SAN ANTONIO -- April 19, 2021 -- Southwest Research Institute has been awarded a grant from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to continue a research program to improve the safety of commercial aircraft engines. The grant is planned to be a four-year, $4.5 million cooperative agreement to develop improved damage tolerance and risk assessment methods for critical life-limited engine parts.

SwRI has collaborated with the FAA since 1995 to improve the safety of commercial air-craft, particularly in assessing the risk of fracture of engine rotors. The Probabilistic In-tegrity and Risk Assessment of Turbine Engines (PIRATE-3) program is now in its third phase, following three previous research grants. The FAA started this research in re-sponse to an accident at Sioux City, Iowa in 1989 caused by the uncontained fracture of an engine fan disk that resulted in the deaths of 112 people.

"Incidents like Sioux City are extremely rare, and for 25 years SwRI has been working with the FAA and industry to make them even rarer," said SwRI's Dr. Craig McClung, PIRATE-3's principal investigator (PI). "If there's an anomaly that could cause a crack in the engine, we use computer simulations to determine the probability that it will lead to a failure."

To accomplish this, McClung and his colleagues created DARWIN (Design Assess-ment of Reliability with INspection), a fracture mechanics and reliability assessment software that supports damage tolerant design and analysis of metallic structural com-ponents. Program Co-Principal Investigator Dr. Michael Enright and Group Leader Jonathan Moody lead the DARWIN development team at SwRI, and the program team includes several major U.S. manufacturers of aircraft engines. The research effort also includes material testing to better understand the behavior of anomalies and cracks under cyclic stress.

"DARWIN is based on what we know about how cyclic stresses and temperatures affect the cracks resulting from any material or manufacturing anomalies that might be pre-sent," McClung said. "Starting from the probability that an anomaly occurs in the en-gine rotor and is not detected, we use DARWIN to predict the probability of fracture during the entire lifetime of each engine over the whole fleet of engines."

DARWIN is utilized by aircraft manufacturers across the globe to ensure the engines they create are resistant to dangerous cracks. It helps the designer to visualize and ma-nipulate a three-dimensional component model, identifying locations where a crack might initiate, slicing the model along the plane where this crack is most likely to grow, and determining the stresses on this plane that will govern the growth rate of the crack.

"DARWIN is mainly utilized at the engine design stage," McClung said. "The industry needs to predict what's going to happen before they put several thousand engines into service, and the FAA requires that they show an acceptably low fracture risk before they are even allowed to put the engine into service. Anomalies are extremely rare, and fractures are even rarer, but we're trying to prevent them from happening in the first place with better design methods. Other research teams have been developing better manufacturing methods and better inspection methods."

The work of McClung and his colleagues has continued to evolve as new incidents oc-cur. The Sioux City accident was caused by an anomaly in a titanium engine rotor, and early research focused on factors that led to that incident. In 2016, a disk fracture and resulting engine fire at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport was caused by a materi-al anomaly in a rotor made from a nickel-based alloy. That event is currently driving much of the PIRATE-3 program.

"Each time there is a new kind of threat, a different kind of anomaly that causes a seri-ous accident, we want to learn from it and reduce the possibility that it could ever hap-pen again," he said.

For more information, visit https:/ / www. swri. org/ life-integrity-failure-prediction .

###
We've heard the announcement by the Tourism Ministry that cultural workers are to get priority access to vaccines and travel exemptions.
Santa Ana police impounded 25 vehicles during a street racing bust on Jan. 9, 2021. (Courtesy of the Santa Ana Police Department)

Santa Ana Street Racing Spectators Could Face Jail Time

Watching a street race in Santa Ana could soon land spectators behind bars.

An ordinance set for discussion during Santa Anas April 20 city council meeting would allow police to issue misdemeanor citations to street-racing spectators. Those who knowingly attend or assist with such events would face up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

As it stands, unless spectators are blocking roadways or engaging in illegal activities, they cannot be cited for attending a street racing event, Santa Ana Police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna told The Epoch Times on April 19.

Street Racing Exhibitions

Street racing in Santa Ana has led to arrests in recent months as police worked to crack down on the heavy-footed motorists.

During a single street-racing bust last January, police issued 27 citations, 25 impounds, four street racing-related arrests and 40 spectator arrests.

Police have also expressed concerns about late-night street exhibitions, where hundreds of street racers and spectators gather late at night, blocking streets, intersections, and sidewalks.

The Santa Ana Police Department has experienced an increase in calls for service related to speed races and reckless driving exhibitions, said a staff report. Drivers and spectators use social media to coordinate these events, which often result in hundreds of spectators. Although most enforcement action centers around the drivers involved in street racing and reckless driving, exhibition scenes also heavily involve spectators.

Spectators in the hundreds come and watch these unlawful activities and typically block all sides of an intersection, virtually stopping all traffic flow.

The crowds interfere with polices ability to respond to the event, the city said, adding that spectators also make it easier for involved drivers to flee.

Last summer, an Orange County Register employee was hit and killed by two cars engaged in an illegal street racing incident in Santa Ana.

The ordinance would provide law enforcement with an effective tool of ridding the streets of spectators so that officers can more directly stop vehicles involved in street racing, the city said.

Individuals within 200 feet of the location of a street race, and who are knowingly present spectators, can be fined.

Longstanding Tradition

Santa Anas street racing exhibitions typically begin on Easter and run through the summer.

The citys street-racing problem reaches back decades, when low-rider cruisers with hydraulics would drive up Bristol Street, disturbing quality of life for local residents, police said.

The traditional car clubs still show up. Theyre more about showing off their cars.  In recent history, its shifted to the street racers, where they take over intersections and do donuts, Bertagna told The Epoch Times in early April.

Groups of people would get in the parking lots, and then often it leads to other criminal activity like drinking, fighting,  shootings, and things like that.

Ramping Up Enforcement

The Santa Ana Public Works Agency previously developed a comprehensive program, Strategic Traffic Enforcement Against Racing and Reckless Driving, to deter the citys street-racing and reckless-driving activities.

Santa Ana is among several local police departments participating in the street-racing enforcement program.

The partnership allocates resources that allow officers to prioritize calls for street racing and utilize investigative tools such as monitoring social media for street-racing activities.
Denton, TX (76205)

Today

Mostly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 66F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 66F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph.
The math teacher who spoke out against a New York City school's anti-racism curriculum has been 'relieved of his teaching duties', it was confirmed Monday.

Grace Church School teacher Paul Rossi was ousted from the classroom after he accused the $57,000-a-year school of indoctrinating students last week.

Topher Nichols, the school spokesman, told DailyMail.com Monday: 'I can confirm that Paul was relieved of his teaching duties.

'He has been invited to spend the remainder of his contract with the school contributing to a new task force that will review best practices nationwide around belonging.'

Nichols elaborated on why Rossi was 'relieved of his teaching duties,' saying it was because 'numerous students requested to be removed from his class because of his unprofessional conduct and because he demeaned them in the press.'

Last week, Rossi said he decided to come forward because he could no longer stay silent while 'witnessing the harmful impact' that anti-racism instruction has on children.

He is now claiming headteacher, George P. Davison, privately agreed the school is 'demonizing white people for being born'. That accusation came Monday in response to a letter by Davison said to have been shared with staff Sunday.

That note from Davison is said to have read: 'You should know that Paul has declined his contract so will not be returning in the fall.

'The wellbeing of our community is our first priority, and we take it seriously whenever students raise concerns about the professionalism of a teacher.

'It is clear to me that Paul cannot be effective as a teacher at Grace any more. I have informed him that he is relieved of his teaching duties, and we've asked two support teachers to take over his math classes for the final quarter.

'He has been asked to not come into the building without prior coordination.'

George P. Davison (right) the head of the Grace Church High School in Manhattan, sent a letter to parents and staff saying he was 'disappointed' math teacher Paul Rossi (left) had publicly blasted the private school in a blog post

Topher Nichols, the school spokesman, confirmed to DailyMail.com Monday: 'I can confirm that Paul was relieved of his teaching duties'

Rossi responded, claiming head George P. Davison privately agreed the school is now 'demonizing white people for being born'

The school had told DailyMail.com Thursday that Rossi wouldn't be fired or face discipline over his post.

Rossi then said he received an email from school Principal Davison saying he should stay home until further notice for 'security concerns.'

He is said to have been asked to stay home after another colleague threatened him in the wake of his complaints being published.

By Monday he had been 'relieved of his duties'.

Candace Owens says parents must SUE woke schools who want to cancel conservative thinking and blasts 'meaningless' degrees like gender studies Candace Owens is pictured Candace Owens has said parents need to start suing woke schools who want to cancel conservative thinking. The conservative commentator said: 'Parents have to start speaking out, not just speaking out, but suing. You have to start suing the schools because they're ruining the lives of young children.' She was joined on Fox News by Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk, who added: 'Where are the adults that are going to start to stand up and realize that the next generation that's standing up for freedom in our country is worthy of protection, in this situation? 'It takes courage to be a young conservative. It's time for adults to start to protect young people's right to organize and speak their mind.' Owens added: 'This thought process that we keep seeing that conservatives are not allowed to exist, that being conservative is backwards and it's wrong, and especially when it comes to the education system taking part in this, right? 'Smearing and labeling their own students, these students having to transfer out of schools. This is systematic bullying that's happening, but worse than that, it's propagandist.' She later praised Andrew Gutmann, 45, who pulled his daughter from $54,000 a year Brearley school as 'an absolute hero' before blasting 'meaningless' degrees like gender studies. Responding to one student's claims that they were punished for studying her in black history month, Owens said: 'This young girl you brought up...picked me, a black person, for Black History Month, and she was accused of being a racist. 'I mean, that is so twisted and perverted and wrong. It would be funny if it wasn't so cruel that led to her actually having to transfer out of this school.' Advertisement

Candace Owens said Sunday that parents need to start suing woke schools who want to cancel conservative thinking.

She told Fox News: 'Parents have to start speaking out, not just speaking out, but suing. You have to start suing the schools because they're ruining the lives of young children.'

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk added: 'Where are the adults that are going to start to stand up and realize that the next generation that's standing up for freedom in our country is worthy of protection, in this situation?

'It takes courage to be a young conservative. It's time for adults to start to protect young people's right to organize and speak their mind.'

Her comments came in the wake of a second controversy that impacted another elite New York City prep schools where a parent complained his child was being brainwashed with anti-racism ideology.

Andrew Gutmann, 45, had announced in an April 13 letter shared by journalist Bari Weiss this week that he has chosen not to reenroll his daughter in the all-girls school where annual tuition is $54,000.

He pulled his daughter from the school over its woke antiracism 'obsession.' He accused the school of 'teaching what to think not how to think.'

The school responded by slamming him for being 'offensive.'

On Monday Woke, Inc author Vivek Ramaswamy also blasted what he calls a culture of 'indoctrination'.

He said American schools are 'going down the tubes' because they have been 'infected' with 'woke culture' that has 'sacrificed the idea of excellence' by 'indoctrinating' students.

Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur and the author of Woke, Inc, compared the wave of 'wokeness' in schools to China's Cultural Revolution of the 60s and 70s, when its people were indoctrinated with Maoism by the Communist Party.

Ramaswamy told Fox News that these incidents illustrate the extent to which American children are being brainwashed.

'I think it's going to be really damaging, poisoning the minds of our next generation,' he told Fox News.

'The thing about America as a country is that we are not like many other countries throughout history - defined on the basis of a single ethnicity, or a single language, or a single monarch.

'America is an idea, and part of being an idea as a country means this.

'The way we describe America affects that America actually works, that's why we call it the American dream.

'It's what we aspire to. E pluribus unum (out of many, one). That's what we should be aspiring to, ideas that bind us together.

Rossi on Tuesday came forward with allegations in a blog post that he published on Substack

Grace Church High School is a $57,000-a-year private school whose famous alumni include actor David Duchovny and New York Times columnist David Brooks

Vivek Ramaswamy (above) spoke out in response to two separate controversies that impacted elite New York City prep schools where parents complained their children were being brainwashed with anti-racism ideology

HEAD OF DALTON RESIGNS AMID ROW OVER WOKE POLICIES Jim Best said he would see out the year at the $50,000-a-year institution then step down to pursue 'other opportunities' The head of the elite Manhattan school Dalton is stepping down this year after being slammed by parents for pushing an 'obsessive', antiracism agenda on students. Jim Best said he would see out the year at the $50,000-a-year institution then step down to pursue 'other opportunities'. His resignation is in response to parents' complaints that Dalton, like other prestigious private schools Grace Church and Brearley, is indoctrinating students with its woke agenda. Dalton parents penned an anonymous open letter to the school earlier this week. 'Every class this year has had an obsessive focus on race and identity, 'racist cop' reenactments in science, 'de-centering whiteness' in art class, learning about white supremacy and sexuality in health class. 'Wildly inappropriate, many of these classes feel more akin to a Zoom corporate sensitivity-training than to Dalton's intellectually engaging curriculum,' it read. Advertisement

He added: 'Instead we have been obsessing over diversity, our differences, for a decade now forgetting all of the ways in which we are actually the same, and now that's getting transmitted to the next generation.

'I think the way we describe this country to them will affect the way it works in the next generation, and that's something to be really frightened of.'

Gutmann, who runs his family's chemical business, told the New York Post on Saturday that he penned the 1,700-word letter he mailed to 650 different families because 'someone had to speak out.' He said he does not regret sending the letter.

'She hasn't been brainwashed yet by the school - but she's had me at home. I'm not so sure that's true of the other kids,' Gutmann told the outlet, referring to his daughter.

'Someone had to do it. Someone had to light the match. Everyone's so afraid of cancel culture. We're going to destroy the city, we're going to destroy the country.'

Gutmann said he refused to sign the school's anti-racism pledge in October.

The school had started the required pledge after black alumnae accused the school of racism in posts made to the Instagram account account 'Black at Brearley,' according to the Washington Free Beacon.

The school's antiracism and diversity plans are extensively described on its website.

'I thought they were going to kick my daughter out then,' Gutmann said.

'They didn't, but next year they have the pledge built into the yearly school contract.'

The concerned dad claimed that the school's 'once-rigorous curriculum' completely changed after administrators 'managed to sneak' in an increased emphasis on race during the pandemic 'when everyone was distracted,' the New York Post reported.

'I don't know who's really driving this and nobody does,' he told the outlet.

Gutmann said the thing he resented the most about Brearley is that the school 'has begun to teach what to think, instead of how to think.'

Jane Fried, Brearley's head of school, sent a message to the school's families on Friday in which she slammed Gutmann's letter as 'deeply offensive and harmful.'
Members of the Tulsa Police Department look on in Tulsa, Okla. on June 20, 2020. (Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images)

Oklahoma Supreme Court Rules City Violated Law in Cutting Police Budget

The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled on April 13 that the Norman City Council violated the states Open Meeting Act, or Sunshine Act, when it approved a budget that slashed $865,000 from police department funding in June last year, amid calls to defund the police spurred by social justice advocates in response to the May death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The states top court unanimously upheld a December ruling from the Cleveland County District Court that found cutting the sum from the police departments Fiscal Year 2021 budget violated the law, after the Norman Fraternal Order of Police filed a lawsuit against the city council.

The notice for the June 16, 2020, meeting was deceptively worded or materially obscured the stated purpose of the meeting and is therefore a willful violation of the states Open Meetings Act, a District Court judge ruled at the time. The notice said the council was going to consider adoption of the citys proposed operating and capital budgets for the upcoming fiscal year, The Oklahoman reported.

Any person who read the language used would not have understood that there would be a defunding, a reallocation, or modification of any underlying departments budget, the judge wrote.

The question before this Court is whether City of Norman, Defendant/Appellant, complied with the statutory notice requirements of the Open Meeting Act, 25 O.S.2011,  301314, for its June 16, 2020 special meeting. We answer in the negative, the Oklahoma Supreme Court said Tuesday in upholding that ruling.

The ruling also found that the citys budget is invalid.

The cuts came as the defund the police movement emerged following the death of Floyd, an African American man who died while in Minneapolis police custody.

The movement calls for the reallocation of funds away from police departments to other social programs, while some call for abolishing the police altogether. The movement claims that police departments are systemically racist and that police funding can be better used elsewhere to help African American communities.

One of the prominent groups pushing for the defunding of police is Black Lives Matter, whose leaders claim to be trained Marxists.

Mayor Breea Clark said at the time that the budget amendments reflect an intentional effort to tackle systemic racism in our community and to be proactive as opposed to reactive in meeting the social service needs of our residents.

A cut of $4.5 million to the police departments budget was initially proposed by city council member Alexandra Scott.

The $865,000 that was cut from the police departments $31 million budget was to be used for community outreach programs. Council members said in June that $630,000 would be used for community outreach and that $235,000 would go toward hiring an internal auditor to monitor the citys spending.

Following the ruling, city spokesperson Annahlyse Meyer told The Associated Press, We are reviewing it and will comply with the Supreme Court ruling. The city council will have to vote again on the budget. However, a date has yet to be set.

In a statement, Sen. Rob Standridge (R-Norman) applauded the Supreme Courts decision while noting that the city has already become less safe since the funding cuts last June.

I applaud the Supreme Courts decision but the damage caused by that vote is already apparent, Standridge said. Since that vote against public safety, the city of Norman has become less safe according to trends were seeing in crime statistics for the community.

Elsewhere, Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva told Fox News in an interview that aired April 15 that violent crime has soared because criminals have been emboldened by the defund the police movement, as well as by the progressive law enforcement policies advocated by leaders like Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon.

Villanueva said the county recorded 60 homicides during the first two months of the year, compared to 21 in same period a year earlier.

Janita Kan and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP)  Liberty University has filed a civil lawsuit against its former leader, Jerry Falwell Jr., seeking tens of millions in damages after the two parted ways acrimoniously last year.

The complaint, filed Thursday in Lynchburg Circuit Court, alleges Falwell crafted a well-resourced exit strategy from his role as president and chancellor in the form of a lucrative 2019 employment agreement while withholding damaging information from the evangelical school about a personal scandal that would explode into public view the following year.

Despite his clear duties as an executive and officer at Liberty, Falwell Jr. chose personal protection, the lawsuit says.

It also alleges that Falwell failed to disclose and address the issue of his personal impairment by alcohol and has refused to fully return confidential information and other personal property belonging to Liberty.

In a statement, Falwell said the lawsuit was full of lies and half truths and called it an attempt to defame him and discredit his record.

I assure you that I will defend myself against it with conviction, he said.

Falwells departure from the Virginia university in August 2020 came soon after Giancarlo Granda, a younger business partner of the Falwell family, said he had a yearslong sexual relationship with Falwells wife, Becki Falwell, and that Jerry Falwell participated in some of the liaisons as a voyeur.

Although the Falwells acknowledged that Granda and Becki Falwell had an affair, Jerry Falwell denied any participation. The couple alleged that Granda sought to extort them by threatening to reveal the relationship.

The lawsuit says that Falwell had a fiduciary duty to disclose Grandas extortive actions, and to disclose the potential for serious harm to Liberty.

Instead, Falwell furthered the conspiracy of silence and negotiated a 2019 Employment Agreement that contained a higher salary from Liberty, the suit says.

The lawsuit argues that Falwell and Grandas actions have injured Libertys enrollment, hurt fundraising, disrupted faculty, resulted in the 2019 agreement that proved detrimental to Libertys interests and damaged the schools reputation. Granda is not named as a defendant in the suit.

University spokesman Scott Lamb said Libertys only word on the subject is the lawsuit itself.

Before the Granda scandal exploded, Falwell had already been on leave after posting a photo on social media that sparked an uproar. It showed Falwell on a yacht with a drink in his hand and his arm around a young woman who was not his wife, their pants unzipped and his underwear exposed.

The complaint, written with a flourish, offers new details reflecting the universitys perspective on its rift with Falwell both before and after the photo scandal.

The time for Falwell Jr. to cash in on Libertys prodigious success had arrived, it says of the contract negotiations. The lengthy treatise includes subsections with titles such as Falwells Auspicious Acts of August of 2020 and Falwell Jr.s Hard Fall, referencing a tumble down the stairs that prompted a 911 call.

According to the lawsuit, after Falwell gave a radio interview about the yacht photo in which he offered a slurred explanation, Becki Falwell stepped in.

The lawsuit says Becki Falwell contacted three members of the executive committee of Libertys board to alert them to what she described as her husbands excessive use of alcohol.

Beckis heartfelt appeal made an impact on Libertys leaders and helped provide a context for understanding Falwells questionable public comments, worrying behavior, and inappropriate social media posts, the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit also alleges there were concerns at Liberty that Falwell smelled of alcohol during work interactions.

It was agreed that Falwell would go on leave and Liberty would pay for his rehab, but a dispute later emerged between Falwell and school leaders over the type of treatment, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit alleges three counts: breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and statutory conspiracy.

On the second count, the lawsuit says it seeks damages in excess of $10 million. On the conspiracy charge, it seeks $10 million in compensatory damages and argues that sum should be tripled, as allowed by state law under limited circumstances, plus $350,000 in punitive damages. Liberty is also seeking other costs and fees.

Falwell, an attorney and real estate developer, had led Liberty since the 2007 death of his televangelist father, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who also founded the Moral Majority, making evangelicals a key force in the Republican party.

In early 2016, Falwell become one of the first conservative Christians to endorse Donald Trump for the presidency. He went on to court controversy and stay in the news, vigorously criticizing Democrats online.

In late August, shortly after Falwells resignation, Liberty announced that it was opening an independent investigation into Falwells tenure as president. The inquiry remains ongoing, and the school has not released any preliminary information from it.

Falwell sued Liberty for defamation in October, alleging the school had damaged his reputation, but dropped the case in December without explanation.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
When an otherwise healthy 48-year-old Nebraska woman arrived at an emergency room after three days of abdominal pain and malaise, doctors discovered a life-threatening puzzle. Her platelets, the colorless blood cells that clump to form clots, had plummeted. But a CT scan of her abdomen and pelvis revealed extensive blood clots.

Her medical team raced to untangle the seemingly paradoxical combination of symptoms. Even as they treated the patient with a common blood thinner, more clots appeared - in her brain and in the blood vessels around her liver and spleen.

As doctors scoured the patient's medical history for clues, a seemingly innocent fact emerged: She had received the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine two weeks before starting to feel ill.

Between March 19 and April 12, medical teams from Virginia to Nevada encountered the same baffling constellation of symptoms in five other women between the ages of 18 and 48. All had recently received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. One woman died.

On Tuesday, U.S. health officials recommended that those vaccinations be paused so experts could reconsider how, or if, the vaccine could be safely used. There were only six known cases among more than 7 million shots, but the symptoms the women experienced drew alarm because they were severe and virtually unseen in healthy individuals - with one recent exception. They struck an ominous resemblance to cases in Europe among people who received a similar coronavirus shot developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford.

Making sense of rare, possibly related adverse events after vaccination can be notoriously tricky, but in this case, U.S. health officials have a blueprint. European scientists' detective work on similar cases in March, paired with decades of painstaking research into an obscure immune reaction to the anticoagulant drug heparin, have given them a probable - but not certain - mechanism, just weeks after the cases began to be detected.

Scientific questions remain about what component of the vaccines might be triggering the reaction, and who is at risk. But the syndrome is so similar to the rare heparin-related reactions that scientists have given the vaccine-triggered reaction a similar name, established a probable link and identified a widely available diagnostic test. It's clear that heparin shouldn't be given because it may worsen the clots, but other treatments exist on the shelves of virtually any hospital, although they cannot undo the damage caused by severe clots.

In a letter Friday to the New England Journal of Medicine, scientists from Johnson & Johnson said that "evidence is insufficient to establish a causal relationship" between their shot and the clots, and called for more evidence to clarify the symptoms observed in people who had been vaccinated. But many experts, including U.S. government health officials, said the immune explanation is the leading theory.

The rapid progress in understanding the clots highlights the dividends yielded by scientific research on seemingly narrow topics - and stands in stark contrast to the plight of other vaccines, in which scientists can struggle for years to understand why an adverse event occurs.

"It's actually extraordinary we know so much about this already," said Theodore Warkentin, a professor in the department of pathology and molecular medicine at McMaster University in Canada, who is one of the world's experts on the heparin-triggered syndrome.

"Imagine if heparin had never been invented, but otherwise the world was the same. People would be getting these low platelets and clotting, and we wouldn't even know where to start. . . . There was a road map."

- - -

For years, a relatively small circle of physicians and scientists have single-mindedly focused on unraveling the science behind a rare reaction to heparin that can cause both clotting and low platelet counts.

In 1957, two physicians from Dartmouth College's medical school presented 10 cases of patients who had received heparin and developed unusual clotting reactions during a three-year period. The report, at a New York medical meeting, included photographs of the clots that had been removed, which were described as "pale, soft, salmon-colored clots," according to a history Warkentin recounted in a textbook. The specialists in the audience were unconvinced, and none raised their hands when asked if they had seen similar cases.

During the next decades, recognition grew that rare reactions to heparin were real and that they were probably triggered by the immune system. A 1977 study detailing the cases of eight patients, six of whom were women, was considered key in establishing heparin-induced thrombocytopenia - known as HIT - as a recognized condition. A vascular surgeon in Milwaukee coined the term "white clot syndrome."

Scientists would continue to learn more about HIT, discovering that a protein found inside platelets that also coated the surface of arteries and veins, called platelet factor 4, could bind strongly to heparin, forming a two-part complex.

In some people, when heparin and the protein bonded, the body's disease-fighting system went on alert, triggering antibodies against platelet factor 4. That could wreak havoc. The antibodies could activate platelets, but with seemingly contradictory consequences: Some platelets would clot, while others would vanish. The antibodies could damage the cells lining blood vessels, helping trigger clots in more ways than one.

Because those antibodies could be detected in laboratory tests, physicians had an indispensable tool to diagnose the condition. The first iteration of a test was created by Warkentin's mentor, John Kelton, in 1984.

It has taken years to work out the science of what is going on in HIT, and it remains an ongoing project. Scientists painstakingly developed mouse models that allowed them to study the condition and made a lab-generated monoclonal antibody that mimicked the one in the body. Warkentin and colleagues discovered a mysterious form of the condition that could occur, even in the absence of heparin.

"It's funny, because you work in these areas and everyone in your family thinks it's so esoteric and then something like this happens," said Mortimer Poncz, division chief of pediatric hematology at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "On the other hand, every time there is an unusual clot, someone is testing it for HIT these days. So it is simply exciting that turned out to be useful."

- - -

When something bad happens to a person after receiving a vaccine, the first question most scientists consider is whether it is related to the shot or simply a coincidence.

In the case of the brain blood clots identified in people in Europe who recently received the AstraZeneca vaccine, early inquiries focused on whether it was happening more frequently than the typical rate of such clots in the general population.

The brain blood clots, called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, are rare - with about two to 14 cases expected in a population of 1 million people each year. The clots in recently vaccinated people were clearly more common than would be normal, occurring in a matter of weeks after healthy, young people received shots.

So far, 222 clots in the brain or abdomen have been identified out of 34 million people vaccinated in Europe - in far less than a year. But what stood out to physicians was that the ensemble of symptoms surrounding these clots was so atypical there wasn't even an easy way to look up the rate of how often they would normally occur.

"People get blood clots. Those things happen," said Steven Coutre, a hematologist at Stanford University Medical Center. "It's one thing to have a blood clot; it's another to have disseminated blood clots in an otherwise healthy woman who dies from it. That gets your attention."

On a Friday in early March, Sabine Eichinger, a physician in Austria involved in the care of the first patient, a 49-year-old health-care worker, told Andreas Greinacher, an expert in Germany on HIT, about the unusual case. She agreed to send him a sample, and by the following Tuesday, Greinacher was talking with Warkentin about the parallels between the cases and the rare immune reaction to heparin, about which they had co-authored a medical textbook.

By the next day, Greinacher and colleagues had determined that a diagnostic test for the same antibodies implicated in HIT could be useful. Their paper was published in the New England Journal of Medicine alongside a report from Norwegian specialists, and proposed a new name for the syndrome: vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia, or VITT. They suggested a possible treatment course, including intravenous immunoglobulin and other anticoagulants.

In the heparin-triggered condition, the culprit was the combination of heparin and platelet factor 4. In the vaccine cases, it appeared that something in the vaccine - what, exactly, is still under intense investigation - bound to platelet factor 4 and triggered a similar response.

"Just as an occasional patient zings off one of these huge responses after being given heparin and gets in trouble, the occasional person given these vaccines loses the regulatory control that keeps this immune response and zings off one of these high-titer antibody responses," said Richard Aster, a senior investigator emeritus at Versiti, a nonprofit focused on blood health and research.

In five of the six U.S. patients who developed clots after receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, physicians performed tests and found those same HIT antibodies. A 25-year-old man who received the vaccine in the clinical trial of the vaccine and suffered a brain clot also had HIT antibodies. The existence of those tests - and the ability to treat the condition - is a tribute to the years of experience studying HIT.

Paul A. Offit, a vaccine expert at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia who developed a rotavirus vaccine, said the swift revelations about the mechanism of the blood clots in people receiving coronavirus vaccines stand in marked contrast to the experience trying to understand rare events associated with other vaccines. A vaccine for rotavirus, RotaShield, was pulled off the market in 1999 because it was found to carry a rare risk of intussusception, a condition that can cause intestinal blockage and may be deadly.

"It's amazing, having lived through the intussusception experience," Offit said. "That was 20-plus years ago, and we still don't know the reason."

But even as the science behind the clots is untangled, the parallel public health question of what to do with an effective vaccine with a rare risk remains.

Many have pointed out that the risk remains lower than the risk of clots from birth control or from a serious case of covid-19. But the clots are serious and can be devastating to individuals, and some groups appear to be at higher risk for the rare reaction. The Nebraska patient was initially treated with heparin, but was switched to a regimen recommended for patients with the rare vaccine reactions, according to a case study in the New England Journal of Medicine. She was critically ill as of Wednesday, when the report was published.

A panel of expert advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is scheduled to debate the matter again Friday. European countries have, for the most part, restarted use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, often restricting it to older people for whom the benefits clearly outweigh the risks.

"We'll never have perfect data, and there will always be uncertainty," Grace Lee, a professor of pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine, said as the CDC committee debated how to move forward Wednesday. "But it's really for me about getting better risk estimates . . . if we can, to minimize exposure to those who may be at highest risk for this particular adverse event."


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New Delhi, April 19 : The Supreme Court on Monday declined to entertain a plea by Trinamool Congress leader seeking a direction to the Election Commission to introduce 100 percent Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) system in the EVMs amid the ongoing polls. VVPAT is a method of providing feedback to voters using EVMs.

A bench headed by Chief Justice S.A. Bobde said: "We are not going to interfere in the middle of the election process." The counsel, appearing for petitioner Gopal Seth, contended that free and fair election was a right of the citizens. The bench responded: "We agree with you on this, but we will not interfere." Seth had moved the top court challenging the Calcutta High Court order which refused to entertain his plea. The Chief Justice queried petitioner's counsel whether his client had moved a representation before the Election Commission. Seth's counsel responded in affirmative and contended that the poll body had appreciated the suggestion. The bench reiterated that it will not interfere in the matter.

A VVPAT is considered as an independent verification system for voting machines, which allow voters to verify whether they have corrected cast their vote. The poll body decided to use VVPAT, along with Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) at all the polling stations in the Assembly elections in four states and Union territory.

However, it was decided to count VVPAT slips of five randomly selected polling stations in each Assembly constituency. This methodology was deployed for verification of the result obtained from the Control Unit. The exercise was followed in accordance with the previous order of the apex court.
Bengaluru, April 20 : Bengaluru legislators and MPs on Monday unanimously favoured imposing Section I44 - prohibition of unlawful assembly of people instead of enforcing measures like lockdown, partial lockdown or night curfew.

After the meeting convened by the Karnataka Revenue Minister, R. Ashoka who also heads the state disaster management committee, that was also attended by Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa virtually, Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee working president, R. Ramalinga Reddy told reporters that they (Congress) were completely opposed to measures like lockdowns and nigh curfew.

"We have suggested that if at all the state government was planning to enforce lockdown, then the state government must take steps to pay at least Rs 25,000 per account in the state, which roughly translates to Rs 15,000 crore. This amount is for the poor people to look after their families," he said.

He added that there was no need for such measures as it would be appropriate to impose Section 144, which will automatically prevent people coming out in groups and restrict people's gathering.

Launching an attack on the Karnataka government, Reddy charged that the meeting convened by the minister, Ashoka was just an eyewash and outcome of this meeting will have to be waited till Tuesday.

"Yediyurappa who attended this meeting virtually has assured us that our concerns will be addressed appropriately during all party meetings on Tuesday," he said.

He accused that neither Revenue minister, Ashoka nor the health minister, K. Sudhakar had answers about shortage of drugs, beds and oxygen in hospitals.

"Despite having an year's experience tackling pandemic like this, they have failed miserably. They should have equipped themselves as soon as the second wave had hit the neighbouring state Kerala. But, unfortunately, they audaciously waited Covid to knock at their doors and then they woke up. This is an irony of this government, which lacks depth in handling crises like this magnitude," he slammed.

Meanwhile, Congress party senior leader, C.M. Ibrahim told reporters that the Bengaluru legislators have appealed to the Karnataka government to take steps to clear doubts about Covid vaccines. "People are questioning us that some people are dying in a short duration after the vaccine is given. This is where the government's role comes in. They must take steps to allay fears," he said.

He also added that the government must take steps to give decent burial to Covind deaths. "First of all government lacks clarity on many issues, when we question them, they do not even have proper response or solution to a problem," he said.
2021-04-16

Maeci

A humanitarian flight of the Italian Cooperation has landed today at 1 p.m. Italian time at Makalle airport, in Ethiopia. It left the United Nations Humanitarian Readiness Base (UNHRD) in Brindisi with a cargo of 8 tons of medical supplies, of which 6 tons of medicines and medical kits of the Italian Cooperation and 2 tons of medicines provided by the Italian Red Cross.



The Italian humanitarian flight - one of the first made by international donors to land in the Tigre' region - is intended to strengthen the health care activities of the Ethiopian Red Cross in support of the population affected by the severe humanitarian consequences of the conflict in the region.



"This flight - says the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Marina Sereni - is a tangible sign of our commitment to the region of Tigre, marked in recent months by a conflict that has caused victims and suffering to the population. We want to alleviate this suffering and to stop the hostilities and violence".
The husband of a pregnant woman who died suddenly from a rare brain condition has revealed how she used her final moments to save their unborn baby.

Charlotte De Martino, 31, had been enjoying life with husband Michael, 32, and their daughters, Freja, three, and Astrid, one.

The Swedish-born IKEA worker, who lived in Ferntree Gully, Melbourne, and was six months pregnant with her third child, was home alone one Saturday morning when she suffered a catastrophic bleed caused by an arteriovenous malformation - an abnormal tangle of blood vessels that had burst in her brain.

Before slipping unconscious, Charlotte mustered the strength to call an ambulance, an extraordinary act that doctors say is the only reason they could save their daughter, Runa.

A month to the day after agreeing to switch off her life support machine, Michael told Daily Mail Australia about his wife's remarkable courage - and how their beloved girls have given him a reason to carry on.

Swedish-born Charlotte De Martino (pictured with daughters Freja, left, and Astrid, in her arms) died two weeks after suffering a catastrophic bleed caused by a rare brain condition

Avid travellers, Charlotte and Michael met on international friendship website Interpals, which is used by people all over the world to make connections before jetting off on overseas adventure.

They hit it off instantly, Skyping for months before flying to South Korea to meet on a holiday in May 2014.

'It was easily the best day of my life,' Michael, an account manager at an electronic security firm, said.

'We both just knew there and then. I could have asked her to marry me on the spot and she would have said yes.'

Although she had never planned to leave her native Karlstad, west central Sweden, Charlotte packed up her life and moved to Australia to be with her 'soulmate' three months later.

Before slipping unconscious, Charlotte (pictured) mustered the strength to call an ambulance, an extraordinary act that doctors say is the only reason they could save her daughter, Runa

The couple travelled the world together before buying a house in 2015 and tying the knot two years later, welcoming daughter Freja soon after.

The De Martinos enjoyed four years of wedded bliss, heightened by the arrival of Astrid in 2019, before their world came crashing down on March 6, 2021.

'Saturdays were always "leave mum alone" days, so I was out with the girls and she was at home by herself,' Michael said.

They chatted in their bedroom that morning but hours later, Charlotte was unresponsive in an ICU bed with doctors clueless about what had happened to her.

Tests revealed she had experienced a massive haemorrhage triggered by an aneurysm, a sudden swelling which had caused an abnormal tangle of blood vessels known as an arteriovenous malformation (AVM) to burst in her brain.

The condition is rare, affecting just one percent of the world's population, and often without symptoms.

The De Martinos (pictured with Astrid, left, and Freja, right) enjoyed four years of wedded bliss before their world came crashing down on March 6, 2021

Doctors ordered an emergency Caesarean section and baby Runa was delivered at 27 weeks, three days.

She is still in intensive care where she will remain until she can eat and breathe independently. Michael visits her everyday.

After two weeks without brain activity, doctors gave Michael the devastating news that Charlotte would never wake up.

Together with her parents, he made the agonising decision to turn off life support on March 20.

ICU consultants say they are still baffled by how she managed to dial triple zero in her last moments of consciousness.

'No one can really explain it because the doctors said it usually happens like a balloon bursting,' he said.

'It's the only reason my daughter is alive.'

What is an arteriovenous malformation? An arteriovenous malformation of the brain (AVM) is a tangle of abnormal blood vessels connecting arteries and veins in the brain. The arteries are responsible for taking oxygen-rich blood from the heart to the brain. Veins carry the oxygen-depleted blood back to the lungs and heart, and a brain AVM disrupts this vital process. An arteriovenous malformation can develop anywhere in your body but occurs most often in the brain or spine. Brain AVMs are rare and affect less than 1 percent of the population. Cause The cause of AVMs is not clear. Most people are born with them, but they can occasionally form later in life. They are rarely passed down among families genetically. Symptoms Some people with brain AVMs experience symptoms such as headache and seizures. AVMs are commonly found after a brain scan for another health issue or after the blood vessels rupture and cause bleeding in the brain. Once diagnosed, a brain AVM can often be treated successfully to prevent complications, such as brain damage or stroke. Source: Mayo Clinic Advertisement

The tragedy has been hardest on the De Martinos eldest daughter Freja, who is old enough to understand her mother has passed away but still struggles with the permanence of the fact.

'It feels like I have to experience my wife passing everyday,' said Michael.

'She's still under the impression that her mum's in hospital and she might see her again. It's heartbreaking having to tell her that that's never going to happen.

'If there was anything in the world I could do to change it for her, I would.'

Friends and family from around the world including countries such as Sweden, Russia, Italy, Portugal and the UK, joined a livestream of Charlotte's funeral on March 31 to remember her and show support for the young family she left behind.

A GoFundMe campaign launched by Michael's mother Linda had raised $78,520 at the time of writing.

Friends and family from around the world joined a livestream of Charlotte's funeral on March 31 to remember her and show support for the young family she left behind

Donations will be used to support Michael and his three little girls as they continue life without their mother, as well as funding flights for Charlotte's parents who paid close to $20,000 to fly to Australia for their daughter's funeral.

Despite Sweden being declared a Covid red zone with over 7,500 cases daily, Charlotte's parents were granted entry to Australia on compassionate grounds thanks to the support of the Victorian and Adelaide state governments and Qatar Airways CEO, Akbar Al Baker.

'There were so many people involved,' Michael said.

'It made me happy that in times like this, the compassionate side of things came through. But it was the definition of a hollow victory.'

Michael now faces a future without his beloved partner, raising their children alone

Michael urges others to cherish time with loved ones, because 'you never know when your time is going to be up'.

'Right now I'm just trying to get through the day, waking up and getting to bed with everyone still in one piece,' he said.

'Even with how much it hurts now, and part of me died with Charlotte, I experienced seven years of euphoria and I know how lucky I am to have had that.

'Charlotte passed knowing she was the best thing that ever happened to me, so I'd just say to people never leave anything to chance.

'I don't have any regrets because I always told her how much she meant to me.'

Donations to the De Martino family can be made through the GoFundMe campaign.

For more information about arteriovenous malformation, please visit Brain Foundation Australia here.
Nine Ukrainians held in Thai penitentiaries have been pardoned, Verkhovna Rada Human Rights Commissioner Liudmyla Denisova has said.

"Thanks to cooperation with the Chief Ombudsman of the Kingdom of Thailand and on the occasion of Thailand's National Day, all Ukrainian prisoners in Thailand have received a royal pardon - two received a pardon in the form of their terms reduced by 1/6 of the actual term of imprisonment (excluding time spent in prison), one person had a prison term reduced by 1/2, and six citizens of Ukraine had their terms reduced and they were released from further punishment," she wrote on her Telegram channel.

Denisova added that six Ukrainians had already returned home, but three Ukrainian citizens remain in Thai prisons.

Earlier, Denisova reported that 21 citizens of Ukraine were held in Thai penitentiary institutions.

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NEW YORK, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A report by Fact.MR projects steady growth for the global push-to-talk (PTT) market. The PTT market has been forecast to expand at a CAGR of over 8% CAGR through 2031. Surge in demand from government and commercial sector is expected to rise, sealing push to talk market future growth opportunities. With the adoption of advanced technology and growing demand for land mobile radio (LMR) in government & defense sectors, push to talk apps and devices sales are poised to increase.

According to the study, the push to talk market size is expected to exceed the valuation of US$ 40 Bn by 2031. The demand for PTT services and solutions with LMR and cellular network is on the rise within the public safety & defense sector. This is expected to provide lucrative growth opportunities for the PTT market players through 2021. Advantages such as the need to maintain optimum security & safety level is increasing the sales in government & defense sector across countries such as U.S., China, India and Germany. Hence, fostering PTT sales.

"Technological advancements are aiding push-to-talk (PTT) market manufacturers, ensuring increasing demand from diverse end users such as transportation, logistics, retail and defense. This is a key push to talk market trend which will continue stimulating the sales" says a Fact.MR analyst.

For more Insights into the Market, Request a Sample of this Report

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Key Takeaways

High demand from advanced defense and commercial sectors are creating growth opportunities for U.S PTT market

Government & defense sector is expected to be the primary end-user for PTT market

Increased demand from public safety and defense sector is expected to spur the PTT sales in Germany

China is expected to vanguard the Asia-Pacific PTT market backed by the heightened demand from government sector

is expected to vanguard the Asia-Pacific PTT market backed by the heightened demand from government sector India to exhibit hegemony due to the rise in application within government & defense sector

to exhibit hegemony due to the rise in application within government & defense sector UK and France to be one of the most lucrative PTT market

to be one of the most lucrative PTT market By network, LMR is leading the segment backed by the use of advanced communication technology

Cellular network is expected to emerge as a potential segment aiding the PPT industry growth

Competitive Landscape

Azetti Networks, Group Talk, Zello, Iridium, AT&T, Simoco Wireless Solutions, Motorola Solutions, and AINA Wireless are some of the key manufacturers that are profiled by Fact.MR. According to the study, with the market being highly competitive, leading players are focused on generating their new proceedings by launching new strategies and product development.

In January 2021, Cubic Corporation announced the launch of FirstNet Ready push-to-talk gateway that offers interoperability between Land Mobile Radio and LTE networks. It has also added compatibility to it vocality RoIP and M3-SE-MFGW interoperability gateways.

Also, on 26th January 2021, Vodafone announced the launch of push-to-talk service with an advanced critical service that provides instant and secure communication powered by Vodafone's GigaNet nationwide network.

Furthermore, in September 2020, Sonim Technologies, a leading U.S. provider of ultra-rugged mobility solutions announced the collaboration with Push to Talk International (PTTI), a leading supplier of Push-to-Talk services in UK and Ireland. The collaboration enabled PTTI to provide its wide range of customers with Sonim's ultra-rugged XP8 Android smartphone.

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Fact.MR has published a market research report on global push-to-talk (PTT) market that contains a detailed analysis for 2016-2020 and opportunity assessment for 2021-2031. The study gives a detailed segmentation on the trends, challenges and opportunities of the market expected to prevail in the upcoming years. In order to gain a better understanding, the market is segmented on the basis of network (LMR push-to-talk services and cellular push-to-talk services), end-use industry (push-to-talk services for public safety, push-to-talk services for commercial use, transportation & logistics, construction, retail, travel & hospitality, health, push-to talk services for government & defense and others) and region (North America, Latin America, Europe, East Asia, South Asia, Oceania and MEA).

Key Questions Covered in the Report

How will demand for push-to-talk (PTT) market will evolve in the future?

Which are the lucrative markets for push-to-talk (PTT) market?

Which is the top selling push-to-talk (PTT) market solution?

Which is the impact of regulation on push-to-talk (PTT) market?

Which are the top companies operating in the market?

What is the impact of Covid-19 on push-to-talk (PTT) market?

Explore Fact.MR's Coverage on the Information & Communication Technology Domain

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ROME, APR 19 - A protestor was run over on Monday while taking part in demonstration against the government's COVID-19 restrictions that involved blocking traffic on the A1 motorway near Florence. The protest, organized by the Tni Italia network representing the hospitality industry, is the latest in a series staged by restaurateurs, bar and gym owners and shopkeepers against the restrictions. The protestor, a restaurateur from Emilia Romagna, was hit by car that refused to stop during the demo, which was being broadcast live via Facebook. The man was not badly injured, sources said. The motorist who hit him was identified and detained by the police further down the highway, according to the sources. "Here we have entrepreneurs, people who are tired of being on the receiving end and want to reopen and get back to work," said Tni Italia President Pasquale Naccari. (ANSA).
This is in response to the Waukegan middle schools being renamed. I think we should keep politics out of schools. I think that theres going to be a new American flag. Call me paranoid, if you want. And the colors of the new flag are going to be black, brown and white. It has nothing to do with political parties, which the flag doesnt either. It has to do with race now. So the original American flag is red, white and blue. Red having to do with the blood that goes through all men and women, white having to do with the stars that we dream upon, and blue having to do with the water that we all crossed to come to this great country to begin with.
Strictly Come Dancing star Oti Mabuse has confirmed she will part ways with the show after appearing in its 19th series later this year.

The South African ballroom specialist, 30, has become a household name since making her debut on the long-running show in 2015, featuring alongside celebrity partner Anthony Ogogo.

But Oti - who has won the coveted Strictly Glitter Ball twice - admits she could step down after being confirmed as a new judge on The Masked Dancer.

Farewell: Strictly Come Dancing star Oti Mabuse has confirmed she will part ways with the show after appearing in its 19th series later this year

She told The Telegraph: I love to dance and also I love bringing joy to so many people, but I think that [this years Strictly] will be the last one.

To be part of a show like Strictly, which is so diverse in every sense of the word, is incredible. It always pushes to open new doors.

'You almost forget this year we had JJ [Chalmers] and Will [Bayley] the year before, its become a normal thing. Im sure they will have a male same-sex couple this year.

But honestly as a woman I cant be dancing forever.'

Success: The South African ballroom specialist, 30, has become a household name since making her debut on the long-running show in 2015

The dancer has enjoyed enormous success on Strictly during her six year run, having won the Glitter Ball with actor Kelvin Fletcher in 2019 and again with comedian Bill Bailey in 2020.

Her admission comes after it was reported that BBC bosses were 'worried' she would leave the show after landing a new judging job on The Masked Dancer.

A source said: 'There was genuine worry that she might be tempted elsewhere as shes so in demand. But Oti has agreed to take part this year, at least, and the bosses are delighted.

'Shes one of the most sought-after talents in telly at the moment. Shes looking forward to taking part and hopefully getting her hands on the Glitterball trophy once again.'

Well done: The dancer has enjoyed enormous success on Strictly during her six year run

Two time winner! Oti has won the Glitterball Trophy twice, once with Kelvin Fletcher in December 2019 (right), and again with Bill Bailey in December 2020 (left)

Sensation: Strictly champion Oti, who was previously a judge on the now-defunct The Greatest Dancert, is now joining the panel on The Masked Dancer

Speaking in March the dancer addressed the rumours during an appearance on Steph's Packed Lunch on Channel 4.

When asked by host Steph McGovern what was 'going on', Oti said: 'Do you know what, some of these conversations obviously I have never been a part of  they are above my pay grade.

'I can't say yes as to whether I'm going back or not. So, everybody will have to wait and see to find out what is going on. But it is nice to be spoken aboutright?'

Previously: Speaking in March the dancer addressed the rumours of her Strictly departure during an appearance on Steph's Packed Lunch

Before confirming her appearance on the show's forthcoming 19th series it was claimed that she had not yet put pen-to-paper, which left producers feeling 'uneasy.'

A source told The Sun: 'Oti has been inundated with offers. Her profile has really blown up since she joined Strictly and she has had ideas pitched from a number of major channels.

'The BBC are now growing increasingly worried that her time on Strictly is numbered.'
New Delhi: Union Minister Piyush Goyal on Sunday (April 18) stated that the union government is working round-the-clock to support the states in COVID-19 management amid an unprecedented surge in infections in the country.

The Commerce and Industry Minister also said that the union government has been fighting a battle against COVID-19 without any discrimination and "politics should not be done on the issue".

Piyush Goyal, while outlining the Centres dedication in the fight against COVID-19, stated that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is working for 18-19 hours a day. Adding that PM Modi reviewed the situation of the pandemic in India after returning from the campaign in West Bengal.

Expressing his concerns over the opposition's motive, Piyush Goyal, in an apparent reference to Congress President Sonia Gandhi and the NCP leaders remarks, said he felt bad at attempts to give political colour to the issue.

"Politics should not be played over this (COVID management). The central government has been fighting a battle against COVID-19 without any discrimination. I felt bad when some people and a prominent political party tried to give political colours to the issue," Goyal said.

He said, after an elaborate meeting with 12 worst-affected states and union territories, the central government did mapping on medical oxygen requirements. 6,177 metric tonnes of oxygen has been finalized to be distributed to states and Maharashtra will get the biggest share of 1,500 metric tonnes of oxygen.

"The Centre is working round-the-clock to support the state government in COVID management. The Prime Minister is working for 18-19 hours. After returning from the campaign, he reviewed the situation of the pandemic in India. He called me at 1 am (yesterday) to take details of the situation," Goyal said.

The Union minister also took a dig at opposition leaders by saying, "the leader who is unable to run the government efficiently needs to worry about presenting their work".

The minister also added that a green corridor is being created for the fast movement of Oxygen Express Trains to facilities for the smooth transport of oxygen to states amid the surge in COVID-19 cases.

Earlier, on Saturday, Congress President Sonia Gandhi accused the BJP-led government of "preferential treatment" to some states.

Additionally, Maharashtra Minister and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Nawab Malik also questioned Centre in a tweet on Saturday over the available resources to fight the COVID-19 situation in the country. Nawab Malik in his tweet called upon Goyal to tell how much oxygen is produced in our country and how much oxygen has been given to Maharashtra.

Meanwhile, India reported its highest-ever single-day spike of COVID-19 cases with 2,61,500 new COVID-19 cases and 1,501 deaths in the last 24 hours on Sunday.

Live TV
(HealthDay)Bye-bye Zoom meetings: As America begins to emerge from the pandemic, many companies are welcoming employees back into physical work spaces.

But Taylor Villanueva, an entrepreneurship specialist at the Girl Scouts of Orange County, counts herself among the millions of Americans who might be feeling just a little anxious about that transition.

"Initially, I was concerned, but I got both of my vaccine doses a while ago so that made me feel a lot better," she said. "Also, we're still taking measures to keep everyone safe. So we're going to still wear masks, we're going to distance, and there are rules about when you can take off your masks."

Villanueva started her job during the pandemic, and she's met some of her coworkers one at a time at various events. But the idea of them all going to the office in person on July 5their official return datefeels overwhelming.

"I don't think it's necessarily what our organization is doing that's making me nervous," Villanueva said. "I think just being around people, in general. Now I'm kind of accustomed to staying away from people, not getting too close, and just kind of extra cautious about what I touch and staying clean. And since I've been working from home for a long time now, I like it. It will be a huge change to go back completely."

Claudia Hellstrom, the operations manager at Amuse, a marijuana delivery company in Los Angeles, is also returning to in-person work soon. Like Villanueva, she isn't concerned about the virus as much as she wonders how the change will disrupt her work/life balance.

"Never in a million years [would I have chosen to work from home for a job before the pandemic]," she said. "It was like a very, very distant, like, I don't think I would be good at this. I don't think I would enjoy it. I barely even considered what my life would be like if I chose a remote role."

Now, Hellstrom said she'd rather keep working from home if she had the option and if the majority of her coworkers were doing the same.

Hellstrom and Villanueva are not the only American workers feeling uneasy about a return to the office life.

A recent Gallup poll found just 17% of respondents wanted to keep working from home because of COVID-19, while 44% wanted to keep working from home because they generally prefer it. And the American Psychological Association released a survey in March that showed roughly half of Americans are uneasy about going back to in-person interactions, whether they've been vaccinated or not.

Dr. Kimberly Quinn, a psychology professor at Champlain College and coordinator for the Wellbeing and Success program at the Burlington, Vt.-based school, said it's understandable why even the most extroverted folks might be uncomfortable with venturing out.

"There's really two anxieties," she said. "There's the type of person who's afraid to catch the 'rona still, so they have anxiety about going out, and re-entering and catching this virus. And then the other type is sort of a combination of those who've become really sensitized to stimulation by all the isolation. When we're isolated and cloistered, things become a much bigger deal very quickly. So that's the fear of a lot of peoplewill I be able to interact properly? Some of the smallest interactions, things that we take for granted like getting coffee, have become overwhelming for some people. It's like fear of fear."

Dr. Nadine Chang, a clinical psychologist at Gracie Square Hospital and an assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, came to a similar conclusion.

"I think it's the anxiety of the unknown," she said. "It's like, how am I going to do this? What is my work going to do? How is my work going to change? And if you think about it, people who have been working remotely for a year now have to make another adjustment. I remember one of my supervised psychology trainees was saying, 'Oh, now I have to wake up at eight o'clock. And I used to just wake up at five minutes to nine to see my nine o'clock patient.'"

To alleviate some of the work-related fears, Chang recommends sticking to a schedule.

"Get back into a routine," she said. "It doesn't necessarily have to be the routine you used to have pre-COVID, but just a routine of getting up and sort of setting yourself into the mindset."

Chang said it's also important for people to remember that they're not alone in their feelings. She recommends seeing a therapist if the idea of working in person feels too overwhelming.

Fortunately, many companies are aware of their employees' concerns and are working to accommodate changed habits and mindsets. Some companies, like Apple and Salesforce, are offering the ability to work from home indefinitely, while others like Ford and JP Morgan Chase will allow employees to come into the office less frequently.

An overall upside, said Chang, is a newfound valuation of physical and mental health.

"I think with the pandemic, people are talking more about the importance of interpersonal interaction and overall well-being," she said. "I do see that companies are making more efforts. If you think about it, like job satisfaction, you want your employees to be happy, and therefore more productive and motivated. So it's sort of a win-win."

More information: Visit the Visit the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for more on returning to the workplace after the pandemic.

Copyright  2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
LOS ANGELES  Liliana Carrillos unraveling over the last year alarmed people in her life.

On Facebook, she spoke of random invasive feelings of despair and pain. She said she was hating being a parent to her brood of young children and wished she could go back in time.

I have absolutely no patience or tolerance left, she added.

More recently, she began to echo the delusion of QAnon believers. She was consumed by the idea that Porterville was the site of a child sex-trafficking ring, according to court records, and contended that the blame for the pandemic rested on her shoulders.

It was clear she was struggling with postpartum depression, with anger, with childhood trauma and with the frustrations of young motherhood, her boyfriend, the father of her children, recounted in court records.

Last month, the situation got gravely worse. She started making wild allegations of child abuse, according to court records. Social workers and police in two counties got involved. The childrens father, Erik Denton, convinced a judge to award him physical custody of their three children, saying Carrillo was experiencing a psychotic episode and he feared for the kids well-being.

But Joanna, 3; Terry, 2; and Sierra, 6 months, remained with Carrillo.

Last weekend, a day before Denton said Carrillo was to turn the children over to him, her mother discovered the three grandchildren dead in the Reseda apartment. In an extraordinary television interview from a Bakersfield jail on Thursday, Carrillo confessed to killing the kids, saying she was trying to protect them from sex trafficking.

I drowned them, she said, claiming she did so softly. She added, I hugged them and I kissed them and I was apologizing the whole time.

Do I wish that I didnt have to do that? Yes, Carrillo said. But I prefer them not being tortured and abused on a regular basis for the rest of their lives.

Denton has roundly rejected any allegation that he abused or mistreated his children and has pointed to Carrillos mental instability. The killings followed weeks of pleas to child welfare agencies and police to get the three kids to safety, according to interviews, court records, Denton and his familys notes documenting some interactions with authorities, and sources familiar with the ongoing investigation.

Her problems became known to two child welfare agencies and brought police from two different departments. But it was not enough the save the children.

The signs of postpartum depression in Carrillo emerged after she gave birth to the couples second child, a boy named Terry, in 2019, according to Dentons account in court records.

By then, Denton and Carrillo  who met a few years earlier while she was driving for Uber and he was a passenger  had bounced around Van Nuys and Murrieta before settling down in the San Joaquin Valley city of Porterville.

For much of their relationship, Denton worked days-long stretches away from home while Carrillo cared for the children. Social media and text messages filed in court suggest the distance posed a strain on their relationship.

Three more days and Ill be home for good, Denton said in a Facebook message. Carrillo replied, Do you want to know how I feel?  I feel like we should have never had kids.

She indicated in her message to Denton that she contemplated suicide regularly and that she feared she was exposing their toddler-age daughter to her mental health issues.

Carrillo complained about her daughter not listening, along with the unending, mundane chores of managing a household and rearing children, often in rambling, expletive-filled Facebook status updates.

I fight feelings of leaving all the f--- time now when left alone wdfith them, she posted.

Denton also tired of being away from his family, according to the messages, and wrote to Carrillo in the fall of 2019, I dont want to give up and you 3 are the only things keeping me from giving up. Carrillo responded that she would begin working so he could return to live permanently with his kids.

You have done marvelously. Its time for you to rest, she told him.

Denton became a stay-at-home parent at the end of 2019, while Carrillo began taking on temporary work outside home.

During this time, he said in court papers, Carrillos depression worsened. Although she started therapy, she abruptly quit and refused psychiatric medications, instead turning to marijuana. In 2020, while pregnant with their third child, Carrillo indicated in a text message to Denton that she was on the verge of so many emotions at once and thus was going to smoke some pot.

After giving birth to their third child, Sierra, in October, Denton said Carrillos mental state frayed further.

Her condition has worsened; she is not taking care of herself and has lost touch with reality, he said in a declaration filed in court, listing her impulsive behavior, like a fixation on those around her in Porterville engaging in pedophilia and sex abuse.

An incident at a Porterville park appeared to catalyze Carrillo in an intense way. In mid-February, their eldest daughter, Joanna, fell and hit her groin at a playground. Although Carrillo witnessed it and afterward, Denton said their daughter was acting normally without complaint, Carrillo accused Denton of being a part of a pedophile ring and allowing someone to molest their daughter.

A visit to Valley Presbyterian Hospital three days later resulted in a physician not identifying any concerning signs or symptoms in Joanna, according to medical records provided to the Los Angeles Times.

But Carrillo appeared fixated on her claims of molestation, and alternated between apologizing to Denton and stating she could not stop thinking the sex abuse was true.

On Feb. 25, Carrillo again took her eldest child to a hospital, this time to Sequoia Family Medical Center in Porterville. There, she reported irritation in her daughters genitals that she claimed resulted from abuse, according to medical records in a dossier Carrillo later released. The staffer wrote in records that as a mandated reporter, she had to notify Tulare County social services, and she documented contacting social workers and sharing pertinent information on both Carrillo and Denton along with concerns for drug exposure.

That night, Carrillo attempted to leave with her children. Denton said he tried to stop her and contacted the citys Police Department. Police later wrote that Carrillo was acting strange and trying to take their children to Los Angeles and that Denton is concerned, according to records of the calls for service reviewed by The Times.

But in a pattern that played out over the next troubling few weeks, Carrillo also called police and lobbed allegations of exploitation: She thinks that the children are being abused, police wrote, according to records of the call.

Within a day, Carrillos mother had driven up from L.A. and picked up her daughter and grandchildren. Carrillo took the childrens legal documents, told Denton she could go to Mexico, where she has family, and for days afterward, refused to share their whereabouts, according court records from the custody case.

A Tulare County social worker contacted Denton the next day, after speaking with Carrillo. The social worker, he said, was concerned about her mental state as Carrillo had accused the social worker of not being legitimate and also refused to disclose where she or the children were. The social worker then instructed Denton on how to petition a court to intervene.

Denton secured an emergency court order for the childrens custody in March, and the judge required that any visits between Carrillo and the children be supervised at a special facility in Porterville.

Dr. Teri Miller, an emergency room physician who assisted her cousin, Denton, with trying to save the children, said that she and Denton went to L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services as well as the Los Angeles Police Department to notify the agencies that Carrillo had psychosis, had taken the children and was essentially hiding in L.A.

Records indicate that an L.A. County social worker tried to visit Carrillo on March 4, leaving a note behind that said they needed to discuss a child abuse report we have received in regards to your children. The social worker left her cellphone number and said she planned to return on March 9.

Carrillo received the order giving Denton physical custody around March 12, according to records, and afterward, she went to the Los Angeles Police Departments West Valley station, where Denton had requested she hand over the children. There, an officer notified her of the consequences of failing to abide by the court order, according to a summary of the meeting Denton provided in court. Carrillo apparently opted to disregard the order.

After discovering Carrillos whereabouts, Denton and Miller said they also called the LAPD and begged police to take her to a mental health facility for psychiatric evaluation. Both told police Carrillo was a danger to the children and herself.

Miller said at one point, two officers met them at a parking lot to discuss Carrillos mental health condition, and that officers even called a supervisor to the scene.

I told them she might kill the kids, Miller recalled.

LAPDs internal affairs unit has since launched an investigation into how West Valley officers handled their reports regarding Carrillo as well as the officers interactions with Miller and Denton.

Miller and Denton said they had conversations with L.A. Countys child welfare agency in which they both stated that Carrillo should not be alone with the children. I spoke to the social worker for like 21/2 hours, and she told me, I dont believe Liliana will harm the children, Denton said. His contemporaneous notes indicate the conversation was on March 19.

She was incredibly sick, Miller said of Carrillo. The physician opined that if the mother had showed up to the emergency room in such a mental state, she would have been held for evaluation. She questioned how the LAPD and L.A. County DCFS could defend their handling of the case.

Theyre afraid to take action and make decisions, she added.

Authorities further became aware of problems with the family around early April, when Carrillo sought a temporary restraining order against Denton and accused him of sexually abusing their oldest daughter, according to court records.

Denton denied the allegation. Carrillo also made the abuse allegation directly to L.A. County DCFS, according to Miller, who said social workers had not yet performed a formal interview with Denton about the claim.

In the very early morning hours of April 10, Carrillo tapped out a message to an unnamed judge along with several media outlets.

She wrote that she was by my childrens side since they were born, referenced her postpartum depression, and proceeded to offer a manifesto.

I dont know when I became a target, but I know that Porterville is the root of all evil right now. Both of my children have now vocalized to me more than once that their private parts hurt, she said. She positioned herself as protecting the kids.

In a lengthy email that included an attachment with more than 100 pages of typed and handwritten notes and images, she offered a meandering, and at times incoherent, account of a young, unstable mother. She attached screenshots of text messages, medical records and annotated court records.

I am removing myself and my children from this world because nothing will ever be the same. There is no going back from here, she wrote.

Hours later, Carrillos mother discovered the three slain children in the apartment in Reseda. Around 11 a.m., a pickup truck driver came upon Carrillo along Highway 65, just north of Bakersfield. The black Ford Focus that Carrillo had driven was stuck near the shoulder. At first one driver stopped, then another.

One of the drivers later recalled that Carrillo had a cut that looked meaty, and he feared she was suicidal and might throw herself into oncoming traffic. She appeared agitated and distraught, he told police, and when farm workers had stopped to give her water bottles, she swatted the bottles away.

One driver tried to calm her down and told her they had called 911 for help.

Im being trafficked, you dont understand, I need to go, she told the driver, according to a police report of the incident.

She then tried to drive away in one of the drivers Ford 150. The pickup trucks owner managed to pull her out of the vehicle and she later ran into the other drivers silver Toyota Tacoma. That truck did not have its keys, but when the Tacomas owner ran over to get her out, it allowed Carrillo to turn on the keyless ignition and drive off, police wrote in records. She was barefoot, having left behind some black sandals.

Authorities were concerned since the Tacomas driver had left four guns and 1,000 rounds of ammunition in the truck, saying he was en route to a shooting range.

Later that afternoon, Carrillo was found driving the Tacoma and ultimately arrested near Ponderosa by Tulare County authorities, hospitalized, then transferred south.

Los Angeles County prosecutors have not filed charges against Carrillo. She remains in custody in a Kern County jail in lieu of $2-million bond on charges related to carjacking and auto theft. I know that Im going to be in jail for the rest of my life, she told the reporter with KGET-TV, an NBC affiliate in Bakersfield, while sitting shackled.

What was the final message to your children? the reporter inquired.

Carrillo recalled telling them, I love you, and Im sorry.
[April 19, 2021] Augumenta Helps JICA Deliver Remote Learning Collaboration to Developing Countries Using Smart Glasses

OULU, Finland, April 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Augumenta, Ltd., today announced it was selected to supply software and systems integration services to support technical training programs for life sciences and agricultural researchers in Africa working with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). The training solution is based on the Augumenta SmartEyes system, which uses camera-equipped smart glasses to connect field workers in Africa with Japanese experts who can view the local scene and provide instructions and support in real-time.

JICA is responsible for delivering Japans official development assistance as an implementing agency, providing ODA Loan and Grant Aid, and executing Technical Cooperation in developing countries. With approximately 100 offices and a network of people cooperating within its numerous programs running all over the world, the organization povides, for example, technical training for participants from developing countries in a wide range of fields, such as medical, industrial, and agricultural fields.



Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, JICA programs allowed Japanese counterparts to host experts and researchers from developing countries in Japan and thousands of Japanese experts to travel to the target countries to arrange hands-on training locally. The pandemic caused disruptions to the programs: experts have been forced to evacuate and the hosting of trainees has been suspended. Last autumn, JICA launched an open call for proposals to find solutions that enable the programs to continue operating despite travel restrictions. The Augumenta system will initially be deployed in two African countries, Ghana and Zambia, as a tool to aid technical guidance in infectious disease control and agriculture. The SmartEyes remote collaboration solution, designed to solve remote working challenges in industrial settings, functions well in challenging environments and varying network conditions and is easy to use by workers with different skill levels.

Augumenta provides the total solution including the needed software, hardware, and support services, and is coordinating the field-testing phase. The company works in close cooperation with Iristick, which supplies the smart glasses used in the project. Iristick has extensive experience in remote assistance in general, and various types of NGO projects in developing countries in particular and brings valuable expertise to the project. NOTE: Additional project details and statements from the involved parties can be found online: https://www.augumenta.com/library/

Media Contact: Matt Schmidt Small Planet Public Relations for Augumenta Matt(at)smallplanet.pr.com

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Two men died after a Tesla vehicle, which was believed to be operating without anyone in the drivers seat, crashed into a tree on Saturday night north of Houston, authorities said.

There was no one in the drivers seat, Sgt. Cinthya Umanzor of the Harris County Constable Precinct 4 said.

The 2019 Tesla Model S was traveling at a high rate of speed, when it failed to negotiate a curve and went off the roadway, crashing to a tree and bursting into flames, local television station KHOU-TV said.

After the fire was extinguished, authorities located 2 occupants in the vehicle, with one in the front passenger seat while the other was in the back seat of the Tesla, the report said, citing Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman.

Tesla and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The accident comes amid growing scrutiny over Teslas semi-automated driving system following recent accidents and as it is preparing to launch its updated full self-driving software to more customers.

The U.S. auto safety agency said in March it has opened 27 investigations into crashes of Tesla vehicles; at least three of the crashes occurred recently.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in January that he expects huge profits from its full self-driving software, saying he is highly confident the car will be able to drive itself with reliability in excess of human this year.

The self-driving technology must overcome safety and regulatory hurdles to achieve commercial success.

Umanzor said the two crash victims were born in 1962 and 1951.

(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin in Berkeley, California and Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by David Shephardson in Washington)

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The Member of Parliament for Wa West constituency, Peter Lanchene Toobu has urged the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to remove the names of former Presidents from their records.



This he claims will preserve their reputation and dignity.



His reaction follows former President John Agyekum Kufuor's response to claims made by Esther Nana Agyemang, a member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP). Click to read



Speaking to Adakabre Frimpong Manso on Neat FM's Me Man Nti programme, the Wa West MP said: "a good name is better than riches...I think after the two-term of every president, their names should be deleted from the party's records. He's no longer a party person because when you go back to the party, you reduce yourself....it's embarrassing to go back to party politicking after becoming a President and so statesmen like former President Kufuor is a Ghanaian and not an NPP member and must be given the respect he deserves".



Listen to him in the video below





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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U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan has warned Russia of possible consequences in case Russian blogger Alexey Navalny dies in custody.

"We have communicated to the Russian government that what happens to Mr. Navalny in their custody is their responsibility and they will be held accountable by the international community," he said in an interview with CNN on Sunday. "In terms of the specific measures that we would take, we are looking at a variety of different costs that we would impose and I'm not going to telegraph that publicly at this point. But we have communicated that there will be consequences if Mr. Navalny dies."

According to Sullivan, Washington has arrived at a conclusion that this matter should better be discussed directly with Moscow, via diplomatic channels, TASS reported.

Navalny is serving his sentence in penal colony number 2 in the Vladimir region. On April 5, the blogger was taken to the colonys medial unit with symptoms of an acute respiratory disease. According to the Federal Penitentiary Services Vladimir region department, Navalny was brought back to the prison cell on April 9 after he had felt better. According to the agency, neither tuberculosis no coronavirus infection was confirmed. Doctors said his health conditions was satisfactory.
Portland police on Saturday identified the officer who shot and killed a man in Lents Park on Friday as Zachary DeLong, who has worked for the Portland Police Bureau for eight years.

Two sources with direct knowledge of the investigation said DeLong shot Robert Douglas Delgado, 46, after Delgado drew what appeared to be a firearm. The sources said investigators recovered an orange-tipped replica firearm at the scene in Southeast Portland. DeLong was put on administrative leave, which is standard practice after police shootings.

Delgados family said Saturday he had struggled with mental-health and substance-abuse issues. Hed had numerous interactions with the legal system, including what his family said were negative interactions with police that left him scared. He never found success through court-ordered substance-abuse programs or probation.

It may be a while before officials offer any details. Im not expecting too much more information to be released for a few days, said Jim Middaugh, spokesman for Mayor Ted Wheeler. The Portland Police Bureau is working closely with the [district attorney] to try and release as much as they can as soon as they can.

While the Police Bureau hasnt said much about its investigation, and DeLongs record as a bureau employee was not publicly available Sunday, he has made headlines in Portland and elsewhere before.

In 2014, DeLong distinguished himself when he helped save a sobbing man who had crawled out onto a fifth-floor building ledge. He credited his bureau crisis-intervention training.

That same year, he also courted scandal when he was among 19 Police Bureau employees who liked a Facebook post showing a police badge with the message I am Darren Wilson, according to a Willamette Week report from the time. Wilson was the white Ferguson, Mo., police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown, a young Black man, sparking a wave of protests.

DeLong grew up in the midst of the cop life. His father, Mark DeLong, is a retired Portland officer whose boss once called him a model policeman. In 2012, the elder DeLong received the bureaus Mark Zylawly Distinguished Service Medal, which honors officers for exhibiting high moral and ethical standards.

Before joining the Portland Police Bureau, Zachary DeLong was a U.S. Army Ranger who served as a sniper in Afghanistan.

History Channels 2016 series The Warfighters featured DeLong in an episode that focused on a harrowing 2010 nighttime mission against the Taliban.

DeLong joined the Army Rangers, he said in the episode, because I wanted the action. I wanted to test myself.

A severe test came with Task Force Merrill, during which a fellow soldier had his legs blown off by an explosive device. The soldier had backtracked to help DeLong, who had fallen into a creek.

I started patting down his arms and legs, and when I got to his knees, it just stops, DeLong remembered of his efforts to aid the wounded man. That didnt click. I didnt realize what had just happened . Id trained on what to do in situations like this 100 times over, and I froze. It took a minute. It was weird.

After the injured soldier was evacuated, the team continued the mission, but DeLong was shaken.

Throughout my entire military career, through all the training, through all the missions prior, I had nothing but the utmost confidence, he recalled. I was never frightened by anything. Id been in numerous firefights. I always felt comfortable in my element. And this totally threw me off. I was terrified.

Yet DeLong had long wanted to be in the midst of such life-and-death situations. Growing up, he said, I would watch war movies. Black Hawk Down specifically. I watched that movie 75 times. I was just obsessed with being a part of that.

He was drawn to the mystique of the rangers, to the elite units phenomenal reputation. In particular, he was determined to become a sniper.

Ive always been enamored with snipers, he said in the Warfighters episode. I always thought that was the coolest thing ever. I shot a lot of guns growing up. You know, your dad is a cop, hes got a safe full of guns that wed always go out and go shoot.  I learned a love of that early on.

-- Douglas Perry

dperry@oregonian.com

@douglasmperry
STAMFORD  When Caryn Cosentini heard the state planned to remove trees off of High Ridge Road, she jumped into the public process feet first. Cosentini requested a public hearing, readied her arguments, and rallied the neighbors.

Two months later, she feels shortchanged.

Stamford officials held the public hearing, spoke with residents, and fielded ideas from the community about the lot adjacent to the Merritt Parkway to no avail. A few days later, the state Department of Transportation continued with the project as planned, chopping down the trees in question.

Now, Cosentini wants answers on what happened.

Whether they were right or wrong, the state and city had a breakdown, she said. But they engaged the public. Because of their breakdown, were getting no answers. And that feels like a stonewall.

The plot of land in question straddles the Rippowam River in North Stamford, right next to the highway exit, abutting Wire Mill Road. The state tagged 38 trees on the property for removal in January in order to replace and expand a strip of road that runs over the river.

The state argues the bridge  first built in 1931, but replaced 43 years later  requires substantial updates due to inadequate curb-to curb width and flooding from the river. However, neighbors expressed concerns about the projects environmental and aesthetic impacts in the community.

The new roadway will include an additional travel lane and sidewalks on both sides. The structure is slated for completion in November 2023.

After demands from Cosentini and others, the city granted residents a public hearing on the trees along High Ridge Road on April 5. About 20 residents showed up to hear city officials talk through vegetation-related concerns, along with the projects design.

Tyler Sizemore / Hearst Connecticut Media

Representatives from the state Department of Transportation did not attend the public hearing, but the DOT announced in late March that it formally would begin the High Ridge Road bridge replacement on April 1.

The hearing was only the first step by the city. Ultimately, residents expected Stamfords tree warden to render a decision on the trees. But before that could happen  only two days after the hearing  laborers arrived to continue work on the project and axed 37 of the 38 trees in question.

With with the trees in question no longer standing, the city opted not to issue the recommendation and told Consentini that the need for a decision from the Citys Tree Warden (was) moot.

The state did not notify the city officials that it would begin tree removal on city property, according to city spokesperson Arthur Augustyn. That same day, the city contacted the state to object to the tree removal.

However, the State continued tree removal anyway, wrote Augustyn in an email.

The Departments ability to acquire property, temporarily or permanently, is set forth in the states general statutes, DOT Spokesperson Kevin Nursick said in an email. The state acquired the parcel in April 2020, when the Board of Representatives granted the DOT a temporary construction easement.

The department then gained full control over any vegetation fully or partially within the limits of the state highway, according to Nursick.

Once an acquisition or temporary construction easement is in place, the property essentially becomes the states, and the authority to perform vegetation management is codified in state statute, he wrote, pointing specifically to Connecticut General Statute  13a-140.

State law establishes that the transportation commissioner can remove any trees or vegetation either partially or wholly within the limits of state highways if necessary for safe and convenient travel.

Tyler Sizemore / Hearst Connecticut Media

Though the state has final say on what happens to the trees, Gary Rose of Sacred Heart University said the Stamford situation is emblematic of a larger issue. According to him, state government has become more bureaucratic over the years, and traditional channels of communication with local governments have broken down.

Even though local governments are still very vibrant units of our state, the distance between the state and the local levels of the policy have become much more distant over the years, said Rose, an expert on Connecticut government. As bureaucracy grows, he said, the once-intimate relationships between appointed government officials and municipalities become more strained.

Government in Connecticut also skews local, a through-line Rose traces back to the its Puritan origins. The states home rule provision, passed in the 1950s, only further solidified that tradition into law.

Theres a long history in Connecticut and throughout the New England area of local governments, Rose said. Were pretty protective of that here. This tree issue, in many ways, is a perceived violation of this longstanding culture that we have of local activity and local power.

Even after reaching a dead end with the city, Cosentini and her allies still want a say in High Ridge Roads future.

I do not think the matter is moot and I do not think the city should hide behind that conclusion. In fact, I think they should call for an oversight review of the state's conduct, she said.

In fact, the DOTs course of action only motivated Cosentini to stay involved. While the trees are gone, the state still has to start rebuilding the road and must remediate the vegetation with the help of a landscape specialist.

With respect to the site, the city should give us the opportunity to review the remediation plan, Cosentini added. The state should step up and engage with us on a better bridge design.

Editors note: This story has been updated to correct the name of Gary Rose.
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Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced a royal commission into the suicides of current and former defence personnel.

Mr Morrison on Monday acknowledged the human cost of defence deployments, expressing the hope that the long-awaited inquiry would act as a healing process.

I think this will be a process that will assist in the comfort that those families have been seeking, he told reporters.

More Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel have lost their lives by suicide than those who have died in active duty in Afghanistan since 2001.

According to a report published by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), between 2001 and 2017, there have been 419 suicides among current serving, reserve and contemporary ex-serving ADF personnel.

By comparison, since 2001, 41 Australian personnel have died while serving in Afghanistan, according to Morrison.

The Federal Government previously resisted calls for a royal commission, instead proposing an independent commissioner to investigate veteran suicides, which failed to receive support in the senate.

Pressure on the government to call an inquiry increased when a motion passed both houses of parliament supporting its creation.

Mr Morrison said the inquiry, which was expected to take up to 18 months to complete, would examine all aspects of service.

The Royal Commission will have a mandate to examine the systemic issues and any common themes and past deaths by suicide of Australian Defence Force members and veterans, he said.

The families of veterans who have taken their own lives have long campaigned for the government to establish an inquiry into the issue.

Julie-Ann Finneys son, David, took his own life in 2019 after suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. She welcomed the announcement as a long time coming.

On Monday, Defence Minister Peter Dutton voiced public support for the royal commission.

He also announced that he would overrule Chief of the Defence Force Angus Campbells decision to strip more than 3,000 Special Forces soldiers who served in Afghanistan of their service medals.

Mr Campbell made the decision as a collective punishment for 39 murders allegedly committed by Australian Special Forces troops in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016.

(NAN)
Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have discovered a better way of targeting and eliminating these teeny pests instead of using toxic pesticides that damage biodiversity

Up to 25 percent of global food production is lost annually due to insects, primarily beetles. For the past 500 million years, beetles have successfully spread and adapted to life around the globe and now account for one of every five animal species on Earth. Yet as far back as ancient Egypt, these tough little bugs have invaded granaries and vexed us humans by destroying our crops.

As a result, food production and an abundant use of pesticides now go hand in hand. A large share of these pesticides damage biodiversity, the environment and human health. As various pesticides are phased out, new solutions are required to target and eradicate pests without harming humans or beneficial insects like bees.

This is precisely what researchers from the University of Copenhagen's Department of Biology are working on. As part of a broader effort to develop more "ecological" methods of combatting harmful insects in the near future, researchers have discovered which hormones regulate urine formation in the kidneys of beetles.

"Knowing which hormones regulate urine formation opens up the development of compounds similar to beetle hormones that, for example, can cause beetles to form so much urine that they die of dehydration," explains Associate Professor Kenneth Veland Halberg of the University of Copenhagen's Department of Biology. He adds:

"While it may seem a slightly vicious, there's nothing new in us trying to vanquish pests that destroy food production. We're simply trying to do it in a smarter, more targeted manner that takes the surrounding environment into greater account than traditional pesticides."

Ancient Egyptians weakened beetles' water balance using stones

The new study, as well as a previous study, also conducted by Kenneth Veland Halberg, demonstrates that beetles solve the task of regulating their water and salt balance in a fundamentally different way than other insects. This difference in insect biology is an important detail when seeking to combat certain species while leaving their neighbors alone.

"Today's insecticides go in and paralyze an insect's nervous system. The problem with this approach is that insect nervous systems are quite similar across species. Using these insecticides leads to the killing of bees and other beneficial field insects, and harms other living organisms," explains Kenneth Veland Halberg.

The centrality to survival of the carefully controlled water balance of beetles is no secret. In fact, ancient Egyptians already knew to mix pebbles in grain stores to fight these pests. Stones scratched away the waxy outer layer of beetles' exoskeletons which serves to minimize fluid evaporation.

"Never mind that they chipped an occasional tooth on the pebbles, the Egyptians could see that the scratches killed some of the beetles due to the fluid loss caused by damage to the waxy layer. However, they lacked the physiological knowledge that we have now," says Kenneth Veland Halberg.

One-hundred billion dollars of pesticides used worldwide

Pesticides have replaced pebbles. And, their global use is now valued at roughly 100 billion dollars annually. But as rules for pesticide use become stricter, farmers are left with fewer options to fight pests.

"The incentive to develop compounds which target and eradicate pests is huge. Food production is critically dependent on pesticides. In Europe alone, it is estimated that food production would decline by 50 percent without pesticide use. With just a single, more targeted product on the market, there would almost immediately be immense gains for both wildlife and humans," states Kenneth Veland Halberg.

But the development of new compounds to combat beetles requires, among other things, that chemists design a new molecule that resembles beetle hormones. At the same time, this compound must be able to enter beetles, either through their exoskeletons or by their feeding upon it.

"Understanding urine formation in beetles is an important step in developing more targeted and environmentally-friendly pest controls for the future. We are now in the process of involving protein chemistry specialists who can help us design an artificial insect hormone. But there is still a fair bit of work ahead before any new form of pest control sees the light of day," concludes Associate Professor Kenneth Veland Halberg.

Facts:

The study demonstrates that beetles regulate their kidney function in a fundamentally different way than all other insects. These differences can potentially be exploited to fatally disrupt the fluid balance of beetles without impacting other insects.

The research data reports that this unique kidney function evolved about 240 million years ago, and that the mechanism has played a significant role in the extraordinary evolutionary triumph of beetles.

Roughly one in five known animal species on Earth is a beetle. While 400,000 species have been described, there are thought to be well over one million beetle species in all.

Researchers used the red flour beetle (Tribolium castaneum) as a test species for the study because it has a well-sequenced genome that allows for the deployment of a wide spectrum of genetic and molecular biology tools.

The researchers got the beetle to urinate by injecting a hormone that scientists now know regulates urine formation in beetles.

Wheat weevils, confused flour beetles, Colorado potato beetles and other types of beetles and insects make their ways into up to 25 percent of the global food supply every year.

The problem is especially evident in developing countries, where access to effective pest control is limited or nonexistent.

The project was conducted in collaboration with researchers from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and McMaster University, Canada

The study has just been published in the scientific journal PNAS https:/ / doi. org/ 10. 1073/ pnas. 2023314118

###
After two days of peaceful demonstrations in downtown Raleigh, some protesters on Sunday night threw eggs at buildings, threw objects at police cars and damaged the windows of a retail store.

Video Transcript

TIM PULLIAM: DeJuan, look at this damage to Urban Outfitters. I witnessed demonstrators using sharp objects to break the glass here, and they were pretty successful. And then I saw them spray paint the word Daunte Wright. It was one week ago today that the 20-year-old black man was shot and killed by a Minnesota police officer who is now facing charges in his death. Moments after this vandalism, our cameras captured two people being arrested by Raleigh police.

Now tonight, we saw at least seven people being arrested. There could be many more. Police warned the crowd to move their demonstration to the sidewalk, because they were violating a city ordinance and were not allowed to march in the streets. As police followed them throughout downtown, the group burned the American flag in the middle of McDowell Street. They said a trash can on fire and used them as barricades several times to block traffic flow. This was an intense, dramatic scene that lasted for a couple of hours tonight.

The group's march weakened once they arrived to the state capitol grounds. That's when Raleigh police closed in and dispersed a large part of the crowd and made more arrests. Raleigh police tell me tonight that there is not any activity going on now. So it seems like the scene is now clear. They're going to be releasing some new details about how they responded to this incident.

We walked with this group tonight, and we heard them chanting no justice, no peace. And shut it down. This group wants law enforcement dismantled. That is the very latest. Live in downtown Raleigh, Tim Pulliam, ABC11 Eyewitness News.

DEJUAN HOGGARD: All right Tim, thank you. And before the demonstrations devolved into property damage, it started off as this. Just a peaceful discussion in Moore Square in downtown Raleigh. Our Michael Lozano joining us live now, walking us back to the events from earlier this evening just to give us more context on what happened. Michael, good evening.

Story continues

MICHAEL LOZANO: Yeah, good evening DeJuan. Yeah, Tim Pulliam really describing what happened. But before all of that, they were here at Moore Square Park this evening. Right now, things remain calm. People I actually see out there skating right now. But this was the initial gathering where that group came to meet. This was the Wake County Black Student Coalition that organized this vigil for Daunte Wright.

They were meeting around 6 o'clock. We've had peaceful protests and demonstrations the last two days. This was also meant to be that as well, a discussion asking for police reform. Demanding justice for Wright and other black men killed at the hands of police.

But obviously seeing what we saw from Tim Pulliam a little bit later here in the downtown area, things got a little bit out of hand. But here at the Moore Square Park, things again remain calm this evening. We haven't seen any damage around here, any real spray paint or graffiti either. And things remain calm thankfully here for business owners in this area. Live in Durham, Michael Lozano, ABC11 Eyewitness News.
ROLLING MEADOWS, Ill., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. (NYSE: AJG) today announced that it has agreed to a strategic partnership with MIG Holding Ltd (MIG Group), which will see the company take a minority interest in Middle East & North Africa (MENA) specialist insurance broker ACE.

Subject to the necessary regulatory approvals, Gallagher will take a 30% minority interest in the ACE entities and MIG Group will retain a 70% interest.

With a history dating back to 1952, ACE is an insurance, reinsurance and employee benefits broker with operations in seven countries and particular expertise in aviation, real estate, construction, oil & gas, financial lines and property risks. Under the direction of President and CEO of MIG Group, Nagib Bahous, ACE's team of over 240 employees operate from offices across Saudi Arabia, as well as in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman, Greece and Lebanon.

"Our strategic investment in ACE enhances Gallagher's international presence in the Middle East and expands our insurance and reinsurance capabilities across the region," said J. Patrick Gallagher, Jr., Chairman, President and CEO. "We look forward to working with Nagib and his associates, and are excited about the many growth opportunities this partnership offers."

Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., a global insurance brokerage, risk management and consulting services firm, is headquartered in Rolling Meadows, Illinois. The company has operations in 56 countries and offers client-service capabilities in more than 150 countries around the world through a network of correspondent brokers and consultants.

Investors: Ray Iardella Media: Linda J. Collins VP  Investor Relations VP  Corporate Communications 630-285-3661/ [email protected] 630-285-4009/ [email protected]

SOURCE Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.

Related Links

http://www.ajg.com


Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-20 02:35:02|Editor: huaxia

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BRUSSELS, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Europeans are being given the opportunity to sound their opinions on the future of Europe through a digital platform launched on Monday, according to a European Commission press release.

The 24-language, fully interactive Digital Platform for the Conference on the Future is where people can engage with one another and discuss their proposals with fellow citizens from all member states of the European Union (EU), noted the release.

People from all walks of life and in numbers as large as possible are encouraged to contribute to shaping their future through online events.

The platform was launched by the Executive Board of the Conference on the Future of Europe, which comprises representatives from the European Parliament, the Council of the EU and the European Commission.

European Parliament President David Sassoli said that the digital platform represented a key tool to allow citizens to participate and have a say on the future of Europe.

"We must be certain that their voices will be heard and that they have a role in the decision-making, regardless of the COVID-19 pandemic," Sassoli said in the release. Enditem
Kerry Stokes Seven Group Holdings has launched a $500 million capital raising that will reduce the Stokes familys grip on the company, help Seven pay down its debt and potentially fuel more acquisitions.

The diversified Seven Group Holdings, which owns a stake in Seven West Media as well as significant mining equipment interests, announced the raising on Monday morning. The offer is fully underwritten and is expected to be completed quickly.

Seven Group Holdings chairman Kerry Stokes. Stokes family interests currently own 42.5 per cent of the group but following the raising will hold 38.8 per cent. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

The Stokes family will sit out the raising allowing the free float of Seven Group Holdings to increase from 38.8 per cent to 42.5 per cent. The move will reduce the Stokes familys stake to around 57.5 per cent.

Seven Group Holdings managing director Ryan Stokes told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald the raising came after the group received feedback at its half-year results in February that investors wanted to see Seven Group Holdings free up liquidity by the Stokes family reducing its stake.
The rollercoaster that he rode for the next few years, Johnson added, turned him into a shoe print expert, as thats what Buckleys case mostly revolved around. But it also made him more cynical of the system. And it led to deep introspection as the former prosecutor had to ask himself how much courage he would have summoned had he been in a position to stop justice from going off the rails.
The shooting death of 13-year-old Adam Toledo in a Chicago alley is a horrible heartbreak, but what about the death of 7-year-old Jaslyn Adams? Adam Toledo's death has sparked protests and riots in Chicago and all over the country, but I suspect Jaslyn's will be just another statistic.



Jaslyn Adams (photo provided to Chicago Sun-Times).

Madeline Kenney, Jermaine Nolen, and Cindy Hernandez of the Chicago Sun-Times report:

A 7-year-old girl was killed and her father was seriously wounded in a shooting Sunday afternoon as they were getting food at a McDonald's drive-thru in the Homan Square neighborhood. The father, Jontae Adams, 28, and his daughter, Jaslyn, were in a silver Infiniti about 4:20 p.m. at the McDonald's, 3200 W. Roosevelt Road, when they were shot, Chicago police said. A McDonald's employee, who asked not to be named, said two people got out of a gray car and started shooting at the victim's car. (snip) Police said the shooting was believed to be gang-related, and less than three hours later, two people were shot in their car at a Popeyes in Humboldt Park, which investigators believe is connected to the McDonald's shooting.

There is no police body cam video of Jaslyn's death, of course, because it was gangbangers who likely killed her as collateral damage. Gangs are killing hundreds of people in Chicago each year. The latest figure (from April 14) I can find for shootings in Chicago (the overwhelming number of which are gang-related) is 864 people so far this year, 218 more than last year.

Jaslyn was not out in the wee hours of the morning armed with a handgun, as Adam was. She just wanted to eat something from Mickey D's.

Gangs are killing many times the number of Black people that police do. Gangs live in the ethnic communities they kill. Yet where are the voices mobilizing communities against these predators?

Hat tip: Peter von Buol.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
FILE PHOTO: A well head and drilling rig in the Yarakta oilfield in Russia

By Devika Krishna Kumar

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Oil prices edged higher on Monday, supported by a weaker U.S. dollar but gains were capped by concerns about the impact on demand from rising coronavirus cases in India.

Brent crude settled up 28 cents, or 0.4%, at $67.05 a barrel, after rising 6% last week. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) U.S. oil ended the session up 25 cents, or 0.4%, at $63.38 a barrel, having gained 6.4% last week.

The U.S. dollar traded at a six-week low versus major peers on Monday, with Treasury yields hovering near their weakest in five weeks.

A weaker dollar makes oil cheaper for holders of other currencies. However, COVID-19 cases have surged in India, the world's third biggest oil importer and consumer, dampening optimism for a sustained global recovery in demand.

"If today's broad-based weakness in the U.S. dollar is sustained, the energy complex should be able to maintain the bulk of last week's gains," said Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch and Associates.

"The primary hazard to continued oil price strength is the possible pre-emergence of COVID-19 case counts on a broad scale ... large portions of Asia are seeing a renewed increase in cases that could force a re-appraisal of recent upward global oil demand adjustments."

India reported a record rise in infections, which lifted overall cases to just over 15 million, making the country the second-worst affected after the United States, which has reported more than 31 million infections.

Deaths from COVID-19 in India also rose by a record 1,619 to nearly 180,000.

The capital region of Delhi ordered a six-day lockdown, joining around 13 other states across India that have decided to impose restrictions, curfews or lockdowns in their cities.

"This new wave of measures, while so far likely to be less stringent than what we saw in March 2020, when gasoline and gasoil/diesel demand in the country fell by close to 60%, is nevertheless set to weigh on transportation fuel consumption," consultancy JBC said.

Story continues

Hong Kong will suspend flights from India, Pakistan and the Philippines from April 20 due to imported coronavirus infections, authorities said on Sunday.

Lending some support, Saudi Arabia's crude oil exports fell in February to their lowest in eight months, the Joint Organisations Data Initiative (JODI) said on Monday, as the world's biggest oil exporter voluntarily capped output to support oil prices.

JP Morgan now expects Brent prices to break the $70 mark by May, compared with September in its previous forecast, the bank said in a recent note. It still expects them to finish the year at a similar level of about $74.

(Additional reporting by Ahmad Ghaddar in London, Aaron Sheldrick in Tokyo; Editing by David Gregorio and Mark Potter)
TMC Supremo Mamata Banerjee will not be campaigning in West Bengal anymore. She will only hold a symbolic meeting on the last day of campaigning, i.e April 26. Congress Leader Rahul Gandhi has also suspended all his public rallies in the state in light of the surge in Covid-19 cases.

Indias Covid-19 tally is at an all-time high with consecutive highest single-day spike. With a health crisis looming large, it is the common man who is facing the brunt of the shortage of beds, oxygen cylinders, remdesivir injections, vaccines and more. Amid several calls to declare a health emergency in India, a blame game has now started between states and the Centre over the need for a blanket ban on rallies and whether votes are important than voters.

As the campaigning for 8-phase assembly elections in West Bengal near completion,Congress Leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday said that he will suspending all his public rallies in the state in light of the surge in Covid-19 cases. Following the suit, TMC Supremo Mamata Banerjee has also made it clear that she will not be campaigning anymore and will only hold a symbolic meeting on the last day of campaigning. She has further urged her party members to scale down the campaigning.

After Congress and TMCs statement on putting all political rallies on hold, all eyes are now on BJP, which is yet to issue a statement. Meanwhile, Mamata Banerjee has demanded PM Modis resignation over mishandling of the pandemic. Holding him responsible for the spike in Covid-19 cases, the TMC supremo said that PM Modi has to resign for the rise in Covid-19 cases. She further added that instead of attending this issue, PM is attending election rallies in Bengal.

Stating that PM Modi is only concerned about his image building exercise in the global community, Mamata Banerjee further expressed, we have no problem if you help others in the world, but first give it to Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Bengal, and other states of the country.
CLINTON  The Clinton Police Department is investigating numerous reports Saturday of stolen motor vehicles and car break ins along Airline Road.

On Sunday, a spokesperson for the police department said that one car was confirmed stolen and had not yet been found. Police did not offer an exact number of incidents in which suspects broke into cars.

Police officials ask those with a Ring Doorbell or any other video monitoring service to check the videos for anything suspicious.

The break ins and stolen vehicles are still under investigation. Officials are asking the public to come forward with any information on this matter by contacting the Clinton Police department.
(@FahadShabbir)

Russian President Vladimir Putin will on April 22 address an international climate summit hosted by the United States, the Kremlin said Monday, despite a sharp deterioration in ties between Moscow and Western capitals

Moscow, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 19th Apr, 2021 ) :Russian President Vladimir Putin will on April 22 address an international climate summit hosted by the United States, the Kremlin said Monday, despite a sharp deterioration in ties between Moscow and Western capitals.

"Vladimir Putin will outline Russia's approaches within the context of establishing broad-ranging international cooperation aimed at overcoming the negative consequences of global climate change," the Kremlin said in a statement.

Confirmation of Putin's participating in the summit via video link comes as Moscow trades barbs with Washington and the European Union over jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny and the conflict in Ukraine.

Despite mounting tensions, Russia and the United States held climate negotiations earlier this year and identified forests, nuclear energy and the Arctic as areas of cooperation.

US President Joe Biden last month invited both Xi Jinping of China and Putin to participate in the two-day summit. Beijing has yet to confirm whether it will attend.

Forty world leaders were invited to the meeting meant to mark Washington's return to the frontlines of the fight against climate change, after former president Donald Trump backed away from the issue.

Forest fires have blazed across Siberia with increasing regularity in recent years, which Russia's weather officials have partly linked to climate change.

Russia in 2020 saw record high average temperatures and a historic decline in summer ice cover on its Arctic maritime route, monitors said last month.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-20 00:31:53|Editor: huaxia

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N'DJAMENA, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Chadian communication minister and government spokesperson Cherif Mahamat Zene on Monday called on the population to stay calm after fierce clashes between the army and rebels over the weekend.

"I want by my voice to reassure that there is nothing, absolutely nothing that can justify the panic that a part of the population is seized with because of the malicious propaganda on social networks. I, therefore, appeal for calm," Mahamat Zene twitted.

More than 300 fighters were killed and 150 others, including three top leaders, taken prisoner on Saturday in Chad's western Kanem province, a Chadian army spokesperson said on Monday.

This came after a raid by the Front for Alternation and Concord in Chad (FACT), an armed rebel group based in neighboring Libya, according to local media.

The battleground is some 300 km north of the capital N'Djamena. On Monday, security in the capital city has been beefed up with tanks deployed in major strategic positions.

"The establishment this morning of a security system in certain parts of the capital seems to be misinterpreted. There is no particular threat to fear," Mahamat Zene said. Enditem
Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 30 giorni fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili.





The Global Holographic display market recorded revenue of $650million in 2017 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 29.7% during the forecast period 2018-2023. Commercial applications is the major market for Holographic displays and is estimated to dominate till 2023. Medical applications are also estimated to witness rapid growth during the forecast period as well. Rising adoption in stage shows, trade fairs, trade fairs and other aspects of the commercial industry has been one of the prime drivers for the overall market growth. America has held major share in the global Holographic display market due to high penetration rates compared to other regions. The region has seen high demand for Holographic displays across the major industries which have realized the markets importance.





What is Holographic Display?

Holographic displays are a true 3D displays that use coherent light to project the object or scene virtually in real space, allowing the viewer to look around objects and see them from a different perspective, as they would in real life. This leads to a more comfortable and naturalistic viewing experience without all the intricacies associated with stereo 3D display. The principle of Holography involves a technique that allows a light field to be recorded and later reconstructed when the original light field is no longer present due to the absence of the original objects. Holography is the advanced version of photography that allows an image to record in three dimensions. The technique of holography can also be used to optically store, process and retrieve information.









Market Research and Market Trends of Holographic Display Market

A company in USA has recently developed 3D holographic maps of battle spaces for the US army. This enables soldiers to view 3D terrain, look around corners and helps with their mission training sessions. In fact, Geographic intelligence plays a vital role in military strategy and fully dimensional holographic images are being used to improve reconnaissance. The 3D images are stored into a holographic sheet by taking complex computerized image data. The technology is simple to use and can be rolled up for flexible storage and transportation.



Holography is also revolutionized in medical industry in recent times as a tool for visualizing patient data while training surgeons. A company in Scotland has been successful in using data to produce 3D images for training and display. Lots of medical systems generate complex data with the help of advanced imaging technology like Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and ultrasound scans. The data produced is usually displayed on a computer screen but it can also be used to produce full colored, system generated 3D holographic images. The benefit involved with these holograms is that no specific viewing devices are required, the surgeons can just look unhindered at the 3D images.



There are pioneering artists around the world using the 3D recording holograms to cut and bend space, construct multiple, visually solid objects in the same volume, combine collection of still images and videos to generate 3D animated works. In the recent past, a show of creative holography has been conducted in Central London by the international selection of artists showcasing their talents through 3D holography display. The collaboration of holographic display with arts will have a huge impact in the global market in the near future.

Who are the Major Players in Holographic Display market?

The companies referred to in the market research report includes Musion Das Hologram Ltd, EON Reality, Realfiction, Zebra Imaging, HoloDisplays, Provision Interactive Technologies Inc. and more than 25 companies.





What is our report scope?

The report incorporates in-depth assessment of the competitive landscape, product market sizing, product benchmarking, market trends, product developments, financial analysis, strategic analysis and so on to gauge the impact forces and potential opportunities of the market. Apart from this the report also includes a study of major developments in the market such as product launches, agreements, acquisitions, collaborations, mergers and so on to comprehend the prevailing market dynamics at present and its impact during the forecast period 2018-2023.





All our reports are customizable to your company needs to a certain extent, we do provide 20 free consulting hours along with purchase of each report, and this will allow you to request any additional data to customize the report to your needs.





Key Takeaways from this Report
Carlil Pittman knows trauma firsthand.

As the co-founder of the Chicago-based youth organization GoodKidsMadCity-Englewood, he grieved the loss of Delmonte Johnson, a young community activist, more than two years ago to the very thing the teen fought fiercely against: gun violence.

Hes also been angered and frustrated by the onslaught of stories of Black Americans killed at the hands of police across the nation throughout the past year.

First, there was Breonna Taylor, a Black woman who was fatally shot in her Louisville, Kentucky, home last March. Then there was George Floyd, whose Memorial Day killing by a Minneapolis officer sparked global protests. Just this week, Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, was fatally shot by a police officer during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota  just minutes from where Floyd died. And on Friday, Pittman spent much of the day planning a demonstration with other Chicago organizers to protest the police killing of 13-year-old Adam Toledo, who was Latino.

Were constantly turning on the TV, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and seeing people that look like us who are getting murdered with no repercussions, said Pittman, an organizer for A New Deal for Youth. Its not normal to see someone get murdered by the click of a video on your phone, yet it has become the norm for our people, our Black and brown communities.

Many Black Americans are facing a collective sense of grief and trauma that has grown more profound with the loss of each life at the hands of police in America. Some see themselves and their children reflected in the victims of police violence, heightening the grief they feel. That collective mourning is a great concern to experts and medical professionals who consider the intersectionality of racism and various forms of trauma impacting communities of color a serious public health crisis facing America.

The racial trauma impacting Black Americans isnt new. Its built upon centuries of oppressive systems and racist practices that are deeply embedded within the fabric of the nation. Racial trauma is a unique form of identity-related trauma that people of color experience due to racism and discrimination, according to Dr. Steven Kniffley, a licensed psychologist and coordinator for Spalding Universitys Collective Care Center in Louisville, Kentucky.

A lot of cities across the country are realizing that racial trauma is a public health issue, Kniffley said, citing health concerns such as increased rates of suicide among Black men, a life expectancy gap and post-traumatic stress disorder. Theres no other way that we can explain that except for the unique experiences Black and brown folks have based on their identity, and more specifically, when they encounter racism and discrimination.

Kniffley said each generation of Black Americans since slavery has faced its own unique iteration of racism and discrimination, which has manifested into a form of intergenerational trauma.

Weve essentially handed down 10 or 15 generations worth of boxes of trauma that have yet to be unpacked, and thats whats contributing to a lot of those biological and mental health related issues that were having, Kniffley said, noting the trauma extends beyond police violence.

A memorial near the spot where 13-year-old Adam Toledo was shot by a police officer in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood, Friday, April 16, 2021, a day after the body camera video was release of the fatal shooting. (AP Photo/Shafkat Anowar)AP

In a 2018 study examining the mental health impact of police killings on Black Americans, researchers found exposure to police killings of unarmed Black Americans had adverse effects on mental health among Black people. Nearly half of Black Americans who responded said they were exposed to one or more police killings of unarmed Black Americans in their state of residence  either through word of mouth or the media.

That effect was found only in Black (Americans), said Dr. Atheendar S. Venkataramani, one of the authors of the study and a physician at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center in Philadelphia.

Rashad Robinson, the president of Color of Change, said the trauma has also created generations of Black Americans who have valid mistrust of law enforcement agencies. And many are experiencing further mental anguish while watching the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who pressed his knee into Floyds neck.

We have a whole set of folks with badges and guns who are supposed to protect and serve and they do neither, Robinson said. In order to survive, we have to integrate into a system in a structure which is brutal  brutal to our lives, our dignity, our health. It has collective and long-term impact.

While much of the media spotlight on police killings impacting Black Americans is focused on Black men, experts say its important to also highlight misogynoir  misogyny directed toward Black women. Black women experience misogynoir in various aspects of their lives but also in connection with police violence. The #SayHerName campaign was launched in 2014 to bring awareness to the lesser-known stories of Black women and girls who have been victimized by police. The hashtag flourished again after Taylors death, prompting accusations of delayed justice in her case.

As a mom, Im constantly in fear for my son and my heart is broken by this country over and over again, said Aimee Allison, who leads She the People. It really calls into question how Black women in particular, whove sacrificed so much to serve this country in terms of democracy and bringing voters to the polls, upholding a vision of peace and justice for everyone else, how much more can we take?

Chicago resident Erendira Martinez said the Little Village community, a Chicago neighborhood with a majority Latino population, is also hurting, not just from Toledos killing but also from the trauma of losing other children to gun violence.

On Thursday night, just hours after the video of Toledos death was released, a 17-year-old girl was shot and killed in the same neighborhood. Martinezs own teenage daughter was shot and killed in Little Village in December.

We had just buried my daughter, and a month later, were burying this kid that grew up with my daughter, she said. No mother should bury their child.

Some community organizations are working to address the trauma, said Aswad Thomas, chief of organizing for Alliance for Safety and Justice, who runs Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice, a network of more than 46,000 crime survivors from mostly Black and Latino communities. The group is releasing its first-ever National Crime Victims Agenda next week to address collective trauma.

The tragic truth is that police violence is the most horrific, visible symptom of a larger systemic problem of how our public safety system is designed and we need to address that head-on, Thomas said. But while also investing in the mom and pops who are on the front lines to violence, hosting the community vigils and interventions groups.

Uzodinma Iweala, CEO of The Africa Center, based in New York, said sometimes the thought of what he and so many other Black Americans have experienced is rage-inducing. He thinks of the times he and his brothers have been stopped by police. Or the time his uncle was called a racial slur by an officer. And how in each instance they prayed they would make it out alive  experiences he thinks some white Americans willfully ignore.

Were going to need a real fundamental examination of the roots of what America is, Iweala said. America refuses to acknowledge that America is not a country without the labor of and the blood, sweat and tears of Black people. Until America values those contributions, it will never value Blackness as a life form.

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Shot while Black: Robeson centers Kill Move Paradise honors the humanity behind the headlines (Review)

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For most New York City government jobs, living within the five boroughs is a prerequisite for getting hired, but there are a few exceptions under state law. Police officers, for example, are allowed to live in Nassau, Suffolk, Rockland, Westchester, Putnam or Orange counties, and a slim majority of NYPD uniformed officers take advantage of that flexibility to live in the surrounding suburbs.

A growing number of elected officials and political candidates said that distance worsens community relations. Thats why state Sen. Kevin Parker from Brooklyn and Assembly Member Catalina Cruz from Queens have sponsored legislation that would require all newly hired NYPD officers to live in the city. The measure has broad support among New York City political leaders. In March, the City Council voted overwhelmingly for a resolution calling for the bills passage. Five mayoral candidates  Maya Wiley, Ray McGuire, Shaun Donovan, Kathryn Garcia and Andrew Yang  support the reform. State Attorney General Letitia James also recommended New York City police residency requirements be instituted in a July 2020 report.

For Parker, largely white officers coming in from the suburbs to police majority-Black neighborhoods may be more likely to act as an invading force.

I think that it really rubs people the wrong way, he said. I think that adds to the lack of relationship or connectedness to various communities that creates fear in the cops.

Most cities dont require officers to live within their jurisdiction. In fact, having officers who dont live in the place where they work can be seen as a way to reduce corruption or conflicts of interest. NYPD officers are prohibited from living in the precinct where they serve. Some cities have a hybrid approach, such as Newark, New Jersey, which requires city residency for the first year of employment.

Parker and Cruzs bill is intended to embed officers in the city and increase racial diversity within the NYPDs ranks. Black New Yorkers make up 24.3% of the citys population, but only 15.2% of uniformed officers in the city are Black, according to figures from August. Black officers are far more likely to live in the city than their white peers. Only 45% of white police officers lived in New York City, data from 2010 showed, compared to the 77% of Black officers and 76% of Hispanic officers.

The legislation would also keep city tax dollars within the five boroughs, rather than paying residents of suburban counties.

I think that adds to the lack of relationship or connectedness to various communities that creates fear in the cops.  state Sen. Kevin Parker

Police unions have been long opposed to residency requirements. We cant talk about changing the NYPD residency requirements without talking about police officers pay, Pat Lynch, president of the Police Benevolent Association, said in a statement. He argued that officers cant afford to live in the city, as NYPD officers on average earn $49.17 an hour over the course of a 25-year career, less than counterparts in some nearby police departments. State troopers earn $64.19, according to data provided by the Police Benevolent Association, while Suffolk County officers receive on average $86.57 in hourly pay.

Mayor Bill de Blasio also was sympathetic to those concerns when asked last year about instituting police residency requirements, saying: A lot of NYPD officers who happen to be people of color are living in the suburbs for purely economic reasons, because they cant find enough affordable housing here.

But many other New York City residents earn less than NYPD officers. After about five and a half years of service, NYPD officers earn a base annual salary of $85,292, excluding overtime or holiday pay. Even without that additional pay  which can lead to officers earning more than $100,000 a year  NYPD officers make more than New York Citys median household income of $63,998. On top of that, police officers in New York City receive benefits like 27 paid vacation days and unlimited sick leave, with an option to retire after 22 years while continuing to receive half their salary.

The salaries of officers in some suburban police departments are unusually high: Suffolk County officers are the highest paid in the state, which has led to complaints from residents that local police are overpaid. The county also has a median household income of $101,031, well exceeding New York Citys.

NYPD officers are also better compensated than most city employees, who are required to reside in the five boroughs. A recent city job posting for a playground associate  who would be subject to a residency requirement  offers an hourly wage of $17.72, for example.

There is no evidence that residency has a positive effect on police performance or community relations.  New York City mayoral candidate Dianne Morales

The majority of (District Council 37 members) are probably not making what a police officer makes, yet they could afford to live in the city, Cruz said, referring to the union that represents a wide range of municipal employees, including janitors, school aides, secretaries and park rangers. Why are you different?

Stephen Nasta, a former NYPD inspector and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, warned that requiring cops to live in the city could hurt recruitment efforts and create resentment among officers that some other civil servants arent subject to the same mandate.

The question about residency requirements also goes beyond just police officers, as firefighters, sanitation workers and teachers are also exempt from the residency requirements (certain other city employees can also live in the suburbs after two continuous years of service). Parker said he was in the process of drafting legislation with guidance from the Vulcan Society, an association of Black firefighters, to create similar mandates for firefighters.

I think the police issue is most pressing, he said. But I think other bargaining units also should be living in the city.

Police reform activists in New York City are surprisingly unexcited by the proposal, seeing it as unlikely to significantly reduce police abuse and misconduct. I dont think theres anything that points to diversity getting at the root problems of policing in this country, said Kesi Foster, an activist with Communities United for Police Reform and Make the Road New York. He noted that Chicago has a police residency requirement, but it still continues to deal with police brutality. Instead, he said lawmakers should focus more energy on police accountability and reducing the scope of police departments. Dianne Morales, the only New York City mayoral candidate to oppose the proposal, referred to such requirements as a distraction.

There is no evidence that residency has a positive effect on police performance or community relations, she said in a statement.

Criminal justice experts said there was limited research on the issue, which makes it difficult to evaluate on its merits. Theres only a couple of studies Im aware of  and mine is one of them  that has to do with really researching the effect in terms of crime or how a community relates to law enforcement within its jurisdiction, said David Pritchard, an adjunct criminal justice professor at the Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University. So its a very understudied issue.

Pritchards study found that when police lived in the communities where they work, crime went down and communities tended to function more peacefully. My study, I would argue, shows on a neighborhood level that it reduces crime and on the neighborhood level that it reduces social disorganization, he said. But it would be difficult to conclude whether that would hold true in a large city like New York City, he said, where officers may live in different boroughs than where they work.

Supporters point out that the residency requirement isnt meant to be a panacea. It isn't just, lets diversify it, and all of a sudden, everything is happy and dandy, Cruz said. Part of it is diversifying the force, part of it is having better training, part of it is  prioritizing programs that divert people away from interactions with the police.
Close

With Pluto safely behind it, New Horizons is just hours away from passing a significant milestone: it would be 50 times further away from the Sun than Earth. The spacecraft completed a mission that had never been done before at the solar system's edge to mark the occasion.

New Horizons reached 50 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun at 8:42 EDT on Saturday, April 17. One AU is the average distance between Earth and the Sun. That's about 150 million kilometers.

This figure is entirely arbitrary and appealing to our base-10 sensibilities as a milestone. Still, it marks a significant achievement: New Horizons now joins an elite group of spacecraft that have traveled this distance, including Pioneers 10 and 11 and Voyagers 1 and 2. NASA said Voyager 1 is the farthest human-made spacecraft ever, orbiting the Sun at 152.5 AU, or 22.9 billion kilometers.

Wrap Your Head Around a Billion Miles Away

New Horizons was launched on January 19, 2006, and is now about 7.5 billion kilometers from Earth. Light takes seven hours to reach Earth at this wavelength, but sending orders to the probe and receiving a confirmation signal on Earth now takes 14 hours. Since the probe is so far away from Earth, Gizmodo Australia said the mission's view of distant stars differs from ours.

New Horizons' camera was pointed at the location in space where Voyager 1 is actually positioned as part of NASA's celebration.

"Never before has a spacecraft in the Kuiper Belt photographed the location of an even more distant spacecraft, now in interstellar space," declared NASA in a statement. "Although Voyager 1 is far too faint to be seen directly in the image, its location is known precisely due to NASA's radio tracking."

Alan Stern, the principal investigator for New Horizons at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, called it a "hauntingly beautiful picture." The image serves as a reminder that we are only in the early stages of being an alien civilization. Our scope into the universe is expanding every day.

ALSO READ: Pluto's Blue Haze Seems Supernatural But is Actually Lethal Poison





The mission's previous highlights include flybys of Jupiter in 2007 and Pluto in 2015, and a 2019 encounter with the strangely shaped Arrokoth.

The probe will resume its journey through the solar system's far reaches from here. The probe is also collecting valuable data about the solar wind and the space atmosphere throughout the mission's science process.

New Horizons' program will be upgraded later this year by NASA to improve its capability. The probe is supposed to last until the late 2030s when its nuclear battery will no longer keep up with the interstellar vehicle.

Is New Horizons Still In The Galaxy?

WRAL.com said New Horizons won't pass the heliopause, or the area of space where the solar winds from other stars are higher than the solar winds from our star, for another 25 years. But it's at the current speed of over 31,000 mph.

Both Voyager 1 and 2 were launched in the late 1970s, and about half of their instruments are now operational. These instruments verified that the probes had successfully entered outer space in 2012 and 2018.

Pioneer 10 and 11, which were launched in the early 1970s, are likely to be the next spacecraft to cross the interstellar benchmark, although the precise date remains unknown. Direct observations aren't feasible since no satellite has been heard from since 2003.

The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission of NASA is determining not only how far out the Sun's impact reaches, but also the shape of the solar system as a result. The heliosphere is not a perfect globe, as the name implies.

RELATED ARTICLE: Pluto at 91: How Did Clyde Tombaugh Discover This Dwarf Planet?

Check out more news and information on Space on Science Times.
Jamaican dancehall artiste Shalkal has an uncanny ability to use homegrown wisdom culled from the Jamaican society to create impactful digital songs that resonate with an international audience. The artiste is now basking in the success of his latest single, Put God First featuring Zimbabwean dancehall artiste Ninja Lipsy.

The video racked up over 20,000 plus views in one week since its release and is arguably his most successful song to date.

A friend of Ninja Lipsy was playing the Put God First song on iTunes and liked the sound of it and contacted me via email. We started corresponding from there and decided to do a remix, and it came off so well. It shows that Jamaican wisdom has worldwide appeal, Shalkal said.

The song has been added to rotation on POWER FM in Zimbabwe and on IRIE FM in Jamaica.

Shalkal will be redoubling his efforts to produce music which narrate stories through his songs using Jamaican metaphors.

Its not uncommon for Jamaicans to use just one metaphor to describe, or express their situation, and immediately everyone knows exactly what they mean. This is the reason I have such a great appreciation for Jamaican metaphors, and Im glad to translate this to music, he said.

As the music climate continues to evolve, it is clear that it will require initiative, and hard work from those who wish to stay on top.

Its really important to focus on the things that really matter. Not everything deserves your energy. It just doesnt, Shalkal said about what 2020 has taught him. There are things that we worry about that wont matter in a month, and this whole COVID experience has taught us that life is too short. People are losing their lives every day. Focus on what really matters in your life.

A few years ago, Shalkal finally decided to step in the booth after years of being a successful entrepreneur.

Shalkal had previously released the humorous Ungrateful Mawga Dog that racked up thousands of streams online, underscoring his status as a talented wordsmith.

He grew up in Runaway Bay, St Ann where he attended York Castle High in Browns Town, and is also known for songs such as Envious So which spawned numerous dance videos which surfaced on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms. Other songs include Come Money Come, Fi You Money, and Money Dance.

Shalkal also had some personal advice for artistes who keep getting caught in never-ending beefs and verbals spats on social media.

2020 is the year that a global pandemic claimed over a one million lives, 2021 is shaping up to be very deadly as well so it is a time for deep self-reflection. Beefs and spats are not the future of Jamaican music, just look at international trends and you will see, Shalkal said.

He wants to release an EP in 2021 and he has enough great tracks to make it a sparkling effort.

I create real, authentic music, he said. I have messages and songs with depth. I dont always purposefully mean to do that, but I have a lot to say that Ive held in for a lot of years and when I get in the studio, I just feel at home and let the vibes flow through me and onto the record.
The first party I remember going to with my wife, they made this risotto they just called riza, which means rice in Croatian, he said. There was veal, chicken, tomatoes and lots of parmesan cheese in there. It was super delicious and always one of those dishes at a christening or birthday. Theyd make a huge pot of it, and thats what wed eat. I didnt know what it was called and couldnt find it at a restaurant.
Update: The suspected gunman, Stephen Broderick, has been taken into custody, according to reports from Austin media.

AUSTIN  Three people were shot to death Sunday in an apparent domestic disturbance that rattled the capital city and a nation already on edge, coming amid a string of mass shootings across the country.

Just before 5 p.m. Interim Austin Police Chief Joseph Chacon said authorities lifted a shelter-in-place warning for the city's northwest suburbs, an area that has seen enormous growth in recent years as part of a booming tech scene. The effort, he said, had shifted to a fugitive search and he warned residents to remain vigilant.

"We do not think this individual is out there targeting random people to shoot them," Chacon said. "That does not mean he is not dangerous. We do think that he is armed and he is very much dangerous."

Authorities identified the suspected gunman as Stephen Broderick, 41.

Chacon said Broderick was a former deputy law enforcement officer with the Travis County Sheriff's office.

Broderick was arrested in June 2020, on a charge of sexual assault of a child, according to the Travis County District Attorney's office.

He was released from custody that month after posting $50,000 bail, the district attorney's office said. Prosecutors have filed a motion to revoke his bail. The office said it is "actively supporting the Austin Police Department and law enforcement who are using all available resources to apprehend Mr. Broderick.

"Our office has been clear that acts of violence committed in our community will not be tolerated," Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza said on Twitter. "I am grateful to the courageous members of our law enforcement who are actively working to bring Mr. Broderick into custody. When Mr. Broderick is apprehended, he will be held accountable."

Chacon asked residents to call 911 if they see the alleged gunman.

"Obviously, this is a tragedy," Chacon told reporters a briefing near the site of the shootings. "We have people who have lost their lives out here. We're going to be doing our very best to conduct the best investigation we can, and also to get this person into custody as quickly as possible."

Chacon said the victims were two Hispanic women and a Black man who were known to Broderick, but did not give details of their relationship to him or each other. He said a child also had been identified and was safely with authorities.

The killings came amid an especially unnerving string of deadly gun violence across the country in recent weeks. Authorities in Indianapolis still were working to piece together why a 19-year-old man stormed a FedEx facility there late Thursday, killing eight people.

Earlier this month, four people were shot to death in Allen, Texas, and 18 people were killed last month in shooting sprees at a Colorado grocery story and spas in Atlanta. On Sunday, three people were killed and two seriously wounded in a shooting at a busy tavern in southeastern Wisconsin.

Chris Combs, a special agent in Austin with the Federal Bureau of Investigations, said the three deaths Sunday were believed to part of a domestic dispute.

"At this time, we do not see any federal nexis to this," he said.

Emergency responders first were called to the scene shortly before noon on Sunday after receiving a 911 call, Chacon said.

Josh Katzowitz, who had been shopping at the nearby Trader Joes on Sunday, told the Associated Press that police and ambulances came pouring in to the area as he was leaving. He said he did not hear any shooting.

The cops had their guns out, he said. Some had pistols, some had rifles and they were strapping on bulletproof vests. There were all of a sudden ambulances, sirens and police cars. There were cops coming from everywhere.

Local and federal law enforcement spent much of the day searching the Great Hills Trail and Rain Creek Parkway area in northwest Austin where the killings took place.

Local police and federal agents were on scene throughout the afternoon, with dozens of emergency and tactical vehicles stationed near an apartment complex where the shootings were believed to have taken place. The area includes a strip mall containing several retail stores and large apartment complexes situated near wooded rolling hills.

Reporter Rebecca Carballo and the Associated Press contributed to this story.



jeremy.blackman@chron.com

This is a developing story.
Alex_Schmidt

A student was arrested Monday morning after a threat was made on Instagram. The Ector County ISD police department was made aware of a social media threat potentially directed at two ECISD middle schools, according to a press release.

The original message, found on an Instagram account, seemed to threaten Bowie Middle School or Crockett Middle School, according to the district. ECISD police began investigating the threat immediately. The student who made the post was identified, taken into custody and is facing criminal charges. The 13-year-old male admitted to making the post in order to scare people.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 18:46:29|Editor: huaxia

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LAGOS, April 19 (Xinhua) -- At least seven people have been confirmed dead following a tanker explosion in Nigeria's north-central state of Benue, an official said on late Sunday.

The fire was caused by a tanker, which lost control and fell after experiencing brake failure, according to Yakubu Mohammed, head of the state's Federal Road Safety Corps.

About 50 houses were destroyed in the fire accident occurring at the Agatu local government area of the state on Sunday, confirmed Emmanuel Shior, a staff member of the state's Emergency Management Agency, adding that a detailed assessment would be carried out on Monday. Enditem
LONDON, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Alphagreen, Europe's leading marketplace for cannabis products is launching the largest ever crowdfunding raise in the CBD and medical cannabis space.

The cash injection will be used to grow its e-commerce and digital marketing operations, expand into new global territories, and leverage its expertise of the sector to enter the emerging market for medical cannabis.

The business had a strong start and raised in the last few days 1.5m already. Existing investors include Stockholm-based Enexis AB, US cannabis fund West Creek Investments and angel investors, including Igor and Oleg Tikhturov.

Co-founder and CEO of Alphagreen, Alexej Pikovsky, said, "The cannabis industry is here to stay. The global market is poised for a significant growth phase and Alphagreen is perfectly positioned to capitalise on the increased use of medicinal cannabis and fundamental changes to the way the cannabis and CBD market will function."

Alphagreen has enjoyed phenomenal growth since its launch in October 2019, and it was uniquely placed to capitalise on the shift to online retailing and increased interest in wellness products as a result of the pandemic.

When it began trading, Alphagreen listed four brands and 50 products. Today the CBD marketplace sells more than 150 brands with more than 2,500 products. Revenue has surged from 23,562 in its second quarter 2020 to 130k in the first quarter of 2021, representing a growth of more than 450%.

As well as generating revenue from the growing number of companies who want to list products on its platform, Alphagreen offers end-to-end e-commerce technology services including SEO, Business Intelligence (data collection; data and market trend analysis) and having one of the largest content creation hubs, including over 1,000 top influencers accessing and part of the Alphagreen e-commerce channel.

One of the key factors behind Alphagreen's success to date, has been a content first strategy where unique and well-researched content has been created leading to strong search rankings. In fact, in the last 12 months more than five million words of exclusive content have been created. As a result, Alphagreen's content has become top ranking within Google across the UK and several other European countries including Germany, France, Spain and Italy.

Cannabis products are one of the fastest growing markets in the world, with an estimated compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 22%.

With its focus on the common challenges of sleep, anxiety and pain, unparalleled market intelligence, market place innovation set to shake up the health and wellness space and content-driven marketing strategy, Alphagreen is expecting to grow by another 300% in 2021.

Alexej Pikovsky adds: "We are on track to finish off the year with close to a million pounds in sales and should see a huge jump in 2022 when our content first strategy, together with our e-commerce market place showcasing the very best in health and wellness brand innovation and portfolios, plus massive web traffic that any business would want to be part of really kick in. We are uniquely positioned and are excited to work with the best brands globally."

About Alphagreen Group:

Alphagreen Group is an ecommerce platform and technology provider focused on CBD and other alternative healthcare products. It operates Europe's leading platform for CBD and provides a comprehensive marketplace for consumers and brands within the wellness and beauty space, provides trustworthy and effective CBD products to alleviate psychological and physical ailments and is expanding into other niche industries including medical cannabis and nootropics.

Founded in 2019, Alphagreen was born from a passion for health and wellbeing, combined with technology and innovation.

The brainchild of entrepreneurs Alexej Pikovsky and Viktor Khliupko, Alphagreen was created to simplify the entire experience with CBD and alternative healthcare products along every step of the consumer journey.

For more information please contact:

Nicky Smith: [email protected] ; +44(0)7867 513 361, +44(0)2036000228

Sophie Woolford: [email protected]; +44(0)7825 347 446, +44(0)2036000228

SOURCE Alphagreen
A three-year-old boy was rushed to hospital after being attacked by a dog in a busy playground over the weekend.

Daniel Parry said he watched in horror as the animal lunged at his son, Luca, as they were leaving a playground in Liverpool.

The 34-year-old claims Luca was left with 'teeth marks on his arm and flesh hanging off' after the attack on Saturday.

Daniel Parry said he watched in horror as the animal lunged at his son, Luca, as they were leaving the playground in Otterspool Promenade (pictured) on Saturday afternoon

Mr Parry, from Wooton Village in Berkshire, had visited the playground in Otterspool Promenade on Saturday afternoon.

He described the park as a 'safe haven' for him and Luca throughout lockdown.

But as they left the area, Mr Parry claims he saw two dogs tied up with their male owner alongside the pets - one of which reportedly lunged at his son.

The owner allegedly fled the scene as workers from a nearby play centre used their first aid kit to stop the bleeding.

Doctors later told Mr Parry Luca was lucky not to suffer nerve or artery damage.

He added: 'There were two dogs strapped up, with a man looking into the playground.

'They didn't seem very feisty or anything like that. We walked around them and Luca was next to me, but all of a sudden one of the dogs ran out.

'The dog must have had an extension on its lead because it got out so far and bit my son's arm. I instinctively reacted, so the dog must have panicked and left him.

'But it happened all so fast. I looked at his forearm and he had a big cut, the teeth had gone in and there was flesh hanging out.'

Nearby workers treated the youngster at the scene before he was taken to Alder Hey Children's' Hospital (pictured) for treatment

Nearby workers treated the youngster at the scene before he was taken to Alder Hey Children's' Hospital for treatment.

The 34-year-old added: 'He's ok now and he's been seen to. But the teeth have gone into his flesh, he's got a big laceration on his arm and there's a wound there.'

Merseyside Police said it was investigating the incident.
TORONTO - Nurse Manpreet Kainth knows every patient being treated under her teams care in Humber River Hospitals intensive care unit

Registered nurse Stephanie Flores, who has been redeployed from the operating room to the intensive care unit, looks out the window in the ICU at the Humber River Hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic in Toronto on Tuesday, April 13, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

TORONTO - Nurse Manpreet Kainth knows every patient being treated under her teams care in Humber River Hospitals intensive care unit

Even with her 16 years of experience, the ever-growing workload and the daily scenes unfolding before her eyes - more acutely ill COVID-19 patients and young people fighting for their lives - weigh heavily on her.

There is no escaping that reality even when she's home with her family, who she tries not to burden with her worries.

Sometimes when I sleep, I just keep thinking," she says during a short break after her team has intubated another COVID-19 patient struggling to breathe. "Those things are going through my mind and I just want to shut it down, just shut it off for a minute."

Another worry that keeps her up at night is the ICU staffing crunch and her team's high level of turnover at this stage of the third wave of the pandemic.

"The thing is, we are not only taking care of the patients," she says. "We have to take care of our staff. Everybody's burned out."

Severely ill COVID-19 patients are being hospitalized in Ontario in higher numbers than ever, as the province and health-care sector scramble to increase capacity through transfering patients to other hospitals, cancelling non-essential procedures and setting up field units.

As COVID-19 cases continue to soar - 4,250 new infections were reported Sunday, with 741 patients in intensive care - the provincial government has promised to add between 700 and 1,000 additional ICU beds.

"Its fine to add a bed, but not so much if you don't have people that can care for the person in the bed, says Vicki McKenna, president of the Ontario Nurses Association.

She says there is already a shortage of nurses in hospital ICUs and adding more beds will only exacerbate the problem.

"The nurses are going to be further stretched than they already are, and that takes a physical and emotional toll on people when they are placed in these situations, she says.

The nurses McKenna speaks with compare the situation to a battlefield. They are used to having patients die, but the duration of the crisis and their inability to connect with friends and family due to infection risk has pushed nurses to the brink.

I am worried about staffing, says Raman Rai, manager of ICU at Humber River. Every single day, every single shift, we wish we had more ICU-trained nurses.

The hospital has redeployed nurses from other units as well as nursing students to support ICU staff, but those with critical-care certificates are in short supply.

A year into the pandemic, Rai says burnout is taking a toll on staff.

The pandemic has been long and hard on the entire ICU team, and we are having nurses who are feeling that they need some time off, she says. It's been difficult to try to get vacation, and they are a bit overworked.

Rai said shes seeing an increase in people taking sick time, or staff requesting a day away. If it cant be accommodated, theyre encouraged to switch shifts.

The team also takes time each shift to decompress and discuss difficult situations theyre witnessing - like the recent deaths of two COVID-19 variant patients from the same family, on the same day.

Doctors are feeling the strain, too.

People get tired all the time, and it has impact on the family as well. You dont have much time to spend with them, says Dr. Ali Ghafouri, an intensivist at Humber River.

We used to have some vacation time, but now we can't even go, because first of all, nowhere to go. And second of all, they're asking for more help, so we are spending more of our vacation time in the hospital.

On Friday, the government pleaded with other provinces to send urgently needed medical personnel. In a letter to her provincial counterparts, deputy health minister Helen Angus estimated Ontario will be short 4,145 hospital nurses over the next four months.

McKenna says the governments plea for help is "a precarious strategy" as all provinces are facing a surge in cases of COVID-19 variants.

"I'm really worried about our workforce today and what they're facing going into the workplaces right now, and how long they can keep up this pace," she says.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 18, 2021.
Lathrop High School's Clarice Louden-Mingo is the Alaska Association of Secondary School Principals' assistant principal of the year. She is also she is the 2021 Alaska Region 6 Assistant Principal of the Year.
Several west-central Illinois communities will be seeing new leadership in the coming weeks as counties finalize the votes from the April 6 election.

In Carrollton, long-time public works director Mike Snyder will be stepping into a new role as mayor after receiving 397 votes against current mayor Joesph Montanez, who received 190 votes.

It was humbling, Snyder said. It was a good win and I said if I won, I wanted it to be decisive.

Snyder has worked for the city of Carrollton for 37 years  24 of those as the Public Works director.

Snyder retired from the city in 2019.

He made the decision to run for mayor after receiving encouragement from several community members.

I felt it was a natural progression for me, Snyder said. I feel because of my time with the city, I can step into the job with more knowledge than most.

One of the first priorities Snyder said he has once he is officially sworn in on May 13 will be to help rebuild the trust between the community members and city hall.

Being the director for the length of time that I was, I talked to a lot of people and I always had an open door policy, Snyder said. I like talking to people.

With an open line of communication and open door policy, Snyder said he hopes the people in the community will be willing to work with the city government.

I think there were a lot of citizens that had lost some trust and confidence in city hall, Snyder said. Part of my campaign was that I want to reunite the community and city government. We need to reunite.

One of the biggest things hell likely be looking at is the closure of the Kroger store, which will eliminate access to a grocery store within the city limits.

Snyder said this is a big problem for the community, especially its older citizens that lack the necessary transportation to make a trip to Greenfield, Jerseyville or Jacksonville to purchase groceries.

Im confident well find a solution, but itll take more than one person, he said.

Snyder lives with his wife, Rebecca. Together they have seven children and 10 grandchildren.

While Carrollton will see new blood in its mayoral seat, White Halls current mayor Brad Staats will retain his position after receiving 275 votes, while opponents Derek Kleidon received 101 and Phillip Shipley received 15.

Staats was first elected in 2017 as mayor, but had previously served as an alderman for 14 years.

I plan to continue to clean up the city, bring businesses back to town, focus on funding to repair city streets, promote parks, lakes and all ball parks to bring back the White Hall youth league, Staats said. I have projects that myself, along with the counsel have been working on and will continue those goals.

He and his wife, Marcy, have two children.

Other races remain close as final votes are being counted.

In Beardstown, Alderman Tim Harris is currently project to take the mayor spot with 325 votes, with just a two-vote lead over Randy Pherigo Jr., who received 323 votes. Incumbent Leslie Harris received 222 votes.

In Virginia, the number of votes for write-in candidate Randy McClure may edge out his opponents if all 177 votes are for him.

The countys GBS Vote page has write-in votes in the Virginia mayors race at 177  Randy McClure is the official write-in candidate, but the write-in votes might not all be for him  votes for Steve Clark at 169 and votes for incumbent Mayor Reg Brunk at 111.

A canvas of the Cass County votes is scheduled for Tuesday.

In South Jacksonville, the presidential race is also close, with an eight-vote spread. Write-in candidate Tyson Manker received 289 votes, while Village Trustee Dick Samples received 281.
New Delhi: The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) has deferred its civil services examination 2020 interviews as a the country is witnessing a massive spike in coronavirus cases, the information was shared on Monday via an official statement.

"The Commission has decided that it will not be possible to conduct examinations and interviews for the present," the statement issued by the Commission said. "Revised schedules of the same will be notified on the website of the UPSC," it said.

The civil services examination is held annually by the UPSC in three stages - preliminary, main and interview - to select officers of Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Foreign Service (IFS) and Indian Police Service (IPS) among others.

In its special meeting, the UPSC considered rapidly changing circumstances, health considerations, lockdown restrictions including social distancing norms and aggravating situation enforced due to the pandemic on Monday.
[April 19, 2021] Wachsman Ranked 140 On The Financial Times List Of The Americas' 500 Fastest Growing Companies 2021

NEW YORK, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Wachsman , the communications-based strategy consultancy headquartered in New York, and with offices in Dublin and Singapore, has ranked 140 on The Financial Times list of The Americas' 500 Fastest Growing Companies 2021. Wachsman was included in the prestigious list of companies as a result of having achieved a compound annual growth in revenues of over 80% between 2016 and 2019. Wachsman works with ambitious leaders and technologists at the frontline of the new economy to shape and advance the way the world sees them. Founded in 2015, Wachsman quickly established itself as a leading communications specialist at the center of the nascent blockchain industry. Since then, the firm has continued to broaden its offering to include strategic communications, reputation management, crisis management, and policy and regulation advisory to clients across the emerging technology spectrum. Wachsman now employs over 70 staff globally, with a client roster boasting dozens of globally renowned technology companies. Of the millions of active companies in North and South America, the Financial Times identified the 500 businesses that have made the most significant contribution to economic growth between 2016 and 2019. Previous list alumni include organizations like Niantic, FreightWise, Uber Technologies, MongoDB, Daitan, FE International, and Ondot. Commenting on the accolade, CEO David Wachsman said: "Wachsman being named on the world-famous Financial Times list of The Americas' 500 Fastest Growing Companies is a tremendous honor for us. We were born out of blockchain, but our continued growth is testament to how we've been able to keep pace with a volatile, ever-changing technology landscape. At Wachsman, we believe that the future belongs to bold, new companies that are upending traditional business models and changing the world. Wachsman exists to help them shape and share their vision."



Wachsman's client roster has featured leading-edge blockchain and DLT protocols, including Cosmos, IOHK/Cardano and Hedera Hashgraph; multi-billion dollar global cryptocurrency exchanges like Bitfinex and eToro; financial services providers such as Lukka, Coinsource and BRD; and technology-focused briefs with entities as diverse as Indiegogo, Aviva-Singlife and the Government of Gibraltar. David Wachsman continued: "I would like to thank our clients around the world, who continue to put their faith in our services and who continue to inspire us to be better every day. And I'm particularly grateful to my wonderful team who have made this remarkable growth possible. We're a firm in a competitive, complex, fast-moving space, but their ambition and their dedication to our clients' success has been our driving force."

About The Financial Times List Of The Americas' Fastest Growing Companies 2021 The FT The Americas' Fastest Growing Companies is comprised of the enterprises that contribute most heavily to economic growth. 500 companies are featured on the list, which was announced online on April 13, 2021 and can currently be viewed on the FT website. This is the second time the FT has published the list, which sees companies awarded based on their Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR). See here for the full list. Methodology The rating is the result of a joint project by the Financial Times and Statista Inc., the world-leading statistics portal and industry ranking provider. The results were achieved by conducting months of research, public calls, intensive database research and directly contacting tens of thousands of companies. The selection process was fairly straightforward: in short, the top 500 companies are receiving this recognition based on Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR). View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/wachsman-ranked-140-on-the-financial-times-list-of-the-americas-500-fastest-growing-companies-2021-301271689.html SOURCE Wachsman

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Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, right, tours a mass-vaccination site in February in Natick. Baker will tour the vaccination clinic at Berkshire Community College on Thursday.
CAIRO (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th April, 2021) A total of 11 people were killed and 98 others were injured after a train got derailed in northern Egypt on Sunday, the country's Health Ministry said.

Earlier in the day, Al Arabiya broadcaster reported that eight people died in the incident that occurred in the Qalyubia governorate, north of Cairo, when a train got derailed on its way from the city of Mansoura to the country's capital.

"The Health Ministry has announced that 11 people were killed and 98 were injured as a result of the (Cairo-Mansoura) train derailment," the statement said.

According to the Egyptian railway authority, four cars got derailed and overturned.

This is the third railway incident that occurred in Egypt in recent weeks. Earlier this week, at least 15 people were injured as a result of a passenger train derailment in the northern Egyptian province of Sharqia. Last month, two trains collided in Egypt's southern Sohag province, leaving 19 people dead and 185 more injured.
Hurricane forecasting has advantages over pandemic forecasting. If people follow an evacuation order and no one dies, the hurricane still leaves behind floods and downed trees and plenty of justification for the order.

With a pandemic, closing businesses and schools might prevent sickness and death, but also eliminate evidence of what might have been. That makes it harder to argue against people who claim overreaction or overreach.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-20 02:30:47|Editor: huaxia

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UNITED NATIONS, April 19 (Xinhua) -- United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Monday for leaders in Asia to bolster efforts towards finding a peaceful solution to the crisis in Myanmar, highlighting the key role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in this regard.

Speaking during a Security Council meeting on cooperation between the world body and regional and sub-regional organizations, the top UN official underscored the relationship with ASEAN, underlining the bloc's important role in diplomacy, conflict prevention and peacebuilding.

"Today, ASEAN's role is more crucial than ever as the region faces an urgent crisis in Myanmar," Guterres said.

In this regard, UN cooperation with ASEAN is vital, the secretary-general said, as the situation requires a robust international response grounded in a unified regional effort.

Guterres told the Council that his special envoy for Myanmar, Christine Schraner Burgener, is in the region and stands ready to resume dialogue with the military and others.

The Security Council debate, held online, focused on an issue which the secretary-general said has been a key priority since he took office four years ago.

Cooperation between the UN and regional and sub-regional organizations has "grown exponentially" since its founding in 1945, he said, encompassing areas that include preventive diplomacy, mediation, counterterrorism, peacekeeping and promoting human rights, but also combating climate change and now the COVID-19 pandemic.

The UN chief provided examples of this partnership across several continents, showcasing how working together can support countries to manage complex political transitions and find sustainable solutions to political challenges.

In Sudan, for example, the UN supported the African Union and Ethiopia in facilitating negotiations which led to the establishment of the transitional government.

"As we continue to support Sudan in its efforts towards democratic governance and an inclusive society, our collaboration remains essential," he said.

The secretary-general said strengthening UN partnerships with regional and sub-regional organizations is integral to his vision for "a networked multilateralism."

Despite the pandemic, he convened heads of regional organizations for a virtual dialogue last November, to shore up collaboration during crises.

"I am committed to pursuing an even closer engagement to promote confidence-building and dialogue, in conflict prevention, management and resolution," he said.

"We can only address our world's current and future challenges, including those exposed and heightened by COVID-19, through ambitious and coordinated multilateral action," said Guterres. Enditem
Stay at home, follow health advisories, take the Covid-19 vaccine if eligible, and stay safe from the second wave of the pandemic, chief operating officer UB Pravin Rao told employees in an email on Monday.

In an email titled "Stay Safe from the Covid-19 Second Wave," Rao cited the enormous number of fresh cases being reported daily, and said, "I write today to request you all put your health and that of your family members above everything else. Do not leave your homes without wearing a protective mask, practice social distancing, and avoid crowds and closed spaces... We request you not to venture out unless its an emergency."

Business Standard has seen a copy of the email.

He further asked employees to work from home unless they were part of the business continuity plan (BCP) teams, across locations. "If you are required to come to office to meet critical requirements, make sure that all the safety measures have been followed. In order to ensure safety, all those who need to work from office as part of BCP are encourage to stay in ECC to avoid daily commute and avoid exposure."

ECCs are Employee Care Centres, or hostels, complete with all facilities for a comfortable stay, present in nearly all campuses.

Rao also encouraged employees to get vaccinated if eligible, calling it an important tool in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. "Though the Covid-19 vaccination is voluntary, it is ideal to receive the complete schedule of Covid-19 vaccine, as per the prescribed age limit directed by the government. This will help give you protection against this disease and limit the spread to your close contacts including family members, friends, relatives, and co-workers.

We have already made arrangements for vaccination in our campuses (as per the current eligibility criteria set up by the government) in some of the DCs (development centres) and are working on setting this up in other locations. We have also established tie-ups with hospitals across a number of cities and employees and their families can get vaccinated from this network of hospitals," he added.
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HOUSTON  A facility in Houston that housed girls who crossed U.S. border unaccompanied is being closed and the girls immediately moved, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said Saturday.

About 450 girls housed since April 1 in an Emergency Intake Site for Unaccompanied Children operated by the National Association of Christian Churches near Bush Intercontinental Airport were being moved.

The NACC Houston EIS and other Emergency Intake Sites are intended for use as a temporary measure, HHS said in a statement.

Officials with FIEL, an immigrant advocacy group in Houston, praised the removal of the girls that FIEL director Cesar Espinosa said are 13-17 years old, but questioned the reason for the move.

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Espinosa said there was an incident at the center Friday night and a FIEL employee saw law enforcement and ambulances outside the center, but could not determine what happened.

There seemed to be a lot of confusion as to what was happening, Espinosa said, translating the description of the scene provided by the employee, Alain Cisneros, in Spanish. The people that were there looked like they were in a sad stance, kind of with their head down and seemed like they were wiping tears away.

Houston police did not immediately return a phone call for comment Saturday and a call to the National Association of Christian Churches rang unanswered.

Espinosa, who had toured the center, said the girls were being housed in a warehouse.

There was really no space for social distancing  they were only allowed to get up from their cot to use the restroom as well as to shower, Espinosa said.

Everything that was being brought in was temporary. The showers were temporary, they were bringing in temporary restrooms, so this space was not equipped to house anybody, much less children, Espinosa said.

HHS said about 130 of the girls have plans to be unified with a sponsor, typically a parent or relative, and ORR will seek to locate a sponsor for the remaining girls.

Texas child welfare officials recently said they received three reports alleging abuse and neglect at a San Antonio facility that is holding more than 1,600 immigrant teenagers who crossed the southern border.

The U.S. government last month stopped taking immigrant teenagers to one site in Midland as it faced questions about the safety of the emergency sites.

HHS has rushed to open large sites to house migrant children across the Southwest amid a sharp increase in crossings of unaccompanied youths at the southern border. The agencys lack of capacity as border crossings rose at the start of President Joe Bidens administration led to children sometimes waiting for weeks in overcrowded and unsuitable Border Patrol facilities.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Bahrains value of exports of national origin has increased by 18% to reach BD684 million during the first quarter of 2021, up from BD580 million for the same period of the previous year. The value of imports increased by 3%, reaching BD1.312 billion during the first quarter of 2021 compared with BD1.272 billion for the same quarter the previous year.

This was according to the Information and eGovernment Authority (iGA) foreign trade report of the first quarter of 2021, encompassing data on the balance of trade, imports, exports (national origin), and re-exports.

The trade balance, the difference between exports and imports, recorded a deficit totalling BD442 million during the first quarter of 2021 compared with BD460 million for the same quarter of the previous year, an improvement of 4%. The top 10 countries in terms of the value of exports of national origin purchased from Bahrain accounted for 80% of the total value, with the remaining countries accounting for 20%.

Saudi Arabia ranked first among countries receiving Bahraini exports of national origin, importing BD153 million from Bahrain.
The cases of coronavirus are surging in India with everyday figures are rising and shortage of medicines and oxygen units is experienced. Amid such a situation of nation in crucial time Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren has written a letter to Center requesting for import of Remdesivir. The letter seeks the permission of central government for importing live-saving drug Remdesivir from Bangladesh.



Looking at the current situation of India several states are continuously reporting shortage in the availability of the antiviral drug. This drug is used for saving lives of serious Covid-19 patients in hospital. Chief Minister Hemant Soren tweeted "With the increasing demand for #Remedisivir for critical patients in Jharkhand & its unavailability, we have reached out to to Pharma companies in Bangladesh for buying around 50,000 vials for emergency use. I have written to @DVSadanandGowda ji for permission to import ASAP, on Sunday. In the letter, the Jharkhands CM mentioned about sharing borders with with five states, and with the influx of migrant labourers, the situation is going to get worse. Further in his letter, he said that state has received only 8038 vials of Remdesivir against the total order for 76,640 vials.



The letter also added "Since we could not get Remdesivir as per our requirement from Indian manufaturers, we started exploring the international market for procuring Remdesivir. We have been able to get a quotation from Beximco Pharmaceuticals ltd, Bangladesh from 50,000 vials of Remdesivir at the cost of one million dollars, which the Jharkhand government is willing to procure at the earliest."



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Its a 1973 Corvette Motion Manta Ray GT, one of three ever made and the only known surviving vehicle of the kind. Its a C3 Corvette built by Baldwin-Motion, the legendary muscle car builder that got started when hot-rodder and drag racer Joel Rosen, aka Mr. Motion, entered into a partnership with Baldwin Auto Company, a family-run Chevrolet dealer. Among the special muscle cars they offered, the Motion Corvettes stood out.This Manta Ray GT is the only one left in the world, as noted above. It draws power from a 350 CI 4V engine that adds 75 hp to the stock version, for a total of 425 hp, and mated to a Turbo 400 Hydra-Matic transmission. Over 14 custom changes were made to the original C3 Corvette, including to the body. The listing mentions the new front fascia with round headlights, custom wheels, side exhausts, ducktail spoiler, and the custom Coca Cola red paint job, over a contrasting black interior.According to the listing with Mecum Auctions , the Manta Ray GT also bears Rosens signature on the center console and the T-top. Corvette Chief Engineer Dave McLellan also signed his name under Rosens.A dated and signed letter of authenticity with Rosens signature is included in the lot: Baldwin-Motion famously offered signed letters for each of their vehicles, with a money-back guarantee if they didnt meet advertised times at the dragstrip.A rare opportunity to own a piece of automotive history, this one-of-a-kind Motion Corvette is ready to be the centerpiece of a new collection, the listing notes. No price estimate is offered, but this is a star vehicle from the upcoming Indy 2021 event, which will take place between May 14 and 22. Previously, this Manta Ray GT changed hands in 2016 for $110,000.
Bedeschi to equip Port of Takoradi with shipunloading technology

19 April 2021

Bedeschi has been awarded a major contract in Ghana. The scope of works include the design, procurement, manufacturing, supply, construction, supervision to installation, testing and commissioning and staff training for the cargo handling equipment in the Port of Takoradi.

The scope of the project is the supply of handling equipment and services for bauxite and manganese in export and clinker in import. Bedeschi will supply five conveyor belts for a total average length of 3km, two shiploaders A frame type model 50/1400 and one eco-hopper. The two shiploaders and the eco-hopper will be delivered fully erected from the company's shipyard directly to the client jetty with dedicated heavy-lift vessel. Bedeschi will provide the computerised control system too.

All the equipment, managed by variable frequency drives, are foreseen to be improved to increase the handling capacity of 25 per cent.

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Nowamagbe Omoigui, cardiologist, foremost civil war and military historian , has died.

The native of Edo State was 62 at the time of his passing

On behalf of the Omoigui family, we are heartbroken to announce that our son, husband, father, uncle, brother, in-law, friend and muse to many, Dr. Nowamagbe Austin Omoigui, pre-eminent interventional cardiologist in Columbia, South Carolina and foremost Nigerian civil-military and Benin historian, shed his earthly bonds and was called to the Lord on April 18, 2021, Sota Omoigui said in a statement on behalf of the family.

We are immensely grateful to God for the life he lived, the service he gave to family and country, and most importantly, his love, care for, and devotion to, his wife, children, family and friends, the statement added.

Although a certified interventional cardiologist, Mr Omoigui contributed a huge trove of insight to the history of the country, particularly on the military era and the civil war.

I am neither a professional political scientist nor historian,he said at a memorial lecture he delivered in 2002 in Benin. However, storytelling is part of our culture and tradition. It is one of the ways ordinary folks have passed the story of our people from one generation to another for centuries.

His historical thrillers bordered on Nigerias history and included, but not limited to the 1966 Nigerian coup detat, the Nigerian counter-coup of 1966, the Nigerian Palace Coup of 1975, the abortive February 13, 1976 coup, the Nigerian Military Coup of December 31, 1983, the palace coup of 1985, the Vatsa Coup Conspiracy of 1985, the Gideon Orkar Coup of 1990.

Rising of the star

Mr Omoigui had his formative education at Corona Primary School, St Saviours Primary School, and St Marys Primary School, all in Lagos.

From there, he graduated to Federal Government College, Warri, and then Kings College, Lagos, before he was admitted to the University of Ibadan where he graduated with a distinction in 1981.

Mr Omoigui was an associate professor of medicine and the director of the division of cardiovascular disease at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, U.S.

He had a masters degree in public health and wrote many publications in medical journals.

He had further postgraduate training in medical education at the University of Rochester, New York; University of Illinois, Chicago; Stanford University, Palo Alto; and the Cleveland Clinic, Ohio.

His sister, Ifueko Omoigui Okauru, is a former chairperson of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS); his father, Daniel Omoigui, was a former surveyor-general of the federation, while his mother, Grace Omoigui was a legal luminary, and she died in 2016.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 17:48:32|Editor: huaxia

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MOGADISHU, April 19 (Xinhua) -- The Somali National Army (SNA) has killed a senior Shabab operative and arrested two others in an operation in the Middle Shabelle region, a military officer confirmed on Monday.

Abshir Mohamed Mohamud, SNA commander for Unit 3, told military radio that the army conducted a planned operation on Sunday along the road linking Balad and Jowhar towns in southern Somalia and inflicted casualties on the militants.

"Our forces killed a senior Shabab commander who was in charge of planting landmines in the Middle Shabelle region," Mohamud said, adding that the forces also killed Mohamud's bodyguard and apprehended two other senior Shabab leaders in the operation.

Somali government forces have intensified operations against al-Shabab in southern regions, but the militants still control some rural areas in those regions, conducting ambushes and planting landmines. Enditem
Domino's India data that included sensitive customer information such as their names, phone numbers, and credit card details has allegedly been breached and put on sale on the dark web.

According to tweets by Israel-based Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock, Alon Gal, the data is worth 13 terabytes (TB). He tweeted on Sunday that the data includes as many as 180 million order details, including 1 million credit card details.

The data, said Gal, was up for sale on the dark web. The threat actor, he said, was asking for $550,000 for the data. The threat actor also had plans to build a search portal to enable data search, he added.

A company spokesperson for Dominos India said, " experienced an information security incident recently. No data pertaining to financial information of any person was accessed and the incident has not resulted in any operational or business impact. As a policy, we do not store financial details or credit card data of our customers, thus, no such information has been compromised. Our team of experts is investigating the matter and we have taken necessary actions to contain the incident.



is the parent firm of Dominos India.

Rajshekhar Rajaharia, the cybersecurity researcher who first alerted users about a big at payments firm MobiKwik last month, said he had alerted India's cyber incident arm of the government Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) about the the Dominos in March.

Again big data leak! 200 million order details, including 13 TB data of Domino's India, allegedly leaked from Dominos India server. The data Includes mobile numbers, email IDs, names, home address, payment types, and social login tokens. It seems the financial data is not there, tweeted Rajaharia on Monday.

He further said that the Domino's data was earlier claimed to be in the possession of the same hacker who had accessed the MobiKwik data. "It seems the same hacker who allegedly hacked #MobiKwik had access to Domino's from February. I had alerted CERT-In on March 5. Later, the first hacker sold server access to some other reseller. Now they are planning to create another search engine," he added.

Dominos India joins a string of hacking incidents involving Indian firms in the recent past, including BigBasket, BuyUcoin, JusPay, Upstox and others. There needs to be an increased focus on cybersecurity. Based on our research, on average, an organisation in India has been attacked 1,681 times a week in the past six months. This is 2.5x higher than the global average of 667 attacks internationally," said Sundar N Balasubramanian, managing director-India and Saarc, Check Point Software Technologies.

The alleged breach at Domino's once again highlights the lack of legal and operational remedies available to Indians in case their data is leaked online.

India does not have a specific legislation dealing with user data breach cases or penal actions relating to the same as yet. The Personal Data Protection Bill, which is proposed to deal with such cases of data breaches, has been pending in the Lok Sabha since 2019.

"Customers need to be made aware of the breach and provide means to protect against future misuse of their personal and credit card data. Organisations in India have to be made liable for such breaches with enough financial implication, making data security a top priority in every enterprise," said Sonit Jain, chief executive officer of cybersecurity firm GajShield Infotech.

The alleged data breach at MobiKwik allegedly affected the data of 3.5 million of its users, exposing know-your-customer documents, such as addresses, phone numbers, Aadhaar numbers, permanent account numbers and so on. The size of the data was reported to be 8.2 TB. MobiKwik denied the breach.

Earlier this month, Facebook and LinkedIn also saw data leaks of millions of users, including the data of Indian users. While both admitted that customer data had been leaked, both said it wasnt hacked from their systems, but had been scrapped. This means using an application to extract valuable information from a website.
"The Shoppes at Cross Keys is the premier shopping destination in the northern St. Louis market and we are excited to expand our presence in the area and become a member of the Florissant community," said Matt Annibale, Director of Acquisitions at FNRP. "Schnucks, who is the market leading grocer in St. Louis, is joined here by a high-performing Home Depot. Both tenants help drive traffic to the center, which greatly benefits the junior anchors, restaurants, and small shops."
Dr. Patrick Kuma Aboagye, Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), has cautioned Ghanaians not to let their guard down in the nation's fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.



Ghana's COVID-19 active cases stand at 1,362 with 86,530 recoveries across the country.



The daily new cases of the disease has seen a significant reduction from hundreds to forty-six (46), according to data provided by the GHS.



Speaking in an interview with Kwami Sefa Kayi on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo' programme, Dr. Patrick Kuma Aboagye asked Ghanaians not become swollen-headed by the statistics and disregard the COVID-19 protocols.



He advised the citizenry to continue to adhere to the protocols, particularly the wearing of nose masks until there is either no trace of the disease or extinguish its impact in Ghana.



"It's minimized because of what me and you together with the health sector and media has done, but we have to continue. It shall resurface if you lose guard," he urged.







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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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) walks through Statuary Hall to the House Chamber for President Donald Trump's State of the Union address in the Capitol in Washington on Feb. 4, 2020. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

Pelosi: Congress Needs to Investigate Jan. 6 Capitol Breach

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) again said that a commission needs to be formed to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol incident.

Today is the 100th day since the January 6th insurrection and assault on the Capitol and our Democracy, Pelosi wrote in her letter on April 16. She added: On this 100th day, we are determined to seek the truth of January 6th. To do so, we must have a January 6th Commission. To that end, we have once again sent a proposal for such a Commission to the Republicans, modeled after the 9/11 Commission.

Congressional talks on the commission stalled when Republicans rejected her proposal to create a commission with more Democrats than Republicans.

A spokesperson for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told CBS News after Pelosis latest letter that neither the Republican Leader nor his staff have been provided Speaker Pelosis latest proposal, but hopefully the Speaker has addressed our basic concerns of equal representation and subpoena authority.

Pelosi, meanwhile, said that two Capitol Police officers had lying-in-honor ceremonies since Jan. 6. Officer Brian Sicknick died of undisclosed causes following the Capitol breach and Officer William Billy Evans was killed after a black manwho was an apparent Nation of Islam adherentcrashed his car into a security gate in an unrelated incident.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Joe Biden leave after a ceremony for slain U.S. Capitol Police officer William Billy Evans at the Capitol in Washington, DC, U.S., April 13, 2021. (J. Scott Applewhite/Pool via Reuters)

We will be proceeding with a security supplemental shortly, prepared by the Appropriations Committee and the Committee on House Administration to address the physical structure and personnel needs, Pelosi said in arguing the need for a commission.

Compromise has been necessary; now, we must agree on the scope, composition and resources necessary to seek and find the truth, Pelosi said. It is my hope that we can reach agreement very soon. At the same time, Committees in the House and Senate have been holding and planning hearings, which will be a resource to the Commission.

Previously, Pelosi and other Democrats pushed for a panel that would be modeled after the panel that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York City and Washington.

In February, Republicans objected to Pelosis proposal for the commission, which would create a panel of four Republicans and seven Democrats to conduct an investigation of the relevant facts and circumstances relating to the domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol.

The Epoch Times has contacted Pelosis and McCarthys offices for comment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
My camera lens is pressed against the window of the small floatplane as it flies below a thick ceiling of clouds. The mist clings to the hillsides of a temperate rainforest that descend steeply to the rocky coastline of southeast Alaska.

The plane banks, and a tiny village comes into view. A scattering of houses are built on stilts on the waters edge. We circle and I see fishing boats tied up next to a large dock and a floating post office. The pilot throttles down and the pontoons skim across the glassy water inside the bay. We taxi to the public dock and I step out in front of the Point Baker general store.
The president, she said, understands that if we want our communities to thrive, if we want our businesses to have more skilled workers that they need, if we want to prepare our economy for the future, there is no greater investment that we can make than in education.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 08:40:03|Editor: huaxia

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CANBERRA, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Monday welcomed the opening of free travel between his country and New Zealand, saying it is a "win-win" for both countries.

As of Monday, Australians can enter and return from New Zealand without having to quarantine on either side.

It marks the first time that Australians can enjoy unrestricted international travel since the country's international borders were closed in March 2020 to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

"Today's milestone is a win-win for Australians and New Zealanders," Morrison said in a joint statement with his New Zealand counterpart Jacinda Ardern on Monday, adding it will help drive the economic recovery for both countries while continuing to navigate the COVID-19 global pandemic, especially in the travel and tourism sectors.

"Both countries have done a remarkable job in protecting our communities from COVID and two-way flights are an important step in our road out."

He said that the two countries were also considering opportunities to open the bubble to other countries in the Pacific.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the opening of travel marked a significant step in both countries' reconnection with the world. Enditem
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Boris Johnson faced humiliation today after he was unable to name the current mayor of the West of England - despite the regional leader being a Conservative.

The Prime Minister was asked during a campaign visit to Gloucestershire ahead of local elections next month if he was able to name Tim Bowles, the incumbent mayor who was elected in 2017.

But Mr Johnson failed to name Mr Bowles after repeated questions, with the PM resorting to saying he was 'campaigning for the West of England mayor, and all Conservative candidates'.

Mr Bowles is the first metro mayor for the West of England Combined Authority, made up of three of the councils in the region  Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol and South Gloucestershire.

The Prime Minister was asked during a campaign visit to Gloucestershire ahead of local elections next month if he was able to name Tim Bowles, the incumbent Tory mayor for the West of England, but he was unable to do so

Mr Bowles announced he will step down from the post at the end of his first term, with four candidates running to be his successor in next month's election

The Conservative mayor announced he will step down from the post at the end of his first term, with four candidates running to be his successor in next month's election.

Mr Johnson was asked if he knew who the West of England mayor is and he replied: 'I'm very much in favour of powerful mayors in the West of England and elsewhere.

'But what I want to see is a strong Conservative mayor in London and across the West Midlands and West of England and across the whole of the country.'

Told that the current mayor for the West of England is a Tory, and asked again to name him, Mr Johnson said: 'Well I can tell you I'll be out campaigning for the West of England mayor, and all Conservative candidates, throughout the week.'

Told that he did not appear to know who Mr Bowles is and that voters could find local elections confusing given they may be voting for councillors, police and crime commissioners and mayors, the PM replied: 'There is a very simple solution, is vote Conservative, you won't go wrong. That's my answer.'

Four candidates are campaigning to be the next regional mayor for the West of England in the forthcoming local elections, which will be held on May 6.

The regional mayor leads the West of England Combined Authority, which has been given powers over spending on the region's transport, housing, adult education and skills.

Businessman Samuel Williams is the Conservative candidate hoping to succeed Mr Bowles, while former MP and minister Dan Norris is the Labour candidate.

Jerome Thomas, currently a councillor in Bristol, is standing for the Green Party, while former Bristol West MP Stephen Williams is the Liberal Democrat candidate.
Consider two contrasting quotes on how reason and passion relate to truth in a society.

The first is (or once was, anyway) quite famous amongst Americans, spoken by Founder John Adams during his defense of the British soldiers accused of murder in the Boston Massacre of 1770:

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

The second is from a figure of whom few alive could claim ignorance. As Jonah Goldberg relates in his book, Liberal Fascism:

[Adolf] Hitler mocked those who believed that arguments and reason should trump the naked power of the people. When four renowned economists sent Hitler a letter disputing his socialist schemes, Hitler responded, Where are your storm troopers? Go on the street, go into folk meetings, and try to see your standpoint through. Then well see whos right -- we or you. [Emphasis added]

Here are represented two arguments -- one for, and one against, the practical and moral supremacy of a society where truth and justice is informed by reason and evidence rather than the passions of a mob.

In his life, John Adams knew the weight of his actions in defending the British soldiers whom his community wanted nothing more than to see hanged. In Adams appraisal of the evidence, the British soldiers were not murderers, but were acting in defense against a violent Bostonian mob. There was an immediate propaganda war which ensued for several months, with a British commissions report titled A Fair Account of the Late Unhappy Disturbance in Boston in New England, and a Boston committee (with aid of Adams famous cousin, Samuel) providing an official account that branded the event for the quarter-millennium that followed, A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston.

Adams earned no love, at the time, from his community for taking up the cause of the hated soldiers defense in the trial that occurred several months later. But he heroically committed to the task, anyway. He successfully petitioned the judge to host the trial in a different venue, believing, probably correctly, that the impartiality of a local jury ruling upon the guilt of British soldiers whod killed Bostonians would be compromised.

Adams later referred to this choice to successfully defend the soldiers as one of the best Pieces of Service I ever rendered my Country. Judgment of Death against those Soldiers would have been as foul a Stain upon this Country as the Executions of the Quakers or Witches, anciently.

When it comes to an individuals guilt or innocence, when his life hangs in the balance, it is better that facts and evidence should inform our reason, Adams argued, even when the evidence leads to judgements which may not satisfy our collective passions.

Thats one vision of what justice in America is meant to be, and its an idea that is clearly enumerated in the Constitution. What were seeing today around the Chauvin trial appears to be the other -- that the passions and naked power of the people, as represented by loud populist rhetoric and violent mobs, should be the true arbiters of truth and justice.

Today, we all know that its virtually impossible for Derek Chauvin to receive a fair trial in Minneapolis. But we are holding the trial in a city that is held by the mob anyway.

And we all know that the de facto storm troopers promoting the BLM cause will set the city alight if the trial doesnt produce a judgement that Chauvin is guilty of having murdered George Floyd. As the Daily Wire reports, model and BLM activist Maya Echols told the world in a now-removed video, 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 sayin.

More prominent activists in the news media, like Christine Emba at the Washington Post, also desire to see Derek Chauvin punished, and openly admit that theyre not interested in the facts or evidence of the trial. Emba says that this could have been that moment of national catharsis that politicians and pundits begged for after the political riots of last summer that left many dead, countless injured, and $2 billion in property damage (read: terrorism). Instead, its a mere background to more of the same. More of the same, she implies here, is the institutional protection of a racist white police officer.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters has now brazenly admitted that, regardless of the facts being introduced and weighed in the balances of our justice system right now in Minneapolis, she is looking for a guilty verdict. And if she doesnt get a verdict that will say guilty, guilty, guilty, then she says that activists got to get more active and more confrontational in the streets to make sure that they know we mean business.

Celebrities, the media, and politicians are openly proclaiming that they are not interested in facts or evidence, only the retribution that they passionately seek. All this is predicated upon the suggestion that the Chauvin trial serves as Americas reckoning, and the supposedly racist Chauvin is to be sacrificed as a stand-in for a supposedly racist America and its supposedly racist police infrastructure.

It requires repeating that the incident in question had nothing to do with racism. No one has been able to produce a single convincing piece of evidence to suggest that Chauvins actions were motivated by Floyds race. But this is not the point.

There were those in 1770 who wanted to make the Boston Massacre trial a referendum on the British policy of quartering soldiers in colonial homes. But Adams heroically ensured that the trial was about the guilt or innocence of those individuals for the crime of murder, refusing to allow them to be punished as stand-ins for the British governments policies.

Derek Chauvin should be tried for the crime of which he is accused, not as a stand-in for the mobs presumption of Americas racism in policing. And unlike Christine Emba, many Americans have been watching the trial, and have paid attention to the evidence. Reasonable doubt appears to have been presented, and, if the verdict were based solely on legal merits, writes Andrew Branca at Legal Insurrection, there is more than enough reasonable doubt to be unable to vote guilty.

Ultimately, though, this is up to a jury of Chauvins peers to decide, and Branca suggests that the political and social dynamics may be enough to drive this train clear off the rails.

So, the question is -- can the facts be stubborn things in America when witnesses who support Chauvins defense have pigs heads and blood slathered on their former homes as a threat, or when legions of anti-American BLM and Antifa storm troopers stand ready to attack innocent Americans and burn down the jurors city, and countless other American cities, if the mob doesnt get the lynching it desires? More importantly, if we no longer live in a country where facts can be stubborn things, and where the passions of a violent mob have supplanted facts and evidence, in what kind of country do we now live?

We may need to brace ourselves and be prepared to speak loudly in defense of facts and evidence, and in favor of reason over passion, because are likely about to discover the answer to both those questions.

Photo credit: YouTube screengrab (cropped)

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
More than 100 people were found using narcotics after police officers raided a club in Ho Chi Minh City in the small hours of Sunday.

A team of police officers under the municipal Department of Public Security carried out a swoop on Enjoy Club on Le Van Khuong Street in Hiep Thanh Ward, District 12 at around 1:00 am.

An amount of drugs along with other exhibits were found at the venue.

The officers escorted over 220 people at the club to the police station for further verification.

Among them, over 100 tested positive for narcotics.

Further investigation is ongoing to determine the violation of each individual.

According to current law, the illegal use of stimulants is punishable by a fine worth VND500,000-1 million (US$21-42).

Those who arrange for others to use drugs may face jail terms lasting two to 20 years, or lifetime imprisonment, depending on the severity of the offense.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
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Access Bank Plc, which last month cut a $60 million deal to acquire the controlling stake in Grobank of South Africa, will look to firm up its presence in the region as its acquisition of Botswanas African Banking Corporation (BancABC Botswana) is now in the bag.

The lender hopes to muster 30 per cent of profit for this year from outside its base Nigeria, and break into eight countries in Africa, from Morocco to Angola, that have been marked down as markets of significant promise.

A definitive agreement is in place for Access Bank to acquire more than 78 per cent of the Botswana bank shares, held by Atlas Mara, a financial services group based in British Virgin Islands, in a transaction to be completed by June, Nigerias biggest bank by asset told the Nigerian Exchange Limited Monday. Atlas Mara owns the biggest stake in Union Bank of Nigeria Plc.

BancABC Botswana is the fifth largest Bank in Botswana and is a very well-capitalised banking institution poised for growth and success in its local market, Access Bank said.

The bank has been perennially profitable, given an existing high-quality retail loan book with opportunities and scope for diversification and further expansion into corporate and SME lending.

Access Bank has been stepping up plans to be a key player in retail banking to complement its core strength in the corporate segment of the industry since its strategic purchase of Diamond Bank in 2019, riding on the latters sweeping digital innovations to gain traction in the retail sector.

It said it would count on the uptake of digital banking in Botswana to deepen financial inclusion in the Southern African country.

The establishment of Access Bank through this acquisition in the Republic of Botswana will position the bank to deliver a more complete set of banking solutions to its clients active in across the SADC and COMESA regions, said Herbert Wigwe, the group managing director.
The Connecticut man accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at an NYPD squad car admitted to cops that he made the explosive devices specifically to use against law enforcement, the feds said Monday.

Lionel Virgile, 44, was charged in Brooklyn Federal Court with attempted arson for the Saturday morning attack, which was partially caught on body-cam footage.

He purchased the materials to create the Molotov cocktails approximately two weeks ago with the intent to hurt the police, prosecutors wrote in a motion to have Virgile jailed pre-trial.

The defendants brutal and entirely unprovoked attack on NYPD showed that he is both a danger to the community and a flight risk, said Sara Wink, the assistant U.S. attorney on the case.

Fortunately, the Molotov cocktail hit the police windshield and then fell to the ground without exploding, Winik added.

The shocking attack began around 8 a.m. Saturday in East Flatbush, near E. 45th St. and Clarendon Road, when cops pulled Virgile over for running a red light in his 2000 Lincoln Town Car.

Virgile hurled bleach that was in a plastic cup at one of the officers who came up to his car, then sped off, the feds said. The cop was hospitalized.

He was pulled over again less than a mile away at E. 55th St. and Snyder Ave.

When cops got out of their squad car, Virgile threw the lit incendiary device at them, though it did not explode, prosecutors said.

Virgile drove off again, but crashed into another vehicle a block away and was taken into custody, prosecutors said.

When cops looked through his car, they found another five prepped Molotov cocktails, filled with yellow liquid and cloth wicks, according to an FBI agent.

Virgile admitted to the police after his arrest that he had prepared the Molotov cocktails two weeks ago with the intent to injure police officers, prosecutors said.

Winik told Judge Robert Levy that Virgile currently does not have a job and is living out of his vehicle.

Virgiles attorney Michelle Gelernt did not make a bail application Monday.

Virgile is due back in court on May 3.
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PHOENIX  Three inmates who briefly escaped from the Estrella Jail in west Phoenix are back in custody, authorities said Sunday.

Maricopa County Sheriffs officials said deputies were able to detain one of the inmates shortly after the escape and Phoenix police helped track down and arrest the other two inmates.

Police said deputies in a patrol vehicle in the area saw two inmates walking down a street near the jail and detained them.

Sheriffs officials didnt immediately disclose how the inmates escaped, but one of them reportedly had an ankle injury.

The names of three inmates werent released.

Authorities said the investigation into the escape was ongoing.

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I've seen "Starcatcher" three times now and it has grown on me on each occasion. Others loved it from the get-go with far more gusto than I  the insatiable fascination with this particular story has bemused me at times  but, especially now that Rees is gone, the piece feels wise, poignant, honest and, well, understanding of our hopeless desire to never grow old. The Lost Boys yuk it up with the best of 'em in this show, but they also talk about the darkness that surrounds those unlucky enough to be lost in one of the world's many caves, hoping to catch at least a partial glimpse of a star.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 03:57:27|Editor: huaxia

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HELSINKI, April 18 (Xinhua) -- After six weeks of closure due to the COVID-19 lockdown, restaurants, cafes, bars and nightclubs throughout Finland will re-open their doors on Monday. And the Finns are looking forward to returning to normal life as the government is planning to gradually ease the restrictions.

BIG BLOW

For people like Eevamaria Halttunen, a Finnish drama pedagogue who enjoys face-to-face communication, the desire to end such an isolated lifestyle is strong.

"All my workshops were canceled, and I have not been wanting to keep them online, as I love the personal aspect of being in the same space with people and working with them through lectures and workshops," the 52-year-old told Xinhua.

According to a recent survey, the arts and recreation industry in Finland is facing losses of up to 700 million euros (838.6 million U.S. dollars) this year due to the pandemic.

The pandemic dealt a heavy blow not only to jobs but also people's personal lives.

The life of Janita Eskelinen, an airline ground crew member, was turned upside down. At the age of 43, she found herself laid off at the beginning of the pandemic, and later completely dismissed by the employer.

"This was a big blow to me and made me depressed," she said.

NEW NORMAL

Halttunen has been working online for over a year as a therapist. It has been her job to help clients develop better emotional skills, reduce stress, and cope with various life challenges. Due to the pandemic, all these were done behind the computer screen.

"It was difficult first, as I felt that it was more difficult to get a personal feeling with my clients online, but has begun to be as normal," she said. "We are all used to this way of working now."

The epidemic has brought some unexpected benefits.

"As everything is online, it's easy now to have clients from everywhere in Finland, so in a way the epidemic has made my work more accessible to more clients," Halttunen noted.

After almost a nervous breakdown, Eskelinen managed to find her a silver lining of life during the pandemic too.

"I gradually adapted to my current way of life after about a year. While taking care of the family and children, I have been taking online professional training courses to prepare for getting a job again after the pandemic," she said.

New FUTURE

"Our goal is that when school ends, children can go to summer camps and people can start planning midsummer parties at the cottage," Prime Minister Sanna Marin told a news conference in early April.

The government's draft exit plan, which plans to gradually ease the restrictions, was believed to depend on the rollout of vaccines.

A total of 3-4 million doses of the various coronavirus vaccines will be available by the end of June, the Department of Health and Welfare (THL) informed this week.

"The news is encouraging, as it will make coronavirus vaccination available to more and more people faster," said Mia Kontio, THL's leading expert.

Halttunen is looking forward to the vaccination, as "it seems to be the only way for a freer way of life."

For Eskelinen, she hopes that the extensive vaccination can "restore society to normal as soon as possible". "But I don't know when it will happen," she admitted.

In fact, Eeva Ruotsalainen, Deputy Chief Physician of Helsinki-Uusimaa Hospital District (HUS), which covers 24 municipalities in southern Finland, including the capital area, warned lately that there is "no time of sighs of relief yet," as the number of daily new cases is still at a high level.

"I am starting to think that the epidemic will change its way, there will be new forms of development of the virus, and at some point, it will either change into the less dangerous flu-type virus and we can start living the same as earlier," said Halttunen.

"Or in case the virus keeps changing and being dangerous, we will have to accept that we cannot keep the society closed, and will have to try to live with the dangerous virus as well as we can for a few years," she continued. "It really is a mystery at the moment." (1 euro = 1.20 U.S. dollars) Enditem
A session of UNSC (Photo: VNA)

Hanoi  As President of the United Nations Security Council in April 2021, Vietnam will organise a high-level open debate on the role of regional organisations in promoting confidence-building and dialogue in conflict prevention and resolution on April 19 via both in-person and online forms.

The event will be presided over by State President Nguyen Xuan Phuc, marking the first time a high-ranking leader of Vietnam has chaired an event within the framework of the UN Security Council. This is also the first important multilateral diplomatic event of the Vietnamese President since the 13th National Party Congress.

State President Nguyen Xuan Phuc will preside over a high-level open debate on the role of regional organisations in promoting confidence-building and dialogue in conflict prevention and resolution on April 19. (Photo: VNA)

Building trust and dialogue

Deputy Foreign Minister Dang Hoang Giang said that Vietnam has presided over the making of, and actively consulted to pass the Statement of the UN Security Council President.

The Statement will affirm the importance of cooperation between the United Nations, its Security Council and regional organisations in conflict prevention and settlement through peaceful measures, on the basis of respecting basic principles of international law and the UN Charter, and underlined confidence-building and dialogue measures as essential elements to contribute to conflict prevention and settlement.

The Statement will call for efforts to strengthen cooperation between the UN, its Security Council and regional organisations as well as between regional organisations in conflict prevention and settlement towards the building of sustainable peace, while encouraging the UN and the international community to support the improvement of capacity of regional organisations in conflict prevention and settlement, post-conflict reconstruction, and peace maintenance.

The role of regional organisations in promoting trust building and dialogue in conflict prevention is the most important and inclusive theme of the UN Security Council which is the UNs main body in the prevention of wars and conflicts and maintenance of international peace and security, Giang said, adding that as a member of many important regional mechanisms, especially ASEAN, Vietnam wants regional organisations to further promote their roles, improve their images and share responsibility with the UN in preventing and solving conflicts in the region, for the stability and prosperity of the region and the world.

Do Hung Viet, head of the Foreign Ministrys Department of International Organisations, emphasised that when building priorities for the working term as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council for 2020-2021, Vietnam determined to promote the role of regional organisations in cooperation with the UN Security Council in particular and the UN in general.

The upcoming high-level open debate will elevate Vietnams initiatives to contribute to maintaining international peace and security. Through this event, Vietnam wants to affirm its commitment and efforts to address global challenges facing the international community, Viet added.

In particular, President Nguyen Xuan Phucs presiding over the event is the affirmation at the highest level about Vietnams foreign policy of independence, self-reliance, diversification, multilateralism, and proactive and active international integration during its new stage of development.

Intensifying ASEANs role

According to Viet, as a member of ASEAN, Vietnam wants ASEAN to have an increasing voice, position and role in matters directly related to the region as well as enhancing the bloc's presence as a regional organisation at the UN.

Through this event, Vietnam will contribute to drawing the attention of the international community and the United Nations to cooperation with ASEAN, and strengthening the blocs role at international forums and institutions in the coming time.

The open debate will be also an opportunity for leaders of the UN and regional organisations such as ASEAN, the European Union (EU), the African Union (AU), as well as the UN Security Council member states to assert the important role of regional organisations, share experience of each regional organisation in dealing with difficulties and challenges in their respective regions.

Vietnam expects this to be the start of a longer process at the UN Security Council on issues related to regional organisations and their role in promoting trust building and dialogue in conflict prevention, thus contributing to the UNs joint efforts to maintain peace, security and development in the world.
It deals with deep understanding of the work at hand, sincerity and hard work, large attention to smaller issues, as they are the need of the hour.

The late Balraj Sardana felt that he should share the process at work which would bring out amazing, creative and innovative solutions to problems that had no easy solutions or no solutions at all. He thought that if there are any secrets not found in books, he must truthfully share it. It is for this reason he has written Creativity Innovation and Intuitive Power: How It Worked For Me (published by Partridge India).

This book highlights Sardanas journey from his childhood, college days and then his work at Tata Steel. The Indian guru and philanthropist Sri Sathya Sai Baba has had a profound influence on him and his family life right from the beginning. In this book, Sardana shows how the guru helped him at each stage of his life including finding creative and innovative solutions at work and surmounting many problems that he encountered.

This book is a great inspiration to the youth. It deals with deep understanding of the work at hand, sincerity and hard work, large attention to smaller issues, as they are the need of the hour. It will bring the focus back to shaping ones conduct based on human values, Sathwic Sardana (son of Balraj) says.

Sharing his lifetimes unique experiences with the present generation was my husbands lifelong wish which finally got fulfilled. By Gods grace, he completed writing the book just a couple of hours before the cerebral stroke, after which he slipped into coma and breathed his last with a cool, calm look on his face, Geeta Sardana adds. For more details about this book, please visit https://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Innovation-Intuitive-Power-Worked/dp/1543707165

Creativity Innovation and Intuitive Power: How It Worked For Me

By Balraj Sardana

Hardcover | 5 x 8in | 156 pages | ISBN 9781543707175

Softcover | 5 x #8in | 156 pages | ISBN 9781543707168

E-Book | 156 pages | ISBN 9781543707151

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the Author

Balraj Sardana was born in Jamshedpur, India. He was schooled in Jamshedpur, went to St. Xaviers college Ranchi for college and finally joined IIT, Kharagpur in Mechanical Engineering. He spent most of his life working at Tata Steel. His father and grandmother influenced his life. At Tata steel, he had several creative and innovative solutions to the problems at work. Many a times he felt some higher authority helped him solve the problem.

Partridge Publishing, an imprint of Author Solutions, LLC, aims to help writers in Singapore, Malaysia, India and Southern Africa become published authors. Partridge gives authors in these region direct access to a comprehensive range of expert publishing services that meet industry standards but are more accessible to the market. For more information or to publish a book, visit http://www.partridgepublishing.com or call +65 3165 7531 (Singapore), +60 3 3099 4412 (Malaysia), 800014971 (Africa) or 000 800 919 0634 (India).
By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 04/19/2021



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ANDREW AND AMIRA

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TARIK AND HAZEL

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MIKE AND NATALIE

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Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.

: The Couples Tell All featured Amira Lollysa claiming Andrew Kenton demanded an immediate pregnancy and revealing she's already "in love" with a new man, Natalie Mordovtseva being accused of calling Mike Youngquist 's best friend Sarah an American "whore," and Tarik Myers revealing he's been in a polyamorous relationship before Hazel Cagalitan during Part 2 on Sunday night on TLC.'s eighth season starred three returning couples from the franchise: Mike, a 35-year-old from Sequim, WA, and Natalie, a 35-year-old from Ukraine; Rebecca Parrott , a 49-year-old from Woodstock, GA, and Zied Hakimi , a 27-year-old from Tunisia; and Tarik, a 46-year-old from Virginia Beach, VA, and Hazel, a 28-year-old from the Philippines.Mike and Natalie previously starred on Season 7 of , Tarik and Hazel found fame on Season 2 of : Before the 90 Days, and Rebecca and Zied first appeared on : Before the 90 Days' third season.The four new couples who starred on Season 8 of were Yara Zaya , a 25-year-old from Ukraine, and Jovi Dufren , a 29-year-old from New Orleans, LA; Stephanie Davison , a 52-year-old from Grand Rapids, MI, and Ryan Carr, a 27-year-old from Belize; Andrew, a 32-year-old from Roseville, CA, and Amira, a 28-year-old from France; and Brandon Gibbs, a 27-year-old from Dinwiddie, VA, and Julia Trubkina, a 26-year-old from Russia.All of the couples attended the Tell-All either in studio with host Shaun Robinson or via videochat except for Stephanie and Ryan.Tarik and Hazel participated via videochat from separate rooms in their home due to a COVID-19 scare in which they had been exposed to a person who tested positive for coronavirus not long before the taping.Amira also checked in through video from France.features Americans who have fallen in love with foreigners bringing their fiances to the United States on K-1 visas.However, once the couple is in America together, the American must marry their overseas partner within the 90-day period allowed by the visa or the foreigner has to return to their home country.Below is an update on several 's eighth-season couples based on Part 2 of the Tell-All.Andrew walked off the set and refused to participate because Amira wouldn't see or talk to him,, and Amira said, "Let him leave. Good!"Amira said she wanted Andrew to leave because he didn't "deserve [her] attention anymore.""I will not give him the pleasure to control me again ever in my whole life. When he talks to me, he makes me feel guilty about everything, and today, you can't do that," Amira explained to the camera.Andrew had wanted to face Amira and share his side of the story, but Amira wouldn't participate in the Tell-All if she had to confront Andrew. Jovi Dufren didn't think it would be a big deal for Andrew and Amira to talk from a distance, and Rebecca Parrott pointed out that Andrew had said he came to the Tell-All to begin with just for a chance to talk to Amira."The fact she needed to distance herself from him and then he only came here to confront her seems a little bit odd... Something about that isn't right," Rebecca pointed out.Andrew told a field producer if they couldn't get him in the same room with Amira to talk at the same time, he'd be going home. As Andrew spoke, he was already sitting in a car, ready to return to his hotel room.Amira admitted she was very "stressed out" and her heart was beating very fast."I'm scared. I don't want to see him," Amira lamented to Shaun.Amira said she last talked to Andrew when he had asked for the engagement ring back. Amira said not only did she return her diamond ring, but she also sent gifts to him and his family members. Amira was upset because Andrew and his loved ones allegedly never said "thank you."When recalling her detainment in Mexico City, Amira said officials never told her why they had detained her in a cell for three full days. Amira recalled being told she must go back to France about five minutes before she hopped on a plane home.Amira claimed Andrew had not texted or called her at all asking how she was doing during that time and if she was okay."If I went missing for three days, my phone would be dead from [ Zied Hakimi ] trying to get ahold of me," Rebecca said. "And the other way around." Tarik Myers therefore asked Amira for confirmation there was "radio silence" the whole three days she had been detained."When you got out of detention and you got your phone back, you had no messages from those three days?" Tarik asked."I had barely nothing, no," Amira replied.Jovi pointed out how Amira had said "barely" the second time she was asked, which implied she probably did have a message or two from Andrew after all. The cast therefore wanted answers and they begged Amira to let Andrew join the Tell-All so he could explain himself.A field producer told Andrew that the cast wanted him to return and open up, but Andrew wanted Amira to give her blessing -- and she did not cave."It takes a lot of time to realize when you are in a toxic relationship," Amira shared, later adding, "I'm scared because I would never know when he's going to yell at me. I never know when he's going to be mad at me... He will scream at me."The cast could understand why Amira didn't want to see Andrew again if he allegedly screamed at her all the time, and Julia Trubkina could tell that Amira was shaking in her seat as she participated via videochat from France.Amira insisted what she did for Andrew was "never enough.""The last day of my quarantine in Serbia, Andrew decided that I have to get pregnant as soon as I arrive in the U.S. Otherwise, he's not going to get married to me," Amira claimed."Now the truth comes out! That's what we were missing!" Tarik noted.Amira said she wants to have kids but not like that under such pressure. Amira said even after Andrew gave her a hard time about children, she was still willing to fly to the United States until her alleged panic attack at the last minute.Amira told the cast she had given Andrew her heart and truly loved him."I come back to France after Serbia's nightmare and I see he's back on the dating site where he met me," Amira announced.Mike acknowledged, "That was fast," and Shaun agreed.Amira claimed she had received a notification about Andrew's activity on the dating website, and she vented, "That makes me sick!"Amira then revealed that she was heartbroken and it took her some time before she could begin dating again."But now I am finally happy again and I am in love with someone!" Amira gushed. "I think this man is the love of my life. I think he's my Mr. Right... He's from the U.S."During a break from filming, Jovi admitted to his co-stars backstage that Amira's story seemed "bogus" to him but he assumed both she and Andrew were lying about parts of the real story.The cast agreed and wish they could have heard from Andrew.Tarik felt the need to defend Hazel's desire to bring a girlfriend into their marriage. Tarik said dating two women at once isn't all about sex, and Hazel agreed sex isn't the priority.Tarik said millions of married couples are polyamorous and "it's absolutely possible" that two married people can have a boyfriend or girlfriend in the relationship and still have a loving, moral and upstanding relationship, just like any other couple."The thing about it is, I have had wild days, and this happened once before," Tarik revealed. "It hasn't exactly been a lifestyle, but it has happened."Hazel said it's great Tarik has been with two women simultaneously before because he has experience and knows how to treat them at the same time, which shocked the rest of the cast.Hazel and Tarik's ex-girlfriend Minty from Thailand then joined the conversation via videochat, and Hazel immediately complained she had "no comment."Minty didn't seem to understand why Hazel didn't like her, and she noted that Hazel is beautiful "when she's nice."Tarik said he had "a dumb man moment" when he had contacted Minty to check on her during the coronavirus pandemic, and Minty explained the love triangle went sour because Tarik had been giving her more attention and Hazel didn't like it.Hazel denied Minty's claim and announced, "I didn't trust you." Minty also confirmed she's more attracted to men than women.When asked the last time Minty had spoken to or texted with Tarik, she replied, "The last time? We still communicate until now.""How recently 'now?' One day ago, two days ago, or three days ago?" Shaun asked."Today," Minty responded with a laugh.Tarik clarified that Hazel started a group chat after the "big blowup" so she could see if Minty and Tarik ever reached out to one another. Hazel said she had wanted Tarik to delete Minty's phone number a long time ago.But Tarik insisted she and Hazel had worked out their problems with Minty and so he shouldn't need to delete her phone number out of his phone."We are kind of friends now," Tarik claimed.But Hazel disagreed and expressed annoyance Tarik hadn't been willing to delete the phone number. Hazel insisted Tarik had said he'd never delete Minty's phone number, but Tarik said he didn't remember saying that."Okay, you have amnesia now," Hazel snapped with sarcasm.Tarik confirmed neither he or Hazel had sex with Minty before. The trio apparently met for a weekend but hadn't been intimate, and Yara joked about not understand what was going on."I'm never going to do that," Hazel said, referring to sex with Minty.Tarik said he and Hazel didn't meet to have sex to begin with, but the other cast members weren't buying that. Hazel also repeated how she didn't trust Minty and Tarik together.Minty revealed she and Tarik always talked to each other, and Tarik told Shaun that they didn't follow anybody else's rules.After their segment, Hazel put her hand on her head and seemed upset and distraught.Shaun brought up Natalie and Mike's fight over his best friend Sarah. Mike had slept at Sarah's house the night before Sarah's wedding, and Natalie accused him of cheating on her with Sarah that night.Mike promised he had never hooked up with Sarah, but Natalie said she had FaceTimed with Mike that evening and he was shirtless in Sarah's house before Sarah had shouted that she was about to get into the shower.Sarah joined the conversation via videochat and said she never thought Mike and Natalie were a good match. She noted there are major cultural differences and Mike likes to joke around when Natalie is a very serious person.Recalling the night Mike had slept at her place, Sarah explained Mike had flown in for her wedding and crashed at her house, where multiple people were staying."My husband was supposed to be there but unfortunately plans change and he ended up staying at his place," Sarah said.Natalie thought Sarah's fiance was going to be in the house that night, and that seemed to be why Natalie was so upset. Natalie said she feared Mike would hook up with Sarah that night and she produced a tense situation."It never even crossed my mind that there would be an issue," Sarah explained, adding that she didn't even remember a moment when Mike was shirtless in her house that night.Sarah said she had a house full of people and so it wouldn't be weird if she yelled out that she was going to take a shower. Sarah also insisted she and Mike had never been intimate or romantic, and Mike agreed."Sarah is like a sister to me. We were roommates and stuff. We're just really great friends and that's it," Mike said.Rebecca, Yara and Julia, however, commented how it's unusual for a male and female to be such close friends without one person at least liking and having feelings for the other person.Sarah then dropped a bombshell when explaining her opinion of Natalie."To be honest with you, I didn't care for Natalie in the beginning just because of our introduction to each other. It was not a nice introduction," Sarah told Shaun.When the women had first connected, Sarah recalled meeting Natalie over FaceTime through Mike.Sarah said Natalie had introduced herself and said, "Congratulations" about the upcoming wedding."And then she asked me if all American women were whores or if it was just me," Sarah said.Natalie denied ever saying that, but Sarah insisted Natalie had asked if she's a whore. A screaming match apparently proceeded that day over FaceTime because Sarah didn't appreciate being talked to like that.Sarah said she and Natalie said a bunch of horrible things to each other after Natalie's rude comment, but Natalie argued she had simply asked Sarah where her fiance was."There was a lot of mean stuff said, and 'American whore' got brought up," Sarah revealed."She was told American men can't have relationships with women unless they're sleeping with them. I think that's where her insecurity came from and why [Natalie] jumped to conclusions."Natalie repeated how she had never said those words, and Mike wouldn't pick a side in the disagreement. Natalie admitted she had raised her voice and acted like a "detective" because she was suspicious of Mike and Sarah's relationship.Shaun asked Sarah if she thought Mike and Natalie could live happily ever after together, and Sarah simply replied, "I don't know. I don't know."After the segment, it appeared Natalie wouldn't talk to Mike and was angry with him again."We are not [in the greatest place right now]," Natalie confirmed.Mike, however, said he was still in love with Natalie and planned to continue working on things with her. Mike noted he was willing to do whatever it takes to be with Natalie.Want more spoilers or couples updates? Click here to visit our homepage!
Addressing the meeting, Deputy Defence Minister Lieutenant General Nguyen Tan Cuong stressed that the Giron victory created a huge source of support for national liberation movements and the fight against imperialism in Latin America and the world in general, contributing to firmly defending the revolutionary government and marking a decisive turning point to lead the Cuban revolution forward onto the path to socialism.

He took the occasion to extend his greetings to the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC)s 8th National Congress, which was held from April 16 to 19, voicing his belief that under the leadership of the PCC, Cuba will gain more achievements in building socialism in the beautiful and heroic country.

He reiterated that the solidarity and comprehensive cooperation between the two Parties, States, armies, and people of Vietnam and Cuba, which has been nurtured and fostered by generations of the two countries leaders, is an exemplary model of bilateral relationship.

He expressed his thanks for Cubas support for Vietnam in the its struggle for national liberation in the past as well as in national construction and defence at present.

For his part, Colonel Juan Miguel Garcia Montano, Cuba's military, naval and air attache in Vietnam said he was touched by the sincere sentiments from the Vietnamese Party, State, army and people for Cuba over the past six decades.

He affirmed that promoting Vietnam  Cuba relations is a prerequisite to the foreign policies of the two countries, pledging to make further contributions to fostering bilateral ties and intensifying defence cooperation in particular.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 00:01:09|Editor: huaxia

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Aerial photo taken on Feb. 24, 2021 shows the scenery of Hani terraced fields in Yuanyang County of Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Yunnan Province. (Xinhua/Chen Xinbo)

by Xinhua writers Wang Changshan, Zhao Jiasong and Zeng Wei

KUNMING, April 18 (Xinhua) -- In the 1990s, French photographer Yann Layma stunned the Western world with images of cascading rice terraces in southwest China, and till today, the agricultural wonder remains as grand as ever, while the people there are living more radiant lives.

The terraced fields in Yuanyang County of Yunnan Province made it onto the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2013.

They were created by the local Hani, an ethnic group that mostly inhabits the area across the Ailao Mountains.

"I'll show you how to catch fish," Ding Jinan, a 24-year-old Hani, introduced life on the terraced fields to audiences across the country via a short-video platform.

Ding quit her job years ago and returned to her hometown, setting up a new media team introducing ethnic traditions and local landscape online to the outside world.

In March 2019, the team uploaded their first video, in which Ding, resplendent in her traditional Hani clothing, shared the process of making local pastries.

The rural lifestyle has attracted an increasing number of viewers to her channel, and the young woman has come to be known as a spokesperson of the Hani rice terraces.

Ding's efforts have further raised the profile of the agricultural heritage, and at the same time, transformations have been taking place.

In 2016, 49-year-old Yue Shao returned to Yuanyang and established a company dedicated to the research and development of breeding on paddy fields.

Yue's company launched a platform that allows purchasers to trace the origin of the agricultural products. In addition, a smart service platform was developed to facilitate unmanned monitoring of seedlings and remote consultations regarding crop diseases for the paddies where ducks and fish are bred as well.

The creative ecosystem has been proven a success.

Statistics from authorities show that since 2017, more than 35.64 million yuan (about 5.46 million U.S. dollars) has been invested in the heritage site to facilitate the transition to the rice-fish-duck ecosystem on over 2,100 hectares of farmland. It has driven 7,320 households to embrace modern farm life, generating more than 152,600 yuan per hectare.

Two farmers work in Hani terraced fields in Sancun Township of Honghe County, southwest China's Yunnan Province, Feb. 4, 2021. (Xinhua/Chen Xinbo)

CONSERVING TRADITION

New projects, new agricultural modes, new ways of life... Despite the sweeping changes taking place, the Hani people still proudly embrace their traditional culture.

Azheke, a village located in a core area of the heritage site, is a living museum displaying the Hani people's traditional housing -- mostly consisting of mud and wood with straw roofs.

In the past, the income of the villagers was so meager that most young people chose to work outside their village. The old houses were crumbling, posing a threat to the inheritance of the Hani traditions and culture.

In January 2018, a team led by Bao Jigang, a professor with Sun Yat-sen University in the southern province of Guangdong, came to investigate the traditional housing at the invitation of the Yuanyang government.

The team proposed an "Azheke Plan" -- motivating villagers to protect their traditional houses via a dividend system.

A tourism company was set up in 2018, with 65 households receiving 70 percent of its share. In 2020, the per capita net annual income of the villagers through the system exceeded 6,300 yuan.

In late March, villagers received the latest dividends totaling 168,000 yuan.

Wu Canxi, a senior at Sun Yat-sen University, has seen remarkable changes in the lives of the villagers since she came to the village to conduct a field study and survey in January.

Now, most can speak Mandarin, and some also speak a few words of English and skillfully use computers to settle accounts.

The passionate student has provided advice for the tourism company's operation and training programs for villagers.

"The key is that everyone knows that they can protect their culture while earning a living, so they voluntarily devote themselves to it," said Wu. 
Three Expedition 64 crew members are preparing to return to Earth today completing a 185-day research mission on the International Space Station.

Meanwhile, four new SpaceX Crew-2 astronauts have arrived at the Kennedy Space Center preparing for a launch next week to the orbiting lab.

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins along with Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov will say goodbye to their station crewmates today. They will enter the Soyuz MS-17 crew ship and close the hatch for the final time at 6:10 p.m. EDT. The trio will then undock from the Poisk module at 9:34 p.m. and parachute to Earth about three-and-a-half hours later inside the Soyuz crew ship. NASA TV will broadcast all the homecoming activities live beginning at 5:45 p.m. today.

Four Commercial Crew astronauts left Houston today and arrived in Florida to prepare for an April 22 liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center to the space station. The quartet will take a near 24-hour ride inside the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour before docking to the Harmony module's forward-facing international docking adapter.

Endeavour will be commanded by Shane Kimbrough and piloted by Megan McArthur, both NASA astronauts. They will be accompanied by Mission Specialists Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Thomas Pesquet from the European Space Agency. All four astronauts have previously flown on space shuttles or Soyuz vehicles.

They will be greeted by station Commander and Houston native Shannon Walker of NASA and her SpaceX Crew-1 crewmates Michael Hopkins and Victor Glover of NASA and Soichi Noguchi of JAXA. The foursome, having been aboard the station since November, will then turn its attention to an April 28 return to Earth aboard the Crew Dragon Resilience.

Staying behind at the station with the Crew-2 astronauts will be NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov. They arrived on April 9 docking their Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft to the Rassvet module less than three-and-a-half hours after launching from Kazakhstan.

On-Orbit Status Report

63 Soyuz (63S) Undock/Landing: The 63S vehicle carrying Kate Rubins, Sergei Kud-Sverchkov, Sergey Ryzhikov is scheduled to undock tonight at 8:33 PM CT and land at 11:56 PM CT. The departure of 63S will reduce the crew complement on board from 10 to 7.

Payloads

AC Touch: Per standard procedure, the crew touched both the coated and uncoated coupons for this long-term investigation. Boeing Environment Responding Antimicrobial Coatings tests an antimicrobial coating on several different materials that represent high-touch surfaces. Some microbes change characteristics in microgravity, which could create new risks to crew health and spacecraft systems as well as creating the possibility of contaminating other planetary bodies. The samples remain in space approximately six months then return to Earth for analysis.

AstroPi Tape Removal: The crew removed the tape covering the AstroPi vis camera on the rear side. The AstroPi units are used to support science such as the European AstroPi Challenge in which students develop code to control the AstroPi systems. Two augmented Raspberry Pi computers (called AstroPis) flown to the International Space Station as part of British ESA Astronaut Tim Peake's mission. The computers are both equipped with the mighty Sense HAT (Hardware Attached on Top) that measures the environment inside the space station, detect how the station moves through space, and pick up the Earth's magnetic field. Each AstroPi is also equipped with different kinds of cameras: one has an infrared camera, and the other has a standard visible spectrum camera.

COSMIC: The crew checked the condition of the cables for the thermal container component of the COSMIC system. The objective is to make sure the cables don't interfere with the microscope stage or its components. The Confocal Space Microscope (Confocal Microscope, or COSMIC) is a JAXA facility that provides fluorescence images of biological samples aboard the International Space Station. Confocal microscopy uses spatial filtering techniques to eliminate out-of-focus light or glare in specimens whose thickness exceeds the immediate plane of focus. With the Confocal Microscope data can be obtained on the fundamental nature of cellular and tissue structure and functions in real-time.

DOSIS-3D: The crew removed the passive detectors and prepared them for return on 63-Soyuz. International Space Station crewmembers are continually exposed to varying levels of radiation which can be harmful to their health. Dose Distribution Inside the International Space Station - 3D (DOSIS-3D) uses several active and passive detectors to determine the radiation doses inside the ISS. The goal is a three-dimensional radiation map covering all sections of the ISS.

RTPCG-2: Following 7 days of incubation, later today the crew will use a microscope to observe protein crystals formed in plate 2B2 before loading another plate with protein solution. The wells will then be sealed and the plates placed in a controlled environment in the SABL (Space Automated Bioproduct Laboratory) where conditions are favorable for crystal development. Phase II Real-time Protein Crystal Growth on Board the International Space Station (RTPCG-2) demonstrates new methods for producing high-quality protein crystals in microgravity. Previous work has shown that microgravity produces high-quality protein crystals that can be analyzed to identify possible targets for drugs to treat disease. RTPCG-2 produces high-quality protein crystals for up to eight proteins for detailed analysis back on Earth.

SCEM (Solid Combustion Experiment Module): The crew checked the status of the LAN (local area network) cable used for the SCEM facility. The SCEM facility will be used to support the FLARE investigation. Fundamental Research on International Standard of Fire Safety in Space - Base for Safety of Future Manned Missions (FLARE), a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) investigation, explores the flammability of materials in microgravity. Various solid fuels are burned under different conditions and observed inside a flow tunnel. Microgravity significantly affects combustion phenomena and results are expected to contribute to the improvement of fire safety in space.

Systems

Portable Emergency Provisions (PEPS) Inspection: The crew inspected Portable Fire Extinguishers (PFEs), Portable Breathing Apparatus (PBAs) and Extension Hose Tee Kits (EHTKs) to verify all are in good condition and working order.

Crew-1 On Board Training (OBT): In preparation for departure later this month, the Crew-1 crew is performing a nominal departure and deorbit OBT. Following this activity, the crew will participate in a deorbit paper sim with ground teams and a conference afterward.

Cycle Ergometer with Vibration Isolation and Stabilization (CEVIS) Audit: The crew inventoried the CEVIS Accessory Kit to determine number and condition of available spares as well as how to store them in the most efficient manner.

Mobile Servicing System (MSS) Operations: Yesterday, Robotics Ground Controllers powered up the MSS video equipment and maneuvered the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) in position to start day 2 of the Crew-1 vehicle survey. SSRMS was maneuvered to inspect Aft-Port and Forward-Port quadrants of Crew-1 with the SSRMS tip Latching End Effector (LEE) camera.

Completed Task List Activities:

None

Today's Ground Activities:

All activities are complete unless otherwise noted.

Payloads ops support

63S undock ops

Look Ahead Plan

Saturday, April 17 (GMT 107)

Crew sleep day

Sunday, April 18 (GMT 108)

Payloads:

Astrobee off, HRF saliva setup

Systems

Crew off duty

Monday, April 19 (GMT 109)

Payloads:

AC touch, Astrobee/ISAAC, CIR manifold bottle exchange, Everywear, Kermit, LSG filter exchange, Myotones, Repository, Standard Measures, RFID, RTPCG-2

Systems

NORS O2 transfer, Crew Quarters (CQ) overhead cleaning, LSG filter exchange, Cygnus cargo ops

Today's Planned Activities:

DOSIS 3D Passive Detectors De-Installation from Columbus (10 PDPs and 1 TDP) [Complete]

Stowage of the equipment to be returned to earth [Complete]

EVA Battery Operations Terminal Autocycle Terminate [Complete]

HRF Generic Ambient Blood Collection Operator [Complete]

Crew Departure Preparations for Return to Earth [Complete]

Retrieve Russian Experiment Blood samples from MELFI [Complete]

ISS Experience ZCam Stow [Complete]

Space Acceleration Measurement System Control Unit Activation [Complete]

Handover of Increment 65 Crew [Complete]

AstroPi Vis camera tape removal [Complete]

Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) Portable Emergency Provisions (PEPS) Inspection [In work]

ISS HAM Radio Power Down in Service Module

CEVIS audit [Complete]

USOS Window Shutter Close

ISS HAM Kenwood Radio Power Down in Columbus

 63S -  hatch cover photo

On-board Training (OBT) Nominal Departure and Deorbit [In work]

 63S -  hatch cover photo downlink

Check communication from Soyuz via RSA2-S/G2

 63S activation

Antimicrobial Coatings Touch

Food Acceptability Survey

HRF Veg Questionnaire

Closing of transitive hatches -2

ISS Crew Orientation

SpX-CREW DRAGON Deorbit Paper Sim with Ground Team

 63S - MRM2 hatch closing leak check

Health Maintenance System (HMS) Respiratory Support Pack (RSP) - Checkout

Waste and Hygiene Compartment (WHC) Manual Fill Initiation

Operation using TK onboard datafiles. Soyuz undocking

Real-time Protein Crystal Growth Maintenance Work Area Preparation

Food Acceptability Survey

Health Maintenance System (HMS) ISS Food Intake Tracker (ISS FIT)

Real-time Protein Crystal Growth Centrifuge Ops

Please follow SpaceRef on Twitter and Like us on Facebook.
Oluwadamilola Ojo can only remember spending a handful of classroom hours learning about Canadas Black history  everything else she knows has been self-taught.

Oluwadamilola Ojo can only remember spending a handful of classroom hours learning about Canadas Black history  everything else she knows has been self-taught.

"Its a little bit embarrassing on the Manitoba government, because Winnipeg in particular is full of immigrants and we dont even know the history of Black Canadians," said Ojo, 17, the leader of Black History Month events at St. Marys Academy.

Black history curriculum in Manitoba The first provincial conference on anti-racism education was held in the mid-1980s, diversity education consultant Tony Tavares said. The province held two anti-racism summer institutes in the early 1990s in collaboration with the faculty of education at the University of Manitoba and a number of community groups. click to read more The first provincial conference on anti-racism education was held in the mid-1980s, diversity education consultant Tony Tavares said. The province held two anti-racism summer institutes in the early 1990s in collaboration with the faculty of education at the University of Manitoba and a number of community groups. Around 15 years ago, the province began developing the Diversity Education resource, including a web resource on Black History Month, with the input of the then-Black History Month Celebration Committee. That resource was updated in late 2020 after several community groups acknowledged the need for more fulsome resources, Tavares said. The expansion included new anti-racism materials. Manitobas social studies curriculum was last reviewed in the late 1990s, and was published primarily in the early 2000s. It was informed by a diversity advisory committee that included two Black educators. It has not been updated since. There are no metrics to measure how much Black history education is integrated into the curriculum, Tavares said, adding he is not aware of any such mechanisms in any Canadian jurisdictions. Though it is unclear when further updates will be made to the mandatory curriculum documents, Tavares said the government is committed to improving diversity in its curriculum at each renewal. Ecole Templeton principal Michelle Jean-Paul said Black educators in the province have been advocating for a more inclusive curriculum since the 1980s, and have formed several groups  including the current Educators of Colour Network  to continue to support Black, Indigenous and other diverse educators. Close

Ojo remembers reading Harper Lees To Kill a Mockingbird (which she called "one of the worst books to represent Black people"), a "very brief" class about the Black United Empire Loyalists who settled in Nova Scotia after the American Revolution, and some discussion of current events throughout the summer, when the death of George Floyd at the hands of police propelled the Black Lives Matter movement into the headlines.

To compensate for a dearth of mandatory Black history curricula in classes, students have taken matters into their own hands: participating in Black students unions and Black History Month events, or advocating to teachers for inclusion in the classroom.

Across the city at West Kildonan Collegiate, aspiring electrician and Grade 11 student Tofunmi Eludipo said the schools Black Students Union is the only place shes learned substantial Black history.

In the classroom, Eludipo  who moved to Canada from Nigeria in 2018  remembers discussing the Black Lives Matter movement, slavery and Viola Desmond (after the Nova Scotia civil-rights activist was selected as the face of Canadas $10 bill), but thats all.

"Coming from Nigeria and trying to learn about Canada in general, it kind of feels lonely not knowing the history about Canadian Black people; just like we have learned about Canadian history, we should be able to learn about Black peoples side," Eludipo said.

"There are a lot of Black people in Winnipeg, Manitoba and elsewhere in Canada, so to learn it in school helps you to learn it more when youre out in the community."

The province last updated its supplementary Canadian Black history and anti-racism education package  which includes a glance at Manitobas early Black history and current Black leaders, as well as resources for Black History Month and for teaching anti-racism  in December 2020, but teaching the material is not mandatory.

Diversity education consultant Tony Tavares, who helped design the materials, said there are places throughout the curriculum designed to include Black history, such as the United Empire Loyalists in Grade 11 social studies, but the curriculum does not specify the level of detail teachers should cover.

Michelle Jean-Paul, a principal in the Seven Oaks school division, believes this hesitance to mandate Black studies presents a disadvantage for all Manitoba students.

"These are aspects of Canadian history that should be studied by all Canadians," Jean-Paul said. "Part of why it needs to be mandatorily included in the Manitoba curriculum is to draw attention to the fact that its absent."

"To me, anti-racism education is rooted in addressing systemic inequalities, identifying the ways in which systemic racism exists, functions and impacts communities, and equipping people with the tools, the language and the resources to dismantle those systems of harm. Black curriculum would be one way of addressing those systemic inequities."  NDP MLA Uzoma Asagwara

A comprehensive Black history curriculum in Manitoba would include both discussion of the early Black settlement of the nation and the Prairies, and a focus on integrating contemporary achievements of Black Canadians into all aspects of the school curriculum, the educator said.

"I can teach Black history and focus on the enslavement of Black people, when slavery ended in Canada and our role in the underground railroad, but thats a pretty limited perspective of Black history," she added.

The current supplementary resources celebrate some of Manitobas Black leaders, particularly those in government roles, such as NDP MLA Uzoma Asagwara and Progressive Conservative MLA Audrey Gordon.

"Im incredibly proud and humbled to now be part of the Black history curriculum in Manitoba, because I dont think many people are aware of the numerous contributions by Black Manitobans to our provinces history," Gordon said in a statement to Free Press.

"Im excited at the prospect of education reform, and the opportunity to have a new provincial curriculum framework that reflects the diversity, ideas and talents of all Manitobans."

As the province begins to focus on anti-racism education in schools, Asagwara said teaching and celebrating Black history becomes even more imperative.

"To me, anti-racism education is rooted in addressing systemic inequalities, identifying the ways in which systemic racism exists, functions and impacts communities, and equipping people with the tools, the language and the resources to dismantle those systems of harm," the MLA said.

"Black curriculum would be one way of addressing those systemic inequities."

Asagwara noted meaningful change will only derive from consultation with Black leaders, from the government to the classroom level.

In his role on the Seven Oaks school board, Greg McFarlane helped spearhead a one-of-a-kind initiative this year, holding a virtual anti-racism town hall with community members and providing resources to help staff learn anti-racist teaching practices.

The division also recently undertook a demographic survey of its staff to get a clearer picture of who students are learning from, an initiative McFarlane hopes to see taken up formally in other school divisions.

"This is the importance of having Black people in those sorts of positions, so we can have that voice and make those changes," he said.

Tavares noted two Black community representatives were instrumental in the last social studies curriculum updates, though the curriculum has not been renewed in the last two decades and there is no indication of when it will be renewed again.

Students like Ojo and Eludipo said future Black history in school would cross subject barriers, and would ideally teach an understanding both of the past  like the settlement and movement of Black Canadians  and of their places in the present and future.

"I believe in all things you have to reflect back on the past to understand the future or understand the present," said Ojo.

"Everywhere we go theres history around us, so learning it is important, because we want to feel like we belong, and we want to feel that our voices are heard. We dont want to be silenced."

julia-simone.rutgers@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @jsrutgers
Affogata, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based customer intelligence platform enabling brands to harness data to improve the consumer experience, raised $5.5M in seed financing.

The round was co-led by Mangrove Capital Partners and PICO Venture Partners. Wix Capital and Fiverr Founder and CEO, Micha Kaufman, also participated in the funding round.

This new funding will finance the companys future expansion plans, including R&D, customer solutions, and more.

Founded in 2019 by Sharel Omer, Ran Margaliot, and Itamar Rogel, Affogata is a customer intelligence platform, enabling brands to harness data that guarantees consumers a perfect experience. The AI-driven technology provides brands with expansive data related to their brand and competitors from across the web, online forums, and internal data sources in real-time. Multiple stakeholders such as marketers, product managers, customer success teams, data analysts, and more use insights based on that data, enabling proactive actions to ensure the perfect customer experience. The company works with brands including Wix, Lemonade, MyHeritage, eToro, Playtika, and more.

FinSMEs

20/04/2021
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-20 04:07:16|Editor: huaxia

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RABAT, April 19 (Xinhua) -- The Moroccan navy rescued over the weekend 165 Spain-bound migrants in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, official news agency MAP reported Monday.

Among the rescued migrants were 103 sub-Saharan people, 34 Moroccans, 27 Bangladeshis and one Burmese, MAP said, quoting a military source.

They were experiencing difficulties aboard several makeshift boats sailing in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, it added.

The migrants received the necessary first aid from the navy units, before being brought back to the nearest Moroccan ports and handed over to the Royal Gendarmerie.

Morocco has become a transit country for African and Asian migrants seeking to reach Europe for better living conditions, as the shortest distance from Morocco's Mediterranean coasts to Spain is only 14 km via the Strait of Gibraltar. Enditem
A new attraction is roaring into the Alamo City.

The San Antonio Zoo officially started construction on its one-of-a-kind, highly anticipated Jaguar Habitat Skywalk on Monday, April 19, according to a news release from the attraction. In 2020, the San Antonio Zoo displayed signs on its ground that the new skywalk is coming soon. The release noted the new addition will be the first of its kind in the U.S.

The zoo told MySA.com it anticipates opening the new attraction by the fall 2021.

READ ALSO: Concerts are back! All the shows heading to Texas arenas in 2021

Guests will be able to see the jaguars from a new perspective, meaning you can look up and see them walk over you (so cool). The new space will also enough room for the zoo's jaguars - Arizona and Balam - to coexist, the release noted.

The skywalk will feature multiple terrain options that closely match jaguars' native habitat. It will include a high, perched perspective and a lower view as well, closer to the water.

San Antonio Zoo has a long history of conservation in Texas. In September 2016, the zoo welcomed a pair of cubs to parents Arizona and Balam, which was the first significant jaguar birth for the zoo since 1974.

For more information on the zoos conservation efforts, visit sazoo.org
The change in online content consumption habit of Vietnamese users fuels the trend of short-form video advertising

Vietnam's digital transformation has led to a boom in new communication methods, which opens up countless opportunities for businesses to promote brand awareness. According to the We Are Social report, Vietnam has a total of 72 million active social media accounts (an increase of 7 million over the same period in 2020), equivalent to a penetration rate of 73.7 per cent.

Despite COVID-19, total digital ad spending will still increase slightly by 9.2 per cent to $290 million in 2020. The explosion of digital transformation and new platforms has unintentionally become a pressure for SMEs which do not have the capacity to compete and keep pace with large firms.

Based on data bythe latest report on digital transformation, up to 96.9 per cent of SMEs think that digital transformation plays an important role. However, 57.6 per cent of SMEs in Vietnam do not possess sufficient resources to deploy digitalisation into their business operations.

Commenting on this issue, experts say that SMEs are still too busy running and sustaining their businesses. They do not have enough time to take advantage of the benefits provided by technology. In fact, many businesses share that they need a certain time to familiarise themselves with digital tools before deciding to invest in an advertising solution on the platform. This situation is also quite understandable when most of the online advertising platforms in Vietnam do not have a Vietnamese team to directly support businesses.

From barrier to driver

Obviously, there are still many barriers hindering the digital transformation of businesses. However, there are still ample opportunities if SMEs take a proactive approach and get timely support. Phan Bich Tam, executive director of the Mobile Marketing Association in Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar, said that, The smaller a business, the more it must take advantage of the tools available in the market to unlock the potential. If they do not adopt these tools, they are likely to miss valuable business opportunities which are offered at very low cost, even free. We can create TikTok, Zalo, or Facebook accounts for free. The problem is how businesses can reach the target audience as accurately as possible.

To address problems about costs, technology and marketing strategies for businesses, TikTok, the leading global platform for short-form videos, has recently announced a commitment to heavily invest in innovative solutions for SMEs in Vietnam when they deploy advertising activities for short-form videos. TikTok is the first global platform with a commitment to investing resources and innovative solutions for Vietnamese businesses.

TikTok has signed a strategic partnership with the Vietnam E-commerce Association (VECOM) to support local companies

Unlike other online platforms in Vietnam, TikToks team of Vietnamese experts will be available 24/7 to promptly answer every question of the local businesses that are in the process of setting up and measuring advertising efficiency. This will help businesses catch up with the market demand in special occasions such as the Tet Holiday. TikToks expert team will triple in 2021 to support the boom of SMEs in the digital marketing playground.

In addition, TikTok develops resources to empower SMEs in actively seeking information and learning with the launch of Small Business Resource Center. TikTok has also been implementing a series of webinars throughout the year to enhance advertising knowledge and expertise for SMEs. Overall, brushing up skills is the only way for SMEs to accelerate digitalisation.

Digital transformation is a long-term process, depending on each business and sector. However, to operate effectively, SMEs should take a proactive approach to new tools as an important long-term investment. As experimenting and growth opportunities have great potential, business owners need to keep an open mind of market change, especially from a technology perspective to increase business efficiency in a smart way.
Apr. 19PLYMOUTH  The solemn gaze on Heminder Singh's face told half the story. The placard he held Sunday with the names of four of the eight souls lost in a shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis told the rest.

Among the dead late Thursday were four Sikhs, a religious community from India with a presence in the U.S. and Metro Detroit, and it prompted those like Singh to honor them in a solidarity vigil in front of a temple of worship.

It also was a call for an end to gun violence and anger aimed at them because of their presence in American society.

"This an extremely tragic event for all of us as the Sikh community and the whole country," said Singh, 61, of West Bloomfield Township, who joined nearly 50 others honoring the fallen at the Gurdwara Sahib Mata Tripta in Plymouth.

"We're hoping and praying for the families of all the people we've lost," he said. "We have a lot of compassion for the family of the person who caused the loss of life. We believe staying positive no matter what the circumstances are."

The safety of Sikhs, Singh said, "is a concern because of our appearance and our identity because way too many incidents have happened over the years."

About 90% of the workers at the FedEx warehouse near the Indianapolis International Airport are members of the local Sikh community, according to Indiana authorities.

People in attendance made reference to a 2012 shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin where six people were killed, a troubling trend they say targets their community for teasing and violence based on the turbans males wear or the way they look.

Those of the Sikh faith, of which there are an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 families in the region, held lit candles that dripped on the pavement on a brilliant sunny day, and prayed for peace and an end to gun violence.

Raman Singh, 55, of West Bloomfield Township, said given the shooting in Indiana and the violence against Sikhs in the past, "it doesn't seem like that much has changed."

Story continues

"This tragedy was all too personal for us. It took place in another Midwestern town not too different than ours," she said. "And the names of the victims could have been the names of our own friends and family."

Dilbag Singh, 51, president of the gurdwara in Plymouth, called the shooting a "very tragic incident and very sad."

These types of gun violence and shootings aren't "good for anybody, especially when it was known" that the man who killed the others and himself had a fragile mental state and his mother had warned the authorities prior, Singh said.

"I think we need more (gun) checks in order to keep a check on such killings," he said. "It's not just this incident. We know it happened in Colorado. It happened in Atlanta. I think we all need to come together and put our minds on it so that there can be more checks so that people which are not in their good mental state shouldn't be able to keep all these arms."

State Rep. Ranjeev Puri, D-Canton Township, decried the loss of "more victims to gun violence."

"Government action is absolutely necessary that these things can absolutely be prevented," he said to the crowd. "And our country has a problem. In just this month, this is the 45th mass shooting in this country. No American should live in fear. And Sikhs unfortunately are disproportionately affected, whether it's because of their faith, the way they look or just who we are."

These issues," he added, "are only brought to light when it's too late."

That needs to change, Puri said, to a community that "remains largely invisible."

lfleming@detroitnews.com

(313) 222-2620

Twitter:@leonardnfleming
"Chargehound has increased revenue recovery and created operational efficiencies that will benefit us long term" said Jon Sinclair, President at Parts Geek

Chargehound, the only fully automated chargeback solution on the market, today announced a partnership with Parts Geek, an online auto parts retailer offering an extensive selection of parts at the most competitive prices. By leveraging Chargehounds customized, automated chargeback solution, Parts Geek has scaled its submission rate to 100%, seen a 33% increase in win rate, and a 2.5x increase in revenue recovered.

As an e-commerce business, Parts Geek has always sought out new technologies to drive operational efficiencies. With increased consumer adoption of online purchasing, Parts Geek saw a massive increase in sales over the last year  and with that growth came an increase in chargebacks.

I knew we needed a chargeback solution that could scale with our growing business. Chargehound has increased revenue recovery and created operational efficiencies that will benefit us long term, said Jon Sinclair, President at Parts Geek. Chargehound has allowed us to automate the entire chargeback process and refocus employee time on other areas of the business, without any additional operating costs.

Parts Geeks previously manual dispute representment process was time-consuming and unable to scale to match the growth of online orders. With high average order values (AOV) spanning multiple payment processors like Braintree, Paypal, and Amex, Parts Geek needed a technology solution that would centralize their dispute management, improve chargeback performance, and refocus employee time on its core business.

E-commerce retailers like Parts Geek have benefitted from a significant increase in online sales over the course of the last year, but business growth often also means an increase in chargebacks, said Pallavi Kuppa-Apte, Chief Operating Officer at Chargehound. Chargehound worked closely with Parts Geek to create customized, best-in-class response templates which have helped boost the win rate and revenue recovery, allowing Parts Geek to manage all chargebacks in one central portal.

For more information on Chargehounds automated chargeback solution, visit http://www.Chargehound.com or follow @chargehound on Twitter or LinkedIn.

About Chargehound

As the only fully automated chargeback solution on the market, Chargehound is a revenue recovery solution that helps merchants fight 100% of chargebacks. With the ability to process up to 250,000 chargebacks per minute across any currency, Chargehound integrates with major payment processors and creates custom templates designed specifically to enable merchants to improve win rates and maximize revenue recovery. With Chargehound, merchants free up time and resources, scale operations with zero CapEx and OpEx, and gain valuable insights for fraud prevention, all while recovering lost revenue. Chargehound was founded by CEO Adrian Sanders and CTO Dmitri Cherniak and is based in San Francisco, CA. Find out more at http://www.chargehound.com.

About Parts Geek

Parts Geek offers the best and most competitive prices on imported and domestic car parts and automobile accessories. With shipping from many manufacturer and third-party vendor locations throughout the United States, Parts Geek customers receive their orders quickly. To learn more please visit http://www.partsgeek.com


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Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif met Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi in Jakarta on Monday.

A press statement from the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the ministers focused on the joint efforts to overcome the pandemic and accelerate their economic recovery.

During his visit to Indonesia, Zarif also met Indonesian President Joko Widodo.

Zarif's visit to Jakarta comes three months after Indonesian authorities seized an Iranian-flagged tanker MT Horse, together with a Panamanian-flagged tanker MT Freya, in waters off Indonesia's West Kalimantan province.

Those tankers are suspected of a variety of violations, including illegally transferring fuel at sea, spilling oil, not displaying national flags, covering the names on their hulls, shutting off their identification systems and anchoring illegally.

Iran, home to major oil and natural gas reserves, has seen its sales abroad deeply impacted by U.S. sanctions after former President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers in 2018.

In the time since, Iran has relied on black-market sales and deals with Venezuela to keep its sales going.

Iran's state-owned fleet of oil tankers routinely travel turn off their Automatic Identification System trackers to try and mask where they deliver their cargo. Analysts say those ships often transfer their oil to other ships, that then sell the crude under false pretenses.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
SPRINGFIELD  The Bing Arts Center building in the X neighborhood was sold to a child-care center with a martial-arts focus.

The sales price was $150,000, according to paperwork filed last month with the Hampden County Registry of Deeds.

Buyers 1 Root Inc., plan to operate a child care operation in the front portion of the The Bing at 716 Sumner Ave., said Aldo Giella of Lessard Realty. Giella listed the building on behalf of nonprofit The Bing, which owned the building as The X Main Street Corp.

1 Root Inc. operates a child care center on Myron Street in West Springfield, Giella said.

Company president Deny Kim didnt return calls for comment.

Giella said he doesnt know what plans 1 Root has for the theater space in the rear of the building.

The Bing was never able to move forward with its long-held plans to renovate the theater. Instead, The Bing held events in gallery space it created in the front of the building.

But The Bing hadnt hosted any events or gallery showings since March 2020 because of COVID-19 restrictions.

With no events, the volunteers who took over the Bing from the city  paying just a dollar nearly 20 years ago  couldnt keep up with bills and with the small mortgage they took out on the property to fund renovations.

COVID-19 made things tough on performing arts venues, with Gateway City Arts nearly closing but instead looking to reopen under a new agreement with concert promoter DPS Shows of Ithaca, New York.

The Bing opened in 1951 as a movie theater and was named for crooner Bing Crosby of White Christmas fame. The first movie shown was Samson and Delilah with Hedy Lamarr.

The city of Springfield sold the building to The X Main Street Corp for a $1 in 2003, according to its website. The city had taken over the property four years earlier for nonpayment of taxes.

As an arts center, The Bing hosted five separate Grammy Award winners over the years.

At the time The Bing went on the market, organizers expressed hope that the organization would continue sponsoring arts events at other venues.

Related content:
Health authorities in South Sudan have reported that 60,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, donated by the African Union, expired before they were used.



The country last month postponed the start of the vaccination campaign, citing logistical challenges.



Vaccinations are currently being done using another batch of 132,000 doses. received in March through the vaccine sharing Covax initiative.



Dr Richard Laku, the government's Incident Manager, said even if the country had started vaccinations using the 60,000 doses, they wouldn't have finished them before the expiry date.



About 2,000 health workers and the elderly in the capital Juba have received their first jab since the rollout started two weeks ago.



The World Health Organizations Country Representative, Fabian Ndenzako, said they would offer guidance to the government on how to dispose of the vaccines if called upon.

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.

Featured Video
As many as 450,647 people in Ukraine have received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine since the start of vaccination campaign, Health Minister Maksym Stepanov wrote on Facebook.

"On April 18, 1,453 people were vaccinated against COVID-19 in Ukraine. In total, 450,647 people have been vaccinated since the beginning of the vaccination campaign. In particular, people vaccinated with the first dose  450,645, fully vaccinated people (received two doses)  5, Stepanov wrote.

As reported by Ukrinform, Ukraine began vaccinating the population against coronavirus on February 24.

On February 23, a batch of 500,000 doses of the COVID-19 Covishield vaccine, developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca, arrived in Ukraine.

The first batch of a COVID-19 vaccine from China's Sinovac Biotech vaccine was delivered in Ukraine on March 25, and its use began on April 13.

On April 16, Ukraine received the first batch of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

iy
Kevin McCarthy threatened to bring 'action' against California Representative Maxine Waters after she joined protesters in Minnesota on Saturday night and urged the crowd to 'get more confrontational'.

The House Republican leader warned he would do so if Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not.

'Maxine Waters is inciting violence in Minneapolis  just as she has incited it in the past. If Speaker Pelosi doesnt act against this dangerous rhetoric, I will bring action this week,' he wrote on Twitter.

McCarthy can propose a resolution to try censure Waters or remove her from her committee assignments but, given Democratic control of the House, it will go nowhere if Democrats stick together.

Republicans pounced on Waters remarks to the Black Lives Matter protesters.

Senator Ted Cruz and controversial Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene also criticized Waters, who, over the weekend, joined demonstrations over the police shooting of Daunte Wright, a black 20-year-old shot and killed at a traffic stop by a white police officer, Kimberly Potter.

But many of these Republicans accusing Waters of inciting violence did not make the same charge against then-President Donald Trump in the wake of the January 6th MAGA riot on Capitol Hill, that left five dead and trail of destruction throughout the Capitol.

Cruz and Greene were some of Trump's most ardent defenders. McCarthy did take to the House floor to declare Trump, who riled up the crowd with his false claims the election was stolen, 'bears responsibility' for the attack on Congress. McCarthy later flew to Mar-a-Lago to make peace with the former president after Trump became furious at him for his words.

Republicans have turned Waters into a punching bag before - notably for her urging the public to harass Trump White House staffers when they saw them in public.

Scroll down for video

Maxine Waters, congresswoman for California, was in Minnesota on Saturday evening, saying that demonstrators needed 'get more active, more confrontational'

A bullet hole is seen in the windshield of a Minnesota National Guard vehicle that was targeted in a drive-by shooting early on Sunday. Two Guardsmen suffered minor injuries

Demonstrators gather on Sunday for a solidarity rally lead by community organizers in the Black and Asian communities in memory of George Floyd and Daunte Wright

The city of Minneapolis prepares for a verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial with National Guard on patrol in the streets

Waters traveled to Minneapolis the weekend before closing arguments in the trial of Derek Chauvin, charged with murdering George Floyd on May 25.

The city is bracing for the verdict in the Chauvin case. More than 3,000 members of the National Guard are in Minneapolis, in addition to 1,100 officers from public safety agencies across the state as part of what has been termed Operation Safety Net.

In the early hours of Sunday, two members of the National Guard were injured - although not seriously - in a drive-by shooting.

Waters said she hoped Chauvin was found guilty.

'I am not happy that we have talked about police reform for so long,' Waters said, demanding a guilty verdict in the Chauvin trial and adding: 'If we don't [get it], we cannot go away. We've got to stay on the street.'

She added that protesters needed 'get more active, more confrontational' and they should ignore the curfew in place.

'Weve got to stay on the street and weve got to get more active, weve got to get more confrontational. Weve got to make sure that they know that we mean business,' she said when it comes to police shootings.

Hours after Waters' passionate speech, a Minnesota National Guard and Minneapolis police team were fired upon in a drive-by shooting.

People gather at George Floyd Plaza in the Powderhorn Park neighborhood of Minneapolis Minnesota to listen to the families of victims of police violence

A bullet hole in a National Guard vehicle is seen after Guardsmen were targeted on Sunday

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senator Ted Cruz, and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene blasted Rep. Maxine Waters for her comments in Minneapolis

The team was providing neighborhood security in Minneapolis when, at about 4.19am local time, a light colored SUV drove by and blasted shots at an occupied National Guard vehicle.

No team members were seriously injured, though two National Guard members suffered minor injuries: One was injured by shattered glass and taken to a local hospital, while the other suffered only superficial injuries.

Cruz accused Waters and fellow Democrats of seeking to 'to tear us apart.'

'Why is Maxine Waters traveling to a different state trying to incite a riot? What good can come from this?' asked Lauren Boebert, representative for Colorado.

Fellow Colorado representative Ken Buck said: 'Why is a sitting member of Congress encouraging protesters to get confrontational?'

Arizona Republican Andy Biggs added: 'The Radical Left dont care if your towns are burning, if theres violence in your streets, or if the police are too defunded to defend their communities.

'As long as the Left appeases their anti-America base, their job is done.'

And Marjorie Taylor Greene, congresswoman for Georgia, called for her to be expelled from Congress.

'As a sitting United States Congresswoman @MaxineWaters threatened a jury demanding a guilty verdict and threatened violence if Chauvin is found not guilty. This is also an abuse of power. #ExpelMaxineWaters'

She called Waters 'a danger to our society.'

On Twitter, others joined in the outrage at Waters' remarks.

'Of course she'll get away with saying that while anyone else would've been thrown in jail,' Rick Santella tweeted.

Another user tweeted, 'Good grief lady, leave get out of here.'

One person also accused Waters of 'stirring people up again with her calls for violence.'

Pictured: Congresswoman Maxine Waters leaving the protest at the Brooklyn Center Police Department on Saturday

Maxine Waters (D-CA) joins demonstrators in a protest outside the Brooklyn Center police station on Saturday night

Maxine Waters (D-CA) joins demonstrators in a protest outside the Brooklyn Center police station on Saturday night

Waters is planning on staying in town until Monday.

According to CBS Minnesota, officials stated that there was a brief altercation between reporters and protesters as Waters was leaving on Saturday, the first reports of any skirmishes.

The Pioneer Press reports demonstrators gathered Saturday afternoon at the home of Washington County Attorney Pete Orput, responsible for the second-degree manslaughter charges against Potter.

The protesters stood outside of Orput's home before marching through is neighborhood in Stillwater.

Black Lives Matter activist Nekima Levy Armstrong said that Orput left his home briefly to engage in a conversation with protesters.

Pictured: Peaceful protesters in front of the Brooklyn Center Police Department on Saturday night

Demonstrators raise their fists at Union Station near the U.S Capitol, during a march in Washington, D.C. on Saturday

A demonstrator holds a Black Lives Matter sign during a protest outside the Brooklyn Center police station on Saturday

Protests have also been taking place in Chicago following the death of 13-year-old Adam Toledo, as well as New York City and across the rest of the United States.

On Friday night, many protests across the nation started off peacefully before sporadic clashes broke out between Black Lives Matters protesters and the police.

University of Minnesota medical students and doctors also marched on the Brooklyn Center Police Department on Saturday, a day after it was the site of most of the night's unrest.

Peaceful protests on Friday devolved into clashes between protesters and police, with flash bangs and pepper spray utilized by the cops.

There originally was not expected to be a curfew for the first time in several days, before one was suddenly imposed during the night's demonstrations.

Media members were briefly detained and 136 people were arrested.

A temporary restraining order was filed to prevent police from arresting or harming journalists.

'Following feedback from media, and in light of a recent temporary restraining order (TRO) filed in federal court, MSP will not photograph journalists or their credentials,' the Minnesota State Patrol said in a statement.

According to the Washington Post, several protesters were arrested on Saturday night. It's unclear why they were arrested, as the protest of about a hundred was drawing to a close.

Earlier in the day, there were peaceful protests across the nation, including Columbus, Ohio, and Philadelphia.

According to NBC Philadelphia, crowds in that city walked through City Center towards City Hall peacefully in a protest that lasted around five hours.

Nevertheless, some businesses did board up and 1,000 National Guard troops were preemptively deployed.
[April 19, 2021] Printed Circuit Board Market Revenue to Cross USD 75 Bn by 2027: Global Market Insights Inc.

SELBYVILLE, Del., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the latest report "Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Market by PCB Type (Single Sided, Double Sided, Multi-layered, High Density Interconnect), Substrate (Rigid, Flexible, Rigid-flex), Application (Consumer Electronics, Automotive, Healthcare, IT & Telecom, Industrial), Regional Outlook, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast 2027", by Global Market Insights Inc., the market valuation of printed circuit board will cross $75 billion by 2027. The market growth is attributed to the increasing adoption of smart home technology products across developed economies such as the U.S., Germany, the UK, and Japan. Smart home technology products, such as smart speakers, smart TVs, human-centric lighting, smart doorbells, security & surveillance systems, voice assistance systems, and robotic vacuums, are integrated with multi-layered printed circuit boards. These multi-layered PCBs provide high miniaturization, low-power consumption, and higher component density per square inch, which are suitable for applications in compact smart home devices. Request for a sample of this research report @ https://www.gminsights.com/request-sample/detail/5035 The printed circuit board market from double-sided segment held 35% of the revenue share in 2020. The industry share of double-sided PCBs is anticipated to decline during the forecast period owing to low conductivity path and circuit density compared to multi-layered and High-Density Interconnect (HDI) printed circuit boards. The double-sided PCBs have low-temperature stability, low operational efficiency, and do not conduct heavy currents in the circuitry compared to HDI PCBs. This has resulted in the declining demand for double-sided PCBs in industrial, automotive, and medical devices. However, the low-cost structure in manufacturing double-sided PCBs is expected to increase their acceptance in low-cost consumer electronics devices, adding new opportunities for the market. The rigid-flex segment captured 5% of the printed circuit board market share in 2020 and will witness a 3% growth rate till 2027 impelled by several benefits offered by the rigid-flex architecture such as hybrid circuit board design, larger conductive tracks, and compact footprint. This architecture also sustains the impact of shocks and vibrations on the devices, which increases device stability and durability. Rigid-flex PCBs can connect rigid boards without external cables and connectors to reduce circuit spacing, resulting in better signal transmissions. These features are predicted to increase their usage in industrial electronics over the forecast period. The IT & telecom application in the printed circuit board market will grow at a CAGR of over 5% through 2027 led by the rapid commercialization of 5G technology, which has resulted in he expansion of the telecom sector. In the telecom industry, PCBs are highly integrated into the base station equipment, servers, routers, digital, and analog broadcasting systems, among others.



The Europe printed circuit board market held 20% of revenue share in 2020 and is estimated to attain a CAGR of over 2% by 2027 on account of favorable government initiatives, supporting the regional electronics and semiconductor manufacturing industries. For instance, in December 2018, the European Commission in collaboration with Germany, France, Italy, and the UK announced a joint project for the development and innovations in the fields of microelectronics. The EU has announced a funding of USD 2.06 billion in R&D activities and an additional USD 7.05 billion funds to attract foreign semiconductor manufacturers to the region. Such supportive investments by the regional governments are creating high growth opportunities for the market. Request for customization of this research report @

https://www.gminsights.com/roc/5035 Some of the key players operating in the printed circuit board market are Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd., Nippon Mektron Ltd., Fujikura Ltd., Nitto Denko Corporation, Advanced Circuits Inc., Unimicron Technology Corporation, and TTM Technologies, Inc., among others. Companies are focusing on inorganic growth strategies, such as restructuring of business operations, to stay competitive in the market. Some major findings of the printed circuit board (PCB) market report include: The proliferation of robotics and automation across the manufacturing and process industries will boost the market progression. Industrial robots, automated assembly lines, programmable controllers, and industrial PCs are extensively integrated with industry-grade PCBs. These industry-grade PCBs provide higher temperature stability that is required for an industrial environment.

Stringent government regulations pertaining to mandating advanced safety systems, such as ADAS and electric stability control systems, in the upcoming vehicles are set to amplify the adoption of PCBs in the market. The growing electronic content in automotive, such as advanced telematics, In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) systems, instrument clusters, will further support the industry growth.

The rising integration of 3D print technology in PCB manufacturing assemblies will add new opportunities in the printed circuit board market. 3D PCB printing achieves high volume manufacturing of PCBs with high-quality and faster time-to-market, supporting the market demand.

The increasing demand for miniaturized microelectronics circuitry in wearable medical devices will spur the growth of High-Density Interconnect (HDI) PCBs in the market. HDI PCBs provide denser circuitry of up to 120 to 160 pins per square inch for the compact placement of microelectronics, which are highly suitable for wearable medical devices such as cardiac pacemakers.

Technological advancements in smartphones, such as inward and outward foldable display technology, are poised to amplify the acceptance of flexible PCBs in the market.

The COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted the industry in the first half of 2020. The stringent lockdown imposed by regional governments has resulted in the temporary closure of consumer electronics and automotive production plants. Adding to this, the shortage of raw materials and trade restrictions have led manufacturers to shift their factories to new regions. This is projected to restrain the market value for the short term. Table of Contents (ToC) of the report: Chapter 3 Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Market Insights 3.1 Industry segmentation 3.2 Impact analysis of coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on printed circuit board market 3.2.1 Global outlook 3.2.2 Impact by region 3.2.3 Industry value chain 3.2.3.1 Research and development 3.2.4 Competitive landscape 3.3 Industry ecosystem analysis 3.3.1 Raw material suppliers 3.3.2 Manufacturers 3.3.3 Distribution channel 3.3.4 End-user 3.3.5 Vendor matrix 3.4 Technology & innovation landscape 3.5 Regulatory landscape 3.6 Industry impact forces 3.6.1 Growth drivers 3.6.2 Industry pitfalls and challenges 3.7 Growth potential analysis 3.8 Porter's analysis 3.9 PESTEL analysis Browse Complete Table of Contents (ToC) @ https://www.gminsights.com/toc/detail/printed-circuit-board-pcb-market 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 along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy, and biotechnology. Contact Us: Arun Hegde

Corporate Sales, USA

Global Market Insights Inc.

Phone: 1-302-846-7766

Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688

Email: sales@gminsights.com Related Images printed-circuit-board-market.png

Printed Circuit Board Market Growth Predicted at 3% Through 2027: GMI

Major printed circuit board market players include Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd., Nippon Mektron Ltd., Fujikura Ltd., Nitto Denko Corporation, Advanced Circuits Inc., Unimicron Technology Corporation, and TTM Technologies, Inc. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/printed-circuit-board-market-revenue-to-cross-usd-75-bn-by-2027-global-market-insights-inc-301271010.html SOURCE Global Market Insights, Inc.

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It can take months to get to know someone, but most of us dont have that kind of time.

If you need to truly know someone fastespecially if youre thinking of offering them a jobthen one of your best options is to use a background check service.

These sites reveal a persons criminal history, social media accounts, current, and past addresseseven speeding tickets. This information can help you decide if you can trust someone with your business, family, or possessions.

All you need is their name or phone number, and a good background check site will do the rest. In 10 minutes, youll have a criminal record report and additional information useful in helping you decide if you can trust them.

Not all background check services are equal, though. For this article, weve spent over 30 hours researching every type of background check service and sorted them according to what theyre best at.



13 Best Background Check Sites Reviewed

First look:



1. Most thorough criminal record report: Truthfinder

2. Best for reverse phone look-ups: Intelius

3. Best for finding social media, dating profiles, and photos: Instant Checkmate

4. Best for businesses looking to hire employees: GoodHire

1.Truthfinder Best Background Check Service Overall

Truthfinder is one of the most detailed background check services we tested. It provides quality and accurate data through its easy-to-use interface.

The website features thorough explanations on how to use the background reports as well. We tested this service using real people, and it returned correct, updated information accordingly, including phone numbers and email addresses.

This company goes beyond your standard public record inquiries and presents the findings in a digestible form. This includes location history, education, social media profiles, assets, and associates.



Youll also find features like free dark web monitoring, which scans the depths of the internet to see if any cybercriminals are taking advantage of you and your data.

Pros

Wide variety of filters and search parameters

Quick results

Full disclosure instructions around using the obtained information

Free dark web monitoring service for subscribed users





Cons





Subscriptions are on the expensive side

No trial period available

2.Intelius  Best for Reverse Phone Lookups

Intelius provides similar services to Truthfinder, including reverse phone and address look-ups. People noted success with locating lost friends and family members, and potential employers were able to obtain detailed education backgrounds of future employees.

When we tested Intelius, we also found information on peoples property and some limited financial data too.

Intelius works best for first-time users who need background checks on just one person, as the business offers a single report payment plan. This is in contrast to many other services, which require you to pay a (sometimes hefty) monthly fee. Its completely confidential, too, so you dont have to worry about your search query becoming public.

Pros

Single report subscriptions available

Budget-friendly monthly plan option

Identity theft protection comes with membership

Cons

Customer service might be slow

Some users report inaccurate results

3.Instant Checkmate  Best Mobile App Background Check

Instant Checkmate is an easy-to-use service suitable for anyone looking for data like police records, social media profiles, photos, or someones contact information.

Despite its name, Instant Checkmate is annoyingly slow. During the search functions, it has multiple unnecessary warnings that cause a delay. Other than that, the interface is simple to manage, even for first-time users.

Pros

Extensive results from a single search

Mobile app available

Multiple search methods

Good value for money

Cons

Report loading can be slow

Inconsistent phone data

No individual report option

4. GoodHire  Best Service for Small to Medium Businesses

GoodHire prides itself in maintaining top FCRA (Federal Credit Reporting Act) compliance, indicating its a reliable business with a reputation for quality. Anyone can take advantage of the services, but its tailored for small to medium businesses, e.g., healthcare and construction companies and nonprofit organizations.

When we tested the site, we found it simple to use with an organized online portal. Theres a

one-time set-up fee and multiple package options depending on your companys screening needs.

All records are conveniently stored online for future reference.

Pros

Mobile-friendly website

Top option for hiring purposes in various fields

Cons

No single check option available

5. InfoTracer Best Check Service for Facial Recognition

InfoTracer is a highly versatile background software service that provides a one-stop-shop for public records. It has an organized reporting structure thats easy to navigate.

This allows quick, hassle-free data searches. Special options include political contributions, assets, and dark web scans. One standout feature is the facial recognition search, where you can identify someone using a photograph.

Other information available includes reverse phone and address look-up, birth and death records, arrests, and warrants. For a simple search, the site is completely free; otherwise, youll need to upgrade to the paid version.

We found InfoTracer to be responsive on both the mobile and desktop apps, and these performed better than the web version.

Pros

Up-to-date database

Great value for money

Highly secure

Special features

Cons

Some users report receiving incomplete reports

No social media option available

6.Spokeo Best for Reverse Email Lookups

Spokeo is one of the most popular background check companies in the USmostly with people searching for friends and family.

This site is loaded with plenty of features for completing standard background searches, including a social media search, criminal records, dark web monitoring, and reverse look-ups.

We tried to dig up information about an old friend who severed connections with everyone in our circle. Happily, our search attempt on Spokeo returned positive results, which led us to the persons updated contact details.

Some Spokeo users complain their searches came up dry or inaccurate, though.

Pros

Basic services are free of charge

Popular for finding lost connections

The site is up to date

Cons

Unlimited search plans unavailable

Some received sparse reports lacking credible information

7. US Search  Best Budget Background Check

US Search is the best background check service for people on a budget. Despite its drab web layout, this site provides accurate background reports and useful search tools at affordable prices.

For our research, we purchased reports for three people, and the data was correct and reliable. It contained important details such as criminal history, assets data, and addresses that were up to date. However, this service was unable to find the subjects marriages and email addresses.

The company offers a wide range of subscription services that give members access to unlimited background reports and extended data searches. It also has a basic one-off People Search report that provides age, address, and publicly listed numbers.

Pros

Accurate and reliable

Affordable reporting

Trial membership available

Cons

No marriage data available

Boring website design

8. PeopleFinders  Best Background Check for Professionals

PeopleFinders provides some of the best standalone search options, allowing you to run that one-off background check on a person without needing a membership plan. Theres a three-day trial for less than $1, but results are limitedno criminal records, for example.

Users report impressive customer service with PeopleFinders. According to the company, their strong point is what they have to offer for professionals, with special enterprise data packages available.

Unfortunately, this site doesnt provide social media profiles, and the service options are available only for those within the United States.

Pros

Cheap three-day trial

Tailored plans for businesses

No membership required

Cons

Hefty cancellation fee

Not available outside the US

Lacks social media data

9. BeenVerified  Best Background Check for Specialized Data

An easy-to-use service, BeenVerified provides unlimited background checks for their paid members. It also has a special court runner service that crawls through records that arent yet digitized.





During our tests, BeenVerified returned a report with closely connected people such as neighbors, family members, and friends. You can also find criminal and court records, vehicle records, and a caller identification feature, among other options.

On the website, youll find extensive details regarding the legal use of the information you obtain.

Pros

Apps available for Android and iOS

Special court runner service

Membership comes with unlimited use

Transparency around legality

Cons

Membership is mandatory; no one-off checks

10. Universal Background Screening  Best Check for Drug Testing

Universal Background Screening is a leading background check service that you can also use to run health and drug tests for potential employees. The site has an intuitive e-consent tool that allows candidates to grant permission for the check electronically.

This solution covers everything from credit reports to county court records, verification of past employment, professional licenses, and more.

All fees are transparently listed on the companys website, and employers can conduct a minimum of one screening, which means youre not automatically stuck with a high monthly charge. The site is accredited by the National Association of Professional Background Screeners (NAPBS).

Pros

Drug and health screenings available

High reputation and accredited

Customizable search templates.

Cons

Not geared towards personal searches

11. Peopletrail  Best Background Check for Accuracy

Peopletrail is a preferred employee screening solution thats suitable for enterprises of all sizes. According to users, it offers a fast screening process and accurate results.

The company uses employees versus an automatic system to verify data is as reliable as possible. Options include criminal and credit checks and education background.

Users praise the customer service team for professionalism, efficiency, and friendliness.

Pros

FCRA compliant and NAPBS accredited

Highly accurate

Great customer service

Cons





On the pricey side

12. EBI Inc  Best Background Check for International Searches

Employment Background Investigations (EBI) provides screening options for employers with extensive search options. Some features include basic identity recognition, criminal records, tax and health information, as well as drug screening.

This company isnt US-centric, unlike many other services on our list, making it suitable for businesses that hire on a global scale. Its helpful for bigger companies for this reason.

There are vague customer complaints online stating dissatisfaction with the service, but specific details arent provided.

Pros

Global search options

Accredited with NAPBS

Compatible with multiple HR management systems





Cons

Not ideal for individuals or smaller businesses

13. Sterling  Runner-up for Small Business Services

Sterling is a global leader in employee background checks that helps employers eliminate guesswork from the hiring process. Businesses can access credit reports, SSN traces, criminal records, civil court records, and other pertinent hiring data.

Like EBI, one benefit of Sterling is that the platform offers seamless integration with popular HR third-party systems. It adds to an efficient and organized hiring process.

Packages differ in pricing, according to the needed search and service depth.

Pros

Tailored for small businesses

Global recognition

HR software-friendly

Cons

Web-based platform only

Best Background Check Service: FAQs

What Does a Simple Background Check Include?

A simple background check includes:

Credit history

License and motor vehicle checks

Employment history

Education

Basic contact information

Criminal record

What Looks Bad on a Background Check?

The following data on a background check may make an individual look bad: incarceration, drug charges, long stretches of unemployment, poor credit history, experience or education inconsistencies, multiple short-term jobs.

What Are the Best Background Check Services?

The best background check services will provide you with exactly what you need, either as an individual or a business. Personal options include locating a missing person in your life or trying to dig up someones past, for example.

For a business, its beneficial to opt for a background check service that coincides with your human resource software. This helps you maintain a database more easily and efficiently.

Best Background Check Services in Conclusion

If you or your enterprise need to run a background check on an individual, the best background check services make it a simple task. These services provide you with a surefire way to obtain the required information before hiring someone.

A transparent service business like Truthfinder provides quality, accurate data, which is why it comes in at the top spot on our list. The website is easy to navigate and allows you to access someones social media profiles, assets, location history, and more.

Truthfinder also provides you with free dark web monitoring and disclosure information necessary for using the collected data legally.
CHICAGO, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Tricoci University of Beauty Culture , a leader in cosmetology, barbering and esthetics education, recently announced the expansion of its Bridgeview beauty school location. The 6,800 square foot addition will open to the public on April 21st and includes three new theory classrooms, two large spa clinics, and the ability to provide salon services to guests. Designed specifically to house the esthetician students, the new facility will allow Tricoci University to cater to the ever-growing demand for its esthetics program and increase the student body to approximately 200 students.

Located just outside of Chicago's southwest side at 7350 West 87th Street in Bridgeview, IL  Bridgeview is one of fifteen Tricoci University campuses across Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. The facility first opened in 2006, two years after Mario Tricoci founded the university after successfully building a chain of upscale salons and day spas around Chicago. This campus, with the additional expansion space, currently offers four programs  cosmetology, esthetics, barbering, and teacher training  and now has a total of 15,500 square feet of space that includes a clinic area, theory room, dispensary, library, wet room, lounges, and classrooms.

"Tricoci University views education as a vehicle for advancement, both personal and professional, which is why we take such pride in serving our students as they pursue career education training," says Joy McClure, Chief Admissions Officer. "Expanding our current location in the Bridgeview market will allow us to serve a greater number of students interested in becoming a beauty professional within their respective field, while providing the local community with high-quality spa or salon services at a substantially discounted rate."

To open the newly expanded Bridgeview campus, and share the space with the broader community  Tricoci University will host a ribbon cutting ceremony on April 21st at 10:00 am. Each guest in attendance will be entered into a raffle for the chance to win complimentary skin care consultation and signature facial to celebrate the grand opening.

For students interested in attending the Bridgeview campus, the cosmetology and esthetics programs both offer full-time and part-time curriculums, while the barbering and teacher training programs only offer a part-time experience. For more information on the new Bridgeview campus and the services available there, visit the Salon Services page on the Tricoci University website.

About Tricoci University of Beauty Culture

Tricoci University of Beauty Culture is a premier beauty education provider with 16 locations throughout Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Tricoci University is focused on producing salon-ready graduates who are prepared for successful careers in the beauty industry. Founded by international beauty industry leader Mario Tricoci, Tricoci University is developing a new type of beauty professional by using innovative teaching methods, an interactive learning platform, and upscale facilities. All guest services are provided by students under the supervision of licensed instructors. For more information about Tricoci University of Beauty Culture please visit www.tricociuniversity.edu .

SOURCE Tricoci University of Beauty Culture
Mumbai:

After a year-long winning spree in local bodies elections, the BJP on Thursday suffered a setback in the Nanded civic polls, home turf of Congress leader Ashok Chavan, whose party bagged 69 of the 81 seats.

The BJP managed to win just six seats in the Nanded-Waghala Municipal Corporation (NWMC) while Shiv Sena won just 1 seat. The counting on four seats got delayed as the (VVPAT) machines along with the Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) were used.

Chavan, who is the state Congress chief, attributed the partys win to non-tampering of EVMs and said that the BJPs return journey has started.

The return journey for Congress in Maharashtra has begun. Ashok Chavan preponderates #BJP in Nanded MC elections.Cong wipes out #BJP.

JaiHo pic.twitter.com/GjEOtvzprT  Maharashtra Congress (@INCMaharashtra) October 12, 2017

According to the figures released by the State Election Commission of Maharashtra (SECM), of the 77 seats, the Congress won 69, followed by the BJP that bagged six seats. The Shiv Sena just about managed to open its account with one seat. An independent candidate also won a seat.

Todays results have proven that the return journey of the BJP has started from Maharashtra. Our ground work in Nanded ensured that there was no tampering of EVMs, which led to our victory, Chavan told reporters here after taking part in the victory celebrations outside the Mumbai Congress office.

He said the BJP had poached five to six corporators, but all of them lost.

There is severe discontent among the people due to high fuel prices, farmers suicides and troubles caused to cultivators due to faulty loan waiver system. People have understood the hollow claims made by the chief minister (Devendra Fadnavis), Chavan said.

The leader of Opposition in the Legislative Council and NCP leader Dhananjay Munde said his party was satisfied that fascist forces have been shown their place.

This result is a proof that people are fed up with the BJP-led Centre and state government. We are satisfied that fascist forces have been destroyed, shown their place and a secular party has won, Munde said.

NCP spokesperson Nawab Malik said the Modi wave has subsided and that people have rejected the saffron partys call of coming to power across the nation.

The BJP claims it is a party with a difference. But it indulged in every possible malpractice in Nanded civic polls, including using money power and government machinery. Yet, they were rejected, he said.

Maharashtra Labour Minister Sambhaji Patil Nilangekar, who was in-charge of the partys poll machinery in Nanded, claimed that the BJPs vote share rose from 3 per cent in 2012 to 19 per cent this time around.

Known for his outspoken nature, BJPs new ally and Maharashtra Swabhiman Paksha (MSP) leader Narayan Rane advised the BJP leadership to do introspection on why it fared so bad despite the chief minister holding many election rallies in the run-up to the Nanded civic polls.

He, however, dismissed the argument that the Nanded civic poll results would have an impact on the 2019 Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.

The Nanded civic body has been ruled by the Congress, since it came into existence two decades ago.

The BJP won 12 of the 16 civic bodies in Maharashtra, for which polls were held this year, expanding its footprint in the states urban pockets. It had made inroads into traditional Congress strongholds and also those of partner Shiv Sena.

In the Nanded-Waghala Municipal Corporation (NWMC), the party-wise strength is as follows: Congress 41, Shiv Sena 14, AIMIM 11, NCP 10, independents 3 and BJP 2.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Photo: (Photo : Instagram: @emrata)

By posting a picture of Instagram her breastfeeding, she welcomed her latest bundle of joy into the world. The 29-year-old model Emily Ratajkowski posted a picture of the new baby Sylvester breastfeeding with the title "Belle Kid" on Wednesday.

By posting personal images after, on 8 March, Emily Ratajkowski gave birth to Sylvester, her first child, with her husband, Sebastian Bear-McClard. "Apollo Bear, Sylvester joined us on the side of the ground. On the surreal, lovely, loving, and loving morning of my life, Sly came on 3/8/21, "Rataykovsky has written.

The new mom was honest about her embryo. Her new baby bump on Instagram and her famous Halloween maternity shoot from Demi Moore's Vanity Fair was also rebuilt.

She revealed the baby's news, taking a snapshot of the little one's breastfeeding and then posting her pictures at work. She wears an oxygen mask in some photos, and in others, she enjoys Sylvester's first couple of moments with him.

READ: Gwyneth Paltrow's Daughter Roasts Her Morning Routine



In October, Emily Ratajkowski revealed that she and Vogue's digitally covered actor and producer Bear-McClard expected to share their bare images during their childhood.

At the time of their pregnancy announcement, Emily did not disclose her baby's sex, simply saying: "I cannot wait until I see who you are."

However, Ratajkowski said before that she didn't want to reveal: the sex of her offspring. Ratajkowski said in an essay last October that her kid is unable to stick to specific sex stereotypes.

She added that at the time, she and Bear-McClard said to friends and families that "we won't know the sex until our kid is 18 and that then they are going to let us know." She called Sylvester her "beautiful baby" in her latest Instagram post.

The lavish New York Baby Shower in Bear-McClard and Ratajkowski celebrated their imminent parenthood in February.

ALSO READ: Dax Reveals How Kristen Bell Explains Sex To Their Daughters

Model and Mother Emily Ratajkowski

The American parents of Emily O'Hara Ratajkowski, Professor Katleen (Balgley), and the painter, John David Ratajkowski, came to life in London, England. Their descendants are British, German, Polish, and Jewish. Emily's been brought up outside San Diego in Encinitas, California. She traveled a lot to Ireland and Mallorca, and she even spent some of her childhood.

Emily began modeling at the age of 14 and was "Ford Models" signed. After a year at UCLA, where she studied fine art, she focused on becoming a model. She became known as a fashion model after shooting with Tony Duran. She also appeared in the music video "Blurred Lines," released by Robin Thicke.

As an actress and a mistress of Ben Affleck's character in the girl's thriller, she played "Tasha" at the "Nickelodeon" show, iCarly. She also appeared in the Entourage film and played in the musical drama We Are Your Friends and Zac Efron.

READ MORE: Emma Stone Gives Birth to First Baby with Dave McCary



After a few weeks of dating, Emily Ratajkowski tied the knot to Sebastian Bear-McClard, her boyfriend in New York. She shocked her fans. Now the happy couple revealed they are living with their firstborn child.

Although many think that she has jumped into marriagethe couple has been on trial with Jeff Magid, the I Feel Pretty star-their love goes on a long time.
Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], April 19 (ANI): Streets wore a deserted look in Mumbai following the imposition of Section 144 in the entire state by the Maharashtra government in an attempt to curb the spread of the coronavirus.



To prevent the COVID-19 surge in the state, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Tuesday imposed Section 144 starting from 14 April.

The prohibitory order will be effective from 8 pm on Wednesday till 7 am on 1 May. During this period, only essential services will be allowed, the Chief Minister announced.

Under the new guidelines, all establishments, public places, activities will remain closed in the state. Only essential services will be exempted, and their operations to be unrestricted.

The guidelines stated that cinema halls, theatres, auditoriums, amusement parks, gyms, sports complexes will remain closed till Section 144 is imposed in the state.

On April 18, as many as 68,631 fresh COVID-19 cases and 503 deaths were reported from Maharashtra in the last 24 hours the highest in the state so far since the pandemic broke out last year. (ANI)


Campaign finance reports showed Giannoulias had $2.1 million in his campaign fund at the start of April, compared to $604,000 for Hastings and $428,236 for Valencia. Dowell, who announced her candidacy earlier this month, had $67,881 on April 1 and has since added $40,500.
WASHINGTON, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland invites America's small businesses and minority educational institutions to participate in its Small Business Connection virtual meeting from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, May 4. Participants will learn how to do business with NASA Glenn.

"At NASA, we recognize that small businesses are facing unprecedented challenges due to the pandemic. Opportunities like this one can help boost small businesses' future success," said Glenn A. Delgado, associate administrator of NASA's Office of Small Business Programs.

NASA Glenn entrance at night Credit: NASA

During the event, participants will meet procurement points of contact and find out about contracting opportunities in areas such as:

research and development

manufacturing

construction and facilities support services

engineering, computer, and administrative services

scientific and technical consulting

Dr. Marla E. Perez-Davis, Glenn's director, will give opening remarks, and Glenn's 2020 and 2019 Small Business Industry Award Winners will be announced.

"While we're facing unique challenges, NASA Glenn's first Small Business Connections virtual event is designed to empower and educate small business owners every step of the way," said Eunice Adams-Sipp, small business specialist, Office of Small Business Programs at Glenn.

Who Can Register?

This event is open to all vendors large and small who are interested in doing business with NASA, but it may be of particular interest to the following organizations:

Historically Underutilized Business Zone, HUBZone

Women-Owned Small Businesses

Veteran-Owned Small Businesses

Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses

Historically Black Colleges and Universities

Minority-Serving Institutions

To register, visit:

https://t.co/WkMybKOzBx?amp=1

SOURCE NASA

Related Links

http://www.nasa.gov


This Saturday will be the first anniversary of the death of my wife Lynn Faulds Wood. Her passing prompted an amazing response  glowing obituaries, 70,000 tweets of condolence, and more than 400 letters and cards

This Saturday will be the first anniversary of the death of my wife Lynn Faulds Wood.

Her passing prompted an amazing response  glowing obituaries, 70,000 tweets of condolence, and more than 400 letters and cards.

But what many of those kind people still dont know is that, ironically, she died of a disease she was trying to warn other people about.

Not the bowel cancer, which she was diagnosed with when our son Nick was just three years old and afterwards spent years campaigning about on TV.

No, Lynn suffered a stroke caused by a disease of which few people have heard. A disease with the hard-to-remember name of antiphospholipid syndrome (APS).

APS, otherwise known as Hughes syndrome or sticky blood, is an autoimmune disease predominantly affecting women.

It triggers the immune system to produce abnormal antibodies. This in turn makes the blood platelets clump together, causing clots, strokes and heart attacks.

The condition is implicated in one in five deep vein thromboses (DVTs), one in five strokes suffered by the under-45s, and one in five recurrent miscarriages.

It was discovered by a British expert, Professor Graham Hughes, almost 40 years ago and is treatable. However, many doctors still dont seem to recognise the symptoms, as Lynns case sadly demonstrates.

The result? Far too many people are needlessly dying. This must change.

Lynn, who survived skin cancer as well as bowel cancer, learned of APS after making a documentary series for ITV called The Ladykillers. Among the conditions she featured was lupus  another autoimmune disease affecting healthy tissue and from which her mother, Betty, had died.

Professor Hughes is a world expert on lupus and during years of treating patients suffering from it, he discovered the syndrome now known as APS.

Lynn suffered a stroke caused by a disease of which few people have heard. A disease with the hard-to-remember name of antiphospholipid syndrome (APS). APS, otherwise known as Hughes syndrome or sticky blood, is an autoimmune disease predominantly affecting women. The pair are pictured above together as broadcasters

Professor Hughes and Lynn became friends and years later, long after his sticky blood breakthrough, Lynn pledged to raise awareness of the problem.

She discussed making a documentary about APS and mentioned it as often as she could in media interviews. But it was some time later before she realised she was a victim, too.

In 2016, we had been on a wonderful holiday in Argentina  a sentimental journey for me, as 34 years earlier I had spent two months there covering the Falklands War for the BBCs Newsnight programme.

Shortly after the long flight home, Lynn developed chest pains. A locum GP at our surgery diagnosed pneumonia.

A few days later, Lynn complained about a pain in her leg. She told another locum she thought she had thrombosis  a blood clot.

The doctor measured her leg to check for thrombosis swelling and said there was nothing to worry about. Two days later, Lynn still had leg pain. Her fears of thrombosis did not go away but a doctor at a local hospital told her it wasnt thrombosis or pneumonia  just muscle strain.

It wasnt until May, six weeks after first becoming ill, and by which time she was limping badly, that Lynn saw our own GP, who immediately sent her for blood tests, an X-ray and a CT scan.

In 2016, we had been on a wonderful holiday in Argentina  a sentimental journey for me, as 34 years earlier I had spent two months there covering the Falklands War for the BBCs Newsnight programme

These revealed my wife had been right all along. She had blood clots in her legs and lung.

A professor of thrombosis and haematology at a leading London hospital later told Lynn: They could have killed you.

In conversations with Professor Hughes, and after research of her own, Lynn decided she had APS.At certain stages, she was prescribed heparin and warfarin, used to thin blood to avoid clots.

We will never know if APS was inherited from her mother  one in five lupus sufferers also has sticky blood and it can run in the family. We will never know either what impact, if any, the misdiagnosis had on the eventual outcome.

What we do know is that for the next four years Lynn displayed many of the APS symptoms that people should look out for.

She sometimes lost her balance and had two nasty falls. Balance problems and dizziness are common with APS and are caused by blood clots to the brain starving it of oxygen and nutrients.

So it seems that although we didnt know it then, Lynn had blood clots on the brain as well as in her lung and legs.

Brainwave activity is also altered by APS. It is thought the antibodies cause tiny clots or a mild inflammatory reaction in the brain cells. This can cause memory and concentration problems, both of which Lynn suffered from.

I just want my brain back, she would say. She would wake in the middle of the night with a headache  another APS symptom.

Her toes and fingertips became cold  yet another symptom  and her toes turned red and purple and became painful. This was ischaemia, where blood flow to the tissues is restricted. In Lynns case, the clotting meant blood was not reaching her extremities.

In January 2017, she was admitted to St Thomas Hospital in London, where over five days she was given 30 hours of iloprost, a sort of medical dynamite that was pumped into her body to open up her arteries and save her toes.

It had limited success, but Lynn was never able to wear fashionable shoes again.

She was also advised to avoid anything with a lot of vitamin K, such as avocado, broccoli, sprouts and cabbage, as it could diminish the effect of the warfarin. The drug works by interfering with how the liver uses vitamin K  too much vitamin K can cause blood clots.

Lynn also had to check, often daily, her bloods consistency.

In December 2018 she was put on hydroxychloroquine, which made her depressed and tearful  highly unusual for someone who was optimistic and cheerful.

An MRI scan later confirmed damage to her brain. APS may have affected some nerve endings, and would explain the headaches.

Then, a few months before she died, Lynn felt a burning feeling under her chest, like acid reflux. An X-ray pointed to a heart problem.

Thirty to 50 per cent of people with APS suffer heart valve disease. It is thought that antibodies associated with APS form on the valves and cause scarring.

Despite all this, doctors said Lynn was managing her illness well. At the last test before her death, her blood consistency was described by our GP as perfect.

So although her health was not great, we had no reason to think she would lose her life  until the stroke that night a year ago.

The doctors told us it had been caused by a massive bleed on the brain. Apparently, warfarin can make the blood so thin, this can be the result  a drug meant to save her led to her death.

Yet another tragic irony: two hours before collapsing, Lynn and I had been clapping the NHS outside our home.

After being taken to Charing Cross Hospital, she thanked staff for helping her, then lost consciousness. Eight hours later she died with me, our son Nick and his wife Lise at her bedside.

We do not want to criticise anyone who tried to help Lynn. We feel sure everyone did their best. We just wish we all, many NHS staff included, knew more about the dreadful disease.

To find out more about APS contact the Graham Hughes International Charity hello@ghicworld.org or phone: 020 3389 9333. You can make a donation at ghicworld.org
At Mayor Lori Lightfoots request, Gov. J.B. Pritzker is deploying 125 Illinois National Guard troops to Chicago on Tuesday in anticipation of a verdict in the trial of the former Minneapolis police officer charged with killing George Floyd last summer.

The Guard members will perform a limited mission that includes helping Chicago police manage street closures, according to the governors office.

The troops from the Guards 33rd Military Police Battalion are specially trained in riot control but will not interfere with peaceful protesters exercising their First Amendment rights, the governors office said Monday.

Sign up for The Spin to get the top stories in politics delivered to your inbox weekday afternoons.

Pritzker also has directed the Illinois State Police to send additional troopers to support the Chicago Police Department.

It is critical that those who wish to peacefully protest against the systemic racism and injustice that holds back too many of our communities continue to be able to do so, Pritzker said in a statement. Members of the Guard and the Illinois State Police will support the city of Chicagos efforts to protect the rights of peaceful protesters and keep our families safe.

The Guard and the state police played a similar role last spring during protests over the death of Floyd, who died after Officer Derek Chauvin held him down with his knee on his neck for several minutes. Pritzker in late May and early June sent 375 Guard members to Chicago and another 250 to the suburbs in the wake of unrest.

A jury began deliberating Monday in Chauvins trial. The 45-year-old former officer faces charges of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

The Chicago Police Department has been on a heightened state of alert in recent days due to the release of video of the fatal police shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo last week. The departments preparation has included specialized units being readied for large demonstrations or unrest and the cancellation of days off.

Story continues

Sources said some police units, including detective teams, will continue to have their days off canceled for the time being. A Chicago police spokesman referred all inquiries to Lightfoots office. A spokesperson for her office has said the safeguards in place were out of an abundance of caution.

The Cook County states attorneys office was seeking volunteers from within its ranks to work in bond court and the felony review unit in the coming days, according to a source with knowledge of the situation. The extra prosecutors would be on hand in case the city sees unrest that leads to a sudden increase in incoming cases.

Chicago Tribunes Jeremy Gorner and Megan Crepeau contributed.

dpetrella@chicagotribune.com
Winnipeggers concerned about the situation in Myanmar are invited to participate in a silent prayer walk on Tuesday.

Winnipeggers concerned about the situation in Myanmar are invited to participate in a silent prayer walk on Tuesday.

The walk, which is being organized by members of the Christian, Buddhist and Muslim communities  the three main religions in Myanmar  starts at 11 a.m. at the Upper Fort Garry gate at the corner of Broadway and Main Street and will end at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

In addition to prayers, the walk will feature a drum song, short speeches explaining the situation in Myanmar and an invitation to sign a letter to the federal government asking it to do more to stop the killing in that country.

Myanmar's military seized control of the nation in February. Mass protests since the takeover have repeatedly met with deadly response from military forces.

The walk will end with the hanging of strings of colourful origami cranes as a symbol of hope. The cranes are being provided by members of the Manitoba Buddhist Temple.

Co-organizer Thomas Novak, a member of the Roman Catholic Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, said the walk is a chance to show people in Myanmar that Canadians remember them.

"A friend in Myanmar emailed me and said the world has forgotten us," he said. "We want to show people in that country we havent."

Novak said ge also hopes the walk will be a voice for people from Myanmar who live in Winnipeg but are afraid to speak out.

"They are afraid for their families back home if they say anything," he said. "We are doing it on their behalf."

The walk is also a way for people of faith to show, "We are all one family, and when one is hurting we all hurt," Novak said.

Novak said the Canadian government is "being very timid" in its response.

Do you appreciate the extensive faith coverage by the Free Press? Become a supporter of the Religion in the News project! Your contribution of $10, $25 or more can help us keep offering trusted coverage of faith in Manitoba. Become a supporter Click here to learn more about the project.

"It should be putting pressure on the military to stop the killings, to open up space for democracy," he said.

Sensei Tanis Moore of the Manitoba Buddhist Temple says the walk is an opportunity to underscore how the Buddha was a social activist who promoted equality, inclusivity and fairness for all.

By walking and praying, participants can also show loving kindness for others, she said, adding, "When we recognize how our own health and welfare is tied up with global health and wellness, we can see the benefits to spreading and sharing loving-kindness."

Everyone is welcome to attend, from any faith or no faith, Novak said. Those who want to join the walk must wear masks, and physical distancing measures will be employed.

People who cant make it to the walk but want to show their concern for the people of Myanmar are invited to light a candle and say a prayer at home at that time, Novak said, and to also contact their member of Parliament.

faith@freepress.mb.ca
Papua New Guineas first post-independence leader, Michael Somare, died of pancreatic cancer on February 26, aged 84. Somare was the most important political figure in PNGs history, having served as prime minister from 1975 to 1980, 1982 to 1985 and 2002 to 2011.

His political career and legacy serve as another demonstration of the abject failure of bourgeois nationalism. Contrary to the various promises made by Somare and his colleagues in 1975 and afterward, the independent capitalist state in PNG has failed to advance the economic interests and social and democratic rights of the working class and rural masses. Still dominated by Australian imperialism, the countrys people remain among the most impoverished in the world, while PNGs extensive natural wealth, including minerals and energy, continues to be plundered for profit by transnational corporations.

Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Michael Somare and his wife, Lady Veronica Somare.(Wikipedia/Public Domain)

Somare was born in 1936, to a father who worked as a police officer with the Australian colonial force. The PNG half-island had been under full Australian control since 1914, when Canberra seized on the eruption of World War I to take over the German-controlled northern part of the territory.

Somare inherited his fathers chiefly status within his East Sepik-based tribe in northern PNG. He trained as a teacher and spent seven years working in primary and secondary schools before becoming a radio and newspaper journalist.

He became active in politics after 1963 when authorities decided to bring down salary levels to what it was estimated the economy of the Territory could afford (in the words of one Australian official). This involved racist distinctions between pay rates for indigenous blacks and expatriate whites within the public service. The measure saw new local public service workers paid about half what white Australians were paid for doing the same work. Existing public service workers like Somare had their wages permanently frozen, with no possibility of raises through promotion.

With the new salary scheme it became practically impossible for any Papua New Guinean to move into one of the more comfortable houses, Somare explained in his 1975 autobiography. There was probably no other single issue that made Papua New Guineans more aware of the injustices of colonialism. [Sana: An Autobiography of Michael Somare, p. 43]

It is telling that the origins of the nationalist movement in Papua New Guinea lie not in a concern for the plight of the countrys masses under imperialist rule, but rather in the effort of a small and relatively privileged layer, including members of the chiefly elite, to advance its social and economic interests.

There was never a mass anti-colonial movement in PNG. Somare and his colleagues played an important role in blocking the entry of the masses into politics, fearing a challenge to their class interests and a disruption to their relationship with the Australian authorities. Somare occasionally drew the ire of the most reactionary and racist settler layers, but Canberra saw him as a trusted guarantor of Australian imperialist interests. This is why Somare was never imprisoned or harassed by colonial authorities in the pre-independence period.

His political career leading up to independence consisted of manoeuvring within the pseudo-parliamentary structure created by the Australian authorities as they prepared to hand over formal control. By the mid-1960s, previous Australian imperialist proposals to annexe PNG as a new state or territory had been abandoned. World imperialism was forging a new form of exploitative relationships with the previously colonised territories and the Australian government feared international censure if it was not seen to be making preparations for PNG independence.

A flag and national anthem were invented in 1961. Australia commissioned a World Bank survey of the territorys economy in 1965 (the greatest hopes in the mineral sector rest on general geological indications that the Territory, and western Papua in particular, may contain major petroleum fields, the report noted). It established the University of Papua New Guinea and Institute of Technology in 1967, with the express aim of training an indigenous ruling elite. A related initiative in 1964 saw the creation of a House of Assembly based on a restricted franchise, limited powers and reserved seats for white expatriates.

Somare won a seat on this body in 1968, after rising to prominence through his work in the public service trade unions. He was elected together with a group of fellow aspiring public servants who in 1967 had formed Pangu Pati (Papua and New Guinea Unity Party). Pangu was not a political party in the usually understood senseit had no mass membership, no clear program beyond aspiring to home rule for the territory, and its House of Assembly caucus lacked stability, as members variously joined or left the group. Somare nevertheless came to head a group that, as he described it, constituted a loyal opposition to the administration.

The establishment of formal independence

After the 1972 elections, Somare was able to muster a majority in the House of Assembly and was appointed chief minister.

This coincided with the election in Australia of Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, who accelerated the preparations for independence. Whitlam was seeking to fashion a fresh face for Australian capitalism on the world stage amid growing denunciations of its White Australia immigration regime and racist treatment of the Aboriginal population. Whitlam saw PNG independence as a means of maintaining Australian hegemony in the South Pacific. Labor, he explained, had commitments, first, to our own national security, secondly to a secure, united and friendly Papua New Guinea.

Somare and his colleagues repeatedly expressed concerns that Whitlam was moving too quickly and suggested an extended home rule period before independence.

Somares record as chief minister from 1972 to 1975 underscores his conservative politics and commitment to the status quo. On the question of PNGs post-independence constitution, for example, he emulated Australias anti-democratic constitution, even retaining Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. He dismissed student demonstrations that broke out in Port Moresby when the constitution was announced, arguing that retaining the British monarchy was aimed at ensuring stability.

Ideologically, Somares Pangu Pati had been formed only on the basis of some vague sympathies for Tanzanias first post-colonial leader Julius Nyerere, together with an idealised promotion of the Papua New Guinean village.

After becoming chief minister, Somare issued Eight Aims in December 1972. These included a rapid increase in the proportion of the economy under the control of Papua New Guineans  a more equal distribution of economic benefits including equalisation of income among people  decentralisation of economic activity and an emphasis on agricultural development [and] a more self-reliant economy less dependent upon imported goods and services.

These aims, one historian explained, quickly became the cornerstone not only of economic planning but also a sort of instant government-sponsored ideology  they acquired, or at least the government tried very hard to have them acquire, an almost religious sanctity. [Don Woolford, Papua New Guinea: Initiation and Independence, p. 220]

After independence, the Eight Aims were effectively dropped, along with associated talk within ruling circles of pursuing a non-capitalist, egalitarian village-based economic development. This had been nothing but a populist cover for Somares pursuit of a capitalist economic program, subordinated to the diktats of Australia and the US.

The first post-independence budget was unveiled by Somares finance minister, businessman Julius Chan, who declared that self-reliance now meant fiscal self-reliance, adding that easy days are over, with lower than expected Australian aid requiring austerity measures.

This set the stage for the subsequent domination of the PNG economy by transnational corporations that continues to the present day.

Somare in office

After taking office in nominally independent PNG, Somare headed a government that remained tied by a thousand strings to Australian imperialism. Canberras so-called aid funding comprised 56 percent of total PNG government spending in 1975, and by 1985, a decade after the end of colonial rule, this had only slightly declined to 33 percent.

During Somares first two terms in office (1975-1980, 1982-1985), very little, if anything, changed for the vast majority of PNGs population. There was no significant redistribution of wealth, change in land ownership, or shift in economic policy.

The first years of Papua New Guineas independence coincided with the collapse of the nationalist program of economic regulation and import substitution based on tariff protection that had been widely promoted and adopted in former colonial countries. From the late 1970s and 1980s, governments in the so-called Third World instead sought to integrate their economies into the capitalist world market by welcoming foreign investment on exploitative terms. This approach saw PNG transformed into a lucrative source of minerals and energy for many of the worlds largest transnational corporations.

Australian investments were protected after PNG independence, most importantly including Rio Tintos Panguna copper and gold mine that was opened in 1972 in the island province of Bougainville. The mine, one of the worlds largest copper sources, caused widespread environmental damage and triggered a separatist civil conflict in Bougainville that has not finally been resolved despite an end to fighting.

Just four years after independence, dissatisfaction with the government triggered student protests and workers strikes in Port Moresby. Tribal conflicts spiralled in some regions, including the Highlands. Extreme social inequality and lack of decent housing in the capital city also saw an increase in violent crime. Somare responded by declaring a state of emergency over much of the country in 1979, and threatening to deploy the military to crack down on strikes and demonstrations. This was only the first of many states of emergency, with the military repeatedly deployed in the Highlands and other parts of the country in the 1980s.

Somares foreign policy was squarely in line with US-Australia Cold War imperatives. His loyalty to the Western powers found one expression in his enthusiasm for the British monarchy. After independence he accepted a seat on the Queens Privy Council and a knighthood (afterwards insisting he be referred to as Sir Michael). Somare also sought to appease the neighbouring Indonesian military junta that had come to power in 1965-66 through an anti-communist bloodbath. Somare endorsed Indonesias brutal invasion and occupation of East Timor from 1975 and welcomed the Indonesian dictator Suharto to Port Moresby in 1979.

PNG politics increasingly became dominated by unstable cliques of capitalist politicians and independents based on narrow parochial appeals in a country fragmented by hundreds of language or wontok groups and motivated by the crumbs of office and personal aggrandisement. To provide some small measure of stability, governments formed on the basis of unwieldy and shaky alliances have been protected by a 30-month period of grace when no-confidence votes are not permitted.

Somare was installed for a third term as prime minister in 2002 on the basis of a coalition of 13 parties and 20 independent MPs. His final term in office (2002-2010) saw greater friction with Canberra. Somare regarded the emergence of China as a significant power in the region as an opportunity to gain financial assistance as well as some leverage with Australian imperialism.

Somare initially agreed to the Australian governments Orwellian-named Enhanced Cooperation Package, $A1 billion neo-colonial program aimed at inserting Australian police, legal officials, economists and other state officials into key positions of power in Port Moresby. The program was modelled on the 2003 Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), an Australian military-police takeover of that Pacific country.

By 2006-2007, however, Somare withdrew support for the operation, in part because of Australian government provocations on PNG soil during its illegal vendetta against Solomon Islands attorney general Julian Moti. Somare won a national election in 2007 amid threats of an Australian military intervention and regime change operation. In 2011, however, his continued orientation to Beijing under the banner of a Look North foreign and economic policy saw the Australian government endorse his illegal ousting by political rival Peter ONeill.

Somares legacy

Somares domestic record is marked by the failure of successive governments, his own included, to alleviate the enormous poverty and social inequality that wracks PNG.

The country exports cash cropsincluding coffee, cocoa, coconut and palm oilas well as minerals such as nickel, copper and gold, and also oil and gas. The aggregated value of these exported resources since independence would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars. This has not flowed, however, to ordinary Papua New Guineans but to many of the worlds largest mineral and energy firms, mostly Australian and Americanincluding ExxonMobil, Chevron, Barrick Gold, BHP Billiton, Newcrest Mining, and Rio Tinto.

A tiny elite layer within PNG has accumulated significant personal fortunes, Somare and his family among them. In 2011, it emerged that he and his children owned a number of Australian beachfront houses and luxury apartments. The former prime minister was repeatedly accused of corruption, including accepting multi-million dollar corporate bribes though this was always denied and not proved in court.

For most people, so-called capitalist development after independence has been a disaster. Many mining and energy extracting operations have produced environmental crisesmost notoriously at BHPs Ok Tedi copper and gold mine, where waste chemicals were dumped for more than a decade in the 1980s and 1990s, with more than 50,000 people affected by the poisoning of the Fly River eco-system.

The country remains among the worlds most impoverished. Average life expectancy is just 65 years. Diseases including polio, malaria, and HIV-AIDS ravage the country, contributing to an annual death toll of more than 15,000 children, or one in every 13 children. Around three-quarters of the 8.5 million people still depend largely on subsistence agriculture. Just over half have access to electricity, and only a small minority access reliable power.

Within PNG villages and towns, there are numerous serious social problems, including alcoholism and family violence. Around one-third of the population is out of school and unemployed, and only 62 percent of adults are literate. Within the cities and towns, young people are afflicted by mass unemployment, lack of basic facilities, and a shortage of educational opportunities.

It is a damning indictment of Somare and the entire venal capitalist class he represented that they have proven unable to meet the democratic aspirations and basic social needs of the vast majority of the population.

A new generation of Papua New Guinean workers and youth will in the next period turn toward a new political perspective, based on socialist internationalism and Leon Trotskys theory of Permanent Revolution. Workers in the country confront the same exploitation, often by the same transnational corporations, as their fellow workers throughout the Asia-Pacific and internationally. A unified struggle with workers internationallyabove all in the Pacific states, Australia and Indonesianeeds to be based on the fight for a government of the working class and rural masses that will establish genuine democracy and end neo-colonial oppression through socialist policies directed to the social needs of the population.
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Carlil Pittman knows trauma firsthand.

As the co-founder of the Chicago-based youth organization GoodKidsMadCity-Englewood, he grieved the loss of Delmonte Johnson, a young community activist, more than two years ago to the very thing the teen fought fiercely against: gun violence.

Hes also been angered and frustrated by the onslaught of stories of Black Americans killed at the hands of police across the nation throughout the past year.

First, there was Breonna Taylor, a Black woman who was fatally shot in her Louisville, Kentucky, home last March. Then there was George Floyd, whose Memorial Day killing by a Minneapolis officer sparked global protests. Just this week, Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, was fatally shot by a police officer during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota  just minutes from where Floyd died. And on Friday, Pittman spent much of the day planning a demonstration with other Chicago organizers to protest the police killing of 13-year-old Adam Toledo, who was Latino.

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Were constantly turning on the TV, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and seeing people that look like us who are getting murdered with no repercussions, said Pittman, an organizer for A New Deal for Youth. Its not normal to see someone get murdered by the click of a video on your phone, yet it has become the norm for our people, our Black and brown communities.

Many Black Americans are facing a collective sense of grief and trauma that has grown more profound with the loss of each life at the hands of police in America. Some see themselves and their children reflected in the victims of police violence, heightening the grief they feel. That collective mourning is a great concern to experts and medical professionals who consider the intersectionality of racism and various forms of trauma impacting communities of color a serious public health crisis facing America.

The racial trauma impacting Black Americans isnt new. Its built upon centuries of oppressive systems and racist practices that are deeply embedded within the fabric of the nation. Racial trauma is a unique form of identity-related trauma that people of color experience due to racism and discrimination, according to Dr. Steven Kniffley, a licensed psychologist and coordinator for Spalding Universitys Collective Care Center in Louisville, Kentucky.

A lot of cities across the country are realizing that racial trauma is a public health issue, Kniffley said, citing health concerns such as increased rates of suicide among Black men, a life expectancy gap and post-traumatic stress disorder. Theres no other way that we can explain that except for the unique experiences Black and brown folks have based on their identity, and more specifically, when they encounter racism and discrimination.

Kniffley said each generation of Black Americans since slavery has faced its own unique iteration of racism and discrimination, which has manifested into a form of intergenerational trauma.

Weve essentially handed down 10 or 15 generations worth of boxes of trauma that have yet to be unpacked, and thats whats contributing to a lot of those biological and mental health related issues that were having, Kniffley said, noting the trauma extends beyond police violence.

In a 2018 study examining the mental health impact of police killings on Black Americans, researchers found exposure to police killings of unarmed Black Americans had adverse effects on mental health among Black people. Nearly half of Black Americans who responded said they were exposed to one or more police killings of unarmed Black Americans in their state of residence  either through word of mouth or the media.

That effect was found only in Black (Americans), said Dr. Atheendar S. Venkataramani, one of the authors of the study and a physician at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center in Philadelphia.

Rashad Robinson, the president of Color of Change, said the trauma has also created generations of Black Americans who have valid mistrust of law enforcement agencies. And many are experiencing further mental anguish while watching the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who pressed his knee into Floyds neck.

We have a whole set of folks with badges and guns who are supposed to protect and serve and they do neither, Robinson said. In order to survive, we have to integrate into a system in a structure which is brutal  brutal to our lives, our dignity, our health. It has collective and long-term impact.

While much of the media spotlight on police killings impacting Black Americans is focused on Black men, experts say its important to also highlight misogynoir  misogyny directed toward Black women. Black women experience misogynoir in various aspects of their lives but also in connection with police violence. The #SayHerName campaign was launched in 2014 to bring awareness to the lesser-known stories of Black women and girls who have been victimized by police. The hashtag flourished again after Taylors death, prompting accusations of delayed justice in her case.

As a mom, Im constantly in fear for my son and my heart is broken by this country over and over again, said Aimee Allison, who leads She the People. It really calls into question how Black women in particular, whove sacrificed so much to serve this country in terms of democracy and bringing voters to the polls, upholding a vision of peace and justice for everyone else, how much more can we take?

Chicago resident Erendira Martinez said the Little Village community, a Chicago neighborhood with a majority Latino population, is also hurting, not just from Toledos killing but also from the trauma of losing other children to gun violence.

On Thursday night, just hours after the video of Toledos death was released, a 17-year-old girl was shot and killed in the same neighborhood. Martinezs own teenage daughter was shot and killed in Little Village in December.

We had just buried my daughter, and a month later, were burying this kid that grew up with my daughter, she said. No mother should bury their child.

Some community organizations are working to address the trauma, said Aswad Thomas, chief of organizing for Alliance for Safety and Justice, who runs Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice, a network of more than 46,000 crime survivors from mostly Black and Latino communities. The group is releasing its first-ever National Crime Victims Agenda next week to address collective trauma.

The tragic truth is that police violence is the most horrific, visible symptom of a larger systemic problem of how our public safety system is designed and we need to address that head-on, Thomas said. But while also investing in the mom and pops who are on the front lines to violence, hosting the community vigils and interventions groups.

Uzodinma Iweala, CEO of The Africa Center, based in New York, said sometimes the thought of what he and so many other Black Americans have experienced is rage-inducing. He thinks of the times he and his brothers have been stopped by police. Or the time his uncle was called a racial slur by an officer. And how in each instance they prayed they would make it out alive  experiences he thinks some white Americans willfully ignore.

Were going to need a real fundamental examination of the roots of what America is, Iweala said. America refuses to acknowledge that America is not a country without the labor of and the blood, sweat and tears of Black people. Until America values those contributions, it will never value Blackness as a life form.

___

Stafford reported from Detroit. She is a national investigative writer with The Associated Press Race and Ethnicity team. Follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Kat__Stafford. Noreen Nasir, a Chicago-based member of the Race and Ethnicity team, and Drew Costley in Arlington, Virginia, contributed.
Canadian evangelicals are decrying a new law that expands access to physician-assisted suicide to people who are sick or disabled but arent dying.

Many of us are quite heartbroken over this, said Derek Ross, the executive director of Christian Legal Fellowship. Were now dealing with a legal system that is making more and more exceptions to the once exception-less principle that you cannot consent to the harm of having your life ended by another person and that all lives are inherently and equally full of worth and value of dignity.

Physician-assisted suicideknown popularly as Medical Assistance in Dying or MAIDhas been legal in Canada since 2016. The law was limited to people who were experiencing what the Criminal Code called a grievous and irremediable medical condition: an illness, disease, or disability that causes enduring physical or psychological pain that cannot be relieved in any way the patient accepts. To be eligible, the patient also had to be dying.

But in March, the government passed an amendment to the Criminal Code, Bill C-7, that removed the criteria that someone must be dying to receive MAID. Canada now allows people who have an illness or disability to have a physician-assisted suicide, even if their death is not imminent. People who are dying no longer have to wait 10 days. Canada also plans to allow MAID for people whose only medical condition is a mental illness.

The law is now presenting death as a medical response to suffering in a wide range of casesnot just when somebody is already dying, but at potentially any stage of their adult life, Ross said. Instead of prioritizing supports to help people to live meaningful lives, weve prioritized ways to make death more accessible. This is a heartbreaking message.

Evangelicals joined Canadians from many religious traditions in protesting the expansion of physician-assisted suicide. In October 2020, shortly after the bill was introduced, more than 150 religious leaders signed a public letter detailing their opposition, with Baptists, Wesleyans, and Pentecostals joining their names with Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Mormon, Jewish, and Muslim leaders.

The most public opposition came from disability organizations. Evangelicals threw their support to those activists, backing their arguments and attempting to raise their visibility.

We were very intentional about that, said David Guretzki, executive vice president and resident theologian at the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC), an organization that represents evangelicals across the country. The public has a reticence to talk about religion, or theyre nervous when religious groups speak up. We thought it was better on this issue in particular for us to allow the voices of disability advocacy groups to speak and for us to come alongside and support them.

The EFC, for example, joined Inclusion Canada, the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, the Disabled Womens Network of Canada, the Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship, and 120 other organizations supporting disability rights in an open letter to the members of Parliament. The letter endorsed the concerns of United Nations human rights experts who wrote that the proposed amendment would violate the Canadian commitment to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

From a disability rights perspective, the UN experts wrote, there is a grave concern that if assisted dying is made available to all persons with a health condition or impairment, regardless of whether they are close to death, a social assumption might follow (or be subtly reinforced) that is better to be dead than to live with a disability. the letter says.

A poll commissioned by the faith-based think tank Cardus showed that about a third of the country enthusiastically supports physician-assisted suicide as a basic human right. Nineteen percent oppose. Forty-eight percent are cautiously supportive, but express concern about potential negative impact on vulnerable Canadians. Despite that, and despite the concerted political effort, Bill C-7 passed the House of Commons last month by a vote of 180149.

Evangelicals arent surprised by the result. Most Christians have come to grips with the fact that we are actually in a pluralistic society in which many of the points of view that they hold are minority perspectives and not majority perspectives, said Ray Pennings, executive vice president of Cardus.

The next political battle, activists say, will be protecting the rights of doctors and other medical professionals who believe it goes against their religious convictions to participate.

The federal law clearly states that no one should be forced to perform a suicide, but Christian doctors may still be required by their regulatory and licensing colleges to either participate or give a referral, depending on their province or territory they live in, according to Larry Worthen, the executive director of the Christian Medical and Dental Association of Canada.

Doctors are living in fear of having a complaint against them and being disciplined, Worthen said. Doctors are already stressed out because of COVID-19 and concern about their patients and overwork, and you add on top of that fear that the next patient who comes in is going to ask for MAID and report them, and the burden just becomes too great.

In Ontario, the countrys most-populous province, the courts have said doctors are required to refer patients to medical procedures like physician-assisted suicide or abortion, even if making the referrals violates the doctors conscience or goes against their religious beliefs.

According to the EFC, its hard to remain optimistic about coming political battles, as the influence of Christian ideas about the value of life decline. About half of Canada identifies as non-religious today, up 30 points in the past 20 years. Only about 20 percent of Canadians attended church at least once a month. But Guretzki said he thinks the situation provides a great opportunity for churches.

Now that weve been pushed out of the center again, much more to the margins, I think were actually closer to what the New Testament church was facing, Guretzki said. I think we have a chance to learn some new lessons about what its like to be a Christian witness when you cant rely on political or cultural influence to get your message across.

For church leaders, this means encouraging Christians to love people well and faithfully testify to Gods grace across political differences while still standing up for the vulnerable.

Our political leaders are not the enemy, said Steven Jones, president of the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches in Canada, a denomination with 500 congregations across the country. For us, theyre the mission field. We love them in the name of Jesus. We need to speak up and let them know there are Canadians that have a different viewpoint.

Jones said hes seen more Christians engaging in Canadian politics in recent years, possibly because of a greater sense of marginalization. While some of the energy is focused on religious liberty, and protecting the rights of Christians in society, he said, there needs to be increased concern about marginal social groups who are told their lives are not particularly valuable, Jones said, such as people with disabilities and the elderly.

We need to be out in the community intentionally coming along and loving people who are marginalized and need the care and love of Jesus, he said.

Experienced advocates are reminding themselves to stay patient and remain faithful in the face of loses. Victoria Veenstra, justice communications coordinator of the Christian Reformed Church in Canada, said that she views advocacy as a spiritual discipline.

When we pin all of our hopes on one specific policy, or we expect a policy to change rapidly, we get really burnt out and discouraged, she said. We want to see justice now. But if we can keep training ourselves to keep moving towards justice in the long-term, faithfully, steadily, Christ is there with us.

Veenstra said its also important to remember that changing the law is not the only way faithful followers of Jesus can speak up for the value of life.

This sucks, she said, but as Christians, we can still come around people and make MAID a less desirable option.
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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Microsoft Access Online Database operates in the same way all other databases do, by saving relevant data collection and allowing you to build links between several things. The links between two separate things in Microsoft Access can either be very easy or super complicated. Microsoft Access database reports and tables show how you can link the relevant information for reporting and analysis.

Once you get your Microsoft Access fields, tables, and links set up, you can generate data entry forms that use that information to save and process your data to produce reports with it. Microsoft Access forms are extremely simple to create with a design tool. And you can use MS Access forms to analyze data entry for users by categorizing related aspects together and hiding aspects they do not want to enter. The Microsoft Access Command Button Wizard also assists you to build easy-to-access buttons for your forms without even knowing how to design Visual basic and macros.

A few significant advantages of working on a database:

Lesser problems and irregularities

Managing the accuracy of the information you need to track reduces the potential for inconsistent values, duplication, and errors. Imagine being able to create a graph or report in Excel that displays an exact representation of your sales or additional key performance indicators.

Enhanced Productivity

You and all the users operating in your database can just change even a single record and all additional relevant things in your database will by default recognize the difference. Find and replace wouldn't significantly detect that a name is spelled in 6 different forms. In a database, there is just one record to change. Every other record linked to it that relates to that customer record will not need a change as they are connected to the same customer. You can even gain access to Cloud Azure VDI to increase your productivity even more!

Control and Protection

Databases allow the users a central location to save, control and secure all their data and information. Microsoft Access comprises the capability to password-protect and encrypts database files to avoid unauthorized access to sensitive information. And with users depending on a database instead of different Excel spreadsheets, they can have higher authority and control over accessing the information.

Better Insight and Recommendations

Probably most essentially, a single source of authenticity in a standardized format suggests that you can get a better insight and make better decisions based on the recommendations by analyzing and reporting your information in a database. Users are primarily used to working with Excel charting. Hence, databases like Microsoft Access can give similar abilities while performing better than Excel with more dominant historical trending, query filtering, and aggregation.



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(TNS)  Apr. 19In an ideal world powered by an ideal economy, extension of and improvements to America's infrastructure would be developer-driven. But the ideal is sometimes outside our grasp.Sometimes, government must be the catalyst. Case in point: the expansion of broadband internet. Within a short drive of Pittsburgh, there are swaths of Western Pennsylvania where the lack of access to technology is profound. Residents are cut off from the kind of connectivity that most consider customary. The result: a land of digital haves and have-nots.President Joe Biden has proposed in his American Jobs Plan an infusion of money that would bridge the divide.While there is bipartisan consensus that something must be done to bring all citizens and businesses into the 21st century, the battle lines are being drawn over the particulars  chief among them, how to fund the initiative. The president wants a boost in the corporate tax rate.De rigueur political wrangling must be set aside in the interests of America's future. Broadband accessibility must be seen for what it is: an essential. The White House has rightly likened expansion of this system to the federal government's 1936 Rural Electrification undertaking, which extended the nation's power grid to rural and poor regions. "Broadband internet is the new electricity," a White House overview stated. "It is necessary for Americans to do their jobs, to participate equally in school learning, health care, and to stay connected." No truer assessment could have been made.There are 30 million Americans without reliable internet access. The president's $100 billion proposal to reach into the country's rural areas with this necessary enhancement of affordable connectivity must be supported by our lawmakers. Without this program, inequality persists and prevails; inequality in access to information and the power born of that information translates to inequality in health and education and economic opportunity.There is no question that broadband must reach every corner of the country. There are, however, other legitimate questions, beginning with a realistic grasp of high-speed internet reach. There is no reliable map of existing broadband coverage. Priority must be given to developing this map. Then, with accurate information in hand, funding should flow. The recipients should be those with shovel-ready projects. This is not the time to engage in lengthy debate over funding preferences for nonprofit/government versus for-profit enterprises.Laying the necessary fiber to connect homes and businesses to high-speed internet is labor- and cost-intensive. It simply cannot be accomplished without the catalytic impact of government funding, coordination and oversight. The bureaucratic red tape that typically gums up progress must be avoided.Universal broadband service can no longer be a goal for the future. It must be a front-burner plan for today. U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, D- Forest Hills, has been a leader on this front. He must muster his political capital to bring naysayers to the table, particularly those who are whistling the same hackneyed tunes about dimming entrepreneurial innovation and empowering big government. Infrastructure improvements  universal service projects  benefit the nation as a whole. They are the reason behind the "united" in the United States of America.
- By Sydnee Gatewood





The Royce International Premier Fund (Trades, Portfolio) disclosed its first-quarter portfolio last week.





The fund, which is part of Chuck Royce (Trades, Portfolio)'s Royce Investment Partners, is managed by Mark Rayner. When picking stocks, the portfolio manager focuses on a concentrated number of "premier" small-cap companies outside the U.S. that have discernible competitive advantages, high returns on invested capital and sustainable, moat-like franchises. He also seeks to identify companies that have notable strengths in industry structure, operational efficiency, financial standing and corporate governance.

In alignment with these criteria, the International Premier Fund established three new positions during the quarter, sold out of three holdings and added to or reduced a number of other existing investments. Notable trades for the three months ended March 31 included new stakes in Learning Technologies Group PLC (LSE:LTG), NICE Information Service Co. Ltd. (XKRX:030190) and discoverIE Group PLC (LSE:DSCV). It also divested of its holdings in TGS-NOPEC Geophysical Co. ASA (OSL:TFS) and Bossard Holding AG (XSWX:BOSN).

Learning Technologies Group

The fund invested in 6.05 million shares of Learning Technologies Group (LSE:LTG), allocating 1.15% of the equity portfolio to the stake. The stock traded for an average price of 1.67 pounds ($2.34) per share during the quarter.

The London-based software company, which offers a wide range of e-learning services and technologies to corporate and government clients, has a market cap of 1.25 billion pounds; its shares closed at 1.69 pounds on Friday with a price-earnings ratio of 70.38, a price-book ratio of 4.64 and a price-sales ratio of 9.33.

The GF Value Line suggests the stock is fairly valued currently based on historical ratios, past performance and future earnings projections.

Story continues

Top Trades of the Royce International Premier Fund

GuruFocus rated Learning Technologies' financial strength 7 out of 10. Although the company has issued approximately 3.43 million pounds in new long-term debt over the past three years, it is still at a manageable level due to adequate interest coverage. The Altman Z-Score of 6.2 indicates the company is in good standing even though assets have been building up at a faster rate than revenue is growing. The return on invested capital is also being eclipsed by the weighted average cost of capital, indicating issues with creating value.

The company's profitability also fared well with a 6 out of 10 rating, driven by an expanding operating margin, strong returns that outperform over half of its competitors and a moderate Piotroski F-Score of 6, which suggests business conditions are stable. Learning Technologies has also recorded a decline in revenue per share over the past 12 months.

The fund holds 0.82% of Learning Technologies' outstanding shares.

NICE Information Service

The International Premier Fund picked up 541,461 shares of NICE Information Service (XKRX:030190), dedicating 1.11% of the equity portfolio to the position. During the quarter, shares traded for an average price of 22,964.2 won ($20.59) each.

The South Korean financial services company, which provides credit information services, has a market cap of 1.46 trillion won; its shares closed at 24,350 won on Friday with a price-earnings ratio of 30.85, a price-book ratio of 5.63 and a price-sales ratio of 3.28.

According to the GF Value Line, the stock is significantly overvalued currently.

Top Trades of the Royce International Premier Fund

The valuation rank of 2 out of 10 aligns with this assessment, especially since the share price and price-sales ratio are approaching 10-year highs.

NICE Information Service's financial strength and profitability were both rated 8 out of 10 by GuruFocus. Boosted by a comfortable level of interest coverage, the robust Altman Z-Score of 10.67 indicates the company is in good standing even though assets are building up at a faster rate than revenue is growing.

The company is also supported by an expanding operating margin, strong returns that outperform a majority of industry peers and a moderate Piotroski F-Score of 5. NICE also has consistent earnings and revenue growth, contributing to its predictability rank of two out of five stars. GuruFocus says companies with this rank return an average of 6% annually over a 10-year period.

Of the gurus invested in NICE Information, the Wasatch International Growth (Trades, Portfolio) Fund has the largest holding with 1.2% of outstanding shares. Royce holds 0.91%.

DiscoverIE Group

The fund established a 1.2 million-share stake in discoverIE Group (LSE:DSCV), giving it 1.02% space in the equity portfolio. The stock traded for an average per-share price of 6.87 pounds during the quarter.

Headquartered in the U.K., the company, which manufactures customer-specific electronic components and solutions, has a market cap of 661.97 million pounds; its shares closed at 7.40 pounds on Friday with a price-earnings ratio of 56.06, a price-book ratio of 3.2 and a price-sales ratio of 1.5.

Based on the GF Value Line, the stock appears to be significantly overvalued currently.

Top Trades of the Royce International Premier Fund

The valuation rank of 2 out of 10 supports this assessment since the share price and price ratio s are all closing in on multiyear highs.

GuruFocus rated discoverIE's financial strength as well as its profitability 6 out of 10. Due to issuing approximately 45.5 million pounds in new long-term debt over the past three years, the company has weak interest coverage. The Altman Z-Score of 3.34, however, indicates it is in good standing even though assets are building up at a faster rate than revenue is growing.

The company has an expanding operating margin as well as strong returns that outperform over half of its competitors. DiscoverIE also has a moderate Piotroski F-Score of 5, but the one-star predictability rank is on watch as a result of revenue per share declining over the past year. According to GuruFocus, companies with this rank return an average of 1.1% annually.

The fund holds 1.34% of discoverIE's outstanding shares.

TGS-NOPEC Geophysical

The International Premier Fund dumped all 1.1 million shares of TGS-NOPEC Geophysical (OSL:TGS), impacting the equity portfolio by -1.57%. The stock traded for an average price of 134.88 krone ($16.23) per share during the quarter.

GuruFocus estimates the fund lost 37.81% on the investment, which was established in the first quarter of 2019.

Top Trades of the Royce International Premier Fund

The Norwegian company, which provides geoscientific data products and services to the oil and gas industry, has a market cap of 14.63 billion krone; its shares closed at 125 krone on Friday with a forward price-earnings ratio of 55.25, a price-book ratio of 1.27 and a price-sales ratio of 4.05.

The GF Value Line suggests the stock is currently modestly undervalued.

Top Trades of the Royce International Premier Fund

The valuation rank of 7 out of 10 also leans toward undervaluation.

TGS-NOPEC Geophysical's financial strength was rated 6 out of 10 by GuruFocus. Although it has debt ratios that are outperforming versus other industry players, the Altman Z-Score of 1.44 warns the company could be at risk of going bankrupt.

The company's profitability fared a bit better, scoring a 7 out of 10 rating even though margins and returns are negative and underperforming a majority of industry peers. The low Piotroski F-Score of 2 also indicates operating conditions are in poor shape. As a result of revenue per share declining over the past five years, the one-star predictability rank is on watch.

The Invesco European Growth Fund (Trades, Portfolio) holds 0.85% of the company's outstanding shares.

Bossard Holding

After reducing its Bossard Holding (XSWX:BOSN) position over several quarters, the fund sold its 76,540 remaining shares, impacting the equity portfolio by -1.44%. Shares traded for an average price of 202.42 Swiss francs ($221.16) each during the quarter.

GuruFocus data shows the International Premier Fund gained an estimated 34.11% on the investment.

Top Trades of the Royce International Premier Fund

The Swiss industrial distribution company, which provides screws, fasteners and logistics services, has a market cap of 1.78 billion francs; its shares closed at 232 francs on Friday with a price-earnings ratio of 18.04, a price-book ratio of 5.58 and a price-sales ratio of 2.19.

According to the GF Value Line, the stock is significantly overvalued.

Top Trades of the Royce International Premier Fund

The valuation rank of 2 out of 10 supports this analysis as the share price and price-sales ratio are both closing in on multiyear highs.

GuruFocus rated Bossard's financial strength 6 out of 10. Although the company has issued approximately 52.5 million Swiss francs in new long-term debt over the past three years, it is still at a manageable level due to adequate interest coverage. The high Altman Z-Score of 6.05 also indicates the company is in good standing even though assets are building up at a faster rate than revenue is growing. The ROIC also surpasses the WACC, indicating good value creation.

The company's profitability fared even better with an 8 out of 10 rating, driven by strong margins and returns that outperform a majority of competitors. Bossard also has a moderate Piotroski F-Score of 4, but the four-star predictability rank is on watch due to a decline in revenue per share over the past year. GuruFocus data shows companies with this rank return, on average, 9.8% annually.

No other gurus currently own the stock.

Additional trades and portfolio performance

During the quarter, the International Premier Fund also boosted its New Work SE (XTER:NOW) and OBIC Business Consultants Co. Ltd. (TSE:4733) holdings and sold out of Cosel Co. Ltd. (TSE:6905).

The fund's $1.09 billion equity portfolio, which is composed of 61 stocks, is most heavily invested in the industrials and technology sectors.

Top Trades of the Royce International Premier Fund

GuruFocus data shows the International Premier Fund returned 15.74% in 2020, slightly underperforming the S&P 500's return of 18.4%.

Disclosure: No positions.

Read more here:

Morgan Stanley Reports Record 1st-Quarter Results

Shares of Bank of America Fall Despite Strong 1st-Quarter Results

The Top 5 Trades of Jerome Dodson's Parnassus Fund







Not a Premium Member of GuruFocus? Sign up for a free 7-day trial here.

This article first appeared on GuruFocus.


Store opening restrictions since January and still in place

Mercialys focused in priority on maintaining operational management efforts and protecting its balance sheet positions

Regulatory News:

Mercialys (Paris:MERY):

Vincent Ravat, Mercialys' Chief Executive Officer: "The health crisis that began in 2020 is continuing in 2021, with deep impacts linked to the government's decisions to close stores. Since the start of January 2021, France has successively been faced with local then national curfews, restrictions on opening shopping centers and stores considered to be non-essential over 20,000 sq.m, then 10,000 sq.m, and, more recently, a third national lockdown, with all stores classed as non-essential closed regardless of their size. These restrictions on trading, which are unprecedented in terms of their duration, are due to be accompanied by government support measures for retailers, aiming in particular to allow them to honor their rent payments, but their deployment is still to be put in place. Nevertheless, we are seeing buoyant letting trends continuing with the hope of an end to the crisis and a normalization soon, highlighting the solidity of our sites."

I. Rental revenues down

Mercialys' business contracted during the first quarter of 2021, with organic growth of -6.0%, which includes a positive effect of +0.5% for indexation, more than offset by the combined impact of the effects of the health crisis for -6.5% linked to the decrease in rents for Casual Leasing and variable rents, as well as the embedded impacts, for the closure periods, of the support granted to tenants in 2020 and the deferral of letting actions or their effects in a context of sites being closed again.

Invoiced rents came to Euro 42.0 million, down -9.8% compared with the first quarter of 2020 after factoring in scope effects, linked in particular to the asset sales completed in December 2020.

(In thousands of euros) Year to

end-March 2020 Year to

end-March 2021 Change

Current basis (%) Change

Like-for-like basis (%) Invoiced rents 46,518 41,958 -9.8% -6.0% Lease rights 632 635 +0.5% Rental revenues 47,150 42,593 -9.7%

These changes reflect the following elements:

Year to

end-March 2020 Year to

end-March 2021 Indexation +1.6 pp +2.2m +0.5 pp +0.2m Contribution by Casual Leasing -0.3 pp -0.5m -1.0 pp -0.5m Contribution by variable rents +0.1 pp +0.1m -1.4 pp -0.7m Actions carried out on the portfolio -0.5 pp -0.8m -1.2 pp -0.5m Accounting impact of "Covid-19 rent relief" granted to

retailers for the first lockdown from 2020 -1.3 pp -1.8m -2.9 pp -1.4m Like-for-like growth -0.5 pp -0.7m -6.0 pp -2.8m Asset acquisition and sales -1.8 pp -2.5m -3.7 pp -1.7m Other effects -0.1 pp -0.2m 0.0 pp 0.0m Growth on a current basis -2.4 pp -3.4m -9.8 pp -4.6m

Lease rights and despecialization indemnities received over the period came to Euro 0.6 million, consistent with the first quarter of 2020, after taking into account the deferrals applicable under IFRS.

Rental revenues came to Euro 42.6 million at March 31, 2021, down -9.7% compared with March 31, 2020.

Negotiations with retailers continued to move forward constructively over the period, notably resulting in the contractual formalization of new negotiations for the first lockdown from 2020, with Euro 1.0 million of the Euro 13.2 million of exceptional provisions for doubtful receivables, recorded in the 2020 accounts, transferred to relief to be issued.

This Euro 1.0 million recognized in invoiced rents is taken into account in the change in organic growth, as detailed above, under "Accounting impact of Covid-19 rent relief granted to retailers for the first lockdown from 2020", resulting in a reversal of provisions for the same amount below the Rental revenues item, with a neutral effect in profit and loss.

II. Shopping center activity deeply affected

The shopping center sector in France has been significantly affected, since January 2021, by the government measures relating to the health crisis.

From January 2, 2021, the French government announced that it was introducing local curfews due to the sharp rise in the Covid-19 epidemic in certain regions. These arrangements were gradually extended nationwide, then on January 29, 2021, the French Prime Minister ordered the closure of all non-food stores with over 20,000 sq.m of gross leasable area, as well as non-food stores in shopping centers with a gross leasable area of over 20,000 sq.m, with effect from midnight on January 30, 2021.

These restrictions, which already included an extremely broad definition of the spaces taken into account, combined with a ban for closed stores on click and collect and order collection services, were reinforced on March 6, 2021, in all French departments under stronger supervision measures, by reducing the limit for gross leasable area authorized to open to 10,000 sq.m.

Lastly, on April 3, 2021, the French government introduced a third national lockdown and also ordered the closure of all stores considered to be non-essential, regardless of their size.

Stores that are classed as essential, with the exception of food retail and pharmacies, are closed if they are located in a shopping center that is over 10,000 sq.m. As a result of this scope for closures that is more restrictive than in 2020, combined with the asset sales completed at the end of 2020 by Mercialys, including the divestment of four Monoprix units, the stores open to date across the Company's portfolio represent 36% of its annualized rental base, compared with 40% during the first lockdown from March to May 2020.

The French government has made a commitment to put in place support packages, in addition to the solidarity fund, which should notably make it possible for tenants that have been ordered to close to honor their rent payments. However, there have been delays with rolling out these support measures. These delays have affected the recovery rate for rent and charges for the first and second quarters of 2021, which stand at 77% and 54%1 respectively, while noting that these recovery rates are calculated on the full amount of rent and charges excluding tax invoiced by Mercialys to its tenants, which are all due in full.

Alongside this, Mercialys is continuing to move forward with its efforts to recover arrears relating to 2020. The Company has received payments for rent and charges for a combined total of Euro 3.3 million2 for the second and third quarters of 2020, taking its gross recovery rate for 2020 up to 87.6% to date, compared with 85.3% when it released its 2020 full-year results on February 15, 2021. Following these receipts, Euro 2.5 million of provisions have been reversed in the accounts for 2021.

As a result of the extremely long closure phases faced currently, combined with a basis for comparison for business that was already disrupted in the first quarter of 2020, the analysis of shopping center footfall and retailer sales for the first quarter of 2021 is not relevant and this will continue to be the case until the process is underway for all stores to reopen.

III. However, letting trends highlight retailers' confidence in the future

Despite the lack of visibility concerning the reopening date for stores, Mercialys' lettings performance continued to show positive trends in the first quarter of 2021, once again highlighting the Company's expertise and adaptability.

Several openings were completed during the first few months of 2021. For example, Hubside Store, specialized in new and reconditioned phones and connected devices, inaugurated four stores at the Nimes, Saint-Etienne, Besancon and Mandelieu sites. These stores, all replacing textiles retailers, will help reduce the Company's rental exposure to this sector, while responding to growing consumer interest in products that are both affordable and responsible. Building on this success, the business relationship between Mercialys and Hubside Store is continuing to develop, with a fifth store signed up recently and to open shortly at the Brest shopping center.

In line with this approach, a "city" format Mr Bricolage store was opened at the Grenoble site, replacing a textiles retailer, fully in line with consumers' current aspirations relating to their home environment.

In addition to the various openings, the number of relettings was particularly positive, with 10 completed during the first quarter of 2021 and about 40 other cases currently underway. These results reflect a structural interest in development among certain retailers and highlight the quality of the physical locations offered by Mercialys across its various catchment areas.

The Company's tailored lettings approach is also benefiting the relaunch of assets to be repositioned and incorporated into the portfolio in December 2020, with several discussions at an advanced stage with stores or retailers from buoyant sectors, such as food, culture, services and health and beauty.

Alongside this, Mercialys has not recorded any increase in the number of retailers serving notice over the last few months, while the current financial vacancy rate was 3.9% at March 31, 2021, compared with 3.8% at December 31, 2021.

IV. Strong focus on protecting balance sheet positions

Since the start of the health crisis, in March 2020, Mercialys has focused on safeguarding the solidity and liquidity of its balance sheet.

At end-March 2021, the Company had Euro 325 million of cash. The decrease compared with the Euro 465 million recorded at end-December 2020 reflects the redemption of commercial paper over the period for

Euro 152.5 million, with the Company's strong cash position enabling it to reduce its exposure to these short-term debt facilities.

Mercialys also extended the maturity of its primary undrawn financing source, i.e. a Euro 225 million revolving bank credit facility, with 80% extended to December 2023, compared with December 2022 previously. A Euro 30 million undrawn bilateral bank line was also extended by two years. The Company's undrawn financial resources represent Euro 405 million, unchanged compared with the end of December 2021.

The Company is also continuing to optimize the management of its bond maturities and, since the start of 2021, has redeemed a further Euro 11.5 million of the bond issue maturing in March 2023. These bonds are cancelled in the Company's books.

Lastly, Mercialys will continue moving forward with its asset rotation efforts.

V. Dividend of Euro 0.43 per share proposed at the General Meeting on April 22, 2021

As announced when reporting its full-year results for 2020 on February 15, 2021, due to the continued uncertainty surrounding the economic and health context, which requires vigilance concerning its key financial balances, as mentioned above, the Board of Directors will submit a proposal at the General Meeting on April 22, 2021 for a 2020 dividend of Euro 0.43 per share, representing a total of approximately Euro 39.6 million based on the number of shares outstanding at December 31, 2020, corresponding to 41% of 2020 FFO.

This proposed dividend covers the requirement, with the SIIC tax status, to distribute 95% of exempt profits from property rental or sub-letting operations. It does not include the distribution based on 70% of exempt profits for 2020 from the disposal of properties and investments in real estate companies, representing an additional Euro 0.39 per share, which is attributable to the shareholders and, under the requirements for SIIC real estate investment trusts, will need to be distributed by 2022 at the latest.

Furthermore, subject to approval by the General Meeting on April 22, 2021, shareholders will be able to opt for 1/ this dividend to be paid in shares or 2/ this dividend to be paid in cash. As applicable, the dividend will be released for payment in cash or shares on May 21, 2021, with an ex-dividend date of April 29, 2021, taking into account the timeframes required to put these options in place.

This press release is available on www.mercialys.com

About Mercialys

Mercialys is one of France's leading real estate companies. It is specialized in the holding, management and transformation of retail spaces, anticipating consumer trends, on its own behalf and for third parties.

At December 31, 2020, Mercialys had a real estate portfolio valued at Euro 3.3 billion (including transfer taxes).

Its portfolio of 2,138 leases represents an annualized rental base of Euro 173.9 million. Mercialys has been listed on the stock market since October 12, 2005 (ticker: MERY) and has "SIIC" real estate investment trust (REIT) tax status. Part of the SBF 120 and Euronext Paris Compartment B, it had 92,049,169 shares outstanding at December 31, 2020.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements regarding future events, trends, projects or targets. These forward-looking statements are subject to identified and unidentified risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results anticipated in the forward-looking statements. Please refer to Mercialys' Universal Registration Document available at www.mercialys.com for the year ended December 31, 2020 for more details regarding certain factors, risks and uncertainties that could affect Mercialys' business. Mercialys makes no undertaking in any form to publish updates or adjustments to these forward-looking statements, nor to report new information, new future events or any other circumstances that might cause these statements to be revised.

MERCIALYS RENTAL REVENUES 2020 Mar 31, 2020 Jun 30, 2020 Sep 30, 2020 Dec 31, 2020 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Invoiced rents 46,518 90,732 136,382 172,911 46,518 44,214 45,650 36,529 Lease rights 632 1,271 1,925 2,529 632 639 654 604 Rental revenues 47,150 92,003 138,308 175,440 47,150 44,853 46,305 37,132 Change in invoiced rents +0.4% -3.3% -2.4% -8.4% +0.4% -7.0% -0.5% -25.6% Change in rental revenues 0.0% -3.6% -2.6% -8.6% 0.0% -7.2% -0.6% -25.4% 2021 Mar 31, 2021 Jun 30, 2021 Sep 30, 2021 Dec 31, 2021 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Invoiced rents 41,958 41,958 Lease rights 635 635 Rental revenues 42,593 42,593 Change in invoiced rents -9.8% -9.8% Change in rental revenues -9.7% -9.7%

1 Estimated recovery rate at April 15, 2021 which may be subject to negative changes as a result of demands for payment potentially being rejected

2 Amount at April 15, 2021

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005663/en/

Contacts:

Analysts investors media contact:

Alexandre Leroy

Tel: +33 (0)1 82 82 75 63

Email: aleroy@mercialys.com
Seoul, April 19 : Nokia, a Finnish telecom equipment giant, said on Monday it has signed an agreement with South Korean mobile carrier LG Uplus to install its next-generation indoor 5G equipment in the country.

Nokia said it will deploy its small cell AirScale Indoor systems in indoor locations across the country, including shopping malls and office buildings, for LG Uplus' 5G network.

The system allows seamless 5G connectivity between indoor and outdoor locations and can be easily upgraded to accommodate future network expansion, according to Nokia.

South Korean telecom operators have recently focused on expanding 5G coverage in indoor locations amid complaints of lack of network availability, reports Yonhap news agency.

A government report late last year found that 5G was available in 61.8 percent of the total 4,516 major public buildings across the country's 85 cities.

LG Uplus uses 5G equipment from Nokia, Samsung Electronics Co., China's Huawei Technologies Co. and Sweden's Ericsson.
An American expat living in Melbourne has revealed the culture shocks she experienced after transferring to an Australian school.

Lara Fourie, 18, moved with her family to the Victorian capital in 2017 and soon discovered that life Down Under is very different than what she was accustomed to.

The student, who has 114,900 followers and 3.3million likes on TikTok, is known for sharing videos about the social cues, slang terms and cultural norms that vary from Australian to American shores.

In her latest clip, which has been viewed 487,500 times since it was uploaded online on April 16, Ms Fourie said she was baffled to walk into school without passing through a metal detector - a fixture in US schools designed to combat shootings.

Scroll down for video

American student Lara Fourie (pictured) moved with her family to the Victorian capital in 2017 and soon discovered that life Down Under is very different than what she was accustomed to.

Australian gun control legislation was transformed in 1996 after the Port Arthur shooting, when lone gunman Martin Bryant opened fire on shop owners and tourists with two semi-automatic, leaving 35 dead and 23 wounded in southern Tasmania.

While laws vary from state to state, rules remain strict across the country and owners are required to carry a firearm licence,

Licence holders must demonstrate a 'genuine reason' for holding a gun which does not include self-defense.

There have been 236 school shootings in the US since 2010 alone.

Ms Fourie said the absence of security scanners in Australian schools made her feel safer than she ever had before.

Ms Fourie (pictured) said the absence of security scanners in Australian schools made her feel safer than she ever had before

Metal detectors are a common fixture in US schools, designed to combat shootings (stock image)

Differences between schools in Australia and the US * Metal detectors: Ms Fourie said she was baffled to walk into school in Australia without passing through a metal detector - a common fixture in US schools designed to combat shootings. * Lunch breaks: Ms Fourie said she was surprised to get two breaks at school in Australia. In the US, she only got one. * Swearing: Ms Fourie said she was surprised to hear Australian students cursing in class - and even more so to hear teachers swear back at them. Advertisement

Ms Fourie said she was also surprised to hear students cursing in class - and even more so to hear teachers swear back at them.

She said she couldn't believe that pupils were allowed outside at lunch, nor that they get two breaks instead of one.

The clip sparked dozens of stunned responses, with many shocked that schools in the US are so different.

'Wait, American schools have metal detectors? Oh my lord,' one viewer wrote.

Ms Fourie said she was surprised to hear students cursing in class - and even more so to hear teachers swear back at them

The American-born student said she couldn't believe that Australian pupils were allowed outside at lunch, nor that they get two breaks instead of one (stock mage)

Others said teachers swearing at teenagers was a common occurrence during their schooldays.

'If you never had a teacher swear at you, then you weren't living,' said one.

Many said hearing Ms Fourie remark on how much safer she felt at school in Victoria made them proud to be Australian.
COVAX, the global initiative to coordinate the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines in an equitable way, is crucial for bringing the pandemic under control.

But COVAXs aim of delivering 2 billion doses to participating countries by the end of 2021  including 92 low-income countries that cant afford to buy vaccines directly from manufacturers  is threatened by chronic under-investment, vaccine nationalism and export restrictions.

COVAX is not intended only for low-income countries: Canada has so far received 316,800 doses through the scheme.

As such, it represents an important insurance policy for Australia, potentially enabling access to a wider portfolio of vaccines than we could secure through negotiations with suppliers.

The vulnerability of our vaccine procurement strategy has become clearer over the last few weeks, with supply blockages limiting vaccine imports from Europe and now the governments warning about the AstraZeneca vaccine and its links to a rare blood-clotting disorder.

Saving COVAX will require more than donations (of both funds and vaccines), as well as the removal of export bans.

Countries must collaborate to urgently remove the legal and technical barriers preventing more widespread vaccine manufacturing in order to increase the global supply of vaccines for COVAX to distribute.

How does COVAX work?

COVAX is led by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI); Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (a public-private partnership that aims to increase vaccination in low-income countries); and the World Health Organisation.

It aims to deliver doses to all of the participating countries that have requested them in the first half of 2021, and 2 billion vaccines in total by the end of 2021.

COVAX is complex, but essentially it works by investing in a portfolio of promising vaccines and then distributing them according to a formula to both self-financing countries and funded countries.

Self-financing countries are those which have contributed funds to COVAX, such as Australia. They are able to buy the vaccines at cheaper prices negotiated by COVAX and will initially receive enough to vaccinate 20 per cent of their populations. In the longer term, these countries may receive enough doses to vaccinate up to half of their populations, depending on how much they contribute.

Funded countries include 92 low-income countries that cant afford to buy their own vaccines.

They will also receive enough to vaccinate 20 per cent of their populations, provided COVAX is able to meet its goals. This is nowhere near enough to achieve herd immunity, but will at least allow health workers and the most vulnerable groups to be vaccinated.

Australia has committed A$123.2 million to enable it to purchase 25 million vaccines for domestic use.

It has also committed $80 million specifically earmarked for providing vaccines for low-income countries. This money will be drawn from existing aid funding, however, and wont go very far in terms of assistance.

How is the program going so far?

COVAX made its first delivery of vaccines to Ghana on February 24. By April 11, it had shipped approximately 38.5 million doses to 106 countries and territories.

While these figures might look promising at first glance, this is a long way behind COVAXs aim to deliver 100 million doses by the end of March.

And they dont stand up well in the context of global vaccine roll-outs. So far, only 0.2 per cent of the 700 million vaccine doses administered globally have been given in low-income countries, whereas 87 per cent have been received by people in high-income and upper middle-income countries.

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Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, pointed out last week that only one in 500 people in low-income countries have so far received a vaccine  a situation he described as a shocking imbalance.

Why is COVAX struggling to deliver?

COVAX needs more funding, to the tune of US$3.2 billion even to meet its modest goals for 2021. But the supply of vaccines is an even bigger problem.

Rich countries like Australia have undermined COVAX by negotiating deals for vaccines directly with pharmaceutical companies, rather than waiting for COVAX to allocate them fairly.

By last November, high-income countries making up just 14 per cent of the worlds population had negotiated pre-market agreements covering 51 per cent of the global supply.

Adding to COVAXs problems, the flow of vaccine deliveries has mostly dried up in the last week.

Some 90 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine manufactured in India that were to be delivered to 64 countries in March and April have been delayed as a surge in COVID-19 cases prompted the Indian government to restrict exports.

What needs to happen?

WHO has called on rich countries to immediately share 10 million doses to prop up COVAX in the first half of 2021.

But so far, no country has committed to do this. Donations that come after countries have fully vaccinated their own populations will be too late.

And where bilateral donations have been made outside of the COVAX program (mainly by China and Russia), they have largely been driven by security, strategic or political considerations, rather than donated to the countries where they are most needed.

Removing export restrictions would help. But as long as demand exceeds supply and the countries where vaccines are manufactured face large outbreaks, we are likely to continue to see these types of barriers.

What is needed most are more sustainable approaches to dramatically boost the global supply of vaccines and ensure theres enough to go around.

This first requires removing the intellectual property protections that allow vaccine developers to hold exclusive rights to control who can make and sell them.

India and South Africa have put forth a proposal at the World Trade Organisation to waive intellectual property rights for COVID-19 medical products during the pandemic, which has been supported by more than 100 low- and middle-income countries. However, several high-income countries, including Australia, have blocked it.

Secondly, governments need to support mechanisms for sharing intellectual property, such as the WHOs COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP).

This was set up nearly a year ago, but no vaccine developer has contributed to it yet. Governments need to make sharing intellectual property and contributing to the pool a condition of public funding for the development of COVID-19 products.

Finally, governments need to help low- and middle-income countries to produce their own vaccines. This means investing money to build up manufacturing capacities in these countries and facilitating technology transfers from companies based in high-income countries.

For COVAX to supply enough vaccines for even 20 per cent of the worlds population, rich countries will need to step up. And fast.

The Conversation is a Premium Times syndication partner. We have permission to republish content.
Roman Babiy, Ukrainian lawyer, politician, People's Deputy of Ukraine of IX convocation

A few days ago, the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky initiated the immediate liquidation of the District Administrative Court of Kyiv. Draft Law  5369 dated 13.04.21 contains only 3 sentences in the main part, as well as the final and transitional provisions. The essence is simple: to liquidate the DACK, to create a new one - the Kyiv City District Administrative Court. Then it is the deputies who are going to work with this.

Society treats this idea differently: from restoring confidence in the judiciary through the elimination of a "dirty" court and the creation of a new, virtuous one instead, to "it's just renaming, not liquidation" and "it's fulfilling the will of Western partners and war against displeasing authorities and disobedient judges".

However, as always, the "devil is in the details", in this case - in the final and transitional positions.

Lets imagine that this law was passed and it came into force. On the same day, the DACK ceases to hear all cases, regardless of the stage at which it is being considered. Even those in which all the evidence is examined and all the explanations are heard (now this process can take a year or even longer).

Then the process of creating a new court will begin. While it goes on, unfinished and new cases should be considered by the Kyiv District Administrative Court (the regional).

The DACK must very quickly, within two calendar weeks, transfer ALL (both current and archival) cases to the KDAC, which will accept them. I don't think it's real, but, on the other hand, no negative consequences have been established in violation of this norm, so in fact "they will be transferred one day...."

But the most important thing is how to ensure relatively fast consideration of cases and protection of the rights and interests of people seeking judicial protection. The DACK has 50 judges. In KDAC - 22 judges with 25 full-time positions, i.e. twice less. In 2020, the KDAC considered about 20 thousand proceedings, and the DACK - about 60 thousand - three times more.

In case of adoption of the bill in the submitted edition all the workload from 50 judges of UASK who barely adhered to the terms of consideration of cases, immediately will pass to the existing regional court in addition to existing caseload. That is, if we take the statistics of last year as a reference, the 22 judges of the regional court since then have to consider 80 thousand cases. The workload per judge will increase 4 times!

The way out could be a temporary increase in the number of KDAC judges. However, these positions still have to be filled by judges. It is easier and more correct to focus on the rapid creation of a new court. Though, in the current situation in the absence of the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine, this is just impossible in the nearest future.

The bill on the resumption of the HQCJU still needs to be supported in the second reading, then a tender commission should be drawn to form the HQCJU, then a tender to the HQCJU will be held, and then some (hopefully short) time will be needed to organize the HQCJUs work. Only after that it is possible to start competitions for new judges, and the contest itself will take a long time. In addition, a year and a half of unresolved urgent issues have arisen in the HQCJU. According to the most optimistic estimates, this will take about a year.

I do not think that under such daily workload KDAC will have time to consider many cases within a year. In fact, the administration of justice in administrative cases would almost stop not only in Kyiv, but also in the Kyiv region. This will deprive the citizens of the opportunity to protect their rights from actions, decisions, inaction of central and local authorities. And all cases that the regional administrative court does not have time to consider during the interim period will be immediately transferred to the newly created court, and their consideration will begin from the outset.

Such a gloomy picture is formed in the administrative proceedings in the case of the adoption of the transitional provisions in the bill 5369 in this version.

Theres another kink. The bill does not explain the future fate of the current judges of the DACK. According to the Constitution, the mere fact of liquidation of a court is not a ground for dismissal of judges. They must be offered a transfer to another court. And only if the judge does not agree to such a transfer - he is fired.

But where should DACK judges be transferred? As an option there may be new courts or other administrative courts where there are vacancies. An additional condition for the transfer is the qualification assessment (more than half of the judges of the DACK did not pass it). And these procedures must also be reflected in the bill.

Therefore, in my opinion, it is necessary to develop a better model of transfer and consideration of the DACK cases than the one proposed by the bill. There can be several options:

temporarily increase the number of KDAC judges and fill new vacancies through the procedure of temporary transfer from other first instance administrative courts.

redistribute cases between the nearest administrative courts (neighboring regions) to reduce the burden on KDAC. At the same time, allow these courts to complete the cases that will be transferred to them.

allow the DACK to complete the consideration of those cases that it has begun to consider on the merits, and to transfer all new and unsolved ones on the merits to the regional administrative court.

start the transfer of cases after the start of the new court, and before that the DACK is going to consider the cases. Although this option is the least consistent with the grounds for the bill.

Choosing such a model requires a separate discussion, upon the results of which we must choose the most balanced option to ensure the citizens right to access to justice.
Scores of protesters marched in downtown Charleston in opposition to police killings in Minnesota and Chicago the past several weeks, facing off with city police as they tried to go down King Street just under a year after riots threw the street into chaos following a peaceful protest.

Police officers told organizers they could not march down King Street as the group planned just before the march started at 5:30 p.m. on April 18. Protesters responded that the officers were selectively enforcing ordinances that require a permit for assembling a group over 25 people and for such a group to march without a parade permit.

The crowd gathered to demonstrate against police brutality and the deaths of Daunte Wright last weekend in Brooklyn Center, Minn., and Adam Toledo in Chicago late last month at the hands of police.

Wright was shot by a longtime police officer who said she mistook her sidearm for a stun gun and killed the 20-year-old Black man during a traffic stop. She has been charged with manslaughter and resigned from the force. Toledo, 13, was shot March 29 after he discarded a gun and held up his hands in surrender.

Why is it a safety issue when a bunch of Black people and their allies come together? an organizer from the group Stand as One, Justin Hunt, asked the crowd. We dont come out here to hurt people, we come out because people are hurt.

Organizers said they were willing to risk arrest for their right to peacefully protest.

No justice, no peace, lets prosecute the police, protesters chanted as they started marching. When Black children are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back.

Organizers warned protesters not to walk in the street, spray paint or damage property.

Still, officers stood by, armed with batons to keep the march from reaching King Street. The group, now over 60 protesters, quickly diverted down Calhoun Street and made its way toward the Charleston Market. The group repeated chants like "a gun is not a taser" in reference to Wright's death.

At the Market, the group grew to over 75 individuals. Organizers criticized police for not allowing them to march down King Street, saying the May 2020 riot was being held against all Black Lives Matter protesters.

On May 30, 2020, a peaceful protest devolved into violence and chaos following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, also at the hands of a police officer. That officer, Derek Chauvin, was fired and is on trial facing murder charges.

You take your uniform off, youre a regular person just like me. Can I take my Black skin off? one protester called out to the crowd.

The group made another stop on the stairs of the U.S. Customs House, then began to march back to Marion Square. They again tried to reach King Street and were rebuffed by officers in riot gear carrying zip ties.

It is our legal right to protest peacefully, the marchers chanted, standing face-to-face with officers.

One officer said the marchers were participating in an unlawful assembly and if they did not disperse, police tactics would be deployed.

We made our point, Hunt shouted into his megaphone, leading protesters  some shouting anti-police epithets at officers  away.

As they headed back to Marion Square along Meeting Street, protesters were met at each intersection near King Street by police ready to block them from that street.

In Marion Square again, the group didnt appear disheartened by the confrontations with police.

Police kept a watchful eye. One walked through the crowd and said, "If youre getting hostile, threatening police officers, thats it."

We are not out here to be violent, I dont know why the police keep saying that, Hunt told the crowd soon after. Im getting tired of them saying that.

We come in remembrance of the king Daunte Wright. We come in remembrance of the young Hispanic king Adam Toledo, Hunt said, asking the crowd to raise up their candles for a candlelit vigil. We have another mother who doesnt have a son. We have another child who doesnt have a father.

Hunt discussed what he called a double standard in how police treat Black teenagers and White mass shooters.

Our job is to make our community better. Our job is to make each other feel safer, Hunt told the crowd.

After several minutes of silence for the victims, the crowd dispersed just before 8:30 p.m., with officers on King Street watching them go.
Wienerschnitzel, the world's largest hot dog chain, is searching for international partners to go global. Tweet this

For nearly 60 years, Wienerschnitzel has proven to be a model of success and a profitable business opportunity. Thanks to its strong operating practices and committed leadership team, franchisees experienced record high sales despite the challenges of the recent pandemic. Its flexible store designs, superior training in addition to strong leadership and consumer demand make it an attractive opportunity for investors and QSR operators.

Wienerschnitzel offers one of the most distinctive and delicious menus in the industry. Celebrated for its world famous Chili Dogs, Corn Dogs, Chili Cheese Fries, beverages and creamy Tastee Freez soft serve desserts, it continues to capture the heart and appetite of customers.

To learn more about Wienerschnitzel's international franchise opportunities contact Werner Glass at (949) 390-3089 or email [email protected].

About Wienerschnitzel

Founded by John Galardi in 1961 with a single hot dog stand in Wilmington, Calif., Wienerschnitzel is one of the real pioneers of the quick-service food industry. The World's Largest Hot Dog Chain now serves more than 120 million hot dogs annually  and fueled by a mission of "Serving Food to Serve Others," also gives back a percentage of profits to its charitable partners. Based in Irvine, Calif., Wienerschnitzel operates or franchises 325 restaurants in 11 states. It is part of the Galardi Group, which is also the parent company of Hamburger Stand and Tastee-Freez LLC. Visit our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or YouTube to learn more about the brand.

SOURCE Wienerschnitzel
He may be 80 but Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease doctor is joining Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter to encourage the nation's teens to get vaccinated.

It is all part of a plan by the White House to specifically target younger members of America's population through targeted advertising as 16s and over become eligible for the vaccine.

Fauci, an unexpected star of the pandemic, will release informative Snapchat clips on the virus and vaccine. Other senior administrative officials including Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and assistant HHS secretary Rachel Levine may also be called for appearances.

Biden is also expected to record a public service announcement which will be shared across multiple social media outlets.

The targeted ads are to start later on Monday and pinpoint other specific demographics where vaccine uptake has traditionally been slow including those in black and Latino communities.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, 80, hopes to encourage younger people including teens to get the coronavirus vaccine and will target teens through Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter

Push notifications will also be used in an attempt to ensure that almost everyone who is eligible and who has a cellphone with some form of social media app, gets the message.

There will also be a further drive to see that those with more conservative viewpoints are also encouraged to get the injection, according to Axios.

Senior officials in White House Health Department will also make additional media appearances including Dr. Anthony Fauci, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and assistant HHS secretary Rachel Levine.

The Biden Administration is focusing on younger people Latino and black communities who have traditionally been hesitant to receive the vaccine along with conservatives

Some will also appear on news shows and television channels popular with black and Latino viewers.

President Biden also intends to record special message to be shared across social media platforms.

The White House is said to be aware that such media bombardment 'may not be the most effective voice in promoting the vaccine to certain parts of the population.'

However, a further outreach to an additional 6,000 community partner that includes doctors and churches will be made.

A social media toolkit is to be sent out to encourage local organizations to encourage their own members and followers to get the jab.

So far, half of all adults in the U.S. have received at least one COVID-19 shot.

The government announced the news on Sunday, marking another milestone in the nation's largest-ever vaccination campaign but leaving more work to do to convince skeptical Americans to roll up their sleeves.

Almost 130 million people 18 or older have received at least one dose of a vaccine, or 50.4% of the total adult population, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

Almost 84 million adults, or about 32.5% of the population, have been fully vaccinated.

The U.S. cleared the 50% mark just a day after the reported global death toll from the coronavirus topped a staggering 3 million, according to totals compiled by Johns Hopkins University, though the actual number is believed to be significantly higher.

The country's vaccination rate, at 61.6 doses administered per 100 people, currently falls behind Israel, which leads among countries with at least 5 million people with a rate of 119.2.

The U.S. also trails the United Arab Emirates, Chile and the United Kingdom, which is vaccinating at a rate of 62 doses per 100 people.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 19)  Filipinos vaccinated overseas who are returning to the Philippines are required to undergo a 14-day quarantine upon arrival, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said on Monday.

This is part of the government's precautionary measures since there is no concrete proof yet that a fully vaccinated person will not transfer the virus to other people.

"Hanggang hindi pa kumpleto at hindi pa sufficient ang ebidensya [Until there is no complete and sufficient evidence] to finally conclude that these vaccines can really prevent one person from being infected and that person from infecting others, then we will retain our protocols," she said in a media briefing.
A meeting to address the lack of vital end-of-life and palliative services in the Midlands will take place this evening, Monday, April 19.

The Midlands region of Laois, Offaly, Longford and Westmeath is the only region in Ireland that does not have a hospice and this must be urgently addressed according to local Senator Fiona OLoughlin.

The Midlands Region has been described as a blackspot when it comes to the lack of inpatient end-of-life services, said Senator OLoughlin.

I am determined that this situation not continue, she added. I have facilitated a meeting between Minister Donnelly and the Chair of the Midlands hospice committee Professor Humphrey O'Connor to progress the provision of a site at Tullamore hospital on Monday, April, 19.

Despite a proposal for a 16-20 bed In-Patient Unit (Hospice) within the grounds of the Midland Regional Hospital Tullamore agreed in 2014, the Midlands still have the lowest level of regional state investment in palliative care nationally with no specialist inpatient hospice unit.

While the region is fortunate to have a well-developed palliative care service in the community and the aim is to care for people appropriately at home for as long as possible, the provision of specialist palliative care inpatient beds will facilitate hospital avoidance and support families in end-of-life care for their loved ones, Senator OLoughlin added.

The meeting will discuss how to facilitate this with the proposed unit in Tullamore Hospital as a priority for hospice in-patient care in the region.

Senator OLoughlin first raised the issue in the Seanad last November.

I want to acknowledge the commitment and leadership of Deputy Barry Cowen to progressing this, and for ensuring that it is contained within the Programme for Government, she added.
Texas lawmakers have been advancing sweeping legislation to address some of the major issues stemming from Februarys deadly winter storm and catastrophic power outages. But some of the legislative moves are targeting renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, which experts and some lawmakers say seems more like a way to protect oil and gas interests than fix problems with the states beleaguered power grid.

Tucked into Senate Bill 3, which seeks to overhaul the states electricity market, is a key provision that would shift the financial burden of ancillary services, which help ensure power is generated continuously to Texas main electricity grid, to renewable energy providers. Texas electric providers currently cover the ancillary services costs.

RELATED: Severe weather this summer could cause another Texas power crisis

But Im convinced that were making a big mistake by attacking a problem that isnt the problem just because we feel like it might be the problem, when the data says the opposite, Johnson said on the Senate floor in late March.

Wind power is a renewable energy source that was expected to be a fraction of winter power generation. All sources  from natural gas, to nuclear, to coal, to solar  struggled to generate power during the February storm.

Yet some prominent Texas Republicans during and after the storm blamed the widespread outages on frozen wind turbines. Targeting renewable energy is not new for the Texas Legislature, but lawmakers have revamped their attacks on the sector after Februarys power outages left millions without electricity for days.

Johnson ended up voting in favor of SB 3, which has now been referred to the House as it takes up a series of related, standalone bills. Johnson has said he ultimately voted in favor of SB 3 because there are more positives in the legislation than negatives.

He also voted in favor of Senate Bill 2, legislation that would reform the governance of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the states main power grid.

On Tuesday, a relatively mild spring day, ERCOT asked Texans to conserve power as it struggled to keep with demand as a high number of power plants were offline for maintenance. And the operators early summer assessment found that a combination of a severe drought, heat wave and low winds could lead to more power outages later this year.

Among the legislative reforms of ERCOT is a provision that would alter who can represent power generators in their seat on ERCOTs board of directors. Currently, any generator has been able to become the sole representative of independent Texas power generators on the ERCOT board, so long as they are a member of the ERCOT market.

READ ALSO: ERCOT asks Texans to conserve power, but says outages not expected as it nears emergency conditions

SB 2 says the board member representing independent power generators has to own and control more than 5% of installed capacity in the ERCOT market. That means only the largest energy companies, which are oil and gas firms such as NRG and Vistra Corp., would qualify. No renewable energy companies meet the Senate bills threshold.

It looks like some sort of culture war thing  fossil fuels versus renewables, said Michael Webber, energy resources professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Which is a false choice. You can have both.

The oil and gas industry is politically powerful in the state and donates immensely to politicians, including more than $5.1 million in the 2020 election cycle to Texas state House and Senate candidates, according to data from the nonprofit National Institute on Money in Politics compiled by Rice University expert Mark Jones.

More than 25,000 megawatts of natural gas generation, enough to power 5 million Texas homes, went down during the storm, along with around 17,000 megawatts of wind generation, according to ERCOT. Natural gas is the largest source of generation on Texas grid, especially during the winter.

Yet during various hearings in February and March about the outages, lawmakers spent relatively little time questioning natural gas production and transportation executives.

During the February storm, the states gas industry regulators quickly launched a campaign defending the sector, spurred on through emails, tweets and public statements.

Many including myself have warned for years about the dangers of relying too heavily on unreliable, intermittent forms of electric generation like wind and solar to meet the energy needs for 30 million Texans, Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian wrote in his newsletter to supporters Feb. 17.

Earlier this month, one Republican lawmaker took a swipe at the renewables industry. Republican state Rep. Briscoe Cain of Deer Park introduced an amendment  which eventually failed  on to a jobs training bill for military veterans that would have eliminated wind and solar energy jobs from the program.

Oil and gas is king in Texas, Cain said in early April on the House floor. We want to make sure they have the best jobs... I happen to think the best jobs are not in wind power and solar.

But as Texas leaders try to protect natural gas and target renewable energy, big businesses have entered the legislative fight.

Some corporations  such as Amazon, Google and JP Morgan  that have already invested in Texas have come out in opposition to the legislation that would shift the financial burden of ancillary services to renewable energy. Those companies are among many corporate giants to tell Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dade Phelan in a letter that the cost of ensuring power is continuously generated should be covered by all energy sources, not just renewables.

Companies want to move to Texas and one of the opportunities is to contract for renewable and cheap power, said Jeff Clark, Texas-based president of the pro-renewables group Advanced Power Alliance.

Disclosure: Advanced Power Alliance, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, Rice University and University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans  and engages with them  about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Jolene Howard, a graduate of the University of Arizona, has completed her new book Crimson Glow: a gripping murder mystery with just a touch of the supernatural.

Jolene writes, Maura Delaney is just your average, sarcastic, chain-smoking young woman who happens to moonlight as a vigilante assassin. Through the use of advanced technology, her mission is to dispose of the human monsters who plague our communities every day. Were talking murderers, rapists, pedophilesthe worst of the worst. Seems like a dream job, right?

Of course, everything doesnt always go according to plan, especially with a best friend constantly playing matchmaker, a hard-nosed boss breathing down her neck, and an obsessed coworker who doesnt understand the term friend-zoned. The malfunctioning of her ability to inconspicuously dispose of the bad guys suddenly throws Maura for a loop. And the appearance of a handsome stranger amid the chaos really throws a wrench in the cogs. Who is this enigmatic man, and why does he make Mauras palms sweat? Theres something peculiar and yet absolutely magnetizing about him that she cant seem to shake.

To top things off, a serial murderer is on the loose, and without Mauras disposal mechanism running at full capacity, the bodies may really begin to stack up. Its a high-stakes race to stop a killer, with quite a few speed bumps, school zones, and construction detours along the way.

Published by Page Publishing, Jolene Howards tale is sure to have you on the edge of your seat as you experience Mauras world of murder and mayhem.

Will Maura be able to track down the serial murderer before it is too late?

Readers who wish to experience this engrossing work can purchase Crimson Glow at bookstores everywhere, or online at the Apple iTunes Store, Amazon, Google Play, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or media inquiries, contact Page Publishing at 866-315-2708.

About Page Publishing:

Page Publishing is a traditional, full-service publishing house that handles all the intricacies involved in publishing its authors books, including distribution in the worlds largest retail outlets and royalty generation. Page Publishing knows that authors need to be free to create, not mired in logistics like eBook conversion, establishing wholesale accounts, insurance, shipping, taxes, and so on. Pages accomplished writers and publishing professionals allow authors to leave behind these complex and time-consuming issues and focus on their passion: writing and creating. Learn more at http://www.pagepublishing.com.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Vulcan Materials Company (NYSE: VMC) will host its first quarter earnings conference call on Tuesday, May 4 at 10:00 a.m. CT (11:00 a.m. ET). Financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2021, will be released before the NYSE market opens.

The Company invites investors and other interested parties to listen to the live webcast of the conference call at www.vulcanmaterials.com. To participate by phone, call 833-962-1439 approximately 10 minutes before the scheduled start. For international calls, the number is 832-900-4623. The conference ID is 6357979.

A replay of the webcast will be available after the call at the Company's website.

Vulcan Materials Company, a member of the S&P 500 index with headquarters in Birmingham, Alabama, is the nation's largest producer of construction aggregates  primarily crushed stone, sand and gravel  and a major producer of aggregates-based construction materials, including asphalt and ready-mixed concrete. For additional information about Vulcan, go to www.vulcanmaterials.com.

SOURCE Vulcan Materials Company

Related Links

http://www.vulcanmaterials.com


Boris Johnson has shelved a visit to India due to the worsening coronavirus situation in the country, Downing Street has announced.

The prime minister had been due to meet with his counterpart Narendra Modi to discuss relations between the two states.

But India's latest Covid figures show the country recording a surge of 273,810 new cases and 1,619 fatalities  with the pandemic apparently spiralling out of control there.

In a joint statement, the two governments said: In the light of the current coronavirus situation, Prime Minister Boris Johnson will not be able to travel to India next week.

Instead, Prime Ministers Modi and Johnson will speak later this month to agree and launch their ambitious plans for the future partnership between the UK and India. They will remain in regular contact beyond this, and look forward to meeting in person later this year.

The planned trip has already been postponed once, and is politically important for Mr Johnson  who wanted to use it to publicise the claimed trade benefits of leaving the EU.

The visit had been previously due to take place in January, but the rising number of cases and the spread of a new variant in India has changed the calculation.

It comes as the governemnt continues to warn against unnecessary international travel, and amid speculation about which countries might be permitted destinations after the next phase of reopening.

The government says it is worried that visitors to countries with high Covid levels might risk bringing back new variants of the virus and undermine the UKs vaccination programme.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures 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 World news in pictures 13 April 2021 This photo taken and received courtesy of an anonymous source shows Buddhist monks gesturing while taking part in a demonstration with protesters against the military coup in Mandalay during the Myanmar New Year festival of Thingyan AFP/Getty World news in pictures 12 April 2021 An Indian holi man during the Kumbh Mela royal bath (Sacred Hindu Pilgrimage) in Haridwar, Uttarakhand, India. Thousands of pilgrims are gathering and taking holy dip in Kumbh Mela that is a mass Hindu pilgrimage which occurs after every twelve years and rotates among four locations EPA World news in pictures 11 April 2021 Nasa released images of of sand dunes on Mars captured using infrared reflections NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU World news in pictures 10 April 2021 People watch devotees pulling a chariot in Biska Jatra Festival in Bhaktapur, Nepal AP World news in pictures 9 April 2021 Maintenance workers clean the monument of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in Moscow on April 9, 2021. - Sixty years ago Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space, marking it a new chapter in the history of space exploration. AFP/Getty World news in pictures 8 April 2021 Protesters hold a banner and burning red flares during a demonstration of called by unions of healthcare and social workers in support of their sector and to demand a bonus in their pay in Paris AFP/Getty

It came as a member of the Sage advisory committee said curbs should be imposed on travel from India because its new Covid-19 variant poses an unknown level of risk,

Professor Andrew Hayward urged Boris Johnson to err on the side of caution over the trade trip.

The B.1.617 strain has been linked to a dramatic surge in infections which is wreaking havoc across India, with evidence it may be capable of evading antibodies and T-cells.

George Eustice, the environment secretary, over the weekend defended the governments decision not to further restrict travel to India, but said the situation was being kept under regular review.

Mr Eustice added that it was appropriate" that the prime ministers trip should go ahead, despite rising infection rates in India.

The visit had already been shortened in response to the outbreak.
Warning: If youve yet to watch Sundays episode of Fear the Walking Dead, you might want to before reading any further; its kinda a biggie.

Thats all she wrote for Fear the Walking Deads villainous Virginia. In Sundays episode, Morgan turned almost all of her Rangers against her by revealing that Dakota had murdered Cameron, and her sister had framed Janice for the crime. In the ensuing shootout, Hill sped away with Daniel and Grace in tow, while Morgan took off with, of all people, Virginia. Though shed been shot, her primary objective was to speak with Dakota.

More from TVLine

What on earth could be so important? She was the teens mother, not her sister, Ginny revealed.

After keeping Sherry from putting an end to Virginia, Morgan took her to his as-yet-unnamed compound. WTH? asked Alicia and pretty much everyone there. Soon, Strand arrived with a dozen of Virginias his Rangers, and Sherry and her crew rolled up in the SWAT van.

Cornered, Virginia struck a bargain with Morgan: Shed have Hill free Daniel and Grace, and give up her life, if (a) Dakota could get a fresh start there, and (b) Morgan killed her himself so that her haters couldnt twist the knife. Of course, when push came to shove, he couldnt bring himself to behead Ginny with Emiles axe.

Instead, Morgan forced Virginia to have a long-overdue conversation with Dakota. You killed our parents, cried the girl. They werent your parents and Im not your sister, Ginny replied. Im your mother.

Eventually, Morgan seemed to more or less talk everybody into stopping the killing starting with Virginia. Everybody except Strand, that is. Now he wanted Alicia to join the army Virginia had charged him with leading. That fast, you change your tune? she asked. Ill give you a reason to come and join me, he promised as he rode off.

Story continues

After Morgan reunited with Grace, and Sherry hit the bricks with her new crew instead of stay with Dwight, Morgan informed Virginia that she and Dakota wouldnt be welcome there  but provided an escape route. Immediately afterwards, June was left alone with Ginny. Having had a daughter herself, June understood the urge to protect ones child. Mind you, her Rose had never murdered someone in cold blood the way that Dakota did. So June avenged John by putting a bullet in Virginias skull, placing Johns hat on her own head and stalking away from the compound.

Did not know she had it in her, did you? Hit the comments with your reaction to the episode.

Launch Gallery: <i>Fear the Walking Dead</i> Season 6 Photos

Best of TVLine
The largest cities in Fiji have been ordered into a snap lockdown after the Pacific nation records its first locally-acquired Covid-19 case in more than a year.

A 53-year-old woman tested positive to the virus, making her the first person to have caught it in Fiji since April last year.

All Fijians have been ordered to stay at home, with public gatherings banned and people only allowed out for essential medical reasons.

The island nation has had less than 100 cases since the pandemic began, and just two deaths after bringing in strict border controls.

It was hoped that Fiji (pictured) was likely to become Australians' next foreign holiday destination, as plans for a travel bubble Down Under were explored

'To aid rapid contact tracing and reduce the likelihood of further transmission, we are announcing a lockdown of the greater Nadi and Lautoka area, starting from 4:00am this morning,' the health department said in a statement.

'All Fijians should stay home. Public gatherings should not happen. No services should run except for essential medical services.'

Lautoka is the second-largest city in the nation while Nadi is its tourist hub.

It was hoped that Fiji was likely to become Australians' next foreign holiday destination, as plans for a travel bubble Down Under were explored.
Bakus War Trophy Park clearly shows the Azerbaijani authorities aggressive essence and their real image  they are promoting racial hatred and believe that cruel treatment and the display of tortures to the next generations and the whole world are normal. This is what representative of the Armenia delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, deputy of the opposition Bright Armenia faction of the National Assembly of Armenia Edmon Marukyan said in his speech in the European Parliament today.

On April 12, 2021 Azerbaijani state TV channel dedicated an hour-long reportage to the museum opened in Baku about the 44-day war in Nagorno-Karabakh. In this terrorist-style exhibition Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev dressed in military uniform was proudly touring and showing the Armenian military equipment and the real-size wax mannequins mocking the Armenian soldiers. The central part of the so-called ''trophy park'' was a long path filled with helmets of Armenian servicemen who had been killed or taken hostage'', Marukyan said, emphasizing that this has taken place in a country that is a member to the Council of Europe.

''Let me remind that Azerbaijan is a country that continues to illegally keep over 200 Armenian POWs and civilian hostages', Marukyan said, showing a number of photos taken from the 'trophy park''. He added that all those photos demonstrate the racial hatred in Azerbaijan against Armenia and Armenians.

''There are long queues to visit this park, which is disgusting and simply unacceptable. With this act Aliyev joint such dictators as Hitler and Saddam Hussein used to be', Marukyan said, bringing the example of a similar park in Iraq constructed by Saddam Hussein using the helmets if over 5000 Iranian soldiers, which Hussein called ''Victory Arch''. ''I see also another similarity between the two dictators  like Hussein, Aliyev does not want to return war prisoners'', Marukyan said, adding that the Baku park clearly shows the aggressive nature of the Azerbaijani authorities and their real face.

''They promote racial hatred and think that the demonstration of ill-treatment and torture to the future generation and the entire world is a normal phenomenon. History has proved that if timely measures are not taken to stop dictators, it stops being local and spreads throughout the world. I urge you to pay attention to these developments and hope that necessary and immediate measures will be taken to condemn the activities of Azerbaijan. The so-called ''trophy park'' must be closed'', Edmon Marukyan concluded.
Spotlight PA is an independent, non-partisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media. Sign up for our free newsletters.

All Pennsylvania voters  yes, that includes independents and minor-party members  will be asked to consider four ballot questions on May 18. Two of them are widely considered non-controversial. The other two? A different story. Below, Spotlight PA breaks down the basics of what they would do, who is in favor, and who is opposed.

Question 1

What would it do? Currently, only Pennsylvanias governor can end a disaster declaration, like the one the state is currently under to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. State law gives the General Assembly the option to pass a resolution to terminate the declaration, though the state Supreme Court ruled last year the governor still gets the final say. The legislature can overturn a governors veto with support from two-thirds of members.

This proposed constitutional amendment would allow a majority of lawmakers to terminate the declaration at any time, without the governors consent. What happens after that is the matter of some debate.

Who is in favor? This proposal, borne out of a contentious response to the Wolf administrations approach to the pandemic, has been championed by the House and Senate Republican caucuses, with support from a few Democrats.

The Pennsylvania chapter of the conservative political group Americans for Prosperity has also launched a campaign to urge a yes vote on the question.

Who is opposed? Most Democrats including Gov. Tom Wolf are urging Pennsylvanians to vote no, as is the grassroots Democratic group Turn PA Blue.

Question 2

What would it do? This question asks voters to amend the Pennsylvania Constitution to limit a disaster declaration to 21 days. It could only then be continued with the consent of the legislature.

At the moment, a disaster declaration lasts 90 days and can be renewed as many times as deemed necessary by the governor. The measure would also prevent the governor from issuing a new disaster declaration based on the same or similar facts.

Who is in favor? Who is opposed? The same parties as question 1.

Question 3

What would it do? This proposal amends the Pennsylvania Constitution to enshrine discrimination protections to Pennsylvanians based on race and ethnicity.

Who is in favor? This amendment is supported by Democratic and Republican lawmakers. Discrimination based on race is cooked into the DNA of this nation and we must take action to explicitly prohibit racial and ethnic discrimination in Pennsylvanias Constitution, said Sen. Vincent Hughes (D., Philadelphia), the amendments sponsor.

The ACLU of Pennsylvania is also in favor: The proposed equality amendment to Pennsylvanias constitution has the potential to expand protections against racial and ethnic discrimination, protect against unintentional but still disproportionate impacts on people of color, challenge discriminatory actions by non-governmental entities, while still permitting race-conscious programs that increase equality.

Who is opposed? While not opposed, the League of Women Voters cautioned in its ballot guide there could be potential downsides.

If passed, this law could add opportunity to bring reverse discrimination cases, the league wrote. Thus, if a Caucasian person felt they were discriminated against by a State-run operation or agency in hiring, admissions, or denied opportunities, they could sue under this new law.

Question 4

What would it do? This is a statewide referendum (as opposed to a constitutional amendment) that would allow municipal fire departments or companies with paid personnel, as well as EMS companies, to apply for a loan through an existing state-run program for volunteer companies. The money can be used to modernize or purchase equipment.

Who is in favor? The measure passed the legislature with unanimous support from Democrats and Republicans. The Pennsylvania Fire Emergency Services Institute is urging a yes vote, as is the Pennsylvania Career Fire Chiefs Association.

Who is opposed? Spotlight PA could not identify any opponents.

WHILE YOURE HERE... If you learned something from this story, pay it forward and become a member of Spotlight PA so someone else can in the future at spotlightpa.org/donate. Spotlight PA is funded by foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results.
JERUSALEM, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Friends of Zion Museum is launching a guesthouse for Holocaust survivors. The guesthouse was built on the Museum's campus grounds in Jerusalem, where the survivors will be able to stay as guests, free of charge. The project, the brainchild of Museum founder Dr. Mike Evans, was built at a cost of approximately NIS 10 million, includes seven units, tailored and accessible for the survivors, featuring 5-star hotel amenities including a clubroom, kitchen and dining hall, laundry rooms and warehouses. The project can accommodate up to 14 guests.

Friends of Zion Museum Launches Guesthouse in Jerusalem for Holocaust Survivors (Photo credit: Yossi Zamir)

The guesthouse is going to be operated jointly with the Yad Ezer La-Haver nonprofit, which will be providing the coordination service for guesthouse arrivals, free of charge. A program is going to be launched in the coming months, through which the survivors will be hosted for a visit to Jerusalem, lodging at the Museum's guesthouse and will participate in an event at the Wailing Wall, where they will celebrate their Bar- and Bat-Mitzvas, a seminal ceremony which they had been deprived of due to their circumstances at the time.

Some 300 Holocaust survivors have registered for the project so far, and will be participating in it in groups this coming year. First occupants checked in this week, and today the first Bar- and Bat-Mitzva ceremonies took place at the Wailing Wall with the Chief Rabbi of the Wailing Wall, Rabbi Rabinovich.

The project was launched in a festive ceremony on the Friends of Zion Museum campus in Jerusalem. Leading the event was Museum founder Dr. Mike Evans, with Rabbi Shimon Elmaliach in attendance, who installed the Mezuzah. Other dignitaries present were Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Elisha Peleg, General (Res.) Yossi Peled, who is also Museum Chairman of the Board, Shimon Sabag, General Manager of the Yad Ezer La-Haver nonprofit, Commissioner of the Prison Service Lieutenant General Katy Perry, MK Katy Sheetreet, Adv. Nir Kimhi, a trustee of the Friends of Zion in Israel, Ms. Tami Raveh and numerous foreign ambassadors.

Dr. Mike Evans, Friends of Zion Museum Founder: "I am proud and thrilled to inaugurate this guest house today, which will serve as a home for Holocaust survivors when they come to visit Jerusalem. This home will always be open to them, and we are deeply honored to be their hosts. The Holocaust survivors are close to our hearts and we are working hard to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive through the museum contents, through our events and through our ongoing collaboration with the Yad Ezer La-Haver non-profit". Dr. Evans told the Holocaust survivors present at the ceremony that "You are the light that shines on mankind when the world goes dark".

Last year the Friends of Zion Museum opened an international media center aimed at disseminating messages strengthening Israel in the unending battle against anti-Semitism worldwide and at against the incessant anti-Israel boycott initiatives. The Museum is also working on building an online research institute, which will be called the "Friends of Israel Institute". It is expected to revolutionize the way Zionism is taught and presented to the public at large. The Institute will help disseminate articles, research and instructional material to millions of people worldwide, using modern tools. Through outreach programs, these will help in the fight against anti-Semitism, in defending Jew worldwide and in Israel and against the various BDS initiatives.

The Friends of Zion Museum is an interactive museum, unique in Israel, which opened about five years ago in downtown Jerusalem. The Museum tells the fascinating stories of Israel's hero friends over the generations, those who expressed their wholehearted support for the Zionist idea, their faith in the Jewish People and in the State of Israel. The Museum displays dozens of state-of-the-art installations, including rotating installations, each featuring touchscreens, audiovisual elements and lighting technologies which guide the visitor traffic through its halls. The visitors are exposed to the story of our friends from all the different peoples of the world, who have helped the Jewish people and promoted the establishment of the State of Israel. These include persons such as Orde Wingate, Queen Victoria, Raoul Wallenberg, Oskar Schindler and others.

The Museum was founded by Dr. Mike Evans Dr. Michael D. Evans), author of 107 books, many of which have made the New York Times bestsellers list and have sold over 38 million copies worldwide. Evans served as Jerusalem Advisor to former President Trump and he is also the founder of numerous initiatives supporting Israel, including: the Jerusalem Prayer Team, which has 76 million members, and the Holocaust Memorial Museum Corrie ten Boom in Haarlem, The Netherlands.

Contact: Friends of Zion Museum, [email protected], +972-2-532-9400

SOURCE Friends of Zion Museum
To the dismay of environmentalists, the Biden administration is proposing to continue its predecessors licensing of the widely used insecticide sulfoxaflor while examining the chemicals harmful effect on honeybees.

In a filing with the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which has twice rejected the governments claims that it was safely regulating sulfoxaflor, the Environmental Protection Agency seeks to leave the insecticide in use with few restrictions while the agency evaluates its effects on endangered species. Environmental advocates say the assessment is off-target because sulfoxaflors main impact is on bees, a dwindling but not endangered species.

Sulfoxaflor, a Dow Chemical product, was first approved by the EPA in 2013 to kill insects on citrus fruits, cotton and other crops despite the agencys finding that it was very highly toxic to honeybees. It was not legalized in California, which has its own pesticide rules, but state regulators approved limited use of the insecticide last spring and are being sued in Alameda County Superior Court.

The EPA said in 2013 that it would protect honeybees and other pollinating species by limiting the timing and amount of dosages and requiring warning labels. But the appeals court ruled in 2015 that the agency had relied on flawed data from Dow and failed to determine that the product was reasonably safe before approving it.

The EPA then reapproved sulfoxaflor with restrictions accepted by beekeepers and their advocates, including a ban on use before bloom in crops that attract bees. But President Donald Trumps EPA lifted those restrictions in 2019, prompting a renewed lawsuit.

The suit was still pending when President Biden took office in January, and his EPA has asked the court to leave the current rules in place while it reviews the impact on agriculture and wildlife species. Trumps EPA had estimated that such a review would take at least seven years, but the agency now says it can act much more quickly, starting this summer.

COVID Resources Coronavirus Map Tracking COVID-19 cases across the Bay Area and California.

Sulfoxaflor has become an indispensable form of pest control for growers as numerous crops have become resistant to older pesticides, lawyers for the EPA said in a filing last week with the court, which had rejected a similar request from the previous EPA on Jan. 12. Because sulfoxaflor is less toxic than other insecticides and dissipates more quickly, the lawyers said, halting its use could pose greater risk to the very species that (environmental groups) seek to protect as well as to other species and humans.

Thats the same unsubstantiated claim the EPA has been making for nearly a decade, said Gregory Loarie, attorney for Earthjustice, which represents beekeepers and environmentalists in the case.

There are lots of alternatives out there that are lower risks, Loarie said Monday. He said the EPA appeared to be seeking a get-out-of-jail-free card by leaving its rules in place despite court findings that they violated environmental standards.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko
The Regional Planning Commission will hold a public meeting on April 27 to discuss transportation and usage of the La. 1077 corridor in west St. Tammany Parish between U.S. 190 and Interstate 12.

The meeting, scheduled for 5:30 p.m., will be held at Coquille Parks and Recreation, 13505 La. 1085, near Covington. People also can participate virtually via Zoom.

The study will determine the high-level costs, feasibility and potential environmental concerns of a roadway capacity project for the 3.1-mile stretch of La. 1077. The study is deemed necessary due to increased traffic as a result of population growth and development in the area and both St. Tammany Parish Government and the Regional Planning Commission believe growth in the corridor is outpacing localized improvement efforts, warranting analysis of the corridor's capacity.

Before moving into the conceptual design phase, St. Tammany Parish requested two general public meetings and two local stakeholder meetings take place. The meetings will allow local input on the La. 1077 corridor as it exists today, as well as future considerations.

An outline of the project scope and more information on participation online is available on is available on the RPC website, www.norpc.org.

Slidell-area roundabout proposals are online

The Louisiana DOTD is conducting an online public meeting for two proposed roundabouts to improve traffic flow, one at U.S. 190 at Northshore Boulevard and another at US 190 at Camp Villere Road just west of Slidell.

The meeting will be held exclusively online on for 14 consecutive days from noon on April 26 to noon May 9. During this time, members of the public can view the project, make a comment or ask questions.

A narrated multimedia presentation will be visible and those participating will have the opportunity to make any comments on the documents linked to the webpage. No live presentation will be conducted. The webpage: H.012812 US 190 @ Northshore & Camp Villere (or: http://wwwsp.dotd.la.gov/Inside_LaDOTD/Divisions/Engineering/Environmental/Pages/default.aspx then navigate to the project folder) will have the meeting sign in link, an agenda, a continuous multimedia presentation, and a comment submission link in order to contact DOTD with questions or comments.

Anyone with questions, no internet access or in need of special assistance can request a hard copy of the content of the virtual public meeting by contacting Robin Daigle via email robin.daigle@la.gov or by calling (225) 242-4508.

Parish Planning Commission OKs two major subdivisions

The St. Tammany Parish Planning Commission had only two major subdivisions on its April 7 agenda, and both were approved.

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Commissioners approved preliminary plans for River Club, Phase 4-B, comprising 16 lots on 4.018 acres north of Delta Lane, south of Brewster Road, south of Covington.

Final plans were also approved for Maison du Lac, Phase 3D, consisting of 16 lots on 3.08 acres on the west side of La. 1085, north of La. 21, also south of Covington.

The rest of the commissions agenda consisted of routine approvals of minor subdivisions, those with five or fewer lots, and resubdivisions, requested when owners want to redivide a plot of land into more or fewer lots.

Bill McHugh

More advisory board, commission appointees

Gov. John Bel Edwards' recent appointments to Louisiana boards and commissions include:

Rear Adm. Joel R. Whitehead of Mandeville, president J. Whitehead and Associates, who was reappointed to the Louisiana Military Advisory Council. Whitehead will serve as an O-6 officer representing the Coast Guard. The Council provides a forum for issues concerning the installations and units of the armed forces located in Louisiana, as well as the military and retired military personnel and their families who live in the state.

Mandeville resident Guy D. Hughes, the chief resource management officer at the Jean Lafitte Parks Service, has been appointed to the Louisiana Folklife Commission to represent the park and preserve; and Ponchatoula resident Tommy I. Hailey, a professor of anthropology and archaeology at Northwestern State University and the director of its Cultural Resources Office, has been reappointed to the Commission to represent the Louisiana Folklife Society.

The Commission advises the Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourisms Office of Cultural Development on policy, objectives and budgeting needs in the identification, preservation and presentation of Louisiana folk cultural resources.

WST-Electric Co-op meeting scheduled

The annual membership meeting of the Washington-St. Tammany Electric Co-op will be held on May 1 at the co-op headquarters, 950 Pearl St., in Franklinton. The 10 a.m. meeting will include reports from co-op officers, directors and committees, as well as unfinished and new business. For more information, call (985) 839-3562.
Bengaluru, April 20 : Hours after Kannada film director, Guruprasad, lashed out at Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa, noted Kannada music director, comedian and director, Sadhu Kokila, on Monday appealed to the general public to be very vigilant about the Covid-19 pandemic and follow the safety protocols.

While explaining his ordeal to procure a cylinder of oxygen for his brother's son, Kokila got emotional and told reporters that he could imagine the plight of a common man who is struggling out there to get treatment for their kith and kin in the worst times of pandemic.

"Being a celebrity, I had to run from pillar to post just to arrange a single cylinder of oxygen for my brother's son, who had tested Covid positive. It was a horrible experience," he rued.

He added that people should not take the pandemic lightly.

"Whatever is coming in the media is absolutely true. There is shortage of oxygen, medicines, beds and even one has to wait for long hours to cremate or bury the dead ones. This is truly disastrous," he rued.

Kokila told reporters on the sidelines of the 'Muhurat' of the Kannada film 'Lagaam' that though his brother's son has recovered now, he cannot forget the ordeal which he went through.

On the work front, Kokila was last seen in the film 'Drona' which starred Shiva Rajkumar in the lead role. The last film for which he had composed music was 'Masti Gudi".
MORRISVILLE, N.C., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Bantam Vape, LLC is excited to announce its e-liquid products are now available for purchase through AVAIL Vapor, LLC, a premium retailer. Bantam's products will be sold in AVAIL's specialized brick-and-mortar locations as well as on its e-commerce website, www.availvapor.com.

AVAIL will offer a wide selection of Bantam's products including Sour Strawberry and Kiwi Berry.

"Bantam is known for our artisanal flavors that are built from scratch using only high-quality ingredients." Tweet this All of Bantams flavors are backed by science, manufactured in certified clean rooms and undergo rigid testing and analysis, resulting in smooth, clean-tasting e-liquids, making Bantam Vape your coils best friend.

"Bantam is known for our artisanal flavors that are built from scratch using only high-quality ingredients, as well as our commitment to compliance and transparency. Joining with an established leader in the vaping category, like AVAIL, poses an exciting opportunity as we continue to expand our retail and online presence; and most importantly, gives our consumers greater access to our products," said Bantam Director of Sales, Michelle Gottlich.

All of Bantam's flavors are backed by science, manufactured in certified clean rooms and undergo rigid testing and analysis, resulting in smooth, clean-tasting e-liquids, making Bantam Vape your coil's best friend. Additionally, the brand's premarket tobacco product application is queued for formal scientific review with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which will ensure the long-term marketing and sale of its e-liquids.

"We recognize that Bantam, like AVAIL, is dedicated to providing consumers with products that echo our principals of exceptional quality and flavors," said Justin Murphy, AVAIL's Vice President of Retail Operations and Marketing. "We are excited to stock the variety of flavors, nicotine level options and reliable quality of merchandise that the Bantam brand offers."

About Bantam Vape

Bantam is a North Carolina-based e-liquids brand founded by vapers for vapers. Bantam operates to create the best possible flavors backed by science. Recognized by Vaping360 as one of the best nicotine salts on the market, Bantam attributes its success to its authentic and artisanal flavors developed by flavorists and chemists with decades of combined experience. Bantam Vape is your coil's best friend. For more information, visit www.bantamvape.com.

About AVAIL

Richmond, Virginia-based AVAIL is a premium retailer that offers a broad array of products online and in its specialized retail stores. The company delivers on the promise of quality and transparency. Information on AVAIL products is available through its retail stores and on the web at www.availvapor.com.

SOURCE Bantam Vape, LLC

Related Links

http://www.bantamvape.com


London, April 19 : UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has cancelled his trip to India in the wake of the severity of the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic in the country, a Downing Street spokesperson confirmed on Monday.

The spokesperson said Johnson and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi would speak later this month to "agree and launch their ambitious plans for the future partnership", the BBC reported.

The visit was to take place on April 26.

The Downing Street further confirmed that the two leaders would meet later this year, without specifying any further details.

Johnson's trip to India was initially scheduled to take place in Januarybut was cancelled when the UK entered a national lockdown, the third of its kind since the onset of the pandemic last years.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
At 8 a.m. on Saturday, April 10, fishing lines were cast in waters all over New Jersey for opening day of trout season.

According to the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife, Since every county has waters that are stocked with trout, trout fishing opportunities are never too far away. Locally, folks took to the Musconetcong River.

To fish for trout or salmon in the state, a valid New Jersey fishing license and trout stamp are both required for residents at age 16 to 70 plus all nonresidents 16 years and older.

Through May 31, the minimum legal size is 9 with a daily limit of six trout in most trout waters. From June 1 through March 20, 2022, the legal size remains 9 but the daily limit will be reduced to four trout.

For more information on trout fishing in New Jersey, go to www.njfishandwildlife.com.
IRVINE, Calif., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In a case of first impression, the Orange County Board of Education now has the right to retain its own lawyer. The settlement sent shockwaves throughout the California education law community and paved the way for some or all of the 58 County Boards to co-appoint their legal officer shared with the County Superintendent.

The dispute arose when the Orange County Superintendent of Schools, Al Mijares, unilaterally hired the Board's General Counsel. Despite multiple assurances to the contrary, the Superintendent contravened Education Code 35041.5 which requires the Board and Superintendent to jointly appoint the same legal counsel. Believing there was an ongoing conflict of interest, the Board retained its own counsel pursuant to Education Code 1042 (d), 1621 (c), Gregory J. Rolen of Haight Brown & Bonesteel ("Haight"). However, after first threatening to not pay Haight the Superintendent then baldly refused to pay invoices setting the stage for a protected legal dispute and 22-day bench trial.

The trial was a combination education law hypothetical and civics tutorial. In a remarkable tentative ruling the Judge addressed not only legal ethical issues such as "conflict of interest" and "coercion," but also unpacked the statutory authority conferred on two equally-elected sovereigns: the Board and Superintendent. Finally, the Judge tackled the very real, professional and personal implications, for both attorney and client, of the Superintendent withholding payment as a litigation tactic in a statewide political power struggle. The case settled on the heels of the Judge's tentative ruling.

"This is an absolute game changer shifting the power dynamic to County Boards, and county board members! The right thing happened here. The letter of the law prevailed over the raw exercise of bureaucratic power," said Greg Rolen.

Gregory J. Rolen is a Partner at Haight Brown & Bonesteel and is currently retained by Orange County Board of Education.

Haight Brown & Bonesteel LLP, one of California's leading law firms since 1937. With more than 75 attorneys across six offices, our practice areas include: appellate; business solutions; construction; elder care; employment & labor; environmental law & toxic tort; food safety; general liability; product liability; professional liability; public entity; risk management and insurance; transactional; transportation law; and workers' compensation.

www.hbblaw.com

SOURCE Haight, Brown & Bonesteel
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Kildare people are invited to sign up for Darkness into Light 2021 which will take place at sunrise on the morning of Saturday, May 8  but won't be a series of mass gatherings as in previous years due to Covid-19 restrictions.

The event, which is sponsored by Electric Ireland, will be asking all supporters to don their yellow t-shirts and take part in the event at a time and in a location that suits them.

Participants may walk, swim, bike or simply share your sunrise moment.

Each year the walk provides an opportunity for people to connect with their local community and to show their support for those who have been impacted by suicide.

In 2009, 400 people set off on the inaugural Darkness Into Light 5km walk in the Phoenix Park to raise funds for Pieta.

From small beginnings, the movement has continued to grow with 29m raised.

Around 200,000 people now take part in the event annually.

The organisers said about the 2021 event: Although in 2021 we may not be able to gather together as we have before, we can share one sunrise together and create hope for a brighter future.

Get creative with your activity, and remember that no matter how you choose to take part this year, youll be giving the gift of hope to those in your community in suicidal crisis, or self-harming.

The safety of our supporters is our highest priority, so we ask all participants to ensure that they strictly adhere to the governments Covid 19 guidelines at all times while taking part in the event.

All those walking or running for the event should ensure that their route is properly lit at the time they plan to take part, and that there are no hazards.
Amaravati, April 19 : Andhra Pradesh on Monday reported 5,963 new Covid-19 cases, raising the overall tally beyond 9.68 lakh, while the state's active cases breached the 48,000-mark to reach 48,053.

From registering more than 2,000 cases a day for some days, new infections are now ranging around 6,000, raising the state's coronavirus tally.

On a positive note, 2,569 persons recovered from the disease in the last 24 hours, raising the total number of recoveries to over 9.12 lakh.

Chittoor district reported the highest number of cases at 1,182, followed by Guntur (938), Srikakulam (893), East Godavari (626) and Visakhapatnam (565), Nellore (491), Kurnool (434), Kadapa (189), Krishna (171), Anantapur (156) and Vizianagaram and West Godavari (19 each).

East Godavari's tally has crossed 1.29 lakh, the highest among all the districts in Andhra Pradesh.

Meanwhile, 27 more persons succumbed to Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, pushing the state's death toll to 7,437.

With 37,765 more tests, the total number of tests conducted in Andhra Pradesh has crossed the 1.57 crore-mark.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
The disputed South China Sea may soon see an escalation in tensions over oil drilling rights between China and the Phillippines, according to Phillippine President Rodrigo Duterte who spoke to the public late on Monday.

The President's comments came as the Filipino leader was criticized for his soft response to China's movements in the disputed sea. China announced earlier this month that it had drilled into the sea to retrieve sediment core from the seabed in the hopes of finding natural gas hydrate resources. It was a world record for deep-sea drilling in the South China Sea.

A U.S. Navy strike group has also made its presence in the sea.

"If they start drilling oil there, I will tell China, is that part of our agreement? If that is not part of our agreement, I will also drill oil there," Durterte said as part of the address that was quoted by Reuters.

The Philippine Coast Guard reported earlier in the week that 240 Chinese vessels remained within Manila's exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea near Whitsun Reef.

China has claimed that the vessels were fishing vessels seeking shelter near the reef.

"I'm not so much interested now in fishing. I don't think there's enough fish to quarrel about. But when we start to mine, when we start to get whatever it is in the bowels of the China Sea, our oil, by that time I will send my grey ships there to stake a claim," Duterte said on Monday.

The stronger words than usual for the President may seek to somewhat appease Philippine nationalists who have openly accused Duterte of being subservient to China.

The dispute also involves territorial claims by Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei, and Malaysiain addition to the Philippines and China. A court in The Hague in 2016 ruled against Chinas claims and in favor of the Philippines. China, however, has not acknowledged the ruling, which has heightened tensions in the area.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Boston - Transgender people have a higher burden of cardiovascular disease and hypertension than cisgender people. However, while doctors have prescribed gender-affirming hormone therapy to transgender men and women for more than 25 years, little is known about how this treatment may impact rates of hypertension in this patient population or how the effects of hormone therapy on blood pressure may change over time.

In the largest and longest observational study of its kind, physician-researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) found that gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT) was associated with blood pressure changes in both transgender men and women. Given the higher burden of heart attack, stroke and other cardiovascular conditions among transgender men and women, these new findings underscore the importance of monitoring blood pressure and other preventive screening measures in transgender patients especially after beginning hormone therapies. The study appears in Hypertension, a journal of the American Heart Association.

"There are many important gaps in clinicians' knowledge about the effects of hormone therapy for transgender people," said senior author Michael S. Irwig, MD, Director of Transgender Medicine at BIDMC. "Our study sought to address these gaps by recruiting a racially and ethnically diverse pool of participants to examine the time course and magnitude of the effects of gender-affirming hormones on blood pressure."

Irwig and colleagues followed 470 patients who began GAHT at two medical centers in the Washington, D.C. between 2007 and 2015. Participants were all at least 17 years old and non-cisgender. Of the 470 patients, 247 were transfeminine and 223 were transmasculine; about 27 percent of patients were non-white. Researchers measured each patient's blood pressure before beginning GAHT to establish a baseline and continued measurements at subsequent clinical visits for up to 57 months.

Within two to four months of beginning hormone therapy, transgender women saw an average decrease of 4.0 mm Hg in their systolic blood pressure, while transgender men saw an average increase of 2.6 mm Hg. The prevalence of stage 2 hypertension (at least 140/90 mm Hg) dropped from 19 percent to 10 percent in the transfeminine group within two to four months of beginning hormone therapy. The use of testosterone in transgender men could lead to an increased risk for heart attack or stroke if they also have untreated high blood pressure.

In addition, the results indicated that some patients experienced different blood pressure effects compared to the majority of those with the same gender identity. Some transgender women and transgender men saw blood pressure rates trend in the opposite direction of their peers. The study authors highlight this is an area that requires further research, noting individuals taking the same medication may react in different ways.

"Further research is needed to understand how different formulations may affect different people and to find out if there are any disparities among Black or Latinx patients," said Irwig, who is also Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. "A 2020 Scientific Statement from the American Heart Association indicates that it is paramount to include LGBTQ health in clinical training and licensure requirements for health care professionals so that physicians can better address cardiovascular health disparities in the LGBTQ community."

###

Study co-authors are Katherine Banks, M.D. and Mabel Kyinn, M.D. of The George Washington School of Medicine & Health Sciences; Shalem Y. Leemaqz, Ph.D. of Flinders University College of Medicine and Public Health; and Eleanor Sarkodie, M.P.H. and Deborah Goldstein, M.D. of the Whitman-Walker Institute.

All authors report no sources of funding and no potential conflicts of interest.

Editor's note: This release is adapted from a press release issued by the American Heart Association.

About Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is a patient care, teaching and research affiliate of Harvard Medical School and consistently ranks as a national leader among independent hospitals in National Institutes of Health funding. BIDMC is the official hospital of the Boston Red Sox. For more information, visit http://www. bidmc. org .

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is a part of Beth Israel Lahey Health, a health care system that brings together academic medical centers and teaching hospitals, community and specialty hospitals, more than 4,000 physicians and 35,000 employees in a shared mission to expand access to great care and advance the science and practice of medicine through groundbreaking research and education.
External Affairs Minister held another round of "productive interaction" with his counterpart Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan here where the two leaders discussed the entire gamut of bilateral relations, especially the strong focus on economic recovery post COVID-19.

Jaishankar arrived in Abu Dhabi on Sunday with a focus on boosting bilateral economic cooperation. His visit to the United Arab Emirates comes amid evolving geo-political developments in the region, particularly in Afghanistan.

"Another productive interaction with FM @ABZayed on our bilateral cooperation. Took forward our ongoing discussions on this subject, starting in February. The strong focus on post-COVID economic recovery will remain a priority for us," he said in a tweet late on Sunday along with a picture of them holding a meeting outdoors.

According to UAE's official WAM news agency, the two leaders discussed ways to develop and enhance bilateral cooperation in all domains, in a way that will fulfil the aspirations of the leadership of India and the and benefit their peoples.

Emphasising on the historic ties between the two nations, Sheikh Abdullah said that the UAE-India strategic partnership contributes to creating more opportunities for growth in commercial, economic, cultural and other fields.

They also deliberated the latest COVID-19 developments, the two countries' efforts to contain its repercussions, and the global efforts to provide vaccines to all countries, WAM reported.

Sheikh Abdullah also praised the cooperation between the two countries to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic, it said.

The foreign minister visited New Delhi on February 26 and held talks with Jaishankar.

Jaishankar earlier paid a two-day visit to the UAE from November 25 to 26 last year in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

Interestingly, Jaishankar's visit to Abu Dhabi coincided with the trip of his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi, amid efforts by the Gulf emirate to facilitate back channel talks to restart dialogue between New Delhi and Islamabad.

(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 2021 Rally Award winners are outstanding examples of professionals who brought their expertise and their heart to helping thousands of people find work during the pandemic.

Rally Recruitment Marketing, the largest community for recruitment marketing, employer branding and talent acquisition professionals, announced the winners of the second annual Rally Awards in a live virtual ceremony.

A global competition honoring excellence in recruitment marketing and employer branding practices, the Rally Awards bestowed 33 awards on 22 companies for categories that included Best Employer Brand Launch, Best Recruitment Marketing Campaign and Best Careers Social Media Channel. Additionally, most categories named a first and second place winner.

Distinguished awards were also given for Recruitment Marketing Rising Star and Recruitment Marketer of the Year. These two categories honor practitioners for distinguishing themselves through pioneering work, business impact and extraordinary leadership, serving as role models for raising up the entire profession.

Throughout 2020, our community stepped up in so many impactful ways to support their organizations through tremendous challenges and change, said Rally Founder & CEO, Lori Sylvia. The 2021 Rally Award winners are outstanding examples of professionals who brought their expertise and their heart to helping thousands of people find work during a pandemic and to find belonging in a company even while working from home, while ensuring that their organizations had the critical staffing needed to provide the essential services that we all depended on. Congratulations to all the winners for making a difference!

Winners were selected by an independent panel of esteemed peer judges, and each entry was judged on strategy, quality, innovation and verified results.

2021 Rally Award winners by category:

Best Careers Blog

First Place: Workhuman, Christina Spadaro and Jessica Breen

Second Place: Giant Eagle

Best Careers Social Media Channel

First Place: ADP, Megan Nichols, Liz Kempinski, Kate Klingman, Ingrid Urquijo Bayter and Ivanessa Delgado

Best Content Marketing Program

First Place (tie): Nestle USA

First Place (tie): PetSmart, Dani Kaufman and Meghan Rozman

Second Place: Newell Brands, Ashley Blackmore

Best Employer Brand Launch

First Place: ADP, Megan Nichols, Liz Kempinski, Kate Klingman, Ingrid Urquijo Bayter and Liz Gelb-OConnor

Second Place (tie): McGraw Hill, Shelby Stoddart and Jacqui Edwards

Second Place (tie): Lockheed Martin

Best Employer Brand Video

First Place: Nestle USA

Second Place: Cisco

Best Recruitment Marketing Campaign

First Place: Lockheed Martin, Matt Biester, Jason Boone, Rowan Toffoli and Anthony Gilbert

Second Place: Land OLakes

Best Talent E-Newsletter

First Place: BAE Systems

Second Place: Morley

Best Use of Employee Generated Content

First Place: PetSmart, Dani Kaufman and Meghan Rozman

Second Place: BAE Systems

Best Use of Organic Social Media in Recruitment Marketing

First Place: Cisco, Carmen Collins, Jen Burns and Kim Dufresne

Second Place: TTEC Holdings

Best Use of Paid Social Media in Recruitment Marketing

First Place: UBS

Second Place (tie): Nestle USA

Second Place (tie): Sitel Group

Best Use of Recruitment Marketing Technology

First Place: Lockheed Martin, Matt Biester, Jason Boone, Rowan Toffoli and Anthony Gilbert

Second Place (tie): Mercy

Second Place (tie): Syneos Health Commercial Solutions

Best Use of Video in Recruitment Marketing

First Place: Dell Technologies

Second Place (tie): TTEC Holdings

Second Place (tie): UBS

Second Place (tie): AdventHealth

Recruitment Marketing Rising Stars

Christina Spadaro, Workhuman

Tricia Day, Appian Corporation

Tony Prudente, Brother USA

Recruitment Marketer of the Year

Kerry Noone, CVS Health

Award recipients voiced appreciation for receiving this honor, for the recognition of the contributions that they and their teams made over the past year, and their excitement about the future of the recruiting marketing and employer branding discipline.

Matthew Biester, Manager of Enterprise HR Technology Implementation at Lockheed Martin:

"Over a year ago, Jason Boone, Rowan Toffoli, Anthony Gilbert and I set out on a journey to aid service members in their transition from active duty to civilian careers and never in my wildest dreams did I think it would have the impact we have seen since. Seeing Handshake 2 Hire go from an idea on a napkin to an award-winning program has been the highlight of my career and I am proud to have the opportunity to help those who have served our country."

Liz Gelb-OConnor, VP, Global Employer Brand & Marketing at ADP:

"My team and I are thrilled to be recognized by our peers for our accomplishments. Over the last few years, we've worked hard to curate authentic stories that best represent ADP's employer brand on our social channels. In addition, we thank our technology leaders for trusting us to break new ground and co-create an employer brand with our technologists targeted to attract tech talent. As a result, we've launched tech.adp.com for technologists, by technologists."

Kerry Noone from CVS Health, Recruitment Marketer of the Year:

"I am so excited to be recognized as the Recruitment Marketing Leader of the year! Last year was like no other year for our country, and who would have thought finding our new normal would become the new buzz phrase? While some companies were slowing their hiring down, others were ramping up, and both at record speed. The best part of the terrible series of events throughout the year is the partnerships that developed and the strengthened relationships. When I reflect back on 2020, I realize how much I learned from my CVS Health colleagues and my fellow recruitment marketing professionals, and for that, I am thankful."

Award winners will have their winning work featured on RallyRecruitmentMarketing.com to benefit, inspire and educate talent acquisition and marketing professionals everywhere. The ceremony can be watched on demand at: https://rallyrecruitmentmarketing.com/2021/04/2021-rally-award-winners/

To learn more about the Rally Awards and to sign up for the 2022 competition, visit: https://rallyawards.com/

About Rally

Rally Recruitment Marketing is an online community of 30,000 professionals learning and sharing best practices in recruitment marketing and employer branding to lead the future of talent acquisition. Rally with us at https://rallyrecruitmentmarketing.com.
BAYLIS  John Wood Community College will have a student visit and registration event Thursday at its agricultural education center near Baylis.

High school students interested in agricultural careers, parents, agriculture teachers and counselors can attend.
[April 19, 2021] Emerald Announces Date for First Quarter 2021 Financial Results Conference Call

Emerald Holding, Inc. (NYSE:EEX) ("Emerald" or the "Company") today announced that it will release its financial results for the first quarter 2021 before the market open on Friday, April 30, 2021. The Company will hold a conference call to discuss the results at 8:30 am ET that same day. The conference call can be accessed by dialing 1-877-407-9039 (domestic) or 1-201-689-8470 (international). A telephonic replay will be available approximately two hours after the call by dialing 1-844-512-2921, or for international callers, 1-412-317-6671. The passcode for the replay is 13718642. The replay will be available until 11:59 pm (Eastern Time) on May 7, 2021. Interested investors and other parties can access the webcast of the live conference call by viiting the Investors section of Emerald's website at https://investor.emeraldx.com. An online replay will be available on the same website immediately following the call.



About Emerald Emerald is a leader in building dynamic, market-driven business-to-business platforms that integrate live events with a broad array of industry insights, digital tools, and data-focused solutions to create uniquely rich experiences. As true partners, we at Emerald strive to build our customers' businesses by creating opportunities that inspire, amaze, and deliver breakthrough results. With over 140 events each year, our teams are creators and connectors who are thoroughly immersed in the industries we serve and committed to supporting the communities in which we operate.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005230/en/

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Nearly 8,000 New Jersey police and firefighters with 20 years of service can now retire early under a bill Gov. Phil Murphy signed into law Monday.

The legislation (S1017), known as a burnout bill, allows public safety workers who reach 20 years of service within the next two years to retire with a pension, regardless of their age. Current law limits the early retirement benefit, the equivalent of half their salary, for public safety workers hired after January 2000 to those at least 55 years old.

The unions who advocated for the change said it was not creating a new benefit, but rather bringing officers and firefighters hired after 2000 in line with those hired before 2000. It corrects what they argued was a misinterpretation of the 1999 law creating the early retirement benefit by former Gov. Chris Christies administration.

Opponents, including local government representatives, have said they were concerned about putting additional strain on the woefully underfunded public employee pension system and about higher bills for government employers.

The nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services said it could not calculate the fiscal impact of the bill with a reasonable degree of certainty. However, the Police and Firemens Retirement System would incur up to $465 million in costs annually if every one of the 7,630 employees covered by the bill retired early.

OLS projected the funded ratio of the local portion of the pension system for police and firefighters would fall from 71.7% to 65.6% and the state portion from 38.9% to 35.7% if the full complement retired early.

Rob Nixon, the New Jersey Police Benevolent Associations government affairs director, said historically only a small percentage of members opt for early retirement, which has a reduced benefit.

An individual member is leaving well over $1 million on the table by taking this benefit, Nixon said, noting their early retirement pension allowance is 50% of their final salary and they forfeit post-retirement medical benefits. Why would they take it? They take it because theyre burning out.

This legislation would extend eligibility for an additional two years, which Nixon described as a limited window to test the financial impact of early retirement.

Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a subscription.

Samantha Marcus may be reached at smarcus@njadvancemedia.com.
Japan's government said on Monday it is asking to release a Japanese journalist who was arrested by security forces in its largest city of Yangon the previous day.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato told reporters Monday that his government is asking authorities to explain the arrest and provide other details while asking for his release as soon as possible.

He did not identify the detainee, but Japanese media identified him as Yuki Kitazumi, a former Nikkei business newspaper reporter currently based in Yangon as a freelance journalist.

We will continue asking the side for his early release, while doing our utmost for the protection of the Japanese citizens in that country, Kato said.

Japan's NHK public television quoted witnesses as saying that they saw Kitazumi being arrested and taken from his home.

Kitazumi had been detained briefly in late February by police while covering pro-democracy protests in Myanmar, where the military ousted the elected government February 1.

has stepped up its criticism of Myanmar's deadly crackdown on opposition but has taken a milder approach than the United States and some other countries that imposed sanctions against members of the military junta.

On Saturday, the junta released more than 23,000 prisoners to mark the traditional new year's holiday. At least three had been political prisoners, but it wasn't immediately clear if any activists detained during the post-coup crackdown had been freed.

According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which monitors casualties and arrests, government forces have killed at least 728 protesters and bystanders since the takeover. The group says 3,141 people, including ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, are in detention.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A man and a woman jointly charged with attacking a man with a machete were today granted bail at Derry Magistrates Court.

Co-accused Codie Weir, 24, of Clon Elagh, and Conor Lishman, 33, of Clarendon Street, both appeared at the local court for bail applications.

They are charged with aggravated burglary and Inflicting grievous bodily harm, aggravated taking and causing damage to a vehicle, possession of an offensive weapon with intent to commit an Indictable offence and two counts of grievous bodily harm with Intent on December 29, 2020.

The pair are further charged with each assaulting a police officer on the same date.

Defence barrister Eoghan Devlin said the offences relate to an allegation that four people entered the home of another individual and a machete was used.

He added that the alleged injured party had the machete in his house.

The court was told that forensics are outstanding in the case, more specifically reports on a machete and Stanley knife, and toxicology reports.

Objecting to bail for Weir, a police officer said she has breached bail a number of times including Covid regulations on one occasion.

Representing Lishman, a barrister said bail was refused at the High Court because of his clients criminal record.

The court heard that the 33-year-old has missed the birth of his child while in prison.

These are the only offences against him. Its safe to say this case wont be going to trial for a very long time, defence counsel added.

Other suspects in the case are out on bail and comparatively Lishman was in a stronger position in terms of bail at this stage, he said.

A police officer objected to bail saying there was a risk of reoffending and interference with witnesses.

Deputy District Judge OHare granted Weir her own bail of 500 with a 500 surety with conditions that include an 8pm-8am curfew.

Lishman was released on the same terms as he had been originally with the addition of a surety.

Both defendants will appear again on May 10.
The U.S. reaches universal eligibility

The United States passed a significant milestone in its vaccine rollout: As of today, all adults in every state, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico are now eligible for a Covid-19 vaccine.

The states had rushed to meet the April 19 deadline set by President Biden two weeks ago, and today the final states  Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont  expanded eligibility.

After a slow start in December, the pace of vaccinations in the U.S. has picked up considerably in recent months. More than 131 million people, or half of all American adults, had received at least one shot as of Sunday, and about 84.3 million people had been fully vaccinated, a third of the adult population. At its current pace, the U.S. will vaccinate 70 percent of its population by mid-June, but experts are warning Americans not to let their guards down. The virus is resurgent and the U.S. is averaging more than 67,000 new cases a day over the past seven days, up from over 54,000 a month ago.

The next phase of the rollout will bring its own challenges. Some scientists and health officials believe that making more people eligible will ultimately get more people vaccinated more swiftly. But others have said they are worried that some of the most vulnerable people, including those 65 and older, may have trouble competing for a shot. About a fifth of that group has not received even one shot.
State court officials are preparing for jury selection May 20 at the Windsor County Courthouse, in Woodstock, pictured here. It would be the states first jury draw since trials were suspended in March last year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Mastercard has signed a partnership agreement with the Central Bank of Iraq (CBI) to digitise the countrys payment ecosystem.

This is intended to boost financial inclusion, encourage socio-economic development, mitigate the risks of a shadow economy and accelerate the advancement toward a cashless society.

The partnership first aims to build an efficient, reliable, and secure payment ecosystem, starting with the education sector, and expanding into other sectors. This will not only reduce the use of cash, promote the use of digital payments, and increase government revenues, but will also minimise sizeable operational and administrative inefficiencies in the education industry by reducing the overly manual processes.

Iraqs population of 40 million people is largely cash-driven, with 99.8% of its $122 billion personal consumption expenditure made in cash in 20191. Despite that however, there is a large potential for digitisation, as the country has a 70% smartphone penetration rate and 222% of the population fall within the young and tech savvy 15-24 years old age bracket.

Furthermore, there is often very little choice in payment methods offered to parents and guardians with most students managing all their payments in cash. With neither parents nor students having bank accounts or using online payment services, it is critical to encourage a change in the way consumers pay school fees, since it can cause a ripple effect by impacting the entire payment ecosystem and economy.

Duha Abdul Kareem Mohammed, Director General for Payments Department at the Central Bank of Iraq, said: "The work that Mastercard has done in Iraq over the last few years has made a notable impact on the countrys financial services sector and driven greater levels of financial inclusion. At the Central Bank of Iraq, we clearly recognise that the digital economy has a vital role to play in that journey, especially in enabling formal economic growth through a new payment ecosystem that is transparent, simple, and effective. We are very much looking forward to working with Mastercard to advance Iraqs digital transformation, beginning with the education sector.

Khalid Elgibali, Division President Mena, Mastercard, said: Creating a digital payment ecosystem is critical, not only because it encourages economic development, but because there is also a demonstrable, negative relationship between cash use and the shadow economy. Our work with the Central Bank of Iraq will focus on improving overall efficiencies the economy, starting with the educational institutions by giving parents, students, and merchants a much safer, simpler, and more convenient way to pay. This is only the start however, and we look forward to expanding into other sectors at a later stage, as we work to advance the full payment ecosystem and achieve financial inclusion in Iraq.

The Mastercard partnership with CBI is a starting point that will allow for the development of a full digital ecosystem in Iraq, which will cover key pillars including the use of Public Policy and Regulation to curb the shadow economy, a wholesale modernisation of the payment ecosystem, and the digitisation of key value chains. Those include government collections and disbursement and peer-to-peer and consumer spending, as well as business purchases and salary payments.-- Tradearabia News Service
New Delhi: The Delhi government on Monday (April 19) rescheduled the summer vacations in all schools in view of the rising COVID-19 cases.

Amid a surge in coronavirus cases in the national capital, the summer vacations will now commence from April 20 and last till June 9 in all government, government-aided and unaided recognised schools.

Summer vacations rescheduled, to be from 20th April to 9th June in all government, government-aided and unaided recognised schools, ANI quoted the Delhi government as saying.

Earlier on Monday, West Bengal Chief Minister had declared summer vacation for all students across the schools in the state. The vacation will start from Tuesday (April 20) and continue till June. The decision to announce early vacation was taken in view of the rising number of COVID-19 cases.

Meanwhile, on Monday (April 19, 2021), Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announced that Delhi will be put under complete lockdown from the night of April 19 till April 26 morning. He said that the lockdown will be placed from 10 pm on Monday till 5 am on April 26. The lockdown was implemented in order to curb the transmission of coronavirus in the state.

"Essential services, food services, medical services will continue. Weddings can be held with a gathering of only 50 people, passes will be issued separately for it. A detailed order will be issued shortly," said the Delhi CM. He also stressed that there is a huge shortage of ICU beds in the hospitals.

Live TV
YEREVAN, APRIL 19, ARMENPRESS. The process of the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide remains one of the priority directions of the Armenian foreign ministry, minister Ara Aivazians advisor Marta Aivazian told a news conference.

We dont lose any occasion for raising this issue at relevant arenas. We also make efforts in our bilateral contacts to achieve the main objective  a maximally broad recognition of the Armenian Genocide, she said.

Asked whether or not any negotiations are planned in the direction of establishing diplomatic relations with Turkey, Aivazian said that no negotiations are planned or taking place between Armenia and Turkey.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
Construction debris on top of printing press equipment at the print shop that prints the Hong Kong edition of The Epoch Times in Hong Kong, China, on April 12, 2021. (Adrian Yu/The Epoch Times)

Attack on Hong Kong Epoch Times a Litmus Test for the Territorys Government: Australian Politicians

The attack on the Hong Kong office of The Epoch Times is a litmus test for the territorys governing body, said Australian politicians who have called on the federal government to denounce the attack.

Queensland Liberal National Party MP George Christiansen told The Epoch Times that the world had seen an escalation of attacks on the free press in Hong Kong, including those involving Jimmy Lai, and that they should be denounced, including by the Australian government.

Attacks on the Free Press continue to come in Hong Kong from the Chinese Communist Party, and they should be condemned,  Christensen said.

Hong Kong police looking into this matter will be a litmus test as to whether or not the Hong Kong government is a complete patsy to the Chinese Communist Party, he added.

Christensens sentiments were echoed by Tasmanian Liberal Senator Eric Abetz, who told The Epoch Times that the attack a deliberate case of vandalism.

This is a case of deliberate vandalism designed to intimidate and silence those who speak out against the campaign to crush Hong Kongs freedoms, Abetz said.

The Epoch Times has been targeted by attacks numerous times over the years, and this is surely another coordinated effort to limit public information and debate that is critical of what has been inflicted upon Hong Kong.

As one of the few independent outlets left in Hong Kong that is critical of the CCP, it is deeply worrying how a free and open press can continue to operate in the face of such attacks, Abetz said.

Christensen and Abetz are both members of the global Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which has said that the strike on The Epoch Times demonstrates that the Hong Kong authorities have slipped into the grip of Chinas Communist regime.

The freedom of the press is an absolute requirement in any state that respects the rule of law. If the Hong Kong authorities really were independent champions of their democratic system, theyd defend The Epoch Times, IPAC said. That they wont tells you all you need to know: Hong Kong has slipped into the grips of an authoritarian communist party that will tolerate no criticism.

The attack on The Epoch Times printing facility on April 12 has been condemned by political leaders, media watchdogs, and government groups globally, including by the U.S. State Department, Reporters Without Borders, and former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

During the attack, Epoch Times staff at the facility were threatened at knifepoint, computers were smashed with sledgehammers, and the printing machines damaged with concrete mix. Computer parts were also stolen.

The Hong Kong edition of The Epoch Times resumed publication on April 17 after declaring that they would not bow to violent threats.
[April 19, 2021] "If Not Now, When?" Liberals Waste Another Shot at Equitable Recovery With Budget 2021

Canada's largest union says the Liberal government has wasted another opportunity to fund a strong and equitable recovery with Budget 2021. Instead of learning from the failures of Canada's care system during the pandemic, the Trudeau government is refusing to do what it takes to protect vulnerable residents in long-term care, promising yet another child care plan that may never see the light of day, and refusing to act on pharmacare. "With this budget, we had a shot at fixing the way we care for our vulnerable in this country, and paying for it by getting the ultra-rich and the pandemic profiteers to finally pay their fair share. Instead, the Liberals are offering another patchwork of half-measures that won't get the job done," said CUPE National President Mark Hancock. "After all we've learned about our broken systems over the past 14 months, this is unconscionable. If not now, when?" The budgt reveals the Liberals have no plan to take meaningful action on fixing the issues that have plagued Canada's long-term care homes throughout the pandemic. "The Liberals have been promising national standards since September, with nothing to show for it, and they still refuse to do what's ultimately needed to save this vital part of our health care system: take profits out of long-term care," said CUPE National Secretary-Treasurer Charles Fleury.



The budget pledged $30 billion over 5 years towards child care - not something they will be able to deliver on before a looming, mid-pandemic federal election. "The Liberals have been promising child care in election years since 1993," added Fleury. "It's the oldest trick in the book."

There was also precious little in the budget towards creating a national pharmacare program, which comes after the Liberal Party teamed up with the Conservatives in February to defeat an NDP bill to establish pharmacare. "After promising pharmacare in the 2019 election and watching a pandemic in which millions of Canadians could not afford their vital medications, the Liberals still refuse to act," added Hancock. "The worst enemy of Liberal promises is the Liberal Party itself." After waiting two years for a federal budget, and after the year they've been through, Canadians expected and deserved a lot better. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005904/en/

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The last time the Taliban had taken over Afghanistan, 26 years ago, Indias historical presence in Afghanistan was forced to abruptly end

Pakistans generals, who own and control the Taliban, want more than anything else to forcefully and completely eject all Indian presence from Afghanistan. (Photo: AFP)

Conventional wisdom has it that Americas decision to end its military presence in Afghanistan signals total victory for Pakistans artful generals and disaster for the Afghan government and its allies, particularly India. However, this might not necessarily be the actual long-term denouement.

To begin with, the US withdrawal decision was inevitable and sensible. For, there was no favourable end state in sight for the United States. US President Joe Biden did well to announce the formal end to the 20-year- old Afghan War. All US combatants are to leave Afghanistan by September 9, 2021, the twentieth anniversary of the attacks on America in 2001.

The generals in Rawalpindi are gloating over what is generally being viewed as Americas worst military defeat. The US invaded Afghanistan 20 years ago with the aim of annihilating the terrorist organisation Al Qaeda and driving out its Pakistan-backed ally, the Taliban.

Al Qaeda was pretty much decimated, and the Taliban fled to safe havens inside their mentors backyard while remnants of the Pakistan Army were allowed an honourable exit. For a while, in the initial years, it had appeared that the US military campaign had done wildly well.

Smug officials and legislators in Washington drew up ambitious plans to install a Western-style democracy in Afghanistan. A former CIA contact, Hamid Karzai, was pulled out from hiding and installed as President in Kabul. Thereafter things started going downhill.

What the powers in Washington had not reckoned with was the tenacity of the generals in Pakistans military headquarters at Rawalpindi. The generals were cowed down by their friends and mentors in Washington but would not abandon their dream of making Afghanistan a part of their strategic backyard.

The generals publicly cringed and whined before their American masters but secretly worked against them, reviving the Taliban, arming and training them and fielding even more vicious groups like the notorious Haqqani network to target Americans.

Rawalpindi rightly calculated that Washington could not win a war of attrition spread over decades. The Americans bled in the Afghan badlands, their convoys came under regular attack within Pakistan, assassins trained by Rawalpindis dirty tricks department regularly eliminated troublesome Afghans, especially the military types, and remorseless Pathans raised in Pakistans madrasas routinely blew themselves up in the roads and bazars of Afghan towns and cities, taking down innumerable civilians with them.

Gradually the Taliban and their murderous allies gained the upper hand while the Americans and their Nato allies retreated. That there could be no satisfactory endgame for the United States had dawned upon American Presidents a long time ago. Former US President Donald Trump vowed to bring back all US troops from Afghanistan but had prevaricated and ultimately thrown up his hands. For all military experts agreed that any US military withdrawal would enable the Taliban backed by the Pakistan Army to quickly bring the present Afghan regime to its knees and undo the sacrifices of thousands of US servicemen.

President Biden though is determined not to go down that route and the September 9 deadline seems to be hard and final. The Stars and Stripes will be lowered over the dusty Afghan landscape for the last time on that day. Strategic experts in India are worried. And for good reason too. The last time the Taliban had taken over Afghanistan, some 26 years ago, Indias historical presence in Afghanistan was forced to abruptly end. Almost overnight, Indian diplomats and others had to flee in specially chartered flights, leaving behind a grand embassy building that was later to be converted to an ammunition dump by the victorious Taliban forces.

This time too there is no guarantee that Indias presence and influence in Afghanistan will not end with the anticipated victory of the Taliban. Pakistans generals, who own and control the Taliban, want more than anything else to forcefully and completely eject all Indian presence from Afghanistan. If the Indians are allowed to remain, it will at best be a token presence.

This is a stated objective and Rawalpindis generals have even complained about the humanitarian and development work carried out in that country by the Indian government. With Afghanistan out of bounds for Indians, the generals hope they will convert that country into their backyard for military and terrorist activities much of which would be directed against India.

However, such a favourable outcome could well elude the generals this time. For global strategic equations are changing, and the primary focus of the Western powers has moved away from the Middle East which has been their principal obsession since the end of the Second World War.

The importance of oil in global geopolitics and economics compelled the Western powers to evolve a strategy to maintain dominance over the Middle East and deny its enemies influence or unfettered access to this region. With the diminishing importance of oil and the concomitant rise of an assertive China, the focus of the Western powers has shifted.

Pakistan, which was a lynchpin in Western strategic calculation, has lost its previous importance. The US withdrawal from Afghanistan will free Washington from the last of its dependencies on Islamabad. This will presage profound changes.

Coupled with this is the gradual and inevitable shrinking of Saudi Arabian influence and cash reserves. Riyadh too today can no longer afford to write blank cheques for Islamabad as it did in the past.

As a result, Pakistan is bound to face increased economic difficulties as it consumes more and more of its limited resources to keep the fighting going in Afghanistan and on the borders with India. This is one reason why Islamabad today seeks a temporary truce at the Line of Control in Kashmir. Constant fighting is a costly business and Pakistan is gradually but inevitably sliding into bankruptcy.

These developments will very shortly completely push Islamabad into the deep pockets of its all-weather friend Beijing, which already views Pakistan as a vassal state. Pakistans generals might continue to dream of turning Afghanistan into a vassal state but they might not have realised that as a vassal themselves, the real power in Afghanistan will be China. Beijing will decide what kind of regime it wants in Afghanistan and from all indications it is clear they have no desire to witness the free run of the highly radicalised Islamists in that country.

Pakistan internally too is not exactly a picture of serenity or economic health. There is a heavy price to pay for sponsoring egregious violence. Pakistans generals may raise their glasses to celebrate their victory in Afghanistan, but those glasses might well turn out to be empty.
Social entrepreneurs are invited to submit their entries for consideration for incubation to the second leg of a Barloworld flagship entrepreneurial programme known as Mbewu. The entries for the 2021/2022 programme are open and close on 14 May 2021.

Noluvo Vovo Ngcwabe, head of Corporate Social Investment at Barloworld.

A social entrepreneur is a person who pursues an innovative idea with the potential to solve a social and/or economic challenge.

Requirements

The organisations should be run by South African citizens; and



Be operational for more than one year;



Preference will be given to organisations that are active in marginalised and previously disadvantaged communities; and



Organisations active in the education, automotive value chain, agro-processing, agriculture, green economy or ground-breaking social innovation/technology that addresses local challenges.

Mbewu was launched by Barloworld in 2019 to provide support to social enterprises and start-ups that work innovatively to solve challenges in society through their entrepreneurial activities. The programme seeks to drive economic sustainability, transformation and growth through development, funding and facilitating access to markets for small and medium sized enterprises.Social enterprises that will be considered for incubation in the Mbewu programme are technology start-ups and those that are active in agriculture (including agro-processing), industrial services, the green economy, the creative industry and social innovation.The finalists who will be incubated into the Mbewu programme will join the ranks of past social entrepreneurs who are already blazing a trail in their respective industries. Successful candidates incubated into the Mbewu programme will receive mentorship, funding to scale up their operations and access to markets.Enterprises that are eligible to apply for this prestigious incubation programme must meet the following requirements:Since we launched the Mbewu programme three years ago, we have been encouraged by the zeal and enthusiasm that South Africans have demonstrated in developing innovative solutions that address socio-economic challenges in a sustainable manner. Through the Mbewu platform, we seek to unlock the potential of this growing sector of the economy and give promising start-ups in various fields the ability to scale up and blossom to their full potential.Barloworld is acutely aware of the challenges facing South Africa, and how the outbreak of Covid-19 has exacerbated the triple challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality. Mbewu represents a tangible intervention that Barloworld has put in place to use the transformative power of social entrepreneurship to be a catalyst of positive social change.We firmly believe that the private sector has an important role to play in helping social entrepreneurs to overcome the common barriers such as lack of financing solutions, human capital and a lack of information and networks. Through Mbewu, we believe that we can contribute positive to the growth of entrepreneurship with a social conscience and support a rare breed of men and women to foster positive change in a profitable and sustainable manner, says Noluvo Vovo Ngcwabe, head of Corporate Social Investment at Barloworld.Eligible social entrepreneurs are invited to apply on www.barloworld.com/mbewu
The NIA on April 17 filed a charge-sheet against seven narco-smugglers associated with Babbar Khalsa International. Republic Media Network has exclusively accessed the copy of the chargesheet exposing the plot of Pakistan Intelligence Agency Inter-Services Intelligence and banned terror outfit Babbar Khalsa International.

Pakistani ISI handler Arif told accused Gurpartap Singh that he will sell the heroin and then either he will buy weapons for Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) and other terrorists or provide the money to the terrorists and operatives of Babbar Khalsa. Arif also told that the proposed consignment will be for Gurpartap. In addition, he also told that Gurpartap has strong connections with ISI in Pakistan.

Investigation has established that accused Gurpartap Singh has been involved in smuggling of heroin and gold since 2004. He has been part of the larger conspiracy of smuggling of heroin and arms/ammunition into India to actively assist revival of BKI activities. He is an active member of BKI. His role is to collect proceeds of heroin and collect arms/ammunitions smuggled from Pakistan into India and forward them to the cadres of BKI and to create unrest in Punjab. In the first week of June, 2020 Sham Lal visited the house of Gurpartap Singh, NIA chargesheet accessed by Repubic reads.

It further added that accused Ajeet Kumar remained an operative of Babbar Khalsa International (BKI). He was involved in the 2005 Delhi Cinema Blast which was claimed by BKI. He had also been part of a larger conspiracy of smuggling of heroin, arms and ammunition into India for the revival of BKI cadres. Accused Ajeet Kumar played a vital role in transporting heroin

Accused Bishan Dass @ Raju is an old operative of Babbar Khalsa International (BKI). He was involved in the 2005 Delhi Cinema Blast which was owned by BKI. He has been part of the larger conspiracy of smuggling of heroin and arms/ammunition into India to help with the revival of BKI cadres. Accused Bishan Dass played a vital role in transporting of heroin from Jammu, chargesheet added.

The case pertains to 16.1. recovery of heroin weighing 61 Kgs and 420 gms and opium weighing 1.245 Kg along with two pistols, three magazines and 100 live cartridges that were recovered from the spot. A case under FIR No. 65/2020 dated 20.09.2020 was registered at PS Arnia, District Jammu, Jammu and Kashmir, under sections 307, 120B & 121 of Indian Penal code and sections 7 & 25 of the Arms Act relating to unprovoked firing from Pakistan side of the border near Bulley Chak at a local police party led by SHO PS Arnia, District Jammu. On 20.09.2020, a local police party led by SHO PS Arnia. District Jammu was on patrolling duty.

Image Credits: PTI
The Charger Blog

The University of New Havens Dining Services and Havenly Treats, a New Haven-based nonprofit, are working together to champion the hiring of refugee and immigrant women for quality jobs that foster growth, innovation, and equity.

The Universitys Dining Services and Havenly Treats are working together to champion the hiring of refugee and immigrant women.

When Hala Ghali, a Syrian refugee, joined the University of New Havens Dining Services team in 2019, she became the first Havenly Treats Fellowship alum to do so. Working as a baker with cross-training on multiple stations, she has excelled in her role, enjoying the many opportunities for professional development. She also enjoys her coworkers and appreciates the flexibility of her schedule.

Its the perfect job for me, she said. I feel very supported in the long-term. Im thrilled to watch the program grow, and I hope that one day it will be open to not only Arab women, but all refugees.

Ghalis experience has been the result of an affiliation Sodexo Dining Services at the University of New Haven formed with Havenly Treats, a New Haven based nonprofit food business whose mission is to help refugee and immigrant women prosper, uplift their families, and shape their communities through a six-month fellowship. The fellowship offers refugee and immigrant women such as Ghali culinary training, the opportunity to learn English, obtain their Servsafe food handling certification, develop their financial and digital literacy, and prepare for the workforce.

As the relationship between the Universitys dining services team and Havenly Treats continues to grow, Ghali has agreed to become an ambassador between them. Dining services has hired its second Fellowship alum, who will work closely with Ghali to develop her skillset and become a fully integrated member of the workforce. Ultimately, the goal is to establish Havenly Treats fellowship into long-term employment with dining services.

This is an exciting opportunity

Juan Dominguez, the Universitys dining services general manager, hopes to certify Havenly Treats Cafe as an authorized vendor so the pastries can be purchased and offered in the various dining locations across campus.

This would allow the affiliation to come full circle by supporting participants while theyre in the fellowship program and providing them with full-time employment opportunities upon completion of the program, explained Dominguez

Aside from the social and economic benefits, the relationship enables sustainable sourcing by utilizing a local vendor. It also fosters inclusion and diversity within the team, and in the community at large.

Caterina Passoni, executive director and co-founder of Havenly Treats, and Camila Guiza-Chavez, fellowship director, say they never imagined getting their pastries from their cafe onto campus would evolve into such a far-reaching opportunity.

We hope to continue growing our relationship with Juan and his team using the University of New Haven as a starting point to solidify a formal program with Sodexo, said Passoni. In the future, wed love to be able to use our alliance with Sodexo as a model for other potential employer partnerships throughout the community.

This is an exciting opportunity for the fellowship program, added Guiza-Chavez. It can become something great. Im proud of Hala, and I have enjoyed watching her grow throughout the experience.

For more about Havenly Treats please visit: https://havenlytreats.com/
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy reassured Americans that the Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccines were safe at a White House briefing April 15. The safety profile for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are very strong. Vaccines are our most powerful pathway out of the pandemic," said the Indian American physician, in response to a question from India-West. (Zoom screen grab)
The relationship between agencies and their clients was either challenged or grew from strength to strength during a time of uncertainty. The Crazy Store and its agency partner, Old Friends Young Talent, was one of the latter...
Apr. 19The Ole Miss-Mississippi State series, won 2-1 by the Bulldogs played, to big crowds over the weekend and on Monday produced two SEC weekly honorees.

Ole Miss left-hander Doug Nikhazy was named pitcher of the week, and MSU reliever Landon Sims was named newcomer of the week.

A junior from Winderemere, Florida, Nikhazy threw the Rebels' first nine-inning complete game in seven years in 9-0 one-hitter on Saturday.

It was the Rebels' first one-hitter in 20 years.

Nikhazy tied a career-high with 12 strikeouts.

Nikhazy was making his fourth start since missing two games with a pulled muscle in his chest. He's 4-1 with a 1.86 ERA in 38 2/3 innings on the season.

A sophomore from Cumming, Georgia, Sims saved both MSU wins in the series allowing just one hit on the weekend. He pitched two innings Friday and one inning Sunday.

parrish.alford@djournal.com
A senior organizer in an infamous hacking group that caused billions of dollars in losses to US companies has been sentenced to 10 years in prison. Fedir Hladyr, a 35-year-old Ukranian national, worked as a manager and systems administrator for a cybercrime outfit known as Fin7, which orchestrated attacks on banks and retailers on a global scale using the Carbanak malware.

At its height, the group included more than 70 people split into teams that were tasked with hacking into systems, developing and installing the virus and sending out spoof emails accompanied with phone calls to dupe unwitting businesses. Hladyr allegedly worked as a systems administrator for the group, helping to supervise its various units and maintain its network of servers.

The elaborate setup allowed the digital thieves to make away with tens of millions of stolen credit and debit card numbers belonging to the customers of banks and retail chains including Chipotle Mexican Grill, Chilis, Arbys, Red Robin, and Jasons Deli. According to the Department of Justice, the group breached the computer networks of businesses in all 50 US states and the District of Columbia, while also launching attacks in the UK, Australia, and France.

Hladyr was arrested in 2018 in Germany and extradited to Seattle, Washington. In his plea deal, he said he joined Fin7 through a cyber security company that he soon realized was a fake enterprise built to serve the group's main purpose. Hladyr had pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit computer hacking.

"This defendant worked at the intersection of all these activities and thus bears heavy responsibility for billions in damage caused to companies and individual consumers, said Acting US Attorney Tessa M. Gorman of the Western District of Washington.
VINEYARD, Utah, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Grov Technologies announced it has signed a definitive sales agreement with River Ranch Dairy to help further their goal of becoming more sustainable and drought resistant through the adoption of Grov's automated indoor feed technology. Under the terms of the agreement River Ranch will purchase an on-premises indoor vertical animal feed production center which will produce fresh Grov HDN Superfeed, using less than 5% of the water of traditional farming.

At the core of the Grov-River Ranch Feed Center will be the Olympus Tower Farm platform. One Olympus Tower takes up only 857 square feet and can produce 6,000 pounds of Grov HDN Superfeed daily, replacing between 35-50 acres of farmland, using zero herbicides or pesticides.

"Reducing both our water usage and becoming more sustainable is essential for the long-term economic health of our farm and the environment," said Jack de Jong, River Ranch Dairy owner and operator. "In addition to sustainability, the health and welfare of our animals is one of our top priorities. We believe feeding our animals Grov's clean fresh "Superfeed" wheatgrass holds the promise to boost the health and productivity of our herd."

The River Ranch Dairy is home to 10,000 animals located in California's Central Valley, the highest and most concentrated milk production area in the U.S. The five-county region has over 1.3 million cows. The new Grov-River Ranch Feed Center will be located near the annual World Ag Expo in Tulare, California, attracting over 100,000 visitors, conveniently showcasing Grov's technology to visitors from around the globe.

"As changing climates and water shortages increase, dairy and beef farmers will need to be equipped with technology and science that will help them feed growing populations and also care for the health and welfare of their animals," said Steve Lindsley, president of Grov Technologies. "We are honored to welcome Jack, who comes from a rich heritage of dairy and Ag expertise, to the Grov family."

The Grov-River Ranch Dairy Feed Center is currently in the permitting and design phase with completion anticipated later this year.

In ongoing trials conducted over the past year, dairy animals that were fed with Grov HDN Superfeed maintained milk production while eating less dry matter, thus improving overall feed efficiency. Trials were conducted at Bateman Mosida Farms, Utah's largest dairy.

For more information about Grov Technologies and its Olympus Tower Farm, please visit www.grovtech.com . Grov welcomes individuals who want to come visit their facility, as long as they follow social distancing guidelines.

About Grov Technologies, LLC

Grov Technologies is pioneering automated controlled environment agriculture (CEA) science and technology to help meet the demands of global food security. The company has developed enterprise scale systems and growing protocols to consistently produce high-density nutrient feed, or HDN Superfeed. Grov enables operators to sustainably grow feed, improve animal health, produce better products and increase profits. Grov is wholly owned by Nu Skin Enterprises, Inc. (NYSE: NUS), which empowers innovative companies with sustainable solutions, opportunities, technologies, and life-improving values.

Grov, Grov HDN Superfeed and Olympus Tower Farm, are trademarks of Grov Technologies.

SOURCE Grov Technologies

Related Links

http://www.grovtech.com


Exclusive: Sources tell theGrio that President Joe Biden is preparing for the Chauvin trial outcome, but attempts to rein in bad policing will be a great challenge

President Joe Biden, in recents weeks, has mulled over several scenarios for federal reaction to the impending verdict of the Derek Chauvin trial. The goal for each option on the table is to get ahead of potentially violent protests that could arise across the country following the jurys decision.

U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during an event on gun control in the Rose Garden at the White House April 8, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The president shared his plans with civil rights leaders and members of the Congressional Black Caucus but did not provide in-depth detail.

Read More: Derek Chauvin murder trial could be the verdict of a generation

As these plans are being considered, Bidens Justice Department appointees have yet to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

One option in response to some of expected violence involves the president working with states to address the matters.

A man holds a portrait of George Floyd during a protest demonstration outside the Governors Mansion on March 6, 2021 in St. Paul, Minnesota.(Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

Meanwhile, as it relates to the trial itself, this is beyond qualified immunity according to Floyd family attorney, Lee Merritt, who tells theGrio that this is about criminal liability for Minneapolis police officer Chauvin. Merritt made those comments while in Minnesota on Friday days before the conclusion of the trial.

Merritt believes Chauvin is criminally liable for kneeling on the neck of George Floyd for over 9 minutes and 29 seconds, which resulted in bones being broken in Floyds neck and also lowering Floyds oxygen intake. This is what the prosecution claims killed Floyd on May 25, 2020.

The defense is blaming illicit drugs and Floyds heart condition for his death. But its Chauvins actions that are on trial.

Attorney Lee Merritt speaks during a candle light vigil in honor of Jonathan Price on October 5, 2020 in Wolfe City, Texas. (Photo by Montinique Monroe/Getty Images)

Former New York Governor David Paterson told theGrio, there are very few police officers that demonstrate this misconduct. But the question is, what do we have to do to put them behind bars?

That question is being placed before President Biden who says hes not ready to offer his proposal on policing reform just yet. However, on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue in the U.S. House and Senate, lawmakers are working on getting the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act to the presidents desk. If passed, the legislation would create a database as it relates to these types of policing crimes and make it less difficult to charge a police officer for the death of a civilian.

Story continues

The bill also gives the Department of Justice more latitude on investigations and actions against police departments that violate policing laws. It also calls for mandatory police use of body cameras. However, attorney Merritt pointed out that evidence proves body cameras have not deterred bad policing. He said there was a camera on Derek Chauvin, and yet he still killed George Floyd in the way he did.

Former Congressman of New York Charlie Rangel thinks the problem with policing is the blue wall of silence. Many commentators over the weekend have speculated that this wall has come tumbling down during the trial as a strategy by police in hopes of relieving the intense focus of the public if Chauvin is found guilty.

Former U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) speaks before New York Governor Andrew Cuomo gets vaccinated at the mass vaccination site at Mount Neboh Baptist Church in Harlem on March 17, 2021 in New York City. (Photo by Seth Wenig-Pool/Getty Images)

But Rangel, 90, contended the loyalty of officers to even the bad apples through silence and complacency has occurred his whole life. He said the problem within police departments will continue until each officer develops a not in my outfit, you dont attitude toward misconduct they witness first hand.

Rangel said this would mean officers have so much pride collectively that you would not allow one of your own to violate the integrity of the badge.

Currently, U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) is working with fellow Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.) on this issue. Scott has offered compelling stories of encounters with the police that were based on race. Booker is hopeful this moment will produce something that can begin to cut into this centuries-old problem of bad policing and the Black community.

Senator Booker said on Friday that the current state of the criminal justice system is tragic.

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., speaks during the Climate Forum at Georgetown University, Friday, Sept. 20, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

It has undermined our communities, Booker told theGrio. [It has] cost African Americans billions of dollars in lost opportunities.

He added, so many of our children have been savagely murdered.

Attorney Lee Merritt said he is also working with white conservatives in Texas to change the tide of deadly policing. One of the many issues Merritt wants to change is when the federal government becomes involved in these cases. Currently, the federal government only intervenes when deadly force is demonstrated to be intentional.

Merritt is planning to run for Texas attorney general in an attempt to improve the policing system in this country. He intends to make the official announcement in May.

But as former New York Gov. Patterson cautions, even when things get better, they could be a prelude to getting worse, which is why we keep fighting even when were winning.

Have you subscribed to theGrios Dear Culture podcast? Download our newest episodes now!

TheGrio is now on Apple TV, Amazon Fire and Roku. Download theGrio.com today!

The post As world awaits Chauvin verdict, police reform remains work in progress appeared first on TheGrio.
New Delhi: After CBSE canceled the Class 10 board examinations and announced that all students will be given a general promotion, what is now worrying the students is the basis of subject selection for Class 11.

With the announcement of the cancellation of the 10th board examination students who will be promoted to the next class are worried about whether they will get the subject of choice or not, as per a report by News 18.

Students, usually, choose their subject of interest for Class 11th on the basis of the results of class 10 and the marks obtained in the subjects. However, since there is no examinations there is a lot of confusion about the criteria for marks being awarded to students.

The CBSE had taken the decision amid coronavirus pandemic keeping the safety of students and their families in mind.
EDMONTON - The Alberta legislature has turned down a request for a special debate on an Opposition bill intended to protect the province's Rocky Mountains from coal mining.

Alberta NDP Leader Rachel Notley announces proposed new legislation to protect Alberta's mountains and watershed from coal mining at a news conference in Calgary on Monday, March 15, 2021. A group of 35 scientists from the University of Alberta are urging the provincial government to rethink its plans for expanding coal-mining in the Rocky Mountains. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

EDMONTON - The Alberta legislature has turned down a request for a special debate on an Opposition bill intended to protect the province's Rocky Mountains from coal mining.

The refusal from United Conservative MLAs to grant unanimous consent for the debate probably means the bill won't get any further and is likely to die on the order paper.

"People from all walks of life, all kinds of backgrounds and all kinds of political views  they want to see this bill debated," NDP Leader Rachel Notley said in a release.

"Today's action by the Kenney government is a betrayal of these Albertans."

Notley had asked the legislature to push the proposed legislation up the agenda to be debated on Monday night.

She said the debate was needed because drilling and road-building are going ahead on the eastern slopes of the mountains  even as the United Conservative government says it's gathering public feedback on coal mines.

"The fact is, this is urgent," Notley told the legislature. "We want to provide a forum for that discussion to be heard in this house."

The bill calls for cancellation of leases that were issued after the government scrapped a policy last May that protected a vast swath of summits and foothills along the western spine of the province.

It would also stop the province's energy regulator from issuing development permits. Open-pit mines would be permanently prohibited in the most sensitive areas and mines elsewhere could not be approved until a land-use plan was developed.

On the weekend, a letter signed by 35 scientists from the University of Alberta's biology department urged the government to allow the debate.

"There is no reliable method to stop leaching of hazardous waste produced by surface coal mining into groundwater where, inevitably, it will pollute precious watersheds we all depend on that are already under severe stress," said the letter.

The law is needed to at least slow development down, said Shelagh Campbell, the biologist who started the letter that went to all UCP caucus members.

"The bill at least has a chance of getting these issues more out in the open," she said.

"A lot of Albertans feel right now pretty desperate in terms of the tools we have at our disposal to slow down the mass destruction that's being visited on us."

The provincial government originally gathered no public input before removing the measures that protected the landscape, but it later opened an online survey and appointed a panel to hear from people.

The survey closed Monday.

"The Coal Policy Committee is currently reviewing and analyzing the survey results and will provide an update in the near future," said Alberta Energy spokeswoman Jennifer Henshaw. "The results will also serve as a road map for the next steps in the coal policy engagement process."

The panel has been widely criticized after its terms of reference made it clear its five members won't be allowed to hear concerns about water or land use  the two issues most Albertans are concerned about.

Energy Minister Sonya Savage said that the university professors should consider making their points to the panel.

"We would strongly encourage them to participate in the coal policy consultations which are currently ongoing," she said in an email.

Campbell said she's received no substantive responses yet to the letter. She said the stakes involved in coal mining are too high to gamble with.

"When they tell us that we can keep this or that out (of the water) and make it safe, it's not true. They don't know that."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 19, 2021.

 Follow Bob Weber on Twitter at @row1960
Algiers, April 13, 2021 (SPS) - The Secretary General of the French Association of Friendship and Solidarity with African Peoples (AFASPA), Ms, Michele Decaster, denounced the decision of the party of French President Emmanuel Macron, The Republic in March (LREM), to open an office in the occupied city of Dakhla, Western Sahara, considering this step as "insignificant and useless because it contradicts international legality."

Speaking to the Algerian National Radio, Ms. Decaster urged the French president to "respect the principles and will of the countries of the African Union, which continue to consider Western Sahara as the last colony on the continent."SPS

125/090/TRA
Deputy of the opposition Prosperous Armenia faction of the National Assembly of Armenia Naira Zohrabyan posted the following on her Facebook page:

The political groups of the Council of Europe discussed the issue of Armenian prisoners of war

The Spring Session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has begun, and the political groups have started discussing the issue of Armenian prisoners of war. The Group of Reformists and Democrats of Europe also held a rather heated discussion on Armenian prisoners of war. I presented irrefutable facts regarding the number of Armenian prisoners of war approved by the Red Cross and the European Court of Human Rights, presented facts about the tortures of Armenian prisoners of war and talked about international law and the international conventions under which Azerbaijan is obliged to return the Armenian prisoners of war without preconditions. I also mentioned that Azerbaijans reasoning that those captured after November 10 are not prisoners of war is a shameful and obscene lie that violates international law, and I called on the Council of Europe to use all of its leverages for the release of Armenian prisoners of war.

The members of the Azerbaijani delegation obviously distorted all norms of international law and stressed again that those captured after November 10 are not prisoners of war and that there must be a legal and court procedure against them and, without any serious counterargument, started saying that their territories have been seized and destroyed over the past 30 years.

The main discussion on the issue of Armenian prisoners of war will take place tomorrow in the afternoon, and since most of the main political groups share the view that Azerbaijan must immediately fulfill the third Geneva Convention and release all Armenian prisoners of war, I am certain that the discussions will be fruitful.
US ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, speaks during a press conference at the UN Headquarters in New York on March 1, 2021. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images)

We Cannot Whitewash Our Own Issues, Ambassador Says After Claiming White Supremacy Is Baked Into Americas Founding

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told CBS Face the Nation in a segment that aired April 18 that the United States must not whitewash its history of slavery if it hopes to speak authoritatively on human rights, while responding to criticism for earlier saying that the original sin of slavery weaved white supremacy into Americas founding.

I was acknowledging what is a fact in the United States. Racism does exist in this country, she said. I think if we are going to be a voice around the globe for raising issues of human rights, we cannot whitewash our own issues in our own country, she added.

Thomas-Greenfield sparked controversy when she told Al Sharptons National Action Network conference last week that white supremacy was to blame for to the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and for continued discrimination against Muslims and Asian-Americans.

I have personally experienced one of Americas greatest imperfections. I have seen for myself how the original sin of slavery weaved white supremacy into our founding documents and principles, she told the conference.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board took issue with her comments, questioning her singular focus on the ills of slavery and racism while ignoring American progress on race since the founding, such as the Civil War that ended slavery or the civil-rights movement.

Ms. Thomas-Greenfield seems to believe her job is to bring critical race theory to the world, with a special focus on criticizing her own country, the editorial board wrote, noting that in her speech, Thomas-Greenfield worked in only a passing reference to Burmas treatment of the Rohingya and Chinas genocide of the Uighurs and sought to draw a moral equivalence between the United States and known current human rights violators like Cuba, China, Russia, and Venezuela.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also weighed in on Thomas-Greenfields comments, saying the remarks are reprehensible and should disqualify her from representing American interests around the world.

America is a noble place, Pompeo told The Cats Roundtable on WABC 770 AM in an interview that aired Sunday. I heard our ambassador to the United Nations this week talk about our founding as fundamentally corrupt and flawed and not noble and good. I couldnt disagree more.

Asked by Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan whether Thomas-Greenfield believes that America is deluding itself for thinking it can provide moral leadership to the world, the ambassador replied in the negative.

No. I think were being tremendous leaders. Our country is not perfect, but we continue to perfect it. Those imperfections are part of our history and we have to talk about them, Thomas-Greenfield said.

Its our strength that we can talk about our imperfections to the world and call out other nations for those same imperfections, adding that her remarks were not meant as a criticism of the United States, but an acknowledgement of our history.

Asked whether her remarks at last weeks conference were meant to equivocate bigotry in America to mass atrocities carried out against minorities around the world, she replied in the negative.

The purpose of that speech was to lay out our values, but also acknowledge our imperfections and acknowledge that we are moving forward, Thomas-Greenfield said. I dont think you will see  a Chinese Uyghur getting on the national stage acknowledging Chinas issues with human rights.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about Thomas-Greenfields comments at a press briefing Friday, with a reporter suggesting the ambassador was essentially parroting Chinese Communist Party talking points, and compared her remarks to a lecture given to Secretary of State Tony Blinken by CCP foreign affairs chief Yang Jiechi last month in Alaska.

Psaki defended Thomas-Greenfields comments, saying, most people recognize the history of systemic racism in our country, and she was speaking to that, while adding that President Joe Biden has no intention to remove her from her ambassadorial post.

He is proud to have her in that position, Psaki said. She is not only qualifiedhe believes she is exactly the right person in that role at this moment in time.


A file photo.

MOSCOW (AP): An American astronaut and two Russians have returned to Earth after six months aboard the International Space Station.



A Soyuz space capsule carrying NASA's Kate Rubins and Russians Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov landed at 0455 GMT Saturday in the steppes of Kazakhstan.



Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Russian space agency Roskosmos, said all three were feeling well after they were extracted from the capsule and began re-acclimating to the pull of gravity.



The three had arrived at the orbiting laboratory complex on October 14.



There now are seven people aboard the ISS  NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Russians Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov arrived on April 9; Americans Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, and Japan's Soichi Noguchi, came aboard in November on the SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience, the first ISS docking under NASA's Commercial Crew Programme.


The Coast Guard will halt the search and rescue process for missing crew members of the capsized Seacor Power lift boat at the end of the day Monday, with eight crewmen still missing, officials said.

"We've had to make the difficult to decision to suspend search and rescue efforts at sunset today," said Coast Guard Capt. Will E. Watson, commander of Coast Guard Sector New Orleans. "The overall factor is the probability that a person can survive given the conditions."

The Seacor Power capsized Tuesday at 4:30 p.m., hours after it left Port Fourchon with 19 crew members aboard. It was hit by a sudden squall packing hurricane-force winds and destructive waves, capsizing about eight miles to the south.

+2 Seacor Power crew member whose body was recovered Sunday identified as Terrytown man The body of the Seacor Power crew member found Sunday night has been identified as 36-year-old Lawrence Warren, according to the Lafourche Par

Six crew members were saved that day. Five have been found dead and eight are still missing.

The Coast Guard search by air and sea, which covered several thousand square miles, will end on its seventh day.

Officials from the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Transportation Safety Board and the president of Seacor Marine, owner of the Seacor Power, shared the update during a 1 p.m. press conference Monday.

NTSB will take the lead while divers contracted by Seacor Marine will continue to search the insides of the sunken vessel, part a recovery and salvage process.

Officials said families of the still-missing crew members were told of the suspended Coast Guard search operation at a meeting Monday morning at a firehouse in Port Fourchon where relatives have quietly held out hope and vigil.

"There was a lot of hugging and a lot of crying," Watson said. "There was a lot of sadness and grief."

NTSB officials have been on the ground in Louisiana since last week. NTSB lead investigator Drew Ehlers said the probe will take between 12 and 24 months.

The investigation will look at the weather conditions at the time of the accident. It will also look at the people involved in the accident, the vessel itself and its equipment.

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

What we know about capsized lift boat Seacor Power and rescue efforts off Louisiana coast Five crew members are dead and eight are missing as U.S. Coast Guard rescuers continued to search the waters of the Gulf of Mexico for survivo

John Gellert, president and CEO of Seacor Marine Holdings Inc., said the "go/no-go decision" to depart Port Fourchon in bad weather was "entirely the captain's." He described the captain as a "very prudent and conservative" mariner with five decades of experience.

Gellert said that it appeared that a leg of the vessel was partially retracted, which suggested that the captain had been trying to lower the legs as the storm hit, to stabilize it as a platform above the water.

But Gellert suggested that attempted didn't get far before the lift-boat capsized.

It would have taken a minute for the legs of the jack-up boat to retract those five feet, but 12 minutes to reach the sea floor 60 feet below, he said, speaking for the first time about the catastrophe.

"The weather they ultimately encountered was well beyond the forecast," he said.

One of the rescued crew members was on the bridge with the captain before the vessel capsized and would have been involved in the process to decide on whether to set out, Gellert said.

Gellert said 17 divers were out at the vessel on Monday and would keep searching as weather conditions allow. The divers have been through about half of the vessel, he said.

"The families continue to have hope and prayers and we would like everyone to continue their thoughts and prayers for the families of those still missing," Gellert said.

Ehlers, the NTSB investigator, said the company will develop a salvage plan for the Seacor Power that the Coast Guard must approve before it is brought onto shore and searched.

"We will go through the vessel inch by inch to see what we can find out," he said.

NTSB officials said they want to hear from people who were out on the water that day and may have seen something. Those people are asked to reach out at eyewitness@ntsb.gov.
This article is an excerpt from a recently published book, Best Tent Camping: New Mexico .

Amaris Feland Ketcham is an associate professor at the University of New Mexico.
Oakland is now the 22nd LCS and the 12th of the Independence-variant ships in the U.S. Navy fleet.The LCS program was first introduced in 2002 and it focuses on two types of LCS categories, the Freedom variant and the Independence variant. The Independence variant LCS are being built by Austal USA in their Alabama-based shipyard, while the Freedom LCS are manufactured by Lockheed Martin, in Wisconsin.A littoral combat ship , designed to take part mainly in near-shore operations (hence the name), is described as being fast and agile. And, according to the Navy official presentation, its capable of combating various types of threats, including quiet submarines and mines.The historic Oakland name already has a long tradition within the U.S. Navy. The first ship that was named after the Californian city dates back to 1918 and was used for cargo transport. The second USS Oakland began its career in 1943 and was involved in several important anti-aircraft missions, including ones in Okinawa and Iwo Jima, earning nine battle stars.With such an interesting history behind it, this young combat ship certainly has to live up to its name.This ship will play an essential role in carrying out our nations future maritime strategy., said LCS program manager Capt. Mike Taylor, when the Oakland was first delivered.While Oakland will be joining the other 11 Independence LCS, back in San Diego, there are still more ships set up to join the fleet. Four others in this variant are still under construction, namely Mobile (LCS 26), Savannah (LCS 28), Canberra (LCS 30) and Santa Barbara (LCS 32), and three more will begin construction later on.
President Biden will nominate Coast Guard Vice Adm. Linda Fagan for vice commandant, which would make her the first female four-star admiral in Coast Guard history, the White House announced Monday.

Why it matters: On the campaign trail in 2019, both Biden and then-candidate Kamala Harris signed a pledge to ensure at least 50%of their national security Senate-confirmed positions would be women, according to Defense News.

Stay on top of the latest market trends and economic insights with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free

Since taking office, President Biden has already nominated several women for top Pentagon positions, including Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks.

Biden last week announced plans to nominate six more women for key national security and law enforcement posts. One of them is Christine Wormuth, who would be the first female secretary of the Army if confirmed.

Background: Fagan, currently the Coast Guard commander for the Pacific Area, has served on all seven continents, according to her bio. If confirmed, she would replace Adm. Charles Ray as the Coast Guard's No. 2 officer.

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Minister Byrne welcomes launch of the Multilingual Digital Platform for the Conference on the Future

Press release

Minister of State for European Affairs, Thomas Byrne T.D. has welcomed todays launch of the EU-wide Multilingual Digital Platform as part of the Conference on the Future of Europe.

The platform will allow citizens from across the EU to have their say on the topics that they consider important for the future of the EU. The platform will enable EU citizens to put forward their ideas, comment on other peoples ideas, create and participate in events and the platform will also act as a central hub where all contributions to the Conference will be brought together and shared. The platform can be accessed at Conference on the Future of Europe (europa.eu)

Launching officially on Europe Day, 9 May, the Conference on the Future of Europe will include a range of events across the EU aimed at promoting greater citizen involvement in the EU.

Speaking after the platforms official launch in Brussels, Minister Byrne said:

I am pleased that the Digital Platform for the Conference of the Future of Europe has launched today. Ireland welcomes the platforms potential to allow all of our citizens engage directly with this important EU initiative. The platform will be an excellent resource to enable all EU citizens to have their say on the future of Europe. The fact that the platform is available in English and Irish and that all EU citizens, including those in Northern Ireland, can take part no matter where they live, is particularly welcome.

The Conference on the Future of Europe will provide an opportunity to consider the challenges the European Union faces and our policy priorities in addressing them together. Europe cannot recover from the COVID-19 crisis without the support and trust of its citizens.

I am delighted that in Ireland, we have a positive record of direct engagement with citizens through the Citizens Dialogues and the Citizens Assembly. I hope to build on this engagement throughout the Conference and welcome the opportunities this platform can provide to facilitate this. I encourage all Irish citizens to engage with the platform and submit their ideas and suggestions. I look forward to announcing our national plans for the Conference soon to coincide with the official launch of the Conference in May.

ENDS

Press Office

19 April 2021

 Previous Item | Next Item 
04/19/2021

Photo (c) Kemal Yildirim - Getty Images Are finances to blame for consumers chronic pain in later life? The results from a new study conducted by researchers from the University of Georgia indicate that the answer may be yes.

According to their findings, those who are struggling financially in mid-life are likely to be at an increased risk of chronic pain as they age.

Physical pain is considered an illness on its own with three major components: biological, psychological, and social, explained researcher Kandauda A.S. Wickrama. In older adults, it co-occurs with other health problems like limited physical functioning, loneliness, and cardiovascular disease.

How financial stress can translate into physical pain

To better understand how consumers finances can impact them physically, the researchers analyzed roughly three decades worth of data from the Iowa Youth and Family Project. The study focused on over 500 families and tracked their financial security and health outcomes over nearly 30 years.

The researchers found that a clear relationship emerged between those who struggled financially and those who experienced higher levels of pain later in life. They believe this stems from a lack of control over financial struggles, which then leads to physiological responses. The team found that stress from finances can lead to stress in other areas of life, and that compounding stress can make people more susceptible to several physical ailments.

They also learned that the inverse relationship existed: having higher levels of pain in later life was associated with higher health care costs, which leads to a greater financial burden. Moving forward, the researchers hope that work is done to better educate and prepare consumers to manage their finances in early adulthood.

In their later years, many complain about memory loss, bodily pain, and lack of social connections, Wickrama said. Nearly two-thirds of adults complain of some type of bodily pain, and nearly that many complain of loneliness. That percentage is going up, and the health cost for that is going up. That is a public health concern.
As the director of the Department of National Parks and Wildlife under the Ministry of Tourism and Arts for the Republic of Zambia, I oversee the management of our wildlife resources and help ensure that our ecosystems and beautiful species are effectively conserved. In Zambia we are successfully mitigating a number of threats including poaching, human-wildlife conflict, habitat loss and climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and even misguided anti-hunting legislation in our partner countries.

Connecticuts Senate Bill 925 is one example of this detrimental legislation. If passed, it would ban the import and possession of the parts and products of six different African species  including elephant, lion, and leopard  even though these species are successfully managed in Zambia. Increasingly, American lawmakers take up such legislation under the guise of wildlife protection and ethics, without consulting or even informing African officials and community leaders.

It is unfortunate that such efforts promoted in the name of African species lack any input from Africans and are grounded on a protectionist mentality contrary to the sustainable-use model that has proven so successful in Zambia and much of southern Africa. Zambias wildlife is already stable without such ill-informed legislation. Our wildlife management system is based on science, adaptation, and community empowerment. But state bills such as SB 925 are based on a false narrative. They ignore science and disrespect our national sovereignty as well as the rights of our rural people to develop sustainably.

Zambia has species based National Management Plans that ensure that our iconic species are conserved for the benefit of current and future generations. Our hunting program is based on scientific surveys and stringent national regulations, including age-based protocols for the harvest of lions and leopards.

The species covered by SB 925 are also regulated under our national CITES program. Their harvest and export must confirm to international quotas, permitting and oversight from this Convention of 183 Parties. Under this system, Zambia has maintained stable or increasing populations of elephant, lion, leopard, and many more species, both covered by SB 925 and not. As the head of the agency charged with implementing these robust safeguards, I can attest to the success of our wildlife management  and I have yet to see any evidence to the contrary. Absent any such evidence, I struggle to see why the lawmakers of Connecticut feel the need to govern Zambias conservation management.

Over the last generations we witnessed high levels of poaching that gave way to a remarkable recovery in our elephant populations and other wildlife. The tangible benefits from regulated hunting have been important to this transition. In fact, the benefits of regulated hunting are crucial to maintaining rural community support for growing populations of dangerous game such as elephants, lions, and leopards.

Our wildlife is not fenced in national parks. Rather, these animals are free-ranging, and some of Zambias poorest communities bear the greatest impact of crop-raiding elephants and attacks on livestock from lions and leopards. But these communities tolerate the wildlife largely because they derive income, social services, and much-needed game meat from regulated hunting. Yet the leaders of these communities have certainly not been consulted when states such as Connecticut consider import bans.

Last year, international travel bans meant to contain the spread of COVID-19 had severe negative implications for our revenue generation and thus for Zambias ability to manage and fund crucial conservation initiatives. The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to be felt and have eliminated or reduced incentives for using land for wildlife and hunting as opposed to livestock or agriculture. Navigating these economic challenges is our immediate concern, but hunting will be an irreplaceable factor in our tourism sectors recovery.

Though we lost most of 2020s hunting season due to COVID-19, we look forward to a bigger and better season in 2021 and beyond. That is, unless American administrative bodies or legislatures implement domestic laws that would limit or completely ban the import of legally harvested wildlife. Such laws would disincentivize U.S. hunters from visiting Zambia and investing in hunts of those species covered by SB 925. Yet these species are crucial to our conservation success because they generate the highest revenues and can also provide significant benefits for vulnerable local communities.

With all the successes that Zambia and other wildlife authorities across southern Africa have seen thanks to legal and regulated hunting, I hope that lawmakers like those behind Senate Bill 925 will not lean on their own emotions. Instead, look to the concrete results we have been able to achieve and the views of our affected communities before making up your minds. I invite you to observe Zambias effective management before you take a position that cuts against science, equity, and comity.

By Dr. Chuma Simukonda is managing director of Zambias Department of National Parks and Wildlife.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 23:35:11|Editor: huaxia

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ABUJA, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Gunmen numbering over 20 on Monday attacked a police station in Nigeria's southeastern state of Anambra, but no casualty was recorded, a spokesman for the police said.

Geoffrey Ogbonna, the spokesman for the police in Anambra, told reporters in the state capital Awka on Monday that the gunmen struck early in the morning at the zonal police headquarters in the Ukpor town of the Dunukofia local government area, but were repelled by policemen on duty.

He said no police equipment or firearmwas carted away during the attack.

No arrest has been made so far, as the gunmen fled after causing damage, Ogbonna told reporters.

According to him, the gunmen burned buildings, vehicles, and motorcycles belonging to police officers and others within the premises.

He further confirmed that the police have launched a search for the suspected arsonists. Enditem
Budget 2021: What it means for Canadian immigration The much-anticipated Budget 2021 has several implications for Canada's immigration system.

Budget 2021: What it means for Canadian immigration The much-anticipated Budget 2021 has several implications for Canada's immigration system.

Budget 2021: What it means for Canadian immigration The much-anticipated Budget 2021 has several implications for Canada's immigration system. Kareem El-Assal Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif

Sans Font Size A

A

The Canadian government has just tabled its first Budget since 2019.

This major announcement usually takes place in the first quarter of each year, however it did not take place last year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Canadian federal budget receives a lot of attention domestically since it contains the policy priorities the government will pursue, the governments spending and revenue projections, as well as an overview of the state of the Canadian economy.

Todays Budget is of added importance for several reasons. It is the first in two years due to the unprecedented times we are living in. Moreover, the ruling Liberal party has a minority government, and is rumored to be considering calling an early election in 2021, which means it may need to rely on the Budget to convince Canadians to give them a majority.

Sometimes, the Budget contains major Canadian immigration policy announcements.

For example, Budget 2014 proposed terminating the popular federal Immigrant Investor Program and Entrepreneur Program. That same Budget outlined that the federal government would invest millions of dollars to ensure that Express Entry would successfully launch in January 2015.

Here are the immigration priorities outlined in Budget 2021. It is important to note that these are proposals and the Budget needs to win the approval of the majority of Parliament for the Liberals to go ahead and pursue these priorities. It is likely that Parliament will pass this Budget since defeating it would trigger an election an outcome that Canadas federal parties likely do not want while the country continues to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

Find out if you are eligible for Canadian immigration

Nearly $430 million to modernize IT infrastructure

Perhaps the most important immigration proposal in the Budget is a nearly $430 million investment the federal government would like to make to modernize its information technology (IT) infrastructure. The Budget calls for the investment to replace the Global Case Management System (GCMS), which is used to manage immigration applications. The purpose of the investment, according to the Budget, includes allowing the federal government to respond to higher levels of foreign national arrivals in the future, better security, and improved application processing.

Reforms to Express Entry

The Budget notes that the federal government has an eye towards reforming Express Entry. The government would like to give the immigration minister more authority to select those candidates who best meet Canadas labour market needs. What these changes may entail are not specified in the Budget.

Express Entry is the main way that Canada selects economic class immigrants. It accounts for about one-quarter of all the immigrants Canada welcomes each year.

Enhancements to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program

The Budget calls for some $110 million in additional spending over the next three years on the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP). The spending will go towards providing information and support to vulnerable foreign workers, increased inspections of employers to ensure they are treating foreign workers well, and improving service delivery to vulnerable workers so they can obtain open work permits if they have been abused by their previous employers in Canada.

Supporting Racialized Newcomer Women

Newcomer women sometimes face barriers to employment in Canada due to factors such as developing English or French skills, lack of Canadian experience, lack of affordable child care, and discrimination. The Budget proposes an additional $15 million in spending over the next two years to build on existing initiatives aimed at helping to improve the employment outcomes and career advancement of newcomer women.

Accelerated Pathways to Permanent Residence

Budget 2021 references the new immigration programs launched by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) last week to provide accelerated permanent residence pathways to essential workers and international graduates this year. Some 90,000 individuals living in Canada will be able to begin to apply for permanent residence beginning on May 6.

Are you an essential worker or graduate in Canada? Discover your eligibility for these new accelerated PR pathways

 CIC News All Rights Reserved. Visit CanadaVisa.com to discover your Canadian immigration options.
Nestled in the rolling hills of Berkshire County, in the western edge of Massachusetts, are a number of cannabis businesses that for more than four years have been the closest place for New Yorkers to legally buy marijuana.

In that time, Massachusetts shops have seen a healthy portion of their customer base come from across the border from New York to shop. How will this customer demographic and revenue base shift with New York becoming the 16th state in the country to legalize recreational marijuana?

Berkshire dispensaries shouldnt fear competition from over the border  at least not for now, said Erik Williams, chief operating officer of Canna Provisions in Lee. I think it's going to be another solid year and a half, almost two years after that first store opens before there's any competition with product selection.

This is because New York still needs to build the infrastructure to supply the huge demand for legal marijuana. Building a whole industry from the ground up takes time. Like every other state legally selling marijuana, all cannabis sold within New York must be grown in-state, in keeping with federal regulations prohibiting the interstate movement of controlled substances.

Its not like you can call the factory and order things, Williams said. Things need to be grown, things need to be processed, things need to be built.

And long before Berkshire dispensaries started selling legal weed, the area was an established tourist destination  a distinction that gives Massachusetts a competitive advantage over the fairly rural New York counties abutting the border, dispensary owners there say.

Williams estimates that about 25 percent of Canna Provisions customers present New York state identification. This is not surprising due to the fact that Western Massachusetts is full of seasonal homes and a destination for out-of-state tourists.

Although Massachusetts cannabis is meant to be purchased and consumed within the state, there are few ways to enforce it, Williams said. This is the way border towns throughout the Northeast have operated forever. I don't know about you, but I dont have an alarm that goes off when I cross the border.

How that cross-border interaction will evolve as New Yorks cannabis industry matures is what makes the market so intriguing to watch.

Taxation could shape competition

In another twist, a lower sales tax in New York could potentially lure Massachusetts residents into New York to buy their marijuana. New Yorks sales tax is 13 percent on cannabis products. In Massachusetts, the sales tax is currently 17 percent, with a three percent local option for towns and cities.

Consumers living close to the border where two recreational-use states meet might begin to do a cost-analysis of where to buy their marijuana. Though not necessarily if the difference is minimal.

The same issue is going to be in New York and New Jersey, said Matt Karnes, founder of cannabis advisory company Greenwave Advisors. (New Jersey will be taxing based on weight of marijuana versus the price itself.) Does it make sense to drive over a bridge or in a tunnel just to save a few bucks?

Bordering states may agree to work together. For the economies of scale to grow rapidly to meet demand, cross-border cooperation might ease the cost of prohibition, Karnes said.

I would not be surprised if we see some type of cooperative agreement between New York, New Jersey, maybe Pennsylvania,  which is currently only a medical marijuana state  a tri-state cooperative for interstate commerce.

Cannabis drinks, food products may create market differentiation

For the time being, the big focus for Massachusetts producers is finding ways to specialize recreational marijuana products to give customers unique ways to consume cannabis.

At one point, hash oil vape pens were not as ubiquitous as they are now. Finding the next vape pen-type product could be huge for a cannabis business. As the states industry has grown, market segmentation has allowed different businesses to focus on innovation that attracts new customers.

Canna Provisions, for example, just launched a curated line of marijuana strains from Massachusetts native and famed cultivator Greg Chemdog Krzanowski called Smash Hits. The hope is this exclusive line of unique marijuana flower (bud) will appeal to return customers with one-of-a-kind flavor profiles versus just pricing perks on similar products sold in other stores.

Its this kind of effort to create exclusivity around certain items that business owners are betting will differentiate dispensaries and producers from one another, creating brand identity among buyers in what is quickly becoming a crowded marketplace.

The biggest new category that we've been working on is infused beverages and I think that's going to be very popular, said Brandon Pollock, co-founder and CEO of Theory Wellness in Great Barrington. There's a company that just got permission to start making infused ice cream, so you will see a lot of fun niche opportunities for entrepreneurs.

New Yorks legalization is a boon for the industry because it encourages new entrepreneurs by being the most progressive cannabis reform bill that's passed in the country, Pollock said.

Forty percent of tax revenue from cannabis sales will be redirected back into an equity program intended to create economic inclusion in the burgeoning legal cannabis industry among people of color and communities that have been disproportionately affected by past drug policy.

While the neighboring states will both be in the cannabis market, sources told Times Union: Hudson Valley that its big enough to offer opportunities to new business owners in both Massachusetts and New York  and for multiple states to take advantage of the tax perks.

Massachusetts has benefited from being one of the first recreational-use states on the East Coast and it has been a cash cow for localities for over four years now, said State Representative Smitty Pignatelli of the fourth Berkshire district.

The Massachusetts provision offering a local option to add an extra three percent of taxes on legal marijuana allowed certain communities to accept the growth of retail cannabis businesses. Pignatelli is not concerned that NYs legalization will eat into the local Berkshire County market.

It's not going to hurt our business too much because those same folks who are coming here to purchase cannabis are the same folks that are coming here to see James Taylor on the Fourth of July, Rep. Pignatelli said.

We have no problems with New York doing it, but the better cannabis is in the Berkshires.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-18 23:20:35|Editor: huaxia

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MOSCOW, April 18 (Xinhua) -- Russia says U.S. influence is evident in the Czech Republic's decision to expel 18 Russian diplomats from Prague.

Czech authorities took the step to please the United States following recent American sanctions on Russia, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Sunday in a statement.

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said Saturday that the country was expelling 18 staffers from the Russian embassy in Prague for the alleged involvement of the Russian special services in two ammunition depot explosions in 2014.

The Russian Foreign Ministry criticized Prague for using "unfounded and far-fetched pretexts" in order to continue its anti-Russian tirade in recent years.

"We express our strong protest to the Czech authorities. We will take retaliatory measures that will make the masterminds of this provocation realize their full responsibility for destroying the foundations of normal development of bilateral relations," the statement read.

The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions against Russia and expelled 10 diplomats citing Moscow's alleged election interference and cyber activities.

The Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday announced a series of retaliatory measures, including entry bans and the expulsion of diplomats, in response to recent "hostile actions" by the United States.

Russia will ask 10 U.S. diplomats to leave the country, the ministry said. Enditem
The pontiff expressed his concern for what is happening in eastern Ukraine with the increase in military activity. He hopes to see actions that promote peace and avoid rising tensions. He is worried about the serious humanitarian situation facing the population.

Vatican City (AsiaNews)  Christianity is the encounter with Jesus as a person, said Pope Francis in todays Regina Caeli from the window that overlooks St Peters Square. At the end of his address, he thanked God saying I miss the square when I have to pray the Angelus in the Library.

Shortly before, the Pope said that he was following with concern the events in some parts of eastern Ukraine where violations of the ceasefire have multiplied in recent months. I note with great concern the increase in military activities.

Please, I very much hope that we can avoid rising tensions and that, on the contrary, acts will be taken to promote mutual trust and much-needed reconciliation and peace. The serious humanitarian situation in which that population find itself should be taken to heart. I express my closeness to them for whom I invite you to pray.

Before the recitation of the Marian prayer Francis commented on the amazement of the disciples when they met the Risen Jesus when he joined them in the Upper Room. In response to their fright, because they believe they were seeing a ghost, Jesus invited them to look at his wounds, touch him, and feed him.

This Gospel page is characterised by three very concrete verbs, which reflect in a certain sense our personal and community life: to look, to touch and to eat. Three actions that can give the joy of a true encounter with the living Jesus.

Look at my hands and feet, Jesus said. Looking is not only seeing; it is more  it also involves intention, will. For this reason, it is one of the verbs of love. Mom and dad look at their baby, lovers look at each other; the good doctor looks at the patient carefully . . . Looking is a first step against indifference, against the temptation to turn ones face away from the difficulties and sufferings of others. Look: I see or look at Jesus.

The second verb is to touch. By inviting his disciples to touch him, to see that he is not a ghost, Jesus indicates to them and to us that the relationship with him and with our brothers cannot remain at a distance. There is no Christianity at a distance. Love demands closeness, contact, the sharing of life. The Good Samaritan didnt just look at the man whom he found half dead along the road: he bent down, treated his wounds, loaded him onto his mount and took him to the inn. This is also with Jesus himself: to love him means to enter into a vital, concrete communion with him.

And Let us come to the third verb, to eat, which expresses our humanity well in its most natural indigence, that is, our need to feed ourselves to live. Eating, when we do it together, in family or between friends, also becomes an expression of love, communion, celebration. . . How many times do the Gospels present us with Jesus who experiences this convivial dimension! Even as the Risen One, with his disciples. To the point that the Eucharistic Banquet has become the emblematic sign of the Christian community. Eating Christs body together, this is the centre of the Christian community.

Brothers and sisters, this Gospel page tells us that Jesus is not a ghost, but a living person. The amazement that only the presence of God gives. First of all, being Christian is not a doctrine nor a moral ideal, it is the living relationship with him, with the Risen Lord: We look at him, touch him, feed on him and, transformed by his Love, we look at, touch and feed others as brothers and sisters.

After the recitation of the Regina Caeli, Francis mentioned that yesterday, Simeon Cardon and five fellow martyrs, Cistercian monks from the Abbey of Casamari in Italy, were proclaimed blessed. In 1799, when French soldiers retreating from Naples sacked churches and monasteries, these meek disciples of Christ resisted with heroic courage, to the death, to defend the Eucharist from desecration. May their example push us to greater fidelity to God to transform society and make it fairer and more fraternal.
New Delhi:

Bharti Airtel has clinched the sweetest deal to date. Tata Teleservices would not only sell its mobile consumer business to Bharti on equity-free and debt-free basis, it would also pay the majority of the outstanding spectrum dues.

Though the two companies have not disclosed details, sources say that the Tata Group will pay nearly 90% of the outstanding spectrum dues of about Rs 10,000 crore that is to be paid over a period of 10 years.

Market leader Bharti Airtel is the only buyer in the telecom sector. It acquired four mobile businesses since March 2016  Videocon, Aircel, Telenor, and Tikona.

In March 2016, it acquired Videocons spectrum in six circles for Rs 4,428 crore. It was termed as a win-win situation for both Bharti and Videocon as the later got about two times premium over what it paid for the spectrum. Bharti got liberalized spectrum in 1800 MHz band that could be used for 4G. Videocon had spectrum in Bihar, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh (East), Uttar Pradesh (West) and Gujarat.

In April 2016, it acquired Aircels 2300 Mhz spectrum in eight circles for Rs 3,500 crore. Aircel had bought the spectrum for Rs 3,438 crore. These circles are  Tamil Nadu, Bihar, J&K, West Bengal, Assam, North-East, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa.

In February 2017, it announced singing agreement to acquire Telenor through no equity and no debt deal. Telenor has operations in Gujarat, UP (East), UP (West), Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Assam.

In March 2017, it bought Tikonas 4G spectrum in four circles  Gujarat, UP (East), UP (West), Rajasthan and HP. Tikona paid about Rs 1,070 crore for the spectrum.

Its deal with Tata gives it spectrum in 19 circles in 1800 Mhz, 800 MHz and 2100 MHz bands and a subscriber base of 40 million.

No wonder, Bharti Airtels share was today trading at 7% higher than its closing price on Thursday.

What has changed in telecom sector?

Entry of Reliance Jio has redefined the dynamics of the sector. It brought revolution in the data-starved Indian market by offering disruptive 4G technology at very reasonable prices to consumers. The incumbent operators, who have not upgraded their networks for last few years couldnt match Jio in quality and prices. That is why the process of merger and acquisition accelerated when Jio launched its services, last year.

What has changed in last one year is a perception about the telecom market, said Arvind Bali, CEO of Videocon Telecom. That is the reason that Bharti Airtel has got a good deal and there is no premium for spectrum.

However, the sector was reeling under huge debt even before the entry of Jio as it is clear from the table below and the EBIDTA is falling.

Industry Debt

S.No. Operator FY16-17Debt (Rs. Cr.) FY 15-16Debt (Rs. Cr.) FY 14-15Debt (Rs. Cr.) 1 Bharti Airtel 97395 83888 66842 2 Vodafone India 56159 81500 47807 3 Idea Cellular 49184 38754 12804 4 Reliance Jio NA NA NA 5 RCOM 42700 41362 36726 6 Tata Teleservices 37796 33627 29833 7 Aircel 32370 25115 20873 8 Telenor 6521 5482 4444 9 BSNL

11448 10169 8889 10 MTNL 22798 22029 21259 Total 356372 341927 249476

Declining EBITDA

S.No Operator

FY16-17 (Rs. Cr.) FY 15-16 EBITDA (Rs. Cr.) YoY Change(%) 1 Bharti Airtel 22312 21899 1.9% 2 Vodafone India 118823 13115 -9.4% 3 Idea Cellular 10304 11910 -13.5% 4 Reliance Jio NA NA NA 5 RCOM 4655 6680 -30.3% 6 Tata Teleservices 1296 3252 -60.1% 7 Aircel 1198 1893 -36.7% 8 Telenor 389 -136 NA 9 BSNL -713 3854 NA 10 MTNL -914 -788 -16.0%

Total 50409 61680 -18.30%

The main reason for huge debt and poor financial health of the sector is bad business decisions of the incumbent operators. For example, Bharti Airtel accumulated debt due to its expansion in African markets, while Vodafone paid a high premium to its original promoters  Essar and Hutchison.

RCOM and Tata Teleservices were not successful due to the wrong choice of technology. Entry of Jio has accelerated merger and acquisition activities. Finally, only two or three players will remain in the market.


Click here to read the full article.

Dogwoof has acquired world sales rights to Faceless, the directorial debut of Jennifer Ngo, ahead of its world premiere at the Hot Docs film festival, Variety has learned exclusively.

Faceless is a behind-the-headlines story of the 2019 Hong Kong demonstrations, seen through the eyes of four young protestors seeking to protect their way of life. Directed by Ngo and produced by Lorraine Ma, its a Dissonant Productions film in association with XTR and Flat-Out Films. The deal was negotiated with the filmmakers by Oli Harbottle, head of acquisitions for Dogwoof.

I remember watching Blackfish in 2013 as an aspiring filmmaker and making a mental note of Dogwoof, said producer Ma. For years they have supported filmmakers in releasing urgent stories that speak truth to power. Its a dream come true to partner with them in bringing Faceless to global audiences.

Faceless follows a daughter who loves her police officer father; a believer who advocates nonviolent resistance; a secondary school student preparing for his exams; and a queer artist-activist. As protests against a controversial extradition bill engulf Hong Kong, their lives are suddenly upended.

With their faces covered, the four young protestors take to the streets, facing tactical problems with creativity and countering police brutality in unity, in the biggest demonstrations the city has ever seen. As daily protests morph into a greater movement calling for democracy, they are each forced to re-examine their motives, their values and personal relationships.

Unsurprisingly, much of the coverage of the 2019-20 Hong Kong protests has been from outsider journalists, so its great to see a film made on the ground in collaboration with people actually involved in the movement, said Harbottle. Jennifers unique access and her bravery in putting together the project makes for an urgent film to highlight the continuing oppression in the region.

Ngo previously reported for the South China Morning Post before moving into current affairs documentaries, mainly for the BBC in London. Since 2018 she has also been involved in the Migration Collective, which organizes the annual London Migration Film Festival.

Ma worked at Fox Networks Group, developing and financing original series and movies. She has also produced three independent movies, including Cannes player Ten Years Thailand, and directed the Al Jazeera documentary Gateless, produced by Oscar-winner Ruby Yang.

Faceless is edited by Samuel Rong, with additional editing by Andrea Lewis. Scott Clotworthy serves as director of photography, with cinematographer Stanley Leung. The assistant director is Crystal Wong. Pic is associate produced by Christopher Niem, and scored by Harris Tartell. The consulting producer is Michael Shevloff and the online editor is Ira Flowers, with executive producers Nancy Tong and Tony Hsieh. Kathryn Everett and Bryn Mooser are executive producers for XTR, with Justin Lacob as contributing producer.

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The latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the UK Government's official source of information, reveals that the COVID-19 lockdown and social distancing restrictions have had the biggest impact on young people between the ages 16-24-years-old. The April 2021 ONS report "Mapping loneliness during the coronavirus pandemic" comes to confirm what community-based UK programmes such as the youth-led "You are Not Alone" project have been saying all along.

Young people are at risk not only by COVID-19

Qualitative and quantitative data that we have been collecting through the project that the FRED youth-led campaign has been running since April 2020 in London show that children and young people have been severely impacted by the lockdown.

The "You are Not Alone" project set up and run by young people from across the UK collected data which reveal increased levels of loneliness by 500% compared to previous years, while over 70% of those calling the project's helpline indicated worrying levels of anxiety, stress and depression. 23% of the young people calling the helpline also indicated intentions of self-harming. Alcohol and drug abuse were also common.

It is now confirmed by the ONS statistics and the RJ4All International Institute, which hosts the FRED youth-led campaign, that the youth groups that are impacted the most by the pandemic and its implications on mental health are those from lower socio-economic backgrounds, black and minority ethnic communities as well as those out of education and employment.

COVID-19 discriminates

Last year, appearing on BBC News, Baroness Doreen Lawrence pointed out that COVID-19 has thrived on racial discrimination. Her warnings were later confirmed by government statistics that showed that black and minority ethnic groups in the UK are more likely to be affected and die by the virus, while there is less engagement and low awareness among these communities.

As the government and the World Health Organisation (WHO) continue to collect their data on COVID-19's discriminatory impacts, we must act now to avoid further disadvantage and poverty.

Tailored and user-led poverty relief programmes

Evidence that I have been collecting over 10 years of community action shows that it is more likely for marginalised communities to trust and get engaged with health and other poverty relief programmes if these are run by their own people.

For example, the success of the youth-led You are Not Alone project is down to the fact that it was conceived and run by young people who were suffering themselves from the impacts of the pandemic. Using mediums that young people can relate to including social media such as YouTube and Facebook as well as chat rooms and mobile applications, the youth-led project appeared in the local press and supported over 2000 individuals from London.

The coronavirus crisis will leave a lasting mark on the UK government and us as parents, educators, public servants and community leaders.
The first plane from Australia landed in New Zealand after a travel bubble between the two countries came into effect on Monday, meaning passengers won't have to enter quarantine after arriving. Ground staff at Auckland airport held up signs reading "welcome home" and "kia ora"  Maori for "hello" or "good health" as the plane taxied to the gate.

The resumption of quarantine-free travel was a relief for families who have been separated during the coronavirus pandemic, as well as for the struggling tourism industry. Australia had previously allowed New Zealanders to arrive without going into quarantine but New Zealand had taken a more cautious approach, requiring travelers from Australia to isolate for two weeks upon arrival.

The idea of a bubble between the neighbors had been discussed for months, but faced setbacks because of several minor virus outbreaks in both countries, which were eventually stamped out. Australia and New Zealand both managed to largely keep the coronavirus out by implementing strict quarantine requirements for inbound travelers.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
According to the PM, the Department of Foreign Affairs will inform the government of Philippines on how the body of the deceased will be disposed
Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 30 giorni fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili.

The global speech and voice recognition market size is expected to grow to USD 31.49 billion by 2026 according to a new report published by Polaris Market Research. The report Voice and Speech Recognition Market Share, Size, Trends, Industry Analysis Report By Component (Hardware, Software, Services); By Interface (AI-Based, Non-AI Based); By End-User (Automotive, Healthcare, BFSI, Consumer, Retail, Government, Home security & Automation, Others); By Regions, Segments & Forecast, 2019  2026, provides step-by-step analysis into current market insights and detailed analysis of future market trends.

In 2018, the non AI-based voice and speech recognition segment dominated the global market in terms of revenue. North America is expected to be the leading contributor to global market revenue during forecast period. A currently moving demand for virtual assistants at homes and enterprises supports the growth of this market. A growing need for automation in customer service and integration of virtual assistants with smart home appliances (digital homes) drive the growth of market. A need to streamline enterprise communication to improve productivity further supports market growth. Other driving factors include increased use in automobiles, mobile banking applications and Electronic health record applications (EHR). The increasing use in biometric applications for user voice authentication would boost market growth during forecast period. A surging demand from emerging economies and technological advancements are factors expected to provide several growth opportunities in coming years.

Request for a sample of this research report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/voice-recognition-market/request-for-sample

An upward interest shone through in cars sector and expanding modernization of vehicles drove showcase development. The thought process being voice acknowledgements diminish mistakes enhancing market effectiveness. IT has been foreseen that half of ventures will be voice essays by 2020. An increasing number of data lapses such as security attacks give reasonable credence to voice recognition systems that are more reliable authentication methods. Growing number of security concerns drive market.

North America came up with highest revenue in the market in 2017 and is anticipated to lead market gains through the forecast period. Use of intelligent virtual assistants to replace traditional interactive response systems has boosted market growth in the region. Use of intelligent virtual assistants is proving effective by enhancing customer and brand experience providing a consumer-friendly environment. The presence of established telecom and cloud infrastructure in the region and growing trend of BYOD drive the market growth in the region. The demand for voice recognition systems has grown significantly in BFSI and healthcare sectors in the regions. Increased adoption of smart homes and smart buildings would provide opportunities for market during forecast period.

China is the worlds largest populace and is expected to have high adoption rates for these technologies. The number of mobile transactions has reportedly increased which makes it ideal for implementation of this software.

Market players are introducing new products in the market to cater to a growing customer base and players are venturing into new markets to expand customer portal and make market presence strong.

The companies in the speech and voice recognition market include Google, Inc., Baidu, Inc., Facebook, Inc., Amazon.com, Inc., Advanced Voice Recognition Systems, Inc., Apple, Inc., IBM Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, Briana soft, VoiceBox Technologies, Fulcrum Biometrics, Neurotechnology, M2SYS Biometrics, Sensory Inc., Voice Base, INc., Agnitio Corp., Auraya Systems, VoiceTrust and Nuance Communications.

Browse for full research summary: https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/voice-recognition-market

Polaris Market Research has segmented the speech and voice recognition market into component, interface, end-user and region

 Voice and Speech Recognition Component Outlook (Revenue USD Million, 2015  2026)

 Hardware

 Software

 Services

 Voice and Speech Recognition Interface Outlook (Revenue USD Million, 2015  2026)

 AI-Based

 Non-AI Based

 Voice and Speech Recognition End-User Outlook (Revenue USD Million, 2015  2026)

 Automotive

 Healthcare

 BFSI

 Consumer

 Retail

 Commercial

 Others

 Voice and Speech Recognition Regional Outlook (Revenue USD Million, 2015  2026)

 North America

o US

o Canada

 Europe

o UK

o Germany

o France

o Italy

 Asia Pacific

o India

o China

o Japan

 Latin America

o Mexico

o Brazil

 MEA

Avail discount on this report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/voice-recognition-market/request-for-discount-pricing

About Polaris Market Research

Polaris Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. We provide unmatched quality of offerings to our clients present globally. The company specializes in providing exceptional market intelligence and in-depth business research services for our clientele spread across different enterprises. We at Polaris are obliged to serve our diverse customer base present across the industries of healthcare, technology, semi-conductors and chemicals among various other industries present around the world. We strive to provide our customers with updated information on innovative technologies, high growth markets, emerging business environments and latest business-centric applications, thereby helping them always to make informed decisions and leverage new opportunities.

Contact us-

Polaris Market Research

Phone: 1-646-568-9980

Email: sales@polarismarketresearch.com

Web: www.polarismarketresearch.com
A semi-trailer full of chicken guts has lost its load on a Queensland highway creating a slippery, stomach-churching mess.

Police were forced to close a section of the Mt Lindesay Highway, south of Brisbane after the truck was involved in a collision on Monday.

Fire and Emergency Services received reports of a spillage on the highway at Jimboomba around 1:35pm, near the intersection at Camp Cable Road.

Queensland Police were forced to close a section of the Mt Lindesay Highway, south of Brisbane, after a truck and semi-trailer lost its load of chicken guts on Monday

A spokesperson from the Queensland Police Service said the highway had been closed to allow for the clean up of the animal innards.

Police and the QFES remained on the scene until 2pm, with one officer describing the road as 'slippery'.

The highway reopened around 4pm with cleaning still taking place, with one photo from the scene showing a man with a broom attempting to sweep up the mess.

It is understood the spillage occurred after the driver of the truck was forced to take sudden action due to another vehicle.

A witness to the horrific scene captured a photo of the truck covered in chicken entrails

The driver of the truck was transferred to the Beaudesert Hospital in a stable condition around 2:10pm.

A spokeswoman from the Queensland Ambulance Service said the man had no distinct injuries.

Witnesses captured nauseating photos of the truck and semi-trailer covered with pink chicken guts.

'I didn't see exactly what happened but it's horrendous and hilarious at the same time,' one onlooker told the Courier Mail.

The major road was closed to allow for the clean-up of the foul spillage, but reopened around 4pm with cleaning still taking place

Photos of the road were posted to Facebook group 'Woodridge Crime Watch, to warn locals of the major road closure.

'This happened when the chicken crossed the road?', one user asked jokingly.

'Oh dear. The smell would be horrendous', another local commented.
Jersey City public school students will not complete the school year inside their classrooms, a shocking, 11th-hour reversal of its initial plans to reopen next week.

The surprise decision to keep the 30,000-student district on its remote learning plan comes just days after teachers returned to the schools for the first time in over a year to prepare their classrooms for in-person learning amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The announcement, made Sunday night in a robocall to parents, was met with harsh criticism from Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop and harsh words by a vocal group of parents.

In the call, Superintendent Franklin Walker blamed a shortage of teachers and other instructional staff willing to return to their schools, noting that more than 450 staff members declined to return to their schools Thursday and Friday when their attendance was deemed mandatory.

We cannot open schools with teachers and paraprofessionals working from home, Walker said. Over 400 (employees) submitted requests (to work remotely from home) based on an increased risk for COVID-19 and while they met the medical requirements, the district cannot provide in-person instruction without them and does not have substitutes to work in school while they work from home.

We will focus our efforts and most notably our resources on a full in-person reopening in September. I will communicate with the staff about our expectations later this week and inform you if circumstances change.

Walker and Deputy Superintendent Norma Fernandez could not be reached for comment.

The school district was expecting to welcome back 6,100 students, or 20%, to in-person learning, based on a survey conducted in March. But most parents did not respond to the survey, forcing principals to call students individually to see if their were returning to school.

At least 400 teachers and other instructional staff have applied for an accommodation to work remotely, but district officials said even those given accommodations would have been required to be inside the school to teach remotely.

Depending on the number of students returning to school, some requests may have been denied, Fernandez told The Jersey Journal Thursday.

In March the city reserved more than 2,000 vaccines doses for local teachers and staff in the hope of getting the schools reopened. District employees also could have been vaccinated on their own. The district and the Jersey City Education Association, the teachers union, both said they dont know how many teachers have been vaccinated.

Board of Education President Mussab Ali said Walkers robocall did not address all the factors and all the information the superintendent was looking at when making this decision.

I know in my conversations with him, (Walker) mentioned that staffing is just one piece in that decision-making factor, Ali said. My only concern was that it should have been highlighted to the community, if youre going to make a call, it is not just a singular issue that is preventing the reopening.

The Newark school district, the largest in the state, reopened April 12 for the first time since the coronavirus closed schools in March 2020. Meanwhile, schools like Hoboken reopened in September.

JCEA President Ron Greco said he was shocked the district is scapegoating teachers. He said despite the expected absences, there are at least 3,000 teachers ready to return to schools.

He said that despite showing support of the plan, the union was not consulted on any of the districts reopening plans.

You cant tell me that if 3,000 teachers, I am using a rough number, are willing to report to work you cannot open these school buildings, Greco said. " I am not going to allow the public to think that the schools cannot open because of us.

In a Facebook post, Mayor Fulop called Walkers decision an absolute failure in leadership and planning ... and Im saddened for the families, children, and those dedicated teachers that were hoping to return.

I struggle with the fact that our Jersey City public schools couldnt figure out some version of in-person learning when Newark, New York City, Hoboken, and virtually every surrounding district has been able to reinstitute some form of in-person learning.

A Facebook group Open Jersey City Schools Now! was created Sunday night and has planned a demonstration in front of the school district central office Thursday.
Canberra, April 19 : Australia's Defence Minister Peter Dutton on Monday pulled rank and intervened to ensure that soldiers who served in Afghanistan were not stripped of service medals over war crime allegations.

Dutton announced he would overrule Chief of the Defence Force Angus Campbell's decision to strip more than 3,000 special forces soldiers who served in Afghanistan of their Meritorious Citation Unit (MCU), reports Xinhua news agency.

Campbell made the unprecedented decision as a "collective punishment" for 39 murders allegedly committed by Australian special forces troops in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016.

Dutton's decision means that soldiers affected will retain their citations unless they are found guilty of war crimes or are dismissed from the Australian Defence Force (ADF) as an accessory to a war crime or for failing to uphold army standards.

Campbell in November 2020 had said the MCU would be stripped on the recommendation of the landmark four-year inquiry into alleged war crimes committed by Australians in Afghanistan, declaring that "units live and fight as a team".

The Inspector General of the ADF inquiry uncovered "credible evidence" that up to 25 special forces soldiers were involved in the alleged murders of 39 Afghan civilians and prisoners.

Criminal investigations into 19 of the soldiers are ongoing.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP)  Visiting Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif discussed trade and economic issues in a meeting in Jakarta on Monday with his Indonesian counterpart, the two countries said.

Zarif emphasized the importance of finalizing a preferential trade agreement in his talks with Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi, Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

He expressed Iran's readiness to continue negotiations, it said in a statement.

Supporting the international law as well as exchanging views on the latest developments in the Afghanistan peace process were among other issues discussed in the meeting, it said. The United States has said it will withdraw its last troops from Afghanistan in September.

Indonesia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the foreign ministers focused on joint efforts to overcome the coronavirus pandemic and accelerate economic recovery.

During his visit, Zarif also met Indonesian President Joko Widodo.

Zarifs visit to Jakarta came three months after Indonesian authorities seized the Iranian-flagged tanker MT Horse and a Panamanian-flagged tanker, the MT Freya. The ships were suspected of a variety of violations, including illegally transferring fuel at sea, spilling oil, not displaying national flags, covering the names on their hulls, shutting off their identification systems and anchoring illegally.

The two foreign ministries did not indicate whether the ministers discussed the seizure of the tankers..
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks during a press briefing at the White House, Tuesday, April 13, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Half of all adults in the U.S. have received at least one COVID-19 shot, the government announced Sunday, marking another milestone in the nation's largest-ever vaccination campaign but leaving more work to do to convince skeptical Americans to roll up their sleeves.

Almost 130 million people 18 or older have received at least one dose of a vaccine, or 50.4% of the total adult population, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. Almost 84 million adults, or about 32.5% of the population, have been fully vaccinated.

The U.S. cleared the 50% mark for adults just a day after the reported global death toll from the coronavirus topped a staggering 3 million, according to totals compiled by Johns Hopkins University, though the actual number is believed to be significantly higher.

In other developments, the nation's top infectious diseases expert indicated Sunday that the government will likely move to resume use of Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine this week, possibly with restrictions or broader warnings after reports of some very rare blood clot cases.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, in a series of news show interviews, said he expects a decision when advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention meet Friday to discuss the pause in J&J's single-dose vaccine.

In this March 6, 2021, file photo, boxes stand next vials of Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine in the pharmacy of National Jewish Hospital for distribution in Denver. U.S. health officials are weighing next steps as they investigate unusual blood clots in a small number of people given the vaccinea one-dose shot that many countries hoped would help speed protection against the pandemic. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)

"I would be very surprised if we don't have a resumption in some form by Friday," he said. "I don't really anticipate that they're going to want it stretch it out a bit longer."

Fauci, who is President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser, said he believed that federal regulators could bring the shots back with restrictions based on age or gender or with a blanket warning, so that it is administered in a way "a little bit different than we were before the pause."

The J&J vaccine has been in limbo after the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration said last week they needed more evidence to decide if a handful of unusual blood clots were linked to the shotand if so, how big the risk is.

The reports are raresix cases out of more than 7 million U.S. inoculations with J&J vaccine. The clots were found in six women between the ages of 18 and 48. One person died.

The acting FDA commissioner had said she expected the pause to last only a matter of days. Still, the decision last Tuesday triggered swift action in Europe and elsewhere.

In this March 3, 2021, file photo, Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine is held by pharmacist Madeline Acquilano at Hartford Hospital in Hartford, Conn. U.S. health officials are weighing next steps as they investigate unusual blood clots in a small number of people given the vaccinea one-dose shot that many countries hoped would help speed protection against the pandemic. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill, File)

Fauci said he doubted very seriously that the U.S. would permanently halt use of the J&J vaccine.

"I don't think that's going to happen," he said. "The pause was to take a look, make sure we know all the information we can have within that timeframe, and also warn some of the physicians out there who might see people, particularly women, who have this particular adverse event, that they treat them properly."

"I think it'll likely say, 'OK, we're going to use it. But be careful under these certain circumstances.'"

More than 6.8 million doses of the J&J vaccine have been given in the U.S., the vast majority with no or mild side effects. Authorities stressed they have found no sign of clot problems with the most widely used COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S.from Moderna and Pfizer.

Fauci appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press," CNN's "State of the Union," ABC's "This Week" and CBS' "Face the Nation."

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.
Apple TV+ has ordered to series the bilingual drama "Now and Then" from Bambu Producciones and creators Ramon Campos, Teresa Fernandez-Valdes and Gema R. Neira. Campos and Fernandez-Valdes will serve as showrunners, with Neira and Campos writing the series.

The series, which will be shot in both Spanish and English and set in Miami with an all-Hispanic cast. Now and Then is described as a multi-layered thriller that explores the differences between youthful aspirations and the reality of adulthood, when the lives of a group of college best friends are forever changed after a celebratory weekend ends up with one of them dead. Now, 20 years later, the remaining five are reluctantly reunited by a threat that puts their seemingly perfect worlds at risk.

The series joins Apple TV Plus growing slate of global projects, including Alfonso Cuarons overall deal with the studio to create television projects, action-thriller "Echo 3" from Mark Boal, Spanish-English language half-hour comedy series "Acapulco" starring Eugenio Derbez and others. For more, read the full Variety report.

Archive: Apple TV News
China's former premier has written an essay which has been interpreted as a coded criticism of President Xi Jinping.

Wen Jiabao, who served as China's Premier from from 2003 to 2013, called for 'fairness and justice' in the essay.

He also discussed his father, who was persecuted during China's Cultural Revolution.

Wen Jiabao, who served as China's Premier from from 2003 to 2013, called for 'fairness and justice' in the essay. Wen is pictured above

The piece was shared hundreds of thousands of times online before being taken down by censors, according to a report in CNN.

The essay, although mild in its apparent criticism of President Xi, is a bold move for a party elder amid a crackdown on dissent in the run-up to the Communist Party's centenary in July.

Wen outlined his vision for China, writing: 'In my mind, China should be a country full of fairness and justice.

'There should always be respect for the will of the people, humanity and the nature of human beings. There should always be youthfulness, freedom and a striving spirit.'

He also mentioned how his father, who was persecuted during China's Cultural Revolution, was placed under house arrest and suffered brutal interrogation and beatings.

China's former Premier has written an essay which has been interpreted as a coded criticism of President Xi Jinping, pictured above

Wen, who is considered a liberal figure in China, was previously censored in the country in 2010 after an interview with CNN, in which he described freedom of speech as 'indispensable'.

China has come under criticism for its heavy-handed approach to dissent, including a crackdown on mass anti-government protests in Hong Kong in 2019.

The crackdown led to over 50 of Hong Kong's most prominent pro-democracy activists and politicians being arrested.

Beijing has also faced claims of genocide against Uighur Muslims in its western Xinjiang province.
An Indian Army instructor shows an AK-47 rifle to Afghan army cadets during a training program at the Officers Training Academy in Chennai on Feb. 18, 2021. Indian American Congressman Ro Khanna has welcomed President Joe Biden's decision to pull out troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11. (Arun Sankar/AFP via Getty Images)
Italy is set to declare war on ice -cream sellers who pump compressed air into their mixtures to make them look fluffier, as the country seeks to defend the honour of its world-renowned gelato stands.

Under proposals being considered by the Italian Senate, ice-cream producers who fail to meet strict quality measures, such as limits on the amount of air added to the mixture, could be hit with a fine of up to  10,000 ($15,000).

The Italian senate is considering heavy fines for gelato inflation with compressed air. Credit:Steve Vidler / Alamy

It is hoped that the reforms will have a chilling effect on cheapskate vendors posing as gelato artisans, who have been known to sell tubs which contain more air than ice-cream.

However, the plans have also whipped up resentment among some gelato masters who argue that pumping air into the mixture is not necessarily poor craftsmanship.
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PHOENIX  A popular trial on Phoenixs Camelback Mountain was temporarily closed Sunday after bees stung a hiker and a Phoenix firefighter who was on a rescue mission.

Firefighters responded to the Echo Canyon Trail about 10 a.m. Sunday after receiving reports of a 50-year-old man experiencing a medical condition while hiking the trail.

But the firefighters encountered bees while making their way up the mountain, delaying their rescue operation.

A hiker in his 40s and a city firefighter sustained multiple bee stings, but both refused to be taken to the hospital.

Authorities said the 50-year-old man eventually walked down the mountain with assistance from the rescue team.

He was in stable condition when transported to a hospital to be checked out for the medical condition. His name wasnt released.

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Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 06:36:24|Editor: huaxia

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Photo taken on Jan. 22, 2020 shows a view of the Port of Long Beach, California, the United States. (Xinhua/Li Ying)

The Port of Los Angeles had the busiest March in its 114-year history. As more Americans get vaccinated, businesses reopen and the economy strengthens, consumers continue to purchase goods at a dizzying pace.

LOS ANGELES, April 18 (Xinhua) -- With about two dozen cargo ships sitting anchored off the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in Southern California's San Pedro Bay this week, local media said it showed the United States was facing a supply chain crisis.

In Seal Beach, a coastal city neighboring Long Beach, Xinhua found on Sunday morning there were at least 20 ships at anchor in the bay area awaiting available berths at the Port of Los Angeles (POLA) and Port of Long Beach (POLB), which form the largest container port complex in the country.

According to the data released by the Marine Exchange of Southern California, a service that monitors port traffic and operations, another six ships were scheduled to arrive this weekend and join the other 20 ships which had been waiting outside the ports for a week.

The two ports, which handle about one-third of U.S. imports, operated as a primary source of imports from China and have been experiencing a "historic cargo surge" and heavy congestions for months. In February, the Coast Guard had videotapes showing over 60 ships at anchor at one time in the San Pedro Bay.

POLA, the busiest U.S. port by container volume, said last Wednesday said it had the strongest March in its 114-year history, noting "as more Americans get vaccinated, businesses reopen and the economy strengthens, consumers continue to purchase goods at a dizzying pace."

Photo taken on Jan. 22, 2020 shows a view of the Port of Long Beach, California, the United States. (Xinhua/Li Ying)

The port's Executive Director Gene Seroka disclosed at an online briefing conference that the port processed 957,599 Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) in March, a 113 percent leap compared to March 2020 when global trade slowed to a crawl after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The loaded imports volume reached 490,115 TEUs last month, an increase of 123 percent compared to the same month of the previous year, while loaded exports edged up 1.5 percent to 122,899 TEUs. Empty containers, heavily in demand in Asia, surged 219 percent compared to March 2020, reaching 344,585 TEUs.

The cargo surge in March marked the largest monthly year-over-year increase in POLA's history and its busiest first quarter.

Earlier this month, POLB also announced that it achieved its busiest month and its second-best quarter on record "as consumers continued to practice physical distancing guidelines in March and turned their computers into virtual shopping malls."

"#POLB had its busiest month ever in March. Dockworkers & terminal operators moved 840,387 TEUs last month, a 62.3% jump from March 2020. These numbers mark the 9th consecutive month that POLB has broken cargo movement records for a particular month," it tweeted on April 15.

Kip Louttit, executive director of the Marine Exchange of Southern California, was quoted by the Business Insider website as saying that the two ports were facing more congestion than ever.

The normal number of container ships at anchor is between zero and one, Louttit said, adding that some of the container ships had been waiting off the shore for weeks and one of the vessels had been at berth since April 3.

Of the ships waiting to dock, half of them are what Marine Exchange calls "mega-container ships" or ships with the carrying capacity of 10,000 TEUs. Louttit explained that these huge ships take longer to unload.

Containers of China COSCO Shipping Corporation Limited are seen at the Port of Long Beach in Los Angeles County, the United States, Feb. 27, 2019. (Xinhua/Li Ying)

"You need more trucks, more trains, more warehouses to put the cargo," he said, otherwise millions of dollars worth of popular imports, including furniture, auto parts, clothes, electronics, and plastics, carried by a cargo ship could only float in the Pacific.

Asked how long he thought the surge might last, POLB's Executive Director Mario Cordero told Xinhua last month, "Our best guess for the duration is early summer." Some experts estimated the surge could run through the summer.

Longer dwell times in harbor, tighter space in warehouses and distribution centers, overflowing container yards, and COVID-19-related dockworker absence contributed to the supply chain bottleneck.

It takes 8,000 trucks to haul cargo away from a ship, Louttit told local KTLA news channel last Thursday, adding that when those trucks hit the road, there aren't enough available dockworkers to unload the next ship in port.

Lately, it takes five to seven days to unload a ship instead of two to three days, said Shruti Gupta, an industrial analyst with consulting firm RSM.

The backlogs got worse after a strike by the teamsters union against one of the trucking companies spread to supporting actions by the longshoremen last week in POLA.

A port spokesperson told NBC News in Los Angeles that there had been some traffic disruptions at one of the port's seven terminals but that the impact against overall port operations and the movement of cargo was minor.

"Any disruptions to the port's operations could come as a significant setback as the Port of Los Angeles continues to make progress in reducing the backlog that peaked in late January and early February," said The Maritime Executive. 
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Market Research Future published a Half Cooked Research Report on Global Superabsorbent Polymers Market Research Report - Forecast to 2022 Market Analysis, Scope, Stake, Progress, Trends and Forecast to 2022.

Superabsorbent Polymers Market - Overview

The global Superabsorbent polymers market is increasing with the impulsive pace; owing to the growing personal hygiene application. According to a recent study report published by the Market Research Future, The global market of Superabsorbent polymers is booming and expected to gain prominence over the forecast period. The market is forecasted to demonstrate a stunning growth by 2023, surpassing its previous growth records in terms of value with a striking CAGR during the estimated period (2017  2022).

Globally, the market for superabsorbent polymers is driven by the region Asia pacific, owing to the rise in the population resulting in to increasing demand for personal care products and agriculture industries among others. Superabsorbent polymers are materials that have the ability to absorb and retain large volumes of water and aqueous solutions. This makes them ideal for use in water absorbing applications such as baby nappies and adults incontinence pads to absorbent medical dressings, paint solidification and water absorption techniques to effectively use water in agriculture. Paramount environment concerns prompt the use of recycled paper where again Superabsorbent polymers are used in pulp processing.

Rising population defines the growth of personal care industry. Moreover growing industries such as medical textile, food packaging, and paints & coatings provide momentum to the superabsorbent polymers market growth.

Key Players:

BASF SE (Germany), Evonik Industries AG (Germany), NIPPON SHOKUBAI CO., LTD. (Japan), Kao Corporation (Japan), Formosa Plastics Corporation (Taiwan), LG Chem Ltd. (South Korea), SDP Global Co., Ltd. (Japan), 3M Company (U.S.), Sumitomo Seika Chemicals Co., Ltd. (Japan), and Songwon Industrial Co., Ltd. (South Korea) are some of the prominent players profiled in MRFR Analysis and are at the forefront of competition in the Global Superabsorbent polymers Market.

Access Complete Report @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/superabsorbent-polymers-market-1956

Superabsorbent polymers products are manufactured by utilizing polyacrylic acid as raw material which are costlier but they are capable to deliver high performance. These high value added products widely used as moisture absorbers in various industries.

Superabsorbent polymers are most widely used in manufacturing personal care products followed by its major use to effectively absorb water and supply it to the roots of the plants in agriculture sector. India appears to be the fastest growing consumer of superabsorbent polymers based products over the forecast period.

Superabsorbent Polymers Market - Competitive Analysis

Superabsorbent polymers market appears to be less competitive with the presence of only few major global chemicals and materials manufacturers operating in the superabsorbent polymers market. Presence of few key players will lead to monopoly situation and also competitive edge in innovation and technology is expected to be indelicate. As these materials are pricing at higher costs in the current markets and increasing demand for superabsorbent materials materials in personal care and paints & coatings industries will influence the end user products from these industries. Superabsorbent polymers market demonstrates a high growth potential as the demand for these materials is increasing other key players are likely to invest in opening new production capacities to meet the global demand with better solutions.

Industry/ Innovation/ Related News:

June 2015  BASF SE (Germany), one of the key manufacturers of superabsorbent polymers also having presence in Brazil, has announced opening of its new production line for acrylic acid, butyl acrylate and superabsorbent polymers in Camacari, Bahia, Brazil. These are the first plants for acrylic acid and superabsorbent polymers in South America. The complex has a capacity of 160,000 tons of acrylic acid per year. The investment of more than 500 million ($567 million) is the largest in BASFs more than century-long history in South America. This complex will secure national and regional supply of products that are currently imported. Moreover it reduces the demand for raw material to produce superabsorbent polymers in various applications.

September 2015  Evonik Industries AG (Germany) a global manufacturer of superabsorbent polymers, has announced that company plans to increase its production capacities for superabsorbent polymers with selected debottlenecking measures. With the project engineering phase complete, the company says implementation will now be conducted in several phases. Evoniks global superabsorbent production capacities will increase by approximately 40,000 metric tons per year. The group sees the biggest potential in its Krefeld and Rheinmunster plants. The company says the resulting flexibility for planning and utilizing production capacities will be used to secure and expand Evonik's leading market position in the area of superabsorbent polymers.

June 2017  NIPPON SHOKUBAI CO., LTD. (Japan), Japanese superabsorbent polymer producer Nippon Shokubai announced a substantial price increase for superabsorbent polymers effective from July 1, 2017, or as contracts and agreements allow. The announcement said prices will go up by $200 a tonne. This is anticipated to have a negative impact in the North East Asia region.
Lotteria Vietnam has said that it will continue its business expansion in Vietnam amid Korean media reports of its closedown over a net loss of nearly US$9 million.

The company, which is operated by Lotte GRS under South Koreas Lotte Group, dismissed a media report that it would cease operations in Vietnam, a spokesperson told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Saturday.

There is an inaccurate understanding of the Korean media report, the Lotteria Vietnam spokesperson added.

Lotteria Vietnam is proceeding with its normal business while an expansion is underway.

The firm is expected to invest in a new plant at Long Hau Industrial Park in Long An Province, just outside Ho Chi Minh City, and open ten Lotteria stores in 2021.

We are working with our parent company in South Korea to clarify its new strategy, the spokesperson told Tuoi Tre.

The spokesperson further explained that Lotteria Vietnam is still operating its franchise business and has reached almost 100 franchised restaurants.

Entering the Vietnamese market in 1998, Lotteria Vietnam is running over 260 outlets and is among the top fast-food chains in the Southeast Asian country.

The Korea Times reported on Sunday that Lotteria Vietnam is not closing down.

It is true that Lotte GRS is leaving the Indonesian market but we are continuing with our franchise and food retail businesses in Vietnam," the newspaper quoted a Lotte GRS official as saying.

The paper seemed to correct its report on Friday that had cited a Lotte GRS official as saying Lotteria Vietnam and others have met the requirements for closure starting this year."

Fridays article said that Lotte GRS was in the process of closing down Lotte Group's food material supplier in Vietnam, which was established in early 2020 to expand Lotte GRS' business in neighboring Southeast Asian countries.

Lotteria franchises in Vietnam have all stopped operations and its headquarters in Seoul is reviewing the possibility of closing down the business within this year, The Korea Times reported.

The report went on to elaborate that Lotteria Vietnam did not make any profit for Lotte GRS in 2020.

Lotteria Vietnam's book value stood at 26.8 billion won [$24 million] as of early last year, but declined to 15.6 billion won [$14 million] after recognizing 11.2 billion [$10 million] won in valuation losses, the article said.

Its net loss surpassed 10 billion won [$8.9 million] in one year.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
NEW YORK, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Best Love Psychic Reading Online Sites for Free & Accurate Readings via Live Chat, Phone Call and Video, Top-Psychics.Org announces the release of the review, "Finding the best love psychics online ", A list of the 4 most reliable love psychic reading platforms for the year 2021.

Top-Psychics.org is amongst one of the preeminent and most believed online portals that people count on when it comes to ranking and evaluating various online psychic reading platforms. The specialist crew at Top-Psychics.org proffers people with a trustworthy and honest viewpoint on any psychic reading portal people wish to receive an illuminating psychic reading session.

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Best Love Psychic Reading Sites In 2021:





Kasamba - Most reliable psychic reading online portal for obtaining exemplary love psychic readings. Users can get three gratis minutes at Kasamba, along with an additional 50% discount for all primary reading sessions.

California Psychics - Highly esteemed love the psychic reading platform that also holds specialization in providing outstanding love tarot card reading. One can get an initial 5 minutes free by scanning an online promo code 'ADD5' and some other exciting discounts like $1/minute low rates.

Psychic Source - Most veteran platforms for receiving love psychic readings at the most inexpensive rates. People can get the readings at as low as $1 per minute and get a 75 percent added discount.

Keen Psychics - Most authentic love psychic reading portal where users can get the initial 10 minutes of love psychic reading session at simply $1.99.

Kasamba Psychics

Kasamaba is the most popular name in this world of psychic reading that needs no introduction, and one can blindly trust this portal for acquiring the best in class love psychic readings. Operational in this industry since 1999, Kasamba psychics holds an extensive community of psychic readers from across the globe.

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Users can effortlessly discover their ideal psychic reader on Kasamba with the help of smart filters that are present on the Kasamba website. This smart filter allows the users to sort the psychic readers working at Kasamba psychics based on their per-minute price, years of expertise, area of specialization, and the ratings that they have acquired from the former patrons.

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Key Features





The only website in the industry that allows users to receive love psychic readings with the help of emails.

Most experienced psychic readers with more than a decade of expertise in this particular discipline.

Free 3 minutes to check the psychic readers' compatibility along with a 50 percent additional discount.

Newly launched mobile application that makes it easier for the patrons to receive psychic readings anytime, anywhere!

Click here for 3 free minutes Session with Kasamba Love Psychics

California Psychics

California Psychics have been proffering authentic love psychic reading online along with various other distinct sorts of psychic readings for the past 2 decades. The professional readers serving at the California psychics platform forever grant their clients the most far-reaching and even-handed answers they have been soliciting about in their love life.

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One can easily scan the online promo code 'ADD5' granted by this platform for further receiving an additional 5 to 10 percent discount. This is why many individuals try out this platform when they seek to receive the best psychic readings online. California psychics perpetually guarantees that they pick the most amazing and incredible psychic readers in their company and shortly before electing them.

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The professionals working at California psychics explain every question of the people and strive to answer those questions supremely by employing suitable expertise and psychic tools.

Key Features





The most effective and enthusiastic patron support team that assists the users at any point in time during the day or night.

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Psychic Source

Psychic Source is one of the ancient and most experienced love psychic reading platforms that holds more than 30 years of know-how in this industry. Psychic Source possesses a tremendous client base that is upheld by transcendent evaluations and grades, presenting it remarkably dependable. This portal has made it extremely easy for the patrons to receive the most precise psychic readings over mobile chat, telephone call, or video conferencing.

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Keen Psychics

Keen psychics is another highly rated love psychic reading platform that is going strong in this industry for the past 20 years. This astounding psychic reading portal has assisted over 30 million individuals with their exceptional guidance on all the matters related to love and relationship. A person can easily start their quest of choosing the most reliable love psychic readers right after signing up on the Keen website by entering their fundamental details.

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A responding police officer took the gravely injured child in a squad car and rushed her to Stroger Hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 4:39 p.m. Her father, 29, with whom she had been in an Infiniti sedan at the time of the shooting, was shot once in the lower back, the report states. He also was taken to Stroger in serious condition.
Baptist Health Spokes for Strokes

PADUCAH - Baptist Health Paducah will host its 10th Spokes for Strokes bike tour on Saturday, June 12, to raise stroke awareness, along with funds for life-saving technologies and expanded stroke care services.Spokes for Strokes will begin at 7 am with registration at Baptist Health Imaging Center on the west end of campus at 2705 Kentucky Ave., followed by the tour at 8 am. Registration at active.com is $25 for an individual, $40 for couples and $50 for a family of four.The bike tour offers 10, 20, 35 or 65 mile rides through southern McCracken, Marshall and Graves counties. Support vehicles will follow all rides. Helmets are required.Last year, Baptist Health Paducah celebrated 10 years as a leader in stroke care. The hospital became the region's first certified primary stroke center in 2010 and remains the only local facility with 24/7 neurohospitalist and neurosurgery coverage.According to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, stroke is the No. 5 cause of death and a leading cause of adult disability in the U.S. On average, someone in the U.S. suffers a stroke every 40 seconds and nearly 795,000 people suffer a new or recurrent stroke each year.The acronym B.E.F.A.S.T. is a good way to learn stroke symptoms.B  Balance: Does the person have a sudden loss of balance?E  Eyes: Has the person lost vision in one or both eyes?F - Face Drooping: Does one side of the face droop or is it numb? Ask the person to smile.A - Arm Weakness: Is one arm weak or numb? Ask the person to raise both arms. Does one arm drift downward?S - Speech Difficulty: Is speech slurred, are they unable to speak, or are they hard to understand?T - Time to call 9-1-1: If the person shows any of these symptoms, even if the symptoms go away, call 9-1-1 and get them to the hospital immediately.Additional stroke signs include sudden severe headache with no known cause or sudden confusion or trouble understanding.For more information about Spokes for Strokes, call 270-575-2871.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP)  A timeline of key events that began with George Floyds arrest on May 25, 2020, by four police officers in Minneapolis:

May 25  Minneapolis police officers respond to a call shortly after 8 p.m. about a possible counterfeit $20 bill being used at a corner grocery and encounter a Black man, later identified as George Floyd, who struggles and ends up handcuffed and face down on the ground. Officer Derek Chauvin uses his knee to pin Floyds neck for about nine minutes while bystanders shout at him to stop. Bystander video shows Floyd crying I cant breathe multiple times before going limp. Hes pronounced dead at a hospital.

May 26  Police issue a statement saying Floyd died after a medical incident, and that he physically resisted and appeared to be in medical distress. Minutes later, bystander video is posted online. Police release another statement saying the FBI will help investigate. Chauvin and three other officers  Thomas Lane, J. Kueng and Tou Thao  are fired. Protests begin.

May 27  Mayor Jacob Frey calls for criminal charges against Chauvin. Protests lead to unrest in Minneapolis, with some people looting and starting fires. Protests spread to other cities.

May 28  Gov. Tim Walz activates the Minnesota National Guard. Police abandon the 3rd Precinct station as protesters overtake it and set it on fire.

May 29  Chauvin is arrested and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter. President Donald Trump tweets about thugs in Minneapolis protests and warns: When the looting starts, the shooting starts. Protests turn violent again in Minneapolis and elsewhere.

May 30  Trump tries to walk back his tweet. Protests continue nationwide and some turn violent.

May 31  Walz says Attorney General Keith Ellison will lead prosecutions in Floyds death. The nationwide protests continue.

June 1  The county medical examiner finds that Floyds heart stopped as police restrained him and compressed his neck, noting Floyd had underlying health issues and listing fentanyl and methamphetamine use as other significant conditions.

June 2  Minnesotas Department of Human Rights launches a civil rights investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department.

June 3  Ellison files a tougher second-degree murder charge against Chauvin and charges the other three officers who were involved in Floyds arrest.

June 4  A funeral service for Floyd is held in Minneapolis.

June 5  Minneapolis bans chokeholds by police, the first of many changes to be announced in coming months, including an overhaul of the police departments use-of-force policy.

June 6  Massive, peaceful protests happen nationwide to demand police reform. Services are held for Floyd in Raeford, North Carolina, near his birthplace.

June 7  A majority of Minneapolis City Council members say they support dismantling the police department. The idea later stalls but sparks a national debate over police reform.

June 8  Thousands pay their respects to Floyd in Houston, where he grew up. Hes buried the next day.

June 10  Floyds brother testifies before the House Judiciary Committee for police accountability.

June 16  Trump signs an executive order to encourage better police practices and establish a database to track officers with excessive use-of-force complaints.

July 15  Floyds family sues Minneapolis and the four former officers.

July 21  The Minnesota Legislature passes a broad slate of police accountability measures that includes bans on neck restraints, chokeholds and so-called warrior-style training.

Oct. 7  Chauvin posts $1 million bond and is released from state prison, sparking more protests.

Nov. 5  Judge Peter Cahill rejects defense requests to move the officers trials.

Jan. 12  Cahill rules Chauvin will be tried alone due to courtroom capacity issues. The other officers will be tried in August.

Feb. 12  City leaders say George Floyd Square, the intersection blocked by barricades since Floyds death, will reopen to traffic after Chauvins trial.

March 9  The first potential jurors are questioned for Chauvins trial after a days delay for pretrial motions.

March 12  Minneapolis agrees to pay $27 million settlement to Floyd family.

March 19  Judge declines to delay or move the trial over concerns that the settlement could taint the jury pool.

March 23  Jury selection completed with 12 jurors and three alternates.

March 29  Opening statements are given.

April 11  Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, is fatally shot by a white police officer during a traffic stop in suburban Brooklyn Center, sparking successive days of protest.

April 12  Judge declines request to sequester Chauvin jury immediately due to Wright shooting.

April 15  Testimony ends.

April 19  Closing arguments. Jury begins deliberations.

April 20  Jury convicts Chauvin on murder and manslaughter charges.

___

Find APs full coverage of the death of George Floyd: https://apnews.com/hub/death-of-george-floyd




NEW DELHI (PTI): Chief of Air Staff Air Chief Marshal RKS Bhadauria on Monday left for France, a visit billed as a "significant step" in further enhancing mutual cooperation.



"The visit of Chief of Air Staff (CAS) from April 19-23 will enhance potential avenues for strengthening the level of interaction between the two Air Forces," the Indian Air Force said.



Air Chief Marshal Bhadauria is scheduled to hold talks with the senior military leadership of France and visit several operational facilities and air bases.



"The visit of CAS will be a significant step in further enhancing mutual cooperation," the IAF said in a statement.



Gen Philippe Lavigne, Chief of Staff of French Air and Space Force (FASF), visited India in February last year.



Last week, sources had said there is a possibility of Air Chief Marshal Bhadauria flagging-off a batch of five-six Rafale jets from the Merignac airbase in the French port city of Bordeaux for India.



Dassault Aviation, the manufacturer of Rafales, was scheduled to send six Rafale aircraft to India by the end of April.



The arrival of the new batch of the aircraft will pave the way for the IAF to raise a second squadron of the Rafale jets. The new squadron will be based in Hasimara air base in West Bengal.



The first Rafale squadron is based at the Ambala air force station. A squadron comprises around 18 aircraft.



India had signed an inter-governmental agreement with France in September 2016 for procurement of 36 Rafale fighter jets at a cost of around Rs 58,000 crore.



Dassault Aviation has delivered 14 jets to the Indian Air Force so far. The first batch of five Rafale jets arrived in India on July 29 last.



The cooperation between Indian and the French air forces have seen gradual expansion in the last few years.



Both the air forces have been carrying out exercise series 'Garuda'.




Joanne Doornewaard, ambassador of the Netherlands to South Korea, speaks during an interview with The Korea Times at the Dutch Embassy in central Seoul, April 15. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk



By Kwon Mee-yoo





The year 2021 marks the 60th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the Netherlands and Korea.



"Sixty years is something that's really meaningful in Korea, though I must admit that in the Netherlands, we do 50, 75 and 100. So we had to explain the difference to Hague," Joanne Doornewaard, ambassador of the Netherlands to Korea, said in an April 15 interview with The Korea Times at the embassy.



"It's looking back, but we also want to look forward. So it's about our past, what we have achieved together  the Netherlands was one of the Sending States to the Korean War and then we established diplomatic relations in 1961. Over time, the relationship grew and now we are very important trading partners and with youth involvement, both our countries are much interested in innovations and new technology. We cooperate for future, so that's our slogan."



Under the theme "Co-create tomorrow," the Netherlands and Korea laid out a series of events to strengthen ties between the two countries with various joint activities, exhibitions and events both on- and off-line.



The yearlong festivities kicked off April 5, the day after the Netherlands and Korea established diplomatic ties 60 years ago, at Everland, a theme park in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, known for its annual tulip festival.



Tulips are is one of the Netherlands' major products, exporting about 3 billion each year, and April is the month of the tulip, so the decision came naturally.



"Because of COVID-19, we would otherwise have done it with big parties. We thought let's do it in another way but still show people an impression of the Netherlands," Doornewaard said. "With fresh tulips, that was a nice event to kick it off. More events are coming up as we celebrate the whole year."



The Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics and Groninger Museum lent their collection to the National Museum of Korea's "600 Years of East-West Exchange through Ceramics" exhibit through November 2022 and Dutch artist Femke Herregraven is taking part in the main exhibition of the 13th Gwangju Biennale from April 1 to May 9.



The Netherlands is the guest country of the 38th Busan International Short Film Festival, to be held from April 21 to 26, and the Best Dutch Book Design 2019 exhibition is schedule from June to August. In October, Dutch musicians will be featured at the 18th Jarasum Jazz Festival and the Seoul concert of the prestigious Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra is slated for November.





Joanne Doornewaard, ambassador of the Netherlands to Korea, hands out a tulip in a pot to visitors in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the two countries during a tulip festival at the amusement park Everland in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, April 5. Courtesy of Dutch Embassy in Korea



Past, present and future



Dutch and Korean people have a long history since it was the Dutch sailors who first introduced Korea to Europe.



"Here in Korea, the Dutch are known for Mr. Weltevree and Mr. Hamel, who came here in the 17th century. The Dutch at that time went all over the world with ships and some of them washed up on shore here. Mr. Weltevree stayed here and not much is known about his stay as he served the king here. But Mr. Hamel lived here for 12 years and he went back to the Netherlands, then wrote down his experiences in Korea. That was the first publication about Korea in Europe," Doornewaard said.



The two countries' relations was highlighted once again during the 1950-53 Korean War. Last year was the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War and Doornewaard attended a ceremony commemorating the occasion and received a plaque from President Moon Jae-in on behalf of the 22 U.N. Sending States.



"During the Korean War, we stepped in and sent our soldiers to help South Korea. The commemoration event was huge and very impressive with President's Moon honoring the veterans. I felt very honored. I did not fight in that war, but to be there to represent the Netherlands and the veterans in the Netherlands was so special," she said.



"Korea is organizing revisit program of veterans and it is very meaningful for them. There was a program when I just arrived here and I spoke to them. They are very elderly and vulnerable people, usually assisted by their son or grandson. But they told me that it's so special to be here to see Seoul and Korea free and prosperous and the idea that they contributed to that."



Now the two countries are important trading partners of each other  international trade is very important for the Netherlands and Korea, as both are exporting countries.



"For us, Korea is one of the main export markets in Asia and we also import some important items from Korea such as electric vehicles and batteries. As of 2030, there will be no fossil fuel cars sold, so there is a huge market for electric cars and there is a waiting list for Korean electric cars. The Netherlands is seen as a gateway to Europe so Korean companies invest in the Netherlands as a way to enter Europe," the ambassador said.



"The other way round, we provide Korea our semiconductor manufacturing machines and chips for automotive industry. ASML and NXP are the big companies here."





Bicycles line a bridge over the canals of Amsterdam, capital of the Netherlands. Bicycle is major form of transportation in the Netherlands. gettyimagesbank
MINNEAPOLIS (AP)  The jury reached a verdict Tuesday at the murder trial of former Officer Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd, the Black man who was pinned to the pavement with a knee on his neck in a case that set off a furious reexamination of racism and policing in the U.S.

The verdict, arrived at after about 10 hours of deliberations over two days, was to be read late in the afternoon in a city on edge against the possibility of more unrest like that that erupted last spring.

The courthouse was ringed with concrete barriers and razor wire, and thousands of National Guard troops and law enforcement officers were brought in ahead of the verdict. Some businesses boarded up with plywood.

Floyd died last May after Chauvin, a 45-year-old now-fired white officer, pinned his knee on or close to the 46-year-old Black mans neck for about 9 1/2 minutes as Floyd gasped that he couldn't breathe and onlookers yelled at Chauvin to get off.

The jury, made up of six white people and six Black or multiracial people, weighed charges of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter, with convictions on some, none or all of the charges possible. The most serious charge carries up to 40 years in prison.

The city has been on edge in recent days  not just over the Chauvin case but over the deadly police shooting of a 20-year-old Black man, Daunte Wright, in the nearby Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center on April 11.

Earlier in the day Tuesday, President Joe Biden weighed in by saying he believes the case is overwhelming.

He said that he had spoken to Floyds family on Monday and can only imagine the pressure and anxiety theyre feeling.

Theyre a good family and theyre calling for peace and tranquility no matter what that verdict is, Biden said. Im praying the verdict is the right verdict. I think its overwhelming, in my view. I wouldnt say that unless the jury was sequestered now.

The president has repeatedly denounced Floyds death but previously stopped short of commenting on the trial itself.

Other politicians and ordinary citizens also offered their opinion as the jury was deliberating.

It shouldnt be really even questioned whether there will be an acquittal or a verdict that doesnt meet the scale of the crime that was committed, Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat, said in Brooklyn Center. The congresswoman said the Chauvin case looks open-and-shut.

Guilty verdicts could mark a turning point in the fight for racial equality, she said.

We are holding on to one another for support. Hopefully this verdict will come soon and the community will start the process of healing, Omar said.
Its past time for Americans to understand what that conflict was like, and how it has affected an entire generation of American men.

G. M. Davis tracks his tour of duty in the Vietnam jungle, leading Marines against the North Vietnamese Army, a well-trained and well-supplied professional army in his new autobiography, My War in the Jungle: The Long-Delayed Memoir of a Marine Lieutenant in Vietnam 196869 (published by Archway Publishing).

A Marine rifle platoon commander in Vietnam, Davis shares the realities of the experience for himself, his radioman, his NCOs and his Marines. Davis details what it was like to fight a professional army and explains that it was nothing like what people have seen in the movies. The author shares everything: the stress, heat, death and dying, sorrow, regret and anger, and finally looking back to America at the time, and placing the blame squarely where he believes it belongs, on the politicians.

Veterans and warfighters are appreciated today, yet Vietnam veterans have been an underclass of Americans for more than 50 years, primarily because the press and the people blamed the loss of the was on the men doing the fighting rather than the men who put them there, Davis says. Its past time for Americans to understand what that conflict was like, and how it has affected an entire generation of American men.

My War in the Jungle is available for purchase online at the Archway link above, at Barnes & Noble and on Amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/My-War-Jungle-Long-Delayed-Lieutenant/dp/1665700815.

My War in the Jungle

By G. M. Davis

Hardcover | 5.5 x 8.5 in | 220 pages | ISBN 9781665700801

Softcover | 5.5 x 8.5 in | 220 pages | ISBN 9781665700818

E-Book | 220 pages | ISBN 9781665700825

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the Author

Gordon Miles Davis, known to his friends as Miles, was born into a Marine family at the beginning of the baby boom. A year before graduating from college he was faced with getting drafted or getting a commission. He became a Marine officer, like his father, and spent most of a year on the ground as an infantry platoon commander in Vietnam. Upon returning to the United States, he attended law school, and after many years practicing as a civil trial lawyer, was appointed to the bench as a United States magistrate judge.

Simon & Schuster, a company with nearly ninety years of publishing experience, has teamed up with Author Solutions, LLC, the worldwide leader in self-publishing, to create Archway Publishing. With unique resources to support books of all kind, Archway Publishing offers a specialized approach to help every author reach his or her desired audience. For more information, visit archwaypublishing.com or call 844-669-3957.
Fisheries agreement reached between Government of Canada and the Listuguj Mi'gmaq Government

April 19,2021 | Source: CNW

The Government of Canada is committed to a renewed relationship with Indigenous peoples based on the recognition of rights, respect, cooperation and partnership. Building on this commitment, the Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, the Honourable Bernadette Jordan, and the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, the Honourable Carolyn Bennett, together with Chief Darcy Gray of the Listuguj Mi'gmaq Government, announced today that they have agreed to a landmark plan to advance reconciliation in the fisheries.



The five-year renewable Rights Reconciliation Agreement on Fisheries addresses areas of mutual interest, and will help foster improved relationships with, and outcomes for, the Listuguj Mi'gmaq community by:



-- upholding the Supreme Court of Canada's decision regarding Mi'gmaq First Nations' Treaty right to harvest and sell fish in pursuit of a moderate livelihood, supported by collaborative discussions founded in mutual respect and understanding;



-- reducing socio-economic gaps by supporting the Listuguj Mi'gmaq's capacity to participate in the fisherieswith the goal of economic self-relianceby obtaining additional fisheries access, such as through licences and quota, as well as vessels and gear; and



-- establishing a co-developed and collaborative approach to fisheries governance.



This agreement was reached in the spirit of collaboration and in a manner consistent with section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the federal Principles respecting the Government of Canada's relationship with Indigenous peoples. This includes, among other things, recognition of the inherent jurisdiction and legal orders of Indigenous nations, and that these are the starting point for discussions aimed at interactions between federal and Indigenous jurisdictions and laws, including those related to fisheries.



The Agreement will advance the implementation of rights and make real progress on issues of great importance to the Listuguj Mi'gmaq First Nation. Having a long-term agreement in place will not only benefit the Listuguj First Nation, it will also assist the broader fishing communities in Quebec and New Brunswick by helping provide for stable, predictable and sustainable fisheries for all harvesters in the region.

 2021 Verizon Media. All rights reserved.

Theme(s): Communities and Organisations.
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Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State has said his predecessor, Akinwunmi Ambode, failed to commit funds for rail projects embarked upon by previous governors in the state.

Speaking on Channels TVs Sunday Politics, Mr Sanwo-Olu said that since the beginning of his administration there has been significant improvement in the construction of the railway projects.

Well, unfortunately, I dont criticise my predecessors but indeed for whatever planning or reasons, he never just funded it, Mr Sanwo-Olu said.

When we came back last two years, the contractor has since significantly moved from about 55 per cent to about 93 per cent in terms of the physical construction of phase 1.

Reacting to the cost of the rail projects, he said It is a lot of money, it is well over N100 billion, adding that it was largely funded by the state government.

According to him, the rail project will be operational by the last quarter of 2022.

The Lagos light rail network was flagged off in 2003 by the then governor, Bola Tinubu. But actual work started during the administration of Babatunde Fashola.

Mr Ambode did not immediately respond to requests for comments. His former spokesperson, Habib Aruna, also told PREMIUM TIMES he no longer works for the former governor.

Last week, Mr Sanwo-Olu officially flagged off the construction of the Agbado-Marina rail line, also known as the Red Line.

The Blue Line is meant to start from Okokomaiko, that is Lagos West, it is on the Lagos Badagry Expressway, after LASU, it is supposed to come from Okokomaiko to Mile 2, through Orile, take it elevated, pass National Art Theatre, and finally ends up in Marina. So, it is 29 kilometres, Mr Sanwo-Olu said during the Channels TV programme.

He mentioned that the Blue Line is in two phases, the first one from Marina to Mile 2 while phase two is from Marina Mile 2 to Okokomaiko.

He said the Red Line is on the Lagos Central District into the Lagos West and would start from Oyinbo, connect Ebute-metta, Yaba, Jibowu, Mushin, Ilupeju, Oshodi, Ikeja and Agege, Iju and finally at Agbado giving modal options to people in their daily commute.

The governor also said the Red Line would have 12 proposed stations and the first phase would cover Agbado to Oyingbo, with nine stations.
Chennai, April 19 : The Deputy Election Commissioner of India, Chandra Bhushan Kumar, on Monday held a review meeting with the Chief Electoral Officer of Tamil Nadu, Satyabrata Sahoo, and other officials on the counting arrangements at the centres. The meeting was held through video conferencing.

Election commission officials of Tamil Nadu said that it was a routine meeting with the state and district officials regarding the preparedness for the counting of votes to be held on May 2.

The district electoral officers also participated in the routine meeting which is the second one held after a meeting on April 16. The review meetings are held to have a fool proof feedback on the arrangements for the May 2 counting.

The complaints and petitions of political parties have also been subjected to review during the meeting ,according to an Election commission official.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-18 21:39:36|Editor: huaxia

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Customers stop at a cafe in Chang'an District of Xi'an, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Feb. 17, 2021. (Xinhua/Shao Rui)

In China's first- and second-tier cities, coffee is on course to obtain a status on par with tea.

There were about 108,000 coffeehouses in China by the end of 2020, a figure projected to be 123,000 by 2023.

BEIJING, April 18 (Xinhua) -- French writer Honore de Balzac could not live or work without the aroma of coffee, they say. Neither can Chen Fang (pseudonym).

An auto engineer based in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Chen has a grind-and-brew coffee maker both at home and in the office.

"I can't go without my two cups a day," said Chen, adding that "It's part of my daily routine, nothing about jumping on a bandwagon."

In China's first- and second-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou where Chen lives, coffee is on course to obtain a status on par with tea, a traditional drink with a history stretching back thousands of years in the country.

RISE OF COFFEE

Habitual coffee drinkers in China's big cities consume an annual average of 300 cups, within a whisker of the figure (329) in the United States, according to a report by Deloitte China in collaboration with MM Capital, though per capita annual consumption lags far behind at nine cups on Chinese mainland.

There were about 108,000 coffeehouses in China by the end of 2020, a figure projected to be 123,000 by 2023, said Deloitte China, noting that 75 percent of these businesses were nestled in first- and second-tier cities.

Released on Deloitte China's website on April 12, the report focused on the fresh-ground coffee market in China.

Shanghai, one of the first Chinese cities to bring in coffee consumption in the 19th century, operates the most coffee shops in the world, said The Beijing News on Thursday.

The metropolis bristles with over 6,000 coffeehouses, more than three times the figure in New York, the newspaper quoted data from Dianping, the Chinese version of Yelp, OpenStreetMap and other sources as saying.

A search query on Tianyancha, a Beijing-based business data platform, showed that 2,170 of the coffee shops in Shanghai have operated for more than 15 years.

Coffee's penetration rate, i.e., the ratio between habitual consumers and the total polled in the Deloitte research, clocks in at 67 percent in China's first- and second-tier cities. The figure is 66 percent for tea.

A customer reads books at a cafe in Chang'an District of Xi'an, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Feb. 17, 2021. (Xinhua/Shao Rui)

PROFILE OF CHINESE COFFEE DRINKERS

Coffee consumers in China are mostly white-collar workers aged between 20 to 40. In first-tier cities the upper limit may extend to consumers 50 years of age, said the Deloitte China report.

The majority of them have graduated from college and earn a relatively handsome salary of 18,000 yuan a month (about 2,757 U.S. dollars).

Grassroots employees in companies constituted the largest consumer group, accounting for 24 percent of the total coffee drinkers between 2018 and 2019, according to separate research by the Health Times.

They were followed by enterprise management and professionals, said the media outlet under the umbrella of the People's Daily.

Most of China's coffee consumers come under significant pressure at work, regularly working overtime, according to the Deloitte report.

WHAT COFFEE DO THEY PREFER

This sets the stage for Chinese consumers' increasing migration from milk coffee to black coffee, said the report.

Consumption of Americano and cold brew coffee has rallied from 24 percent in 2017 to 49 percent while caramel macchiato has seen its market share shrink from 21 percent to six percent during the same period.

For Chen, it is a matter of course not to add milk or sugar to coffee. "I'm a little bit addicted," she admitted.

The Deloitte report believed that Chinese consumers have developed both psychological and physiological dependence on coffee.

The thriving of indigenous startups such as Luckin and Lyan played an important role in the formative years (2017-2020) of China's habitual coffee consumption, said the report.

A preference for healthy drinks and the original flavor of coffee beans also contributed to the expansion of black coffee in the market, according to the report.

Black coffee is probably the future, it concluded. 
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 19:41:23|Editor: huaxia

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ABUJA, April 19 (Xinhua) -- The number of people killed in a petrol tanker explosion in north-central Nigeria has risen to 12, as emergency workers continue to search for more casualties, an official said on Monday.

"We have so far recovered the bodies of eight adult males, three adult females, and one male child," Yakubu Mohammed, a commander of the Federal Road Safety Corps in Benue, told Xinhua.

Earlier reports put the number of dead at seven.

The blast on Sunday occurred along a major road in the Agatu local government area, when the driver lost control of the vehicle, which skidded off the road. Some shops and residential buildings nearby were reportedly consumed by the ensured fire.

An investigation has been launched into the blast. Enditem
Paul Kuroda /For the San Francisco Chronicle

Comedy: Whitney Cummings is one of the busiest people in comedy. She starred in her own sitcom, Whitney, and helped create another, 2 Broke Girls. Shes had four stand-up specials including, most recently, Can I Touch It? on Netflix, and published a book, Im Fine ... and Other Lies. Of course she has a podcast  its Good for You. 7:30 p.m. Thursday, 7:30 and 9:45 p.m. Friday, 7 and 9:30 p.m. Saturday, Laugh Out Loud Comedy Club, 618 NW Loop 410. $50-$200 for tables for two, four or eight, improvtx.com/sanantonio.

Exhibit: The McNay Art Museums Tobin Collection of Theatre Arts delves into the way that the natural world has been depicted in operas, musical theater productions and ballets. The show, Is it Real? Staging Nature, pairs designs by such theater artists as Helen Pond and Natalia Gontcharova with sculptures by the likes of Mary Frank and Barbara Hepworth. Opens Thursday. Through Oct. 24, McNay Art Museum, 6000 N. New Braunfels. Included with museum admission, which ranges from $10 to $20, mcnayart.org.
New Delhi:

During the rush hour on Friday morning, Delhi Metro services on violet line were not working due to a technical glitch.

However, after a gap of around 30 minutes, the services of the violet line metro has resumed.

Apart from this, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has increased fares as a part of an implementation of the second phase of fare hike. Earlier the base fare was increased from Rs 8 to Rs 10 and the upper limit was increased from Rs 30 to Rs 50.

It is worthy to note that when metro service started the minimum fare was Rs 4 and the maximum was Rs 8.

The revised fare hike in fares be as follows:

For less than 2 km there will be no change in fares. Between 2 and 5 kms, the fare will be hiked by Rs 5 (from Rs 15 to Rs 20).

For all other zones, fares will increase at a flat rate of Rs 10

Increase in electricity and maintenance charges coupled with salary hike of staff members are the prime reason for the fare hike, said DMRC.

It is learnt that the Metro board of directors had repeatedly turned down the request of the DMRC the proposal to increase the fare.There will be no increase in fare of Airport Express Link.
[April 19, 2021] Credit Agricole CIB Appoints Matthew Owen as Director, Financial Institutions Coverage Canada

Matthew Owen has joined Credit Agricole CIB as Director, Financial Institutions Coverage for Canada, effective April 12, 2021. Matthew is a seasoned banker with more than 10 years' experience covering Financial Institutions in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong & Canada. Matthew commenced his finance career in 2008 in Sydney, Australia at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in their Institutional Bank covering financial institutions, with a focus on debt capital markets origination and liquidity management. During this time in the role, he worked in Hong Kong and later in Singapore, working closely with local financial institutions in the region. In 2015, he joined National Australia Bank as a Director in their institutional transactional solutions department with responsibilities for their corporate institutional clients. Matthew joins Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank from his most recent role at HSBC Bank anada where he was responsible for the coverage of the Canadian Banks.



Based in Toronto, Matthew will report locally to Laurent de Monts, Managing Director & Head of Financial Institutions Group for Credit Agricole CIB Canada. About Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank (Credit Agricole CIB)

Credit Agricole CIB is the corporate and investment banking arm of Credit Agricole Group, the 12th largest banking group worldwide in terms of tier 1 capital (The Banker, July 2020). Nearly 8,400 employees across Europe, the Americas, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa support the Bank's clients, meeting their financial needs throughout the world. Credit Agricole CIB offers its large corporate and institutional clients a range of products and services in capital markets activities, investment banking, structured finance, commercial banking and international trade. The Bank is a pioneer in the area of climate finance, and is currently a market leader in this segment with a complete offer for all its clients. For more information, please visit www.ca-cib.com View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005270/en/

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Indisputably, we are living in a time of disorientation. As we redefine our personal and professional lives in the disabling fog of the wicked COVID-19 virus, new questions confront us, such as: "Do we work at home or live at work?" On the social front, we also are disturbed by the rude awakening that the many outstanding moral reforms, civil rights legislations, and collaborative achievements in American society have not been enough to overcome another virus: the ugly Racism virus.

We wholeheartedly commend every effort to correctly diagnose cases of racism and every outreach to assist both its victims and perpetrators in overcoming the ravages of racism. It is our heart-felt desire for people and communities to become healed and whole, freely participating in the God-ordained divine equality of people.

Tragically, another hideous, destructive virus has emerged alongside of the ugly Racism virus: the Partisan virus. This virus chief symptom is unrestrained, unhinged, unaccountable verbal abuse of other people in the most demeaning and debilitating terms. And because real racism is such a highly contagious and truly wicked virus, the unaccountable, partisan viral use of the label racist is so destructive.

For example, just recently, the State of Georgias legislature wrote and passed a bipartisan reform of election laws, making it easier for every Georgian to vote but harder to cheat  longer voting hours, more voting days, and no-excuse mail-in voting with voter ID. This reform is supported by a multi-ethnic cluster of leaders because it makes voting in elections actually more accommodating to people of every race than voting is even in non-southern states, including New York, Colorado, and Delaware.

Tragically, some misguided national leaders and corporate leaders have sought to exert their power over Georgia. Is it because it is a southern state that they presumed its policies, even in 2021, must be racist? Some of the baseless attacks were targeted to hurt business interests in Atlanta, Georgia  ignoring the fact that a huge number of those business enterprises are owned by African-American citizens, perhaps more than in any other major city. The carriers of the viciousPartisan virus also recklessly and foolishly attacked the idea of voters needing photo-IDs, as if minority people are not intelligent enough to obtain photo-IDs, and as if minority people never apply for jobs, never have bank accounts, never visit corporate offices, never fly airplanes, never buy alcoholic beverages or cigarettes, and never do any of the numerous other things requiring photo IDs in contemporary society. How ignorant can the carriers of this Partisan virus be, and how demeaning they are of their minority neighbors  whom they must hardly know!

Absurdly, some of these carriers of the Partisan virus even compare Georgias new election legislation to Jim Crow laws of the last century  without a single objective point of comparison. Some of us knowingly sacrificed our jobs and risked our lives fighting Jim Crow laws  and we remember them quite well. Any attempted positive comparison of the expansion of voting privileges and rights of the new Georgia election law with the atrocious, depraved Jim Crow laws is outrageous, ignorant, and demeaning.

Without question, the Racism virus is a wicked, insidious, destructive, vicious, horrific, outrageous, contagious virus. And so is the Partisan virus!

May God give all of us the courage and wisdom to defeat both of these irrational affronts against humanity and to insist that truth, justice, and civility be the hallmarks of effective public discourse. For those of us who cherish the God-ordained gift of equality, there is no excuse if we fail to speak out against the dual evils of racism and vicious partisanship.
Some children will be taller, some will be more developed, some boys will have changing voices while others wont. This is all a normal part of going through adolescence, but it might seem a little more sudden, Dr. Josefson said.

Families should talk with children about how these changes are normal, about how everyones body changes, but not in unison. Dr. Coble suggested, start with the basics, how are you eating, how are you sleeping?

If your children have been truly isolated, think about helping them ease back in  perhaps by encouraging them to spend socially distanced time outside with one good friend. Pandemic or no pandemic, children and families need reliable information about puberty. Dr. Adiaha Spinks-Franklin, a developmental behavioral pediatrician at Texas Childrens Hospital and an associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine, sends families to Amaze.org, which has videos aimed at kids, and to the Healthy Bodies Toolkit site developed by Vanderbilt University.

Even in nonpandemic times, life is often harder for early developers, who remain emotionally and intellectually the same age as their peers, but who may look significantly older. Dr. Carol Ford, a professor of pediatrics and division chief of adolescent medicine at the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, said that the children who develop early always need more support, and that may be particularly true now, when the changes may be starker after an interval away. Parents need to be ready to have concrete and detailed conversations about issues like personal hygiene (yes, your sweat starts to smell different) and the developments still to come (menstruation, wet dreams).

Some adolescent specialists have raised questions about whether the emotional intensity of lockdown and the pandemic year may actually have contributed to early puberty; Dr. Spinks-Franklin said, Ive had quite a few of my girls start their periods during the pandemic. She has wondered whether stress has had something to do with that, or whether it is just regular development.

One preliminary analysis out of Italy that was published in March suggested that referrals for early puberty in girls were significantly increased during the first six months of the pandemic, compared to the same six-month period of 2019. From March to September of 2020, 246 children, almost all girls, were referred to Bambino Gesu Childrens Hospital in Rome to be evaluated for suspected precocious puberty, compared to 118 during the same months of 2019. The authors raised questions about the possible links to stress, higher caloric intake and increased screen use, to be addressed with further research.

If you think your child might be developing too early, schedule an appointment for an in-person checkup, and ask their pediatrician to discuss issues of puberty and body image. After the 10-year-olds mother brought up the subject, Dr. McFadden talked with her patient, reinforcing the message that the body changes of puberty are normal and healthy. She talked with the mother about speaking with the childs teachers, so there will be a cadre of folks looking out for her as she re-emerges into in-person school. And she and the mother discussed the risks that can attend early development in girls, who may be taken for older than they are, or preyed upon.
With more than 25,000 daily Covid cases stretching Delhis health infrastructure to its limit, patients gasping for oxygen, and bed occupancy running full, the national capital went into a week-long lockdown, starting 10 pm on Monday until 5 am on April 26.

Meanwhile, the high court in Telangana gave a two-day ultimatum to the state government to decide on a or curfew.

Announcing in in a virtual address, Chief Minister said: If strict measures are not taken now, the health system in can collapse.

He said the period would be used to arrange more beds and supplies, such as oxygen and medicines. If we do not impose a lockdown now, we might face a tragedy. We do not want to face such a situation where patients are lying on the corridors or losing their life on the streets; at any cost.





ALSO READ: Serum, Bharat Biotech to get suppliers' credit for 300 mn Covid-19 doses

Less than 100 ICU beds were available in the city and hospitals were running short of oxygen.



One private hospital informed us that around 3 am, the night before yesterday, it had almost no oxygen left. It was with great difficulty that it managed to procure oxygen. We are falling short of medicines, especially Remdesivir, Kejriwal said.

The Delhi government also appealed to migrant workers not to panic and leave the city in a huff since the lockdown was only for a short duration.





ALSO READ: Govt allows coronavirus vaccination for all adults starting May 1

The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) welcomed the Delhi governments decision as a much-needed step to break the chain of the virus. Sharing an estimate, said that there would be a loss of business to the tune of Rs 600 crore per day in Delhi.

Prominent commercial markets of Delhi in a meeting held on Sunday had decided to self impose a lockdown until April 25. Delhi's trade organisations are fully geared up to the extent that no person in Delhi should not face any problem in obtaining their essential commodities, a statement by said.
The Cove's geographic location benefits from the largest concentration of biomedical engineers and scientists in the world. Upon completion, the mixed-use campus will encompass 13+ acres, comprising 1.4 million square feet of lab/tech office and 1.6 million square feet of residences with ample room for parking. It also includes a waterfront park that brings the outdoors in and the indoors out  for tenants, residents, and the Jersey City community alike. It will be filled with lush greenery and vertical gardens, eye-catching biophilic design pieces, event spaces, and terraces. The ground-up development is being designed by Ennead Architects. Nancy J Kelley + Associates is leading marketing and leasing for the property.

"The Cove epitomizes our commitment to reigniting New Jersey's innovation economy as a global leader in technology and life sciences," said Governor Phil Murphy. "With the most educated workforce in the country and unmatched location, New Jersey is uniquely positioned to innovate and build the companies of the future."

"We are very excited to realize this unequalled vision for a new 21st-century community," said Clay McPhail, Vice President of Acquisitions and Asset Management at Argent Ventures. "The Cove has the scale to be truly transformative not only economically, but also ecologically. The views are phenomenal and the location at the crux of downtown Jersey City and Liberty State Park just can't be matched. It's going to be a great place to work and live."

Convening Place for Innovators of All Kinds in the Heart of East Coast Life Sciences Corridor

Bridging disciplines, institutions and people, The Cove is a super-connected live-work-play supercluster just minutes from Manhattan in the heart of the East Coast life sciences/tech corridor. This location is the center of one of the world's largest STEM concentrations: colleges and universities, hospitals, healthcare companies, tech firms, data companies, accelerators, maker spaces, pharmaceutical companies, finance firms and more.

The Cove reimagines city life by bringing people what they need and want closer together: flexible, state-of-the-art workspaces alongside residences, expansive parkland on the Hudson River, connections to multiple transit options, and exciting retail, restaurants and bars. Its world-class purpose-built spaces have the power to stimulate thought and spark breakthroughs for scientists, thinkers and makers. Capable of delivering the support, funding, and resources companies need for anything from R&D to commercialization, The Cove is where innovators from across industries and the globe convene to communicate and create.

"The Cove is a unique, singular, and unrivalled opportunity to develop a destination hub for life sciences/tech with access to local resources and connectivity to both New York's major academic institutions and New Jersey's pharmaceutical companies," said Nancy J Kelley, President & CEO, Nancy J Kelley + Associates. "As a ground-up development, it will offer the very latest in space requirements for the life sciences industry, focused on flexibility, collaboration and efficiency. And it will offer an environment unique in the Greater New York Metropolitan Area that is particularly attractive to the younger, highly skilled employees that life science/tech companies need, at lower rental rates and with great incentives."

"We have worked to establish Jersey City as a sought-after destination for innovation, science and technology, igniting an untapped economic engine that is attracting jobs and countless other opportunities for our community," said Mayor Steven M. Fulop, City of Jersey City. The Cove is an exciting addition to Jersey City on this front, and, coupled with neighboring SciTech Scity, will further strengthen Jersey City and the entire State of New Jersey as a leader in scientific and technological innovation."

Designed for 21st-Century Living, Work + Play

The Cove takes its place among an elite set of peers within a rich network of institutions and firms while making its own unique contribution to the region. This high-design campus is the beneficiary of 21st-century infrastructure, lightning-fast broadband, and convenient connections to its neighbors, including Liberty State Park, Liberty Science Center and SciTech Scity (which will be home to a large conference center, co-working spaces, and more). It offers an unmatched combination of dynamic amenities, ample green space, comprehensive service and support, aesthetic excellence, as well as easy access to highways, rail, ferries and international airports.

Designed to leverage reclamation, renewal, and resiliency, The Cove sits on a remediated brownfield. The site will be transformed from a polluted industrial waterfront into a thriving public asset that will help protect the shoreline from impacts of climate change. Combined sewer stormwater will be diverted from the harbor, stored, and treated. A restored wetland habitat with full public access and eco-education loop will connect to the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway. The wetlands will offer a protective system providing natural water filtration, ample wildlife habitat and a natural buffer protecting the shoreline from flooding and storm surge events.

The Cove could be among the first regenerative state-of-the-art carbon neutral neighborhoods. Planning has begun to explore the possibility of heating and cooling all buildings through combustion-free heat exchange technology that extracts energy from municipal wastewater. Power could also be provided by solar or other renewable means. Abundant public transportation, dedicated electric vehicle parking, bike lanes and storage will provide residents and workers full mobility and further contribute to the project's aggressive carbon reduction goals. All buildings will be designed to extremely high standards of sustainability and resiliency and will be WELL Building Standard certified.

'The Cove will be a transformational next generation mixed-use environment, an interconnected smart city hub where live, work and play all take place within a 15-minute walking radius," said Peter Schubert, Partner at Ennead Architects. "Designed as a holistic approach to urban living, outside spaces and terraces are integrated throughout all programs, as are a variety of amenities, including a wellness and business research center."

Leveraging New Jersey's $14 billion Commitment to the Innovation Economy

The time is right for The Cove, which is positioned to leverage New Jersey's newly-enacted $14 billion commitment to invest in New Jersey's innovation economy with a holistic approach to economic development. A battery of new programs, including tax credits for companies creating new jobs, funding for venture capital for investments in New Jersey-based growth companies, and financing for development projects and other programs offer diverse, purpose-designed sources of stimulus to promote the kind of robust economic activity The Cove is designed to support.

Development Will Occur in Multiple Phases

Groundbreaking is slated for 2022 and the campus will be developed in multiple phases. The first phase encompasses two academic/laboratory/teaching facilities and a commercial life science building totaling up to 833,899 square feet of space. The first academic building will include seven floors comprised of a spectrum of life science and teaching uses, including laboratory/office space for companies at all stages of growth, a state-of-the-art digital conference center, a convergence cafe, and core facilities designed for biomedical engineering, clinical drug discovery and other translational uses. The commercial building will include laboratory and office space, as well as street-level retail. The plan also calls for a publicly accessible 3.5-acre waterfront park linked to the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway.

The project's second phase calls for two commercial laboratory/office buildings totaling 596,000 square-feet just north and east of Phase I. Residential construction will be a multiphase development as well.

The Cove is directly adjacent to the New Jersey Turnpike, 10 minutes' walking distance from PATH and two minutes from light rail. It is within 3060 minutes driving distance from Princeton and the New Jersey pharma parks as well as minutes away by taxi water service to New York City's major academic medical centers and incubators/accelerators.

Media Contact:

Nancy J Kelley

President & CEO

Nancy J Kelley + Associates

(617) 519-6144

[email protected]

SOURCE Argent Ventures
Highlights Realme will launch the Q3 series in China on April 22.

There are going to be at least two smartphones under it.

Realme Q3 Pro may be the highest-end phone in the series.

Realme Q3 series is coming on April 22. In a Weibo post, Realme announced the launch date for its next phone series and it will include at least two of them. Realme may launch the Q3 and the Q3 Pro at the upcoming event, although it is likely the Q3i may also arrive. Realme's chief marketing officer shared a poster of the Realme Q3 Pro, and it has a fluorescent back with a shiny yellow finish. We saw some bits of this design on the Illuminating Yellow colourway of the Realme 8 Pro.

While Realme is reusing a recent design, it is retaining what has emerged as a controversial design element, the "Dare to Leap" branding. And all of this creates a festival-like decoration on the Realme Q3 Pro. On the back, the Realme Q3 Pro will come with a triple camera system, including a 64-megapixel main camera. There is also going to be an LED flash accompanying the cameras. And that is it. Realme is yet to make the rest of the specifications of the Q3 Pro official.

And while we wait for official specifications, the rumour mill has something for us. Going by the looks of the phone, a similar phone appeared on China's TENAA certification authority. The phone listed on the certification website bears the model number RMX2205 and comes with a 6.43-inch Full-HD+ AMOLED display with an in-display fingerprint scanner. The Realme phone may come with a 4500mAh battery and run the Android 11 operating system with Realme UI 2.0 skin on top. Some reports have even said the phone will have a 120Hz refresh rate on the screen, while the battery will support the 65W fast charging technology.

Luckily, the RMX2205 also made a visit to the Geekbench benchmarking platform. On the platform, the phone appeared with a MediaTek Dimensity 1100 chipset and at least 8GB of RAM inside. This means the Realme Q3 Pro may be a 5G phone with mostly mid-range specifications. Realme previously confirmed that the Q3 series will sit below the GT series, and that means it is not flagship-level.

In other news, Realme is geared up to launch the Realme 8 5G smartphone in India on April 22. The smartphone, however, will originally arrive in Thailand on April 21 with a 90Hz LCD, a MediaTek Dimensity 700 processor, and a 5000mAh battery with fast charging. The rest of the specifications of the Realme 8 5G will come out during the event later this week, along with the price. We will know more about the phone then.
Much to the delight of Marvel and Muni fans alike, the first teaser trailer for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings has dropped  and on the birthday of its star Simu Liu, no less.

The latest addition to the Marvel cinematic universe began production in San Francisco last year under the title Steamboat and was forced to temporarily halt filming because of the pandemic. The project resumed last October, surprising a number of Lower Nob Hill residents when second unit stunt scenes entailing a careening Muni bus were filmed along California Street, among other locations.

The trailer itself pulls no punches with its CGI-laden fight sequences, but we also get to see a few brief, endearing moments shared between Liu and rapper/actress Awkwafina (who co-stars as Katy) as they go out for drinks and karaoke, showing how the martial arts master attempts to relish a normal life in San Franciscos Chinatown before his past comes back to haunt him. It ends with a familiar action-packed segment on the 1 California line (well forgive the fact that it passes through Ghirardelli Square) wherein Katy and Shang-Chi narrowly rescue the passengers of the bus as it uncontrollably speeds down the road, crushing at least one car in its path.

We make a good team, Katy says with a panicked grin, after screaming for her own life only moments before.

On Monday morning, the S.F. Municipal Transportation Agency Twitter account seemed to be basking in the limelight of its blockbuster trailer appearance, clarifying that no Muni buses were harmed in the making of this film.

"The real bus was chilling in its trailer during the action scenes," wrote SFMTA.

Also in a moment of pure serendipity that morning, an issue with the overhead cable lines on the (real) 1 California was resolved shortly after the trailer was released. Fans were quick to point out the parallels:

In other news, fans were able to get a first glimpse at the films villain  and Shang-Chis father  Wenwu (portrayed by In the Mood for Loves Tony Leung) who urges his son to join him at his side as the leader of the Ten Rings. Its worth noting that Wenwu is not Shang-Chis father in the original comics dating back to the 1970s; however, the film will more closely resemble a modified origin story featured in a newer Shang-Chi comic series written by Gene Yang, which was published last year.

Liu is widely recognized for his portrayal of Jung in the lauded Netflix sitcom Kims Convenience, which saw its series finale last week, and also appears in the San Francisco-set coming-of-age drama Women is Losers, which premiered at SXSW earlier this year. On Monday morning, he shared a photo of the Shang-Chi poster on Twitter, revealing further details about the appearance of his character.

The film is slated for theatrical release Sept. 3, 2021.

Watch the full trailer below:
Dog the Bounty Hunter calls on police officers to use non-lethal bullets

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Duane Chapman, better known as Dog the Bounty Hunter, announced his new campaign to encourage police officers to model after his example by pursuing criminals using non-lethal bullets.

The popular reality show star has been captured on screen for years, taking down those who run from the law as a bail bondsman. In a recent interview with Fox News, the 68-year-old explained that he has taken down suspects thousands of times and never once had to use lethal force.

His campaign is called "Take the Lead Out."

"I've arrested over 8,000 fugitives in a 43-year career and have never shot anyone and killed them," Chapman explained.

"We've used all non-lethal weapons. We're going to get the lead out of the bullet and replace it with rubber and or wood. I've shown a thousand arrests on different networks in America in the last 15 years, and I've been attacked [by] ... machetes, shopping carts, guns, knives," he continued.

"I've shot a lot, but I've never killed [anyone]. Because on my team, you will not use a lethal weapon. It's not the gun that kills or the officer. It's the lead in the bullet," Chapman added.

The Fox News host told the bounty hunter that officers get very skeptical of using non-lethal methods.

Officers think that they need their guns, he noted.

However, Chapman maintained that "[Police officers who] shoot someone right now, you got a problem.

He said that Americans have seen him take fugitives down thousands of times, and he shot many of them with non-lethal weapons.

It works. All you need to do is get them down so you can cuff him," the reality star insisted.

"You need to stop killing them. And I don't think they're killing them on purpose, he said of those in law enforcement. Nevertheless, he noted that police officers are trained to kill.

Because of that level of training, he repeated, Let's take the lead out of their bullet,"

Chapman said the idea could be a "bipartisan bill" and again stressed the need to "get the lead out of that bullet."

"Who's going to want to keep the lead in so you can kill someone? Who's going to do that, and that will separate the men from the boys, he said. I think every cop in America, every citizen, we got to stop them. They're coming at you. They just robbed a store, kidnapping someone; you got to stop them.

"A wood bullet, a rubber bullet will stop them just like the lead bullet. But they will not die," he concluded, adding that only someone shot in the head from wooden or rubber bullets can result in death.

Chapman's new campaign, which can be reached at taketheleadout@gmail.com, comes on the heels of the recent criticism on police officers and their use of firearms following the death of Daunte Wright in Minnesota.

Wright was shot during a traffic stop by veteran police officer, Kim Potter, who said the killing was accidental. Body-camera footage of the killing shows Potter shouted "Taser" before firing.
The master's program has inspired Strong to plan for her post-military career, a venture shipping goods for local, regional and national companies with a small fleet of trucks. "This program is going to set me up perfectly for that," said Strong, a full-time member of the New Jersey Air National Guard for 13 years.

The path that Strong is following is one that other members of the military have chosen too. Active military or veterans represent nearly 15% of the more than 200 alumni who have completed the graduate supply chain management program since it was launched in 2014, said Brody Sheldon, senior program coordinator.

Margaret O'Donnell, manager of Military and Veteran Engagement Programs at Rutgers Business School, said for military veterans as well as those in active duty, Reserve or National Guard roles, the importance of logistics is ingrained. "When people think of expertise they can use while serving, as well as in their civilian careers, procurement and supply come to mind as readily transferable skill sets," O'Donnell said.

"The online aspect of the program makes it doable no matter where someone is living or deployed," she said.

For 2021, U.S. News & World Report ranked Rutgers Business School's online master's programs (non-MBA), including supply chain management, No. 5 in the nation for veterans, and No. 12 overall.

"There was no question in my mind I wanted to enroll," New Jersey Army National Guard Maj. Robert Fernandez said of the supply chain program. "The multiple combinations of the experience and subject matter background of the staff at RBS, the reputation and prestige of Rutgers, the ability to facilitate this program online for working adults like me, and the importance of this field, made my decision easy."

Fernandez earned the degree in three years, taking a summer semester while deployed in Kuwait in 2018.

Sheldon said students have up to 4 years to complete the 10 courses, but the average is five semesters. The program is asynchronous, so students can work around their schedules, but they must meet weekly deadlines. "It's flexible but still structured," she said.

Read about the experience of Kimberly Chatman, another recent graduate from the online Masters in Supply Chain Management Program: Graduate ready to take supply chain management career to next level

The program's high ranking and flexibility appealed to Strong, who'd earned her bachelor's degree in English at Rutgers University-Camden. She joined the Air Force before her junior year. "My entire adult life has revolved around supply chain and logistics," she said.

Fernandez is the chief operations officer for transportation at the New Jersey Infrastructure Bank, an independent state authority that finances water quality and transportation projects. "I feel that this program has given me the skills through which I can always strive to find improvement and be as efficient as possible," he said.

Learn more about the Master of Science in Supply Chain Management at a webinar on May 5. For prospective students interested in starting classes in the summer, the application deadline is May 10. Application deadline for the fall semester is mid-August.

SOURCE Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick
A grant agreement with the Michigan Department of Transportation could award Midland County Connection an additional $240,570 in funding through the CARES Act.

The Midland County Board of Commissioners will convene for a regular meeting on Tuesday. Other items up for approval on Tuesdays agenda include:
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Islamabad, April 19 : Prominent religious political parties along with many religious organisations have decided to side with the freshly proscribed religious organization, Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP), announcing a shutter-down strike on Monday, in protest against the violence and protests, that have led to clashes between the police, and have claimed lives of locals.

Mufti Muneeb-ur-Rehman, former chairperson of Ruet-e-Hilal Committee, along with leaders of other religious organizations of Pakistan, have called for a complete shutter down strike, against the use of force by the government to disperse the protestors in Lahore during the past two days.

Religious political parties including Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI_F) and Jamat-e-Islami, the country's largest religious party, have also come out in support of the strike call, stating that the government has opted to use of brutal force and has ignored negotiations to control the worsening situation on the streets of Pakistan.

"Certain people were certainly wrong, but the government should act wisely", said Mufti Usman.

Other than religious and political parties joining in on the protest, traders across the country have also announced to close all markets today in support of the anti-government protest.

The protest comes in the wake of violent confrontation between protestors of the proscribed Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) and the police and rangers in Lahore, as security forces conducted operation to disperse the protestors of the banned religious political party in Lahore.

lashes between the security forces and the protestors resulted in casualties and critical injuries, while TLP claimed that security forces killed several of their people and even opened fire inside the mosque.

On the other hand, TLP protestors attacked a police station and took hostage at least 12 policemen, while left at least six critically injured.

"Miscreants armed with petrol bombs attacked the Nawankot police station, taking 12 policemen hostage and leaving sex injured", said Dr. Firdous Ashiq Awan, spokesperson of Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar.

However, the 11 hostage policemen were released in the early hours of Monday after successful first round of talks between TLP and the government.

TLP has been protesting against the arrest of its leader Saad Hussain Rizvi, who was taken into custody after he announced a march towards Islamabad, demanding the government to fulfill its commitment to expel the French Ambassador and severe ties with France over blasphemous caricatures against Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) and the statement by the French President.

The French embassy has also advised its nationals in Pakistan to leave the country amid serious security threats being posed by the TLP against its citizens.
JACKSON, MI  For more than two decades, a caped crime-fighter could be seen throughout Jackson  keeping an eye out for suspicious criminal activity and capturing the attention of residents and visitors alike.

But the city is once again without a masked defender.

Captain Jackson, known in his personal life as Thomas Frankini, died Monday, April 12. He was 64.

Captain Jackson first hit the streets of a struggling downtown Jackson in 1999. It started as a bit when calling into The Bart Hawley Show while it was on the radio. Soon after, he and his only child, Andrea Hart, who used the alias Crime Fighting Girl, began to patrol.

He checked business doors to ensure they were locked, volunteered in community outreach, held doors open at the Michigan Theatre, helped neighborhood watches and reported suspicious activity to the police.

No, he didnt have super powers, and he didnt call himself a superhero. He was a crime fighter, likening himself to a beat cop from his metro-Detroit childhood. He wanted to help bridge the gap between the community and police work.

Ive always been a contributor to society, he told the Jackson Citizen Patriot in 2013. I just want to make a difference. I started walking up and down the street and talking to business owners. One guy came up to me and said, I want to shake your hand. Its not like the police give a damn about us. I said, Wow. Im sold. Ive got to do this. My message has always been: Call the police. Thats what theyre there for.

Much of his daughters life was shaped by the shared memories they created in their alter-egos, she said. They became a crime-fighting duo when she was 9.

We did not tell people who we were  none of my childhood friends knew who we were, Hart told MLive/Jackson Citizen Patriot in her first interview in her given name. When we got in the car after going to an event or volunteering somewhere, we would take our masks off and act as though nothing had happened. We went about our lives.

Crime Fighting Girl continued until she graduated from high school. The duo was joined for several years in the 2000s by Captain Jacksons long-time girlfriend, Queen of Hearts.

With or without a partner, Captain Jackson patrolled multiple times a week on top of volunteer work, his daughter said. His work continued until 2020, but she suspects he would have continued for even longer, if he could have.

His death came with little warning, but family was there with him, Hart said.

Captain Jackson could be polarizing in the community. While many supported his work and enjoyed the mystery, others were skeptical of the idea of a real-life superhero.

Hart recalled a time when the two were patrolling downtown in uniform  they never called it a costume  and a passerby yelled something derogatory at them. Instead of getting angry back, Captain Jackson smiled and waved.

He told Crime Fighting Girl just because someone was rude doesnt mean you have the right to be rude back.

That memory sticks in my mind I remember just looking up at him and being amazed that he was brave enough to handle the criticism of the outside world, she said.

Criticism came to a head for Captain Jackson in 2005, when Frankini was arrested for drunken driving. The Jackson Citizen Patriot unmasked him, and he briefly considered retiring because of the pushback.

But it didnt keep Captain Jackson off patrol for long, Hart said. She said she thinks the experience made him want to be a stronger role model and show others that he was still human.

Superheroes most of the time are flawed, she said. Captain Jackson made him want to be this better version of himself.

His notoriety caught the attention of media around the world. Captain Jackson was featured in a photography project on real-life superheroes by French photographer Pierre-Elie de Pibrac. He has also participated in an Australian filmmakers documentary and has been a guest on Dr. Drews Lifechangers, a nationally syndicated talk show.

In his personal life, Frankini worked in metal manufacturing. He was a hands-on father that enjoyed reading and writing, liked the Adam West version of Batman and always made sure to include Hart throughout her life, she said.

The ordinary man that he was when he wasnt dressed up in his cape and his mask, in his uniform, was pretty remarkable, Hart said.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 19:56:54|Editor: huaxia

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MOGADISHU, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Somali National Army (SNA) and African Union Mission (AMISOM) forces arrested several Shabab fighters in a joint operation in southern Somalia on Sunday, the AU mission said on Monday.

AMISOM said its Burundian contingent based at Gololey joined the operation, flushing out militants hiding in the Sayga forest.

"A number of al-Shabab fighters were captured and handed over to the Somali police for further investigations," AMISOM said in a statement.

The operation was aimed at ensuring free movement of Somali people on the main supply route of Mogadishu-Jowhar, the statement said.

Al-Shabab, which has been seeking to topple the government, has continued to restrict the movement of people and control supply routes to most of the recovered areas, according to Somali authorities and humanitarian partners.

AU troops have been conducting regular patrols and escorting vehicles carrying humanitarian relief aid and participated in combat operations against al-Shabab to secure main supply routes.

There have been clashes in southern and central Somalia between government forces and al-Shabab since the militants were chased out of the capital Mogadishu in August 2011 by allied forces. Enditem
Bir lahlou, 18 April 2021 (SPS) - The Sahrawi army will be able to face the drones used by the Moroccan occupation army, said the Secretary General of the Sahrawi Ministry of Security and Documentation Sidi Ougal, stressing that the French intervention in Western Sahara was not only political but also military.



In a statement to APS, Sidi Ougal said that the Moroccan regime had appealed to its allies after the great difficulties it faced on the ground, stating that the drone that targeted the head of the Sahrawi gendarmerie, Dah El Bendir was an Israeli one.



The Sahrawi military chief was eliminated by a Harfang drone, which is a version of the Israeli Heron drone, franked by Airbus Defense and Space.



Information received by the Moroccan website the Desk.ma report a combined operation carried out by a Harfang drone of Israeli design that pointed the target with a laser rangefinder, allowing a fighter to execute the strike from a great distance by one or more shots of air-to-ground missiles. (SPS)



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Chandigarh, April 19 : Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) President Sukhbir Singh Badal on Monday said he had never met Ajit Singh, a witness in the 2015 Kotkapura police firing case, and that he would file a defamation suit against Inspector General (IG) Kunwar Vijay Partap Singh for falsely claiming that he had tried to lure the witness.

In a statement here, the SAD President said it was clear that IG Kunwar Vijay Pratap, who was heading state's Special Investigating Team (SIT) to probe into the firing incident, was obsessed with targeting SAD and the Badal family.

It was with this purpose that he had forwarded a malicious letter to the Director General of Police and made these wild allegations.

"The IG knew from the proceedings of the Kotkapura firing case in the high court that his probe would be cast aside. The latest allegation is a result of this deep rooted frustration and aimed at politicising a case after wasting three years pursuing the political agenda of the Congress party.

"The IG tried to implicate SAD and its senior leadership in the case at the instance of the Congress government but he was unsuccessful in this task. It is a clear case of gross misuse of his official position by the IG to please his political bosses rather than nailing the culprits in the case." Badal said Ajit Singh had also set the record straight by asserting that he had not been approached by anyone for a job in the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) and that he had approached the Sikh institution for a job.

"The witness has also submitted that even this request is pending and that he has not been offered any job by the SGPC." He said despite such a clear cut rebuttal from the witness, the IG had prevailed upon a section of the media to publish this malafide report.

Badal said SAD had always stood for speedy investigation into all cases related to the heinous incidents of sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib.

"It is unfortunate that after failing to nail those responsible for the reprehensible acts, the Congress government is politicizing the issue by using Kunwar Vijay Pratap to strike out at me," Badal added.

Two persons were killed and many others were injured after the police under the previous SAD-BJP government resorted to unprovoked firing on hundreds of people protesting the alleged desecration of the Guru Granth Sahib in Bargari village in Faridkot district in 2015.

Earlier this month, the Punjab and Haryana High Court had quashed state's probe into the Kotkapur firing case and directed the state to constitute a new SIT without Vijay Pratap Singh.

The directions were passed by the bench of Justice Rajbir Sherawat, which was hearing a plea filed by Gurdeep Singh, former police officer at Kotkapura, and another official who had approached the court seeking directions to remove the IPS officer from the investigation team.

After the high court order, the Chief Minister had refused to accept the resignation letter of Vijay Pratap Singh seeking premature retirement from service.
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NEW DELHI (AP)  H.S. Panno, an independent contractor living in a spacious two-story penthouse in New Delhi, had his doubts when he bought his first electric car in September.

So far, he's pleased with his savings on gas and maintenance, which are down by more than half, but disappointed with the practical limitations of driving his Nexon XZ+. For starters, he says he's only getting 200 kilometers (125 miles) per charge, not the promised range of 315 kilometers (195 miles). And he can't drive the car outside the city because of a lack of charging stations.

EVs are a rarity in India, where more than 300 million vehicles, most of them scooters and three-wheel motorized rickshaws, jam the highways. The country is now making an ambitious push for what it calls electric mobility, to reduce smog. But the effort is plagued with technological and logistical hurdles, even for those relatively simple vehicles.

The EV passenger car segment may be potentially huge but for now it is a niche within a niche: In March, 25,640 electric vehicles were sold across the country, of which 90% were two and three-wheelers. The total 400,000 EVs registered in India in 2019 accounted for less than 0.2% of all vehicles.

Panno got a $1,770 rebate as a government incentive for buying his Nexon XZ+, Indian automaker Tatas mid-range electric vehicle model. It cost $22,740, about twice the price of the company's most popular gas-fueled models.

It's a good car and a pleasure to drive, but I'm still scared of breaking down midway from a lack of charge, Panno said.

Officials see EVs as a solution to the deadly smog choking city streets, even though for the most part heavily polluting coal power plants generate the electricity needed to charge them.

Indias capital New Delhi provides a slew of subsidies to first-time EV buyers. EVs are also exempt from road tax and registration fees and there are other incentives to encourage swapping of old gas and diesel vehicles for new electric ones. About half of Indias 31 states have drafted similar EV policies with varying degrees of progress.

Story continues

The New Delhi government recently dropped the Nexon XZ+ and Nexon XM from its list of a dozen four-wheel vehicles eligible for subsidies. The reason? Their low range.

Tata said the Nexon XZ+'s 315-kilometer range was verified by the official Automotive Research Association of India. But the actual range depends on factors such as air conditioning, individual driving style and the conditions in which the vehicle is driven," the company said in a statement.

The EV market has been growing at an annual rate of 20% and is dominated by five major players: Tata, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., MG Motor India, Olectra Greentech Ltd. and JBM Auto Ltd. Startups also are joining the fray.

Local automakers have been slow to get into making EVs and their parts, largely because of a lack of demand. Those that have jumped in mostly rely on cheap imports that have added to complaints over poor quality.

Last year, India raised tariffs on imports of EVs and their parts, including all-important and expensive lithium-ion batteries. That and other policies are aimed at encouraging domestic production, raising quality and bringing prices down to the level of conventional autos.

Some companies, both domestic and foreign, have taken heed and dozens of projects are in the pipeline. Tata plans a $54 million lithium-ion production facility in the Indian state of Gujarat. Japans Toshiba-Denzo-Suzuki has set up a factory in the western state of Gujarat, an auto manufacturing hub, to make lithium-ion batteries for Maruti Suzuki and Suzuki motor plants. Elon Musk recently announced Tesla plans to set up an EV factory in southern India.

Moushumi Mohanty, head of electric mobility at the Centre for Science and Environment, a nonprofit focused on sustainable development, says the lack of charging stations remains a big hurdle.

For the supply side to work, the government will have to formulate a standardized regulatory framework to monitor the quality of technology and safety parameters, Mohanty added.

India has been striving to follow the lead of the U.S., Japan, and China in building up its auto industry, which already employs more than 35 million people, directly or indirectly, and contributes more than 7% to the countrys gross domestic product. To help repair damage from the pandemic, the country's leaders are aiming to double exports of vehicles and components in the next five years.

The effort to ramp up EV use is part of a global trend. Sales of such vehicles rose 40% in 2019 from a year earlier to account for 2.6% of worldwide car sales, or about 1% of all vehicles, according to the International Energy Agency.

But for the foreseeable future, India's EV market will likely remain the domain of electric scooters and rickshaws, which cost $1,200 to $3,680 and like passenger cars need charging facilities.

Ashok Kumar switched to driving an electric rickshaw taxi from working at a printing press three years ago, after hearing the New Delhi government was offering subsidies. However, he never got the promised rebate on his $1,770 electric rickshaw.

Kumar sets out each day acutely aware that he has just until lunchtime to earn as much as he can. Then he has to rush home to charge his vehicle.

It takes 12 hours of charging to get a running time of five hours, he says.

Its absolutely useless, he said about the e-rickshaw as he waited for customers outside a metro station.

So far, New Delhi, a city of 31 million people, has only 72 active charging stations, with another 100 in the pipeline. Thats nowhere near enough for a city that plans to ensure one-quarter of all new vehicles sold, whatever their size, be electric.

The problem is worst for commercial vehicles that cannot afford to stop in the day to recharge. Most private EV owners just charge their vehicles at home, viewing public charging stations as a last resort.

Jasmine Shah, vice chairman of the Delhi Dialogue and Development Commission, a government think tank leading the capitals electric mobility initiative, shrugs off such complaints. India needs EVs to improve the environment, he said.

Were simply focusing on creating demand for electric vehicles. The rest will follow, Shah said.
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 Online Masters in Gerontology Degree Programs.

Intelligent.com analyzed 195 schools, on a scale of 0 to 100, with only 32 making it to the final list for Online Masters in Gerontology Degree Programs. To access the complete ranking, please visit: https://www.intelligent.com/best-online-masters-in-gerontology-degree-programs/

2021 Online Masters in Gerontology Degree Programs featured on Intelligent.com (in alphabetical order):

Brenau University

Eastern Illinois University

Fort Hays State University

George Washington University

Iowa State University

Kansas State University

McDaniel College

Michigan State University

North Dakota State University

Nova Southeastern University

Oklahoma State University

Rutgers University

Seton Hall University

Southeastern University

Texas State University

Texas Tech University

UNC Greensboro

University of Arkansas

University of Central Missouri

University of Florida

University of Indianapolis

University of Louisiana at Monroe

University of Maryland - Baltimore County

University of Missouri

University of North Dakota

University of North Texas

University of Southern California

University Of Southern Indiana

University of Texas at Arlington

University of Utah

Webster University

Wichita 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/.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-20 02:21:27|Editor: huaxia

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People queue up to receive COVID-19 vaccine outside the Kuwait Vaccination Center in Hawalli Governorate, Kuwait, April 20, 2021. Kuwait will extend the partial curfew until the end of Ramadan in efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19, the Kuwaiti government announced Monday. (Photo by Asad/Xinhua)

KUWAIT CITY, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Kuwait will extend the partial curfew until the end of Ramadan as efforts to curb spread of COVID-19, the Kuwaiti government announced Monday.

According to a decision made at a regular meeting of the government, the curfew hours will remain unchanged, from 7 p.m. and 5 a.m. local time, starting April 22 until the end of Ramadan.

Kuwaiti Minister of Health Bassel Al-Sabah said at the meeting that there is an increase in deaths and infections with more people in intensive care units (ICUs).

The decision may be reassessed with the regular review of the COVID-19 pandemic situation, Foreign Minister and Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs Sheikh Ahmad Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Sabah said after the meeting.

The government also urged residents and citizens to assume social responsibility and get the COVID-19 vaccine, saying it is the only way to reduce deaths and infections as well as pressure on ICUs.

On April 1, the Kuwaiti government 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. Enditem
In a first, (IEX) commenced the Cross Border Electricity Trade (CBET) on its power trading platform. This would help the exchange expand its power markets beyond India to the South Asia region.

The company said it will lead towards building an "integrated South Asian regional power market."

The government designated nodal agency for CBET is Vidyut Vyapar Nigam Ltd (NVVN), a fully-owned subsidiary of limited. The company has secured approval for Nepal to participate in the day-ahead market on IEX.

In 2018, the union ministry of power had issued guidelines for import/ export (cross border) of electricity. It provided a policy framework for CBET. The guidelines said for the export of coal based power, only imported coal or spot e-auction coal or coal obtained through commercial mining would be used.

A year later, the Central Electricity Regulatory Authority (CERC) gave its nod to new regulations of Cross-border electricity trade, thereby making trade of electricity to neighbouring countries more seamless. This included setting up of nodal agency for bilateral trade of electricity, monitoring and planning by central agencies and similar technology interface at both ends.

Mohit Bhargava, CEO, NVVN said, Nepal is the first country to avail the benefit of buying day ahead power from power exchange through NVVN. This is a new beginning in the South Asian region. NVVN with vast experience in power trading also has extensive expertise in cross border power trading. We also aspire to work closely with Bhutan and Myanmar in future."

NVVN currently exports power to Banglades and Nepal and also facilitates the settlement of grid operations and other related technicalities.





Currently, the CBET with neighboring countries for India stands at about 18 Billion Units (BUs) conducted through the medium and long term bilateral contracts.

India imports 8.7 BU from Bhutan and exports 2.37 BU and 7 BU to Nepal and Bangladesh, respectively. The power trade with these countries is expected to increase to about 40 BU by FY22 and 70 BU to FY27 according to a study by IRADe, said IEX in a statement.

"While the macro-economic growth in the South Asia region have been one of the strongest in the world, the region has been confronting with challenges related to power demand-supply balance and the low per capita power consumption," IEX statement said.

S N Goel, Chairman & Managing Director, IEX, With a large installed power generation capacity base of 382 GW and peak demand of about 185 GW, India is a power surplus country. We have a unique opportunity to lead the regional power market development and make efforts towards enhancing the energy access and security amongst the neighboring nations in the region.

IEX is working closely with PTC, Vidyut Vyapar Nigam Ltd. (NVVN), and all other designated nodal agencies for Cross Border Electricity Trade to facilitate inter-country power trade through the Exchange Market, said the company's statement.
Kochi, April 19 : The Kerala Police who recorded the arrest of 40-year-old Sanu Mohan after he was taken into custody from Karwar in Karnataka on Monday, said that he has accepted that it was he who killed his daughter.

Mohan disappeared on March 21 along with his 13-year-old daughter, from here.

The case turned mysterious when the dead body of his daughter was recovered from a water body on March 22, near here.

Even though Mohan has confessed to killing his daughter, the police are yet to take that as the final conclusion and he is being questioned at the Thrikakara police station, here.

Speaking to the media here top police official C.H. Nagaraju said, even though he has admitted of the crime, our probe is going on as there is lack of consistency in his statements.

"He said that he wanted to end his life and before that he wanted to eliminate his daughter and he did that. But after doing that he could not do what he wanted to do. It is more or less confirmed that there was no second person involved in the crime," said Nagaraju and added that there are reports of the presence of alcohol in her body and this will have to be scientifically checked.

According to the police, Mohan after dropping his wife at her house near Alappuzha on March 21 along with their daughter left for another home.

Following no response about the whereabouts of both, the relatives reached the flat at Kochi and were shocked to find blood stains. It was only after the body of the daughter was recovered the next day, did the police get into the act.

"He has admitted of doing the crime and after strangulating her, he took the body and put it in the water body," said the police official.

The Kerala Police first registered a man missing case and launched a massive hunt to trace Mohan, but it was only last week that his whereabouts were traced to a hotel at Ollur near Mangalore in Karnataka.

Soon the police swung into action and he was taken into custody from Karwar and was brought to the Thrikakara Police station, here in the early hours of Monday.

After the customary medical checkups he is now being interrogated.

His wife has been asked to appear before the police.

Mohan is believed to have huge debts when he was in Pune before returning to Kochi a few years back and has since remained cut away from his family.

The police have launched a detailed probe and a team has left for Mumbai to probe Mohan's dealings there.

-- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 19) - The Department of Foreign Affairs on Monday confirmed that a Filipino seafarer was found dead on a beach in Vanuatu, a country of some 80 islands in the South Pacific.

Yes, it was in the local news there that a Filipino crew member was discovered missing from the foreign vessel as it left Vanuatu. Shortly, the body was found on the beach, said Ivy Banzon-Abalos, the DFA's executive director for strategic communications, in a message to reporters.

However, Banzon-Abalos said they have yet to verify reports that the seafarer was found to have been infected with the coronavirus.

According to a report by Radio New Zealand, Vanuatu halted all outbound travel in the island for three days after the deceased seafarer tested positive for COVID-19.

The DFA said the Philippine Embassy in Australia, through the Philippine Consulate General in Vanuatu, has already reached out to the manning agency and that the latter has already informed the seafarers family.

Under Philippine laws, the local manning agency is mandated to ensure that the family will receive all the benefits due to the family of the deceased, said Banzon-Abalos.

The local manning agency is in touch with its principal company, as well as with its local company in Vanuatu to facilitate investigation of the case, she added.

Banzon-Abalos also said the Philippine Embassy in Australia is closely monitoring the ongoing investigation on the seafarers death.

The embassy in Australia stands ready to provide the appropriate assistance on the repatriation of the remains, she said.

CNN Philippines correspondent Tristan Nodalo contributed to this report
Islamabad, April 19 : Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, who is on a three-day visit to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has ruled out backchannel talks with his Indian counterpart S. Jaishankar, who is also in the Gulf country.

"I am here for a bilateral visit and not an India-specific agenda. My agenda is UAE-Pakistan and not India-Pakistan," The Express Tribune quoted Qureshi as saying to reporters in Dubai on Sunday, a day after reaching the UAE, putting an end to speculations of a possible meeting with Jaishankar.

"I don't think a meeting is set out with the Indian Foreign Minister... We want peace in the region and cordial ties with all our neighbours including India," he added.

The Minister welcomed the UAE's mediation in resolving Pakistan's issues with India.

"We welcome third-party facilitation but no matter what friends say, the initiative has to be indigenous," he added.
London, April 19 : An increasing number of people in the UK have developed tinnitus for the first time or have seen their symptoms worsen after a Covid attack, according to a media report.

Tinnitus -- a condition to describe sounds such as ringing, whooshing or humming coming from an internal source rather than externally. The condition affects nearly seven million people in the UK.

The British Tinnitus Association (BTA) has reported a 256 per cent rise in the number of web chats from May to December 2020 compared with the same period in 2019, while calls to its helpline rose by 16 per cent, the Guardian reported.

"Calls to our helpline and visits to our website have really increased as people are looking for support, and they're struggling to get through the healthcare system. For a lot of people, the emotional and social consequence [of Covid-19] has made tinnitus worse," David Stockdale, the BTA chief executive, was quoted as saying.

According to data collated by software company SEMrush, Tinnitus-related searches on Google have soared following the outbreak of Covid-19, with searches for "tinnitus causes" jumping 83 per cent in February 2021 compared with February 2020, while searches for "tinnitus" grew by 50 per cent over the same period, the report said.

Scientists are now concerned whether the Covid-19 virus or the medication used for treating the infectious disease is causing the ear damage.

"There are two sides to this - people who have got tinnitus now, either from Covid or just during the pandemic, and people with pre-existing tinnitus reporting that it's worse. We need more research to look into the different mechanics, but the possible reason could be the virus itself impacting the ear and causing ear damage that can result in tinnitus and hearing loss," Eldre Beukes, a research fellow in audiology at Anglia Ruskin University, was quoted as saying.

"Another possible theory is that the medication received in hospital while having Covid could have damaged the inner ear," Beukes said.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
A controversial proposal to move a casino boat to Slidell cleared its first hurdle Monday when a Senate committee chairman, whose wife is a lobbyist for the measure, cast the tie-breaking vote.

State Sen. Gary Smith, D-Norco, cast the deciding vote before the Senate Judiciary B Committee that he chairs. His wife Katherine is one of the 19 lobbyists hired by Brent Stevens, the founder and chairman of P2E, the Los Angeles-based company that wants to move its shuttered casino from Bossier Parish to Slidell.

The extraordinary number of lobbyists has caught the attention of State Capitol insiders who note that it takes only 20 votes to approve legislation in the Senate.

Before the hearing, Smith said that he didnt know that Katherine, a veteran lobbyist, was working on the issue.

She didnt tell me, he said in an interview.

Mondays vote was the first step through the legislative process for Senate Bill 213 by state Sen. Sharon Hewitt, R-Slidell. Hewitt and St. Tammany Parish officials who supported the measure  including Parish President Mike Cooper  emphasized repeatedly that they favored passage of the bill to give voters in the parish the right to decide whether they want the casino in an October referendum.

Stevens wants to put the casino just off the Interstate 10 exit in Slidell closest to Lake Pontchartrain.

Its about giving our local community an opportunity to vote, Hewitt said in making her final pitch for the bill.

The proposal also has the support of the Northshore Business Council, the St. Tammany Parish Chamber of Commerce and the Louisiana Restaurant Association.

SB213 pitted Hewitt and parish officials against a number of local pastors, who warned that the bill would lead to more suicides, broken marriages and other problems from gambling addicts.

We get left holding the bag, Randy Boyett, the lead pastor at Thompson Road Baptist Church in Slidell, told the senators.

What's next for Slidell-area casino? It's up to St. Tammany legislators The first hurdle for a proposed $250 million casino resort near Slidell will have to be cleared during the upcoming legislative session  legi

Also opposed to the casino owners are other casino owners, but none of their lobbyists spoke against the bill.

One reason for their opposition is that a new casino in Slidell would take away customers from the Boomtown Casino in Harvey, the Treasure Chest in Kenner and the Harrahs casino in New Orleans.

The scoop on state politics in your inbox Get the Louisiana politics insider details once a week from us. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

A lobbyist for one of the Lake Charles casinos put in a red card expressing his opposition. Industry sources said that was for an issue that wasnt discussed during the hearing: Hewitts bill also would add the planned location of the casino to the list of permitted waterways in Louisiana, dating to the 1991 legislation that legalized riverboat gambling in the state.

The Lake Charles casinos fear that adding a new waterway could lead lawmakers to add the Sabine River as a permitted location at some point, which would be a direct competitor to their gambling halls.

Besides Smith, those who voted for the Slidell casino were state Sens. Joe Bouie Jr., D-New Orleans; Ronnie Johns, R-Lake Charles; and Mike Reese, R-Leesville.

Voting against it were state Sens. Kirk Talbot, R-River Ridge; Cameron Henry, R-Metairie; and Greg Tarver, D-Shreveport.

Possible Slidell-area casino: A battle brewing with Mississippi and possible hurdles ahead For the past 19 years, Mike and Nok Pervel have left their Mandeville home for the Mississippi Gulf Coast nearly every weekend, drawn by the a

In a text after the vote, Smith said he does not discuss his wifes clients or issues with her and added, Any involvement by her would not change my opinion that letting the people of that area vote on the issue is the correct vote.

Smith also texted that moving the casino to Slidell would take away business from Mississippi casinos, and that would increase tax revenue in Louisiana.

Chris Masingill, who heads efforts to bring business to St. Tammany Parish, told the committee members that he had been working with Stevens since July 2020 on the proposed move.

Stevens owns DiamondJacks, which had been the worst-performing casino in the Shreveport-Bossier City market when he closed it for good in May 2020. Thats the casino he wants to move.

Masingill said that Stevens, who attended the hearing but did not speak, is proposing to spend up to $250 million to build a casino resort. The construction would create 1,700 jobs, and it would have 1,900 jobs after opening, Masingill said.

The parish would benefit directly from a 5% tax on net gambling proceeds, he added.

We found that P2E maintains a gold standard in this industry and is a responsible local partner, Masingill said, not mentioning how Stevens left about 400 workers jobless after he shut down in Bossier City.

In a March 31 Facebook Live town hall, Stevens made the extraordinary claim that state officials had asked him to keep DiamondJacks closed after Gov. John Bel Edwards began allowing casinos to reopen following the worst of the pandemic.

Mike Noel, who chairs the Louisiana Gaming Control Board, said in an interview Monday, however, that no one on his staff had told that to Stevens. His board authorizes which casinos can open and close.

As he was leaving the Capitol Monday, Stevens was asked who had asked him not to reopen. He said he had to get on a conference call and couldnt talk. An aide promised to answer the question but failed to do so Monday.
Access Garage Doors, an industry leader with more than 15 years of experience in residential and commercial garage door repair and installation, is proud to welcome a new location in Central Kentucky, including Richmond and Lexington, owned by entrepreneur and military veteran, Nick Clapper.

Access Garage Doors specializes in offering homeowners a comprehensive selection of services to repair existing equipment, as well as a wide selection of high-quality new garage doors and openers. Access Garage Doors is a Master Authorized Clopay dealer and an Authorized Service Provider for LiftMaster, Home Depot, Genie, Clopay, and Amarr.

With more than 15 years of experience in the garage door industry, Access Garage Doors has built a solid reputation for its dedication to customer service and quality workmanship. Access upholds its core brand values with each new local franchise that it launches. The newest location in Central Kentucky welcomes the 10th nationwide franchise to the Access family.

We have awarded 10 franchises within the last 15 months of franchise offerings, said Jesse Cox, President and CEO of Access Garage Doors. Although we are experiencing early success regarding newly awarded franchises, the franchise team including myself, feel that it is imperative to stay dedicated to retaining a healthy growth pace that sustains and facilitates the quality of our program. Entrepreneurs are drawn to our brand because we offer a home-based business opportunity with flexibility, minimal staffing requirements, affordability, and the best training program in the business. The experience and focus that Nick Clapper brings to his franchise, combined with the proven Access Garage Doors business model create an unstoppable team to serve the Central Kentucky region.

As a rapidly growing franchise brand, Access Garage Doors is also scalable and recession-resistant. The companys industry-leading training program opens the door to success for new franchisees with 30-60 days of training from home and pre-development from home, followed by 10 full days of hands-on instruction, sales, marketing, and additional training at the company headquarters in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

I liked Access Garage Doors right from the start, said Clapper. Their business model and approach to sales and corporate support just made sense to me. While visiting the company headquarters, I was also able to see a training class in action, and I was sold on the hands-on instruction and attention to the smallest details. Im excited to bring the Access brand to Central Kentucky.

For more information about Access Garage Doors franchise opportunities, please visit: https://accessdoorcompany.com/franchise/.

To learn more about Access Garage Doors, please visit: https://accessdoorcompany.com/.

###

About Access Garage Doors

Founded in 2005, Access Garage Doors provides service, installation, and sales of state-of-the-art residential and electric openers. Based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Access is a top-tier Master Authorized Dealer for one of the largest garage door manufacturers, Clopay, and is a top-tier LiftMaster ProVantage Dealer. Access also carries brands such as Amarr Doors, Genie, Craftsman, Chamberlain, Marantec, and Sommer, and services Hormann, Wayne Dalton, CHI, Raynor, Sears, Linear, Lynx, Overhead Door, Ideal Door, Windsor Door, Stanley, Door Link, and Ryobi brands. Access is a long-term member of the International Door Association as well as the Home Builders Association of Greater Chattanooga.
A jailed Vietnamese blogger serving an 11-year prison term for writing articles criticizing Vietnams government is showing signs of poor health and mental decline in the prison to which he was moved last week, his wife said Monday.

Nguyen Tuong Thuy, an independent journalist and former RFA Vietnamese Service blogger, was moved April 15 from the Bo La detention center in Binh Duong province to the An Phuoc detention center in the same province.

After visiting Thuy at An Phuoc on Saturday, Nguyen Thi Lan wrote on her Facebook page that her husband appeared to have lost weight and looked haggard and frail. He was also uncharacteristically absent-minded, Lan wrote.

While talking with me, he often stuttered and easily forgot things. It often took him so time to think before saying something, she said.

Thuy, 71, was older than many of the other inmates held at Bo La and was often last in line when the prison canteen opened for purchases of food, a fellow prisoner who was released to An Phuoc ahead of Thuy told family members.

Thuy was also hindered in performing daily tasks at Bo La by an injury to his hand suffered when police wrenched his phone away from him at the time of his arrest, sources said.

Lan said that Thuy told her conditions are better at An Phuoc, where he now shares a cell containing a television, fan, and tiled floor with two other prisonersan inmate from Vietnams Central Highlands and a Hoa Hao Buddhist, a religious group often harassed by communist authorities.

Lan wrote that she hopes her husbands health will now improve at his new prison.

Thuy, who had blogged on civil rights and freedom of speech issues for RFAs Vietnamese Service for six years, was sentenced on Jan. 5 with two other bloggerslike Thuy members of the Vietnam Independent Journalists Associationwho were handed lengthy jail terms at the same time.

'Anti-state writings'

Arrested in May 2020, Thuy was indicted along with Pham Chi Dung and Le Huu Minh Tuan on Nov. 10 for making, storing, and disseminating documents and materials for anti-state purposes" under Article 117 of Vietnams Penal Code.

Sentenced with Thuy, Pham Chi Dung was given a 15-year prison term, while Le Huu Minh Tuan was jailed for 11 years. Dung was transferred from Bo La to An Phuoc on March 29.

Thuy later refused to appeal his sentence, tearing up a petition form given to him after prison guards told him what to write on it, Thuys lawyer told RFA in an earlier report.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranked Vietnam 175 out of 180 in its 2020 World Press Freedom Index. About 25 journalists and bloggers are being held in Vietnams jails, where mistreatment is common, the Paris-based watchdog group said.

Vietnams already low tolerance of dissent deteriorated sharply last year with a spate of arrests of independent journalists, publishers, and Facebook personalities as authorities continued to stifle critics in the run-up to the ruling Communist Party Congress in January. But arrests continue in 2021.

Reported by RFAs Vietnamese Service. Translated by Anna Vu. Written in English by Richard Finney.
Data breaches have become very common these days with recently Facebook and LinkedIn getting embroiled in such data theft incidents. Even last year, prominent Indian companies saw a massive data breach amid lockdowns and pandemic.

Now the latest case is from Dominos India which is said to have suffered a data breach where information such as customer data including phone numbers, names, and payment information including credit cards are compromised.

As per a report by Gadgets 360, this data breach was discovered by Alon Gal, the CTO of Hudson Rock, a cybersecurity firm. He tweeted that the breach happened on Sunday(April 18) and it is supposedly sold at around Rs 4.5 crore (10 Bitcoin).

Reportedly, the data was gleaned from the internal files of the company between 2015 and 2021 and it has details of about 18 crore orders and 10 lakh credit cards.

The report further stated that the pizza chain's breach also allegedly includes internal files of about 250 of the companys employees which includes data of around 13 terabytes. The actual numbers are yet to be confirmed.

Jubilant FoodWorks experienced an information security incident recently. No data pertaining to financial information of any person was accessed and the incident has not resulted in any operational or business impact. As a policy we do not store financial details or credit card data of our customers, thus no such information has been compromised. Our team of experts is investigating the matter and we have taken necessary actions to contain the incident, a company spokesperson told Gadgets360.

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#mute
In the view of the rising COVID-19 cases in the country, the government on Monday announced that from May 1 everyone above the age of 18 years would be eligile to get the vaccination against the virus.

Vaccine manufacturers have been permitted to release up to 50 per cent of their supply to state governments and in the open market at a pre-declared price.

States have also been empowered to procure additional vaccine doses directly from the manufacturers, as well as open up vaccination to any category of people above the age of 18 years for the same.

Also read: Former PM Manmohan Singh tests COVID-19 positive, rushed to AIIMS

The decision to start the Phase-III of vaccination programme was taken during a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "In its Phase-III, the National Vaccine Strategy aims at liberalised vaccine pricing and scaling up of vaccine coverage. This would augment vaccine production as well as availability, incentivising vaccine manufacturers to rapidly ramp up their production as well as attract new vaccine manufacturers, domestic and international," the government said in a release.

While vaccine manufacturers would have to supply 50 per cent of their monthly Central Drugs Laboratory (CDL) released doses to the Government of India, they would be free to supply the remaining 50 per cent doses to state governments and in the open market.

"Manufacturers would transparently make an advance declaration of the price for 50 per cent supply that would be available to state governments and in open market, before 1st May 2021. Based on this price, state governments, private hospitals, industrial establishments etc would be able to procure vaccine doses from the manufacturers. Private hospitals would have to procure their supplies of Covid-19 vaccine exclusively from the 50 per cent supply earmarked for other than Government of India channel," it said.

Private vaccination providers will have to transparently declare their self-set vaccination price. The eligibility through this channel would be opened up to all adults, i.e. everyone above the age of 18, the government said.

Also read: COVID-19: Gennova Biopharma to start mRNA vaccine trials this month

The Centre's vaccination programme will continue as before, providing free of cost vaccination to health care workers (HCWs), front line workers (FLWs) and all people above 45 years of age.

"All vaccination (through Government of India and other than Government of India channel) would be part of the National Vaccination Programme, and mandated to follow all protocol such as being captured on CoWIN platform, linked to AEFI (adverse events following immunisation) reporting and all other prescribed norms. Stocks and price per vaccination applicable in all vaccination centres will also have to be reported real-time," the government said.

While 50-50 per cent distribution of vaccine to the Centre and others will be applicable uniformly across for all vaccines manufactured in the country, imported vaccines will be allowed to be utilised in the other than Government of India channel.

The Centre will allot vaccines from its shares to states and union territories based on the criteria of extent of infection and performance based on speed of administration. "Wastage of vaccine will also be considered in this criteria and will affect the criteria negatively. Based on the above criteria, state-wise quota would be decided and communicated to the states adequately in advance," it said.

Also read: Punjab imposes night curfew to check COVID surge; coaching centres, gyms, bars, cinemas shut till April 30

"Second dose of all existing priority groups i.e. HCWs, FLWs and population above 45 years, wherever it has become due, would be given priority, for which a specific and focused strategy would be communicated to all stakeholders," the release added.

India is reeling under the second wave of coronavirus cases, with scarcity of hospital beds, ventilators, oxygen, medicines being reported from across the country. The country has administered 12.38 crore of COVID-19 vaccine doses as of Monday morning.

In January, the Centre had given emergency use approval to Serum Institue of India's Covishield vaccine and Bharat Biotech's Covaxin to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier this month, Russia's Sputnik V was also given approval, while the Centre also fast-tracked approval process for foreign made COVID-19 vaccines which have been approved by drug regulators in US, UK, Europe and Japan.

Also read: NASA's 'Wright Brothers moment'; flies first helicopter on Mars
BBC podcast presenter Deborah James has poignantly revealed that 'all she wants is a future', as she launched a new campaign to mark Bowel Cancer Awareness month.

The broadcaster and mother-of-two, 39, who's also known as Bowel Babe, has been living with stage four bowel cancer since she was diagnosed in December 2015.

Speaking on Lorraine This Morning, London-based Deborah launched ITV's Lorraine's 'No Butts' campaign, designed to get people talking about the illness's main symptoms.

Speaking with Dr Hilary, the campaigner stressed that people had more chances of recovering from bowel cancer if it's caught early, and said people need to avoid embarassment about talkig about symptoms.

Deborah, who presents the Radio 5 Live podcast 'You, me and the Big C', spoke candidly about her future on today's show, saying that she's had to accept she probably won't see her children, aged 11 and 13, turn 18.

Deborah James, 39, known as Bowel Babe, launched ITV's "No Butts" campaign this morning to raise Bowel Cancer Awareness

'I was diagnosed art the age of 35, with stage four bowel cancer.

'It was the last thing I thought would ever happen. It was caught very late and unfortunately, the chances of survival plummets.

'It's really hard when I look at my kids. I have a 13-year-old and an 11-year-old and I wonder if I'll ever see them getting to 18 and I probably won't

'All I want is to have a future and dream about a future. I want to make it to my 40th birthday later in the year, I want to have a huge party.

Deborah said being diagnosed late made her chances of surviving cancer lower, and said she didn't think she would make it to see her children aged 13 and 11 turn 18 (pictured in hospital in 2020)

People applauded the campaign as well as Deborah's fight to raise Bowel Cancer awarenesss on the show

I want to be a 40-year-old, not Deborah with cancer, I want to be Deborah,' she added.

'Living with cancer mentally is a roller coaster, physically is very challenging. Covid has a level of complexity and worry.

'The hardest thing was when I've been in hospital over the last year. I've had to have radiotherapy, treatment every week, but I've done it all alone.

'When bowel cancer is caught earlier, it is survivable, but we need people to talk about it,' she said.

'We need people to talk about it, we need people not to feel embarrassed, because ultimately, that's how we save lives,' Deborah said in a clip explaining the campaign.

The ITV Lorraine campaign, supported by Bowel Cancer UK, highlights the illness's main symptoms

Deborah said she didn't think she would be able to see her son and daughter turn 18, due to her illness

'The reason "No Butts" is so important is because we want to smash the poo taboo, I mean let's face it, even your favourite actor poos,' she joked.

'Let's trigger that, let's talk about poo, let's have a conversation, pull up a pew, pull up a chair and talk about poo,' she said.

'It's all about getting bums on seat to smash the poo taboo,' Deborah told Lorraine.

'There should be no embarrassment when talking about our bowel health, and ultimately, by doing it, we want to save lives, because unfortunately, bowel cancer is the second cancer killer in the UK, and it's about time for it to change,' she added.

'All on the Board, from our amazing TFL, have made a board for us in London this morning,' she explained.

'We're going to be taking this pink sofa all over the country, and actually tomorrow, I'm in Sunderland at the Stadium of Light, where we'll be talking "No Butts",' she added.

The campaigner stressed that bowel cancer is curable if detected early, and said she wanted people not to be embarrassed about talking about their poo

Viewers got behind the campaign and said they were rooting for Deborah, who is still undergoing treatment, to get better

'We want everyone to become their own doctors in a way by learning these very simple main symptoms because 60,000 lose their lives every year to bowel cancer,' Dr Hilary said.

'We can prevent a lot of those if only people knew to look at their poo and report symptoms,' Dr Hilary said.

As part of the campaign, ITV have created a leaflet highlighting bowel cancer's main symptoms.

The TV doctor went through the main symptoms, which spell out 'BOWEL.'

'"B" is for blood, "o" is for change in bowel habits, "w" - weight loss you can't explain, "e" is for extreme tiredness, "L" is for lump or pain in your tummy,' he explained.

'I know GPs say they are open for business but some people say they haven't been able tog et an appointment,' Hilary added, 'you can and you must, make your appointment whether it's video online or whatever, do a blood test,' he added.

'There's nothing to fear, it could save your life,' he added.

Deborah, who was diagnosed at a later stage and said she didn't want it to happen to other people .

Reflecting on her own symptoms, she said: I was really tired, but of course I was tired, I was a busy working mother-of-two,' she said.

Campaigner, broadcaster and author Deborah James, 38, said protecting cancer care should be a priority (pictured upon leaving hospital after going through an operation to treat her stage four metastatic bowel cancer)

'The key thing is when it's caught early, it's curable,' she added.

'The earlier it's caught, the better the chances of survival, I'm very grateful to be alive, but I don' want that to happen to anybody else

This Morning viewers were touched by Deborah's story and applauded her campaigning effort.

'1000% rooting for Deborah,' one said.

'Great work getting us talking about B-O-W-E-L-S. #NoButt #bowelcancerawarenessmonth #Lorraine,' another said.

Deborah, who was told she had an eight per cent chance of living longer than five years after her diagnosis, said cancer referrals had dropped dramatically in the wake of Covid.

The mother-of-two talks about her cancer on Instagram under her moniker Bowel Babe, and shares glimpses of her treatment (pictured during a treatment session in hospital)

She explained this is because people have not been getting their symptoms checked, which hinders chances of the cancer getting caught early.

Speaking of receiving the Pzifer covid jab on January 22, the campaigner, who has been told it 'doesn't change anything,' went on to say how it has given her 'hope' that there's 'light at the end of the tunnel' - and admitted she now feels better about the pandemic mentally.

Deborah, known as Bowel Babe, has had 17 tumours in her lifetime and was told in January she was cancer-free.

However, she said doctors discovered news signs of her bowel cancer which required surgery and she underwent an operation in December - but is now feeling much better.
Carestream/Ziehm Logo The partnership with Carestream confirms Ziehm Imagings industry-leading technology, said Nelson Mendes, President and CEO of Orthoscan and Ziehm Imaging Inc.

Known as the Ziehm Vision RFD C-arm, this surgical imaging system will further enhance Carestreams mobile and fluoroscopic product offerings to benefit even more healthcare providers. The system will be available in the U.S. and Canada in 2021.

The Ziehm Vision RFD C-arm offers a 25kw generator, in either a 20.5 x 20.5 cm or 31 x 31 cm field of view flat-panel CMOS digital detector, allowing for broad procedural work including vascular, cardiac, spine ortho-trauma and pain management, in addition to many general surgical applications. The systems Advanced Active Cooling enables extended case times beyond traditional air-cooled systems. It also provides an intuitive graphical interface that benefits technologists with reduced training time as well as improved productivity.

The partnership with Carestream confirms Ziehm Imagings industry-leading technology, said Nelson Mendes, President and CEO of Orthoscan and Ziehm Imaging Inc. As a result of this partnership, we're able to provide Carestream and its customers with one of the most innovative C-arms on the market. The Ziehm Vision RFD delivers advanced surgical care with the Ziehm Usability Concept, provides exceptional image quality and helps to reduce exposure significantly with the next-generation SmartDose, thereby providing a very unique package.

Ziehm Vision RFD systems will be available for sale and service through Carestream. The companys Sales & Service teamworking in collaboration with Ziehm Imagingwill provide responsive support to all valued customers. Carestream Service is widely recognized for its outstanding customer satisfaction and prompt support.

The addition of the Ziehm C-arm to our medical imaging portfoliobacked by Carestreams deep experience in radiology and fluoroscopy applicationsis another example of our commitment to meet the evolving needs of our customers and their patients, said Steve Romocki, Worldwide Product Line Manager for Radiology Systems at Carestream.

About Carestream Health

Carestream is a worldwide provider of medical imaging systems; X-ray imaging systems for non-destructive testing; and precision contract coating services for a wide range of industrial, medical, electronic and other applicationsall backed by a global service and support network. For more information about the companys broad portfolio of products, solutions and services, please contact your Carestream representative or call 1-888-777-2072 or visit http://www.carestream.com.

CARESTREAM is a trademark of Carestream Health.

Carestream Social Media

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About Ziehm Imaging

Founded in 1972, Ziehm Imaging is recognized as the world leader in the development, production and global marketing of intra-operative mobile X-ray-based imaging solutions (C-arms) that streamline clinical workflows. Employing more than 700 people worldwide and with more than 14,000 systems installed in 70 countries, our devices provide exceptional image quality and flexibility in the operating room and serve as an important basis for treatment success. Ziehm Imaging mobile solutions are used in spine surgery, orthopedics, traumatology, vascular surgery, interventional radiology, cardiology, cardiac surgery and further clinical applications. For more information, please visit http://www.ziehm.com

Ziehm Imaging is a division of Ziehm-Orthoscan, Inc.

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Media Contact, Carestream:

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China strives to help relocated poor embrace better life

10:27, April 19, 2021 By Su Bin, Wang Dan ( People's Daily

Photo shows a resettlement site in Hemuling village, Jingning She autonomous county, east Chinas Zhejiang province. Since 2015, 1,099 residents from 403 households who once lived in the mountainous villages with an altitude of over 600 meters have moved to the relocation site. (Peoples Daily Online/Li Suren)

By rolling out various measures, including launching vocational training, developing featured industries, and providing financial support, China is working to consolidate the results of poverty alleviation relocation and ensure that the relocated residents can secure jobs and become better-off.

Relocation is essential for bringing leapfrog development to the Chinese people in inhospitable areas, and an important approach to the countrys victory in its fight against poverty.

From 2016 to 2020, China relocated more than 9.6 million registered impoverished residents, and built about 35,000 resettlement areas for them.

Luo Yoinghe used to live in Doudi village, Huishui county, southwest China's Guizhou province. Five years ago, he and his fellow villagers were relocated to a community in the economic development zone of Huishui county.

After Luo was elected as the secretary of the Party branch of the community in December 2016, he made a decision to find jobs for all relocated residents.

He started a night school that provided 15-day vocational training programs. Based on an investigation into the literacy and educational background of the residents, the night school tailored different training plans to suit different groups and desired jobs. It is estimated that the night school's training programs are joined around 1,200 times each year.

To provide better employment services, the community has also established a labor service company to match job seekers to enterprises.

Among all 5,935 residents at the community, 3,123 have secured jobs, or at least two in each family.

We have more than 400 enterprises around us, as well as six poverty alleviation workshops in the community. The per capita monthly income stands at around 3,000 yuan ($459) to 4,000 yuan, said Luo.

According to him, the average annual per capita income of the village was less than 3,000 yuan in 2016, and has hit 14,800 yuan today.

We shall work harder on employment to better revitalize the countryside and improve the wellbeing of people, he added.

In 2016, Jiangbei township of Ganzhou, east China's Jiangxi province built a relocation site in its Jiangbei village, which is adjacent to a national highway. Near the relocation site, the township government established a three-storey poverty alleviation workshop with a total area of nearly 1,200 square meters which was later rented by an electronics manufacture producing earphone cables and data cables for smart phones.

It was in this workshop that 55-year-old Huang Liuzhao, who moved from the mountainous village of Laiyuan, Jiangbei township to the relocation site, secured a job that earns him over 3,000 yuan each month.

So far, Jiangbei township has established seven industrial bases for poverty alleviation. A total of 158 relocated residents from 28 households in the township have benefited from local industries, and 99 have secured jobs.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
The Bishop of Limerick Brendan Leahy has confirmed that, subject to COVID-19 guidelines, First Holy Communions and Confirmations across the diocese will be celebrated from July 1 onwards.

While the dates for both will be made on a parish-by-parish level, Bishop Leahy said that all the indications now at a national level indicate that arrangements can be provisionally made for after June when schools have closed.

First Holy Communions and Confirmations are a special celebration for the child and their families and last year was really challenging as, like so much else in society, normal rules went out the window because of COVID. While a small number of Confirmations had been celebrated prior to the first lockdown it was really August before we were able to start having them.

We are in a much more positive place generally in terms of the outlook for Ireland now but there is still a lot of uncertainty for this years celebrations, not least as we wont return to anything that resembles normal until the vaccination programme is completed.

Right now, we are still in Level 5 and must abide by guidelines, so we do not have a clear road ahead. All the indications are that it would be premature to commit to June for these celebrations, so we are really looking at July onwards. While the celebrations will be after the school year ends, there is a significant benefit from that as it will rule out the risk of infection spreading from ceremonies to schools.

We cant say now what thats going to look like. At the moment, Churches are still closed for celebrations, but we hope and pray that this will ease and that people will be able to gather safely again. However, everything will be subject to public health guidelines. Its right to be positive but there is still going to be uncertainty as we still have to watch out for infection rates, he said.

Bishop Leahy said that for all the challenges with last years First Holy Communions and Confirmations, the celebrations remained very special. Last year, because of the restrictions, the focus was only on the spiritual celebration and that did not prove to be a bad thing and the feedback from many families was very positive. They missed having godparents and grandparents, in particular, but the focus was concentrated on the actual sacraments and many parents said that they found it very special. It was about the child, the family and their faith. The layers and trappings we put on celebrations sometimes distract from the really special thing thats at the core of it. We found that with First Holy Communions, Confirmations and even, in many cases, with weddings.

He added: Of course, people like to share these great days with others, not least with grandparents, which is particularly special, and we really want to see happen. The stripping back of these celebrations to that core group means that the true meaning and importance of this day does come out.
This undated photo provided by Taylor family attorney Sam Aguiar shows Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky. She was shot when detectives serving a no-knock warrant busted into her apartment on March 13, 2020. Taylor's boyfriend fired at the officers, believing they were being robbed. (Photo provided by Taylor family attorney Sam Aguiar via AP) PHOTO:Photo provided by Taylor family attorney Sam Aguiar via AP

Book by Officer in Taylor Raid Will be Published

By The Associated Press

LOUISVILLE - The publisher of a memoir by a Louisville police officer who fired at Breonna Taylor after being shot during the deadly raid on Taylors apartment says it will release the book even though its distributor, Simon & Schuster, announced it would not be involved."

Post Hill Press, based outside of Nashville, Tennessee, has scheduled a fall release for Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly's The Fight For Truth: The Inside Story Behind the Breonna Taylor Tragedy.

"Post Hill Press continues to move forward with plans to publish Sgt. Mattinglys book," according to a statement provided Friday to The Associated Press. His story is important and it deserves to be heard by the public at large. We feel strongly that an open dialogue is essential to shining a light on the challenging issues our country is facing.

A Post Hill Press spokesperson declined comment on whether the publisher would seek a new distributor or distribute the book itself, a far more challenging undertaking without the resources of Simon & Schuster, one of the world's biggest book publishers.

Reports of the book deal Thursday were met with widespread anger on social media, with Simon & Schuster authors Jennifer Weiner and Saeed Jones among those condemning it. Kentucky state Rep. Attica Scott, a Democrat, wrote on Twitter that People love to profit off of Black pain and tragedy. It sells.

Mattingly and another officer fired shots that hit Taylor during the March 13, 2020, narcotics raid. Mattingly was shot in the leg by Taylors boyfriend. Taylor, a 26-year-old Black emergency medical worker, died at the scene, but no drugs were found in the apartment.

The 48-year-old Mattingly was shot in the leg by Taylors boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who said he fired a single shot after fearing an intruder was breaking into the apartment. Mattingly was recently reprimanded by Louisvilles police chief for a September email critical of department leadership and protesters. He remains in the department. Two other officers who fired their guns during the raid have been dismissed.

The response to Mattinglys book deal highlighted a little known part of the publishing industry  distribution deals. In a companywide memo shared by the publisher Friday with The Associated Press, Simon & Schuster CEO Jonathan Karp called them an important part of our overall business portfolio and cited the unsustainable precedent of rendering our judgment on the thousands of titles from independent publishers whose books we distribute to our accounts, but whose acquisitions we do not control.

You have our commitment to always be open to the exchange of opinions and points of view with our employees and authors, Karp wrote. At times, that commitment will be in conflict with the editorial choices of our distribution partners, which we must also respect. As a publisher, we seek a broad range of views for our lists. As a distributor, we have a limited and more detached role.

In recent years, Simon & Schuster has faced outrage over titles the company itself planned to publish. It dropped a memoir by far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, a prominent supporter of the Jan. 6 march in Washington that led to the overrunning of the U.S. Capitol by Donald Trump supporters seeking to halt the certification of Joe Biden's presidential win.

Hawley's The Tyranny of Big Tech was acquired by Regnery Publishing, a conservative publisher distributed by Simon & Schuster.
[April 19, 2021] Avolon Announce New Appointments

Avolon is pleased to announce the appointments of Felipe Campos as Chief Technical Officer and Steven Graham to the role of Head of Americas. Felipe Campos will bring a wide range of aviation experience to his new position which will be based in Dublin. An engineer by training, Felipe has been Avolon's head of Latin America, responsible for all of Avolon's activity in that region since 2016. As a customer focused executive, he will bring deep commercial perspective and strategic insight to his new role. Before joining Avolon Felipe spent time with GE Aviation and also with the airline groups LATAM and TAM, where he started his career in aviation in 2005. Felipe holds a MSc in Naval Engineering and Project Management from Escola Politecnica at the University of Sao Paulo. He also holds an MBA from IBMEC. Steven Graham has been appointed Head of the Americas for Avolon. He has been Head of North Ameria since 2017 and in his new role that will expand to incorporate North and Latin America. Based in New York, he will lead all of Avolon's activity in these regions.



Steven was one of co-founders of Avolon in 2010. He has a Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Actuarial Mathematics and Statistics from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland. ENDS

About Avolon

Headquartered in Ireland, with offices in the United States, Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai, Avolon provides aircraft leasing and lease management services. Avolon is 70% owned by an indirect subsidiary of Bohai Leasing Co., Ltd., a public company listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SLE: 000415) and 30% owned by ORIX Aviation Systems, a subsidiary of ORIX Corporation which is listed on the Tokyo and New York Stock Exchanges (TSE: 8591; NYSE: IX). Avolon is the world's third largest aircraft leasing business with an owned, managed and committed fleet, as of 31 March 2021 of 842 aircraft. Website: www.avolon.aero

Twitter (News - Alert) : @avolon_aero View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005475/en/

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The UK's tougher approach to technology deals was on show yesterday as ministers intervened to investigate the 29billion takeover of Arm.

US-based Nvidia is seeking to buy the British chip maker from Japan's Softbank. It is the latest example of ministers and regulators taking a closer interest in tech deals after Brexit, which in the past were waved through.

Critics have long claimed that the lax approach taken previously allowed prized British firms to be snapped up by foreign giants with little scrutiny.

Tech deal fears: US-based Nvidia is seeking to buy the British chip maker from Japan's Softbank

For example, artificial intelligence star Deepmind was snapped up by Google in 2014, while chip maker Imagination Technologies was sold to China-backed Canyon Bridge.

Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson's former adviser, later complained about Deepmind's sale, saying the UK had a valuable asset and let Google buy it 'for trivial money without the powers that be in Whitehall understanding its significance'.

The Arm deal has come under scrutiny over competition concerns, and yesterday Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden launched a probe on national security grounds.

Arm's chip designs are ubiquitous in digital devices across the globe, with the Government warning they also underpin critical UK infrastructure and defence technology.

But despite stressing that ministers still want to encourage foreign investment, Dowden yesterday said it was 'appropriate that we properly consider the national security implications' of the sale of Arm.

No such intervention was made when Softbank bought Arm for 24billion in 2016. At the time, the company was seen as the jewel in the crown of Britain's technology industry but its sale was waved through by ministers, who were anxious to promote the economy in the wake of the Brexit vote.

Then prime minister Theresa May even called Softbank's boss to congratulate him on the deal.

But yesterday the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) said it wanted to examine possible 'national security implications' of the proposed sale to Nvidia.

The importance of computer chips  also known as semiconductors  has been underscored by recent global shortages, as well as the trade disputes between the US and China.

Both Washington and Beijing regard advances in semiconductors as crucial to future technologies such as 5G communications and artificial intelligence, with the two superpowers racing to gain an advantage over one another.

Concerns that these technologies could be used for military purposes or spying have also led to calls in Western countries for supply chains to be made secure and relocated if necessary.

Dowden's move was welcomed by union Prospect, which has warned that Nvidia's takeover could put jobs at risk  although the firm has insisted it will keep Arm based in the UK and expand its presence.

General secretary Mike Clancy said: 'If the UK is serious about becoming a science superpower, we need to ensure that the future of our most cutting-edge companies is secure and that high-quality jobs are protected for the future
When Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris visited Atlanta days after the shootings, I was among the local Asian American leaders who met with them. Many among us made the connection between this appalling crime and the rise in anti-Asian violence in the United States against the Asian community. The president assured us more resources would be devoted to the issue of discrimination and violence against the Asian American Pacific Islander community  and that he would move decisively to mitigate the threat of gun violence against us.
According to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, those who have gotten shots should act immune, not limit themselves to CDC guidelines. He called the lack of change in mask-wearing or social distancing useless if vaccinated.

Why get COVID-19 vaccine if there's no change

Governor DeSantis has doubts over taking the vaccine if Americans can't get back to everyday day-to-day life without masks or social distancing. Instead of continuing the usual pandemic protocols to act immune if vaccinated, he criticized the lack of answers from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) officials, reported the Epoch Times.

He questioned the intentions of the CDC why the same rules apply, even if one is vaccinated to get back to no mask-wearing, no social distance if the vaccine is as effective as claimed. Another is the CDC's intentions in keeping a lid on states if vaccines are distributed.

DeSantis was quoted when he spoke in Lakeland, Florida, over the weekend, as noted by Fox35. "My view is if you get a vaccine, the vaccines are effective, you're immune, and so, act immune."

He said that the messaging is horrific when it should be; he added taking the vaccine is suitable for everyone, and it works. All the activities like mask-wearing and social distancing are not typical, no need to do it anymore. Live your life because you're vaccinated.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis added that he was for getting vaccinated but said they were not as effective; the advice to wear two masks is too much for anyone. Public health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci advise wearing two masks as he does. The governor asks why is it so? What is Fauci not telling everyone?

'Lockdowner Biden' Receives Criticism from Ron De Santis over Immigration Policy amid Pandemic

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Fauci, they say keep on your masks even after getting all jabs and doses against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus or COVID-19.

It is not understandable why anyone has to keep masked if an individual has taken a vaccine.

A CDC report this April stressed even if fully vaccinated, there should be precautions kept at all times like wearing a mask, having a six-foot distance from everyone, crowds are dangerous for COVID-19 transmission and enclosed areas and public spaces, which is all that is known for now.

If people have not been jabbed the full two doses of the vaccine, they should keep away from large crowds or wear their masks even at home or immediately have the CCP virus and get severe symptoms. From one standpoint, this is causing fear and a form of social control by the government and the CDC.

The governor scoured the CDC's and Food and Drug Administration's decision to stop giving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after isolated cases of blood clotting were reported.

He said that the handling of the J&J vaccine is disastrous and erroneous, saying he has no idea what info they have that prompted the decision to stop vaccinating with it. It gives people the wrong idea about vaccines. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said it is a drawback if more people want to be convinced to be vaccinated.

Janice Dean Demands Legal Action, Accuses Gov. Cuomo of Covering Up Nursing Home Deaths



Ex-Felons Need to Pay Court Fees and Fines Before Voting in Florida, But Records Are Inaccurate

@ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
China's largest online travel agency Trip.com Group is banking on private group tours to help it ride out the dramatic plunge in international travel after raising US$1.1 billion from a secondary listing in Hong Kong.

Trip.com's chief executive Jane Sun Jie told the South China Morning Post that customised services are buffering the mainland's largest online travel agency against a decline in the number of journeys.

"Consumers prefer to travel with much smaller groups, with their families and close friends," she said. "So we offer them customised services and use it as a tool (to boost company performance)."

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

Nasdaq-listed Trip.com, operates travel booking sites including Ctrip.com, Skyscanner and Qunar. It floated 31.6 million shares on Hong Kong's stock market at HK$268 (US$34.49) each, a 5.5 per cent discount to its closing price of US$36.51 on Friday.

Trip.com's Jane Jie Sun Jie looks to private tours to boost profits. Photo: AFP alt=Trip.com's Jane Jie Sun Jie looks to private tours to boost profits. Photo: AFP>

On its trading debut in Hong Kong on Monday, Trip.com opened at HK$281, up 4.9 per cent.

Private group tours refer to trips that cater to a family or a small number of travellers who prefer to avoid public transport amid worries about contracting the coronavirus.

Trip.com said bookings for private group tours during the upcoming Labour Day holiday from May 1 to 5 have jumped 533 per cent from a year earlier.

"I think the recovery for Chinese domestic travel will be very strong if we control the virus very effectively," Sun said. "Hopefully, towards the later part of this year, or early part [of] next year, some of the [travel] bubbles will be created."

Story continues

Trip.com recorded a loss of 3.3 billion yuan (US$506 million) last year, down from a profit of 7 billion yuan a year earlier.

The global travel market dropped by more than 50 per cent to US$2.6 trillion from US$5.8 trillion in 2019, according to research by mainland data consultancy Analysys.

Sun said the company is now back in the "profit zone" and will invest the proceeds from its Hong Kong share offering in technology to enhance its booking services.

The company has an overallotment option to sell an additional 4.7 million shares to sell into investor demand.

Domestic tourism boosting business. Photo: Reuters alt=Domestic tourism boosting business. Photo: Reuters>

Trip.com, formerly known as Ctrip, was founded 17 years ago and is now 11.5 per cent owned by Chinese internet giant and artificial intelligence company Baidu.

A stream of mainland Chinese companies have raised capital in Hong Kong via secondary listings amid ongoing US-China tensions.

Trip.com initially set a maximum offering price at HK$333 apiece for its Hong Kong debut, but the falling price of its American depositary receipts (ADRs) in New York forced Trip.com to lower its expectations.

"Release of pent-up demand for domestic and international travel will take place sooner or later," said Wang Feng, chairman of Shanghai-based financial services company Ye Lang Capital. "Trip.com, as a leading online travel agency in China, has opportunities to grab a bigger market share in the domestic market as it benefits from the higher degree of digitalisation in the mainland economy."

Trip.com is also looking to expand outside the mainland, banking on its Hong Kong listing to help.

"Part of the benefit we gain from being a Hong Kong-listed company is that our brand will be very well-known in the Asian market," Sun said. "So I think the Asian market will be the first step naturally for us to expand."

Additional reporting by Georgina Lee

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright  2021 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 2021. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
Dr Peter Sore, a Cardiac and Thoracic Surgeon, head of Heart Clinic at the Coast General Teaching and Referral Hospital (CGTRH) spoke to Nation.africa about his experience on the frontline of healthcare services.

I recently operated on three Covid-19 patients, but I never revealed it to my family. It would have scared them.

They were coronavirus patients with surgical problems. Your patient can have Covid-19 but also have surgical emergency problems so you cannot refuse to operate on them. Initially, as surgeons, we used to fear but we have overcome the panic.

In my more than 30 years of practice as a medic, I have never been as terrified as during the pandemic. I was distraught when some of my patients succumbed to Covid-19. One time, my patient needed endoscopy, but he died because we could not do the crucial surgery to save his life due to the recent medical workers strike in Mombasa.

There are patients with issues that can be addressed but they fear coming to the hospitals, fearing they may contract the disease. Sadly, their diseases progress and they died at home.

I have had some patients, especially those suffering from cancer of the oesophagus and I needed to do surgery, but I could not because of the Covid-19 situation. The health workers strike compounded the challenges.

We need statistics to know how the pandemic has affected Kenyans. This disease has really disrupted healthcare services, to a point that patients cannot get surgery.

I wish Kenyans knew how the pandemic has affected medical services. For instance, on March 22, everything was set for resumption of open-heart surgery at Coast General Teaching and Referral Hospital (CGTRH), the largest health facility in the region. But our specialist colleagues from Kenyatta National Hospital who were planning to travel to Mombasa could not after President Uhuru Kenyatta announced the containment measures locking down the five counties including Nairobi.

We are now at a crossroads, with our patients awaiting the surgery, which is crucial for their survival. It is a difficult situation. The same is happening in Nairobi. Heart surgeries cannot be performed because ICUs are now reserved for Covid-19 patients.

We usually have training programmes for surgery where we get specialists from all over the world coming to Mombasa but due to the containment measures, we had to shelve it.

The lockdown has affected our training. You know you cannot always do zoom surgery trainings; it must be practical. We must monitor students doing the surgeries; the trainings are no longer vibrant.

The pandemic has slowed down our work and made it somewhat cumbersome. Now, before doing any surgery you have to do a Covid-19 test.

Sometimes you plan for surgery but when you do a CT scan you find the patient is suspected to have the virus so you cannot operate and have to wait. The practice has changed so much that before things like endoscopy, we insist on a Covid-19 test.

Before the pandemic, I could see 25 patients in my clinic at CGTRH but nowadays I attend to 10 or less. For surgery, we have about six main operational theatres where we could perform 20 procedures per day but now its 10 or five.

It is a tricky situation. Some of the staff who were manning the ICUs for surgical patients were redeployed to Covid-19. So we have to work with less staff for surgeries. It is a complicated situation. The most affected areas are surgery and obstetrics/gynaecology.

I have not contracted the disease, but my staff got it, some were admitted and recovered. But I am glad we now have the vaccine. I have been vaccinated; I wish the rest could follow suit.
The company will use the funds for potential acquisitions, sales and marketing, product development and operational costs.

The issue price of A$0.29 represented a discount of 10.8% to K2Fs last close and 9.0% discount to 15 trading day VWAP

( ) has completed a strongly supported share placement and received irrevocable commitments to raise A$7.25 million at an issue price of A$0.29 per share.

The placement was supported by new high-quality institutional investors and sophisticated investors with specific experience and knowledge in the resources sector.

This strong support recognises not only the commercial opportunities for K2fly but also the value and importance of the product offering to the sector more generally.

Funds raised will strengthen K2Fs balance sheet and will be applied towards potential acquisitions, sales and marketing, product development and general working capital.

Shows confidence in companys strategy

K2F CEO and executive director Brian Miller was pleased with the confidence in the company and its strategy.

He said: The strong support from the investment community, particularly from new institutional investors, is testament that K2F has the right strategy, products and team.

This placement gives us a solid balance sheet to execute our future strategy.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank our investors for their ongoing support and welcome new institutional and sophisticated investors to our shareholder register.

Placement details

The placement will comprise the issue of 25 million fully paid ordinary shares at an issue price of A$0.29 per new share to institutional and sophisticated investors.

Pursuant to the placement, more than 80% of the new shares were placed with institutional investors.

The issue price represented a discount of 10.8% to K2Fs last close on April 15 and a 9.0% discount to the 15 trading day VWAP of A$0.3188 per share.

Settlement of the placement is expected to be completed on or around Tuesday, April 27, 2021.

Use of proceeds

The total proceeds of A$7.25 million will be used as follows:

Potential acquisitions = A$3 million;

Sales and marketing = A$1.25 million;

Product development = A$2 million; and

Operational costs/working capital = A$1 million.

Argonaut acted as lead managers to the placement.
A modified version of the AstraZeneca-Oxford Covid-19 vaccine to combat a coronavirus variant first documented in South Africa could be ready by the end of 2021, Reuters reported, citing an AstraZeneca officials interview.



This comes after a small study suggested that that the vaccine was almost entirely ineffective at preventing mild cases of Covid-19 against the South African variant, B.1.351; and that it takes 86 times as many antibodies from the AstraZeneca vaccine to neutralize B.1.351 as it does to neutralize the original strain of the virus.

TOI

Sarah Walters, AstraZeneca's Austria country manager, told the Kurier newspaper that these studies indicating the existing AstraZeneca vaccine was less effective against the more infectious variant first documented in South Africa were "too small to draw final conclusions".

ALSO READ: India Approves Sputnik V Covid-19 Vaccine, As Daily Cases Cross 170,000 Mark

"In the meantime, AstraZeneca and Oxford University have started on modifications to the vaccine for the South African variant and we expect it will be ready by the end of the year, should it be needed," she said.

The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine has received regulatory approval in more than 100 countries, including in India where it is being manufactured as Covishield by the Serum Institute of India.

Reuters

Notably, preliminary studies suggest that both Covishield and Covaxin are effective against the B.1.1.7 variant, first detected in the United Kingdom, which is one of the two prevailing mutations in India.

ALSO READ: IMA Claims 734 Doctors Dead From Covid-19, Families Need Help

Covaxin is effective against both UK and Brazilian variant; Covishield is effective against the UK variant but we are awaiting its efficacy data against the Brazilian strain. The South African variant could not be cultured so far, a senior official told TOI.

Reuters

Meanwhile, Russia's Sputnik V vaccine has also proved to be less effective against the South African Covid-19 variant but neutralises the British variant effectively.

India recently authorised the use of the Sputnik V vaccine, the first batch of which will be arriving later this month.

Reuters

Genetic mutations of viruses like SARS-CoV-2 emerge frequently, but some variants are labelled variants of concern, because they can reinfect people who have had a previous infection or vaccination, or are more transmissible or can lead to more severe disease.

There are currently at least three documented SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern. Meanwhile, the new variant witnessed in India, which has a so-called double mutation, has been detected in at least 10 other countries, including the US, the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

Representational Image/PTI

Researchers and scientists claim there isnt enough data yet to classify it as a "variant of concern", however, theyre checking if the new Indian Covid-19 strain spreads more easily and evades vaccines.


Gladys Berejiklian has suggested the phased rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine could be scrapped in favour of a more open plan due to an abundance of spare doses.

Speaking ahead of a national cabinet meeting on Monday, the New South Wales premier said Australians want a less structured approach to the rollout.

'We should be far less rigid in how we approach the vaccination rollout, given we know that there's no issue with anyone over 50 having AstraZeneca, and there is quite considerable supply in Australia at the moment,' she told reporters.

'We need to really crack on with it.'

Under the vaccination plan designed by the federal government last year, there are five stages.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian (pictured) has suggested a less structured approach to the Covid vaccine rollout

Phase 1a and 1b, currently underway across the country, include aged care, disability, quarantine and health care workers, as well as aged care residents.

Anyone with an underlying medical condition, significant disability, or aged over 70 - over 55 for Indigenous Australians - are also eligible to receive a jab.

However, medical advice updated earlier this month recommended AstraZeneca - the 'workhorse' of the rollout - be scrapped as the preference for people under 50, due to the risk of a rare blood clot disorder.

That has left many states with an abundance of spare doses, with much of the workforce included in Phase 1 aged under 50s and others cancelling their appointments out of concern.

National cabinet will convene on Monday afternoon for the first time since agreeing to meet twice-weekly to get the country's vaccination schedule back on track.

Ms Berejiklian says she's looking forward to advancing discussions about offering the AstraZeneca vaccine to anyone over 50 willing to have it. Pictured: An Australian getting a Covid-19 vaccine

Ms Berejiklian says she's looking forward to advancing discussions about offering the AstraZeneca vaccine to anyone over 50 willing to have it.

'In NSW alone, we have two and a half million people over the age of 50 who are eligible to have a vaccine,' she said.

'We do have sufficient supply of vaccine for the next little while.

'I think we can do better.

'I don't know how long I've been saying that NSW is ready to step up.'

Meanwhile, there were no new locally transmitted cases of COVID-19 diagnosed in NSW in the 24-hours until 8pm on Sunday.

On the weekend health authorities confirmed the virus had been passed from one family to another who were staying in adjoining rooms on the same floor of a quarantine hotel in Sydney.

Staff working on that floor have been tested and are self-isolating.

The cases raised concern that there could have been community transmission.
(Alliance News) - The following is a round-up of updates by London-listed companies, issued on Monday and not separately reported by Alliance News:







Cerillion PLC - London-based billing and customer relations management software firm - Says experienced strongest ever six-month trading period, exceeding management expectations. Revenue for six months to March 31 expected to total GBP12.8 million, up 25% on a year ago, while adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation is expected to rise 77% to GBP4.8 million. The company adds that its sales pipeline remains strong and prospects for the remainder of the financial year are "very positive". "The business has performed very strongly over the first half, and new orders in the period have equalled total new orders for the whole of the last financial year. Our last contract win represented another major milestone for us, and reflects growing market recognition of the quality of our solution and services," says Chief Executive Louis Hall.







Christie Group PLC - provider of professional services to hospitality, leisure, healthcare and retail sectors - Revenue for 2020 slumps to GBP42.2 million from GBP78.0 million in 2019, hit by the pandemic. Makes GBP6.3 million pretax loss, swinging from profit of GBP4.4 million in 2019. While performance was hit by the pandemic, especially in the first half, it saw a recovery in the second half of the year. "We experienced an encouraging first quarter, boosted by the certainty of a decisive general election result. However, the pandemic's arrival meant that business effectively stalled for three months, with our physical offices closed and systems and people adapting to the demands of remote working to the extent required," firm says. Does not propose dividend for year, after total payout of 1.25 pence for 2019, and will reconsider dividends when trading normalises.







Empire Metals Ltd - London-based resource exploration and development company - Revenue for 2020 slides to just GBP1,204 from GBP111,457 in 2019, while pretax loss widens to GBP953,769 from GBP675,592. Revenue derives from operational services, as its operations are still in exploration phase. Says made "significant progress" in 2020 and looks to continue momentum in year ahead. "Our genesis as a value-driven Australian-focussed resource company will be cemented on the appointment of a new CEO, which we anticipate in the coming weeks, as we look forward to what we believe is a very bright future in this region," company says.







Deltic Energy PLC - London-based natural resources investing company - Reports pretax loss of GBP1.7 million for 2020, slimming from loss of GBP2.4 million in 2019. Records no impairment of intangible assets for 2020 after booking GBP801,307 cost in 2019. Says despite virus disruption in 2020, the company continued to make progress across its gas-focused exploration assets including a significant expansion in the number of licences and gross acreage it holds following "an extremely successful outcome" in the 32nd offshore licensing round. "With commodity prices back at pre-Covid levels, we are starting to see strong signs of recovery in the UK North Sea with significant M&A activity in the first few months of 2021, and many projects which were deferred in 2020 are expected to be restarted during this year," says Deltic.







TruFin PLC - financial technology firm - Net revenue for 2020 rises to GBP8.3 million from GBP6.2 million, while pretax loss narrows to GBP8.0 million from GBP11.8 million. Company says it negotiated the challenges of 2020 and emerged "stronger". Says 2021 has started well, with first quarter revenue not less than GBP2.5 million, representing 20% growth year-on-year. "Much of the momentum we experienced in 2020 is continuing into 2021 and we remain optimistic for 2021 and beyond. In light of this, the board has suspended the processes to explore options for Oxygen and Vertus until such time that it believes appropriate value can be realised," company says.







Coro Energy PLC - South East Asian energy company - Reports pretax loss of USD8.0 million for 2020, a touch wider than the USD7.9 million loss for 2019. General & administrative expenses fall to USD2.9 million from USD5.1 million, but net finance expense comes in at USD4.9 million, up from USD2.6 million. Says it took "decisive action" in 2020 to reduce overhead cost base in response to the pandemic, resulting in the fall in general & administrative costs. These cost savings are sustainable, it adds, and expects a recurring overhead cost base in the range of USD1.7 million to USD1.9 million in 2021. "Having raised new capital early in 2021, and with a strengthened executive team, we are excited about the potential to add value for shareholders in the next 12 months and beyond," company says.







EQTEC PLC - advanced gasification technology firm - Revenue for 2020 rises to EUR2.2 million from EUR1.7 million, though pretax loss widens to EUR5.8 million from EUR3.6 million. Widened loss due to share-based payment costs of EUR1.8 million as well as administrative expenses growing to EUR3.7 million from EUR2.7 million. Says business platform proves resilient in face of the pandemic. Looking ahead, firm targets 2021 for first year of profitability. "In 2021, revenues from both current and new projects and gradual growth from maintenance and consulting contracts are forecast to generate revenues of approximately EUR15 million in 2021. These revenues, together with an expected contribution from EQTEC Capital, are forecast to generate positive Ebitda, making 2021 EQTEC's first year of profitability," says EQTEC.







Maestrano Group PLC - London-based artificial intelligence platform for transport corridor analytics - Says revenue for three months to March 31 grows 1% to GBP294,000, while Ebitda loss widens to GBP455,000 from GBP138,000 as expenses grow 46% - reflecting increased investment in the US, Australia and UK - and cost of sales rise 50%. Chief Executive Nick Smith adds: "Our third quarter was impacted by a major weather event in Australia, which delayed acceptance for airframes delivered to the Australian government under the contract announced on 29 November 2019. This revenue will now be recognised in the 4th quarter, which will combine with other project deliveries as we focus on meeting our full year objectives."







Caledonia Mining Corp PLC - Zimbabwe-focused gold producer - Says gold production from the Blanket Mine in Zimbabwe for first quarter of 2021 is 13,197 ounces, with firm remaining on track to hit its production guidance of between 61,000 and 67,000 ounces for full-year despite the quarterly outturn being "slightly below" target. Chief Executive Steve Curtis says: "Gold production has often been lower in the first quarter of each year and increases in the following quarters. The rainy season this year saw unprecedented rainfall causing flooding at the mine and resulted in several lost shifts during the period. These temporary issues have now been rectified and with the Central Shaft now operational we remain on track to hit our 80,000 ounce target in 2022."







Trinity Exploration & Production PLC - Trinidad & Tobago-focused oil exploration and production company - Says production levels were resilient over first quarter of 2021, with volumes averaging 3,107 barrels of oil per day due to company's "pro-active approach to protecting base production". This represents 7% reduction in production volumes year-on-year and 3% quarter-on-quarter decline. Says cash balances remained robust at USD20.0 million as at March-end, from USD20.2 million at end of December, despite increased investment in growth initiatives occurring in the first quarter. "Having proven its low cost, low risk production model during the past 12 months - and with the company now benefitting from the recovery in the oil price - the focus is on scaling the business. Increased automation across producing assets combined with a growing opportunity to significantly enhance production in collaboration with key industry partners will be core to Trinity's development for the remainder of the year," company says.







By Lucy Heming;A lucyheming@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
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 Online Masters in Healthcare Administration Degree Programs.

Intelligent.com analyzed 171 schools, on a scale of 0 to 100, with only 55 making it to the final list for Online Masters in Healthcare Administration Degree Programs. To access the complete ranking, please visit: https://www.intelligent.com/best-online-masters-in-healthcare-administration-degree-programs/

2021 Online Masters in Healthcare Administration Degree Programs featured on Intelligent.com (in alphabetical order):

A.T. Still University

Azusa Pacific University

Bellevue University

Boston College

Briar Cliff University

Bryan College

California State University, East Bay

California State University, Long Beach

Campbellsville University

Clarkson College

Colorado State University Global

Des Moines University

Drexel University

Excelsior College

Florida Atlantic University

Friends University

George Washington University

Georgetown University

Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine

Liberty University

Marist College

Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences

Medical University of South Carolina

Midwestern State University

Minnesota State University Moorhead

Mississippi College

Nebraska Methodist College

New England College

Newman University

Oklahoma State University

Oregon Health & Science University

Roberts Wesleyan College

Rosalind Franklin University

Russell Sage College

Sacred Heart University

Saint Joseph's University

Simmons University

Southern New Hampshire University

The University of Scranton

Tulane University

University of Arkansas Fort Smith

University of California-San Francisco

University of Central Florida

University of Cincinnati

University of Denver

University of Mary

University of Maryland Global Campus

University of Memphis

University of Missouri

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

University of Southern California

University of St. Francis

Virginia Commonwealth University

Winston-Salem State 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/.
PARIS, April 18 (Xinhua) -- "All the subjects of the 2021 edition of the Boao Forum fall under global governance," said former French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin who is participating in the annual conference being held on April 18-21.

"From the place of China in the world, the great 'Belt and Road' project to the digital revolution and new forms of development ... all changes require a strengthening of global governance," said Raffarin in a recent written interview with Xinhua.

"The number one objective of international cooperation must be peace," he stressed. "To do this, we must promote dialogue and respect. Each nation must take its part in our community of shared future. Cold or hot wars do not promote cooperation, in particular when it is necessary for nations to invent the multilateralism of the 21st century."

Founded in 2001 when Asian countries sought economic integration in the aftermath of the 1998 financial crisis, the Boao Forum, a non-governmental organization, has been dedicated to facilitating exchanges among stakeholders in Asia and beyond. Its annual conference in 2020 was canceled due to the pandemic.

Themed "A World in Change: Join Hands to Strengthen Global Governance and Advance Belt and Road Cooperation," this year's Boao Forum is aimed at providing an inclusive platform to discuss challenges of common concern, build consensus and boost confidence for the region and beyond.

Noting that ideological questions or rivalries between powers often hamper multilateral cooperation, Raffarin believed that it is possible to find initiatives of common interest "by proposing concrete, geographically localized subjects."

"The best way to avoid the aggravation of the current international difficulties is to promote projects in which all actors find their benefit. The danger of the period would be that the spirit of closure, of protectionism, the radicalization of nationalism would reject all ideas of shared cooperation," he said.

China is adapting to the situation of the world and will remain one of the engines of global growth in the long term, said the veteran French politician.

"It strengthens its national market by strengthening domestic demand and strengthening its businesses. Consumption dynamics support Chinese imports and foreign trade. This is dual circulation. The earlier return to growth in China than elsewhere will promote global recovery. The Chinese market is becoming an imperative market for any business that wants to go global. This is also true of the European and American markets," he said.

As Europe wishes to defend its sovereignty and promote its independence to avoid deadlock situations and promote global cooperation based on balanced rules, it is necessary to negotiate good agreements to regulate the flows, such as the Sino-European agreement on investments, or the return to good functioning of the World Trade Organization, he added.

Confronted with the global crisis inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Boao Forum this year will surely touch the issue of health. Raffarin told Xinhua that his participation would aim to bring together the subjects of health and those of the environment, "because indeed these are the two neighbouring and major concerns of our public opinion."

"Protecting the planet amounts to protecting populations. Despite the current international difficulties, it seems to me necessary to seek consensus between the nations. With the future of the Planet being the key to the destiny of humanity, the 'Planetization' of our policies may be the new form of globalization, a more humane approach to globalization," he said.

[ Editor: WPY ]
~Reduced quarantine time, increased connectivity~

SABA:--- Per May 1, Sabas entry policy will change, whereby the mandatory 10-day quarantine measure will be lifted and the connectivity to the island will be increased.

In the new phase, fully-vaccinated persons do not have to quarantine, while for non-vaccinated persons the quarantine period is reduced to five days. More flights will become available on Windward Islands Airways (Winair), and The Edge is planning a new schedule, reestablishing the ferry service between St. Maarten and Saba.

Mitigation strategy

With 85 per cent of the adult population vaccinated against COVID-19, Saba is moving from a containment strategy to a mitigation strategy with a new entry policy and new on-island measures per May 1. Island Governor Jonathan Johnson sent a letter to the local hospitality sector on Friday, April 16 to update the entrepreneurs. A stimulus package has been created to assist the hotels, dive shops, and taxi drivers, in preparing to welcome more visitors to the island. Other elements of the stimulus package include endeavors that enhance Sabas tourism product, funding for promotion, and incentives to improve connectivity.

New schedules

On May 1, Winair will start a new flight schedule between St. Maarten and Saba. Flights will be carried out on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. There will be two flights per day, in the morning and late afternoon. The Edge is planning to resume ferry service between St. Maarten and Saba. The preliminary schedule is Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and twice monthly on Monday.

Banned countries

The risk categorization policy has been updated with the addition of a new category: banned countries. Travelers from banned countries are not permitted to enter the island, unless they are Saba residents. Banned countries are designated by the Dutch Ministry of Public Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS), based on the widespread circulation of variants of the coronavirus. A link to the updated list of banned countries will on the COVID-19 page of the www.sabagov.nl website. Also on this website, people can find the list of low-risk countries and high-risk countries.

Vaccination status

Different measures will be implemented depending on the risk categorization and the vaccination status of the traveler. Fully-vaccinated persons from a high-risk country will not have to quarantine, but they will need to show a negative PCR test result not older than 72 hours before arrival. Non-vaccinated persons from a high-risk country will need to show a negative PCR or antigen test result, quarantine for 5 days and do a rapid antigen test on day five. There will be no measures for fully-vaccinated and non-vaccinated adults from low-risk countries.

Day-trippers

Only fully-vaccinated persons can come to Saba for the day. These so-called day-trippers will need to show a negative test result, and secure approval before travel.

Automated system

All travelers coming to Saba will continue to require obtaining approval before arrival. For now, approval can be requested at least 72 hours before arrival through This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . After May 1, a new automated approval system will be introduced, similar to the EHAS system used by St. Maarten, whereby passengers will submit a digital application within 72 hours of their arrival on Saba. Under the EHAS system, applicants will receive automatic response immediately, followed by an approval letter within 24 hours.

Testing location

A new central testing location in The Bottom will open per May 1 for travelers who need testing before departure or persons who need testing at the end of their 5-day quarantine. The testing location will be open from Tuesday through Sunday, from 1:00-3:00pm. The cost of a rapid antigen test will be US $50 and US $75 for a PCR test.

Townhall meeting

The Public Entity Saba is organizing a townhall meeting this Wednesday, April 21 where the community will receive an update on the plans of the new reopening phase per May 1. Addressed will be the new entry process, the new entry policy, the measures on the island, and the continuation of healthcare. The townhall meeting will take place at the Princess Juliana Sports Field in The Bottom from 7:00pm to 9:00pm.
The New South Wales government has announced that the highly anticipated Mad Max prequel, Furiosa, will be filmed locally.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian made the announcement at a press conference in Sydney on Monday, alongside star Chris Hemsworth, director George Miller and producer Doug Mitchell.

Berejiklian stated that it will be the 'largest film ever to be filmed here', adding 850 local jobs and injecting at least $350million into the local economy.

Coming soon: The New South Wales government has announced that the highly anticipated Mad Max prequel, Furiosa, will be filmed locally. Pictured, Chris Hemsworth at the announcement in Sydney on Monday

She went on to praise the upcoming blockbuster's cast and crew, and claimed it would be 'showcasing Australian talent at its best'.

'Chris, who's made Australia his home, he's a global superstar and works here in NSW, and I couldn't feel prouder about him and his generation of actors that are really continuing to put Australia on the map,' she added.

Minister for the Arts Paul Fletcher said it was 'very important' that Australia supported the film industry, and described the Mad Max franchise as an ''iconic Australian production'

Out of Hollywood: Premier Gladys Berejiklian made the announcement at a press conference in Sydney on Monday, alongside star Chris Hemsworth (centre), director George Miller (right) and producer Doug Mitchell (left)

On show: Berejiklian praised the upcoming blockbuster's cast and crew at the press conference, and claimed it would be 'showcasing Australian talent at its best'

'Australia is really experiencing a boom in film at the moment,' he added, explaining that the country's handling of the coronavirus pandemic was to thank.

Mad Max Furiosa is slated for release in 2023, and will also star Anya Taylor-Joy in the title role.

The role was originally portrayed by Charlize Theron in the 2015 blockbuster, Mad Max: Fury Road.

Original: The role was originally portrayed by Charlize Theron (pictured) in the 2015 blockbuster, Mad Max: Fury Road

Taking over: Mad Max Furiosa is slated for release in 2023, and will also star Anya Taylor-Joy (pictured at the premiere of Emma in LA in February 2020) in the title role

In an interview with The New York Times in May last year, Miller said he originally considered using de-aging technology to make Charlize, 45, appear younger.

'For the longest time, I thought we could just use CG de-aging on Charlize, but I don't think we're nearly there yet,' the 76-year-old filmmaker told the publication.

He eventually settled on 25-year-old Anya, who has won recent praise for her roles in The Queen's Gambit and Emma.
Geneva, Switzerland (PANA) - UN independent human rights experts on Monday denounced a government-backed report into racism in the United Kingdom, saying that it further distorted and falsified historic facts, and could even fuel racism and racial discrimination
MOSCOW  The Russian authorities moved the imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny to a hospital on Monday for what was described as treatment with vitamins.

The Russian penitentiary system released a statement saying that a commission of government doctors had decided on the move for Mr. Navalny, who is now nearly three weeks into a hunger strike. Mr. Navalnys personal doctors have reported that he is suffering from a range of severe symptoms that they call life threatening.

There was no immediate response from Mr. Navalnys political allies or personal doctors about the recommendation for treatment with vitamins. Over the weekend, they said that Mr. Navalnys blood tests had showed a risk of imminent heart or kidney failure.

His potassium levels were elevated, and tests showed other signs of possible kidney ailments, his doctors said. But starvation is only one issue in his declining health. Mr. Navalnys lawyers say he may also be suffering from the lingering effects of a near-fatal poisoning with a military nerve agent last summer.
This article was originally published by the Institute of Current World Affairs in D.C.

BERLIN  Germany. But normal.

Thats the message the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is taking into this Septembers federal election. Hundreds of elected officials and party members met last weekend in Dresden to introduce their new messaging and debate their official party platform.

The slogan is as much a statement about the kind of world the AfD pitches to its votershearkening back to a simpler, better time before globalization, a wave of refugee arrivals and a pandemicas it is about how the AfD hopes it and its positions will be perceived in the German political landscape.

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Meanwhile, the party approved its most radical platform yet: In addition to doubling down on its demand that Germany leave the European Union, AfD delegates voted to end family reunification for refugees, ban the construction of minarets, implement a strict Japan-style immigration system and repeal the current mask mandate, among other positions.

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In the end, its a contradiction, Johannes Hillje, a political consultant and expert on the AfDs rhetorical tactics, told me. The communication strategy is directed toward the center, but in terms of content theyre moving even further to the right and getting more radical.

Germans will go to the polls in September to elect a new parliament and, by extension, a new chancellor. After 16 years with Angela Merkel at the helm, the election will represent a major turning point in German politicsnot least because the third wave of the coronavirus pandemic has upended political polling and put Merkels long-ascendant Christian Democrats (CDU) on the defensive. Five and a half months out, the campaign is beginning in earnest: With both the CDU on the verge of choosing their chancellor candidate and the Greens having just done so, the electoral field is starting to take shape.

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For the AfD, the stakes in Septembers elections are high. After a difficult year, the party is looking to recoup its losses and prove it can reach the same levels of support it had in the 2017 election. Its a tall order: The pandemic is the only recent crisis in German politics it hasnt been able to clearly exploit for its own benefit. The dynamics of pandemic politics, combined with the domestic intelligence services impending surveillance of the entire party, mean AfD leaders have reason to be nervous.

Two years ago, the future looked quite different for the AfD: In May of that year, the partyAfD won 11 percent of the vote in the European parliament elections, a slight drop from its 2017 federal election result but still a 4 percent increase over the support it had received in the 2014 European elections. That fall, itthe party made significant gains in state elections in eastern Germany, becoming the second-largest party in Saxony (27.5 percent), Brandenburg (23.5 percent) and Thuringia (23.4 percent).

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In February 2020, the AfD showed its penchant for disruption in another way: Its actions helped break a major taboo in Thuringia, where it voted with other right-of-center parties to oust the states left-wing premier. That alliance sparked national outrage and upended internal politics within Merkels CDU. Just two weeks later, a deadly far-right attack targeting shisha bars that killed nineelected people in the central city of Hanau drew attention to how the AfDs rhetoric emboldens violent extremists.

Then came the coronavirus pandemic. At the outset, the AfD seemed unsure how it should react: Some of its politicians initially called for stricter measures to fight the virus while others dismissed COVID-19 as nothing more than a flu. It wasnt until the summer that the party coalesced around a more unified message of opposing government pandemic measures. Whats more, with attention focused on the virus, the AfDs top issuerefugee policy and migrationall but disappeared from the headlines.

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The AfD has since built itself up as the sole political party opposed to what it calls Merkels corona dictatorship, unofficially joining forces with the Querdenken movement and other protests against government measures. Marching in Berlin last summer, AfD politicians appeared to have no problem rubbing shoulders with conspiracy theorists.

But embracing the small but vocal anti-coronavirus measures opposition has failed to boost the AfD electorally like the influx of refugees did in 2015 and 2016. Indeed, the opposite has been true for most of the last year. Its support began dropping in the polls as the pandemic took hold last spring, and more than a year later, the party is still struggling to get back to where it was in early 2020. Even as the public has begun to sour on the governments handling of the pandemic in recent weeks, the AfD has been only a modest beneficiary of the electorates shifting mood.

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The partys pandemic-era fortunes have had an impact at the ballot box. In mid-March, voters in two western German states, Baden-Wurttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate, dealt the AfD significant losses. In Baden-Wurttemberg it lost more than a third of its support compared with 2016, dropping from 15.1 percent to just 9.7 percent. And in Rhineland-Palatinate, where the partys support tends to track closely to what it wins nationally, it went from 12.6 percent to 8.3 percent.

The pandemic has merely sped up a process that was already underway: The AfDs voter base is hardening and the party is radicalizing. As Hillje puts it, we see a consolidation rather than a collapse of the party.

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Amid the headlines about the pandemic last year, stories about the partys direction and internal fights often passed by unnoticed or got less attention than they otherwise should have. Last March, for example, as the first wave of the pandemic hit Europe, the AfD announced that its even more far-right faction known as Wing would be disbanded. Eager to avoid surveillance by the German domestic intelligence service, which had already declared the Wing a suspected case of extremist activity, more moderate party leaders made a concerted effort to at least improve the partys image.

Thats meant the perennial internal battle within the AfDbetween so-called moderates and the far-right radicalshas only intensified since the start of the pandemic. The party is more divided internally than ever before, the journalists Katja Bauer and Maria Fiedler write in their new book, The AfD Method. The bitter internal disputes have paralyzed the party and prevent it from working through strategic questions.

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Over the summer, the party leadership narrowly voted to kick out Andreas Kalbitz, the AfDs leader in the eastern state of Brandenburg. He had allegedly lied about his past involvement in neo-Nazi youth organizations, which was a step too far for some in the party. Removing Kalbitz gave party leaders an easy example to point to when they say they dont tolerate any extremism within their rankswhile leaders like Hocke retain their loose ties with Germanys network of extreme-right groups.

The blowback from the more radical far-right wing of the party has been fierce, however. At a fall party conference in the western German city of Kalkar, delegates booed party leader Jorg Meuthen when he called for a more moderate tone on the pandemic. There was even speculation Meuthen could be voted out of the party leadership, though that has not yet happened. Meanwhile, more radical members are winning election to leadership at local and state levels across the country; In Berlin, the new party leader was elected with support of the far-right Wing.

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Ultimately, the efforts of Meuthen and others to avoid surveillance by the domestic intelligence service appear to have failed: The Office for the Protection of the Constitution, or BfV for short, will indeed declare the entire party a suspected case of extremism, media outlets reported earlier this year.

That may ultimately serve only to strengthen the AfDs far-right wing. At the party convention last weekend, it was easy to see where the influence is trending: Many of the radical proposals that ultimately passed did so at Hockes urging. More supposedly moderate leaders, like Meuthen, saw their influence diminished.

The whole conference was a victory for the extremists in the party regarding the manifesto, Hillje said. Especially Bjorn Hocke showed his power within the party.

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As things stand now, the AfD stands to either see modest losses or maintain its previous level of support. Most opinion polling shows it around 11 percent, down from the 12.6 percent it won back in the 2017 federal elections but easily within the margin of error.

With its Germany. But normal slogan, the party is making a play for voters across the spectrum: Like their frequent focus on protecting the Heimat, or homeland, the new messaging is purposely vague. Normal can mean different things to different votersand played right, could be persuasive to both protest voters (who see the partys radicalization and arent especially bothered) as well as the die-hard right-wing voters (who see the partys radicalization and are totally on board).

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Its hard to make long-term predictions about the AfDs trajectory; even keeping an eye on September is difficult with the pandemic situation still so volatile. If the current loss of trust in the governments handling of the pandemic continues and the vaccine campaign sees further delays, the AfD could stand to benefit. If things improve and Merkels CDU regains some trust, the AfD may find its newfound identity as the anti-lockdown party less relevant and less helpful.

Meanwhile, the BfVs decision to put the party under surveillance may scare off some more centrist voters who might otherwise vote for the party out of frustration or a desire for protest, even if the development has little effect on the AfDs core voter base.

But the conversations Ive had with party officials and supporters over the years, from Gorlitz on the eastern border with Poland to Gelsenkirchen in Germanys former coal country to an AfD stronghold in Hockes home state of Thuringia, have convinced me the AfD isnt going anywhere in the near future. As long as it can continue to be a home for Germanys far-right activists and channel the frustration of enough German voters, particularly in the east, it will remain a factor in political life.
New Delhi, April 19 : In a bid to boost vaccine production amid rising Covid cases, the Centre has given in-principle approval for credit to vaccine-makers, the Serum Institute of India (SII) and Bharat Biotech, it was announced on Monday.

The Finance Ministry has approved sanction of Rs 3,000 crore credit for the Serum Institute and Rs 1,500 crore to Bharat Biotech, and the credit will be disbursed at the earliest.

Earlier, Adar Poonawalla, CEO of Serum Institute of India, had suggested that the company would require around Rs 3,000 crore to increase production of Covid-19 vaccines.

Industry body FICCI also recently suggested that the government should provide incentives to vaccine manufacturers to increase the production of Covid-19 vaccines in the country.

It recommended financing vaccine makers under a production linked incentive (PLI) type scheme.

The financial support came as the government decided to open up vaccination for all citizens above the age of 18 from May 1.

Further, the Health Ministry on Monday said that the National Vaccine Strategy aims at liberalised vaccine pricing and scaling up of vaccine coverage. This would augment vaccine production as well as availability, incentivising vaccine manufacturers to rapidly ramp up production as well as attract new vaccine manufacturers, domestic and international, said an official statement.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
You can probably spot a Fitbit tracker from a mile away. They generally have a distinct blockish look with rubbery straps and simple watch faces. That's likely why Fitbit has been partnering with designers to make prettier bands and trying to make more "stylish" trackers like the Alta. But the Alta was far from stylish, and the company discontinued the device in 2019. Since then, Fitbit's trackers have stuck to basic designs. That is, until now. The company is announcing today the Fitbit Luxe  which it's calling a "fashion-forward fitness and wellness tracker... in an effortlessly chic bracelet design."

You can be the judge of whether the Luxe is indeed fashion-forward and effortlessly chic, but based on the renders so far, it at least appears to offer lots of attractive band and color options. There's also a few strap and bracelet options from Californian jewelry maker gorjana. Three case colors are available: black, platinum (silver) and gold, and they're paired with black, orchid (pink) and white bands respectively.

Besides the hues and accessories, there are more reasons Fitbit is calling the Luxe its "most elevated tracker." For one thing, the company says this is its thinnest touchscreen tracker to date. Like the Sense, the Luxe features a buttonless design so you'll only be able to use it by swiping and tapping the AMOLED display. Fitbit also said it adapted jewelry-making techniques, using a process called metal injection molding to create the Luxe's stainless steel case, as well as a "metal vaporizing technique" for a polished finish on the gold and platinum finishes.

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Until we see the device in person, it's hard to tell if these touches truly make the Luxe more attractive than the Alta, the Inspires and Fitbit's other trackers. Like the company's previous wearables, the Luxe monitors a wide variety of metrics like heart rate variability, breathing rate, sleep stages and blood oxygen saturation, though that last one is "coming soon" and won't be available in all countries.

The Luxe will also monitor your vitals to gauge how stressed you are and assign you a Stress Management score, as well as track your skin temperature variation  both already available on the Sense. Unlike the Sense though, the Luxe does not have GPS built in, so you'll have to bring your phone with you to map your run.

Though it's not technically a smartwatch, the Luxe's simplistic OS will still let you receive your smartphone's notifications, set alarms and use a stopwatch. It's compatible with both iOS and Android devices, and will also work with Google's Fast Pair to make syncing with your phone much less of a pain. This appears to be the only new feature hailing from Google since it completed its acquisition of Fitbit in January.

Fitbit

Like most of Fitbit's trackers, the Luxe promises to last up to seven days on a charge. It's water resistant up to 50 meters and will automatically track your swims. Plus, it can also keep tabs on your menstrual cycle in addition to constant heart rate, daily steps, distance and calories burned.

Those in the US can pre-order the Luxe today for $150, while global availability is slated for this spring. The company is throwing in a free six-month trial of Fitbit Premium, which usually costs $10 a month or $80 a year. It offers personalized health-tracking reports across all your metrics, guided programs to improve your nutrition, sleep and wellbeing, as well as games, challenges and workout content. As is Fitbit's custom with its recent releases, a Special Edition with nicer accessories (by gorjana) is available for $200 and will arrive in June.
 Interrogating recent research indicating nonprosecution of certain misdemeanors lowers reoffense | Main | "Qualifying Prosecutorial Immunity Through Brady Claims" 

April 19, 2021

SCOTUS grants cert on Confrontation Clause case, and Justice Sotomayor has much to say about two criminal case denieal

The Supreme Court is back in action this morning after a short hiatus, getting started with this new order list that has most of its limited action in criminal law cases. Specifically, the Justices granted certiorari in a single case, Hemphill v. New York, 20-637, which presents this criminal procedure issue:

Whether, or under what circumstances, a criminal defendant, whose argumentation or introduction of evidence at trial opens the door to the admission of responsive evidence that would otherwise be barred by the rules of evidence, also forfeits his right to exclude evidence otherwise barred by the confrontation clause.

In addition, in Brown v. Polk County, No. 20982, a case concerning Fourth Amendment requirements for a penetrative cavity search of a pretrial detainee, Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued this lengthy statement respecting the denial of certiorari. And in Whatley v. Warden, Ga. Diag. & Classification Prison, No. 20363, a case concerning defense counsel's failure to object to a capital defendant's shackling, Justice Sotomayor issued this lengthy dissent from the denial of certiorari.

April 19, 2021 at 09:55 AM | Permalink

Comments

This issue of warrantless body cavity searches while a person is in custody of the police or a jail is most important. These kinds of searches occur far more frequently that most people, including defense counsel, know. For anyone interested in this issue, who has not read the Sixth Circuit's opinion in United States v. Felix Booker, 728 F.3d 535 (6th Cir. 2013), I strongly recommend that you read this extraordinary opinion, which was written by Judge John Rogers, who in 2013 was arguably the most conservative judge on the Sixth Circuit. Booker had been a passenger in a car that was pulled over on a traffics stop. He was subjected to a pat search (unusual for a mere traffic stop), which found marijuana. He was taken to jail (also unusual for a small quantity of marijuana arrest), where he was subject to a visual naked body examination. A Deputy thought he saw something protruding from Booker's anus, but could not reach it. The naked Booker, covered only in a blanket, was taken in the back of a Sheriff's car to a nearby hospital emergency room. Deputies asked a friendly E.R. physician, La Paglia, to conduct a body cavity search of Booker, despite the fact that they had no search warrant. As a matter of medical ethics, the patient, Booker, also did not consent ot the digital rectal exam. In the later litigation, it came out that Dr. LaPaglia had previously conducted such searches (without a warrant) for the police before. When Booker clenched his anus to prevent Dr. LaPaglia's digital body cavity search, the doctor first gave him a shot to sedate him, and then venilated him and administered an I.V. to completely paralyze his body. Dr. LaPAglia's digital search of Booker's anus produced a golf ball sized rock of crack cocaine, weighing far more more than 5 grams (5 grams is the weight of a nickel). The trial Judge denied defense counsel's motion to suppress the evidence. Booker was convicted at trial and sentenced to a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years. On appeal, the Sixth Circuit reversed, finding that the motion to suppress should have been granted. The real issue was whether Dr. LaPaglia was a state law actor, since searches by private parties are not subject to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement. In a one-of-a kind, unprecedented decision, Judge Rogers and the panel found that the Deputy Sheriffs had "de facto deputized" Dr. LaPaglia, making him a state law actor to who the Fourth Amendment applied. The Fourth Amendment also applied to the Deputies who had taken Booker to the E.R. and requested the search. Booker's convictions were vacated and upon remand the evidence was suppressed and the indictment was dismissed. Subsequently, Booker filed a civil rights lawsuit against Dr. LaPaglia and the Deputy Sheriffs. A few months after the Sixth Circuit's opinion in Booker was released, Dr. LaPaglia was himself arrested and prosecuted in Tennessee for illegally possessing (in his home) many narcotics, more than 2 dozen kinds of marijuana (in glass jars in his kitchens) and even the unscheduled anesthesia drug Propofol, which killed the singer Michael Jackson. Dr. LaPaglia's medical license was subsequently suspended. The Felix Booker opinion should serve as a warning to physicians who would aid law enforcement in performing warrrantless body cavity searches, but I suspect that few are aware of its holding.

Posted by: Jim Gormley | Apr 19, 2021 11:33:07 AM

By contrast to what happened in the Felix Booker case, described above, I have a local (Lexington, Kentucky) friend who is a radiologist with more than 30 years in practice at a major local hospital. He was most surprised one day to have D.E.A. Agents show up at his hospital one afternoon with a Mexican drug mule that they had just arrested when he got off a commercial flight at Bluegrass Airport. Earlier in the day, the Mexican detainee had walked across the border at Tijuana, Mexico into San Diego, California. He was followed as he took a taxi to the local airport and bought (for cash) a one-way plane ticket to Chicago. Upon arrival in Chicago, he bought a one-way plane ticket (again for cash) to Lexington. He was detained upon arrival for suspicion of smuggling drugs. The Agents asked my radiologist friend to take X-Rays of his abdomen, to determine whether he might be carrying drugs in his intestines or stomach. Sure enough, the X-Rays show the square corners of the packages that heroin had been sealed into before he swallowed the packages. The detainee was taken to a "dry cell" at the jail (no toilet or basin), where he was given a laxative and eventually excreted the packages of heroin out. This is the kind of alternative to a physically penetrating search to which Justice Sotomayor is referring, as opposed to what was done by a physician to Ms. Brown, when he search her vagina and anus (but found nothing).

Posted by: Jim Gormley | Apr 19, 2021 11:46:19 AM

Reading through the opinions from New York on the new case, it looks like the issue was not seen as a big issue by the lower court judges (perhaps because they were relying on an earlier case that did not get cert). So, it's a little unclear what happened to allegedly "open the door."

I guess this is one of the dangers from a court that has been trying to shrink its docket for the past fifty years. If you pass on an issue early, it becomes engrained in the state or circuit case law so that, when the Supreme Court finally gets around to taking the case, the issue is not well argued in the lower courts.

Posted by: tmm | Apr 19, 2021 1:23:05 PM

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The most awaited moment by NASA has come, after so many trials and unsuccessful attempts to fly the Mars helicopter, today NASA will make another attempt to fly the Ingenuity helicopter.

NASA is optimistic that today the helicopter will take off from the Martian land at 12:31 am PDT (Pacific Daylight Time) which will be 1:01 pm according to IST (Indian Standard Time) in India.

NASA in a press release said that data from the first flight will return to Earth a few hours following the autonomous flight."A live stream will begin at 6:15 am EDT, as the helicopter team prepares to receive the data downlink in the Space Flight Operations Facility at NASA`s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)."

According to Indian Standard Time (IST), the flight will be attempted at 3:45 pm which you can watch on NASA Television, the agency app, website, and social media platforms, including YouTube and Facebook.

On Mon., April 19, our Ingenuity #MarsHelicopter makes its first attempt at flight. Watch live coverage from @NASAJPL beginning at 6:15am ET (10:15am UTC) as the team receives the first data & finds out if they've made history: https://t.co/JFEsGuAYbr pic.twitter.com/w6RjKWVHV7  NASA (@NASA) April 19, 2021

The original flight date of April 11 rescheduled as engineers worked on preflight checks and a solution to a command sequence issue. The rover will provide support during flight operations, taking images, collecting environmental data, and hosting the base station that enables the helicopter to communicate with mission controllers on Earth.

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An new overseas hardware chain has shocked Australians for its striking resemblance to Bunnings Warehouse.

The company Builders Warehouse has a number of stores in the Philippines, and uses a dark green and red colour scheme, the same hammer symbol and a very similar font to Bunnings.

Bunnings is not believed to have any connection with the international business, which is reported to have first opened in 2018.

Overseas warehouse chain Builders Warehouse looks similar to Australian chain Bunnings

The chains both use a dark green colour, the same hammer symbol and a very similar font

Builders Warehouse customers are able to buy traditional hardware store stock such as tools, indoor and outdoor appliances, paint, furniture and tiles inside a large shed.

The chain has stores in Dau, Mabalacat, Pampanga, Malolos and Bulacan in the Phillipines.

'Builders Warehouse is anchored in delivering first-class construction materials to everyone who needs a hand in home building from the groundwork, furnishing up to the final modifications of any structural development,' their website reads.

'An entirely goal and service-oriented corporation, Builders Warehouse extends its reach to a wider range of consumers in the succeeding years of its foundation.'

Bunnings Warehouse and Builders Warehouse (pictured) are not believed to be affiliated

Builders Warehouse (left) has a shockingly similar logo to Bunnings Warehouse (right)

Bunnings Warehouse first opened in 1907 under the name Bunnings Brothers, and first store with the new name opened in Melbourne in 1994.

The successful chain is owned by retail giant Wesfarmers and experienced massive growth in the 2020 financial year, making $1.85billion.

Bunnings has expanded into a wider range of products than the usual hardware goods, including plants, electrical appliances and arts and crafts.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Bunnings Warehouse, which is not believed to be associated with the Filipino chain.
Moscow hits back at Czech expulsion of envoys

The Kremlin has rejected accusations Russian agents were linked to a deadly blast in the Czech Republic in 2014. File photo: Shutterstock

Moscow reacted furiously on Sunday to Czech allegations that two Russian spies accused of a nerve agent poisoning in Britain in 2018 were behind an explosion at a Czech ammunition dump four years earlier, which killed two people.



Prague on Saturday expelled no fewer than 18 Russian diplomats, prompting Russia's Foreign Ministry to vow on Sunday to "force the authors of this provocation to fully understand their responsibility for destroying the foundation of normal ties between our countries".



Late on Sunday, Moscow expelled 20 Czech diplomats in retaliation and said they must leave the following day.



The Czech Republic said it had informed Nato and European Union allies that it suspected Russia of causing the blast, and European Union foreign ministers were set to discuss the matter at their meeting on Monday.



The United States strongly backed Prague on Sunday, with the State Department commending its firm response to "Russia's subversive actions on Czech soil."



The row is the biggest between Prague and Moscow since the end of decades of Soviet domination of eastern Europe in 1989.



It also adds to growing tensions between Russia and the West in general, raised in part by Russia's military build-up on its Western borders and in Crimea, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014, after a surge in fighting between government and pro-Russian forces in Ukraine's east.



Russia said Prague's accusations were absurd as it had previously blamed the blast at Vrbetice, 300 kilometres east of the capital, on the depot's owners.



It called the expulsions "the continuation of a series of anti-Russian actions undertaken by the Czech Republic in recent years", accusing Prague of "striving to please the United States against the backdrop of recent US sanctions against Russia".



Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said the attack was aimed at a shipment to a Bulgarian arms trader.



"According to information, which has also been in the media, this was an attack on ammunition that had already been paid for and was being stored for a Bulgarian arms trader," he said on Czech Television.



He said, without naming the individual, that there was later an attempt to murder the arms trader.



Bulgarian prosecutors charged three Russian men in 2020 with an attempt to kill arms trader Emilian Gebrev, who was identified by Czech media as the same individual. Reuters was unable to reach Gebrev.



Czech police said they were looking for two men who travelled to the Czech Republic days before the blast under the names Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov.



Those names were the aliases used by the two Russian GRU military intelligence officers wanted by Britain for the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok in the English city of Salisbury in 2018. The Skripals survived, but a member of the public died.



The Kremlin denied involvement in that incident, and the attackers remain at large.



Czech interior and acting foreign minister Jan Hamacek said police knew about the two people from the beginning, "but only found out when the Salisbury attack happened that they are members of the GRU, that Unit 29155."



Hamacek said Prague would ask Moscow for assistance in questioning them, but did not expect it to cooperate.



British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab tweeted that the Czechs "have exposed the lengths that the GRU will go to in their attempts to conduct dangerous and malign operations".



A Nato official said the alliance would support the Czech Republic as it investigated Russia's "malign activities", which were part of a pattern of "dangerous behaviour".



"Those responsible must be brought to justice," added the official, who declined to be named.



The United States imposed sanctions against Russia on Thursday for interfering in last year's US election, cyber hacking, bullying Ukraine and other actions, prompting Moscow to retaliate.



On Sunday, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Washington had told Moscow "there will be consequences" if Alexei Navalny, the opposition figurehead who almost died last year after being given a toxin that Western experts say was Novichok, dies in prison, where he is on hunger strike.



The 2014 incident has resurfaced at an awkward time for Prague and Moscow.



The Czech Republic is planning to put the construction of a new nuclear power plant at its Dukovany complex out to tender.



Security services have demanded that Russia's Rosatom be excluded as a security risk, while President Milos Zeman and other senior officials have been putting Russia's case.



In a text message, Industry Minister Karel Havlicek, who was previously in favour of including Russia, told Reuters: "The probability that Rosatom will participate in the expansion of Dukovany is very low." (Reuters)
Add amateur radio to your disaster toolkit

The Islands' Sounder reports on an upcoming amateur radio course in Washington State and the role ham radio can play in a disaster

The story says:

Has COVID got you thinking about what you can do to prepare for future emergencies and disasters, like the inevitable Cascadia Subduction Zone mega-quake? We know that it will grind our region to a halt for weeks if not months, knocking out power, transportation, and regular communications. Consider adding amateur radio skills to your personal preparations.

The San Juan County Amateur Radio Society will be hosting a free amateur radio (ham radio) license exam on May 15 in Friday Harbor. Socially distanced testing will follow COVID minimum-contact protocols in compliance with state guidance.

Read the full story at

https://www.islandssounder.com/news/add-amateur-radio-to-your-disaster-toolkit/
New Delhi:

Pakistan initiated unprovoked ceasefire violation Pakistan violated ceasefire in KG sector of Poonch, Jammu and Kashmir on Friday. The Indian army is retaliating with full force.

UPDATES

# Ceasefire violation by Pakistan troops began at 6:55 A.M. in the morning. On Thursday, the Pak troops had fired in the same area and 1 soldier was martyred whereas 1 porter died.

# Pakistan initiated unprovoked ceasefire violation in Khadi Kalmada sector of Poonch, Jammu and Kashmir

#WATCH J&K: Ceasefire violation by Pakistan in KG sector of Poonch. pic.twitter.com/oW8O5YtTqO  ANI (@ANI) October 13, 2017

Jammu and Kahsmir has witnessed many ceasefire violations in recent times. On Wednesday, an encounter took place between security forces and terrorists in Bajin, Handipora of Jammu and Kashmir.

Two IAF personnel were martyred whereas two LET terrorists were also killed during the encounter.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
FLINT, MI -- Being back on campus for University of Michigan-Flint 2021 graduate Amari Younger is bittersweet.

It reminds her of all the friends she made and things she accomplished.

But it was also her first time spending real time participating in a university event since COVID-19 forced virtual classes last March.

Younger recently joined other students from the upcoming graduating class and the spring 2020 class gathered at Willson Park in downtown Flint to record a video celebrating their achievements.

Its bittersweet, Younger said. Its nice to be able to come and do this, despite the pandemic. I get a little bit of that on-campus feeling.

UM-Flint graduates wont be walking across the stage this year, but the university has partnered with the Flint Public Art Project to design a mural to honor graduates during the pandemic.

The 2021 graduating class will be the second to experience a non-traditional farewell from their universities.

Younger grew up in Flint, attended Carman-Ainsworth Community Schools and decided on UM-Flint because it was close to home and convenient. She never thought that she wouldnt be spending time on campus during her senior year, however.

You know, you try to do your best, but you can see your grades slowly dropping, Younger said. Im the type of student that learns better in class, sitting with the professor and doing everything on campus  but, you have to persevere.

The search for opportunities after graduation has been half the battle, Younger said. Many of the traditional opportunities are in-person internships which have been delayed or canceled due to the pandemic.

For someone who switched to a Criminal Justice major halfway through college, Younger wasnt sure if she would still graduate on the same timeline she expected because of the pandemic and its uncertainty.

At the end of the day, it just came down to, I have to graduate. I have to make adjustments so I can be done and finished, Younger said.

Don Weismiller, a Spring 2021 graduate, said that he felt robbed of his senior year from a social perspective. Younger missed the personal relationships she had with professors and fellow students, too.

Weismiller was active in Greek Life, had plans for studying abroad and didnt get the same education as he would in a normal classroom, he said. Weismiller struggled with thoughts of depression at the onset of the pandemic because he said he couldnt see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Think of class like Star Trek -- I was Patrick Stewart hogging the spotlight, Weismiller said. I almost wanted to believe the crazy guys who would say COVID-19 was going to be gone by Easter.

Spring 2021 graduate Alexis Menard shares the same sentiments as her fellow graduates.

Those experiences in college with your friends can never be replaced, she said.

Classes were a bit easier for her, Menard said, because most professors in her focus areas already taught online.

Im disappointed, but I am still happy of me and my peers accomplishments, she said.

Menard helped endorse the idea to bring the Flint Public Art Project on board for the mural. Its something she can look back on and be proud of during her time at UM-Flint.

I look forward to showing this to my friends and family and saying, Look at how cool this is  this was dedicated to me and my fellow graduates, Menard said. Its something that will always be with us.

Read more on MLive:

Mural goes up downtown on UM-Flint campus to honor COVID-19 graduates

UM-Flint students craft plan to honor graduates individually amid COVID pandemic

UM-Flint, Kettering University intend to freeze tuition for 2021-22 academic year
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Derek Chauvin is pictured in court on Monday morning during closing arguments in his murder trial

Prosecutors in Derek Chauvin's murder trial have asked the jury to consider one question in coming to a verdict: Would George Floyd have died were it not for the cop's restraint?

Prosecutor Steve Schleicher presented that question in his closing statement on Monday morning as he cast doubt on the myriad of factors the defense presented as contributing causes of Floyd's death, including his drug use, heart problems and potential exposure to exhaust from the squad car he was pinned next to on May 25.

'The defendant knew better. He just didn't do better,' Schleicher said of Chauvin. 'George Floyd did not have to die that day, should not have died that day. But, for the fact that the defendant decided not to get up, and not to let up, George Floyd died.'

Schleicher also refuted the defense suggestion that Floyd had 'superhuman strength' during his arrest because he was suffering from 'excited delirium'.

Floyd was 'a human being,' the prosecutor said. 'There is no such thing as super human, that exists in comic books.'

Underlining how hard Floyd fought just to be able to breathe, Schleicher showed the court graphic photos of the injuries he suffered when he was pinned down, which had been previously presented to the jury but were not released publicly until Monday.

As he did throughout three weeks of testimony, Chauvin sat silent and expressionless and took notes on a yellow legal pad as Schleicher walked the jury through each of the charges he's facing: second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

Before closing statements Judge Peter Cahill addressed the jury and told them to stick to the evidence presented in court when coming to a verdict, saying: 'You must follow the law even if you believe the law is or should be different.'

Prosecutors repeatedly referenced this timeline of Floyd's fatal arrest during the trial and showed it once again on Monday

Chauvin is facing three charges in connection with George Floyd's death on May 25: second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter

The court was shown these photos of the injuries Floyd sustained as he was pinned to the ground on May 25

Cuts are shown on Floyd's knuckles after he struggled to get Chauvin to relieve the pressure on his neck

Schleicher asserted that Floyd died because Chauvin's 'ego and pride' took over and caused the cop to betray his badge and abandon his training when he pressed his knee into the handcuffed black man's neck.

'All that was required [to save Floyd] was some compassion,' Schleicher told the court. But instead Floyd was crushed beneath the knee of the officer, surrounded by strangers with no familiar face or loved one to cry out to.

Schleicher noted that Floyd's final words were addressed to Chauvin: 'I can't breathe', over and over.

What is 'excited delirium'? The condition Chauvin's defense claims made Floyd dangerous during arrest Derek Chauvin's defense has repeatedly suggested that George Floyd may have been experiencing 'excited delirium' during his fatal arrest on May 25. Excited delirium is a condition characterized by the abrupt onset of aggression and distress, typically accompanying drug abuse. Thomas Lane, a rookie officer who helped restrain Floyd, could be heard on body camera footage questioning whether Floyd might be experiencing excited delirium. The subject came up at Chauvin's trial last week when the defense called Nicole Mackenzie, a Minneapolis police officer who trains other officers in medical care and testified for the prosecution earlier. Mackenzie told the jury that new officers are told how to recognize the signs of excited delirium. Suspects may be incoherent, she said, exhibit extraordinary strength, sweat or suffer from abnormal body temperature, or seem like they suddenly snapped. They're taught that cardiovascular disease, drug abuse or mental illness can trigger excited delirium, she said. But Mackenzie told the jury that she would defer to an emergency room doctor in diagnosing the condition. She also testified that she provides training on excited delirium only to new recruits. Judge Peter Cahill cautioned jurors that there is no evidence that the veteran Chauvin had the training. There is no universally accepted definition of excited delirium and researchers have said its not well understood. The American Psychiatric Associations diagnostic handbook doesnt list the condition and one study last year concluded it is mostly cited as a cause only when the person who died had been restrained. Advertisement

'But he continued to hold him down, to grind into him, to shimmy,' Schleicher said. 'George Floyd begged until he could speak no more and the defendant continued this assault.

'The truth is the defendant was on top of him for nine minutes and 29 seconds and he had to know.'

Schleicher opened his statement by telling the jury who Floyd was  that he was born on October 14, 1973, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, that he was a 'mama's boy', a beloved son, brother and father.

And Schleicher bookended Floyd's life  loved and surrounded by loved ones  with his death, ground into the asphalt and alone.

Addressing the fact that it is hard to believe that a police officer could 'do something like this,' Schleicher told the court this is not a case against the police, but against one particular bad cop.

What the defendant did, he said, 'wasn't policing. It was assault'.

'It was unnecessary, it was gratuitous and he did it on purpose,' Schleicher told the jury. 'He betrayed the badge and everything he stood for. [He] abandoned his values, abandoned his training and killed a man'.

Chauvin was responding to a call over a fake $20 bill but, the prosecutor told the silent court, 'George Floyd's life was taken for something worth far, far less than that.'

Floyd died because Chauvin was 'trying to win' and because of Chauvin's 'ego and pride', Schleicher said.

It was not, he said, 'the kind of pride that makes you do better'. It was, 'The kind of ego-based pride that the defendant was going to do what he wanted to do as long as he wanted because he had the authority and he had the power and of the badge[he was] trying to win and George Floyd paid for it with his life.'

According to Schleicher, Chauvin 'chose pride over policing'.

Schleicher took the jury back through the events of May 25 and told them all of the reasons a person might be unable to comply to police commands - all of the reasons taught in the crisis response training undertaken by all of the officers there that day.

'It's nothing new,' he told the jury. 'People have emotions. People don't meet the police on their best day very often.'

He reminded them of Chief Medaria Arradondo's testimony that MPD responds to 4,000 calls for service for people in crisis every year.

'They're there on a $20 counterfeiting charge,' he said. 'They train for this.'

Schleicher did not attempt to sugar coat Floyd's issues. He 'certainty had his struggles,' the prosecutor said, referencing testimony from Floyd's girlfriend Courteney Ross about his struggles with opioid addiction.

That was nothing new for officers either, Schleicher said. 'The difference on May 25, 2020 is that officers wouldn't listen to him, wouldn't recognize the signs of what they had prepared for,' he said.

'A reasonable officer should have known that and recognized that. Floyd was trying to get into the car. He was trying to work up the courage. He said he'd count to three but he just couldn't do it.'

Everything that happened that day was, the prosecutor said, 'completely unnecessary', but the excessive force started in earnest the moment the officers had Floyd prone and handcuffed on the ground.

Schleicher told jurors to ask themselves if Floyd would have died were it not for what Chauvin did that day. Was it his enlarged heart, did he suddenly die of a drug overdose, was it the fumes from the car tail-pipe?

'Use your common sense,' Schleicher urged. 'Believe your eyes. What you saw you was murder.'

Prosecutor Steve Schleicher is seen delivering the state's closing statement on Monday morning

Prosecutors showed this graphic to remind how police officials testified that Chauvin's use of force was unreasonable

Schleicher cited testimony from medical experts who said Floyd did not die from sudden cardiac arrhythmia or a heart attack

This graphic seeks to refute the suggestion that Floyd's death was caused by his drug use

Turning to the law as Judge Cahill had instructed the jurors, Schleicher reminded: 'The fact that other causes contribute to the death does not relieve the defendant of criminal liability.'

The only scenario in which Chauvin is not criminally liable if a 'superseding cause' caused his death.

But, Schleicher intimated, 'The unlawful restraintthat's what killed George Floyd. Believe your eyes. Unlawful force pinning him to the ground, that's what killed him. That was a homicide.'

Chauvin's constant scribbling on a yellow notepad sparks fevered Twitter debate Derek Chauvin sparked a flurry of social media speculation after he was repeatedly seen scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad over 16 days of testimony at his trial for the death of George Floyd. Eagle-eyed viewers flocked to Twitter to share their theories for what Chauvin was writing in his notebook. One viewer created an entire Twitter account dedicated to the theories, entitled: 'Derek Chauvin's yellow notepad'. Derek Chauvin sparked a flurry of social media speculation after he was repeatedly seen scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad over 16 days of testimony at his trial for the death of George Floyd Advertisement

Schleicher guided the jury back through the experts they had heard and the testimony they had given  including emergency room physician Dr Bradford Langenfeld, Chief Medical Examiner Dr Andrew Baker, who ruled the death a homicide, and pulmonologist Dr Martin Tobin.

Those experts explained both what Floyd did and did not die from, Schleicher said.

'You know how George Floyd died,' the prosecutor said, harking back to Dr Tobin's testimony during which he said that Floyd had been held 'in a vice' between the pavement and Chauvin's knee.

'He said it was as if George Floyd's left lung had been surgically removed to the point where Mr Floyd was desperately trying to breathe, pushing his shoulder, pushing his face [against the ground] to breathe.'

'That's what killed Mr Floyd.' This wasn't a sudden arrhythmia, the prosecutor insisted, there was no medical evidence of a heart attack and it wasn't a drug overdose.

'George Floyd was obviously not a perfect man. Who is? No-one is. You heard about drugs, you heard about questions: "Is he chewing gum, does he have a pill in his mouth?" None of that matters because you know what his drug level was from the toxicology result,' Schleicher said.

He went on to refute the suggestion that Floyd was experiencing 'Excited Delirium', and said the idea that the condition gave him 'super-human strength' or made him 'impervious to pain' was 'nonsense'.

There were so may things that might have saved Floyd's life, Schleicher said; putting Floyd in the side recovery position or keeping him in it in the first place or giving immediate medical aid in the form of CPR chest compressions.

'These actions were not policing, theses actions were an assault,' he said.

As for whether Chauvin was acting knowingly or not, Schleicher said: 'It's pretty simple. You're doing something to hurt somebody and you keep doing it. You're doing it on purpose.'

Schleicher played excerpts of the officers' body-worn camera footage showing Floyd prone and handcuffed beneath them.

'Do you want to know what indifference looks like?' he asked, before playing a portion in which Chauvin can be heard responding to Floyd's pleas of 'you're killing me,' and complaints that his stomach hurts, that everything hurts with the sound: 'Uh Huh' before adding: 'It takes a lot of oxygen to complain about it.'

Schleicher told the court: 'That isn't protection. It isn't courage and it certainly, certainly isn't compassion. It's the opposite of that.'

But Chauvin's negligence goes beyond what he did and extended towards what he did not do, Schleicher said.

Despite the fact that Chauvin had the 'knowledge and tools' he did not render medical aid.

In all, Schleicher concluded that the only possible verdict on all three counts was guilty.

But even after that he said: 'You have another thing to consider. Was this just okay because the defendant was a police officer? Was it justified? Was this objectively reasonable?'

He told the jury: 'It was not.'

'We talked a lot about what might have happened, hypotheticals. We talked a lot about what didn't happen. You need to focus on what did happen. George Floyd wasn't resisting, he just couldn't comply. They do it all the time.

'He wasn't going anywhere. He was doing anything. He didnt need to be put in a prone position, but the defendant was on top of him he stayed on top of him, grinding his knee on him, twisting his wrist - simply the infliction of pain not a reasonable use of force. Force must be reasonable at the point it occurs, the point it ends and all points in between.'

'Dont miss the forest for the trees,' he urged the jury. 'Officer after officer, the Chief of Police, got on that stand and told you that this conduct violates the use of force policy, the departments core values, the duty of care.

'When George Floyd said his final words to the defendant the defendant stayed on top of him. He ignored it. Continued doing what he was doing. Facing the crowd, grinding his knee, twisting his hand.

'The greatest sceptic of the case among you, how can you justify the continued use of force on this man when he has no pulse. It wasnt too late. He could have rolled him over and performed CPR.

He continued past the point of finding a pulse, past the point where the ambulance arrived, past the point where the paramedics got out. Whats the goal? What are we trying to accomplish here? Why hold him so long, past that line that was crossed?

Schleicher let the words pile up  unreasonable, unnecessary, unlawful.

'The defendant is guilty of second-degree murder. Hes guilty of third-degree murder and hes guilty of second-degree manslaughter: all of them,' he said. 'This is not a justified used of force. You cant justify this use of force its not possible.

As he did throughout three weeks of testimony, Chauvin sat silent and expressionless and took notes on a yellow legal pad as Schleicher walked the jury through each of the charges he's facing: second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter

Floyd family members Tiffany Hall, Philonise Floyd and Reverend Al Sharpton are seen walking into the Hennepin County courthouse on Monday morning ahead of closing statements

Members of Floyd's family held their fists in the air in defiance as they approached the courthouse on Monday

Reverend Al Sharpton and members of George Floyd's family arrive at Hennepin County courthouse on Monday

Schleicher returned to his opening sentiments as he wound towards the end of his powerful two-hour closing statement. He had said at the start that Floyd had died surrounded by strangers but they were not, he said people who did not care.

'They all converged by fate in one single moment of time to witness something,' he said. 'To witness nine minutes 29 seconds of shocking abuse of authority, to watch a man die and there was nothing they could do about it because they were powerless. Because even they respected the badge. Even seeing this happening.

'All they could do was watch and gather what they could, gather their memories, their thoughts and impressions, those precious recordings and they gathered those up and they brought them here and they got up on the stand and they bore witness to this outrageous act and they gave you what they had.'

'And they gave it to you,' he said looking at the jury, 'Randomly selected people from the community. You got a summons in the mail and here you are  all converged on one spot.

'That power belongs to you. Only you have the power to convict the defendant of this crime and in so doing declare that this use of force was unreasonable it was excessive, it was grossly disproportionate.

'It is not an excuse for the shocking abuse you saw with your own eye. This case is exactly what you thought when you saw hit first.'

Returning to Jerry Blackwell's opening statements as he wrapped up his own closing, Schleicher said: 'You can believe your eyes. It's exactly what you knew it was. It's what you felt in your gut. It's what you now know in your heart.

'This wasn't policing, this was murder. The defendant is guilty on all three counts  all of them  there no excuse.'

The court took a break before Chauvin's attorney Eric Nelson stepped up for his closing statement, which he began by reminding the jury that the defendant 'doesn't have to play catch up', he starts with presumption of innocence.

For the first time in the case Chauvin set down the pen with which he has scribbled throughout and looked at the screen on which Nelson displayed definitions of standards of doubt, stretching out his arms and calling for them to consider the scales of justice, reasonably balanced.

Civil cases may use a 'preponderance of evidence' as a standard of proof he told them - a grain of sand that could, he suggested, tip the scales.

The next level is 'clear and convincing evidence'. This is the standard, Nelson told the jury, that the state used to, 'take away your children.'

The highest standard is proof 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. Nelson explained: 'Essentially what the state has to convince you is that the evidence in this case completely eliminates any reasonable doubt  or in other words leaving only unreasonable doubt, capricious, unpredictable, fanciful  space aliens flew in and inhabited the body of Derek Chauvin, that's fanciful.'

Where Schleicher was emotive, his language powerful, his images dramatic, Nelson asked the jury to be 'intellectually honest' and cast his own statements accordingly.

Most notably, Nelson took a quick swipe at the state's rebuttal of defense medical expert Dr David Fowler's contention that carbon monoxide may have played a part in Floyd's death.

Dr Tobin came in and told the jury, he said, that there could not have been any carbon monoxide poisoning because his oxygen saturation levels at hospital were 98 percent.

Nelson pointed out: 'I could get up in front of you and argue you to that we know this wasn't asphyxiation because George Floyd had a 98 percent oxygen level but that's not intellectually honest.

'It doesn't stack up against the rest of the evidence because of what we know. We heard the testimony of paramedic Seth Bravinder and [ER physician] Dr Langenfeld.

'They came in and said they began resuscitation efforts, they introduced oxygen they're manually breathing for him. They're re-oxygenating his blood.

'So, when you're looking at the evidence you have to compare it to all of the of the evidence.'

If they are missing any single element  even one single element - then, Nelson said, the verdict has to be not guilty. 'I submit to you that the state has failed to meet its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt,' he said.

Nelson focused in on the definition of objectively reasonably use of force because, in his words, 'No crime is committed if the police officers actions were reasonable.'

'You must look at those facts which a reasonable officer in the same situation would have known at the precise moment the officer acted with force,' he said.

'You must decide if the officer's actions were reasonable in light of the totality of the facts and circumstance in front of the officer and without regard to the officer's own state of mind, intention or motivations.'

As he did in his opening Nelson cast his net wide when it came to all of the things, he said, an objectively reasonable officer would have been aware of on the day of Floyd's death  the high crime area, the fact that it was high density and urban, the proximity of a hospital, the behavior of the suspect and the unpredictability of humans.

A reasonable officer, he said, will take into consideration his immediate surroundings and who hes on the scene with. 'Are these veteran officers, are they rookie officers?' Nelson asked. 'Throughout the course of this trial the state has focused you on nine minutes 29 seconds. The proper analysis is to take those nine minutes 29 seconds and put them in the context of what would a reasonable officer know.

And that picture, Nelson said, starts at the moment of dispatch.

What Chauvin knew, he said, was that a business had called, that the suspect was there, he was large and possibly under the influence.

That first call was a code 3  'get there fast, lights and sirens'  but it was cancelled when officers Thomas Lane and J Alexander Keung took the call over.

Defense attorney Eric Nelson is seen delivering his closing statement on Monday morning

In his instructions to the jury on Monday morning, Judge Cahill said that 'beyond reasonable doubt' is the standard upon which an 'ordinary prudent man or woman would act in their ordinary affairs.'

Reasonable doubt, he told them, is a doubt, 'based on common sense.' It is not 'a fanciful or capricious doubt nor is it beyond all doubt.'

Judge Peter Cahill opened Monday's proceedings by reading the jury instructions ahead of closing statements

He talked them through the law as it applies to each of the three counts faced by Chauvin. None of the charges  second-degree murder, third-degree murder or second-degree manslaughter  require the jury to find that Chauvin intended to cause substantial bodily harm or the death of George Floyd.

Even the most serious count only requires them to find that he committed the act of felony assault and does not need the additional element of any intention to cause the harm that it did. Put bluntly it would be enough for them to find that he did it.

Equally they may find him guilty of causing Floyd's death if they decide that his act or acts were a substantial factor in Floyd's death. They need not be the only factor if the jury but any others must be a direct result of Chauvin's act.

But if they decide that there was another superseding cause that was not a result of Chauvin's acts.

All of their assessments of Chauvin must be considered through the prism of whether his use of force was 'objectively reasonable in light of the totality of the facts without regard to the officer's own intentions.'

Chauvin is not guilty, he told them, if they find that the force he used was authorized by law.

When it comes to judging the veracity of witnesses' testimony 'there are no hard and fast rules,' and no weight at all can be given to the fact that Chauvin himself did not take the stand.

Minneapolis was transformed into a fortress over the weekend as city officials, business owners and residents braced for unrest that could follow the verdict in Chauvin's case.

More than 3,000 members of the National Guard are currently stationed in the city in addition to 1,100 officers from public safety agencies across the state as part of what has been termed Operation Safety Net.

In the early hours of Sunday, two members of the National Guard were injured in a drive-by shooting.

There were no serious injuries, said Adjutant General Maj Gen Shawn Manke, but he added that the incident 'highlights the volatility and tension in our communities right now'.

A Monmouth University poll released on Thursday found that 63 percent of Americans believe that acquittals across the board for Chauvin would be a negative step for race relations.

Thirty-seven percent said that if he were found guilty of murder, it would be a positive step.

Police unions, and conservatives more broadly, have warned against high-profile cases being judged on bigger issues outside the courtroom, such as race relations in general, rather than the evidence put forth in the proceedings.

The tension has been heightened by the killing less than 10 miles from downtown Minneapolis of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old black man shot by a white police officer, Kimberly Potter, at a traffic stop on April 11. She has been charged with manslaughter.

Members of the National Guard and police officers stand guard in Minneapolis ahead of a Chauvin verdict

Hennepin County Government Center, where the Chauvin trial is being held, is protected with high fences and concrete

Members of the National Guard stand on duty in downtown Minneapolis under Operation Safety Net

City Hall in Minneapolis is boarded up on Sunday and ringed in fencing and barbed wire ahead of the Chauvin verdict

The state's case: Prosecutors called 38 witnesses - including police officials, medical experts and people who watched Floyd's fatal arrest in real time - to prove the black man's death caused by Chauvin's actions

Chauvin's highly anticipated trial began on March 29 with an opening statement from trial attorney Jerry Blackwell, who vowed to prove that the defendant 'betrayed the badge' when he 'did not get up, did not let up' for nine minutes and 29 seconds, even after Floyd stopped breathing and despite the fevered pleas from bystanders for him to release Floyd.

MINNESOTA V DEREK CHAUVIN - CHARGES Second-degree murder Chauvin is charged with second-degree murder, which in Minnesota can be 'intentional' or 'unintentional.' The second-degree murder charge requires prosecutors to prove Chauvin caused Floyd's death while committing or trying to commit a felony  in this case, third-degree assault. Prosecutors must convince the jury that Chauvin assaulted or attempted to assault Floyd and in doing so inflicted substantial bodily harm. Prosecutors don't have to prove Chauvin was the sole cause of Floyd's death - only that his conduct was a 'substantial causal factor.' If the prosecution can prove Chauvin committed third-degree assault , he can be convicted of Floyd's death. Prosecutors are fearful that Chauvin will escape conviction for second-degree murder, that carries a maximum 40 year sentence. But because Chauvin does not have any prior convictions, sentencing guidelines recommend he serve no more than 25.5 years in jail. Second-degree manslaughter The manslaughter charge has a lower bar, requiring proof Chauvin caused Floyd's death through negligence that created an unreasonable risk, and consciously took the chance of causing severe injury or death. If convicted of second-degree manslaughter in Minnesota, the charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. But sentencing guidelines for someone without a criminal record call for no more than four years behind bars. Third-degree murder Third-degree murder would require a lower standard of proof than second-degree. To win a conviction, prosecutors would have to show only that Floyd's death was caused by an act that was obviously dangerous, though not necessarily a felony. That would result in a maximum sentence of 25 years. But there are caveats. Chauvin has no criminal history, which means he will likely end up serving about 12.5 years if he is convicted of second or third-degree murder. Advertisement

Over the next 11 days prosecutors brought in 38 witnesses - beginning with people who watched Floyd's fatal arrest unfold in real time.

Among them was 911 dispatcher Jena Scurry, who called the officers' supervisor with concerns about their use of force; off-duty firefighter and EMT Genevieve Hansen, who begged the officers to allow her to provide medical aid; nine-year-old Judea and her cousin Darnella Frazier, who filmed the most famous viral video of the arrest; and mixed martial arts fighter Don Williams, who testified that Chauvin used a 'blood choke' on Floyd.

Christopher Martin, the Cup Foods employee whose concerns about a counterfeit $20 bill Floyd used to buy cigarettes led to his arrest, also testified that he wished he hadn't said anything because he believes Floyd might still be alive today if he'd kept quiet.

During testimony from these eye-witnesses the jury was shown several graphic videos of Floyd's confrontation with police. Prosecutors also showed video of Floyd inside the Cup Foods store before police were called, in which he appeared agitated, distracted and potentially under the influence of drugs.

The second week of the trial was dominated by technical testimony, beginning with senior Minneapolis Police Department officials, including Chief Medaria Arradondo, who testified that Chauvin violated department policy when he restrained Floyd for nine minutes and 29 seconds.

Police officials testified that while officers might sometimes use a knee across a person's back or shoulder to gain or maintain control, they're also taught the specific dangers for a person in Floyd's position - prone on his stomach, with his hands cuffed behind him - and how such a person must be turned into a side recovery position as soon as possible.

Later in the prosecutors called a string of medical experts to testify that Floyd died due to a lack of oxygen, not from a primary cardiac event. Some of the most powerful testimony came from Dr Martin Tobin, a lung and critical care specialist who told jurors that other factors, not just Chauvin's knee, made it hard for Floyd to breathe: officers lifting up his handcuffs, the hard pavement, his turned head and a knee on his back.

Tobin pinpointed the moment when he said he could see Floyd take his last breath - and said Chauvin's knee remained on Floyd's neck another 3 minutes, two seconds. 'At the beginning, you can see he's conscious, you can see slight flickering, and then it disappears,' Tobin said as he highlighted a still image from police body-camera video. 'That's the moment the life goes out of his body.'

The state rested its case on April 13, at which point all eyes turned to Chauvin's attorney Nelson.

The defense case: Chauvin's attorneys called just seven witnesses to shift blame away from the ex-cop and onto Floyd's drug use and health problems

At the center of Nelson's defense was the argument that Floyd's death was not caused by Chauvin's actions but by outside factors - namely Floyd's drug addiction and underlying health conditions, including a bad heart.

Nelson made two other key arguments: that use of force is an unattractive but essential component of policing, and that the hostile crowd that surrounded Chauvin and fellow officers as they restrained Floyd had distracted them from proper procedure and care.

Nelson called just seven witnesses over two days of testimony. He began by showing the jury video from Floyd's arrest on May 6, 2019, in an effort to portray that he had a history of feigning medical distress and rapidly ingesting pills when confronted by police through testimony by an officer and a paramedic involved in that arrest.

The next two witnesses - Minneapolis Park Police Officer Peter Chang and Floyd's friend Shawanda Hill - spoke about what they saw on the day of Floyds death as the court was shown new body-camera footage of the chaos.

The sixth witness was Barry Brodd, a former cop and use-of-force expert who testified that Chauvin did not use deadly force against Floyd. In fact, Brodd argued that Chauvin's placing the handcuffed black man in the prone position and kneeling on his neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds did not constitute use of force at all.

'It's a control technique. It doesn't hurt,' Brodd said. 'It's safe for the officer, safe for the suspect and you're using minimal effort to keep them on the ground.'

During direct examination by Nelson, Brodd said Chauvin was 'justified' and acting 'with objective reasonableness' in his interactions with Floyd. He also leaned in to the defense narrative that Chauvin and his fellow officers felt 'threatened' by the gathering crowd.

But as he looked at the all-too-familiar image of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd's neck under cross-examination, Brodd was forced to concede that such a restraint would cause pain and thus also 'could be use of force'.

The final and perhaps most influential witness called was Dr David Fowler, a former chief medical examiner in Maryland who shared his conclusion that Floyd's death should have never been classified as a homicide because there were too many competing potential causes of death.

One of the potential causes Fowler presented was exposure to exhaust fumes from the squad car Floyd was pinned next to, which the defense witness said could have caused some degree of carbon monoxide poisoning.

The carbon monoxide point was one of many on which Fowler contradicted the opinions of medical experts who testified before him. Blackwell drilled down on those contradictions while attempting to chip away at Fowler's credibility during cross-examination, at one point telling him: 'You're not a toxicologist..a pulmonologist.. a cardiologist, a physiologistYou don't treat patients.'

Fowler's earliest contradiction over more than five hours of testimony on April 14 came when he shared his conclusion that Floyd died from a 'sudden cardiac arrhythmia' due to his underlying heart disease during his restraint by police. That conclusion was refuted by Dr Baker, the Hennepin County chief medical examiner who performed Floyd's autopsy.

Fowler also said that Floyd had an enlarged heart, which meant he needed more oxygen to function, and that methamphetamine use heightened his risk of cardiac arrhythmia.

Later in his lengthy and technical testimony, Fowler cited multiple studies which challenged the notion that the prone position - in which Floyd was held for nine minutes and 29 seconds - is inherently dangerous.

He also referenced studies which concluded that it doesn't matter how much a person weighs if they are applying a single knee to another person - and a double knee restraint makes only a modest difference.

According to those studies a person transfers just 23 percent of their bodyweight during a double knee restraint. So, Dr Fowler said, Chauvin  who he viewed as applying a single knee restraint for most of the restraint  would have been applying less than 30 to 35 pounds of weight to Floyd.

Fowler asserted that none of that weight compromised Floyd's 'vital neck structures', that there was no evidence of injury to Floyd's neck and that the pressure applied was less than the amount necessary to bruise him.

Moments before the defense rested Chauvin addressed the court for the first time on the morning of April 15 and invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination, meaning he would not take the stand.

In a brief rebuttal later that morning the prosecution recalled Dr Tobin to refute Fowler's claims about the potential for carbon monoxide poisoning, with which Tobin said he disagreed entirely.

Judge Cahill barred Tobin from referring to specific test results with Floyd's carbon monoxide levels, which the prosecution sought to enter into evidence just minutes earlier. But Tobin told the court Floyd's hemoglobin was 98 percent saturated with oxygen, leaving up to two percent for carbon monoxide. Pressing that point Tobin told the jury: 'You and I have somewhere between zero and three.'

Judge Cahill excused the jurors through the weekend, reminding them to pack a bag ahead of sequestration on Monday following closing statements.
OTTAWA, ON, April 19, 2021 /CNW/ -

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to create stress and anxiety for many Canadians, particularly those who do not have ready access to their regular support networks. Through the Wellness Together Canada online portal, people of all ages across the country can access immediate, free and confidential mental health and substance use supports, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

On this last stretch through the COVID-19 crisis, we can gain strength from good news and focussing on the things we're grateful for. I have been heartened by the many ways Canadians are helping to support their community. One such example comes to us from the Canadian Caribbean Association of Halton, in Ontario. Members of this community have come together to develop the 'Beat the COVID-19 Blues' program, which focusses on supporting individuals who need to self-isolate with healthy and nutritious meals. And their support does not end there, they have also arranged a program of free online family entertainment, including concerts and virtual cooking classes, to support a sense of community.

As COVID-19 activity continues in Canada, we are tracking a range of epidemiological indicators to monitor where the disease is most active, where it is spreading and how it is impacting the health of Canadians and public health, laboratory and healthcare capacity. At the same time, the Public Health Agency of Canada is providing Canadians with regular updates on COVID-19 vaccines administered, vaccination coverage and ongoing monitoring of vaccine safety across the country. The following is the latest summary on national numbers and trends, and the actions we all need to be taking to reduce infection rates, while vaccination programs expand for the protection of all Canadians. Due to reduced reporting over the weekend, national seven-day averages have not been updated in today's statement. These data are still being collected and analysed. I will provide the latest numbers during my remarks tomorrow.

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Since the start of the pandemic, there have been 1,121,498 cases of COVID-19, including 87,925 active cases and 23,623 deaths reported in Canada; these cumulative numbers tell us about the overall burden of COVID-19 illness to date. They also tell us, together with results of serological studies, that the vast majority of Canadians remain susceptible to COVID-19. As vaccine delivery ramps up at an accelerated pace, there is cause for optimism that widespread and lasting immunity can be achieved through COVID-19 vaccination. We now have multiple safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines with unique advantages that are authorised for use in Canada. Vaccine coverage is increasing across Canada, with benefits being seen in prioritized high-risk populations. Ramp up of vaccine supply and acceleration of vaccination programs will return further benefits to protect more Canadians, over the coming weeks and months.

However, with the current acceleration of COVID-19 activity and a concerning rise in the proportion of cases that involve more contagious variants of concern, strong public health measures and individual precautions must be sustained where COVID-19 is circulating. The latest national-level data show a 7-day average of 8,669 new cases daily (Apr 9-15), a 26% increase compared to the previous seven days. For the week of April 4 to 10, there were on average of 124,247 tests completed daily across Canada, of which 6.5% were positive for COVID-19, an increase from 5.1% the week prior. Sustained high infection rates are also impacting COVID-19 severity indicators, particularly in areas with elevated disease activity. The rise in severe and critical illnesses is placing renewed strain on the health system and healthcare workforce. Provincial and territorial data indicate that an average of 3,428 people with COVID-19 were being treated in Canadian hospitals each day during the most recent 7-day period (Apr 9-15) representing a 34% increase over last week. This includes, on average 1,049 people who were being treated in intensive care units (ICU), which is 22% higher than the previous week. Mortality trends are also increasing, with a 7-day average of 41 deaths reported daily, which is 38% higher than the week prior.

While COVID-19 continues to impact people of all ages in Canada, infection rates are highest among those aged 20 to 39 years of age. As well, we are seeing an increased number of adults under the age of 60 years being treated for COVID-19 in hospital, including in ICUs. This is a reminder that serious illness can occur at any age and evidence indicates that variants of concern can be associated with more severe illness and increased risk of death. In addition, circulation of COVID-19 in younger, more mobile and socially-connected adults is an ongoing risk for spread into high-risk populations and settings and several jurisdictions have highlighted social gatherings as an important driver for spread. As of April 18, a total of 62,522 variant of concern cases have been reported across Canada, including 59,911 involving B.1.1.7 variants, 2,196 P.1 variants and 415 B.1.351 variants. Although B.1.1.7, continues to account for the majority of variants of concern in Canada and has likely replaced the original virus in some areas, there has been a concerning rise in P.1 cases in recent weeks. Early evidence suggests that the P.1 variant may reduce the effectiveness of vaccines, making it even more important to control its spread.

Canadians are urged to remain vigilant, continue following local public health advice, and consistently maintain individual practices that keep us and our families safer: stay home/self-isolate if you have any symptoms, think about the risks and reduce non-essential activities and outings to a minimum, avoid all non-essential travel, and maintain individual protective practices of physical distancing, hand, cough and surface hygiene and wearing a well-fitted and properly worn face mask as appropriate (including in shared spaces, indoors or outdoors, with people from outside of your immediate household).

Canadians can also go the extra mile by sharing credible information on COVID-19 risks and prevention practices and measures to reduce COVID-19 in communities and by downloading the COVID Alert app to break the cycle of infection and help limit the spread of COVID-19. Read my backgrounder to access more COVID-19 Information and Resources on ways to reduce the risks and protect yourself and others, including information on COVID-19 vaccination.

SOURCE Public Health Agency of Canada

Cision

View original content: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/April2021/19/c5605.html
A Virtuous Cycle

(TNS)  Cars are returning to Worcester.For much of the last year, the COVID-19 pandemic stripped New Englands second-largest city of severe traffic. The peanut at Kelley Square smoothly siphoned cars around its curves. Vehicles cruised along Interstate I-290 without any inhibitions both in the morning and later in the evening. Motorists downtown and across the city had their pick of two or three parking spaces. But as vaccine doses rise, so do the number of cars packing into the city.Traffic is returning to Worcester despite many people still working from home. As the cars return it shines a spotlight on Worcesters lack of public transportation. Weve been in rough shape public transportation wise in Worcester and Central Massachusetts for a number of years, City Manager Edward Augustus Jr. said.Emerging out of the pandemic may offer an opportunity for the region. Congress already passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern said will allot about $200 million for Worcester. The breakdown will include $115 million for the city and $81 million for schools. McGovern said the city can use its discretion for much of the funding from the bill. On top of the American Rescue Plan, President Joe Biden is also pushing for an infrastructure bill that could be worth up to $4 trillion.Its funding that provides Augustus with some cautious optimism to restore some public transit routes that were cut due to funding.Augustus said when transportation funds are cut, it prompts a larger death spiral which could easily get out of hand.Route cuts [combined with] fare increases, its just killer, Augustus said. It doesnt go where I want it to go and it costs more so you drive more people away.Driving the public away from public transportation often places people back in personal cars or prevents those who cant afford a car to be restricted to a smaller area for goods and places to work.Its a lifeline, an essential service for people, Augustus said.Funding for public transportation from state and federal levels is important, Augustus said, because it inherently is inefficient. Buses arent always full and every stop isnt popular.Augustus said the key to any system would be to highlight the efficient aspects that can subsidize the inefficient areas.Due to the inherent inefficiencies, Augustus envisions an entirely new take on public transportation.Theres an on-call element to it. Is that a way to meld the two? Augustus asked. The Uber and Lyft sensibilities of transportation as opposed to a schedule and you have to schedule around when we go.Something like that already exists in Worcester County. Augustus emphasized the Worcester Regional Transit Authority using the mobile app Via.The innovation was funded through a $460,000 award from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.The app, WRTA Via, can be used with both iOS and Android devices and allows passengers to access an on-demand shuttle that provides services to Westborough High School, the Senior Center and two MBTA commuter rail stations.I think we need to figure out how to get more modern, if you will, with how people expect public transportation to be provided, Augustus said.In Worcester, there are two destinations involving public transportation: within the city and outside it.Investments at Union Station are evidence of how important the commuter rail into Boston is for the citys growth, Augustus said.Last year, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation announced a $29.3 million grant for an 800-foot-long, high-level platform that will allow disabled access and enable multiple trains to stop at the same time.Despite the investments, the total number of routes from Worcester to Boston was cut by the MBTA a month after the grant was announced as a result of cost-cutting measures linked to COVID-19.With public transit within the city, Augustus supports a free-fare system.The Zero Fare WRTA Coalition was formed after the Worcester Regional Research Bureaus Implications of a Fare-Free WRTA report was published in May. The coalition is made up of citizens advocating and organizing for a Worcester public transit system that is efficient, frequent, convenient and free, the group says.In the report, the Research Bureau said research and evidence from other cities have shown going fare-free to be perhaps the most effective ridership-boosting plan available to bus systems, a priority for a system like the WRTA that is suffering from significant drops in ridership.A price tag associated with a fare-free system is about $3 million.Worcesters specific conditions  rider demographics, farebox recovery ratios, service zone characteristics, and lean operations  point to a perfect candidate for a fare-free system, the report said. The equity implications of allowing all residents to ride the bus without paying a fare may overshadow the implications for government efficiency, but both are important factors in whether to implement a fare-free model.Augustus has seen the model work in other cities. Kansas City, he said, used federal stimulus money in the early 2000s to build a monorail system downtown, which is free.Federal money paid for the infrastructure of the monorail while assessments from businesses along the route pays for the service.Its a model that Ride the Woo plans to implement.The trolley service plans to offer visitors and residents of Worcester free rides across the city through partnerships with local businesses.Originally, Ride the Woo planned to debut around the same time Polar Park debut. The coronavirus, though, delayed plans.Any public transit initiative will require public buy-in, not just through the support of the idea but by participating.Worcester remains a car-centric city with public transportation sometimes seen as a means for those who cant afford a car. Its a sentiment unlike larger cities where large segments of the population depend on public transit for a primary means of getting around the city.I think its similar to the mindset that weve been trying to change for a number of years around parking, Augustus said.Augustus wants a public transit system where residents believe it works for them.It has to be a system that works for the customer, Augustus said. If you have a work meeting or an appointment, it has to work when you want to go. I keep coming back to this on-call system, I really think thats going to be [the future], the idea of using technology and the stuff that Uber and Lyft have transformed.Theres reason to believe the service would also work for the city.A public transit system in Worcester would likely involve stops within the Canal District, but it likely wouldnt stop at the Worcester Public Market then again at Crompton Place and yet again at the Fidelity Bank Ice Arena.The central stop locations would prompt more walking across the city, which Augustus said promotes the idea of safety. Safe places generate more visits and instead of a death spiral, it promotes a thriving ecosystem.It creates a virtuous cycle, Augustus said.Its something that could take off in all of Worcesters neighborhoods, connected Main South to Shrewsbury Street. Tatnuck Square to the Canal District and Greendale to College Hill.The work between those stops is just beginning, though.We dont see public transportation going away, August said. We see public transportation expanding and playing more of a critical role.
An allocation of over 2.56 million has been confirmed to Kilkenny County Council for the 2.8 million development of a modern library and other community facilities in Thomastown

Fine Gael TD John Paul Phelan said the funding is a timely boost for the town and surrounding hinterland.

This will be transformative for Thomastown. Not only will we get a new, modern library measuring over 500 square feet but it will be a fantastic public facility which will include printing services and study space for all. It is also planned to have the library open from early to late, seven days a week.

The vacated, old library building is also getting a very welcome boost and it will revert back for use by Thomastown Community Centre and its members. All of this investment will totally transform essential community services in Thomastown and will future proof it and benefit so many.

Fine Gael is committed to supporting services in rural communities and this investment will contribute greatly to the regeneration of the town and the provision of services to so many different age groups, interest groups, associations and more. Its all exceptionally good news for Thomastown and the surrounding hinterland and the services provided for the community for years to come, Deputy Phelan said.

The funding is part of a 75million announcement for 24 landmark regeneration projects in rural communities across the country.

Deputy John McGuinness also welcomed the funding.

"This is great news for Thomastown and will bring a great boost to the locality with the development of a community facility that will be enjoyed for generations to come.

Creating social and cultural focal points like this is of huge importance and this is a very positive investment that will bring great benefit to the people of Thomastown and surrounding areas, he said.

Welcoming the news on behalf of Kilkenny County Council, Chairman Andrew McGuinness said, Im delighted to welcome this very positive news today and particularly happy for the people in Thomastown who will now get their own state of the art facility that will help their community to thrive. Today is a good day for Kilkenny and a great day for Thomastown."

Local councillor Peter 'Chap' Cleere, who is the chair of the Callan-Thomastown Municipal District, has also welcomed the announcement, hailing the funding as great news.

The funding, which is being provided under the 1Billion Rural Regeneration and Development Fund will support the key objectives of Our Rural Future - the Governments ambitious new policy for Rural Ireland.

Announcing the funding today, Minister for Rural and Community Development, Heather Humphreys said:

Just three weeks ago, the Government launched Our Rural Future, the most ambitious and transformational policy for rural development in decades.

Today we are putting that policy firmly into action and delivering major investment aimed at town centre regeneration and supporting remote working.

These projects will breathe new life into towns and villages across the country making them attractive and vibrant places for people to live, work, socialise and raise a family.

A large number of the successful projects provide for the regeneration of vacant town centre buildings as remote working and hot-desking facilities. These projects will support remote workers and commuters to work from and remain in their own local community.
The Federal Court of Australia found that Google misled users about personal location data collection, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has announced. Justice Thomas Thawley on Friday ruled that the internet giant misled users into thinking that it could collect, keep or use personally identifiable location data only if the Location History setting was on.

However, another setting titled Web & App Activity also allowed Google these permissions. But the company didnt explicitly inform consumers of this. Moreover, this setting was on by default, thus enabling Google to collect personally identifiable location data from users.

The court ruling takes into account personal location data collected between January 2017 and December 2018 through Android mobile devices. During this period, when users later accessed the Location History setting to turn it off, Google continued to mislead them. The company didnt tell the users that turning off location history but leaving the Web & App Activity setting on would continue giving it those location data privileges.

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Furthermore, between 9 March 2017 and 29 November 2018, when users accessed the Web & App Activity setting to turn it off, Google misled them once again. It failed to inform them that the setting was relevant to the collection of personal location data.

We are extremely pleased with the outcome in this world-first case, ACCC Chair Rod Sims said in a statement. This is an important victory for consumers, especially anyone concerned about their privacy online, as the Courts decision sends a strong message to Google and others that big businesses must not mislead their customers.

The ACCC is seeking declarations and penalties from Google. The Commission did not specify an amount but said it will determine that later. According to a Reuters report, the ACCC would seek a penalty in the many millions.

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As expected, Google disagrees and is considering an appeal

As you might expect, Google does not agree with this court ruling and is considering an appeal. A company spokesman said that the internet giant was reviewing its options. The court rejected many of the ACCCs broad claims. We disagree with the remaining findings and are currently reviewing our options, including a possible appeal, the spokesman said.

The spokesperson was perhaps referring to other ACCC allegations about certain statements Google made about the methods by which consumers could prevent Google from collecting and using their location data, and the purposes for which personal location data was being used by Google. The federal court has dismissed those allegations.

Google is also fighting the Australian government over the proposed pay-for-news law. The internet giant has threatened to disable Search in the country if the government forces it to pay for news.
By Jonathan Allen

MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) - Jurors in the murder trial of Derek Chauvin began deliberations on Monday after a prosecutor implored them to "believe your eyes" as he replayed video of the former Minneapolis police officer kneeling on a dying George Floyd's neck.

Chauvin's lead lawyer, Eric Nelson, countered in his own closing argument that Chauvin behaved as any "reasonable police officer" would, saying that he followed his training from 19 years on the force.

Over and over again, Steve Schleicher, a prosecutor with the Minnesota Attorney General's office, repeated a phrase: "Nine minutes and 29 seconds"  the length of time Chauvin was captured on video on May 25, 2020, with his knee on Floyd's neck.

Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill gave the jury final instructions before it left the courtroom at 4 p.m. (2100 GMT) to begin deliberations. Jurors adjourned after four hours and were sequestered in a hotel. Deliberations resume on Tuesday.

Although the verdict will be seen as a reckoning of the way the United States polices Black people, Schleicher emphasized in remarks that lasted nearly two hours that the jury was weighing the guilt of only one man, not a system.

"This wasn't policing; this was murder," Schleicher told jurors. He cited the motto of the Minneapolis Police Department, which fired Chauvin and three other officers after Floyd's arrest: "To protect with courage and to serve with compassion."

"Facing George Floyd that day that did not require one ounce of courage, and none was shown on that day," Schleicher said, often speaking with audible anger and disgust. "All that was required was a little compassion and none was shown on that day."

Chauvin, who is white, knelt on Floyd, a 46-year-old handcuffed Black man, outside the grocery store where Floyd had been accused of buying cigarettes with a fake $20 bill. Bystanders filmed and screamed at Chauvin to get off and check Floyd's pulse.

Story continues

"He was trapped with the unyielding pavement beneath him, as unyielding as the men who held him down," Schleicher said, playing a clip of video he said showed Chauvin mocking Floyd's struggle to breathe.

UNATTRACTIVE FORCE

Chauvin has pleaded not guilty to second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree "depraved mind" murder and second-degree manslaughter.

Nelson, his lawyer, said prosecutors were wrong to dismiss his theory that carbon monoxide poisoning from the nearby police car's exhaust and Floyd's use of the opioid fentanyl may have contributed to Floyd's death.

He repeated a single phrase scores of times, saying Chauvin behaved as a "reasonable police officer" would with a man as "large" as Floyd, who was struggling against being put in a police car when Chauvin arrived, responding to a call for backup.

Chauvin, dressed in a gray suit and blue shirt and tie, removed his face mask, part of the coronavirus pandemic's social-distancing requirements, and watched jurors listen to his lawyer, who spoke for nearly three hours.

In a final rebuttal, Jerry Blackwell, another prosecutor, scoffed at the carbon monoxide theory.

"What 'reasonable police officer,' when apprehending someone on the ground, subdues them and puts their face in front of a tailpipe of a car, and then thinks that's a defense?" he asked.

The extensive video of Floyd's death from multiple angles is the heart of the prosecution's case, replayed for hours on end to the jurors.

"You can believe your eyes," Blackwell said, echoing Schleicher's phrasing. "It was what you saw. It was homicide."

He said the video shows Chauvin using unreasonable, and therefore illegal, force in compressing Floyd's torso against the road, starving him of oxygen.

He said it was something that was obvious even to the youngest bystander who testified. "Even a 9-year-old little girl knows it: Get off of him," Blackwell said.

But Nelson used the same videos to try to prove the opposite point. The fact that Chauvin continued kneeling on Floyd even as he knew he was being filmed was evidence he believed he was responding to the scene in a reasonable way, Nelson said.

"In this case, the totality of the circumstances that were known to a reasonable police officer in the precise moment the force was used demonstrates that this was an authorized use of force, as unattractive as it may be," Nelson said.

National news networks carried live broadcasts of testimony after the first of 45 witnesses took the stand three weeks ago, although the coverage was sometimes interrupted by fresh episodes of police violence caught on camera.

The closest instance occurred a few miles from the courthouse in downtown Minneapolis when a white police officer fatally shot a Black motorist, Daunte Wright, on April 11 in a traffic stop in the nearby suburb of Brooklyn Center.

As angry protests swelled, Minneapolis and state officials have ramped up security precautions. The tower in which the courtroom sits is ringed by barbed wire and armed soldiers from the National Guard.

For the second-degree murder charge, 12 jurors will have to agree that prosecutors proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Chauvin committed a felony, in this case assault, that was a substantial cause in Floyd's death. They do not have to find that Chauvin intended to kill Floyd.

That crime carries a punishment of up to 40 years in prison, although sentencing guidelines call for a shorter sentence of up to 15 years for someone with no prior convictions.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Additional reporting by Brendan O'Brien; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Peter Cooney)
Indias cases spiral

Delhi enacted a weeklong citywide lockdown on Monday, as coronavirus infections and deaths in India reported new daily records and several local governments announced they were facing shortages of oxygen, I.C.U. beds and treatments.

Our health systems have reached its limit, Delhis chief minister said. We have almost no I.C.U. beds left. We are facing a huge shortage of oxygen.

Several regions, including Maharashtra and parts of Uttar Pradesh, imposed lockdown-like restrictions. In the eastern state Jharkhand, the chief minister asked for permission to import more remdesivir, an experimental drug, for emergency use.

The shortages have resulted in squabbles between opposition-led state governments and the central government. And nonstop cremations across the country have been casting doubt on the official toll of the victims, Reuters reports.
SAN FRANCISCO, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The recall of embattled San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, one of a band of so-called progressive/rogue DAs elected around the country, is gathering significant steam.

"It has been a little more than a month since we launched the recall petition, first online," explains recall committee chairman Richie Greenberg, "We are energized. Our effort has seen ever-increasing support through donations as well as the public's enthusiasm. We've sent targeted emails to voters. We are keeping sight on the August 11th deadline as operations will ramp up significantly in the next week. San Franciscans from across the political spectrum are now united in simply wanting their safe streets back. They want the ability to freely walk in the park without fear of getting robbed. Our neighborhood stores shouldn't be looted. Our property shouldn't be stolen."

Elected in 2019 by barely 14% of the registered San Francisco voter in first round ballot, Boudin promised criminal justice reform. Instead, policies which protect criminals coupled with no prosecutorial experience have resulted in a dismantling of virtually all criminal trials. Home invasion burglaries, arson, auto thefts, shop lootings, brazen daytime robberies at gunpoint have all skyrocketed as such crimes have been green-lighted by Boudin's hands-off policies.

"Boudin isn't performing the prosecutor duties he is being paid an annual $400,000 compensation for. Now, San Franciscans are moving forward to recall him."

The Committee Supporting the Recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin leads the recall effort, with website at https://RecallChesaBoudin.org.

MEDIA CONTACT:

The Committee Supporting the Recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin

Richie Greenberg, Chairman

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Committee Supporting the Recall of DA Chesa Boudin

Related Links

https://recallchesaboudin.org


Suburban Minneapolis police shoot, kill alleged carjacker View Photo

BURNSVILLE, Minn. (AP)  Police in suburban Minneapolis shot and killed a man Sunday afternoon who was allegedly involved in a carjacking and fired shots at pursuing officers, according to a release from the Burnsville Police Department.

The release said officers encountered the suspect, believed to be a white man in his 20s, driving a vehicle with stolen plates in Burnsville, south of Minneapolis. Shortly after the suspect crashed the vehicle, officers received a report that the same man had then stolen a car from a woman at gunpoint.

Police said the suspect began shooting at police during a chase before crashing the vehicle. The suspect continued to fire at police and multiple officers returned fire, according to the release. The man was later pronounced dead at a Minneapolis hospital.

No officers were injured and those involved have been placed on standard administrative leave, the release said. All officers wear body cameras, which will be part of the investigation by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the statement said.

The Star Tribune, citing traffic camera video, said the man jumped out of a moving white car, ran along the median and into traffic, and appeared to point a gun at a white SUV.

A snippet of the traffic camera video posted online showed the man stepping out of a slowly moving vehicle on a highway on-ramp, then stepping into traffic and appearing to try to stop the SUV, which slowed and then veered away. A police car quickly pulled up next to the man.

The shooting comes a day before closing arguments in former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvins trial in the death of George Floyd, and after a week of unrest that followed the fatal shooting of a 20-year-old Black man by a police officer in Brooklyn Center, another suburb.

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[April 19, 2021] Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP Announces Former Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Zweig Has Joined the Firm's Manhattan Office

Jonathan Zweig has joined Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP as Of Counsel and is based in the Manhattan office. Mr. Zweig served for over six years as an Assistant Attorney General with the New York State Office of the Attorney General's Investor Protection Bureau, where he prosecuted civil securities fraud actions and tried major cases on behalf of investors and the State. Mr. Zweig's work on behalf of New York helped establish the retroactive application of the Martin Act's expanded statute of limitations. Mr. Zweig also conducted investigations of Credit Suisse concerning its alternative trading system (or "dark pool") and wholesale market making business, resulting in joint settlements with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and payments from Credit Suisse totaling $70 million. For his exceptional work as a securities fraud prosecutor, Mr. Zweig was twice awarded the Louis J. Lefkowitz Award for Exceptional Service. Robbins Geller partner Sam Rudman noted: "We're excited to have Jonathan - another top-notch trial awyer - join our expanding Manhattan office."



Mr. Zweig joins Chad Johnson, Noam Mandel, and Desiree Cummings, all of whom are highly experienced securities litigators in the Firm's Manhattan office. "I am proud to join Robbins Geller, where I can represent victims of corporate fraud and abuse alongside enormously talented colleagues," said Mr. Zweig.

Before his work as an Assistant Attorney General, Mr. Zweig was a litigator at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, where he represented clients in securities litigation, mass tort, and other litigations. Mr. Zweig also clerked for Judge Jacques L. Wiener, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and Judge Sarah S. Vance of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Mr. Zweig earned his Bachelor of Arts degree, summa cum laude, from Yale University, and his Juris Doctor degree, magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School. Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP is the world's leading complex litigation firm representing plaintiffs in securities fraud, antitrust, corporate mergers and acquisitions, consumer and insurance fraud, multi-district litigation, and whistleblower protection cases. With 200 lawyers in 9 offices, Robbins Geller has obtained many of the largest securities, antitrust, and consumer class action recoveries in history, recovering tens of billions of dollars for victims of fraud and corporate wrongdoing. Robbins Geller attorneys are consistently recognized by courts, professional organizations, and the media as leading lawyers in their fields of practice. Please visit rgrdlaw.com for more information. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005815/en/

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The City of Washington Police Department took to social media to remind parents of the importance of discussing with their kids the dangers of playing with realistic toy guns.

Kids Shooting at Each Other for Fun

It has come to the attention of the local police that a group of kids has been driving around town playing a game called "Assassin," which involved shooting each other with real-looking toy guns, Fox News reported. The police received a report that the youth was armed with what appeared as real guns being pointed from a moving vehicle.

Local authorities were able to stop the vehicle and discovered the Youth were carrying bb guns. They proceeded to warn the kids that the so-called game can put them in dangerous situations.

ALSO READ: Talking To Your Kids About Gun Violence

Further, the social media post was meant to urge discussion between other parents and their kids on bb guns, telling parents to "please talk to your kids not to play this game as it causes dangerous situations."

ALSO READ: 3-Year-Old Oregon Boy Dies After Accidentally Shooting Himself with Gun

Should Parents Ban Realistic Toy Guns?

Experts advise against buying toy guns that make them feel uncomfortable. However, experts warn parents not to forbid toy guns entirely, Parents noted. Why so? Educator Jane Katch revealed that the act of banning could make playing toy guns even more desirable.

A better option would be to have kids use their imagination in making their own pretend guns. There should also be ground rules like not pointing them at others and not bringing them to school, at an online class, or in public. Parents also need to remind their children that play guns may be mistaken for the real thing. As such, there could be tragic consequences that can be fatal even for a child.

ALSO READ: A 9-Year-Old Student Was Suspended, Teacher Reported Seeing Him With a BB Gun During Virtual Class

Realistic Play Guns Can Lead to Real Danger

Edmonton Police previously launched a campaign to build awareness about the safe use of imitation guns to reduce incidents that would require police response.

Police are reminding parents and children that it can be hard to tell a fake gun from a real gun especially when an imitation gun is brought out in public. The details on a realistic toy gun can be indistinguishable from a real one. Police identified the following as imitation guns:

Toy guns

Replica guns

Prop guns

Airsoft guns

BB guns

Pellet guns

Paintball guns

The police will respond to reports of the use of firearms with seriousness and thus can lead to police shootings, serious injuries, and, unfortunately, in some cases, even death. There are currently over a thousand cases of weapons complaints involving imitation guns.

Consequences that follow can include seizing the gun, herring fined, charged, or even arrested. Schools also generally disapprove of bringing toy guns to school. Kids can get suspended when they are found carrying a toy gun, even to an online class on Zoom or Google Hangouts.
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Troops of the Nigerian Armed forces on Sunday foiled attempts by Boko Haram to take over Dikwa, headquarters of Dikwa Local Government Area of Borno State.

A statement by the Army spokesperson, Mohammed Yerima, said the terrorists suffered high casualties in their failed bid.

Dikwa has been a soft target for the terrorists in recent years where they attack and wreck havoc on the residents.

The most recent attack was less than a month ago where seven aid workers were abducted from the area.

The insurgents during the attack also burnt the offices of the aid workers, destroyed government facilities, and hospitals belonging to non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

The statement said the terrorists were said to have suffered heavy losses in both equipment and personnel including some of their key leaders.

The army, however, did not specify in numbers of casualties.

Read full statement:

BOKO HARAM SUFFERED HIGH CASUALTY IN A FAILED ATTEMPT TO TAKE DIKWA

Troops of Operation Lafiya Dole currently carrying out Operation Tura Takaibango stationed at Dikwa and Gulumba Gana supported by the Air Component inflicted heavy casualty on Boko Haram Terrorists who attempted to take control of the strategic town of Dikwa, the headquarters of Dikwa LGA of Borno State. The terrorists in their numbers mounted on 12 gun trucks attacked the town on the eve of Sunday 18 April 2021, just as the locals prepare to break their Ramadan fast for the day. The troops having contained the initial wave of the attack had to occupy their alternative Headquarters at Gulumba Gana to enable the Air Component engage any gun trucks and other technicals in the vicinity of the attack to prevent fratricide. The troops launched a counter attack in the early hours of Monday 19 April 2021 and successfully reoccupied their main headquarters in Dikwa.

The retreating terrorists suffered heavy losses in both equipment and personnel including some of their key leaders from the superior fire power of own troops both from the air and ground forces. The troops are currently patrolling Dikwa town and environs to assess the level of damage inflicted on the terrorists.

The Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Ibrahim Attahiru, has commended the troops for their doggedness and directed them to restrategise in order to prevent any further attacks in the area. The Nigerian Army remains committed towards ensuring a safe and secure environment through out the North East theatre.

Mohammed Yerima

Brigadier General

Director Army Public Relations

19 April 2021
The state constitution prescribes the process for redistricting General Assembly districts but not congressional representation. For the state legislative remap, lawmakers have until June 30 to approve a map that is put into law. If they fail to meet that deadline, an eight-member commission is formed, made up of two members selected by each of the four partisan leaders of the Illinois House and Senate, to come up with a new map by Aug. 10. If that fails, a ninth partisan tiebreaking member of the commission is chosen by Sept. 5. A new map must be submitted by Oct. 5.
We wanted to bring this back last season as weve done different things over the years, but of course it was canceled last spring, said Cori Veverka, cultural arts supervisor for the Oswegoland Park District. Its a great socially-distant event and we usually see a couple hundred people come throughout the day. Some come in the morning, some for a picnic lunch, and we have good visibility from the road for people driving by.
Leaders in the nation's capital are bracing for more demonstrations as the jury began deliberating Monday night in the trial of a former Minneapolis police officer charged with the murder of George Floyd.

The National Guard in Washington got a request from the city for 250 personnel who can support local law enforcement. The Guard members will be unarmed and will assist police with street closures at multiple intersections to help keep pedestrians safe, said Capt. Chelsi Johnson, a D.C. National Guard spokeswoman.

All 250 of the Guard members will be from the D.C. area, she added, and will come from a mix of military occupational specialties.

Acting Army Secretary John Whitley reviewed and approved the request.

"Supporting the Metropolitan Police Department is a part of the portfolio of the D.C. National Guard, and our team is uniquely qualified to conduct this mission," the D.C. National Guard said in a statement to Military.com. "The D.C. National Guard remains strong with soldiers and airmen available to execute its requested missions."

Read Next: Two Guardsmen Return to Duty After Being Shot at in Minneapolis; 3K Troops Brace for Unrest

The request was made as the prosecution and defense in the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin finished their closing arguments Monday in Minneapolis. The trial started March 29.

Chauvin was charged with murdering Floyd after he was captured on video in May 2020 kneeling on the Black man's neck for more than nine minutes during an arrest. The defense contends that Floyd's health conditions and drug use led to the 46-year-old man's death. The prosecution says Floyd's death was the direct result of Chauvin kneeling forcefully on the man's neck.

Two Guard members in Minneapolis were fired upon Sunday morning as that city, where the trial is taking place, braces for unrest.

Floyd's death led to protests in cities across the country and reignited the national debate on police brutality and racism. It also led military leaders to issue statements of unity and review policies that could inadvertently be discriminating against some troops.

National Guard members have for months been tasked by governors across the country to respond to some of the nationwide protests. That includes in Washington, D.C., where a viral photo taken June 2 showing Guard members lined up on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial raised questions about the role the military should play in First Amendment demonstrations.

The photo was taken a day after low-flying helicopters hovered over protesters in the District -- a tactic typically used in war zones. The incident prompted a monthslong investigation; actions were taken against several personnel involved after the tactics were deemed inappropriate for the situation. Army officials have not disclosed the types of punishments or details about those who were involved.

The new request for troops in Washington comes as thousands still stand guard near the U.S. Capitol, which was violently overrun by supporters of President Donald Trump on Jan. 6, resulting in several deaths. That mission has been extended until at least May 23.

-- Gina Harkins can be reached at gina.harkins@military.com. Follow her on Twitter @ginaaharkins.

Related: Task Force Calls for Permanent National Guard Force to Protect DC
Every year, the Supreme Court receives about 10,000 petitions and hears only around 80 cases. Four justices have to vote to hear an appeal, which ensures that thousands of petitions are swatted away without comment, leaving the lower courts decision as the final word. Unfairness is baked into the cake: SCOTUSs desire for tidy docket management means that egregious wrongs go unrighted simply because four justices lack the nerve, the bandwidth, or the desire to address them. A majority of the court seems content with this state of affairs. Not Justice Sonia Sotomayor. In recent years, Sotomayor has emerged not only as the conscience of the court but as the watchdog of its docket. She continually writes separate opinions to flag cases involving extreme cruelty, lawlessness, and other inequities. Her goal appears to be to urge the public to pay attention to the injustices that the Supreme Court lets stand.

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On Monday, the Supreme Court turned away two cases, Brown v. Polk County and Whatley v. Warden, with appalling facts, prompting Sotomayor to write separately about each of them. Start with Brown. In 2017, Sharon Brown was arrested for suspected shoplifting in Polk County, Wisconsin. While in the county jail, two inmates accused her of hiding a packet of methamphetamines in a body cavity. Jail officials sent Brown to the hospital, where a doctor used a speculum to open and examine her vagina. When he found no drugs, he inserted the speculum into Browns anus and opened it. The doctors headlamp then went out, so Brown waited with the speculum in her anus while he searched for a flashlight. After several minutes, he found the flashlight and discovered no drugs.

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Brown sued the jail officials for violating her Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches. She argued that the Constitution requires correctional officers to obtain a warrant based on probable cause before searching the body cavities of a pretrial detainee. (It should be noted that pretrial detainees like Brown have not been convicted of a crime and are legally innocent.) The lower courts ruled against her, finding that officers need only a reasonable suspicion for such a search, and had it in this case. Brown appealed, urging the Supreme Court to rule that a warrant, rather than mere reasonable suspicion, is necessary to conduct such an invasive search of pretrial detainees.

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SCOTUS turned away the case without comment. Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself because, while serving on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, she participated in the decision not to take up the case as a full court after a three-judge panel ruled against Brown. Sotomayor concurred with the courts decision not to hear Browns appeal, writing that SCOTUS should wait to act until other courts consider the issue. (Under an informal rule, the Supreme Court lets legal questions percolate in the lower courts before rendering a verdict.)

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Following this gesture of collegiality, however, Sotomayor recounted the revolting facts with an eye toward the systemic racism and sexism that lie just behind them. She quoted extensively from Browns testimony, noting that, when the doctor removed the speculum from her anus, she said: I immediately started crying. I couldnt stop. I cried myself to sleep. I cried all the way back to the jail. I cried the whole time I was getting dressed.

This trauma left Brown with anxiety and depression, Sotomayor wrote. She slept just three hours a night. She experienced flashbacks and feared leaving the house, terrified the police would pull her over and send her back to jail. Nearly two years later, Brown was still afraid of being alone in a room with a man. Even her own brother.

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Sotomayor pointed out that the Polk County jail has a policy of believing inmates who accuse a fellow detainee of concealing drugs and automatically perform cavity searches on these individuals. An unverified charge from a stranger with unknown motives could send anyone to the hospital for a penetrative search, just like Brown, she wrote. Meanwhile, almost anyone can be arrested for something thanks to the dramatic expansion of criminal laws. An unbuckled seatbelt, a noisy muffler, an unleashed dog: Any one of countless petty misdemeanors might land you in jail.

People of color disproportionately bear these burdens, Sotomayor continued. Brown is a member of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. Native American people are vastly overrepresented in Wisconsin jails and prisons. And, citing an amicus brief filed in the case, Sotomayor pointed out that Native American women experience sexual violence at higher rates than any other population in the United States, meaning non-consensual body cavity searches are more likely to traumatize and retraumatize these women and their communities. (The justice has long paid attention to the disparate impact of overpolicing and overcriminalization racial minorities.)

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Will Sotomayors opinion have any effect? On the public, certainly: It has already drawn attention (and scorn) to an obscure county jails odious policies, as well as their degrading and dehumanizing effects on detainees. But she also issued a warning to lower courts: Jails must consider less offensive and invasive methods before resorting to a body cavity search. The courts below considered no such alternatives before holding that reasonable suspicion alone justified this degrading search into Browns vagina and anus, she cautioned. Future courts presumably will not do the same. Translation: Lower court judges, dont do this again.

Sotomayors opinions give voice to those crushed by the wheels of the criminal justice system.

Sotomayors other opinion on Monday, Whatley v. Warden, was an outright dissent. The facts of the case are stunning. After a jury in Georgia found Frederick R. Whatley guilty of murder, his trial moved to the penalty phasewhen the jury would decide whether to recommend the death sentence. The Supreme Court has ruled that due process forbids the needless, visible shackling of defendants during this phase of a trial because it prejudices the jury. Yet Whatleys attorney allowed him to hobble up to the stand, his shackles clearly visible to the jury, to testify for several hours. The prosecutor then directed Whatley to reenact the alleged murder using a toy pistol while providing a running commentary. (I want you to point the gun at me just like you did him that day.) As Sotomayor described it, Whatleys chains clanked and rattled with every move, constantly reminding the jury that the court apparently believed he might do more than just pretend to kill someone in the courtroom if left unrestrained. Yet his defense attorney allowed all this to take place without objection.

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Unsurprisingly, the jury sentenced Whatley to death. He then claimed that he had ineffective assistance of counsel in violation of the Sixth Amendment because his lawyer failed to object to his visible shackling, even during the bizarre reenactment. Every lower court ruled against him, and the Supreme Court rejected his appeal without comment. Sotomayor dissented, writing that she would order a new sentencing hearing for Whatley. As she explained:

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Chains paint a defendant as an immediate threat. Jurors faced with a defendant in shackles will find it more difficult to consider the defendant as a whole person and to weigh mitigating evidence impartially. If jurors think the court does not trust a capital defendant to avoid violence at his own sentencing proceeding, with his life on the line, they are unlikely to trust him to do so while serving a life sentence with no hope of parole.  Whatleys chains, fresh in the jurys mind from the previous afternoons spectacle, powerfully corroborated the prosecutors argument. It is hard to imagine a more prejudicial example of needless shackling.

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Powerful wordsyet Sotomayor could not even convince fellow liberal Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan to join her dissent. Maybe thats beside the point. Opinions like this one give voice to those crushed by the wheels of the criminal justice system. It echoes her opinionsmostly lone dissentsin cases that involve police brutality, the death penalty, prosecutorial misconduct, highly questionable or downright corrupt judicial practices, prison conditions during COVID, and the rights of clemency applicants. At the end of Donald Trumps execution spree, Sotomayor published a dissent that named every individual put to death by the administration, as if bearing witness. In January, Sotomayor even plucked out an obscure petition by a mentally ill immigrant facing deportation to Haiti, where he faced persecution, including torture. She scolded her colleagues for allowing the government to deport the immigrant while he appealed his removal order, denying him the small grace to which he is legally entitled.

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Perhaps a small grace is what Sotomayor seeks to provide in these opinions, as well. She knows she has not persuaded three other justices, let alone a majority of the court, to come to her side. She knows prosecutors, law enforcement officers, and lower courts may simply ignore her stern warnings. But she writes them anyway, because she believes it is important to put on the record the unconstitutional abuses that voiceless people face in the United States every day. With this extremely conservative court, that may be the most that she, or any of us, can hope for.

As politicians race to pass new voter suppression measures across the country, the fight for voting rights has never been more important. Slate Plus members allow us to cover this fight for the franchise with the urgency it deserves. We really couldnt devote the time and resources necessary to report out this monumental story were it not for your support. Mark Joseph Stern, staff writer
Investigators refusal to open case over nationalist Martsinkevichs death deemed illegal

 RAPSI, Vladimir Burnov

17:40 19/04/2021

MOSCOW, April 19 (RAPSI)  The Chelyabinsk Regional Court invalidated an investigators refusal to open a case over the death of the leader of the Restruct nationalist movement Maxim Martsinkevich, who was found dead in a Chelyabinsk detention center in the fall of 2020, attorney Alexey Mikhalchik told RAPSI on Monday.

The court found arguments of the appellants convincing, overturned an order to dismiss criminal complaint and ordered investigators to conduct a repeated check of the death circumstances, the lawyer stated.

Relatives of Martsinkevich insisted that a murder case needed to be opened.

Moreover, the results of an examination, initiated on request of lawyer Alexey Mikhalchik, of injuries found on the body of Martsinkevich, ruled out the theory that he committed suicide. Mikhalchik cited the findings of forensic physician Elena Kuchina, whom he asked to conduct the examination; according to the results it did not seem possible that Martsinkevich could do himself certain injuries he suffered.

Martsinkevich was found dead in a detention cell in September 2020. He left a suicide note, a source familiar with the matter told RAPSI. The man could bargain for release in 2021, his defense said earlier.

Martsinkevich, an infamous Russian nationalist, had a history of clashes with the law. In 2014, he was sentenced to five years in prison for publishing extremist content on the Internet.

He was also convicted of publishing online a video of staging a pretentious execution of a Tajik drug dealer and extremist statements and received 3.5 years in prison in two cases taken together.

In December 2018, Moscows Babushkinsky District Court gave Martsinkevich 10 years in prison for robbery and hooliganism. His associate, a leader of the St. Petersburg cell of Restruct movement established by Martsinkevich, Mikhail Shalankevich received a 6-year prison term but was released due to the time served in detention.

Besides Martsinkevich, nine members of the Restruct movement were involved in the case. According to case documents, under pretense of drug interdiction, the group attacked people who sell smoking mixtures in 2013-2014 in Moscow using electro shockers, gas sprayers and metallic pipes, leaving several people traumatized and one person dead.

The case was reconsidered as in May 2018 the Moscow City Court overturned a specific part of the defendants 10-year prison term concerning robbery and hooliganism and ordered the case review. The court also mitigated sentence for three associates of Martsinkevich, who were also defendants in the case. Dmitry Sheldyashev and Alexander Shankin were sentenced to 5 years and 10 months in a penal colony while Roman Maksimov received 4 years and 10 months.




MDC-T activist Patson Murimoga is lobbying party members to demonstrate against their leader Douglas Mwonzora on Thursday this week to compel him to account for over $6 million which he allegedly stole from party coffers.

Murimoga, formerly Mwonzoras close ally, told NewsDay that the demonstration would be held on Thursday at Parliament Building to petition the Senate to intervene on the matter.

He is accusing the MDC-T leader and Manicaland senator of conniving with the partys finance director, Toddy Mapingire, to loot the money, which he allegedly used to buy foreign currency on the parallel market.

Last week, Murimoga lodged a complaint with the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (Zacc) and urged it to investigate why police had not yet arrested Mwonzora for the theft of the $6 million despite overwhelming evidence against him.

He said he had already notified the police about the demonstration, but was still awaiting clearance.

National police spokesperson Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi said: I am not privy to issues happening in town, I am currently out of Harare.

Murimoga said the MDC-T had always claimed it was anti-corruption and pro-democracy, hence the need to uphold those values.

That is why on April 22, 2021, we are lobbying for party members to participate in the demonstration to demand our money back from Mwonzora. We demand the arrest of Mwonzora for money-laundering and theft, he said.

I have no personal grudges with Mwonzora. For a very long time, he was my closest ally. But I am a pro-democracy campaigner. Democracy has no sides. As the MDC-T party, we believe that we are a government-in-waiting. Therefore, if leadership fails to account for a paltry $6 million, what then of the other national treasures? How then can the party be entrusted with national governance when it is failing to manage its own internal accounting systems?

Murimoga said the disappearance of the $6 million had left the party broke, adding that it was failing to settle its debts as well as pay its employees.

He said the party had not yet paid for the Zupco buses hired to ferry party members to an extraordinary congress held in December last year, which endorsed Mwonzora as the party president.

Employees have gone for months without getting salaries. I, for instance, am a driver, but I have not yet gotten my salary for some months and that is the situation with the majority of the party employees, Murimoga said.

He said Mwonzora demonstrated against Zanu PF over the disappearance of the US$15 billion diamond revenue, hence the need for him to be consistent on issues of accountability and transparency.

But Mwonzoras spokesperson Lloyd Damba said the demonstration sponsored by losers would be a flop.

This is not the first time we have heard of these demonstrations on social media and we do not expect them to be the last, he said.

Mwonzora is not fazed at all about these nonsensical sideshows which are being sponsored by malcontents and extraordinary congress losers. The president is concentrating on rebuilding and rebranding the party. The ordinary congress will settle the leadership question once-and-for-all and flush anti-revolutionaries out of the cockpit.

On the issue of party debts, Damba said Murimoga could not comment on party finances since he did not work in the accounts department. Newsday
Press Release

April 19, 2021 As vaccine rollout reaches more essential sectors, including news media frontliners, Bong Go calls on gov't to ramp up vaccination in a more accessible, efficient and orderly manner Senator and Chair of the Senate Committee on Health Christopher "Bong" Go earlier welcomed the decision of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases to include frontline news media workers in the updated list of sectors under Priority Group A4 of the National COVID-19 Vaccine Program. The Senator had previously appealed to the government to include members of the media in the COVID-19 priority list without prejudice to other sectors already identified as priorities. In an interview given on Saturday, April 17, Go pointed out the significant role played by the media in disseminating information about the pandemic to the public. He pointed out that media workers, especially field reporters, put their health and safety at risk in order to keep Filipinos informed about the country's current situation. "Ang importante naman rito ngayon, kung ano 'yung available na bakuna na dumarating, sundin lang natin ang priority list ng gobyerno, sa health workers, sa frontliners, pababa sa indigents, sa mga senior citizens. Ito naman sa A4 natin ... ay napakahalaga rin ang kanilang (media) ginagampanan," said the Senator. According to a resolution approved by the IATF on April 15, frontline media workers in private and government news organizations will be vaccinated alongside other essential sectors in the A4 category, such as commuter transport workers, market vendors and frontline workers in the food industry, among others. "I will clarify sa IATF kung anong mga guidelines at polisiya, saan kayo lalapit para mabakunahan na at tuloy-tuloy ang ating roll-out," Go said while addressing the media. In line with this, Go called on government to provide detailed guidelines on required processes to be followed by those who are next in line or are now eligible to be inoculated. Go reiterated the need to ensure accessible, efficient and orderly vaccine rollout in different parts of the country to lessen waiting time and exposure of the public. He also urged DOH to spread out vaccination centers in barangays and even consider administering vaccines in villages or smaller residential clusters. "Bringing vaccines to smaller residential clusters, like villages, sitios, or subdivisions, will avoid overcrowding in existing vaccination centers and will prevent the further spread of COVID-19," Go said. "As we expect more vaccines to be delivered and as we have also widened the priority list to cater to more essential sectors, we must keep on ramping up and speeding up the vaccination rollout to achieve herd immunity," he added. He said doing inoculation in smaller residential clusters would be safer for residents than if they were to go to overcrowded barangay vaccination centers and those located in malls. "LGUs and DOH must maximize available facilities, volunteers, doctors and nurses to speed up an orderly inoculation. Sabi nga ng Pangulo noon, dalhin dapat ang bakuna sa pinaka-mahihirap at pinaka-malalayong mga lugar," he said. On this note, Go reiterated the importance of strictly adhering to the vaccination priority list. He reminded the public to be disciplined, vigilant, and cooperative with the government in the face of rising new cases of COVID-19 infections. "Ulitin ko, sumunod tayo sa priority list, alam natin gusto na natin mabakunahan pero ayaw natin mayroong mag-oovertake na hindi naman kasama sa priority list," stressed Go. "Huwag kayong mag-alala dahil ginagawa naman ng gobyerno ang lahat. Ang importante rito, tuloy-tuloy ang pagbabakuna... sakripisyo muna tayo ngayon. Disiplinahin natin ang ating mga sarili, turuan natin ang ating mga kapitbahay na magdisiplina. Para naman ito sa ating lahat para hindi tayo mas mahirapan," he reasoned.
State troopers respond to a traffic stop in which 17 illegal aliens were discovered in a vehicle driven by a U.S. citizen on the outskirts of Phoenix, Ariz., on April 16, 2021. (AZDPS)

Arizona State Troopers Release 17 Illegal Aliens After ICE Declines to Take Custody

The Arizona Department of Public Safety said state troopers were forced to release 17 illegal aliens after Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) both declined to take them into custody.

A state trooper initiated a traffic stop early on April 16 and discovered the 17 illegal aliens in the vehicle, the Department of Public Safety (AZDPS) wrote on Twitter. The driver was a U.S. citizen.

The incident occurred in Chandler, near Phoenix.

AZDPS requested assistance from Immigration [and] Customs Enforcement & the U.S. Border Patrol to take custody of the undocumented aliens, both agencies declined the request, the department wrote on Twitter.

Absent response from the agencies with jurisdiction on immigration violations, the AZDPS trooper issued the appropriate citations for the traffic violations, impounded the vehicle, and was forced to release the subjects.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey also responded on Twitter with a scathing rebuke of the Biden administration, saying it needs to get its head out of the sand when it comes to the crisis at our border.

This administration is asleep at the switch, and their total lack of action is having real consequences here in the state of Arizona, he said. Ive met with our Border Patrol and they need help, and they need the support of the administration.

Ducey called for the National Guard to be deployed to the Arizona border.

ICE didnt respond by press time to an Epoch Times query about why it declined to take the 17 aliens into custody.

However, on Jan. 21 President Joe Biden issued an executive order that paused deportations for 100 days. The Department of Homeland Security then issued guidance on Feb. 18 for handling the arrest, detainment, and deportation of illegal immigrants.

Under the guidance, illegal immigrants who entered the country after Nov. 1, 2020, are an enforcement and removal priority. However, ICE agents must seek approval from their leadership before taking into custody an illegal alien who isnt a convicted felon, a terror suspect, or a criminal gang member.

So far this fiscal year (which began Oct. 1, 2020), Border Patrol has apprehended almost 570,000 illegal aliens along the southern border, with the last several months showing a trajectory thats on track to compete with the highest number of apprehensions recorded1,692,544 captured in fiscal 1996.
Japan has urged Myanmar authorities to release a Japanese journalist in custody at a Yangon prison, one of at least 65 reporters arrested during the junta's crackdown on anti-coup protests.

The military has ramped up its attempts to crush dissent following mass demonstrations against its ousting of civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, with at least 737 civilians killed and the press increasingly under attack.

Freelance reporter Yuki Kitazumi was detained on Sunday, and a Japanese embassy spokesman confirmed that he was transferred overnight from a police watchhouse to the Insein prison.

Kitazumi has not been charged yet and diplomats are seeking permission to visit him in jail, the spokesman told AFP on Monday.

Insein is notorious for holding political prisoners.

"We are asking Myanmar for the person's early release. We will do our utmost to protect the Japanese national," Japanese government spokesman Katsunobu Kato told reporters.

"As far as reasons for his arrest and detention, the Japanese embassy is working to learn those details."

It is the second time Kitazumi has been detained since the coup.

In February, he was beaten up and briefly held in custody during a crackdown on protesters but was later released.

The press has been caught in the junta's crackdown as the military attempts to tighten control over the flow of information, throttling internet access and revoking the licenses of five local media outlets.

At least 34 journalists and photographers remain in custody across Myanmar, according to monitoring group Reporting ASEAN.

Local monitoring group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners said three reporters in Kachin State from the Myitkyina News Journal outlet were detained at an interrogation centre.

"At these interrogation centres, detainees are forced to sign and confess under duress or through harsh torture," AAPP said in its daily update Monday.

bur-lpm/qan
A cult leader who practised an obscure branch of Hinduism is alleged to have raped four female devotees, court documents have revealed.

Rajinder Kalia, 65, who allegedly indoctrinated his devotees to believe he was 'an incarnation of God', is accused of using his power and influence to groom worshippers as young as four at the Baba Balak Nath temple in Bell Green, Coventry.

The guru is also accused of instructing his followers to launch an 'onslaught of harassment' against any members of the temple who spoke out against him.

The four women seeking damages from Kalia are no longer members of the Coventry temple.

Rajinder Kalia, 65, who allegedly indoctrinated his devotees to believe he was 'an incarnation of God', is accused of using his power and influence to groom worshippers as young as four at the Baba Balak Nath temple in Bell Green, Coventry. Pictured is a devotee kissing Kalias feet at the temple

The guru is also accused of instructing his followers to launch an 'onslaught of harassment' against any members of the temple who spoke out against him

The allegations surrounding the undetected cult were filed at the High Court last month by consultant solicitor at Peacock Law, Clare Kirby, The Times reports.

They come after claims of rape were dismissed by the authorities in 2017 following insufficient evidence and Kalia, a former draper and clerk from India, returned to the temple.

Worshippers would also pay Kalia, who lived in a gated home with a swimming pool in Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Rugy, Warwickshire, around 12,000 each to show their devotion. Pictured is a painting of him

It was upon his return that the cult leader is alleged to have told worshippers to 'harass' those who spoke out against him, with one follower claiming she was threatened with acid attacks.

The tyres of another follower were allegedly slashed after she spoke out against the guru and a man and a woman, who worked as unpaid servants to Kalia, claim they lost 1.1 million to the preacher due to his hold over them.

According to the court claim, Kalia, whose followers travelled from as far as Glasgow to see him, is alleged to have claimed 'to be divine' and is accused of using 'undue influence' over young girls for three decades.

The cult leader would tell his followers, many of whom were vulnerable women, that those in the 'outside world are evil and to be avoided' during his sermons and videos also show followers kissing and touching Kalia's feet as he sat on a 'throne'.

Worshippers would also pay Kalia, who lived in a gated home with a swimming pool in Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Rugy, Warwickshire, around 12,000 each to show their devotion.

Nazir Afzal, a former chief prosecutor, told The Times: 'It's shocking that this is alleged to have happened in plain sight.

Rajinder Kalia, 65, is accused of using his power and influence to groom worshippers at the Baba Balak Nath temple in Bell Green, Coventry

'There is undue deference paid towards people who are supposedly the most religious.

'People should not be prevented from speaking up because of the perceived power and control these individuals have.'

Kalia will be defending the High Court claim against him, according to The Times.

The claims from the civil case come after West Midlands Police attempted to charge Kalia with criminal offences relating to the allegations of sexual abuse.


Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday pleaded with a radical Islamist group to end its violent campaign to oust the French ambassador, saying the unrest was harming the nation.

Rioting has rocked the country for the past week since the leader of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan was detained after calling for a march on the capital to evict France's top diplomat.

On Sunday, 11 police officers were seized by protesters during clashes and held for hours at a TLP mosque, where hundreds of supporters are still gathered.

The group has waged an anti-France campaign for months since President Emmanuel Macron defended the right of a satirical magazine in Paris to republish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed -- an act deemed blasphemous by many Muslims.

Khan said he also wants to stop "the insult of our Prophet in the name of freedom of speech" by western nations, but said he could not expel ambassadors every time it occurred.

"If we keep protesting our whole lives we would only be damaging our own country and it will not impact (the West)," Khan said in a recorded address shown on television.

"It doesn't make any difference to France," he added.

The TLP has called for a march on the capital Islamabad, where security has been boosted in recent days, at midnight on Tuesday if the ambassador has not been expelled.

France's embassy, which last week sent an urgent advisory recommending French nationals and companies leave the country, sent out a fresh alert Monday telling its citizens to avoid gatherings.

The government is due to hold another round of negotiations with the party leaders on Monday evening, in a bid to quell the unrest.

Khan said a week of protests had caused major disruption to cities, damaged property and left several police officers dead. Lahore police had earlier put the death toll at six.

TLP leaders say several of the party's supporters have also been killed and many wounded in clashes.

Story continues

- Solidarity march -

Calls for a nationwide strike in solidarity with the protesters was widely supported by mainstream religious groups and in Lahore and Karachi, many shops and markets were closed and some transport services halted.

Few issues are as galvanising in Pakistan as blasphemy, and even the slightest suggestion of an insult to Islam can supercharge protests, incite lynchings, and unite the country's warring political parties.

"The government has resorted to shedding blood of innocent people. The (protesters) are raising their voice rightfully and we support that," said Sharjeel Goplani, the head of a business association in Karachi, who supports the expulsion of the French ambassador.

Khan's government has struggled to bring the TLP to heel over the years, but this week announced an outright ban against the group.

In his address, he told Pakistanis that he was working with other Muslim nations to "jointly explain" to the West how "Muslims sentiments are being hurt".

"Expelling the French ambassador would mean cutting ties with European Union, half of our textile export goes to Europe, this means half of our textile exports will be reduced, which means unemployment and closure of the factories," he added.

The embassy is sending home non-essential French staff, a source at the foreign ministry in Paris told AFP.

A source at Punjab governor's office said the TLP in negotiations were demanding the release of their leader Saad Rizvi, whose detention last week sparked the protests, and a vote in parliament on the expulsion of the French ambassador, while the government wants an end to the repeated unrest.

Lahore police said Monday that TLP supporters were refusing to bury the bodies of supporters being held at the mosque.

Also at the site was an oil tanker seized by crowds on Sunday.

bur-kf-ecl/je
WASHINGTON  When the pandemic struck, Cricket Jacquier had 1200 cows to milk a day but his usual milk buyers were gone.

Widespread closures of schools and restaurants slammed the dairy industry hard, forcing some producers to have to dump perishable milk that suddenly had no market. But for Jacquier, a farmer in East Canaan, Conn., help swiftly arrived.

To assist farmers like Jacquier weather the pandemic as it upended agricultural markets, supply chains and labor practices, Congress created a special relief program through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Jacquier received roughly $200,000 in grant money to get through, money he put straight back into buying feed for his animals, he said.

Most farmers in the U.S. were not so lucky.

While the USDA distributed more than $20 billion through the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) last summer and fall, the money only went to 43 percent of farmers across the country, a CTInsider investigation found.

The program was a major boon for Midwest Corn Belt farmers, but in 19 states, including Connecticut, fewer than 25 percent of farmers received a payment.

The numbers are glaring. In Nebraska, 99.7 percent of farmers received at least one CFAP payment, according to USDA data analyzed by CTInsider. In Connecticut, home to 5,500 farms by the USDAs 2020 count, just 8 percent of farmers benefited.

In Illinois, 92 percent of farmers received a payment. In New Jersey and New Hampshire, 9 percent of farmers did. In Kansas, 90 percent of farmers got CFAP money. In Maine and Rhode Island, just 13 percent did.

Other major agricultural states also had small percentages of their farmers benefit: 19 percent of Florida farmers got a payment, along with 28 percent of farmers in California and Texas and 34 percent in Georgia.

Asked about these numbers, the USDA said it had identified gaps and disparities in assistance both by the commodity being produced and by the type of production or farmer.

On March 24, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced changes to the program going forward and additional outreach to minority farmers, underserved producers, and smaller and medium operations.

Christian Abraham / Hearst Connecticut Media

The pandemic affected all of agriculture, but many farmers did not benefit from previous rounds of pandemic-related assistance, Vilsack said. The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to helping as many producers as possible, as equitably as possible.

Since the pandemic struck, Congress directed an unprecedented flood of federal aid to prop up American farms and the food systems they supply. In addition to the USDA relief program, the federal government also took the unusual step of opening the Small Business Administrations pandemic programs to agriculture businesses, although these programs are usually closed to farms.

A CTInsider analysis found American farms have received over $23.8 billion in direct pandemic farm relief payments through CFAP and over $14 billion in Paycheck Protection Program loans to farms.

Just as bigger, well-connected companies gobbled up large amounts of PPP loan money before main street shops could get in line last spring, the USDA CFAP program disproportionately favored some types of farmers.

Until recently, the CFAP program largely favored row crop producers - like corn farmers - and big operations that already had a relationship with the USDA, according to seven agriculture experts interviewed by the CTInsider.

Many specialty crop producers  like fruit and vegetable growers  do not typically receive USDA subsidies and were initially left out of the program. When they were later added in September, some may not have known they were eligible.

"Entire segments were excluded like biofuels, or even within livestock producers, there was no compensation for farmers that were forced to euthanize animals while processing facilities were closed," the USDA told CTInsider.

For smaller farmers in particular, completing paperwork to attest for each row of onions or carrots was not worth the smaller pay-out compared to the thousands of dollars received by large mono-culture operations.

Bryan Hurlbut, Connecticuts Agriculture Commissioner and former state director of the FSA in Connecticut, said the system is kind of skewed against us.

If you look at Nebraska, theyre corn and soy and small grains. All those farms have intimate relationships with their Farm Service Agencies (FSA), said Bryan Hurlbut, Connecticuts Agriculture Commissioner and former state director of the FSA in Connecticut. Theyre repeat customers. They register their acreage every year. Quite honesty, its a lot easier to register their acres because they are big square blocks theres a Connecticut dairy farmer whose got 1000 acres and its spread over 100 different parcels of land. Its just very hard and time consuming for them to register their acres, to do their reporting, to capture that data appropriately.

Connecticuts aquaculture industry  like the many oyster farms up and down the coast  was devastated by restaurant closures during the pandemic, but was left out of CFAP at first.

Later after advocacy from the Connecticut congressional delegation and other members of Congress, these farmers and others were allowed to participate in the second round of the program that launched in the fall of 2020. But still many small farmers and some farm types were left out.

There was a lot of need early on and I dont know that we met that need early on, Hurlbut said.

The USDA reached out to many farmers through their newsletters, emails and other announcements, as did other agricultural groups, but farmers who dont usually have contact with the USDA may have been less likely to hear about it.

I cant say I was aware of it, said Ray Holden, vice president of the New Haven County Farm Bureau, who has a 15-acre farm in Orange. Holden and his wife raise beef cows and other animals and grow hay and corn, with most of their business coming from school group visits and birthday parties held at the farm. With those events canceled, their income was slashed.

I dont apply for those grants so I would have skipped right over that, he said.

Joan Nichols, president of the Connecticut Farm Bureau, said her organization worked hard to spread the word, but they havent received a lot of calls or complaints about the program since.

Our phones werent blowing up, she noted.

Christian Abraham / Hearst Connecticut Media

The pandemic had varying impacts across agriculture markets at various times. Early on, some farmers plowed crops under because COVID-19 disrupted their supply chains. With virus outbreaks at meat processing plants, some farmers struggled to process their livestock.

How we reported this story By Emilie Munson and Kyle Ogilvie CTInsider used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain payment data for all USDA Coronavirus Food Assistance Program payments made since the program launched on May 26, 2020 until it closed the second round of payments on Dec. 11, 2020. We received our data from the USDA on Jan. 5, 2021. We analyzed the data set to determine the number of unique farmers who received payments based on the address and name of the payment recipients (if two people with different names received payments at the same address, they were counted as two farmers). Then, we compared this information to the number of farmers in all 50 states using data from 2020 State Agriculture overviews published by the National Agricultural Statistics Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In addition, the CTInsider analyzed the U.S. Small Business Administration's Paycheck Protection Program data to identify how many farmers used this pandemic relief programs too. We used the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes attached to each loan to identify how many loans went to the sector called Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting. We obtained our PPP loan data from the SBA on April, 15 2021. See More Collapse

Produce, like apples and onions, that could be stored for a time, fared better than products that had to go to market quickly, when closures of schools and restaurants upended the markets. Meanwhile, some farmers who sold through farm stands and other local means saw an uptick in demand from customers at home.

Many farmers had new costs  from personal protective equipment to extra marketing.

The objective of CFAP was to mitigate actual production and marketing losses sustained by each agricultural commodity sector. Farmers didnt have to prove any personal losses to get a payment; they just needed to fit into a category that the USDA determined was eligible based on a variety of factors.

Farmers could get up to $250,000 in the first and second rounds of the program, while corporations could get up to $750,000 under certain conditions. You generally qualified if you made up to $900,000 a year in income. The payment was taxable.

Some smaller farmers said they did not apply although they were eligible because they personally had decent sales during the pandemic.

Elizabeth Higgins, a business management specialist who works with fruit and vegetable growers at Cornell Cooperative Extension, said she had to coax some skeptical farmers to apply.

I did have farmers who were saying they were having a very good year  so were soybean farmers in the Midwest and they are lining right up. This program is not about whether you personally are having a good year, Higgins said. Commodity crop farmers are more used to that.

In contrast, she added that she knew of farmers in the Midwest who made sure to maximize their CFAP payments by applying for each owner in their general partnership jointly-owned business to receive a payment - something permissible under CFAP rules in some circumstances.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS), a non-partisan government entity, that studied the program reported to Congress that CFAPs implementation methodology failed to incentivize participation by all affected agricultural sectors and all injured producers in those sectors  in particular, small farmers, processed food commodities, and aquaculture producers.

Moreover, CRS found even after changes were made to the program, the USDAs formulas and eligibility criteria resulted in row crops like corn and soybeans receiving the largest share of the payments, a share that greatly exceeds their average national output value.

In Connecticut, dairy farmers received the most benefit from CFAP by far, followed by corn and cattle in round one of the program, according to a data dashboard compiled by the USDA. In round two, sales commodities  like fruit and vegetables and aquaculture  edged into first place for funding, followed by milk and tobacco, the USDAs dashboard shows.

In Connecticut, CTInsider found the over 5,000 farmers left out of the program fit a few profiles. The state is home to thousands of small family farm operations, which may not have been eligible due to their commodity type or may have been less likely to hear about the program or know they could apply.

Keith Bishop, CEO of Bishops Orchards in Guilford, said he heard about the program but he didnt act immediately on it because the USDA doesnt usually cater to farmers like him.

Since we are specialty crop growers, and those crops don't get much attention or support as do the 'typical' USDA commodity crops, we have not applied for any [Farm Service Agency] payment programs in two decades. Our paperwork was many years out of date with FSA to be able to be immediately eligible, Bishop explained. The conservation compliance provisions would need to have more understanding for me to sign and [get the] paperwork completed.

Christian Abraham / Hearst Connecticut Media

Now after a painful year of low apple volumes, damage from Tropical Storm Isaias, shutting down his farm wine bar and working to keep his over 100 employees healthy, Bishop said he will take another look at it.

Dana Assard, who has a 100-acre farm in Bethlehem where they raise cattle, pigs and chickens, said she only heard about the program when her friend and county farm bureau president called her. She and her husband looked into it, but decided not to apply.

You apply for stuff like that and it just gets pushed off and you never get it and he just doesnt really believe in all the grants, Assard explained. Its a lot of paperwork and a lot of running around to get it done.

Robert Maddox, owner of Sun One Organic Farms in Bethlehem, read about the program in an email  and then called five other farmers urging them to apply. He felt it was dumb luck that he clicked on the right email and heard about it.

The vast majority of farms would take the initial assumption that I have that this is just for corn, soybeans, wheat and dairy, he said. Its rare that there is something out there for fruit vegetable growers I think what the lesson learned is just because you put it an email, you cant assume that people will always read their email.

Peter Sepe, a sheep farmer in Sandy Hook and president of the Fairfield County Farm Bureau, said, Ill be honest. We were qualified right from the beginning, right from the outset [but] it takes some deciphering to understand if youre qualified.

Sepe said his CFAP payment helped tide him over while he chased down invoices from struggling restaurants that bought his lamb.

Hurlbut said he has not spoken to USDA Secretary Vilsack about Connecticuts low participation rate in the CFAP program but we probably should. The USDA is already implementing new efforts now to try to boost participation.

On March 24, USDA announced it would reopen CFAP for more applications and add a new focus on getting the payments out to farmers who had been missed.

The USDA said it would spend $2.5 million to improve outreach to farmers who had been overlooked. It also announced it would direct $6 billion to develop new programs or modify existing ones to offer further assistance to dairy farmers, specialty crops, beginning farmers and organic farmers, among other measures.

Kyle Ogilvie is a volunteer data consultant with the non-profit DataKind DC who supported this investigation through a partnership between DataKind and the National Press Foundation.

Editors note: This article has been corrected to clarify that farmer Keith Bishops was referring to low apple volumes, not prices.

emilie.munson@hearstdc.com; Twitter: @emiliemunson
04/19/2021

Photo (c) Peter Zelei Images - Getty Images Coronavirus (COVID-19) tally as compiled by Johns Hopkins University. (Previous numbers in parentheses.)

Total U.S. confirmed cases: 31,672,240 (31,636,941)

Total U.S. deaths: 567,233 (566,970)

Total global cases: 141,544,240 (140,858,072)

Total global deaths: 3,022,288 (3,013,280)

CDC says half of all adults have had at least one shot

The U.S. has reached a coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccination milestone. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that half of all adults have received at least one dose of a vaccine.

Across the country, most states have opened vaccination eligibility today to all adults, at the request of President Biden. That comes at an opportune time since the rate of infection has begun to rise among the unvaccinated.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said fewer than 6,000 fully vaccinated people have been infected with the virus in so-called breakthrough cases. However, none of them got seriously ill or died from the virus.

Fauci: Johnson & Johnson vaccine could be back this week

Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Bidens chief COVID-19 medical adviser, predicts that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine could resume distribution by Friday. The vaccine has been on pause since last week when health officials began investigating six reports of recipients suffering blood clots.

I would think that were not gonna go beyond Friday, in the extension of this pause, said Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), on ABCs This Week.

A CDC advisory committee met last week to review vaccine data but did not issue a recommendation because it said it needed more information. Out of more than 7 million people, six women who received the vaccine formed blood clots in the brain and one died.

Scientists plan to reinfect COVID-19 survivors

Researchers at Oxford University are embarking on an experiment that is not without some controversy in the medical community. They plan to reinfect a group of people who have recovered from COVID-19.

The objective is to see how much immunity is provided by the previous exposure. Scientists say there is a lot to be gained from this kind of trial since it will provide insight into the degree to which a previous illness provides future protection.

To conduct the trial, more than 60 volunteers between the ages of 18 and 30 will be quarantined inside Oxford University Hospitals, with test subjects rotating in about every three weeks. The study is being funded, in part, by the British government.

Poll: 56% say COVID-19 is here to stay

After more than a year, it might not be surprising if people thought this pandemic is never going to end. In fact, a lot of consumers actually do feel that way.

A survey by Healthinsurance.com found that 56% of respondents agreed that COVID-19 is never going away. Another 91% said they would miss some aspects of pandemic life when things return to normal.

There was a slight increase from last April in the number of people who said they are able to pay their monthly bills, but the survey found saving for an emergency hasn't improved. Forty-six percent said they don't have enough money saved to cover medical costs should they come down with an illness like COVID-19.

Petco suggests employers welcome dogs back to the office

Has your employer started making plans to reopen the office? Well, guess what? Your dog has gotten accustomed to having you around all day. Not only are you in for an adjustment, so is your best friend.

Petco Health and Wellness Company is urging employers to consider adopting a pet-friendly workplace policy, in addition to other post-pandemic changes. The company suggests that such a policy could be good for everyone.

"At Petco, we've experienced the benefits of working with and around pets all day for decades," said Ron Coughlin, Petco's CEO. "The past year of quarantining and working from home has brought more pets into American families than ever before and significantly deepened the bonds we share with them. We want to see those bonds continue and ensure these pets remain an integral part of our families well into the future.

Around the nation
Prince Charles and Prince William will reportedly lead a summit soon to discuss the royal family's future after the death of Prince Philip.

According to a Daily Mail report, the two heirs, together with the Queen, will discuss which family members will retain senior royal roles and their respective responsibilities. This was in light of the Duke of Edinburgh's death, raising concerns about whether his hundreds of patronages should be passed down.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's decision to step down from their royal duties have complicated the matter by reducing the number of people available for high-profile roles.

"The question is whether you start off by deciding how many patronages and engagements there should be, and then work out how many people are needed to achieve them, or whether you decide how many people there should be, which will dictate how many engagements and patronages they can take on," a source familiar with the matter said as reported by The Sun.

Royal insiders said that the decision of who will have prominent positions could not be discussed solely. Prince Charles will lead the talks due to him becoming king first and that any decisions will impact his reign.

Prince Charles has made it clear that Prince William must be consulted for each stage as any significant changes would naturally affect his son when he inherits the throne.

Due to the Sussex family's decision to step down from their roles, Prince Charles' youngest brother Prince Edward, the Earl of Wessex, and his wife Sophie will be filling in the position left by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

Royal expert and author Penny Junor told Express.co.uk that Edward and Sophie have been quietly doing good things in the background "and now because there is a vacuum where Harry and Meghan once were."

Prince William said he favored a more targeted approach on the Royal Family duties. The Duke of Cambridge said that he could make a more meaningful contribution to the number of organizations he supports, according to a News24x7 World report.

Paul Burrell, Princess Diana's former butler, earlier told Us Weekly that Prince Charles has made it clear that he wants to slim down the monarchy and reduce the full-time working members to the immediate line of succession.

RELATED ARTICLE: Royal Family Snubs Prince Harry, Meghan Markle's Offer To Help Search for 'Diversity Czar'

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's Exit

Last year, the Sussex couple announced that they are quitting the royal family. The couple said they wanted to make their own money and they would split their time between the U.K. and the U.S., according to a Page Six report.

The couple noted that the geographic balance would allow them to raise their son with an appreciation for the royal tradition while also providing their family with space to focus on the next chapter of their lives.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's marriage has been criticized over their spending and want to have privacy. Critics noted that they continued to accept money from the British taxpayers.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex recently had an interview with Oprah, highlighting their struggles while living and working as members of the British royal family.

Markle noted that royal family members had questioned what Archie's skin color would be. Buckingham Palace responded and said that they will always be much-loved family members.

READ MORE: Meghan Markle Reveals She Had a Miscarriage in July, Sparks Heartless Reactions

WATCH: What's Next For The Royal Family After Prince Philip's Passing - From TheThings Celebrity






LOS ALAMOS, N.M., April 19, 2021--A new machine-learning program accurately identifies COVID-19-related conspiracy theories on social media and models how they evolved over time--a tool that could someday help public health officials combat misinformation online.

"A lot of machine-learning studies related to misinformation on social media focus on identifying different kinds of conspiracy theories," said Courtney Shelley, a postdoctoral researcher in the Information Systems and Modeling Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory and co-author of the study that was published last week in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. "Instead, we wanted to create a more cohesive understanding of how misinformation changes as it spreads. Because people tend to believe the first message they encounter, public health officials could someday monitor which conspiracy theories are gaining traction on social media and craft factual public information campaigns to preempt widespread acceptance of falsehoods."

The study, titled "Thought I'd Share First," used publicly available, anonymized Twitter data to characterize four COVID-19 conspiracy theory themes and provide context for each through the first five months of the pandemic. The four themes the study examined were that 5G cell towers spread the virus; that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation engineered or has otherwise malicious intent related to COVID-19; that the virus was bioengineered or was developed in a laboratory; and that the COVID-19 vaccines, which were then all still in development, would be dangerous.

"We began with a dataset of approximately 1.8 million tweets that contained COVID-19 keywords or were from health-related Twitter accounts," said Dax Gerts, a computer scientist also in Los Alamos' Information Systems and Modeling Group and the study's co-author. "From this body of data, we identified subsets that matched the four conspiracy theories using pattern filtering, and hand labeled several hundred tweets in each conspiracy theory category to construct training sets."

Using the data collected for each of the four theories, the team built random forest machine-learning, or artificial intelligence (AI), models that categorized tweets as COVID-19 misinformation or not.

"This allowed us to observe the way individuals talk about these conspiracy theories on social media, and observe changes over time," said Gerts.

The study showed that misinformation tweets contain more negative sentiment when compared to factual tweets and that conspiracy theories evolve over time, incorporating details from unrelated conspiracy theories as well as real-world events.

For example, Bill Gates participated in a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" in March 2020, which highlighted Gates-funded research to develop injectable invisible ink that could be used to record vaccinations. Immediately after, there was an increase in the prominence of words associated with vaccine-averse conspiracy theories suggesting the COVID-19 vaccine would secretly microchip individuals for population control.

Furthermore, the study found that a supervised learning technique could be used to automatically identify conspiracy theories, and that an unsupervised learning approach (dynamic topic modeling) could be used to explore changes in word importance among topics within each theory.

"It's important for public health officials to know how conspiracy theories are evolving and gaining traction over time," said Shelley. "If not, they run the risk of inadvertently publicizing conspiracy theories that might otherwise 'die on the vine.' So, knowing how conspiracy theories are changing and perhaps incorporating other theories or real-world events is important when strategizing how to counter them with factual public information campaigns."

###

Link to video: Interview with Ashlynn Daughton, an information scientist in the Information Systems and Modeling Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and co-author of the study: https:/ / youtu. be/ AssdxCBdb-k

Paper: Gerts D, Shelley C, Parikh N, Pitts T, Watson Ross C, Fairchild G, Vaquera Chavez N, Daughton A. "Thought I'd Share First" and Other Conspiracy Theory Tweets from the COVID-19 Infodemic: Exploratory Study. JMIR Public Health Surveill 2021;7(4):e26527

URL: https:/ / publichealth. jmir. org/ 2021/ 4/ e26527

DOI: 10.2196/26527

Funding: Los Alamos Laboratory Directed Research and Development fund and National Laboratory Fees Research

About Los Alamos National Laboratory (http://www. lanl. gov )

Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is managed by Triad, a public service oriented, national security science organization equally owned by its three founding members: Battelle Memorial Institute (Battelle), the Texas A&M University System (TAMUS), and the Regents of the University of California (UC) for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.

Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns.
The iconic Phantom of the Opera music box will be auctioned off to benefit the Actors Fund, as part of a new package donated by the production and composer Andrew Lloyd Webber.

The lot contains two tickets for Phantom's reopening performance on Broadway as Lloyd Webber's guests, as well as "Lot 665" direct from the West End production. The prop is described in the show as "a papier-mache musical box in the shape of a barrel organ. Attached, the figure of a monkey in Persian robes playing the cymbals." The estimated selling price is between $20,000-$30,000.

This auction is part of the Stage & Screen benefit, created by Doyle Auctioneers & Appraisers and Christine Baranski for the Actors Fund. The auction will take place on Wednesday, April 28, beginning at 10am ET. The current selection of items can be viewed here.
Brett Coomer, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

COVID-19 vaccines are available with no wait and no registration at the NRG Stadium site.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo announced that the wait time was virtually non-existent on Monday afternoon while urging people to take advantage of the free vaccine on Twitter.
Ireland West Airport, Knock today welcomes the announcement by Minister of State at the Department of Transport, Hildegarde Naughton T.D. that funding to the amount of 2,185,983 from the Department of Transport, Tourism & Sport has been approved for Capital expenditure (CAPEX) projects for Ireland West Airport.

The funding is provided to contribute towards capital investment in the areas of safety, security and sustainability under the Regional Airports Programme 2021-2025.

Announcing the funding, Minister of State Naughton said: I am delighted to be approving these capital allocations in what has been an incredibly difficult year for our regional airports. This funding represents a strong commitment by Government to help Irelands regional airports remain financially sustainable as they plan to move beyond the largest exogenous shock that the sector has ever face

Minister Naughton added I am pleased to say that this years funding has also taken climate objectives into account for the first time, representing an important step in the process towards the greening of Irish Airports. I am confident that todays allocations, coupled with the impending funding to address the impacts of Covid-19, will help airports regain their foothold in the aviation market when recovery begins.

Welcoming todays announcement, Arthur French, Chairman, Ireland West Airport said We welcome todays announcement of funding towards Capital Expenditure projects by the Minister of State at the Department of Transport, Hildegarde Naughton T.D which will assist the airport in undertaking important safety, security and sustainability related projects in the coming months. We also wish to acknowledge the continued support of Ministers Naughton and Ryan and the Department of Transport during what continues to be a very challenging time for the airport due to the continue impact of COVID-19.

Also read: Massive boost for Leitrim with 4.5m for Mohill and Dromahair
The EU on Monday announced sanctions on 10 Myanmar junta officials and two conglomerates linked to the military over the coup and bloody crackdown on protesters in their country.

The military has ramped up its attempts to crush dissent following mass demonstrations against its ousting of civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, with at least 737 civilians killed and the press increasingly under attack.

International pressure has been steadily building on the junta, although it has so far appeared to ignored all condemnation.

Announcing the sanctions on officials, EU member states said the individuals "are all responsible for undermining democracy and the rule of law in Myanmar/Burma, and for repressive decisions and serious human rights violations".

The two firms hit with asset freezes and visa bans, Myanmar Economic Holdings Public Company Limited (MEHL) and Myanmar Economic Corporation Limited (MEC), were "owned and controlled by the Myanmar Armed Forces (Tatmadaw), and provide revenue for it", the statement added.

The companies dominate sectors including trading, alcohol, cigarettes and consumer goods.

The officials targeted are mostly members of the ruling State Administration Council seen as responsible for undermining the democracy in the southeast Asian nation, EU diplomats said.

- Japanese journalist arrested -

The announcement came after Japan urged Myanmar authorities on Monday to release from prison a Japanese journalist accused of spreading fake news, one of at least 65 reporters arrested during the junta's crackdown.

Yuki Kitazumi was detained on Sunday, and a Japanese embassy spokesman confirmed that he had been transferred overnight from a police watchhouse to the Insein prison.

Insein is notorious for holding political prisoners.

Japanese diplomats had sought permission to visit him in jail but that request had not yet been granted, an embassy spokesman told AFP on Monday.

"We are informed by the police he was arrested due to the suspicion of releasing fake news," he told AFP.

Story continues

Myanmar authorities told the embassy the journalist was not physically harmed during the arrest and was in good health.

State media later confirmed he had been charged.

"We are asking Myanmar for the person's early release," Japanese government spokesman Katsunobu Kato told reporters. "We will do our utmost to protect the Japanese national."

The press has been caught in the junta's crackdown as the military attempts to tighten control over the flow of information, throttling internet access and revoking the licences of five local media outlets.

At least 34 journalists and photographers remain in custody across Myanmar, according to monitoring group Reporting ASEAN.

- 'Guerrilla war' -

Western powers have increasingly been seeking to target the junta's key moneymakers.

The US and Britain have already imposed sanctions on the MEC and MEHL, while Washington has hit Myanmar's state gem company as well.

The EU also hit junta chief Min Aung Hlaing and 10 other senior officials with sanctions last month.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said after the virtual talks with his EU counterparts Monday that the junta was "manoeuvring the country into a dead end".

That, he said, "is why we are increasing the pressure to bring the military to the negotiating table".

But fighting continued on Monday between residents and the military in the central city of Myingyan, where at least four people were shot on Monday afternoon, a resident told AFP.

It was unclear how many people died.

"There is still some shooting," the resident told AFP, adding that people were trying to defend themselves with homemade guns. "It's like guerrilla war in our town.

"The army did not allow anyone to be on the street. They shoot anyone they see on the street."

At least six people including a 13-year-old have been arrested in Myingyan, local media reported.

- Pot-banging sailors -

Meanwhile, security forces barged into the rooms of nearly 40 Myanmar sailors in hotel quarantine in Yangon and attacked them Saturday, after some of them participated in the daily protest ritual of banging on pots and pans.

Traditionally a way for Myanmar people to drive away evil spirits, the activity has become an act of resistance since the putsch, with nightly drumming from 8:00 pm local time.

The seafarers were staying at the Hlaine Tet Hotel after returning from South Korea.

Myo Min, who did not use his real name, said his group was beaten up and some of them robbed -- one seafarer's $1,500 salary was stolen.

Three were badly injured, he added.

"As soon as the door was opened, they started beating us," he told AFP, by phone.

"None of them were wearing masks... It is totally unacceptable. I feel insecure now. I just want to go back home. No one can protect us."

bur-lpm-aph/jj
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

At the end of 2020, experts led by allergists at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) examined all information related to possible allergic reactions to COVID-19 vaccinations. Now the team has published updated insights based on their experience overseeing more than 65,000 employees who have become fully vaccinated since that time. The group's latest findings are published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice.

"Our main goal is to enable as many individuals as possible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine safely and avoid unnecessary vaccine hesitancy due to a lack of knowledge around allergic reactions to vaccines," says lead author Aleena Banerji, MD, clinical director of the Allergy and Clinical Immunology Unit at MGH.

In addition to updated guidance on the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, this guidance also includes the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine, which had not yet been authorized for emergency use at the end of 2020.

With additional clinical data and authorization of the third COVID-19 vaccine in the United States, the investigators propose modified approaches to the evaluation of patients with a history of allergies. This includes clear and simple initial questions to identify individuals who are eligible for all COVID-19 vaccines without needing an allergist evaluation.

"With more time and experience, we have been able to significantly narrow the group of patients with prior allergies who require an allergist assessment before COVID-19 vaccination," says senior author Kimberly G. Blumenthal, MD, MSc, co-director of the Clinical Epidemiology Program within MGH's Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology. "We now advise that only the rare individuals who have had a recent severe allergic reaction to polyethylene glycol, an ingredient in the vaccines, see an allergist or immunologist for evaluation, which may include skin testing." Individuals with severe allergies to foods, oral drugs, latex, bee stings or venom can safely receive the COVID-19 vaccines.

The team noted that severe allergic reactions to the vaccines remain exceedingly rare. Vaccine clinics should continue to observe higher-risk individuals for 30 minutes after vaccination, and they should have staff trained in recognizing and managing allergic reactions that may occur.

Explore further ACAAI updates guidance for allergic reactions to COVID-19 vaccines

More information: Aleena Banerji et al, COVID-19 Vaccination in Patients with Reported Allergic Reactions: Updated Evidence and Suggested Approach, The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice (2021). Aleena Banerji et al, COVID-19 Vaccination in Patients with Reported Allergic Reactions: Updated Evidence and Suggested Approach,(2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.jaip.2021.03.053
Global cybersecurity company Kaspersky reported a significant decrease in the number of ransomware attempts it has detected and foiled among its small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) users in the Southeast Asian (SEA) region.

In its latest Kaspersky Security Network (KSN) report, the company revealed less than one million ransomware attempts (804,513) were monitored in 2020, less than half of 2019s over 1.9 million detections.

Among the six SEA countries, only Singapore observed an uptick in the number of ransomware detections. There was a slight increase from 2,275 instances in 2019 that jumped to 3,191 in 2020.

Although Indonesia still ranked fifth globally for the volume of its ransomware detections, its 1,158,837 detections are now down to 439,473. The trend of decreased ransomware incidents was observed across other countries in the region including Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand.

China remains at the top spot in terms of ransomware detections globally both for 2019 and 2020. Meanwhile, Brazil and the Russian Federation switched places for the second and third spots, with Brazil now being 2nd globally for 2020.

I looked at the statistics for individual families, and it follows the overall drop in the number of detections, mainly due to the drop in the number of WannaCry detections. This family makes up a significant share of all detected ransomware, despite the fact that it has not been supported by the creators for more than three years and exists as a zombie, said Fedor Sinitsyn, security researcher at Kaspersky.

One of the most persistent cyber threats to SMBs in the region remains to be ransomware, a malware designed to infect computers of organizations and individuals, encrypt the data in it, and block access to it. Ransomware attackers then will demand a fee from the victims in exchange for enabling the system to work again.

Ransomware attacks may be declining but Kaspersky has been issuing a warning to companies, of all shapes and sizes, against the increasing activities of Ransomware 2.0 or whats known as targeted ransomware.

This cybersecurity disease goes beyond kidnapping data. Malicious ransomware groups are now conducting data exfiltration coupled with blackmailing. Using pressure tactic, these cybercriminals threaten to publish publicly the data they hold, further increasing the need for the victims to pay the ransom to protect their valued reputation.

The decrease of ransomware detections here should not make us complacent. Since last year, we have been underlining the evolution of this threat. Ransomware groups are now more concerned about quality over quantity. Meaning, from blindly throwing a line into the ocean and waiting for an insecure user to bite, attackers are now more aggressive and targeted towards their victims, comments Yeo Siang Tiong, General Manager for Southeast Asia at Kaspersky.

A single targeted ransomware group alone managed to breach over 61 companies in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region last year, and with the accelerated digitalization of businesses in the region, we also predict that the sophistication behind attack methods will only increase and become more sophisticated. SMBs and enterprises should seriously look into intelligence-based technologies, both for endpoint protection as well as detection and response, he adds.

To help SMBs secure their cash flow and assets, Kaspersky offers savings for its latest Kaspersky Endpoint Detection and Response Optimum (KEDRO) solution for new and existing customers valid on 10-999 nodes across the region until June 30, 2021. Customers can get up to 33% in savings for a 1-year license, and up to 40% for three years.

Interested SMB owners can find out more about this promo at go.kaspersky.com/Kaspersky_EDRO_SEA_Promotion.html.

There are different ways to protect your computer and your data from ransomware attacks. Some of Kasperskys tips include:
[April 19, 2021] Barry University School of Podiatric Medicine Adopts Hippo Virtual Care Platform for Virtual Medical Education, Remote Proctoring

SEATTLE, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Hippo Technologies , Inc.  (Hippo) , a global virtual care company delivering solutions for healthcare and medical education, announced today that Barry University's School of Podiatric Medicine is using the Hippo Virtual CareTM (HVC) platform to provide its medical educators with remote teaching and proctoring, continuing medical education, and consultation solutions. "The Hippo technology will enable us to bring streaming doctor-patient visits to our classrooms, for real-time clinical experience for our first-year students," says Barry University Podiatric School of Medicine Interim Dean, Dr. Robert Snyder. "Beyond further elevating the cutting-edge educational experience of our students, we anticipate utilizing it on medical mission trips, connecting underserved communities with our world-class providers." Using Hippo's Virtual Medical Education solution, Barry University faculty will wear HVC hands free, voice-activated headsets during medical training, examinations, diagnostic procedures, treatments, and medical device demonstrations. The HVC platform's high-definition video and voice-activated interface enables medical educators and physicians to use the devices to communicate in real-time with medical students who are viewing remotely  providing students a "through the eyes of the clinician" perspective. The HVC platform and wearable devices combine the benefits of in-person learning with the safety and opportunities of virtual education and remote care. In addition to education, Barry University will be using the HVC pltform to assess students through remote proctoring , allowing educators to evaluate skills in real time. The ability to record procedures through the HVC "store-and-forward" function enables students and faculty to review and discuss clinical practice after a training or procedure and keep an historical record of progress.



The Hippo HVC platform is interoperable and HIPAA and GDPR compliant, connecting enterprise systems, databases, IoT devices, wearables and technologies together to bridge the gap between physical care and virtual care. HVC is implemented by some of the most prominent nursing schools, medical schools, and universities globally. In total, an aggregate of more than 200,000 students have leveraged Hippos' technologies for virtual education.

"We are extremely grateful for our partnership with such a forward-thinking and innovative university, and look forward to not only serving the greater Miami area, but expanding our global reach through Barry's international programs," said Brian Hamilton, President and Co-founder of Hippo Technologies, Inc. "Barry's deployment of the HVC platform has taught us how to maximize our relationships in the education sector, and it has further solidified our strategy for incorporating our partners into the Hippo HIVE community." In October 2020, the company launched the Hippo HIVE , a knowledge forum and meeting place for members to distribute virtual care information through white papers, blogs, interviews, articles, and research. Developed to be an education epicenter, Hippo invites its university partners to contribute to the HIVE with the goal of democratizing healthcare and education by making access affordable and available to all. For more information on Hippo Technologies, Inc., please visit www.myhippo.life About Hippo Technologies, Inc.

Hippo Technologies, Inc., is a global virtual care company servicing the healthcare and medical education industries. The Hippo Virtual CareTM platform includes a hands-free, voice-activated, head-worn tablet and HIPAA/GDPR compliant software allowing clinicians to communicate and video conference in real time with remote colleagues and students, search medical records, and automatically access files and imaging during patient examinations, procedures, consultations and rounding. Hippo delivers a unique "through the eyes of the clinician" experience with all the safety and convenience of remote care. For more information, please visit https://myhippo.life/contact/ . Follow Hippo Technologies, Inc., on LinkedIn and Twitter, and in Latin America visit Hippo HIVE on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. https://hippohive.org/es/ About Barry University

Barry University is located in Miami Shores, Florida, and is a private, Catholic institution with a history of academic excellence in the Dominican tradition. Founded in 1940, the University enrolls approximately 7,500 students across undergraduate and graduate programs. The School of Podiatric Medicine was founded in 1985 with the purpose of graduating competent podiatric physicians qualified to enter post-graduate training. This is accomplished by excellence in podiatric medical education, fostering life-long learning, expressing a commitment to social justice by serving the local and global community through patient care, and encouraging research and innovation that promotes the common good. For additional information about Barry University, visit our website at www.barry.edu. To learn more about the School of Podiatric Medicine, visit www.barry.edu/podiatry. Follow Barry University on LinkedIn and Facebook . View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/barry-university-school-of-podiatric-medicine-adopts-hippo-virtual-care-platform-for-virtual-medical-education-remote-proctoring-301271239.html SOURCE Hippo Technologies

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Some states could refuse to sign up to a home quarantine system that would allow vaccinated Australians to go on holiday and return without two weeks in hotel isolation.

Scott Morrison touted his plan for home quarantine last week but has insisted it would not come into play without the approval of the medical experts.

Ahead of a National Cabinet meeting with state premiers on Monday, he conceded that not all state premiers like the idea and some would probably refuse to sign up.

Sydney International Airport on April 19 when flights to New Zealand restarted

This could lead to a situation where some Australians feel free to go overseas while others still face the major cost and discomfort of hotel quarantine.

Asked it it's possible that some states refuse to allow home isolation, Mr Morrison said: 'Of course it is.

'When you look at how states have reacted over the last year, many have different opinions on these issues.

'I would seek to achieve as much national consistency as we possibly could but you rightly point out that public health is a matter of state jurisdiction and the Commonwealth is not in a position to direct that in any way, shape or form.'

Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan has said he would need 'a lot of convincing' to adopt home quarantine, with a spokesman telling The Australian: 'We are a strong supporter of formal, secure quarantine.'

And Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley said the state has 'no plans' to move to home quarantine' but would consider a proposal backed by medical advice.

A patient has sample taken at a busy drive through Covid testing site in Inglewood, Perth

In contrast, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian last week called home quarantine a 'sensible suggestion' and backed Mr Morrison's idea.

The prime minister said any home quarantine plan could only be introduced once the most vulnerable Australians are vaccinated.

'As I said yesterday, that is many months away from being achieved,' he said on Monday.

'We still over the next few months be working through those priority groups of vaccinations.

'There is nothing suggested in anything I said that that would be achieved eminently or soon.

'Just if you want to get to that position, that will take a lot of months and the work that has to be done before then that if you did go down that path you could do it safely and effectively.

'That's what I would hope but let's get the work done and let's get together and see where we get to. That's the reason I'm pulling National Cabinet to work through this issue together and not in isolation because decisions will ultimately be made in the states.'

The home quarantine option would only apply to Australians who have had both doses of a Covid-19 vaccine, Mr Morrison said.
[April 19, 2021] Sunshine Biopharma Reports Favorable MTD Results for COVID-19 Treatment

MONTREAL, April 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sunshine Biopharma Inc. (OTC PINK: SBFM), a pharmaceutical company focused on the research, development and commercialization of oncology and antiviral drugs, today announced that it has successfully completed a Maximum Tolerated Dose (MTD) study in mice. Sunshine Biopharma is pleased to report that the MTD results are favorable and fall within the optimum range for use in humans. Next, Sunshine Biopharma will use the test dose indicated by these results to conduct the efficacy studies in hACE2-transgenic mice. Sunshine Biopharmas COVID-19 treatment is an inhibitor of PLpro, a protease present only in the SARS Coronaviruses (Betacoronaviruses) and is an important antiviral target as it is involved in shutting down the host innate immune system thereby causing significantly greater morbidity. MTD is defined as the highest dose of a drug that does not cause unacceptable side effects or overt toxicity in a specific period of time. The MTD studies we conducted were designed with a minimum number of animals and included endpoints such as clinical observations and blood tests for liver function, said Dr. Steve Slilaty, CEO of Sunshine Biopharma. We are delighted that our compounds passed this critical toxicology step with flying colors, he added. About Sunshine Biopharmas Coronavirus Treatment Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the causative agent of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that has claimed the lives of over 3 million people worldwide since it first appeared in December 2019. There are currently no drugs that can effectively arrest replication of the virus in people who have contracted the illness. On May 22, 2020, Sunshine Biopharma filed a patent application for several molecules which were designed to inhibit the Coronavirus PLpro protease, thus shutting down the ability of the virus to multiply. PLpro is present only in the SARS Coronaviruses (Betacoronaviruses) and is an important antiviral target as it is involved in shutting down the host innate immune system. On Febuary 1, 2021, Sunshine Biopharma entered into an exclusive license agreement with the University of Georgia for two additional Anti-Coronavirus compounds which the University of Georgia had previously developed and patented. Sunshine Biopharma is currently advancing the development of these two compounds in parallel with the Companys own (SBFM-PL4) by conducting a transgenic mice study in collaboration with the University of Georgia. The goal of the ongoing study is to determine if our protease inhibitors will protect the hACE2-transgenic mice from disease progression and death following infection with SARS-CoV-2. Should these mice studies prove successful, Sunshine Biopharma plans to submit the results to the FDA and Health Canada for authorization to conduct testing on actual COVID-19 patient volunteers in a Phase I clinical trial setting.



About Sunshine Biopharmas Anticancer Compound In addition, to working on the development of a treatment for COVID-19, Sunshine Biopharma is engaged in the development Adva-27a, a unique anticancer compound. Tests conducted to date have demonstrated the effectiveness of Adva-27a at destroying Multidrug Resistant Cancer Cells, including Pancreatic Cancer cells, Small-Cell Lung Cancer cells, Breast Cancer cells, and Uterine Sarcoma cells. Clinical trials for Pancreatic Cancer indication are planned to be conducted at McGill Universitys Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, Canada. Sunshine Biopharma is owner of all patents and intellectual property pertaining to Adva-27a.

Safe Harbor Forward-Looking Statements This press release may contain forward looking statements which 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 statements 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 general stock market conditions. 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 expansion of our existing as well as new service lines noting there is no assurance that we will generate enough revenues to offset those costs in both the near and long term. Additional service offerings may expose us to additional legal and regulatory costs and unknown exposure(s) based upon the various geopolitical locations we will be providing services in, the impact of which cannot be predicted at this time. For Additional Information Contact:

Camille Sebaaly, CFO

Sunshine Biopharma Inc.

Direct Line: 514-814-0464

camille.sebaaly@sunshinebiopharma.com

www.sunshinebiopharma.com



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Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-20 00:15:06|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, April 19 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese mainland spokesperson on Monday rejected the slander brought by Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authority on the convictions of Jimmy Lai Chee-ying and other instigators of Hong Kong riots on illegal assembly charges.

Ma Xiaoguang, spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, urged the DPP to stop its political manipulation under the disguise of democracy and human rights, which aims to seek "independence" by destabilizing Hong Kong.

Ma said the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government's efforts to bring the culprits to book are legitimate and brook no interference. Enditem
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Smartphones and tablets can do so much these days. Samsung even has flagship devices that can even replace laptops with the help of the Samsung DeX. That's why it's not all that surprising to see the brand launching a new wireless keyboard.

Yup, Samsung has listed the Samsung Smart Keyboard Trio 500 on its website yesterday. This is a small wireless keyboard (only 78 keys) that's available in black and white colours. It's fairly compact so you can easily slip it in a small bag, making it a highly portable device. But since it weighs around 412.3g, Samsung probably used good material for the frame so it should be quite robust.

In terms of features, the Smart Keyboard Trio 500 can be paired to a maximum of three devices, which you can quickly switch between paired devices with the press of a button. It also comes with three shortcut keys to assign to apps that you frequently use, as well as a key that helps it connect to a Samsung DeX.

This will probably launch during the next Samsung Unpacked, which is when Samsung plans to release the new Galaxy Book Pro. But could Samsung have other products in store for us? If so, what devices would you like to see launched during the event? Let us know in the comments, and stay tuned to TechNave for more news like this.
The FDA has ordered the U.S. facility that ruined millions of doses of Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine to halt manufacturing while the agency investigates last month's ingredient mix-up.

Emergent BioSolutions, the company that owns and runs the Baltimore plant that had been making the J&J vaccine, said in a regulatory filing that the FDA requested a pause on April 16 in production of new drug substance for the shot pending completion of the inspection.

Johnson & Johnson said it would work with Emergent and the FDA to address any findings at the end of the inspection.

J&J was put in charge of manufacturing at the plant in early April by the U.S. government after it disclosed the error. That saw ingredients from AstraZeneca's shot also being produced at the plant at that time contaminated a batch of the J&J vaccine.

The request to pause manufacturing is the latest setback to J&J's vaccine, whose use has been halted by U.S. regulators as they review reports of rare but serious brain blood clots in people who took the one-dose shot.

U.S. health officials are expected to issue updated guidance on who should use the vaccine on Friday, but the hold on the Baltimore plant could mean further delays before the U.S. supply of the one-dose vaccine ramps back up.

FDA officials have ordered production of Johnson & Johnson's vaccine to be halted at Emergent BioSolution's Baltimore plant while it investigates an ingredient mix-up that ruined 15 million doses of the shot

J&J was put in charge of manufacturing at the plant (pictured) in early April by the U.S. government after it disclosed the error in which ingredients from AstraZeneca's shot also being produced at the plant at that time contaminated a batch of the J&J vaccine

The Emergent BioSolutions facility had been seeking authorization from the FDA for the J&J vaccine when the error occurred.

J&J has authorization to make doses in the Netherlands and finish them in the U.S. a a plant run by Catalent.

'At this time, it is premature to speculate on any potential impact this could have on the timing of our vaccine deliveries,' J&J said in a statement.

The company has previously said it would deliver 100 million doses of its vaccine to the United States during the first half of 2021 and has so far delivered about 18 million.

J&J said in a statement it was focused on securing emergency use authorization for the Emergent plant.

Emergent said on Monday in a regulatory filing that the FDA started its review on April 12.

The company said it would quarantine existing material manufactured at the Baltimore facility until the review is complete.

'We acknowledge that there are improvements we must make to meet the high standards we have set for ourselves and to restore confidence in our quality systems and manufacturing processes,' Emergent said in an emailed statement.

In March, J&J said it had found a problem with a batch of the drug substance for its COVID-19 vaccine being produced by Emergent.

J&J did not say how many vaccine doses the spoiled batch would have produced, but the New York Times, without citing a source, reported that about 15 million doses were ruined.

The Times described the error as the result of an ingredient intended for AstraZeneca's vaccine being swapped accidentally into the solution J&J's vaccine.

Issues at the Emergent facility are not thought to be at all related to the investigations into blood clots among people who received J&J's vaccine.

But the combined effects of the delays from the inspection and from the trial pause could have ripples for the overall U.S. vaccine supply.

Even with zero doses of J&J's shot allocated to U.S. states, the national supply shipped out this week will still increase compared to last.

Overall, states will get 17,580,0000 doses this week. Pfizer will ship about two million more doses than it did last week, and Moderna will provide about 157,000 more doses compared to the week of April 12.

But several states said their supply will fall after. California said its allocated doses fell by a third last week and it was expecting to see another four percent drop in its shipments this week.

And a secondary concern looms: that pauses on both the manufacturing and the use of J&J's vaccine will fuel hesitancy in the U.S. and abroad, especially in poorer countries that have been counting on the cheaper, easier to store vaccine for their rollouts.
Portarlington's regeneration has been given a 1 million boost with confirmation that just over 1 has been approved for the heritage-led overhaul of the town's Market House and Square.

The Minister for Rural and Community Development, Heather Humphreys confirmed that the Laois Offaly border town project was among 24 regeneration projects across the country to get a share of the 75million for regeneration.

Her Department said the funding, which is being provided under the 1 billion Rural Regeneration and Development Fund will support the key objectives of Our Rural Future - the Governments ambitious new policy for Rural Ireland. A total of 1,094,880 is going to the Portarlington project.

The Portarlington project, which will cost 1,216,533, involves the refurbishment and immediate reuse of the Market House located in the centre of the town.

"The Market House will be reimagined as the central focus of the town with a range of public and community uses including community meeting space and an event and exhibition space.

"The project will regenerate a key focal point within the town, acting as a launching point for further regeneration and redevelopment in the town centre," said a description published by the department.

Announcing the funding today, Minister Humphreys said: These projects will breathe new life into towns and villages across the country making them attractive and vibrant places for people to live, work, socialise and raise a family.

The project is one of the elements in the new plan for Portarlington which is set to be revealed for public consultation shortly.

Senator Fiona OLoughlin welcomed the funding.

The Market House will be reimagined as the central focus of the town with a range of public and community uses including community meeting space and an event and exhibition space, said Senator OLoughlin.

The Department of Rural and Community Developments Rural Development Investment Programme includes a number of integrated funding interventions:

 Rural Regeneration and Development Fund (RRDF)

 Town and Village Renewal Scheme

 CLAR

 Outdoor Recreation Infrastructure Scheme

 Local Improvement Scheme

 LEADER

 Walks Scheme

ABOUT The Rural Regeneration and Development Fund

The Rural Regeneration and Development Fund was established to deliver on the National Strategic Objective in the National Development Plan 2018-2027 of Strengthened Rural Economies and Communities and will be rolled out over a 10-year period. The Fund is administered by the Department of Rural and Community Development.

The Fund provides investment to support suitable projects in towns and villages with a population of less than 10,000, and outlying areas, which will deliver on the National Strategic Objective of Strengthened Rural Economies and Communities and achieve sustainable economic and social development in these areas.

Calls for applications to the Fund are sought under two categories. Category 1 relates to projects with all necessary planning and consents in place and are ready to proceed, while Category 2 relates to projects which require further development to become ready for Category 1 status.

The funding for projects announced today relates to the outcome of the third call for Category 1 applications, which closed in December 2020.

The 24 projects announced today are located all across the country and will: deliver town and village regeneration; repurpose derelict, disused or heritage buildings; deliver remote work and enterprise spaces; build or transform libraries; deliver tourism infrastructure; and generally support greater activity, footfall, business and residency in rural towns and villages and their hinterlands.

To date, the Fund has provided 243 million for 163 projects across Ireland, worth a total of 326 million.

The Departments new rural development policy, Our Rural Future, was launched on 29 March. The policy is the most ambitious and transformational policy for rural development in decades.

The funding from the RRDF is provided to further the aims of Our Rural Future, which highlighted the need to build strongly on existing investment and to strive for even greater ambition to achieve significant and rapid progress on the objective of balanced regional development.
WASHINGTON  State police are investigating a Sunday afternoon crash that killed a Danbury woman and sent four others to the hospital.

Sharon May Piech, 39, died en route to New Milford Hospital following the multi-vehicle crash on Route 202, according to police.

Firefighters and EMS were called to a crash at the intersection of Litchfield Turnpike and Garland Road around 1:30 p.m. and found three damaged vehicles in the eastbound lane of Route 202.

Police said Piech was heading westbound on Route 202 in a 2015 Subaru Forester 2.5i Premium when, for an unknown reason, her vehicle crossed over into the eastbound lane of traffic and sideswiped a 2018 Mercedes-Benz S-Class before continuing about 100 feet and crashing head on with a 2018 Ram 2500 SLT pickup truck.

When firefighters and EMS got to the scene, CPR was already being performed on Piech, who police say died while en route to New Milford Hospital.

The 66-year-old driver of the pickup truck, along with his three passengers  ages 65, 11 and 9  were transported to Danbury Hospital with suspected minor injuries.

Police said the driver of the Mercedes-Benz  a 70-year-old New York man  and his 68-year-old passenger reported no injuries.

Connecticut State Police are investigating the fatal crash and urge anyone with information to call Trooper Steven Kieltyka at 860-626-7900.
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Biden's Attorney General Merrick Garland said Monday the domestic extremism behind the Oklahoma City bombings are 'still with us' on the 26th anniversary

Biden's Attorney General Merrick Garland said Monday the domestic extremism behind the Oklahoma City bombings are 'still with us' on the 26th anniversary.

Garland led the investigation into 1995 attack that killed 168 people - including 19 children - as a Department of Justice staffer.

He delivered remarks during a remembrance ceremony at the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum, his voice occasionally cracking with emotion.

'Although many years have passed, the terror perpetrated by people like Timothy McVeigh is still with us,' Garland said, referring to the man convicted and executed for carrying out the attack.

'Just last month, the FBI warned of the ongoing and heightened threat posed by domestic violent extremists.

'The Department of Justice is pouring its resources into stopping domestic violent extremists before they can attack, prosecuting those who do, and battling the spread of the kind of hate that leads to tragedies like the one we mark here today.'

Hatred of the federal government motivated McVeigh and his co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, to commit what many experts still refer to as the deadliest act of domestic terrorism on U.S. soil. McVeigh was executed by lethal injection in 2001. Nichols was sentenced to life in prison.

The outdoor ceremony, attended by first responders, bombing survivors and family members of victims, was held between the gates of the memorial that mark the times, 9:01 and 9:03 a.m., before and after the explosion occurred.

Behind the speakers were empty glass and metal chairs representing each person who died, including smaller chairs for the 19 children killed in the bombing, many of them inside the second-floor Americas Kids day-care center.

The outdoor ceremony, attended by first responders, bombing survivors and family members of victims, was held between the gates of the memorial that mark the times, 9:01 and 9:03 a.m., before and after the explosion occurred

Garland led the investigation into 1995 attack that killed 168 people as a Department of Justice staffer. 'Although many years have passed, the terror perpetrated by people like Timothy McVeigh (right) is still with us,' Garland said, referring to the man convicted and executed for carrying out the attack

A quiet that fell over the memorial grounds during 168 seconds of silence to remember the victims was interrupted at 9 a.m. by church bells from a nearby cathedral.

Oklahoma's Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt also warned of the dangers of division within the country.

'Never in our lifetime has it been easier for us to be divided,' Stitt said. 'There are groups that refuse to listen to another point of view. They try to cancel anyone who sees the world differently.

'It feels like everywhere we turn, someone or something is trying to drive a wedge between us.'

Blayne Arthur, whose mother Margaret 'Peggy' Clark died in the bombing, said she believes the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum plays an important role in teaching a new generation about the dangers of hate.

'That's one of the most important purposes of the museum and the memorial is to tell that story to all generations and say there's a different way and hate is not the answer,' said Arthur, who is now Oklahoma's secretary of agriculture, 'and I think now it's really important to do that.'

Behind the speakers were empty glass and metal chairs representing each person who died, including smaller chairs for the 19 children killed in the bombing, many of them inside the second-floor Americas Kids day-care center

A person kneels at the memorial chair of Robbin Ann Huff and baby Amber Denise Huff in the Field of Chairs during the 26th Anniversary Remembrance Ceremony
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has cancelled his trip to New Delhi which was scheduled for next week, in view of the severity of the second wave of the Coronavirus pandemic in India.

An official statement of the ministry of external affairs said, "In view of the prevailing Covid situation, it has been decided by mutual agreement that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom will not visit India next week."

However, the two sides will be holding a virtual meeting in the coming days to launch plans for a transformed India-U.K. relationship. "Both leaders attach the highest importance to taking the India-U.K. partnership to its fullest potential and propose to remain in close touch in this regard and look forward to an in-person meeting later in the year," the ministry said.

The UK is eyeing a new bilateral trade deal with India, following its exit from the European Union. India is the second-largest investor in the UK, after the US. Post-Brexit, the UK is focused on the Indo-Pacific region for its economy and security.

Johnson's trip to India was initially scheduled to take place in January but was cancelled when the UK entered a national lockdown, the third of its kind since the onset of the pandemic last year.
(@ChaudhryMAli88)

President Dr Arif Alvi Monday emphasized that strengthening and developing the country's dairy sector on modern was essential as it played an important role in national economic growth and development

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 19th Apr, 2021 ) :President Dr Arif Alvi Monday emphasized that strengthening and developing the country's dairy sector on modern was essential as it played an important role in national economic growth and development.

Talking to a delegation of dairy industry, led by Syed Hasan Raza, which called on him here at the Aiwan-e-Sadr, he urged for promoting dairy sector to generate employment opportunities and earn foreign exchange by exporting dairy products.

The delegation briefed the president about the issues and challenges being faced by the dairy industry.

He assured the delegation of government's support to address the issues of dairy producers and processors by providing them level playing field and enabling environment to enhance milk production.

He said the government had focused on this sector to enhance economic growth, ensure food security and alleviate poverty in the country.

The president also underscored the need for skill development of people associated with the dairy sector.

He stressed the need for creating awareness among the people about the advanced dairy techniques to enhance yield and quality of produce.

President Alvi urged all stakeholders to devise a national strategy and forward-looking policy for the development of dairy sector.

He also appreciated the role of private sector in promoting dairy industry in the country.
HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Area 52's delta-8-THC products are now back in stock. From delta 8 carts to gummies and tinctures, these ultra premium products won't last long.

Why Area 52?

Area 52 Delta 8

The company has several years of experience in using visionary plants that they believe are an integral role in the process of self-growth, development, and self-care. Area 52's primary focus is set on cannabis products, mainly on the hemp-derived delta 8 THC.

The brand's presence in the delta 8 space answers the demand for high-quality delta 8 THC extracts  something that is difficult to find in such a young and booming market.

According to (co-founder Adam Wathen), the biggest pitfall of buying delta 8 THC - whether locally or online - is the lack of regulation in terms of the quality standards and labeling practices:

"The delta 8 space is going through the same period as the CBD market just a few years ago, it's a mirrored situation. There are a lot of cheap or budget products in this space, which use harmful and unethical ways of cutting corners. This is something we're just not interested in doing. Low-grade extracts come with toxic elements like cadmium, lead, mercury, butane, hexane, and bleaches. Our products are guaranteed to be clean and free from all harmful elements because we don't want to consume the bad stuff either. For us, it's always quality over quantity."

The company's products are available in a variety of formats. The delta 8 THC tincture offers 1200 mg of broad-spectrum hemp extract in a natural vanilla flavor. Area 52 also sells gummies that pack a healthy dose of 25 mg of hemp-derived delta8 in assorted fruity flavors. The gummies are vegan, non-GMO, gluten-free  and low in sugar.

There's also one product that is grabbing delta 8 THC aficionados by the throat  the Area 52 delta 8 vape cartridge. Ranked the best delta 8 cart by Observer and Daily CBD, this vape liquid contains pure delta 8 THC distillate combined with strain-specific terpenes. The current variety uses terpenes from the Pineapple Express strain, providing an unbeatable, sativa-like uplifting feel. At 900 mg of delta 8 THC distillate, a little goes a long way.

Unlike most hemp-derived products on the market, the Area 52 extracts are made with a delta 8 THC distillate, which doesn't leave an earthy flavor typical of its full-spectrum counterparts.

Area 52's Delta 8 products are made from organic hemp sourced from local farms in Colorado  similar to how some of the best CBD products are made. The company prides itself in using a unique extraction process that is much slower than some of the high-risk methods and creates a cleaner and more enjoyable experience overall. They're also very scrupulous when it comes to laboratory testing.

"We love this molecule for its smooth buzz and clear-headedness. It's great for use at work to boost productivity, in the evenings to wind down after a long day, or out with your friends when you want to get a positive vibe and chill. However, this experience can be easily ruined if a product is poorly manufactured or comes from a subpar source. It's even worse when it gets contaminated with toxic chemicals due to improper purging. We don't let such things happen here at Area 52. If we don't use it, you can't buy it. And if you don't take anyone's word for granted  check out our lab-reports for hard proof," said co-founder Wathen.

Delta 8 THC is the analog of its standard, more popular version, delta 9 THC. It is twice less potent than delta 9 and doesn't cause uncomfortable side effects such as anxiety and paranoia. Until recently, few people have heard of delta 8 THC, but with the recent scientific breakthroughs, manufacturers can now obtain large yields of this cannabinoid using a special conversion process from CBD.

Press Contact

Adam Wathen

UFO [at] area52 [dot] com

Related Images



area-52-delta-8-thc.jpg

Area 52 - Delta 8 THC

SOURCE Area 52 Delta 8
Defense witness in actor Efremov case pleads not guilty to willful false testimony

 The press service of Moscow's Presnensky District Court

11:44 19/04/2021

MOSCOW, April 19 (RAPSI)  Tevan Badasyan, a defense witness in the deadly road traffic accident case against actor Mikhail Efremov, on Monday pled not guilty to intended making of false statements concerning the car crash, RAPSI reports from Moscows Presnensky District Court.

According to the prosecution, Badasyan alleged that he detected another person being in the car alongside the actor. Prosecutors claim that the witness intentionally wanted to mislead the court.

Pretrial investigation into the false testimony case was completed in early April. There are three defendants in it, including Badasyan. Two other defendants insisted that they saw not Efremov, but someone else driving the car at the time of the accident.

In October 2020, the Moscow City Court reduced jail sentence of Efremov by 6 months, from 8 to 7.5 years. The actor was found guilty of driving under influence (DUI) resulting in vehicular homicide.

As established by the court, on the evening of June 8, Efremov driving his car crossed into the oncoming lane in central Moscow and collided with a delivery service vehicle. He was arrested on the scene. Alcohol and drugs were reportedly found in his blood. Victim Sergey Zakharov was taken to hospital where he died early in the morning of June 9.

Efremov pleaded guilty in the case.
STEM

Labster Bolsters Simulations with Additional Science Learning Resources

Virtual lab company Labster has expanded its portfolio of learning resources with a variety of new offerings designed to complement its core science simulations. Updates on the platform include:

38 new short simulations focused on specific concepts of techniques, adapted from existing full-length simulations;

Upgrades to existing simulations to improve the playing experience;

A new library of science images;

Additional 3D science animations on a range of topics;

Lab report templates for students;

Lab manuals for all simulations;

Accessibility updates;

Course translations in Spanish, German, French and Italian;

An updated catalog view that provides information on simulations' curriculum alignment, accessibility status and languages available; and

A bank of quiz questions without answers, for review or assessment (coming soon).

For more information, visit the Labster blog.
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Lawyers representing victims of chemical weapons attacks in Syria filed a criminal complaint with Swedish police on Monday, calling for an investigation into the role of officials in President Bashar al-Assad's government.

Allegations of war crimes can be investigated by Swedish police regardless of where they were committed.

Similar legal actions, taken by groups such as Civil Rights Defenders, the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, Syrian Archive, and the Open Society Justice Initiative on behalf of victims have already been launched in Germany and France.

"The groups call on Swedish judicial authorities to open an investigation into these attacks, so that Syrian officials responsible for these war crimes can be put on trial under the principle of universal jurisdiction," the groups behind the legal action said in a statement.

The Syrian government denies ever using chemical weapons against its own civilians in the course of conflict with rebel forces. The conflict, which began in 2011, has largely subsided with Assad having regained control of most key territory with Russian and Iranian military support.

According to the complaint, the Syrian government used chemical weapons in attacks on the opposition-held towns of Ghouta in 2013 and Khan Sheikhoun in 2017. Hundreds of civilians, including children, were killed.

"In the ten years since the first assaults on pro-democracy protesters in Syria, the government has used chemical weapons more than 300 times to terrorize the civilian population," said Steve Kostas, a lawyer at the Justice Initiative.

"Swedish authorities can join their counterparts in France and Germany to jointly investigate the use of chemical weapons in Syria and demonstrate that there will be no impunity for the perpetrators of these crimes," he said in a statement.

A U.N.-commissioned investigation to identify those behind chemical attacks in Syria concluded in 2017 that Syrian government forces had used chlorine and sarin gas.

The first trial of suspected members of Assad's security services for crimes against humanity, including torture and sexual assault, began in a German court in April 2020.

(Reporting by Simon Johnson; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
A new study from the UBC Sauder School of Business finds a subtle shift in organ donor messaging can lead to a big boost in registration.

Organ donation saves countless lives every year, and most people think it's the right thing to do -- but when it comes to people actually registering to donate, the numbers around the world are surprisingly low. This is particularly so in countries that rely on informed consent and require people to learn about organ donation before they opt-in to register as a donor.

In fact, in Canada, just 32 per cent of people have registered to become organ donors.

Transplant agencies have tried a range of strategies to increase donation levels, including the introduction of in-hospital organ donation coordinators, greater public education and marketing campaigns.

Some campaigns emphasize how low organ donation rates are and plead with people to sign up, hoping the meagre numbers will motivate people to help. In marketing, this is known as a low descriptive norm. Others take the opposite tack, and emphasize how positive people feel about organ donation, which encourages people to conform to the expectations of others, a high injunctive norm. For example, one UK government advertisement stated, "96 per cent believe donating organs is the right thing to do."

But what happens when you combine the two approaches? According to the new study, titled Everybody Thinks We Should But Nobody Does: How Combined Injunctive and Descriptive Norms Motivate Organ Donation Registration, highlighting the incongruence between what people believe and what they do -- or don't do -- can spur their willingness to register.

According to UBC Sauder PhD candidate Rishad Habib (she/her), who co-authored the study with UBC Sauder colleagues Dr. Katherine White and Dr. JoAndrea Hoegg, by focusing on how low registration numbers are, some agencies may be unknowingly alienating potential donors.

"If you tell people that nobody is doing something, does that really motivate them to register?" says Habib. "By communicating that the numbers are low, they might be inadvertently communicating that it's not very important, or not worthwhile."

On the flipside, if marketers focus on how many people support organ donation, they risk making people feel like they don't need to act.

For the study, the researchers tested all three approaches -- focusing on the low rates, the high support, and a combination of the two -- in online surveys, lab surveys and in a public field study.

In one study, research assistants set up a table at the UBC student centre and regularly rotated banners encouraging passersby to register. They also asked people if they were already registered, and if they weren't, they would show them an iPad displaying the different messaging on the banners.

For example, one read, "Only 20 per cent of Canadians are registered as organ donors" while another said, "90 per cent of Canadians believe people should register as organ donors." The people were then offered the chance to sign up.

Roughly 20 per cent of people who were given only the individual messages signed up; but when people were given the combined message, registrations jumped to 33 per cent, which represents an almost 70 per cent increase -- a leap that could help save lives.

"It motivates responsibility," explains Habib. "When the two messages are combined, people think, 'No one's doing it, but it's important. So I need to step up and register."

Habib hopes the findings, which were published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, will help transplant organizations create more effective communication strategies; in fact, the study has already influenced at least one organ donation registry's online and TV campaigns.

"You could apply this to other situations where there's a positive behaviour, but there aren't a lot of people doing it -- like mask wearing at the start of the pandemic," she says. "If the behaviour levels are low, but the support for the behaviour is high, then it makes sense to communicate both."

###
BBDO Indonesia and BBDO Guerrero have joined forces with Sweety on a campaign for Sweety Silver Pants. Inspired by Indonesian myths, the campaign illustrates how parents need to change their babys diaper regularly if they want to prevent monster tantrums.

There are still many parents in Indonesia who believe in myths and superstitions. And there is a belief that if your baby cries continuously, a monster might be trying to steal it away. But more likely, the crying is caused by a full diaper. Based on research conducted by Sweety, 80% of diaper rash is from prolonged exposure to moist diapers, resulting in skin problems such as irritation, infection, itching and redness.

Inspired by local myths, Sweety worked with BBDO Indonesia and BBDO Guerrero, with the counsel of BBDO Asia Creative Council, to launch a print advertising series that explains how not changing a diaper on time can transform even the cutest baby into a grouchy little monster. Each monster baby is patterned after a creature from Indonesian folklore: The Leyak, the Genderuwo, and the Buto Ijo.

When asked about the print campaign, Wenny Damayanti - Head of Marketing Baby Care, Kimberly-Clark Softex said, Many Indonesian parents believe their babies are crying because they're being disturbed by a mystical creature, despite the fact that the baby is crying nonstop due to a full diaper. We also understand that a full diaper can cause skin issues to the baby, such as rashes, irritation, infection, and itching, which makes them uncomfortable. Therefore, Sweety in collaboration with BBDO Indonesia launched an innovative campaign in the form of a print advertisement that illustrates how changing a diaper late, can turn your little one into a "haunting" figure for parents, therefore it is better to check your babys diaper condition regularly.

The visual for this campaign initiative is strengthened by the copy Ganti Sebelum Menghantui which translates to Change their diaper before it changes them. This emphasizes the importance of using a quality diaper, checking the diaper routinely, and immediately changing it without waiting for the diaper to be full.

BBDO Guerreros Emman Carandang and Jamie Que added, Indonesia has such a rich and colorful oral tradition. We wanted this campaign to bring them to life in a modern way, telling the story of what haunts parents right now. The crafting of this series was very important so that we could capture the nuances and details that bridge an ancient, mythical world with the modern one.

BBDO Greater China developed a radio campaign with the same goal, to encourage parents to check their babys diapers regularly. The radio spots create anticipation, mimicking the arrival of something extraordinary, like man landing on the moon and a royal entrance. However, at the end of the build-up, comes a twist: the only thing arriving is a babys poop. The messaging is clear, they wont make an announcement, so check your babys diaper frequently to avoid diaper rash.

When asked about the messaging and different mediums of the campaign, Wenny continued, There is also a radio campaign that accomplished the same purpose. The radio campaign also contains the message that babies do not reveal when they poop, so check your baby's diaper regularly to prevent diaper rash on their skin. The campaign also aims to educate parents on how to prevent diaper rash by using high-quality diapers, such as Sweety Silver Pants.

Syeda Ayesha Ikram, ECD BBDO Indonesia also added, Indonesia has many myths and folklores. In a culture this rich in stories, what better way than to pick a crucial consumer issue, blend it with a mythological twist and present it in a tangible form to the local audiences as a head-turner? Another genre close to Indonesians is comedy. When combined with an unexpected turn in storytelling, it conveys a serious message in a lighthearted manner, drawing applause from consumers. These formed the basis of the Sweety print and radio campaigns. She continued when asked about the BBDO collaboration, apart from the insights, the cherry on top is the brilliant collaboration between BBDO Guerrero, BBDO Indonesia, and BBDO Shanghai in bringing the ideas to life.

Credits:

BBDO Guerrero

Creative Chairman : David Guerrero

Executive Creative Director : Federico Fanti

Creative Director : Ali Silao

Creative Director : Emman Carandang

Creative Director : Jamie Que

Creative Services Director : Al Salvador

Print Producer : Zeth Pascual

Head of Final Art Studio : Manny Vailoces

Senior Account Manager : Lucelle Zuniga

Senior Account Manager : Regie Ucang

Marketing Assistant : Meda Cruz

BBDO Indonesia / BBDO Greater China

Executive Creative Director : Syeda Ayesha Ikram

Writer, CCO : Aricio Fortes

Chairman & CCO : Leong Wai Foong

Group Creative Director : Mukund Olety

Creative Director : Moksa Jiwadana

Art Director : Meilina Lim (Print)

Copywriter : Beda Pandutama (Print), Danif Pradana

(Radio)

FA Artist : Sugiono (Print), Soeyatno (Print)

Head of Strategy & Business : Ezra Nathanael

Associate Account Director : Ismaniar Kurniasih

Account Manager : Hatiti Alfianti

Account Executive : Hafizh Baihaki

Senior Producer : Devithia Marpaung (Radio), Fikri Damis

(Radio), Irma Rahmawaty (Print)

Producer : Siti Syarah Reyma (Print, Audio & Placement)

Senior Marcom Director : Aviani Primasari

Senior Marcom Executive : Natalia P Handayani

Marcom Executive : Tiara Jasmine

Media Relation Manager : Katrina Hutagaol

Executive Assistant : Dian Kameswari

Managing Director : Talha Bin Hisaam Third Parties

Print Works

Photographer : Illusion CGI Studio

Illustrator : Illusion CGI Studio

Production Company : Illusion CGI Studio

Radio Works

Audio production & English VO Take : Network BBDO, South Africa

Sound Engineer : Greg Canning

Integrated Producer : Caroline Switala (Network BBDO, South Africa*)

Bahasa VO Take : Cut2Cut, Jakarta Indonesia

The radio campaign was produced in Network BBDO South Africas studio, this campaign was a real team effort from the network and its partners from different corners of the world all collaborating for the significant Asian brand, Sweety.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.  About 51,000 New York City public school students who recently opted back into in-person learning will be able to return to campus on Monday, April 26, amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

During a March 24 to April 9 opt-in window, families of children who were full-time remote learners were able to let their school know they wanted to switch to in-person learning. It was the second time kids were able to switch to traditional classroom learning. The first opt-in period was in mid-November.

We know from experience how safe our schools are; we set a gold standard. Its the safest place to be in the city, Mayor Bill de Blasio said during a press conference last week.

Students across all grade levels  from 3-K to 12th grade  will return to school buildings starting Monday, April 26, according to the city Department of Education (DOE).

Throughout the opt-in period, principals were able to review the numbers of students opting into in-person instruction at their schools in real-time, the DOE said.

Each school community is unique, and the DOE said it will support schools and school leaders as they prepare to welcome back remote learners into classrooms again.

New York City set the reopening gold standard for districts across the country, and we are thrilled to welcome back approximately 51,000 new students of all grade levels to schools in two weeks, said city Schools Chancellor Meisha Porter recently. None of this would be possible without our resilient principals, educators, staff and families, and I thank them all for their tireless efforts to ensure every student who wants the opportunity to have an in-person learning experience has one.

*** CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF CORONAVIRUS IN NEW YORK ***

Heres what you need to know.

When will my child return to school?

Students across all grade levels will be able to go back to school starting April 26.

This marks a change from de Blasios comments last month, in which he said younger students would be the first to go back to classrooms, but that more work would need to be done to bring middle and high school students back.

We still have more work to do for middle and high school, de Blasio said at the time. Were still not sure about those timelines, as I said, the opt-in will include middle and high school students so we know what their intentions are, and then well be able to provide more information as we get more guidance and as we see the overall situation evolve.

However, all students, in preschools, District 75 schools, elementary schools, middle schools and high schools will begin the return to campus on April 26. According to the DOE, this is because the city is able to accommodate all middle and high school students who opted in.

How socially distanced will students be?

The second opt-in period was announced after the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) updated its school guidance stating distance between students could be reduced from six feet to three feet  which would allow the city to accommodate more students. The CDC said students can safely sit just three feet apart in the classroom as long as they wear a mask, but should be kept the usual six feet away from one another at sporting events, assemblies, lunch, or chorus practice.

However, de Blasio and Porter said that only preschool and elementary school students will be allowed to sit three feet apart. Middle and high school students will remain seated six feet apart.

Even with the existing six-foot rule in middle and high school, we will be able to accommodate all kids who want to come back, de Blasio said.

Will there be instruction five days a week?

The mayor and chancellor both said incoming in-person students will not impact those who were previously learning in-person.

This means that students who were already learning in-person will not have their schedule changed and will continue attending school on their days, whether thats three days a week or five days a week. But Porter said the city is working to get as many schools as possible five days a week.

We will work with schools to ensure we can get as many kids back for five days as possible. Students will remain in the program they are in without disruption, she said.

How many students are learning in-person?

According to the DOE, the total number of students who have opted to learn in-person  including students from the recent opt-in period  is about 365,000, or nearly 40%. Before the latest opt-in period, just 30% of city public school students were learning on campus.

Of the 51,000 students who opted into in-person learning, 26,500 students are in 3-K to fifth-grade, 10,000 are in middle school, 13,000 are in high school, and 1,500 are in District 75 schools, which teach special needs students.

What should I expect when my child goes back to school?

Your childs school will keep you informed about its specific learning model and your childs schedule.

Students who attend a school using the blended learning model will be on campus two to three days a week and learning remotely on the other days. Currently, many schools across the city are offering students five-day-a-week in-person instruction.

Under blended learning, schools are arranging schedules and programs to serve the number of students they expect to see in-person each day. And the city DOE wants to make sure the expectation is clear  if you are in blended learning, your school expects that you will attend school in-person.

Will I need to consent to testing?

Students who sign up for blended learning must submit consent for random coronavirus testing by the first day their child begins in-person learning. If you have already submitted consent, the DOE encouraged parents to submit the consent form again to ensure the latest form is on file.

There are two ways to submit the consent form:

New York City Schools Account (NYCSA) -- Log into your account, click your students name, click Manage Account, and when a dropdown menu appears, click Consent Forms. Read the page and choose the consent option at the end for your student.

Print and sign the form and bring it to your childs school on the first day her or she is back on campus. A printable PDF file is available in 10 languages at the DOEs COVID Testing page.

If a student comes to school on the first day back for in-person instruction without a consent form on file, the principal and school staff will contact you to obtain consent. After that, those students without a consent form on file who dont have a medical or disability-based exemption must move to fully remote instruction.

What are the other safety precautions?

Safety protocols at schools involve social distancing, face coverings and more. Before entering school buildings, students and staff must fill out a daily health screening before entering.

Students will be asked to wash their hands and use hand sanitizer more often. Social distancing markers will be placed throughout school buildings to remind kids to keep their distance. Students will be required to stay in pods together throughout the day as much as possible, and limit contact with other classrooms to contain any potential spread of the virus to other parts of the school.

Schools will be thoroughly disinfected every night, with custodians using backpack sprays or an electrostatic disinfectant. High-touch surfaces will be cleaned throughout the school day. The DOE has been supplying schools with cleaning supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE), including face masks.

What if I want to switch back to remote learning?

At any time of the school year for any reason, you can opt back into full-time remote learning. You can use this form to opt back to fully remote.

But be aware that there may not be another opportunity to opt back into in-person learning for the remainder of the 2020-2021 school year.

What should I know about possible school closures?

New York City public school buildings wont close as frequently due to coronavirus cases under a new policy. De Blasio announced earlier this month that four positive coronavirus cases would shutter a public school building under the policy  replacing the controversial two-case rule where two positive cases without a clear link would shutter a building for at least 10 days.

For the entire school building, if there are two or three confirmed cases in one week it will lead to an increase in randomized COVID-19 testing for students and staff. Testing will double to 40% of students and staff.

If there are four or more cases in different classrooms within seven days that can be traced to a known exposure within the school building, the building will close for 10 days.

You can go here for a breakdown on how schools or classrooms will close if there are positive COVID-19 cases.

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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FARMINGTON  Navajo Nation leaders approved a bill to allocate $2 million in supplemental funding to help families with funeral expenses related to a COVID-19 death.

In February, the tribes Division of Social Services requested the money for its COVID-19 burial assistance because the resource was close to depleting its funding.

Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez and Vice President Myron Lizer on April 9 signed the bill that will transfer $2 million from the Unreserved Undesignated Fund Balance to the division.

For every life lost there are family members who grieve their loss, and we continue to pray for their comfort, they wrote in a memorandum to Speaker Seth Damon.

ADVERTISEMENTSkip



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There have been 1,262 deaths related to COVID-19 for the tribe as of April 10. Nez and Lizer said they understand the virus will take more lives.

The division has worked tirelessly in finding sources of funding to help our people, but those sources are limited. We thank the Navajo council for supporting the division and their work, the president and vice president wrote.

Delegate Pernell Halona, who sponsored the bill, told the Navajo Nation Council that the division has received 1,519 requests for assistance as of March 26.

In some situations, more than one family member were lost and it imposed tremendous financial hardship, crisis on the loved ones that are left behind, Halona said.

Deannah Neswood-Gishey, the divisions executive director, told delegates that the COVID-19 burial assistance resource was started during the pandemic and prior to its establishment, the division used federal funding provided to its pre-existing burial assistance program.

That pre-existing program capped assistance at $2,500 for a standard funeral and families had to use mortuaries that have contracts with the tribe, Neswood-Gishey explained.

The COVID-19 burial assistance provides $3,500 and there is no requirement to use mortuaries that have agreements with the tribe, she said adding that the division has helped families from California, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Texas.

After the council passed the bill March 26, they directed the division to take all steps necessary to fund or reimburse up to $3,500 to families who did not apply for or were denied COVID-19 related burial assistance through the Federal Emergency Management Agency or because they did not use mortuaries that have contracts with the tribe.

The directive also stated families who received $2,500 are eligible for the additional $1,000.

In the memorandum from Nez and Lizer, they mentioned that they anticipate working on the offer by FEMA for funeral assistance as a separate source of funding for tribal members.

The Division of Social Services is working on how applications are processed and will provide that information to all. We continue our fight against the monster virus, and we offer our prayers for all Navajo people for their continued health and safety, they wrote.
Nikkei Asia  Kangbashi, a town in the middle of barren Inner Mongolia deserts, once found itself stuck with rows of newly built-but-vacant apartment buildings, earning a na-tionwide reputation as a guicheng, or ghost town.

Now the district in the city of Ordos is back. Having sold previously empty apartments, Kangbashi town is building more high-rise complexes. Were not a ghost town anymore, a local property sales manager said with a laugh.

The secret to the reversal of the towns fortunes is the intense competition among high school students, and their parents, to be accepted into Chinas top universities. Once mu-nicipal officials moved some of the citys top schools into Kangbashi, the so-called tiger parents followed and property prices  along with new investment  soared.

At a condominium showroom, a salesperson explained fluctuating condominium prices here over the past 10 years.

Work on a new urban center in Kangbashi gained momentum in 2009, as the 4 trillion yuan ($610 billion at current rates) that the central government pumped into the coun-trys economy after the global financial crisis sent coal prices soaring and fueled a frothy property market in Ordos.

When the bubble burst, condos that went for more than 8,000 yuan per square meter, or about $1,200, at the peak tumbled to between 3,000 yuan and 5,000 yuan.

Yet now prices in central Kangbashi are up to 15,000 yuan per square meter, the sales-person said. This is even as the citys economy shrank in 2019 and 2020.

Locals uniformly credit the trend to vastly improved school choices for residents. Top-quality schools like Ordos No. 1 High School, which has sent students to leading universi-ties in Beijing, were moved to Kangbashi.

They sort of forced great teachers to relocate by enticing them with [housing] at half the price, the person said.

Tight regulations surrounding school districts require parents who want to send children to a particularly coveted school to own a home within the district, driving up prices to lev-els that have raised broad concern. Properties near good schools in Beijing or Shanghai can go for millions of dollars.

With the areas ghost town status seemingly shaken off, the local government began ap-proving condominium construction again last year for the first time in eight years. As many as 10 projects are set to be greenlighted by the end of the year, according to the person at the showroom.

Some Chinese media outlets have celebrated Ordos as a model for how to deal with hous-ing gluts, but the truth is that this is not an uncommon tactic. Tianjin, for example, built a new school in the area hit by the August 2015 explosion to help sell housing there.

The prioritization of property sales over the education system underscores Chinas de-pendence on real estate to drive its economy and fund government spending. Comments arguing that real estate is holding China hostage are a common sight online.

Property investment directly boosts gross domestic product and stokes demand in related industries such as steel and cement.

In normal countries, condominiums are built because theres demand, said an econo-mist under Chinas State Council. In China, condominiums are built to increase steel and cement production. Its backward.

The deluge of national housing investment that helped power Chinas record-breaking 18.3% GDP bounce last quarter has some observers warning of a potential glut.

According to Haitong Securities, over 30% of economic growth from last spring to the end of 2020 can be accounted for by real estate investment, more than the fields average contribution over the past decade. Many local governments could not make ends meet without income from land sales for housing and property tax revenue.

The development that helped power Chinas recovery from the coronavirus outbreak has left lower-tier cities with a buildup of excess homes. New condominium inventories reached a four-and-a-half-year high by square footage around the end of last year, ac-cording to E-House China R&D Institute.

On top of this, population growth has stalled. The number of people in their 20s and 30s  the prime homebuying age  is already shrinking. In Ordos specifically, the population grew nearly 5% annually on average in the six years through 2012, but the growth rate has plunged to an average of 0.6% since the bubble ended.

School moves have a striking impact, but only a temporary, limited one. Tianjin and Inner Mongolia still languish near the bottom of Chinas 31 provinces and provincial-level cities in terms of economic growth.

We cant shake the fear that if new development picks up steam, well create a new ghost town, an Ordos real estate developer said.

This story was first published by Nikkei Asia

Contact editor Michael Bellart (michaelbellart@caixin.com)

Download our app to receive breaking news alerts and read the news on the go.

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Mamadi Doumbouya for The New York Times Talk Neil deGrasse Tyson Thinks Science Can Reign Supreme Again

Neil deGrasse Tyson is perhaps the countrys best-known popularizer of science. The astrophysicist, who is 62, has achieved that status through his ever-expanding body of work in television, podcasting, journalism, social media and books (his latest is the new Cosmic Queries) and as director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He has done so at a time when, distressingly, skepticism toward established science has become increasingly widespread. Tyson himself received some scrutiny in 2019 after he was subject to two claims of sexual misconduct, which he subsequently described as misunderstandings. Those claims were investigated by his employers at the museum as well as Fox Broadcasting and National Geographic, which respectively air his series Cosmos and StarTalk; all three of them decided to continue employing Tyson. Weve lost confidence in our civic entities, Tyson says about declining public trust in science. Thats a strong destabilizing force, and some of that spilled over into the scientific community.

In your work, you often bring up wanting to inculcate in people a scientific mind-set, which is a way of thinking that would help navigate misinformation. But we dont always recognize misinformation for what it is. So what questions should people be asking themselves when they encounter material thats skeptical about mainstream science? Let me first offer a transition from your question: Ive gotten simultaneously famous and infamous for commenting on Twitter on films and whether they get their science correct. If something lands awkwardly, I ask myself, Could they have done that better or differently? Then later I comment. My defense is, if you are watching a period piece that takes place in the 1950s in L.A., and theres a 1962 Chevy Bel Air on the road, and the person you see the movie with is a car buff and says, That car wasnt made yet, you say, Thats pretty good that you noticed that. Or if youre watching a Jane Austen period piece: The carriage rolls up, and somebody is wearing a derby instead of a top hat. If youre a costume designer, you would cry foul. Those people arent criticized for making those observations. Because Im bringing science to that table, people reject it unfairly. Now getting back to your point: Whats behind all this? The missing link is curiosity. Without curiosity youre no longer probing for what is true. If someone says, I saw Bigfoot the other day, there are people who say, Yeah, thats great! And people who say, No, youre full of [expletive]  both of those responses require no brain work. What is the brain work I would like to see more of? Its: Tell me more. When did you see this? Where did you see it? Did you find other evidence? You start probing. Its the absence of curiosity that concerns me.

But curiosity is also part of what drives people down anti-vaccine rabbit holes or toward conspiracy theories, isnt it? So what I left out is a tandem awareness we must have that would go along with curiosity, and that is self-awareness of bias. Ill give an example: Among religious people who want to change the science curriculum  thats a very small subset, by the way, of religious people  many of them see the universe as perfectly ordered and beautiful. Because they see the things that are beautiful. If you look at religious posters that have quotes, usually from the New Testament, those quotes are on top of beautiful sunsets. Theyre not on top of the underbelly of a tarantula, which occupies the same world as that sunset. Or ticks sucking blood from its mammalian host. Or 

I get it, I get it. OK. But to brush under the rug the things that dont agree with what you want to be true is the biggest problem we have when were trying to analyze information.

Neil deGrasse Tyson at the Rose Center at the American Museum of Natural History in New York in 2006. He has been the director of the Hayden Planetarium since 1996. Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

What about the larger cultural perspective? This moment is presenting new political and social challenges to the authority of science, and doing so for a variety of reasons  a lot of them bad faith. Should there be a resulting shift in how scientists advocate for themselves and their work? Big Y-E-S. Heres what I think happened. We lost, as a culture, the concept of authority coming out of the Vietnam War and Watergate, and we stopped going to the moon. This all happened around the same time. Then we find out about the Pentagon Papers  authorities were lying or withholding information. Also, scientists were promising a future of flying cars and monorails down the street, and that didnt happen. There is an absence of delivery on promised goods. So, I saw the slow dismantling of authority as something you should blindly listen to. What that means is you have to teach science differently. You have to say, Heres this body of knowledge that are objective truths established by science. Then: Heres this frontier where were still asking questions. You distinguish between science thats objectively established as true and science on the frontier. Once youve come up knowing the science and how and why it works and understanding what the bleeding edge of science does, youre in a position to pass judgment on science-related news. Now, on top of that, if theres anything we would call a scientific authority, it is the National Academy of Sciences. Most people dont even know that the frickin thing exists. Why is that? We need better marketing.

What would be the mechanism for that? Ill go pie in the sky: a mission to Mars with humans. That would do it. Why do I know that? Because in the 1960s, while were going to the moon, you didnt need special programs to get people interested in science and engineering. It was writ large in the daily headlines because every mission was more ambitious than the previous mission. This went higher, this orbited longer, now were docking, now were going to launch the craft thats going to the moon, now we go to the moon. And you knew it was fluency in science and technology that was empowering that journey. So a mission to Mars with humans, I could script this: Were going to do this in the year 2035. Its 14 years from now, and we want the crew to be in their upper 20s in age, which means that right now that crew is in middle school. Let us do another Mercury 7 except were going to find the middle-schoolers who we are going to track, and Teen Beat is going to say, How were your grades? Are you doing all the right things? Are you studying? They become models for society without having to take out an ad. They go to Mars! By the way, for this you also need biologists, medical doctors, engineers, astrophysicists, chemists, geologists. You tickle all the STEM fields, and everybody is going to want to be a part of that, and science would reign supreme once again.

As far as communicating with the public, are there ways in which your being so active on Twitter is not helpful to your larger goals? Heres one of my great disappointments: I conducted a Twitter survey, and I asked carefully conceived questions. One of them was, How do you lean politically: Libertarian, liberal, centrist or conservative? The response was only about 10 percent conservative. I was disappointed in that because if half the country votes conservative, that means conservatives are underrepresented in my Twitter feed. And my feed is not politicized. You might want to believe it is. Its just not.

Then what accounts for that disparity? I dont know. Ive been trying to figure that out. Thats why I read books on conservatism, to get inside the head of why is someone thinking this way. Plus, there are tweets that I wont post because theyd be too controversial even though they are completely fun and true. Heres one, Ill just tell you. I dont know if Ill ever post this. You go to the planet in Avatar, right? Get a nice shot of them being oppressed by the military unit that got sent there. Then I put up that image and have as a caption, Blue Lives Matter.

Oh, God. Because all of the Avatarians were blue, right? That would land really weirdly. People would pick fights because social media is very tribalizing even when theres no reason for it to be. I have a list of others that Im never going to post.

Delete that list. [Laughs] OK. I might publish it in a book one day.

Tyson with William Shatner on StarTalk in 2016. National Geographic Channel, via Everett Collection

Heres something Ive been curious about: My understanding is that, broadly speaking, physics is the study of very small things  quantum physics, particle physics  and very big things  astrophysics, relativity theory. Can you explain to me the interrelationship between the two areas? Or what a theory that integrates them looks like? So that question is simultaneously brilliant and 

Stupid? You can say stupid. Missing some stuffing. Ill tell you why its both. The way you can think about the universe is we have these four forces of nature, and you can ask, over what scales do they manifest? That controls what it is we need to know about the universe on those scales. So if you look at the large-scale universe, all matter is neutral. Theres an equal number of positive and negative charges. Planets are not attracted to each other by electrical charges. The electrical charges dont play into that. Its just gravity. Astrophysicists were the first to exploit gravity to understand the large-scale universe. Do you need particle physicists to understand the solar system? No. Because the forces that control the particles are not manifesting on those scales. Now lets look at the small scales. I have matter. How is it held together? With electromagnetic forces. Well, all molecules are held together by electromagnetic forces. The physicists lay the groundwork, the chemist takes it from there. How about the smaller particles? All right, the universe used to be little. Were expanding, so its smaller yesterday than it is today. Smaller today than it will be tomorrow. Lets roll the clock back. The universe is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. Its now the size of an atom. If the universe is now the size of the atom, how do we connect the gravity that was controlling it to the laws of physics that control something small? That is a shotgun marriage between Einsteins general theory of relativity, the theory of the large, and quantum physics, the theory of the small. When the large becomes small, somethings got to give. Thus were born the string theorists. So you dont have to think about string theory when youre looking at cosmology the way astrophysicists do. But if you want to look at the Big Bang and what was going on before, during and right after, you have to merge the theories of the small with the theories of the large. Thats a big frontier. Theyre each at each others extremes. And by the way, they dont play in the sandbox together. Relativity requires a completely smooth continuum of space-time, whereas quantum physics has quantized space. They cannot talk to each other on the same mathematical page. So either quantum physics will absorb relativity or relativity will absorb quantum  no one thinks thats going to happen  or theres a third theory that will then encompass them both: string theory or something else. I think that answers your question.

Tyson depicted in The Simpsons in 2017. 20th Century Fox Film Corp., via Everett Collection

I know that in almost every interview, you get asked about aliens. But let me ask you in this way: In Avi Loebs book about Oumuamua, he makes the argument that the scientific community is too hidebound and skeptical about the possible existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life. Is there something to that? No. Theres an entire organization fully within the family of the worlds astrophysicists called the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, which has an endowment and faculty who are highly respected, and they give interviews to the media. Avi came to this as a cosmologist basically  Ive known him for many years, a brilliant deep-thinking person  then he steps into the world of this search for alien intelligence. Hes rightly concerned that maybe this should get more attention, more funding. Everybody always wants more funding. The question is what are you going to invoke in order to achieve more funding? The argument that Oumuamua was an alien-directed spacecraft was not convincing to nearly all his colleagues. But it was convincing to him, and he wrote a book, and the public eats it up. I want there to be aliens, but Im not going to assume that because right off the bat theres something I cant explain, that the best explanation is going to be aliens. Now, Avi did a lot of homework before he arrived at his conclusion. But the homework was missing all the homework he could have done but didnt do because he didnt know about it.

A lot of what weve talked about really goes to questions of authority. Do you feel as if your own authority was affected by the claims of sexual misconduct made against you a couple of years ago? I dont think of myself as a source of authority. Let me give an example: The husband of someone whom I was working with was certain that weve never landed on the moon. He gave me this long explanation and said he had so much respect for me that if you tell me we landed on the moon, then Ill believe it. I said, No, this is not about authority. Its about your curiosity. Its about your understanding why something is or is not true. It has nothing to do with me declaring it and then you believing it. Then I said, What would convince you that we landed on the moon? Pictures of the landing sites. I said, Heres a website, and you can see photos. He came back the next day and said, I saw those pictures, but then I looked and NASA was a sponsor of the website, and that means that if they wanted to keep this a fake  And I said, You asked me what would convince you, and I gave you that evidence, and youre still not convinced. So we are done. It means you are not prepared to be convinced. I never think of what I say or present as authority. My ideal encounter with a person  as me in the educator role  is I teach them how to think about a problem. Its never been about authority. There are people who want to think when I post things its from pundit status because most people with my level of following are pundits. My postings arent that. Theyre to get you to think. So I dont think about authority  ever.

What about from a perspective of curiosity? Did you learn anything about gender dynamics or power imbalances as a result of those accusations? I think the #MeToo movement should have been something we engaged as a society decades ago. I dont think theres anything new about the #MeToo movement that people didnt already know was going on forever. Its not new; its a matter of when it hit, and social media became a fertile ground for the formation of movements of any kind because finally people get to have a say  not just the media speaking for people. So I dont know what surprises they held for people. Its not a new thing. Its an old thing that finally got its due.

But I was trying to ask what you, not the culture, had learned. Did that experience open any self-reflection or new understanding about either your own behaviors or thinking regarding gender dynamics? Im trying to get some introspection. There was the full movement that I think brought a lot of peoples attention that hadnt thought about it, hadnt cared about it. Ive been very aware of all this for decades. My father is a sociologist. My mother is a gerontologist. They cared a lot about the human condition and access to opportunity. So I had a very good baptism in this and what it means when one group is oppressed or they dont have access to opportunity. I saw that being a Black person growing up. You see how people treat you and how thats different from how they treat others in terms of their expectation for you or opportunities that they think you should or shouldnt have. So Ive had a deep lens my whole life.

Tyson in an episode of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014). Fox Image Collection, via Getty Images

We mentioned cognitive bias earlier. Do you have any hunches about your own? The fact that scientists are human like everybody means that there is a susceptibility to bias. The difference is the scientist is supposed to have good self-awareness of that bias so that they can check for it. You ask yourself, Do I have an urge for this experiment to come out one way or another? We are trained to invoke, as far as we can see, analysis of bias. So science may be the most honest enterprise humans have ever constructed. So about myself: I always try to check to see if I have bias. You know how to reduce bias? You dont invest emotions. Its just information. So again, my own bias  let me just think. Heres a bias. I think anybody  unless theres brain damage  can learn anything. Thats not scientifically demonstrated: Im operating on the assumption that if any human has learned it, then any other human can learn it. Its sort of a noble bias, right? Its consistent with how I want the world to be. As an educator thats a bias I carry, and Im self-aware.

Might there be ways of thinking or skills that the next generation of science-popularizers have or need that dont come as naturally to you? Let me back up for a moment and look at Carl Sagan. He stepped in places where no one had stepped before. He was criticized early on for appearing, for example, on Johnny Carsons show. Thats entertainment! That is not science! Then people realized, Oh, my gosh, the public embraces what we do as scientists. Now no one would object to such a thing. I was on Jon Stewarts and Stephen Colberts shows a lot when they were on Comedy Central. What I chose to do was understand  what is their comedic angle on me? How many seconds will they allow me to speak before they come in with a quip? I would look at Jon Stewart interviewing. He can dance circles around you, and hell interrupt you and then you stumble. I said, Im going to try to not let that happen to me. So I timed the average number of seconds he let you speak before he comes in with a quip. Its between six and nine seconds  which is a long time, by the way. So I said, let me parcel my information so that when he does come in its a natural pause, then we can laugh, and I continue and nothing gets discombobulated. Thats what I was doing that previously was unnecessary because Johnny Carson wasnt interrupting Carl Sagan every six seconds. Whats happening now is there are so many ways of reaching people: YouTube and Instagram and Twitch. This Instagram Live interview I did was hosted by someone named AstroAthens. This is a woman who is one of a dozen or more people who are half my age or less who love science and have chosen to take their enthusiasm to the internet. Take a look at what theyre posting. Theres no way I can do that. I dont even have the facility with those platforms. And when all the rest of those folks are firmly on the landscape, I want to slowly exit backdoor and have no one even notice that Im missing.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity from two conversations.
Brazil-based meat giant JBS has struck a deal to buy Vivera, in a transaction valuing the Dutch plant-based meat business at EUR341m (US$410.4m).

The agreement includes three production plants in the Netherlands and a research and development facility, JBS said in a statement provided to just-food today (19 April), adding the deal has been cleared by its board and is subject to approval from the relevant competition authorities.

JBS continued: The acquisition of Vivera strengthens and boosts JBS global plant-based food platform. Strong growth is expected in this category throughout global markets. The deal will add a brand to JBS portfolio that is well-established in consumer preferences, strengthening the companys focus on value-added products.

A potential sale of Viveria, which supplies retailers in 25 countries in Europe, including the UK and Germany, was first mooted by Bloomberg late last week, quoting unnamed sources who said other parties were also interested in acquiring the Dutch business.

Vivera offers branded and private-label products and was backed by the Netherlands-based private-equity firm Gilde Buy Out Partners.

JBS said it will operate Vivera as a standalone business, with its leadership team headed by chief executive Willem van Weede to remain in place.

"Joining forces with JBS gives us access to significant resources and capabilities to accelerate our current strong growth trajectory and the Vivera brand expansion," van Weede said in the statement.

The Brazilian meatpacker is already the owner of meat-free brands. Its flagship Seara line launched the Incrivel plant-based burger in Brazil in 2019, and the following year Colorado-based Planterra Foods, owned by JBS, instigated a wider rolled out of the Ozo brand in the US.

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JBS' CEO Gilberto Tomazoni added: "Vivera will give JBS a stronghold in the plant-based sector, with technological knowledge and capacity for innovation. This acquisition is an important step to strengthen our global plant-based protein platform."

Vivera, founded in 1990 as Encko-Vivera, a traditional protein company with a presence in vegan and vegetarian products, went fully plant-based in 2019 when it sold the meat part of the business Encko to Dutch meat processor Van Loon Group. Vivera has a small presence in Brazil with a distribution agreement with meat giant BRF.

The company announced a plan last year to invest EUR30m in one of its Netherlands plants over three years in an effort to double the production of meat alternatives. Vivera is focused on the European markets, including the UK.
Dreams Are Worth Dreaming: A Motivational Tale By Anthony Reyes My goal is for readers who may be going through a difficult time to know that they can start dreaming again and that they have the potential to become successful in life regardless of the hardships they are experiencing.

In Anthony Reyes newly released book, Dreams Are Worth Dreaming: A Motivational Tale, he shares how he used to dream big until he experienced several difficulties in his life that affected him mentally and financially. Even though he endured some of the most challenging moments in his life, he discovered the necessary steps to get back on track to living his dream life.

Throughout the book, readers will be inspired by Reyess story and how he shares that it is possible to achieve their dreams. He shares how the first step to reaching these dreams is to realize it starts within oneself. Readers will witness the authors personal experience as a backdrop as he shows what one needs to do to reinvent themselves with disciplined focus by changing their views, perspective and mindset.

My new book illustrates how I was able to climb my way out of the life obstacles that I was facing that erased the dreams that I had for myself, said Reyes. I wrote this tale for individuals to know that they are capable of getting out of the rut they may be experiencing. My goal is for readers who may be going through a difficult time to know that they can start dreaming again and that they have the potential to become successful in life regardless of the hardships they are experiencing.

Dreams Are Worth Dreaming presents a modern, uplifting and motivational story that will shed light on how to overcome lifes obstacles that may blindside the dreams an individual always had for themselves. Reyes will encourage readers to influence the warrior within to take the initiative, to fight back against the opposing grain, to smooth its edges, and to make something out of ones most cherished dreams.

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A seven-year-old girl was shot dead in a horrific act of violence at a McDonald's drive-thru in Chicago on Sunday afternoon.

It happened just after 4pm in the Windy City's Homan Square neighborhood.

Jaslyn Adams, 7, was hit multiple time and rushed to hospital where she was pronounced dead. Her father, Jontae Adams, 28, was also seriously injured as the pair waited in line in the family car to get food.

Police are still hunting for the suspect. It is not clear what led up to the shooting.

Video shot by those at the scene sees officers pulling the little girl out of the car and rushing her into the back of a police car in a bid to get her to hospital as quickly as possible.

A person can be heard exclaiming, 'Oh s***! They killed a baby!'

Scroll down for video

Seven-year-old Jaslyn Adams was fatally shot on Sunday afternoon while her father sustained gunshot injuries as they sat inside a vehicle at a McDonald's drive-thru

Jaslyn Adams, 7, was hit multiple time and rushed to hospital where she was pronounced dead

According to Chicago police, both victims were inside the vehicle when they 'heard gunshots and felt pain'. The car could be seen riddled with at least 15 bullet holes

A police commander walks by as police investigate a crime scene where Jontae Adams, 28, and his daughter Jaslyn, 7, where shot, resulting in Jaslyn's death

Police investigate a crime scene in the Windy City's Homan Square neighborhood

Police are still hunting for the suspect. It is not clear what led up to the shooting

Police investigate a crime scene where Jontae Adams, 28, and his daughter Jaslyn, 7, at a McDonald's drive-thru, Sunday, April 18

Jontae Adams frantically called his mother, Jaslyn's grandmother, Lawanda McMullen, after the shooting.

'He said, 'Ma, come get me. They just shot my baby,' McMullen told the Chicago Sun Times.

Jaslyn's aunt, Tawny McMullen, said her niece was a 'beautiful' and 'really sweet child.'

Joslyn was a student at Cameron Elementary School. She was nicknamed Pinky 'because she was bright' and pink was her favorite color, family members said.

The girl was hit several times and was taken by Chicago police officers to Stroger Hospital where she was pronounced dead

The shooting happened just after 4pm in Chicago's Homan Square neighborhood

Cook County Medical Examiner's Office confirmed Jaslyn, of Oak Park, was shot several times before her death.

The bullets stuck the girl's body 'multiple times' while her 28-year-old father was hit in the torso.

Their car was left riddled with bullet holes and shell casings were seen all around the vehicle.

Police said the shooting was believed to be gang-related.

The pair were both rushed to John Stroger Hospital where Jaslyn was pronounced dead. The father is currently in serious condition, according to police.

The exact circumstances leading up to the shooting remain unclear.

No suspects are yet custody but detectives are investigating the shooting

Marvin Edwards, president of 100 Men Standing, a group advocating against gun violence, encouraged anyone with information relating to the shooting to come forward.

'We are sick and tired of this. It makes no damn sense,' Edwards said.

'Whoever pulled this trigger on this young lady and took her life, trying to get something to eat from McDonald's, whoever is housing these individuals, turn these people in... We are pleading with you, do not let this go undone. Turn them in right away. This family are going through living hell right now because of the acts of some fools.'

People can leave anonymous tips by calling 1-800-U-TELL-US or by messaging Chicago Police Department's text line at 274637.
Hales case reflects the twisted morality and corruption of the legal system in an imperialist nation.

In our upside-down world, good guys often go to jail, and bad guys get promoted and live luxuriously.

Ex-President Barack Obama, a key architect of modern drone warfare, today lives in an $11.75 million, 6,892 square-foot waterfront mansion on a 30-acre property on Marthas Vineyard, and is regarded by many people as a great moral leader.

Donald Trump, who expanded the drone war even further than Obama, is also enjoying life these days at his $160 million Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

Daniel Hale, by contrast, a principled former Air Force officer and defense contractor who publicly exposed the drone program, will likely be spending at least the next two years in federal prison.

On March 31st, Hale pleaded guilty in the Eastern District of Virginia to one count of illegally retaining and transmitting classified national defense information in violation of the Espionage Act of 1917.

The documents pertaining to the U.S. drone war were transmitted to The Intercept reporter Jeremy Scahill in 2014/5 and published as part of a series called The Drone Papers.
Dubai CommerCity (DCC), the first dedicated e-commerce free zone in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia (Menasa) regions, has launched 470,000 sq ft of new facilities as part of its first stage in line with its planned schedule.



Dubai CommerCity is situated in the Umm Ramool area in Dubai, and is an AED3.2-billion ($871 million), 2.1 million-sq-ft project. The launch of the new phase includes a built-up area of over 320,000-sq ft of offices spaces in the Business Cluster. It also includes 145,000 sq ft of e-commerce logistics units and multi-client warehouses in the Logistics Cluster, which will be manaof ged and operated by Hellmann Worldwide Logistics and DHL.



Given its strategic location and the increased demand for its facilities and services, the new free zone managed to lease more than 51% of the logistics warehouses to companies launching their operations in different sectors, ranging from e-commerce, logistics and information technology to fashion, jewellery and electronics.



The launch of Dubai CommerCity aims to lead the future of e-commerce business in the region. The project has been thoroughly studied not only to provide foundational solutions, but also to stimulate and support business and prosperity at a time when the sector is going through peak growth. The e-commerce sector is key as its value is expected to reach $148.5 billion by 2022 in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia regions, said Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Chairman of the Dubai Airport Freezone Authority (Dafza).



The GCC region is the fastest growing in the e-commerce sector, and the UAE comes in second place as it is expected to grow 38.3% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR). The UAE is also ranked the fifth largest B2C products e-commerce market in sales within the Middle East, Africa and South Asia regions valued at $4 billion. The UAE companies in e-commerce account for 6% of the list of the 100 largest companies in the sector within the Middle East, Africa and South Asia region, he added.



Dr. Mohammed Al Zarooni, Director General of Dafza said: The global e-commerce sector is expected to grow 16.6% CAGR between 2019 and 2022. The Middle East, Africa and South Asia region is also expected to grow 18.4%, the Middle East and North Africa region 24.9% and the GCC 32.9% CAGR.



Dubai CommerCitys activities align with the strategies set out by the visionary leadership that have been placed to address the critical issues that have surfaced throughout the past months. The pandemic has redefined the nature of work in various sectors including e-commerce. During this period, the role of e-commerce has expanded and offered several solutions. It has also allowed the UAE to offer unprecedented opportunities to businesses across the region and globally, added Al Zarooni.



The launch of the facility is supported by the strategic partnerships signed by Dubai CommerCity and aims to support businesses to run effectively and seamlessly. The e-commerce free zone has signed agreements with Hellmann Worldwide and Logistics DHL Express that complement the efforts to grow and enhance the portfolio of services that Dubai CommerCity provides. As part of the partnerships, Hellmann Worldwide will manage and operate a shared, multi-client warehouse within the logistics cluster of the free zone and clients will have access to last mile delivery services through DHL Express.



Dubai CommerCitys customers will also utilise unique storage options and pay-as-you-go payment model which are highly cost efficient and allow flexibility to scale their operations in line with demand. The strategic partnerships will allow for fast e-commerce fulfilment across the region and will provide a suitable and stable groundwork from where customers can grow businesses and enter new markets.



Hellmann will also provide end-to-end warehousing including services like order management systems and streamlined customs clearance processes. As part of end-to-end logistics services, Hellmann will also offer last mile delivery services, through its last mile partner DHL Express, from the warehouse directly to the consumer.



Dubai CommerCity has signed partnership agreements with Magento Commerce, a leading e-commerce software provider and Redbox Digital, a global digital consultancy and platinum Magento implementation partner. Focused on offering E-Commerce-as-a-Service, the collaboration will provide Dubai CommerCity customers with tailored access to e-commerce solutions and services that will enhance digital experiences and brand growth.  TradeArabia News Service
Lucifer actor Tom Ellis and his screenwriter wife Meaghan Oppenheimer reportedly called police as a mysterious package was sent to their home in Los Angeles.

The screen star, 42, was left shocked when his spouse, 35, received a random box filled with glitter, according to a report.

The couple, who tied the knot in June 2019, are said to have filed a report to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) after finding the delivery 'creepy'.

'Creepy': Lucifer actor Tom Ellis and his screenwriter wife Meaghan Oppenheimer reportedly called police as a mysterious package was sent to their home in Los Angeles (pictured in 2019)

A source has told TMZ that claimed the cops' Threat Management division is currently investigating the case and 'have a lead on a suspect'.

MailOnline has contacted a spokesperson for Tom and Meaghan for further comment.

Tom wed TV and film executive Meaghan in a romantic woodland ceremony in Santa Ynes after a four-year romance.

What's going on? The screen star, 42, was left shocked when his spouse, 35, received a random box filled with glitter, according to a report (pictured last month)

Blended family: Tom's ex-wife, EastEnders star Tamzin Outhwaite, pictured with their daughters Florence, 12, and Marnie, eight, and her boyfriend Tom Child last year

The Miranda star co-parents Nora, 15, with his ex-girlfriend Estelle Morgan, as well as Florence, 12, and Marnie, eight, with his former wife, EastEnders star Tamzin Outhwaite.

The Welsh thespian has been keeping busy in recent months as he recently wrapped up filming for Lucifer.

It was revealed last year that the sixth series would be the programme's last after it was renewed by Netflix for a fourth season following its axe on Fox.

The end: The Welsh thespian has been keeping busy in recent months as he recently wrapped up filming for Lucifer (pictured last year with co-star Aimee Garcia)

The father-of-three bid farewell to the urban fantasy show on social media by sharing a picture of a personalised lighter which had the dates March 17, 2015, and March 29, 2021.

Lucifer's lead penned: 'Today is the day. 6 years ago I started a journey with the most amazing group of people and today we say a fond farewell to each other.

'Thank you to every single crew member who has helped bring the story of #Lucifer to life. What a ride . Ps Thanks for the beautiful gift @moppyoppenheimer.'
The value of Bahrains exports of national origin increased by 18% to BD684 million ($1.8 billion) during the first quarter (Q1) 2021, compared to BD580 million for Q1 of the previous year, marking a 17.9% increase, a report said.



The top 10 countries in terms of the value of exports of national origin purchased from Bahrain accounted for 80% of the total value, with the remaining countries accounting for 20%, said the Information & eGovernment Authority (iGA) in its foreign trade report of first quarter of 2021.



Saudi Arabia ranked first among countries receiving Bahraini exports of national origin, importing BD153 million from Bahrain. Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates was second with BD76 million and the US third with BD71 million.



Agglomerated iron ores and concentrates emerged as the top products exported during first quarter2021 with BD150 million, unwrought aluminium alloys was second with a value of BD106 million and aluminium wires (not alloyed) third with BD42 million.



The total value of-exports decreased by 20% to reach BD185 million first quarter2021, compared to BD233 million for the same quarter of the previous year. The top 10 countries accounted for 89% of the re-exported value, while the remaining countries accounted for the 11%. The UAE ranked first with BD61 million, Saudi Arabia second with BD49 million, and Oman third with BD19 million.



Four-wheel drive cars emerged as the top product re-exported from Bahrain with BD26 million, agglomerated iron ores and concentrates came in second place with BD22 million, and apparatus for electrical control came third with BD13 million.



The trade balance, the difference between exports and imports, recorded a deficit totalling BD442 million during first quarter 2021 compared to BD460 million for the same quarter of the previous year, an improvement of the trade balance by 4%.



Imports



The value of imports increased by 3%, reaching BD1.312 billion during first quarter 2021 compared to BD1.272 billion for the same quarter the previous year. The top 10 countries accounted for 72% of the value of imports, with the remaining countries accounting for 28%.



According to the report, Brazil ranked first when it came to imports to Bahrain, with a total ofBD175 million, China was second with BD162 million, and the UAE was third with BD102 million.



Non-agglomerated iron ores and concentrates emerged as the top product imported into Bahrain with a total value of BD169 million, while aluminium oxide was second with BD93 million, and four-wheel drive cars third with BD49 million.  TradeArabia News Service
New Delhi, April 19 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday urged doctors from cities with experience in Covid management to reach out to those in the underserved areas by hand-holding, training, online consultations to ensure that protocols are followed.

Prime Minister Modi interacted with doctors across the country via video conferencing on the Covid issue and the vaccination progress. The Prime Minister appreciated the doctors, medical and para-medical staff for their invaluable service towards the country during the coronavirus pandemic.

"Last year, during the same time, it was due to our doctors' hard work and the nation's strategy that we were able to control the coronavirus wave. Now that the country is facing the second wave of coronavirus, all the doctors, our frontline workers are confronting the pandemic with full force, and are saving the lives of millions of people," Modi said.

Modi further stated: "Recently the Central Government has taken many important decisions related to the supply of essential medicines, injections and sufficient availability of oxygen. State Governments have been given necessary guidelines about these." Emphasising that vaccination is the biggest weapon in the fight against coronavirus, he urged the doctors to encourage more and more patients to get vaccinated.

The Prime Minister also urged the doctors to educate people against several rumours on Covid treatment and prevention.

In these difficult times, Modi said, "It is very important that people do not become a victim of panic. Along with proper treatment, emphasis must also be on counselling of patients admitted in hospitals." Prime Minister Modi also encouraged doctors to use tele-medicine for treatment of other diseases, in case there is no emergency.

The Prime Minister noted that this time the pandemic is spreading rapidly in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities as well.

Modi called for accelerating efforts to upgrade resources in such places. He urged doctors to connect with their colleagues working in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities and give them online consultations to ensure that all protocols are followed correctly.

The doctors shared their experiences in dealing with the Covid pandemic. They congratulated PM Modi on his leadership in dealing with the pandemic. They also spoke about how they augment healthcare infrastructure.

The doctors reiterated the importance of people wearing a mask and maintaining social distancing. They also stressed about maintaining health infrastructure for non-Covid patients. They also spoke about how they are sensitising patients against improper use of medicines.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Driver Jeff Proctor and navigator Evan Weller built an early lead along the rough, 280-mile loop course that started and ended along the Gulf of California town of San Felipe. Despite a pair of mid-race stops to replace cut tires, Proctor and Weller survived sand washes and multiple "square edge" ruts and jumps to build a 35-mile lead with 20 miles remaining, then cruised to the team's first SCORE win of 2021, and sixth victory in Baja for the Ridgeline.

Making approximately 550 horsepower, HPD's 3.5-liter HR35TT engine uses the same block and cylinder heads as the production V6 that powers the production Ridgeline. Additional, custom elements of the powertrain include an HPD-designed intake plenum and custom Engine Control Unit programming.

SCORE International San Felipe 250 Results

1st Class 7 [unlimited V6 trucks] Jeff Proctor / Evan Weller - Honda Ridgeline

Quote

JEFF PROCTOR (owner/driver Ridgeline Off-Road Race Truck) won Class 7 for unlimited V6 Trucks: "My co-driver Evan (Weller) navigated a flawless race. We had some pretty good lines in the sand washes, and it was one of those days that everything just clicked. We didn't really have any issues. We did have a couple earned flats, but for the most part it was a pretty good day for us. We are taking home the class win and couldn't be more excited to kick this 2021 SCORE Season with a 'W'. To get through all those nasty, sharp-edged rocks, all the square-edged whoops that San Felipe is known for, we are just stoked to be here at the finish line."

Fast Facts

This is the first San Felipe 250 win for the Honda Off-Road Racing Team, in its first appearance in the event for the Honda Ridgeline.

250 win for the Honda Off-Road Racing Team, in its first appearance in the event for the Honda Ridgeline. It is the sixth class win for the Ridgeline in the last 12 SCORE events on the Baja Peninsula for the Ridgeline since the debut of the program in 2015.

for the Ridgeline since the debut of the program in 2015. In addition to this weekend's win in San Felipe , the Honda Off-Road Racing team has won its class four times in the Baja 500, and once in the Baja 1000.

Next

The Honda Off-Road Racing Team returns to action on the Baja peninsula June 12 for the 53rd annual SCORE Baja 500. Photos and information from the Ridgeline Off-Road Race Truck's efforts can be viewed on Instagram at @hondaoffroadracing and @proctor_race.

Honda Racing social media content and video links can be found on Instagram (www.instagram.com/hondaracing_hpd), Twitter (twitter.com/HondaRacing_HPD) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/HondaRacingHPD). Additional features and long-form videos can be found on the Honda Racing/HPD YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/HondaRacingHPDTV).

SOURCE Honda Racing/HPD
Pacific Telecommunications Council Announces the Call for Participation for Its 44th Annual Conference

Pacific Telecommunications Council (News - Alert) (PTC) announces the Call for Participation (CFP) for its 44th Annual Conference. PTC'22: Reunite. Rethink. Renew. will be a hybrid event, offering both in-person and online attendance, held in Honolulu from 16 to 19 January 2022.

"Like many, we are looking forward to reuniting and paving the way for the innovations of the near future, as the world continues to evolve and depend on our industry at lightning speed," said Sharon Nakama, chief executive officer of PTC. "We encourage industry executives to submit one or multiple proposals to educate and share their expertise at PTC'22."

The Call for Participation is open to everyone in the ICT industry: ecosystem players, policy makers, regulators, academics, researchers, or students, and offers a variety of conference formats: individual presentations, panel discussions, workshops, lightning talks, and more.

PTC'22 topics encompass the entire spectrum of the industry in areas ranging from humanitarian efforts to the global economy.

Academics, researchers, an students are encouraged to submit a paper abstract or panel proposal that aligns with a suggested topic or the conference theme. In addition, apply for a research award, the Meheroo Jussawalla Research Award or Yale M. Braunstein Student Award, with the opportunity to present the research at PTC'22.







The deadline to submit all proposals including research paper abstracts is 9 July 2021. Full student papers are due 12 September 2021 and full research papers are due 28 September 2021.

For more information on the PTC'22 Call for Participation, proposal details, and a complete list of topics, visit www.ptc.org/ptc22/cfp.

ABOUT PACIFIC TELECOMMUNICATIONS COUNCIL

Recognized as PTC, the Pacific Telecommunications Council is the leading global non-profit membership organization promoting the advancement of information and communications technologies (ICT) in the Pacific Rim. PTC's Annual Conference held every January, is the Pacific Rim's premier telecommunications event and serves as the strategic springboard for the global communications industry.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005027/en/
Brazilian Companhia Nacional de Cimento completes the purchase of CRH Brasil assets

19 April 2021

The Brazilian antitrust authority, CADE, in accordance to the agreement disclosed on 26 October 2020, has confirmed Brazilian Companhia Nacional de Cimentos (CNC) purchase of all the businesses of the CRH group operating in Brazil (CRH Brasil and its subsidiaries).



CNC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BCPAR, holding company in which Buzzi Unicem owns 50 per cent of the share capital in a joint venture with Grupo Ricardo Brennand. The consideration paid takes into account the price originally agreed of US$21m and the changes in the financial position of the acquired companies occurred from the signing of the agreement.

As planned, Buzzi Unicem has financed CNC, on an arms length basis, for an amount of US$242m to support the whole transaction.



The CRH companies operating in Brazil consist of three integrated cement plants and two grinding plants, all located in the southeast area of the country. The acquisition will result in a significant strengthening of BCPAR, which also operates in the same market area. In 2020 CRH Brasil sold approximately 2.8Mt of cement.

Published under
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines Life, 19 April)  This week, celebrate World Poetry Month, learn about Philippine history, and watch award-winning films online.

Fully Booked Chats: Gina Apostol

Join award-winning authors Glenn Diaz (The Quiet Ones) and Gina Apostol (Insurrecto, The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata) for a discussion on Apostols books and Philippine history.

The event will be broadcast through the bookstores Facebook page on April 23 at 7 p.m. Click here for more details.

Pagbabalik-tanaw sa Labanang Pilipino-Amerikano sa Quingua, 23 Abril 1899

Commemorate the 122nd anniversary of the Battle of Quingua (now Plaridel, Bulacan) on April 22 with this lecture by retired University of the Philippines professor Dr. Jaime B. Veneracion who will talk about this two-part battle between Americans and Filipinos, led by General Gregorio Del Pilar.

Click here for more details.

CineKabalen

Catch the last few days of the online edition of CineKabalen featuring the seven entries for the Central Luzon Category and seven entries for the Kapampangan Category. The film fest will also screen highlights from previous festivals under three categories: Piyestang Kapampangan, Culinary Cinema, and CineKabalen Retrospective.

The films will be screened until April 21. Register through the FDCP channel to watch the films.

Coffee Conversations

Poetry collectives Ang Sabi Nila and Collaboratory.ph and Fully Booked are celebrating World Poetry Month with Coffee Conversations on Sunday, April 25 from 3 to 6 p.m. The topics up for discussion include the role of poetry in social action and poetry as extended practice.

The event is free and will be streamed through the Fully Booked Facebook page. Click here for more details.

Black Sheep's Black Pack

Black Sheep presents three of their most traveled films for the price of one. The Black Pack features Oda sa Wala, starring Marietta Subong in an award-winning turn as a lonely funeral parlor operator; the ensemble horror film Motel Acacia, which features acclaimed actors from Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand; and Death of Nintendo, a tender coming-of-age film set in the 90s and amid the threat of a volcano on the brink of eruption.

The films start streaming on KTX and iWant starting April 23 with an early bird rate of 250. Click here for details.
Lawyer Tretyakov's bid to review recovery of $4 million set for May

 RAPSI, Vladimir Burnov

15:33 19/04/2021

MOSCOW, April 19 (RAPSI)  The Moscow Regional Commercial Court will proceed with an application filed by lawyer Igor Tretyakov seeking to review recovery of 308.5 million rubles ($4 million) from him on May 11, according to court records.

In March, the Ninth Commercial Court of Appeals ordered the first instance to reconsider Tretyakovs bid to review recovery of 308.5 million rubles ($4 million). The court thus overturned the ruling of the Moscow Regional Commercial Court of late October 2020 refusing to rehear Tretyakovs case upon the applicants appeal.

In late November 2018, the Moscow Regional Commercial Court ordered recovery of the money Tretyakov allegedly received in the S.A. Lavochkin Scientific Union under the pretence of legal services. The court also declared 21 contracts signed by the Scientific Union and the lawyer between July 2016 and January 2018 invalid.

The court therefore granted a claim filed by the Moscow Region Prosecutors Office on behalf of the Federal Property Management Agency (Rosimushchestvo) and the state corporation Roscosmos. Prosecutors insisted that the agreements were invalid as Tretyakov had not participated in court proceedings himself. Thus, the lawyer has only created a semblance of his activity.

In May and September 2019, the Tenth Commercial Court of Appeals and the Moscow District Commercial Court upheld the ruling.

Currently, Tretyakov is a defendant in the case on embezzling 330 million rubles (about $5 million) from Roscosmos. In late December, the case was returned to prosecutors, according to the lawyers attorney Stanislav Shostak. He is in detention now.

Two other defendants, ex-CEO of the S.A. Lavochkin Scientific Union Sergey Lemeshevsky and chief of the Unions legal department Yekaterina Averyanova were also detained. Later, Averyanova admitted guilt and signed a deal with investigators in exchange for release from detention under house arrest.

According to investigators, the defendants have stolen assets of Roscosmos by signing fraudulent contracts for provision of legal services with the law firm. All the works were allegedly performed by the corporations own specialists. The overall sum of payments to the firm reached 330 million rubles.

Tretyakov pleads not guilty.




2021-04-16

Maeci

We, the governments of France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America condemn in the strongest terms the April 14 attacks in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. Together, our governments will support the Government of Iraqs investigation into the attacks to ensure that those responsible will be held accountable.

We are united in our view that attacks on U.S. and Coalition personnel and facilities will not be tolerated and reiterate our steadfast commitment to the fight against ISIS.
The Supreme Court of the United States in Washington on May 7, 2019. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

Supreme Court Rejects Gun-Rights Appeals by Nonviolent Criminals

The Supreme Court has rejected requests by three convicted criminals to overturn lower court rulings that found they could legally be barred from owning firearms.

In an unsigned order, the nations top court on April 19 declined to hear appeals from Raymond Holloway Jr., Lisa Folajtar, and Kenneth Flick, leaving lower court rulings against them intact. The trio, who all were convicted of nonviolent crimes, had asked the court to consider whether certain felons should be prohibited from possessing or owning guns.

At issue was the courts 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller. In a narrow 54 opinion then, the court found the Second Amendment protects an individuals right to possess firearms and that Washingtons total ban on handguns, as well as its requirement that firearms in the home be kept nonfunctional even when necessary for self-defense, violated that right.

However, justices also stated that the Second Amendment right is not unlimited and that the majority opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill.

In a petition to the Supreme Court, attorneys for Folajtar argued the lower courts have failed Americans who committed nonviolent crimes by not letting them fully reenter public life as an equal. Barring her from owning a gun because she made a false statement on her tax returns is unconstitutional, they asserted.

Holloway was convicted of driving under the influence, while Flick was convicted of importing and selling counterfeit cassette tapes.

David Thompson, an attorney for Folajtar, told The Epoch Times via email, We regret that the Court has declined to take up this important issue at this time.

While we are disappointed the the Supreme Court chose to allow grossly improper lower court rulings to stand, FPC will continue our aggressive litigation strategy and immediately move forward to litigate new challenges in various circuits to address serious constitutional questions including the proper test for Second Amendment cases, unconstitutional lifetime bans, and other restrictions not supported by history, tradition, or evidence, added Adam Kraut, the senior director of legal operations for the Firearms Policy Coalition, which was representing Holloway and Folajtar, in a separate statement.

The Supreme Court also decided on April 19 not to hear an appeal in a separate case concerning gun rights.

The New York State Rifle & Pistol Association and several petitioners asked justices to consider whether the Second Amendment protects a persons right to self-defense outside of the home, and whether states can dictate which people, if any, can exercise that right.

New York state bans open carry of guns entirely and requires that people obtain a license before carrying concealed firearms. The licensing program is excessively onerous, making it virtually impossible for the ordinary law-abiding citizen to obtain a license, petitioners told the court in a brief.

The Supreme Courts rejection means that lower court decisions finding the petitioners claims foreclosed by an earlier appeals court ruling, which stated that New York gun laws didnt violate the Constitution, will remain in place.

An attorney for the petitioners didnt immediately respond to a request for comment.
The world has passed another grim milestone: 3 million dead from the coronavirus pandemic. This staggering loss of life, after little more than a year, is a devastating indictment of the ruling elites of every major country and of the capitalist system as a whole.

And even as this latest barrier is surpassed, the pandemic is accelerating and is poised to produce even more deaths in the months to come.

A nurse holds a phone while a COVID-19 patient speaks with his family from the intensive care unit at the Joseph Imbert Hospital Center in Arles, southern France, Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2020. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

Globally, the average number of daily confirmed cases is at the highest rate during the entire pandemic. It has more than doubled from a low in mid-February of 361,000 to more than 752,000. During that same period, more than 520,000 men, women and children died, and the official count of daily deaths, at nearly 12,000, is climbing toward the peak seen this past January of just over 14,000.

The pandemic has accelerated with extraordinary rapidity in countries such as Brazil and India. In Brazil, the daily cases have increased by about 50 percent to more than 65,000. The real toll, however, can be seen in the daily death counts, which have nearly tripled since February to almost 3,000 per day, the highest rate in the country since the pandemic began and second only to this past winter in the United States, when daily deaths at times reached nearly 3,500.

In India, the situation is even more dire. In the past two months, the number of daily cases has rocketed from a low of 11,000 to more than 200,000, an 18-fold increase. Correspondingly, the number of active cases has grown from 138,000 to more than 1.8 million, and the daily death rate has shot up from less than 100 to more than 1,100. India currently has the highest number of confirmed new cases each day and is well on its way to surpassing the records set by the United States.

Such dramatic explosions of the virus are not just confined to nations that have already had previous waves of the pandemic. In Papua New Guinea, where public officials had been able to limit the total number of infections to just 900 since the pandemic began, there has been a tenfold increase in the number of known coronavirus cases over the past two months, with total cases now more than 9,500. Deaths have similarly spiked from less than 10, out of a population of 9 million, to nearly 90.

Countries in Eastern Europe have also faced new waves the contagion. Daily new cases in Bulgaria spiked sharply in February, reaching a height of more than 3,600 new cases a day in March, with more than 110 new deaths every day. In Hungary, the daily case count only recently dropped below 5,000, and the death rate is still at more than 250, triple what it was two and a half months ago.

The official number of coronavirus deaths in Germany reached 80,000 yesterday, and many more will die in the coming days because of the refusal by the government to close schools and factories despite a massive third wave of the virus. There are currently around 30,000 new infections every day, and the health care system is overwhelmed.

Among German workers, there is a growing sense that the federal and state governments bear full responsibility for the catastrophe. Many workers and youth reacted with protests and scorn at yesterdays official state event to commemorate the dead and President Frank-Walter Steinmeiers proposal to put up a candle in every window.

Instead, many people put up candles in front of government buildings all over the country. Protesters accused the state and federal governments of carrying out a de facto policy of social murder in the interests of the corporations and the banks. Each candle stands for people who, because of your hesitation and your policies, are no longer alive, one poster read. Another stated: You do everything to protect profits, dividends and gains. Shame on you.

The accelerating spread of the virus is compounded by the spread of new and more infectious variants of the virus, which have been allowed to mutate innumerable times throughout the now nearly 142 million officially recorded coronavirus infections. In India, a variant that is a combination of one that originated in South Africa and the US West Coast is spreading ferociously, along with the UK variant. In Brazil, the P.1. variant is suspected to be the reason behind the high death rate. In both countries, underfunded hospital systems, unable to provide the necessary care for the new influx of hundreds of thousands of patients, are on the brink of collapse.

In the face of the accelerating pandemic, governments throughout the world are rejecting the necessary measures to contain the spread of the disease. An editorial in the Times of India, articulating the position of the ruling class, proclaimed that any lockdown measures would be a cure truly worse than the disease. One of the heirs of the Ambani family, one of the richest in Asia, called lockdowns totalitarian and claimed that they would destroy the very backbone of our society and economy.

Such is the language of the ruling elite in every country. When they speak of society and the economy, they mean the interests of the rich. They are not concerned with the colossal loss of human life that has already occurred, and the even greater number of deaths to come, but with ensuring that the accumulation of their private profit continues unabated. The tens of trillions handed out by every government to bail out the banks must be paid for with the lives of the working class.

Moreover, the panacea that coronavirus vaccines were promised to be at the beginning of the year has proven to be a lie. The vaccine distribution globally has been extraordinarily unequal, with Reuters estimating that 55 percent of those who have received at least one dose of the vaccine are from high income countries. And within those countries, various local reports make clear that the richest individuals are much more likely to have been vaccinated than the poor.

In addition, countries have taken to hoarding vaccines, as well as the raw materials to make vaccines. The worst culprit is the US, now under the administration of Joe Biden. A study by Duke University estimates the US will have more than 300 million excess doses of the vaccine by July, even when accounting for vaccines set aside for children, none of which the Biden administration is currently offering to other countries for their vaccination programs.

The Duke study also notes that, even if COVAX, the global COVID-19 vaccine mechanism, were to be fully funded this year, it would still vaccinate only 20-25 [percent] of the population of the worlds 92 poorest countries. At the current rate, these countries may not reach 60 [percent] coverage until 2023 or later.

There have also been calls for the Biden administration to lift the embargo on the raw materials to make the vaccine so that more vaccines can be made in other countries. According to the South Asian news source IANS, Indias China expert Brahma Chellaney lambasted this policy, As if Bidens vaccine hoarding policy during a global crisis wasnt bad enough, he also has restricted export of key raw materials, affecting vaccine production in India.

Only about 1 percent of Indias population has been fully vaccinated, and less than 0.1 percent have been given even one dose in Papua New Guinea. Countries ravaged by decades of US military interventions, such as Honduras and Guatemala, have vaccinated less than a percent of their population, and Mexico and Brazil have only been able to vaccinate 8.6 percent and 11.7 percent of their respective populations.

From the beginning of the pandemic, a rational and scientific response has been blocked by two interrelated factors: the prioritization of personal wealth over social need and the subordination of the necessary global response to national geopolitics.

Ample resources exist to both produce enough vaccines for the nearly 8 billion members of the human race, as well as to distribute them in a timely manner. There is also more than enough money to close schools and nonessential businesses, which are necessary measures to stop the transmission of the coronavirus, and to provide compensation for all the workers and small business owners who would lose their income during such lockdowns.

The working class must take the resolution of the pandemic into its own hands. The emerging strikes across the US and internationally must be coordinated among all sections of workers in every country. The working class must intervene to enforce a policy that places human life above private profit. That is, the fight against the pandemic must be developed as a political struggle against the entire capitalist order, which has killed millions and caused untold suffering for billions.
Where Can You Send Your Children to University?

Commentary

Liberal arts education, as I experienced it at Antioch College in the late 1950s and early 1960s, was aimed at opening students minds to the intellectual life of Western culture.

Students were asked to consider such questions as What counts as a good life?, How do peoples ideas and actions differ from place to place and time to time?, What is the basis of social life?, Do people have free will or is life determined?, Where does wealth come from?, Is science different from other belief systems?, What is beauty?, Who should govern?, and many others engaged with literature, languages, and science.

Liberal arts education relied on academic values derived from the Enlightenment. These are openness in the search for truth, merit-based selection of personnel, and academic freedom for diversity of thought. These values are based on, as Gad Saad puts it, the defining ethos of the West, namely the unfettered commitment to the pursuit of truth. Both merit-based selection of personnel and freedom for diversity of thought are structural conditions for the search for truth, as both are required for a fruitful exchange and competition of ideas in an intellectual marketplace.

During the past four decades, liberal arts education was canceled, and is now deceased. Postmodernism assassinated the idea of truth, claiming that all knowledge is subjective and that each person has my truth. Critical theory imposed the definitive and final answer to social and political questions in terms of Marxs class conflict theory, with the creative modification of racial, gender, and sexuality classes being the actors in oppression and victimhood. Feminists disposed of Western culture and civilization as the patriarchal work of dead white men. Goodbye, Homer and Shakespeare and all of Western literature, Bach and Beethoven and all of Western music (except Clara Schumann), Rembrandt and Renoir and all of Western painting (except, of course, Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt).

Race activists have rejected the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution as the work of slave owners, and the entire country as systemically racist. Race-baiters at The New York Times, once a serious newspaper, declared that America was from its foundation about slavery and has been about anti-black racism ever since, and never about anything else. America has been duly canceled. Canada, weak on slavery, is deemed strong on colonialism and utterly worthless. Liberal arts education was, as we have now been informed, always a lie in aid of patriarchal and white supremacist oppression.

With neo-Marxist social justice ideology having answered all important questions, not only is further inquiry redundant, but also any alternative point of view, criticism, or objection is forbidden as white male supremacism and violence against marginalized, racialized, and underserved populations, who feel unsafe and traumatized if they hear opinions that do not support social justice ideology. Thus, freedom of speech and academic freedom are totally canceled. Diversity of thought and opinion is deemed reactionary, fascist, Nazi, and evil.

Education today, in universities and in schools under the guidance of universities, is all about overthrowing the patriarchy and white supremacism and replacing males with females, and whites with people of color, preferably lesbians and transsexuals of color. Theres no longer a need to ask all of those obscure liberal arts questions, for we now have all of the virtuous answers. We know how society was constituted as oppressive, and how it will be reconstituted as virtuous. We know who is worth listening to and emulatingfemales and people of colorand who must be marginalizedmales and whites.

This replacement, apparent for example in the demography of all universities, has been conducted under the slogan diversity, equity, and inclusion, which means fewer men and whites (with the exception of the preferred illegal aliens), and more females and people of color. Today, its males and whites who are underrepresented, which is exactly what was hoped for by the woke.

Whats the Choice?

With liberal arts education no longer available in woke anti-male and anti-white universities, what options are available for high school graduates?

Higher education has for decades been seen in North America as the path to economic and social success. Parents have sacrificed to send their children to college and university. Even if they know how corrupt higher education has become, they wouldnt be willing to deprive their offspring of the advantages alleged to follow from graduation.

So, for the, say, 90 percent of parents who are not Marxists, radical feminists, anti-white racists, and science deniers, what can they do for their children?

Above all, dont let your children enroll in studies coursesfeminist, black, ethnic, Latinx, queer, trans, and whatever new victim they come up with next. Unless you want your children to learn race and gender hatred, hatred of their country, and hatred of Western civilization, and want them to have as their occupational destiny fast food outlets and coffee houses, avoid these woke programs.

In the social sciences, anthropology, sociology, and political science used to be serious academic subjects but are now devoted to lies, such as that blacks are at more risk of death from police rather than from the black criminals who in reality take most of their lives, that statistical disparities are proof of discrimination rather than differential preferences and capabilities, and that men can become women and women can become men.

The humanities are much the same and should be avoided. Dont imagine that English literature is taught in English departments anymore. They would not sink to teaching dead white men. English departments are now all woke cultural studies, which probably explains why enrollment has plummeted. History has now become peoples history, with special emphasis on the oppressed. Its enrollment has also plummeted. Even language programs are no longer about teaching language but about social justice. Avoid at all costs the social sciences and humanities.

It may be hard to believe, but education and social work are more radical. Education faculties are dedicated to bringing race and gender hatred into the schools.

Only the hard sciences, engineering, and mathematics have maintained some academic content, although the departments themselves struggle with the diversity, equity, and inclusion mandates imposed on them. So, STEM would be the only programs that would be worthwhile for your children. Oh, but not biology, which has been canceled by transgender activists and their enablers throughout society, and who will cancel your children should they believe in biology.

Theres another option (thank you, David Leis): higher education in technical fields, at polytechnic institutions such as British Columbia Institute of Technology in Vancouver, Manitoba Institute of Trades and Technology, Algonquin College in Ottawa, and Dawson College in Montreal. In the United States, the reputation of the multitude of polytechnic universities is set by the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Wisdom, once sought in the liberal arts, must now be sought elsewhere.

Philip Carl Salzman is professor emeritus of anthropology at McGill University, senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, fellow at the Middle East Forum, and president of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Over half of American adults inoculated with at least one coronavirus vaccine shot: CDC

Moscow, Apr 19 (Sputnik) At least one shot of a coronavirus vaccine has been administered to 50.4 percent, or nearly 130 million, of the US population over the age of 18, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.

A total of 209,406,814 COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered in the US, according to CDC data released on Sunday. At least one dose has been administered to 129,988,985 people aged 18 and over.

In total, 131,247,546 people in the US, or about 39.5 percent of the population, have received at least one vaccine dose, while 84,263,408 (over 25 percent of the total population) have been fully vaccinated, according to CDC.
Two of Coronation Street's sexiest new stars are reportedly set to land extensions to their contracts after becoming a huge hit with fans.

Ruxandra Porojnicu and Charlotte Jordan, who play Alina Pop and Daisy Midgeley respectively, have become 'firm favourites' with viewers after a slew of young cast members departed the soap in recent years.

It comes as viewers have been gripped been a new storyline which has seen Alina embroiled in a steamy afffair with Tyrone Dobbs, leaving his partner Fiz devastated.

Gorgeous: Coronation Street star Ruxandra Porojnicu is reportedly set to land an extension to her contract after becoming a huge hit with fans

A source told The Sun that soap bosses are reportedly to keep Ruxandra and Charlotte on the soap, and fans can expect to see more of their characters on screen in the future.

The insider said: 'Ruxandra's character Alina Pop is currently involved in her second big storyline where she is having a fling with Tyrone Dobbs  and she is being lined up for plenty more.

'While Charlotte's character Daisy Midgeley has been on and off since she joined five months ago her blossoming popularity has led to her being put forward for more time on screen.

Exciting: Charlotte Jordan, who plays Daisy Midgeley, is also reportedly being put forward for more screentime

Stunning: Ruxandra, who plays Alina Pop on the soap, has been embroiled in a new storyline that has seen her character have a steamy affair with Tyrone Dobbs

'Having fresh, young blood back on the street has been really exciting.'

MailOnline has contacted representatives for Coronation Street for comment.

In the past two years Corrie has seen a slew of its younger stars depart the soap to pursue other roles, including Lucy Fallon, Faye Brookes, Bhavna Limbachia and Katie McGlynn.

Ruxandra originally joined Corrie back in 2019 as nail technician Alina, who was soon revealed to be a victim of human trafficking after being brought to the UK from her native Romania.

Shocking: The actress previously revealed she'd been called a 'homewrecker' and told to 'go back to your own country' by some vile soap trolls due to the storyline

While Alina eventually escaped her ordeal and left the cobbles, she returned the following year, and in recent months has begun an affair with Tyrone.

Viewers have seen the pair struggle to hide their feelings, with Tyrone eventually confessing the truth to partner Fiz.

Ruxandra previously revealed she'd been called a 'homewrecker' and told to 'go back to your own country' by some vile soap trolls.

Talking about the storyline and the backlash she has received, Ruxandra admitted she was concerned soap fans would 'hate' her.

She told The Sun: 'Fiz and Tyrone are such an amazing and iconic couple, so when I found out what was planned I was surprised. And my first thought was, everyone is going to hate me.'

Ruxandra added that she was 'torn' over the storyline as it is a 'great opportunity' but as a viewer she is 'gutted' over the storyline due to her love for Tyrone and Fiz.

Love is in the air! She added that she was 'torn' over the storyline as it is a 'great opportunity' but as a viewer she is 'gutted' over the storyline due to her love for Tyrone and Fiz.

She added: 'The way the storyline has gone I've found the reactions to be quite mixed, which I was not expecting. The way it has been written created a good environment for Alina to be accepted by the audience. Well, some of them.

'But I've also had people saying, "Go back to your own country", and calling me a homewrecker. I don't take those comments seriously.'

Meanwhile Charlotte first joined Corrie as Jenny Connor's stepdaughter Daisy in November, and quickly set her sights on David Platt, despite his marriage to wife Shona.
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) speaks during his weekly press briefing on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 18, 2021. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

House GOP Leader Says He Will Bring Action Against Maxine Waters for Inciting Violence if Pelosi Refuses

The House GOP leader on Sunday urged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to take action against Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) this week for inciting violence in Brooklyn Center, Minneapolis, over the weekend.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said that if the House speaker doesnt act against this dangerous rhetoric, he will take action against the Democratic lawmaker for her remarks at a demonstration in the city following the fatal shooting of 20-year-old Daunte Wright on April 11.

Maxine Waters is inciting violence in Minneapolisjust as she has incited it in the past, McCarthy said on Twitter. If Speaker Pelosi doesnt act against this dangerous rhetoric, I will bring action this week.

Waters attended a protest in Brooklyn Center on Saturday night in the city where Wright was shot by officer Kim Potter at a traffic stop, where police were attempting to arrest him for an outstanding warrant. Potter, who has since resigned, is charged with second-degree manslaughter.

The Democratic lawmaker told reporters on Saturday that she is going to fight with all of the people who stand for justice, adding, Weve got to get justice in this country, and we cannot allow these killings to continue.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) speaks to reporters, as Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) (L), Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.), and Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) listen, outside the White House in Washington on Feb. 5, 2021. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

On the night of Wrights death, a crowd of at least a few hundred people who were in the area during the Derek Chauvin trial protested outside the Brooklyn Center Police Department headquarters.

Minnesota National Guard troops arrived around midnight under orders from by Gov. Tim Walz, after reports of rioting and looting. Shortly after, Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliot imposed a citywide curfew.

The National Guard confirmed that it had more than 500 personnel activated after Walzs decision, noting that the troops were mobilized ahead of a jury decision in Chauvins trial in the death of George Floyd. Riots, arson incidents, vandalism, and looting erupted in Minneapolis last year following Floyds death, leading to tens of millions of dollars in property damage.

Most recently, on Sunday National Guard members came under gunfire in Minneapolis, with two suffering minor injuries.

Weve got to not only stay in the street, but weve got to fight for justice, but I am very hopefully and I hope that were going to get a verdict that will say guilty, guilty, guilty, Waters said Saturday, referring to Chauvins trial. And if we dont, we cannot go away.

Criticizing Waters over her remarks, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said that Democrats are actively encouraging riots and violence, adding, They want to tear us apart.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) speaks at a Senate hearing on Capitol Hill, Washington on Feb. 23, 2021. (Andrew Harnik/AP Photo)

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) meanwhile said that she will soon be introducing a resolution to expel Waters from Congress for her continual incitement of violence on innocent American people.

Rep. Waters is a danger to our society, Greene wrote on Twitter. After traveling across state lines to incite riots, her orders recorded on video last night at the Brooklyn Center, directly led to more violence and a drive by shooting on National Guardsmen in Minnesota early this morning.

As a sitting United States Congresswoman @MaxineWaters threatened a jury demanding a guilty verdict and threatened violence if Chauvin is found not guilty. This is also an abuse of power. #ExpelMaxineWaters.

The offices of Waters and Pelosi didnt immediately respond to requests for comment by The Epoch Times.
Amid surging COVID-19 cases, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announced on Monday that the state government has decided to impose a lockdown in the national capital from 10:00 pm on April 19. The lockdown will last till 5:00 am next Monday (April 26).

Among the various places that will remain closed during the course of the lockdown are liquor shops. This means that Delhiites won't be able to buy alcohol from these shops during the lockdown. Bars and restaurants will also remain closed during this lockdown.

These liquor shops were also shut during the nationwide lockdown which was imposed by the Centre in March 2020. Liquor shops were closed in the country for 8-12 weeks.

"I appeal to Delhiites to follow lockdown which is necessary to reduce Covid cases; we will improve health system during this time," said Kejriwal upon announcing the six-day lockdown.

"In order to prevent a total collapse, L-G Anil Baijal and I took this decision. And in this duration, essential services will be allowed and more beds will also be set up," he added.

Huge crowd gathers at liquor shops in Delhi

Soon after the Chief Minister's announcement, people rushed to fill up their alcohol stock and long queues formed outside liquor shops in the national capital. People have lined up to purchase booze in the Darya Ganj, Karol Bagh and Gole Market areas, according to India Today TV. Similar scenes were reported from Khan Market, in South Delhi.

The Delhi Police was trying to control the crowd as buyers lined up at these liquor shops were flouting COVID-19 norms. Several people were seen purchasing entire cartons of booze.

A woman, who had lined up at a liquor shop in Shivpuri Geeta Colony, told ANI, "I have come here to buy two bottles of liquor as no vaccination or medicine can defend against the virus as well as the liquor."

"I have been drinking for 35 years, and have never had to take any medicine. People who drink are all safe from Covid," she added, urging the government to keep liquor stores open during the lockdown.

(Edited by Mohammad Haaris Beg)

Also Read: Lockdown in Delhi: Guidelines, rules, timings, dates; what's allowed, what's not allowed
The Reserve Bank of India has formed a committee to review the way asset reconstruction companies (ARCs) function in the financial sector and recommend measures to reform them according to the growing requirements of the financial sector. RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das had announced after the monetary policy committee meeting earlier this month that such a panel was in the work.

The six-member committee would be led by Sudarshan Sen, former Executive Director, RBI. Other members on the panel include Vishakha Mulye, Executive Director, ICICI Bank; P N Prasad, former Dy Managing Director, SBI; Rohit Prasad, Professor of Economics, MDI, Gurgaon; Abizer Diwanji, Partner, Ernst & Young; and R Anand, Chartered Accountant.

The committee will review existing legal and regulatory framework applicable to ARCs and recommend measures to improve efficacy of ARCs. The review will also look at role of ARCs in resolution of stressed assets including under Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code (IBC), 2016. The panel will also assess business models of the ARCs.

The committee will formulate suggestions for improving liquidity in and trading of security receipts, and look into any other matter relevant to the functioning, transparency and governance of ARCs.

The Committee will submit its report within three months from the date of its first meeting.

After enactment of the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest (SARFAESI) Act in 2002, regulatory guidelines for ARCs were issued in 2003 to enable development of this sector and to facilitate smooth functioning of these companies.

Since then, ARCs have grown in number and size but their potential for resolving stressed assets is yet to be realised fully, RBI Governor Das had while announcing the first bi-monthly monetary policy for the current financial year on April 7.

In the latest Budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced setting up of Asset Reconstruction Company and Asset Management Company to tackle stressed assets.

"An Asset Reconstruction Company Limited and Asset Management Company would be set up to consolidate and take over the existing stressed debt and then manage and dispose of the assets to Alternate Investment Funds and other potential investors for eventual value realization," she had said.
The Federal Government has told South-South states that multinational oil companies would not relocate their Headquarters to the Niger D...

The Federal Government has told South-South states that multinational oil companies would not relocate their Headquarters to the Niger Delta because peace cannot be guaranteed.

The government said if the place remained insecure, investment would continue to be elusive as no oil company would agree to go there.

The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, stated this in his speech obtained by journalists on Sunday in Abuja delivered after his induction as patron and conferment of the peace ambassadors award on him by the Niger Delta Non-Violence Agitators Forum.

Sylva enjoined Niger Deltans to remain steadfast in bringing peace to the oil-producing areas.

He said, What I must say here is that the core of your organisation is non-violence and that is actually the essence of what we want in Nigeria.

We must bring peace to the Niger Delta. Its our duty to bring peace to the Niger Delta. Sometimes, we are worried that investment opportunities are not coming to the Niger Delta. But we must realize that its our activities that will determine whether these opportunities will come or not.

Right now, we are saying that oil companies must move their Headquarters to the Niger Delta. But its our duty to ensure that the place is peaceful enough for the oil companies to move back there. If the place is insecure, you will actually believe that no oil company will agree to go there.

That is why this organization is really very important in the Niger Delta. Thats why we must begin to also encourage those of you who are committed to making peace and only trying to assuage those who are making trouble. So I am really happy to be associated with this organization.

What we need in the Niger Delta more than anything else right now is peace and I believe that if there is peace in the Niger Delta there will be prosperity. No investor would want to operate from far if there is peace because it actually cost him more, operating from a distance. So for us, I believe that if we can bring peace to the Niger Delta, these investors will not talk much.

Sylva recommended that other organizations should emulate what NDNAF was doing to propagate the message of peace

Just as you have brought that message to me, I want to assure you that from today, I will also be an advocate of the NDNAF, the Minister said.
President Joe Biden is carefully monitoring the Derek Chauvin trial where opening arguments began Monday  and is concerned that a verdict may inflame racial tensions at a time when multiple U.S. cities are on edge following police killings.

Biden ruminated about potential fallout during a meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus last week, and aides are saying he has also shared concerns with lawmakers in private.

'And also, you know, with Daunte Wright in Minnesota  that God-awful shooting resulting in his death, and  and in the midst of an ongoing trial over the killing of George Floyd,' Biden said last week. 'And Lord only knows whats happened based on what the verdict will or will not be there.'

President Joe Biden is monitoring the Derek Chauvin trial, where closing arguments began Monday, and is concerned that a verdict could inflame racial tensions in the nation

He was referencing the shooting of the 20-year old Wright by a police officer in Minnesota during a traffic stop. Wright's funeral is scheduled to be held on Thursday.

Biden raised concerns about fallout during the meeting with black lawmakers, aides told CNN.

The footage of Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd's neck during Floyd's arrest last summer set off protests in Minneapolis and around the country. If the Chauvin jury should deliver a verdict this week or next, the results would come amid renewed tensions in communities where police have shot suspects during traffic stops and arrests  along with sharp splits over efforts to control the coronavirus and a new spate of mass shootings.

It is unusual for officers to be charged with murder or manslaughter when they kill someone in the line of duty, and only about a third of charges result in a conviction, the New York Times reported. Chauvin's defense brought up Floyd's drug use and said his death was caused by other factors besides Chauvin's knee.

People protest at Brooklyn Center Police Department, Minnesota, after the death of Duante Wright. April 16 2021. President Biden is concerned about the verdict could inflame racial tensions

President Joe Biden speaks to the media during a meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, USA, on 13 April 2021

People protest outside of Brooklyn Center Police Station, Minnesota. April 16 2021. Brooklyn Center Police Officer Kimberly Potter fatally shot Duante Wright during a traffic stop

Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin (R) is accused of killing George Floyd during Floyd's arrest

Even though prosecutors were armed with powerful video evidence, there is a chance of an acquittal or a conviction on a lesser charge that could reignite street protests.

Chauvin is charged with second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter  with maximum sentences of 40 years, 25 years, and 10 years on each charge respectively.

Police and National Guard forces have surrounded the Minnesota courthouse where the trial gets back underway on Monday.

Amid the tensions over police shootings, the White House has called out police officers for use of force tactics.

On Friday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki called the video of 13-year-old Adam Toledo getting shot by a Chicago police office 'chilling.'

'Too often in this country law enforcement uses unnecessary force, too often resulting in the death of black and brown Americans.' On Thursday, graphic body camera video was released publicly that showed the teenager being fatally shot by 34-year-old officer Eric Stillman.
By Nam Sang-so





It was 1964. A secretive organization was quietly buying land in central Florida nearby Lake Buena Vista southwest of Orlando  a lot of land for a cheap price. Much of it was cow pastures or swamps. Land like this was nothing special and only cost about $180 an acre (4,047 square meters), according to whohq.com. The land owners were pleased to sell the useless land and the residents of the neighborhood were happy to see that some big business was coming to Florida, which would create a lot of jobs. Rumors escalated. In October of 1965, a local newspaper solved the mystery by reporting it was Disney. Walt Disney and his brother Roy had decided to build in Florida the Walt Disney World Resort, a bigger version of the Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, California.



Back in November of 1963, Walt had chosen central Florida for the new theme park. The area had sunny weather throughout the year and it was near the crossing of Interstate 4 and Florida's Turnpike, while there was a regional airport about a half hour away.



However, if anyone had known what Walt was up to, land prices would have soared. As a result, Walt and Roy had other people do the purchasing job in the field. They made up a company, Tomahawk Properties, code named the land purchase "Project X" and quietly began buying land. It worked well as the project members were armed with a high sense of morality and no one breached trust in performing their secret job. After the news got out that Disney was the buyer, land prices in the area shot up to $1,000 an acre. In all, the company had bought about 27,440 acres. That's almost twice the size of Manhattan in New York City. Now, there is a large bronze statue of Walt holding hands with Mickey Mouse in the center of Disney World. On the statue's base is a quote from Walt that reads, "We believe in our idea: a family park where parents and children could have fun  together." Disney World knew that the faithful performance of the Project X team under a situation of conflicting interests allowed the Florida resort to open successfully in 1971.



Now let's look at how the state-run Korea Land and Housing Corp., known as LH, has been handling the designation of new cities around Seoul and other cities. Employees of LH and some other high-ranking government officials who had advance access to confidential city-planning information scrambled to get rich in breach of trust and avariciously speculated in pieces of the designated areas, much of them farmland, ahead of the government's action. The allegations of breach of trust are rocking the nation at a time when public discontent over skyrocketing home prices is running high. Most people in Korea are eagerly waiting to see how the government will deal with the depraved morals of the corrupt civil servants.





The writer (sangsonam@gmail.com) is a retired architect/engineer.


Henry joins Emmes with 30 years of clinical research experience, most recently as vice president of patient solutions at PPD. One of the largest clinical research companies in the world, PPD has about 24,000 employees working in 46 countries. She began her career there as a clinical research associate in 1991 and gained increasing responsibilities in a number of management positions, including as director of hematology/oncology. Henry was one of only 14 individuals selected to participate in PPD's first global leadership program.

In 2020, she was named to the PharmaVOICE 100 list of most inspiring people working in the life-sciences industry.

Before joining PPD, she spent eight years at the New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, NC, starting as a phlebotomist and completing her tenure there as a nurse in medical/surgical and neurology areas.

According to Henry, "Two of the things that attracted me to Emmes were its excellent reputation and its 40+ years in clinical research. The opportunity to work with Christine again, along with the conversations I had with members of Emmes' leadership team, had a big impact on my decision.

"I look forward to building upon Emmes' long-established relationships with government clients as we develop new client opportunities with biotech and pharmaceutical companies, from smaller, private firms to large, public companies," she continued.

Emmes' Biopharma group was given a boost with the company's acquisition of Neox this past December. A CRO operating in 19 European countries, Neox added about 150 employees and significantly expanded Emmes' international presence and biopharmaceutical client base. Emmes is continuing to invest in global growth, both internally and through acquisitions.

According to Dr. Dingivan, "I've worked closely with Rhonda for many years in roles across clinical operations and sales management, and I know that her values, personality and depth of CRO experience make her the perfect leader for Emmes' growing biopharma business."

She added, "Rhonda also brings a deeply rooted commitment to patient advocacy. Her nursing experience brought a very valuable perspective to her clinical research work at PPD, and it's no surprise that one of her titles included the words, patient-centered trials. The depth of Rhonda's clinical research experience, her understanding of the therapeutic areas that Emmes is well known for, and her demonstrated success in leading business development functions will make her an outstanding addition to our team."

Henry holds a B.S. in nursing from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. She has been active in a number of non-profit organizations, including serving as a volunteer board member for The Carousel Center, which provides advocacy and services for children who have been affected by physical or sexual abuse. She and her husband, who have three children and one grandchild, live in Wilmington, NC.

About Emmes

Founded in 1977, Emmes is a global, full-service Clinical Research Organization dedicated to excellence in supporting the advancement of public health and biopharmaceutical innovation. The company's clients include numerous agencies and institutes of the U.S. federal government and a wide range of biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical device companies throughout the world. To learn more about how our research is making a positive impact on human health, go to the Emmes website at www.emmes.com.

SOURCE Emmes

Related Links

www.emmes.com


A Belfast man has lost an appeal against his conviction and six-and-half year jail sentence for the sexual assault of his godson and that boys cousin.

Some of the offences occurred at a caravan park in Donegal which the man visited with his neighbour and the two boys.

The Court of Appeal said it was satisfied that the trial judge had made no error in his conduct of the case and his approach to sentencing.

Following a jury trial in October 2018, the man, now aged 70 years, was convicted of five counts of sexual assault and one count of indecent assault on dates between 1989 and 1996 when the boys were aged between seven and 14 years old.

Four of the charges of sexual assault related to his godsons cousin with the remaining two charges relating to his godson, who was the son of one of his neighbours..

The trial heard the man gave the boys alcohol after his neighbour had gone to bed. On one occasion, he sexually assaulted his godsons cousin after sitting him on his lap in the driving seat of his car after learning the boy was interested in cars.

Lawyers for the man said the trial judge had erred by ruling that a statement made by his godsons cousin to his own wife in 2010 was the first reasonable opportunity he had to make a complaint.

In addition, they claimed the judge had erred in law by ruling the prosecution was allowed to lead evidence that the delay by the victim in reporting the offences was due to his suffering mental health issues for a number of years.

The victim explained he had feared the effect which knowledge of the offences would have on his mother as his aunt, the mother of the other victim, had been suicidal after she had learnt about what had happened to her own son.

The Court of Appeal with Mr Justice George Birmingham presiding, with Mr Justice Seamus Woulfe and Mr Justice John Edwards, concluded that in such circumstances the occasion in 2010 was the first reasonable opportunity that the victim had to make a statement about the offences.

Mr Justice Birmingham said the court was satisfied that the trial judge had given careful consideration to the circumstances in which the victim had raised the complaint and the background to the case.

He said it seemed that the complaint by the victim to his wife was sufficiently close in time to the formal complaint made to gardai that it did not really change the dynamics of the case.

Mr Justice Birmingham said it seemed it had been suggested that the victim had effectively been allowed to give expert evidence about his own mental health and why it explained his delay in telling people about the offences.

We do not believe there is any reason why someone cannot speak about their own health, Mr Justice Birmingham said.

On the appeal against the sentence, the Court of Appeal dismissed claims by the mans lawyers that the trial judge had paid insufficient attention to their clients work record and lack of previous convictions.

Mr Justice Birmingham said the court was not persuaded there had been any error in the judges approach to sentencing.

This was serious offending which was always required to be met with a significant sentence, the judge concluded.
"There is no vaccine that gives 100 protection," the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service said this in an interview with Kwami Sefa Kayi on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo' programme Monday morning.



Dr. Patrick Kuma Aboagye made this known while discussing the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines in curbing the disease.



He noted that, although no vaccine provides 100% protection against any disease, they are the safest prevention or cure.



He believed the country will be back to normal soon as the population is vaccinated.



Touching on the first dose of the vaccines issued a month ago, Dr. Kuma Aboagye stated that those who have received the AstraZeneca vaccine have adequate protection against the disease.



He revealed that the AstraZeneca is 76 percent effective against COVID-19 infection and therefore encouraged the populace to avail themselves for the vaccine jab when the government finally secures vaccines to cover the entire country.



"So far, there is no vaccine that gives 100 percent protection . . . for a vaccine, even 50 percent is enough. If a larger population are to be 50% vaccinated, it is protective enough," he stated.



He was full of hope that Ghana will conquer the disease.





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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President Joe Biden removes his mask to speak from the Treaty Room in the White House about the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in Washington on April 14, 2021. (Andrew Harnik-Pool/Getty Images)

Biden to Hold Second Meeting With Bipartisan Group of Lawmakers About Infrastructure Proposal

President Joe Biden is scheduled on Monday to meet with a bipartisan group of Congress members to discuss his $2.2 trillion infrastructure proposal.

Mondays meeting, which is taking place in the Oval Office of the White House, will mark the second time a group of bipartisan lawmakers will convene with the president to discuss his newly unveiled plan, which has largely met with opposition from Republicans.

The group will consist of Sens. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Angus King (I-Maine), Mitt Romney (R-Utah), and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) as well as Reps. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), Charlie Crist (D-Fla.), Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.), Kay Granger (R-Texas), and Norma Torres (D-Calif.).

These former state and local elected officials understand firsthand the impact of a federal investment in rebuilding our nations infrastructure on their communities, the White House said in a statement on Sunday.

Hickenlooper previously served as mayor of Denver and governor of Colorado. Hoeven, King, Shaheen, Romney, and Crist are former governors, while Cleaver, Gimenez, Granger, and Torres are all former mayors.

Biden unveiled his infrastructure proposal, which he dubbed the American Jobs Plan, at the end of March. He says it will create jobs, grow the economy, and make the United States more competitive internationally.

The wide-ranging proposal consists of two parts including traditional projects such as roads and bridges, and plans outside of infrastructure such as reducing carbon emissions in line with U.N. climate change goals, expanding health insurance coverage, and extending the expanded child tax benefit.

To pay for the proposal, the White House has proposed increasing the corporate tax rate to 28 percent from the current 21 percent.

The proposal has since received push back from Republican lawmakers, who say the components of the plan have little to do with infrastructure. They have, however, signaled that they are open to negotiate on smaller measures to address infrastructure needs across the country.

Only about six percent of the presidents proposal actually goes to what everyday Americans would describe as infrastructure. If Democrats are interested in roads, bridges, highways, and perhaps broadband, there is a deal to be had there, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the GOP Senate whip, said last week on Fox News Sunday.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had previously indicated that he would not support the infrastructure plan and said earlier this month that he was hopeful that not every single Democrat will back the measure. He has also characterized Bidens proposal as a Trojan horse for massive tax increases and a whole lot of more debt and whole lot of spending.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), whose support is critical in a 50-50 Senate, has said he is open to spending $4 trillion on the plan, as long as its paid for.

Meanwhile, Republicans are currently crafting their own counter-proposal that would come in at the $600 to $800 billion range.

Romney, who is meeting Biden on Monday, said earlier this week that he thinks an $800 billion package might be too high. He also would like to focus on roads, airports, and other traditional infrastructure components.

Bidens current plan to hike the corporate tax rate to pay for the bill has also drawn opposition from Republicans who voted for the Trump-era tax cuts. That measure slashed the same rate from 35 percent to where it is now.

Democrats will need to convince at least 10 Republicans in the Senate, or else they would be required to again turn to budget reconciliation, which would undermine Bidens campaign promise to govern by unifying the country.

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.
Authorities searched for a suspect after a 7-year-old girl died while her father was severely injured in a shooting at a McDonald's drive-thru in Chicago's Homan Square neighborhood on Sunday afternoon.

According to Chicago Police, the shooting occurred at 4:18 P.M. at McDonald's on 3200 West Roosevelt Road, near South Kedzie Avenue. The girl and a 29-year-old man were still inside the vehicle when they heard gunshots and were attacked.

A girl died, father injured after a suspect shot them at a drive-thru

The 7-year-old was admitted to Stroger Hospital with several gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead. The Cook County Medical Examiner's Office said she was known as Jaslyn Adams of Oak Park, as per the NBC Chicago.

Officials said the girl's father was shot in the torso and was admitted to Stroger Hospital in critical condition. He was named Jaslyn's father by family members. Following the incident, the McDonald's where the shooting happened was cordoned off by police tape. Investigators seemed to be concentrating their efforts on a vehicle parked in the drive-thru.

According to police, no suspects were caught as of Sunday evening. Following the shooting, members of the community and the girl's family shared their sorrow and frustration.

Teen Dies After Police Shot Him When He Fired At Officers in Knoxville, Tennessee High School

Tawny McMullen, Jasyln's aunt, described the 7-year-old as a sweet, talkative girl who was loving, adding that she has a daughter of the same age. "My baby is taking it so hard right now," she said, "such a real sweet love girl."

Following the shooting, community activist Andrew Holmes stood outside Stroger Hospital with numerous other local officials, calling for an end to the recent violence. Meanwhile, Jaslyn's aunt addressed the media with her message.

The police had barricaded off the parking lot, but no arrests have been made yet. The shooting is thought to be gang-related, according to the cops.

It is because two other individuals, a 33-year-old man, and a 19-year-old woman, were shot in their car less than three hours after the incident at McDonald's. The police believed it was linked to the McDonald's attack, The Independent reported.

Jaslyn liked to dance and make TikTok videos, said her grandmother, Lawanda McMullen. Pinky was her nickname since she was "bright," and pink was her favorite color, said the victim's family. Jaslyn's family and local community activists called for peace and an end to the violence.

At Least 8 People Dead Including Suspect in Massive Shooting at Indianapolis FedEx Facility

Chicago reported 24 shootings over the weekend

Meanwhile, this weekend in Chicago, three people were killed, and at least 21 others were injured in shootings, as per ABC7 Chicago. A 33-year-old man and a 19-year-old woman were in a blue Chevy Malibu at the Popeyes drive-thru window at Chicago and Kedzie; having just ordered food, the gunman pulled up in a car and opened fire at 7:12 P.M.

The woman was shot in the abdomen, while the man was shot in the left leg. Both were rushed to Stroger Hospital, where the man was stable, and the woman was in critical condition.

In a shooting on Austin's West Side on Sunday night, one man was killed, and another was injured. A man in a silver SUV fired shots at the two men on the sidewalk in the 4900-block of West Madison Street at about 11:20 P.M., police said.

According to police, one guy, 43, was shot in the chest and taken to Mt. Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The man has yet to be named by the Cook County medical examiner's office. The other man, 22, was shot in the right leg and was taken to the same hospital, and is now in good condition.

An 18-year-old man was killed, and a woman was injured in a shooting at a Lawndale company on Friday night. A person entered the business in the 3600-block of West 16th Street at about 7 P.M. and started firing shots. The man was shot in the chest and face and taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Jawon L. Ward, a resident of Englewood, was confirmed by the Cook County medical examiner's office. The woman was shot in the shoulder and back and was taken to the same hospital in good condition. Simultaneously, two men were seriously injured in a drive-by attack in Englewood on the South Side on Sunday.

The men, 37 and 38, were seated in a parked gray sedan in the 7400-block of South Stewart Avenue around 9 P.M. when someone inside a passing white sedan shot them, said the police. The 37-year-old was hit in the face and chest, while the older man was struck in the chest. They were still in critical condition when they arrived at the University of Chicago Medical Center.

A 17-year-old girl was shot in the Lower West Side of Chicago early Sunday. Around 12:50 A.M., the girl was riding in a car in the 170-block of West Cermak Road when two males left a black vehicle and fired shots. She was shot in the head and taken to Mt. Sinai Hospital, where she was reported to be in fair condition.

Police Officer Who Shot Daunte Wright Mistakenly Fired Gun Instead of Using Taser, Police Chief Claims

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Bengaluru, April 20 : Karnataka revenue minister, R. Ashoka on Monday said that there is no proposal before the government to enforce lockdown or partial lockdown to contain the Covid pandemic.

After chairing the meeting with Bengaluru legislators and MPs to seek their opinion on tackling Covid, Ashoka who is also chairman of state disaster management committee said that next two months will be most crucial, hence, the government needed the support of everyone including the Opposition.

"All the more what we require is a strong support from our people, who are on the street and they should start following the Covid norms strictly," he said.

According to him, the Bengaluru representatives had suggested restart the stamping of Covid patients especially those who are in home isolation.

Rejecting charges of shortage of oxygen in hospitals, Ashoka said that there was no shortage of oxygen. "Yes few small and medium hospitals have encountered short supply of Oxygen, but that is not a complete picture. In reality, oxygen producing companies were not able to supply oxygen to all hospitals in the wake of growing demand. The Oxygen production companies have been asked to supply three times a day instead of twice a day," he said.

As far as the shortage of beds, the minister said that the government was taking stringent steps on private hospitals to hand over 50 per cent of their beds. "As of now we have taken possession of only 10 per cent of beds from private hospitals. We are going to take steps on them soon," he said.

He also added that as a contingency measure non-Covid patients who are not suffering from severe diseases are being shifted to makeshift hospitals at hotels. "Only emergency patients will be treated at these designated hospitals," he reasoned.

When asked about shortage of Remedesvir drug, the revenue minister said that there was no shortage of this antiviral drug. "The government is already acting tough on those who are hoarding or blackmarketing this drug," he said.

Replying to a query, Ashoka said that the government was already in the process of identifying new land to build more crematoriums as well as designate as burial grounds. "At present we have directed existing crematoriums to operate 24/7 till this crisis is over and that too free of cost to reduce burden on relatives of dead," he said.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
A former teacher from suburban Houston has been accused of sexually abusing a male student for nearly three years, beginning when he was just 13 years old.

Marka Lee Bodine, 31, was arrested on Saturday on a charge of continuous sexual abuse of a child under the age of 14, which is punishable by up to 25 years in prison.

The investigation into Bodine was launched last Monday, after a former student at Tomball Intermediate School, now aged 16, came forward with allegations of continuous and ongoing sexual misconduct against his former teacher.

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Marka Bodine, 31, a now-former middle school English teacher from Texas, has been charged with continuous sexual abuse of a child under age 14. She is accused of sexually abusing a former student beginning in 2018, when he was just 13 years old

Until last week, Bodine taught sixth-grade English at Tomball Intermediate School

'It was definitely a cry out for help,' Tomball Police Chief Jeff Bert told Fox 26. 'He had reached out to a school, and he reached out to the police department as well, so I think he just became overwhelmed with it and reached out to us.'

Bodine was taken into custody on Saturday and booked into the Harris County jail. She has since been released after positing $100,000 bond.

Bodine made her initial court appearance on Monday and was ordered to wear a GPS monitor as one of the conditions of her release, KPRC reported.

Bodine made her initial court appearance on Monday and was ordered to wear a GPS monitor

Bodine was arrested after victim went to the police. The 31-year-old teacher also went to the police, accusing the boy of harassing her

According to court documents, Bodine had gone to the police, claiming that her former sixth grade student was harassing her and threatening to harm himself.

Bodine later reportedly admitted to having a three-year sexual relationship with that same boy, beginning in 2018 when he was just 13 years old, and sending him dozens of explicit videos and photos.

Chef Bert said the investigation has uncovered evidence in the form of social media posts and text messages, suggesting that Bodine had been grooming the victim for sex.

The Tomball Independent School District released a statement to ABC13, stressing that the case involved a former student 'who does not currently attend Tomball ISD schools.'

According to district officials, as soon as they learned of the allegations against Bodine, she was placed on administrative leave and has since resigned.

Her LinkedIn profile indicates that Bodine had taught English at Tomball ISD for nearly six years.
Last month, schools reopened across Virginia under a mandate by Democratic Governor Ralph Northam. In Norfolk Public Schools (NPS), elementary schools reopened on Monday, March 15, followed by middle schools on April 12 and high schools on April 26.

The city of Norfolk has had nearly 17,000 COVID-19 infection and 241 deaths, while the state of Virginia as a whole has seen nearly 650,000 cases and 10,564 deaths. All of these figures are set to increase in the coming weeks and months as a result of the broader reopening of schools and nonessential workplaces well before the pandemic is contained.

Child in line to return to class (Image credit: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office/ Public Domain)

This reporter spoke with an NPS Special Education teacher about conditions at her elementary school, which reopened last month. She wished to remain anonymous for fear of repercussions to herself and colleagues.

Ed Hightower: You mentioned how in a Facebook group for Special Ed teachers there were posts about how difficult their conditions are?

Norfolk Teacher: Yes, its been very difficult. They warn about triggers in their posts, meaning that what they are about to say could be harmful to someone with a history with mental illness. In response to the post, someone commented, I feel really awful, Im at the end of my rope. I want to quit, but I am afraid to quit. What are my next steps? I feel very abused by my administration etc.

I am seeing many posts like this now. A lot of it has to do with the expectations of the hybrid learning model, having students in real time and other students still at home, while not feeling adequately supported and feeling very unprepared. Teachers also feel guilt that they are not doing the best under the circumstance we are all under.

Also, at this time of year there is the additional, I guess threat, of high stakes assessments coming up and knowing that for many teachers they are still going to feel the pressure of the results of those assessments. Its still on our plate, that we are responsible for a particular outcome even for our Special Ed population, and feeling like were at a tremendous disadvantage and feeling like no one really cares that were at a disadvantage. Youre still required to make a certain amount of progress with your students whether theyre in-person or at home.

EH: I think to a certain extent that was already the case with teachers, where you encountered all of these social ills: malnutrition, abuse or neglect at home, poverty, etc. And teachers were left holding the bag for all of these social ills when it came to standardized test results. But now you are made to be a guarantor of these kids progress in this highly novel (to put it mildly) situation.

NT: Right, and when you say novel, that means that there is no road map. So, were finding this on our own with very little support from anyone. This is all new for teachers and all we have is each other to lean on and its difficult when you hear other teachers say theyre stressed to the point of leaving or even self-harm. I feel, teachers feel there are a lot of fingers pointing at us right now and some of us internalize that and feel a deficiency, whether it is our deficiency or that of society. We feel that we should be solving these issues of injustice and educational gaps, that we should somehow have the ability to solve these crises. I dont know where we get that, why we shoulder that burden ourselves, I dont know where that comes from.

EH: What does the hybrid model look like for a special Ed teacher?

NT: Were in the building with students in the classroom, and I call it broadcasting. Were sitting across from our laptops with the camera in our face talking to the kids at home while simultaneously trying to address the kids who are there in-person. You very quickly forget about social distancing. You very quickly forget that theres a pandemic when theres a child tugging on you because he needs help in real time.

And were under a lot of pressure to improve our lesson plans, which seems kind of strange to me that at the end of the year theres some sort of deep need from the state of Virginia to improve our lesson plans. Its April, so I am not really understanding where that came from. But there have been several professional development emails sent out to us making sure that we have our lesson plans squared away, and that they look letter perfect. The time to discuss lesson plans is in September, so that we have a primer and a template to work from for the rest of the year, not to re-tool things. I think it must be about high stakes testing because everybody is freaking out. Its coming next month.

EH: Piling the high stakes testing on is absolutely outrageous. What are conditions like in your Special Ed classroom?

Im in the classroom with a general education teacher, so were together and its called inclusion class: two teachers within the same classroom. With the model we have, we have five or six in-person children each day, maybe 9 or 10 at home. Wednesday is our asynchronous day, we put activities and assignments online for the kids but there is no in-person or online class.

EH: How much do the test scores matter, and has it changed during the pandemic?

NT: It is a part of our advancement, at least for the general education teachers. The further up you go the more important it is, like with high school teachers it does bear weight. Its part of our annual goals, which are tied to improving academics test scores. Were supposed to always be thinking about the tests and how were going to use them to advance student learning. Its always been a big thing, and I think its interesting that many other states have already decided that they are opting out of the high stakes tests, but not Virginia. Given that we have a Democratic governor I dont understand what his issue is, I mean I think that that would take a huge amount of weight and burden off of everyone.

Parents are allowed to opt their children out of the high stakes testing, but the district frowns on that. Its something that teachers are actually asked not to tell parents they can do, even though its their legal right. I think they just have to send an email to the principal saying I dont want my child to participate in this years high stakes testing and it will not affect the childs grades or ability to advance. But were always cautioned not to inform parents about this.

EH: For the teachers it seems dangerous, for the parents it seems dangerous. It seems like if this call were shared by a rank-and-file committee and on the WSWS it might be popular, something that would galvanize support.

NT: Yes, I think that that would be helpful to get the word out that they can do that. Parents came in in October and brought their children in face-to-face for PALS testing, which is a kindergarten, first grade and second grade assessment. They brought their kids in face-to-face. I dont think parents really know what their rights are, and I think that works against parents.

EH: What is this type of testing, PALS?

NT: For the state of Virginia, its a phonological awareness assessment. It tests whether or not kids know the alphabet, know the alphabet sounds and understand rhyming. There is a lot of state money tied to the PALS assessment. In October, we were told to invite all of the kindergartners in for face-to-face PALS testing. It was really shocking. Is it really worth our lives? We were told it was tied to state money and reading support for students, but PALS testing can be done online.

EH: How were the tests conducted?

NT: We wore masks and the kids wore masks but that was about it. We were told we would have more safety protocols than we had. We were supposed to have plastic shields and we were supposed to have gloves and stuff. We pretty much had to provide our own masks, like now. We have to provide our own masks for the face-to-face teaching. We werent given masks from the school.

EH: That seems patently unreasonable, like youre in a coal mine and you dont get a hard hat.

NT: Right, its bring your own. And we hear different things. When this all started, I thought we would get our own PPE but its for the kids in case the kids forget it. They have childrens masks but not adult masks. So, like good little workers we pay for our own stuff.

EH: have there been any outbreaks at the schools?

NT: They are sending teachers and students home. At our union Zoom call there was discussion about an entire class that got sent home. Im not certain whats happening with that class and what the end result was.

The WSWS Educators Newsletter encourages educators, parents and students to expose conditions in your schools. Send notes to educators@wsws.org and include your contact information if you want to do a full interview.
Kodiak. Copper (CVE: KDK) CEO Claudia Tornquist joined Steve Darling from Proactive to bring news the company has made a strategic acquisition by acquiring 100% percent interest in the Axe Copper-Gold Property near Princeton British Columbia.

Tornquist telling Proactive this new project now extends the MPD project area and is host to a porphyry complex comprised of four drill-proven copper-gold porphyry centres and has potential for additional targets similar to Kodiaks Gate Zone.
Border Force staff are demanding tougher penalties for airlines that fail to check passengers' Covid paperwork causing huge delays at airports.

Even with non-essential travel banned under current rules, pictures show seven-hour queues as officials individually check thousands of passengers' Covid paperwork on arrival.

Last week, a woman collapsed at the passport control desk after waiting for hours to be seen.

And, with May 17 marking an end to the government's ban on overseas holidays there are fears the delays could worsen.

The Immigration Services Union - which represents Border force workers - said pressure to ensure arrivals have followed Covid travel rules should be on the airlines.

As it stands, passenger locator forms should be checked prior to boarding by airlines - who could be slapped with a 2,000 fine if they fail to do so.

But countless staff miss the checks, meaning arrivals sometimes face border force officials with incorrect forms or lacking proof of a negative Covid test.

This increases their contact time with officials from four minutes to between 30 and 40, the union said.

In other Covid news:

Cases of people contracting South African and Kent Covid variants after being vaccinated have already been recorded, expert warns;

Emmanuel Macron discusses ways to open France to vaccinated 'American and European' travellers this summer;

Huge crowd of maskless young people gathered outside Harrods yesterday as police step in;

Britons splurged billions in pubs and restaurants over the weekend, figures show;

A further 1,882 people tested positive for Covid-19 yesterday - an 8.7 per cent rise on last Sunday;

Britain yesterday recorded 10 deaths - compared to seven deaths on this day last week;

Government confirmed more than 9.9 million people in the UK have now received both doses of a Covid-19 vaccine.

Border Force staff are demanding tougher penalties for airlines that fail to check passengers' Covid paperwork causing huge queues at arrivals (left). Last week, a woman collapsed at the passport control desk after waiting for hours to be seen (right)

And, with May 17 marking an end to the government's ban on overseas holidays - to be replaced with a 'traffic light' system based on a country's Covid risk - there are fears the delays could worsen. Pictured: Arrivals at London Heathrow Airport this month

Passengers arrive at Heathrow Airport's Terminal 2 with their luggage last week

The 'traffic light' system would see countries classed as either green, amber or red - depending on the threat they pose of fuelling the pandemic.

It was yesterday revealed that only eight countries are set to feature on the government's green travel list, including Gibraltar, Israel, Iceland and the US.

The Immigration Services Union's Lucy Moreton told The Times there are two options to rectify the passport control delay issue: 'Remove the requirement to check 100 per cent of arrivals comply with Covid requirements, inevitably increasing the risk to national Covid security.

'Or compel carriers to ensure that those they bring into the UK have complied with the UK's requirements.'

The International Air Transport Association urged the government to make the paper system for arrivals documents digital - because 'even with limited traffic there are already reports of lengthy waits at UK border checkpoints'.

The Immigration Services Union - which represents Border force workers - said pressure to ensure arrivals have followed Covid travel rules should be on the airlines. Pictured: Heathrow Airport last week

As it stands, passenger locator forms should be checked prior to boarding by airlines - who could be slapped with a 2,000 fine if they fail to do so. Pictured: Heathrow Airport last week

Passengers at Gatwick airport today told MailOnline that border checks were fast - if all their documents were in check.

English literature student Simon Heller, 25, who landed to return to Oxford University, said: 'It was alright to be honest. I think because I had all the documents ready it took all of four minutes to get through the queue.

'They checked every paper and form I needed to fill out, my test certificates and the place I was going to isolate for the next 10 days.'

In reaction to the news of his native Switzerland not expected to be one of the first greenlist countries, Mr Heller joked: 'Good cause I would have been angry at having to isolate now!

'I don't think it should be on the list yet as we pretty much have the same amount of cases as the UK with like a tenth of the population so it's still relatively high.'

Communications editor Tim Hopkins, 38, was returning home to Birmingham after working in Geneva.

He said of the return process: 'It took me about two minutes to get through and was super straight forward.

'The police check you first when you come through, they check your passenger locator, PCR test and your two and eight day test.

'Then you have to go to the customs gate for the passport check. Once you're through there they don't check you again.'

Student Alexander Davis, 19, was returning to his accommodation in Leeds after visiting his parents in Geneva

Student Alexander Davis, 19, was returning to his accommodation in Leeds after visiting his parents in Geneva.

He said: 'The wait was about 15 minutes so not too bad. It's okay if you come prepared like the website tells you and have all the forms ready which I did.

'I kind of expected it to be like this. You go to the passport check and then wait in a line before they ask you for your tests and passenger locator form.

'It was pretty socially distanced and there was plenty of staff to make sure it was all okay.'

Earlier this month, former head of the UK Border Force Tony Smith said the government should use technology to lighten the load on stretched officers.

He urged international governments and airlines to 'show leadership' by getting together to hammer out a solution - and suggested checking people's documents before they board flights to avert clogging up the borders.

He told LBC: 'This is a bit of a disaster. I managed the borders for all the Olympics, and those was the busiest we ever had in the UK, and at Heathrow - record numbers, high security.

'And we did work with the airlines, we worked with the airports, with worked with our colleagues. The answer is: why don't we check these things before people get onboard?

'We do it with passports, we do it with visas, if the airlines don't do that, they get fined. We need international collaboration between the airports, the airlines and governments.'

Such pre-flight passenger checks could be easily managed with apps, he suggested, as a way of easing the load on border force staff.

Giving a damning verdict of the current chaos, Mr Smith said: 'All we're doing is loading more and more pressure on to our hard-pressed officers at the border, asking them to do more and more things, and they're getting beaten up every day because 'we're the ones who are the problem'.'

Last week, the bosses of Heathrow Airport, British Airways and Jet2 lashed out at the 'inhumane and completely avoidable' queues.

They called on Home Secretary Priti Patel to step up border guard numbers as there are often 'hardly any desks manned' at passport control.

The wider use of electronic passport gates would ensure hassle-free holidays once foreign travel resumes under the government's 'traffic light' system, the experts said.

Sean Doyle, head of BA, said it had been working hard to ensure it can welcome customers safely but public confidence would be undermined 'if we are not fully prepared at entry points into the UK'.

Heathrow Airport boss John Holland-Kaye said: 'Recently, passengers arriving in this country have faced waiting times of over six hours with hardly any desks manned. This is inhumane and completely avoidable.

'This is a wake-up call for ministers to make sure that when international travel restarts, the processes at the border are automated and every desk is manned.'

Although non-essential travel remains banned but thousands are still entering the UK every day.

On May 17, the government ban on overseas holidays will lift.

The British overseas territory of Gibraltar, along with Israel, Iceland and the US, will be among the nations and territories on the safe list, according to industry modelling reported by the Telegraph.

The research was carried out by Robert Boyle - the former strategy chief at British Airways.

It also reveals that nearly all of Europe is either on the Government's 'amber' list, where arrivals must go into self-isolation for ten days, or the red list - where arrivals have to quarantine in hotels at a cost of 1,750.

According to the new research, the other countries which will reportedly be on the green list are Malta, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland.

Both Australia and New Zealand are currently closed to foreign arrivals while Iceland, Gibraltar, Israel, Malta and the United States all have heavy restrictions in place which ban holidaymakers travelling to the countries.

Ireland's Government advises against non-essential travel and arrivals must quarantine for 14 days, with 'limited exceptions' according to the Foreign Office.

The research contradicts expectations from travel industry leaders that most of Europe would be on the Government's green list.

The findings put Spain, Greece, Italy and Cyprus - all of which are hugely popular with British tourists - on amber because of their high coronavirus rates.

However, they could still turn green by June 28 - when the Government is set to carry out a review which could see nations moved between lists.

The report, which has reportedly been circulated among figures in the travel industry, ranks 52 countries based on a series of coronavirus-related statistics.

These include vaccination rates, infection rates and the extent of Covid-19 variants.

The report is said to read: 'The surest case for green must be Gibraltar. It has essentially zero cases of any type and the population is fully vaccinated.

'Israel must be the next most likely. Again, it has vaccinated close to its entire population and case numbers are below even last year's threshold.'

The report contradicts previous expectations from industry leaders that most European countries would be in the Government's quarantine-free category.

Johan Lundgren, easyJet's chief executive, said when asked if he expects destinations such as France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Croatia, Cyprus and Turkey to be on the 'green' list: 'Yes, by the time we open up for travel on May 17 and if the Government continues to have the plan in place on the two-test system.'

Senior industry figures told MPs on the Transport Select Committee last week that the proposed traffic light system is 'too complex' while the overall strategy set out by ministers is 'very vague in many areas'.

They also warned border control at airports is already 'unable to cope' with Covid checks despite passenger numbers being massively reduced due to the lockdown ban on non-essential international travel.

They warned there will need to be a 'dramatic improvement in border performance if we are to increase passenger numbers' when flights do resume.

Meanwhile, British Airways boss Sean Doyle said the continued success of the vaccine rollout in the UK and the US could allow for a transatlantic travel corridor to be put in place.

Last month, experts said London and Washington were already discussing piloting a bilateral safe travel scheme between the two countries.

Mr Doyle, who was speaking at an online industry event, also said the firm would be offering 60 PCR tests to its customers amid concerns the bill charged by some testing firms of approximately 120 could price many families out of a trip abroad.

His comments reflect the announcement made by testing firm Randox who said last week it would be offering 60 tests through partnering airlines in a bid to aid the sector's recovery.

The Government has yet to say which countries will make it onto the 'green list' for low risk travel but the Department for Transport has pledged to categorise countries 'in early May'.

Assessments will be based on a range of factors, including the proportion of a country's population that has been vaccinated, rates of infection, emerging new variants, and the country's access to reliable scientific data and genomic sequencing.

The Government's Global Travel Taskforce published details on the proposed traffic light system earlier this month.

It will see countries rated green, amber or red, with travel from 'green' countries quarantine-free but passengers will have to take one test after flying home, rather than the current two.

Boris Johnson's lockdown exit roadmap states that international travel will resume no earlier than May 17.

Travel bosses this week delivered a damning assessment of the taskforce's report as they claimed it lacked detail and argued the proposed timetable for the return of flights is too slow.

Simon McNamara, the UK and Ireland country manager for the International Air Transport Association, told MPs: 'There was a tremendous amount of expectation from this report and we expected it to be, if you like, the start of the sprint to the finish.

'But it has turned out to be another milestone and I think that is the disappointment in it.

'It has provided that framework, it has provided some clarity but there are many areas that are still unanswered it is very vague in many areas such as the timescale to when the border will be ready, which countries will fall into which category.

'I think crucially the approach to reopening we believe is still too complex and too cautious I'm afraid.'

Chris Garton, chief solutions officer at Heathrow Airport, expressed concerns about the proposed testing regime and added: 'Our biggest issue in terms of the summer particularly is the performance at the border and we need to see a dramatic improvement in border performance if we are to increase passenger numbers travelling through Heathrow.'

Mr McNamara echoed a similar sentiment on border checks as he said: 'Finally, it is the point that Chris raised which is the ability of the border to handle any scale up in operations.

'It is unable to cope at the moment so we are very concerned about that also.'

Brian Strutton, the general secretary of the British Airline Pilots Association, told the Committee that the taskforce's report was a 'bitter disappointment to everybody working in the industry'.

'The expectation was this would be the blueprint to get summer flights going again,' he said. 'In fact it is not, it is a jam tomorrow, 'we might let you know next month where you can fly to and when'.

'There is no specificity in it at all so as a result many airlines have already told us they will be curtailing the plans they had for the summer.'

Mark Tanzer, the chief executive of the Association of British Travel Agents, said firms are increasingly feeling the strain as he cautioned against further delays to resuming holidays abroad.

He said: 'I guess I can't emphasise enough the urgency of pushing forward with this given the state of the industry which has been in suspension for over a year now and the fact that we have gone through Easter and out the other side with international travel illegal means there is even more pressure on the summer season.

'A week lost is vital for a lot of members who could be teetering on the brink.'

The evidence to MPs came after Mr Lundgren struck a more optimistic tone on Wednesday morning, telling reporters: 'I will struggle to see that there will be, unless something happens between now and then, that there would be many (European) countries who wouldn't be in that green category.'

The chief executive of easyJet Johan Lundgren (pictured) said that by the time travel restarts in Britain on May 17, most European countries should be on the UK's green list for travel

Mr Lundgren said the main question customers were asking was which countries would be on the 'green list' as he urged the Government to come forward with more details as soon as possible.

He added: 'We would expect that, if the Government continues with the approach on the testing regime that they have said, I would expect almost all major European countries, that by the time it comes to travel reopening, that most countries in Europe should be in that category.'

Travel to and from a 'green' country will require people to be tested before they leave their holiday destination and again two days after arrival back in the UK.

The Government is exploring whether cheaper rapid lateral flow tests could be used for the pre-departure check with a PCR test then used for the test after arrival.

Mr Lundgren said: 'If the PCR test and the lateral flow test will need to be in place for 'green' countries, I couldn't see that there would be many countries in Europe that wouldn't be in the 'green' category.

BA boss Sean Doyle (pictured) has said swift vaccine rollouts in the UK and the United States should enable transatlantic routes to open once international travel resumes this summer

'It's important the Government comes out with this list as soon as possible because this is the main question for most of our customers right now.

'They want to know if the favourite destination for them to go on their holiday or to visit friends and family across Europe is that country in the 'green' category.

'And it will be a big difference, of course, if you're in the 'green' category, versus if you're in 'amber' or 'red'.'

The UK's seven-day rate of coronavirus cases per 100,000 people stands at 29, while many popular short-haul locations have much higher figures, including France (348), Greece (185), Italy (169) and Spain (111).

Asked if he expects destinations such as France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Croatia, Cyprus and Turkey to be on the Government 'green list', Mr Lundgren replied: 'Yes, by the time we open up for travel on May 17 and if the Government continues to have the plan in place on the two-test system.

'I wouldn't see reason why you wouldn't have the majority of the countries of Europe in there.

'We really believe that, if you're in the 'green' category, there should not be any need of any testing at all because it would be considered low-risk.'

Meanwhile, BA boss Mr Doyle said swift vaccine rollouts in the UK and the US should enable transatlantic routes to reopen.

'There's an immediate opportunity to open up the US,' Mr Doyle said during CAPA Live, an online industry event.

With the two countries 'more or less mirroring each other' on vaccination, he said 'that should lead to the UK and the US being able to lead the way in terms of opening up'.

Paul Charles, the CEO of The PC Agency, said he believes discussions between the US and the UK are 'proceeding positively'.

He told MailOnline: 'The UK/US governments are in negotiations at the moment which are proceeding positively, about a possible pilot bilateral corridor scheme to enable safe travel between the two countries after the end of May.

'One of the (eight) Global Travel Taskforce workstreams is called 'Engaging with other like-minded countries'  these are countries such as the US which have advanced vaccine rollout programmes and are focused on reducing infection and variant rates.'
The former home of a man who testified as part of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvins defense in his ongoing murder trial was vandalized over the weekend, police claim.

According to police in Santa Rosa, California, the former home of Barry Brodd was vandalized early Saturday morning with a pigs head and animal blood.

However, police said, Brodd, a former training officer in the city, no longer even lives in California.

The current homeowners claimed that they woke up at 3 a.m. when a group of people in all black clothes threw a pigs head on their porch and splattered blood on their front door and garage door. The vandals supposedly put blood on another statue in the town before fleeing the scene.

Brodd, a use-of-force expert, testified Tuesday that Chauvin acted with objective reasonableness while restraining George Floyd. Several prosecuting witnesses, including ones that actually worked for Chauvins department, offered contradictory testimony. Santa Rosa Police Chief Rainer Navarro slammed the testimony and pointed out that Brodd had not worked for the department since 2004.

Closing arguments in the Chauvin trial begin Monday.

___

David Matthews of the New York Daily News wrote this story.

(c)2021 New York Daily News

Visit New York Daily News at www.nydailynews.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Austria has wrapped up negotiations to acquire Russias Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said.

In a briefing to local media, Kurz said the talks had "de facto come to an end" making it possible for Austria to buy one million doses and provide an "additional turbo" to the country's vaccination rollout.

Kurz first revealed that he was in talks with Russia to purchase the vaccine in late March, following a February 26 phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The European Medicines Agency is still carrying out a rolling review of the Sputnik V vaccine. Asked last week if Austria would wait for an EU license, Kurzs office said the licensing mechanism for Sputnik V is "still to be decided."

Hungary and Slovakia are, so far, the only EU countries to order the Russian vaccine. Hungary said Friday it would help Slovakia assess the jab after a negative assessment by Slovakias own drug regulator.
MND, the French industrial group specializing in ropeway mobility, snowmaking systems, mountain safety and sensational leisure infrastructures, continues to support the development of Waterville Valley Ski Resort in the Northeast United States, where the Group will build its first North American detachable 6-seater chairlift. This lift installation, worth 9 million USD, will be completed over a two year period, with completion in 2022.

Mr. Tim Smith, President and General Manager of Waterville Valley Resort, said: "We have developed a strong partnership with MND over the last 4 years, including the installation of conveyors, a surface lift, and significant snowmaking system upgrades. We are confident in continuing to work with them as a partner for this strategic project. Replacing our White Peaks lift is the most important project in our investment plan for the existing resort footprint, and will continue our work to enhance the guest experience at Waterville Valley Resort. This will be one of the largest upcoming lift projects in the Northeast United States. This lift represents the best technology in the market today and we are pleased to extend our partnership with MND."

Xavier Gallot-Lavallee, Chairman and CEO of MND, said: "We have been partners with Waterville Valley Resort since 2017 and are pleased to be continuing our collaboration. This project will expand our position in the U.S. market by building our first detachable ropeway transportation system in the United States. North American resorts are demonstrating their willingness to renew their offerings by investing in safety, comfort and customer experience while controlling investments and optimizing operation and maintenance costs. Waterville Valley is a perfect example of this approach, and our teams are mobilized to support these developments with our technology and service offerings both on East and West Coasts of the United-States."

The new detachable chairlift will replace the resort's main lift, the 1988 "White Peaks Express", which transports skiers from the base area to the summit. The new chairlift will increase transport capacity to 3,000 people per hour and offer both comfort and reliability with the latest 6-person bubble seats featuring Design by Porsche Design Studio.The detachable clamp technology used and the construction of a garage to store the seats will improve the system availability and decrease maintenance costs.

This is a turnkey project with MND providing design, project management, equipment fabrication, construction, installation, start-up and operator training. This lift will be constructed by MND in the framework of its strategic commercial and industrial alliance with Bartholet. MND will rely on its subsidiary MND North America and its local partners. The civil works will be partly completed this year with the installation of the equipment in 2022, for opening operations in the 2022-2023 ski season.

Waterville Valley, a New Hampshire resort in the Northeast United States, initiated a major investment program in 2017 to renew the attractiveness of the ski area. As part of this program, MND built two conveyor belts for the beginner ski area, a surface lift, and a complete modernization of the snowmaking system, including more than 400 latest generation snow guns.

Technical specifications of the new White Peaks Express 6-passenger detachable chairlift:

Length: 5700' (1740 meters)

Vertical drop: 1585' (483 m)

Speed: 1000 ft/min (5 m/s)

Power input at speed: 845 HP (630 kW)

Capacity: 3000 p/h, with 100 6-place "Design by Porsche Studio" bubble chairlifts

About Waterville Valley Resort

Waterville Valley is a four-season resort set on 540 private acres surrounded by 360 of National Forest. Sitting atop the 4,004-foot Mt. Tecumseh, "New Hampshire's Family Resort" features 265 acres of skiable terrain, a vertical drop of 2,020 feet, 62 trails, 12 lifts, and 74k of groomed Nordic terrain and dining in the Town Square as well as a variety of lodging options, including country inns, condominiums, and all-suite hotels.

For more information, visit waterville.com.

About MND

MND is a French industrial group specializing in ropeway mobility, snowmaking systems, mountain safety and sensational leisure infrastructures. With more than 3,000 customers in 49 countries, MND contributes daily to the mobility, leisure and safety of all by offering proven and sustainable solutions based on its experience in the mountains. Based in Savoie, France, MND has 300 employees and relies on 7 international distribution subsidiaries and 28 distributors to develop its activities worldwide. MND is listed on the Euronext Growth market in Paris (FR0011584549 - ALMND).

Learn more: www.mnd.com

About MND in the United States

MND has been present in the United States for 10 years with a Western office located in Eagle, Colorado and an Eastern office in Laconia, New Hampshire. In the United States, MND is present in avalanche risk prevention, snowmaking systems, ski lifts and ski area safety equipments.

Contacts

Press Relations

Alexandre Berard

+33 (0)6 45 42 95 46 - alex@alternativemedia.fr Financial Press Relations

Serena Boni

+33 (0)4 72 1804 92 - sboni@actus.fr Investor Relations

Mathieu Omnes

+33 (0)1 53 67 36 92 - momnes@actus.fr

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Demonstrators in Minnesota dropped to their knees and made plans to mobilize at the site of a fatal officer-involved shooting - before learning the victim they were memorializing was a carjacking suspect who allegedly shot at police.

The Black Lives Matters protesters, who were demonstrating Sunday outside the governor's mansion, could be seen in video shot by a local reporter observing a moment of silence when they heard of a police-involved shooting in Burnsville, Minnesota.

'This information HAS NOT been confirmed but this group says they're heading there', tweeted Fox 9 reporter Mitti Hicks.

Roughly an hour later, Hicks tweeted that the group was 'heading back to Brooklyn Center (the site of the Daunte Wright shooting) because they need more information about what happened in Burnsville first.'

What actually happened in Burnsville was a wild chase down a highway in which a carjacking suspect allegedly shot at police before he was shot dead.

Protestors kneel after hearing there was an officer-involved shooting in Burnsville moments ago. This information HAS NOT been confirmed but this group says they're heading there. pic.twitter.com/MHdQQmytnY  Mitti Hicks (@MittiMegan) April 18, 2021

Agents from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigate the scene of an officer-involved shooting involving a carjacking suspect who police said fired on them

The carjacker abandoned his stolen ride before trying to carjack two other motorists at gunpoint

The suspect, a white male in his 20s, was shot Sunday afternoon on State Highway 13 at the interchange of Interstate 35W in Burnsville, Minnesota after police said he abandoned a stolen car, tried to steal two others at gunpoint and shot at cops.

The horrifying ordeal began in the afternoon when the carjacking suspect was being sought by cops for driving a car with stolen plates. He would crash that car, only to carjack a woman at gunpoint and take off in her vehicle, police said.

Police continued their pursuit and said the suspect shot at them before abandoning the stolen ride.

Video provided by the Minnesota Department of Transportation shows the suspect slowing down a white sedan before jumping out and tumbling to the ground. He can be seen then running into oncoming traffic and pointing his gun at a motorist who appeared to take a sharp left turn toward a grassy median to avoid the man.

Minnesota Department of Transportation footage shows the suspect slow a stolen white sedan down and open the door

The suspect tumbled out of the car before running toward oncoming traffic

He can be seen pointing his gun at a motorist in an attempt to steal another car

The motorist could be seen heading over the grassy median into oncoming traffic to get away from the gunman. He was shot dead by police shortly afterwards

Police said the suspect then attempted to carjack another motorist.

While video doesn't capture the fatal confrontation, police said they and the carjacker exchanged fire before the suspect was shot at roughly 3pm.

He was taken to Hennepin County Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.

No officers were wounded in the shooting. Those involved were placed on 'standard administrative leave'.

'All Burnsville Police Officers wear body cameras and camera data will be handled by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) who will lead the investigation,' Burnsville police said in a statement.

A woman identified as one of the attempted carjack victims told the press that the police had no choice but to open fire.

'Them officers, they didn't kill him, they didn't murder him,' the woman said.

'The guy could have killed me and my 6-year-old goddaughter. He could have killed who knows how many people,' she said.

#Burnsville

Victim of attempted car jacking says that the Officers were justified in the shooting.

Protestors can be heard yelling in the background.pic.twitter.com/viyYD3k22b   Not My President, Presidential Occupant Biden (@CplChaskoIV2) April 18, 2021

The BLM protesters were roundly mocked on Twitter for appearing to extend sympathy to the suspect before learning he was an alleged violent carjacker.

'I can't imagine this being my life...kneeling for criminals that would run everyone of them over if they got in their way', one person wrote. '"Need more information" = They found out he was a carjacker firing at the police', another said.

People have been protesting in Minnesota for the past week after the death of Wright when an officer allegedly mistook her taser for a gun after a traffic stop.

The state is also the location of the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin, charged in the death of George Floyd last year.

The closing arguments in his trial are set for Monday, after which there could be a verdict and the potential for unrest based on that verdict.
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Market Research Future Published a Cooked Research Global Color Masterbatch Market Research Report - Forecast to 2027 - Market Analysis, Scope, Stake, Progress, Trends and Forecast up to 2027.

Color Masterbatch Market  Market Overview

Color masterbatches is made up of rubber, plastic, and elastomer in which pigments are dispersed optimally, this solids are cut into small pieces, which is further processed and used to make value added products in various industries which includes packaging, building & construction, consumer goods, automotive, textile and agriculture among others.

Packaging as an end-use industry accounts for the largest market for color masterbatch. Increasing consumption of plastics across the globe in an array of industries is expected to boost the market for color masterbatch. Especially, the packaging sector which is the largest consumer of plastics. Evolution of different packaging techniques in the sector is propelling the market for color masterbatches.

Rapid urbanization and changing lifestyle of consumers in the emerging markets can be further attributed to the growth of color masterbatch market. Consumers are more inclined towards packaged food items. Also, an emerging textile industry in the Southeast Asian counties, especially, Vietnams textile sectored which is growing at a rate of nearly 9% will offer ample opportunities for color masterbatch.

Plastics are gaining traction in the building & construction sector replacing traditional materials. The economic downturn in 2008-09 in the U.S which had an adverse effect on the housing industry in the country witnessed sharp decline in the ceramic tile industry. However, the recent stats showing a positive outlook for housing market in the U.S for 2017-18 with low mortgage rates in the country beefing up new construction activities. A similar trend has been noted in the European market. Whereas, the ongoing and upcoming construction activities in the region is stimulating the demand for color masterbatch. For instance, amidst the decline in oil prices in the GCC the construction activities in the region still remains as a strong indicator for economic growth in the region. The construction activities is expected to stimulate in the coming years with an overall capital spending in GCC estimated at USD 480 billion of which 65% will be towards infrastructure development. Accounting for the latter mentioned factors it is healthy to assume a pool of market opportunities for color masterbatch in the Middle East region.

Furthermore, regional demographics and macroeconomic indicators such as rise in disposable income, decline in unemployment rates, and an increasing middle class population in the emerging economies is expected to increase the spending power of the population the region. Thus, the above mentioned factors are some compelling factors for the market growth.

Increasing scrutiny towards the vehicular emission across the globe has resulted in extreme pressure on OEMs to alter their vehicle design without jeopardizing the performance of the vehicle. Hence, more and more lightweight materials are being adopted in automotive sector. For instance, 10% of the average weight of a medium size passenger vehicle is of the plastic materials. Also, new regional norms like Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) and EU to cut down the emission from vehicles are propelling the market for plastics in automotive. Hence, driving the market for color masterbatch.

Access Complete Report @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/color-masterbatch-market-882

Key Players:

A Schulman Europe, Tosaf Compounds, Polyplast Muller, Polyone Corporation, Hubron, Clariant Masterbatches, Ampacet, and Cabot Plastics International among others. are some of the prominent players at the forefront of competition in the Global Color Masterbatch Market and are profiled in MRFR Analysis.

Color Masterbatch Market  Competitive Analysis

Color masterbatch market is a fragmented market with Tier `1 manufacturers and domestic players. The major trends noted among the manufacturers are expansion, joint-ventures, and acquisitions to capture the market share and increase their market presence in line with the increasing demand for masterbatch. For instance, Ampacet has announced its new production plant for masterbatches in Australia for catering the ever-growing demand for masterbatches from the food, shipping, industrial and retail industries.

In similar lines, A Schulman Inc, opened a new color master batch facility in Hangzhou High Tech Industrial Park CEDZ, Jiangsu, China in 2016. This expansion in China and other growing markets throughout the Asia Pacific will produce A. Schulman's premium color additives for packaging, automotive, agricultural, sports, and leisure & home customers.

Industry/ Innovation/ Related News:

November, 2017- Ampacet, a global leader in the masterbatch market has launched its new production line for production of white masterbatch in Dudelange, Luxemborg. The main aim of the company with this newly opened production line is to maximise the overall customer experience by optimizing the lead time enhancing the delivery flexibility.

July, 2017- In 2017, Ampacet has announced its new production plant for masterbatches in Australia for catering the ever-growing demand for masterbatches from the food, shipping, industrial and retail industries. The newly opened plant will enable the company to further strengthen its presence in the Oceania region.

March, 2017- In 2017, Ampacet invested in new production lines across its various manufacturing facilities in Europe in line with increasing the production capacity of color additives, black and white masterbatches at its Messacny facility in Belgium. Second capacity increase was at its Dudelange facility in Luxemborg.

July, 2016- In 2016, A Schulman Inc, enters a partnership with Snetor Chimie headquarters in Courbevoie (France )- this partnership will allow the expansion of its master batch footprint on the African continent

April, 2016- In 2016, A Schulman Inc, opens a new color master batch facility hangshu High Tech Industrial Park CEDZ, Jiangsu, China. This expansion in China and other growing markets throughout the Asia Pacific will produce A. Schulman's premium color additives for packaging, automotive, agricultural, sports, and leisure & home customers
The Lee Select Board has set May 4 for a public hearing on a special permit request for Forest Wilde LLC to convert the Cork N Hearth restaurant on Route 20 at the Lenox town line, seen in this aerial view, into a marijuana manufacturing facility and retail store.
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.
Governments are increasingly aware of the importance of monitoring and evaluating their policies  including agri-environmental policies  and are devoting efforts to strengthening their monitoring and evaluation systems and capacities. They aim to improve their performance by establishing evidence-based policy-making, evidence-based management and evidence-based accountability, which will help to improve the design and implementation of policies.



Have agri-environmental and agricultural policies, including cross-compliance and environmental regulations, succeeded in meeting environmental objectives for agriculture in OECD countries (and selected non-OECD countries)? What is the role for governments to encourage farmers to deliver environmental public goods?
U.S. technology developers came together to show their latest in counter-drone technology during a demonstration at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona. Focused on Low Collateral Effects Interceptors (LCEI), this demonstration is the first in an ongoing series of semi-annual demonstrations aimed at evaluating technologies to deliver an enterprise approach to counter growing threats from rapidly increasing small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS). Nancy Jones-Bonbrest, Army Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office, reports.

Follow Army Recognition on Google News at this link

In collaboration with the U.S. Air Force, the Joint Counter-sUAS Office (JCO) and the Army Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO) hosted a demonstration in counter-drone technology at Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz on April 5-9. (Picture source: U.S. Army/Mark A. Schauer, Yuma Proving Ground Public Affairs)

In collaboration with the U.S. Air Force, the Joint Counter-sUAS Office (JCO) and the Army Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO) hosted the demonstration April 5-9. Three companies were selected through a Request for Information (RFI) process to attend the demonstration, focused on defeating sUAS in environments that require minimal collateral damage to the surrounding areas or personnel, such as in urban areas.

This was the first of many industry opportunities as we look to synchronize solutions and counter the small UAS threat, said LTG L. Neil Thurgood, Director of Hypersonics, Directed Energy, Space and Rapid Acquisition, which includes the RCCTO. Events like this demonstration at Yuma Proving Ground will help identify new approaches, focus our efforts, and allow us to leverage innovation quickly.

Following the first demonstration, participants will receive an assessment detailing how their capability performed against certain criteria during the government-funded test. The Air Force will welcome participating systems for further evaluation and possible inclusion in the LCEI development program funded by the JCO starting in FY21.

The systems were evaluated for their effectiveness in defeating lightweight Group 1 UAS. These types of drones are small and quick, hard to mitigate and can carry various payloads, including surveillance equipment. This weeks demonstration helps the Department of Defense as we strive to provide the most capable counter-small UAS equipment to our operational forces, said MG Sean Gainey, Director of the Joint Counter-small UAS Office. By focusing the first event on low collateral effects interceptors, we are addressing a key challenge when operating in complex urban environments, around sensitive sites, or in situations where the rules of engagement limit kinetic capabilities.

The three companies  Aurora Flight Sciences, ELTA North America, and XTEND  were invited to the demonstration after they were selected through an RFI released in January 2021. This follows the DoD release of its C-sUAS Strategy, also in January, which provided the framework for addressing sUAS across the spectrum from hazards to threats in the homeland, host nations, and contingency locations.

More than 30 companies responded with three participating in the demonstration. The companies will leave the demonstration with an awareness of their systems strengths and limitations against known threats.

According to the company, Auroras Modular Intercept Drone Avionics Set (MIDAS) is artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled, multi-rotor sUAS outfitted with optical sensors and a customized payload that can defeat multiple sUAS per flight with low-collateral effects. An autonomous solution, MIDAS is cued from ground radar and locks on with its onboard sensor.

Aurora was honored to participate in the JCO and RCCTO demo event for low-collateral interceptors at the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground, said Kel Jackson, Counter-UAS program manager for Aurora Flight Sciences, a Boeing Company. Demonstrating MIDAS differentiated Counter-UAS capabilities in such a challenging environment was invaluable.

The ELTA North America team demonstrated their Drone-Kill-Drone (DKD) system, which they say is 100 percent autonomous from launch to intercept. The system needs no human intervention other than the command to launch. DKD uses a combination of onboard processing, autonomous flight control, and optical target lock to strike the target while in flight. It contains an entanglement net of cut-resistant wires that spring-release during flight and entangle rotors for an extremely high kill rate. DKD is modular and scalable to carry additional effector payloads and can be integrated to accept cues from drone detection sensors or Command and Control (C2) systems.

We all know warfighters are wearing multiple hats as it is, so having something connected to the network that is fully autonomous is crucial, said Dean Nohe, senior director of business development for ELTA North America. The DKD takes the network or sensor feed and assigns the right drone to the right threat. Once it gets close to the target, theres onboard processing and onboard AI that enables an optical target lock and continues the autonomous guidance to the drone until interception.

XTEND described their SKYLORD GRIFFON system as a C-sUAS platform that allows operators with no flight experience to intercept aerial threats. The system can seamlessly interface with most detection or C2 systems and uses augmented reality to enable the operators to immerse themselves in countering sUAS.

After three days using this system everyone is mission capable, said Ido Baron, vice president of business development and sales for XTEND. The system is man-portable, lightweight and inexpensive. Each drone is like a bullet in a magazine, with most of the cost in the C2 system and software, which is on the ground.

According to the company, this technology fuses edge technology with human-centric cognitive capabilities allowing operators to deploy multiple drone teams to detect and intercept enemy drones. The SKYLORD GRIFFON provides a smart hard kill, which means the CUAS system flies by C2 but once it comes within range of the drone, the operator takes control so they can investigate the target to either intercept it or follow it, providing the full mission spectrum.

Each vendor had similar scenarios and missions as part of the demonstration, which also looked at ease of integration into existing Department of Defense systems, their ability to operate autonomously, and effectiveness at intercepting and targeting hostile UAS.

Future demonstration events will be posted separately as the JCO coordinates with Joint partners to select focus areas providing the most impact to transitioning solutions into production. A second demonstration will occur in late FY21 and an RFI to the industry will be released this spring.
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Achim Berg, Operating Partner at General Atlantic and President of Bitkom, Germanys digital association, will join Staffbases advisory board as part of the collaboration.

FREMONT, CA: Staffbase, a leading digital solution provider for internal communications, and General Atlantic, a global growth equity firm, announced a strategic partnership. General Atlantic is leading a 145 million dollar funding round for the Chemnitz, Germany-based start-up to help it expand globally and boost its global leadership in the employee engagement sector. Current investors Insight Partners and e.ventures will contribute to this funding round, while KIZOO and Capnamic Ventures will continue to invest. Achim Berg, Operating Partner at General Atlantic and President of Bitkom, Germanys digital association, will join Staffbases advisory board as part of the collaboration.

Dr. Martin Bohringer, Co-Founder and CEO of Staffbase, said, Our vision is to unite all of a companys employees through strong internal communications and a shared mission. To bring this about, we provide managers and communications specialists at enterprise companies with the leading digital platform for successful employee communications a platform that we are expanding very rapidly. The partnership with General Atlantic will further help us achieve this and accelerate our growth, especially in North America. The strong local team and the expertise it provides are decisive for us.

Staffbase, which was established in Chemnitz in 2014, has grown to become a multi-award-winning provider of an internal communications suite, which includes an employee app, an internal email newsletter tool, and a cutting-edge intranet platform, all of which are designed to improve employee communications. More than eight million people consume its products in over 1,000 companies. Adidas, Audi, BHP, Deutsche Post DHL, Hitachi, Ikea, Groupon, Johns Hopkins University, McKesson, Suncor, Viessmann, Groupon, and Volvo are among the global companies and organizations that use Staffbase.

Staffbase is a global pioneer and has developed software that specifically addresses the employee experience, supporting enterprises in transforming internal communications and engagement. We have been following this exciting company for quite some time and are looking forward to partnering with Martin and the Staffbase team to build on the business position as a global market leader. Staffbase is a prime example of the quality of entrepreneurship and range of innovative companies with global ambitions emerging out of Germany, said Dr. Christian Figge, Managing Director, General Atlantic.

The Staffbase platform enables businesses to connect with all of their workers efficiently and easily, whether through corporate-branded messaging, timely and accurate news dissemination, or successful measurement of communications activities. The companys technologies help workers identify more directly with their employers, allowing for more efficient onboarding and increased employee engagement. The COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of hybrid workplaces have highlighted the value of focused and agile internal communications. Senior management at major corporations increasingly sees internal communications as a strategic tool for communicating with employees and guiding them through this time of digital transformation.

Staffbase employs 450 people in 11 places worldwide, including its headquarters in Chemnitz and offices in London, New York, Vancouver, Amsterdam, and Berlin. Bananatag, Canadas leading supplier of internal communications solutions, merged with the group in early March. The merged business is one of the largest and fastest-growing suppliers of cutting-edge internal communications tools globally. The Staffbase suite, which includes an employee app and intranet, has been extended due to the acquisition to provide a native solution for email correspondence and tighter integration with collaboration platforms such as Slack and Microsoft 365, including Microsoft Teams and SharePoint.
Like nearly all of the draft experts, even Trevor Lawrence believes it's all but a forgone conclusion that he will end up in Jacksonville as the No. 1 overall pick on April 29.

On Sunday afternoon, Lawrence sent out a tweet thanking the Jaguars fans for raising more than $11,000 for wedding gifts and to charities of his choice in Jacksonville.

Lawrence tweeted that he and his wife, Marissa, will donate $20,000 of their own money to charities in Jacksonville.

''We hope to be a part of your community soon,'' Lawrence wrote. ''Thank you Jaguars fans. We really appreciate the wedding gifts and donations for charities of our choice.''

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Trevor Lawrence works out during his pro day on Feb. 12.

The Jaguars fan effort was started by Eric Dillard, whose initial plan was to get enough donations to purchase a $300 toaster from Lawrence and Mowry's wedding registry.

According to a post from Dillard's Twitter account last weekend, they ended up purchasing an additional gift  a vacuum  and continued to collect money to go to charities of Lawrence's choice.

Lawrence and Marissa were married in a private ceremony in Bluffton, S.C. on April 12.

After much was made about Lawrence's comments during a Sports Illustrated interview that he doesn't play with 'this huge chip'' on his shoulder, he clarified his statement on Twitter Saturday.

''It seems as if people are misreading my sentiment, Lawrence posted on his Twitter account. I am internally motivated  I love football as much or more than anyone. It is a HUGE priority in my life, obviously. I am driven to be the best I can be, and to maximize my potential. And to WIN.

''I have a lot of confidence in my work ethic, I love to grind and to chase my goals. You can ask anyone who has been in my life. That being said, I am secure in who I am, and what I believe. I dont need football to make me feel worthy as a person. I purely love the game and work, the team, the ups, and downs. I am a firm believer in the fact that there is a plan for my life and Im called to be the best I can be at whatever I am doing. Thanks for coming to my TedTalk, lol.

Story continues

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MORE: Trevor Lawrence, Amari Rodgers scoff at notion that Lawrence is not motivated before NFL draft

Lawrence is ranked at the top of the 2021 draft class that includes a strong quarterback group  BYU's Zach Wilson, Ohio State's Justin Fields, North Dakota State's Trey Lance, and Alabama's Mac Jones, a Jacksonville native  who could all be top 10 picks.

In three seasons at Clemson, Lawrence passed for 10,098 yards and 90 touchdowns. He went 34-2 as a starter.

Jaguars coach Urban Meyer said last month during an interview with NBC Sports' Peter King the direction they are going for the draft is to select Lawrence with the top pick.

Lawrence underwent surgery on Feb. 16 to repair a torn labrum in his left (non-throwing) shoulder, but he has returned to throwing passes.

The initial diagnosis had Lawrence taking four to five months for a full recovery, but remains projected to be a full go when NFL training camps open in July.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Trevor Lawrence and wife to donate $20,000 to Jacksonville charities
House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy has claimed that up to 15 Democrats could vote for his motion to censure California Representative Maxine Waters after she told Black Lives Matters protesters to 'get more confrontational' in Minneapolis on Saturday night.

During an interview with on Fox News Primetime, McCarthy said the congresswoman 'believes there is value in violence'.

'And now what she has said has even put doubt into a jury,' McCarthy said, referring to the George Floyd jury that started deliberations on Monday in the murder trial of former Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin.

'You had a judge announce that it was wrong. I think this takes action especially when she has a pattern of this behavior,' McCarthy continued.

He was referring to Waters' 2018 remarks when she told Californians to 'get in the face' of Trump administration staffers if they see them in public.

McCarthy said he believes there are 'probably 10 to 15' Democrats who would vote for censure.

Scroll down for video

Kevin McCarthy (left) has claimed that up to 15 Democrats could vote for his motion to censure California Representative Maxine Waters (right) after she told Black Lives Matters protesters to 'get more confrontational' in Minneapolis on Saturday night

'It will all come down to the pressure of what Democrats will put on them to just try to vote to table it - not even to have the discussion,' he added.

McCarthy's remarks Monday night came just hours after he claimed in a tweet that Waters 'broke the law by violating curfew and then incited violence' while in Minneapolis over the weekend.

He then accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of 'ignoring Waters behavior,' which he said prompted him to introduce 'a resolution to censure Rep. Waters for these dangerous comments'.

McCarthy's move came as the judge in Chauvin's trial said the congresswoman's comments could have given the defense grounds for an appeal.

Speaking after the jury was sent out on Monday afternoon, Chauvin's attorney Eric Nelson once again made a bid to have the case against his client thrown out on grounds that there was no way the jury could be untainted by the excessive publicity surrounding the case.

'Now that we have US representatives threatening acts of violence in relation to this trial its frankly mind-blowing,' Nelson said.

Taking it into consideration Judge Peter Cahill said: 'I grant you Congresswoman Waters may have handed you grounds for appeal and the turning over of this trial.'

Judge Cahill denied Nelsons move for a mistrial but he said: 'I wish elected officials would stop talking about this case. They should respect a co-equal branch of government.'

He said that failure to do so was 'abhorrent', but added: 'I don't think it's given additional material with which to prejudice the jury. A congresswomans opinion really doesn't mean much.'

McCarthy's remarks Monday night came just hours after he claimed in a tweet that Waters 'broke the law by violating curfew and then incited violence' while in Minneapolis over the weekend

Maxine Waters, congresswoman for California, was in Minnesota on Saturday evening, saying that demonstrators needed to 'get more active, more confrontational'

McCarthy's move could get Waters removed from her committee assignments but, given Democratic control of the House, it will go nowhere if Democrats stick together

McCarthy's move could get Waters removed from her committee assignments but, given Democratic control of the House, it will go nowhere if Democrats stick together.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki refused to condemn her remarks and Pelosi insisted Waters shouldn't apologize.

But Republicans pounced on Waters' remarks to the Black Lives Matter protesters.

Senator Ted Cruz and controversial Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene also criticized Waters, who, over the weekend, joined demonstrations over the police shooting of Daunte Wright, a black 20-year-old shot and killed at a traffic stop by a white police officer, Kimberly Potter.

But many of these Republicans accusing Waters of inciting violence did not make the same charge against then-President Donald Trump in the wake of the January 6 MAGA riot on Capitol Hill, that left five dead and a trail of destruction throughout the Capitol.

Cruz and Greene were some of Trump's most ardent defenders. McCarthy did take to the House floor to declare Trump, who riled up the crowd with his false claims the election was stolen, 'bears responsibility' for the attack on Congress. McCarthy later flew to Mar-a-Lago to make peace with the former president after Trump became furious at him for his words.

Republicans have turned Waters into a punching bag before - notably for her urging the public to harass Trump White House staffers when they saw them in public.

Waters traveled to Minneapolis the weekend before closing arguments in the trial of Derek Chauvin, charged with murdering George Floyd on May 25.

The city is bracing for the verdict in the Chauvin case. More than 3,000 members of the National Guard are in Minneapolis, in addition to 1,100 officers from public safety agencies across the state as part of what has been termed Operation Safety Net.

In the early hours of Sunday, two members of the National Guard were injured - although not seriously - in a drive-by shooting.

Waters said she hoped Chauvin was found guilty.

'I am not happy that we have talked about police reform for so long,' Waters said, demanding a guilty verdict in the Chauvin trial and adding: 'If we don't [get it], we cannot go away. We've got to stay on the street.'

People gather at George Floyd Plaza in the Powderhorn Park neighborhood of Minneapolis Minnesota to listen to the families of victims of police violence

A bullet hole in a National Guard vehicle is seen after Guardsmen were targeted on Sunday

She added that protesters needed 'get more active, more confrontational' and they should ignore the curfew in place.

'Weve got to stay on the street and weve got to get more active, weve got to get more confrontational. Weve got to make sure that they know that we mean business,' she said when it comes to police shootings.

Hours after Waters' passionate speech, a Minnesota National Guard and Minneapolis police team were fired upon in a drive-by shooting.

The team was providing neighborhood security in Minneapolis when, at about 4.19am local time, a light colored SUV drove by and blasted shots at an occupied National Guard vehicle.

No team members were seriously injured, though two National Guard members suffered minor injuries: One was injured by shattered glass and taken to a local hospital, while the other suffered only superficial injuries.

Cruz accused Waters and fellow Democrats of seeking to 'to tear us apart.'

'Why is Maxine Waters traveling to a different state trying to incite a riot? What good can come from this?' asked Lauren Boebert, representative for Colorado.

Fellow Colorado representative Ken Buck said: 'Why is a sitting member of Congress encouraging protesters to get confrontational?'

The city of Minneapolis prepares for a verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial with National Guard on patrol in the streets

Arizona Republican Andy Biggs added: 'The Radical Left dont care if your towns are burning, if theres violence in your streets, or if the police are too defunded to defend their communities.

'As long as the Left appeases their anti-America base, their job is done.'

And Marjorie Taylor Greene, congresswoman for Georgia, called for her to be expelled from Congress.

'As a sitting United States Congresswoman @MaxineWaters threatened a jury demanding a guilty verdict and threatened violence if Chauvin is found not guilty. This is also an abuse of power. #ExpelMaxineWaters'

She called Waters 'a danger to our society.'

On Twitter, others joined in the outrage at Waters' remarks.

'Of course she'll get away with saying that while anyone else would've been thrown in jail,' Rick Santella tweeted.

Another user tweeted, 'Good grief lady, leave get out of here.'

One person also accused Waters of 'stirring people up again with her calls for violence.'

Waters is pictured with demonstrators outside the Brooklyn Center police station on Saturday night

Waters joins demonstrators in a protest outside the Brooklyn Center police station on Saturday night

Waters is planning on staying in town until Monday.

According to CBS Minnesota, officials stated that there was a brief altercation between reporters and protesters as Waters was leaving on Saturday, the first reports of any skirmishes.

The Pioneer Press reports demonstrators gathered Saturday afternoon at the home of Washington County Attorney Pete Orput, responsible for the second-degree manslaughter charges against Potter.

The protesters stood outside of Orput's home before marching through is neighborhood in Stillwater.

Black Lives Matter activist Nekima Levy Armstrong said that Orput left his home briefly to engage in a conversation with protesters.

Peaceful protesters in front of the Brooklyn Center Police Department on Saturday night

Demonstrators raise their fists at Union Station near the U.S Capitol, during a march in Washington, DC, on Saturday

A demonstrator holds a Black Lives Matter sign during a protest outside the Brooklyn Center police station on Saturday

Protests have also been taking place in Chicago following the death of 13-year-old Adam Toledo, as well as New York City and across the rest of the United States.

On Friday night, many protests across the nation started off peacefully before sporadic clashes broke out between Black Lives Matters protesters and the police.

University of Minnesota medical students and doctors also marched on the Brooklyn Center Police Department on Saturday, a day after it was the site of most of the night's unrest.

Peaceful protests on Friday devolved into clashes between protesters and police, with flash bangs and pepper spray utilized by the cops.

There originally was not expected to be a curfew for the first time in several days, before one was suddenly imposed during the night's demonstrations.

Media members were briefly detained and 136 people were arrested.

A temporary restraining order was filed to prevent police from arresting or harming journalists.

'Following feedback from media, and in light of a recent temporary restraining order (TRO) filed in federal court, MSP will not photograph journalists or their credentials,' the Minnesota State Patrol said in a statement.

According to the Washington Post, several protesters were arrested on Saturday night. It's unclear why they were arrested, as the protest of about a hundred was drawing to a close.

Earlier in the day, there were peaceful protests across the nation, including Columbus, Ohio, and Philadelphia.

According to NBC Philadelphia, crowds in that city walked through City Center towards City Hall peacefully in a protest that lasted around five hours.

Nevertheless, some businesses did board up and 1,000 National Guard troops were preemptively deployed.
Twenty employees of the Czech embassy in Moscow have been declared personae non grata in response to the expulsion of 18 Russian diplomats from that country, the Russian foreign ministry said on Sunday.

"[Czech Ambassador] Vitezslav Pivonka was informed that twenty employees of the Czech embassy in Moscow are declared personae non grata. They are to leave the territory of our country by the end of the day on April 19, 2021," it said. "It was also demanded the Czech side brings the number of locally employed personnel on a par with the number of employees of the similar category in the Russian embassy in the Czech Republic. A corresponding note was handed over to the ambassador."

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis and First Deputy Prime Minister Jan Hamacek on Saturday announced the expulsion of 18 employees of the Russian embassy in Prague, who were allegedly "officers of Russian special services."

The move came in the context of the newly leveled circumstance of the 2014 blast at the ammunition depot in the village of Vrbetice. According to reports, "officers of Russias military intelligence" were allegedly involved in this incident.

The Russian foreign ministry expressed resolute protest over this step taken "under invented and ungrounded pretexts" and vowed response measures would follow.
Snapdeal, Indias largest value e-commerce company, today announced the launch of a new brand campaign Brand Waali Quality, Bazaar Waali Deal. The campaign highlights Snapdeals positioning as a shopping destination that disrupts the notion that only expensive products offer good quality.Taking a direct approach, the campaign disrupts the notion that only expensive products/brands offer good quality. In a straightforward manner, it communicates Snapdeals unique value proposition - good quality at low prices

The campaign Brand Waali Quality, Bazaar Waali Deal, features Bollywood actors Riteish Deshmukh and Genelia Deshmukh Using humour, the campaign takes a lighthearted dig at a mindset that feels that anything can be good only if it is branded.

Through a series of videos, the campaign challenges the conventional brand-oriented thinking and draws the attention of the audience to the depth of high-quality choice that is available online and showcases that great quality is also available at affordable prices. The campaign is targeted towards smart, value-conscious buyers, who are not necessarily taken in by the brand quotient, but are focussed on getting good quality, high utility items including fashion, accessories, homeware and much more.

Speaking on the release of the campaign, Snapdeals CEO & Co-founder, Kunal Bahl said, Value is an integral part of India's purchase journey - online or offline. It is shaped by decades of experience & acumen of Indian families in looking beyond the sales talk to find the best value for their rupee. In todays connected world, it is also in the collective wisdom from ones network that helps sort real value from the hype. This campaign is a nod to the savvy online buyers, who understand that great quality does not need to cost more.

The campaign is designed based on consumer insights gathered through extensive research. While users are familiar with value-priced options, they also seek a consistently predictable experience on quality, assortment, price and service. Snapdeal has built out a complete solution, where the entire assortment on the platform is aligned with the value e-commerce tenets of good quality at low prices. With its distinctive positioning, as seen in the campaign, Snapdeal is visibly reaffirming its leadership in the value e-commerce space.

While value retail has traditionally thrived in Indias bazaars and in more recent times through modern format value retailers, an online equivalent of the same was missing. Snapdeal is Indias only e-commerce platform that is solely focused on the value segment. Unlike other platforms, which have bits of value selection dispersed across the entire assortment, 100% of Snapdeal is about value.

The market for value retail in India is estimated at USD 210 Bn, which is 3 times of branded retail. Depending on the category, while 15-40% of the branded market is already online, only 2-3% of the unbranded, value merchandise is online. This vast value e-commerce opportunity is also enabled by the growth of e-commerce beyond Indias top ~ 40Mn households to the next ~ 170 Mn households, accounting for nearly 60% of India.

Conceptualized and developed in partnership with All things small and EO2, Snapdeals Brand Waali Quality, Bazaar Waali Deal'' will reach out to consumers pan-India. The campaign will also highlight the ease of buying on Snapdeal and the simplicity of payments and returns. The campaign includes 10 videos ranging and will run across a variety of media.
After its Supreme Assembly, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaktsutyun political party in Armenia issued a statement stating that it will run in the snap parliamentary elections, if they are held.

The statement reads as follows:

The 24th Supreme Assembly of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaktsutyun political party in Armenia, examining the current situation in the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Artsakh in terms of politics and security, assessing the current moods of the public and the moral-psychological atmosphere, the internal and external challenges and threats conditioned by the post-war situation, records the following:

- the resignation of the conspiratorial authorities and the exclusion of the power of Nikol [Nikol Pashinyan] in the public administration system of the country by all the previously declared means remain a vital necessity for the future of our people and statehood;

- as a result of the peoples struggle, the authorities were compelled to announce the holding of snap parliamentary elections, but it is clear that the authorities will try to do everything possible to be reproduced under the name of elections;

- the possible holding of snap parliamentary elections will be crucial for preservation of our national identity and maintenance of statehood.

Proceeding from all this, the Supreme Assembly of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaktsutyun Armenia decided:

A. to participate in the possible snap parliamentary elections, viewing them as one of the ways of making the treacherous authorities resign;

B. reserve the power for making decisions on the format of participation in the possible elections for the Supreme Body of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaktsutyun political party.

The Supreme Assembly of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaktsutyun Armenia calls on our compatriots to continue the struggle for the resignation of the treacherous authorities for the future of Armenia, regardless of whether elections will be held or not.
Authorities say they have apprehended a person in connection with a shooting at a busy tavern in southeastern Wisconsin early Sunday that left three men dead and three men injured.

Kenosha County Sheriffs Department spokesman Sgt. David Wright said the suspect is facing a charge of first-degree intentional homicide, with additional criminal charges likely after further investigation. Authorities said earlier they werent sure if there was more than one shooter.

There is no threat to the community at this time, Wright said in a release. He said no further information on the suspect would be released Sunday.

Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth said earlier a suspect was asked to leave the Somers House Tavern in Kenosha County but returned and opened fire. Beth said shots were fired inside and outside the bar, which he described as very busy at the time. He said he believed at least one handgun was used.

Kenosha is about 30 miles (50 kilometers) south of Milwaukee, not far from the Wisconsin-Illinois border.

Officials originally said two people were injured but said they were checking with hospitals for people who may have been hurt in the shooting. Wright said in the updated release that authorities believe there is one possible unknown shooting victim.

Beth said two people died at the scene. The third person hopped in a car with two other people, who moments later flagged down a police vehicle. The officer drove the victim to a hospital where that person was pronounced dead, Beth said.

Wright said investigators have reviewing surveillance video from the scene. The tavern installed video cameras a couple of years ago, Beth said, but he didnt know if the surveillance video is from the business.

Wright called it a complex investigation that involves several crime scenes.

Detectives have followed up on multiple leads and gathered surveillance video evidence during extensive neighborhood canvasses, he said.

A man who lives near the bar, Peter Ploskee, told WLS-TV that he heard gun shots, looked out a window and saw people running from the bar in every direction.

It was just chaos, he said. People are just running, people screaming.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers called it a senseless tragedy and said he and his wife are thinking of the families and loved ones affected and the entire Kenosha community as they grieve and grapple with yet another tragic incident of gun violence.

It was the latest in a recent string of shootings across the country, including the killings of eight people at a FedEx warehouse in Indianapolis on Thursday. Last month, four people were killed at an office shooting in California, eight people were fatally shot at massage businesses in the Atlanta area, and 10 died in gunfire at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado.

The nearby city of Kenosha was the scene of serious unrest last summer, after police shot a young Black man, Jacob Blake, leaving him paralyzed. A white Illinois teenager was accused of fatally shooting two people during the Kenosha protests. Kyle Rittenhouse of Antioch is charged with homicide and attempted homicide in the Aug. 25 shootings. He has pleaded not guilty and says he fired in self-defense.
Harness Health to Open Occupational Be Well Center

By West Kentucky Star Staff

PADUCAH - Mercy Health last week announced the opening of the Harness Health Partners  Lourdes Occupational Health and Be Well Center.The center is located on the Lourdes Hospital main campus at 225 Medical Center Drive in Paducah.Harness Health Partners will provide occupational health care for Mercy Health associates and for employees of companies in the local Paducah community.Mercy Health will extend its own employer health solutions programs to employers through its Harness Health Partners division to enhance employee engagement and lower overall health care costs.The occupational health work at the center is led by Greg Crowe, system director of occupational health for Harness Health Partners.The Lourdes Occupational Health and Be Well Center services include:Drug and alcohol screeningsPhysical examsOccupational injury and illness treatmentPhysical rehabilitationDiagnostic testingImmunizations/vaccines (such as flu, hepatitis B, and Tdap)Ergonomic assessments and programsInjury prevention trainingBloodborne pathogen trainingDepartment of Transportation PhysicalsMercy Health - Paducah is part of Bon Secours Mercy Health, one of the 20 largest health systems in the United States and thefifth-largest Catholic health system in the country.
Identical win sisters who were separated at birth in South Korea and adopted by two different American families recently learned that one another existed  and reunited for the first time on their 36th birthday.

Neither Molly Sinert nor Emily Bushnell knew that they were twins, or had much information at all about their backgrounds  until both separately started to unlock the secrets of their pasts through DNA testing.

Now 36, the women were surprised to learn that they each had a twin out there in the world, and to celebrate their birthday this year they met face-to-face for the first time since they were born

Back together again! Twin sisters who were separated at birth in South Korea reunited for the first time on their 36th birthday

In the dark: Neither Molly Sinert nor Emily Bushnell knew that they were twins, or had much information at all about their backgrounds

Taken away: Sinert was adopted by a Jewish family in Florida, while Bushnell was also adopted by a Jewish family, but in Pennsylvania

Flashback: The girls are pictured at various points in their childhoods

It's unknown why the two women had been separated as babies, but both managed to end up thousands of miles away in the US within a few months of their birth.

So thrilled: Sinert shared her happy news on social media

Sinert was adopted by a Jewish family in Florida, while Bushnell was also adopted by a Jewish family, but in Pennsylvania.

Neither was aware of the other's existence.

Recently, though Bushnell's 11-year-old daughter, Isabel, wanted to learn more about her mother's background and genetics.

'I wanted to do the DNA test because she was adopted,' Isabel told Good Morning America. 'I wanted to find out if I had more family on her side.'

Bushnell didn't want to take the DNA test herself, so let Isabel do her own.

Twins! Since learning about one another, they've been able to compare photos of themselves as children

How they found out: Sinert took a DNA test around the same time that Bushnell's daughter took one

Long lost sis! They pair were shocked to learn that they were twins and began communicating

How? It's unknown why the two women had been separated as babies, but both managed to end up thousands of miles away in the US

Thinking alike: Both had picked similar beaded dresses for prom and wore their hair the same way

'A hole was immediately filled in my heart,' Sinert said. 'Finding out that I had an identical twin sister just made everything so clear. It all makes sense'

Same: The pair quickly discovered several special 'twin moments' they shared

Meanwhile, Sinert had decided to take a DNA test as well, and both Sinert and Bushnell's daughter got their results back around the same time last month.

'I clicked on the close relative and I didn't understand it,' Sinert said, recalling the moment she learned she had a close blood relative.

'[It said,] "You share 49.96% DNA with this person. We predict that she's your daughter." This is obviously not right, because I've never gone into labor, I don't have children,' she said.

Soon, however, she figured out that it was her twin sister's daughter.

'A hole was immediately filled in my heart,' she said. 'Although I have family who love me and adore me and have been absolutely wonderful, there was always a feeling of disconnection. Finding out that I had an identical twin sister just made everything so clear. It all makes sense.'

Time for a visit: Bushnell and her daughter flew to Florida to meet Sinert in March

Back together! They reunited on their shared birthday, March 29

'This is the happiest moment of my life,' Bushnell said

Bushell said: 'I can honestly say that. I was robbed of the last 36 years of a life that I could have had with my twin. But at the same time, I'm very grateful and excited for what lies ahead'

The twins began talking to one another, trading pictures and stories. They were both amazed to see that they'd had cats growing up, and that both had worn similar strapless beaded dresses and collar necklaces to prom, with their hair styled identically.

'I realized this is probably one of the many twin moments we'll discover,' Bushnell said.

They put off their first face-to-face meeting until March 29, the day they each turned 36, so they could celebrate their shared birthday together for the first time. Both Bushnell and her daughter flew to Florida to meet Sinert.

'This is the happiest moment of my life,' Bushnell said. 'I can honestly say that. I was robbed of the last 36 years of a life that I could have had with my twin. But at the same time, I'm very grateful and excited for what lies ahead.'
Bitcoin price dropped as low as US$52,148.98 on Sunday morning, days after reaching an all-time high above US$64,800.

The total number of COVID-19 related deaths worldwide have surpassed three million.

S&P/ASX 200 (INDEXASX:XJO) is higher for a fifth consecutive session to start the new week and is ~1.7% away from the all-time high of 7,197 hit in February last year.

The index was last trading about 0.17% higher at 7075.6 points by 12.52 pm.

Leading improvements were materials, financials and utilities while energy, IT and communications stocks fell.

Largest global lithium company

Lithium miners Galaxy Resources ( ) and Orocobre ( ) have agreed on a $4 billion merger to create the fifth largest global lithium chemicals company.

According to the scheme, Orocobre shareholders will own 54.2% of the new entity with Galaxy shareholders owning the remaining 45.8%.

COVID-19 wave

Indias COVID-19 infection rate has hit a record high while Germanys chancellor on Friday said a third wave of the virus had the country in its grip.

India added about 270,000 new cases on Sunday, taking its total reported cases to more than 15 million.

The sub-continent is the only country other than the US to cross 15 million cumulative cases.

Top gainers

Todays top gainers on the ASX include ( ) (+14.29%), Carnavale Resources Limited ( ) (+11.11%), . ( ) (+22.22%), ( ) (+75.00%), ( ) (+8.33%) and Elementos Limited ( ) (+8.33%).

Proactive news headlines:

Rumble Resources shares up 103% to new record on back of zinc-lead discovery at Earaheedy

( ) has hit a new record after fast-tracked assay results from two reverse circulation (RC) holes at Chinook Prospect of the Earaheedy JV Project in Western Australia confirmed a zinc-lead discovery.

Creso Pharma buoyed by Halucenex entering LOI with leading nanotechnology company

s ( ) (FRA:1X8) target acquisition Halucencex Life Sciences Inc has signed a non-binding Letter of Intent (LOI) with leading nanotechnology company Sixth Wave Innovations Inc ( ) ( ) to assess Molecularly Imprinted Polymers (MIPs).

Chalice Mining secures key properties covering all known Gonneville Intrusion mineralisation

( ) ( ) has strengthened its position at Gonneville Intrusion within the Julimar Nickel-Copper-PGE Project near Perth in Western Australia by entering binding agreements to acquire four additional key private properties.

K2fly completes strongly supported $7.25 million placement to institutional and sophisticated investors

( ) has completed a strongly supported share placement and received irrevocable commitments to raise A$7.25 million at an issue price of A$0.29 per share.

Australian Potash receives green loan verification for debt finance to help develop Lake Wells Sulphate of Potash Project

( ) has received green-loan verification for the debt issued to partly fund development at its flagship Lake Wells Sulphate of Potash Project (LSOP) in Western Australia.

Carnavale Resources extends Kookynie Gold Project anomalies with high-grade results up to 2 metres at 16.25 g/t

( ) (FRA:YBB) has extended the McTavish East and McTavish North gold anomalies in the second round of aircore drilling at the Kookynie Gold Project in Western Australia.
Clark County firefighters said a large African cat bit a firefighter helping to extinguish a blaze Sunday at a home in the Felida neighborhood, north of Vancouver.

Clark County Fire District 6 officials said a fire broke out at the back of the single-story home Sunday, then spread to the homes attic. The homeowner was trying to douse the flames as firefighters arrived.

Firefighters got the fire under control within 25 minutes, but at least one encountered the serval, a savannah wild cat native to Sub-Saharan Africa, and suffered a minor injury from a bite to the fingers.

Officials estimated the cat weighed 60 to 70 pounds, though the cats typically weigh up to 40 pounds in the wild.

With the fire out, the firefighters decided to close up the house with the cat inside until the homeowner and animal control officers could contain it. It was later captured safely.

Fire district officials said the serval was unharmed, just a little freaked out.

-- The Oregonian/OregonLive
Prashant Shukla, one of the three arrested with 265 vials of Remdesivir last week, has tested positive for Covid-19.

The police had arrested Prashant and two others, including Mohan Soni and Haryana resident Sachin Kumar, on charges of black marketing of Remdesivir vials.

As per protocol, the accused were tested after being arrested.

"Prashant, one among them tested positive for the virus. As a precautionary measure, we have asked our men to undergo Covid test," said ACP Vikas Kumar Pandey.

The police official said, "Once we received the test results of the accused, we immediately shifted him to a Covid care facility."

STF sources said that they have been trying to crack the nexus to curb black-marketing of Covid vials. There were inputs that of the 265 Remdesivir injection vials were supposed to be supplied to local medicine dealers, besides Haryana resident Sachin Kumar.

"We are zeroing in on the local pharma distributors, and expecting an early breakthrough. It also came to light that the injections were sent to Kanpur resident Mohan Soni by one Apoorva Mukherjee of West Bengal, who is associated with a pharma company. As Mohan was supposed to take back his Rs one lakh from Apoorva, the latter instead had sent him vials against the cash," senior police official informed.

The Kanpur unit of Special Task Force (STF) had, on Thursday, arrested three persons with 265 Remdesivir injections meant for sale in black market.

Remdesivir is a key medicine, used in the treatment of Taking advantage of the shortage, some people have been selling the vials at high prices.

DCP South Raveena Tyagi had stated that Prashant Shukla of Pashupati Nagar and Baktauri Purwa resident Mohan Soni were earlier arrested. --IANS

amita/dpb

(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.)
Trinidad and Tobago can see a reduction in the number of people dying from Covid-19 on a daily basis if the drugAzithromycinis immediately stopped, says Dr Ravi Ramjanak.

Ramjanak is a consultant in obstetrics gynaecology and pelvic reconstructive surgery.

It is my view based on the pharmacodynamics of Azithromycin that the death rate will fall if we stop using this drug in Covid-positive cases. Azithromycin has no effect on viruses, yeasts and fungi, said Ramjanak in an interview with the Sunday Express last week.
Climate change is not taking a break from wreaking havoc in 2020, with the joint highest global temperatures on record, rampant bushfires, the faster rates of sea level rise and the extinction of some species.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210416005435/en/

Under this circumstance, Chinese President Xi Jinping, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel held a virtual meeting Friday on climate change, ahead of the Leaders' Climate Summit on Earth Day convened by the U.S., scheduled next week.

Emphasizing that he always advocates building a community with a shared future for mankind, the Chinese president voiced his willingness to strengthen cooperation with France and Germany on climate change.

"Tackling climate change is a common cause for all mankind and it should not become a geopolitical bargaining chip, a target for attacking other countries, or an excuse for trade barriers," he added.

China's inspiring pledge

President Xi on Friday's meeting reiterated China's ambitious climate target to bring the country's carbon dioxide emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.

"This means that China, the world's largest developing country, will complete the world's highest reduction in carbon intensity and move from carbon peak to carbon neutral in the world's shortest time."

The 14th Five-Year Plan unveiled that China's energy consumption per unit of GDP and carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP will be reduced by 13.5 percent and 18 percent, respectively, between 2021 and 2025. It also aims to increase the share of non-fossil energy in total energy consumption to around 20 percent.

According to Climate Action Tracker (CAT), if China's goal of carbon neutrality before 2060 is achieved, it will alone lower global warming projections by around 0.2 to 0.3 degrees Celsius, the biggest single reduction ever estimated by CAT.

Meanwhile, China's commitment goes beyond the 2065-2070 global carbon neutrality schedule under the Paris Agreement 2 degrees Celsius scenario, which could move global carbon neutrality ahead by 5-10 years.

Walking the talk

"The Chinese side honors our promises with concrete actions," President Xi told Macron and Merkel, adding that China has incorporated peaking carbon emissions and achieving carbon neutrality into overall layout of building an ecological civilization and endeavored to build a green and low-carbon circular economy.

China, with its economic progress over the past decades largely powered by coal, is now among the world's biggest investors in renewable energy, owning 30 percent of the world's installed capacity of renewable energy.

The share of clean energy consumption in the country has risen from 19.1 percent in 2016 to 24.3 percent in 2020, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed.

A 2019 study using data from NASA satellites shows that global green leaf area has increased by five percent since the early 2000s, with at least 25 percent of that gain coming in China.

China's forest coverage rate has risen from 12 percent in the early 1980s to 23.04 percent in 2020.

As President Xi also mentioned at the summit, China has been actively working with other countries to cope with climate change especially under the South-South cooperation framework.

According to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, China has so far signed 38 cooperation agreements on climate change with 35 countries and helped train 2,000 officials and technical personnel from 120 developing countries.

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-04-16/Xi-attends-China-France-Germany-leaders-climate-summit-via-video-link-ZvGSANIQQE/index.html

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210416005435/en/




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Carmakers are finding creative ways to shift away from sedans without tilting towards an SUV-only range. Ford traveled to the biennial Shanghai auto show to unveil a model named Evos that blurs the lines between segments.

Ford proudly pointed out the Evos is the first car developed largely by a China-based team, though its members leveraged the company's global product development expertise. It was "designed entirely around the Chinese consumer experience and ownership scenarios," according to a statement published by the Blue Oval.

Precisely how this approach shaped the Evos during its development phase isn't clear, though we're told the front end's design blends Ford's design heritage with Chinese aesthetic values. Moving beyond the front fascia, the Evos wears unusual proportions that tick many boxes: It has four doors like a sedan, a fastback-like roofline, and the ground clearance of a crossover. Roof rails and black cladding over the wheel arches add a rugged touch to the overall look. In many ways, it reminds us of the segment-bending Citroen C5 X introduced earlier this month.

Ford surfed one of the latest trends in infotainment technology by giving the Evos a screen big enough to surf on. Forget inches; this unit measures 1.2 yards wide. It notably houses a 12.3-inch digital instrument cluster, and a 27-inch touchscreen that occupies the space above the center console and ahead of the front occupant. These units can be split, so the driver can keep an eye on navigation directions, for example, while the passenger watches a movie. Artificial intelligence from Baidu, China's home-grown Google rival, is packed into the software.

Details about what the Evos is powered by weren't included in Ford's release. Nothing suggests it's 100% electric, but some degree of electrification is extremely likely. Regardless, don't expect to find a V8 under the hood.

Story continues

As of writing, the Evos has only been announced for the Chinese market. It will be manufactured locally by a joint-venture called Changan Ford, and it's scheduled to go on sale before the end of 2021. Anning Chen, the head of Ford's Chinese division, went as far as explaining the Evos "represents a step forward in creating high-end products around customer experience to address the diverse needs of Chinese consumers." And yet, the model might end up addressing the needs of American and Canadian consumers, too. Unverified rumors claim Ford will fill the Fusion-sized gap in its range with a so-called "white space vehicle" that's neither a sedan nor a crossover, and earlier spy shots taken on the outskirts of Detroit show a camouflaged test mule with unmistakably Evos-like proportions.

If the Evos is America-bound, we'll learn more about the model coming to our market in the coming months. Across the pond, the Evos  or a market-specific off-shoot of it  could replace the Mondeo, which will retire in 2022.

Related video:
A new law that gives state officials a strong say in property tax assessments for large-scale green energy projects was blasted by Republican state legislators Thursday.

The law, passed as part of the state budget package, empowers the state Department of Taxation and Finance and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to decide how much such projects are worth by using what the law calls a "discounted cash flow approach."

Those assessment figures would be used unless a town and a developer made a deal for payments in lieu of taxes.

At a news conference in Somerset, Senate Minority Leader Robert G. Ortt, R-North Tonawanda, and Assemblyman Michael J. Norris, R-Lockport, said the law presents more evidence that the administration of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo wants to promote green energy at the expense of local governments' authority.

"It really undermines and guts their right to determine not only what projects they want but how they're taxed," Ortt said. "I think it's unconstitutional, and I hope it will be challenged in the courts."

+3 As New York pushes green energy, localities bristle at loss of control New law gives New York State more authority than ever over approvals for large-scale wind and solar energy projects, and some officials and residents are expressing alarm about loss of local control.
For Habia, it is clear : "Neither Jesus nor Muhammad will come to deliver us from the yoke of this regime, but it is up to us to do so"

Former member of parliament and chairman of the party The Democrats, Nicodemus Yao Habia, in his last message to the Togolese remains optimistic for a revival of the political struggle and the advent of alternation.

In his address, he invited the Togolese to have more hope and to put in their heads that "it is not yet too late to restart the mobilization and demand the departure of the" Gnassingbe clan ".

"I would like to tell my Togolese compatriots, who love freedom, justice and political change, not to lose hope. Togo will change. There is a creator God. But neither Jesus nor Muhammad will come to deliver us from the yoke of this regime. It is up to us to take our destiny into our own hands ", this is the strong message from the former MP.

Better, the president of the party "The Democrats", believes hard as to make that "Everything will change. Our children will not experience the suffering that we experience today under this regime. I know this country will be liberated. And its coming soon. Tchoko Tchoko, Ablode .

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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.  Norm Becker knows his industry isnt glamorous.

But during his 13 years as CEO, New Mexico Mutual has made an effort to appeal to the next generation of insurance professionals.

Its considered a stodgy business, Becker says. So college graduates arent necessarily attracted to it.

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Becker, who spent his entire career in the insurance field, retired April 2. Kellie Mixon, a 25-year veteran of New Mexico Mutual including her most recent role of chief financial officer, has taken over his position.

The company, which marked its 30th anniversary last month, was created by the state legislature to provide workers compensation insurance to New Mexico businesses. And that is where its focus has remained.

All we do is workers compensation coverage, Becker says. And the only territory we serve is the state of New Mexico.

To counter an aging workforce and a pedestrian reputation, New Mexico Mutual runs three programs that introduce young people to their world: a high school internship program, a college internship program and a two-year post-college program.

Even their headquarters, a 15,000-square-foot building completed three years ago, was designed in part to attract younger workers. The workspaces are collaborative and ringed with windows. Theres a fitness center on-site and trails around the property. The result is a really open, inviting, bright, positive environment, Becker says.

We got to get them in here to look around and live our life for a while, Becker says.

Once there, he says, young recruits see that New Mexico Mutual needs people with a knack for technology, finance, customer service, human resources, marketing and more.

Some, like Becker, find their niche and stay.

I understand that New Mexico Mutual grew during your tenure. Can you tell me more about that?

Becker: The best measure, or metric of growth, in our business is the market penetration. And so we had a market increase from 27% of the market share to 33% currently.  Another metric, its common in the insurance business, its called surplus. Surplus growth. The amount of money that you have in the bank, basically. And thats tripled in the 13 years since Ive been here.

To what do you attribute that growth?

One of the things that we introduced not long after I got here  and we not only introduced it, but we owned it and we live it  is our values-based culture.  With that (in place) you can focus on your customer, which is what we do focus on.  Were here to serve our injured workers.

Tell me about the technology you brought in during your time as CEO.

We dedicated about five or six employees to an innovation team and all they did all day long is develop this technology. Its app-based. It wont sound terribly innovative to you, except that this just doesnt happen in the insurance business.  Our agent partners can be on-site with you if youre an employer and, within five minutes, quote a product with New Mexico Mutual including a price. All off of an app.  Its been incredibly beneficial. Because we didnt know, of course, in February of last year, that were going to go into the environment were working in right now.

You mentioned earlier that the workforce is aging out. Why?

Its just the last generation or two, particularly the Gen Xers and millennials, didnt go to school thinking that theyre going to come out as a home office person in an insurance company.  The older generation, whos in this business today, has been in it for a very long time. Theyre going to retire from this business.  Weve gone from whatever the percentage of baby boomers was to where 42% of our employees now are millennials, 37% are Gen Xers and 21% are older than the Gen Xers. So youve got 79% of millennials and Gen Xers walking the halls in our company. Thats atypical for an insurance company.

Why do you think its important to have that mix?

Well, the immediate importance is to bring those fresh ideas and innovation and open minds.  (Gen Xers and millennials) dont think about the way things have been done. They think about the way things can be done. So its pretty exciting.  In the longer term, its a succession plan. Youve got to have folks on the bench with experience when the retirees are starting to roll off the payroll.

Can we talk a little bit more about New Mexico Mutuals succession plan?

We actually have a succession plan in place all the time  So if somebody leaves, you got somebody that can step right into that job.  Weve got a history of advancing our employees. But I will say Kellies succession of me as the CEO is the first time any employee in New Mexican Mutuals history has been elevated to CEO. So its a pretty big day around here.

Business Outlooks In-Depth item features interviews with leaders of well-established New Mexico businesses about the practices that have allowed them to weather ups and downs. Send suggestions of locally owned businesses that have been in existence for at least a decade and that employ at least 20 people to gporter@abqjournal.com for consideration.
Two men dead after fiery crash in Tesla Model S.



[Investigators] are 100-percent certain that no one was in the driver seat driving that vehicle at the time of impact, Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman said. They are positive. #KHOU11 https://t.co/q57qfIXT4f pic.twitter.com/eQMwpSMLt2  Matt Dougherty (@MattKHOU) April 18, 2021

Deputies are on a Major crash near hammock dunes place /thornblade circle. Avoid the area and expect delays.



Follow us at https://t.co/EzyDHKCJB0 and Download our new mobile app C4 NOW to receive live feeds on crime, arrests, safety tips, traffic accidents in your area. pic.twitter.com/6igpgJH5Ia  Mark Herman, Harris County Constable Precinct 4 (@Pct4Constable) April 18, 2021

Weve recently covered a Model Y that plowed into a police car, and not that long ago, the National Transportation Safety Board said that Autopilot suffers from a lack of appropriate safeguards. Adding insult to injury, Tesla regulatory counsel Eric C. Williams told the California Department of Motor Vehicles that Autopilot and FSD are definitely not autonomous systems.The bad publicity doesnt end here, though. A Tesla with nobody in the drivers seat has crashed into a tree and burst into flames in Spring, Texas, killing two people after failing to make a turn. One of the men killed was in the front passenger seat while the other was in the rear, according to KHOU Its not clear if Autopilot was turned on before the crash. Several of our folks are reconstructionists, but they feel very confident just with the positioning of the bodies after the impact that there was no one driving that vehicle, declared Constable Mark Herman of Harris County Precinct 4.According to Herman, firefighters needed four hours and more than 30,000 gallons of water to extinguish the fire, and at one point, the firefighters had to call Tesla to ask how to put the fire out. That alone begs a serious question about the safety of electric vehicles in the event of a crash, but Tesla isnt to blame for the fiery incident. The lithium-ion battery is to blame because thermal runaway and cell rupture may lead to combustion.Gasoline is extremely flammable as well, but as opposed to electric-vehicle manufacturers, traditional automakers have decades of experience under their belt. Be that as it may, legacy brands can still get it wrong for a multitude of reasons. Nissan, for example, recalled 2,146 examples of the 2021 model year Rogue crossover over an improperly secured fuel hose At the moment of writing, the investigation into the 2019 Tesla Model S crash that killed two people is still ongoing, according to the cited publication.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 19)  Top security officials and military insiders confirmed the existence of several Viber groups among retired and active military officers who intensely discuss many issues, with some of the group members being described as "very opinionated."

"There is a Viber group of retired officers who talk about politics. There are about 400 members," National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon told CNN Philippines.

Esperon did not elaborate if this was the same group being referred to in vague social media posts supposedly demanding for government "to denounce China's invasion in the strongest possible terms."

In a Facebook post, Southern Luzon Command chief, LtGen Antonio Parlade said he is also a member of one of the Viber groups composed "of active but mostly retired officers."

"A few were commenting of (President Rodrigo Duterte's) actions/inactions: his cursing, being unchristian, (pro-China), divisive to our society, putting commies in Cabinet and more," Parlade said.

While these chat groups exist, there was "not a single mention or discussion" of alleged plans to withdraw support from the Duterte administration, according to two military sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"That is fake news meant to initiate, agitate, arouse, organize, and mobilize the public," a retired officer told CNN Philippines.

"I know of some discussions (regarding) what is happening (in the West Philippine Sea) but more on how to address the issue from kinetic to non-kinetic actions," an active military officer said. "But nothing on making demands."

Esperon describes some members of a military Viber group as "very opinionated."

"The opposition will like them, but this group wants to be independent," Esperon added.

The Department of National Defense and the Armed Forces of the Philippines issued separate statements on Sunday denying claims they were withdrawing support from their Commander-in-Chief over his handling of issues hounding the country's claim on the West Philippine Sea.

DND, AFP deny claims of their withdrawal of support for Duterte

Both DND Secretary Delfin Lorenzana and AFP chief General Cirilito Sobejano labeled as "fake news" online posts implying destabilization plots against the current administration.

Asked if they have tracked who were behind these claims Lorenzana said, "We already have an idea who but we are confirming our suspicion."

Esperon also called these alleged plans by defense and military groups as mere empty threats.

"Destabilization? Hot air! I have quelled so many of them since the 80s," said Esperon, who was also AFP chief when rebel soldiers launched failed attempts to unseat then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in mid-2000.
We must now address our biggest threat  climate change. It is imperative that our industry acts quickly and adapts to its impact by strengthening our industry commitment to cutting emissions of carbon dioxide and other global warming gases.

The IOR Annual Conference has announced Star Refrigeration as a Gold Sponsor for its online event taking place from 21 to 22 April 2021. Several members of the Star team will also play an integral role as key speakers at the event, presenting alongside university academics and industry experts.

This years conference titled The Journey to Net Zero Heating and Cooling  Beyond Refrigeration 2021 not only aims to support businesses, the UK Government and individuals to achieve their environmental goals, it will also provide expertise used to develop a road map for non-technical specialist business owners. The event will provide a varied programme featuring case studies that demonstrate how the refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump sector is responding to the challenge of net zero heating and cooling.

Star Refrigerations Group Sales and Marketing Director, Dr Rob Lamb, is set to open the conference, explaining why moving to net zero emissions is essential for the industry. Dr Lamb is a past Trustee of the Institute of Refrigeration and also serves as Chair of the Membership Committee. Inspired by Greta Thunbergs recent BBC documentary, he will set out a roadmap to achieving net zero, aiming to reverse her statement Without action there is no hope, to With action there is hope.

Dr Lamb said, Business and industry have such a crucial role to play in climate change. This event aims to offer guidance and expertise to businesses and professionals to really start making these vital changes to the refrigeration industry and the sectors it serves. The wheels are already in motion worldwide, and those businesses which dont invest and plan for net zero will be left behind.

We have pulled together in the face of unprecedented global challenges, from the Covid-19 pandemic to the global recession, forcing us to adapt and modernise as a society. We must now address our biggest threat  climate change. It is imperative that our industry acts quickly and adapts to its impact by strengthening our industry commitment to cutting emissions of carbon dioxide and other global warming gases.

The IOR conference is set to highlight the long-term challenges facing the refrigeration industry and the solutions readily available  such as ultra-low GWP refrigerants, better system performance, improved monitoring and more effective training for engineers.

Star Technical Solutions Dermot Cotter and David Blackhurst will chair and lead workshops on Learning how to measure impact with environmental, legislative and regulative auditing throughout the two-day conference, while David Pearson of Star Renewable Energy will co-host the informal chat How to improve net energy in cities.

Sharing the companys years of experience in heat pump technology, Dr Andy Pearson is due to present a case study titled River source heat pumps for residential and commercial heat networks. It presents an overview of the performance achieved by Stars river source heat pump at Queens Quay in Clydebank. Once again Star has successfully busted the myth that big heat pumps are not effective, not efficient and not reliable. The excellent performance at Queens Quay proves that large systems like this are readily available technology for district heating networks in the UK.

Dr Pearson said, Im honoured to have been invited by the IOR to present at the Annual Conference once again. Im passionate about the key role heat pump technology can play in the decarbonisation of the countrys heat networks in order to make our homes, schools and hospitals greener, warmer and more energy efficient. This case study is a great example of what can be achieved with renewable energy sources.

Attendees will have access to a comprehensive set of conference papers, live webinars of all presentations and recordings of all sessions for six months. The annual conference programme also offers networking opportunities within its coffee lounge discussion sessions.

Fees start at 50 + VAT per person with discounted fees available for students and delegates from Article 5 countries under the Montreal Protocol and the 7 countries with economies in transition.

To find out more about the annual conference and to book your place, visit https://ior.org.uk/events/netzero

To find out more about Star Refrigeration and Star Renewable Energy go to: https://www.star-ref.co.uk/about-us/
Strategic Transaction with Access Bank Plc for BancABC Botswana

TORTOLA, BRITISH VIRGIN ISLANDS / ACCESSWIRE / April 19, 2021 / Atlas Mara Limited ("Atlas Mara" or the "Company" and including its subsidiaries, the "Group") (LSE:ATMA), the sub-Saharan African financial services group, announces that its subsidiary, ABC Holdings Limited ("ABCH"), has entered into definitive agreements with Access Bank Plc ("Access Bank") for the sale of ABCH's holdings in African Banking Corporation Botswana ("BancABC Botswana") (the "Transaction"). The Transaction is subject to fulfillment of various customary conditions precedent including certain regulatory requirements and consents from other relevant authorities and certain counterparties.

As part of the Transaction, Access Bank will acquire ABCH's 78.15% shareholding in BancABC Botswana for cash consideration representing approximately 1.13 times book value including a deferred portion payable 24 months after closing of the transaction, subject to certain conditions. The Transaction is expected to conclude in the second quarter of 2021, assuming all relevant approvals are received by then.

Michael Wilkerson, Chairman of Atlas Mara, said, "The Transaction announced today is consistent with the objectives articulated by the Company as part of its previously-announced strategic review and overall debt restructuring. The pandemic-related economic slowdown in 2020 led to a broadening of the initially-announced strategic review and an acceleration of potential transaction discussions in-line with the Company's objective of a comprehensive restructuring of the Company's and ABCH's balance sheets. This Transaction, like the previously announced transactions for Mozambique, Rwanda and Tanzania, is consistent with this strategy and will help realize value for the Group's creditors and other stakeholders.

He continued, "BancABC Botswana has achieved a great deal since Atlas Mara's initial investment in 2014, including in digital adoption and in growing a high-quality retail operation. Management have shown strong resilience and further innovation during the pandemic-related economic slowdown of 2020, and we thank the team for their hard work. By combining with Access Bank's infrastructure, including its digital offerings and its corporate and SME capabilities, the bank will be well positioned to continue the positive trajectory and succeed in the macroeconomic recovery to come."

Contact Details:

Investors

Kojo Dufu, +1 212 883 4330

Media

Apella Advisors, +44(0) 7818 036 579

Anthony Silverman

About Atlas Mara

Atlas Mara Limited (LSE: ATMA) is a financial institution listed on the London Stock Exchange. Atlas Mara aims to be a positive disruptive force in the markets in which we operate by leveraging technology to provide innovative and differentiated product offerings, deliver excellent customer service and accelerate financial inclusion. For more information, visit www.atlasmara.com .

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: Atlas Mara

View source version on accesswire.com:
Half of U.S. adults have gotten at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, the U.S. government announced on Sunday. But Alabama lags far behind that mark.

As of Sunday afternoon, 37% of Alabama adults had gotten at least one jab, according to data from the Alabama Department of Public Health and the U.S. Census Bureau. And no county in Alabama had succeeded in reaching the 50% mark.

The county with the highest percentage of residents 18 and older receiving at least one dose was Hale County, in Alabamas Black Belt region. Just under 45% of adults in Hale had reportedly gotten at least one shot as of Sunday afternoon.

Meanwhile, some counties are even farther behind. Russell County, on the states border with Georgia, has vaccinated less than 20% of its adult population, according to ADPH data.

[Cant see the map? Click here.]

Nationwide, almost 130 million people 18 or older have received at least one dose of a vaccine, or 50.4% of the total adult population, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. Almost 84 million adults, or about 32.5% of the population, have been fully vaccinated.

In Alabama, nearly 1.4 million people, or 36.6% of the adult population, has gotten at least one shot. Nearly 915,000, or 24% of adults, have completed their vaccination series.

The U.S. cleared the 50% mark for adults just a day after the reported global death toll from the coronavirus topped 3 million, according to totals compiled by Johns Hopkins University, though the actual number of deaths is believed to be significantly higher.

Do you have an idea for a data story about Alabama? Email Ramsey Archibald at rarchibald@al.com, and follow him on Twitter @RamseyArchibald. Read more Alabama data stories here.
The Vice President of the Republic, Mahamudu Bawumia, has been commended by a founding member of the New Patriotic Party, Ama Busia.



In an interview the astute patriot and stateswoman granted to Okyeman TV, Madam Busia said that she rues ever raising eyebrows over Bawumia as a choice of running mate to Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in the run-up to the 2008 elections.



In the interview, Madam Busia emphasized that Dr. Bawumia has paid his dues to the New Patriotic Party and is more than qualified to lead the party into the next elections.



Dr. Bawumia has paid his dues to the New Patriotic Party she stated. Continuing, she asked President Akufo-Addo for forgiveness for ever opposing the vice presidential candidature of Dr. Bawumia in 2008 as he has proven his critics wrong with his performance.



"I told President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo that if I ever opposed his selection of Dr Bawumia as running mate, he should please forgive me she said.



Madam Ama Busia is the sister of the late Kofi Abrefa Busia, a former Prime Minister of Ghana from the UP tradition.

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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Lebanon is collapsing economically, politically and socially. The government is paralyzed, and institutions are in disarray.

As a result, Lebanese politicians  in particular President Michel Aoun, Caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab, Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri, Hezbollahs Secretary General Hasan Nasrallah, and Amals leader and Speaker of the House Nabih Berri  are responsible for Lebanons current debacle and should be held accountable. Lebanon cannot be saved as a state unless influential external actors decide to step in and create conditions that could pull Lebanon back from the abyss. Using outside influence now is more urgent than ever.

Sectarian politics in Lebanon has allowed national politicians to pursue their narrow interests at the expense of the country. Alliances have been formed, for example between the Maronite president and the Shiite Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah, in order to maximize their control of the national purse, expand their wealth, and keep their armed militias well-funded.

The extravagant lifestyles of the political elite attests to this corruption, and the people know it. If these conditions are allowed to continue, Lebanon could become bankrupt within two years, which would allow neighboring states and terrorist groups to exploit Lebanons instability.

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Meanwhile, Hezbollah has used its military and financial resources from Iran and Syria to cow leaders of other Lebanese parties to its will, especially on government formation and budgetary allocations.

The ongoing political paralysis and inability to form a government are pushing Lebanon toward disintegration and collapse.

Citizens have no money to buy groceries, and when they do, the Lebanese currency, the lira, is becoming almost worthless. Tempers are flaring in markets, at banks, in government offices and on the streets.

The recent U.N. Food and Agriculture Organizations Hunger Hotspots report highlights the dire hunger and catastrophic famine situation in Lebanon. The FAO report warns civil unrest and violent clashes could become more frequent.

Brain drain is another worrisome casualty of Lebanons deteriorating economic situation. Many professionals who have the means or who hold a dual citizenship from Western countries and have close relatives living in these countries are leaving in droves. While the bottom 60% of Lebanese society is struggling to put food on the table, the professional stratum of society is immigrating and taking all of their expertise with them.

As Lebanon loses this precious creative human capital, it slowly begins to resemble many poor failed states in the Middle East region and beyond.

The famed bustling urban life of Beirut is rapidly disappearing except for the thin upper crust of the city. With the disappearance of the vibrant commerce and prosperity  the hallmark of Lebanon in previous decades  the country increasingly resembles a banana republic.

If external powers  especially the European Union, Britain, the United States, Canada and Australia  believe that Lebanons stability remains an important ingredient in the regional geopolitical context, they should embark on a bold strategy to prevent Lebanon from becoming a failed state. In case the U.N. Security Council decides against a temporary Trusteeship Council for Lebanon, as I had suggested earlier, the EU+4 could be an efficacious substitute.

The United States envisioned involvement in this multinational initiative is based on the assumption that Lebanons collapse will have a destabilizing ripple effect throughout the region. Terrorist groups and their regional affiliates, plus potentially nefarious state actors in the neighborhood, will rush in to fill the ensuing vacuum, which would be inimical to U.S. regional interests.

In the short-term, the EU+4 group should establish a multibillion-dollar international fund to help the Lebanese economy recover to be disbursed through a special Economic Council for Lebanon, which would be created by the EU+4. Such a council would comprise non-political Lebanese technocrats, plus representatives from the EU+4 group.

Also in the short-term, the EU+4 should work with Lebanese professionals and technocrats to form a new government of distinguished technocrats, academics and business people with the sole purpose of reviving the economy and employment.

In the long-term, the EU+4 will need to tackle the confessional or sectarian basis of governance in Lebanon, which has been a major root cause of the countrys endemic corruption. The EU+4s designated emissary for Lebanon should start a series of meetings to explore different modalities for the future governance of Lebanon.

Early in its modern history, the confessional system helped stabilize the country and created a functioning system of government. The economic, demographic and political changes in recent decades, however, have rendered the confessional system obsolete. It must be changed if Lebanon is to be saved.

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
Batavia, NY (14020)

Today

Mainly clear skies. Low 68F. Winds WSW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Mainly clear skies. Low 68F. Winds WSW at 10 to 15 mph.
DOVER, Del. (AP)  Insurance company The Hartford has agreed to pay $650 million into a proposed trust fund for victims of child sexual abuse as part of the Boy Scouts of America bankruptcy case.

In exchange for the payment, the Boy Scouts and its local councils would release The Hartford from any obligation under policies it issued to the BSA and the councils dating back to 1971.

The settlement agreement and release was submitted to the court on Friday by a panel of mediators that is working with the BSA, abuse victims and other parties in the bankruptcy to try to fashion a global resolution of more than 80,000 sexual abuse claims.

Our agreement with The Hartford is an encouraging step towards achieving a global resolution that will promote the BSAs efforts to equitably compensate survivors and continue the mission of Scouting, the organization said in a statement.  We are committed to continuing our mediation efforts with all parties and look forward to sharing additional updates as these discussions progress.

According to the court filing, The Hartfords payment will be reduced if, after the agreement is signed, the BSA or the settlement trust enters into an agreement with another insurer, Century Indemnity Company, and Centurys settlement amount is less than two times The Hartfords settlement amount.

Even without the possible reduction in The Hartfords payment, attorneys representing abuse victims in the bankruptcy were appalled by the settlement.

Its outrageous. Their real liability is in the billions of dollars, said Paul Mones, who represents hundreds of abuse victims, including members of the official tort claimants committee that is charged with acting as a fiduciary for abuse victims in the bankruptcy.

This is just business as usual for the Boy Scouts  paying lip service to their supposed understanding and concern for their horrific legacy of sex abuse  but not doing anything substantive, Mones added.

Jim Stang, an attorney for the tort claimants committee, or TCC, said there are at least 24,000 sexual abuse claims subject to The Hartfords policies. The actual number is likely significantly higher, given that many victims did not include the dates they were abused on their claim forms, he noted.

We think their exposure is $8 billion for the 24,000 claims, Stang said, adding the committee will be objecting to the settlement. Theyre not even paying 10% of what we think theyre on the hook for.

The agreement with The Hartford was announced after the Boy Scouts filed a revised reorganization plan earlier this week after gaining little support for a previous proposal.

The previous plan called for a $300 million contribution by local councils to the settlement trust, about $115 million in cash and noninsurance assets from the BSA, and the assignment of BSA and local council insurance policies. In return, the BSA, its 253 local councils and hundreds of sponsoring organizations such as churches and civic groups would be released from further liability. Any insurance companies that agree to pay specific settlement amounts into the trust also would be shielded from further liability.

The new plan increases the contribution from local councils to $425 million but keeps the national organizations contribution at $115 million. More than half that amount consists of the estimated value of the BSAs art collection, including several Norman Rockwell paintings.

Should abuse victims not approve the new plan, the BSA  which says it needs to exit bankruptcy by late summer  would turn to an alternative BSA-only plan. Under that plan, the settlement trust would be funded only by the BSA, and only for claims made against the national organization, not local councils. The councils and local sponsoring organizations such as churches and civic groups would make no contribution to the settlement trust and would have no protection from liability for abuse claims.

Depending on which plan is used, the BSA estimates the amount of money to be available for abuse victims at between $2.4 billion and $7.1 billion, including insurance rights.

The official tort claimants committee estimates the value of some 84,000 sexual abuse claims at about $103 billion.

The Boy Scouts of America, based in Irving, Texas, sought bankruptcy protection in February 2020 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 have said from the start that they would go after 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 legally separate entities by the Boy Scouts, even though they share insurance policies and are considered related parties in the bankruptcy.
Keanu Reeves fans just cant get enough of him. He gives his all creating characters in movies like John Wick and The Matrix, but people want to know the real Reeves. Where did he come from? That begins with his parents. Fortunately, Reeves has gone on record telling his life story from the moment he was born.

Keanu Reeves | Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Reeves appeared on the Conversations with Charlie podcast on Sept. 29, 2019. Host Charlie Herzfeld asked Reeves to start at the beginning, so here is what Reeves had to say about his parents.

Keanu Reeves parents Patricia Taylor and Samuel Nowlin Reeves, Jr. met in Beirut

Reeves was born in Beirut, Lebanon. His mother, Patricia Taylor and father, Samuel Nowlin Reeves, Jr. both ended up in Beirut in 1964, when they married and had Keanu.

My mother and father were 22, 21, 22. My father was there. I actually dont really know his story. I think its like he was in college and then left and then was in Beirut on the beach. My mother, English, ran away from home, Paris, working, showgirl but then also picking up pins in couture houses getting into fashion where she would end up becoming a clothing designer for musicians. Anne Murray, Dolly Parton. Anyway, so they met, they fell in love and they had a baby. That was me and then they stayed there for a few months and then they ended up going to Australia. Keanu Reeves, Conversations with Charlie, 9/29/19

Patricia Taylor and Keanu Reeves | Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

RELATED: Keanu Reeves Remembers the First Time Someone Ever Recognized Him From a Movie and Its Adorable

Reeves said his family only spent a few months in Sydney, Australia, but thats where his sister, Kim, was born. His parents were divorced in 1966.

Then they split up, Reeves said. We went to New York and then I ended up in Toronto, Canada.

Enter Keanu Reeves stepfather

In New York, Taylor met Paul Aaron. They were only married from 1970-1971, but Aaron became a mentor to Reeves budding acting career eight years later.

They got married, Reeves said. I think they were married for like six months or something like that. Paul was directing Broadway, ended up working in Hollywood. He was around for a few years and stayed in contact. He was part of one of the other introductions to show business. I was a PA on one of his movie of the weeks when I was like 15. I wanted to become an actor from probably around when I was 15.

Keanu Reeves | Erin Combs/Toronto Star via Getty Images

RELATED: Keanu Reeves Once Spoke About the Joys of Dating Older Women

Even after he and Taylor got divorced, Aaron continued to help Reeves career.

So eventually I started working, through Paul Aaron, got a greencard, Reeves said. Then at 20, got in my car and drove to Hollywood.

More stepfathers

Taylor had two more husbands after Aaron. According to The Famous People and IMDB, Taylor was married to Robert Miller from 1976  1980 and had another daughter, Karina. Jack Bond in the early 90s.

Sources: Conversations with Charlie podcast, The Famous People, IMDB
Statement by Ambassador Kelly at Arria Meeting on Non-Proliferation

Statement

Thank you Ambassador and thank you for the invitation to todays meeting.

Let me begin from first principles. Ireland unequivocally condemns any use of chemical weapons, and all weapons of mass destruction, anywhere and at any time.

We have all seen the devastating and indiscriminate impact these terrible weapons have on people and communities in Syria. We should be united in acting together to uphold the international prohibition against the use of these appalling weapons. We deeply regret that Council has not been able to do this, with some focusing instead on seeking to undermine the professionalism and impartiality of the OPCW.

Mr Chair,

Let me be very clear, Ireland rejects any attempt to undermine the Integrity of International Non-Proliferation Regimes, and in particular, the continued attack today on the OPCW. I reiterate our firm confidence in, and support for, the professionalism, integrity and impartiality of the OPCW.

We, as the international community, have established the OPCW to be the impartial and authoritative voice, with the legal mandate and technical expertise, to address the problem of chemical weapons. It forms an essential part of the global disarmament and non-proliferation architecture, and protects all of our interests, including those of developing countries, in ensuring the global elimination of these weapons.

This is why we reject the continued political pressure placed by Russia on the OPCW regarding its documented, evidence-based conclusions on Syria.

We cannot accept efforts to put unsubstantiated claims on the same level as the authoritative, impartial, and evidence-based findings of the OPCW.

To do so, would undermine the integrity of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Mr Chair,

Syria has clear legal obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention. Over the years, it has evaded its responsibilities and failed to cooperate meaningfully to meet these obligations. Its initial declaration of chemical weapons stockpiles is a web of gaps and inconsistencies, and remains incomplete. This is what we should be discussing today.

Tragically, we have seen the documented, repeated use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government on its own people. The OPCW and UN has now provided eight reports with factual, evidence-based and impartial conclusions, attributing the uses to the Syrian authorities. The most recent of these, released earlier this week, shows that chlorine was used by the Syrian Air Force on Saraqib on 4 February 2018.

Those who use chemical weapons must be held accountable. There can be no impunity for such a breach of international law. For our part, we are fully committed to fully implementing the EU sanctions regime, which has imposed restrictive measures on persons and entities involved in the development and use of chemical weapons.

Mr. Chair,

The bottom line remains the same. Syria must do what it promised to do, what it is legally obliged to do: declare and destroy all of its chemical weapons stocks and facilities. Last July, the OPCW Executive Council set out the clear actions Syria must take to ensure compliance with the CWC. Syria chose not to act on these. We again urge Syria to act immediately to comply with this Decision.

Ireland has co-sponsored the decision put to the Conference of States Parties (CSP) to the Chemical Weapons Convention for its meeting next week. In the absence of the necessary action by the Syrian authorities to meet their obligations, we believe that CSP must take all appropriate actions to address Syrias non-compliance.

Thank you Chair.

1. Thank you Ambassador and thank you for the invitation to todays meeting.

2. Let me begin from first principles. Ireland unequivocally condemns any use of chemical weapons, and all weapons of mass destruction, anywhere and at any time.

3. We have all seen the devastating and indiscriminate impact these terrible weapons have on people and communities in Syria. We should be united in acting together to uphold the international prohibition against the use of these appalling weapons. We deeply regret that Council has not been able to do this, with some focusing instead on seeking to undermine the professionalism and impartiality of the OPCW.

4. Mr Chair,

5. Let me be very clear, Ireland rejects any attempt to undermine the Integrity of International Non-Proliferation Regimes, and in particular, the continued attack today on the OPCW. I reiterate our firm confidence in, and support for, the professionalism, integrity and impartiality of the OPCW.

6. We, as the international community, have established the OPCW to be the impartial and authoritative voice, with the legal mandate and technical expertise, to address the problem of chemical weapons. It forms an essential part of the global disarmament and non-proliferation architecture, and protects all of our interests, including those of developing countries, in ensuring the global elimination of these weapons.

7. This is why we reject the continued political pressure placed by Russia on the OPCW regarding its documented, evidence-based conclusions on Syria.

8. We cannot accept efforts to put unsubstantiated claims on the same level as the authoritative, impartial, and evidence-based findings of the OPCW.

9. To do so, would undermine the integrity of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

10.Mr Chair,

11. Syria has clear legal obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention. Over the years, it has evaded its responsibilities and failed to cooperate meaningfully to meet these obligations. Its initial declaration of chemical weapons stockpiles is a web of gaps and inconsistencies, and remains incomplete. This is what we should be discussing today.

12.Tragically, we have seen the documented, repeated use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government on its own people. The OPCW and UN has now provided eight reports with factual, evidence-based and impartial conclusions, attributing the uses to the Syrian authorities. The most recent of these, released earlier this week, shows that chlorine was used by the Syrian Air Force on Saraqib on 4 February 2018.

13.Those who use chemical weapons must be held accountable. There can be no impunity for such a breach of international law. For our part, we are fully committed to fully implementing the EU sanctions regime, which has imposed restrictive measures on persons and entities involved in the development and use of chemical weapons.

14.Mr. Chair,

15.The bottom line remains the same. Syria must do what it promised to do, what it is legally obliged to do: declare and destroy all of its chemical weapons stocks and facilities. Last July, the OPCW Executive Council set out the clear actions Syria must take to ensure compliance with the CWC. Syria chose not to act on these. We again urge Syria to act immediately to comply with this Decision.

16.Ireland has co-sponsored the decision put to the Conference of States Parties (CSP) to the Chemical Weapons Convention for its meeting next week. In the absence of the necessary action by the Syrian authorities to meet their obligations, we believe that CSP must take all appropriate actions to address Syrias non-compliance.

17.Thank you Chair.

 Previous Item | Next Item 
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.  New York City public school students who recently opted for in-person learning are slated to begin returning to campus on Monday, April 26, but according to Chalkbeat, some principals in two school districts told families those plans have been put on hold due to conflicting messages about the three-foot rule  a rule that reduced the distance between students from six feet to three feet amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Last week, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that approximately 51,000 students would be able to go back to campus beginning April 26 following another opt-in period for families to switch from remote to in-person instruction.

The opt-in period was announced after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the distance between students could be reduced from six feet to three feet in classrooms. Students can safely sit just three feet apart as long as they wear a mask, but should be kept the six feet away from one another at sporting events, assemblies, lunch or chorus practice.

De Blasio later said that middle and high school students would continue to stay six feet apart, but that elementary schools could move to three feet apart.

Chalkbeat reported that officials began explaining last week the logistics of moving to three feet, but quickly retracted the information without explanation.

In at least two school districts, principals were then told by their superintendents to pause planning efforts and tell parents they may not be able to accommodate more students by April 26, according to an email from a superintendent obtained by Chalkbeat and other letters to schools.

Some schools in the two districts then communicated that message to families, Chalkbeat reported.

However, de Blasio said all students would return to campus beginning April 26. When asked about the confusion during WNYCs The Brian Lehrer Show on Friday morning, de Blasio said he was confident that 51,000 students would go back to school on April 26.

Ill make sure its real clear, de Blasio said during the interview. So, on the 26th, a week from this coming Monday, everyone who opted-in, its about 51,000 kids opted-in, theyll come to school.

During a Monday press conference, Schools Chancellor Meisha Porter said approximately five schools  out of 1,600 public schools citywide  sent the communication to families that it would pause planning, which she said was incorrect.

I just want to clarify there were five schools where that came up and it was incorrect, she said. Were working towards welcoming back the 51,000 families that have opted back into in-person learning on the 26th [of April.]

A Department of Education (DOE) spokesperson didnt respond to Chalkbeats questions on why some school leaders were told to pause planning, but said there wont be a delay in implementing the three-foot rule. More guidance would be sent to principals this week, the spokesperson told the media outlet.

Chalkbeat reported that the DOE sent a new message to principals Friday morning to reaffirm students who opted in could return to classrooms beginning April 26, but information on logistics were still vague.

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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OLD SAYBROOK  The Torrington emergency medical technician accused of using Molotov cocktails to set fires at emergency services facilities across Connecticut, including Roxbury, last month is returning to the state Tuesday to face charges, according to police.

Officers with the Old Saybrook Police Department went to Northumberland County Jail in Coal Township, Pa, on Tuesday morning to pick up Richard White, a 37-year-old EMT from Torrington, officials said.

Police Chief Michael A. Spera said White will be charged with third-degree arson and third-degree burglary. He will be held on $150,000 bond and appear Wednesday in state Superior Court in Middletown.

Today is the first step in Connecticut holding Richard White accountable for his crimes against public safety, Spera said. Any person who seeks to do harm to those responsible for saving human lives is a danger to society.

Authorities said White allegedly set four fires on Feb. 27 that damaged a Roxbury home and emergency services facilities in Old Saybrook, Meriden and Roxbury. Hours before the fires, officials said White got into a fight with a fellow Hunters Ambulance employee after being placed on administrative leave in a disciplinary hearing in Meriden.

White fled the state after the fires, police said. He was taken into custody in Pennsylvania that night about 230 miles from Roxbury. He was held since his arrest as a fugitive from justice in Pennsylvania, police said.

On Tuesday evening, Meriden police said White had been charged with first-degree criminal attempt to commit arson, manufacturing of bombs, second-degree breach of peace and criminal michief.

The charges stem from an attempted arson at the Hunters Ambulance base on Main Street, Meriden police said in a Facebook post. White is being held on $250,000 bond, according to Meriden police.

WTNH reported White was taken to Old Saybrook Police Department on Tuesday. His vehicle was also taken to the department, the TV station reported.

The warrant held by Old Saybrook officers stems from one of the Feb. 27 incidents that targeted a Hunters Ambulance facility on Boston Post Road in Old Saybrook, according to police.

Spera said White illegally entered the facility where he lit and threw a Molotov cocktail that started a fire.

White is also the subject of a warrant held by Meriden police, Spera said, charging him with criminal attempt at first-degree arson and manufacturing of bombs.

Arrest warrants are pending with other law enforcement agencies in Connecticut.

Old Saybrook police also served a search-and-seizure warrant to take possession of Whites vehicle, which Spera said he used to flee the state the night of the incidents. The warrant also allowed police to seize Whites clothing and other items, Spera said.
(TNS)  City Hall is seeking a firm that can bring free public Wi-Fi and "smart city" technologies to New Orleans as officials seek to bridge gaps in internet access for some residents.City officials said Friday they are seeking bids from companies that can bring wireless internet access at no cost to taxpayers. The city will welcome proposals over the next 30 days and choose a firm to provide the service soon after that.The end goal is to help close digital deficits in neighborhoods that have little or no access to the Internet and to use smart city technologies to improve city services for residents, officials said.Smart city technologies include automated street lights, synchronized traffic signals for better traffic flow, advanced water meters and gunshot detection sensors, among others."We believe that Internet connectivity is an essential part to living and to opportunities in our city, and we are dedicated to finding solutions to make that happen," said city Utilities Office Director Jonathan Rhodes.The new technologies will "improve transportation, improve quality of life and support our public safety agencies and the delivery of those services," added city Chief Information Officer Kim LaGrue.The move comes as the coronavirus pandemic has underscored the need for residents to be able to quickly and reliably access the internet from their homes and businesses after public agencies and businesses closed to visitors and employees for much of the past year.New Orleans school officials, for example, quickly learned that as many as one in four children do not have internet access or a reliable computer in their homes. That meant public school leaders had to figure out how to put a laptop and a hotspot in the hands of students to allow them to work remotely while schools were closed to in-person learning.The city further estimates that between 30% and 50% of its residents don't have internet access at home, Rhodes said. To test how to resolve that problem, the city launched a pilot Wi-Fi program last year to provide internet service at public recreation facilities.Now, the city is seeking a firm that can provide low-cost or no-cost internet access to city residents on a broader scale.When completed, public Wi-Fi could be accessed outdoors, or at specific locations such as public parks and community centers. But the main goal is to ensure people can access it from home, Rhodes said."We want to make sure people are connected at their kitchen table, where they do their homework and their work," he said.According to a request for proposals posted to the city's website, the city is seeking a fiber network that will connect 430 public and Sewerage and Water Board sites. It is seeking a network that will deliver internet to homes at speeds of 1 gigabit per second or higher, and to businesses at 10 gigabits per second or higher.Wi-Fi access would be offered at community centers, within targeted community zones and at public parks, the RFP says.New Orleans' move to become "smarter," meanwhile, is part of a trend among select cities across the globe to use real-time data and technology to drive their decisions. In Oslo, Norway, light, heat and cooling sensors are helping to cut carbon emissions; in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, a monitoring system for bus drivers has greatly reduced the number of accidents involving public buses, according to that city's Road and Transit Authority.LaGrue said New Orleans is open to all sorts of smart technologies but is focusing on those that improve transportation, public safety response, and energy services. The RFP says the city wants to focus on floodwater detection, smart wayfinding and kiosks, smart lighting and smart traffic management.Overall, firms should expect to spend between $20 million and $50 million to provide the services, LaGrue said.Rhodes said companies can use a mix of federal and private funding in their proposals, but the project shouldn't come at a cost to taxpayers."We wish we could have had this out yesterday, especially given that we've been through a year of the pandemic, and there are too many people that haven't had the connectivity that they have needed," he said.
What today represents is something that I have been advocating for the last three months, DiMaria said. This is to get to a more local level, especially for the senior population. Its not easy for seniors to get in a car and drive 40 miles away from here to get the vaccine and then go back two or three weeks later to get the second vaccine.
Inaugural Janus Henderson Sovereign Debt Index reveals US government debt has increased almost twice as fast as the rest of the world since 1995

Total US government debt is worth $59,109 for each citizen - only Japan and Singapore owe more per person.

The cost of servicing US government debt in 2020 was $479 billion.

Global government debts jumped by over a sixth in 2020 to a record $62.5 trillion

The worlds governments took on eight years worth of borrowing in 2020 to fight the global pandemic, increasing their debts by over a sixth (17.4%), according to the first edition of Janus Hendersons Sovereign Debt Index. As eight in ten countries in the index slipped into recession, governments added $9.31 trillion to their tab. This is equivalent to one seventh (14.8%) of the worlds GDP2, a bigger slice than was needed to shore up the economy in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. The worlds government-debt tally ended the year at a record $62.5 trillion, almost four times its 1995 total (+273%) and equivalent to $13,050 per person3.

The biggest economies took on the biggest debts in 2020, but the UK had the largest budget deficit

Some countries have taken on more debt than others to meet the challenges of the last year. In absolute terms the biggest economies naturally borrowed most. The US, Japan and China alone accounted for more than half of the worlds new government borrowing in 2020.

Compared to the size of its economy, the biggest borrower was the UK with a government budget deficit worth one fifth of its GDP, but the US, Brazil, South Africa, Spain, Canada, Japan and Singapore all ran deficits at least one eighth the size of their economies too. Sweden and Switzerland are among those that have borrowed the least, but none comes close to Taiwan whose debts remained almost unchanged year-on-year relative to GDP as a robust response to the outbreak enabled its economy to expand.

Even before the pandemic struck, the worlds governments ran deficits in every one of the last 25 years as spending ran ahead of tax collection. Happily, the world economy also grew substantially, underpinning the debt edifice with a larger tax base, but the increase in sovereign debt has nevertheless outstripped economic growth by a fifth.

Story continues

But this debt is cheap to finance

Despite sharply higher borrowing the burden of servicing all this debt has not increased. In 2020, the worlds governments had to pay just 2.0% for their loans4, compared to 7.6% in 1995. This huge drop in rates means the worlds interest bill has only gone up by just over a fifth despite debts almost four times higher. Relative to GDP, the burden of interest has more than halved since 1995. No country in Janus Hendersons index paid a higher interest rate in 2020 than in 1995.

The steady fall in interest rates has driven dramatic returns for bond investors

Governments finance their deficits by issuing bonds to investors which can be bought and sold on financial markets. The steady decline in interest rates over the last 25 years has driven significant returns for bond investors. Between 1995 and 2020 the Global Government Bonds Index5 generated a total return of 308% in USD terms, nearly five times the rate of inflation over the same period.

Debts will jump again in 2021, adding $768 per person

2021 will see another big jump in government borrowing of around $4 trillion, or $768 for each person, but compared to the size of the world economy, debt levels have already peaked thanks to a likely strong economic recovery.

Bethany Payne Global Bonds Portfolio Manager at Janus Henderson said: "Debt often comes laden with moral baggage that suggests it should be avoided, but a hair-shirted view misunderstands the importance of government borrowing to support the economy in bad times like 2020. Debts are at record levels, but financing costs are so cheap that borrowing was the right call.

"Economic growth is the most painless way to overcome large government borrowing. The recovery from Covid-19 is going to be very uneven. Service-driven economies like the UK that had a tough 2020 should rebound faster than manufacturing-driven economies like Germany that were less affected by the drop in global demand in 2020.

"Many countries have also focused their recent borrowing on loans that will need to be repaid in relatively short order - for these there is a real risk of being caught out having to refinance large amounts of debt at uncomfortably higher rates in future."

Jim Cielinski, Global Head of Fixed Income added: "The bond markets are a huge machine for judging the creditworthiness and economic performance of each country - they determine how much a government must pay to borrow. They are not only important for bond investors. The interest rates set in the bond markets affect the value of every asset, from homes to stock markets.

"One way or another, everyone has a stake in the bond markets. People can own bonds in their own right, or they can choose to own them via fixed-income investment funds. Bonds help fund retirement incomes for pension funds. Insurance companies use them to manage risks and fund payouts. The banking system, mortgages and savings rates all depend on the bond markets. Without the bond markets modern economies simply could not function.

"Investors have enjoyed superb returns from bonds in recent years, but interest rates are now on the way up again and that presents risks. Central banks will work to keep rates low for now, but stronger economies tend to be bad news for bond prices."

Notes to editors

Janus Henderson Group (JHG) is a leading global active asset manager dedicated to helping investors achieve long-term financial goals through a broad range of investment solutions, including equities, fixed income, quantitative equities, multi-asset and alternative asset class strategies.

At 31 December 2020, Janus Henderson had approximately US$402 billion in assets under management, more than 2,000 employees, and offices in 26 cities worldwide. Headquartered in London, the company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).

Methodology

Janus Henderson sourced data on government debt, GDP, debt interest payments and budget deficits from EIU, supplementing it with data from individual country sources where necessary. To enable full comparability between different data sets, all data is in nominal USD (ie not adjusted for inflation), unless stated otherwise. Bond market data was sourced from Bloomberg. Janus Henderson sourced other data from national central banks, the OECD, the IMF and World Bank. The countries in Janus Hendersons index together account for 88% of global GDP and two thirds of the worlds population. Figures are not scaled up to take account of parts of the world not in the sample.

________________________________

1 If we take out the effect of changing exchange rates, the increase was $8.1 trillion

2 14.8% of GDP of countries in the index  these countries represent 88% of global GDP

3 Countries in our index represent 67% of the worlds population in 2020

4 Debt interest payments divided by average public debt

5 Bloomberg: W0G0, Total return, USD,Hedged

This press release is solely for the use of members of the media and should not be relied upon by personal investors, financial advisers or institutional investors. We may record telephone calls for our mutual protection, to improve customer service and for regulatory record keeping purposes.

Issued by Janus Henderson Investors. Janus Henderson Investors is the name under which investment products and services are provided by Janus Capital International Limited (reg no. 3594615), Henderson Global Investors Limited (reg. no. 906355), Henderson Investment Funds Limited (reg. no. 2678531), Henderson Equity Partners Limited (reg. no.2606646), (each registered in England and Wales at 201 Bishopsgate, London EC2M 3AE and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority) and Henderson Management S.A. (reg no. B22848 at 2 Rue de Bitbourg, L-1273, Luxembourg and regulated by the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier). Henderson Secretarial Services Limited (incorporated and registered in England and Wales, registered no. 1471624, registered office 201 Bishopsgate, London EC2M 3AE) is the name under which company secretarial services are provided. All these companies are wholly owned subsidiaries of Janus Henderson Group plc. (incorporated and registered in Jersey, registered no. 101484, with registered office at 47 Esplanade, St Helier, Jersey JE1 0BD).

[Janus Henderson, Janus, Henderson, Perkins, Intech, VelocityShares, Knowledge Shared, Knowledge. Shared and Knowledge Labs] are trademarks of Janus Henderson Group plc or one of its subsidiaries.  Janus Henderson Group plc.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005119/en/

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Some women claim to be experiencing irregular, heavy or painful menstrual periods following their COVID-19 vaccine. But experts said, while theyve heard of the phenomenon, theyre not sure what might be causing it, and they say it should not dissuade someone from getting the vaccine.

Are there reports of funky periods? Yes. Do we have a ready explanation? I dont think so, said Dr. Mary Jane Minkin, clinical professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at the Yale University School of Medicine.

Minkin said she has heard of women having heavy periods, cramping and other problems after getting the vaccine, but theres no biological reason for it.

Minkin said there are multiple causes that can lead to irregular or difficult periods, including stress, so its still unclear whether there is a link between the vaccine and the period.

However, two researchers  Kate Clancy, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Katharine Lee, a postdoctoral scholar in the division of public health sciences at Washington University  have been seeking participants in a study on the impact of the COVID vaccine on the menstrual cycle.

According to a research consent form now online, women who participate in the study will take a survey that asks about the timing of their vaccines, menstrual cycles and menstrual period.

This research study is about your experiences with your period or other menstrual bleeding (such as spotting) and associated symptoms after receiving at least one dose of a vaccine for COVID-19, the form reads. Side effects are a common and even an important element of the vaccine response, and bleeding patterns can be an important way to understand how our immune systems are activated.

Clancy had previously posted on Twitter, looking for anyone who had irregular periods following vaccination.

A colleague told me she has heard from others that their periods were heavy post-vax, Clancy posted on Feb. 24. Im curious whether other menstruators have noticed changes too? Im a week and a half out from dose 1 of Moderna, got my period maybe a day or so early, and am gushing like Im in my 20s again.

In addition to Minkin, obstetrician/gynecology Dr. Daniel Gottschall said he hadnt heard from patients having irregular periods after vaccination, but pointed out the vaccine is still relatively new.

In Connecticut, most women young enough to still be menstruating werent eligible to receive a vaccine until about eight weeks ago, said Gottschall, vice president of medical affairs for the Fairfield region of Hartford HealthCare and St. Vincents Medical Center in Bridgeport. There were some young women  including health care workers  who were eligible for the vaccine sooner, but Gottschall said its still too early in the process to know what the effects are on this population.

I dont think theres a good cause and effect of how we understand the virus to work and how it might affect the menstrual cycle, he said.

Even if there is a connection, Minkin and Gottschall said that shouldnt dissuade women from getting the vaccine. Everything has a risk/benefit, but the risks of this vaccination are very, very, very small, Gottschall said.

Minkin agreed. If somebodys got menstrual pain, we can take care of it, she said. But we have a much harder time dealing with the COVID itself.
One of the best aspects of our soldiers and airmen in this fight against COVID-19 is their adaptability, said Major General Rich Neely, commander of the Illinois National Guard. We, in the military, are constantly asked to adapt to change  to find new and improved ways to accomplish tasks. We take that experience into every fight. Quickly adapting to ever-changing circumstances is a special skill our Illinois National Guard soldiers and airmen bring to the people of Kane County.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 23:38:29|Editor: huaxia

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DAR ES SALAAM, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan on Monday pledged her country's strengthened cooperation with the World Bank, saying the bank was a catalyst for economic development.

President Hassan made the remarks during talks with Mara Warwick, the World Bank's country director for Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, at Chamwino State House in the capital of Dodoma, said a statement issued by the Directorate of Presidential Communications.

"The World Bank is supporting Tanzania in improving social services such as education and health, and in improving the infrastructure," said President Hassan, while urging the World Bank to continue working with Tanzania toward building an economy that will transform the east African nation's citizens' welfare.

Warwick said the World Bank had previously approved loans to the tune of 4.9 billion U.S. dollars for supporting various development projects in the country, making Tanzania among the leading recipients of the bank's funding. Enditem
If the advance predictions are correct, this years Academy Awards looks to be an uneventful affair. Theres near-unanimous agreement among Oscar pundits about who will win most of the major awards, and among the predicted winners, theres very little worth getting preemptively worked up about. But theres one Oscar victory Im already bracing myself for and fuming about, and thats the victory of Pixars Soul over Cartoon Saloons Wolfwalkers.

Soul isnt a bad movie, exactly. Its inventive and charming, despite some underthought racial politics, and the scene set in a Black barbershop will likely stand as a watershed moment in the history of Hollywood animation. But its also far from Pixars best, and even nominating italong with the even-less-inspiring Onwardfeels more like the product of reflex than careful consideration. By contrast, Wolfwalkers is a dazzling achievement on practically every level, staggering in its visual beauty and thoughtful in its reworking of ancient myth for a contemporary audience. As the culmination of what director Tomm Moore has identified as a trilogy inspired by Irish folklore, its even more impressive, and rewarding it would be a way of acknowledging what Moore and his partners at Cartoon Saloon, Paul Young and Nora Twomey, have built: an independent animation studio, located in a midsize city in Ireland, that has over the course of less than two decades established itself as an artistic powerhouse, worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Aardman Animations and even Studio Ghibli.

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Wolfwalkers is the fourth of Cartoon Saloons four features to be nominated, and, if Soul wins, it would also be the fourth to lose. (The previous three nominees were 2010s The Secret of Kells, 2014s Song of the Sea, and 2017s The Breadwinner.) Meanwhile, a win for Soul would be Pixars 11th in the 20-year history of the Best Animated Feature award, a record not even Disney comes close to equaling. For predictive purposes, even more important than Pixars wins is its much shorter history of losses: The Oscar has gone to a non-Pixar studio only nine times, but in six of those years, Pixar wasnt even nominatedwhich is to say that when theyve had the chance to vote Pixar, Oscar voters have done so almost 80 percent of the time. When Pixar is up for an Oscar, the academy practically needs a reason not to give it to them.

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Soul isnt the worst of the Animated Feature nomineesthat distinction goes to the Netflix eyesore Over the Moonand its not even the worst Pixar nominee. But it would be a depressingly rote choice, especially when Wolfwalkers is on the table. The movie, co-directed by Moore and Stewart, is a love letter to classic hand-drawn animation, an element that distributor Apple TV+ has been stressing in the last leg of the movies awards campaign. Where the art book for Pixars Soulnow a key component of any animated films awards strategyis mostly a glossy collection of production sketches, The Art of Wolfwalkers is an elaborate study by animation historian Charles Solomon, who likens the movie to the work of Disneys old masters. Thats not to say its style is solely backward-looking. In fact, the animators used sophisticated digital techniques, including building the 17th-century Irish forest in which much of the movie takes place as a computer-generated 3D environment before drawing the frames by hand. But where Moore talked early on about how digital tools allowed them to refine scenes through a near-infinite process of iteration, the focus has shifted to Cartoon Saloon as keepers of the flame, which may prove to be a tactical error.

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Soul would be a depressingly rote choice, especially when Wolfwalkers is on the table.

If youre a fan of traditional animation, Wolfwalkers is an absolute thrill, a movie that at times is practically flamboyant about its hand-drawn origins. Characters, especially the wolves and wild humans who live outside the walled city of Kilkenny, are drawn with visible pencil marks, so that you can almost see preliminary sketch through the finished product. There are moments inspired by centuries-old woodcuts where all pretense of a third dimension drops away, boldly graphic images that can make your breath catch in your throat. But the Oscars arent just about artistic achievement. Theyre awards the movie industry gives to itself, and as such, theyre deeply informed by how that industry sees itself, both now and in the future. They can be aspirational, rewarding movies like Moonlight or Parasite, but a win for something like Argo or Green Book feels like the industrys way of holding out a certain kind of moviecrowd-pleasing, with enough awareness of social issues to seem vaguely enlightening but lacking the sharp political edge that might cause viewers to actually interrogate their own beliefsand saying, This is what we do.

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When it comes to animation, that kind of self-congratulatory calculation combines with a more material one: jobs. The academys animation branch has a pronounced protectionist bent, favoring movies from established studios in favor of those from upstart outsidersin some cases even rewriting the rules to exclude them. Despite being recognized by many critics groups as the best animated movie of the year, Richard Linklaters Waking Life was excluded from the inaugural crop of Animated Film nominees over concerns that the movies technique, which involved drawing over live-action footage of the actors, was not real animation. (There were only three nominees that year, and one of them was Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.) In 2010, the animation branch added a special rule stating that motion-capture animation, a mainstay of Hollywood filmmaking, both animated and (ostensibly) not, does not, by itself, qualify as animation. As more figures drift back and forth between the worlds of animation and live actionBrad Bird going from The Incredibles to the Mission: Impossible series and back again, Roger Deakins advising on the virtual cinematography of Wall-E and How to Train Your Dragonsome anxious boundary-drawing from the mediums gatekeepers is not surprising. But its noteworthy that even as the academy has shown greater fondness for live-action movies produced outside the Hollywood system, its remained stubbornly resistant if not outright hostile to nonstudio animationto say nothing of animated films produced in a languages other than English. With the exception of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and Spirited Awaythe former produced with DreamWorks, the latter distributed by Disneythe Best Animated Film Oscar has essentially been passed from one Hollywood studio to the next, not counting the four years in a row it sat in Pixars front lobby. Its as if there were an unspoken rule that the trophy couldnt travel more than a few hours drive.

This years Academy Awards will largely be an in-person affair, but part of me wishes it was being done Emmys-style, if only for the site of an academy flunky in full PPE standing outside Cartoon Saloons Kilkenny headquarters waiting for the cue to hand them the statue. Even if they didnt win, an Oscar would have made the journey to Ireland, and that would be a big step in the direction of acknowledging that the future of animation isnt only in Hollywood.
A missing 13-year-old girl from Florence was located alive in Texas Saturday, police said.

Abbygail Moody was found about 7 p.m. at a home where she had been held for about two days, according to KLTV in Tyler, Texas.

Tyler police said they acted on an FBI tip that a kidnapping victim might be in a home in the 3600 block of Woods Boulevard in Tyler.

Daniel Dylan Skipworth, 19, is being held on $560,000 bond in the Smith County Jail on charges of aggravated sexual assault of a child, kidnapping, trafficking-engage in sexual conduct and resisting arrest.

According to KETK, court documents say Skipworth met Moody online through Instagram messages and drove 10 hours from Tyler to Florence on the night of April 14, arriving around 5:30 a.m. on Thursday. Moodys parents filed a missing persons report that same day with Florence police.

FBI investigators were able to track the girls cell phone until it was dumped. They were also able to track Skipworths number back to Tyler. He returned from Alabama at 3:46 a.m. Friday. FBI agents from Birmingham contacted Tyler police who went to Skipworths house on Saturday afternoon.

According to documents, Skipworths father told them that Daniel had been to Alabama in the past week. The father went up to Skipworths room and brought him to authorities. The warrant says that he was uncooperative and upset that his family had allowed investigators inside their home. Officers say Skipworth started pushing against them and tried to bite one of them.

He was detained until a search warrant could be obtained, police said. Then officers found Moody. No officers were injured, and Moody appears to be physically OK, officials said.

According to documents, Moody said that she had initially left her home willingly with Skipworth, but had a change of heart. She asked him several times to return her home over the two days, but he refused. Skipworth told police that Moody brought a small bag with her belongings, along with a computer.

Moody accused Skipworth of sexually assaulting her multiple times while she was hidden in his room, that she begged Moody to stop, but he said, Its fine.

Her mother is expected to travel to Texas to be reunited with her.

The investigation involved Florence police, FBI Birmingham, FBI North Alabama Violent Crimes Taskforce, FBI Dallas/Tyler Resident Agency, Corinth police and the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency.
The Lighthouse that Leads Missing Children to Safety

BEIJING, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Recently, Zhao Li, the founder of China's China Child Safety Emergency Response (CCSER), won as one of the 2020 Global Top 10 Leaders of Innovative Non-Profit Projects by Global Brand Evaluation Center. Every year, the award selects 10 influential pioneer figures in inventive public welfare who can find solutions to important social issues. Its scope includes the founders or main operators of sustainable development fields such as healthcare, environmental protection, and youth education.

CCSER Founder Zhao Li, a Leader in Innovative Public Welfare, Wins 2020 Global Top 10 Leaders of Innovative Non-Profit Projects Award

The various awards selected by the World Brand Evaluation Center each year are regarded as one of the few top honors by many business and academic professionals around the world. It is reported that Bill Gates, founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Anthony Franco, the founder of the Open Insulin Project, also received this award as project leaders.

Today, missing children are a global problem. In many cases, children will suddenly disappear or even be kidnapped under normal living conditions. Even babies who have just learned to walk are not safe. In countries with areas in development and a large population, like China, it is extremely difficult for ordinary families to immediately send messages asking for help about missing youths.

In the United States, there is a well-known missing child alert systemAMBER Alert. This alert began in 1996 and has a history of 25 years. From highway displays to today's mobile phone alarms, AMBER Alerts are still in use today.

In China, a nationwide missing child alert system has always been missing in its history. It was not until Zhao Li appeared that this situation began to gradually change. In 2015, Zhao Li donated two million RMB to create an innovative public welfare project called China Child Safety Emergency Response (CCSER). Driven by the idea of combining scientific and technological innovation with human care, Zhao Li invested a second payment of two million RMB to develop advanced mobile phone software for early warnings and alerts of missing children for CCSER.

Story continues

Zhao Li and Zhang Yongjiang have also worked hard to establish a three-in-one (early warning, alarm, and search) information release system and have collaborated with millions of offline volunteer groups to create a child disappearance alert system covering the entirety of China. A major innovation to CCSER's system is the use of technology that allows users and volunteers to accurately obtain information about missing children. Details will be sent out based on the distance between users, volunteers, and the location where the child has been reported missing, and the accuracy of the information will be reviewed by CCSER staff while the latest developments will be readily provided.

Although she was inspired by the United States' AMBER Alert, from the very beginning, Zhao Li had established a unique system that was different from preexisting and foreign missing child information release and search mechanisms. She discovered that current AMBER Alerts in the United States have three drawbacks: 1. The range of information sent is not accurate enough. Released details on highways' electronic display screens make information release too broad, and many people who aren't aware of the situation receive the information as well. 2. Too little information is released. Only two pieces of information, such as the fact that there is a missing child and a license plate number, will be provided. Once the criminal changes cars or removes their license plate, searchers will lose their trail on the kidnapper. 3. The alert serves as only one step that does not inform people of the search's result. In other words, people who see information about missing children will never know if the child has been found.

After analyzing this situation, the system and software development team led by Zhao Li combined elements of mobile network communication based on existing functions of the same types of platforms and "emphasized important effective factors and removed relatively ineffective aspects." Innovation and change. First, the system she developed enables the "information exporter" to directly transmit the most detailed information on the missing child to the "information recipient" in one go, actualizing "accurate initial information transmission." Secondly, she led the system development team to use GIS geographic information technology, combined with a series of big data such as walking speeds, driving speeds, and high-speed rail speeds to develop a unique information push mechanism for missing children. Using this mechanism, the CCSER platform will accurately send relevant early warning messages to the surrounding area in certain time intervals, centering on the location where the child went missing. During the "three-hour prime search period" after the child has been declared missing, three "protection circles" with a radius of 30 kilometers, 90 kilometers, and 690 kilometers will gradually be formed. After three hours, information about missing children will quickly cover the whole country. Finally, when the missing child is found, the CCSER platform will close its early warning after verification and inform volunteers that the missing child has been recovered, effectively avoiding miscommunication between the early warning issuer and volunteers that repetitive, invalid, or wrong information feedback can cause. This unique information push-and-recover mechanism is vividly referred to by Zhao Li and her team as a "closed-loop water ripple" communication system. At the same time, this unique system also constitutes as a new model of "precise communication" to find missing children. Because of its precision, CCSER has recovered thousands of missing children in the six years since its establishment. The application of these original technologies also makes CCSER an international leader in numerous important aspects.

To improve the CCSER system, Zhao Li realized that to further build the scope of their online platform, it is necessary to cooperate with offline agencies to protect children to the greatest extent. So Zhao Li led her team to cooperate with a number of well-known chain companies (Lianjia Charity, Tiantian Chain, FAW Audi, etc.) to establish nearly 30,000 offline child guard stations, truly ensuring that every child out in public can feel that "when you are in danger, you can easily find a safe haven."

Today, after six years of practice and continuous improvement, Zhao Li and her team have successfully established 26,248 offline child guard stations, organized 5,118,087 volunteers, and issued 2,159 missing child warnings with 1,072 children that were recovered.

In early 2020, Zhao Li went to the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC)'s headquarters in Washington, USA to meet with Caroline Humer, the director of the organization, and Carly Tapp, the program specialist of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC, the agency that sends out AMBER Alerts). Together, they discussed how to use their respective advantages to better help missing children in various countries. In more than three hours of conversation, the two major organizations expressed their appreciation for CCSER's innovative technology, new communication modes, and its patented software while expressing a strong willingness to cooperate. The person in charge and technical commissioner of NCMEC in the United States was even more surprised at the efficiency of Zhao Li's early warning platform and its achievements in just five years.

While improving both online and offline interaction mechanisms, Zhao Li also led CCSER to organize authoritative experts from legislative, judicial, DNA identification, Internet technology, public welfare, and other fields to conduct professional seminars and to actively promote related legislation on child protection. CCSER has also signed cooperation agreements with non-profit organizations such as the China Society of Behavioral Law, enabling the platform to receive authoritative theoretical guidance and relevant legal support from top professionals in domestic judicial circles.

When asked about her original intent in creating CCSER, Zhao Li said that the idea stemmed from her own experience. In 2014, her three-year-old son was almost lost. When her son had returned by himself, she deeply felt the worries of being a mother when she thought her child had disappeared. From then on, she hoped to help the families of missing children in some way. She said: "It is worthwhile although we only help one family. This is our due responsibility. After more than six years, we should also look to broadening CCSER's scope internationally, perfecting our platform, and letting the world know more about CCSER."

Due to her outstanding contributions in recovering missing children, Zhao Li won the title of Person of the Year at the 11th China-US Business Summit in October 2020. This year, she won as one of the 2020 Top 10 Global Innovative Public Welfare Leaders by the World Brand Evaluation Center. It is worth mentioning that Zhao Li is the only Chinese individual who has won this honor since the award was founded in 2009.

To this day, the problem of missing children around the world is still serious. In the past six years, Zhao Li and her team have established and continuously improved their system for early warnings for missing children, which has greatly increased the probability of successfully recovering youths who have disappeared. With their day-to-day efforts, more and more lost children can reunite with their loved ones. We have reason to believe that Zhao Li, this incredibly caring and dedicated Chinese mother, has become a beacon for missing children looking for their way home. We also believe that Zhao Li's system and the valuable experience she's accumulated in practice can benefit even more countries, especially children in developing regions.

Cision

View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ccser-founder-zhao-li-a-leader-in-innovative-public-welfare-wins-2020-global-top-10-leaders-of-innovative-non-profit-projects-award-301271343.html

SOURCE China Child Safety Emergency Response (CCSER)
But corrresponding month of last year displayed the sharpest of contrasts between the first and second half the market had ever seen, due to COVID-19 impact, WorldACD analysis reveals

Air cargo traffic in March showed year-on-year (YoY) worldwide growth of 21%, the corresponding month of last year having been significantly impacted by COVID-19, according to the latest analysis by WorldACD.

To make any sense of this percentage (increase), we need to revisit the detailed results for March 2020, the market data specialist said, underlining that the first and second hal of the month in question had displayed the sharpest of contrasts in air cargo living memory.

To bear this out, the YoY growth in the period 1-15, March, 2021, stood at -0.2%, whereas in the second half of the month it was +44%, a clear reminder that the first lockdown started to bite air cargo by mid-March 2020, WorldACD observed.

As the cautious recovery of early 2021 (+1.1% YoY for the first two months) was halted in the first half of March (-0.2% YoY), the question arises whether the second half reversed the trend again.

Volume 'only marginally lower'

In its monthly analysis, WorldACD first looked at volume developments for the 30 largest markets.

For six of them (the origins USA Atlantic South, USA Midwest, Taiwan, Thailand, Belgium and Kenya), March 2021 was simply the best month since January 2018. The same was true for the destination markets China-East, South Korea, Japan, Belgium, the Netherlands and USA-Midwest.

In contrast, other top-origins, notably China North East and Central, France, UK, India, and Australia, have not yet recovered. Their month of March remained more than 20% below their best month over the past three years. This is also the case for the destinations Australia, Canada East, China Northeast, Spain, South Africa and USA Northeast.

However, worldwide, March 2021 was only marginally lower than the same month in 2018 and 2019.

This is the more remarkable when taking into account the enormous reduction in cargo capacity. YoY load factor improvements in each of the three first months of 2021, range between 15 and 20 percentage points: airlines are clearly able to use their cargo space much more efficiently than in the past.

Market share gains for leading forwarders

For the full first quarter of 2021 (Q1), chargeable weight worldwide was 7.7% above Q1-2020, but still 2% below Q1-2019. Vulnerable & High-Tech, Flowers and Live Animals, however, did better than in Q1-2019, the first of these categories growing by an impressive 22%.

Compared with Q1-2019, the 10 largest forwarders gained considerable market share in Africa (+2.4 percentage points) and Central & South America (+3.3% points), but lost share in the Northern hemisphere, ranging from a loss of 0.4% points in the Middle East & South Asia (MESA) to a loss of 2.7% points in Europe.

China driving air cargo growth

Until the financial crisis of more than 10 years ago, a countrys air cargo growth was often double the growth of the countrys economy. However, this 2:1 ratio has moved downwards since, WorldACD noted.

Yet, it may be back to the old level in China. According to The Economist, Chinas economy grew by 18.3% YoY in Q1. In the same period its outbound air cargo increased by 39% and its inbound by an even higher 41%. To no ones surprise, China leads the Q1 air cargo growth tables by a large margin.

The whole Asia Pacific area increased by 19% YoY (outbound), followed by the Americas (+10% YoY in the north, +6% YoY in central & south). Europe and Africa remained the same, whilst the origin MESA dropped by 10% YoY.

Soaring rates

Since the start of the pandemic, it has been air cargo rates which have undergone the most drastic change, according to WorldACD.

The Q1 YoY rate increase of 64% puts the much smaller volume gains in a rather different light. Not only do the rate increases highlight the capacity shortage and the short term financial influence of the pandemic, they may cause further changes in cargo capacity made available by passenger airlines.

After all, with rates on full freighter flights up by 32% YoY.... and those on passenger aircraft (having) almost doubled, airlines could be tempted to take a fresh look at the capacity they make available for air cargo.

As to whether this is already happening, WorldACD said the increase in freighter capacity in March was seven percentage points lower than for cargo capacity on passenger aircraft, while the average rate/yield for all markets worldwide rose every week from mid-March to mid-April.

Volumes down in April

Looking at how things have shaped up in the current month, WorldACD stated that worldwide volumes decreased by 4% in Week 14 (5-11 April) on the previous week. Worldwide capacity was up slightly (+ 0.1%).

On a regional level, the origin Central & South America did best with a volume increase of 4% week-over-week, while origin Europe showed the largest decrease (-13%).

The average worldwide yield/rate in week 14 increased compared with week 13.

Image: Alamy
New Delhi, April 19 : US President Joe Biden invited 40 world leaders to the Leaders' Summit on Climate on April 22-23.

Climate experts say this is a critically important initiative as the first step by the US government to focus on climate action in their efforts to show that the US is back on the international level, targeting heads of states of key countries.

The summit comes at a critical juncture, with the latest UNFCCC report stating that the collective climate action pledges according to the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are far off track from the goals envisaged in the Paris Agreement, most notably to pursue efforts to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

There are also increasing calls to developed countries to step up financial support for climate action in developing countries, in particular for adaptation.

What do we want? Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe views the Leader's Summit as a critical opportunity for European leaders to bring to the table further efforts and specific commitments to put itself on a 1.5 degrees Celsius compatible pathway.

Its four main requests for the European Commission and the European leaders participating in the summit are: Emissions reductions well beyond 55 per cent.

This should be combined, with greater efforts to protect biodiversity and increase carbon removals, in line with the EU's fair share of the global efforts to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees.

All Member States, Norway and the UK commit to increase climate finance for developing countries to be allocated to adaptation, with a strong priority to the least developed countries and the small island countries. The European Investment Bank should commit to scaling up adaptation finance to 50 per cent of its climate finance for developing countries by 2025.

No COVID-19 recovery funding to fossil fuels, explicitly fossil gas, says CAN, Europe's leading NGO coalition fighting dangerous climate change.

At EU level, this translates into keeping fossil gas and nuclear out of the EU taxonomy, budget funds and EU recovery (1.8 trillion) spent by Member States and regions.

In assessing recovery plans, the European Commission should insist that the necessary reforms on national level, throughout all sectors are kicked-off to achieve beyond 55 per cent emissions reduction.

European countries champion climate action and a green recovery in upcoming bilateral meetings and summits, including the EU-India summit, the renewed Southern Partnership and EU-Africa Partnership Strategy, by developing concrete measures to globally shift away from fossil fuels and lock in new dependencies.

For each of the European countries participating in the Leaders' Climate Summit, CAN Europe asks Denmark that no funds for polluters or for fossil infrastructure. Also climate finance for adaptation and mitigation developing countries and enhance commitment to renewable energy.

For France to end fossil fuel subsidies nationally and abroad. And increase climate finance for developing countries to 8bn per year for 2021-2025. Also implement all the recommendations of the citizen assembly.

Germany to increase domestic emissions reduction and associated climate law to 70 per cent by 2030 (up from 55 per cent). Also adjust renewable energy expansion and other targets accordingly, plus double finance from the federal budget allocated to international climate finance to at least 8bn per year by 2025.

"Five years after European countries committed to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius in Paris, European leaders must increase emissions reductions or we won't manage," said Wendel Trio, CAN Europe Director.

"We are obnoxiously far off track. European countries must aim way beyond long-term commitments; we need emissions to start dramatically dropping from today.

"This summit taking place is a good sign. But it won't be useful as such unless it brings greater action to combat climate change; namely, increased climate finance and higher emissions reductions," Trio said.

"We see political leaders across Europe acknowledging the needs to foster climate action. However, we need to see the essence of their speeches at the heart of absolutely all their policies, budgets, priorities, decisions just a couple of green measures won't sort out the climate crisis," said Sven Harmeling, International Climate Policy Coordinator, CAN Europe.
Malawi's former president, Peter Mutharika, has accused the government of politically persecuting him. During a televised news conference at his residence in Mangochi district Saturday, Mutharika cited the freezing of his bank accounts and arrests of his party officials over corruption allegations as examples. But authorities say they are only following the law.



Mutharika, who lost to President Lazarus Chakwera during last years elections, faces legal action for administrative blunders committed when he was in office.



The latest is the case in which he is expected to pay about $87,000 in legal fees by wrongly forcing Chief Justice Andrew Nyirenda and Justice of Appeal Edward Twea on leave during his administration.



And in August, Malawis Anti-Corruption Bureau froze bank accounts of Mutharika and his wife, Gertrude, as part of investigations into his role in a scandal in which bags of cement worth about $6.6 million entered the country without being taxed.



Various efforts by Mutharikas lawyers to have his bank accounts unfrozen have proven unsuccessful.



Mutharika told reporters the freezing of his accounts is persecution of the highest form.



The aim is simply to create hardship on me. Even the account where my retirement package comes in, that account is closed. So, my retirement benefits cannot come in. The idea is to make me totally incompetent financially to make me impossible to support the DPP (Democratic Progressive Party), and therefore to destroy the DPP and make a one-party dictatorship, he said.



Banging on a table as he spoke, Mutharika called on the government to end what he said was a tendency of persecuting former presidents.

Persecuting former heads of state should stop in this country. It doesnt happen anywhere else. It doesnt happen in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Rwanda, anywhere else. Its only in this country where this kind of stupidity continues to go on. I want it to stop, Mutharika said.



Latim Matenje, a political analyst with the Political Science Association of Malawi, says Mutharika is justified to think that the government is persecuting him, considering the time his accounts have been frozen.



From my perspective, freezing the accounts of somebody right from August up to April, I mean, its inhumane. One would wonder what that person is eating. So, for him to claim that I am not surprised, he said.



Matenje said the government can prove Mutharika is wrong by letting him access his bank accounts as the probe into the case progresses. Matenje, however, faulted Mutharika for making similar comparisons to a former president.

The call itself is justifiable but not from him. It is surprising its him doing so because he did the same to Dr. Joyce Banda because she left Malawi; she went outside because of persecution here, Matenje said.

In 2014, Banda, who was Mutharikas predecessor, fled the country after being implicated in what became known as the Cashgate scandal, in which government officials siphoned off millions of dollars of public money.

Reacting to Mutharikas accusations, government spokesperson Gospel Kazako said Mutharika is wrong by alleging persecution.

Kazako, who also serves as the minister of information, says the government is only following the laws of the country.
Jailed Lao human rights defenders Lod Thammavong, Somphone Phimmasone, and Soukane Chaitad are shown, left to right, in undated photos.

Three Lao workers serving long prison terms for criticizing their government on Facebook while working in Thailand were never allowed contact with lawyers, and should be immediately released, a U.N. human rights expert says.

Somphone Phimmasone, his girlfriend Lod Thammavong, and Soukane Chaithad disappeared in March 2016 after returning to Laos to renew their passports, and were later shown on television making what appeared to be forced confessions for what they called the mistake of protesting their countrys policies.

Charged with criticizing the Lao government online while working abroad and for taking part in a protest outside the Lao embassy in Thailand, the three were handed prison terms described by rights groups as harsh at a secret trial in April 2017.

Somphone was sentenced to a 20-year term and was fined 210 million kip (U.S. $26,000), while Soukane was sentenced to 16 years and was fined 106 million kip (U.S. $13,000), the source said.

Lod was handed a 12-year sentence and was fined 110 million kip (U.S. $14,000).

Somphone, Lod, and Soukane had been engaged in legitimate human rights work at the time of their arrest five years ago, Mary Lawlorthe U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenderssaid in an April 12 statement, calling for their immediate release.

The misuse of national security laws to convict human rights defenders who are critical of the Government generates fear amongst all human rights defenders in the country and has an adverse effect on their ability to carry out legitimate human rights work, Lawlor said.

At no time, either in pre-trial detention or during their trial or since, were the three protesters allowed legal representation, Mary Lawlor wrote. The Government must guarantee a safe, secure and enabling environment for all human rights defenders.

'Specifically protected'

Responding by email to a question from RFA, Orsolya Totha human rights officer in the Special Procedures Branch of the Geneva-based Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rightssaid the activities for which the three human rights defenders were jailed are not only not forbidden under international human rights law, but are specifically protected.

These reasons alone would be enough to call for their release, but their rights to a free and fair trial have also been violated, Toth wrote, adding that it is not too late even now to allow them contact with an attorney.

In ideal circumstances, prompt and unhindered access to an independent lawyer of their choice helps detainees serving a sentence to understand their rights and challenge aspects of their conditions and treatment in detention.

In the cases under question, access to lawyers might also provide opportunities to appeal the sentences, Toth said.

The outrageous and unacceptable criminal sentences against these three peaceful dissidents should be quashed, added Phil Robertson, Deputy Asia Director for Human Rights Watch, in an April 14 statement, calling for their immediate and unconditional release.

Once again, Vientiane is showing what a dictatorial government it is, with an unaccountable leadership that regularly runs roughshod over the human rights of the Lao people, both in the country and abroad, Robertson said, calling the U.N. Special Rapporteurs April 12 statement an indictment of the lack of basic fair trial protections in the Lao legal system.

No government statistics or reliable estimates exist regarding the number of political prisoners held by Laos in the countrys prisons, the U.S. State Department said in an annual human rights report released this year.

In June 2019, nine residents of Sekong province handed prison terms of from two to six years for their protest two years before of a government decision to give villagers farmland to a Vietnamese company for use as a rubber plantation.

And in August 2019, Od Sayavong, a Lao democracy activist living in Thailand, vanished after criticizing the Lao government and applying for asylum in a third country, with the U.N. Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders saying the activist had likely been disappeared.

Reported by RFAs Lao Service. Translated by Max Avary. Written in English by Richard Finney.
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VirtualInvestorConferences.com Details:

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About SLANG Worldwide Inc.

SLANG Worldwide Inc. is a global leader in the cannabis CPG sector with a diversified portfolio of popular brands distributed across the United States. The Company specializes in acquiring and developing market-proven regional brands as well as launching innovative new brands to seize global market opportunities. For more information, please visit www.slangww.com.

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A real-time solution for investor engagement, Virtual Investor Conferences is part of OTC Market Group's suite of investor relations services specifically designed for more efficient Investor Access. Replicating the look and feel of on-site investor conferences, Virtual Investor Conferences combine leading-edge conferencing and investor communications capabilities with a comprehensive global investor audience network.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains statements that constitute "forward-looking statements." Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements, or developments in the industry to differ materially from the anticipated results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such 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.

Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by management of SLANG at this time, are inherently subject to significant business, economic and competitive risks, uncertainties and contingencies that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. Investors are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Applicable risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to regulatory risks, risks related to the COVID-19 global pandemic, changes in laws, resolutions and guidelines, market risks, concentration risks, operating history, competition, the risks associated with international and foreign operations and the other risks identified under the headings "Risk Factors" in SLANG's final long form prospectus dated January 17, 2019 and "Risks and Uncertainties" in the management discussion and analysis for the year ended December 31, 2019 and three and nine months ended September 30, 2020 and other disclosure document available on the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. SLANG is not under any obligation, and expressly 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 expressly required by applicable law.

SOURCE VirtualInvestorConferences.com
KCRA - Sacramento Videos

A hum of nervous excitement makes its way through the stadium at Whitney High School Friday evening. Parents and soon-to-be grads -- posing for pictures. A lot of smiles, and pride. The easily distinguishable notes of Pomp and Circumstance emanate from speakers near a portable stage. Families scanning a sea of caps and gowns -- hoping to catch a glimpse of their graduate filing down to the field. This day, filled with joy for so many Whitney High families, is one that carries thoughts of what could have been for a high school senior who is not here. Zachary Didier, a stand-out student in academics, theatre and sports, and a friend to many on that field for graduation, died from fentanyl poisoning back in December. See more in the video above.
ATLANTA and INDIANAPOLIS, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- GROUNDFLOOR , a wealthtech platform that allows everyone to build wealth through real estate, and PadSplit , a mission-driven marketplace that helps solve the affordable housing crisis, are teaming up in a new partnership that will create hundreds of new affordable housing units. The two Atlanta-based companies operate as real estate marketplaces, though they have traditionally served different audiences. This unique partnership unites the companies together for the first time, alongside real estate developer White Hawk LLC, which is utilizing GROUNDFLOOR's lending services to renovate 36 homes that will all serve as PadSplits. As a result of the partnership, hundreds of individuals will be able to find safe, clean, and affordable housing in the Indianapolis metro area.

"This partnership allows PadSplit to enter new markets more quickly and efficiently, alongside property owners like White Hawk who already understand the benefits of our model," said Atticus LeBlanc, PadSplit's founder and CEO. "The biggest beneficiaries of this partnership are lower income individuals in Indianapolis, who will now be able to access quality affordable housing, close to job centers, and achieve more financial independence. We've always admired GROUNDFLOOR's ability to increase housing density in cities and are excited to finally work with them."

For GROUNDFLOOR, the partnership reflects the wealthtech platform's rapid growth since the company launched in 2013 as the first company qualified by the Securities and Exchange Commission to offer real estate debt investments to accredited and non-accredited investors alike. In 2020, the platform saw record growth in investor activity in Q2 and Q3, which is continuing in 2021, with nearly $43M in volume year-to-date. On the lending side of its marketplace, GROUNDFLOOR has originated almost 2,000 loans since inception.

The partnership with PadSplit also underscores GROUNDFLOOR's growing emphasis on social impact projects. In January, the company announced a new accessory dwelling unit (ADU) pilot program to increase housing density and reduce gentrification in Atlanta. These homes in Indianapolis will soon be available on GROUNDFLOOR's platform, so its more than 90,000 investors can participate in supporting these renovations, and ultimately help to create more affordable housing.

"We see first-hand how housing supply continues to be constrained in the markets we serve, making it even more difficult to find housing for those who need it most," said Brian Dally, GROUNDFLOOR's co-founder and CEO. "We're excited to be able to team up with PadSplit in this effort to create more affordable housing, while also allowing our investors the opportunity to invest in projects with positive social impact outcomes. It's a win-win-win."

Individuals who are looking for affordable housing through PadSplit will be able to move into some units by the end of April, with additional rooms becoming available as renovations are completed. PadSplit's marketplace provides shared housing  with private, furnished bedrooms, and fixed utility costs as well as access to 24/7 telehealth services and job matching. PadSplit members average $25,000 in annual income and report $420 in monthly savings between housing, utility, and transportation costs. Each PadSplit home must meet specific design guidelines designed to exceed HUD standards, while members must pass a criminal background check and screening process to qualify.

Both GROUNDFLOOR and PadSplit are headquartered in Atlanta and originally proved their models out in the state of Georgia. To date, GROUNDFLOOR has raised $26.8M in equity capital and PadSplit has raised $14.6M. Both companies have been recognized as two of the most innovative startups in Georgia.

For more information on how to invest in these projects, or to finance loans, visit GROUNDFLOOR.com. For more information on how to become a PadSplit property owner, or to see available housing, visit PadSplit.com.

About GROUNDFLOOR

Founded in 2013, GROUNDFLOOR is an award-winning wealthtech platform that allows everyone to build wealth through real estate. GROUNDFLOOR was the first company qualified by the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission to offer direct real estate debt investments via Regulation A for non-accredited and accredited investors alike. Today, it remains the only product offering everyone the ability to build fully customizable real estate debt portfolios for short-term, high-yield returns. Headquartered in Atlanta, GROUNDFLOOR has won numerous awards for its rapid growth and innovation including the Inc 500 and Deloitte's Technology Fast 500. To date, GROUNDFLOOR has raised $26.8 million in equity capital from a variety of sources, including venture capital and online public equity offerings. As of its most recent round of financing, the company is 26 percent customer-owned.

About PadSplit

PadSplit is a mission-driven company that helps to solve the affordable housing crisis, one room at a time. Through its shared-housing model, the company aligns incentives between cities, nonprofits, and property owners to spur cost-effective housing creation without public subsidy, all while providing safe and affordable housing for working class individuals. PadSplit was founded by an affordable housing advocate and is advised by a team of nationally recognized housing leaders and investors including Enterprise Community Partners, the UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation, Kapor, Impact Engine, and the Citi Impact Fund amongst others. Headquartered in Atlanta, PadSplit operates in several cities throughout the United States, including Atlanta, Houston, Richmond, Tampa and Indianapolis. For more information about the company or how to become a member or property owner, visit PadSplit.com .

MEDIA CONTACT:

Hela Sheth

GROUNDFLOOR

[email protected]

SOURCE Groundfloor Finance Inc.

Related Links

groundfloor.us


Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-20 07:10:19|Editor: huaxia

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QUITO, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno received president-elect and former banker Guillermo Lasso at the presidential palace in Quito on Monday to officially start the government transition process, with just over a month to go before the end of the current administration.

Moreno, who will leave office on May 24, received Lasso and vice president-elect Alfredo Borrero and their wives in their first official meeting.

It came a day after the National Electoral Council declared Lasso, a center-right candidate, the winner of the second round of the presidential election held on April 11.

Lasso, who will govern for four years, won with 52.36 percent of the votes (4,656,426) against leftist Andres Arauz, who obtained 47.64 percent of the votes (4,236,515).

During the meeting, Moreno said that the technical teams of the outgoing and incoming governments, designated to carry out the transition process, will meet as many times as necessary to transfer information in a "timely, transparent, truthful and technical manner."

Meanwhile, Lasso said his priority will be vaccinating the population against COVID-19, something he promised during his campaign, saying that in his first 100 days in office, he would advance the immunization of 9 million people in the country. Enditem
Kolkata: Amid a firece second wave of coronavirus in the country, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday (April 19, 2021) urged the Election Commission (EC) to curtail the poll schedule for the remaining three phases of the ongoing Assembly election in the state.

Banerjee urged the poll panel to re-consider its decision to stick to the original poll schedule and stressed that the last three phases of polls on a single day or at the most in two days would check the spread of COVID-19 to some extent.

"With folded hands, I request the EC to hold the next three phases on a single day. If not one day, conduct it in two days and save one day. Please don't take your decision based on what the BJP says... Please ensure that you protect public health by curtailing the poll schedule, even if it is by one day," the TMC supremo was quoted as saying by PTI.

Further, the CM said that she and other leaders of her party would not hold any rally in congested places. She charged the Narendra Modi-led government for "not taking adequate measures in the past six months to avert vaccine crisis".

Banerjee declared summer vacation of all students across the schools in the state. The vacation will start from Tuesday (April 20) and continue till June. The decision to announce early vacation has been taken in view of the rising number of COVID-19 cases.

We have decided to start summer vacation for all schools from tomorrow till June, Banerjee was quoted as saying by ANI.

Meanwhile, the last phases of polls in West Bengal are scheduled to be held on April 22, 26, and 29. The ruling TMC had opposed the ECs decision to conduct elections in eight phases at a time when the number of coronavirus disease cases rose exponentially.

Banerjee took to Twitter on April 15 to urge the commission to hold the remaining phases of polls at one go.
AUSTIN, Texas, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Sonic Healthcare USA (Sonic), a leading provider of laboratory services in the United States, was recently included as a laboratory testing partner for the Rockefeller Foundation's K-12 National Testing Action Program (NTAP). The NTAP program introduces school districts in the United States to leading testing companies supporting COVID-19 testing for K-12 students.

Over the last year, Sonic has been one of the leading commercial laboratories performing COVID-19 testing throughout its network of clinical laboratories and pathology practices in the United States. Sonic continues to focus on and support specific underserved patient populations and government-funded programs in partnership with local government and public health agencies to improve testing access for these communities.

Sonic is expanding testing capacity for K-12 testing programs at the following laboratory locations: American Esoteric Laboratories, located in Memphis, TN; Bernhardt Laboratories, located in Jacksonville, FL; Clinical Labs of Hawaii, located in Honolulu, HI; Clinical Pathology Laboratories, located in Austin, TX; East Side Clinical Laboratory, located in Providence, RI; GPA Laboratories, located in Greensboro, NC; LMC Pathology Services, located in Las Vegas, NV; Seacoast Pathology, located in Exeter, NH; Sunrise Medical Laboratories, located in Hicksville, NY; and WestPac Labs, located in Santa Fe Springs, CA.

"We are honored and privileged to be included amongst the leading companies supporting COVID-19 testing efforts," said Jerry Hussong, MD, MBA, Chief Executive Officer, Sonic Healthcare USA. "Supporting the reopening of schools is paramount to COVID-19 recovery efforts; it is our social responsibility to collaborate with public health officials, school officials, and other leading private and public sector organizations. Collectively, we can quickly respond to the needs of our local communities," added Dr. Hussong.

About Sonic Healthcare USA

Sonic Healthcare USA is a subsidiary of Sonic Healthcare Limited, one of the world's largest medical diagnostic companies, providing laboratory services to medical practitioners, hospitals and community health services, with operations in eight countries, on three continents and providing care to over 100 million patients each year. Sonic Healthcare USA is a leading provider of state-of-the-art laboratory services and pathology practices throughout the USA with eight operating divisions and nearly eight thousand US- based employees, 330 Pathologists and serving over 30 million patients per year. Sonic Healthcare USA operates under a federated business model that emphasizes medical leadership and community-based testing services to provide outstanding quality and service to the doctors and patients that they serve. For more information, visit the Sonic Healthcare website at www.sonichealthcareusa.com.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Sonic Healthcare USA

Dr. Jerry Hussong, MD, MBA

Chief Executive Officer

[email protected]

512.531.2216

SOURCE Sonic Healthcare USA

Related Links

https://www.sonichealthcareusa.com


Its farewell to one of Gladys Berejiklians longest-serving members of staff.

Gladys Berejiklians director of strategy Ehssan Veiszadeh has resigned. Credit:Twitter

Senior political staffer Ehssan Veiszadeh has resigned as the Premiers director of strategy. He will join the Committee for Sydney in the double threat role of deputy chief executive and director of strategy. After six years inside State Parliament, his departure ends one of the most enduring fixtures of Berejiklians political machine.

Veiszadeh joined Berejiklian during her time as treasurer in 2015. He quickly rose to become director of communications with a reputation for ruling the office with an iron fist, before being appointed as the Premiers director of media when Berejiklian ascended to the top job in January 2017. In February, he moved out of the media team into a broader strategy role.

He starts at the Committee for Sydney on May 31, ahead of the June budget.
Ludhiana: In a bid to ensure the safety and security of the farmers, labourers, commission agents, and other workforce engaged in ongoing procurement operations from the contagion, the Mandi Board has so far distributed 5000 facemasks among them to keep the grain markets free of Covid.

On the directions of Deputy Commissioner Varinder Kumar Sharma, the Mandi Board along with the Food Supply department has already made elaborate arrangements of decongesting markets besides ensuring social distancing through marking of the patches.

Mask

Disclosing further details in this regard, Deputy DMO Bir Inder Singh said that it is the moral duty of the department to give protection to the son of soils, labourers, and others from Covid by distributing masks free of cost. He said that masks have been supplied to all market committees and staff at temporary yards and these are being provided to farmers, labourers, and others.

He said that vaccination camps are also being set up in the grain markets and evoking a good response.

Singh further said most of the grain markets have been given sanitizers, soaps, special foot operating handwashing kiosks, and a sensitization drive is being carried out through a public address system about Covid appropriate behaviour so that procurement season can be completed in a smooth and hassle-free manner.

Coronavirus

He said that whereas, the Punjab Government is committed to procuring every single grain of the farmers but at the same time, it has a big responsibility to keep the Covid at bay from procurement operations.

He said that only with the cooperation and support of the public, the pandemic can be defeated hence all must wear face masks whenever they have to venture outside their homes.

Deputy DMO also exhorted the people to stick to the golden principles of wearing a mask at all-time, maintaining physical distancing, and following hand hygiene.
Apr. 18Members of the Altamont City Council have been discussing possible projects to utilize Rebuild Illinois Bond funds.

Commissioner Tayler Polk opened a recent discussion by telling council members there are extra Rebuild Illinois funds of approximately $152,800 they need to use by July of 2025 or the city will lose the money. He said he was proposing a project, however asked for alternate project ideas from council members.

Polk said there were several complaints about sidewalk and road gutter problems in front of Altamont pharmacy in downtown Altamont. He said he had Michael Tappendorf with Milano and Grunloh Engineers create a plan to replace concrete sidewalks and road gutter for a rough estimated cost of approximately $250,000. Polk said they could combine the Rebuild Illinois funds with motor fuel tax they collect to complete the project.

"That's for sidewalk, gutter and concrete road," Polk said. "I wanted to bring it to the council to see if any council members had any thoughts on the project because we have to use the money somewhere."

Polk said he expects to get more foot traffic on the sidewalk with opening of the Sarah Bush Lincoln Altamont Medical Center on the corner of North Third Street and Division Street. He said he would like to see the project go across the street and cover a portion of the block to the north on Third Street towards the railroad tracks.

"Hopefully the plan in the future is to go all the way to the tracks," Polk said.

"2025 isn't that far away when you're thinking about planning a project and bidding on it," Altamont Clerk and Treasurer Sarah Stephen said.

"I like the idea in front of the clinic and pharmacy but I am wondering if there is someplace that is worse that needs it? I would love to see that in front of the pharmacy corrected because I have people stop me and said something about that, too," Commissioner Dan Milleville said.

Story continues

Polk said in downtown the proposed project area is the worst. He said the ultimate goal would be to replace the concrete on down Washington Avenue to the triangle.

Milleville said with the price tag of $250,000 maybe there are other options.

"I'm not saying there are not any other options, what I don't want to spend $100,000 on something that is just okay when you can spend $150,000 and get it right," Polk said.

"This is just something to keep in mind, these are only guestimates on cost," Polk said. "I want to make sure the drainage situation gets corrected."

In other matters, the council:

Approved a roadside fundraiser request from Grobengieser-Fischer American Legion Post 512 for Poppy Day on Friday, May 28 with a rain day set for June 4.

Approved a roadside fundraiser request from the Altamont Lions Club for Tootsie Pop Day on Saturday, June 12.

Approve a roadside fundraiser request from Big Brothers Big Sisters on Friday, Aug. 6.

Approved a tax increment services agreement with South Central Illinois Regional Planning and Development Commission in the amount of $17,000. The agreement would set up a new TIF district for a new residential property development area south of Altamont.

Approved a resolution providing for a feasibility study on the designation of a portion of the City of Altamont residential redevelopment area.

Approved an ordinance for a residence at 6 Sherman Drive home occupancy. Mayor Rippetoe said the occupants of the house are planning to operate a business to refurbish brass for ammunition.

Approved a professional services agreement with Milano and Grunloh Engineers for design and construction engineering services for a proposed sanitary sewer improvement project as detailed in the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) Community Development Block Grant. Altamont received a $550,000 DCEO block grant last week.

Approved an ordinance authorizing the purchase of real property for an easement for utility purposes at 100 Oak Street for the ongoing water main replacement project.

Charles Mills can be reached at charles.mills@effinghamdailynews.com or by phone at 217-347-7151 ext. 126.
Nearly 4 percent of children living in group homes for youngsters across Japan have at least one parent with foreign roots, forcing staff members to confront issues they were not initially trained to handle, an Asahi Shimbun study shows.

The welfare ministry began a nationwide survey on children of foreign ancestry at childrens institutions last year due to a lack of official data on the subject.

In the study last autumn, The Asahi Shimbun sent questionnaires to about 600 homes for orphaned, neglected and abused children as well as 150 or so homes for infants up to the age of 1 to ascertain problems that arise due to nationality.

Valid responses were given by 60 percent of the facilities. Kayoko Ishii, a professor of sociology at Tokyo's Rikkyo University, assisted in analyzing the findings.

It emerged that 16,776 children were registered in about 450 such institutions as of Oct. 1.

Of that figure, both or one of the parents of 637 children had foreign nationality, accounting for 3.8 percent of the total.

Twenty-four of the 637 children were stateless or in limbo with regard to their nationality. The study found that there were more than 30 such cases in the past.

The ratio of children with mixed parentage was higher at facilities in urban centers in the Kanto, Chubu and Kansai regions than those in other regions.

At a home in Kawasaki, 10 of the 27 children had at least one parent who is not Japanese, making it the facility with the nation's highest ratio of such children.

The study revealed that the number of mixed parentage children is rising even in local regions. One facility in the Tohoku region of northeastern Japan responded that a child in this category had recently become its first case.

Respondents in the study voiced concerns about their ability to communicate with children with overseas roots. - Asahi
INDIANAPOLIS  They are the rare gun laws that attract bipartisan agreement  so-called red flag laws, which allow the authorities to temporarily take away guns from people declared by a judge to be too unstable to have them.

The case of Brandon Hole appeared, at first, to be exactly the kind of situation these laws were designed to address. Indeed, last March, when Mr. Holes mother raised alarms about his mental state, the police seized a shotgun from his home. It was never returned.

But a year later, the police say, Mr. Hole, 19, shot and killed eight people at a FedEx facility before killing himself, using rifles he had legally purchased not long after that incident in March 2020.

While many details are still unclear, Mr. Holes case is a sobering example of how even states with widely supported safeguards can fail to prevent dangerous people from obtaining firearms. The laws, experts say, are often used only as short-term solutions. In the days after the shooting, local officials have struggled to explain how a man who was deemed by law enforcement as too unstable to possess a weapon could go on to legally buy one months later.
Pugh Rape Case Moves Forward

By West Kentucky Star Staff

PADUCAH - A man charged with the rape and assault of an elderly woman appeared in court Friday.Thirty-nine-year-old Gary Pugh appeared for a pretrial conference. The McCracken Circuit Court Clerk said a jury trial is set for June 7.Pugh was arrested on July 20 after an 80-year-old woman told authorities he showed up at her house and asked to pray with her. Police say he then forced the woman into a bathroom where he physically and sexually assaulted her.He faces charges of second-degree assault, first-degree rape, first-degree sexual abuse, first-degree unlawful imprisonment, and persistent felony offender.
It took nearly three months for the new US President to hold his first summit with another nations leader in person. But when he finally found time and overcame the COVID constraints, which leader did he choose to host in the White House? Japans Prime Minister, Yoshihide Suga, who visited Washington at the weekend, Australian time. Why Japan? Because Japan is on the front line of the US confrontation with China, Americas greatest struggle of the 21st century.

Driving home the point, the relationship with Tokyo is our most important alliance in the words of a background briefing that a White House official gave the American press corps before the summit. Other capitals will have their noses out of joint, but the truth is that Biden cannot succeed in meeting Chinas challenge without solid Japanese support.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and Joe Biden met face-to-face at the White House. Credit:AP

Did he get it? The declaration issued by Biden and Suga on the weekend could be the decisive act on Japans part to change from the path of improvement-oriented relations with China to competition-focused or even confrontation, depending on how China reacts, says a leading Japanese analyst, Yoichi Kato. Because Biden asked Japan to step up its commitment to help defend Taiwan, the self-governing territory that China considers a red line priority, against any Chinese aggression. And Japan did.

The world is on alert over Chinas moves against Taiwan. Beijing relentlessly has been increasing its military pressure on Taiwans airspace and maritime zones in recent months. Just last week Beijing flew 25 warplanes into Taiwans air defence identification zone, the biggest number since Taiwan started disclosing such reports last September. Taiwan scrambled its own air force to deter them.
Even as the state grapples with COVID surge, Kerala sent 20,000 litres of liquid oxygen to Goa amid the widespread shortage due to rapid rise in the number of COVID patients across the country.

Goa Health Minister Vishwajit Rane on Sunday said the Kerala government has facilitated the transport of 20,000 litres of liquid oxygen for COVID-19 patients.

Thanking Kerala minister KK Shailaja, Rane tweeted, "I extend my gratitude to Smt @shailajateacher Madam, Hon Health Minister of Kerala, for helping us with movement of 20,000 litres of liquid oxygen for COVID patients in the state of Goa. The people of Goa are really grateful for your contribution to our fight against #COVID19."

Jharkhand wants to import Remdesivir from Bangladesh

With the increasing demand of Remdesivir for critical patients, Jharkhand sought permission from the Centre to import 50,000 vials of the COVID-19 drug from a Bangladeshi pharmaceuticals company.

Chief Minister Hemant Soren on Sunday wrote a letter to Union Cabinet Minister DV Sadanand Gowda asking for permission to import the supply as soon as possible.

File Photo

"We had anticipated the second wave to be less virulent due to vaccination and herd immunity. But, on the contrary, a large proportion of patients are showing major symptoms and require hospitalisation and other such treatment protocols...Remdesivir is a vital medicine in the treatment protocol of a COVID-19 case. Unfortunately, there is an acute scarcity of the medicine in Jharkhand," read the letter.

The letter further said that the supply from Indian manufacturers fell short of the growing demand for the drug which led it to explore the international market for the medicine.

"Since we could not get the Remdesivir as per our requirement from Indian manufacturers, we started exploring the international market for procuring Remdesivir. We have been able to get a quotation from Bangladesh's Beximo pharmaceuticals for 50,000 vials of the drug which the Jharkhand government is willing to procure at the earliest in light of the pressing needs of the medicine," the letter added.

"In view of the above, I would request you to allow us to import and use the medicine from the said company," the letter concluded.

Ambani's Reliance diverts oxygen to Maharashtra for COVID fight

Industrialist Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd is diverting oxygen produced at its refineries to supplement availability in worst-hit COVID states like Maharashtra and the trucks carrying supplies are in transit.

BCCL

Reliance's twin oil refineries in Jamnagar have through minor process modification converted industrial oxygen into medical-use oxygen that can be administered to COVID-19 patients low on oxygen, people aware of the development said.

In all, 100 tonnes of oxygen will be supplied from the Jamnagar refineries, said a PTI report.
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Gunmen on motorcycles attacked a village near Niger's troubled border with Mali, shooting at people as they prayed at the mosque during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and killing 19 people, officials said Sunday.

The attack took place Saturday evening in the village of Gaigorou in Niger's Tillaberi region, which has come under repeated attack by suspected Islamic militants since January.

Niger's government called a cowardly attack by people who claim to be Muslims, and sent the interior and defense ministers to visit the wounded.

"The government will continue to fight the terrorists without weakness, Defense Minister Alkassoum Indatou told residents in western Niger on Sunday.

Islamic extremists aligned with the Islamic State group have long been active in Niger, and suspicion quickly fell on the militants earlier this year after gunmen began staging a series of large-scale attacks on civilians near the Malian border.

It began with a January attack on two villages that killed at least 100 people. The following month 237 more were killed in a series of attacks at the hands of armed gunmen aboard motorcycles.

There have been no claims of responsibility for the wave of attacks.

Not only are jihadis active in the Tillaberi region, but the counterterrorism offensives against those extremists have helped give rise to ethnic militias, analysts say. Intercommunal tensions have been exacerbated as a result, particularly near the border between Mali and Niger.

The mounting violence poses a strong threat to Niger's newly inaugurated President Mohamed Bazoum. He was sworn into office earlier this month only days after security forces thwarted an attempted military coup at the presidential palace in the capital of Niamey.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
The project that manages the WordPress content management system, which claims to power about 41% of the Web, will treat Google's new ad-tracking technology, Federated Learning of Cohorts, as a security issue and block it from working.

A post from a core developer, who goes by the moniker Carike, on Sunday cited the explanation provided by the Electronic Frontier Foundation about FLoC, in which it described the technology as a "terrible idea".

Google's testing of FLoC was not announced publicly by the company and came to light after the EFF, an organisation that fights for digital rights, announced the launch of a trial on 30 March.

Privacy-focused engine DuckDuckGo and the companies behind the browsers Vivaldi and Brave have also opposed Google's move. Vivaldi's chief executive Jon von Tetzchner called the new data harvesting venture "nasty".

In the post, Carike said: "WordPress powers approximately 41% of the web  and this community can help combat racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination and discrimination against those with mental illness with four lines of code."

The post added that the sites which wanted to use FLoC would undoubtedly have the technical talent on board to override the proposed filter.

"When balancing the stakeholder interests, the needs of website administrators who are not even aware that this is something that they need to mitigate  and the interests of the users and visitors to those sites, is simply more compelling," the post said.

"Furthermore, for WordPress versions that support privacy settings, we can easily add an on-off toggle to enable websites to opt in. This would only require a few more lines of code and only a couple of new strings."

Regarding the need to roll out a fix right away, the post pointed out that the next WordPress version, 5.8, was only scheduled to be released in July, while FLoC was likely to be rolled out in April.

"Furthermore, a significant number of WordPress sites only update to minor versions. By back-porting, we can protect more sites and more visitors to those sites  and amplify the impact," the post added.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- SolAero Technologies Corp. (SolAero), a leading provider of high efficiency solar cells, solar panels, and composite structural products for satellite and aerospace applications, congratulates the team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Labs (JPL) on the successful maiden flight of the Mars Helicopter, Ingenuity. SolAero is proud to have supplied the solar panel that has enabled the first powered, controlled flight on another planet.

The solar panel for Ingenuity was manufactured in SolAero's state-of-the-art production facility in Albuquerque, NM. The panel is populated with SolAero's industry-leading, 33.0% efficient IMM (Inverted Metamorphic Multi-junction) class of solar cells that generate in excess of 10% more power than other space solar cells in production today. The IMM is also more than 40% lighter than typical space grade solar cells. The combination of higher efficiency and significantly lower mass was a critical factor that was deemed mission enabling for Ingenuity's successful flight.

The success of Ingenuity further extends SolAero's long history of powering satellites and spacecrafts for NASA and JPL, including the Mars 2020 Cruise Stage, the InSight Lander that is currently operating on the Mars surface, the DAWN asteroid mission, the Parker Solar Probe to the sun, the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission and many others.

"SolAero is extremely proud to be a part of this history-making flight and supporting it with the highest performance solar panels available," said Brad Clevenger, CEO of SolAero Technologies. "SolAero's industry leading technology and track record of performance continue to make it the supplier of choice for the most demanding satellite applications."

About SolAero Technologies Corp.

SolAero Technologies is a leading provider of satellite solar power solutions and precision aerospace structures to the global space markets, encompassing a wide array of applications including civil space exploration, science and earth observation, defense intelligence and communication, and commercial telecommunications industries. The business was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. For more information about SolAero, visit https://solaerotech.com/

About NASA/JPL

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a unique national research facility that carries out robotic space and Earth science missions. JPL helped open the Space Age by developing America's first Earth-orbiting science satellite, creating the first successful interplanetary spacecraft, and sending robotic missions to study all the planets in the solar system as well as asteroids, comets and Earth's moon. In addition to its missions, JPL developed and manages NASA's Deep Space Network, a worldwide system of antennas that communicates with interplanetary spacecraft. JPL is a federally funded research and development center managed for NASA by Caltech. For more information about JPL, visit https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/

Contact:

Ms. Maggie Smith

Corporate Marketing Communications Manager

(505) 463-1732

[email protected]

SOURCE SolAero Technologies Corp

Related Links

http://www.solaerotech.com


MENLO PARK, Calif., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Patrick Scott, an executive vice president at global consulting firm Protiviti, has been named to Consulting magazine's 2021 'Global Leaders in Consulting' list. The award recognizes leaders who are making a worldwide impact on the profession by displaying outstanding leadership qualities and capabilities and exerting extraordinary influence on their global firms and clients. Scott, a founding managing director with Protiviti in 2002, following 23 years at Arthur Andersen, is recognized in the Excellence in Influence category.

Scott is responsible for Protiviti's global industry program, global key account program and global marketing. He also serves as the Financial Services Global Industry Leader, Protiviti's largest industry practice. Scott is a member of the firm's executive team reporting to the CEO and has mentored several emerging Protiviti leaders who have progressed to the executive team under his mentorship. He has had a wide range of increasing responsibilities while at Protiviti, including chairing the Quality and Risk Management Committee, leadership of the Chicago market's practice, and leader of the Central U.S. region  while continuously leading consulting engagements with large teams for some of the firm's largest global clients.

"Pat is one of the most respected executives at Protiviti and has been instrumental in enabling the firm to grow from a startup in 2002 to a global firm with revenues of over $1 billion," said Joseph Tarantino, Protiviti president and CEO. "His dedication to collaborating with clients through our industry programs is just one of the ways Pat has helped establish and maintain our reputation for excellence in working with our clients to help them confidently meet challenges and take advantage of transformational opportunities."

The 2021 Global Leaders in Consulting honorees were celebrated during a virtual awards event on April 15.

Previous Protiviti recipients of the Global Leaders in Consulting award are Country Market Leader Sanjeev Agarwal (2019), Executive Vice President Andrew Clinton (2018), and Managing Director Philip Fretwell (2017). In 2020, Protiviti was recognized as one of Consulting magazine's Best Firms to Work For, its seventh consecutive year on the list.

About Protiviti

Protiviti (www.protiviti.com) is a global consulting firm that delivers deep expertise, objective insights, a tailored approach and unparalleled collaboration to help leaders confidently face the future. Protiviti and our independent and locally owned Member Firms provide clients with consulting and managed solutions in finance, technology, operations, data, analytics, governance, risk and internal audit through our network of more than 85 offices in over 25 countries.

Named to the 2021 Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list, Protiviti has served more than 60 percent of Fortune 1000 and 35 percent of Fortune Global 500 companies. The firm also works with smaller, growing companies, including those looking to go public, as well as with government agencies. Protiviti is a wholly owned subsidiary of Robert Half (NYSE: RHI). Founded in 1948, Robert Half is a member of the S&P 500 index.

Protiviti is not licensed or registered as a public accounting firm and does not issue opinions on financial statements or offer attestation services.

Editor's note: photos available upon request.

SOURCE Protiviti

Related Links

http://www.protiviti.com


Arizona News

Phoenix, Arizona - Attorney General Mark Brnovich filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and federal officials for violating the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) over destructive immigration policies. The Attorney Generals Office (AGO) is asking the U.S. District Court in Arizona to void the decisions to stop border wall construction and the Remain in Mexico policy until the federal government complies with its obligations under NEPA.

Its the pinnacle of hypocrisy for the Biden Administration to claim it wants to protect our environment, while not enforcing federal statutes that are specifically designed for that purpose, said Attorney General Mark Brnovich. Were not going to sit idly by as the Biden Administration ignores real harms to our state resulting from its heavy-handed executive orders.

NEPA protects the environment by requiring federal agencies to carefully weigh environmental considerations before taking any major federal action. As the drafters of NEPA recognized, population growth has significant environmental impacts. In its complaint, the AGO argues that DHS and other federal officials did not provide environmental impact statements or environmental assessments when DHS abruptly halted ongoing border wall construction and also began permitting entry of additional migrants by ending the Remain in Mexico policy.

Abruptly Halting Border Wall Construction

President Joe Biden, in one of his first official actions on January 20, 2021, ordered the halting of ongoing construction of miles of border wall, leaving haphazard and unplanned gaps between physical barriers and encouraging widespread illegal migration. Since construction was stopped, machinery has been standing idle in areas of Arizona, with incomplete work in numerous places.

As a direct consequence of the gaps in the nations border infrastructure, migrants have been crossing into Arizona in greater numbers than ever before. One source estimates that approximately 1,000 individuals are able to evade detention and enter the United States illegally every single day, many through these glaring holes in the border wall.

Inevitably, many of these migrants settle in Arizona, increasing the population of the state. Despite these foreseeable effects resulting from DHS policies, at no time did the agency undertake any analysis of the environmental impacts.

Stopping Remain in Mexico Policy and Permitting Additional Migrants to Enter the U.S.

President Biden also ordered DHS to stop carrying out the Remain in Mexico program in February 2021 and allow asylum seekers to enter the United States while claims are pending. Thousands of immigrants have now been released and continue to be as a result of the termination of the program. Many will be able to remain in the United States even if their asylum claims are eventually denied, or they simply fail to appear for their hearings.

While the courts have repeatedly recognized that the environmental impacts of such policies must be analyzed prior to their implementation under NEPA, DHS has never attempted to do so.

Impact of Increased Population on the Human Environment: Thousands of additional individuals have settled and continue to settle in Arizona than otherwise would have as a result of DHS actions. Migrants, like everyone else, need housing, infrastructure, hospitals, and schools. They drive cars, purchase goods, and use public parks and other facilities. All of these activities have significant environmental impacts, including displacement of undeveloped lands and additional air emissions. But although courts have repeatedly recognized that these impacts must be analyzed under NEPA, DHS has never even attempted to do so.
After pulling her fatally wounded friend and on-duty partner from their mangled police vehicle, Senior Constable Catherine Nielsen needed support from her Toowoomba colleagues, instead, some chose to make threats and lie to her over how much they knew about the gunman responsible.

Senior Constable Nielsen described the late Senior Constable Brett Forte as a very good friend and they had worked together in Toowoombas Tactical Crime Squad for a number of years.

Senior Constable Catherine Nielsen leaves Toowoomba Magistrates Court on Monday afternoon. Credit:Toby Crockford

Her close colleague was gunned down by Ricky Maddison, who was on the run from police, on May 29, 2017, near Gatton in the Lockyer Valley, west of Brisbane.

Maddison ambushed Senior Constable Nielsen and Senior Constable Forte while they were chasing him, and unleashed a hail of automatic gunfire on their police four-wheel-drive.
ATLANTA and BRISTOL, Tenn., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --

Reopening of Facility and Resumption of Production to:

Protect and strengthen U.S. domestic medical supply chain with high-quality, onshore alternative to foreign dependence for life-saving medications

Combine experience and success of Jackson Healthcare with scientific and manufacturing expertise of Bristol, Tennessee

Develop economic engine with new job prospects in Upper East Tennessee

Jackson Healthcare, a family of highly specialized healthcare staffing, search and technology companies, today announced that it has purchased the last manufacturing facility in the United States that is authorized to produce Amoxicillin and Amoxicillin Clavulanate, commonly known as Amoxil and Augmentin. With this acquisition, a critical piece of the nation's medical supply chain has been secured, reducing the country's growing dependence on foreign-produced, life-saving antibiotics.

Jackson Healthcare purchased the 360,000-square-foot, world-class antibiotic production facility located on more than 40 acres in Bristol, Tenn. on April 16, 2021. The acquisition has not only rescued the manufacturer from bankruptcy but put it under American ownership for the first time in its 43-year history.

Amoxicillin and Amoxicillin Clavulanate account for more than 30 percent of all antibiotics prescribed each year, and today, approximately one in 12 people in the U.S. are prescribed Amoxicillin on an annual basis. Given the widespread use and demand for these medications, restarting production in the Bristol manufacturing facility is significant, helping the U.S. build its supply of these essential antibiotics.

USAntibiotics, Part of the Jackson Healthcare Family of Companies

The Bristol, Tenn.-based antibiotic manufacturing facility will be known as USAntibiotics and become part of the Jackson Healthcare family of companies. Jackson Healthcare is a privately held organization that was founded in 2000. Based just north of Atlanta, it is Great Place to Work Certified and consistently named among the nation's best workplaces.

"Jackson Healthcare is delighted to share this news and extend a big thank you to the employees of the manufacturer and communities of Upper East Tennessee. With an unwavering commitment to the facility and production of these life-saving medications, they are the true heroes in this story," says Shane Jackson, president of Jackson Healthcare. "We are thrilled to welcome them to the Jackson Healthcare family of companies."

Shane Jackson adds that this team of great people doing great work aligns well with Jackson Healthcare's mission of improving the delivery of patient care and the lives of everyone we touch  and that USAntibiotics can have a positive, powerful impact on the production, quality and availability of popular antibiotics that will benefit all Americans.

In 2008, every dose of Amoxicillin and Amoxicillin Clavulanate in the U.S. was produced in the Bristol, Tenn. facility. After the patents on these medications expired, the facility continued to produce generic equivalents. It recently faced increasing economic pressure, however, from low-cost products sold by overseas competitors, ultimately leading to its bankruptcy.

"We could simply not stand by and allow this essential antibiotic manufacturing facility to close," explains Rick Jackson, founder, CEO and chairman of Jackson Healthcare. "The national security implications and ability to reduce our dependence on foreign production of life-saving medications are among the key factors that led to our decision to make this purchase and investment. It's ultimately an investment in America."

Reopening and Restarting Production

The Jacksons note that the company's focus right now is on getting the production facility back to work, hiring additional people and adding the resources to help it realize its full potential.

"We are now beginning the critical work that goes with restarting the facility. It has a deep history and proven track record of tremendous production power and quality. We look forward to bringing it back to full capacity and all that will mean for Americans who need these vital antibiotics," adds Rick Jackson.

This Bristol, Tenn. site has been designated by the Department of Homeland Security as a critical manufacturing infrastructure facility. At full capacity, it can produce billions of doses of American-made antibiotics on an annual basis.

"This is a new day  an incredible day for America and the people of Tennessee," shares Gary Murphey, trustee for the estate of the previous owner of the manufacturing facility. "Under American ownership for the first time since its founding, this is a story with the optimal outcome  one that will help save lives, provide new job prospects, and keep production of core antibiotic medications in the U.S. to protect our people and our interests."

Jackson Healthcare will provide further updates in the coming months on the restart of production and other key milestones.

About Jackson Healthcare

Jackson Healthcare is a family of highly specialized healthcare staffing, search and technology companies. With a mission to improve the delivery of patient care and the lives of everyone it touches, it helps healthcare facilities across the country serve more than 10 million patients each year. Backed by more than 1,500 associates and with over $1.4 billion in annual revenue, Jackson Healthcare is a top three U.S. healthcare staffing firm. In addition to being Great Place to Work certified, it is consistently named an employer of choice, having been nationally recognized as a best workplace in healthcare, a best workplace for women and a best workplace for millennials, as well as being named one of 2020's Healthiest Employers by the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Learn more at www.jacksonhealthcare.com.

SOURCE Jackson Healthcare

Related Links

http://www.jacksonhealthcare.com


Pam Kelly Glauber danced a bit outside of her comfort zone in a performance set to debut virtually this week.

The West Hartford resident  a ballet dancer accustomed to dancing en pointe  is a part of a contemporary dance called A Voice of Thousands, which she described as fast-paced and energetic. Its one of four pieces that make up a virtual performance a Hartford-based dance company, Dimensional Dance, has coming out on Earth Day, which is April 22.

The piece shes in has been a really fantastic challenge said Glauber, who has worked at her technique and conveying the pieces emotion.

That said, I miss my pointe shoes, she said.

The overall performance, called Earth Day 2021: We Are All Connected, features Connecticut dancers performing in environmentally-related pieces envisioned by different choreographers.

Most of our programs are educational, having to do with racial justice or the environment, said Dimensional Dance director Ruth Lewis. But this is the first time weve been able to do a big program about the environment.

And the educational aspect carries into this performance, too. One of the pieces, Chrysalis  which Lewis, the choreographer for that dance, said is about caterpillars emerging from the chrysalis  begins the lineup. Lewis said an educator would tell those tuning in about milkweed, which is the sole source of food for caterpillars turning into monarch butterflies, and also talk about pollinators.

Theres a period of time that the insect hangs upside down as a part of the monarch transformation. Lewis said the dancers would be, too, while using yoga silks in a studio at Connecticut Aerial Yoga.

Another piece, Hassamme, showcases an individual so dedicated to preserving the natural world that they become one with it, in mind and spirit, according to a news release.

Chloe Knopf created that piece, and its filmed outside, and thats a beautiful piece, Lewis said. She films it by a river, and its inspired by the untouched lands in Finland.

The Ocean in One Drop  a piece that dancers Matisse Madden and Jus Hues choreographed  is one Lewis referred to as a celebration of the ocean.

And he sort of represents a mariner in the ocean or the human element, and Matisse (Madden), as a ballet dancer, sort of represents the ocean life, and whether its the plants or the animals, Lewis said.

Lewis said theyll be linking in their program to a video from GreenWave.

And theres also A Voice of Thousands. Cat Quinn choreographed that dance, which Lewis said is a tribute to those who peacefully protest to protect the environment.

Lewis said theyre trying to arrange an interview with Jasilyn Charger, a Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe member who has been a part of the Keystone Pipeline protest effort..

When they were filming that dance at the state Capitol, Lewis said that Gov. Ned Lamont stopped by.

That was a really fun surprise, Glauber said.

As far as her hopes for the performance, Lewis said she wants it to inspire people to take action. Those interested in viewing the overall performance can access the Eventbrite page for the performance at dimensionaldance.com, and theres a recommended $10 donation for the show.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.  Born in West Brighton and raised in Port Richmond, John McBeth is a lifelong Staten Islander and longtime community activist who wants to be the North Shores next City Council member.

McBeth, who currently lives in Mariners Harbor, is one of over 12 candidates in the June 22 Democratic primary for the race to replace City Councilwoman Debi Rose, who will be term-limited at the end of the year.

McBeth, who works as a senior safety instructor for Consolidated Edison and serves as a member of Community Board 1, is not one of the seven candidates in the primary to have raised enough money to qualify for, according to the latest data from the New York City Campaign Finance Board.

Given the crowded fields in this years City Council races, the Advance/SILive.com opted to send questionnaires to each of the candidates in this years Mid-Island and North Shore City Council races.

Here are McBeths unedited responses:

What will you do to ensure your district fully recovers from the pandemic?

I will make specific, public pushes to educate and encourage everyone to take a vaccine, Ill encourage mask use for as long as it is deemed medically necessary, and I will lead by example from within the office. My City Council office will become the centralized hub for vital information. I will join in legislation that limits penalties or extends deadlines for property taxes, fees, and fines.

What is your top priority outside pandemic recovery?

There are two other pandemics affecting the North Shore, the first is Education disparity. I will push to eliminate disparities in funding and other resources for North Shore Schoolsthere should be no daylight between what is available to South Shore students, and what is available to North Shore students for example. My second top priority is gun violence. As a long time anti violence advocate, I intend to start by addressing the underlying causes for gun violence.



I will support those non-profits and community based organizations that actively reduce violence in our neighborhoods, and aid in the development of sound, proven strategies. By now, we should clearly realize that we cannot prosecute or arrest our way out of this issue. We have to address the causes.

What do you see as the future of policing in New York City? What is your position on the City Councils reform package announced Jan. 29?

As someone who has sat at the table during police-community relations resolution efforts, who has worked with the NYPD on developing strategies, and who is an NYPD Community Partner, I first-hand see the value of good police community relations. I have trained alongside NYPD brass in inherent bias training sessions. Admittedly, this is not an issue that we can train our way out of.accountability is important to every job, and NYPD should not be held to a different standard.

In short, I agree with all of the provisions laid out on Jan 29th directed at police reform, most notably: end qualified immunity, remove police from schools, and the formulation of a specialized response for those experiencing emotional distress. Not EVERY issue requires a gun, a badge, and force to fix.

What efforts started by Councilwoman Rose would you like to continue and what would you like to do differently?

In the borough of parks, I would like to continue the process of renovating and improving public parks. School expansions or new construction still needs to be prioritized as well. As for changes, I would make my office more transparent in sharing information with constituents as rapidly as possible. I would make my office the central hub for information concerning the district (similar to what I currently do with Staten island Community Calendar on Facebook.

John McBeth (center) is pictured with Councilwoman Debi Rose (left) at the renaming of Roff Street at the corner of Vanderbilt Avenue to Community Leader William L. Taitt Way in Clifton on Saturday, Oct. 10, 2020. (Staten Island Advance/Derek Alvez).

Finally, I would add in a layer of accountability to constituent complaints by publicly tracking them by issue whereas the public can readily see what has been done to resolve an issue. Finally, I would assist community based organizations that are doing measurably good work towards improving our community. I would help them expand, find resources, find suitable staff, and assist them with the necessary paperwork to be fully established.

How has your prior work experience prepared you for this position?

I have a lifetime of community service: Volunteering in my high school service group, the Seagull Society; volunteering to protect this country with the United States Navy as a Nuclear Operator, volunteering in the church as a Steward (Shiloh AME Zion) then as a Deacon (St. Philips Baptist Church); volunteering to stand on street corners where violence has occurred in our communities and encouraging others to do the same by co-founding Occupy the Block; volunteering to count the homeless (HOPE2020), house and feed the homeless (Director, Board of Directors for Project Hospitality, Co-Chair of their Governance Committee); volunteering on political campaigns at every level of government, local to national; volunteering with interracial (Friendship Dinners, US DOJ trained in Community Dialogues), and interreligious organizations and efforts (Building Bridges Coalition, Staten Island Interreligious Clergy Leadership); volunteering as an elected Judicial Delegate; volunteering on Staten Islands Community Board #1 (and as the chairperson for the local area committee encompassing Port Richmond, Mariners Harbor, Elm, Park, and Arlington); volunteering for the Richmond County District Attorneys Hate Crimes Task Force; volunteering to represent the community in discussions on closing Rikers Island with the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform; volunteering as a member of the Staten Island Community Justice Center Advisory Board tasked with bringing a Community Justice Center to Staten Island; volunteering to spearhead the march to promote voter registration right here on Staten Island on the 50th Anniversary of the March on Selma. These all required talent in organization, logistics, effective design, and most importantly, time management.

Do you support any of the current mayoral candidates? If so, which one and why?

I have not publicly come out in favor of any specific candidate to date, however, I like Eric Adams and Maya Wiley. Eric Adams, far ahead of consideration to run, visited our Occupy the Block operation to get ideas for combatting gun violence in Brooklyn.

How would you like to see transit improved on the North Shore?

NO MORE STUDIES, lets move forward with the North Shore BRT. Where feasible, streets should be closed to encourage foot traffic whether permanently or temporarily during the day. More protected bike lanes and considerations for trash on the street in areas where there are narrow sidewalks.

How will you hope to ensure responsible development on the North Shore with a focus on addressing the areas infrastructure needs?

By demanding that the infrastructure question be answered FIRST. Before any project that requires my approval is decided, I must include community input. A fully transparent office would offer this information on first contact in order to give the community time to ingest the information. Responsible development that requires approval must have affordable units included, but the formula MUST be changed.

The terminal building and parking garage that CanAm Enterprises believes the plan to build a smaller version of the New York Wheel -- about 420 feet high -- on the St. George waterfront will likely happen by early 2025. Feb. 25, 2021. (Staten Island Advance/Jan Somma-Hammel)

Do you hope to reinvigorate some of the more tourist-focused development? If so, how would you hope to do that?

The people know what they want, I would encourage a people-focused effort that takes all voices into consideration. I would also consider voices from those outside the district to hear what they would be willing to visit Staten Island. Smaller spaces and ideas include gallery space, artisan space, and the like.

What is your position on a public hospital for Staten Island?

I refuse to lie to my neighbors, we do NOT meet the demographics currently set for having a public hospital. Until we do, I believe it is fair and prudent to receive the equivalent portion of public hospital funding provided by our tax base. That funding would go towards efforts to replicate the access provided by a public hospital

What is your position on the 44 Victory homeless shelter?

I believe that Staten Island SHOULD house OUR homeless, preferably temporarily. 44 Victory is too big for that type of facility in that area. The publics input should be considered, or at the very least, they should have been properly informed.

Where would you like to see funds directed and what steps would you like to see the city take to address drug addiction on the Island?

Funding should be directed towards the heaviest lift in addressing this issue: inpatient rehabilitation. In the interim, it is vitally important to try what hasnt been tried yet. A high-impact mobile service delivery system that incentivizes recovery through vouchers. Dealers are quickly replaced, and squeezing the supply only produces more desperate attempts to get to substances. We cant arrest our way out of this issue either.

-

We must educate the young and assist the addicted. We have to go where they are, and we need to keep telling their stories. I believe that a large part of the proliferation of opioids is a direct result of people withholding stories of their loved ones. Information is our best weapon, but we have to look at it as a health issue over a crime issue.
MASON CITY, Iowa  Two Minnesota women are going to prison after a high-speed chase through three North Iowa counties.

Heather Marie Krumrie, 32 of St. Paul, MN, and Marion Marie Baca, 34 of Hinckley, MN, were arrested on January 31. Law enforcement says they were first spotted in a vehicle speeding on Highway 218 near Plainfield in Chickasaw County and a chase continued through Floyd and Cerro Gordo counties at speeds of over 150 miles per hour. Court documents state stop sticks were used to halt the vehicle just outside Mason City on Highway 18.

Investigators say Krumrie and Baca were throwing objects out of the window during the chase.

Krumrie pleaded guilty to possession with intent to deliver methamphetamine and failure to use a drug tax stamp. Shes been sentenced to 10 years in prison. Baca pleaded guilty to eluding and has been given five years in prison.
As India's coronavirus situation threatens to spiral out of control, overrun hospitals are scrambling to come up with something we usually take for granted: oxygen.

The country of 1.3 billion people added a record-high of 261,500 new cases on Sunday (local time), with one in six people who underwent a test returning a positive coronavirus result, authorities said.

In Indias capital New Delhi the situation appears twice as dire as it recorded 25,500 cases in a 24-hour period, with about one in three people returning a positive result.

Less than 100 critical care beds were available in the city of more than 20 million people, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said, as social media was flooded with people complaining about lack of beds, oxygen and drugs.

Workers transport oxygen cylinders for Covid-19 patients on a stretcher in Patna, India on April 17. Source: Getty Images

In a statement, the city government said it had informed Prime Minister Narendra Modis federal administration about the dire need of beds and oxygen.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal tweeted late Sunday that there was an "acute shortage of oxygen", adding in capital letters that "oxygen has become an emergency" in the megapolis.

"The cases are rising very fast... only 100 beds left," he said earlier in a video statement.

In recent weeks, the number of confirmed Covid cases in the country has rocketed past the previous peak.

During the first wave of the pandemic last year, small manufacturers that produced industrial oxygen were allowed to produce medical oxygen, The Indian Express reported.

The government is now trying to leverage all it can to boost vital medical supplies as it expands the number of makeshift hospital beds available.

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Amid shortages, a health worker adjusts an oxygen cylinder that is being used for Covid-19 patients at a private hospital in Allahabad, India. Source: Getty

India scrambles to shore up oxygen supplies

Special trains  dubbed the Oxygen Express  have been set up to transport oxygen tankers to needy areas, while the government said oxygen use for industrial purposes would be limited.

Story continues

"To immediately cater to the rapidly increasing demand of medical oxygen due to surge in Covid-19 cases, supply of oxygen for industrial purposes has been prohibited except for 9 selected industries," Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan said

Oxygen has applications in the iron, steel, glass, plastics and textiles industry, among others.

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Indian cases have skyrocketed in April. Source: Reuters

India's Sunday tally of new cases took the total number of cases to nearly 14.8 million, second only to the United States, which has reported more than 31 million infections.

The countrys deaths from COVID-19 rose by a record 1,501 to reach a total of 177,150.

As cases rise across India, criticism is mounting over how Prime Minister Narendra Modis administration has handled the health crisis, as religious festivals and election rallies attended by thousands continue.

with AFP, Reuters

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Five years ago, Alabama ONE was not in a fun place, to say the least. The credit union had been placed into conservatorship, which can sometimes signal the beginning of a slow demise. But this particular story has a happy ending.

Marketing Manager Dantrel Robinson joins The Remarkable Credit Union podcast to talk about how Alabama ONE was able to not only survive, but flourish, rebuilding its brand and regaining community trust.

This month, we tackle the BIG question: What can we learn from a thriving credit union that was in conservatorship less than five years ago?
We can hear the crackling and feel the warmth already.

Soon summer nights will be upon us and whats better than relaxing by a fire in the backyard. An added bonus to owning a fire pit is roasting smores and hot dogs over an open flame.

Its no surprise fire pits and outdoor fireplaces are on the wish lists of many Lehigh Valley homeowners amid the coronavirus pandemic. Gregory J. Case, an agent who works for RE/MAX Central in the Upper Saucon Township area, said he is seeing an uptick in demand for all outdoor amenities since the March 2020 shutdown.

Areas like fire pits and outdoor kitchens are becoming more and more popular with existing homeowners and buyers alike, Case told lehighvalleylive.com. People feel like these areas create a safe environment to socialize in small groups, socially distanced, in an inviting setting.

We scoped out five of our favorite homes with fire pits or outdoor fireplaces currently for sale locally on Trulia. We listed them in order from lowest to highest in asking price. All the information came from Trulia listings.

A fire pit with ample space is stationed in a fenced-in yard in this Bethlehem property.

5. 1316 W. Market St., Bethlehem ($289,000)

This four-bedroom, three-bathroom homes comes complete with a fenced-in backyard with fire pit.

The property is a mix of old and new world charm with hardwood flooring throughout and a renovated kitchen with exposed brick. There is a full bathroom on each level. Photos show a formal dining space and multiple gathering spaces.

The home includes four bedrooms and three bathrooms.

Outdoors, theres a multi-leveled deck, stone walkways, patio and shed, as well as open space surrounded by landscaping and foliage. Theres also an oversized, detached two-car garage.

The patio on this Upper Milford property includes an outdoor fireplace.

4. 7354 Saint Peters Road, Upper Milford ($629,999)

An outdoor fireplace completes the back patio of this historic home, dating back to the 1800s.

The five-bedroom, four-bathroom home was formerly a stone barn with many architectural details remaining intact. Theres massive walls, soaring ceilings, limestone flooring, spiral iron staircases, arched windows, rustic-reclaimed exposed beams, cherry hardwood floors and solid mahogany throughout the estate.

The historic home dates back to the 1800s.

Photos show formal living and dining spaces. One of the gathering rooms has a bar and a floor-to-ceiling indoor stone fireplace. Therea also a modern kitchen.

Outdoors, there are more than three acres of grass bordered by woods, a pair of small streams, a stocked pond with fountains and a stone waterfall. Theres also a spring house and ornate fountain, as well as the paved patio.

3. 50 High Saddle Lane, Upper Macungie ($649,900)

This four-bedroom, five-bathroom home includes a backyard fire pit complete with privacy shrubs and what appears to be built-in benches.

Photos can be found here.

There is a total of 5,128 square feet of living space. Highlights include a full brick exterior, quoining, dentil molding, hip-style roof and various interior finishes. A modern kitchen features concrete countertops, a large center island, custom cabinetry with soft close drawers, under cabinet lighting, and stainless steel appliances.

Theres a gathering space off the kitchen complete with a gas fireplace. The main level also includes a guest bedroom with private bathroom. Upstairs, the master suite includes a tray ceiling with en suite bathroom, complete with heated flooring, a jetted tub, double-bowl vanity, and skylights. Off the master suite is studio space and an office area.

Downstairs, a finished basement includes a theatre room, den, more office space, and bathroom.

The fire pit includes swinging benches.

2. 1634 Chestertown Road, South Whitehall ($770,000)

This 6,224-square-foot home comes complete with a fire pit with swinging benches beside an in-ground pool.

Theres a total of four bedrooms and four bathrooms. A modern kitchen comes complete with stainless steel appliances, a double oven and a center island with contrasting granite countertop. Theres also a breakfast area and morning room.

This 6,224-square-foot home has four bedrooms and four bathrooms.

There are two fireplaces -- one in the family room and another in the master suite. The master suite also includes a sitting area and huge walk-in closet. Theres also a walkout lower level with media room, recreational room, fitness room and a guest bedroom.

Outdoors, theres a sunken Florida room with wet bar, as well as a Trex-style deck and concrete patio.

This back yard patio in Upper Saucon Township comes complete with an outdoor fireplace.

1. 2747 Avenue Du Village, Upper Saucon Township ($1.2 million)

This 3,967-square-foot townhome comes complete with a covered stone patio with an outdoor fireplace.

Theres a total of four bedrooms and four bathrooms. The main level features a modern kitchen with stainless steel appliances, as well as another seating area.

The townhome totals 3,967 square feet.

Completing the main level is an office, master suite with spa-like en suite bathroom, two guest bedrooms and a laundry room.

Upstairs, theres a second room for office space, as well as a modern bathroom and large fourth bedroom.

Please subscribe now and support the local journalism YOU rely on and trust.

Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com.
New Delhi: Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Monday (April 19) took it to his Twitter to share his response to former PM Manmohan Singh's letter on tackling the COVID-19 crisis addressed to PM Narendra Modi.

Tweeting the previews of his response to ex-PM Manmohan Singh, the Union Minister said that the history would be kinder to him (Manmohan Singh) if only his own party had followed his advice.

It is saddening, Dr Singh, that while you very well understand the importance of vaccination as an important method of fighting COVID-19 battle, people in responsible position in your party as well as the state governments formed by your party do not seem to share your views, wrote Harsh Vardhan in his reply.

Taking a jibe at the opposition, the Union Health Minister also said, It is shocking that senior members of Congress party are yet to utter a single word of gratitude towards our social scientist community and vaccine manufacturers for innovating under trying circumstances and empowering the world with vaccines.

The response from Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan comes a day after ex-PMs letter to PM Modi in which Manmohan Singh wrote, "the key to our fight against COVID19 must be ramping up the vaccination effort. We must resist the temptation to look at the absolute numbers being vaccinated, and focus instead on the percentage of the population vaccinated."

Earlier, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi also chaired a meet of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) and accused the central government of "gross unpreparedness" and "adhocism" in battling COVID-19 crisis.

Live TV
Spain's Ministry of Health is proposing to postpone the second dose of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for up to eight weeks among people under 80 years of age to increase the number of people vaccinated - even if the protection is not complete. This would be in line with the strategy being used in other countries such as Israel and the UK.

The department, headed by Carolina Darias, has proposed this radical change in vaccination strategy in a document sent to the Public Health Commission to be debated at an extraordinary meeting this Tuesday. This will take place on the same day that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) issues its opinion on the safety of the Janssen vaccine after rare episodes of blood clots in young women in the United States.

If the proposal gets the go-ahead, the second dose of the two formulas would be administered after 56 days. At the moment, the second Pfizer jab is 21 days after the first and Moderna's 28 days.

The unexpected move from the Ministry of Health comes after Darias herself rejected the request of some regions last week to extend the time between first and second jabs of the Pifzer and Moderna vaccines for up to 42 days, a practice that already has the approval of the European Medicines Agency.

At the time she said, "The most vulnerable groups should have maximum protection."

But according to the new Ministry of Health proposal, "an extended interval between doses will result in higher levels of antibodies and a longer period of protection."
Stronger than expected Q3 sales and earnings has caused Skellerup to increase its forecast full year FY21 net profit after tax (NPAT) to a range of $37 to $39 million. This compares to FY20 NPAT of $29.1 million.

CEO David Mair said all businesses have continued to perform well.

Sales of potable water products in the USA and demand for our flashing and plumbing products in all markets were robust in Q3. We expect continued solid demand in Q4. Sales of essential dairy consumable products were also better than expected during what is a normal seasonal low period. We are now moving into the peak part of the NZ season where dairy farmers undertake maintenance so expect a strong Q4 result. Demand for our high-performance marine foam products continues to grow in all markets. Our order book remains strong, particularly in the USA.

The global shortage of containers and shipping space along with international port congestion is impacting our business. We are focused on delivering the essential products we supply throughout the world. Our manufacturing teams are focused on securing raw materials and running our operations as efficiently as possible to meet the requirements of customers.

In February, Skellerup reported a record first half NPAT of $19.5 million. Skellerup will report its results for the full FY21 year on 19 August 2021.

Please see the link below for details:

Market Update 19 April 2021

Source: Skellerup Holdings Limited

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In early 2021 the Israeli military announced that it was the prime backer of the new Advanced Navigation Technology Center. This new division of state-owned IAI (Israel Aerospace Industries) will develop and manufacture a new generation of INS (Inertial Navigation System) technology to complement or replace satellite (GPS) guidance. IAI did not provide any more details of the new INS technology, not even the name of the new system. IAI already develops and makes INS systems as unjammable backups for GPS systems but the future is seen as better INS.

The 21st century saw research in the U.S. and other industrialized countries developing new concepts and technologies that greatly improved INS accuracy and cost. By 2013 prototypes of new INS tech proved INS could be nearly as accurate as GPS and almost as small. Cost was still a factor, with the new INS still costing more than 10 times current GPS. But this is all a big improvement over what has been available before. The new INS tech can now be used to more effectively monitor GPS and alert the operator that their GPS has either developed a problem or is being jammed. The new INS systems are also useful for some fast missiles that often lose their GPS signal as they maneuver. Another urgent chore for INS is to more effectively deal with the growing use of GPS spoofing (misdirecting). This involves EW (electronic Warfare) equipment that can mislead) rather than jam without alerting the victim that their navigation system might not be reliable. Thus, even with the ability of GPS anti-jamming tech to keep up with jammer technology, there is still a demand for a new INS. That has led to smaller, cheaper and more accurate INS systems. Aside from airlines and commercial shipping, there is not much of a mass market for these new INS systems because for most users, GPS is reliable enough to keep the INS gear out of the more cost-sensitive markets. But the demand from the airlines, shipping companies and the military is huge. INS tech is becoming a popular feature for high-end smartphones and other consumer items, because some smartphone and smartwatch manufacturers seek to use INS to automatically fill in if the user temporarily loses the GPS signal.

Many Department of Defense navigation and electronics experts believe current anti-jamming efforts are sufficient to keep military GPS use viable for a while, but the improvements in GPS jamming and spoofing technology have been arriving faster than expected. Despite the secrecy about GPS disruption, since 2017 there has been growing evidence that Russia has been frequently jamming or spoofing GPS signals, mainly to hide the exact location equipment that allows GPS tracking. Developing equipment like this is easily within Russian capabilities. In early 2019 a report made the news revealing that there had recently been nearly 10,000 instances where someone, apparently Russia, had been jamming or spoofing satellite navigation signals. Not just the American GPS, but also signals from non-American satellite navigation systems (Chinese Beidou, EUs Galileo, Japans QZAA and even the Russian GLONASS). Much of this activity was not outright jamming but the harder to detect spoofing. This was apparently done to conceal the true location of key Russian officials, like president Putin, and Russian military units. The spoofing was particularly common for Russian military forces in Ukraine and Syria. Spoofing replaced the actual satellite signal with a false one that rendered smart bombs or planned attacks on targets inaccurate. Spoofing can introduce the false signal gradually and sometimes delay a navigation system's realization that it is being deceived. Thats one function of INS, to act as a monitor for GPS as well as a backup. Current INS tech relies on receiving an accurate GPS location initially and periodically thereafter to keep both GPS and INS location data in sync. GPS depends on continuous satellite signals to operate and the INS is used to step in and replace GPS when the satellite signal becomes temporarily too weak, or absent. When an accurate GPS signal is achieved, INS goes back into standby mode. Spoofing can now mimic these momentary disruptions and evade detection as a false signal by the INS, which is completely self-contained.

Israeli INS researchers are not the only ones seeking an INS that is accurate and persistent enough to replace GPS for extended periods. INS has long suffered from the inability to provide as accurate a location as satellite navigation systems while also suffering from drift as the gyroscope and acceleration capabilities now performed by microelectronics of the chip-based INS cannot maintain as continuously precise location as the space satellite-based system can. This is no longer seen as an insurmountable problem, nor is the large cost-difference between GPS and INS tech. Israel apparently feels it is closer to a solution than anyone else.

Meanwhile spoofing satellite navigation systems has become more popular and practical because it does not require expensive or high-tech equipment. While American weapons and military navigation systems have a backup in the form of unjammable INS systems, these are useless if the spoofing is not detected. American systems are supposed to detect spoofing and revert to INS but the Americans do not disclose details of how these systems work in order to make it difficult for spoofing systems to be modified to be less detectable. That is one reason why the U.S. has not released detailed information on spoofing incidents because some of them may have evaded the INS spoofing detection tech.

To further complicate the issue there have also been instances where mandatory AIS (Automatic Identification System) transponders that all large ships must carry, are more frequently reporting instances of getting no GPS signal at all. Large ships usually carry two AIS units, in case one malfunctions so AIS failure can be ruled out as a cause. Something outside the ship is messing with the GPS signal. This demonstrates how it is possible to deceive the unjammable INS and new INS systems are sought that will eliminate that risk by replacing GPS most of the time.

The new INS technology has attracted a lot of attention in the military as backups are always appreciated because when equipment fails in combat, or for commercial users like aircraft of ships, its literally a matter of life or death. Meanwhile, the U.S. is building and testing more compact GPS anti-jamming systems for smaller (as small as 200 kg/440 pounds) UAVs. This is part of a program to equip all American UAVs, even the smallest ones, with more secure GPS. While all UAVs can be flown by the operator, the GPS makes it a lot easier for the operator to keep track of exactly where his UAV is at all times, and sometimes the UAV is programmed to simply patrol between a series of GPS coordinates. If the GPS jams or fails, the operator can usually use the video feed to find landmarks on the ground and bring the UAV back to where it can be seen and landed. Other UAVs have a failsafe system for the GPS. When it is no longer available the UAV turns around and heads back in the general direction of the operator. This is better than just allowing the GPS-less UAV keep flying until it runs out of fuel and crashes somewhere,

GPS reliability threats are coming from a few suppliers like Russia, China and North Korea. These nations have developed all manner of GPS jamming technology, and in 2019 it became public that the Russians were using GPS new spoofing technology to conceal the true location of senior leaders and some military units.

Developers and users of GPS jamming gear tend to keep quiet about what they do because this sort of thing is illegal in peacetime, especially when civilians experience GPS disruptions themselves. When the United States tests military GPS jamming it does so at sea or in remote areas and warns nearby civilians who might encounter GPS problems to be aware of the tests and act accordingly. This warning policy has been in use for decades because of the growing number of new electronic equipment designs that could cause problems for civilians if the disruptive effect extended farther than expected.

Other nations are not as secretive in complaining and often the culprit is Russia. In late 2018 Finland and Norway went public with their accusations that Russia deliberately jammed GPS signals in northern Finland and Norway from a location near the Russian military bases in the Kola Peninsula on the Barents Sea. The jamming took place as NATO held its largest training exercise since the Cold War ended in 1991. Russia denied any responsibility even though they are known to possess long-range jammers for GPS and other signals. Norway said they had tracked the jammer to a specific location but when Russia refused to admit any involvement Norway refused to explain how they tracked the signal because that would provide Russia with information on Norwegian EW (Electronic Warfare) equipment that might be useful to them.

In late 2020 Iran was caught testing spoofing tech at a military facility in the capital Tehran and trying to keep it secret. It is not known if the Iranians developed the spoofing tech themselves or received it from Russia or China.

Until the appearance of the new spoofing tech, GPS jamming had little or no impact on the NATO military exercises and even commercial airliners operating in the area had INS backup in case GPS signals were not working properly. The potential victims were civilians with smaller aircraft or on the ground who depend on commercial navigation gear using GPS. Then again, that may have been the point because Russian firms have long been producing a wide variety of GPS jammers that are generally ineffective against military GPS users but would be useful for criminals, terrorists or anyone involved in irregular warfare, as Russia has been in Ukraine since 2014. As for the damage to diplomatic relations with Norway and Finland, these two nations need no reminders of what a bad neighbor Russia is and historically has been.

GPS spoofing equipment has also found a market among criminal gangs. This was first encountered during 2018 in Shanghai, China where local gangsters were found to be using technology for spoofing GPS signals. Shanghai was just the beginning because this spoofing tech was subsequently encountered in twenty other Chinese coastal cities where gangsters ran profitable smuggling operations. The Chinese GPS spoofing was implemented differently from the Russian method. The Russian spoofing would make all GPS devices in an area appear in the same position instead of the many different positions they actually were. In contrast, the Chinese spoofing, when active, would show individual ships each in a different location but always around the same central point that was apparently where the spoofing signals were broadcast. This produced what was called a crop circle pattern. This was first noted by crews of ships slowly entering the port of Shanghai. While doing so they would watch the location of other ships via their AIS transponders. By international law, all large seagoing ships were required to carry and use AIS equipment, which constantly broadcast the GPS position of the ship. But there were cases where ships suddenly saw the AIS positions of ships near them change. The bridge crew could see, often with/or without, the use of binoculars, where the other ships actually were while, at the same time, the AIS display was showing them somewhere else within a circular area. After a few minutes, AIS signals would accurately report location again. In situations like this, it was noted that no GPS receivers onboard were receiving a signal, nor were GPS devices ashore that were within the circle.

The Chinese government denied responsibility for this GPS spoofing and blamed it on smugglers who apparently use the spoofing device to avoid being caught by the police while a smuggler ship was carrying illegal cargo. In one case the smuggler was caught anyway, because of an accident caused by the spoofing, and the smuggler ship was found to be carrying sand illegally obtained nearby and being taken out of the port for sale elsewhere. Sand mining had been banned in this region because this valuable commodity was in great demand elsewhere and exporting more of it was damaging the environment.

GPS spoofing declined during 2020 but China revealed no details about what happened. In the past China has given local hackers a choice between going to prison or quietly working for the Chinese government. Russia uses similar tactics as do many other governments. One thing that was noted about the Shanghai Spoofer was that the spoofing often took place around oil terminals where ships smuggling oil for Iran or to North Korea often operated. The governments of Iran and North Korea also noticed this and could have received useful information on how the Shanghai spoofing gear worked. Thats one of the conspiracy theories popular with many Iranians and South Koreans.
"Our hope is that every attendee walks away with practical and actionable items to change the way they do business as integral partners of the local community." - Express CEO Bill Stoller

Express Employment Professionals is hosting the 2021 ExpressTalks Celebrity Edition, a nationwide business leadership broadcast featuring entrepreneur, award-winning author and motivational speaker Bill Rancic, as well as Carla Harris, Vice Chairman, Managing Director and Senior Client Advisor at Morgan Stanley.

ExpressTalks Celebrity Edition will broadcast to several Express locations across the U.S. and Canada on Wednesday, April 21. Participants can register online at ExpressPros.com/ExpressTalks.

After bursting onto the scene as NBCs first Apprentice, Rancic traveled the globe, sharing why some companies thrive in chaos and others don't. He reveals what leadership behaviors are needed in a world beset by turbulence, uncertainty and dramatic change.

During his presentation, Rancic will discuss his Pause and Pivot Method, a totally new technique teaching audiences how to evaluate their business procedures in a methodical manner that will make them more productive in both long- and short-term situations.

At Morgan Stanley, Harris is responsible for increasing client connectivity and penetration to enhance revenue generation across the firm. She formerly headed the Emerging Manager Platform, the equity capital markets effort for the consumer and retail industries and was responsible for Equity Private Placements.

Harriss passion lies in helping others. As she says, we are blessed, so that we can be a blessing to others. She vowed that when she reached senior management, she would provide people with the tools, strategies, and pearls of wisdom honed by her own experience. Carlas Pearls include, Authenticity: The Power is You, The 90-Day Rule and Perception is the Co-Pilot to Reality.

Bill and Carla are inspirational business leaders and speakers that we are proud to learn from in this years ExpressTalks Celebrity Edition, said Express CEO Bill Stoller. Our hope is that every attendee walks away with practical and actionable items to change the way they do business as integral partners of the local community.

###

If you would like to arrange for an interview with Bill Stoller to discuss this topic, please contact Sheena (Karami) Hollander, Director of Corporate Communications and PR, at (405) 717-5966.

About Bill Stoller

William H. "Bill" Stoller is chairman and chief executive officer of Express Employment Professionals. Headquartered in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the international staffing company has more than 830 franchises in the U.S., Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Since inception, Express has put more than 9 million people to work worldwide.

About Express Employment Professionals

At Express Employment Professionals, were in the business of people. From job seekers to client companies, Express helps people thrive and businesses grow. Our international network of franchises offers localized staffing solutions to the communities they serve across the U.S., Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, employing 526,000 people globally in 2020. For more information, visit http://www.ExpressPros.com.


Foreign spies operating in Britain will be prosecuted and deported under new laws to protect the country from hostile states.

The Queens Speech on May 11 will reportedly be used by the Prime Minister to announce a bill outlining measures to protect Britain from the likes of Russia and China.

It will mandate that all individuals working on behalf of foreign governments in the country will have to register their presence - not doing so will become a criminal offence, The Times reported.

Intelligence agencies have warned that under current laws, foreign spies are immune from the law unless they are caught acquiring official secrets. (Pictured, flag of the Chinese Communist Party)

The Official Secrets Act, which is intended to protect the United Kingdom from espionage, will be updated so it can be used against anyone attempting to undermine Britains interest from abroad. (Pictured, GCHQ headquarters in Gloucestershire)

Intelligence agencies have warned that under current laws, foreign spies are immune from the law unless they are caught acquiring official secrets.

It is believed that Britain will aim to have a similar register to the Foreign Agents Registration Act in the US, which extends to anyone representing the interests of a foreign state.

The Official Secrets Act, which is intended to protect the United Kingdom from espionage, will be updated so it can be used against anyone attempting to undermine Britains interest from abroad.

With some parts written in 1911, ministers hope to adjust the legislation so it can be used against those carrying out foreign cyberattacks.

They are also considering whether to raise the maximum sentence - which is currently two years for most offences - for any breaches of the act.

It comes after Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Britain stood in 'full support' of Czech government after the country's police confirmed they were searching for two men who were suspects in the Salisbury novichok attack.

The Czech Republic is expelling 18 Russian diplomats it has identified as spies in a case related to an explosion at an ammunition depot in the town of Vrbetice in 2014.

President Biden warns Putin 'there will be consequences' if Alexei Navalny dies in prison following two-week hunger strike as doctors warn the Russian opposition leader 'could die any minute'

By Chris Pleasance

Joe Biden has warned Putin there will be consequences if critic Alexei Navalny is allowed to die in jail as doctors warn his health is failing amid hunger strike.

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday that Biden is weighing up a range of responses if Navalny dies, and that Moscow is aware of the threat.

Meanwhile EU leaders said sanctions placed on Russia earlier this year could be increased if Navalny perishes, with a summit to discuss the issue on Monday.

It comes after Yaroslav Ashikhmin, a doctor acting on behalf of Navalny's family, said test results received from the Russian penal colony where the activist is being held show dangerous levels of potassium in his blood along with signs of kidney failure.

'Our patient could die at any moment,' Ashikhmin warned.

Alexei Navalny is showing signs of kidney damage and could die 'at any moment' as he continues a three-week hunger strike over conditions in a US jail, his doctor has said (pictured, Navalny in jail last month)

Navalny, 44, has been on hunger strike since March 31 because he says Russian prison guards are refusing him proper treatment for acute pain in his back and numbness in his legs. Moscow insists he is being given adequate care.

Sullivan said Washington is 'looking at a variety of different costs that we would impose... if Mr Navalny dies', while refusing to go into specifics.

He spoke a day after Biden called Navalny's treatment 'unfair' and 'totally inappropriate' when asked about it during a round of golf.

German foreign minister Heiko Maas said the issue will be discussed at a meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday.

'The package of sanctions is already significant, but there may be others,' French foreign minister Yves le Drain added.

Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner and Putin's most-prominent critic, was first arrested in January upon his return to Russia following a suspected Novichok poisoning, that is thought to have been carried out by an FSB hit squad.

He was then jailed for two and a half years the following month over an old embezzlement case, and transferred to a penal colony on February 26.

Navalny says he is being denied medical attention for acute pain in his back and numbness in his legs by guards inside the penal colony (pictured) where he is being held

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan (left) has warned Moscow of 'consequences' if Navalny dies, while German foreign minister Heiko Maas has said sanctions could be increased

On March 15 he uploaded his first Instagram post from inside jail, likening conditions to 'a concentration camp' alongside an image of him with a shaved head.

Then, on March 31, Navalny revealed in a hand-written letter posted online by his team that he had gone on hunger strike after being denied proper medical care.

He wrote: 'I really need a doctor. Every convict has the right [by law] to invite a specialist to examine and consult him. Even I have such a right and Im innocent.

'I demand that a doctor be allowed to see me, and until this happens, I am declaring a hunger strike.'

Navalny has previously posted online about his declining health since he started the strike, saying that prison wardens had threatened to force-feed him.

But the sudden deterioration in his health this weekend prompted Leonid Volkov, a top strategist for Navalny, to call for demonstrations to take place on Wednesday.

The demonstrations are due to take place in symbolic locations - Manezh Square in Moscow, just outside the Kremlin, and St. Petersburg's sprawling Palace Square.

Russian activists have called for nationwide protests to pressure the government into saving Navalny, after large demonstrations in January were met with a brutal police response

Police did not immediately respond, but marchers likely face a harsh crackdown.

Officers arrested more than 10,000 people during demonstrations that took place in January, in what was the largest show of defiance against Putin in years.

The saga is playing out against the backdrop of increased tensions between Russia and the west over a troop build-up in Ukraine that is unprecedented in recent years.

Russia insists that troops are being stationed along the border in response to NATO activities, but the alliance denies any build-up of its own and has called on Putin to 'de-escalate' the situation.

Putin himself has given no explanation for the build-up, but observers have suggested that it could be designed as a 'test' for Joe Biden after he took a tough line with the Kremlin, and as Putin sizes up his new counterpart.

Others have suggested that Putin is responding to pressures within Russia itself, including growing political opposition from Navalny and those linked to him.
The oil firm that commissioned the Seacor Power liftboat to work on its rigs distanced itself from the boat's decision to set sail in 90mph winds after it sank, as hopes to find the nine missing sailors aboard fade.

Just six of the 19 onboard the Seacor Power, which capsized in heavy seas and powerful winds on Tuesday, have been rescued. Four have been found dead, and nine are still missing.

Houston-based Talos Energy, which describes itself as 'one of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico's largest public independent producers,' said in a statement on Sunday that they were not involved in the Seacor Power's decision to set sail.

A liftboat looks like a barge, with three or four legs, and is self-propelled. It combines the design of a jack-up oil rig with an offshore supply boat.

The capsized Seacor Power is pictured on Sunday, with one of its three legs visible

The capsized vessel and rescue boats are seen bottom left, eight miles of the Louisiana shore

The Seacor Power was on its way to work at a Talos Energy oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico

The Secor Power (left) is a mobile platform that can work in up to 195 feet of water with three extendible legs. The large housing structure above the deck of the lift boat will likely pose significant challenges for divers

'The Seacor Power was in port for service and inspections for several days prior to its departure,' they said in a statement.

'The vessel was not at a Talos facility and was fully under the command of its captain and Seacor Marine, including when to depart the port.'

They said that Talos was assisting Seacor and the U.S. Coast Guard Unified Command with the ongoing response effort.

'Like everyone in the offshore community we are heartbroken and praying for everyone affected by this tragedy,' they said.

The vessel was making a transit during a tropical storm-force wind warning from the National Weather Service, which had predicted 'suddenly higher waves' in the typically-calm region.

At the time of the incident, winds were blowing up to 90 mph and waves were up to nine feet high, according to the Coast Guard.

David Bourg, a naval architect, told WDSU that liftboats in the class of the Seacor Power can withstand winds of 80mph when afloat, and 115 mph when 'safe-quartered' in shallower water where their legs can be sunk deeper for more stability.

The four deceased crewmen, recovered earlier in the week, have been named as Captain David Ledet, 63, of Thibodaux; 53-year-old Anthony Hartford of New Orleans; 55-year-old James Wallingsford of Gilbert; and 69-year-old Ernest Williams of Arnaudville.

Hartford, a cook, was found on Friday.

'It's no feeling right now,' Anthony's Hartford's widow Janet Hartford said.

Janet said the last time she saw her husband of 24 years and the father of their four children was on March 30 when he brought her roses and cake for her birthday.

Captain David Ledet, 63, (left) was confirmed dead in the Seacor Power boat disaster and Gregory Walcott, 62, (right) remained among the missing on Saturday as the Coast Guard continued search efforts

James Wallingsford, 55, of Gilbert is among those confirmed to have died. He is pictured with his wife Sheila Wallingsford and their daughter Dakota Nielsen

Janet Hartford holds a photo of her husband Anthony, 53, who died on the Seacor Power. She is pictured with her daughter, Antranae, 24, right; her son, Thelonious Dukes, 38, far left; and daughter-in-law, Chantrice, at their home in New Orleans on Saturday

The families and friends of the missing men are seen waiting for any news as crews search the Seacor Power

Marion Cuyler, fiancee of missing crew member Chaz Morales, at a fire station where family members of the missing crew members have gathered

Chaz Morales, one of the missing crew members, is seen left with his three children and right with a friend

Marion Cuyler, whose fiancee Chaz Morales is among the nine men missing, said U.S. Navy Seal dive teams were continuing the search on Sunday.

'They couldn't dive last night, seas were not favorable,' Cuyler told WGNO.

'They were on the dive boat at 9:50 this morning headed to the vessel. Going to continue on level three.'

Cuyler texted her fiancee, a crane operator, that the weather appeared too bad to head out Tuesday.

She said Morales texted her back that he wished he could stay ashore.

Officials have released little information about their continuous search in the murky seas surrounding the capsized Seacor Power liftboat, some eight miles off the coast, since announcing divers found two bodies inside the ship on Friday night.

Divers are trying to get inside the boat, capsized where the sea is 50 to 55 feet deep.

Rescuers in the air and the water have been searching an area the size of Rhode Island for the remaining nine missing crew members.

'We are continuing to search,' Coast Guard Petty Officer John Michelli said Sunday morning.

'We've basically been 24-7 since the beginning.'

Terry Crownover, director of the Marine Survival Training Center, an offshoot of the University of Louisiana in Lafayette, told WDSU that he noted one of the survivors was pulled from the water not wearing a life jacket, suggesting the capsize happened very quickly.

He said that in 50 degree water, a person has 10 minutes to rescue themselves. If they stay in water at that temperature for one hour, they risk suffering hypothermia.

WDSU chief meteorologist Margaret Orr said the water temperature in the Gulf at the search site was 76 degrees on Friday afternoon - meaning the conditions were survivable, but odds worsen over time.

Crew members of the Coast Guard Cutter Glenn Harris search for survivors Tuesday after a 175-foot commercial liftboat capsized. Six men were pulled alive from the water but many remain missing

Crew members of the Coast Guard Cutter Glenn Harris pull a person from the water Tuesday after the Seacor Power flipped. The confirmed death toll in the disaster has risen to four, after dive teams recovered two bodies inside the vessel

Coast Guard members throw a hammer against the hull of the Seacor Power on Thursday as they search for signs of life. No contact has been made with the missing crew since two climbed back inside the capsized vessel on Tuesday

'It'd be a will to survive. Mentally physically, that's the hard part right there,' Crownover said.

'It's so easy to give up, and it's so hard to stay a fighter.'

A large housing structure with capacity for 50 crew members sits on the stern of the Seacor Power.

Marine architect David Bourg told the site the entrances to the structure are airtight, but the components and rooms inside cannot be sealed watertight.

But if there are stranded mariners in air pockets inside, Crownover said there is a possibility divers can reach them.

Weather conditions have hampered diver access to the lift boat, however.
Police Bodycam Footage Shows Suspect Firing at Officer on California Highway

California authorities on Friday released body camera footage that shows the moment an attempted homicide and robbery suspect fired at a motorcycle traffic enforcement officer, moments before the officer fatally shot the suspect.

The seven-minute clip, released by the Fremont Police Department, shows Joshua James Gloria, 34, of Oakland opening fire on Fremont police officer Brian Burch following a brief police chase on March 24.

Police said Gloria was wanted in connection with an armed robbery in San Francisco.

Burch, a six-year veteran of the department, was alerted regarding a stolen SUV in the parking lot of a shopping mall while working traffic enforcement. The stolen vehicle activated a license plate reader.

The officer slowly followed Gloria on a police motorcycle as backup arrived before pursuing the suspect on eastbound Highway 84, west of the Newark Blvd./Ardenwood Blvd. exit on the border of Fremont and Newark.

The SUV had a flat rear tire, prompting Gloria to pull over on the shoulder of State Route 84. The suspect exited the stolen vehicle before firing at Burch, who jumped off his police motorcycle and crouched behind an embankment to avoid being hit.

Oh, [expletive]! Burch is heard shouting as he avoids the gunfire. Shots fired! Shots fired! Shots fired!

Burch fired his weapon as Gloria attempted to steal his police motorcycle. The suspect was struck as he ran back toward the stolen SUV.

Suspect down, Burch says in the footage.

Burch wasnt hit by gunfire in the incident. Gloria was pronounced dead at the scene.

Fremont Police issued a statement after the shooting stating that they were notified by the San Jose Police Department that Gloria had been issued an arrest warrant in connection with an attempted murder case at an illegal gambling parlor.

The California Highway Patrol and the Alameda County District Attorneys Office are leading the investigation, which remains open and ongoing.

The body-worn camera video provides a comprehensive overview of the events that led to the shooting and shows the dangerous nature of this incident, the Fremont Police Department said.
Washington:

Identifying real estate as the one sector where maximum amount of tax evasion takes place, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday said there was a strong case to bring it under the ambit of the GST.

The matter will be discussed in the next meeting of the GST, which will be held on November 9, in Guwahati, Jaitley said, while delivering a lecture at Harvard University.

The one sector in India where maximum amount of tax evasion and cash generation takes place and which is still outside the GST is real estate. Some of the states have been pressing for it. I personally believe that there is a strong case to bring real estate into the GST, Jaitley said, while delivering the Annual Mahindra Lecture on Indias tax reforms.

In the next meeting itself, we are addressing one of the problem areas or at least (having) discussion (on) it. Some states want, some do not. There are two views. Therefore, by discussion, we would try to reach one view, he said.

The finance minister said the move would benefit the consumers who will only have to pay one final tax on the whole product.

As a result, the final tax paid on the whole product in the GST would almost be negligible, he said.

Jaitley said the reduction in eventual expenditure coupled with incentivising people to enter the tax net may also help reduce the size of shadow economy.

A 12 per cent GST is levied on construction of a complex, building, civil structure or intended for sale to a buyer, wholly or partly. However, land and other immovable property have been exempted from GST.

On demonetisation, Jaitley said it was a fundamental reform which was necessary to transform India into a more tax-compliant society.

If you see the long-term impact of it, demonetisation brought in more digitised transactions; it brought the issue to the centerstage. It expanded the individual tax base. It compressed the cash currency by three per cent which was operating in the market, Jaitley said.

Those objectives are for the long-term. No doubt there are short-term challenges, but (necessary) for transforming India from a non-compliant to a more compliant society, he said.

The finance minister said India had historically been one of the least efficient tax system in the world with an extremely small tax base.

Frankly, over the last several decades, serious efforts, real efforts to expand this base had not been made. You had marginal efforts, he said, adding that systematic efforts to challenge the shadow economy were made only recently.

In the last few years, the bulk of the increase in tax payers has not been in terms of number of companies but individuals who are coming into the tax net, he said.

Jaitley said some people had misunderstood the objective of demonetisation which wasnt to confiscate somebodys currency.

Obviously if somebody has currency and deposits in the bank, it does not become lawful holding. They still have to account for it. Therefore, the anonymity which was attached to a cash currency came to an end and that holding got identified, he said.

The government was able to trace out about 1.8 million people whose deposits are disproportionate to their normal incomes. And they are all to answerable to the law and pay their taxes, he said.

Jaitley is on a week-long stay in the US, during which he will participate in annual meetings of the IMF and the World Bank.

For all the Latest Business News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran's foreign ministry spokesman said on Monday that Tehran always welcomed dialogue with Saudi Arabia, but he did not confirm nor deny direct talks this month between the arch-rivals.

The two countries severed diplomatic ties in 2016 and have been engaged in several proxy wars in the region as they vie for influence.

A senior Iranian official and two regional sources had told Reuters that Saudi and Iranian officials held discussions in Iraq in a bid to ease tensions as Washington works to revive a 2015 nuclear pact with Tehran and end the Yemen war. [L1N2MB022]

The Financial Times first reported the meeting.

"We have seen media reports about talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia, although the reports sometimes had contradictory quotes," Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told a weekly news conference.

"What is important is that the Islamic Republic of Iran has always welcomed dialogue with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and considers it in the interest of the people of the two countries, as well as peace and stability in the region," he added.

Saudi authorities have not responded to a Reuters request for comment on the talks.

One of the sources said the meeting, arranged by Iraq's prime minister who visited Saudi Arabia earlier this month, had focused on Yemen, where a military coalition led by Riyadh has been battling the Iran-aligned Houthi movement.

Sunni power Saudi Arabia had opposed the inernational nuclear accord with Shi'ite Iran for not tackling Tehran's missiles programme and regional behaviour.

It has called for a stronger deal this time around at talks in Vienna aimed at bringing the United States and Iran back into compliance with the pact, which then U.S. President Donald Trump quit in 2018. Tehran breached several nuclear restrictions after Trump reimposed sanctions.

President Joe Biden's administration is also pressing for a ceasefire in Yemen which is grappling with what the United Nations describes as the world's largest humanitarian crisis.

(Reporting by Parisa Hafezi; Writing by Ghaida Ghantous; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
The jury has started deliberations in Derek Chauvin's trial in the death of George Floyd after prosecutors and Chauvin's lawyers presented their closing arguments on Monday and the judge provided instructions on the charges, which include second-degree murder.

The case was handed over to the 12 jurors after nearly three weeks of witness testimony.Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer, declined to take the stand last week.
LANSING, MI - One of laws used to justify Gov. Gretchen Whitmers emergency powers is a step closer to a potential repeal.

The anti-executive power group Unlock Michigan submitted more than half a million signatures in October in a petition drive aimed at undoing the 1945 law Whitmer used to issue executive orders last year.

The signatures were deemed valid by the states elections bureau, according to a Monday report by the Secretary of State, meaning certification is right around the corner.

Ten days after Unlock Michigan submitted its signatures, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled governors do not have the authority to unilaterally issue executive orders for as long as necessary, as outlined in the 1945 Emergency Powers of Governor Act, calling that law unconstitutional. This effectively struck down Whitmers initial executive orders, though public health orders still remain constitutional.

Related: They keep trying, but lawmakers have been unable to limit Michigan health departments authority

Unlock Michigan has not dropped its ballot initiative in hopes that it reaches the Republican-led state Legislature and is taken off the books completely. The Michigan Bureau of Elections reviewed a sample size of the petitions signatures and found the majority submitted were valid.

Unlock Michigan spokesman Fred Wszolek expressed pleasure with the decision in a Twitter post on Monday.

(Gov. Whitmer), maybe now youll try working WITH the legislature, he wrote, instead of governing by decree?

The bureau reviewed 506 petition signatures drawn from approximately 536,700 signatures submitted, finding that 434 were valid. State petition law requires at least 338 valid signatures of the sample for the bureau to recommend certification.

Extrapolating from the random sample, the bureau found the Unlock Michigan petition exceeded the minimum threshold of valid signatures, or 340,047, by more than 120,000 signatures. About 1,600 signatures were rejected due to errors made by the circulator of the petition, including some sheets becoming mutilated, according to the report.

With the signatures deemed valid, the Secretary of State recommends certification by the Board of State Canvassers. The state board is scheduled to meet Thursday, April 22, at 10 a.m.

Upon certification, the Legislature could approve the petition and bypass a veto by Whitmer. It could also appear on the ballot in 2022 if not taken up by the Legislature, just like how Proposal 3 was approved in 2018 to codify no-reason absentee voting.

Before the Board of State Canvassers certifies the petition, an opposition group is urging for a criminal investigation into how signatures were obtained.

Read more: Petition to repeal emergency powers had forged signatures, misleading language, opposition group claims

Keep Michigan Safe, a group in favor of Whitmers use of state of emergency powers, filed a legal complaint Friday, April 9, accusing Unlock Michigan of not providing proper witnesses on signatures, providing misleading language or using unregistered voters as signers, which is illegal in Michigan.

The small amount of invalid signatures sampled in the report were due to improper registration status, mismatched addresses or wrong signature dates. There were not enough invalid signatures to deny a certification recommendation by the Secretary of State.

Keep Michigan Safe spokesman Mark Fisk said the bureaus report ignored 90% of their complaints, including an investigation into Unlock Michigan and for Republican Board of State Canvasser member Tony Daunt to recuse himself from certification.

By letting Unlock Michigan off the hook for its illegal and unethical practices, turning a blind eye to conflicts of interest and glossing over the Boards own abject failure to promulgate rules, this report has made a mockery of the initiative process, Fisk said in a statement. Were disappointed but we will make our case to the Board of Canvassers and the courts to stop this ill-conceived and irresponsible petition drive.

In response to the complaint, Wszolek said the accusations made by Keep Michigan Safe were frivolous and preposterous.

We just didnt need to [mislead] at all, he said. We had no problem getting people to sign this petition. The demand for overturning the governors abuse of emergency powers was pretty sweeping.

Read more from MLive:

AG investigating Unlock Michigan petition group accused of improper signature collection

Petitioners say they have 500K signatures in bid to strip Whitmer of emergency powers
This time, the Asan plant is suspending the manufacturing, and as everyone can easily guess, its because the company doesnt have enough chips to install on the cars it makes.The plant located some 100 kilometers south of Seoul (thats about 62 miles for our American readers) is currently responsible for producing the Sonata. Hyundai told Yonhap News Agency it expects the days of temporary shutdown to represent a loss accounting for more than 4,000 vehicles.The worse thing is the Asan plant is currently at its second suspension in just two weeks, as Hyundai also suspended the operations last week on Monday and Tuesday due to the lack of powertrain control units.Despite major efforts from pretty much everybody in the industry, the chip struggle is far from coming to an end.The global health issue has caused a transition from the traditional office to ad-hoc working environments set up at homes. As a result, the sales of new-gen electronics, including phones, tablets, and computers, have skyrocketed. Since all these devices come with chips, foundries worldwide have been having a hard time dealing with all orders, especially as resellers anticipate strong sales in the coming months across the world and therefore try to adjust their inventory accordingly.United States President Joe Biden himself has met with industry officials to discuss ways to address the chip shortage, all in an attempt to prevent the economy from getting more hits due to manufacturers shutting down their production lines.Intel has already confirmed that its planning to enter the car chip manufacturing business . The company claims that its accelerated strategy should allow it to begin the operations in six to nine months.
Authorities in the northern Chinese province of Shaanxi have formally arrested rights attorney Chang Weiping on suspicion of "subversion of state power," his wife said on .



Chang is currently being held in Fengxian Detention Center in Shaanxi's Baoji city. The charge against him appears to have been changed from "incitement to subvert state power," which carries a maximum jail term of 15 years, to the more serious charge of "subversion of state power," which has no upper limit on length of custodial sentence.



He was redetained in after he spoke out about being tortured following an earlier detention in connection with a dinner gathering of human rights lawyers, dissidents, and rights activists in the southeastern port city of Xiamen in .



Chang Weiping's wife Chen Zijuan said she had received a notification of formal arrest from the Baoji municipal police department,



Chen issued statement saying that her husband hadn't committed any crimes at all, "let along subverting state power."



She called his continued detention an abuse of police power and demanded Chang's immediate release.



No legal basis

According to Chen, police had no legal basis to detain Chang, and are now holding him in a detention center in a mountainous area with scant transportation links.



"This is an outright abuse of power and a form of retaliation," Chen said. "I am extremely angered by the recklessness of the local judicial agencies and demand that they immediately correct their mistake."



Xie Yang, a fellow rights attorney from the central province of Hunan, said Chen's statement highlights irregularities in the way Chang was arrested and in the processing of his case.



"These [political] cases are different from regular criminal cases, which often remain within the framework of criminal law," Xie told RFA.



"But in cases of [alleged] subversion of state power, there are few legal safeguards," he said. "The normal laws don't apply, and they can do whatever they want."



Meanwhile, the wife of jailed Chinese rights lawyer Yu Wensheng, who was held incommunicado for three years and sentenced to jail for "incitement to subvert state power," said he had been beaten up by a group of people while serving his sentence inside Nanjing Prison.



Xu Yan, who had a video call with Yu last month, said the online "visit" was the first she had heard of the incident.



"When he first arrived in Nanjing Prison, he was set upon by a group of people who beat and kicked him," Xu told RFA. "He was very confused at the time [about what had actually happened]."



"I have requested that the authorities at Nanjing Prison hold the leaders of the relevant departments accountable, and to investigate whether someone instructed them to attack him, and to hold them accountable too," she said.



Torture suspected

Family members have long suspected that Yu Wensheng was tortured and ill-treated while in custody, as he only has limited use of his right hand, and is unable to write, brush his teeth or harvest crops as part of prison labor.



He was recently sent to hospital for medical attention to his hand.



"He was examined by orthopedics and a neurosurgeon, and was later given medication to treat the trauma to his hand and the nerve damage," Xu said.



"At first it was only on his right hand, but a more serious incident took place on , and now his left handle has started shaking too."



Xu said Nanjing Prison used to arrange family visits every two months, but face-to-face visits have been suspended due to COVID-19.



She called on the prison authorities to reinstate face-to-face visits, once a month, as provided for in Chinese law.



Earlier this year, Yu was named as a finalist for the Martin Ennals Award honoring human rights defenders.



The Martin Ennals Foundation called him "one of the best-known and most intrepid human rights activists" in China, acknowledging that Yu has been subjected to arbitrary detention, a secret trial, and the removal of his license to practice law.



Reported by Gao Feng for RFA's Mandarin and Cantonese Services. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
A 7-year-old girl is dead and her 29-year-old father hospitalized after they were shot in a McDonald's drive-thru on Chicago's West Side, CBS Chicago reported. Late Sunday, police said the shooter or shooters were still on the loose.

It was part of another gunfire-filled weekend in Chicago in which at least two people died, including the little girl, and 22 were wounded, according to CBS Chicago.

The station says a Chicago police officer rushed Jaslyn Adams to a hospital after she was found in a bullet-ridden car sitting in a McDonald's drive-thru. She was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Investigators said Jaslyn was hit multiple times around her body. Family members said her father, Jontae Adams, 29, was also hit.

Chicago Police said he was shot in the upper body. He was taken to the same hospital as his daughter and was reported in serious condition and is expected to survive.

At least 30 shell casings surrounded the vehicle after the shooting at 4:18 p.m., CBS Chicago said. The tinted windows on one side were shot out. There were bullet holes in the frame and back window, as well.

It wasn't clear if the shooting was targeted, but authorities haven't said the public is at risk. The Chicago Sun-Times says a McDonald's employee who asked not to be identified told it two people got out of a gray car in the drive-thru and started shooting at Adams' car.

Family members spoke about their loss with CBS Chicago at the hospital.

"It's really emotional now for my family," said Jaslyn's aunt, Tawny McMullen. She was teary-eyed as she remembered the 7-year-old as funny and joyful.

"She was just the sweet and outgoing; really talkative; really lovable," McMullen said.

Jaslyn's grandmother said Jontae Adams called her as soon as the shooting happened, saying, "They shot my baby!"

"Y'all, please put the guns down," McMullen said. "Our kids want to play. My kids can't even go out the door because of this violence. Please put the guns down."

Story continues

Relatives said it was normal outing for Jaslyn and her dad to go to McDonald's.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot spoke out about the shooting on Twitter on Sunday night, saying she was "heartbroken and angered" and calling for an end to "the epidemic of gun violence."

I am heartbroken and angered that a 7-year-old child was killed this afternoon on Chicago's West Side. This unthinkable act of violence has no place here. The epidemic of gun violence cutting our children's lives short cannot go on.

 Mayor Lori Lightfoot (@chicagosmayor) April 19, 2021

"CBS Evening News" headlines for Monday, April 19, 2021

Closing arguments presented in Derek Chauvin trial

7-year-old fatally shot in McDonald's drive-thru in Chicago
Cooperative fertiliser major IFFCO on Monday said it will set up four medical oxygen plants with an investment of about Rs 30 crore in the next 15 days in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Odisha, in a bid to supply it for free to hospitals.

The plant will be put up at Kalol (Gujarat), Aonla and Phulpur (Uttar Pradesh) and at Paradeep (Odisha), it said.

"The order has been already issued. It will take at least 15 days from today to transport, install and commission an oxygen plant. A dedicated team is working on this project. IFFCO will try to commission it as soon as possible for the service of the nation," IFFCO spokesperson told PTI.

IFFCO is investing around Rs 30 crore on four oxygen plants, he added.

On Sunday late night, IFFCO Managing Director and CEO U S Awasthi had announced that the cooperative is going to establish an oxygen plant with capacity of 200 cubic meter per hour in its Kalol unit in Gujarat.

"IFFCO will give free oxygen to hospital, each cylinder of 46.7 litres," he had said.

The proposed oxygen plant in Kalol will generate medical grade oxygen and fill 700 big D-type cylinders daily and also 300 medium B-size cylinders on demand, which will be supplied to all hospitals for free, he had added.

Awasthi had also said that IFFCO will fill up the oxygen cylinders free of cost for hospitals, but they need to bring their own cylinders for refill. A security deposit will be taken if cylinders taken from IFFCO to avoid hoarding of oxygen.

In view of the recent surge in COVID-19 cases, there is huge demand for oxygen for effective clinical treatment of COVID-19 patients.

As a result, there are reports of shortage of medical oxygen in some parts of the country, especially in Maharashtra and Delhi.

(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 Elizabeth Howcroft

LONDON (Reuters) - What do you do with a $69 million artwork that doesn't physically exist?

That's the question faced by the Singapore-based investor calling himself Metakovan, who made headlines last month when he bought the digital artwork "Everydays: The First 5000 Days" by the American artist Beeple at Christie's.

The work is a non-fungible token (NFT) - a new type of virtual asset that has its ownership status and authenticity verified by NFTs have exploded in popularity in 2021, with prices skyrocketing.

Metakovan, real name Vignesh Sundaresan, plans to put the artwork on display in four virtual world environments. He is working with architects to design gallery complexes that the public can enter via web browsers or virtual reality technology.

But art is just one part of a new economy of blockchain-based virtual worlds where land, buildings, avatars and even names can be bought and sold as NFTs, often fetching hundreds of thousands of dollars. In these environments, referred to as the metaverse, people can wander around with friends, visit virtual buildings and attend virtual events.

Metakovan's plans are an ambitious undertaking, but he says he is the world's biggest NFT investor. His collection of NFTs and other crypto assets, the Metapurse fund, is valued at $189 million, according to NonFungible.com, a site that aggregates sales history data from NFT marketplaces.

"The current Cambrian explosion of NFTs that you see is all about acquisition - people want to buy up NFTs, gobble as many of them as they can," said Anand Venkateswaran, aka Twobadour, who runs the Metapurse fund with Metakovan.

"But it's just the tip of the iceberg. The real explosion will happen when they're able to ... experience these NFTs as they were intended. If it's a plot of virtual land, you ought to move around in it, have an immersive experience in it."

In what will be one of the biggest names to join the party, videogame maker Atari told Reuters it planned to launch its own blockchain-based virtual world and would soon announce details.

Online environments are going to be "very very big", regardless of fluctuations in the price of bitcoin, said Frederic Chesnais, head of Atari's division and the company's former CEO. NFT real estate could one day fetch millions of dollars, he added.

Investors caution, however, that while big money is flowing into NFTs, the market could represent a price bubble, with the risk of major losses if the hype dies down. There could also be prime opportunities for fraudsters in a market where many participants operate under pseudonyms.

A PLOT OF VIRTUAL LAND: $500K+

The NFT frenzy has heightened interest in blockchain-based online environments. The best known are Decentraland, Cryptovoxels, Somnium Space and The Sandbox, where virtual real estate prices are hitting new highs.

Decentraland has seen more than $50 million in total sales, including land, avatars, usernames and wearables like virtual outfits. A patch of land measuring 41,216 virtual square metres sold for $572,000 on April 11, which the platform said was a record.

Another Decentraland plot sold for $283,567 on March 21, according to NonFungible.com, while Somnium Space said an estate on its platform fetched more than $500,000 on March 16.

Metaverse enthusiasts compare the rush to buy virtual land to the scramble for domain names in the early days of the internet. There are currently a few thousand unique landowners on each of the main blockchain-based platforms.

Their theory is that as more people congregate in these environments, plots of land in central locations will be highly sought-after because of the amount of visitor traffic.

"All of virtual land and these virtual spaces are basically real estate on which experiences will start to centre, on which attention will start to focus," Twobadour said.

"That's where all of the attention is and that's monetisable in a million different ways."

So far, it's a relatively small number of people driving up land prices on these worlds.

In Decentraland there were 334 buyers in March, sending monthly land sales volumes past $4 million, from $767,400 in February with 184 buyers and $246,134 in January with 111 buyers, according to NonFungible.com.

An NFT investor called Whale Shark, whose collection was valued at more than $20 million by NonFungible.com in February, said he spent 200 of the Ether on land in Cryptovoxels and another 200 in The Sandbox in 2018 and 2019.

Those estates cost around $60,000 each back then but are now worth more than $400,000 apiece, he added, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Some virtual worlds have their own cryptocurrencies: Decentraland's MANA has skyrocketed more than 3500% over the past year, according to Coinbase.

VIRTUAL FESTIVAL, ANYONE?

Some early virtual land investors who bought in early are now selling to companies, said Samuel Hamilton, community and events lead at the Decentraland Foundation.

Atari, ahead of its plans to open its own blockchain-based world, has licensed a retro arcade within Decentraland and is due to open a casino, while an area called "Crypto Valley" is home to various crypto companies.

Decentraland has hosted a virtual fashion exhibition in collaboration with Adidas, where designs were auctioned as NFTs. It is also attracting interest from musicians who can perform in the space, selling tickets and merchandise as NFTs.

"We're going to have several well-known global festivals all doing stages, and when we get to that point we expect hundreds of thousands or even millions of people," Hamilton said.

Last year, American rapper Travis Scott drew an audience of 27.7 million visitors to five concerts within Fortnite, the popular online game owned by Epic Games.

IS 'CRYPTO WINTER' COMING?

Sebastien Borget, co-founder of The Sandbox, described the commercial activity within virtual worlds as a new nation forming and said the NFT-based economy would outgrow the real-world one within a decade.

There are, however, many in the fledgling industry who warn of dangers ahead for investors.

"I expect that there'll be a crypto winter in the next couple of months, the whole NFT boom will explode and then all the value will absolutely collapse," said Ben Nolan, founder of the virtual world Cryptovoxels.

"Doing NFTs as an investment or as a way to make money is really ill-advised."

However he does see a future for virtual worlds and NFTs.

"Do I think most people will use virtual worlds? Probably not, but I think a lot of people will and I think NFTs are a big part of that growth," he said.

"Actually walking around with another person in a virtual space and looking at art together is a really nice way to spend time," he added.

Whale Shark said the vast majority of NFTs had no commercial viability, and expects only a small number to emerge as winners.

But some investors such as Australia-based Mateen Soudagar, aka DCL Blogger, have little interest in moving back into real-world investments.

Soudagar says he has made millions of dollars through and NFTs, but rather than cash out, he keeps around 75% of his money in crypto assets and reckons many of his peers do the same. Other than upgrading his laptop, he hasn't changed his lifestyle.

"If you're a believer in the movement then you think that the world will move into this space," he said. "So when you're putting it into fiat you're going backwards."

Crypto asset sales surge https://tmsnrt.rs/3wP4AWw

Virtual real estate boom https://tmsnrt.rs/3aaIROT

(Reporting by Elizabeth Howcroft; Editing by Pravin Char)
On April 5-7, for the first time, Indian as well as Japanese and Australian warships took part in a French naval exercise codenamed La Perouse, in the Bay of Bengal.

This provocative drill took place after a March summit and naval drills by the anti-Chinese Asian Quad alliance of the United States, India, Japan and Australia, as well as visits to India by US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin and South Korean Defence Minister Suh Wook. During the La Perouse exercise, warships carried out 90 drills including helicopter and resupply operations. Another Indian-French naval war game, the Varuna exercise, is scheduled for April 25-27.

The PHA Tonnerre and the FLF Surcouf deployed as part of the Mission JDA 21 in the Bay of Bengal, (Image credit: Twitter/MarineNationale)

Arnaud Tranchant, the captain of Frances amphibious assault ship Tonnerre, which headed the La Perouse drill, told Indian media it aimed to strengthen interoperability between the two navies.

Indian Navy Spokesperson Commander Vivek Madhwal said, Participation by the Indian Navy in the exercise demonstrates the shared values with friendly navies ensuring freedom of seas and commitment to an open, inclusive Indo-Pacific and a rules-based international order.

These drills highlight mounting war tensions as the Biden administration takes office and calls on the European Union (EU) to work together with Washington against alleged expansionist Chinese policies in Asia. Last year, the Quad countries carried out Malabar naval exercises in the Bay of Bengal. Now, as the EU powers continue boosting their collective military spending amid the pandemic, even after it hit $300 billion in 2019, they are also developing an aggressive policy in Asia.

These exercises are in line with a new strategy document recently rolled out by French armed forces chief General Thierry Burkhard, signalling a turn by French imperialism to preparations for large-scale state against state wars.

The world is evolving quickly enough and badly enough, he said, pointing to growing conflicts and uninhibited re-militarisation. The army imagined a situation in 2035  But in 2020, a certain number of check-boxes are already ticked. France now confronted the end of a stage of conflicts involving wars in the Sahel and Afghanistan, in which French forces enjoyed overwhelming military superiority against the targeted populations. The army expects new, symmetric conflicts, Burkhard said, state against state, that is, between major, nuclear-armed powers.

This comes after France spent 49.7 billion on its defence budget for 2021, as planned in the 2019-2025 military program law, with plans to raise this to 54 billion by 2024.

In March, only weeks before the Franco-Indian naval drills were to begin, the European Parliament issued a report titled The Quad: An emerging multilateral security framework of democracies in the Indo-Pacific region. It noted that the adoption of Indo-Pacific strategy papers by France, Germany and the Netherlands has stepped up expectations about the forthcoming strategy for the region by the EU as a whole.

The EU powers, while not lining up entirely with Washington against Beijing, are nonetheless signalling increasing hostility to China. While calling US policy the expression of a strategic US-China rivalry, the EU parliament report noted: The EU, on the other hand, looks at China as an economic partner and a systemic rival, but also as a partner for negotiation and cooperation on key issues (including climate change).

However, it also echoed rising war propaganda falsely blaming China for having allegedly triggered the COVID-19 pandemic. It claimed, The appetite for engagement with China may have subsided in some European capitals, provocatively asserting that Beijing aims to distract public opinion from Chinas responsibility for the pandemic.

This aggressive policy is connected to a deep crisis of the capitalist system bound up with the emergence of Asia as a centre of world economy, soon to have 62 percent of world Gross Domestic Product and buy 35 percent of EU exports. France and the EU as a whole are reacting by pouring tens of billions of euros into their military machines. Financed by austerity against the working class and herd immunity policies on COVID-19 that have claimed over 1 million lives in Europe, these funds are preparing catastrophic wars.

Paris and New Delhi are escalating long-standing strategic ties. After the 1991 Stalinist dissolution of the USSR, both French imperialism and India sought to promote notions of a multi-polar world order. Then-French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine criticized the United States as a hyper-power, and Indian governments responded positively to attempts by Paris to market itself as a somewhat more reliable and less unpredictable and threatening partner than Washington.

France was supportive of Indias nuclear tests in 1998, when most of the imperialist powers reacted by imposing sanctions. Franco-Indian cooperation has grown over the last two decades to cover nuclear, space, defence, cyber security, intelligence-sharing and counter-terrorism cooperation. Bilateral military exercises, beginning with the navies in 2001, followed by the air forces in 2004 and the armies in 2011, have now became a regular feature.

What this history shows is that none of the imperialist powers, including Washingtons supposedly less aggressive European allies, have any alternative to the accelerating drive to war and police-state rule.

France has stepped up its involvement as it became increasingly concerned over Chinas growing economic influence abroad. China set up its first overseas military base in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa in 2017 and has invested in developing, managing or acquiring strategically located ports in countries surrounding India, including Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar. This cuts across not only US but also European and French interests, notably the interests of Paris in maintaining its fading domination of its former colonial empire in Africa.

Paris and New Delhi have repeatedly moved closer to a military alliance, with France signing a basing deal giving it access to facilities in India in 2018. In February 2020, the French and Indian navies, for the first time, conducted joint patrols from the Indian Ocean island of Reunion.

The Hindu last November reported that visiting French Navy Chief Admiral Christophe Prazuck had stated that Paris is looking forward to organising joint patrols with the Indian Navy in 2020 and working on the precise objectives. Speaking at an event, he said the region of the patrols could be the northwestern Indian Ocean or southern Indian Ocean around the islands that are part of France.

At the same time, Paris and New Delhi have moved closer based on the anti-Muslim policies of both French President Emmanuel Macron and Indias Hindu-supremacist Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Indian media and officials have tweeted their support for Frances anti-separatist law, which aims to restrict Muslims freedom of religion and expression by claiming that certain Islamic practices amount to separatism against the French Republic.

France has also supported India in Kashmir, a Muslim-majority region Modi has stripped of its autonomy and subjected to violent police-state rule. Thousands of Kashmiris and prominent politicians have been detained, communication lines cut and mobility in the Kashmir Valley severely restricted with the deployment of tens of thousands of additional Indian troops in one of the worlds most militarised zones.

In January, Emmanuel Bonne, a diplomatic adviser to French President Macron, visited India for an annual strategic dialogue and insisted that France supports India on Kashmir. He said, Even if it is Kashmir, we have been a strong supporter of India in the Security Council, we did not let China play any kind of procedural game. When it comes to the Himalayan regions, you should check our statements, we have been completely clear. There is no ambiguity in what we say in public.
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Derry City and Strabane District Councils Enterprise Week, which runs from today to Friday next, will focus on guiding entrepreneurs as the local economy enters the Covid recovery phase.

The online programme includes business skills workshops offering expert guidance in building resilience and tailoring operations and services for the reopening of trading.

Mayor, Councillor Brian Tierney, urged local businesses and budding entrepreneurs to access the programme and get involved in the wide range of online events on offer.

The Covid-19 pandemic has created challenges for every business in this City and District, he said.

From tailoring services and working environments to meet the restrictions to changing planning for an uncertain future - it has created unprecedented demands.

"The programme for Enterprise Week 2021 offers expert advice and guidance to help adapt your business to the challenges ahead and identify opportunities to improve performance as we enter the recovery and revitalisation phase.

Among the highlights in the five-day programme are Business Resilience workshops with Full Circle Management Solutions, Business Growth Clinics hosted by Enterprise North West, Business Social Media Training and a Women in Enterprise Networking Event focusing on overcoming Covid.

A two-day blended digital and live event powered by Spartacus entitled Level Up 2021 will seek to inspire post pandemic ideas and spark creativity by exploring how people, both locally and internationally, have innovated and created economic growth and initiated real change.

Other highlights are an EURES Cross Border Tax Briefing Seminar on Tax and Social Security implications for cross-border workers and employers, an introduction to online advertising from Full Circle, an introduction to the local Department for Communities Employer Advisors and a seminar focusing on human resources.

Business development manager at Derry City and Strabane District Council, Louise Breslin, said: Our Business Support team have been working closely with local entrepreneurs during the pandemic to offer advice and assistance on government support and adapting to the restrictions.

We are delighted to be able to offer a wide range of expert mentoring and guidance through the programme for Enter- prise Week 2021 which will allow businesses to make informed decisions about how best to navigate the recovery and revitalisation stage of the pandemic.

While we are disappointed that we cant invite attendees to physical events this year, the online programme means that the events and seminars will be more accessible and I would encourage people to register now for any events they are interested in as the numbers are capped for some workshops.

You can access the full programme for Enterprise Week at derrystrabane.com/enterpriseweek and follow the event on social media through the hashtag #EW2021.


(Natural News) A gender reveal in Cancun claimed the lives of two people after a small plane used for a stunt in the event crashed into the Nichupte Lagoon, a body of water located on the east coast of Cancun.

A video posted online shows a plane flying over a blue lagoon near the Caribbean Sea. The plane released a pink cloud into the sky, revealing that the couple holding the event is expecting a girl.

The cellphone video, which lasted less than one minute, was captured by someone on the boat where the couple was holding a party along with family and friends. The footage shows a small white plane soaring near Isla Dorada, a waterfront community in the center of Cancuns tourist zone.

At the beginning of the video, one man joked that the stunt was fine as long as it wont crash on the boat filled with partygoers. A second man can also be heard asking in Spanish if the baby is a boy.

Cheers turned into frantic screams

The video followed the small plane through the clear sky, pausing to show the pilot releasing the pink cloud. The person shooting the video apparently lost sight of the plane for a couple of seconds and people can be heard cheering for the hosts. But the cheers turned into frantic screams when they realized that the plane had crashed.

Authorities later revealed to local media that both the pilot and the co-pilot were killed in the crash. The incident is still being investigated and authorities have yet to release the names of the victims.

Local authorities, the National Guard and the Municipal Police arrived at the scene at 4 p.m. on Tuesday. The plane was spotted 300 meters from the shore.

Francisco Fernandez Millan, the president of the Nautical Association of Quintana Roo, said that the association coordinated Tuesdays rescue efforts.

The authorities revealed that the pilot of the white Cessna seemed to own the aircraft. The small plane, which departed from Holbox Island at 3:31 p.m. on March 30, belonged to Xomex, an aviation company.

According to its website, Xomex offers commercial, recreational and cargo flights in the Riviera Maya and the countrys southeast area. A Xomex representative didnt immediately respond to a message from The Washington Post on March 31.

The Federal Civil Aviation Agency has launched an investigation to determine what caused the crash.

In a statement, Millan said one of the people on the plane died during the rescue operation. The other person died while receiving first aid from a first-responder. Pictures posted on social media show workers dressed in white hazmat suits and local authorities rolling at least one body wrapped in a white blanket from the dock.

Gender reveal events have been causing accidents in the last few years

The Cancun plane crash was not the first incident where a gender-reveal celebration turned deadly.

Early in February 2021, a man died after he was struck by shrapnel from an exploding novelty cannon used during a baby shower in Michigan.

Evan Thomas Silva, 26, was killed when a small cannon-type device was fired at a Genesee County home. While the homeowner had used the cannon before, police officers said that the device was used to create a big flash, a loud noise and smoke.

Silva was standing 10 to 15 feet away from the cannon when he was struck by shrapnel. Silva was rushed to the Hurley Medical Center, but he died from his injuries.

Silva was a guest at the party held at the home of a family friend of the expectant couple. The cannon also damaged three parked vehicles and a garage at the property.

Back in April 2017, an Arizona couples gender reveal started a wildfire that destroyed over 45,000 acres of land. The wildfire took a week to extinguish.

Dennis Dickey, a Border Patrol agent, shot a makeshift target labeled boy and girl placed in a field near Tucson.

But the target exploded with a lot of blue smoke. The explosion then ignited a fire at the surrounding bush.

It took firefighters from 20 stations to put out the wildfire, which burned for a week. The fire also caused over $8 million in damages. (Related: Gender reveal party responsible for apocalyptic West Coast wildfires.)

Gender reveal inventor begs couples to stop hosting destructive parties

Even Jenna Myers Karvunidis, the blogger who is credited with inventing gender reveal parties back in 2008, advised couples to stop throwing these events.

Karvunidis, who blogs for High Gloss and Sauce, spoke up after a gender reveal party in California sparked the El Dorado wildfire. Officials in San Bernardino County announced that a gender-reveal party caused the wildfire and destroyed over 10,000 acres.

Karvunidis begged couples to stop throwing stupid parties that often cause destruction due to the use of firearms and pyrotechnics.

The wildfire started from the El Dorado Ranch Park in Yucaipa. It spread from the park to the north on to Yucaipa Ridge that separates Mountain Home Village and Forest Falls from the city.

Karvunidis also called out the couple who hosted the gender-reveal party for holding the event when it was 116 degrees in Pasadena. She expressed disbelief at people lighting a fire amid the heat just to announce the sex of their child, which is not important enough to warrant such destruction.

Officials warned that people responsible for starting fires due to negligence or illegal activity can be held financially and criminally responsible.

Visit Environ.news to read more articles about the dangers of gender-reveal parties.

Sources include:

Chron.com

NYPost.com

Newsweek.com

People.com
Fire on Cape Towns Table Mountain under control, smoldering View Photo

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP)  Firefighters in Cape Town finally brought a wildfire under control Monday after it swept across the slopes of the citys famed Table Mountain, burning the universitys historic library and forcing the evacuation of some neighborhoods.

The smoldering fire is being watched for flareups amid high winds and hot, dry conditions.

City authorities said the fire, which started early Sunday, was largely contained more than 24 hours later.

The fire had already badly damaged the library and other buildings on the campus of the University of Cape Town on Sunday, as well as other historic buildings nearby. Fueled by the high winds, it spread through the wild bush on the mountain slopes toward the citys center and the surrounding residential areas.

Devils Peak, one of the iconic points of the mountain which overlooks downtown Cape Town, was lit up by flames as the fire raged through the night. Residents of suburbs on the mountain slopes were evacuated early Monday as the blaze came dangerously close to their homes.

Fire-fighting helicopters with water containers suspended on ropes had been scooping up water from swimming pools and the nearby ocean and dumping it on the fire. But they were grounded on Monday because of the strong winds.

Four firefighters were injured battling the blaze on the slopes, said officials. The South African army had offered to help with some of its aircraft.

Its a massive wind thats blowing, and that is actually fueling the fire to spread in each and every direction, Cape Town mayor Dan Plato said.

A man in his 30s was arrested on suspicion of arson for setting additional fires, another city official said, but its not clear if he was responsible for starting the blaze. The man was arrested after witnesses reported seeing three people moving through flames setting more fires, Cape Town safety and security official JP Smith said.

Smith said the city had commissioned a forensic fire investigator to look into the cause.

Wildfires on the mountains surrounding Cape Town are fairly common during the hot, dry summer months and are sometimes whipped up into huge, uncontrollable blazes by strong coastal winds. The temperature in Cape Town peaked at 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit) Sunday and the winds hit the city overnight and Monday.

About 250 city and volunteer firefighters were deployed to battle the fire, which damaged four buildings at the University of Cape Town. The Jagger Librarys main reading room, where rare and unique African books and manuscripts were kept, was gutted and some of the priceless works had been lost, the university said. Others were saved after fire-proof doors activated and sealed off parts of the library.

Library staff had watched in horror from a safe distance as the building burned, the librarys executive director, Ujala Satgoor, said.

A windmill, built in 1796, and a restaurant near a memorial for the British colonial politician Cecil Rhodes also burned down.

The university has been completely evacuated and shut down and meals were being provided for around 4,000 students who had to quickly leave the university campus and their residences, according to Gift of the Givers, a disaster response organization. Many of those students were taken to local hotels, the group said. Activities at the university were suspended until at least Wednesday.

The group said it is also supplying food and water to the firefighters who had been working for more than 24 hours to control the fire.

Heavy smoke hung over parts of Cape Town and people were advised to cover their mouths and noses with wet towels or rags while being evacuated.

Dramatic videos and photos were posted on social media by people who came perilously close to the blaze on the slopes of Table Mountain, which is popular among runners and mountain bikers on the weekend.

Lisette Lombard posted a video of herself escaping from the fire after going on a trail run on Sunday. Shes seen running, breathless, as plumes of smoke rise close behind her. She said her car and others left in a parking lot were completely burnt out and she eventually found help from firefighters coming up the mountain.

When they told me that it (the fire) is out of control, that is when the penny dropped on how dangerous the situation was and how lucky I had got, she told South Africas IOL news website.

By GERALD IMRAY

Associated Press
Hong Kong: The Hong Kong authorities on Sunday (April 18) announced that they are suspending flights from India, Pakistan and the Philippines from April 20 onwards.

The order stated that the ban will remain in place for two weeks and the decision was taken after the N501Y mutant COVID-19 strain was detected in the Asian financial hub for the first time, authorities said in a statement late on Sunday.

The authorities have further declared these three countries will be classified as extremely high risk. The term was curated for the three countries after there had been multiple imported cases carrying the strain into Hong Kong in the past 14 days, the government said.

As per the countrys health bulletin, the city reported 30 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday, 29 of which were imported, marking the highest daily toll since March 15. Hong Kong has recorded over 11,600 cases in total and 209 deaths.

Hong Kong authorities have been urging residents to get vaccinated against COVID-19 with only around 9% of Hong Kongs 7.5 million residents vaccinated so far.

The government last week widened the citys vaccine scheme to include those aged between 16 to 29 years old for the first time, as they aim to boost lacklustre demand for inoculations amongst residents.

Airlines impacted by Hong Kongs ban on travellers from India, Pakistan and the Philippines include carriers such as Cathay Pacific, Hong Kong Airlines, Vistara and Cebu Pacific.

(With Agency inputs)

Live TV
Arizona News

Phoenix, Arizona - Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced Thursday that a State Grand Jury indicted Brett James Smith, also known as Brett James Zagorac, on charges of Fraud, Forgery, and Perjury. Smith is accused of fraudulently misrepresenting his background and credentials to obtain private tutor employment and access to children as a private tutor.

The indictment further alleges on or between August 2019 and April 2020, Smith fraudulently misrepresented and omitted material facts from a name change application with the Maricopa County Superior Court, in order to receive the benefit of an Arizona name change and to conceal his history of arrests and convictions for misdemeanor charges in Illinois and Indiana under his previous name.

The case was investigated by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, Chandler Police Department, Phoenix Police Department, Gilbert Police Department, Glendale Police Department, and the Pinal County Sheriff's Office.

All suspects are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

This case is being prosecuted by Section Chief Counsel Blaine Gadow and Assistant Attorney General Samantha Caplinger.



Below is the booking photograph for Smith.
For some observers, the 2018 arrest  and alleged rough treatment  of Carlos Ghosn, who had served as chairman and CEO of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, signaled that "the bloom was off the rose" for Tokyo and Japan as a coveted international executive assignment.

And although the headlines drew negative attention, business experts say Japan's allure persists for companies and their leaders, and that the focus for executives is not on criminal charges; rather, they worry more about the more practical downsides of working in Japan.

Parissa Haghirian, professor of International Management at Sophia University in Tokyo, describes a local business climate that is greater than any single scandal.

"From a corporate perspective, Tokyo is still a very attractive place, Japan is an attractive market. It's a shrinking market, that's for sure, but there are still many wealthy consumers, and especially in the consumer goods industry, the luxury industry, there's still very many opportunities, and this is the main reason why a company would come to Japan."

Professor Haghirian sees the automotive director's arrest as an incident that could spur international executives to deepen their understanding of Japan's legal framework.

"We have an effect by this scandal on society, and on the economy, but of course this is a tough learning process for everyone involved. Everyone who wants to work here, and everyone who wants to work in a top management position needs to be better prepared."

Professor Haghirian says that, for its part, the government is also attempting to streamline policies and procedures in order to attract more business executives. "The Japanese government has changed quite a lot of aspects; for example, pension plans, all these kinds of things. It's a lot easier to come to live in Japan and work in Japan than it used to be ten years ago," Haghirian opined.

International executives with lengthy experience in Japan say that reaching greater commercial heights will require an increased focus on business fundamentals.

Ernest Higa is the American entrepreneur who brought Domino's Pizza to Japan. Higa now helms Tokyo-based Higa Industries, Co., Ltd. Among his various enterprises, he oversees Japan's Wendy's restaurants, and he knows Japan's executive disincentives well.

Recognizing that a hefty inheritance tax and exit-taxes on unrealized gains are crimping the influx of high-earners who might help realize Tokyo's efforts to become Asia's leader in FinTech, Prime Minister Suga has pledged to make executive-friendly tax reforms soon.
Mayor Brian Bowman is asking the federal government to permanently double the annual gas tax revenue it provides to cities.

Mayor Brian Bowman is asking the federal government to permanently double the annual gas tax revenue it provides to cities.

The request is one of three key commitments the mayor hopes to see in todays federal budget.

"Wed love to see that made permanent. The reason this is important is the (funding) with the gas tax (goes) straight to municipalities," said Bowman.

In a recent column, federal cabinet minister Dan Vandal wrote that a one-time doubling of the gas tax this year will raise Winnipegs share of the funding to more than $88 million.

"It is significant It would be nice just to see that (made) permanent and then we could budget accordingly," said Bowman.

The mayor said such funding is ideal because it isnt at risk of delays like some tri-government funding requests, where the city must wait for other governments to review a deal before it is finalized.

"Money that does go straight to municipalities for their intended purpose would prevent provincial governments from really aggravating the efforts to get those federal dollars delivered in our community," said Bowman.

Specifically, Bowman accuses the Manitoba government of dragging its feet on a partnership between the city, province and Ottawa to complete the first two phases of the $1.8-billion north end sewage treatment plant upgrade. The city applied for that funding in October 2019.

The province has argued its completing due diligence on the file, not delaying it.

The mayor is also urging the federal government to ensure municipalities have a say in a national COVID-19 recovery plan and to provide Winnipeg with additional housing supports.

"This (housing funding) may be a way to ensure that the recovery involves everybody in our community and helps build needed infrastructure in the process," he said.

joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @joyanne_pursaga
[April 19, 2021] Ryan Honored Again as One of the Best Workplaces for Women in Canada by Great Place to Work

Ryan, a leading global tax services and software provider, has recently been named to the 2021 list of Best Workplaces for Women in Canada by Great Place to Work. This is the third consecutive year the Firm has made this prestigious list. "It is an honor to be recognized as a best workplace for women in Canada for the third consecutive year," said Ryan President of Canadian Operations Garry Round. "This award further demonstrates our commitment to creating a work environment that empowers all team members to achieve the highest levels of professional and personal growth." To be eligible for this list, organizations must be Great Place to Work Certified in the past year and have offices in Canada. Additionally, they must have a minimum of 15 female employees, and at least 90% of employees must agree that people are treated fairly, regardless of their gender. Winning companies were determined based on their overall Trust Index score from female employees. "Earning this nationwide recognition again as a premier workpace for women supports our continued efforts to develop and maintain a world-class culture that attracts a diverse and highly driven workforce," said Ginny B. Kissling, Ryan Global President and Chief Operating Officer. "I'm thankful we've built an environment where our female Canadian team members feel safe to place their trust and confidence in Ryan."



The full list of the 2021 Best Workplaces for Women in Canada by Great Place to Work can be found here. About Great Place to Work

Great Place to Work (GPTW) is the global authority on high-trust, high-performance workplace cultures. Through proprietary assessment tools, advisory services, and certification programs, GPTW recognizes the world's best workplaces in a series of national lists, including those published by The Globe & Mail (Canada) and FORTUNE magazine (USA). Great Place to Work provides the benchmarks, framework, and expertise needed to create, sustain, and recognize outstanding workplace cultures. About Ryan Ryan, an award-winning global tax services and software provider, is the largest Firm in the world dedicated exclusively to business taxes. With global headquarters in Dallas, Texas, the Firm provides an integrated suite of federal, state, local, and international tax services on a multijurisdictional basis, including tax recovery, consulting, advocacy, compliance, and technology services. Ryan is a nine-time recipient of the International Service Excellence Award from the Customer Service Institute of America (CSIA) for its commitment to world-class client service. Empowered by the dynamic myRyan work environment, which is widely recognized as the most innovative in the tax services industry, Ryan's multidisciplinary team of more than 3,000 professionals and associates serves over 18,000 clients in more than 60 countries, including many of the world's most prominent Global 5000 companies. More information about Ryan can be found at ryan.com. "Ryan" and "Firm" refer to the global organizational network and may refer to one or more of the member firms of Ryan International, each of which is a separate legal entity. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005222/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pyxis Oncology ("Pyxis" or the "Company") today announced that it will host a key opinion leader (KOL) webinar on antibody-drug conjugates on Tuesday, April 27, 2021 at 1pm Eastern Time.



The webinar will feature presentations by KOLs Jeremy Barton, M.D. and Rakesh Dixit, Ph.D., DABT, who will discuss antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and their potential for improving the lives of patients with difficult-to-treat cancers.

Also featured will be a presentation by Pyxis Oncology Chief Executive Officer Lara Sullivan, M.D., and Ronald Herbst, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer, who will discuss the Company's ADC programs.

Pyxis is currently advancing three ADC candidates: PYX-201, PYX-202, and PYX-203. All three candidates leverage site-specific conjugation technology to improve these drugs' stability and activity and target both novel and established tumor antigens. PYX-201 and PYX-202 candidates also have local immuno-modulatory effects and may act synergistically in a combination treatment setting with immunotherapies.

PYX-201 is a first-in-class non-internalizing ADC that targets a tumor-restricted antigen that is overexpressed in several solid tumor types and designed to selectively kill tumor cells while enhancing a robust anti-cancer immune response. PYX-202 targets a tumor cell surface antigen that is expressed in a range of solid tumors and is designed to reduce toxicity by using a highly stable linker and a well-understood cytotoxic agent. PYX-203 targets an antigen expressed in certain hematologic malignancies and utilizes a highly potent DNA-damaging agent designed to reduce the potential development of drug resistance and disease relapse.

Drs. Barton and Dixit, and the Pyxis management team will be available to answer questions following the formal presentations.

To register for the webinar, please click here.

Jeremy Barton, M.D. is a strategic oncology drug development consultant with experience at the chief medical officer level working across a broad range of technologies and both solid and hematological tumors. He has more than two decades of experience in oncology drug development in the U.S. and Europe across all phases from preclinical through commercialization. Career highlights include serving as vice president, head of oncology, biotechnology clinical development at Pfizer and filling the CMO role for eFFECTOR Therapeutics and Mirati Therapeutics. He earned his M.A. from University of Oxford and his M.D. from University College Hospital Medical School in London.

Rakesh Dixit, Ph.D., DABT is president and chief executive officer of Bionavigen, a virtual biopharmaceutical company specializing in biologics, cell and gene therapy and small molecule drug development. He is an accomplished executive, inventor, and scientist with over 30 years of success with top biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, including Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Medimmune, AstraZeneca. Dr. Dixit is the winner of the prestigious Long-Standing Contributions to the ADC Field award at the 2020 World ADC Awards, hosted by ADC Review Journal of Antibody Drug-Conjugates. He earned his Ph.D. in toxicology from the University of Lucknow and graduate work at Case Western Reserve University.

About PYX-201

PYX-201 is a first-in-class non-internalizing ADC that targets a tumor-restricted antigen that is overexpressed in several solid tumor types to selectively kill tumor cells while enhancing a robust anti-cancer immune response.

About PYX-202

PYX-202 targets a tumor cell surface antigen that is expressed in a range of solid tumors. PYX-202 is an ADC designed to reduce toxicity by using a highly stable linker and a well-understood cytotoxic agent.

About PYX-203

PYX-203 is an ADC that targets an antigen expressed in certain hematologic malignancies. PYX-203 utilizes a highly potent DNA-damaging agent designed to reduce the potential for development of drug resistance and disease relapse.

About Pyxis Oncology

Founded by Longwood Fund, Pyxis Oncology is building a differentiated portfolio of biologics, including antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and immunotherapies, to improve the lives of patients with difficult-to-treat cancers. Pyxis is employing site-specific conjugation technology to develop highly stable ADCs with superior therapeutic indexes. Pyxis is also advancing a diverse portfolio of immunotherapies that target broad immune regulators as well as novel immune checkpoints identified through its immuno-oncology and cold tumor platforms. For additional information, visit www.pyxisoncology.com.

Media Contact

Jason Braco, Ph.D.

LifeSci Communications

+1-646-751-4361

jbraco@lifescicomms.com
Due to the continuing number of new COVID-19 cases at the Unionville-Sebewaing Area School District, the district has decided to have the middle school and high school move to remote learning this week.

Grades six through 12 will be in remote learning from April 19-23.

Superintendent George Rierson said the district has been monitoring the number of positive cases and quarantines since students returned from spring break, with low attendance caused by students in quarantine either due to close contacts or positive cases.

The USA Elementary School will remain open as attendance has been better than the other schools and the number of positive cases and quarantines have been lower.

Students will also not be sent to the Tuscola Tech Center.

While Rierson said the number of close contacts a student has in school are limited, close contacts on the districts buses are a different issue.

That would put them within six feet of someone whos positive, Rierson said, calling it a factor that increased the number of students who had to quarantine despite being symptom-free.

The last time the school district had to go to online learning was on a Friday back in March, though that also had to do with teachers having planned time off along with teachers and students who were in quarantine. The district did return to in-person learning the following Monday.

The district also had to resort to remote learning for a day and a half before its Thanksgiving break, which was also due to staffing issues.

This also comes as the district announced on Friday that five more students in the middle and high schools and one elementary school teacher have tested positive. Contact tracing has been completed and all individuals who were in close contact have been advised to quarantine.

Rierson said there was no relationship at all between these newly announced cases. He added that the end of the day on Friday, the district had 74 students in quarantine, with an absentee rate of around 30% for both the middle and high schools.

It gets difficult to provide continuity and learning for a large number of students who are out, Rierson said.

The district had 15 students in the district identified as having COVID-19 at the time.

Rierson said that at the end of this week, a number of students will leave quarantine and as long as the number of newly announced cases are kept down, in-person learning will resume on Monday.

If the number of cases and quarantines increase, well look at another week of remote learning, Rierson said.

Measures the school district has taken to prevent the spread of the virus include daily health screenings, having desks in classrooms maintain a six foot distance, reducing the number of students in the hallway between classes, maintaining students in cohort groups, cleaning frequently touched surfaces multiple times per day, and nightly cleaning of all areas used by students.

Since October, there have been 43 students 19 staff members who have tested positive for COVID-19.

The USA School District continues to urge parents and students to continue following these public health recommendations:

 Staying home when you are sick.

 Practicing the three ws: wash your hands, wear a mask, watch your distance.

 Covering coughs and sneezes and properly disposing of tissues.

 Continue to socialize responsibly  limit gatherings outside your household.

 Continue to monitor your health for symptoms.

With the USA District school year going on until June 10, Rierson expects there to be more positive cases in the district, but hopes the current trend of declining cases in Huron and Tuscola counties will continue.

Were going to be diligent here by implementing mitigation measures to do everything we can to bring that number down in the schools, Rierson said.
President Joe Biden abruptly reversed himself on how many refugees the United States would accept this year, after a political firestorm erupted when the White House announced it was retaining the ceiling of 15,000 refugees set by his predecessor Donald Trump.

Biden had pledged during the election campaign to raise the ceiling on refugees to 125,000 a yearstill a drop in the bucket compared to the millions of refugees created by US-instigated wars and conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, the principal driving force of recent mass migrations.

Immigrants in a US detention center

In February, the administration carried out a back-door reduction in the total number of refugees to be admitted during the current fiscal year, which ends September 30, notifying Congress that since barely seven months remained, only 62,500 refugees would be admitted. But the White House delayed issuing the formal Emergency Presidential Determination until Friday, April 16, stalling thousands of refugees who had scheduled flights to the United States.

The determination actually released on Friday restated the Trump ceiling of 15,000, although it altered the geographical distribution, permitting a few thousand refugees apiece from the Middle East and from predominantly Muslim countries in north and east Africa, who had been effectively barred by Trumps anti-Muslim policy.

Groups which sponsor and care for refugees immediately protested, and many congressional Democrats joined them, including Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, and Pramila Jayapal, co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus.

Several hours later, the White House issued a revised statement declaring that the ceiling of 15,000 set by Trump had been overturned, and that a new, higher ceiling for the current fiscal year would be announced May 15. The statement reaffirmed that a ceiling of 125,000 would be in effect for the next fiscal year, beginning October 1.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki tried to explain the initial statement as a purely technical one which did not actually reiterate the Trump ceiling, only left it in place while a new ceiling was being discussed and decided on. She said that while a new ceiling would be set May 15, this was unlikely to be as high as the 62,500 promised in February.

Friday night, Bidens assistant national security adviser Jon Finer held a conference call with refugee advocates, telling them the cap would likely be lifted well before May 15, and that the administration would try to resettle refugees as soon as possible, rather than spreading out the admissions until Sept. 30.

Some 33,000 refugees have already been vetted by the State Department, have housing, counseling and other resources already lined up, and await only legal permission to enter the country.

The reversal touched off a round of finger-pointing within the Biden administration, with leaks to the press blaming Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, for the announcement that Biden would keep the Trump ceiling. Competing leaks blamed Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Xavier Becerra for the unpreparedness of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, although he was the last Biden cabinet member approved by the Senate, and has only been in office since March 18.

Right-wing anti-immigrant spokesmen seized on the White House flip-flop as an indication that Biden was bending to the pressure generated by congressional Republicans who have been howling about a border crisis because of the surge in Central American refugees coming across the US-Mexico border.

Stephen Miller, Trumps fascistic adviser on immigration, gloated, This reflects Team Bidens awareness that the border flood will cause record midterm losses *if * GOP keeps issue front & center.

There is little doubt that the right-wing reading of White House political calculations is correct. The Biden administration, and the Democratic Party as a whole, continually bow to pressure from the right, a process which Biden has openly defended in the name of keeping a strong opposition and a strong Republican Party.

Since the number of refugees crossing the US-Mexico border began to increase dramatically in January and February, the White House has been mainly concerned about right-wing political criticism of Bidens supposed leniency, not about popular outrage over the spectacle of thousands of children packed into cages under police guard at the border.

Thousands of child migrants are being held at immigration detention camps for far longer than the 72-hour maximum set under the court-imposed Flores agreement, mainly because HHS facilities are themselves grossly overcrowded and unable to take them.

The same agency, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the HHS, handles both the intake of approved refugees from Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and the long-term housing of undocumented child migrants at the US-Mexico border. The ORR has exhausted its $1.3 billion budget for the year already, and while the Biden administration has authorized emergency funding to detain child refugees at the border, it has not taken a similar action for the ORR to allow the agency to carry out both its major operations.
California took a big step last week opening vaccine eligibility to everyone 16 and over, and teenagers are getting in line for shots.

Doctors say this is a good thing.

The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement in February urging all eligible teens to receive the COVID-19 vaccine to help end the suffering and death caused by COVID-19.

"I do think that teenagers should receive the COVID vaccine, once they meet criteria," said Dr. Lisa Dana, a pediatrician at Golden Gate Pediatrics in San Francisco and Mill Valley. "Everyone ideally should receive the vaccine once eligible, and deemed safe."

Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

For parents and teens booking appointments, it's important to know that teens under the age of 18 need parental or guardian consent to get inoculated in California. When a 16- or 17-year-old gets a jab, a parent or guardian must be present.

What's more, while everyone 16 or older is eligible for inoculation, only the Pfizer vaccine has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for people under age 18. The Pfizer vaccine is a two-dose shot that was 95% effective in preventing COVID illness in clinical trials.

The other two vaccines available in the U.S. created by Moderna and Johnson & Johnson are authorized for use in adults 18 and over. Pfizers vaccine was approved for use in 16- and 17-year-olds because the company included that age range in its clinical trials.

Pfizer asked the FDA earlier this month to authorize use of its vaccine in individuals ages 12 to 15 and this age group could start getting inoculated as early this summer.

Moderna recently began two separate studies that will test its vaccine in children under 12 and another study in people ages 12 to 17. The company has said it could have results for the older age group by the summer.

While young people tend to have mild cases of COVID-19, teenagers are about twice as likely to become infected with the coronavirus as younger children, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers specifically found COVID-19 incidence among those age 12 to 17 years was approximately twice that in children aged 511 years based on analysis of 277,285 cases reported in school-age U.S. children from March 1 to September 19, 2020.

Preliminary research also shows older children spread the virus more easily than younger children.

"Teenagers arent a major risk for getting sick and dying, but they are clearly a reservoir for this virus and theyll spread it," said Dr. George Rutherford, a professor of epidemiology at UCSF. "Teenagers tend to live with parents and grandparents and can spread it to them. Where we are now in the pandemic, we still need to get more older people and high-risk people vaccinated. We also need to get the drivers of the pandemic vaccinated, and this tends to be younger people. With teenagers, the virus spreads just as easily as it does with adults, theyre not like 11-year-olds with lower transmission rates."

Rutherford noted that a recent surge in COVID cases in Michigan has in part been driven by infections in young people and shows the importance of getting teenagers vaccinated.

Michigan health officials have said among the biggest drivers of coronavirus infections in the state are outbreaks in youth athletes and those associated with K-12 schools, according to the Detroit Free Press. "Cases among kids ages 10-19 are at an all-time high, the state's top epidemiologist, Sarah Lyon-Callo, reported last week, quadrupling from four weeks earlier," the news site reported on April 13.

Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

Teenagers receive vaccine in the same way adults do, with an injection in the arm. Common side effects include injection site pain, fatigue, headache, muscle pain, chills, joint pain and fever.

"Because teens have more robust immune systems, its possible that they may feel these side effects more strongly than adults would," Dr. Angela Dangvu, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital Orange County, said in a Q&A posted in response to the state opening vaccine eligibility to 16 and over on April 15. "This is a sign that their immune system is mounting a response against the virus."

Dangyu also said that while teens and families can have more peace of mind about the safety of resuming more typical activities when teens get vaccinated, they still need to wear masks in group settings and public places where masking is required.

"In one-on-one activities where a teen and their friend are both fully vaccinated, they can feel comfortable removing their masks so long as no one in either household is high-risk and unvaccinated," she said.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.
AFC Energy's ( ) Adam Bond talks to Proactive London after returning from Saudi after a hugely successful business trip for Extreme E. Bond explains to our Proactive audience their plans to deepen their relationship with ABB Schweiz AG, the provider of electric vehicle charge points.

ABB has subscribed for 3.25mln in newly issued AFC shares, while Dutco Group, a Dubai-based conglomerate, has subscribed for 1.5mln of new shares, resulting in the issue of 7.36mln new shares in aggregate.
Only one man was injured, and he is in a serious condition.

Debris from the explosion litters the street. Credit:The Age Archives

Many had remarkable escapes from certain death yesterday morning when an explosion and fire wiped out two furniture stores in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, and damaged 62 other shops.

Hairbreath Escapes for Many in Shattered Shops Area

First published in The Age on April 21, 1962

One family opposite were missed by inches by glass flying at bullet speed, a police patrol car changed its normal cruise at the right moment, and a family had just moved out of the wrecked stores.

Shop fronts were wrecked for 200 yards along the street on each side of the blast centre.

A man, 23-year-old Vlado Prokop, of Bell Street, Fitzroy, was hurled 70 feet by the explosion and was critically injured.

He was rushed to St. Vincents Hospital where he underwent an emergency operation for head injuries.

Official police reports list 62 shops damaged by the explosion, some extensively. Plaster was cracked and windows broken in about 12 homes.
The father of a seven year-old girl killed after their car was sprayed with bullets outside a McDonald's has multiple previous drugs arrests, and may have been the intended target, police believe.

Jontae Adams, 29, whose seven year-old daughter Jaslyn was killed in Chicago Sunday, was arrested on suspicion of manufacturing and dealing heroin twice in 2012 and twice in 2013, according to court records.

He was convicted of an unspecified drugs offense in 2016, and was arrested for possession of heroin in 2018.

In 2012, he was one of several suspected gang members arrested for operating an open-air heroin market in the East Garfield Park neighborhood of Chicago.

Jaslyn Adams, 7, was hit multiple time and rushed to hospital where she was pronounced dead. Shocking photos show the family's silver Infiniti car sprayed with bullets, with the vehicle shot at by two different gunmen, according to police.

Adams was also seriously-injured after being shot once while he and Jaslyn waited to get fast food, and has since shared a Facebook post calling his late daughter his 'protector.'

Police are still hunting for the suspect. It is not clear what led up to the shooting, which happened just after 4pm in the Windy City's Homan Square neighborhood, but police are said to be working on the theory that Jontae Adams was the intended target of the gun attack.

Jontae Adams, 29, and his seven-year-old daughter, Jaslyn, were shot on Sunday afternoon just after 4pm as they waited to get food at a McDonald's drive-thru in Chicago. Jontae was shot in the torso and survived. His daughter was shot several times. She was pronounced dead at a local hospital

Jaslyn Adams, 7, was hit multiple time and rushed to hospital where she was pronounced dead

According to Chicago police, both victims were inside the vehicle when they 'heard gunshots and felt pain'. The car could be seen riddled with at least 15 bullet holes

A screenshot of the final texts said to have been sent by Jaslyn to her aunt Jasmine as she traveled to the Chicago McDonald's where she was later shot dead

Jontae Adams, who was shot in the torso and rushed to a nearby hospital, posted a message on his Facebook showing several photos of himself with young Jaslyn.

He defended his parenting in the post, and wrote: 'I never did anything but show her how a man suppose to a woman.

'Anything she ask she basically get, I dont give a f*** what yal think because yal a** Ignorant.'

Jontae Adams added in his post: 'I taught her how to use bathroom brush teeth all that - nothing but smiles when we together I know my mistakes I made out here but I already blame myself so yal tryna do it not gone work.'

Scroll down for video

Seven-year-old Jaslyn Adams was fatally shot on Sunday afternoon while her father sustained gunshot injuries as they sat inside a vehicle at a McDonald's drive-thru

A police commander walks by as police investigate a crime scene where Jontae Adams, 28, and his daughter Jaslyn, 7, where shot, resulting in Jaslyn's death

Police investigate a crime scene in the Windy City's Homan Square neighborhood

Police are still hunting for the suspect. It is not clear what led up to the shooting

Police investigate a crime scene where Jontae Adams, 28, and his daughter Jaslyn, 7, at a McDonald's drive-thru, Sunday, April 18

He wrote: 'My baby just became my protector.'

He also posted a screen shot of a text conversation between his daughter and her aunt Jasmine moments before the shooting. Jaslyn was asking her aunt what she wanted to order from McDonald's.

Another Facebook video appears to show Jaslyn driving her father's car while sitting on his knee, and was posted as a tribute in the wake of her death.

Meanwhile, distressing video shot by those at the scene sees officers pulling the little girl out of the car and rushing her into the back of a police car in a bid to get her to hospital as quickly as possible.

Records show that Jontae Adams (pictured) has been arrested several times in recent years

Records show Adams has faced numerous charges including possession and trafficking of heroin

He defended his parenting in the post, and wrote: 'I never did anything but show her how a man suppose to a woman.'

Jontae Adams with his daughter Jasyln, who was shot and killed while sitting in her father's car outside a Chicago McDonald's on Sunday

Adams has defended his parenting in the wake of his daughter's death, and referred to Jaslyn as his 'protector' in a Facebook status posted after her death

A person can be heard exclaiming, 'Oh s***! They killed a baby!'

Jontae Adams frantically called his mother, Jaslyn's grandmother, Lawanda McMullen, after the shooting.

'He said, 'Ma, come get me. They just shot my baby,' McMullen told the Chicago Sun Times.

Jaslyn's aunt, Tawny McMullen, said her niece was a 'beautiful' and 'really sweet child.'

Joslyn was a student at Cameron Elementary School. She was nicknamed Pinky 'because she was bright' and pink was her favorite color, family members said.

The girl was hit several times and was taken by Chicago police officers to Stroger Hospital where she was pronounced dead

The shooting happened just after 4pm in Chicago's Homan Square neighborhood

Cook County Medical Examiner's Office confirmed Jaslyn, of Oak Park, was shot several times before her death.

The bullets stuck the girl's body 'multiple times' while her father was hit in the torso.

Their car was left riddled with bullet holes and shell casings were seen all around the vehicle.

Police said the shooting was believed to be gang-related.

Jaslyn and her father were both rushed to John Stroger Hospital where Jaslyn was later pronounced dead. The father is currently in serious condition, according to police.

The exact circumstances leading up to the shooting remain unclear.

No suspects are yet custody, with an investigation ongoing. Marvin Edwards, president of 100 Men Standing, a group advocating against gun violence, encouraged anyone with information relating to the shooting to come forward.

'We are sick and tired of this. It makes no damn sense,' Edwards said.

'Whoever pulled this trigger on this young lady and took her life, trying to get something to eat from McDonald's, whoever is housing these individuals, turn these people in... We are pleading with you, do not let this go undone. Turn them in right away. This family are going through living hell right now because of the acts of some fools.'

People can leave anonymous tips by calling 1-800-U-TELL-US or by messaging Chicago Police Department's text line at 274637.
.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........

WASHINGTON  The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from a Kentucky man whose pickup truck was seized at the Mexican border and held by the federal government for more than two years.

The justices did not comment in leaving in place a lower-court ruling against the man, Gerardo Serrano. He was asking the court to force the government to hold a prompt hearing when it takes peoples property under forfeiture laws.

Those laws allow the government to seize property without ever having to prove it was used for illicit purposes.

Serrano was crossing the border at Eagle Pass, Texas, on his way to visit relatives in 2015 when federal border agents searched and then took possession of his Ford F-250 pickup.

The agents justified the seizure because they found munitions of war in the vehicle, five bullets  but no gun. Serrano said he angered the agents by taking picture of the border crossing on his cellphone and then refusing to hand over the devices password, although he said he deleted the photos.

He didnt get the truck back until 2017.

ADVERTISEMENTSkip



................................................................
Iran welcomed on Monday the idea of talks with its regional rival Saudi Arabia, amid reports that the two Gulf powers were directly talking about bilateral relations and hopes that the talks about the Iranian nuclear deal have made progress.

Iran has always welcomed dialog with the Saudi kingdom and sees it as beneficial to the people of both countries and regional peace and stability, Bloomberg quoted Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh as saying at a news conference on Monday.

Over the weekend, the Financial Times reported, citing three officials, that Saudi Arabia and Iran held direct talks in Iraq this month. The talks reportedly involved the proxy war in Yemen and the recent increase of attacks from the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels in Yemen on oil facilities and oil infrastructure targets in Saudi Arabia.

A Saudi-led Arab coalition has been fighting the Houthi movement in Yemen since 2015.

Khatibzadeh declined to either confirm or deny talks with Saudi Arabia were held, while a senior Saudi official denied to FT that any talks with Iran had been held.

Potential de-escalation of the Iran-Saudi relations could defuse some of the tension in the Middle East, a critical oil-producing region, which also hosts the most important oil chokepoints along the sea routes.

Last week, the Houthi rebels from Yemen claimed yet another attack on Saudi Aramco facilities, involving 17 drones and two ballistic missiles. Three weeks earlier, a petroleum products distribution terminal in Jizan, Saudi Arabia, was attacked, the Kingdom said, blaming the Houthi movement and vowing to take measures to preserve the stability of the global oil supply.

Reports of Saudi-Iranian talks come a day after Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said about the talks in Vienna about the nuclear deal that After days of intensive talks, it appears that we are now on the right track. But difficult way to go.

United States National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, told Fox News on Sunday that the talks in Vienna have been constructive in the sense that there is real effort underway there.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
U.S. Rep. Ken Buck declared early Monday morning that he is running for a fifth term in Congress, laying to rest speculation the Colorado Republican sparked over the weekend when he took to social media to tease an impending announcement.

Buck, who stepped down last month after serving one term as chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, takes the fight to the Democrats in a campaign video released Monday.

"President Biden and his liberal allies are trying to take away our God-given rights," Buck says in the video as photos of Vice President Kamala Harris, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi flash on screen.

'"Their tax-and-spend policies will create more big government and less freedom for Americans. The liberals want to dictate which doctor we can see, which gun we can own and which kind of car we can buy. My name Is Ken Buck, and I'm here to put a stop to this. The American experiment runs on freedom, and I plan on keeping it that way."

Buck, a former Weld County district attorney, added in a statement also released Monday: "I will fight back and do everything in my power to protect what makes America the greatest country in the world. I promise you that I wont back down from the corrupt liberals in the swamp and their toxic cancel culture."

Although Buck made clear in January that he wasn't going to challenge Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet next year  in what would have been his third run for the seat since 2010  a Republican blogger suggested Buck was hinting at a Senate bid or possibly planned to launch a campaign against Gov. Jared Polis, setting off an unexpected chain of dominos.

More than one GOP strategist told Colorado Politics that their best guess was that Buck could be throwing his hat in the ring for Colorado attorney general, an office he considered seeking ahead of the 2018 election before deciding to run for another term representing the heavily Republican 4th Congressional District.

The Colorado GOP has yet to field challengers to Bennet or Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser, who are both running for re-election next year.

As it's currently configured, the 4th CD includes Weld County and much of Douglas County, two GOP strongholds, as well as the Eastern Plains. Under its 2020 boundaries, the district voted for Donald Trump by nearly 16 percentage points, the widest margin of any congressional district in Colorado, which voted as a whole for Joe Biden by 13 percentage points.

According to the Cook Political Report, the current district has a Partisan Voter Index score of R+12, meaning it votes about 12 percentage points more Republican than the nation as a whole, though that will change before the next election.

The seat's 2022 boundaries are unknown, pending action by an independent redistricting commission, which is awaiting final census figures before it can begin drawing final maps.

Democrat Isaac "Ike" McCorkle , who lost to Buck last year by 24 percentage points, is running in the 4th CD again next year, but Buck enters the race with a campaign cash advantage.

According to finance reports filed last week, Buck raised $150,000 in the year's first quarter and finished the period with about $375,000 in the bank. McCorkle reported raising about $18,000 and had $161,000 on hand, along with about $5,000 in debt.
[April 19, 2021] Funds advised by EMH Partners acquire 65% stake in cleverbridge AG

COLOGNE, Germany and CHICAGO and MUNICH, Germany, April 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Funds advised by EMH Partners, based in Munich, have agreed to acquire 65% of the shares of cleverbridge AG. EMH and cleverbridge have agreed that EMH will acquire the majority shareholding in cleverbridge AG alongside the management team and founders.

cleverbridge was founded in 2005 and is a leading, fast growing global provider of subscription billing and management services focused on digital goods, primarily software. With headquarters in Cologne, Germany and Chicago, USA, and offices in Tokyo, and Taipei, cleverbridge enables its clients to grow effortlessly on a global scale, serving more than 190 countries. EMH Partners is the perfect partner for us as we accelerate our growth trajectory, says Craig Vodnik, CEO and Co-Founder of cleverbridge. EMH Partners has validated their entrepreneurial credentials of supporting founder-led organizations entering their next stage of growth by providing added value to our existing plans. Its been such a refreshing experience to talk with fellow operators and see such an aligned vision for the future of client-centric solutions. EMHs investment positions us well to improve our cloud-based platform, play an even more active part in our industrys consolidation, and deliver more value for our marquee list of enterprise clients. cleverbridge processed transactions with a volume of more than 650m in 2020, a significant increase compared to the prior year, while continuing its history of strong profitability. Recent large enterprise software client wins keep the company on its growth trajectory. With 300 employees supporting more than 30 languages and over 60 currencies, cleverbridges commerce-as-a-service offering drives clients operational excellence in payments, global tax and regulatory compliance, fraud prevention, chargebak and dispute management, and customer service. Further, the company supports its clients in the execution of their growth plans through data analytics and digital marketing, reseller management, and customer flow optimization.



The subscription billing and management market fits perfectly into our investment strategy, our entrepreneurial beliefs and our scope of competences, says Dominik Schwarz, Partner at EMH Partners. The market promises strong growth as the volume of subscription and software-as-a-service solutions sold globally continues to increase. cleverbridge, with its excellent cloud-based technology platform and its seasoned management team and experts, is a leader both in providing operational excellence and growth support to its clients. We look forward to supporting the company and its clients during their next phase of expansion. Consummation of the transaction is subject to customary closing conditions. The parties involved have agreed to keep the terms of the investment confidential. The management team, with the full support of EMH, will remain focused on the ambitious opportunities ahead. cleverbridge is the latest investment of funds advised by EMH Partners, previous investments include: Brainlab, a global leader of software-driven medical technology, Native Instruments, a global digital music creation software and hardware provider and Occhio, a German manufacturer of high-quality lighting.

About cleverbridge

cleverbridge provides global billing solutions for digital goods, online services and SaaS companies in B2C and B2B markets. Its cloud-based platform simplifies recurring billing, optimizes the customer experience and offers comprehensive global compliance and payment capabilities. With cleverbridge, clients can acquire more customers, improve retention, and grow revenue in international markets. For more information on cleverbridge, please visit www.cleverbridge.com. About EMH Partners

EMH Partners is an owner-led investment firm by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. As a next-generation private equity company and one of the leading investors in the DACH region, EMH Partners supports the growth of Mittelstand companies with capital, digitisation and expansion expertise. EMH Partners invests in market-leading, owner-managed companies to accompany them in partnership during the next growth phase. Today, EMH Partners manages more than 1 billion of committed capital. For more information on EMH Partners, please visit www.emh.com. Contacts: cleverbridge AG

Stephanie Duesing

stephanie.duesing@cleverbridge.com

1.312.922.8693 x 3325 EMH Partners

Norbert Essing Kommunikation GmbH

Julian Hoffstadt

julian.hoffstaedt@essing-kommunikation.de

+49 5404 9708-0



[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
POTTSVILLE  The glass slipper will fit Cinderellas foot, but she wont be able to kiss her prince in the upcoming musical at Pottsville Area High School.

A year after the coronavirus pandemic canceled their spring musical, the Crimson Players will perform the musical by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday, April 23-25, in the high school auditorium. It is directed by Maria Malek.

At rehearsals on April 12, the two leads said they are excited to be back on stage. Julia Malek, who plays the title character, is fulfilling a longtime dream of playing a lead in a Pottsville Area High School musical.

Ive been watching them since I was little, the 18-year old senior from Pottsville said.

Logan Miscannon, who plays Prince Topher, said it feels surreal to be on stage after more than a year. Putting on the show, he said, is a way of showing the community the Crimson Players are back.

As a performer, my goal is to bring happiness, and thats especially needed during this pandemic, the 17-year old junior, also from Pottsville, said.

Physical contact among the 25 students in the musical will be limited. That means Julia Malek and Miscannon wont kiss during the show, but will instead lean in to appear that they are smooching, the director said.

They will wear plastic masks during performances and a limited number of students will be allowed in dressing rooms.

In fact, effects of the pandemic continue to impact the production. Student quarantines have already delayed the performance by a week, and if there is another COVID-19 delay, the musical will be presented May 21-23. Tickets already purchased will be honored.

Based on a French folk tale about a young woman forced into servitude by a wicked stepmother who meets a handsome prince, Cinderella is based on the 2013 Broadway production.

In that version, Maria Malek said, Cinderella isnt helpless and the prince is a rounder character than previous versions. The titular character also shows him the injustices in his kingdom.

The director said rehearsing hasnt always been easy, with limited days and students having to quarantine as a result of the virus. When they do rehearse, cast members are in small groups, she added.

Julia Malek, Marias daughter, said the show is absolutely beautiful and so funny.

Its not the Disney Cinderella, she said, referring to the 1950 animated movie.

Other main cast members are Sam Keglovitz, who plays the Fairy Godmother; Zoe Holden, playing Cinderellas stepmother; Meg Burns, portraying the stepsister Gabrielle; Lily McDonald, portraying the stepsister Charlotte; and Jake Montgomery, who plays the regent, Sebastian.

Attendance limited

Attendance at each of the three performances is limited to 350 people in the 1,399-seat auditorium.

The audience will be spaced and must wear face masks for the entire show. There will be hand sanitizer stations near all entrances.

There will be a 15-minute intermission, but without concessions.

A video recording of one of the performances will be offered next week. Tickets are available on the high school website or by calling 570-621-2962. Anyone with questions about tickets is asked to contact Maria Malek at mmalek@pottsville.k12.pa.us.

Maria Malek said the musical is normally performed in March, but was pushed to back April under the assumption that more people would be vaccinated and able to attend.

Back for a last hurrah

Last March, the Crimson Players were set to perform the Claude-Michel Schonberg The Pirate Queen, but the pandemic forced its cancellation.

Having directed the schools musicals for 18 years, Maria Malek said bringing the musical to life this year brings her joy.

We all feel the loss of last years show very keenly, but our group this year is so enthusiastic and dedicated to bringing the joy of the story of Cinderella to their friends and family and they are so excited to be back on stage, she said.

Julia Malek said while it was disappointing to not be able to perform as the lead role of Grace OMalley in The Pirate Queen, putting on Cinderella has brought her a lot of joy.

It will be great to have that last hurrah, she said.
Passengers check in at the counter for New Zealand flights at Sydney International Airport on April 19, 2021, as Australia and New Zealand opened a trans-Tasman quarantine-free travel bubble. (Saeed Khan/Getty Images)

Australia-NZ Travel Bubble Opens, Singapore May Be the Next

The Trans-Tasman travel bubble has opened on Sunday night, with the first flight from Sydney to Auckland taking off around 7 a.m. on Monday.

After over one years tight border restrictions, all residents in Australia and New Zealand, including foreign nationals, can now travel to the other country without quarantine, as long as they meet related health and border clearance requirements.

Todays milestone is a win-win for Australians and New Zealanders, boosting our economies while keeping our people safe and just in time for ANZAC Day, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in a statement on Monday.

Both countries have done a remarkable job in protecting our communities from COVID, and two-way flights are an important step in our road out.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern shared her joy over the re-opening of borders.

It is truly exciting to start quarantine-free travel with Australia. Be it returning family, friends or holidaymakers, New Zealand says welcome and enjoy yourself, she said in a joint statement.

The bubble marks a significant step in both countries reconnection with the world, and its one we should all take a moment to be very proud of.

Travellers take selfies before their departure for New Zealand at Sydney International Airport on April 19, 2021. (Saeed Khan/Getty Images)

To use the travel bubble, all passengers must have spent the previous two weeks in either of the two countries and not have returned a positive Covid-19 test result during the period or shown any Covid-19 symptoms.

However, travellers need to prepare for disruptions of plans at short notice in case of an outbreak. Information related can be found on Australias Smartraveller website and New Zealands Unite Against COVID-19 website.

Singapore and other Pacific island nations are likely to be the next choices for Australian travel bubbles, with Singapore at the top of the list, according to Deputy Prime Minister and Federal Transport minister Michael McCormack.

Were in those discussions, McCormack told the ABC on Monday. Whether its the Pacific Islands, Fiji, Noumea. Whether its the places in Asia that have a low prevalence of COVID like Taiwan, Japan, potentially Singapore and Korea.

However, he emphasized that the vaccine rollouts in Australia and other countries are critical for opening international borders, that any travel bubble plan will be dependent on medical advice.
TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / April 19, 2021 / Talisker Resources Ltd. ("Talisker" or the "Company") (TSX:TSK)(OTCQX:TSKFF) is pleased to announce that the Company plans to increase its current resource drill program from 50,000m to 100,000m at its flagship Bralorne Gold Project located in south-central British Columbia. A fifth drill rig has already been added as part of a staged increase to eight drill rigs. The increase adds to the 43,500 metres of drilling already completed at the project since initiation of drilling by Talisker in February 2020.

Key Points:

100% of the increased meterage will be completed in 2021 calendar year

Increased meterage will convert recently discovered near to surface bulk-tonnage mineralisation discovered along strike from the Charlotte Zone to inferred category

Additional meterage will also be added to complete conversion of high-grade vein targets located from potential to inferred category located surface to 750m depth, focused on the Bralorne West block

On completion, total meterage drilled at Bralorne by Talisker since Feburary 2020 will be in excess of 120,000 metres

Talisker is fully funded to complete the program

"Our consistent drill results, coupled with the recent strategic investment by New Gold allows Talisker to confidently double our resource drill-out program at our core Bralorne asset," commented Terry Harbort, Chief Executive Officer of Talisker who added, "The completion of this expanded program by the end of 2021 will allow the Company to rapidly create value with focused resource definition and move one step closer to fulfilling our vision of become a tier one explorer."

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 22nd. To register, please click on the following link - https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_rp3EDUo9QS6Lg1YKOYdrLA. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

About Talisker Resources Ltd.

Talisker 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 & CEO

Terry.harbort@talliskerresources.com

+1 416 361 2808 Mick Carew

VP, Strategic and Corporate Development

mick.carew@taliskerresources.com

+1 604 803 7711

Related Links - https://taliskerresources.com/

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.

Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Information

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, effective time of the rights provided to New Gold under the Investor Rights Agreement, the completion of New Gold's strategic investment; the completion of the Offering, the use of proceeds, 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 statements 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 market risks and the demand for securities of the Company, 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 news 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.

SOURCE: Talisker Resources Ltd.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/640977/Talisker-to-Increase-Bralorne-Drill-Program-to-100000m
[April 19, 2021] Vortus Investment Advisors and Newly Formed Stateline Operating Partner to Develop Assets in the Delaware Basin

Vortus Investment Advisors, LLC ("Vortus"), a Fort Worth, Texas-based private equity firm focused on lower to middle market upstream investments across North America, today announced a new partnership with Stateline Operating, LLC ("Stateline"). Headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, Stateline is a newly formed operating and development joint venture between Vortus and Flat Creek Resources ("Flat Creek"). Stateline will be managed by Flat Creek with an initial focus on the development of existing oil-rich assets in Eddy County, New Mexico in the Delaware Basin. "We are excited to partner with this management team, which has proven expertise and demonstrated success in this region," said Jeff Miller, Managing Partner at Vortus. "This partnership further demonstrates our focus on strong investor alignment." Brian Crumley, Managing Partner at Vortus, added, "Looking to the future, Vortus will continue to evaluate additional partnership opportunities with the Flt Creek team in the Permian Basin, as well as other attractive domestic oil and gas resource plays across the country."



Mike McCracken, Stateline's CEO, added, "We are excited to partner with Vortus to develop one of the most economic plays in the United States with a focus on environmentally responsible operations. We value the Vortus support and courage of conviction." Kirkland & Ellis LLP served as legal counsel to Vortus with a team led by Dallas partner Thomas Laughlin and Houston partner Shubi Arora. Shearman & Sterling LLP served as legal counsel to Stateline with a team led by Houston partner Sarah McLean.

About Vortus Investment Advisors, LLC Vortus Investment Advisors, LLC is a Fort Worth-based private equity firm focused on the lower middle market upstream energy industry in North America. Vortus has an asset-based investment strategy, targeting privately negotiated transactions in the lower to middle market requiring approximately $25 million to $100 million of equity capital in partnership with successful owner/operators. For additional information, please visit www.vortus.com. About Stateline Operating, LLC Stateline Operating, LLC is a privately held, independent oil and natural gas company based in Fort Worth, Texas. Stateline acquires, develops, and produces oil and gas properties in the Permian Basin and other domestic resource plays. For more information, please visit www.statelineoperating.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005042/en/

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China prevents Mongolian fire from spreading across border

Xinhua) 15:07, April 19, 2021

HOHHOT, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Over 600 Chinese firefighters were mobilized to prevent the flames of a grassland fire in Mongolia from spreading to China's Xilingol League, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, local authorities said.

The fire started in Mongolia on Sunday. The Chinese firefighters were dispatched to prevent the fire from blazing across a border patrol road and fire isolation belt.

The flames have been extinguished.

(Web editor: Xian Jiangnan, Liang Jun)
 Close Derek Chauvin found guilty on all charges

Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is expected to appeal his conviction after being found guilty on all charges in the murder of George Floyd.

The jury found Chauvin was:

Guilty of second-degree unintentional murder

Guilty of third-degree murder

Guilty of second-degree manslaughter

Joe Biden said the conviction of Chauvin in the killing of Mr Floyd could be a giant step forward for the nation in the fight against systemic racism. But he declared that its not enough.

Chauvin remains in the maximum security prison there and is currently under administrative segregation, otherwise known as solitary confinement, for his safety, a spokesperson for the Minnesota Department of Corrections told CNN.

On Wednesday, US Attorney General Merrick Garland launched a sweeping investigation into policing practices in Minneapolis, which will assess whether the Minneapolis Police Department engages in a pattern or practice of using excessive force, including during protests.

Sentencing was scheduled for 16 June, exactly eight weeks from today.

Read More:

Read The Independents updates and analysis below.
One person has been arrested in connection with a incident at a bar in in the US in which three persons were killed and three injured, officials said.

The Kenosha County Sheriff's Department said in a statement on Sunday that the person, whose name was not released, was arrested on suspicion of first-degree intentional homicide, NBC News reported.

The victims were not identified, and more than three people may have been injured, the department said.

The person was taken into custody after detectives followed multiple leads and reviewed surveillance video, the department said. Additional details about the arrest were not immediately provided.

Police said earlier that officers found the bodies at the Somers House Tavern in the north of the city. The wounded were taken to a hospital with serious injuries, the statement said.

"We believe our suspect knew who he was targeting," Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth said at a news conference.

--IANS

int/pgh

(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.)
South Australia reels in World Fisheries Congress

April 19,2021 | Source: FiskerForum

The 2021 World Fisheries Congress to be held in South Australia will bring together the brightest minds in commercial fishing, with a focus on conservation and sustainability.



Scheduled for September this year, The 8th World Fisheries Congress, will be held in Adelaide, South Australia.



Bringing together scientists, managers, fishers and aquaculture operators from across the globe, the congress promotes international co-operation in fisheries science, conservation and sustainability.



The event will host respected speakers from around the world, and feature presentations, workshops, networking events and industry exhibitions.



Adelaide Convention Bureau CEO Damien Kitto said the event is significant for fisheries across the globe.



It will be the largest gathering of research, industry and management sectors to discuss the latest advances in fisheries world-wide, he said.



The congress, set to be held between September 20-24, was postponed from October last year due to COVID-19 restrictions.



Kitto said bringing the congress to attendees using both in-person and online formats has made the new September date possible.



Whilst the number of delegates who attend Adelaide may reduce, the global reach and awareness of how South Australia practices its fishing techniques will be significantly increased via the hybrid platform of knowledge sharing, he said.



Using hybrid events is the essential stepping stone to returning to the totally face-to-face business events we know delegates are craving.



Speakers will include world leaders in global fishery policy, such as Ambassador Peter Thomson, the United Nations Special Envoy for the Ocean, and Professor Katsumi Tsukamoto, winner of the International Fisheries Science Prize, among others.



Full registration for the event will include access to all presentations and workshops, and tickets to the welcome reception, and formal dinner.



Attendees and exhibitors are eligible for funding of between $5000 and $250,000 under the Federal Governments Business Events Grant programme, which will help cover costs of attending the conference.



SA Minister for Primary Industries and Regional Development David Basham said the event will reel in huge economic benefit for South Australia.



The influx of fisheries experts to Adelaide in September is expected to inject $2.7 million to the local economy, he said.



Minister Basham said it is fitting the World Fisheries Congress is to be held in South Australia this year, being the premium seafood state of the Southern Hemisphere.

 FiskerForum  2004 - 2019

Theme(s): Others.
Marvel released the first trailer for Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings featuring Simu Liu, Awkwafina, and Tony Leung.

The unveiling of the clip is a historic event as it is the first Asian superhero movie introduced in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as it features an all-Asian cast including the first lead Asian superhero.

Canadian actor Liu, 32, looked every bit the action star as he showed off an impressive array of martial arts skills in the titular role.

Historic: Marvel released the first trailer for Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings featuring Simu Liu as the protagonist and titular character

Big gig: Awkwafina - real name Nora Lee - was also seen in the trailer as she plays Shang-Chi's pal Katy

His character, Shang-Chi, is a martial artist who has been trained to be an assassin since childhood by the Ten Rings terror organisation.

Things begin to get tricky when he tries to escape to a normal life by living in San Francisco.

No doubt it is a complicated situation as Shang-Chi's father Wenwu/The Mandarin (played by Tony Leung) is actually the leader of the villainous Ten Rings organisation.

Throwing fists: His character, Shang-Chi, is a martial artist who has been trained to be an assassin since childhood by the Ten Rings terror organisation

Interesting: Things begin to get tricky when he tries to escape to a normal life by living in San Francisco

Wow factor: Simu showed off his impressive physique as he went shirtless in one scene

In an ominous voiceover Wenwu says: 'I gave you ten years to live your life and where did that get you?

'You walked in my shadow, I trained you so the most dangerous people in the world couldn't kill you. Son it's time for you to take your place by my side.'

To which Shang-Chi defiantly replies: 'That's not going to happen'

'Son it's time for you to take your place by my side': No doubt it is a complicated situation as Shang-Chi's father Wenwu/The Mandarin (played by Tony Leung) is actually the leader of the villainous Ten Rings organisation

Then the two-minute clip takes a dramatic twist as Shang-Chi battles it out with several foes.

A voiceover from Wenwu continues: 'You can't outrun who you really are.'

It all ends with an epic fight scene inside of a San Francisco public transportation bus where he first meet's Awkwafina's - real name Nora Lum - Katy.

Taking another turn, Katy ends up behind the wheel of the large vehicle and crashes into several cars as Shang-Chi is forced to save several passengers in the process.

Action-packed: Then the two-minute clip really begins to kick it up a notch as Shang-Chi battles it out with several foes

Interesting: A helicopter could be seen landing in front of Ten Rings organisation members

Shining star: Canadian actor Liu, 32, looked every bit the action star as he showed off an impressive array of martial arts skills in the titular role

It ends with Katy hilariously remarking: 'We make a good team!'

The all-Asian cast is star-studded as the film also includes characters Xialing (Meng'er Zhang), Jian Li (Fala Chen), Razor Fist (Florian Munteanu), Jon Jon (Ronny Chieng) and Jiang Nan (Michelle Yeoh).

When filming wrapped back in October, Liu was well aware of the historic moment as he took to Facebook to celebrate the movie.

He penned: 'Nine months from now we will break records and make history as the first superhero movie to feature an ALL-ASIAN cast that kicks so much a*s it's not ever funny. Well - that's a lie, actually, it's quite funny too.

Oh no: It all ends with an epic fight scene inside of a San Francisco public transportation bus

Battling it out: Shang-Chi was able to fight off foes before saving passengers from impending doom

'For all of those who hated us because of the color of our skin, or been made to feel less than because of it; NO MORE. This is OUR movie, and it will be IMPOSSIBLE for Hollywood to ignore us after this.'

The character of Shang-Chi - also known as the Master of Kung Fu and Brother Hand - first appeared in Marvel comics back in 1973.

Destin Daniel Cretton - who is known for introspective dramas like Just Mercy, Short Term 12, and The Glass Castle - directed the film.

Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings is set for release in the US and UK on September 3.
(Natural News) Fifteen million doses of the Johnson & Johnson Wuhan coronavirus vaccine were ruined as a result of the wrong ingredient being added during production. The incident occurred in a factory in west Baltimore which federal authorities flagged for multiple violations. Because of the mishap, delays have been anticipated in the federal governments vaccine rollout.

A government official said the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) discovered that Emergent BioSolutions ruined the 15 million doses by adding the wrong ingredient. The companys Bayview facility in Baltimore is also producing AstraZeneca vaccines. Unfortunately, workers at Emergent accidentally included an ingredient meant for the AstraZeneca jabs in a batch of J&J vaccines.

The HHS official told POLITICO: It was no secret that Emergent did not have a deep bench of pharmaceutical manufacturing experts.

J&J acknowledged the gaffe on March 31, saying that the affected batch is unusable and needs to be discarded.

J&Js vaccine has been viewed as a milestone for COVID-19 immunization programs worldwide. The one-dose jab can be shipped and stored at standard refrigeration temperatures. On the other hand, the two-dose mRNA vaccines by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna require sub-zero temperatures for storage and shipping. The 15 million ruined doses would have been enough to fully vaccinate 15 million citizens.

The pharmaceutical giant attributed the incident to human error and added that an earlier batch was not affected by the mishap. The last shipment consisting of 11 million doses came from a facility in the Netherlands. The latest delivery of vaccine doses fulfilled J&Js goal of providing the U.S. government with 20 million shots by the end of March 2021.

White House officials told the New York Times that the J&J vaccine mishap will not prevent the U.S. from meeting its COVID-19 vaccination goals. President Joe Biden has pledged to have sufficient vaccine doses for all American adults by the end of May 2021.

He previously committed to having 100 million Americans immunized against the Wuhan coronavirus in his first 100 days in office, which was achieved with six weeks to spare. (Related: Yearly COVID-19 shots might be needed by everyone, Johnson & Johnson CEO now conveniently claims.)

Emergent repeatedly flagged by FDA for failing to meet manufacturing standards

Emergent and J&J first joined forces in April 2020 to produce the one-dose COVID-19 jab. The drug manufacturer even lauded the lesser-known firm in a statement as an important partner for its goal of supplying more than one billion doses by the end of 2021.

However, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) described Emergents Bayview plant as a testing laboratory that did not manufacture products. The facility needed technology and personnel upgrades before it could be allowed to churn out vaccines.

An FDA inspection at the Bayview plant around the time J&J announced its partnership with Emergent revealed more skeletons in the closet. The agencys lead investigator, Marcellinus Dordunoo, said the company failed to train employees for their respective roles as part of their function and current good manufacturing practices. He also flagged the Bayview plants failure to protect electronically held-data generated during analytical testing from possible deletion or manipulation. Dordunoo noted in his report that Emergent did not address data integrity concerns.

Prior to this inspection, the FDA had already pointed out a number of issues with Emergent. A December 2017 inspection of the firms Canton, Massachusetts plant found that it had not rectified the presence of low-level mold and yeast isolates there. FDA agents also questioned Emergents unwritten policy of not conducting routine audits at the separate Camden facility, also located in Baltimore. (Related: FDA slaps vaccine manufacturer for ongoing bacterial contamination.)

Anthrax vaccines are filled into vials at Emergents Camden plant while the vaccine serum for the J&J shots is produced at the Bayview plant. A plant located in Indiana and owned by the New Jersey-based Catalent handles the fill and finish process of putting the vaccine serum into vials.

J&J said it would add more manufacturing and quality experts to supervise vaccine production at the Bayview facility. The move is in compliance with the instruction from the Biden administration to directly oversee Emergents vaccine production process moving forward. Emergent declined to comment on the matter.

Visit Vaccines.news to read more articles about improper COVID-19 vaccine production.

Sources include:

DailyMail.co.uk

POLITICO.com

WPSDLocal6.com
Hawaii Supreme Court Ends Pandemic-Related Early Prisoner Release

As state and local governments across the United States ease pandemic-related restrictions, the Supreme Court of the State of Hawaii has decided to end a program that allowed for the release of low-level inmates early in hopes of controlling the spread of COVID-19 in the Aloha States detention facilities.

The three-page ruling ending judicial oversight of the jails came on April 16. The vote was 41.

The order also ended the temporary prohibition on judges imposing bail on defendants charged with certain low-level offenses.

Concerned about a viral breakout at Oahu Community Correctional Center, the Office of the Public Defender filed a petition with the court Aug. 12, 2020, seeking the expedited release of certain categories of inmates at Hawaiis community correctional centers and facilities. At that time, the pandemics trajectory remained uncertain and vaccinations were not available.

Citing the virulence at the time of the CCP virus within close quarters and the possibility that its spread in Hawaiis jails had the potential to overwhelm health care providers, the court established procedures for considering the release of some inmates and pretrial detainees.

Hundreds of misdemeanor and pretrial detainees and those serving misdemeanor and petty misdemeanor sentences were reportedly released under the order. Excluded from the early release program were individuals convicted of or awaiting trial for felony assault, sexual assault or attempted sexual assault, burglary, robbery, unauthorized entry to a dwelling, domestic abuse, or violating a restraining order, protective order, or injunction.

Last month, as petty criminals continued to be released, Honolulu residents complained about a surge in chaos and lawlessness, blaming the early release program for it, Hawaii News Now reported at the time. The state Supreme Court policy allowed accused criminals to be set free hours after being arrested.

Theres no consequences for their bad behaviors, said Dr. Chad Koyanagi, a local psychiatrist. Because jails arent an option for offenders, some hospitals have been effectively transformed into detention facilities, and their employees have been physically attacked.

Half a dozen people were injured by a particular individual, and I heard that he wasnt even taken into custody, Koyanagi said at the time. He was released back to his family, which is horrifying to me.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Hawaii filed a brief with the states high court urging that the program be continued.

But because COVID-19 is under control in the jails, theres no need to continue the early release policy, the court determined in its new ruling.

Today, according to recent filings in this case, it appears that the rate of positive cases in Hawaiis correctional centers and facilities has significantly declined since the petition was filed in August 2020, testing and other health and safety measures have been implemented within the correctional centers and facilities, and a vaccination program to vaccinate inmates is underway. Thus, it appears that the conditions that necessitated swift action by this court in August 2020 are no longer prevalent, the court stated.

Both the state and defense counsel continue to have the option of filing individual motions seeking release, the court said.

In his dissenting opinion, Associate Justice Michael D. Wilson said the courts majority was ignoring the expert opinion of Dr. Pablo Stewart, who found the health and safety measures that have been implemented inside  remain inadequate and ineffective at mitigating the risks and addressing the harms created by COVID-19.

After the ruling, the Hawaii Department of Public Safety said there were no more active COVID-19 cases in the incarcerated population in Hawaii correctional facilities or at the Saguaro Correctional Center in Eloy, Arizona, which is under state contract to house prisoners from Hawaii, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported.

The ACLU of Hawaii was extremely disappointed with the ruling, Wookie Kim, its legal director, told reporters.

Everything feels the same, looks the same, is the same  so for the court to say these emergency conditions are no longer prevalent is shocking to read.
Press Release

19 April 2021

Over the past year, the United Nations specialized agency for tourism has been supporting its Member States on a series of initiatives relating to market intelligence and marketing. Now, as tourism begins to restart in some parts of the world, a series of special sessions were held jointly with Facebook to deliver a range of key insights into how the effective use of digital marketing can help destinations gain a competitive advantage in the challenging months ahead.

Advertisements

Three sessions, one each in English, Spanish and French, welcomed participants from 30 countries. The sessions focused on Facebook and Instagram Communication Insights and Best Practices, with participants also given an overview of digital tools and tips for communicating with their target audiences, including through Messenger and WhatsApp. Alongside this, the sessions highlighted the importance of metrics and other key tools in measuring the success of digital marketing campaigns, and role of advertising and creativity in reaching new audiences.

Sandra Carvao, UNWTO Chief, Market Intelligence and Competitiveness, says: "We are very happy to have Facebook on board with us to bring the fundamentals and best cases of digital marketing to our Members. Our partnership will help destinations be better prepared for a new market framework and allow them to use data and digital marketing to reach new audiences and restart their tourism sectors."

Nicolai Gerard, Facebook EMEA Government Politics & NonProfit Marketing Solution Director says: "We are very pleased to work with UNWTO to help global destinations take advantage of all the benefits that digital solutions and tools can offered. In the times we are living, it is key for the travel industry to implement digital marketing strategies to accelerate the road to recovery. With this partnership, we believe that travel destinations will gain the necessary tools and skills that will allow them to use all the services available through our family of apps."
Photo: The Canadian Press FILE - In this Wednesday, April 17, 2019 file photo reviewed by U.S. military officials, the control tower is seen through the razor wire inside the Camp VI detention facility in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. A plan to offer the COVID-19 vaccine to prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, which was halted earlier in 2021 amid a political backlash, is on again as health authorities on April 19, 2021 expanded the vaccination program on the Navy base in Cuba to the entire adult population of the remote facility. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

Prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre can begin getting the COVID-19 vaccine as soon as Monday, a senior defence official told The Associated Press, months after a plan to inoculate them was scuttled over outrage that many Americans werent eligible to receive the shots.

The new timing coincides with President Joe Bidens deadline for states to make all adults in the U.S. eligible for coronavirus vaccines. Beginning Monday, anyone older than 18 in the country qualifies to sign up and get in a virtual line to be vaccinated.

The defence official said all 40 men held at the Navy base in Cuba will be offered the vaccination to comply with legal requirements regarding the treatment of prisoners and to help prevent COVID-19 from spreading. Strict quarantine procedures had already sharply curtailed activities at the base and halted legal proceedings for prisoners facing war crime trials, including the men charged in the Sept. 11, 2001, attack.

Obviously, we dont want an outbreak of COVID on a remote island with the challenges that would present, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the effort ahead of an official announcement.

The announcement in January that the military intended to offer the vaccine to prisoners sparked intense criticism, particularly among Republicans in Congress, at a time when COVID-19 vaccines were just being rolled out to troops and civilians at Guantanamo and were not widely available in the United States.

Several Republican members of Congress backed legislation that would have blocked Guantanamo prisoners from receiving the vaccine until all Americans had the opportunity to receive it.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy criticized the decision on Twitter. President Biden told us he would have a plan to defeat the virus on day 1, the California Republican said on Jan. 30. He just never told us that it would be to give the vaccine to terrorists before most Americans.

Though the decision to vaccinate the prisoners may still prove controversial, a key difference now is that the vaccine is now available to anyone over 18, both on the base and throughout the U.S. Half of all adults in the country have received at least one dose of the shot.

At Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, 56% of the total population of about 5,700 people, a mix of military personnel, contractors and dependents, has been vaccinated, and the shot is available to any adult who wants it, said Dawn Grimes, a public affairs officer for the base hospital.

There are about 1,500 people assigned to the task force that runs the detention centre on the base. There have been no known cases of COVID-19 among them, nor among any of the prisoners.

Medical personnel have already discussed the vaccine with the prisoners. The military does not plan to disclose how many ultimately choose to accept it, the official said, citing medical privacy regulations.

The Biden administration announced in April that it could conduct a full review of detention centre operations with the goal of eventually closing the facility, which opened in January 2002 to hold people suspected of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban after the Sept. 11 attacks.

At its peak in 2003, the detention centre at the Navy base on the southeast tip of Cuba held nearly 680 prisoners, and it drew widespread condemnation over the treatment of the men held there, most without charges.

Closing it has proved a challenge because the U.S. has sought to continue holding and prosecute some prisoners, but Congress has prevented the transfer of anyone held there to facilities inside the country for any reason.

Those still being held there include Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, who, along with four others, faces trial on charges that include murder and terrorism over the Sept. 11 attacks. The long-stalled case remains in the pretrial stage, and no hearings have been held in more than a year because of the pandemic.
The documentary The Race to Save the World looks at several David-versus-Goliath efforts to curb climate change by raising awareness or confronting companies that profit off of fossil fuels. At times it looks like a lot of fun, as when a horde of kayaktivists paddle into Elliott Bay in Seattle to try to impede the movement of the Polar Pioneer, a massive floating oil rig Shell intended to use in the arctic. Roughly 200 kayaks in a rainbow of colors tried to surround the 307-foot-tall drill until police boats intervened.

The problem of man-made climate change is not new, nor are documentaries about it. The Race to Save the World departs from some of the more common approaches of such films. It isnt loaded with scientific data. There arent horror shows of pollution, industrial disasters or environmental degradation, not that those arent parts of some of these stories. This film looks at activists who decided to take personal risks, many of them involving potential criminal penalties for trespassing or other civil disobedience charges.

Retiree Miriam Kashia joins a few dozen people on a 3,000-mile cross-country walk to raise awareness about climate change. Shes dismayed over why people passing in cars would flip off an older woman who is approaching the problem very peacefully.

Other cases are more confrontational. Abby Brockman is a mother in Washington state who gets arrested after blocking oil-transport trains for eight hours. Her concerns are both local and global. Michael Foster is a psychologist arrested in North Dakota for manually closing a valve on a Keystone Pipeline. Aji Piper is one of many Washington state youth who filed a suit to demand the state not deprive his generation of its rights due to neglectful management of resources. There also are mass protests in New York and Washington, D.C.

The Race To Save The World 1 Minute Official Trailer from Joe Gantz on Vimeo.

The Race to Save the World is directed Joe Gantz, who also has made films about the increasing number of Americans facing financial hardship (American Winter) and illness (Ending Disease). He is best known for creating Taxicab Confessions, which captured people having candid conversations in cabs. Race has some similarly intimate scenes, with parents and spouses captured in raw conflict or distress about some of the activists choices. Gantz doesnt hide his subjects vulnerability or shy from their flaws. Some of Brockmans testimony at her own trial is a disaster.

The activists talk about their motivations and why they decided to take personal risks. There are many arrests and footage from trials. The consequences of going to jail for blocking a train track for a few hours or turning off a pipeline that was easily turned back on are potentially formidable. That helps focus the contrast of the enormous legal protections enacted for specific private property, such as fossil fuel company infrastructure, versus the difficulty of protecting widely shared resources or conditions.

The film does not easily reinforce a sense of idealism about activism, though many activists speak passionately about the costs of action and inaction. At times, the sites of protests are visually stunning. But one of the most startling points made in the film is that on Earth Day in 1970, 20 million Americans marched to demand protection of the environment, which contributed to President Richard Nixon signing legislation creating the EPA. The looming question is how the escalating climate problem and abundance of supporting evidence has not inspired more activism.

The Race to Save the World screens on Earth Day (April 22). Find the link at Zeitgeist Theatre & Lounge.

Dumpstaphunk's new album 'Where Do We Go From Here' is right for the times Obviously, Dumpstaphunk didnt write the song Where Do We Go From Here with plans to see a bunch of crazy shit going on around us and say, 
25 years ago: Stalinist-led coalition in Italy

On April 21, 1996, general elections in Italy brought the rebranded Italian Stalinists into government for the first time in nearly 50 years. Reflecting the confidence which big business placed in the post-Stalinists, the Milan stock exchange soared 4 percent the day after the vote.

The Stalinists who transformed the old Communist Party of Italy into the Party of the Democratic Left (PDS) in 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, now had control over the largest bloc of seats in the ruling Olive Tree (Uliva) coalition. A left-talking minority faction that rejected the total repudiation of any connection to socialism founded the Rifondazione Communista (Refounded Communist Party). It played a key role in forming the new government, giving its votes to the Olive Tree, which won a majority over the right-wing Freedom Alliance coalition.

Romano Prodi, with Lamberto Dini (left) and Massimo D'Alema, in 1996

There was no popular mandate in the voting for either of the two coalitions, which ran on virtually identical capitalist programs of austerity and budget cutting. The PDS and the two parties which made up the Freedom Alliance coalition, the Forza Italia party of billionaire Silvio Berlusconi and the neofascist Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance), received votes similar to those in the 1994 election, which led to Berlusconi forming a government.

The swing from center-right to center-left was accomplished by the shifting of figures from the old Christian Democratic Party, who had supported or participated in Berlusconis government, over to the side of the PDS.

Romano Prodi, a capitalist technocrat, took the post of prime minister in the PDS-led government. Lamberto Dini, Berlusconis finance minister and successor as prime minister, also ran as a candidate in the Olive Tree coalition.

The election of the PDS was not a blow against the fascists and the right-wing. The fascist AN increased its overall vote by more than 2 percent to 15.7 percent and became the largest party in Rome, where they received nearly one-third of the votes. The right-wing populist Northern League, which advocated the autonomy or independence for the industrialized north of Italy, also saw its vote rise to 3.7 million.

50 years ago: Papa Doc Duvalier dies, leaving 19-year-old son as Haitis dictator

Francois Duvalier, the US-backed dictator-president in Haiti, died on April 21, 1971. Papa Doc, as Duvalier was known, was succeeded by his 19-year-old son Jean-Claude DuvalierBaby Docwho became Haiti's new ruler. Both Duvalier dictatorships oversaw regimes of immense political terrorism, characterized by vicious anticommunism.

Duvalier first came to power in 1957, winning election in part by promoting racial resentment of Haitis black majority against its mixed-race elite. Once in office, Duvalier immediately began building a police state that brutally upheld capitalist property relations, in which political dissenters were arrested, exiled or summarily executed.

Papa Doc Francois Duvalier

Initially, the United States opposed Duvalier and supported a failed coup attempt against him in 1958. However, Duvaliers police state proved to be a reliable asset to the US in smashing any support for socialism among the impoverished masses of Haitians. Particularly after Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba in 1959, the United States began providing support to Haiti. Duvalier was more than willing to receive the financial backing of the US to help prop up his unstable rule. With his position in Haiti strengthened by US dollars, a massive repression was unleashed on the population.

Duvalier formed the Tonton Macoutes secret police force who carried out terrible crimes against the population. The Tonton Macoutes committed assassinations, kidnappings and public executions in which bodies would be left on display as a warning to political opponents. In 1969 Duvalier announced an attempt to rid Haiti of all supposed communists. The self-declared president for life killed as many as 60,000 in this act of political genocide.

Taking power after his fathers death, the young Jean-Claude Duvalier inherited and continued the operations of the police state. His regime was marked by blatant corruption that surpassed even that of his father, including syphoning funds of the Haitian treasury into personal offshore accounts.

75 years ago: German Stalinists and Social Democrats form Socialist Unity Party

On April 21, 1946, the Socialist Unity Party (SED) was formed in the Soviet-occupied sector of Germany through a merger of the Stalinist Communist Party (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD).

The new entity was established on rotten foundations. It brought together the Social Democrats, who had broken with the perspective of socialism decades before, beginning with their support for World War I, and the Stalinists, who advanced a nationalist perspective in line with the interests of the parasitic bureaucracy that had usurped political power from the working class in the Soviet Union.

Otto Grotewohl (right) and Wilhelm Pieck (left) seal the unification of the SPD and KPD.

The formation of the SED took place amid the political breakdown triggered by the Allied defeat of the Nazi regime in May 1945. Both the Social Democrats and the KPD, basing themselves on the deal struck between the Soviet bureaucracy and the imperialist powers in the latter stages of the war, were committed to restabilizing the global capitalist order by playing their part in suppressing the class struggle in Soviet-occupied eastern Germany, whose largest city was the divided former capital, Berlin. The crimes of the Nazis had discredited capitalism in the eyes of millions of workers and the end of the war had been accompanied by the establishment of workers councils and other forms of struggle throughout Europe.

The reformed SPD central committee was established when the Nazis were defeated. Jockeying for control of the reestablished organization, which had been smashed under fascism, they rapidly proposed a unity deal with the Stalinists. This was directed against the SPD leadership-in-exile and a group led by Kurt Schumacher in Hanover. The KPD, which was only beginning to construct its own apparatus, initially rebuffed this overture.

By April 1946, however, the Stalinists were prepared for a unification. The Berlin leadership of the SPD rapidly agreed. Schumacher and the rest of the SPD leaders who resided in the sectors of the country controlled by Britain, France and the US, opposed the deal from the standpoint of open anticommunism, fearing that it could cut across their orientation to the imperialist powers.

As the WSWS has explained, the SED represented a fusing of two bureaucracies. This was possible because the SPD and KPD agreed on the fundamental political questions: the suppression of the political independence of the working class and the establishment of a bureaucratic state.

100 years ago: US pledges to dominate Latin America

On April 19, 1921 President Warren G. Harding pledged to go to war if necessary for the historical principle of the Monroe Doctrine, at a ceremony dedicating a statue to the Lattin American bourgeois nationalist leader of the early 19th century, Simon Bolivar. The statue had been given to the United States by the government of Venezuela.

The Monroe Doctrine was pronounced during the administration of James Monroe (18171825). It was initially directed against European efforts to impose new colonies after the breakup of the Spanish Empire. But by the early 20th century it had been transformed into a doctrine that upheld the right of the United States alone to the imperialist domination of the people and resources of Latin America.

Warren G. Harding

In a testament to hypocrisy, Harding declared, The history of the generations since that doctrine was proclaimed has proved that we never intended it selfishly: that we had no dreams of exploitation. The 20th century would, in fact, be characterized by the brutal realization of US imperialisms dreams of the domination of Latin America both economically and militarily.

Harding continued, in a reference to the American intervention in Europe during the First World War, The history of the last decade must certainly have convinced the world that we will stand to fight, if necessary, to protect this continent and these sturdy young democracies from oppression and tyranny.

During the Harding administration, US troops were deployed in Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Panama and Costa Rica, and had only been recently withdrawn from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.

Most of the Latin American states had sent representatives to the ceremony unveiling the statue of Bolivar. They enthusiastically applauded Hardings remarks.
Earlier on this year Ricky spoke to British TV host Lorraine about when we can expect to see the 3rd and final season.

"Everything going well, we film in April and May and then it takes a few months to edit and then it takes a couple of months to put into a 160 languages," he said.

"So, I'm hoping [it will air] by the end of the year."

"I've never done a third series of anything," he added. "But it felt right, and I fell in love with the characters, and I think this should be it."

While we're sad to see this show end, we can't wait for season 3.
A 12-year-old girl who disappeared while walking to school more than 20 years ago was a victim of homocide, an inquest has found.

Quanne Diec was last seen walking from her Granville home, in western Sydney, to catch a train to Strathfield Girls High School, on July 27, 1998.

She was reported missing by her parents later that evening and her body has not been found since.

An inquest was launched to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death and disappearance of Quanne.

NSW Deputy State Coroner Magistrate Derek Lee said on Monday the schoolgirl died by homicide.

Quanne Diec was last seen walking from her Granville home, in western Sydney, to catch a train to Strathfield Girls High School, on July 27, 1998

The inquest had focused on the acquitted suspect in her death Vinzent Tarantino, who was found not guilty of murder by a NSW Supreme Court jury in 2019

'However, the available evidence and the absence of any post-mortem examination does not allow for any finding to be made as to the precise cause of Quanne's death,' Mr Lee wrote in his inquest findings.

He recommended the case be referred to the state's unsolved homicide squad for further investigation as per protocol.

The inquest had focused on the acquitted suspect in her death, Vinzent Tarantino, who was found not guilty of murder by a NSW Supreme Court jury in 2019.

Quanne's devastated family struggled to understand that decision, and Mr Lee said their anguish was unbearable.

Tarantino had made a number of 'confessions' to abducting then dumping the schoolgirl's body in bushland, including to police in 2016 when he walked into a police station.

No new evidence surfaced at her inquest.

The day the 'well-liked and well-rounded' child disappeared, a neighbour said she saw a young foreign-looking girl speaking to a man in a white van.

Shortly after, the vehicle marked with blue and white stripes drove away with her inside.

Other alleged sightings and persons of interest dropped away to leave Mr Tarantino as the remaining 'significant' person of interest.

His then-girlfriend Laila Faily was reporting domestic violence incidents in October 1998 when she disclosed that her boyfriend admitted strangling Quanne on his bed before dumping his mattress.

Tarantino had made a number of 'confessions' to abducting then dumping the schoolgirls' body in bushland, including to police in 2016 when he walked into a police station. He was found not guilty

She later told police he said he 'f***ed up' and strangled her when she would not stop screaming, and that he dumped her body near Wollongong.

In late 2011 Mr Tarantino made another so-called confession to another one of his girlfriends.

After calling the missing persons unit in 2003 saying he had information regarding Quanne's whereabouts, then withdrawing this, Mr Tarantino called his two brothers in 2016 saying he was going to tell police what happened.

'When I was out of it on drugs I did a horrible thing ... I have to go in and open up ... I killed a f***ing kid,' he told his family.

Throughout his statements he also said his life was being threatened by bikie gangs after he witnessed a shooting, a reason his defence gave the jury as to why he made a confession - believing he would be safer in jail.

Police never uncovered any evidence that gangs had threatened him.

Mr Tarantino led police to an area of bushland south of Sydney where he said she had been buried, but her body has never been found.
A young woman found naked and bound at a Melbourne creek more than 40 years ago was killed by her stepfather, a coroner has ruled.

Barbara Dawson was last seen alive on October 29, 1980. The 20-year-old's body was discovered partially submerged in a shallow ford at Kororoit Creek in the western suburb of Altona North three days later.

She was naked with her throat cut and plastic bags around her head and her feet. A 1981 inquest could not determine who killed her.

In 2003, her stepfather Peter Dawson was arrested. Neither he nor anyone else was charged, and he died in Queensland in 2008 at the age of 65.

A new inquiry by coroner Audrey Jamieson has determined Mr Dawson, on the balance of probabilities, caused his stepdaughter's death.

Barbara Dawson (pictured) was last seen alive on October 29, 1980. Her body was discovered three days later

Victoria's Coroners Court was last month told Mr Dawson and his partner, Helen, kept a 'tight leash' on the young woman.

She wasn't allowed to socialise and stayed home unless she was working at a Footscray supermarket.

In the lead-up to her death, she clashed with her parents because she wanted to be allowed to go out with a coworker.

Two days before she disappeared, Ms Dawson withdrew $1,400 from her bank account.

When the discovery of her body made the news, her stepfather told a neighbour: 'No, she has gone away on a holiday'.

Mr Dawson was in the area her body was found a day before passers-by made the grim discovery.

The 20-year-old's body was discovered partially submerged in a shallow ford at Kororoit Creek, Altona North (pictured), three days later

Later, Mr Dawson's partner was overheard saying: 'I'll call the police and tell them everything'.

Mr Dawson admitted down the track to his son: 'I've done it (killed) before', the court was also told.

On the day of the young woman's disappearance, a telegram arrived at the family's Tottenham home.

'Decided to be on my own for a while. Let you know where I am later,' it read.

It was signed 'Babs'. Her family said only Mr Dawson used that nickname for the young woman.

The telegram was requested and dictated by a man calling from a Footscray phonebox, according to the phonogram operator at the time.

In 2005, Mr Dawson was arrested and charged with the murder of his first wife, Patricia.

She has never been found after disappearing in South Australia in 1972.

The murder charge was dropped in 2006.
STROUDSBURG  Before the coronavirus shut down in-person classes at the Bronx middle school where Vivian Jimenez runs an aftercare program, she would take the bus every weekday from Stroudsburg to New York, sleeping on the way there and listening to music on the ride home. The 14-hour days didnt leave much time to get to know her neighbors  or to pay attention to politics.

I never cared, and for me, it was never convenient, Jimenez, 46, said of voting. But in 2020, frustration with Donald Trump and a pandemic that kept her home prompted her to vote for the first time. She registered as a Democrat in Monroe County and voted for Joe Biden.

Farther up in the mountains of Northeastern Pennsylvania, Jon Turcos family fled a Manhattan apartment for their vacation home in Pocono Pines. Turco and his wife, both longtime Democrats, registered and voted in the woodsy vacation town, which is now bursting with full-time residents.

As Democrats look to where they can grow an electorate increasingly consolidated in the Philadelphia region, they might look to the Poconos. Both Monroe and neighboring Pike County shifted Democratic by about five percentage points from 2016 to 2020, two of only six Pennsylvania counties to move that far left. About one in four active voters in the two counties is newly registered since the 2016 election, compared with about 16% statewide, according to an Inquirer analysis of voter-roll data.

The influx of out-of-staters has helped offset a steady stream of older, mostly white working-class voters leaving the Democratic Party across the state.

Democrats challenge is maintaining that momentum in a traditionally transient region where people are spread out in gated communities and upward of 15% commuted out of state before the pandemic.

I call it the great New York escape, said State Sen. Mario Scavello (R., Monroe), a former Mount Pocono mayor who used to commute to a grocery store he owned in the Bronx.

You have to give up your firstborn son to get a mortgage here, said Tarah Probst, mayor of Stroudsburg, the Monroe County seat. Monthly home sales were up 30% late last year compared with pre-pandemic levels, according to a Zillow analysis, and inventory was down 50%.

Many of the same changes you saw in the Philly suburbs or in Northern Virginia, you see here, Vince Galko, a Republican strategist who has run campaigns in Northeastern Pennsylvania. You have a lot of voters coming in from New Jersey and New York and the area just completely changed.

About 46% of registered voters in Monroe are Democrats, compared with 34% Republican and almost 20% independent. Democrats advantage shrunk slightly over the last four years despite the population growth in the county of about 170,000. But the party flipped the county commission in 2019, and towns like Mount Pocono and Stroudsburg have elected their first Democratic mayors in decades.

The western part of the county farthest from New York, with large swaths of state game land and nature preserves, is still reliably Republican. The GOP holds almost all the county row offices, while two Republicans and one Democrat represent Monroe in Harrisburg.

When Rudy Giuliani comes and speaks to the Republican Party on a Saturday morning and you see the kind of crowd he got, you know we still have a very strong Republican Party here, said County Commissioner Sharon Laverdure, a Democrat.

Lawyers, bankers, construction workers, teachers, and more are moving in, many drawn by proximity to I-80 and affordable homes nestled near lakes and mountains. Monroe County is among the most diverse in Pennsylvania and has the third-largest proportion of Latinos, including a large community of Puerto Ricans.

The needs of my district are just so varied, said U.S. Rep. Susan Wild (D., Pa.), who represents a slice of Monroe County and most of the Lehigh Valley to the south, a similar region demographically that has also seen an infusion of white college-educated voters, as well as working-class Latino voters.

Jimenezs family moved here about 12 years ago from New York. Shes seen more Latinos moving in and Latino-owned restaurants and businesses popping up. But she doesnt feel part of the community.

Im not doing anything but sleeping there, she said, so its hard.

One of every four workers in Monroe commutes out of state, according to Census data. And as of 2018, 15% drove or took buses for 90 minutes or more a day, compared with the national average of 2%.

Commuters have long been a difficult constituency to draw to the polls. Many people in both parties said expanded mail voting and remote work may have boosted participation last year, though studies generally show mail voting doesnt increase turnout by itself.

Michael Penn, the Mount Pocono mayor and a former commuter, said that when he campaigned at bus stops, people would tell him they got home after polls closed. Mail-in voting was a good solution for some of those people, no question, Penn said.

The first wave of this Poconos migration started in the 1970s when I-80 extended to connect New York City and Pennsylvania. As tourism expanded, so did employment. Another wave came after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, with people drawn by gated communities with pools. After a period of population decline during the last recession, the region bounced back.

Probst, the Stroudsburg mayor, said families who moved in decades ago now have voting-age children here, further fueling Democratic growth.

They werent connected to this community ... but then you get your roots here, your kids start going to school here, you get that you are attached and then you start caring about voting in these elections locally, Probst said.

Christina Luna, who hosts a local Spanish and English radio show, said Democrats have struggled to reach the Latino community, which makes up about 17% of Monroe. Thats partly because many Latinos register as independents, she said. The county is also geographically spread out and lacks a prominent Latino political leader.

There is a lack of time, but there is also something thats really deep, that Hispanics dont feel entitled or that theyre allowed a voice, Luna said.

Democrats also have an opportunity to grow among younger residents. The average age in Monroe County is about 10 years younger than nearby Pike and Wayne Counties. And Democrats advantage among voters 18 to 24 is the third largest in the state, behind only Allegheny County, home to Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia.

Adan Stevens-Diaz, 37, a community organizer from New York who moved to Stroudsburg in 2005, said he thinks young people want to rally around issues, not political parties. We just came out of an election where [Bernie] Sanders was favored among young Latinos, he said of the Vermont senator, and that came out of a skepticism of both parties.

Racism can also impact involvement, Stevens-Diaz said, either inspiring coalitions to fight against it, or furthering isolation. Decades of tensions between commuters and other residents have eased but still remain.

Ivette Burgos said anti-Latino racism around Stroudsburg is why she voted for the first time in 2020. Burgos, 47, moved to the Poconos from New Jersey in 2010 and said that after Hurricane Maria and Trumps presidency, she felt increasingly isolated, even as her community grew more diverse.

Its been, like, really bad the way they acted like they were getting infested with a whole bunch of Spanish people, Burgos, 47, a forklift operator, said of some longtime residents in the area. I think thats what motivated me [to vote]. Its straight out in the open and it didnt end when Biden came in. Were still going through it.

Staff writer Jonathan Lai contributed to this article.
Nose Ring Piercing Makes New York Woman Undergo a Life-Saving Liver Transplant

A New York mother has recovered from liver failure after a nose ring piercing turned into a life-threatening infection. Now, shes warning people not to wait too long to see a doctor, even during a global pandemic.

Dana Smith, 37, from Queens, became terminally ill about a month after getting the piercing done around Thanksgiving last year, reported ABC7.

After being admitted to the hospital, she fell into seizures due to brain swelling and recovered only after receiving a liver transplant.

Doctors diagnosed her with fulminant Hepatitis B, a type of liver impairment that develops roughly eight weeks after developing hepatitis.

The medical team determined the nose piercing was the main cause of the Hepatitis B infection, leading to liver damage, the report said. At first, the doctors didnt realize she even had a nose piercing, but when they took the mask off her nose, they noticed the tiny studded ring.

Dr. Lewis Teperman, the director of North Shore University Hospitals transplant services told ABC7 that getting a nose piercing was the one unique change that had taken place in her life.

Its the perfect time for the virus to incubate, Teperman added.

Dana says she didnt realize how ill she was at first, and she assumed the stomach pain and loss of appetite shed experienced was simply acid reflux and stress related to the year-end holiday.

When it got worse, she was still hesitant to visit the hospital due to the pandemic.

I was just drinking water, I couldnt hold the water down, Dana told ABC7. I guess at some point I started to throw up blood.

It wasnt until Jan. 12, 2021, that Dana finally asked her sister to take her to the hospital.

That one decision saved my life, she added.

Dana was so ill that she cant recall the events that followed; her seizures and brain swelling were severe, and doctors had to place her into a medically-induced coma. And days later when she woke up, she heard doctors saying shed had a liver transplant.

Its very overwhelming. Emotionally, everything, mentally, she said.

Fortunately, Dana was able to receive a transplant within 48 hours of being placed on the transplant list, according to the report. She underwent surgery on Jan. 17 and was released from the hospital on Jan. 26.

Dana said that she would have visited the hospital sooner if shed realized how sick she was.

Now, she is warning people not to wait too long to visit the doctor, even with the state of things during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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
French experts divided over reopening amid COVID Epidemic slowed but still high number of cases

(ANSAmed) - PARIS, 19 APR - Experts in France remained divided on the issue of the country's reopenings amid COVID mid-May, as the government has announced.



The example of the Nice region, the Maritime Alps, where the infection rate has dropped to the levels seen in December after having been one of the first regions to impose the current restrictions two months ago: on Sunday, the numbers on the basis of the previous 7 days had been 229 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.



"We are at around 65-70% COVID patients," Carole Ichai, head anesthesiologist in the intensive care unit of the Nice hospital, told BFM TV in an interview. "We no longer have that permanent pressure that there was before, with all beds full.



This enables us to let the staff rest a bit." This trend has led many to say that the peak of the third wave has already been reached, given the slight drop in the number of patients in intensive care at the national level over the past few days.



In the eyes of Pascal Crepey, epidemiologist at Sante Publique, it is "certainly possible" that the restrictive measures will begin to make their effects felt.



"The numbers are not rising. Unfortunately the measures adopted have not had as strong of an impact as they did in the first and second lockdown. The decline will be very slow." According to INSERM epidemiologist Dominique Costagliola the current state of an epidemic in France "does not allow for hope for imminent improvement" to an extent of being able to loosen the public health regulations in mid-May, as announced by President Emmanuel Macron and the government.



Given the lower level of testing carried out, "there has not been a clear drop" in infections, and there are still, he added, "over 30,000 infections per day, a situation that does not allow for hope for possible improvement.".



He stressed that this is even more the case since "elementary schools will reopen April 26 and middle schools and high schools the following week". (ANSAmed).




New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will chair an important meeting on the Covid-19 situation at 11:30 am on Monday, officials said.

The meeting comes amid a massive surge in coronavirus cases across the country, with several chief ministers complaining of a shortage of essentials like oxygen supply and medicines like Remdesivir, and seeking the Centre's intervention.

PM Modi

Modi has been holding regular meetings to deal with the emerging pandemic situation.

India's total tally of Covid-19 cases crossed the 1.50-crore mark with a record single-day rise of 2,73,810, while the active cases surpassed the 19-lakh mark, according to the latest Union Health Ministry data.
LADERA RANCH, Calif., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- SmartStop Self Storage REIT, Inc. ("SmartStop" or the "Company"), a self-managed and fully-integrated self storage company with approximately $1.7 billion of self storage assets under management, today announced the acquisition of a recently built six-story self storage facility in Oakville, Ontario, Canada. The property was completed in April 2020 and was approximately 35% occupied at acquisition. This is SmartStop's 17th owned or managed location in the Greater Toronto Area ("GTA"), and 153rd property in North America.

The six-story facility is located at 450 Iroquois Shore Rd in the Oakville community, one of the GTA's most affluent suburbs. This prime location provides easy access from both the 400 series and QEW highways as well as the Go Transit regional train service. This facility serves the communities of Oakville, Kerr Village, Clearview, and Falgarwood and is located a short drive from Sheridan College. The property's 1,073 units are 100% climate-controlled across approximately 81,500 square feet. The property offers customers a variety of amenities including state-of-the-art security systems, elevators, keypad access, a gated drive-in loading area and more. The facility is the Company's third in Oakville, establishing SmartStop as the dominant market player in the submarket.

"We are thrilled to add to our best-in-class portfolio in the Greater Toronto Area," said H. Michael Schwartz, Chairman and CEO of SmartStop. "This property's favorable demographics and supply constraints exemplify the compelling characteristics of the entire region, which we believe is one of the most attractive self storage markets in North America. With 17 facilities owned or managed in the GTA, SmartStop is quickly becoming a leader in the market and we expect the GTA will be a significant part of SmartStop's growth strategy going forward."

About SmartStop Self Storage REIT, Inc. (SmartStop)

SmartStop is a self-managed REIT with a fully integrated operations team of approximately 400 self storage professionals focused on growing the SmartStop Self Storage brand. SmartStop, through its indirect subsidiary SmartStop REIT Advisors, LLC, also sponsors other self storage programs. SmartStop is the tenth-largest self storage company in the U.S., with approximately $1.7 billion of real estate assets under management, including an owned and managed portfolio of 153 properties in 19 states and Ontario, Canada and comprising approximately 104,000 units and 11.7 million rentable square feet. SmartStop and its affiliates own or manage 17 operating self storage properties in the Greater Toronto Area, which total approximately 14,300 units and 1.5 million rentable square feet. Additional information regarding SmartStop is available at www.smartstopselfstorage.com .

Contact:

David Corak

VP of Corporate Finance

SmartStop Self Storage REIT, Inc.

949-542-3331

[email protected]

SOURCE SmartStop Self Storage REIT, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.smartstopselfstorage.com


Minister Coveney addresses UN Security Council meeting on Co-operation with Regional Organisations

Press release

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Simon Coveney T.D., today spoke at a UN Security Council meeting chaired by Vietnam on enhancing cooperation between the United Nations and Regional Organisations to strengthen conflict prevention and resolution.

The meeting recognised the importance of partnerships between the United Nations, the EU and other regional organisations such as the African Union, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the League of Arab States and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

Speaking at an online meeting of the Council, the Minister highlighted a number of examples where regional co-operation has contributed to a more peaceful world.

Across the European neighbourhood, the contribution of regional co-operation to coherence, stability and growth is felt on a daily basis [] Partnerships built at local, regional and international levels led to and continue to underpin the success of the Good Friday Peace Agreement.

Just as we are committed to UN peacekeeping missions across the globe, Ireland is proud to have members of our Defence Forces participating in EU Common Security and Defence Policy operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mali and the Mediterranean.

The Minister emphasised the role that regional organisations can play in ensuring the participation of women. He concluded by underlining the value of regional partnerships in promoting peace.

Strengthening cooperation between the UN and regional organisations enhances our ability to prevent and resolve conflict, and to advance the broader goals and objectives of the UN Charter. We are already doing much together. Let us commit to realising the full potential these unique partnerships have to offer.

ENDS

Press Office

19 April 2021

Notes to Editors:

The meeting, chaired by Vietnam, is one of the signature events of Vietnams Presidency of the Council in the month of April.

The meeting will be chaired by the President of Vietnam, Mr. Nguyen Xuan Phuc.

The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres and the former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will brief the meeting, along with a number of representatives from regional organisations including the African Union, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the European Union, the League of Arab States, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The meeting is available to view on UN Web TV: http://webtv.un.org/

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5K attend first indoor services at Rock Church in over 1 year; pastor says it feels like 'Christmas'

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More than a year after the COVID-19 pandemic caused the shuttering of the campuses of Rock Church in San Diego, California, Senior Pastor Miles McPherson welcomed back over 5,000 of his congregants indoors for the first time on Sunday, and it felt like Christmas.

Whats up Rock family? Whats up Rock family! One year has gone by; we are back! McPherson declared in a Facebook broadcast, clapping at first and then pumping his fists in the air with jubilation.

All the campuses, everybody watching all over, God bless you. Thank you so much for your patience, for your faithfulness. COVID came, but COVID did not knock us out. Come on now! God will not stop the church. We are back. It is so exciting.

While elated that his congregants were now finally able to come together for the first time since the state placed restrictions on houses of worship gathering during the pandemic, McPherson also took the time to acknowledge the loss many of them suffered as a result of the virus while offering a sense of hope.

Over the last year, weve gone through so much. A lot of yall lost loved ones, lost jobs, businesses, but God is going to sustain you. Hes going to sustain you as we talk about in this new series called Relaunching, Hes going to get you through, McPherson declared.

Speaking with The San Diego Union-Tribune after the service, the megachurch pastor, who did not move to hold indoor services until state officials lifted mandatory restrictions last week, reiterated how happy he was to reunite with his spiritual family again.

It was so good to see our family back together, he said. It was like Thanksgiving or Christmas when you get to reunite with your family and reestablish your relationships.

More than 5,000 attended in-person services across four campuses and 300,000 also watched Rock Church services online, the publication noted. But for those who attended in-person, the feeling was special.

Its my birthday today, and weve been gone for so long that it feels like a gift from God and Pastor Miles that we can all be together again, said Karla Ghancous, 27, who recalled the first time she walked through the doors of the Point Loma campus.

I kid you not, the Holy Spirit just caught me the moment those double doors opened and I heard the music. Im ready to run back in right now, she told the newspaper.

Along with the loss of life that came with the pandemic, the social isolation, said McPherson, also deprived congregants of their relationship.

We dont realize how much we need each other, to look each other in the eyes, to see our faces and the expressions were making, McPherson said. Because were made for relationships. And when you take that away and when you get used to that, you lose something, and you just dont realize what you lost until you get it back.

On April 12, California lifted capacity limits on houses of worship after a controversial year when several churches challenged the states pandemic restrictions in court.

In response to recent judicial rulings, effective immediately, location and capacity limits on places of worship are not mandatory but are strongly recommended, an update posted on the states COVID-19 website reads.

In February, the office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom was forced to revise guidelines for indoor worship services after the U.S. Supreme Court granted an emergency injunction blocking a complete public health ban on indoor worship services in some counties. But the court kept in place restrictions on singing, chanting and a 25% limit on crowd size in place.

The state completely lifted all mandatory restrictions after the Supreme Court ruled against the states limits on in-home Bible study and other forms of worship on April 9.



Last week, Rock Church announced that four campuses would hold in-person services at 50% capacity, while the Chula Vista campus and microsites continued to meet outdoors.

Those wishing to attend services are encouraged to RSVP each week and are required to wear a mask upon entering the facility. Attendees will have the option to remove the mask once they are seated.

According to a statement released by the church, seating indoors "will support comfortable distancing." Attendees are asked to maintain "appropriate distance from those outside their household" and were asked to leave bags and purses at home in an "effort to keep everything as touchless as possible." No food or drink was allowed to be consumed inside the church buildings except water.

With the recent Supreme Court ruling allowing churches to meet indoors, the Rock Church leadership has been meeting to assess the feasibility of how to do it safely," McPherson said in a statement. "This involves preparing the physical buildings, training staff and volunteers, and making the necessary safety precautions.
On Wednesday, April 21, at 10.30, the press center of the Interfax-Ukraine news agency will host a online conference about the socio-political attitudes of the population based on the results of a sociological study entitled "Fight or surrender: what ukrainians think about escalation of conflict in the East", conducted by the Ukrainian Institute for the Future (UIF) with the assistance of New Image Marketing Group. Participants include Doctor of Sociology Oleksandr Shulga, Executive Director of the Ukrainian Institute of the Future Vadym Denysenko (8/5a Reitarska Street). The press conference will be available on the YouTube channel of Interfax-Ukraine. During the period the restrictive measures introduced in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic in Kyiv are in effect, the presence of media representatives is not allowed in the press center of the agency, only speakers are present in the hall. During the broadcast, it is possible to follow the event and ask questions to the speakers in the broadcast chat.
JOURNALIST: - Sir, do you think the USA will return to renegotiate the terms for the CPTPP deal with other countries?

Dr. VO DAI LUOC: - The question of whether the USA will return to the CPTPP deal or not is a matter of great concern, not only for countries that are members of the CPTPP but also for other ally countries of America. I think that although the US President Joe Biden wants to rejoin the CPTPP right now, there is also an overwhelming leaning towards multilateral Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). So in the short term, the US may not be able to renegotiate to rejoin the CPTPP. The reason is that the more Free Trade Agreements develop, the less are the chances of the US once again rejoining the CPTPP.

For instance, at present many countries are benefiting much more from FTAs because of more capital flow, and better markets, labor, and technology. However, voters in developed countries, like the US, believe that they are at a disadvantage because large corporations will lean towards the developing countries to take advantage of cheaper labor, growing markets, and preferential tax policies.

Former President Donald Trump launched the concept of fair and free trade, which is also how he sympathized with voters and had the support of his voter base. However, that which is fair is also not easy to do. Hence, although President Joe Biden wants to renegotiate the CPTPP for benefits to the US, it is unlikely he can do it at this time. The US still has many unresolved domestic issues that need to be tackled before thinking of rejoining the CPTPP, such as consent of congress on issues related to businesses and labor.

- Sir, will China be able to rejoin the CPTPP, given that its leaders have repeatedly expressed their will to do so?

- China has officially declared that they want to rejoin the CPTPP, but it is still a far cry from wanting and actually realizing. First of all, there are terms in the CPTPP that can be considered progressive, but also binding. If China wants to participate, they will have to reform very strongly, especially in their policy towards current state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The Chinese SOE block is too strong, and the Chinese SOE support and protection policy is also too huge. Therefore, the question arises if China will reform this policy to conform to the terms of the CPTPP. Besides this, there are also intellectual property rights and labor issues to upgrade.

Such reforms in China are not easily implemented, especially the policy of economic development, for which the Chinese prefer a very nationalistic approach. Therefore, in my opinion, both China and the US will not be able to participate in the CPTPP in coming time.

- Sir, there is also an opinion that the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) plays a key role in China, so they will put pressure on the US to return to the CPTPP soonest. What is your opinion on this?

- RCEP associates have long-term strategic interests with China and neighboring countries. This is also believed to be a factor that motivates the US under the leadership of President Joe Biden to rejoin the CPTPP. Besides, this agreement is the best tool for the US to deepen economic relations with the region. In fact, the US can still maintain flexibility in that it seek a narrower agreement with CPTPP member countries on topics such as digital trade, the environment, and climate change, or on the sale and purchase of medical equipment and other essential products. Such an agreement will help build trust and serve as a starting point for the US to rejoin the CPTPP.

- Sir, what are the trends in US trade policy under President Joe Biden?

- I think that the trade policies will still serve the long-term strategies of the US. It will be a reassertion of their position as a world leading power, and show control over emerging nations that threaten America's superpower status, of which China is number one. The US trade policy under President Joe Biden may be both competitive and controlling, though it must also clearly define a restructuring of relationship on the basis of mutual benefits.

On a broader scale, the US wants to reestablish its own set of rules, rather than reestablish new global governance, including in trade. Although this global governance model is in context of a current multilateral world, the US still maintains its superpower status across the world, as well as over its core interests. The problem is how the new rules will be introduced by President Biden, which are still unclear, and only time will tell.

- Thank you very much.

Luu Thuy (interviewer)
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson (L) speaks to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a meeting at the G7 Summit in Biarritz, France, on Aug. 25, 2019. (Jeff J Mitchell - Pool/Getty Images)

UK Prime Minister Johnson Cancels India Visit Amid CCP Virus Surge

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has cancelled his planned trip to India, due to concerns over the ongoing CCP virus surge in that country.

In the light of the current coronavirus situation, Prime Minister Boris Johnson will not be able to travel to India next week, the Indian and UK governments said in a joint statement.

Instead, Prime Ministers Modi and Johnson will speak later this month to agree and launch their ambitious plans for the future partnership between the UK and India. They will remain in regular contact beyond this, and look forward to meeting in person later this year.

A health worker collects a sample from a passenger for an RT-PCR test at the Yesvantpur railway station in Bangalore, India, on Apr. 5, 2021. (Manjunath Kiran /AFP via Getty Images)

India is going through a second wave of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, with infections passing the 15 million mark. Delhi is due to go into lockdown on Monday night.

During a visit to Gloucestershire on Monday, Johnson expressed sympathy for India and said its only sensible to postpone the trip given the situation there.

But he emphasised that were going to be going back, because the relationship between the UK and India is of huge importance.

He said he and Modi will be trying to do as much as we can virtually and then look forward to doing it in person as and when circumstances allow.

Johnson had already postponed the trip once from January, when England went into the third national lockdown amid rising infections caused by the Kent variant of the CCP virus.

Last week, UK health authorities said they were investigating a new COVID-19 variant, which was first identified in India.

According to the World Health Organisation the variant was first seen in two Indian states at the end of 2020, and since then has accounted for an increasing proportion of COVID-19 cases in the country.

This variant has two mutationsE484Q and L452Rwhich have been seen in other variants around the world and are thought to contribute to increased transmissibility and resistance to vaccines.

Public Health England (PHE) said on April 15 that the new mutant virus, known as B.1.617, has been designated a Variant Under Investigation and both PHE and its international partners continue to monitor the situation closely.

To date, 77 cases of the new variant have been found in the UK, 73 in England and four in Scotland.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Antonio and Maria have been waiting for the call for months. When it finally came, they couldnt contain the tears  a mix of happiness and emotions. We are calling you from your healthcare center, you have an appointment for a vaccination on Thursday at 9.18am. This septuagenarian married couple are among the 3.9 million Spaniards aged 70 to 79 who have been waiting impatiently for the coronavirus vaccination program to get to them, as the process progressed among people who were older than them but also younger citizens too. Their age group is now making up for lost ground. By Friday, 37.9% of 70- to 79-year-olds had received at least one dose of the vaccine, and for the first time overtook the 60-69 age group, who are being given the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) will tomorrow make a decision on what to do with the Janssen vaccine. Use of the medication has been suspended while research is carried out on cases of rare blood clots associated with its use. It was due to be used for the 70-79 age group in Spain. Something similar happened with AstraZeneca, the use of which has been suspended in a number of countries, with changes to the age range in Spain, for example, based on the scientific evidence emerging from its use. Even if the one-shot Janssen vaccine were to remain suspended in the European Union, however, the over-80s and the over-70s could be completely inoculated in Spain during the second half of May. The Spanish government is aiming to have 70% of the adult population of Spain vaccinated by the end of the summer.

Antonia Garcia, 79, is one of the 1.8 million people in his age group to have already received the vaccine. He is euphoric

The decisions taken by the Spanish health authorities, in particular the use of AstraZeneca for the 60-69 age group, saw the 70-79 group pushed to the back of the line. The majority of European countries decided at the beginning of March to use AstraZeneca for the over-60s in order to speed up the protection of the most vulnerable groups in society, but Spain opted to set the maximum age limit at 69, despite scientific testing clearly showing that this vaccine protects the elderly against hospitalization and death due to Covid-19 as well as the other two being used for seniors, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. The decision set back the immunization of septuagenarians by a month, but the process is now moving along at a good speed.

Antonia Garcia, 79, is one of the 1.8 million people in his age group to have already received the vaccine. He is euphoric. Last Wednesday, he was waiting impatiently to access one of the installations that has been set up for vaccinations in the Parc Tecnologic de Barcelona Activa, in the Catalan capital. Since last week, an immunization point for the over-70s has been in place there for four primary healthcare centers in the area.

Antonia Garcia gets her vaccine. MASSIMILIANO MINOCRI

Antonia pulls up her sleeve and in barely a few seconds a nurse injects her arm and its all over: the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine is now in her body. In two days time, it will be her husbands turn. Im very happy, she says with dewy eyes. Its been very tough. My grandchildren are my life and although my children live close by they havent come around at all. All they do is come up the elevator and my husband and I say hello to them from the door of our house with our masks on. But I havent been able to touch them. Not seeing Bruna, 16, or Victor and Vera, 13, has been the most difficult thing, she explains. The worst thing for me has been not having them over for lunch, she adds with sadness.

She also explains that she misses her friends, going out on the street and travel. Because of the pandemic, she had to cancel two trips last year  one to Benidorm and another within Catalonia.

While there is no clear line separating the over-70s and the over-80s, in general, the former group is somewhat more active, better qualified and was better integrated in the workplace  in particular in the case of women, explains Raymond Torres from think-tank Funcas. This group of people from 70 to 79, who in general have not been retired for long, tend to have greater economic activity, and they deal with new technology better, he explains, also pointing out that they have lost more day-to-day activities than older people during the pandemic. It was normal to see people from this age range at conferences and cultural activities because in general they are very independent and have a lot of free time, he adds.

Rosa Gonzalez after her vaccination in Barcelona. MASSIMILIANO MINOCRI

Rejection of Covid-19 vaccines among this group is proving to be scant. Vicente Rodriguez, who researches aging at the CSIC public research institute, says that they are wanting to get vaccinated, they are calling for it, and will wait in line for hours if they hear there are doses left over in any place. The expert indicates that there is not much specific scientific literature about how seniors have dealt with this crisis. From international writing, it is clear that feelings of loneliness, depression and anxiety have increased among those who were already prone to them, he adds.

This is not the case of Rosa Gonzalez, who is 78. This Galician lives with her niece in Barcelona, and she says that the confinement did not affect her. Im not very anxious and I have psyched myself up, she explains. Ive only gone out shopping and to the doctor. But I have stopped seeing the friends that Ive got here in Barcelona. She was very happy to get her vaccine this week. We have to do whatever it takes to bring an end to this plague, she adds.

Gonzalez had no doubts about getting the vaccine, and is not interested in the bad press or conspiracy theories that have surrounded the medication. As soon as I could, I was going to get it, she says. For me. These things that people say, that [the vaccines are bad] Come on, why would anyone want to kill me?

English version by Simon Hunter.




"Learning to live together as a family is a process, and a choice, whether born in or adopted. It can be a lovely process, if the family decides to bless each other, even in the most difficult of moments."

Christian author Anne Weaver developed a family ministry that focuses on blessing each other intentionally. To share this intentionality with others, she started to write childrens books about her own family and the way they bless one another. Weaver and her husband adopted a child, Favor, from Liberia, Africa and she shares his adoption journey in Favor: A World Turned Upside Down. This spirited childrens book follows him as he makes his way from Liberia to his new home in Alaska and showcases how the family showers Favor with love and how he is a shining new blessing in their lives.

The book begins with providing background on Favors living situation prior to the adoption. His birth mother, Mama Grace, put Favor into an orphanage in order for him to receive proper nourishment. This was the hardest day of her life, and she is celebrated for making the greatest sacrifice to ensure her son would have the best possible life.

Fast forward to the Weaver family being called by the Lord to visit Liberia to find the missing part of their family, which they quickly realized was Favor. After spending some time in Africa with Favor, who was two years old at the time he was adopted, the Weavers began their journey back to the United States. Even as he faced challenges, Favor began to settle into his new environment with the help of his new siblings and parents. At the end of the story, Favor realizes that we are all children of God and part of a collective family. Favor, along with his new adopted family, send kisses to Mama Grace, who is a part of their family as well.

Favor reminds readers to have faith in Gods plan. By sharing Favors journey, Weaver hopes that others will find joy and gratitude in life, even during times of uncertainty. This book can be read by families who have adopted children as a relatable, uplifting story about the beauty of an expanded family.

Learning to live together as a family is a process, and a choice, whether born in or adopted, said Weaver. It can be a lovely process, if the family decides to bless each other, even in the most difficult of moments.

Weaver hopes to spread the message that family has nothing to do with the color of skin or shared blood and everything to do with growing together in love and support.

Favor: A World Turned Upside Down

By Anne Weaver

ISBN: 978-1-6642-1799-7 (softcover); 978-1-6642-1800-0 (hardcover); 978-1-6642-1801-7 (e-book)

Available through WestBow Press, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

About the author

Anne Weaver is the mother of three amazing kids: Hannah, Ezra and Caleb. She and her husband, Bo, had two biological children and felt that their family was missing someone. After time praying and looking to God for an answer, they were called to Liberia, Africa, where their youngest son, Caleb (Favor) was born. Weavers childrens book, Favor, was written to help Caleb know where he came from and celebrate his choices. Weaver has a second book, Farm Fiasco, which follows her three children and their adventure on a farm. Both of her childrens books are part of Yehovah Yashas ministry guide and demonstrate that a family that blesses each other, laughs together. Currently, Weaver resides in Fairbanks, Alaska. To connect with the author, please visit her author website: https://anneweaverbooks.com/.

For Interview Requests & Review Copies, Please Contact:

LAVIDGE  Phoenix

Danielle Grobmeier

480-648-7557 | dgrobmeier@lavidge.com


Georgian opposition refuses to sign the EU-proposed agreement despite repeated calls from the countrys Western partners. Hartzell renews the document

By Veronika Malinboym

On Saturday, April 18th, the ruling Georgian Dream party agreed to sign the agreement which was first proposed by the EU mediator Christian Danielsson. The newly signed agreement addresses issues such as the large-scale reform of the judicial and electoral systems as well as the amnesty to the individuals whose had cases launched against them in relation to June 2019 protests in Tbilisi  including the opposition leader Nika Melia, who currently remains in detention.Following the signing of the document, speaker of the Georgian Parliament and member of the ruling Georgian Dream party Archil Talakvadze stated that by doing that, ruling party showed its high degree of responsibility, and added that it was now the oppositions turn to show that it can put the interests of the state above their personal interests.A number of the countrys opposition parties have already rejected the possibility of signing the agreement along with the ruling party. Member of the United National Movement party Koba Nakopia stated that while the chairman of the UNM remains in detention following his 'illegal' arrest, no agreement with the Georgian Dream is possible. Nakopia added that Melia should not only be let free but should also participate in the process of negotiations with the ruling party. As of right now, the opposition Girchi- More Freedom, UNM, Lelo for Georgia, European Georgia and Strategy Agmashenebeli have already refused to sign the agreement proposed by the EU. In response, the chairman of the ruing Georgian Dream party Irakli Kobakhidze told Imedi TV that the oppositions decision is illogical but expected:"It's illogical [for them] to refuse [signing the agreement], but it was probably expected, given that, unfortunately, the opposition very often takes illogical steps."Meanwhile, in order to help bring the ongoing crisis to the conclusion, several high-ranking Western politicians have already called for all MPs to sign the agreement. The Spokespeople of the High Representative of the European Union and Vice-President of European Commission as well as the United States Department of State, in their statement urge the parties to sign the agreement drafted by the President of European Commission Charles Michel and address the needs of Georgian people:After nearly six months of negotiations, the citizens of Georgia have made clear that they want the political stalemate to end, and for all elected Members to work together in Parliament and address the serious challenges facing the country, including the regional challenges, COVID-19, and the economic crisis. With this in mind, we call on all Members of the Parliament of Georgia to sign the agreement that President of the European Council, Charles Michel, will propose today, the statement reads.Earlier today, in another attempt to assist Georgia out of the political crisis, the head of the EU delegation to Georgia Carl Hartzell proposed a renewed version of the agreement which accommodates one of the oppositions main demands- snap elections. According to the renewed document and based on the ruling partys previous offer, the early parliamentary elections will be held in 2022 if the ruling Georgian Dream party fails to obtain 43% of votes during the self-government elections of October 2021. With an updated version of the agreement in hand, Carl Hartzell stated that the mediators are now looking forward to convincing political parties to with the view to finalising this process as a way forward and end Georgias current political crisis.
Etawah: Samajwadi Party patriarch and founder Mulayam Singh Yadav did not cast his vote in panchayat elections in his native Saifai village on Monday following a request from family members in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to family sources, the 81-year-old so far has never missed voting in any election.

"We requested Netaji (Mulayam Singh Yadav) not to come to Saifai to cast his vote this time for the panchayat elections in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and luckily, he agreed to our request. Currently, Netaji is in Delhi," Dharmendra Yadav, nephew of Mulayam Singh Yadav, told PTI.

Voting for the second phase of the Uttar Pradesh panchayat polls is underway on Monday with more than 3.48 lakh candidates in the fray for over 2.23 lakh posts in 20 districts.

Polling will be held till 6 pm and over 3.23 crore voters are eligible to exercise their franchise.
I have an embarrassing confession to make. My dating life was stunted in high school  a date here, a date there and generally they were disastrous and involved a lot of anxiety, sweating and clammy hands. Nothing turns a girl off more than clammy hands.

Some guys need a stiff shot of Jack Daniels to make it through a date. I needed a stiff shot of Pepto Bismol.

However, to quote Bob Dylan, The times they are still a-changin. Though Im married and have four daughters (with my wife, by the way) and three grandchildren, Im getting offers for dates.

Dont get the wrong idea. Im not on Match.com, Tinder, SilverSingles or any of those wildly popular dating sites. The romantic offers arrive every day in my junk email folder.

Suddenly, I feel like I could compete with George Clooney and Brad Pitt. I never thought there could be so many exciting opportunities to meet members of the opposite sex, who judging from their grammar and syntax probably live somewhere north of Siberia. So what? In my book, good grammar takes a back seat to true love any day ... and I taught grammar.

Im getting asked out by women I dont even know and who obviously dont know me because they call me Dearest, Beloved, My love and Lovest. Is that even a word?

Theyre probably thinking, Wow, wouldnt he be a great guy to take to Popeyes for Cajun wings and afterward for Pepto Bismol martinis? Hes engaging, sensitive, bald and best of all, funny!

For decades, Ive heard what women want most in a man is a sense of humor. But nobody ever told my wife. She didnt want a comedian, she wanted a handyman. Instead of listening to jokes, she always wants to talk about yard work. Bummer.

Nevertheless, here I am. A regular barrel of laughs, or barrel of monkeys or whatever that barrel is filled with.

Ive also read studies that say women dont care if a guy is bald. Now, THATS really funny. The people who did that research were probably the same ones who said Hillary Clinton had a 90 percent chance of winning the 2016 election.

I never realized junk email could be such a treasure trove of romantic adventures, business opportunities and charitable causes. There are so many ways to find love, so many ways to give away money, so many ways to make money and so many ways to get fleeced.

Since Im married and gainfully employed, Ill share these opportunities with anyone looking for a date or extra income. Last week, I got an email from the daughter of the late Col. Gaddafi of Libya. (How would you like to show up at his door to take out his daughter? Id need a whole bottle of Pepto Bismol.)

Ms. Gaddafi, who was a lieutenant colonel in the Libyan army, wrote a personal email to me that said:

Dear Friend,

I came across your e-mail prior to a private search while in need of your assistance. My name is Aisha Gaddafi, a single mother with three children. (I am the only biological daughter of late Libyan President Colonel Gaddafi).

She must be a loyal reader of this column. How else could she get my email address?Anyway, she wants to have a business arrangement with me, and all I need is $27.5 million, so I called my banker to see if she could lend me the money, but she needs to ask her boss.

The next day, someone named Amanda emailed me:

Hello, Dear. Talk to me, love. Can I talk to you please?

Im not going near that offer. For all I know, Amanda could be Nancy Pelosi.

Then, Linda emailed me:

Hi, my love. Nice to meet you. Am Miss Linda. I found your email in google search and I picked interest to contact you. Ive something very important which I like to discuss you and tell you more about me with my photos and my phone numbers as fellows?

Mrs. Flora Hippolite said she wanted to have a Personal and Trustworthy Relationship.

And Jennifer at PINCHme wanted, I think, to be pinched.

Love, romance, excitement. Its all there, including business opportunities that could make me rich overnight. All I have to do is tap into my retirement savings and send checks to Mrs. Hippolite, PINCHme and the Gaddafi Foundation. Gonna call my banker right now.

Joe Pisani can be reached at joefpisani@yahoo.com.
USM Receives $7 Million for Ocean Enterprise Efforts

Mon, 05/17/2021 - 17:32pm | By: Margaret Ann Macloud

The University of Southern Mississippi (USM) was recently awarded $7 million in state funding to support infrastructure associated with the Roger F. Wicker Center for Ocean Enterprise (RFWCOE). This appropriated money from both capital expense funds and the Mississippi Development Authoritys Gulf Coast Restoration Fund, brings the total to $21 million in appropriated monies to USM since 2019 for RFWCOE, infrastructure, and programming.

The following projects will be supported by this $7 million award:

Wharf and pier improvements supporting the Research Vessel (R/V) Gilbert R. Mason and two additional large research vessel slips

Short term pier access for support vessels

Infrastructure support for launch of uncrewed maritime systems

We are thankful our legislators, the Governor, the Mississippi Port of Gulfport and the community continue to invest and support this transformational project that brings together industry, non-profit, federal and state partners to grow the blue economy in Mississippi, said Dr. Kelly Lucas, USMs Associate Vice President for Research, Coastal Operations.

The 62,000 sq. ft. Roger F. Wicker Center for Ocean Enterprise will be located at the Mississippi State Port Authority at Gulfport and is expected to open in April 2022. The Center is a comprehensive research and development partnership program focused on uncrewed maritime systems and blue technology innovation. The program includes access to prototype fabrication equipment, laboratories, training, and conference space and access to the 4-dimensional shallow, medium and deep-water testing range with a command-and-control center for real time mission support. NOAA, Office of Marine and Aviation Operations Uncrewed Maritime Systems headquarters will be located in the new building along with USM and other private partners.

The previous $14 million in funding awarded to USM includes program support from the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources through the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act (GOMESA) and additional infrastructure funds from the Gulf Coast Restoration Fund to support building infrastructure and site improvements. The Mississippi State Port Authority at Gulfport has committed $32 million in restoration funds to build the RFWCOE.

We appreciate our great partnership with the Port of Gulfport. They have been instrumental in building infrastructure needed to support this program, and we look forward to continuing to work with them to implement the waterside improvements for the ocean enterprise program, USM Vice President for Research Dr. Gordon Cannon said.
Patna, April 19 : Two bar girls including a minor were allegedly raped by an orchestra organiser in Patna on Sunday, an official said here on Monday. The accused has been arrested.

The victims were brought from Chhattisgarh for a dance performance in an orchestra event. The organiser Vipin Giri, a resident of Fatehpur under Naubatpur police station in Patna, promised them a month-long job in the orchestra.

The victims contacted the local police on Monday morning and gave written complaints against the accused. Subsequently, a police team raided Giri's house and arrested him.

"As per the statement of victims, the accused allegedly forced them into prostitution in Patna which they resisted. Hence the accused Vipin Giri held them captive in a house. On Sunday, he came in a drunken state and allegedly raped them one by one," said Vimlesh Kumar SI Naubatpur police station.

"We have conducted medical examination of victims which confirms rape. One of the victims claimed that she is below 18 year old. We have booked the accused under POCSO act as well," the officer said.
The Financial Times reports a first meeting between officials of the Islamic Republic and emissaries from the Wahhabi kingdom in the Iraqi capital on 9 April. Relations broke off in 2016 after the assault on the Saudi consulate in Iran. Issues on the agenda include nuclear power to the war in Yemen.

Baghdad (AsiaNews / Agencies)  There are new signs of a thaw in the Middle East, in spite of recent denials which have failed to quash reports that circulated over the weekend reported by the British Newspaper Financial Times, of an April 9 meeting in Bagdad between Iranian and Saudi officials.

It was the first such meeting in an attempt to renew diplomatic relations interrupted in January 2016.

Yesterday evening Arab News reported the comments of an anonymous Saudi official denying news of a meeting between the two Muslim powers, Sunni and Shiite, in Iraq. However, the declaration appears more of a ritual than event, while international diplomacies look with interest at movements in the region with a view to de-escalating tension.

There are several unresolved issues that see the two fronts opposed, starting from the war in Yemen to the Iranian nuclear dossier, with Tehran reopening the negotiating table while pushing uranium enrichment to 60%.

The Islamic Republic and the Wahhabi kingdom interrupted relations five years ago, following the assault on the Saudi consulate in Iran, in response to the execution of the Shiite leader Nimr al-Nimr.

The controversy triggered heavy repercussions at the regional level, particularly the economic, diplomatic and commercial isolation of Qatar considered too close to Tehran.

The meeting held on 9 April in Baghdad is only the first step in a long process aimed at re-tying the threads of diplomacy and did not foresee the participation of high-ranking officials.

Nonetheless it is a positive sign in a region where steeped in tension such as the recent accident at the nuclear plant, with suspicions falling on Israel, another actor interested in isolating what it considers the "Iranian threat".

Analysts and experts underline that unlike 2015, Riyadh wants to have a role in the negotiations that led to the Iranian nuclear agreement (JCPOA) and also involve the Gulf nations in the negotiations. Another actor at stake is Iraq, which is heading for the parliamentary elections in October amid outbreaks of violence, a new coronavirus pandemic and timid attempts at economic, diplomatic and cultural recovery after years of wars and violence, as evidenced also by the recent visit of Pope Francis.

According to Arab Analyst Tamer Badaoui, "if these talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia have taken place, the Iraqi Prime Minister's goal is twofold. The first is to show that his government is worthy of Tehran and Riyadh's confidence in facilitating these talks. If so, it would have succeeded where its predecessors failed. Furthermore, Moustafa Kazimi "tries to limit Iraqi paramilitary groups with the help of Iran without having to force them to disarm or at least impose minimal pressure on them."
TAIPEI, April 19 (Reuters) - Taiwan is seeking to acquire long-range, air-launched cruise missiles from the United States, a defence official said on Monday, as the Chinese-claimed island bolsters its forces in the face of increasing pressure from Beijing.

While Taiwan is developing its own long-range missiles, to give it an ability to strike back deep into China in the event of war, it has also looked to the United States to help provide it more advanced weaponry.

Asked in parliament which weapons systems Taiwan wants to buy but the United States has not yet said it can, Lee Shih-chiang, head of Taiwan's defence ministry's strategic planning department, named Lockheed Martin Corp's AGM-158.

"We are still in the process of seeking it" from the United States, Lee said. "Communication channels are very smooth and normal."

He did not elaborate.

The AGM-158 JASSM - standing for Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile - can have a range of almost 1,000 km (621 miles) depending on the model, and be fixed to aircraft including F-16s, which Taiwan operates.

Lockheed Martin says the missile is designed to destroy high-value, well-defended, fixed and relocatable targets, and be launched far enough away to keep the launch aircraft well away from enemy air defence systems.

China has stepped up military activity near Taiwan, as it tries to force the government in Taipei to accept Beijing's claims of sovereignty.

Taiwan's armed forces, dwarfed by China's, are in the midst of a modernisation programme to offer a more effective deterrent, including the ability to hit back at bases far from China's coast in the event of a conflict.

Taiwan's armed forces have traditionally concentrated on defending the island from a Chinese attack.

But President Tsai Ing-wen has stressed the importance of developing an "asymmetrical" deterrent, using mobile equipment that is hard to find and destroy, and capable of hitting targets far away from Taiwan.

Washington, Taipei's main foreign arms supplier, has been eager to create a military counterbalance to Chinese forces, building on an effort known within the Pentagon as "Fortress Taiwan".

Beijing views Taiwan as sovereign Chinese territory, and has never renounced the use of force to bring it under its control. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
[April 19, 2021] Privacy Leader DeleteMe Adds New Features, Custom Data Removal Requests to Combat Increasing Threats to Online Privacy

BOSTON, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Online privacy leader DeleteMe today announces the launch of a new Custom Removal Request feature and improved customer dashboard for all new and existing DeleteMe users, bringing increased power and transparency to their flagship privacy management platform. Today, privacy threats against Americans are on the rise. There are currently over 120 data broker websites which sell personal information on 97% of the adult population, with an average of 296 pieces of information per user for sale, according to the company. These publicly available records are sold for as little as $.99 each, and are commonly used by spammers and scammers to initiate harassment and fraud, as well as by criminals online who use this information to intimidate victims. DeleteMe's improved dashboard and customer experience are designed to give customers clear, instant visibility into where their data is being sold online, and make it easier than ever to scrub this personal information from offending sites. It also centralizes reporting for multiple family members into an easier-to-use view, so authorized users can monitor and remove information for members of their family. "The first step to taking back control of your online data is knowing who has it," say Rob Shavell, Co-Founder and CEO of DeleteMe. "Unfortunately, most Americans still don't realize just how much of their personal data is currently for sale, and our new fatures make it clear and easy to understand from the day you sign up."



Perhaps the most exciting feature of the launch is the new Online Removal Request tool, which breaks new ground in online privacy. This feature empowers users with the full force of the DeleteMe removal team to pursue websites and individuals who publish private information without their permission. "This is definitely our new favorite feature," Shavell adds. "Any time a user finds personal info listed online, no matter the website, they can now submit a customer removal request and our team of privacy experts will manually initiate removal from the offending site or provide instructions on how to remove it yourself, expanding the reach and power of the DeleteMe platform," Shavell adds.

Existing DeleteMe customers gained access to the new features automatically on April 15th, and new customers can sign up to DeleteMe for $129/year and gain instant access to the entire platform, including the recently added features, at JoinDeleteMe.com. About DeleteMe: https://joindeleteme.com/ DeleteMe is the leading online privacy personal information removal service. In business for over 10 years, DeleteMe's privacy advisors have successfully completed over 25 million opt-outs from data brokers, ensuring consumers and businesses' online privacy. About DeleteMe for Business: https://joindeleteme.com/business-privacy/ DeleteMe for Business services over 40% of Fortune 100 corporations, with special plans for protecting executives, employees, and their families from harassment, doxxing, identity theft, phishing, telemarketing, robocalls, and scams. Contact:

Will Simonds

(425) 243-6570

will@getabine.com View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/privacy-leader-deleteme-adds-new-features-custom-data-removal-requests-to-combat-increasing-threats-to-online-privacy-301271584.html SOURCE DeleteMe

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Colombo, April 19 : Sri Lankan police on Monday said security has been beefed up in all churches across the island nation ahead of the the second anniversary of the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, which killed over 250 people and injured at least 500 others.

Police spokesperson DIG Ajith Rohana said authorities were informed that various religious masses, activities, and events were being planned to commemorate the victims , and as a result additional security personnel have been deployed in all churches islandwide, reports Xinhua news agency.

"The Police Headquarters has issued a special message to the officers-in-charge (OICs) of police stations and senior officers of territorial divisions including Senior DIGs, DIGs, SSPs and SPs to monitor the situation," Rohana said.

"We have informed all stations to provide maximum security in respect of events," he added.

The Easter terror attack by suicide bombers in April 2019 was one of the worst violent incidents recorded in Sri Lanka's history.

Sri Lankan authorities have said probe into the blasts is still continuing and that they have identified and taken into custody masterminds behind the violence.

On April 21, 2019, three churches in Negombo, Batticaloa and Colombo and the hotels -- Shangri-La, Cinnamon Grand, Kingsbury and Tropical Inn -- in the capital city were targeted in the series of coordinated suicide bombings.

Sri Lankan authorities attributed the attacks to little-known local Islamist extremist groups, National Thowheeth Jama'ath and Jammiyathul Millathu Ibrahim.

However, the Islamic State terror group claimed the attacks.
[April 19, 2021] DefinedCrowd's Founder and CEO Received by the President of Portugal

SEATTLE, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the current context, His Excellency the President of Portugal received entrepreneur Dr. Daniela Braga during a hearing concerning the economic future of Portugal and the Recovery and Resilience Plan, which will be sent to Brussels by the end of the month. "I deeply admire the President of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. It was a greathonor to meet and talk with His Excellency, especially about a subject that's so close to my heart," said Dr. Braga after the hearing. Regarding Portugal's economic and social future, Dr. Braga said: "With the world still reeling from the impact of a global pandemic, social and economic concerns are understandably at the top of every country's agenda. I believe investing in Artificial Intelligence and digitalization is crucial to accelerating recovery and planning a future not only for Portugal but also for Europe, in order to reduce vulnerability to social and economic crisis."



The hearing took place last Friday April 16 at 3 p.m. GMT, via videoconference. Contact

Catarina?Peyroteo?Salteiro???

Director of Global Communication & Brand???

pr@definedcrowd.com???

Photo: Rui Ochoa/Presidencia da Republica Related Images the-president-of-portugal-receives.jpg

The President of Portugal Receives DefinedCrowd's Founder and CEO

President of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, during the virtual hearing with Founder and CEO of DefinedCrowd, Dr. Daniela Braga. Photo: Rui Ochoa/Presidencia da Republica

View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/definedcrowds-founder-and-ceo-received-by-the-president-of-portugal-301271737.html SOURCE DefinedCrowd Corp.

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Champion of underdogs

Dr Tony Sewell CBE, 62

No one is better qualified to speak on education and the black community than Sewell. Born in Brixton in 1959 to Jamaican parents of the Windrush generation, he studied English literature at Essex University before becoming a teacher in some of London's toughest secondary schools.

He was part of the team which opened Mossbourne Community Academy in 2004 on the site of Hackney Downs School, which was described as the 'worst school in Britain'.

In 2011/12 Mossbourne achieved the distinction of getting seven per cent of its leavers into Oxford or Cambridge universities.

No one is better qualified to speak on education and the black community than Dr Tony Sewell

Sewell went on to found Generating Genius, a charity which helps children from minority ethnic backgrounds study and follow careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects.

Police gangs reformer

Keith Fraser, 54

The former police superintendent and chair of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales, knows what it is like to be on the receiving end of racism.

Born to Jamaican parents  a bus driver and a secretary  in Birmingham in the 1960s, he has recalled being stopped and searched frequently as a teenager.

He joined the Metropolitan Police in 1985 aged 18, but was still stopped by fellow officers when driving off-duty.

Keith Fraser, 54, the former police superintendent and chair of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales, knows what it is like to be on the receiving end of racism

Over his 32 years of police service, Fraser rose to become a Superintendent in the West Midlands force, before becoming the first black chairman of the Youth Justice Board and chairman of Employability UK.

He developed West Midlands Police strategy on deterring young people from joining gangs.

Muslim campaigner

Aftab Chughtai MBE, 62

Unlike many academics who pontificate on racial issues, Chughtai has experience of running a business in the heart of one of Britain's most ethnically diverse cities.

Born to Kashmiri parents, Chughtai took over running the family's babywear shop in Birmingham, and now sits on the board of the Asian Business Chamber of Commerce.

He is also chair of the West Midlands Police Independent Advisory Group, a trustee of Washwood Heath Multi Academy Trust, and was a co-founder of the campaign group Muslims for Britain, which engages with British Muslims on key national issues.

Unlike many academics who pontificate on racial issues, Aftab Chughtai MBE, 62, has experience of running a business in the heart of one of Britain's most ethnically diverse cities

In 2017, he was appointed to the Grenfell Tower taskforce, charged with scrutinising Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council's efforts to help the community recover from the tragedy.

Kenya-born researcher

Mercy Muroki, 25

Born in Kenya, Muroki attended a school with no electricity and a pit latrine for a toilet. Aged five, she arrived in West London with her parents and sister.

Shortly after, her parents split  and her mother and the two children were homeless for a period.

Muroki became a mother herself, aged 18, but went on to read politics at Queen Mary University of London and study for a MSc at Oxford, where she won several academic prizes.

Born in Kenya, Mercy Muroki, 25, attended a school with no electricity and a pit latrine for a toilet. Aged five, she arrived in West London with her parents and sister

She became a senior researcher at the Centre for Social Justice, and is also a national newspaper columnist.

Race equality leader

Dr Samir Shah CBE, 78

Born in India, Dr Shah came to England in 1960 and attended Latymer Upper School in West London, before reading geography and maths at the University of Hull. He has a DPhil from St Catherine's College, Oxford.

He began his career at London Weekend Television in 1979, before moving to the BBC, where he held senior positions overseeing political journalism.

Now CEO of his own TV and radio production company, Dr Shah was awarded a CBE in 2019 for services to Television and Heritage.

Born in India, Dr Samir Shah CBE, 78, came to England in 1960 and attended Latymer Upper School in West London, before reading geography and maths at the University of Hull. He has a DPhil from St Catherine's College, Oxford

He has served as chair of the V&A and as a visiting professor of creative media at Oxford University.

He is also member of the Nuffield Foundation Steering Group, working on reviews into inequality.

He was chairman of the race equality think-tank the Runnymede Trust  which said yesterday it felt 'let down' by yesterday's report  for two decades and has been a member of the Holocaust Commission.

Peerless surgeon

Lord Kakkar, 56

Ajay Kakkar is a prime example of the success many families of Indian origin have enjoyed in supposedly racist Britain.

He followed his father into medicine, studying at King's College, London, followed by a PhD at Imperial College. He is now Professor of Surgery at University College, London.

He is the director of the Thrombosis Research Institute, and has worked with the NHS on its strategy to prevent dangerous blood clotting.

Lord Kakkar, 56, is a prime example of the success many families of Indian origin have enjoyed in supposedly racist Britain

He was made a life peer in 2010 before being appointed as a member of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council in 2014. He serves as Chair of the Judicial Appointments Commission.

Lord Kakkar chairs medical research charity the King's Fund, sits as a school governor and is also a commissioner of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea.

TV space scientist

Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock MBE, 53

Born and brought up in London, Aderin-Pocock moved between 13 schools, struggling with dyslexia, to eventually win a place to read physics at Imperial College London.

She completed a PhD in mechanical engineering, in the course of which she developed a novel instrument to measure materials just microns thick  a device which was later marketed commercially by the university.

Born and brought up in London, Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock MBE, 53, moved between 13 schools, struggling with dyslexia, to eventually win a place at Imperial College London

Now a distinguished space scientist, she has presented the BBC's Sky At Night for the past eight years.

Much of her time is devoted to inspiring new generations of astronauts, engineers and scientists, and visiting inner-city schools to tell their students how she became a scientist  busting myths about careers, class and gender in the process.

School Governance Expert

Naureen Khalid, 59

From a British Pakistani background, Khalid achieved a Masters in Genetics at Karachi University, and later a MPhil at the University of East Anglia.

She is now an educational specialist who has sat for more than a decade on the governing boards of several schools and academies.

She also serves as an expert for National Online Safety, an organisation which helps to protect children online by providing safety training to schools.

From a British Pakistani background, Naureen Khalid, 59, achieved a Masters in Genetics at Karachi University, and later a MPhil at the University of East Anglia

She presents at education events, and has co-founded a national forum which helps support school governors and provides them with a space to exchange ideas and experiences.

Globally feted academic

Dambisa Moyo, 52

Moyo was born in Lusaka, Zambia, but spent some of her childhood in the U.S. She took a chemistry degree at the University of Zambia, followed by a DPhil in economics at Oxford University and a Masters in Public Administration at Harvard.

She worked at Goldman Sachs as a research economist for seven years, advising developing countries on international finances, and served as head of Economic Research and Strategy for Sub-Saharan Africa.

Moyo has sat on the boards of brewing company SABMiller, Barclays Bank, Barrick Gold and U.S. oil giant Chevron.

Dambisa Moyo, 52, was born in Lusaka, Zambia, but spent some of her childhood in the U.S. She took a chemistry degree at the University of Zambia, followed by a DPhil in economics at Oxford University and a Masters in Public Administration at Harvard

She has published many books, with her 2009 work Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working And How There Is A Better Way For Africa, becoming a bestseller  while upsetting those on the Left who believe that ever-increasing quantities of aid is the best way to help the developing world.

In 2009 she was named as a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, and one of Time magazine's top 100 most influential people in the world.

Schools stalwart

Martyn Oliver, 49

The only white member of the commission, Oliver started teaching in 1995 and went on to become chief executive of Outwood Grange Academies Trust, which oversees 34 academies in the North, many of which were failing schools when the trust took them over.

The only white member of the commission, Martyn Oliver, 49, started teaching in 1995 and went on to become chief executive of Outwood Grange Academies Trust

Oliver serves as a board member of the Department for Education's Opportunity North-East, which aims to improve results in secondary schools in that region.

Co-opted members

Kunle Olulode, 59

Olulode, is a former trade union activist on Camden Council who led the 500-strong Camden black workers' staff group.

He has also served as a board member of English Heritage and is director of Voice4Change, which represents charities working with ethnic minorities.

Blondel Cluff, 60Cluff's parents arrived in Britain from Anguilla with the Windrush generation. A lawyer and former head of legal at Lazard Brothers (a financial and asset management firm), Cluff is a fellow of King's College London, and has also served as a diplomat.
President Joe Biden told a group of Democratic and Republican lawmakers on Monday that he is prepared to compromise on his $2 trillion infrastructure plan - both on what it contains and how it is paid for.

'I am prepared to compromise,' he said during an Oval Office meeting. 'There's a lot of needs and so we're going to be talking about, number one, what should be included in the package. Obviously I put a lot in the package and they get all should be included, and how to pay for it.'

'I've noticed everybody's for infrastructure, the question is who's going to pay for it. And that's what we're going to try to work out today,' he added.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg sat to Biden's right in the meeting, where Vice President Kamala Harris typically sits. Harris was in North Carolina on Monday to tout the jobs' plan.

President Joe Biden told a group of Democratic and Republican lawmakers he is prepared to compromise on his $2 trillion infrastructure plan - both on what it contains and how it is paid for

The Oval Office meeting comes as the administration prepares for a new round of taxes - this time on wealthy individuals - to pay for the second phase of Biden's infrastructure plan, which focuses on social programs.

The 10 lawmakers meeting with Biden are all former governors or mayors. The president has touted his support from Republican mayors and governors to paint his proposals as bipartisan even as his American Rescue Package didn't garner a single GOP vote on Capitol Hill.

'A little secret here,' Biden said. 'Full disclosure: I asked senators and congressmen who would either been governors or mayors because they know what it's like to make things work, to make sure that you get things done, and deal with infrastructure and the needs of your community.'

Biden faces an uphill battle on his sprawling infrastructure plan, which goes beyond tradition projects of roads and bridges to include housing, childcare and the environment.

Both Democrats and Republicans have weighed in on the proposal, which is in the process of being drafted on Capitol Hill.

Monday's meeting marks the second time in the last two weeks Biden has hosted a bipartisan group of lawmakers. Last week he met with eight lawmakers for nearly two hours.

Among the group of 10 lawmakers sitting down with the president is Republican Senator Mitt Romney, who has an infrastructure proposal of his own to counter Biden's.

'All 10 of us got a chance to speak,' Romney told reporters on Capitol Hill after the meeting. 'The president spoke about his plan, what he hoped to accomplish with it, but he was in listening mode, and, and was gracious to solicit our respective points of view.'

'We had a good opportunity to present our view,' he noted.

Among lawmakers meeting with Biden is Republican Senator Mitt Romney, who has an infrastructure proposal of his own

This was the second meeting of bipartisan lawmakers President Biden has hosted in the past two weeks as he tries to sell his infrastructure plan on Capitol Hill

Democratic Senators Angus King of Maine; Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire; and John Hickenlooper of Colorado were among those at the meeting

The Republican legislation aims for a smaller infrastructure deal - in the $600 billion to $800 billion range.

It would focus on traditional infrastructure items and some Democrats see that as a first step to a larger deal.

Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, a close Biden ally, said on 'Fox News Sunday that the Senate should 'come together in a bipartisan way to pass that $800 billion hard infrastructure bill' and then tackle a second package that would include additional items the president is proposing.

Lawmakers meeting with Biden on Monday DEMOCRATS Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado Sen. Angus King of Maine Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri Rep. Charlie Crist of Florida Rep. Norma Torres of California REPUBLICANS Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota Rep. Carlos Gimenez of Florida Rep. Kay Granger of Texas Advertisement

Meanwhile the White House wooing continues.

White House chief of staff Ron Klain will host leaders of the moderate House Democratic Blue Dog Coalition on Tuesday and key members of the New Democrat Coalition on Wednesday, a White House official told CNN.

Vice President Kamala Harris is in North Carolina on Monday to sell the plan and other Cabinet officials are also hitting the road.

Republicans have criticized Biden's plan for being too large and going outside the traditional infrastructure scope. Some moderate Democrats have expressed similar concern.

Biden has defended his plan by saying all the items contribute to the greater infrastructure of the country.

But he's also facing criticism from his left wing, who wanted him to go even bigger.

The White House is working to mollify progressives with talk of the American Families Plan, a second part of the infrastructure initiative that will be released this month and focus on social programs, including the child tax credit.

But most Republicans strongly oppose the social programs and liberals worry that a smaller first round package passing with bipartisan support could kill the second round proposal.

To pay for his American Families Plan, Biden is weighing a new series of tax hikes on the wealthy, people familiar with the discussions told Politico.

The new taxes come after the administration proposed a series of taxes on corporations last month to pay for its $1.9 trillion COVID relief package. Some of those funds could pay for first round of infrastructure funding but the way to cover costs is still being worked out as the legislation is being crafted.

But a presidential proposal for a tax on the wealthy is likely to be much more contentious on Capitol Hill than his push to raise corporate taxes.

Vice President Kamala Harris leaves for North Carolina on Monday to sell President Biden's infrastructure plan

Republicans are pushing back hard on Biden's plan to raise taxes - both on corporations and on high-net earners.

And some Democrats from high-worth areas - such New York, San Francisco and Silicon Valley - may object to the president's plan to raises taxes on their constituents.

Biden has pledged only to raise taxes on households making more than $400,000. But the administration hasn't been clear as to whether that limit applies to individual earnings or combined household - a distinction that makes a big difference especially in areas on the East and West Coasts where the cost of living is high.

One idea the administration is considering would be to reel back Donald Trump's tax cut, taking the top marginal tax rate back to 39.6 per cent, where it was before the 2017 tax cut.
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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday cancelled his upcoming trip to India due to rising coronavirus cases there.

A joint statement from the British and Indian governments was published on Monday which read: In the light of the current coronavirus situation, Prime Minister Boris Johnson will not be able to travel to India next week.

Instead, Prime Ministers Modi and Johnson will speak later this month to agree and launch their ambitious plans for the future partnership between the UK and India.

They will remain in regular contact beyond this, and look forward to meeting in person later this year, it added.

He was to visit India on April 26.

Mr Johnson had already postponed the trip once from January, when COVID-19 infections were high in Britain.

Infections in India are currently surging as the country endures a second wave of the virus.

(NAN)
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines)  The Philippine Association of National Advertisers, in partnership with the Certified Digital Marketer Program, will hold the inaugural Collab 2021 web conference on April 20 at 4 p.m. with the theme of e-commerce and collaboration.

Touted as a 360-degree view web conference, the event will feature a lecture on the new e-commerce landscape and trends, elevator pitches on collaboration from expert guests, and in-depth panel discussions covering topics such as e-commerce marketing, consumer behaviors, product innovations, and operations.

The event will bring together a powerhouse line-up of experts from different areas of the e-commerce value chain:

 Arthur Pena, Group Director for Media of P&G, and responsible for the FMCG brands e-commerce initiatives.

 Daniel Lim, Vice President of SM Investments Corporation, who currently spearheads SM Malls Online, the omnichannel e-commerce arm of SM Malls.

 Chad Sotelo, General Manager of Electrolux, who held previous stints at Samsung, LOreal, and P&G.

 Steve Sy, CEO of Great Deals, which is a full-suite e-commerce enabler working with the largest brands in the country.

 Neil Trinidad, Country CMO of Lazada Philippines, with over 16 years of experience across FMCG (Unilever) and Tech (Google).

 Jeff Saez, Chairman and President of Nuworks, an Innovations Agency that established Nuworks Commerce in 2020 to meet rising e-commerce demand.

 Ash Mandhyan, CEO of Quanta Digital, who has over 10 years of experience in e-commerce, working for Facebook, Lazada, iProspect, and SM Prime Holdings.

The session will be moderated by PANA Board Director, Maye Yao Co Say, who also serves as COO of Richwell Philippines.

Partnerships are key to progress

The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred a boom in e-commerce adoption in the country, which still continues to rise. A study conducted by VISA in October 2020 showed that 52% of Filipinos shopped online for the first time during the pandemic.

E-commerce is now at the center of opportunities. But to keep up with this increasing demand, businesses need to build new strengths and capabilities, which can be accelerated with the help of partners, said Hans Roxas-Chua, president of CDM. Brands, agencies, and solutions providers need to come together because our collective growth depends on the strength of this e-commerce ecosystem we are building.

Over 300 delegates will participate in Collab 2021, where they can directly ask their questions to the event speakers.

Collab 2021 was made possible with the support of its Gold Sponsors: PMFTC and Locad. Special thanks go to Nuworks and Future Proof PH, the marketing and sales partner of the event, and its media partners, adobo Magazine, The Philippine Star, BusinessWorld, 96.3 Easy Rock, Philippine Daily Inquirer and Inquirer Mobile, CNN Philippines, Inquirer.NET, DOOH, and Rappler.

For more information about the event and to see the full agenda, visit https://collab2021.futureproof.ph.
One front in the legal battles over the Jefferson Parish School System's suspension of students seen handling BB guns during virtual lessons has been quieted.

The Jefferson Parish School Board and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry have reached a settlement in a lawsuit that Landry filed alleging that the board violated the state's open meetings law when it held three meetings of its Disciplinary Committee in December to approve a virtual discipline policy that was later ratified by the full School Board.

In the settlement, the board acknowledges that the meetings violated the law. After Landry sued the board, the board reconvened the Disciplinary Committee in accordance with the open meetings law and proper public notice requirements. At that meeting March 1, committee endorsed a similar policy to what had been done in December, and the full board approved it two days later.

As part of the settlement with Landry, the board agrees to hold all future Disciplinary Committee meetings in accordance with state open meetings laws and to pay all court costs related to the case. Those costs were not specified.

The board approved the settlement during its meeting last week. But it has yet to be signed by both parties and entered into the court record in 24th Judicial District Court in Jefferson Parish.

Landry's suit stemmed from the September suspension of two students -- one a Harvey fourth-grader and the other a Grand Isle sixth-grader -- who were both seen handling BB guns during virtual lessons.

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Both students were recommended for expulsion under a Jefferson Parish school policy that bans weapons on school property or at school sponsored events, though a hearing officer later knocked that punishment down to suspensions.

The school system contended that handling weapons even during a virtual lesson when both students were in their own homes was akin to doing it at school. The decisions prompted a furious backlash against the system from Landry and the National Rifle Association on the right to the ACLU on the left.

The Legislature also hurriedly passed a bill, which was signed into law by Gov. John Bel Edwards, that required school districts to write specific virtual-learning policies and afford extra levels of appeal to students recommended for expulsion.

Landry jumped into the fray on several fronts, inviting the family of Ka'Mauri Harrison, the suspended Harvey fourth-grader, to Baton Rouge for a meeting and questioning if the School Board had violated Harrison's rights.

In addition to suing the board in state court over the committee meetings, Landry has intervened in the suit Harrison's family has filed against the School Board in federal court. That suit remains pending.
At the urging of the Biden administration, the Australian government and the countrys military are working intensely with the US to ramp up their preparations for what could be a catastrophic war against China for control over Taiwan.

The plans would place Australian forces on the front line of a US drive to reassert Washingtons global hegemony that is increasingly focused on the strategically and economically crucial island, just 160 kilometres from the Chinese mainland.

Australia Prime Minister Scott Morrison (AP/Kiyoshi Ota)

The Australian Financial Review (AFR) informed its corporate readership last Friday: The Australian government has sharply escalated its internal preparations for potential military action in the Taiwan Strait.

The AFR said unnamed sources had told it that the Australian Defence Force was planning for a potential worst-case scenario if the United States and China clashed over Taiwan, prompting debate over the scope and scale of Canberras contribution to what would be an unprecedented conflict in the region.

Despite the details being hidden from public view, the plans are evidently detailed. Options include contributing to an allied effort with submarines, as well as maritime surveillance aircraft, air-to-air refuellers and potentially Super Hornet fighters operating from US bases in Guam or the Philippines, and even Japan, the newspaper reported. Another optionsaid to be riskierwas to incorporate Air Warfare Destroyers into US aircraft carrier groups.

There is no doubt Australia would be called on to support the United States if there was a conflict with China, the AFR report insisted.

Washingtons hand in stepping up these preparations was indicated late last month when Michael Goldman, the US charge daffaires in Australiacurrently Washingtons highest representative in the countrysaid during an Australian National University podcast that the two allies strategic planning covered a range of contingencies  of which Taiwan is obviously an important component.

As no doubt intended by the Biden administration, Goldmans comments were widely reported in prominent media outlets in Asia and the US, heightening the provocation toward Beijing over the island.

In recent weeks both the outgoing and incoming commanders of the US Indo-Pacific command, Admirals Phil Davidson and John Aquilino, have warned of a war over China within the next six years, or even earlier.

Davidson and Aquilino accused China of planning to invade Taiwan. In reality, the US is undercutting the One China policy, established in 1979 when Washington ended diplomatic relations with Taiwan, recognising Beijing as the government of all China, including Taiwan.

The Biden administration is stepping up an array of destabilising moves initiated by the Trump White House, including the junking of previous restrictions on contact between US and Taiwanese officials and the development of closer military collaboration with Taiwan.

Last week, an unofficial US delegation became the latest in a series of high profile visits to Taiwan. The delegation included Richard Armitagethe anti-China hawk who served as George W Bushs deputy secretary of state. Taiwans President Tsai Ing-wen told the delegation her government would work with the US to deter Chinas adventurous manoeuvres and provocations.

Speaking last week at an Indian foreign affairs conference, known as the Raisina Dialogue, chief of Australias Defence Force General Angus Campbell justified the plans for war over Taiwan, saying all militaries undertook a whole variety of planning and rarely ever talk about it.

However, the fact that such military preparations are being publicly talked about is a warning of how far the Biden administration is prepared to go to block China from challenging the supremacy over the Indo-Pacific that the US obtained via victory in World War II.

Analysts cited by the AFR said the US pressure on Australia to commit to join a US attack on China had intensified with last months first-ever Quad summit, convened by President Joe Biden with the leaders of Japan, India and Australia. Michael Shoebridge from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a government-funded and US-linked thinktank, said: Biden is using fast multilateralism. Obama wanted to get everyone in the tent and consult. Biden doesnt want to do that. He wants partners to work with him at the speed that he needs to work.

Another indication of the pace of developments came last week with Bidens decision to end the long, disastrous and criminal US military campaign in Afghanistan, in order to concentrate forces further in the Indo-Pacific. That announcement was immediately matched by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who cited last years defence policy update, which called for the Australian military to shift focus from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific.

A former Defence official told the AFR there would be questions in the government over whether the ANZUS Treaty automatically applied in the event of an alleged Chinese strike against Taiwan. Article IV of that US-Australia-New Zealand pact, signed in 1951, commits each party to meet the common danger from an attack on their armed forces, public vessels or aircraft in the Pacific.

That issue points to how sharply the Australian ruling class has shifted its position to commit itself to a US-led war, despite China becoming Australian capitalisms largest export market over the past two decades.

In 2004, the Bush administration sought an immediate explanation after Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, during a visit to China, described the ANZUS Treaty as symbolic. Downer said Australia would not automatically support the US in a conflict with China over Taiwan. Downers comments were denounced by Australias military and political establishment, including the Labor Partys then shadow foreign minister Kevin Rudd, as a threat to the US alliance.

Two years later it was revealed that at least seven diplomatic cables had been exchanged with Washington over Downers remarks, prompting Prime Minister John Howard to repair relations with the Bush White House by claiming that Downer had been taken out of context.

Today, whatever the discussions about citing the ANZUS Treaty in an effort to justify Australian participation in a US-led assault on China, the Liberal-National Coalition government is already engaged in preparations for war, confident of the backing of the opposition Labor Party.

As they have done in every major war, Labor and the trade unions are doing everything they can to stifle anti-war sentiment and demonise the targeted enemy. At Labors recent national conference, the unions helped pass six resolutions denouncing China for aggression or human rights abuses on every front nominated by the Trump and Biden administrations, including Taiwan.

The International Youth and Students for Social Equality in Australia and New Zealand is holding an online meeting in opposition to the drive to war against China at 4 p.m. [AEST] on Saturday, April 24. Register here.
Class of 2021: Jessica Teresi

Biology major draws on her experience to help students understand mental health issues

Jessica Teresi, a biological sciences major from Northfield, New Jersey, suffered two severe concussions  one in high school and one her sophomore year in college  that affected her mental health. But the medical challenges also resulted in gained resiliency skills and a commitment to advocacy and service.

As a Changing Carolina Peer Leader at the University of South Carolina, she devoted time to helping other college students navigate mental health issues. She is part of Changing Carolinas Mental Health Special Interest Group at the Center for Health and Wellbeing, helping create events to educate and provide campus resources for students on general, sexual and mental health. She will graduate in May with leadership distinction in professional and civic engagement.

And she plans to continue that work as a physician assistant.

When I was in my junior year of high school, I had a serious concussion that kept me out of school for a few months. It really affected everything  emotional, physical, cognitive capabilities. I was in and out of doctors appointments and frustrated about why this wasnt getting better. Typically, when someone gets a concussion, they rest a couple weeks and theyre fine.

Concussions are known to produce abrupt changes in a persons cognitive, physical and emotional state. My case is no exception. I have struggled over the past five years to find relief from my lingering symptoms as side effects from common medical treatments sacrificed my emotional wellbeing. As a result, I was inspired to find a routine to manage my stress and promote the importance of stress management as a Changing Carolina Peer Leader.

If you can get people in the habit of speaking about their emotions, they know that maybe they do need to reach out to someone for help. Jessica Teresi, Class of 2021, Changing Carolina Peer Leader

We are a nationally recognized peer education organization. We work with Student Health Services. Were not a student club group; we are employees of the health center. We go through certified training, and we learn from faculty advisors. I learned how to identify high-risk behaviors, how to educate students at events.

While I was still recovering from my most prevalent symptom, headaches, I got reinjured during my sophomore year of college and that reignited everything.

For me, since I was still going through injury recovery, I knew how it affected every single aspect of my life, health-wise. I felt like there were messages people should be aware of. The mental health part, how to verbalize your emotions, stress management. Even if you dont need it now, it will come in handy.

While serving as the Changing Carolina mental health co-chair, she jumpstarted I Feel UofSC, a mental health campaign that educates students about identifying and classifying feelings and emotions.

With mental health, people are nervous to say what theyre going through. Everyone says, Im fine. But (getting better) relies so heavily on me communicating what Im going through. To say, Im not doing OK, that leads to seeking help.

My part was to teach people how to validate their emotions. I did that by a student-inspired Spotify account. We asked students to think of a song and think about how that song makes you feel. Everyone could relate to that. We were normalizing conversations around mental health. People would say, Thats what I listen to when Im trying to be in a better mood. It was people coming together to discuss their emotions.

If you can get people in the habit of speaking about their emotions, they know that maybe they do need to reach out to someone for help.

Teresi is now in the process of applying to physician assistant programs, a path suggested by her University 101 instructor after she arrived on campus her freshman year.

I was in the living-learning community, Galen Health Fellows. It was very beneficial for me. You have a cohort, so the people in your U101 were in Bio 101 and your lab and we also all lived in Patterson. That helped me get adjusted and feel like it wasnt just me on my own. Our U101 class was health care oriented. Thats the whole reason I got interested in PA career.

Everyone tells you campus fit is a real thing and you dont understand it until youre on the campus. That happened pretty quickly for me. Once I was here, I had that internal feeling, This is where I want to be.

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The Sharjah Economic Development Department (SEDD) said that the number of issued and renewed licences during the first quarter (Q1) of 2021 reached 15,920 compared to 14,267 during the same period in 2020, a rise of 12%.



The departments first-quarter report also confirmed the ongoing growth in the total number of licences, rising by 29 percent compared to the same period in 2019 while revealing that e-commerce licences topped the list, rising by 292 percent compared to the same period last year, reported state news agency Wam.



Industrial licences came next, with an increase of 19 percent, followed by commercial licences with 13 percent. Professional licences hit an increment of about eight percent in the first quarter of 2021 while the growth of "Eitimad" domestic licences reached five percent.



Sultan Abdullah bin Hadda Al Suwaidi, Chairman of the SEDD, explained that the licence issuance rate increased to 53 percent during the first quarter of this year while the number of licence renewals rose by eight percent, which is good for the emirate compared to equivalent international figures.



He also pointed out that this ongoing rise confirms the strength of the local economy and the attractiveness of the emirates investment environment, and highlights the emirates strategic location within the region, its advanced infrastructure, and its other strategic economic and social advantages, as well as the available opportunities in various local sectors.



Fahad Al Khamiri, Director of the Registration and Licencing Department at the SEDD, said that the number of licences, especially e-commerce licences, rose significantly by 292 percent during the first quarter of 2021, by 51 licences, adding that industrial licences rose by a rate of 19 percent numbering 623, and commercial licences by 13 percent totalling 10,265.



The number of professional licences increased by eight percent with 4,772 while this figure for "Eitimad" domestic licences was five percent during the same period with 209, confirming the continuity of business and economic activities in the emirate, as well as its ability to maintain economic balance in major sectors, he added.
Patna, April 19 : Amid rising Covid cases, the BJP in Bihar challenged the night curfew decision of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and said that it will not help fight the pandemic in the state.

Sanjay Jaiswal, the Rajya Sabha MP and BJP state president said during all party meeting on Saturday that the BJP is in favour of weekend curfew from Friday evening to Monday morning.

"In current circumstances, the Corona virus is spreading rapidly in Bihar and night curfew cannot help bring the situation under control. We have to make efforts in a positive direction to break the chain of Coronavirus. Weekend lockdown is a wise option for us," Jaiswal said.

"The Bihar government has taken several good decisions on Sunday which are required under current circumstances. I am not a specialist but I do not understand the decision of 'night curfew'. I cannot understand how night curfew will help reduce coronavirus infections in Bihar. People during the weekend curfew of 62 hours analyse themselves about their health. It will help identify suspected patients and also break the chain of Coronavirus," Jaiswal said.

Samrat Chaudhary, the Panchayati Raj minister and BJP MLC also slammed the Nitish Kumar government after former education minister Mewalal Chaudhary died of Covid.

"The health infrastructure of Bihar has completely collapsed. If this government would not save the life of MLA or MP in the state then imagine what would happen to common people," Chaudhary said.

The BJP's stand has given ammunition to opposition parties which have been attacking the night curfew decision of the Nitish Kumar government.

Congress leader Ajit Sharma said, "Night curfew is realistic in metro cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad etc. Majority of people stay at home during night in Bihar. Hence night curfew has no meaning in Bihar. The decision of CM Nitish Kumar is just an eyewash. He is trying to fool the people. If the state government would have imposed weekend curfew in Bihar, the two and a half days could be utilized to reinforce sanitisation of public places, provide oxygen cylinders, medicines, beds, ambulances in hospitals." Mritunjay Tiwari, the spokesperson of RJD said: "Our leader Tejashwi Yadav advocated weekend curfew in Bihar to break the chain of the virus but it looks like CM Nitish Kumar is not only ignoring opposition parties but also his alliance partner BJP as well.

Bihar CM Nitish Kumar on Sunday, took a decision to impose night curfew in the state till May 15 after an all party meeting.
They have backed the blue with legislation to protect police funding.

They have also defended gun rights.

But now members of the Texas Senate must decide which one prevails as those top Republican priorities collide in what has become one of the biggest hot-button issues the Legislature will take up this year.

While a bill to allow most people to carry a handgun without a license sailed through the Texas House, it now faces a Texas Senate where the leader, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, has made his support for law enforcement a critical part of his political identity. And a large contingent of Texas law enforcement officials have adamantly opposed legislation that would allow unlicensed carrying of weapons, despite some gun rights groups pushing Republicans to make the bill law.

This bill does not make officers more safe, Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia said at a rally in front of the state Capitol that included Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez and dozens of other law enforcement officials. It makes us less safe.

Patrick, who has the authority in the Senate to quell most any bill he wants, said Monday that the votes are not there in the Senate right now to move the legislation.

If we have the votes to pass a permitless carry bill off the Senate floor, I will move it, Patrick said Monday. At this point, we dont have the votes on the floor to pass it. I plan to meet with law enforcement who oppose permitless carry and with the NRA and GOA (Gun Owners of America) who support it to see if we can find a path that a majority of senators will vote to pass.

CONSTITUTIONAL CARRY: Bill approved by state House would allow unlicensed Texans to carry handguns

Its not dissimilar to what Patrick has said about the issue in the past. During a 2017 radio interview in San Antonio, Patrick told host Trey Ware that law enforcement does not like the idea of anyone being able to walk down the street with a gun and they dont know if they have a permit or not.

For Patrick, backing the police has become a major political point over the last year as protests nationwide have drawn attention to police shootings. Patrick was part of a statewide tour to back the blue last year by pushing back against some Democrats and their call to defund the police.

Whether youre a Republican or a Democrat, protecting police is an American thing and a Texan thing, Patrick said.

TEXAS TAKE: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox

Letting the so-called constitutional carry legislation go to a vote would appease some of the most vocal gun rights advocacy groups, over the safety objections of police.

The Gun Owners of Americas Texas chapter is already pushing its supporters to up the pressure on Patrick and senators to hear the legislation.

It would be unthinkable for the Senate to let constitutional carry die after it has passed the House by such a large margin, that group said in a statement to its supporters. We need you to take action. Call Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

Senate version still in committee

Under House Bill 1927, which passed the House on Thursday, people 21 and older would not be required to pass a training class and hold a permit to carry a handgun in public. The bill does not apply to anyone with a criminal record.

A similar bill has been filed in the Senate by Sens. Drew Springer and Dawn Buckingham, both Republicans. But that legislation hasnt received a hearing yet in a committee, typically the first stop for a bill.

Patrick, meanwhile, has made other gun-related issues a priority. Last week, the Senate passed Senate Bill 20, which would allow legal gun owners to carry firearms into their hotel rooms, rather than leave them in their car overnight.

Patrick on Friday talked about that bill as having strengthened the Second Amendment rights of all Texans.

Patrick has long been a staunch defender of gun rights. But he has also been willing to take on the National Rifle Association at times. In 2019, after a shooting in which a 21-year-old man is accused of killing 23 shoppers at a Walmart in El Paso, Patrick called for expanded background checks to keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people  in direct opposition to the NRA.

Im a strong NRA supporter, and theyre a strong supporter of mine, Patrick said in an interview on Fox News Channel after that shooting. But I believe they are wrong in not expanding background checks to stopping strangers from selling guns to strangers.

Patrick said he still supported allowing family and friends to sell guns to one another without background checks.

Despite those comments, Patrick has not pushed that issue further and hasnt advocated any legislation this year that would limit gun purchases.

HB 1927 now heads to the Senate for consideration. The House and Senate must agree to identical bills in order for it to go to the governor for his approval. The Legislature is in session for six more weeks.

jeremy.wallace@chron.com
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AMSTERDAM, April 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Prof. Dr Pasquale Pistone and Prof. Dr Philip Baker, Directors of IBFDs OPTR, will present the Yearbook via video, explaining some of the main events and trends that arose last year in the protection of taxpayers rights around the world. Click here to watch the video.



The OPTR reports on the protection of taxpayers fundamental rights around the world. The precise and technical information of the OPTR contains reference to taxpayer bills, conventions, and statutes, also in their judicial and administrative interpretation, which explore how states apply this protection in practice.

The OPTR serves as a unique legal basis for developing further research on the legal remedies, including the related project of the International Law Association, that secure the effective protection of taxpayers rights. It is hoped that this may contribute to nudging the convergence towards a global standard in this field.

This publication relies on information gathered in 42 countries worldwide up to 31 December 2020, and

monitors the effective implementation into domestic law of legal procedures, safeguards and guarantees associated with taxpayers rights;

provides an annual comparison by jurisdiction of the level of compliance with minimum standards and best practices; and

identifies trends in the practical protection of taxpayers rights.



The basis for the Yearbook consists of surveys supplied by groups of experts appointed from 42 countries, as well as reports from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice. The groups of experts incorporate members of tax authorities, the judiciary and academia, as well as ombudspersons and practitioners. The national reports are also available for downloading.

If you would like further details, please contact Phil Windus, Senior Marketing Coordinator, at p.windus@ibfd.org.

About OPTR

The IBFD Observatory on the Protection of Taxpayers Rights, established by Prof. Dr Pasquale Pistone and Prof. Dr Philip Baker, is a non-judgemental platform for keeping track of developments in the practical protection of taxpayers rights around the world. It follows the standards established by Prof. Dr Pasquale Pistone and Prof. Dr Philip Baker at the 2015 IFA Congress on The Practical Protection of Taxpayers Fundamental Rights.

Since then, the OPTR has continuously monitored the observance of minimum standards and the adoption of best practices around the world with respect to the guarantee and protection of human rights pertaining to tax matters.

To learn more about the Observatory, please visit the official IBFD academic page or contact optr@ibfd.org.

About IBFD

IBFD is a leading international provider of cross-border tax expertise, with a long-standing history of supporting and contributing to tax research and academic activities. As an independent foundation, IBFD utilizes its global network of tax experts and its Knowledge Centre to serve Fortune 500 companies, governments, international consultancy firms and tax advisers.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/c46cd15e-f71a-4525-ae13-af2ba953d951
Simon Cowell cut a casual figure as he continued filming America's Got Talent in Pasadena, California on Monday.

The music mogul, 61, crossed his arms as he arrived at the TV studios in Los Angeles in a sporty ensemble.

Sporting a pair of long white shorts and black trainers, Simon looked pensive as he strolled to work in the sunshine.

There he is: Simon Cowell cut a casual figure as he continued filming America's Got Talent in Pasadena, California on Monday

Simon paired the knee-length shorts with a simple grey T-shirt that hung loosely around his neck.

He accessorised with a pair of stylish RayBan sunglasses that kept the Californian rays out of his eyes.

The judge completed the laidback look with a pair of lace-up black trainers and some matching tube socks.

And he wore his raven locks in their signature bristled style as he headed into the audition room.

'Its a no from me': The music mogul, 61, crossed his arms disapprovingly as he arrived at the studios in Los Angeles

Last month, it was reported that Britain's Got Talent judge walks over 40 miles a week to help him recover from breaking his back in an electric bike accident last year.

In August, Simon was rushed to hospital to undergo six hours of surgery after injuring himself in the accident, forcing him to cancel all his planned TV work for the rest of the year.

But now the record executive is determined to do everything he can to ensure he makes a full recovery, including walking for several hours a day and holding business meetings at 9AM so that he no longer lives like a 'vampire'.

Over it: Sporting a pair of long white shorts and black trainers, Simon looked glum as he strolled to work in the sunshine

Keeping it casual: Simon paired the knee-length shorts with a simple grey T-shirt that hung loosely around his neck

Of his new fitness regime, a source told MailOnline: 'Simon said how he hasn't worn trainers as much as this in 20 years.

'He feels fitter than ever before and is keeping to a normal routine rather than being on the phone until into the early hours of the morning.'

Adding to this, The Sun also reported at the time that Simon was set to start filming the reality competition show as a source said he was excited to be back.

Protection: He accessorised with a pair of stylish RayBan sunglasses that kept the Californian rays out of his eyes

The insider told the publication: 'Simon cant wait to get back to doing what he loves. Hes been focused on his return for months.'

Last year, reports claimed Simon was considering legal action against the manufacturers of his electric bike after breaking his back.

The TV mogul and his team were said to be 'weighing up' legal options and have been 'pressing' the manufacturers, Swindon Powertrain.

Classic: He wore his raven locks in their signature bristled style as he headed into the audition room

One lawyer claimed that a successful lawsuit could see Simon get up to 10million for medical bills and loss of earnings, The Sun reported once more.

Meanwhile, the iconic British variety show Britain's Got Talent has been put on hold until 2022.

But filming has gone ahead for season 16 of America's Got Talent and the show will air on NBC in June.
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2021 MIAMI YPN President Bethany Martinez Our 2021 MIAMI YPN Leaders have been working endlessly to make sure that we provide the most comprehensive and engaging content and events for our members"

The MIAMI Association of Realtors (MIAMI) has elected Bethany Martinez, SRS, as its 2021 MIAMI Young Professionals Network (MIAMI YPN) president. She and the 2021 MIAMI leadership boards were installed March 25 at MIAMIs 101 Inaugural Gala Reception at the Biltmore Hotel Country Club Courtyard.

Our 2021 MIAMI YPN Leaders have been working endlessly to make sure that we provide the most comprehensive and engaging content and events for our members, Martinez said. Our goal in 2021 is to expand our network, set up more opportunities for more referrals, and influence young professionals all over the country to develop programs that will foster the growth of members who enter this challenging industry. Together we inspire real estate professionals to be better, more tech savvy, and informed of Realtor issues.

MIAMI YPN is comprised of real estate influencers creating the next generation of real estate leaders. To join, visit: http://www.MiamiRealtors.com/YPN

Martinez is a broker sales associate with RelatedISG International Realty. A full-time real estate professional since 2013, she is founder of Females For Profit, an organization that curates events dedicated to South Florida entrepreneurial women.

She formerly served on the recruitment committee for 100 Women Who Care, a Miami-Dade community that raises funds for local non-profits and raises awareness for various local causes.

Martinez served as a United Way of Miami-Dade Young Leader in 2018.

Before entering real estate, Martinez spent six years in the hospitality industry. She has served MIAMI YPN since January 2017.

Martinez is a licensed notary.

Announcing the 2021 MIAMI YPN  Young Professionals Leadership Board:

Joining Martinez are: MIAMI YPN President-Elect Chandra Etienne, C2EX, PSA, AHWD, MSIRE of EXP Realty The Chandra Etienne Group; 2020 MIAMI YPN President Peter Ortega, ABR, AHWD, C2EX, PSA of Keller Williams Miami Beach; YPN-Broward Chapter Chair Katherine Arteta, C2EX of NXT LVL Realty; YPN-JTHS Chapter Chair Shakearah Rolle of Arise Real Estate Advisors; Sophia Allen of The Real Estate Professionals; Gabriel Amedee, C2EX, PSA, e-PRO of Strike Realty; Darnell Aponte, SRS, PSA of Keller Williams Partners Realty; Phillip S. Calloway, MS, C2EX, AHWD of Influencers Realty Group; William Colas of Kerdyk Real Estate; Dania Diaz, TRC, MRP, CNE, C2EX, PSA of RE/MAX Advance Realty; Eric Firestone, ABR, SFR, PSA, MRP, e-PRO of Elite Ocean View Realty; Karen Gomex of Real Estate Sales Force; Isael Prieto of Stratwell; Nick Tiger Quay of Avanti Way; Laura Rivero of Avanti Way; Violeta Rocha, C2EX, SFR of Lifestyle International Realty; Sacha Roude, SRS, PSA; Julie Sidorevskaya, C2EX, BPOR of Julies Realty; Ashley Silva, C2EX of Coldwell Banker Realty; Marcelo Steinmander of EWM Realty International.

Kevin Puricelli is the MIAMI Director of Creative Services and Executive for YPN. Teresa King Kinney, CAE, CIPS, GRI, RCE, TRC serves as the CEO for the MIAMI Association of Realtors.

About the MIAMI Association of Realtors

The MIAMI Association of Realtors was chartered by the National Association of Realtors in 1920 and is celebrating 101 years of service to Realtors, the buying and selling public, and the communities in South Florida. Comprised of six organizations, the Residential Association, the Realtors Commercial Alliance, the Broward-MIAMI Association of Realtors, the Jupiter Tequesta Hobe Sound (JTHS-MIAMI) Council, the Young Professionals Network (YPN) Council and the award-winning International Council, it represents 52,000 total real estate professionals in all aspects of real estate sales, marketing, and brokerage. It is the largest local Realtor association in the U.S. and has official partnerships with 223 international organizations worldwide. MIAMIs official website is http://www.MiamiRealtors.com
A collection of bizarre 'paid zone' stickers have emerged across New South Wales train stations, concerning commuters they'll be charged for simply walking through a tunnel.

Transport NSW have introduced new paid zone strips at 46 ungated stations across the Sydney Trains network and at Rose Bay Ferry wharf as part of a program to catch fare evaders.

The grey stickers have been spotted strategically placed at the entrance of station tunnels warning travelers that 'tickets may be checked beyond this point'.

New 'paid zone' stickers have been spotted across 46 ungated stations on the Sydney Trains network (pictured)

The Summer Hill station now have the new paid zone stickers inside the tunnels (pictured)

The installment of the paid zone strips at Cabramatta station's railway bridge in Sydney's south west has raised concerns for locals as the elderly community regularly use the overpass.

A Cabramatta resident said they were 'not sure as to why these stickers have been laid down'.

'It just leads to confusion for some people, especially the elderly or people that can't read English properly,' they wrote on a community Facebook page.

'Please be aware and let your parents/grandparents that use this bridge know that they will not be charged for simply crossing over.'

The paid zone stickers are also installed at Summer Hill station, leaving commuters baffled as to whether they'll be fined for using the public bathrooms inside.

The new paid zones were also introduced at the Cabramatta Railway Bridge that is regularly used by elderly residents (pictured)

'Lucky these days you can just reverse your tap off. Did it at Central as the bathrooms are in the paid section. Tap on go to bathroom then reverse the tap off,' one commuter said on Reddit.

'I do this occasionally- the fully contained toilets at Wynyard and Martin Place are some of the best public toilets in the city,' another agreed.

This hack allows people to enter train stations to use the public toilets, but avoid being charged a fare as they soon tap out at the very same station.

According to Transport NSW: 'If you change your mind about travelling, you can reverse your tap on to avoid getting charged.

'Reverse your tap on within 30 minutes by tapping your Opal card, single trip ticket, contactless card or linked device at any Opal reader at the same location you tapped on.'

But other savvy Sydneysiders had even more inventive ideas.

'The real hack is finding the corporate buildings on Phillip and Pitt Street that allow free access to a floor with a toilet,' a traveler recommended.

Another commuter believed it was a strategy to tell homeless people to 'move along' out of the station.

'Basically the law says staff/cops can hassle you to check if you've tapped on, and you have to hope they buy that you're just passing though as a 'reasonable excuse,' they said.

'I think the answer is far more likely to have something to do with stopping people from simply claiming "I was just walking through the tunnel' to avoid getting a ticket," another refuted.

Transport NSW confirmed to Daily Mail Australia that the strips are used as a 'communication to tool remind customers to tap on before using public transport.'

'The paid zone signage reminds customers travelling on the public transport network that they need to tap on and off to avoid a fine,' a Transport NSW spokesperson said.

Transport NSW confirmed that the new strips (pictured) will not limit access or use of tunnels and walkways and no fines have been issued to customers

'These strips have been positioned near Fixed Location Readers to increase the visibility of the readers to customers.'

Transport NSW said the new strips will not limit access or use of tunnels and walkways and no fines have been issued to customers.

'Transport for NSW does not intend to issue fines to customers using the tunnel as a thoroughfare.'
New Delhi: West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee will not campaign in Kolkata anymore, announced All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Derek OBrien on his official Twitter handle on Sunday (April 18) night.

The TMC leader has taken this decision in the view of rising COVID-19 infections in the state. The TMC leaders also added that the West Bengal CM will only hold one symbolic meeting on the last day of campaigning in the city, which is April 26.

The TMC leader, Derek OBrien also added that Mamata Banerjees rallies in other parts of the states will not be longer than 30 minutes.

Mamata Banerjee will NOT campaign in Kolkata anymore. Only one symbolic meeting on the last day of campaigning in the city on April 26.

Slashes time for all her election rallies in all districts. Restricted to just 30 minutes. #BengalElection2021 #Covid  Derek O'Brien |  ' (@derekobrienmp) April 18, 2021

This announcement from the TMC was made hours after Congress leader Rahul Gandhis statement that he had suspended all his scheduled poll rallies in West Bengal on account of the surge in COVID-19 cases.

Earlier, on Thursday, TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee had appealed to the Election Commission to conduct the remaining three phases in one go to "protect people from further exposure to COVID-19".

Meanwhile, the remaining phases of the West Bengal assembly election are to be held on April 22, April 26 and April 29 respectively.

The COVID-19 caseload of West Bengal soared to 6,59,927 as the state registered its highest single-day spike of 8,419 fresh infections on Sunday (April 18), the health bulletin revealed.

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Paris, TX (75460)

Today

Thunderstorms this evening followed by occasional showers overnight. Low near 65F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms this evening followed by occasional showers overnight. Low near 65F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
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But care must be taken if you want to get the most out of your tarot reading by picking an expert with a good reputation. Trying to decide which one to pick and why can become overwhelming, especially with all the choices available.

Best Online Tarot Card Reading Sites of 2021:

Keen PsychicsCheapest Tarot Card Readings Online by Experts (10 Minutes for Just $1.99!). Readings Are Done Via Phone Call and Live Chat

KasambaBest for Love Tarot Reading by Experienced Psychics (3 Free Minutes + 70% Off). Readings Are Done Via Phone Call and Live Chat.

California PsychicsBest Tarot Readers for Future Telling, Tarot Readers to Uncover Your Past, Present, and Future (Very Low Rates, From $1 a Minute Plus Use Promo Code ADD5 For Extra 5 Minutes Free). Readings Are Done Via Phone Call and Live Chat.

Psychic SourceBest for Angel Card and Cartomancy Tarot Readings (Only $1 Per Minute + 3 First Minutes Free). Readings Are Done Via Live Video, Phone Call, or Online Chat.

Here is my in-depth review of the top four best sites for online tarot readings:

KeenCheapest Tarot Card Readings Online

Keen is the website to use if youre looking for cheap readings done by trusted and expert tarot readers. With over 35 million readings, Keen has been offering this service worldwide since 1999.

Tarot card readings are available 24/7 with Keen, no matter what time zone you are in. If the reader is not available when you call in, you can arrange for them to call you back.

Each reader (or spiritual adviser, as theyre called on the site) is equipped to give you the spiritual and intuitive guidance you seek. The site allows you to contact your preferred tarot reader either by call, chat, or email.

The site is user-friendly and easy to navigate when searching for a psychic adviser and has a filter tool for narrowing down your search for the best match.

Keen also has a downloadable app for iOS and Android smartphones, making your online experience smoother and more accessible. The website and the app allow you to pick a video call, phone call, online chat, or email for all readings and psychic conversations.

Picking a psychic youre comfortable with is easy. When scrolling for an adviser, youre given full details, such as the bio of the reader, how many readings theyve done, and reviews scoring.

Pricing is clearly indicated on each profile, and rates are charged per minute. Keen does offer the first three minutes free and has a special offering of $1.99 for the 10 minutes thereafter for new customers. A banner indicates which advisers offer this special.

Keen has a live customer support line should you need further support or need to report an issue. You can also submit a Web support request. The platform is private and secure, with Keen guaranteeing 100 percent confidentiality at all times. Keen acts as a barrier between you and your adviser, keeping your phone number private at all times. Not even the reader has access to your phone number or other personal information.

The site includes users written reviews, providing honest feedback on a users experience with Keen and its services. And if you have an issue using the platform, Keen may give you a credit of up to $25 to use for future readings or conversations online.

For professional and insightful tarot card readings, you cant go wrong with Keens wide range of spiritual advisers available on its site. With over 11 million reviews available, you can rest assured youre dealing with a reputable site offering you some of the best tarot online readers available. And you can have a tarot card reading free for the first three minutes!

Authentic and accurate tarot readings at the cheapest rates

Over 1,700 spiritual advisers to pick from

Available 24/7 by phone call, live chat, or email

New customers special offer at $1.99 for 10 minutes

Secure payments facility and 100 percent privacy guaranteed

Click Here to Get 10 Minutes for Just $1.99 with Keen Gifted Psychics

KasambaBest for Love Tarot Readings

The first thing youll notice when you go to the Kasamba website is that theyve been in business for 20 years. The website is informative, giving you everything you need to know about having an online love tarot reading. Each of Kasambas experienced psychics has been fully vetted by the sites strict quality guidelines, and all advisers are highly professional. With more than 4 million five-star ratings, you can have an online tarot reading knowing youre dealing with some of the most experienced tarot experts in the world.

Kasamba offers top experienced psychic advisers from around the world 24/7 who give professional guidance for all your love and relationship questions. Their psychics are also able to help in a number of other areas, such as dreams, careers, and astrology.

Tarot readings are offered via phone call, live chat, or email. The real-time chat platform allows you to connect instantly with your adviser online as you watch them type their responses.

The website is user-friendly, with all love and relationship psychics having their own category for easy searching. Kasambas app is downloadable via the App Store or Google Play for iOS and Android mobiles. This app allows you to have access to any of the psychics at any time no matter where you are.

Joining Kasamba is simple. Once youve selected your adviser, youll be asked to register by giving a username and password. Youll also be asked to pick your preferred payment method. Payment can be done via credit card or by adding funds via PayPal. The Kasamba site is encrypted for security, and your information is kept private.

Kasamba offers three free chat minutes with every new psychic you try. This affords you the opportunity to find the best tarot reader for your personal needs. Newcomers are offered 70 percent off their first reading. Pricing varies for every adviser, giving you the flexibility to find the best tarot expert to suit your budget.

For all your love and relationship questions, Kasambas tarot online readings will give you trusted advice, guidance, and clarity. Its psychics are rated as some of the best in the world, so you can have peace of mind youre getting professional and expert insights into your love situation. And make sure you get your free love tarot reading when you take advantage of the three free minutes available to newcomers.

Best for online love tarot readings, with up to 272 love and relationship advisers to pick from

Advisers available 24/7 by phone, email, or live chat

70 percent discount on first readings for all newcomers (after the first three free minutes)

Secure SSL payments, ensuring your personal information is safe and private

Refunds available if youre not satisfied with the platforms service

Customer support to answer all your questions and guide you through the process of using Kasambas platform and services

Click Here to Get 3 Free Minutes with Kasamba Top Tarot Readers

California PsychicsBest Tarot Readers for Future Telling

Some of the best and most trusted psychics can be found on the California Psychics website. If youre looking for an expert adviser with highly priasedpsychic abilities to answer all your past, present, and future questions, youre in the right place with this site.

With over 6 million readings in the past 26 years, California Psychics has satisfied millions of its customers, confirming its advisers are some of the best in the world.

Each psychic adviser on the California Psychics site has been through a stringent application process to ensure they can read with accuracy, authenticity, and skill. Only 2 out of every 100 applicants are accepted, thus ensuring you get only the most gifted psychics.

California Psychics website is easy to navigate, and drop-down menus give you a range of services to pick from. A queuing feature allows you to see where you are placed in the system with your chosen psychic adviser. This gives you an indication of when to expect your turn.

A mobile app is also available through the App Store and Google Play for all iOS and Android phones.

Picking your psychic adviser is simple, with full profiles describing the advisers range of skills and the tools they use. You can also see their ratings at a glance and whether theyre available to take your call. If your preferred adviser is not available when you call, you can arrange for a callback.

Pricing is clearly indicated on each advisers profile and is charged per minute. An introductory offer is available for all newcomers to the site from as low as $1 per minute for a popular psychic. Pricing is also determined by whether an adviser is preferred or premium. Payments can be made with credit cards, debit cards, or via PayPal.

Customer support is available 24/7, 365 days of the year, and they can be called directly or via an online contact form. California Psychics can be contacted toll-free in the U.S., Australia, Denmark, India, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom for both customer support and psychic readings.

A Rewards Program is also available. Karma Rewards can be earned with every purchase you make and can be used toward getting a free tarot reading. You can also win free gifts and get exclusive offers and other benefits with this platform.

Having access to some of the most trusted psychics in the world means you can have peace of mind that your tarot reading online experience will be professional, accurate, and authentic. All your questions will be answered intuitively, and proper guidance will be offered at all times. And using the website and app makes going digital a breeze!

Advisers are available 24/7, 365 days of the year via phone or chat

Up to 270 tarot experts for past, present, and future readings

Privacy guaranteed, with no recordings or monitoring of readings allowed

Introductory offers from $1/minute plus five free minutes

California Psychics: Accurate Predictions, $1/minClick Here To Start

Psychic SourceBest for Angel Card and Cartomancy Tarot Readings

Psychic Source has been doing readings for over 30 years and offers live chat, phone, and video readings. If face-to-face consultation with your psychic adviser is essential, this is your site for angel card and cartomancy tarot readings. With 266 compassionate and skilled psychics to pick from, you can be sure to find peace and comfort from your tarot cards reading.

Psychic Sources website is user-friendly, with a range of drop-down menus to click on. A filter button allows you to narrow down your search to see which psychic is available to you on the phone, live chat, or for video readings. You also have the option of booking an appointment with your preferred adviser.

An interactive tool is available to help you find your perfect match, saving you time on searching through all the psychics on the site. You can pick your subject, the type of reading youre searching for, and your reading style. Each psychic advisers profile indicates their time availability and their star rating. Their price per minute is clearly stated, as well.

All psychics using the Psychic Source platform have to undergo a rigorous screening process to ensure theyre authentic and skilled in their profession. Being the oldest and most trusted psychic online site, Psychic Source backs this claim by including both video and written testimonials from satisfied customers.

The customer service hotline is available 24/7, and the customer care specialists are also screened for their knowledge and compassion to support all customers using this site.

Psychic Source offers a range of promotions and other special offers when you sign up to its email. You can also view all special offers in the Special Offers section. An introductory offer of $1 per minute is available for all newcomers to the site. A Membership Rewards program allows you to earn Bonus Dollars whenever you make a purchase, and this can be used toward other readings on the platform.

When going online for all your angel card and cartomancy readings through Psychic Source, you can rest assured youre dealing with the experts. Psychic Source is the oldest online site for all psychic matters, and their testimonials confirm its one of the best sites for tarot readings. And you can enjoy a face-to-face experience if you book a video psychic.

Wide range of readings at affordable prices

New customers introductory offer at $1/minute with any psychic adviser

The first three minutes of your reading are free

Best site for getting an angel card reading or cartomancy reading

English- and Spanish-speaking readers are available

Click Here to Get 3 Free Minutes + 75% Off with Psychic Source

Finding the Best Online Tarot Card Reading by Experts

The tarot deck of cards continues to capture the imagination of readers and querents alike with their symbolic and often mystical images. In reality, these cards go far deeper than foretelling your destiny.

An expert online tarot card reader should use these cards to trigger their intuition and to delve into their subconscious so they can understand whats really driving your questions. If used this way, these cards can be empowering in assisting you in finding the answers to many of the issues youre facing in life.

Having an online tarot card reading can help you find the solutions and answers about yourself that have eluded you for years. Youll be given the opportunity to gain a deeper insight into what drives you and what potentials you have available to explore.

A tarot card reading can give you peace of mind as you seek the right answers, giving you an overall sense of well-being and calmness once more. And theyll help you find focus and direction as you seek to achieve personal goals and aspirations.

To ensure you get the most out of your online experience, you need to pick a reputable psychic website. This way, youre not wasting your money and time or being taken in by a charlatan!

Its essential you use a site that has a good reputation for using best practices and is legitimate. You want to check out the psychics availability, accuracy, pricing and discounts or free offers, as well as what other clients are saying about them in the reviews. Through my own research, Ive found four of the best online tarot card reading websites.

A Comparison: Tarot Reading Near Me vs. Tarot Reading Online

Deciding whether to have a tarot reading near me vs. a tarot reading online depends on a number of factors. While many customers prefer the personalized experience of sitting in a psychics room in a local shop, the advantages of online tarot card readings are numerous.

The Advantages of Online Tarot Reading:

Access to the best tarot experts: Finding an experienced and professional tarot reader in your neighborhood is often not easy. But, by using any of the four websites Ive reviewed in this article, youll be able to find a tarot expert in no time at all.

Finding an experienced and professional tarot reader in your neighborhood is often not easy. But, by using any of the four websites Ive reviewed in this article, youll be able to find a tarot expert in no time at all. Saves you time: You click a few buttons from the comfort of your home and have immediate access to some of the best tarot readers in the world. This saves you from having to drive anywhere or booking appointments months down the line.

You click a few buttons from the comfort of your home and have immediate access to some of the best tarot readers in the world. This saves you from having to drive anywhere or booking appointments months down the line. Saves you money: Online tarot reading sites offer a range of discounts, especially for first readings. You can also take advantage of introductory offers to find the right psychic adviser for your personal needs.

Online tarot reading sites offer a range of discounts, especially for first readings. You can also take advantage of introductory offers to find the right psychic adviser for your personal needs. All the services in one place: Besides offering tarot card readings, online psychic sites provide you a range of services, from astrology to dream interpretations, angel readings, oracle card readings, cartomancy, and more. You can get all your life questions answered without ever leaving your home.

Besides offering tarot card readings, online psychic sites provide you a range of services, from astrology to dream interpretations, angel readings, oracle card readings, cartomancy, and more. You can get all your life questions answered without ever leaving your home. Availability: Most online psychics are available 24/7 no matter where you are. You also have the option of picking between a phone call, live chat, or, in some cases, video calls. Plus, if youre away on business or on holiday and need some spiritual guidance, simply use your mobile app, and youre in touch with a psychic instantly.

Most online psychics are available 24/7 no matter where you are. You also have the option of picking between a phone call, live chat, or, in some cases, video calls. Plus, if youre away on business or on holiday and need some spiritual guidance, simply use your mobile app, and youre in touch with a psychic instantly. Customer support services: You can be guaranteed premium customer support when using the best online psychic portals for tarot card readings.

Some of the disadvantages of online tarot reading are not seeing the cards being pulled and missing out on the thrill of being in the same room as a psychic. For some people, not having the option of a face-to-face tarot reading online could also be a disadvantage.

The Advantages of a Tarot Reading Near Me:

Authenticity: Having a tarot reading near me can mean your experience is more authentic, and seeing your tarot expert in person confirms they do actually exist!

Having a tarot reading near me can mean your experience is more authentic, and seeing your tarot expert in person confirms they do actually exist! Seeing the cards: Watching the tarot cards being pulled in front of you is also thrilling and heightens the mystical experience of having a reading.

Watching the tarot cards being pulled in front of you is also thrilling and heightens the mystical experience of having a reading. Real-life experience: For years, the thrill of walking into a psychics room has kept many visitors enthralled. This real-life mystical experience is not one to be easily forgotten!

However, visiting a tarot expert in person can be time-consuming, expensive, and simply not as convenient as being able to go online with the touch of a button (or two).

What You Need to Know About Tarot Card Readings

Tarot cards are designed to portray the typical journey and life experiences of the human being. But what can tarot cards really do in a reading? How are they used to help you find clarity and resolution to the issues youre facing or to give you the answers to what lies ahead for you?

A typical deck is made up of 78 cards and divided into the Major Arcana suit and the Minor Arcana suit. The 22 cards of the Major Arcana portray images depicting the different stages of the journey of life. These fascinating drawings are archetypal, referring to a persons psychological development. They depict the inner journey of the human being, and the deeper you go into these cards, the more inner awareness you develop about yourself.

The 56 cards of the Minor Arcana suit each demonstrate the everyday challenges and achievements a human being may experience throughout their life. When any of these cards are pulled in a reading, both your psychological development and daily challenges and tribulations are reflected on.

What Can a Tarot Card Reading Do for You?

People will often turn to tarot cards when their lives feel uncertain and, at times, even out of control. Theyre seeking some kind of spiritual guidance so they can get the answers to the challenges theyre facing in their lives. At times like these, facing the world on your own can be overwhelming, and this is where a good tarot card reading can bring back some balance and direction.

Each card is a reflection or mirror of the person being read. Each cards symbolism, through its image, serves to unlock certain aspects of your mind that already hold the answers you seek. By tapping into the inner power of your subconscious mind and listening to your intuition, you can begin to understand what is happening in your life, from within.

In summary, a tarot reading can help you with:

Self-awareness and gaining a deeper understanding of yourself

Focus and direction

Clarity and a sense of what could happen in your future

The ability to make the right decisions

Empowerment to achieve your goals and dreams

Highlighting your life purpose

How to Get the Most Out of Your Online Tarot Reading

Setting the right intention for your online tarot reading will help give you the answers you need. But it also helps to connect with your reader. So, when looking for an online reader, make sure you listen to your intuition. Let it guide you to the best tarot expert for you. This way, you can feel comfortable sharing your deepest feelings and thoughts.

If a site offers a free tarot reading for the first few minutes, take advantage of it. This is one of the best ways to help you find a reader you can connect deeply with.

Ask the Right Questions

Avoid asking yes-no questions because this often confuses both the reader and the cards. Instead, make use of open-ended questions. This allows a conversation to develop and allows the reader to tap more into their intuition. Tarot hardly ever gives a simple answer, so dont expect it.

No Tarot Card Is Negative

Tarot cards are a reflection of you and your energy. If the cards appear to be negative, know that you have the power to change it. Whether youre using an online source or youve found someone for tarot card reading near me, use the messages from the cards to show you what you need to change rather than take what they say as something cast in stone. Every tarot reading has a lesson to teach you, so make sure you get the most out of your online experience.

Dont Be Rigid with Time Frames

Refrain from asking for answers within a specific time frame. Tarot readers prefer to keep the time frame open because it empowers you to decide when and how you want to implement the change shown in the reading.

Be Honest and Open

Be open with your tarot reader. If you hold back, its going to take the reader longer to get the answers. Instead, by telling your reader what you want to know and why, theyre able to get more effective answers from the cards without it becoming a long, drawn-out affair (which will also end up being a costly online experience!)

Ask for Confirmations

Tarot cards often confirm what you already know and are a useful tool to support a decision you want to make or to confirm a gut feeling you have about a situation or a person. If this is what youre searching for, make sure your reader knows this upfront. It will save you a lot of time and money.

Frequently Asked Questions About Tarot Readings Online

How accurate are online tarot readings?

Online tarot readings are reported to be be very accurate when you use professional and skilled online psychic readers. These experts are often highly gifted and can access your energy whether youre in the same room or not.

However, its essential to use your intuition to find the right reader for you and that theres a good connection between the two of you. Depending on where youre from, you may not find local readers when you search for tarot card reading near me. So your best option is to find one online.

Can free online tarot card readings be trusted?

If the cards are being pulled by a real person, not by the computer, and youre using a reputable website, you can rest assured the reading can be trusted. Most highly recommended psychic websites offer a free tarot card reading in the first three minutes. This affords you the opportunity to gauge the authenticity of the reader and whether you like their reading style.

If youre getting your free online tarot reading through a legitimate psychic online, you can trust the reading. This can be confirmed by checking out the testimonials of other users on the site.

What is the love tarot?

A love tarot card reading often shows what is happening between two people in a relationship. The tarot cards are expected to pick up on the emotions being played out in all parties involved. They also are believed to indicate whether the energies are right between two people and confirm any uncertainties you may have about a person.

Love tarot readings can empower you to find better ways to manage a relationship by indicating what is happening at the heart level. The cards will show what emotions need to be worked on so that relationship problems may be solved.

Final Thoughts

Online tarot readings can be empowering, rewarding, and the source of guidance you seek in all areas of your life. The beauty of online readings is that you have instant access to some of the best tarot experts globally. This means youre not limited to using the tarot reader in your neighborhood.

By using reputable and well-known psychic websites, you can be guaranteed an enjoyable online experience and still get the professional guidance and clarity you seek. While getting a tarot card reading near me vs. tarot reading online may still be popular, online tarot readings are gaining traction in the digital world.

Why not give online tarot reading a chance and click on one of the websites recommended in this article? And take advantage of the free introductory offers so you can connect with the best online psychic perfect for you!
Former Deputy General Secretary of the largest opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr. Samuel Koku Anyidoho has saluted the Cadres of the party for organizing a meeting to address the challenges in the party.



According to him, the likes of senior comrade Dan Abodakpi, Hudu Yahaya, Benjamin Kumbuor and Goosie Tanoh as well as other cadres deserve applause for embarking on that exercise in the interest of the NDC.



Speaking on Okay FM's 'Ade Akye Abia' Morning Show, the Chief Executive Officer of the Atta Mills Institute said that as a Cadre who worked closely with the late President Prof. Atta Mills, the NDC belongs to the Cadres.



"I want to congratulate the Cadres for their activities they embarked on over the weekend at Tema. They have done well for the NDC; it is not easy to accomplish that task. Look, our senior comrades; Dan Abodakpi, Hudu Yahaya, Benjamin Kumbuor, Goosie Tanoh, if people don't know, the NDC belongs to the Cadres," he indicated.



"I received a lot of calls about the Cadres activity in Tema while I was attending a 6th-anniversary lecture organized by the University of Health and Allied Sciences in memory of President Atta Mills. I belong to that group and we worked closely with the late President Atta Mills and former President Rawlings (late)," he stressed.



He bemoaned that the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) made a mistake by not making the Cadres an organ of the party when it was formed in 1992; thus, that decision has affected the NDC up to today.



"The only mistake that I believe was made in 1992 was that at the formation of the NDC that decision they took that the Cadres will not become an organ of the NDC has affected the NDC up to today," he bemoaned.



He, however, recommended for the amendment of the NDC Constitution to give Cadres an organic status within the ambit of the party's constitution as they are the real owners of the NDC.



"It is the prayer of some of us that the Cadres will be given that organic status within the ambit of the NDC Constitution, they own the party and so if you see senior comrade Dan Abodakpi, Hudu Yahaya, Benjamin Kumbuor, Goosie Tanoh and others in a meeting, they are the real owners of the NDC," he said.



He disclosed that the meeting organized by the Cadres was meant to address the issue of the NDC having two successive electoral defeats.



"And so the Cadres have decided to intervene going into 2024 and not sit back to allow the party go astray; after all, the party belongs to them," he insisted.

Source: Daniel Adu Darko/Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
As Ireland celebrates reaching the important milestone of administering 1m doses of Covid-19 vaccines, it is vital we do not forget the millions of people in low-income countries for whom the vaccines are still beyond reach.

Data compiled by the University of Oxford paints a stark picture of inequitable global Covid-19 vaccine rollout, highlighting how the low-income countries are lagging far behind.

It shows the 1m doses administered in Ireland translates into one in five people vaccinated with at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.

However, in countries where Goal works, the figure is a lot different. For example, in Sudan, only one in 1,000 people have had a vaccine; in Sierra Leone the figure is one in 122 people and in Malawi one per 100 people.

There are serious international efforts to ensure the vaccine reaches low-income countries. Leading on this is Covax, a global initiative backed by the World Health Organization (WHO). The Vaccine Alliance (GAVI) and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovation (CEPI) are also involved.

Since late February Covax, with support from governments, including Ireland through Irish Aid, has delivered 38m doses of Covid-19 vaccines to 100 economies in collaboration with vaccine manufacturers.

Despite Covax being the largest and most rapid global rollout vaccine initiative in history, it is no way near meeting what is needed to achieve global mass vaccination.

Covaxs target is to vaccinate 20% of the population of the countries it supports, most of which are low-and-middle-income countries. But this is far from the 70%-80% cover estimated to achieve herd immunity. And Covax is short of $2bn to meet its target of 20% coverage.

Mass vaccinations

With support from Irish Aid and other donors, Goal is working with health authorities and communities to support vaccination efforts and prepare the countries we work in for mass vaccinations.

In Sudan we are ensuring the cold chain works in places like North Darfur, repairing or replacing fridges and solar panels. In Malawi, we are running awareness campaigns to counteract misinformation around vaccination, using our community-led action approach which we adapted from our Ebola response in West Africa.

However, currently there is simply not enough vaccine supply. The importance of vaccinating everyone, and not just in Ireland, is three-fold.

Firstly, the right to healthcare, treatment and prevention for all is enshrined in the Human Rights Declaration which all United Nations member states, including Ireland, have signed up to. People in low-income countries have as much of a right to life as those in Ireland, and to get access to Covid-19 testing, treatment and prevention, including vaccines.

Scientific rationale

Secondly, there is a scientific rationale. Only if we reach mass vaccination will we all be protected from Covid-19. Also, vaccination reduces transmission, and this lessens the risk of new variants of Covid-19 emerging.

Thirdly, with vaccination, we expect secondary impacts of Covid-19 to reduce. Covid-19 has caused devastation to peoples lives and livelihoods in Ireland, with a huge impact on mental health, and the education and wellbeing of our children and our most vulnerable citizens.

Dr Enida Friel: 'Solving Covid-19 vaccine supply is complex, but the international community and the pharmaceutical industry must come together and try harder. Lives depend on it.'

Goal has seen similar and often more severe impacts in communities in the 14 countries in which we work in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. They do not have the safety nets we have in Ireland. Health, education, nutrition, food security, water and sanitation services have been undermined. Livelihoods have been destroyed and violence against women and children has increased.

Capacity to produce vaccines in countries like South Africa exists. However, the knowledge is not being shared by private pharmaceutical companies that hold the intellectual property rights of vaccines that have been developed, despite the fact that a large amount of public funding went into their research.

To address this, South Africa and India have proposed to the World Trade Organization (WTO) that it issues a temporary waiver for the intellectual property rights of treatments and vaccines against Covid-19. While supported by over 50 countries, most of them low and middle income, and in line with WTOs own commitment, the proposal is opposed by the EU, USA and the UK.

Increased production and supply

The waiver, if granted, will not solve all of the supply problems, but would allow increased production and supply in low-income countries of Covid-19 vaccines, as well as treatments and much-needed PPE.

Pharmaceutical companies could also voluntarily put their Covid-19 patents for vaccines, diagnostics and treatments in the Covid-19 Technology Access Pool or C-TAP, launched by WHO and Costa Rica in May 2020 and backed by 40 countries. But this is not happening either.

There is another global initiative in the mix, Access to Covid-19 Technology or ACT Accelerator. This is backed by the WHO and partners, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and aims to increase access to diagnostics, treatment, vaccines and to strengthen health systems.

At the 75th United Nations General Assembly last year, President Michael D Higgins called for open knowledge exchange on tools to combat Covid-19.

Mike Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organisation said 'we are not safe until all of us are safe'.

The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence is also to be commended for a report released last month in which it called on the Government to endorse the C-Tap initiative to help achieve equitable global access to Covid-19 vaccines.

Solving Covid-19 vaccine supply is complex, but the international community and the pharmaceutical industry must come together and try harder. Lives depend on it.

As a people here in Ireland, we have always shown solidarity with those less fortunate. So let us remember again that, as the Irish man at the helm of WHO Dr Mike Ryan put it, we are not safe until all of us are safe.

Dr Enida Friel is head of monitoring, evaluation, learning and accountability at Goal and vice-chair of Irish Global Health Network
The cybersecurity group said it is planning to list on the premium segment of the LSE main market following a share offering at a yet to be disclosed price

PLC has confirmed plans to float on the premium segment of the London Stock Exchanges main market, with admission of the shares planned for early May.

The cybersecurity group said on Monday that it will undertake an initial public offering (IPO) at a yet to be disclosed offer price. Reports suggest the company's management are looking for a valuation of around 3.5bn.

said it is aiming to have a free float of at least 20% of its share capital following admission, adding that it expects to be eligible for inclusion in the FTSE UK indices.

The firm added that the details of the offer will be disclosed in its prospectus when it is published, but said the proceeds of its fundraising will be used to accelerate new product development, drive broader awareness of its products globally and strengthen its balance sheet.

Darktrace will be hoping that its IPO follows the trend of several other strong floats on the LSE so far this year including online greeting card retailer ( ) and boot maker ( ).

The company will also be looking to avoid being another high-profile tech flop like Holdings PLC ( ), which made a distinctly lacklustre debut last month.

However, Darktrace may find its IPO prospects have been muddied by a potential public relations issue after reports emerged last week saying the company had provided contradictory information relating to the role of British tech billionaire Mike Lynch.

A recent FT report said that in 2018 the firm told the paper that Lynch had left its advisory council the year before to explain why he was removed from the firms website. However, the companys listing document filed earlier this week showed that Lynch had remained on the council until last month.

The inconsistency threatens to undermine Darktraces efforts to distance itself from Lynchs legal troubles, with the billionaire currently battling extradition to the US to face allegations that he inflated revenues at Autonomy, a software company he founded and then sold to HP for US$11bn in 2011. Lynch denies all the allegations.

Darktrace could find itself embroiled in the legal drama, which in turn is likely to put investors off backing the firm when it goes public.
'Delayed arrival of helpers a relief for many'

An employers group says people are worried about migrant workers bringing mutated strains of the coronavirus into Hong Kong. File photo: RTHK

Damon Pang reports

The Hong Kong Employers of Overseas Domestic Helpers Association says the government's two-week ban on arrivals from the Philippines has come as a relief to many people who are concerned about the Covid-19 situation in the country.



The discovery of a mutant strain of the virus in the community in Hong Kong has led to the SAR government banning flights from the Philippines, India and Pakistan. The government says multiple arrivals from the three countries have also had the same mutated form of the virus.



The association's chair, Betty Yung, said some employers will be happy to push back the arrival of helpers from the Philippines, without the need to terminate their contracts.



"They can't stop the contracts because they've signed them already.... [The employers] would rather have the maids come later, when the situation in the Philippines get better," she told RTHK.



Yung said these employers noted that a patient in the SAR with the mutant strain had tested negative for coronavirus during a 21-day quarantine period and they feared this could also happen with their helpers.



She said employers should be prepared for the two-week arrivals ban to be extended.



The chair of the Hong Kong Union of Employment Agencies, Thomas Chan, said at least a thousand migrant workers from the Philippines have already been affected by the ban.



He said his union has proposed to the SAR government that it should donate vaccines to Filipino helpers on their way to Hong Kong, but it has received no response from officials.



However, a spokesman for the Asian Migrants Coordinating Body, Eman Villanueva, said it isn't realistic to suggest that helpers must be vaccinated before coming to the territory.



"Vaccination should not be made mandatory. It has to be voluntary, it has to be an informed decision of the person involved, whether a migrant worker or anyone," he said.



Villanueva said the vaccination rollout in his home country has been slow because there are not enough jabs to go around.



He said it was understandable for the Hong Kong government to ban flights from countries deemed to be high-risk, saying it has to take steps to protect the local population from coronavirus.
[April 19, 2021] Student of Florida Invents App That Shows Vaccination and Testing Centers Closest to Users

DORAL, Fla., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Eric Azcona, a Dominican Senior student from the Florida International University FIU, has launched a new application that helps people to locate vaccination and testing centers based on their location. In addition to showing nearby venues, upcoming the application will allow user to pre-register to get the vaccine, the app will also show the condition of those places, the volume of assistance available, and estimated waiting times. Pointgenie's app could not have come at a better time with many people still suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic. This app which is available for iPhone devices will reduce anxiety and stress, while promoting ease of access, using technology. When quizzed about the app, Eric Azcona said "the application is part of a more ambitious project that the startup has been developing. Only that at this moment we found an immediate problem and we decided to put our resources to help the community which is overwhelmed with so much information on the internet. I personally invite everyone to download the application and start sharing information about places and their status to defeat this vius."



The application will combine the power of the community and artificial intelligence to provide accurate information for users Eric Azcona has hinted that more features will be added to the mobile app in the future. The more robust version will also allow users to share images and videos of their experiences in real-time and will allow interaction among the patrons with messages and social profiles.

The platform also intends to help entrepreneurs scale their businesses by proving them access to a decentralized platform where they can offer rewards to their loyal customers. Pointgenie's commitment to businesses culminated in the addition of an exciting new feature that allows businesses to create a home page linked to a QR code. When scanned these QR codes would reveal important information such as special offers, contactless menus, contact links, footfall analytics and more. The team behind Pointgenie encourages businesses and individuals to get in on their exciting innovations and improve their business and quality of life respectively. The team has hinted that more humongous additions and innovations should be expected coming soon and urges all to keep a close eye on them as they look to venture into other sectors such as cryptocurrencies in the future. The app can be download it in the following link:

https://apple.co/3erSlrZ Media Contact

PointGenie LLC

Eric Azcona CEO & Founder

307707@email4pr.com

www.pointgenie.com View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/student-of-florida-invents-app-that-shows-vaccination-and-testing-centers-closest-to-users-301271237.html SOURCE PointGenie LLC

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Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - Libya and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) on Sunday discussed the creation of a technical committee comprising the various UN agencies operating in Libya to support the ministry's work
Washington:

President Donald Trump will unveil the US strategy on Iran on Friday, the White House said.

The president will deliver remarks announcing the (Iran) strategy to the country, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters at her daily news conference.

She however, gave no indication of what the Iran strategy would be.

However, media reports said that the president might pull out of the Iranian nuclear agreement.

Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi cautioned against leaving the Iranian nuclear agreement, which was one of the top foreign policy achievement of the former president Barack Obama.

Experts agree that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action remains the best way to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Failing to certify the Iran Nuclear Agreement would be a spectacularly dangerous and reckless decision that puts Americas national security at risk and the catastrophic threat of a nuclear-armed Iran back on the table, Pelosi said.

Noting that Democrats have no illusions about the conduct of the Iranian regime, she said destroying the JCPOA would be a gift to the most radical and dangerous elements in Iran.

The agreement has set up the toughest international monitoring regime ever enacted.

The JCPOA has also allowed the international community to make progress in holding Iran accountable for its continued support for terrorism and its many human rights violations, she said.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Officers were called to the 8700 block of South Commercial Avenue in the South Chicago neighborhood about 11:30 p.m. They were told a man who was riding the bus had opened fire in the drivers direction, according to a police media notification.
Jaipur, April 19 : In the first Board of Investment (BOI) meeting chaired by CM Ashok Gehlot on Monday, Rajasthan Government cleared the customised package of incentives for investment worth over Rs. 1,67,000 crore in the state, of which the major contributor sector is renewable energy.

With these investments nearly 40,000+ new employment will be added in the state. Out of these investment opportunities, only renewable sector will provide 90% of jobs and that too in the barren land areas of the state, which are less fortunate due to being non-agricultural lands.

Jaisalmer, Jalore, Barmer are the districts to name a few. Adani Green Energy, Renew Power, Greenko Energies and JSW Solar are investing nearly Rs. 1,64,540 Cr in total and will be providing employment opportunities to 37000+ in the renewable energy sector in the next couple of years.

Gehlot said, "It should be ensured that new projects are started in a time bound manner by removing bottlenecks in investment in the state. In the last two years, the state government has implemented many important policies and programs to increase investment in the state. Rajasthan Investment Promotion Scheme (RIPS 2019), Rajasthan Industrial Development Policy 2019, through One Stop Shop System and Single Window System and many facilities are being provided to investors." He instructed the officers that every effort should be made to increase investment in the state.

Other than RE, projects from Sahasara Semiconductors in the Electronics, Mewar Polytex in the Technical Textile, ASI Industries in the Engineering Manufacturing Stone, Hemdha Medisources in the Medical & Health and Kanchan India in Textile have also been cleared by the Board. Also, issues pertaining to projects ofA Kajaria Group in the Bathware Mfg and Ceramic Tiles, JCB in Earth Moving Machines, Saint-Gobain in the Glass manufacturing sectors were cleared for smooth operation of these projects. Collectively the total investment from these companies is estimated to be Rs. 3200+ Cr and employment to 5600+ persons are expected.

The BOI has been constituted under the Rajasthan Enterprises Single Window Enabling and Clearance Act. The State Government through an amendment in the act in year 2020 had provisioned the board for fast track clearance of proposals related to customized packages under RIPS 2019.

Ashutosh A. T. Pednekar (IAS), Industries Secretary, Rajasthan Government said, "Investment scenario in the State has changed in recent times. Corporates are entrusting the policies and support being extended by the State Government for setting up their ventures in Rajasthan. We have some major proposals lined up which will soon be taken upto appropriate level for decision."
OPPOSITION MDC Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa yesterday scoffed at suggestions by President Emmerson Mnangagwa that he was unpatriotic to the country and pandering to the whims of his Western handlers.

Chamisa was responding to Mnangagwas Independence eve interview broadcast by the State media on Saturday, where the Zanu PF leader said unless MDC Alliance members cut their ties with the West, it would be difficult for his administration to recognise them as proper Zimbabweans.

Mnangagwa said dialogue with the youthful opposition leader was only possible under the Political Actors Dialogue (Polad)  a platform for all parties which contested the 2018 presidential election.

Chamisa has, however, rubbished Polad as an illegitimate platform for genuine dialogue. He also accused Mnangagwa of ignoring citizens calls for a genuine and inclusive government.

Why is he (Mnangagwa) not friends with progressive nations himself, Chamisa asked rhetorically.

Who are his friends? He is busy allocating friends to us, so who are his friends? Why is he giving us all the nations in the world? I want to thank him for elevating, honouring and acknowledging our capacity to build bridges and have warm relations with other nations.

Our focus is to resolve our issues as Zimbabweans through convergence and building a new consensus to give meaning to our independence and sacrifices of our heroes and heroines who perished for a cause so great.

Let us build bridges in Zimbabwe and my message to ED is, stop burning bridges, stop being destructive, stop dividing the country, stop hate language and hatred. Dont be vindictive, dont be a victim of ageism. We are young but not babies.

Chamisa said despite winning the 2018 elections and being denied the victory after the results were reportedly manipulated in favour of Mnangagwa, his party was still committed to inclusive and genuine dialogue to resolve the Zimbabwean crisis.

We have always invited him to smoke the peace pipe, but he is carrying a machete and sjamboks and that is the problem. He thinks every problem is a nail that needs a hammer. Violence has no winner and one thing about violence is that no one has monopoly (over it).

He mistakes us as an opposition. We are not an opposition, but an alternative. That lady (Thokozani Khupe) and that guy (Douglas Mwonzora) he created are his opposition. He says there must be a loyal opposition, loyal to who? We are loyal and patriotic to Zimbabwe and its people. Zimbabwe needs leaders, not rulers. Only in a dictatorship would you find alternative ideas treated as unpatriotic, Chamisa said.

In his pre-recorded interview, Mnangagwa defended Polad, saying it was a platform where genuinely patriotic Zimbabweans come and participate.

We have created a platform where every genuine patriotic Zimbabwean can come and participate and use their talents and contribute to the global national vision. Its not a Mnangagwa vision, it is not a Zanu PF vision; it is a national vision for our people. In a democracy, we debate issues and the best debate on the day takes the day.

That is what we must do and we have created a platform so that nobody is left behind. For instance, it does not follow that everybody should be saying yes, yes, yes to everything I say. I would not want yes people around me, I want people who argue with me and I argue with them.

He described Chamisa and his deputy Tendai Biti as surrogates of the West, accusing them of inviting sanctions on Zimbabwe and inciting violent demonstrations which caused loss of property and lives.

Well, you have mentioned this one Zimbabwean (Chamisa); you forget that he and his vice-president (Tendai Biti) went to America to ask for sanctions to continue to be imposed on Zimbabwe. So, before they cut that umbilical cord with the Americans, it is difficult to be proper Zimbabweans.

We still have countries like the UK and the US who still continue to insist on imposition of sanctions. They have their surrogates in Zimbabwe persuading them to continue to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe and the reasons are best known to them, who want the people of Zimbabwe to suffer, perhaps to ride on the suffering of the people of Zimbabwe for them to come to office, Mnangagwa said.

The US and the UK have maintained tough economic sanctions on Zanu PF bigwigs and companies linked to the ruling party over gross human rights violations, violent land seizures and disrespect for property rights.

Addressing delegates at State House yesterday, Mnangagwa said his government would not deviate from the ethos of the countrys liberation struggle.

As the second republic, we will never betray that which made the many sons and daughters of our motherland to wage the protracted liberation struggle, paying the supreme sacrifice. We will always protect the significance and sacred spirituality of our land.

Mnangagwa also said the signing of the Global Compensation Agreement on July 29, 2020 with white former commercial farmers was re-affirmation of the irreversibility of the land reform programme as well as a symbol of commitment to constitutionalism, the respect of the rule of law and property rights. Newsday
An attorney accused of assaulting his girlfriend at a West Ashley bowling alley in March has been temporarily suspended from practicing law in South Carolina, according to an order issued by the state Supreme Court.

The April 16 interim suspension prohibits Pano Michael DuPree from practicing law "until further order" of the court.

DuPree was arrested after the March 19 incident at Ashley Lanes.

Two witnesses told Charleston police they saw a man, later identified as DuPree, start an argument with his girlfriend, place his arms around her neck from behind and pull her hair, according to an incident report.

An unidentified male bystander intervened, running up to DuPree and punching him in the face, the report said. He was knocked to the ground, pulling out some of his girlfriends hair in the process.

The attorney was taken to Roper St. Francis Hospital for treatment of his injuries, according to the report. After talking to witnesses and DuPrees girlfriend, officers followed him to the hospital and charged him with third-degree assault and battery, a misdemeanor.

He was briefly held in the Charleston County jail before being released March 20 on a $1,087 bond, records show.

DuPree could not be reached Monday for comment.
In 2017, Amanda Gorman, then 19 years old, became the countrys first national youth poet laureate.

Four years later, at Democratic President Joe Bidens inauguration, she gave a rousing oration of her poem, The Hill We Climb, speaking eloquently on the complexities of democracy in the United States, stealing the spotlight during the hours-long ceremony and becoming a national sensation in the wake of her reading.

The recent Harvard University graduate went on to perform at the Super Bowl last month, reciting a poem honoring front line workers. Shes the youngest inaugural poet to date, and in the wake of her reading at Bidens inauguration in January, sales of her book, also titled, The Hill We Climb, skyrocketed.

The city of Northampton is now launching its own youth poet laureate program for teenagers in the small Pioneer Valley community, pointing to the accomplishments of Gorman and other young poets.

Theres no greater voice for the power and popularity of poetry among young people than when a young person is the speaker, Karen Skolfield, Northamptons current adult poet laureate, said in a statement. Look at what Amanda Gorman, the national youth poet laureate, has already accomplished  poetry at the 2021 presidential inauguration, poetry at the Super Bowl, an integration of poetry in life events.

Youth poet laureates bring energy, enthusiasm, and joy; they make poetry real and meaningful to a much younger age group, Skolfield added.

Northampton already has a poet laureate program for adults, a coveted two-year position that has drawn artists like Martin Espada, Janet Aalfs, Jack Gilbert, Leslea Newman, Lenelle Moise, Richard Michelson, Patrick Donnelly and Amy Dryansky.

The Northampton Arts Council announced last week, though, its searching for a middle or high-school student to serve for a one-year term as the inaugural youth poet laureate of the city.

Once the council makes the appointment, Northampton will become the third city in Massachusetts to have a youth poet laureate, joining the ranks of Boston and Worcester, according to the council. A much larger number of communities in the Bay State have adult laureates

Youth poet laureate programs have been launched in dozens of cities and states nationwide, with initiatives set up or in the works in Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Nashville, New York City, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Seattle and elsewhere, the council noted.

This is an idea were excited to see implemented in Northampton, said Brian Foote, executive director of the arts council, a city body tasked with working to fund, promote and present arts programming in Northampton. A youth poet laureate is an excellent extension of the work the Northampton Arts Council does to raise the visibility and accessibility of the arts and writing communities.

Applicants for the position must be entering seventh to 12th grade as of September 2021. They are required to be a resident of Northampton, Florence or Leeds, attend school or be homeschooled in the city and have a deep love of poetry as well as a willingness to be an advocate for the art, according to the council.

The first person in the position will serve a one-year term from Aug. 1, 2021 to July 31, 2022. They will be tasked with promoting poetry within the city, designing and completing one community- or school-based poetry project and participating in at least two readings or performances in Northampton, the council noted. The youth laureate will also have the option of publishing a limited-edition chapbook of their own work.

The individual will receive a $500 stipend as well and mentorship from Northamptons current adult laureate, Skolfield, according to the council.

An Amherst resident and U.S. Army veteran, Skolfield teaches writing to engineers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where she earned her Master of Fine Arts. Her book, Battle Dress, won the Barnard Women Poets Prize.

The deadline to apply or nominate someone to the youth laureate program is June 15. For more information on the initiative, people can visit http://northamptonartscouncil.org.

Related Content:
Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media

BRIDGEPORT  Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., visited the Bridgeport Emergency Operation Center on Sunday to recognize the 911 dispatchers during Telecommunications Week and push for first responder recognition.

During the visit, Blumenthal said that dispatchers deserve to be called first responders under the law.
April 19, 2021--(BRONX, NY)--Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine have developed a topical drug that regenerates and restores the function of erectile nerves damaged by radical prostatectomy, the most common treatment for localized prostate cancer. The drug was tested in rats, and the findings were published online today in JCI Insight.

"Erectile dysfunction (ED) after radical prostatectomy has a major impact on the lives of many patients and their partners," said study co-leader David J. Sharp, Ph.D., professor of physiology & biophysics and of ophthalmology and visual sciences and professor in the Dominick P. Purpura Department of Neuroscience at Einstein. "Since rats are reliable animal models in urologic research, our drug offers real hope of normal sexual function for the tens of thousands of men who undergo this surgery each year."

Radical prostatectomy--surgery to remove the prostate gland--is considered the definitive treatment for localized prostate cancer. "Despite the advent of so-called nerve-sparing procedures, the surgery can damage the cavernous nerves, which control erectile function by regulating blood flow to the penis," said study co-leader Kelvin P. Davies, Ph.D., professor of urology and of physiology & biophysics at Einstein. He notes that about 60% of patients report having ED 18 months after surgery, and fewer than 30% have erections firm enough for intercourse after five years. Viagra and similar ED treatments are rarely effective in these patients, he said.

A decade ago, Dr. Sharp and colleagues discovered that the enzyme fidgetin-like 2 (FL2) puts the brakes on skin cells as they migrate towards wounds to heal them. To speed wound healing, the researchers developed an "anti-FL2" drug: small interfering RNA molecules (siRNAs) that inhibit the gene that codes for FL2. Packaged in gel nanoparticles and sprayed on mice, the siRNAs not only healed wounds twice as fast as untreated wounds but also regenerated damaged tissue. A February 2021 study in rats found that the siRNAs also aided the healing of corneal alkaline burns.

Dr. Sharp, Dr. Davies, and their teams realized that injured nerves might be especially amenable to this gene-silencing drug: For unknown reasons, the FL2 gene becomes over-active after injury to nerve cells, causing the cells to produce copious amounts of FL2 enzyme.

The Einstein team evaluated the drug using rat models of peripheral nerve injury in which the cavernous nerves were either crushed or severed, mimicking the nerve damage associated with radical prostatectomy. The siRNA gel was applied to the nerves immediately after injury.

When treatment was applied following a nerve crush injury, siRNA treatment enhanced nerve regeneration (regrowth) and restored nerve function as shown by cavernosometry, a test in which blood pressure within the penile shaft is measured after cavernous nerves are electrically stimulated. At three and four weeks post-therapy, the treated animals had significantly better erectile function compared to controls. After a month, the blood pressure response of the treated animals was comparable to that of normal animals.

Remarkably, even after nerves were severed, the drug treatment induced nerve regeneration and partial recovery of erectile function. Regenerated nerves were observed in 7 out of 8 treated animals, but not in any of the control animals (severed nerves treated with nonfunctioning siRNAs). The siRNA drug was able to heal gaps of several millimeters between the severed nerve ends--a result previously achieved only by nerve grafting, according to Dr. Sharp. "Functionally, the result from siRNA treatment was equivalent to or better than nerve grafting," he added.

The researchers also found that penile shafts of treated animals had higher levels of the enzyme nitric oxide synthase compared to controls. The enzyme produces the nitric oxide needed to trigger the sequence of events leading to erections. "This is important because drugs like Viagra don't work if there's no nitric oxide to kick things off," said Dr. Sharp. "But if we can restore even some of the nitric oxide in these nerves, Viagra and other ED drugs may then be able to exert their effects."

Dr. Sharp's team is currently studying whether the siRNAs can promote nerve regeneration after spinal cord injuries.

###

The study is titled "Fidgetin-like 2 negatively regulates axonal growth and can be targeted to promote functional nerve regeneration." The other contributors are: lead author Lisa Baker, Ph.D., Moses Tar, M.D., Adam Kramer, Ph.D., Guillermo Villegas, Ph.D., Rabab Charafeddine, Ph.D., Olga Vafaeva, Parimala Nacharaju, Ph.D., and Joel Friedman, M.D., Ph.D. (all at Einstein at the time of the study). Dr. Baker and Kramer are currently research scientists at MicroCures, Inc. The siRNA technology discussed in this study is licensed to MicroCures, which is a startup of Einstein.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (RO1 GM109909, RO1 DK109314, T32 5T32GM007491), NYS Spinal Cord Injury Research Board, and Sexual Medicine Society of North America graduate student research fellowships.

Financial disclosures: Dr. Sharp is the chief scientific officer at MicroCures, Inc., and Drs. Sharp, Davies, and Friedman hold stock in MicroCures, Inc.

About Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Albert Einstein College of Medicine is one of the nation's premier centers for research, medical education and clinical investigation. During the 2020-21 academic year, Einstein is home to 721 M.D. students, 178 Ph.D. students, 109 students in the combined M.D./Ph.D. program, and 265 postdoctoral research fellows. The College of Medicine has more than 1,900 full-time faculty members located on the main campus and at its clinical affiliates. In 2020, Einstein received more than $197 million in awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This includes the funding of major research centers at Einstein in aging, intellectual development disorders, diabetes, cancer, clinical and translational research, liver disease, and AIDS. Other areas where the College of Medicine is concentrating its efforts include developmental brain research, neuroscience, cardiac disease, and initiatives to reduce and eliminate ethnic and racial health disparities. Its partnership with Montefiore, the University Hospital and academic medical center for Einstein, advances clinical and translational research to accelerate the pace at which new discoveries become the treatments and therapies that benefit patients. Einstein runs one of the largest residency and fellowship training programs in the medical and dental professions in the United States through Montefiore and an affiliation network involving hospitals and medical centers in the Bronx, Brooklyn and on Long Island. For more information, please visit einsteinmed.org, read our blog, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and view us on YouTube.
It took 171 years and a few days, but San Francisco finally has an official font.

Were not counting the recent Apple San Francisco font, which has nothing to do with the city and looks like Helvetica on a low-carb diet. Ben Zottos Fog City Gothic is inspired by old San Francisco street signs, and the typeface has a mood to it.

The Hayes Valley resident works in computers, design, history and neighborhood associations, and he combined the four things to create his first font.

Im an amateur typographer. I dont know if it would pass muster with real professionals, but it came out pretty well, Zotto says. And I thought, I should share this.

The font is inspired by San Franciscos old embossed street signs, distinctive black-on-white steel markers that began appearing in 1946 and were prevalent in the city in the 1960s and 1970s. The bubbled-out letters can be seen in archive photos, movies such as Bullitt and Vertigo, and almost every episode of The Streets of San Francisco. The signs have long since been phased out by San Francisco officials for a flatter, decidedly less cool design, but Zotto was able to re-create their distinctive font using historic photos.

Zottos font is for sale at his web site. He spoke to The Chronicle by phone, a day after announcing Fog City Gothic on social media.

Q: What sparked your interest in creating a font for San Francisco?

A: Ive always loved street signs. I came to the city maybe 14 years ago, and theyve been a signature of the streets of the city and the built environment. I thought, Whats the actual history on these?  As I was digging, I realized the black-on-white signs had two different typeface variations. Theres the one thats in use now thats highway standard  highway gothic they call it. But I realized this other older typeface was different.

As far as I can tell its sort of a bespoke thing that the San Francisco sign shop cooked up based on federal standards, but not exactly like federal standards.

Courtesy Ben Zotto /

Q: The San Francisco street signs that you based your font on dont exist any more, correct?

A: They do not. Im not sure when they stopped producing these black-on-white embossed enameled steel signs, but my suspicion is it was sometime in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Ever since then theyve been flat. They havent been embossed. The signing technology moved on.

Q: Why did you want a font based on this specific era of street signs?

A: I just think its very interesting. I like things that are unique and particular and dont necessarily have a name, but had a large impact on the visual environment. The typeface was embossed in metal, and what happens is the edges get softened, and they paint the sign on top so it looks different from different angles. Thats what I wanted to capture. Bold and blockish, but soft around the edges. I called it Fog City Gothic hoping to evoke that feeling.

Q: How much time did you put into Fog City Gothic?

A: I thought it would just be a little kick-around side project, and then ended up putting a ton of time into it. I sourced the letter forms from all different kinds of historic photos, and tried to trace them and normalize them and space them and kern them.

Warner Bros. 1968

Q: Does City Hall have a Department of Fonts? At any point did you seek help from City Hall or the SFMTA?

A: I tried to get in touch with a couple of folks I know at the SFMTA, and that didnt really go anywhere. I could have pressed harder. But in the end, frankly, I was looking for a reason to do a project. Having an excuse to build a typeface that might be useful for some people seemed like a lot of fun. So I just kind of did it.

Q: With the street signs gone, was there a particular letter that was difficult to create? Did you have Z issues?

A: Fortunately this typeface is only uppercase, so that simplifies a lot of things. There were a couple letters and a few digits that I didnt really have a historic source for. Characters that are rare out in the world (including) the letter X and the number 4 I just didnt have a good reference. I had to look at similar typefaces and make something I thought was close.

Theres a Z in Sanchez Street and a Z in Mizpah Street, so I had sources for that.

Q: What other problems did you run across?

More from the Archive The Vault Home of the San Francisco Chronicle's archive and more than 150 years of journalism covering the Bay Area and beyond.

A: While (Fog City Gothic) has two different widths, the actual signs were in four different widths. One width is quite common, then theres a much chunkier width for signs with six letters or less, then there are a couple of skinnier widths for when you have Embarcadero or Divisadero or another longer name. Thats still true today by the way. Once youre looking for it, youll see Oak Street and Fell Street, and the letters are huge.

Joseph J. Rosenthal / The Chronicle

Q: What do you hope people will do with this?

A: It has a midcentury industrial vibe to it, or a midcentury civic urban vibe to it. I would hope it would be useful to any graphic designer doing any work in that domain. If its used for specific San Francisco stuff, thats even more delightful. Its on sale right now for real cheap (currently marked down to $5 for both the regular and wide version, or $4 for just one), in the hopes that San Francisco people might grab it without quite knowing what to do with it  then find something fun to remix it into.

Q: Do you have any other font projects coming up?

A: I made two of the best-looking font widths (for Fog City Gothic). I have an inclination to see if I could do at least one more width on it, to make it more useful as a typeface family. I dont have other fonts on the horizon.

Paul Chinn / SFC

Q: Can I nominate the Comic Sans of local fonts, the font used for the Cow Palace?

A: (Looks it up on Google.) Oh, yeah! The one where the As are kind of going backwards and theyre sort of mirror images of each other. Thats an interesting (typeface).

Q: How does it feel having your font out in the world?

A: Its very gratifying that other people who share my interests and inclinations are seeing it, and having kind of a kinship excitement in the result. If somebody finds something cool to do with it, San Francisco-wise, that would be even more delightful.

Peter Hartlaub is The San Francisco Chronicles culture critic. Email: phartlaub@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @PeterHartlaub
NEW YORK, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- WeissLaw LLP is investigating possible breaches of fiduciary duty and other violations of law by the board of directors of Marlin Business Services Corp. ("Marlin") (NASDAQ: MRLN) in connection with the proposed acquisition of the Company by HPS Investment Partners LLC ("HPS"). Under the terms of the merger agreement, Marlin shareholders will receive $23.50 in cash for each share of Marlin common stock that they hold.

WeissLaw LLP (PRNewsfoto/WeissLaw LLP)

If you own Marlin shares and wish to discuss this investigation or have any questions concerning this notice or your rights or interests, visit our website:

https://www.weisslawllp.com/MRLN/

Or please contact:

Joshua Rubin, Esq.

WeissLaw LLP

1500 Broadway, 16th Floor

New York, NY 10036

(212) 682-3025

(888) 593-4771

stockinfo@weisslawllp.com

WeissLaw LLP is investigating whether Marlin's board acted in the best interest of Marlin's public shareholders in agreeing to the proposed transaction, whether the per-share merger consideration adequately compensates Marlin's shareholders, and whether all information regarding the process undertaken by the board and the valuation of the transaction will be fully and fairly disclosed to Marlin's public shareholders.

WeissLaw LLP has litigated hundreds of stockholder class and derivative actions for violations of corporate and fiduciary duties. We have recovered over a billion dollars for defrauded clients and obtained important corporate governance relief in many of these cases. If you have information or would like legal advice concerning possible corporate wrongdoing (including insider trading, waste of corporate assets, accounting fraud, or materially misleading information), consumer fraud (including false advertising, defective products, or other deceptive business practices), or anti-trust violations, please email us at stockinfo@weisslawllp.com



Cision

View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/shareholder-alert-weisslaw-llp-investigates-marlin-business-services-corp-301271877.html

SOURCE WeissLaw LLP
The 10-year-old migrant boy filmed sobbing to a Border Control agent who rescued him has pleaded to stay in the United States in a heart-breaking phone call with his uncle in Miami.

Wilton Obregon appeared on the verge of tears at times as he talked to construction worker Misael Obregon Leiva.

The boy could barely be heard amid the background noise of the shelter for unaccompanied migrant children in Brownsville, Texas, where he has been held since being picked up alone on an isolated track.

He made his plea after Nicaragua formally requested the U.S. return him to his home in an isolated mountain region of the country, where his father Lazaro Gutierrez and other family members live.

The battle over the boy came as his kidnapped mother Meylin, 30, was released by the cartel who snatched her and Wilton - and is reported to have crossed the border into U.S. custody.

Wilton Obregon, 10, made world news when a U.S. Border Patrol agent's bodycam footage was released. In a 10-minute phone call with Wilton, his uncle Misael Obregon Leiva (pictured) vowed to fight for him to stay in the U.S. and reunite the family

Misael asked him: 'Would you like to go back to Nicaragua or do you want to come with me?' The boy answered: 'I don't want to go back'

Wilton Obregon, a native of Nicaragua, drew appeared in a video crying in front of a U.S. Border Patrol agent and asking for help after he had been abandoned by the group of migrants he had crossed the Mexico-United States border with

The pair were seized in northern Mexico following an earlier attempt to get across in March.

U.S. authorities deported them and they were grabbed for ransom in Mexico within hours. Misael paid $5,000 for Wilton's freedom with borrowed money, but could not afford the same for his sister.

Wilton and his mother were deported in March under Title 42, a pandemic-era policy that expels migrants without them allowing them to apply for protection

Wilton was then moved back over the border and found wandering alone near La Grulla on April 1. A video of his sobbing made headlines around the world after it went viral.

Misael has offered no details of his sister's release. In a 10-minute phone call with Wilton, he vowed to fight for him to stay in the U.S. and reunite the family.

He condemned Nicaragua's actions and tried to bolster Wilton's spirits with thoughts of life in Miami.

He told him: 'What the government wants is to use you and take you back with lies. For you to continue suffering there in Nicaragua. Don't allow the government to take you back there because you are going back to suffer.

'I am fighting for you my boy. I'm working on all the paperwork for you to come to me as soon as possible.'

Nicaragua's consul general in Houston, Samuel Trejos, tried to visit Wilton at the Casa Padre shelter run by U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement, a division of Health and Human Services.

But he had to make do with a video conference instead due to Covid-19 restrictions.

Mr. Trejos said Wilton was 'happy to know he was being helped to return to Nicaragua he wants to hug his father again and his grandmother'.

Misael asked Wilton on the call: 'I am very surprised why the government of Nicaragua is saying that you said to a man that you want to go back to Nicaragua. Tell me what that man told you.'

Misael Obregon is seen with with his 15-year-old twin sons and his girlfriend. The children were allowed to enter the United States because they were unaccompanied although they had crossed the Mexico-United States border with their aunt and cousin

Wilton Obregon (left) , his mother Meylin Obregon (right) and two cousins left Nicaragua for the United States on February 8 and were expelled by immigration authorities and forced to return to Mexico in late March

Wilton replied: 'I didn't say anything.'

Misael, who made a video of the call, then asked: 'Didn't you talk to a man through a video call? A man who you don't know?'

Wilton replied: 'Yes, a man asked me.'

Misael then said: 'And what did you say, that you want to go back to your country?' Wilton's reply was indistinct due to background noise.

But Misael also asked him: 'Would you like to go back to Nicaragua or do you want to come with me?' The boy answered: 'I don't want to go back.'

The uncle implored his nephew to refuse to talk Mr. Trejos again. He said: 'Don't continue talking with that man because all he wants is to deceive you and take you back to Nicaragua.

'Tell him that you don't want to talk to him anymore. You don't talk to anybody, only with me and your mom. You don't talk to anybody else. If you want to talk to somebody it has to be with me or your mom. Not with people who you don't know.

'You tell him that you don't want to talk to him. And if he asks you things don't answer anything. Don't talk to those people. All they want to do is damage you and return you to Nicaragua to suffer.'

Meylin Obregon (right) abandoned her Nicaragua home with her son Wilton due to the alleged abuse that the father of her two children inflicted on her

At one point in the conversation, Misael does his best to lift Wilton's spirits, saying: 'It's okay my boy don't be sad. Soon you are going to be out of there.

'We are doing all the paperwork and you will leave there. Don't worry about that. We have clothes, shoes for you here, all that you need.'

Misael added: 'When you leave there, you are going to study here. I know that you are very intelligent and you are going to be somebody important, well prepared and all your dreams are going to come true.

'Here in this country, everybody is going to support you, the government and everybody. After all you have gone through and all your suffering. You are going to have a better life here than in Nicaragua where that government doesn't do anything for the poor children.'

Misael was also critical of Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega during the call. Talking about where Wilton would like to end up he said: 'Nobody can take a decision for you, only you.

'Not Ortega  only you decide where you feel better, here with me or Dan Ortega has you in Nicaragua. You decide.'

Wilton replies but there is so much background noise Misael can hardly hear what he says. At one point the boy sounds upset and on the verge of tears.

Misael reassured him: 'As I said, I don't want you to go back to Nicaragua. I am going to give my life for your studies and all you need.'

The uncle, who has been in Miami for five years, continued to soothe Wilton by saying: 'Don't be scared my boy, you are not going to return to Nicaragua.

'Your decision is the only one that matters. If you say I want to go with my uncle, you are going to come here I hope it's God's will that we will be reunited soon, to hug and protect you and give you love.'

Wilton and his mother were deported in March under Title 42, a pandemic-era policy that expels migrants without them allowing them to apply for protection.

Meylin is now understood to have surrendered to U.S. authorities and claimed asylum following her release by the cartel. She told TV station Unavision she was freed after her captors told her 'It was not convenient for them' to continue holding her.

She added: 'They left me in a lonely abandoned part. From what they (the U.S. authorities) told me they are going to give me asylum.

Misael said when news broke of his sister's kidnapping, 'I worried that she's going to die that she's not going to make it through this.' The cartel called him for the ransom. He said: 'They threaten to hurt them both, or worse. These people are capable of anything'

After the call to his nephew, jubilant Misael said of his sister being freed: 'I have the best news in the world, thanks to God.

'My sister has been liberated, it is a blessing. Thanks to God for this precious and happy moment of my life. I want everybody to know that my sister has been liberated from the hands of the mafia.'

When news broke of the kidnapping, he said: 'I worried that she's going to die that she's not going to make it through this.' The cartel called him for the ransom. He said: 'They threaten to hurt them both, or worse. These people are capable of anything.

Misael's 15-year-old twin sons made the March border crossing with Meylin and Wilton. They were allowed to remain because they were classed as unaccompanied minors and were reunited with their father on April 6.

Wilton made world news when the Border Patrol agent's bodycam footage was released. He said he crossed the border with a group and they abandoned him. He told the agent: 'Somebody could abduct me, kidnap me. I'm scared.'

The boy's father, a cattle farmer in the mountain town El Rama, has signed off on the request by Nicaragua to have his son return home. This is despite him agreeing to the boy leaving with his mother.

Nicaragua's Vice President Rosario Murillo said Gutierrez 'requests the repatriation of his son and the boy also claims to want to hug his father and grandmother'.

Meylin has claimed she tried to get to the US to flee alleged abuse in her marriage. Her other son Delvin remained with his father.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 22:43:16|Editor: huaxia

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-- Six years after Chinese president's state visit, a closer China-Pakistan community with a shared future is becoming a reality and setting a fine example for the rest of the world.

-- According to data by the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor has helped Pakistan rake in 25.4 billion U.S. dollars in foreign direct investment since inauguration, offering more than 75,000 jobs to local people.

--The special friendship between China and Pakistan is a historical choice, and is deeply rooted in the hearts of the two peoples, who have always extended a helping hand to each other in times of need.

--The mutual support and bilateral cooperation in the face of huge challenges have shown the world the true meaning of an all-weather friendship.

by Deng Kaiyin, Li Hao and Liu Tian

ISLAMABAD, April 19 (Xinhua) -- For hundreds of years, the lofty Karakoram mountain range has never been the hurdle between the two ancient civilizations of China and Pakistan, but rather a witness to the ever-deepening friendship between the two peoples.

The rolling mountain observed a new height of friendly exchanges between the two countries in 2015 when the plane taking Chinese President Xi Jinping for a two-day state visit to Pakistan flew over it.

During the visit, the two sides forged their all-weather strategic cooperative partnership, and mapped out strategic arrangements and a long-term plan for future bilateral development.

Six years on, benefits of the fruitful visit thrive across the South Asian country. A closer China-Pakistan community with a shared future is becoming a reality and setting a fine example for the rest of the world.

A train for the Orange Line arrives at a subway station in Lahore, Pakistan, Oct. 26, 2020. (Xinhua/Liu Tian)

CPEC's NEW CHAPTER

Back to 2015, Pakistan was deeply-marred by terrorism, and few countries in the world were willing to invest in the country, said Mushahid Hussain Syed, chairman of the Pakistani Senate's standing committee on foreign affairs. The South Asian country was looking forward to an economic take-off to stabilize its society.

"China and Pakistan need to align development strategies more closely to realize the dreams of our peoples," Xi said in a signed article published ahead of his Pakistan visit.

During the visit, the two sides signed more than 50 cooperation deals, and agreed to center the development of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) with four key areas namely the Gwadar Port, transport infrastructure, energy and industrial cooperation.

The CPEC blueprint is now a reality. Three major coal-fired power plants with world's top environment friendly technologies have generated more than 71.5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity since they were combined to the grid, ending Pakistan's history of power outages of an average of 12 hours per day.

In 2020, major CPEC energy projects generated about one-third of the total electricity injecting into the national grid, said Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Nong Rong. With planned hydropower plants including Karot and Suki Kinari under construction, Pakistan's energy structure will be further improved in the near future.

Photo taken on Nov. 18, 2019 shows the expressway section from Havelian to Mansehra under the Karakoram Highway Phase Two project in Pakistan's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. (Xinhua/Liu Tian)

The CPEC has also enhanced connectivity. The Karakoram Highway Phase Two project, along with the Sukkur-Multan Motorway, CPEC's largest transport infrastructure project, has connected the heartland of the country with its remote northern region and financial center in the south. The eco-friendly Orange Line metro train in Pakistan's cultural center Lahore has served over 10 million passengers within six months.

Facing the Arabian Sea and the Middle East, the re-functioned Gwadar Port has welcomed Afghan transit cargo, facilitating goods movement in the region and "helping make Pakistan the hub of transit trade in the region," said Pakistani President Arif Alvi. With a new international airport and a coastal expressway linking the airport to a newly-built free trade zone, Gwadar is sailing towards the dream of becoming a "New Dubai" in Pakistan.

According to data by the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan in March, the CPEC has helped Pakistan rake in 25.4 billion U.S. dollars in foreign direct investment (FDI) since inauguration, offering more than 75,000 jobs to local people. In fact, China has been Pakistan's largest source of FDI for the past seven years, and its largest trading partner over the last six years.

Xi's visit was very important, and what the two countries planned at that time "is in the pipeline, is happening, is going on," Alvi told Xinhua in a recent interview.

Photo taken on Jan. 29, 2018 shows a view of Gwadar Port in southwest Pakistan's Gwadar. (Xinhua/Ahmad Kamal)

ALL-WEATHER FRIENDSHIP

"My friend's lovely image dwells in the mirror of my heart; I tilt my head slightly, and here it comes into my sight." Xi quoted an Urdu poem in the signed article to describe what Pakistan is like in his own heart.

The special friendship between China and Pakistan is a historical choice, and is deeply rooted in the hearts of the two peoples, who have always extended a helping hand to each other in times of need.

When the devastating earthquake struck China's Wenchuan in 2008, Pakistan shipped its entire reserve of tents to China. When Pakistan was hit by a severe flood in 2010, China dispatched its largest ever medical team to the South Asian country.

Amid the raging COVID-19 pandemic, Alvi wrote a letter to Xi to express consolations to the Chinese people, and visited China in March 2020. Pakistan's National Assembly and Senate have both passed a resolution on offering full support to China's anti-pandemic fight.

In return, China has sent medical teams and donated anti-epidemic materials to Pakistan. Besides, Pakistan became the first country to receive COVID-19 vaccine aid from China, and took part in the Phase III trial of a Chinese COVID-19 vaccine, ensuring more safety for its citizens while gaining first-hand medical experiences.

"In every situation, on every step, our Chinese counterparts are always providing us firm support," recalled Omeira Naseer, supervisor of the vaccine trial at Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad. "We have a very nice experience with our Chinese counterparts."

A handover ceremony of a batch of China-donated COVID-19 vaccine is held at Noor Khan Air Base near Islamabad, Pakistan, Feb. 1, 2021. (Xinhua/Liu Tian)

The mutual support and bilateral cooperation in the face of huge challenges have shown the world the true meaning of an all-weather friendship.

"By all-weather, we mean that our two countries will always move ahead together rain or shine. This description of China-Pakistan partnership is a most appropriate one, as it aptly defines the all-weather friendship and all-round cooperation between China and Pakistan," Xi said in 2015 at the Parliament of Pakistan.

As this year marks the 70th anniversary of the diplomatic ties between China and Pakistan, Alvi said the anniversary will be a new starting point, and the all-weather friendship between the two countries will be stronger in the future.





SHARED FUTURE

"Over the years, thanks to the nurturing of generations of leaders and people from all sectors of both countries, China-Pakistan friendship has flourished like a tree growing tall and strong," Xi said in the signed article.

Now younger generations have taken over the relay baton of exchanges. The Chinese education sector has welcomed an increasing number of Pakistani students, while more and more people in Pakistan are learning Chinese. Besides, there have also been closer cooperation between sister cities, media outlets and think tanks from both countries.

During the state visit six years ago, Xi noted that the friendship between China and Pakistan is based on trust and mutual support. "Our friendship is a pacesetter for amicable relations between countries."

Pakistan was the first Islamic country to establish diplomatic ties with China. Since then, the iron-clad relationship has set a good example of mutual learning and friendly cooperation between different civilizations.

Students attend a Chinese language class at a campus of the Roots Millennium Schools in Islamabad, Pakistan, on March 11, 2021. (Xinhua/Ahmad Kamal)

China has always taken the development of its ties with Pakistan as a priority in its neighboring diplomacy, while Pakistan continues to give China top priority in its foreign policy. The two sides firmly support each other on issues concerning their respective core interests.

The high degree of mutual trust has enabled the two sides to keep a close communication and coordination at international and regional fora like the United Nations, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation.

"Committed to building a China-Pakistan community of common destiny, we cooperate to expand our converging interests and strive for common development," said Xi in the signed article.

Noting that China-Pakistan relations "have gone well beyond the bilateral context," Xi during his state visit in 2015 called on both sides to "increase coordination and collaboration on major regional and global issues."

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said in August last year that the all-weather strategic cooperative partnership between the two countries is beneficial to international and regional peace and stability.

The idea of "building a community with a shared future for mankind" proposed by Xi is the only option to defeat global challenges, said Alvi. (Video reporters: Jiang Chao, Liu Tian; video editors: Liu Yuanyuan, Pei Lei)
A new poll may put some wind in the actor Matthew McConaugheys sails as he considers whether to run for governor of Texas.

Forty-five percent of the states voters said that they would vote for Mr. McConaughey if he were to challenge Gov. Greg Abbott next year, according to the poll, conducted by The Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas, Tyler.

An additional 33 percent of voters said they would support the incumbent, while 22 percent said that at this early stage, they would prefer to choose someone else.

But such highly theoretical questions can sometimes produce wonky results, especially this far in advance of any actual campaigning. Thats doubly true when the hypothetical involves a figure with name recognition as high as Mr. McConaugheys, particularly in his home state.
New Delhi, April 19 : Amid the shortage of beds for Covid patients, the North Delhi Municipal Corporation on Monday offered its schools and community centres to create an infrastructure for 8,000 beds.

Addressing a press conference, North Delhi Mayor, Jai Prakash, said that Corona cases are continuously increasing in the city, which is very worrying and the North Delhi Municipal Corporation is ready to provide about 8000 beds in its various institutions to the Delhi government.

"But for that the Delhi government will also have to cooperate fully, then we can all work together," he said.

Prakash pointed out that the Delhi government had asked the municipal corporations to provide beds for Corona patients.

"We have made arrangements for the Delhi government to make beds available for Corona patients in various institutes of the corporation and if the Delhi government provides bed and oxygen facilities, then the polyclinics of North Corporation can be developed into mini-hospitals.

"In the 71 schools under our jurisdiction, which have 1700 rooms, 6800 beds can be arranged if four beds are put in one room," he said.

Prakash further stated that there are 12 big community centres of the corporation, in which 700 beds can be arranged.

Prakash mentioned that the civic body has requested the Delhi government and the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) to give permission to start a Covid Care Centre at the Balak Ram Hospital.

"100-bed COVID Care Centre is ready at the Balak Ram Hospital. We have requested the Delhi governmen to fulfil all the necessary arrangements for the Hindu Rao Hospital. The Delhi government and the corporation must work together, only then we can win this battle," he said.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Cars now are not only the status marker in society but also a convenient way of transportation. For family transportation, it is doubtlessly, the best choice in the context of Nepal.

Owning a car means having the convenience and freedom of being able to travel anywhere you want, any time you want. But, buying a new car also means spending a lot of your hard earnings. Everyone would want to have the best and top-specs cars for themselves, but it is only possible if one is able to pay for it. The specific amount you pay for a car will provide you with the features accordingly.

There are, however, numerous cars in the market that provide you with the fundamental features without breaking the bank. Today, we will present a list of the budget cars you can purchase under Rs 3.5 million (Rs 35 lakhs) in Nepal.

8. Datsun Redi-Go

Photo: Datsun

Datsun Redi-Go is the most affordable car on the list. The car has a bold and sleek design. The interiors of the car have a large roominess cabin and cutting-edge style, emphasised by an all-new black interior that looks sophisticated. Though being budget-friendly, this car comes up with power-packed features and excellent performance.

The Datsun Redi-GO has an intelligent spark automated technology engine, which automatically adjusts spark timing in response to fuel quality and power requirements. Some of its notable features are;

Highest in class ground clearance of 187mm

An 8-inch touchscreen infotainment system that supports voice recognition

Reverse parking assist camera with projection guide

Smart utility spaces

Flexible storage capacity with removable parcel tray

Power steering and power windows (front)

The car also has an abundance of safety features. It comes with a strong crash-resistant body shell, dual front airbags, and seatbelt pre-tensioners with load limiters, ABS + EBD system and seatbelt reminders.

Specifications

Engine type 1.0 L petrol engine Displacement 999cc Dimension Length: 3,435mm

Width: 1,574mm

Height: 1,546mm

Ground clearance: 187mm Max power [email protected] Max torque [email protected] Transmission type Automatic No. of cylinders 3 Gearbox 5-speed Mileage 20kmpl Fuel tank capacity 28 litres Brakes Front brake: disc

Rear brake: drum Boot space 222 litres Turning radius 4.73 metres Air conditioner Yes Weight 1,100 kg

The price for Datsun Redi-Go in Nepal is Rs 2,399,000.

7. Hyundai Santro Era

Photo: laxmihyundai

It has been amongst the most popular models and the most desirable ones in the Hyundai fleet of cars, especially for starters and first-time car buyers. Hyundai Santro Era is one of the many variants of the Santro series. It is touted as the best budget-friendly family hatchback. Surprisingly, the Santro Era is the base offering in the Santro line-up.

It has a seven-inch touchscreen infotainment system with mirror-link support, Bluetooth connectivity and AC vents. The car is powered by a 1.1litre four-cylinder petrol engine. Some of its notable features are:

Anti-theft device

Crash sensors

ABS, EBD

Power steering and power windows front

Some of the safety features on this car are child safety lock, seat belt warning, door ajar warning, adjustable seats, engine immobiliser, crash sensor, anti-theft device and anti-lock braking system.

Specifications

Engine type 1.1L petrol engine Displacement 1,086 cc Dimension Length: 3,610mm

Width: 1,645mm

Height: 1,560mm

Ground clearance: 165mm Max power 68.05bhp @ 5500 rpm Max torque 99Nm @ 4500rpm Transmission type Manual No. of cylinders 4 Gearbox 5-speed Mileage 20.3kmpl Fuel tank capacity 35 litres Brakes Front brake: disc

Rear brake: drum Boot space 235 litres Turning radius 4.4 metres Air conditioner Yes Weight 1,310 kg

The cost of Hyundai Santro Era in Nepal is Rs 2,456,000.

6. Renault Kwid RXT AMT Opt

Photo: Carwale

Renault Kwid RXT 1.0 AMT Opt is a petrol variant in the Kwid lineup. The Renault Kwid has an SUV-inspired design that has a ground clearance of 184mm and has got the strength and robustness. This car has always been one of the best-looking small cars. Among the variants on offer, the Renault Kwid RXT AMT Optional is a perfect ride for someone looking forward to enjoying the ride along with the convenience of the automated manual transmission.

Since it is based on the top-end version of the Kwid, it gets all the features available in the RXT version, which include a touchscreen audio system with navigation, a digital speedometer, air-conditioning and two front power windows. The car also offers a high driving position and greater visibility that gives better control with an imposing stance and dynamic performance.

Some of its highlighted features are:

Digital instrument cluster

New rear retractable seat belts

Traffic assist mode

Reverse parking camera

Specifications

Engine type Petrol engine Displacement 999cc Dimension Length: 3,731mm

Width: 1,579mm

Height: 1,490mm

Ground clearance: 184mm Max power 67bhp @ 5500rpm Max torque 91Nm @ 4250rpm Transmission type Autmatic No. of cylinders 3 Gearbox 5-speed Mileage 22 kmpl Fuel tank capacity 28 litres Brakes Front brake: disc

Rear brake: drum Boot space 279 litres Turning radius 4.90 metres Air conditioner Yes Weight 1,100 kg

The price for Renault Kwid RXT 1.0 AMT Opt in Nepal is Rs 2,649,000.

5. Volkswagen Polo

Photo: volkswagen.co.in

The Volkswagen Polo has been around the market for years now, but Volkswagen has been constantly updating to keep it relevant. The build quality of the car is almost unmatchable at this price segment. The interior and the exterior of the car also looks fantastic. The new 1.0 TSI turbo-petrol engine is the latest addition in the car which is refined and gets the job done. The company claims that the new engine is lighter and more efficient than the engine it replaced. Some of the notable features of the new Volkswagen Polo are:

Dust and pollen filter

App connect

Touchscreen infotainment system

High-mounted stop lamp

Multi-function steering control

Cruise control

Voice control

Specifications

Engine type 1.0L petrol engine Displacement 999cc Dimension Length: 3,971mm

Width: 1,682mm

Height: 1,469mm

Ground clearance: 168mm Max power 75.10bhp @ 6200rpm Max torque 95Nm @ 3000-4300 Transmission type Manual No. of cylinders 3 Gearbox 5-speed Mileage 18.78 kmpl Fuel tank capacity 45 litres Brakes Front brake: ventilated disc

Rear brake: drum Boot space 280 litres Turning radius 4.9 metres Air conditioner Yes Weight 1,500 kg

The price for Volkswagen Polo TL Plus 1.0 petrol is Rs 3,090,000 in Nepal.

4. Maruti Suzuki Swift VXI

Photo: marutisuzuki.com

In the early days of its launch, Maruti Suzuki Swift was one of the most popular cars in Nepal. Because of its good look, it was one of the most preferred cars in Nepal and it still is. It is one of the few cars to hold a badge of five-star Euro NCAP rating, which makes the car reliable in terms of safety.

Talking about its specs and features, Suzuki Swift comes with a 1197cc petrol engine in Nepal. It gives mileage of 22kmpl and that is very good compared to other vehicles in the segment. Maruti Suzuki Swift has a ground clearance of 163mm which may not be big enough for rough surfaces. But, for city ride, it should not be an issue. Suzuki Swift has a boot space of 316 litres to carry your essentials or luggage. This is also very good compared to other vehicles in the segment.

Some of the notable features of Maruti Suzuki Swift VXI are:

Front power windows

Central locking door

Tilt steering

Key-less entry

ABS with EBD

High-speed alert warning

Dual airbags

Reverse parking assist sensors

Specifications

Engine type 1.2L K series dual jet petrol engine Displacement 1,197cc Dimension Length: 3,845mm

Width: 1,735mm

Height: 1,530mm

Ground clearance: 163mm Max power 88.50 [email protected] 6000rpm Max torque 113Nm @4400rpm Transmission type Manual No. of cylinders 4 Gearbox 5-speed Mileage 23.2kmpl Fuel tank capacity 37 litres Brakes Front brake: disc

Rear brake: drum Boot space 268 litres Turning radius 4.8 metres Air conditioner Yes Weight 1,335kg

The price for Maruti Suzuki Swift VXI in Nepal is Rs 3,099,000.

3. Ford Figo Aspire (Titanium)

Photo: india.ford.com

The new Ford Figo Aspire is one of the best-looking cars in this segment. It has an elegantly designed look to distinguish it from the crowd and draws attention from all directions, boasting some stylish features. The premium cellular grille and stylish R15 alloy wheels add a classy bold stance look.

Some of the notable features of Ford Figo Aspire are:

Sync 3 feature

A 6.5-inch touchscreen infotainment system

Push-button start

Automatic wipers

Automatic headlamps

Automatic climate control

The New Aspire comes with lots of safety and security features such as airbags, anti-lock braking system, electronic brake-force distribution, electronic stability programme (ESP), and electric power-assisted steering (EPAS) that balance the vehicle for better driving experiences and handling. It also has a rearview camera that automatically turns on when the car is reversed.

Specifications

Engine type Ti-VCT Petrol engine Displacement 1,194cc Dimension Length: 3,995mm

Width: 1,704mm

Height: 1,525mm

Ground clearance: 174mm Max Power 94.93 [email protected] 6500rpm Max torque 119Nm @ 4250rpm Transmission type Manual No. of cylinders 3 Gearbox 5-speed Mileage 18.5kmpl Fuel tank capacity 42 litres Brakes Front brake: ventilated disc

Rear brake: drum Boot space 359 litres Turning radius 4.9 metres Air conditioner Yes Kerb weight 1016-1044 kg

The price for Ford Figo Aspire (Titanium) in Nepal is Rs 3,349,000.

2. Hyundai Aura

Photo: laxmihyundai

Hyundai Aura is developed specifically for elegant sedan lovers. It conveys a modern and stunning design interpreting Hyundais signature design language of Sensuous Sportiness.

On the front, Aura comes with a Satin Silver Front Grille design alongside Twin Boomerang LED DRLs. Likewise, it also comes with a sharp headlamp and stylish chrome-surrounded fog lamps. Moving towards the side profile, Aura features a coupe-like stance with blacked-out pillars. On the rear, it gets a stylish Z-shaped LED tail lamp. On the interior, Hyundai has included premium styles like dual-tone grey interiors and satin bronze crash pad.

Some of the notable features of Hyundai Aura are:

Superior interior designing

Glove box cooling

USB charger

Rear adjustable headrest

Luggage lamp

The advanced eight-inch touchscreen infotainment system

Unique driving rearview monitor

Iblue audio remote smartphone app

Keeping occupants safety as a priority, the all-new AURA is built with 65% (AHSS & HSS) high strength steel that ensures complete safety for all occupants. There are also other features like an emergency stop signal, rear parking sensors, impact sensing, auto door unlock system, ABS with EBD and dual airbags.

Specifications

Engine type 1.2L Kappa, AMT petrol engine Displacement 1,197 cc Dimension Length: 3,995mm

Width: 1,680 mm

Height: 1,520mm

Ground clearance: 165mm Max power 82bhp @ 6000rpm Max torque 114Nm @ 4000rpm Transmission type Manual No. of cylinders 4 Gearbox 5-speed Mileage 13kmpl Fuel tank capacity 37 litres Brakes Front brake: disc

Rear brake: drum Boot space 402 litres Air conditioner Yes Kerb weight 892-936 kg

The price for Hyundai Aura in Nepal is Rs 3,396,000.

1. Hyundai Grand i10 NIOS Sportz

Photo: laxmihyundai

Topping our list is the Hyundai Grand i10 Sportz. Hyundai has focused on design and style to create an advanced hatchback.

This is one of the most loved cars in Nepal. Along with the beautiful looks, it provides a series of features for the buyers that makes this car popular among the riders. It has a bold stance and contemporary design. The aerodynamics design of the car offers an increase in stability and has lowered the drag coefficient. For visibility enhancement, the car features projector headlamps and fog lamps. Some of the notable features of the Hyundai Grand i10 NIOS Sportz are:

Driver seat height adjustment

Fully automatic temperature control

Headlamp escort function

Rear defogger

Driver rearview monitor

The 8-inch touchscreen infotainment system

The safety features in this car include a front seatbelt pre-tensioner, rear parking sensors, dual airbags, rear camera with display, immobiliser, emergency stop signal, speed alert system, speed sensing auto door lock, impact sensing auto door unlock and ABS with electronic brake distribution (EBD).

Specifications

Engine type 1.2L Kappa, AMT, petrol Displacement 1,197cc Dimension Length: 3,805mm

Width: 1,680mm

Height: 1,520mm

Ground clearance: 165mm Max power [email protected] Max torque [email protected] Transmission type Smart Auto AMT No. of cylinders 4 Gearbox 5-speed Mileage 18.9kmpl Fuel tank capacity 37 litres Brakes Front brake: disc

Rear brake: drum Boot space 260 litres Air conditioner Yes Kerb weight 895 kg

The price for Hyundai Grand i10 NIOS Sportz in Nepal is Rs 3,456,000.
Weber State Team Wins First Place for Energy Performance at International Solar Decathlon

April 19, 2021

Weber State University was honored with first place for Energy Performance and second place for Presentation in the international Solar Decathlon Build Challenge.

The Solar Decathlon is a collegiate competition in which student teams design and build high-performance, low-carbon homes powered by renewables. More than 100 teams, including teams from Yale and Harvard universities, submitted detailed design proposals. From those designs, nine international teams were eventually selected to spend a year building their structures. Teams were judged on their innovation and excellence in architecture and engineering. Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy Jennifer Granholm discussed the importance of the contest during the virtual awards ceremony on Sunday, April 18.

Youve learned how to get things done in the middle of a global pandemic, so the skills you have developed are going to take you far in life, Granholm told the decathletes. The resilience and the dedication that youve shown certainly are signs of a bright future. I hope you all stay in this field because the competition doesnt end here because now we need you to bring those skills to the big decathlon, which is solving the climate crisis.

Under the direction of Building Design & Construction Professor Jeremy Farner, 50 students contributed to build a net-zero home in central Ogden. In addition to Weber State students, Davis Technical College and Ogden-Weber Technical College students worked on the project.

This was a collaborative effort of grand magnitude, Farner said. Along with students from multiple institutions, we collaborated with industry sponsors and Ogden City to make it happen. Nothing of this size or complexity could have been accomplished without the support of an entire community. This accomplishment reflects the effort of many dedicated individuals.

Winning the energy category of an energy competition was very meaningful for the 50 students who were part of the effort.

For us the competition was about the data, and the Energy Performance category data showed we had the most energy efficient home, said Janae Thomas, student project manager. By understanding and utilizing smart building principles, we can ensure a healthy quality of life for our community. We owe a thank you to professor Jeremy Farner for sacrificing family and personal time for the project and the team. We are also very grateful for the support from Weber State University, Wadman Construction and the many, many other sponsors that were essential to our build.

University of Colorado Boulder took first place overall. All the finished projects are easy to tour in the Virtual Village. Normally the finalists projects would be featured during the Smithsonian Folklife Festival at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., but because of the pandemic, the tours, judging and announcement were all moved online.

Weber States net-zero home is located at 2807 Quincy Ave. and is now occupied by Melissa and Mark Haslam and their newborn, Maverick. The Haslams are both Weber State alumni who were selected from a pool of qualified buyers in October 2021, when the home was completed.

The Quincy Avenue home was designed to make the true cost of ownership' affordable by nearly eliminating all energy bills. Energy costs to operate the home are estimated at just over $100 annually or around $9 per month to be connected to the electrical grid. Weber State will monitor power bills for two years to make sure the HVAC and solar systems perform as they were designed.

The 2,540-total square-foot home (1,270 on main and 1,270 in a full basement) has 2,370 finished square feet with six bedrooms, two bathrooms and two family rooms. It incorporates portable battery backup technology to power the homes critical functions for up to 72 hours if the electrical grid were to go down in a natural disaster or emergency. Not only does the solar array generate enough energy to offset the energy usage of the home annually, but it also generates enough electricity to charge an electric vehicle to travel 20 miles per day. Each feature was selected for its availability to homebuilders.

We centered this home on the feasibility of being able to duplicate it in other places, said team member Tyler Bone, Everything is readily available, from the foundation to the electric system to the water heater. We implemented the elements in this house to share with as many other houses as possible.

The plans, the features and a virtual tour are all available to review on the teams website.

The lot was obtained as part of an agreement with Ogden City to show its commitment to revitalize neighborhoods and breathe new life into historic districts. With support from a number of Weber State and Ogden City groups, the university established the Student Construction Capital Revolving Fund. Proceeds on the sale of the home are being reinvested into the fund to continually repeat the process.

I think its important to give thanks to the Department of Energy and the Solar Decathlon for hosting the competition and challenging us to find solutions for the future, said team member Dallin Barton. Thanks also to Weber State and Ogden City for making this opportunity possible.

Most of the student team members have now graduated and are successfully working in industry. They say the most important aspect of this contest was to help design and build a more sustainable future.

This home, with its off-the-shelf energy features really pushes cities, homebuilders and homeowners to see that this could be the future standard for homebuilding, Thomas said.

Visit weber.edu/wsutoday for more news about Weber State University.
Terre Haute, Ind. (WTHI)

Local residents came together to take a stand against suicide. In the third annual "Stand Against Suicide" event, Team of Mercy partnered with 3 Sisters Investments with the goal of spreading more awareness to the community about this important topic.

This year, Mental Health America found that hundreds of thousands of people across the nation are struggling with mental health problems, especially anxiety and depression. In Indiana, a recent study found that suicide is the second leading cause of death in the state.

Christina Christ is the Executive Director of Team of Mercy, a local nonprofit organization. The goal behind this nonprofit is to assist survivors following a suicide attempt.

"Suicide is very real," she said. "It is happening at an alarming rate right here in our community and in the entire Wabash Valley. With next month being mental health awareness month, we really wanted to do something and get ahead of it and promote it now. It is ok to not be ok. We are here to break the stigma, and we want to show what true community means. We just want to spread love."

Over the weekend, dozens of community members rallied behind the organization to spread love and awareness to the community. Residents walked around the 12 points neighborhood, holding signs and spreading encouragement to passing cars.

"There's so much support for individuals who are fighting the silent battle," Mark Baker, one of the founders of 3 Sisters Investments, said. "We want to let people know there is help out there, and they are loved, and there are plenty of resources available."

Residents shared their personal stories, while honoring their loved ones at the event.

"It really hits home with me and her," Abbigail Montgomery, a Team of Mercy volunteer, said. "We lost my mother about three years back. She battled with depression, and we battle it with my family. We miss her every day and we wish she was still here."

The goal of the "Stand Against Suicide" event is to remind everyone that they are not alone and that there are resources out there for you and your loved ones.

If you or a loved one is struggling, Team of Mercy is encouraging you to reach out. Their number is 855-225-5550, and their website is linked here. Additionally, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 800-273-8255.
Russia Expels 20 Czechs After Blast Blamed on Skripal Suspects

MOSCOW/PRAGUEMoscow expelled 20 Czech diplomats on Sunday in a confrontation over Czech allegations that two Russian spies accused of a nerve agent poisoning in Britain in 2018 were behind an earlier explosion at a Czech ammunition depot that killed two people.

Prague had on Saturday ordered out 18 Russian diplomats, prompting Russia to vow on Sunday to force the authors of this provocation to fully understand their responsibility for destroying the foundation of normal ties between our countries.

Moscow gave the Czech diplomats just a day to leave, while Prague had given the Russians 72 hours.

The Czech Republic said it had informed NATO and European Union allies that it suspected Russia of causing the 2014 blast, and European Union foreign ministers were set to discuss the matter at their meeting on Monday.

The U.S. State Department commended Pragues firm response to Russias subversive actions on Czech soil.

The row is the biggest between Prague and Moscow since the end of decades of Soviet domination of eastern Europe in 1989.

A policeman walks by a poster attached by protesters to a gate of the Russian embassy in Prague, Czech Republic, on April 16, 2021. (Petr David Josek/AP Photo)

It also adds to growing tensions between Russia and the West in general, raised in part by Russias military build-up on its Western borders and in Crimea, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014, after a surge in fighting between government and pro-Russian forces in Ukraines east.

Russia said Pragues accusations were absurd as it had previously blamed the blast at Vrbetice, 300 km (210 miles) east of the capital, on the depots owners.

It called the expulsions the continuation of a series of anti-Russian actions undertaken by the Czech Republic in recent years, accusing Prague of striving to please the United States against the backdrop of recent U.S. sanctions against Russia.

Arms Shipment

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said the attack had been aimed at a shipment to a Bulgarian arms trader.

This was an attack on ammunition that had already been paid for and was being stored for a Bulgarian arms trader, he said on Czech Television.

He said the arms trader, whom he did not name, had later been the target of an attempted murder.

Bulgarian prosecutors charged three Russian men in 2020 with an attempt to kill arms trader Emilian Gebrev, who was identified by Czech media as the same individual. Reuters was unable to reach Gebrev for comment.

Czech police said two men using the names Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov had travelled to the Czech Republic days before the arms depot blast.

Ruslan Boshirov (L) and Alexander Petrov attend their first public appearance in an interview with the RT channel in Moscow, Russia, in this video grab provided by the RT channel on Sept. 13, 2018. (RT channel video via AP)

Those names were the aliases used by the two Russian GRU military intelligence officers wanted by Britain for the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok in the English city of Salisbury in 2018. The Skripals survived, but a member of the public died.

The Kremlin denied involvement in that incident, and the attackers remain at large.

Czech interior and acting foreign minister Jan Hamacek said police knew about the two people from the beginning, but only found out when the Salisbury attack happened that they are members of the GRU, that Unit 29155.

Hamacek said Prague would ask Moscow for assistance in questioning them, but did not expect it to cooperate.

Dangerous and Malign

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab tweeted that the Czechs have exposed the lengths that the GRU will go to in their attempts to conduct dangerous and malign operations.

A NATO official said the alliance would support the Czech Republic as it investigated Russias malign activities, which were part of a pattern of dangerous behavior.

Those responsible must be brought to justice, added the official, who declined to be named.

The United States imposed sanctions against Russia on Thursday for interfering in last years U.S. election, cyber hacking, bullying Ukraine and other actions, prompting Moscow to retaliate.

On Sunday, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Washington had told Moscow there will be consequences if Alexei Navalny, the opposition figurehead who almost died last year after being given a toxin that Western experts say was Novichok, dies in prison, where he is on hunger strike.

The 2014 incident has resurfaced at an awkward time for Prague and Moscow.

The Czech Republic is planning to put the construction of a new nuclear power plant at its Dukovany complex out to tender.

Security services have demanded that Russias Rosatom be excluded as a security risk, while President Milos Zeman and other senior officials have been putting Russias case.

In a text message, Industry Minister Karel Havlicek, who was previously in favor of including Russia, told Reuters: The probability that Rosatom will participate in the expansion of Dukovany is very low.

By Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber and Robert Muller
Next the vegetables: Should we choose Oro Blanco heirloom grapefruit with shaved kohlrabi, shiso and sansho peppers? Spring lettuces with miso-date dressing, sunflower seeds and mint? Asparagus glazed in butter with seaweed, miner's lettuce, and grilled nettles? Or grilled Swiss chard, stuffed with celtuce (Chinese lettuce, also called celery lettuce), radish and herbs?

"I like the asparagus," our server admitted.

It was slivered, barely sauteed so it retained its crunch, and mingled with the other vegetables, it was as delectable a dish as I'd ever tasted. If chefs keep creating these dishes that are pure magic, going to plant-based dining for sake of the planet will never be a problem.

The main course? My dining companion had promptly settled on the roasted halibut, a choice in which the server concurred, as he had just tasted it: superbly fresh and so carefully prepared as to retain its sweetness and its moisture. It came drizzled with a sabayon and accompanied by charred leeks with hazelnuts.

For myself, I was torn: Grilled black cod with mahogany clams in a green garlic broth? Or what about smoked lamb ribs in a pistachio romesco? "It takes 45 minutes," the server said, "but I'd order the roast chicken."
China in action to make COVID-19 vaccines global public good

(CGTN) 14:51, April 19, 2021

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu speaks at a virtual ministerial meeting held by the United Nations Economic and Social Council themed "A Vaccine for All," April 16, 2021. /Chinese Foreign Ministry

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu said Friday that China is fulfilling its solemn commitment to make COVID-19 vaccines a global public good with practical actions.

Ma made the remarks at a virtual ministerial meeting held by the United Nations Economic and Social Council themed "A Vaccine for All." The meeting brought together senior officials from the UN, government, business, the scientific community and civil society, who explored ways to guarantee equal access to the vaccine as a global public good, and to strengthen countries' readiness for its distribution.

China is providing vaccine aid to 80 countries, exporting vaccines to more than 40 countries, and cooperating with more than 10 nations in vaccine research, development and production, said Ma, adding that the safety and efficacy of China's vaccines are widely recognized.

China has officially joined COVAX, and quickly responded to the COVID-19 ACT Accelerator initiative to promote equitable and reasonable global distribution of vaccines, Ma noted.

Stressing that everyone has equal access to vaccines, Ma said all countries should strengthen international solidarity and cooperation, adhere to fairness and justice, eliminate the vaccine divide, and resolutely resist vaccine nationalism and political manipulation.

We should promote practical cooperation, strengthen communication, promote vaccines as a global public good, and jointly build a community of common health for mankind, Ma underscored.

(Web editor: Xian Jiangnan, Liang Jun)
Buldhana: The row between Shiv Sena and Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) over Remdesivir supply in Maharashtra takes an ugly turn with the ruling party MLA claiming that if he finds the novel coronavirus he will put it in former Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis' mouth.

The Shiv Sena MLA in question Sanjay Gaikwad said will out the coronavirus into the mouth of BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis when he finds it. His remark has sparked protests by the opposition party in the state.

Talking to reporters in Mumbai on Saturday, Gaikwad, the MLA from Buldhana, accused the BJP leaders of mocking the ruling party and ensuring how the alliance government (comprising the Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress) fails.

"Hence, if I would have found the coronavirus, I would have put it into the mouth of Devendra Fadnavis," he was qouted as saying by .

Former Maharashtra chief minister Fadnavis is being targeted by the ruling parties for objecting to Mumbai police's grilling of a pharma company's top executive over alleged stocking of vials of Remdesivir.

Gaikwad alleged that Fadnavis, and BJP leaders Pravin Darekar and Chandrakant Patil were doing petty politics over the pandemic and distribution of Remdesivir injections.

The Shiv Sena leader charged that the Centre had asked Remdesivir manufacturing companies in Maharashtra to not supply the anit-viral drug to the state and accused them of providing Remdesivir injections to Gujarat and supplying 50,000 vials of the drug to that state free of cost from a BJP office in Maharashtra.

"Such low and petty politics is being done by the central government and Fadnavis," he said.

Following Gaikwad's remarks, BJP workers staged protests at various places in Buldhana on Sunday and burnt the MLA's effigies.

Meanwhile, Fadnavis on Sunday said he has not done anything wrong and was not afraid of any inquiry against him.
Alhaji Mohammed Shukurulah Bamba, a stalwart of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Northern Region, has appealed to party members to unanimously endorse vice President Dr (Alhaji) Mahamudu Bawumia as the party's 2024 presidential candidate.



He said Dr Bawumia was the only winsome candidate who could help the party to retain power.



"If we make a mistake and replace the vice president, there will be mass defections, especially from the North," he warned.



Alhaj Bamba told the GNA that Dr Bawumia was the brain behind the party winning the 2016 election and retaining the same in 2020, adding that it would be suicidal if he was not given the mandate to lead the party.



"Already some people have the perception that NPP never wants people of Northern extraction to lead the party. Such perceptions will be confirmed if Dr Bawumia is dropped just as happened to the late Alhaji Aliu Mahama," he explained.



"We are all witnesses to the role the vice president played in the campaign history of the NPP. Had it not been him, we would've been in opposition by now and we need to reward him by endorsing him to replace Nana Akufo-Addo," he said.



Alhaj Bamba said politics was about numbers and that Dr Bawumia had a large following nationwide, which members of the party must not underrate.



He said it was important for the leadership of the NPP not to lose grips on the North and that the surest way to maintain and increase votes from the Northern sector was not to abandon Dr Bawumia.



"Many of us will not hesitate to join other parties or stop active politics if Dr Bawumia is dropped. I am the founder of Bawumia Fun Club and a one-time NASARA aspirant and we have a lot of supporters across the board", he said.



"There are many of us who worked and are still working behind the scenes to always ensure victory for the party because of Bawumia and though our efforts had never been recognized, for the love for the party, we shall continue to give out our best," he said.



He claimed that it was only Dr Bawumia who could retain power for the NPP to break the eight-year term jinx in the country and asked those campaigning or endorsing other persons to have a second look at the situation since Dr Bawumia was the grassroots person and deserved to lead the party into the 2024 elections for victory.

Source: GNA









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Featured Video
The two-way quarantine-free travel bubble between Australia and New Zealand has lifted off with the first flight leaving the Brisbane Airport at 9.35am on Monday.

Seven flights to Auckland were scheduled on Monday and six arrival flights were expected.

Brisbane Airport Corporation spokeswoman Rachel Bronish said the terminal was already buzzing from just seeing 250 passengers a day to expecting more than 2000 passengers a day.

Its amazing to be here at the international terminal, which has been a shadow of its former self in the past 12 months, she said.
A 14-year-old boy from Algiers who was found shot in Harvey a week ago died Sunday night, according to the Jefferson Parish Coroner's Office.

Laquinn Nicholas had been hospitalized at University Medical Center in New Orleans since he was wounded April 10 in the 4000 block of South Dells Street in Harvey.

Man shot and killed in Metairie Sunday night A man was shot and killed in the 3600 block of Lausat Street (map) in Metairie Sunday night, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office said.

The shooting was reported just before 2 p.m., according to Capt. Jason Rivarde, a spokesman for the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office.

The Sheriff's Office has not released many details about the case. What is known is that a vehicle crashed into a mailbox on South Dells Street, authorities said.

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

An undisclosed number of people got out of that car, including Nicholas. But he collapsed shortly after exiting the vehicle, according to Rivarde. The Sheriff's Office did not disclose when investigators suspect the shooting occurred, before or after the teen got out of the vehicle.

Laquinn was taken to the hospital in critical condition. An autopsy later determined the teen died of multiple gunshot wounds, said Coroner's Office spokesperson Mark Bone.

No arrests have been made in the case.

Anyone with information about the shooting death of Laquinn Nicholas is asked to call the Sheriff's Office investigations bureau at 504-364-5300. The public can also call Crimestoppers at 504-822-1111 or toll-free at 1-877-903-7867. Callers do not have to give their names or testify and can earn a reward of up to $2,500 for information that leads to an indictment.
IRVING, Texas, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- 7Eleven, Inc., the premier name in convenience-retailing, will collect and donate non-perishable food items during the month of April for local communities throughout the Northeastern United States. 7-Eleven is encouraging customers in the participating states to donate shelf-stable food items to their local participating 7-Eleven store. Donations will be divided between five Feeding America member food banks in the Northeast.

The initiative was created in conjunction with National Volunteer Month, and all participating stores in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont will be equipped to collect items for direct donation to local Feeding America member food banks.

"The past year has proven the importance of community and taking care of one another," said Sembe T. Cole, North Atlantic Zone Vice President for 7-Eleven. "We are proud to have 7-Eleven Franchisees and employees committed to giving back to community members in need, and look forward to finding new, creative ways to involve our entire zone in similar opportunities in the future."

7-Eleven has a longstanding history of supporting Feeding America and hunger relief causes. In February, the convenience retailer announced a campaign to help provide meals to families facing hunger through its relationship with Feeding America. As part of the program, customers can round up their purchases in-store and through the 7NOW delivery app to the nearest dollar to donate the difference in change to Feeding America. For every large Big Gulp fountain drink, Slurpee drink or cup of coffee purchased at participating stores each Friday through April 27, 7-Eleven will also help provide a meal to the Feeding America network of food banks.

*7-Eleven, Inc. will help provide 1 meal to Feeding America for every large coffee, Slurpee and Big Gulp drink purchased at participating 7-Eleven locations each Friday from 2/26/21 through 4/24/21 3:00AM CT (max. 275,000 meals per Friday and 2.5 million meals during promotion) to benefit member food banks. 1 bev purchased helps provide 1 meal; $1 helps provide at least 10 meals secured by Feeding America on behalf of member food banks. See 7-eleven.com/lp/feeding-america for more information.

About 7-Eleven, Inc.

Are you still reading this? Awesome. Most people stop when they get to the small print. But not you! You get to read the cool stuff. 7-Eleven, Inc. is the premier name and largest chain in the convenience-retailing industry. They don't like to brag, but they invented convenience stores. For real. Google it. Based in Irving, Texas, 7-Eleven operates, franchises and/or licenses more than 70,000 stores in 17 countries, including 11,800 in North America. Known for its iconic brands such as Slurpee, Big Bite and Big Gulp, 7-Eleven has expanded into high-quality sandwiches, salads, side dishes, cut fruit and protein boxes, as well as pizza, chicken wings and mini beef tacos. Mmmmm, tacos. 7-Eleven offers customers industry-leading private brand products under the 7-Select brand including healthy options, decadent treats, and everyday favorites, at an outstanding value. Customers can earn and redeem points on various items in stores nationwide through its 7Rewards loyalty program with more than 34 million members, place an order in the 7NOW delivery app in over 35 participating markets, or rely on 7-Eleven for bill payment service, self-service lockers and other convenient services. Find out more online at www.7-Eleven.com, via the 7Rewards customer loyalty platform on the 7-Eleven mobile app, or on social media at Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Also, they trademarked the word "Brainfreeze." No lie. Thanks for sticking with this. You're unstoppable.

SOURCE 7-Eleven, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.7-eleven.com


Zurich, Switzerland -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/19/2021 -- According to new stability evidence assessed by Swissmedic, (the Swiss surveillance authority for medicines and medical devices) the COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech efficacy can be assured for up to two weeks when stored at -25 to -15 degrees Celsius (freezer temperature). This is a critical factor for the Swiss vaccine rollout programme, enabling the vaccines to be available in health centres, medical practices and pharmacies throughout Switzerland. This increase in the elasticity and adaptability of the distribution as well as the handling and management of the vaccine - is likely to help increase Switzerland's vaccination rate.



From research and development through to commercial introduction and pharmacovigilance, EPM Scientific provide permanent, contract and multi-hire recruiting options to fully cover the production system. The Swiss team are predominantly based in Zurich and have an unmatched understanding of the life sciences market throughout the country, operating as a leading life science recruitment agency. The dedicated consultancy team of the corporation are located in more than 12 offices around the world, giving them a global presence as well as fantastic local expertise. EPM Scientific is the preferred recruiting partner for hundreds of world-leading firms internationally as part of the Phaidon International Group. They have established a community of one million mid-to-senior level professionals to link ambitious individuals with their desired career. To ensure that the best-in-class recruitment methodology is being used to deliver the best possible results for clients and applicants, the firm has invested heavily in the frequent training of its staff and consultants.



EPM Scientific has extensive proven expertise in Switzerland, which is not limited by physical borders and the Zurich team is part of a 750-strong international workforce that gives EPM Scientific a reach across more than 60 global countries. Wherever the firm operates globally, the focus is always on designing intelligent and long-lasting recruitment solutions that connect talented people with businesses and careers where they can thrive. EPM Scientific consultants have extensive expertise in clinical jobs, including clinical development and clinical operations. The team also works specifically in commercial, medical communications, medical affairs and quality roles. 2020 proved to be a year of challenge for those in clinical jobs - but great opportunity too. Leveraging technology and ongoing training, the firm was able to ensure consultants were able to continue to provide exceptional support, despite pandemic conditions.



Dedicated consultants create bespoke recruitment solutions that help to ignite innovation and growth in a range of client businesses, from agile start-ups to global names in the sector. As such the firm has established an extensive network over the years, connecting with millions of talented individuals who have the experience and skillset to make a real difference. There is currently a very wide range of roles available via EPM Scientific in locations across the country, these include: Head of Regulatory Affairs, Senior Sales Representative Orthopaedics, Senior Plant Engineer, Sales Manager (software sales), IVD Quality Manager, Process Engineer, NPD Quality Engineer, Regulatory Affairs Specialists, Director of Biostatistics and Senior Medical Science Liaison to name just a few.



"Like many sectors, 2020 marked a defining moment for recruitment. Challenged by uncertainty, but unwavering in our commitment to our clients, we enter 2021 with a sense of duty to clients and candidates", commented Luis Rolim, Global Marketing Director at EPM Scientific. He went onto say, "as we reflect on the challenges of virtually securing and retaining talent, we're inspired by a team who have demonstrated a remarkable ability to adapt and continue to help all our clients secure top talent on a global scale."



To find out more information about Clinical Jobs in Switzerland visit https://www.epmscientific.ch



For any media enquiries please contact Gary Elliott at Iconic Digital  020 7100 0726.



For all other enquiries please contact EPM Scientific CH: +41 44 542 12 50.



For more information about EPM Scientific CH services, please go to https://www.epmscientific.ch.



About EPM Scientific CH

EPM Scientific CH has a reach that extends to more than 60 countries internationally. The firm is a Life Sciences specialist, reimagining the way that recruitment is handled in this innovative sector.
SEOUL  Pride and jealousy have driven North and South Korea to engage in propaganda shouting matches and compete over who could build a taller flagpole on their border. Now that one-upmanship is intensifying a much more dangerous side of their rivalry: the arms race.

Earlier this month, South Koreas dream of building its own supersonic fighter jet was realized when it unveiled the KF-21, developed at a cost of $7.8 billion. The country also recently revealed plans to acquire dozens of new American combat helicopters. When President Moon Jae-in visited the Defense Ministrys Agency for Defense Development last year, he said South Korea had developed a short-range ballistic missile with one of the largest warheads in the world.

Unlike North Korea, the South lacks nuclear weapons. But in recent years the country has revved up its military spending, procuring American stealth jets and building increasingly powerful conventional missiles capable of targeting North Korean missile facilities and war bunkers.
HARRISBURG, Pa., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- On Friday, April 16, the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board (PLRB) issued a decision in favor of the university workers' right to organize and join a union. The officers of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, President Rick Bloomingdale, and Secretary-Treasurer Frank Snyder issued the following statement on behalf of the State Federation's Executive Council:

"This decision is the most recent reaffirmation of Pitt workers' rights in their years-long fight to join a union. The Pennsylvania AFL-CIO calls on the University of Pittsburgh to respect the legally recognized rights of its university workers. The University has resorted to an age-old tactic of anti-union employers with their attempt to flood the bargaining unit and dilute the community of interest. It is time for this obstructionism to stop. The University of Pittsburgh must follow the directive of the PLRB and finally let the workers decide, not Pitt."

SOURCE PA AFL-CIO

Related Links

www.paaflcio.org


Officials at a South African national park said yesterday that a man who was suspected of being a poacher was killed by a herd elephants on Saturday.

In a news release, South African National Parks reported the man died in Kruger National Park and another man was arrested on Saturday, April 17.

The men were running from rangers when they ran into a breeding herd of elephants. The men were reportedly attempting to poach rhinoceros.

The park said rangers were on routine patrol when they saw three individuals who ran. The rangers called for air and K9 support.

When they [realized] they had been spotted, the suspected poachers dropped an axe and a bag with their provisions in an attempt to escape from the rangers, park officials said

One of the men was arrested and told the rangers hat the group had run into a herd of elephants and was not sure if his accomplice had managed to escape. The Rangers discovered his accomplice badly trampled and unfortunately succumbed to his injuries.

The third suspect is said to have been injured in the eye but continued to flee. A rifle was recovered and the case was referred to police, who together with the pathology team attended to the scene.

Gareth Coleman, managing executive of Kruger National Park, said, We are proud of the teamwork and dedication of our Rangers Corp, our aviators and the K9 unit. It is unfortunate that a life was unnecessarily lost. Only through discipline, teamwork and tenacity will we be able to help stem the tide of rhino poaching in KNP.

READ MORE
Ghana and Cocoa Chocolate companies announced an agreement to accelerate collaboration to protect and restore forests in cocoa-growing areas.



With this agreement, the World Cocoa Foundation (WCF) and the Forestry Commission of Ghana (GFC) are building a partnership to further align the Ghana Cocoa Forest REDD+ Program (GCFRP) and the Cocoa & Forests Initiative to achieve no deforestation commitments.



The Memorandum of Understanding, signed by GFC and WCF, commits the parties to working together in six regions where the government of Ghana has made action to protect and restore forests a priority.



The work in these Hotspot Intervention areas has already started, with active engagements in the Asunafo-Asutifi, Bia-Juaboso, Kakum and Sefwi-Bibiani landscapes.



It is aligned with commitments spelled out in the Ghana framework for action signed in November 2017 for the landmark Cocoa & Forests Initiative, a unique partnership of 35 companies, governments and cocoa-growing communities.



As part of the Memorandum of Understanding, GFC will facilitate the development of strategic initiatives, collaborate on protocols for data collection and ensure stronger monitoring on social and environmental issues.



WCF is responsible for facilitating the coordination and convening the actions of the 35 cocoa and chocolate companies that have signed the Cocoa & Forests Initiative. WCF will also support monitoring and evaluation, innovation and private-public learning.



In his remarks, the Chief Executive of the GFC, John Allotey said, this partnership represents a phenomenal collaboration with the private sector to ambitiously contribute to real and verifiable emission reductions in Ghanas precious forest landscapes which are home to diverse forms of wildlife and also provide important livelihood options for rural dwellers. The GCFRP is already achieving significant impacts with inclusive governance arrangements and the GFC encourages other like-minded institutions to strategically partner with the program for visible impact at scale.



With our partner GFC, we aim to accelerate our journey towards forest positive cocoa, said Richard Scobey, WCFs President.



Ending cocoa-related deforestation requires all stakeholders to work together. Today, WCF and cocoa and chocolate companies are strengthening our collaboration with the government of Ghana.



On the Cocoa & Forests Initiative (CFI)



The Cocoa & Forests is a public-private partnership to end cocoa-related deforestation and forest degradation and promote forest restoration. 35 cocoa and chocolate companies and governments collaborate within the framework of CFI with other stakeholders such as NGOs, farmer organizations and civil society organizations on the development and implementation of business-driven solutions.



In 2020, cocoa and chocolate companies announced major strides towards 2022 Cocoa & Forests



Initiative targets with, for example, more than 4 million tree seedlings distributed to farmers to establish agroforestry systems and reforest degraded forests in Cote dIvoire and Ghana.



The Cocoa & Forests Initiative contributes to Sustainable Development Goals 13 (Climate Action) and 15 (Life on Land) and is aligned with the Paris Climate Agreement.







Source: Naomi Obenewaa Abrokwa/Peace FM News









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 Ghana Health Service has assured Ghanaians the second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine will arrive in May this year.



The country had its first batch of the vaccine in March.



Six hundred thousand (600,000) vaccines were procured by the government and frontline health workers, government officials and the media among other selected categories of people received the first dose awaiting their second jab to complete the vaccine effectiveness in protecting them against the Coronavirus disease.



The receivers of the vaccines expected their second dose to commence in April but the vaccines are not yet in.



Speaking in an interview with Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo' host Kwami Sefa Kayi, Dr. Patrick Kuma Aboagye, Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, stated emphatically that he is "pretty sure that, looking at all the arrangement that is ongoing, we will have them in May''.



He urged the receivers to keep their fingers crossed for their second dose in May.





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 Marine Corps' decision to put a general in charge of the office that investigates serious claims of wrongdoing after he was found to bear some responsibility for training failures leading to a fatal accident that killed nine troops is under scrutiny from lawmakers.

Maj. Gen. Robert Castellvi's assignment as Marine Corps inspector general was sharply questioned by a California lawmaker last week. Castellvi was testifying before the House Armed Services' military personnel subcommittee Thursday when Rep. Jackie Speier, a California Democrat, told him she had met with the nine families who lost loved ones when their amphibious assault vehicle sank off San Diego's coast in July.

"I'm not going to make a big deal about this ... but I don't quite understand how someone gets elevated to the position of inspector general after being in charge of that particular disaster," Speier said in the final moments of Thursday's hearing.

Read Next: 'Super Corvette:' Former Navy Secretary Reveals He Pushed to Rename Littoral Combat Ship

Castellvi was 1st Marine Division's commanding general when the accident occurred. The investigation into the incident, released last month, stated that Castellvi bore "some responsibility" over the AAV platoon not completing a readiness evaluation before the training exercise.

Speier did not give Castellvi a chance to respond before Thursday's hearing was adjourned. The general declined to respond to a request for comment from Military.com on her remarks.

"Major General Castellvi was best qualified and suited for the assignment," Capt. Andrew Wood, a spokesman at the Pentagon, said when asked about the service's response to Speier's comments.

Lt. Gen. Steven Rudder, head of Marine Corps Forces Pacific, wrote in the investigation into the AAV accident that, had training requirements been met beforehand, the crew and embarked troops "may have been better prepared and responded more quickly as the mishap unfolded."

Despite that, Rudder ultimately decided that Castellvi should not be reprimanded. The general then became inspector general of the Marine Corps about two months after the accident. In that role, Castellvi serves as the service's top watchdog overseeing investigations and allegations of wrongdoing.

Speier is not alone in having concerns about Castellvi's assignment. Rep. John Garamendi, another California Democrat, told Military.com this month he also has questions about Castellvi.

Garamendi is calling on Marine Commandant Gen. David Berger to testify about the AAV sinking and other fatal accidents before the House Armed Services readiness subcommittee on May 3.

"We have enough information now to call to account the Marine Corps, certainly including those who are immediately responsible," Garamendi said. "And that's why I want the commandant there."

The Marine Corps announced this month a new review into the lead-up to the fatal accident, which could leave Castellvi and other senior leaders being held to account. Families whose sons were in the doomed AAV say that not enough senior leaders were held accountable for the troubling series of failures before the accident.

The Marine Corps determined the accident was preventable. Mechanical, training and leadership failures were all identified as reasons the AAV sank.

Michael McDowell, the father of 1st Lt. H. Conor McDowell, noted in an opinion piece for Military.com that Castellvi also oversaw his son's unit when it experienced a separate 2019 training accident. McDowell's son was killed when his light armored vehicle rolled over.

Two officers, a colonel and a lieutenant colonel, were relieved of command after the AAV accident, but more senior leaders have not been punished, McDowell noted.

"Castellvi is now Inspector General of the Marine Corps, the top officer heading investigations and inquiries into such fiascos as the AAV drowning deaths," McDowell wrote. "Why no penalty for the two-star?"

When Castellvi relinquished command of 1st Marine Division in September, he was heralded for his leadership by his superior, Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl, the head of I Marine Expeditionary Force.

"[Castellvi] has been exceptional from readiness across the board," Heckl said during the ceremony, according to the Orange County Register. "He raised the bar and put this division where it needs to be.

"Are you leaving this command in a better place than you found it?" Heckl added. "That's an unequivocal 'Yes.'"

-- Gina Harkins can be reached at gina.harkins@military.com. Follow her on Twitter @ginaaharkins.

Related: 'Tragic Mishap Was Preventable': How the Marines Failed 9 Troops Whose 35-Year-Old AAV Sank in the Pacific
Australia's Covid-19 vaccination program is expected to undergo a 'big reset' with details to be announced on Thursday.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison met with state and territory leaders on Monday for national cabinet, with a further meeting scheduled for Thursday.

In a statement issued following the meeting, Mr Morrison said the leaders had agreed in-principle to a series of changes to the vaccination strategy to be considered at the next meeting.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has teased a 'big reset' of Australia's vaccination program after leaders met at a national cabinet meeting on Monday

'(That will include) options to bring forward the commencement of vaccinations for over 50 year olds under the priority group 2a, and the readiness of more state and territory-operated vaccination sites including mass vaccination sites, as vaccine supplies increase,' he said.

The national cabinet backed GPs continuing to be the primary model of rolling out vaccinations for over-50s, with states and territories to consider options to supplement rollout through expanded state vaccination centres.

'The commonwealth will continue to finalise the vaccination of residential aged care facility residents with Pfizer using an in-reach model,' he said.

Emerging from the meeting, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told reporters in Brisbane there had been a 'good discussion' about the vaccine rollout.

'It's a big reset on the vaccine rollout,' she said, adding that 'firm decisions' would be announced later in the week.

'Everyone went into that room with the right attitude.'

The national strategy's priority will remain vaccinating people in the 1a and 1b groups, with all states to prioritise the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine for over-50s.

States and territories will consider options to supplement the vaccine rollout through expanded state vaccination centres following in Victoria's lead, pictured: Melbourne's Convention Centre

The series of changes to the vaccine rollout will be put forward for approval in a second national cabinet meeting on Thursday

Asked about a proposal floated to allow Australians returning from overseas to undertake home quarantine, Ms Palaszczuk said no formal proposal was put.

'Our hotel quarantine has worked incredibly well to date.'

Tasmania has flagged a specific role in the reset, offering to vaccinate aged care and disability workers which were to be covered by the federal program.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian earlier said everyone should be 'far less rigid' in the approach to the vaccine rollout.

'Given we know that there's no issue with anyone over 50 having the AstraZeneca and there is considerable supply in Australia at the moment, that we need to really crack on with it,' she said.

'We have got the capacity for the mass vaccination hubs.'

Mr Morrison said ahead of the meeting there were strong arguments to bring forward the date of vaccinating those over 50.

Under the vaccination plan designed by the federal government last year, there are five stages.

The national strategy's priority will remain vaccinating people in the 1a and 1b groups, with all states to prioritise the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine for over-50s

Victoria on Wednesday will resume its rollout of the AstraZeneca shot to eligible people under 50, after it was paused on April 9 due to the blood clot issue

Phase 1a and 1b, currently underway across the country, include aged care, disability, quarantine and health care workers, as well as aged care residents.

Anyone with an underlying medical condition, significant disability, or aged over 70 - over 55 for Indigenous Australians - are also eligible to receive a jab.

Following this Phase 2a and 2b will include adults aged 60-69 years old, adults aged 50-59 years old, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people 18-54, other critical or high-risk workers and then unvaccinated Australians from previous phases.

However, medical advice updated earlier this month recommended AstraZeneca - the 'workhorse' of the rollout - be scrapped as the preference for people under 50, due to the risk of a rare blood clot disorder.

The Melbourne Exhibition Centre (pictured) is another building operating as one of Victoria's mass vaccination centres

That has left many states with spare doses.

Federal Labor health spokesman Mark Butler said there were serious issues with the flow of vaccine supplies, which needed fixing.

'I have talked to a number of providers, big GP clinics, state clinics - they are set up to do very big numbers of vaccinations,' he said.

'Some are getting 50 or 100 doses per week. That is nowhere near enough.'

Victoria on Wednesday will resume its rollout of the AstraZeneca shot to eligible people under 50, after it was paused on April 9 due to the blood clot issue.

Three mass vaccination sites offering the AstraZeneca vaccine will also open their doors on Wednesday to Victorians in phase 1a and 1b.

Australia has administered 1.59 million jabs so far.
Brisbane City Council will meet with residents over a contentious development in the citys south, on land with significant environmental value and an earlier approved development.

Plans for the residential care facility, health and childcare centre on Underwood Road, Eight Mile Plains, have hit significant community opposition, with calls for the council to acquire the land under its bushland preservation fund.

An artists impression of the view from the western side of the proposed development towards the Underwood Road entry. Credit:Development.i

The Brisbane Islamic Centre proposal would be situated on the north-western corner of the land at 161 Underwood Road, which runs along the western side of the Gateway Motorway and links to parkland further to the east and north.

Approval for a mosque on the southern section of the site, which is cut roughly in half by Bulimba Creek, was granted after a lengthy court battle with the council which initially refused the plans in 2014.
Readers of The Portable Creek will not only laugh, and likely shed a tear here or there, but theyll also feel inspired to reflect on their own cherished memories of family and friends whove made meaningful marks on their lives.

Keith Huffman invites readers on a celebration of small-town, Southern nostalgia and other shenanigans within the pages of The Portable Creek (published by Archway Publishing).

This is a family memoir, of sorts, told one newspaper column at a time, a variety of memories stitched together like a patchwork quilt. So writes Huffman in describing his collection of rich Southern memories that elevate the extraordinary feats and antics of ordinary country folk. These stories range from bootlegging shenanigans, jailhouse dramas, and teachings of backroad skepticism, to a drunken cage match with a Sipsey Swamp wild cat that earned one lucky man $50 and a new suit of clothes. Other highlights include multiple examples of homespun country engineering, plus the heartfelt reminiscing of how one ornery old coots dying wish was to get baptized by the very country preacher who had been determined to save his soul for decades. The book also includes other newspaper features that Huffman has written over the years, between West and East Alabama, sharing genuine examples of Southern hearts, tragedies, and triumphs.

Readers of The Portable Creek will not only laugh, and likely shed a tear here or there, but theyll also feel inspired to reflect on their own cherished memories of family and friends whove made meaningful marks on their lives. Old family albums will be revisited, and many readers will certainly grab their phones or take trips to see their grandparents and other special relatives, all so they can absorb unique details from their own family histories, the author says.

The Portable Creek will appeal to readers seeking true anecdotes about small-town life, ordinary citizens facing daily challenges against incredible odds, and the beloved settings from a bygone era never to pass this way again. Visit https://www.archwaypublishing.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/813115-the-portable-creek to purchase a copy.

The Portable Creek

By Keith Huffman

Hardcover | 5.5 x 8.5in | 268 pages | ISBN 9781480896260

Softcover | 5.5 x 8.5in | 268 pages | ISBN 9781480896277

E-Book | 268 pages | ISBN 9781480896284

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the Author

Keith Huffman is a licensed professional counselor who helps his clients cope with and overcome psychological hardships. A graduate of the University of Alabama, he also has worked as a journalist, writing for the Pickens County Herald and Opelika-Auburn News, where he contributes a feature column on Southern nostalgia and other shenanigans. Keith lives with his family in Alabama.

Simon & Schuster, a company with nearly ninety years of publishing experience, has teamed up with Author Solutions, LLC, the worldwide leader in self-publishing, to create Archway Publishing. With unique resources to support books of all kind, Archway Publishing offers a specialized approach to help every author reach his or her desired audience. For more information, visit archwaypublishing.com or call 844-669-3957.
Syrians will be called to cast their ballots next month in the countrys second presidential election since the start of the devastating civil war in 2011.

By Linda Bordoni

The announcement was made by the Parliament Speaker on Sunday, who set 26 May as election day. In a statement, the Speaker also said Syrians abroad will be able to vote at embassies on May 20.

Prospective candidates, he added, can hand in their applications from Monday, but they must have lived in Syria continuously for at least 10 years. This means that opposition figures in exile, fighting to end decades of Assad family rule will not be able to stand.

Millions of refugees displaced by the 10-year conflict will also not be eligible to cast their votes.

President Bashar al-Assad, who took power following the death of his father Hafez in 2000, has not yet officially announced he will stand for re-election, but he is expected to do so.

He won the previous election in 2014, three years after a violent crackdown on anti-government protesters and amid the raging conflict. At the time, he was given nearly 90 percent of the vote.

Since then, Russias military intervention has helped Assad to regain large swathes of land from opposition fighters, who now control a small pocket of land in the countrys north-western region.

Assads Baath party won an expected majority in Syrias parliamentary elections last year, denounced as undemocratic by the opposition, and next months poll is widely seen as most likely to keep the current President in power.
The prosecutor handling the Daunte Wright case has spoken for the first time after 150 protesters descended on his home on Saturday night.

Demonstrators spent three hours at Peter Orput's Stillwater, Minnesota, home and demanded that Wright's killer Kimberly Potter face murder charges over his death.

But speaking in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Washington County Attorney Orput, 65, said he is prepared to go all out to get a conviction and denied 'going easy on her because she's a cop'.

Orput told DailyMail.com: 'I'd just ask, have faith in me as a prosecutor. I'm not giving anything away.

'I'm not trying to say, well she's a cop, I'm going to give her a break. I'm saying I'll present the evidence like I have in the 350 jury trials I've done in my career and I'm going to ask the jury to do the right thing.

'And I think the right thing is to convict her of second-degree manslaughter.'

Peter Orput, the prosecutor handling Daunte Wright's case, told DailyMail.com, 'I'd just ask, have faith in me as a prosecutor. I'm not giving anything away'

Orput spoke for the first time as demonstrators spent three hours protesting outside his home in Stillwater, Minnesota Saturday night

Kimberly Potter, 48, was arrested Wednesday and charged over the killing of Daunte Wright, 20, during a traffic stop last week

Potter, 48, was arrested Wednesday and charged over the killing of Wright, 20, during a traffic stop last week.

Bodycam footage taken during the stop shows her screaming 'taser, taser, taser' before she shoots Wright once in the chest.

She is then heard shouting, 'Holy s***! I shot him' as a fatally injured Wright drives away. He crashed his car a few blocks away and died at the scene.

His death, which came during the second week of ex-cop Derek Chauvin's trial over his part in the death of George Floyd, sparked mass protests.

The case is being prosecuted by Orput, who is the county attorney for neighboring Washington County, because of Potter's links to the Hennepin County prosecutors with whom she had worked closely before resigning on Tuesday.

Prior to his election to his current role in 2010, he worked as an assistant county attorney for Hennepin County where he specialized in prosecuting violent crime.

Orput had previously refused to speak about the case but decided to talk to protesters outside his three-bedroom home that he shares with wife Tami, 57, and their three children.

He told DailyMail.com: 'There was a protest. Some I respected. They were peaceful, honorable and they wanted to let me know what their feelings are.

'I'm ok with that. In fact, I was so ok with it, I went out to talk to them. I let them know what the legal issues are and they wanted to tell me, they want justice.

'And I said I'll get you just as much justice as I can out of this particular case. That's it.'

Orput had previously refused to speak about the case but decided to talk to protesters outside his three-bedroom home that he shares with wife Tami, 57, and their three children

The protestors demanded that Wright's killer Kimberly Potter face murder charges over his death

Orput told DailyMail.com: 'There was a protest. Some I respected. They were peaceful, honorable and they wanted to let me know what their feelings are'

Responding to protesters demanding Potter face an immediate murder charge, Orput insisted on due process and said he was 'sorry' if the charges aren't enough for some.

He said: 'Everybody's entitled to due process. Adolf Hitler is entitled to due process. Everybody is. And I welcome it. I don't see that as a challenge.

'I said let's bring it to court, let's put it all in front of a courtroom, in front of a jury of 12 working people and say, what do you think?

'Because I believe the woman I'm prosecuting committed second degree manslaughter. If I thought she'd committed more, I'd bring the charges.

'But I can only bring the charges that the evidence supports. And if that doesn't assuage the public, then I'm sorry it doesn't.'

Orput's intervention comes amid rising tension in Minneapolis as the Chauvin trial comes to a close, with both sides due to make their final case on Monday.

Wright's family is being represented by Benjamin Crump who is also representing the family of George Floyd.

The Wright family has publicly demanded that Potter face murder charges over the killing.

Orput said he has spoken with the family lawyers and told them that he hopes some good will come from Wright's death.

Father-of-one Wright, 20, was killed during a traffic stop last week, sparking protests and outrage

Orput spoke to the protestors outside his home and said, 'I let them know what the legal issues are and they wanted to tell me, they want justice'

To the protesters, he added: 'If they want to protest, they have the right  I respect the first amendment'

He said: 'It's what I told the attorneys representing Mr. Wright who are also representing Mr. Floyd, it's deeply unfortunate that we need these incidents to get change  but we do.

'I've been working on changes and actually, since the death of Mr. Floyd, I've been able to see some things that I've been pushing come good.

'So it wasn't for naught, this wasn't for naught. We need to see changes in society. But don't make it in a micro way about this woman and how you think she should be treated.'

To the protesters, he added: 'If they want to protest, they have the right  I respect the first amendment.

'But don't damage my property, don't hurt my wife and kids. If you have something to say, I've heard it, I've spent hours, I haven't slept all week.

'I've tried to get the charges right - I think I've got the charges right, I'm willing to go to trial on the charges and I'm willing to do everything I can to get a conviction.'
Hong Kong: HK records 12 COVID-19 cases

The Centre for Health Protection today said it is investigating 12 additional COVID-19 cases, one of which is locally transmitted and epidemiologically linked with a local case.

The new local case involves an 84-year-old man who lives in Block 2, Oi Fai House, Yau Oi Estate, Tuen Mun. His unit is adjacent to a previously confirmed case on the same floor.

The centre explained that it is proactively following up to investigate whether the infections of the cases are related.

Given environmental contamination on the same floor of the building cannot be excluded, the Department of Health will issue quarantine orders to all remaining asymptomatic residents on the 8th floor of Block 2, Oi Fai House in Yau Oi Estate and transfer them to quarantine centres while symptomatic residents will be sent to the hospital for treatment.

Separately, the centre is continuing its investigation of a confirmed case announced yesterday. The 31-year-old woman was a staff member working at a clinic located at the Centrium, 60 Wyndham Street, Central.

The centre has arranged the close contacts of the case, including clinic staff and patients, to undergo quarantine. It also called on people who had been present at the clinic to undergo a COVID-19 nucleic acid test.

Among the imported cases, seven arrived from India, three from the Philippines and one from the US.

A total of 175 cases have been recorded in the past 14 days, including 37 local ones, of which 12 have unknown infection sources.

For information and health advice on COVID-19, visit the Government's dedicated webpage.

This story has been published on: 2021-04-19. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
The government is studying the Delhi governments order and chief minister Uddhav Thackeray is expected to take a call on whether to further tighten curbs in the next two days. The state is also planning to curtail timing of essential stores so as to restrict unnecessary public movement.

Last week the state government announced a fifteen-day curfew to contain the pandemic but its implementation has not been rigorous. Amidst shortage of oxygen and hospital beds there is a call from state cabinet ministers to impose a

States relief and rehabilitation minister Vijay Wadettiwar today said the current restrictions have not helped to reduce Covid-19 cases and the chief minister will decide whether to impose a in the next two days.

reported over 67,000 Covid-19 cases on Sunday and is the worst affected state in the country. The number of active cases in the state is over 640,000.

On ground citizens groups and civic bodies are taking steps to limit crowding and speed up vaccination drive.

Covid-19 cases have been rising in Nashik in the last fifteen days and this is putting a strain on government administration and health infrastructure. We felt that citizens could take responsibility to reduce all non-essential travel with a view to reduce cases. Around 60 associations have supported the call for a Janata Curfew and shop owners have voluntarily decided to open their stores for only 3-4 hours in the day, said Hemant Rathi, president of Nashik Citizens Forum.

Meanwhile in Aurangabad the local municipal corporation is considering allowing only vaccinated shopkeepers to open their stores from May 1.

The current statewide restrictions are temporary. Aurangabad will be safe only when all those above 45 years vaccinate themselves, Aurangabad municipal commissioner Astik Kumar Pandey said in a social media address to local residents.

Pandey said the civic body has stepped up the vaccination drive and it is being implemented in each of the municipal wards. Special teams and drives have been formed to increase the coverage of vaccination, he said.
"Vikrant Massey Is A Gem Of A Person And A True Professional", Says His Switchh Co-Star And Debutant Naren Kumar

Naren Kumar, a Dubai-based personality, who is an actor is set to make his Bollywood debut with his upcoming Web film Switchh which is all set to release on Eros Now on 23rd April 2021. The mega release also stars Vikrant Massey with Naren Kumar making his solo acting debut. Shot all over UAE, this film is sure to enthrall all movie lovers and set to premiere on all digital channels. It also stars Madhu Sneha, Tanvi Vyas, Veer Aryan, Nitin Marani. 'Switchh' web movie is directed by Mustufa Raj.

Naren heaps praises for his co-actor Vikrant Massey saying, "He is a gem of a person and a true professional. An amazing actor!! I really learnt a lot from him. The entire team was really cooperative and friendly." On talking about his role Naren states, "I am playing the character of Neil Rai in the movie. It's a character that is very different from my personality. So I had to go through a lot of changes physically and program myself mentally to train well for this role. Being a Bollywood actor has always been my dream."

About the film he says, "It's an all-out Bollywood masala movie with lots of thrills, car races and suspense. It's a thriller suspense with twists and turns which involves planning and executing a heist and the repercussions of it. If I say anything more I will be giving out the story. Amazing songs are given by legends like Bappi Lahiri and Sukhbir in this web-film."

On sharing about making Bollywood debut Naren says, I consider myself blessed & fortunate where actors struggle for years and years to get a Bollywood break or where their families are in the Bollywood industry with a backing, I am today honored to be the lead in such a big banner film! I would like to thank God and my family for the support and encouragement.
Eritrea: 13 Christians remain imprisoned after 2 raids on prayer meetings

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Thirteen Eritrean Christians remain imprisoned after authorities raided two separate prayer meetings last month where 35 people were taken into custody, including several women.

Twenty-two of the 23 Christians who were arrested at a prayer meeting in the capital of Asmara last month, most of whom were women, were released from the Mai Sarawa prison last Sunday, while of all the 12 Christians who were arrested in the city of Assab, 660 miles southeast from Asmara, remain in Assab prison, where conditions are known to be harsh, the U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern reported.

The ICC, which released its report based on information received from Release International and Barnabas Fund, said the arrests were carried out by members of the Eritrean Army late last month.

It's not yet clear why only one of the 23 arrested in Asmara hasn't been released, the groups said, adding that they're also working to find out if those who were freed are in good health.

Since last September, at least 160 Christians have been released from prisons in that country, but the latest arrests dampened hopes that the government was easing its harsh repressive policy against Christians, Barnabas Fund said.

In Eritrea, citizens have a duty to report anything untoward happening in their community, Release International added. This can turn ordinary neighbors into spies. In some cases, their own family members have reported Christians.

Eritreas President Isaias Afewerki is a member of the Eritrean Orthodox Church in Asmara  belonging to the largest among the only three Christian denominations allowed to function in the country.

Afewerki, 75, who's the leader of the ruling Peoples Front for Democracy and Justice Party, also has a reputation of being an alcoholic and a ruthless autocrat. Afewerkis policy of restrictions is more about his fear that religion will mobilize people as a political force than religion itself.

In February, 70 Christians from evangelical and Orthodox backgrounds, including women, were released from three prisons in Eritrea, some after being held without charge for more than a decade.

The release of Christians could be an attempt to distract the international community's attention from Eritreas role in the ongoing war in the Tigray region in neighboring Ethiopia, the U.K.-based group Christian Solidarity Worldwide reported at the time.

When arrested, Eritreas persecuted Christians often disappear without a trace, leaving their loved ones with no information on their whereabouts or safety. Prison conditions are some of the harshest in the world, with inmates kept in shipping containers and believers often tortured in an attempt to get them to renounce their faith.
New Delhi: On a day when Maharashtra recorded its highest single-day rise in coronavirus cases, it mandated a negative COVID-19 RT-PCR report for the train passengers travelling from Delhi-NCR and five states.

In order to break the transmission of coronavirus, Maharashtra on Sunday (April 18, 2021) declared Delhi-NCR, Kerala, Goa, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Uttarakhand as the places of 'sensitive origin' that may lead to the 'higher potentiality' of spreading COVID-19, ANI reported. As per the order by Maharashtra Chief Secretary Sitaram Kunte, passengers travelling to Maharashtra from the six places mentioned above will need a RT-PCR negative test within 48 hours of their train travel.

Maharashtra govt declares Kerala, Goa, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Delhi-NCR, & Uttarakhand as 'Places of Sensitive Origin'; passengers travelling from these places will need negative RT-PCR test report within 48 hours of the travel to enter Maharashtra pic.twitter.com/m8zNug4yRE  ANI (@ANI) April 18, 2021

Maharashtra, the worst COVID-19-hit Indian state, recorded 68,631 new infections in the last 24 hours, its highest since the pandemic broke out.

The sudden unprecedented surge in COVID-19 is the reason behind the Uddhav Thackeray-led state government taking the decision of putting a new SOP in place for travel in long-distance trains from 'sensitive origin' states.

If passengers are not carrying the RT-PCR negative report, they will have to undergo a rapid antigen test at the station, it added. PTI MR

"All passengers shall be compulsorily screened and only asymptomatic passengers shall be allowed to board the trains for Maharashtra. Social distancing should be ensured during boarding/deboarding and travel," read the order.

It added that no unreserved ticket for Maharashtra should be issued on trains plying from these six states.

The state government also asked the ministry of railways to provide thermal scanners at all exits in stations and strictly enforce COVID appropriate behaviour in trains.

"These places will be considered the places of sensitive origin from the date of this order till the time it is retracted or till COVID-19 stays notified as a disaster," it stated.

This is pertinent to note that the Indian Railways has already said that it will impose a fine of Rs 500 if someone's found without a face mask at railway premises including trains. It also said that spitting will also attract a hefty fine.

Meanwhile, 68,631 new COVID-19 infections took the total number of active cases in Maharashtra to 6,70,388, of which, Mumbai has 87,698 active cases.



As of Sunday evening, the state has so far witnessed 31,06,828 recoveries and 60,473 fatalities.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 10:21:19|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, April 19 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese mainland on Sunday reported 11 new COVID-19 cases, all of which were imported, the National Health Commission said in its daily report on Monday.

Of them, four were reported in Hainan, two each in Guangdong and Yunnan, and one each in Tianjin, Shanghai and Shaanxi.

One new suspected COVID-19 case arriving from outside the mainland was reported in Shanghai, according to the commission.

No new deaths related to COVID-19 were reported.

A total of 5,515 imported cases had been reported on the mainland by the end of Sunday. Among them, 5,274 had been discharged from hospitals following recovery, and 241 remained hospitalized. No deaths had been reported among the imported cases.

The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases on the mainland reached 90,510 by Sunday, including 315 patients still receiving treatment, six of whom were in severe conditions.

A total of 85,559 patients had been discharged following recovery on the mainland, and 4,636 had died as a result of the virus.

There were four suspected COVID-19 cases on the mainland on Sunday.

Sixteen asymptomatic cases were newly reported, all arriving from outside the mainland. There were a total of 322 asymptomatic cases, of whom 307 were imported, under medical observation on Sunday.

By the end of Sunday, 11,683 confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 209 deaths, had been reported in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), while 49 cases had been reported in the Macao SAR, and 1,073 cases, including 11 deaths, had been reported in Taiwan.

A total of 11,270 COVID-19 patients in the Hong Kong SAR had been discharged from hospitals following recovery, while 48 had been discharged in the Macao SAR, and 1,033 had been discharged in Taiwan. Enditem
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Hoag Family Cancer Institute announced the opening of two additional molecular imaging and therapy trials, the first to be offered in Orange County and in the United States. Hoag's Molecular Imaging & Therapy Program is helping to pioneer the most sensitive imaging and therapy methods to date to advance research and applications of molecular imaging and therapy. These trials are expected to play a significant role in the future of cancer detection, individualized treatment and drug development, and they are available at Hoag today.

The opening of the CD38 myeloma trial offers advanced cancer detection for this rare disease. Hoag is the first in the nation to offer this Phase 2 study, brought to Hoag by Gary Ulaner, M.D., Ph.D., FACNM, director of the Hoag Molecular Imaging and Therapy Program, and funded through the National Health Institute. The trial will test the use of a highly targeted molecular imaging agent in the earliest detection and location of a patient's myeloma. This could offer oncologists valuable insight into more effective, less toxic, targeted treatment options for this deadly disease.

Dr. Ulaner led the Phase 1 arm of the study before coming to Hoag from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

The PSMA I-131 trial for prostate cancer will be the county's first molecular therapy trial and is funded by Hoag philanthropy. Dr. Ulaner explained the therapy tested in this Phase 2 trial is a type of radioligand, which is made of two parts: a ligand, which can find specific surface molecules on cancer cells, and a radioisotope, which emits therapeutic radiation to kill cancer cells. Because the radioligand can target cells anywhere in the body, they show promise for metastatic cancer treatment.

"This trial will evaluate a promising new therapy against a type of prostate cancer known as prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-avid metastatic prostate cancer," Dr. Ulaner said. "Agents like the one in this trial, have been incredibly successful in prolonging patient's lives and improving their quality of life. We are very excited to offer this to our community."

Hoag was selected as one of only 41 hospitals in the nation to participate in this trial.

"Hoag is pioneering many promising cancer imaging and therapy studies, many of which I expect will become standard of care in the future," said Dr. Ulaner. "Orange County patients are gaining access to some of the most exclusive trials. Hoag is pleased to offer this level of personalized cancer care to our great community."

For more information about both trials, visit www.hoag.org/mit.

ABOUT HOAG

Hoag is a nonprofit, regional health care delivery network in Orange County, California, that treats more than 30,000 inpatients and 480,000 outpatients annually. Hoag consists of two acute-care hospitals  Hoag Hospital Newport Beach, which opened in 1952, and Hoag Hospital Irvine, which opened in 2010  in addition to nine health centers and 13 urgent care centers. Hoag has invested $261 million in programs and services to support the underserved community within the past five years, including areas like mental health, homelessness, transportation for seniors, education, and support for single mothers. Hoag is a designated Magnet hospital by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC). Hoag offers a comprehensive blend of health care services that includes five institutes providing specialized services in the following areas: cancer, heart and vascular, neurosciences, women's health, and orthopedics through Hoag's affiliate, Hoag Orthopedic Institute , which consists of an orthopedic hospital and two ambulatory surgical centers. In the 2020 - 2021 U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals Rankings, Hoag is the highest ranked hospital in Orange County and the only OC hospital ranked in the Top 10 in California. For an unprecedented 23 years, residents of Orange County have chosen Hoag as one of the county's best hospitals in a local newspaper survey. Visit www.hoag.org for more information.

SOURCE Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian

Related Links

http://www.hoag.org




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The Pound Sterling Australian Dollar (GBP/AUD) exchange rate fell by -0.2% today as the risk-sensitive Aussie benefited from Chinas return to economic growth. The pairing is currently fluctuating around AU$1.78.

GBP/AUD Exchange Rate Sinks as Risk-On Market Mood Boosts Aussie

The Australian Dollar has continued to benefit after the Chinese economy  the worlds second-largest economy and Australias biggest trading partner  grew by 18.3% in the first quarter of this year.

China's National Bureau of Statistics commented:

The national economy made a good start.

We must be aware that the Covid-19 epidemic is still spreading globally and the international landscape is complicated with high uncertainties and instabilities.

As a result, the Australian Dollar to Pound exchange rate has risen on growing optimism in Australias economy, thanks to the improvement in Chinese economic growth.

Australia has also reopened its travel bubble with New Zealand.

New Zealanders account for nearly 1.3 million of the arrivals in Australia as of 2019, so this news has buoyed confidence in Australias tourist sector.

New Zealands Prime Minister Jacinda Arden said:

It is truly exciting to start quarantine-free travel with Australia. Be it returning family, friends or holiday-makers, New Zealand says welcome and enjoy yourself.

Pound (GBP) Sinks Despite UK Economic Optimism

The Pound (GBP) struggled against the Aussie today despite upbeat UK market mood. The nations Covid-19 hospitalisations continue to fall and the daily death toll has dropped substantially since the beginning of this year.

Canada Life has reported concerns over a Fear of the Office, particularly from those who have previously suffered from Covid-19.

Canada Life commented:

Amongst Brits that now work from home, this trend is more prevalent among those who have previously tested positive for Covid-19, with only 34% planning on returning to the office. This compares to 69% of those who havent suffered from the virus.

The data highlights that despite the potential for continued immunity, those who have experienced Covid-19 are more reluctant to return to work face-to-face.

In the absence of any notable UK economic data today, the Pound Australian Dollar exchange rate has however suffered.

Pound Australian Dollar Forecast

Australian Dollar (AUD) investors will be awaiting tomorrows release of the latest Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) Meeting Minutes.

Any dovishness from the RBA, however, would weaken the AUD/GBP exchange rate.

However, if global risk sentiment continues to improve, then the risk-sensitive Aussie would rise against Sterling.

Pound (GBP) traders will be eyeing tomorrows release of the UK ILO Unemployment Rate report.

The Pound Australian Dollar (GBP/AUD) exchange rate would rise if UK joblessness shows any signs of decreasing.
Korea's foreign minister Chung Eui-yong speaks during a parliamentary interpellation session at the National Assembly, Monday. Yonhap

South Korea's foreign minister said Monday his country has little reason to object to Japan's plan to release radioactive water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea if it follows related International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) standards.



Chung Eui-yong made the remarks during a parliamentary interpellation session in response to a query by Rep. Moon Jin-seog of the Democratic Party.



"If (Japan) follows the due processes under the standards of IAEA, (Seoul) has no particular reason to object," the foreign minister said.



Chung also said Japan should meet three conditions  providing enough scientific evidence and information and sufficiently sharing such information; having more sufficient consultation in advance; and guaranteeing South Korea's participation in IAEA's safety verification process  in order to win Seoul's understanding on the issue.



"Rather than opposing the plan (outright), Seoul is relentlessly and consistently requesting Japan (accept) those three things, while putting our top priority on (safeguarding) the health and safety of our people," the foreign minister noted.



Tokyo announced Tuesday that it plans to start releasing over 1.2 million tons of Fukushima's contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean in two years, triggering a backlash from Seoul, Beijing and other neighbors.




We are excited to announce that Tom Blomberg is joining Coterie and will add a highly-talented and experienced executive to our team.

Coterie Advisory Group Inc., whose founding partners include some of the original founders of Star HRG (Starbridge) and Ternian Insurance Group, have announced that Thomas Blomberg, formerly of BCS Insurance Company and more recently of Innovative Health Insurance Advisors, will be joining Coterie Advisors business development team as: Senior Vice President of National Sales.

Tom will leverage his industry experience and relationships to partner with employee benefits Brokers and Consultants to focus on Coterie Advisors Fundamental Care product set. Their Limited-Benefit Indemnity Plans allow employers to offer affordable and unique health insurance options for their uninsured, part-time, and hourly workers which provides coverage for basic medical expenses. It complements Coterie Advisors flagship product, their level-funded Limited Day Health Plan, which offers near-comprehensive coverage at 30-40% less than the cost of traditional high-deductible health plans. With their combined product offerings, Coterie Advisors delivers an Affordability-Based Medical Plan strategy that is unique to the marketplace.

Aaron Cook, President of Coterie Advisors said, We are excited to announce that Tom Blomberg is joining Coterie and will add a highly-talented and experienced executive to our team. Similar to the principals of Coterie, Tom has spent his career dedicated to offering unique medical solutions to underserved employees of some of the largest service industry employers in the nation. Cook added, Tom brings to Coterie his experience, industry knowledge, and reputation that will drive business development for Fundamental Care and continue our success in the future.

The affordability void in healthcare continues to be a major issue in the United States. With over 28 Million uninsured and 70% of workers living paycheck to paycheck, Coterie Advisors continues to design and develop solutions that meet the needs of the underserved. Fundamental Care provides access to unique and affordable insurance benefits on a guarantee issue basis. Limited Day and Limited Benefit Indemnity plans can be customized and structured with affordable premiums and no deductibles. The plans are high in potential coverage and include upfront, day-one benefits  healthcare employees can actually use. Both plans meet the employers ACA mandated requirement for offering Minimum Essential Coverage and Coterie Advisors can also provide Minimum Value Plan (MVP) options for client's needing a solution for their full-time equivalent employees.

Through Coterie Advisor's Affordability-Based Medical Plan Strategy, the plans not only provide needed healthcare to the insured employees but also offer companies a strategy to improve recruiting and reduce turnover by rewarding a carve-out class or more-tenured employees. For more information, please contact your employee benefits broker or visit https://www.fundamentalcare.com or https://www.coterieadvisors.com.

ABOUT COTERIE ADVISORS:

Coterie Advisory Group, Inc. is an Arizona-based, insurance program manager and consultative advisor who delivers Affordability-Based Medical Plan Strategies to help benefit brokers, employers, and associations in the benefits industry. Since 1990, the founding partners of Coterie Advisors have specialized in Affordability-Based Medical Plans. They have decades of experience working with some of the nations largest service industry employers and understand the unique needs of a variable hour workforce made up of part-time, hourly, and seasonal employees. Their unique and proprietary Affordability-Based Medical Plans (Fundamental Care) include fully-insured limited-benefit indemnity plans and level-funded limited-day plans which solve real-world problems, make a meaningful difference in consumers' lives, and have a track record of being market-leading and market-changing.
The European Commission will next week present the first part of a "green taxonomy" list of energy sources and technology to be labelled as sustainable investments, but a question mark hangs over the inclusion of natural gas.

The classification system, to be published on Wednesday, is mandated under a 2019 agreement between member states and the European Parliament meant to define durable economic activities and green finance.

It seeks to define what the EU would deem as sustainable as it moves towards a goal of Europe becoming carbon-neutral by 2050, with criteria focusing on mitigating climate change or preparing for it.

A second commission proposal is to follow later this year covering four other subjects -- protection of water and marine resources, the circular economy, preventing pollution and biodiversity -- all part of the EU's "Green Deal" to reach that ambition.

For an investment to be considered "green" it has to meet one of these objectives without hurting any of the others.

The proposal is to become a "delegated act", meaning it becomes law unless member states or the European Parliament reject it.

But a leak of the commission's taxonomy list last month raised an outcry from NGOs, experts and MEPs, in particular over the inclusion of gas as a partially sustainable energy source.

Nine experts the commission consulted threatened to break off cooperation over the perceived "greenwashing", according to a letter sent to the commission and seen by AFP.

The commission plan, according to the leak, is to have gas-fuelled power stations labelled as "green" as transitional facilities up to 2025 where they replace ones using coal.

- 'Blank cheque' -

One of the experts signing the letter, Sebastien Godinot, economist at the environmental protection NGO WWF, said that would give a "blank cheque" to gas operators and risk a long-term dependence on fossil fuels.

"This proposal could potentially create a direct incentive to build even more gas co-generation plants than already planned", Godinot warned.

A Green MEP from the Netherlands, Bas Eickhout said: "A gas-fired power plant built now is there to stay for 40 years. So brings you way over the 2050 deadline."

As a result, "we are going to object" to the commission proposal, based on the version leaked in March, Eickhout said.

Several sources said that the governments of Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Luxembourg and Spain had written a joint letter to the commission to voice their objection to including gas in the taxonomy.

Godinot noted that, while natural gas releases less carbon dioxide than coal, it also emits methane, considered a worse greenhouse emission.

Other points of discord are the commission's approach to forestries and logging, seen by some as not rigorous enough, and it automatically classifying bioenergy as durable even when the biomass it uses comes from dedicated farmland.

A French news website, Contexte, said on Thursday that the commission has been forced to revise its document and could revert to an ordinary legislative process that would be much longer.

The commission did not confirm that. An EU source said the text it is to present is "still in development" and stressed how technical it was.

"Right now, we're talking about a general approach to gas. Further analyses are needed," the source said.
Tehran and Moscow are working on an expanded document on cooperation, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said at a press conference on Monday.

"Simultaneous work is underway on two documents. The one called the cooperation agreement between the two countries, which is extended every five years, is set to expire this year in the month of Farvardin [which ends on April 20]," TASS cited him as saying.

The diplomat added that the document would be extended automatically. According to Khatibzadeh, "at the same time, the parties are working on an expanded document." "Good agreements were made during the visit [of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov] concerning a document on comprehensive [cooperation]," the spokesman said, adding: "The parties will sign [the agreement] as soon as it is ready."

The Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement that Russia and Iran signed in March 2001 has since been extended automatically every five years. Iranian top diplomat Mohammad Javad Zarif said during a visit to Moscow on September 24, 2020, that Tehran planned to consider the possibility of bringing the document up to date.

Lavrov carried out an official visit to Iran on April 13. Both foreign ministers signed an agreement on the establishment and activities of cultural centers. The Russian top diplomat was also received by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Parliament Chairman Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.
Moscow, April 19 : The Russian Foreign Ministry has announced the expulsion of 20 staffers of the Czech Embassy in Moscow as a retaliatory move against the removal of of 18 Russian diplomats from Prague, for allegedly being "identified as members of the Russian secret services".

The Ministry said in a statement on Sunday that it summoned the Czech Ambassador to Russia Vitezslav Pivonka and strongly protested against the unfriendly act of the authorities in Prague.

Pivonka was informed that these 20 people from the Czech Embassy must leave Russia by the end of Monday.

The Ministry also required the Czech Embassy to reduce the number of locally hired staffers to the same level as that of the Russian mission in Prague.

It added that the Czech authorities used "unfounded and far-fetched pretexts" to continue their anti-Russian tirade in recent years and to please the US following the recent American sanctions against Moscow In a statement on Saturday, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Hamacek said: "I decided to expel all the employees of the Russian embassy in Prague who have been clearly identified by our special services as officers of the Russian intelligence agencies SVR and GRU. Within 48 hours, 18 staff members of the Russian embassy must leave the Czech Republic." Prime Minister Andrej Babis said the 18 staffers were also allegedly involvement in the 2014 twin ammunition depot explosions in the Czech Republic which claimed the lives of two people.
Organizations across Pennsylvania have put together events and programs for Earth Day 2021 on Thursday.

Starting at 10 a.m., First Lady Frances Wolf will welcome several Pennsylvania agencies for the annual Governors Residence Earth Day celebration, which this year will be held virtually. It will feature learning activities and information geared toward middle- and high-school students.

The theme will be Protecting the Environment for All Pennsylvanians, and the event will include activities from the Pennsylvania departments of Environmental Protection, Conservation and Natural Resources, Education and Agriculture, and the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

The event will recognize the 50th anniversary of Pennsylvanias Environmental Rights Amendment, which guarantees citizens the right to clean air, pure water, and the preservation of the natural, scenic and historic value of the environment.

In addition, information and activities from our Earth Day partners from around the state will be featured in a Virtual Exhibit Hall.

Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful has several Pick Up Pennsylvania events scheduled on and around Earth Day, with all events planned according to the social distancing guidelines. For a variety of volunteer opportunities, check on the Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful Calendar of Events webpage.

The Bucknell University Humanities Center will present Agnes Revisited  The Performance: Learning to Live with Floods  History, Change, Remembrance and Resilience from 7:30-9:30 p.m. via Zoom.

Nearly 50 years ago Tropical Storm Agnes descended on the Susquehanna River Basin, upending lives, devastating homes and transforming the Susquehanna Valley.

In this performance, Bucknell students join with residents to revisit Agnes and the lessons it has for today. It will transform more than 30 interviews, hundreds of photographs and dozens of newspaper articles from the days of Agnes into songs, monologues, scenes, dances and more.

The performance draws on the historical research of Presidential Fellow Bethany Fitch and Professor Andrew Stuhl (Environmental Studies and Sciences), which includes more than 20 oral histories with Pennsylvanians who lived through the storm and resulting recovery.

For more information or to register, visit the Bucknell University Humanities Center Facebook page.

The Pocono Arts Council will recognize the award recipients for The Earth Speaks VII: A Juried Exhibition on the Environmental Crisis, which is featured in the Community Gallery in Stroudsburg. They will be featured in a roundtable discussion via Zoom from 6-7 p.m.

For more information about programs, upcoming events and more, visit the Pocono Arts Council website.

The Pennsylvania and Delaware Chapter of the Nature Conservancy has scheduled independent trash clean-ups, iNaturalist projects at 15 in Pennsylvania and Delaware, and nature labs of virtual field trips or nature-themed lessons and family activities.

For more information visit the chapters events webpage.

The Rodale Institute near Kutztown will feature Earth Day on the Farm  an afternoon of music, food, activities and farming  from 11 a.m.4 p.m.

The event will include live music by Out of the Orchard; smoothies, bowls, sandwiches and more from Blendlife Food Truck; Rodale Institute Mobile Market selling organic veggies straight from the fields; handcrafted products from local vendors; a plant sale; kids activities, including seed starting, seed bomb-making, bug hotel project and scavenger hunt; free Pesticide Free Pledge yard signs.

For more information, visit the Rodale Institute website.

The Exchange Gallery will celebrate Earth Day at 6 p.m. with a free, all-ages drum circle in Bloomsburgs Town Park. No musical experience is needed, and all ages are welcome. For more information visit The Exchange website.

This Pennsylvania Horticulture Society will plant 13 trees at Mary McLeod Bethune School in North Philadelphia, part of a two-year project funded by Vistra Energy to create a healthy tree canopy on the schools campus and the surrounding neighborhood.

It also will offer a Say No Mow to Your Lawn virtual program at 5 p.m. Jeff Lorenz, founder of Refugia Design/Build, will discuss how you can turn your lawn into a functional and resilient pollinator paradise. For more information visit the PHS events webpage.

The Ned Smith Center for Nature and Art in Millersburg will open a special exhibit to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Pennsylvanias Environmental Rights Amendment to the state constitution on Earth Day.

The Pennsylvania departments of Conservation and Natural Resources and Environmental Protection, the Pennsylvania Game Commission and the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission are collaborating with the center to produce the exhibit, The Green Amendment: Celebrating Half A Century of Environmental Rights.

For more information, visit the centers Facebook page.
Photo taken on April 18, 2021 shows a signing ceremony for the participants of the Fourth China International Import Expo in Shanghai, east China. [Photo/Xinhua]

More than 70 percent of the exhibition area of the fourth China International Import Expo has already been spoken for, its organizer said on the 200-day countdown on Sunday.

Sun Chenghai, deputy director-general of the CIIE Bureau, said the annual expo for imports has been given the green light for Nov. 5 to 10 in Shanghai, and preparations for it are proceeding smoothly.

"Intended deals worth more than $200 billion were reached by international exhibitors and domestic buyers in the past three editions of the expo," Sun said at the countdown ceremony.

"We will continue to make the expo a window for the dural-circulation development paradigm and a platform for global procurement and investment, cultural exchange and open cooperation," he said.

Gu Jun, director of Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce, said the municipal government has always listed preparation for the expo among its main jobs, and it has formed an overall plan with 216 detailed tasks in areas such as epidemic prevention for this year's expo.

More than 30 companies and foreign trade promotion agencies, including Korea International Trade Association and German Chamber of Commerce, signed agreements for long-term cooperation with the CIIE Bureau on the event.

Guiliano Menassi, CEO of Pirelli Asia Pacific Region, an Italian tire manufacturer, said the company's headquarters in Milan sees the Chinese market as very important, especially since China is upgrading its consumption of high-value and sustainable products.

"The CIIE is a golden platform to strengthen economic cooperation, promoting global trade and world economic growth," he said, adding that the company will double its exhibition area and bring its latest technology to this year's expo.

"Without a doubt, the expo will be a big success for all the companies that participate and have tremendous, advanced ideas to share," Menassi said.

After the countdown began, a matchmaking session with domestic buyers and around 20 exhibitors in the healthcare, equipment and services sectors was held in Shanghai's Qingpu district, where the expo venue is located.

CBRE Group, a commercial real estate services and investment firm based in the United States, said the company reached 20 deals and memorandums of understanding with clients and local governments in its first participation in the expo last year.

"The spillover effect of the CIIE is big and real, as we followed up the business leads made during the expo, landing projects in Shanghai, Beijing and in Xi'an, Shaanxi province and Wuhan, Hubei province," said Li Ling, president of CBRE China.

"There are lots of opportunities in China, as the country launched the dual-circulation development paradigm, and we have already started to prepare for this year's CIIE," he said.
Crayola has released a 24-pack of crayons, pencils and markers with shades that represent a diverse range of skin tones.

The 'Colors of the World' packs include newly-formulated drawing tools that represent 40 global skin tones to ensure children can draw themselves accurately.

Boxes of crayons manufactured by the art supplies giant since 1903 historically contained blue, black, brown, green, orange, red, violet, and yellow - making it difficult for children to find their own shade.

While the markers will not be available in Australia until June, publicity from the US prompted fierce discussion with some labelling the move as 'political correctness on steroids'.

Crayola's 'Colors of the World' pack includes 24 newly-formulated crayons that represent 40 global skin tones (pictured)

Undertones include Rose, Almond, and Golden, while gradients range from Extra Light to Deepest. Full colour list pictured

Someone else said: 'Too many left marketing people in that organisation.'

But others praised the move as a 'great idea' and 'just what we needed'.

The crayons, which were developed with MAC chief chemist and Cover FX co-founder Victor Casale, take undertones into account rather than just ranging from light to dark, offering up a wide range of shades for kids to choose from.

Undertones include Rose, Almond, and Golden, while gradients range from Extra Light to Deepest - giving the crayons names likes 'light medium rose,' 'very light almond,' 'extra deep golden,' 'deep rose,' and 'deepest almond.'

Mr Casale, who has more than 30 years of experience creating diverse foundation colors, worked with Crayola teams for three months on the project, translating his makeup color expertise to crayons.

Crayola created the new pack to ensure children all over the world could draw themselves accurately

'[In MAC and Cover FX makeup], the colors are all very precise and very close to each other,' he previously told DailyMail.com.

'We tested and validated the colors on shade models - each shade was tested on real people of that shade. When you apply a complexion product on your face, and you compare it to your skin - side by side - you have to be very precise.

'When translating this knowledge and experience to support the Colors of the World initiative, I felt it would be difficult for a child to notice the differences on paper,' he explained.

Instead, he combined two very close complexion shades into one crayon shade 'to achieve a full representation of all-inclusive shades into a palette of 24'.

Crayola CEO Rich Wuerthele said the new colours will help 'increase representation and foster a greater sense of belonging and acceptance' (stock image)

'This is actually a process many beauty brands follow when they have to pare down their complexion assortment to fit into smaller sized distribution channels,' he said.

'The key is that every person can identify with a shade in the Colors of the World box.'

Crayola CEO Rich Wuerthele said the new colours will help 'increase representation and foster a greater sense of belonging and acceptance'.

'We want the new Colors of the World crayons to advance inclusion within creativity and impact how kids express themselves,' he said.

The colour names are printed on the crayons in English, Spanish, and French.
The Vietnamese Ministry of National Defense, in collaboration with the Embassy of Cuba in Hanoi, the Vietnam - Cuba Friendship Association and the Vietnam Union of Friendship Organizations, held a ceremony in the Vietnamese capital city on Monday morning to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Cubas Giron victory (April 19).

In April 1961, U.S. troops made an attempt to invade Playa Giron, a beach village over 200km southeast of La Habana (Havana), but they suffered a defeat and were repelled from the island, according to Nhan Dan (The People) newspaper.

This victory later led to Cubas reunification.

Speaking at Monday mornings event, Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Tan Cuong, Vietnamese Deputy Minister of National Defense, emphasized that the Giron victory created a great encouragement for the liberation and anti-imperialist movements in Latin America and around the world.

The Giron victory helped firmly defend the Cuban revolutionary government and lead the national revolution forward to the path to socialism.

Besides, Senior Lieutenant General Cuong affirmed the brother-like relationship and comprehensive cooperation between Vietnam and Cuba.

Deputy Minister Cuong, on behalf of the Ministry of National Defense, thanked Cuba for always standing alongside Vietnam since wartime until todays development phase.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Cuba has given Vietnam timely support for disease control and prevention.

Colonel Juan Miguel Garcia Montano, a Cuban military attache, speaks at the ceremony to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Cubas Giron victory in Hanoi, April 19, 2021. Photo: H.Q. / Tuoi Tre

Along with the peoples diplomacy, bilateral defense cooperation has gradually become an important pillar in the relationship between the two countries, Cuong assessed.

For his part, Colonel Juan Miguel Garcia Montano, a Cuban military attache, expressed his delight and emotion at the support Vietnam has given to Cuba over the past 60 years, especially in the most difficult periods.

The Cuban military attache affirmed that the Vietnam-Cuba relationship has been toughened through the time of war and many ups and downs of history, and promoting this relationship is a prerequisite to the foreign policy of both countries.

On the occasion, Deputy Minister of National Defense Cuong also hailed the success of the eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba that took place from April 16 to Monday.

Cuong said he looked forward to Cubas more achievements under the leadership of the new Party Central Committee.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
It follows March's 21mln share placing and provides a high-potential, production-led growth project.

( ) told investors it completed the acquisition of an interest in the Buffalo PSC, offshore Timor-Leste.

The transaction, which constitutes a reverse takeover, sees the company acquire a 50% stake in the Carnarvon Petroleum Timor vehicle which owns 100% of the Buffalo PSC.

The company noted that shares in the enlarged company will begin trading on the London Stock Exchange at 8:00am today.

Along with the acquisition, the company recently issued new shares in a 21.84mln placing, selling 840.1mln new shares priced at 2.6p each.

A portion of the proceeds is earmarked to fund the drilling of the B-10 appraisal well and other related costs at Buffalo.

Buffalo is host to 34.3mln barrels of contingent oil resources and under previous operators (BHP and Nexen Petroleum) it produced some 21mln barrels over a five-year period.

Advance Energy previously highlighted that Buffalo has the potential to deliver production at a rate of around 40,000 barrels per day within a three-year period, subject to the B-10 results.

In late March, as it raised the funds, chief executive Leslie Peterkin commented: The fundraise enables the completion of the transformative transaction with Carnarvon Petroleum and we can now look forward with confidence to the exciting B-10 appraisal well later this year which represents a material value catalyst for Advance Energy and its shareholders.
Oslo, 19 April 2021  Interoil Exploration and Production ASA (Interoil) is pleased to confirm that after successful inspection and testing, the workover rig has now arrived at the Mata Magallanes Oeste Field in Argentina and downhole operations are about to start. This milestone marks an important step towards re-opening of 15 oil producing wells in the field.



The initial scope involves retrieving existing malfunctioning downhole equipment from two wells, clean up, opening new by-pass hydrocarbon layers, and leaving them flowing oil and gas. The gas will be used to fuel surface facilities (production and treatment equipment) required for oil production and formation water disposal. This initial phase involves the opening of 15 existing wells where oil production is expected to increase to around 120 bopd from the current level of 17 bopd.

In Colombia, the protracted negotiations with local communities continue prior to drilling the Mazorca well. These negotiations are undertaken in consultation with authorities. In addition, the ANH has requested Interoil to pause the drilling of the well until certain environmental studies pertaining to the neighboring Altair-1 well are completed.

The ANH has also indicated its view that the well qualifies as an exploration well of the A2-b type rather than as one of the A3 type committed to be drilled by the company. Interoil is

providing the ANH with its technical considerations and working with the ANH in resolving the characterization of the well with the view of discharging the companys contractual commitments and enable drilling operations as promptly as reasonably possible.

***************************

Please direct further questions to ir@interoil.no

Interoil Exploration and Production ASA is a Norwegian based exploration and production company - listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange - with focus on Latin America. The Company is operator and license holder of several production and exploration assets in Colombia and Argentina. Interoil currently employs approximately 50 people and is headquartered in Oslo.

The notice has been published by Mr. Geir Arne Drangeid, Partner and Senior Advisor, First House AS, at 08:45 CEST, 19 April 2021.

This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5 -12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act.
China is guilty of ongoing crimes against humanity in its oppressive treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities, Human Rights Watch said in a detailed report released Monday.

Beijing has imprisoned more than one million members of the main ethnic group in its western Xinjiang region and keeps millions more under a tough system of surveillance and controls, said the report by HRW and Stanford Law Schools Human Rights & Conflict Resolution Clinic.

The Chinese government has committed  and continues to commit  crimes against humanity against the Turkic Muslim population, the report said.

The Chinese governments apparent goal in creating the camps is the erasure of Turkic Muslim culture and religion, it said, specifying Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other groups in Xinjiang.

The ongoing policies violate the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which says widespread or systematic attacks on a civilian population are a crime, the report said.

It faulted the Chinese government for illegal imprisonment, torture and murder of Uyghurs, and of intentional policies of forced labor and sexual violence toward them.

HRW said Beijings mistreatment of Uyghurs dates back more than two decades, but said that they have intensified since 2013 under Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Driven by nationalism and Islamophobia, Xis government wants to Sinicize the Muslim communities, the report said.

HRW and the Stanford researchers did not go so far as to accuse Beijing of genocide in Xinjiang, an accusation that has been made by the US government, legislatures in Belgium, Canada and Netherlands, and other rights groups.

HRW said it hadnt documented evidence of genocidal intent by Beijing, but also said its report does not preclude such a finding.

If such evidence were to emerge, the acts being committed against Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang  a group protected by the 1948 Genocide Convention  could also support a finding of genocide.

HRW called for governments to work together to pressure China to change its policies and to help identify the perpetrators.

It also called for the United Nations to set up a commission of inquiry to investigate allegations.
A Melbourne man who the police minister described as a drug delivery kingpin has been arrested in Perth after allegedly overseeing a clandestine state border crossing sneaking 33 kilograms of methylamphetamine and 25 kilograms of pills in a motorhome into Western Australia.

WA Police Commissioner Chris Dawson says Mohammed Oueidas arrest will have a large impact as police allege he is a senior figure involved in the facilitation and trafficking of drugs within Australia.

Alleged drug kingpin Mohammed Oueida.

Two more Victorians  35-year-old man Khaled El-Moustafa and a 42-year-old woman Nada Dennaoui were arrested on Thursday after being stopped and searched in a rented Winnebago near Kellerberrin, which is about 200 kilometres east of Perth, at about 7.30pm, with drugs allegedly found under the motorhomes bed.

Mr Oueida, 45, was arrested on Saturday night in the southern Perth suburb of Coolbellup and a black Hummer he allegedly drove in a convoy with the motorhome was confiscated by police.
The Minister of Defence, Bashir Magashi, has asked troops fighting the insurgents in the North East not to be afraid of bullets and that they should be more daring in their fight against insurgents.



Speaking during a morale-boosting visit to the troops in Maiduguri, Borno state over the weekend, Magashi, a retired Brig.-Gen. said what should be on the minds of the troops while battling insurgents should be to secure the country.



You should not be afraid of the bullet because it can even meet you in the house if it means you dying by it. But if you are not meant to die by the bullet, it will never kill you even at the heart of a war.



The minister assured them of the governments readiness to improve on their welfare.

Source: LIB









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Hong Kong: Ant Group is exploring options for founder Jack Ma to divest his stake in the financial technology giant and give up control, as meetings with Chinese regulators signalled to the company that the move could help draw a line under Beijing`s scrutiny of its business, according to a source familiar with regulators` thinking and two people with close ties to the company.

Reuters is for the first time reporting details of the latest round of meetings and the discussions about the future of Ma`s control of Ant, exercised through a complicated structure of investment vehicles.

The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Jack Ma had offered in a November meeting with regulators to hand over parts of Ant to the Chinese government.

Officials from the central bank, People`s Bank of China (PBOC), and financial regulator China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) held talks between January and March with Ma and Ant separately, where the possibility of the tycoon`s exit from the company was discussed, according to accounts provided by the source familiar with the regulators` thinking and one of the sources with close ties to the company.

Ant denied that a divestment of Ma`s stake was ever under consideration. "Divestment of Mr. Ma`s stake in Ant Group has never been the subject of discussions with anyone," an Ant spokesman said in a statement.

Reuters could not determine whether Ant and Ma would proceed with a divestment option, and if so, which one.

The company hoped Ma`s stake, worth billions of dollars, could be sold to existing investors in Ant or its e-commerce affiliate Alibaba Group Holding Ltd without involving any external entity, one of the sources with company ties said.

But the second source also with company connections said that during discussions with regulators, Ma was told that he would not be allowed to sell his stake to any entity or individual close to him, and would instead have to exit completely. Another option would be to transfer his stake to a Chinese investor affiliated with the state, the source said.

Any move would need Beijing`s approval, both sources with knowledge of the company`s thinking said.

The accounts provided by all the three sources are consistent in terms of the timeline for how discussions have evolved over the past few months.

On the company side, one source said Ma met regulators more than once before the Chinese New Year, which was in early February. And the second source said Ant started working on options for Ma`s possible exit about a couple of months ago.

The source familiar with the regulators` thinking said Ant had told officials during a meeting sometime before mid-March that it was working on options.

The source familiar with the regulators` thinking has direct knowledge of conversations between Ant and officials, while one of the sources with company ties has been briefed on Ma`s interactions with regulators and Ant`s plans. The other one has direct knowledge of Ant`s discussions about options. They requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

The Ant spokesman did not provide any comments from Ma. Alibaba referred questions to Ant. Jack Ma`s office did not respond to Reuters` request for comment made via Ant. The State Council Information Office, PBOC, and CBIRC, also did not respond to requests for comment.

The high-stakes discussions come amid a revamp of Ant and a broader regulatory clampdown on China`s technology sector that was set in motion after Ma`s public criticism of regulators in a speech in October last year.

Ma`s exit could help clear the way for Ant to revive plans to go public, which stalled after the tycoon`s speech, both sources proximate to the company said.

Ant was expected to raise about $37 billion in what would have been the world`s largest IPO, but the plans were scuppered the day after Ma`s Nov. 2 meeting with regulators.

"Indeed Jack Ma stepping away may help the company`s share price re-rating by removing uncertainty and resolving the perception that the Chinese government`s issue with the company is with the individual," said Devan Kaloo, global head of equities at Aberdeen Standard Investments.

Kaloo said he does not see Ma divesting his Ant stake as much of a concern. "There is a strong, well-established professional management team who have run the various group companies for some time," he noted.

Hong Kong-listed shares of Ma`s Alibaba dropped as much as 1.9% on Monday in a positive market.

`TOO BIG FOR THEIR BRITCHES`

Beijing has since late last year unleashed a series of investigations and new regulations that have not only reined in Ma`s empire but also swept across the country`s technology sector, including other high-profile, billionaire entrepreneurs.

For Ma, 56, who also founded Alibaba and once commanded cult-like reverence in China, the consequences have been particularly severe. The tycoon completely withdrew from the public eye for about three months and has continued to keep a low profile after a brief January appearance.

China`s antitrust regulator fined Alibaba a record $2.75 billion on April 10 following an antimonopoly probe that found it had abused its dominant market position for several years.

A couple of days later Ant was asked by the central bank to become a financial holding company, bringing it under the ambit of banking rules that it had managed to avoid so far and allowed it to grow rapidly.

"China still likes to promote its technology firms as global leaders just as long as they don`t get too big for their britches," said Andrew Collier, managing director of Orient Capital Research.

CONTROLLING STAKE

Although Ma had previously stepped down from corporate positions, he retains effective control over Ant and significant influence over Alibaba.

While he only owns a 10% stake in Ant, Ma exercises control over the company through related entities, according to Ant`s IPO prospectus.

Hangzhou Yunbo, an investment vehicle for Ma, has control over two other entities that own a combined 50.5% stake of Ant, the prospectus shows. Yunbo can decide all matters related to Ant and exercise the combined voting power of the three entities, the prospectus shows.

Ma holds a 34% equity interest in Yunbo, the prospectus shows.

One of the sources with company ties said there`s "a big chance" Ma would sell his equity interest in Yunbo to exit from Ant, ultimately paving the way for the fintech major to move closer to completing its revamp and reviving its listing.

Reuters could not reach Yunbo for comment. Ant did not provide a comment on behalf of Yunbo.

Live TV

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Anderson Cooper, host of CNNs Anderson Cooper 360 and Anderson Cooper Full Circle will start his two-week run as guest host of Jeopardy! tonight.

Cooper will host through April 30.

Episodes air on CBS at 7 p.m. or 7:30 p.m. ET in most areas.

The longtime host of Jeopardy! Alex Trebek died in November 2020 of pancreatic cancer. A slate of guest hosts were named to temporarily fill in for Trebek after his last episodes aired in January.

Green Bay Packers Aaron Rodgers last week wrapped up his stint as host and earned a donation of $236,725 will be made to the North Valley Community Foundation, a hub for social change in northern California, where Rodgers grew up.

The amount donated equals the cumulative winnings of the contestants who competed during the two weeks Rodgers served as guest host.

To date, the total funds donated to various charitable causes by Jeopardy! on behalf of the recent guest hosts appearances is $735,930.

The show said it will match the cumulative winnings of all the contestants competing during his first week of shows for a donation to Hospital Albert Schweitzer in Haiti, whose mission is to collaborate with the people of Haiti as they strive to improve their health and quality of life.

During Coopers second week of shows, the cumulative winnings of the contestants will be matched in a donation to benefit Justice Defenders, an organization training paralegals and lawyers within defenseless communities in Africa to provide legal services for themselves and others  protecting their rights and addressing their wrongs.

Previous hosts were Ken Jennings, show producer Mike Richards, Katie Couric and Dr. Oz.

After Anderson, Bill Whitaker will host May 3-May 14. Mayim Bialik is scheduled to host May 31 to June 11 and Savannah Guthrie June 14-25. Dr. Sanjay Gupta also will serve as host.

The Tournament of Champions will air May 17-28 with Buzzy Cohen as host.

READ MORE
Four hundred forty-six.

Thats how many people were killed in Birmingham over the last four years - 446 people with friends and families, hopes and dreams.

AL.com analyzed every Birmingham homicide from 2017 to 2020. Each case was different, with its own set of causes and complications. But many of the victims had a lot in common - such as where and how they died.

More than half died in West Birmingham. Nearly 90 percent were killed by a gun. Three quarters of them were young, Black men.

[Cant see the map? Click here.]

That 446 doesnt include the 31 killings in Birmingham so far this year, including nine through the first 10 days of April.

I feel a combination of anger and sadness, Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin said. Im sad because another life has been lost. Im sad because another mother has to wake up in the middle of the night, crying out, reaching for her child shell never be able to talk to again. Never be able to hug again.

I tend to channel the same emotions I had when my own brother was killed... the same emotions when my nephew was killed, said Woodfin, who lost relatives to gun violence.

The data

A national list ranking the American cities with the highest homicide rates put St. Louis, Missouri at number one, with a rate of 61 homicides per 100,000 people. Birmingham - a violent city since its birth - wasnt included because the city didnt report homicide data to the FBI, but in 2020 the Magic City would have ranked second on that list, with a rate of 58 homicides per 100,000 people.

Within Birmingham, some areas had far more homicides than others. The neighborhoods of western Birmingham saw the most bloodshed.

Birmingham is made up of 99 neighborhoods. Ensley had the most homicides of any neighborhood - 21 people were killed there between 2017 and 2020.

Most of these crimes - nearly 58 percent - happened at night. And most remain unsolved.

[Cant see the map? Click here.]

Those 99 neighborhoods fit into 23 larger communities. The three communities with the most homicides over the last four years are all on the west side of town. They are Five Points West, West End and Ensley.

There were 57 homicides in Five Points West between 2017 and 2020 - by far the most of any of the citys communities. West End was second with 45, and Ensley community, which shares a name with the smaller neighborhood, was third with 39.

Homicide data collected by AL.com shows the vast majority of people killed in Birmingham - nearly 75 percent - were Black men.

The role of poverty

The issue is complicated. Its about race and systemic racism. Its about poverty, and conflict resolution, according to Lonnie Hannon, an associate professor in the school of public health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He says chronic poverty and extreme income inequality play huge roles.

Hannon has done research linking violent crime and poverty. He wrote a policy brief while working at Tuskegee University examining the relationship between income among a citys poorest residents and the rise of violent crime rates, and said the extreme income inequality in parts of Birmingham leads to a rise in violence.

The city of Birmingham is just handcuffed in so many ways from being able to take control of its own economic destiny. Lonnie Hannon, PhD.

When your poorest residents are chronically disadvantaged, that speaks of something else going on in the society, he said. What we see in the state of Alabama is, structurally, from the Alabama constitution and the lack of home rule, the city of Birmingham is just handcuffed in so many ways from being able to take control of its own economic destiny.

Hannon specifically pointed toward Birminghams decision in 2015 to raise the minimum wage in the city to $10.10 an hour - a measure that was later disallowed by the Alabama Legislature. That move by the legislature, Hannon argues, hamstrung Birminghams poorest communities. His research shows that hike in minimum wage could have helped reduce violent crime in Birminghams poorest communities by as much as 51 percent.

Birminghams median household income in 2019 was less than $37,000 per year, which is just over half the national household income. Its also significantly less Alabamas statewide median household income, which was nearly $52,000 in 2019. And even within Birmingham there are huge disparities in income between the citys richest and poorest residents.

But it might not be that simple.

Its so much more complex than that, said Donna Dukes, Founder and Executive Director of Maranathan Academy, a non-profit private alternative school for critically at-risk youth in Birmingham.

Dukes pointed to education as the No. 1 factor for reducing poverty and violent crime - including financial education.

Although I totally understand proponents of raising the minimum wage so that a livable wage is possible, I still feel like education has to go hand-in-hand with that, she said.

Hannon himself said raising the minimum wage would only be a short-term solution.

Alabama - and specifically Birmingham - is home to high income inequality. Most economists would tell you that a little bit of income inequality is healthy, Hannon said. But its that dramatic income inequality thats not healthy.

Hannon said the further someone feels like they are from normal society - not only what they see around them but what they see online, on social media - the more risks they feel they have to take.

What happens is, you end up having to take the big risk, like selling drugs. Participating in illegal activities, carjacking. The things that lead to violent crimes... What you have are people who have been removed from the normal opportunity structure, and they exist on the margins of that opportunity structure, and they believe they have to take a lot of risks.

Education, jobs and neighborhood revitalization

Donna Dukes is the founder and executive director of the Maranathan Academy in Birmingham.

The Maranathan Academy, which Dukes founded with her mother in the early nineties, works with what she calls critically at-risk children. Many of these children come from that section of society that Hannon says lives in the margins. Dukes students come in many shapes and sizes - many have been expelled from school for violence or weapons, and some had to leave their public school after being bullied or abused.

The age group the school targets is critical - Birminghams homicide victims from 2017-2020 range in age from unborn babies to an 88-year-old, but most victims of homicides here are between the ages of 18 and 35.

[Cant see the chart? Click here.]

Duke stresses the importance of hope, and hard work.

Only by experiencing the joy and sense of accomplishment and pride that comes from completing a day of work - you may be tired, you may be frustrated, but you feel good about yourself, Dukes said. Then receiving remuneration for that... is totally different from what you feel when you get something and you havent worked for it.

But Hannon believes Birminghams poorest and most violent neighborhoods need more than just hard work. He said neighborhood revitalization would help raise property values, increase the tax base and attract businesses, which could in turn offer jobs to people in that critical age range.

When you can hire those people, even if its at a Panera Bread, or a Publix or something like that, and they are working, and making OK money, he said. A, theyre busy, and B, they have some money in their pocket, and they are much less likely, much, much less likely to engage in criminal behavior.

Woodfin said his administration has focused on neighborhood revitalization, and he emphasized what he calls the built-up environment.

What our young people and what our citizens see - Im not talking about their pocket book and Im not talking about their income  its what they see when they walk out of their home. They gotta know people care, he said. Hope is an intangible, but hope can be a tangible, too. That tangible is what people see.

He said his focus has been on blight removal and fixing up the neighborhoods so that people know you care.

Full enforcement. Non-negotiable

Woodfin, for his part, is fed up. He said there are a few different types of homicides, from verbal altercations that lead to gun violence, to domestic disputes that end in a family member dead, to the occasional drug transaction gone bad. But the rise of one particular type of violence has gotten the mayors attention.

There is a small group of people who deserve the attention of full enforcement, and were about to give it to them. Randall Woodfin, Birmingham Mayor

This is the one that really, really frightens me, he said. This is the one where there is some form of a feud... and whatever their beef is they tend to have this notion of just shooting at each other whenever they see each other... Youve got people who, they ride around shooting people. They shoot in cars, they shoot in homes, they shoot in parks. They shoot in Walmart parking lot shopping centers. This is what they do. I dont think theyre going to stop... and I really get pissed because innocent people usually die from this type of shooting.

Woodfin said hes drawing a line in the sand for this type of shooting, and that hes planning to go full enforcement.

As an administration we are pro prevention and re-entry measures first, but let me make this very clear. There is a small group of people who deserve the attention of full enforcement, and were about to give it to them.

He said hes working toward a coordinated effort with city and county law enforcement, the District Attorneys office and the U.S. Attorney to enforce maximum punishments for these crimes, and for people carrying illegal guns.

I believe there is a certain segment of people who are in the minority, a super small population in the community. They are shooters. They are killers. They have a reckless disregard for your life and my life and other innocent peoples lives. And theyre not going to stop shooting, he said. And it doesnt matter what prevention program we have, what anti-poverty program we have, what reentry measures and programs we have, they are shooters and killers. And we need to go full enforcement on them, and if they move, we move. Because they want to hurt people, they should not be allowed to just roam about the community. And we need to do everything we can to remove them from our community. Thats non-negotiable.

He said other cities that have had such cooperation have seen success in reducing gun violence.

In other cities where there has been a decrease in gun violence, there has been a coordinated effort where there is 100 percent buy-in from the city. Well Im bought in now.

Gun access

One key problem is the all-to-easy access to illegal guns, Hannon and Woodfin agreed.

I am 100 percent in support of the Second Amendment, Woodfin said. But you cant tell me that this crisis shouldnt have the help of the state and federal government.

Woodfin said the Birmingham Police Department has removed more than 700 illegal guns from the street so far this year, but they are replaced as soon as they are confiscated.

You can buy a gun, literally, easier than you can buy a cell phone, Woodfin said. Its crazy out here.

Hannon said its just too easy to get your hands on an illegal gun.

Its the proliferation of the black market gun trade thats dangerous, Hannon said. For me to be able to just walk down to the Chevron and buy a pistol from a guy, thats just way too easy.

Nearly 87 percent of homicides in Birmingham between 2017 and 2020 were by gun.

[Cant see the map? Click here.]

You cant separate homicides from gun violence. They go hand-in-hand, Woodfin said. Lets be very clear here. This is not a Birmingham problem, this is Americas problem. This American problem literally sits in urban cores across our country. This style of gun violence.

Strength in numbers

Woodfins final message was to the residents of the city of Birmingham.

Its not just the shooters that allow it to continue. Silence by witnesses allows it to continue.

He spoke about the need for witnesses to come forward with information on these crimes, about the need for strong witness protection programs to make those people feel safe. He also said neighborhood watch programs are vital.

Ultimately I believe that the majority of citizens in the city of Birmingham are law abiding citizens, theyre good people, and we have more strength in numbers than the bad people who are committing illegal activity, and we should show our strength in our numbers and feel empowered to protect our block, our street, our neighborhood, he said. We need to feel empowered. If we collectively come together, we can solve this.

Do you have an idea for a data story about Alabama? Email Ramsey Archibald at rarchibald@al.com, and follow him on Twitter @RamseyArchibald. Read more Alabama data stories here.
A group of rowdy men have raised eyebrows after they were spotted riding horses down a busy thoroughfare in Sydney.

Footage posted online shows at least six men trotting their steeds down Haldon Street in Lakemba, weaving in and out of gridlock traffic.

'What the f**k,' the man filming says, as the riders suddenly appear from around a corner and begin heading towards him.

The equestrians narrowly steer around the vehicles before forming a line on the narrow pavement between the cars and the kerb.

At least six men have been filmed riding horses down Haldon Street, Lakemba's main street, in Sydney's southwest

One horse decides to continue down the footpath, becoming unbalanced as its hooves slip on the tiles.

'Woah, woahh!' The man filming says nervously.

The mammal quickly regains its balance and shakes its head, before charging over to a pedestrian for a closer inspection.

But the horse's curious nature is unsettling for the man who immediately lunges a few steps back.

The men filming can be heard laughing as the larrikins continue galloping down the street.

In NSW horses are considered vehicles and have the same rights and responsibilities as other drivers, motorcyclists and bicycle riders, but some special rules also apply.

Unless overtaking, equestrians can only ride two ride abreast, as long as they are within 1.5 metres of each other.

Riding on the footpath is only permitted under special circumstances and riders are are required to wear a helmet.

A NSW Police spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia they are aware of the incident and have received a number of calls from members of the public over the past couple of weeks in relation to men riding through the area on horses.

The matter is currently being investigated by the Campsie Police area command and anyone with information is urged to contact police.
Keeping pace with the upcoming 5G revolution, OPPO Reno5 Pro 5G was the first 5G-ready smartphone from the Reno series in India with an AI Highlight Video feature. In addition to this, it is the first smartphone in India to be powered by a flagship-level chipset- MediaTek Dimensity 1000+. Offering a 65W SuperVOOC 2.0 Flash Charge and a slim design, the smartphone comes with OPPOs industry-first Reno Glow design. The OPPO Reno5 Pro 5G, with its outstanding features, will empower consumers to Live the Infinite.

Oppo Reno5 Pro 5G Specifications

Brand: Oppo

Oppo Display: 6.5-inch AMOLED panel

6.5-inch AMOLED panel Processor: Octa-Core MediaTek Dimensity 1000+

Octa-Core MediaTek Dimensity 1000+ OS: Android 11

Android 11 Memory: 8GB 128GB ROM

8GB 128GB ROM Back Camera: 64MP + 8MP+ 2MP + 2MP Rear Cameras

64MP + 8MP+ 2MP + 2MP Rear Cameras Front Camera: 32 MP

Battery: 4350 mAh

4350 mAh Colors: Aurora Blue, Moonlight Night, Star Wish Red

Design and Display

The Reno series is often planned, explored every year with new materials and finishes. The OPPO Reno5 Pro 5G has a special back panel with matte blue paint with little specks that shimmer under the sun, identical to stars.

It is a fairly ergonomic device, especially with curved front and back panels, with a thickness of 7.6 mm and a weight of only 173 grams. The cameras are installed in a slightly elevated rectangular box from behind.

A Super AMOLED display with a curve resolution of 6.5 inches with full HD+ and a refresh rate of 90 Hz. On the top left, there is a single boom-punch entry and a fingerprint reader in the monitor below. The HDR10+ is also consistent with a maximum brightness of 1,100nits.

Performance

The OPPO Reno5 Pro 5G is Indias first smartphone to pack the newly announced 1000+ chipset Dimension. It incorporates 5G and can at least be an option to Qualcomm Snapdragon 865, on paper.

The OPPO Reno5 Pro 5G will sport a high-performance octa-core architecture alongside 5G at 7 nm as one of Indias first smartphones to be powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 1000+ chipset. Besides the basic 8GB + 128GB version, other variants may also be available.

Software

OPPO recently confirmed ColorOS 11.1 based on Android 11. Fortunately, OPPO Reno5 Pro 5G is one of the first smartphones to introduce this application.

Media Player controls will allow you to adjust the display from the notification bar between the connected audio devices. Touch sensitivity can be adapted during games through the floating Game Space window and boosts overall reaction when playing fast-paced FPS titles.

But its pretty much because everything else stays the same as the beta, including the Flex Drop floating window function that is difficult to run. Nevertheless, ColorOS 11 is the king of versatility and is also configured in terms of regular multi-tasking and software output in the MediaTek chipset. In combination with a fluid 90 Hz monitor, this allows for a silky smooth software interface.

Camera

A Quad-Camera array is on the back of the OPPO Reno5 Pro 5G: a main 64MP F/17 camera, an ultra-wide 8MP lens, a 2MP macro photographer, and a monochrome 2MP. A 32 MP auto shooter is on the front.

Overall quality is impressive for pictures taken during daylight. Also, pictures are clean and sharp, with the right information. Like the Reno 4 Pro model, the camera often appears to magnify. This is not so much about the hardware as it is all about the AI or the program since it just activates the HDR when work is clearly to be performed on the scene. Thats not the case in most scenarios and this allows certain cut-off highlights to be used.

If you shoot a white bowl of fruit or a person in the background. The images are also very good since the algorithms of OPPO ensure the item is exposed correctly. It is just the HDR that occasionally functions a little slow. The new sensor also has better autofocus and a wider dynamic range around the board, as portrait shots and low-light images.

Camera Samples

Battery

The battery life of slim smartphones is typically short. But the Reno5 Pro 5G will impress and offer a whole day of battery life on a single charge, much like the Reno4 Pro. If you play less, youre able to comfortably accommodate a single charge for around one day and a half battery life, which is so slim for the appliance.

The 65 W SuperVOOC loader is more impressive. It has a 4350 mAh battery which fills up in around 30 minutes and half the battery in just 13 minutes, which is the fastest charge rate you get in this section.

Some AI charging capabilities, such as customized night charges, are enabled by the handset. In the afternoon, your phone will learn about your charging patterns and maximize power input to prevent overloading your battery and therefore not degrading easily. You can also maximize power consumption during sleep mode on the phone.

Final Verdict

The interface visual design of the OPPO Reno5 Pro 5G is unique in the market. The Reno5 Pro 5G delivers all the characteristics of a far more costly flagship device from the premium feel of hand to the fabrics. The 1000+ Axis blends all the output you need except for hard games. New tricks in its sleeves have enhanced the software.

Charge rates are fantastic, while the battery capacity is adequate to see the work of the day. The price of the Reno5 Pro 5G is marginally around 35,990. Well, the Reno5 Pro 5G has decent photos, a good build, but will lag a little behind as they face high-end, flagship processors. Hence, the Reno5 Pro 5G is an excellent option if you are looking for quality design, paired with relatively high-performance images and videos from Instagram.
Anti-LGBTQ legislation is not only bad policy, but its also bad for business, according to American Airlines.

The Fort Worth, Texas-headquartered carrier joined dozens of major Texas businesses and chambers of commerce in a statement released Monday warning state lawmakers that policies targeting members of the LGBTQ community  especially young trans people  could cause irreparable damage in the states economy.

We are concerned to see a resurgence of efforts to exclude transgender youth from full participation in their communities, to criminalize or ban best-practice medial care that is proven to save lives, or to exclude LGBTQ people in a variety of other settings, including accessing healthcare, filing a prescription, or seeking legal representation, the statement read.

We will continue to oppose any unnecessary, divisive measures that would damage Texas reputation and make our customers, our visitors, and our employees and their families feel unwelcome or unsafe, the businesses added.

The effort was announced during a press conference Monday morning by Texas Competes, a coalition of businesses that work for a fair and welcoming Texas for LGBTQ people.

Molly Wilkinson, American Airlines VP of regulatory affairs, said in a statement that, discrimination of any kind runs counter to Americans mission of taking care of people on lifes journey.

Equity and inclusion are core values critical to the success of our company, and laws that create unequal treatment are not only bad policy, but are also bad for business, she added.

Other businesses that joined the effort include Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, as well as the Austin Chamber of Commerce and the Fort Bend Chamber of Commerce.

On Wednesday, Texas senators passed the Senate Bill 29, legislation aimed at banning transgender youth from participating in team sports. The measure is now in the House for consideration.

The coalitions statement comes as Alphonso David, the president of the Human Rights Campaign urged corporate leaders in the U.S. to take a stand against anti-transgender currently under consideration in state legislatures in an open letter published Monday.

Story continues

In order to achieve equality, we need those in positions of power at the largest businesses in the country to rise up against injustice and discrimination; businesses that have increasingly over the years embraced the inherent benefits of being socially responsible, David wrote.

According to the HRC there are more than 240 anti-LGBTQ bills under consideration in state legislatures across the country. Of those, more than 115 directly target transgender people and more than 60 would ban transgender girls and women from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity.

Currently 10 anti-LGBTQ bills await signatures from the state governors.

Trans sports bans have already been signed into law by the governors of three states: Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee.

These bills and others like them being introduced across the nation effectively deny basic and fundamental rights to certain groups of people  and they must be stopped, David said. We cannot thrive in any democracy if, because of our identity, we are denied the ability to access resources, use our voice at the ballot box  or frankly  to exist under the eyes of the law.

Corporate social responsibility means companies must integrate social and environmental concerns in their business operations and interactions with stakeholders. It means corporations must define their values with their own actions. In its most basic form, that means they must support their employees, stakeholders and consumers being treated fairly under law, he added.
April 19 : Both Alia Bhatt and Ranbir Kapoor, who had tested positive for COVID-19, left for Maldives today, after they tested negative. On Monday morning, the couple was spotted at the Mumbai airport.

While Alia was seen in a yellow top teamed with a white jacket and white pants, Ranbir donned a white T-shirt and blue jeans. Both were seen wearing protective masks.

Alia and Ranbir are the latest Bollywood celebrities to leave for the beach destination. Recently, Janhvi Kapoor with her friends, and Madhuri Dixit with her family have returned from the beach island.

With Mumbai under lockdown-like situation, all film shoots have been halted. Ranbir and Alia found it the appropriate time to be away from the city and enjoy the mesmerising beauty of the island nation.

On Sunday, rumoured couple Disha Patani and Tiger Shroff also jetted off to the Maldives. Maharashtra curfew has led the celebs to leave the city as work has been temporarily stopped. While some celebs have headed for outdoor shoots, others are leaving for Maldives. On Sunday, Disha was spotted at the Mumbai airport while leaving for Maldives. Tiger and Disha were earlier in Maldives last year.

A day before, on Saturday, Sara Ali Khan along with mom Amrita Singh flew to the beach destination. They were also spotted at the Mumbai airport while heading for a flight to the Maldives. Sara has recently returned from a vacay in Kashmir. Shraddha Kapoor has also returned from the Maldives after her third trip in 2021.

While Alia was shooting for Gangubai Kathiawadi, she was diagnosed positive for COVID-19 earlier this month. Last week, the actress took to Instagram to announce that she had tested negative for the virus. Ranbir had tested positive in March and recovered after a few days. While Ranbir was down with the virus, Alia shared a post on social media and expressed how much she missed him.
A war over how much water to pump from underground in the Houston region has been playing out in courtrooms and obscure meetings. Its escalating now as new regional goals are being proposed that allow for more water to be pumped from Montgomery County  and for land in areas such as The Woodlands to sink in coming decades by more than a foot.

About every five years, a group known as Groundwater Management Area 14 sets goals for how much water should remain in aquifers that stretch beneath the area. The group is drafting its latest set of goals, which it expects to release early this week, starting an at least 90-day period for public feedback.

There is distress on both sides: Residents of The Woodlands and around Lake Houston want to see less ground sinking, or none. But the group that manages Montgomery Countys underground water prefers an alternative that could lead to even a little more sinking. That group isnt currently using the last set of regional goals, either.

The terms and calculations are complex, but the decision matters. Water pulled from aquifers is cheaper than water pulled from lakes, which must be more heavily treated. But if too much water is pumped from underground, the ground can sink, which can worsen flooding. The regional group exists because aquifers are shared by many counties, and what happens in Montgomery County could affect Harris County, or vice versa.

Probably the bedrock principle of this is that its a regional resource, said Larry French, the Texas Water Development Boards groundwater division director.

The water war begins

Harris and Galveston counties for years suffered from sinking ground, known as subsidence; it got so severe that one subdivision famously sank into the bay. The Legislature formed the Harris-Galveston Subsidence District to address the issue, and it continues to transition the area toward using more water from lakes.

Until recently, the group in Montgomery County was taking a similar approach. Its not a subsidence district, but instead a groundwater conservation district, known as Lone Star.

Previous Lone Star leaders wanted the county to use only as much water as was naturally replenished. So they required large utilities to replace 30 percent of what they pulled from underground with water from another source. The San Jacinto River Authority in 2015 built a $480 million treatment plant on Lake Conroe to meet the need.

Some 80 utilities signed contracts with the river authority, promising to pay for that plant. Some would later argue the utilities had no choice. Water bills went up. The water war began.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Political takeover upends Montgomery County's drinking water war

The city of Conroe and seven utilities sued Lone Star, arguing the district could not make them reduce what they were pumping. Then a new law changed the Lone Star board from an appointed to an elected one. The president of a utility company that sued, Quadvest, backed a slate of candidates who won. The new board settled with Conroe and the utilities, tossing the reduction requirement.

Without that mandate, the river authority now runs its plant at the lowest capacity. The large utilities do not meet the 30 percent conversion once envisioned, said the river authoritys general manager, Jace Houston. Some are short-paying or not paying their portion of the cost for building the plant as litigation continues, he said.

Setting new goals

Change didnt stop there. The regional planning group, Groundwater Management Area 14, last set goals in 2016 for what the shared aquifers should look like in the future. The cities of Conroe and Magnolia and Quadvest challenged these.

The 2016 goals through a settlement process were found no longer reasonable, and Lone Star is not currently managing according to any goals. That puts pressure on the current process. The district said in an emailed response to questions that because goals are long-term, and a new round is underway, there was no reason to use the even earlier 2010 goals as a practical matter.

The regional planning group  of which Lone Star is one of five voting members  devised three possible options for its new goals. Earlier this month, it voted unanimously for the middle of the three, which requires more than half of all wells in each county to have water levels that havent decreased by more than 30 percent in 2080, compared to 2009, and average subsidence in each county of no more than one foot. The member districts were working out the wording for the proposal before it was released for public review.

After the public comment period, the five groundwater conservation districts will go over the feedback that each received and may vote in October to make these goals official, or change them. Lone Star said it does not want these to be the final goals but wanted to move forward. Among the districts concerns, Lone Star said it didnt have monitoring sites to assess subsidence accurately, though it is especially mindful and vigilant of potential subsidence issues.

Input had meanwhile poured in. A member of the steering committee for TownshipFuture, a political action committee that aims to inform residents of The Woodlands, member Robert Leilich said it preferred a plan to eliminate subsidence. His home was spared from flooding during Hurricane Harvey by only a foot. Partnership Lake Houston, which promotes economic development, preferred the more conservative of the three options.

But residents in Conroe sent form emails complaining of water bills that more than doubled. They argued that Montgomery County should be allowed to pump as much as Harris County, which is not bound to the regional goals because it has the subsidence district. An attorney for Quadvest, Marvin Jones, wrote in a letter that attempting to throttle groundwater production in Montgomery County to prevent subsidence in The Woodlands is misguided at best.

And if the group didnt end up voting their way? Jones said Quadvest would be forced to appeal, and, if that fails, likely to sue.

emily.foxhall@chron.com
India may soon get its first indigenous mRNA or messenger RNA COVID-19 vaccine as Gennova Biopharmaceuticals Ltd is looking to start the first phase of human trials for its vaccine this month.

The Pune-headquartered company, a subsidiary of Emcure Pharmaceuticals, had received approval in December last year to start phase 1 and 2 trials for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate. However, it got delayed as the Drugs Controller General of India (DGCI) asked the company to repeat the animal toxicity study which it had conducted in the US.

"The DCGI cleared it in December, but we had originally submitted our pre-human animal toxicity studies from the work we had done in the US. mRNA is a brand-new technology and there's no commercial mRNA product in India. There were certain protocols and formalities to be followed, wherein they wanted us to repeat the animal toxicity studies in the Indian setting," Mint quoted Vikas Thapar, president of corporate development and strategy at Emcure Pharmaceuticals, as saying.

Also read: Oxford University to reinfect recovered Covid-19 patients to develop better vaccines

A mRNA vaccine carries molecular instructions through a synthetic RNA of the virus to make the protein that triggers an immune response in the body. The COVID-19 vaccines of Pfizer and Moderna are based on this technology.

Gennova Biopharma expects to begin the second phase of human trials after two months from the start of first phase. It will seek emergency use approval from DGCI if phase 2 trial is successful, Thapar said.

It will later also look at partnering other companies to scale up production of the vaccine and ingredients used in it. It also plans to produce some of the raw materials needed for the vaccine itself.

Gennova Biopharma's vaccine candidate can be stored at 2-8 degree Celsius temperature, unlike Pfizer and Moderna vaccines which require ultra-low temperatures.

Also read: 50% American adults receive at least 1 dose of COVID-19 vaccine
Dad sentenced to 6 months for breaking gag order, objecting to daughter taking testosterone

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A Canadian dad was sentenced to six months in jail after breaking a gag order by publicly objecting to his teen daughter being given cross-sex hormones as part of a medicalized gender transition.

Robert Hoogland of British Columbia, referred to as "CD" in court documents, was sentenced last week to six additional months in jail for violating court orders by identifying himself publicly objecting to his trans-identifying daughter being put on testosterone.

Sources close to the situation told The Christian Post that Hoogland could be released earlier than six months, taking into account the time he has already served. The sentence may wind up being between three and four months.

Later this week, Justice Michael Tammen, who sentenced Hoogland for criminal contempt because he violated publication and identification bans, is expected to publicly release his reasons for the imposition of the sentence.

According to sources, Hoogland's response to the judge's sentence is a "stoic acceptance of what he considers an overly strict sentence for a first offense."

The Canadian father will be unavailable for interviews until his time in prison is completed.

Hoogland has been in jail for a few weeks already after breaking a gag order that forbade him from publicly identifying himself as the dad in the contested case.

His plight comes amid the ongoing case in Texas of James Younger, a boy whose mother calls him Luna and wants him to transition into a girl against the objections of his father, Jeff Younger.

A hearing in the matter, which made national headlines in the fall of 2019, is scheduled for Friday morning.

According to the curators of the "Save James" Facebook page Monday, attorneys for Younger's ex-wife intend to argue that the father should be stripped of his parental rights, lose the ability to be notified when his ex-wife makes medical or psychological decisions for the boys, be imprisoned for six months, placed on probation for 10 years, have less custody of the boys and pay for all attorneys fees.

Meanwhile, Texas state lawmakers have in recent days held hearings on legislation that prohibits medicalized gender transitioning of minors, similar to a bill that was recently passed in neighboring Arkansas. A handful of other states are considering similar bills.

Last month, the high court in British Columbia reportedly chastised Hoogland for breaching the order that required his identity to remain concealed from the public.

Hoogland's name appeared on a GoGetFunding crowdfunding page, which was a violation of the court order. He was warned that if his name was not removed from the page before his court date, then it would "not go well for him," a source told CP.

The court denied Hoogland's request to be released for two days so that he could use his home computer and take his name off of the crowdfunding page and other sites.

Canadian news outlets are reportedly barred from using Hooglands actual name in their coverage in an attempt to protect his daughter's identity, who is said to be 15 years old.

According to reports, Hoogland's daughter has suffered from several complex issues, all of which were attributed to gender confusion. His daughter was referred to an endocrinology unit at a nearby hospital at the recommendation of psychologist Wallace Wong, a known proponent of transgender affirmation.

Hoogland has consistently stressed that these experimental practices were being done without his consent and that the school where his daughter was taught gender identity lessons had hidden from him what was going on with his child. The father accused the school of enabling and facilitating his daughter's newfound transgender persona.

When his daughter was in grade 7, the school "socially transitioned" her and began referring to her by a different name without informing her parents, according to The Post Millennial.

Hoogland has also emphasized that his daughter's long-term health is in jeopardy because of how the hormones will impact her body.

I had a perfectly healthy child a year ago, and that perfectly healthy child has been altered and destroyed for absolutely no good reason, Hoogland said in an exclusive interview with The Federalist in February 2020.

She can never go back to being a girl in the healthy body that she should have had. Shes going to forever have a lower voice. Shell forever have to shave because of facial hair. She wont be able to have children, the father was quoted as saying.

Sometimes I just want to scream so that other parents and people will jump in, understand whats going on.
Kowalewski was staying at the hotel because he was getting ready to move into a place of his own family members said at the time. Hed been there about a week when his dad picked him up March 1 to run some errands because he doesnt have a car.
Variants from the United Kingdom and New York comprised 85 percent of Connecticuts COVID cases sampled last week, according to a new report.

About half of the cases sampled contained the U.K. variant known as B.1.1.7, Gov. Ned Lamont warned.

It could be as high as 50 percent now, Lamont said Thursday during his pandemic briefing. The bad news is its highly infectious, so while over half of our population has been vaccinated, its spreading fast in the other half of the population.

The good news is the vaccines work  it works against this variant, the governor added.

According to the latest report from Jackson Laboratory and the Nathan Grubaugh Lab at the Yale School of Public Health, cases of B.1.1.7 comprised about 51 percent of all positive COVID-19 cases sampled since the previous week.

That means B.1.1.7 cases increased about 9 percent from the previous week. All told, 945 cases of the variant have been identified in Connecticut through genomic sequencing, a process that involves testing samples from positive COVID-19 test kits.

In total, 85 percent of COVID-19 tests sequenced in the past week were either B.1.1.7, or another variant first detected in New York known as B.1.526. Only 12 percent of the samples were not deemed variants of concern, as B.1.1.7 is considered, or variants of interest as B.1.526 is classified.

The competition between B.1.1.7 (and) B.1.526 is quite interesting, and could have significant public health importance, Grubaugh, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Yale, wrote in a Twitter thread accompanying the reports release Thursday. Currently B.1.1.7 is winning, though things could rapidly change as more people get vaccinated.

The strain from New York comprised 34 percent of samples sequenced in the past week, down nearly 4 percent from the previous week. To date, there have been 478 cases of that strain reported in Connecticut. The strain has researchers concerned because it can contain mutations thought to help the virus evade monoclonal antibody treatments or vaccines.

The report is also tracking all variants with a mutation known as E484K, which is thought to help B.1.526 and other strains possibly escape the vaccines. With the drop in cases of B.1.526, the overall number of variants sequenced with that mutation is also down by a little under 8 percent from the week before.

I'll take this as good news with the caveat that other mutations are also likely important for immune evasion, Grubaugh tweeted.

The latest numbers on variants come as Connecticut edged closer to surpassing 8,000 deaths on Friday, with another five fatalities bringing the states official death toll from the virus to 7,995.

The daily positivity rate stood at 2.27 percent as 1,062 new infections were found in 46,768 tests. A net decline of 19 patients brought the states hospital census for the disease to 486.

B.1.1.7 has researchers concerned since studies have shown it can pass more easily from person to person, and because its thought to pose a greater risk of death to those who catch it.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes the variant is thought to spread about 50 percent more easily than the first strains of COVID-19. Its also likely to increase the severity of the disease based on hospitalization and fatality rates, according to the CDC.

However, researchers do not believe the variant has an increased risk to escape antibodies  whether as part of monoclonal antibody treatments given to people hospitalized for COVID-19, or in those who have been vaccinated or who previously had COVID-19.

When it was first detected earlier this year, the variant caused Britain to go back into lockdown as it quickly became the dominant strain there, Reuters reported. In Michigan, where cases are surging, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has said the variant is partly to blame, WXYZ reported.

Connecticut officials reported last month the first known death in a resident who had the B.1.1.7 variant, but its unclear how many people have been hospitalized or have died with the strain.

Not every person whos hospitalized has a genomic sequence done, said Josh Geballe, Lamonts chief operating officer.

Whats common about almost everyone whos being hospitalized right now is that they were not vaccinated, he added. These vaccines work against these variants very effectively. So if its a topic youre concerned about, my recommendation is go get vaccinated because you will almost certainly have very robust protection against severe illness that would land you in the hospital.
New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday (April 19) in a press conference announced that to break the transmission of COVID-19 in the national capital, the city will be put under complete curfew from April 19 midnight till April 26 morning.

It has been decided to impose a lockdown in Delhi, from 10 pm tonight to 6 am next Monday (26th April), said Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal.

Delhi is facing the fourth wave of COVID-19...25,000 cases have been reported now. Delhi's health system has reached its limits. I don't say that the system has collapsed but it has reached its limits, said Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal in the press conference.

The Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal also urged the citizens of the national capital not to panic, this is a small lock down, don't leave Delhi, said Kejriwal.

He also added that the wedding in the city can still accommodate 50 people and the authorities will keep issuing e-passes for those who need to travel during the curfew.

"There will be a small lockdown in Delhi from 10 pm tonight. Essential services will continue. Marriage ceremonies will be allowed with a gathering of only 50 people," he said.

Delhis health system has been stretched to its limit, and is under stress. Harsh measures will have to be taken to prevent a collapse of the health system, Delhi CM added.

#WATCH| In the last 24 hours, around 23,500 cases were reported. In last 3-4 days, around 25,000 cases have been reported. Positivity rate&infection have increased. If 25,000 patients come every day then system will crumble, there's a shortage of beds:Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal pic.twitter.com/P3xEszFkke  ANI (@ANI) April 19, 2021

While stating the condition of the city in the fight against COVID-19, Arvind Kejriwal said, In the last 24 hours, around 23,500 cases were reported. In last 3-4 days, around 25,000 cases have been reported. Positivity rate and infection have increased. If 25,000 patients come every day then the system will crumble, there's a shortage of beds.

Earlier, the Delhi government had announced a weekend curfew that ended at 5 am on Monday (April 19). The national capital on Sunday recorded the highest single-day spike with over 25,000 new COVID-219 cases.

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The Police have confirmed the arrest of 10 suspects over alleged complicity in a rival cult clash in Ikere Ekiti, Ikere Local Government Area of Ekiti.

Sunday Abutu, the Police Public Relations Officer, who confirmed the incident to journalists in Ado Ekiti, said the clash occurred on Saturday night and the early hours of Sunday.

I can confirm to you that 10 suspects have been arrested in connection with the bloody cult clash. The clash was caused by rivalry and show of strength, he said.

The police spokesperson also confirmed that six persons lost their lives in the clash, adding that their corpses have been deposited in the morgue.

We have begun serious operations there by combined forces of the men of the Nigeria Police Force, Nigerian Army, Amotekun Corps and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps.

Those arrested are in our custody and by the time we conclude our investigations, they will be charged to court accordingly.

NAN reports that the police have deployed more officers and increased surveillance on the town by conducting stop and search on vehicles and individuals coming in and out of the town. (NAN)
Bach Mai Hospital Director Nguyen Quang Tuan has affirmed that the departure of 28 doctors will not affect the hospital's operations.

The Ministry of Health (MOH) conducted an inspection campaign to assess the quality of hospitals and a survey to assess patients satisfaction about service quality.

The survey was conducted online, with anonymity guaranteed.

At Bach Mai Hospital, 74 percent of inpatients said they were satisfied about the hospitals services, while the figure is 82 percent for outpatients.

The satisfaction of medical workers about the hospital was low, just 3.5/5, while it was above 4 in previous years.

As many as 2, 014 out 4,300 people participated in the survey and 15 percent said they were fully satisfied about the hospital, while 51 percent were generally satisfied about the hospitals leaders. Sixty three percent said they wanted to work there for a long time, while 70 percent proposed increasing wages.

More than 100 workers complained that they were overloaded because of the unreasonable working regime with no time off to compensate for days on duty, and that they were subject to high pressure, low income and too many exams for ranking. They also cited many other problems, such as the lack of workers and lack of equipment, including gloves. They want more fair punishment and more compliments, more encouragement, and workers opinions heard.

We are facing serious difficulties. We work under pressure, while the income is low. Many good doctors and nurses have left because the pressure has become unbearable. We are very tired, and we stay just because of the word Bach Mai, a worker wrote.

We have a high number of working hours daily, while the income is too low. Under current laws, every worker has eight working hours a day, but we work at least 10 hours a day, another worker wrote.

Reshuffling

An officer of the administration division of Bach Mai Hospital commented that the fact that 15 percent of workers feeling satisfied working in such an environment with high pressure is a fairly high figure.

As explained by MOH, fully satisfied means that workers dont complain about anything and all their demands can be met. This is really difficult, he said.

In the context of revenue decrease of VND2 trillion, high pressure, 50 percent income decrease, hard work and Covid-19, this figure is quite understandable, he said.

The officer went on to say that leaders of the hospital and all department heads fulfilled their tasks last year in very difficult conditions amid the pandemic and the requirements to improve service quality.

The hospital has a comprehensive healthcare regime, under which every patient has one bed and nurses have to wash patients hairs and clean the potty, works they did not have to do in the past.

Bach Mai became the first public hospital in Vietnam following the autonomy policy in 2020 which means that it can no longer receive funding from the State and has to cover its own expenses.

Bach Mai became the first public hospital in Vietnam following the autonomy policy in 2020 which means that it can no longer receive funding from the State and has to cover its own expenses.

The leaders of the hospital have been making every effort to improve service quality to increase patient satisfaction. It needs to employ more workers, but it cannot because of limited financial capability. As a result, medical workers have had to undertake more work and one nurse has to take care of many patients.

Reshuffling to improve service quality and bring the highest possible satisfaction to patients is what the hospital must do to exist in an autonomy regime. However, reshuffling is never easy and needs serious measures.

Because patients queue up at 3-4 am to register for health examinations, the hospitals leaders asked the workers of some departments to begin their working shift at 5 am.

Heads of departments also have to take higher responsibility. Only when their departments are recognized as excellently fulfilling tasks will they be recognized as excellent workers.

The hospital has also imposed strict punishments on medical workers who have bad attitudes towards patients and their relatives. If patients make complaints, the cases will be considered and judged by a disciplinary committee. The new regulations have put pressure on workers.

What we need to do now is provide best services and win patients satisfaction. If so, we will have more patients, and thus higher income. We will continue to ask to remove the bottlenecks in the financial mechanism, he said.

What does the hospital say?

Asked about the mass resignation of 221 workers, including 28 doctors, the Bach Mai Hospital director said it was a normal phenomenon in the labor market. Many private hospitals have been set up and workers now have many choices for jobs.

He affirmed that the hospital has recruited a high number of highly qualified workers, including professors, associate professors, practitioners with doctorates, and residents.

The hospital also signed labor contracts with nurses who experienced refresher training courses in 2019.

Bach Mai has nearly 1,000 professors, associate professors and practitioners with doctorates, so the departure of 28 practitioners will not affect the operation of the hospital, Tuan said.

Thuy Hanh

Bach Mai Hospital faces mass resignation of staff More than 200 workers at Hanoi-based Bach Mai Hospital, the countrys leading hospital, have resigned from their posts. Some practitioners said they had left because of unreasonable changes in management.
For the second time in April, HablaCuba.com hosts a new promo for Cuban expats who stay constantly in touch with their families and friends back home in Cuba and want to help them whenever possible. Between April 19 until April 24, the international top ups sent to Cubacel mobiles are upgraded as follows:

500 CUP sent - 1300 CUP received

1000 sent CUP - 2600 CUP received

Cubacel has set in place some restrictions when it comes to how to use the amount, differentiating between the main balance and the bonus - Bono Dinero. The main balance will keep the same validity as previous promotions (330 days from recharge date).

In addition to the promo, the customers will also receive the benefit of 50% discount for International calls. It will apply to all prepaid customers who have Dinero Bonus. Once the bono dinero is consumed, the main balance will be deducted but keeping active the 50% discount.

The promotional bonus can be used for local and international calls and SMS (including SMS entumovil). It does not apply for usage on Bolsa de Correo and Mobile Internet (Data Packs)

The promotional Bonus (1000 CUP) can not be transferred to other mobile lines. Only the main account can be transferred.

If customers have balance from previous promotions and they receive a top up during promotional period, the new expiration date will be 30 days (from date when top up is received) for both previous and current balance.

For customers with other valid bonuses (minutes, SMS and Data), expiration date will not be extended.

The entire amount (main balance and Bono Dinero) can be used for:

National and international calls

National and international texts (including SMS entumovil)

Besides sending top ups, customers can also recharge their familys and friends Nauta accounts, in order to help them gain access to the internet. Or, if they prefer calling, they can also use HablaCuba.coms calling services. Customers can place their calls:

From any landline, mobile or even payphone in the world, through access numbers.

Through the smartphone app called KeepCalling, available for iOS and Android.

The rate for international calls to Cuba is 69.9/min, for both landlines and mobiles, and the cost of a text message is 7.

All services HablaCuba.com offers revolve around the websites mission, which is to bring people together, no matter the distance, no distance is too long if people stay connected.

About HablaCuba.com

HablaCuba.com is an interactive website designed by KeepCalling, a global telecommunications company registered in 2002 in the USA. Presently, KeepCalling provides its services to hundreds of thousands of consumers, with a focus on customer satisfaction. KeepCalling has been listed by Inc 5000 as one of the fastest growing companies in the USA for 5 consecutive years. In 2015 the company registered a revenue increase of over 200% from 2011 to 2014.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 23:47:20|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, April 19 (Xinhua) -- The recent video summit among leaders of China, France and Germany has sent a positive signal to the world community for jointly tackling global challenges such as climate change, experts have said, noting the summit bears great significance for building a fair, reasonable and win-win global climate governance system.

Chinese President Xi Jinping attended a video summit with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Beijing on Friday.

The leaders of the three countries exchanged in-depth views on cooperation in coping with climate change, as well as on China-Europe relations, anti-pandemic cooperation, and major international and regional issues.

Ali el-Hefny, Egypt's former ambassador to China, said that the gathering of China-France-Germany signals the three sides' firm stand for maintaining their obligations towards the climate and sends a very positive message to other countries to be part of the actions to reduce emissions.

The former ambassador hailed China as "a model for the international community in the field of tackling global emissions".

"The summit shows the commitment to climate action extends from China to Europe and this is essential if we are all going to implement the Paris Agreement which requires raising ambition in the next decade," Richie Merzian, director of Climate and Energy Program at the Australia Institute, told Xinhua.

Climate change is a global challenge that requires active participations of all countries in the world, said Humphrey Moshi, a professor at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.

This summit has set a good example for dealing with global issues such as climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic through international cooperation, said Moshi.

President Xi has announced that China will strive to bring carbon dioxide emissions to a peak before 2030 and become carbon neutral before 2060, said Ronnie Lins, director of the China-Brazil Center for Research and Business, adding that this is a major commitment, which reflects China's responsible attitude towards climate change. Enditem
The U.S. climate envoy has said it is inappropriate for his country to intervene in Japan's plan to dump radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea.

"We don't think it is appropriate for the U.S. to jump in to the process that's already under way and where there are very clear rules and expectations," U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry told reporters in Seoul on Sunday.

"The U.S. is confident that the government of Japan has had full consultation with IAEA, that IAEA has set up a very rigorous process," he added.

He was responding to a request for U.S. cooperation from Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong, but after their meeting the previous day, a ministry spokesman only said, "Seoul expressed serious concerns over the dumping plan and asked Washington to take an interest in the issue and cooperate, so that Tokyo will provide more transparent and prompt information to the international community." He did not comment on Kerry's response.


MOUNT PLEASANT, MI - Central Michigan University has suspended a third employee in its investigation into a relationship with a Lansing public relations firm under fire after misconduct allegations against its owner.

CMU spokeswoman Heather Smith confirmed the suspension Monday, April 19, but said the university has no further information to share.

Since late March, CMU has been investigating its relationship with Vanguard Public Affairs, a Lansing-based firm that has done work on high-profile Democratic political campaigns, campaigns for local offices and communications for unions and corporate clients.

Vanguards owner, TJ Bucholz, has been accused of inappropriate behavior, sexual harassment and fostering a toxic work environment by several women, including current students or recent graduates of CMU working as interns or staff.

CMU placed a staffer and a faculty member who may have had knowledge of the situation on administrative leave when it began the investigation. The university did not announce their names, but the universitys student newspaper, Central Michigan Life, reported they are journalism faculty members Steve Coon and student media adviser Dave Clark.

UPDATE: CMU suspends staff, launches investigation after students it sent to Lansing PR firm report sexual harassment

The university hired former U.S. Attorney Matthew Schneider to investigate its connections with Vanguard. Though Schneider attended high school with Bucholz, CMU previously affirmed its comfort with him running the investigation.

Read more:

CMU very comfortable with investigator, despite high school connection to Lansing PR firm owner

CMU suspends staff, launches investigation after students it sent to Lansing PR firm report sexual harassment

Michigan Press Association suspends CMU staffer amid investigation into Lansing PR firm
India and Iran have jointly opposed the possible return of the Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan asserting that the war-torn nation could not go backwards, Afghanistan Times reported. Back in 1996, after the fall of Kabul, the Taliban had established a totalitarian regime in the country and named it the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. However, their rule ended just after five years after the militant organisation was overthrown by the Northern alliance.

However, as the US readies its troops to leave the Afghan soil, both Tehran and New Delhi have expressed concerns about the Islamic Emirate. Speaking on Saturday, the Indian Minister of Foreign Affairs called it an existential threat against Pakistan and a national security threat for Iran and India. Furthermore, he asserted that India was not a rival to Pakistan when it came to the Afghanistan crisis. This is an illusion to think that what India does in Afghanistan indirectly targets Pakistan. These words harm Indias efforts in Afghanistan, he added.

"We need to put our differences aside and focus on our commons including the reality that the Islamic Emirate is an existential threat against Pakistan and a national security threat for Iran and India," said Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif echoing Jaishankars stance.

US troops withdrawal

The statement comes days after Pentagon asserted that the US might increase the number of soldiers to ensure a safe and orderly drawdown of its troops from the conflict-prone area. At present, there are a total of 28,000 troops stationed in the Islamic Republic, all of whom would be pulled out by September 11. However, considering threats from an ever emboldened Taliban, Pentagon stated that it was possible that additional soldiers would be added to troops in the near future.

Addressing press reporters, John Kirby, Spokesperson for the US Department of Defense said that it was not out of the realm of possibility that for a short period of time there would be some additional enabling capabilities added to Afghanistan. He added that this would be solely with a motive to facilitate a safe, orderly and deliberately planned drawdown of the troops by President Bidens announced deadline. However, the spokesperson refrained from providing any details into the number or nature of the addition.

Image Credits: AP/PTI
India is under the siege of the deadly second wave of COVID-19. More than two lakh people are testing positive for coronavirus over the last four days amid a growing positivity rate and a spiking fatality rate across the country.

As many as 2,61,500 more people tested positive for COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, taking the cumulative cases to 1,47,88,109.

A new variant, which has a so-called double mutation, is thought to be fueling Indias deadlier new wave of infections that has made it the worlds second worst-hit country.

Sixteen states and UTs -- Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Haryana, Rajasthan, Punjab, Kerala, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Telangana, Uttarakhand, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal -- are displaying an upward trajectory in daily new cases, the Union health ministry said.

The number of new fatalities has reached a record high too with 1,501 more people succumbing to the disease in the last 24 hours.

Acute shortage of beds, oxygen supply

Amid the rise in COVID figures, states are dealing with an acute shortage of beds and oxygen supply.

Demands for increased supply of oxygen cylinders, vaccine doses and Remdesivir were raised by 11 states and UTs, including Delhi on Saturday.

Maharashtra: Amid shortage, Mumbai's All Kurla Committee provides oxygen cylinders



"COVID patients are approaching us & other NGOs. We help as per stock availability. It's a chargeable service, but we give it for free to the poor," says a member of All Kurla Committee (16.07) pic.twitter.com/Ibpp4uYKTY  ANI (@ANI) April 16, 2021

Horror unfolded in Madhya Pradesh where 12 coronavirus patients died at the Shahdol Medical College in Madhya Pradesh allegedly due to the lack of liquid medical oxygen on Sunday night.

Dean of the Shahdol Medical College, Dr Milind Shiralkar told the media earlier that the deaths of Covid-19 patients were the result of lack of medical oxygen.

Family members of the deceased patients claimed that the deaths were caused by lack of stable medical oxygen supply.

How does India plan to tackle oxygen shortage

Several states have reported a short supply of oxygen for the growing pool of COVID patients.

India plans to import 50,000 metric tonnes of medical oxygen to cater to the rising demand.

The Union Health Ministry has been directed to finalise the tender for the same and also explore possible sources for import identified by the missions of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), it said.

"Also, based on the mapping exercise undertaken, 4,880 MT, 5,619 MT and 6,593 MT have been indicated to these 12 states -- Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan -- for meeting their projected demand as on 20th April, 25th April and 30th April, respectively," a statement issued by the health ministry said.

BCCL

Medical oxygen is a critical component in the treatment of COVID-affected patients and there has been increasing demand for medical oxygen, especially from these 12 states which have a high burden of active coronavirus cases.

While the demand in Maharashtra is expected to be beyond available production capacity of the state, states like Madhya Pradesh do not have any production capacity to meet their demand for medical oxygen, the health ministry said.

Besides, there is a trend of increasing demand in other oxygen producing states such as Gujarat, Karnataka, Rajasthan, it highlighted.

States have been directed to set up control rooms to ensure smooth supply of oxygen to the districts according to need and review requirement of cylinders, tankers etc.
Panaji, April 19 : Goa Chief Minister Prmaod Sawant on Monday urged Uddhav Thackeray to not "single out" states, after the Maharashtra government blacklisted six states, including Goa, as "places of sensitive origin".

"#COVID19 is a global pandemic. Let us put up a combined fight against this pandemic under the leadership of PM @narendramodi ji. I urge @CMOMaharashtra not to single out states as 'Places of Sensitive Origin', and withdraw the said order in public interest," Sawant tweeted on Monday.

Earlier, Maharashtra Chief Secretary Sitaram Kunte in an order said that Kerala, Goa, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Delhi and NCR region and Uttarakhand had been declared as places of "sensitive origin" until the order is retracted or till Covid-19 stays notified as a disaster.

The directive has been issued by the Maharashtra government "in order to curb the transmission of Covid-19 in the state and in order to stop the influx of Covid-19 virus variants into the state of Maharashtra from other locations".

The order has been issued under the provisions of Section 2 of the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897.

Reacting to the development, Goa Aam Aadmi Party convenor Rahul Mahambre said that Goa should also insist on Covid-19 certificates from tourists visiting the state.

"Maharashtra govt declares Goa is a place for sensitive origin for covid 19. But despite pleas from all @DrPramodPSawant is still adamant not to insist for covid negative for travellers coming to Goa," Mahambre said.

On Sunday, Goa reported its highest tally of daily Covid-19 cases with 951 persons testing positive. The state currently has 7,052 active Covid-19 patients.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 17:09:23|Editor: huaxia

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An attendee tries a smart device during the 1st Summit of Jinan National Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Application (JNAIIA) Pilot Zone & the Exposition of Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Application on Yellow River Basin in Jinan, east China's Shandong Province, April 19, 2021. The event kicked off in Jinan on Monday. (Xinhua/Guo Xulei)
Madhuri Dixit Embraces Her Goofy Side With Latest Yoga Post And It Is Sure To Leave You In Splits

Known for always holding her elegant demeanor, Bollywood diva Madhuri Dixit, was seen embracing her inner goofiness in her latest social media post. In the picture shared by Madhuri on her Instagram handle, she is seen striking funny facial expressions while performing 'kukkuta yoga asana' also known as cockerel pose, or rooster posture.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Madhuri Dixit (@madhuridixitnene)

Along with the picture, she wrote, "Embracing my goofy side with some yoga". In the photo, the Devdas actor could be seen clad in a black half sleeves T-shirt, paired along with the same coloured yoga capri, as she stretched her body above the ground with her hands on a mauve coloured mat. Her Kalank co-star Sonakshi Sinha, along with more than 1 lakh fans liked the post within less than an hour of being posted.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Madhuri Dixit (@madhuridixitnene)

Of late, the Gulab Gang star has been quite active on social media and had shared many pictures and videos from her Maldives trip diaries which she spent with her family. Meanwhile, on the work front, the 'Dhak-Dhak' girl of Bollywood will be debuting in the digital world through the suspenseful family drama series by Netflix titled Finding Anamika. The plot of the series revolves around the story of a global superstar, wife, and mom who suddenly vanishes without a trace. As police and loved ones search for answers to her disappearance, her perfectly crafted facade is stripped away, revealing hidden truths and painful lies in the life of an iconic actress.
New Delhi, April 19 : Union Home Minister Amit Shah has said that the production of the life saving drug Remdesivir is 'adequate' and as a precautionary measure its export has been banned.

Shah said on Sunday, "The production of Remdisivir is adequate. We have banned export as precautionary but in panic people are buying in bulk which is leading to a shortage." "I appeal to the people to buy it when only the doctor prescribes," he added.

The response comes after many state governments,including Maharashtra have complained about the shortage of the injections .

India on Sunday reported 2,61,500 fresh Covid cases, the highest single-day spike ever, pushing the country's overall Covid tally to 1,47,88,109, according to the Health Ministry data.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - April 19, 2021) - Inomin Mines Inc. (TSXV: MINE) is pleased to announce the hiring of Carlos Torres and Eduardo Ortiz to lead the company's community relations and project evaluation activities in Mexico.

A resident of Oaxaca, Mr. Carlos Torres, will represent the company with local communities, government officials and other stakeholders. Mr. Torres is a civil engineer who worked as a mine manager and field engineer at Gold Resource's El Aguila gold-silver mine in Oaxaca State. At El Aguila he was involved in developing infrastructure for the project including road access, mining camp, open-pit and under-ground mine development, and tailings dam. Mr. Torres also worked as Habitat Program Supervisor in Oaxaca with SEDESOL a Mexican Federal Government Ministry of Social Development agency in charge of urban development to improve living standards in rural communities.

Mr. Eduardo Ortiz has been appointed senior exploration geologist to evaluate the company's gold-silver properties in Oaxaca and new acquisition opportunities in Mexico. Mr. Ortiz, who started his career as a geologist in Oaxaca State, has worked throughout Mexico. His immediate previous position was Senior Exploration Geologist for a Mexican subsidiary of First Majestic Silver Corp. Prior to this position he worked as Senior Geologist at Endeavour Silver Corp. He also was Chief Geologist at Goldgroup Mining Corp.'s Cerro Colorado mine in Sonora.

John Gomez, President & CEO of Inomin Mines, says, "I'm delighted to welcome Carlos and Eduardo to our team. I'm confident they will be instrumental to unlock La Gitana and Pena Blanca's resource potential, and assist us review other project acquisition opportunities."

About Inomin Mines

Inomin Mines is engaged in the identification, acquisition and exploration of mineral properties, especially gold, silver and nickel projects that display strong potential to host significant mineral resources. Inomin holds the La Gitana and Pena Blanca gold-silver properties in Mexico. The company owns a 100% interest in the Beaver-Lynx sulphide nickel project in south-central British Columbia, and the Fleetwood zinc-copper-gold-silver VMS project in south-west British Columbia. Inomin also owns 100% of the King's Point gold-copper-zinc project in Newfoundland under option to Maritime Resources Corp. Inomin trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol MINE. For more information visit www.inominmines.com and follow us on Twitter @InominMines.

On behalf of the board of Inomin Mines:

Inomin Mines Inc.

Per: "John Gomez"

President and CEO

For more information please contact:

John Gomez

Tel. 604.566.8703

info@inominmines.com

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/80763
AET has won the SRS (Singapore Registry of Ships) Ship Owner of the Year Award presented at the Singapore International Maritime Awards (IMA) ceremony held as part of the Singapore Maritime Week.

The SRS Award recognises an outstanding owner of quality Singapore registered ships and takes account of fleet size, growth, operational excellence, sustainable contribution to human capital development both ashore and at sea. This year, special emphasis was placed on the owner who has been able to demonstrate resilience by adapting its business activities and operations even amidst the global pandemic challenges.

The IMA ceremony was held as one of the key anchor events of the Singapore Maritime Week (April 19  24, 2021) organised by the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA). The biennial Singapore IMA seeks to recognise individuals and companies for their contributions to Singapores development as a premier global port hub and an international maritime centre.

Receiving the Award on behalf of AET, President & CEO, Capt Rajalingam Subramaniam said: Being named SRS Ship Owner of the Year for the first time is a great recognition for AET and the entire MISC Group. This award reflects on our commitment and contributions to the entire maritime ecosystem as a global company with Asian roots and as a leading player of responsible and sustainable shipping. -- Tradearabia News Service
New Delhi: The Delhi Traffic Police had announced that many borders in Delhi were closed for traffic on Monday (April 19) due to protests held by the Kisan Andolan.

The traffic police of the capital has issued an alert on their official Twitter account on Monday morning.

According to the alert, Ghazipur border (from Ghaziabad towards Delhi), Singhu Border, Mungeshpur (Mungeshpur Border), Harewali Border and Tikri Border were closed.

The Delhi Traffic Police had to take this because of the farmers' protests over the three farm laws passed by the government.

The Delhi Traffic Police said in an alert, Due to protest of Kisan Andolan, Service road of National Highway No. 24 both side at U.P Gate and N. H. 24 , N. H 9 from U.P. towards Delhi are closed at U.P. Gate Ghazipur Border. ONLY National Highway no. N.H. 9 AND N.H 24 from Delhi.

Traffic Alert

Due to protest of Kisan Andolan,

Service road of National Highway No. 24 both side at U.P Gate

and

N. H. 24 , N. H 9 from U.P. towards Delhi are closed at U.P. Gate Ghazipur Border

ONLY

National Highway no. N.H. 9 AND N.H 24 from Delhi  Delhi Traffic Police (@dtptraffic) April 19, 2021

Towards Ghaziabad upper side carriageway open. Diversion is being continue to facilitate the motorist. Commuters can take the following routes. Traffic coming from Ghaziabad side via 1.Nala road, 2.Upper canal and 3.Hindon canal also.

The traffic alert also mentioned the routes towards Ghaziabad that would be kept open for the day.

Live TV
Scott Morrison has pledged to protect industry as Australia heads toward net zero carbon emissions 'as quickly as passively and preferably by 2050'.

The prime minister admitted Australia's energy mix will have to change over the next 30 years to get there, but this would not be achieved through imposts on business.

'We are going to meet our ambitions with the smartest minds, the best technology and the animal spirits of our business community,' he told a Business Council of Australia dinner on Monday night.

Championing entrepreneurialism and innovation, Mr Morrision pointed to the nation's energy and farming sectors saying 'we're not going to achieve net zero in the cafes, dinner parties and wine bars of our inner cities'.

'It will be won in places like the Pilbara, the Hunter, Gladstone, Portland, Whyalla, Bell Bay, the Riverina. In the factories of our regional towns and outer suburbs.'

'That's where the road to net zero is being paved in Australia,' he added.

Mr Morrison will speak at a US virtual climate summit this week convened by President Joe Biden.

Mr Morrison will speak at a US virtual climate summit this week convened by President Joe Biden

The US and China - the world's two biggest carbon polluters - recently agreed to co-operate to curb climate change.

Meanwhile, Anthony Albanese is attempting to cast doubt on the federal government's ability to handle renewable energy technology, pointing to the national broadband network.

The NBN is expected to cost $57billion, close to double what the coalition initially promised due to changes with materials used.

The opposition leader says Australia cannot make the same 'technological misadventure' with the transition to clean energy.

'We must not repeat this mistake when it comes to renewable energy,' he will tell a virtual summit on Tuesday.

'We need to be at the front of the pack, not well behind the pace.'

Mr Albanese says low cost electricity from renewables will help businesses grow so they can hire more Australians.

'With the right policy settings, falling power prices will act as a catalyst for a revival of the Australian manufacturing industry.'

The Morrison government is using the same argument but in a bid to justify expanding the gas industry.

Rather than setting out a plan for the phase-out of export resources like coal, Mr Albanese says their future is based on global demand.

'Labor respects existing resource export industries for the jobs they provide to Australians,' he will say.

'Decisions about the long-term future of those industries will be made in the boardrooms of Tokyo, Beijing, Seoul and New Delhi.'

But he says renewables represent the future.

'We must use cheap, clean energy to maintain existing energy-intensive industries, like aluminium and steel, and also to develop new opportunities that have not previously been viable.'

Labor's climate and energy policies so far include a $15billion National Reconstruction Fund, a $20billion project to update Australia's power transmission lines, $200million for community batteries and tax reforms to lower the cost of electric vehicles.

The opposition has not yet announced its roadmap for achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, which is expected to include a target for 2030.
Complicating those trust issues is the fact that, while the Biden administration may declare on Thursday that the United States is back, Congress remains as divided as ever on climate.

Mr. Biden is expected Thursday to announce a new U.S. target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. How ambitious other countries feel Americas new goal is, and how credible its path toward getting there is viewed, will largely determine how much the administration can prod other nations to make stronger commitments.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, has already said his party will oppose Mr. Bidens $2 trillion infrastructure plan, which is currently the cornerstone of the administrations efforts to meet current and future climate goals. A group of Republican House leaders last week also introduced legislation calling for a wholesale renegotiation of the Paris Agreement and denounced Mr. Bidens plans for global re-engagement.

Anyone who says the United States is united in working on climate change is drinking the Kool-Aid because we arent, said Samantha Gross, director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative at the Brookings Institution.

White House officials said this week the United States remained credible; America is still on track to meeting the Obama administrations goal of cutting economywide emissions about 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, despite the Trump administration rollbacks.

But those numbers are arguable. This year, a study from the Rhodium Group did estimate that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions were about 21 percent below 2005 levels at the end of 2020  putting the country within striking distance of the Obama administrations pledge under the Paris Agreement. But about a third of that decline was because of the coronavirus pandemic, which sharply curtailed driving and business activity last year. Emissions will very likely rise again this year as the economy rumbles back to life unless policymakers enact significant new clean-energy policies, the study warned.

Ali A. Zaidi, the White House deputy climate adviser, pointed to another factor that should bolster U.S. credibility: American climate pledges go beyond the word of Washington. Yes, Mr. Trump abandoned the Paris Agreement. But, he said, our states and our cities and our businesses and our workers stayed in.
The size of Victorias infrastructure pipeline has almost doubled since Premier Daniel Andrews took power in 2014, growing to nearly 90 projects costing taxpayers a total of $81 billion.

A fresh analysis of six years of state budget data by Victorias Auditor-General reveals that in 2015  Mr Andrews first year as Premier  Victoria was set to build 48 projects, mainly transport, and costing $32 billion.

Premier Daniel Andrews at the State Library station, part of the Metro Tunnel project, in November. Credit:Jason South

This had increased to 87 major projects by 2019, costing taxpayers $81 billion, the analysis, published on the Auditor-Generals website on Monday, shows.

The Premier, who took office vowing to do away with years of inaction on transport infrastructure, is now pumping $800 million a month into the delivery of his signature Big Build pipeline, with projects reaching a cost and scale never seen before.
Tradition and progress By Robert T. Smith

Social traditions, customs, and beliefs form over time organically to create a social order. The cornerstone of our countrys social order had been established generally through natural law and Judeo-Christian values. This unique social order, coupled with a full serving of individual life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, individual freedom and responsibilities as a citizen, delivered Americanism as a demonstrably best system. The ideals or boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable behavior were established based on a higher authority over the here and now man-made authority. While these ideals may not always have been or be achieved, they were/are the high-bar goal for what can be recognized as virtue. Certain groups are intent to race through our society knocking down the boundary walls of our social order, without having thought through why such a boundary was established. Progress we are told, but to where? As we continue to experience the ongoing war on the social order that once was the glue that held our American society together, the societal chaos created by the here and now base impulses of humanism is on display daily. The core of the natural family system destroyed by a proliferation of fatherless homes resulting in a multitude of social ills and criminal activity; deaths of despair through suicide, alcohol or drugs dramatically on the rise. Natural law and our religious-based virtue, replaced by the unnatural and man-centered anything goes feel good of the day. For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods. The serpent of the story served up the apple to Eve, who enticed Adam, the allegorical beginning of original sin - the human condition. In this early scene of the Holy Bible, knowing full well what had occurred and where Adam and Eve were hidden, God sought out the representative first humans, he called out to them And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? People seek pleasure in various ways to be their own god, to be accountable only to themselves, and God seeks out the sinner for salvation by his grace that is manifested into the individuals faith. We all face the decisions of good and bad, natural and unnatural, ordered and disordered in our daily lives. Answering the call of God is our only means of salvation. Acting in a manner pleasing to the creator is the desire of our salvation. An individual relationship with the creator is the cornerstone of a meaningful existence. There is no place to hide from the gaze of God. A life lived in a manner to please your audience of one, God, helps to minimize many base human impulses. Unique in nature, this individual battle is fought only in the intellect and consciousness of man. The animal kingdom is burdened only with the drive for survival. That quiet, conscious conversation that goes on daily in our own thoughts is the spark of spiritual reality for our lives and a sign of the evidence of natures God. All people have a set of values, but not all values are virtuous. As todays culture promotes the drift toward the here and now, self-centered values of humanism, more and more frequently we see the results streamed to us daily in our social media. Those whose value system is not virtuous cause mayhem in our communities. As extreme examples are the recent mass murders of innocents in schools and churches, businesses, or other public places, or the daily body count in the big cities like Chicago. There are all manner of other lesser harms people do to one another or themselves, the unconstrained impulses of humanism. Mans law is ephemeral, based on personal or societal impulses of the day. As we move away from a creator God controlling authority and seek to be our own god, who is to say what is good or bad. You are your own god, and your actions will only have consequences if caught by the man-made authority. Once a person becomes their own god, anything goes based on their own set of values, there is really no empirical basis to establish good and bad, natural or unnatural, ordered or disordered. Whole communities are consumed by their humanism, abandonment of the traditional family virtues, with no support from their local social or religious organizations they turn many to getting their fair share, no matter the manner. Another drug overdose or deal gone bad shooting, or another deadly interaction with law enforcement has just become background noise for our daily lives. Free individuals living as they desire in the presence of their God is the cornerstone of Americanism. Mans law, enforced by the state that conflicts with the God of man and natures laws can only lead to oppression, forced compliance. The man-made systems of Communism, Marxism, theocracies, totalitarianism, or the softer controls of Socialism are all driven by the state authority acting as the God-like controlling authority over individuals lives. The state cannot accept a challenge to its authority from God. The humanists automatically default to another man-made law or another social program that alleges to fix the problems, but in reality, only serves to hide them as a feel good something to do for the self-anointed demigod political deciders and their supporters. When the small people of our current political class cast big shadows over how we live our lives, the time draws near to nightfall. As quoted from William O. Douglas: As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air  however slight  lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness. As humanism slowly erodes our society by destroying the divinely inspired human spirit, and the central powers of the state begin to encroach more into our daily lives to dictate by force what is right or wrong, good or bad, it is apparent that the real answer comes to us from long ago, divinely inspired into a book. And the Lord God called unto mankind and said unto them.where art thou. Robert T. Smith is an environmental scientist who spends his days enjoying life and the pursuit of happiness with his family. He confesses to cling to his liberty, guns and religion, with antipathy toward the arrogant ruling elites throughout the country. Home
Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin on Monday announced the formation of the citys first Civilian Review Board to investigate complaints of police misconduct.

Birmingham knows full well the history of those who have abused the power, their power to protect and serve,' Woodfin said. We will never forget the name Bonita Carter, a womans whose tragic death at the hands of police led to cries of reform and ignited change that reshaped the destiny of our city.

Its why, even today, we have to work harder,' Woodfin said. Its so important that we work harder to strengthen the bonds of trust between our officers and the city theyve sworn to serve.

In June, Woodfin announced he was launching a 30-day review to look at police transparency and accountability. At the end of that review by his office, he named a task force with plans to issue an executive order addressing any gaps between what officers are doing now and best practices after an additional 90-day review. The task force was formed in July to review public safety issues in the city following the police killing of George Floyd and civil unrest in cities across the nation.

In December 2020, Woodfin and Birmingham City Councilman Hunter Williams, who chairs the Public Safety Committee, released a lengthy report from the Birmingham Public Safety Task Force.

Two of the members of that task force  Birmingham attorney Victor Revill and Joyce Vance, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama  will also serve on the new Civilian Review Board. The other members are former Birmingham Police Chief Annetta Nunn, the Rev. Lawrence Conoway, senior pastor at Fellowship Bible Church and T. Marie King, a Birmingham activist, speaker and facilitator for change.

Birmingham Police Chief Patrick Smith released this statement regarding the newly-announced Civilian Review Board: The Birmingham Police Department is committed to providing professional police services and honoring public safety obligations to the community. I fully support Mayor Randall Woodfins formation of a Civilian Review Board and the recommendations of the Public Safety Task Force.

I believe the CRB will establish direct, cohesive and ongoing dialogue between community members and the BPD. It is my hope the CRB will expedite our ongoing efforts to enhance community engagement, increase trust, and generate positive change in Birmingham, Smith said. As chief of police, I assure you the men and women of the BPD are dedicated to improving the quality of life here in Birmingham. We strive to do our best to understand each situation and serve the public with the right resources.

The Civilian Review Board will have general investigative and subpoena authority as allowed under Alabama law, except with respect to matters that have been referred to the District Attorney and/or the Jefferson County Personnel Board and/or the Birmingham Police Departments Internal Affairs.

The board will investigate complaints submitted by Birmingham residents in response to allegations of police misconduct so long as the underlying issue has not been previously referred to the District Attorney and/or the Jefferson County Personnel Board and/or the Birmingham Police Departments Internal Affairs.

Woodfin said the board will provide an authentic community voice to policing, saying it puts moms and dads, faith leaders and community activists and young professionals at the same table as our police force.

This is an opportunity to build bridges, to cultivate trust, to create more checks and balances and for ensuring justice,' the mayor said. Were putting reform in the hands of the people.

Once a complaint is submitted to the Civilian Review Board, it will automatically trigger a 20-day review period for investigation. Upon competition, the findings will be submitted to the police chief as recommendations. The board is expected to start taking complaints in early July.

Woodfin said citizen complaints against police officer have actually decreased in recent years, in part because of body-worn cameras and because of the policies and practices of the current police administration through the values the chief implores to the officers on the streets every day.

In attendance at Mondays press conference was J.D. Jackson, a cousin of 20-year-old Bonita Carter who was shot to death by Birmingham Police Officer George Sands on June 22, 1979 in the parking lot of Jerrys Convenience Store on 10th Avenue North in Kingston.

I know that you were not born necessarily to end life so suddenly,' Jackson said, but maybe you were born to make sure that our city became truly the Magic City so it would stop being the tragic city.
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Congresswoman Maxine Waters may have handed Derek Chauvin's defense grounds for appeal and the turning over of any guilty verdict.

Speaking after the jury was sent out on Monday afternoon, Chauvin's attorney Eric Nelson once again made a bid to have the case against his client thrown out on grounds that there was no way the jury could be untainted by the excessive publicity surrounding the case.

'Now that we have US representatives threatening acts of violence in relation to this trial its frankly mind-blowing,' Nelson said.

Taking it into consideration Judge Peter Cahill said: 'I grant that Congresswoman Waters may have given you something on appeal that may result in this whole trial being overturned'.

Judge Cahill denied Nelsons move for a mistrial but he said: 'I wish elected officials would stop talking about this case. They should respect a co-equal branch of government.'

He said that failure to do so was 'abhorrent', but added: 'I don't think it's given additional material with which to prejudice the jury. A congresswomans opinion really doesn't matter a whole lot.'

Waters (D - California) had joined protesters in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center on Saturday night for a demonstration over the death of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old black man shot dead by a white police officer during a traffic stop on April 11.

Waters told the protesters that she will fight for justice on their behalf and urged them to 'to get more confrontational' - just one day after protests descended into violence.

'I hope we get a verdict that says guilty, guilty, guilty,' she said of the Chauvin trial. 'And if we don't, we cannot go away. We've got to stay on the street. We get more active, we've got to get more confrontational. We've got to make sure that they know that we mean business.'

Derek Chauvin's defense attorney Eric Nelson called for a mistrial after the jury retired on Monday, citing comments California Congresswoman Maxine Waters (left) made about the case during a protest on Saturday. Judge Peter Cahill (right) condemned Waters' remarks as 'abhorrent' before stating that he would not declare a mistrial

Derek Chauvin is pictured in court on Monday as his attorney unsuccessfully lobbied for a mistrial

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell likewise went after Waters on Monday, telling colleagues: 'It's harder to imagine anything more inappropriate than a member of Congress flying in from California to inform local leaders - not so subtly - that this defendant had better be found guilty or else there will be big trouble in the streets.'

The Kentucky Republican said that Waters' demand for a guilty verdict was 'like somebody window-shopping or ordering off a menu.'

'Every single American deserves a fair trial. This is sacred. You do not balance the scales of justice by trying to tip them,' McConnell said.

The top Senate Republican noted that through much of the country's 'quest for civil rights and equal justice has been the fight to get rid of extra-judicial violence, to get rid of rigged trials where the outcome was molded by public sentiment or angry mob.'

'It is beyond the pale for a sitting member of the United States Congress to look at what happened last summer and imply there should be some kind of a sequel if a legal case does not unfold as she thinks it should,' he said.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy took his criticism even further - saying that he is introducing a motion to censure Waters.

Meanwhile House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Capitol Hill reporters Monday that Waters didn't need to apologize as her comments didn't incite violence, despite calls from Republicans to have Waters punished for her remarks.

And White House press secretary Jen Psaki refused to condemn Waters' comments, telling reporters: 'Well, I can speak to the president's view. He has been very clear that he recognizes the issue of police violence against people of color, communities of color is one of great anguish and it's exhausting and quite emotional at times.'

Waters defended herself on Monday by saying that Republicans were trying to 'send a message to all of the white supremacists' by criticizing her call for Black Lives Matter to 'get more confrontational' if Chauvin is found not guilty.

Speaking to the Grio, Waters said: 'I am nonviolent. Republicans will jump on any word, any line and try to make it fit their message and their cause for denouncing us and denying us, basically calling us violent.

'Any time they see an opportunity to seize on a word, so they do it and they send a message to the white supremacists, the KKK, the Oath Keepers, the [Proud] Boys and all of that.'

She also accused Republicans of using the tactic to raise money off the Democrats' backs.

Walters said she was 'not worried that they're going to continue to distort what I say.'

'This is who they are and this is how they act,' she added. 'And I'm not going to be bulled by them.'

Judge Cahill's condemnation of Rep Waters Chauvin's defense attorney Eric Nelson called for a mistrial on Monday afternoon and cited Rep Maxine Waters' remarks over the weekend that Black Lives Matter Protesters should 'get more confrontational' if the ex-cop is found not guilty. 'I hope we get a verdict that says guilty, guilty, guilty,' Waters said of the Chauvin trial. 'And if we don't, we cannot go away. We've got to stay on the street. We get more active, we've got to get more confrontational. We've got to make sure that they know that we mean business.' Nelson said the comments had the effect of 'threatening and intimidating the jury'. Judge Peter Cahill replied by saying: 'I grant you Congresswoman Waters may have handed you grounds for appeal and the turning over of this trial. 'I wish elected officials would stop talking about this case. They should respect a co-equal branch of government.' The judge said that failure to do so was 'abhorrent', but added: 'I don't think it's given additional material with which to prejudice the jury. A congresswomans opinion really doesn't mean much.' Advertisement

Cahill's condemnation of Waters' comments came after the state of Minnesota concluded its murder case against Chauvin on Monday by telling the jury: 'The reason George Floyd is dead is because Mr Chauvin's heart was too small.'

The jury was then dismissed for deliberation, where they will consider three charges against Chauvin: second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

After the jury stepped out Nelson called for a mistrial over prosecutor Jerry Blackwell's characterization of the defense's case as 'nonsense' and a 'story' - as well as the possibility that media attention could bias the jury.

Judge Cahill said he was not making any findings as to whether Blackwell's comments constituted prosecutorial misconduct that could result in a mistrial but said that he had dealt with all of Nelson's specific objections as he had made them.

As for the media attention, Cahill said he is hopeful that the jurors have heeded his warning against looking at any news coverage of the case before officially denying the mistrial motion.

Outside the court more than 2,000 National Guard members and 1,100 law enforcement officials stood watch over Minneapolis as the city braces for potential unrest over the verdict.

In his closing statement, Nelson insisted that Chauvin acted as any reasonable officer would when he pinned Floyd to the pavement while underlining the handcuffed black man's 'active resistance' to arrest.

Nelson urged the jury to examine all of the evidence presented over three weeks of testimony and come to the conclusion that the state did not meet the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Floyd's death was a direct result of Chauvin's actions on May 25, 2020.

'This was an authorized use of force - as unattractive as that may be,' Nelson said, noting that none of the state's use-of-force experts or police officials could agree on a specific point where Chauvin's actions became unreasonable.

He also emphasized the 'hostile' reactions of the crowd that gathered to watch Floyd's arrest and yelled out for the officers to get off of him - asserting that the chaos was distracting for Chauvin.

Nelson dragged out his at times rambling closing for more than two hours before Judge Peter Cahill interrupted him and called for a lunch break at 2.10pm local time.

When he returned to conclude his statement, Nelson ripped into prosecutors for discounting Floyd's underlying health issues and drug use when arguing that Floyd's primary cause of death was asphyxia during Chauvin's restraint.

'When you take into consideration the presumption of innocence and proof beyond a reason doubt. I would submit to you that it is nonsense to suggest that none of these other factors had any role. That is not reasonable,' Nelson said.

'When you conclude your analysis of the evidence, the entirety of the evidence, when you review the law as written, all within a thorough honest analysis, the state has failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. And therefore Mr Chauvin should be found not guilty of all counts.'

Defense attorney Eric Nelson is seen delivering his closing statement on Monday, where he urged the jury to examine all of the evidence presented over three weeks of testimony and come to the conclusion that the state did not meet the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Floyd's death was a direct result of Chauvin's actions on May 25, 2020

Nelson underlined Floyd's active resistance to arrest by playing footage from Chauvin's body camera for the jury

Members of the National Guard and police officers stand guard in Minneapolis ahead of a Chauvin verdict

High school students from across Minneapolis participated in a statewide walkout on Monday to stand in solidarity against racial injustice and honor the lives of George Floyd and Daunte Wright

Minneapolis was transformed into a fortress over the weekend as city officials, business owners and residents braced for unrest that could follow the verdict in Chauvin's case.

More than 3,000 members of the National Guard are currently stationed in the city in addition to 1,100 officers from public safety agencies across the state as part of what has been termed Operation Safety Net.

The operation, which is rumored to have cost the city more than $1million, moved into its third stage on Monday with the start of jury deliberation.

Nelson began his closing statement by reminding the jury that the Chauvin 'doesn't have to play catch up', he starts with presumption of innocence.

For the first time in the case, Chauvin set down the pen with which he has scribbled throughout and looked at the screen on which Nelson displayed definitions of standards of doubt, stretching out his arms and calling for them to consider the scales of justice, reasonably balanced.

Civil cases may use a 'preponderance of evidence' as a standard of proof he told them - a grain of sand that could, he suggested, tip the scales.

The next level is 'clear and convincing evidence'. This is the standard, Nelson told the jury, that the state used to, 'take away your children.'

The highest standard is proof 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. Nelson explained: 'Essentially what the state has to convince you is that the evidence in this case completely eliminates any reasonable doubt  or in other words leaving only unreasonable doubt, capricious, unpredictable, fanciful  space aliens flew in and inhabited the body of Derek Chauvin, that's fanciful.'

Nelson asked the jury to be 'intellectually honest' and cast his own statements accordingly.

Most notably, Nelson took a quick swipe at the state's rebuttal of defense medical expert Dr David Fowler's contention that carbon monoxide may have played a part in Floyd's death.

Dr Tobin came in and told the jury, he said, that there could not have been any carbon monoxide poisoning because his oxygen saturation levels at hospital were 98 percent.

Nelson pointed out: 'I could get up in front of you and argue you to that we know this wasn't asphyxiation because George Floyd had a 98 percent oxygen level but that's not intellectually honest.

What is 'excited delirium'? The condition Chauvin's defense claims made Floyd dangerous during arrest Derek Chauvin's defense has repeatedly suggested that George Floyd may have been experiencing 'excited delirium' during his fatal arrest on May 25. Excited delirium is a condition characterized by the abrupt onset of aggression and distress, typically accompanying drug abuse. Thomas Lane, a rookie officer who helped restrain Floyd, could be heard on body camera footage questioning whether Floyd might be experiencing excited delirium. The subject came up at Chauvin's trial last week when the defense called Nicole Mackenzie, a Minneapolis police officer who trains other officers in medical care and testified for the prosecution earlier. Mackenzie told the jury that new officers are told how to recognize the signs of excited delirium. Suspects may be incoherent, she said, exhibit extraordinary strength, sweat or suffer from abnormal body temperature, or seem like they suddenly snapped. They're taught that cardiovascular disease, drug abuse or mental illness can trigger excited delirium, she said. But Mackenzie told the jury that she would defer to an emergency room doctor in diagnosing the condition. She also testified that she provides training on excited delirium only to new recruits. Judge Peter Cahill cautioned jurors that there is no evidence that the veteran Chauvin had the training. There is no universally accepted definition of excited delirium and researchers have said its not well understood. The American Psychiatric Associations diagnostic handbook doesnt list the condition and one study last year concluded it is mostly cited as a cause only when the person who died had been restrained. Advertisement

'It doesn't stack up against the rest of the evidence because of what we know. We heard the testimony of paramedic Seth Bravinder and [ER physician] Dr Langenfeld.

'They came in and said they began resuscitation efforts, they introduced oxygen they're manually breathing for him. They're re-oxygenating his blood.

'So, when you're looking at the evidence you have to compare it to all of the of the evidence.'

If they are missing any single element  even one single element - then, Nelson said, the verdict has to be not guilty. 'I submit to you that the state has failed to meet its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt,' he said.

Nelson focused in on the definition of objectively reasonably use of force because, in his words, 'No crime is committed if the police officers actions were reasonable.'

'You must look at those facts which a reasonable officer in the same situation would have known at the precise moment the officer acted with force,' he said.

'You must decide if the officer's actions were reasonable in light of the totality of the facts and circumstance in front of the officer and without regard to the officer's own state of mind, intention or motivations.'

As he did in his opening Nelson cast his net wide when it came to all of the things, he said, an objectively reasonable officer would have been aware of on the day of Floyd's death  the high crime area, the fact that it was high density and urban, the proximity of a hospital, the behavior of the suspect and the unpredictability of humans.

A reasonable officer, he said, will take into consideration his immediate surroundings and who hes on the scene with. 'Are these veteran officers, are they rookie officers?' Nelson asked.

'Throughout the course of this trial the state has focused you on nine minutes 29 seconds. The proper analysis is to take those nine minutes 29 seconds and put them in the context of what would a reasonable officer know.

Nelson took the jury through the events of the day; from that moment of the first call to Cup Foods and dispatcher Jenna Scurry's decision to call for back-up.

Chauvin and Tou Thao headed to the scene, knowing that there was some sort of disturbance with which the two officers already there - J Alexander Keung and Thomas Lane - were struggling.

Nelson showed footage from Lane's body-worn camera of the officers trying to wrangle Floyd into the back of the squad car.

'Active aggression or active resistance?' he asked. 'Let's call it active resistance.'

This, Nelson said, was the mental starting point and context upon which Chauvin drew in that moment.

Nelson repeatedly stated the notion of 'a reasonable police officer', each time pushing the connection between the concept and his own client. Chauvin, in Nelson's scenario, was that 'reasonable officer' - a characterization that brought in its wake the assumption that the decisions he was making were reasonable.

'He walks onto a scene he's sees active resistance occurring, possibly active aggression. He is not intervening at that time but what are his options?' Nelson asked.

'Distraction techniques, controlled take down, conscious neck restraints  he has, per his training, these techniques at his disposal.'

Chauvin is facing three charges in connection with George Floyd's death on May 25: second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter

Chauvin did not step in immediately but instead observed, Nelson said before describing what he saw through the perspective of a reasonable officer.

A reasonable police officer, Nelson said, would observe the white foam around Floyd's mouth. He would consider the information that this person was possibly on something.

A reasonable person would look at the size of a person and assess his size in relation to his own size. A reasonable officer would know that there are two rookies putting Floyd in the car.

A reasonable officer would hear what a suspect was saying. 'I'm a good guy, I'm a good guy, I'm a good guy. I'm claustrophobic,' and he's going to compare those words with the actions of the individual.

A reasonable officer, Nelson said, would ask himself, as per training, whether a person is purposefully trying to thwart attempts to take into custody or are they simply unable to comply.

A reasonable officer would conclude that the amount of force being used by Keung and Lane was not enough to overpower Floyd's resistance to getting into the car.

Nelson quoted the state's own use of force expert, LAPD Sergeant Jody Stiger who had observed the 'futility' of the officers' attempts to get Floyd into the car.

The struggle was intense, Nelson reminded  so intense that it knocked the body-worn camera and badge from Chauvins shirt.

Once again the jury saw the milestone camera footage of the scene  the footage that prompted dispatcher Jenna Scurry to report concerns at what she had witnessed to the supervising sergeant.

Nelson stopped the video at the moment Floyd was put to the ground and he reminded the jury that there was not a single use of force expert [and] not a single police officer [who]said that anything up to this point was unlawful or unreasonable.

'It was reasonable to put him in the squad car, it was reasonable the efforts that they took to restrain him. It's the point at which Mr Floyd is brought to the crowd that there comes dispute.'

Nelson stopped the video at the moment Floyd was put to the ground and he reminded the jury that there was not a single use of force expert [and] not a single police officer [who]said that anything up to this point was unlawful or unreasonable'

Nelson presented several graphics like the one above to show that Chauvin adhered to his police training

Chauvin's constant scribbling on a yellow notepad sparks fevered Twitter debate Derek Chauvin sparked a flurry of social media speculation after he was repeatedly seen scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad over 16 days of testimony at his trial for the death of George Floyd. Eagle-eyed viewers flocked to Twitter to share their theories for what Chauvin was writing in his notebook. One viewer created an entire Twitter account dedicated to the theories, entitled: 'Derek Chauvin's yellow notepad'. Derek Chauvin sparked a flurry of social media speculation after he was repeatedly seen scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad over 16 days of testimony at his trial for the death of George Floyd Advertisement

Nelson argued that this too was reasonable and in line with training  a move aimed at protecting both the officers and the suspect.

He accused the state of trying to 'reframe the issue of what a reasonable police officer would do' by extracting 9 minutes 29 seconds from all that went before.

In fact 16 minutes and 59 seconds had gone before  all of which, Nelson said, a reasonable officer would consider.

'A reasonable police officer would know about those previous 17 minutes, he would know about the struggle, he would consider the suspects reaction to the previous use of force.

'And a reasonable police officer would consider using an additional force to overcome the subject's resistance.'

Nelson told the court: 'I have thought a lot about the difference between perspective and perception. Perspective is the angle at which you see something, perception is how you interpret what it is that you see.

'I've thought about this a lot because it's not the normal set up for a jury trial. I cannot see four of the jurors. They probably can't see me either. Several of the jurors I have a very good view of, four of them I do not, others it's obstructed.

'Things can affect your perspective. But your perception is how you interpret what you see and that's our life, our experiences the things that make us what we are.'

As far as the jury is concerned, Nelson said: 'Ultimately the court will instruct you on how to deal with these biases. The courts final instructions will guide you to try to recognize your biases, what we bring to the table and analyze the evidence from the perspective of the incident itself.'

The witnesses on the scene did not have the benefit of such reflection or instruction, Nelson said. They brought their own biases to the table and each impacted on what they believed they saw and how they reacted to it.

Nelson spoke of Charles McMillan, who urged Floyd to get in the car and left the scene wishing Chauvin to 'get home safe.'

He spoke of Darnella Frazier, the 17-year-old who filmed the incident  but did not even know officers Lane and Keung were there.

And Donald Williams, the MMA fighter who accused Chauvin of putting Floyd in a blood choke - but both carotid articles were never blocked, Nelson told the court. 'This was not a choke hold.'

Speaking of Williams Nelson said: 'He was upset and that's okay because his perception affected what he was seeing.'

Similarly, he suggested that off-duty fire-fighter Genevieve Hansen was almost overwhelmed by her perceptions.

Nelson pointed out that she admitted the crowd distracted her from focusing on the officers, she interpreted fluid on the ground as Floyds urine and assumed the blood on his face was from the ground.

When told in court that EMS had been called five minutes before she arrived she flat out refused to believe what was, in fact, a verifiable truth.

'What she observed was not consistent with the actual evidence,' Nelson said.

Meanwhile the officers on the scene were, he said, all aware that they were being filmed and Chauvin was making his assessment of the situation minute by minute attempting to keep control of both Floyd and the crowd which, Nelson said, he would have recognized was in crisis.

According to Nelson the most critical moment in the case came at 8.25.16pm. At that moment three things happened: Floyd took his last breath, Chauvin pulled his mace and threatened the crowd with it and Hansen entered the scene walking up behind the officers and startling him.

All of these events happened at once and influenced Chauvin's perception he said.

All of these things conspired to form Chauvins perception of threat and, referencing the testimony of Medical Support Coordinator Nicole MacKenzie, created a situation in which it was more easy to miss something with Floyd.

Nelson pointed out that paramedics did a 'load and go' after assessing the crowd as 'unfriendly'.

He listed all of officers who testified about Chauvin's use of force, reeling off their names and stating that they all came to different conclusions as to when use of force became unnecessary.

Nelson said that a witness he found particularly interesting was Lieutenant Johnny Mercil as he was Chauvins actual use of force trainer so, Nelson said, 'the best glimpse were going to get into the training of a Minneapolis police officer'.

'He corrected the state at times,' Nelson said of Mercil. 'He said the knee on the neck is not an unauthorized move and can be utilized. He said it can be there for an extended period of time [and that] once a person is handcuffed people can continue to thrash around and be a danger to themselves and others.

Nelson sought to paint witnesses to Floyd's fatal arrest - as seen in the body camera footage above - as 'biased'

Nelson reminded the jury that Mercil had testified about ground defense and using weight to control a suspect and how he said that there were no strict techniques, that he personally trains officers to put a knee over the shoulder, up to the base of the neck and described it as routinely used.

Mercil, Nelson said, recognized the concept of 'awful but lawful'. And admitted that there are circumstances under which an assessment had to be made as to whether or not it was worth the risk to handcuff a person and administer medical aid.

And he recognized the human element  the impact of use of force on the officer doing it.

'You have to take into account that officers are human beings capable of making mistakes,' he said. 'In this case the totality of the circumstances as known to a reasonable officer in the precise moment the force was used demonstrate this was an authorized use of force, as unattractive as it may be and this is reasonable doubt.'

In a moment of marked emotion amid a clinical assessment of all that had occurred, Nelson said: 'There is absolutely no evidence that officer Chauvin purposefully applied unlawful force.

'Officer Chauvin did not purposefully use unlawful force. These are officers doing their job in a highly stressful situation according to their training according to the Minneapolis police department. It's tragic. It's tragic.'

Turning to cause of death, Nelson once again apologized for being long-winded but said that there was an important sentence that the state had not read to the jury.

Reading the instruction handed to the jury earlier, Nelson emphasized the key qualification that the state had omitted: 'The defendant is criminally liable for all the consequences of his actions that occur in the ordinary and natural course of events, including those consequences brought about by one or more intervening causes if such intervening causes were the natural result of the defendant's acts.'

The reason the state was seeking to convince the jury that asphyxia was the sole cause of Floyd's death was, Nelson said, because none of the other contributing factors  heart disease, hypertension, excited delirium, fentanyl and amphetamine ingestion - were natural consequences of Chauvin's actions. Instead, they were consequences of Floyd's own.

He said: 'The state [has] to convince you beyond a reasonable doubt that there pre-existing issues did not contribute to Mr Floyd's death.

'That is why the state has brought in expert after expert after expert to testify that the single cause of death was asphyxiation.'

Viewed as a whole, according to Nelson, testimony from the state's experts witnesses 'flies in the face of common sense', especially when set against Dr Andrew Baker's findings.

The Chief Medical Examiner said there was no evidence of asphyxia at autopsy. Nelson gave as examples that there were no fine bruises he would expect to see.

There were no injuries to the structures of Floyds neck and when he finally did review the video which he had avoided watching ahead of the autopsy so that he would not bias himself, he saw nothing about the placement of Chauvins knee to change his opinion.

And all of the other physical defects he found Nelson said  the enlarged heart, the narrowed arteries, the paraganglioma  were the findings relied upon by all other experts who, he suggested, willfully ignored things that did not fit the narrative of asphyxia.

Dr Baker found the manner of death was homicide but in a medical not criminal sense. In his official finding he wrote, Cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint and neck compression

Dr Baker explained that he used the word complicating to mean, an intervention occurred and there was an untoward outcome on the heels of that intervention.

He also told the court that if he wrote something on the death certificate he did so for the simple reason that it played a role in the death.

He added arteriosclerotic and hypertensive heart disease; fentanyl intoxication and recent use of amphetamine.

Nelson said, Apparently the state did not like Dr Bakers findings. His findings didnt support the notion that what you see is what you should believe.

Nelson tackled some of Dr Martin Tobins most emotive testimony, that he termed the finger and knuckle testimony, the doctors view that Floyd used both to push himself up so that he could breathe.

According to Nelson this testimony falls apart when viewed through the prism of the facts and detached from the doctors own bias.

The time stamp on the images used to highlight the theory shows that Floyd was actually in the side recovery position at the time  just 15 minutes into his restraint.

He would continue to breathe for another five minutes and 51 seconds.

Nelson said, This illustrates how you can take a nanosecond of time in this address, have this testimony that hes pushing his body up to try to breathe, but when you look at the evidence compared to the rest of the evidence what do you really see?

You see a person on his side being held in the side recovery position, his fingers and knuckles occasionally touching the ground and tire.

Nelson warned the jury, You cannot take a single isolated frame and reach any conclusions.

Again and again Nelson returned to his theme  that nothing in this case could be viewed in isolation but that instead everything must be placed in the context of the totality of circumstances.

He urged the jury, Put the evidence in its proper context.

Cause of death, Nelson told them, is a multifactorial process.

Nelson said it was 'a preposterous notion' that the amount of fentanyl in Floyds system did not play some part in his death as he showed the jury the photo above of pills found in the console of Floyd's car

The history of Floyds use of illegal substances was significant, Nelson said and not a character attack. IT provided insight on how his body might react to opioid use within the context of a law enforcement encounter.

Nelson reminded the jurors that Floyds girlfriend Courtney Ross had admitted that both struggled with opioid addiction.

He remined them of the prior arrest on May 6, 2019 when Floyd had a remarkably similar encounter with police that resulted in his blood pressure skyrocket to 216 to 160.

He reminded them of Rosss testimony that Floyd had suffered an accidental overdose and complained that his whole body hurt at the time.

He reminded them of the knock off pills purchased by Floyd from his friend Morries Hall and how they made Ross feel as if she was going to die when she took them.

Hall, Nelson pointed out, was with Floyd on May 25, 2020.

He told them about store clerk Christopher Martins observation that Floyd was high and Shawanda Hills testimony that he fell asleep back in the car and they couldnt keep him awake.

Nelson said it was 'a preposterous notion' that the amount of fentanyl in Floyds system did not play some part in his death.

Continuing his lengthy closing after a brief lunch break, Nelson told the jury that the state was asking them to simply ignore 'significant medical issues' when they offered up asphyxia as the sole cause of Floyd's death.

'The failure of the state's experts to acknowledge any possibility that any of these factors in any way contributed defies medical silence and it defies common sense and reason,' he said.

Applying common sense and reason to the timeline of Floyd's last verbalizations, Nelson told the court that it was consistent with the 'sudden cardiac arrhythmia' and not 'the long prognosis of hypoxia', or low oxygen.

Nelson also cleared up an aspersion cast on Dr Fowler's evidence during cross examination when Jerry Blackwell challenged the doctor that he didnt even know if the squad car was running, as he knocked down Fosters assertion that carbon monoxide from the tail pipe may have contributed to Floyds death.

Today Nelson said: 'We know it was running' and pointed to officer Lane's body-camera footage, which showed he never turned off the car when arriving at the scene.

Nelson pondered what would have happened if the paramedics had treated on the scene or gone straight to the hospital rather than drive a few blocks away. Might Floyd have been revived?

His point was, he said, 'Human beings make decisions in highly stressful situations that they believe to be right in the very moment that it is occurring. There's lots of what ifs? What could have happened? What should have happened? Lots of them in lots of regards.

'But we have to analyze this case from the perspective of a reasonable police officer in the precise moment of use of force.

'We have to look at cause of death. Did Mr Floyd die of asphyxia or were there other contributory factors that were not the natural consequence of Mr Chauvin's action?

'The drug ingestion, the diseased heart, the hypertension  all of these things existed before Mr Chauvin arrived.'

'The struggle,' he said, 'What role did the struggle play? We know in a prior incident Mr Floyds heart was beating at 219 over 160. He didn't die that day.'

Wrapping up closing statement that had taken close to three hours, Nelson once again asserted that the state had failed to prove Chauvin guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and thus the jury should not find him guilty on any charge.

Trial attorney Jerry Blackwell delivered the state's rebuttal

Trial attorney Jerry Blackwell then stood to deliver the state's rebuttal. He told the jury that while they had heard 45 witness in all, there was a 46th  one that spoke to them before the trial, during it and would continue to speak to them in the deliberations room: common sense.

For all the issues brought up in closing statements Blackwell told the jury, 'the case is so simple a child could understand it'.

In fact, a child had, he said referencing nine-year-old witness Judea who had said that she thought a remedy might have been to 'get off of him'.

Blackwell painted Nelsons closing summary as a 'story' because 'it's either completely not true or the facts have been altered in order to make a point to you, which makes it a story.

'You've got to reach a verdict  verdict's a Latin word for truth. You're not reaching a story.'

Picking up on Nelson's technique of repeatedly casting Chauvin in the role of 'a reasonable officer', Blackwell said: 'Reasonable officer is not a magic word that you apply to Mr Chauvin and then he becomes one.

'The whole narrative cut off before we got to the point that Mr Floyd was not moving, not conscious, did not have a pulse and that Mr Chauvin is still on top of him when the EMTs showed up. How is that reasonable?'

With characteristic savagery Blackwell dismantled Nelson's assertion that Floyd died from causes other than Chauvin's actions.

'The notion that Mr Floyd dying was just coincidental, he just happened to die in the same time and same place of factors unrelated to what Mr Chauvin was doing  that's a story ladies and gentlemen and defies common sense,' Blackwell said.

Floyd had lived 17,026 days, Blackwell said, many with all of the underlying problems that Nelson flagged up, he had survived everything but his encounter with Chauvin.

Where Nelson had suggested that the state's expert witnesses differed in their opinions, Blackwell said they were united in one key fact: 'There was a use of force that set a number of things in motion for Mr Floyd that culminated in his death.'

He reminded them that Dr Tobin had said that no human being could have survived the restrained and neck compression to which Floyd was subjected. 'We are only required to show you that Mr Chauvins conduct was a substantial cause in Mr Floyds death,' Blackwell said.

And, however their experts may have differed in the precise mechanisms involved, he said they all agreed that Floyd's death stemmed back to the subdual, restraint and neck compression.

He rejected the suggestion that there are two sides to every story  a premise on which Nelson has repeatedly fallen back.

The court is not about 'stories', Blackwell said, 'What we're about here is getting to the truth.'

In a similar vein he said that the police badge which Chauvin wore was 'not a license to abuse the public, to not follow procedures'. There are no two sides to that, he said, 'that's simply wrong and the only sides to that are the "w" and the "g" [of wrong].'

Chauvin 'had all the power', that day, Blackwell said  'He had a gun, he had mace, he had back up.'

And the crowd that he was facing, Blackwell said, consisted of three high school juniors, a second-grader, a senior taking her cousin to get candy, Donald Williams the MMA fighter who wanted to save Floyds life, Charles McMillan  the mayor of the neighborhood and Genevieve Hansen.

This 'bouquet of humanity', all of different ages, races and genders did not present any threat, Blackwell said, 'They came together, they saw a human being they did not know suffering and they wanted to intervene.'

Had they wanted to take the law into their own hands, Blackwell told the court, they could have removed Chauvin but they respected the badge.

As he repeatedly characterized all that the defense had said about the crowd and events of that day as 'a story' Nelson objected in a move that was sustained by the judge who told Blackwell to move on from the use of the word.

The state's closing: Prosecutors tell jurors to ask whether Floyd would have died were it not for Chauvin's restraint

In closing for the state, prosecutor Steve Schleicher asked the jury to consider one question in coming to a verdict: Would Floyd have died were it not for the cop's restraint?

Schleicher posed the question as he sought to cast doubt on the myriad of factors the defense presented as contributing causes of Floyd's death, including his drug use, heart problems and potential exposure to exhaust from the squad car he was pinned next to on May 25.

'The defendant knew better. He just didn't do better,' Schleicher said of Chauvin. 'George Floyd did not have to die that day, should not have died that day. But, for the fact that the defendant decided not to get up, and not to let up, George Floyd died.'

Schleicher also refuted the defense suggestion that Floyd had 'superhuman strength' during his arrest because he was suffering from 'excited delirium'.

Floyd was 'a human being,' the prosecutor said. 'There is no such thing as super human, that exists in comic books.'

Underlining how hard Floyd fought just to be able to breathe, Schleicher showed the court graphic photos of the injuries he suffered when he was pinned down, which had been previously presented to the jury but were not released publicly until Monday.

As he did throughout three weeks of testimony, Chauvin sat silent and expressionless and took notes on a yellow legal pad as Schleicher walked the jury through each of the charges he's facing: second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

The court was shown these photos of the injuries Floyd sustained as he was pinned to the ground on May 25

Cuts are shown on Floyd's knuckles after he struggled to get Chauvin to relieve the pressure on his neck

Schleicher asserted that Floyd died because Chauvin's 'ego and pride' took over and caused the cop to betray his badge and abandon his training when he pressed his knee into the handcuffed black man's neck.

'All that was required [to save Floyd] was some compassion,' Schleicher told the court. But instead Floyd was crushed beneath the knee of the officer, surrounded by strangers with no familiar face or loved one to cry out to.

Schleicher noted that Floyd's final words were addressed to Chauvin: 'I can't breathe', over and over.

'But he continued to hold him down, to grind into him, to shimmy,' Schleicher said. 'George Floyd begged until he could speak no more and the defendant continued this assault.

'The truth is the defendant was on top of him for nine minutes and 29 seconds and he had to know.'

Schleicher opened his statement by telling the jury who Floyd was  that he was born on October 14, 1973, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, that he was a 'mama's boy', a beloved son, brother and father.

And Schleicher bookended Floyd's life  loved and surrounded by loved ones  with his death, ground into the asphalt and alone.

Addressing the fact that it is hard to believe that a police officer could 'do something like this,' Schleicher told the court this is not a case against the police, but against one particular bad cop.

What the defendant did, he said, 'wasn't policing. It was assault'.

'It was unnecessary, it was gratuitous and he did it on purpose,' Schleicher told the jury. 'He betrayed the badge and everything he stood for. [He] abandoned his values, abandoned his training and killed a man'.

Chauvin was responding to a call over a fake $20 bill but, the prosecutor told the silent court, 'George Floyd's life was taken for something worth far, far less than that.'

Floyd died because Chauvin was 'trying to win' and because of Chauvin's 'ego and pride', Schleicher said.

It was not, he said, 'the kind of pride that makes you do better'. It was, 'The kind of ego-based pride that the defendant was going to do what he wanted to do as long as he wanted because he had the authority and he had the power and of the badge[he was] trying to win and George Floyd paid for it with his life.'

According to Schleicher, Chauvin 'chose pride over policing'.

Schleicher took the jury back through the events of May 25 and told them all of the reasons a person might be unable to comply to police commands - all of the reasons taught in the crisis response training undertaken by all of the officers there that day.

'It's nothing new,' he told the jury. 'People have emotions. People don't meet the police on their best day very often.'

He reminded them of Chief Medaria Arradondo's testimony that MPD responds to 4,000 calls for service for people in crisis every year.

'They're there on a $20 counterfeiting charge,' he said. 'They train for this.'

Schleicher did not attempt to sugar coat Floyd's issues. He 'certainty had his struggles,' the prosecutor said, referencing testimony from Floyd's girlfriend Courteney Ross about his struggles with opioid addiction.

That was nothing new for officers either, Schleicher said. 'The difference on May 25, 2020 is that officers wouldn't listen to him, wouldn't recognize the signs of what they had prepared for,' he said.

'A reasonable officer should have known that and recognized that. Floyd was trying to get into the car. He was trying to work up the courage. He said he'd count to three but he just couldn't do it.'

Everything that happened that day was, the prosecutor said, 'completely unnecessary', but the excessive force started in earnest the moment the officers had Floyd prone and handcuffed on the ground.

Schleicher told jurors to ask themselves if Floyd would have died were it not for what Chauvin did that day. Was it his enlarged heart, did he suddenly die of a drug overdose, was it the fumes from the car tail-pipe?

'Use your common sense,' Schleicher urged. 'Believe your eyes. What you saw you was murder.'

Prosecutor Steve Schleicher is seen delivering the state's closing statement on Monday morning

Prosecutors repeatedly referenced this timeline of Floyd's fatal arrest during the trial and showed it once again on Monday

Prosecutors showed this graphic to remind how police officials testified that Chauvin's use of force was unreasonable

Schleicher cited testimony from medical experts who said Floyd did not die from sudden cardiac arrhythmia or a heart attack

This graphic seeks to refute the suggestion that Floyd's death was caused by his drug use

Turning to the law as Judge Cahill had instructed the jurors, Schleicher reminded: 'The fact that other causes contribute to the death does not relieve the defendant of criminal liability.'

The only scenario in which Chauvin is not criminally liable if a 'superseding cause' caused his death.

But, Schleicher intimated, 'The unlawful restraintthat's what killed George Floyd. Believe your eyes. Unlawful force pinning him to the ground, that's what killed him. That was a homicide.'

Schleicher guided the jury back through the experts they had heard and the testimony they had given  including emergency room physician Dr Bradford Langenfeld, Chief Medical Examiner Dr Andrew Baker, who ruled the death a homicide, and pulmonologist Dr Martin Tobin.

Those experts explained both what Floyd did and did not die from, Schleicher said.

'You know how George Floyd died,' the prosecutor said, harking back to Dr Tobin's testimony during which he said that Floyd had been held 'in a vice' between the pavement and Chauvin's knee.

'He said it was as if George Floyd's left lung had been surgically removed to the point where Mr Floyd was desperately trying to breathe, pushing his shoulder, pushing his face [against the ground] to breathe.'

'That's what killed Mr Floyd.' This wasn't a sudden arrhythmia, the prosecutor insisted, there was no medical evidence of a heart attack and it wasn't a drug overdose.

'George Floyd was obviously not a perfect man. Who is? No-one is. You heard about drugs, you heard about questions: "Is he chewing gum, does he have a pill in his mouth?" None of that matters because you know what his drug level was from the toxicology result,' Schleicher said.

He went on to refute the suggestion that Floyd was experiencing 'Excited Delirium', and said the idea that the condition gave him 'super-human strength' or made him 'impervious to pain' was 'nonsense'.

There were so may things that might have saved Floyd's life, Schleicher said; putting Floyd in the side recovery position or keeping him in it in the first place or giving immediate medical aid in the form of CPR chest compressions.

'These actions were not policing, theses actions were an assault,' he said.

As for whether Chauvin was acting knowingly or not, Schleicher said: 'It's pretty simple. You're doing something to hurt somebody and you keep doing it. You're doing it on purpose.'

Schleicher played excerpts of the officers' body-worn camera footage showing Floyd prone and handcuffed beneath them.

'Do you want to know what indifference looks like?' he asked, before playing a portion in which Chauvin can be heard responding to Floyd's pleas of 'you're killing me,' and complaints that his stomach hurts, that everything hurts with the sound: 'Uh Huh' before adding: 'It takes a lot of oxygen to complain about it.'

Schleicher told the court: 'That isn't protection. It isn't courage and it certainly, certainly isn't compassion. It's the opposite of that.'

But Chauvin's negligence goes beyond what he did and extended towards what he did not do, Schleicher said.

Despite the fact that Chauvin had the 'knowledge and tools' he did not render medical aid.

In all, Schleicher concluded that the only possible verdict on all three counts was guilty.

But even after that he said: 'You have another thing to consider. Was this just okay because the defendant was a police officer? Was it justified? Was this objectively reasonable?'

He told the jury: 'It was not.'

'We talked a lot about what might have happened, hypotheticals. We talked a lot about what didn't happen. You need to focus on what did happen. George Floyd wasn't resisting, he just couldn't comply. They do it all the time.

'He wasn't going anywhere. He was doing anything. He didnt need to be put in a prone position, but the defendant was on top of him he stayed on top of him, grinding his knee on him, twisting his wrist - simply the infliction of pain not a reasonable use of force. Force must be reasonable at the point it occurs, the point it ends and all points in between.'

'Dont miss the forest for the trees,' he urged the jury. 'Officer after officer, the Chief of Police, got on that stand and told you that this conduct violates the use of force policy, the departments core values, the duty of care.

'When George Floyd said his final words to the defendant the defendant stayed on top of him. He ignored it. Continued doing what he was doing. Facing the crowd, grinding his knee, twisting his hand.

'The greatest sceptic of the case among you, how can you justify the continued use of force on this man when he has no pulse. It wasnt too late. He could have rolled him over and performed CPR.

He continued past the point of finding a pulse, past the point where the ambulance arrived, past the point where the paramedics got out. Whats the goal? What are we trying to accomplish here? Why hold him so long, past that line that was crossed?

Schleicher let the words pile up  unreasonable, unnecessary, unlawful.

'The defendant is guilty of second-degree murder. Hes guilty of third-degree murder and hes guilty of second-degree manslaughter: all of them,' he said. 'This is not a justified used of force. You cant justify this use of force its not possible.

As he did throughout three weeks of testimony, Chauvin sat silent and expressionless and took notes on a yellow legal pad as Schleicher walked the jury through each of the charges he's facing: second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter

Floyd family members Tiffany Hall, Philonise Floyd and Reverend Al Sharpton are seen walking into the Hennepin County courthouse on Monday morning ahead of closing statements

Members of Floyd's family held their fists in the air in defiance as they approached the courthouse on Monday

Schleicher returned to his opening sentiments as he wound towards the end of his powerful two-hour closing statement. He had said at the start that Floyd had died surrounded by strangers but they were not, he said people who did not care.

'They all converged by fate in one single moment of time to witness something,' he said. 'To witness nine minutes 29 seconds of shocking abuse of authority, to watch a man die and there was nothing they could do about it because they were powerless. Because even they respected the badge. Even seeing this happening.

'All they could do was watch and gather what they could, gather their memories, their thoughts and impressions, those precious recordings and they gathered those up and they brought them here and they got up on the stand and they bore witness to this outrageous act and they gave you what they had.'

'And they gave it to you,' he said looking at the jury, 'Randomly selected people from the community. You got a summons in the mail and here you are  all converged on one spot.

'That power belongs to you. Only you have the power to convict the defendant of this crime and in so doing declare that this use of force was unreasonable it was excessive, it was grossly disproportionate.

'It is not an excuse for the shocking abuse you saw with your own eye. This case is exactly what you thought when you saw hit first.'

Returning to Jerry Blackwell's opening statements as he wrapped up his own closing, Schleicher said: 'You can believe your eyes. It's exactly what you knew it was. It's what you felt in your gut. It's what you now know in your heart.

'This wasn't policing, this was murder. The defendant is guilty on all three counts  all of them  there no excuse.'

Judge Peter Cahill opened Monday's proceedings by reading the jury instructions ahead of closing statements

Before closing statements Judge Peter Cahill addressed the jury and told them to stick to the evidence presented in court when coming to a verdict.

'It is your duty to decide the questions of fact. It is my duty to give you the rules of law that apply,' the judge said. 'You must follow the law even if you believe the law is or should be different.'

Judge Cahill said that 'beyond reasonable doubt' is the standard upon which an 'ordinary prudent man or woman would act in their ordinary affairs.'

Reasonable doubt, he told them, is a doubt, 'based on common sense.' It is not 'a fanciful or capricious doubt nor is it beyond all doubt.'

He talked them through the law as it applies to each of the three counts faced by Chauvin. None of the charges  second-degree murder, third-degree murder or second-degree manslaughter  require the jury to find that Chauvin intended to cause substantial bodily harm or the death of George Floyd.

Even the most serious count only requires them to find that he committed the act of felony assault and does not need the additional element of any intention to cause the harm that it did. Put bluntly it would be enough for them to find that he did it.

Equally they may find him guilty of causing Floyd's death if they decide that his act or acts were a substantial factor in Floyd's death. They need not be the only factor if the jury but any others must be a direct result of Chauvin's act.

But if they decide that there was another superseding cause that was not a result of Chauvin's acts.

All of their assessments of Chauvin must be considered through the prism of whether his use of force was 'objectively reasonable in light of the totality of the facts without regard to the officer's own intentions.'

Chauvin is not guilty, he told them, if they find that the force he used was authorized by law.

Hennepin County Government Center, where the Chauvin trial is being held, is protected with high fences and concrete

Members of the National Guard stand on duty in downtown Minneapolis under Operation Safety Net

City Hall in Minneapolis is boarded up on Sunday and ringed in fencing and barbed wire ahead of the Chauvin verdict

The state's case: Prosecutors called 38 witnesses - including police officials, medical experts and people who watched Floyd's fatal arrest in real time - to prove the black man's death caused by Chauvin's actions

Chauvin's highly anticipated trial began on March 29 with an opening statement from trial attorney Jerry Blackwell, who vowed to prove that the defendant 'betrayed the badge' when he 'did not get up, did not let up' for nine minutes and 29 seconds, even after Floyd stopped breathing and despite the fevered pleas from bystanders for him to release Floyd.

MINNESOTA V DEREK CHAUVIN - CHARGES Second-degree murder Chauvin is charged with second-degree murder, which in Minnesota can be 'intentional' or 'unintentional.' The second-degree murder charge requires prosecutors to prove Chauvin caused Floyd's death while committing or trying to commit a felony  in this case, third-degree assault. Prosecutors must convince the jury that Chauvin assaulted or attempted to assault Floyd and in doing so inflicted substantial bodily harm. Prosecutors don't have to prove Chauvin was the sole cause of Floyd's death - only that his conduct was a 'substantial causal factor.' If the prosecution can prove Chauvin committed third-degree assault , he can be convicted of Floyd's death. Prosecutors are fearful that Chauvin will escape conviction for second-degree murder, that carries a maximum 40 year sentence. But because Chauvin does not have any prior convictions, sentencing guidelines recommend he serve no more than 25.5 years in jail. Second-degree manslaughter The manslaughter charge has a lower bar, requiring proof Chauvin caused Floyd's death through negligence that created an unreasonable risk, and consciously took the chance of causing severe injury or death. If convicted of second-degree manslaughter in Minnesota, the charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. But sentencing guidelines for someone without a criminal record call for no more than four years behind bars. Third-degree murder Third-degree murder would require a lower standard of proof than second-degree. To win a conviction, prosecutors would have to show only that Floyd's death was caused by an act that was obviously dangerous, though not necessarily a felony. That would result in a maximum sentence of 25 years. But there are caveats. Chauvin has no criminal history, which means he will likely end up serving about 12.5 years if he is convicted of second or third-degree murder. Advertisement

Over the next 11 days prosecutors brought in 38 witnesses - beginning with people who watched Floyd's fatal arrest unfold in real time.

Among them was 911 dispatcher Jena Scurry, who called the officers' supervisor with concerns about their use of force; off-duty firefighter and EMT Genevieve Hansen, who begged the officers to allow her to provide medical aid; nine-year-old Judea and her cousin Darnella Frazier, who filmed the most famous viral video of the arrest; and mixed martial arts fighter Don Williams, who testified that Chauvin used a 'blood choke' on Floyd.

Christopher Martin, the Cup Foods employee whose concerns about a counterfeit $20 bill Floyd used to buy cigarettes led to his arrest, also testified that he wished he hadn't said anything because he believes Floyd might still be alive today if he'd kept quiet.

During testimony from these eye-witnesses the jury was shown several graphic videos of Floyd's confrontation with police. Prosecutors also showed video of Floyd inside the Cup Foods store before police were called, in which he appeared agitated, distracted and potentially under the influence of drugs.

The second week of the trial was dominated by technical testimony, beginning with senior Minneapolis Police Department officials, including Chief Medaria Arradondo, who testified that Chauvin violated department policy when he restrained Floyd for nine minutes and 29 seconds.

Police officials testified that while officers might sometimes use a knee across a person's back or shoulder to gain or maintain control, they're also taught the specific dangers for a person in Floyd's position - prone on his stomach, with his hands cuffed behind him - and how such a person must be turned into a side recovery position as soon as possible.

Later in the prosecutors called a string of medical experts to testify that Floyd died due to a lack of oxygen, not from a primary cardiac event. Some of the most powerful testimony came from Dr Martin Tobin, a lung and critical care specialist who told jurors that other factors, not just Chauvin's knee, made it hard for Floyd to breathe: officers lifting up his handcuffs, the hard pavement, his turned head and a knee on his back.

Tobin pinpointed the moment when he said he could see Floyd take his last breath - and said Chauvin's knee remained on Floyd's neck another 3 minutes, two seconds. 'At the beginning, you can see he's conscious, you can see slight flickering, and then it disappears,' Tobin said as he highlighted a still image from police body-camera video. 'That's the moment the life goes out of his body.'

The state rested its case on April 13, at which point all eyes turned to Chauvin's attorney Nelson.

The defense case: Chauvin's attorneys called just seven witnesses to shift blame away from the ex-cop and onto Floyd's drug use and health problems

At the center of Nelson's defense was the argument that Floyd's death was not caused by Chauvin's actions but by outside factors - namely Floyd's drug addiction and underlying health conditions, including a bad heart.

Nelson made two other key arguments: that use of force is an unattractive but essential component of policing, and that the hostile crowd that surrounded Chauvin and fellow officers as they restrained Floyd had distracted them from proper procedure and care.

Nelson called just seven witnesses over two days of testimony. He began by showing the jury video from Floyd's arrest on May 6, 2019, in an effort to portray that he had a history of feigning medical distress and rapidly ingesting pills when confronted by police through testimony by an officer and a paramedic involved in that arrest.

The next two witnesses - Minneapolis Park Police Officer Peter Chang and Floyd's friend Shawanda Hill - spoke about what they saw on the day of Floyds death as the court was shown new body-camera footage of the chaos.

The sixth witness was Barry Brodd, a former cop and use-of-force expert who testified that Chauvin did not use deadly force against Floyd. In fact, Brodd argued that Chauvin's placing the handcuffed black man in the prone position and kneeling on his neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds did not constitute use of force at all.

'It's a control technique. It doesn't hurt,' Brodd said. 'It's safe for the officer, safe for the suspect and you're using minimal effort to keep them on the ground.'

During direct examination by Nelson, Brodd said Chauvin was 'justified' and acting 'with objective reasonableness' in his interactions with Floyd. He also leaned in to the defense narrative that Chauvin and his fellow officers felt 'threatened' by the gathering crowd.

But as he looked at the all-too-familiar image of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd's neck under cross-examination, Brodd was forced to concede that such a restraint would cause pain and thus also 'could be use of force'.

The final and perhaps most influential witness called was Dr David Fowler, a former chief medical examiner in Maryland who shared his conclusion that Floyd's death should have never been classified as a homicide because there were too many competing potential causes of death.

One of the potential causes Fowler presented was exposure to exhaust fumes from the squad car Floyd was pinned next to, which the defense witness said could have caused some degree of carbon monoxide poisoning.

The carbon monoxide point was one of many on which Fowler contradicted the opinions of medical experts who testified before him. Blackwell drilled down on those contradictions while attempting to chip away at Fowler's credibility during cross-examination, at one point telling him: 'You're not a toxicologist..a pulmonologist.. a cardiologist, a physiologistYou don't treat patients.'

Fowler's earliest contradiction over more than five hours of testimony on April 14 came when he shared his conclusion that Floyd died from a 'sudden cardiac arrhythmia' due to his underlying heart disease during his restraint by police. That conclusion was refuted by Dr Baker, the Hennepin County chief medical examiner who performed Floyd's autopsy.

Fowler also said that Floyd had an enlarged heart, which meant he needed more oxygen to function, and that methamphetamine use heightened his risk of cardiac arrhythmia.

Later in his lengthy and technical testimony, Fowler cited multiple studies which challenged the notion that the prone position - in which Floyd was held for nine minutes and 29 seconds - is inherently dangerous.

He also referenced studies which concluded that it doesn't matter how much a person weighs if they are applying a single knee to another person - and a double knee restraint makes only a modest difference.

According to those studies a person transfers just 23 percent of their bodyweight during a double knee restraint. So, Dr Fowler said, Chauvin  who he viewed as applying a single knee restraint for most of the restraint  would have been applying less than 30 to 35 pounds of weight to Floyd.

Fowler asserted that none of that weight compromised Floyd's 'vital neck structures', that there was no evidence of injury to Floyd's neck and that the pressure applied was less than the amount necessary to bruise him.

Moments before the defense rested Chauvin addressed the court for the first time on the morning of April 15 and invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination, meaning he would not take the stand.

In a brief rebuttal later that morning the prosecution recalled Dr Tobin to refute Fowler's claims about the potential for carbon monoxide poisoning, with which Tobin said he disagreed entirely.

Judge Cahill barred Tobin from referring to specific test results with Floyd's carbon monoxide levels, which the prosecution sought to enter into evidence just minutes earlier. But Tobin told the court Floyd's hemoglobin was 98 percent saturated with oxygen, leaving up to two percent for carbon monoxide. Pressing that point Tobin told the jury: 'You and I have somewhere between zero and three.'

Judge Cahill excused the jurors through the weekend, reminding them to pack a bag ahead of sequestration on Monday following closing statements.
Thiruvananthapuram, April 19 : With Covid cases in Kerala spiking, the Congress on Monday decided to open a state level control room in the party headquarters here, to address doubts of people among other objectives.

State Congress president Mullapally Ramachandran told the media that the control room is headed by former WHO expert S.S. Lal, who incidentally was the party candidate from the Kazhakootam in the April 6 Assembly elections.

"The control room has a team of doctors and we have asked similar desks to be opened in all the 14 districts headquarters of the party," he said.

Ramachandran said the testing done in Kerala was less and the steps taken both by the state and Centre failed to handle the pandemic.

"Health experts for long has been demanding the state government to increase the number of tests to one lakh daily, but it was not done. And when it was increased in the past few days, the total number of positive cases jumped to 72,234 cases, which indicates a spread," he said.

The Congress leader also claimed that there appears to be a slackening down in the health care after the April 6 Assembly elections and that is one reason why the party decided to open such a control room.

"This is just meant to provide help to people who might have doubts and this is not to counter the other health care set-up... instead we are just lending a helping hand," he added.
Detroit's Chief of Police has called for a local Congresswoman to resign after she called for the abolition of police.

Chief James Craig said he believes Rep. Rashida Tlaib should step down from office after she called for the abolishment of police following the fatal shooting of unarmed black man Daunte Wright.

'It wasn't an accident. Policing in our country is inherently & intentionally racist,' Tlaib posted to Twitter.

'Daunte Wright was met with aggression & violence. I am done with those who condone government-funded murder. No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can't be reformed.'

Detroit's police chief said he would 'love' to see Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib resign after her call for abolishing police departments

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib called for the abolishment of police following the fatal shooting of unarmed black man Daunte Wright

Tlaib - who is a member of Congress' far-left 'Squad' alongside Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar - set off fierce debate with the incendiary tweet, which was 'liked' more than 23,000 times.

The Michigan Rep. made the radical declaration just one day after Wright was shot dead at a traffic stop in Minnesota when a white cop reached for her gun instead of a Taser, which has been characterized as an accident.

But Chief Craig said she should step down from office.

'I'd love to see her resign, I'd throw her a goodbye party. Let her go. Who is she speaking for? Let me just say this, when you talk about abolishing police, incarceration, you talk about safe cities - what do you think the residents in Detroit want?'

'Is she truly representing the people, or is she representing a fringe group? She does not speak for black and brown people in our city.

'If I made comments on par with hers, they'd be calling for my resignation,' said Chief Craig.

But Tlaib's office was quick to fire back with a statement.

'It's a disappointment and unproductive for Chief Craig to run to the cameras to call for Congresswoman Tlaib's resignation. One would think Chief Craig has more important things to do.'

'Congresswoman Tlaib has the strong support of her district and is not going anywhere. She will continue to work on policies that address the systematic problems in our country, and work to ensure every person feels safe and has the opportunity to thrive.'

After last week's tweet, Tlaib clarified her comments days later stressing she 'understood that many are concerned about public safety, but it is clear that more investment in police, incarceration, and criminalization will not deliver safety.'

Over the weekend at an event, she responded further saying that society can't police away its issues. 'That's not the way to approach it.'

Congresswoman Tlaib's office was quick to fire back with a statement

She also responded to the Chief's resignation call in an email to Fox 2.

'I have never shied away from speaking truth to power. That's why I've repeatedly spoken out against the Detroit Police Department's violent treatment of our residents,' the email read.

'Report after report cites DPD's harmful treatment of Black Lives Matter protestors. The city even took protesters to court, in an attempt to intimidate the movement.'

Tlaib responded to Craig's question about who she represents.

'I represent the communities that are afraid to be pulled over by the police because they are scared that they could be murdered,' she said.

'The $300 million that's spent on DPD each year would be better spent on addressing poverty, education, and jobs in our communities. I will continue to work on policies that address systemic problems in our communities -such as banning racist facial recognition surveillance - to ensure every person feels safe and has the opportunity to thrive.'

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, pictured last week, has called for a drastic rethinking of policing

Ocasio-Cortez is pictured with fellow 'squad' members Tlaib (far left), Ilhan Omar (second left) and Ayanna Pressley (right) in July 2019

Fellow squad member New York congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez said reform of the police is no longer enough as she joined Tlaib's call, last week, for the police to be abolished.

'Daunte Wright's killing was not a random, disconnected 'accident' - it was the repeated outcome of an indefensible system that grants impunity for state violence, rewards it w/ endlessly growing budgets at the cost of community investment, & targets those who question that order,' said Ocasio-Cortez.

'Cameras, chokehold bans, 'retraining' funds, and similar reform measures do not ultimately solve what is a systemic problem.

'That system will find a way - killings happen on camera, people are killed in other ways, retraining grows $ while often substituting for deeper measures.'

Her comments mark her strongest support yet for a movement to abolish the police. She has previously backed calls to defund police departments, but has not until now spoken in favor of a total scrapping of the forces, and starting again.

Asked in June what an America with defunded police would look like, she replied: 'It looks like a suburb.'

She continued: 'Affluent white communities already live in a world where they choose to fund youth, health, housing etc more than they fund police.

'When a teenager or preteen does something harmful in a suburb (I say teen bc this is often where lifelong carceral cycles begin for Black and Brown communities), White communities bend over backwards to find alternatives to incarceration for their loved ones to 'protect their future,' like community service or rehab or restorative measures.

'Why don't we treat Black and Brown people the same way?'

The analyst group Public Citizen counted 991 people killed by police in the U.S. last year. They tweeted that there were only 18 days where the police did not kill someone in 2020.

Last summer, calls for police reform were high on the agenda after George Floyd was killed by a white Minnesota police officer. Among the more radical proposals were to defund the police.

The Detroit chief argued the majority of the community supported the police and that activists simply riled people up even more.

Daunte Wright, 20, was shot by a Brooklyn Center police officer last Sunday during a traffic stop

Wright, a 20-year-old father-of-one, was reportedly pulled over for expired license plate tags. Police soon realized he had an outstanding warrant.

Wright stepped out of his vehicle at the request of police, before he tried to get back inside and flee the scene.

At that point, Officer Kimberly Potter went to reach for her Taser, but instead pulled out her gun and fired at Wright.

'I'll Tase you! I'll Tase you! Taser! Taser! Taser!' Potter could be heard shouting in her bodycam video.

Immediately after, Potter can be heard saying: 'Holy sh*t. I shot him'.

He was pronounced dead at the scene.

A memorial for Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center, where he was shot and killed last weekend
Two conflicting headlines on the same opinion page of Sundays Chicago Tribune caught my attention. Kasss column, Former top cop defends officer in teens death, in which Eddie Johnson describes the officer involved did what he was trained to do. Despite Johnsons acrimonious ending as top cop, he tries to be honest in these evaluations, calls these issues as he sees them and tries to avoid politics. Huppkes column is headlined A cop killed Toledo. Its simply unacceptable. Seems a bit naive, particularly when it conflicts with that of the career police person whos trying to make an honest assessment, ran the department and who has been on the wrong end of more than one gun. We need fewer columnists with unyielding opinions and more who really evaluate the facts. This is a terrible tragedy for everyone involved, politicization of the issue adds little of value, and only divides.
In response to protests against unending police violence and in anticipation of a verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial in the coming days, Democratic governors and mayors across the country are preemptively declaring emergency protocols at police departments and activating National Guard soldiers in an attempt to intimidate protesters and deprive them of their First Amendment rights.

In Minneapolis and the surrounding suburbs of Champlin and Brooklyn Center, where 20-year-old Daunte Wright was shot and killed by 26-year police veteran Kimberly Potter, after she allegedly mistook her pistol for a Taser last Sunday, more than 3,000 National Guard troops and at least 1,100 law enforcement agents from agencies across the state have been activated as part of the misnamed Operation Safety Net.

Workers install concertina wire between fenced barriers outside the Hennepin County Government Center. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)

Far from protecting workers and youth, Operation Safety Net has led to the injury and arrest of hundreds, many of whom had nothing to do with the protest. While Capitol Police on the front lines of the attack on Congress on January 6 were prohibited from utilizing their most effective crowd control munitions such as sting ball grenades or less-lethal impact munitions, working class parents and their families in Brooklyn Center have been suffering the effects of CS gas and flashbangs throughout the past week.

We have been sneezing and coughing every day, because it comes through the walls and then it stays in the walls, Iranesha Anderson, 29, told the Washington Post. Anderson has four children, two of whom have asthma. You cant even air out your apartment, because the [expletive] still keeps coming in.

In addition to flooding working class neighborhoods with tear gas, militarized police and soldiers, an unconstitutional curfew has been in effect for the last week in Champlin and Brooklyn Center, preventing many residents from going about their day. Disturbing images and videos over the weekend revealed scenes of militarized police backed by soldiers, pointing semi-automatic rifles at unarmed women attempting to pump gas who were allegedly in violation of the curfew.

Demonstrating the immense fear within the ruling class and the state that the protests, similar to last summers, might grow to encompass broad layers of workers and youth and spiral out of their control, state agents have been deliberately targeting journalists to prevent the distribution and documentation of on-the-ground footage of the occupation.

During Friday evenings protest in Brooklyn Center, during which police boasted of 136 arrests, multiple journalists reported being assaulted by police while taking photographs or simply standing on the sidewalk. Freelance photographer Tim Evans told the Associated Press that he witnessed police charge into a crowd of peaceful protesters and begin pepper-spraying and tackling people, with one officer punching Evans in the face before ripping off his press credentials and forcing him to lie on his stomach with a knee in his back.

I was yelling press. He said he didnt care and to shut the f*ck up, Evans told the AP. Evans said another officer came over and smashed his head into the ground and then zip-tied his hands behind his back.

Im extremely upset, Evans said. I felt like they were targeting the press in general. Im out there doing what Im doing because I have such strong convictions about the importance of this work. Evans added that without his protective equipment, such as goggles, respiratory mask and helmet, he would have been seriously injured.

Its egregious, its horrific, he said. We are nothing as a society, as a democracy, without a free press and its constantly being challenged and constantly being abused.

A video journalist documenting the protests for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Mark Vancleave, reported on Twitter that after being shot in the hand with a less-lethal round by police while holding his camera to his face on Monday, he wont be able to pick up a camera for at least six weeks following surgery to repair his broken ring finger.

Vancleave said he is recovering, but remains deeply concerned for my fellow journalists working to fairly and accurately report on the crisis unfolding in our communitiesparticularly as Minnesota law enforcement continues to target journalists with force and disregard [their] constitutionally protected role.

Maribel Perez Wadsworth, president of USA TODAY Network and publisher of USA Today, issued a statement following the police riot Friday night condemning the actions of the police in Brooklyn Center.

We condemn the actions of the police in Brooklyn Center in the strongest possible terms, Wadsworth said. Requiring journalists to lie prone on the ground and photographing their credentials are purposeful intimidation tactics. To be clear, we will not be intimidated or deterred in fulfilling our First Amendment right and responsibility to hold power to account in our reporting.

The rampant abuse of journalists prompted Democratic Governor Tim Walz to issue a statement on Twitter Saturday in which he claimed to be looking for a better path forward to protect the journalists covering civil unrest.

On Thursday, Walz defended the fortifying of the Brooklyn Center police station with concrete barricades and the brutal violence police meted out to journalists and protesters alike.

What do you think would have happened Sunday night or Monday night, especially had there not been a fence there and had there been no one there? Ive learned from the past that the building would have been burned down and my fear was that the surrounding apartments would have burned, too.

In addition to fortifying the police station, the home of former officer Potter has been fortified with concrete barriers and steel fencing. A 24-hour surveillance system has also been installed, with police providing round-the-clock protection as well.

Testifying to the anger and tension the ongoing occupation is causing in the community, early Sunday morning it was reported that members of the Minnesota National Guard and Minneapolis Police Department were fired upon in an alleged drive-by shooting.

According to the Minneapolis Police Department, at about 4:19 a.m., someone in a light-colored SUV fired multiple shots at the soldiers and police, who were patrolling in North Minneapolis. No one was shot or seriously injured. One soldier was taken to the hospital to receive care for injuries suffered from shattered glass.

In Washington D.C., Fox 5 confirmed that Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser has already requested 300 Guard members, who remain on standby at the D.C. armory should police request support.

On Friday, local media obtained an internal email from the Metropolitan Police Department confirming that the entire department will be activated on an all hands on deck mode beginning April 19.

In Pennsylvania, Democratic Governor Tom Wolf declared a proclamation of disaster emergency on Friday. The proclamation carried with it an activation order for over 1,000 National Guardsmen to be deployed in Philadelphia. Troops could be seen arriving in Philadelphia throughout the weekend.

In a statement, Wolf said the declaration was part of preemptive steps the government was taking in order to ensure the safety of our fellow Pennsylvanians. The proclamation is effective for 90 days, unless rescinded or extended by Wolf.

During a Friday press conference, Wolf and police heads defended the deployment of extra police and Guard soldiers saying they had learned from last summers protests following the murder of George Floyd and have developed a holistic plan to counter protests.

Regardless of what may develop, I am confident that our department is prepared for whatever may come our way, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said on Friday. Outlaw admitted that missteps were made during protests last summer, but vowed that her department would not hesitate to use less-lethal munitions but that they would not be used against peaceful demonstrators.

Describing the militarized atmosphere in the city, Outlaw said: Things might look different in your neighborhoods over the coming days. You will see officers on bikes, and some officers on foot. Some officers may be on horseback ... theres even a chance that you will see a Pennsylvania National Guard soldier in your neighborhood. Please remember that they are all here to serve you.
UPDATE: Bystander details harrowing effort to help rescue fire victim in White Township

A fire damaged the living space above a business Monday morning in White Township and one person was hurt, authorities report.

A woman was taken to an area hospital for treatment, New Jersey State Police said.

The fire was reported just before 8 a.m. at 421 Route 46, above the Five Acres Flea Market, police said. The blaze appeared to be knocked down by 8:30 a.m., although firefighters continued to work.

Burn marks were visible upstairs above windows to the front and left side of the building. Firefighters were tearing apart the flooring searching for hidden flames.

The extent of the damage to the business below was not immediately clear.

A fire broke out about 8 a.m. April 19, 2021, on the second floor of a building in the 400 block of Route 46 in White Township, Warren County.Rich Maxwell | lehighvalleylive.com contributor

Mountain Lake Fire Company was heading the firefighting effort that also included Belvideres Good Will company.

Warren County fire Marshal Joe Lake was on the scene as were state troopers from the Washington barracks. Fire and police personnel will investigate to determine the cause of the fire.

Freelance photographer Rich Maxwell contributed to this report.

Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting lehighvalleylive.com with a subscription.

Tony Rhodin can be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com.
'Difficult to Specify'

'A Godsend'

Controversial History

Similar Policing Tactics

(TNS)  Arrests for carjackings, shootings and robberies are up in the city in recent years, but how much of that success can be credited to a controversial surveillance program is unclear, a multi-year analysis found.The Project Green Light program, launched six years ago to help stem violent crimes, likely contributed to a "significant" decline in carjackings, robberies and shootings in Detroit since 2016, according to the study released earlier this year.But the four-year evaluation by Michigan State University, however, couldn't determine whether the program is largely responsible for the declines or if it played a smaller role along with other recent crimefighting initiatives in Detroit. "I don't think that our study is the conclusive end-all, thumbs up or thumbs down on this type of approach," said Edmund McGarrell, a co-author and professor in MSU's school of criminal justice of Green Light. "Over time, the picture should become more clear."Hailed by Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan in 2016 as "the next generation of violence reduction," the program offers businesses the opportunity to install highly visible green lights and high-definition surveillance cameras that feed into the Police Department's Real Time Crime Center. Businesses appear to recognize the benefit. In 2016, Green Light had 77 locations. By 2017, it added 138 businesses; 235 sites joined in 2018; and 204 more establishments in 2019. Despite the pandemic, 62 new businesses signed on in 2020, the MSU report notes.The study, which was requested by Detroit Councilwoman Raquel Castaneda-Lopez, looked at data from 2017-19. While stipulating it's difficult to quantify how much Green Light has helped, the study concluded the program's overall influence on crime trends in Detroit is "limited."The study's findings come as Detroit's City Council works to hash out an ordinance governing implementation of surveillance technology and amid calls to direct more policing dollars toward mental health services and substance abuse intervention.Detroit police Chief James Craig defended Green Light, arguing it's paying off and the study attempts to quantify things that can't be measured."Part of it (the report) was complimentary of Green Light, but one thing that stands out is that they say there's no way to tell how much crime it's prevented," Craig said. "But we can never know if a criminal sees the green light and decides not to rob someone; it's not like he's going to come into the police station and tell us, 'I was planning to rob the gas station on Davison, but I saw the green light and decided against it.'"But for Castaneda-Lopez, who has advocated for the city to curb investment in the effort, the lack of clarity over the effectiveness of Green Light is evidence that some police department funding should be directed elsewhere."It reaffirms my hesitations that I've had about the program for this entire time," said Castaneda-Lopez, who voted this month against the city's 2021-22 fiscal budget plan, citing a desire to have $40 million from the police department's $327 million budget go toward social services instead.Castaneda-Lopez said Detroit's elected leaders should invest in programs "that actually will statistically improve neighborhoods and their quality of life.""No one is asking for an officer on each corner, nor a camera on each corner," she added. "They want to have resources in their community."Since Green Light's inception, carjackings citywide have declined "substantially"  dropping at an overall rate of 38 percent from 2016 to 2019  at participating and non-participating sites, MSU's evaluation found.Fatal and nonfatal shootings have declined 27 percent since 2016, compared with the five years prior.But the authors cautioned it's challenging to pinpoint the individual impact of Green Light over other programs implemented alongside it, including Operation Ceasefire, which has focused on curbing gang violence, and Project Safe Neighborhoods, which has encouraged community-based solutions to violent crime."When I put my strict, cautionary evaluation hat on, I have to concede it becomes very difficult to specify if we do see an impact on carjacking, to what extent is that Green Light? To what extent is that CeaseFire?" said McGarrell, who also is director of the Michigan Justice Statistics Center.The report, finalized in February, surfaced late last month after Castaneda-Lopez inquired about it during city budget deliberations.Craig said Green Light was created to reduce carjackings and robberies primarily at gas stations and liquor stores, and "the results are there."The first year Green Light was implemented, carjackings dropped 39 percent from the previous year, while robberies fell 17 percent. There were 3,593 robberies and 532 carjackings in the city in 2015; last year, there were 1,843 robberies and 221 carjackings, reductions of 49 percent and 57 percent, respectively, police figures show.The study noted while it "cannot directly attribute the citywide decline" (in carjackings) to Green Light, it is the type of program that would have a deterrent effect. That's reinforced, it added, with the decline in carjackings at Green Light locations, despite a significant increase in the volume of businesses participating over time."In addition to having fewer carjackings and robberies, anecdotally, we're hearing good things about Green Light from business owners and community members," Craig said. "Crimes have not been totally eliminated  we still make arrests at Green Light locations  but it's not nearly what it was."Castaneda-Lopez said the city's focus should still be on the root causes of crime."If we really want to talk about being able to prevent and reduce crime, the conversation must shift from just a policing standpoint to talking about safety in a true definition, which encompasses these other societal factors that play into creating crime," she said.Mike Saad, owner of Starter's Bar & Grill on Plymouth in northwest Detroit, was among the first group of business owners to sign up for Green Light when it was launched. He said the program is responsible for getting rid of loiterers outside of his establishment."It's been excellent; it's changed the dynamic of the neighborhood for me," he said. "I used to get rowdy people back in the day; now, they see that green light and I don't have any problems whatsoever. It's been a godsend."Saad said he feels comforted that officers visit his business regularly, one of the program's perks, he noted."Usually, police only come in when there's a problem, and that's your only interaction with them," he said. "So now, the officers will come in once or twice a week. ... They get to see the inside of the businesses without being called because there was a problem."Longtime Starter's customer Jamiel Martin said he supports Project Green Light."It's helped police arrest violent criminals, and I'll always support that," the 47-year-old Detroit resident said. "I understand that some people are concerned about privacy, but I'm more concerned about violent criminals."Mike Moses, owner of First Class Liquor on East Warren, said he pays more than $300 per month for Green Light services. Moses said he sees the program as "just a money-making scam for the city.""I have it, but it's just for the look, basically," he said. "It's not really doing anything. Maybe the cops might come faster, but it really doesn't make a difference."Having Green Light didn't stop one of my regular customers from getting carjacked last year. Someone jumped in his car and took off."Each establishment is responsible for buying and installing the cameras, which is an estimated $4,000 to $6,000 per site, as well as monthly fees of up to $150 for cloud-based video storage.Detroit police Sgt. Nicole Kirkwood said the department isn't aware of how much has been collected in fees and costs for the program. The department, she said, doesn't receive any of the money business owners pay into Green Light. Rather, it goes to the companies that provide the equipment and services.The city has more than 3,000 Green Light cameras and 700-plus participants. Last year, 62 percent of Green Light participants were retail shops, 25 percent service organizations and 13 percent were multi-unit residential.The MSU report notes Green Light participation was associated with increased clearance by arrest for carjackings and robberies. But given the relatively small number of arrests at Green Light locations that had reached final adjudication, "it is difficult to assess the impact of PGLD on convictions and sentencing."Co-author McGarrell said completion of the report lagged as researchers waited for cases to make their way through the court system. Other complicating factors, he said, have been the continued rollout of the program over time and an uptick in calls for service at participating stations."It just makes it complicated in terms of being able to detect a clear impact," McGarrell said. "For a variety of reasons, it's not clear cut. It's easier to study in a neighborhood or at a precinct level than a small geographic area."McGarrell said there is "promising evidence" that Green Light can have a positive impact on public safety, but "with all of these qualifications that I offer and one study, in one city, we would want to build additional evidence."Use of Green Light and other surveillance technology in Detroit has been contentious. Civil rights advocates and residents have argued Green Light is intrusive and discriminatory, and the protest group Detroit Will Breathe has called for its elimination. City officials point out that the program is voluntary.Protesters also have concerns the police department's facial recognition program uses feeds from Green Light locations along with other video sources. City Council President Pro Tem Mary Sheffield spearheaded legislation several years ago to bring transparency and accountability when surveillance contracts are considered in Detroit. The council is expected to take up the issue in May. Sheffield said the ordinance, if approved, would apply to all types of surveillance equipment, whether it's for traffic cameras, illegal dumping or police department initiatives."This ordinance is not anti-facial recognition or anti-cameras, it's pro-transparency and accountability in making sure that council has adequate information when we're voting on this particular procurement for technology," she said. "It empowers us with more information and it also gives the community more of a voice in expressing why they are for or against it."The ordinance, she said, was in the works prior to Green Light and wasn't crafted in response to community complaints. Sheffield said Green Light has some benefits, but she hasn't reviewed MSU's report yet and is conducting her own research on the impact it has had on crime in the city.Project Green Light has inspired similar policing programs in communities nearby.Charles Lackey, director of Information Technology in Highland Park, launched "Project Blue Light," a concept based on Green Light, but expanded it with two-way speakers to businesses that will enable police to talk to business owners in real time.Highland Park and Ecorse in February jointly launched their blue light program to cut costs. Eleven businesses in the two cities are signed up for Blue Light, Lackey said.Unlike Detroit's program, Lackey said after participants pay an initial $2,300 for lights, four high-definition cameras and signs, there are no monthly fees."There have been about seven or eight arrests that came from officers monitoring the system," he said. It's a little too early to say for sure how it's going, but so far, so good."
Today, in an official letter to the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, the Council of Europe and the UN Commissioners for Human Rights and other international bodies, I provided additional information on the urgency of the return of Armenian captives from Azerbaijan, the real situation, the protection of their rights and missing persons. The Human Rights Defender (Ombudsman) of Armenia, Arman Tatoyan, on Monday morning wrote this on Facebook.

The letter primarily indicates that there is an ongoing, open armed conflict. From the point of view of international [humanitarian] law, this means that regardless of whether or not they were taken prisoner after the November 9, 2020 tripartite declaration, they are prisoners of war, captives; they should be released immediately. This issue is artificially delayed by openly abusing legal processes, presenting them as terrorists and in violation of international rules, using detention as punishment.

All the while, this is a universal demand requirement for the implementation of international rulings to be applied automatically. The opposite grossly violates international human rights requirements and the international humanitarian law, including the 1949 Geneva Convention. The release and return of prisoners should be considered solely in the context of the human rights and humanitarian processes.

The Human Rights Defenders monitoring, as well as the results of the investigation of the complaints received continuously confirm that the Azerbaijani authorities, in gross violation of international requirements, artificially delay the release of the Armenian captives, and deliberately do not disclose the actual number of prisoners. With this policy, they are violating the rights of prisoners and causing mental sufferings to the families of the captives and the missing persons, as well as are causing tension in the Armenian society.

Evidence gathered by the Human Rights Defender's Office confirms that the number of captives held in Azerbaijan is higher than the Azerbaijani authorities have confirmed. This is in reference to the return of 44 captives in 2020.

The absolute urgency with respect to the issue of the release and return of captives must be considered in the context of the policy of hatred towards Armenians and animosity in Azerbaijan, which has been continually propagated at the state level.

Therefore, taking into account the humanitarian mandates of these international bodies and their role in human rights (the priority of right to life) protection, they were provided with additional information on the real situation, raising the urgent need to take decisive measures for the release and return of all captives, also reads the statement by the ombudsman of Armenia.
The man-made lakes that store water supplying millions of people in the US West and Mexico are projected to shrink to historic lows in the coming months, dropping to levels that could trigger the federal government's first-ever official shortage declaration and prompt cuts in Arizona and Nevada.

The US Bureau of Reclamation released 24-month projections last week forecasting that less Colorado River water will cascade down from the Rocky Mountains through Lake Powell and Lake Mead and into the arid deserts of the Southwest and the Gulf of California.

Water levels in the two lakes are expected to plummet low enough for the agency to declare an official shortage for the first time, threatening the supply of Colorado River water that growing cities and farms rely on.

It comes as climate change means less snowpack flows into the river and its tributaries, and hotter temperatures parch soil and cause more river water to evaporate as it streams through the drought-plagued American West.

Lake Powell is situated along the Arizona-Utah border and Lake Mead along the Arizona-Nevada border.

The agency's models project Lake Mead will fall below 1,075 feet for the first time in June 2021. That's the level that prompts a shortage declaration under agreements negotiated by seven states that rely on Colorado River water. Lake Mead's levels are currently at 1,081 feet

Meanwhile, the agency's models predict Lake Powell's levels may drop as low as 3,540 feet of elevation above sea level, which would be the lowest since 1968. The models predict Lake Powell will continue to drop below the the target elevation of 3,525 feet next year. Currently, Lake Powell's elevation levels are at 3,564 feet

The agency's models project Lake Mead, the reservoir created by the Hoover Dam, will fall below 1,075 feet for the first time in June 2021. That's the level that prompts a shortage declaration under agreements negotiated by seven states that rely on Colorado River water: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

Lake Mead's levels are currently at 1,081 feet.

Meanwhile, the agency's models predict Lake Powell's levels may drop as low as 3,540 feet of elevation above sea level, which would be the lowest since 1968.

The models predict Lake Powell will continue to drop below the the target elevation of 3,525 feet next year.

Currently, Lake Powell's elevation levels are at 3,564 feet.

The projections, however, will not have binding impact.

Federal officials regularly issue long-term projections but use those released each August to make decisions about how to allocate river water. If projections don't improve by then, the Bureau of Reclamation will declare a Level 1 shortage condition. The cuts would be implemented in January.

Arizona, Nevada and Mexico have voluntarily given up water under a drought contingency plan for the river that was signed back in 2019.

A shortage declaration would subject the two US states to their first mandatory reductions. Both rely on the Colorado River more than any other water source, and Arizona stands to lose roughly one-third of its supply.

Lake Mead's (top right) levels are currently at 1,081 feet, or 39 percent full

Currently, Lake Powell's elevation levels are at 3,564 feet, or 36 percent full

The inflow at Lake Powell is forecast to be well below average this year. The average million acre-feet levels is usually 10.83 but is forecast to be as low as 1.70 maf (or 24 percent capacity)

Water agency officials say they're confident their preparation measures, including conservation and seeking out alternative sources, would allow them to withstand cuts if the drought lingers as expected.

'The study, while significant, is not a surprise. It reflects the impacts of the dry and warm conditions across the Colorado River Basin this year, as well as the effects of a prolonged drought that has impacted the Colorado River water supply,' officials from the Arizona Department of Water Resources and Central Arizona Project said in a joint statement.

In Nevada, the agency that supplies water to most of the state has constructed 'straws' to draw water from further down in Lake Mead as its levels fall.

It also has created a credit system where it can bank recycled water back into the reservoir without having it count toward its allocation.

Colby Pellegrino, director of water resources for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, reassured customers that those preparation measures would insulate them from the effects of cuts but she warned that more action was needed.

'It is incumbent upon all users of the Colorado River to find ways to conserve,' Pellegrino said in a statement.

The Bureau of Reclamation also projected that Lake Mead will drop to the point they worried in the past could threaten electricity generation at Hoover Dam. The hydropower serves millions of customers in Arizona, California and Nevada.

The agency's models predict Lake Powell's levels may drop as low as 3,540 feet of elevation above sea level, which would be the lowest since 1968. Currently, Lake Powell's elevation levels are at 3,564 feet

The US Bureau of Reclamation predicts Lake Mead (above in December) will fall below 1,075 feet for the first time in June 2021, which is the level that prompts a shortage declaration. Lake Mead's levels are currently at 1,081 feet

To prepare for a future with less water, the bureau has spent 10 years replacing parts of five of the dam's 17 turbines that rotate to generate power. Len Schilling, a dam manager with the bureau, said the addition of wide-head turbines allow the dam to operate more efficiently at lower water levels.

He said the turbines will be able to generate power almost to a point called 'deadpool,' when there won't be enough water for the dam to function.

But Schilling noted that less water moving through Hoover Dam means less hydropower to go around.

'As the elevation declines at the lake, then our ability to produce power declines as well because we have less water pushing on the turbines,' he said.

The hydropower costs substantially less than the energy sold on the wholesale electricity market because the government charges customers only for the cost of producing it and maintaining the dam.

Lincoln County Power District General Manager Dave Luttrell said infrastructure updates, less hydropower from Hoover Dam and supplemental power from other sources like natural gas raised costs and alarmed customers in his rural Nevada district.

'Rural economies in Arizona and Nevada live and die by the hydropower that is produced at Hoover Dam. It might not be a big deal to NV Energy,' he said of Nevada's largest utility. 'It might be a decimal point to Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. But for Lincoln County, it adds huge impact.'
NEW YORK, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The number one reason for start-up failure isn't lack of funding or stiff competition. The main reason is 'misreading market demand'.

Therefore, it becomes important for start-ups to thoroughly research the market.

Market research can be the make-or-break factor

Market research has long been regarded as a scientific, process-oriented discipline for gaining key insights. However, for most start-ups, accessing quality market research remains a challenge.

Addressing this challenge head-on is Dubai-based market research and consulting firm Fact.MR. Through its exclusive subscription model for start-ups, Fact.MR has become the go-to market research company for small businesses.

"Start-ups that use our reliable market insights prime themselves for success in the long run. Effective market research guides start-ups on what can be achieved and how to achieve it," says Sudip Saha, Co-founder of Fact.MR, and an industry expert with over fifteen years of experience in market research.

Fact.MR also offers start-ups access to the world's largest AI-powered market database - Market Ngage. This AI-powered database provides real-time access to millions of data points, market research reports, competitive landscape analysis, and market projections.

"Agility is critical to operate in a start-up environment. Start-ups often need insights quickly, and that's why our AI-powered database Market Ngage is an apt solution," opines Mr. Saha.

Fact.MR currently serves startups across a range of sectorsautomotive, food & beverage, healthcare, ICT, industrial goods, chemicals & materials, and retail. Whether a business is looking for global automotive market research or needs granular, country-level healthcare market intelligence, Fact.MR provides the apt solution.

Since its inception, Fact.MR has catered to over 5,000 organizations around the globe. While Fortune 1,000 companies make up a sizeable share of Fact.MR's clientele, its start-up focused market research solutions are the firm's USP.

"Big conglomerates have pre-approved marketing budgets, which is not the case for start-ups, especially those that are bootstrapped. Therefore, we have unique subscription models designed exclusively for start-ups and small businesses," concludes Mr. Saha.

About Fact.MR

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SOURCE Fact.MR
(Alliance News) - The Rank Group PLC on Monday said it has a new majority owner following a reorganisation by its controlling shareholders.

GuoLine Capital Assets Ltd is now the parent company of controlling shareholder Guoco Group Ltd, which holds a 56% stake in Rank. GuoLine replaced the former parent company, Hong Leong Co (Malaysia) Bhd. The size of the stake remains unchanged.

Rank, Guoco and GuoLine signed an agreement to govern their relationship, on the same terms as the previous agreement involving Hong Leong.

Shares in Rank, a Berkshire-based gambling operator, were down 0.2% to 195.40 pence in London. The wider FTSE 250 index was up 0.4%.

By Ivan Edwards; ivanedwards@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Chloe Goodman has revealed her daughter Isla was hospitalised after she noticed there was blood in her urine.

The reality star, 27, shared several snaps of herself and the tot, 11 months, in hospital and told how Isla had a viral respiratory infection.

Taking to her Instagram Stories, Chloe posted a photo of Isla on her lap and wrote: 'Meant to be at Drusillas but hospital on a Sunday it is.

Worried: Chloe Goodman has revealed her daughter Isla was hospitalised after she noticed there was blood in her urine

'Docs think Isla has some sort of infection due to her having blood in her wee x just waiting to hear back, they are running more tests.'

Chloe then shared another photo of Isla's toe wrapped in plaster and wrote: 'Little update on my gorgeous one, she has a respiratory viral infection.

'She's been assigned to acorn and they will keep a close eye on her to make sure that after 5 days it doesn't turn into a bacterial infection.'

Earlier this year, Chloe hit back at claims she caught Covid while holidaying in Dubai with her sister Lauryn and their children before Christmas.

Health: The reality star, 27, shared several snaps of herself and the tot in hospital and told how Isla had a respiratory viral infection

The media personality addressed speculation from fans during an Instagram Story on Wednesday, as she detailed her 'horrendous' ordeal with the virus.

Chloe also told how two members of her family members have been hospitalised with coronavirus, after the 'whole family' came down with it over Christmas.

Discussing messages from followers who had suggested she caught the virus while abroad, Chloe said: 'I'm not in Dubai, a few people have messaged me saying I got Covid because I went to Dubai.'

Chloe enjoyed a sun-soaked getaway to the United Arab Emirates in November before the UK was plunged into a second national lockdown.

'Baby girl': Chloe shared a heartwarmng snap of herself resting her hand on her daughter's leg

Chloe wrote: 'Docs think Isla has some sort of infection due to her having blood in her wee x just waiting to hear back, they are running more tests'

She continued: 'That was not the case at all, I went there ages ago when we weren't in a lockdown.

'Before Tiers were introduced. I think we went into a lockdown while we were over there and we extended and then flew home, we were negative before we went and got back.'

Revealing where she believes she contracted the virus, Chloe said: 'I got covid from a family member over the Christmas period, that's how me and Isla got it.

'I'll be honest it was the most horrendous thing. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. The fatigue, you don't have an ounce of willpower to fight it, it's horrendous what it does.

Chloe added: 'Little update on my gorgeous one, she has a respiratory viral infection'

'I've got two family members at the moment in hospital battling covid, my whole family basically caught it. We got the new variant, we've been so good for so long, this new variant is absolutely horrendous with how easily you can catch it.

'Everyone who thinks I've been here there and everywhere, I haven't. Only Dubai when we were allowed to travel.'

Chloe went on to reveal that the family were forced to cancel a trip to the Caribbean to celebrate her sister Lauryn's 30th birthday.

'We were meant to be going to Barbados for my sisters 30th but that was cancelled. The flight went ahead but obviously we didn't go.

'For us we are getting regular hospital updates. It's a really brutal time.'
MANCHESTER, England, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ACE Money Transfer has launched global money transfer services in Australia.

Bringing convenient and inclusive money transfer services to users worldwide, ACE focuses on expansion, innovation, exceptional customer experience and speed to market.

After having served a customer base of 1.3 million individuals in United Kingdom (UK) and European Union (EU) with a network of 100+ countries and 300,000+ payout locations, ACE Money Transfer has a new goal that is to build international digital payment services and serve Australian customers.

At ACE, the approach is to digitize remittances and help making remittance services convenient and affordable - especially for migrant workers in Australia. Every transaction would be digital and would bear either no or minimal charges as compared to money transferred through physical agent locations that is usually subject to high fees.

"It is imperative for companies to 'Feel' for their customers. That 'Feel' for customers made ACE to leap into Australia to offer them cost-effective, comfortable and convenient solutions to their money transfer needs," said by Mr. Rashid Ashraf, CEO of ACE Money Transfer.

It is a great news for Individuals in Australia who wish to send their hard-earned monies back to their homes to support their families for livelihood. They will have the access to use services of ACE Money Transfer through its website or mobile App, at any time, and can transfer monies using their debit or credit card. Regardless of whether customers are making a regular transfer, they can get facilities of airtime, pay to mobile wallets and bill payments from the comforts of their homes.

The utmost priority of any international remittance company is to meet faster expansion goals. ACE Money Transfer has grown its name by serving customers in United Kingdom and Europe for more than 15 years. Working in another continent is a logical step to showcase its ambitions.

ACE Money Transfer (registered name "Aftab Currency Exchange Limited") is a Manchester based renowned financial institution which specializes in cross-border payments and provides online and App based money remittance services. To launch its operations in Australia, ACE Money Transfer acquired an Australian company with ACN number 626577268 named as "ACE Money Transfer PTY LTD". Australian subsidiary is duly licensed by and registered with AUSTRAC (Financial Regulator of Australia) and has a registered office at 30 Freemont Circuit, Truganina, Vic, 3029, in Australia.

Contacts:

[email protected]

+44 161 3936 999

SOURCE ACE Money Transfer
The Parler social media website is displayed on a cell phone in New York City on March 5, 2021. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

Apple Greenlights Parlers App for Return to iOS App Store

Apple has approved Parlers updated app for a return to the iOS store, the company said in a letter.

In a missive to members of Congress, Apple said Parler has proposed updates to its app that include strengthened moderation practices.

Apples review team informed Parler that as of April 14, its proposed updated app will be approved for reinstatement to the App Store, Timothy Powderly, a senior Apple director for government affairs, told Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) in the letter.

Apple anticipates that the updated Parler app will become available immediately upon Parler releasing it, Powderly added.

Buck and Lee had pressed Apple on its removal of Parlers app.

Parler interim CEO Mark Meckler told The Epoch Times that the companys updated app was approved for a return to the Apple store.

Apple did not respond to an inquiry.

Buck told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that the the reinstatement is a huge win for free speech.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has said Parler was removed from the companys app store because there were posts inciting violence.

Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks during a tour of the Flextronics computer manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas, on Nov. 20, 2019. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

There are some incitement to violence examples on there, and they need to step it up on the moderation. And our hope is that they do that and get back on the store, Cook said in January, shortly after the removal.

In the letter, Powderly said Apples review team found a significant number of posts on Parler that violated guidelines, such as posts that glorified Nazism and encouraged violence.

Parler officials have said that its moderation practices needed to be better but noted that other social media platforms that saw posts related to the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol were not punished by Apple or other Big Tech companies.

The standards that were held to are higher than that of Facebook and Twitter, former Parler CEO John Matze told The Epoch Times in a previous interview. And that is wrong, because that is giving preferential treatment to some clients and some customers and not others.

Amazon Web Services kicked Parler off its servers and Google joined Apple in removing Parlers app from its app store.

Parler went offline for weeks but relaunched on a new server in February.

Apple did not coordinate or consult with Google or Amazon before deciding to remove Parlers app, according to the letter.

Amy Peikoff, Parlers chief policy officer, told The Epoch Times via email last month that Parler expected to return to Apples app store.

Were optimistic that Apple will continue to differentiate itself from other Big Tech companies by supporting its customers choice to think differentto exercise their constitutionally protected freedoms of thought, speech, and associationwhile using Apple products, she said.

Jan Jekielek and Joshua Philipp contributed to this report.
Congratulations to Marsha Sell for once again achieving this well-deserved honor, said Dan Forsman, President and CEO Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Georgia Properties. Marsha continues to dominate the Atlanta real estate market, and it has been a privilege to be able to witness her incredible a

Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Georgia Properties is proud to announce that Luxury Collection Specialist Marsha Sell, has recently been designated with the first-ever Sapphire Phoenix Award, honoring her 45th consecutive year as an Atlanta REALTORS Association Top Producer. This prestigious recognition symbolizes industry excellence, and Marshas long-standing status proves that she has established herself as a staple throughout the Greater Atlanta real estate market.

Marsha Sell has been in the real estate industry for over 48 years and leads the Sell Team alongside her business partner, Keith Grogan. Marsha has been a consistent member of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Chairmans Circle, and serves as one of the companys top agents. Her reputation for excellence is apparent in every transaction she represents, and her unwavering work ethic has resulted in unprecedented success throughout her 48 years in the industry.

It is an honor to work with Marsha. Her longevity and success as a Realtor set a benchmark for others, said Mary Crist, Senior Vice President and Managing Broker of the East Cobb office.

About Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Georgia Properties

Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Georgia Properties has over 1,600 associates and 26 locations across the Greater Metro Atlanta and North Georgia area. The company generated over $4.4 billion in sales volume and 11,606 transaction sides in 2020. Trendgraphix reports that Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Georgia Properties is ranked #1 in home sales for the Greater Metro Atlanta area. Led by president and CEO Dan Forsman, the organization offers a full suite of real estate services including residential real estate, luxury real estate, new homes services, condo/ high-rise services, commercial real estate, corporate relocation, property management, mortgage lending, title and settlement services, home warranties and insurance. Equal Housing Opportunity.

Visit http://www.bhhsgeorgia.com.
The company has signed binding agreements to acquire four private properties at the southern end of the Julimar Nickel-Copper-PGE Project.

The purchase is a de-risking step for the potential development of a future mining operation.

( ) ( ) has strengthened its position at Gonneville Intrusion within the Julimar Nickel-Copper-PGE Project near Perth in Western Australia by entering binding agreements to acquire four additional key private properties.

These properties cover 723 hectares and take Chalices holding of private land at the southern end of the Julimar Project to a combined total of approximately 1,668 hectares or about 17 square kilometres.

Shares were more than 2.6% higher in early trade to A$6.58 while Chalices market cap is approximately A$2.217 billion.

Covers Gonneville Intrusion

They cover all of the current known mineralisation at the Gonneville Intrusion, the geological host to Chalices major PGE-nickel-copper-cobalt-gold discovery.

Total consideration for the acquisition comprises $11.25 million in cash and 1,033,294 fully paid ordinary Chalice shares.

The company says that the agreements are on terms considered customary for agreements of this nature, and settlement is not subject to any material conditions precedent.

De-risking step

This acquisition follows one in November 2020 in which Chalice entered into a binding agreement to acquire three key private properties in the same area, which is just 70 kilometres northeast of Perth.

These three properties cover a combined area of around 945 hectares with one property covering about 85% of the Gonneville Intrusion.

At the time, Chalice said securing the title to these properties was considered to be an important milestone for the project and a major de-risking step for the potential development of a future mining operation.
OMD, an Omnicom Media Group agency and a subsidiary of Omnicom Group has won the marketing and media mandate for AU Small Finance Bank (AU Bank). OMD will be responsible for end-to-end customer-focused campaigns and the delivery of faster business outcomes as part of this mandate that will be handled by the OMD Mumbai office. Though it was a competitive multi-agency pitch, OMD got an edge over others due to its client-centric philosophy and its homegrown self-created data platform, Omni, that was launched in 2018.

OMDs relationship-based approach, eye for detail, and the data and analytics platform Omni acted as the three key differentiators that gained the banks trust in OMDs capabilities and sensibilities. Omni is built around radical collaboration and empathy aimed to achieve a better understanding of consumer preference through data-driven planning and insight, an aspect that will enable the brand to make faster data-driven decisions in its marketing mix. By leveraging data in this proactive digital-first banking ecosystem, AU Bank is expected to target its digital products with better predictable outcomes.

At this important life stage of the bank, partnering with a reputed agency like OMD, will add a new dimension to our brand considering their experience & expertise. Additionally, OMDs capabilities with data & analytics will help us to connect better with our customers as we concentrate efforts to strengthen our base and presence across the country, said Uttam Tibrewal, Executive Director, AU Small Finance Bank.

We are excited to bring alive AU Banks vision of bringing differentiated offerings to an otherwise underserved segment. What I love about AU Bank is that they are ready to push boundaries and want consumers to demand more from banks. In this sense, AU is geared to offer more to customers in a unique manner. Our media offering for AU Bank is just like that  unique and creating magic for customers. AU Bank is now expanding its geographical presence pan-India, and we are honoured to be a part of this progressive journey. Since the bank has taken a digital-led approach, its partnership with OMD will act as a gamechanger in AU Banks overall brand positioning and create higher recall among its existing customer and attract new ones. says, Priti Murthy, CEO, OMD India.

OMDs full suite of applications will provide end-to-end insights, creative development, reporting, and optimization solutions. This will make the campaigns resonate better with consumers and drive higher conversions. OMD unique value proposition to dive deep into data will drive more insightful and effective campaigns for AU Banks brand.

Having a deep domain knowledge of the banking sector coupled with our proprietary tools and services in the data and analytics space helped us win the AU Bank mandate as its brand marketing and communications partner, says Kartik Sharma, Group CEO, Omnicom Media Group-India.

OMD will implement smarter strategies to create innovative campaigns using predictive functionality and a more quantitative approach to map empathy.
When Joe Biden took office, he promised amnesty, free health care, and a secure, 'dignified' entry to the U.S. for illegal migrants.

"If I'm elected president, we're going to immediately end Trump's assault on the dignity of immigrant communities. We're going to restore our moral standing in the world and our historic role as a safe haven for refugees and asylum-seekers," Biden said in his acceptance speech at the virtual Democratic National Convention.

Now that what he's delivered has been a border surge premised on his recission of President Trump's 'Remain in Mexico' migrant asylum protocols, as well as vowed to admit every unaccompanied child migrant the human smugglers can dump into the U.S. deserts, what he's delivered are child migrant centers packed to 1,600% capacity with kids stacked end on end like sardines as COVID rages through the facilities -- and squalid overcrowded migrant camps just south of the border. That's some 'dignity.'

Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina noticed the irony. According to his op-ed at Fox News (emphasis mine):

Our immigration system is so overwhelmed right now that many migrants are being housed in subpar conditions. There is nothing humane about seeing 4,000 migrants being held in a facility that is only supposed to hold 250 people under COVID-19 protocols. There is nothing humane about seeing unaccompanied children  including many toddlers  sleeping on floors in facilities after human smugglers abandoned them. There is nothing safe or secure about cartels capitalizing on the current crisis. The cartels are using and exploiting children to distract Border Patrol while smugglers sneak across another area carrying drugs that will soon poison and kill Americans. The Biden administrations policies have fallen well short of being humane to migrants or strong on border security. As a result, we now have both a humanitarian and security crisis.

Heckuva job, Bidie.

Turns out that the wretched migrant detention facilities are not the only less-than-dignified entry for the would-be illegal migrants and asylum-claimants here.

In a little-known story out of Tijuana, the migrant camps awaiting Biden's approval for entry, are swelling to an unmanageable size:

According to Fox News (are these the only guys reporting actual news? Might be an additional reason we see ratings numbers like these, noted today by AT contributor Peter Chowka):

TIJUANA (Border Report)  In recent weeks, portable bathrooms and showers have gone up at the migrant campsite just south of the San Ysidro Port of Entry in Tijuana. So have the complaints and the level of frustration among migrants living at the site, now an estimated 1,500 people. Baja California health officials say COVID-19 cases are also on the upswing at the camp and have made another plea with asylum-seekers to vacate the area for health and safety reasons. But as the camp enters its third month, people like Nicolas Diego, who is from Guatemala, say they are not going anywhere. Like the others, Diego believes the Biden administration will eventually allow them into the U.S. in spite of the fact the White House has insisted only asylum-seekers with pending cases, who registered under the Migrant Protection Protocols period, will be able to cross the border.

This is what's known as 'news.' This is what's known as 'reporting.'

The conditions are not only inhumanly crowded in the U.S.-side migrant detention centers, formerly known as 'cages,' they're inhuman on the other side, too.

The migrants keep gathering because they've been convinced by the actions of Joe Biden that they're eventually going to get let in, the story reports.

And Biden has done nothing to disabuse them of this particular belief. When I first read about this shanty camp, probably the one nicknamed 'Esperanza' described in this Politico piece here, it had just 1,000 people. A month later, it's now reported to have 1,500, according to Fox. They are all expecting to be let in, and if not, well, they'll find another way as they're entitled. That's of a piece with a place that has grown very rapidly.

Imagine what that looks -- and smells like, given the absence of sanitation. Imagine the shakedowns from gangs going on as vulnerable people camp out in the open. The caravans were big bringers of crime and violence to TJ in the past -- odds are good that this new wave may well be doing the same. When people know they can't get in legally due to bad criminal records, they look for opportunities when Democrats effectively say the gate's open, which is what Biden is doing now. People judge Biden on his acts, not his words, and his acts, including acts of omission, are telling them to amass.

That's not just bad for them, it's bad for Tijuana, too. We already know that Tijuana's citizens include a large pro-Trump bunch, with many as opposed to illegal migration as are the people in the states. When the first leftwing-organized migrant caravans blew through in 2018, the Tijuana residents protested and chanted their support for President Trump and demanded that their city not be used as a transit point for all illegal comers. The growth of this new migrant camp there is likely to provoke a similar response, and with it, protests from Mexico City, which doesn't want the border towns to become restive, based on how it reacted in 2018. I wrote about that here, here, here, here, here and here.

Safe, dignified migration, Joe? Doesn't look like it. Not only are migrant cages in the states overcrowded, the migrants waiting on the other side are overcrowded and filling fuller, too. Nice going, Joe. As Bob Gates once said: Joe Biden has been wrong on every foreign policy issue.

Certainly explains why he's trying to ignore it. But it doesn't make such a growing problem go away. This isn't dignity. Compared to President Trump's orderly migration policies, Biden's plan is migrant abuse.

Image: Screen shot from KPBS video, via shareable YouTube

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
The home furnishing retailer's sustainable business practices are recognized for the 13th consecutive year

BURLINGTON, ON, April 19, 2021 /CNW/ - IKEA Canada is recognized for the 13th consecutive year as one of Canada's Greenest Employers by Mediacorp Canada Inc. for its commitment to sustainable business practices. The designation recognizes employers that lead Canada in creating a culture of environmental awareness and for having developed exceptional sustainability initiatives within their organizations.

"At IKEA, we want to make it easy for Canadians to live more sustainably by enabling and inspiring change in the daily lives of our customers and co-workers," said Melissa Barbosa, Country Sustainability Manager, "Our 7,900 co-workers are our best sustainability ambassadors, leading the way as we work to meet our goals to become fully circular and climate positive over the next decade."

As part of the retailer's commitment to be both people and planet positive, IKEA Canada continues to put sustainability at the forefront from furniture to food, production to home delivery and energy to investments.

The following are a few of many initiatives that make IKEA one of Canada's Greenest Employers:

Starting in Fall 2021, EV trucks will begin servicing select Canadian markets for home deliveries as part of IKEA Canada's journey to fulfill its commitment of 100 per cent zero-emissions deliveries by 2025.

IKEA Canada introduced the IKEA ScrapsBook, inspiring Canadians to get creative in reducing food waste at home.

IKEA Canada will phase out all non-rechargeable alkaline batteries from its home furnishing range by October 2021 .

. IKEA Canada has recently introduced more plant-based food options to its restaurants and bistros, including the new IKEA Plant Ball, vegan soft ice, and veggie dog with a goal for 50 per cent of restaurant offerings to be plant-based by 2025.

Through its two wind farms in Alberta and rooftop solar installations on more than half of its stores, IKEA Canada generates renewable energy equivalent to approximately four times the energy it consumes.

and rooftop solar installations on more than half of its stores, IKEA Canada generates renewable energy equivalent to approximately four times the energy it consumes. IKEA Canada reduced food waste from its kitchen by 31 per cent in 2019 and has a goal to reduce food waste by 50 per cent in 2021.

IKEA Canada's sell-back program gives gently used products a second life and supports a more sustainable shopping experience and circular business model.

IKEA Canada supported more than 80,000 Canadians through $1.7 million in product donations to the most vulnerable communities impacts by the COVID-19 pandemic in partnership with organizations like Furniture Bank.

ABOUT IKEA CANADA

Founded in 1943 in Sweden, IKEA is a leading home furnishing retailer, offering a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible can afford them. IKEA Canada is part of Ingka Group which operates 374 IKEA stores in 30 countries, including 14 in Canada. Last year, IKEA Canada welcomed 22.9 million visitors to its stores and 178.4 million visitors to IKEA.ca and the IKEA app. IKEA Canada operates business through the IKEA vision - to create a better everyday life for the many people and does so through its local community efforts and sustainability initiatives. For more information on IKEA Canada, please visit IKEA.ca.

SOURCE IKEA Canada

For further information: Maja Boricevic, Communication Specialist, [email protected]

Related Links

http://www.ikea.ca


Vice President Kamala Harris is avoiding a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border despite being named the White House's point person on immigration issues at the southern border, according to the head of the U.S. Border Patrol agents' union.

"If she goes to the U.S. border, people are going to expect her to fix the problem, so she avoids it," Brandon Judd said on "Fox News Live."

Judd noted that it was "disgusting" as it showed putting politics first before what's best for the country. The union chief noted that visiting the southern border personally is what the country's president and the vice president are supposed to do, Washington Examiner reported.

Judd added that the Biden administration's "catch and release" system has not been working. The said system freed migrants into the U.S. after initially being detained in the border region.

"As long as we continue to release people into the United States after they violate our laws, with no consequences, people are going to continue to come," Judd noted.

Judd, who represents over 18,000 members of the National Border Patrol Council, said they want to accept people in the country, but they want to do it legally. He then criticized the right-wing and left-wing politicians, who are trying to politicize the issues.

During a GOP press briefing on Wednesday, Republicans took aim at Kamala Harris with a mock missing persons milk carton notice as they lamented she has yet to visit the southern border.

House Republican Whip Steve Scalise, who brought along the milk carton prop that read 'Missing at the border' with a Harris' White House portrait image, said it was a national disgrace.

Scalise said that President Joe Biden puts Kamala Harris in charge, and the vice president refuses to go down to not "be associated with this disgraceful policy."

Kamala Harris announced on Wednesday that she will be visiting Guatemala and Mexico but will not go to the U.S.-Mexico border to address the mass migration.

The vice president said she had been asked to address the root causes of illegal migration and that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is the one in charge of the border crisis, according to a Daily Mail report.

Meanwhile, reports circulated that Biden is now considering restarting the border wall construction, which he postponed earlier.

READ NEXT: Republican Senator Says Border Crisis Could Be Solved if Trump Immigration Policies Reinstated

Border Crisis and Smugglers

Many migrants are paying illegal smugglers to bring them to the United States. Juan Macias, a 35-year-old Honduran migrant, paid $7,000 in March to a smuggling network, AFP News reported. Macias said he dealt with eight different traffickers during the journey.

The Biden administration has warned undocumented migrants not to come as they might fall victim to crime and human smugglers.

Around 172,000 undocumented migrants were detained crossing the border with Mexico in March, a 71 percent increase in just a month. It also marks the highest number of migrants crossing in 15 years, Customs and Border Protection said.

Biden has vowed to increase the refugee cap to 62,500 in the current fiscal year. He also said he would expand it to 125,000 next year, according to an RT report.

Just 29 percent of Americans in a Quinnipiac poll said that they approve of Biden's handling of the border situation. White House press secretary Jen Psaki and other officials had repeatedly denied a crisis on the southern border.

READ MORE: Kamala Harris Has No Plans Yet to Visit U.S.-Mexico Border

WATCH: Kamala Harris Actively 'Avoids' Border Crisis: Border Patrol Council President - From Fox News






People across Britain observed one minute of silence in honor of Philip just before the funeral got underway. Under soft spring sunshine, some locals earlier stopped outside the castle to leave flowers, but people largely heeded requests by police and the palace not to gather because of the pandemic.

Prince Charles, the heir to the throne, sat opposite the monarch alongside his wife, Camilla. Prince Andrew was two seats to the queen's left. Prince William and his wife, Kate, sat directly opposite from his brother, Prince Harry, who had traveled back from California without his pregnant wife, Meghan.

Following strict social distancing rules during the pandemic, the queen set an example even in grief, sitting apart from family members who were arrayed around the church.

Coronavirus restrictions meant that instead of the 800 mourners expected in the longstanding plans for Philip's funeral, only 30 people were allowed inside the castle's St. George's Chapel, including the queen, her four children and her eight grandchildren.

Philip, who died April 9, two months shy of his 100th birthday, was honored at Windsor Castle in a service that was steeped in military and royal tradition but also pared down and infused with his own personality. The entire royal procession and funeral took place out of public view within the grounds of the castle, a 950-year-old royal residence 20 miles (30 kilometers) west of London, but was shown live on television.

The widowed British monarch, setting an example amid the coronavirus pandemic, sat alone at the ceremony, dressed in black and with her head bowed in prayer.

As military bands played and a procession of royals escorted his coffin to the church, Prince Philip was laid to rest Saturday in a funeral ceremony that honored his lifetime of service to the U.K., the crown and his wife of 73 years, Queen Elizabeth II.

Philip's coffin traveled to the chapel on a specially adapted Land Rover designed by the prince himself. The coffin was draped in his personal standard and topped with his Royal Navy cap, sword and a wreath of flowers.

For the procession, senior military commanders lined up in front of the vehicle. The children of Philip and the queen -- Charles, Princess Anne, Andrew and Prince Edward -- walked behind the hearse, while the 94-year-old queen traveled to the chapel in a Bentley car.

Grandsons Prince William and Prince Harry also walked behind the coffin, although not side by side. The brothers, whose relationship has been strained amid Harrys decision to quit royal duties and move to California, flanked their cousin Peter Phillips, the son of Anne.

For many viewers, the moment stirred memories of William and Harry at 15 and 12, walking behind the coffin of their mother, Princess Diana, in 1997, accompanied by their grandfather Philip, in a London ceremony televised around the world. Later Saturday, the two brothers were seen walking together and chatting as the mourners left the chapel after the service.

The funeral reflected Philip's military ties, both as a ceremonial commander of many units and as a veteran of war. More than 700 military personnel took part, including army bands, Royal Marine buglers and an honor guard drawn from across the armed forces.

Inside the Gothic chapel, the setting for centuries of royal weddings and funerals, the service was simple and somber. The ceremony began with Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby entering the chapel ahead of the coffin, followed by Philips children and three of his eight grandchildren, as a four-member, socially distanced choir sang "I am the resurrection and the life."

There was no sermon, at Philip's request, and no family eulogies or readings, in keeping with royal tradition. But Dean of Windsor David Conner said the country had been enriched by Philip's "unwavering loyalty to our queen, by his service to the nation and the Commonwealth, by his courage, fortitude and faith."

Philip spent almost 14 years in the Royal Navy and saw action in the Mediterranean Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific during World War II. Several elements of his funeral had a maritime theme, including the hymn "Eternal Father, Strong to Save," which is associated with seafarers and asks God: "O hear us when we cry to thee/For those in peril on the sea."

Leading a prayer, Conner said: "Grant unto him the assurance of thine ancient promise that thou wilt ever be with those who go down to the sea in ships and occupy their business in great waters."

As Philip's coffin was lowered into the Royal Vault, Royal Marine buglers sounded "Action Stations," an alarm that alerts sailors to prepare for battle. Its inclusion, after the traditional bugle call of "The Last Post," was a personal request from Philip.

Philip was placed in the vault alongside the remains of 24 other royals, including three kings of England. But it will likely not be his permanent resting place. After the queen's death, she and Philip are expected to be buried in the Royal Burial Ground on the Frogmore Estate close to Windsor Castle.

Along with Philip's children and grandchildren, the 30 funeral guests included other senior royals and several of his German relatives. Philip was born a prince of Greece and Denmark and, like the queen, is related to a thicket of European royal families.

Ahead of the funeral, Buckingham Palace released a photo of the queen and Philip, smiling and relaxing on blankets in the grass in the Scottish Highlands in 2003. The palace said the casual photo was a favorite of the queen.

For decades, Philip was a fixture of British life, renowned for his founding of the Duke of Edinburgh's Awards program that encouraged youths to challenge themselves and for a blunt-spoken manner that at times included downright offensive remarks. He lived in his wife's shadow, but his death has sparked a reflection about his role, and new appreciation from many in Britain.

"He was a character, an absolute character," said Jenny Jeeves as she looked at the floral tributes in Windsor. "He was fun, he was funny. Yes, he made quite a few gaffes, but it depends which way you took it, really. Just a wonderful husband, father, and grandfather, and a good example to all of us."
Joe Biden is being hailed as the second coming of FDR and LBJ.

Unfortunately, this may be true.

Like his Democrat predecessors, Biden claims that sweeping government action will transform America into a more just and prosperous nation. In fact, the domestic programs advanced by those two liberal lions  the New Deal and the Great Society  failed to deliver on their promises. Their heroic memories are the triumph of myth over reality.

Lets stipulate that the American economy has always been so vast and influenced by so many factors that it is difficult to measure the impact of specific policies. In addition, counterfactual history is by definition speculative: We dont know what would have happened if Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson had made very different choices. We can get close to answers, but the ground remains muddy enough that partisans can almost always argue that things would have been better or worse if specific policies had or had not been implemented. That said, the things werent great but they would have been worse without me argument  a main defense of Barack Obamas feckless policies  is often a tacit admission of failure.

Still, we can measure FDR, whose policies aimed to end the Great Depression, and LBJ, who launched a costly war on poverty, on their own terms. And in that light, neither achieved his aims.

A growing body of scholarship shows that the New Deal Roosevelt launched in 1933 did not end the Great Depression. Yes, the economy did grow during his first term in office  how much of that was due to his policies or the rebounding business cycle is hard to say. But the first New Deal, and the second, more aggressive set of policies FDR advanced in 1935 in response to the continuing crisis and growing civil unrest, did not create a lasting recovery. The nation dipped back into recession in 1937-38 and unemployment was higher in 1939 (17.2%) than it was in 1931 (15.9%). It took a horrific world war to finally turn the tide. In 1943 the unemployment rate was 1.9%.

When Johnson described the Great Society in his 1964 State of the Union address, he said its goal was not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it. In the decades since we have spent trillions on Medicaid, food stamps and public housing. Yes, all that money  and other programs such as affirmative action  has made some difference. But the disparities in health and wealth, in crime rates and education, between wealthier Americans and the urban blacks and rural whites those programs targeted, have diminished little.

The United States is a far richer country than it was in the 1930s or 1960s. The standard of living enjoyed by all citizens has risen significantly during the last century. But one would be hard pressed to argue that government welfare programs and regulations are the reason rather than the dynamism of our capitalist system.

Note that the same people who deride the Reagan Revolutions achievements trumpet the hard to identify economic gains of the New Deal and Great Society. This false view enables them to ignore the actual lessons of history, to demonize Ronald Reagan while pretending that FDR and LBJ set the path others, including President Biden, should follow.

Bidens multitrillion-dollar social programs are far more radical than those of his Democrat predecessors because he is pushing for radical change at a time of relative prosperity and stability. Instead of the Great Depression that Roosevelt inherited, Biden was handed a growing economy. Unlike Johnson, who assumed office at the height of the civil rights movement, Bidens America is not riddled with the systemic injustice of Jim Crow.

Given those crises, one can understand why the 32nd president and the 36th felt an urgent need to act. Biden has no such excuse. The current leader also has the advantage of hindsight. He can see the shortcomings of the approach embraced by his predecessors.

Insanity is commonly defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. This is what were getting as Biden takes up the mantle of two men he considers icons.
Scott Morrison has warned any further restrictions to contain an outbreak of Covid-19 in Australia will not be good for either the economy or jobs.

The prime minister met with state premiers on Monday to get Australia's derailed vaccination program back on track, while looking at ways to open up international borders, albeit further down the track.

"We can't get ahead of ourselves here ... the thing we need to be very clear about is the pandemic is raging globally," Mr Morrison told reporters in Sydney.

"If there are further lockdowns ... because of the introduction of Covid into Australia, then that won't be good for the economy, it won't be good for jobs."

Scott Morrison says Australia would pay a heavy price for opening borders too early. Source: AAP

Quarantine-free travel returns between Australia and New Zealand

The warning has come as Australia and New Zealand restarted quarantine-free travel.

Travellers from Australia no longer have to isolate after crossing the Tasman for the first time in more than a year, with the first flight departing Sydney on Monday morning.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is excited the travel bubble occurred before Anzac Day.

"The Tasman is open," he told reporters in Sydney.

"It's a win-win for Australia and New Zealand and I think this is going to be very important for the tourism and travel industry ... as well the very practical issues of families being able to reconnect.

"There are so many connections between ourselves and our Kiwi cousins."

There have been emotional scenes as Australians touched down in New Zealand. Source: AAP

Kiwi arrivals to Australia have been able to travel without quarantine for about six months.

All people residing in Australia or New Zealand, including foreign nationals, can use quarantine-free travel, as long as they meet the health, immigration and border clearance requirements in each country.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she imagined the airport to look like a scene from the movie Love Actually.

"It is truly exciting to start quarantine-free travel with Australia," she told reporters.

Story continues

"Be it returning family, friends or holiday makers, New Zealand says: 'Welcome and enjoy yourself'."

Deputy PM says Pacific island nations likely candidates for bubbles

Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack said Singapore and Pacific island nations were likely to be the next countries to sign up to similar arrangements.

"We want to make sure that we get international travel back to some sort of normality," he told the ABC.

Australia and New Zealand has reopened borders for quarantine-free travel. Source: AAP

Mr McCormack, who is the federal transport minister, said vaccine rollouts in Australia and other countries would be critical to allowing overseas travel.

"It's so important that we get Australians to able to travel and people to be able to come here and spend their dollars and have a good time," he said.

He stressed medical advice would be paramount in creating any new travel bubbles with discussions in preliminary stages.

Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com

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A day after former Prime Minister  in an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi  called for ramping up vaccine supply and being transparent with states in their distribution, health minister hit back.

Vardhan said the second wave of Covid-19 was fueled by Congress-ruled states as they were busy raising doubts about vaccines rather than vaccinating people. He also said a decision on a point in the letter on allowing import of vaccines had already been taken a week ahead, on April 11, 2021.

He added, same is the case with Singhs suggestion regarding providing funds and other concessions to augment vaccine manufacturing. This decision had also been taken many days before receipt of your letter and multiple vaccine manufacturing entities have been funded by the government to immediately enhance production, said.

Anyway, despite such factual inaccuracies, we understand your deep concern for the country and also assure you that we share the same, the minister said.

ALSO READ: Former PM Manmohan Singh tests positive for Covid-19, admitted to AIIMS

Irresponsible public pronouncements made by some leaders have resulted in below-national-average coverage of senior citizens and frontline workers in some Congress-ruled states, Vardhan said. Let alone thanking our scientists, many members and Congress-ruled state governments have taken extraordinary interest in spreading falsehoods regarding the efficacy of these vaccines. They fuelled vaccine hesitancy, and played with the lives of our countrymen, Vardhan said.

Vardhan said the former Prime Ministers advice to not get tempted to go by the absolute numbers, but by percentage of population covered, is not incorrect.

A sitting chief minister of your party created a dubious world record of sorts by being the only head of government directly inciting people against an indigenously developed vaccine! Some leaders even shamed the vaccines in public but took their doses in private, he alleged.





ALSO READ: EAM Jaishankar rejects criticism over export of coronavirus vaccines

It does seem that those who drafted your letter or advised you, have done a great disservice to your standing by misleading you regarding material that is already in public domain, the health minister said.

Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot rapped Vardhan for his politically motivated response to Singhs letter, saying it was unfortunate and condemnable.

History shall be kinder to you Dr ji if your offer of constructive cooperation and valuable advice was followed by your @INCIndia leaders as well in such extraordinary times !



Heres my reply to your letter to Honble PM Sh @narendramodi ji @PMOIndia pic.twitter.com/IJcz3aL2mo  Dr (@drharshvardhan) April 19, 2021

Gehlot said Singh had written to his successor giving positive suggestions about in public interest. There was no criticism of the government, the Rajasthan chief minister said.

It is unfortunate and condemnable on part of the Union health minister to have written a politically-motivated reply to the former prime minister, Gehlot tweeted.

Singh on Sunday wrote to Prime Minister Modi suggesting five measures to battle the Covid-19 crisis, including ramping up and boosting the supply of medicines
Although coronavirus infections are rising dramatically and scientists and doctors are urgently warning of an overload of the health system, the federal and state governments continue their unscrupulous profits-before-lives policy. Even the completely inadequate federal  emergency brake  is being deliberately watered down and delayed. Now, hospitals are on the verge of being overloaded.

The situation in Thuringia is particularly dramatic. Hospitals in Jena and the hotspot Greiz, where the incidence level has been over 500 per 100,000 for weeks, can no longer treat coronavirus patients who need intensive care. Initially, five patients seriously ill with COVID-19 will be transferred to intensive care units in other German states, as Professor Michael Bauer, head physician of the Jena Clinic for Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, announced.

Intensive care bed (Photo: Lacu Schienred / CC-BY-SA 4.0)

According to the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive and Emergency Medicine (DIVI), 220 COVID-19 patients are currently in intensive care units in Thuringian hospitals. Of these, more than half (128) are receiving invasive ventilation, 638 of 701 intensive care beds are occupied, 63 beds are vacant, of which only 29 are specifically equipped for the treatment of COVID-19 patients, and the number of admissions is increasing daily.

On Friday, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reported a further 1,190 new infections in Thuringia and an increase in the incidence rate to 259. Already by the end of 2020, several COVID-19 patients had to be transferred from Thuringia. The rising numbers are the result of the policies of the state government under Bodo Ramelow (Left Party), opening up businesses and the education system. Despite the foreseeable development, it had decided on further relaxations before Easter.

In Bavaria, too, most hospitals are already in emergency mode. On average, the number of COVID-19 patients in Bavarian hospitals has doubled in the last three weeks. Roland Engehausen, managing director of the Bavarian Hospital Association (BKG), said a new peak in hospitals could certainly be expected at the end of the month. He went on to warn, If the number of newly infected people doesnt go down, well be in an area we dont know from May.

Currently, more than 2,500 COVID-19 patients are being treated in Bavarian hospitals; 700 are receiving intensive medical care. A week ago, there were almost 200 fewer. In the entire state, there are only 340 intensive care beds with the option of invasive ventilation.

A spokeswoman for the health ministry had to admit that if the increase continued, there would be an impairment of hospital care, especially regular emergency care. A spokeswoman for Nuremberg Hospital said Friday that all intensive care beds in the region had been occupied for a short time on Thursday evening.

Nurse Rali Guemedji, who works in the intensive care unit at Nuremberg Hospital, posted a video account of working conditions there. Every day, every hour, the staff of the hospitalthe cleaners, the nurses, the doctorsare working at the limit. Many have sleepless nights because they are seeing that even young people without any previous illness suffer and die, Guemedji said.

The consequences of a further increase in patient numbers in hospitals are quite clear. Michael Hallek from the Cologne University Hospital told the Kolner Stadtanzeiger that a hard triage in the university hospital was not far away. In such circumstance, doctors would have to decide which patient received potentially life-saving treatment and which did not, due to a lack of resources. If the numbers go up too fast, it may not be avoidable. In the next few weeks, it could happen. The system is at its limit, the doctor explained.

Other doctors have reported that so-called soft triage was already commonplace as a result of the high workload. The necessary rejection of patients or postponement of operations often resulted in massive health disadvantages, even for non-coronavirus patients. Emergencies cannot always be comprehensively cared for with us, said Hallek. Even COVID-19 patients with life-threatening illnesses could no longer be helped in all cases. Weve never had that before.

Steffen Weber-Carstens of Berlins Charite Hospital pointed out that in many regions there was only 10 percent or less free capacity in intensive care units. For an intensive care unit with 12 beds, this meant just one bed. He warned against walking into a peak workload with open eyes and risking the health system drowning.

Gernot Marx of the DIVI warned that of the almost 30,000 infected people reported on Thursday, around 300 to 600 would become seriously ill in a fortnight at the latest and would have to be treated in intensive care units.

Because of the spread of several virus strains and the slow progress of the vaccination programme, it is no longer only the elderly and those with previous illnesses who have to be treated in intensive care units, as was the case last year, but much younger people, most of whom have no previous illnesses worth mentioning.

According to Martin Kreis from the Charite, the age range here is between 30 and 60. In Berlin alone, 40 new intensive care beds currently must be made available every week to be able to care for patients. Across Germany, 50 to 100 additional patients are admitted to intensive care units every day. One in two patients who must be ventilated dies.

Government adviser Rolf Apweiler told broadcaster ntv that he assumed there were far higher coronavirus case numbers than currently being reported. Because of the drop in testing over the Easter holidays, he said, one should assume a 3040 percent higher incidence. We were still at the beginning of the wide spread of the B.1.1.7 virus strain; The worst is yet to come for many districts. This risk situation cannot be explained away, said Apweiler.

The head of the DIVI, Christian Karagiannidis, again appealed to state and federal governments to finally take effective measures against further spread. We are used to death, but there has never been anything like this, he told the Tagesspiegel. Even after a drastic tightening of protective measures, it would take at least two weeks for the number of patients in the clinics to decrease, he said.

Hospital employees have been working at their limit for more than a year. This is not without consequences. Even now, many available beds in German hospitals cannot be utilized because of a lack of qualified staff.

According to the Federal Employment Agency, 9,000 nurses left the profession between April and July. A survey by the German Professional Association for Nursing Professions showed that 32 percent of almost 3,600 respondents were more likely to think about leaving the profession than stay. Almost one third of respondents work in an intensive care or COVID-19 ward. The federal governments nursing commissioner, Andreas Westerfellhaus, has already warned of catastrophic consequences.

Despite the imminent collapse of the health system, the federal and state governments are sticking to their herd immunity policies. They continue to keep workplaces and schools open by any means necessary to secure the profits of corporations and the super-rich. This criminal policy cannot be countered with appeals to the politicians who are responsible for it. Only the broad mobilisation of the working class on an international, socialist programme can counteract it.
Shares is the leading weekly publication for retail investors. It is packed with investment ideas, news and educational material to help build and run portfolios and get more from your money.

Shares puts on free Investor Events throughout the year across the country. They provide an opportunity for investors to learn more about companies on the stock market and hear from a range of investment experts including fund managers and Shares journalists.
The issue of Armenian prisoners of war was discussed at the morning sitting of the Conservatives and Reformists political group of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), where there were also Azerbaijanis; their number is large in that group. Opposition Prosperous Armenia Party MP and member of the Armenian delegation to PACE, Mikayel Melkumyanwho is also in Strasbourg, France, on Monday wrote this on Facebook.

"We [the Armenian delegation] presented the situation on the ground: They are prisoners of war, but they are, in fact, in the status hostages, and the disgraceful situationthat there are about two hundred [Armenian] captives [in Azerbaijan]must be settled quickly.

That is, the issue that the European Court of Human Rights has accepted the fact that it is not being implemented was clearly presented during the discussion.

Their [the Azerbaijani delegations] only counter-argument was that they [the captive Armenians] are not prisoners of war, but terrorists.

That is, I clearly asked this question in this political group. Tomorrow evening, when this issue is to be discussed in the plenary session, it is obvious to us that the only argument of the Azerbaijanis is that they [the captive Armenians] are not prisoners of war, but just terrorists," Melkumyan added.
HONOLULU, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Hawaiian Electric Industries, Inc. (HEI) (NYSE: HE) will announce its first quarter 2021 financial results on Friday, May 7. In addition, American Savings Bank, F.S.B. (American), a wholly owned indirect subsidiary of HEI, will announce its first quarter 2021 financial results on Friday, April 30.

HEI will conduct a webcast and conference call to discuss first quarter 2021 consolidated earnings, 2021 earnings guidance and regulatory and other matters on Friday, May 7 at 7:30 a.m. Hawaii time (1:30 p.m. Eastern time).

Parties in the U.S. may listen to the conference call by dialing (844) 834-0652. International parties may listen to the conference call by dialing (412) 317-5198. Parties may also access presentation materials and/or listen to the conference call by visiting the conference call link on HEI's website at www.hei.com under "Investor Relations," sub-heading "News and Events  Events and Presentations."

A replay will be available online and via phone. The online replay will be available on HEI's website about two hours after the event. An audio replay will also be available about two hours after the event through May 21, 2021. To access the audio replay, dial (877) 344-7529 (U.S.) or (412) 317-0088 (international) and enter passcode 10153633.

HEI and Hawaiian Electric Company, Inc. (Hawaiian Electric) intend to continue to use HEI's website, www.hei.com , as a means of disclosing additional information; such disclosures will be included in the Investor Relations section of the website. Accordingly, investors should routinely monitor the Investor Relations section of HEI's website, in addition to following HEI's, Hawaiian Electric's and American's press releases, HEI's and Hawaiian Electric's SEC filings and HEI's public conference calls and webcasts. Investors may sign up to receive e-mail alerts via the "Investor Relations" section of the website. The information on HEI's website is not incorporated by reference into this document or into HEI's and Hawaiian Electric's SEC filings unless, and except to the extent, specifically incorporated by reference.

Investors may also wish to refer to the Public Utilities Commission of the State of Hawaii (PUC) website at dms.puc.hawaii.gov/dms to review documents filed with, and issued by, the PUC. No information on the PUC website is incorporated by reference into this document or into HEI's and Hawaiian Electric's SEC filings.

HEI supplies power to approximately 95% of Hawaii's population through its electric utility, Hawaiian Electric; provides a wide array of banking and other financial services to consumers and businesses through American, one of Hawaii's largest financial institutions; and helps advance Hawaii's clean energy and sustainability goals through investments by its non-regulated subsidiary, Pacific Current.

Contact: Julie Smolinski Phone: (808) 543-7300

Vice President, Investor Relations & Corporate Sustainability E-mail: [email protected]

SOURCE Hawaiian Electric Industries, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.hei.com


One of Britains Most Premature Babies Born at Just 22 Weeks Defies Survival Odds

One of Britains most premature babies has defied the survival odds and doctors expectations after being born at just 22 weeks and one day, weighing less than 1 pound.

Charvi Matthews weighed just 14 ounces (approx. 0.39 kg)less than a loaf of breadwhen she was born more than three months early.

Proud parents Millisa Matthews and Daniel Golding, both 39, from Greenwich, London, were told there was little chance their daughter would survive.

The little fighter was even smaller than her mothers hand. She resembled a tiny doll as doctors tucked her into an incubator, with her skin so translucent they could see every vein. But following months of specialist care, countless operations, and more than 35 blood transfusions, little Charvi fought back from the brink.

Charvi is now defying all expectations to breathe on her own, drink from a bottleand she doesnt miss giving her proud mom an occasional tiny smile.

Millisa, a mom-of-four, hopes to bring their little miracle baby home by her first birthday.

When Charvi was first born she could fit in one hand and you could see every vein in her bodyit was scary how small she was, Millisa said.

We were told she had about a 10 percent chance of survivalbut I was adamant wed give her that chance.

Millisa, a former retail worker, said her baby daughter really had to fight for her life.

There were times where we were very worried, but now shes getting stronger every day and has exceeded doctors expectations, she said.

There was no way I was going to give up on her, no matter how much the odds were stacked against her. I want people to never give up on 22-weekers. Charvi has shown how much is possible if you give them a chance.

Millisa and Daniel were expecting their fourth child to arrive on Feb. 24, 2021. In October last year at the 20-week pregnancy scan, the parents, as well as their three childrenTayla, 15, Logan, 8, and Kaine, 4found out the newest baby was a girl.

However, just weeks later on Oct. 26, Millisa was rushed into St. Thomas Hospital with severe stomach pains. Doctors said Millisa had sepsis, which had sent her into early labor. Millisa said that doctors told her that this baby has to come out, like, right this second.

After an emergency C-section the same day, tiny Charvi was born.

When I saw my baby girl, I was scared by how small she was, Millisa said. When doctors told me her weight, I remember thinking she weighed less than the tub of butter sat in the fridge at home.

Charvi needed to be resuscitated before being whisked off to the NICU to be put on a ventilator because her lungs had not fully formed. The family said they were told there was a 90 percent chance Charvi would die. But hopeful Millisa said she was adamant Charvi would survive.

Over the coming months, Charvi had two major surgeries, more than 35 blood transfusions, and countless rounds of antibiotics.

It was a terrifying timeevery time Id get a phone call from the hospital, my heart would stop and Id have tears in my eyes because I was expecting the worst, Millisa said.

At one point doctors told me I was prolonging the inevitable. But as bad as things got, we knew wed never give up on her.

Millisa and Daniel would take it in turns to visit Charvi in the NICU every day, and two months after she was born, they were allowed to hold their daughter for the first time.

Earlier this month, Charvi was finally transferred to the neonatal high dependency unit. Now its been over five months since she was born, but her three siblings still have yet to meet her. However, Millisa hopes this will soon change as Charvi grows stronger.

The once palm-sized baby now weighs more than 6.5 pounds (approx. 2.9 kg), which is more than seven times her birth weight. The little warrior is now also able to breathe unassisted for up to three hours a day.

Doctors have told me she has exceeded all of their expectations, they didnt think shed survive the first 48 hours, Millisa said.

She is the first surviving 22-weeker at St. Thomas Hospitalbut it shows that it is possible, she added.

Millisa now wants to spread hope for other babies born at 22 weeks.

Millisa said: There were times where I doubted our decisions to keep up Charvis treatment. I would question if I was doing the right thing to continue putting her through pain.

Our whole world has been completely turned upside down since Charvi was born, and it was terrifying whenever her condition would deteriorate.

But deep down, I always knew shed make it  and I want to share that message of hope to other families.

I think people arent hopeful for 22-weekers, and many of them sadly do pass away, but you should always give them the chance.

I want other mothers to know that 22-weekers can survive, so dont give up hope. Miracles can and do happenCharvi has proven that.

Epoch Times staff contributed to this report.

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
Ukrainian Army positions came under fire early on April 19 from territory controlled by Russia-backed separatists near Horlivka in eastern Ukraine. The army said in a statement that one Ukrainian soldier was killed and another wounded after their positions were attacked with automatic grenade launchers on April 18. The latest violence comes amid escalating tensions prompted by a Russian troop buildup near its border with Ukraine.
BOSTON, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Faulty Breathalyzer tests could cause thousands of convicted drunk drivers in Massachusetts to contest their cases.

As many as 27,000 licensed drivers could fight their convictions in the state.

Paul Toland Law, Criminal Defense Attorney in Boston Smiling with Suit on Hands on Hips

In a 2016 case, scientific evidence found that Breathalyzer evidence used from 2011 to 2014 was unreliable due to administration practices or lack thereof. The case also discovered the Office of Alcohol Testing withheld more than 400 document detailing failed calibration of Breathalyzer machines.

One Boston criminal defense attorney, Paul Toland, says the state should be held responsible for the mistakes.

"This is a great example of how the Government needs to be held accountable for their actions. Although my sympathies go out to any victims of any OUI cases, the focus should be on how the Commonwealth failed to follow any protocols and withheld relevant information concerning the breathalyzer tests. The Courts will be further backed up due to the Commonwealth's negligence and let this be a lesson to the Government that they need to play by the rules too. This is why we have rules, laws, and due process in Court to make sure that anyone charged with a crime receives a fair trial under our Constitution. Given that the Commonwealth failed to play fair and purposely withheld information on these tests, then any defendant deserves at the least a new trial." Criminal defense attorney, Paul Toland, said.

Defendants who could be affected were convicted from 2011 through April 18th, 2019.

Press Contact:

Andrea Lyon

Social Firestarter

Media Outreach

Email: [email protected]

Phone: (407) 274-6178

SOURCE Paul Toland Law

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It was a few months into my new pandemic-forced routine of working from home that I realised I was no longer experiencing the emotional slump I typically fell into on Sundays. Instead of the weekly ritual of organising myself mentally and physically with either a crazed panic or the demeanour of a sad sloth, I was finding myself soaking in an unfamiliar sense of tranquillity.

If you work a traditional Monday-Friday week, theres a high chance youre familiar with the sadness that can gradually rise in you over the course of a Sunday until youre so grumpy that anyone who talks to you in the evening is at high risk of getting their head bitten off.

Working from home on Mondays is a mind trick for beating the Sunday blues. Credit:iStock

There are many names for it  such as the Sunday blues and the Sunday scaries  and its incredibly common, even if you like your job. One 2009 Swedish study concluded that Sunday was indeed the most depressing day of the week. And a US survey of 1000 people found four out of five respondents experienced an elevated sense of anxiety on Sunday in anticipation of the week ahead, mainly in the evening, and almost two-thirds said they got the worst night of sleep on Sunday.

There is even a song attached to the phenomenon, with a bleak history. Gloomy Sunday was originally created in 1933 by a Hungarian composer and became caught up in urban legends linking it to suicides. Later, Billie Holidays best-known version, released in 1941, was banned from being broadcast on BBC radio for being detrimental to wartime morale (the ban was lifted in 2002).
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 15:43:27|Editor: huaxia

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BOAO, Hainan, April 19 (Xinhua) -- China's recent opening-up measures, especially those in the financial sector, have created tremendous opportunities for multinationals to tap into, said Eddie Chen, head of China & Asia at Eurazeo, an investment company headquartered in France.

"We see China not much different from our home market now as the country continuously eases market access and improves the business environment," Chen told Xinhua in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the annual conference of the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA).

He said back in 2013, the company spent up to nine months opening a representative office in China, which is almost unimaginable today.

"One of the most exciting parts of doing business in China is that things are changing fast, and changes bring opportunities," he said, noting that the changes happening in China are positive ones.

Aside from national-level policies, local governments at all levels in China demonstrate a strong willingness to attract foreign investment by means of offering incentives and other forms of support, said Chen.

He visited the southernmost island province of Hainan, where the BFA is hosted, eight times in nine months to take advantage of preferential local policies and look for opportunities for Eurazeo's portfolio companies.

Last year, China released a master plan for building Hainan into a globally influential and high-level free trade port by the middle of the century.

This month, the country unveiled more policies to further liberalize and facilitate trade in the Hainan free trade port, allowing certain regions to relax their control of import and export qualifications for and quantities of commodities such as crude oil, refined oil and sugar, and cancel their licensing systems for imports such as mechanical and electrical products.

Looking ahead, Chen said the "dual circulation" development paradigm, a guiding thought in a blueprint for China's development over the next five to 15 years, will certainly attract more foreign companies to expand their presence in the world's second-largest economy by stimulating the domestic market. Enditem
Kathmandu, April 19

The Ministry of Health and Population has informed that the countrys Covid-19 tally has reached 285,900 as of Monday afternoon.

The ministry says 1,227 new cases were confirmed in the country in the past 24 hours. Of them, 634 are from the Kathmandu valley.

In this period, 7,001 swab samples were tested. So far, 2 million and 352,502 people have been tested in the country.

Likewise, in this period, 547 people underwent antigen tests for the virus, of which 54 were found infected.

As of today, 7,254 cases are active. Of them, 587 are hospitalised, 148 in intensive care units, and 43 on ventilators.

Of the total cases so far, 275,555 people have achieved recovery whereas 3,091 died, according to the ministry. In the past 24 hours, 255 people have been discharged whereas eight deaths were reported.

Over 80 people are quarantined across the country.
On a hot and scorching Wednesday afternoon, Ana Patricia Non walked along the streets of Maginhawa to find a spot that is both accessible and able to withhold sizable foot traffic. Somewhere in front of a Romantic Baboy and Ministop, she approached the owners of the place where she used to buy vegetables and requested permission to use the space for a community pantry. When it was granted, she rushed home to collect her already-packed goods, called for a tricycle, and quickly made her way back. She set up a bamboo cart along Maginhawa Street and stocked it with rice, vegetables, milk, vitamins, face masks, canned goods, soap and other essentials.

How the Maginhawa Community Pantry looked like during its early days. Photo courtesy of ANA PATRICIA NON

Not long after, she marked the first day of the Maginhawa Community Pantry through a public Facebook post. From 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., this community pantry is stationed in front of a convenience store where it is accessible to residents located in Krus na Ligas, UP Village, San Vicente, Teachers Village, Sikatuna, and Bliss who are free to take as much supplies as they need or share with others whatever they could. A few hours later, she received cash donations from her friends and family which she used to purchase bundles of vegetables that replenished her cart.

Ana Patricia Non owns and runs a small furniture refurbishing business that employed workers severely affected by the pandemic  construction workers turned woodworkers and jeepney drivers turned delivery men. When two months passed with no income, she found herself struggling to make ends meet. Frustrated with the situation she had no control over, she recalled the frequent advice of her sister: Ang importante ngayon ay mabuhay, mag-survive, at magpalakas. Kung may sakit, magpagaling.

Non always thought of the people left most vulnerable by the pandemic  those who dont have the option to stay at home and stay safe and whose meals depend on the income they earn on the same day, if any at all.

Within 24 hours, Nons post had gone viral across all social media platforms and hundreds of Filipinos were requesting for more information on how they could help further this initiative. To those beyond the radius of Maginhawa, Non urges starting a community pantry of their own. As of April 19, there is a growing list of 28 active community pantries across the Philippines, according to a Facebook post by Non  all inspired by the Maginhawa Community Pantry initiative. According to the organizers, the community pantry has helped 5,000 beneficiaries as of this writing. They also mentioned that donations have been "overflowing" and that they shared them to 15-20 other community pantries.

Matiyaga Community Pantry in Diliman. Photo courtesy of ELIJAH SAN FERNANDO

Following Nons advice, Elijah San Fernando augmented this initiative with his full-time advocacy and policy work as he set up the Matiyaga Community Pantry in Diliman. On the regular, his days were largely focused on working with farmer organizations to buy their surplus vegetables and distribute it directly to consumers through what they call the Magsasaka Outlet. The Matiyaga Community Pantry gives out free sweet potatoes and other vegetables that they purchased directly from the farmers strained by the pandemic.

Barangay Malake Community Pantry. Photo courtesy of JA ABDEL

Ja Abdel, a small business owner, explained why she was inspired to build a community pantry in Barangay Malake, Los Banos. The pandemic is tough for some of us but it is even worse for most.

In Sampaloc, Manila, Toots Vergara and his wife Ana adopted Nons pantry model. Riddled with doubt in the early stages of planning, they were worried about not having enough resources to sustain the community pantry. Merely a few hours after they were approached by a cohort of community members in P. Noval wanting to support what they had started. We realized people were just waiting for a venue where they can help, however much they can, he said.

P. Noval Community Pantry. Photo courtesy of TOOTS VERGARA

Another primary concern of the couple was the possibility of people hoarding supplies and leaving nothing for those that come after them. This skepticism was quickly dispelled as Vergara witnessed nearby locals carefully discern the amount of supplies they needed before even taking anything from the table.

Non shared her experience with Maginhawa Community Pantry where people were lining up again under the extreme heat of the sun or going home to change shirts in an attempt to be unrecognizable in order to get a second ration from the pantry. She explained that these people are the ones who need the community pantry the most, Sila po yung nasanay na hindi nila alam kung kailan ang next meal nila. She questioned the unfair judgment of selfishness thrown at these individuals, Kung maubos ang laman ng community pantry, magandang problem iyun. Ang goal naman sa pagkain is maubos, maconsume at kainin  hindi i-display.

Valenzuela Community Pantry. Photo courtesy of CYRIL BALDERAMA

Cyril Balderama, a dancer/choreographer who also works for the City Government of Valenzuela, had recently begun their own community pantry in Barangay Dalandanan with Valenzuelas Performing Arts Community. While their local government unit continues to distribute ayuda in their area, Balderama considers this initiative as a more immediate response to the people within the vicinity who are waiting for their households share. He recalled that the most important lesson he had learned being in the arts is to become an even better member to the community he is part of.

Marikina Community Pantry. Photo courtesy of MARA DE GUZMAN

Situated in front of Casa Labada, the Marikina Community Pantry set up by Mara de Guzman, an executive director at an NGO, hopes that street sweepers and tricycle and jeepney drivers receive as much support as they can. We wanted to empower struggling Filipinos because they are a huge help to make this community a better place. She likens this movement to a big step towards a stronger Philippines where we demonstrate humanity, hospitality, and everything that makes us Filipinos.

The Bayombong Community Pantry in Nueva Viczaya. Photo courtesy of organizers

In Nueva Vizcaya, a group of graduating college students came together to organize the Bayombong Community Pantry. Minsan, nawawalan na [kami] ng pag-asa sa bansa pero itong mga ganitong movements na nakikita namin na nagsusulputan sa ibat ibang parte ng bansa ang isa sa mga rason kung bakit nagkakalakas pa kami upang magserbisyo sa ating bansa, a group representative said.

New community pantries are being formed each day. However, efforts supporting what Non had started are not limited to the physical spaces they inhabit. People have taken their contributions online in the form of spreading information and step-by-step instructions on how individuals can partake in this movement.

The concept behind community pantries is not new. For example, universities in the U.S. developed food pantries purpose-built to provide assistance to students in crippling debt back in 2013. Thailands Too Pan Sook (Pantries of Sharing) emerged late 2020. But Filipinos have unequivocally instituted a movement thats entirely their own. From affected restaurant owners in Maginhawa to farmers in Tarlac, Non continues to be surprised by the ones who are taking action and participating in the initiative she started only a few days ago. For as long as there are Filipinos willing to share the resources to sustain it, the community pantry is here to help those in need. Non circled back to her rationale, Hindi niya ma-sosolve ang kahirapan at kagutuman pero sapat siya pantawid gutom para makapagaral, makapagtrabaho, makapagisip at even lumaban.

The idea behind the community pantry was that people could take as much as they need and donate whatever they can. What Non believed was a necessary act of help cascaded into a social solidarity that spans a nation. She strongly argued against the glamourized narrative that the community pantry movement represents Filipino resiliency, but rather evidence of response and unity born out of necessity.

Elijah San Fernando echoed the sentiments of those who set up communal pantries in their area. In the absence of good governance, tanging tayong mga ordinaryong Pilipino talaga ang magtutulungan.

***

Here's a link to how you can help the Maginhawa Community Pantry.



UPDATE: Here's a list of the current community pantries across the country which is being updated by the Community Pantry PH Facebook group. There is also a Google Maps version of the list.
Diplomacy in his administration, President Joe Biden promised on the campaign trail, would become the premier tool of our global engagement. So it should be: Diplomacy is the first and best option for foreign policy, the norm and barest necessity of international relations. Across the political spectrum, from the most aggressive hawk to the most committed pacifist, we can agree on the value of diplomacy as a means of keeping peace and advancing US interests abroad without resorting to costly violence.

For all that broad acclaim, however, policymakers in Washington have a bad habit of misunderstanding how diplomacy works. They too often seem to conceive of it as a reward for desired behavior rather than a practical means for achieving those ends. Do what we want, Washington says, and then we can talk. Maximalist demands, coercive sanctions, reckless public insults, and hasty reactions are more characteristic of US diplomacy than the patience, persistence, prudence, and mutually beneficial compromises needed for the task. Our governments diplomatic efforts are frequently wildly undiplomatic, resembling nothing so much as Proverbs characterization of the fool.

The fool, Proverbs tells us, is willfully ignorant and is unwilling to accept others advice, learn from mistakes, or heed correction.

Most of Proverbs is attributed to Solomon, a king known for his wisdom. The fool, Proverbs tells us, is willfully ignorant (Prov. 1:22) and is unwilling to accept others advice (12:15), learn from mistakes (26:11), or heed correction (13:18). The fool is always chattering, unable to keep silent even though foolish words bring ruin (10:10). Fools are hotheaded (14:16) and show their annoyance at once (12:16). While the prudent overlook an insult (12:16) and avoid strife, fools are quick to quarrel (20:3) and prone to provocation (27:3). Fools mock at making amends for sin; they operate without goodwill (14:9). Fools are often unaware of their self-inflicted danger (14:16), but that oblivion is no security for their associates: A companion of fools suffers harm (13:20).

Perhaps the most glaring example of this proverbial foolishness in US diplomacy right now is the shambles of US-Iran relations. To see how Washington has played the fool here, a quick rehearsal of recent history is first in order.

In 2015, after two years of negotiations, the United States, Iran, the European Union and five other countries signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal. The pact constrained Irans nuclear activities to levels well below what would be needed to construct nuclear weapons. It also provided for independent inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities.

The JCPOA was never meant to be a full overhaul of Irans governance or even its foreign policy. The terms of the pact were kept narrowsome even time-limited. Yet if this deal were successful, it could become a basis for further talks to address other Iranian military buildup (especially ballistic missiles), as well as Tehrans regional troublemaking and maybe, eventually, its domestic oppression, too.

And the deal was successful: Iran complied. Those independent inspections repeatedly had Tehran keeping its side of the bargain, as the Obama and Trump administrations both certified. But in 2018, thinking he could force Iran to accept a more expansive pact, then-President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the deal. He re-imposed sanctions on Iran that the JCPOA had lifted (a policy dubbed maximum pressure) and tried to make other signatoriesthe United Kingdom, France, Germany, China, Russia, and the EUdo likewise.

Article continues below

Iran spent a year maintaining compliance though it no longer received many of the JCPOAs promised benefits. When it became apparent the US exit wouldnt be quickly resolved, Iran began gradually breaching the deals constraints in the summer of 2019. Next, French-mediated talks fell through in the fall of 2019 after Trump followed a private agreement to reduce sanctions with a public announcement of more sanctions. Since then, nuclear negotiations have stalled, with both countries preoccupied by COVID-19 and Iran reportedly determined to lay low until after the US presidential election.

Biden came into office this year having promised new attention to diplomacy as well as a return to the nuclear deal on condition of renewed Iranian compliance with its terms. Less than two weeks after his inauguration, Iran offered a proposal meeting Bidens stipulation: a simultaneous US and Iranian return to the JCPOA managed by the European Union.

Biden refused. He also shot down a similar plan from European diplomats. The reasoning? The usual: Do what we want, and then we can talk. The administration has now agreed to indirect talks with Iran via European intermediaries, but the insistence that Iran return to full compliance first hasnt changed.

The imperious posture of two consecutive US administrations is shortsighted and garrulous.

This is foolishness. The Iranian government deserves ample critiquenot least for its treatment of religious minoritiesbut Tehran didnt initiate this conflict. Washington did. The imperious posture of two consecutive US administrations is shortsighted and garrulous. It seeks strife instead of avoiding it. It rejects Irans attempts to revive goodwill and make amends. Our government has an opportunity to reverse and learn from a mistake but is choosing provocation instead. And we, a companion of fools in our government, could be harmed as a result.

That risk will continue in our foreign policy until our leaders learn a less foolish diplomacy. Iran is a comparatively small and weak nationits entire GDP (around $450 billion) is less than our defense department budget (around $700 billion).

But many foreign policy experts anticipate conflict with China and/or Russia will be the focus of this century. That would mean far higher stakes and an even more urgent need for wisdom in our diplomacy. US policymakers should be imitating the prudence of Joseph as governor of Egypt (Gen. 41:4657), the winsomeness of Daniel in the Babylonian court (Dan. 1), and the canniness of Paul when he was arrested in Jerusalem (Acts 22:2329).

That means putting aside childish displays of power and arrogant commands. American foreign policy must make greater allowance for the use of influence beyond military or economic threats, CT editorialized about Iran in 2008. The lips of fools bring them strife, and their mouths invite a beating, says Proverbs 18:67, The mouths of fools are their undoing, and their lips are a snare to their very lives. We are fortunate enough to be able to hear that warning metaphorically most of the time, but in foreign policy, the danger of foolishness is real.

Bonnie Kristian is a columnist at Christianity Today.
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The civic space first needs to be consistent in its approach and sensitise the public on pressing issues before getting them to effect changes. The media is the channel through which this can be done effectively, which makes partnership between the media and civil society groups even more important.

The pen is mightier than the sword. There are not many truer sayings. The sword will kill a man once, but the pen can kill him many times, even after he is physically dead. However, this same pen can also be used to build, not just the man, but his environment, and his descendants. So the pens role is vital in shaping our country, not just for us, but for our children.

Societies were established throughout the world roughly 5,000 years ago. It was these societies that have left records which remain alive in our imaginations. It was the society, in Greece, which gave every freeborn man the right to speak his mind, that have the longest continuous legacy. The Greek society was also the first intersection of the mass media and the civic space, as the Pantheon in Athens was where news was disseminated, and where debates happened. The Greek concept of democracy, with everyone having a voice, has survived through the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the Slave Trade, the period of Englightenment, and till today.

At the end of the 20th century, many African countries, including Nigeria, finally adopted democratic rule, and this has been the longest stretch of democracy on the continent since the wave of independence in the 1960s. There is, however, a regression of democratic values across Africa. The 2020 Democracy Report of the Varieties of Democracy Institute (V-DEM), Autocratization Surges, Resistance Grows, raises the alarm that while the world in 2019 was substantially more democratic than it was in the 1970s, an ongoing trend of autocratisation may reverse this scenario. Democratic institutions in countries as diverse as Hungary and Mali are weakening, leading to consequences of yet unknown dimensions.

Because of the media blackout, the reportage of abuses from that section of the country have ranged from low to non-existent, and even more damning was the restriction of aid agencies, which would have ordinarily filled in this gap. These kinds of restrictions end up creating a bitterness that isnt seen, and which create more violence, sustaining a vicious cycle.

The number of liberal democracies has fallen from a peak of 45 countries in 2010 to 37 in 2019. Levels of democracy have fallen throughout regions: As a population-weighted average, Latin Americas 2019 democracy index receded to 1992 levels, while in the same year, Eastern Europes reached its lowest point since the end of the Soviet Union. Down here in Nigeria, the situation is equally damning.

One of the key markers of democratic regression and the rise of autocracy is defence spending. The war in the North-East has increased Nigerias defence budget by up to 10 per cent. The more money there is to spend on the military, the less democratic that country is likely to be, because money spent on the military is usually used to strengthen it, often increasing the likelihood of abuse. In Nigeria, one of the ways of sinking money without accountability is through a security budget. It is this same premise of a lack of accountability that has led to a media blackout in the North-East. One of the greatest mass atrocities in Borno  the Rann Bombing in 2017- came to light because of sustained media campaigns. Because of the media blackout, the reportage of abuses from that section of the country have ranged from low to non-existent, and even more damning was the restriction of aid agencies, which would have ordinarily filled in this gap. These kinds of restrictions end up creating a bitterness that isnt seen, and which create more violence, sustaining a vicious cycle.

Democracy dies in darkness. There are lots of abuses in the civic space, and calling these out for what they are goes a long way in preventing the collapse of the civic space.

The civic space is the bedrock of any open and democratic society. When the civic space is open, citizens and civil society organisations are able to organise, participate and communicate without hindrance. In doing so, they are able to claim their rights and influence the political and social structures around them.

The civic space is the bedrock of any open and democratic society. When the civic space is open, citizens and civil society organisations are able to organise, participate and communicate without hindrance. In doing so, they are able to claim their rights and influence the political and social structures around them. This can only happen when a state carries out its duty to protect citizens, while respecting and facilitating their fundamental rights to associate, assemble peacefully and express views and opinions freely. These are the three key rights that the civil society depends upon. Avenues of dialogue with government are closing, which is an indication that government does not respect the views of civil society, which acts as watchdog against arbitrary rule.

There is a lot of work to be done. The civic space first needs to be consistent in its approach and sensitise the public on pressing issues before getting them to effect changes. The media is the channel through which this can be done effectively, which makes partnership between the media and civil society groups even more important.

Cheta Nwanze is a partner at SBM Intelligence.

This was part of a paper delivered at the WISER Conference on the mass media, and the intersection of national security and the civic space in Nigeria which held on April 15.
Donald Trump has praised Joe Bidens plans to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan, but criticised a 11 September deadline set by the US president.

Mr Trump said in a written statement on Sunday that pulling all US troops from Afghanistan was "a wonderful and positive thing to do".

However he complained the new administrations target missed the 1 May deadline formerly agreed between Mr Trumps negotiators and the Taliban.

The former US president wrote that "we should keep as close to that schedule as possible and that the withdrawal should be sooner than September out of respect for US forces.

"I wish Joe Biden wouldn't use September 11 as the date to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan, said Mr Trump, for two reasons.

First, we can and should get out earlier. Nineteen years is enough, in fact, far too much and way too long, Mr Trump said in the statement, first reported by Axios.

The former president continued by saying that "September 11 represents a very sad event and period for our country and should remain a day of reflection and remembrance honouring those great souls we lost.

Mr Trump, a critic of the conflict, once called Afghanistan a complete waste, and tweeted in 2013 that the US should leave Afghanistan immediately.

Ally and Republican senator for South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, wrote on Sunday that he could not disagree more with the former presidents remarks.

Mr Biden on Wednesday said all of the countrys remaining forces in Afghanistan would start withdrawing from 1 May, and before 11 September  the 20th anniversary of the terror attacks that triggered the war in 2001.

"It was never meant to be a multi-generational undertaking, said Mr Biden of the plans to withdraw, which he said were in line with the Trump agreement with Afghan forces and the Taliban.

We were attacked. We went to war with clear goals. We achieved those objectives, Mr Biden added, "and it's time to end the forever war.

A number of troops will remain in the country for the protection of US diplomats and officials after an estimated 2,500 to 3,500 troops depart.

Additional reporting by Reuters
Australia Post will no longer deliver perishable foods from June 30 - a move industry experts say will 'ruin' businesses across the country.

The government-run postal service has contacted affected producers to inform them of the change - including those selling native bush ingredients, truffles, butter and cheese.

Australia Post has blamed the 'complex requirements' in the country's different states and territories for the decision.

Australia Post will no longer deliver perishable food items from June 30 in a controversial decision that has angered businesses

Australia Post said it will end perishable food deliveries on its StarTrack services, which includes Road Express, Premium, Next Flight and Courier.

Sydney boutique butter producer Pepe Saya said the move would devastate farmers and producers who rely on Australia Post delivery for their income.

'We lost a lot of our normal business during the outbreak of the pandemic and had to go big time into home delivery,' he told NCA NewsWire.

'This is going to ruin people.'

An Australia Post spokesman said a national approach to food and health regulations was required if the company was to resume perishable shipments in future.

'The carriage of perishable food requirements differ by state and include complex requirements on vehicle type, site and vehicle registration, licence maintenance, staff training and audit requirements,' an Australian Post spokesperson said.

Companies like Cheese Therapy (one of their cheese boxes pictured), which sells therapy boxes featuring produce from bushfire and Covid-19 pandemic-hit cheese companies, will be among the worst-hit

An Australia Post office in Queenscliff, Victoria. The company has blamed the 'complex requirements' in the country's different states and territories for the decision

The move will particularly impact food producers in rural areas who cannot access alternative courier services at an affordable price.

Among the impacted businesses will be companies like Cheese Therapy, which sells therapy boxes featuring produce from bushfire and Covid-19 pandemic-hit cheese companies.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Australia Post for further comment.
Pennsylvania registered 1,914 new COVID-19 infections on Monday, down from 3,088 last Monday. It reported 3,761 for Sunday, up from 3,362 the previous Sunday.

Hospitalizations continued to rise, however, with 2,638 people hospitalized with COVID-19 in Pennsylvania, up from 2,474 last Monday.

The number in intensive care, 551 as of early Monday, is up from 534 a week ago.

Pennsylvania registered 27 new COVID-19 deaths on Sunday and two on Monday, bringing the total count to 25,690.

As of early Monday, 43% of eligible Pennsylvania residents had received at least one shot of COVID-19 vaccine, the tenth-best percentage in the U.S., according to The New York Times vaccine data tracker.

Twenty-six percent of eligible Pennsylvanians were fully vaccinated, tied for 24th.

Pennsylvania as of early Monday had distributed 80% of the doses it has been allocated, which was tied for 23rd best. The national average for doses used is 79%.

The state health department says Pennsylvania has recently been averaging about 97,100 shots per day.

As of Sunday, 40% of U.S. residents have received at least one shot, according to The New York Times. That percentage is based on the entire population, even though vaccine is not yet approved for children under 16.

Experts say between 70% and 90% of Americans need to be vaccinated to attain the herd immunity that will prevent COVID-19 from spreading and eliminate it as a serious threat.

At the current pace, well reach 70% on June 17, according to The New York Times.

About 131 million people in the United States had received at least one dose as of Sunday. The United States has 330 million people.

RELATED: Pa. Gov. Tom Wolf gets first shot of COVID-19 vaccine
Madalyn Mendoza, MySA.com

Mayor Ron Nirenberg was a hot topic on Twitter on Saturday after sharing a photo of himself receiving his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

While the mayor may have been hoping to get San Antonians excited about getting vaccinated themselves, his update got many of his followers excited in a different way.
UPDATE: Tracy Blackburn was taken back into custody about 8 p.m. by the Coosa County Sheriffs Office.

EARLIER : Authorities are searching for a Jemison man who escaped from a work-release program early Monday.

Tracy OBrian Blackburn, 47, made his getaway from the Childersburg CBF/CBC about 1 a.m. He pleaded guilty in 2017 to second-degree assault in Shelby County after hitting another man and was sentenced to 20 years with five to serve. Court records show he has a lengthy criminal history.

Blackburn is a white male, 5-feet, 9-inches tall and weighs 185 pounds. He was last believed to be wearing street clothing.

Anyone with information on his whereabouts is asked to call 911 or the Alabama Department of Corrections at 1-800-831-8825.
China pledges targeted policies, necessary support for economic recovery

Xinhua) 14:08, April 19, 2021

BEIJING, April 19 (Xinhua) -- China will maintain necessary support for economic recovery and implement targeted structural tax cuts and other measures to consolidate its growth momentum, the country's top economic planner pledged on Monday.

Policies aimed at stabilizing employment and safeguarding market entities will not be trimmed, while measures to support small and micro-enterprises will be fully implemented, said Meng Wei, spokesperson for the National Development and Reform Commission, at a press conference on Monday.

The planner vowed to continue stepping up financial services for market entities, strengthen the market regulation of raw materials, and alleviate corporate cost pressures.

While China's economy has extended an improving trend in the first quarter, increasing uncertainties in the global market and uneven domestic recovery still pose challenges for future development, according to Meng.

China's economy grew 18.3 percent year on year in the first quarter of 2021, as strong domestic and foreign demand powered recovery from a low base in early 2020 when COVID-19 stalled the world's second-largest economy.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has projected that the Chinese economy will grow by 8.4 percent in 2021, 0.3 percentage points above the January forecast, according to the IMF's World Economic Outlook released in early April.

(Web editor: Xian Jiangnan, Liang Jun)
Copperas Cove, TX (76522)

Today

Partly to mostly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 66F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly to mostly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 66F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph.
New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation has registered a case against officials of Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB) and Bank of Baroda, Paharganj Branch, and other unknown persons on the allegations of misappropriating funds amounting to over Rs 200 crore.

The Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB), under the government of NCT of Delhi, has allegedly invested its surplus funds in the form of FDRs in different banks and diverted the same into suspected fake account/FDRs.

It was alleged that during the year 2020-2021, DUSIB has transferred money from four different accounts of the organisation maintained in Central Bank of India, Vikas Kutir to Bank of Baroda, Paharganj branch for the purpose of investing in FDRs.

The unknown officials of DUSIB in conspiracy with the officials of Bank of Baroda diverted the said funds to the tune of Rs 207.99 crore.

It was further alleged that instead of issuing genuine FDRs, the said money was diverted to an account in the name of a private firm. It was also alleged that the money was transferred to one fake account in the name of DUSIB in Bank of Baroda.

The money transferred to the Bank of Baroda for the purpose of making FDRs was diverted through the fake account of DUSIB. The documents provided to DUSIB were allegedly fake FDRs printed on normal paper.

In total, 112 documents (FDRs) to the tune of Rs 214 Crore were given by the Bank to DUSIB. It was further alleged that out of these, only three FDRs amounting to over Rs 6 croe were found to be genuine, the rest of the FDRs were suspected to be forged.

CBI conducted searches at the office of DUSIB, Bank of Baroda and the residence of a Bank Manager. During searches, documents related to the forged/fake FDRs were recovered from the premises of the bank manager.

Live TV
Long-running UK police drama The Bill could be getting a reboot.

British reports suggest a new version is still in early development and has not yet been greenlit. But should it get the go-ahead it is expected to feature three former stars: Graham Cole, Trudie Goodwin, and Mark Wingett as PC Tony Stamp, Sgt June Ackland and DC Jim Carver, respectively.

The plan is for the established cast members to be joined by some fresh faces, with the plot seeing the old hands acting as consultants for the new Sun Hill recruits.

According to reports the project began to pick up pace last year when members of the original cast met to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the shows final episode.

Simon (Sansome, writer) started investigating the rights and managed to acquire them. Three of the best-known stars are in talks and hes hopeful he can get them on board. Tony [McHale, EastEnders writer and Holby City creator] has seen the script and they hope they can get him signed up too, an unnamed source suggests.

The original series ran for 27-years between 1983 and 2010 and screened in Australia on ABC.

Source: Radio Times

Related
ALBANY  Already facing several state and federal investigations, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is the focus of a new probe into his alleged use of government staff to help produce a best-selling book last year.

On April 13, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli invoked state Executive Law to issue a formal referral letter requesting a criminal investigation by state Attorney General Letitia James. Under state law, DiNapoli is authorized to make the request and to bestow jurisdiction on the matter to the attorney general's office.

Allegations have recently emerged that public resources may have been used in the development and promotion of the governors book, 'American Crisis: Leadership Lesson from the COVID-19 Pandemic'," DiNapoli wrote to James.

DiNapoli requested an investigation related to the use of property, services, or resources of the state for personal purposes, private business purposes or other compensated non-governmental purposes by the Executive Chamber, including, but not limited to, in the drafting, editing, sale and promoting of the governors book and any related financial or business transactions.

The New York Times first reported on Monday that James was pursuing an inquiry in response to DiNapoli's letter. A spokesman for the attorney general's office confirmed receipt of the comptroller's letter but told the Times Union their office would not comment further on an "ongoing investigation."

We have officially jumped the shark  the idea there was criminality involved here is patently absurd on its face and is just the furthering of a political pile-on," Richard Azzopardi, a senior adviser to Cuomo, said in a statement in response to the investigation request by DiNapoli. "Any state official who volunteered to assist on this project did so on his or her own time and without the use of state resources. To the extent a document was printed, it was incidental. This is Albany politics at its worst  both the comptroller and the attorney general have spoken to people about running for governor and it is unethical to wield criminal referral authority to further political self-interest.

A number of high-ranking aides to Cuomo helped produce the book. They included Secretary to Governor Melissa DeRosa, Budget Director Robert Mujica, Gareth Rhodes, who is a deputy superintendent at the Department of Financial Services, and Jim Malatras, chancellor for the State University of New York. Malatras and Rhodes have both served on the governor's coronavirus task force. Cuomos office has asserted the help was voluntary.

There were also more junior staffers assigned tasks related to the book. Some of those staff members recently told the Times Union they did not consider their assignments to be truly voluntary, and that the duties occurred within the context of normal work assignments.

Whether or not the work was voluntary, Cuomo's special counsel, Judith Mogul, had explicitly stated in a letter seeking approval of the book project that government staff would not be used, without any caveats. And in July 2020, a top staffer at the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics approved Cuomo's book on the condition that government staff not be used.

According to the Times, Cuomo received an offer for the book upwards of $4 million. Still, it remains unclear how much Cuomo was paid, and Cuomo again declined to provide those details at a news conference on Monday. He has said the information will become public when his tax returns are released.

While misuse of state government resources is a state-level offense, Cuomos book also has been a focus on an investigation launched by the U.S. attorneys office in Brooklyn. At the same time Cuomo aides were helping to edit the book, which painted a positive picture of Cuomos handling of the pandemic, Cuomo aides allegedly removed unflattering information from a report on COVID-19's death toll in nursing homes.

Beth Garvey, special counsel to the governor, has said the administration did not alter nursing home data to lower the number of deaths in those facilities attributed to COVID-19. The death figures summarized in a report by Cuomo's administration last summer were sharply lower than the numbers later established for nursing home fatalities. That report blamed the spread in nursing facilities on infected employees, not the governor's policymaking.

"COVID taskforce members, including Melissa DeRosa, Linda Lacewell, and Jim Malatras, were involved in reviewing the draft report  none of them changed any of the fatality numbers or 'altered' the fatality data," Garvey said. "After asking DOH questions as to the source of the previously unpublished data  to which there were not clear or complete answers  and probing to determine whether it was relevant to the outcome of the report, a decision was made to use the data set that was reported by the place of death with firsthand knowledge of the circumstances, which gave a higher degree of comfort in its accuracy."

Cuomo is also facing an investigation from two attorneys appointed by James to examine a spate of sexual harassment allegations against the governor, as well as an impeachment probe from the Assembly Judiciary Committee.

James, the state's top law enforcement official, has refrained from calling for Cuomo's resignation. DiNapoli did join the chorus of officials calling for Cuomo to resign in mid-March, after the Times Union reported that one Cuomo staffer had made a groping allegation against the governor, which he has denied. DiNapoli called those and other sexual harassment allegations "extremely disturbing" and "impairing Gov. Cuomos ability to lead."
Jurors Start Considering Verdict in Chauvin Case After Closing Arguments

Prosecutor says Chauvin killed Floyd, defense says 'reasonable doubt' exists

Jurors in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin were presented with closing arguments on Monday and will now be sequestered until they decide whether to convict or acquit the ex-cop on three counts, including second-degree murder.

Chauvin, 45, is accused of killing George Floyd, 46, with his actions on May 25, 2020, including kneeling on Floyds back and neck for approximately nine-and-a-half minutes.

The defendant caused George Floyds death. He did. The state proved that beyond a reasonable doubt, Matthew Frank, the assistant Minnesota attorney general, told jurors during the conclusion of the three-week trial.

Frank downplayed the resistance Floyd offered to officers who attempted to place him into the back of a patrol car after his arrest on alleged use of a counterfeit $20 bill at Cup Foods in Minneapolis.

The prosecutor primarily focused on what happened after Floyd was on the ground, restrained by Chauvin and two other former officers.

For nine minutes and 29 seconds, George Floyd beggedhe begged until he could speak no moreand the defendant continued this assault. When he was unable to speak, the defendant continued. When he was unable to breathe, the defendant continued, Frank said.

Even when the ambulance arrived, Chauvin remained on top of Floyd, he added.

What the defendant did to George Floyd killed him, he charged.

In this image from video, defense attorney Eric Nelson, left, and defendant, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin listen to Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill read instructions to the jury before closing arguments in the trial of Chauvin at the Hennepin County Courthouse in Minneapolis, Minn., on April 19, 2021. (Court TV via AP/Pool)

Demonstrators gather for a rally in memory of George Floyd and Daunte Wright outside Cup Foods in Minneapolis, Minn., on April 18, 2021. (John Minchillo/AP Photo)

Experts that the prosecution called made clear that Chauvin ignored Minneapolis Police Department policies when he spent so long restraining Floyd and in his failure to render aid once Floyd stopped breathing, jurors were told.

Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo told the court earlier in the trial that the way Chauvin used his knee to restrain Floyd violated department policy. He also said Chauvin did not follow department rules on de-escalation.

Frank said that experts made clear that Floyd died from asphyxia, or a lack of oxygen, caused by the restraint applied by Chauvin and other officers.

Among the prosecutorial experts was Dr. Martin Tobin, a lung specialist who told the court that even a healthy person who was subjected to what Floyd was would have died as a result.

The defense has highlighted Floyds drug use and his poor heart health, arguing those may have ultimately caused the death.

The Hennepin County Medical Examiners Office autopsy report on Floyds death described contributing factors as his fentanyl intoxication and his heart disease.

But the cause of death was cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression, the office wrote.

It was the stress of that interaction that tipped him over the edge given his underlying heart disease and his toxicological status, Dr. Andrew Baker, the Hennepin County medical examiner, told the court during the trial.

Workers fortify government buildings downtown as the city prepares for possible unrest following the verdict in the Derek Chauvin murder trial, in Minneapolis, Minn., on April 19, 2021. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Law enforcement and National Guard members stage outside the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis, Minn., on April 19, 2021. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

Dr. David Fowler, a defense witness who previously headed a medical examiners office in Maryland, later told jurors that the death should be categorized as undetermined instead of homicide because of Floyds drug use and health.

In my opinion, Mr. Floyd had a sudden cardiac arrhythmia due to his atherosclerosis and hypertensive heart disease  during his restraint and subdual by the police, Fowler said.

Chauvin was charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. Jurors could decide to convict him on all counts, convict him on one or two counts, or completely acquit him.

Eric Nelson, Chauvins lawyer, said in his closing arguments that the state did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Chauvin caused Floyds death.

What the state has to convince you is that the evidence in this case completely eliminates any reasonable doubt. Or in other words, leaving only unreasonable doubt, he said.

I submit to you that the state has failed to meet its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, he added later.

Nelson said that Chauvin was acting reasonably when he arrived on the scene and observed, without intervening, how Floyd was fighting off being placed in the patrol car.

Chauvin then chose to use necessary force to subdue Floyd, said Nelson, who has said Chauvin was concerned about the actions of bystanders who became agitated by what they viewed as excessive restraint.

Nelson also argued that carbon monoxide from the vehicle next to which Floyd was ultimately restrained could have led to Floyds death. That theory was promoted by Fowler, but contested by Tobin.

Prior to closing arguments, Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill went over state law with jurors and emphasized that they must follow that law in determining whether or not Chauvin is guilty.

The defendant is presumed innocent. That presumption remains with defendant, unless and until he has been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, he said.

Jurors were told that they should reference both direct and circumstantial evidence when deciding on each charge.

The jury is being sequestered for the first time as they consider the three charges. There is no minimum or maximum time for announcing a verdict.
Hospitals across India are running out of beds, vaccine stock, oxygen cylinders and remdesivir injections. BMC on Monday has informed that Maharashtra is left with only 2 days of vaccine stock.

States across India are facing a grim situation with Hospitals running out of beds, vaccine stock, oxygen cylinders and remdesivir injections. In what can be deemed as a national Covid emergency, Maharashtra is left with only 2 days of vaccine stock. BMC has said that if vaccines dont come in by Tuesday, then Centres may be shut from Wednesday.

State Health Minister Rajesh Tope has said Maharastra is administering 3.5 lakh vaccinations per day with a capacity of 8 lakh vaccinations in Maharashtra. However, they have asked the Centre for 50 lakh vaccines a week. He added that people are being turned down in Maharashtra due to shortage of vaccines.

In Delhi, on the other hand, DRDO has re-opened Covid-19 facility, wherein 250 beds will be provided in the first phase. Another facility has been opened at the Commonwealth Games Village, which provides a set up of 500 beds. Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal visited this facility earlier this morning and promised that 1400-2000 beds are going to be added by April 20.

Amid the massive Covid-19 surge, the Delhi government has announced a week-long curfew today. The decision to impose a curfew comes after Delhi observed a weekend lockdown from Friday till Sunday.
[April 19, 2021] CAKAP To Support Bangkit's Program in Improving English Language Competence for 'Fresh Graduate' Students

JAKARTA, Indonesia, April 19, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- In an increasingly competitive globalization era, every individual is required to be as reliable as possible. Not only in terms of academic competence, but also being able to communicate well. In this case, the role of English as the language of communication most often used internationally, is very appropriate and must be mastered well in mastering communication technology, as well as for direct interaction. Besides being able to assist in interacting with the world community, English is also widely used in digital technology terms which are now increasingly used. As a pioneer platform of Foreign Language learning that carries the concept of two-way online learning, Cakap, is providing an English proficiency classes to the Bangkit 2021, a Google-led program delivered in collaboration with Gojek, Traveloka, and Tokopedia, to support developing the world-class technology human resources in Indonesia. "It has become Cakap's vision that we really want to contribute to the competence of Indonesian human resources, one of which is the ability to speak foreign languages. In the 'English Bangkit 2021' program, Cakap provides English language training for 3,000 fresh graduate students from universities and polytechnics who have joined Bangkit 2021," said Cecillia Ong, Vice President of Business Development from Cakap. Bangkit organizes ICT-based business learning programs (Information and Communication Technology) through software engineering. Thi ICT-based training material includes machine learning, mobile development, and cloud computing. This training is to prepare Bangkit students to become a skilled human resource, who are able to compete in the field of information and communication technology.



"On its way, the Bangkit training program that we developed, turned out to be constrained in terms of the language of instruction. Because we provide ICT-based business training using English, the students actually find it difficult to understand the training material. Students are reluctant to ask questions or interact during discussion sessions," explained William Florance, Google's Education Programs Lead for the Asia Pacific region. "In fact, leading technology companies have told us that they expect their talent to be able to communicate well in English, which is why we have designed Bangkit as a primarily English language program. For this reason, we collaborate with Cakap, as a platform language training with no doubt about the quality of training. We believe Cakap can help our students to be able to speak English well," he added.

Cakap provides class facilities training English for Bangkit students, with a focus on learning Active Speaking, where students can improve their self-confidence so they can actively speak in English. As well as the Business English class, which will guide students to be able to use English with good and correct sentence structure for professional needs. The collaboration between Cakap and Bangkit will take place from April 12, 2021 to the next 3 (three) months. Classes will be divided into 180 (one-hundred-eighty) class groups, where each class may only consist of a maximum of 10 (ten) people. And each class will get 25 (twenty-five) meeting sessions. "The program with Bangkit is very much in line with our commitment, namely, Cakap Untuk Bangsa. Besides academically excellence, the ability to speak English which already become international language will certainly increase the value of an individual. And we hope that, with the collaboration between Cakap and Bangkit, we can hand-in-hand to support excellent talents for Indonesia in the future. Where they can be the talent with high competitiveness in the international arena," concluded Cecilia Ong. Able to use foreign language in communication, of course, will open lots of opportunities in broadening network between countries. People with good capability language skills will have a bigger change on taking this opportunity. About CAKAP Cakap is a startup company that develops online learning applications with two-way interactions between students and professional teachers through video calls and text conversations. We aim to improve welfare by increasing the intelligence level of the nation's children. Cakap now provides foreign language learning as well as vocational learning in the form of English, Mandarin, Japanese, self-development and so on that both adult and child consumers can participate in.



Available on Google Play and the App Store to reach different consumer segments, because everyone has the right to quality education. CAKAP provides educational solutions with an international standard learning curriculum About Bangkit from Google Bangkit is a training program led by Google, designed to produce Indonesian resources with world-class technological quality. This year, Bangkit opens program opportunities for Indonesian students to join the 'Kampus Merdeka' program. With the support of the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Indonesia in the 'Kampus Merdeka', Bangkit 2021 places up to 3,000 students on 3 learning paths to help students develop skills according to their interests in technology throughout the year of 2021. SOURCE Cakap

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DETROIT, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Hirzel Law, PLC was presented first place in the Detroit Free Press Community Choice Awards for Best Law Firm in Metro Detroit on April 15, 2021.

The Detroit Free Press Best of the Best Awards honor the achievements and accomplishments of local businesses throughout the Metro Detroit area. The Best of the Best Awards recognize the best businesses in the community, including law firms, based on client voting.

"This award would not have been possible without our clients' support and trust in the work that we do," said Kevin Hirzel. "Hirzel Law prides itself on providing peace of mind to our clients in condominium, HOA, and real estate law matters."

"I am proud of the Hirzel Law attorneys and staff members who continue to provide great customer service," said Hirzel. "Hirzel Law understands that a law firm's strengths come from its people, and we are committed to providing responsive and high quality legal representation to individuals, corporations and homeowners associations."

The attorneys at Hirzel Law have received numerous other awards from Best Lawyers, the Community Association Institute's College of Community Association Lawyers, Leading Lawyers, Michigan Top Lawyers, and Super Lawyers, for representing clients in condominium, HOA, and real estate law matters. "Unlike many other awards, which are based on peer recognition, the Best of the Best Awards are special as this recognition comes from our clients," said Hirzel.

Hirzel Law, PLC can be contacted by calling (248) 478-1800 or by visiting www.hirzellaw.com.

Hirzel Law, PLC is an award-winning law firm with offices in Farmington and Traverse City, Michigan that represents condominium associations, homeowners associations, and summer resorts. The firm also represents individual and corporate clients in various condominium, HOA, and real estate matters.

Elizabeth Kebler

(248) 478-1800

[email protected]

SOURCE Hirzel Law

Related Links

www.hirzellaw.com


Guy Carpenter & Co., the reinsurance brokerage business of Marsh McLennan, announced the appointment of Anthony Cordonnier as managing director and global co-head of Cyber, effective the second half of 2021, and the promotion of Erica Davis to global co-head of Cyber, effective immediately.

Cordonnier and Davis will co-lead Guy Carpenters cyber team to utilize more effectively its global footprint, advanced analytical capabilities and expansive sector knowledge, offering clients and prospects more efficient and effective placement strategies.

The creation of these roles demonstrates the companys continued investment in its cyber platform and commitment to strengthening its leading market position, said Guy Carpenter in a statement.

Based in London, Cordonnier will report to James Boyce, CEO, Global Specialties, Guy Carpenter. Davis is based in New York and will report to Will Garland, president, Centers of Excellence, North America, Guy Carpenter.

Cordonnier is a key figure in the cyber reinsurance market and joins from Swiss Re where he was most recently director and head of the companys Reinsurance Cyber Center, responsible for building its portfolio and overseeing its global underwriting activities. In addition, he currently serves as the chair of the International Underwriting Associations Cyber Reinsurance Committee.

Davis joined Guy Carpenter in 2018 and was most recently managing director and leader of the companys North America Cyber Center of Excellence, a dedicated team of cyber brokers, product innovators and analytics experts.

With over 20 years experience in the cyber re/insurance market, Davis is a leading industry figure and has played a central role in development of Guy Carpenters strategic approach in the sector, said Carpenter.

As part of the ongoing expansion of its cyber expertise, Guy Carpenter also announced the appointments of Jess Fung as managing director and North American Cyber Analytics lead, and Rebecca Ruddy as senior vice president within its North America cyber team.

Fung most recently served as executive vice president at Willis Re, leading its U.S. West Coast actuarial team, and head of Analytics of both its Professional Liability Segment and the Global Cyber Practice Group. Ruddy joins from Aon Reinsurance Solutions, where she was a director and reinsurance treaty broker, and a member of the firms Global Cyber Practice Group.

Source: Guy Carpenter

Topics Cyber Talent Swiss Re Marsh McLennan
European Union exercises option under previous agreement to order 100 million additional doses of COMIRNATY  , bringing total doses to 600 million for 27 EU member states

All doses expected to be delivered in 2021

NEW YORK and MAINZ, GERMANY, April 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE)  Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) and BioNTech SE (Nasdaq: BNTX) today announced they will supply an additional 100 million doses of COMIRNATY, the companies COVID-19 vaccine, to the 27 European Union (EU) member states in 2021. This announcement is a result of the European Commissions (EC) decision to exercise its option to purchase an additional 100 million doses under its expanded Advanced Purchase Agreement signed on February 17, 202 1 . This brings the total number of doses to be delivered to the EU to 600 million.

We remain committed to moving as quickly and safely as possible to bring this vaccine to more people in Europe, as the deadly virus continues to wreak havoc across the continent, said Albert Bourla, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Pfizer. To date, we have met all of our supply commitments to the EC and we plan to deliver 250 million doses to the European Union in Q2, a fourfold increase on Q1s agreed quantity.

The additional 100 million doses from this option exercise will further help to support the acceleration of the vaccination campaigns throughout the EU. We now intend to deliver a total of 600 million doses to the EU this year, which covers two thirds of the EU population and represents the largest cumulative supply agreement for COMIRNATY that we have agreed to date globally, said Sean Marett, Chief Business and Chief Commercial Officer of BioNTech.

COMIRNATY will be produced in BioNTechs and Pfizers manufacturing sites in Europe.

AUTHORIZED USE IN THE EU:

COMIRNATY  (the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine) has been granted conditional marketing authorisation by the European Medicines Agency to prevent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in people from 16 years of age. The European Medicines Agencys (EMAs) human medicines committee (CHMP) has completed its rigorous evaluation of COMIRNATY, concluding by consensus that sufficiently robust data on the quality, safety and efficacy of the vaccine are now available.

Story continues

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION:

Events of anaphylaxis have been reported. Appropriate medical treatment and supervision should always be readily available in case of an anaphylactic reaction following the administration of the vaccine.

The efficacy, safety and immunogenicity of the vaccine has not been assessed in immunocompromised individuals, including those receiving immunosuppressant therapy. The efficacy of COMIRNATY  may be lower in immunosuppressed individuals.

As with any vaccine, vaccination with COMIRNATY  may not protect all vaccine recipients. Individuals may not be fully protected until 7 days after their second dose of vaccine.

In clinical studies, adverse reactions in participants 16 years of age and older were injection site pain (> 80%), fatigue (> 60%), headache (> 50%), myalgia and chills (> 30%), arthralgia (> 20%), pyrexia and injection site swelling (> 10%) and were usually mild or moderate in intensity and resolved within a few days after vaccination. A slightly lower frequency of reactogenicity events was associated with greater age.

There is limited experience with use of COMIRNATY  in pregnant women. Administration of COMIRNATY  in pregnancy should only be considered when the potential benefits outweigh any potential risks for the mother and fetus.

It is unknown whether COMIRNATY  is excreted in human milk.

Interactions with other medicinal products or concomitant administration of COMIRNATY  with other vaccines has not been studied.

For complete information on the safety of COMIRNATY always make reference to the approved Summary of Product Characteristics and Package Leaflet available in all the languages of the European Union on the EMA website.

The black equilateral triangle denotes that additional monitoring is required to capture any adverse reactions. This will allow quick identification of new safety information. Individuals can help by reporting any side effects they may get. Side effects can be reported to EudraVigilance or directly to BioNTech using email medinfo@biontech.de , telephone +49 6131 9084 0, or via the website www.biontech.de .

About Pfizer: Breakthroughs That Change Patients Lives

At Pfizer, we apply science and our global resources to bring therapies to people that extend and significantly improve their lives. We strive to set the standard for quality, safety and value in the discovery, development and manufacture of health care products, including innovative medicines and vaccines. Every day, Pfizer colleagues work across developed and emerging markets to advance wellness, prevention, treatments and cures that challenge the most feared diseases of our time. Consistent with our responsibility as one of the world's premier innovative biopharmaceutical companies, we collaborate with health care providers, governments and local communities to support and expand access to reliable, affordable health care around the world. For more than 170 years, we have worked to make a difference for all who rely on us. We routinely post information that may be important to investors on our website at www.Pfizer.com . In addition, to learn more, please visit us on www.Pfizer.com and follow us on Twitter at @Pfizer and @Pfizer News , LinkedIn , YouTube and like us on Facebook at Facebook.com/Pfizer .

Pfizer Disclosure Notice

The information contained in this release is as of April 19, 2021. Pfizer assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements contained in this release as the result of new information or future events or developments.

This release contains forward-looking information about Pfizers efforts to combat COVID-19, the collaboration between BioNTech and Pfizer to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, the BNT162 mRNA vaccine program and COMIRNATY, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine (BNT162b2) (including qualitative assessments of available data, potential benefits, expectations for clinical trials, supply agreements with the European Commission and the timing of delivery of doses thereunder, the anticipated timing of regulatory submissions, regulatory approvals or authorizations and anticipated manufacturing, distribution and supply) involving substantial risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. Risks and uncertainties include, among other things, the uncertainties inherent in research and development, including the ability to meet anticipated clinical endpoints, commencement and/or completion dates for clinical trials, regulatory submission dates, regulatory approval dates and/or launch dates, as well as risks associated with preclinical and clinical data (including the Phase 3 data), including the possibility of unfavorable new preclinical, clinical or safety data and further analyses of existing preclinical, clinical or safety data; the ability to produce comparable clinical or other results, including the rate of vaccine effectiveness and safety and tolerability profile observed to date, in additional analyses of the Phase 3 trial and additional studies or in larger, more diverse populations following commercialization; the ability of BNT162b2 to prevent COVID-19 caused by emerging virus variants; the risk that more widespread use of the vaccine will lead to new information about efficacy, safety, or other developments, including the risk of additional adverse reactions, some of which may be serious; the risk that preclinical and clinical trial data are subject to differing interpretations and assessments, including during the peer review/publication process, in the scientific community generally, and by regulatory authorities; whether and when additional data from the BNT162 mRNA vaccine program will be published in scientific journal publications and, if so, when and with what modifications and interpretations; whether regulatory authorities will be satisfied with the design of and results from these and any future preclinical and clinical studies; whether and when a Biologics License Application for BNT162b2 may be filed in the U.S. and whether and when other biologics license and/or emergency use authorization applications or amendments to any such applications may be filed in particular jurisdictions for BNT162b2 or any other potential vaccines that may arise from the BNT162 program, and if obtained, whether or when such emergency use authorization or licenses will expire or terminate; whether and when any applications that may be pending or filed for BNT162b2 (including a potential Biologics License Application in the U.S. or any requested amendments to the emergency use or conditional marketing authorizations) or other vaccines that may result from the BNT162 program may be approved by particular regulatory authorities, which will depend on myriad factors, including making a determination as to whether the vaccines benefits outweigh its known risks and determination of the vaccines efficacy and, if approved, whether it will be commercially successful; decisions by regulatory authorities impacting labeling or marketing, manufacturing processes, safety and/or other matters that could affect the availability or commercial potential of a vaccine, including development of products or therapies by other companies; disruptions in the relationships between us and our collaboration partners or third-party suppliers; risks related to the availability of raw materials to manufacture a vaccine; challenges related to our vaccines ultra-low temperature formulation, two-dose schedule and attendant storage, distribution and administration requirements, including risks related to storage and handling after delivery by Pfizer; the risk that we may not be able to successfully develop other vaccine formulations; the risk that we may not be able to create or scale up manufacturing capacity on a timely basis or maintain access to logistics or supply channels commensurate with global demand for our vaccine, which would negatively impact our ability to supply the estimated numbers of doses of our vaccine within the projected time periods as previously indicated; whether and when additional supply agreements will be reached; uncertainties regarding the ability to obtain recommendations from vaccine technical committees and other public health authorities and uncertainties regarding the commercial impact of any such recommendations; uncertainties regarding the impact of COVID-19 on Pfizers business, operations and financial results; and competitive developments.

A further description of risks and uncertainties can be found in Pfizers Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020 and in its subsequent reports on Form 10-Q, including in the sections thereof captioned Risk Factors and Forward-Looking Information and Factors That May Affect Future Results, as well as in its subsequent reports on Form 8-K, all of which are filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and available at www.sec.gov and www.pfizer.com .

About BioNTech

Biopharmaceutical New Technologies is a next generation immunotherapy company pioneering novel therapies for cancer and other serious diseases. The Company exploits a wide array of computational discovery and therapeutic drug platforms for the rapid development of novel biopharmaceuticals. Its broad portfolio of oncology product candidates includes individualized and off-the-shelf mRNA-based therapies, innovative chimeric antigen receptor T cells, bi-specific checkpoint immuno-modulators, targeted cancer antibodies and small molecules. Based on its deep expertise in mRNA vaccine development and in-house manufacturing capabilities, BioNTech and its collaborators are developing multiple mRNA vaccine candidates for a range of infectious diseases alongside its diverse oncology pipeline. BioNTech has established a broad set of relationships with multiple global pharmaceutical collaborators, including Genmab, Sanofi, Bayer Animal Health, Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, Regeneron, Genevant, Fosun Pharma, and Pfizer. For more information, please visit www.BioNTech.de .



BioNTech Forward-looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements of BioNTech within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements may include, but may not be limited to, statements concerning: BioNTechs efforts to combat COVID-19; the collaboration between BioNTech and Pfizer to develop a potential COVID-19 vaccine; our expectations regarding the potential characteristics of BNT162b2 (COMIRNATY) in our Phase 2/3 trial and/or in commercial use based on data observations to date; the expected timepoint for additional readouts on efficacy data of BNT162b2 in our Phase 2/3 trial; the nature of the clinical data, which is subject to ongoing peer review, regulatory review and market interpretation; the timing for submission of data for, or receipt of, any marketing approval or Emergency Use Authorization; our contemplated shipping and storage plan, including our estimated product shelf-life at various temperatures; and the ability of BioNTech to supply the quantities of BNT162 to support clinical development and, if approved, market demand, including our production estimates for 2020 and 2021. Any forward-looking statements in this press release are based on BioNTech current expectations and beliefs of future events, and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially and adversely from those set forth in or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: the ability to meet the pre-defined endpoints in clinical trials; competition to create a vaccine for COVID-19; the ability to produce comparable clinical or other results, including our stated rate of vaccine effectiveness and safety and tolerability profile observed to date, in the remainder of the trial or in larger, more diverse populations upon commercialization; the ability to effectively scale our productions capabilities; and other potential difficulties.

For a discussion of these and other risks and uncertainties, see BioNTechs Annual Report as Form 20-F for the Year Ended December 31, 2020, filed with the SEC on March 30, 2021, which is available on the SECs website at www.sec.gov . All information in this press release is as of the date of the release, and BioNTech undertakes no duty to update this information unless required by law.

Pfizer Contacts:

Media Relations

Andy Widger

+44 (0)1737 330909

eupress@pfizer.com

Investor Relations

Chuck Triano

+1 (212) 733-3901

Charles.E.Triano@Pfizer.com

BioNTech Contacts:

Media Relations

Jasmina Alatovic

+49 (0)6131 9084 1513

Media@biontech.de

Investor Relations

Sylke Maas, Ph.D.

+49 (0)6131 9084 1074

Investors@biontech.de








The abductors of the Obadu of Ilemeso Ekiti, Oba David Oyewumi have demanded N20 million ransom from the family for the monarch to be set fr...





The abductors of the Obadu of Ilemeso Ekiti, Oba David Oyewumi have demanded N20 million ransom from the family for the monarch to be set free.

Suspected gunmen, numbering six, last week Thursday besieged the palace and abducted the monarch around 9pm.

The abductors who fired gunshots sporadically were said to have scaled the fence to the palace and moved straight into the monarchs apartment and whisked him away.

Ilemeso, in Oye Local government Area of Ekiti State is a neighbouring town to Isan Ekiti , the country home of Governor Kayode Fayemi.

A family source confided in newsmen in Ado Ekiti on Monday that the gunmen contacted the family on Saturday evening and made the financial demand.

The source said: We have been contacted. They called us around 7.03pm on Saturday and demanded that we pay the sum of N20 million for the king to be released.

We are really worried by this demand. The family is taking further steps to ensure that Kabiyesi is released as soon as possible, he said.

The Police Public Relations Officer, Ekiti State Command, ASP Sunday Abutu, said the police and other security agencies were making frantic efforts to rescue the monarch from captivity.

Abutu said: We are taking all security measures to ensure that we rescue the Oba. We are not resting at all.

We are working with other sister agencies in this regard and also working on intelligence gathering we have at our disposal .

The police want to work more to prevent this kind of crime, and we are relying on information from the members of the public, because we work more on information we found to be veracious.

We appeal to members of the public to help us with information. Let them report any strange face or suspected person to the police. We assure you that the police will protect the identities of such informants.
Canada to welcome 6,000 caregivers by the end of 2021 Immigration minister announces new measure to finalize caregiver applications for permanent residence.

Canada to welcome 6,000 caregivers by the end of 2021 Immigration minister announces new measure to finalize caregiver applications for permanent residence.

Canada to welcome 6,000 caregivers by the end of 2021 Immigration minister announces new measure to finalize caregiver applications for permanent residence. Shelby Thevenot Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif

Sans Font Size A

A

Canadas immigration department plans to finalize 6,000 caregiver applications for permanent residence by December 31, 2021.

In a statement released on April 15, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) said it will finalize the applications for caregivers who have completed their in-Canada work experience, as well as their immediate family members.

Do you live in Canada? Apply for PR under new pathways launching May 6!

The department also said it would make at least 1,500 first-stage decisions on applications for the Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots by June 30, 2021.

Immigrant caregivers, who take care of our families and elders, are often separated from their own families, and the pandemic has significantly slowed down permanent residence application processing, keeping them apart from their families longer than we would have hoped, Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino said in the release. With todays announcement, were getting caregiver immigration back on track which will help reunite front-line heroes with their loved ones.

By prioritizing these decisions, IRCC will be able to issue more caregiver work permits for those who have valid job offers to work for families in Canada. The statement also says the pandemic has affected operations at IRCC, particularly for paper-based applications as office closures resulted in more employees working remotely. The number of mail-in applications processed in 2020 was significantly reduced. As a result, IRCC is digitizing the application process so that the department can process the applications it received in 2020 before the end of the year. IRCC says it will ensure caregiver program applicants receive acknowledgement of receipt letters by May 31, 2021.

The new policy will take effect on May 3, 2021. Those who applied to the Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots in 2020 will not need to reapply, IRCC says.

About Canadas caregiver immigration programs

The Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots were launched in 2019. These pathways to permanent residence for caregivers offer occupation-specific work permits, rather than employer-specific work permits. This means caregivers do not have to remain tied to one employer as long as they are still working in their occupation. About 2,900 caregivers and their family members became permanent residents in 2020.

As of March 3, 2021, there were applications for about 12,000 caregivers and their accompanying family members in IRCCs processing inventory. This includes applications to both the Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots, but also the cases that IRCC is still finalizing from previous caregiver programs.

As of April 8, 2021, IRCC received an estimated 2,367 applications for the Home Child Care Provider Pilot. This represents about 86 per cent of the number of applications that can be accepted for 2021. For the Home Support Worker Pilot, IRCC has received an estimated 516 applications, representing about 19 per cent of the number of applications that can be accepted in 2021.

Caregivers eligible for new immigration programs

Caregivers who are already in Canada could also have the opportunity to apply for permanent residence through the recently announced creation of a permanent residence pathway for essential workers.

Starting May 6, Canada will accept 30,000 new permanent residents with one year of work experience in essential occupations. Caregiver occupations, NOC 4411 and 4412, are considered eligible occupations under this new program.

In addition, IRCC will also open the doors to 20,000 healthcare workers and 40,000 international student graduates who are already living in Canada. In total, these temporary programs are expected to allow 90,000 foreign nationals to become Canadian permanent residents.

Do you live in Canada? Apply for PR under new pathways launching May 6!

 CIC News All Rights Reserved. Visit CanadaVisa.com to discover your Canadian immigration options.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)  Lou Barletta, the Trump-backing former congressman and immigration hawk who unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Senate, has taken a step toward possibly running for governor of Pennsylvania in 2022 and begun a political action committee to raise money.

Barletta told The Associated Press a month ago that he was considering running and would decide in the coming weeks on whether to seek the Republican nomination for governor.

Barletta has continued to discuss the possibility of running internally, with Republicans, and on Monday said in an interview, I am definitely very seriously considering it.

To help him in his decision-making, Barletta has forged another connection to Donald Trump, saying that he hired a newly formed political consulting firm that includes Bill Stepien, Trumps former campaign manager and White House political director.

The website for Barlettas new political action committee, Change PAC, lays out his views on a range of topics and on how they affect Pennsylvania. The PAC, he said, is not an announcement that he is running, but people across Pennsylvania have been encouraging me to get involved in statewide issues and the PAC gives me a platform to do it.

Barletta, 65, was a staunch and early supporter of Trump during the 2016 Republican presidential primary race from his perch in Congress in a northeastern Pennsylvania district where Trump made a particularly strong showing.

Barletta won the seat during 2010s Republican wave after rising to national prominence as the mayor of small-city Hazleton, where he tried to combat illegal immigration through tough municipal laws. His strategy was copied by dozens of other cities across the U.S., but his Hazleton ordinances were never enforced before the U.S. Supreme Court struck them down in 2014.

He appeared on stage at Trumps rallies, served on the executive committee of Trumps transition team and, in Congress, introduced a bill to fund the construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border in an effort to help Trump fulfill a key campaign promise.

Despite his close relationship with Trump, Barlettas was unable to make that support translate to the 2018 race for U.S. Senate and lost by 13 percentage points to the incumbent, Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey. After Barletta lost, he remained engaged with politics, getting involved with Trumps unsuccessful reelection campaign in Pennsylvania.

Still, if he runs, Barletta would likely be considered the front-runner in what could be a crowded GOP primary next spring.

Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, is constitutionally term-limited from serving a third term, leaving the governors office without an incumbent running for the first time since 2010.

Attorney General Josh Shapiro is widely expected to seek the Democratic nomination, and his success in two statewide contests and fundraising prowess have given pause to other Democrats thinking of running for the office.

On the Republican side, U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser  who succeeded Barletta in Congress and lives near Barletta  has said he is interested in running for governor, and the top federal prosecutor in Philadelphia appointed by Trump, William McSwain, has told Republican officials that he is seriously considering running for governor.

McSwain last month began Freedom PA, a political action committee to raise money.

Joe Gale, a Montgomery County commissioner, has said he is running, while freshman state Sen. Doug Mastriano from Franklin County and second-term state Sen. Dan Laughlin from Erie County have said they are considering running.

The name of former Lt. Gov. Jim Cawley, currently a vice president at Temple University, routinely comes up in Republican circles as a possible candidate, but Cawley himself has stayed quiet publicly about whether he will run.
Food service establishments, including bars, restaurants, food trucks, breweries, bakeries and wineries, are eligible for up to $10 million through funding made available by the American Rescue Plan. The United States Small Business Association released application information and guidelines on Monday for the funding that doesnt need to be repaid if protocols are followed.

The American Rescue Plan established the Restaurant Revitalization Fund to help restaurants and other food service-related businesses to remain open after economic hardships endured during the COVID-19 pandemic. The program will provide business with funding equal to their pandemic-related revenue loss up to $10 million per business and no more than $5 million per physical location.

Recipients are not required to repay the funding as long as funds are used for eligible uses no later than March 11, 2023. The uses include business mortgage expenses, rent payments, outdoor seating construction or purchasing masks and other safety equipment.

Heres everything business-owners need to know about the Restaurant Revitalization Fund and how to apply.

Who can apply?

Restaurants

Food stands, food trucks, food carts

Caterers

Bars, saloons, lounges, taverns

Snack and nonalcoholic beverage bars

Bakeries, which have onsite sales to the public that account at least 33% of gross receipts

Brewpubs, tasting rooms, taprooms, which have onsite sales to the public that account at least 33% of gross receipts

Breweries and/or microbreweries, which have onsite sales to the public that account at least 33% of gross receipts

Wineries and distilleries, which have onsite sales to the public that account at least 33% of gross receipts

Inns, which have onsite sales to the public that account at least 33% of gross receipts

Licensed facilities or premises of a beverage alcohol producer where the public may taste, sample, or purchase products

How to apply

Businesses can apply through a Small Business Association-recognized Point of Sale Restaurant Partner or directly online when the program launches within the next couple of weeks. The SBA will be establishing a web portal for all applications.

A sample application can be found here.

The application will require the following documents:

Verification for Tax Information: IRS Form 4506-T, completed and signed by the applicant. Applicants can complete this form online on the SBA platform to satisfy this requirement.

Gross Receipts Documentation, including any of the following documents to demonstrate gross receipts and, if applicable, eligible expenses: Business tax returns (IRS Form 1120 or IRS 1120-S); IRS Forms 1040 Schedule C; IRS Forms 1040 Schedule F; For a partnership: partnerships IRS Form 1065 (including K-1s); Bank statements; Externally or internally prepared financial statements such as Income Statements or Profit and Loss Statements -Point of sale report(s), including IRS Form 1099-K

Brewpubs, tasting rooms, taprooms, breweries, wineries, distilleries, bakeries and inns must provide documents that onsite sales accounted for at least 33% of gross receipts for 2019. For businesses that opened in 2020, the applicants original business model should have included at least 33% of gross receipts in onsite sales to the public.

When to apply

The Small Business Administration plans to launch the over the next two weeks. Before that the SBA will establish a seven-day pilot period for the application portal and will conduct extensive outreach and training.

The pilot period will be used to address technical issues ahead of the public launch. Participants in the pilot will be randomly selected from existing PPP borrowers in priority groups and will not receive funds until the application portal is open to the public.

After an official launch date is announced, the first 21 days of the program will be dedicated to priority businesses. Following the 21-day period, all eligible applicants are encouraged to submit applications.

Priority businesses are defined as businesses that are at least 51% owned by one or more individuals who are women, veterans or socially and economically disadvantaged. The SBA defines socially disadvantaged as individuals who have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice or cultural bias.

The SBA defines economically disadvantaged as individuals whose ability to compete in the free enterprise system has been impaired due to diminished capital and credit opportunities as compared to others in the same business area who are not socially disadvantaged.

How much funding is available?

The Restaurant Revitalization Fund includes $28.6 billion in funding.

The program includes $5 billion for applicants with 2019 gross receipts of not more than $500,000. An additional $4 billion is set aside for applicants with 2019 gross receipts from $500,001 to $1,500,000. Another $500 million is set aside for applicants with 2019 gross receipts of not more than $50,000.

Funding from the program may not exceed $10 million total and $5 million per location. The minimum award is $1,000.

For applicants open prior to Jan. 1, 2019, the payment calculation is 2019 gross receipts minus 2020 gross receipts minus Paycheck Protection Program loan amounts.

For businesses that operated only partially in 2019, the payment calculation is the average 2019 monthly gross receipts multiplied by 12, then subtract 2020 gross receipts and PPP loan amounts.

For businesses that began operation between Jan. 1, 2020 and March 10, 2021 or applicants that have not yet opened but have incurred eligible expenses, the calculation is the amount spent on eligible expenses between Feb. 15, 2020 and March 11, 2021 minus 2020 gross receipts minus PPP loan amounts.

Allowable uses for funds

If used properly, the funds from the Restaurant Revitalization Fund do not need to be repaid.

If the funding is used for the following business expenses, the money in essence is a grant.

Business payroll costs, including sick leave

Payments on any business mortgage obligation

Business rent payments (this does not include prepayment of rent)

Business debt service, both principal and interest (this does not include any prepayment of principal or interest)

Business utility payments

Business maintenance expenses

Construction of outdoor seating

Business supplies including protective equipment and cleaning materials

Business food and beverage expenses including raw materials

Covered supplier costs

Business operating expenses

Related Content:
Judicial Watch just released a report showing how the U.S. FDA purchased aborted babies for unethical scientific experiments dating back to 2012.

A revelatory report was released by the legal accountability group Judicial Watch last week, recounting how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had procured aborted babies from the California-based Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR), which has been previously under fire for its long-standing involvement in fetal tissue trafficking.

Emails between FDA employees and ABR representatives have proven that the U.S. agency had funded the ABR that supplied them with aborted fetuses from 2012 to 2018.

NBC News reported in 2018 that the Trump administration had terminated the contract between the U.S. FDA and ABR over concerns that the contracts were "unlawful." The Health and Human Services Department (HHS) said in a statement that it "was not sufficiently assured that the contract included the appropriate protections applicable to fetal tissue research or met all other procurement requirements."

"As a result, that contract has been terminated, and HHS is now conducting an audit of all acquisitions involving human fetal tissue to ensure conformity with procurement and human fetal tissue research laws and regulations," the HHS said in a statement.

However, ABR isn't stopping. It is one of the oldest fetal tissue procurement firms after all, earning millions of dollars on the sale of aborted babies' body parts such as lungs, livers, eyeballs, brains, and more.

According to The Federalist, the uncovered emails between U.S. government officials from the FDA and ABR employees showed that ABR earned $12,000 upfront per aborted baby, some of which could have survived out of the womb as premature children. These aborted babies were at the gestational age of 16 to 24 weeks.

The body part that was most in demand? Intact thymuses and livers that were shipped "fresh and on wet ice." What were these body parts used for? These were used "to 'humanize' mice and test biologic drugs in scientific experiments," The Federalist noted.

Moreover, it was found that U.S. government employees under the FDA, including doctors, often request that tissue samples from aborted babies would be taken from preferrably a male fetus, but "undetermined sex or female is better than no tissue." In one email, an ABR employee even complained about how there's "no way of telling" a fetus' gender because they "only check external genitalia."

In 2019, Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit against the HHS, which handles the FDA. Just this March, the federal court ordered HHS to release the records accounting for the purchased organs of aborted babies as it believed there was "reason to question" the transaction had indeed violated federal law.

In related news, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently announced the resumption of taxpayer funding for research that uses fetal tissue from aborted babies. This is worrisome, especially with ABR facilitating the buying and trafficking of aborted baby parts.

As per PRNewswire, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins was one of the first to oppose such legislation, calling out HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra for being a "fanatical advocate for abortion."

Family Research Council's Connor Semelsberger agreed, arguing, "Using body parts from aborted babies to conduct research is a barbaric practice that should be unthinkable. Sadly, President Biden is instead promoting it. Proponents of aborted fetal tissue research willingly compromise ethics in the name of 'science.' However, the ends do not always justify the means."
The lawsuit alleges that Boeings mismanagement caused the delays, not GDCs actions. The Fort Worth-based subcontractor contends that Boeing failed in its contractual obligations to the subcontractors, including failing to pay what GDC was due for its work. It also alleges that Boeing has damaged GDCs reputation with the Pentagon.
gettyimagesbank



Gov't vows to crack down on virtual money-related illegal transactions



By Anna J. Park



The government said Monday that it will crack down on any illegal transactions involving cryptocurrencies, such as money laundering and fraud, by strengthening its surveillance of digital assets from this month until June.



The move comes as a cryptocurrency craze has fueled speculation here, with retail investors scrambling for virtual money, which has greatly outperformed stock markets over the past few months, amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.



According to the Office for Government Policy Coordination (OPC), Monday, related ministries and agencies, including the finance ministry, the Financial Services Commission (FSC), police and the Fair Trade Commission (FTC), held a vice-ministerial meeting Friday as part of the pan-governmental surveillance initiative.



The FSC said it will intensify its monitoring of cryptocurrency transfers, while the Korea Financial Intelligence Unit (KoFIU) will analyze all suspicious transactions and report them to the tax agency or police.



The latter will carry out a crackdown on digital coin scams, account hacking and financial crimes involving digital assets.



The FTC will examine local cryptocurrency businesses' terms and conditions of use, and order the rectification of any irregularities. The Korea Communications Commission (KCC), meanwhile, will prevent any illegal online distribution of sales schemes, and disinformation regarding cryptocurrencies.



"As cryptocurrency trading is more of a speculative deal rather than an investment, people need to judge them cautiously with the utmost responsibility," said OPC Minister Koo Yun-cheol, calling for extra caution on the part of investors, as there exist various illegal scams surrounding digital coin investments.



Vowing to closely monitor the local cryptocurrency market, the government also stressed that it will continue to work on methods to collect taxes from such investments starting next January.



Frenzy in the local cryptocurrency market



The decision to strengthen government control over cryptocurrencies comes as the domestic market has recently showed signs of overheating.



This is not only limited to Korea, but has become a global phenomenon over the past year, due to excessive liquidity flowing into the market because of central banks' measures to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.




Restaurants in East Greenwich took full advantage of the opportunity to expand outdoor dining over the summer. Now, many restaurants hope to keep the expanded seating option.
WASHINGTON - Vice President Kamala Harris will deliver her first major speech on the economy on Monday in North Carolina as she continues her push to tout the Biden administration's $2 trillion infrastructure plan.

In doing so, she is highlighting at least one piece of the infrastructure plan stemming directly from a 2019 bill she introduced as a senator from California to electrify the nation's school buses, which make up 90% of the nation's bus fleet, according to three senior administration officials.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan, the former head of North Carolina's environmental agency, will be accompanying Harris in the state. The EPA, along with the Department of Energy, will be key to the administration's broader $174 billion push for electric vehicles.

Harris will visit the Thomas Built Buses manufacturing plant in High Point, N.C., to discuss the $20 billion investment being proposed by the administration to convert the entire U.S. fleet of gasoline- and diesel-powered school buses to electric vehicles.

The visit will be preceded by a Harris speech at the Center for Advanced Manufacturing at Guilford Technical Community College highlighting the administration's work during its first 90 days and its goal of creating more jobs than any other White House in history.

The infrastructure package "will be the largest jobs investment our country has made since World War II," Harris will say, according to excerpts of her speech provided to The Washington Post.

"And it's not just about jobs. It's about good jobs. . . . At a good job, you shouldn't have to worry about your safety at work. At a good job, you shouldn't have to go into debt for a diploma that promises a decent paycheck," Harris plans to say.

Harris's appearance on the campus of the technical school is also designed to underscore the training required for the new manufacturing jobs the administration hopes to create if the infrastructure plan is approved by Congress.

Although Harris has yet to explicitly highlight as much, her policy footprint threads through the far-reaching infrastructure proposal the administration touts as the most significant federal jobs investment since World War II. As a senator, Harris co-sponsored several of the bills and investments incorporated into Biden's infrastructure effort, including the plan's proposed $111 billion investment in water infrastructure and $100 billion investment in high-speed broadband infrastructure.

The administration's push to electrify the nation's school bus fleet is derived directly from Harris's original bill, according to senior administration officials. It goes further in trying to transition school buses - which mostly run on diesel fuel and make up 90% of transit buses in the United States.

The measure will prioritize transitioning school buses in districts serving the most students on free and reduced lunches and those with high local air pollution; diesel engines are a major source of harmful pollutants and may contribute to respiratory illnesses in children. A 2001 study found that "a child riding inside of a diesel school bus may be exposed to as much as four times the level of toxic diesel exhaust as someone riding in a car ahead of it."

The proposal includes the expense of purchasing the electric buses; funds for retraining workers and implementing the necessary charging infrastructure; and broader technical assistance for districts to adjust for things such as route planning because fuel stops would no longer be required. The proposal would also increase the resiliency of local electric grids, a senior administration officials said, because buses only operate in the mornings and in the afternoons and can be used as grid assets at other times.

While the endeavor is ambitious, the transition is already happening in some places. Highland Electric Transportation purchased and deployed more than 300 electric school buses from the company for Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland this year - the largest single procurement of electric school buses in the country.

"One of the things that the Americans Jobs Plan does is find some of the innovative things that have worked on the ground and in state and local governments - and try and see what we can amplify and expand for the federal government," a senior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of the plan.

That administration official did not have a specific estimate for how many jobs electrifying school buses would create, and it's unclear how many jobs the overall infrastructure plan would offer.

Republicans have signaled support for increasing spending on electric vehicle infrastructure, but Harris and the president still face a long, uphill battle in getting the infrastructure bill to the president's desk - let alone winning over any GOP lawmakers.

Although she's still defining her role as Biden's No. 2, Harris is playing a key role in selling the infrastructure package and will spend much of the spring traveling the country to tout various parts of it, some of them things she's previously championed as a senator.

"The way a vice president can have impact is when they define ideas - it's a measure of her influence in a less obvious way," said Joel Goldstein, a vice-presidential scholar and law professor at Saint Louis University's law school. "And of course, one of the things that's so tricky about the vice presidency is so often that what you do and contribute isn't something that people want to flag."

She has been chosen to slow the rush of migrants to the southern border. She also crisscrossed the country to discuss the administration's $1.9 trillion stimulus package, and held meetings with lawmakers and small businesses in the run-up to its passage.

Harris intends to play a similar role with the infrastructure plan, according to senior administration officials: She visited a water treatment facility in Oakland, Calif., last month to promote the administration's goal of replacing 100% of the nation's lead pipes and service lines to deliver clean drinking water and reduce lead exposure to schools, homes and child-care facilities.

The provision is reminiscent of Harris's 2019 Water Justice Act, which called for $250 billion in federal spending on access to safe and affordable drinking water by replacing lead-containing services lines.

The infrastructure plan's broadband investment proposal also mirrors a bill Harris co-sponsored in the Senate that would invest $100 billion in building high-speed broadband and infrastructure in underserved and unserved communities.
WEAVERVILLE, Calif.  Trinity County Public Health Branch is offering to pay its residents to get their COVID-19 vaccine.

Health officials said they will give out $25 gift cards to all Trinity County residents at the time of vaccination at any TCPHB vaccine clinics, beginning on April 23. The goal is to increase county vaccination rates in remote areas and in communities that are underserved.

TCPHB will hold a COVID-19 vaccine clinic at the Trinity County Fair Grounds Dining Hall, 6000 CA-3 Hayfork CA on April 23, 2021, from 10 a.m. to noon. The Moderna vaccine will be provided at the clinic.

Once the hold on Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine is lifted, TCPHB said it will resume administration of the vaccine. If the hold is lifted on J&J vaccine before the April 23 clinic, TCPHB said it will be providing both J&J and Moderna (first and second doses) vaccine.

Click here to register for the COVID-19 vaccine or call the California COVID-19 Hotline at 1-833-422-4255 from Monday through Friday, between 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. and Saturday through Sunday at 8 a.m. 5 p.m. for assistance.
People embrace after learning that their loved one was safe after a mass casualty shooting at the FedEx facility in Indianapolis on April 16, 2021.

REUTERS
National Liberal Party (PNL) Deputy Chairman Rares Bogdan declared, on Monday, before the PNL leadership meeting, that the tensions in the governmental coalition that emerged after the revocation of Vlad Voiculescu as Minister of Health must "end very fast", stating that "it doesn't look good at all in Brussels, it doesn't look good at all in front of Romania's citizens", and there are multiple challenges generated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to him, Romania is under the NATO security umbrella and in a priority partnership with the USA and it is currently in an "extraordinary position" in Europe.

"We have no reason to have such interruptions, such impeded issues, which, I repeat, are detrimental in terms of economic life, in terms of citizen confidence and, of course, we are still in the third wave, we are in full of COVID-19 pandemic, I do not think that this is what our citizens expect from us," said Rares Bogdan.

Asked if the prime minister would offer guarantees to his coalition colleagues that he would no longer dismiss ministers without the consent of the governing partners, Rares Bogdan replied the Constitution should be amended to that end.

"Well, this is the prime minister's prerogative, he guarantees the policies and Florin Citu cannot be required, when not satisfied with a minister in terms of the enforcement of governmental policies and the implementation of the governing program, not to be able to demand the minister's change or not to proceed to the latter's replacement," explained the PNL deputy chairman.

He added that last week, at the meeting of the governing coalition, there was a consultation on changes in Health.

President Klaus Iohannis is "a president who does not exceed his constitutional powers", he replied, when asked about the involvement of the head of state in these tensions within the coalition and specified that the PNL representatives did not meet with President Iohannis during this period.

Rares Bogdan also declared that the Liberals are not giving in and will not remove Prime Minister Florin Citu from his position and are expecting USR PLUS to appoint a new Minister of Health, mentioning that he guarantees that by Tuesday evening the situation in the coalition will have ended and things will move ahead in the same formula. He added that the Liberals will not give up any ministry in addition to the December negotiations.

Liberal Rares Bogdan ruled out the formation of a minority government because, he said, "A minority government cannot make reforms. A minority government cannot lead Romania forward, cannot play on economic markets and cannot regain the trust of its partners and cannot create jobs".
Sri Lanka: Government dismisses allegations against Port City bill

April 19,2021 | Source: News First

The government has dismissed allegations levelled against the Colombo Port City Economic Commission Bill, co-cabinet spokesperson Keheliya Rambukwella said. The Attorney General has officially informed us that the bill falls in line with the countrys constitution, Rambukwella noted. He pointed out that the Port City is a mechanism to attract investments as a solution, to deal with issues concerning foreign currency revenue and the depreciation of the rupee. State Minister Ajith Nivard Cabraal identified Port City as a project that would create 83,000 jobs and serve as a turning point for the countrys progress. They say that the police will have no control over this. If an offence even such as pickpocketing takes place in Port City, it is our police that will carry out investigations, state minister.
James Nesbitt is a surprise addition to Line Of Duty. (David M Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images for Walpole)

James Nesbitt has admitted he faked outrage at being snubbed for Line Of Duty so that he could keep his secret role a surprise.

The Cold Feet star was a shock addition to the cast in episode five of the police drama's sixth series, when DI Steve Arnott (Martin Compston) looked up detective Marcus Thurwell's police record, showing Nesbitt pictured as the character.

Read more: Line Of Duty quiz  test your knowledge

As well as pretending to be angry about missing out on a role in the hit series, Nesbitt also lied to fans that he was taking part in a catalogue shoot while filming scenes of his character supposedly in Spain.

This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it.

The Sun reported that Nesbitt said: "Ive kept it to myself for over a year and couldnt even tell my closest friends or family.

Im still sworn to secrecy about Marcus Thurwell, but as ever with Line Of Duty, there will be a few surprises along the way.

The hit show's creator Jed Mercurio said he and Nesbitt had kept the plot development between the two of them and that he warned his new star that his role would involve two conditions  wearing shorts, and "hed have to lie about it".

James Nesbitt starred in another police drama in Belfast, Bloodlands, giving him a cover story. (HTM Television /iStock/Steffan Hill)

Northern Irish actor Nesbitt recently starred in Bloodlands, which was produced by Mercurio, and said that both shows filming in Belfast had provided the perfect cover for him.

He threw reporters off the scent during filming telling Radio Times in February this year: "Even though Line Of Duty had been shot here for years I was never considered for it, which has always slightly galled me."

As dodgy detective Marcus Thurwell was introduced to the police procedural, surveillance photos of the character apparently enjoying his retirement in Spain while wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt were shown.

This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it.

The scenes were actually filmed at Belfast Marina, and Mercurio admitted: "I think people thought Jimmy was shooting an advert. I told passers-by he was modelling for a catalogue."

Nesbitt's character features in a new part of the storyline connected to an old case about the murder of a character called Lawrence Christopher, which his team worked on and which was investigated for police systemic racism.

Story continues

Thurwell and the officers he worked with  who included Ian Buckles and Philip Osborne  also appear to be connected to the OCG, who are blackmailing members of the police over their dodgy dealings.

Watch: Martin Compston shares Line Of Duty pranks with Vicky McClure
A team of researchers at the University of Oxford has announced the launch of a human challenge trial under which people who have fought off the Covid-19 will be re-exposed to it in order to develop more effective vaccines against the virus.

For this trial, the researchers are looking for 64 previously infected Covid-19 individuals between the age group 18 -30 years. The volunteers will be first reinfected with the original strain from Wuhan, China and will be monitored for a year, according to a report in cnbc.com.

With this, the researchers from the UK university will examine what types of immune systems could prevent people from becoming reinfected from Covid-19. They will also investigate how the immune system reacts to the virus a second time. Additionally, the study will also determine how much virus, on average, it takes to infect someone who's had the virus earlier.

The Oxford University's trial will take place in two phases. The first phase is scheduled to take place this month and the second phase is due to start during the summers.

For the phase-1 trial, the participants will undergo CT scans of the lungs and MRI scans of the heart. Thereafter, the researchers will examine the participants in a quarantine unit for a minimum of 17 days. The trial participants will only be discharged if they are no longer infected and at risk of spreading the disease.

On the other hand, the second phase of the trial will explore two different areas. According to Helen McShane, chief investigator of the study and professor of vaccinology at the Department of Paediatrics, University of Oxford, "First, we will define very carefully the baseline immune response in the volunteers, before we infect them. We will then infect them with the dose of virus chosen from the first study and measure how much virus we can detect after infection".

"Second, we will measure the immune response at several time points after infection so we can understand what immune response is generated by the virus," she added.

During the trial, participants who develop Covid-19 symptoms will be treated with an antibody drug from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc, authorised by US regulators, Oxford said. The research will last for about a year, including a minimum of eight follow-up appointments after being discharged.

Meanwhile, critics of the human challenge trials have pointed out the ethical dangers of infecting people without being sure of its long-term consequences. But the UK university has assured that all those enrolled will be completely fit, healthy, and fully recovered from their first Covid infection.

Also read: Delhi under complete lockdown for six days, from tonight till April 26

Also read: India touches another grim milestone at 2.73 lakh new COVID-19 cases, 1,619 deaths
Most of the seniors like to come here because of the way we treat them, with love and respect, Baafour said. Some of these seniors dont have family, so when they come here, they consider us their family. A few have said their own kids dont reach out to them. God uses us to fulfill that need.
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Northerners doing business in Umuchieze Cattle Market, Umunneochi Local Government Area of Abia State, have refuted the allegation that they were habouring bandits, kidnappers, and armed robbers.

The spokesperson of the group, Buba Kedemure, who addressed reporters at the market on Monday, said they were deeply worried by the allegation.

He said that it was alleged that criminals were authorised by the group, to plan and attack their victims within and outside the state.

Mr Kedemure said the allegation was an attempt by some disgruntled people within and outside the cattle market to incite the host communities and the government against them.

The market, he said, was established more than 16 years ago and had become a unifying factor between the north and south.

He said some people were not happy with the peaceful co-existence between the community and the host communities.

Mr Kedemure said the group had written to the commissioner of police and the director of State Security Service in Abia State in January to inform them about the security challenges in the market.

He called on the people of the state to disregard the allegation, saying we are law-abiding citizens who are engaged in legitimate business.

The spokesperson urged the security agencies to redouble efforts in protecting lives and property, as well as visit the market to see things for themselves.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the group, Annayim Umar, said they had been preaching peace, unity and brotherliness and would not relent in ensuring that there was peace and order in the market.

Abia, like other states in Nigerias South-east, has been grappling with security challenges, including kidnapping for ransom.

The state government has imposed curfew in some major cities as one of the measures to check insecurity in the state.

(NAN)
Russia has reportedly asked Slovakia to accept another delivery of Sputnik V

Meanwhile, the possibility to disclose the contract for the purchase of the Russian vaccine will be subject to legal analysis.

The first batch of Sputnik V vaccines arrived in Slovakia on March 1. (Source: TASR)

Font size: A - | A +

Russia has asked Slovakia to accept another delivery of Sputnik V vaccines. The country has another shipment of vaccines ready, said Defence Minister Jaroslav Nad (OLaNO) after the April 14 cabinet session.

Sputnik V could have been rolling out in Slovakia for weeks Read more

However, the state has not accepted the delivery yet due to the current situation related to the evaluation of the first batch of the vaccine by the State Institute for Drug Control (SUKL), he added, as reported by the SITA newswire.

The Defence Ministry will not be the first choice when discussing the potential transport of the Russian vaccine, the minister continued, adding that his department was not originally supposed to secure the transport of the first batch, delivered in early March, either. Still, as the country was unable to secure the transport in a different way, the vaccines were eventually brought on board an army plane, Nad explained.

Manual for foreign trips

Meanwhile, the cabinet discussed at its session the recent visit of Finance Minister Igor Matovic (OLaNO) to Russia and Hungary, at which he discussed the vaccine, as well as the evaluation of the vaccine provided by SUKL.

Regarding the visits, criticised by some former and active diplomats earlier this week, Foreign Affairs Minister Ivan Korcok (SaS nominee) wants to submit a manual for the preparation and approval of the foreign trips of cabinet members for the next cabinet session.

Heger: The decision to make Matovic discuss Sputnik V was pragmatic Read more

Matovic did not notify the cabinet of either visit. The negotiations in Budapest were not attended by a representative of the Slovak Embassy to Hungary either.

Korcok reiterated his reservations to the visit while rejecting the claims that make him look like an enemy of Hungary. He asked the cabinet members to respect the rules. He has also asked them to trust the Slovak diplomatic service, its experiences and qualities, as reported by the TASR newswire.

In the future, only Health Minister Vladimir Lengvarsky (OLaNO nominee) should negotiate about vaccines in the future, as he told journalists.

Contract to be checked

Meanwhile, the possibility to disclose the contract for the purchase of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine by Slovakia will be subject to legal analysis, Lengvarsky said. The agreement could not be published because of a clause that requires the consent of the second contract party, he added.

Justice Minister Maria Kolikova (Za Ludi) and Deputy PM for Legislation Stefan Holy (Sme Rodina) are expected to help with the analysis, SITA reported.

The agreement was already delivered to President Zuzana Caputova, who wanted to learn more about its contents. Recently, the Sme daily looked into the parts of the Hungarian contract that were made public. The 16-page document is very general and vague and claims that Russia does not bear any responsibility for the vaccine.

Hungarian contract on Sputnik V shows that Russia bears no responsibility Read more

Lengvarsky also said that the shipment of the Russian vaccines delivered to Slovakia that are to be checked by Hungary is ready, awaiting his signature. The ministry will comment on the further use of the vaccines once they receive the test results, he added.

He stressed that he will approve its use only if its safety is confirmed.

The minister also expects that the European Medicines Agency will approve the registration of Sputnik V soon, as reported by TASR.

14. Apr 2021 at 17:39 | Compiled by Spectator staff
A report prepared by the Los Angeles Police Department found that hate crimes against Asian Americans in LA more than doubled compared to past years.



Significant increase: The analysis, submitted to the Police Commission last week, noted there were 15 documented cases of hate crimes against the Asian American and Pacific Islander community in 2020 compared to seven in 2019 and nine in 2018, reports the Los Angeles Times.



Out of the 15, nine of them were classified as battery and five were either criminal threats or aggravated assault.

One incident was a bomb threat made in an email to the Japanese American National Museum.

The total number accounted for 4.2% of 355 total hate crimes reported and 8.1% of all hate crimes related to race in 2020.

In addition to the crimes, the 2020 figures also showed nine hate incidents against Asian Americans, accounting for 4.5% of 199 total hate incidents reported and 8% of all hate incidents related to race.



Documenting the rise: The LAPD cited increasing hostility towards the Chinese community in its report.



It noted that offenders in six of the 24 hate crimes and incidents made references to COVID-19 while anti-Chinese rhetoric was used in seven other cases.

Last month, two motions were introduced by members of the Los Angeles City Council to address the ongoing rise in anti-Asian incidents, NextShark previously reported.

The first motion called for the LAPD to report data on the increasing crimes while the second motion directed the chief legislative analyst and other departments to report recommendations for strengthening the citys monitoring and mitigation of harassment in public spaces.



Still unresolved: Many of the 2020 cases remain unsolved. The findings showed authorities have yet to identify suspects in nine of these anti-Asian hate crimes.



In two of the cases, the local attorneys office declined to file charges reportedly due to insufficient evidence. One case remains under review.

The office also did not file hate crime enhancements against a suspect who is facing other charges.

Two of the cases did not go through as the victim and parents of a minor victim decided not to file charges.



Feature Image via Fox 11 Los Angeles

Story continues

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Healthy young adults who have previously contracted Covid-19 will be recruited to take part in a new human challenge trial to study how the bodys immune system reacts to the deadly coronavirus, for a better understanding to protect against the virus and also for more accurate tests.

The Oxford University-led human challenge trial will look at what kind of immune response can stop people from becoming re-infected and also how the immune system reacts second time round.

People aged between 18 and 30 who have previously been naturally infected will be recruited and re-exposed to the virus in a safe, controlled environment and paid around 5,000 pounds to be quarantined for 17 days at a hospital.

Challenge studies tell us things that other studies cannot because, unlike natural infection, they are tightly controlled. When we re-infect these participants, we will know exactly how their immune system has reacted to the first Covid infection, exactly when the second infection occurs, and exactly how much virus they got, said Helen McShane,

Professor of Vaccinology at the Department of Paediatrics, University of Oxford and Chief Investigator on the study.

The study will take place in two phases with different participants in each phase.

The first phase, which will start this month, will establish the lowest dose of virus which, in approximately 50 per cent of people who have previously been naturally infected, can take hold and start replicating but produce little or no symptoms.

In the second phase of the study, expected to start later this year, all participants will be infected with the standardised dose of virus which was established in phase one. Prof. McShane said her team will begin with defining very carefully the baseline immune response in the volunteers, before infecting them.

Also Read | UK PM Boris Johnson cancels trip to India due to coronavirus worries

They will then infect them with the dose of virus chosen from the first study and measure how much virus we can detect after infection.

They will then be able to understand what kind of immune responses protect against re-infection.

They will also measure the immune response at several time points after infection to understand what immune response is generated by the virus.

A challenge study allows us to make these measurements very precisely because we know exactly when someone is infected. The information from this work will allow us to design better vaccines and treatments, and also to understand if people are protected after having Covid, and for how long, said McShane, adding that it would also help with designing tests that can more accurately predict whether people are protected.

For phase one, up to 64 healthy participants between the ages of 18 and 30 who have previously been naturally infected with Covid-19 will be re-exposed to the virus in carefully controlled conditions.

The virus used in the study will be the original strain from Wuhan, China.

The participants will be quarantined in a specially designed hospital suite for a minimum of 17 days under the care of the research team.

They will undergo numerous medical tests including CT scans of the lungs and MRI scans of the heart.

The risks to participants will be minimised by making sure that those who take part are completely fit and well and have completely recovered from their first infection with Covid, the researchers said.

Any participants, recruited on a voluntary basis, who develop any symptoms will be given medical treatment with the Regeneron monoclonal antibody treatment.

They will only be discharged from the quarantine unit when they are no longer infected and not at risk of infecting others. The full length of the study will be 12 months, including a minimum of eight follow-up appointments after discharge.

The research team explained that a human challenge trial in medical research is a carefully controlled study that involves purposefully infecting a subject with a pathogen or bug, in order to study the effects of that infection.

There are still many unknowns surrounding this virus and human infections studies can enable us to learn a lot about Covid-19. This study has the potential to transform our understanding by providing high-quality data on how our immune system responds to a second infection with this virus, said Shobana Balasingam, Vaccines Senior Research Advisor at Wellcome Trust, the funders behind the trial.

The findings could have important implications for how we handle Covid-19 in the future, and inform not just vaccine development but also research into the range of effective treatments that are also urgently needed. Keeping up the pace of scientific research and development, through crucial studies such as this remain the only way we will truly get ahead of this pandemic and bring it under control, she said.
DOWNERS GROVE, Ill., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Dover (NYSE: DOV) announced today that it has completed the acquisition of AvaLAN Wireless Systems Incorporated ("AvaLAN"). AvaLAN is a leading provider of highly-secure wireless and wired Ethernet solutions, along with managed routers, software-as-a-service and cloud-based services that enable operators to securely connect various parts of the site infrastructure and fully utilize modern data-enabled operational, payment and customer engagement technologies. AvaLAN is now part of the Dover Fueling Solutions ("DFS") operating unit within Dover's Fueling Solutions segment.



Located in Huntsville, Alabama, AvaLAN focuses on solving data connectivity challenges by securely connecting difficult-to-reach network edge devices. AvaLAN's solutions solve customers' data connectivity challenges at the network's edge for large retail, enterprise and government customers, and supplies secure, managed, PCI-compliant and easy-to-configure wireless Ethernet solutions. The company is a pioneer in the development of wireless solutions for the retail fueling industry. Wireless solutions are increasingly preferred by operators due to easier deployment compared to wired solutions, as well as streamlined upgrading and maintenance.



AvaLAN positions DFS to capitalize on long-term digitization trends in the fuel retail industry, as its offerings enable more parts of the retail site to be connected, while managed separately, and increase the connection bandwidth allowing for faster data transmission and enhanced functionality of site devices.



DFS President, David Crouse, stated, "Through this acquisition, we are excited to add industry-leading network and infrastructure solutions to our portfolio, especially as secure data transfer and communication becomes a centerpiece in our end-to-end portfolio of forecourt solutions. We estimate 90% of all gas stations in the U.S. will need to invest in communication and network infrastructure in the near future. Offering security software and corresponding hardware adapted for the fuel retail market builds on our record of innovation and product leadership to create a comprehensive suite of forecourt solutions as we further advance our long-term strategy of growing the digitally-enabled value streams in our retail fueling business."

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

About Dover:

Dover is a diversified global manufacturer and solutions provider with annual revenue of approximately $7 billion. We deliver innovative equipment and components, consumable supplies, aftermarket parts, software and digital solutions, and support services through five operating segments: Engineered Products, Fueling Solutions, Imaging & Identification, Pumps & Process Solutions and Refrigeration & Food Equipment. Dover combines global scale, operational agility, world-class engineering capability and customer intimacy to lead the markets we serve. Recognized for our entrepreneurial approach for over 60 years, our team of approximately 24,000 employees takes an ownership mindset, collaborating with customers to redefine what's possible. Headquartered in Downers Grove, Illinois, Dover trades on the New York Stock Exchange under "DOV." Additional information is available at www.dovercorporation.com.

Forward-Looking Statements:

This press release contains "forward-looking" statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended. All statements in this document other than statements of historical fact are statements that are, or could be deemed, "forward-looking" statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to numerous important risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors, some of which are beyond the Company's control. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations include, among other things, the impacts of COVID-19, or other future pandemics, on the global economy and on our customers, suppliers, employees, business and cash flows, other general economic conditions and conditions in the particular markets in which we operate, changes in customer demand and capital spending, competitive factors and pricing pressures, our ability to develop and launch new products in a cost-effective manner, and our ability to realize synergies from newly acquired businesses. For details on the risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements that may be contained herein, we refer you to the documents we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020, and any subsequently filed Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and Current Reports on Form 8-K. These documents are available from the SEC, and on our website, www.dovercorporation.com. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Investor Contact: Media Contact: Andrey Galiuk Adrian Sakowicz Vice President  Corporate Development Vice President  Communications and Investor Relations (630) 743-5039 (630) 743-5131 [email protected] [email protected]



SOURCE Dover

Related Links

http://www.dovercorporation.com


When President Joe Biden convenes a virtual on Thursday, he faces a vexing task: how to put forward a nonbinding but symbolic goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that will have a tangible impact not only on efforts in the US but throughout the world.

The emissions target, eagerly awaited by all sides of the climate debate, will signal how aggressively Biden wants to move on climate change, a divisive and expensive issue that has riled Republicans to complain about job-killing government overreach even as some on the left worry Biden has not gone far enough to address a profound threat to the planet.

The climate crisis poses a complex political challenge for Biden, since the problem is harder to see and far more difficult to produce measurable results on than either the pandemic relief package or the infrastructure bill.

The target Biden chooses is setting the tone for the level of ambition and the pace of emission reductions over the next decade,? said Kate Larsen, a former White House adviser who helped develop President Barack Obama's climate action plan.

The number has to be achievable by 2030 but aggressive enough to satisfy scientists and advocates who call the coming decade a crucial, make-or-break moment for slowing climate change, Larsen and other experts said.

Scientists, environmental groups and even business leaders are calling on Biden to set a target that would cut US greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.

The 50 per cent target, which most experts consider a likely outcome of intense deliberations underway at the White House, would nearly double the nation's previous commitment and require dramatic changes in the power and transportation sectors, including significant increases in renewable energy such as wind and solar power and steep cuts in emissions from fossil fuels such as coal and oil.

Anything short of that goal could undermine Biden's promise to prevent temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, experts say, while likely stirring up sharp criticism from international allies and Biden's own supporters



The target is significant, not just as a visible goal for the US to achieve after four years of climate inaction under President Donald Trump, but also for leveraging other countries,'' Larsen said.

That helps domestically in the battle that comes after, which is implementing policies to achieve that target. We can make a better case politically at home if other countries are acting at the same level of ambition as the US?



The 2030 goal, known as a Nationally Determined Contribution, or NDC, is a key part of the Paris climate agreement, which Biden rejoined on his first day in office. It's also an important marker as Biden moves toward his ultimate goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Clearly the science demands at least 50% in reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, said Jake Schmidt, a climate expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a leading environmental group.

The 50% target is ambitious, but it is achievable,'' he said in an interview. It's also a good climate message, he said: People know what 50% means it's half.''



Whatever target Biden picks, the itself proves the U.S. is back in rejoining the international effort? to address climate change, said Larsen, now a director at the Rhodium Group, an independent research firm.

The summit is the starting gun for climate diplomacy after a four-year hiatus under Trump, she said. John Kerry, Biden's climate envoy, has been pressing global leaders in person and online ahead of the summit for commitments and alliances on climate efforts.

Nathaniel Keohane, another former Obama White House adviser and now a vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund, said experts have coalesced around the need to reduce emissions by at least 50 per cent by 2030.

The number has to start with 5, he said, adding, We've done the math. We need at least 50%.''



The 2030 target is just one in a sometimes overlapping set of goals that Biden has outlined on climate. He also has said he expects to adopt a clean energy standard that would make electricity carbon-free by 2035, along with the wider goal of net-zero carbon emissions economy-wide by 2050.

Biden's climate adviser, Gina McCarthy, acknowledged that the sheer volume of numbers can be confusing. At a forum last week, she and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said climate activists should focus on actions in the next decade.

Let's stop talking about 2050,'' said McCarthy, who is leading White House efforts to develop U.S. climate commitments for 2030.

Bloomberg, 79, was even more blunt: 2050 is a good number for people who give speeches, but I don't know anyone giving those speeches who's going to be alive in 2050."



Some Republican lawmakers call the focus on reducing US emissions counter-productive, saying Biden's plan would raise energy costs and kill American jobs while allowing Russia, China and other countries to increase greenhouse gas emissions.

The Biden administration will set punishing targets for the United States, while our adversaries keep the status quo. That won't solve climate change,'' said Sen. Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the top Republican on the Senate Energy Committee.

(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.)
ONEONTA, N.Y. -- A number of Oneonta residents protested downtown following the officer-involved shooting on April 6, when Oneonta Police Sgt. Ralph Pajerski shot 23-year-old Tyler Green on his front lawn. Green had stabbed his girlfriend in the leg and caused her to drop their 2-year-old child, and lunged at the child as the fatal shots were fired.

Protesters called for OPD to release the body camera footage from the shooting, and asserted that the use of force against Green was unnecessary, even if he was guilty of abusing his girlfriend.

"We don't want to stick up for Mr. Green," said protest organizer Eric Hanss. "What we're hoping is to prevent this kind of situation in the future." Hanss and his fellow protesters called for deescalation to be the foremost method used in these situations.

This came at a contentious period for police relations, following the killing of 13-year-old Adam Toledo by Chicago police. It also follows the death of 20-year-old Daunte Wright at a traffic stop in Minnesota after an officer apparently shot him by mistake, thinking she had pulled out her taser. All while former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is standing trial for second degree murder in the death of George Floyd.
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The Governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, on Monday, gave an honorary award to Sunday Erhabor, the assistant superintendent of police, who maintained professionalism despite being assaulted by civilians.

The award ceremony held on Monday, at the governors office, Ikeja Lagos.

In a statement by Muyiwa Adejobi, the police spokesperson, the governor applauded the assaulted officer for his professionalism, perseverance, self-control and maturity exhibited during the attack on him.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how the officer was assaulted by one Victor Ebhomenyen at Four Points Hotel on Saturday.

The police said the suspect, who is now in their custody, inflicted serious injuries on the officer.

The assaulted officer, Mr Erhabor, is a personnel of the Rapid Response Squad (RRS).

Encomium, Award

Mr Adejobi, a superintendent of police, said the Commissioner of Police in the state, Hakeem Odumosu, appraised the officer and presented him at governors office where he was presented a plaque.

The Commissioner of Police, Lagos State, CP Hakeem Odumosu, who presented the officer to the Governor at the Governors Office, Alausa-Ikeja, showered encomium on the ASP Sunday for Professionalism, perseverance, self-control and maturity exhibited during the attack on him.

He was then presented a state plaque as a mark of honour and prestige to appreciate his commitment to promoting core values of modern policing and protection of fundamental human rights, Mr Adejobi said in the statement.

The police spokesperson said the prime suspect, Mr Ebhomenyen, is in police net, while his accomplice, one Etinosa Obaywana, is at large.

The suspects were stopped by the officer for allegedly driving against the traffic at Four Points Hotel, Victoria Island, on Saturday.

The prime suspect is detained at the State Criminal Investigation Department, Panti, Yaba, for proper investigation and possible prosecution, the police said.

Although the police said the suspect will be charged to court, the judiciary is currently on strike.

The suspects car, a white Hyundai with Reg No. MUS 251 EH, was also impounded for the necessary penalty in line with the provisions of the Lagos State Transport Sector Reform Law, 2018.

The police boss urged other police officers to emulate Mr Erhabor and exhibit a high level of professionalism and perseverance even at the height of fierce provocation while on duty or off duty.
Thiruvananthapuram, April 19 : Malayalam actor Fahadh Faasil's new film "Joji" is being appreciated since it dropped recently on a digital platform. The National Award-winning actor says he is never worried about the reactions his films might receive.

"I am not worried about my films working or not. When it doesn't work it hurts, but for me it's the process which is exciting, to identify a film and work on it. You like an idea, you go to the shoot and then you improvise and finish shooting, and your fight is whether you have done justice to what you initially conceived. It is a constant fight," Fahadh tells IANS.

The actor, whose work in films such as "Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum", "Bangalore Days", and "Kumbalangi Nights" among others has been appreciated, says he is always thinking about how to make his work be better.

"Even when your film works, you think that there are so many things you could have done and there are so many things that you missed out on. This process is never complete, and I am in love with the process which you are exploring. You are dealing with human emotions, you are trying to understad people better. I like love this aspect of my job and I want to do this as long as I can," he says.

So what are the qualities he looks for in a script? "I want it to be as real as looking out of the window. I need that connect and need to believe that it happened somewhere, and to approach it honestly. What I have constantly tried to do is to do real stuff," says the actor, whose film "Joji" released on Amazon Prime Video.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
By Tom Churchelow

There is no question that many New Jerseyans are hurting from the impact of COVID-19. That is why last spring utility companies across the state agreed to implement a moratorium on residential customer utility service shutoffs. The current state-imposed moratorium, however, is eventually going to end. Knowing that, it is time that everyone comes together and creates a plan to resolve past due utility bills.

We agree that $700 million (as of January 2021 and growing by the day) in unpaid utility services is growing at an alarming rate, which will pose greater challenges for both customers and the utilities in ensuring that growing balances are ultimately paid. For their part, utilities have supported customers through PPE donations, increased charitable giving and the use of company facilities as field hospitals, all the while providing service without full payment and without exception.

The signs of difficulty in making up the current customer bill deficit are evident. While there are programs and options available to help customers pay their bills, many New Jerseyans are not using them. As a result of the extended moratorium, our member companies have seen a decrease in customer engagement in numerous respects, including applying for available assistance programs and entering into enhanced, more flexible, deferred payment arrangements (DPA).

For example, one of our electric distribution company members noted that call volumes declined in November 2020 by 16% and DPAs saw a 15-24% reduction in November/December 2020. Given this experience, it is fair to consider whether utility customers would more likely avail themselves of these various payment programs and options if the moratorium is not extended again, beyond June.

Customer engagement has decreased as customers are not applying for the assistance offered by either their utilities or by the federally funded program Low Income Heating and Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). The New Jersey Department of Community Affairs recently noted that its response rate for the program is only 27%. That low number is despite our member companies best efforts with direct contact through calls, email, texts, social media campaigns, door hangers, use of innovative communication applications such as Live Agent. It is also happening despite great effort and support from Lieutenant Governor Sheila Oliver and Board of Public Utilities President Joe Fiordaliso.

So where do we go from here? We believe the answer is a multi-faceted approach. The Universal Service Fund (USF) helps make energy bills affordable for low-income customers. State expansion of the USF program could allow for the forgiveness of unpaid bills. Creating a USF-like program for water is another avenue for addressing unpaid services.

Expansion of the USF program can be matched by the development of new and innovative uncollectible recovery mechanisms. These include such things as special purpose riders for bad debt for certain electric, and all gas and water and wastewater companies that lack these mechanisms, as well as using the mechanisms where they already exist.

The state should also consider putting more money into customer assistance programs. As noted, the utilities have been working day and night to educate their customers about such programs. Those efforts, however, need an additional boost, one that can be done through either a direct appropriation to organizations like New Jersey SHARES or as an allocation of federal CARES Act and America Rescue Plan dollars.

The CARES Act, meanwhile, can play a critical role in this process, with over $10 billion in federal funds coming to New Jersey. While we understand some of these dollars are marked for specific purposes, surely a portion of that money can be used to help the state resolve its $700 million in unpaid utility services.

Our member companies have been responsive, good corporate citizens since the outset of this pandemic. They recognize that everyone must do their part to help during these trying times. New Jersey Utilities Association member utilities will continue to take an approach moving forward that is in the best interest of all customers. At the same time, we know that the utility service shutoff moratorium cannot go on indefinitely.

We appreciate the calls of President Fiordaliso and Lt. Governor Oliver for customers to act now regarding payment assistance. However, they can only do so much without the appropriate resources and planning. That is why it is imperative that everyone  the state, our member companies, assistance organizations, and customer advocates  comes together now to create a comprehensive and sustainable plan to resolve past due utility bills.

Tom Churchelow is president of the New Jersey Utilities Association and a member of the New Jersey Council on the Green Economy and New Jersey Energy Efficiency Advisory Group. Tom also serves on the Board of New Jersey SHARES and on the Jersey Water Works Steering Committee.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Heres how to submit an op-ed or Letter to the Editor. Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow us on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and on Facebook at NJ.com Opinion. Get the latest news updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters.
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'Ban on arrivals from high-risk countries must stay'

Leung Chi-chiu says the coronavirus situation in India, Pakistan and the Philippines won't improve quickly. File photo: RTHK

Wendy Wong reports

A specialist in respiratory medicine said on Monday that people who have spent time in India, Pakistan and the Philippines should be banned from coming to Hong Kong for as long as it takes for the coronavirus situation in those places to improve.



The government has announced a two-week ban on flights from the three countries after identifying two community cases in the SAR of a highly-infectious mutant strain of Covid-19. It says multiple people arriving from India, Pakistan and the Philippines have also been found to have the strain.



Anyone who has stayed in these countries for more than two hours in the previous 21 days is also banned from flying into Hong Kong via other places.



But Dr Leung Chi-chiu said the 14-day ban announced will not be enough.



We will have to keep this ban unless the situation there improves or unless we have devised other measures to reduce the chance of importation of these dangerous variants into Hong Kong, he said.



University of Hong Kong microbiologist Ho Pak-leung said the government acted too slowly, noting that the number of imported Covid-19 cases has been increasing for the past two to three weeks.



He also urged the government to step up anti-infection measures at quarantine hotels, saying the virus could have been transmitted among guests and staff.



However, Professor David Hui, who advises the government on its anti-epidemic strategy, said he believes the first person to be found with the coronavirus variant in the community did not contract the virus locally, but had an exceptionally long incubation period.



The patient tested negative for Covid-19 during his 21-day quarantine after he arrived from Dubai last month, but was found to carry the mutant strain last week.



A friend he lived with during his stay in Hong Kong has also been infected with the variant.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 19)  The government is better off treating COVID-19 patients in temporary hospitals instead of using hotel rooms, an industry group said.

President Rodrigo Duterte last week floated the idea of ordering the police to take over hotel operations and treat patients there while hospitals are full. However, hotel executives said that's easier said than done.

Christine Ann Ibarreta, president of the Hotel Sales and Marketing Association, said their member establishments have "high occupancies" as overseas workers and other Filipinos coming home from abroad check in to spend days of quarantine before undergoing a swab test at least five days upon arrival.

READ: Hotels in NCR Plus already exhausted, group rejects temporary hospital proposal

While individual rooms and beds may be available in accommodation establishments, the Tourism Congress of the Philippines said their facilities are not ready for medical processes.

"Hotels are still pretty much on high occupancies for those being used as quarantine facilities. I think they should focus more on constructing field hospitals instead of commandeering hotels as those would be more suited to handle the medical requirements," TCP President Jojo Clemente III told CNN Philippines. "Hotels are just rooms but are not equipped properly should emergencies arise."

RELATED: Gov't needs to double COVID-19 beds in NCR  treatment czar

Manpower is another issue as hotel staff are not trained medical professionals.

"We are really in the process of recruiting manpower for the increased allocation and for the modular hospitals built," Health Undersecretary Leopoldo Vega, head of the One Hospital Command Center, said in a text message, adding that 60% of the 3,510 positions for health workers in Metro Manila have been filled through emergency hiring.

The agency is also counting on the deployment of medical professionals from other regions to man the frontlines in the NCR Plus bubble, where infections are surging.

Meanwhile, Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat said 21 hotels used as isolation centers within Metro Manila and Calabarzon are 70% full, with 650 rooms still available.

With some hotels housing non-critical patients to decongest hospitals, Clemente said it should still be done under DOH supervision "to ensure that the appropriate care is being given."

The Tourism chief said the opening of a 500-bed temporary hospital within Luneta Park in Manila will boost heath care capacity, but it won't be ready to accept patients until next month.

READ: Govt to set up more modular facilities, LGU-based triage for COVID-19 patients as hospital admissions surge
EVANSVILLE, Ind. (AP)  The remains of more than 700 Native Americans have been returned to burial grounds in southwestern Indiana.

Indiana University completed repatriation of the remains to Angel Mounds State Historic Site from the schools Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, the Evansville Courier & Press reported Saturday.

In 2018, Indiana University researchers landed a $300,000 federal grant to preserve a treasure trove of artifacts excavated from the site. The school worked with several federally recognized tribal nations in the multi-year process to comply with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

The remains had been at the school since 1971. They were restored in March to Angel Mounds.

It was the right thing to do. They are supposed to be there, said Mike Linderman, western regional director for state historic sites at the Indiana State Museum and manager for Angel Mounds State Historic Site.

The remains were unearthed from the site near the Ohio River at the direction of archaeologist Glenn Black in 1939.

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act was passed in 1990 and mandates the return of Native American human remains and cultural items to tribal nations, according to the newspaper.

NAGPRA is about human rights, respecting tribal sovereignty and federal law, said Jayne-Leigh Thomas, Indiana Universitys NAGPRA director.

We still have a long way to go, but we are so incredibly honored and committed to seeing this work completed, she said in a release.

Angel Mounds is located near Evansville and along the banks of the Ohio River.

The 603-acre (244-hectare) site encompasses 11 mounds that were once part of a fortified, walled city Native Americans occupied until about 1450. Its considered one of North Americas best-preserved, pre-contact Native American sites.

We hope the community will continue to be supportive of the fact that this site is sacred to American Indians and be respectful, said Carrie Wilson, Quapaw Nation NAGPRA coordinator.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki argued Monday the administration did not make a reversal on its refugee policy and refused to entertain questions about if a change came after outraged Democrats on Capitol Hill blasted President Joe Biden for his decision.

Psaki got into a terse exchange with reporters on the issue after the White House did a u-turn on Friday and said Biden would raise the refugee cap by May 15 after allies and progressives blasted the president for keeping it at the historically low rate of 15,000 set by Donald Trump.

The move on Friday caused immediate backlash on Capitol Hill and, within hours of Democrats publicly chastising the president on the decision, the White House said the cap would be raised in the next month.

In her briefing, Psaki argued the administration made no policy change when it issued a 'clarification' on Friday afternoon about its refugee cap, saying there was always a caveat to raise the number if needed.

'I would dispute that being our characterization on Friday,' she said when asked at her daily press briefing about the change in policy.

'This was always meant to be just the beginning,' she noted.

'We have every intention to increase the cap and to make an announcement of that by May 15 at the latest, and I expect it will be sooner than that,' Psaki said. 'The president also remains committed to pursuing the aspirational goal of reaching 125,000 refugees by the end of the next fiscal year.'

She said the administration always had an 'aspirational' reach to raise the cap.

'62,500 was a down payment meant to be a down payment in this in this year. That was why we set that goal. Now, that was an aspirational increase of 10 times, what was being led in by the Trump administration,' she added.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki argued the Biden administration did not make a reversal on its refugee policy

Friday's move came after liberals like Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, along with staunch allies like Senator Dick Durbin, criticized the president, slammed Biden's move - loudly and publicly.

As the criticism grew louder, the White House said Biden would raise the cap after initially moving only to expand the eligibility criteria for resettlements.

But, on Monday, Psaki got into a tense back-and-forth with Fox News White House correspondent Kristin Fisher, who repeatedly grilled Psaki on if the change came after the Democratic criticism.

'I don't think you've articulated what our change in policy is so go ahead and do that,' Psaki told her.

'I don't think it's my job to do that,' Fisher replied.

'It is. You're asking the question,' Psaki said. 'What was our change from the morning to the afternoon?'

'The change from the morning to the afternoon was that you explicitly said the admission of up to 15,000 refugees remains justified and in the afternoon you said that the president would be raising the cap on or before May 15,' Fisher said.

Psaki, in her response, argued the executive order released on Friday said that if the 15,000 limit was reached, the administration would consider raising the cap.

'In the morning we also said that if 15,000 is reached, the subsequent presidential determination on the issue was to increase admissions,' she said. 'That was not clearly understood. We felt it was incumbent upon us to make sure people understood and were clear that our objective was to welcome in more refugees and we remain committed to our goal.'

Psaki said the White House changed the limits set by the Trump administration that capped areas where refugees can come from, calling it an important change.

'Friday's announcement I should say, was an effort, an important step forward in our view to reverse the Trump policy that banned refugees from many key regions of the world so there were many parts of the Middle East, parts of Africa, where refugees could not apply, and could not come into the United States,' she said.

But she went on to argue the challenge wasn't the number in the cap but in the country's ability to process the influx of refugees.

She said that ability was hampered by the record number of migrants crossing the border and gutting to the refugee office done by the Trump administration.

Jen Psaki got into a terse exchange with reporters on the issue after the White House did a u-turn on Friday and said Biden would raise the refugee cap by May 15 after allies and progressives blasted the president for keeping it at the historically low rate of 15,000 set by Donald Trump

'I think it's also important for people to understand that the challenge is not the cap. The challenge is the ability to process, the ability, the funding, the staffing and welcome refugees in,' she said.

Statement on refugees Press Secretary Jen Psaki released a statement on President Biden's refugee cap on Friday after Democratic outrage Biden kept the number at 15,000: The Presidents directive today has been the subject of some confusion. Last week, he sent to Congress his budget for the fiscal year starting in October 2021, which honors his commitment. For the past few weeks, he has been consulting with his advisors to determine what number of refugees could realistically be admitted to the United States between now and October 1. Given the decimated refugee admissions program we inherited, and burdens on the Office of Refugee Resettlement, his initial goal of 62,500 seems unlikely. While finalizing that determination, the President was urged to take immediate action to reverse the Trump policy that banned refugees from many key regions, to enable flights from those regions to begin within days; todays order did that. With that done, we expect the President to set a final, increased refugee cap for the remainder of this fiscal year by May 15. Advertisement

She did not explain if the challenge was in the 'process' why the White House simply didn't raise the cap number anyway.

After Biden's original announcement on Friday, saying the refugee cap would stay at its Trump level of 15,000, Psaki released a statement saying the number would be raised by May 15.

She explained, after consulting with advisers, the president realized the US could not accept 62,500 refugees - his original goal - and she blamed the Trump administration for 'the decimated refugee admissions program we inherited.'

'For the past few weeks, he has been consulting with his advisors to determine what number of refugees could realistically be admitted to the United States between now and October 1. Given the decimated refugee admissions program we inherited, and burdens on the Office of Refugee Resettlement, his initial goal of 62,500 seems unlikely,' Psaki said.

She said the cap would be increased for the remainder of the fiscal year and that number would be released by May 15.

'We expect the President to set a final, increased refugee cap for the remainder of this fiscal year by May 15,' Psaki said.

Friday's announcement that Biden signed an executive order keeping the refugee cap at 15,000 - after promising during his campaign and presidency to raise it - sent shockwaves through Democrats, who had wanted Biden to move swiftly to reverse the policies of Trump, who had set the 15,000 cap as a way to limit immigration.

Rep. Ilhan Omar, who fled with her family from Somalia when she was young and spent four years in a Kenya refugee camp, criticized Biden for his decision.

'As a refugee, I know finding a home is a matter of life or death for children around the world. It is shameful that @POTUS is reneging on a key promise to welcome refugees,' she wrote on Twitter.

'There are simply no excuses for todays disgraceful decision. It goes directly against our values and risks the lives of little boys and girls huddled in refugee camps around the world. I know, because I was one,' she noted.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed Biden for upholding 'the xenophobic and racist policies of the Trump' era.

'Completely and utterly unacceptable,' she tweeted. 'Biden promised to welcome immigrants, and people voted for him based on that promise. Upholding the xenophobic and racist policies of the Trump admin, incl the historically low + plummeted refugee cap, is flat out wrong. Keep your promise.'

And Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the head of the Progressive Caucus, echoed her words.

'It is simply unacceptable and unconscionable that the Biden Administration is not immediately repealing Donald Trumps harmful, xenophobic, and racist refugee cap,' Jayapal said in a statement.

Sen. Dick Durbin, a close White House ally, wrote on Twitter: 'Say it aint so, President Joe. This is unacceptable.'

'Refugees wait years for their chance and go through extensive vetting35,000 are ready today. I urge the Biden Administration to reconsider this decision and stick to their promise of increasing refugee admissions,' he added.

Liberals, including Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar (left) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (right), immediately criticized Biden's decision

In February, Biden committed to raising the cap. Secretary of State Antony Blinken notified Congress on Feb. 12 that the administration planned to allow up to 62,500 refugees to enter the country in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30.

But, on Friday, it was announced the cap would stay in place. The White House had been asked repeatedly in recent days when Biden planned to raise it.

Biden's decision to delay issuing the revised refugee cap for this year appeared tied to concerns over the optics of admitting more refugees amid rising levels of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border in recent months, and to not wanting to look 'too open' or 'soft,' another U.S. official with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

Under an emergency presidential determination signed by Biden, the United States will offer refugee status to a wider part of the world than had been allowed by Trump.

The United States would use all 15,000 slots under the Biden order and that officials were prepared to consult with Congress should there be a need to increase the number of admissions to address unforeseen emergencies.

Under Biden's new plan, the 15,000 slots would be allocated this way:

7,000 for Africa

1,000 for East Asia

1,500 for Europe and Central Asia

3,000 from Latin America and the Caribbean

1,500 from the Near East and South Asia

1,000 for an unallocated reserve
Lucknow, April 19 : BJP MLA from Banda, Prakash Dwiwedi, has written a letter to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, asking him to immediately stop the ongoing panchayat elections.

He said that three phases of the panchayat elections were yet to be held and in view of the corona surge, it would be hazardous to allow them to go ahead.

Dwivedi said that some contestants were hospitalized and one of them had even died. He pointed out that people were moving around in large crowds for campaigning and the safety protocols were not being followed in the rural interiors.

The BJP MLA said that it would be in larger public interest to immediately call off the panchayat elections.
Mangoes are one of the main tropical fruits grown in Vietnam, second only to bananas.

Most Vietnamese mango production is concentrated in the Mekong Delta region, which accounts for 48% of the countrys total production area and produced 567,732 tonnes last year, nearly two thirds of the total national output.

In 2020 Vietnamese mango exports brought in US$180.8 million, down 9% from the previous year due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

China was the largest importer of Vietnamese mangoes, to a value of US$151.8 million, followed by Russia with US$8.4 million and Papua New Guinea with US$5.5 million.

Other importers of the fruit included the US, the Republic of Korea, the EU, Japan and Hong Kong (China).

According to Director Nguyen Quoc Toan of the MARDs Department of Processing and Market Development, if Vietnam wants to increase mango exports to large markets, it needs to consider developing its value chain from production to processing and packaging so as to meet all requirements of importing countries.

The MARD said it will take the necessary measures to support mango producers in increasing their exports to key markets such as the US, the EU, China, Japan and the Republic of Korea.
Past and present: Villagers in NW Chinas Gansu province bid farewell to poverty, embrace new lives

People's Daily Online) 16:27, April 19, 2021

The upper section of the combo photo shows pupils running on the playground of the primary school of Yuangudui village, Weiyuan county, Dingxi city, northwest Chinas Gansu province, March 4, 2013, and the lower section of the combo photo, taken on Aug. 22, 2020, shows the new school. (Photo/Xinhua)

After shaking off poverty in 2019, Yuangudui village in Weiyuan county, Dingxi city, northwest Chinas Gansu province, has taken on a new look.

The first step the village took to eliminate poverty was boosting construction of infrastructure. By the end of 2020, cement roads had been paved and led to the doors of every household in Yuangudui, and a hardened road was built to connect the village to the county seat. Under a relocation project, villagers living in uninhabitable areas were relocated to new homes at new settlements.

In the summer of 2015, the first phase of a water diversion project went into operation, giving 447 households in the village access to tap water. The project also benefited over 2 million people who had long been plagued by drought in cities including Dingxi and Baiyin.

Efforts were also made in the field of education. In 2013, the primary school of Yuangudui village was relocated to a new settlement that boasts brand-new schoolhouses and teaching facilities. All school-age children in the village now go to school. The children now have access to better facilities, and their parents attach more importance to their childrens education than they did before, said Wa Yongfu, principal of the school.

Today, villagers have access to rural cooperative medical care, rural subsistence allowances, and elderly-care insurance schemes. New industries such as the cultivation of lilies, potatoes and traditional Chinese herbs, as well as rural tourism, have given villagers stable income growth. Guo Lianbing, head of the village, said more families now own cars, adding that the village saw an increase of more than 40 cars last year.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun)
Irans foreign ministry spokesman said on Monday that Tehran always welcomed dialogue with Saudi Arabia, but he did not confirm nor deny direct talks this month between the arch-rivals.

"We have seen media reports about talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia, although the reports sometimes had contradictory quotes," Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told a weekly news conference.

"What is important is that the Islamic Republic of Iran has always welcomed dialogue with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and considers it in the interest of the people of the two countries, as well as peace and stability in the region," he added.

A senior Iranian official and two regional sources said that Saudi and Iranian officials held discussions in Iraq in a bid to ease tensions as Washington works to revive a 2015 nuclear pact with Tehran and end the Yemen war, Reuters reported.

One of the sources said the meeting, arranged by Iraqs prime minister who visited Saudi Arabia earlier this month, had focused on Yemen, where a military coalition led by Riyadh has been battling the Iran-aligned Houthi movement.

The Financial Times first reported the meeting.

The two countries severed diplomatic ties in 2016 and have been engaged in several proxy wars in the region as they vie for influence.
Women are less likely than men to be getting the benefits of the governments financial support for self-employed workers, according to a new study.

Research, carried out by Womens Budget Group, found by the end of January 2021 only 29 per cent of all claims for the governments self-employment income support scheme (SEISS) were made by women, despite them constituting 35 per cent of self-employed workers.

The report found some 632,000 self-employed women made claims for the payments totalling just over 1.4bn by January 2021  substantially less than the 1,557,000 claims made by men which amounted to almost 4.8bn.
Welcome Guest! You Are Here:
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., is the Senate Republican Whip.

You are reading the Opposing View, one of two perspectives in Today's Debate.

For Our View, read Biden builds solid infrastructure proposal, but questions remain.

If President Joe Biden sincerely wants to address our countrys infrastructure needs, he doesnt need to reinvent the wheel. Lawmakers historically work across the aisle to invest in infrastructure, and one doesnt have to look far for recent examples.

Four months ago, a divided Congress passed comprehensive legislation investing in ports, harbors and waterways. Recent infrastructure packages have garnered widespread, bipartisan support because Republicans and Democrats alike understand that infrastructure is key to our economic prosperity. It enables South Dakotas commodities to reach markets around the world and tourists to visit our majestic state.

So let me be clear: A bipartisan infrastructure bill is possible if Democrats are interested in working with Republicans on traditional infrastructure such as roads and bridges, and even modern infrastructure like broadband, if done correctly.

The proposal from the White House, however, misses the mark on our nations infrastructure needs and undermines the opportunity for bipartisan cooperation.

Their proposal would spend more taxpayer dollars subsidizing and promoting electric vehicles than on investments in roads, bridges, ports and waterways combined. Less than 6% of the $2.2 trillion plan would invest in roads and bridges, and the most expensive pieces of the proposal stretch the meaning of infrastructure far beyond how everyday Americans would ever define it.

Some items are worthy of bipartisan discussions. But its an abuse of the term and, frankly, insulting to the American peoples intelligence to describe billions of dollars for a Civilian Climate Corps and for schools to eliminate paper plates as infrastructure.

Critics argue that Republicans are nitpicking the meaning of infrastructure. Count me as someone who believes you should be straight with the American people if youre asking for one of the largest tax hikes in generations to pay for one of the most expensive proposals in American history.

Story continues

You dont have to be an economist to understand the highest combined federal-state corporate tax rate in the developed world would crush job growth when its needed most.

Our country needs to get back to work. One way to do that is through a serious infrastructure proposal tailored to actual needs. If the White House will work with Republicans, together we can expand infrastructure and economic opportunity  instead of the federal government.

John Thune is a Republican senator from South Dakota and the Senate Republican Whip.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Biden doesnt need to reinvent the wheel on infrastructure: John Thune
Kolkata, April 19 : Considering the steep rise of Covid cases in the city, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has cancelled all 'big rallies' in Kolkata and has slashed the timing of the rallies in the districts.

She will be restricting herself in one meeting and fewer gatherings 'where cases are lower'. She has also urged her party colleagues to scale down their campaign in parts of Kolkata that will go to polls in the next two phases on April 26 and 29.

"Mamata Banerjee will NOT campaign in Kolkata anymore. Only one 'symbolic' meeting on the last day of campaigning in the city on April 26. Slashes time for all her election rallies in all districts. Restricted to just 30 minutes," Trinamool Congress spokesperson Derek O' Brien said in a tweet.

The Chief Minister also said that she would hold a 'symbolic rally' on the 26th of this month at Kolkata's Beadon street. Meanwhile it should be mentioned that most of the seats in Kolkata will have its election on the 26th and 29th -- in the seventh and the eighth phase of the election.

The Chief Minister has directed Chief Secretary Alapaon Bandopadhayay to take all measures to control the spread of the disease in the state.

"With the massive surge in #COVID19 cases across India, GoWB is taking all necessary steps to protect its people. I've reached out to the PM to help us with additional medicines and vaccines required. I have also directed all the top officials to make elaborate arrangements & step up their efforts at every level to deal with #COVID19 situation in WB. The Chief Secretary along with key officials will be doing a Press conference at 2PM to discuss the details of the plan," the Chief Minister wrote in her official Twitter handle.

On Sunday, Mamata wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, flagging doctors' concerns about "extremely scarce and uncertain" supplies of Remdesivir and Tocilizumab, two key medicines used to treat Covid-19. She also urged him to look into the "scarce and erratic" flow of vaccines into the state and ensure steady oxygen supply.

The Chief Minister identified three areas that she said required the PM's intervention "to scale up our capabilities to tackle the pandemic on a war footing". She put availability of vaccines first, saying "focused and aggressive vaccination" was of critical importance, particularly in Kolkata due to its "high population density".

Stating that Bengal had been among the "best performers" in the initial phases of the vaccination programme, Mamata said the state was "now suffering" for no fault of her government. She also demanded PM Modi's resignation over the nationwide Covid spike. Accusing Modi of misleading the nation and not planning, Mamata said: "All he says is he has to win Bengal."

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
A Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine is administered in this tile photo taken in New York City on April 8, 2021. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

All Eligible Americans Can Now Get COVID-19 Vaccine: Biden

The Biden administration is now delivering on a promise from former President Donald Trump: all eligible Americans as of Monday can get a COVID-19 vaccine.

I have good news. Everybody is eligible, as of today, to get the vaccine, President Joe Biden said in a video posted on Monday morning.

In a February interview, National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins said the Trump White House deserves considerable credit for its Operation Warp Speed.

Operation Warp Speed, announced last May, was the Trump administrations plan to coordinate federal and private resources to push out a COVID-19 vaccine.

The Operation Warp Speed, for which I give a great deal of credit to [former HHS Secretary Alex Azar], was [an] effort that many of us were not initially convinced was going to be necessary. And it was thought about as a Manhattan Project.

Collins remarked that CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus vaccines got done in 11 months from when we first knew about this virus is at least five years faster than its ever been before.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 131 million (39.5 percent of the U.S. population) have taken at least one dose of the vaccine, and 84 million (25.4 percent of the U.S. population) have been fully vaccinated as of April 18.

The vaccine adverse event reporting system (VAERS) received 3,005 reports of deaths among people in the United States who had received one of the COVID-19 shots between Dec. 14, 2020, and April 12, 2021. More than 189 million doses of the shot were delivered during this time.

The deaths exceed the total number of fatalities following all other vaccinations from January 2010 to November 2020 before the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines.

Over the 10 years, VAERS received 734 reports of death following the other vaccinations, based on a quick search on April 19.

VAERS is known to capture less than one percent of adverse effects from vaccines due to underreporting, according to a $1 million Harvard study funded by the CDC from 2007 to 2010.

Almost half of former President Trumps supporters dont plan to take a CCP virus vaccine according to a March poll (pdf) by NPR, PBS, and Marist.

The poll indicates that 47 percent of people who identified themselves as Trump supporters would not want to be vaccinated when the doses became available to them.

The survey found that 41 percent of Republicans would not take the vaccine, compared to only 11 percent of Democrats saying they wouldnt take it.

Jack Phillips and Meiling Lee contributed to this report.
Job Title: Officer Revenue Reconciliation (Fresher Jobs)

Organisation: Uganda Revenue Authority (URA)

Duty Station: Kampala, Uganda

About URA:

The Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) was established by the Uganda Revenue Authority Statute of 1991 and set up in September of the same year as a central body for assessment and collection of specified revenue, to administer and enforce the laws relating to such revenue and to provide for related matters. This statute incorporated all the laws that were in force then regarding tax collection. The new organization (URA) amalgamated the three tax administration departments that were responsible for all the taxes collected by the Central Government of Uganda.

Job Summary: The Officer Revenue Reconciliation will reconcile revenue collections and all transfers by commercial banks to Bank Of Uganda as reported by URA stations, commercial banks, Telecom companies to ensure accuracy and completeness of revenue reports

Key Duties and Responsibilities:

Verify revenue returns received from Banks, telecom companies, and URA stations for accuracy of accounting data

Receive bank statements, transfer schedules and returns, acknowledge receipt and check them for authenticity, identifying and noting any discrepancies in them.

Maintain and update a filing system of the bank Statement

Compare ledgers against bank statement and electronic bank statements against physical bank statements for accuracy

Notify the bank/telecom/stations of any missing bank/ collection statements details and the Revenue Accounting unit of any missing cash book transactions

Review with respective station heads and banks the status report on the authenticity and accuracy of the returns and verify the accuracy of the status report before its submission to the supervisor

Carry out a reconciliation of revenue collections by URA collecting stations and transfers between bank branches and Head Office to certify reliability of financial records

Analyze information in cash books and bank statements and prepare a list of reconciling items to facilitate the reconciliation.

Prepare and submit daily/weekly/ monthly reconciliation statement reports

Review, confirm and clear the interbank transactions for the organization.

Share technical information with revenue reconciliation team and revenue accounting officers.

Follow up raised queries to improve the accuracy of information in the accounting system

Review the reconciliation statement generated from the accounting system to identify and categorize errors and raise them to banks and stations for correction

Relay information on the improvement of the accounting system to the Finance Systems Administrators.

Maintain, communicate and monitor compliance of an accurate record of bank codes with respective stakeholders.

Identify and eliminate posted Adjusting journal vouchers from the reconciliation statement.

Prepare and Submit adjusted Journal vouchers to Supervisor, Revenue reconciliation.

Sensitize stakeholders to improve the understanding of URA accounting procedures and deliver stationery

Carry out periodic sensitization of bank officers about the revenue Collection agreements, and URA station heads and about the accounting procedures.

Carry out and report on periodic station visits to sensitize staff about collection agreements





Qualifications, Skills and Experience:

The applicant for the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) Officer Revenue Reconciliation job must hold an honors Bachelors degree with a major in Accounting or Finance from a recognized University

A minimum of two years of work experience in accounting in a large organization

Fair knowledge of Tax laws of Uganda and the region

Public Finance and Accountability Act 2003

High Integrity.

Good Interpersonal Relations.

Good Analytical skills.

High proficiency in the use of computer applications especially MS Office required

Excellent report writing capability

A team player and negotiator

Desirable Requirements

Experience in application of Finance/Accounting Software/Systems.

Partial or full qualifications in CPA or ACCA.

How to Apply:

All suitably qualified and interested candidates who wish to join URA should apply online at the link below.

Click Here

Deadline: 1st May 2021

For more of the latest jobs, please visit https://www.theugandanjobline.com or find us on our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/UgandanJobline
France bears significant responsibility for enabling the genocide in Rwanda and still refuses to acknowledge its true role in the 1994 horror, said a report commissioned by Kigali that was released Monday.

The damning report, commissioned in 2017 and running to nearly 600 pages, labels France a collaborator of the extremist Hutu regime that orchestrated the pogrom of some 800,000 people, and outright rejects the position that Paris was blind to their genocidal agenda.

But a source in the French presidency, asking not to be named, hailed the fact that complicity in the genocide was excluded and said the report would open a new political space between the two countries.

The years-long investigation by US law firm Levy Firestone Muse said France knew a genocide was coming but remained unwavering in its support of its Rwandan allies, even when the planned extermination of the Tutsi minority was clear.

The French government bears significant responsibility for enabling a foreseeable genocide, states the Muse report, which drew on millions of pages of documents and interviews with more than 250 witnesses.

It found no evidence, however, that French officials or personnel directly participated in the killing of Tutsis.

France has long been accused of not doing enough to halt the massacres, and the Muse reports follows the publication last month of a separate inquiry into the same events commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron.

 Neither blind, nor unconscious 

The Duclert Commission, named after the historian leading that investigation, concluded that France bore overwhelming responsibilities over the genocide and acknowledged a failure on its part, but no complicity in the killings.

But the Muse report asserts greater French culpability, saying the Duclert Commission stopped short of explaining what France was responsible for, and erred in concluding that Paris remained blind to the looming genocide.

The French government was neither blind nor unconscious about the foreseeable genocide, the report stated.

More than a quarter of a century on the issue still poisons relations between France and Rwanda under President Paul Kagame, a former Tutsi rebel who has ruled the mountainous nation in Africas Great Lakes region since the aftermath of the genocide.

The main thing is that the two commissions come to common conclusions, that France has heavy and overwhelming responsibilities (and) allowed a genocide which was foreseeable to take place, Rwandas Foreign Minister Vincent Biruta told journalists in Kigali.

In a separate interview with Le Monde newspaper, Biruta said Rwanda would not take legal action against France for its role in the genocide.

 Indispensable collaborator 

The genocide between April and July of 1994 began after Rwandas Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana, with whom Paris had cultivated close ties, was killed when his plane was shot down over Kigali on April 6.

Within a few hours extremist Hutu militia began slaughtering Tutsis, and some moderate Hutus, with a scale and brutality that shocked the world.

The Muse report said nobody worked closer with Habyarimana than France under then leader Francois Mitterrand, who was most to blame for the reckless enabling of the radical Hutu regime as it prepared for genocide.

France provided critical military and political support to the regime to protect its own strategic interests in Africa, the report said, and ignored internal warnings of a looming slaughter even as hateful rhetoric and violence against the Tutsi surged.

Only the French government was an indispensable collaborator in building the institutions that would become instruments of the genocide. No other foreign government both knew the dangers posed by Rwandan extremists and enabled those extremists, the report states.

The French governments role was singular. And still, it has not yet acknowledged that role or atoned for it.

Kagame welcomed the recent Duclert Commission as an important step toward a common understanding of what took place but said a decades-long effort by France to avoid responsibility had caused significant damage.

The Muse report accused France of concealing documents, obstructing justice and spreading falsehoods about the genocide in a deliberate campaign to bury its past in Rwanda.

The cover-up continues even to the present, the report added, saying French authorities refused to cooperate with their inquiry or turn over critical documents pertinent to their investigation.

On April 7  the 27th anniversary of the start of the genocide  France ordered the opening of key archives concerning the work of Mitterrand between 1990 and 1994, including telegrams and confidential notes that were sources in the Duclert investigation.

The Muse report noted that the recent disclosure of some documents related to the Duclert Commission suggested a move toward transparency.
Pakistans generals, who own and control the Taliban, want more than anything else to forcefully and completely eject all Indian presence from Afghanistan. (Photo: AFP)

Conventional wisdom has it that Americas decision to end its military presence in Afghanistan signals total victory for Pakistans artful generals and disaster for the Afghan government and its allies, particularly India. However, this might not necessarily be the actual long-term denouement.

To begin with, the US withdrawal decision was inevitable and sensible. For, there was no favourable end state in sight for the United States. US President Joe Biden did well to announce the formal end to the 20-year- old Afghan War. All US combatants are to leave Afghanistan by September 9, 2021, the twentieth anniversary of the attacks on America in 2001.

The generals in Rawalpindi are gloating over what is generally being viewed as Americas worst military defeat. The US invaded Afghanistan 20 years ago with the aim of annihilating the terrorist organisation Al Qaeda and driving out its Pakistan-backed ally, the Taliban.

Al Qaeda was pretty much decimated, and the Taliban fled to safe havens inside their mentors backyard while remnants of the Pakistan Army were allowed an honourable exit. For a while, in the initial years, it had appeared that the US military campaign had done wildly well.

Smug officials and legislators in Washington drew up ambitious plans to install a Western-style democracy in Afghanistan. A former CIA contact, Hamid Karzai, was pulled out from hiding and installed as President in Kabul. Thereafter things started going downhill.

What the powers in Washington had not reckoned with was the tenacity of the generals in Pakistans military headquarters at Rawalpindi. The generals were cowed down by their friends and mentors in Washington but would not abandon their dream of making Afghanistan a part of their strategic backyard.

The generals publicly cringed and whined before their American masters but secretly worked against them, reviving the Taliban, arming and training them and fielding even more vicious groups like the notorious Haqqani network to target Americans.

Rawalpindi rightly calculated that Washington could not win a war of attrition spread over decades. The Americans bled in the Afghan badlands, their convoys came under regular attack within Pakistan, assassins trained by Rawalpindis dirty tricks department regularly eliminated troublesome Afghans, especially the military types, and remorseless Pathans raised in Pakistans madrasas routinely blew themselves up in the roads and bazars of Afghan towns and cities, taking down innumerable civilians with them.

Gradually the Taliban and their murderous allies gained the upper hand while the Americans and their Nato allies retreated. That there could be no satisfactory endgame for the United States had dawned upon American Presidents a long time ago. Former US President Donald Trump vowed to bring back all US troops from Afghanistan but had prevaricated and ultimately thrown up his hands. For all military experts agreed that any US military withdrawal would enable the Taliban backed by the Pakistan Army to quickly bring the present Afghan regime to its knees and undo the sacrifices of thousands of US servicemen.

President Biden though is determined not to go down that route and the September 9 deadline seems to be hard and final. The Stars and Stripes will be lowered over the dusty Afghan landscape for the last time on that day.

Strategic experts in India are worried. And for good reason too. The last time the Taliban had taken over Afghanistan, some 26 years ago, Indias historical presence in Afghanistan was forced to abruptly end. Almost overnight, Indian diplomats and others had to flee in specially chartered flights, leaving behind a grand embassy building that was later to be converted to an ammunition dump by the victorious Taliban forces.

This time too there is no guarantee that Indias presence and influence in Afghanistan will not end with the anticipated victory of the Taliban. Pakistans generals, who own and control the Taliban, want more than anything else to forcefully and completely eject all Indian presence from Afghanistan. If the Indians are allowed to remain, it will at best be a token presence.

This is a stated objective and Rawalpindis generals have even complained about the humanitarian and development work carried out in that country by the Indian government. With Afghanistan out of bounds for Indians, the generals hope they will convert that country into their backyard for military and terrorist activities much of which would be directed against India.

However, such a favourable outcome could well elude the generals this time. For global strategic equations are changing, and the primary focus of the Western powers has moved away from the Middle East which has been their principal obsession since the end of the Second World War.

The importance of oil in global geopolitics and economics compelled the Western powers to evolve a strategy to maintain dominance over the Middle East and deny its enemies influence or unfettered access to this region. With the diminishing importance of oil and the concomitant rise of an assertive China, the focus of the Western powers has shifted.

Pakistan, which was a lynchpin in Western strategic calculation, has lost its previous importance. The US withdrawal from Afghanistan will free Washington from the last of its dependencies on Islamabad. This will presage profound changes.

Coupled with this is the gradual and inevitable shrinking of Saudi Arabian influence and cash reserves. Riyadh too today can no longer afford to write blank cheques for Islamabad as it did in the past.

As a result, Pakistan is bound to face increased economic difficulties as it consumes more and more of its limited resources to keep the fighting going in Afghanistan and on the borders with India. This is one reason why Islamabad today seeks a temporary truce at the Line of Control in Kashmir. Constant fighting is a costly business and Pakistan is gradually but inevitably sliding into bankruptcy.

These developments will very shortly completely push Islamabad into the deep pockets of its all-weather friend Beijing, which already views Pakistan as a vassal state. Pakistans generals might continue to dream of turning Afghanistan into a vassal state but they might not have realised that as a vassal themselves, the real power in Afghanistan will be China. Beijing will decide what kind of regime it wants in Afghanistan and from all indications it is clear they have no desire to witness the free run of the highly radicalised Islamists in that country.

Pakistan internally too is not exactly a picture of serenity or economic health. There is a heavy price to pay for sponsoring egregious violence. Pakistans generals may raise their glasses to celebrate their victory in Afghanistan, but those glasses might well turn out to be empty.
WELLESLEY, Mass., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A total of 63 physician groups in the Harvard Pilgrim Network have been named to Harvard Pilgrim Health Care's 19th annual Physician Group Honor Roll. The Harvard Pilgrim Honor Roll highlights physician groups that have achieved exceptional results in their approach to disease prevention and the treatment of acute and chronic illness for both adult and pediatric patients.

Harvard Pilgrim selected the Honor Roll physician groups based on clinical performance measured against national standards set by HEDIS (Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set), a tool developed for the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) to assess the clinical performance of doctors and other medical professionals. Harvard Pilgrim reviewed performance in three domains of clinical care affecting both adult and pediatric patients: acute, chronic and preventive care. Physician groups were identified as Honor Roll practices based on points earned for performance on 14 measures such as appropriate treatment for children with upper respiratory infection, comprehensive diabetes care and breast cancer screenings. A total of 16 of the 63 practices on the Physician Group Honor Roll achieved "With Distinction" status, meaning they exceeded NCQA's national 90th percentile in all domains of clinical care.

"We are honored to partner with these exceptional physician groups and we congratulate each of them on their outstanding performance on national quality benchmarks," said Michael Sherman, MD, senior vice president at the combined organization of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Tufts Health Plan. "We recognize these physicians for their outstanding dedication to patient safety and for the exceptional care they provide our members."

Honor Roll practice providers are noted in Harvard Pilgrim's printed and online provider directories, as well as on the organization's web site, enabling members to evaluate and select physicians based on quality measures.

The following practices were named in the 2021 Harvard Pilgrim Physician Group Honor Roll ("With Distinction" status noted with an asterisk *):

Connecticut

ProHealth Physicians, Central Connecticut CT

Maine

InterMed, Portland, ME

Martin's Point Healthcare, Portland, ME

Massachusetts

Acton Medical Associates, Acton, MA

Affiliated Pediatric Practices, Eastern Massachusetts, MA *

Baycare Health Partners, Springfield, MA

Brigham And Women's Physician Organization, Boston, MA

Charles River Medical Associates, Natick, MA

Congenial Health, Peabody, MA

Cooley Dickinson Physician Hospital Organization, Northampton, MA

Dedham Medical Associates, Dedham, MA

Dedham Medical Associates, Norwood, Norwood, MA *

Emerson PHO, Concord, MA

Granite Medical Group, Quincy, MA

Harbor Medical Associates, South Weymouth, MA

Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, Beverly, Beverly, MA *

Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, Braintree, Braintree, MA

Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, Burlington, Burlington, MA *

Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, Cambridge, Cambridge, MA *

Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, Chelmsford, Chelmsford, MA *

Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, Chestnut Hill, Chestnut Hill, MA

Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, Concord Hillside, Concord, MA

Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, Copley, Boston, MA *

Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, Kenmore, Boston, MA

Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, Medford, Medford, MA *

Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, Peabody/Lynnfield, Peabody, MA

Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, Post Office Square, Boston, MA *

Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, Quincy, Quincy, MA

Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, Somerville, Somerville, MA *

Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, Watertown, Watertown, MA *

Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, Wellesley, Wellesley, MA *

Lahey Clinic, Burlington, MA

Lincoln Medical, P.C., Concord, MA

Lowell General Physician Hospital Organization, Lowell, MA

Massachusetts General Hospital Physicians Organization, Boston, MA *

Milford Regional Physician Group, Milford, MA

Mount Auburn Cambridge IPA, Cambridge, MA

New England Quality Care Alliance, Eastern Massachusetts, MA

Newton Wellesley Health System, Newton, MA

North Shore Health System, Lynn/Salem, MA

Northeast PHO, Beverly, MA *

PCPO (Pentucket Medical Associates/Mystic Healthcare), Haverhill/Lawrence, MA

Pediatric Physicians' Organization at Children's, Eastern Massachusetts, MA

Plymouth Medical Group Physician Associates, Plymouth, MA

Reliant Medical Group, Central Massachusetts, MA

Signature Healthcare Corporation, Brockton, MA

South Shore Medical Center, Norwell, MA *

South Shore PHO, South Weymouth, MA

Southcoast Health Network, Dartmouth, MA

Steward Compass Medical Local Chapter, South Shore Massachusetts, MA

Steward Greater Boston West Local Chapter, Brighton, MA

Steward Greater Central Mass Local Chapter, Worcester, MA

Steward Greater Fall River Local Chapter, Fall River, MA

Steward Greater Haverhill/Methuen Local Chapter, Haverhill/Methuen, MA

Steward Greater North Shore Local Chapter, Peabody, MA

Sturdy Memorial Hospital Affiliated Physicians, Attleboro, MA

The Physician's Organization at Children's Hospital, Eastern Massachusetts, MA

Tufts Medical Center, Boston, MA

UMass MCN-Northern Worcester County, Worcester, MA

UMass Memorial Health Care, Worcester, MA

Winchester Physicians, Winchester, MA *



New Hampshire

Southern New Hampshire Internal Medicine Associates, Derry, NH

Upper Connecticut Valley Hospital Physicians, Colebrook, NH

About the combined organization of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Tufts Health Plan

The combination of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Tufts Health Plan represents the coming together of two of New England's most iconic nonprofit health care companies. Representing nearly 90 years of combined service to our members and the community, together we are building upon our diverse legacies and innovative collaboration by making it our purpose to guide and empower healthier lives for our members  no matter their age, health, race, identity, or income.



We strive to be a different kind of nonprofit health and wellbeing company, with a broad range of health plans, and innovative tools that make navigating health and wellbeing easier, guiding our members at every step of their health care journey to better health outcomes. We are committed to providing high-quality and affordable health care, improving the health and wellness of our members, and creating healthier communities throughout New England.

SOURCE Harvard Pilgrim Health Care
SAGINAW, MI  Prosecutors have ruled police were justified in using deadly force against a Chesaning man who drew a BB gun on them as they were executing a warrant on his apartment in search of methamphetamine.

The Saginaw County Prosecutors Office announced the afternoon of Monday, April 19, that Michigan State Police troopers involved in the January shooting death of John R. Neitling acted lawfully.

This office has reviewed the witness statements, video and audio recordings of the incident, as well as other available evidence, said the statement from Saginaw County Prosecutor John A. McColgan Jr. We conclude that the use of deadly force by law enforcement personnel under these circumstances was justified.

The morning of Jan. 7, the Bay Area Narcotics Enforcement Team (BAYANET) and members of the state polices Emergency Support Team (EST) were to execute a high-risk search warrant at Neitlings apartment at 406 E. Broad St.

BAYANET personnel had made a controlled purchase of meth from Neitling less than two days prior, prosecutors said. Police in September 2019 and April 2020 executed similar warrants on the unit, finding crystal meth on both occasions. Neitling was on free on bond at the time on resulting drug and firearm charges.

BAYANET and EST members on Jan. 7 announced their presence and identified themselves, prosecutors said. They found the door to Neitlings enclosed porch was fortified with an additional lock.

As EST members attempted to breach this door, they heard Neitling and his fiancee, Samantha Jo Searles, yelling from inside.

EST members kept trying to gain entry, only to see Neitling breaking a hole through the wall directly opposite the porch door and protruding an apparent gun barrel through the hole, prosecutors said.

On seeing the gun barrel, EST members fired several shots toward Neitling. An uninjured Searles eventually exited the residence, saying Neitling was bleeding out and was probably dead, according to police reports previously obtained by MLive via a Freedom of Information Act request.

Police deployed both a camera-outfitted robot and a police K-9 unit into the building before entering themselves. When both failed to turn up any sign of activity from Neitling, troopers entered and found him lying on his back on the living room floor with multiple bullet wounds to his upper body and several liters of blood pooled around him, police reports state.

Police found a 4.5mm BB gun on the ground near Neitlings feet, prosecutors said.

Paramedics responded and found no signs of life from Neitling. They pronounced him deceased at 7:06 a.m.

Police placed Searles in custody and took her to the Montrose Township Police Department. Neitlings body was removed by a medical examiner investigator.

Police proceeded to search the residence after Saginaw County Animal Care and Control officers responded to remove a pit bull from the apartment. They seized more crystal meth, marijuana, two digital scales, and two additional BB guns, one of which had its orange tip painted black, reports state.

During a later examination of Neitlings body, five bullets were recovered from his body, reports state. According to a toxicology report, Neitlings blood had 140 nanograms per milliliter of amphetamine and 1,500 nanograms per milliliter of methamphetamine when he died.

No police or other civilians were injured in the event.

When EST members made the call to use deadly force, they were attempting to execute a search warrant based on probable cause, repeatedly announced their presence and purpose, gave commands with which Searles and Neitling refused to comply, and were confronted with the barrel of what appeared to be a handgun protruding from the wall opposite them, McColgan said in his press release. Multiple EST members who were present at the porch doorway reported that, when Neitling broke the hole in the wall and pointed the barrel of the apparent handgun at the officers, they feared for their lives and the lives of their fellow officers. Considering all of the circumstances, we conclude that the actions of law enforcement personnel were justified and consistent with preservation of self and others.

Searles, 33, on Feb. 5 was arraigned on new charges of maintaining a drug house and conspiracy to possess methamphetamine. The former is punishable by up to two years in prison, while the latter is a 10-year felony.

In interviews with police, Searles said Neitling did not want to go back to jail or prison, reports state.

Neitling was survived by a wife and two sons, all of whom live in Pennsylvania, two siblings, and numerous aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, and nephews, his obituary states.

He enjoyed fishing, camping, music, spending time with family and friends, going to concerts, and being a father, his obituary states.

Read more:

Michigan man killed by police during raid told fiancee he did not want to go back to jail, reports show

Michigan woman whose boyfriend was killed during police raid faces new drug charges

Prosecutors reviewing police-involved shooting that left Saginaw County man dead

Chesaning couple arraigned on drug and gun charges

Investigation continues into fatal police-involved shooting in Chesaning

Authorities release name of Chesaning man killed in police-involved shooting

Police-involved shooting leaves Chesaning man dead
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Minneapolis was transformed into a fortress over the weekend, as a tense city braced for a verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin - the white police officer accused of murdering George Floyd - this week.

More than 3,000 members of the National Guard have been drafted into the city, in addition to 1,100 officers from public safety agencies across the state as part of what has been termed Operation Safety Net.

In the early hours of Sunday, two members of the National Guard were injured in a drive-by shooting.

There were no serious injuries, said Adjutant General Maj. Gen. Shawn Manke, but he added that the incident 'highlights the volatility and tension in our communities right now.'

Closing statements in Chauvin's trial are slated to kick off on Monday morning at the Hennepin County courthouse, the culmination of three weeks of intense testimony from 45 witnesses.

A Monmouth University poll released on Thursday found that 63 percent of Americans believe that acquittals across the board for Chauvin would be a negative step for race relations.

Thirty-seven percent said that if he were found guilty of murder, it would be a positive step.

Members of the National Guard and police officers stand guard in Minneapolis ahead of a Chauvin verdict

City Hall in Minneapolis is boarded up on Sunday and ringed in fencing and barbed wire ahead of the Chauvin verdict

Members of the National Guard stand on duty in downtown Minneapolis under Operation Safety Net

Hennepin County Government Center, where the Chauvin trial is being held, is protected with high fences and concrete

Members of the Minnesota National Guard stand outside a Whole Foods on Sunday in front of razor wire ready to be unfurled

This image shows a bullet hole in a National Guard vehicle after shots were fired Sunday morning in north Minneapolis.

Police unions, and conservatives more broadly, have warned against high-profile cases being judged on bigger issues outside the courtroom, such as race relations in general, rather than the evidence put forth in the proceedings.

The tension has been heightened by the killing less than 10 miles from downtown Minneapolis of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old black man shot by a white police officer, Kimberly Potter, at a traffic stop on April 11. She has been charged with manslaughter.

In addition, a white Chicago police officer, Eric Stillman, was revealed last week to have killed a 13-year-old black boy, Adam Toledo - sparking further protests in Minneapolis, and nationwide.

Chicago was particularly concerned about possible protests, following Toledo's killing.

Demonstrations were held on Thursday and Friday calling for justice for the 13-year-old.

Activists gathered outside the house of Mayor Lori Lightfoot, and police in Chicago are readying for another tense week.

In New York City, too, protests against police brutality were staged.

Barricades were up once more around police precincts and demonstrators marched through the city's streets.

Protesters march through the Logan Square neighborhood during a rally on Friday in Chicago

Chicago Police officers mask up and prepare near Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot's home as people protest on Friday

Chicago Police officers stand near Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot's home as protesters march through Logan Square Friday

People look at a memorial in Washington Square Park for Daunte Wright in New York City

Hundreds of BLM protesters are gathered at the Barclays Center and took to the streets on Friday night

Police officers take a protester into custody as hundreds of BLM protesters are gathered at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn

Throughout the weekend communities in the Minnesota city echoed with the sound of hammering, as shops and businesses were boarded up.

Some business owners have hired private security firms, The Washington Post reported, at a cost of up to $3,000 a day.

The area around Hennepin County Government Center, where Chauvin's trial is being held, has already been fortified with concrete barricades and multiple layers of high-security fencing topped by barbed wire. Chauvin's trial began with opening statements on March 29, and the jurors heard 13 days of evidence.

Chauvin, 45, who declined to testify in his own defense, faces charges of manslaughter, second-degree murder and third-degree murder in the death of Floyd, 46, in May last year.

A man sits ontop of a car holding a Black Lives Matter near the George Floyd Square in Minneapolis on Sunday

Demonstrators on Sunday outside Cup Foods, where George Floyd was killed on May 25

Activists are seen on Sunday outside a memorial to George Floyd in Minneapolis

The spot where George Floyd lay is marked in chalk as activists gather at the memorial on Sunday

Members of the National Guard stand watch in Minneapolis on Sunday

Prosecutors will paint the picture that Chauvin recklessly squeezed the life from Floyd as he and two other officers pinned him to the street for nine minutes, 29 seconds outside a corner market, despite Floyd's repeated cries that he couldn't breathe  actions they say warrant conviction not just for manslaughter but also on two murder counts.

The defense will argue that Floyd put himself at risk by swallowing fentanyl and methamphetamine, then resisted officers trying to arrest him  factors which compounded his vulnerability to a diseased heart and raise sufficient doubt that Chauvin should be acquitted.

The attorneys aren't limited by time in their closing arguments, though legal experts say overlong arguments risk losing jurors' attention and may be less effective.

Prosecutors Steve Schleicher and Jerry Blackwell will share the closing, with Schleicher leading off and Blackwell coming on for the last-word rebuttal of defense attorney Eric Nelson's closing.

Video played a huge role at trial, both in buttressing the expert testimony and in driving home the emotional impact of Floyd's anguish and death. Prosecutors can re-play video during their closings, and experts say they expect it.

Guilty verdicts must be unanimous, which means Nelson needs to raise doubt in the minds of just a single juror on the various counts. His closing is certain to return to the themes of his cross-examination of prosecution witnesses and the brief defense case he mounted.

Nelson is also likely to question perhaps the strongest single part of the state's case  the video of Floyd's arrest, including bystander Darnella Frazier's video that largely established public perceptions of events. Nelson argued that camera angles can be deceptive, and used other views to suggest to jurors that Chauvin's knee wasn't on Floyd's neck at all times.

'If I was Nelson, I'd do a lot of things, because a lot of things need to be done,' Joe Friedberg, a local defense attorney not involved in the case, said.

'He's in desperate trouble here.'

Second-degree murder requires prosecutors to prove Chauvin intended to harm Floyd. Third-degree murder requires proof that Chauvin's actions were 'eminently dangerous' and done with indifference to loss of life. Second-degree manslaughter requires jurors to believe that he caused Floyd's death through negligence and consciously took the chance of causing severe injury or death.

Each count carries a different maximum sentence: 40 years for second-degree unintentional murder, 25 years for third-degree murder, and 10 years for second-degree manslaughter. Sentencing guidelines call for far less time, including 12 1/2 years on either murder count.

After the defense rested its case in Chauvin's trial, NAACP president Derrick Johnson said: 'What we've all witnessed throughout the trial thus far confirmed what we saw in the video. Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd.

'As we turn to closing arguments on Monday, the nation waits on justice.'

On Friday workers were seen erecting a large fence around a post office, and adding a wooden barricade to a hotel that had been boarded up weeks earlier.

Minneapolis Public Schools, which only recently resumed in-person teaching amid the COVID-19 pandemic, announced that it would return to remote learning from Wednesday, in anticipation of the verdict.

The massive show of force is designed to avoid a repeat of last summer's unrest, which saw violence across Minneapolis, with the burning of a police station and an estimated $350 million in damage to buildings and businesses.

Yet many feel the response to protests have been heavy-handed.

A demonstrator reacts as police officers use pepper spray Friday during a protest outside the Brooklyn Center police station

On Friday night police in Brooklyn Center arrested over 100 demonstrators after declaring an illegal assembly

Mike Elliott, the mayor of Brooklyn Center - where Wright was killed - and the city council last week called on law enforcement to dial back their response, including their use of chemical irritants.

'We have to approach policing in a different way, in a more humane way,' Elliott said.

He and others also criticized the mass arrests of mostly peaceful protesters, including another 136 people on Friday night.

Hennepin County Sheriff Dave Hutchinson, one of the leaders of Operation Safety Net, accused the mayor of causing 'significant confusion' by questioning police procedures and asked if the city no longer wanted their help.

The mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, has defended the increased security presence, and said in a briefing last week that his priority was the 'safety and security' of the city and its residents.

'This is a hard time for our city,' Frey said at the briefing.

'These times are tense. They are traumatic, and they're going to need all of us working together in every respect.'

Ted Cruz slams Maxine Waters for 'encouraging riots and violence' after she called on BLM protesters to get 'more confrontational' - hours before two National Guardsmen were injured in drive-by shooting in Minneapolis

Senator Ted Cruz has accused Democrats of 'actively encouraging riots & violence' after California Representative Maxine Waters joined protesters in Minnesota on Saturday night, and urged the crowd to 'get more confrontational'.

Cruz and others slammed Waters for her remarks in Minneapolis on Saturday night -- made just hours before two National Guardsmen tasked with keeping the peace there were injured in a drive-by shooting.

Waters traveled to Minneapolis the weekend before closing arguments in the trial of Derek Chauvin, charged with murdering George Floyd on May 25. She also spoke amid protests in response to the killing last week of Daunte Wright, a black 20-year-old shot and killed at a traffic stop by a white police officer, Kimberly Potter.

'I am not happy that we have talked about police reform for so long,' Waters said, demanding a guilty verdict in the Chauvin trial and adding: 'If we don't [get it], we cannot go away. We've got to stay on the street.'

She added that protesters needed 'get more active, more confrontational' and they should ignore the curfew in place.

Hours after Waters' passionate speech, a Minnesota National Guard and Minneapolis police team were fired upon in a drive-by shooting.

Scroll down for video

Maxine Waters, congresswoman for California, was in Minnesota on Saturday evening, saying that demonstrators needed 'get more active, more confrontational'

A bullet hole is seen in the windshield of a Minnesota National Guard vehicle that was targeted in a drive-by shooting early on Sunday. Two Guardsmen suffered minor injuries

Senator Ted Cruz accused Waters and fellow Democrats of seeking to 'to tear us apart'

The team was providing neighborhood security in Minneapolis when, at about 4.19am local time, a light colored SUV drove by and blasted shots at an occupied National Guard vehicle.

No team members were seriously injured, though two National Guard members suffered minor injuries: One was injured by shattered glass and taken to a local hospital, while the other suffered only superficial injuries.

Cruz accused Waters and fellow Democrats of seeking to 'to tear us apart.'

'Why is Maxine Waters traveling to a different state trying to incite a riot? What good can come from this?' asked Lauren Boebert, representative for Colorado.

Fellow Colorado representative Ken Buck said: 'Why is a sitting member of Congress encouraging protesters to get 'confrontational?''

Arizona Republican Andy Biggs added: 'The Radical Left don't care if your towns are burning, if there's violence in your streets, or if the police are too defunded to defend their communities.

'As long as the Left appeases their anti-America base, their job is done.'

And Marjorie Taylor Greene, congresswoman for Georgia, called for her to be expelled from Congress.

'As a sitting United States Congresswoman @MaxineWaters threatened a jury demanding a guilty verdict and threatened violence if Chauvin is found not guilty. This is also an abuse of power. #ExpelMaxineWaters'

She called Waters 'a danger to our society.'

On Twitter, others joined in the outrage at Waters' remarks.

'Of course she'll get away with saying that while anyone else would've been thrown in jail,' Rick Santella tweeted.

Another user tweeted, 'Good grief lady, leave get out of here.'

One person also accused Waters of 'stirring people up again with her calls for violence.'

Pictured: Congresswoman Maxine Waters leaving the protest at the Brooklyn Center Police Department on Saturday

Maxine Waters (D-CA) joins demonstrators in a protest outside the Brooklyn Center police station on Saturday night

Maxine Waters (D-CA) joins demonstrators in a protest outside the Brooklyn Center police station on Saturday night

Waters is planning on staying in town until Monday.

According to CBS Minnesota, officials stated that there was a brief altercation between reporters and protesters as Waters was leaving on Saturday, the first reports of any skirmishes.

The Pioneer Press reports demonstrators gathered Saturday afternoon at the home of Washington County Attorney Pete Orput, responsible for the second-degree manslaughter charges against Potter.

The protesters stood outside of Orput's home before marching through is neighborhood in Stillwater.

Black Lives Matter activist Nekima Levy Armstrong said that Orput left his home briefly to engage in a conversation with protesters.

Pictured: Peaceful protesters in front of the Brooklyn Center Police Department on Saturday night

Demonstrators raise their fists at Union Station near the U.S Capitol, during a march in Washington, D.C. on Saturday

A demonstrator holds a Black Lives Matter sign during a protest outside the Brooklyn Center police station on Saturday

Protests have also been taking place in Chicago following the death of 13-year-old Adam Toledo, as well as New York City and across the rest of the United States.

On Friday night, many protests across the nation started off peacefully before sporadic clashes broke out between Black Lives Matters protesters and the police.

University of Minnesota medical students and doctors also marched on the Brooklyn Center Police Department on Saturday, a day after it was the site of most of the night's unrest.

Peaceful protests on Friday devolved into clashes between protesters and police, with flash bangs and pepper spray utilized by the cops.

There originally was not expected to be a curfew for the first time in several days, before one was suddenly imposed during the night's demonstrations.

Media members were briefly detained and 136 people were arrested.

A temporary restraining order was filed to prevent police from arresting or harming journalists.

'Following feedback from media, and in light of a recent temporary restraining order (TRO) filed in federal court, MSP will not photograph journalists or their credentials,' the Minnesota State Patrol said in a statement.

According to the Washington Post, several protesters were arrested on Saturday night. It's unclear why they were arrested, as the protest of about a hundred was drawing to a close.

Earlier in the day, there were peaceful protests across the nation, including Columbus, Ohio, and Philadelphia.

According to NBC Philadelphia, crowds in that city walked through City Center towards City Hall peacefully in a protest that lasted around five hours.

Nevertheless, some businesses did board up and 1,000 National Guard troops were preemptively deployed.
VANCOUVER, BC, April 19, 2021 /CNW/ - Reconnaissance Energy Africa Ltd. ("ReconAfrica") (TSXV: RECO) (OTCQX: RECAF) (Frankfurt: 0XD) and Renaissance Oil Corp. ("Renaissance") (TSXV: ROE) (OTCQB: RNSFF) are pleased to announce that they have entered into a letter of intent (the "LOI") setting forth the material terms and conditions upon which ReconAfrica will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares (the "Renaissance Shares") and convertible securities of Renaissance (the "Transaction"). The Transaction is expected to be implemented by way of a statutory plan of arrangement under the Business Corporations Act (British Columbia).

Pursuant to the LOI, ReconAfrica will issue to each holder of a Renaissance Share 0.046 of a common share of ReconAfrica (each whole common share, a "ReconAfrica Share") (the "Consideration"). The value of the Consideration represents a 1.45% premium over the closing price of the Renaissance Shares on the TSX Venture Exchange (the "TSXV") on April 16, 2021, the last day of trading prior to the announcement of the Transaction, and based on the closing price of the ReconAfrica Shares on the TSX.V of $7.62 on April 16, 2021. The terms of the Transaction value Renaissance at $.35 per share or approximately $155 million. Following the completion of the Transaction, current shareholders of Renaissance will hold approximately 20,340,792 shares or 11.36% of the fully-diluted issued and outstanding shares of ReconAfrica.

The boards of directors of each of ReconAfrica and Renaissance, respectively, have unanimously approved the entering into of the LOI. The companies have agreed to a 30 -day exclusivity period to, among other things, negotiate and settle a definitive agreement.

"With ReconAfrica's recent drilling success in the Kavango Basin, the Company has determined it is in the best interest of ReconAfrica shareholders to consolidate all interests," stated Scot Evans, CEO of ReconAfrica. "Renaissance Oil's right to acquire 50% working interest in 2.2 million acres in the eastern part of the Kavango basin (Botswana) is potentially very valuable to ReconAfrica as it pursues the development of conventional resources in the basin."

"Consolidating all interests in the Kavango Basin to 8,500,000 acres, which covers the entire sedimentary basin, is in an accretive transaction for both ReconAfrica and Renaissance," stated Craig Steinke, CEO of Renaissance. "The combined company will solely focus on the development of the deep Kavango basin while exploring strategic alternatives for the Mexican assets."

The LOI is non-binding and there is no assurance that the Transaction will be completed as proposed or at all. The completion of the Transaction is subject to, among other things: (i) completion of satisfactory due diligence by each of ReconAfrica and Renaissance; (ii) negotiation of a definitive agreement and the entering into of a binding definitive agreement in connection with the Transaction, to include standard non-solicitation, superior proposal and right to match provisions (the "Definitive Agreement"), following receipt by the board of directors of Renaissance of a fairness opinion in connection with the Transaction and the board of directors resolving to unanimously recommend that shareholders of Renaissance vote in favour of the Transaction; (iii) the entering into by the directors and officers of Renaissance of support and lock-up agreements on terms satisfactory to ReconAfrica to vote in favour of the Transaction; and (iv) receipt of all required corporate approvals from the board of directors of ReconAfrica and Renaissance, respectively, and all regulatory and shareholder approvals, including "majority of the minority" shareholder approvals, as applicable, any competition or foreign investment approvals and the approval of the TSXV and any required third-party consents.

None of the securities to be issued pursuant to the Arrangement Agreement have been or will be registered under the United State Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any state securities laws, and any securities issued in the Arrangement are anticipated to be issued in reliance upon available exemptions from such registration requirements pursuant to Section 3(a)(10) of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable exemptions under state securities laws. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities.

ReconAfrica is a junior, Canadian oil and gas company engaged in the opening of the newly discovered deep Kavango Sedimentary Basin, in the Kalahari Desert of northeastern Namibia and northwestern Botswana, where ReconAfrica holds petroleum licenses comprising approximately 8.5 million contiguous acres. In all aspects of its operations, ReconAfrica is committed to minimal disturbances in line with international best standards and will implement environmental and social best practices in all of its project areas.

Renaissance is an onshore operator in Mexico with 100% working interest in approximately 1200 boe/day. The Company holds an option to acquire a 50% working interest, in all rights from surface to basement, in a large Petroleum Licence, comprising 2.2 million acres in the Kavango sedimentary basin, in Botswana, Africa. The licence operator is ReconAfrica.

Neither the TSXV nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: Certain statements contained in this press release constitute forward-looking information under applicable Canadian, United States and other applicable securities laws, rules and regulations, including, without limitation, statements with respect to the completion of the Transaction and all of the condition's precedent to the completion of the Transaction that must be fulfilled. 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 ReconAfrica's and Renaissance's current belief or assumptions as to the outcome and timing of such future events. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as ReconAfrica's and Renaissance's actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of the factors discussed in the "Risk Factors" section in ReconAfrica's annual information form dated July 27, 2020 available under ReconAfrica's profile at www.sedar.com and in the "Risk Management and Rick Factors" section in Renaissance's management's discussion and analysis for the year ended December 31, 2019. Actual future results may differ materially. Various assumptions or factors are typically applied in drawing conclusions or making the forecasts or projections set out in forward-looking information. Those assumptions and factors are based on information currently available to ReconAfrica and Renaissance. The forward-looking information contained in this news release is made as of the date hereof and ReconAfrica and Renaissance undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities 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.

SOURCE Reconnaissance Energy Africa Ltd.

For further information: Scot Evans CEO | Tel: +1 (877) 631-1160; Craig Steinke CEO | Tel: +1 (877) 631-1160; Email: [email protected]; Media Inquiries: [email protected]

Related Links

https://reconafrica.com/


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The global Flexible Packaging Market is anticipated to reach $335 billion by 2026 according to a new research published by Polaris Market Research. In 2017, the food and beverage segment accounted for the highest market share in terms of revenue. Asia-Pacific is expected to be the leading contributor to the global Flexible Packaging market revenue in 2017.

The increasing disposable incomes and growing demand for fast moving consumer goods drives the growth of the flexible packaging market. Growing urbanization has resulted in urban citizens spending most of their time at work and everyday commute, which has increased the demand for convenient packaging for on-the-go consumption, thereby supporting the flexible packaging market growth. Brand owners are taking initiatives to optimize packaging operations to meet the global competition, increase productivity, enhance shelf life of products, improve overall efficiency, and create brand differentiation in the market. The demand for new and unique packaging sizes, shapes and configurations has increased from industries such as food and beverages, cosmetics, and healthcare among others. The increasing need to offer convenient packaging solutions while also addressing environmental concerns has boosted the flexible packaging market growth.

Request for a sample of this research report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/flexible-packaging-market/request-for-sample

Numerous key players have adopted partnership and acquisition strategies to increase their market share in the global flexible packaging market. For instance, In December 2015, Mondi Group signed an agreement for the acquisition of 95% of the outstanding share capital in KSP, Co. KSP is a flexible packaging company based in South Korea with strong focus on production of high-quality spouted and retort stand-up pouches for food, pet food and beverage industries. The acquisition of KSP compliments Mondis stand-up pouch operations in Korneuburg, Austria and Jackson, US while expanding its presence in U.S. and Asia. In July 2016, Mondi Group also signed an agreement to acquire Uralplastic. Uralplastic manufactures a range of consumer flexible packaging products for food, hygiene, homecare and other applications. The acquisition of Uralplastic supports the development of Mondis consumer packaging business, strengthens its presence in the Russian consumer packaging market, and expands its offerings in the flexible packaging market.

Asia-Pacific generated the highest market share in terms of revenue in 2018 in the flexible packaging industry, and is expected to lead the global Flexible Packaging market throughout the forecast period. The growing population, rising disposable incomes, and increasing living standards support the growth of flexible packaging industry in the region. The increasing demand from the food and beverage, and retail industry is expected to generate numerous opportunities for the Flexible Packaging industry.

Complete Summary with TOC Available @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/flexible-packaging-market

The well-known companies profiled in the Flexible Packaging report include Amcor Limited, Mondi Group, Berry Plastics Corporation, Sonoco Products Company, American Packaging Corporation, Novolex Holding Inc., Bemis Company, Inc, Constantia Flexibles International GmbH, Ampac Holding, and Sigma Plastics Group. These companies launch new products and collaborate with other market leaders to innovate and launch new products to meet the increasing needs and requirements of consumers.

Flexible Packaging Market Size and Forecast, 2018-2026 by Type Bags Pouches Wraps Others

Flexible Packaging Market Size and Forecast, 2018-2026 by Material Paper Plastic Flexible Foam Aluminum Foil Bioplastics Others

Flexible Packaging Market Size and Forecast, 2018-2026 by End-User Food and Beverage Healthcare Retail Consumer Goods Others

Flexible Packaging Market Size and Forecast, 2018-2026 by Region North America U.S. Canada Mexico Europe Germany UK France Italy Rest of Europe Asia-Pacific China India Japan Rest of Asia-Pacific Latin America Brazil Middle East & Africa



Avail discount on this report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/flexible-packaging-market/request-for-discount-pricing

About Polaris Market Research

Polaris Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. We provide unmatched quality of offerings to our clients present globally. The company specializes in providing exceptional market intelligence and in-depth business research services for our clientele spread across different enterprises. We at Polaris are obliged to serve our diverse customer base present across the industries of healthcare, technology, semi-conductors and chemicals among various other industries present around the world. We strive to provide our customers with updated information on innovative technologies, high growth markets, emerging business environments and latest business-centric applications, thereby helping them always to make informed decisions and leverage new opportunities.

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Email: sales@polarismarketresearch.com

Web: www.polarismarketresearch.com
Patriann Smith, assistant professor of literacy studies in the USF College of Education, has been awarded a three-year, $3.6 million grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The grant is in partnership with the University of the West Indies Cave Hill in Barbados to establish an interdisciplinary educational research center to help support decision making and policy development for educational innovation and expansion in Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean. The grant will also establish a repository for educational research produced in and about the Caribbean. Smith, a native of St. Lucia, will work with a team at the University of the West Indies to conduct research that highlights significant educational issues on the islands, such as challenges with literacy and numeracy teaching methods, and make those insights accessible to researchers across the world.

Smith says research in the Caribbean is generally difficult to locate as the findings are often not submitted to online repositories that are easily accessible in and beyond the Caribbean. In addition to building a database of educational research for USAID, she and her colleagues will share with scientists in the Caribbean how they can better leverage their expertise through publishing in top-tier journals, by participating in high-profile lecture series and other mechanisms that further enhance the research profile of Caribbean scholars. This will allow future research to build upon whats already known and advance efforts to improve educational outcomes in the Caribbean. Theyll also be looking at how Eurocentric curriculum has hampered educational growth.

Working in partnership with Caribbean scholars to implement and design decolonizing research methods and pedagogies in literacy, math, science and other areas of the curriculum will allow USF to extend anti-racism efforts internationally by supporting humanizing efforts for Black communities int he Caribbean, Smith said.

Todays young people are the leaders of tomorrow. Empowering them with tools to succeed impacts our region. What affects one will affect us all, and as neighbors, the American and Caribbean people share similar interests. We are neighbors, we are partners, we are friends, said Clinton White, USAID Eastern and Southern Caribbean regional representative.

The Caribbean initiative will help inform policy and planning for ministries of education and other stakeholders in education. It will also enhance USFs commitment to strengthening its international research partnerships and allow for a global exchange of information. By identifying and addressing educational challenges in the Caribbean for predominantly Black student populations, researchers can better assist in efforts to address opportunity gaps in primarily Black communities in the United States and around the world.

Smith moved to the United States in 2009, earning her masters and doctoral degrees from USF. Prior to that, she was a K-12 teacher in St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago. Smith has coordinated and supported partnerships between universities and K-12 schools in Illinois and Texas and brings her prior experience and expertise to the current initiative. She and her colleagues at USF, through the David C. Anchin Center and the Institute for the Study of Latin America and the Caribbean, will spend the next three summers conducting research in partnership with faculty in the Caribbean and will teach courses to research fellows at the University of West Indies Cave Hill. Theyll also be collaborating with Historically Black College and Universities (HBCUs), such as Spelman University in Atlanta, Tennessee State University in Nashville and the University of the Virgin Islands in St. Thomas, to help ensure they identify additional issues that may affect the teaching of certain curriculums.

The grant will initially target 10 Caribbean island countries, seven of which are independent: Antigua, Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts, Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The remaining three countries are the U.S. Virgin Islands, Montserrat and Anguilla. Smith and her team plan to eventually extend their efforts to the wider Caribbean.
The Ritz-Carlton, Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) has made three new appointments to its team of experienced professionals.

Joining the Ladies and Gentlemen of The Ritz-Carlton DIFC are Edwin Calimano, Director of HR; Sabry Balboul, Director of Engineering; and Frida Audi, Director of Sales and Marketing.

Hailing from the United States, Edwin Calimano brings a glowing track record with experience working mainly in luxury hotels from around the globe. Prior to his role at The Ritz-Carlton DIFC, Calimano served at hotel brands such as Accor Hotels-Fairmont, Jumeirah Group-Burj Al Arab, Jumeirah Beach Hotel, One & Only Le Royal Mirage, IHG, Hyatt Hotels Corporation, and the Four Seasons. In his capacity, Calimano supported many HR projects and pre-openings in the region and around the world.

Originally from Egypt, Sabry Balboul brings a massive track record having worked all around the MEA. Joining the Ritz-Carlton DIFC from the Hilton International, Balboul supported many pre-opening projects in the region. Alongside his incredible experience, Balboul holds a pre-Master diploma and BA in Electrical Engineering from the University of Cairo.

Frida Audi, originally from Lebanon, brings to the table extensive knowledge of the dynamic UAE market having worked in luxury hotels across the region including The Oberoi, Dubai. Joining the team at The Ritz-Carlton DIFC, Audi is no stranger to Marriott International with her previous work tenure at The Ritz-Carlton Doha. Audi brings an impressive skill set to the position as she successfully spear-headed the Sales and Marketing teams at Habtoor Grand Resort Autograph Collection by Marriott and Al Habtoor City Hotels by Hilton Dubai, where she worked in the capacity of a Cluster Commercial Director.

Commenting on the new appointments the hotel's General Manager, Fadeel G. Wehbe added: We are incredibly enthusiastic to welcome the newest members to join the Ladies and Gentlemen at The Ritz-Carlton DIFC. Each new addition brings a host of expertise, experience, creativity, and new perspectives to our team. We are confident that each new member will prove to be invaluable to the legendary Ritz-Carlton brand and help us improve our strategies and increase the overall satisfaction for our employees and guests." - TradeArabia News Service
(TNS)  Longmont, Colo., Power and Communications staff has suggested the city resume collecting a $1 hourly fee from people who charge their electric vehicles at publicly accessible city EV charging stations.Longmont's City Council is to review that proposal during a Tuesday night study session.Longmont owns and operates five such publicly available EV charging stations and has not imposed a fee to people using them since it changed the system connecting four of them in summer 2019.Those five public stations are outside the St. Vrain Memorial Building at 700 Longs Peak Ave. in the Development Services Center parking lot on the west side of the 300 block of Kimbark Street, in the Longmont Public Library garage between Third and Fourth avenues, outside the Longmont Museum at 400 Quail Road and at the Service Center at 1100 S. Sherman St. The library garage station was installed in September 2020. The other four were in use prior to that.Each station has two charging ports and is covered by five-year maintenance and repair contracts.In 2019, Longmont Power and Communications replaced the then-four existing charging stations with ChargePoint stations "to offer our residents a higher quality EV Station with advanced web platform services," staff members wrote to the City Council in a memo for Tuesday's meeting. "At that time, LPC temporarily suspended the $1/hour fee as a means to support the replacement rollout and to reinvigorate usage of the EV stations."That fee suspension, staff said, was intended to introduce customers to the upgraded stations and technology and revitalize charging activity at the stations.Staff said, "Unless Council directs otherwise, LPC will resume a $ 1 per hour use fee for public charging stations effective Aug. 1, 2021, which is similar to fees in place by surrounding communities."Staff said based on last year's use of the now-total five city EV stations, a $1 per hour fee will generate approximately $12,000 per year, which would cover "the cost of owning and operating the existing EV stations and will allow the city to incrementally invest in additional public stations or other EV infrastructure over time."In addition, staff said, an hourly fee "will encourage customers to move their vehicles when charged, thus freeing up the charger for other vehicles."In 2020, 342 unique users used the five stations, with 3,714 individual charging sessions. More than 43,000 kilowatt hours of electricity were used to charge EVs at those stations, staff reported.The average length of charging time at a city public EV station was three to four hours, and staff said a total of 17.7 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent was saved by having EVs charge at the stations.In addition to the five city-owned public charging stations, there are more than 65 public and privately owned charging stations within a 10-mile radius of Longmont, city staff said, adding that "a vast percentage of vehicle charging occurs at home or possibly at the workplace."The staff report said Loveland charges $1 an hour for its four municipally owned EV charging stations; Fort Collins, $1 an hour for its eight municipal charging stations, and Boulder, $1 an hour for its 44 city-owned EV charging stations. Denver has no fee for people charging at its more than 20 municipally owned public EV stations. Nor does Colorado Springs Utilities collect a fee for its 3 municipal charging stations.Tim Ellis, a Longmont Power and Communications energy strategies and solutions staff manager, said in an email that while Longmont's five city-owned public EV charging stations manufactured by ChargePoint are now available at no fee, customers must create an account with ChargePoint to use those chargers  chargepoint.com/drivers/activate."It's a fairly simple process, and the customer can download an app on their phone to access any ChargePoint station thereafter," Ellis said.He said, "The city does not (have) immediate current plans to install any additional public charging stations this year or next, but we are continually evaluating the opportunity to strategically deploy EV infrastructure as the need arises and makes sense for the citizens of Longmont."More information is available on the city's "Electric Vehicle Charging Stations" web page,What: Longmont City Council study sessionWhen: 7 p.m. TuesdayWhere: Council and city staff members will participate from remote locations. Residents can watch the meeting by clicking "play" on the video link within the interactive agenda window. The mayor will announce when people can call in to comment during the portion of the meeting when the public is invited to be heard.Agenda:
In what could be another Autopilot mode failure, two people were killed in a fiery Tesla crash in Texas with no one in the driver's seat.

Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman told Houston television station KPRC 2 that the investigation showed "no one was driving" the fully electric 2019 Tesla when the accident happened.

"There was a person in the passenger seat of the front of the car and in the rear passenger seat of the car," the report quoted Herman as saying on Sunday.

Herman said it took firefighters nearly four hours and more than 30,000 gallons of water to extinguish the blaze.

"Normally when the fire department arrives, they have the vehicle fire in control in minutes, but this went on close to four hours," according to a KHOU 11 report.

At one point, crews had to call Tesla to ask how to put the fire out.

Preliminary reports suggest the car was traveling at a high speed and failed to make a turn, then drove off the road into a tree.

It's not yet clear whether the car had its Autopilot driver assist system activated.

Tesla was yet to react to the deadly incident.

There have been at least 23 Tesla Autopilot-related crashes, currently under investigation by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

Tesla had already cautioned that Autopilot is not an autonomous driving system and requires a driver's constant attention.

Last month, the NHTSA swung into action after the driver of a Tesla Model Y smashed into a state trooper's cruiser near Michigan.

Michigan police said the driver was using Autopilot, Tesla's advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS), at the time of the crash.

The electric car-maker recently rolled out a beta version of Autopilot called "Full Self Driving", calling it the next step towards secure driving.

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.
Here's what you need to know: Monday, April 19
They won the hearts of sci-fi fans around the world with The X-Files.

And Gillian Anderson, 52, and David Duchovny, 60, who played Dana Scully and Fox Mulder respectively, were once again delighting viewers as they reunited.

The Crown actress took to Instagram to share a duo of snaps showing her and her former partner in crime, as he was introduced to her dog.

All together: Gillian Anderson, 52, and David Duchovny, 60, who played Dana Scully and Fox Mulder respectively, were once again delighting viewers as they reunited

Gillian and David became household names in the '90s thanks to the roles as FBI Special Agents in the beloved sci-fi series The X-Files.

A host of her 1.8million Instagram followers soon swarmed the comments section to delight in the reunion - stating they were 'getting the band back together'.

Instagram users penned: 'Getting the band back together... the way you knew this would break the internet... Ive just died a thousand deaths from one photo!!...

'cuties!! currently watching x files as we speak, what a duo!... Omgggg this photo is everything... HELL YEA KING AND QUEEN ARE BACK... I still love these two after all these years. Forever my OTP.'

Happy days: The Crown actress took to Instagram to share a duo of snaps showing her and her former partner in crime, as he was introduced to her dog

Way back when: Gillian and David became household names in the '90s thanks to the roles as FBI Special Agents in the beloved sci-fi series The X-Files

Last year, Gillian reflected on her decision to leave Hollywood and move to London at the height of her fame.

'I had a complicated relationship with becoming so famous so young and seeing the worst part of what the industry can be. I really hated it and wanted to get away,' she told Australia's TV Week magazine.

'Now I'm older, I can put it all in perspective. The rewards that I've been blessed with for following my instincts are many, and I never got to the point of even considering moving back to America,' she added.

Excitement! A host of her 1.8million Instagram followers soon swarmed the comments section to delight in the reunion - stating they were 'getting the band back together'

Gillian, who spent years living in England as a child, explained that she 'always missed the UK and always knew she was going to end up back here'.

The Emmy winner was born in Chicago, and her family later relocated to Puerto Rico for 15 months and then London.

The Sex Education star returned to the United States with her family at the age of 11 and they settled in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
President of the Young Professionals Network (YPN), Mr. Stephen Asiedu has admonished New Patriotic Party (NPP) members nursing presidential ambitions to channel their energies into seeing to President Akufo-Addos successful second term.



He says aspirants can only leverage on a good performance by President Akufo-Addo in his second term to campaign for additional years for the NPP to run affairs of the country.



Mr. Asiedus comments come on the back of recent manoeuvres by some members of the NPP thought to have presidential ambitions to get elected as flagbearers and have initiated moves to secure the endorsement of delegates ahead of time.



Speaking exclusive interview, Mr. Asiedu said We advise that they focus on Nana Addo succeeding in his second term because if Nana Addo doesnt succeed in the second term, the NPP will have a tough time selling their candidate because there will not be any track-record to sell to Ghanaians.



It is too early to be shouting who is in whose camp. We do not need that. What we need is to focus on the Nana Addo government to deliver a second term that gives hope and develops trust in the electorate for the NPP as a party. That becomes the only CV that you have if you become the candidate of the party in 2024.



Mr. Asiedu also advised government to focus on delivering on its promises, which include the construction of roads, healthcare promises like the construction of the district and regional hospitals, providing employment for the youth, instilling a sense of confidence in the business community by stabilizing the currency and making the economy vibrant.



He indicated that the COVID-19 pandemic has had adverse effects on businesses and that the situation has led to a restriction of goods imported into the country, which is also resulting in price hikes.



The YPN President said members of the NPP should focus on helping to stabilize the economy, and restoring confidence in Ghanas education system to enable the next flagbearer have a lot of achievements to tout about.



If we dont focus and put our energy behind the President to deliver on his promises, we will come to 2024 without any message and we might lose the election to the opposition, he cautioned.

Source: Daily Graphic









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CHICAGO, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Delta Capital Partners Management LLC, a global private equity firm specializing in litigation and legal finance, is pleased to announce a new senior executive hire and promotions within the firm. Todd Schneider has joined Delta as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Compliance Officer; and Gabriel Olearnik and Daniel Bond have been promoted to Director of Investor Relations and Director of Underwriting, respectively.

Todd Schneider Hired as CFO and CCO.

Mr. Schneider will oversee the implementation and management of all financial activities for Delta and also will work closely with Delta's senior management and investment committee. Mr. Schneider has served as the Chief Financial Officer and Chief Compliance Officer of Shorehill Capital LLC, a private equity firm focused on investing in middle market industrial products, industrial services, and distribution businesses. Mr. Schneider also served as the Chief Financial Officer and Chief Compliance Officer of CHS Capital LLC, the precursor firm of Shorehill Capital. Throughout their histories, CHS Capital and Shorehill Capital made investments in more than 400 businesses and invested over $3 billion of capital. Prior to CHS Capital, Mr. Schneider was the Chief Financial Officer of Conversus Asset Management, the asset manager for Conversus Capital L.P., formerly the world's largest publicly traded private equity fund of funds designed to provide investors liquidity in a historically illiquid asset class. Mr. Schneider has also held positions as a Senior Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer of FBOP Corporation, as well as a senior manager at KPMG, where Mr. Schneider began his professional career.

Christopher DeLise, Delta's Founder, CEO and CO-CIO, stated, "Delta is pleased to have Todd join our team as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Compliance Officer. Todd's extensive background as a senior financial professional and organizational leader, knowledge of various asset classes, and intimate familiarity with all aspects of operating, financing, and successfully scaling private equity firms, will enable Delta to continue its remarkable growth and position the firm to be a funder of choice for sophisticated claimants and respondents across the globe."

Gabriel Oleanrik Promoted to Managing Director and Director of Investor Relations .

Mr. Olearnik is currently a Managing Director overseeing international deal origination, operations, and strategic alliances and ventures for Delta. Now, Mr. Olearnik also will serve as Director of Investor Relations, where he will be responsible for overseeing global investor relations for Delta. Prior to joining Delta, Mr. Olearnik was the General Counsel of a major private equity firm in London and a Partner and Chair of the Private Equity Practice Group at Kochanski & Partners, a leading independent European law firm. Prior to those roles, Mr. Olearnik was a corporate finance attorney at Clifford Chance, Mayer Brown and at Dentons.

DeLise noted, "Gabriel has done a tremendous job representing Delta as a litigation funder throughout Europe. Gabriel's experience with Delta and many successes since joining the firm, his prior experience as the General Counsel of a private equity firm, and his intimate knowledge and familiarity with all legal and operational facets of private investment funds, makes him the perfect choice to serve as Delta's Director of Investor Relations. In that role, Gabriel will materially contribute to the firm's growth plans by expanding and enhancing Delta's relationships with its existing investors."

Daniel Bond Promoted to Managing Director and Director of Underwriting .

Mr. Bond is currently a Managing Director for Delta, where he oversees intake, evaluation, due diligence, and monitoring efforts in connection with new equity investment opportunities. Now, Mr. Bond also will also serve as Director of Underwriting, where he will be responsible for overseeing all facets of litigation and arbitration underwriting for Delta across all of its product and service offerings worldwide, including equity and credit solutions for plaintiffs and defendants. Prior to joining Delta, Mr. Bond was a Partner at Kirkland Ellis and had an over-10-year law firm career with experience in the conduct, management, and planning of commercial litigation and dispute resolution. Mr. Bond's experience encompasses a range of intellectual property and complex civil litigation matters and he has successfully litigated numerous high-profile lawsuits for blue chip clients in a variety of fields.

DeLise remarked, "Daniel's tremendous success managing litigation and arbitration underwriting for Delta's equity-oriented investments makes him the ideal choice to serve as worldwide Director of Underwriting across all of Delta's product and services offerings as Delta continues to expand its platform to include litigation finance solutions for defendants, municipalities and governments; managed solutions for businesses; and credit-based products. With these new offerings all coming online within the next several weeks, and with Daniel at the helm of our underwriting process, Delta expects to be able to significantly increase deal capacity while diminishing throughput time."

About Delta

Delta Capital Partners Management LLC is a global private equity firm specializing in litigation and legal finance, judgment enforcement, asset recovery, and related strategies. Delta provides capital and related services to individuals, businesses, private investment funds, law firms and other professional service firms across the world that seek to hedge their financial exposure, reduce legal spending, enhance the probability of a successful and timely resolution of claims, and maximize the effectiveness of their core businesses.

For additional information, please contact either:

Kimberly Fine, Chief Marketing Officer: [email protected]

Brian Maddox, Media Contact: [email protected]

SOURCE Delta Capital Partners
What Boris Johnson's green targets mean for YOUR life and wallet Target - Cut meat and dairy consumption by a fifth over the next decade Impact - Someone who has meat for every three meals could only do this twice a week under the new plans. Similarly, the average Briton would need to shave a fifth of the average milk consumption down to 16ml a day - or roughly three teaspoons. Target - Ban new fossil-fuelled cars - including hybrids - by 2033 Impact - The average cost of buying a new electric car in the UK is 44,000, according to industry figures. Target - Ban the sale of oil-fired boilers by 2028 and gas boilers by 2033; require all homes to be insulated Impact - Energy efficiency measures - such as improving insulation and installing low carbon boilers - could cost 10,000 per home. Target - Stop expanding UK airport capacity and impose a frequent flyer levy with the aim of reducing the number of flights by 15% Impact - The average Briton currently takes 10 foreign holidays every five years, which would need to reduce to around 8. This is the equivalent of around three foreign holidays every two years. Advertisement

Boris Johnson's plans to slash the UK's greenhouse emissions by nearly four-fifths in a decade sparked criticism today, as the PM was accused of 'shameless virtue signalling' and pursuing unreachable targets that would put the UK's economic recovery at risk.

The Prime Minister has described the target to reduce emissions by 78% on 1990 levels by 2035, which will be set in law under the Government's sixth carbon budget, as the most ambitious in the world.

It has been announced on the eve of a major US summit on Thursday where President Joe Biden is expected to set out a new US target for reducing emissions.

According to advice from the Government's advisory Climate Change Committee (CCC), delivering on the target will mean radical changes including an end to heating homes with natural gas boilers, lower meat and dairy diets and a switch to electric cars.

The target sparked criticism today as the intrusive and costly adaptations needed to achieve it were laid bare, including spending 10,000 on upgrading homes, cutting foreign holidays and reducing meat consumption by a fifth.

Hugh Bladon, from the Alliance of British Drivers, said: 'Boris can say what the hell he likes but by the time we get round to it he'll be history. So this is all shameless virtue signalling.

'He's trying to make himself a big world leader and environmentalist.

'If Boris wants to cosy up to Biden then good luck to him, but this would be economically crippling.'

Other changes include switching from petrol and diesel cars to electric vehicles and from gas boilers to clean home heating, more offshore wind power, a reduction in meat and dairy consumption and planting of new woodlands.

Announcing the move, Mr Johnson said: 'We want to continue to raise the bar on tackling climate change, and that's why we're setting the most ambitious target to cut emissions in the world.'

The major changes that will be necessary to achieve the 78% CO2 reduction - as set out by a report by the Climate Change Committee - are detailed below.

Cut meat and dairy consumption by a fifth over the next decade - so that's meat just twice a week if you want to have it for three meals a day

One measure to meet the emissions target includes requiring people to cut the amount of meat and dairy they eat by a fifth in the next decade, the CCC said.

Average meat consumption currently stands at 70g a day, according to the NHS, so reducing this by a fifth would equal 56g - approximately the weight of a chicken breast.

This means that someone who has meat for every three meals could only do this twice a week.

Similarly, the average Briton would need to shave a fifth of the average milk consumption down to 16ml a day - roughly three teaspoons.

Tory MP Peter Bone criticised the plan for meat and dairy when it was first proposed by the Climate Change Committee last year.

'It's the sort of thing that won't happen because of government intervention. Maybe more people will move that way,' Mr Bone said.

'But government won't say to people, ''you can only have dairy products five days a week''.'

Achieving the 80 per cent reduction will require major changes to industry, farming and homes - as well as planting more trees. One such measure includes encouraging people to cut the amount of meat and dairy they eat by a fifth in the next decade, the government's Climate Change Committee (CCC) claimed (file image)

Mr Johnson, who drove a 15-year-old diesel car before entering government, has been determined to lead the world in reducing carbon emissions and the UK has pledged to reach net zero by 2050.

In February, it was revealed that the PM has ordered Whitehall departments to look at how much greenhouse gas emissions produced by different sectors of the economy cost society.

He pondered new carbon taxes and charges for Britain that would see higher prices on meat and cheese at the supermarket and on gas for their hobs and boilers at home.

At present, only airlines and power generators are charged for their emissions, but ministers want to extend the 'polluter pays' principle to all sectors. This could lead to a hike in prices for goods such as beef, lamb and cheese, or more heavily polluting forms of heating such as gas.

MailOnline has calculated the potential cost at the tills if the Government imposed a tax on meat, oil, dairy, eggs and sugar

No costs have been mooted by Whitehall, but recent studies by a team at Oxford University have calculated that surcharges of 40 per cent on beef, 25 per cent on oils, 20 per cent on milk, 15 per cent on lamb and 10 per cent on chicken would reduce emissions and reduce consumption in the way the PM wants.

This means that the cost of a sirloin steak, currently around 4.50 in the supermarket, would be around 6.30 and mince would rise 1.46 to 5.02. Olive oil would increase from 3.75 to 4.69.

Four pints of milk would go from 1.09 to 1.32, four lamb chops up to 7.50 from 6, six chicken breasts up 50p per pack to 5.50 while a whole chicken would increase in price by 28p to 3.78; Eggs would rise 5p to 94p and sugar would increase by a penny to 66p.

A study by the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food calculated tax levels for everyday items that would reduce carbon and consumption. Academics believe 40 per cent on beef would be required, 25 per cent on oats and 20 per cent on lamb

10,000 bill to rip out your oil and gas boiler - and replace it with electric heat pumps and hydrogen alternatives

The CCC has suggested that new oil-fired boilers will have to be banned by 2028, and gas-fired boilers by 2033.

A previous report suggested that these measures to reduce household emissions by 2050 could cost as much as 10,000 per home.

This includes about 2,000 on insulation and 6,000 on installing alternatives to gas boilers, such as electric heat pumps.

Hydrogen and heat pumps have both been touted as a low carbon emission alternative.

Boris Johnson has announced a 'world-leading' new legal target to cut the UK's greenhouse gas emissions by nearly four-fifths by 2035

But issues with these heat sources have been highlighted by Dr Matt Lipson, the business lead at Energy Systems Catapult's Consumer Insight.

He told BBC Radio 4: The downside is theres no (hydrogen) supplier at the moment, so if you want to do it this winter you might struggle.

However, the report suggests that the reduction in household emissions by 2050 could cost as much as 10,000 per home.

This includes about 2,000 on insulation and 6,000 on installing alternatives to gas boilers, such as electric heat pumps.

Dr Lipson added: When we look at the costs nationally it seems the best option is a mix of solutions - theres no silver bullet unfortunately.

Obviously the price of a planet we can all live on isnt free but I think its probably worth the bill.

'We have to take a nuanced approach and different choices for different places.'

Dr Jonathan Marshall, head of analysis at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit said: 'Calling time on gas boilers will represent a major step on the UKs path to a carbon neutral nation and is a way for families up and down the country to take action on their carbon footprints.'

There are also warnings about the volatile nature of hydrogen, which could result in explosions and leaks that are difficult to detect.

Boiler Guide states: 'Because of its high energy content, hydrogen gas is a highly flammable and volatile substance which makes it a risky fuel to work with.

'Hydrogen is incredibly flammable which makes it a dangerous fuel if not handled correctly. There is also no smell to hydrogen so sensors are required to detect leaks.'

Ban new fossil-fuelled cars - including hybrids - by 2033

The sale of new petrol and diesel cars, motorbikes and vans, including plug-in hybrids, will have to be phased out by the early 2030s, and even HGVs will start to shift to greener alternatives.

That will mean more electric vehicles and charging points, and people will also need to use their cars less, with more home working and more journeys on foot, bike or public transport - with buses and trains also going green.

'Achieving decarbonisation of surface transport will require a sector-wide transition to vehicles that produce zero tailpipe emissions,' the CCC has said.

It highlighted how cars account for 61% of 'surface' transport emissions, which covers roads, public transport and the rail network.

New petrol and diesel cars and vans are expected to no longer be sold by 2030.

And the committee has said hybrid cars, which are part-electric but still have an engine, should be included in this move from 2032.

The average cost of buying a new electric car in the UK is 44,000, according to industry figures, suggesting a heavy cost for consumers.

Experts have also raised concerns about whether the UK can manufacture enough batteries to fit e-models.

Hugh Bladon, from the Alliance of British Drivers, said: 'This would destroy the motor industry and make too expensive for the people who need to use cars to ever own one.'

Energy efficiency measures - such as improving insulation and installing low carbon heating - could cost 10,000 per home (file image)

If hydrogen is part of a zero-carbon future, it could have to be produced by electrolysis (as shown above), which sees electric currents passed through water. Another option is for the plants to capture the carbon emissions and pump them underground

Fewer foreign holidays - and higher prices for flights

A frequent flyer tax is being discussed, with an aim for flights from the UK to be cut by 15 per cent from 2018 levels in a 'highly optimistic' scenario for lowering emissions.

The average Briton currently takes 10 foreign holidays every five years, which would need to reduce to around 8. This is the equivalent of around three foreign holidays every two years.

Meanwhile, the upward pressure on air fares caused by extra taxes could see prices return to levels not seen since the 1970s.

The CCC found aviation emissions accounted for 7% of UK greenhouse gas emissions in 2018 - an increase of 88% from 1990 levels.

But as the Covid pandemic grounded planes and stopped international travel, the report estimates the UK has seen a drop of at least 60% of greenhouse gas emissions from 2019.

It highlights that with pre-pandemic passenger levels not expected to return until 2024, the pandemic has presented an opportunity to examine ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the future.

Among the report's suggestions to prevent the situation worsening, they warn there can be no increase in UK airport capacity unless any expansion - such as at Heathrow - is balanced by reductions in capacity elsewhere in the UK.

A frequent flyer tax is also discussed, which calls for flights from the UK to be cut by 15 per cent from 2018 levels in its 'highly optimistic' scenario for lowering emissions (file image)

Tensions with China escalate as Tories warn the 'Golden Age' in relations is over and Beijing accuses the UK of 'spreading lies' about human rights abuses - after Boris Johnson lashes 'demented' Chinese medicine for helping spark Covid pandemic

By James Tapsfield for MailOnline

Tensions with China escalated again today as Tories warned the 'Golden Age' in relations is over - and Beijing accused the UK of 'spreading lies' about human rights abuses.

A war of words is raging after Boris Johnson lashed out at 'demented' Chinese medicine for helping trigger the coronavirus pandemic, and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab threatened fines for firms that profit from slave labour.

A damning report backed by a slew of senior Conservatives today highlights a slew of issues including 'violations of freedom of expression, freedom of religion or belief, arbitrary disappearances and detention, and force television confessions'.

Ex-Cabinet minister Lord Hague said the UK must have its 'eyes fully open' in its ties with China, while Foreign Affairs Committee chair Tom Tugendhat said: 'It is clear the Golden Era is over and the UK, and our allies, need to rethink our relations with China's dictatorship.'

Tory MPs have been pushing ministers to take a more robust approach to the Asian superpower, including relying less heavily on Huawei for the UK's 5G network.

But Beijing delivered a stinging rebuke to the government over the measures announced by Mr Raab yesterday, saying it will 'take all necessary measures to defend national interests and dignity and firmly safeguard its sovereign, security and development interests'.

Beijing has accused the UK of 'spreading lies' about human rights abuses. Pictured, President Xi Jinping this week

Foreign Affairs Committee chair Tom Tugendhat (left) said: 'It is clear the Golden Era is over.' Boris Johnson (pictured right in 2018) risked the wrath of China this week by lashing out at 'demented' medicine that grinds up pangolin

What has Covid got to do with pangolins? Pangolins - which have been illegally traded for centuries and used in traditional Chinese medicine - have been implicated in the emergence of coronavirus in China last winter. Scientists are almost certain the virus first emerged in bats. But, because bats are not usually able to infect humans directly, they believe the virus was passed to an intermediate species before jumping to people. Pangolins appear to be immune to Covid-19, which makes them a prime carrier of the virus and would have allowed them to act as an unharmed vector carrying the virus from bats deep in the wild, where they live, to public markets where the scaly creatures are illicitly traded. All eight species of pangolin are supposed to be protected from trafficking by international law. Yet they are one of the most bought and sold mammals in Asia and Africa, according to the World Wildlife Fund. Based on reported seizures between 2011 and 2013, more than 230,000 pangolins are killed every year. But experts believe the official seizures represent as little as 10 per cent of the actual number being traded on the black market. In Asian countries, particularly China and Vietnam, pangolin meat is a delicacy and their scales are used as ingredients for traditional medicine, to treat ailments such as skin diseases, menstrual disorders and arthritis. Chinese law states that selling pangolins is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. The prevailing theory is that Covid-19 emerged in Wuhan's infamous wet market, where hundreds of different species of animals were kept in cramped cages dangerously close to one another, sometime last winter. Scientists have described such markets as the perfect breeding ground for new, pandemic-causing viruses. Pangolins were not listed on an inventory of items sold at the Huanan Seafood Market, however the illegality of trading pangolins could explain their exclusion from the list. The black market trade in the creature has also been previously implicated in oubreaks of bird flu. World Health Organization experts will visit the city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first detected in late 2019, on Thursday at the start of their investigation into the origins of the pandemic, Chinese authorities have said. China has denied that the market - or pangolins - are involved in the spread of the virus, and its authoritarian regime has blamed other countries such as India for the outbreak. Another theory is that the virus was engineered at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a high-security biochemical lab in the city. One of America's most senior government officials last week claimed this was the most 'credible' origin theory. Matthew Pottinger, president Donald Trump's Deputy National Security Adviser, told politicians from around the world that even China's leaders now openly admit their previous claims that the virus originated in a Wuhan market are false. Mr Pottinger said that the latest intelligence points to the virus leaking from the top-secret Wuhan Institute of Virology, 11 miles from the market, saying: 'There is a growing body of evidence that the lab is likely the most credible source of the virus.' In a zoom call with UK MPs he claimed the pathogen may have escaped through a 'leak or an accident', adding: 'Even establishment figures in Beijing have openly dismissed the wet market story.' Like the wet markets, China has denied the lab having anything to do with the outbreak. The visit to Wuhan by the WHO team is already mired in controversy after it published terms of reference revealing it will not investigate the Wuhan institute  the only laboratory in China with the highest international bio-security grading  as a possible source of Covid-19. Scientists have previously said that Covid-19 unique spike protein and its ability to latch onto human cells so efficiently mean generic engineering shouldn't be ruled out. Advertisement

Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said: 'Individual countries including the UK have funded, concocted and deliberately spread lies and rumours to smear and discredit China on the pretext of so-called human rights issues.

'It fully exposes their hypocrisy and sinister intentions to curb the development and progress of Xinjiang and interfere in China's internal affairs.'

In an environmental speech to world leaders earlier this week, Mr Johnson tore into people who 'grind up the scales of a pangolin' in a bid to become more 'potent' - a thinly veiled attack on Chinese remedies.

He said: 'Obviously it's right to focus on climate change, obviously it's right to cut CO2 emissions, but we won't achieve a real balance with our planet unless we protect nature as well.

'One final thought, don't forget that the coronavirus pandemic was the product of an imbalance in man's relationship with the natural world.

'Like the original plague which struck the Greeks I seem to remember in book one of the Iliad, it is a zoonotic disease.

'It originates from bats or pangolins, from the demented belief that if you grind up the scales of a pangolin you will somehow become more potent or whatever it is people believe, it originates from this collision between mankind and the natural world and we've got to stop it.'

But China hit back at the PM after his comments, with a spokesman saying: 'We've said many times that origin tracing is a scientific matter.

'There is no room, no place, for people making speculations, hyping up - otherwise it will only disrupt international co-operation.'

Conservative insiders detected the influence of the PM's fiancee Carrie Symonds in his incendiary remarks.

Ms Symonds has been vocal in her opposition to wet markets, where the animals are sold, gaining praise from Peta as it announced her as one of its most influential activists of 2020

Former Tory aides told MailOnline she was 'definitely' behind Mr Johnson's conservation push and are growing concerned that her enthusiasm for such issues are eating up too much of the Government's bandwidth at the expense of other policy areas.

One Tory insider said: 'When the f*** was he talking about the environment before he got with her? I've never seen Boris talk about the environment.

'It's also a tangential issue. It is completely lacking any political antennae. it is not mission critical. This government should be about the public's agenda, not Carrie's agenda.'

The Tory said there was a 'time and a place' to talk about conservation issues, and this was 'not it'.

Mr Johnson made the remarks in a virtual speech to the One Planet Summit, hosted by France's President Macron, citing the illegal trade in the scaly anteater-like creatures.

They are widely used in Chinese medicine and their trafficking has been blamed for transmitting the virus from bats found in the wild to humans.

The first documented cases of the Covid-19 were in the Chinese city of Wuhan, with a wet market trading in exotic animals being seen as the probable source.

Mr Raab announced yesterday that British firms will face heavy fines if they are lined to Chinese human rights abuse and companies will have to meet requirements showing their supply chains are free from forced labour in the Xinjiang province.

The Beijing government has been accused of widespread abuse in the area, home to the Muslim Uighurs, including allegations of forced sterilisation, slave labour and mass internment.

Members of the Uighur minority group have reportedly been made to pick cotton in Xinjiang province, leading to concerns British consumers could inadvertently be buying tainted goods.

Mr Raab said companies will be given robust guidance on how to carry out due diligence checks to make sure they are not sourcing products tainted by the human rights violations in the province.

He told MPs the picture of human rights abuses in Xinjiang was 'harrowing' and the UK had a 'moral duty to respond'.

Pangolins inhabit tropical forests in India, China, south-east Asia and parts of Africa.

Out of the eight existing sub-species, three are critically endangered, and all of them are protected by international treaty.

The general hunting and trading of pangolins have been banned in China since the late 1980s, but the exotic mammals are still trafficked by the thousands for their perceived nutritional value.

Their scales are deemed as a previous ingredient by believers of traditional Chinese medicine and its than 123 tons were sold in 2019 on the black market.

People also eat their meat for the supposed health benefits and the animals' blood is seen as a healing tonic.

China has previously denied pangolin are a vector for moving the virus from bats to humans.

Last year researchers in the Communist state found that the animals are indeed natural hosts for various coronaviruses, but do not appear to be the direct source of Covid-19.

Pictured: A map showing the nine countries China has blamed for the outbreak of Covid-19

In November a different team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences claimed the virus likely originated in India in summer 2019 - jumping from animals to humans via contaminated water - before travelling unnoticed to Wuhan, where it was first detected.

Mr Johnson has previously called for greater protection for pangolins.

In 2018 he wrote a newspaper article calling for greater efforts to track down on hunting and smuggling the mammal.

He wrote: 'As we get older we human beings are capable of all manner of self-deception. We go under the knife in the hope of looking younger. We take pills and potions of dubious efficacity.

'But in the annals of human folly there is surely nothing more delusional than the belief still prevalent in large parts of Asia that a man can somehow rectify his waning virility by grinding and eating the scales of a pangolin.

'And yet that is what they do. The tragedy is that all eight species of pangolin are now endangered, two of them critically so.

'We are losing them to poachers at a rate of 100,000 a year. They are smuggled, butchered and cooked  all for the sake of their mythical medicinal qualities.'
Do Not Disturb said the sign outside Room 905 of Johannesburgs Michelangelo Towers hotel on 1 January 2014. When the police finally broke in they found the garrotted body of Patrick Kare-geya, Rwandas former head of external security, on the bed. Karegeya had fallen out with the regime he had helped create, and was murdered by a Rwandan hit squad as he helped build an opposition movement in exile.

Do Not Disturb is also the sign that has been metaphorically hung on the narrative that Paul Kagames Rwandan regime has so assiduously cultivated over the past quarter century  namely that a heroic band of warriors led by Kagame swept in from Uganda to halt the Hutus genocide against their fellow Tutsis in 1994, then built a prosperous and harmonious new country on the ruins of the old one.

It is a narrative that the international community, wracked with guilt over its failure to prevent that genocide, has for the most part happily swallowed. Kagames regime has faults, it concedes, but it has brought peace and stability to Africas highly combustible Great Lakes region and turned tiny, mountainous, landlocked Rwanda into the Switzerland of Africa.

Foreign assistance, much of it British, pours into a country that has become an advertisement for the efficacy of international aid. Kagame is welcomed by presidents and prime ministers, hailed by philanthropists and showered with awards. Bill Clinton has called him one of the greatest leaders of our time. Tony Blair has praised his visionary leadership.

Michela Wrong, the author of acclaimed books on Kenya, Eritrea and Mobutus Zaire, dares to differ. She no longer buys Rwandas uplifting narrative, although she admits she sometimes did so as a journalist covering the aftermath of the genocide. She has chosen to ignore that Do Not Disturb sign and, in an overdue book that takes the injunction as its title, she rips off the regimes veil of respectability to expose the horrors beneath.

[See also: Reviewed in Short: New books by Gwendoline Riley, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Michael Spitzer and Matthew dAncona]

Wrong does so by interviewing former members of a government whose excesses finally became too heinous for them to ignore: men and women who live in fear of assassination despite fleeing their homeland, refuse to communicate by digital means lest they are under surveillance, and met Wrong only in the relative safety of public places  even in Britain.

Indeed, the regimes tentacles stretch so far that Wrong worked offline while writing the book, hid her laptop in a laundry basket each night, and backed up all her notes in case her London flat was broken into. She says she never felt so personally at risk.

***

Wrong is no apologist for the genocide in which Rwandas Hutu majority massacred 800,000 Tutsis  and some moderate Hutus  in 100 frenzied days. She recalls with incredulity how, shortly after the killing ceased, she watched devout Hutus leaving an idyllic church overlooking Lake Kivu one Sunday morning and walk straight past mounds of earth containing the bodies of Tutsi men, women and children who had been slaughtered in that very building.

But, she argues, genocides do not take place in a vacuum: there is always a context and a build-up. In this instance it was a history of Tutsi aggression against Hutus and the recent incursion of Kagames Tutsi-dominated militia, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), from Uganda into northern Rwanda. The Hutus feared for their own safety, she says. Kill or be killed is a motivation most of us can grasp.

The genocide was triggered by the shooting down of a plane flying Juvenal Habyarimana, Rwandas Hutu president, back to the capital, Kigali, from a conference. The RPF accused Hutu extremists of killing Habyarimana because he had made too many concessions in the recent Arusha peace accords. Certainly, the planes debris and body parts had scarcely landed on the presidential palace before the slaughter of Tutsis began, suggesting some pre-planning.

But Wrong cites numerous claims by Karegeya and other RPF defectors that Kagame secretly ordered Habyarimanas assassination to derail a peace process that would have cemented the Hutus political power. She also notes that the RPF discouraged any reinforcement of Rwandas hapless UN peacekeeping force until it had seized Kigali. Its priority was capturing power, not saving lives.

Victors write history, and blaming the RPF for Habyarimanas assassination quickly became taboo, the equivalent of Holocaust denial. Entertaining the possibility that, whether through rashness or ruthlessness, the leader routinely labelled in the West as the Man Who Ended the Genocide might actually also have started it, would not do.

Wrong goes on to assert that the RPF secretly slaughtered 30,000 Hutus in the aftermath of the genocide, and that an investigation of that reciprocal massacre was suppressed following intense pressure from Rwandas new government. No tarnishing of the halo would be permitted.

Worse, Wrong places much of the blame for the two Congo Wars that lasted from 1996 to 2003, sucked in a dozen neighbouring countries and caused at least 500,000 deaths, on Kagames regime.

Rwanda invaded the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo to prevent genocidaires regrouping in the giant Hutu refugee camps that had sprung up along the border after the RPF seized power. However, it used the conflicts to slaughter thousands more Hutu civilians, remove two DRC presidents and plunder the abundant mineral resources of eastern Congo (taxi drivers call Kigalis smart new suburbs Merci Congo).

In Wrongs view, Kagame is the evil genius responsible for so much death and destruction, and her portrait of the Rwandan president is the polar opposite of the saintly one that his government pays Western lobbyists so much to promote.

Born in 1957, the son of Tutsi parents who fled to Uganda to escape Hutu oppression when he was two, Kagame was a sneak who told on his classmates at primary school. He went on to a good secondary school, but turned feral after his father died when he was 15. He was rescued when a young Marxist, Yoweri Museveni, started recruiting Tutsi refugees for his National Resistance Army (NRA), a guerrilla group seeking to overthrow Ugandas president Milton Obote.

Tall, stick thin and ill-suited to fighting, Kagame became an intelligence officer specialising in the extra-judicial executions of suspected infiltrators, informers and rule-breakers  a task he pursued so zealously that he was dubbed Pilato after Pontius Pilate, who ordered Jesuss execution then denied responsibility. Contemporaries marvelled at the triviality of the infractions deemed to merit capital punishment, Wrong writes. A common means of execution was to strike the neck of a kneeling victim with a kafuni  a farmers short-handled hoe.

After Museveni toppled Obote in 1985, Kagame joined the new governments military intelligence department. But over time he and other Tutsis who had fought for Museveni secretly formed the RPF to overthrow Habyarimanas dictatorial regime in their motherland, Rwanda. In 1990 their charismatic young leader, Fred Rwigyema, was killed in a failed offensive and Kagame, aged 33, succeeded him.

The RPF regrouped under Kagames leadership. He recruited child soldiers, purged Rwigyemas supporters and introduced a draconian disciplinary code that listed 11 capital offences. In 1991 the RPF invaded northern Rwanda, driving thousands of Hutus off their land and into the arms of Hutu militias. The state media fanned hatred of the inyenzi  Tutsi cockroaches. Then Habyarimanas plane was shot down and the bloodbath began.

***

Kagame has ruled Rwanda, as vice-president then president, ever since the genocide, and on the face of it he has been astonishingly successful. The country has enjoyed rapid economic growth. Health and education have improved dramatically. Two thirds of its MPs are women. Gacaca, a community justice system, has allowed Hutus to confess their crimes, and official distinctions between Hutus and Tutsis have been banned.

Kigali now looks like a thriving city. The streets are clean and safe. There are no beggars, or street vendors. Plastic bags and smoking in public are banned. Grand-sounding institutions such as the National Electoral Commission, the Office of the Ombudsman, the Rwanda Development Board and the National Institute of Statistics have sprung up like pristine white mushrooms in the forest, Wrong writes.

But no African government curates its public image more assiduously than Rwanda, she argues, and appearances deceive. Economic statistics are fabricated. The parliament, judiciary and independent media have been neutered. All international NGOs have been banished. Elections are rigged, and Wrong describes a meeting at which Kagame and his associates discussed what percentage of the vote he should award himself.

The reconciliation process is also fake, Wrong contends. The genocide museums and commemorations are designed to remind the Hutus of their guilt. The gacaca trials covered only Hutu crimes, not those of the RPF. Hutus are given prominent political positions for cosmetic purposes only. Genuine ethnic reconciliation would undermine a regime that depends for its survival on the concept of perpetual war, requiring the existence of a never-to-be-vanquished foe, Wrong writes.

As for Kagame himself, Wrong portrays him as a paranoid, ruthless and half-mad control freak with a tell-tale vein on his temple that throbs when he is angry. He kicks, beats and whips senior commanders in front of their subordinates. He personally eavesdrops on military communications to monitor his armed forces. He micro-manages his aides personal lives, telling one to divorce a wife he deemed insufficiently Rwandan. Senior officials cannot travel abroad without his permission.

Nobody is safe from the roiling, inexplicable fury within him. Patrick Karegeya grew up with Kagame, fought beside him and did his dirty work. Their wives were friends. Their children played together. But when he lost faith in the regime and sought to resign, he was first imprisoned and later forced to take what Rwandans call the subway  an underground escape route out of the country. Then he was murdered in South Africa.

[See also: Philip Roth and the repellent]

The book is littered with similar examples of former allies, critics and outright opponents being demonised, imprisoned, exiled and killed on foreign soil. In 2011 Scotland Yard warned three Rwandan exiles in London that they were targets. In September last year Paul Rusesabagina, who gave more than 1,200 Tutsis refuge in his Kigali hotel in 1994 but later became a fierce opponent of Kagame, was lured from his exile in Texas and bundled on to a private jet to Rwanda. The hero of the movie Hotel Rwanda is now being tried for terrorism.

A disaffected RPF luminary quoted Kagame saying: Those wazungus [white people] make noise, but over time they forget it. He was right. There is abundant evidence of Kagames atrocities, much of it chronicled in this powerful, compelling and meticulously researched book. But the West has little interest in ostracising an African leader who offers it stability, expiation of guilt, a showcase for foreign aid and regular contributions to African peacekeeping operations.

Thus Britain continues to give Kagames regime 54m a year. Thus his police state will host the next Commonwealth summit. And thus, says Wrong, Western funding for his aid-dependent country has not suffered, the admiring articles by foreign journalists have not ceased, sanctions have not been applied, and the invitations to Davos have not dried up.

Do Not Disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad



Michela Wrong



Fourth Estate, 512pp, 20
Indias Capital to Lock Down Amid Devastating Virus Surge

NEW DELHINew Delhi imposed a weeklong lockdown on April 19 to prevent the collapse of the Indian capitals health system, which authorities said had been pushed to its limit amid an explosive surge in coronavirus cases.

In scenes familiar from surges elsewhere, ambulances catapulted from one hospital to another, trying to find an empty bed over the weekend, while patients lined up outside medical facilities waiting to be let in. Ambulances also idled outside of crematoriums, carrying half a dozen dead bodies each.

People keep arriving, in an almost collapsing situation, said Dr. Suresh Kumar, who heads Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital, one of New Delhis largest hospitals for treating COVID-19 patients.

People stand on social distancing markings made at a government hospital in Jammu, India, on April 19, 2021. (Channi Anand/AP Photo)

Most of them desperately need oxygen, Kumar said. But the city is facing shortages of oxygen and some medicine, according to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who told reporters that the new stringent measures being imposed were required to prevent a collapse of the health system, which had reached its limit.

Just months after India thought it had seen the worst of the pandemic, the virus is now spreading at a rate faster than at any other time, said Bhramar Mukherjee, a biostatistician at the University of Michigan who has been tracking infections in India.

The surge is devastating for India and has weighed heavily on the global efforts to end the pandemic since the country is a major vaccine producer but has been forced to delay exports of shots abroad, hampering campaigns in developing countries, in particular. In a sign of the high stakes, the chief executive of Serum Institute of India, the worlds largest maker of vaccines, asked U.S. President Joe Biden on Twitter last week to lift the U.S. embargo on exporting raw materials needed to make the shots.

Over the weekend, the global death toll from the coronavirus passed a staggering 3 million people Saturday.

India reported over 270,000 infections on April 19, its highest daily rise since the pandemic started. It has now recorded more than 15 million infections and more than 178,000 deaths. Experts agree that even these figures are likely undercounts. Amid the rise in cases, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called off a trip to New Delhi.

The city of 29 million people has fewer than 100 beds with ventilators, and fewer than 150 beds available for patients needing critical care. Similar strains can be seen in other parts of the vast country, where the fragile health system has been underfunded for decades and a failure to prepare for the current surge has left hospitals buckling under the pressure of mounting infections.

In the Himalayan Jammu state in Indias north, the weekly average of COVID-19 cases has increased 14-fold in the past month. In Telengana state in southern India, home to Hyderabad city, where most of Indias vaccine makers are based, the weekly average of infections has increased 16-fold in the past month.

Meanwhile, election campaigns are continuing in West Bengal state in eastern India, amid an alarming increase there as well, and experts fear that crowded rallies could catalyze the spread of the virus. Top leaders of the ruling Bhartiya Janta Party, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have campaigned heavily to win polls in the region.

Members of disaster response force spray disinfectants as a precautionary measure against COVID-19 in Hyderabad, India, on April 19, 2021. (Mahesh Kumar A./AP Photo)

By contrast, in New Delhi, officials have begun to impose stringent measures again. The Indian capital was shut down over the weekend, but now authorities are extending that for a week: All shops and factories will close, except for those that provide essential services, such as grocery stores. People are not supposed to leave their homes, except for a handful of reasons, such as seeking medical care.

They will be allowed to travel to airports or train stationsa difference from the last lockdown when thousands of migrant workers were forced to walk to their home villages.

That previous harsh lockdown last year, which lasted months, left deep scars. Politicians have since been reticent to even mention the word. When similar measures were imposed in Maharashtra state, home to the financial capital of Mumbai, in recent days, officials refused to call it a lockdown. Those restrictions are to last 15 days.

Kejriwal, the Delhi official, urged calm, especially among migrant workers who particularly suffered during the previous shutdown, saying this one would be small.

But many feared it would spell economic ruin. Amrit Tripathi, a laborer in New Delhi, was among the thousands who walked home in last years lockdown.

We will starve, he said, if the current measures are extended.

By Aijaz Hussain and Aniruddha Ghosal
The hospital ship Mercy just welcomed the tiltrotor aircraft that will serve as the Navy's next carrier delivery platform onto its deck for the first time.

The Navy last week began flight deck tests with the V-22 Osprey off the coast of Southern California, marking the first time a V-22 variant has landed on a Military Sealift Command, or MSC, hospital ship.

The Navy is using a Marine Corps MV-22B Osprey assigned to Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 21 for these flight deck tests. The trials come as the Navy also prepares to bring its own CMV-22 variant into the fleet -- upgraded with extended range to ferry personnel and supplies between carriers and shoreline installations -- to replace the aging C-2A Greyhound.

Read Next: Study of Marine Recruits Reveals Imperfect Immunity Effects of Having COVID-19

The hospital ship underwent a seven-month maintenance period in which its flight deck was expanded to accommodate larger aircraft, according to an April 16 news release.

Hospital ships often operate in areas experiencing humanitarian crises; the change will allow more aircraft to transport people in need to the vessels more quickly. The Mercy returned to San Diego from Los Angeles last year following its support of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's COVID-19 relief effort. The ship moved to Portland, Oregon, for maintenance and the upgrades needed to accept more types of aircraft, the Navy said earlier this month.

The Mercy will also practice takeoffs and landings with the MH-60 Seahawk, the release states.

"Improving the capability of the ship to support newer aircraft platforms such as the MV-22 allows greater flexibility and enhances the embarked Medical Treatment team's ability to continue providing the outstanding care they are known for," Capt. Kendall Bridgewater, commander of Military Sealift Command Pacific, said in the release. "This investment in new capability is a great example of MSC's continued support to the fleet and plays an important role in keeping the U.S. Navy competitive well into the future."

The latest tests not only mark a milestone for the V-22, but also for the Mercy. According to a 2011 innovation report, leaders for years have tried to reinforce the Mercy-class ships' limited deck capabilities to accept larger aircraft.

"Although the current ships are equipped with a Flight Deck, it is only large enough to land one MedEvac helicopter," the report states. "This results in a serious bottleneck as the ship loses the ability to transport large amounts of patients and cargo between the ship and the shore."

More than 100 personnel -- from San Diego, the amphibious assault ship Boxer, destroyer Stethem, amphibious assault ship Tripoli, Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 3 and Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 49 -- are aboard the Mercy to train and assist its civil service mariner crew, the release states.

-- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Oriana0214.

Related: V-22 Osprey Designed for the Navy Makes First Flight
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Nokia, a Finnish telecom equipment giant, said on Monday it has signed an agreement with South Korean mobile carrier LG Uplus to install its next-generation indoor equipment in the country.

Nokia said it will deploy its small cell AirScale Indoor systems in indoor locations across the country, including shopping malls and office buildings, for LG Uplus' network.

The system allows seamless connectivity between indoor and outdoor locations and can be easily upgraded to accommodate future network expansion, according to Nokia.

South Korean telecom operators have recently focused on expanding 5G coverage in indoor locations amid complaints of lack of network availability, reports Yonhap news agency.

A government report late last year found that 5G was available in 61.8 percent of the total 4,516 major public buildings across the country's 85 cities.

LG Uplus uses 5G equipment from Nokia, Samsung Electronics Co., China's Huawei Technologies Co. and Sweden's Ericsson.

--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.)
On November 3, 1997, cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and Anatoly Solovyov were spacewalking outside the Mir space station to remove an old solar panel that was to be replaced three days later during another outing. The solar panel was retracted on command, removed from the Kvant module, and stowed on the exterior of the core module. Before returning inside, Vinogradov took hold of a small satellite named Sputnik 40 and waited until the station had oriented itself to give a clear view of the satellites intended flight path. Then giving it a good toss, Vinogradov launched the satellite into orbit. As the little satellite drifted away, it became satellite number 24958 in NASA's catalog and the first satellite to be launched by hand.

Photo: Ann May | Dreamstime.com

Sputnik 40, also known as Sputnik Jr, and Radio Sputnik 17 (RS-17), was a one-third, working scale model of Sputnik 1, the worlds first artificial satellite. It was built by students from Russia and France to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the launching of Sputnik-1 on October 4, 1957, and was trucked up to the space station in the Russian cargo freighter Progress M-36 a month earlier.

While Sputnik-1 was relatively large at 23 inches in diameter and weighed nearly 84 kilogram (184 lb), Sputnik Jr was only about 8 inches and 4 kilograms (8.8 lb). The small spherical satellite transmitted a beep-beep beacon on 145.820 MHz, as opposed to Sputnik-1's beacon at 20 MHz and 40 MHz. As Sputnik Jr looped around the globe, ham operators reported its reception from across the world. At the Jules Reydellet College in Reunion, where the transmitter was assembled, a great cheer went up from the students and teachers gathered to listen to the Sputnik model as it passed overhead on its initial orbit. The Russian students at the Polytechnic Laboratory of Nalchik in Kabardino-Balkaria were equally jubilant. They had build the satellite body. In fact, two working models were built and transported to Mir, but only one was launched.

Mir space station.

Sputnik-1s power supply consisted of three silver-zinc batteries. Two of these batteries powered the 1-watt radio transmitter and one powered the temperature regulation system. By contrast, Sputnik Jr was powered by three one-pound packs of four lithium batteries. Despite being undersized by Sputnik-1s massive 51-kg power supply unit, Sputnik Jr functioned longer than the original Sputnik-1 radio had 40 years earlier. Sputnik-1s battery lasted for only 21 days, but Sputnik Jr continued to transmit for 56 days. After Sputnik Jr became silent, it continued to orbit for four more months, before falling back into the atmosphere.

Russia launched two more satellites by hand between 1998 and 1999. Sputnik 41 (RS 18) was carried to the Mir aboard Progress-M 40 on 25 October 1998, and on 10 November 1998 during an extra-vehicular activity, cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Sergei Avdeyev deployed the satellite by hand. Sputnik 41 was identical to Sputnik 40, except it also broadcasted recorded voice messages in three languages in addition to beeps. The satellite was built and launched to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Aero-Club de France, and the 41st anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 1. Sputnik 41s radio operated for one month, and the satellite fell back to earth a month later.

The third and the final hand-tossed satellite Sputnik 99 was notable for the controversary it generated before it left Earth. The satellite was developed by French and Russian amateur radio satellite groups, with help from the Russian Space Agency's flight control center, TsUP. However, TsUP made the mistake of partnering with Swatch, a Swiss watch manufacturer to broadcast advertisement from the satellite over amateur radio bands promoting the Swatch Group. Apparently, the Mir project was in dire straits and required funding in order to survive. Swatch agreed to financially help the space agency in return for transmitting voice and text messages over amateur radio frequencies in flagrant violation of international code of conduct. Amateur radio enthusiasts and amateur radio organizations around the world raised a storm and protested the misuse of amateur radio frequencies. As a result, the Russian Space Agency was forced to disable the transmitter on the satellite prior to launch. When French spationaut Jean-Pierre Haignere hurled the satellite into orbit, it was already dead.

Russia failed to secure the necessary funds to keep Mir afloat, and in early 2001, the 15-year-old space station was deorbited to be burned up in the atmosphere.

References:

# The Top 10 Sputniks, Collect Space

# Tiny Beeping Model Tossed From Station, Space Today
Klamath County Sheriff deputies are evacuating homes in a remote corner of Klamath County as another April wildfire has broken out in Oregon amid dry, warm and windy conditions.

The Pomina fire was burning uncontained near the town of Beatty, located about 40 miles northeast of Klamath Falls. Officials got the first call about the fire at 2:30 p.m. By evening it had scorched about 1,200 acres.

The fire near Beatty comes two days after a rapidly moving brush fire near Oregon City forced homeowners in about a dozen homes to evacuate. The Niebur fire started Friday afternoon and immediately threatened several structures.

Oregons early wildfires are disheartening news after the massive blazes of last September. Strong winds from the east combined with hot, dry conditions on Labor Day weekend led to enormous blazes in the Clackamas, Santiam, McKenzie, Umpqua and other major drainages. Over a million acres burned, nine people died, and about 40,000 people were evacuated.

Much of the towns of Gates and Detroit on the Santiam River, and Phoenix and Talent near Medford were destroyed.

The Pomina fire near Beatty broke out less than three weeks after Gov. Kate Brown declared a drought emergency in Klamath County. As of March 8, precipitation and snowfall were 77% of a normal water year in the county.

The Pomina blaze began on private property and has moved into the Fremont-Winema National Forest, said Tamara Schmidt, spokeswoman for the national forest. The cause is unclear.

So early in the fire season, its proven difficult to find crews and resources to fight the blaze, Schmidt said. For now, U.S. Forest Service and Oregon Department of Forestry crews are fighting the fire.

The stubborn drought comes as regional and state leaders continue to argue over whether to remove four dams on the Klamath River. The proposal to remove the dams to benefit the basins threatened salmon has sharpened a decades-old dispute over who has the biggest claim to the rivers life-giving waters.
Missouri poet Kitty Carpenter could have chosen any number of titles for her poem, a moving and difficult accounting of how the roles of parent and child change as a result of the passing of time; but it is, in the end, a poem that locates its hope in memory  the memory that the farm represents for her when she thinks of her mothers strength.

Farm Sonnet

By Kitty Carpenter

The barn roof sags like an ancient mares back.

The field, overgrown, parts of it a marsh

where the pond spills over. No hay or sacks

of grain are stacked for the cold. In the harsh

winters of my youth, Mama, with an axe,

trudged tirelessly each day through deep snow,

balanced on the steep bank, swung down to crack

the ice so horses could drink. With each blow

I feared she would fall, but she never slipped.

Now Mamas bent and withered, vacant gray

eyes fixed on something I cant see. I dip

my head when she calls me Mom. Whats to say?

The time we haves still too short to master

love, and then, the hollow that comes after.

***

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright 2020 by Kitty Carpenter, Farm Sonnet from Rattle, (Winter 2020). Poem reprinted by permission of Kitty Carpenter and the publisher. Introduction copyright  2021 by The Poetry Foundation.
A man accused of breaching coronavirus laws over a huge gypsy funeral for his brother will face no further criminal action after the charges were dropped.

Patrick James Rooney, 48, was charged with breaking Covid regulations following the funeral of traveller Joe Rooney, known as 'Gypsy Joe', on November 9 last year.

Police said they handed a 10,000 fine to the organisers of the event, which saw 150 travellers marching through Kettering, Northants.

The police slammed the organisers for their 'total lack of respect' for coronavirus rules which limits funerals to only 30 mourners

The mourners were seen flouting social distancing which requires people to stand 6ft (2m) away from each other

Photographs taken at the time show crowds ignoring social distancing guidelines as the procession brought the town centre to a standstill.

Officers in riot gear were also deployed at the time of the gathering, which came days after England's second lockdown to slow the spread of the virus.

But on Monday afternoon at Northampton Magistrates' Court, the case against Rooney was suddenly dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service.

Prosecutor Stella Moses said the CPS had taken the decision after a 'careful review of the case'.

Rooney was charged with participating in a gathering of two or more people in a public place last month before the case against him was withdrawn.

Magistrates told him there would be no further action in the case and thanked him for attending the hearing.

The court heard Rooney, of Market Harborough, Leicestershire, had funded his own defence of the case privately and his costs will now be reimbursed through central funds.

On the morning of the funeral, around 150 mourners turned out outside St Edward's Catholic Church to celebrate the life of Mr Rooney.

The 47-year-old was killed in a car crash when his Audi A8 ploughed into a tree near Geddington, Northamptonshire., on October 25.

Horse-drawn carriages with Irish flags led the group on their journey to the church followed by a cortege of seven Rolls Royces.

On Monday afternoon at Northampton Magistrates' Court, the case against Rooney was suddenly dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service

The 47-year-old, known across Corby as 'Gypsy Joe', died in a crash between Stanion and Geddington last month

The procession was even giving a police escort along the route and officers put in roadblocks to help the travellers as they descended on the town.

Under guidelines at the time, individuals were only allowed to meet with one other person outdoors in a public place and funeral numbers were restricted to 30.

Northamptonshire Police said they had issued their first 10,000 fine to the funeral's organiser for their 'total disrespect' of Covid-19 restrictions.

Speaking previously, Chief Constable Nick Adderley, said: 'It is exceptionally frustrating when we see a group of people with no regard for other people's safety, completely flouting the restrictions and having the type of funeral many people would have loved to have had but have been unable to hold, simply because they think they are above the law.

'While I of course sympathise with anyone who has lost a loved one, it cannot be one rule for some people and another rule for others, and no one is above the law.

'This is why Northamptonshire Police is seeking to issue its first 10,000 fine to the organisers of this funeral for their total disrespect of the restrictions put in place to keep us all safe.

'This may seem like a harsh course of action to some but I do not apologise whatsoever when I have seen so many painful sacrifices made throughout this pandemic by law-abiding citizens I have a duty towards.'
Macrotech Developers share listed at a discount of 10% to IPO issue price on NSE today. The stock of Mumbai-based real estate developer listed at Rs 436, a discount of 10.28% against IPO issue price of Rs 486 on NSE. Price band of the IPO was fixed at Rs 483 to Rs 486 per equity share.

Market cap of the firm rose to Rs 20,733 crore. Total 33.43 lakh shares changed hands on BSE.

On BSE, the stock listed at Rs 439, a 9.67% discount to issue price. Market cap of the firm stood at Rs 20,766 crore.

Total 1,36,147 shares of the firm changed hands on BSE in early trade.

The IPO of Macrotech Developers was held from April 7 to April 9. The share sale was subscribed 1.36 times on the last day of bidding. The IPO received bids for 4.95 crore equity shares against issue size of 3.64 crore equity shares.

The portion reserved for retail investors was subscribed 40 percent. The portion reserved for employees was subscribed 17 percent. The company reserved Rs 30 crore worth of equity shares for its employees.

Macrotech Developers market debut on April 19; what to expect

Qualified institutional buyers put in bids for 3.05 times of their IPO portion and non-institutional investors submitted bids for 1.44 times of the reserved portion.

Macrotech Developers Ltd, earlier known as Lodha Developers, has raised Rs 2,500 crore through the IPO.

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 held 100% stake and planned to sell 10% by issuing 51,440,328 equity shares of Rs 10 face value during the IPO.

Lot size of the IPO was 30 shares for which one would have to spend Rs 14,580. A maximum of 13 lots comprising 390 shares could be bought for Rs 1,89,540.
Boris Avagian, a deputy chief of Karabakhs State Emergencies Service, effectively blamed pro-government members of Armenias parliament for Azerbaijan continuing refusal to free them when he spoke at a public discussion organized in Yerevan by other lawmakers.

Avagian also said he does not know which officials represent Armenia in negotiations on the fate of more than 100 Armenian prisoners believed to be held by Baku.

If you, deputies of Armenias National Assembly, do not know that person, how can I, the holder of a state post in the Republic of Artsakh, know that person? he asked.

Karen Sargsian, the Karabakh interior minister, fired Avagian in a move announced later in the day.

A statement released by the State Emergencies Service said Avagian was not authorized to comment on topics beyond the scope of his powers and that most of his comments do not correspond to reality.

The roundtable discussion was organized by independent lawmakers who left Prime Minister Nikol Pashinians My Step bloc following the Armenian sides defeat in the war with Azerbaijan stopped by a Russian-brokered ceasefire in November. One of them, Taguhi Tovmasian, said Avagians comments on the authorities handling of the prisoner issue are a cause for concern.

We must also hear from other officials who are supposed to deal with the prisoners return, Tovmasian told reporters.

The Armenian government caused controversy after some of its senior representatives said late on April 9 that a new group of Armenian captives is about to be set free and repatriated. However, none of them was on board a Russian plane that arrived from Baku to Yerevan that night.

Andranik Kocharian, a senior pro-government lawmaker, accused Baku of not honoring an agreement which he said was reached as a result of Russian President Vladimir Putins latest conversations with Armenias and Azerbaijans leaders. He claimed that Lieutenant-General Rustam Muradov, the commander of Russian peacekeeping forces deployed in Karabakh, travelled to Baku to escort the prisoners back to Armenia.

Muradov categorically denied that, however, saying that officials in Yerevan are misleading the population.

Armenian opposition leaders accused Pashinians government of botching the prisoner release in a failed attempt to score political points.
It has been 100 days since the suspension of former President Donald Trumps Twitter account.

For millions of Trump loyalists, his silence has meant the loss of their greatest weapon in their fight against the left. For his detractors, the absence of a daily barrage of anxiety-provoking presidential verbiage feels closer to a return to normalcy than anything else  so far  in 2021.

ARTS AND IDEAS

The pandemic Oscars

Wesley Morris, our critic at large, took a close look at the changes to the Academy Awards, which will be held next Sunday. Heres the list of nominees.

The last year mightve tricked a person into believing that anything could really happen. And by nomination day, something had. The academys vow to do better with respect to racial, ethnic and gender representation, essentially, bore out.

The Oscars have never featured a less white class of major nominees; women fill 40 percent of the director slots; there are three people of Asian descent in the acting categories. There are enough identity-oriented milestones that enumerating them feels thanklessly actuarial. Instead, you just look at the mix of names and titles and think: Was that so hard? Maybe. All it took was a pandemic.

Now we can toast marshmallows by the hearts warmed by the range of experiences (and faces) in this group of nominees. Im not wild about most of these movies, but seeing their posters assembled on nomination day was gladdening. This is how things should look. But those are optics, which have their function but cant be everything.

PLAY, WATCH, EAT, MOVE

What to Cook
The two Minnesota National Guard members who were fired upon in a drive-by shooting Sunday morning have returned to duty, a Guard spokesman said.

The Guardsmen suffered minor injuries when someone in a light-colored SUV fired several shots, according to a Sunday statement from the Minnesota National Guard. The two service members sustained minor injuries. One was injured by shattered glass and treated at a local hospital; the other "received only superficial injuries."

"I am relieved to know none of our Guardsmen were seriously injured," Maj. Gen. Shawn Manke, the Minnesota National Guard adjutant general, said in a statement. "This event highlights the volatility and tension in our communities right now. I ask for peace as we work through this difficult time."

Read Next: Lawmakers Question General's Prestigious Pentagon Assignment After Fatal AAV Accident

Lt. Col. Scott Hawks, a Minnesota Guard spokesman, declined to disclose the injured service members' units.

The Guardsmen are on state active-duty orders, which don't allow them to seek medical care or disability compensation through the Department of Veterans Affairs -- meaning soldiers who suffer a life-altering injury while on these orders are blocked from receiving the care to which other veterans are entitled. Troops on state duty are, however, entitled to worker's compensation through the state.

"State Active Duty is based on state law and does not qualify as "active service" for VA benefits," a VA summary on National Guard benefits says. "Unlike full-time National Guard duty, National Guard members on State Active Duty are paid with state funds as opposed to Federal funds."

When National Guard units are activated under state orders, they are essentially state labor and only loosely tied to the military; troops must even fill out new W-4 forms when reporting to duty. Because of this, Guard troops on state orders are generally paid less than their active-duty counterparts and are not entitled to accrue benefits such as the GI Bill.

For the Guard to earn active-duty pay and all benefits, including health care, the president would need to declare a state of emergency and place troops under Title 32 status, meaning the Guard members would stay under the command of the state, but the federal government would foot the bill for their mission.

Protests erupted in the Minneapolis area after the death of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man killed by a White police officer during a traffic stop April 11. Racial tensions in the area were already at the boiling point in anticipation of the verdict in the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, the former police officer accused of killing George Floyd, another Black man, last year.

Approximately 3,000 Minnesota Guard troops have deployed to the Minneapolis area amid days of protests. Police have used chemical irritants and pepper balls against protesters, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Law enforcement has also been seen assaulting, detaining and photographing journalists, the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder reported.

The military's mission in Minnesota comes after more than a year of virtually non-stop domestic missions for the National Guard, including coronavirus relief, securing Capitol Hill, combating wildfires and responding to hurricanes. This, on top of missions abroad, has marked one of the busiest times in the National Guard's history.

-- Steve Beynon can be reached at Steve.Beynon@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevenBeynon.

Related: How the Pandemic Spurred Congress to Rewrite GI Bill Rules for the National Guard
Residents of Awka, the capital of Anambra State, and Onitsha, the states commercial hub, have expressed worries over the hike in rents.

The respondents made their feelings known in interviews with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Saturday in Awka.

They complained that rents for residential houses, offices and shops were becoming so high, and were adversely affecting the living standard.

Uchenna Okafor, a computer operator in the Aroma area of Awka, said she was initially paying N80,000 per annum for a self-contained apartment, but that her landlord later raised the rent to N120,000.

Another resident, Titus Maduako, said he used to pay N300,000 yearly for a three-bedroom apartment he lived in, but his landlord recently served the occupants a notice which announced an increase in the rent to N400,000.

Alloy Attah, who resides in Onitsha, also said that rents for shops and offices in the commercial city had gone out of the reach of the low and middle classes.

About two years ago, you could hire a shop for between N5,000 and N10,000, but now the rent has doubled, the same applies to offices and residential apartments, he said.

He said the situation was adversely affecting the residents who had other family needs to cater for.

Meanwhile, Ignatius Nwanando, an estate agent in Awka, blamed some landlords for the rent hike.

Some landlords will tell you to increase the rent to the same level with recently built houses regardless of the fact that the new ones have modern facilities, compared to the old buildings.

They will equally say that you should add caution fee, agreement fee and the main rent and we too must get our percentage as agents too, he said.

Mr Nwanando said it was up to the state governments to legislate on real estate matters with a view to reducing the challenges faced by urban dwellers.

Also, Paulinus Uche, a landlord in Awka, said the hike on rent was due to arbitrary increase in the prices of building materials and the excessive charges by government regulatory agencies.

Those blaming landlords for rent increases should visit the market and price building materials.

Apart from that, enquire on what it takes to buy a plot of land in any state capital in the South-east, start excavation and see the army of government and community agents that would be visiting your site, he said.

Mr Uche said the government must be sincere in handling the factors that have led to the hike in rents.

For instance, we heard that a bag of cement produced in another African country sells lower than the price we currently pay in Nigeria, even when it is our son that owned both factories.

Our leaders should look into such matters to make life better for the people, he said.

ADVERTISEMENT

(NAN)
A 41-year-old Bethlehem man threatened to kill his ex-girlfriends 11-year-old son on Thursday if she wouldnt give up the keys to her SUV, Bethlehem police report.

Jose Alberto Claudio-Diaz, of the 1000 block of East Fourth Street, was charged Friday with two counts of robbery and single counts of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and terroristic threats, court papers say.

The bald, 5-foot, 7-inch, 180-pound white native of Puerto Rico was not in custody as of early Monday afternoon, records show.

The woman, who lives in the 1200 block of Livingston Street, reported the vehicle stolen at 6:15 a.m. Thursday, police said. Speaking in Spanish as her daughter translated for police, she told the officer that Claudio-Diaz had called at 6 a.m. and demanded she bring him the keys to the 2013 blue Nissan Rogue, court papers say.

Fearing for the safety of her son, the woman gave the keys to Claudio-Diaz, who drove off, police said.

When asked if Claudio-Diaz was ever allowed to use the vehicle before, she said no, court papers say. But in July  when Claudio-Diaz previously took the vehicle  she told police that she had allowed him to use it in the past, court papers say.

Claudio-Diaz was charged with unauthorized use of a vehicle and terroristic threats after the July 15 incident and pleaded guilty to the second charge, records say. He was sentenced Jan. 6 to 112 days to 23 months in jail and paroled two days later, records show. He had been held since Sept. 17 in lieu of $5,000 bail, records show. He is also on 12 months probation from a Sept. 11 harassment case, records show.

Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting lehighvalleylive.com with a subscription.

Tony Rhodin can be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com.
While we are in the middle of a deadly pandemic, BJP leaders in Vododara have objected to the presence of Muslim volunteers at the Khaswadi crematorium in the city. The city is overburdened with bodies due to the second wave of COVID-19.



The incident took place on April 16, when some BJP leaders of the partys Vadodara unit, including its president Dr. Vijay Shah who reached the crematorium to participate in the last rites of a party leader. However, the leader objected to the presence of a Muslim man, who was just preparing the pyre with the wood and cow dung cakes for the last rites.

Later, Shah told the Vadodara Municipal Corporation to ensure that Muslims are not allowed inside the crematorium.

 Reuters

Shah said in an interview, We learnt that he is a contractor supplying wood and dung cakes but he has sublet a contract or appointed more Muslim youth to work in the crematorium, which is wrong. Volunteering for good work is one thing but getting into religious rituals when you have no knowledge of it is not welcome We have told the VMC that the person, who is given the contract for the supply of wood and cow dung could deliver it outside the crematorium. He does not need to be inside.



Heres what people have to say about this-

Na bhalaa karengey. Na karney dengey!!  Kalyan (@kalyansview) April 19, 2021

         Lucky    (@Lucky11India91) April 19, 2021

 dead bodies        Imran Khan (@imransoop) April 19, 2021

Will they oppose muslim doctors as well?  Judish Raj (@JudishRaj) April 19, 2021

Bas object karna hi aata hai. They can't hep but objections ke baadshah hai ye log.  sameer shah (@Shah_Baadshah1) April 18, 2021

So much poison in their minds n hearts ..unbelievable  Sameera gawandi (@sameeratweeter) April 19, 2021

Sabka saath sabka vikaas  rohan gopalan (@rohangopalan) April 19, 2021

However, several BJP leaders in VMC weren't happy with the objection raised. Mayor Keyur Rokadia said that the issue will be addressed amicably and the communities must work together as the time is such.

Another BJP leader said, This stand taken by the party leaders is very embarrassing. It is not right to mix religious ideologies at this time when the entire city is suffering. We cannot deny that the Muslim groups in Vadodara have worked very closely with the VMC during the last year.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments section below!
Archiving architecture: Presentation on maestro Bawas Bentota hotel masterpiece View(s):

Sri Lankan architects who are members of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) together with JAT Holdings Limited will host a presentation titled Archiving Architecture by Architect Channa Daswatte, on the Reconstruction of Maestro Geoffrey Bawas Legendary Bentota Beach Hotel. It will be held on Saturday, April 24 at 5:30 pm at the Shangri-La Hotel Colombo. The (RIBA), the parental body of the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects, is a professional architects body established in 1834, specifically for the advancement of architecture and promotion of the acquisition of knowledge of the arts and sciences under its charter.

RIBA is also the premier educational regulatory body and authority that accredits the education of architecture the world over. In Sri Lanka, three of the four schools of architecture  the Moratuwa University, the City School of Architecture and the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology  are accredited by the RIBA, giving it the desired recognition

and stature.

The RIBA, being an international body, established a branch in Sri Lanka under the name of RIBA Members: Sri Lanka. It was inaugurated by RIBA President Jane Duncan on August 3, 2017 at Westminster House, the British High Commissioners residence in Colombo 07.

It is pertinent to mention that most of Sri Lankas prominent professionals in architecture are members of the RIBA.

RIBA Members Sri Lanka with JAT Holdings Limited will present Archiving Architecture by Channa Daswatte, on the Reconstruction of Maestro Geoffrey Bawas Legendary Bentota Beach Hotel, on Saturday, April 24 at 5:30 pm at the Shangri-La Hotel Colombo.

This would be followed by a

question and answer session and a

networking cocktail. Due to COVID restrictions, participation for this event has been restricted to 150, the organisers say.
The British Design Fund's Damon Bonser joins Proactive London to explain the genesis behind the company's purpose, aims and ambitions.

The firm supports enterprise and innovation in the UK by investing in, and supporting, early stage, well designed, product businesses.

The Fund works with businesses that are often pre-revenue but that have scalable products who are ready to accelerate growth and build long term value and thriving stand-out businesses.
YEREVAN.  We will see as to what format the [Armenian] army will be, what regulations will be. I can say one thing for sure that the back of the army must be straightened very quickly, we must have the most combat-ready army in the region, and our bar should no longer be Azerbaijan, but other countries in the region, including Turkey. Armen Khachatryan, a member of the majority My Step faction in the National Assembly (NA) of Armenia, on Monday told this to reporters in the NA.

He noted that no one had spoken about any friendship with Turkey. "Let's leave aside the fake agenda: is Turkey a friend or a foe? We all know that Turkey has an unfriendly attitude towards Armenia and the Armenian people. Yes, we have inimical relations with Turkey for centuries. But what to do with the enemy? You must either make the enemy manageable or destroy [it]. You have to defeat the enemy in various domains, both economic and military. During this [recent Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh)] war, we destroyed the enemy as much as possible, they have suffered great losses, and although the [military] forces [between us] were obviously disproportionate, the enemy suffered considerable and substantial losses, which it conceals," Khachatryan added.

He stressed that the Armenian army should be as professional as possible, and it is clear that the norms and principles of military service should be reviewed. "Since we cannot allow our army to be idle, our soldier must not have free time during the service, and [must] spend all [his] service in training," noted the My Step lawmaker.
Plano, Tx, April 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Plano, Texas - RealManage announced today that Benjamin J. Yaeger, a corporate team member, was promoted to executive vice president of revenue.

Mr. Yaeger joined RealManage in 2015 to lead the company's operations in Austin, TX. In 2016, he assumed leadership of the San Antonio market forming the Central Texas Division, RealManages largest operational division at that time. With much success leading the divisions growth, in 2020, Ben moved into a corporate level role as the division president of sales and marketing. In his new role as executive vice president of revenue, Ben will lead sales and marketing, new value-added services and will support corporate development for the RealManage Family of Brands. Ben shared, RealManage is on an exciting path of growth. I am grateful for the opportunity to work with this amazing group of leaders and professionals, and passionate about creating value for our clients and residents.

Prior to joining RealManage, Ben served in the US Navy, where he gained ten years of experience in building and leading teams. He was an accomplished naval aviator, participated in two overseas deployments, and flew over 100 missions in support of combat operations for Operation New Dawn and Operation Enduring Freedom. Some of the roles Mr. Yaeger held while serving were squadron evaluation pilot, detachment maintenance officer, and material control officer. Bens last tour in the Navy was as an assistant professor of naval science at North Carolina State University, where he taught courses in leadership, ethics, management, and naval weapons system theory. There he was selected as a finalist for the Chief of Naval Educations Instructor of the Year award. He holds an MPA from North Carolina State University and a BA in Economics from the University of Virginia.

RealManage Family of Brands President Chris Ayoub states, "Ben has been an exceptional leader for our company in different capacities over the years, but has found his niche. I am confident that in his new role as executive vice president of revenue, he will help take RealManage to the next level of becoming the best company in the world at managing jointly owned property."



About RealManage



RealManage is a community management company managing close to two thousand community associations across the nation. Areas of operation include California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Nevada, Texas, and Washington. The company provides services to homeowner associations (HOAs), condominium associations, cooperatives, municipal utility districts, luxury high-rises, and large master-planned communities. Learn more about RealManage at www.realmanage.com.



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The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel's chic 50s costumes have earned the show legions a fans and a mantle full of awards.

But it looked like Rachel Brosnahan's character was taking her flair for fashion into the next generation as she arrived on set in NYC on Monday.

The star, who plays leading lady Miriam Midge Maisel in the Amazon Prime hit, embraced a laid back 60s-style in slim, light washed jeans and a smart, striped shirt with a suede motorcycle jacket.

Modern girl: Rachel Brosnahan's Marvelous Mrs. Maisel character was seen in more 60s-style costumer while arriving to set in New York on Monday

Though her look could fit in perfectly in the present day, it appeared to be an vintage-inspired costume, as Rachel was spotted wearing the same ensemble during shoots in the city on Friday.

The Milwaukee, Wisconsin born beauty, 30, stepped out of her transportation wearing white mule loafers and was masked up to prevent the spread of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

It looked like Rachel had already sat for hair and makeup, seen sporting Midge's era-perfect curls and perfectly arched brows. And her manicure was in perfect condition, with glossy fire-engine red nails.

Brosnahan came ready with some caffeine, holding a Venti-sized Starbucks concoction as she made her way to film.

Fashionista: The star, who plays leading lady Miriam Midge Maisel in the Amazon Prime hit, polished up slim, light washed jeans and a smart, striped shirt with a suede motorcycle jacket

Catch up: She and co-star Alex Borstein chatted while waiting to get inside the day's location

She and co-star Alex Borstein chatted while waiting to get inside the day's location.

The Emmy-winner didn't appear to be in costume, instead embracing her wild side in a green zebra print coat over a black dress and matching leather boots.

She was also primed with coffee, seen with her own Starbucks.

Later on castmate Jane Lynch was also seen slipping onto set, looking low profile in a windbreaker and jeans.

Animal instincts: The Emmy-winner embraced her wild side, wearing a green zebra print coat over a black dress and matching leather boots

Java: Both stars were ready with sizable Starbucks beverages ahead of their busy day of shoots

Low key: Later on castmate Jane Lynch was also seen slipping onto set, looking low profile in a windbreaker and jeans

The cast has been busy shooting its fourth season of the show, which follows the feisty Midge as she tries to make her mark in the male-dominated world of stand-up comedy.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel started production in mid-January after the pandemic pushed back their initial spring 2020 plans.

Since its premiere in 2017 the show has picked up 20 Emmys and three Golden Globes. Season four is rumored to be expecting a December 2021 release.
Having set up Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Gates is also funding solar-power developer Heliogen through his Gates Ventures family office. The Californian company is developing systems that use thousands of tiny, computer-controlled mirrors to harness energy from the sun. It recently achieved a major commercial breakthrough after it was picked by FTSE 100 global miner Rio Tinto to help replace gas-fired generation at its Boron mine in California, as a first step towards potential greater use. Gates is also an enthusiast of nuclear power, founding TerraPower in 2006 to try and develop cheaper, smaller, nuclear power generators that produce less waste. In October, it was one of two US companies granted funding from the US Department of Energy to build advanced nuclear reactors to be operational within seven years. We want to be open to ideas that seem wild, he said previously. Jeff Bezos Online shoppings contribution to global warming is open to debate, with delivery vans arguably reducing some individual trips to shops. Amazons tally is clear, however. Its global carbon footprint in 2019 was 51.17 million tonnes  equivalent to about one seventh of the UKs entire emissions. Having created the empire from his Seattle garage to solve customers shopping problems, founder Jeff Bezos is now tackling bigger dilemmas. In February 2020 he invested $US10 billion of his own money to set up the Bezos Earth Fund, which pledges to invest in scientists, activists, NGOS and any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world. We can save the Earth, Bezos wrote on Instagram.

The recipients of the first $US791 million were announced in November, and include the World Wildlife Fund, Union of Concerned Scientists, and Salk Institute for Biological Studies, which was founded by Jonas Salk, who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines. Last year, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos contributed $US10 billion of his own money to set up the Earth Fund. Credit:AP The Earth Fund has just poached Dr Andrew Steer from the World Resources Institute to be its chief executive. Former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres says the fund has the potential to be a transformative force for good. Mark Zuckerberg The 38-year-old entrepreneur has been called the most dangerous person in the world, given the growing power of Facebook, the social media giant with more than 2.7 billion users that he set up from his Harvard dorm room. It may be an attempt at atonement, but Zuckerberg is now putting his mind and estimated $US113 billion fortune to climate change.

Launching Breakthrough Energy Ventures with Bill Gates in 2015, he argued progress towards sustainable energy was too slow. He is also developing technology he reckons could solve a different side of the problem: augmented reality glasses that could cut down peoples need to travel. On a podcast last month he said: The more that we can teleport around, not only are we eliminating commutes and stuff thats kind of a drag for us individually, but I think thats better for society and for the planet overall. Warren Buffett The 90-year old Oracle of Omaha has long accepted the dangers of global warming, declaring in his 2016 letter to shareholders that it was highly likely that climate change posed a major problem for the planet. If there is only a 1 per cent chance the planet is heading toward a truly major disaster and delay means passing a point of no return, inaction now is foolhardy, he said.

The record of his Berkshire Hathaway Energy, which owns power generators and cables and gas pipelines in the US and the UK, is more mixed. About 6 per cent of its investment was bound up in coal assets as of the end of 2020, while in July it placed a major bet on the future of gas, buying Dominion Energys transmission and storage network for $US4 billion. But the company has also been splashing out on renewables, investing $US34 billion in wind, solar, geothermal and biomass. Meanwhile, in Californias deserted Salton Sea, it is trying to develop ways to extract lithium, needed for electric car batteries, from brine. If an ark may be essential for survival, begin building it today, no matter how cloudless the skies appear, Buffett said in 2016. Elon Musk Of all the billionaires trying to save the planet, Elon Musk seems to be driven by the most visceral fear of people being wiped out  if not by climate change, then by artificial intelligence. If humanity just happens to be in the way, it will destroy humanity, the 49-year-old said in a documentary in 2018. He has offered a practical solution to the climate change problem, however: developing electric cars that people want to drive. Teslas sales of about 500,000 vehicles in 2020 belie its huge influence on the car market, with bans on new petrol and diesel cars now looming in several parts of the world, including the UK. Its Powerwall home battery helps ensure clean power goes into the cars, enabling drivers to store solar power from panels on their roofs.

Musk is deploying some of his estimated $US203 billion fortune into other carbon-cutting efforts. In February, he launched a $US100 million fund to back projects to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, to which some critics retorted that fossil fuels should just be left in the ground. The success of Elon Musks Tesla has made him one of the worlds richest people. Credit:AP Despite his climate efforts, Musk is a major backer of bitcoin, the crypto-currency whose energy consumption has come under fire from critics including Janet Yellen, the Treasury Secretary, due to the vast computing power required to power it. Michael Bloomberg The former presidential candidate built his reputation for tackling climate change as the three-term mayor of New York between 2002 and 2013, helping to cut the citys carbon emissions and bringing in the smoking ban. In 2011, Bloomberg Philanthropies joined the Sierra Club, an environmental group, in a campaign to shut down coal-fired power plants in the US.
The aquarium houses two breeds of penguins: rockhoppers, known for their bright yellow feathers crowning their heads and the way they hop around; and Magellanics, fast swimmers named after the Portuguese explorer who discovered them. The two species intermingle, but each stake out their preferred territories within the exhibit: The Magellanics gravitate toward the waters edge and the rockhoppers gather on the rock ledges. Seven of the aquariums 36 penguins are rockhoppers, the rest being Magellanics, Gonzalez said.
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The global next generation sequencing market expected to reach US$ 25.85 billion by 2028 according to a new study by Polaris Market Research. The report Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) Market Share, Size, Trends, Industry Analysis Report, By Application (Drug Discovery/Personalized Medicine, Genetic Screening, Diagnostics/Infectious Diseases, Agricultural & Animal Research); By Technology; By Product; By End-Use; By Regions; Segment Forecast, 2021  2028 gives a detailed insight into current market dynamics and provides analysis on future market growth.

The global next-generation sequencing market is anticipated to grow owing to advancements in both technology and genetic data analysis through the use of bioinformatics and other computational tools. Market players are focusing on developing automated sequencers equipped with high speed and accuracy. Moreover, significant investments in start-ups causing intense competition, thereby reducing the cost of sequencing. This has also enabled increased adoption in emerging nations.

The global next-generation sequencing market is fragmented based on application, technology, product, end-use, and region. In terms of application, the market is segmented into drug discovery/personalized medicine, genetic screening, diagnostics/infectious diseases, agricultural & animal research, and others.

Request for a sample of this research report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/next-generation-sequencing-ngs-market/request-for-sample

The technology market segment is further divided into the whole genome, targeted sequencing & re-sequencing, whole exome, RNA sequencing, chip sequencing, de novo sequencing, and methyl sequencing. The product market segment is further divided into instruments, reagents & consumables, and services. The end-use market segment is further divided into healthcare institutions, academics, biotech & pharma firms, and others.

increasing usage of NGS in infectious diseases. Genetic screening segment is expected to expand at highest CAGR during the forecast.

Based on technology, the target sequencing segment is projected to constitute almost half of the market in 2028. This can be attributed to the fact that concerned sequencing technique offers cost effective approach and increased market activities.

North America region is dominating in the global next generation sequencing market, holding almost one third of the market share throughout forecast period. Recent spike in COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. and government funded genetic studies favoured the regions growth.

The players including QIAGEN, Oxford Nanopore Technologies, and Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. together held a significant market share of global next generation sequencing industry in year 2020.

Browse for full research summary: https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/next-generation-sequencing-ngs-market

List of Key Players

QIAGEN

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.

F Hoffman-La Roche Ltd.

Oxford Nanopore Technologies

Genomatix GmbH

PierianDx

DNASTAR, Inc.

Eurofins GATC Biotech GmbH

Perkin Elmer, Inc.

BGI

Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc.

Others

Polaris Market Research has segmented the next generation sequencing market report on the basis of application, technology, product, end-use and region

Next Generation Sequencing, Application Outlook (Revenue  USD Million, 2016  2028)

Drug Discovery/Personalized Medicine

Genetic Screening

Diagnostics/Infectious Diseases

Agricultural & Animal Research

Others

Next Generation Sequencing, Technology Outlook (Revenue  USD Million, 2016  2028)

Whole Genome Sequencing

Targeted Sequencing & Re-sequencing

Whole Exome Sequencing

RNA Sequencing

Chip Sequencing

De Novo Sequencing

Methyl Sequencing

Next Generation Sequencing, Product Outlook (Revenue  USD Million, 2016  2028)

Instruments

Reagents & Consumables

Services

Next Generation Sequencing, End-Use Outlook (Revenue  USD Million, 2016  2028)

Healthcare Institutions

Academics

Biotech & Pharma Firms

Others

Next Generation Sequencing, Regional Outlook (Revenue  USD Million, 2016  2028)

North America U.S. Canada

Europe France Germany UK Italy Spain Netherlands Austria

Asia Pacific China India Japan Malaysia South Korea Indonesia

Central & South America Mexico Brazil Argentina

Middle East & Africa UAE Saudi Arabia Israel South Africa



Avail discount on this report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/next-generation-sequencing-ngs-market/request-for-discount-pricing

About Polaris Market Research

Polaris Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. We provide unmatched quality of offerings to our clients present globally. The company specializes in providing exceptional market intelligence and in-depth business research services for our clientele spread across different enterprises. We at Polaris are obliged to serve our diverse customer base present across the industries of healthcare, technology, semi-conductors and chemicals among various other industries present around the world.

Contact us-

Polaris Market Research

Phone: 1-646-568-9980

Email: sales@polarismarketresearch.com

Web: www.polarismarketresearch.com
A high-profile Melbourne murderer has been found dead in prison

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Plans to create a Midlands Bank to pilot public banking in Ireland should be seriously considered according to the Laois Offaly based Minister Pippa Hacket.

The Green Party Minister of State who sits at Government meetings was speaking following the announcement that KBC is to withdraw from the Irish market, on foot of a similar announcement from Ulster Bank and the closure of 88 branches of Bank of Ireland

It is clear that private banking is not serving us well, so its time to reconsider our options, she said. Public banks keep money in a community. Whats generated there, stays there, and is pumped back into new ventures or expansions, she told Seanad Eireann on Monday, April 19.

A statement issued by the minister said public banking has long been Green Party policy.

She added that in 2018, the Local Public Banking in Ireland report examined the possibility of piloting such a bank in the Midlands, suggesting that it should be headquartered in Mullingar with branches in Tullamore, Portlaoise, Athlone and Longford.

The proposal was submitted by Irish Rural Link and the Savings Bank Foundation for International Cooperation (SBFIC)

A full public banking system could remove the barriers to micro-businesses, who are so often turned down for credit, said Minister Hackett.

Were talking about your local cafe or hairdresser  enterprises that we have missed so much, and that have suffered badly under lockdown. Think also of new tourism ventures like bike hire, or small local food enterprises, she said.

Minister Hackett said public banks are already a successful part of the banking sector in 21 EU countries. She said the German system Sparkassen has been operating successfully since the late 1700s.

For more information on the Midlands Bank pilot, see here: https://assets.gov.ie/ 4692/171218114530- d7371aa5b0474587b07b2f555c9cbb 6b.pdf
On April 10, Gov. Dan McKee signed a bill that would drastically cut the Ocean States climate emissions over the next two decades.
Democrats are trying to take control of everything, including adding four justices to the Supreme Court. The Republican comeback has now begun.
(Newser)  Prince Philip's uncle was assassinated by members of the Irish Republican Army in 1979, and in the wake of the prince's death, the current leader of Sinn Fein, once the political wing of the IRA, has apologized. "Of course, I am sorry that happened; of course, that is heartbreaking," Mary Lou McDonald told a London radio station of the bombing of Lord Louis Mountbatten's boat. The attack was carried out when he was at his Irish vacation home, Classiebawn Castle, during the Northern Ireland Troubles when the IRA was fighting the British government; it also killed his oldest daughter's mother-in-law, his 14-year-old grandson, and the boy's 15-year-old friend, all of whom were along on the lobster potting trip at the time. The underground paramilitary group quickly claimed responsibility.

story continues below

Asked whether she would apologize to Prince Charles for the attack (Lord Mountbatten served as a mentor to him), McDonald said yes, report the New York Times and the Guardian. But, she added, "The army and armed forces associated with Prince Charles carried out many, many violent actions on our island." (Indeed, at the time, the IRA said Mountbatten was a legitimate target, having served as a commander in the British army; his death was the group's most direct attack on British royals.) Even so, she said, Sinn Fein is now peaceful, and "it is all our jobs to ensure no other child, no other family, no matter who they are, suffers the same trauma and heartbreak that was all too common on all sides of this island and beyond. I am happy to reiterate that on the weekend that your queen buried her beloved husband." (Read more Prince Philip stories.)
Edison, NJ -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/19/2021 -- Latest released the research study on Banking System Software Market, offers a detailed overview of the factors influencing the global business scope. Banking System Software Market research report shows the latest market insights, current situation analysis with upcoming trends and breakdown of the products and services. The report provides key statistics on the market status, size, share, growth factors of the Banking System Software. The study covers emerging player's data, including: competitive landscape, sales, revenue and global market share of top manufacturers are SAP SE (Germany), Oracle Corporation (Oracle FLEXCUBE) (United States), Finacle (Infosys) (India), Fidelity National Information Services, Inc. (United States), Finastra (United Kingdom), Temenos AG (Switzerland), Tata Consultancy Services (TCS BaNCS) (India), Alacra, Inc.(United States), Sopra Steria Group SA (France), Megasol Technologies (Corniche) (Sweden), NF Innova (Austria)



Free Sample Report + All Related Graphs & Charts (Including COVID19 Impact Analysis) @: https://www.advancemarketanalytics.com/sample-report/99566-global-banking-system-software-market



Definition:

The global banking system software will continue to rise due to the digitalization in almost each and every sector in today's time. The banking system software acts as the central nervous system of the banking sector which helps in improving the day to day operations within the banks and between the bank and user. The software supplies the infrastructure to build, deploy and administer the financial products. It mainly stores the data of account holders in compliance with local law, along with handling financial transaction processing and accounting. The software manages all other operations as well such as online and mobile banking, customer self-service portal and all other transactions.



Keep yourself up-to-date with latest market trends and changing dynamics due to COVID Impact and Economic Slowdown globally. Maintain a competitive edge by sizing up with available business opportunity in Banking System Software Market various segments and emerging territory.



Banking System Software Market Segmentation and Market Data Breakdown:

by Type (Corporate Banking System Software, Investment Banking System Software, Private Banking System Software, Retail Banking System Software), Deployment (Cloud Hosted, Open API, On-premise), Operating System (Windows, Android, Mac, Linux), Features (Cash Management, ATM Management, Online Banking, Securities Management, Transaction Monitoring, Compliance Tracking, Credit Card Management, Risk Management, Others), Pricing Model (Monthly Payment, Annual Subscription, One-time Payment, Others)



Attraction of The Report:

- What Are the Major Drivers in The Market?

Growing Digitalization in Every Industry

Need for Faster and Efficient Management of Banking Operations While Reducing the Human Errors

- What Are the Major Trends in The Market?

Increasing Number of Mobile and Online banking System Software

Introduction of AI-driven Technologies

- What Are the Key Challenges in The Market?

Competition from Tech Startups

- What Latest Developments in The Market?

On 21st January 2020, Temenos launched the banking-as-a-service platform in the US to speed up digital transformation. It is designed to offer a range of services like digital onboarding, personal financial management, know-your-customer verification and support for artificial intelligence. This launch of front-to-back SaaS products for digital banks will revolutionize the software banking landscape in the US wich is the highly strategic market for the company.



Avail 10-25% Discount on various license types @ https://www.advancemarketanalytics.com/request-discount/99566-global-banking-system-software-market



Region Included are: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Oceania, South America, Middle East & Africa

Country Level Break-Up: United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, South Africa, Nigeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Germany, United Kingdom (UK), the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Austria, Turkey, Russia, France, Poland, Israel, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, India, Australia and New Zealand etc.



What benefits does AMA research study is going to provide?

- Latest industry influencing trends and development scenario

- Open up New Markets

- To Seize powerful market opportunities

- Key decision in planning and to further expand market share

- Identify Key Business Segments, Market proposition & Gap Analysis

- Assisting in allocating marketing investments



Strategic Points Covered in Table of Content of Banking System Software Market:

Chapter 1: Introduction, market driving force product Objective of Study and Research Scope the Banking System Software market

Chapter 2: Exclusive Summary  the basic information of the Banking System Software Market.

Chapter 3: Displaying the Market Dynamics- Drivers, Trends and Challenges of the Banking System Software

Chapter 4: Presenting the Banking System Software Market Factor Analysis Porters Five Forces, Supply/Value Chain, PESTEL analysis, Market Entropy, Patent/Trademark Analysis.

Chapter 5: Displaying the by Type, End User and Region 2013-2020

Chapter 6: Evaluating the leading manufacturers of the Banking System Software market which consists of its Competitive Landscape, Peer Group Analysis, BCG Matrix & Company Profile

Chapter 7: To evaluate the market by segments, by countries and by manufacturers with revenue share and sales by key countries in these various regions.

Chapter 8 & 9: Displaying the Appendix, Methodology and Data Source

Finally, Banking System Software Market is a valuable source of guidance for individuals and companies.



Get More Information: https://www.advancemarketanalytics.com/reports/99566-global-banking-system-software-market



Key Questions Addressed in the Report

? Who are the top 20 players operating in the Banking System Software market?

? What covers the drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges in the Banking System Software industry?

? What are the growth trends in the market at the segmental and overall market levels?

? Which are the untapped emerging regions in the Banking System Software market?

? What are the recent application areas in the market?



Data Sources & Methodology

The primary sources involve the industry experts from the Global Banking System Software Market including the management organizations, processing organizations, analytics service providers of the industry's value chain. All primary sources were interviewed to gather and authenticate qualitative & quantitative information and determine the future prospects.

In the extensive primary research process undertaken for this study, the primary sources  Postal Surveys, telephone, Online & Face-to-Face Survey were considered to obtain and verify both qualitative and quantitative aspects of this research study. When it comes to secondary sources Company's Annual reports, press Releases, Websites, Investor Presentation, Conference Call transcripts, Webinar, Journals, Regulators, National Customs and Industry Associations were given primary weight-age.



Thanks for reading this article; you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, Europe or Asia.
The proportion of businesses targeted by cyber criminals in the past year increased from 38% to 43%, with over a quarter of those targeted (28%) experiencing five attacks or more, according to the Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report 2021.

Those attacks are pushing many firms to the brink, with one in six businesses attacked (17%) saying the financial impact materially threatened the companys future.

The Hiscox report says insurance take-up is still patchy. Adoption of standalone cyber cover crept up from 26% of firms to 27% over the year.

These are among the findings of a survey of 6,042 companies in the U.S., UK, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Ireland. Now in its fifth year, the Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report 2021 surveyed a representative sample of organizations.

On a more positive note, the report shows firms are responding to the cyber challenge: mean spending per business on cyber security has more than doubled in the last two years.

The report emphasized that there was a wide range of financial costs for cyber attacks, with smaller firms suffering the largest losses relative to size of business. For micro firms with under 10 employees, the median cost was $8,000.

However, 5% of the companies surveyed, which had experienced cyber attacks, suffered costs of $300,000 or more.

One German business services firm experienced breaches costing the equivalent of $474,000 per employee, the report said.

One of the big takeaways of this report is the worrying range of financial impacts that cyber attacks can have, commented Gareth Wharton, Hiscox Cyber CEO.

The risk of inaction is that the next attack could be enough to sink the business, he added. Cyber is a complex problem but that does not mean it is unmanageable. With good risk management and appropriate cyber insurance, firms can contain the impact of an attack and limit the damage.

The report contains a new cyber readiness model that gauges firms strengths in six key cyber security areas across people, process and technology. It is designed to be interactive, allowing businesses to check and compare their cyber maturity with their peers, draw on best practice in each area, and develop cyber resilience, said Hiscox.

Scoring survey respondents against the readiness model highlighted the number of firms lacking true cyber resilience, noted the report. For example, only one in five (20%) qualified as an expert, while more than a quarter (27%) were classed as novices.

Other key findings from the report include:

Ransomware now commonplace. Around one in six firms (16%) was targeted with ransomware and more than half (58%) paid the ransom. In the U.S., the proportion paying a ransom was 71%. The costs of recovery from a ransomware attack were typically almost as high as any ransom paid (making up an average 45% of overall cost). Phishing emails were the main way in for the ransomware extortionists, with smaller companies more at risk. Some 74% of firms with fewer than 10 employees, targeted with ransomware, blamed phishing as the point of entry, compared to 65% of the biggest firms surveyed.

Around one in six firms (16%) was targeted with ransomware and more than half (58%) paid the ransom. In the U.S., the proportion paying a ransom was 71%. The costs of recovery from a ransomware attack were typically almost as high as any ransom paid (making up an average 45% of overall cost). Phishing emails were the main way in for the ransomware extortionists, with smaller companies more at risk. Some 74% of firms with fewer than 10 employees, targeted with ransomware, blamed phishing as the point of entry, compared to 65% of the biggest firms surveyed. Cyber security spending doubles. The average firm now devotes more than a fifth (21%) of its IT budget to cyber security  an increase of 63% in a year. Mean spending per firm on cyber has more than doubled in two years  from $1.45 million to $3.25 million. German firms are the biggest spenders at an average of $5.5 million. Belgian firms spend the least ($1.9 million on average).

The average firm now devotes more than a fifth (21%) of its IT budget to cyber security  an increase of 63% in a year. Mean spending per firm on cyber has more than doubled in two years  from $1.45 million to $3.25 million. German firms are the biggest spenders at an average of $5.5 million. Belgian firms spend the least ($1.9 million on average). Three key sectors targeted. These were technology, media and telecoms (56%), financial services (55%) and energy (54%). The percentage of firms targeted in each of these sectors was typically up from 44%, 44%, and 40% respectively in 2020.

These were technology, media and telecoms (56%), financial services (55%) and energy (54%). The percentage of firms targeted in each of these sectors was typically up from 44%, 44%, and 40% respectively in 2020. Insurance take-up still patchy. Adoption of standalone cyber cover crept up from 26% of firms to 27% over the year. Take-up was highest among large companies and those ranked as experts. Small firms remain resistant to insurance: nearly half (44%) of those with under 10 employees said they had no intention of buying insurance cover.

Adoption of standalone cyber cover crept up from 26% of firms to 27% over the year. Take-up was highest among large companies and those ranked as experts. Small firms remain resistant to insurance: nearly half (44%) of those with under 10 employees said they had no intention of buying insurance cover. More big firms on firing line. As past surveys have noted, the probability of being targeted rises sharply according to size of firm. This year there was a much steeper curve  from 23% for the smallest to 61% for enterprise firms (those with 1,000-plus employees). This compares to last years report when equivalent figures were 31% for the smallest and 51% for enterprise firms.

As past surveys have noted, the probability of being targeted rises sharply according to size of firm. This year there was a much steeper curve  from 23% for the smallest to 61% for enterprise firms (those with 1,000-plus employees). This compares to last years report when equivalent figures were 31% for the smallest and 51% for enterprise firms. German firms hardest hit. German businesses accounted for more than a third of total losses across the entire study group at $48 million. They also topped the table for the median cost of all attacks ($23,700) and the largest single attack ($5.1 million).

German businesses accounted for more than a third of total losses across the entire study group at $48 million. They also topped the table for the median cost of all attacks ($23,700) and the largest single attack ($5.1 million). Experts fared better. Firms that qualified as experts in Hiscoxs cyber readiness model suffered fewer ransomware attacks, were less likely to pay the ransom and recovered more quickly. The U.S. had the highest proportion of cyber experts (25%) and one of the lowest median costs of attacks. The UK ranked second, with 23% of firms ranked as experts. UK firms were least likely to have had a cyber attack (just 36%) and most likely to have defended it successfully.

About the study

The fifth annual Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report was compiled in collaboration with Forrester Consulting. It is based on a survey of executives, departmental heads, IT managers and other key professionals. In total 6,042 professionals involved in their organisations cyber security effort were contacted (1,000-plus each from the UK, U.S., France and Germany, more than 500 each from Belgium, Spain, and the Netherlands and 300 from Ireland). Respondents completed the online survey between Nov. 5, 2020 and Jan. 8, 2021.

Topics Cyber
DUBLIN, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Urban Air Mobility (UAM) Market - A Global and Regional Analysis: Focus on Range, Application, Ecosystem, Operation, End-User, Platform Architecture, and Country - Analysis and Forecast, 2023-2035" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Research and Markets Logo

The urban air mobility industry analysis projects the market to have a significant growth of CAGR 27.37% based on the values during the forecast period from 2023 to 2035. The Asia-Pacific region is expected to dominate the market by 2035 with a share of 39.27%. The Asia-Pacific region includes China, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore, but China is expected to acquire a major share in 2035 due to the increase in the population and traffic congestion in megacities in the country.



The urban air mobility market has gained huge importance in the past few years. This is due to the rising demand for an alternate mode of transportation that is quicker and more efficient than the current transportation services. Several government agencies and associations have started drafting policies and regulations to make sure that the airspace is managed to enable higher and safer operations of the aircraft and drones.



Scope of the Global Urban Air Mobility Market



The global urban air mobility market research provides the market information for segmentation, such as the classification of the vehicles based on their range and application, as well as the ecosystem, operations, end-use industry, and platform architecture. The market analysis examines the urban air mobility market outlook in terms of the trends, driving forces, opportunities, technological advancements, and competitive benchmarking, among others.



The report further takes into consideration the market and business dynamics, along with the detailed product contribution of the key players operating in the market.



Global Urban Air Mobility Market Segmentation



The report constitutes an extensive study of the urban air mobility industry. The report largely focuses on providing market information for the air mobility vehicles covering various segments, products, applications, and regions. The travel range included less than 20 kilometers, 20-100 kilometers, 100-400 kilometers, and greater than 400 kilometers. The applications were classified into passenger transportation, cargo transportation, medical and emergency aid transportation, and food delivery. The market is further segmented into operation, end-use industry, and platform architecture such as fixed-wing, rotor-wing, and others.



The urban air mobility market is segregated by region under four major regions, namely North America, Europe, APAC, and Rest-of-the-World. Data for each of these regions (by country) is provided.



Key Companies in the Global Urban Air Mobility Industry



The key players in the global urban air mobility market include Acubed by Airbus S.A.S.(U.S.), Airspace Experience Technologies (U.S.), Aurora Flight Sciences (U.S.), Bell Textron Inc (U.S.), DELOREAN AEROSPACE (U.S.), EHang (China), EVE Air Mobility (U.S.), Joby Aviation (U.S.), Kitty Hawk (U.S.), Lilium GmbH (Germany), NEVA Aerospace (U.K.), Opener (U.S.), Pipistrel Group (Slovenia), Volocopter GmbH (Germany), and other key players.

Story continues

Key Topics Covered:

1 Markets

1.1 Industry Outlook

1.1.1 Urban Air Mobility Market: Overview

1.1.2 Futuristic Trends

1.1.2.1 Cellular Connected Drones

1.1.2.2 Drone Receptacles

1.1.2.3 Hybrid-Electric Propulsion

1.1.2.4 Hydrogen Propulsion

1.1.2.5 Smart Ground Infrastructure

1.1.2.6 Internet of Things (IoT) Connectivity

1.1.2.7 Fully Autonomous Systems

1.1.2.8 Safety Solutions

1.1.3 Leading Manufacturers, Products, and Technical Specifications

1.1.4 Transition of Urban Air Mobility to Advanced Air Mobility

1.1.5 Commercialization of UAM

1.1.6 Regulatory Framework

1.1.6.1 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)

1.1.6.2 European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA)

1.1.6.3 Drone Regulations

1.1.7 Investment Scenario: Start-Ups and Stakeholders in UAM Market

1.1.8 Patent Analysis

1.1.8.1 Introduction

1.1.8.2 Patent Landscape

1.1.9 Supply Chain Analysis

1.2 Business Dynamics

1.2.1 Business Drivers

1.2.1.1 Growing Need for an Alternate Mode of Transportation in Urban Mobility

1.2.1.2 Demand for an Efficient Mode of Logistics and Transportation Service

1.2.1.3 Adoption of Urban Air Mobility Due to Environmental Concerns

1.2.2 Business Challenges

1.2.2.1 Short-Term Challenges

1.2.2.1.1 Impact of COVID-19 on Urban Air Mobility Market

1.2.2.2 Long-Term Challenges

1.2.2.2.1 Lack of Technology in Infrastructure in Megacities

1.2.2.2.2 Stringent Regulations on Urban Air Mobility Operations by Aviation Authorities.

1.2.3 Key Business Developments

1.2.3.1 Business Strategies

1.2.3.2 Corporate Strategies

1.2.4 Business Opportunities

1.2.4.1 Increasing Demand for Air Ambulance Vehicles

1.2.4.2 Smart City Initiatives Will Demand Urban Air Mobility



2 Application

2.1 Overview

2.2 Global Urban Air Mobility Market (By Range)

2.2.1 <_0 />2.2.2 20 km-100 km

2.2.3 100 km-400 km

2.2.4 >400 km

2.3 Demand Analysis for Global Urban Air Mobility Market (by Range)

2.4 Global Urban Air Mobility Market (by Application)

2.4.1 Passenger Transportation

2.4.2 Cargo Transportation

2.4.3 Medical and Emergency Aid Transportation

2.4.4 Food Delivery

2.5 Demand Analysis for Global Urban Air Mobility Market (by Application)



3 Products

3.1 Overview

3.2 Global Urban Air Mobility Market (by Ecosystem)

3.2.1 Platform

3.2.1.1 Delivery Drones

3.2.1.2 eVTOLs

3.2.1.2.1 Air Taxi

3.2.1.2.2 Personal Air Vehicles

3.2.1.2.3 Air Ambulance and Medical Transportation Vehicles

3.2.2 Demand Analysis for Global Urban Air Mobility Market (by Platform)

3.2.3 Infrastructure

3.2.3.1 UTM

3.2.3.2 Vertiports

3.2.3.3 Charging Stations

3.3 Global Urban Air Mobility Market (by Operation)

3.3.1 Piloted Operation

3.3.2 Optionally Piloted

3.3.3 Autonomous Operation

3.4 Demand Analysis for Global Urban Air Mobility Market (by Operation)

3.5 Global Urban Air Mobility Market (by End-User)

3.5.1 E-commerce

3.5.2 Healthcare

3.5.3 Food Delivery

3.5.4 Transportation and Logistics

3.5.5 Tourism

3.5.6 Others

3.6 Demand Analysis for Global Urban Air Mobility Market (by End-User)

3.7 Global Urban Air Mobility Market (by Platform Architecture)

3.7.1 Fixed Wing

3.7.2 Rotor Wing

3.7.3 Others

3.7.3.1 Tilt Rotor

3.7.3.2 Thrust Vector Control

3.8 Demand Analysis for Global Urban Air Mobility Market (by Platform Architecture)



4 Region

4.1 Global Urban Air Mobility Market (by Region)

4.2 North America

4.3 Europe

4.4 Asia-Pacific

4.5 Rest-of-the-World



5 Markets - Competitive Benchmarking & Company Profiles

5.1 Competitive Benchmarking

5.1.1 Acubed-Airbus

5.1.1.1 Company Overview

5.1.1.1.1 Role of Acubed-Airbus in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.1.1.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.1.1.2 Business Strategies

5.1.1.2.1 Product Developments and Demonstrations

5.1.1.3 Corporate Strategies

5.1.1.3.1 Partnerships

5.1.1.4 Strengths and Weaknesses of Acubed-Airbus

5.1.1.5 R&D Analysis

5.2 Airspace Experience Technologies, Inc.

5.2.1 Company Overview

5.2.1.1 Role of Airspace Experience Technologies, Inc. in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.2.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.2.2 Business Strategies

5.2.2.1 Product Developments

5.2.3 Corporate Strategies

5.2.3.1 Memorandum of Understanding

5.2.4 Strengths and Weaknesses of Airspace Experience Technologies, Inc.

5.3 Aurora Flight Sciences

5.3.1 Company Overview

5.3.1.1 Role of Aurora Flight Sciences in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.3.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.3.2 Corporate Strategies

5.3.2.1 Corporate Strategies

5.3.3 Strengths and Weaknesses of Aurora Flight Sciences

5.4 Bell Textron Inc.

5.4.1 Company Overview

5.4.1.1 Role of Bell Textron Inc. in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.4.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.4.2 Business Strategies

5.4.2.1 Product Developments and Launches

5.4.3 Corporate Strategies

5.4.3.1 Partnership

5.4.4 Strengths and Weaknesses of Bell Textron Inc

5.5 DELOREAN AEROSPACE, LLC

5.5.1 Company Overview

5.5.1.1 Role of DELOREAN AEROSPACE, LLC in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.5.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.5.2 Strengths and Weaknesses of DELOREAN AEROSPACE, LLC

5.6 EHang

5.6.1 Company Overview

5.6.1.1 Role of EHang in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.6.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.6.2 Business Strategies

5.6.2.1 Product Launches, Demonstrations, and Expansions

5.6.3 Corporate Strategies

5.6.3.1 Partnerships and Collaborations

5.6.4 Strengths and Weaknesses of EHang

5.6.5 R&D Analysis

5.7 EVE Air Mobility

5.7.1 Company Overview

5.7.1.1 Role of Eve Air Mobility in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.7.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.7.2 Business Strategies

5.7.2.1 Business Expansion

5.7.3 Corporate Strategies

5.7.3.1 Collaboration

5.7.4 Strengths and Weaknesses of Eve Air Mobility

5.8 Jaunt Air Mobility LLC

5.8.1 Company Overview

5.8.1.1 Role of Jaunt Air Mobility LLC in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.8.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.8.2 Corporate Strategies

5.8.2.1 Partnerships and MoUs

5.8.2.2 Agreements and Acquisitions

5.8.3 Strengths and Weaknesses of Jaunt Air Mobility LLC

5.9 Joby Aviation

5.9.1 Company Overview

5.9.1.1 Role of Joby Aviation in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.9.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.9.2 Corporate Strategies

5.9.2.1 Merger, Agreement, and Acquisitions

5.9.3 Strengths and Weaknesses of Joby Aviation

5.1 Kitty Hawk

5.10.1 Company Overview

5.10.1.1 Role of Kitty Hawk in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.10.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.10.2 Corporate Strategies

5.10.2.1 Partnerships

5.10.3 Strengths and Weaknesses of Kitty Hawk

5.11 Lilium GmbH

5.11.1 Company Overview

5.11.1.1 Role of Lilium GmbH in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.11.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.11.2 Corporate Strategies

5.11.2.1 Partnerships and Collaborations

5.11.3 Strengths and Weaknesses of Lilium GmbH

5.12 NEVA Aerospace

5.12.1 Company Overview

5.12.1.1 Role of NEVA Aerospace in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.12.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.12.2 Strengths and Weaknesses of NEVA Aerospace

5.13 Opener

5.13.1 Company Overview

5.13.1.1 Role of Opener in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.13.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.13.2 Business Strategies

5.13.2.1 Award and Expansion

5.13.3 Strengths and Weaknesses of Opener

5.14 Pipistrel Group

5.14.1 Company Overview

5.14.1.1 Role of Pipistrel Group in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.14.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.14.2 Business Strategies

5.14.2.1 Product Launch

5.14.2.2 Award and Partnership

5.14.3 Strengths and Weaknesses of Pipistrel

5.15 Volocopter GmbH

5.15.1 Company Overview

5.15.1.1 Role of Volocopter GmbH in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.15.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.15.2 Business Strategies

5.15.2.1 Product Launch and Demonstration

5.15.2.2 Business Expansion and Cooperation

5.15.3 Strengths and Weaknesses of Volocopter GmbH

5.16 Other Key Players

5.16.1 AMSL Aero Pty Ltd

5.16.2 AutoFlight

5.16.3 Electra Aero, Inc.

5.16.4 Honeywell International Inc.

5.16.5 Hyundai Motor Company

5.16.6 Overair, Inc.

5.16.7 Skyports Limited

5.16.8 Trek Aerospace, Inc.

5.16.9 Varon Vehicles Corporation

5.16.10 Wing Aviation LLC

5.16.11 Wingcopter

5.16.12 Wisk Aero LLC



6 Research Methodology

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View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/worldwide-urban-air-mobility-industry-to-2035---increasing-demand-for-air-ambulance-vehicles-presents-opportunities-301271558.html

SOURCE Research and Markets
It was a pretty emotional moment on Friday when Sanford Strong co-founder and co-leader Teresa Quintana found out that the nonprofit group had finally gotten 501(c)(3) status.

"I got the letter from Congressman Moolenaar's office on Friday and I was very ecstatic that it had gotten approved," Quintana said on Monday, the emotion still evident in her voice. "The whole reason behind Sanford Strong is serving the community, and when we can better serve the community financially, that's huge for us."

Sanford Strong, which is led by the nonprofit board of Sanford residents Quintana, Emily Ricards, and Martina Ricards, was formed almost immediately after the mid-Michigan dam failures of May 19, 2020. The organization has helped thousands of residents with flood relief by providing materials and mobilizing volunteers, among other things.

Although Sanford Strong was already designated as a non-profit organization, gaining 501(c)(3) status through the Internal Revenue Service allows the group to help people more easily and more quickly.

"Theres many benefits to it," Quintana said. "The most important thing to me is that now that's in place, we will be able to streamline the process of how to get funding to individuals. It was quite a process and we had to go through a couple different entities, which takes more time. Being able to serve our residents in a more timely manner is going to be very helpful.

"And now we have tax-exempt status," she added. "So when donors contribute to us, we can give them a tax-deductible receipt. This also allows us to apply for grants. And the other benefit to this is it legitimizes our cause. Having those things in place makes companies and other entities more comfortable donating to us directly."

Quintana emphasized that the office of U.S. Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Midland, expedited the lengthy process of becoming a 501 (c) (3) organization for Sanford Strong. She said some other organizations are still waiting after applying for such status last April.

"This is probably the worst time in history to apply for anything with the IRS," she said. "It went really slow. I reached out to John Moolenaar's office to expedite it. They were great. We appreciate our congressman being so proactive and caring so much about the cause."

Channeling volunteers to areas of need

Quintana recently posted on the Village of Sanford Facebook page that she created a volunteer database because so many people have reached out to her wanting to volunteer. That database is at https://bit.ly/3edukmU

The database asks for the volunteer's name, contact information, skill set and how they are interested in helping, and where they would be able to work.

"Im sharing (the database) with other organizations that are involved in flood relief in Midland County and Gladwin County," Quintana said.

"Gladwin County is still in need of a lot of help," she noted. "We will dispatch volunteers to and help out every area that we can."
[April 19, 2021] Primerica Announces Agreement to Acquire e-TeleQuote

Primerica, Inc. (NYSE:PRI), a leading provider of financial services to middle-income families throughout the United States and Canada, and Etelequote Limited, a senior health insurance distributor of Medicare-related insurance policies, announced today that they have signed a definitive agreement under which Primerica will acquire 80% of Etelequote Limited's operating subsidiaries (collectively, "e-TeleQuote") at an enterprise value of $600 million. Under the terms of the agreement, Primerica will purchase the remaining 20% stake over a period of up to four years. The companies also signed a distribution agreement for Primerica's U.S. sales force to refer Medicare Advantage and Medicare Supplement sales to e-TeleQuote. The transaction is expected to close in July 2021. "This acquisition will combine the strengths of two successful companies, positioning both for expanded growth," said Glenn Williams, Primerica Chief Executive Officer. "The synergies between the client relationships of our sales force and e-TeleQuote's expertise in senior health insurance plans are a major factor in our decision to enter this space. e-TeleQuote's specialized technology platform and dynamic sales centers align perfectly with Primerica's powerful distribution capabilities, allowing us to deliver additional value to our clients, sales representatives, employees, and stockholders." Williams continued: "This announcement is the culmination of several years of work by our strategy and leadership teams and furthers our long-term strategic plan. e-TeleQuote is the right size acquisition for us in an adjacent, high-growth sector. We look forward to welcoming the e-TeleQuote team to the Primerica family and working together to expand our positive impact on the financial lives of middle-market clients of all ages." Headquartered in Clearwater, FL, e-TeleQuote is an innovative, fast growing business in the senior health insurance distribution space with a broad geographic reach into all 50 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. Led by strong entrepreneurial management, the 10-year-old company is well-positioned to expand its role as a distributor of Medicare-related plans, which help seniors defray medical expenses and provide peace of mind. One of e-TeleQuote's core strengths is the breadth of its carrier relationships. e-TeleQuote offers products from a wide array of carriers (including United Healthcare, Humana, and Anthem) with over 2,700 Medicare Advantage plans available. e-TeleQuote also has a growing Medicare supplement business with 4 carriers. This breadth aligns well with Primerica's distribution footprint and will enable Primerica to serve the financial needs of clients more fully throughout their lifecycle. Consumers may obtain information on available plans through e-TeleQuote agents or its consumer facing website www.easymedicare.com. "We are excited about the many opportunities that present themselves through the combination of our two organizations," said Anthony P. Solazzo, CEO and Founder of e-TeleQuote. "We believe that e-TeleQuote's carrier agnostic approach to helping Medicare beneficiaries find solutions to their healthcare needs, as well as our other core values, align perfectly with Primerica. Both organizations are dedicated to serving constituents who have long been underserved and do so through an educational approach that meets the needs of consumers. It is the similar commitment to consumers, employees, and our communities that makes this a mutually beneficial arrangement." Financial Terms Under the terms of the share purchase agreement, Primerica will acquire 80% of e-TeleQuote at a $600 million enterprise value and a $450 million implied equity value based on an estimated $150 million in net debt at closing. Primerica will fund the transaction - which includes the 80% equity stake for $360 million as well as replacing e-TeleQuote's existing debt with lower cost fundingprovided by Primerica - with $370 million in cash, a $125 million draw on its revolving credit facility, and a $15 million seller's note. e-TeleQuote's stockholders will have a potential earnout of up to $50 million payable in cash if specified financial targets are achieved in 2021 and 2022.



Specifically, Primerica will acquire 70.25% of e-TeleQuote from The Resource Group International, Limited, representing its entire ownership stake, and 9.75% of e-TeleQuote from e-TeleQuote management. Following the closing, the remaining stake will be held by e-TeleQuote's management. Structural components such as the potential earnout, call and put options and a new management incentive plan are expected to incentivize and encourage retention of key members of the e-TeleQuote team. The call and put options will be exercisable over up to a four-year period. The transaction is expected to be immediately accretive to Primerica's earnings. As a result of this announcement, Primerica has suspended stock buybacks through the remainder of 2021 but expects to resume repurchases in 2022.

Strategic Rationale Primerica's acquisition of e-TeleQuote is a natural extension of its strategy to distinguish itself as the leading distributor of financial services products to meet middle-income families' evolving needs. With a product portfolio that provides a solid foundation for financial security - term life insurance, annuities, IRAs, managed investment accounts, mortgage lending, pre-paid legal services, and the coming addition of senior health insurance plans - Primerica is positioning itself to become an even more important part of the financial lives of the overlooked middle-income market. Senior health insurance plans play a critical role in bridging the gap between Medicare and the healthcare expenses seniors often face after turning 65 years of age. Acquiring e-TeleQuote will support Primerica's already formidable distribution capabilities, enhance Primerica's earning streams, extend Primerica's reach into new markets and create recruitment and referral opportunities for Primerica's sales force. Approvals and Timing The transaction has been approved by both companies' boards of directors and is expected to close on July 1. The transaction is subject to regulatory and other customary closing conditions. Advisors Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC served as financial advisor to Primerica and Sidley Austin LLP served as legal counsel to Primerica. J.P. Morgan Securities LLC served as financial advisor to e-TeleQuote, and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP served as legal counsel to e-TeleQuote. Webcast/Conference Call Primerica will conduct a webcast at 5:30 p.m. Eastern on April 19, 2021 to discuss the planned acquisition. The investor webcast can be accessed at the Company's investor relations website, https://investors.primerica.com. A webcast replay will be available on the website after the call. For additional information on the pending transaction, please see www.primerica.com/public/announcement. Forward-looking Statement This press release contains forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The forward-looking statements in this press release do not constitute guarantees of future performance. Those statements, which are not strictly historical statements, including, without limitation, statements regarding the proposed acquisition of a majority stake in e-TeleQuote; the benefits of the acquisition of a majority stake in e-TeleQuote, including the expansion of Primerica's distribution and lead curation capabilities, potential new cross-selling opportunities and market reach, diversification of Primerica's earning streams, acceleration of Primerica's long-term strategic plans and movement into an adjacent sector, potential enhancement of growth and earnings expectations, and the potential value and synergies that the strategic partnership may deliver, including to Primerica's clients, sales force, employees and stockholders; expectations regarding new debt; and the expected timing of the proposed transactions, constitute forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, the ability of Primerica and the selling shareholders to close the announced transaction; the ability of Primerica to realize the potential benefits of the acquisition of a majority stake in e-TeleQuote; the possibility that the closing of the transaction may be delayed; potential disruptions to Primerica's and e-TeleQuote's operations, distraction of management and other risks related to Primerica's integration of e-TeleQuote's business, team, technology and sales centers; e-TeleQuote's ability to recruit agents; e-TeleQuote's ability to retain management and key employees; the ability of e-TeleQuote's sales agents to place policies based on leads provided by Primerica; revenue growth and recognition of revenue; products and services, and their development and distribution; risks related to economic, regulatory and competitive factors; risks related to Primerica and e-TeleQuote's key strategic relationships, including e-TeleQuote's carrier relationships; and other risks detailed in Primerica's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Primerica assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information contained in this press release or with respect to the announcements described herein. About Primerica, Inc. Primerica, Inc., headquartered in Duluth, GA, is a leading provider of financial services to middle-income households in the United States and Canada. Independent licensed representatives educate Primerica clients about how to better prepare for a more secure financial future by assessing their needs and providing appropriate solutions through term life insurance, which the company underwrites, and mutual funds, annuities and other financial products, which the company distributes primarily on behalf of third parties. Primerica insured over 5.5 million lives and had approximately 2.6 million client investment accounts at December 31, 2020. Primerica, through its insurance company subsidiaries, was the #2 issuer of Term Life insurance coverage in North America in 2020. Primerica stock is included in the S&P MidCap 400 and the Russell 1000 stock indices and is traded on The New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "PRI." About e-TeleQuote e-TeleQuote, the owner and operator of easyMedicare.com, is an independent digital insurance marketplace providing individuals the ability to purchase Medicare insurance from the comfort of their homes. The company diligently researches available plan options from multiple insurance carriers, helping people choose a plan that best suits their needs. e-TeleQuote provides personal consultation through experienced licensed Medicare advisors who suggest plan coverage options based on an individual's particular needs. The company is proud to serve in excess of 150,000 people across the United States. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005820/en/

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FORT COLLINS, Colo., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Marketing 360 Listings app, used by small business owners, agencies, and larger enterprises, is a favorite tool within the platform for many reasons, one of the biggest being the ability to ensure that their business is correctly listed on the most popular local sites, directories, and apps for their industry.

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"The Marketing 360 Listings app is a game changer for busy SMBs that need a better and more efficient way to ensure that their business is listed in the most important places" said Marketing 360 CMO, Jerry Kelly. We saw great utilization of the Listings app during COVID, as business owners needed to update their hours regularly to meet the demands of their local government restrictions. With little time and effort, SMBs can ensure that their business is accurately listed on the most prominent sites, all through the Marketing 360 Listings app."

The app also allows for premium business information, like additional directions to the business, the service area, payment options, brand videos, featured messages, specialties, associations, and important links.

Marketing 360 offers interested business owners the ability to create their account and use the software, as well as unlock plans and pricing at https://www.marketing360.com .

About Marketing 360

Marketing 360 is a technology company that provides business management and marketing software and services for SMBs and franchises. The Marketing 360 platform gives SMBs everything they need to manage and grow their business from a singular platform, including the ability to  build a professional website, accept and manage payments, manage leads and customers, book appointments, monitor reviews, manage social media, syndicate business listings, manage content marketing, run multi-channel digital advertising campaigns, and more. Marketing 360 was founded in 2009 with the mission of enriching communities by helping small businesses grow, and is headquartered in Fort Collins, Colorado, with offices in Austin, Texas. Learn more about Marketing 360 at https://www.marketing360.com/ .

Contact:

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[email protected]

970-541-3284

SOURCE Marketing 360
May it please the court. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, good morning. The video evidence, I think, will be very helpful and meaningful to you because you can see it for yourself without lawyer talk, lawyer spin, lawyer anything. You can see it for yourself. Please. Please. I cant breathe. Please, man. Please somebody help me. Please. Im about to die in this thing. Oh my God. What did he say? He said, Im about to die. Oh my God. While watching the George Floyd trial, I noticed the differences and the importance of footage. This corner  When Stephon was murdered, we only had the officers footage. We only had their point of view. Hey, show your hands. You know, when my son was killed being on the platform, there was several bystanders that filmed. And had it not been for the cameras, we wouldnt even be here today because they would have probably said it was justified. Bro, with your feet on his head, man. You knee on his neck. Hes pushing harder. Yeah. I cannot breathe. A little bit more. Right here. I dont watch the footage of my dads incident because its torture. You see the officers giving a trove of blows to his body? Yes. To his arms, to his torso, to his legs. Here it is 30 years later, nothing has changed. Now who are you going to believe? The defendants or your own eyes? I am watching the George Floyd case with my best friend, Tiffany, at her home. Oh my gosh. Wow. And hes still on his neck. Today was the first time I watched the entire video of George Floyd, and it definitely made me think about my dad begging for his life screaming. Check his pulse. Check his pulse. His daughter was the same age I was when my dad was beaten. My name is Lora Dene King. Im the middle child of Rodney Glen King. The world saw the videotape. We thought the video showed excessive force and unnecessary force. With that videotape, if they had two eyes and they werent blind, you could see that it was excessive force. The defense tried to dilute the impact of the tape by dissecting it, frame by frame, in an effort to show that King was a threat to the officers. He kind of gave out like a bear-like yell, like a wounded animal. If he had grabbed my officer, it would have been a death grip. If he had grabbed the weapon, he would have had numerous targets. He didnt grab anybody during these events, did he? No sir, he did not. He couldnt walk. He had 50 broken bones. His skull was permanently fractured. He had permanent brain damage. My dad was never the same after that. You know, and everybody just considered him to be normal. I think if that happened to anybody, they wouldnt be normal ever again. This doesnt just affect the person it happened to. It also affects all those people who are out there watching it. Theyre all affected forever. I was desperate to help. I was just kind of emotional, and I went to the African-American that was standing there on the curb. And I was just like, theyre not going to help them. Oh my God. This man, he witnessed another African-American man getting his life taken. The nine-year-old speaker on the trial. Good morning, [inaudible]. Good morning. Which one is you? Just so happened to be walking down the street. She will never forget that for the rest of her life. You ultimately ended up posting your video to social media, right? Correct. And it went viral? Correct. It changed your life, right? The girl who filmed George Floyd, the fact that there was nothing she can do to save his life. Its been nights, I stayed up apologizing and apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more. Thats something that will haunt her like George Holliday, who captured my dads video. Without George Holliday, these four officers might not be on trial. He just wanted to test this new camera he had. Like, oh let me take  he stood there shaking, terrified. And he still suffers to this day because that was the right thing to do. What could he have done to deserve that? If I was to see George Floyds daughter today, I wish there was something I can say. But its not easy. Its not easy at all. Because Im sure shes watched that videotape. And thats something that carries in your mental every everyday, just like my dads video tape. For the jury, a difficult decision ahead, knowing that to acquit the four officers could ignite this city. Not guilty of  Chanting: No justice, no peace. No justice, no peace. And damage to the city of Los Angeles running into billions of dollars. Thats what Im saying. The police, they dont pay a cent for this trial. So my mother and I, we was watching the George Floyds trial. And it brought back so many memories of my son Oscars case. Oscars last picture in his cellphone was of the officer who shot him. My name is Wanda Johnson. Im the mother of Oscar Grant. Grant was shot once in the back as he lay face down on the train stations platform. He was unarmed. The 27-year-old officer has said he thought he had drawn his Taser gun   but accidentally pulled out his handgun instead. And the incident was captured on cellphone video. Video speaks for themselves. And the jury will see that and make the correct decision. We knew that we would have a very hard time winning in the court systems because the judicial system was not made for everyone in the society. As the situation went on, the crowd began to grow and grow. Oh my goodness, the same playbook that they used for what happened with Oscar, they used the same thing for George Floyd. Oh, there was a crowd of angry mob people. They were behind them. There were people across the street, people yelling. We dont know if they were going to attack us. I thought about the young man testifying in George Floyds case. You grew angrier and angrier. Calling the police on the police. 911, whats the address of the emergency? How do you have somebody investigate those that they work with? Of course youre going to find that theyre going to believe the people that they work with quicker than they will believe the citizens who are filing the complaint. Would you like to speak with those sergeants? Yeah, Id like to. He was unresponsive. He wasnt resisting arrest or any of this. OK, one second. Murderers, bro. Yall are just murderers, bro. You know, when we was going to jury trial for Oscar, they would ask questions like, Do you know anybody who went to jail? Do you know anybody who had an encounter with the police? And as soon as the person said that, they would strike them from being a juror, right? Having a jury that consists of different backgrounds, it could help with the decision-making of innocent or guilty. The 27-year-old officer   pleaded not guilty to the murder charge. His trial had been moved to Los Angeles over concerns of racial tension and intense media scrutiny. Everybody, lets just pray for one minute. Father God, we come to you and your son named Jesus Christ. Father, we ask the people that see this  Every time I come to my moms house, Im reminded that my son was killed here. My name is Sequette Clark. Im the mother of Stephon Clark. 22-year-old Stephon Clark was fatally shot while running from police. Clark was see evading authorities after allegedly smashing a car window. He was shot eight times in his grandmothers backyard. Police apparently thinking he was holding a gun, now say it was a cellphone. Out of fear for their own lives, they fired their service weapon. And following the incident, officers manually muted their body cameras at times. Move over this way. As we watched the George Floyd trial, I invited particular members of my family because you cant address something in the community or the city or the nation until you address it at home with the family. When Mr. Floyd was in distress, Mr. Chauvin wouldnt help him, didnt help him. So thats just how they left my boy out there. They handcuffed him after he was dead. Excessive force. Excessive force and lethal force after the fact of death. I felt saddened, heavy, drained. I felt as if I was a slave 400 years ago. Just hearing how he was dead, seeing how he was dead. And then to turn around and hear the defenses attempt to bring up the fact that we should not focus on the   9 minutes and 29 seconds   that it took to kill George Floyd. But we should focus on what went on ahead of that. Anything that does not deal directly with the murder of George Floyd is irrelevant in my opinion. Hes 6 to 6 and a half feet tall. You did not know that he had taken heroin. Mr. Floyd did use a counterfeit $20 bill to purchase a pack of cigarettes. Mr. Floyd put drugs in his mouth. Poppas already dead. George Floyd is already dead. Thats right. Thats right. So now youre resurrecting him just to kill him all over again. Basically. Defame him in order to justify the wrongdoing of your officers, reminded me exactly of what the district attorney did to Stephon. The cellphone examination revealed a domestic violence incident that happened with the mother of his children. Texts and phone calls showing that he was seeking drugs and a photograph of his hand holding 10 Xanax pills. What was on his cellphone has zero to do with the actions of the police officers at the time of his homicide. I feel like its a bittersweet thing thats happening watching the George Floyd trial. Because Im optimistic that this is a piece of justice for the death of my son. We might not be here. Theyre going to get him. Theyre going to get him. Was a crime committed? The answer to that question is no. And as a result, we will not charge these officers with any criminal liability related to the shooting death or the use of force of Stephon Clark. April 14, 1991: King fights emotional and physical scars. So this is basically a photo album book of my dads newspaper articles since hes been in the news. Years and years and years. You throw someone to the wolves and you expect them to be normal. You know, theres no such thing as normal after that. And then, can you imagine how many Rodney Kings there is that never got videotaped? Theres plenty of them. I would have prayed and hoped that Oscars trial would have been televised because America has to really look in the mirror and say, Are all people being treated equally? There was excessive use of force against George Floyd  Were not focused on the videotape, his toxicology, his heart condition. Were focused on the fact that several people witnessed this man get murdered. You can see it with our own eyes. Its crazy. People dont realize what it does to your family. Its bigger than just a trial and this officer. We never get to see them again. We never get to smell them again and kiss them again. Our lives are completely affected forever.
New Delhi: The Center on Monday (April 19) announced that states, private hospitals and industrial establishments can procure the doses directly from manufacturers.

It also liberalised the vaccination drive and announced that everyone above 18 years of age will be eligible to get vaccinated against COVID-19 from May 1.

Under the third phase of the vaccination drive commencing next month, the vaccine manufacturers would supply 50 per cent of their monthly Central Drugs Laboratory (CDL) released doses to the central government and would be free to supply the remaining 50 per cent doses to state governments and in the open market.

Manufacturers would have to make an advance declaration of the price for 50 per cent supply that would be available to the state governments and in the open market before May 1, 2021, an official statement said, news agency PTI reported.

State governments, private hospitals, industrial establishments, etc would be able to procure vaccine doses from the manufacturers based on the price decided.

Private Hospitals would have to procure their supplies of COVID-19 vaccine exclusively from the 50 per cent supply earmarked for entities other than those coming through the central government channel.

The private vaccination providers would need to transparently declare their self-set vaccination price and the eligibility through this channel would be opened up to all adults, that is everyone above the age of 18, the statement added.

Vaccination will continue as before in the government of India vaccination centres free of cost to the eligible population - healthcare and frontline workers and all people above 45 years of age.

The Union Health Ministry said the important decision to allow vaccination to everyone above the age of 18 from May 1 was taken in a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Live TV
Stakes are high in this golden ghetto legal battle for homeless rights the metro population of desperate souls rises and suburbs might soon lose their ability to dump their responsibilities on KCMO.

Read more . . .


Citizens wait for COVID-19 vaccine inoculation at a hospital in Seoul, Monday, when AstraZeneca vaccination started for healthcare workers for the disabled and seniors, as well as airline crewmembers aged 30 or above. Yonhap



By Bahk Eun-ji



The country's COVID-19 vaccination program is facing another potential setback following announcements in the United States that it will consider offering potential booster shots of vaccines in order to increase their effectiveness.



Boosters are an extra dose of a vaccine given at a predetermined time after the initial injections to raise or maintain immunity against the targeted virus. The issue was recently brought up by U.S. vaccine policy chief Anthony Fauci and the CEOs of Pfizer and Modena.



The coronavirus vaccines from the two pharmaceutical giants are administered in two injections, but the U.S. government has decided to look at giving third shots for both, according to White House officials last week.



If the U.S. confirms the third round of vaccinations, it will increase demand there for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and the supply schedule for other countries, such as Korea, is likely to be pushed back, amid already fierce international competition to secure sufficient doses.



Korea has secured 13 million doses of Pfizer vaccines and decided to administer 6.29 million of them in the second quarter, but the U.S. plan for booster shots could cause a delay in this schedule.



The government has signed a contract for 20 million vaccines doses each from Modena and NovaVax, supposedly for delivery in the second quarter, but a specific supply timetable has yet to be confirmed.





An airline crewmember receives the AstraZeneca anti-COVID-19 vaccine at a hospital in Seoul, Monday. Yonhap




Danske CEO bows out over Dutch ABN money laundering inquiry FILE PHOTO: Danske bank signs are seen on a bank's headquarters in Copenhagen

By Anthony Deutsch and Nikolaj Skydsgaard

AMSTERDAM/COPENHAGEN (Reuters) -Danske Bank's chief executive Chris Vogelzang, who was hired to help it recover from a multi-billion dollar money laundering scandal, resigned on Monday after Dutch authorities labelled him as a suspect in a separate case at ABN Amro.

Vogelzang said he was quitting after the Dutch prosecution service said it was investigating three former board members at ABN. The Dutch bank also said it had reached a 480 million euro ($577 million) settlement over systematic failures to tackle money laundering.

"I am very surprised by the decision by the Dutch authorities," Vogelzang said, adding his status as a suspect did not imply that he would be charged.

Vogelzang joins a growing list of European bank CEOs to depart over the past 18 months. Italy's UniCredit , Swiss banks UBS and Credit Suisse , Germany's Commerzbank and Britain's Lloyds Banking Group have all announced leadership changes since the start of 2020.

And Danske's former CEO, Thomas Borgen, stepped down in September 2018, also over money laundering missteps.

Prosecutors in the Netherlands are investigating the failure of bank boards to catch illicit money trails, targeting executives who have since landed top jobs elsewhere.

While the prosecutors did not name the three individuals, they said they had been identified as suspects "effectively responsible" for breaking the Dutch money laundering act.

ABN's former CEO Gerrit Zalm, a long-time Dutch finance minister, also stepped down from the board on of Denmark's largest bank and confirmed to Dutch broadcaster NOS that he was one of the individuals being targeted.

The investigation into anti money laundering failures at ABN began a year after fellow Dutch bank ING paid a record fine of 775 million euros to settle a similar case.

Although the ING settlement stated that no managers would be prosecuted, a Dutch court in December ordered a criminal investigation into the role of former ING CEO Ralph Hamers, who is now the top executive at Swiss bank UBS.

Story continues

Hamers has said in media interviews he always acted in good conscience during ten years at ING and that he is confident that the case will "turn out well," while UBS Chairman Axel Weber said he has "full confidence" in his ability to lead the bank.

"Given the special situation Danske Bank is in and the intense scrutiny the bank is under ... I do not want speculations about my person to get in the way of the continued development of Danske Bank," Vogelzang said in a statement.

Danske is still under investigation in several countries, including the United States, over some 200 billion euros ($246 billion) of suspicious transactions that passed through the bank's tiny Estonian branch between 2007 and 2015.

Dutchman Vogelzang, who took the helm of Danske in June 2019 with a mandate to steer it through the money-laundering affair, will be replaced by Carsten Egeriis.

"It is super unfortunate that it's once again money laundering that this is related to. It's almost embarrassing," Jyske Bank analyst Anders Haulund Vollesen told Reuters.

While Vogelzang has made strides in cleaning up Danske, he would "not get to see the fruits of his labour," Haulund said.

Analysts viewed Danske's choice of Egeriis, 44, as a safe bet based on his experience within compliance and risk.

Egeriis joined Danske in 2017 as head of risk management after working for more than a decade within credit risk at Barclays in London, indicating Danske "will take no chances", Sydbank analyst Mikkel Emil Jensen said.

Denmark's financial watchdog has told Danske it expects to approve him as new CEO.

"Danske Bank works to underline, that there can be no doubt that anyone there is anything but absolutely clean," Per Hansen, investment economist at Nordnet, told Reuters.

Egeriis told Reuters he regretted Vogelzang's exit and that he plans to pursue his predecessor's strategy.

BILLIONS LAUNDERED

In the Netherlands, several inquiries have been looking into suspected money laundering, with investigators estimating some 13 billion euros was laundered each year between 2004 and 2014, a sum equivalent to roughly 2% of Dutch GDP.

ABN, which was bailed out during the financial crisis and is 56%-owned by the Dutch state, said it had agreed to pay a fine of 300 million euros and 180 million euros as disgorgement reflecting "the seriousness, scope and duration of the identified shortcomings".

Prosecutors in September 2019 alleged it failed to spot accounts involved in money laundering, end relations with suspicious clients and report such transactions.

While the bank failed as a whole as a gatekeeper, three former executives "presumably are effectively responsible for the violation of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Terrorism Financing Act," prosecutors said in a statement.

Although the executives are suspects, "this does not necessarily entail that they will be prosecuted," they added.

Among examples cited by prosecutors was an ABN client with the lowest risk classification, who had opened 192 bank accounts for 49 companies between 2014 and 2018. The client committed fiscal fraud, receiving almost 200,000 euros from tax authorities, which was transferred and withdrawn.

Since ING's fine, leading Dutch banks have invested heavily at increasing their capacity to detect money laundering.

"This settlement marks the end of a painful and disappointing episode for ABN Amro," its CEO Robert Swaak said.

ABN has dedicated more than 3,000 new employees to regulatory monitoring, adding staff for the first time after years of job cuts.

(Reporting by Anthony Deutsch and Nikolaj Skydsgaard; Additional reporting by Bart Meijer and Toby Sterling in Amsterdam; Editing by Alexander Smith)
It was at a closed-door meeting of local emergency services the day before Seroja made landfall when it dawned on me how serious the threat to the town was. The Department of Fire and Emergency Services information suggested Kalbarri was looking at a direct hit and major human and structural damage could be expected. A whopping 70 per cent of Kalbarris buildings sustained some form of damage - almost 50 per cent are severe. Miraculously, there were just a few minor injuries. Credit:Nine News They highlighted the fact Kalbarris houses and buildings were not built cyclone-proof, unlike those up in the Pilbara, because the town was so much further south than where they usually formed off WAs coast. Nothing was built to withstand the force theyre capable of, which is standard further north and across the country in at-risk areas. A direct hit would be devastating and the DFES intelligence proved to be accurate. The Sunday Seroja arrived, Kalbarri was eerily quiet. Gone were the hordes of tourists that had been there just days before.

With a red alert in place at midday  legally requiring us to stay inside  we filmed last-minute preparations before hunkering down ourselves. Knowing I would have to do live crosses throughout the night, we booked accommodation right on the water where I could stand on a balcony and have the ocean in the background. We were going into this knowing we would be facing the cyclone head-on. We could really get hurt here Late afternoon conditions started to change. The sky darkened, the wind picked up and it started raining. By the time of my first live cross at 6pm, that had intensified significantly. The wind was starting to howl and the rain was pelting my face, I could barely hear the Nine studio back in Perth as they spoke to me down the line. At 6.30pm, another live cross, and I was struggling to stand. We could feel Seroja starting to pound the coast.

About 15 minutes later, the power went out and we were in complete darkness. I grabbed a torch and started filming on my phone. As Darius Winterfield went live on air, he was struggling to stand and was pelted by strong winds and rain. Credit:Nine News The wind and rain became so intense the balcony filled with water, which started pouring into our apartment, and we pushed rugs and towels onto the doors in a vain attempt to stall it, but it just kept coming. The glass balcony doors began to squeeze and pulsate as conditions worsened and thats really when it started getting scary. By 7pm Seroja was well and truly on top of us. The apartment was rumbling and shaking. The pooled water on the balcony was parting like the Red Sea owing to the force with which it was being blown. Hamish, our satellite tech Shayne Lewis and I had to yell at each other to get over the noise.

We stepped away from the glass doors because we feared they were going to explode. It wasnt long before the balcony roof was torn off. Ripped to shreds by the 170km/h winds. The rest of the tin roof went into an ominous rattle and thats when my heart started racing. I remember looking at the throbbing glass doors, hearing the roof ripping and thinking we could really get hurt here. Guys what are we going to do when the roof goes, I yelled, as all three of us stood in the bathroom. We thought we could run to our crew cars, thinking they would be safer. But with debris flying everywhere that was ruled out. We wouldnt have been able to get the front door open anyway. Hamish, being a Queenslander, had cyclone experience and suggested we all hunker in the back bedroom of the house.

We ran, crouched over, back out to the living room, worried the glass would implode, grabbed our possessions, camera gear, and a double mattress and huddled in the back bedroom. The sound was terrifying. Sheets of metal and wood rattling and crashing, alarms going off. It felt as though our apartment could collapse at any moment. I was trying to remain calm but felt myself breathing heavily as I sat on a single bed ready to cover myself with the mattress wed brought in. I was glad I was with the crew. By 9pm Seroja started to quieten. We could hear the worst of it was over. But it was clear to me Kalbarri would wake up to absolute carnage. Disaster zone doesnt even describe it

At first light, we went out to see the destruction for ourselves. It was jaw-dropping. Kalbarri looked like a war zone. Like the town had been bombed. Streets were covered in debris and trees it was impossible to drive. Whole roofs torn off houses and discarded hundreds of metres away. The foreshore was an absolute mess. Hundreds of trees had snapped and were left at a 90-degree angle. Canoes and tinnies that had been tied up a day earlier on the beach were now 300 metres away in the caravan park. Authorities have found about 875 homes were damaged by the cyclone so far. Credit:Getty Images We walked from street to street alongside shellshocked residents. Some were sitting in gutters in tears, in front of what was left of their homes. It was heart-wrenching. Some had been forced to huddle in pantries or bathrooms as their entire homes came crashing down around them. A whopping 70 per cent of Kalbarris buildings sustained some form of damage  almost 50 per cent deemed severe. Miraculously, there were just a few minor injuries.

Residents were reduced to tears inspecting the damage the morning after. Credit:Getty Images The Prime Minister toured the town on Friday and said himself a disaster zone doesnt even describe it. The damage bill is estimated to be around $150 million dollars. Some say it will take two years to get the town back on its feet. Seroja destroyed their homes, but not their spirit Cameraman Hamish Edwards films the aftermath of tropical cyclone Seroja in Kalbarri. Credit:Darius Winterfield/Nine News Perth

There is still no power in the town  it could be weeks away  and there are now major asbestos concerns with roughly a quarter of the towns shacks made of the toxic material. Loading In the days that followed Serojas arrival, the people of Kalbarri welcomed us with open arms as they told us their stories of survival and how they planned to carry on. After nine days literally weathering the storm with the people of Kalbarri, I felt guilty for leaving when they needed so much help. But I was grateful for my experience and floored by the generosity and spirit of those we met, some left with nothing.
Now Playing: Video: Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle

A Houston man was killed Sunday in a drive-by shooting after he was involved in a minor traffic crash near Independence Heights, Houston police said.

The man had pulled over around 6:20 p.m. near East 35th and Europa to exchange information with the other driver in the wreck. During the exchange, a third vehicle pulled up to the scene, and someone in that car fired multiple rounds, police said. The victim died at the scene. The suspect fled and remained at large as of Sunday night.
Researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) want to build the world's first prototype that tracks moving tumors with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in real time during proton therapy. They are combining a rotating open MRI device, designed for the LINAC-MR system from Alberta Health Services, with an actively scanned clinical-akin proton beam at OncoRay, the Dresden-based National Center for Radiation Research in Oncology. The rotating MRI device is produced by ASG Superconductors, using their helium-free superconducting magnesium diboride (MgB2) magnet. Real-time MRI would make it possible to synchronize the proton beam to tumor motion during radiation dose delivery. So far, this has been impossible and therefore was a limiting factor for treating moving tumors with this promising cancer therapy.

Proton therapy is an emerging radiation technology to irradiate tumors while sparing the surrounding tissue better than conventional X-ray-based radiation due to the finite penetration depth of the protons. However, the effectiveness of proton therapy is limited by tumor motion, anatomical changes during therapy, and set-up inaccuracies in patient positioning. "With onboard X-ray imaging currently available at the proton therapy system, we do not obtain high-contrast live images of where we are aiming at and what we are hitting," says Dr. Aswin Hoffmann of the HZDR Institute of Radiooncology - OncoRay, describing the fundamental problem. "Therefore, when we treat moving tumors, we have to use rather large safety margins around the tumor tissue, reducing the targeting accuracy and increasing the risk of side effects in surrounding tissues."

Experts were skeptical

Especially with tumors that are constantly moving during respiration or digestion, the healthy tissue immediately surrounding the tumor might receive too much radiation dose, while the tumor tissue itself receives too little. Until now, in proton therapy no suitable imaging technology to visualize the tumor and its motion during radiation with high soft-tissue contrast has been available. The solution could be magnetic resonance imaging, which would offer several advantages, as Hoffmann explains: "MRI provides unsurpassed soft-tissue contrast combined with high spatial and temporal resolution. Also, unlike X-ray imaging, MRI doesn't deposit any additional ionizing dose into the tissue." However, integrating MRI into proton therapy systems proves to be a major technological challenge. For a long time, so-called in-beam MRI was deemed impossible.

To acquire sharp and geometrically accurate images, MRI scanners operate with precisely predefined magnetic fields. At the cyclotron, the protons are accelerated by a rapidly varying (radiofrequency) electric field and kept to a spiral trajectory by a static magnetic field. During transport into the radiation room, the beam is also guided and kept in shape by magnetic fields. "Experts postulated that these electromagnetic fields would interfere with the MRI scanner and vice versa, distorting the MRI image and impacting the proton dose distribution delivered in tissue," explains Aswin Hoffmann. In recent years, the medical physicist and his research group have been able to demonstrate, for the first time worldwide, that it is generally technologically possible to combine both systems, to experimentally confirm the presence of these effects, but also to be able to significantly compensate for them. To this end, they placed an open low-field MRI scanner with a magnetic field strength of 0.22 Tesla (MRJ2200 - ASG Superconductors Paramed MRI Unit) into the proton beam path and showed good MR image quality during irradiation with a static beam.

Unique infrastructure and collaboration

With the new MRI device and its real-time, high-contrast imaging capabilities for organs in the chest, abdomen and pelvis, Hoffmann's team now intends to build a first prototype which might be used clinically at some stage, as the researcher explains: "What is special about this MRI scanner is that it can be rotated around the patient relative to the beam, allowing us to study dosimetric and biological beam effects for MRI magnetic fields both perpendicular and parallel to the proton beam." A team of physicists, engineers, and physicians has the opportunity to pursue this unique research in an experimental room adjacent to the patients' treatment room at the OncoRay proton therapy facility.

Building on their joint prior experience with the 0.22 Tesla MRI scanner, which is usually used to examine extremities, the manufacturer ASG Superconductors, is now producing a mid-field-strength open MRI device with a magnetic field strength of 0.5 Tesla, which is specifically adapted to the requirements of real-time MRI-guided radiation therapy by the Alberta Health Services LINAC-MR group and its spin-off company MagnetTx Oncology Solutions. Engineers at MagnetTx Oncology Solutions are also developing the gantry that is required to rotate the MRI scanner as well as the image processing methods for automatically tracking the tumor in real time. The design and manufacture of the entire 30-ton device is currently in full swing. In summer 2022, the team plans to incorporate it in the actively scanned, clinical-akin experimental proton beamline at the OncoRay facility.

"It is very exciting for ASG Superconductors to be part of this project in collaboration with HZDR and MagnetTx," said Marco Belardinelli ASG Paramed MRI Unit Director and adds, "seeing our MRI and MgB2 superconducting technology used as a key component in new and innovative applications such as this one, which will ultimately benefit the patients and the medical community, makes us proud and even more confident we are moving in the right direction."

"Our partnership with HZDR and ASG has been extremely positive." said Mike Cogswell, MagnetTx President and CEO. "We look forward to continuing to work together to improve the cancer treatment industry."

"Thanks to this collaboration between HZDR and international industrial partners, my team and I are a big step closer to our goal of bringing significant innovation to the field, especially to real-time image-guided proton therapy," says Aswin Hoffmann, describing his optimistic outlook.

###

More information:

Aswin Hoffmann, PhD MSc

Institute of Radiooncology - OncoRay at HZDR

Phone: +49 351 458 3932 | Email: aswin.hoffmann@hzdr.de

Media contact:

Simon Schmitt | Department Head and Press Officer

Communications and Media Relations at HZDR

Phone: +49 351 260 3400 | Mobile: +49 175 874 2865 | Email: s.schmitt@hzdr.de

Publications:

A. Hoffmann, B. Oborn, M. Moteabbed, S. Yan, T. Bortfeld, A. Knopf, H. Fuchs, D. Georg, J. Seco, M. F. Spadea, O. Jakel, C. Kurz, K. Parodi: MR-guided proton therapy: a review and a preview, in Radiation Oncology, 2020 (DOI: 10.1186/s13014-020-01571-x)

S. Gantz, V. Hietschold, A. L. Hoffmann: Characterization of magnetic interference and image artefacts during simultaneous in-beam MR imaging and proton pencil beam scanning, in Physics in Medicine & Biology, 2020 (DOI: 10.1088/1361-6560/abb16f)

S. M. Schellhammer, A. L. Hoffmann, S. Gantz, J. Smeets, E. van der Kraaij, S. Quets, S. Pieck, L. Karsch, J. Pawelke. Integrating a low-field open MR scanner with a static proton research beam line: proof of concept, in Physics in Medicine and Biology, 2018 (DOI: 10.1088/1361-6560/aaece8)

B. G. Fallone: The rotating biplanar linac-magnetic resonance imaging system, in Seminars in Radiation Oncology, 2014 (DOI: 10.1016/j.semradonc.2014.02.011)

About ASG Superconductors

ASG Superconductors SpA (Genoa, Italy) is a worldwide leading superconducting magnet company with more than 60 years of experience and relevant projects in fusion, high energy physics and MRI-medtech systems.

About MagnetTx

MagnetTx Oncology Solutions Ltd. (Edmonton, Canada) designs, manufactures and markets the Aurora RT. Aurora RT is a cancer treatment system that combines high-quality MRI and simultaneous linear accelerator-based radiation therapy treatment.

About HZDR

The Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR - Dresden, Germany) performs - as an independent German research center - research in the fields of energy, health, and matter. It operates large-scale facilities, which are also used by visiting researchers. HZDR is a member of the Helmholtz Association and has six sites (Dresden, Freiberg, Gorlitz, Grenoble, Leipzig, Schenefeld near Hamburg) with almost 1,400 members of staff.

About OncoRay

OncoRay - National Center for Radiation Research in Oncology (Dresden, Germany) is jointly operated by the HZDR, the University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus, and the Faculty of Medicine Carl Gustav Carus at the Technische Universitat Dresden.
Aviva is better placed than rival L&G, which UBS rates as a sell.

All of the good news is in the price for ( ) or for now at least says UBS, which has downgraded to hold from buy even though its target price rises.

Restructuring following the sales of its overseas businesses is now in the price, says the Swiss broker, and the focus now switches to operational improvements.

To achieve that will require a shift in business mix, in UBSs view, which will take time to deliver with untested complexities and investment/M&A needed.

Aviva, however, is better placed than rival L&G PLC( ), which UBS rates as a sell.

L&Gs share price has bounced on rising rates, benign credit risk and positive regulatory noises but earnings ratings appear full and cash/capital analysis points to pressure on dividend forecasts.

Targets are 420p for Aviva and 240p for L&G compared to market prices today of 407.6p and 278.8p respectively.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 19)  A report recently published by the medical journal Lancet that revealed COVID-19 transmission is predominantly airborne warrants stricter safety protocols in the Philippines' public transport system and in enclosed office spaces, an expert said Monday.

Dr. Rontgene Solante, head of the Adult Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine department of San Lazaro Hospital, said in an interview with CNN Philippines' The Source that tighter health protocols need to be implemented, including six feet of physical distancing, proper ventilation in enclosed spaces, and wearing of face masks with better filtration to protect people from airborne transmission.

Solante noted that a COVID-19 droplet transmission usually reaches a person within a 3-foot distance either through inhalation or by touching a surface. But an aerosolized COVID-19 droplet is a smaller particle that can stay in the air for up to three hours in an enclosed space and reach someone within 6 to 8-foot distance.

An aerosolized droplet can stay in the air longer than the [ordinary COVID-19] droplet and can reach longer than 3 feet  like 6 ft to 8 ft especially in a closed space without ventilation because of their ability to be airborne. The danger is that, the longer (it is) in the air, you have a higher risk of getting it," he said.

"This can be alarming especially in public places," Solante added. "If youre in a public and in an enclosed space, youre only wearing a face mask and youre not practicing 6-foot distancing, thats the danger of airborne transmission."

For offices and enclosed spaces, Solante suggested putting up a source of good ventilation and a larger space for physical distancing. Windows may be opened or negative pressure machines that lessen the density of airborne particles may also be installed. For high-risk areas such as elevators, talking must be discouraged.

Solante noted that common modes of transport like the Light and Metro Railway Transit should consider modifying health protocols among passengers, apart from imposing the use of face masks and face shields.

"They should modify now to have proper ventilation and limit the number of people per area. Passengers must not be allowed to talk and use their cellphones so there would be no aerosolization of COVID-19 particles," he added.

The government must also reinforce guidelines among people and stress potential risks of staying in enclosed spaces.

"It's just a matter of reinforcing it again and at the same time, strictly implementing the adequate and proper ventilation in an enclosed space. The danger of airborne is not much with open space," he said. "Its really in an enclosed space and you have more people inside, you cannot practice a safe distance, a lot of people talking, people not practicing social distancing  these factors can increase the rate of transmission."

Experts from the UK, the US, and Canada said in The Lancet report that there must be an urgent modification of health protocols after listing ten streams of evidence why COVID-19 is transmitted "primarily by the airborne route."

Some of the findings noted that there is higher transmission of COVID-19 indoors than outdoors and there is limited evidence to support other dominant modes of transmission, including respiratory droplets. The paper also said COVID-19 spread from infected but asymptomatic people, or those not coughing or sneezing, account for up to 59% of all transmission globally.
The suspect for a shooting at a Wisconsin bar was taken into custody. The incident left three people dead and three others wounded, according to authorities on Sunday. The Kenosha County Sheriff's Department released a statement indicating the individual, whose name was not divulged, was arrested on suspicion of first-degree intentional homicide.

Wisconsin Bar Shooting

According to the sheriff's department, the shooting transpired at around 12:45 A.M. at the Somers House on Sheridan Road, near 15th Place in the Village of Somers. It further stated that the suspect was located, and it appeared to be an isolated and targeted incident.

The famous bar is currently surrounded by crime tape as officials have probing underway. The three injured victims have been hospitalized. Police remarked that there could be at least one other possible unknown gunning victim.

Additional criminal charges are to follow pending the investigation. Around 100 officers were looking for a person/s of interest, reported USA Today.

Also, according to the sheriff's office, the three individuals who died knew each other. Authorities stated that they believed handguns were used, and over one was recovered at the incident.

According to Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth, a man, who had been kicked out of the Wisconsin bar, returned with a handgun and fired gunshots. "We don't believe this was a random act. From what I've been told, the three people who passed away probably knew each other. This was a targeted situation," reported ABC News.

Shots were fired inside and outside the bar, which he depicted as "very busy" at that point. According to Kenosha County Sheriff's Department spokesman Sgt. David Wright, at this point, there is no threat to the community, reported Chicago Tribune.

Senate Breaks Filibuster on Anti-Asian American Hate Crime Bill

The bar is called Somers House Tavern, near the shore of Lake Michigan. It is acclaimed to be a popular hangout spot among the community in Carthage College.

The suspect was depicted as a Black male more than six feet tall. He was donning a light-colored hooded sweatshirt.

The names of the victims were not identified. The suspect was arrested following detectives having multiple leads and having evaluated surveillance footage.

The victims were all men. The third person hopped in a car with two other individuals. Moments later, he flagged down a police vehicle.

Beth said there is a probability that one or two, or perhaps even more, had minor injuries and some other injuries. According to Heidi Wittwer, who was at the bar at the time of the gunning, there was a fight that transpired first between two individuals right next to the Wisconsin bar.

Investigators have appealed to local hospitals to notify them of other additional victims of the shooting. The incident was the most recent of numerous shooting attacks across the United States, including one at an Indianapolis FedEx warehouse last week that recorded eight fatalities.

Anyone with additional information regarding the Wisconsin bar shooting is asked to contact the department at (262) 605-5100. They may also leave an anonymous tip to the Kenosha County Crime Stoppers by contacting 262-656-7333.

Democrats Push for Republican Support on Bill Seeking Protection From Asian American Hate Crimes

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The leader of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) deputies, Alfred Simonis, said on Monday that if a party leaves the governing coalition, a motion of censure may no longer be needed, because the new Government must come to Parliament for the investiture vote.

He added that he had not discussed with representatives of the governing coalition's parties to support a motion of censure.

On Monday, the governing coalition is to convene in the first meeting since the removal of Vlad Voiculescu from the position of health minister.
The body of a man who jumped into Hull Bay last week after fleeing his home to avoid speaking with police was found over the weekend, according to authorities.

Jeffrey Liljas body was discovered around 3 p.m. Sunday, three days after he went missing, the Hull Police Department said in a statement.

The 41-year-old Hull mans body was recovered by Massachusetts State Police divers after sonar scans by a Massachusetts Environmental Police crew showed an area of interest roughly 200 feet off shore in approximately 16 feet of water, according to the statement.

He was positively identified, and his family has been notified, the department noted.

The departments search started around 11:35 p.m. Thursday and continued every morning since through Sunday, drawing support from the Hull Fire Department, the state police dive team and air wing, state environmental police and the United States Coast Guard.

Police responded to Liljas home late Thursday for a report of a disturbance over the misuse of a family vehicle. Officers talked with the family earlier in the day about the vehicle, which was later found in Boston, according to the department.

Lilja left the home during an argument and before police arrived. Officers then started to look for him, authorities said.

The man was found around 11:30 p.m., standing with two other men on Cadish Avenue near M Street. As officers approached to speak with them, Lilja ran away and jumped into Hull Bay, according to officials.

When police tried to deescalate the situation and persuade Lilja to get out of the water, he refused and went deeper into the bay until officers lost sight of him. The two other men were cooperative with law enforcement and were sent on their way, the department said.

Officers immediately called the Hull Fire Department to kick off the search to locate the man, according to authorities.

Related Content: Crews continue search in Hull after 41-year-old man jumped into water to avoid officers
This rendering helped Charleston get an $18.5 million federal grant for a new bike-ped bridge over the Ashley River. Now the city is seeking input on how it should look.
Sexual abstinence and 'purity culture' are often conflated but aren't the same, Tim Keller explains

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What's often referred to as "purity culture" is not the same thing as remaining sexually abstinent outside of marriage, though many conflate the two, according to Tim Keller, founder and former pastor of Redeemer Church in New York City.

Keller explained in a Facebook post that in the early church, the Christian sexual ethic  that "sex was only for within a mutual, whole-self-giving, super-consensual life-long covenant"  was "revolutionary," given the prevailing Greco-Roman ethic of the day.

"It was based on a radical egalitarian principle that the husbands body belonged to the wife, and the wifes to the husband (1 Corinthians 7:4). That meant that anyone who within marriage exploited or abused was violating the Christian sex ethic just as much or more as those who had sex outside of marriage," he said.

In the Greco-Roman era, men of higher social status were permitted to demand sex of anyone of lower social status even if they were married.

By contrast, purity culture is a phenomenon that arose in recent decades in some churches with the ascendancy of the book I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris, a book Harris has since apologized for and now rejects.

The book overshot Scripture and elevated specific behaviors, including sex outside of marriage, as "unforgivable sins," Keller said, and "went far beyond the Christian sex ethic to argue that you should not date or even kiss someone unless you were sure you were going to marry them."

"However, to say sexual abstinence outside of marriage is automatically 'purity culture' is at best historically naive and uninformed and at worst deliberately dishonest. They are not the same. Those who are angry at the abuses of purity culture are right to be so," Keller added.

"It has done harm and it should be called out and lamented. There is a difference."

His words come two years after Harris apologized for his book and subsequently announced that he no longer identifies as a Christian and his marriage was over. Harris' public deconstruction came amid an ongoing push within some progressive religious voices, such as Bromleigh McCleneghan, author of Good Christian Sex: Why Chastity Isn't the Only Option - And Other Things the Bible Says About Sex, who are calling for the abandonment of the historic Christian sexual ethic altogether, in part because of the damage that the purity culture of the 1990s has wrought.

Other voices, such as Juli Slattery, who leads a ministry called Authentic Intimacy and is the author of Rethinking Sexuality: God's Design and Why It Matters, have since responded to the pushback against purity culture, acknowledging the harms that it caused while distinguishing between the overemphasis on sexual morality and abstinence within purity culture and God's redemptive plan for human sexuality showcased in the entirety of Scripture.

"Every sexual issue is at heart a spiritual issue. When sex becomes confusing, it causes us to reexamine what we believe about God. Getting sex wrong usually begins and ends with getting Gods character wrong," Slattery wrote in a March 3 blog post on the overreach of purity teachings.

"The purity movement taught a God who gave us moral rules to follow, but underemphasized His redemptive nature. In our current day, we teach about Gods love and mercy, but tend to skip past His holiness and righteous judgment. This is a grave danger of which every Church generation must be aware," she said.
WASHINGTON, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Fannie Mae (OTCQB: FNMA) priced an $879 million Multifamily DUS REMIC under its Fannie Mae Guaranteed Multifamily Structures (Fannie Mae GeMS) program on April 14, 2021. FNA 2021-M11 marks the fifth Fannie Mae GeMS issuance of 2021.

"We started the second quarter with an $879 million 10-year fixed-rate GeMS deal, building on the $21.5 billion in DUS issuance in Q1 2021," said Dan Dresser, Senior Vice President, Multifamily Capital Markets & Pricing. "This first quarter saw spreads continue to grind tighter despite the solid volumes; multifamily borrowers have benefitted from approximately a 30-basis-point tightening of spreads from pre-COVID levels, and investors continue to enjoy the strong underwriting of the DUS program. The M11, for example, offered investors a collateral pool with properties from 20 states, all while maintaining solid credit quality with a weighted average debt-service coverage ratio of 2.27 and LTV of 58 percent."

All classes of FNA 2021-M11 are guaranteed by Fannie Mae with respect to the full and timely payment of interest and principal. The structure details for the multi-tranche offering can be found in the table below:

Class Original Face Weighted Average

Life Coupon (%) Coupon

Type Spread Offered Price A1 $41,250,000 6.10 1.270 Fixed S+8 100 A2 $637,288,684 9.85 1.459 WAC S+17 97.11 A3 $200,000,000 9.90 1.305 Fixed Not Available Not Available X $41,250,000 6.08 0.189 WAC IO Not Offered Not Offered X3 $200,000,000 9.40 0.154 WAC IO Not Offered Not Offered Total $878,538,684











Group 1 Collateral





UPB: $878,538,684 Collateral: 54 Fannie Mae DUS MBS Geographic Distribution: NY (22.58%), NJ (11.21%), CO (10.7%) Weighted Average Debt Service Coverage Ratio (DSCR): 2.27x Weighted Average Loan-to-Value (LTV): 58.02%

For additional information, please refer to the Fannie Mae GeMS REMIC Term Sheet (FNA 2021-M11) available on the Fannie Mae GeMS Archive page.

About Fannie Mae

Fannie Mae helps make the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage and affordable rental housing possible for millions of people in America. We partner with lenders to create housing opportunities for families across the country. We are driving positive changes in housing finance to make the home buying process easier, while reducing costs and risk. To learn more, visit: fanniemae.com | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Instagram | YouTube | Blog

Fannie Mae Newsroom

https://www.fanniemae.com/newsroom

Photo of Fannie Mae

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Fannie Mae Resource Center

1-800-2FANNIE

Certain statements in this release may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. In addition, not all securities will have the characteristics discussed in this release. Before investing in any Fannie Mae issued security, you should read the prospectus and prospectus supplement pursuant to which such security is offered. You should also read our most current Annual Report on Form 10-K and our reports on Form 10-Q and Form 8-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") available on the Investor Relations page of our Web site at www.fanniemae.com and on the SEC's Web site at www.sec.gov.

SOURCE Fannie Mae

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The Kerala lottery department will release the results of the popular weekly 'Win Win W 612' lottery on April 19, i.e., Monday at 3pm. All those who participated in this lottery can visit the official Kerala lottery website-keralalotteryresult.net to check the results.

Steps to check Kerala Lottery result today

Step 1: Visit the official Kerala lottery website

Step 2: Click on the link reading 'Kerala Lottery Result 19.4.2021 Win Win W-612'

Step 3: You will be redirected to a new page displaying the results

Step 4: Cross check the numbers displayed on the screen with the number on your ticket

Win Win W 612 lottery prizes

Winners can bag huge cash prizes. The first prize winner gets Rs 80 lakh whereas the second prize winner gets Rs 5 lakh. Third, fourth and fifth prize winners can bag Rs 1 lakh, Rs 5,000 and Rs 2,000, respectively.

There is also a consolation prize worth Rs 8,000. Sixth, seventh and eighth prize winners can get Rs 1,000, Rs 500 and Rs 100, respectively.

Participants need to verify their tickets at the Kerala Government Gazette within 30 days of the date of result declaration to claim their cash prizes. Winners can get their cash prizes after the verification process is complete.

Lotteries in Kerala

The Kerala Lottery Department organises seven weekly lotteires-Pournami, Win Win, Sthree Sakthi, Akshaya, Karunya Plus, Nirmal and Karunya. Besides this, the state government also organises six bumper lotteries.

Also read: Kerala lottery result 17.04.2021: 'Karunya Plus KR 495' weekly lottery winners announce timings today; where and when to check online

Also read: Kerala lottery result 16.04.2021: 'Nirmal NR 220' weekly lottery winners announcement timings today; where and when to check online

Also read: Kerala lottery result 15.04.2021: 'Karunya Plus KN-364' winners announcement timing; where and when to check online
Nestle Q1 preview: Increased in home-consumption, better demand from rural and urban India, sustainable growth in and new products launches are some of the factors that analysts believe will drive growth for the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) maker in the January - March quarter of 2021.

Nestle, which is slated to report its for the March quarter on April 20, could post up to 14 per cent year-on-year (YoY) rise in Q1 net profit, while revenues could increase between 5-11 per cent. The company follows January - December financial year.

Analysts also expect gross margins to improve, led by benign input prices. Ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) margin, however, is likely to witness some pressure on account of higher employee cost and other expenses.

Shares of the firm have declined over 6 per cent on a year-to-date basis. During the three months-ended March 2021, they shed over 6.5 per cent as against a rise of 4 per cent in the BSE Sensex and 2 per cent in BSE FMCG index.

Here's what top brokerages expect from its Q1FY21 numbers:

ICICI Securities

The brokerage eyes a 11.8 per cent YoY jump in March quarter net profit at Rs 587.4 crore as against Rs 525.43 crore posted in the same period last year. On a quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) basis, the figure is expected to rise up to 21.5 per cent. The firm had posted a net profit of Rs 483.3 crore in the previous quarter.

Meanwhile, it expects Nestle to post a 10.8 per cent YoY increase in Q1 revenue to Rs 3,683.3 crore on the back of sustainable growth in Moreover, new products launches and distribution expansion in rural regions will also aid growth, it said.

The firm had posted a net profit of Rs 3,325.27 crore in the corresponding quarter last year and Rs 3,432.6 crore in the December quarter of CY20. Sequentially, the figure is expected to rise 7.30 per cent.

"We expect the company to maintain its operating margins at 23.7 per cent (11 bps lower). The increase in milk prices has been offset by cost cutting measures and rationalisation in media spends. The company was able to grow at a slower pace at 7.9 per cent in CY20 despite strong growth momentum in packaged foods mainly due to supply constraints in the noodles segment," the brokerage added.

Narnolia Financial

Analysts at Narnolia have more moderate expectations of a mere 1 per cent rise in March quarter profit at Rs 528 crore. While on a QoQ basis, the expect the figure to rise by 9 per cent.

They expect the revenue for the quarter under review to rise 5 per cent YoY to Rs 3,490 crore, led by increased in-home consumption, better demand from rural and urban India, traction from different channels and penetration led volume growth with secular growth across categories. Sequentially, they expect the figure to grow by nearly 2 per cent.

"The companys in-home consumption portfolio in both foods and beverages categories such as Everyday Dairy Whitener, nestle a+ Milk, another milk-based portfolio, Nescafe, Ketchup and sauces and Maggie are expected to continue their positive trajectory," it said.

Gross margin is expected to improve by 240 bps to 58.7 per cent YoY while Ebitda margin is expected to decline by 68 bps YoY to 23.4 per cent YoY. Ebitda margins stood at 24.1 per cent and 22.1 per cent during Q1CY20 and Q4CY20, respectively.

Volume growth and performance of product portfolio along with movement in advertisement spends and other expenses are some of the key monitorables as per Narnolia analysts.

Edelweiss Financial

The brokerage eyes March quarter profit at Rs 6,00.6 crore, up 14.3 per cent YoY and 24.3 per cent QoQ. It also expects the revenue for the period to rise by 7.9 per cent yearly to Rs 3,588.8 crore while sequentially, the figure could grow by 4.6 per cent.

"Nestle is likely to see ~9 per cent YoY growth in domestic revenues on a base of 10.7 per cent. Q4CY20 saw 10.1 per cent YoY domestic revenue growth on a base of 10 per cent. Export revenue growth is likely to dip by 10 per cent YoY on a base of 12.9 per cent," Edelweiss Financial said.

Raw material prices have started inching up, however, cost optimisation measures should aid Ebitda margin expansion of 120 bps YoY, it added. The brokerage pegs Ebitda margin figure for the March quarter at 25.3 per cent.

Prabhudas Lilladher

The brokerage expects Nestle to post adjusted profit for the first quarter of CY21 at Rs 583.5 crore, up 9.5 per cent YoY, as against Rs 532.7 crore posted in Q1CY20. Adjusted profit could increase by 21.5 per cent QoQ from Rs 480 crore posted in the previous quarter.

"We expect Nestle to report 10.5 per cent revenue growth led by strong traction in Maggi, Chocolates, QoQ recovery in out of home consumption and increased focus on rural growth," the brokerage said. It pegs Q1 revenue at Rs 3,674.4 crore.

It eyes Ebitda margin to contract to 23.8 per cent led by higher employee cost and other expenditures.
The Finance Industry Development Council (FIDC) has urged the government to include the education sector under the Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme (ECLGS).

The NBFC body in a letter to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman noted that the business of many NBFCs include education loans to students to finance their higher education expenses in India and abroad and education institution loans (EIL) for financing education infrastructure growth needs of schools, colleges and universities.

Last week, the government had expanded the scope of ECLGS 2.0 and said that Special Mention Accounts-1 (SMA-1) will now be eligible for credit under the scheme.

SMA-1 borrowers in the healthcare sector and 26 other high stress sectors as identified by the Kamath Committee are now eligible under ECLGS 2.0.

Noted that the education Sector was excluded from the scope of ECLGS, FIDC said that all the other sectors have been allowed to operate with significant relaxations whereas educational institutions are still closed.

"It is a well-established fact that educational institutions have a deep social and economic impact and depriving the sector of adequate and timely support will have serious consequences for the nation as a whole.

"We believe that inclusion of education sector under ECLGS will not only provide regular source of funding to educational institutions enabling them to cope up with short term liquidity problem arising out of closure of schools/colleges etc, but also the cash flows would be more aligned to the elongated repayment term," the letter said.

The lending institutions would also be able to cover the risk of educational infra loan portfolio and it would provide an enhanced business opportunity as well, it said.
A passenger train derailed Sunday north of Cairo, killing at least 11 people and injuring scores more, the Egyptian authorities said. It was the latest of several deadly rail accidents to hit the country in recent years.

At least 60 ambulances rushed to find survivors and help those who were hurt when four train cars ran off the rails just outside Cairo, the railway authority said. At least 98 people were injured, mostly with broken bones, cuts and bruises, the Health Ministry said in a statement.

Videos on social media showed train cars overturned at the city of Banha in Qalyubia Province and passengers escaping along the tracks. The train was bound for the Nile Delta city of Mansura from Cairo, the capital, the rail authority said in a statement.

Salvage teams could be seen searching for survivors and removing the derailed train cars. It was not immediately clear what caused the derailment, and prosecutors said they were investigating.

The state-run daily newspaper Ahram reported that the authorities had detained at least 10 railway officials, including the train conductor and his assistant, pending an investigation into the accident.

At the Banha University hospital, people lined up on Sunday to donate blood for the crash victims. Families were also there looking for loved ones who had been on the train.

We were surprised by the train speeding up, said Tarek Gomaa, one of the injured. We found ourselves on top of each other.

Sundays accident came three weeks after two passenger trains collided in the province of Sohag, killing at least 18 people and injuring 200 others. Prosecutors said gross negligence by railway employees was behind that crash on March 25, which caused public outcry across the country.

Train wrecks are common in Egypt, where the railway system has a history of badly maintained equipment and mismanagement. The government says it has begun a broad effort to renovate and modernize the system. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said three years ago that the government needed about 250 billion Egyptian pounds, or $14

Hundreds of train accidents are reported in Egypt every year. In February 2019 an unmanned locomotive slammed into a barrier in Cairos main railway station, causing a huge explosion and a fire that killed at least 25 people. That crash prompted the transportation minister at the time to resign.

In August 2017, two passenger trains collided just outside the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, killing 43 people. In 2016, at least 51 people were killed when two commuter trains collided near Cairo.

Egypts deadliest train crash was in 2002, when more than 300 people were killed after a fire broke out in an overnight train traveling from Cairo to southern Egypt.

SOURCE: AP
English Lithuanian

By the decision of 28 February 2018, the Director of the Supervisory Authority of the Bank of Lithuania imposed a sanction on AB Zemaitijos Pienas - a fine of EUR 158,000 for violations of the norms of the Law on Securities of the Republic of Lithuania. By the ruling of 27 July 2018, the Vilnius Regional Administrative Court reduced the fine imposed to 138,000 Euros.

On 14 April 2021, the extended panel of judges of the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania, having examined the appeals of AB Zemaitijos Pienas and the Bank of Lithuania, upheld them partially. This court amended the decision of the Vilnius Regional Administrative Court of 27 July 2018 as follows:

to overrule the part of the ruling of the Vilnius Regional Administrative Court of 27 July 2018 regarding the disclosure of incorrect information on the observance of the principles established in the Corporate Governance Code and refer this part of the case to the court of first instance for reconsideration;

to change the parts of the ruling of the Vilnius Regional Administrative Court of 27 July 2018 on non-compliance with the requirements for publication and storage of information, as well as on violations of information disclosure in the consolidated annual reports of 2015, 2016 and in the half-year report of 2017; to partially uphold the complaint of the claimant joint-stock company Zemaitijos Pienas and to annul paragraphs 2.4 and 3.4 of the motivational part of the Decision No. 241-38 of the Director of the Supervisory Service of the Bank of Lithuania of 28 February 2018 Regarding the application of the sanction to AB Zemaitijos Pienas in which violations of Article 21 (1) and Article 33 of the Law on Securities of the Republic of Lithuania were stated and established that the claimant violated Articles 22 and 23 of the Law on Securities of the Republic of Lithuania by submitting financial and non-financial indicators not fully in line with the requirements of the API guidelines.

to leave unchanged the remaining part of the ruling of the Vilnius Regional Administrative Court of 27 July 2018.

Among other things, the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania instructed the Vilnius Regional Administrative Court to reconsider the issues of the sanction applied.

Gintaras Keliauskas

Lawyer

Tel. +370 68718399




EUGENE, Ore.--According to Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Administration officials, the agency is considering extending COVID-19 regulations indefinitely.

This means mask mandates and social distancing will be in effect for at least the foreseeable future.

Aaron Corvin, an OSHA spokesperson said the indefinite option is the only option on hand because of Oregon laws.

"We are not allowed to extend a temporary rule beyond 180 days. That's concrete, that's in state law, and we're following that," Corvin said.

Although there is no concrete end time set, the proposal says: "It is expected that this rule will be appealed once it is no longer necessary to address the COVID-19 pandemic."

When this proposal was announced, there was backlash from the Oregon community.

In fact, nearly 60,000 people signed a petition against the rule change, and about 5,000 people commented during the public comment period. OSHA said their previous comment record was around 1,100.

Some people believe this rule change is necessary to end the pandemic.

"That's really the secret to getting people back to work and normalcy, the new normal. So yeah I do feel good about [the proposal]," Kevin Mcgehee said.

While others think making a rule without an exact timeline is irresponsible.

"I don't like that idea. I think that we don't know what's going to change with [the pandemic] so having a permanent rule in place is not really a good idea," Michael Kurcsics said.

An official decision will be made on the proposal prior to the May 4th deadline.
According to a tweet published by the Greek Minister of Defence and a tweet published by Dimitris Mitch on April 16, 2021, the Ambassador of the Netherlands in Greece presented their proposal regarding the new multi-role frigate for the Hellenic Navy.

Follow Navy Recognition on Google News at this link

SIGMA 11515HN Version standard (Picture source: Navaldefence)

The Sigma class is a Dutch-built family of modular naval vessels, of either corvette or frigate size, designed by Damen Group.

At the heart of the Sigma-class design is a modular approach - the vessel can be built to suit the needs of a particular customer and the end-product can cover such types as fast-attack corvette, standard ocean-going corvette, off-shore patrol vessel, or basic frigate fighting forms. Inherent stealth features include an enclosed, low-profile smoke funnel, enclosed/integrated main mast, and slab-sided hull superstructure.

A turreted deck gun is set over the forecastle in the "A" position. Aft of this is a stepped hull superstructure which runs up to the integrated bridge section which hosts the integrated main mast mounting various communications and sensor fits. Beyond this is a collection of Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) launchers and, aft of these installations, is the low-profile smoke funnel arrangement over midships. The aft section of the superstructure can accommodate a full-service helicopter hangar to go along with the stern-based helicopter pad (servicing a single navalized helicopter aircraft).

Structural dimensions include a running length of 297,6 feet, a beam of 42,8 feet and a draught of 11.9 feet. Displacement reaches 1,700 tons depending on overall configuration. The ships can serve a crew of up to 80 personnel.

Sonar is mounted in the bow, giving the warship an advantage against enemy submarines. Other installed systems include the Thales Group TACTICOS, MW08 3D surveillance/search radar, Sperry Marine BridgeMasterE ARPA radar, and LIROD Mk.2 tracking fire control radar. An ESM (Thales DR3000), ECM (Racal Scorpion 2L), and decoy (TERMA SKWS, DLT-12T) suite are all part of the ship's makeup.

Armament includes the 76mm OTO-Melara turreted deck gun, 2 x 20mm Denel GI-2 (GIAT M693/F2) autocannons, 2 x MBDA Mistral TETRAL surface-to-air quad missile launchers, 4 x MBDA Exocet MM.40 Block II anti-ship missiles and 2 x Triple torpedo tubes supporting the EuroTorp 3A244S Model II/MU-90 torpedo families.

Installed armament is made up of 2 x SEMT-Pielstick 20PA6B STC engines with 4 x Caterpillar 3406C TA generators driving 2 x Rolls-Royce propellers at the stern. Maximum speed in ideal conditions reaches 28 knots though cruising is generally at 18 knots. Range is out to 5,500 miles.
Nigerian governors on Thursday said they will start implementing financial autonomy for the judiciary latest by May ending, a pledge that indicates that an end to the ongoing strike that has crippled the nations judiciary may be in sight.

The governors also called on striking members of the Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria (JUSUN) to call off their two weeks old strike.

The chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF), Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State, gave this assurance in an interview with journalists after meeting with stakeholders from the state judiciary and legislature at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.

Courts across the country have been grounded for two weeks by JUSUN members who downed tools since April 6 in protest against the non-implementation of the judiciarys financial autonomy particularly at the state level.

Addressing State House correspondents over the matter on Thursday, Mr Fayemi said the governors were not against the financial autonomy of both the legislature and the judiciary, but had only been spending time on ensuring its full implementation.

Modalities worked out

He said the modalities for the implementation were worked out at the meeting held at the Presidential Villa.

According to him, the meeting, chaired by the Chief of Staff to President Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Gambari, was attended by the Solicitor-General of the Federation, the representatives of the judiciary, the representatives of the Conference of Speakers, and House of Representatives.

The governor said, we are on all fours, adding that an agreement has been reached.

He added, first, the issue is about implementation. There has been no objection from governors on judicial and legislative autonomies, as a matter of fact, it would not have passed if governors were not in support, in the first instance, in the state assemblies.

The issue has been fully and holistically addressed, but we dont just want to agree to something on paper without working out the modalities for implementation. Thankfully, the meeting we have just emerged from, with the Chief of Staff to the President chairing, has worked out the modalities to the satisfaction of all parties.

When asked, Mr Fayemi the implementation would not start latest by May ending.

As soon as the final document that is cleaned up emerges, that is preparatory to implementation. Were not going to put a timeframe in the air, but it will be implemented as soon as possible, definitely no later than the end of May 2021, he said.

On why the NGF had yet to issue a statement on the progress so far recorded in arriving at the agreement, Mr Fayemi said, its because for us, this is not an issue that requires a statement from the governors. The Honourable Minister of Finance has dealt with it and the issue is out there for you to deal with.

But for us, were here for legislative and judicial autonomy and the governors, the speakers and the judge are on the same page, as far as this issue is concerned, he added.

Appeal

Mr Fayemi urged the striking workers to return to work as he maintained the implementation of the financial autonomy of the judiciary would commence in May.

In the interest of the nation, we believe that the striking workers should return to their offices because as far as this has gone, we have met with all the parties concerned, the President, through the Chief of Staff, has also been seized of this matter and has been monitoring what has been happening.

I think were basically at a position where whether you speak to the Conference of Speakers chairperson or you speak to me or you speak to the representative of the judiciary or you speak to the Solicitor-General of the Federation, you will hear that were speaking with one voice on the implementation and no later than May, you will start seeing the implementation of the agreement that weve reached, he said.

FG, NBA, governors, JUSUN to meet

Meanwhile, members of JUSUN and the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) on Monday held protests in Abuja and different parts of the country to further press for the demand for the financial autonomy of the judiciary.

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Both organisations had issued separate directives to their members to embark on the protests across the country following the abrupt cancellations of meetings which governors and federal government representatives were scheduled to have with them (JUSUN and NBA) and others on Wednesday and Thursday last week.

PREMIUM TIMES earlier reported that the labour minister, Chris Ngige, has scheduled the meeting to hold at 3p.m. in Abuja on Tuesday.

Background

Nigerian governors are largely believed to be against the autonomy of the judiciary and the legislature at the state level.

They had displayed opposition by rushing to court to challenge the executive order issued in May 2020 by President Muhammadu Buhari for the enforcement of the relevant constitutional provisional provision on the financial independence of the two arms of government.

Judiciary workers embarked on strike on April 6 demanding the implementation of section 121(3) of the Nigerian constitution which is being flouted by the governors.

The section provides that funds meant for the judiciary be released to the heads of court in various states directly from the consolidated revenue account.

A judgment of the Federal High Court in Abuja delivered in January 2014 had affirmed the constitutional provision, yet the governors have refused to comply.
Jacks Shadow N successfully avenged last week's defeat to Whos Better at Harrah's Philadelphia with a 1:50.3 score in Sunday (April 18) afternoon's featured $14,400 top-level conditioned pace at the riverside racetrack.

After mid-race traffic trouble left Jacks Shadow N an insurmountable task last week, driver Tim Tetrick opted to send the seven-year-old Shadow Play gelding immediately to the lead at race's outset, clearing Whos Better and Dexter Dunn through a :26.3 quarter. After rating a soft :29.3 second sectional, Jacks Shadow N was forced to accelerate up the backstretch when faced with mild first-over pressure from Dealers Table. Jacks Shadow easily turned aside his outside rival past three-quarters in 1:23.3, and kept Whos Better three-quarters of a length at bay at the winning post. Precision Bluechip finished third, another four lengths behind.

Scott DiDomenico trains 21-time winner Jacks Shadow N for the Triple D Stables, Oompa's Farm and Robert Mondillo. He paid $4.00 to win.

In the afternoon's top distaff pace, a $11,600 high-level conditioned event, Eclipse Me N sprinted clear through the far turn to defeat Disturbed Hanover and Tango Dancer N by eight lengths in 1:50.2. Simon Allard drove the nine-year-old daughter of Real Desire for trainer Lou Pena and the partnership of the D Racing Stable, Yves Sarrazin and Donald MacRae. He paid $4.60 to win.

Tetrick and Yannick Gingras led all drivers with three wins apiece on the 14-race card.

Live racing returns to Harrah's Philadelphia on Wednesday, with a 13-race card slated to commence at 12:25 p.m. Players are reminded that free past performance pages are available for all Harrah's Philadelphia races via the Pennsylvania Harness Horsemen's Association website.

(Harrah's Philadelphia)
The most interesting true crimes are often the ones that sound so unlikely that they verge on fiction, spiraling from headlines into myths. Hulus new series Sasquatch covers that type of crime, investigating rumors that three cannabis farmworkers were murdered in a gruesome fashion attributed to legendary forest monster Sasquatch.

Directed by Joshua Rofe (Lorena), the Hulu series follows gonzo journalist David Holthouse as he investigates an anecdote he heard at a cannabis farm in Northern California in the 1990s. The area best known as a hotbed of cannabis cultivation has gained a reputation in popular culture as a particularly dangerous region, partially due to the Netflix series Murder Mountain. While the series has been criticized as sensational, its sentiments are echoed by the longtime cannabis farmers interviewed in Sasquatch.

Holthouse, who has worked as an embedded journalist for 25 years covering subjects like neo-Nazi communities, serves as the lead detective on the series, gumshoeing his way through Mendocino County trying to find clues to the supposed murders. Scenes were often shot with only one cameraman and no support crew in order to create a sense of security between Holthouse and his sources, many of whose voices and images are obscured.

In some cases, he was developing sources over the course of an entire year, says Rofe. His wheelhouse is essentially pockets of society that would make the rest of us really uncomfortable, and really afraid. He thrives in those situations.

Hulu

The three-episode series premiering April 20 is indeed terrifying. For inspiration, Rofe looked not to other true crime docs, but rather tense feature films like McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Zodiac, The Parallax View and Memories of a Murder by Parasite director Bong Joon-ho.

Sources repeatedly caution Holthouse against investigating further or risking his own safety. Despite the fact that these three supposed murders are now 28 years old, sources acknowledge that these deaths are part of a pattern of other missing persons that residents of the area would rather be forgotten.

I didnt know going into this that this was going to be such a dangerous world we would enter, says Rofe. It seemed quirkier. A Bigfoot killed three guys on a weed farm? I knew that there was a darkness that was there of course, but I couldnt have guessed just how dark it was going to get.

Hulu

Rofe recounted one night when Holthouse planned to meet a source without a cameraman. The meeting changed twice, first to a public place in the afternoon, then to 11 p.m. at a location that turned out to be closed. Even Holthouse was nervous at that point, then eight additional people unexpectedly arrived. One of them called yet another source, then offered to immediately drive Holthouse to meet them three hours away, in the middle of the woods. Meanwhile, Rofe was back in a hotel room, wide awake awaiting text updates from Holthouse that he was safe. Holthouse, perhaps wisely, declined the invitation.

Im a filmmaker, Im a movie geek to the extreme, says Rofe. But suddenly you realize youre not just making that doc series you were excited to make. There are things that are so real, and [the sources] dont give a st that you are making your little doc series for Hulu. They dont care about the themes you want to explore. Things could get really dicey, and you realize that quickly.

Courtesy of the U.S. Forest Service

Although the overall tone drips with paranoia, there are still a few light-hearted moments, thanks largely to interviews with Sasquatch enthusiasts who range from true believers to scholars who think of the beast as an allegory. Rofe himself refuses to comment on whether he believes Sasquatch exists, but regardless of his opinion on the myth, the experience of filming the docuseries changed him in at least one significant way.

I dont ever want to go camping again, he says.
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Derek Chauvin is pictured in court on Monday morning during closing arguments in his murder trial

The state of Minnesota concluded its murder case against Derek Chauvin today by telling the jury: 'The reason George Floyd is dead is because Mr Chauvin's heart was too small.'

Trial attorney Jerry Blackwell came to that dramatic conclusion at the end of the prosecution's rebuttal on Monday afternoon at Hennepin County court.

The jury was then dismissed for deliberation, where they will consider three charges against Chauvin: second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

After the jury stepped out Chauvin's attorney Eric Nelson called for a mistrial over Blackwell's characterization of the defense's case as 'nonsense' and a 'story' - as well as the possibility that media attention could bias the jury.

Judge Peter Cahill said he was not making any findings as to whether Blackwell's comments constituted prosecutorial misconduct that could result in a mistrial but said that he had dealt with all of Nelson's specific objections as he had made them.

As for the media attention, Cahill said he is hopeful that the jurors have heeded his warning against looking at any news coverage of the case before officially denying the mistrial motion.

Outside the court more than 2,000 National Guard members and 1,100 law enforcement officials stood watch over Minneapolis as the city braces for potential unrest over the verdict.

In his closing statement, Nelson insisted that Chauvin acted as any reasonable officer would when he pinned Floyd to the pavement while underlining the handcuffed black man's 'active resistance' to arrest.

Nelson urged the jury to examine all of the evidence presented over three weeks of testimony and come to the conclusion that the state did not meet the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Floyd's death was a direct result of Chauvin's actions on May 25, 2020.

'This was an authorized use of force - as unattractive as that may be,' Nelson said, noting that none of the state's use-of-force experts or police officials could agree on a specific point where Chauvin's actions became unreasonable.

He also emphasized the 'hostile' reactions of the crowd that gathered to watch Floyd's arrest and yelled out for the officers to get off of him - asserting that the chaos was distracting for Chauvin.

Nelson dragged out his at times rambling closing for more than two hours before Judge Peter Cahill interrupted him and called for a lunch break at 2.10pm local time.

When he returned to conclude his statement, Nelson ripped into prosecutors for discounting Floyd's underlying health issues and drug use when arguing that Floyd's primary cause of death was asphyxia during Chauvin's restraint.

'When you take into consideration the presumption of innocence and proof beyond a reason doubt. I would submit to you that it is nonsense to suggest that none of these other factors had any role. That is not reasonable,' Nelson said.

'When you conclude your analysis of the evidence, the entirety of the evidence, when you review the law as written, all within a thorough honest analysis, the state has failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. And therefore Mr Chauvin should be found not guilty of all counts.'

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Defense attorney Eric Nelson is seen delivering his closing statement on Monday, where he urged the jury to examine all of the evidence presented over three weeks of testimony and come to the conclusion that the state did not meet the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Floyd's death was a direct result of Chauvin's actions on May 25, 2020

Nelson underlined Floyd's active resistance to arrest by playing footage from Chauvin's body camera for the jury

Members of the National Guard and police officers stand guard in Minneapolis ahead of a Chauvin verdict

High school students from across Minneapolis participated in a statewide walkout on Monday to stand in solidarity against racial injustice and honor the lives of George Floyd and Daunte Wright

Floyd's seven-year-old daughter Gianna joined a press conference outside the Hennepin County court on Monday

Minneapolis was transformed into a fortress over the weekend as city officials, business owners and residents braced for unrest that could follow the verdict in Chauvin's case.

More than 3,000 members of the National Guard are currently stationed in the city in addition to 1,100 officers from public safety agencies across the state as part of what has been termed Operation Safety Net.

The operation, which is rumored to have cost the city more than $1million, moved into its third stage on Monday with the start of jury deliberation.

Nelson began his closing statement by reminding the jury that the Chauvin 'doesn't have to play catch up', he starts with presumption of innocence.

For the first time in the case, Chauvin set down the pen with which he has scribbled throughout and looked at the screen on which Nelson displayed definitions of standards of doubt, stretching out his arms and calling for them to consider the scales of justice, reasonably balanced.

Civil cases may use a 'preponderance of evidence' as a standard of proof he told them - a grain of sand that could, he suggested, tip the scales.

The next level is 'clear and convincing evidence'. This is the standard, Nelson told the jury, that the state used to, 'take away your children.'

The highest standard is proof 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. Nelson explained: 'Essentially what the state has to convince you is that the evidence in this case completely eliminates any reasonable doubt  or in other words leaving only unreasonable doubt, capricious, unpredictable, fanciful  space aliens flew in and inhabited the body of Derek Chauvin, that's fanciful.'

Nelson asked the jury to be 'intellectually honest' and cast his own statements accordingly.

Most notably, Nelson took a quick swipe at the state's rebuttal of defense medical expert Dr David Fowler's contention that carbon monoxide may have played a part in Floyd's death.

Dr Tobin came in and told the jury, he said, that there could not have been any carbon monoxide poisoning because his oxygen saturation levels at hospital were 98 percent.

Nelson pointed out: 'I could get up in front of you and argue you to that we know this wasn't asphyxiation because George Floyd had a 98 percent oxygen level but that's not intellectually honest.

What is 'excited delirium'? The condition Chauvin's defense claims made Floyd dangerous during arrest Derek Chauvin's defense has repeatedly suggested that George Floyd may have been experiencing 'excited delirium' during his fatal arrest on May 25. Excited delirium is a condition characterized by the abrupt onset of aggression and distress, typically accompanying drug abuse. Thomas Lane, a rookie officer who helped restrain Floyd, could be heard on body camera footage questioning whether Floyd might be experiencing excited delirium. The subject came up at Chauvin's trial last week when the defense called Nicole Mackenzie, a Minneapolis police officer who trains other officers in medical care and testified for the prosecution earlier. Mackenzie told the jury that new officers are told how to recognize the signs of excited delirium. Suspects may be incoherent, she said, exhibit extraordinary strength, sweat or suffer from abnormal body temperature, or seem like they suddenly snapped. They're taught that cardiovascular disease, drug abuse or mental illness can trigger excited delirium, she said. But Mackenzie told the jury that she would defer to an emergency room doctor in diagnosing the condition. She also testified that she provides training on excited delirium only to new recruits. Judge Peter Cahill cautioned jurors that there is no evidence that the veteran Chauvin had the training. There is no universally accepted definition of excited delirium and researchers have said its not well understood. The American Psychiatric Associations diagnostic handbook doesnt list the condition and one study last year concluded it is mostly cited as a cause only when the person who died had been restrained. Advertisement

'It doesn't stack up against the rest of the evidence because of what we know. We heard the testimony of paramedic Seth Bravinder and [ER physician] Dr Langenfeld.

'They came in and said they began resuscitation efforts, they introduced oxygen they're manually breathing for him. They're re-oxygenating his blood.

'So, when you're looking at the evidence you have to compare it to all of the of the evidence.'

If they are missing any single element  even one single element - then, Nelson said, the verdict has to be not guilty. 'I submit to you that the state has failed to meet its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt,' he said.

Nelson focused in on the definition of objectively reasonably use of force because, in his words, 'No crime is committed if the police officers actions were reasonable.'

'You must look at those facts which a reasonable officer in the same situation would have known at the precise moment the officer acted with force,' he said.

'You must decide if the officer's actions were reasonable in light of the totality of the facts and circumstance in front of the officer and without regard to the officer's own state of mind, intention or motivations.'

As he did in his opening Nelson cast his net wide when it came to all of the things, he said, an objectively reasonable officer would have been aware of on the day of Floyd's death  the high crime area, the fact that it was high density and urban, the proximity of a hospital, the behavior of the suspect and the unpredictability of humans.

A reasonable officer, he said, will take into consideration his immediate surroundings and who hes on the scene with. 'Are these veteran officers, are they rookie officers?' Nelson asked.

'Throughout the course of this trial the state has focused you on nine minutes 29 seconds. The proper analysis is to take those nine minutes 29 seconds and put them in the context of what would a reasonable officer know.

Nelson took the jury through the events of the day; from that moment of the first call to Cup Foods and dispatcher Jenna Scurry's decision to call for back-up.

Chauvin and Tou Thao headed to the scene, knowing that there was some sort of disturbance with which the two officers already there - J Alexander Keung and Thomas Lane - were struggling.

Nelson showed footage from Lane's body-worn camera of the officers trying to wrangle Floyd into the back of the squad car.

'Active aggression or active resistance?' he asked. 'Let's call it active resistance.'

This, Nelson said, was the mental starting point and context upon which Chauvin drew in that moment.

Nelson repeatedly stated the notion of 'a reasonable police officer', each time pushing the connection between the concept and his own client. Chauvin, in Nelson's scenario, was that 'reasonable officer' - a characterization that brought in its wake the assumption that the decisions he was making were reasonable.

'He walks onto a scene he's sees active resistance occurring, possibly active aggression. He is not intervening at that time but what are his options?' Nelson asked.

'Distraction techniques, controlled take down, conscious neck restraints  he has, per his training, these techniques at his disposal.'

Chauvin is facing three charges in connection with George Floyd's death on May 25: second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter

Chauvin did not step in immediately but instead observed, Nelson said before describing what he saw through the perspective of a reasonable officer.

A reasonable police officer, Nelson said, would observe the white foam around Floyd's mouth. He would consider the information that this person was possibly on something.

A reasonable person would look at the size of a person and assess his size in relation to his own size. A reasonable officer would know that there are two rookies putting Floyd in the car.

A reasonable officer would hear what a suspect was saying. 'I'm a good guy, I'm a good guy, I'm a good guy. I'm claustrophobic,' and he's going to compare those words with the actions of the individual.

A reasonable officer, Nelson said, would ask himself, as per training, whether a person is purposefully trying to thwart attempts to take into custody or are they simply unable to comply.

A reasonable officer would conclude that the amount of force being used by Keung and Lane was not enough to overpower Floyd's resistance to getting into the car.

Nelson quoted the state's own use of force expert, LAPD Sergeant Jody Stiger who had observed the 'futility' of the officers' attempts to get Floyd into the car.

The struggle was intense, Nelson reminded  so intense that it knocked the body-worn camera and badge from Chauvins shirt.

Once again the jury saw the milestone camera footage of the scene  the footage that prompted dispatcher Jenna Scurry to report concerns at what she had witnessed to the supervising sergeant.

Nelson stopped the video at the moment Floyd was put to the ground and he reminded the jury that there was not a single use of force expert [and] not a single police officer [who]said that anything up to this point was unlawful or unreasonable.

'It was reasonable to put him in the squad car, it was reasonable the efforts that they took to restrain him. It's the point at which Mr Floyd is brought to the crowd that there comes dispute.'

Nelson stopped the video at the moment Floyd was put to the ground and he reminded the jury that there was not a single use of force expert [and] not a single police officer [who]said that anything up to this point was unlawful or unreasonable'

Nelson presented several graphics like the one above to show that Chauvin adhered to his police training

Chauvin's constant scribbling on a yellow notepad sparks fevered Twitter debate Derek Chauvin sparked a flurry of social media speculation after he was repeatedly seen scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad over 16 days of testimony at his trial for the death of George Floyd. Eagle-eyed viewers flocked to Twitter to share their theories for what Chauvin was writing in his notebook. One viewer created an entire Twitter account dedicated to the theories, entitled: 'Derek Chauvin's yellow notepad'. Derek Chauvin sparked a flurry of social media speculation after he was repeatedly seen scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad over 16 days of testimony at his trial for the death of George Floyd Advertisement

Nelson argued that this too was reasonable and in line with training  a move aimed at protecting both the officers and the suspect.

He accused the state of trying to 'reframe the issue of what a reasonable police officer would do' by extracting 9 minutes 29 seconds from all that went before.

In fact 16 minutes and 59 seconds had gone before  all of which, Nelson said, a reasonable officer would consider.

'A reasonable police officer would know about those previous 17 minutes, he would know about the struggle, he would consider the suspects reaction to the previous use of force.

'And a reasonable police officer would consider using an additional force to overcome the subject's resistance.'

Nelson told the court: 'I have thought a lot about the difference between perspective and perception. Perspective is the angle at which you see something, perception is how you interpret what it is that you see.

'I've thought about this a lot because it's not the normal set up for a jury trial. I cannot see four of the jurors. They probably can't see me either. Several of the jurors I have a very good view of, four of them I do not, others it's obstructed.

'Things can affect your perspective. But your perception is how you interpret what you see and that's our life, our experiences the things that make us what we are.'

As far as the jury is concerned, Nelson said: 'Ultimately the court will instruct you on how to deal with these biases. The courts final instructions will guide you to try to recognize your biases, what we bring to the table and analyze the evidence from the perspective of the incident itself.'

The witnesses on the scene did not have the benefit of such reflection or instruction, Nelson said. They brought their own biases to the table and each impacted on what they believed they saw and how they reacted to it.

Nelson spoke of Charles McMillan, who urged Floyd to get in the car and left the scene wishing Chauvin to 'get home safe.'

He spoke of Darnella Frazier, the 17-year-old who filmed the incident  but did not even know officers Lane and Keung were there.

And Donald Williams, the MMA fighter who accused Chauvin of putting Floyd in a blood choke - but both carotid articles were never blocked, Nelson told the court. 'This was not a choke hold.'

Speaking of Williams Nelson said: 'He was upset and that's okay because his perception affected what he was seeing.'

Similarly, he suggested that off-duty fire-fighter Genevieve Hansen was almost overwhelmed by her perceptions.

Nelson pointed out that she admitted the crowd distracted her from focusing on the officers, she interpreted fluid on the ground as Floyds urine and assumed the blood on his face was from the ground.

When told in court that EMS had been called five minutes before she arrived she flat out refused to believe what was, in fact, a verifiable truth.

'What she observed was not consistent with the actual evidence,' Nelson said.

Meanwhile the officers on the scene were, he said, all aware that they were being filmed and Chauvin was making his assessment of the situation minute by minute attempting to keep control of both Floyd and the crowd which, Nelson said, he would have recognized was in crisis.

According to Nelson the most critical moment in the case came at 8.25.16pm. At that moment three things happened: Floyd took his last breath, Chauvin pulled his mace and threatened the crowd with it and Hansen entered the scene walking up behind the officers and startling him.

All of these events happened at once and influenced Chauvin's perception he said.

All of these things conspired to form Chauvins perception of threat and, referencing the testimony of Medical Support Coordinator Nicole MacKenzie, created a situation in which it was more easy to miss something with Floyd.

Nelson pointed out that paramedics did a 'load and go' after assessing the crowd as 'unfriendly'.

He listed all of officers who testified about Chauvin's use of force, reeling off their names and stating that they all came to different conclusions as to when use of force became unnecessary.

Nelson said that a witness he found particularly interesting was Lieutenant Johnny Mercil as he was Chauvins actual use of force trainer so, Nelson said, 'the best glimpse were going to get into the training of a Minneapolis police officer'.

'He corrected the state at times,' Nelson said of Mercil. 'He said the knee on the neck is not an unauthorized move and can be utilized. He said it can be there for an extended period of time [and that] once a person is handcuffed people can continue to thrash around and be a danger to themselves and others.

Nelson sought to paint witnesses to Floyd's fatal arrest - as seen in the body camera footage above - as 'biased'

Nelson reminded the jury that Mercil had testified about ground defense and using weight to control a suspect and how he said that there were no strict techniques, that he personally trains officers to put a knee over the shoulder, up to the base of the neck and described it as routinely used.

Mercil, Nelson said, recognized the concept of 'awful but lawful'. And admitted that there are circumstances under which an assessment had to be made as to whether or not it was worth the risk to handcuff a person and administer medical aid.

And he recognized the human element  the impact of use of force on the officer doing it.

'You have to take into account that officers are human beings capable of making mistakes,' he said. 'In this case the totality of the circumstances as known to a reasonable officer in the precise moment the force was used demonstrate this was an authorized use of force, as unattractive as it may be and this is reasonable doubt.'

In a moment of marked emotion amid a clinical assessment of all that had occurred, Nelson said: 'There is absolutely no evidence that officer Chauvin purposefully applied unlawful force.

'Officer Chauvin did not purposefully use unlawful force. These are officers doing their job in a highly stressful situation according to their training according to the Minneapolis police department. It's tragic. It's tragic.'

Turning to cause of death, Nelson once again apologized for being long-winded but said that there was an important sentence that the state had not read to the jury.

Reading the instruction handed to the jury earlier, Nelson emphasized the key qualification that the state had omitted: 'The defendant is criminally liable for all the consequences of his actions that occur in the ordinary and natural course of events, including those consequences brought about by one or more intervening causes if such intervening causes were the natural result of the defendant's acts.'

The reason the state was seeking to convince the jury that asphyxia was the sole cause of Floyd's death was, Nelson said, because none of the other contributing factors  heart disease, hypertension, excited delirium, fentanyl and amphetamine ingestion - were natural consequences of Chauvin's actions. Instead, they were consequences of Floyd's own.

He said: 'The state [has] to convince you beyond a reasonable doubt that there pre-existing issues did not contribute to Mr Floyd's death.

'That is why the state has brought in expert after expert after expert to testify that the single cause of death was asphyxiation.'

Viewed as a whole, according to Nelson, testimony from the state's experts witnesses 'flies in the face of common sense', especially when set against Dr Andrew Baker's findings.

The Chief Medical Examiner said there was no evidence of asphyxia at autopsy. Nelson gave as examples that there were no fine bruises he would expect to see.

There were no injuries to the structures of Floyds neck and when he finally did review the video which he had avoided watching ahead of the autopsy so that he would not bias himself, he saw nothing about the placement of Chauvins knee to change his opinion.

And all of the other physical defects he found Nelson said  the enlarged heart, the narrowed arteries, the paraganglioma  were the findings relied upon by all other experts who, he suggested, willfully ignored things that did not fit the narrative of asphyxia.

Dr Baker found the manner of death was homicide but in a medical not criminal sense. In his official finding he wrote, Cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint and neck compression

Dr Baker explained that he used the word complicating to mean, an intervention occurred and there was an untoward outcome on the heels of that intervention.

He also told the court that if he wrote something on the death certificate he did so for the simple reason that it played a role in the death.

He added arteriosclerotic and hypertensive heart disease; fentanyl intoxication and recent use of amphetamine.

Nelson said, Apparently the state did not like Dr Bakers findings. His findings didnt support the notion that what you see is what you should believe.

Nelson tackled some of Dr Martin Tobins most emotive testimony, that he termed the finger and knuckle testimony, the doctors view that Floyd used both to push himself up so that he could breathe.

According to Nelson this testimony falls apart when viewed through the prism of the facts and detached from the doctors own bias.

The time stamp on the images used to highlight the theory shows that Floyd was actually in the side recovery position at the time  just 15 minutes into his restraint.

He would continue to breathe for another five minutes and 51 seconds.

Nelson said, This illustrates how you can take a nanosecond of time in this address, have this testimony that hes pushing his body up to try to breathe, but when you look at the evidence compared to the rest of the evidence what do you really see?

You see a person on his side being held in the side recovery position, his fingers and knuckles occasionally touching the ground and tire.

Nelson warned the jury, You cannot take a single isolated frame and reach any conclusions.

Again and again Nelson returned to his theme  that nothing in this case could be viewed in isolation but that instead everything must be placed in the context of the totality of circumstances.

He urged the jury, Put the evidence in its proper context.

Cause of death, Nelson told them, is a multifactorial process.

Nelson said it was 'a preposterous notion' that the amount of fentanyl in Floyds system did not play some part in his death as he showed the jury the photo above of pills found in the console of Floyd's car

The history of Floyds use of illegal substances was significant, Nelson said and not a character attack. IT provided insight on how his body might react to opioid use within the context of a law enforcement encounter.

Nelson reminded the jurors that Floyds girlfriend Courtney Ross had admitted that both struggled with opioid addiction.

He remined them of the prior arrest on May 6, 2019 when Floyd had a remarkably similar encounter with police that resulted in his blood pressure skyrocket to 216 to 160.

He reminded them of Rosss testimony that Floyd had suffered an accidental overdose and complained that his whole body hurt at the time.

He reminded them of the knock off pills purchased by Floyd from his friend Morries Hall and how they made Ross feel as if she was going to die when she took them.

Hall, Nelson pointed out, was with Floyd on May 25, 2020.

He told them about store clerk Christopher Martins observation that Floyd was high and Shawanda Hills testimony that he fell asleep back in the car and they couldnt keep him awake.

Nelson said it was 'a preposterous notion' that the amount of fentanyl in Floyds system did not play some part in his death.

Continuing his lengthy closing after a brief lunch break, Nelson told the jury that the state was asking them to simply ignore 'significant medical issues' when they offered up asphyxia as the sole cause of Floyd's death.

'The failure of the state's experts to acknowledge any possibility that any of these factors in any way contributed defies medical silence and it defies common sense and reason,' he said.

Applying common sense and reason to the timeline of Floyd's last verbalizations, Nelson told the court that it was consistent with the 'sudden cardiac arrhythmia' and not 'the long prognosis of hypoxia', or low oxygen.

Nelson also cleared up an aspersion cast on Dr Fowler's evidence during cross examination when Jerry Blackwell challenged the doctor that he didnt even know if the squad car was running, as he knocked down Fosters assertion that carbon monoxide from the tail pipe may have contributed to Floyds death.

Today Nelson said: 'We know it was running' and pointed to officer Lane's body-camera footage, which showed he never turned off the car when arriving at the scene.

Nelson pondered what would have happened if the paramedics had treated on the scene or gone straight to the hospital rather than drive a few blocks away. Might Floyd have been revived?

His point was, he said, 'Human beings make decisions in highly stressful situations that they believe to be right in the very moment that it is occurring. There's lots of what ifs? What could have happened? What should have happened? Lots of them in lots of regards.

'But we have to analyze this case from the perspective of a reasonable police officer in the precise moment of use of force.

'We have to look at cause of death. Did Mr Floyd die of asphyxia or were there other contributory factors that were not the natural consequence of Mr Chauvin's action?

'The drug ingestion, the diseased heart, the hypertension  all of these things existed before Mr Chauvin arrived.'

'The struggle,' he said, 'What role did the struggle play? We know in a prior incident Mr Floyds heart was beating at 219 over 160. He didn't die that day.'

Wrapping up closing statement that had taken close to three hours, Nelson once again asserted that the state had failed to prove Chauvin guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and thus the jury should not find him guilty on any charge.

Trial attorney Jerry Blackwell delivered the state's rebuttal

Trial attorney Jerry Blackwell then stood to deliver the state's rebuttal. He told the jury that while they had heard 45 witness in all, there was a 46th  one that spoke to them before the trial, during it and would continue to speak to them in the deliberations room: common sense.

For all the issues brought up in closing statements Blackwell told the jury, 'the case is so simple a child could understand it'.

In fact, a child had, he said referencing nine-year-old witness Judea who had said that she thought a remedy might have been to 'get off of him'.

Blackwell painted Nelsons closing summary as a 'story' because 'it's either completely not true or the facts have been altered in order to make a point to you, which makes it a story.

'You've got to reach a verdict  verdict's a Latin word for truth. You're not reaching a story.'

Picking up on Nelson's technique of repeatedly casting Chauvin in the role of 'a reasonable officer', Blackwell said: 'Reasonable officer is not a magic word that you apply to Mr Chauvin and then he becomes one.

'The whole narrative cut off before we got to the point that Mr Floyd was not moving, not conscious, did not have a pulse and that Mr Chauvin is still on top of him when the EMTs showed up. How is that reasonable?'

With characteristic savagery Blackwell dismantled Nelson's assertion that Floyd died from causes other than Chauvin's actions.

'The notion that Mr Floyd dying was just coincidental, he just happened to die in the same time and same place of factors unrelated to what Mr Chauvin was doing  that's a story ladies and gentlemen and defies common sense,' Blackwell said.

Floyd had lived 17,026 days, Blackwell said, many with all of the underlying problems that Nelson flagged up, he had survived everything but his encounter with Chauvin.

Where Nelson had suggested that the state's expert witnesses differed in their opinions, Blackwell said they were united in one key fact: 'There was a use of force that set a number of things in motion for Mr Floyd that culminated in his death.'

He reminded them that Dr Tobin had said that no human being could have survived the restrained and neck compression to which Floyd was subjected. 'We are only required to show you that Mr Chauvins conduct was a substantial cause in Mr Floyds death,' Blackwell said.

And, however their experts may have differed in the precise mechanisms involved, he said they all agreed that Floyd's death stemmed back to the subdual, restraint and neck compression.

He rejected the suggestion that there are two sides to every story  a premise on which Nelson has repeatedly fallen back.

The court is not about 'stories', Blackwell said, 'What we're about here is getting to the truth.'

In a similar vein he said that the police badge which Chauvin wore was 'not a license to abuse the public, to not follow procedures'. There are no two sides to that, he said, 'that's simply wrong and the only sides to that are the "w" and the "g" [of wrong].'

Chauvin 'had all the power', that day, Blackwell said  'He had a gun, he had mace, he had back up.'

And the crowd that he was facing, Blackwell said, consisted of three high school juniors, a second-grader, a senior taking her cousin to get candy, Donald Williams the MMA fighter who wanted to save Floyds life, Charles McMillan  the mayor of the neighborhood and Genevieve Hansen.

This 'bouquet of humanity', all of different ages, races and genders did not present any threat, Blackwell said, 'They came together, they saw a human being they did not know suffering and they wanted to intervene.'

Had they wanted to take the law into their own hands, Blackwell told the court, they could have removed Chauvin but they respected the badge.

As he repeatedly characterized all that the defense had said about the crowd and events of that day as 'a story' Nelson objected in a move that was sustained by the judge who told Blackwell to move on from the use of the word.

The state's closing: Prosecutors tell jurors to ask whether Floyd would have died were it not for Chauvin's restraint

In closing for the state, prosecutor Steve Schleicher asked the jury to consider one question in coming to a verdict: Would Floyd have died were it not for the cop's restraint?

Schleicher posed the question as he sought to cast doubt on the myriad of factors the defense presented as contributing causes of Floyd's death, including his drug use, heart problems and potential exposure to exhaust from the squad car he was pinned next to on May 25.

'The defendant knew better. He just didn't do better,' Schleicher said of Chauvin. 'George Floyd did not have to die that day, should not have died that day. But, for the fact that the defendant decided not to get up, and not to let up, George Floyd died.'

Schleicher also refuted the defense suggestion that Floyd had 'superhuman strength' during his arrest because he was suffering from 'excited delirium'.

Floyd was 'a human being,' the prosecutor said. 'There is no such thing as super human, that exists in comic books.'

Underlining how hard Floyd fought just to be able to breathe, Schleicher showed the court graphic photos of the injuries he suffered when he was pinned down, which had been previously presented to the jury but were not released publicly until Monday.

As he did throughout three weeks of testimony, Chauvin sat silent and expressionless and took notes on a yellow legal pad as Schleicher walked the jury through each of the charges he's facing: second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

The court was shown these photos of the injuries Floyd sustained as he was pinned to the ground on May 25

Cuts are shown on Floyd's knuckles after he struggled to get Chauvin to relieve the pressure on his neck

Schleicher asserted that Floyd died because Chauvin's 'ego and pride' took over and caused the cop to betray his badge and abandon his training when he pressed his knee into the handcuffed black man's neck.

'All that was required [to save Floyd] was some compassion,' Schleicher told the court. But instead Floyd was crushed beneath the knee of the officer, surrounded by strangers with no familiar face or loved one to cry out to.

Schleicher noted that Floyd's final words were addressed to Chauvin: 'I can't breathe', over and over.

'But he continued to hold him down, to grind into him, to shimmy,' Schleicher said. 'George Floyd begged until he could speak no more and the defendant continued this assault.

'The truth is the defendant was on top of him for nine minutes and 29 seconds and he had to know.'

Schleicher opened his statement by telling the jury who Floyd was  that he was born on October 14, 1973, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, that he was a 'mama's boy', a beloved son, brother and father.

And Schleicher bookended Floyd's life  loved and surrounded by loved ones  with his death, ground into the asphalt and alone.

Addressing the fact that it is hard to believe that a police officer could 'do something like this,' Schleicher told the court this is not a case against the police, but against one particular bad cop.

What the defendant did, he said, 'wasn't policing. It was assault'.

'It was unnecessary, it was gratuitous and he did it on purpose,' Schleicher told the jury. 'He betrayed the badge and everything he stood for. [He] abandoned his values, abandoned his training and killed a man'.

Chauvin was responding to a call over a fake $20 bill but, the prosecutor told the silent court, 'George Floyd's life was taken for something worth far, far less than that.'

Floyd died because Chauvin was 'trying to win' and because of Chauvin's 'ego and pride', Schleicher said.

It was not, he said, 'the kind of pride that makes you do better'. It was, 'The kind of ego-based pride that the defendant was going to do what he wanted to do as long as he wanted because he had the authority and he had the power and of the badge[he was] trying to win and George Floyd paid for it with his life.'

According to Schleicher, Chauvin 'chose pride over policing'.

Schleicher took the jury back through the events of May 25 and told them all of the reasons a person might be unable to comply to police commands - all of the reasons taught in the crisis response training undertaken by all of the officers there that day.

'It's nothing new,' he told the jury. 'People have emotions. People don't meet the police on their best day very often.'

He reminded them of Chief Medaria Arradondo's testimony that MPD responds to 4,000 calls for service for people in crisis every year.

'They're there on a $20 counterfeiting charge,' he said. 'They train for this.'

Schleicher did not attempt to sugar coat Floyd's issues. He 'certainty had his struggles,' the prosecutor said, referencing testimony from Floyd's girlfriend Courteney Ross about his struggles with opioid addiction.

That was nothing new for officers either, Schleicher said. 'The difference on May 25, 2020 is that officers wouldn't listen to him, wouldn't recognize the signs of what they had prepared for,' he said.

'A reasonable officer should have known that and recognized that. Floyd was trying to get into the car. He was trying to work up the courage. He said he'd count to three but he just couldn't do it.'

Everything that happened that day was, the prosecutor said, 'completely unnecessary', but the excessive force started in earnest the moment the officers had Floyd prone and handcuffed on the ground.

Schleicher told jurors to ask themselves if Floyd would have died were it not for what Chauvin did that day. Was it his enlarged heart, did he suddenly die of a drug overdose, was it the fumes from the car tail-pipe?

'Use your common sense,' Schleicher urged. 'Believe your eyes. What you saw you was murder.'

Prosecutor Steve Schleicher is seen delivering the state's closing statement on Monday morning

Prosecutors repeatedly referenced this timeline of Floyd's fatal arrest during the trial and showed it once again on Monday

Prosecutors showed this graphic to remind how police officials testified that Chauvin's use of force was unreasonable

Schleicher cited testimony from medical experts who said Floyd did not die from sudden cardiac arrhythmia or a heart attack

This graphic seeks to refute the suggestion that Floyd's death was caused by his drug use

Turning to the law as Judge Cahill had instructed the jurors, Schleicher reminded: 'The fact that other causes contribute to the death does not relieve the defendant of criminal liability.'

The only scenario in which Chauvin is not criminally liable if a 'superseding cause' caused his death.

But, Schleicher intimated, 'The unlawful restraintthat's what killed George Floyd. Believe your eyes. Unlawful force pinning him to the ground, that's what killed him. That was a homicide.'

Schleicher guided the jury back through the experts they had heard and the testimony they had given  including emergency room physician Dr Bradford Langenfeld, Chief Medical Examiner Dr Andrew Baker, who ruled the death a homicide, and pulmonologist Dr Martin Tobin.

Those experts explained both what Floyd did and did not die from, Schleicher said.

'You know how George Floyd died,' the prosecutor said, harking back to Dr Tobin's testimony during which he said that Floyd had been held 'in a vice' between the pavement and Chauvin's knee.

'He said it was as if George Floyd's left lung had been surgically removed to the point where Mr Floyd was desperately trying to breathe, pushing his shoulder, pushing his face [against the ground] to breathe.'

'That's what killed Mr Floyd.' This wasn't a sudden arrhythmia, the prosecutor insisted, there was no medical evidence of a heart attack and it wasn't a drug overdose.

'George Floyd was obviously not a perfect man. Who is? No-one is. You heard about drugs, you heard about questions: "Is he chewing gum, does he have a pill in his mouth?" None of that matters because you know what his drug level was from the toxicology result,' Schleicher said.

He went on to refute the suggestion that Floyd was experiencing 'Excited Delirium', and said the idea that the condition gave him 'super-human strength' or made him 'impervious to pain' was 'nonsense'.

There were so may things that might have saved Floyd's life, Schleicher said; putting Floyd in the side recovery position or keeping him in it in the first place or giving immediate medical aid in the form of CPR chest compressions.

'These actions were not policing, theses actions were an assault,' he said.

As for whether Chauvin was acting knowingly or not, Schleicher said: 'It's pretty simple. You're doing something to hurt somebody and you keep doing it. You're doing it on purpose.'

Schleicher played excerpts of the officers' body-worn camera footage showing Floyd prone and handcuffed beneath them.

'Do you want to know what indifference looks like?' he asked, before playing a portion in which Chauvin can be heard responding to Floyd's pleas of 'you're killing me,' and complaints that his stomach hurts, that everything hurts with the sound: 'Uh Huh' before adding: 'It takes a lot of oxygen to complain about it.'

Schleicher told the court: 'That isn't protection. It isn't courage and it certainly, certainly isn't compassion. It's the opposite of that.'

But Chauvin's negligence goes beyond what he did and extended towards what he did not do, Schleicher said.

Despite the fact that Chauvin had the 'knowledge and tools' he did not render medical aid.

In all, Schleicher concluded that the only possible verdict on all three counts was guilty.

But even after that he said: 'You have another thing to consider. Was this just okay because the defendant was a police officer? Was it justified? Was this objectively reasonable?'

He told the jury: 'It was not.'

'We talked a lot about what might have happened, hypotheticals. We talked a lot about what didn't happen. You need to focus on what did happen. George Floyd wasn't resisting, he just couldn't comply. They do it all the time.

'He wasn't going anywhere. He was doing anything. He didnt need to be put in a prone position, but the defendant was on top of him he stayed on top of him, grinding his knee on him, twisting his wrist - simply the infliction of pain not a reasonable use of force. Force must be reasonable at the point it occurs, the point it ends and all points in between.'

'Dont miss the forest for the trees,' he urged the jury. 'Officer after officer, the Chief of Police, got on that stand and told you that this conduct violates the use of force policy, the departments core values, the duty of care.

'When George Floyd said his final words to the defendant the defendant stayed on top of him. He ignored it. Continued doing what he was doing. Facing the crowd, grinding his knee, twisting his hand.

'The greatest sceptic of the case among you, how can you justify the continued use of force on this man when he has no pulse. It wasnt too late. He could have rolled him over and performed CPR.

He continued past the point of finding a pulse, past the point where the ambulance arrived, past the point where the paramedics got out. Whats the goal? What are we trying to accomplish here? Why hold him so long, past that line that was crossed?

Schleicher let the words pile up  unreasonable, unnecessary, unlawful.

'The defendant is guilty of second-degree murder. Hes guilty of third-degree murder and hes guilty of second-degree manslaughter: all of them,' he said. 'This is not a justified used of force. You cant justify this use of force its not possible.

As he did throughout three weeks of testimony, Chauvin sat silent and expressionless and took notes on a yellow legal pad as Schleicher walked the jury through each of the charges he's facing: second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter

Floyd family members Tiffany Hall, Philonise Floyd and Reverend Al Sharpton are seen walking into the Hennepin County courthouse on Monday morning ahead of closing statements

Members of Floyd's family held their fists in the air in defiance as they approached the courthouse on Monday

Schleicher returned to his opening sentiments as he wound towards the end of his powerful two-hour closing statement. He had said at the start that Floyd had died surrounded by strangers but they were not, he said people who did not care.

'They all converged by fate in one single moment of time to witness something,' he said. 'To witness nine minutes 29 seconds of shocking abuse of authority, to watch a man die and there was nothing they could do about it because they were powerless. Because even they respected the badge. Even seeing this happening.

'All they could do was watch and gather what they could, gather their memories, their thoughts and impressions, those precious recordings and they gathered those up and they brought them here and they got up on the stand and they bore witness to this outrageous act and they gave you what they had.'

'And they gave it to you,' he said looking at the jury, 'Randomly selected people from the community. You got a summons in the mail and here you are  all converged on one spot.

'That power belongs to you. Only you have the power to convict the defendant of this crime and in so doing declare that this use of force was unreasonable it was excessive, it was grossly disproportionate.

'It is not an excuse for the shocking abuse you saw with your own eye. This case is exactly what you thought when you saw hit first.'

Returning to Jerry Blackwell's opening statements as he wrapped up his own closing, Schleicher said: 'You can believe your eyes. It's exactly what you knew it was. It's what you felt in your gut. It's what you now know in your heart.

'This wasn't policing, this was murder. The defendant is guilty on all three counts  all of them  there no excuse.'

Before closing statements Judge Peter Cahill addressed the jury and told them to stick to the evidence presented in court when coming to a verdict.

'It is your duty to decide the questions of fact. It is my duty to give you the rules of law that apply,' the judge said. 'You must follow the law even if you believe the law is or should be different.'

Judge Cahill said that 'beyond reasonable doubt' is the standard upon which an 'ordinary prudent man or woman would act in their ordinary affairs.'

Reasonable doubt, he told them, is a doubt, 'based on common sense.' It is not 'a fanciful or capricious doubt nor is it beyond all doubt.'

Judge Peter Cahill opened Monday's proceedings by reading the jury instructions ahead of closing statements

He talked them through the law as it applies to each of the three counts faced by Chauvin. None of the charges  second-degree murder, third-degree murder or second-degree manslaughter  require the jury to find that Chauvin intended to cause substantial bodily harm or the death of George Floyd.

Even the most serious count only requires them to find that he committed the act of felony assault and does not need the additional element of any intention to cause the harm that it did. Put bluntly it would be enough for them to find that he did it.

Equally they may find him guilty of causing Floyd's death if they decide that his act or acts were a substantial factor in Floyd's death. They need not be the only factor if the jury but any others must be a direct result of Chauvin's act.

But if they decide that there was another superseding cause that was not a result of Chauvin's acts.

All of their assessments of Chauvin must be considered through the prism of whether his use of force was 'objectively reasonable in light of the totality of the facts without regard to the officer's own intentions.'

Chauvin is not guilty, he told them, if they find that the force he used was authorized by law.

When it comes to judging the veracity of witnesses' testimony 'there are no hard and fast rules,' and no weight at all can be given to the fact that Chauvin himself did not take the stand.

Minneapolis was transformed into a fortress over the weekend as city officials, business owners and residents braced for unrest that could follow the verdict in Chauvin's case.

More than 3,000 members of the National Guard are currently stationed in the city in addition to 1,100 officers from public safety agencies across the state as part of what has been termed Operation Safety Net.

In the early hours of Sunday, two members of the National Guard were injured in a drive-by shooting.

There were no serious injuries, said Adjutant General Maj Gen Shawn Manke, but he added that the incident 'highlights the volatility and tension in our communities right now'.

A Monmouth University poll released on Thursday found that 63 percent of Americans believe that acquittals across the board for Chauvin would be a negative step for race relations.

Thirty-seven percent said that if he were found guilty of murder, it would be a positive step.

Police unions, and conservatives more broadly, have warned against high-profile cases being judged on bigger issues outside the courtroom, such as race relations in general, rather than the evidence put forth in the proceedings.

The tension has been heightened by the killing less than 10 miles from downtown Minneapolis of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old black man shot by a white police officer, Kimberly Potter, at a traffic stop on April 11. She has been charged with manslaughter.

Hennepin County Government Center, where the Chauvin trial is being held, is protected with high fences and concrete

Members of the National Guard stand on duty in downtown Minneapolis under Operation Safety Net

City Hall in Minneapolis is boarded up on Sunday and ringed in fencing and barbed wire ahead of the Chauvin verdict

The state's case: Prosecutors called 38 witnesses - including police officials, medical experts and people who watched Floyd's fatal arrest in real time - to prove the black man's death caused by Chauvin's actions

Chauvin's highly anticipated trial began on March 29 with an opening statement from trial attorney Jerry Blackwell, who vowed to prove that the defendant 'betrayed the badge' when he 'did not get up, did not let up' for nine minutes and 29 seconds, even after Floyd stopped breathing and despite the fevered pleas from bystanders for him to release Floyd.

MINNESOTA V DEREK CHAUVIN - CHARGES Second-degree murder Chauvin is charged with second-degree murder, which in Minnesota can be 'intentional' or 'unintentional.' The second-degree murder charge requires prosecutors to prove Chauvin caused Floyd's death while committing or trying to commit a felony  in this case, third-degree assault. Prosecutors must convince the jury that Chauvin assaulted or attempted to assault Floyd and in doing so inflicted substantial bodily harm. Prosecutors don't have to prove Chauvin was the sole cause of Floyd's death - only that his conduct was a 'substantial causal factor.' If the prosecution can prove Chauvin committed third-degree assault , he can be convicted of Floyd's death. Prosecutors are fearful that Chauvin will escape conviction for second-degree murder, that carries a maximum 40 year sentence. But because Chauvin does not have any prior convictions, sentencing guidelines recommend he serve no more than 25.5 years in jail. Second-degree manslaughter The manslaughter charge has a lower bar, requiring proof Chauvin caused Floyd's death through negligence that created an unreasonable risk, and consciously took the chance of causing severe injury or death. If convicted of second-degree manslaughter in Minnesota, the charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. But sentencing guidelines for someone without a criminal record call for no more than four years behind bars. Third-degree murder Third-degree murder would require a lower standard of proof than second-degree. To win a conviction, prosecutors would have to show only that Floyd's death was caused by an act that was obviously dangerous, though not necessarily a felony. That would result in a maximum sentence of 25 years. But there are caveats. Chauvin has no criminal history, which means he will likely end up serving about 12.5 years if he is convicted of second or third-degree murder. Advertisement

Over the next 11 days prosecutors brought in 38 witnesses - beginning with people who watched Floyd's fatal arrest unfold in real time.

Among them was 911 dispatcher Jena Scurry, who called the officers' supervisor with concerns about their use of force; off-duty firefighter and EMT Genevieve Hansen, who begged the officers to allow her to provide medical aid; nine-year-old Judea and her cousin Darnella Frazier, who filmed the most famous viral video of the arrest; and mixed martial arts fighter Don Williams, who testified that Chauvin used a 'blood choke' on Floyd.

Christopher Martin, the Cup Foods employee whose concerns about a counterfeit $20 bill Floyd used to buy cigarettes led to his arrest, also testified that he wished he hadn't said anything because he believes Floyd might still be alive today if he'd kept quiet.

During testimony from these eye-witnesses the jury was shown several graphic videos of Floyd's confrontation with police. Prosecutors also showed video of Floyd inside the Cup Foods store before police were called, in which he appeared agitated, distracted and potentially under the influence of drugs.

The second week of the trial was dominated by technical testimony, beginning with senior Minneapolis Police Department officials, including Chief Medaria Arradondo, who testified that Chauvin violated department policy when he restrained Floyd for nine minutes and 29 seconds.

Police officials testified that while officers might sometimes use a knee across a person's back or shoulder to gain or maintain control, they're also taught the specific dangers for a person in Floyd's position - prone on his stomach, with his hands cuffed behind him - and how such a person must be turned into a side recovery position as soon as possible.

Later in the prosecutors called a string of medical experts to testify that Floyd died due to a lack of oxygen, not from a primary cardiac event. Some of the most powerful testimony came from Dr Martin Tobin, a lung and critical care specialist who told jurors that other factors, not just Chauvin's knee, made it hard for Floyd to breathe: officers lifting up his handcuffs, the hard pavement, his turned head and a knee on his back.

Tobin pinpointed the moment when he said he could see Floyd take his last breath - and said Chauvin's knee remained on Floyd's neck another 3 minutes, two seconds. 'At the beginning, you can see he's conscious, you can see slight flickering, and then it disappears,' Tobin said as he highlighted a still image from police body-camera video. 'That's the moment the life goes out of his body.'

The state rested its case on April 13, at which point all eyes turned to Chauvin's attorney Nelson.

The defense case: Chauvin's attorneys called just seven witnesses to shift blame away from the ex-cop and onto Floyd's drug use and health problems

At the center of Nelson's defense was the argument that Floyd's death was not caused by Chauvin's actions but by outside factors - namely Floyd's drug addiction and underlying health conditions, including a bad heart.

Nelson made two other key arguments: that use of force is an unattractive but essential component of policing, and that the hostile crowd that surrounded Chauvin and fellow officers as they restrained Floyd had distracted them from proper procedure and care.

Nelson called just seven witnesses over two days of testimony. He began by showing the jury video from Floyd's arrest on May 6, 2019, in an effort to portray that he had a history of feigning medical distress and rapidly ingesting pills when confronted by police through testimony by an officer and a paramedic involved in that arrest.

The next two witnesses - Minneapolis Park Police Officer Peter Chang and Floyd's friend Shawanda Hill - spoke about what they saw on the day of Floyds death as the court was shown new body-camera footage of the chaos.

The sixth witness was Barry Brodd, a former cop and use-of-force expert who testified that Chauvin did not use deadly force against Floyd. In fact, Brodd argued that Chauvin's placing the handcuffed black man in the prone position and kneeling on his neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds did not constitute use of force at all.

'It's a control technique. It doesn't hurt,' Brodd said. 'It's safe for the officer, safe for the suspect and you're using minimal effort to keep them on the ground.'

During direct examination by Nelson, Brodd said Chauvin was 'justified' and acting 'with objective reasonableness' in his interactions with Floyd. He also leaned in to the defense narrative that Chauvin and his fellow officers felt 'threatened' by the gathering crowd.

But as he looked at the all-too-familiar image of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd's neck under cross-examination, Brodd was forced to concede that such a restraint would cause pain and thus also 'could be use of force'.

The final and perhaps most influential witness called was Dr David Fowler, a former chief medical examiner in Maryland who shared his conclusion that Floyd's death should have never been classified as a homicide because there were too many competing potential causes of death.

One of the potential causes Fowler presented was exposure to exhaust fumes from the squad car Floyd was pinned next to, which the defense witness said could have caused some degree of carbon monoxide poisoning.

The carbon monoxide point was one of many on which Fowler contradicted the opinions of medical experts who testified before him. Blackwell drilled down on those contradictions while attempting to chip away at Fowler's credibility during cross-examination, at one point telling him: 'You're not a toxicologist..a pulmonologist.. a cardiologist, a physiologistYou don't treat patients.'

Fowler's earliest contradiction over more than five hours of testimony on April 14 came when he shared his conclusion that Floyd died from a 'sudden cardiac arrhythmia' due to his underlying heart disease during his restraint by police. That conclusion was refuted by Dr Baker, the Hennepin County chief medical examiner who performed Floyd's autopsy.

Fowler also said that Floyd had an enlarged heart, which meant he needed more oxygen to function, and that methamphetamine use heightened his risk of cardiac arrhythmia.

Later in his lengthy and technical testimony, Fowler cited multiple studies which challenged the notion that the prone position - in which Floyd was held for nine minutes and 29 seconds - is inherently dangerous.

He also referenced studies which concluded that it doesn't matter how much a person weighs if they are applying a single knee to another person - and a double knee restraint makes only a modest difference.

According to those studies a person transfers just 23 percent of their bodyweight during a double knee restraint. So, Dr Fowler said, Chauvin  who he viewed as applying a single knee restraint for most of the restraint  would have been applying less than 30 to 35 pounds of weight to Floyd.

Fowler asserted that none of that weight compromised Floyd's 'vital neck structures', that there was no evidence of injury to Floyd's neck and that the pressure applied was less than the amount necessary to bruise him.

Moments before the defense rested Chauvin addressed the court for the first time on the morning of April 15 and invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination, meaning he would not take the stand.

In a brief rebuttal later that morning the prosecution recalled Dr Tobin to refute Fowler's claims about the potential for carbon monoxide poisoning, with which Tobin said he disagreed entirely.

Judge Cahill barred Tobin from referring to specific test results with Floyd's carbon monoxide levels, which the prosecution sought to enter into evidence just minutes earlier. But Tobin told the court Floyd's hemoglobin was 98 percent saturated with oxygen, leaving up to two percent for carbon monoxide. Pressing that point Tobin told the jury: 'You and I have somewhere between zero and three.'

Judge Cahill excused the jurors through the weekend, reminding them to pack a bag ahead of sequestration on Monday following closing statements.
citizens who have been trapped outside of Trinidad and Tobago since the closure of the countrys borders in April 2020, may soon be allowed to come home.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley yesterday announced during a news conference at the Diplomatic Centre in St Anns that he and a team of ministers met with Caribbean Airlines Ltd on Friday to discuss the reopening of the countrys borders sometime within the next four to six weeks.
The Married At First Sight reunion on Sunday night was filled with explosive arguments, cheating scandals and heart-warming love stories.

But one groom who was noticeably absent was fan-favourite Chris Jensen, who failed to rock up to the finale - despite his jilted bride Jaimie Gardner attending.

According to a source, the 32-year-old FIFO worker decided not to attend to avoid coming face-to-face with his ex-bride, as he 'didn't want to put himself in a position' to be involved in a confrontation with Jaimie again.

No show: One groom who was noticeably absent form the MAFS reunion was fan-favourite Chris Jensen, who failed to rock up to the drama-filled finale - despite his jilted bride Jaimie Gardner attending

Despite the show thriving on drama - and seeing the likes of Bryce Ruthven and Rebecca Zemek being grilled over their rumoured cheating scandals - Chris decided he didn't want the negativity that attending Sunday's episode would bring.

'He doesn't want to see her again. He's not the sort of person that likes to purposely walk into confrontation. It's the complete opposite of what he stands for,' a source told Daily Mail Australia.

Chris was a late-comer to this year's series, and sensationally walked out on Jaimie after accusing her of wanting to fake their marriage for the camera.

'Jaimie tried to convince him to stay and begged him to stop being too nice to make her attitude and what she was saying about him look okay.'

The source went on to say Chris was 'devastated' to have been paired up with Jaimie.

Not again! According to a source, the Sunshine Coast father-of-two 'didn't want to put himself in a position to be attacked' by his 'wife' again

Shock exit: Chris was a late-comer to this year's series, and sensationally walked out on Jaimie after accusing her of wanting to fake their marriage for the camera

'His intentions for signing up for MAFS were for the right reasons. He didn't care [for fame] and wasn't expecting his past to be resurfaced.'

They went on to say, 'Chris had 138 followers on Instagram before the show, and if any charity work came his way in the future, sure he will put his hand up.'

It's understood that Chris's decision to 'politely decline' the invitation to return was no surprise for producers, after they willingly let Chris walk away from the show.

The news comes just weeks after news broke that Chris was arrested on drugs charges prior to his appearance on Married At First Sight.

The reality star faces one count of trafficking dangerous drugs - serious organised crime.

He was due to appear for a mention before Brisbane Supreme Court last month, but the matter was adjourned until April 23.

No thanks! It's understood that Chris's decision to 'politely decline' the opportunity to return to the show was no surprise for producers, after they willingly let him walk out

Chris had previously been granted Supreme Court Bail, The Courier Mail reported.

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia last month, Queensland Courts and the Department of Justice and Attorney-General confirmed the charges.

He was arrested alongside three co-accused, who are all facing similar charges.

A Brisbane Magistrates Court spokesman told The Courier Mail that Chris last appeared in court before on October 30, 2020, after being granted magistrates bail in 2018.

During his last appearance his bail was enlarged, and the matter was adjourned to July 23.

Chris also faces single charges of possessing dangerous drugs, possessing anything used in commission of a crime, possessing used utensils or pipes and two counts of possessing property suspected of being proceeds of an offence under the Drugs Misuse Act.
A team of scientists at the University of California, US, are roasting meteorites in a lab in a bid to try and recreate the birth of planets. Meteorites are often referred to as what was left over from the building blocks of our solar system after the Big Bang, which was the explosion that brought the universe into existence. Now, to seek answers regarding the formation of the planet, the scientists said that they are trying to simulate in the laboratory this very early process when a planets atmosphere is forming so they can put some experimental constraints on that story.

Whats cooking? Exoplanet meteorites. The gases released from meteorite samples heated in a high-temperature furnace can tell scientists about the initial composition of the atmospheres of rocky exoplanets. https://t.co/XHw8CmCN3o  UC Santa Cruz (@ucsc) April 16, 2021

Myrian Telus, one of the co-authors of the study published in Nature Astronomy, explained that when the building blocks of a planet are coming together, the material is heated and gases are produced. And if the planet is large enough the gases will be retained as its atmosphere, she added. The idea behind planetary formation is that these planets are composed of something similar to that of their host star or their Sun, which would indicate that their atmospheres should have a rich amount of hydrogen and helium.

However, when it comes to the process of outgassing, where the meteorites release gas, it shows that water vapour is the primary gas, followed by carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide as the second and third most abundant gases. "Using solar abundances is fine for large, Jupiter-size planets that acquire their atmospheres from the solar nebula, but smaller planets are thought to get their atmospheres more from outgassing," said Telus.

What involves baking a meteorite?

In the study, the researchers at the US Santa Cruz explained that they set up a furnace and connected it to a mass spectrometer and vacuum system. The spectrometer then measured the mass to charge ratio of ions. These measurements are often used to calculate the exact molecular weight of a sample component, such as the amount of water vapour or hydrogen present, the scientists said. They added that the vacuum system, on the other hand, takes care that no material from outside can enter and mix up the results of the test.

(Image: UCSantaCruz/Website)

The team of scientists picked out the meteorites Murchison, Jbilet Winselwan, and Aguas Zarcas, whose composition is the closest match to that of the sun and planets. They said that these meteorites also did not carry the risk of melting due to the heat from the baking. Additionally, they also believe that these space rocks contain some original elements that can help them to understand the composition of the photovoltaic system across eons of planet formation.

The rocks were heated to a temperature of 1200 degrees Celsius, and the system studied the gases that were produced due to this. In addition to water vapour, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxides, the team also found small amounts of hydrogen and hydrogen sulfide gases.
Last October, I spoke on the phone with a man in Virginia. He wanted to know how to help the hundreds of immigrant kids hed seen in the news who remained separated from their parents because of the Trump administrations zero-tolerance policy. I want to do something, he said. I Googled and I cant find any information. I directed him to organizations in his area that license foster families for unaccompanied kids.

Since that conversation, more children have arrived at our border seeking haven from deadly hurricanes and the pandemics impact, and  finally  protection, after a federal ruling in November forbade the Trump Administration to expel unaccompanied children and restored their right to seek asylum.

President Joe Biden has done the right thing by lifting even more of his predecessors heinous policies. His administration has ordered a review of asylum policies, ended an information-sharing agreement between federal agencies that scared off childrens potential sponsors, and revived the Central American Minors program, which allows children to apply for family reunification in the U.S. without having to leave their home country. The children at our border are not arriving because Biden lifted these policies. Actually, he hasnt gone far enough.

The Biden administration has continued to apply Title 42, a Trump-era COVID-19 policy that turns away asylum seekers at the border. Not only does Title 42 have no public health basis and deny people their legal right to seek protection, but it has also likely increased the number of unaccompanied children. Migrant families in crowded Mexico border camps are making the impossible choice to send their children all alone to the United States, knowing that their children are assured entry and safety. Additionally, under our laws, children who arrive with loving caregivers  siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents  are also designated as unaccompanied if the relative is not their legal guardian. It is important that the children retain this unaccompanied status because it gives children access to services, lawyers, child advocates, and a child-friendly evaluation of their claim for protection. But under Title 42, U.S. authorities allow these children into the United States, but send the caregivers back behind the border, separating a family.

Biden came to office pledging to create a more humane immigration system. The current situation offers a rare opportunity to do just that by making the best interest of the child its guiding principle. Childrens safety and well-being must take precedence over any attempt to punish migrants for doing what they must to survive. The best interest of the child standard offers clear solutions to the needs of unaccompanied children at our border.

The best interest of the child standard requires that we keep families together. We can do this by once again following our asylum laws, ending Title 42, and allowing those seeking protection, including families, to enter the country.

There is another broad, effective cohort eager to help these children: The American people. Like the gentleman who called me, many Americans have the means and desire to help children. A pre-election survey by Lake Research Partners found that Americans are united in the belief that the best interest of the child should guide all federal policy, including immigration.

The government has not even begun to tap this vast human resource. A massive public campaign and clear resource pages would allow interested parties to help.

I fully expect more calls from people like the gentleman in Virginia. Wouldnt it be great to be able to guide them to a clear, best-for-kids plan that is supported by our government? We can do this, together.

Miriam Abaya is the senior director for immigration and childrens rights at First Focus. She wrote this for InsideSources.com.
Diplomats expelled from the Czech embassy in Moscow have arrived in Prague after being caught up in a row between Russia and their homeland.

Most of the 20 diplomats and their families disembarked at the Vaclav Havel Airport on Monday evening after being expelled from Moscow. Others had left by car.

The move followed a decision by Czech authorities to expel 18 diplomats from the Russian embassy in Prague over suspicions that Russian intelligence was involved in explosions at an ammunition depot in October and December 2014.

Russia denies the accusation.

The Russian diplomats, identified by Czech intelligence as spies, left Prague for Moscow on Monday.

Diplomats expelled from the Czech embassy in Moscow have arrived in Prague after being caught up in a row between Russia and their homeland

Most of the 20 diplomats and their families disembarked at the Vaclav Havel Airport on Monday evening after being expelled from Moscow. Others had left by car

The move followed a decision by Czech authorities to expel 18 diplomats from the Russian embassy in Prague over suspicions that Russian intelligence was involved in explosions at an ammunition depot in October and December 2014. Russia denies the accusation

The European Union deplored Russia's tit-for-tat expulsion, saying it stood in full solidarity with Czechia, also known as the Czech Republic.

'The European Union is deeply concerned about the repeating negative pattern of dangerous malign behaviour by Russia in Europe,' the European Commission said in a statement late on Monday.

'Russia must stop with these activities, which violate well-established international principles and norms and threaten stability in Europe.'

Prior to the statement, acting Czech Foreign Minister Jan Hamacek said he had asked fellow EU foreign ministers for 'an expression of solidarity' at a video conference on Monday.

Citing an intelligence report, the Czech government has said Russia's military secret service GRU orchestrated a 2014 explosion that killed two people, followed by another one the same year.

The European Union deplored Russia's tit-for-tat expulsion, saying it stood in full solidarity with Czechia, also known as the Czech Republic. Pictured: A girl looks out from the window of a plane carrying expelled diplomats from the Czech embassy in Moscow

Czech police are seeking two men in connection with the blast, who British authorities also identified as suspects in the 2018 poisoning with the nerve agent Novichok of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury.

The Kremlin has dubbed the expulsion of its diplomats 'provocative and unfriendly'.

Also on Monday the Czech government said it would eliminate Russia's Rosatom from a multi-billion-euro tender to build a new nuclear plant unit and would no longer consider buying Sputnik V vaccines.

Russian atomic energy agency Rosatom will not be addressed to submit documents for security assessment,' Czech Industry and Trade Minister Karel Havlicek told reporters.

The decision leaves France's EdF, South Korea's KHNP and US-based Westinghouse in play for a contract to build the new unit at the southern Dukovany plant by 2036.

As well as ruling Rosatom out of the nuclear tender, Hamacek said the Czech Republic would no longer consider buying the Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine against Covid-19.

'The only way now is to rely on vaccines that have been approved by the European Medicines Agency,' Hamacek said.

On Monday, acting Czech Foreign Minister Jan Hamacek said he had asked fellow EU foreign ministers for 'an expression of solidarity' at a video conference

The 20 Russian diplomats, identified by Czech intelligence as spies, left Prague for Moscow on Monday

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said the 2014 explosion at an ammunition depot near the eastern village of Vrbetice was not an act of state terrorism as it targeted goods owned by a Bulgarian arms dealer.

'He probably sold these arms to entities fighting against Russia,' Babis told reporters.

'But there's no way we could tolerate GRU agents carrying out such operations here,' he added.

The attack happened in the same year that Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine and a conflict broke out between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed rebels in the east of the country.

Babis said the attack was 'fumbled' as the military material was probably meant to explode on its way to Bulgaria and not on Czech territory.

People gather outside the Russian embassy in Prague on Monday to protest the country's alleged interference in Czechia

Citing an intelligence report, the Czech government has said Russia's military secret service GRU orchestrated a 2014 explosion that killed two people, followed by another one the same year. Pictured: Police officers stand guard as people protest outside the Russian embassy in Prague on Monday

The two Russians allegedly behind the explosion were identified as Alexander Mishkin and Anatoly Chepigov based on video footage from the site and photos published after the Skripal attack.

Top Czech prosecutor Pavel Zeman said the two had arrived in the Czech Republic several days before the first blast, presenting themselves as arms dealers.

The purported Bulgarian client, the Emco company owned by entrepreneur Emilian Gebrev, said it had not planned any transport of arms from the depot 'in the months before, during and at least a year after the explosions, neither to Bulgaria nor to any third country'.

Gebrev himself was the victim of a poisoning in 2015 in the Bulgarian capital Sofia and an investigation for attempted murder is ongoing.

Gebrev has said that he believes he, his son and an executive from Emco were all targeted with a Novichok-related substance.
Panaji, April 19 : Even as the state's requirement for oxygen is set to double, according to Health Minister Vishwajit Rane, the state government is leaving no stone unturned to supplement its inventory of oxygen supplies, even reaching out to government and private players in states like Kerala and Karnataka.

The state has witnessed an unprecedented surge in Covid-19 cases -- mirroring a similar spike pan-India -- resulting in the need for ramping up generation of supply of oxygen, a critical requirement during treatment of Covid-19 patients, who suffer from acute symptoms that includes shortness of breath.

Rane said that an elaborate plan was being put in play to ensure that oxygen was available to all patients in the care of government hospitals, even as the Opposition has demanded a thorough audit of essential medicines and oxygen, which Leader of Opposition Digambar Kamat said should be made public.

"Future forecast is double. Exactly double of what we are using today. That much oxygen we would require. We need to make more arrangements," Rane said.

Currently, the state's apex medical facility, the Goa Medical College, consumes 45 trolleys of oxygen cylinders per day and the other designated Covid-19 facility, the South Goa district hospital consumes 18 trolleys per day. Each trolley comprises of 150 cylinders.

"The situation is expected to worsen," Rane said.

The Health Ministry has already reached out to local manufacturers of oxygen in Goa and has made contact with the Kerala government and industries in Karnataka to tap in more supply.

Rane said that, thanks to Kerala's Health Minister KK Shailaja, Goa had been able to procure 20,000 litres of liquid oxygen, while the government was also looking to tap industrial units in Kerala to source more of the precious resource.

"Government is trying its best to increase its oxygen capacity," Rane said, adding that the volume of oxygen requirement was "going up everyday".

Goa has witnessed a sudden, but steep bump in the number of Covid-19 cases, which have leapt from an average of 500 new cases per day last week to nearly 900 plus over the last three days. Increase in the number of cases, has also led to increase in hospitalisation of Covid-19 patients, which has led to an increased demand in oxygen supply.

With reports of a shortage in oxygen supplies in several parts of the country, Goa Opposition leader Digambar Kamat had demanded that the Health Ministry "release daily stock reports of availability of medical oxygen, medicines like remdesivir and Covid vaccines" for sake of transparency.

Rane however scoffed at the request made by Kamat.

"Are they doctors? The doctors are with me. Make positive suggestions. Do not politicise these critical health issues," Rane said.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Rhianna Gardner was left with a bruised cheek following the attack in Colchester, Essex

A young woman was left with a black eye after being attacked by dognappers who tried to steal her pug amid a worrying rise in canine crimes sweeping the UK.

Rhianna Gardner was walking her dog in woodland in Colchester, Essex, last Thursday at 8pm when she was targeted.

She bravely put up a fight and managed to thwart the theft but was left with bruising to her cheek.

Rhianna said the dognappers 'picked on the wrong person' but warned other female dog owners to be on guard.

Essex Police have been made aware.

Rhianna took to Facebook to post about her terrifying ordeal.

She wrote: 'Any young girls walking their dogs at night alone please think again.

'I was attacked last night at 8pm in daylight walking through a small open woods in Colchester.

'They tried to take my dog but they picked the wrong person. We are both okay.

'Ladies make sure you are not walking alone. Police are aware.'

And other social media users were quick to comment on Rhianna's experience.

One wrote: 'Thank God you're both okay. Well done for standing up for yourself.'

Another added: 'Well done you for fighting back. I would go crazy as well if anyone tried to take mine. It is a scary world out there at the moment.

She bravely put up a fight and managed to thwart the theft of her pet pug (pictured) but warned other female dog owners to be on guard

'I always go out with someone else, please be careful next time hun.

'Maybe ask someone to come with you or join a dog walking club, really sad when you can't just nip out for some fresh air with your little one in fear of it being stolen.'

And a third said: 'You are a brave girl, happy you are both safe now.'

Essex Police has been approached for comment.

The attack follows a spike in dog theft cases in the UK during the pandemic - with incidents increasing by almost a fifth amid the coronavirus lockdown as soaring demand saw prices for some breeds almost doubled.

The pet owner said she has made Essex Police aware of the incident before taking to Facebook to post about her terrifying ordeal

In a Facebook post, she began: 'She wrote: 'Any young girls walking their dogs at night alone please think again'

Staffordshire bull terriers, chihuahuas and cocker spaniels are among the most sought-after breeds being targeted by dognappers who are looking to cash in during the pandemic.

Google searches for 'buy a puppy' increased by 166 per cent after the UK-wide lockdown, announced on 23 March, meant millions of people would be working from home.

Thieves recently stole an entire litter of seven cocker spaniel puppies, valued at 2,000 each, along with their mother from a caravan in Cambridge.

Average asking price for some of UK's most sought after breeds Breed Before lockdown After lockdown % increase Dachshunds 973 1,838 89 Chow Chows 1,119 1,872 67 Pugs 684 1,064 56 French Bulldogs 1,251 1,905 52 English Bulldogs 1,637 2,140 31 Source: Dogs Trust

And, last month, Nala - a cross between a Maltese and a poodle known as a Maltipoo - was stolen in north London after crooks hijacked the van for a professional dog walking service.

But it is thought that Staffordshire bull terriers remain the most popular breed of dog to be targeted by thieves, according to a survey from Direct Line.

Dogs Trust's Chief Executive, Owen Sharp, previously told MailOnline: 'We understand that dog owners are increasingly concerned about dog theft.

'Demand for dogs is at an all-time high and prices for some of the UK's most desirable dog breeds are at their highest in three years, and possibly at an all-time high, with the costs for some dogs increasing month-on-month since lockdown began last year.

'Given the high demand for dogs in recent months and the increase in prices, it is no wonder criminals are taking advantage of the situation.'

Home Secretary Priti Patel is looking to bring in tougher sentences as the maximum at the moment is seven years in prison.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Flex Logix Technologies, Inc., supplier of the fastest and most-efficient AI edge inference accelerator and the leading supplier of eFPGA IP, announced today that its executives will be presenting on Day 4 and Day 5 of the 2021 Linley Spring Processor Forum. Topics will include high performance inference for power constrained applications as well as the critical need for software to maximize throughput, accuracy, and power and inference solutions.

Following are the details around each Flex Logix presentation. For more information or to view the presentations after they are presented, please visit the Flex Logix website.

Session 6: Edge-AI Software

Presentation title: Why Software Is Critical for AI Inference Accelerators

Speaker: Jeremy Roberson, Technical Director and AI Inference Software Architect, Flex Logix

Date: Thursday, April 22

Time: 8:30 am  10:30 am PT

Summary: In this presentation, Jeremy will discuss the importance of software in maximizing the throughput, accuracy, and power of an AI inference accelerator. He will examine how codeveloping software with hardware allows for architecture tradeoffs that maximize throughput/power for customer models. The software compiler must seamlessly translate data into meaningful results without knowledge of the hardware inner workings. Finally, he will discuss how with the continued evolution of CNN models, software adaptability will continue to drive throughput/power/cost improvements for broader adoption of AI functionality.

Session 9: Efficient AI Inference

Presentation title: High Performance Inference for Power Constrained Applications

Speaker: Cheng Wang, Sr. VP, Software Architecture Engineering, Flex Logix

Date: Friday, April 23

Time: 10:10 am  11:40 am PT

Summary: In this presentation, Cheng Wang will discuss AI inference solutions for power constrained applications, such as edge gateways, networking towers, and medical imaging devices. He will begin with the set of considerations for hardware deployment, as these applications have lower thermal constraints and usually do not have space for a full size PCIe card. This will lead into a brief overview of the M.2 form factor, where he will then talk about the role of an M.2 inference accelerator in the system designs for such applications.

About Flex Logix

Flex Logix is a reconfigurable computing company providing AI inference and eFPGA solutions based on software, systems and silicon. Its InferX X1 is the industry's fastest and most-efficient AI edge inference accelerator that will bring AI to the masses in high-volume applications by providing much higher inference throughput per dollar and per watt. Flex Logix's eFPGA platform enables chips flexibly handle changing protocols, standards, algorithms, and customer needs and to implement reconfigurable accelerators that speed key workloads 30-100x compared to processors. Flex Logix is headquartered in Mountain View, California with offices as well in Austin, Texas. For more information, visit https://flex-logix.com.

MEDIA CONTACTS

Kelly Karr

Tanis Communications

[email protected]

+408-718-9350

Copyright 2021. All rights reserved. Flex Logix is a registered trademark and InferX is a trademark of Flex Logix, Inc.

SOURCE Flex Logix Technologies, Inc.
Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow, speaks during a rally on the National Mall in Washington on Dec. 12, 2020. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

MyPillow Sues Dominion Voting Systems for $1.6 Billion

MyPillow sued Dominion Voting Systems on April 19 for $1.6 billion, asserting that the election technology company unlawfully interfered with the free speech rights of CEO Mike Lindell.

Attorneys for MyPillow claim that Dominion has engaged in bullying of Lindell, a strong supporter of former President Donald Trump, over his attempts to speak out about allegations of fraud in the 2020 presidential election. In February, Dominion sued Lindell and his company for defamation, seeking $1.3 billion.

Defendants, in their role as agents of the state administering public elections, have conducted an expansive illegal campaign which was designed to, and did, punish and silence any voice that criticized or questioned Defendants actions or products, the lawyers wrote in the 51-page suit, which was obtained by The Epoch Times.

Defendants illegal campaign to punish and silence their critics violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment as applied to the states and their political subdivisions and agents under the Fourteenth Amendment and 42 U.S.C. Section 1983.

The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court in Minnesota.

Lindell, in a live stream on his new Frank Speech website on April 19, called the matter the most important case in history for your First Amendment rights

Dominion legal counsel Stephen Shackelford told The Epoch Times via email, This is a meritless retaliatory lawsuit, filed by MyPillow to try to distract from the harm it caused to Dominion.

The building housing the Toronto office of Dominion Voting Systems. (The Epoch Times)

Dominion makes election machines and related products. Its items are used in 28 states and Puerto Rico, according to the company.

Dominion sued Lindell in February in federal court in Washington. Lawyers said Lindell lied about links between Dominion and alleged election fraud. The company has also sued lawyer Sidney Powell and Fox News.

It sent letters to dozens of other individuals and companies, threatening lawsuits if certain conditions werent met.

A number of companies issued statements after receipt of the letter.

American Thinker publisher Thomas Lifson, for example, told readers that his website published pieces that falsely accuse Dominion of conspiring to steal the November 2020 election from Donald Trump.

The site apologized for publishing the stories.

But in the new suit, MyPillow lawyers say in years leading up to the 2020 election, there was evidence that Dominion machines were vulnerable to being hacked. For example, a federal judge in Georgia in October 2020 said some Dominion machines failed to register valid votes and werent being reviewed before being rejected, resulting in irreversible voter disenfranchisement.

Both Dominion and MyPillow assert they lost business because of the respective lawsuits, and are asking for damages as a result.

Samuel Allegri contributed to this report.
(CNN) -- After a day of closing arguments, jury deliberations began late Monday afternoon in former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin's trial in the death of George Floyd.

In the state's closing argument, a prosecutor said Chauvin kneeled on Floyd's neck and back for 9 minutes and 29 seconds because of his pride and his ego in the face of concerned bystanders.

"He was not going to let these bystanders tell him what to do. He was going to do what he wanted, how he wanted, for as long as he wanted. And there was nothing, nothing they can do about it because he had the authority. He had the power, and the other officers, the bystanders were powerless," prosecuting attorney Steve Schleicher said. "He was trying to win, and George Floyd paid for it with his life."

The comments about Chauvin's pride and ego were the first time prosecutors have specifically discussed Chauvin's mindset when Floyd died on May 25, 2020 -- elements that are key to the charges of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter against him.

In response, defense attorney Eric Nelson said Chauvin acted as a "reasonable officer" would in that situation and said there was no evidence he intentionally or purposefully used force that was unlawful.

"You have to look at it from the reasonable police officer standard. You have to take into account that officers are human beings, capable of making mistakes in highly stressful situations," Nelson said. "In this case, the totality of the circumstances that were known to a reasonable police officer in the precise moment the force was used demonstrates that this was an authorized use of force, as unattractive as it may be. This is reasonable doubt."

Prosecuting attorney Jerry Blackwell then delivered a rebuttal rejecting the defense's claim that Floyd died because of an enlarged heart.

"The reason George Floyd is dead is because Mr. Chauvin's heart is too small," he said.

Judge Peter Cahill instructed jurors on the law before and after closing arguments, and sent them off outside the courtroom just after 5 p.m. ET. The jury will remain sequestered for deliberations and will stay in a hotel at night.

During the trial, prosecutors called 38 witnesses to testify, including police use-of-force experts who criticized Chauvin and medical experts who explained how Floyd died. The defense called seven witnesses of its own -- but not Chauvin himself, as he invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to testify.

Chauvin, 45, has pleaded not guilty to all three charges. If convicted, he could face up to 40 years in prison for second-degree murder, up to 25 years for third-degree murder, and up to 10 years for second-degree manslaughter. The charges are to be considered separate, so Chauvin could be convicted of all, some or none of them.

The end of the trial comes 11 months after Floyd's death on a Minneapolis street set off widespread protests about how police treat Black people.

No matter this trial's verdict, the broader issue shows no signs of lessening. Last week, just miles away from the courthouse, a Brooklyn Center police officer was charged with manslaughter after she fatally shot 20-year-old Daunte Wright during a traffic stop.

Tensions are high throughout the region, and authorities have ramped up security around Minneapolis. The Hennepin County Government Center has been surrounded by fencing and barricades since jury selection began in March. This past week, crews installed razor wire around some police buildings, and National Guard troops have been deployed in parts of downtown Minneapolis.

Gov. Tim Walz requested additional law enforcement assistance from Ohio and Nebraska in advance of the verdict, according to a press release from his office on Monday.

Prosecution: 'Believe your eyes'

In his closing argument, Schleicher spoke for an hour and 43 minutes as he sought to prove that Chauvin used excessive and unreasonable force and caused Floyd's death.

He contrasted Chauvin's "ego-based pride" with the proper feelings of pride in wearing a police badge and praised policing as a noble profession. He insisted the state was prosecuting Chauvin individually -- not policing in general.

"This is not an anti-police prosecution; it is a pro-police prosecution," he said. "There is nothing worse for good police than bad police."

Schleicher's closing argument relied on a series of video clips that showed Chauvin's actions that day, linking them explicitly to the language of each charge.

"George Floyd's final words on May 25, 2020, were, 'Please, I can't breathe,' and he said those words to Derek Chauvin," Schleicher told the jurors. "All that was required was a little compassion, and none was shown on that day."

Schleicher told jurors to reject defense theories and look at what they know happened.

"You need to focus on what did happen. George Floyd was not a threat, he never was. He was not resisting. He was just not able to comply. They should have recognized that," he said. "The defendant was on top of him, stayed on top of him, grinding, his knees into him. Pressing down on him, continuing to twist his arm twisting. up against the handcuffs. A pain compliance technique without the opportunity to comply," he added.

At the end, Schleicher simplified the case into a concise argument: "Believe your eyes."

"This case is exactly what you thought when you saw it first, when you saw that video. It is exactly that. You can believe your eyes. It's exactly what you believed. It's exactly what you saw with your eyes. It's exactly what you knew, what you felt in your gut. It's what you now know in your heart," he said. "This wasn't policing. This was murder."

Defense: 9 minutes and 29 seconds ignores the full story

Nelson's case to acquit Chauvin has been to argue that his use of force was appropriate, that he was distracted by the crowd of hostile bystanders and that Floyd died due to fentanyl and methamphetamine use, his resistance of officers and his underlying health issues.

He said the prosecution's focus on 9 minutes and 29 seconds, rather than Floyd's active resistance in the minutes earlier, was inappropriate.

"It's not the proper analysis because the 9 minutes and 29 seconds ignores the previous 16 minutes and 59 seconds. It completely disregards it," he said. "Human behavior is unpredictable, and nobody knows it better than a police officer."

Nelson argued Chauvin had no intent to use unlawful force and that he followed his training.

"These are officers doing their job in a highly stressful situation, according to their training, according to the policies of the Minneapolis Police Department. It's tragic. It's tragic," he said.

During the restraint, he said, the bystanders were in their own crisis and made the scene unsafe for Chauvin to render aid and care for Floyd. At the same time that Floyd took his last breath, Chauvin pulled out his mace to keep the crowd back and an off-duty firefighter walked up to the scene from behind, startling him, Nelson said.

"All of these facts and circumstances simultaneously occur at a critical moment. That changed officer Chauvin's perception of what was happening," he said.

Nelson highlighted Floyd's use of fentanyl and methamphetamine and his heart issues, and he expressed incredulity that the prosecution's doctors dismissed those as a cause in his death.

"I would submit to you that it is nonsense that none of these other factors had any role. That is not reasonable," he said.

He spoke for about two and a half hours before Judge Cahill forced him to pause so that the jury could have lunch. A pool reporter inside the court noted that the jury appeared to be getting antsy, with several rubbing their eyes and fidgeting. After the break, Nelson spoke for about 15 minutes more.

In Blackwell's rebuttal, he took issue with the defense saying there were two sides to every story.

"There really aren't two sides to the story on whether this force is unreasonable," he said.

He noted that, legally, prosecutors did not have to prove that Chauvin's actions were the only cause of death -- just that they were a substantial causal factor in Floyd's death.

Further, he defended the crowd of bystanders, referring to them as a "bouquet of humanity" who came together to try to help a stranger who was suffering. They were in anguish, Blackwell said, torn between their respect for the police and their concern for Floyd's life, but they did not physically intervene.

"They respect this badge, even if it tore them up inside," he said.

45 witnesses over 3 weeks of testimony

The prosecution's case fit into three distinct phases with 38 witnesses: what happened to Floyd last May, the Minneapolis Police use-of-force policy and the medical analysis of why Floyd died.

The first week of testimony largely focused on Floyd's final moments and the distressed bystanders who watched Chauvin kneel on Floyd while he was handcuffed and prone on the street. Video from the bystanders and police body camera footage showed Floyd's gasps for air and calls for his "mama" over those excruciating minutes, leaving several witnesses in tears.

Next, a series of police supervisors and use-of-force experts criticized Chauvin's actions as excessive and unreasonable. They said he violated policies around de-escalation, objectively reasonable use of force and the requirement to render aid. Foremost among the critics was Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo.

"That in no way, shape or form is anything that is by policy. It is not part of our training, and it is certainly not part of our ethics or our values," Arradondo said.

The medical testimony, particularly from Dr. Martin Tobin, laid out the mechanics of how Floyd died. The renowned pulmonary critical care doctor testified that Floyd died from a "low level of oxygen" when Chauvin pinned him to the street and restricted his ability to breathe -- what's known as positional asphyxia.

In contrast, the former Minneapolis police officer's defense team called seven witnesses -- but Chauvin was not among them.

A police use-of-force expert testified that Chauvin's restraint of Floyd was "justified," and a forensic pathologist testified that Floyd's cause of death was "undetermined," saying his underlying heart issues were the main causes.

Several other defense witnesses have testified about Floyd's drug use, particularly during a prior arrest in May 2019 in which he ingested opioids as police approached him in a vehicle.

Together, the witnesses furthered the defense's three main arguments in the case: that Floyd died due to drug and health problems, that Chauvin's use of force was ugly but appropriate, and that a hostile crowd of bystanders distracted Chauvin.

The-CNN-Wire

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For half a century, through war, anarchy and upheaval, Afghanistan has been stripped of tens of thousands of Buddhist and Hindu antiquities, some dating back more than 1,800 years.

Many of those items entered the Western market in the 1990s and early 2000s, St John Simpson, a curator at the British Museum, told The New York Times last month. And all of those, he said, were almost certainly illegally exported or stolen.

On Monday, 33 of those antiquities, valued at $1.8 million, were handed over to the Afghan ambassador, Roya Rahmani, by the Manhattan district attorneys office and the Department of Homeland Security, at a ceremony in New York.

The artifacts were part of a hoard of 2,500 objects valued at $143 million seized in a dozen raids between 2012 and 2014 from Subhash Kapoor, a disgraced Manhattan art dealer currently jailed in India on smuggling and theft charges.
Residents of Aflao in the Ketu South District in the Volta Region have expressed profound gratitude to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, for the nomination of their son into the highest office as a Deputy Minister of Communication.



According to them, Richard Ahiagbahs nomination is an indication of the confidence the President has reposed in him based on hard work to occupy such a high-profile office.



The Aflao residents also assured the President and his government of their full support for Richard Ahiagbah to excel and perform.



They also congratulated him on his nomination and reassured him of their support to enable him live up to his expectation.



Richard Ahiagbah, until his nomination as Deputy Communication Minister, was the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Danquah Institute.



Profile of Hon. Richard Ahiagbah



Mr. Richard Ahiagbah comes from Aflao, in the Ketu South District in the Volta Region.



He has engaged in politics at the highest levels in the NPP abroad. He is a conviction patriot, who believes the liberal-conservative worldview of the NPP is the best vehicle for Ghanas accelerated growth and development.



As a member affiliated with the Chicago Chapter and the larger NPP-USA Branch, Richard has played significant roles for the party.



In his roles as the Communication Director of the Chicago Chapter and a member of NPP-USA Communication team, Richard appears regularly as a panelist on radio and TV talk shows for the party.



In addition, Richard also publishes articles to advance or defend the government and party interests. He is a key member of NPP-USAs Rapid Response Team, created to rejoin, defend or promote the party and government programs.



At present, Richard is leading a three-member committee to develop a strategic plan for the NPP-USA communication team.



In addition to his participation in team efforts, Richard created a website in 2014 devoted to promoting the electoral goals of the NPP. All the articles he published and boosted on his website were also submitted and carried on leading Ghanaian online and print media for broader reach.



In the 2016 elections, Richard served as the Diasporan Mobilization Coordinator, an effort designed to augment the partys 2016 election monitoring capacity. The mobilization effort by the external branches of the NPP has been described widely as an essential factor in the 2016 triumph.



In 2012, Richard got the consultancy firm he worked for in the USA, to agree to send a small team of field campaign organizers from the USA to support the NPP.



While abroad, Richard maintains close relations with party members in Ghana and supports grassroots activist groups in service to the party.



And each time he is in Ghana, he campaign and interacts with members of his resident constituency, Kpone Katamanso, Ketu South and other constituencies in the country.



Richard served and continued to serve the party financially.



In 2012, he participated in a fundraising with Vice President Bawumia in Alexandria, Virginia. In 2016, he supported and led many fundraising efforts to enable the Chicago Chapter to fund its adopted constituency (Asutifi South).



Richard is an active participant in US politics; a vital experience which he has brought to bear on his service to the NPP. He has worked on several US Presidential, Congressional and State campaigns.



He also played instrumental role in the party's victory in 2016 and 2020 general election

Source: Josephine Acheampomaa/[email protected]









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Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga met with United States President Joe Biden Friday in Washington for a summit aimed at strengthening the US-Japan military alliance amid Washingtons escalating confrontation with China. The meeting was the first Biden has held in-person with a world leader since taking office, indicating the importance Washington places on Japan for its agenda.

In their joint statement, Biden and Suga accused China of destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region. The two leaders, the statement said, exchanged views on the impact of Chinas actions on peace and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region and the world, and shared their concerns over Chinese activities that are inconsistent with the international rules-based order, including the use of economic and other forms of coercion.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga delivers remarks in a meeting with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs Toshimitsu Motegi and Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi, Tokyo, March 16, 2021. (DoD photo by Lisa Ferdinando)

Washington insists that China bow to the international rules-based orderthat is, the post-World War II framework established by the US in which American imperialism was the dominant power and set the rules. Driven by the fear that China could undermine its global position, the US has for the past decadefirst under Obama, then Trump and now Bidensought to undermine China economically and strategically, including through a massive military build-up in the Indo-Pacific.

The most significant aspect of the Biden-Suga statement was a reference to Taiwan, which has been thrust to the fore by Washington, particularly in the past year. The statement declared the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and encouraged the peaceful resolution of cross-Strait issues. This is the first time that US and Japanese leaders have directly mentioned Taiwan since Richard Nixon and Eisaku Sato made such a declaration in 1969.

While the reference might appear innocuous, it further undermines the One China policy that both the US and Japan accepted as the basis for establishing diplomatic relations with China, following Nixons visit to Beijing in 1972. Under the One China policy, the two countries effectively recognized Beijing as the legitimate government of all China, including Taiwan. Previously they had recognized the Kuomintang (KMT) dictatorship in Taipei, established after it fled the Chinese mainland following the 1949 Chinese Revolution, as the government-in-exile of all China.

In the protracted discussions before the establishment of US diplomatic relations with China in 1979, Taiwan had been the most difficult obstacle to overcomea measure of how sensitive it is today. While President Jimmy Carter oversaw the process, he also signed into law the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act that ensured the sale of US military hardware to Taiwan and gave a vague guarantee of US support for Taiwan against alleged Chinese aggression.

The Trump administration significantly boosted arms sales to Taiwan and stepped up contacts between Taiwanese and US officials. In his final days in office, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dispensed with longstanding diplomatic protocols limiting such contacts and thereby undermined the One China policya move that Biden has largely continued. At the same time, top-level US officials have been warning of a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan as a means for justifying even closer relations with Taiwan, including possible military ties.

The Biden administration had been pushing Japan to take a tougher stance against China over Taiwan. The fact that it was even mentioned in the joint statement indicates that behind closed doors Biden and Suga discussed closer collaboration over Taiwan in some detail. The issue is particularly delicate for Japan as it was the colonial ruler of Taiwan (Formosa) from 1895 to 1945 when it reverted to China after Japans defeat. Japan is also heavily dependent on its economic relations with China.

Beijing immediately criticized the joint Biden-Suga statement. The Chinese embassy in Washington accused the two countries of stoking division and building blocs against other countries under the banner of free and open. The embassys statement reiterated that Taiwan, along with Hong Kong and Xinjiang, were internal Chinese affairs and warned that Beijing would firmly safeguard its national sovereignty, security and development interests.

Beijing has repeatedly warned that it would use force if the government in Taipei were to declare formal independence from China. In response to the Biden-Suga statement, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng said: We are prepared to do everything we can for a peaceful reunification (with Taiwan). That said, we dont pledge to give up other options. No option is excluded.

The Biden administration is deliberately raising tensions with China over what is potentially the most dangerous flashpoint for war in Asia. The current Taiwanese administration is headed by President Tsai Ing-wen from the Democratic Progressive Party, which advocates a more independent stance for Taiwan. By forging closer ties with Taipei, the US, aided by Japan, is encouraging Tsai to push for independence and risk conflict.

Under Biden, the US navy has already sailed through the Taiwan Strait four times, on track to pass the annual record of 13 such voyages set under Trump last year.

At the same time, Biden and Suga restated their opposition to China in other flashpoints. We reiterated our objections to Chinas unlawful maritime claims and activities in the South China Sea and reaffirmed our strong shared interest in a free and open South China Sea governed by international law, in which freedom of navigation and overflight are guaranteed, consistent with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Biden has continued freedom of navigation operations, provocatively sending US warships into Chinese-claimed waters in the South China Sea. The US has not signed the UN convention that it accuses China of breaching.

Biden also reaffirmed that the US-Japan Security Treaty applies to the uninhabited rocky outcrops in the East China Sea, known as the Senkaku or Diaoyu Islands, that are controlled by Japan but also claimed by China. In other words, the US would back Japan militarily in the event of war with China over these islets, using its full range of capabilities, including nuclear.

The Biden-Suga talks are part of a US diplomatic offensive to strengthen its strategic partnerships in preparation for conflict with China. Last month, Biden held the first-ever leaders summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue that included Suga along with prime ministers Scott Morrison and Narendra Modi of Australia and India respectively. The Quad is a quasi-military alliance aimed against China.

This was followed by the first overseas trip by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to Japan and South Korea. South Korean President Moon Jae-in is due to meet Biden in Washington early next month.

Biden and Suga also pledged to deepen their economic cooperation. At a joint press conference, Biden prefaced the announcement of the new US-Japan Competitiveness and Resilience Partnership (CoRe) by again declaring that the two countries would work together to take on the challenges from China.

In particular, the US and Japan plan to spend $2.5 billion and $2 billion respectively to develop 5G mobile networks, as well as future 6G networks. A White House statement said the two would also cooperate on sensitive supply chains, including semiconductors, and on the promotion and protection of critical technologies.

These communication networks and technologies are crucial for US war efforts. Semiconductors are essential for military equipment like warplanes and missile guidance systems. The fact that the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company dominates the global production of chips, particularly the most advanced, is a factor in the US focus on Taiwan.
Governments worldwide are expected to seek more proposals for wind power stations to produce electricity in coastal areas this year.

The new international wind power developments could produce more than 30 gigawatts of electricity. That is almost as much as the 35 gigawatts currently produced around the world. Some industry experts say the business environment for wind power is very competitive.

Several European oil companies including Total, BP and Shell plan to quickly expand their renewable energy businesses. They aim to reduce dependence on oil and gas production to satisfy investors who want long-term business plans that result in less pollution. Many governments are also ordering electricity companies to meet increasingly lower pollution targets.

Big oil companies are entering the renewable power market although it is less profitable than traditional operations. Earlier this year, BP and German company EnBW paid a record price for development rights to two offshore areas that could produce three gigawatts of electricity. The sites are near the coast of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The developers pay a yearly amount before making a final investment decision. The payment for BP and EnBW will amount to almost $1.4 billion made in four yearly payments for rights to the areas.

Offshore wind power developers, Iberdrola, Orsted and SSE all confirmed to Reuters they had unsuccessfully sought the contract.

Some experts say the high fees threaten the cost reductions the industry has gained over the past 10 years. Mark Lewis is with BNP Paribas, a French banking group. He said the recent fee deal would add around 35 percent to project development costs.

BP said the fee was reasonable considering the area of the sites in the Irish Sea. He said they are not in deep water and are close to land. The company said the conditions at the sites will permit shorter, less costly connection wiring.

But, some in the industry have expressed concern. Ben Backwell is chief of the Global Wind Energy Council, an industry group. He said there are not enough projects to meet demand.

So you are going to create an over-heated market when what we want to see is more opportunities made available, he said.

Julien Pouget is a renewable energy expert with the French oil company Total. He said the technology is developing quickly. He noted announcements about larger wind turbines. He said the development makes his company hopeful about cost reductions that will make operations profitable.

Britain oversees the development contracts. The country guarantees producers a minimum price for electricity. But because industry costs are falling, the guaranteed price is now the lowest it has ever been: 30 percent lower than in 2017.

Asia and the U.S. are relatively new markets

Britain is the worlds largest offshore wind market. It is estimated that 10 gigawatts of electricity can be produced there.

European countries including Denmark, Poland and France are expected to hold competitive sales of development rights called auctions this year.

In the United States, President Joe Biden wants to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030. There are currently 13 projects in development. They are expected to produce around 9.1 gigawatts of electricity and might begin operation by 2026.

Spanish energy company Iberdrola is already involved in development proposals in the American states of Rhode Island and Massachusetts through its U.S. group, Avangrid. BP agreed to pay $1.1 billion in a deal last year to buy one-half of two U.S. developments from the Norwegian company Equinor.

In Asia, Japan plans to develop up to 10 gigawatts of offshore wind electricity by 2030. The country plans to expand that amount to 30 to 45 gigawatts by 2040.

Iberdrola bought Japanese developer Acacia Renewables last year. It said it expects to take part in the sales in Japan.

However, experts warned that new areas cannot expect high prices for development rights, also called seabed leases. And they cannot expect to offer price guarantees as low as Britains. Backwell of the Global Wind Energy Council said the industry in Asia and in the U.S. is still developing.

He said: Each region has to build up its own industry and skills before they can expect to see the most competitive prices.

Im Caty Weaver. And Im Alice Bryant.

The Reuters news agency reported this story. Caty Weaver adapted it for Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor.

______________________________________________________

Words in This Story

gigawatt n. a unit of power equal to one billion watts; a watt is a measure of energy

offshore adj. in the ocean away from the coast

opportunity n. an amount of time or a situation in which something can be done; a chance to do or gain something

turbine n. an engine that has a part with blades that turn because of pressure from water, steam or air

minimum adj. the lowest possible amount
Pu Zhang, author, Jung Chang's younger brother, at his home in London in 2012. (Courtesy of Pu Zhang)

CCP Targets Hong Kong Epoch Times Out of Fear, Says Novelist and Translator of Wild Swans

The Epoch Times is one of the main targets of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Hong Kong because it makes the CCP afraid, a Chinese novelist has said.

Pu Zhang, writer, and novelist from Chengdu, China, is the Chinese translator of the award-winning autobiography Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, and the younger brother of its author Jung Chang.

Pu Zhang (L), Jung Chang (R), and their mother in Chengdu, China, in 2010. (Courtesy of Pu Zhang)

Speaking to The Epoch Times on April 18, Zhang said he felt both indignation and pride when hearing the sabotage of the Hong Kong Epoch Times printing press on April 12.

In the early hours of April 12, four masked intruders broke into The Epoch Timess printing plant in Hong Kong. They tossed construction debris and smashed equipment before fleeing in a white van. The Hong Kong edition of The Epoch times had to suspend its distribution until April 16.

Construction debris on top of printing press equipment at the print shop that prints the Hong Kong edition of The Epoch Times in Hong Kong, China, on April 12, 2021. (Adrian Yu/The Epoch Times)

This is the fifth time the printing press has been sabotaged since it was set up in 2006.

Guo Jun, director of The Epoch Times Hong Kong edition, said that during the last 20 years, staff working at the publication have been followed, some of their family members in mainland China had been threatened, and their advertising clients, business partners, and landlords had been pressured.

The Epoch Times, Apple Daily Main Targets Of CCP

The attack [on Hong Kong Epoch Times] was inevitable, and will get worse in the future, Zhang said, attributing his prediction to the CCPs increasingly vicious actions as it works to tighten its grip on Hong Kong.

Since day one, when the CCP took power [in China], the single most important thing has been control, Zhang said, adding that it needs to control the media as well as peoples minds and speech.

The existence of The Epoch Times is increasingly threatening to the CCP, he said.

The Epoch Times and Jimmy Lais Apple Daily are definitely the main targets that they [the CCP] will suppress, attack, and eliminate. But on the other hand, Im proud of The Epoch Times, Zhang said.

The Epoch Times is an incredible media outlet. As its impact grows in Hong Kong and around the globe, the CCP is terrified, he said. So when I saw the news, apart from indignation, Im proud of The Epoch Times.

If you look at the media outlets in Hong Kong, [they] have fallen, he said.

Apart from the CCPs own publications, other media outlets in Hong Kong have been bought out by the CCPs money. [They would] get a so-called red-hat businessman to buy the whole newspaper with a lump sum, he said.

Basically, only two papers are left that are speaking the truth and fighting evil with righteousness, he added.

Hong Kong pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai is led into a police van as he heads to court to be charged under the Beijing-imposed controversial new national security law, on Dec. 12, 2020. (Peter Parks/AFP via Getty Images)

Pro-Beijing media and government officials in Hong Kong have set their sights on efforts to shut down the Apple Daily, as its founder was sentenced on April 16 to 14 months in prison for participating in Hong Kongs mass anti-Beijing and pro-democracy protests in 2019.

Everyone Is Worried About Hong Kong

Zhang has attended a number of Hong Kong pro-democracy rallies in the United Kingdom. He said that everyone is worried about Hong Kong.

Zhang said that from his own experience, he has witnessed freedom in Hong Kong diminishing.

My books, even just a fiction, when it was being sold in Hong Kong, the store would suddenly shut down, he said.

The CCP is afraid of even a love story. They are in control of big stores, which arent allowed to sell [my books], and small stores would be forced to shut down (after selling them).

Zhang said that it was primarily people from mainland China who would buy his books and bring them back home.

Hong Kong has been a beacon of hope for the people in mainland China, Zhang said.

Chinese people from the mainland saw hope there, [they] saw a land of freedom. Now this land, this freedom is diminishing. The CCP is once again putting chains around people, he said. Wouldnt any normal person be angered and frustrated?

One Country, Two Systems is no more, he said, adding that police in Hong Kong were being granted more control after the national security law was imposed.

Everyone is terrified. When I call my friend on the phone, [the friend] would get nervous after a few words and hang up.

Zhang said he is doing what he can to support freedom in Hong Kong from the UK, such as writing articles and attending rallies. He said, I feel that Im not letting myself down and that it gives my life some meaning.

I dont know if the CCP will fall, he added. Were waiting for the day it does.

CCP Influence in UK

Beyond Hong Kong, Zhang said the CCPs tentacles also run deep. He told The Epoch Times that he has witnessed the CCPs stifling influence even in the UK.

One of Zhangs novels, A Tibetan Girl Called Ata, tells a heart-wrenching love story between a Han Chinese and a Tibetan girl, set against the backdrop of the 2008 Tibetan unrest.

The novels English translation is set to be published soon but Zhang said it took him a while to find a publisher willing to take it on.

Several English publishers who found his book interesting wouldnt publish it because they were afraid of upsetting the CCP, he told The Epoch Times.

The CCP has a lot more control in the UK than in the United States because it controls all sorts of Chinese groups. Their informants are everywhere, he said.

Zhang said that the advertisement clients of The Epoch Times Chinese edition in the UK have also been pressured.

If you have a restaurant and advertised on The Epoch Times, youd immediately be intimidated and punished by the CCP, Zhang said. It [the CCP] rallies people to boycott the restaurant  not every Chinese is afraid of its intimidation and control.

Dr. Guihua Li, general manager of Epoch Media UK, confirmed that Epoch Timess clients would often drop out, and some had confirmed that they were being intimidated.

Eva Fu and Alex Wu contributed to this report.
Several changes have been made to the European Union-backed compromise to end the political crisis in Georgia. Head of the EU Delegation to Georgia Carl Hartzell, who introduced the changes to politicians earlier today, said this is a proposal that President of the European Council Charles Michel views as balanced and realistic.

Hartzell said after the meeting that 'some parties indicated before this meeting the need to consult the new proposal and we have taken that into account'. Therefore, he said, the mediators are now looking forward to again convincing the parties back here with the view to finalising this process as a way forward and end Georgias current political crisis.

The renewed text of the EU-proposed document reads that following the offer made by the Georgian Dream on April 16 early parliamentary elections shall be called in 2022 if the Georgian Dream party receives less than 43% of valid proportional votes in the October 2021 local self-government elections.

Parliament Speaker Archil Talakvadze said signing the initial document last Friday that if the ruling party will receive less then 40% of votes in this years local government elections, the party will discuss the issue of holding the repeat parliamentary elections.

The opposition politicians have been refusing to sign the initial document because it did not include the holding of repeat parliamentary elections and the release of 'political prisoners' - opposition United National Movement chair Nika Melia and co-founder of opposition-minded Mtavari Arkhi TV Giorgi Rurua.

The renewed document now says that 'within one week of signing this agreement, the two cases of perceived politicized justice' should be addressed 'either by an amnesty and/or by taking such steps as to produce an equivalent outcome'.

Almost all of the opposition politicians attending the meeting have expressed their willingness to sign the renewed document after they consult with other members of their respective parties, Agenda.ge reported.
Canadas governments are refusing to shut down schools and nonessential businesses amid a dramatic worsening of the COVID-19 pandemic across the country. Last Thursday, there were 9,561 new infections, a record since the start of the pandemic. In Ontario, where new cases are averaging more than 4,300 per day, hospitals and intensive care units (ICU) are buckling under a flood of new patients.

By prioritizing corporate profits over workers lives, the Justin Trudeau-led federal Liberal and Ontario Conservative governments are ensuring that the virus and its new and more lethal variants will continue to spread, threatening the lives of thousands and indeed tens of thousands of people in coming weeks and months.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has adamantly opposed shutting down schools and non-essential workplaces. (Photo credit: Ontario government)

The ruling elites callous indifference to the lives of workers and their families was epitomized in Ontario Premier Doug Fords emergency announcement on Friday, the third such announcement in as many weeks. Despite the horrifying projections made public immediately prior to his statement, including a worst-case scenario of 1,800 ICU patients and 18,000 daily cases by the end of May, Ford unveiled a series of totally ineffectual measures.

They included the extension of a stay at home order from four to six weeks, the reduction of capacity limits for retail outlets to 25 percent, a ban on outdoor meetings apart from gatherings consisting of one household and one other person who lives alone, and restrictions on inter-provincial travel.

Ford also gave draconian emergency powers to the police, empowering them to stop anyone outside of their home, demand details of where they were going and impose fines of up to $750 for violations of the provinces stay-at-home order. After a public outcry, with many rightly noting that they would be used disproportionately against low-income workers, Ford was forced to retreat Saturday and announce that the new policing powers were being dropped.

One of the sharpest condemnations of the government came from University of Toronto epidemiologist David Fisman, who told Global News, The reason its so frustrating to hear stuff like this is hes (Ford) got the science absolutely upside down.  We know in Ontario that the huge drivers right now of transmission are workplaces, particularly industrial workplaces, warehouses, Amazon distribution centres, post offices. We know a lot of the folks who are getting sick are lower income or have poor job security, cant stay home if they feel sick. And I didnt hear any of that today. I didnt hear any of that in todays press conference  Its so ridiculous.

Underscoring that the ruling class policy is to let the virus rip through workplaces and working class communities, Ford contemptuously brushed aside appeals from medical professionals that his government provide paid sick-leave for workers, even if only for the remainder of the pandemic. He also refused point blank to impose any new restrictions on worksites, other than a toothless ban on nonessential construction, which most contractors will simply evade by declaring their operations essential. In effect, the stay at home order exists only on paper, or more accurately only for those who can afford to do so.

In light of the well-known fact that workplaces are the main driver of the pandemic, Fords policies amount to a death sentence for hundreds of workers and their relatives. As the latest update from the governments own Ontario Science Table noted prior to Fords announcement, Without stronger system-level measures and immediate support for essential workers and high-risk communities, high case rates will persist through the summer.

The update noted that the province-wide test positivity rate is 7.9 percent. The World Health Organization considers any test positivity rate above 5 percent to indicate that a pandemic is out of control.

Ontarios hospitals are also showing signs of collapse as the number of patients continues to steadily rise. Over the weekend, the province surpassed the threshold of 2,000 COVID-19 patients in hospital and 700 patients in intensive care. This is more than double the rate that the government cited during the winter as the upper limit for guaranteeing regular health care for all.

Doctors acknowledge that a triage-type system in which care is rationed is already in effect, with some patients who normally would be hospitalized told to stay at home and others who normally would have been placed on ventilators receiving oxygen via a technique called high-flow nasal cannula. Triage describes a situation in which due to a lack of resources, medical personnel must determine who receives treatment and who is left to die.

At Sunnybrook Health Science Centre in Toronto, a field hospital is being brought into service to cope with the overflow of patients. Other field hospitals are expected to begin operating across the province in the coming days. The Ford government has made a desperate appeal to the federal government to help it mobilize 600 medical personnel from elsewhere in Canada to cover a staff shortage produced by decades of austerity and over a year of punishing pandemic-related workloads. Underscoring the fact that the catastrophic situation in Ontario is by no means unique, the Quebec, Saskatchewan and Alberta governments promptly responded that they have no medical personnel to spare. British Columbia is likewise confronting a mounting threat of equipment and personnel shortages, fueled by the spread of the P1 variant. First identified in Brazil, the P1 variant is highly transmissible and appears to be less impacted by, if not resistant to, existing vaccines.

In response to the calamity in Ontario, which will be repeated in most other provinces in the coming weeks unless an independent working class-led movement enforces a change in policy, the federal Trudeau government has all but washed its hands of any responsibility. Speaking like a disinterested external observer, Trudeau said at a Friday press conference, Canada continues to face an incredibly serious situation with this third wave, cases are rising rapidly in many cases, in many places, numbers are higher than they have ever been before and many hospitals are stretched way too thin.

In reality, Trudeau and the trade union-backed Liberal government bear chief responsibility for Canadas ruinous response to the pandemic, including for its second and third waves, which have already claimed well over 10,000 lives. They spearheaded the reckless back-to-work/back-to-school campaign last summer, ruled out comprehensive lockdowns in last falls throne speech, and have refused to provide the necessary resources to strengthen the health care system and provide the social supports that would allow working families to shelter at home till the spread of the virus is halted. The open economy policy created conditions in which the more infectious and deadlier COVID-19 mutations, the B.1.1.7 or UK variant, the B.1.351 or South African variant, and the P1 variant, could take root and are now spreading widely in communities across the country.

The Trudeau governments advocacy of a strategy based on profits before lives has been backed from the outset by the corporatist trade unions. Even now, with the health care system in the early stages of a terrible collapse, the union bureaucracy is refusing to call for any closures of industrial, manufacturing, logistical and other workplaces. Instead, the unions are offering their services, including to the hard-right Premier Ford, to ensure that the economy remains open throughout a deadly third wave in the face of deepening popular outrage.

In a pathetic open letter to Ford and other members of his cabinet last week, the Ontario Federation of Labour pleaded with the government to abide by the very labour relations laws and union/corporate management structures that have facilitated the spread of COVID-19 throughout the province, especially in industrial centres like Peel Region. The union federation, which ostensibly represents over 1 million workers, made not a single demand for the closure of businesses or schools. Instead, it urged the government, which even before the pandemic was shredding what worker rights remain, to ensure the enforcement of the existing toothless Occupational Health and Safety Act. The letter concluded with an appeal to Ford to open the door to enhanced cooperation with the unions, i.e., to create a new mechanism to enforce the profits before lives policy against worker opposition.

To resist this anti-worker agenda, bring the pandemic under control, and save lives, workers across Canada must intervene independently with their own political program and unite their struggles with their brothers and sisters internationally. Rejecting the capitalist imperative of protecting corporate profits, they should fight for the closure of all nonessential production with full pay for workers until the pandemic is over, and an end to all in-person learning in schools with comprehensive social support to families. These demands require a frontal assault on the vast wealth hoarded by the ruling elite, which must be expropriated as part of a socialist program to fund a global response to the pandemic based on the health and social needs of all.
MONTREAL, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (CDPQ), a global investment group, announced a USD 100-million investment in Druva, a global leader in cloud data protection and management. Three existing shareholders  Neuberger Berman, Viking Global Investors and Atreides Management  also participated in this growth round led by CDPQ and totalling USD 147 million. As part of the agreement, CDPQ is joining Druva's Board of Directors.

The Druva Cloud Platform enables organizations to centrally protect data irrespective of location: cloud environments, leading SaaS applications (Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and Salesforce), hybrid environments, or endpoint devices. Thousands of organizations worldwide, including over 50 of the Fortune 500, are using Druva's SaaS platform to reduce the complexity of data protection, accelerate and protect cloud projects and increase cyber resilience and regulatory compliance. Based in Sunnyvale, California, Druva has offices across the globe, including in Singapore, Japan, Germany, India and the United Kingdom.

"Druva has established itself as an industry-leading Data Protection as a Service (DPaaS) provider in the last few years by offering cloud-native data protection and management solutions that exceed the traditional offering because they are scalable, easy to deploy and less costly," explained Martin Laguerre, Executive Vice-President and Head of Private Equity and Capital Solutions at CDPQ. "The team has developed both a robust subscription-based business model and a solid customer base. With this transaction, we are delighted to support the strong growth of a company whose products are increasingly essential based on the acceleration of enterprise cloud adoption."

In 2020, Druva Cloud Platform's customer base expanded substantially, with the adoption of multiple Cloud Platform products increasing by 50%.

"The unprecedented events of 2020 have ushered in a generational cloud transformation for businesses, and data's increasing value is at the very heart of it," said Jaspreet Singh, founder and CEO, Druva. "CDPQ's long-term investment horizon, collaborative approach, sectorial expertise and global network make them an ideal partner as we expand the reach of Druva Cloud Platform and continue to invest in our product and technological capabilities. Working together, we will solidify our position as the data protection and management provider of choice."

Transaction in line with CDPQ's integrated technology strategy

CDPQ is active along the technology investment continuum  from early stage VC funds and direct investing in Series C to growth rounds and select pre-IPO opportunities. A three-pillar strategy was implemented in 2020 to make technology a critical performance driver where CDPQ: invests in new technology business models to deliver sustainable returns; protects its portfolios by systematically including technology as a factor in risk management; and promotes internal technological advances for its USD 287 billion global portfolio to ensure CDPQ remains a leading technology-driven organization.

"Rising volumes of stored data, rapid adoption of cloud and deployment of SaaS applications, regulatory frameworks and cybersecurity concerns have accelerated the demand for data protection and management solutions for businesses," said Alexandre Synnett, Executive Vice-President and Chief Technology Officer at CDPQ. "The working-from-home dynamic experienced globally has further accentuated the need for cloudbased data protection solutions and we believe Druva is in an excellent position to seize opportunities and enhance its clients' agility and data compliance."

"As we expand our exposure to investments in technology companies globally  and across all stages of the growth cycle  we see other opportunities, similar to Druva, in the AsiaPacific region where internet penetration and cloud adoption are increasing rapidly," added Meng Ann Lim, Managing Director, Direct Private Equity for Asia-Pacific, CDPQ Singapore.

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 DRUVA

Druva delivers Data Protection and Management for the cloud era. Druva Cloud Platform is built on AWS and offered as-a-Service; customers drive down costs by up to 50 percent by freeing themselves from the burden of unnecessary hardware, capacity planning, and software management. Druva is trusted by thousands of companies worldwide, including over 50 of the Fortune 500. Druva is a privately held company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and is funded by Sequoia Capital, Viking Global Investors, CDPQ, Neuberger Berman, Tenaya Capital, Riverwood Capital and Nexus Partners. Visit druva.com and follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

SOURCE Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec

Related Links

https://www.cdpq.com/


NASHVILLE The Tennessee Department of Commerce & insurance (TDCI) Securities Division is partnering with the Investor Protection Trust and PBS Books to produce Investing: Whats New & Whats Not virtual event set to livestream on TDCIs Facebook page on Friday, April 23, 2021 at 12:00 p.m. CT/ 1:00 p.m. ET.

One of the most important saving and investing goals is a financially secure retirement. Its a big goal. Fortunately, there are a variety of new and not new investing options and strategies out there that can help. Investing: Whats New & Whats Not will feature qualified experts who will discuss many of the new investment options, the tried-and-true investment strategies and how both can be part of a retirement savings plan.

The event will be interactive, allowing participants to ask questions, submit comments and get answers in real time. After the live event, Investing: Whats New & Whats Not will be available on the TDCIs website and on WI65.org, along with a variety of tools and resources for savers and investors of all ages and at all stages of life. Investing: Whats New & Whats Not is the second in a series of 12 When Im 65 Boomers to Zoomers: Building a Secure Path to Retirement virtual events.

This important event is another great opportunity for Tennessee investors of all ages to share strategies with experts about new and not new investment options and how both can be an important part of a retirement saving plan, said TDCI Assistant Commissioner Elizabeth Bowling.

The Investing: Whats New & Whats Not virtual event will livestream on TDCIs Facebook page, on Friday, April 23, 2021 at 12:00 p.m. CT/1:00 p.m. ET and will feature the following:

Host: Fred Nahhat, Detroit Public Television

Moderator: Donna Lowry, Georgia Public Broadcasting

Two Topic Segments: StripeSmart New Investment Strategies to Try SolidStandard Steps Toward A Secure Retirement



Partnering and aligning the great investor education work being done by state governments and the IPT with public television station and libraries is creating a powerful, sustainable resource for the public on this critical topic, said Rich Homberg, President and CEO of Detroit Public Television. Like public television, libraries are an important and trusted community resource. PBS Books has been partnering with libraries for over five years around important topics and few topics are more important than investing for a secure retirement. Bridging this work with the states is an incredible partnership in creating an evergreen land-scape of information and resources.

Michelle Olympiadis, Acting Executive Director of the Investor Protection Trust, said: Retirement is our single biggest saving goal. It is also one of our most important. The When Im 65 Boomers to Zoomers program is designed to give every person the tools, resources and information they need to prepare for retirement. We want viewers of all ages to learn about the new investment options and remember the not new strategies so they can build a nest egg that will give them the retirement they want.

The When Im 65 Boomers to Zoomers: Building a Secure Path to Retirement is a yearlong series of 12 60-minute virtual events livestreaming via Facebook Live on partner Facebook pages on the fourth Friday of each month at 12:00 p.m. CT/1:00 p.m. ET.

The series provides the quality, objective investor and financial information needed by all Americans to make wise and safe investment decisions at every age and every stage of life. The Boomers to Zoomers virtual events are interactive and feature timely topics, financial experts, motivational stories and practical information viewers can use immediately to prepare for long-term financial security. Upcoming Boomer to Zoomer virtual event topics include: Military Finances, Harness Your Inner Hummingbird: How to Build Your Nest Egg and Financial Freedom.

For more information visit, WI65.org.

###

About The Groups

About the Tennessee Department of Commerce & Insurance: Fostering fair marketplaces, public safety, and consumer education that promote the success of individuals and businesses while serving as innovative leaders. Our divisions include the State Fire Marshals Office, Insurance, Securities, Regulatory Boards, Tennessee Law Enforcement Training Academy, Tennessee Emergency Communications Board and TennCare Oversight. https://www.tn.gov/commerce.html | https://www.facebook.com/Tennessee- CommerceAndInsurance | https://twitter.com/TNCommerceInsur

The Investor Protection Trust (IPT) is a nonprofit organization devoted to investor education. More than half of all Americans are now invested in the securities markets, making investor education and protection vitally important. Since 1993 the Investor Protection Trust has worked with the states and at the national level to provide the independent, objective investor education needed by all Americans to make wise and safe investment decisions. www.investorprotection.org | facebook.com/InvestorProtectionTrust | twitter.com/IPT_Info

PBS Books is a multi-platform initiative celebrating PBS programming. Born out of the desire to develop original content that would appeal to vast audience of diverse readers, PBS Books hosts regular social and digital engagement events, as well as live coverage of important literary events across the country. In 2018, PBS Books launched a Library Engagement Program to build and enhance working relationships among libraries, local PBS stations, cultural institutions, and readers. Today, the Library Network has more than 1,800 partners. www.pbsbooks.org | www.facebook.com/PBSBooks1 | twitter.com/pbsbooks
India on UK's red list, 103 cases of Indian variant had been identified in the UK

This is the second time in three months that the British PM has cancelled his visit to India. (Photo: AFP)

New Delhi: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday cancelled his visit to India scheduled for April 26 and the UK added India to its Covid-19 travel "red list", effectively banning all travel from the country and making a 10-day hotel quarantine compulsory for UK residents arriving in the country. A BBC report quoted Mr Johnson as saying it was only sensible to cancel the visit in view of the raging pandemic in India which is battling a ferocious second wave of the Covid pandemic.

UK health secretary Matt Hancock confirmed the move to put India on its "red list" in the House of Commons as he revealed that 103 cases of the so-called "Indian variant" had been identified in the UK, of which the "vast majority have links to international travel".

He said that samples of that variant have been analysed to see if the new variant has any "concerning characteristics", such as greater transmissibility or resistance to treatments and vaccines.

"After studying the data, and on a precautionary basis, we've made the difficult but vital decision to add India to the red list," the minister told MPs.

"This means anyone who is not a UK or Irish citizen... cannot enter the UK if they have been in India in the previous 10 days," he said. The new rules, which Mr Hancock said have not been taken lightly, will come into force from Friday. The "red list" has around 40 badly hit nations.

This is the second time in three months that the British PM has cancelled his visit to India. He was originally scheduled to be the chief guest at Indias Republic Day on January 26 this year but cancelled his visit in early January due to the raging pandemic then in Britain.

India, which has been reporting more than 2,00,000 cases daily, confirmed the mutually agreed cancellation in view of the prevailing Covid situation and said a virtual meeting would be held in the coming days to launch plans for a transformed India-UK relationship. It added that both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the British PM attach the highest importance to taking the India-UK partnership to its fullest potential.

Bilateral political ties between the two nations have strengthened enormously under PM Modi and Mr Johnson. In December last year, the foreign ministers of the two nations had held discussions in New Delhi on five broad themes  connecting people, trade, defence and security, climate and health including the cooperation on the Covid vaccines, with both nations also agreeing on key elements of a 10 year India-UK roadmap.
ATLANTA, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Operation HOPE, an Atlanta-based national nonprofit focused on financial literacy and economic self-sufficiency, today announced that Craig Boundy, Chief Executive Officer of Experian North America, has joined the HOPE Global Board of Advisors. Boundy leads Experian's North American business lines, and plays a key role in driving the company's commitment to helping marginalized communities get fair and affordable access to lending.

In October 2019, Boundy led Experian to join Operation HOPE as a partner to enhance financial inclusion across the United States. This partnership combined Operation HOPE's education and counseling programs with Experian's credit education knowledge, capability and services like Experian Boost. Joining the HOPE Global Advisory Board is another step for Boundy to carry out his vision for Experian's corporate responsibility and commitment to increasing financial literacy and using data and analytics to help people manage their financial lives.

Boundy joins a distinguished Board that consists of some of the country's top executives in business, banking, nonprofits and NGOs. HOPE Global Advisory Board members provide guidance and support for Operation HOPE in its commitment to provide financial literacy education and economic empowerment for individuals and small business owners living in under-served communities.

"Having a strong board culture is vital to Operation HOPE's long-term success. This requires the addition of leaders, like Craig, who's values align with our overall vision," said John Hope Bryant, Operation HOPE founder and CEO. "As we continue to grow and serve communities in need, his unparalleled expertise will also accelerate our ability to disrupt the status quo and affect meaningful change."

"I am proud to join Operation HOPE's board to help further its mission of empowering the financial health of diverse communities," Boundy said. "Together, we can help improve access to financial education, tools and services that ultimately benefit society as a whole."

An accomplished global business leader, Craig joined Experian in 2011 as Managing Director of Experian UK and Ireland before becoming CEO of North America in 2014. Prior to Experian, Craig was CEO of Logica in the United Kingdom, having joined the organization in 2008 as CEO of Global Operations. Before that, he served as Chief Operating Officer for Cable & Wireless' business in Europe, the United States and Asia. Previously, Craig served as Sales Director and then COO at Energis. His early career was with British Telecommunications.

Experian North America prides itself on its workplace culture of inclusion and recently received its recertification as a Great Place to Work for the third year in a row. The company ranks in the top 40 Fortune Best Large Workplaces in Financial Services and Insurance, and the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For 2021. The Human Rights Campaign Foundation granted the company a perfect score in its Corporate Equality Index, and Experian has been named by Forbes as one of the top 100 Most Innovative Companies in the world.

About Operation HOPE

Since 1992, Operation HOPE has been moving America from civil rights to "silver rights'" with the mission of making free enterprise and capitalism work for the underserveddisrupting poverty for millions of low and moderate-income youth and adults across the nation. Through our community uplift model, HOPE Inside, which received the 2016 Innovator of the Year recognition by American Banker magazine, Operation HOPE has served more than 4 million individuals and directed more than $3.2 billion in economic activity into disenfranchised communitiesturning check-cashing customers into banking customers, renters and homeowners, small business dreamers into small business owners, minimum wage workers into living wage consumers, and uncertain disaster victims into financially empowered disaster survivors. Project 5117 is our multi-year four-pronged approach to combating economic inequality that aims to improve financial literacy, increase business role models and business internships for youth in underserved communities, and stabilize the American dream by boosting FICO scores. Operation HOPE recently received its seventh consecutive 4-star charity rating for fiscal management and commitment to transparency and accountability by the prestigious non-profit evaluator, Charity Navigator.

For more information: www.OperationHOPE.org. Follow the HOPE conversation on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Press Contact:

Lalohni Campbell

4045937145

https://operationhope.org/

SOURCE Operation HOPE

Related Links

https://operationhope.org/


[April 19, 2021] Canada Strong: Sezzle and Local Laundry Team Up to Support Local

Sezzle and Local Laundry announce a joint campaign aimed at supporting Canadian small businesses affected by COVID-19 - In line with a shared mission to benefit the community and create social good, Sezzle and Local Laundry have teamed up to create custom Canadian-made shirts to support small businesses. - Revenue from shirt sales will be donated directly to a small business charity that is helping small businesses through the pandemic. - Along with this campaign, Local Laundry commits to raising a million dollars for Canadian charities by 2030. TORONTO, April 19, 2021 /CNW/ -- Sezzle Inc. (ASX: SZL) (Sezzle or Company) // Sezzle, the mission-driven payments company, announces its partnership with Local Laundry, a purposeful Canadian eCommerce business. The joint campaign supports Canadian small businesses in Canada affected by COVID-19 impacts. Large numbers of small businesses in Canada are craving for relief after the catastrophic effects of COVID-19 on brick and mortar retail. Local Laundry - a retailer with the mission to make garments for social good - found themselves among the accumulating population of brands on a search for support. As a mission-driven company, they set out to find a partner with similar values and the shared ambition to support Canadian small businss. With Sezzle's recent B-corp certification and commitments to social-good, it was an easy choice.



"We were thrilled to partner with Sezzle on a campaign that gives back with our custom Canadian-made garments. Sezzle helped us and our customers during the height of the pandemic and we can't wait to return the favour and help support other small businesses in need. Our custom Canadian-made garments program has been used to raise $10,000 to causes and charities close to our community's hearts. We're thankful to collaborate with a socially conscious organization like Sezzle on a campaign that will help Canadian Small Businesses" said Connor Curran, CEO of Local Laundry. Together, the companies designed a t-shirt - with a portion of the profits from sales going to support small businesses across Canada, beginning April 15th and running through April 30th. Ten dollars from every shirt sale will be donated to one of two charities: ACCESS Community Capital Fund's Small Business Relief Fund and CanadaHelps' Covid-19 Community Care Fund. Additionally, Sezzle will waive all processing fees associated with shirt sales.

"ACCESS Community Capital Fund is helping small businesses and entrepreneurs through these challenging times by providing access to micro funding, business support and programs. We know small business and innovation will lead the economy and have made it our mission to lift up this community. Our team would like to thank Sezzle and Local Laundry for selecting our organization, providing much needed funding and extending our impact." Ryan Hollinrake, Executive Director "Through our COVID-19 Cause Funds, we've been able to support hundreds of charities responding to unprecedented needs in communities across Canada. Charities are a critical part of Canada's social fabric and social safety net and their work has been critical in helping Canadians through these challenging times. CanadaHelps would like to thank Sezzle and Local Laundry for supporting these charities and the many Canadians who rely on them." Marina Glogovac, President and CEO, CanadaHelps Interested in helping support small businesses in Canada? Buy a shirt here. About Sezzle Inc. Sezzle is a rapidly growing fintech company on a mission to financially empower the next generation. Sezzle's payment platform increases the purchasing power for millions of Active Consumers by offering interest-free installment plans at online stores and in-store locations. This increase in purchasing power for consumers leads to increased sales and basket sizes for the more than 30,000 Active Merchants that offer Sezzle. Sezzle US Media Contact: Erin Foran

Tel: (651) 403-2184

Email: erin.foran@sezzle.com SOURCE Sezzle

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
NEW YORK, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- illycaffe, a global coffee industry leader in sustainable quality, announced today that Jack Edwards will join the company as President of North America, effective April 19.

Edwards is a seasoned executive who spent nearly two decades with Diageo, a leader in beverage alcohol with an outstanding collection of brands across spirits and beer. Most recently, he served as Senior Vice President of Sales and National Accounts for The Diageo Beer Company USA, one of three divisions of Diageo's $6B NA business, where he led a team of 115 people and a distributor network responsible for Guinness, Smirnoff Ice, and other major and emerging brands.

"Jack's broad and deep skillset, commitment to excellence, comprehensive understanding of consumers, knowledge of the premium beverage industry, and record of leading strategic growth are ideally suited to our North American business, which is poised for expansion among coffee lovers across all channels," said Massimiliano Pogliani, CEO of Trieste, Italy-based illycaffe. "His extensive experience, combined with his sharp leadership acumen, are aligned to successfully realize illy's long-term plans."

Edwards' career at Diageo started in Chicago in finance, before moving into cross-functional positions spanning portfolio planning, marketing, and sales. He transferred to the company's Norwalk, CT U.S. headquarters in 2005, where he managed regional sales teams and earned additional responsibilities. During this time, Jack helped launch several successful new innovations and drove significant growth on brands including Bulleit Bourbon and Ciroc Vodka, and his teams delivered best in class execution across the entire Diageo portfolio.

Edwards holds an MBA degree in Business Administration from the Kellogg Business School at Northwestern University. Prior to joining Diageo, he was an auditor at KPMG.

illycaffe announced in February it had closed a strategic investment by Rhone Capital, an important step in leading the company into its next phase of international growth, particularly in the U.S. Earlier this month, illycaffe became the first Italian coffee company to obtain B Corp status, underscoring the company's commitment to generating a positive impact on society and the planet, and affirming its business model which is based in creating sustainable value for the long term.

About illycaffe

illycaffe is an Italian family-owned company, founded in Trieste in 1933. Its mission has always been to offer the best coffee to the world. illycaffe produces a unique 100% Arabica blend, combining 9 of the best varieties in the world, selected by illycaffe: every day 8 million cups of illy coffee are served in over 140 countries around the globe, in the cafes, restaurants and hotels, in single-brand cafes and shops, at home. As a result of its innovations, illycaffe contributes to the coffee technology progress at global level. In 1991, the "Premio Ernesto Illy de qualidade sustentavel do cafe para espresso" was launched in Brazil for quality espresso coffee. illycaffe has contributed to the sharing of the know-how, paying growers a premium price for the best quality selected by illycaffe. Since 2016, with the "Ernesto Illy International Coffee Award", the company has celebrated coffee growers all over the world that, according to illy, have produced the best sustainable coffee. Since 2013, the company has been in the list of the World Most Ethical Companies. In 2019, it enhanced its commitment to pursue a sustainable business model integrating the interest of people with the environment, adopting the status of Societa Benefit (Benefit Company) and adding this commitment into its own bylaw. In 2021, illycaffe was the first Italian company in the coffee sector to obtain the international certification as B Corp as a result of its commitment to comply with the highest standards of social and environmental performance. The company also founded the University of Coffee, which has the objective of sharing culture at all levels, offering a comprehensive and practical training to growers, baristas and coffee lovers. Everything that is "made in illy" is about beauty and art, the founding principles of the brand, starting from its logo, designed by artist James Rosenquist, up to illy Art Collection cups, decorated by over 100 international artists. In 2019, the company had 1405 employees and a turnover of  520,5 million. There are 269 illy single-brand shops in over 40 countries all over the world. In 2021, Rhone Capital became a shareholder of illycaffe with a minority share to support the company in its international growth.

SOURCE illy
Pixium Vision announces the drawdown of a further tranche, with a nominal value of 1.5 million, under the financing contract with ESGO

Paris, 19 April 2021 - 8.00 p.m. CET - Pixium Vision (FR0011950641 - ALPIX), a bioelectronics company that develops innovative bionic vision systems to enable patients who have lost their sight to live more independently, announces that it has issued a new tranche of 150 bonds with a nominal amount of 1,500,000, pursuant to the request of European Select Growth Opportunities Fund ("ESGO"), a US-based healthcare investor, to exercise 150 of the remaining 300 bond warrants.

This drawdown is in accordance with the provisions of the agreement with ESGO to provide financing for a maximum nominal amount of 10,000,000 over a period of 30 months, which was first announced on 6 November 20191. In accordance with that agreement, on 18 February 20202, the Company issued 875 bond warrants permitting the issue of a maximum of 875 bonds, with a maximum nominal borrowing amount of 8,750,000 if all bond warrants are exercised. Four tranches with a nominal value of 1,250,000 were issued in November 2019, February 2020, May 2020 and January 2021, respectively, and two tranches of 1,000,000 were issued in March 2021. After drawing down the new tranche of 1,500,000, there are 150 outstanding bond warrants that permit issuing a maximum of 150 bonds with a maximum nominal borrowing amount of 1,500,000 if all bond warrants are exercised3.







Contacts

Pixium Vision



Lloyd Diamond

Chief Executive Officer investors@pixium-vision.com (mailto:investors@pixium-vision.com)



+33 1 76 21 47 49











Media Relations



LifeSci Advisors

Sophie Baumont

sophie@lifesciadvisors.com

+33 6 27 74 74 49











Investor Relations

LifeSci Advisors

Guillaume van Renterghem

gvanrenterghem@lifesciadvisors (mailto:gvanrenterghem@lifesciadvisors).com

+33 6 69 99 37 83

ABOUT PIXIUM VISION

Pixium Vision is creating a world of bionic vision for those who have lost their sight, enabling them to regain visual perception and greater autonomy. Pixium Vision's bionic vision systems are associated with a surgical intervention and a rehabilitation period. Prima System sub-retinal miniature photovoltaic wireless implant is in clinical testing for patients who have lost their sight due to outer retinal degeneration, initially for atrophic dry age-related macular degeneration (dry AMD). Pixium Vision collaborates closely with academic and research partners, including some of the most prestigious vision research institutions in the world, such as: Stanford University in California, Institut de la Vision in Paris, Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, Institute of Ocular Microsurgery (IMO) in Barcelona, University hospital in Bonn, and UPMC in Pittsburgh, PA. The company is EN ISO 13485 certified and qualifies as "Entreprise Innovante" 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









Disclaimer

This press release, implicitly or expressly, contains certain forward-looking statements concerning Pixium Vision and its business. Such statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, financial conditions, performance or achievements of Pixium Vision to be materially different from the results, financial conditions, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Pixium Vision issues this press release as at this date and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements contained herein, whether in response to new information, future events or otherwise. For a description of the risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results, financial conditions, performance or achievements of Pixium Vision to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, please refer to section 3 "Risk Factors" of the Company's reference document, which was filed with the Autorite des Marches Financiers under number D.20-0350 on 24 April 2020, and which can be viewed on the websites of the Autorite des marches financiers - "AMF") and Pixium Vision).

1 Company press release dated 6 November 2019

2 Company press release dated 19 February 2020

3 In accordance with the agreements entered into, ESGO, at its sole discretion and subject to the fulfilment of certain conditions, had the option to subscribe for several tranches of bonds that, after the drawdown of this tranche, represent a maximum remaining amount of 500,000 (see press releases of 6 November 2019 and 12 June 2020).

Attachment
Throughout March, many Bay Area restaurants and businesses continued to close for good despite most Bay Area counties moving into the less restrictive orange tier of Californias reopening plan.

Two longstanding restaurants among the losses included Tygers Coffee Shop in San Francisco, which quietly closed on March 31, and Baja Cactus in Milpitas, which closed after 36 years in business.

Many businesses shuttered after an inability to agree on leases with their landlords. That was the case with 10-year-old cocktail bar Maven, which forever closed at the end of March  but its just one of the many reasons these businesses shut down. Last month, former owners of Prairie, CatHeads BBQ and The Stud talked about the different ways their restaurants or bars couldnt survive the pandemic, and what life is like after a business shuts down.

Along with the bad news of closures, there were some bright spots: Among the restaurant openings in March there was the revival of one popular cafe chain that closed in 2020. Last May, Specialties announced it would permanently close all its 50 locations scattered throughout three states, but then nearly a year later, the business returned with one outpost in Mountain View that opened March 1.

"We've downsized to just one location and have updated the menu with new delicious creations. This will allow us to focus on the great food and customer experience, the Specialties website said.

On Tuesday, four more Bay Area counties moved into the orange tier, with the exception of Solano County, which still remains in red. Gov. Gavin Newsom shared in April that he anticipates the economy to fully reopen by June 15.

See the list of Bay Area restaurant and business closures through March below. For more Bay Area closures in 2021, click here.

7-Eleven

The Castros 7-Eleven closed on March 4, as first reported by Hoodline, after numerous customers and staff complained about frequent shoplifting, loitering, and lack of cleanliness, as well as fear for their safety. Read more.

AS B-Dama

Berekleyside reports that the popular Japanese izakaya found inside Swans Market closed. Owner Chikara Ono plans to debut his concepts Dela Curo and Sundo as replacements for AS B-Dama inside Swans Market sometime this year.

Baja Cactus

The 36-year-old Mexican restaurant in Milpitas closed its doors on March 31 following the sale of the property where it's located and with no option to renew its lease, the East Bay Times reports. The restaurant opened in 1985.

Bissap Baobab

Oaklands only Senegalese restaurant permanently closed its doors on March 6, Berkeleyside reported. I just couldnt stay open in this big space, paying big rent, owner Marco Senghor told Berkeleyside.

Celias Mexican Restaurant

The Mexican restaurant chain has closed its outpost at 1841 Euclid Ave. in Berkeley, as first reported by Berkeleyside. The former restaurant owner of that specific location transferred Celias ownership to brothers Pedro and Jesus Madrigal last August, but the pair recently renamed the business El Talpense.

Cosecha

Cosecha owner Dominica Rice-Cisneros closed her 10-year-old Mexican restaurant on March 27 after sharing that she had lost 80% of her business during the pandemic. Its not all bad news though. Rice-Cisneros already has plans for her next business venture, Bombera, which opens April 27. Read more.

Mahila

Malaysian restaurant Mahila closed for good March 15 after failing negotiations with the landlord, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. (SFGATE and the San Francisco Chronicle are both owned by Hearst but operate independently of one another.)

Maven

The popular cocktail bar in the Lower Haight has closed at the end of March after 10 years in business. Jay Bordeleau, who ran the bar, said that the closure came as he wasnt able to come to a rent agreement with his landlord. Read more.

Revolution Cafe

The bohemian bar and live music venue that opened in 2006 in the Mission District has closed, as first reported by Mission Local. Cafe owners Jennifer and Andre Larzul posted a GoFundMe page last year to help support both their businesses, Revolution Cafe and Seafood Grill, but only raised a little over half of their $12,000 goal. Read more.

Scott's Seafood

Scotts Seafood has closed its Walnut Creek outpost, according to Berkeleyside. The restaurant also has locations in San Francisco and Oakland that are still open.

Tygers Coffee Shop

The nearly 30-year-old cafe forever closed on March 31, according to Glen Park Association, which first reported the closure. SFGATE spoke briefly with the new business owner but he declined to comment on what will replace Tygers Coffee Shop at this time. Read more.
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SAN ANTONIO  San Antonio police on Sunday said it was a passenger in the front seat who opened fire on an officer following a routine traffic stop, leading the wounded officer to fatally shoot the driver and that passenger.

Police had previously said it was the driver of the pickup truck who opened fire on the officer in the shootout Friday.

Police said Sunday that the medical examiner identified the two men killed as Sammie Joe Barbosa, 33, the driver, and Alex Anthony Garcia, 25, the passenger.

A 22-year-old female passenger was grazed by gunfire and taken to a hospital.

The officer was shot in the hand, police said. Police on Saturday identified that officer as Officer T. Sauvage, a five-year veteran, and did not immediately return messages to The Associated Press on Sunday seeking the officers first name. The San Antonio Express-News reports officials have identified the officer as Tyler John Sauvage.

Police said their investigation has determined that an occupant in the vehicle, whom police did not identify, was told to give the handgun to Garcia, who then shot Sauvage.

ADVERTISEMENTSkip



................................................................

Police Chief William McManus has said the officers body camera recorded a few minutes of what appeared to be a casual conversation between the officer and the trucks occupants before the officer was shot.

Police say that after talking with the occupants, the officer requested cover via radio.

Per protocol, the police shooting team and internal affairs will conduct separate but concurrent investigations. The officer will be placed on administrative duty.

A day earlier, a police officer shot and killed a man who opened fire outside a San Antonio International Airport terminal.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bogdan Aurescu, will take part on Monday, in the reunion of ministers of foreign affairs from EU member states, which will take place as a video-conference.

According to a press release sent by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE), topics regarding the situation in Georgia, EU-India relations, the situation in Myanmar, the state of the Comprehensive Joint Action Plan, regarding the Iranian nuclear file, relations with Mozambique and the perspective of the post-Cotonou Accord are on the reunion's agenda.

The virtual reunion will also include debates regarding the evolution in Ethiopia and the situation in Ukraine. Furthermore, the ministers of foreign affairs will have an informal exchange of opinions with the Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dmytro Kuleba.
(Newser)  Wildlife officials in California have no problem with people finding clams for dinner the old-fashioned way along the coastwith a shovel and bucket. But the Guardian reports they've put a temporary halt on a newfangled device that makes it incredibly easy to catch the day's legal limit in a matter of minutes: hydraulic pumps. The contraptions became especially popular during the pandemic as people sought outdoor activities. Two years ago, maybe 1 in 50 groups out clamming had such a pump, estimates Sonke Mastrup of the state's Department of Fish and Wildlife. Today, Mastrup figures 80% of clammers use themat least until last month, when the state issued a moratorium to better understand the impact they might have on clam stocks.

story continues below

"If you were digging, it takes a few minutes to pop out a clam, but it takes only 10 to 15 seconds with the pump," says Mastrup. "The clams come out beautiful, with no shovel cuts," he adds. "As a clammer I'm jealous, but as a resource manager, it might be too good." The Press Democrat explains that the pumps "use pressurized water to liquefy several feet of sand and mud under which tasty gaper and Washington clams lie buried." Then it's just a matter of scooping up the exposed clams. The state limit is 10 clams per day, and citations were up over the past year for people exceeding the limit. Authorities are worried the clam population will be decimated without time to recover, and they've declared the pumps off-limits until they can better assess the matter. (Read more clams stories.)
Many who know me might be shocked by this: I shot my first pistol when I was 8 or 9, taught by my father, a physician, aiming at targets in our basement. At summer camp, I loved riflery the way some kids loved art. Staring through the sight, down the barrel, I proved an excellent shot, gathering ever more advanced medals from the National Rifle Association. As a reward, for my 13th birthday, my uncle gave me a .22 Remington rifle.

I did not grow up on a farm or in a dangerous place where we needed protection. I grew up in the well-off, leafy suburb of Scarsdale, New York.

When I entered high school in the 1970s, I joined the riflery team and often slung my cased gun over my shoulder on my mile-long walk to school for practice. It didnt seem dissonant that, on other mornings, I went to the train station to join protests against the Vietnam War.

Since then, the United States has undergone a cultural, definitional, practical shift on guns and what they are for.

Once mostly associated in the public mind with sport, guns in the United States are now widely regarded more as weapons to maim or kill  or to protect from the same. Guns used to be on a continuum with bows and arrows; now they seem better lumped in with grenades, mortars and bombs.

In the 1990s, by which time I was an emergency room doctor at a Level 1 trauma center in New York City, I became acquainted with the damage that small-caliber handguns could cause. When I started treating gunshot victims, I marveled at how subtle and clean the wounds often were, externally at least. Much cleaner than stabbings or car wreck injuries.

We searched for a tiny entrance wound and the larger exit wound; they were often subtle and hard to locate. If you couldnt find the latter, you would often see the tiny metal bullet, or fragments, lodged somewhere internally on an X-ray  often not worth retrieving because it was doing no damage.

These were people shot in muggings or in drug deals gone wrong. Most of these patients had exploratory surgery, but so long as the bullet had not hit a vital organ or major vessel, people survived.

No one was blown apart.

An assault-style weapon was allegedly used last month to kill 10 people in a Boulder, Colorado, supermarket, just as one has been used in more than a dozen mass-casualty shootings, leaving four or more people dead, since 2017.

Guns and the devastating injuries they cause have evolved into things I dont recognize anymore. My Remington .22 has about as much in common with an assault-style weapon as an amoeba has with a human life. The injuries they produce dont belong under one umbrella of gun violence. Though both crimes are heinous, the guy who shoots someone with an old pistol in a mugging is a different kind of perpetrator from the person who, dressed in body armor, carries a semi-automatic weapon into a theater, house of worship or school and commences a slaughter.

Certainly many American gun owners  maybe a majority of them  are still interested in skill and the ability to hit the bulls-eye of a target (or a duck or deer, if youre of the hunting persuasion). But the adrenaline in todays gun culture clearly lies in paramilitary posturing, signaling to the world the ability to bring mayhem and destruction. Add a twisted mind with the urge to actually bring mayhem and destruction, and tragedy awaits.

Before Congress passed an assault weapons ban in 1994, Americans owned about 400,000 AR-15s, the most popular of these military-style weapons. Today, 17 years after Congress failed to reauthorize the ban, Americans own about 20 million AR-15-style rifles or similar weapons.

Why this change in the nature of gun ownership? Was it because 9/11 made the world a much scarier place? Was it NRA scaremongering about the Second Amendment? The advent of violent video games?

Now, not just emergency rooms but also schools and offices stage active-shooter drills. When I was an ER doctor, we, too, practiced disaster drills. A bunch of surrogate patients would be wheeled in, daubed with fake blood. Those drills seem naive in 2021  we never envisioned the kinds of mass-shooting disasters that have now become commonplace.

And, frankly, no disaster drill really prepares an emergency room for a situation in which multiple people are shot with todays semi-automatic weapons. You might save a few people with careful triage and preparation. Most just die.

I gave up riflery as a teenager when other options  boys, movies, travel  came along. Maybe Ill take it up again someday, if assault-style weaponry is banned and the word gun again brings to mind sport and not a spinoff of war.

(Kaiser Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.)
The former coordinator of opposition leader Aleksei Navalny's team in Russia's second-largest city, St. Petersburg, has been detained two days before announced rallies to demand the Kremlin critic's release from prison amid reports his health is rapidly deteriorating.

Denis Mikhailov wrote on Telegram that he was detained early on April 19 for taking part in an unsanctioned demonstration on January 31 protesting Navalny's arrest.

If found guilty, Mikhailov could face up to 15 days in jail.

The current leader of Navalny's team in the city, Irina Fatyanova, was sentenced to 10 days in jail on the same charge last week.

Mikhailov's detainment came a day after Navalny's supporters announced their plan to hold mass rallies across Russia on April 21 to demand Navalny's immediate release.

Navalny, 44, was arrested in January on his arrival from Germany, where he was treated for a poisoning in Siberia in August with what was defined by European labs as a nerve agent. He has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering the poisoning, which the Kremlin has denied.

A Moscow court in February converted a 3 1/2-year suspended sentence on a charge that Navalny and his supporters call politically motivated to real jail time, saying he broke the terms of the original sentence by leaving Russia for Germany for the life-saving treatment he received.

The court reduced the time Navalny must spend in prison to just over 2 1/2 years because of time already served in detention.

Navalny went on a hunger strike in late March in protest of what he said was the refusal of prison authorities to allow him to receive proper medical care for acute back and leg pain just months after he recovered from the poison attack that nearly took his life.

The health of Putin's most vocal critic has rapidly deteriorated in recent days and he could suffer cardiac arrest "any minute," according to his personal doctor and three other physicians, including a cardiologist, who pleaded for access to Navalny in a letter to Russia's Federal Prison Service.
Wagner Vineyards Estate Winery is one of the oldest wineries in the Finger Lakes Region of upstate New York.

Its also one of the most recognized, having opened in 1979 on the eastern shore of Seneca Lake. By now, the fourth and fifth generations of the Wagner family are overseeing an operation that now includes the winery, a restaurant (The Ginny Lee Cafe) that opened in 1983 and a brewing operation that opened in 1997 (Wagner Valley Brewing Co.).

The winery sources 250 acres of grapes and produces 50,000 cases of wine per year, according to its website. It makes more than 30 award-winning wines ranging from bone dry to dessert wine sweet. You can find the winerys numerous awards in an easy-to-navigate page on the website. Its variety of Rieslings each have won a long list of accolades.

Two awards that stand out. It was named Winery of the Year, Eastern United States, by the San Diego International Wine Challenge judges in 2016, and New Yorks Winery of the Year through its performance in the New York Wine Classic in 2019.

The winery is located at 322 State Route 414, in Lodi. New York; its open daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Its a 200-mile drive (about three and a half hours) from Harrisburg due north to Lodi.

The brewery and cafe are both at 9322 State Route 414, with the brewery open the same hours as the winery.

Presently, the cafe is open during lunch Fridays through Sundays for takeout and limited seating inside, and for outdoor seating as the weather permits. That will change in May when the cafes hours are expanded to seven days a week for lunch and other special events.

The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board carries a variety of Wagners wines in its Fine Wines & Good Spirits stores. You can see what they carry at this link.

One other fact worth noting. The winery last week announced that it was unveiling a code of conduct for all of its visitors moving forward. It noted in a Facebook post that the return of events and large gatherings brings with it the increased chance for people of color and marginalized identities to be harrassed, threatened or discriminated against.

We have enacted a Visitor Code of Conduct to better reflect our values and ensure our physical and virtual spaces are safe for all identities, the winery noted in the post, thanking the Lift Collective for providing the framework and guidance for the creation of this policy. Any violation of this policy will result in immediate and swift removal from the premises and future visits to Wagner Vineyards, Wagner Valley Brewing Co., and the Ginny Lee Cafe at the discretion of winery/brewery/restaurant management.

Below is the latest in the 6 Questions series of interviews with winemakers and owners of East Coast wineries, which looks behind at what has been a turbulent year and, with optimism, looks ahead. Thanks to Alex Jankowski, the marketing and PR manager for the winery, for taking these on.

Welcome to Wagner Vineyards Estate Winery, which opened in 1979. It sources grapes from 250 acres of vineyards and produces 50,000 cases of wine per year.

Q, For readers who arent familiar with the winery, what are a few things they should know about it?

A, We are a 100% estate-bottled winery founded in 1978 by Stanley Bill Wagner, who was a lifelong grape grower for the Taylor Wine Co. before building his own winery after the passage of the 1976 New York Farm Winery Act. In total, we sustainably farm 20 grape varieties across 240 acres, translating to wines that encapsulate the freshness and ripeness we are able to achieve in the fruit grown here on the east side of Seneca Lake. We focus primarily on Riesling and Cabernet Franc, but we take pride in each and every one of the 30 wines we make.

Q, In the vineyard how was the winter? How much has the vineyard evolved through the years in terms of replantings or plantings, new clones? Or new varieties of grapes?

A, The focus has shifted dramatically over the course of the 40+ years weve been in business from the native and French-American hybrids we grew for the Taylor Wine Co. to the European vinifera varieties we are known for today. Bill Wagner planted our first vinifera vineyard in 1978 (eight acres of Riesling we still farm to this day), and now more than half of our farm consists of vinifera varieties. That said, we still hold great reverence for native and hybrid grapes -- some of which we are the only farm in the region still growing and making single-varietal wine from. That balance gives us a unique portfolio of wines that cater to all taste preferences.

The winter was relatively calm. One practice we perform each year to lengthen the life on our vines is to hill up a mound of dirt over the graft union of every vinifera vine before winter. This insulates the rootstock and lower scion trunk from harsh winter temperatures and keeps the vine alive in the event of a killing frost. We then de hill each spring to re-expose the graft union and prevent the scion from developing its own root system.

A look from above at Wagner Vineyards Estate Winery in Lodi, New York.

Q, I was looking at the history there and all thats been done is there a next project on the horizon?

A, We continue to evolve our practices and methods in the vineyard and in the cellar to keep our business running as sustainably as we can. Since 2015 we have been installing solar panels on our cafe and several of our outbuildings. We now have more than 800 panels that provide more than two-thirds of the electricity we use in a year. In the vineyard, we continue to experiment with several different cover-cropping techniques for our row middles to strengthen our land against erosion and provide additional nutrients into the soil. Current cover crops include cereal rye, organic hay (grown and baled on our farm), and an OVN mixture of tenacious grasses and fescues.

Q, Your Riesling program: How much has it evolved or grown there are the 5 varietals, yes?  Are they in any blends?

A, For 30 years, all of our Riesling came from that one vineyard Bill planted back in 1978. After recognizing the staying power and potential of Riesling in the Finger Lakes, we expanded our plantings to now boast the largest and most diverse Riesling farm in the Northeast. We have 62 acres of Riesling across six different sites that vary in both age of vine and elevation.

We use these plantings to make seven different wines: Caywood East Riesling (a dry, single-vineyard offering), Riesling Dry, Riesling Semi Dry, Riesling Select (a medium sweet Riesling from grapes on our oldest vineyard block), Riesling Ice (a dessert wine), Fathom 107 (a Riesling/Gewurztraminer blend), and our Sparkling Riesling.

Q, Too soon to write about your Alta B Weekend? Is there a date for that yet? Are there other weekly or annual events you do there that readers should know about?

A, At the very least, we will have the Alta B Weekend sale both in the winery and on our website that folks have come to expect and love over the years. We are hoping that we can hold the in-person festivities associated with the weekend in 2021 as well, but no final decisions have been made.

We can, however, confirm that our Friday Night Sunset Series will take place each Friday from May 28 through September 3. These extended hours allow folks to enjoy our beautiful sunset scenes over Seneca Lake along with drinks, food, and music.

A lineup of a couple of ines from Wagner Vineyards Estate Winery in the Finger Lakes.

Q, Ive asked everyone for these interviews the same thing what has the past year been like running a winery and brewery amid all that has taken place? And are these practices instituted because of the pandemic that could stay permanent?

A, Its been a challenge, for sure, but its nothing compared to those who have felt the physical toll of the pandemic or have put their lives on the line to battle the virus on the front lines. To them, we are forever indebted and grateful.

We emerged from the shutdown with several new policies and practices in place that will remain so for the immediate future. One of these practices is going to a reservation-only system for our indoor, seated tastings. We still allow walk-in visitors to enjoy drinks by the flight or glass as space permits [and we are thankful to have plenty of space].

But folks who want to really dive into the rich history of Wagner and our region now have the ability to book a 45-minute window with a member of our tasting staff and know that our pourer will dedicate that time to teaching them about our wines and answering any questions they might have. Our tasting staff also appreciates this delineation between who is coming to drink and have a good time and who is coming to educate themselves about our work. We are thrilled to accommodate both sets of visitors, and we hope to see you all this summer!

ALSO READ: Its 10 years in business for this central Pa. winery: Heres what it has planned

ALSO READ: Chester County winery owners have big plans for their Chambourcin, sparkling program
Commerce and industry minister said on Monday that the governments recently announced Seed Fund Scheme for new age firms will ensure adequate availability of funds, especially for startups with good ideas across various fields.

The minister also said that often good ideas are bought out by international venture capitalists at throwaway prices.

I hope good ideas dont get sold very cheap, particularly to foreign investors, who are able to identify a good idea...I hope this scheme supports our domestic entrepreneurs and their business ideas who often cannot take off due to the absence of critical funding at an early stage, he added.

The Seed Fund scheme scheme was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January. It aims to offer financial assistance to startups for proof of concept, prototype development, product trials, market entry and commercialization. Over the next four years, Rs 945 crore corpus will provide seed funding to eligible startups through incubators.

The scheme has been approved for a period of four years, starting 2021-22 and is expected to support about 3,600 startups.

Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has set up an experts advisory committee to execute and monitor the scheme. According to the guidelines, grants of upto Rs 5 crore will be provided to the eligible incubators selected by the committee. The selected incubators will provide grants of up to Rs 20 lakh for validation of proof of concept, or prototype development, or product trials to startups. Investments of up to Rs 50 lakh will be provided to the startups for market entry, commercialization, or scaling up through convertible debentures or debt-linked instruments.

The Seed Fund Scheme also envisions to promote virtual incubation for startups by enabling 300 incubators to support startups from all corners of the country. The impact of this will be visible by the spur of innovations in tier 2 and tier 3 regions of India, an official statement said.

Goyal further said that the scheme will create a robust startup ecosystem, particularly in tier two and tier three towns of India, which are often deprived of adequate funding. Would like to especially encourage innovators from rural areas to come forward and benefit from this scheme, he added.
Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to your market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.
Mexican special callsigns

Members of the Association of Radio Amateur of the Mexican Republic (ARARM) will activate three special callsigns to celebrate their club's 61st anniversary.

Look for 6D1A, 6D2A and 6D3A to be active until May 16th. Activity will be on 160-6 meters on all modes and the satellites.

Diplomas will be awarded in three different categories (Gold/Silver/Bronze) based on the number of special stations contacted by the applicant (or reports in the case of SWLs).

Complete details are available on QRZ.com. QSL Manager is XE2T via direct or LoTW.

OPDX
Kimberly Guilfoyle Joins Eric Greitens Campaign for Senate as National Chair

Kimberly Guilfoyle, a fundraiser for former President Donald Trumps 2020 campaign and girlfriend of Trumps eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., announced on Monday morning that she would join Eric Greitenss campaign for Senate as the national chair.

Governor Greitens is a fighter who has stood with President Trump and has a proven record of advancing conservative America First policies, Guilfoyle said in a statement. I am proud to join this team as the National Chair and look forward to championing Governor Greitenss vision throughout Missouri and around the country.

Greitens, a former Navy SEAL and Missouri Governor, launched his campaign on March 22 for the U.S. Senate seat to be vacated by the retiring Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.).

Missouri Gov.-elect Eric Greitens speaks in Jefferson City, Mo., in this file photo. (Orlin Wagner/AP Photo)

Proud to announce @KimGuilfoyle has joined our campaign as National Chair! Greitens wrote on Twitter Monday. She has been one [of] President Trumps fiercest defenders, and she will continue to fight and defend America First values.

Greitens ended his gubernatorial term early amid an impeachment proceeding against him in 2018. At the time, he was facing an invasion of privacy charge based on allegations from a woman with whom he admitted to having an extramarital affair. Greitens was also charged with a felony for using charity donor lists for political fundraising.

Greitens denied the invasion of privacy charge, which was later dropped because the investigators failed to find evidence. Another charge was withdrawn due to an agreement made between Greitens and the prosecutor upon the condition of his resignation.

Greitenss main competitor is Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who announced his run on March 24. Rik Combs, a retired U.S. Air Force officer and Libertarian nominee for Governor of Missouri in 2020, also announced in March that he would run as a Republican.

As attorney general, Schmitt joined the Trump-backed Texas Supreme Court case challenging the validity of the 2020 presidential election. He also sued the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on April 21, 2020, alleging that it abetted the spread of the CCP virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus. Last week, Schmitt and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton jointly filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration, seeking to reinstate Trumps Remain in Mexico policy to combat the border surges.

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt speaks during a news conference in St. Louis, Mo., on Aug. 6, 2020. (Jeff Roberson/AP Photo)

According to a GOP primary voters survey obtained by The Hill last month, Greitens led in the Republican field with 48 percent of the vote. Schmitt only received 11 percent.

Trump hasnt endorsed any candidate in Missouris U.S. Senate race. In a state that Trump won in the 2020 election by a 15.4 percent margin, his endorsement is sought after by the candidates and could influence the voters significantly.

Greitens has received endorsements from Trumps former personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and Dennis Prager, a conservative radio talk show host.

Some Republicans, such as Jean Evans, the former executive director of the Missouri Republican Party, expressed concern for Greitenss run, saying it opens the door for a Democrat, according to the Kansas City Star.

A few Democrats have declared running or considering the run for the Senate seat. Among them are former state senator Scott Sifton, former Marine officer Lucas Kunce, and Kansas City mayor Quinton Lucas.

Greitens told The Epoch Times earlier this month that he would stand up and fight against the evil CCP once he is elected.

Ivan Pentchoukov contributed to this report.
Johnson scraps Delhi trip; UK puts India on virus red list View Photo

LONDON (AP)  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has called off a trip to New Delhi amid surging coronavirus cases in India, as the U.K. imposed a travel ban on most visitors from the vast Asian nation.

The British and Indian governments said Monday that in the light of the current coronavirus situation, Johnson will not be able to travel to India next week as planned. They said Johnson and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi would speak later this month and planned to meet in person later this year.

The long-planned trip would have been Johnsons first foreign visit since the start of the coronavirus pandemic more than a year ago. It was originally scheduled for January but was postponed when infections soared in Britain.

British Health Secretary Matt Hancock told lawmakers in the House of Commons that India would be added to a red list of countries with high coronavirus rates. Starting Friday, people who have been in India within the previous 10 days wont be allowed into the U.K. The exceptions are U.K. citizens and returning residents of Britain and Ireland, who face 10 days of mandatory hotel quarantine on arrival.

Millions of people in Britain have roots or relatives in India, and Hancock said that between our two countries we have ties of friendship and family.

I understand the impact of this decision, but I hope the House will concur that we must act, he said.

Hancock said the U.K. has recorded 103 cases of a new virus variant that was first identified in India. Scientists are investigating whether it spreads more rapidly or is more resistant to existing vaccines than the original strain.

India reported 273,810 new infections on Monday, its highest daily rise since the start of the pandemic. It has now reported more than 15 million infections, second only to the United States.

The Indian Health Ministry also reported 1,619 deaths from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, pushing the toll over 178,769. India has the fourth-highest number of deaths after the U.S., Brazil and Mexico but has a much larger population.

New Delhi, where Johnson and Modi had been due to meet, was placed under a weeklong lockdown Monday as the explosive surge in cases pushed the Indian capitals health system to its limit. The soaring cases and deaths come just months after India thought it had seen the worst of the pandemic.

Johnson said it was only sensible to postpone the trip, given the shape of the pandemic there. He said he hoped Modi would be able to come to Britain for the Group of 7 summit in June, to which India has been invited as a guest.

The strain identified in India, known as B.1.617, is currently designated a variant under investigation by British health authorities, rather than a variant of concern, such as those first identified in southeast England, Brazil and South Africa.

Danny Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College London, said my assumption from everything Ive seen is that it will become a variant of concern.

___

Follow APs pandemic coverage at:

https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic

https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine

https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

By JILL LAWLESS

Associated Press
Lima, Apr 18 (UNI) At least five Peruvian servicemen died in a helicopter crash in the country's Department of Cusco, the Joint Command of the Armed Forces of Peru (CCFFAA) said.

The accident occurred on Saturday morning, while the helicopter, carrying a total of 12 servicemen, was performing a reconnaissance operation against illicit drug trafficking, according to a CCFFAA statement, released on Twitter.

"The Joint Command of the Armed Forces deeply regrets the death of the courageous members of the Armed Forces and expresses its deepest condolences to their families," the Saturday statement says, listing the names of the five soldiers who died in the accident.

According to CCFFAA, another two servicemen are being searched for, while five others have been rescued.

The accident occurred as a result of a mechanical failure, which caused the helicopter to crash into Vilcanota River, CCFFAA said.

UNI XC-ASN 0807
Pipeline

16 April 2021

Accor, a world-leading hospitality group, and Miami-based real estate developer RPC (Royal Palm Companies), announce a strategic agreement to manage and operate Downtown Miami's newest mixed-use tower, Legacy Hotel & Residences under the Morgans Originals brand. This news comes on the heels of Accor's latest phase of expansion following its acquisition of sbe's hotel brands and its planned joint venture with Ennismore, which will see the creation of one of the world's largest and fastest growing lifestyle operators.

This announcement marks the launch of Morgans Originals, Accor's newest lifestyle brand. Built on the heritage of lifestyle hospitality, the Morgans Original portfolio will provide much more than a conventional hotel experience, offering the best in food, mixology, design and atmosphere. Over the next few months, Legacy will be joined within the Morgans Original portfolio by select properties all individual in nature, but unmistakably rooted in the heritage of lifestyle hospitality.

Expected to break ground this year, Legacy Hotel & Residences is the latest property to join Accor's network of luxury and lifestyle properties in Miami, a portfolio that includes award-winning properties across leading brands such as Delano, Mondrian, SLS, Hyde, MGallery and more. Located in the heart of mega-project Miami Worldcenter (MWC), the second-largest urban development in the U.S., Legacy Hotel & Residences will offer 310 residences sitting atop a 219-room hotel with ground-floor retail in Downtown Miami.

The luxury skyscraper will feature a first-of-its-kind eight-floor Center for Health + Performance, Miami's first enclosed seven-floor rooftop atrium with a restaurant bar and lounge, the city's first Singapore-inspired cantilevered pool soaring 500 feet in the sky, and a members-only lounge.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 19:05:38|Editor: huaxia

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Over the 100 years, the CPC has achieved extraordinary success, including the elemination of extreme poverty in China, and there is much to learn from CPC's 100-year history, the secretary of international relations of the Argentine Justicialist Party has told Xinhua. #CPC100Years #GLOBALink

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Samsung Electronics is building a $220-million R&D center in Hanoi, and U.S. chip company Qualcomm has set up its first R&D facility in Southeast Asia in Vietnam.

An artist's impression of Samsung Electronics' research and development center in Tay Ho District, Hanoi. Photo courtesy of Samsung.

The former is expected to be completed in 2022 and employ 3,000 engineers.

The South Korean giant also has other R&D centers in Vietnam to research into mobile devices, household electrical appliances, artificial intelligence, and data analysis.

The Qualcomm R&D center opened in June last year in Hanoi with four laboratories for developing wireless technologies (4G, 5G) and camera technologies and boosting the performance of mobile device batteries. It has around 50 engineers, all of them Vietnamese.

The Samsung facility will develop smartphones for the Southeast Asian market and software for Australia, New Zealand and Europe, and serve as a 5G network testing hub.

Others have also chosen Vietnam to set up R&D centers, including ride-hailing company Grab (in HCMC), South Korean tech giant LG Electronics (Hanoi and Da Nang) and Japans Toshiba and Panasonic (Hanoi).

Samsung also has 11 labs in Vietnamese universities to conduct collaborative education programs and enable students to take part in research into mobile phone technologies.

Many students have gone on to become researchers at the company.

Vu Thanh Thang, vice chairman of cybersecurity firm BKAV, said the trend of tech giants setting up R&D centers in Vietnam shows the country "has the ability to take part in high value-added activities in the global value chain."

Vietnam is now in a golden demographic period with 45 percent of its population being under 30 years of age, which is attractive to global companies, he said.

But this trend is causing difficulties to local tech companies since they have to compete with global giants to attract talent, he pointed out.

He suggested that instead they should proactively train their own R&D engineers.
TEL AVIV - Clashes occurred on Sunday evening in the Jaffa district of Tel Aviv between Arab and Jewish protestors.



The police arrested three of the Arab protestors.



The incidents occurred after a violent attack by Arab residents of the ethnically mixed quarter on the director of a Jewish religious school, Rabbi Eliyahu Mali, who was looking to buy property for the school premises.



Local media reported that in response and as a protest against the attack, a demonstration was called at the same place by religious Jews.



After the Ramadan prayers, a counter-protest was held by local Israeli Arabs who chanted slogans such as "go home, settlers".



Police tried to re-establish order.



Clashes instead occurred again for the sixth evening in a row at Damascus Gate between police and Palestinians from the eastern part of the city.



According to emergency services sources, four Palestinians were injured. The protest was against an Israeli decision to put up barriers open the steps in front of the gate to prevent people from sitting.



During the month of Ramadan, which began in recent days, the square is where many people meet to chat.



The police say that the barriers were not intended to prevent gatherings or harm anyone and were instead an attempt to facilitate the flow of people from and to Damascus Gate.


It happened in 1968, when Mr. Bidens hero Robert Kennedy brought together working-class Black, Latino and white constituencies in a presidential campaign that championed a liberalism without elitism and a populism without racism. It happened again in 1997 and 2009 in Texas, when Republican legislators representing white working-class voters and Democrats representing Black and Hispanic constituencies came together to support (and then to defend) the Texas top 10 percent plan to admit the strongest students in every high school to the University of Texas at Austin, despite the opposition of legislators representing wealthy white suburban districts that had dominated admissions for decades. And a similar coalition appears to be coming together in California, over the issue of exclusionary zoning. State Senator Scott Wiener, who has been trying to legalize multifamily living spaces, told me that Republican and Democratic legislators representing working-class communities have supported reform, while the opponents have one thing in common: They represent wealthier constituents who wanted to keep certain people out of their community.

Taking on exclusionary zoning also begins to address two other challenges the Biden administration has identified: the housing affordability crisis and climate change. Economists from across the political spectrum agree that zoning laws that ban anything but single-family homes artificially drive up prices by limiting the supply of housing that can be built in a region. At a time when the Covid-19 pandemic has left many Americans jobless and people are struggling to make rent or pay their mortgages, it is incomprehensible that ubiquitous government zoning policies would be permitted to make the housing affordability crisis worse by driving prices unnaturally higher.

Likewise, there is widespread agreement that laws banning the construction of multifamily housing promote damage to the planet. Single-family-exclusive zoning pushes new development further and further out from central cities, which lengthens commutes and increases the emissions of greenhouse gases. This is an especially big problem for employees who cannot work remotely at a computer. Families should always have the freedom to make personal choices about their living arrangements, but as the planet heats up, it is bizarre that government would explicitly prohibit construction of the most environmentally friendly options.

It is clear that the federal government has the authority to act on this issue. While zoning laws are locally constructed, the federal government has long cited its powers to regulate interstate commerce as a rationale for pursuing important aims: combating racial discrimination in zoning, protecting religious institutions from discriminatory zoning and overriding zoning laws to site cellphone towers.

Enactment of Mr. Bidens proposal for federal grants to encourage local reforms would be an important first step and could provide a significant incentive for change, just as President Barack Obamas race-to-the-top program for education helped alter state and local behavior toward charter schools. But there are many other additional opportunities Mr. Biden should explore.

In December 2020, the Century Foundation, where I work, assembled more than 20 of the nations leading thinkers on housing over Zoom  elected officials, civil rights activists, libertarians and researchers  to discuss eight possible options. The alternatives included reinstating and strengthening the Obama administrations 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule that requires local governments to begin taking steps to dismantle segregation, as well as Mr. Obamas 2013 guidance making clear that unjustified policies that have a racially discriminatory disparate impact are illegal even absent discriminatory intent. Another set of policies would require states, cities and counties receiving existing federal funding for public infrastructure and housing to develop strategies to reduce exclusionary zoning.

But Mr. Biden should go even further and create what is known as a private right of action  comparable to the one found in the 1968 Fair Housing Act  to allow victims of economically discriminatory government zoning policies to sue in federal court, just as victims of racial discrimination currently can. This Economic Fair Housing Act, which I have proposed and the Equitable Housing Institute has developed into statutory language, makes clear that state-sponsored economic discrimination is wrong, whether or not it has a racially disparate impact. And because it is wrong, the law should apply in every town and state in the country  not just those that want to participate in the new federal funding programs Mr. Bidens proposal would provide.
The Ex-DNI John Ratcliffe said that President Biden is failing with foreign policy and making the wrong moves. It should not be the case, but since the Democrat president is giving up too much ground to US rivals.

Ex-DNI John Ratcliffe warns the President is failing

Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, assessed the crumbling performance of President Biden as foreign policy is not tight compared to the Trump administration, reported Newsmax.

There have been recent events like the meeting with China and the incident wherein Putin mocked Biden by challenging him to a turned-down debate. News of his perceived cognitive decline is not seen as well, thus the pressures of US adversaries seeing Trump gone is a significant factor.

On Fox News, "Life, Liberty & Levin," last Sunday night, Ratcliffe laid bare what worries him most. He said according to his close friend Robert Gates, Joe Biden is always wrong on national security and foreign policy decision with no-fail for 40 years. Gates served as the secretary of defense during the Obama administration.

Ex-DNI John Ratcliffe was quoted directly on what he thought of the poor decision-making of Biden. "It's one problem to be wrong as a senator or vice president of the United States, but he's the president of the United States, and he's really early on reflecting that he's already making those wrong choices when it comes to our national security and foreign policy, and foreign leaders see that and take advantage of it."

CIA Pressures Analysts to Suppress Intel on Chinese Interference in 2020 US Election

One example is the unwise choice of messing with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He added that Biden talks too much with no action, he told Mark Levin.

Putin is ex-KGB, but he challenged the Obama-Biden administration by robbing Crimea and made Obama decide what he'll do next. He's pushing the President's buttons, probing and testing the new President. His assessment will make a big difference in how the US will be perceived.

Ratcliffe said that Putin would see how far the US will go and all world leaders. This is a significant change from how Trump was perceived.

A contrast was made, and he concluded that his peers well-respected ex-President Trump, with "peace through strength." He calls the Biden administration pure chaos and weak as seen in the way most world leaders discount the US now.

The ex-DNI chief mentioned the mess at the US borders. He said it's reflective of the chaos in the Middle East or Ukraine or the straits outside of China, stressing a problem with the White House and its Oval Office. It is reflecting the dismal decisions that will degrade foreign policy.

Ex-DNI John Ratcliffe made a scathing assessment that the President does not care for America, and he's sinking its image very low. He said that in two years, things should change, and making use of the failures of the Biden Administration show how President Trump got it right.

Democrats Attack Trump Intel Chief Decision to Protect Election Security Raised Subpoena Option

Director of National Intelligence says that Beijing a Threat to US, Free World Since 1941

@ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
SYDNEY (Reuters) - New Zealand said it is "uncomfortable" with expanding the role of the Five Eyes, a post-war intelligence grouping which also includes the United States, Britain, Australia and Canada, recently criticised by China.

China is New Zealand's largest trading partner, and Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta said in a speech that New Zealand sought a predictable diplomatic relationship.

New Zealand will find it necessary to speak out on issues where it does not agree with China, including developments in Hong Kong and the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, she said in a speech on Monday to the government-funded New Zealand China Council.

In later comments to media reported by New Zealand's Newshub, Mahuta said New Zealand didn't favour invoking the Five Eyes for "messaging out on a range of issues that really exist out of the remit of the Five Eyes".

"We are uncomfortable with expanding the remit of the Five Eyes," she said.

China's foreign ministry has repeatedly criticised the Five Eyes, after all members issued a joint statement about the treatment of Hong Kong pro-democracy legislators in November.

Last month, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said "the Five Eyes have taken coordinated steps to gang up on China", after Australia and New Zealand issued a joint statement on Xinjiang.

Last year, the Five Eyes discussed cooperation beyond intelligence sharing, including on critical technology, Hong Kong, supply chains and the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a statement by Australia's Foreign Minister Marise Payne in 2020.

Mahuta's office told Reuters it couldn't provide a copy of her comments on the Five Eyes.

Payne will travel to New Zealand on Wednesday for meetings with Mahuta and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, the first diplomatic visit between the neighbouring countries since borders reopened both ways.

Canberra has recently endured a rockier relationship with Beijing than Wellington, with Australia's trade minister unable to secure a call with his Chinese counterpart as exporters were hit with multiple trade sanctions from China.

Story continues

A diplomatic dispute between China and Australia worsened in 2020 after Canberra lobbied for an international inquiry into the source of the coronavirus pandemic.

China and New Zealand upgraded a free trade agreement in January, when, Mahuta said, trade ministers had held a "constructive" call.

(Reporting by Kirsty Needham; Editing by Michael Perry)
FDA Orders Johnson & Johnson Contractor to Pause Vaccine Production at Plant With Prior Contamination Issue

A contractor that makes ingredients for Johnson & Johnsons COVID-19 vaccine said in an April 19 filing that federal regulators ordered a stoppage to its production of the drug substance for the duration of an inspection at a Maryland facility that was previously plagued with a contamination issue.

Emergent BioSolutions, which has a contract to manufacture bulk drug substance for Johnson & Johnsons COVID-19 vaccine, stated in an SEC filing that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requested a pause in production of any new material at its Bayview facility in Baltimore, Maryland, while regulators carry out an inspection. The FDA also requested that existing vaccine substances be put into quarantine for the duration of the probe. Federal regulators launched the inspection on April 12.

The company didnt immediately return a request from The Epoch Times for information about how long the manufacturing pause could last and for comment on the stoppage, but Emergent told Politico in a statement that its working with both Johnson & Johnson and the FDA on strengthening the supply chain for this vitally important vaccine.

We acknowledge that there are improvements we must make to meet the high standards we have set for ourselves and to restore confidence in our quality systems and manufacturing processes, Emergent told the outlet.

Commenting on the manufacturing stoppage at Bayview, Johnson & Johnson told Reuters that, at this time, it is premature to speculate on any potential impact this could have on the timing of our vaccine deliveries.

Johnson & Johnson has previously said it would deliver 100 million doses of its vaccine to the United States during the first half of 2021, and so far it has delivered about 18 million doses.

A health worker loads syringes with the vaccine on the first day of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine being made available to residents at the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza in Los Angeles on March 11, 2021. (Damian Dovarganes/AP Photo)

Last month, ingredients for Johnson & Johnsons COVID-19 vaccine and AstraZenecas COVID-19 vaccine were mixed up at the Bayview plant, leading to 15 million doses being ruined.

This quality control process identified one batch of drug substance that did not meet quality standards at Emergent Biosolutions, a site not yet authorized to manufacture drug substance for our COVID-19 vaccine. This batch was never advanced to the filling and finishing stages of our manufacturing process, Johnson & Johnson said in a March 31 statement.

In a follow-up statement, Johnson & Johnson said it was assuming full responsibility regarding the manufacturing of drug substance for its COVID-19 vaccine at the Bayview facility.

Specifically, the Company is adding dedicated leaders for operations and quality, and significantly increasing the number of manufacturing, quality and technical operations personnel to work with the Company specialists already at Emergent, Johnson & Johnson stated.

AstraZeneca confirmed in an April 3 statement that it would relocate the production of its vaccines from the Baltimore facility.

The company will work with the U.S. Government to identify an alternative location for domestic drug substance production, AstraZeneca stated.

The Bayview plant manufacturing pause is the latest setback to Johnson & Johnsons efforts to increase production of its one-shot vaccine.

Federal health officials on April 13 halted the use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after reports of rare and severe blood clots in the brain with reduced blood platelet levels occurred after some people received the shot.

Infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci told the media on April 18 that the use of Johnson & Johnsons COVID-19 vaccine will likely resume in the United States by the end of the week.

By Friday, we should have an answer as to where were going with it. I would think that were not going to go beyond Friday in the extension of this pause, said Fauci, who heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

COVID-19 is the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.
A police officer who 'tried it on' with four domestic abuse victims, asked them 'for nudes' and told one she was 'too pretty' for her boyfriend has been sacked after being found guilty of misconduct.

Married father-of-two PC Colin Noble, who had been a serving officer with West Midlands Police for 20 years, claimed he only called one woman 'fit' in a 'ham-fisted' attempt at 'boosting her confidence', and had a particular 'style' aimed at building rapport.

But the 50 year old also looked at her breasts, asking to 'see what you are working with', suggested she 'unbutton' her shirt, and inquired if she 'had any nudes'.

Unknown to the experienced officer, he was secretly recorded by that complainant, known as Miss X, because of her concerns about his behaviour.

Audio of those conversations was played during a six-day disciplinary hearing at the force's headquarter.

PC Colin Noble (pictured), a married father of two who had been a serving officer with West Midlands Police for 20 years, was found guilty of misconduct and sacked today

The disciplinary hearing also heard evidence from the other complainants where he was alleged to have made a 'catalogue of completely inappropriate comments' between 2014 and 2017.

A three-member panel found the case against the 50-year-old proven on Monday, stating they 'preferred the account' of Miss X, and three other complainants, Miss A, B and C, over that of Noble.

Nick Hawkins, the legally qualified chairman giving the tribunal's findings, said that, by contrast, they found the evidence given by Noble to be at times 'inconsistent', and in some cases 'attempting to fit his explanations to known facts'.

Mr Hawkins added that the tribunal found 'significant evidence of PC Noble using sexualised talk and making inappropriate suggestions' to Miss X.

'The panel considered the improbability of the chances the four female witnesses, who had never met each other, nor seen each other's statements, or knew of each other's allegations, making such strikingly similar allegations,' he said.

'Either PC Noble was extremely unfortunate in that (they) all invented allegations that were strikingly similar, or they are telling the truth and the similarities are because they reflect the way PC Noble behaves with vulnerable victims of domestic violence.'

Mr Hawkins said: 'The panel concluded the most likely explanation is they are telling the truth and the events happened as alleged.'

Graham Henson, Noble's barrister, told the panel his client had a 'long, unblemished record'; however, the tribunal decided the constable's breaches of professional standards were so serious he should be dismissed without notice.

The tribunal heard Noble (pictured) 'tried it on' with four domestic abuse victims, asked them 'for nudes' and told one she was 'too pretty' for her boyfriend

Mr Hawkins told Noble: 'Your behaviour towards these women was totally unprofessional and inappropriate.

'Rather than offering assistance, you sought to further a relationship with each of the four women.'

He added: 'The way you treated them was appalling.'

Mr Hawkins said Noble's misconduct could only be described as 'serious breaches', adding the 'only appropriate sanction that can be imposed on you today is of dismissal without notice'.

'That is the sanction we impose,' he added.

Noble has a right of appeal.

Giving findings of fact, the panel concluded that Noble had turned up at Miss A's house unannounced up to 30 times, telling her she was 'too pretty' for her boyfriend.

He also touched her neck, asking to see her tattoos, and whether he could see those on her thighs, and asked if she had 'ever slept with a black man'.

The complainant, giving evidence, said Noble's remarks made her feel 'weird and sick' - adding: 'It's just not nice... you believe you can trust people but you can't.'

Another complainant, Miss C, said she and PC Noble had developed a 'semi-relationship'.

The domestic abuse victim said the officer had asked her 'How can you be single wearing those boots?' - referring to the thigh-high boots she had been wearing during a police interview.

Noble told her he could 'get into trouble' for contacting her but had also asked her out for a drink.

Nick Hawkins, the legally qualified chairman giving the tribunal's findings said it found 'significant evidence of PC Noble using sexualised talk and making inappropriate suggestions' to Miss X

The fourth complainant, Miss B, whom the panel said they also found 'honest and truthful', said Noble had phoned her three times, to insist he needed to meet her at her home, alone.

Giving evidence, she described Noble as 'being too pushy', adding he 'just wouldn't lay off', and in the end she lied about having moved away from the Midlands to stop his calls.

'It felt a little bit like the way my ex treated me, putting pressure on me, doing things I don't want to,' she said.

Mr Hawkins said Miss B 'had no reason to lie about her interactions', which had happened some years ago, adding that 'she told the panel she was giving evidence because it might help another woman get justice'.

Miss A, Miss B and Miss C all came forward to report Noble following publicity surrounding his criminal trial at Birmingham Crown Court in 2019, in which he was acquitted of a charge of misconduct in a public office in connection with the allegations made by Miss X.

Today Noble was dismissed with immediate effect after the panel found the case for gross misconduct proven following an eight day hearing.

Miss A, Miss B and Miss C all came forward to report Noble (pictured) following publicity surrounding his criminal trial at Birmingham Crown Court in 2019

The hearing at Midlands Police's Lloyd House HQ was told Noble had spent three years working for the force's Public Protection Unit based in Stechford, Birmingham.

He visited a victim of domestic abuse in her home on several occasions from June 2017.

When the woman became uneasy with his 'flirty' behaviour, she began to record their conversations.

These recordings were said to have contained 'wholly inappropriate sexualised comments and advances.'

Noble continued to visit and phone the woman even when he had no policing reason to do so.

In August of the same year, the woman complained and the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) commenced an independent investigation.

After Noble was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, the officer was posted to a non-public facing role while the force investigated the claims.

They identified other women who had experienced the same predatory behaviour and the IOPC deemed his behaviour amounted to gross misconduct.

Deputy Chief Constable Vanessa Jardine, of West Midlands Police, said after the hearing: 'PC Noble is not representative of our organisation.

'The behaviour he carried out will never be acceptable or tolerated in this organisation whose core value is to prevent crime, protect the public and help those in need.

'We will be relentless in routing out individuals who behave in this way.

'I am pleased that PC Noble has now been dismissed from the force but remain saddened by his actions.'
AGROSCOPE

Zurich-Reckenholz, 19.04.2021 - Many plant and animal species depend on habitats shaped by agriculture. Where and with what frequency do which species occur in the agricultural landscape? What is the state of their habitats? How effective are the measures taken to increase biodiversity? Agroscopes biodiversity monitoring programme ALL-EMA records species and habitat diversity in the Swiss agricultural landscape. This is the basis for understanding the state of habitats on which agricultural production strongly depends. The findings show that at lower elevations (plain and hill zones), species and habitat diversity are markedly lower than at higher elevations (mountain zones).

What do septfoil, the marbled white butterfly and water pipits have in common? These species are all common in the Swiss agricultural landscape. Unfortunately, this is not the case for all species that use agricultural habitats. Populations of spignel, the Damon blue and whinchats, for example, have declined so much that they are now on the Red List of endangered species.

Plain and hill zones less species-rich than the mountain zone

The ALL-EMA (= Agricultural Species and Habitats) programme provides representative data on habitats and the occurrence of plants, butterflies and birds  the latter two in collaboration with Biodiversity Monitoring Switzerland  at five-yearly intervals. Initial results show that at lower elevations (plain and hill zones), species and habitat diversity are markedly lower than at higher elevations (mountain zones). One would have expected the opposite: more species ought to occur at lower elevations than in the mountains, where the conditions are too inhospitable for many living creatures. Numerous studies show that the intensive human use of the landscape in the lowlands is the reason for this situation.

The measures are effective  but not enough

All farmers in receipt of direct payments manage part of their land as biodiversity priority areas (BPAs). This is meant to prevent a further decline in biodiversity. The Agroscope researchers investigated the differences in species and habitat diversity between these BPAs on the one hand and control areas without promotion measures on the other. They noticed a higher species and habitat diversity in the BPAs in general, but the difference varied according to elevation. At lower elevations, biodiversity is markedly higher on BPAs than in the control areas, confirming the importance of the measures at these elevations. Nevertheless, success in halting the decline of species and habitat diversity on a large scale has not yet been achieved. In the mountain zones, the differences between BPAs and control areas are smaller, and the general state of biodiversity is better. However, some scores in the lower parts of the mountain zones indicate adverse developments for biodiversity similar to the situation at lower elevations.

Identifying causes in order to take action

The findings from the first five-year survey cycle were summarised in the ALL-EMA report on the state of biodiversity in the Swiss landscape. Some of these findings have already been incorporated into the further development of agricultural policy as measures for improving the quality of biodiversity priority areas by improving the requirements for the latter.

Meanwhile, the second survey was initiated so that development over time can be assessed in future. In addition, ALL-EMA researchers will focus more strongly on the causes of the decline in biodiversity. This will make it easier to evaluate the current measures for promoting species and habitat diversity, which in turn will allow us to implement more efficient biodiversity promotion measures  to ensure that septfoil and water pipits have a future in Switzerland.

Background information on ALL-EMA

The ALL-EMA (Agricultural Species and Habitats, www.allema.ch) monitoring programme was created on behalf of the Federal Offices for Agriculture (FOAG) and the Environment (FOEN) with the aim of promoting species and habitat diversity in the Swiss agricultural landscape. With ALL-EMA, the systematic monitoring of biodiversity also allows us to conclude how biodiversity-promoting measures can be optimised. The three research areas are:

1) The systematic and periodic recording of the state of, and change in, species and habitat diversity in the agricultural landscape according to the agricultural environmental objectives;

2) The assessment of the state of, and change in, species and habitat diversity in the biodiversity priority areas;

3) Data analysis and provision in order to answer current and future questions about species and habitat diversity in the Swiss agricultural landscape.

ALL-EMA supplements the Swiss Confederations monitoring strategy around the focal point agricultural landscape in order to create synergies with the focal points normal landscape (www.biodiversitymonitoring.ch), inventory areas (biotopschutz.wsl.ch) and agricultural environmental monitoring (in german: https://www.blw.admin.ch/blw/de/home/nachhaltige-produktion/umwelt/agrarumweltmonitoring.html).

Address for enquiries

Eva Knop

Agroscope, Reckenholzstrasse 191, 8046 Zurich



Agroscope Media Service

Schwarzenburgstrasse 161, 3003 Bern

media@agroscope.admin.ch

Tel. +41 58 466 88 62

Publisher

AGROSCOPE

http://www.agroscope.admin.ch




Tamara Ecclestone enjoyed a sunny trip to Disneyland over the weekend with her two daughters and husband Jay Rutland.

Looking stylish in a crop top and denim shorts, the mother-of-two, 36, cradled her seven-month-old daughter Serena as her family posed in front of Hollywood's Universal Studios sign.

Jay, 40, stood close to his wife in a white T-shirt and khaki shorts, while Sophia, seven, wore a tie dye tank top and shorts as she flashed the camera a big grin.

Fun: Tamara Ecclestone, 36, enjoyed a sunny trip to Disneyland over the weekend with her two daughters and husband Jay Rutland, 40. The family posed in front of Universal Studio's sign

Little Serena was strapped to her mother's chest in a carrier.

Tamara has clearly missed visiting the theme park with her loved-ones, and captioned the sunny photo: 'It's been a minute.'

Later in the day, Tamara shared some snaps of Sophia visiting some of the park's attractions, along with a clip of Jay enjoying a cooling wind machine on a ride.

Tamara and Jay have been to six countries since the start of lockdown; Croatia, Switzerland, the U.K, Dubai, The Maldives and America.

Bernie Ecclestone defended his daughter Tamara for travelling the world during lockdown and said that where she lived in Gstaad Switzerland was 'very cold'.

The billionaire former F1 boss, 90, said that neither Tamara or her sister Petra had broken any anti-Covid laws by jetting to different countries and had good reasons to do so.

Sweet: Later in the day, Tamara shared some snaps of Sophia visiting some of the park's attraction

Petra, meanwhile, has travelled with her fiance Sam Palmer, 37, and four children from London to Croatia to LA, then Switzerland, Monaco and France, then back to LA, Monaco, and The Maldives before travelling back to Monaco since March last year.

Speaking to MailOnline, Bernie, said this month: 'They have been travelling around a lot but theyve 100 per cent broken no laws by doing so. They both have a home in Switzerland for a start so are residents.

'I think, in Tamara and Jay's case, they left Switzerland to go somewhere warm because it had been snowing and was very cold in Gstaad.

Having fun: The little girl appeared to be having a whale of a time as she threw up peace signs for the camera

'They went to Dubai and from there they disappeared to the Maldives, since they already had a trip there booked for some time and it was easier to fly straight there from Dubai so they didnt have to break any rules. It was nice and simple, plus the airline tickets at the time were cheaper.

'They have now gone to California purely to see Petra, who has moved there.'

It comes two days after Tamara celebrated daughter Serena turning seven-months-old by sharing a sweet throwback snap from when she was pregnant with her.

The socialite looked radiant in the photo she shared on Saturday, which saw her cradle her then baby bump while posing in lingerie.

'I think Jay would like one at home': Tamara joked that her husband loved one ride's wind machine so much he'd like one installed at home

The mother-of-two gushed about her youngest daughter, saying Serena 'completed' her family with Jay and daughter Sophia.

Tamara also wore a white satin dressing gown that had a lace trim along the cuffs of the garment for her stylish photo.

Her brunette locks were pulled up into a ponytail with her hair falling in waves over her shoulders to perfectly frame her face.

'You completed us': Tamara celebrated daughter Serena reaching her seven month milestone by sharing a sweet throwback snap from when she was pregnant on Saturday

In the caption, Tamara lovingly wrote: 'Seven months today. You completed us Riri'.

Tamara managed to keep her second pregnancy quiet on social media, with her father Bernie revealing to MailOnline in September that she had given birth to Serena earlier in the year.

The post comes after Tamara and husband Jay celebrated eldest daughter Sophia's seventh birthday in style by visiting a cooking school and a dessert parlour in Dubai.

Sweet: In the caption, Tamara lovingly wrote: 'Seven months today. You completed us Riri'

Private: Tamara managed to keep her second pregnancy quiet on social media, with her father Bernie revealing to MailOnline in September that she had given birth to Serena earlier

In a series of Instagram updates the birthday girl looked delighted as she licked chocolate off of a spatula at Mamalu Kitchen, before tucking into a tasty milkshake at Black Tap.

Sophia's doting mother paid tribute to her mini-me as she wrote in an accompanying caption: 'The most amazing few days celebrating our 7 year old.

'Couldn't be more proud of the little lady your becoming. Courageous, kind, loyal, clever and hilarious. Love you so much.'

Happy family: Tamara also shares daughter Sophia, seven, with husband Jay

She added: 'Birthday eve was spent @mamalukitchen one of our favourites.'

Jay added: 'Happy 7th birthday to my baby girl Fifi and a happy 6 months bday to my little Fifi mark II, Riri. The months and years are just flying by in a blink.

'Words can't describe how lucky I feel to have two such happy and healthy girls. May every father be blessed with daughters.'

Special day: The post comes after Tamara and husband Jay celebrated eldest daughter Sophia's seventh birthday in style by visiting a cooking school and a dessert parlour

Alongside images of Sophia looking animated with her baby sister, he added: 'Family dinner to celebrate Fifi's 7th birthday, at @blacktapdubai.

'Probably should have been in the [photo] but I'm better the other side of the camera anyway. Riri's face in the last photo. Lovely day, Godbless X' (sic)

The family have barely been back to their UK home since last June, with businessman Jay admitting concerns over their protection was one reason they had not been back more.

The father-of-two revealed to MailOnline that they have no plans to return to London following the dramatic security lapse that led to a multi-million pound jewel heist at her West London home in December 2019.
"Jerry shared his many detailed memories about the war, specific missions, and what it was like to serve in one of the most dangerous assignments of World War II. A must read!"

Over 16 million Americans served in World War II, and those who made it home returned with stories of bravery, horror, and moments that reminded them that life is a gift. With few veterans left to tell their stories, author Gerald Jerry Raschke, at 96 years old, recounts his experiences beginning as an Army Air Corps recruit at the tender age of 18 in his memoir, The Aging Warrior. An ode to family, friendship, and the bonds that tie us, Raschkes moving account celebrates the men and women who devoted their lives to serve their country.

Throughout the book, Raschke describes the 61 missions he served in the European theater in vivid detail from diary entries he made. Despite being color-blind, Raschke managed to earn his wings and the trust of his comrades to complete perilous bombing missions throughout the war. Readers will be on the edge of their seats as they learn about the losses, setbacks, and multiple crash landings Raschke went through as well as specific details around the high-risk missions that stacked the odds against him and his team.

The author also memorably shares the effect the love of his life had on him while serving abroad from their first meeting before his service to their wedding after his homecoming. Those interested in these fascinating wartime stories and the true details of Raschkes role will be inspired by his reflections on this time in history.

Jerry shared his many detailed memories about the war, specific missions, and what it was like to serve in one of the most dangerous assignments of World War II, a reader wrote in a five-star review of the book on Amazon. A must read!

Filled with over 150 captivating WWII photographs, including several original 35mm color photos of target strikes and some images of the Holocaust collected from the Library of Congress, The Aging Warrior is an exceptional and all-encompassing view of the life of a young man and the extraordinary moments that defined his time in the service.

The Aging Warrior

By Rev. Gerald Jerry Raschke

ISBN: 978-1-6655-0924-4 (softcover); 978-1-6655-0925-1 (hardcover)

Available through AuthorHouse, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble

About the author

Rev. Gerald Jerry Raschke is a World War II veteran who served from 1943 to V-J Day 1945. Raschke met his first wife, Mildred, when she was 14 and they were married for 56 years. Raschke later followed his passion for his faith after being ordained to the Sacred Order of Deacons in 1975. Serving as a deacon for over two decades in Texas, he taught future priests and deacons at the University of Dallas Anglican School of Theology. In 1994, he was appointed Archdeacon of the Dallas Diocese and in 1997, began serving at the alter during major feasts at The Cathedral Church of Saint Paul. He received recognition for his heroic feats from the president of the French Republic in 2017 when he was inducted as a Knight of the Legion of Honor, an honor created by Napoleon Bonaparte. Raschke retired as Vice President of Risk Management for Citi Bank after 42 years working in finance. Semiretired, he still serves at the altar on major feast days and resides with his family in Springfield, Ill.

General Inquiries, Review Copies & Interview Requests:

LAVIDGE  Phoenix

Danielle Grobmeier

480-648-7557 | dgrobmeier@lavidge.com
They dont know who it is, but officials in a small Lehigh County borough are basically begging for someone to quit flushing mop heads down the toilet.

While workers have found cellphones, toys, cueballs and marbles among the excrement before, Alburtis officials say over the past year stringy mop heads have become tangled in the boroughs sewer station pumps.

The sixth time was last week.

When the mop head gets stuck, borough workers have to go in, get good and dirty, and untangle it, borough manager Sharon Trexler said.

Its the same type of mop head every time, although Trexler said it is hard to tell when they first get dislodged.

The sewage at the plant only comes from the boroughs 2,500 residents, so its definitely a borough resident, she said.

Its sad you have to tell people what they can put in the toilet, Trexler, who has been the borough manager for 14 years, said.

The problem is that the mop heads stop the pumps, she said. At one point, there was one caught in each of the boroughs pumps.

And if the pumps arent working, people will see backups in their basements, Trexler warned, raw sewage.

It would be difficult to hone in on the exact offender, so the borough wrote about the issue in its newsletter.

Then last week, when yet another mop head had to be dislodged, officials posted about it on Facebook, starting with MOP HEADS SHOULD NOT BE FLUSHED.

At this point, were asking residents to help us, Trexler said.

The borough is asking for tips to find the culprit, and also asking residents to spread the word that mop heads and toilets dont mix.

Alburtis isnt alone in this sticky situation. Crystal, Minnesota, has had to deal with multiple mop heads being flushed into the sewage system.

When we flush the wrong things down the toilet or drain, such as a mop head, it creates problems for pipes and pumps in... Posted by City of Crystal, MN - Local Government on Monday, March 8, 2021

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to lehighvalleylive.com.

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com.
Water under the bridge? Not exactly. The tally of lost learning and instruction time and the toll it took on kids education is yet to be fully understood. We also dont know yet how many families gave up and left CPS for private or nontraditional charter schools. Enrollment at the district has been shrinking substantially every year for almost two decades.
A TAKEAWAY restaurant in Henley has scored poorly in two consecutive food hygiene inspections.

Herbies Pizza, which is based at the top shops in Greys Road, was awarded two stars out of a possible five at its most recent visit by South Oxfordshire District Councils environmental health inspectors.

The score, meaning improvement needed, follows the one-star rating, or major improvement needed, which the business received after the previous inspection in January.

On that visit, the inspectors found the cleanliness of the premises was generally satisfactory but improvements were needed in the handling of food, including preparation, cooking, reheating, cooling and storage.

At the time, a spokesman said the business was confident of a better score, saying staff always washed their hands between preparing and dispatching orders and all food arrival, cooking and expiration dates were recorded.

But when the inspectors returned last month, they said food handling still wasnt up to scratch so they could only award one additional star.

A spokesman for Herbies, which held a three-star rating before the January visit, said the business had requested yet another inspection and he was confident it would score much better. He said: Theyll be coming this week or next and we expect to do well because weve literally changed everything and its now looking in great shape.

We accept that the last visit wasnt very good but weve got new staff on board who have all had their food hygiene training.

Weve improved our paperwork, put notices on everything in the kitchen and are ensuring that all the right temperature checks are being carried out so were expecting a great result.

Only one star was awarded to the Chef King Chinese restaurant at The Arcade in Goring, the same as it was given after an inspection in 2019.

Inspectors said the building and facilities were satisfactory but food handling needed improvement while paperwork, including food record-keeping and logs of staff training on hygiene, required major improvement.

Chef King did not respond to a request for comment.

Two stars went to the Village Plaice in Benson high street, the Five Horseshoes at Maidensgrove and the White Hart in Nettlebed.

The Village Plaice, which was previously rated four stars or good, was satisfactory in all areas except hygienic food handling, which needed to improve. A manager said this mostly stemmed from an issue with water infiltration in a rear wall, which was going to be addressed anyway, and some gaps in the records.

The takeaway has requested a

re-inspection which should take place in the next month or so.

He said: Weve made all the improvements that were requested and were just waiting for them to come back.

Weve always had a good score but sometimes people can point out things youve missed. Were confident well go back up again.

The Five Horseshoes, which also had four stars previously, was on top of its paperwork but both the condition of the building and food handling required improvement.

Landlord Dan Taverner said it was the pubs first bad rating since he took over 14 years ago.

He said: It has been a difficult year with the pandemic and this time we had a new officer who pointed out a bunch of things which we hadnt been alerted to before.

Weve addressed them all and put new processes in place, including a weekly deep clean, so were confident that everything will be spick and span when we re-open.

We expect to go back up to our usual four- or five-star rating at the next visit.

The White Hart, which also had four stars previously, only needed to improve the condition of the premises. A spokesman said the pub suffered an unexpected plumbing problem which required part of a wall to be removed and this coincided with the inspectors visit, which is always unannounced.

He said the wall had been patched up and the environmental health team would be carrying out another inspection and had informally confirmed there was no longer a problem.

The remaining scores for the first quarter of 2021 were as follows:

Five stars (very good)  Sage and Squash, Bell Street, and Uppal Fish and Chips, Kings Road, both Henley; Carl Woods Butchers, Wood Lane, Sonning Common; the Nettlebed Creamery, Nettlebed; the Granary Delicatessen, Watlington; Benson Butchers, Benson; Dinkys Baguette Shop, Bridge Street, Caversham

Four stars  Path Hill outdoor activity centre, Goring Heath

Three stars (satisfactory)  Mr Simms sweet shop, Bell Street and Pachangas Mexican restaurant, Duke Street, both Henley; BB Wines, Peppard Road, Sonning Common; Blue Tin Produce, Ipsden; Village Tandoori, Kidmore End Road, Emmer Green; Kings Meadow convenience store, Gosbrook Road, Caversham.

As well as requesting a re-inspection, businesses can appeal their ratings. All scores are awarded under national criteria set by the Food Standards Agency and published online at ratings.food.gov.uk
Chennai, April 19 : Tension prevailed at the Government Vellore Medical College Hospital in Tamil Nadu on Monday with the relatives of patients alleging the death of six patients due to disruption in supply of oxygen.

Refuting the charge, a health official told IANS: "Normally the death rate of Covid-19 patient ward in the hospital will be one per day. But today four patients lost their lives. Two other persons admitted in the critical care ward (non-Covid-19) also died." According to the official, work on the hospital's oxygen plant was underway on Monday and the relatives of the Covid-19 patients who died alleged that the death was due to disruption in oxygen supply.

"There are over 150 patients in the hospital's Covid-19 ward. Supply of oxygen to several patients did not get disrupted," the official added.

According to the official, an inquiry by the Director Medical Education has been ordered.

District Collector A. Shanmuga Sundaram had also visited the hospital, a police official told IANS.

However, Sundaram, and hospital officials were not available for comment despite IANS trying several times.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
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
The latest news on COVID-19 developments in Canada (all times eastern):

People line up in the rain for a COVID-19 vaccine at a pop-up clinic at the Masjid Darus Salaam in the Thorncliffe Park neighbourhood in Toronto on Sunday, April 11, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

The latest news on COVID-19 developments in Canada (all times eastern):

8:05 p.m.

Yukon's chief medical officer of health confirmed a new COVID-19 case in the territory today.

Dr. Brendan Hanley says the person is from rural Yukon and had travelled within the country.

This brings the total number of cases in the territory to 77.

Last week, the territory confirmed its first case of the P.1 variant, which is the strain first identified in Brazil.

5:55 p.m.

Alberta is reporting 1,391 new cases of COVID-19 and three additional deaths due to the virus.

The province says 1,160 cases of variants have also been identified in the last 24 hours.

Variants currently make up almost 57 per cent of the provinces 18,424 active cases.

There are 460 people in hospital due to COVID-19, and 104 are in intensive care.

3:35 p.m.

Saskatchewan is reporting 243 new cases of COVID-19.

The province says there have been no new deaths due to the virus.

It says there are 200 people in hospital because of COVID-19, and 43 of them are in intensive care.

2:50 p.m.

Dr. Allison Furey, wife of Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey, has stepped up to help Ontario battle its soaring COVID-19 case numbers.

The premier told reporters today that his wife has been working on the front lines in a St. Johns COVID-19 assessment unit, and that shes eager to help out in Ontario.

Furey says he spoke with Ontarios deputy health minister, Helen Angus, early this morning about how Newfoundland and Labrador could help the province meet its need for health-care workers.

He told reporters today he expects officials to work out a plan for sending workers to Ontario within the next 24 hours.

2:15 p.m.

Newfoundland and Labrador is reporting three new cases of COVID-19.

Health officials say two new cases are linked to travel within Canada, and the other is a close contact of a previously identified infection.

There are now 25 active reported cases of COVID-19 in the province.

Public health says contact tracers are still working to chase down the source of one of those infections, which was announced last Thursday.

1:45 p.m.

Nunavut's chief public health officer says all those currently infected with COVID-19 in Iqaluit are adults.

Dr. Michael Patterson also says about three-quarters of them are in their 20s and 30s.

Nunavut is reporting six new cases of COVID-19, all in Iqaluit, bringing the city's total to 28 cases.

Patterson declared an outbreak in the city on April 16, after its first case was reported on April 14.

The city of about 8,000 people, the only place in Nunavut with active cases, is under a strict lockdown with schools, non-essential businesses and government offices closed.

1:35 p.m.

Manitoba is lowering the age eligibility for COVID-19 vaccines.

Anyone 40 and over can now get the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

The change follows similar moves by Ontario and Alberta on the weekend.

Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna doses are available for First Nations people in Manitoba aged 34 and up and for others aged 54 and up.

The province reported 108 new COVID-19 cases and no new deaths today.

1:30 p.m.

New Brunswick is reporting nine new cases of COVID-19 today.

Health officials say the hard-hit Edmundston region has six new cases while the Moncton, Fredericton and Bathurst areas each have one new case.

There are 158 active reported cases in the province and 21 patients are hospitalized with the disease, including eight in intensive care.

New Brunswick has administered more than 200,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine, with 27.5 per cent of the eligible population 16 and over having received at least one dose.

1:15 p.m.

Nova Scotia is reporting 15 new cases of COVID-19 today and now has 63 active cases.

Eight of the cases are in the Halifax area, six are in the eastern zone and one is in the western area of the province.

Seven of the 15 cases are related to travel outside of Atlantic Canada, five are close contacts of previously reported cases and three are under investigation.

As of Sunday, the province has administered 207,563 doses of COVID-19 vaccine with 32,496 people having received their required second dose.

12 p.m.

Prince Edward Island is increasing travel restrictions in an effort to control the number of COVID-19 cases in the province.

All non-resident travel to the Island from outside Atlantic Canada is on hold until at least May 17.

The province is reporting three new cases of COVID-19 today  all involving people who arrived from outside the Atlantic region.

Rotational workers and truck drivers who arrive in the province will need to isolate until they receive a negative COVID-19 test even if they are vaccinated.

11:30 a.m.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh wants Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to consider invoking the federal Emergencies Act given the dire pandemic outlook in Ontario.

In a letter to Trudeau, Singh says such a declaration could help ensure a more co-ordinated delivery of vaccines to those who need them most.

Singh says it would also allow workers to prevent the spread of COVID-19 by taking paid sick days and time off to get vaccinated.

The NDP leader says in Toronto, the wealthiest neighbourhoods have higher rates of vaccination than neighbourhoods where racialized and working-class people live  areas that have higher levels of COVID-19 positivity.

11:20 a.m.

Manitobans 40 and older will soon be able to get the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

A government source has told The Canadian Press the province is lowering the minimum age eligibility following similar moves by Ontario and Alberta.

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, says an announcement is to be made today.

Currently, the AstraZeneca vaccine in Manitoba is available to those 65 and older and to people between 55 and 64 with certain underlying medical conditions.

11:15 a.m.

Alberta says residents born in 1981 or earlier will be eligible to get the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

Premier Jason Kenney announced last night the province would lower the minimum age to receive the shot to 40 from 55.

Bookings for the younger age cohort are to start tomorrow.

Health Minister Tyler Shandro says lowering the age offers roughly 575,000 more Albertans access to a COVID-19 vaccine.

11 a.m.

Quebec is reporting 1,092 new COVID-19 cases today and 15 more deaths attributed to the novel coronavirus, including two in the past 24 hours.

Despite the notable drop in new, daily infections, health officials reported 686 hospitalizations, a rise of three, and 183 people in intensive care, a rise of eight.

The province says it administered 40,433 COVID-19 vaccine doses Sunday; nearly 2.4 million Quebecers have received at least one dose.

New restrictions between Ontario and Quebec went into effect today, limiting travel between the provinces in order to reduce the spread of virus variants.

10:50 a.m.

Ontario is reporting 4,447 new cases of COVID-19 today and 19 more deaths attributed to the novel coronavirus.

Health Minister Christine Elliott says there are 1,299 new cases in Toronto, 926 in Peel Region and 577 in York Region.

The Health Department is reporting that 2,202 people are hospitalized with the disease, although the government notes that more than 10 per cent of hospitals did not submit data.

There are 755 people in intensive care and 516 on ventilators.

10:45 a.m.

Nunavut is reporting six new cases of COVID-19 today, all in Iqaluit.

The capital city of about 8,000 people declared an outbreak April 17, two days after its first case was reported.

There are now 28 active reported cases of COVID-19 in Nunavut, all in Iqaluit.

Since the first case was reported last week, there have been 263 COVID-19 tests in Iqaluit, 235 of which have come back negative.

10:30 a.m.

Canada hit the 10-million milestone this morning for total COVID-19 vaccines administered and is closing in fast on getting a first dose to one in four Canadians.

With Ontario reporting almost 67,000 new vaccinations this morning, Canada surpassed the 10-million mark.

About 9.1 million people have now received at least one dose, including about 915,000 who have received both required doses.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 19, 2021.
Its not that some people love guns more than people, its that some people love liberty more than government oppression and tyranny. The second amendment was put in place to give the government pause before doing to us what the governments of China, Valenzuela, Iran, Cuba, etc., did to theirs. Instead of acting like the lap dog of the socialist Democratic party, you should be thanking gun owners that your freedom still exists. This crop of liberals want to rule over every facet of our lives and gun owners are the only ones right now stopping them.
[April 19, 2021] Gen Z Girl Band Hello Sister Releases First Ever NFT with a Limited Edition Remix of Their Hit Song "Wave Of LOVE" on Rarible.com

ORLANDO, Fla., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Gen Z girl band Hello Sister (www.hellosistermusic.com) announces that they have released their first ever NFT (non-fungible token) in the form of a Limited Edition remix of their hit song "Wave of LOVE" available now on Rarible.com (https://bit.ly/397lfdJ). The pop rock group from Orlando, Florida is made up of three sisters Grace, Gabriella and Scarlett Mason ages 12-15, making them the youngest music artists known to release an NFT. The NFT will be sold at auction with 25 first edition tokens starting at $50 USD each. They will be available with the cryptocurrency price of .03 ETH (Ethereum). "We are super excited to be a part of the NFT movement. As young music artists, we find it so cool that this new form of art exists. We are humbled to be a part of it at such a young age," said the sisters. The collectible digital asset of their pop anthem, penned by their father, Pop and R&B songwriter Tim Mason over 20 years ago, has been given a fresh makeover by the teen group, but the catchy tune underscores a timeless message  "let's ride this wave of loveone smile can change everything." The multi-talented girls are all musicians and songwriters with a strong following on several social media platforms, and fans are widely sharing their #waveofLOVE hashtag. A portion of the proceeds from the initial sale of the "Wave of LOVE" NFT will be donated to a local animal shelter. "We really wanted to provide something super special for our fans. And the idea of donating to a shelter was a great wa for us to help animals," the group said.



Hello Sister is on the roster at Create Music Group (https://createmusicgroup.com), a Los Angeles-based independent music distribution and publishing company. Create oversees Hello Sister's digital royalty collection and distributes to more than 100 DSP's including Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and more. Link to "Wave of LOVE" video: Hello Sister - Wave of LOVE (Official Music Video) - YouTube

Follow Hello Sister on social media -

Instagram: hellosistermusic

Facebook: hellosistermusic

Twitter: @hellosisterband

TikTok: @hellosistermusic

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXW8EiqEPBm3SR4v5JrJ8JA

Buy/Stream/Listen: cmg.ffm.to/waveoflove Website: www.hellosistermusic.com Hello Sister Contacts:

Media & PR: Carole Imperiale | 307705@email4pr.com (908) 380-0015

Booking & Management: Bernard Porter | Bernard@pcgnashville.com | (615) 400-8321 View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/gen-z-girl-band-hello-sister-releases-first-ever-nft-with-a-limited-edition-remix-of-their-hit-song-wave-of-love-on-rariblecom-301271249.html SOURCE Hello Sister

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Xi's remarks about Asian countries' solutions to global challenges

Xinhua) 17:00, April 19, 2021

BEIJING, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Government officials, experts and leaders of businesses worldwide have gathered at a four-day forum starting Sunday in China's southern province of Hainan.

Founded in 2001, the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) is committed to promoting regional economic integration and bringing Asian countries closer to their development goals.

Here are some of the remarks made by Chinese President Xi Jinping to encourage cooperation between Asian countries and collaboration between Asia and the rest of the world.

Sept. 16, 2014

Xi published a signed article titled "Let us become partners in pursuit of our dreams" prior to his state visit to Sri Lanka.

-- "As a Sri Lankan proverb goes, give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; and teach a man how to fish and you feed him for life," Xi said.

-- "China will put into practice its guiding principles for neighborhood diplomacy, i.e. amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness in its cooperation with Sri Lanka in every way so that China's development may benefit the people of Sri Lanka to a greater extent," he said in the article.

April 19, 2015

Xi published a signed article titled "Long Live China-Pakistan Friendship" prior to his first-ever state visit to Pakistan.

-- "My friend's lovely image dwells in the mirror of my heart; I tilt my head slightly, and here it comes into my sight," Xi quoted a line from a Urdu poem.

-- "Committed to building a China-Pakistan community of common destiny, we cooperate to expand our converging interests and strive for common development. Our aim is to deliver even more benefits to our peoples and realize brighter development prospects," Xi said.

Nov. 19, 2018

Xi published a signed article titled "Open up a New Future Together for China-Philippine Relations" ahead of his state visit to the Southeast Asian country.

-- "As a Philippine proverb goes, 'Seize today, or you will lose tomorrow.' China will work with the Philippines to seize the opportunity and go along with the trend of our time," Xi said.

-- "China welcomes the Philippines and other countries on board the express train of its development. China will work with other countries to firmly uphold the WTO-centered multilateral trading system and promote the evolution of the international political and economic order in a fairer and more equitable direction," he said.

Nov. 10, 2020

Xi sent a congratulatory letter to the opening of the first conference of the International Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation of the BFA.

-- A new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation is on the upswing in today's world, bringing about profound changes to human development and offering a new path for solving and responding to difficulties and challenges for global development, Xi said.

-- Noting that the world is now facing the COVID-19 pandemic and other various challenges, he said China stands ready to work with countries worldwide to strengthen scientific and technological innovation and cooperation, and push for more open, inclusive and mutually beneficial international exchanges in the area, so as to contribute to promoting the global economic recovery and safeguarding people's health.

Nov. 20, 2020

Xi addressed the 27th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting in Beijing via video link.

-- "There is a Malay proverb that goes, 'bukit sama didaki, lurah sama dituruni,' which means to climb the hill together and go down the ravine together. It aptly captures the spirit of our Asia-Pacific family. COVID-19 serves as another reminder that only solidarity and cooperation can enable us to prevail over challenges," Xi said.

Jan. 25, 2021

Xi addressed the World Economic Forum Virtual Event of the Davos Agenda.

-- "China will continue to share its experience with other countries, do its best to assist countries and regions that are less prepared for the pandemic, and work for greater accessibility and affordability of COVID-19 vaccines in developing countries," Xi said.

March 29, 2021

Xi held a telephone conversation with Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

-- China stands ready to work with Sri Lanka to boost bilateral cooperation and provide robust impetus for the latter's post-pandemic economic recovery and sustainable development, Xi said.

He suggested that the two countries steadily push forward major projects like the Colombo Port City and the Hambantota Port, and promote high-quality collaboration in jointly building the Belt and Road.

(Web editor: Xian Jiangnan, Liang Jun)
Learn about the company's Greener Life program and enter to win a new flat screen television

ATLANTA, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Georgia Natural Gas, Georgia's leading natural gas provider, with partners 11Alive, Lenox Square and eWaste/ePlanet, will celebrate Earth Day by holding its annual recycling event at Lenox Square on Thursday, April 22, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. The community is invited to bring old electronics to Lenox Square, located at 3393 Peachtree Rd. NE in Atlanta. The collection site has moved this year to a new location within the shopping center, outside the dining pavilion.

(PRNewsfoto/Georgia Natural Gas)

"Earth Day is about coming together to protect our planet and bringing awareness to important steps we can take individually to make a collective difference for the environment," said Maurice Baker, manager of community relations at Georgia Natural Gas. "We have helped to recycle nearly 50,000 pounds of electronics, and this year, we look forward to having an even greater impact."

Those looking to participate can drop off unwanted electronic equipment  including cell phones, computers, monitors, printers, televisions, radios and fax machines  for eWaste/ePlanet to recycle responsibly.

"We are happy to take your unwanted electronics, regardless of the quantity or quality, and responsibly dispose of them using environmentally sustainable practices," said Wilson Kieffer, founder of eWaste/ePlanet. "You will have the peace of mind on Earth Day knowing everything is taken care of responsibly, which is great for the planet we all live on."

Georgia Natural Gas offers customers another way to be environmental stewards by opting into Greener Life, a carbon offset program that makes emissions from their natural gas use carbon neutral. Greener Life makes it easy and affordable for customers to make their natural gas use have a net zero impact on the environment by purchasing and retiring carbon offsets on their behalf. During the event, participants can learn about the program and enter to win prizes, including a flat screen television.

Story continues

All participants are encouraged to wear a mask, stay socially distant and follow CDC safety guidelines. Volunteers will be on location to retrieve items from vehicle trunks to avoid direct person-to-person contact. For more information, please visit www.gng.com.

About Georgia Natural Gas

Georgia Natural Gas is part of SouthStar Energy Services. SouthStar is owned by Southern Company Gas, a wholly owned subsidiary of Southern Company (NYSE: SO). SouthStar also operates as Ohio Natural Gas, Florida Natural Gas, Maryland Energy, Pennsylvania Energy, Grand Rapids Energy (in Michigan), Virginia Retail Energy and in other parts of the Southeast as SouthStar Energy Services. SouthStar's subsidiaries in Illinois operate as Illinois Energy and Illinois Energy Solutions.

About Southern Company Gas

Southern Company Gas is a wholly owned subsidiary of Atlanta-based Southern Company (NYSE:SO), America's premier energy company. Southern Company Gas serves approximately 4.3 million natural gas utility customers through its regulated distribution companies in four states with approximately 666,000 retail customers through its companies that market natural gas. Other nonutility businesses include investments in interstate pipelines, asset management for natural gas wholesale customers and ownership and operation of natural gas storage facilities. For more information, visit southerncompanygas.com.

Cision

View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/georgia-natural-gas-invites-community-to-recycle-electronics-at-lenox-square-on-earth-day-april-22-301271607.html

SOURCE Georgia Natural Gas
(Alliance News) - The following is a round-up of updates by London-listed companies, issued on Monday and not separately reported by Alliance News:







Evraz PLC - blue-chip Russian steelmaker - Issues consent solicitations for USD500.0 million 6.75% 2022 notes, USD750.0 million 5.375% 2023 notes and USD700.0 million 5.250% 2024 notes.







Greatland Gold PLC - precious and base metals exploration and development in Western Australia and Tasmania - Says further results from Scallywag drill programme show license is "prospective for intrusion-related mineralised systems." Chief Executive Shaun Day adds: "In particular, it is very pleasing that initial targets have once more intersected pathfinder elements associated with systems seen nearby at Havieron and Telfer, and regionally at Winu." Company completed a total of seven holes for 3,761 metres at Scallywag during the 2020 field season, testing targets at the Kraken, London and Blackbeard prospects. Exploration work at Scallywag is focussed on the discovery of intrusion related gold-copper deposits such as Havieron, Telfer and Winu.







RTW Venture Fund Ltd - investment company focused on the life sciences sector - Portfolio company Biomea Fusion Inc prices USD153 million US initial public offer. Biomea's IPO raised USD153 million by offering 9 million shares at USD17.00 per share. On the first day of trading, Biomea's share price increased by 9.41% to close at USD18.11 per share. "Biomea is a preclinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery, development and commercialization of irreversible small molecules to treat patients with genetically defined cancers. Biomea is advancing its lead preclinical program BF-219, an irreversible menin inhibitor, for the treatment of menin-dependent cancers," company explains. Prior to IPO, the company together with other funds managed by RTW Investments, participated in a USD56 million Series A financing round in Biomea in December 2020.







Supply@Me Capital PLC - London-headquartered fintech platform - Says due diligence for TradeFlow Capital Management Pte Ltd deal continues and, it notes, does the integration plan for the Supply@ME and TradeFlow inventory funding business models. "The terms of the transaction and its financing are being structured so as to maximise existing shareholders' value," company says. It adds: "SYME and TradeFlow are keen to complete the acquisition as soon as practicable. A further announcement will be made in due course."







Bushveld Minerals Ltd - South Africa focused-vanadium producer - Notes unprotected industrial action at its Vametco operation has temporarily stopped production with effect from April 16. "It is understood that the unprotected industrial action is in relation to expectations of payments under the Employee Participation Plan at Vametco, however, the company is yet to receive a formal notice from organised labour," company says. It adds: "The company recently concluded an EPP with the recognised labour union. The plan is designed to provide a framework whereby employees, excluding senior management, can share in the favourable performance of the company. This is in addition to production related bonuses employees receive during the ordinary course of the year. The expectations for payments are not in keeping with the EPP recently signed." Says senior management team has held a series of meetings with representatives of the recognised trade union.







Cambria Automobiles PLC - franchised motor retailer - Says talks with management team, Mark Lavery, James Mullins and Tim Duckers, over possible acquisition deal ongoing. Management team sizing up deal to buy entire issued share capital of the company, not already owned by them, at of 80 pence in cash per share. Deadline for management team to make firm offer extended to May 17.







Tavistock Investments PLC - Berkshire-based investment manager - Receives further letters from Paul Simpson and Denise Simpson, who own 1.0% of Tavistock, stating their intention to reject the possible all share offer by TEAM PLC. Notes now has letters of intent to reject deal from 35.1% of shareholders, on top of 16% owned my management who will turn down deal. Company believes offer undervalues Tavistock and feels there is no commercial logic to justify a combination of the two businesses. On March 23, Jersey-based investment manager Team announced a possible all-share offer for Tavistock worth GBP15.2 million, or 2.5 pence per share.







By Paul McGowan; paulmcgowan@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Holdings Plc has scrapped the executive floor of its Canary Wharf headquarters in London and turned the private offices of its top staff into client meeting rooms and collaborative spaces.

Chief Executive Officer Noel Quinn and other senior managers have been kicked out of their offices on the 42nd-floor and will hot desk on an open-plan floor two storeys below, Quinn told the Financial Times in an interview. The offices were empty half of the time because senior staff were traveling around the world, which was a waste of real estate, he said.

Quinn told the newspaper that he wont be in the office five days a week, saying its unnecessary and the new reality of life. A representative for confirmed the FT report to Bloomberg

The London-based bank, which expects to eventually shrink its property footprint by 40%, doesnt plan to renew many of its city-center leases due in the next three to five years, Quinn said. The lender is also shifting to a policy of about two employees per desk, excluding branches, he said.

Last years abrupt shift to remote working has sparked a debate across industries about future demand for office space, prompting a number of global banks and other large firms to rethink how employees operate. Standard Chartered Plc this month formalized hybrid working for staff across its global operations after 84% of employees asked to keep the flexible arrangements pioneered during the coronavirus pandemic.

Still, not all banks are embracing a permanent shift to working from home. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer David Solomon said in February that remote work was an aberration that we are going to correct as quickly as possible.


SANTA CLARA (dpa-AFX) - The U.K. government Monday said it would investigate Nvidia Corp.'s (NVDA) $40 billion deal to acquire British chip designer Arm from SoftBank Group Corp., over possible national security issues.



Digital minister Oliver Dowden said he had issued a Public Interest Intervention Notice over the sale of ARM by Japan's SoftBank to Nvidia.



He has written to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to inform them of his decision and has instructed them to begin a 'phase one' investigation to assess the transaction.



The CMA will now prepare a report with advice on jurisdictional and competition issues. The report will also include a summary of any representations it receives on potential national security issues arising from a consultation it will launch to gather third-party views.



'As a next step and to help me gather the relevant information, the UK's independent competition authority will now prepare a report on the implications of the transaction, which will help inform any further decisions,' he said.



Nvidia said it does not believe the deal poses any national security issues.



'We will continue to work closely with the British authorities, as we have done since the announcement of this deal,' said Nvidia.



Last September, Nvidia announced its deal to buy business of UK-based Arm in a deal worth $40 billion. Arm develops and licenses intellectual property and software tools for chip designs.



However, it has attracted intense scrutiny from regulators around the world, while competitors have accused that the deal would give the U.S.-based chip maker an unfair advantage in the semi-conductor industry.



In January, CMA, the U.K. competition regulator, announced it would investigate Nvidia's acquisition of Arm.



'The CMA will look at the deal's possible effect on competition in the UK. The CMA is likely to consider whether, following the takeover, Arm has an incentive to withdraw, raise prices or reduce the quality of its IP licensing services to NVIDIA's rivals,' CMA announced in a statement then.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

NVIDIA-Aktie komplett kostenlos handeln - auf Smartbroker.de
Irish Water, working in partnership with Leitrim County Council, is replacing approximately 600 metres of old, problematic watermains in Drumlitten, Co Leitrim that were prone to frequent bursts and leakage which caused water supply disruptions for customers in the area.

The mains are being replaced with new high density polyethylene (plastic) pipes and the benefits of the works will include a more reliable supply as the replacement of water mains and service connections will reduce the instances of bursts and water outages.

The mains that are being replaced are on the R209 between the Keshcarraigan and Fenagh Road. The works are due to commence this week and will be completed in June. Once completed customers in this area will enjoy an improved water and more reliable supply with less disruption. Farrans Construction Ltd are contracted to carry out the work on behalf of Irish Water in line with Level 5 COVID-19 restrictions.

This project is one example of how Irish Water is working in partnership with Leitrim County Council to reduce leaks every day. Fixing leaks can be complicated with over 63,000km of water pipe in Ireland. Most leaks arent visible, resulting in precious water being lost but we are making progress. In 2018 the rate of leakage nationally was 46%, by the end of 2019 it was 42% and we are currently on course to achieving a national leakage rate of 38% by 2021.

Commenting on the project Declan Cawley, Irish Water said: To facilitate the safe delivery of the works, there will be some traffic management in place. Local and emergency access will be maintained at all times.

The works may involve some short-term water shut offs and the project team will ensure that customers are given a minimum of 48 hours notice prior to any planned water shut offs. We understand that this type of work can be inconvenient and works crews will make every effort to minimise any disruption these necessary works cause.

This mains replacement work is part of a significant investment by Irish Water to upgrade the water network in Leitrim and will benefit customers by strengthening and reinforcing the water network and minimising disruptions in their water supply by reducing leakage and unplanned outages when bursts occurred on the existing main. We would like to thank customers in advance for their cooperation and patience while we complete this essential job.

Customers have been notified about the works and can phone Irish Water on 1850 278 278 if they have any questions about the project or check out the Water Supply Updates section of the Irish Water website for regular updates.

The National Leakage Reduction Programme helps provide a more reliable water supply to Irish communities by reducing high levels of leakage and improving water quality. Its delivery represents an investment of over 500 million between 2017 and 2021 to reduce leakage and replace old pipes on the water network.

Irish Water continues to work at this time with our Local Authority partners, contractors and others to safeguard the health and well-being of both staff and the public and to ensure the continuity of critical drinking water and wastewater services. Irish Water would like to remind people to follow the HSE COVID-19 advice and ensure frequent handwashing.

Irish Water is working proactively with our delivery partners and as part of a multi-agency working group to ensure that our construction works are carried out in a controlled and safe manner, in keeping with Government and HSE guidelines to protect workers, their families and the broader community.

For more information on reducing leaks visit our national Leakage Reduction Programme page on www.water.ie.
An experienced skydiver died Saturday after an accident at the Skydive Lodi Parachute Center, the San Joaquin Sheriffs Department confirmed Sunday.

The incident happened a month to the day after the owner of the facility in Acampo was ordered to pay more than $40 million to the family of another jumper who died in a tandem dive with an uncertified instructor in 2016.

Shortly before 2:30 p.m., we received a call of a parachutist coming down with her parachutes tangled, said Sandra Mendez, public information officer for the county. Unfortunately, she did not survive.

The sheriffs office said the skydiver, whose name was not disclosed pending identification by the Medical Examiners Office, was very experienced and that the Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the accident.

The womans death is the latest in a string of fatalities linked to the Skydive Lodi Parachute Center, which has recorded 22 deaths since opening in 1981. Nine of those deaths have occurred since 2016, according to the FAA.

On March 17, the family of an 18-year-old high school graduate from Los Banos who died in 2016 after his parachute did not open was awarded a $40 million judgment against the owner of the skydiving school, Bill Dause.

Investigators said first-time skydiver Tyler Turner plummeted 13,000 feet to the ground when the instructor, who was attached to him by a harness, could not get their parachutes open.

A 28-year-old woman died in 2019 after she departed from the Lodi Parachute Center and parachuted onto Highway 99, where she struck the back of a big rig, according to California Highway Patrol officials.

Another experienced skydiver, a 62-year-old woman with more than 2,500 jumps under her belt, died at the facility in 2018 when her main chute failed to deploy correctly.

What weve decided was she had a malfunction of her main parachute, waited a long time before she got rid of that  we call it a cutaway  and activated her reserve parachute, Dause told reporters at the time.

The same year, the FBI served a warrant at the Skydive Lodi Parachute Center, confiscating skydiving videos and records of credit card transactions, but did not disclose what was being investigated.

In 2016, 20 instructors at the facility were suspended and 120 others were told they required more training, following an investigation by the United States Parachute Association, the only federally recognized organization that licenses skydivers.

The inquiry followed an incident when a skydiving plane carrying 18 people took off from the center and crash-landed upside-down in a nearby vineyard after its engine malfunctioned.

The FAAs skydiving accident investigations are typically limited to determining whether the parachute was properly packed, according to an agency spokesperson.

Aidin Vaziri is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: avaziri@sfchronicle.com
OSLO, NORWAY (20 April 2021) - The 2021 Annual General Meeting of TGS-NOPEC Geophysical Company ASA ("TGS" or the "Company") will be held on 11 May 2021 at the offices of Schjdt law firm at Ruselkkveien 16, in Oslo at 17:00 CET.

Registration of attendees will begin at 16:30 CET.

Due to the extraordinary situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and in light of the travel and meeting recommendations and restrictions currently in place, the Company has found it necessary to urge shareholders to either vote electronically in advance or submit proxy forms prior to the meeting and to not attend the meeting in person.

The notice for the annual general meeting is attached hereto (English and Norwegian), together with relevant appendices. The notice will be sent to all registered shareholders on 20 April 2021.

To register your attendance, send proxy or to cast your vote electronically in advance through VPS Investor Services, please use the electronic link here: https://investor.vps.no/gm/logOn.htm?token=f7e6cd58a87b0561ee0b766fa19e5f69ee5727c8&validTo=1623337200000&oppdragsId=20210419VPQ2N5U0 and available on www.tgs.com . The pin code and reference number, which are sent out with the notice, will be needed. Kindly note that shareholders that have received the notice electronically will not receive and do not need a pin code or reference number, but must submit their notice of attendance, proxy or advance votes through their online investor account services (investortjenester).

Online registration will open on 20 April 2021 at 14:00 CET.

About TGS

TGS provides scientific data and intelligence to companies active in the energy sector. In addition to a global, extensive and diverse energy data library, TGS offers specialized services such as advanced processing and analytics alongside cloud-based data applications and solutions.

Forward Looking Statement

All statements in this press release other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements, which are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict, and are based upon assumptions as to future events that may not prove accurate. These factors include TGS' reliance on a cyclical industry and principal customers, TGS' ability to continue to expand markets for licensing of data, and TGS' ability to acquire and process data product at costs commensurate with profitability, as well as volatile market conditions, which have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the severe drop in oil prices. Actual results may differ materially from those expected or projected in the forward-looking statements. TGS undertakes no responsibility or obligation to update or alter forward-looking statements for any reason.

For more information, visit TGS.com or contact:

Fredrik Amundsen

CFO

investor@tgs.com

Attachments
A hand grenade found at a yard sale in North Cape May over the weekend prompted authorities to evacuate an area surrounding the home, police said Monday.

On Saturday, Lower Township police received a report of a hand grenade located at a yard sale on Shore Drive in North Cape May and responding officers determined the device was unexploded, police said in an alert. The area of Shore Drive between Racetrack Drive and Folsom Drive was evacuated.

The Atlantic City Police Departments Bomb Squad Unit removed the grenade safely and transported it to a secure location, police said.

The Lower Township Police Department would like to remind residents that if they discover artillery, it should not be touched or moved. Artillery should be left in place for appropriately trained and equipped authorities to assess and remove, police said in an alert.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Avalon Zoppo may be reached at azoppo2@njadvancemedia.com.
on Monday added India to its COVID-19 travel "red list", which effectively bans all travel from the country and makes a 10-day hotel quarantine compulsory for UK residents arriving back to the country.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock confirmed the move in the House of Commons as he revealed that 103 cases of the so-called Indian variant had been identified in the UK, of which the "vast majority have links to international travel".

He said that samples of that variant have been analysed to see if the new variant has any "concerning characteristics", such as greater transmissibility or resistance to treatments and vaccines.

"After studying the data, and on a precautionary basis, we've made the difficult but vital decision to add India to the red list," the minister told MPs.

"This means anyone who is not a UK or Irish citizen... cannot enter the UK if they have been in India in the previous 10 days," he said.

The new rules, which Hancock said has not been taken lightly, will come into force from Friday.

The move came hours after Downing Street had announced the cancellation of Prime Minister Boris Johnson's visit to India next week due to a spike in infections in the country.

Earlier, when asked if India would be added to the travel red list, Johnson said that was "very much a matter for the independent UK Health Security Agency they will have to take that decision".



Meanwhile, will ban flights from India, Pakistan and the Philippines for 14 days starting from Tuesday as the city reported the first two cases with highly transmissible virus variant in the community over the weekend.



Visitors who have stayed in the three countries for more than two hours in the past 21 days will also be restricted from boarding any passenger flights to Hong Kong, the government said on Sunday, adding the countries are now classified as areas of extremely high risk.The bans stem from a circuit breaker arrangement that has instituted, which was triggered for each of the countries as there had been five or more arrivals with the N501Y mutant strain within seven days, it said. The strain was first detected in South Africa.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
TEACHERS representatives yesterday described government as a heartless employer and vowed that their members would not be coerced to teach, despite threats to withhold their benefits.

Primary and Secondary Education minister Cain Mathema on Monday told State media that government was invoking the no-work, no-pay principle for teachers who have not been reporting for duty since the beginning of this term.

Since last year, some teachers have not been reporting for duty, or were availing themselves at schools without conducting lessons in protest over poor wages.

We are summoning the principle of no-work, no-salary with immediate effect. Teachers who do not report for duty or those who go to their schools and not do their work will not be paid. We have requested school heads to compile lists of such names and we will forward them to the Public Service Commission so that those not doing their work will not be paid, Mathema said.

Mathema has also threatened punitive measures against educators who conduct private lessons.

But teachers unions said they were unfazed by governments threats and would continue with their strike demanding salaries between US$520 and US$550 or the equivalent in local currency.

Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe secretary-general Raymond Majongwe described government as a bully which was not committed to collective bargaining processes.

The government should not bully its employees. Threats and bullying should not be used as a bargaining tactic. Government should resort to dialogue with the concerned parties if it wants to save the education sector, he said.

Zimbabwe National Teachers Union (Zinatu) chief executive officer Manuel Nyawo said although government could threaten them to report for duty, it was impossible to force teachers to conduct lessons.

Our members are in a dilemma. On one hand, they have to decisively deal with the issue of incapacitation while on the other, they have to deal with the decision of a heartless employer. Given this position, government should bear in mind that one can force a donkey to the river, but cannot force it to drink water, he said.

The ministry can force us to report for duty, but they cannot force us to teach. As Zinatu, we will encourage our members to report for duty, but the ministry must be rest assured that no learning is going to take place until our demands are met.

Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe president Obert Masaraure said governments bullying tactics was destroying the education sector.

As the minister, Mathema should be focusing on profiling the incapacitation narrative of teachers to Treasury by lobbying for a salary raise, he said.

Unfortunately, he is determined to destroy the sector which he should be defending. Incapacitated teachers will never be coerced to attend for duty. Teachers are patiently waiting for the day they will be capacitated.

Former Primary and Secondary Education minister David Coltart also blasted government for failing to resolve its salary stalemate with civil servants and for using threats instead of engaging them.

If I was the Minister of Education today, I was not going to be issuing threats against them because teachers are suffering and they are not being paid a viable wage, that is the starting point. I suspect that the salary stalemate with teachers is one of the reasons why the June examinations were suspended because schools are not functioning, Coltart said.
ROME, APR 19 - European Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton has said Italy is set to get 54 million more doses of the four COVID-19 vaccines so far approved in the next three months. "That is three times the amount received so far," Breton told RAI television. "That will make it possible to vaccinate 70% of adults by the end of July". So far over 15 million COVID-19 vaccine shots have been given in Italy and over 10 million people have had at least once dose. Regional Affairs Minister Mariastella Gelmini has said Italy should achieve herd immunity to the coronavirus in August or September. (ANSA).
We should be ready to make the most of opportunities that come our way.

When I unexpectedly received a parcel that contained letters that I had written to my parents from my boarding school days onwards, I took this as an omen and decided to set down my memoirs, originally thinking they might be of interest to my grandchildren, John Burgess states. After several years and 1500 pages of data, he collated some of the material into a book titled Life, Luck and Liaisons (published by Xlibris AU).

Burgess had the benefit of growing up in what may have been the best decades in history  the 50s and 60s. Although New Zealand was far away from the action during World War II, many of his parents generation had been part of the ANZAC troops in Europe, North Africa and the Pacific. Post war, there was a strong sense of freedom and anticipation in a young country with a fast-growing economy. He benefitted from growing up in this period of optimism; it was reflected in his schooling, his early days farming and later, his sailing adventures in the Pacific and Indonesian waters, as recounted in this book.

I had read 'A Good Keen Man' by Barry Crump when it was first published. Parts of my book evoke a similar time and way of life. I also relate my experiences at a leading private boarding school exposing a hierarchical cult that is no longer encouraged in those institutions. Many at the time were familiar with these behaviours but were too afraid to divulge them, Burgess says. Many readers will relate to the difficulties of father/son relationships, particularly when working together. Hopefully, readers will enjoy the tales of my sea heritage and ocean sailing on American yachts. Every Kiwi (New Zealander) has a relationship with the sea and would be interested in this aspect of my story.

When asked what he wants readers to take away from his writing of this book, Burgess answers, We should be ready to make the most of opportunities that come our way. There may be setbacks along the way, but if we believe in ourselves, we can enhance our own personal growth. Life is an adventure. Seize the day! For more details about the book please visit, https://www.xlibris.com/en-au/search?query=Life%2C+Luck+and+Liaisons

Life, Luck and Liaisons

By John Burgess

Hardcover | 6 x 9in | 372 pages | ISBN 9781664101227

Softcover | 6 x 9in | 372 pages | ISBN 9781664101210

E-Book | 372 pages | ISBN 9781664101203

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the Author

After he left school, John Burgess worked in livestock management and, later, on a cropping farm in New Zealands Southland, often in below freezing temperatures. During the long winter nights, before the advent of television and FM radio, he had plenty of idle time and he decided to enroll in a yearlong correspondence course with the London School of Journalism. He presented his first freelance effort to the editor of the New Zealand Heralds supplementary newspaper, The Weekly News and was encouraged to submit a weekly article based on his rural experiences in both New Zealand and Australia. When he left New Zealand to join a yacht for a life of adventure, the editor asked him to continue to submit regular weekly farming articles, as well as writing about his travel experiences. Along the way, he wrote detailed letters to his parents  his boarding school training never quite deserted him! His mother saved those letters and it was the re-reading of those, as well as some of the newspaper articles written during the same period, that inspired him to set down this narrative of his early life.

Xlibris Publishing Australia, an Author Solutions, LLC imprint, is a self-publishing services provider dedicated to serving Australian authors. By focusing on the needs of creative writers and artists and adopting the latest print-on-demand publishing technology and strategies, we provide expert publishing services with direct and personal access to quality publication in hardcover, trade paperback, custom leather-bound and full-color formats. To date, Xlibris has helped to publish more than 60,000 titles. For more information, visit xlibrispublishing.com.au or call 1-800-844-927 to receive a free publishing guide.
[April 19, 2021] Whiteford Expands Government Contracts Practice with Leading DC Hire

Whiteford, Taylor & Preston announced that David S. Panzer has joined the firm's Washington, D.C., office. With more than 20 years of government contracts and litigation experience, Mr. Panzer brings the experience of both a senior in-house counsel at a major government services contractor and a partner at a global law firm. He will co-head Whiteford's Government Contracts practice with Tom Coulter, who joined the firm's Richmond office last year. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005675/en/ David S. Panzer (Photo: Business Wire) "We are exceptionally pleased to welcome David to the firm," said Managing Partner Martin Fletcher. "With our full service capabilities and rate structure, we see tremendous synergies with his vast government contracts experience." dded Mr. Coulter, "The addition of David to our growing government contracts practice further enhances our services to a rapidly expanding network of government contracting clients. We're thrilled to have him on the team."



Prior to joining Whiteford, Mr. Panzer served as Deputy General Counsel for one of the largest private companies in the Washington, D.C., area, a multi-billion dollar government services contractor with operations around the world. In that role, he managed day-to-day operations of the Legal Department, served as the chief advisor on all government contracts issues and was the lawyer responsible for virtually all significant litigation, investigations, bid protests, Claims and REAs. Before going in-house, Mr. Panzer spent more than a dozen years at one of the country's largest law firms, including five as a partner, where he had a wide-ranging litigation practice. Said Mr. Panzer, "Whiteford is an ideal platform for serving government contractors large and small. Companies in this sector are looking for three things: sophisticated counsel who understand both their business and the regulatory environment in which they operate, full service capabilities that span the scope of their business, and cost-effective delivery that provides value to the business. Whiteford has all three, and it's a winning combination."

About Whiteford, Taylor & Preston LLP: With over 180 attorneys, Whiteford, Taylor & Preston provides a comprehensive range of sophisticated, cost-effective business law and litigation services to clients ranging from innovative start-ups to middle market companies to global enterprises. Our growing Mid-Atlantic footprint includes seventeen offices in Delaware, D.C., Kentucky, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia. For more information, please visit www.wtplaw.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005675/en/

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ISSAQUAH  Cascade Business Park, at 1145 Newport Way N.W. in Issaquah, sold for a little over $36 million, according to King County records.

The seller was the Danz family's Sterling Realty Organization, which acquired the property in 2010 for $15.6 million.





. . .
The European Union says it stands in full support and solidarity with the Czech Republic amid a diplomatic spat between Prague and Moscow over Czech claims that Russian military agents linked to the 2018 Skripal nerve-agent poisoning in Britain were behind an earlier explosion at a Czech arms depot that killed two people.



The EU is deeply concerned about the repeating negative pattern of dangerous malign behaviour by Russia in Europe, the lead spokesman for the bloc's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on April 19 following talks between the blocs foreign minister on the matter.



The spokesman, Peter Stano, said in a statement that Russia must stop with these activities, which violates well-established international principles and norms and threaten stability in Europe."



The previous day, Russia ordered 20 Czech Embassy employees in Moscow to leave the country in response to the Czech governments expulsion of 18 Russian diplomats it identified as being intelligence operatives. Both sides sent government planes on April 19 to take the envoys and their families home.

The tit-for-tat move and Czech allegations have triggered its biggest dispute with Russia since the 1989 end of communist rule, putting the small Central European NATO member at the center of rising tensions between Moscow and the West.

The foreign ministers of the so-called Visegrad Group consisting of Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia condemned all activities aimed at threatening security of sovereign states and its citizens," according to a statement published on the website of the Polish Foreign Ministry.

The ministers said that they stand ready to further strengthen our resilience against subversive actions at both national level and together with our NATO allies and within [the] EU.

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said the decision to expel the Russians was based on "unequivocal evidence" provided by Czech investigators pointing to the involvement of Russian military intelligence agents in the 2014 blast in the eastern town of Vrbetice.

Babis said the 2014 attack was "not an act of state terrorism" but was aimed at a shipment to a Bulgarian arms trader, without naming the individual.

Were a sovereign state and its unacceptable for foreign agents to conduct such operations here, he said.

The October 16, 2014 explosion in Vrbetice set off 50 metric tons of stored ammunition, killing two people. Two months later, another blast of 13 tons of ammunition occurred at the same site.

The Kremlin on April 19 called the Czech moves "provocative and unfriendly."

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that in addition to the expulsions, the Czech Embassy in Moscow will no longer be allowed to employ Russian citizens.

"It's been decided both with regard to the United States of America and the Czech Republic, that they won't be able to employ citizens of our country any longer. This factor has played an especially important role, in particular, for the Czech Embassy and for the organization of its work in Moscow. They employed a very large number of Russian citizens," she said in an interview on Rossia-1 television.

Acting Czech Foreign Minister Jan Hamacek said Russia's reaction was "stronger than we had expected" as "more diplomats than the number of intelligence officers we expelled."

Czech Industry Minister Karel Havlicek said the government would eliminate Russia's state-run corporation Rosatom from a multi-billion-dollar tender to build a new unit at the Dukovany nuclear power plant.

Babis specifically mentioned a unit of Russia's GRU military intelligence known as Unit 29155.

That unit has been linked to a series of attempted assassination plots and other sabotage across Europe, including the 2018 poisoning of Sergei Skripal in the English city of Salisbury.

Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer, and his daughter Yulia, nearly died after being exposed to what British authorities later concluded was Novichok, a military-grade nerve agent. A British woman who accidentally came into contact with the substance died.

Britain's NATO allies responded to the Skripal poisoning by imposing sanctions on Russia and expelling diplomats.

While the government unveiled its case, Czech police announced they were seeking two suspected Russian agents carrying various passports, including Russian documents in the names of Aleksandr Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov.

The names match those of the two men whom Britain has blamed for the Skripal poisonings.

The open-source-investigation organization Bellingcat identified the suspects as GRU agents Aleksandr Mishkin and Anatoly Chepiga.

Scans of the passports used by the two -- published by Bellingcat -- showed Chepiga used a Tajik document to enter the Czech Republic.

The Tajik Foreign Ministry told RFE/RL that it was investigating the report.

"We learned about [the Tajik passport used by Chepiga] from the media and started our investigation. We can't yet make any comments until the end of the investigation," an official at the ministry said.

The fresh dispute adds to a growing list of issues between the West and Moscow, including Russia's military buildup near Ukraine's borders and in occupied Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014.

Last week, the United States hit Moscow with major new sanctions and expelled 10 diplomats over alleged election interference, cyberattacks, and other perceived hostile activities. Russia responded by ordering a raft of measures and telling an equal number of U.S. diplomats to leave.

The United States, Britain, NATO, and the EU threw their support behind the Czech decision and pledged their support.

Babis said the 2014 attack targeted "ammunition that had already been paid for and was being stored for a Bulgarian arms trader," Babis said on Czech Television, adding that the arms trader had later been the target of an assassination attempt in 2015.

The Czech news magazine Respekt reported that the ammunition and weaponry that was destroyed was intended for Ukraine, which in 2014 was battling Moscow-backed fighters in eastern Ukraine. A Bulgarian arms trader named Emilian Gebrev was reportedly the organizer of the arms deal with Ukraine, Respekt said.

Bulgarian officials have said Gebrev was targeted with a substance similar to the chemical nerve agent Novichok. In January 2019, Bulgarian prosecutors charged three Russians, including a top GRU officer, in absentia in connection with that case.

"We have been informed by our embassy [in Prague] that they [Czech authorities] are working on a few investigative versions," Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ekaterina Zaharieva told state broadcaster BNT on April 19.

"One of them is that the delivery [of the blown-up munitions] was for a Bulgarian arms dealer. We are speaking about Emilian Gebrev. They are also working on another investigative version about an arms delivery to Syria."

In a press statement, Gebrev denied that his company had been reexporting ammunition from the Czech Republic to Ukraine in 2014. But he made no comment on whether the ammunition or related materials belonged to his company EMCO. Gebrev did not respond immediately to calls by RFE/RLs Bulgarian Service to clarify.

The EMCO statement, issued on April 19, said it has been documented that the company "has never exported ammunition originating in the Czech Republic to Ukraine" and is willing to cooperate with any investigation in the case.

"In the period months before, during and at least one year after the explosions in the Czech Republic, EMCO did not and did not plan to transport property from the warehouses in question, either to Bulgaria or to any other country," the company statement said, noting that "to date, no investigative body has approached EMCO for information on the matter.

"Assumptions about the motives and causes of the explosions must be clarified by the Czech investigating authorities. As can be seen from the public statements made so far, including by officials, a number are contradictory and some even mutually exclusive," it added.

Viktor Yahun, who was the deputy chief of the Ukrainian Security Service, said that Kyiv in October 2014 had sought to acquire ammunition from Bulgaria around the time of the Czech depot explosions.

"This businessman who was poisoned and was allegedly poisoned by the Russian intelligence services, he was searching for such ammunition in the countries of the former Warsaw Pact, and the best place for their transit storage before sending to Ukraine was, in fact, the Czech Republic," Yahun said in an interview with RFE/RL.

"After the explosions, both Czech law enforcement and we ourselves had suspicions that it might not have been a coincidence," he said.

Outgoing Bulgarian Defense Minister Krassimir Karakachanov confirmed to RFE/RL's Bulgarian Service that Gebrev was dealing with old arms and ammunition that are no longer used by the army.

Czech Interior Minister Jan Hamacek told Czech Television on April 18 that investigators believe the explosion had occurred earlier than planned. According to Hamacek, the blast had been scheduled to take place once the ammunition transport arrived in Bulgaria.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Bulgarian Service, AP, Seznam Zpravy, Reuters, TASS, CTK, and Interfax
On Jan. 14, a week before President Bidens inauguration, the Pentagons principal deputy general counsel at the time, William S. Castle, recommended that medical professionals be authorized to offer vaccinations to the detainees. He noted that the Pentagon has repeatedly asserted in litigation that detainees receive health care comparable to that which is afforded active duty service members on the island, and that the level and type of treatment are dependent on, and consistent with, the accepted medical standard of care.

The U.S. military base at Guantanamo has about 5,500 residents, including about 250 school-aged children, and a foreign work force of about 2,200 Jamaican and Filipino laborers who work under Pentagon contracts. The children are too young to be offered the vaccinations, but the foreign workers have been offered them.

As of April 1, according to health officials at the base, all but about 400 adults were entitled to vaccines, and about 47 percent of those eligible had not taken a single dose. Health officials there would not or could not quantify how many of those people had affirmatively refused to obtain a shot, which were being offered at a base ballroom that before the pandemic had served as a bingo parlor.

It is also not known how many people have been found to be infected with the coronavirus at the base, which is separated from Cuba proper by a minefield. The military acknowledged two cases in the first month, both of service members who recovered, but then imposed a blackout on specific disclosures.

The military has managed to prevent a major outbreak there by requiring people arriving from the United States to quarantine for 14 days.

No hearings have been held at the war court in more than a year, and nearly none of the defense lawyers have traveled there to meet with the detainees because of the pandemic. The International Red Cross canceled a series of visits for the protection of the unvaccinated detainees, as well.

Those few lawyers who have traveled there and undergone the two-week quarantine reported that they then met their clients in conditions that they said made communication virtually impossible. The detainees and visitors were kept many feet apart, separated by plexiglass barriers and issued protective wear that left only their eyes exposed. They spoke through masks and found it difficult to hear.
A Chinese Catholic priest has urged Pope Francis to speak in defense of orphans in China following closures of Catholic orphanages, according to a report.

In an article published at Asia News, Fr. Wendao shared what was happening to Catholic orphanages in China's Hebei and Shaanxi provinces that was shut down along with Catholic churches and minor seminaries by the government. The priest from northern China raised his sentiments on the China-Vatican agreement and sought the attention of the Holy See on these matters.

"I would like to ask you, our Holy Father of the universal Church: Can you hear the weakest and truest voiced of the Church in China?" He said in the article.

The priest identified the Sisters Of The Sacred Heart Orphanage that was shut down two years ago and the Liming (Dawn) Home and the St. Joseph's Disabled Infant Home under the Dioceses of Zhaoxian and Cangzhou, respectively, that were shut down recently.

Wendao said the orphanages were well-managed by the Catholic church and "solved some social problems" because "abandoned children could be cared for." He cited a professor from the Central Institute For Socialism, the school Catholic priests are sent by the government to be "reformed," that commended the Catholic orphanages in its contribution to China's society despite being a communist and an atheist.

"Catholic groups showed that what they did was for love, not profit. The staff and the Catholic Sisters serving there deserve respect. The love shared with the abandoned children comes from their faith in God. It is uncommon and rarely seen in other sectors in society," the priest quoted the professor in saying.

Wendao stressed that the government is "ignoring the beautiful contribution and quality social services" that the Catholic church is providing China through the orphanages by closing them down and transferring the children to facilities run by the government.

"It is clear that those government officials are not planning to serve abandoned children, but only to follow their senior officials' political orders, namely to do everything possible to reduce the influence of the Catholic Church in China," Wendao emphasized.

He added that the churches were closed by the government for the pandemic when "malls and tourist attractions were open" while pilgrimages were forbidden. He focused also on the government's "tightening its grip" in schools.

Wendao revealed that he received complaints from Catholics who informed him that students "who held a particular belief (especially Catholicism)" were encouraged to drop out of schools or underwent "psychological pressures" while teachers "received threats" in so far as their careers were concerned or received "hate attacks" in public.

According to Wendao, the China-Vatican Agreement initially gave encouragement to Catholics in China out of perceiving it as a means to "normalize" the life of the Catholic church there but things eventually got "blurred" as priest started eyeing for the post of bishop "disregarding the interests of the Church," churches were "dismantled, and minors were "banned" from church activities.

The priest said that the appointment of bishops by the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association may further silence the voices of Catholics in China who experience many forms of injustices, discrimination, and suppression. He raised hopes that the Holy See would finally speak up about the issue.
Melissa Caddick's father-in-law said he won't accept the conwoman is dead until three crucial questions about her mysterious disappearance are answered.

Caddick, who allegedly defrauded more than $25million from scores of investors including friends and family, vanished the day after corporate watchdog ASIC raided her luxury $6.1million home in Dover Heights, Sydney, on November 11 last year.

A foot washed ashore three months later on the NSW south coast and was confirmed to be Caddick's after a DNA match was made, however police have been hesitant to confirm the missing conwoman is actually dead.

The 49-year-old's father-in-law, tax agent Rodo Koletti, has been probed by police who are preparing a statement for the coroner.

When asked by officers if he believed Caddick was dead, Mr Koletti responded: 'I do not feel police have to date provided enough information for me to form an opinion one way or the other if Melissa is dead.

'How much of the mysterious foot was found in the shoe, how was it severed, how do they explain that forensic scientists stated that it was unlikely the shoe had been in the ocean for less than two weeks?'

Sydney conwoman Melissa Caddick (pictured with her husband Anthony Koletti) allegedly defrauded more than $25million from scores of investors

Caddick, pictured with her husband Anthony who is not accused of wrongdoing

Caddick's decomposed foot in a rare Asics shoe was found 400km away from her home on Bournda Beach on February 21

Mr Koletti, whose son Anthony (left) was married to Caddick (right) for seven years, said the couple were 'happily married'

Mr Koletti, whose son Anthony was married to Caddick for seven years, said the couple were 'happily married'.

He also said his son didn't have any business prowess, and wouldn't have been aware of his wife's alleged fraudulence.

'Even if Melissa's business documents were sitting on the kitchen table in front of Anthony he would not know what he was looking at. He doesnt have the business capacity to know what a financial scheme is,' Mr Koletti told The Daily Telegraph.

Anthony and Caddick's son are still living in her Dover Heights mansion, which could soon be seized pending a federal court decision, to be sold to help repay her alleged victims.

ASIC is also seeking the Edgecliff penthouse where Caddick's parents live, which is under the fraudster's name.

ASIC dropped all charges against Caddick and has withdrawn the warrant for her arrest.

The commission would not reveal whether this is confirmation that Caddick is definitely dead.

'It is not for ASIC to determine if, or speculate on whether, Ms Caddick is alive. That is a matter for the NSW Police and - should it come to that - a coroner,' a spokesman previously said.

Liquidators say the mother-of-one 'meticulously and systematically' deceived those who entrusted millions of investment dollars to her over seven years, then used the money to fund her lavish lifestyle.

Caddick blew her victims' money on luxury items and overseas trips with the authorities confiscating high end fashion label handbags, shoes and clothes during the raid.

A lack of credible witnesses and an absence of CCTV footage means her disappearance may never be solved.

ASIC dropped all charges against Caddick and has withdrawn the warrant for her arrest

Liquidators say the mother-of-one 'meticulously and systematically' deceived those who entrusted millions of investment dollars to her over seven years, then used the money to fund her lavish lifestyle

Caddick vanished the day after corporate watchdog ASIC raided her luxury $6.1million home in Dover Heights, Sydney, on November 11 last year. Pictured: the ASIC raid

Two forensic experts have raised a theory that Caddick may have died elsewhere before being moved closer to Bournda beach, where her foot and trainer were discovered

More than 50 possible sightings were reported to NSW Police in the weeks after her disappearance but none were solid leads.

Two forensic experts have raised a theory that Caddick may have died elsewhere before being moved closer to Bournda beach, where her foot and trainer were discovered.

The south coast beach is more than 400km from where Caddick was last seen at her lavish Dover Heights home in Sydney.

'That is remarkable but it can happen,' said Professor John Hilton, a forensic pathologist said.

Earlier this month, NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said authorities were unable to say whether she killed herself or if there was foul play involved.

He also raised the possibility Ms Caddick could have severed her own foot to throw police off the scent - and that she could still be alive.

'There's always a chance she cut her foot off and is still alive, though it's pretty fanciful,' he told 2GB on March 8.

One theory to explain her disappearance has been that Caddick jumped from the Dover Heights clifftops after making the short 300m walk from her home.

The route is not covered by CCTV cameras and led police to initially suspect she had taken her own life.

But Mr Fuller said many people jumped from those cliffs without their remains washing up several hundred kilometers away.

The south coast beach where Caddick's foot was found is more than 400km from where she was last seen at her lavish Dover Heights home (pictured) in Sydney

A lack of credible witnesses and an absence of CCTV footage means her disappearance may never be solved

Caddick blew her victims' money on luxury items and overseas trips with the authorities confiscating high end fashion label handbags, shoes and clothes during the raid. Pictured with husband Anthony Koletti

'[It's not common to see] body parts wash up so far south of Sydney and in such good condition given she went missing on or about November 11,' he said.

'Not to say it can't happen. The coroner will make further determinations.'

He said the limited decomposition of the shoe would indicate it had not been out in the ocean for the entire three-month period since she went missing.

Earlier this month Caddick was farewelled in a private service with only a handful of mourners in attendance.

Caddick's husband, her parents Barbara and Ted Grimley, and her brother Adam Grimley gathered with friends at the West Chapel, in Matraville, on April 6 to say their goodbyes.

Anthony led the procession out of the chapel alongside the funeral director, who helped him carry a bouquet of flowers to put in the boot of his black Mercedes, as the Grimleys followed behind.

Although a death certificate is yet to be obtained, her foot has been cremated.
Part of the problem is that we glorify inanities. Society no longer celebrates churches, Islamic movements and religious leaders who make selfless contributions and tangible differences. Rather, we idolise glamour, drama and profanity. The pastor, Imam, or Sheik becomes the centre of veneration, not God.

In the first part of this topic, we made the point that, Religion is not the problem. The use to which religion is put is the issue.

But it has not always been like that  especially when the issue is considered from the perspective of local influencers. What this means is that we have degenerated. Like everything else, the blight that defaced our country and made it unrecognisable from the prosperous forward-looking nation that secured independence from Britain in 1960 is still very much in play.

Religion used to be one of the catalysts of development before and during the First Republic. In many parts of Nigeria, the history of educational and infrastructural development will not be complete without a generous mention of missionaries of both the Christian and Islamic faiths. The Catholic Church established some of the best schools in the land. So did the Anglican Communion, Ansar Ud Deen, Zumratul Islamiya, Seventh Day Adventists, Ahmaddiya Movement, Cherubim and Seraphim, Baptist, Methodist, ECWA, etc.

There was a healthy competition among the faiths in the provision of social amenities. It was easy, at the time, to believe Pervez Musharrafs statement that, Islam teaches tolerance, not hatred; universal brotherhood, not enmity; peace, and not violence. Now, the brand of Islam and Christianity espoused by some of our people are totally at variance with what we used to know. Religion has now been weaponised in the justification of many evil schemes.

As Reza Aslan notes, Religion doesnt make people bigots. People are bigots and they use religion to justify their ideology. Can you now see where Boko Haram and their co-travellers are coming from?

Some of the best hospitals were owned by missionaries. Indeed, there are many areas of this country where the only source of accessing healthcare is the mission. Philanthropic movements through the ages were championed by churches. Countless orphanages, skills acquisition centres, womens rights movements, civil rights organisations and other establishments committed to the restoration of human dignity have their origins in the church or some other religious organisation. In that long gone era, religion held up the moral compass and spoke the truth to power.

Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, as he then was, frontally challenged the government of Argentina to change direction from the politics of elite greed and mass pauperisation. He was a combative archbishop unafraid to challenge entrenched authority personalised by the husband-and-wife tag team of Nestor and Cristina Kirchner. In 2010, when Argentina approved a marriage law giving same-sex couples the same rights as heterosexual ones, Bergoglio warned the government that the law amounted to an intention to destroy Gods plan.

Dr. Victor Oladokun, a strategic media and communication consultant, argues that we can start the process of restoration by building structures that ensure accountability in institutionalised and independent churches. The current system where the purse of the church is an extension of the pastors pocket is iniquitous.

Like Nigerias Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, Bergoglio had become a symbol of the use of the pulpit to speak truth to power. The world was not surprised when the Papal Conclave of March 13, 2013, elected him Pope. Today, even as he presides over the affairs of 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide, he carries his own bag, travels by public transport, while mere pastors of churches with less than 10,000 members boast of owning three private jets!

It has been a long trajectory from the era of compassionate and forward-looking missions to this present day where God is being upstaged by the image of the greedy pastor whose focus is not theology but hypnotism through motivational and fund-raising talks disguised as sermons.

By their fruits, you shall know them. If you dont know where the rain started beating you, how can you tell when you started getting wet? We embarked on the journey to the bastardisation of religion when we ignored its building blocks:

Transparency and accountability;

A well-trained clergy, leading to the enthronement of theological illiteracy;

A prophetic voice, which ceased;

The spiritual missions of churches to humanity, which was lost sight of with the play to the political gallery;

Selflessness, and the rise of greed through the glaring manifestation of the so-called Prosperity Doctrine;

The focus on what is important, by majoring on the minors and minoring on the majors, with attention on what is unimportant;

Reaching souls with the gospel, taken over by franchising of the church  the establishment of churches primarily for the purposes of increased revenues;

Understanding of what the gospel is all about, which has been lost;

A focus on service to others, taken over by self-improvement. There is a difference between preaching the good news which is the Gospel; and good advice which is anchored on a New Age philosophy, positive thinking and human wisdom, by slick fast-talking entrepreneurs masquerading as clergy;

Setting believers free, which has not changed to intimidation, condemnation and scare tactics that condemn them to bondage instead.

What should be done to reverse the ugly situation?

Dr. Victor Oladokun, a strategic media and communication consultant, argues that we can start the process of restoration by building structures that ensure accountability in institutionalised and independent churches. The current system where the purse of the church is an extension of the pastors pocket is iniquitous. Umbrella bodies such as the Catholic Bishops Conference (CBCN), Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN), Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), the Nigerian Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), etc can help by drawing up and enforcing guidelines for the comportment and theological purity of the clergy in accordance to the tenets of each faith.

Even though this may sound unpopular and unleash all the dogs of war at the command of many a cleric, there must be some form of regulation and enforcement of codes of conduct by Nigerias equivalent of the Charities Commission, including financial accountability. A church worker should have no problem separating his personal account from the religious organisations finances. A situation where a pastor is buying his third private jet at the height of the COVID pandemic when many of his members were locked down in poverty is neither Christian-like nor morally defensible.

So, there you are! Religion is not necessarily the problem, the manner it is being weaponised to pauperise and zombify the people is the issue Hopefully, our religious leaders can still make a U-turn before it is too late.

It was in this same country that the friendship/partnership between two great men of different faiths led to good things. The legendary Reverend Father D.J. Slattery had a good friend in Imam Y.P.O Shodeinde. That relationship paid off when Fr. Slattery was scouting for land to establish St. Finbarrs College at Akoka. Who, but his Muslim friend, facilitated the acquisition and bush clearing? How one wishes such partnerships are commonplace today.

Part of the problem is that we glorify inanities. Society no longer celebrates churches, Islamic movements and religious leaders who make selfless contributions and tangible differences. Rather, we idolise glamour, drama and profanity. The pastor, Imam, or Sheik becomes the centre of veneration, not God. Instead of the biblical Abba Father, some religious adherents now uplift the Daddy Pastor, Mummy G.O., Baba Alfa and Man of God.

What should a rational human being do when headed 180 degrees in the wrong direction? Answer: Make a U-Turn.

We have to return to the basic tenets of our faith. In the U.K. you cannot solicit money in a religious broadcast. The job of the clergy is to teach and empower believers to fulfil their purposes in life and to be the salt and light of the world.

In Rwanda, pastors are required to have a theology degree before they can start their own churches. The law also requires faith-based organisations to declare grants to the regulator, Rwanda Governance Board. Any financial support to a faith-based organisation must be channeled through the organisations account in a bank or a financial institution in Rwanda. Some Rwandans who spoke to foreign journalists after the law came into effect said the strict measures are necessary.

Clarisse Mukasine, a follower of a Pentecostal church, synthesises what is on the minds of many people of faith, some of whom have voted with their feet and decided to no longer align with any particular denomination.

Some pastors live off their followers; others enrich themselves using grants meant to support church projects because there is no accountability, she said.

So, there you are! Religion is not necessarily the problem, the manner it is being weaponised to pauperise and zombify the people is the issue.

Hopefully, our religious leaders can still make a U-turn before it is too late.

Wole Olaoye can be reached through wole.olaoye@gmail.com.
India has barred the supply of oxygen to many industries to meet rising demand from hospitals which are under pressure from a surge in coronavirus infections in the country.

Clinical demand for the gas has increased to 60% of Indias production and is expected to rise further, the Ministry of Health said in a statement late Sunday. The nation reported a record 273,810 new infections on Monday.
"It's shocking and disappointing to see some media members and verified Twitter handles are peddling this trash as truth."

Video Transcript

- Some local activists are, once again, calling on Chicago Mayor, Lori Lightfoot to resign.

And tonight the mayor shutting down rumors that she might, saying that comments spreading online are simply not true.

Lightfoot tweeting earlier, calling the rumors quote, "homophobic, racist and misogynistic."

And she says that she will continue to serve as Chicago's mayor.
Cahoot E-commerce Fulfillment Network Traditional solutions do not meet the needs of SMBs. With Amazon pushing its popular prime membership program to transition from 2-day to 1-day free delivery, even large retailers face logistical challenges. But Cahoot changes that by intelligently aggregating the power of many, said Chowdhary.

Cahoot, the worlds first peer-to-peer eCommerce fulfillment network, announced that it has been named on the Fast Companys Prestigious List of the Worlds Most Innovative Companies for 2021. Cahoot enables brands and online retailers to affordably provide one-day and two-day delivery nationwide by storing and fulfilling goods for each other.

Fast Companys Most Innovative Companies (MIC) list honors the businesses that have not only found a way to be resilient in the past year but also turned those challenges into impact-making processes. These companies did more than just survive; they thrivedmaking an impact on their industries and culture as a whole. This years list features 463 businesses from 29 countries.

"We are honored to be named one of the World's Most Innovative Companies and recognized for our work. We are enabling businesses of any size to affordably offer their customers the same superfast delivery experience as Amazon" said Manish Chowdhary, Founder and CEO of Cahoot.

Like the Airbnb marketplace of homeowners and travelers, the patented Cahoot fulfillment network brings together the collective power of many SMBs and their warehouses to fulfill orders, thus reducing fulfillment costs and expediting delivery. Cahoots optimization algorithm further analyzes all combinations of warehouses, carriers, and shipping services to find the most affordable and efficient way to deliver orders fast.

With consumers flocking to online shopping in 2020 due to COVID, eCommerce grew an unprecedented 44% year-over-year, nearly three times the historical annual growth. At the height of the pandemic, even Amazons fulfillment services faltered. Customer orders took almost a month to arrive as warehouses struggled to fulfill orders. Amazon stopped accepting non-essential goods in its warehouses and prioritized its direct sales over those of its marketplace sellers, leaving hundreds of thousands of sellers that rely on its popular fulfillment service (FBA) scrambling for alternatives. Such incidents have caused merchants to always be prepared with a backup provider when they need it.

This eCommerce explosion has led to a shortage in warehouse space, well-priced and available labor, and carrier capacity. Warehouse vacancies reached an all-time low in Q3 2020 while rents were at an all-time high. LinkedIn also reported a surge of 73% job openings for fulfillment workers, the highest among all categories, and wages began creeping up. Moreover, all major carriers, including USPS, increased rates and added surcharges to handle the unprecedented increase in demand. All of this has resulted in much higher operational costs for retailers. And, at a time when most consumers are struggling financially, raising prices is not an option for merchants.

Traditional solutions do not meet the needs of SMBs - unlike large corporations that have the power to negotiate aggressively with landlords and carriers to stay competitive. With Amazon pushing its popular prime membership program to transition from 2-day free delivery to now 1-day, even the largest retailers are facing logistical challenges. But Cahoot changes all that by intelligently aggregating the power of many, said Chowdhary.

By unlocking previously unavailable warehouse capacity from tens of thousands of merchants across the U.S., Cahoot is transforming eCommerce fulfillment into a new collaborative model thats more efficient. Cahoot's fulfillment model is also environmentally friendly besides scaling up to meet the rising consumer expectations of free and fast delivery. And for the first time, online merchants can monetize their existing warehouse space and labor in a way previously not imagined or possible. Before Cahoot, we didnt really know how to leverage our extra space and fulfillment capacity. Becoming a Cahoot Fulfillment Partner has been a great way to make extra money without the hassle of becoming a full 3PL. Onboarding was fast and easy; Cahoot software is so efficient that we pick Cahoot orders before our own! said Robert Hill, CEO of Seismic Audio Speakers.

With Cahoot, merchants can expand to regions previously too far for fast ground shipping and too expensive for expedited air shipping. My customers now expect free 1-day and 2-day delivery, which is very expensive and difficult to provide. But with Cahoot, I can now offer 1-day delivery in both the East and the West with ground shipping, in addition to my home state of Kentucky, said Darren Somerville of Impact Battery.

By providing fulfillment as a utility-like service as opposed to a competitive advantage previously available only to the largest and highly capitalized corporations, Cahoot aims to fuel even greater innovation - sure to benefit consumers around the world.

Before Cahoot, we were selling only on Amazon. The inventory restrictions imposed by Amazon FBA were difficult for my business, said Eli Miller, owner of Twinkle Toy. Cahoot helped us grow by serving customers nationwide across multiple selling channels, including our own website. Its a whole new opportunity that I would never have had without Cahoot.

Cahoots shipping volume increased five-fold year-over-year in 2020. Many merchants have found success through Cahoot:



A chocolatier in Brooklyn, NY, added 34% more sales just by outsourcing fulfillment to 2 additional locations.

A prominent battery merchant in the Midwest maintained their Amazon Seller Fulfilled Prime eligibility by expanding 1-day ground coverage to 45%+ of U.S. consumers.

Another merchant selling big, bulky products saved 88% on two-day delivery costs and tripled sales in just three weeks.

Fast Companys editors and writers sought out the most groundbreaking businesses across the globe and industries. The Worlds Most Innovative Companies is Fast Companys signature franchise and one of its most highly anticipated editorial efforts of the year. It provides both a snapshot and a road map for the future of innovation across the most dynamic sectors of the economy.

Cahoot is available for merchants looking to expand their reach for one- and two-day delivery services across all popular selling channels, including Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Shopify, BigCommerce, and more. Merchants can reach a Cahoot fulfillment expert at cahoot.ai or connect with Cahoot on LinkedIn

ABOUT CAHOOT

Cahoot is the worlds first peer-to-peer eCommerce fulfillment network that helps online businesses offer nationwide 1-day and 2-day deliveries. Cahoot offers drastically lower fulfillment fees because it enables merchants to store and ship the merchandise for each other. This novel business model also allows merchants to make extra money using their existing warehouse space and personnel.

ABOUT FAST COMPANY

Fast Company is the only media brand fully dedicated to the vital intersection of business, innovation, and design, engaging the most influential leaders, companies, and thinkers on the future of business. Fast Companys Most Innovative Companies issue (March/April 2021) is now available online here, on iTunes, and on newsstands beginning March 16, 2021
Statement by Minister Coveney on UN Security Council Ministerial Debate on Enhancing Cooperation

Statement

Mr. President,

I would like to thank Viet Nam for organising todays debate, highlighting the critical need to co-operate in support of conflict prevention and resolution.

Like others, I also offer my solidary to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

I would also like to thank Secretary General Guterres, and former Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who have spoken eloquently about the unique partnerships between the UN and regional organisations.

I welcome the adoption of a Presidential Statement on this important issue.

Mr. President,

In Ireland, we do not have to look far beyond our shores to see the impact of regional organisations in building and sustaining peace.

From the ashes of the Second World War, the European regional experiment became a reality.

Across the European neighbourhood, the contribution of regional co-operation to coherence, stability and growth is felt on a daily basis.

Referring to the architects of todays European Union, the Nobel Peace Laureate from Ireland, John Hume, said they spilt their sweat, and not their blood, and by doing so broke down the barriers of distrust of centuries

This experience also informed the journey towards peace and reconciliation on the island of Ireland.

Partnerships built at local, regional and international levels led to and continue to underpin the success of the Good Friday Peace Agreement.

Drawing on this experience, and learning from the EU and other regional organisations, I would like to make three points today.

The first is that regional organisations can bring a unique understanding to ensuring that confidence-building measures are inclusive and context-specific.

Regional organisations, through their work in promoting cooperation and engagement among their members, are themselves powerful examples of confidence building.

The European Union put building bridges between people at the centre of its approach to supporting peace on the island of Ireland. They literally built and funded a bridge in one of the conflict areas.

The aptly named EU PEACE cross-border funding programme, for example, focused on the creation of constructive human relationships across all layers of society including survivors, young people, and womens groups.

Looking across the world, we see examples of regional organisations successfully applying contextual knowledge to address challenges to peace and security.

Recently, this Councils Informal Expert Group on Climate and Security heard about the important work of UNOWAS and ECOWAS on climate-related risk assessments in West Africa.

I underline Irelands strong support for the OSCE continuing efforts in Ukraine. The commitment of all sides to the principles of the OSCE must be upheld.

By enhancing engagement with regional organisations, this Council can draw from country and thematic experience, built on local understanding and expertise.

This brings me to my second point  that regional organisations can and must work together in support of the UN, and that regional approaches to confidence-building measures and dialogue require sustained investment over time.

The EU-UN partnership in the area of peace operations and crisis management is a good example.

Just as we are committed to UN peacekeeping missions across the globe, Ireland is proud to have members of our Defence Forces participating in EU Common Security and Defence Policy operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mali and the Mediterranean.

All these Missions operate in support of UN Security Council resolutions.

Irish experts are also currently serving in EU civilian CSDP missions in eight countries.

Trilateral co-operation has also proved effective in a number of areas.

The EU, through Operation Althea, mandated by this Council, works closely with the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe to promote stability in the European neighbourhood.

Similarly, through Operation Atalanta in Somalia, the EU cooperates with the UN and African Union to leverage local and international skills and experience.

These strategic partnerships allow each organisation to engage more effectively and to ensure real and targeted impact on the ground; which is what really matters

The recent establishment of the European Peace Facility will enable the EU to contribute to the financing of military peace support operations and assistance measures globally.

The EPF will, for example, support the increasing role in peacekeeping played by the African Union and sub-regional organisations to prevent, mediate and settle conflicts on the African continent.

I also commend the African Unions efforts to increase the effectiveness of the African Peace and Security Architecture.

ASEAN, meanwhile, continues to play a key role in its region. I welcome the recent progression to a strategic partnership between the EU and ASEAN.

This demonstrates the shared commitment between our two organisations to a rules based international order and effective multilateralism.

ASEAN can and should play an important role in an issue that concerns all of us - ensuring the protection of human rights, and facilitating dialogue and a peaceful solution to the current crisis in Myanmar.

We look towards the upcoming ASEAN Summit and are hopeful of a tangible outcome. This would be a positive manifestation of the potential of regional organisations the likes of which we are discussing here today.

There is scope here for the strengths of the UN and ASEAN to align.

My final point is that peace is made by people.

By courageous individuals like Monica McWilliams and Pearl Sagar, who worked on a cross-community basis to ensure womens representation in the Northern Ireland Peace Process.

We have learnt that to be sustainable, peace must be inclusive.

Regional organisations have a vital role to play in giving space to grassroots and community actors, and in elevating the voices of civil society.

We see the invaluable role of regional womens mediator and peacebuilding networks, particularly in conflict-affected contexts. Groups such as FemWise Africa and the Arab Women Mediators Network are showing the way for all of us.

There is more that we can do  on this Council, within UN-led peace processes, and through the work of regional organisations to ensure that women are both in the room and at the table when decisions are made.

We must also ensure that the voices of young people, too often marginalised, are both heard and heeded.

Mr President,

Primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security rests with this Council.

Strengthening cooperation between the UN and regional organisations enhances our ability to prevent and resolve conflict, and to advance the broader goals and objectives of the UN Charter.

We are, as we know, already doing much together.

Let us commit to realising the full potential these unique partnerships have to offer.

Thank you very much.

ENDS

19 April 2021

 Previous Item |
Greene and Gosar distanced themselves from the controversial America First Policy Platform document ((AFP via Getty Images))

It strains credulity to believe that any person who feels the United States is strengthened by a common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions is unaware of the white supremacist sentiment attached to such a statement.

Sitting Republican members of Congress should understand all this better than anyone, but now Marjorie Greene and Paul Gosar would like to pretend they had no intention of sounding racist with their announcement of the America First Caucus.

On Friday, Punchbowl News first reported on a document that seemed to speak to their policy posture but was quickly criticized for invoking language of nativism and white supremacy. The America First Caucus (AFC) exists to promote Congressional policies that are to the long-term benefit of the American nation, the document  titled America First Policy Platform  read, adding that members of the AFC would follow in Donald Trumps footstep, and potentially step on some toes and sacrifice sacred cows for the good of the American nation America is a nation with a border, and a culture, strengthened by a common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions. History has shown that societal trust and political unity are threatened when foreign citizens are imported en-masse into a country, particularly without institutional support for assimilation and an expansive welfare state to bail them out should they fail to contribute positively to the country. The AFC would weed out birth tourism and chain migration, the document continued, and it would also oppose all foreign aid, stating that American tax dollars should not go toward teaching gender studies in Pakistan.

At the time, Nick Dyer, a spokesperson for Greene, told CNN that the caucus would launch very soon. The very next day, however, Dyer said the freshman congresswoman best known for her love of QAnon conspiracy theories is not launching anything.

The Congresswoman wants to make clear that she is not launching anything. This was an early planning proposal and nothing was agreed to or approved, Dyer wrote.

Story continues

Dyer then conveniently added that Greene did not approve the language that riled so many up. Greene took to Twitter herself to say the draft of the proposal came from an outside group that I hadnt read. And naturally, she also blamed the media for spreading false narratives.

As for Paul Gosar, he claimed in a statement: Let me be perfectly clear. I did not author this paper. In fact, I first became aware of it by reading about it in the news yesterday, like everyone else.

What changed in a single day? Swift condemnation from GOP leadership in the House. While his tweet did not single out Greene or Gosar by name, GOP House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tweeted on Friday: The Republican Party is the party of Lincoln & the party of more opportunity for all Americans  not nativist dog whistles.

Joining him was GOP conference chair Liz Cheney, who wrote on Twitter: Republicans believe in equal opportunity, freedom, and justice for all. We teach our children the values of tolerance, decency and moral courage. Racism, nativism, and anti-Semitism are evil. History teaches we all have an obligation to confront & reject such malicious hate.

I guess the enduring support of embattled Congressman Matt Gaetz was not enough to get Greene and Gosar to go forth with the caucus, so its since been scrapped.

Regardless of their words, Greene and Gosar denouncing their own group is a testament to the ongoing reality that for all the attention bigots often cry out for with their words, they tend to stand down when met with the slightest bit of resistance. And no matter what they claim, even if Greene and Gosar didnt write the document themselves, their behavior suggests its perfectly in line with their values.

In February, Gosar denounced white racism at CPAC, noting, Thats not appropriate. He did so because he was criticized for speaking at an event organized by someone with white nationalist views. In 2019, he caught flack for following several Twitter accounts that espoused racism. Only a month ago did Gosars own family members brand him a white supremacist.

Then there is Greene, who has been condemned for sharing racist videos and engaging in racist rhetoric since before she became a member of Congress. In February 2019, she famously said of Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib (who was born in Detroit) and Ilhan Omar (who was born in Somalia, came to the US as a child and is an American citizen), after learning that they didnt take an oath of office using the bible, that they really should go back to the Middle East.

Greene and Gosar have earned the repudiation, but I cant help but wonder if the nativists gathered around a burning cross for a hearty laugh at the hypocrisy. McCarthy may claim that the Republican Party doesnt engage in nativist dog whistles, for instance, but the political campaigns of Ronald Reagan, George H W Bush, and George W Bush each beg to differ. Of course, then there is former President Trump, who didnt so much engage in dog-whistles like welfare queen or the infamous Willie Horton ad. No, Trump forgoes dog-whistles and flat out shouts out white supremacists groups while calling them very fine people on both sides.

Greene and Gosar are despicable to me, but as far as GOP politics go, their error wasnt so much being outwardly racist so much as it was not being in the position of ultimate power before doing so. Trump built an administration filled with advisers like Stephen Miller. He presided over policies that were condemned for being racist and xenophobic the world over. Yet none of these people condemning Greene and Gosar have said anything about any of that.

The American First caucus might be dead for now, but not if Marjorie Taylor Greenes popularity continues to rise. Will the condemnation come as strongly  or at all  if she and Gosar gain enough power to pique other GOP members self-interest? The story of Donald J Trump suggests not.

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GAITHERSBURG, Md. and SUZHOU BIOBAY, China, April 18, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Sirnaomics, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company engaged in the discovery and development of RNAi therapeutics against cancer and fibrotic diseases, today announced the initiation of a Phase 2 study of the company's lead drug candidate, STP705, for Keloid scar prevention. The Phase 2, multi-center, randomized, double-blind, multiple-arm, controlled study is designed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of various doses of STP705 in reducing post-keloidectomy keloid recurrence.

The primary endpoint of this trial is to measure the rate of recurrence in patients who have undergone surgery alone (receiving placebo) versus surgery and STP705 at three months, six months, and 12 months post-surgical excision.

"We anticipate that this important study should render additional data on STP705's unique mechanism of action on skin fibrotic scarring, following the promising results in previous studies," said Patrick Lu, Ph.D., founder, President and CEO of Sirnaomics. "This approach for Keloid scar prevention is indicative of our strategy to leverage STP705's dual-targeted inhibitory property and polypeptide nanoparticle-enhanced delivery to develop improved options for treating different cancer indications."

"Keloid scarring is a serious medical condition resulting in abnormal scar formation and pain along with having a very negative psychological impact on patients who suffer from the disease," said Michael Molyneaux M.D., Chief Medical Officer. "There is currently no treatment apart from surgical removal and this carries a very high recurrence rate. We seek to offer patients a viable alternative to prevent recurrence after surgical resection."

Sirnaomics expects to report initial clinical data from the Phase 2 trial in the second half of 2021. Additional information about this clinical trial is available at clinicaltrials.gov using the identifier: NCT04844840.

About Keloid Scar

Keloids form as a result of aberrations of physiologic wound healing and may arise following any insult to the deep dermis. By causing pain, pruritus and contractures, excessive scarring significantly affects the patient's quality of life, both physically and psychologically. Multiple studies on keloid formation have been conducted for decades and have led to a plethora of therapeutic strategies to prevent or attenuate excessive scar formation. However, most therapeutic approaches remain clinically unsatisfactory, most likely owing to poor understanding of the complex mechanisms underlying the processes of scarring and wound contraction.

Pathophysiology of keloids entails a prolonged inflammatory and proliferative phase of wound healing after injury. Among various cytokines promoting keloids formation, TGF-1 is known as a key regulator of the aberrant fibrogenic response, while COX-2 acts a potent proinflammatory and proliferative mediator. When STP705 was locally injected into the human hypertrophic scar tissues, which were surgically removed from patients and implanted onto nude mice, the company observed scar size reductions, accompanying with not only target gene silencing but down regulation of fibrogenic markers including -SMA, hydroxyproline, Collagen 1, and Collagen 3. Further analysis revealed that STP705 is able to induce fibroblast apoptosis both in vitro and in vivo. Therefore, the synergistic effect of simultaneous silencing of TGF-1 and COX-2 may reverse skin fibrotic scarring through minimizing inflammation and activating fibroblast apoptosis. This mechanism of action of STP705 can be widely applied for treatment of many fibrotic conditions.

About STP705

Sirnaomics' leading product candidate, STP705, is a siRNA (small interfering RNA) therapeutic that takes advantage of a dual-targeted inhibitory property and polypeptide nanoparticle (PNP)-enhanced delivery to directly knock down both TGF-1 and COX-2 gene expression. The product candidate has received multiple IND approvals from both the US FDA and Chinese NMPA, including treatments of cholangiocarcinoma, nonmelanoma skin cancer and hypertrophic scar. STP705 has also received Orphan Drug Designation for treatment of cholangiocarcinoma and primary sclerosing cholangitis. A Phase 2a study of STP705 for treatment of squamous cell skin cancer (isSCC) in adult patients demonstrated positive efficacy and safety results, with 76% of all patients (19/25) achieving complete histologically clearance and the two optimal dosing ranges achieving 90% histological clearance of tumor cell in the lesion. No significant or serious adverse events, including no significant cutaneous skin reactions, were reported in the study, and the company was able to define a clear therapeutic window in advance of later stage studies.

About Sirnaomics, Inc.

Sirnaomics, Inc., a leading privately held biopharmaceutical company for discovery and development of RNAi therapeutics, is a Delaware corporation headquartered in Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA, with subsidiaries in Suzhou and Guangzhou, China. The company's mission is to develop novel therapeutics to alleviate human suffering and advance patient care in areas of high unmet medical need. The guiding principles of the company are: Innovation, Global Vision with a Patient Centered focus. Members of the senior management team have a combined experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, spanning clinical development, regulatory, financial and business management in both the USA and China. The company is supported by funding from institutional investors, corporate partnerships and government grants. Sirnaomics has developed a strong portfolio of intellectual property with an enriched product pipeline. The therapeutic areas of focus include oncology, anti-fibrotic, anti-viral and metabolic therapeutics. Learn more at www.sirnaomics.com.

Contact:

Sirnaomics:

Michael Molyneaux, MD, MBA

Chief Medical Officer

Email: [email protected]

Investors:

Stephanie Carrington

Tel: +1 646 277 1282

Email : [email protected]

Media:

Mark Corbae

Tel: +1 203 682 8288

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Siranomics, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.sirnaomics.com


Mumbai, April 19 : "Bigg Boss 14" housemate Rakhi Sawant has thanked Bollywood superstar Salman Khan and his brother, actor Sohail Khan, for pitching in with support for her mother Jaya's cancer treatment.

Rakhi posted a few clips of her mother in hospital. In the clip, Rakhi is heard saying in Hindi: "Today is my mother's operation for cancer and I am so happy. Now, you don't have to take anymore tension mom. The cancer will be out of your body permanently." Rakhi's mother Jaya then thanked Salman for the support he has shown.

"I would like to say namaskar to Salman Khan. I used to pray to Jesus that I have no money. I will die like this and my god sent Salman Khan as an angel in my life. He stood by us and helped me with my operation. His entire family is standing by me. I would like to thank you and your family," said Jaya, addressing Salman.

She added: "I pray that you and your family never face any kind of struggle. I pray that you move much ahead. Thank you Salman Khan." Rakhi too thanked Salman for the help. "It is because of you and god that this big operation is taking place. You helped us get the number of the world's best doctor. Every house in India should have sons like Salman Khan and Sohail Khan," she said.
AUSTIN, Texas, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Abrigo, the leading technology provider of compliance, credit risk, and lending solutions for community financial institutions, today announced the launch of Abrigo Commercial Account Opening. In partnership with ProcessMaker, a leading provider in workflow management, Abrigo's robust commercial account opening and treasury services software is an end-to-end online solution that allows financial institution customers to open commercial accounts from anywhere and in 10 minutes or less.

Nearly three out of four bank customers agree that account opening should happen instantly, according to a recent study by Ekata, a global identity verification solution provider. However, excessive paperwork and bottlenecks in the back office make this impossible for most banks and credit unions. Abrigo's customizable commercial account opening and treasury services software makes it easy for banks and credit unions to provide rapid account opening, bolstering customer satisfaction. Another unique component of this new software is the pairing of it with treasury management services onboarding. Abrigo Commercial Account Opening enables financial institutions to ask customers about adding treasury services at the same time they are opening the deposit account. Automating this process makes it easier for financial institutions to capture this important stream of fee income earlier and seamlessly. Abrigo Commercial Account Opening streamlines and automates many time-intensive components of account opening and treasury services while improving the experience for customers and members by, among other benefits:

Allowing the customer to apply for multiple business accounts at once

Incorporating a dynamic application that asks tailored questions contingent on previous answers

Allowing for e-signatures as well as remote upload of supporting documents

Allowing for applicants to start, save, and resume applications at any point

Supporting complex relationships and notifying related parties when their signature or other information is needed

Enabling treasury services to be jointly set up with the initial account opening

"Community financial institutions are always looking for innovative ways to become more digital and efficient without losing the human, personal touch they're known for," said Jay Blandford, President of Abrigo. "That's why our Commercial Account Opening software is so important. Some customers will want to open a commercial account without leaving their business, while others will want the help of their banker. Regardless of whether the customer or member is filling out the application or the banker is filling it out on their behalf, Abrigo Commercial Account Opening makes the process fast and seamless, creating a better experience for customers and members, as well as the institution's staff."

While the solution makes account opening easier for customers and members, banks and credit unions also gain significant time savings, allowing bankers to acquire even more customers, driving additional growth and revenue for the institution. Financial institutions using the Commercial Account Opening solution can utilize custom dashboards and receive notifications for completed tasks utilizing workflows. Plus, the completely web-based solution integrates with Abrigo's other origination solutions for increased data efficiency.

Financial institutions can begin implementing Abrigo's Commercial Account Opening solution today. To learn more about the solution or how to get started, visit https://www.abrigo.com/software/lending-and-credit-risk/sageworks-lending-software/commercial-account-opening/.

About Abrigo

Abrigo enables U.S. financial institutions to support their communities through technology that fights financial crime, grows loans and deposits, and optimizes risk. Abrigo's platform centralizes the institution's data, creates a digital user experience, ensures compliance, and delivers efficiency for scale and profitable growth. Make Big Things Happen. Get started at abrigo.com.



About ProcessMaker

ProcessMaker is a no-code/low-code process automation solution provider focusing primarily on solutions in banking, higher education, and manufacturing. ProcessMaker makes it easy for business analysts to collaborate with IT to automate complex business processes connecting people and existing company systems. Headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, ProcessMaker has hundreds of commercial customers and an active open source community of thousands of users. Organizations rely on ProcessMaker to digitally transform their core business processes, enabling faster decision-making, improved compliance, and better performance. Learn more at www.ProcessMaker.com

SOURCE Abrigo

Related Links

http://www.abrigo.com


A Russian Defense Ministrys plane brought another 44 Russian children back to Russia from Syria on Monday, the press office of the Childrens Rights Commissioner for the Russian President Anna Kuznetsova said in a statement.

"The Russian Defense Ministrys plane carrying 44 children aged between two and 16 landed at Chkalovsky Airport outside Moscow. The kids come from a refugee camp located in an area not controlled by the Syrian authorities and a Damascus orphanage," the statement reads.

According to earlier reports, 34 Russian children from refugee camps and ten kids from a Damascus orphanage were handed over to Kuznetsova.

"I have seen how children live in the Damascus orphanage, where conditions are created for their development and caring teachers support them. However, the childrens families are waiting for them back home, they havent seen each other for several years. Moreover, some grandparents have only seen their grandchildren through photos," TASS cited Kuznetsova as saying.
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WELLINGTON, New Zealand  As the passengers walked a little dazed through the airport gates, they were embraced one after another by family members who rushed forward and dissolved into tears.

Elation and relief marked the opening of a long-anticipated travel bubble between Australia and New Zealand at the Wellington Airport on Monday. Children held balloons and banners and Indigenous Maori performers welcomed the arrivals home with songs.

The start of quarantine-free travel was a long time coming for families who have been separated by the coronavirus pandemic as well as to struggling tourist operators. It marked the first, tentative steps toward what both countries hope will become a gradual reopening to the rest of the world.

Danny Mather was overcome to see his pregnant daughter Kristy and his baby grandson for the first time in 15 months after they flew in from Sydney for a visit on the first flight after the bubble opened. What did they say to each other?

ADVERTISEMENTSkip



................................................................

Not a thing, he said, laughing. They just hugged. Its just so good to see her and Im just so happy to have her back.

Kristy Mather said it was overwhelming to be reunited with her family and it was amazing the bubble had opened.

I wished it had happened earlier, but its happened now, she said. I just wanted to get on that first flight because you never know, it may go south. Lets hope it sticks around.

Danny Mather said he wanted to keep New Zealand safe from the virus but also thought the time was right to open the bubble.

The idea of a travel bubble between Australia and New Zealand had been talked about for months but faced setbacks because of several small virus outbreaks in both countries, which were eventually stamped out.

To mark the occasion, Wellington Airport painted an enormous welcome sign near its main runway and Air New Zealand ordered some 24,000 bottles of sparkling wine, offering a complimentary glass to adult passengers.

Air New Zealands Chief Operating Officer Carrie Hurihanganui said the carrier had previously been running just two or three flights a day between the two countries but that jumped to 30 flights on Monday carrying 5,200 passengers.

She said the day marked a turning point and people were excited.

You can feel it at the airport and see it on peoples faces, she said.

The leaders of both countries welcomed the bubble, saying it was a world-leading arrangement because it aimed to both open borders and keep the virus from spreading.

Todays milestone is a win-win for Australians and New Zealanders, boosting our economies while keeping our people safe, Australian Prime Scott Morrison said.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said her country was welcoming the new arrivals.

The bubble marks a significant step in both countries reconnection with the world and its one we should all take a moment to be very proud of, she said.

Travelers who lined up at Sydney and Melbourne airports early Monday said they were excited or relieved to finally fly to New Zealand after more than a year. Some were visiting family and friends, while others were attending funerals.

Both countries have managed to keep out the virus by putting up barriers to the outside world, including strict quarantine requirements for travelers returning from other countries where the virus is rampant.

They did very well with the precautions and everything, better than all the world. Everywhere else cannot go anywhere safely, said Ameera Elmasry, who was at the Wellington airport to greet her son Shady Osman, a doctor who she hadnt seen in 16 months. Its very good whats happened now.

Australia had previously allowed New Zealanders to arrive without going into quarantine but New Zealand had taken a more cautious approach, requiring travelers from Australia complete a quarantine.

The start of the bubble comes ahead of the New Zealand ski season and is welcome news for many tourist towns, including the ski resort of Queenstown.
Historical items related to an Allied WWII raid which destroyed seven Japanese ships in Singapore in 1943 will be reunited with the operation's ship in Sydney.

The artefacts relating to a storied Allied raid on ships in Japanese-occupied Singapore in World War II are set to be reunited with the vessel which helped make it happen.

As part of Operation Jaywick, Allied forces in September 1943 paddled folding kayaks into Singapore Harbour and severely damaged seven Japanese ships via the use of limpet mines.

The soldiers had been deployed from a confiscated Japanese fishing boat, the MV Krait, which travelled undercover from Exmouth in Western Australia.

Historical items related to an Allied WWII raid which destroyed seven Japanese ships in Singapore in 1943 will be reunited with the operation's ship in Sydney

They all returned safely to Australia and the special operation is considered one of the most daring of the war.

The operation was so successful that the Japanese never realised how the ships had been sunk, and blamed local saboteurs. However this resulted in the mass torture and execution of European internees from Changi prison and local Chinese and Malay civilians.

The Australian National Maritime Museum on Tuesday said in a statement it had acquired a faux Japanese flag, medals and knife belonging to MV Krait commander and navigator Lieutenant Hubert Edward "Ted" Carse.

The items will be reunited with the MV Krait at the Sydney museum and put on display in the lead up to Anzac Day on Sunday.
Autopsies conducted this weekend have revealed the cause of death for victims of two recent homicides.

Guam Police Department spokesman Sgt. Paul Tapao, in a statement, said that autopsies were conducted on Daniel Quinata Sanchez and Joshua James Meno on Sunday.

Sanchez, the former mayor of Umatac who was found dead on April 3, died from injuries to the head and stab wounds to the body, said Tapao.

Joyner Scott Sked and her boyfriend Rudy Quinata are accused of murdering Sanchez. The couple allegedly beat Sanchez with a hammer and stabbed him at least 10 times with scissors. His body was discovered a couple of days after his death.

A witness told police that Sked bragged about the murder. Police also said Quinata told authorities twice that Sked was responsible.

Sked and Quinata are being held on a combined $150,000 cash bail.

Swamp Road case

In the Swamp Road investigation, Tapao said the autopsy report revealed that Meno died from a gunshot wound to the abdomen.

Meno's lifeless body was discovered on the shoulder of the road along Hahasu Drive on April 15.

Court documents stated that a trail of blood led from Meno's body to the entrance of the home of murder suspect Mathew Manibusan.

Manibusan claims he shot Meno in self-defense.

He told police that "Meno had been threatening his cousins while brandishing a machete and that he was afraid Meno would hurt him or his girlfriend in the home, so he shot Meno first.

Manibusan is being held on $100,000 cash bail.
DZ BANK AG Frankfurt am Main - Pre Stabilisation

RNS Number: residue number system

Frankfurt am Main, 19. April 2021

Not for distribution, directly or indirectly, in or into the United States or any jurisdiction in which such distribution would be unlawful.

Pre-Stabilisation Notice

Nederlandse Waterschapsbank NV (NEDWBK)

DZ BANK AG (contact: Ralph Ockert; telephone: +49 69 7447 7051) hereby announces, as Stabilisation Coordinator, that the Stabilising Managers named below may stabilise the offer of the following securities in accordance with Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/1052 under the Market Abuse Regulation (EU Regulation 596/2014).

The security to be stabilised: Issuer: NEDWBK Guarantor (if any): none Aggregate nominal amount: EUR Benchmark Description: Tba coupon, due 26. April 2051 Offer price: tba Other offer terms: Payment 26. April 2021, denoms 100k +1k, soft bullet Stabilisation: DZ BANK AG Stabilisation Coordinator:

Stabilising Managers: DZ BANK AG

Toronto Securities, SEB



Stabilisation period expected to start on: 19.04.2021 Stabilisation period expected to end on: no later than 30 days after the proposed issue date of the securities Existence, maximum size and conditions of use of over-allotment facility. The Stabilising Managers may over-allot the securities to the extent permitted in accordance with applicable law. Stabilisation trading venue: Luxembourg Stock Exchange (Regulated Market)

In connection with the offer of the above securities, the Stabilisation Manager(s) may over-allot the securities or effect transactions with a view to supporting the market price of the securities at a level higher than that which might otherwise prevail. However, there is no assurance that the Stabilisation Manager(s) will take any stabilisation action and any stabilisation action, if begun, may be ended at any time. Any stabilisation action or over-allotment shall be conducted in accordance with all applicable laws and rules.

This announcement is for information purposes only and does not constitute an invitation or offer to underwrite, subscribe for or otherwise acquire or dispose of any securities of the Issuer in any jurisdiction.

In addition, if and to the extent that this announcement is communicated in, or the offer of the securities to which it relates is made in, any EEA Member State that has implemented Directive 2003/71/EC, as amended (together with any applicable implementing measures in any Member State, the "Prospectus Directive") before the publication of a prospectus in relation to the securities which has been approved by the competent authority in that Member State in accordance with the Prospectus Directive (or which has been approved by a competent authority in another Member State and notified to the competent authority in that Member State in accordance with the Prospectus Directive), this announcement and the offer are only addressed to and directed at persons in that Member State who are qualified investors within the meaning of the Prospectus Directive (or who are other persons to whom the offer may lawfully be addressed) and must not be acted on or relied on by other persons in that Member State.
Local Enterprise Office Laois is inviting food and drink producers from the county to join the hugely successful Food Academy programme and follow in the footsteps of local companies, such as Ballykilcavan Brewery, Le Skinny Chef, Flavour Safari, 12 Acres Brewing Company which have previously taken part.

Now in its eighth year, Food Academy is a unique food business development programme between the 31 Local Enterprise Offices, including Local Enterprise Office Laois, SuperValu and Bord Bia. Participants in the programme receive training in food safety, market research and branding, marketing, finance, sustainability and business development.

The Food Academy programme currently supports 290 Irish food and drink producers including 140 female entrepreneurs, generating 170m in sales. In 2020, there was a 15% growth in SuperValu Food Academy sales with participants earning 28m. The Food Academy programme supports 1,500 jobs in local communities nationwide and local producers are now being encouraged to apply for the 2021 programme before Friday, April 27th.

Evelyn Reddin, Head of Enterprise with Local Enterprise Office Laois welcoming the increase in Food Academy sales through SuperValu in 2020.

Since it was started up eight years ago by the Local Enterprise Offices, SuperValu and Bord Bia, the Food Academy programme has been hugely successful, going from strength to strength. It has helped hundreds of up-and-coming food and drink producers to get their products market-ready, giving them an opportunity to sell to a nationwide audience.

The Food Academy is part of a suite of Local Enterprise Office supports designed for food and drink entrepreneurs in Ireland, such as the Digital School of Food and Food Starter programmes, both aimed at getting those with food ideas off the ground. As local food and drink producers grow their sales through these programmes, Local Enterprise Office Laois is on hand to support their expansion plans through further training, mentoring and financial assistance, she said.

Commenting on the Food Academy programme, Carmel Biggane, Food Academy Manager, SuperValu said: At SuperValu we believe in local business and are proud to continue to support local producers across the country. In collaboration with the Local Enterprise Office Network and Bord Bia, the Food Academy is a great way for us to help new businesses to grow and get the support they need.

The programme allows us to use our experience to help small businesses through their journey from start up to getting their products on our shelves all year round. Weve had great success with the Food Academy in recent years, we look forward to welcoming new producers this year and continuing to support local communities. I would call on local food producers across Ireland to get involved and see how Food Academy can help you grow.

The Food Academy Programme is now open for applications until Friday 23rd April 2021 and the subsidised cost to participate is 200 per company. To apply, interested food and drink producers from Laois are encouraged to contact Local Enterprise Office Laois for an application form by e-mailing hdeevy@laoiscoco.ie or by visiting LocalEnterprise.ie/laois

Further information about the Food Academy is also available at https://supervalu.ie/real-people/food-academy-programme.
Appointment

19 April 2021

Kempinski Hotels announces the appointment of Octavio Calderin as the new finance and accounting director, who will be in charge of supervising the day-to-day financial operations at Kempinski Hotel Bahia.

He brings more than 15 years of hotel operations experience to his new role, and we are confident that he will be a valuable addition to the executive team as we continue to deliver sustained profitable growth.

Octavio has passed through the ranks of Sheraton in Zurich and The Ritz-Carlton in Budapest and Tenerife, in addition to a wide portfolio of hotels and resorts since its inception, on its native island of Tenerife. His extensive experience in hotel finance, from overseeing all financial aspects to driving financial strategy and planning, will be the key to directing the hotel's financial performance, as well as identifying potential opportunities or risks.

In 2012, he landed the position of Chief Financial Officer at The Ritz-Carlton in Tenerife. Years later, with The Ritz-Carlton, he moved to Budapest as head of the finance team for three years. His haunting ambition and learning led him to Zurich, assuming responsibility for two hotel properties, Sheraton Zurich Hotel and Sheraton Zurich Neues Schloss.

Octavio complements our strong performance-oriented DNA, and his impressive reputation for results makes him the right choice to lead our finance team.
NSIN Propel will leverage Decisive Point's defense and government contracting expertise and Newlab's proven Innovation Studio model, prototyping resources, and industry and investor network to guide selected companies through a process of developing and piloting technologies designed to meet DoD and commercial market needs. NSIN is sponsoring the program and is working closely with Decisive Point and Newlab to set the vision for the program. NSIN Propel will help companies develop practical acquisitions knowledge and capacity by equipping participants with capabilities necessary for success in the federal market and building the momentum to raise capital from private investors, build relationships with defense and commercial customers, and win government contracts.

"We are proud to partner with Newlab to launch NSIN Propel, which will help drive the development of emerging technologies for national security and public safety," said Ryan Benitez, Principal with Decisive Point. "As emerging technologies, from AI and machine learning to robotics and connected systems, transform the global security landscape, our partnership with Newlab will help ensure that the United States military continues to lead at the cutting edge of next-generation technology."

"We're excited to partner with Decisive Point to launch NSIN Propel, which will combine Newlab's Innovation Studio model, which drives impactful outcomes, with Decisive Point's deep expertise in government and defense innovation to catalyze technology solutions that will shape the future of national security," said Shaun Stewart, CEO of Newlab. "NSIN Propel will enable the U.S. government to benefit from dual-use technologies critical to defense while providing the companies the guidance they need to scale their solutions for both the government and commercial sectors."

NSIN Propel partners will collaborate with the Rome, New York-based Air Force Research Laboratory's Information Directorate (AFRL)the premier research organization for Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence (C4I) and Cyber technologiesto recruit companies new to the defense sector with technology solutions that can be adapted to address the needs of both the U.S. Air Force and the broader DoD community. Selected companies will work on solutions that deliver safety, resiliency, and agility to national security initiatives through data fusion and analytics, focusing on sensors, connectivity, autonomous systems, and human-machine interaction. NSIN Propel presents an opportunity for companies with relevant commercial applications in areas such as smart cities, urban tech, mobility, industrial automation and manufacturing, logistics, and supply chain management to expand into federal markets.

"Providing guidance to companies as they develop solutions for the federal market is critical to enabling the DoD community to leverage cutting-edge emerging technologies," said John Hrivnak, NSIN Program Manager "By partnering with Decisive Point and Newlab, we aim to ensure that the U.S. government will benefit from the extraordinary technological advances made in the private sector to help meet our critical national security needs."

NSIN Propel is currently accepting applications from technology companies interested in participating. For more information on the application process, please click here .

About Newlab

Newlab is a community of experts and innovators applying transformative technology to solve the world's biggest challenges. Newlab membership and studios bring together entrepreneurs, engineers, inventors and industry leaders to create sustainable solutions and enterprises. Newlab employs technologies including robotics, AI and material science to transform what matters mosthealth, environment, media, cities, and infrastructure.

About Decisive Point

Decisive Point is a venture capital firm focused on technology for government, public safety, and defense. Decisive Point's mission is to support founders with the guts to try; the ones who look at challenges facing the country and their communities and see problems worth solving. Decisive Point supports their clients as they navigate the federal market and invest in those that deliver solutions to both commercial customers and the nation.

About NSIN

The NSIN mission is to "build networks of innovators that generate new solutions to national security problems." NSIN is headquartered in Arlington, VA, and has regional offices in 11 commercial innovation hubs throughout the United States. Through its headquarters, regional hubs, and embedded university partnerships, NSIN builds a national network of innovators and delivers programming that solves real-world, DoD problems through collaborative partnerships with non-traditional problem-solvers within the academic and early-stage venture communities.

For press inquiries contact: [email protected]

SOURCE Newlab
Varying severity of COVID-19 symptoms in patients is reflected by levels of a chemical biomarker in their body which scientists say could be used to better manage treatments and other interventions, including vaccinations.

In a new paper in International Journal of Infectious Diseases, medical experts in Italy and Australia examined levels of a chemical called serum amyloid A (SAA), a protein synthesised in the liver which can spike up to 1,000-fold within the first 24-48 hours of an infection.

In turn, an increase in SAA can further perpetuate inflammation and cause clot abnormalities and organ damage, researchers say, concluding SAA levels are associated with higher COVID-19 severity and mortality.

The University of Sassari and Flinders University researchers focused on the latest research including 19 studies of more than 5,600 COVID-19 patients for specific markers to predict disease severity and progression.

Our analyses showed that COVID-19 patients with severe disease or who eventually died had significantly higher levels of SAA when compared to patients with mild COVID-19." Arduino Mangoni, Study Senior Corresponding Author and Professor, Clinical Pharmacology, Flinders University, South Australia

"Patients with severe forms of coronavirus disease 2019 have excessive inflammation, alterations in clot formation, and significant damage in several organs, particularly the lung, the kidney, the heart, and the liver,"

Given the key role of inflammation in COVID-19, markers that reflect a state of excessive inflammation might be particularly useful for risk stratification and effective management.

"This chemical may help, together with other patient characteristics, in predicting which COVID-19 patients are likely to deteriorate and require aggressive management," the researchers say.

While safe and effective vaccines are being rolled out worldwide there are currently few effective therapies to treat COVID-19 in the community and in hospital.

In this context, the use of specific markers to predict disease severity and would facilitate the early identification of patients requiring aggressive management and monitoring and assist with the judicious use of health care resources.

The link between SAA and COVID-19 severity and mortality focused on data collected from 5,617 patients hospitalised with COVID-10 with different degrees of severity and survival status, along with current literature.
More than 250 firefighters in Cape Town battled a massive blaze that broke out on the slopes of the citys Table Mountain on Sunday and spread to a university campus, severely damaging at least three buildings and forcing student residences to be evacuated.

Efforts to extinguish the flames were hampered by howling winds, with helicopters that are usually deployed to douse the flames unable to fly on Monday. Some residents of the suburbs of Vredehoek and Devils Peak were instructed to vacate their homes, schools in the area were shut and several streets were closed to traffic.

Several historic buildings were gutted, including a tearoom at the Rhodes Memorial on Table Mountains lower reaches, and Mosterts Mill, which was built in 1796 and is the countrys oldest working windmill. A thick pall of smoke blanketed large parts of the city, restricting visibility and making it difficult to breathe.

More than 200 firefighters and emergency personnel were deployed to battle a raging wildfire on the slopes of Cape Towns Table Mountain on Sunday.

Cape Town University students were forced to evacuate the campus. No fatalities have been reported so far pic.twitter.com/YWMQio1DWx

 Bloomberg Quicktake (@Quicktake) April 18, 2021

Five firefighters were injured and are receiving treatment, the Western Cape province said in a statement on Monday.

This is the worst wildfire to have hit Cape Town in recent memory, said James-Brent Styan, a spokesman for disaster management in the province. We seem to be making headway but the fire is not fully under control yet. Hopefully the fire will not flare up overnight as it did on Sunday.

The full extent of the damage will be assessed once the fire is brought under control, the city of Cape Town said in a separate statement. The cause of the blaze is being investigated and a 30-year-old man suspected of starting a secondary fire has been taken into police custody, the city said.

The University of Cape Towns music school, Fuller Hall student residence and Jagger Library were badly damaged, and several valuable book collections and a reading room were torched. More than 4,000 students were evacuated and accommodated at hotels and private residences in the city, and all campuses will be shut on Monday and Tuesday.

The insurance industry is likely to face claims of more than 100 million rand ($7 million), although an accurate assessment has yet to be made, said Christelle Colman, a spokesperson for Old Mutual Insure.

With assistance from Roxanne Henderson.

Copyright 2021 Bloomberg.

Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Wildfire
RESTON, Va., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The DECA International Career Development Conference kicks off its core week in a virtual format on April 19 at www.decaicdc.org. More than 17,000 DECA members registered to participate, with all 146,000 members invited to join, an added benefit included with their DECA membership, in their quest to prepare for college and careers.

Ramkishore Annachi, DECA's Southern Region Vice President, virtually delivers his opening remarks during the #DECAICDC Grand Opening Session.

"The virtual format, combined with the generous support of our conference partners, provides a unique opportunity for us to offer many of the conference highlights to our entire membership this year in the spirit of access and inclusivity," said Frank Peterson, executive director of DECA Inc. "We encourage all our DECA members to participate this week as they prepare to become emerging leaders and entrepreneurs."

The #DECAICDC will spotlight DECA's top student performers from all 50 United States, Canada, China, Guam, Puerto Rico and Spain. It will also highlight innovative business partnerships that empower these emerging business leaders and future entrepreneurs to tackle the challenges of an ever-evolving and persistently difficult economic landscape.

During the school year, DECA members take part in the organization's competitive events program, allowing them to compete for local and regional titles. The competitions are designed to simulate real-life business scenarios and test students' academic understanding and skills development. The top state and provincial winners will now put their talents to the test during the program's final round of competition virtually. Businesspeople from across the world are evaluating DECA members' concepts, ideas and projects against industry-validated performance indicators.

"All DECA members should be commended for their resilience and grit to participate in DECA's competitive events program this year," said Christopher Young, chief program officer of DECA Inc. "Even through the uniqueness of the past year, DECA members have taken their learning to the next level as they prepare to lead us through the many challenges ahead."

DECA's connection to business, one of its key guiding principles, provides DECA members realistic insight into industry and promotes meaningful, relevant learning. Best known for breathing life back into struggling small businesses on CNBC's The Profit, Marcus Lemonis will deliver the keynote in an interview format. A successful entrepreneur, advocate and philanthropist, he will share everything from his favorite moments on The Profit to advice to DECA members for building a personal brand, the importance of diversity, how to be successful and more.

DECA's corporate advisory board is comprised of more than 60 nationally and internationally recognized businesses and organizations including AT&T, Facebook, Hilton, Intuit, Marriott International, Men's Wearhouse, Muscular Dystrophy Association, National Retail Federation Foundation, Piper Sandler, Publix, U.S. Army, Universal Orlando Resort and Walgreens.

These companies work with DECA to industry-validate its curriculum, recruit talent to careers in their industry, tap into the attitudes and opinions of the teen-market and provide community engagement opportunities for their associates.

DECA will name its top international performers during its grand awards session on May 6. Nearly $170,000 will be awarded to DECA members in competitive events awards and scholarships, and hundreds of DECA members received registration grants courtesy of the J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation.

For more information, contact Christopher Young, CAE, Chief Program Officer at DECA Inc. at [email protected].

Related Images

image1.jpg

SOURCE DECA Inc.
Photo: The Canadian Press

B.C. is following the lead of some eastern provinces and is lowering the bottom age limit for eligibility of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Starting later this week, the province will be launching AstraZeneca clinics directed at people age 40 and up in high-risk communities with a high rate of transmission.

The province will be deploying reserve 75,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine donated by the U.S. to communities and neighbourhoods based on case counts. Distribution of the AstraZeneca vaccine already underway through pharmacies in some communities will also see age eligibility lowered from 55 to 40.

In the BC Interior, Enderby and Invermere are being targeted by specific clinics. Other communities targeted by the province include a dozen Lower Mainland neighbourhoods and Dawson Creek.

This vaccine is a very good vaccine, said Dr. Penny Ballem, executive lead of B.C.s vaccine program, referring to the AstraZeneca jab.

She pointed to the United Kingdom, where case counts have fallen through the floor thanks to the vaccine. Its use had previously been restricted to the specific age range of 55-65 due to concerns about blood clots, but there have been just two cases in Canada after more than 700,000 doses administered.

As of April 14, there have been 114,171 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine administered in B.C., with about 91,000 through pharmacies.

Looking at the vaccine program as a whole, the province says it remains on track to offer everyone in B.C. one dose by July 1.

Fifty-seven per cent of British Columbians over the age of 65 have already received their first dose, with uptake well over 80 per cent for those ages 80 and over.

The government is forecasting that it will start to see the positive impacts of the vaccine program on hospitalizations starting at the end of April.
The latest news on COVID-19 developments in Canada (all times Eastern):

The latest news on COVID-19 developments in Canada (all times Eastern):

11 p.m.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has lowered the minimum age for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

He says those aged 40 and over will be able to book appointments for the shot starting on Tuesday.

As it stands, only those 55 and older can receive the AstraZeneca shot.

The Sunday night announcement came in a tweet, hours after Ontario made a similar move.

Kenney says more information will be released in the morning.

7:05 p.m.

Ontario is expanding the number of residents eligible to receive the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

A spokeswoman for the province's health minister says those 40 and older can start receiving the shot as of Tuesday.

The previous cut-off age was 55.

Alexandra Hilkene says AstraZeneca shots will be available through pharmacies and primary care providers.

---

6 p.m.

Alberta is reporting 1,516 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours.

There have also been three additional virus-related deaths.

The province's chief medical health officer says in a series of tweets that 800 of the new cases reported today are variants of concern.

Dr. Deena Hinshaw says out of 15,343 tests completed in the past day, 9.8 per cent of them have been positive for COVID-19.

4:30 p.m.

The federal government says it has reached out to numerous provinces to see whether they can provide health-care workers to help with the surge in new COVID-19 cases in Ontario.

Yet it isn't clear whether the Ontario government has agreed to take the assistance, which was announced by four federal ministers during a news conference this afternoon.

Ontario on Friday rejected an offer from Ottawa for mobile vaccination clinics, saying what it really needs is more vaccines, even as the province said it was short nurses.

3:50 p.m.

Saskatchewan is reporting 289 new cases of COVID-19, as well as one additional death.

The person who died was in their 50s and lived in the province's North Central zone.

Health officials report there have been 11,063 new doses of vaccine administered in the past day, bringing the provincial total to 345,126.

3 p.m.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says federal health-care workers will be sent to Ontario to help manage the worsening COVID-19 crisis.

Trudeau says in a video update that workers from departments such as National Defence and Immigration will be reassigned to help in the Greater Toronto Area in particular.

He says hes also working with provinces such as Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island to see what human resources and equipment they can spare.

He says the federal government will also work with Ontario cities to deploy rapid tests to hard-hit locations and will cover the costs of relocating personnel and resources from other provinces.

2:30 p.m.

British Columbia says ready to expand its vaccine effort to residents as young as 18.

Authorities say those 18 and older will be invited to register for an immunization appointment over the course of the week.

Registration will be open to those 40 and above starting Monday, with the lower age limit decreasing every following day.

Those as young as 18 will be able to sign up by Friday.

The government says those who register for a vaccine will be contacted about booking an actual appointment after they've signed up.

---

2:15 p.m.

Nunavut is reporting three new COVID-19 cases, all of which are in Iqaluit where the territory's only current outbreak is located.

Today's new cases in the capital raise the total number of active infections to 22.

The city of approximately 8,000 went into lockdown Thursday when it identified its first case.

Health authorities identified 12 additional cases on Friday and six more on Saturday.

1:50 p.m.

Manitoba is reporting 170 new COVID-19 cases today and one additional death.

The province's daily pandemic update says three cases have been removed due to data correction, bringing Manitoba's total number of infections since the beginning of the pandemic to 36,159.

The person who died was a man in his 70s from the Prairie Mountain Health Region in southwestern Manitoba.

The province's five day test-positivity rate is 5.6 per cent.

There are 132 people in hospital in Manitoba with COVID-19, with 33 of those in intensive care.

12:45 p.m.

Prince Edward Island is reporting three new cases of COVID-19 today.

Chief public health officer Dr. Heather Morrison says the new cases include a child under 10 years old who has been hospitalized, an individual in their 30s and a person in their 50s.

All three cases are related to travel outside of Atlantic Canada.

The Island currently has 10 active cases.

12:40 p.m.

Nova Scotia is reporting seven new cases of COVID-19 today.

Four of the cases are in the Halifax area, with two close contacts of previously reported cases, one related to international travel and the other under investigation.

The three other infections are in the eastern health zone and are related to travel outside of Atlantic Canada.

Nova Scotia has 49 active cases of COVID-19.

12:25 p.m.

New Brunswick is reporting 10 new cases of COVID-19 today.

Nine of the cases are in the Edmundston region with six confirmed as contacts of previously confirmed patients and the other three under investigation.

The remaining case is in the Saint John area and is related to travel.

The province has a total of 153 active infections.

11:10 a.m.

Quebec is reporting 1,344 new cases of COVID-19 today, along with nine new deaths related to the virus.

The province says two of the most recent deaths occurred in the past 24 hours, while the other seven took place between April 11 and 16.

Hospitalizations in the province declined slightly, falling by nine to 683.

The number of patients in intensive care units remained stable at 175.

---

11 a.m.

Hospitalizations and admissions to intensive care units continue to reach record heights in Ontario.

The province says 2,107 patients are currently in hospital, with 741 in an ICU and more than 500 on a ventilator.

Provincial figures show hospital admissions are currently outpacing recoveries from COVID-19.

Ontario is also reporting 4,250 new infections over the last 24 hour and 18 virus-related deaths.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 18, 2021.
New Delhi, April 19 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said it is because of the efforts of the pharmaceutical industry that today India is identified as 'pharmacy of world'. He made this remark during an interaction with leaders of the pharmaceutical industry via video conferencing.

The Prime Minister appreciated the crucial role of the pharma sector in the fight against the pandemic.

He also appreciated the way the pharma industry is working even in such trying conditions."Essential medicines were made available to more than 150 countries around the world during the pandemic. Despite all the challenges, the Indian pharma industry has also registered a growth of 18 per cent in exports last year, which shows its potential," Modi said.

Noting the second wave of the virus and rising number of cases, the Prime Minister commended the pharma industry for their efforts to increase production of several necessary drugs.

He appreciated them for reducing the price of injections like 'Remdesivir' and to keep the supply of medicines and essential medical equipment going smoothly.

The Prime Minister urged the pharma industry to ensure seamless supply chains and extended government's support for facilities like logistics and transportation.

He urged the industry to conduct more and more research on threats which can occur in the future along with Covid. "This would help us take the lead in combating the virus," he said.

Seeking cooperation from the pharma industry, PM Modi assured that the government is undertaking reforms for new drugs and regulatory processes.

The leaders of the pharma industry appreciated the proactive help and support received from the government. They highlighted the efforts made over the last one year in ensuring availability of drugs keeping manufacturing and logistics operational. Operations at the pharma hubs for manufacturing, transportation, logistics and ancillary services are being maintained at optimum levels.

The participants also shares inputs on the measures being undertaken to meet the overall medicine demand in the country despite the unprecedented increase in demand for some drugs for Covid treatment protocol.
SI launched the ASU Faculty Startup Challenge in 2018 to support the launch of new spinouts founded by ASU faculty researchers or postdoctoral students. Each year, up to six startups are selected for seed investments, with a judging panel of seasoned entrepreneurs selecting the winners.

An Arizona State University spinout founded by Dr. Alexandra Lucas and her team of researchers at the ASU Biodesign Institute is the winner of the third annual ASU Faculty Startup Challenge. The annual competition is run by Skysong Innovations, which works across the university to help researchers pursue commercial applications for their work.

Serpass Biologics, Dr. Lucas startup, is developing a new class of immune-modulating biologics for autoimmune disorders. These can be used to treat and suppress excessive immune system responses in a wide range of diseases, including arthritic, cardiac, gastrointestinal, pulmonary and vascular disorders.

As the winner, Serpass Biologics will receive a $50,000 seed investment. The other finalists, which each receive $25,000 investments, include:

Joseph Blattman  Unnamed Company

Professor, School of Life Sciences, Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology

Spinout company seeking to revolutionize immunome profiling through a single cell therapeutic diagnostic tool using a nanoprobe embedded inside DNA origami. The company is supported by more than $2 million in grants and other funding.

Daniel Bliss  Big Little Sensor

Professor, School of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering

A non-contact method for measuring human vital signs beyond respiration and heart rate, using low-power, small-scale remote sensors from a distance. Intellectual property includes 10 disclosed inventions and five patent applications.

Rolf Halden  AquaVitas

Professor, Biodesign Center for Environmental Health Engineering

A wastewater-based epidemiology company that provides analytical services to protect human health by monitoring contaminants, narcotics, and contagious pathogens like SARS-CoV-2. Last year, the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) awarded AquaVitas a contract to conduct a national study to assess SARS-CoV-2 viral elements found in wastewater.

Robert Sampson  Sunesta Solar, Inc

Director, School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering

This company is based on research completed in Quantum Energy and Sustainable Solar Technologies (QESST) lab, an NSF-DOE funded Engineering Research Center at ASU. The innovation is a novel solar module that allows dual use of land for generating electricity and growing crops at the same time. The module is designed to be wavelength selective, with the light that is most beneficial to plants allowed to pass through, while the rest is utilized to generate electricity.

SI launched the ASU Faculty Startup Challenge in 2018 to support the launch of new spinouts founded by ASU faculty researchers or postdoctoral students. Each year, up to six startups are selected for seed investments, with a judging panel of seasoned entrepreneurs selecting the winners.

All founders who apply are eligible to receive ongoing assistance through ASU Entrepreneurship and Innovation (E+I) and the ASU Startup Mill, a collection of experienced entrepreneurs and executives who provide mentoring and go-to-market executive-level leadership.

This years contest is launching now. For more information, contact Charlie Lewis, VP of Venture Development, at clewis@skysonginnovations.com.

About Skysong Innovations

Skysong Innovations works with ASU researchers to protect and commercialize the intellectual property they create. The organizations mission is supporting ASU faculty, promoting the ASU Knowledge Enterprise, and enhancing the community ASU serves. Skysong Innovations has helped launch more than 140 new spinout companies from ASU, which together have attracted almost a billion dollars in outside investments. Learn more: https://www.skysonginnovations.com/
Monday, April 19, 2021

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Conspiracy theorist James DiEugenio has dubbed the week of February 14th 2021, the Fred Litwin Follies! It sounds like a musical extravaganza and who can complain about that? Actually, the follies are nothing more than an article-a-day carpet bombing about my books  and theres no shortage of sour notes in its 34,000+ words.

There were already three articles about me up on his web site and so hes now pushed the number to eight (oops, a ninth was added yesterday)! Gee, I couldnt convince any of my dearest friends to do that! And there are also four episodes of Black Op Radio to enumerate my many misdeeds.

DiEugenios official title should be Protector and Defender of the Garrison Faith, and as such he must answer anybody who deviates, even if just slightly, from his conspiracy dogma. My heresy of writing an entire book critical of Jim Garrison gets me special treatment, and so the Protector and Defender of the Garrison Faith has also reviewed my other two books.

Its quite telling that DiEugenio writes that the problem is  and I cannot make this point forcefully enough  too many writers and interested parties think they know the Garrison inquiry and New Orleans, when they really do not. Of course, the only person who really understands the Garrison inquiry is the Protector and Defender of the Garrison Faith  he alone can decipher and interpret the ancient scripture (Jim Garrisons papers) and he alone can determine which high priests are allowed to add and discuss doctrine.

Unauthorized commentators  Patricia Lambert, Don Carpenter, Sylvia Meagher, Gus Russo, Paul Hoch, Rosemary James, Alecia Long, Max Holland, Hugh Aynesworth, James Phelan, Fred Litwin  are deserving of scorn and ridicule. They do not have the necessary skills to understand the complex nature of the holy texts and they have not adequately studied the printed words of the Protector and Defender of the Garrison Faith. Salvation is only possible when they have repented and have memorized the full 25 episodes of the Destiny Betrayed podcast.

Indeed, many of these illegitimate poseurs have been tainted by working for the deep state, which means everything they say or write can be safely ignored. Whats worse is that they hide their devious intent  but no matter, the Protector and Defender of the Garrison Faith can ferret out their covert connections and can safely exclude their findings from the record.

I wish I was exaggerating.

Let me start with the scorn. Its not enough to prove people wrong, DiEugenio has to say nasty things about people. Here are just a few of the insults I have collected  give me enough time and I am sure I can find hundreds more:

Sylvia Meagher had ignorant viewpoints

Litwin sounds indistinguishable from Dan Rather on a bad day.

the very idea that Litwin would use Paul Hoch as a kind of model for the critical community is absurd in and of itself.

Hoch was incontinent in his search for truth.

Litwin is so incontinent to smear Garrison

And, of course, DiEugenios friends, these unskilled and untrained people could figure out the forensic hoaxes that physicist Hoch could not?

After suffering through Litwins phantasmagoria with Thornley, I was ready to walk the book out to the trash bin behind my apartment.

I was ready to walk the book out to the trash bin behind my apartment. Instead, I decided to take a few days off. I had to in order to recover my damaged sensibilities.

By following Hochs advice, Litwin now has custard pie all over his face. Or as they say in the field of information technology, which both men worked in: garbage in, garbage out.

Litwin is so monomaniacal, so freight train locomotive obsessed

Which I have spent over 50 pages exposing as literary rubbish.

If anyone can show me anything of value that Hoch has produced on this case in the last 30 years, I would like to see it.

For anyone who knows the JFK case, Litwins two book are not just boring, they are rather insulting.

I will never be in the same room with Paul Hoch again.

Here are some key examples of what DiEugenio has gotten wrong:

DiEugenio Trashes Paul Hoch, an Important JFK Researcher

Paul Hoch is a first-generation Warren Commission critic, and his newsletter, Echoes of Conspiracy, provided essential commentary on books, films and documents over the years. If you read some of Paul Hochs prodigious correspondence with other researchers, youll find a level of intellectual rigor so often missing in JFK circles. Many researchers, when encountering a sticky problem, often turn to Paul for help. I know  because I often turn to Paul for answers.

DiEugenio loves to bad-mouth Hoch, and mentions him forty-two times in his article about my books. In the process, he badly mangles the published record and needlessly insults a very important JFK researcher.

For instance, in 1983 Paul Hoch gave an important speech in Chicago on how to evaluate evidence and documents. DiEugenio says that Hoch told them to ignore any new releases that came from the Board about Clay Shaw. I wish I was kidding about that, but unfortunately I was there. DiEugenio gets it all wrong. Hoch said that Any post-Garrison story with Clay Shaw in it starts with a heavy burden of skepticism to overcome. In my view, good advice, but DiEugenio turns it into a blanket prohibition.

At that conference, Hoch told DiEugenio that he thought former Warren Commission Counsel Burt Griffin gave a better speech than former Deputy Chief Counsel for the HSCA Robert Tanenbaum. DiEugenio then makes an unwarranted leap of faith  which would mean, by deduction, that he bought the Single Bullet Theory.

Its important to note that James DiEugenio did not comment on the exchange of letters in my book between Paul Hoch, Jim Garrison, and Ted Gandolfo (pages 256-258). Besides raising the issue of homosexuality, Hoch asked Garrison a direct question about the evidence in his possession when he charged Shaw. Its telling that Garrison not only totally evaded the question in his reply, but refers to Hochs letter as strident and that he would not reply to a gratuitous critique. And, then Garrison notes that Mr. Hoch has a finely tuned aggression and is wonderfully ferocious.

And, not surprisingly, DiEugenio ignores the entire exchange.

That correspondence might possibly explain DiEugenios Two Minutes Hate of Paul Hoch in his articles, which were ostensibly about Fred Litwin. Little Jim always echoes Big Jim  and so the Garrison denunciation of Hoch means that excommunication is the only option available to DiEugenio.

DiEugenios Ignores the context of my book, I Was a Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak

DiEugenio is the master of taking things out of context. His review of I Was a Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak ignores the fact that it is not a book about the JFK assassination per se, but a book about conspiracy thinking, and a memoir on why my thinking has evolved over the years. You wouldnt know that from reading DiEugenios review. Several chapters of my books have been totally ignored, and like the earlier review by David Mantik on his website, only a small portion of what I have written is discussed. My complete history of conspiracy thinking in the assassination  from Mark Lane to Dick Gregory  is ignored.

Heres a specific example of DiEugenio removing context. He takes great exception to the trajectory diagram, prepared for the HSCA by Thomas Canning of NASA , on page 174 of my book.

What he neglects to tell the reader is that I used these diagrams in a chapter about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and their one-sided JFK assassination conspiracy documentaries. In 1983, they featured Dr. Cyril Wecht as an expert and they showed his diagram of the single-bullet theory:

Here is what I wrote  What they didnt show the Canadian public was the trajectory analysis performed by Thomas Canning, staff engineer for the Space Projects Division of the NASA Ames Research Center for the HSCA in 1979. And so even if you have issues with the Canning diagram  for instance, I believe he used the wrong Zapruder frame  it was intellectually dishonest of the CBC not to show their audience a trajectory diagram that was commissioned by the second investigation into the JFK assassination. DiEugenios interest lies solely in criticizing Canning and the HSCA, and thus he removes the context from the illustration.

DiEugenio Ignores the Context of my book, Conservative Confidential: Inside The Fabulous Blue Tent

The subtitle of my book is Inside the Fabulous Blue Tent. DiEugenio does not tell the reader what this is  even though there is a whole chapter on the Fabulous Blue Tent [it was a party I started, with two colleagues, for gay conservatives & friends held at Conservative Party conferences]. In fact, DiEugenio ignores my two chapters on gay politics, my chapter on the film Iranium, my chapter on Islam, and virtually everything else. He does fixate on David Horowitz  I only mention him seven times in my book, while DiEugenio mentions him thirty-seven times in his series of articles.

DiEugenio Distorts the Testimony of Witnesses

John Stringer was the photographer of the JFK autopsy and DiEugenio presents him as a witness to help prove that the JFK autopsy photographs were either altered or substituted. Using Stringer as a witness to bolster that allegation is ridiculous  several times, during his testimony, he was shown various photographs and he confirmed, every single time, that he took the photographs. You can find his testimony here .

Stringer was systematically asked about all the autopsy photographs and he thought they were all authentic and that none were altered.

Page Number Autopsy Photographs

161 29. 30, 31

162 1, 2, 3, 4

164 5,6, 26, 27, 28

168 7,8,9,10, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37

173 11, 12, 38, 39

188 13, 14, 40, 41

192 15, 16, 42, 43

206 17, 18, 44, 45

216 19, 21, 22, 46, 47, 48. 49 (brain photographs)

222 20, 27, 24, 25, 50, 51, 52 (brain photographs)

In terms of the brain, DiEugenio states the following: When asked directly by Gunn if he would say these were the photos he took of Kennedys brain, Stringer replied No, I couldnt say that they were President Kennedys. But he leaves out the next line, in which Stringer says, I mean, theres no identification. He was then asked if the photographs were consistent with the brain as he remembered it. Stringer replied, Well, it has to be, if thats Mr. Kennedy.

It is true, as DiEugenio says, that Stringer thought photographs of the superior view of the brain were taken with a different film, but he wasnt entirely sure. For instance, he was asked, Did you use Ansco film in the  taking of the autopsy? and Stringer replied, Not as far as I know. He then added he had no recollections of using a film pack.

One thing is for sure, Stringer never said any of the photographs were altered and the photographs were exactly as he remembered from the autopsy.

DiEugenio Relies on Dubious Single-sourced Anecdotes

DiEugenio also uses single-source anecdotes which are dubious. He writes that someone asked Hoover if Oswald was the assassin and he replied, If I told you what I really know, it would be very dangerous to this country. Our whole political system could be disrupted. He wrote that his source was Destiny Betrayed, page 246; but the actual source is from Anthony Summers book Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover. Summers quoted Billy Bryars, a student who had a conversation with Hoover in the summer of 1964. But, did this really happen? Was Hoover perhaps thinking the Soviets were involved? Well, we dont really know.

DiEugenio tells a whopper of a story about Clay Shaw. An interior designer, Phil Dyer, met with Shaw in 1972 and Shaw admitted that he not only knew Oswald fairly well, but that Oswald was a double agent. When this supposedly happened, Shaw was in the middle of his damages lawsuit against Jim Garrison. A strange time for a statement that could be used against him. Perhaps, Shaw was pulling his leg. Or, perhaps this never happened. DiEugenio is suspicious of just about anything the government does or says, but in this case, he finds no need for any skepticism. Indeed, DiEugenio says Dyer certifies the defendants knowing perjury.

DiEugenio Misinterprets Documents Related to Clay Bertrand

Of course, the lynchpin of DiEugenios thesis is that Clay Shaw was the elusive Clay Bertrand. He takes issue with my assertion that Garrison was looking for Bertrand in late 1963. The search for Clay Bertrand in 1963 was extensive . The FBI, the Secret Service, and the New Orleans Police Department were actively looking for Bertrand. In the process, they contacted their confidential informants, the New Orleans Police Department, Tulane University, the Narcotics Squad, the Vice Squad and even the New Orleans Retailers Credit Bureau. Dean Andrews contacted Raymond Comstock who worked for Garrison  and he was then in touch with the FBI. Its certainly conceivable that Garrison did not know about the search for Clay Bertrand, but given his knowledge and interest in David Ferrie, and given that one of his own key investigators was involved in the search, I find it unlikely.

Warren Commission Document #75

And Raymond Comstock was no ordinary investigator in the D.A. office. He was part of the inner circle:

Garrison writes in his book about visiting Dean Andrews in the fall of 1966 to discuss Clay Bertrand. He seemed surprised about Andrews 1964 Warren Commission testimony. Perhaps, he was surprised because he knew that Clay Bertrand could not be found in 1963.

DiEugenio Relies on Unreliable Witnesses

DiEugenio brings up Ricardo Davis as a witness who told Harold Weisberg that the FBI showed him a picture of Clay Shaw right after the assassination. Unfortunately, Davis said nothing about it when he was interviewed by William Gurvich of Garrisons office.

We just have Weisbergs word of what Davis said. Is it possible that Davis was winding up Weisberg? Heres an excerpt from an FBI report from July 20, 1967.

DiEugenio Gets His Facts Wrong on Permindex/CMC

My chapter on Permindex/CMC debunked a number of longstanding conspiracy theories regarding the organization. I am fortunate to live in Ottawa and have been able to go through the papers of Louis Bloomfield, a lawyer from Montreal, who represented some of the shareholders of Permindex/CMC. Unfortunately, DiEugenio relies upon poor sources for his material on Permindex/CMC:

1. it was later booted out of the country due to a crescendo of negative newspaper articles.

Permindex was not booted out of the country, they left because they could not raise enough capital.

State Department Despatch, May 28, 1958.

There were also many negative newspaper articles  almost all from one socialist newspaper - about George Mantello, largely due to antisemitism and his history in saving Jews during WWII. I explain all this in my book.

2. The State Department intervened and did some investigatory work. They found out that the true principal funding was through J. Henry Schroders, a bank that was closely associated with Allen Dulles and the CIA.

This is also not true. Management of Permindex approached Schroder, but the bank provided no funding.

State Department Despatch, February 1, 1957

State Department Despatch, October 8, 1957

There are several hundred letters from Bloomfield to George Mantello in Italy amongst his papers. Many of them discuss financing as Permindex/CMC was always short of funds. There is not one mention of Schroders Bank in any letter.

3. Litwin makes reference to a 1959 CIA document saying that Nagy offered to place a CIA agent on the staff. He then says that since Shaw joined the board in 1958, the dates do not match. (Litwin, p. 293) First, placing someone on the staff is not the same as a member of the Board, and I have a hard time believing Litwin does not understand this. Secondly, we don't know from the document when Nagy first wrote the CIA about the employment offer.

A CIA memo dated November 6, 1959 reports the Nagy offer of placing a businessman on the Board and a CIA agent on the staff. Shaw was already on the Board. But, heres the important point that DiEugenio doesnt mention  that in a memo written on March 24, 1960, the CIA was not impressed with Permindex/CMC and that a major determinant of whether to place someone in the company should consider the fact that no contracts are claimed with any Soviet Bloc countries. It does not appear that the CIA took up the Nagy offer.

4. Secondly by going through the Louis Bloomfield archives in Canada, he found out that corporate lawyer Bloomfield served as a legal representative of the company and was soliciting funds for Permindex. What made that even more fascinating was, in doing so, he was in contact with the wealthiest families in the world at that time e.g., the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds.

Actually, if you go through the Bloomfield archive you will find only perfunctory letters to the Rothschilds and only one or two references to the Rockefellers. You can read Bloomfields letters to Baron Edmund de Rothschild here.

There are a few letters that mention David Rockefeller. I have posted two on my blog  and they were not for financing, but for collaboration.

5. And although Litwin writes that Bloomfield was not in the OSS, John Kowalski, who has been through the Bloomfield archives, says he did see letters between the legendary World War II Canadian/British intelligence officer William Stephenson and Bloomfield.

Here is a link to my blog post with the supposed letter to Stephenson.

DiEugenio Uses a Crackpot Book to Buttress his Permindex/CMC Claims

James DiEugenio relies upon Michele Mettas book, On The Trail of Clay Shaw: The Italian Undercover CIA and Mossad Station and the Assassination of JFK, to make the case that Permindex/CMC was involved in unsavory activities.

Metta's book is poorly translated from Italian and it is very hard to read. I challenge anybody to buy the book and see if you can finish it. Most of the book is just six degrees of separation  linkages without meaning and context. There is no hard information in the book on Permindex/CMC, and what it does have is inaccurate.

Here are some examples:

1. Bloomfield had tremendous power inside CMC, because he was the majority shareholder of this company. In other words, he had the power to do things that even all the other shareholders combined couldnt, especially the authority of replacing corporation officers or board of directors. (page 154)

This is completely untrue. Bloomfield was a corporate lawyer who represented some of the shareholders. As you go through his archives, it is clear that Permindex/CMC was run by George Mantello and his son Enrico. Almost 100% of Bloomfields letters to Permindex/CMC are to the Mantellos, and, in many of them, Bloomfield is requesting additional information on the operations of the company.

2. In fact, if we dig deep enough about the Carcano, the rifle that Oswald allegedly used, we come once again across elements that are fully in turn with a conspiracy involving the CMC. (page 68)

Metta tries to tie the Carcano rifle to Clay Shaw. Heres how he does it: The Mannlicher-Carcano rifle was part of surplus army stock from WWII. Adam Consolidated Industries bid on a stock of rifles in 1960. Adam used another company, Crescent Firearms, to sell the Carcanos. The factotum of Crescent was Joseph Saik, an anti-Communist who had worked with General Eisenhower in Europe. And one of Eisenhowers collaborators was General Charles Thrasher, whose aide-de-camp was Clay Shaw. Got it?

3. The point is that there are many undeniable clues showing H.L. Hunts involvement right in the middle of the international plot which led to the death of the 35th President of the USA. (page 105)

Once again, this is convoluted. Paolo Marella met with H.L. Hunt in 1966. Marella was a relative of Giuseppe Azzaretto, who was a member of the CMC [I am not sure what he means by a member] and thus the linkage.

4. Finally, there existed a dense and long correspondence between Bloomfield, founder of Permindex-CMC, and George H. Bush. This correspondence is kept in the previous mentioned documents submitted by Bloomfield himself, as explicitly expressed in his will, to the Library and Archives Canada. However, they are still inaccessible

The correspondence between Bloomfield and Bush is completely open to any researcher. And, guess what  the letters are completely mundane. Here is a link to the complete collection of Bloomfield-Bush correspondence.

5. This too cryptic conduct gave reason to the assassination scholars Sprague and Cutler to make an analysis and reach the conclusion that the umbrella was used to fire a dart with a paralyzing agent at JFK to restrain his muscles and make him an immobile target far easier to kill. An explanation fully endorsed by Fletcher Prouty, one of the most relevant Dallas ambush whistleblowers. (page 159)

The connection of the umbrella man to Clay Shaw requires some incredible gymnastics. This blog post examines all the documents from this utterly ridiculous section.

6. Gershon Peres was on the Board of Permindex from 1967-1970. Peres was the brother of Shimon Peres.

I dont know if this is true  but if it is, so what? I should add that some of the Bloomfield letters from 1968 talk about winding down Permindex. He was anxious to be rid of the operation.

An important part of my book detailed the contribution of George Mantello in saving up to 15,000 Jews during the Holocaust. He smuggled out papers regarding Auschwitz, and he got himself a job at the El Salvadorean Embassy, as first Secretary, and, along with the Consul, gave out citizenship papers wherever he could. Here is an example:

Many conspiracy books, including DiEugenios, smear Mantello by saying he was involved with the refugee protection racket. DiEugenio says that In what is probably the only positive contribution by Litwin in his entire book, he appears to clear Permindex member George Mandel of being in the Jewish refugee racket. Of course, DiEugenio could have done some research and determined the truth about Mantello. But then, DiEugenio goes on to say, The problem with this is that Metta shows that Mandel was working with the Israeli spy service for years and years.

Here is the excerpt from a CIA document, that I included in my book, that discusses this:

There was nothing nefarious about Mantello working with Israeli intelligence  after all, few people knew as much as he did about Jewish refugees in Europe. It appears he cooperated with Asher Ben-Natan who worked for the intelligence service of the Israeli foreign ministry. One CIA document, dated November 1951, notes that Ben Natan  is surrounding himself with former IIS personnel, and the list included Mantello. This would seem to confirm the paragraph above that Mantello, by then, was separated from their service. Natan was deeply involved with the Jewish Brichah, an organization dedicated to bringing Jewish survivors to Israel.

David Kranzler has written a terrific book on George Mantello:

DiEugenio strains the limits of credibility when he writes that perhaps the most important, at least to me, is that another CMC member was instrumental in the rise of Licio Gelli, the infamous leader of the utterly fascist Propaganda Due (P2) lodge. But further, CMC and P2 shared the same office space! Suffice it to say that with these kinds of revelations, Robert Willans, an expert on Operation Gladio, now entertains the possibility that P2 and Permindex may have been a part of that concealed stay behind NATO network. Which puts it above the level of the CIA.

Heres how this one works. The Italo-American Hotel Corporation (IAHC) was a subsidiary of Permindex  and its Board meetings were held in the office of the lawyer Roberto Ascarelli. Ascarelli was instrumental in the rise of Licio Gelli, the leader of Propaganda Due (P2) lodge. Therefore, Permindex is linked to P2. And, as DiEugenio tells us, it is above the level of the CIA. I should add that I have seen no references to IAHC in the Bloomfield files, or any references to Ascarelli or Gelli.

DiEugenio Downplays Antisemitism and Homophobia

DiEugenio claims that the other way Litwin tries to distract from all this is by picking up his second dog whistle. The first is homophobia; his second is anti-Semitism. Because Bloomfield was Jewish, he uses that to play the anti-Semite card. The only times I use the world anti-Semitic in my Bloomfield chapters is in relation to the harassment meted out to George Mantello in Switzerland during and after the war by Heinrich Rothmund, who was the antisemitic head of the Swiss Alien Police. Does DiEugenio dispute that Rothmund was antisemitic? Secondly, I used the term antisemitic to describe the Lyndon LaRouche organization. Again, does DiEugenio believe this organization was not antisemitic?

As for homophobia, DiEugenio writes that there is not one memo I have read that Garrison ever outlined such a homosexual-oriented plot. I never claimed there was such a memo. Garrison told Hugh Aynesworth, Jim Phelan, and Merriman Smith about a homosexual plot; and Richard Billings wrote in his diary that Garrison believed that Shaws sadism was at the heart of the case. DiEugenio doesnt comment on the March 17, 1967 memo [page 81 in my book] from John Volz to Jim Garrison that Shaws motive could very well have been rooted in his sadistice [sic], homosexual abnormality.

DiEugenio also dismisses my discussion of homophobia in Oliver Stones film JFK. He says Getting to Stones film itself, taking out his dog whistle, Litwin calls it a depiction of a homosexual conspiracy. (Litwin, p. 254) Which, again I think is a bizarre statement. Because, after watching the film several times, I don't see it as that. I included transcriptions of four scenes in my book which are completely ignored by DiEugenio. In addition, he doesnt comment on the protest, at the time, against Stones film by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), or the articles in the Advocate about the films homophobia.

Here is a blog post about the homophobia in Stone's JFK.

DiEugenio Uses Lame Excuses and Lies for Fletcher Prouty

Fletcher Prouty was interviewed by the ARRB on September 24, 1996. In a 14-page report, the ARRB concluded that many of Proutys allegations are not based on interpretations of actual events, but merely his feelings or general beliefs. In addition, given the opportunity to document these allegations or in some fashion uncover the truth, Prouty declined to do so, and often retreated or contradicted his published claims.

DiEugenios response is fairly lame  Prouty understood from the first couple of questions what the agenda was. So he decided to play along and give them what they wanted. The ARRB document discussed every Prouty allegation and found no evidence to back them up. I challenge everybody to go read not only the ARRB interview with Prouty, but also their 16-page memo on Army Intelligence in Dallas, which also refutes Proutys allegations.

Here is the link to the ARRB interview with Prouty .

Here is the link to the ARRB report on Army Intelligence .

As for army intelligence, DiEugenio just flat out contradicts the source he cites. He brings up Col. Bill McKinney and says that he called Prouty about it [a detachment for Dallas] since Fletcher would likely have arranged the air transportation for the unit. If you read the actual interview with William McKinney, you find out that at the time he was just a PFC who had just completed basic training and was attending intelligence training in Ft. Holabird, MD. It is important to note that McKinney had not yet reported to the 316th on November 22, 1963 and was not in Texas. Whats worse is that McKinney did talk to Prouty, as DiEugenio claims, except that the call was in 1977 or 1978 and it was about a story he was working regarding train track conditions [Prouty worked for Amtrak].

DiEugenio Wont Show His Readers the Important Underlying Documents

DiEugenio says that I have misunderstood Harold Weisberg - who said that Dean Andrews told him that Shaw was Bertrand. He claims I missed what he wrote in his unpublished book. Here is a blog post that uncovers exactly what Andrews said. Andrews never really came out and said that Shaw was Bertrand. He said, "If the Green Giant gets past that, he is home clear." I think that Weisberg read just a little too much into Andrews' words.

DiEugenio is Incapable of Real Research

DiEugenio cites an FBI memo from William Branigan to Bill Sullivan which he believes proves that Shaw was Bertrand. It is a new revelation for DiEugenio and he thinks I am unaware of this document. In fact, I have been discussing this document for months and believe it does nothing of the sort. My blog post has the actual document, as well as additional information unknown to DiEugenio .

DiEugenio Ignores Criticism of His Work, Part One

Now, while still on the topic of Shaw and Bertrand, it is interesting to note that DiEugenio has not responded to what I wrote in my Conclusion about some of his witnesses. So, let me repeat what is in my book.

Another DiEugenio witness is Leander Davy, whose interview with Garrisons staffers he found to be utterly fascinating. He worked at a restaurant and bar, The Court of the Two Sisters, and claimed that Oswald walked in one night and asked for Clay Bertrand and that Clay Shaw frequented the place. In 1977, Davy was deposed by the HSCA, and he recalled that about two weeks before the assassination, he had gone in on a Saturday morning to pick up his check. He was sent to the storeroom, which he said was actually a little apartment, and guess who was there? Lee Harvey Oswald was lying across the bed. David Ferrie was there, and yes, the three tramps were there as well.

He saw other people too. Jack Ruby once parked in a loading zone in front of the restaurant and slapped Davy in the face when he complained. Fred Crisman came around almost every week in 1963. Even Thomas Beckham was in the restaurant. Its not surprising that HSCA investigators thought there were serious questions about his credibility.

Then there is William Morris who signed an affidavit he knew Shaw as Clay Bertrand. Morris was interviewed in 1967 while an inmate at the Wynne State Prison Farm in Texas. He claimed that Shaw worked for General Electric and that he lived with his mother, which were both untrue. Morris was six feet tall but said he was taller than Bertrand, forgetting that Shaw was quite tall at 64. Further, he claimed that Bertrand brought had Jack Ruby to his apartment. Is there any wonder why he didnt testify at the Shaw trial?

DiEugenio claims that Clay Shaws maid Virginia Johnson said that a man who stayed with Shaw on several occasions told her that Shaw had used the name of Bertrand. However, Johnsons statement says something quite different: yes, she had heard the name Bertrand, but she wasnt quite sure of the details. Lots of people were talking to her; she had conversations at a fabric class about the case, but When asked if Mr. Formadol [sic] [she was clearly talking about Shaws friend William Formyduval] referred to Mr. Shaw as Bertrand, she stated no. Garrisons investigators went back several months later for another interview, and this time she said that she had never heard the name, Bertrand.

Then there is Mrs. Jessie Parker, who testified that she had seen Shaw at the Eastern Airlines VIP Room at Moisant Airport and that he had signed the guest book as Clay Bertrand. But DiEugenio neglects to tell his readers that Shaw was supposedly with a group of visitors from Venezuela who were accompanied by U.S. State Department employees and a military escort. The military man did not recognize a photo of Shaw as the man in the VIP room. One of the State Department employees did recognize Shaws picture but only because he knew Shaw professionally, and he said Shaw was not at the airport.

Yet another DiEugenio witness is Thomas Breitner, who said that, on Shaws trip to San Francisco, he visited the University of California and he introduced himself as Bertram. You can see Turners report belowyou have to love the last paragraph. Breitner could only have gotten the name Clem from the media since Perry Russo was the only person to use that name for Clay Bertrand.

Breitner called the Berkeley Police Department in April 1965 insisting that his wife had attempted to kill him by means of putting a poisonous powder in his soup. He made a series of phone calls in February 1968 to the FBI claiming that his life had been threatened by people who were manufacturing miniature darts treated with poison. He wrote another letter in 1969 about CIA harassment. Of course, Garrison did not dare put Breitner on the witness stand.

DiEugenio is silent on all of the above  and these are his witnesses! So, yes, in terms of numbers, as DiEugenio keeps reminding us  there are lots of witnesses he can find to identify Shaw as Bertrand. But once you look closely, they all fall apart.

DiEugenio Ignores Criticism of His Work, Part Two

DiEugenio makes a big deal out of an entry in Clay Shaws notebook: Although the entire book listed addresses and phone numbers, on one otherwise blank page were scrawled two abbreviations Oct. and Nov. and next to those, the word Dallas. This claim was taken, almost word-for-word, from Garrisons book. The actual page from Shaws notebook is shown below, and its not quite as advertised. Is there something nefarious that I am missing?

He ignored this criticism as well.

DiEugenio Sources Non-Existent Evidence

DiEugenio likes to source documents that are either missing or were never in existence. He says he did get some of the late Jim Roses documents about Crisman and Beckham, and criticizes me for not seeing these documents. Yet, he wont tell us what was in those documents, and, of course, he wont publish any.

He writes that Bob Tanenbaum saw documents from Helms office that directed Garrisons witnesses to be surveilled and harassed. Which they were. Unfortunately, Tanenbaum says those documents cannot be found.

DiEugenio then claims that Richard Case Nagell told Garrisons representative, William Martin, that he had an audiotape of four men in New Orleans talking about an assassination plot against Kennedy. He named one of them as Arcacha; he would only describe another of the men as Q. Which would strongly denote Quiroga. Again, this tape has never surfaced, and yet that is enough for DiEugenio to convict both Arcacha Smith and Carlos Quiroga.

James DiEugenio is seriously auditioning to become the Marjorie Taylor Greene of JFK conspiracy theorists  Garrison is his Q. The only difference is that DiEugenio lacks Greenes charm.

DiEugenio says that the HSCA learned that the Dallas Police had found diagrams of the sewer system under Dealey Plaza in Arcacha Smiths apartment after the assassination. This is not true. Francis Fruge, a Louisiana State police officer, heard that Captain Will Fritz of the Dallas Police might have been told thatbut he wasnt too sure.

DiEugenio also believes the story that David Ferrie had a map of Dealey Plaza in his desk at G. Wray Gills office.

Here is the complete story of DiEugenios allegations against Sergio Arcacha Smith.

DiEugenio Cites Few Primary Documents

My book On The Trail of Delusion includes many primary documents, and I have included many links to such documents so that readers can check them themselves. The raw material of Garrisons investigation makes it extremely hard to take his methodology, and thus his investigation seriously.

Only fifty Garrison documents are cited in Destiny Betrayed. I include thirty Garrison documents in my book, and I have 229 links to online memos and documents. My blog also now has hundreds of pages of Garrison memos and documents.

DiEugenio Cant Properly Source His Allegations

DiEugenio is proud that there are 1,800 footnotes in his book The JFK Assassination. But, a lot of his footnotes just refer back to his previous books or to Probe Magazine - and if you dont have those, then you have no idea what he is referring to. Heres some specifics  his chapter 7, Bugliosi vs. Garrison and Stone, has 91 footnotes:

27  DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed

11  Mellen, A Farewell to Justice

9  Davy, Let Justice Be Done

4  Probe Magazine

2  John Armstrong

2  Jim Garrison

1  Anthony Summers

And so, most of his footnotes source back to other conspiracy authors. One has no idea of any underlying documentation. Footnote 60 (about the Howard Hunts cover story) sources back to page 363 in Destiny Betrayed. If you go to Destiny Betrayed, youll find it refers to a memo that has not been found. Footnote 61 (was Dave Phillips in Dallas?) sources back to page 364 of Destiny Betrayed, which refers to another conspiracy book, The Man Who Knew Too Much by Dick Russell. And his source is dubious  an alleged conversation between Phillips, on his death bed, and his brother.

In his book, Destiny Betrayed, 208 footnotes source back to Probe Magazine. Since most issues of Probe Magazine are not online, one has no idea of the underlying source. And, how many libraries have the entire set of Probe Magazine?

DiEugenio also criticizes my footnoting writing that the proper method is to annotate the information to a box number and folder titles at that archives. Yet, he does not do that in his books. Here is an excerpt from Destiny Betrayed  NODA refers to the New Orleans District Attorneys Office.

DiEugenio Doesnt Tell His Readers What Archives He Has Visited

In researching my book, On The Trail of Delusion, I visited archives in Frederick (Maryland), Dallas, New Orleans, Montreal, Ottawa, Waco, Boston, and Washington D.C. I list all of these archives in the beginning of my notes and sources section.

James DiEugenio does not list any of the archives he has visited.

Here is what he says about my visits to various archives:

What most of these archives have in common is that they house the papers of Garrisons critics; for instance. Life reporter Dick Billings, Washington Post reporter George Lardner, and Shaws friend, author James Kirkwood.

First off, Richard Billings became a critic only after working with Garrison. His papers contain many primary Garrison documents and many memos he wrote about the investigation. Secondly, James Kirkwood transcribed many of his interviews with witnesses, jurors on the Shaw trial, and even Judge Haggerty - why on earth would I not go through those papers? What proper researcher would avoid these archives? Did DiEugenio not visit these archives?

Here is a Smorgasbord of DiEugenio Inanities

John Judge revealed that Penn Jones actually did crawl through that sewer system in the sixties. Perhaps we could use a source on that. Jerry Dealey has written on the Dallas Sewer System and does not believe this would be possible .

DiEugenio cant even dismiss Garrisons theory that Kerry Thornleys body was in the Oswald backyard photographs. Information supporting the allegation was supplied by none other than Jack Rubys acquaintance Breck Wall. This is absurd on its face  how on earth would Breck Wall know anything about this? To make this even worse, if you go to DiEugenios book, Destiny Betrayed, he writes that when he interviewed Wall in 1993 that Wall reneged on the claim.

DiEugenio claims that many of the lawyers for the other side were being paid by the CIA. This is simply not true. In an answer to interrogatory, Gordon Novel said that he understood his two early lawyers were clandestinely remunerated by a party of parties unknown to me. The fees were $1,633 each. Elmer Gertz, Novels lawyer for his libel action, clarified this further:

In fact, they might not have been paid. I have about fifty letters from Elmer Gertz to Gordon Novel demanding payment and threatening to end his lawsuit .

Lee Harvey Oswalds money order used to purchase his rifle was sent from Dallas to Chicago and it arrived one day after it was sent. DiEugenio believes this was impossible and to test the premise, sent a letter which then took five days to arrive. But, as Steve Roe has shown, back in the early sixties, the U.S. Postal system had Rocket Run boxes in major cities which promised next day delivery for air mail letters.

My book discusses an article in Confidential Magazine by Joel Palmer, an investigator for Garrison. DiEugenio disputes this saying Having gone through Garrisons extant files, I can find no evidence for that statement [that Palmer worked for Garrison]. Yet, I have eight memos to Jim Garrison from Joel Palmer, and one memo from Steve Jaffe asking Palmer to interview a witness. Perhaps DiEugenio should read Palmers statement about the Garrison investigation on my blog.

DiEugenio writes that Harry Connick is a major reason we have such an incomplete record of the Jim Garrison investigation into the JFK assassination. Actually, Jim Garrison could have released all of his investigative records before he left office. Tom Bethell wondered back in 1969, When is he [Garrison] going to publish his 26 volumes?

DiEugenio writes about Gordon Novel and his supposed links to the CIA: In that sworn deposition, he also admitted he communicated by telegram with Richard Helms. I have put that telegram on my blog  it was a joke because of the Garrison allegations that the CIA was paying his lawyers .

James DiEugenio writes that As per Thomas Beckham and his cohort Fred Crisman, no one will never know the truth about them. This allows DiEugenio to ignore Garrisons insistence that they were both important suspects in the assassination  so much so that he wrote several memos about them to the HSCA. DiEugenio is silent about Beckhams laughable deposition to the HSCA.

And, there are more disappearing files  James DiEugenio writes that Garrison said Bill Boxley took the Fred Crisman files. His source is my book  and indeed, Garrison wrote on a Boxley memo that the Crisman file departed with Boxley. But, lots of files were disappearing  check out the memo from Tom Bethell on other missing files that I posted on my blog. Garrison was extremely sloppy with file management. DiEugenio also claims that Garrisons Crisman records in the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC) have also disappeared. And, to top it all off, DiEugenio claims to have seen Jim Roses documents about Crisman back in 1996  but wont tell us what was in those documents. Since I havent seen them, he believes my analysis is incomplete.

What James DiEugenio Will Not Comment On

Whats really interesting in DiEugenios 34,000+ words is what he leaves out. For instance, he doesnt say a word about Garrisons kooky memos to the HSCA; theres nothing about Garrisons crazy theory of propinquity; Garrisons ridiculous attempts at cryptography are not worthy of comment; the three tramps are nowhere to be found in his review; Perry Russos lie detectors tests are absent; Garrisons crazy beliefs about a second Oswald arent worthy of a comment; not a sentence about Rev. Clyde Johnsons crazy story about Shaw and Ruby; and he has nary a word about Fletcher Proutys antisemitism.

Blog Links to Debunked DiEugenio Allegations

Dr. Jacob Hetys [sic] allegation that Greg Donnelly knew Clay Shaw as Clay Bertrand .

James DiEugenios allegations about a cleared attorneys panel.

James DiEugenio believes David Lewis is a credible witness.

Was Mary Brengel a credible witness?

Why does James DiEugenio believe David Logan?

Why does James DiEugenio accept Jessie Parkers testimony about the VIP Room ?

The true story of Aura Lee.

James DiEugenio believes Raymond Broshears.

Did Woodrow Hardy see Shaw, Ferrie and Oswald together?

Why does James DiEugenio find Leander Davys testimony to be utterly fascinating?

Perry Russos lie detector tests

Did the CIA pay the lawyers of Garrisons witnesses?

Why does James DiEugenio quote Valentine Ashworth?

Did Clay Shaws maid know he was Clay Bertrand?

Did Thomas Breitner meet Clay Bertrand?

David Ferries Strange Ice-Skating Trip

Did David Ferrie Know Lee Harvey Oswald?

Did Lee Harvey Oswald have David Ferries Library Card?

Did David Ferrie fly Clay Shaw to Canada and to Cuba?

Was Eladio del Valle David Ferries Paymaster?

Did the CIA Pay the Lawyers of Garrisons Targets? (Part Two)

Did David Ferrie Go Fishing with Clay Shaw?

Did Charles Krop Have a Recording Mentioning Shaw and Ferrie?

Did Herbert Wagner see Shaw and Ferrie Together?
It's being reported this morning that the U.K. will intervene on Nvidia Corp.s $40 billion deal for British semiconductor designer Arm Ltd. on national security grounds. In a press release, The UK's Digital Secretary Oliver Dowden stated, "We want to support our thriving U.K. tech industry and welcome foreign investment, but it is appropriate that we properly consider the national security implications of a transaction like this."

The U.K. antitrust watchdog is required to investigate the implications of the deal and will make a report by midnight on July 30, the department for Digital Culture Media and Sport said in a statement on Monday.

The deal for the countrys most valuable tech company is already under investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority, which will consider whether Arm might raise prices or hurt licensing services to Nvidias rivals. Arm is currently owned by Japans SoftBank Group Corp. and Nvidia has said it will keep Arms headquarters in the U.K.

Arms neutral position as a supplier at the heart of the chipmaking industry has already raised concerns about the deal, because chipmaker Nvidia directly competes with Arms customers such as Qualcomm Inc., Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

A spokesman for Nvidia responded by stating that, "We do not believe that this transaction poses any material national security issues. We will continue to work closely with the British authorities, as we have done since the announcement of this deal."

Apple's A-series and new M1 processors use 'Arm' technology. You could read the full Bloomberg report at BNN Bloomberg.

CNBC added that "The deal is also being probed by regulators in the U.S., China and the European Union and some question whether it will be allowed to go through. Five industry sources told CNBC back in February that they thought that the deal had a very high chance of being blocked by one or more of the regulators.
More people were diagnosed with Covid-19 during the past seven days than any other week since the start of the pandemic  topping 5.2 million globally  with the worst outbreaks accelerating in many countries that are ill-equipped to deal with them.

The worrisome trend, just days after the world surpassed 3 million deaths, comes as countries are rolling out vaccinations in an effort to get the virus under control. The data from Johns Hopkins University showing a 12 per cent increase in infections from a week earlier casts doubt on the hope that the end of the pandemic is in sight.

The weekly increase surpassed the previous high set in mid-December. While infection rates have largely slowed in the US and UK, countries in the developing world  India and Brazil in particular  are shouldering surging caseloads.

Fatalities have increased for the past month and were about 82,000 the week ended April 18, an average of almost 12,000 a day.
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Mexican authorities are recording an average of 275 new migrant children each day waiting to cross into the United States - or having been sent back from the northern side of the border, according to UNICEF

And the number of migrant children trying to reach the United States from Mexico has increased ninefold since the beginning of the year, UNICEF said on Monday.

The rise from 380 to 3,500 youngsters registered at reception centers at the southern side of the border has overwhelmed the facilities, the UN children's agency said.

At least 30 percent of children who are being housed at the centers in Mexico have traveled without their parents.

'I was heartbroken to see the suffering of so many young children, including babies, at the Mexican border with the U.S.,' said Jean Gough, regional director of UNICEF.

Gough, who completed a five-day visit to the border, said UNICEF is worried 'that living conditions for migrant children and mothers in Mexico could soon deteriorate further.'

Jean Gough, regional director of UNICEF in Latin America and the Caribbean Children, distributes UNICEF's Hygiene kits in Kiki Romero Municipal Gym in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The United Nations agency said that at least 3,500 migrant children have been registered at receptions centers since January

At least 30% of children who are being housed at reception centers in Mexico have traveled without their parents. An average of 275 additional migrant children find themselves in Mexico every day

An immigrant child walks towards a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint in La Joya, Texas, after crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico on April 14

UNICEF said human traffickers 'shamelessly exploit' the desperation of families looking to escape gang and domestic violence, poverty, the effects of climate change and unemployment brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

Migrants in the Mexican border towns of Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana have spoken of abuses they suffered on their journey such as extortion, sexual assault, kidnapping and human trafficking, UNCIEF added.

UNICEF said it also met women from Central America who have encountered problems such as getting meals, having the personal belongings taken, sleeping on the floor and using their own bodies by covering their children's to keep them warm at night.

Migrant children at a shelter in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, are provided with hygiene kits. Since the start of 2021, the number of migrant children reported in Mexico has increased sharply from 380 to nearly 3,500

A migrant shelter in El Chaparral, a neighborhood in the Mexico border city of Tijuana where the number of children has increased dramatically

A migrant child looks at a human smuggler after she and other asylum seekers were ferried on an inflatable raft from Mexico to the Texas border town of Roma via the Rio Grande last Thursday

An immigrant child glances back towards Mexico after crossing the border into the Texas border city of La Joya on April 14, 2021. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection stats released April 8 , there was a 70% increase in border encounters for March at the southwest border - a 20-year record high. Border Patrol officers detained 172,331 migrants in March after stopping 101,028 people in February.

'Central American families aren't migrating  they are fleeing. These children and their parents who are now in Mexico escaped gang criminality, domestic violence, poverty, devastating hurricanes, and job loss due to the pandemic in their countries of origin. So why would they return? Often, there is nothing they could go back to,' Gough said.

'Traffickers are shamelessly taking advantage of their hopelessness and putting children's lives at risk during this perilous journey. The best way to give migrant families a good reason to stay in their communities is to invest in their children's future at the local level. The real child crisis is not at the U.S. border; it's in the poorest communities of northern Central America and Mexico.'



UNICEF called for additional reception centers are on the border and an improvement in social conditions in Central America and poor regions of Mexico to reduce migration.

Meanwhile, data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows that apprehensions of migrants at the United States' southwestern border increased in the last nine months of former President Donald Trump's term in office and continued to rise after President Joe Biden succeeded him in January.

CBP stats released April 8 showed a 70 percent increase in border encounters for March at the southwest border - a 20-year record high.

Border Patrol officers detained 172,331 migrants in March after stopping 101,028 people in February.

The agency also reported 18,663 unaccompanied children were taken into custody in March. Border officers encountered 9,271 migrant minors who unlawfully entered the United States from Mexico in February.
600,000 in funding is being made available to Rethink Ireland which will help children and young people to improve their use of technology through Rethink Irelands Children and Youth Digital Solutions Fund.

The Fund was officially launched on April 9 by the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Roderic OGorman TD.

Rethink Ireland will partner with the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth on the one-year fund which is being delivered from April 2021  March 2022.

The objective of the Fund is to support services who work with children and young people to enhance their efficiency, programme reach, collaboration and their data collection through the use of technology.

It is being funded under the What Works Initiative, funded through Dormant Accounts, an initiative of the DCEDIY to maximise the impact of prevention and early intervention to improve outcomes for children and young people.

The Digital Solutions Fund will support up to eight projects/collaborations. Each Awardee will receive a cash grant (to a maximum of 50,000), mentoring support and a comprehensive six-month Accelerator programme. The Accelerator Programme focuses on building Awardees' capacity and equipping them to scale so they can reach more people in need of their work.

The Fund is open to organisations that have a not-for-profit legal form, e.g., a school, charity, social enterprise, voluntary organisation, or Higher Education Institution. It will also be open to applications from Children and Young Peoples Services Committees and Child and Family Support Networks, as key coordinating structures involving statutory and non-statutory agencies, and non-government organisations, in service delivery to children, young people and their families.

The successful applicant can be:

A collaborative project with two or more organisations working together using technology to become more efficient in their communication and delivery of services to children and young people.

A collaborative project with two or more organisations making innovative content for children/youth available and accessible online.

A project that seeks to enhance the use of data and evidence in their service planning through digital solutions.

An innovative IT/Digital project which aims to improve the digital literacy of children, young people and/or their parents in order to address the digital divide.



Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Roderic OGorman TD, said: This funding will make an important difference to the lives of children, young people and their families. It will provide practical support to services focused on providing high-quality prevention and early intervention services for children, young people and their families, while encouraging the sharing of learning and collaboration. We know that by intervening early in a childs life, or early in the onset of difficulties, we can improve lives and address the impact of disadvantage.

CEO of Rethink Ireland, Deirdre Mortell, said: The Covid-19 pandemic has made our society become even more reliant on technology to learn, work and socialise. Technology has the ability to connect us to community, to learning and to new ideas. Unfortunately, the pandemic has also exposed the digital divide and the challenges some young people face in terms of accessing and using technology. Therefore, it is timely that today Rethink Ireland is launching the Digital Solutions Fund.

I would strongly encourage services which help children and young people to improve their use of technology to apply to the Digital Solutions Fund. Rethink Ireland would be delighted to work with you to support you strengthen your impact and help bridge the digital divide.

The Fund will be open for applications from today until Monday, May 17 at noon. Further details are available on https://rethinkireland.ie/
Matt Damon is currently in Australia to film scenes for the next Marvel blockbuster Thor: Love and Thunder alongside co-star Chris Hemsworth.

And on Sunday night, the A-list pals touched down in Sydney on a private jet after spending the weekend in Byron Bay with Chris' wife Elsa Pataky and their brood.

The Hollywood heartthrobs, who were also joined by director Taika Waititi and British songstress Rita Ora, cut casual figures as they exited the aircraft and checked in at their Sydney accommodation.

Down Under: Matt Damon (pictured) and his A-list pal Chris Hemsworth touched down in Sydney on a private jet on Sunday, after spending the weekend in Byron Bay

Matt, 50, donned a grey long-sleeved top, rolled up at the elbows, teamed with dark trousers and sneakers.

He slung a black backpack over one shoulder, and attempted to go incognito by wearing a cap.

The Good Will Hunting star appeared relaxed and at ease as he checked into a luxury Sydney hotel.

Casual: Matt, 50, donned a grey long-sleeved top, rolled up at the elbows, teamed with dark trousers and sneakers

Attempting to go under the radar: The Good Will Hunting star attempted to go incognito by wearing a cap

High life: Matt was seen earlier on in the night touching down in Sydney via a private jet (pictured)

Stepping out: Rita Ora joined the all-star group as they stepped out

Pals: Chris (pictured), 37, exited the aircraft in a casual ensemble that showed off his famously buff physique

Chris, 37, was pictured exiting the private jet in a casual ensemble that showed off his famously buff physique.

The Home and Away alum wore a white long-sleeved top, sweatpants and sneakers.

Chris, his actress wife Elsa Pataky, 44, and their brood made their way to a vehicle on the tarmac.

Low-key: The Home and Away alum wore a white long-sleeved top, sweatpants and sneakers

Fame: Chris rose to fame with a starring role on Australian soap Home and Away

Muscle man: Chris carried his own luggage as he made his way to a vehicle on the tarmac

Details: The father-of-three accessorised his casual look with a chain necklace

Quick getaway: Chris made his way to the waiting vehicle with his brood

Spanish actress and model Elsa cut a low-key figure as she exited the jet.

The blonde beauty donned a long-sleeved top, sweatpants, sneakers and a trendy fedora cap.

Rita, 30, who is currently Down Under to film The Voice and has been making friends with a host of Ozzie stars, was also pictured exiting the jet, covering up her toned figure in a baggy jumper and sweatpants.

Matt has been in Australia since the start of the year to film scenes for Thor: Love and Thunder.

Latest gig: Matt has been in Australia since the start of the year to film scenes for Thor: Love and Thunder

Making his return: He is reprising his comedic cameo from the 2017 Thor installment, Thor: Ragnarok. Pictured exiting the aircraft in front of Matt is British songstress Rita Ora, 30

Casual attire: Rita donned a baggy grey jumper and vibrant green sweatpants with sneakers

Effortless: She kept light on her feet with trendy white sneakers, and allowed her blonde locks to flow freely

He is reprising his comedic cameo from the 2017 Thor installment, Thor: Ragnarok.

The latest installment of Thor is being filmed in Australia after receiving a $24.1million location incentive grant from the Federal Government.

Directed by Taika Waititi, the film is expected to bring more than $178million to the local economy, create 2,500 jobs and enlist services from about 1,650 businesses.

Thor: Love and Thunder is due for cinematic release in May 2022.

Spanish beauty: Chris' wife Elsa Pataky (pictured), 44, who is a Spanish actress and model, cut a low-key figure as she exited the jet

Effortless: The blonde beauty donned a long-sleeved top, sweatpants, sneakers and a trendy fedora cap

Incredible: Directed by Taika Waititi, the film is expected to bring more than $178million to the local economy, create 2,500 jobs and enlist services from about 1,650 businesses
New Delhi/London, April 19 : British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has cancelled his trip to New Delhi which was scheduled for next week, in view of the severity of the second wave of the Coronavirus pandemic in India.

An official statement of the ministry of external affairs said, "In view of the prevailing Covid situation, it has been decided by mutual agreement that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom will not visit India next week." However, the two sides will be holding a virtual meeting in the coming days to launch plans for a transformed India-U.K. relationship. "Both leaders attach the highest importance to taking the India-U.K. partnership to its fullest potential and propose to remain in close touch in this regard and look forward to an in-person meeting later in the year," the ministry said.

The UK is eyeing a new bilateral trade deal with India, following its exit from the European Union. India is the second-largest investor in the UK, after the US. Post-Brexit, the UK is focused on the Indo-Pacific region for its economy and security.

Johnson's trip to India was initially scheduled to take place in January but was cancelled when the UK entered a national lockdown, the third of its kind since the onset of the pandemic last year.

-- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed
VANCOUVER - Lawyers for Meng Wanzhou asked a B.C. Supreme Court judge Monday to delay the final leg of hearings in the Huawei executive's extradition case one week before it is set to begin.

Chief Financial Officer of Huawei, Meng Wanzhou leaves her home in Vancouver, Thursday, March 25, 2021 to go to B.C. Supreme Court. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

VANCOUVER - Lawyers for Meng Wanzhou asked a B.C. Supreme Court judge Monday to delay the final leg of hearings in the Huawei executive's extradition case one week before it is set to begin.

Richard Peck said the legal team needs time to review new evidence obtained through a court order in Hong Kong that could support its argument that the United States misled Canadian officials in describing the allegations against Meng.

"What we request is a reasonable time in which to assess the documents and determine their likely admissibility," he said.

In response, a lawyer for Canada's attorney general argued there's no basis to believe the documents will be relevant and accused Meng's team of trying to turn the extradition hearing into a trial.

After 2 1/2 years of legal proceedings, "and mere days from reaching the finish line, the applicant asks this court to take a several month pause. Her request should be denied," the Crown said in a written response.

Meng was arrested at Vancouver's airport in 2018 at the request of the U.S. to face fraud charges that both she and Huawei deny.

She is accused of lying to HSBC about Huawei's control of subsidiary Skycom during a presentation in 2013, putting the bank at risk of violating U.S. sanctions against Iran.

The court has heard that Huawei sold Skycom to Canicula Holdings, another company that Huawei controlled financially, in 2007.

While Meng's Canadian lawyers have not yet seen most of the documents from HSBC and their contents are unclear, Peck said it's believed they will shed light on what the bank knew about the relationship between the companies and how much it relied on Meng's 2013 presentation.

"We say these materials are relevant because they are referenced from the very bank at the very time including the very parties involved in this matter," Peck said.

Meng's team also said in court documents that Canada's attorney general should launch an investigation into whether Meng was arrested based on inaccurate information.

Peck proposed that the final three weeks of the hearing, set to begin April 26, be adjourned until Aug. 3 to allow time for such a probe, as well as for COVID-19 cases to subside.

But Robert Frater, a lawyer for Canada's attorney general, said there's no evidence to believe the new documents are relevant to the extradition case.

Meng's team relies entirely on two letters from Huawei's U.S. lawyers in which allegations are made, but support for the allegations is redacted and those lawyers are "aligned" with Meng, he said.

He added that the U.S. has "vigorously" denied the allegations, so Meng's team is essentially asking the B.C. Supreme Court to weigh one side against the other, a job better suited for the U.S. trial.

Frater also accused Meng's team of "jurisdiction shopping" for a court that would approve the document disclosure.

Meng's lawyers previously failed in an effort to access the same documents through a court in the United Kingdom.

"Having received the answer 'no' from the U.K. court, then my friends went to Hong Kong and inexplicably, HSBC, which was the same litigant that appeared in the court in the U.K., completely reversed its position after having won on every single point in the U.K. court," Frater said.

"HSBC for reasons known only to itself turned around and decided to agree to an order."

Frater called the adjournment application an "11th hour" request, adding the Hong Kong court provided no timeline for when the documents might be shared with Meng's team.

There's no credible basis for an independent investigation and Canada has no duty to investigate the evidence underlying extradition requests made by its treaty partners, he said.

The broad public interest in Meng's extradition case only adds to the urgency of wrapping it up, he said.

"Extraditions hearings are supposed to be expeditious," Frater said.

Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes reserved her decision until Wednesday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 19, 2021.
In light of the traffic stop of U.S. Army Lt. Caron Nazario in Virginia, it is necessary to reiterate why many of us are afraid of  and unsupportive of  the police as currently organized. My wife and I are both white and over 70 years old, but both of us have had offensive experiences with the police as mature adults. In the Virginia episode, body camera video shows a uniformed Army officer with his hands raised and extended out the window of his stopped vehicle (as per the officers commands) being told by the two police officers that he should be afraid of the police and that he was fixin to ride the lightning " (crude slang for death by electrocution). While neither of our experiences was quite this blatantly violent or racist, each had some elements of both. One of us was told that because we were white, we didnt look like a criminal. Thus, as painful as it is to say, we should all be afraid of the police until the entire structure is changed.

Jim Keyser, Portland
A new documentary exposes the harrowing story of the six Chinese mariners who survived Titanic but were vilified in the press and deported from the US just days after the sinking.

Filmmakers Arthur Jones and Steven Schwankert have made The Six, which debuted in Chinese cinemas this week, to tell the little-known story of eight third-class Chinese passengers on the ship: Ah Lam, Fang Lang, Len Lam, Cheong Foo, Chang Chip, Ling Hee, Lee Bing and Lee Ling.

After the sinking, two of the men died, five escaped the ship on lifeboats, and a sixth, Fang Lang, survived after he was found clinging to a wooden plank in the middle of the ocean.

But because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, just one day after arriving in New York after the tragedy, the six surviving men were vilified by the press and forced to travel straight for the Caribbean to work on fruit ships.

They were then sent to the UK because there was a shortage of sailors, with many enlisted in the army during World War One.

The true story of Fang's miraculous survival was recreated by James Cameron for his 1998 blockbuster Titanic, but the scene was never included in the final cut.

Instead, Cameron used the story as inspiration for his final scenes between Jack and Rose as they desperately clung to a floating piece of wood to survive.

When the research team of The Six tracked down descendants of the survivors, some had no idea their relatives had been aboard the ship because they had never spoken about the disaster.

New documentary The Six tells the previously untold stories of six Chinese survivors of the Titanic disaster, including (from left) Ling Hee, Fang Lang, Lee Bing and Ah Lam

James Cameron used the story of Fang as inspiration for the final scene of the film which saw Rose and Jack clinging to a wooden door in the ocean

Filmmakers Arthur Jones and Steven Schwankert are hoping to correct history with new documentary The Six, a film about the Chinese men who survived the sinking of Titanic (pictured Titanic leaves berth 43 at Dock Gate 4, the entrance to the Eastern Dock in Southampton, to begin its fateful voyage across the Atlantic Ocean; a journey from which it never returned)

About 1,500 people were killed when the RMS Titanic - nicknamed 'The Unsinkable Ship' - struck an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean on April 14, 1912.

Only around 700 people survived, most in lifeboats, while a few managed to cling to the wreckage and wait for help to arrive in freezing waters.

But for years very little was known about the eight Chinese men who boarded the Titanic, and the six of them who survived.

Eight Chinese men boarded the Titanic, their names on a single ticket (pictured): Ah Lam, Fang Lang, Len Lam, Cheong Foo, Chang Chip, Ling Hee, Lee Bing and Lee Ling

Of the six survivors, five made it onto lifeboats and one man was rescued while clinging to a wooden plank out at sea

The filmmakers determined that it was likely all eight men, who were professional sailors working in Britain, knew each other before boarding the Titanic (pictured Fang Lang)

Who were the Chinese survivors of Titanic? Lee Bing, 32, was from Taishan in Guangdong, he was married to Too Bing. He was travelling to New York City with eight colleagues from the Donald Line's Anetta. After the sinking of Titanic, he immigrated to Canada. Chang (or Chong) Chip, 32, was unmarried. After the diaster, he lived in London but became increasingly unwell and eventually passed away from pneumonia in 1914. He was buried in an unmarked grave in a cemetery in London. Choong Foo, was unmarried. Ling Hee, 24, was unmarried. It is understood Ling Hee was later forced to leave England and travelled to Calcutta, India. Ah Lam, 37, was born in Canton, China. He was unmarried. After the rescue, Ah (Ali) Lam was possibly later deported to Hong Kong. Fang Lang is believed to have been born in China in 1894. He may have come from Hong Kong. He settled in America, but never talked about the Titanic to his family. He is believed to have died in 1985 aged 90. Advertisement

Their names can still be found on a single ticket for third-class passengers: Ah Lam, Fang Lang, Len Lam, Cheong Foo, Chang Chip, Ling Hee, Lee Bing and Lee Ling.

Jones and Schwankert determined that it was likely all eight men, who were professional sailors working in Britain, knew each other before boarding the Titanic.

They discovered that the men were on the Titanic en route to Cuba, scheduled to board a freighter boat known as The Annetta in New York.

'The reason they were traveling on Titanic in the first place is for work,' Schwankert told The Washington Post.

'They were professional mariners, and they were being seconded from their company in the UK to go and work on the companies in North America.'

The Lams were Cantonese while the others were British subjects from Taishan in Guangdong.

Lee Bing was married, but all the other men were single.

They were bunked up in the steerage, the lowest class of the cabins.

Only 20 per cent of non-British men in the steerage survived the sinking.

It is believed in part the men survived because they did not understand instructions to 'stay in their rooms' and were therefore able to escape onto life boats.

Five of the eight men escaped the ship on lifeboats, and four of them were in 'Collapsible C'.

Collapsible C was a backup escape vessel and one of the last lifeboats to leave the ship. It was not full when it was found by rescuers.

Also inside the lifeboat was Joseph Bruce Ismay, the chairman of the company which owned the Titanic, as well as George T Rowe, the ship's quartermaster.

Both men later testified to the presence of the four Chinese men in their lifeboat.

The sixth surviving man, Fang, was found in the sea by a lifeboat which had returned to the wreckage to search for survivors.

Unlike other Titanic survivors who received praise in the press, the six men were vilified and falsely accused of saving their own lives ahead of women and children by hiding in lifeboats.

Fang passed away in 1985 at the age of 90, and according to his son Tom, who was born in the US, his father 'never spoke' about the disaster

What was the Chinese Exclusion act? The Chinese Exclusion Act was a US federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers. Building on the earlier Page Act of 1875 which banned Chinese women, the Chinese Exclusion Act was the first, and remains the only law to have been implemented, to prevent all members of a specific ethnic or national group from immigrating to the United States. The act was initially intended to last for 10 years, but was renewed and strengthened in 1892 with the Geary Act and made permanent in 1902. These laws attempted to stop all Chinese immigration into the United States for ten years, with exceptions for diplomats, teachers, students, merchants, and travelers. Exclusion was repealed by the Magnuson Act on December 17, 1943, which allowed 105 Chinese to enter per year. Chinese immigration later increased with the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which abolished direct racial barriers, and later by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which abolished the National Origins Formula. Advertisement

At the time, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported the Chinese survivors were 'creatures' who had 'sprung' into lifeboats 'at the first sign of danger' and hidden themselves away.

The filmmakers discovered this theory would have been impossible for the Chinese men to have performed, with Arthur telling the BBC the immigrants were 'scapegoated' in the media.

Meanwhile other coverage at the time said the men had dressed as women in order to get priority to be rescued.

Titanic historian Tim Maltin confirmed there is no evidence that the Chinese survivors were stowaways or disguised themselves as women.

Tim argues the men tried to help others, with Fang Lang rowing a lifeboat to ferry others to safety.

According to one newspaper, the two who died, Len Lam and Ling Lee, hid beneath the slats in the lifeboat and were 'crushed to death by the weight of the other passengers sitting on top of them'.

Jones and Schwankert then discovered that, despite surviving the horrific experience, none of the six men were permitted to enter the United States.

Just after arriving in the US, the men were forced to travel to the Caribbean to work on fruit ships.

The men's names are seen here listed in a newspaper report of who survived the wreckage however they were vilified by the press

The Titanic and fellow liner the Olympic under construction at the Harland and Wolf shipyard in Belfast. The Olympic was launched first, and after it was involved in a collision with HMS Hawke they had to pull resources from Titanic, which fatefully delayed her maiden voyage from 20 March to 10 April

After around two-and-a-half hours, the vessel broke into two sections and sank, each settling to the seafloor around a third of a mile apart. Around 1,500 people were believed lost in the tragedy, including around 815 of the liner's passengers

Titanic filmmaker James Cameron was so inspired by the stories of the Chinese mariners that he based the ending to his blockbuster on Fang's story (pictured, Cameron, who is an executive producer on the new documentary)

This was due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, a law passed in 1882 by President Chester A Arthur that forbid all Chinese laborers from immigrating to the country.

Unlike other survivors, the Chinese men were not allowed to bypass screening at Ellis Island and they received no medical aid.

'They were not treated humanely,' Arthur said. 'We know they lost close friends on board. And yet they weren't given the option of staying.'

'Not only did they have to leave in 24 hours, they were held overnight in custody. They were detained.'

Five of the eight men escaped the ship on lifeboats, and four of them were in 'Collapsible C', a backup escape vessel (depicted in The Six)

Cameron initially shot a scene for Titanic showing a lifeboat rescuing a Chinese man clinging to a piece of wood in the ocean - a reenactment of one of the survivors Fang Lang's rescue. However it ended up being deleted from the final edit

The Titanic now lies on the seafloor around 350 nautical miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. The liner made two short stops en route to her planned Atlantic crossing  one at the French port of Cherbourg, the other at Cork Harbour, Ireland, where smaller vessels ferried passengers on and off board

THE TITANIC DISASTER TIMELINE Ned Parfett, the 'Titanic paperboy', outside of the White Star Line offices in London April 10, 1912 (12:00): The Titanic sets sail from Southampton to New York, calling at Cherbourg and Cork en route. April 14 (09:0022.30, ship's time): Marconi Company radio officers on the Titanic received a total of six warnings of ice in the vicinity, not all of which were passed on to the crew. April 14 (23:39): Lookout Frederick Fleet, in the crow's nest, spots an iceberg dead ahead of the ship. Turning to port, the vessel managed to avoid a direct collision, but suffered a 'glancing blow' instead. April 15 (00:05): Captain Edward Smith orders abandon ship and has radio operators issue distress signals. April 15 (02:05): The Titanic's final lifeboat is launched. Ten minutes later, the liner's angle in the water increased rapidly, ultimately reaching over 30 degrees, as water reached previously unflooded parts of the ship through deck hatches. April 15 (02:20): The Titanic finally disappeared beneath the waves, some two hours and forty minutes after striking the iceberg. Advertisement

Even stranger, after the men boarded the Annetta, they seemed to completely vanish from history.

'It really started to bother me. Like, why don't we know?' Schwankert said.

Jones and Schwankert spent more than two years trying to find the answer, traveling everywhere from the US to the UK, Cuba to China, and the Caribbean as well.

The filmmakers launched a website, whoarethesix.com, to try and find tips regarding the survivors for the documentary.

Using the manuscript of names, they were able to track down the historical records for the men, using Titanic internet forums to assist in their search.

The filmmaker discovered the men were sent to the UK, where there was a shortage of sailors after World War One.

Chang Chip became increasingly unwell and eventually passed away from pneumonia in 1914. He was buried in an unmarked grave in a cemetery in London.

The other five worked together in Britain until 1920, with some marrying British women and having children.

However, an anti-immigrant policy forced them to depart the country without notice, leaving their loved ones behind.

The filmmakers discovered Fang Lang's American-Chinese son Tom Fong on an internet forum.

Tom was searching for answers because he believed his father was one of those Chinese passengers.

They learned Fang had become a citizen of the US.

Fang passed away in 1985 at the age of 90, and according to Tom, he 'never spoke' about the disaster.

He thinks his father may have kept his Titanic survival as a secret from him because of a mix of trauma and stigma.

In a trailer for the film, he explained: 'I asked my mother and she said she'd never heard about it, she'd never heard about my father being on this boat and it sinking or anything.'

Schwankert told Straits Times: 'You have to go looking for people who are looking for you.

The filmmakers discovered Fang Lang's American-Chinese son Tom Fong on an internet forum, where he was searching for answers after suspecting his father was on board the ship

Tom, who continues to live in the US with his family, thinks his father may have kept his Titanic survival as a secret from him because of a mix of trauma and stigma

'Thanks to finding Tom Fong, we were able to start putting together one of the stories and that also helped us understand the rest of it.'

When the research team of The Six tracked down descendants of the survivors, many of them were still reluctant to share their families' stories due to the stigma experienced by their family members a century ago.

They learned Ah Lam was deported to Hong Kong, Ling Hee boarded a steamboat heading for India while Lee Bing immigrated to Canada.

The filmmakers are working with London-based distributor TVF International, who have launched an international version of the film last week to broadcasters at the virtual MIPTV summit, usually held in Cannes, and already have several interested UK and USA broadcasters.
The Biden administration has decided not to reduce vaccine distribution to states even where vaccine 'hesitancy' is at its highest  maintaining a per capita formula even as state-by-state differences in vaccination rates become more pronounced.

Biden's coronavirus team is sticking by the formula now that more than half of U.S. adults have received their first shot  but with the nation still far short of what experts say is needed to bring down infection rates.

'We are going to make sure everybody, no matter where you are in the country, has ample opportunity to get vaccinated,' said coronavirus advisor Andy Slavitt at a briefing Monday. 'We are not going to quote unquote punish less ready areas,' he underlined. 'We're going to actually work harder with them to make sure that people have the information they need.'

Coronavirus advisor Dr. Andy Slavitt says the administration will not 'punish' states that are slower in getting their populations vaccinated

The commitment comes as the administration said it will allocate $150 million to 'get vaccines to 'underserved communities and vulnerable populations'  amid evidence of uneven vaccination rates across regions and states, and even within communities.

Those funds will allow community-based health providers 'to strengthen their efforts to get shots in arms and care for patients with Covid-19,' said Slavitt.

The state-by-state disparities have emerged even as the administration announced it had another 28 million vaccine doses were shipped this week  enough to keep the daily pace of 3 million shots per day on pace.

Among those states with the lowest share who is fully vaccinated are Alabama (19%), Georgia (20%), Utah (20%), Tennessee (21%), and Mississippi (21%). In Maine and New Mexico, 33 per cent are already fully vaccinated.

A New York Times examination of county-by-county vaccinations found those vaccination rates were lower in those that backed former President Donald Trump over Joe Biden.

There are significant state-by-state differences in vaccination rates. Shipments will continue to go out on a per capita basis

The administration is pushing out funds to community health centers to try to boost vaccination rates

'I think our philosophy is just because a state may be behind in their demand for vaccines or it may take a little more work to get vaccines into arms in some places relative to others,' said Slavitt

Slavitt cited the 28 million figure and and said, 'We do believe that there is adequate vaccine supply for everybody to get vaccinated and get an appointment.

'I think our philosophy is just because a state may be behind in their demand for vaccines or it may take a little more work to get vaccines into arms in some places relative to others. It does not mean that we think we should be giving up on those locations. Does that mean that we think they should lose those doses, and they should be automatically transferred somewhere else? It just simply means that we and the state and county officials and local doctors need to work harder to listen to the local communities,' he said.

Both Slavitt and infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci have been pushing a soft sell. 'And as Dr. Fauci, I think so well said, allow people to get the information that they need to make the decision about whether to get vaccinated or not,' said Slavitt.

Said Centers for Disease Control head Dr. Rochelle Walensky, 'we have seen that the administration of vaccine across the country is not uniform. Even in our preliminary analysis, we know that it hasnt been uniform and thats exactly why we have to engage in the efforts that was just discussed.'

Walensky reported that the 7-day average of U.S. infections has reached 67,000 per day, up from 53,000 per day a month ago when she warned it was going in the wrong direction.

Alejandro Garcia, 16, receives his first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in West New York, N.J., Monday, April 19, 2021. New Jersey is opening up COVID-19 vaccine eligibility to those 16 or older beginning today; only the Pfizer vaccine is authorized for teenagers younger than 18

Everyone in United States aged 16 years and above is now eligible for COVID-19 vaccination, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Monday.

'Folks, I have good news. Everybody is eligible, as of today, to get the vaccine. We have enough of it, you need to be protected, and you need, in turn, to protect your neighbors and your family,' said President Joe Biden in a video posted to Twitter, announcing the eligibility expansion.

'So please, get the vaccine.'

The majority of U.S. states have already expanded their COVID-19 vaccine rollouts to people from this age group, and it's up to states to decide who becomes eligible when. The CDC's guidance is a formality, endorsing the use of the shots in people between 16 and 18.

Alaska was the first state to lower statewide eligibility to age 16 and was followed by states including Georgia, Texas and California. Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont barely hit Biden's deadline, expanding access on Monday.

More than half of U.S. adults have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, according to the CDC, but people younger than 18 make up less than one percent of those who have had a first dose, and 0.3 percent of Americans who are fully vaccinated.

It comes as COVID-19 rates remain stubbornly high in the U.S., despite the ongoing push to expand vaccination. Meanwhile, hospitalizations remain stable at about 5,459 a day, an increase of less than one percent compared to last week.

The average number of daily deaths remains stable at 737, including 313 fatalities recorded on Sunday.

New daily COVID-19 cases finally fell below 70,000 over the weekend, but still hovers near that figure, which experts say is too high.

On Sunday, the U.S. recorded 42,018 new cases of COVID-19, driving the seven-day rolling average down to 68,664. That's slightly lower than a week prior, when the average number of new cases was 70,196.

President Biden announced that all states had expanded vaccine eligibility to those 16 and older as of Monday, meeting his deadline and coinciding with updated CDC guidance, in a short video clip posted to Twitter

Less than one percent (0.8) of people who have had a first dose of vaccine are younger than 18. People between 18 and 29 represent about 11.5% of those who have had one dose. More than a quarter of people who got their first dose are between 50 and 64 (left). People between 50 and 64 and aged 65 to 74 each make up about a quarter of all fully vaccinated Americans. Only 0.3% of fully vaccinated people are under 18 (right)

The Biden administration is also expected to allocate additional $150 million in funding to community health centers across the country in an effort to get shots to underserved communities, an official told CNN.

Community health centers are often the primary medical resource for people in low-income communities and do not require insurance to provide care. It will take nearly a month for the funding to actually get into the hands of these centers, however, because they will have to apply for the funds and be approved by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

People in these communities, especially people of color, face higher risks of contracting COVID-19, being hospitalized for the infection and dying of coronavirus. That makes them high priority people to get vaccinated, yet the vast majority of shots have gone to white Americans and people living in wealthier neighborhoods.

As the vaccination campaign ramps up, case rates are still stubbornly high.

'Seventy thousands cases a day is not acceptable,' Dr Barry Bloom, former dean of the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health told The New York Times.

'We have to get that down.'

Over the past week, new cases were still rising in at least 20 U.S. states., according to tracking from Johns Hopkins University.

After a remarkable run of low Covid figures despite its early reopening, Florida is now seeing more new cases a day than any other state in the aftermath of Spring Break.

The Sunshine State recorded 6,834 new COVID-19 cases and 35 new fatalities on Sunday.

Maine is seeing the steepest increase, however, with its seven-day rolling average of new cases rising to 478 on Sunday, compared to 423 average new cases a week prior.

In Delaware, 411 new cases are now being reported a day, compared to 359 the previous Sunday.

After a harrowing surge in new COVID-19 cases that began in mid-February, Michigan is finally seeing its new daily cases decline.

The state's seven-day rolling average of new infections is now down to 5,779, compared to its latest peak of 7,873 on April 10.

Hope is likely on the horizon for all four states, however.

Each has now vaccinated more than 60,001 per every 100,000 residents, according to the CDC's tracking.

Hospitalizations are holding stable, at fewer than 5,500 new admissions per day on average, but up slightly from March

Nationwide, more than a quarter of Americans are fully-vaccinated, and 40 have had at least one dose of vaccine.

Among adults 18 and older, rates are considerably higher.

Nearly a third of people 18 or older are fully vaccinated and 50.4 percent of adult Americans are have had at least one shot.

Vaccinations are ramping-up across the country as supply and eligibility expand - but a few states lag behind.

Alabama has the lowest vaccination rate in the country, with 46,751 doses administered per 100,000 residents. Mississippi has fared little better, with 49,251 doses given per 100,000 people.

On the other end of the spectrum, New Mexico now leads the pack with 77,605 dose administered per 100,000 residents, and Alaska is close behind with 70,467 shots-in-arms per capita.

Alaska became an early leader in the vaccination race, thanks in part to its large Alaska Native population. Native American tribes received separate federal allocations of vaccines which weren't subject to some of the state-specific hiccups that led to delays in the first weeks of rollout. New Mexico's large Native American population likely offered the state a similar advantage.

It is unclear why Mississippi and Alabama lag behind, but vaccine hesitancy is high in these states compared others. In Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Arkansas and Tennessee had still used less than 70 percent of their available doses as of April 15, according to CDC data.

Their high vaccination rates are likely driving encouraging trends in new COVID cases in each state. Last week, just 2.3 percent of COVID-19 tests administered in New Mexico and 2.6 percent of tests in Alaska were positive.

According to tracking from Bloomberg, cases have begun to decline in 16 states where at least 35 percent of people are now vaccinated.

Four countries - Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands, Israel and Seychelles - have seen their COVID curves flatten nationwide after 40 percent of their populations were fully vaccinated.

And at the current pace, the U.S. is on track to reach herd immunity, with 75 percent of its population vaccinated, within four months.

People aged 16 years and above who have underlying medical conditions that increase the risk of serious, life-threatening complications from COVID-19, should be among those offered the vaccine first, according to the U.S. health agency's latest recommendations.

Earlier in April, U.S. President Joe Biden had directed states to widen the vaccine eligibility to people aged 18 or above by April 19. No COVID-19 vaccine is authorized yet for those under 16, although testing is underway.

Currently, the CDC and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have placed a pause on the use of Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine amid fears that it may cause life-threatening blood clots in rare cases.

Guidance on the use of the shot is expected within days, US Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy told CNN. It may offer different advice depending on a person's gender and age, he said.

The pause on J&J's vaccine could slightly hamper the rollout of vaccines in the U.S., but issues at a Baltimore manufacturing plant last month meant that America was predominantly relying on the other two manufacturers - Moderna and Pfizer - already.
GOSHEN  Rick Lynn is taking his retirement, after 33 years as the director of the local council of governments.

The Northwest Hills Council of Governments with a membership of 26 first selectmen and mayors from Torrington to Washington, was formerly the Litchfield Hills COG. Lynn served the latter for 26 years, and has been with the Northwest Hills group for seven years.

Hes turning 70 soon, he said, and is ready to take some time to do what he wants, and spend more time with his family including his 3-year-old grandchild. He and his wife, Joanne, live in Cornwall and have two grown children.

Meanwhile, the NHCOG is preparing to interview candidates to replace him.

Theyre going through the process of hiring a new executive director, and I think the deadline for applications was (April 16), Lynn said. The COGs executive committee is doing the interviews. Were hoping that the new director can start in June sometime.

I will stay on to provide time for a smooth transition, he said.

Hell miss working with members, many of whom hes known for decades. Its a great group, Lynn said. We all work so well together. Its such a pleasure to work for them, and I want to help make it smooth for them with a new director.

The position of executive director requires a person with a masters in planning or public administration. Typically, a director has a strong planning background, and public administration is an important skill, Lynn said.

The council members identify the jobs they want to undertake, and I work for them to achieve that. The spirit of regional cooperation with the COG has always been exceptional. They all want to work together, he said.

State requirements are also part of the COGs responsibilities. Were required by statute to do certain things, like a regional plan of conservation and development, Lynn said. We help identify transportation priorities. We help leaders meet their regional needs. We meet monthly to hear about new developments and programs in the state, and they talk with one another about their issues, about municipal management, and get advice from one another.

A good example of the COGs cooperative efforts, Lynn said, is a public works cooperative, where members agreed to buy several pieces of expensive equipment to share through the council, rather than a single town buying that equipment themselves and only using it a few times a year.

This saves them time, he said. They dont have to go halfway across the state to pick up a catch basin cleaner, for example. The COG charges lower rates to use it, and it saves taxpayers money with that regional cooperation. Weve also helped the COG save money with regional supply purchases, for things like treated salt for winter road maintenance.

The NHCOG is deep in the development of a GIS mapping system, identifying areas for emergency services as well as businesses and municipalities, with interactive information.

So much more can be done with computerized mapping, Lynn said. The biggest change over the last 30 years is the change in information technology, and the mapping project is an example of that.

The council also hears from agencies on the state and federal level. Earlier this month, members heard a talk from the director of UniteCT, which provides funding to residents for rent and utility payments during the pandemic.

We try to provide speakers on a regular basis, Lynn said. It helps our members to meet the people who administer these programs, and then theyll feel more comfortable calling or emailing them, if theyve heard them speak. Its a great way of networking, not only for members, but state officials.

Many of the towns in the council face the same challenges  small populations and schools that are part of regional districts; businesses that often struggle to survive, and a population of elderly as well as families in need. Those challenges are not unique to many members, but having other leaders to share their troubles with helps, Lynn said.

I think all of the town officials in the northwest region are very supportive of each other, he said. Theyre very in tune with the residents in their area and what their needs are. Its through that collaboration, with emails, monthly meetings, and dealing with similar issues, that they solve their own problems; what rec programs can they offer during the pandemic? Or asking, What kinds of protective measures are you using? Is your town hall open yet? Knowing what neighboring towns are doing is very helpful.

Whats changed over the years, Lynn said, is the amount of paperwork he handles.

Its increased dramatically, the amount of paperwork the government requires, he said. But the information technology has changed things too.

When I first started, we didnt have computers  its hard to believe, but I had a typewriter. We used to type things up, and make copies and mail them out to the members. Theyd receive it in two or three days, then a response took two or three days. That was standard operating procedure. Now, with email and social networking, its instantaneous. People expect a fast response.

Lynn is proud that the NHCOG has always had a quorum to meet. That shows the commitment members have to the region and one another, he said.

His decision to retire wasnt easy. Ill miss all the wonderful people Ive had to work with, Lynn said. Im looking forward to spending more time with my family, seeing my new grandchild; Id like to spend time outside. But Ill miss the people.

The only thing I wont miss is the traffic in I-84, driving to Hartford, he said. Otherwise, I cant think of anything.

Lynns first job was in downtown Buffalo, NY. Coming to northwest Connecticut was like a dream come true, he said, adding that hes lived in Cornwall for 40 years.

Driving down the Housatonic River corridor for the first time, it was like utopia. It was such a blessing to work in the northwest hills for all these years.
GARYSBURG, N.C.  In 2013, Kathy Claiborne got a noisy new neighbor. Thats when a huge factory that dries and presses wood into roughly cigarette-filter-sized pellets roared to life near her tidy home in one of the states poorest counties. On a recent afternoon in her front yard, near the end of a cul-de-sac, the mill rumbled like an uncomfortably close jet engine.

I cant even recall the last time I had a good nights sleep, said Ms. Claiborne, who in 2009 moved to the neighborhood, which is majority African-American. She wears a mask outdoors, she said, because dust from the plant can make it hard to breathe.

The slumberless factorys output is trucked to a port in Chesapeake, Va., and loaded on ships bound for Europe, where it will be burned to produce electricity and heat for millions of people. Its part of a fast-growing industry that, depending on whom you ask, is an unwelcome source of pollution or a much-needed creator of rural jobs; a forest protector, or a destroyer.

In barely a decade, the Southeasts wood pellet industry has grown from almost nothing to 23 mills with capacity to produce more than 10 million metric tons annually for export. It employs more than 1,000 people directly, and has boosted local logging and trucking businesses.
The former US President Donald Trump on April 18 (local time) lauded his successor Joe Biden for the decision of full troop withdrawal from Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks but criticised his timeline. News Agency ANI reported citing a US media publication that the former Commander-in-chief of the American army had offered his support to US President Joe Bidens plans to redeploy the over 2,500 US troops remaining in war-stricken Afghanistan. Reportedly, Trump also urged Biden to end the longest war of the US well before September 11 that POTUS announced last week.

In a statement, Donald Trump said in a statement on Sunday that while leaving Afghanistan is "a wonderful and positive thing to do," but added that "we should keep as close to that schedule as possible...Getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do. I planned to withdraw on May 1st, and we should keep as close to that schedule as possible.

"I wish Joe Biden wouldn't use September 11 as the date to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan, for two reasons. First, we can and should get out earlier. Nineteen years is enough, in fact, far too much and way too long," Trump said, adding, "September 11 represents a very sad event and period for our Country and should remain a day of reflection and remembrance honouring those great souls we lost."

While US President Joe Biden on April 14 announced his final plan of withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan ahead of the 9/11 terror attacks anniversary, a similar announcement was also made by former US President Donald Trump. Biden said, "US troops, as well as forces deployed by our NATO allies and operational partners, will be out of Afghanistan before we mark the 20th anniversary of the heinous attack on September 11 but we will not take our eyes off the terrorist threat." Meanwhile, taking to Twitter on October 8, Trump said the US should have the little number of US soldiers present in the foreign country, to return home by Christmas.

White House on Afghanistans future

There is no guarantee of war-stricken Afghanistans future after the remaining over 2,500 US troops leave the Middle Eastern country, said top White House official on April 18 even as Washington stressed that it would continue to be focussed on the terrorist threats emanating from Kabul. White House National Adviser Jake Sullivan told Fox News in a televised interview that he cant make any guarantees about what will happen inside Afghanistan when asked about the risk of a repeat of what happened in Iraq.

In Iraq, Islamic State militants had seized territory after the American troops withdrew in 2011. US President Joe Biden on Wednesday had announced that the US would withdraw its remaining troops from Afghanistan by September 11 which also marks the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks that started Americas longest war. In 2011, the attacks by the extremists had pushed former US President Barack Obama to sent troops back into Iraq. While answering questions on Fox News, Sullivan also said that Biden has no intention of sending US troops back to Afghanistan.

Image credits: AP
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has signed a new anti-riot bill into law on the same day as closing arguments in the Derek Chauvin trial over George Floyd's death.

The Republican-backed bill, which aims to crack down on violent protests, comes into effect immediately and is response to the riots that broke out in the wake of the police killing of Floyd in Minneapolis last summer.

DeSantis signed the bill, officially known as HB 1, on Monday at a press conference at the Polk County Sheriff's Office headquarters.

'I think it's really remarkable if you look at the breadth of this particular piece of legislation,' he said.

'It is the strongest anti-rioting, pro-law enforcement piece of legislation in the country. There's just nothing even close.'

It will increase the criminal penalties for those who commit crimes during a riot, including assault and defacing monuments and public property. It will be punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the anti-riot bill, officially known as HB 1, on Monday at a press conference at the Polk County Sheriff's Office headquarters

'This bill protects all monuments in Florida. You have no right to go in and take down monuments. We're not going to let the mob win the day with that,' DeSantis said.

It also creates a new second-degree felony called aggravated riot that can see people charged when a riot has more than 25 participants and causes bodily harm, more $5,000 in property damage or blocks roadways by force.

The bill allows local governments to be sued if they fail to prevent a riot breaking out and adds language to state law that could force local governments to justify a reduction in law enforcement budgets.

It gives civil immunity to people who drive into protesters who have blocked roads and also prevents those who have been charged in relation to a riot from being released on bail until after their first court appearance.

'Just think about it, you're driving home from work, and all of a sudden, you have people out there shutting down a highway, and we worked hard to make sure that didn't happen in Florida,' DeSantis said.

'They start to do that, there needs to be swift penalties.'

The bill builds on several measures DeSantis introduced last summer as a response to the violent protests following George Floyd's death at the hands of police.

Republicans say the bill is designed to protect people and property. They have hit back at suggestions that the bill will impact freedom of speech.

'Rights have limits, and violence is where the line is drawn,' said Republican Sen. Danny Burgess, who carried the bill in the Senate. 'This bill is about preventing violence.'

The new anti-riot bill into law was signed into effect on the same day as closing arguments in the Derek Chauvin trial over George Floyd's death

The bill was sent to Florida's Republican governor as new protests erupted last week in a Minneapolis suburb (above on Sunday) after another fatal police shooting of black man Daunte Wright and as closing arguments started in Derek Chauvin's trial

Those who oppose the bill, however, say it aims to stop protests altogether and violate the First Amendment Rights of people involved in groups like Black Lives Matter.

The American Civil Liberties Union previously said the new law would give police broad discretion over what constitutes a demonstration and a riot.

'The bill was purposely designed to embolden the disparate police treatment we have seen over and over again directed towards black and brown people who are exercising their constitutional right to protest,' said Micah Kubic, the executive director of ACLU of Florida.

It was first filed in the Florida House of Representatives in January before being passed by the Senate, 23-17, last Thursday.

The bill was sent to Florida's Republican governor as new protests erupted last week in a Minneapolis suburb after another fatal police shooting of black man Daunte Wright and as closing arguments started in Derek Chauvin's trial.

In Minneapolis, where the trial is taking place, the city is already taking precautions in case of unrest.

More than 3,000 members of the National Guard have been drafted into the city, in addition to 1,100 officers from public safety agencies across the state as part of what has been termed Operation Safety Net.

Businesses have already been boarded up and the area around Hennepin County Government Center, where Chauvin's trial is being held, has already been fortified with concrete barricades and multiple layers of high-security fencing topped by barbed wire.

In Minneapolis, where the trial is taking place, the city is already taking precautions in case of unrest. A number of businesses have already been boarded up
Heaven knows he's miserable now.

Morrissey's manager issued a scathing statement Sunday slamming "The Simpsons" for depicting the English rocker in a "hurtful" and "hypocritical" light.

Sunday's episode of "The Simpsons" saw 8-year-old Lisa adopt a new imaginary friend inspired by the fictional Quilloughby  a former member of British band the Snuffs, which "dominated the '80s indie scene with their brand of literate, sardonic ... music that focused on Quilloughby's obsessions, especially his militant vegetarianism."

Fans couldn't help but notice the animated character (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch) and his uncanny resemblance to Morrissey. The former frontman of British band the Smiths, a staple of '80s indie rock, is known for lyrics and imagery that reflect his views on animal rights and other hot-button issues.

Titled "Panic on the Streets of Springfield," a riff on the 1986 Smiths song "Panic," the "Simpsons" episode poked fun at Morrissey's penchant for droll commentary. It also satirized his disillusioned, morose sound with original parody tracks such as "Everyone Is Horrid Except Me (and Possibly You)."

Morrissey seemed flattered  at first  by the homage, promoting the episode on his Facebook page prior to its Sunday premiere. And "Simpsons" writer Tim Long recently told Variety the cartoon is "definitely Morrissey-esque, with maybe a small dash of Robert Smith from the Cure, Ian Curtis from Joy Division, and a bunch of other people."

After its debut, however, Morrissey's team took issue with how the episode portrayed an older version of the so-called Quilloughby during a Snuffs reunion concert. According to Yahoo News, one scene saw the washed-up character spiral out of control onstage  renouncing veganism because it "was invented by foreigners, of whom there are far too many on this planet!"

"That's right, I hate the foreign!" Quilloughby shouts while firing a meat gun at the crowd before performing a solo track called "Refugees? Again?" Watching his future self alongside Lisa, imaginary Quilloughby laments, "Is this what I turned into? I'm greedy, I'm hateful, and my face looks like a syphilitic moon!"

In 2021, the sequence reads like a commentary on xenophobic and racist remarks made in recent years by Morrissey, who has called Chinese people "a subspecies," mocked London Mayor Sadiq Khan's accent and spoken out against England's liberal-leaning immigration policies.

"Poking fun at subjects is one thing," read a post on Morrissey's official Facebook page written by his manager, Peter Katsis. "But when a show stoops so low to use harshly hateful tactics like showing the Morrissey character with his belly hanging out of his shirt (when he has never looked like that at any point in his career) makes you wonder who the real hurtful, racist group is here."

Morrissey also has expressed support for the white nationalist political party For Britain, led by vocal anti-Islamist Anne Marie Waters. Waters has endorsed the so-called "white replacement theory," arguing against "the replacement of white Europe by non-Europeans," as stated by the politician in a 2019 speech.

"[C]alling the Morrissey character out for being a racist, without pointing out any specific instances, offers nothing," Katsis' Facebook post continued. "It only serves to insult the artist. They should take that mirror and hold it up to themselves."

Katsis also mentioned actor Hank Azaria, who apologized to people of Indian descent last week for voicing the controversial "Simpsons" character Apu. Azaria previously quit playing the local convenience store owner after the role was widely condemned as a harmful stereotype.

"Simpson's actor Hank Azaria's recent apology to the whole country of India for his role in upholding 'structural racism' says it all," Katsis wrote. "Unlike the character in the Simpson's 'Panic' episode ... Morrissey has never made a 'cash grab', hasn't sued any people for their attacks, has never stopped performing great shows, and is still a serious vegan and strong supporter for animal rights.

"By suggesting all of the above in this episode  the Simpson's hypocritical approach to their storyline says it all. Truly they are the only ones who have stopped creating, and have instead turned unapologetically hurtful and racist."

Fox, which airs "The Simpsons," declined to comment when reached Monday by the Los Angeles Times.
Corteva Agriscience continues to bring new and innovative solutions to market by offering natural-origin products that work complementarily with our conventional crop protection solutions.

Corteva Agriscience and Symborg, an expert in microbiological technologies, announced today a multi-year agreement around a microbe-based nitrogen fixation product in the United States, Canada, Brazil and Argentina.

Through the agreement, Symborg is providing an exclusive distribution license to Corteva for the endophytic bacterium Methylobacterium symbioticum, which works with the plant to secure needed nitrogen from the atmosphere. Corteva is leveraging its wide distribution network, market reach and extensive research and development capabilities.

The Corteva product, to be branded as Utrisha N nutrient efficiency optimizer, works in natural field conditions, adapting to the plants growth needs and helping to sustainably maximize crop yield potential. It will be available for a broad range of crops, including field and row crops, sugar cane, and turf and ornamental, as well as range and pasture. The agreement also enables Corteva and Symborg to co-distribute the product in specialties crops on an exclusive basis.

Corteva Agriscience continues to bring new and innovative solutions to market by offering natural-origin products that work complementarily with our conventional crop protection solutions, such as Optinyte nitrogen stabilizer, said Susanne Wasson, President, Crop Protection Business Platform, Corteva Agriscience. Were excited to work with Symborg to scale up and maximize sustainable options that help farmers meet changing environmental conditions while keeping their crops productive and healthy.

This collaboration represents another step forward for Cortevas expanding global Biologicals portfolio, which is dedicated to developing biostimulants, biocontrol and pheromone products with proven, predictable performance. Utrisha N, a BlueN technology powered by Symborg, will provide value through integrated nutrition management efficiency and enhancing yield potential and sustainability, in line with the Corteva Agriscience 2030 Sustainability Goals.

"Our goal at Symborg is to transform agriculture while helping farmers combine profitability and sustainability. With our innovative biotechnological solutions, we want to bridge the gap between the current agricultural model that is starting to urgently demand changes and the model that is yet to come," explains Jesus Juarez, founding partner and CEO of Symborg. "It is exciting to establish a collaboration agreement with Corteva, a company with which we share values such as innovation, sustainability and proximity to the farmer.

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

About Corteva

Corteva, Inc. (NYSE: CTVA) is a publicly traded, global pure-play agriculture company that provides farmers around the world with the most complete portfolio in the industry - including a balanced and diverse mix of seed, crop protection and digital solutions focused on maximizing productivity to enhance yield and profitability. With some of the most recognized brands in agriculture and an industry-leading product and technology pipeline well positioned to drive growth, the company is committed to working with stakeholders throughout the food system as it fulfills its promise to enrich the lives of those who produce and those who consume, ensuring progress for generations to come. Corteva Agriscience became an independent public company on June 1, 2019, and was previously the Agriculture Division of DowDuPont. More information can be found at http://www.corteva.com.

Follow Corteva Agriscience on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube.

About Symborg

Symborg is a biotechnology company in the agricultural sector that help farmers to maximize crop yields with minimum resources, contributing to a more sustainable agriculture. Symborg develops, manufactures and markets innovative biostimulants and biofertilizers for all types of crops and agricultural systems, increasing nutrient use efficiency, improving crop strengthening, crops physiological activity and tolerance to stress, thus optimizing and increasing its harvest potential and fruit quality. Due to its significant commitment to research development and innovation, Symborg has established itself as a leading agribusiness company delivering biological solutions. It currently has offices in Spain and Portugal, France, the USA, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Turkey and China.

More information can be found at http://www.symborg.com.

Follow Symborg on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

# # #

Cautionary Statement About Forward-Looking Statements

This communication contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, which are intended to be covered by the safe harbor provisions for forward-looking statements contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and may be identified by their use of words like "plans," "expects," "will," "anticipates," "believes," "intends," "projects," or other words of similar meaning. All statements that address expectations or projections about the future, including statements about Corteva's growth, product development, and sustainability goals, are forward-looking statements.

Forward-looking statements are based on certain assumptions and expectations of future events which may not be accurate or realized. Forward-looking statements also involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond Corteva's control. While the list of factors presented below is considered representative, no such list should be considered to be a complete statement of all potential risks and uncertainties. Unlisted factors may present significant additional obstacles to the realization of forward-looking statements. Consequences of material differences in results as compared with those anticipated in the forward-looking statements could include, among other things, business disruption, operational problems, financial loss, legal liability to third parties and similar risks, any of which could have a material adverse effect on Corteva's business, results of operations and financial condition. Some of the important factors that could cause Corteva's actual results to differ materially from those projected in any such forward-looking statements include: (i) failure to obtain or maintain the necessary regulatory approvals for some of Cortevas products; (ii) failure to successfully develop and commercialize Cortevas pipeline; (iii) effect of the degree of public understanding and acceptance or perceived public acceptance of Cortevas biotechnology and other agricultural products; (iv) effect of changes in agricultural and related policies of governments and international organizations; (v) effect of competition and consolidation in Cortevas industry; (vi) effect of competition from manufacturers of generic products; (vii) costs of complying with evolving regulatory requirements and the effect of actual or alleged violations of environmental laws or permit requirements; (viii) effect of climate change and unpredictable seasonal and weather factors; (ix) risks related to oil and commodity markets; (x) competitors establishment of an intermediary platform for distribution of Corteva's products; (xi) impact of Corteva's dependence on third parties with respect to certain of its raw materials or licenses and commercialization; (xii) effect of industrial espionage and other disruptions to Cortevas supply chain, information technology or network systems; (xiii) effect of volatility in Cortevas input costs; (xiv) failure to realize the anticipated benefits of the internal reorganizations taken by DowDuPont in connection with the spin-off of Corteva and other cost savings initiatives; (xv) failure to raise capital through the capital markets or short-term borrowings on terms acceptable to Corteva; (xvi) failure of Cortevas customers to pay their debts to Corteva, including customer financing programs; (xvii) increases in pension and other post-employment benefit plan funding obligations; (xviii) risks related to the indemnification obligations of legacy E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company liabilities in connection with the separation of Corteva; (xix) effect of compliance with laws and requirements and adverse judgments on litigation; (xx) risks related to Cortevas global operations; (xxi) failure to effectively manage acquisitions, divestitures, alliances and other portfolio actions; (xxii) risks related to COVID-19; (xxiii) risks related to activist stockholders; (xxiv) failure to enforce Cortevas intellectual property rights or defend against intellectual property claims asserted by others; (xxv) effect of counterfeit products; (xxvi) Cortevas dependence on intellectual property cross-license agreements; and (xxvii) other risks related to the separation from DowDuPont. Additionally, there may be other risks and uncertainties that Corteva is unable to currently identify or that Corteva does not currently expect to have a material impact on its business. Where, in any forward-looking statement an expectation or belief as to future results or events is expressed, such expectation or belief is based on the current plans and expectations of Corteva's management and expressed in good faith and believed to have a reasonable basis, but there can be no assurance that the expectation or belief will result or be achieved or accomplished. Corteva disclaims and does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, except as required by applicable law. A detailed discussion of some of the significant risks and uncertainties which may cause results and events to differ materially from such forward-looking statements or other estimates is included in the "Risk Factors" section of Corteva's Annual Report on Form 10-K.

04/19/21

TM  SM Trademarks and service marks of Corteva Agriscience and its affiliated companies, except BlueN, trademark of Symborg.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-18 21:29:12|Editor: huaxia

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by Tafara Mugwara, Zhang Yuliang

HARARE, April 18 (Xinhua) -- Since Zimbabwe gained independence from Britain exactly 41 years ago, there has been a steady growth of relations between the country and its all-weather friend China.

As Zimbabwe celebrates Independence Day on April 18, the historical ties between the two countries that span back from the 1960s during Zimbabwe's struggle against colonial rule are at an all-time high.

This year's Independence Day comes at a time when Zimbabwe is battling the COVID-19 pandemic.

In its fight against the global pandemic, China has been at the forefront assisting Zimbabwe through the provision of anti-epidemic materials, and more recently, with COVID-19 vaccines.

Despite facing the enormous task of fighting the contagious virus back home, China stood firmly with Zimbabwe since the pandemic's onset last March.

With China's timely assistance, Zimbabwe became one of the first African countries to roll out a successful inoculation program with vaccines donated by the Chinese government.

Christopher Mutsvangwa, a senior member of Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu-PF party and former ambassador to China, said China has always stood firmly with Zimbabwe during times of distress.

"So we are very grateful, first, it was PPEs, by China. Now, it is of course the vaccination. We hope that very soon our people will have herd immunity, and the economy can get back to work," said Mutsvangwa recently.

The former diplomat commended China for making the vaccine a global public good during times of competition for vaccines.

Prominent Zimbabwean sculptor Dominic Benhura thanked China for availing of vaccines to Zimbabwe.

"China has been our all-weather friend. That also made me very confident to take their jab because during our liberation war they helped us militarily, in training, with equipment and everything, so whenever Zimbabwe is in trouble China always comes to help us," he told Xinhua.

Zimbabwe launched its nationwide vaccination campaign on Feb. 18 with Sinopharm vaccines donated by China.

To date, more than 270,000 people have been vaccinated, making Zimbabwe one of the countries with the highest vaccination rate in Africa.

The southern African country of 14.5 million is targeting to inoculate 10 percent of its population to achieve herd immunity.

BROTHERS IN ARMS

China's partnership with Zimbabwe began with its support for the country's liberation struggle.

The relationship further strengthened during the early 2000s when the United States and the European Union imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe following its land reform program that aimed at addressing colonial land ownership imbalances.

In response to increased economic isolation and capital flight, former President Robert Mugabe in 2003 adopted the Look East policy.

The policy pivoted Zimbabwe economically towards the Asia-Pacific region, with an emphasis on closer trade relations with China.

Since that time, China has taken a leading role in modernizing Zimbabwe's agriculture, telecommunication and mining sectors.

Cooperation in other fields such as education, science, culture, and health has also made significant progress.

Donald Rushambwa, a researcher at Harare-based China-Africa Economic and Culture Exchange Research Center, said China has always stood by Zimbabwe during trying times -- from the liberation struggle, during the period of capital flight following the imposition of sanctions, and the pandemic.

"Those were some of the crucial times that Zimbabwe needed help and China came to our aid, it then shows that it's a symbolic relationship and China stands in solidarity with Zimbabwe in these times," he told Xinhua.

Rushambwa said China's ties with Zimbabwe stretches beyond economic aspects.

"So it goes on to show the good gesture that for China and Zimbabwe, it's not all about the economic trade between the two countries, but it is also about developing each other and complementing each other through policies such as the Belt and Road Initiative, many aspects are brought about for the win-win cooperation between China and Zimbabwe," Rushambwa said.

He said in face of the global pandemic, China has once again demonstrated that it attaches great importance to its relationship with Zimbabwe.

China went further than providing material assistance to Zimbabwe during the pandemic. Apart from sharing its anti-epidemic experience, it also dispatched a team of medical doctors to share their experience in fighting the pandemic with their Zimbabwean counterparts.

The Zimbabwean government took a leaf from China's anti-epidemic approach and adopted stringent measures to contain the spread of the pandemic.

In a spirit of solidarity, Chinese private corporations in Zimbabwe have also complemented the Chinese government in providing anti-epidemic support to Zimbabwe. Enditem
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 20)  The Presidential Electoral Tribunal released on Monday the full copy of its decision dismissing the electoral protest filed by former Senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos against Vice President Leni Robredo.

In the decision, the PET said Marcos failed to prove his claims and that his allegations appeared bare, laden with generic and repetitious allegations and lacked critical information regarding the alleged irregularities.

If, indeed, protestant was convinced of his claims in Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, and Basilan, then he should have indicated those three as his pilot provinces. But he did not, to no fault of this Tribunal, it said.

This is in relation to his cause of action to annul election results in Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, and Basilan. In January this year, Marcos asked the tribunal to revise the results of the poll recount and to validate signatures from the said provinces due to alleged fraud and terrorism.

However, in the Feb. 16 decision, seven magistrates fully concurred with the dismissal while eight concurred with the poll protest result. A highly-placed source in the Supreme Court said defeated candidate Marcos failed to present specific acts to back his claims of poll fraud, such as the time and manner of irregularities.

READ: Supreme Court unanimously junks Marcos' VP poll protest vs Robredo

The court said the lack of substantial recovery of votes from the said provinces led to the dismissal of the protest. Rule 65 of the Tribunal Rules also mandates the dismissal of a protest when the results of the revision and appreciation of ballots in the pilot provinces do not support the allegations of fraud or irregularities.

According to its review, the body also said the total number of votes for Robredo increased by 1,510,178, while that of Marcos gained only 204,512, confirming the victory of the former. Moreover, PET said Robredo would still maintain her lead even if a third cause of action would be conducted.

Marcos failed to make out his case, the PET said. To entertain the third cause of action is to risk frustrating the valid exercise of the nations democratic will and subject it to endless whims of a defeated candidate.

After losing the 2016 vice presidential election, Marcos filed an electoral protest against Robredo on June 30 in the same year. He questioned the result of the polls where he was defeated by Robredo by 263,473 votes.

The tribunal in October 2019 found that Robredo's lead grew by around 15,000 votes after a recount of ballots from the 5,415 clustered precincts in the pilot provinces of Iloilo, Negros Oriental, and Camarines Sur  Robredo's bailiwick.

CNN Philippines senior correspondent Anjo Alimario contributed to this report.
Pamphlet for the Colombia Embassy's event "Colombia  Korea: Commercial Strategies for the Americas" / Courtesy of Colombia Embassy in Korea



By Kim Jae-heun



The Embassy of Colombia in Korea, along with the Chamber of Commerce of Bogota, are organizing the hybrid event "Colombia  Korea: Commercial Strategies for the Americas," to be held on Wednesday from 8:00 to 10:30 a.m. (KST), at the Presidential Palace in Bogota.



The event aims to strengthen bilateral relations between Korea and Colombia and expose the trade, investment and nearshoring challenges and opportunities between these nations.



It also seeks to create a space for dialogue between the authorities and private-sector representatives of Colombia, the United States and Korea, and to identify opportunities for business, where Colombia can get involved in international production chains, becoming a business hub for the region and a gateway to the United States.



In 2022, Colombia and Korea will commemorate 60 years of diplomatic relations. According to a press release by the embassy, in Korean culture "this date has a special meaning as a rebirth of the cycle, therefore, we have the opportunity to renew and strengthen the relations of our countries from the commercial and investment sector."



The press release added that the two countries are also commemorating five years since the entry into force of the Free Trade Agreement between Colombia and Korea.



Taking into account the anniversary of diplomatic relations in 2022, and with the aim of stimulating and fostering bilateral commercial relations, the event will present the results of a study on the state of trade and investment relations between Korea and Colombia, carried out by the Bogota Chamber of Commerce with support from LIG Nex1. It will introduce recommendations for the strengthening of bilateral relations for the short, medium and long term.



The event, co-hosted by five organizations including the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea (AMCHAM Korea) and the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI), will feature addresses by nine speakers, including President of Colombia Ivan Duque Marquez, Colombian Ambassador to Korea Juan Carlos Calza Rosero, KCCI Executive Vice Chairman Woo Tae-hee and AMCHAM Korea Chairman and CEO James Kim.


Those are the people I feel have been dishonored by the path that the Illinois General Assembly has now chosen, said Jay Young, executive director of Common Cause Illinois. It should be the job of our elected officials to sort of recognize that this challenge exists, to recognize that theyre not going to be able to draw the district lines with any degree of specificity, theyre not going to be able to draw equal districts.
After undertaking extensive search across the continent, leading sustainable IT company Tomax Technology opted for Aalborg as the best location for their European base.

For the last 7 years Tomax Technology (https://tomaxtechnology.com) have specialised in selling on excess stock from the worlds leading IT manufacturers. The companies who buy the stock then sell it on to businesses, schools and government departments, and in this way the team at Tomax help manufacturers like Cisco utilise excess stock in a manner which chimes with their commitment to the circular economy. Our infrastructure and processes have been tailored to shift excess Cisco technology (https://tomaxtechnology.com/cisco-excess) into local markets at speed, saving time and cutting the dependency on air freight. At the same time, utilising excess stock in this way stops new equipment having to be produced, particularly when the excess stock comes with full territory licences, is manufacturer backed and carries a 3 months guarantee. We even got a name for it - #safesourcing  which reflects the fact that the equipment we supply can be trusted in a way that the grey or counterfeit technology market simply cant.

Speaking about the decision to set up in Aalborg, Chief Commercial Officer Soren Sorensen explained how the citys Green Transistion agenda aligned perfectly with the values of Tomax technology: Aalborg offers us the opportunity to develop a facility that is completely sustainable and well be speaking to businesses already located here to understand how best to do that. The network of sustainable businesses makes this an inspiring place for us to be, and we were attracted by Aalborgs green port plan and superfast connectivity. Im really excited to expand our team here and really fly the flag for Aalborg.

Catharina Vinther Engqvist, the Director of Invest in Aalborg (https://investinaalborg.dk) was equally enthusiastic on the synergy between Tomax and Aalborg: Aalborg is a tiny metropolis with a global mindset and were growing rapidly. We offer a highly skilled workforce, one of the best Tech Universities in Europe and have a huge focus on innovation and on The Green Transition. Tomax Technology is totally in scope for these key factors and we are very excited to welcome them to our city and region

The approach taken by Tomax aligns perfectly with the mission of the team at Green Hub Denmark, who have promoted Aalborg as a centre of societal transition. Aalborg offers an entry for national and international businesses and researchers seeking to develop, test and create growth through the sustainable solutions and technologies of tomorrow.

The partners behind Green Hub Denmark have collectively poured 7.5 billion DKK into the initiative, which is connecting businesses, consumers, researchers, the utility sector and authorities to forge a world class platform for green growth and a green societal change. Through massive investments, the objective for Green Hub Denmark is to turn North Denmark into the Silicon Valley of green innovation.

The Tomax approach also reflects a growing awareness of the global problem of electronic waste (ewaste). According to the Global Ewaste Monitor 2020 53.6 metric tonnes of ewaste are thrown into landfill around the world, which is the equivalent of 7.3kg per capita. Shockingly, this so-called waste actually has value, and the team at Tomax specialize in tapping into that value. Our knowledge of the market enables us to build a picture of where the items are in demand, information which is augmented by close working relationships with our customers. Pulling all of this together means that our customers enjoy quick access to vital equipment, while manufacturer partners know that their circular economy principles are being met.

From the base in Aalborg, Tomax will be supplying over 25 countries across Europe. Investment in excess, reused and refurbished IT enables IT departments to play a part in contributing to the parent companys commitment to zero carbon and wider sustainability. DigitalLead, which was created to strengthen digitalisation in Denmark and achieve the UN sustainable development goals, has a hub based in Aalborg, and the use of remanufactured, reused and excess technology directly aligns with several of their goals. Were looking forward to working with Danish businesses in Aalborg and further afield, helping them to source more sustainable IT hardware and keep their existing hardware in use for longer.
Bindi Irwin welcomed her first child, baby daughter Grace Warrior, last month.

And on Sunday, Terri Irwin introduced her baby granddaughter to some of the creatures at the family's famous Australia Zoo in Queensland.

While Bindi was no stranger to the crocodile enclosure as an infant, Terri chose to take little three-week old girl to meet some of the tamer, farmyard animals.

Mother hen: Bindi Irwin's mother Terri (left) introduced three-week-old baby Grace Warrior Irwin to some of the tamer animals at Queensland's Australia Zoo on Sunday

'Introducing Grace to some of the animals living in her backyard,' Terri captioned a photo on Twitter with some chickens.

The Irwin matriarch, 56, recently shared her joy at becoming a grandmother on Twitter, and said that her late husband Steve Irwin would have been 'beyond proud'.

Terri wrote: 'Love is not a big enough word. My heart is so incredibly happy. And I know that Steve would be beyond proud.'

'My heart is so incredibly happy': The Irwin matriarch, 56, (left) recently shared her joy at becoming a grandmother on Twitter in March and said that her late husband Steve Irwin would have been 'beyond proud'

Steve, known to millions around the world as 'the Crocodile Hunter', was filming a documentary when he was fatally stabbed in the heart by a stingray barb on September 4, 2006 in Batt Reef, Queensland. He was 44 years old.

Steve had once cradled both Bindi and Robert as young children while presenting slabs of meat during feeding displays at Australia Zoo's Crocoseum.

Terri added: 'Grace is the next generation to continue his mission and message of conservation... She chose her parents wisely. Bindi and Chandler are already the best parents ever.'

Flashback! The late Steve Irwin had once cradled both Bindi and Robert as young children while presenting slabs of meat during feeding displays at Australia Zoo's Crocoseum

Baby's first SAFE Croc photo! The family poked fun of Grace's first photo with 'crocs' by posing with the shoe brand by the same name

Bindi and Chandler announced the birth of their daughter on March 26, one day after welcoming the child at Buderim Private Hospital on Queensland's Sunshine Coast.

The couple first met at Australia Zoo in in 2013, when the American former wakeboarder went on a guided tour of Australia Zoo in Queensland.

Grace was born on the couple's first wedding anniversary, as they tied the knot on the zoo grounds in March 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Appointment

19 April 2021

Kempinski Hotels is pleased to announce the appointment of Javier Bisbal as the new sales and marketing director at Kempinski Hotel Bahia.

His 20 years of experience in the luxury travel industry includes the large national and international brands Fairmont, Jumeirah, Majestic Resorts and ME by Melia, the latter two as Director of Sales and Marketing.

In his new role, Javier will lead the sales, marketing, public relations, and groups and events teams, charged with optimising revenue opportunities and continuing to develop the hotel's iconic brand.

Javier transmits high motivation and energy to his team. Javier's excellent training will be the basis for working and implementing all the strategies and actions necessary to achieve the annual goals of the Sales and Marketing Department, thus positioning Kempinski Hotel Bahia as one of the leading hotels in Spain, allowing it to reach new levels of production both in the main market segments and in other new ones, especially after COVID-19.

Javier graduated from the University of Barcelona with a degree in tourism and hotel management. Years later, he moved to New York, where he completed his studies and began his professional career.
Pakistan records diversified export and production results

19 April 2021

The Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) of Pakistan has released cement export and production data for the July 2020-March 2021 and July 2020-February 2021 periods. It shows diversified trends in export and local production. Export volumes increased during this period, but revenues remained flat in dollar terms, reflecting a weaker price market for cement and clinker. Meanwhile, local output increased on intense local demands and expansion in capacity.

Export

Pakistan's cement industry earned US$210m of export revenue by delivering 6.247Mt of cement and clinker overseas in 9MFY20-21, compared to US$210m from 5.592Mt of exports in the year-ago period. The export data represents a flat performance on the export front in dollar terms, but reflects the growth of 11.7 per cent in terms of volumes during this period, as reported by FBS.

In local currency terms, the export value increased by 3.8 per cent to PKR34bn (US$210) from PKR32bn during this 9MFY20-21. Nevertheless, the cost per tonne fell from US$37.56/t in 8MFY19-20 to US$33.62/t in the July 2020-March 2021 period.

In March 2021 alone, revenues rose to US$26.84m on the export of 776,934t from US$19.52m on the export of 537,452t cement and clinker exports in February 2021. The export trend represents a substantial growth of 37.5 per cent and 44.6 per cent in terms of value and quantity, respectively. The same strong growth pattern in export, recorded in the comparison period of March 2020, when export stood at US$ 16.14m on the shipments of 436,725t of commodities. It depicts growth of 66.3 per cent in value and 77.9 per cent in quantity.

Production in 8MFY21

The Large Scale Manufacturing Industries Index (LSMI) continues to see a growth trend in July 2020-February 2021. The latest data released by PBS suggests that LSMI output during 8MFY21 witnessed an increase of 7.5 per cent YoY and an increase of 4.9 per cent YoY during February 2021.

During this period, Pakistans cement production increased by 21.3 per cent, YoY to 32.909Mt compared to 27.067Mt a year earlier. The upward trend was also observed in February 2021, when production rose by 11.7 per cent to 4.053Mt versus 3.629Mt in the same month last year.

Published under
Closing arguments have been presented in the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. A suspect was arrested in the fatal shooting of three people in Austin, Texas. And every adult in the USA is eligible to schedule an appointment for a COVID-19 vaccine.

It's Ashley and Julius with the news you need to know.

But first, every Doge has its day: As Bitcoin tumbles, Dogecoin fans want to make "DogeDay" happen Tuesday.

The Short List is a snappy USA TODAY news roundup. Subscribe here!

Both sides in the Chauvin trial deliver closing arguments

The prosecution and defense presented their closing arguments Monday in the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, a former police officer charged in the death of George Floyd. Prosecutor Steve Schleicher said Chauvin "chose pride over policing," calling his actions "unnecessary, gratuitous and disproportionate." Schleicher reminded jurors Chauvin had hundreds of hours of training over his 19 years with the Minneapolis Police Department and should've known how to handle someone in crisis. On the other end, the defense urged jurors to focus on "the totality of the circumstances" and consider more than the nine minutes and 29 seconds Chauvin's knee was on Floyd's neck. The defense returned to the argument that Floyd died because of the drugs in his system and underlying heart issues.

Path to this point in the trial: Monday's closing arguments marked the 14th day of the trial. Before that, the prosecution called 38 witness and played dozens of clips over an 11-day span. After the prosecution rested its case last week, the defense called seven witnesses over two days before resting Thursday.

What's next? After closing arguments, the jurors will deliberate and decide whether the government proved all of the elements of a given charge beyond a reasonable doubt.

How long will it take to reach a verdict? Although every trial is different, legal observers told USA TODAY that Minnesota juries typically have returned verdicts within a few days, particularly if they are sequestered.

Chauvin is charged with second-degree and third-degree murder, as well as second-degree manslaughter in Floyd's death last May. If convicted of the most serious charge, Chauvin could face 12 years in prison under sentencing guidelines for a first-time offender. The prosecution argued there are aggravating factors that require a longer prison term.

Closing arguments began in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd.

Two suspects arrested after shootings in Texas and Wisconsin

Story continues

In Austin, Texas, police arrested a former sheriff's deputy suspected of killing three people in a shooting over the weekend. The suspect, Stephen Nicholas Broderick, 41, was arrested along a highway Monday after police received calls about a man walking along the road. Also Monday, the Elgin school district identified two of the victims as Alyssa Broderick, who left Elgin High School last year, and Willie Simmons, who was a senior there. Before the shooting, Broderick had been free on bail on charges of sexual assault of a child, and his wife filed for a protective order, saying she was "afraid he will try to hurt me or my children."

In Kenosha County, Wisconsin, the suspect in a shooting that left three people dead and two injured was arrested Sunday. Rakayo A. Vinson, 24, was brought into custody Sunday after a manhunt involving about 100 officers, the Kenosha County Sheriff's Department said. The shooting happened early Sunday at a tavern in Kenosha after the suspect "wasn't cooperating with management."

No one is serious about stopping the next FedEx shooting | Opinion

What everyones talking about

You get a vaccine! You get a vaccine!

Your vaccine time has come, America: Every U.S. adult is eligible to schedule a COVID-19 vaccine starting today. New Jersey, Massachusetts and Oregon were among a handful of states making the vaccine available to every adult Monday, the deadline set by President Joe Biden. The White House has turned its attention to convincing Americans to get the jabs. "Please get the vaccine," Biden said in a video posted on Twitter. Still on the fence about receiving one? We talked to a panel of experts about the vaccines, and the message was clear: Vaccines are safe, effective and a triumph of science  essential for ending the pandemic and restoring the U.S. economy. The big challenge is getting enough people to take them.

France to begin international travel next month.

Registered nurse Sofia Mercado administers a shot at a vaccination event for workers at an Amazon fulfillment center March 31 in North Las Vegas. Companies and labor unions are securing coronavirus vaccines for their workers.

NASA makes history with first powered flight on another planet

That's one small step for NASA, another giant leap for mankind. The Mars Ingenuity helicopter made its first successful (and historic!) flight Monday  the first powered flight on another planet. The little helicopter that could rose nearly 10 feet, hovered for about 39 seconds and rotated 100 degrees toward the waiting Perseverance rover before landing, NASA said. After waiting for more than three hours to learn the flight was a success, NASA engineers responded with cheers and applause at the arrival of the first photo, a black-and-white image of Ingenuity's shadow as it hovered above the Martian surface.

Fact check: Mars Perseverance rover landing happened

The Mars helicopter Ingenuity photographed its shadow while hovering above the surface of Mars on April 19.

Real quick

Supreme Court passes on challenges to gun ownership ban

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up three challenges to a federal ban on gun ownership for people convicted of nonviolent crimes, surprising Second Amendment advocates who hoped the court would chip away at the restriction. By not taking the appeals, the nation's highest court let stand a series of lower court rulings that prohibit people convicted of driving under the influence, making false statements on tax returns and selling counterfeit cassette tapes from owning a gun. The decisions are the latest in a series of instances in which the Supreme Court has skirted Second Amendment questions. But the court has signaled in recent years that it is interested in revisiting the issue.

A break from the news

This is a compilation of stories from across the USA TODAY Network. Want this news roundup in your inbox every night? Sign up for The Short List newsletter here.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Derek Chauvin trial closing arguments, Kenosha and Austin shooting suspects arrested, NASA: It's Monday's news
To start the morning we share just a bit of info on community news, pop culture and top headlines.



April Always Tough

10 days of tragedy: 15 historic disasters occurred over these days in April The middle of April has been a calamitous time in history, with a series of tragic events happening locally, nationally, and across the world. Between April 11 and April 20, more than a dozen disasters shaped the course of history.

Show-Me Charter Lesson Plan

Why a Missouri Senate bill troubles traditional public school officials A bill with charter school expansion, public funding of private schools and home schools, and nearly everything else officials and advocates of traditional public schools don't want could come up for debate on the floor of the Missouri Senate at any time.

Troops Need Help In Kansas

Veteran homelessness has increased in Kansas according to new data by: Sam Montero, KSN Posted: / Updated: WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) - According to new data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), homelessness among veterans has risen in Kansas by 7.4% from 2019 to 2020. Retired Marine Corps Col. Michael Hudson said it happens too often.

PRIEST GETS OFF!!!

Priest who had church altar threeway with porn stars won't face obscenity charge A Catholic priest caught having a threesome with two porn stars on his church altar will not be charged with obscenity. Travis Clark, 37, instead faces a charge of felony vandalism over the September 2020 incident at Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in New Orleans.

Progressive Lockdown Fight

'No personal liberties were taken away': Joe Scarborough blasts Jim Jordan for spreading 'lies' about Fauci Joe Scarborough blasted Rep. Jim Jordan for his conduct while questioning Fauci during a hearing. "When do Americans get their freedom back?" Jordan aggressively asked of Fauci. "It's so personal and it is personal," Scarborough said. "They have lied about Dr. Fauci. See more stories on Insider's business page.

Truth Is Out There

Opinion | The Pentagon has stopped laughing about UFOs. Why hasn't Silicon Valley? In our era of life-changing innovation, there are major breakthroughs that could well come from the serious study of a phenomenon we too often mock: UFOs. The government has reversed its official position of publicly ignoring UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomenon, the new trendy name for UFOs) and is starting to tackle the subject openly.

Former Prez Trump Mostly Agrees With Upcoming Afghanistan Exit

Trump calls Afghanistan withdrawal 'a wonderful and positive thing to do' and criticizes Biden's timeline Former President Donald Trump on Sunday praised withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan, while knocking his successor's timeline for doing so.

The Lie Spreads Faster

A leading conspiracy theorist who thought COVID-19 was a hoax died from the virus after hosting illegal house parties A Norwegian COVID-19 denier, who threw illegal gatherings, has died from the virus, officials said. Hans Kristian Gaarder, 60, died days after holding two illegal parties on his property. Several guests have since tested positive for the virus and also gave it to close contacts.

Check Fashion Hotness

Daisy Marquez Smolders In Savage X Fenty Corset Lingerie The thrilling snap was a big hit with Daisy's following, reeling in 100,000 likes overnight. Many of her online admirers and fellow influencers, such as Isabella Buscemi, Nazanin Kavari, Amra Olevic Reyes, and Lydia Barakat, dropped gushing messages in the comments section of the post.

KCK Questions Sweet Life

How Can Honey Never Spoil? I've heard honey never spoils. How is this possible?-Joshua Landis, Kansas City, Kansas Honey has an unusual composition. As you know, it starts with plant nectar before the bees work their magic and the factors that retard spoilage come into play. First, most of the water is evaporated.

Sound Of KC Endures

"Jazz and the Black Aesthetic," American Jazz Museum | KC STUDIO "Jazz and the Black Aesthetic" showcases the visual work of members of the local Black Space Black Art (BSBA) collective but feels like jazz music. From acrylic paintings to 3-D works, the exhibit featured in the American Jazz Museum's Changing Gallery is an interstellar interpretation of jazz music through visual media.

Weather Weirdness This Week

Sunny to start Monday, watching snow chances Tuesday OUT THERE THIS MORNING ABOUT BE A PART OF THAT RACE. RIGHT NOW, WELL, WE STILL HAVE CLOUDS OVERHEAD. A FEW SPRINKLES WELL EAST OF THE METRO AREA. SOME SUNSHINE TRYING TO MIX IN OUT THERE WHERE IT'S 60 DEGREES, WE HAVE A WEST, NORTHWEST WIND CURRENTLY AT NINE MILES AN HOUR.

Calibre 50, Los Dos Carnales - El Mensaje is the song of the day and this is the OPEN THREAD for right now.
New Delhi: Amid the rising COVID-19 infections in the district, the Gautam Buddh Nagar administration has started conducting random COVID-19 tests from Friday onwards.

While addressing the media on Friday, District Magistrate Suhas L Y said, random COVID-19 tests will be conducted at Delhi-Noida border points.

The decision comes amid rising COVID-19 cases in the national capital region. "Number of COVID-19 tests will be increased in areas bordering Delhi. For people commuting to and from Delhi, random tests will be conducted," news agency ANI quoted him as saying.

ALSO READ: Noida Gurudwara provides food to COVID-19 patients and families, leaves netizens impressed

The tests are being conducted at the Delhi-Noida border area.

"This has been done keeping in view that children and youth are also getting infected from the virus in the ongoing second wave of coronavirus," he told reporters.

"Number of beds in hospitals is being increased and there is adequate number of beds but people should not insist on being admitted to any particular hospitals. Arrangement has been made for crucial drugs and oxygen also," Suhas added.

Additionally, the Gautam Buddh Nagar Police in Uttar Pradesh has launched an initiative for facilitating plasma for coronavirus patients, according to officials.

Plasma therapy involves taking antibodies from the blood of a person who has recovered from COVID-19 and transfusing those into a coronavirus-infected patient to help kick-start the immune system to fight the infection.

The police commissionerate has launched a helpline number  8851066433  to connect people in need of plasma with donors, the officials said.

(With Agency inputs)

Live TV
On Christmas Eve, an unexpected storm with massive 40-foot waves left Troy Rabago and his dream sailboat stranded for more than eight hours in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.

Rabago, who's from Kyle, Texas, was sailing from Progreso, in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula back to the Texas coast after retrieving his 35-foot sailboat. He planned to sail with a partner he met on a sailing website, but the man ended up ditching him after one day, according to Rabago's GoFundMe page.

Sailing alone, Rabago fought for his life when the large waves came. He tied his hands to the wheel to keep himself from being thrown in all directions, the GoFundMe page stated. He rode the waves as they crested vertically and crashed while the water completely encompassed the boat. After eight hours of fighting for his life, the storm calmed, leaving him stranded on his inoperative boat.

READ ALSO: Here's why floating caterpillars are all over San Antonio right now

The Texan called for a mayday, hoping someone would come to save him. Several hours later, a Russian tank approached, leaving Rabago to make the hard decision of jumping off his boat, abandoning it in the middle of the ocean. However, not long after he jumped off, he saw fishermen sail up and take his boat, according to the GoFundMe page, which noted it's legal for someone to take a boat if left unattended at sea.

Three days later, Rabago got back to Mexico and dealt with immigration, the army, and so many other organizations who were looking for the man who ditched him sailing and his boat, Rabago told the Coastal Advocacy Adventures podcast last month. After a long and grueling process, he finally flew back home to Texas on New Year's Eve, thinking his boat was somewhere back near Progreso, Mexico. But that wasn't the case.

Come January, the coast guard reached out to Rabago to tell him his boat was about 80 miles away from the coast. By Valentine's Day, it was along the shore near mile marker 4, becoming a spot where tourists and residents took pictures and uploaded them on Facebook.

David Babbitt with Fishing Channel Trident Fishing spotted Rabago cutting up his boat with a chainsaw last weekend, as it's a federal offense to leave a boat washed up on the shore. Babbitt spoke with Rabago, who called his experience "harrowing." Babbitt uploaded the interview on his YouTube channel Tuesday, and it's received more than 6,000 views as of Thursday evening.

A GoFundMe page was made to help raise funds to get the boat off the shore and keep Rabago out of jail. Click here to donate. You can also hear Rabago tell his story on the Coastal Advocacy Adventures podcast.

Check out Babbitt's video below:
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 19) The Filipino medical workforce is not fully armed to face the COVID-19 surge as only 63% of health workers have been vaccinated, according to World Health Organization Representative to the Philippines Dr. Rabindra Abeyasinghe.

In a virtual briefing on Monday, Dr. Abeyasinghe said while immunizing economic frontliners is also part of the vaccine response, the Philippine government must "still prioritize and ensure the full coverage of medical frontliners."

READ: LIST: Priority sectors, subgroups in COVID-19 vaccination program

RELATED: Govt lists down essential workers eligible for vaccine priority

Department of Health Undersecretary Myrna Cabotaje said in a separate briefing that 1.26 million Filipinos already received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine.

Of this total, 960,191 are healthcare workers; 128,018 are senior citizens; and 176,304 are persons with comorbidities.

A total of 191,982 have completed their vaccination against COVID-19.

Dr. Abeyasinghe said he was "happy" that the Philippines has already vaccinated nearly 63% of medical frontline workers, but he said it's still "short of protecting all frontline healthcare workers."

"The current surge demonstrates that medical workers have to be fully protected so that they can work to care for the sick," he said.

"We continue to emphasize -- let's work on a priority basis and move gradually to other groups," the WHO official said.

Cabotaje, however, said vaccine hesitancy among health workers remains.

"Marami pa po sa atin ang may vaccine hesitancy, including sa ating healthcare workers," she said.

[Translation: Many of us still have vaccine hesitancy, including our healthcare workers.]

The Philippines has received a total of 3,025,600 vaccine doses, either through donations or procurement.

The government is hoping to receive the bulk of vaccines by the second half of the year, which can boost its target of inoculating at least 50 million Filipinos this year.
Logitech India, a leading brand in computer peripherals, recently participated in the joint edition of FDCI x Lakme Fashion Week for the very first time, which was held around the second week of March. The brand has a clear and focussed ambition to make deeper connections with young millennials who are looking for simple, minimalistic products that accentuate their lifestyle with the latest in technology and design. To bring in that modern and designer look, the brand has roped in Arpita Mehta to make customised sleeves for their Logitech Pebble mouse M350 and the K380 keyboard.

Also read: Loco and Logitech G join hands to host Indias largest PC tournament

As a brand, Logitech has been committed to bringing unforgettable experiences to their customers. Partnering with a property like the Lakme Fashion Week will serve as an ideal platform par excellence for brands to connect with their target audience and expand their customer base.

In this interaction with Adgully, SrinivasRao Vishnubhotla, Country Head, Logitech India, in a candid conversation spoke about the brands association with well known designer Arpita Mehta and how they plan to expand their product portfolio to meet the discerning consumers with designer products.

Work From Home (WFH) has increased the need to embrace technology. How has the computer peripherals market managed to grow and satisfy the end customers? What kind of strategy did Logitech devise to meet the challenges?

The change in scenarios across the globe has pushed organisations all over the world to adapt and adjust to a new normal  be it work, play, or study. The most prominent of all is the shift in the workplace, which is transitioning at a rapid pace. Our focus is to ensure that our product portfolio caters to both Work from home and Play at home scenarios that meet the pent-up demands of our consumers.

With our vast range of product folio, we aim to offer the users a seamless experience. For instance, the MX Master 3 mice, MX keys, G733 wireless headset, the MK295 mouse, and keyboard combo, are some of the products that allow you to be efficient in the day and ensure a power-packed experience. Our range of mice, keyboards, webcams, headphones are designed to increase efficiency and are dedicated to making tools that make the workspace more comfortable, especially when working long hours. We have also witnessed immense traction in the wireless segment as well considering it has proven to be undeniably easier, faster, and more convenient.

What prompted Logitech to be associated with the Lakme Fashion Week? How are you trying to connect fashion and design to your products to woo the GenNext customers?

As a brand, Logitech has been committed to bringing unforgettable experiences to our consumers that go beyond our product offerings. Our products are made to compliment the lifestyle of the millennials and adapt to their flexible working environments. In sync with this, we constantly strive to associate ourselves with properties that reverberate with the lifestyle of the young audience and highlight Logitechs youthful brand ethos. Associations with a property like the Lakme Fashion Week serve as an ideal platform par excellence for brands to connect with their target audience and expand their customer base.

The intent to associate with Lakme Fashion Week and designer Arpita Mehta has been to bring forth an amalgamation of technology and style that compliments the contemporary lifestyle of our consumers. With this collaboration, we aspire to make deeper connections with young millennials who are looking for simple, minimalistic products that accentuate their lifestyle with the latest in technology and design.

The customised sleeve collection designed by Arpita Mehta perfectly blends the style with the modern and thoughtfully designed Logitech Pebble mouse M350 and the K380 keyboard. The customised sleeves collection is specially curated for people to match their contemporary professional lifestyle and complement the smooth organic shape of the devices for everyday multitasking.

Why have you chosen Arpita Mehta? What kind of value addition will she bring in to capture that style and design into your mouse and keypads? Are you planning to command a premium for these specially designed products?

The unique association between Arpita Mehta and Logitech is aimed at making deeper connections with young millennial who are looking for simple, minimalistic products that accentuate their lifestyle with the latest in technology and design. Inspired by the Logitech Pebble mouse M350 and the K380 keyboard, the customised sleeves collection is especially curated for people to match their contemporary professional lifestyle and complement the smooth organic shape of the devices for everyday multitasking. As the country is adapting to a hybrid working environment, Logitech strives to offer products that fit the curated lifestyle of the customers and allows them to work from anywhere.

How do you plan to promote these designer products? Are such kinds of designer products successful in the overseas markets?

Post the show and the social media visibility, we have seen an increased demand for the specially designed sleeves. Currently, we are looking at select promotions in some markets with these sleeves to maintain a certain degree of exclusivity.

Whats going to be your channel for selling these products? What kind of markets are you planning to explore to sell these designer products?

We are a design-led company, focused on innovation and quality. We design experiences that connect people with the digital world so that they can create, achieve, and enjoy more. The sleeves are a value addition that further accentuates the desirability of our Lifestyle range of products that are available across online and offline channels.

In the long term, how is this association with a designer going to help the brand? Is this a sustainable proposition that will help to strengthen the equity of the brand in a low involvement category?

Logitech keeps millennials at the core of their marketing strategy. I believe, millennials connect better with brands that give them the freedom to evolve their lifestyle. Association with properties like the LFW and designer Arpita Mehta helps not only build brand resonance but brand equity as well. Arpitas sense of creativity in fashion is in sync with Logitechs minimalistic approach and embodies the same brand ethos. With the focus of building a stronger resonance, associations like these will help build a better brand connection and engagement with the millennials.
Faster and cheaper genetic sequencing can give us the ability to test for almost any infectious pathogen  provided we use it.

Why it matters: Doctors never identify the causative agents of many infections, leading them to misdiagnose patients and even miss the early emergence of new diseases, but wider use of genetic sequencing promises a future in which no virus will be left behind.

Driving the news: On Friday, the White House announced the federal government would invest $1.7 billion from the American Rescue Plan to "improve the detection, monitoring and mitigation" of COVID-19 variants, including funding to shore up the country's lagging genomic sequencing efforts.

Context: More widespread genetic sequencing could be the key not just to tracking coronavirus variants, but identifying mysterious pathogens of all kinds: viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites and more.

One example: The Virginia-based startup Aperiomics has developed a massive database of the genetic sequences of tens of thousands of known pathogens.

When doctors are presented with an infection of unknown cause, they can use shotgun metagenomic sequencing  decoding the genes of all organisms in a biological sample  and compare the findings against Aperiomics' list.

If unknown genetic sequences show up, it's a decent clue that doctors could be dealing with something new.

What they're saying: "There is a huge difference between what we know exists and what the existing testing is capable of identifying," Aperiomics CEO Crystal Icenhour says.

What to watch: How quickly improvements in genetic sequencing bring down the costs of such tests, and whether insurance companies will cover them.

Go deeper: Axios' Coronavirus Variant Tracker.
Beth identified the three people killed as 24-year-old Cedric Guston, 26-year-old Atkeem Stevenson and 22-year-old Kevin Donaldson, all of Kenosha. Two of them were shot inside the bar, where one of them fell immediately and the other staggered outside before collapsing. The third man was killed during an exchange of gunfire across the street, Beth said.
Next year. The momentum is there!

Maybe in 3-4 years. There's always some problem.

Not until it's already legal in Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi

Somehow, the legislature will criminalize weed for eternity

Vote

View Results
Letters: Arms deal should be a goal, but it must be verifiable
Burma Japanese Journalist Detained in Myanmar Moved to Prison: Embassy

Yuki Kitazumi / Kyodo

A Japanese freelance journalist detained by security forces in Myanmars largest city Yangon on Sunday has been transferred to prison, the Japanese Embassy in Myanmar said Monday.

Yuki Kitazumi, a former reporter for the Tokyo-based Nikkei business daily who now lives in Yangon, was detained at his house on Sunday night and taken away in a police vehicle, local media reported.

Kitazumi has been moved to Insein prison in Yangon where many political detainees are imprisoned, the embassy said. The reason for his detention is not yet known.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said Monday the embassy is seeking information regarding Kitazumis detention.

We will do our best to protect Japanese nationals in the country, Suga told reporters.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said in a press conference, We are urging the Myanmar government to release the journalist as soon as possible.

Japanese Foreign Ministry officials said they had asked the Myanmar military about the reason for Kitazumis detention and whether he was suffering from any injuries.

The 45-year-old journalist was also briefly detained by security forces while covering an anti-coup protest there on Feb. 26.

His reports have been carried by Japanese media and he has also posted information on the situation in Myanmar on social media.

According to posts on social media, some people saw Kitazumi forced to raise his hands and kneel down by security forces and they brought out cardboard boxes from his house after searching it.

Myanmars ruling military has detained many journalists including foreign nationals since the Feb. 1 coup that ousted the elected government led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

The military has increasingly suppressed free speech by stripping local media companies of their licenses. The military has also restricted use of the internet.



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Myanmar Junta Turns Auspicious New Year into Nightmare of Bloodshed

Hundreds of Villagers Flee After Myanmar Military Raid in Sagaing

Girl, 7, Shot as Myanmar Regime Forces Attack Protesters Near Indian Border
Hyundai Motor Group signed an agreement with local battery manufacturer SK Innovation Company to develop batteries for a new range of Hyundai and Kia hybrid electric vehicles to be launched from 2024.

SK Innovation already supplies batteries for the Kia Soul EV and had previously signed agreements to supply batteries for the forthcoming Hyundai Ioniq 6 and Kia EV6 which will be based on the groups E-GMP dedicated EV platform.

Hyundai will work closely with SK Innovation throughout the entire process from design to production and quality assurance. The two companies aim to develop a safe and cost efficient battery system best suited for hybrid models.

SK Innovation is South Koreas second largest manufacturer of electric vehicle (EV) batteries behind LG Energy Solution.

LG Energy Solution was the manufacturer of the batteries that caused the expensive recall of some 82,000 Hyundai EVs worldwide earlier this year. The supplier agreed to pay 70% of the estimated US$900m cost of replacing the batteries.



Earlier this month LG Energy Solution and SK Innovation settled a long-standing technology infringement dispute in the US with SK Innovation agreeing to pay its domestic rival US$2bn in compensation.
New Delhi, April 19 : The Union Government on Monday announced that everyone above the age of 18 will be eligible to get a vaccine against Covid-19 from May 1. The decision was taken in a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Prime Minister Modi said that the government has been working hard for over a year to ensure that maximum numbers of Indians are able to get the vaccine in the shortest possible time. "India is vaccinating people at world record pace and we will continue this with even greater momentum." The third phase of vaccination, which will start on May 1, aims at liberalised vaccine pricing and scaling up of vaccine coverage. Private Vaccination providers have to transparently declare their self-set vaccination price and the eligibility through this channel would be opened up to all adults everyone above the age of 18.

Vaccine manufacturers are empowered to release up to 50 per cent of their supply to state Governments and in the open market at a pre-declared price. On the other hand, states are empowered to procure additional vaccine doses directly from the manufacturers, as well as open up vaccination to any category of people above the age of 18 for the same.

Vaccination will be provided free of cost to the eligible population as defined earlier which include Health Care Workers (HCWs), Front Line Workers (FLWs) and all people above 45 years of age at Government of India (GoI) vaccination centres.

The division of vaccine supply 50 per cent to GoI and 50 per cent to other than its channel would be applicable uniformly across for all vaccines manufactured in the country.
The story is the only episode in our history where we came so close to destroying the world.

Richard F. Kaufman, a retired Navy commander, examines the development of cruise missiles, the role they played in the Cuban Missile Crisis and the rigors of the Cold War in his new book A One-Way Trip to Death: A Survivors View of Cruise Missiles in the Cuban Missile Crisis (published by Archway Publishing).

An autobiographical sketch of Kaufmans experiences as a Navy guided missile officer and chase pilot for the Regulus cruise missile, the book also covers cruise missiles and other pilots who flew them. At the time, the authors mission was a one-way trip to insure its delivery to a Soviet naval target on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Soviet Union. The story begins with the coming of the first cruise missile; the Kamikaze of World War II. By all standards, it is the first cruise missile controlled by humans who were committed to the death. The epilogue discusses the ultimate cruise missile by the time the Gulf War arrived, and how it arrived as an efficient combat weapon. The long and arduous experiment from the Kamikaze to Regulus, and from Regulus to the ultimate cruise missile had arrived by the time of the Gulf War.

It relates to the fears we have today for nuclear war, Kaufman says of his book. The story is the only episode in our history where we came so close to destroying the world. We learn from the past to live today.

A One-Way Trip to Death is available for purchase online at the Archway link above, at Barnes & Noble and on Amazon at: https://www.amazon.com/One-way-Trip-Death-Survivor%C2%92s-Missiles/dp/1665702451.

A One-Way Trip to Death

By Richard F. Kaufman, Ph.D

Hardcover | 6 x 9 in | 148 pages | ISBN 9781665702447

Softcover | 6 x 9 in | 148 pages | ISBN 9781665702454

E-Book | 148 pages | ISBN 9781665702461

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the Author

Richard F. Kaufman, a United States Navy commander retired in 1970 after serving 24 years of service. He holds the Distinguished Flying Cross along with seven Air Medals received from previous combat duties. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, he was the GMGRU-1 aircraft and missile maintenance officer. Following that event, he was assigned to the Naval Air Systems Command where he received a patent for an Automatic Missile Guidance System, used in several Navy missile systems. Kaufman received his doctorate from the University of Texas in 1974 and continued his career teaching at Texas Christian University and California State University as a full professor. Today he lives in California and is a full professor emeritus.

Simon & Schuster, a company with nearly ninety years of publishing experience, has teamed up with Author Solutions, LLC, the worldwide leader in self-publishing, to create Archway Publishing. With unique resources to support books of all kind, Archway Publishing offers a specialized approach to help every author reach his or her desired audience. For more information, visit archwaypublishing.com or call 844-669-3957.
Eleanor Tomlinson has revealed that she experienced emotional high and lows during the coronavirus pandemic.

Speaking to Radio Times on Tuesday the Poldark star, 28, said of the national lockdown: 'It has been the most extraordinary experience.

'There have been moments of incredible happiness and also times of immense sadness,' she added.

Eleanor Tomlinson has revealed that she experienced emotional high and lows during the coronavirus pandemic

Eleanor continued: 'I yearn for the day we don't have to wear masks any more...To be able to hug someone would be so amazing. I've really missed being able to do that.'

The actress has recently been filming for a new show, The Offenders, for the BBC and Amazon in Bristol.

And she described being on set as a 'welcome reprieve' from the lockdown measures that caused her rollercoaster of emotions.

The Poldark star is set to play one of The Offenders' central characters, Gabby, alongside the legendary American star Christopher Walken, 78, who stars as Frank.

Looking to the future: The star admitted she yearned for the day she'd no longer have to wear her mask and hoped she could hug people soon (pictured with Gabriella Wilde in Poldark)

Eleanor traded her Poldark petticoat and corset for a high-visibility vest as she carried out community service as Gabby, in a Bristol park last Tuesday.

Clutching a takeaway coffee and a hot water bottle, the actress appeared to be in high spirits as she relaxed on set.

Filming for the programme ground to a halt after just 12 days due to health concerns, but work has since continued in earnest as Britain's third national lockdown starts to ease.

Back to work: The actress has recently been filming for a new show, The Offenders, for the BBC and Amazon in Bristol alongside Christopher Walken

Out now: The full interview is available in this week's Radio Times

It's understood that the BBC has already commissioned a second series of the show - - before the first has even finished post-production.

The broadcaster's demand means both series' one and two are being filmed back-to-back in Somerset, with award winning production company Big Talk charged with putting it together.

Reflecting on the BBC's unorthodox decision to commission a second series before gauging the popularity of the first, Big Talk boss Kenton Allen told Deadline: We said, "Well write Season 2 if you commission Season 2".

We were able to rewrite Season 1 to reflect what we know is going to happen to the characters in Season 2. We were able to deepen it and layer it.

The new show will also star Darren Boyd, Gamba Cole, Rhianne Barreto and Clare Perkins.

The full interview is available in this week's Radio Times.
Photo: Glacier Media

Vancouver Police have identified the victim in a fatal gang-related shooting that took place Saturday night outside a restaurant in Coal Harbour.

Police say Harpreet Singh Dhaliwal, 31, was the victim of a targeted shooting that took place at around 8:30 p.m. April 17 near Cardero's restaurant.

Dhaliwal, an Abottsford resident, was pronounced dead at the scene after efforts to revive him weren't successful.

The victim has been linked in the media to the Brothers Keepers gang.

The shooting took place in plain view of the public in the neighbourhood and at the popular waterfront seafood restaurant.

We continue to believe this incident was a targeted killing and that Dhaliwal was the intended victim, says Sergeant Steve Addison, VPD. While we dont think there is an immediate risk to the public, it is always shocking and unnerving when gun violence takes place in such a busy, public place.

Homicide detectives continue to investigate. Anyone with information is encouraged to call the tip line at 604-717-2500 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.

Police are also currently investigating any possible connections to the homicide with a stabbing victim found nearby at around the same time, as well as an attempted traffic stop on a vehicle associated to a gang member near the scene of Dhaliwal's shooting. In that case, the driver failed to stop and instead sped away, crashing the vehicle into the number of poles in Coal Harbour, according to the VPD. Three people fled the crashed car and ran toward the seawall. The driver remains at large.

Dhaliwal's killing is Vancouver's fifth homicide of 2021.
President Joe Biden's newly-appointed UN Ambassador Linda Thomas Greenfield doubled down on anti-American Chinese talking points last Wednesday as per reports.

Townhall reported that Thomas-Greenfield raised during the National Action Network event for Al Sharpton that racism is "woven into" the United States' founding documents. The report cited a tweet of Grabien Media Founder Tom Elliot that included Thomas-Greenfield's video taken during the said event that was viewed 1.2M times.

"Biden's UN ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, tells the National Action Network that if America's going to join the UN's Human Rights Council, we must acknowledge our own failures: 'White supremacy is weaved into our founding documents and principles'," Elliott tweeted on Thursday.

In the video, Thomas-Greenfield emphasized the virtue of humility in admitting America's weaknesses as the country pushes for "a better future."

"We immediately reengaged with the Human Rights Council and have announced our intention to seek election to that body so that we can advance our most cherished democratic values around the globe. Of course when we raise issues of equity and justice at the global scale we have to approach them with humility," Thomas-Greenfield raised.

"We have to acknowledge that we are an imperfect union and have been since the beginning. And every day we strive to make ourselves more perfect and more just," she added. "In a diverse country like ours, that means committing to do the work. It means learning and understanding war, about each other. It means engaging trailblazing groups like yours to teach, grow, to improve. It means not forgetting our past or ignoring our present but keeping both firmly in mind as we push for a better future."

Thomas-Greenfield shared her personal and her own ancestry's experience--her great grandmother--of slavery due to "white supremacy" and cited the many instances of racism experienced by many minorities including the Latino Americans, Muslim Americans, Asian Americans, and Jewish Americans in the United States that has aggravated due to the pandemic along with bullying.

She said these are the very reasons the Biden Administration has made efforts to address discrimination in the country. She revealed that she spoke of these experiences in the United Nations General Assembly and intends to make it the focus of her term there.

Bidens UN ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, tells the National Action Network that if America's going to join the UNs Human Rights Council, we must acknowledge our own failures: White supremacy is weaved into our founding documents and principles pic.twitter.com/bYc5SyWkE1  Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) April 14, 2021

Townhall added that Thomas-Greenfield's "powerful" message actually echoed the sentiments of China who "lectured the U.S." during its meeting in Alaska with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken regarding the Uyghur genocide issue when the U.S. are "slaughtering black people" and are failing in dealing with its own "human rights issues" that allegedly led to the Black Lives Matter movement.

In a prior report, Townhall explained the U.S. left the Human Rights Council in 2018 under the administration of former President Donald Trump not to "retreat from human rights commitment" but to disassociate from a "hypocritical and self-serving organization that makes a mockery of human rights."

Biden reversed in February what Trump did by rejoining the UN Human Rights Council as an "opportunity to speak in the Council" and "introduce resolutions" even though it recognizes that "the Human Rights Council is flawed" and in need of reform especially in line with its anti-Israel policies.

She said racism is not a problem of the person who experiences it but the "problem of the racist" and "of the society that produces the racist."

In the transcript of her interview with Face The Nation on Sunday published by CBS News, Thomas-Greenfield clarified that what she said during the National Action Network event was not a criticism of America but rather an acknowledgment of its history and "imperfections" and that she being a UN Ambassador now is proof of "what our country is about."

"I think we're being tremendous leaders, our country is not perfect, but we continue to perfect it. Those imperfections are part of our history and we have to talk about them. It's- it's our strength that we can talk about our imperfections to the world and call out other nations for those same imperfections. So it's not a- a criticism. It's an acknowledgement of our history. It's an acknowledgement of where we started. But we need to look at where we've come," she stated.
A lawyer for jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, who is in the third week of a hunger strike, says his client looks "bad," raising further concerns over the Kremlin critic's health after he was transferred to a correctional facility hospital amid intensifying pressure from the West.

Lawyer Aleksei Liptser met briefly with Navalny on April 19 and said that even though the situation was "only getting worse," the 44-year-old anti-corruption campaigner said he was determined to continue his hunger strike even though his health was failing.

"The lawyer got to see Navalny for just a few minutes, then he was kicked out with officials citing the end of the working day.... Civilian doctors are still not allowed to see him, and he is not stopping his hunger strike," the coordinator of the network of Navalny's teams across Russia, Leonid Volkov, wrote on Twitter.

Reuters quoted Liptser as saying that Navalny had again been denied a doctor of his choice.

Just before the weekend, Navalny's personal doctor and three other physicians, including a cardiologist, pleaded for access to the 44-year-old in a letter to the Federal Penitentiary Service, saying he could suffer cardiac arrest at "any minute."

Kira Yarmysh, Navalny's spokeswoman, warned over the weekend that the Kremlin critic -- who months earlier fell gravely ill after a poison attack with a chemical nerve agent -- could die within "days" if action wasn't taken soon.

Navalny's case has further isolated Moscow at a time when U.S. President Joe Biden's administration has announced tougher economic sanctions against the Kremlin and the Czech Republic, a member of NATO and the European Union, has expelled Russian spies, accusing Moscow of playing a role in a deadly 2014 explosion at an ammunition storage depot.

Russia's prison service said in a statement that a decision had been taken to transfer Navalny, to a nearby prison hospital and that he was in "satisfactory" condition and was being given "vitamin therapy" with his consent.

Volkov said Navalny was actually moved to the new location on April 18, "as usual, without them telling anyone."

Speaking just ahead of a meeting of foreign ministers from the EU's 27 members, the bloc's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Russian authorities are "responsible for the health situation of Mr Navalny" and should allow doctors to visit him at the hospital.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that what happens to the Kremlin foe in custody "is the responsibility of the Russian government" and the international community will hold the authorities accountable.

"In the interim, our objective is of course continuing to...push for his release and reiterate our view that he must be treated humanely," Psaki said.

Marie Struthers, Amnesty Internationals Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, said the Russian authorities "cannot escape the global scrutiny that their appalling treatment of Aleksei Navalny has invited."

We address all of our supporters, national governments, and international bodies to join our call for Navalnys immediate release, and urgent medical attention by independent doctors of his choice to save his life, Struthers added.

The announcement of the move and the designation of his condition as "satisfactory" did little to allay the fears of Navalny's associates.

The assessment of his health, some noted, was the same as the one given before Navalny launched a hunger strike that has seen his weight drop sharply to 76 kilograms, 17 kilos less than when he entered the notorious Correctional Colony No. 2, about 100 kilometers from Moscow.

Others warned of the conditions at the facility where Navalny had been transferred.

"That hospital is located on the territory of the maximum security Correctional Colony No. 3.... That place is used to break certain inmates, and even those inmates who were dying [of illnesses] tried to avoid being transferred to that facility. There are no physicians or nurses there. I do not know how [Navalny] is going to receive treatment there," Dmitry Dyomushkin, an outspoken Russian nationalist who once served time in the Correctional Colony No. 2 told Current Time on April 19.

Some Russian media reports cited other former inmates in the past who backed up Dyomushkin's comments about Correctional Colony No.3.

"Aleksei was not transferred to a hospital -- he was transferred to another penal colony - to IK-3, to a prison where TB [tuberculosis] is treated! This is not at all a hospital where they can diagnose and prescribe treatment for his problems. We urgently demand to be allowed to hold a consultation by us, the doctors who have treated him," the team of Navalny's personal doctor, Anastasia Vasilyeva, said on Twitter on April 19.

Last week Vasilyeva was detained and then fined for showing up at the prison, where she asked to be allowed to examine Navalny.

Navalny was arrested in January on his arrival from Germany, where he was treated after being poisoned in Siberia in August 2020 with what was defined by European labs as a Novichok nerve agent. He has accused Putin of ordering the poisoning, which the Kremlin has denied.

A Moscow court in February converted a 3 1/2-year suspended sentence on a charge that Navalny and his supporters call politically motivated to real jail time, saying he broke the terms of the original sentence by leaving Russia for Germany for the life-saving treatment he received.

The court reduced the time Navalny must spend in prison to just over 2 1/2 years because of time already served in detention.

A close ally of Navalny's on April 19 rang the alarm about the opposition leader's health, saying there was "no hope" of good news.

"We don't know what happened to him over the weekend because the lawyers aren't allowed to visit him then. I hope we will get some news today but I'm very afraid to receive bad news," Lyubov Sobol told Ekho Moskvy radio station.

Sobol said Navalny was "under heavy psychological pressure and hard physical conditions in the penal colony," where he was placed in a group of inmates who cooperate with the prison administration and who keep him constantly under surveillance, regularly reporting to the administration about him."

On April 18, Navalny's allies called on people to stage massive protests across the country on April 21 before Navalny is harmed "irreparably."

Early on April 19, Vladimir Milov, a close associate of Navalny, announced he had fled the country to keep from getting arrested.

He said that his efforts were focused on gathering international support in order to press the Russian authorities to release Navalny.

With reporting by Reuters and Current Time
OTTAWA - The first federal budget in more than two years extends Ottawas COVID-19 "lifeline" for those still struggling after a difficult year  including aid for laid-off workers  another few months as it aims to pull Canada through the pandemic once and for all.

Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland listens to a questionduring a news conference in Ottawa, Monday April 19, 2021. Freeland will deliver the government's first budget since the COVID-19 pandemic began. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

OTTAWA - The first federal budget in more than two years extends Ottawas COVID-19 "lifeline" for those still struggling after a difficult year  including aid for laid-off workers  another few months as it aims to pull Canada through the pandemic once and for all.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freelands first crack at a budget plan is also widely viewed as a pre-election platform. There is more than $100 billion in new spending over the next three years targeting a wide variety of voters. There are promises for seniors and their caregivers, working parents, students and business owners.

"This budget is about finishing the fight against COVID," Freeland said Monday in her speech in the House of Commons.

"It's about healing the economic wounds left by the COVID recession. And it's about creating more jobs and prosperity for Canadians in the days and decades to come."

Freeland is also looking ahead to the post-pandemic Canada the Liberals want to see, one that has $10-a-day childcare, the ability to produce its own vaccines, national standards for long-term care homes and small- and medium-sized businesses equipped with the workers and technology they need to survive.

Canadas net debt is now over $1 trillion for the first time ever, after a $354 billion deficit for the pandemic year just over. It is expected to keep climbing with deficits of nearly $155 billion this year, and $60 billion in 2022-23.

That is driven in part by $101.4 billion in new spending over the next three years, including costs to maintain federal wage and rent subsidies and employment benefits until September, rather than cutting them off in June. The raging third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted many parts of the country to revive or renew restrictions.

Genevieve Tellier, a political scientist at the University of Ottawa, said the budget is a bit more clearly an election plan than she expected.

"If you are elderly, if you are a student, if you are a worker that has lost your job, if you are a worker that has a job, if you are a small-business owner, there's something probably for you with that budget," she said. "So in that sense, it's very 'electoraliste,' as we say in French."

The budget's marquee entry is what Freeland calls a "generational investment" in child care, a $30-billion spend over five years that will first try to cut fees for regulated child care spaces in half by the end of 2022, aiming for them to be $10 a day within five years. The program will have a long-term annual cost of almost $9 billion.

It also seeks to address some of Canada's biggest nightmares of the pandemic, namely vaccine production and long-term care. Freeland is proposing to invest another $2.2 billion in life sciences and vaccine manufacturing over the next seven years, and $3 billion over five years to help the provinces implement national standards in long-term care.

The Liberal government is waiving interest payments on federal student loans for another year, expanding sick leave benefits under employment insurance, and boosting the tax credit for low-income workers.

Tellier said that last tax credit is the closest the Liberals have come to a guaranteed livable income.

The Liberals are also offering some aid for small- and medium-sized businesses to invest in new technology and hire young people trained in how to implement it.

There is also the promise of a greener, cleaner Canada, with a promise of more than $17 billion in climate change programs, much of it in the form of incentives to encourage heavy industry to curb their emissions and grow Canada's clean technology sector.

All of it comes with a pandemic-sized asterisk that things could still change drastically if vaccine supplies are delayed or they prove not to work that well against emerging variants of the virus. The budget includes alternative scenarios that show where the fiscal picture might go if the worst-case scenarios of the pandemic play out.

Those risks seem even more real as the country is battling the worst wave of the pandemic yet with record hospitalizations and patients in critical care, and doctors and nurses warning repeatedly of a health-care system on the brink of collapse.

Freeland acknowledged the weight the pandemic continues to bear on Canadians.

"We are all tired, and frustrated, and even afraid, she said. "But we will get through this."

Whether Canada gets through it without a federal election is the next question to be asked. Opposition parties all rejected the idea of going to the polls for now but NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh seems to be the one under the greatest pressure.

Singh said earlier this year he would support the government because a pandemic election is in nobody's best interest, and maintained that stance Monday.

"We are not going to make an irresponsible decision," he said.

Singh's biggest criticism of the budget was the lack of any new taxes to go after the "ultra rich," corporations and elite business owners who have made millions of dollars while millions of Canadians suffered.

The closest the budget got to Singh's request is a tax on luxury purchases.

Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole and Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet both presented amendments they intend to demand to garner their support. For O'Toole it was an overhaul of the planned child-care program, and Blanchet wants more money for provincial health transfers and additional aid for seniors.

Both also said Singh had taken any pressure off them to vote for the budget to avoid an election.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 19, 2021.

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. An earlier version incorrectly reported that the budget contained $100 million in spending over next three years.
HALIFAX - Seven new cases of COVID-19 were reported in Nova Scotia on Sunday, bring the province's total number of active infections to 49.

Dr. Strang, Nova Scotia chief medical officer of health, right, and Premier Iain Rankin field questions after a tour of a COVID-19 vaccination clinic in Halifax on Friday, April 16, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

HALIFAX - Seven new cases of COVID-19 were reported in Nova Scotia on Sunday, bring the province's total number of active infections to 49.

Health officials said four of the most recent cases were in the Halifax area, with two close contacts of previously reported cases, one related to international travel and the other under investigation.

The three other cases were in the eastern health zone and are related to travel outside of Atlantic Canada.

Officials said one of the close contact cases in the Halifax area involved a second staff member at Glasgow Hall, a long-term care home in Dartmouth.

As a precaution, officials said residents were being isolated and cared for in their rooms and the facility is closed to visitors and designated caregivers.

All residents have been tested and officials said testing was completed Saturday for all staff who are close contacts of the two employees who tested positive.

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for Nova Scotia Health confirmed another health care worker in the Halifax area had recently tested positive for COVID-19.

In a brief interview Sunday, Wendy Walters said eight co-workers were also self isolating as a result of the positive finding.

Walters said public health officials were still investigating the case.

She would not discuss any other details, including where the health care worker is employed, citing privacy concerns.

"The challenge of this case is that it is one (case) and the employee is protected under their personal health information," said Walters.

Unrelated to the cases identified Sunday, officials confirmed the results of previous testing that identified 22 new variant cases, including the first case of the mutation first identified in Brazil.

Chief medical officer of health Dr. Robert Strang said while more cases have been confirmed as variants, it was a good sign that they are mainly linked to travel.

"We are detecting them through testing and containing them before they can spread widely within Nova Scotia," Strang said in a news release. "This is another reminder why it's important for people to not travel unless it's absolutely necessary."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 18, 2021.
For further information on this analysis, Cyber Threat Intelligence to Power the Next Generation of Cybersecurity , please visit: http://frost.ly/5ka

"With the growing cost of cybercrime and increasing confrontations between geopolitical rivals in the cyber domain, organizations turn to CTI providers to learn the modus operandi of attackers and increase their chances of anticipating and preventing damages," said Mikita Hanets, Cybersecurity Research Analyst at Frost & Sullivan. "Customer demand for consolidated solutions that are more affordable and easier to use is encouraging vendors to address several intelligence needs at once. As a result, most vendors aim to provide insights about relevant cyber activity and take a more active role in operationalizing threat intelligence with either homegrown software or partnerships with other security vendors."

Hanets added: "The emergence of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model presents new opportunities for CTI vendors. A growing number of threat intelligence providers are repositioning themselves as SaaS vendors that support a range of intelligence-related use cases."

Market participants should focus on the following growth opportunities:

Expansion into the digital risk protection (DRP) market : Convergence between the CTI and DRP segments will help vendors become go-to suppliers of CTI, ranging from indicator of compromise feeds to information about leaked credentials. It will also allow them to penetrate the midmarket with DRP use cases and upsell other intelligence products over time.

: Convergence between the CTI and DRP segments will help vendors become go-to suppliers of CTI, ranging from indicator of compromise feeds to information about leaked credentials. It will also allow them to penetrate the midmarket with DRP use cases and upsell other intelligence products over time. Broadeninto the threat intelligence platforms (TIP) market: The addition of use cases going from the aggregation of threat feeds to basic threat hunting functionality will enable CTI vendors to provide a comprehensive SaaS offering that enables customers to access threat intelligence and operationalize it on a single platform.

The addition of use cases going from the aggregation of threat feeds to basic threat hunting functionality will enable CTI vendors to provide a comprehensive SaaS offering that enables customers to access threat intelligence and operationalize it on a single platform. Partnerships with security vendors: Security vendors should market a more expensive version of the product (e.g., endpoint security) enhanced by threat intelligence in collaboration with one or several CTI vendors. These partnerships would enable threat intelligence providers to drive revenue growth and increase market share.

Cyber Threat Intelligence to Power the Next Generation of Cybersecurity is the latest addition to Frost & Sullivan's Security research and analyses available through the Frost & Sullivan Leadership Council, which helps organizations identify a continuous flow of growth opportunities to succeed in an unpredictable future.

About Frost & Sullivan

For 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

Cyber Threat Intelligence to Power the Next Generation of Cybersecurity

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A GARDA was struck in the chest in the back seat of a patrol car en route to Henry Street garda station, Kilmallock Court heard.

Eriks Koleda, aged 23, of The Haymarket, Cathedral Place, Limerick city pleaded guilty to assault.

Inspector Pat Brennan said an off-duty garda observed an intoxicated male drinking a can of beer.

"He got into a car, drove off at speed with no lights on. Henry Street garda station was contacted," said Insp Brennan.

The court heard that Mr Koleda was later arrested by Garda Eoin Dillon.

"While en route to Henry Street a slight struggle took place in the rear seat of the car. Garda Dillon was struck in the chest," said Insp Brennan.

Michael ODonnell, solicitor for Mr Koleda, said his client is very apologetic.

"On the day he didnt know whether he was coming or going. He had an amount of drink. He is a 23-year-old Latvian national," said Mr ODonnell.

The solicitor said Mr Koleda had received some sad family news earlier that day.

"He drank a lot of cider. He has learned his lesson," said Mr ODonnell.

Judge Patricia Harney said Garda Dillon has not made much of the incident.

"I have to take account of that," said Judge Harney, who fined Mr Koleda 250 for assault.
Shawn Paul Jones, author of Life and a Silver Spoon, has completed his new book A Haunted House in Kansas: a thrilling horror story that introduces the Smith family who have just moved into an old farmhouse that is rumored to be haunted. Mere ghost stories from the local townspeople become the horrifying reality of the Smith family as they encounter supernatural phenomena that will terrify them for the rest of their lives.

Jones writes, The snow drifted slowly down under a dark and low sky. A slight breeze was in the air, and it cried across the eaves and downspouts and gables of the old house in a way that could be taken for the sound of someone whispering to you if you were staying out at this place all by yourself in the middle of the night. Up and down the long and vacant hallways and in the empty rooms, boards would creak, and they would sound like someone prowling and stalking the place. In closets, old wooden shelf supports groaned. And as the sun had begun to go down and the shadows began to come out along the corners and angles of the walls, one could feel this house seeming to come alive somehow, in a suggestible sense where any sound or noise could be taken to be anything your mind imagined it to be.

Published by Page Publishing, Shawn Paul Joness thrilling tale shares the Smith familys journey as they face horrors beyond their worst nightmares.

Readers who wish to experience this chilling work can purchase A Haunted House in Kansas at bookstores everywhere, or online at the Apple iTunes Store, Amazon, Google Play, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or media inquiries, contact Page Publishing at 866-315-2708.

About Page Publishing:

Page Publishing is a traditional, full-service publishing house that handles all the intricacies involved in publishing its authors books, including distribution in the worlds largest retail outlets and royalty generation. Page Publishing knows that authors need to be free to create, not mired in logistics like eBook conversion, establishing wholesale accounts, insurance, shipping, taxes, and so on. Pages accomplished writers and publishing professionals allow authors to leave behind these complex and time-consuming issues and focus on their passion: writing and creating. Learn more at http://www.pagepublishing.com.


Mumbai, April 19 : TV star Shubhangi Atre is currently quarantined after testing Covid positive, says isolation has made her a selfie addict.

"I'm missing my shoots. I now feel I am addicted to face camera in my phone because I am stuck in my room. Since I can't leave my room to roam around in the house, this isolation has taken a toll on me," Shubhangi tells IANS.

In fact, the actress, who plays Angoori Bhabhi on the popular sitcom "Bhabhi ji Ghar Par Hai!" says she has become quite the "selfie queen" lately.

"I am hooked on clicking my own selfies that I can safely say that I am a selfie queen now," laughs Shubhangi, adding:" Earlier I use to make fun of people clicking too many selfies but now have explored that it is actually a fun task." The doctor has suggested that the actress should keep herself occupied with happy thoughts, and the actress keeps herself busy revisiting memories.

"I revisit my childhood days and teenage by watching old albums. It helping cheer me up. I really miss my parents. I still feel like a baby who will cry to reach her parents," she says.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Israeli youths without face masks enjoy the sunny day in Tel Aviv's beach, Israel, Sunday, April 18, 2021. AP



Israelis stepped into the streets without masks on Sunday for the first time in a year, a key milestone as the country vaccinates its way out of a coronavirus nightmare.



"It's very strange but it's very nice," said Eliana Gamulka, 26, after getting off a bus near the busy Jerusalem shopping boulevard of Jaffa Street and removing her face covering.



"You can't pretend that you don't know anyone any more," she smiled.



With over half the population fully vaccinated in one of the world's fastest anti-Covid 19 inoculation campaigns, the health ministry announced on Thursday that masks would no longer be required in public outdoor spaces.



For Gamulka, a project manager, the good news came at the perfect time: just two weeks before her wedding.



It will be "very nice to celebrate with everyone, now without masks," she said. "The pictures will be great! I'm very relieved. We can start living again."



The vaccination of close to five million people has sent Israel's coronavirus caseload tumbling from some 10,000 new infections per day as recently as mid-January, to around 200 cases a day.



That has allowed the re-opening of schools, bars, restaurants and other indoor gatherings  although masks are still required in indoor public spaces.



And even before Health Minister Yuli Edelstein's announcement came into effect, punters in the popular bars of Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market were mask-free and smiling on Thursday evening.



Yet on Sunday, office worker Ester Malka said she wasn't quite ready to let down her guard.



"We're allowed, but I'm still afraid, I got used to (wearing a mask)," she said.



"I feel like it's part of my life. We'll see what happens when everyone has taken them off. If it goes well for a couple of months, then I'll remove mine."



Mass vaccination



Israel just months ago had the world's highest infection rate, a coronavirus outbreak that left 6,300 people dead among 836,000 cases.



But the Jewish state sent its coronavirus caseload tumbling after striking a deal for a vast stock of Pfizer/BioNTech jabs.





People without face masks hang out in downtown Tel Aviv, Israel, Sunday, April 18, 2021. AP
[April 19, 2021] RESCHOOL Launches DISCOVER Learning Resource to Support Families in Finding Activities Year Round When Their Children Aren't in School

RESCHOOL, a Colorado-based nonprofit that creates equitable access to learning that happens in and beyond school, is excited to launch DISCOVER, a free, online and mobile-friendly tool for families to easily learn about organizations providing learning resources and activities for children, ages birth to 18, when they aren't in school. In a 2019 Colorado statewide study RESCHOOL conducted with its partners at the OMNI Institute, 75% of the 200 parents surveyed said they struggled finding learning activities for their children when they were not in school. Parents also reported that it is hard to find affordable programming and scholarships, and programming that is conveniently located, interesting to their child, age-appropriate, and/or that reflects their culture, values and identity. DISCOVER gives parents a snapshot of this information and contact information so they can learn more about the organization and sign up for programming. DISCOVER can help families find out-of-school learning opportunities that are in-person, live or pre-recorded online as well as activities their children can experience at home. More than 55 organizations are listed on the site across various categories including academic support, arts, community engagement, life skills, physical activity and outdoors, and STEM. Approximately 49 of these organizations offer free programming or scholarships, and RESCHOOL is adding more every day. The majority of programming on DISCOVER right now is based in the Denver Metro area,and RESCHOOL is looking into expanding the site to include programming in additional regions of Colorado in the near future. DISCOVER also makes it easy for families to see if organizations have expertise in supporting children with disabilities, find organizations who have leaders that identify similarly to their children and determine whether there is language support in a child's primary language.



"COVID-19 not only dramatically changed what in-school learning looked like, it also shut down child care and out-of-school learning programs forcing families and providers to adapt in a wide variety of ways," said Amy Anderson, Executive Director at RESCHOOL. "We saw providers create take-home activity kits that families could safely pick up, curriculum being adapted to be accessed online, and providers re-constructing their physical spaces to make them safe when limited, in-person activities were allowed. Meanwhile, families made choices and accessed learning that was safest and made the most sense for their situations. There are so many factors that go into choosing activities for your kids, and so many great options out there. We want to make it as easy as possible to connect families and learning providers." Seeing the need for a tool that highlights activities anytime throughout the year when kids and teens aren't in school, and one that highlights in-person, online and take-home activities, RESCHOOL developed DISCOVER to replace Blueprint4SummerCO, the growing online tool it ran for three years.

Remote learning and child care challenges created by COVID-19 only underscored the complexities that families already manage when it comes to finding and choosing learning options for their children. "Since 2014, RESCHOOL has been co-creating resources and services with families to make accessing meaningful learning for their children easier," said Anderson. "DISCOVER was developed after learning from families about what kind of tool would be most useful to them when they are searching for out-of-school activities that meets both the parents' needs and sparks their children's interests and passions." COVID has impacted families financially as well, oftentimes leaving less money to put towards activities outside of school. Since 2018, RESCHOOL has raised and distributed nearly $140,000 to eliminate financial barriers for children to access activities with fees and to reduce the costs organizations incur to provide free out-of-school programming to kids and teens. RESCHOOL hopes to raise and distribute nearly $400,000 in learning and provider dollars in 2021. Many organizations have also struggled to provide affordable programming after a year of having to run programs at partial capacity or incur additional costs to adapt programming to be available online or at-home, and as a result don't have much left in their budget for advertising. RESCHOOL makes it free for local learning providers to list their organization on DISCOVER, giving them access to additional free marketing opportunities and exposure to more families in the Denver Metro area. About RESCHOOL RESCHOOL believes that learning happens everywhere. When young people experience a variety of opportunities that they drive, they THRIVE. We know inequities exist. We work alongside a variety of people to address inequities in our educational system both in and outside of schools so all young people have the resources to access the learning experiences they choose. Learn more about our work here, check out DISCOVER here, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005280/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
A man sentenced to 15 years in prison for raping and sexually assaulting his daughter on a repeated basis over a 12-year period has appealed against the severity of his jail term for the offences.

The man, who told gardai he had regarded the girl as his daughter by day and partner by night, had pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court in October 2018 to 21 sample charges including rape, attempted rape and sexual assault at locations in Dublin and Leinster on dates between January 2006 and December 2017.

His daughter was aged between five and 17 years at the time of the offences.

The man, who cannot be named in order to protect the victims identity, also pleaded guilty to three counts of assault causing harm to his daughter on dates between June 2016 and December 2017.

The 54-year-old was sentenced to 18 years in prison with the final three years suspended.

Counsel for the man, Caroline Biggs SC, told the Court of Appeal on Monday that the main ground of appeal was that the sentencing judge, Mr Justice Michael White, had erred in principle by fixing a life sentence as the appropriate headline sentence.

While the case contained a serious and appalling set of circumstances, which included encouraging the victim to consume alcohol and watch pornography and a horrific breach of trust of a father-daughter relationship, Ms Biggs said the judge had erred by finding the offences were at the very apex of the serious offence of rape.

She suggested the appropriate headline sentence should have been in the range of between 10 and 15 years.

Ms Biggs said Mr Justice White had also given insufficient credit to the many mitigating factors in the case including the mans early guilty plea and his full co-operation with gardai.

She said the man had accepted the blame was all his and had left the family home immediately after the offences had been reported and became homeless.

The barrister said there had been a history of the man being defiled by male members of his own family.

She claimed similar cases in terms of gravity had received headlines sentences of 10-15 years.

However, the President of the Court of Appeal, Mr Justice George Birmingham, presiding, with Mr Justice John Edwards and Mr Justice Maurice Collins, said he found the ground of appeal against the headline sentence of a life sentence was very surprising given the offences were among the most serious cases that the courts have had to deal with.

Mr Justice Birmingham said the DPP would have been pushing an open door in appealing on grounds of leniency if a headline sentence of 10-15 years had been fixed.

Counsel for the DPP, Conor Devally, SC, argued there had been no error in fixing a headline sentence of life imprisonment given the large number of aggravating factors in the case.

The Court of Appeal reserved its ruling in the case until a later date.
The investment is part of the " Bio-based circular solutions to decarbonize the local economy " project and has a value of over 1.65 million euros. The project is supported by a grant of EUR 744.000 provided by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the EEA and Norwegian Financial Mechanism 2014-2021, within the "SMEs Growth Romania" program. The project is developed in partnership with the Norwegian company BioBag.

The new Bio Compounds division will start the production of BioMateris in 2022, a raw material used in the production of compostable packaging. Since Romania is one of the key producers of agricultural outputs within the European Union, Promateris aims to encourage and participate in the development of a strong local bioeconomy and an efficient use of natural resouce.

Moreover, the integration of local agricultural chains enables manufacturers of bio-based and compostable packaging to reduce their carbon footprint and to create a stronger local circular economy.

BioMateris is the result of continuous investments in the company's R&D department, as well as the result of several partnerships with research institutes. BioMateris will be used to develop products for the following industries: agriculture (mulch film), retail and HoReCa (food packaging), bio-waste management (bin liners) etc. Promateris has more than 50 years of tradition in the manufacturing of technical & specialty polymer-based compounds, an experience that will strongly benefit the development of this new division.

Promateris is a leading European manufacturer of sustainable products and solutions for the circular economy. With a history of more than 60 years in packaging manufacturing, Promateris gained regional leadership and top manufacturing expertise in chemical engineering.

Promateris Group invests in developing sustainable packaging products and solutions for the circular economy, R&D and end-of-life solutions. The company also operates a plant dedicated to manufacturing specialty compounding for technical applications. Active in Bucharest, Valencia and Athens through commercial offices, and through distributors in more than 20 countries and 3 continents.

Photo- https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1487807/promateris_group.jpg

SOURCE Promateris
Karel Appel moved to Paris (then the European hub for the arts) in 1950. In Paris, he meets artists from all over the world, including the Chinese artist Walasse Ting and the American Sam Francis. The artists influence and inspire each other and they form close friendship. In Paris, they lived a poor but bohemian life.

In 1957, Appel travels to New York, and arrives in the middle of a vibrant art scene, with the rise of Pop Art and the American Abstract Expressionism. He paints a series of portraits of famous jazz musicians in the studio of his friend Sam Francis. Walasse Ting also moves to New York in 1958 and together with Sam Francis develops the idea for a book that should capture the zeitgeist of the visual arts: 'One Cent Life'. The book finally appears in 1964 and includes 68 color lithographs of the various artist friends, including, besides Ting and Francis, Karel Appel, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and many others.

After many years of living in New York, as of 1989 Ting starts to divide his time between New York and Amsterdam and is re-united with his good friend Karel Appel. On two occasions they paint together in a studio at the Weteringcircuit in Amsterdam, arranged by Gallery Delaive. Appel & Friends shows a selection of work by Karel Appel, together with works by Walasse Ting and Sam Francis.

Gallery Delaive  www.delaive.com

SOURCE Gallery Delaive
Access Garage Doors Celebrates Nationwide Expansion With New Franchise in Kentucky

Essential and Affordable Franchise Brand Awards New Location in Central Kentucky

April 19, 2021 // Franchising.com // CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. - Access Garage Doors is proud to welcome a new location in Central Kentucky, including Richmond and Lexington, owned by entrepreneur and military veteran, Nick Clapper.

Access Garage Doors specializes in offering homeowners a comprehensive selection of services to repair existing equipment, as well as a wide selection of high-quality new garage doors and openers. Access Garage Doors is a Master Authorized Clopay dealer and an Authorized Service Provider for LiftMaster, Home Depot, Genie, Clopay, and Amarr.

With more than 15 years of experience in the garage door industry, Access Garage Doors has built a solid reputation for its dedication to customer service and quality workmanship. Access upholds its core brand values with each new local franchise that it launches. The newest location in Central Kentucky welcomes the 10th nationwide franchise to the Access family.

We have awarded 10 franchises within the last 15 months of franchise offerings, said Jesse Cox, President and CEO of Access Garage Doors. Although we are experiencing early success regarding newly awarded franchises, the franchise team including myself, feel that it is imperative to stay dedicated to retaining a healthy growth pace that sustains and facilitates the quality of our program. The experience and focus that Nick Clapper brings to his franchise, combined with the proven Access Garage Doors business model create an unstoppable team to serve the Central Kentucky region.

The companys industry-leading training program opens the door to success for new franchisees with 30-60 days of training from home and pre-development from home, followed by 10 full days of hands-on instruction, sales, marketing, and additional training at the company headquarters in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

I liked Access Garage Doors right from the start, said Clapper. Their business model and approach to sales and corporate support just made sense to me. While visiting the company headquarters, I was also able to see a training class in action, and I was sold on the hands-on instruction and attention to the smallest details. Im excited to bring the Access brand to Central Kentucky.

SOURCE Access Garage Doors

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Lady Victoria Hervey looked sensational in a tiny gold bikini as she flaunted her physique while playing with a dog on the beach in LA on Monday.

The 44-year-old socialite appeared to be in great spirits as she frolicked in Malibu.

She soaked up the sun in the yellow rhinestone bikini top that drew attention to her petite frame.

Wow! Lady Victoria Hervey looked sensational in a tiny gold bikini as she flaunted her physique while playing with a dog on the beach on Monday

Victoria put her taut midriff on display in a pair of matching bottoms with gems and ties at either side.

The British beauty carried a pair of sunglasses and added a touch of glam to her look with an array of rings and bracelets.

She appeared to go make-up free and let the wind blow through her golden tresses as she walked and threw a ball for a dog.

Victoria was not wearing a mask on her outing after recently admitting she doesn't agree with them.

Flaunt it: The 44-year-old socialite appeared to be in great spirits as she frolicked in Malibu, California, wearing a yellow rhinestone bikini top that drew attention to her petite frame

'I'm not going to lie, I never wear one,' she told The Daily Mail earlier this month, adding that she 'storms out' of any shops that ask her to put one on.

Even so, she went into business supplying PPE at the start of the pandemic, but insisted that she isn't a hypocrite.

'I did a little bit of a pivot,' she said. 'But no, it doesn't! I was selling it to hospitals, not to people out walking their dogs or shopping.'

Asked if she would ever take the Covid vaccine, she scoffed: 'No way!

'It's a personal thing, and my mother's had hers, but at my age I really believe in natural immunity.'

Playing: Victoria put her taut midriff on display in a pair of matching bottoms with gems and ties at either side as she threw a ball for a dog

She admitted that Project Baby had also influenced her thinking  as she has a prospective sperm donor/father lined up.

Six of her eggs were frozen and stored three years ago, at a cost of 11,000, and she spent the time afterwards looking for a donor.

'I had a friend who was going to be my sperm donor. He was going to be involved in my child's life, but as a friend, not a partner,' she explained.

'And I was supposed to be pregnant now. But then Covid happened, which was a big blow, but looking back I'm really grateful I didn't do it with that person. He just wasn't right.'

Victoria revealed she has since found someone, but is keeping their identity secret.
The need for both townships and municipalities has long been a question which has been debated. Everyone in the county lives in a township, but not everyone lives in a city or village. Shaw said when townships were established, the area was more rural and basic needs were met by the broader township government. That is changing.
The North Carolina Department of Insurance has ended its legal dispute with the North Carolina Rate Bureau on its proposed 18.7% dwelling insurance rate increase, averting a potentially costly administrative battle with insurance companies, NCDOI said in a statement.

The dwelling insurance settlement will result in an overall statewide increase of 7.6%  no more than a $25 increase in premium on the base rate, according to the department.

The hearing scheduled for Jan. 18, 2022 has been canceled.

I am happy to announce that North Carolina consumers will save nearly $33 million a year in premium payments compared to what the Rate Bureau had requested, Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey said. I am also glad the Department of Insurance has avoided a lengthy administrative legal battle which could have cost consumers time and money.

On Dec. 14, 2020, NCRB, which represents companies writing property insurance in North Carolina and is not a part of the N.C. Department of Insurance, proposed a 18.7% statewide overall increase in dwelling insurance rates. After studying the data, a settlement was negotiated for an overall statewide increase of 7.6%.

Dwelling insurance policies are not homeowners policies. Dwelling policies are for owner-occupied residences of no more than four units, including rental properties, investment properties and other properties that are not occupied full time by the property owner.

The increase will take effect on new and renewed policies beginning Nov. 1.

Mobile Home Insurance

Causey has set Jan. 18, 2022, as the hearing date for the NCRBs proposed overall statewide average of 24.9% increase for MH-F (Fire) policies and an overall statewide average of 11.3% increase for MH-C (Casualty) policies.

We are not in agreement with the Rate Bureaus proposed increases filed December 14, 2020. The next step, according to statute, is to set a hearing date, said Causey. It is now necessary to hold a hearing to reach a resolution that will make the most financial sense for our residents and insurance companies.

The hearing will begin at 10 a.m. in the Second Floor Hearing Room in the Albemarle Building, 325 N. Salisbury St., Raleigh, N.C.

The hearing will be held unless NCDOI and NCRB are able to negotiate a settlement before that date. State law gives the insurance commissioner 45 days to issue an order once the hearing concludes.

Once the order is issued, NCRB has the right to appeal the decision before the N.C. Court of Appeals. A Court of Appeals order could then be appealed to the N.C. Supreme Court.

Source: North Carolina Department of Insurance

Topics Trends North Carolina Pricing Trends
Talks between top advisers to the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany to cool tensions in eastern Ukraine yielded few tangible results, diplomats said on April 19, as the EU warned a Russian military buildup near Ukraine's borders could spark a larger conflagration.



Speaking after EU foreign ministers were briefed by Ukraine's foreign minister, the bloc's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called on Russia to pull back troops amassed near Ukraines border and in occupied Crimea amid concerns over Moscows intentions.



A fragile cease-fire negotiated last summer in eastern Ukraine between government forces and Russia-backed separatists has unraveled in recent weeks, leaving at least 30 Ukrainian soldiers killed since the start of the year. On April 19, Ukraines army said one soldier was killed and one more wounded after their positions were attacked with automatic grenade launchers on April 18.



"The risk of further escalation is evident," said Borrell.



It is the highest military deployment of the Russian army on the Ukrainian borders ever. Its clear that its a matter of concern when you deploy a lot of troops," Borrell said. Well, a spark can jump here or there.



Borrell said more than 150,000 Russian troops had gathered near Ukraine and in Crimea, but the EUs foreign policy service later issued a correction putting the figure at more than 100,000 troops.



The United States and NATO say the Russian military buildup is the largest since 2014, when Moscow illegally annexed Crimea and backed separatists in the east of Ukraine in a conflict that has killed more than 13,000 people.



The Kremlin denies its military movements are a threat and maintains its a sovereign issue.

Ukraines Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba urged the EU to prepare "a new set of sectoral sanctions" against Russia in talks with his counterparts from the 27-nation bloc.



But Borrell said no further sanctions were being proposed or under consideration. Diplomats suggested that for the moment the EU would seek to apply pressure on Russia through more diplomacy.



But the diplomatic front appeared to make little, if any, progress.



Top political advisers to the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany held separate talks under the so-called Normandy Format, but diplomats said they yielded no tangible results.



The Normandy Format has brought together the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine.



Following the political advisers meeting, a Ukrainian statement said all sides reaffirmed their commitment to reaching a cease-fire in eastern Ukraine and would continue to work on the issue.



The talks come after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron met in Paris last week. They were joined by German Chancellor Angela Merkel via video link.



Zelenskiy said while in Paris that the goal of the political advisers meeting was to revive implementation of the so-called Minsk Agreements, aimed at reaching a durable cease-fire in eastern Ukraine leading to steps towards a political solution to the conflict.

Zelenskiy has said he is seeking a four-way summit under the Normandy Format that would include Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Ukraine's position is that a cease-fire is a basic precondition for the implementation of the Minsk agreements and would pave the way for the implementation of other difficult provisions of the agreements, such as local elections in the separatist-controlled Donbas and control over the Ukrainian-Russian border.

With reporting by AFP, AP, dpa, and Reuters
Each time Napa Resident Karla Casas wants to help her daughter with her schoolwork, she must first translate the instructions into Spanish.

Its a process that can quickly turn stressful for Casas, 27, and her daughter, Danna Sofia, 7, who is just learning to read, Casas wrote in a text in Spanish.

During the evenings we dedicate ourselves to her work, she sees that it often ends up being stressful. We spend a lot of time in front of the computer, Casas wrote in Spanish. When Danna Sofia, who attends McPherson Elementary School, is given reading assignments, the pair work through them haltingly while Casas uses translation software to ensure her daughter is doing her work correctly.

Quality journalism doesn't happen without your help. Subscribe today! Support local news coverage and the people who report it by subscribing to the Napa Valley Register.

As the pandemic and distance learning recede, experts and advocates are still assessing the impact of more than a years worth of virtual schooling on students, especially those in their early childhood. Settling into Zoom school has been a challenge for students and parents across the board, advocates say, but it has been particularly hard on English language learners and students whose parents are not comfortable assisting them with English-language school work.
Local News, Crime, Community, Charity & Cause, Press Releases

By Chris Boyle Published: April 19 2021

These new Deputy Sheriff Recruits will begin a rigorous six-month training program.

The Suffolk County Sheriffs Office recently held a swearing in ceremony for ten new Deputy Sheriff Recruits at the Maxine S. Postal Auditorium in the Riverhead County Center. This new class of Deputy Sheriff Recruits follows a class of 20 Recruits that began their training on April 1, 2021.

These new Deputy Sheriff Recruits will begin a rigorous six-month training program that includes instruction in firearms, emergency vehicle operations (EVOC), EMT training, and individualized field training. The recruits will graduate in the fall, joining a force consisting of 250 Suffolk County Deputy Sheriffs.

Sheriff Toulon welcomed these new deputies to the Sheriffs Office, reminding them that they now hold a position of authority in Suffolk County, and with that authority comes great responsibility.
Brattleboro, VT (05301)

Today

Some clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 66F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Some clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 66F. Winds light and variable.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 22:47:17|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Chinese experts have condemned Japan's unilateral decision to discharge nuclear wastewater into the sea, calling it "extremely irresponsible."

Dumping wastewater resulted from the accident at Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea is not Japan's only option, said Liu Senlin, a researcher with the China Institute of Atomic Energy.

Japan's unilateral decision to release the wastewater into the ocean is extremely irresponsible, Liu said. The choice, which involves the lowest economic cost to Japan, was made before seeking consensus with the international community and stakeholders, and before exhausting all available options.

According to Liu, there are several other options for wastewater disposal include burying it underground or evaporating it into the air, but Japan merely opted for the cheapest plan.

"The decision passes the responsibility that should be borne by Japan itself to the whole world, setting a very bad precedent," he noted.

The ultimate responsibility for ensuring safety of spent fuel and radioactive waste management rests with the State, he said, citing Convention on Nuclear Safety, and Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management.

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, to which Japan is a signatory, also requires that contracting states take all measures necessary to ensure that pollution arising from incidents or activities under their jurisdiction or control does not spread beyond the areas where they exercise sovereign rights.

Japan should implement prudent measures in a manner that takes responsibility for its own people and the international community, said Liu, adding that it should choose the best way to dispose of the nuclear wastewater with participation and supervision from stakeholders.

It is also doubtful whether or not Japan's treated wastewater truly meets discharge standards, said Zhao Chengkun, an expert with the China Nuclear Energy Association.

As of December 31, 2019, 73 percent of the nuclear wastewater still exceeds Japan's discharge standards after treatment by an advanced liquid processing system (ALPS) capable of removing most contaminants, according to a report from an organization researching the treatment of wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear accident.

Moreover, Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operator handling wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear accident, has a record of covering up and falsifying information, Zhao noted.

Liu Xinhua, a researcher with the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, added that there is a fundamental difference between wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant accident and liquid effluents from the normal operation of nuclear power plants in terms of source, radionuclide type and processing difficulty.

The liquid waste discharged after the Fukushima nuclear plant accident contain radionuclides and extremely toxic transuranium elements such as Plutonium and Americium. However, liquid effluents discharged normally from nuclear power plants do not directly come in contact with the fuel pellets and barely have the transuranium elements, Liu Xinhua said. Enditem
DENVER, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Rocky Mountain Industrials Inc. (RMI), Colorado's next generation infrastructure company, announced today that its 620-acre Rocky Mountain Rail Park located in Adams County raised $65,209,784 toward expedited completion of the Rail Park's construction.

The transaction was solely underwritten by Piper Sandler & Co. "After working with the development team for over a year on a complex transaction, we are thrilled with the outcome and the market receptivity of the developer's vision for the project," commented Piper Sandler & Co. Institutional investors who participated included BlackRock, JPMorgan Asset Management, Wells Fargo, and Invesco, along with other regional investment funds.

"The broad range of institutional participants in this transaction validates our vision for the project and importance of our infrastructure solution in Denver and the Rocky Mountain Region," said Brian Fallin, CEO of RMI, "We are pleased with another efficient financing for the Rail Park."

RMI began construction on the properties south parcel in March 2021, with plans to follow a phased approach to the rail-served northern parcels.

About RMI

Rocky Mountain Industrials Inc. is a materials infrastructure and distribution organization strategically positioned to serve the Mountain West.

Media Contact:

The Rose Group

[email protected]

SOURCE Rocky Mountain Industrials Inc.
Women make up only 28% of the workforce in science, technology, engineering, and math, and men outnumber women majoring in most STEM undergraduate majors. We can teach young women and girls to communicate effectively in STEM environments, so they can achieve the same status as men in the fields. Balancing and diversifying the STEM fields themselves will create cultures that are more welcoming to young women and underrepresented minorities.

Women make up only 28% of the workforce in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), and men outnumber women majoring in most STEM undergraduate majors.(1). This statistic drives engineer and STEM advocate Caitlin Kalinowski to be a guiding voice for women and minorities interested in these industries. Kalinowski actively promotes more women joining these fields while working as a leader in virtual reality.

Women entering highly male-dominated places have always had to learn new ways of communicating to be effective. In past roles, Ive had to learn how to communicate in a masculine culture in ways that I was not socialized for. Even [STEM] courses for young people use problem sets and projects more appealing to young men, so we need to start at the very beginning to improve diversity. explains Kalinowski. In the short term, we can teach young women and girls to communicate effectively in STEM environments, so they can achieve the same status as men in the fields. Longer-term, balancing and diversifying the STEM fields themselves will create cultures that are more welcoming to young women and underrepresented minorities.

Kalinowski believes that constant discussions in the media about how male-dominated STEM fields are can actually make the problem worse, and that instead positive messages and role models need to be shown to young women and girls. By constantly discussing these stereotypes, young girls can develop further insecurities. Instead, Kalinowski wants the next generation to experience normalcy and confidence in STEM, with fewer gender stereotypes attached.

STEM and the Challenges Females Face

Statistically, women are still vastly underrepresented in the STEM workforce. However, women have made gainsfrom 8% of STEM workers in 1970 to 27% in 2019.(2)

Kalinowski hopes this statistic will continue to increase, as we address the major factors contributing to these gaps: gender stereotypes, imposter syndrome, male-dominated cultures, fewer role-models, and a lack of confidence girls develop in their own leadership abilities.

[Its important to] find women and hire them, and to make sure they have resources and support. You have to build relationships, says Kalinowski. Letting college women and schoolgirls know that they have a future in these industries is a huge piece of this. More importantly, if girls seem hesitant to enter a STEM field, its imperative they receive positive mentoring.

According to Kalinowski, a critical step to help more women and minorities succeed in this industry would be recognizing this issue early and bringing it forward in elementary and middle school. With more girls feeling confident and proud of their interest in STEM at a younger age, their transition into collegiate and career-based STEM programs would be more pleasant and less stressful.

Its really important to me how we [communicate this concern]. I worry about how society talks about STEM and how to get more girls to participate because when one focuses on the gap, girls will internalize it. Be careful not to imply that these are predominantly male areas, explains Kalinowski regarding this topic close to her heart. Telling your daughter that shes smart and capable is really important.

More Women and Minorities in Tech are Needed

Workplace diversity has become a pivotal subject, so intertwining the normalcy of women and minorities in STEM programs is crucial. Whether this be incorporated into early education or simply parents supporting their daughters as they show genuine interest in STEM, it is a focus educators and parents should advocate.

Kalinowski has experienced these industry challenges as a female mechanical engineer and wants to help prepare young women for STEM fields. She is devoted to being a mentor and a role model for the younger generation so they can push forward and accomplish their science, technology, engineering, or mathematics goals without facing discrimination, or anxiety along the way.

Seeing more women in the field can be a source of inspiration, Kalinowski says. Girls have to be shown what women can do. The key is to foster their drive with mentoring and the opportunity to follow that dream.

Summary of Tips from Kalinowski

To recap, Caitlin indicated the top takeaways for fostering more women and girls in STEM:

1. Make efforts to find and attract more women to STEMthink outside the box

2. Build relationships with colleges, as well as elementary and middle schools to attract more women in STEM

3. Provide resources for women and girls to succeed in STEM fields

4. Provide mentoring

5. Put more attention on advocating, rather than focusing on the gender gap narrative

About Caitlin Kalinowski

Caitlin Kalinowski earned her BS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University in 2007, where she is a guest lecturer at Stanfords School of Engineering and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. Currently, Caitlin is Hardware Director for Facebook Reality Labs Oculus VR products including 2020s Oculus Quest 2, Oculus Quest, Oculus Go, and Oculus Rift. Previously she was a technical lead for Mac Pro and MacBook Air products and was part of the original unibody MacBook Pro team. Caitlin has also been instrumental in her support for the arts in California and her work blazing paths to encourage girls to enter STEM. For more information visit https://caitlinkalinowski.com/

1. American Association of University Women (AAUW), The STEM Gap: Women and Girls in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. aauw.org/resources/research/the-stem-gap/ | Accessed 2 APR 2021

2. Cheridan Christnacht and Anthony Martinez. United States Census Bureau, Women Making Gains in STEM Occupations but Still Underrepresented. census.gov/library/stories/2021/01/women-making-gains-in-stem-occupations-but-still-underrepresented.html | 26 JAN 2021
A bill that would ban paddling of public school students with disabilities cleared its final legislative hurdle Tuesday when the Louisiana House approved it.

The measure, House Bill 79, passed 89-0 and heads to Gov. John Bel Edwards, who made the change part of his modest public schools legislative agenda.

Under current rules, local school districts have the option to use corporal punishment on all students.

The bill would eliminate that choice for students with disabilities, who are often on the receiving end of the paddle.

More than 500 students  16 percent of all those disciplined during the 2015-16 school year  had disabilities, according to figures compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which backed the bill.

In Livingston Parish 20 percent of students targeted for corporal punishment during the same period were those with disabilities, one of the highest rates in the state.

The scoop on state politics in your inbox Get the Louisiana politics insider details once a week from us. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

Critics of the practice contend corporal punishment can worsen a student's medical condition.

Another bill that would outlaw corporal punishment entirely failed in the House.

The legislation applies to students with individual education plans, or IEPs. That includes children with speech or language impairments, developmental delays, emotional disturbances and autism.

The ban also applies to students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

The bill excludes students classified as gifted and talented.

Before the measure cleared the Senate a definition of corporal punishment was added by the Senate Education Committee.

It includes using physical force with or without an object, hitting, paddling, striking, spanking, slapping "or any other physical force that causes pain or physical discomfort."
Iran's president said on Thursday that his country was capable of enriching uranium up to 90% "if we wanted to", but it was not on Iran's agenda, state TV reported.

Hassan Rouhani was responding to concerns by European countries over Tehran's announcement it had started 60% uranium enrichment in light of an attack on its Natanz facility.

Negotiations in Vienna between Iran and signatories of the 2015 nuclear deal are scheduled to resume on Thursday.

The talks are aimed at finding a way for the United States to re-enter Tehran's agreement with world powers and have Iran comply again with its limits.

The accord, which former President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from in 2018, prevented Iran from stockpiling enough high-enriched uranium to be able to pursue a nuclear weapon in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.

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April 20, 2021  5.36am
By Jessica Corbett, staff writer at CommonDreams. Originally published at CommonDreams

Echoing recent demands from human rights advocates and former detainees, two dozens members of the U.S. Senate Democratic Caucus on Friday pressed President Joe Biden to finally close the Guantanamo Bay offshore military prison, where 40 men are still being held despite global outrage over the facility and its long record of torture.

As a symbol of lawlessness and human rights abuses, the detention facility continues to harm U.S. national security by serving as a propaganda tool for Americas enemies and continues to hinder counterterrorism efforts and cooperation with allies, declares the letter (pdf), spearheaded by Senate Majority Whip and Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) as well as Appropriations Committee Chair Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.).

For nearly two decades, the offshore prison has damaged Americas reputation, fueled anti-Muslim bigotry, and weakened the United States ability to counter terrorism and fight for human rights and the rule of law around the world, the letter continues. In addition to the $540 million in wasted taxpayer dollars each year to maintain and operate the facility, the prison also comes at the price of justice for the victims of 9/11 and their families, who are still waiting for trials to begin.

In February, National Security Council spokesperson Emily Horne said that we are undertaking an NSC process to assess the current state of play that the Biden administration has inherited from the previous administration, in line with our broader goal of closing Guantanamo.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki subsequently confirmed that shuttering the prison permanently certainly is our goal and our intention.

Welcoming the White Houses review, the senators point out that all 40 Gitmo detainees are aging, many with complex health problems, and six have been approved for transfer for years, in some cases for over a decade.

After years of indefinite detention without charge or trial; a history of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment; and multiple attempts at a thoroughly failed and discredited military commission process, it is past time to close Guantanamos detention facility and end indefinite detention, the lawmakers emphasize, adding that with sufficient political will and swift action, your administration can finish the job.

Bidens predecessor, former President Donald Trump, vowed to keep the prison open after his predecessor, former President Barack Obamaunder whom Biden was vice presidentfailed to deliver on his vow to close it, despite eight years in office.

Strong and effective leadership from the White House will be necessary, the senators write, calling for a senior official specifically tasked with handling the closure.

Q: What damages US reputation, fuels anti-Muslim bigotry, and weakens US counterterrorism efforts worldwide? A: #Guantanamo, say 24 Democratic Senators demanding its closure. @SachaPfeiffer https://t.co/O4maoxjPyY  Letta Tayler (@lettatayler) April 16, 2021

The lawmakers add that because indefinite detention at Guantanamo is at its core a human rights problemone that demands solutions rooted in diplomacy and that uphold U.S. human rights and humanitarian law obligationsthe National Security Councils human rights directorate should play a leading role in both the review you have ordered as well as throughout the closure process.

They further demand that the president immediately re-establish the special envoy for Guantanamo closure at the State Department, rebuild related infrastructure at the Defense Department, and, as it relates to the remaining detainees, make use of our federal court system in ways that are consistent with current law but that have been underutilized by previous administrations.

Given the current statutory prohibition on transfers to the United States, the letter says, we urge you to direct the Justice Department to explore pursuing plea agreements remotely, via video conference, with detainees for whom there are federal charges available and against whom the department has sufficient untainted evidence to bring such charges.

In the event that a detainee is sentenced to a period of incarceration beyond time already served at Guantanamo, the letter continues, your administration could negotiate with foreign governments to allow the remaining time to be completed in the transfer country subject to the terms of the plea agreement.

The senators also call on Biden to reverse erroneous and troubling legal positions taken by the Trump administration regarding the application of relevant international and domestic legal protections to Guantanamo, including in particular the position that the Constitutions Due Process Clause does not apply to the men detained there.

After the unprecedented damage of the last four years to Americas standing in the world, closing the Guantanamo detention facility is more important than ever for sending a message about what we stand for as a nation, the letter concluded. We urge you to act swiftly to ensure that message is loud and clear.

Along with Durbin and and Leahy, the letters signatories are Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Mazie K. Hirono (D-Hawaii), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
Managing Editor of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt has expressed disgust over the activities of illegal miners in the country.



Contributing to Peace FM's ''Kokrokoo'', Kwesi Pratt wondered why not much has been done to clamp down on illegal miners.



He recounted the dangers of illegal mining stressing one of the problems associated with this kind of mining, aside the pollution of the waterbodies, is the destruction of the country's forest reserve.



"Can you imagine the number of unique plant species getting destroyed?" he questioned.



He told sit-in host Nana Yaw Kesseh that the illegal mining, popularly known as ''galamsey'', is destroying the plants used for medicine and therefore spurred Samuel Abu Jinapor, Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, to do everything to end illegal mining in the country.



"We are destroying all our plants that we can use for medicine. It affects medical practice, the development of traditional medical practice. It's a major problem to the development of traditional medical practice," he said.







Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Britain today announced four coronavirus deaths in the lowest daily count since September 7  when just three victims were added to the official toll.

Department of Health figures showed there were also 2,963 new infections in the past 24 hours, down 17 per cent on last week's figure of 3,568.

Today's Covid deaths are the lowest they've been in more than seven months, after falling by almost 70 per cent compared to last Monday's 13.

There is no indication that opening outdoor pubs, gyms and hairdressers last week, or reintroducing the rule of six late last month, has caused any uptick in cases. Coronavirus metrics are usually low on Mondays due to the way test results and fatalities are logged, but ministers will take confidence in the fact both cases and deaths are down significantly from last Monday.

The statistics will inevitably pile more pressure on Boris Johnson to speed up his roadmap out of lockdown, with the next relaxation not due for almost another month.

Mr Johnson has promised to stick to 'data, not dates' when it comes to easing curbs but has so far refused to move quicker despite vanishingly low death numbers and just 2,000 Covid patients being treated by the NHS.

Health officials revealed another 300,000 vaccines were administered on Sunday, with 10million Britons now fully vaccinated. But the number of first doses has crashed to just 100,000 a day because of supply issues and the need to focus on top-up jabs.

Meanwhile, India is being added to the UK's travel 'red list' after Boris Johnson cancelled his visit amid surging coronavirus cases and alarm about a new variant. Matt Hancock told MPs today that the government had made the 'difficult' decision to place the country in the highest level of restrictions from 4am on Friday.

The Health Secretary also revealed the UK will have a booster vaccination programme for vulnerable Brits this autumn. The third jab that tackles strains like the South African or Indian versions which may weaken the original vaccines.

Some 103 cases of the variant first identified in India have now been identified in the UK, with the 'vast majority' linked to international travel, he said.

'After studying the data and on a precautionary basis we have made the difficult but vital decision to add India to the red list,' the Health Secretary said.

Travel from destinations on the 'red list' is banned, and any British residents returning home must check into quarantine hotels.

Earlier, a joint statement from the British and Indian government said Mr Johnson's trip - already scaled back - will not go ahead 'in light of the current situation'.

Mr Hancock said the latest move means 'anyone who is not a UK or Irish resident or a British citizen cannot enter the UK if they've been in India in the previous 10 days'.

'UK and Irish residents and British citizens who have been in India in the past 10 days before their arrival will need to complete hotel quarantine for 10 days from the time of arrival.'

Infections in India have been spiking and deaths are rising while numbers have dropped off in the UK

The Covid variants circulating in the UK: Public Health England says officially the Indian variant has been spotted 77 times in Scotland and England since March

India is vaccinating some 3million people per day, topping most other countries, but its huge 1.3billion population means only a tiny proportion have been protected (pictured)

India is added to UK's travel 'red list' from 4am Friday as Matt Hancock warns it is 'vital' to protect against new variant India is being added to the UK's travel 'red list' after Boris Johnson cancelled his visit amid surging coronavirus cases and alarm about a new variant. Matt Hancock told MPs today that the government had made the 'difficult' decision to place the country in the highest level of restrictions from 4am on Friday. Some 103 cases of the variant first identified in India have now been identified in the UK, with the 'vast majority' linked to international travel, he said. 'After studying the data and on a precautionary basis we have made the difficult but vital decision to add India to the red list,' the Health Secretary said. Travel from destinations on the 'red list' is banned, and any British residents returning home must check into quarantine hotels. Earlier, a joint statement from the British and Indian government said Mr Johnson's trip - already scaled back - will not go ahead 'in light of the current situation'. Mr Hancock said the latest move means 'anyone who is not a UK or Irish resident or a British citizen cannot enter the UK if they've been in India in the previous 10 days'. 'UK and Irish residents and British citizens who have been in India in the past 10 days before their arrival will need to complete hotel quarantine for 10 days from the time of arrival.' He added: 'India is a country I know well and love. Between our two countries we have ties of friendship and family. I understand the impact of this decision but I hope the House will concur that we must act.' Advertisement

He added: 'India is a country I know well and love. Between our two countries we have ties of friendship and family. I understand the impact of this decision but I hope the House will concur that we must act.'

During a visit to Gloucestershire earlier, Mr Johnson told reporters: 'Narendra Modi and I have basically come to the conclusion that, very sadly, I won't be able to go ahead with the trip.

'I do think it's only sensible to postpone, given what's happened in India, the shape of the pandemic there.

'Countries around the world including our own have been through this. I think everybody's got a massive amount of sympathy with India, what they're going through.

'And I just want to stress that this is, we're going to be going back, the relationship between the UK and India is of huge importance, and I'll be talking to Narendra Modi on Monday, we'll be trying to do as much as we can, virtually.

'Of course it will be frustrating, but we'll try and replicate as much as we can remotely, and then look forward to doing it in person as and when circumstances allow, and hopefully before the Cop summit in November and hopefully we'll get Narendra Modi over for the G7 in June.'

Speculation had been mounting about the fate of the trip as the situation spirals in the India.

Mr Johnson had already pushed the visit back from earlier this year as a result of the UK's third lockdown.

Rather than several days of talks with Narendra Modi and high-profile events, it was only due to be a single day next weekend - but is now off altogether.

Meanwhile, Mr Hancock today confirmed the UK will have a booster vaccination programme later this year.

The Health Secretary said uptake of the jab so far has been 'astonishingly high' and that the country remains on track to offer a first jab to all adults by the end of July. It also remains on track, he said, to come out of lockdown in June.

He said new variants of the virus were the biggest threat to Britain's newfound security.

The booster rollout, expected to come in the autumn, will offer people a third jab that tackles strains like the South African one which may weaken the original vaccines.

Everyone over the age of 50 has been offered a vaccine already, with the NHS now targeting those in their late 40s for the limited supply of first doses available this month.

Supply problems and a huge surge in demand for boosters means that the number of first-timers coming forward is a fraction of what it was in March, but the rollout is still reaching almost half a million people every day, most of them for second doses

People getting their second vaccine doses now are mostly those who got their first in mid-to-late January  people aged 70 or above and others in the high risk groups.

Matt Hancock confirms booster Covid vaccines will be rolled out this autumn Health Secretary Matt Hancock said today that vaccine uptake so far has been 'astonishingly high' and that Britain remains on target to offer a jab to all adults by the end of July Matt Hancock today confirmed the UK will have a booster vaccination programme later this year as he announced 10million people have now had second doses. The Health Secretary hailed the 'terrific milestone' today after another 221,193 people got their booster jabs on Sunday, taking the total to 10,152,039. It means almost one in five adults in Britain have the best available protection against Covid, with almost all of the country's most vulnerable people now covered. A total of 32.9million people have had their first dose of a vaccine, meaning well over half of the adult population have at least some protection. Experts estimate the jabs have already saved 10,000 people's lives while the country's three-month lockdown brought down case rates and hospital admissions. Mr Hancock said uptake of the jab so far has been 'astonishingly high' and that the country remains on track to offer a first jab to all adults by the end of July. It also remains on track, he said, to come out of lockdown in June. He said new variants of the virus were the biggest threat to Britain's newfound security. The booster rollout, expected to come in the autumn, will offer people a third jab that tackles strains like the South African one which may weaken the original vaccines. Everyone over the age of 50 has been offered a vaccine already, with the NHS now targeting those in their late 40s for the limited supply of first doses available this month. Supply problems and a huge surge in demand for boosters means that the number of first-timers coming forward is a fraction of what it was in March, but the rollout is still reaching almost half a million people every day, most of them for second doses. Advertisement

Mr Hancock said in Parliament that three quarters of over-75s have had a vaccine as well as four fifths of over-80s.

He said the Government is 'ramping up plans for a booster shot to make sure our vaccines stay ahead of the virus'.

AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna are known to already be working on updated vaccines that are tweaked so they can tackle mutated variants.

All the current jabs are based on the original version of the virus but newer variants look different and therefore require slightly different-shaped immune cells. The current jabs still work but are less effective against these strains.

Mr Hancock said: 'We've already procured enough vaccine doses to begin the booster shots later this year.

'We will be working with our current vaccine suppliers and new suppliers, like the CureVac partnership, to work out which vaccines will be effective as a booster shot and to design new vaccines specifically targeted at the variants of concern  like the variant first found in South Africa.

'Our goal is to ensure the vaccine protects against this dreadful disease, whatever it throws at us, to keep us safe and to protect our much-cherished return to normal way of life.'

It is not yet clear when the second rollout will take place, nor whether it will include all adults or just those in the clinically vulnerable groups.

Praising the current programme, Mr Hancock said the NHS had given out record numbers of second doses on Friday and Saturday, doing a combined 999,000.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said today: 'Vaccines offer us the best possible protection from the virus, so it is fantastic that 10million people have now received their second dose.

'This is another remarkable milestone in our vaccination programme, which has already saved thousands of lives.

'I want to thank the brilliant staff and volunteers involved in the rollout, and urge all those who are called to keep coming forward.'

The Health Secretary said that, despite the threat of new variants  one from India has now been found to be spreading in England  the country is still on track to shake off its social distancing laws in June, as planned.

He said: 'This virus is diminished but not defeated. Cases, hospitalisations and deaths are back to the levels we saw in September.

'Throughout the crisis weve protected the NHS and there are now 2,186 people in hospital with Covid across the UK, down 94 per cent from the peak. And the average number of daily deaths is 25, down 98 per cent...

'Step by step we are returning this country towards normal life and we are on track to meet the road map set out by the Prime Minister.'

The next step on the roadmap is one month away, set for May 17 at the earliest, when indoor gatherings will be allowed as well as large groups outdoors. Indoor entertainment venues will be able to reopen and international travel may be permitted.

The thing most likely to throw the lockdown-easing plans off course, Mr Hancock said, was a variant that prevented vaccines working properly.

Most concerning is the South African strain, of which there have been 600 cases confirmed by Public Health England. This is both spreading inside the country and being brought in by travellers, and surge testing is being done to weed it out.

The newest worrying variant is one that was first seen in India.

Analysis of publicly available information on new variant numbers on Saturday suggest cases have risen to 160, suggesting it's spreading rapidly in the community.

PHE currently lists it as a 'variant under investigation', a tier below other troublesome strains including the Kent, South African and Brazilian variants.

Indian officials claimed the variant had formed as a hybrid of two other strains and that it showed signs of being more infectious and less easily targeted by the immune system.

Two key mutations set it apart from others  named E484Q and L452R  with both of them found on the 'spike' that the virus uses to latch onto human cells.

These are not thought to be key mutations of any of the other variants on Public Health England's list, but have appeared in virus samples before.

Sir Simon Stevens, NHS chief executive, said today: 'This is another significant milestone and major achievement for the NHS vaccination programme, the biggest in the health services history and fastest in Europe.

'Since Englands NHS became the first health service anywhere in the world to administer a Covid-19 vaccine, the programme has gone from strength to strength, with everyone in the top priority groups given the opportunity to get jabbed ahead of target.

'The success of the NHS vaccination programme is not a happy accident. It is down to careful planning coupled with the sheer hard work and determination of doctors, nurses and countless other staff ably assisted by volunteers and many others.'
Last year, during a summer of protests against police violence following the killing of George Floyd, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council announced a $1 billion cut to the New York City Police Departments budget, roughly half of which was achieved through shifting costs to other agencies. Of the actual spending reductions, 75% would come from reduced spending on NYPD overtime. The cap on overtime, which previously stood at about $600 million a year, was slashed to $253 million for fiscal year 2021. Critics who waged a monthslong campaign to defund the police immediately criticized the budget cuts as smoke and mirrors. The budget hawks at the Citizens Budget Commission called the cap on overtime unrealistic and pointed out that it was only budgeted for one year.

Sure enough, an analysis in March from the Independent Budget Office, the citys fiscal watchdog agency, estimated that the NYPD had already surpassed de Blasios overtime cap in just eight months. Since the beginning of the current fiscal year last July, the city had already spent $268 million in police overtime, and the Independent Budget Office estimated that it will reach $388 million by June 30, the end of the fiscal year. That will still represent a big drop, to less than half of the average overtime spending of the previous three years, according to the Independent Budget Office, but it would exceed the cap by 44%. And there is no reason to think it is permanent: The drop in overall overtime spending is a result of canceled public events and pandemic restrictions, the Independent Budget Office said, and the office predicts overtime spending will return to pre-pandemic levels next year.

The NYPDs inability to stay under its overtime cap is not a new issue, but its one with increased salience in an era of heightened attention to the costs of policing. Its a perennial problem, said Ana Champeny, director of city studies at Citizens Budget Commission. Champeny, who previously worked in the citys Department of Finance, said the NYPD has blown past its cap every year since at least 2007.

Why is it so hard to control police overtime? Experts who spoke to City & State differed in their explanations, which included the agencys unique and broad mandate, the unpredictability of the job as well as the political nature of the NYPD and its unions.

The NYPD is not the only agency to surpass its annual overtime allotment, but it is unique in the extent to which it exceeds it, particularly compared to other city agencies. According to an analysis provided to City & State by the Independent Budget Office, overtime payments to the NYPD in fiscal year 2020 accounted for 45% of the citys overtime spending across all of its agencies.

One reason is the size of the NYPD workforce, which currently sits at about 35,000 uniformed officers and about 16,000 civilian employees. For context, there are about 10,000 uniformed FDNY firefighters and about 8,000 correctional officers.

The citys overtime cap carries no legal mandate, and the NYPD has blown through the limit every year since at least 2007.

About 25% to 30% of overtime spending among uniformed NYPD officers can be attributed to public events like parades and protests. The decrease in overtime spending for the current fiscal year is mostly attributable to the cancellation of public events due to the pandemic. The NYPD spent a lot of time in 2020 policing protests, racking up $115 million in overtime in just the first two weeks of the protests, according to the Independent Budget Office. Overtime for events was $153 million in fiscal year 2019 and $289 million in fiscal year 2020, with the huge jump explained by the protests that happened in May and June, according to Bernard OBrien, a budget analyst at the Independent Budget Office who has analyzed the NYPD budget for years.

There was a lot of activity out in the streets where NYPD had to be present and that did affect the overtime budget, the mayor told WNYCs Brian Lehrer in March.

But police reform advocates dispute whether it was necessary to have so many officers at protests this year. No one said we need 7,000 police officers at the protest, said Nick Encalada-Malinowski, civil rights campaign director at the progressive advocacy organization VOCAL-NY. He pointed out that the overtime from the protests could result in even more taxpayer money from lawsuits, stemming from widespread abuse of protesters.

The next largest chunk of overtime goes to criminal investigations, including homicides, robberies and narcotics, totaling $139 million in fiscal year 2020. Operational overtime, a broad category that includes accidents and emergencies, accounted for $87 million of overtime in the same year. New arrests were $62 million of overtime in fiscal year 2020, down from $74 million the year before, likely the result of the first few months of pandemic restrictions.

NYPD officers have been caught abusing overtime in the past, most notably laid out in the 1994 Mollen Commission report, which detailed extra officers participating in arrests to collect overtime, among other schemes. In a 1995 corruption trial, Officer Daniel Eurell confessed that he and his fellow officers made false arrests at the end of their shifts to get more overtime. More recently, in a 2018 trial connected to a 2014 drug arrest, an NYPD officer admitted to filing for overtime beyond the number of hours he worked.

John Driscoll, an adjunct professor in the law and police science department at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former NYPD officer who served 11 years as the head of the Captains Endowment Association, disputed the idea that NYPD overtime is excessive. Driscoll noted the NYPD audits the overtime of officers regularly and that when the agency exceeds its budget cap, its because of the unpredictability of the job. He pointed to spikes in gun violence and homicides in 2020 as contributing factors to overtime. Some things you can plan for, other things you cant, Driscoll said.

Experts agree that reducing overtime would require more political will, coordination and planning than the mayor, the City Council and the NYPD have demonstrated thus far.

Whatever the factors driving it, if legislators want to attack overtime spending, the budget is not the relevant battlefield because the citys budgetary overtime cap carries no legal mandate.

The overtime cap is really a goal, said OBrien of the Independent Budget Office. Its an aspiration.

OBrien said that when the fiscal year 2021 budget cap was initially proposed by de Blasio, most fiscal monitors immediately knew it would not be possible given the amount of management change and cultural shifts it would necessitate in the department. Its hard to have immediate change, OBrien said.

The expectation of overtime is often factored into the expected salaries of uniformed officers. The average uniformed officer brings in overtime thats equivalent to 16% of their base salary, according to a Citizens Budget Commission estimate, and an NYPD captain brings in overtime thats on average 32% of their base annual salary. In some units, overtime is part of the job description, Driscoll said. Certain units, theres a built-in overtime because of the nature of the job, like narcotics, he said.

Despite the NYPD not remaining under de Blasios recent overtime cap, the mayor contends that his strategy was successful overall. Actually, the overtime budget has been steadily going down, de Blasio told Lehrer about fiscal year 2021. Thats a really good thing. The NYPD is very serious about it. Im very serious about it.

De Blasio attributed the agency exceeding its cap to protests as well as a reduction in the headcount of uniformed officers through attrition and cuts. When you have less full-time staffing, it does create some additional pressure for overtime, he said.

The argument that a larger force could decrease overtime was presented by de Blasio and the City Council in 2015, when 1,300 officers were added to the force, though it proved to be false. In fact, overtime shot up in the years after the additional officers were added for neighborhood policing, from $693 million in 2016 to a peak of $836 million in 2020, according to an Independent Budget Office analysis. This is not a new phenomenon: a 2004 Independent Budget Office analysis found the NYPDs overtime spending increased when staffing went up and also increased, albeit more slowly, when staffing was decreased.

Because overtime is built into the functioning of the NYPD, the Citizens Budget Commission has said drastic reductions in overtime require a coordinated plan, which the current budget did not contain. It would also require renegotiated police union contracts, as overtime is subject to collective bargaining.

Samuel Walker, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha who has studied police union contracts nationwide, said they play a role in the difficulty of reducing overtime, which he said was not unique to the NYPD. The problem is pretty common around the country, Walker said.

Champeny said that pensions, which are also tied to police contracts, could provide another incentive for police officers to rack up overtime. The citys pension system is based on a final average salary of three to five years of service, and that number factors in overtime. It creates an incentive for officers, especially nearing retirement, to get as much overtime as they can because it increases their benefits, Champeny said. Driscoll disputed this, saying that NYPD officers dont have discretion to receive overtime without approval, and that the NYPD carefully tracks overtime among those approaching retirement.

Most experts agree that reducing overtime would require more political will, coordination and planning than the mayor, the City Council and the NYPD have demonstrated thus far.

In the view of criminal justice reform advocates, the inability to keep to an overtime cap is mostly the result of the agencys political weight. The NYPD, because its a political organization, is allowed to do whatever they want, Encalada-Malinowski said.

It is something that needs to change, Walker said of overtime. He added that the problem of police overtime is not studied enough. As an issue of wasteful spending, Walker said fixing it should have bipartisan appeal.

There needs to be a vigorous, rigorous audit with an eye to identifying unnecessary overtime, he said. That money can be used for other social services. Whether its on mental health treatment, after school for kids, that money can be better spent.
The co-leader of Germany's Greens, Annalena Baerbock, said on Monday she would run to become chancellor in September's elections, the first time the left-leaning party has sought the top job in its 40-year history.



Baerbock, a former champion trampolinist who has seen support for her party rise over the past year, said she would offer a "new start" and focus on investing in education, digital and green technologies.



Analysts said the chance of an outright win for the ecologist party was still a long shot - though the Greens have become a formidable force that has profited from voters' fatigue with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives.



Baerbock's group still trails the conservatives by around five points in the polls, despite signs of divisions in the conservative camp that has ruled for 16 years.



Baerbock, 40, sought to allay fears about her relative lack of experience. "Democracy lives off change. Yes, I was never a chancellor and never a minister," she told a news conference. "I stand for renewal. Other stand for the status-quo." "We would like to lead this government - but since politics is not a wish-fulfillment exercise, it will be up to the voters to decide who will come out of this election with how much strength," she added.



Baerbock was nominated for the chancellorship by her party and formally presented on Monday by co-leader Robert Habeck - an orderly process that stood in contrast to public divisions among the conservatives.



Armin Laschet, chairman of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and Markus Soeder of their CSU Bavarian sister party, remained at loggerheads on Monday over which of them should lead their increasingly strained alliance.



ALLIANCES



"While Laschet and Soeder are still fighting in the arena and the potential damage to the party could be great, the Greens have delivered a masterpiece of political professionalism," ING economist Carsten Brzeski said.



The Greens, who were born in 1980 out of the ecologist movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, govern the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, a former conservative stronghold.



A Forsa poll last week put support for the Greens on 23%, behind 27% for Merkel's alliance.



To lead a coalition government, the Greens could team up with the left-leaning Social Democrats (SPD), which the Forsa poll showed to have 15% support, and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), at 9%. Another three-way tie-up could be with the SPD and the far-left Linke.



In a more likely scenario, given the current numbers, the Greens could also join government as junior partner to Merkel's conservatives.



Finance Minister and SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz was quick to congratulate Baerbock on her candidacy, tweeting that he was "looking forward to an exciting and fair competition".



A person close to Scholz, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Scholz and Baerbock had a good and professional relationship and their parties had many overlapping policy goals.
Members of a special operations force assigned to the PLA Macao Garrison participate in a comprehensive combat capability assessment. (Photo by Fang Zhao)

MACAO, Apr.18 -- The Chinese Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) Garrison in Macao recently organized an assessment to check the combat capabilities of its special operations forces on coordination, skills and tactics.

According to the commander of a special operations company in PLA Macao Garrison, the assessment was set against the background of eliminating terrorists and rescuing hostages and was composed of various phases like operations planning, engagement operations, firepower strikes, and joint clearing operations.

In between, more than ten courses such as armed cross-country race, crossing obstacles, climbing and live-fire shooting with various firearms were scheduled to be carried out in succession with the interval between no more than two minutes.

As explained by Colonel Li Jian, head of the combat and training department with the PLA Macao Garrison, this assessment aimed to test and figure out the actual combat capabilities of the garrisons special operations forces, with a view to laying a sound foundation for optimizing the organization of special operations forces and improving the training pertinence.
In Vietnam, over half of businesses have turned to digital platforms to adapt to the new context amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Shawn Tan, economist from the World Banks Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice, said the digital economy is becoming more important, especially amid the pandemic. "Digital technologies allow businesses to better adapt to the Covid-19 shock," he said.

Vietnam's economic transition from a middle-income to high-income economy requires growth based on labor productivity. Digital technology will be a tool for Vietnam to speed up corporate productivity, improve adaptability and develop new businesses.

Digital technology reduces information and transaction costs and provides goods and services more efficiently, with better quality and a larger customer base and new markets.

Vietnam has a lot of potential to use the recovery process as an inflection point towards a model of greener, inclusive and competitive growth driven by innovation, said Shawn Tan.

A report from a World Bank survey in Vietnam shows that, in 2020, about 48% of Vietnamese businesses turned to digital platforms in response to the pandemic. This increased to 59% in October 2020. Meanwhile, only 5% of firms invested in digital solutions and 7% reorganized product combinations.

When surveying the application of technology in Vietnam, the World Bank's indexes found that "the use of 4.0 technology in Vietnam is still in an early stage".

Vietnam to quantify digital economy

At the seminar on digital economic measurement.

At the seminar on digital economic measurement held by the General Statistics Office of Vietnam and the World Bank last week, Nguyen Thu Huong, director general of the General Statistics Office, said that measuring and quantifying the digital economy has important implications for Vietnam.

Jaffar Al-Rikabi, World Bank economist, said that measuring the size of the digital economy faces many challenges: digital economy is a new concept with many different definitions; problems related to data quality; difficulty of measuring the consumption of digital products; the value of data investment in a modern economy is difficult to determine; measuring the sharing economy, and the challenges in understanding how the economy works when companies benefit from cross-border operations.

Experience in the world shows that the digital economy can be measured by production or the user (measured by supply - demand). When we want to know the size of the digital economy, we measure production from supply. The supply is often involved in digital economic production and trade, such as the value of investment, employment, research and development. To examine the economic impact of digitalization on the larger economy and society (e.g., productivity and wages), it is necessary to examine the application of digitalization in the digital economy.

After exchanging experiences from a number of countries around the world, officials of the General Statistics Office said that measuring the digital economy is a technical problem and very complicated, especially because identifying and collecting information is still a new thing.

In some developed countries as well as countries that have identified digital transformation as a key industry, they have invested in information gathering to make decisions as well as investment direction for digital infrastructure and digital economy for economic development.

Vietnam is choosing the digital economy as one of the top priorities. Therefore, we would like to have advice to be able to make decisions, especially to agree on how to understand and identify the current and forward-looking digital economy, Huong said.

Duy Vu

Digital academy takes shape The initial ecosystem for a digital school is taking shape at the Posts and Telecommunications Institute of Technology (PTIT).
A teenager who was caught carrying an AK-47 in New York's Times Square was confused about the city's gun laws, his lawyer has claimed.

Manhattan Judge Melissa Jackson rejected the argument on Sunday and refused to grant the teen bail, which prosecutors requested be set at $25,000.

Saadiq Teague, 18, from Ohio, was arrested while carrying the AK-47 on the mezzanine level of the A, C and E subway station on April 16.

Saadiq Teague, 18, who was caught carrying an AK-47 in New York's Times Square was confused about the city's gun laws, his lawyer has claimed

New York City Police Officers transport Saadiq Teague, 18, from the Columbus Circle Transit Bureau Police Station After being found with an unloaded semi-automatic gun, ammunition and a gas mask outside a Times Square subway station, in New York City

He reportedly had the weapon in plain view and had made no effort to conceal it.

It was unloaded by Teague had a fully loaded magazine and a gas mask in his backpack.

Teague was charged with several counts of criminal possession of a weapon, and one count of criminal use of drug paraphernalia after being found with an unloaded semi-automatic gun, ammunition and a gas mask.

Teague reportedly had the weapon in plain view and had made no effort to conceal it

His alleged offenses carry a maximum 15 year prison sentence, the New York Post reported.

But, the 18-year-old reportedly told police he believed it was legal to carry a gun in New York City, provided the ammunition is carried separately.

His lawyer, Jacqueline Phipps, told reporters Teague's story was feasible.

She said: 'It's conceivable that a teenager might not understand the complexities of all these laws and the differences in most states and the ways in which laws in all the states coincide'.

She also said prosecutors had presented no evidence that Teague had intended to use the gun.

She explained the district attorney 'did not say anything about evidence, suggesting that there is any further evidence, any type of plan to use this, any type of threat to use this, anything of that nature,

'I am 100 percent sure that if there is any evidence indicating that, the District Attorney's Office would have presented it'.

A New York City police officer (NYPD) carries evidence from the Columbus Circle Transit Bureau Police Station

Teague was charged with several counts of criminal possession of a weapon, and one count of criminal use of drug paraphernalia after being found with an unloaded semi-automatic gun, ammunition and a gas mask

Phipps also said she had argued in favour of Teague making bail so he could return to Ohio and be with his mom, younger sister, and brother who has a rare neurological degenerative disease.

Teague's lawyer said: 'His mom is really emotional as she told me how much her son means to her and she relies on him to take care of her and also take care of his brother'.

She also warned that Teague would not be able to make bail if the sum was set at $25,000, as requested by prosecutors.

'They are not a family that has a lot of financial resources', she said. 'He would not be able to make bail,

'Bail in this case would result in Mr. Teague, a teenager, be stuck in jail, far from his family and it's not necessary to ensure his return to court.'

Phipps pleas apparently fell on deaf ears, however, as Assistant District Attorney Ricky Shah rejected the request, citing lack of explanation of why Teague was carrying the firearm in the subway the first place.

Police remanded him in custody after notice the muzzle of the gun poking out of his bag while he was charging his phone in the Times Square subway.

Saadiq's father Andrew Teague, 43, was shot dead by police last month in Ohio

Teague will now be remanded in custody until at least his second court appearance on April 22.

The 18-year-old has no criminal record and worked as a waiter after leaving school last year. He later lost his job because of the pandemic but reportedly wants to train as a mechanic.

His father, Andrew Teague, 43, was shot dead by Ohio police in a shootout last month.

Police had a warrant out for his arrest for felonious assault and were pursuing him in his car.

He drove away for them then stopped on a highway and opened fire. The cops returned fire and killed him.
The PCI has just been released by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry in tandem with the US International Development Agency. How would you evaluate its findings for 2020?

Pham Thien Nghia, Chairman of Dong Thap Peoples Committee

This is quite good news as once again Dong Thap have received appreciation from the business community, helping the province to maintain its progress and carve out a spot among the group of localities with the best economic governance quality in the national tally. This is a valued reward for provincial management authorities.

Undergoing more than 15 years of engagement with the PCI, Dong Thap holds high esteem for the initiative which provides a driving force for the leadership of localities to accelerate the pace of reform and identify shortcomings in management in their localities, based on which suitable solutions can be prepared to beef up local development.

The PCIs largest contribution, in my view, is not the score or the ranking of the localities, but the smart models that have been found and the practical lessons being shared, helping to shorten the gap in terms of the committed efforts of local governments and expectations from people and businesses. These are valued lessons as well as the practical base for our management.

Dong Thaps high PCI ranking over many consecutive years has helped to spread the image of an evolving province among investors and those looking for opportunities.

Helping businesses to weather the storm of the ongoing pandemic is an effective way to improve the local investment and business climate. How has the province supported them to overcome the difficulties?

Aside from taking drastic measures to quickly implement government support packages and tackle labour issues, provincial leaders have had direct meetings with businesses, listening to their problems and paying due regards to business startups in diverse districts, towns, and industrial parks and clusters. This is a step forward for the so-called business coffee model.

Simultaneously, Dong Thap has taken practical activities to support the local business community for market expansion or improve trust among local consumers nationwide. Along with this, we inaugurated a centre for the introduction and exhibition of specialties and tourism in Hanoi last June to present more than 200 products and startup items from 50 businesses based in the province. We also hosted the Week of Basa fish and specialties of Dong Thap at Big C Thang Long in Hanoi last August.

The stalls brimmed with Dong Thap specialties and received specific positions at big trade centres in Ho Chi Minh City like GIGA mall, Big C, AEON, and CoopMart. Business clubs and Dong Thap specialty cooperatives then sprung up in diverse locations in the province to support business development.

This has bolstered the trust of people and businesses, encouraging them to land new investment and business ventures despite difficult times. Last year, 610 new business setups were reported with more than $178 million in the total committed capital, setting a record in the number of new business setups.

In addition, Dong Thap has pushed up administrative reforms via fresh models and initiatives in order to boost reform efficiency, more effectively serving people and businesses.

Pham Thien Nghia, Chairman of Dong Thap Peoples Committee (standing), communicates with businesses at a business coffee event at Song Hau Industrial Park in Lai Vung district, Photo: Van Khuong

Would you shed some light on these new models for administrative reform?

Dong Thap has established multiple channels for direct communication between management agencies and the business communities to provide friendly and effective services. Besides effective models such as business gatherings or farmer associations, the creation of public services information switchboard 1022 at three levels (province, district, and commune) has contributed to quickly settling claims and proposals. This reflects progress in our efforts to build up a pro-business administration.

Under the Combining online public services and public postal services model in settling administrative procedures in Dong Thap province, people do not need a physical presence to be able to send their proposals and receive results.

Besides that, to increase peoples comfort there are some set days during which civil servants support the elderly or those with difficulties in completing all the necessary procedures.

Meanwhile, the model under which every stage  from receiving proposals, evaluating, settling, and giving results  should be completed in only eight hours has helped significantly shorten the time to complete business registration procedures. The time for granting investment project certificate has also been slashed by more than half compared to regulations.

These models have played a role in Dong Thap securing second position in the Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index tally in 2020.

What is Dong Thaps recipe for maintaining such a high PCI ranking over the past 13 years?

Our management has always believed that improving the investment and business environment is a whole process and a constant task, requiring non-stop efforts from the entire political system. We understand that the high PCI score is not that significant if management authorities cannot satisfy business requirements. Therefore, right after the annual PCI announcement ceremony, the provinces leadership engages in analysing the weaknesses and measures to address, and present plans for making improvements to push up investment, create more jobs, and promote development economically and socially.

Looking at the PCI ranking, there remains much space for improvement which requires Dong Thaps whole political system to make further strides, helping to turn challenges into opportunities, and further spreading the spirit of walking in companionship with businesses to meet expectations of people and businesses. The business community plays an essential role in driving national socioeconomic development. On that journey, we are always doing our utmost to support business development, as their opportunities are also our opportunities.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry will expel a senior diplomat from the Russian Embassy in Kyiv, Chernikov, in response to Russia's expulsion of a Ukrainian consul in St. Petersburg, Deputy Foreign Minister Yevhen Yenin has said.

"The senior diplomat is a counselor of the Russian Embassy in Kyiv. His last name is Chernikov. The relevant note will be sent to the Russian embassy tomorrow morning," Yenin told the Ukraine 24 television channel on Sunday, April 18.

He also said that the Ukrainian side had already heard some blackmail from the Russian side.

"They accuse us of the fact that if we declare an employee of their embassy, rather than of their consulate, persona non grata, they will be forced to declare an employee of our embassy in Moscow persona non grata. The civilized world needs to get used to the fact that Russian diplomacy is not diplomacy at all, but a continuation of the activities of special services in a hybrid war, and we see everything perfectly on examples," Yenin said.

Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko said on April 17 that the day before, Russian law enforcement officers detained a consul of Ukraine's Consulate General in St. Petersburg, Oleksandr Sosoniuk, for several hours.

Russia's FSB Federal Security Service said it had detained the Ukrainian diplomat as he was allegedly receiving classified information from law enforcement and FSB databases.

Subsequently, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned Ukraine's Charge d'Affaires in the Russian Federation Vasyl Pokotyl and said Sosoniuk's presence in Russia was undesirable. He is required to leave Russia by April 21.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said that the symmetrical response to this provocation would be the expulsion of a senior diplomat from the Russian Embassy in Kyiv within 72 hours.

op
NC legislature

If the debacle of HB2 wasnt enough, the N.C. legislature is at it again with a new discrimination attempt. Sadly this comes from elected officials who are supposed to represent all of us, not just those whose lifestyle they approve of.

Its time for the N.C. legislature to do its job and quit attacking transgender citizens.

It is time to clean house. Looking forward to the next election.

Jeannie Inskeep, Raleigh

Racial harassment

Michael Gordons April 16 report on a Hendrick auto dealers alleged tolerance of racism is disheartening. It should prompt Hendrick customers to ask their dealers to make hateful behavior grounds for immediate dismissal.

That, incidentally, would amount to a lot of asks: Hendrick has at least 25 dealerships in our area.

Not only does it appear some Hendrick managers do nothing when racist taunts are reported, but in this case the former employee who filed suit was threatened as a troublemaker.

Ironically, Hendrick CEO Rick Hendrick recently said, ...I wouldnt do something that would hurt our company. Our name. Our brand.

Really? Id wager hes absolutely serious. But he needs to spend a little less time hopping about in his helicopter and a little more time civilizing the world his employees live in.

James B. Russo, Durham

NC utilities

Regarding N.C. utility proposals need a strong dose of sunlight, (April 15 Editorial):

Thank you for underlining the risks of having a private equity firm, Bernhard Capital Partners of Baton Rouge, La., takeover management of municipal utilities.

The sole purpose of these firms is to obtain the highest profits possible for its investors, very rich people who seek to be richer.

The purpose of municipal services, like supplying power and water, is to benefit residents. Management of these services must set priorities.

Private equity firms, like Bernhard Capital, must have profit-making as their top priority.

This can only mean that at some point residents will get short shrift in the form of higher costs or poorer service. Its a bad deal for everyone except the very rich.

Story continues

Nancy Milio, Chapel Hill

Bus stop solution

Regarding 82-year-old sits on buckets to wait for bus in Raleigh. Why doesnt she have a seat? (April 14):

While I can understand the citys inability to finance both a bench and shelter for each bus stop, why not, for now, just a bench? Has no one considered this humane and relatively inexpensive solution?

William Meyer. Durham

The NC grid

Wildfires in California and extreme cold in Texas have taught us what happens when the goals of legislatures, regulators and utilities are out of alignment.

For example, when carbon neutral goals are too aggressive and regulations hinder cost recovery, utilities are forced to make difficult decisions between meeting mandates or performing right of way maintenance and replacing aging infrastructure.

North Carolina has long enjoyed a balance of good policy making by the legislature and governors office, good oversight by the N.C. Utilities Commission and Public Staff, and safe and reliable electricity at a reasonable price by utilities like Duke Energy.

Duke Energy is making proactive investments to strengthen the grid, improving reliability by reducing the number and frequency of outages and restoring power more quickly when interruptions are experienced. I encourage policy makers and regulators at the local, state and federal levels to continue to prioritize investment in the modernization of the electric grid for the benefit of all North Carolinians.

Scott Gardner, Durham

Retired Director, NC Governmental Affairs for Duke Energy

Biden and Yemen

We need President Biden to unequivocally end decades of destructive U.S. policy in Yemen.

The U.S. should require an end to arms sales and other support for Saudi Arabia and the UAE and an end to all U.S. military involvement in Yemen, in favor of deep investments in lasting diplomacy, accountability and people-centered solutions.

The president must choose the path of peace, justice, and diplomacy that he was elected for

Ted Shohfi, Durham
April 19, 2021

Why Washington's Anti-Russian Policies Are Likely To Intensify

Thanks to a monoculture of anti-Russia hawks in U.S. policy institutions relations between the U.S. and Russia are likely to further decline. But some hope might be seen at the horizon.

Scott Ritter predicts the end of a generation of anti-Russian influencers in Washington DC who depict Russia and is policies as being run by just one man:

These Putin whisperers infiltrated every aspect of American culture and politics, their writings achieving near-scripture-like reception in the pages of American newspapers and political journals, and the authors of this intellectual dreck being offered prime seats at the table of national security policymaking, either on the National Security Council, or as a National Intelligence Officer.

...

These Putin Whisperers thrived during the administration of President Barack Obama, led by the likes of Michael McFaul, and achieved near-critical mass during the Trump administration, empowered by overly politicized claims of collusion with Russia by people in the Trump circle. They continue to play an important role today, filling the airwaves and pages with anti-Putin propaganda whose cumulative effect is to dumb down the American public by demonizing Russia and its president to the point that any accusation will be accepted at face value, regardless of the lack of corroborating evidence or the improbable veracity of its claim; the recent scandal over allegations that Russia paid the Taliban bounties to kill Americans in Afghanistan serves as an apt illustration of this phenomenon.

Unfortunately the constant demonization of Russia's president by the 'Putin-whisperers' has already led to some tragic consequences:

A childrens author and parish councillor died after a neighbour with mental health issues shot him in the face and stamped on his head, believing he worked for Vladimir Putin and was to blame for the spread of Covid-19, an inquest heard.

But the danger of seeing everything caused by just one man is much greater. It explains the confused policies of the Biden administration which may lead towards war.

Ritter argues that Biden trapped himself:

Biden is a prisoner of his own anti-Russian rhetoric, influenced in large part by the need to be seen as responding to a domestic political prerogative founded on decades of Russia - and Putin-bashing at the hands of the Putin whisperers and their ilk. It is one thing to spout off as a candidate for president; it is an altogether different reality to be serving as president, where words and actions have life-or-death consequences.

As the realities set in the people and their policies will have to change:

These are policies pushed and promoted by the Putin whisperers. For the moment, their will continues to prevail. But their days are numbered, as realpolitik pragmatists in the White House, Pentagon and Intelligence Community are recognizing the reality that the days of taking for granted US global hegemony are over, and that for the United States to remain relevant, it must adapt to the reality of a multi-polar world, and Russias rightful role therein. This will not happen overnight, but it is in the process of happening. In promoting and supporting Bidens latest round of sanctions, the Putin whisperers have reached their high-water mark. From here on out, their influence will begin to ebb as the national security demand for fact-based assessments outstrips the domestic political need for fact-free propaganda.

I am not that optimistic. The Blob is resistant to change because those who are inside it tend to bite away anyone with even a slightly different view.

Consider the case of Matthew Rojansky, Director of the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is known as a middle-of-the-road expert of U.S. and Soviet/Russian relations - not a hawk, but also not an appeaser.

Rojansky was supposed to chair the Russia desk in Biden's National Security Council. As soon as that became know the 'Putin Whisperers' came out in force to fight the nomination. Axios led the charge:

Rojansky has been praised for his scholarship on Russia and is frequently cited in U.S. media for his expert commentary. But his work has drawn criticism  including in a 2018 open letter from Ukrainian alumni of Kennan that blasted the think tank he runs as an "unwitting tool of Russias political interference."

...

In 2017, Rojansky decried America's "Cold War style paranoia about the Russian bogeyman," acknowledging that Putin "is a huge problem for the United States" while arguing that escalation carries "unacceptable risks." He has consistently called for managing competition with Russia in a way that protects U.S. interests and minimizes risks.

"Russia is not going to go away," Rojansky wrote in a National Interest op-ed last year criticizing what he characterized as the overuse of sanctions. "Peaceful coexistence remains an imperative, no matter how unsavory Putins regime might be."

Bad headlines and heavy lobbying against Rojansky followed. Biden hints at Russia appeasement policy wrote the Washington Examiner pointing to Rojansky nomination.

Today we learn that Rojansky has been canceled because his middle-of-the-road position is now deemed 'controversial':

A Russia expert whose bid to join the Biden National Security Council sparked an outcry among prominent critics of the Kremlin is no longer under consideration for the role, according to three people familiar with the matter.

...

Rojansky got far in the hiring process, the people noted, and was being considered for the role for at least six weeks before his name was made public by Axios. That report provoked uproar among well-known Russia hawks, including activists Bill Browder and Garry Kasparov, as well as the largest Ukrainian-American organization in the country. Rojanskys critics have pointed to the Kennan Institutes 2015 award to Russian oligarch Petr Aven, and an open letter written by Ukrainian alumni of the Kennan Institute in 2018 that slammed the think tank unit as an unwitting tool of Russias political interference.

Sane people are aghast about the potential consequences:

Anatol Lieven @LievenAnatol - 12:16 UTC  Apr 19, 2021 This is so depressing. Any open debate on Russia policy within the administration will be eliminated, and huge amounts of inconvenient fact will be suppressed or ignored. Did we not see enough of this sort of thing and its consequences in the run-up to the Vietnam and Iraq wars?

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No fan of Putin- but this act by the Blob shows how policy failures happen in US FP. Stage 1: Anyone w/even slightly heterodox opinions on contentious state x is excluded from policymaking. Stage 2: Exclusion causes groupthink that leads to dumb policies towards state x & a disaster

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Jon Askonas @JonAskonas - 13:25 UTC  Apr 19, 2021 The fix was in the moment Axios and Politico described Rojansky as "controversial", creating a controversy out of thin air. In the Russianist community, Rojansky is known as being almost painfully middle-of-the-road.

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Mark Ames @MarkAmesExiled - 14:01 UTC  Apr 19, 2021 Bidens Russia policy hiring subordinate to a vulture capitalist who renounced his US citizenship (Browder), a far-right fellow traveler with Frank Gaffney & Peter Thiel (Kasparov), and a Ukrainian lobby group with deep ties to Nazi collaborators. This is normalcy.

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Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald - 14:20 UTC  Apr 19, 2021 The Biden Administration was considering hiring a very smart, moderate Russia specialist, @MatthewRojansky, for its National Security Council, but the standard Russia hawks who crave conflict with Putin blocked it on the ground that he's too diplomatic.

The Blob does not self-correct its groupthink. It needs very strong forces to turn the course of the huge foreign policy ship. Change is likely to come only after the current crew has run the ship into ground and turned it into a wreck.

Over the weekend several additional conflict items between Russia and the 'west' sprang up.

Russia exposed a plot to assassinate the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko:

Several people, including two in Russia, have been arrested for allegedly plotting an armed insurrection against the Belarusian president. He claims that the US may have sanctioned the assassination attempt.

...

The existence of an alleged plot to kill Lukashenko, other top Belarusian officials, and even their family members was revealed on Saturday. In Minsk, the national broadcaster ONT ran a story naming suspected conspirators and exposing their plans. The report offered as evidence several clips of what appears to be Zoom meetings between them.

The Czech Republic unreasonably accuses Russia of an 2014 explosion in an ammunition dump:

The Czech authorities are binning Russias bid for a nuclear power contract and expelling 18 embassy officials in connection with a fatal explosion seven years ago.

...

The incident in October 2014 at the Vrbetice arms depot was forgotten with great alacrity. A huge explosion of 50 tonnes of munitions killed two workers. Another big blast followed in December. The facility was state-owned, but, in an arrangement of characteristic post-communist Czech opacity, privately managed. Security was sloppy. The clean-up costs were huge, but compensation to nearby residents stingy. The investigation was lethargic and inconclusive.

After the Czech sent 18 Russia diplomats back to Moscow, Russia ordered 20 Czech diplomats to leave. With that many gone the Czech embassy in Moscow will hardly be able to work. So why did the Czech authorities make such weird claims now and react in such a harsh way?

The most likely explanation is that the Biden administration bumped the Czechs into acting, as part of its efforts to raise international pressure on the Kremlin.

The Czech also used the opportunity to exclude the Russian Rosatom from the tender to expend the Dukovany nuclear power plant. Previously a Chinese company was similarly banned. The only other serious bid is from the U.S. company Westinghouse.

With a monoculture of anti-Russian hardliners in the State Department and National Security Council further U.S. polices towards Russia will likely become even more hostile than they are now. It may indeed need a conflict, and a potentially high number of casualties, before sanity sets in.

Posted by b on April 19, 2021 at 16:38 UTC | Permalink

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Line Of Duty fans are convinced the series six trailer gives away who survives the shoot out between DI Fleming and PC Pilkington.

Sunday's instalment of the hit police drama - which drew in an eye-popping 10million viewers - saw Kate [Vicky McClure] locked in a tense showdown with Ryan [Gregory Piper], with two gunshots heard as the screen faded to black.

Yet keen fans have claimed they already know the outcome from watching the trailer, while Adrian Dunbar - who plays Superintendent Hastings - has revealed that there's already been 'a very big clue' about what happens in next week's episode.

Have they cracked it? Line Of Duty fans are convinced the series six trailer gives away who survives the shoot out between DI Fleming and PC Pilkington

Putting their amateur detective skills to the test, several Line of Duty fans took to Twitter after Sunday's show to suggest that the series six trailer had the answers.

They were quick to point out one blink-and-you-miss-it scene which sees Kate standing next to Acting Detective Superintendent Jo Davidson [Kelly Macdonald] - which has yet to air on the show.

Fans thus deduced the scene must happen in the aftermath of the shooting - indicating Kate survives. Although nothing is known of Ryan's fate.

One person declared: 'Screen grab from #Lineofduty session 6 @BBC trailer. #katefleming looks p***ed, #jodavidson has her hands in the air. THIS SCENE HASN'T OCCURRED YET. #katefleming lives for at least 1 more episode.'

And another wrote: 'Nah shes no dead! Major spoiler if you Look back at the original season 6 trailer - both Jo and Kate get stopped by armed police, exact same clothes they were wearing just now. I reckon Ryan either missed or the second shot was Jo.'

Interesting: Adrian Dunbar revealed that there's already been 'a very big clue' about what happens to Kate in Line of Duty while appearing on GMB on Monday

Adrian appeared to back up the theories as he appeared as the first guest back in the Good Morning Britain studio on Monday, pointing fans away from the misspelt 'definately' but insisting many 'already know' her fate.

In typical AC-12 style on Sunday's show, a twist emerged in the form of a throwback clue to the 2019 series showing the word definitely misspelt as 'definately' in Jo's messages - a clue that previously suggested Hastings could be one of the bent coppers he is so hellbent on finding.

Reflecting on Sunday's dramatic show, Adrian said: 'Great cliffhanger again, Jed loves his cliffhangers. And a lot of LOD fans know [what's coming next for Kate]

Drama: On Sunday's instalment of the hit police drama, Kate [Vicky McClure] was seen locked in a tense showdown with Ryan Pilkington [Gregory Piper]

Presenter Adil Ray then jumped in asking: 'Theyve worked it out you mean?'

Adrian continued, knowingly nodding his head: 'A lot of Line of Duty fans know whats going on. All will be revealed in the fullness of time.'

Susanna then despaired as she said: 'I feel like you're giving us a really heavy piece of information that I can't for the life of me work out.'

Adrian then dropped the bombshell: 'Yes, theres been a very big clue. Im giving you a scoop. As the first guest back on the show, I am giving you a massive scoop.

'Theres a clue out there as to what happens next.'

Dropping hints: While appearing as the first guest back in the Good Morning Britain studio, the Ted Hastings actor, 62, pointed fans away from the misspelt 'definately' as they searched for clues

Susanna then probed about another huge moment in Sunday's show which saw the misspelt word 'definately' pop back up in messages Jo Davidson was receiving.

She said: 'When Jo Davidson was exchanging texts, they sent back a message that including a spelling mistake. Definitely is not spelled with an A.'

And Adrian told her: 'Correcto. Youre getting there. Youre still not there where this present clue is concerned.'

Trying to keep up! Speaking for many across the nation, Susanna told Adrian: 'I feel like you're giving us a really heavy piece of information that I can't for the life of me work out'

Elsewhere in his GMB interview, the actor continued: 'Line of Duty does seem to be a bit old school. People are happy to watch it, talk about it, wait for the next episode.

'Jed structures it so its like that, so we have the cliffhangers. Youre going to come across somebody whose talking about it during the week.

'The BBC people send me notes and they say, "you cant talk about this, this and this". Now and again, leaks do happen. Its a show that depends on collusion with the public.'

Detective work: Several fans made the connection between the trailer and the fact we have yet to see the scene where Kate and Jo are seen walking around a car

Adrian also chatted about how the cast are kept in the dark about the show's ending when they start filming, with Jed giving pointers on how they should act.

He explained: 'Once you see the episodes lining up, you think, weve covered that well, the audience knows that know.

'Regarding the ending, Jed always gives himself a bit of leeway. The ending is never set in stone and we dont get that episode until late in the day.

'We dont know for the first three eps. Sometimes he may turn around and decide to say to one of us, can you just do a look over here or a look over there.'

Adrian also remained coy about whether he'd be in another series, telling Adil he has 'no idea', but admitting that 'if the numbers are good and the BBC are happy Im sure there will be [another season]'.

Turning back to Kate, Adrian stayed tight-lipped about her role in next week's episode and beyond when asked if she'll be in another series.

He said: 'Its hard to tell. I wish I could tell you.'

Adrian added: 'We have a character whose old school like Ted who puts it out there, we should be adhering to those old fashioned values like loyalty and integrity.'

Line Of Stress! Line Of Duty fans were sent wild on Sunday evening as the latest episode ended on a nail-biting cliffhanger as Kate and Ryan were locked in a showdown

His interview comes after Line Of Duty fans were sent wild on Sunday as the latest episode ended on a nail-biting cliffhanger with Kate and Ryan locked in a showdown.

After viewers learnt that Jo was related to gangster Tommy Hunter, the fifth episode ended with Kate in a tense showdown with Ryan.

Soon after the show aired, Twitter was flooded with wild reaction from fans, who demanded bosses show the next episode now, as the suspense was too much to wait another week to see the outcome of the shoot off.

Wah! After viewers learnt that Joanne Davidson, played by Kelly Macdonald, was related to gangster Tommy Hunter, the fifth episode ended with Vicky McClure's character Kate Fleming in a tense showdown with Ryan Pilkington, played by Gregory Piper

Fans soon flooded social media in both shock and outrage.

Viewers penned: 'The whole of the U.K. right now after another cliffhanger #LineOfDuty... I mean, that cliffhanger is next level. But honestly, this was my fave part #LineOfDuty... #LineOfDuty another cliffhanger...

'I'm fuming after that Line Of Duty cliffhanger...was Kate able to get Jo an almond croissant???!... When #LineofDuty leaves us on another cliffhanger... The Line of Duty producers leaving the episode of that cliffhanger #LineofDuty...

'Having to wait a week after that cliffhanger #lineofduty... Ummm. Excuse me. Im going to need the next episode of that now. That is a cliffhanger. And my mouth does not know how to close. #LineOfDuty...

Look what you've caused: Davidson seemed genuinely distraught when she thought Kate could be shot, however it was her messages that got her in the position

Nail-biting: Soon after the show aired, Twitter was flooded with wild reaction from fans, who demanded bosses show the next episode now, as the suspense was too much to wait another week to see the outcome of the shoot off

What's going to happen next? Fans soon flooded social media in both shock and outrage

'Im in NYC watching every episode. Just finished tonights cliffhanger. You must be a creative internet user. ie seek and ye shall find. #LineOfDuty #lineofdutyday... Another Line of Duty cliffhanger I cant take it anymore Robbie...

'another week of "line of duty", another week of a cliffhanger... So I just watched last nights @Line_of_duty And yet again its ended on a cliffhanger (of course) what an episode honestly absolutely brilliant acting PS; I hope Kate doesnt die...

'Mother of God, I dont think I can take another week waiting on the outcome of yet another cliffhanger literally heart pounding out of my chest at the end of episode 4 and 5...

'Mother of God, I dont think I can take another week waiting on the outcome of yet another cliffhanger for literally heart pounding out of my chest at the end of episode 4 and 5 of #LineofDuty6 Whilst Im here...Patricia Carmichael for H''.

What's next? Although fans were already reeling with the twist, the show ended with shock, with the tense cliffhanger seeing PC Pilkington drawing his gun at DI Fleming
Womens rights campaigners have widely criticised the federal governments bizarre new online educational resources that teach students about consent through videos of milkshakes, tacos and an ocean that might be filled with sharks.

Fair Agenda has started a petition calling on the government to work with violence prevention experts to review the material on its Good Society website, which was launched as part of its Respect Matters program.

Videos aimed at students in years 10 to 12 on the website use metaphors to discuss consent and avoid mentioning the words rape or assault.

One features a teenage girl smearing a milkshake in a teenage boys face without his permission, appearing to represent sexual assault or rape.
The domestic benchmark indices nosedived in Monday's session following a strong second wave of Covid-19 in the country, leaving the market bulls battered.

An across-the-board selling resulted in a 1,469-point crash on the BSE barometer Sensex in intra-day trade. The index, however, recouped some losses and ended 883 points lower at 47,949 with HDFC twins, Reliance Industries and select banking counters among the worst drags. Barring shares of Dr Reddy's Labs and Infosys, all constituents of the 30-pack index traded in the red.

Meanwhile, its NSE counterpart Nifty after shedding as much as 425 points ended with a 258-point cut at 14,359. High volatility marked today's session with India VIX settling 10.20 per cent higher at 22.48.

The sell-off was equally bad in the broader as mid-cap and small-cap indices lost 2.1 - 2.4 per cent lower. Except Nifty pharma, all indices on NSE traded in the red.



"The steady rise in test positivity cases and the steady decline in recovery rates are areas of serious concern. But, this negativity need not reflect fully in the market since the global clues are positive. The decline in US 10-year yield from the recent high of 1.75 per cent to 1.56 per cent presently is a major relief & support to markets," said Dr. V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services.

Here are the key factors behind today's selloff:



Covid cases

The biggest single-day spike in Covid-19 infections in India once again spooked investors on Dalal Street, as they feared the impact of the same on economic and earnings growth following lockdown-like restrictions by most states to curb the spread of virus. In the last 24 hours, India clocked a record 2,73,810 Covid-19 cases, taking the total infections past the 15 million mark since the start of the pandemic.

Earnings growth

The second wave of Covid-19 in India has cast a cloud over economic growth and earnings outlook going ahead, worrying investors.

The domestic have moved in a linear manner over the past one year amid expectations of strong earnings growth in FY21 and FY22. Analysts believe any negative surprises on the earnings front can again derail the recovery.

The trend was visible in shares of IT companies, which kicked off the earnings seasons last week. The shares of IT firms fared poorly on bourses after the Q4 performance of IT bellwethers TCS and Infosys fell short of market expectations.

"The health crisis India is going through and localised lockdowns and restrictions on economic activity warrant a market correction. The targets of around 11 per cent GDP growth and above 30 per cent earnings growth for FY 22 that the market had assumed pre-second wave are likely to fall short," cautioned Kumar.

GDP downgrades

As a resurgence in Covid cases poses risks to India's fragile economic recovery, it has forced leading brokerages to downgrade India's GDP growth projections for the current fiscal year to as low as 10 per cent, dampening market sentiment.

While Nomura has downgraded projections of economic growth for the fiscal year ending March 2022 to 12.6 per cent from 13.5 per cent earlier, JP Morgan now projects GDP growth at 11 per cent from 13 per cent earlier. UBS sees 10 per cent GDP growth, down from 11.5 per cent earlier and Citi has downgraded growth to 12 per cent. READ ABOUT IT HERE

FPI outflows

The above mentioned concerns were also visible among foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) who have pulled out a net Rs 4,615 crore from Indian in April so far. According to the depositories data, overseas investors pulled out Rs 4,643 crore from equities but invested Rs 28 crore in the debt segment. If they turn net sellers in April, that would be the first monthly selling since September 2020. Sell-off by FPIs often leads to sharp market correction.
Madison Media Omega, a unit of Madison World is delighted to announce that The Landmark Group has appointed the Agency as their Media AOR for their brands Lifestyle and Spar. The Agency will handle the entire media mandate, which includes Print, Television, Radio, Outdoor and Digital. The account was won in a multi-agency pitch and will be handled by the Agency based out of Bengaluru.

Lifestyle is Indias leading fashion destination brining multiple categories including men, women and kids apparel, footwear, handbags, fashion accessories and beauty under a single roof. Lifestyle offers leading national and international brands, a true omni-channel experience with lifestylestores.com. The brand has a network of 80 stores, across 42 cities enjoying highest top-of-mind recall.

Also read: Madison Media Tops New Business Charts for 2020 in Comvergence & Recma

SPAR Hypermarket is a multinational conglomerate involved in retailing of apparel, footwear, consumer electronics, cosmetics & beauty products, home improvement and baby products. SPAR Hypermarket operates over one million square feet area across 24 stores in nine cities, including Bengaluru, Mangalore, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Delhi, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon, and Chennai. The average store size is 40,000 sq. ft. and, between its 24 stores, SPAR serves over 45 million customers annually.

Says Vikram Sakhuja, Partner & Group CEO, Madison Media & OOH, The Retail business is all about driving Sales. We took the best of our diverse talent across Madison in pitching for the prestigious Landmark group. We are thrilled to get their mandate and look forward to partnering them to deliver growth in challenging times of the pandemic.

Says Mr. Dinesh Rathod, CEO, Madison Media Omega, Were very happy to partner with The Landmark Group for their 2 prestigious brands, Lifestyle and Spar in India. The Landmark Group has been in the market for years, building trust among its customers and we intend to further strengthen the brands popularity in the country.

Madison Media, Indias largest homegrown media agency Tops New Business Charts for 2020 in both Comvergence and Recma. The agency also scored A+ in Recmas Comp pitches for 2020 and a Dominant in Recmas qualitative ranking for 2020. Madison Media last year was ranked by Recma, amongst the Top 5 Global Independent Agencies of the World. It is also ranked the 2nd most powerful media agency by The Economic Times, Brand Equity Ad Agency Reckoner, 2019. Some other accolades include Best Digital & Social Media agency of the Year at IDMA 2020, Media Agency of the Year at Prime Time Awards 2020, Agency of the Year at Digies Digital Awards 2019 and Mobile Media Agency of the Year at IDMA 2019. In addition, the Agency has won over 200 awards since 2019.

Madison Media also continues to handle media planning and buying for blue chip clients like Godrej, Marico, Asian Paints, Titan, Tata Consumer Products, Blue Star, TVS, Raymond, Viacom 18, Ceat, Pidilite, Bajaj Electricals, McDonalds, Lodha, gaana.com, and many others.

Madison World is Indias largest homegrown communication agency established in 1988. Madison World through its 11 companies served last year, as many as 500 advertisers.
Marie Watson wanted to be among the first in line when she and other essential workers became eligible for the coronavirus vaccine  and with good reason.

Registered nurse Sofia Mercado administers a vaccine shot at a vaccination event for workers at an Amazon Fulfillment Center, Wednesday, March 31, 2021, in North Las Vegas, Nev. A growing number of companies and labor unions are directly securing coronavirus vaccines for their workers. Amazon and some other large companies have hosted on-site inoculations, while smaller operations have helped book appointments for their workers. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Marie Watson wanted to be among the first in line when she and other essential workers became eligible for the coronavirus vaccine  and with good reason.

The maintenance parts buyer for a Mission Foods tortilla plant in Pueblo, Colorado, had lost her father to COVID-19 in the fall and was told by a doctor last year that she herself almost certainly had the virus.

So when her union, the United Food Workers and Commercial Workers, secured appointments for the plant's 200 workers, she jumped in her car and drove to a nearby drive-thru clinic for the first of two doses.

There was this sense of relief," Watson said. "This was more confirmation that Im on my way to being normal.

A growing number of labour unions and companies are securing shots for their employees as eligibility widens. Some large companies such as Amazon are offering workplace vaccinations through licensed health care providers, while smaller outfits are booking appointments for workers at outside locations.

For employers, the vaccines are a critical step toward restoring normalcy at a time when they expect a spike in demand for their services as more people get inoculated. They are also betting that employees who did not initially trust the vaccine will have a change of heart when they see co-workers receiving it.

For workers, employer assistance with the vaccine eliminates hurdles, including transportation issues or manoeuvring through a patchwork of websites to find appointments. That access could help to narrow the racial and socioeconomic gaps that have opened in the countrys vaccination drive.

While many essential workers have spent weeks trying to get time slots, Watson got her shot days after Colorado extended eligibility to food workers.

Iliana de la Vega, owner of the Mexican restaurant El Naranjo in Austin, Texas, said she secured appointments for all 12 of her employees out of gratitude that they stuck with her through shutdown orders and capacity restrictions that ate into their pay.

Some workers hesitated at first but were quickly persuaded with the promise of a day off, De la Vega said.

A couple of them said, We are not sure.' I said, 'That's not an option. Take it or leave it. Who knows when you will be able to get it again?'" de la Vega said.

Despite the growing number of companies offering on-site vaccinations, there are signs that some may have lost interest. In March, when vaccine eligibility was widening and distribution efforts improving in the U.S., a survey by the consulting firm Gartner found 30% of companies planned to bring vaccines to their employees. That was down from 42% in January, when distribution was still spotty and obtaining appointments was still extremely difficult for most people.

The speed of the rollout has exceeded their expectations so companies are realizing they can take a back seat, said Brian Kropp, chief of research at Gartner's human resources practice.

Vaccinating employees is also less urgent for a growing number of companies that are adopting permanent remote-work policies, Kropp said. While nearly two-thirds of companies plan to reopen their workplaces by the end of this year, the majority say they will allow many employees to keep working from home at least some days, according to Gartner, which surveyed 300 companies.

Nonetheless, prominent companies continue to join the list of those offering on-site vaccinations.

Ford Motor Co. and the United Auto Workers opened up on-site vaccinations Monday in Michigan, Kansas and Ohio. In Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine had initially put a stop to workplace clinics out of concern they would tie up supply, but he allowed them to resume last week as demand dropped at the state's mass vaccination sites.

Amazon launched its long-anticipated on-site vaccinations last month in Kansas, Missouri and Nevada. Warehouse and other front-line workers can sign up for shots at kiosks or through Amazons employee app.

Yogurt maker Chobani, which employs 2,200 people in the U.S., partnered with a local pharmacy to vaccinate hundreds of its employees at its Twin Falls, Idaho, plant, according to the companys chief People and Culture Officer Grace Zuncic.

American Airlines, Subaru, chicken producer Mountaire Farms, and agricultural equipment maker Vermeer are among 40 companies that brought vaccines to their employees through partnerships with Premise Health, a direct health care provider. American Airlines is administering vaccines at airports in Chicago, Charlotte, Tulsa and Dallas-Fort Worth, according to the company.

At least 25,000 people have been vaccinated through the partnerships, said Premise President Jami Doucette. He expects that number to climb into the millions.

Tyson Foods, one of the worlds largest food companies, said it has vaccinated nearly 40,000 employees  nearly one-third of its workforce  at vaccination events in 16 states. Tyson also expanded its on-site event last week to include eligible family members of employees.

Bob Reinhard, who is leading Tysons vaccination effort, said a minority of employees have refused to get vaccinated while some others are interested but want more information and dont want to go first.

That secondary group is now coming around, Reinhard said.

Employer-organized vaccination events, along with incentives such as bonuses or paid time off, allow companies to keep track of how many employees get vaccinated. Employer are legally allowed to require the vaccine, but the vast majority have shied away from doing so; some say it doesn't make sense to do so until everyone is eligible and there is sufficient supply.

Still, the idea is gaining some traction. While Gartner's March survey showed just 8% of companies planned to require employees to show proof of vaccinations, that number was up from 2% in January.

Chobani, which says it has avoided outbreaks at its plants and has seen few positive cases among employees, has not ruled out requiring the vaccines, Zuncic said. The company plans to assess how many of its workers have been vaccinated by midyear.

It's a discussion that continues, Zuncic said. We want to get a pulse and sense of how far along we are.
PHILADELPHIA, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Shopping online is becoming more and more common, and PPC is one of the best ways to help online businesses attract more users and increase conversions. For businesses that are looking to set up PPC or have a team of experts fine-tune their campaign, the 1Digital team of marketing experts is here to help. In addition to offering incredible PPC and marketing services, their team specializes in practically every other aspect of an e-commerce business including e-commerce design, development, and support.

1Digital Agency

PPC, or pay-per-click advertising, is one of the most popular forms of digital marketing. The idea behind PPC is relatively simple: a company bids for keywords, people search for those keywords, and that company's ad might appear at the top of the search results. If a user clicks on that ad, the company pays for that click and gets more traffic to their online store.

The genius of PPC is the fact that many users don't even know that the results they are seeing are ads. Most of the time search engine users just click the first link they see, whether it is an ad or not. This helps bring in plenty of traffic for businesses that know which keywords to target.

While this basic idea is relatively simple, there are a lot of different factors that can influence the ROI of a PPC campaign. Without an optimized campaign, businesses can end up paying for clicks that turn into bounces instead of conversions. The key to any good PPC campaign is to make sure that the keywords being bid on are actually bringing in qualified leads, and that's where 1Digital can help.

Their specialists offer world-class digital marketing services and their PPC team is second to none. PPC is not an exact science and the only way to get the best results is to understand exactly how every facet of a PPC campaign functions. A good PPC campaign is like a living thing and results have to be constantly monitored and bids have to be adjusted accordingly in order to get the best possible results. Otherwise, businesses can end up overspending without achieving the best results.

The team at 1Digital understands the Art of E-commerce. Their digital marketing experts have worked on PPC campaigns for businesses across a wide range of industries and they know exactly what makes these campaigns tick. Whether they are building a new PPC campaign or trying to increase returns on an established campaign, their team of PPC specialists is ready to help businesses get their ads in front of users who need their products or services.

For e-commerce brands interested in seeing the difference that 1Digital can make, their e-commerce experts are always ready to talk. Just reach out to a member of the 1Digital team by calling 888.982.8269 or sending an email to [email protected].

1Digital Agency

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[email protected]

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Rodney Floyd speaks during the funeral for his brother, George Floyd, at The Fountain of Praise church in Houston, Texas, on June 9, 2020. Godofredo A. Vasquez/Pool via REUTERS

George Floyd's brother Rodney Floyd says there's a "dark cloud" over Minnesota.

He spoke to the Washington Post during Derek Chauvin's murder trial in the death of George Floyd.

Rodney Floyd and several other family members have traveled to Minneapolis for the trial.

Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

George Floyd's youngest brother, Rodney Floyd, says there's a "dark cloud" over Minnesota because multiple Black men have been killed by police in the state.

Rodney Floyd spoke with the Washington Post with his brother, Philonise Floyd, during former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin's murder trial in George Floyd's death.

The brothers spoke to The Post about Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old killed by a police officer in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, earlier this month; Philando Castile, a school cafeteria employee who was shot by a police officer in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area in 2016; and Jamar Clark, who was shot by a police officer in Minneapolis in 2015.

Now Rodney Floyd and Philonise Floyd are in Minneapolis for Chauvin's trial, nearly a year after the former police officer knelt on George Floyd's neck for nine minutes during an arrest. Chauvin is facing second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter charges.

"We try to think of coming here as a job," Rodney Floyd told The Post. "Put on a suit, and go try and get justice for your brother. But there's a dark cloud over this place."

Read the original article on Insider
With the support of Congress, the land trust community is ready to accomplish much that would benefit all Americans.

The Land Trust Alliance, a national land conservation organization working to save the places people need and love by strengthening land conservation across America, is this week connecting conservationists with their elected representatives through Land Trust Alliance Virtual Advocacy Days.

Starting April 19, a record-setting 234 land trust professionals and supporters from 39 states are connecting with members of Congress through video conferencing and phone calls. Virtual Advocacy Days participants will urge congressional action on multiple conservation priorities, including passage of the Charitable Conservation Easement Program Integrity Act, which would halt the abuse of conservation easement donations and thereby safeguard taxpayers.

With the support of Congress, the land trust community is ready to accomplish much that would benefit all Americans, said Land Trust Alliance President & CEO Andrew Bowman. Together, we can stop bad actors from abusing a critical conservation program and we can give the people of this nation more conserved lands to benefit their physical and mental health. In short, we can make a better tomorrow.

In addition to advocating for the Charitable Conservation Easement Program Integrity Act, Virtual Advocacy Days participants will promote voluntary private land conservation as a means to achieve the Biden administrations goal of conserving at least 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030, join the call for a modernized Civilian Conservation Corps and lay the groundwork for a successful 2023 Farm Bill.

Land Trust Alliance Advocacy Days runs for four days, concluding April 22. Scheduled speakers include U.S. Department of Agriculture Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Senior Advisor for Climate Robert Bonnie, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), along with Reps. Abigail Spanberger (D-Virginia) and Glenn GT Thompson (R-Pennsylvania).

About the Land Trust Alliance

Founded in 1982, the Land Trust Alliance is a national land conservation organization that works to save the places people need and love by strengthening land conservation across America. The Alliance represents nearly 1,000 member land trusts supported by more than 200,000 volunteers and 4.6 million members nationwide. The Alliance is based in Washington, D.C., and operates several regional offices. More information about the Alliance is available at http://www.landtrustalliance.org.

# # #
American Idol contestant Cecil Ray has been arrested in Texas after allegedly forcing his way into the home of his ex-girlfriend and striking her in the face.

A Rockdale PD officer said that he had received a call to a residence last week where the reality star - full name Cecil Ray Baker - allegedly entered the home of his ex, Mariah Lopez, and assaulted her, TMZ reported on Monday.

Mariah took to TikTok following the arrest with a video declaring she and her daughter were 'happy safe and healthy' and included purported evidence of Cecil's abuse in photos and text exchanges.

Controversy: American Idol contestant Cecil Ray (seen last month) has been arrested in Texas after allegedly forcing his way into the home of his ex-girlfriend and striking her in the face

It has been claimed that the dispute began as Lopez had refused to let him see the child he believes is his.

Lopez claimed that she wouldn't let Baker - who is a machine operator from Cameron, Texas - in so he went to a locked back door and ripped it open to gain entry according to an affidavit obtained by TMZ.

She went on to tell law enforcement that Baker then pushed her on the floor and 'struck her in the face with a palm heel' before he left.

Another witness was Lopez's sister who told police that he went to his ex's place to see her daughter who he believes is his.

Ugly: TMZ reported on Monday that a Rockdale PD officer said that he had received a call to a residence last week where the reality star - full name Cecil Ray Baker - allegedly entered the home of his ex, Mariah Lopez, and assaulted her, as he is seen in a mugshot from Saturday

According to law enforcement sources for TMZ, the sibling mostly corroborated Lopez's description of the events.

Police said that they went on to try to track Baker and learned that he had relocated to a nearby town.

Baker was arrested a few days later on April 17 where he was charged with burglary of habitation which happens to be a second-degree felony in Texas.

He was later released on the same day as his arrest on a $15,000 bond.

Last week, Mariah called Cecil out on TikTok: 'People arent who they always seem to be on TV. Im tired of always being silenced. You even denied my daughter being yours #cheater #americanidol #fyp'

On Sunday, she shared a second TikTok video about the alleged abuse she suffered at the hands of Baker: 'Ive had enough. This is why victims never come forward bc yall try so hard to tear them down. #dobetter #bebetter'

Poignant: The video was set to the song You Should Be Sad by Halsey which is about being abused by a boyfriend

Fury: In one screen shot of texts purported to be from Cecil, the singer appeared angry with heavy use of expletives

Last week, Mariah called Cecil out on TikTok: 'People arent who they always seem to be on TV. Im tired of always being silenced. You even denied my daughter being yours #cheater #americanidol #fyp'

Then, on Sunday, she shared a second TikTok video about the alleged abuse she suffered at the hands of Baker.

'Ive had enough. This is why victims never come forward bc yall try so hard to tear them down. #dobetter #bebetter,' she wrote.

The video was set to the song You Should Be Sad by Halsey which is about being abused by a boyfriend.

Evidence: In the video Mariah shared several images of what appeared to be bruising on her arms and legs

'I know your family has seen your behavior and honestly it is disgusting that they are OK with it and trying to deny it,' she wrote directly to Cecil

Damage: Lopez shared a brief video of what appeared to be a busted up door jamb, likely from the incident which Baker was arrested over

'My daughter and I are happy safe and healthy,' Mariah captioned the first slide of the video showing a photo with the baby.

'I know your family has seen your behavior and honestly it is disgusting that they are OK with it and trying to deny it,' she wrote directly to Cecil.

Under the captions, Mariah included screen grabs of texts with friends who allegedly witnessed the abuse.

'I've seen him push you so hard you fall to the ground,' one text read.

Booked: Cecil Baker's booking sheet and mug shot were among the elements in the damning TikTok video

'But in all honesty I just hope that you decide to do better. I hope one day that you change and hold yourself accountable for your own actions. I hope one day you can change and flourish into the person that you need to be.'

'There were times where it was hard to leave,' Mariah wrote over a photo of an expletive laden text exchange with Cecil. 'You would keep reeling me back in.

Several images appear in the video of bruises on Mariah's arms and legs.

'The truth will eventually come out,' the caption read over video of what appeared to be a busted up door jamb, likely from the incident which Baker was arrested over.

She ended the video on a hopeful note for her ex: 'But in all honesty I just hope that you decide to do better. I hope one day that you change and hold yourself accountable for your own actions. I hope one day you can change and flourish into the person that you need to be.'

Interesting: It has been claimed that the dispute began as Lopez (seen last month) had refused to let him see the child he believes is his

Baker had made it to the top 24 of American Idol until being eliminated last week.

It is interesting to note that he dedicated his first performance to his two-month-old daughter which helped him earn his ticket to Hollywood in an episode which aired in February.

Cecil Ray performed a version of Morgan Wallen's Talkin' Tennessee.

He revealed that he had recently lost three people he loved to suicide, but vowed to stay strong for his infant daughter, impressing new mom and judge Katy Perry.
Pierre Komi T. Adade, a resident of Charlotte, North Carolina, originally from Togo, West Africa, has completed his new book Orphan to Greatness: An African Story: a gripping and potent biography describing his familys past and how he eventually ended up immigrating to America.

Pierre writes, I will never, ever forget the touching, emotional statement our father used to whisper in our ears as we were growing up. I would rather sacrifice everything I have, even go naked and see you, my children, succeed in life than spend the little money I have on personal luxuries and deny you an education. As you well know, when I was your age, I wasnt fortunate enough to have someone there to back me up for an education. Believe me, it hurts like an open wound. I do not wish for you to experience even one iota of what I have endured. All I want from you is for you to take advantage of my willingness to help you, to build a secure future for yourself, as well as for the generations to come. You dont have to pay me back. You really dont even have to take care of me in my old age either. I dont expect any of these things from you. I just dont want any of you to look back years from now and blame me for not helping you to succeed in life. I just want you to be happy because I love you.

Published by Page Publishing, Pierre Komi T. Adades intriguing tale describes Pierres life experiences growing up, how his parents have raised him and how he succeeded by fulfilling his fathers wishes of having a child educated in an English-speaking country.

Readers will get to know Pierre personally. This biography not only chronicles Pierres life, but describes how his parents have shaped him. He details the lessons they have instilled upon him throughout his life. Pierre also mentions what major events took place around him, while he was growing up. He was born and raised in a tribe in West Africa. The tribes and his parents values and religion have immensely shaped his outlook and perspectives on life.

Throughout his life, he has been inspired by his father. His father was an orphan growing up, which is the inspiration for the title. Pierres father was a coffee grower in West Africa, but when he was younger he yearned for an education to become a doctor or something similar. Since Pierres father did not have a family growing up, he was unable to get an education as he hoped. His circumstances caused him to become a coffee grower in order to provide for himself and his family. As a result, Pierres father dreams have changed from obtaining a better education for himself to having his children receive a better education in America or another English-speaking country.

When Pierre met a young American from the Peace Corps, his fathers dreams came true. This young America sponsored Pierre, which brought him to America. Pierre was able to receive an education in America just as his father always wanted. After immigrating to America, Pierre was able to give a year experience to each of his parents by bringing them over to America.

Readers who wish to experience this potent work can purchase Orphan to Greatness: An African Story at bookstores everywhere, or online at the Apple iTunes Store, Amazon, Google Play, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or media inquiries, contact Page Publishing at 866-315-2708.

About Page Publishing:

Page Publishing is a traditional, full-service publishing house that handles all the intricacies involved in publishing its authors books, including distribution in the worlds largest retail outlets and royalty generation. Page Publishing knows that authors need to be free to create, not mired in logistics like eBook conversion, establishing wholesale accounts, insurance, shipping, taxes, and so on. Pages accomplished writers and publishing professionals allow authors to leave behind these complex and time-consuming issues and focus on their passion: writing and creating. Learn more at http://www.pagepublishing.com.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also involved (documented in the recent report Gates to a Global Empire by Navdanya International), whether through buying up huge tracts of farmland, promoting a much-heralded (but failed) green revolution for Africa, pushing biosynthetic food and new genetic engineering technologies or more generally facilitating the aims of the mega agrifood corporations.We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agrifood chain. The high-tech/data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose a certain type of agriculture and food production on the world.

Of course, those involved in this portray what they are doing as some kind of humanitarian endeavour  saving the planet with climate-friendly solutions, helping farmers or feeding the world. This is how many of them probably do genuinely regard their role inside their corporate echo chamber. But what they are really doing is repackaging the dispossessive strategies of imperialism as feeding the world.

FAILED GREEN REVOLUTION

Since the Green Revolution, US agribusiness and financial institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have sought to hook farmers and nation states on corporate seeds and proprietary inputs as well as loans to construct the type of agri infrastructure that chemical-intensive farming requires.

Monsanto-Bayer and other agribusiness concerns have since the 1990s been attempting to further consolidate their grip on global agriculture and farmers corporate dependency with the rollout of genetically engineered seeds, commonly known as GMOs (genetically modified organisms).

In her latest report, Reclaim the Seed, Vandana Shiva says:

In the 1980s, the chemical corporations started to look at genetic engineering and patenting of seed as new sources of super profits. They took farmers varieties from the public gene banks, tinkered with the seed through conventional breeding or genetic engineering, and took patents.

Shiva talks about the Green Revolution and seed colonialism and the pirating of farmers seeds and knowledge. She says that 768,576 accessions of seeds were taken from farmers in Mexico alone:

taking the farmers seeds that embodies their creativity and knowledge of breeding. The civilising mission of Seed Colonisation is the declaration that farmers are primitive and the varieties they have bred are primitive, inferior, low yielding and have to be substituted and replaced with superior seeds from a superior race of breeders, so called modern varieties and improved varieties bred for chemicals.

It is now clear that the Green Revolution has been a failure in terms of its devastating environmental impacts, the undermining of highly productive traditional low-input agriculture and its sound ecological footing, the displacement of rural populations and the adverse impacts on village communities, nutrition, health and regional food security.

Aside from various studies that have reported on the health impacts of chemical-dependent crops (Dr Rosemary Masons many reports on this can be accessed on the academia.edu website), New Histories of the Green Revolution (2019) debunks the claim that the Green Revolution boosted productivity; The Violence of the Green Revolution (1991) details (among other things) the impact on rural communities; Bhaskar Saves open letter to Indian officials in 2006 discusses the ecological devastation of the Green Revolution and in a 2019 paper in the Journal of Experimental Biology and Agricultural Sciences, Parvez et al note that native wheat varieties in India have higher nutrition content than the Green Revolution varieties (many such crop varieties were side-lined in favour of corporate seeds that were of lower nutritional value).

These are just a brief selection of peer-reviewed and grey literature which detail the adverse impacts of the Green Revolution.

GMO VALUE CAPTURE

As for GM crops, often described as Green Revolution 2.0, these too have failed to deliver on the promises made and, like the 1.0 version, have often had devastating consequences.

The arguments for and against GMOs are well documented, but one paper worth noting appeared in the journal Current Science in 2018. Along with PC Kesavan, MS Swaminathan  regarded as the father of the Green Revolution in India  argued against introducing GM crops to India and cited various studies about the failings of the GMO project.

Regardless, the industry and its well-funded lobbyists and bought career scientists continue to spin the line that GM crops are a marvellous success and that the world needs even more of them to avoid a global food shortage. GM crops are required to feed the world is a well-worn industry slogan trotted out at every available opportunity. Just like the claim of GM crops being a tremendous success, this too is based on a myth.

There is no global shortage of food. Even under any plausible future population scenario, there will be no shortage as evidenced by scientist Dr Jonathan Latham in his recent paper The Myth of a Food Crisis.

However, new gene drive and gene editing techniques have now been developed and the industry is seeking the unregulated commercial release of products that are based on these methods.

It does not want plants, animals and micro-organisms created with gene-editing to be subject to safety checks, monitoring or consumer labelling. This is concerning given the real dangers that these techniques pose.

Many peer-reviewed research papers now call into question industry claims about the precision, safety and benefits of gene-edited organisms and can be accessed on the GMWatch.org website.

It really is a case of old wine in new bottles.

And this is not lost on a coalition of 162 civil society, farmers and business organisations which has called on Vice-President of the European Commission Frans Timmermans to ensure that new genetic engineering techniques continue to be regulated in accordance with existing EU GMO standards.

The coalition argues that these new techniques can cause a range of unwanted genetic modifications that can result in the production of novel toxins or allergens or in the transfer of antibiotic resistance genes. The open letter adds that even intended modifications can result in traits which could raise food safety, environmental or animal welfare concerns.

The European Court of Justice ruled in 2018 that organisms obtained with new genetic modification techniques must be regulated under the EUs existing GMO laws. However, there has been intense lobbying from the agriculture biotech industry to weaken the legislation, aided by the Gates Foundation.

The coalition states that various scientific publications show that new techniques of genetic modification allow developers to make significant genetic changes, which can be very different from those that happen in nature.

In addition to these concerns, a new paper from Chinese scientists, Herbicide Resistance: Another Hot Agronomic Trait for Plant Genome Editing, says that, in spite of claims from GMO promoters that gene editing will be climate-friendly and reduce pesticide use, what we can expect is just more of the same  GM herbicide-tolerant crops and increased herbicide use.

The industry wants its new techniques to be unregulated, thereby making gene-edited GMOs faster to develop, more profitable and hidden from consumers when purchasing items in stores. At the same time, the costly herbicide treadmill will be reinforced for farmers.

None of this is meant to imply that new technology is bad in itself. The issue is who owns and controls the technology and what are the underlying intentions. By dodging regulation as well as avoiding economic, social, environmental and health impact assessments, it is clear that the industry is first and foremost motivated by value capture and profit and contempt for democratic accountability.

This is patently clear if we look at the rollout of Bt cotton in India which served the bottom line of Monsanto but brought dependency, distress and no durable agronomic benefits for many of Indias small and marginal farmers. Prof A P Gutierrez argues that Bt cotton has effectively placed these farmers in a corporate noose.

Monsanto sucked hundreds of millions of dollars in profit from these cotton farmers, while industry-funded scientists are always keen to push the mantra that rolling out Bt cotton in India uplifted their conditions.

Those who promote this narrative remain wilfully ignorant of the challenges (documented in the 2019 book by Andrew Flachs  Cultivating Knowledge: Biotechnology, Sustainability and the Human Cost of Cotton Capitalism in India) these farmers face in terms of financial distress, increasing pest resistance, dependency on unregulated seed markets, the eradication of environmental learning, the loss of control over their productive means and the biotech-chemical treadmill they are trapped on (this last point is precisely what the industry intended).

When assessing the possible impacts of GMO agriculture, it was with good reason that, in their 2018 paper, Swaminathan and Kesavan called for:

able economists who are familiar with and will prioritise rural livelihoods and the interests of resource-poor small and marginal farmers rather than serve corporate interests and their profits.

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

Whether through all aspects of data control (soil quality, consumer preferences, weather, etc), e-commerce monopolies, corporate land ownership, seed biopiracy and patenting, synthetic food or the eradication of the public sectors role in ensuring food security and national food sovereignty (as we could see in India with new farm legislation), Bill Gates and his corporate cronies seek to gain full control over the global food system.

Smallholder peasant farming is to be eradicated as the big-tech giants and agribusiness impose lab-grown food, GM seeds, genetically engineered soil microbes, data harvesting tools and drones and other disruptive technologies.

We could see farmerless industrial-scale farms being manned by driverless machines, monitored by drones and doused with chemicals to produce commodity crops from patented GM seeds for industrial biomatter to be processed and constituted into something resembling food.

The displacement of a food-producing peasantry (and the subsequent destruction of rural communities and local food security) was something the Gates Foundation once called for and cynically termed land mobility.

Technocratic meddling has already destroyed or undermined agrarian ecosystems that draw on centuries of traditional knowledge and are increasingly recognised as valid approaches to secure food security, as outlined in Food Security and Traditional Knowledge in India in the Journal of South Asian Studies, for instance.

But is all of this inevitable?

Not according to the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, which has just released a report in collaboration with the ETC Group: A Long Food Movement: Transforming Food Systems by 2045.

The report outlines two different futures. If Gates and the global mega-corporations have their way, we will see the entire food system being controlled by data platforms, private equity firms and e-commerce giants, putting the food security (and livelihoods) of billions at the mercy of AI-controlled farming systems.

The other scenario involves civil society and social movements  grassroots organisations, international NGOs, farmers and fishers groups, cooperatives and unions  collaborating more closely to transform financial flows, governance structures and food systems from the ground up.

The reports lead author, Pat Mooney, says that agribusiness has a very simple message: the cascading environmental crisis can be resolved by powerful new genomic and information technologies that can only be developed if governments unleash the entrepreneurial genius, deep pockets and risk-taking spirit of the most powerful corporations.

Mooney notes that we have had similar messages based on emerging technology for decades but the technologies either did not show up or fell flat and the only thing that grew were the corporations.

He says:

In return for trillions of dollars in direct and indirect subsidies, the agribusiness model would centralise food production around a handful of untested technologies that would lead to the forced exodus of at least a billion people from hundreds of millions of farms. Agribusiness is gambling on other peoples food security.

Although Mooney argues that new genuinely successful alternatives like agroecology are frequently suppressed by the industries they imperil, he states that civil society has a remarkable track record in fighting back, not least in developing healthy and equitable agroecological production systems, building short (community-based) supply chains and restructuring and democratising governance systems.

As stated in the report, the thrust of any Long Food Movement strategy is that short-termism is not an option: civil society groups need to place multiple objectives and actions on a 25-year roadmap and not make trade-offs along the way  especially when faced with the neoliberal-totalitarianism of Gates et al who will seek to derail anything or anyone regarded as a threat to their aims.

The report A Long Food Movement: Transforming Food Systems by 2045 can be accessed at here.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 19) -- Local executives in the Greater Manila area do not have to worry about beating the initial deadline for the distribution of cash aid.

The extension has been approved in principle by SILG (Secretary of Interior and Local Government) and [DSWD] Secretary Bautista. They are just discussing the number of days of extension. We will make the announcement in due time, DILG Undersecretary Jonathan Malaya told CNN Philippines.

Metro Manila mayors asked the DILG to extend the initial 15-day period given to local government units to finish the distribution of cash aid for the recent enhanced community quarantine.

Marikina City Mayor Marcy Teodoro said the initial deadline was not realistic since the funds were downloaded to LGUs more than a week after ECQ was imposed last March 29.

He said they are now done distributing to beneficiaries in the DSWDs master list. But he added that they are now dealing with grievance complaints from residents not included in the list who claim they deserve aid as well.

Kukulangin itong binigay ng national [government]. Kung magkano 'yung kaya naming ma-abono pipilitin namin bigyan 'yung lahat ng mga nag-appeal pero ang limitation nun, depende dun sa kaya namin, Teodoro said.

[Translation: The one provided by the national government will not be sufficient. We will try to release from our own funds as much as we can to those who are appealing, but it will be limited by our capacity.]

In San Juan City, Mayor Francis Zamora said 90% of the total cash aid fund has been disbursed. They have around P10 million left but some people in the master list have not claimed their money.

Zamora said it was possible these residents got stuck in other cities or provinces during the ECQ. They have until this week to claim their cash aid.

As of April 18, some 7.5 million or less than half of the 22.9 million target beneficiaries have received their cash grant.
The alarmingly high infection rate of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causal agent of the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, has had an enormous impact on healthcare in many parts of the world. The surge in the rate of hospitalization, especially intensive care unit admissions, has placed an overwhelming burden on healthcare systems worldwide. Among many initiatives to contain the spread of the virus, social distancing, nationwide lockdowns, and vaccine deployments have taken the front seat.

Many European countries, as of spring 2021, are undergoing the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. These nations have started following stringent social distancing measures in response. In England, researchers found that since January 2021, the country's third national lockdown, the rate of hospitalization and deaths owing to COVID-19 has been consistently decreasing. On the 8th of March 2021, the first significant relaxation of lockdown was announced, whereby schools were re-opened. Since then, researchers observed that the rate of decline of new cases had slowed considerably. Following the re-opening of schools, large-scale COVID-19 testing for school children and their families has been conducted with the help of lateral flow devices.

The Real-time Assessment of Community Transmission-1 (REACT-1) is an ongoing study that is helping monitor the rate of SARS-CoV-2 infection in England over time. REACT-1 has significantly boosted the surveillance data in England. It involves the detection, via swab-positivity for SARS-CoV-2, among a random sample of the community irrespective of individuals' COVID-19 symptoms. A new study published on the medRxiv* preprint server focuses on the results from round 10 of REACT-1, which is based on the swabs collected between the 11th and 30th of March 2021. In this study, researchers have compared the results of round 10 with round 9, for which samples were collected between the 4th and 23rd of February 2021.

While studying the prevalence of infection, the tenth round showed a reduction by around 60%, in comparison to the ninth round. These rounds happened during England's third national lockdown, after the second wave of COVID-19 in the country.

The current research found that the national R number over the period of study was below one, indicating the epidemic had decelerated from February to March. However, the newest data revealed that following the re-opening of school in March, the rate of decline slowed. Further, the frequency of COVID-19 positive individuals plateaued at 1 in 500 (0.20%) people.

Researchers observed the highest prevalence in children belonging to primary and early secondary school, aged between 5-12 years. On the contrary, individuals above the age of 65 years showed the lowest prevalence of COVID-19. Scientists believe that the infection rate is consistently lower among older adults owing to being the primary group to be vaccinated. Further, a decrease in mortality rate and the number of individuals requiring hospitalization, after the onset of vaccination programs, was observed. Scientists also highlighted that post-vaccination, the rate of severe COVID-19 has decreased significantly in the older adult population.

In this study, scientists observed a close proximity between the incidence of COVID-19 measured by the recent rounds of REACT-1 and the data obtained from publicly available sources on the rate of hospital admission and mortality. They found that the relationship, between the prevalence of infections and mortality (suitably lagged) has diverged. Such a divergence could be owing to the vaccination program. This result is consistent with the studies conducted in Israel and Scotland. These countries have also reported high efficiency of vaccines against severe COVID-19.

Scientists believe that in the future, the association between infections, deaths, and hospitalizations in England should be closely monitored. This is because if the approximation of the infection and mortality curves falls back to the previous pattern, it would mean an increase in the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants that are evading the vaccine-induced immune response. In the preliminary rounds of REACT-1, the correlation between infections and mortality had appeared to be weaker, possibly owing to the lack of community transmission.

The current study reported swab positivity to be over 30-times higher in participants who were in direct contact with a confirmed COVID-19 patient than in individuals who were not in direct contact. This observation emphasizes the value of COVID-19 testing. Researchers believe that manual contact tracing might not be sufficient to achieve an R number less than 1. Additionally, owing to a consistently higher rate of infection in deprived neighborhoods, REACT-1 recommended highly local interventions even when the number of cases is low.

The government in England is following a new cautious approach for easing the national lockdown. They have adopted the strategy to ease lockdown gradually by implementing an approximate gap of five weeks after each step towards "normalization." This approach ensures time to assess the effect of each step based on the rate of transmission of the virus and the R number. Subsequent REACT-1 surveys will test the efficacy of this strategy.

*Important Notice

medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
A VIRTUAL talk on the myths and realities around Lawrence of Arabia will be given to a meeting of the British Modern Military History Society at 7.30pm on May 12.

Historian John Peaty will discuss the life of British intelligence officer Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, who is famed for supporting the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.

The society hopes to resume its talks at Woodcote village hall in September.

For more information, visit bmmhs.org
The impenetrable G. Gordon Liddy



By Franklin Raff





Legendary talk-show host G. Gordon Liddy died recently at age 90. Remembered by some for his often misunderstood role in the Watergate affair, he lived a remarkable life, much of it shrouded forever in secrecy.



What you may have seen in the media, heard on his show or read in his best-selling autobiography WILL comprise but a glimpse of his experiences, and even after a decade as his executive producer, sidekick and aide de camp, I am left with as many questions as answers.



A few years ago, for instance, I wanted to buy Mr. Liddy a unique gift, a Special Operations Association special edition .45ACP 1911 handgun, because I knew he was proud of (what I thought was) his honorary membership in the SOA.



One must do such things by the book, however, and I wondered whether it would be entirely kosher for me to present such an elegant piece to an honorary member. So I telephoned the SOA president, who said, Its a good question, Franklin. But Mr. Liddy is a full member, not an honorary member.



But, I replied, he was in the FBI and Treasury, sure, and an officer during the Korean War, but only CIA Special Operatives and elite Special Forces unit members can become members.



Gordon is way beyond fully, formally qualified for full membership in the SOA. Thats all I can say, the president told me. He then reminded me that while he appreciated my taste in guns, I was in fact knowingly and willingly planning to purchase a firearm for transport across state lines for delivery to a convicted felon. I opted for a different gift.



Had I known the depth of G. Gordons background I wouldnt have been so surprised when, a few years earlier, fifty Marines turned up to meet him at a rifle range in Iraq. He accepted their challenge to put a group of shots on target at a hundred yards. They wanted to see just how sharp the G-Man really was.



The rifles were RPKs, variants of the Kalashnikov AK-47. He and I lay prone and sighted our targets while the Marines looked on.



The rifles had iron sights (no scopes) and at that range the front sight blades nearly covered up the targets. Im a seasoned shot, but a tight group with this weapon seemed utterly impossible for me at that distance  much less, I thought, for a septuagenarian whod left his glasses back in the Humvee.



So I fired a short volley at my own target, and two more, surreptitiously, at his. The Marines followed us downrange to check our performance. As I stared at the mess I had made of my own paper, with holes scattered about, I heard Gordons familiar growl: Frrrrrr-anklin!



I looked up. His target had ten neat holes in a tight group right at the center  his shots  and a mess of my own in distant orbit. Everyone had a good laugh, and we all learned there are no circumstances in which it is advisable to underestimate G. Gordon.



Few civilians knew about any of these exploits. Those who served our country often knew much more.



Not long after 9/11/2001, the two of us returned to JFK Airport from Kuwait, arriving at 5:30 am on one of those soft, foggy mornings so particular to New York, especially when the growing energy of the sky, of industry and of the people around you become palpable. We found some decent coffee and approached Customs.



A tough-looking officer at the booth sleepily took G. Gordons passport without looking up. I watched as he flipped backward through the stamps. Falling on the front page, his eyes widened. After a time, he looked up at Gordon.



Suddenly, this imposing mans face lit up with a happy, almost child-like expression. No! he exclaimed. After a long pause, Gordon simply replied, Yes.



The officer closed the passport, eyes still on Gordon. His expression darkened but he was still smiling. Mr. Liddy, I dont know what you were doing out there in the Middle East, and frankly, I dont think I want to know. But I sure am glad youre back. Welcome to New York, sir. Welcome home.



Charitable, dutiful, true to his religion, and of course intensely loyal, G. Gordon also had the sharpest, most captivating and affectionate sense of humor of anyone I have ever known.



G. Gordon Liddy didnt simply survive; he prevailed. He is now reunited with his extraordinary wife, Frances, where he has long wished to be. When we recall the times we were privileged to accompany him, those who knew Gordon are left with a sense of delight, inspiration, and mystery.



Franklin Raff was a friend and executive producer for G. Gordon Liddy at Radio America. Home
Infosys, Facebook, Genpact, Cognizant among others have reached out to employees and offered support in different ways as the second wave of Covid cases sees an exponential rise.

Companies are advising employees not to venture out of their homes and give prominence to the health and safety of the family. This is of significance as several IT and Tech firms were going to take a call of work-from-home scenario from June and had plans to allow some employees to come back to offices. But that seems to be now extended.

In an email to employees on Monday, titled "Stay Safe from the Covid-19 Second Wave," Infosys chief operating officer U B Pravin Rao cited the enormous number of fresh cases being reported daily, and said, "I write today to request you all put your health and that of your family members above everything else. Do not leave your homes without wearing a protective mask, practice social distancing, and avoid crowds and closed spaces... We request you not to venture out unless its an emergency."





ALSO READ: Monday Blues: Second Covid-19 wave stings indices as markets drop 1.8%

Infosys has also asked all staff to unless they have to report to work as part of a business continuity plan team.

Facebook India has announced three company-wide paid holidays "to give people additional time to rest and recharge".

In an internal communication to employees on Saturday, Facebook India vice president and managing director Ajit Mohan said, "We are deeply conscious that we are going through a tough time in India and a lot of you are experiencing fatigue and burnout. Given the grim pandemic situation, our people are facing increased challenges to self-care, and many are carrying the additional caregiving responsibilities."

Similarly, business process management firm has increased its employee communications, in addition to the focus they've had since last year in the health and wellness of employees.



ALSO READ: Delhi under lockdown for a week as rising Covid cases stretch health infra

We understand that the resurgence of Covid-19 in India comes with increasing personal and professional challenges for our employees. Our CEO, Tiger Tyagarajan is reinforcing the need to stay safe, to extend support to colleagues across borders, and to demonstrate empathetic resilience and agility, in order to focus on client work that is most important, and reprioritize work that is not client critical, said a Genpact spokesperson.

In an email sent to all employees last week, Rajesh Nambiar, Chairman and Managing Director of Cognizant India said, "While we had hoped to be on the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of cases are growing significantly across India. Now, more than ever, we need to stay alert, continue to take precautions and follow safety measures to stop the spread."

ALSO READ: Serum, Bharat Biotech to get suppliers' credit for 300 mn Covid-19 doses

He further said employees should report any illness, even without taking a Covid-19 test in the internal Cognizant portal, follow local health guidelines, practice social distancing, and stay home if they feel unwell.

Naveen Tewari, founder and CEO, InMobi Group said in an audio message to the leadership team said, I am more than happy to help anybody at any point of time in the company, or in their extended family or friends if they need help. Please reach out, do not hesitate, you will not be able to activate things by yourselves, he said.





He cautioned all the employees of the InMobi group by saying that for the last 14 months or so of the Covid breakout, this probably is the worst that he has seen. "The number of cases and deaths of people whom I have known have been 7-8 in the last 24 hours. Some of them I couldnt save, and equal numbers are still searching for hospital beds. We do not have any systemic solution for this. The only way to deal with this is for you and your team members and family to stay in. Nothing is more important than saving yourselves. Our system cannot take cases, there is no capacity, said Tewari.





ALSO READ: Govt allows coronavirus vaccination for all adults starting May 1

India on Monday reported a net increase of 128,013 in active cases, the most ever in a day, to take its count to 1,929,329. Indias share of global active cases now stands at 10.57 per cent (one in 9). The country is second among the most affected countries by active cases. On Monday, it added 273,810 cases, the most in a day yet, to take its total caseload to 15,061,919. And, with 1,619 new fatalities, its Covid-19 death toll reached 178,769, or 1.19 per cent of total confirmed infections.

With 1,230,007 more people getting Covid-19 vaccine shots on Sunday, Indias total count of those inoculated reached 123,852,566. The count of recovered cases across India, meanwhile, reached 12,953,821  or 86.00 per cent of total caseload  with 144,178 new cured cases being reported on





ALSO READ: InMobi's Tewari warns of rising cases, offers staff help in audio message
New Delhi: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday (April 14) is improving in home isolation.

As per the official sources, the BJP leader's condition is being closely monitored by renowned doctors.

The sources also added that Yogi Adityanath does not have a fever now and his oxygen levels are also in the normal range.

Additionally, the Chief Minister has also kept Navratri fast for nine days, but regardless of his condition the BJP leader is working through virtual meetings in order to monitor the COVID-19 situation in the state.

Earlier, CM Yogi Adityanath had announced that he was isolating himself on Tuesday and was tested positive the following day. The Chief minister started getting cautious after a number of officials in his secretariat tested positive for COVID-19.

Live TV
The federal government turned down a request by state governors to borrow from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to augment the N50 billio...

The federal government turned down a request by state governors to borrow from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to augment the N50 billion federation account allocation committee (FAAC) shortfall in March.





Zainab Ahmed, minister of finance, budget and national planning, said this while speaking on Good Morning Nigeria programme, a daily breakfast show on the Nigeria Television Authority (NTA), on Monday.

Godwin Obaseki, governor of Edo state, had alleged that the federal government printed N60 billion to support March federal allocation to states.

Godwin Emefiele, governor of CBN, had dismissed Obasekis claim describing it as unfortunate and totally inappropriate.

Ahmed said that whenever there is reduction in federal allocation, the federal government takes money from some reserve accounts, but in the case of March allocation which fell by N50 billion, all state governments were asked to manage their resources.

It is a difficult time, I can explain to you how difficult it is not just for the federal government but also for the states, we see increasing reduction in our FAAC revenue, she said.

In the month of March, we had a shortfall of FAAC that is almost about N50 billion and we did not have enough accrued in any of those accounts, the states to be honest wanted us to borrow from the Central Bank, but we resisted, we just told everybody to go back to live within what they had.

So it was very surprising for us when we heard a sitting governor saying that CBN has printed money for FAAC, that was very unfortunate because it is not true.
By Cate Cadell and Stephanie Nebehay

BEIJING/GENEVA (Reuters) -Human Rights Watch said on Monday that China's actions in Xinjiang could meet criteria for crimes against humanity, calling for a U.N. investigation into "widespread" abuses and for businesses to shun goods made in the region.

The U.S.-based activist group said there was evidence of ongoing egregious abuses targeting Turkic Muslims, which include Uighurs, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz people. China has consistently denied all accusations of abuse in Xinjiang.

"Given the gravity of the abuses against Turkic Muslims, there is a pressing need for concerned governments to take strong, coordinated action to advance accountability," Human Rights Watch said.

United Nations experts and rights groups say China has detained over a million Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang since 2017 as part of a broad crackdown in the region.

The report cited cases of torture, enforced disappearances, labour transfers, sexual violence and other abuses based on evidence including witness testimonies, government documents and media reports.

Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said that such crimes were among the gravest under international law.

"Concerned governments should be imposing targeted sanctions - visa bans, economic restrictions and the like. They should be pursuing criminal cases under the concept of universal jurisdiction," he told a news conference.

Companies that cannot ensure that their supply chains for textiles or other goods were not made using forced labour in Xinjiang should stop doing business there, the report said.

Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, said: "We really think this is a very important moment for anyone doing business in the region to pause and think very very carefully about whether their operations really are free of serious human rights violations."

LEGAL FRAMEWORK

The report provides a legal framework for how Beijing's actions in Xinjiang could meet the criteria for crimes against humanity as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Story continues

In December, the ICC said it would not pursue an investigation into the mass detentions because the alleged crimes took place inside China, which is not party to the Hague-based court.

Several Western governments have levied sanctions over alleged rights abuses against China, which has said it will not allow an independent investigation into its programmes in Xinjiang.

Chinese officials initially denied the mass detentions, but have since said people were participating in voluntary vocational training and de-radicalisation programmes, and they have since "graduated".

In March, the European Union, United States, Britain and Canada imposed sanctions on Chinese officials over alleged human rights violations in Xinjiang. China responded with corresponding sanctions on several lawmakers, researchers and institutions.

Beijing has called Uighur witnesses abroad "actors" and says efforts to investigate Chinese policy in Xinjiang are led by "anti-China forces", primarily in the United States.

(Reporting by Cate Cadell in Beijing and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Neil Fullick and Rosalba O'Brien)
As the government holds



crucial meetings, amid a spike in COVID cases in the state, Health Minister K Sudhakar on Monday, indicating tough control measures said, lockdown is not the only solution, as he also conceded that Bengaluru city is witnessing shortage of ICU beds.

The Minister said Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa who will on Monday be attending the meeting with MLAs and Ministers from Bengaluru, virtually from the hospital where he is undergoing treatment for COVID, will also be holding a meeting with leaders of opposition parties Tuesday to gather their opinion on the measures to be taken in the state.

"In Bengaluru, there is an increase in infections, when infections increase there will be shortage of beds at hospitals. More than hospital beds, we are seeing a shortage of ICU beds," Sudhakar said.

Speaking to reporters here ahead of the crucial meeting with legislators and Ministers from the city, he said, we will discuss on how to bring it under control and measures to be taken in this regard.

"Giving treatment is one part of it, we will also have to control the spike in infections and bring it down, for that we will have to certainly impose restrictions on some activities. We will have to think in that direction and take advice from everyone," he added.

Chief Minister Yediyurappa who is currently undergoing treatment for COVID at a private hospital, will be attending the meeting virtually, his office said in a statement.

Noting that the suggestions given by the state's Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) on COVID with scientific inputs will be crucial, Sudhakar said, keeping all these aspects in mind the government will take a decision.

Responding to a question on lockdown, he said, "the term lockdown is getting publicity, the question before us is what kind of strict measures should be taken to bring things under control...we should have clarity on it. Lockdown is not the only solution."



People are thinking about normal life being affected, but many lives are getting lost and saving lives is the priority of the government, he said, adding "so we will discuss about the measure to be taken at the meeting today, and tomorrow Chief Minister will be talking to leaders of opposition parties via video conference, following which we will come to a final decision."Not giving clarity on whether tough measures will be announced Monday, the Minister said, "it can't be said now itself, may be measures for Bengaluru will be announced today or as there is meeting with leaders of opposition parties tomorrow, after getting inputs from there and discussing with Ministers, officials and TAC, a decision may be announced."The meeting with leaders of opposition parties that was scheduled for Sunday was cancelled after Yediyurappa tested positive for COVID.

The state had on Sunday reported the biggest ever spike of 19,067 new COVID cases and 81 deaths taking the total number infections to 11,61,065 and the toll to 13,351.

The total number of active cases stood at 1,33,543.

Out of the 19,067 new cases on Sunday, 12,793 were from Bengaluru alone.

(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.)
Elizabeth Furse, who represented northwest Oregon in Congress for three terms in the 1990s, died peacefully at home Sunday at age 84 from complications related to a fall, her former husband said Monday.

A lifelong activist, Furse championed the rights of Native Americans and helped five Oregon tribes to regain federal recognition. She also worked to advance the rights of women, children and farm workers, and she advocated for peace and nuclear disarmament and environmental regulation and land use rules.

Elizabeth Furse shown on the evening of her second election to Congress in 1994. She won by just 301 votes. (Michael Lloyd/The Oregonian)Oregonian

Her work on tribal issues dated to the 1970s. In 1992, running as a Democrat from Washington County, she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives without ever having held elected office.

After she left Congress voluntarily at the end of her third term in 1999, she became founding director of Portland State Universitys Institute for Tribal Government. She also co-owned and operated Helvetia Winery with her second, now former, husband, John Platt, for nearly three decades.

John Platt and Elizabeth Furse, who were married for 25 years and remained best friends, stroll Helvetia Vineyards in 2002. They co-owned and operated it for 30 years. (Bruce Ely/The Oregonian)The Oregonian

Furse, who was born a British citizen in Kenya when it was still a British colony, grew up mostly in South Africa and, as a young woman, was active in the anti-apartheid movement. She married a U.S. citizen and, after moving to the United States, became a citizen. She was the first person born in Africa elected to Congress, according to her close friend Kerry Tymchuk, now head of the Oregon Historical Society.

Congresswoman Elizabeth Furse with her husband, John Platt, and daughter, Amanda Briggs, at a press conference in summer 1997 to announce that, as a believer in term limits, she would not run for a fourth term. (Kathryn Scott Osler/The Oregonian)Oregonian

Furse is survived by her children, Amanda Briggs of Beaverton and John Briggs of Seattle, and by Platt, with whom she remained close friends. Platt said he and the family are planning a memorial service to be held sometime this summer.

Congresswoman-elect Elizabeth Furse talks to supporters on the phone on election night 1992, after wrapping up a victory over Republican Tony Meeker. (Tim Jewett/The Oregonian)Oregonian

Elizabeth Furse at the Hilton Hotel in Portland on election night 1996. It was her third and final victorious run for Congress. (Michael Lloyd/The Oregonian)November Scans 1996

The interior of Elizabeth Furse's house in Helvetia was a reflection of her interests, the creative talent of her family and her own artistic projects. The photo was taken in 2014, when she ran for a seat on the Washington County Commission. (Benjamin Brink/The Oregonian)LC- The Oregonian

Elected officials and others who knew her shared reactions and thoughts about her many contributions.

Former Rep. Elizabeth Furse lived the Jewish concept of tikkun olam with every fiber of her being, repairing the world to help Tribal communities, strengthen womens health care and support vulnerable Americans everywhere. Ill miss her tremendously.  Ron Wyden (@RonWyden) April 19, 2021

Elizabeth Furse had a steadfast commitment to justice and civic engagement, Portland State University President Stephen Percy said in a statement.

Direlle Calica, director of the Institute for Tribal Government that Furse founded, said in a statement, The legacy of her work on tribal governance, restoration legislation and self-determination has been profound and will continue to be realized by generations of Native Americans and Oregonians to come.

RIP. A great public servant and truly good person. Crossed party lines twice to endorse my former boss US Senator Gordon Smith - gutsy move from a different political age.  Dan Lavey (@DanLavey1) April 20, 2021

-- Betsy Hammond; betsyhammond@oregonian.com; @OregonianPol
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-20 05:02:13|Editor: huaxia

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N'DJAMENA, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Incumbent Chadian President Idriss Deby has won the absolute majority in the first round of the presidential election, according to provisional results announced Monday evening by the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) of the central African nation.

According to the CENI, Deby received 3,663,431 votes, or 79.32 percent of all votes cast. Voter turnout was 64.81 percent. The Constitutional Council will proclaim the final results in the days that come.

The presidential poll took place on April 11 amid political and security tensions.

In early March, three opposition candidates announced their withdrawal from the race, including Saleh Kebzabo, heavyweight of the opposition who wants to boycott the election. Kebzabo came second in the 2016 presidential election.

Since April 11, the polling day, militants of the Front for Alternation and Concord in Chad (FACT), an armed rebel group based in neighboring Libya, have made incursions into the province of Tibesti, in northern Chad.

More than 300 FACT rebels were killed and 150 others, including three top leaders, taken prisoner last Saturday in Chad's western Kanem province, a Chadian army spokesperson said on Monday.

The battleground is some 300 km north of the capital N'Djamena. On Monday, security in the capital city has been beefed up with tanks deployed in major strategic positions.

The government called on the population to stay calm, saying the security reinforcement was misinterpreted, and there is no particular threat to fear.

Several opposition parties and civil society organizations in Chad called on the warring parties to reach a ceasefire, and asked the government to open an inclusive national dialogue to ease tensions. Enditem
Thousands of Christians pray for San Diego's schools amid COVID-19 virtual learning

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Over 3,200 people from 98 partnering churches joined a prayer event in person and online Saturday to pray for the citys schools, youth and teachers.



The event was the second We Pray San Diego gathering, following the first one in June that had focused on praying for both the healing of residents infected with COVID-19 and the citys racial tensions. Nearly 2,000 people attended the event in person while the remainder joined online.

Interestingly enough, we have not had any big civil unrest in our city. Is that a direct result? Maybe not, said Daryl Nuss, 71, the special counsel to the CEO of National Network of Youth Ministries and a We Pray San Diego leader, to The Christian Post.

But I think some of it can be attributed to the fact that people of faith were praying and are praying.

During the event, Nuss and other participants prayed for an hour while listening on their cell phones to a prayer guide provided by Pastor Miles McPherson of San Diegos 19,000-member Rock Church. Nuss said he and 50 other people prayed outside the Poway Unified School Districts office while practicing social distancing.



Back in July, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that schools on the state's COVID-19 watch list needed to remain closed, which included San Diego County, and thus all educational instructions would be given virtually. San Diego as well as Los Angeles, the two largest public school districts in California, announced that month they would be holding online-only classes for the fall.

The Saturday prayer meeting was built on years of working alongside San Diego schools, Nuss said. Over the past eight years, churches have built a relationship with local schools with projects like drug awareness programs.

We have a real bond of trust, he said. This didnt happen out of the blue.

Another event leader, Assistant Pastor Abel Isaac Ledezma of Centro Familiar Cristiano Church, said prayer topics included school, education, teachers, principals, students, and the education system. Californias school system is the ninth-worst in the nation because of low test scores, a high dropout rate and high number of pupils per teacher in the classroom, according to ranking site WalletHub.

Basically, we were praying for our future, Ledezma said. I felt like this one was much needed.

Getting parking for everyone was the events biggest challenge, Ledezma shared. But once We Pray San Diego found available parking lots, everything went smoothly. The peaceful church members had surprised people driving by, he said.

They were a little confused because theyre used to seeing people with protest signs showing anger, but their faces started to change when they saw we were praying, he said. Its very different from what people are seeing nowadays.

Attendees enjoyed the event and looked forward to the next time it would happen, Nuss said.

I had an individual Saturday say, cant we do this once a week or once a month? he said.

Both Nuss and Ledezma said the event gave the community a chance to see what the church stood for. In times when Christians often are known for what they oppose, it was an opportunity for believers to show love for their community.

This is a positive way to let people know we believe in God, we believe in the power of prayer and were not afraid to pray on our streets, Ledezma said. Overall people have a positive response to prayer. During the planning process of this event I took some time to pray for the people who are driving by, that because they saw us praying it would lead to a domino effect in their spiritual life.



The events prayer guides are still available online at wepraysandiego.com. They include contemplative music, reading from the Bible and prayer topic suggestions in English, Spanish and American Sign Language.
NEW YORK, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Atento S.A. (NYSE: ATTO, "Atento" or the "Company"), one of the world's top five providers of customer relationship management and business process outsourcing (CRM/BPO) services, announced that the Company has assumed a front-line position in the fight against the novel coronavirus by launching Atento's Equitable Vaccination Distribution and Scheduling solution, partnering with Bethesda-based solutions provider DMI, Inc. in the state of Maryland.

Atento's COVID-19 Vaccine Hotline software solution enables government institutions to easily manage the increased incoming call volume associated with the current pandemic environment while also conducting proactive outreach to provide equitable vaccine distribution and set appointment schedule to all residents across any county. Atento's newly announced software is directly aligned with U.S. President Biden's commitment that all states, tribes and territories make every U.S. adult eligible for the COVID vaccines by May 1.

The logistical challenges presented through the high transmission of the pandemic and social distancing norms meant that public administrations needed to find workable solutions that would protect all people, especially the most vulnerable, while trying to work as quickly as possible to avoid slowing down the roll-out efforts.

Atento was able to overcome such challenges in the roll-out of a tailor-made service that would allow residents to receive the information they need by providing outreach programs, general information and vaccination scheduling.

Agents working from home for a joint cause

Thanks to Atento's remote working solution, [email protected], agents were recruited to work safely from home to assist the State of Maryland in reaching those individuals highest at risk to help make appointments.

"The Atento team deployed this solution very quickly and within two weeks we were ready to assist residents. We have the capabilities to scale our operation up or down depending on demand and have demonstrated the ability to handle 70,000 calls per day," said John Blackburn, EVP, DMI Health Innovations & Cybersecurity.

The COVID-19 Vaccine Hotline Solution from Atento allows government institutions to handle high volume of calls, as well as implement proactive outreach to provide general information and schedule appointments for residents within a defined area. Outbound calling features meant senior residents and disadvantaged populations could be prioritized in delivering key information and scheduling vaccination appointments.

1.4 million residents served

"The success of the DMI/State of Maryland COVID-19 program was a team effort across operations, IT and HR," says Wesley O'Brien, Atento's Commercial Vice President. "The program's success was made possible by an extraordinary One Atento team attitude."

The program received a 94 percent CSAT rating with 10,000 residents traced per month and 1.4 million residents being served by the entire service. Solutions such as this one will become crucial throughout the coming weeks and months ahead to bring about a successful inoculation campaign that everybody is hinging on to bring a close to the health pandemic.

About Atento

Atento is one of the five largest global providers for client relationship management and business process outsourcing services nearshoring for companies that carry out their activities in the United States. Since 1999, the company has developed its business model in 13 countries with a workforce of 150,000 employees. Atento has over 400 clients for which it provides a wide range of CRM/BPO services through multiple channels. Its clients are leading multinational companies in the technology, digital, telecommunications, finance, health, consumer and public administration sectors, amongst others. Atento trades under ATTO on the New York Stock Exchange. In 2019 Atento was recognized by Great Place to Work as one of the 25 World's Best Multinational Workplaces and as one of the Best Places to Work in Latin America. For more information www.atento.com

About DMI

DMI is a global technology solutions company that specializes in digital strategy, design, transformation and support. Utilizing expertise from six unique DMI Groups, in the areas of AI & Analytics, Commerce, Experience, Managed Services, Transformation, and Government, DMI delivers intelligent digital transformation solutions that meet organizations where they are. Born digital, DMI has been delivering mission-critical, enterprise grade solutions since 2002 for more than a hundred Fortune 1,000 enterprises and all fifteen U.S. Federal Departments. DMI has grown to 2,500+ employees globally and has been continually recognized by top industry analysts as market leader as well as a Top Place to Work by the Washington Post. www.DMInc.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


LONDON: Britain is adding India to its travel "red-list" after detecting 103 cases of a coronavirus variant first identified in the country, health minister Matt Hancock said on Monday.

"We`ve made the difficult but vital decision to add India to the Red List. This means anyone who is not a UK or Irish resident or a British citizen cannot enter the UK if they`ve been in India in the previous 10 days," Hancock told parliament.

"UK and Irish residents and British citizens who`ve been in India in the past 10 days before their arrival will need to complete hotel quarantine for 10 days from the time of arrival."

The rules come into force at 4 am local time (0300 GMT) on Friday, Hancock said.

Earlier, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson cancelled his visit to India has again due to the prevailing COVID-19 situation, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs informed on Monday.

In response to the media queries on the upcoming visit of the UK PM, the MEA stated, "In view of the prevailing Covid situation, it has been decided by mutual agreement that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom will not visit India next week."

The official statement added that the two sides will be holding a virtual meeting in the coming days to launch plans for a transformed India-U.K. relationship.

"Both leaders attach the highest importance to taking the India-U.K. partnership to its fullest potential and propose to remain in close touch in this regard and look forward to an in-person meeting later in the year."
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One could be forgiven for thinking Salvador Dali was alive and well on Friday as Sir Ben Kingsley stepped into the surrealist painter's shoes for a new biopic.

The Oscar-winning actor was the spitting image of Dali, who passed away in 1989 at the age of 84, while making his first appearance on the set of forthcoming film Dali Land.

Sporting the twirled mustache and shoulder length hair favoured by the eccentric Spanish artist, Sir Ben, 77, was ready for action as filming got underway on the windy Anglesey coast in Wales.

Lookalikes: Sir Ben Kingsley was the spitting image of Dali while making his first appearance on the set of forthcoming film Dali Land

Latest role: One could be forgiven for thinking Salvador Dali was alive and well on Friday as Sir Ben stepped into the surrealist painter's shoes for a new biopic

Adding to Dali's distinctive look, the celebrated actor wore a pattered cape and held a cane as he took up position on the rocky coastline.

Sir Ben was joined by a small group of production assistants and cast-members dressed in period clothing that appeared to reflect the film's early seventies setting while shooting his first scenes.

However leading lady Suki Waterhouse, last seen filming on location in Liverpool, was not present as filming commenced on the Welsh island.

Iconic: Dali was famed for his incredible draftsmanship and often bizarre works of art

All set: Sporting the twirled mustache and shoulder length hair favoured by the eccentric Spanish artist, Sir Ben, 77, was ready for action as filming got underway on the windy Anglesey coast in Wales

Steady on: Adding to Dali's distinctive look, the celebrated actor wore a pattered cape and held a cane as he took up position on the rocky coastline

Set in 1973, Dali Land will follow the story of a young gallery assistant who helps the ageing Dali prepare for a big show in New York.

While Sir Ben takes on the role of the artist in his later years, while Ezra Miller, 28, portrays the impressionist in his youth.

They star alongside Barbara Sukowa playing his wife Gala - a role originally slated for Lesley Manville - Frank Dillane as a young art enthusiast, and Tim Roth who will be Dalis right hand man, Captain Moore.

In good company: Sir Ben was joined by a small group of cast-members dressed in period clothing that appeared to reflect the film's early seventies setting while shooting his first scenes

Listen to me: The actor held court as Dali while his male and female co-stars listened

Coming soon: Set in 1973, Dali Land will follow the story of a young gallery assistant who helps the ageing Dali prepare for a big show in New York

Pointing it out: Sir Ben used his can to wave at something off camera as he chatted with his co-stars

The real deal: Sir Ben Kingsley as he is known to millions (L) and the actor dressed in character for his new role as Salvador Dali (R)

Hard at work: A team of production assistants surrounded the three actors as they prepared to shoot another scene

Mary Harron, best known for her cinematic interpretation of controversial Brett Easton Ellis novel American Psycho, serves as director and co-writer on the new production alongside her screenwriter husband John C. Walsh.

Speaking in 2019, producer Edward R. Pressman told Deadline: 'Marys sense of cosmic irony is a perfect match for a story about the flamboyant, contradictory and larger than life Salvador Dali.

'I love the team weve assembled and cant wait to see Sir Ben Kingsley and Lesley Manville embody the iconic partnership of Dali and Gala.'

Close: Sir Ben and his co-stars huddled together as they filmed a scene on the rocky coastline

Don't mind me: The leading man appeared to be nursed as he lay back on the rocks

In repose: Sir Ben's co-stars looked on as he spread himself out on the uneven ground and closed his eyes, seemingly at peace

Born in Catalonia in 1904, Dali's notable unique aesthetic turned him into one of the most significant surrealist painters of the 20th century.

With sex, food, science, religion and nature key themes throughout his body of work, Dali's notable paintings include The Persistence Of Memory, Crucifixion, Metamorphosis of Narcissus and Basket of Bread.

The painter is the latest in a series of historical figures played by Sir Ben, with the actor previously winning an Academy Award for his portrayal of Mahatma Gandhi in 1982 epic Ghandi.

Success: The painter is the latest in a series of historical figures played by Sir Ben, with the actor previously winning an Academy Award for his portrayal of Mahatma Gandhi in 1982 epic Ghandi (pictured)

Alternate perspectives: The actor has also played Polish-Israeli holocaust survivor Itzhak Stern in Steven Speilberg's 1993 masterpiece Schindler's List (L) as well as Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in 2018 drama Operation Finale (R)

Behind the camera: In 2011 he also stepped into the shoes of pioneering French filmmaker Georges Melies for Martin Scorsese's Hugo

The actor has also played Polish-Israeli holocaust survivor Itzhak Stern in Steven Speilberg's 1993 masterpiece Schindler's List, as well as Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in 2018 drama Operation Finale.

In 2011 he stepped into the shoes of pioneering French filmmaker Georges Melies for Martin Scorsese fantasy Hugo.

Dali Land was originally scheduled for a 2020 release. A new date has not yet been confirmed.

Dressed up: Suki Waterhouse was spotted on the streets of Liverpool in a full length silver gown and a metallic cap as she filmed her own scenes for the forthcoming film

Coming soon: Dali Land was originally scheduled for a 2020 release. A new date has not yet been confirmed.
France, Gournay sur Marne -- April 19, 2021 - Logic Design Solutions (LDS) extends its portfolio of NVME-HOST IPs with the first NVME-HOST IP on POLARFIRE FPGA SoC which enables designers to address specific market in embedded recording domain.

Higher performance

MVMe disks can manage several PCIe links, which allows them to reach recording speed faster than SATA disk, which have only one link running at 6Gbits maximum, allowing them a recording speed of 500 MBytes/sec.

Nevertheless in some cases, SATA disk in RAID 0 can compete NVMe disks in writing and reading speed and in capacity, but at the expense obviously of a need for more space.

Simple to use

LDS, has for many years acquired expertise in the field of embedded recording, so LDS has taken care to offer an NVMe IP which is easy to use for both those who start in the field of NVMe disks and the more experienced.

Thus all the NVMe protocol is managed by the IP, which is connected to an embedded PCIe Root Port IP in the FPGA. Configuration of the PCIe and of the NVMe are done automatically when power is turned on or on demand after a disk shutdown procedure.

The configuration of the recording session is done by writing to IP registers, using an APB bus. All other data buses are in AXI4 to facilitate the use of the IP.

Thus, the IP is manageable either by a state machine, whose VHDL source code is provided or by a CPU whose C source code is also provided.

The user can start his project directly from ones delivered by LDS.

About Logic Design Solutions

LDS develops IP for FPGA, and provides FPGA design services ranging from consulting to products' developments. We have an expertise in fast designs and for over 25 years' experience in FPGA/PLD Design. Logic Design Solutions' IP are an excellent value. Our competitive pricing enables customers to decide easily either purchasing or developing.

More information on our company, customers and IPs can be found on www.logic-design-solutions.com






Men who conspicuously wear large luxury product logos on their shirts are seen as being more promiscuous and less trustworthy and reliable, a study concluded.

A US psychologist set out to see whether  in the manner of peacock feathers  ostentatious, blingy clothing made men appear more attractive to women.

The theory was that such 'audacious displays of wealth' are enticing because they signal a man's economic power and ability to invest in their offspring's futures.

However, the results of the study suggest that, in humans, luxury displays are seen more as an indicator of one's investment in mating than in reproduction.

Men who conspicuously wear large luxury product logos on their shirts are seen as being more promiscuous and less trustworthy and reliable, a study concluded (stock image)

The study was conducted by evolutionary psychologist Daniel Kruger of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

'Rather than being a reliable and honest signal of future paternal investment, displays of luxury goods may sometimes represent investment in mate attraction, which is at the expense of future investment in offspring,' he said.

'Luxury displays featuring exaggerated size, coloration, and sound may indicate relatively greater investment in mating effort.'

'Large luxury product logos enhance social competitiveness and mate attraction, whereas small logos enhance perceptions of trustworthiness and reliability.'

In the study, 376 US students were shown a polo shirt with a Ralph Lauren Polo brand logo printed on the left breast in either a small or a large size.

They were then asked to imagine the man who owned the shirt and rank him on a scale of 1100 for various factors relating to both the effort he puts into both mating and parental investment.

These included 'flirts often' and 'knowingly hits on someone elses partner' for the former and 'good at taking care of children' and 'devotes most resources to supporting family' for the latter.

They also rated how they felt the man would be interested in relationships of different durations  from brief flings to long-term commitment  and how attractive a prospect he would appear to women for such relationships.

In another part of the study, a different set of 615 participants were asked to say whether men would choose to wear the polo shirt with the large logo or the small logo to various events  including a family reunion and a party attended by a crush.

In the study, 376 US students were shown a polo shirt with a Ralph Lauren Polo brand logo printed on the left breast in either a small or a large size, as pictured They were then asked to imagine the man who owned the shirt and rank him on a scale of 1100 for various factors relating to both the effort he puts into both mating and parental investment

Dr Kruger found that people imagined that the man who owned the shirt with the larger logo was more invested in mating and less in becoming a parent  and similarly would be more interested in a brief fling than a long-term relationship.

Meanwhile, men said that they would be more likely to wear the shirt with the larger logo when in a situation where they were competing for social dominance, in a leadership role or trying to attract a mate.

In contrast, they were more likely to opt for the smaller logo when attending a casual dress job interview or meeting their partner's parents for the first time.

Women's expectations of how the men would behave largely matched the men's responses.

The full findings of the study were published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Movie and television studios can continue to take big tax credits through 2026 for filming in New York state.

The recently passed state budget extended the program for one more year. A spokesman for Gov. Andrew Cuomo said it was especially important to keep film companies in New York after a year with record unemployment.

The state also recently released the list of films that took credits in 2020. The list remains heavy on million-dollar movies and television shows filmed in New York City and on Long Island. Only two were filmed in Syracuse.

The largest payout in the state went to the fifth season of Blacklist, a crime thriller. Sony claimed $22.7 million, records show.

The second season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, by Amazon, claimed $21.9 million.

While more companies have started to film in Syracuse in recent years, only two made the list for claiming tax credits in 2020.

American Dresser was the first film to be shot in the state-funded CNY Film Hub in DeWitt. It claimed about $210,000. It was shot in 2015, starring Tom Berenger and Keith David.

After that shoot, the film hub descended into a drama of its own as its builders were convicted of corrupting the bidding process for state construction contracts.

The movie Banana Split claimed $20,503, records show.

That movie was made in 2017 by American High, a company based in Liverpool. Scenes were shot at Heids ice cream shop, the Palace Theatre in Eastwood, a private Syracuse home and the former A. V. Zogg Middle School in Liverpool, which is now a movie studio.

See the full statewide list below.

This video still from the 2020 movie "Banana Split," shot by American High in the Syracuse area, shows lead actress and writer Hannah Marks in a scene from the Palace Theater in Eastwood.video still

The state program continues to credit more than $420 million a year to the industry - more than any other economic development credit in New York. For comparison, the states Excelsior Jobs program is expected to cost $161 million this year, according to budget documents.

Critics have questioned the need to subsidize one industry so heavily and they dismiss the jobs as overcounted and temporary. The program is set up as a refundable credit, which means the state writes a check to a company that generates more credits than it would pay in taxes.

The state has put some restrictions on the program in recent years.

This year, the state will require television pilots to meet minimum production budget thresholds to qualify for credits.

The requirement was put in place last year for other types of productions. The minimum budget must be $1 million in New York City and the counties of Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester and Rockland. The minimum budget in the rest of the state is $250,000.

Last years budget also eliminated variety shows like the Tonight Show from taking credits in the future.

The credit amounts have also been reduced from 30% to 25% downstate and from 40% to 35% in Upstate New York.

The state also offers a credit for post-production expenses. That has been reduced from 30% to 25% downstate and from 35% to 30% upstate.

A 2013 state law requires Empire State Development to release the name and dollar amounts for each movie and television show that takes credits. There is a long gap from the time a movie starts filming to the time the state reveals its credit information.

The law was put in place after a series of stories on Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard exposed the states secrecy.

See the 2019 list of movies, TV shows that claimed credits

Contact Michelle Breidenbach | mbreidenbach@syracuse.com | 315-470-3186.
A 74-year-old New Jersey man died Sunday evening when a lawnmower he was working under fell on top of him, police have confirmed.

John Levinski, of Hillsborough in Somerset County, succumbed to injuries sustained during what police officials are ruling an accidental death.

Levinskis neighbor on the 400 block of Township Line Road called police at about 5 p.m. when they found him under a lawn mower not breathing, police said.

According to the Hillsborough Township Police Department, Levinski was working underneath (the) commercial lawn mower which was hoisted in the air by a cable attached to a Kubota tractor.

The cable broke and the lawnmower fell on Levinski, who died at the scene, police said in a statement. An investigation into the incident is ongoing.

Hillsborough Township police Lt. Mark Szymanski said he could not provide additional details at this time.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Steven Rodas may be reached at srodas@njadvancemedia.com.
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT: A horrifying video of a child getting dragged under a treadmill has been released by safety regulators, which are urging people to stop using the machines.

In the video, two children are seen in the shot  one on the Peloton Tread+ treadmill, the other seen holding a large bouncy ball, which the child presses up against the machine.

The ball and the child holding it then gets sucked under the treadmill.

The other child then jumps off the treadmill and runs off, while the child struggles to get out from under the treadmill.

A child was sucked under a Peleton treadmill, prompting an urgent warning from a safety regulator. Source: US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC)

The child struggles for quite some time, eventually is freed, only to get pulled back under.

The child's head is completely under the machine, getting sucked in further, until they are able to free themselves. The child then gets up and runs off.

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) released the video of the child getting sucked under the treadmill to accompany a new release which said there had been 39 "incidents" involving the treadmill.

Of the 39 incidents, 23 involved children, the Associated Press reported.

"To date, CPSC is aware of 39 incidents including one death. CPSC staff believes the Peloton Tread+ poses serious risks to children for abrasions, fractures, and death," the news release says.

"In light of multiple reports of children becoming entrapped, pinned, and pulled under the rear roller of the product, CPSC urges consumers with children at home to stop using the product immediately."

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) says there have been 39 incidents, including one death involving the Peloton Tread+. Source: US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC)

The CPSC said the video of the child getting sucked under the treadmill "demonstrates the hazard to children posed by the Tread+".

The CPSC also said at least once incident happened when a parent was using the treadmill, which suggested the hazards "cannot be avoided" by locking the device when not in use.

Story continues

There have also been reports of pets getting sucked underneath the machine.

Peloton says safety notice is 'inaccurate and misleading'

In a media release, Peloton said the company was "troubled" by the CPSC press release about the Tread+ treadmill as it was "inaccurate and misleading".

"There is no reason to stop using the Tread+, as long as all warnings and safety instructions are followed," Peloton said in the rebuttal.

"Children under 16 should never use the Tread+, and members should keep children, pets, and objects away from the Tread+ at all times."

Peloton said it was "shocked and devastated" to find out a child died while using the Tread+ and the company reported the incident to the CPSC.

"While preparing its report to CPSC, Peloton learned through a doctor's report to CPSC's public database that a child had experienced a brain injury," the statement said.

"Peloton spoke to the family who reported that and the child is expected to fully recover.

"Not wanting to delay in notifying members, on March 18, 2021, Peloton's co-founder and CEO John Foley sent an urgent reminder directly to Tread+ Members to follow the critical warnings and safety instructions that accompany the Tread+, which state that children, pets, and objects should be kept clear of the Tread+ at all times."

If adults want to keep using the treadmill, CPSC said they should use it only in a locked room so children and pets cant come near it.

Peloton said the press release regarding the Tread+ treadmill was "misleading". Source: US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC)

When not in use, the treadmill should be unplugged and the safety key taken out and hidden away.

The commission also said to keep exercise balls and other objects away from it, because those have been pulled under the treadmill, too.

Peloton is best known for its stationary bikes, but it introduced the treadmill about three years ago and now calls it the Tread+. It costs more than $4,000.

Sales of Peloton equipment have soared during the pandemic as virus-weary people avoid gyms and workout at home instead. The company brought in $1 billion in revenue in the last three months of 2020, more than double its revenue from the same period a year before.

The commission did not say how many of the Peloton treadmills have been sold.

It was announced earlier this year Peloton was set to launch in Australia sometime in 2021.

With the Associated Press

Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com

You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and download the Yahoo News app from the App Store or Google Play.
DETROIT -- Detroit police have launched an investigation after people living in a home that caught fire failed to tell firefighters an 18-month-old girl was inside the house.

Firefighters rescued the toddler from the burning home in the 11000 block of Riad at about 3:20 a.m. on April 5, Deputy Fire Commissioner Dave Fornell told The Detroit News on Saturday.

Several adults were outside and asked firefighters to save dogs that were in the burning house. Thats when firefighters found a crib with the child in it in a room filled with black smoke, according to the Associated Press.

A woman later identified as the adoptive mother acknowledged the girl after the firefighter carried the child outdoors in his arms, leaving firefighters totally dumbfounded.

It is extremely unusual that when we pulled up the family never mentioned there was a child in the building, Fornell told the newspaper.

The girl was taken to a hospital where it later was learned she had injuries inconsistent with being trapped in a fire, he added.

Police and Childrens Protective Services were alerted. The child was placed with another guardian, according to the Associated Press.

Firefighters are investigating the cause of the blaze as suspicious. Dogs and puppies inside the house did not appear to be harmed by the fire which mostly damaged the kitchen.
Leading automobile companies like Maruti Suzuki India (MSI), and Cars fear dent in sales as COVID-19 cases surged across the country.

The country's largest carmaker MSI stated that the auto sales were correlated closely with economic growth and also (being a discretionary purchase) with the consumer sentiment.

"The COVID-19 situation deterioration is obviously a negative for customer sentiment and thus has a negative impact on sales," MSI Executive Director (Sales and Marketing) Shashank Srivastava told PTI when asked about the impact of second wave of the pandemic on the company's sales.

Lockdowns make it physically not possible to deliver cars but even the deterioration in COVID-19 situation without also psychologically dents consumer propensity to buy, he noted.

Similarly, (TKM) Senior Vice President Naveen Soni acknowledged that localised restrictions have impacted order flow and delivery schedules.

"We will be able access trends and define numbers only by the end of the month depending on the severity and extension of the restrictions. As of date, we have had a good number of pending orders that had to be carried forward from the month of February and March to April. Therefore, we are striving to meet the customer demand in spite of the local restrictions and lockdowns," he noted.

On manufacturing operations, Soni said the company continues to cautiously proceed with vehicle production.

"Our immediate focus is to fasten and streamline the demand and supply processes with more accuracy and manage production, along with faster deliveries making it easier and convenient for customers by reducing the delivery time," he added.

Well-being of the employees as well as dealer and supplier staff are sacrosanct and the automaker has already reintroduced monitoring systems which were in place including submission of a self-declaration health form, Soni said.

"As responsible corporates, we are continuously monitoring the situation carefully and will take accurate actions, as and when required. More importantly, this time we have precious lessons from last year to learn, unlearn and reflect upon," he noted.

Cars India said it is keeping a close look at the emerging situation.

" and weekend curfews will impact sales as showrooms will be shut in some of the markets. We are currently assessing and taking feedback from various cities about its extent," Cars India Senior Vice President and Director (Marketing and Sales) Rajesh Goel noted.

India's total tally of COVID-19 cases crossed the 1.50 crore mark on Monday with a record single-day rise of 2,73,810 new infections, while the active cases surpassed the 19-lakh mark.

The total tally of COVID-19 cases has mounted to 1,50,61,919 and the death toll increased to 1,78,769 with a record 1,619 daily new fatalities.

Registering a steady increase for the 40th day in a row, the active cases have increased to 19,29,329 comprising 12.81 per cent of the total infections, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate has dropped to 86 per cent.
Lightning strikes over Lake Mead near Hoover Dam that impounds Colorado River water at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Ariz., on July 28, 2014. (John Locher/AP Photo)

US West Prepares for Possible 1st Water Shortage Declaration

CARSON CITY, Nev.The man-made lakes that store water supplying millions of people in the U.S. West and Mexico are projected to shrink to historic lows in the coming months, dropping to levels that could trigger the federal governments first-ever official shortage declaration and prompt cuts in Arizona and Nevada.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released 24-month projections last week forecasting that less Colorado River water will cascade down from the Rocky Mountains through Lake Powell and Lake Mead and into the arid deserts of the U.S. Southwest and the Gulf of California. Water levels in the two lakes are expected to plummet low enough for the agency to declare an official shortage for the first time, threatening the supply of Colorado River water that growing cities and farms rely on.

The agencys models project Lake Mead will fall below 1,075 feet for the first time in June 2021. Thats the level that prompts a shortage declaration under agreements negotiated by seven states that rely on Colorado River water: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

The April projections, however, will not have binding impact. Federal officials regularly issue long-term projections but use those released each August to make decisions about how to allocate river water. If projections dont improve by then, the Bureau of Reclamation will declare a Level 1 shortage condition. The cuts would be implemented in January.

Arizona, Nevada and Mexico have voluntarily given up water under a drought contingency plan for the river signed in 2019. A shortage declaration would subject the two U.S. states to their first mandatory reductions. Both rely on the Colorado River more than any other water source, and Arizona stands to lose roughly one-third of its supply.

Water agency officials say theyre confident their preparation measures, including conservation and seeking out alternative sources, would allow them to withstand cuts if the drought lingers as expected.

The study, while significant, is not a surprise. It reflects the impacts of the dry and warm conditions across the Colorado River Basin this year, as well as the effects of a prolonged drought that has impacted the Colorado River water supply, officials from the Arizona Department of Water Resources and Central Arizona Project said in a joint statement.

In Nevada, the agency that supplies water to most of the state has constructed straws to draw water from further down in Lake Mead as its levels fall. It also has created a credit system where it can bank recycled water back into the reservoir without having it count toward its allocation.

Colby Pellegrino, director of water resources for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, reassured customers that those preparation measures would insulate them from the effects of cuts. But she warned that more action was needed.

It is incumbent upon all users of the Colorado River to find ways to conserve, Pellegrino said in a statement.

The Bureau of Reclamation also projected that Lake Mead will drop to the point they worried in the past could threaten electricity generation at Hoover Dam. The hydropower serves millions of customers in Arizona, California and Nevada.

To prepare for a future with less water, the bureau has spent 10 years replacing parts of five of the dams 17 turbines that rotate to generate power. Len Schilling, a dam manager with the bureau, said the addition of wide-head turbines allow the dam to operate more efficiently at lower water levels. He said the turbines will be able to generate power almost to a point called deadpool, when there wont be enough water for the dam to function.

But Schilling noted that less water moving through Hoover Dam means less hydropower to go around.

As the elevation declines at the lake, then our ability to produce power declines as well because we have less water pushing on the turbines, he said.

The hydropower costs substantially less than the energy sold on the wholesale electricity market because the government charges customers only for the cost of producing it and maintaining the dam.

Lincoln County Power District General Manager Dave Luttrell said infrastructure updates, less hydropower from Hoover Dam and supplemental power from other sources like natural gas raised costs and alarmed customers in his rural Nevada district.

Rural economies in Arizona and Nevada live and die by the hydropower that is produced at Hoover Dam. It might not be a big deal to NV Energy, he said of Nevadas largest utility. It might be a decimal point to Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. But for Lincoln County, it adds huge impact.

By Sam Metz
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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.  PNM, New Mexicos largest energy provider, is proud to announce paid summer college engineering internships for American Indian students in the greater Albuquerque area. PNM will fill three temporary internship positions.

Interns will perform assignments designed to enhance engineering knowledge and abilities, including basic engineering support on operational and customer-related engineering projects.

The internships will provide participants an opportunity to work with company executives and other stakeholders to represent Native American interests affecting the utility industry.

The interns will also provide support to the director of Tribal Government & Customer Engagement, by participating in business meetings with tribal leaders, department staff and company management. Now in its 11th year, 31 students have completed the summer engineering internship with PNM that has provided value career experience.

The internship program has also resulted in the hiring of five interns into a full-time engineering positions with PNM. Candidates should be familiar with Native American culture and tribal issues in order to assist the Tribal & Customer Engagement team with any necessary projects.

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To be eligible, students must meet the following criteria: currently enrolled in a four-year Bachelor of Engineering degree program at an institution of higher education, or working toward a graduate degree in engineering; have a current grade point average of 2.5 or higher; and possess functional computer skills.

Preference will be given to juniors and seniors majoring in electrical, civil, mechanical or environmental engineering. The internship will run from the end of May through mid-August.

To apply go to www.pnm.com/careers and read a full job description, register, upload a resume and answer all posting questions. The deadline is no later than Wednesday, April 21.
Grenfell Tower residents raised concerns about fire safety months before the fatal disaster but their fears were ignored and they were treated as 'sub class citizens', an inquiry has heard.

Lee Chapman, the secretary of the Grenfell leaseholders' association, said he had raised concerns about bare gas pipes being run through the stairwell of the building - the only fire escape - during upgrade works in spring 2017.

However he was repeatedly refused an independent fire assessment of the building by the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO).

Mr Chapman told the inquiry: 'I feel that the way that these concerns were handled is a good reflection of the culture within the TMO and the attitude that it had towards Grenfell Tower residents at the time.

Grenfell Tower residents called for an independent fire assessment of the building by the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) by their calls were repeatedly refused

'Ultimately we were people who wanted to feel safe in our homes, and this should not have been perceived by the TMO as something which was annoying or bothersome.

'I also believe that as residents in a so-called ''social housing block'', we were treated as sub citizens or sub class.'

The public inquiry into the June 2017 disaster is now looking at issues surrounding social housing management, including risk assessment and handling of tenants' complaints.

On Monday, the inquiry saw chains of email between Mr Chapman and KCTMO, in which residents were refused an independent fire safety inspection of the building.

In one reply, residents were told KCTMO had been assured recent works were safe by the London Fire Brigade and the National Grid.

It stated: 'We do not see it necessary to instruct or fund an independent adjudicator at this time.'

Mr Chapman said he feared the fire safety consultant appointed by KCTMO would be tasked with proving residents wrong rather than conducting a proper assessment.

'(KCTMO's responses) made me have the impression that the council would essentially be against the residents because they might think: ''They keep complaining so we need to prove that we are right,'' Mr Chapman told the inquiry on Monday.

'That was the impression that I had at the time, that it was ''us against them'', even though in my view we needed to work together to get this result.'

Mr Chapman and other members of the leaseholders' association repeatedly requested copies of fire safety reports from the National Grid and the fire brigade which KCTMO claimed it possessed.

These requests were never complied with, the inquiry heard.

Seventy-two people died as a result of the fire at the tower when an electrical fault in a fridge-freezer sparked a catastrophic blaze

'I think with the letters that we sent and the responses that we got, it just didn't seem to fully address (issues) we were raising,' Mr Chapman said.

'(There was) nothing addressing the individual parts of it, it was just very generic.'

The leaseholders' association also repeatedly raised concerns about residents smoking in the stairwell and the fact that the exposed gas pipes were an easy target for vandalism.

In an email to the KCTMO on March 20 2017, Mr Chapman said: 'Having seen these pipes numerous times, I am seriously concerned about how I will get out of the building alive in the event of a fire with this added risk.'

He added: 'At the 22nd floor it is a very long way down from the window in the event that after 30 minutes of fire our house is engulfed.'

In a second email three days later, Mr Chapman said: 'The potential risk to life and our common assets is without doubt very high given that this GAS MAIN is installed through our communal fire escape.'

He continued: 'I cannot imagine the possible consequences of a fire in this building and as a duty of care the RBKC must ensure we can get out in an emergency, if there is a need to evacuate.

'To be clear, if we cannot get out people will die or at best suffer serious injury.'

On the night of the fire, Mr Chapman's wife, Dr Naomi Li, was one of the last people to escape the building alive.

Mr Chapman said in an earlier statement residents had been 'brushed off' by KCTMO and the council.

'I had a sense that the people in the TMO and RBKC looked down on the residents of Grenfell Tower and were brushing us off,' he said.

Witness David Collins said the fire safety issues were a product of the culture and leadership at KCTMO.

He said residents had tried to get KCTMO to engage with them on the noise from the upgrade works, poorly fitted windows and the placement of boilers.

'I'd say (fire safety and poor works) are outcomes - whether you have a safe building, it's all about the leadership and the culture,' he said.

Mr Collins was one of a number of people who joined a residents' group called Grenfell Community Unite, but staff at KCTMO refused to meet them.

'We tried every way we could possibly find to get a voice and be heard,' he said.

Seventy-two people died as a result of the fire at the 24-storey tower when an electrical fault in a fridge-freezer sparked a catastrophic blaze which was fuelled by the building's flammable cladding system.

The inquiry continues.
New Delhi, April 19 : After the Delhi government announced a week long lockdown from Monday 10 p.m. to arrest the spike of Covid cases, Anand Vihar and Kaushambi bus stands of Delhi and UP are once again abuzz with migrant labourers, who are fleeing from the city fearing that the shutdown of the public transport may force them to walk hundreds of kilometers, a scene reminiscent of the last year.

Hundreds of people including children and elderly queued up at these bus stations on Monday with their belongings to head home leaving their jobs and employment back in the city. Sweating in the scorching son, they were seen waiting for the transport for their destination. Losing bread seems easier for these migrants than the fear of walking hundreds of kilometers.

Manoj, a migrant labourer waiting for a bus at the bus stand, told IANS, "I am going to the village due to the lockdown, how can the poor man give room rent without job? The company will be closed. From where will I earn money to feed my family? Last year I paid 4 months rent from my own pocket. i have small children, I will not come back now." Prem Sagar, another migrant labourer told IANS, "I am going to my village. After the lockdown, work will be stopped, then how will I earn? I will come back after the lockdown is over and work starts." Like them, many others from various parts of Delhi and Ghaziabad are heading to the bus stands from where they will catch a bus to their villages. However, this time corona fear is not in their mind, the only ting which is uppermost in their mind is how to reach home witout walking on foot.

The spike in Covid cases has cast a shadow on businesses with migrant labourers bearing the brunt of the curbs and restrictions put in place by the various governments.




By Jun Ji-hye







A former dog breeder who worked for Seoul National University (SNU) has been sentenced to six months in prison, suspended for two years, for mistreating 20 dogs, including a retired cloned sniffer dog, which were used in experiments carried out by the university's veterinary medicine college.







The Seoul Central District Court said Monday it found the 25-year-old guilty of violating the Animal Protection Act.







The breeder was working for a research team led by veterinary professor Yi Byeong-cheon from 2018 to 2019.







The alleged mistreatment of experimental dogs by the SNU research team was first made known to the public after the animal rights group Beagle Rescue Network posted a petition on the Cheong Wa Dae website in April 2019.







The group filed a complaint with the prosecution against Prof. Yi for alleged violation of the Animal Protection Act, but the professor claimed that it was the breeder, not him, who had mistreated the dogs. The professor then reported the breeder to the police.







The prosecution's investigation showed that the breeder had hit and thrown the dogs for no reason, and blasted them with high-pressure water hoses.







Among the abused animals was a retired cloned sniffer dog named May, who starved to death as a result of the breeder's actions.







The sniffer dog had been retired after five years of service at Incheon International Airport.







The professor, who was carrying out tests to develop animals with specific characteristics through cloning technology, is currently undergoing a separate trial for using May for his research without gaining approval from the university's Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.


MILWAUKEE, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ademi LLP is investigating Sterling (NYSE: STL) for possible breaches of fiduciary duty and other violations of law in its transaction with Webster.

Click here to learn how to join the action: https://www.ademilaw.com/case/sterling-bancorp or call Guri Ademi toll-free at 866-264-3995. There is no cost or obligation to you.

Ademi LLP alleges Sterling's financial outlook is excellent and yet Sterling shareholders will receive only 0.463 of a Webster share for each share of Sterling stock they own. The merger agreement unreasonably limits competing bids for Sterling by prohibiting solicitation of further bids, and imposing a termination penalty if Sterling accepts a superior bid. Sterling insiders will receive millions of dollars as part of change of control arrangements. We are investigating the conduct of Sterling's board of directors, and whether they are (i) fulfilling their fiduciary duties to all shareholders, and (ii) obtaining a fair and reasonable price for Sterling.

If you own Sterling common stock and wish to obtain additional information, please contact Guri Ademi either at [email protected] or toll-free: 866-264-3995, or https://www.ademilaw.com/case/sterling-bancorp.

We specialize in shareholder litigation involving buyouts, mergers, and individual shareholder rights throughout the country. For more information, please feel free to call us. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.

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U.S. refiners were forced to source their heavy crude from somewhere else after the United States sanctioned Venezuelan crude oil. Now, U.S. refiners may again be forced to resource crude oil as French bank Natixis stops funding the Ecuadorian oil trade.

So far, six European banks have been called out for financing the trading of crude oil from Ecuador. Concerns have been raised that the oil industry has encroached on indigenous territories in Ecuador, including in the Amazonthe worlds largest rainforest.

Natixis, according to Reuters, amended its official policy on Ecuadors crude oil trade on April 7, reducing the volume of crude it finances this year, and stopping all financing of Ecuadors crude oil by this time next year.

The United States imported 67.9 million barrels of crude oil from Ecuador in 2020, down from 74.6 million barrels in 2019, according to EIA data. According to data from Stand.earth and Amazon Watch cited by Reuters, Natixis financed cargoes of 5.5 million barrels from the Amazon in the last six months of 2020.

Other banks previously announced that they, too, would stop financing the trade of Amazonian crude, including BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse, and ING.

The news comes as the United States already had to replace the volume of heavy crude oil that it was purchasing from sanctioned Venezuela, which in 2015 was 301.9 million barrels, according to the EIA. The United States 2020 crude oil imports from Venezuela was brought down to zero.

The oil sector accounts for more than half of Ecuadors export earnings, according to OPEC. Ecuador was a member of OPEC until last year. The countrys oil nationalism and failing state of its oil pipelines have come under scrutiny, and it has failed to attract the foreign players that its industry requires.

Ecuador produces half a million barrels of crude per day, and much of what it exports to U.S. refineries is of a heavy sour variety and was considered as a substitute for Venezuelan crude.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Its not easy bein green

It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things

And people tend to pass you over cause youre

Not standin out like flashy sparkles on the water

Or stars in the sky

But green is the color of spring

And green can be cool and friendly-like

And green can be big like an ocean

Or important like a mountain

Or tall like a tree

-Kermit The Frog, It Isnt Easy Being Green

Source: Musixmatch

With apologies to Kermit, green is growing in the investment world. Black Rock scored the largest EFT launch in history last week with a carbon transfer fund. More investment banks are greening up their portfolios and investment managers are making their own commitments.

However, the Securities and Exchange Commission is raising some concerns.

What Is Green Investing

Green investments come in two categories  ESGs (Environment, Social and Governance) and SRIs (Socially Responsible Investing).

ESGs, as the designation indicates, judge investments by how they benefit the environment, social issues, and the manner in which they are run.

SRIs filter investments to eliminate those they feel do social or environmental harm. However, they do not necessarily seek companies actively trying to improve the environment or social issues.

This article focuses on ESGs.

Green Is Growing

The Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative announced it had more than doubled its membership at the end of last month. Thirty socially-conscious managers and investment funds founded the group in December. It now has 73 members managing $32 trillion. That is over 36 percent of total global assets under management.

Members of the initiative commit to seeking investments that will achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. That is in keeping with The Paris Agreement on climate change.

The initiatives collective assets have tripled in less than six months, underscoring its growing global recognition and significance, writes Reed Montague, research analyst for Calvert, one of the initiatives founding firms. The Net Zero Asset Managers initiative is now also accredited by the United Nations Race to Zero climate change campaign, joining 120 countries in the largest-ever alliance committed to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, at the latest.

Banks Going Green

Some of the largest banks in the United States are launching green initiatives.

JPMorgan

JPMorgan Chase & Co is putting over $2.5 trillion to work on climate change and sustainability through the end of 2030.

Morgan has already established a Green Economy team to provide financing, banking, and consulting services to green companies. The emphasis is on businesses that produce environmentally sensitive products and/or contribute to conservation.

Climate change and inequality are two of the critical issues of our time, and these new efforts will help create sustainable economic development that leads to a greener planet and critical investments in underserved communities, said Jamie Dimon, Chairman, and CEO of Morgan. Business, government, and policy leaders must work together to support long-term solutions that advance economic inclusion, bolster sustainable development and further the transition to a low-carbon economy. We are committed to doing our part.

Wells Fargo

The San Francisco bank recently unveiled its own commitment to helping achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. As part of that plan, Wells Fargo has entered into a 20-year agreement to purchase renewable energy from NextEra Energy Resources. Terms of the contract specify that Wells Fargo will purchase all of the solar energy produced by Blackburn Solar Project, a 600-acre facility to be owned and developed by NextEra. The 58-megawatt facility is scheduled to be operational by 2022.

Bank of America

The Charlotte, NC, bank will use $1 trillion to aid the transition to a low-carbon economy by 2050. The initiative will be spearheaded by its Environmental Business Initiative.

It is part of the $1.5 trillion B of A is putting toward green investing and the development of social inclusiveness and sustainable development.

The private sector is well-positioned to ensure that the capital needed  at the scale it is needed  can drive the transition to a low-carbon, sustainable economy, said Bank of America Vice Chairman, Anne Finucane.

Carbon Transfer ETF Breaks Record

Black Rock, an investment management company, set a record for the biggest ETF launch last week. Investors put $1.25 billion into the firms U. S. Carbon Transfer (LCTU) ETF.

The new Black Rock venture is part of a surge in ESG funds. Last year, green ETFs raised $31 billion. Already this year such funds have topped $6.3 million.

SEC Concerns

More companies than ever are going green. However, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has raised concerns about transparency.

Some claims by those representing some ESG investment may be misleading according to the SEC.

During examinations of investment advisers, registered investment companies, and private funds engaged in ESG investing, the staff observed some instances of potentially misleading statements regarding ESG investing processes and representations regarding the adherence to global ESG frameworks, reads an SEC report.

Acting SEC Chair Allison Herren Lee is launching an initiative to standardize and clarify reporting by ESG companies.

The most fundamental role that the SEC must play with respect to climate and ESG is the provision of information  helping to ensure material information gets into the markets in a timely manner, Lee told a meeting of the Center for American Progress. Investors are demanding more and better information on climate and ESG, and that demand is not being met by the current voluntary framework.

Meanwhile, Lee recently issued a request for input from the public about climate and social sustainability disclosure.

Evaluating ESGs and SRIs

It can seem daunting to find the right ESG or SRI.

First, you have to decide what is most important to you in such an investment. For instance, is social justice a higher priority than climate change?

You want to be sure your money is really going to a company or fund that meets your standards. That can be difficult. The simplest, most time-consuming way is to read the company or fund prospectus and quarterly reports.

However, there are companies that evaluate ESG/SRI mutual funds and EFTs. Some of the most popular are:

Conclusion

ESGs offer an exciting opportunity. You can profit while helping humanity and the planet. However, just as with any financial venture, you should do your homework to ensure your money is working to do what you want it to do.

As a bonus, heres a little something from Kermit.

Read More

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.
Chuck Norris almost ran off and joined the Navy at age 17, but because his mother wanted him to finish high school before enlisting, he had time to rethink his choice of military branch and joined the Air Force instead.

This isn't just about inter-service rivalry; if Chuck Norris chose the Navy, America -- and maybe the world -- might never have known the man who puts the "laughter" in "manslaughter."

Born Carlos Ray Norris on March 10, 1940, the man who would be Chuck Norris was born and raised in Ryan, Oklahoma. His mother, Wilma, was just 18 years old and, unsurprisingly, spent seven days in labor. When he was born, his skin was blue because his lungs weren't pumping.

Doctors rushed in to jump-start them and, according to his autobiography "Against All Odds," he was "gulping air like a pro."

It was the closest the Grim Reaper ever got to Chuck Norris. It also was the reason his mother was so adamant about Carlos graduating from high school. She believed God had a plan for him -- she might have been right.

Air Force basic training is where young Carlos officially became Chuck Norris, a new name given to him by a fellow airman. He graduated from basic training, married his high school sweetheart and was sent to Arizona for a year. Then, he was sent to Osan Air Base, South Korea, a move he called "a major turning point."

It was there that he pursued martial arts. He joined the base judo team but quickly found it wasn't for him. Then one day, while walking through an alley, he discovered a dojo practicing tang soo do, the Korean art of empty hand fighting. Even with an injured shoulder and in a class full of black belts, he took to the art.

Eight years later, he was a world champion.

He studied tang soo do and taekwondo, both Korean martial arts, and became the first Westerner to be awarded an eighth-degree black belt in taekwondo. He also later studied judo at March Air Force Base (now March Air Reserve Base), California, before being discharged in 1962.

He briefly worked for Northrop Aviation, but moonlighted as a karate instructor and soon was teaching full time and running a number of martial arts schools. He held the world middleweight karate champion title for six years and was named Black Belt magazine's "Fighter of the Year'' in 1969, eventually founding 32 martial arts schools.

Chuck Norris Movies

It was celebrity student Steve McQueen who encouraged Chuck Norris to go into acting. After bit roles, he captured the public's attention with his showstopping turn as Bruce Lee's martial arts opponent in the 1972 film "Return of the Dragon."

By the late 1970s, he was popular enough to headline his own movies and starred in cult classics such as "Good Guys Wear Black," "Delta Force" and "Missing in Action."

He later starred in the long-running TV series "Walker, Texas Ranger." The show's enduring popularity and Chuck Norris' deserved reputation as a real-world martial arts master led to the rise of "Chuck Norris Facts," an early internet meme that exaggerates his tough-guy image to hilarious effect.

Chuck Norris Facts

Heres a smattering of some of the greatest Chuck Norris Facts created by the internet:

When Chuck Norris was born, he drove his mom home from the hospital.

Chuck Norris can hit you so hard, your blood will bleed.

Jack was nimble, Jack was quick, but Jack couldn't dodge Chuck Norris' roundhouse kick.

Chuck Norris can unscramble an egg.

Chuck Norris once roundhouse kicked a salesman. Over the phone.

Chuck can divide by zero.

When Chuck Norris plays dodgeball, the balls dodge him.

Chuck Norris can speak braille.

Chuck Norris can build a snowman out of rain.

Chuck Norris makes onions cry.

Chuck Norris's blood type is AK-47.

Chuck Norris tells Simon what to do.

Chuck Norris once went to Mars. That's why there are no signs of life.

Chuck Norris visits Marines in Camp Taqaddum, Iraq in 2006. (U.S. Marine Corps/Lance Cpl. Ben Eberle)

Is Chuck Norris Dead?

Norris is still very much alive, probably because death lives in fear that he might seek revenge for that stunt he pulled when Chuck Norris was born.

He often uses his success to give back to the military community. He has been a spokesman on behalf of the Veterans Administration (now Veterans Affairs) and hospitalized veterans. In 1990, he created the Kick Drugs out of America Foundation and has been named "Veteran of the Year" by the American Veteran Awards.

Every once in a while, you can even see Norris on USO tours, visiting deployed troops but letting them win the war.

-- 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.
Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick died of natural causes, it was ruled Monday

Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who was given full state honors after he was treated as a martyr in the wake of the January riots, actually died of natural causes, a medical examiner ruled.

Sicknick died after suffering two strokes following the Capitol riots, the District of Columbia's chief medical examiner announced Monday.

The strokes weren't related to any injuries he might have sustained during the riots, according to the examiner's determination.

The ashes of the officer, 42, had been brought to lie in state in the Capitol's historic Rotunda in February. It was widely assumed that he'd died from his injuries that came during the January 6 attack; he died the next day.

Since 1852, only about three dozen distinguished Americans have 'lay in state,' including Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.

The most recent politician to lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda was U.S. Rep. John Lewis, the civil rights leader whose casket was place there last July.

Even President Joe Biden took a moment of silence in front of the urn carrying the cremated remains of the fallen cop, reaching out and touching the wooden box before holding his hand to his heart. He was accompanied by First Lady Jill Biden.

The category of 'laying in honor' was created in 1998 in order to recognize distinguished Americans outside of the political realm: Sicknick was the fifth American to receive the honor reserved for people who aren't political leaders.

Sicknick was honored after his death with his cremated remains lying in the center of the Capitol Rotunda in the wake of the riots

Capitol Police officers paid their respects to Sicknick when he was lying in honor in the Capitol Rotunda on February 3

Fellow officers saluted the remains of Sicknick, who is one of only five Americans who weren't political leaders to get the honor of lying in state

Joe and Jill Biden were among those who paid their respects to Sicknick while his remains were on display in the Rotunda

Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Democrat Rep. Steny Hoyer also came together to pay their respects

The program during the ceremony honoring Sicknick, who was treated as a martyr in the wake of the riots in which it was initially presumed he died of injuries sustained during the melee; instead, the Washington DC medical examiner said Monday he died of natural causes

The hearse carrying Sicknick's remains left the Capitol after a ceremony in the Rotunda honored him with full state honors

Members of the military also paid their respects to Sicnick as his ashes lay in state

The first two citizens to lay in honor in the Rotunda were Capitol Police officers Jacob J. Chestnut and John M. Gibson, who were fatally wounded in 1998 by a gunman who ran to the offices of then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay.

The other two were civil rights leader Rosa Parks in 2005 and the Reverend Billy Graham in 2018.

Sicknick was among five people who died after the riot as some supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol after being whipped up into a frenzy during a 'Stop the Steal' rally.

During the riot, Sicknick is said to have been sprayed with a chemical irritant.

Investigators initially believed he had been struck by a fire extinguisher but that was later disproven. They also thought, at first, that his death maybe be linked to ingesting the chemical irritant.

Footage has emerged showing the moment a man identified as Julian Khater allegedly deployed bear spray at Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick during the January 6 insurrection

Sicknick is seen rubbing his face after he was struck by bear spray during the riots. Medical Examiner Francisco J. Diaz, however, found no evidence that Sicknick suffered any adverse reactions to chemical irritants that he was sprayed with

In one of the videos, a man identified as Khater could be seen deploying a stream of liquid in the direction of Sicknick, who turns and runs for cover, holding his hands over his eyes with an agonized expression

George Pierre Tanios (left and right) is facing multiple criminal counts, including assaulting police with a deadly weapon and obstructing an official proceeding after allegedly spraying Sicknick withan irritant

His official cause of death, according to the medical examiner, has been ruled as acute brainstem and cerebellar infarcts due to acute basilar artery thrombosis.

That means he suffered two devastating strokes in his brain stem causes to a clot in an artery.

His manner of death was ruled 'natural', which is used when a disease alone causes the death. The examiner's office clarified that the manner of death is not considered natural if it is hastened by an injury.

Sicknick had been sprayed with a chemical substance outside the US Capitol at about 2.20pm on the day of the riots.

Two men have been charged with assaulting Sicknick in the melee. It isn't clear whether their charges could be affected by the medical examiner's ruling, which isn't a determination of criminal intent.

On the day of the riots, Sicknick returned to his division office that evening and collapsed at about 10pm.

Police initially said that Sicknick, who joined the force in 2008, had been injured while engaging with protesters.

He was rushed to hospital and placed on a ventilator but died at about 9.30pm the following night.

Washington DC Chief Medical Examiner Francisco J. Diaz, however, found no evidence that Sicknick suffered any adverse reactions to chemical irritants that he was sprayed with by some of the rioters.

Early reports had suggested that Sicknick had been struck over the head by a fire extinguisher during the chaos but in the weeks after the attack new information emerged disputing that narrative.

Sicknick's brother, Ken Sicknick, told ProPublica that the officer texted him on the night of the riots and said he had been 'pepper-sprayed' but was in 'good shape'.

Ken said his brother's condition rapidly deteriorated over the next 24 hours before he was intubated and treated for a blood clot and a stroke. He died at about 9.30pm on January 7, Ken said.

FROM HISTORY: First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy is pictured looking at the coffin of her slain husband President John F. Kennedy as his casket lays in state at the US Capitol in 1963

FIRST TWO: The first two citizens to lay in honor in the Rotunda were Capitol Police officers Jacob J. Chestnut and John M. Gibson, who were fatally wounded in 1998 by a gunman who ran to the offices of then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay

Sicknick's mother, Gladys Sicknick, spoke to DailyMail.com last month and said she believed her son suffered a fatal stroke.

'We think he had a stroke, but we don't know anything for sure,' she said, before the examiner's Monday ruling.

She said the family has been largely left in the dark about the investigation into Sicknick's death, adding: 'We'd love to know what happened.'

The two men accused of spraying the irritant at Sicknick, George Pierre Tanios and Julian Elie Khater, were arrested and are facing multiple felony charges, including assaulting police with a deadly weapon.

No murder charges were ever filed in Sicknick's death.

The New York Times had obtained a string of video clips that allegedly showed Tanios, Khater and Sicknick at several points before, during and after the spray incident.

In one of the videos, a man identified as Khater could be seen deploying a stream of liquid in the direction of Sicknick, who turns and runs for cover, holding his hands over his eyes with an agonized expression.

Sicknick - who had served in the New Jersey Air National Guard- was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-20 04:47:34|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

LOS ANGELES, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Arizona Governor Doug Ducey issued an executive order on Monday banning "vaccine passports," preventing local governments from requiring residents of the state to provide their COVID-19 vaccine status in order to receive service or enter a specific area.

Under the executive order, state agencies, counties, cities and towns cannot issue a measure that requires an individual to provide documentation of their COVID-19 vaccination status in order to enter a business, building or area or to receive a government service, permit or license.

Businesses contracting with the state to provide services to the public also cannot require vaccination documentation, while private businesses are not prohibited from requiring such documentation in order to provide services or allow entry.

The health care institutions, schools, child care centers and universities were allowed to collect vaccination documentation.

Ducey explained that even though the state authority strongly recommend all residents to get vaccine against COVID-19 but they could not be forced to share their private medical information.

Arizona on March 24 opened vaccination eligibility to all residents 16 and older, allowing everyone who wants the vaccine to register for an appointment. As of Monday, 4,495,519 vaccine doses have been administered to 2,736,235 individual in the Grand Canyon state, with 1,926,181 Arizonans now fully vaccinated. Enditem
These papers, which were submitted by the Irish authorities, show a chronological list of the developments in nanotechnology in Ireland, given at consecutive Working Party on Manufactured Nanomaterials meetings.

June 2008 - 4th Meeting of the Working Party on Manufactured Nanomaterials, held 11-13 June 2008, in Paris, France.



November 2007 - 3rd Meeting of the Working Party on Manufactured Nanomaterials, held 28-30 November 2007, in Paris, France.



April 2007 - 2nd Meeting of the Working Party on Manufactured Nanomaterials, held 25-27 April 2007, in Berlin, Germany.
With his 2020 anthology, Day by Day Time Folding Time (published by Trafford Publishing), Ralph Gunther Mohnnau introduced an exciting new voice in the world of poetry.

This year, the author and poet launches a new press campaign for his book in hopes of reaching a wider audience, especially those who have passion for the art of Japanese haiku.

Day by Day Time Folding Time is a creative collection of 99 haikus that reflects what life is like every day. Each piece has a corresponding English and German translation, thus allowing readers to appreciate the poetry in both languages. The haiku, with its direct form of expression and the simplicity of its words, is enriched with themes of love  to life, mankind and the world. Mohnnau believes that the book will appeal to those who are fascinated by the exotic form of Japanese poetry.

A haiku from the book (in English and German language) reads:

nachtlicher flug: auf

den tragflachen spiegelt sich

das licht des vollmonds

nocturnal flight: on

wings reflecting back the sheen

of the full moon's light

Day by Day Time Folding Time is published with companion collections: Sowing Nightshade in the Wastelands of Cities and On the Tidings of Time also available from Trafford Publishing. To purchase a copy, visit https://www.trafford.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/784486-day-by-day-time-folding-time.

Day by Day Time Folding Time

By Ralph Gunther Mohnnau

Softcover | 6 x 9in | 162 pages | ISBN 9781490798592

E-Book | 162 pages | ISBN 9781490798578

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the Author

Ralph Gunther Mohnnau was born in 1937 in Bad Keuznach, Germany. An early interest in the poetry of the Middle Ages and Expressionism, as well as painting and ballet, led to his studies in English and romance languages, earning him degrees in law and philosophy from the Universities of Mainz, Freiburg, and the Paris Sorbonne. Foreign studies took him to Greece, Egypt, North America, Africa, and Canary Islands, crediting his personal encounters with Martin Heidegger, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Charles Bukowski, Joan Miro, and John Cage as significant influences on his creative work. Mohnnau has written and edited more than 260 books. All are available in the list published by the German National Library under dnb.de (search Mohnnau).

Trafford Publishing, an Author Solutions, LLC, author services imprint, was the first publisher in the world to offer an on-demand publishing service, and has led the independent publishing revolution since its establishment in 1995. Trafford was also one of the earliest publishers to utilize the Internet for selling books. More than 10,000 authors from over 120 countries have utilized Traffords experience for self publishing their books. For more information about Trafford Publishing, or to publish your book today, call 844-688-6899 or visit trafford.com.
New Delhi:

The United States on Thursday pulled out of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) over the agency's alleged anti-Israel bias, reported Associated Press.

The Trump administration had criticised the recent resolutions by the UNESCO and claimed the United Nations' cultural agency was continuing it's anti-Israel bias.

"This decision was not taken lightly, and reflects US concerns with mounting arrears at UNESCO, the need for fundamental reform in the organisation, and continuing anti-Israel bias at UNESCO," the State Department said in a statement.

In 2011, the United States had stopped funding UNESCO after the UN cultural agency voted to include Palestinian Authority as a member.

The US withdraws from #UNESCO, reports AFP news agency pic.twitter.com/LatSCTWBYl

 News Nation (@NewsNationTV) October 12, 2017

Headquartered in Paris, UNESCO is a specialised cultural agency of the United Nations (UN). It was established to contribute to the peace and security by promoting international collaboration through educational, scientific, and cultural reforms.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Hyderabad, April 19 : With increasing number of calls for transportation of bodies of Covid victims to crematoriums, Feed the Needy team in Cyberabad on Monday resumed its free 'last ride service'.

In view of increasing number of calls from families of the Covid victims during the ongoing second wave of the pandemic, Cyberabad Police Commissioner V.C. Sajjanar had sought resumption of the service.

The vehicle was flagged off by the Commissioner on Monday.

The 'last ride service' will cater to carry bodies of Covid or non-Covid deceased belonging to any caste or creed. The services will be available from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. The team will also take care of cremation of any deceased body where any near or dear ones are not available to take care of last rites. Citizens can avail the service by calling on 7995404040 or 9490617440.

Feed the Needy is a team of 10 IT professionals, who has been in forefront in serving the society. The team helped in cremation of 210 people from July 4, 2020 to December 31, 2020. These included 150 Covid deaths. The remaining 60 were non-Covid deaths.

Sajjanar appreciated the initiative of the Feed the Needy organisation and more so when such a service was the need of the hour during the Covid pandemic. He stated that the group of 10 youngsters behind the initiative have also been working actively with the Society for Cyberabad Security Council (SCSC) as volunteers with Traffic Forum and also fed many during the lockdown.

He thanked SCSC General Secretary Krishna Yedula for extending the service to Feed the Needy and also hinted at more such services being launched through SCSC.

Feed the Needy member Sai Teja thanked the Commissioner and other officials of Cyberabad and donors who are supporting for this initiative.
Structures are springing up along the N1 in Accra, worsening the existing precarious situation on the highway due to obstructions to motorists view.



Some residents along the N1 at Awoshie Water Works in Accra have thus petitioned the Ablekuma North Municipal Assembly over a structure being constructed along the highway.



The petition was copied to the Ghana Highway Authority, which has since asked the developer to move three metres away from the highway.



Residents, however, have claimed that work is still being carried out by the developer to complete the project.



With all kinds of structures being put up along the highway, the apparent nuisance is said to be endangering the lives of road users, pedestrians and even residents in the neighbourhood.



Indeed, some residents complain about vehicles running into their homes.



Residents complaint



According to one of the residents, Ms Patience Nunoo, in the course of the past three years, four cases of vehicles veering off the road and running into nearby houses, and two cases of vehicles mounting the pavements had occurred.



In the past two months, two pedestrians walking along the road have been killed by vehicles, seemingly as a result of the obstructions of the view of the drivers, she said.



Controversial building



Some sources told the Daily Graphic that the controversial building currently under construction along the highway belongs to the Assemblyman for the Awoshie Electoral Area, Mr Obed Mintah Oduro.



When the Daily Graphic contacted him, Mr Oduro claimed the Municipal Chief Executive had asked that work on the project should be stopped.



Just some few minutes later, he called back and questioned why this reporter had called him to enquire about the issue.



How did you get this (phone) number? Why have you called to interrogate me on the construction of that particular structure while other structures are being put up along the highway? he asked.



I have been a media person before. If you have taken 'soli' (money) from the residents, dont come and interrogate me, he said.



I will look for you, he threatened.









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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SITA, the technology provider for the air transport industry today announced the results of its biometric-enabled Proof of Concept (PoC) designed to support a low-touch passenger experience and optimise passenger processing at Istanbul Airport (IGA).

The six-month trial showed a 30 per cent reduction in boarding times and increased satisfaction of participating passengers and airlines, as well as reducing risks associated with Covid-19 thanks to the low-touch passenger journey.

The intuitive biometric solution allowed airline agents to easily enrol passengers on the existing SITA Flex common-use check-in counters. Once enrolled, passengers were able to simply scan their face at every step of the way, from security check, lounge access, and boarding, without having to touch any surfaces.

The PoC conducted with Turkish Airlines involved the use of sophisticated biometric technology across multiple touchpoints. These included a common use terminal (CUTE) for Smart Path enrolment, an iValidate gate verification point where passengers gain access to the gates, IGA lounge access verification, and boarding gate verification.

Hani El-Assaad, President, Middle East, India & Africa (MEIA), SITA said: SITA is considered as the technology partner of IGA in terms of airport systems and operations with solutions implemented throughout the airport. This latest PoC harnesses existing SITA technology infrastructure including SITA Smart Path and SITA Flex to further optimize passenger processing at a time when safety and efficiency are in sharp focus due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Safety and operational efficiency have become critical factors for airports and airlines to emerge from the pandemic according to the latest SITA IT Insights report. As passengers return to the skies, new health-focused processes such as PCR test verification present operational challenges to reduce congestion at airports.

Ersin Inankul Chief Digital & Commercial Officer, iGA added: Despite the challenging economic environment we are confident that smart technology implementations are crucial to boost passenger confidence and increase the airports efficiency. Istanbul Airport is a technology-driven airport and were proud to be leading the way in terms of low touch smart systems that can help keep passengers safe while reducing operational burdens on the airport. - TradeArabia News Service
Google has quietly rolled out an interesting and quite useful feature for desktop users. The feature is essentially a shortcut that lets you quickly go back to the search field on a search page results page.

First spotted by 9to5Google, you can just press / to return to the search box once you have scrolled down to the results page. You will also see a small box at the bottom corner of the results page that reads Press / to jump to the search box.

Note that the feature appears and works when you are on a results page, not on the home page. It seems that the feature is available to select users right now. We are expecting it to be rolled out to all users in the coming days.

Here's what the new shortcut looks like (9to5Google)

Apart from an update to the Search page on the desktop, Googles latest iteration of Chrome browser will get a similar minor yet useful feature. The Chrome 90 browser will soon allow you to create a link for a section of a website you have highlighted. It essentially allows the receiver to click the link and read the highlight of the content. The feature should work on most websites. The implementation for sites locked with paywall or sign-ups remains to be seen.

Separately, Google will soon allow Chrome users to take a look at their recently closed tabs, without going through the entire Chrome history. The feature is currently getting tested on the latest version of Chrome Canary. You can learn more about this feature here.
(CNN)  When news broke that Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine might be linked to blood clots, the company responded by pointing a finger at Pfizer and Moderna's vaccines, issuing a media statement that said a study showed there were reports of blood clots with their vaccines as well.

But the study doesn't show that at all, according to the lead author.

"We didn't find anyone with blood clots," Dr. Eun-Ju Lee, an assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, said of her study of Moderna and Pfizer's vaccines. "We didn't find any of those scary things that are happening with Johnson & Johnson."

Among the more than 7 million people who've received the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, at least seven have experienced very rare blood clots in the brain  one man during clinical trials and six women during the vaccine's rollout, which has been put on pause because of the blood clot concerns.

Now Johnson & Johnson is coming under fire for stoking fear about Pfizer and Moderna's vaccines when in fact Johnson & Johnson's shot is the only one authorized in the US with reports of blood clots.

In its media statement, Johnson & Johnson wrote there had been reports of blood clots for "all COVID-19 vaccines."

"That is a really irresponsible thing to say," said Dr. Paul Offit, referring to the J&J media statement. Offit, a vaccine expert at the University of Pennsylvania, is a member of the US Food and Drug Administration's advisory panel that reviewed emergency use authorization applications from all three COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers.

Offit noted that the company's statement was especially unfortunate given there are still significant numbers of people in the US who are hesitant to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

"I think Paul is right on," said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, who is a member of a vaccine advisory panel to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "His indignation is appropriate."

In an email to CNN, a J&J spokesman did not directly respond to questions about why the company had said there had been reports of blood clots when that is not in fact the case.

The spokesman sent a statement that says: "We continue to work closely with medical experts and global health authorities to assess the data on these extremely rare events. ?Above all, we are committed to the safety and well-being of the people who use our products, and we support public awareness of the signs and symptoms to ensure the correct diagnosis, appropriate treatment and expedited reporting by health care professionals."

In a story published April 13, CNN pointed out issues with part of the J&J media statement. In statements issued later that day and the next day, the company did not repeat the claim that there had been reports of blood clots with all vaccines.

J&J's April 9 media statement

The issue of blood clots and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine first arose on April 9 when the European Medicines Agency issued a statement that it was investigating reports of blood clots among people who had received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

In response, J&J issued the media statement that day saying that "We are aware that thromboembolic events including those with thrombocytopenia have been reported with all COVID-19 vaccines."

"Thromboembolic events" is a medical term for blood clots.

That J&J statement included a footnote to the study by Lee and her colleagues, which looked at some adverse events reported after people received the COVID-19 vaccines manufactured by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna.

That study, published in February in the American Journal of Hematology, analyzed reports of people who had experienced low blood platelet levels  not blood clots.

"Those are entirely different entities," said Lee, the study's lead author. "It's like apples and oranges."

The study identified reports of 17 people who experienced low blood platelet levels for the first time after receiving either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. The authors concluded these reports were "not surprising," given that tens of millions of people had received the vaccine. As of February 2, more than 30 million people in the US had received at least the first dose of either Pfizer or Moderna's vaccine, according to the CDC.

Having low platelet counts, or thrombocytopenia, is not uncommon and there can be many causes, including pregnancy, heavy alcohol consumption and certain cancers or viral infections.

Different types of vaccines

Moderna and Pfizer are mRNA vaccines, and J&J is an adenovirus vector vaccine. AstraZeneca also uses an adenovirus vector platform, and it too has been linked to very small numbers of rare blood clots.

The Johnson & Johnson April 9 media statement included a link to a Lancet study that shows reports of blood clots with AstraZeneca's vaccine.

CDC monitoring through February 13, however, found no increased incidence of certain types of blood clotting disorders or thrombocytopenia among people who'd received Pfizer or Moderna.

Johnson & Johnson sought help from Pfizer and Moderna to look into reports of blood clots, but both companies declined, saying their vaccines appeared to be safe, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the situation. AstraZeneca, however, did agreed to join forces with Johnson & Johnson, according to the report.

When asked about the Wall Street Journal report, the company issued a statement to CNN saying that "at Johnson & Johnson, we believe collaborative scientific exchange can lead to more robust answers to questions -- particularly as it relates to the safety of patients."

This story was first published on CNN.com, "Johnson & Johnson said blood clots have been reported with all Covid-19 vaccines. The author of the study they cited says they're wrong."
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SANTA FE  Over the past several years, Beck & Bulow has grown from a stand selling bison meat at northern New Mexico farmers markets to a supplier for 250 large restaurants and other businesses across the region. And they arent planning to stop expanding anytime soon.

Theres a lot of people here that want high-end meats, said co-founder J.P. Bulow. We have certain things here that you cant get anywhere else.

With the help of $300,000 in state and local funding under the Local Economic Development Act, Bulow said, the company, which raises and sells sustainably sourced bison, beef, seafood and other meats, is looking for a 10,000-square-foot warehouse where it can dramatically scale up its online shipments of packaged meat.

Bulow said expanding the online side of the business  which currently accounts for around 20% of sales  will allow the company to add 52 jobs over 10 years and reach customers across the country, while bringing revenue back home to New Mexico.

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Youre taking New Mexico animals, but then the money is coming in from out of state, he said.

Beck & Bulow is one of four New Mexico food processing companies that have received state funding to expand this year.

Earlier in 2021, the state provided money to help Los Poblanos Historic Inn & Organic Farm, Bueno Foods and La Primera Tortilla in Sunland Park. Each company announced expansions supported by a total of $1.05 million in state LEDA funding. All told, the four companies are expected to hire people for at least 139 new positions over the next decade, according to state documents.

Just as important, said Mark Roper, division director for the state Economic Development Department, the expansions solidify the respective companies in New Mexico and help fill a key gap in the states food supply chain.

That investment is going to continue to bring dividends for decades, in jobs and payroll, Roper said.

Growing and raising food has long been part of New Mexicos identity, but, Roper said, the state largely lacks the capacity to convert raw material into a finished product on an industrial scale.

A study from New Mexico State University showed that between 95% and 97% of food produced in New Mexico is exported for processing.

We grow it or raise it, and then it goes someplace else, and then it comes back to us in a grocery store, Roper said.

Because of that, Roper said the state has prioritized helping companies that can provide more finished food products in the state. Under the current administration, EDD identified sustainable and value-added agriculture  which encompasses a mix of food processing efforts  as one of eight key industries for the state to focus on. The others are aerospace and defense, biosciences, sustainable and green energy, intelligent manufacturing, film and television, global trade, and cybersecurity.

The industry has accounted for 7% of the states LEDA funding over the last 18 months, along with 14% of the projected jobs, according to data provided by EDD.

We look at it as an investment.We look for a return on investment, Roper said. Its just our return comes in long-term tax income and quality jobs.

The expansions range in size and scope depending on the project, but largely focus on establishing more production capacity in New Mexico. Bueno Foods is planning a 25,000-square-foot $10 million freezer warehouse that will allow the Albuquerque company to store more of its green chile in New Mexico rather than in out-of-state warehouses.

This really helps reduce cost and saves money from storage costs outside of the state, Ana Baca, vice president of marketing for Bueno Foods, told the Journal in March.

For La Primera Tortilla, a 39-year-old company in Sunland Park, the expansion will help the company keep up with demand by nearly doubling its capacity.

Juan Carlos Favela, secretary treasurer for La Primera, said the company moved into its current location about six years ago. He said the 8,800-square-foot facility was an expansion, but the company got into local Walmarts shortly thereafter and once again felt the pressure to expand.

It just grew very quickly to where now were at the same point that we were when we first moved to that building, Favela said.

Favela said the company is planning to build another 8,000-square-foot facility, hire 14 new employees over the next three years and invest $2.7 million in new equipment. The expansion will allow the company to double its production of corn tortillas  the companys most popular product  while dramatically scaling up its capacity to produce flour tortillas.

Its a big step, because now were thinking of distributing and sending our products out of town, he said.
As many as 673 new cases of Coronavirus were detected in Sindh while seven more patients lost their lives taking the tally of COVID related deaths in the province to 4,551

KARACHI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2021 ) :As many as 673 new cases of Coronavirus were detected in Sindh while seven more patients lost their lives taking the tally of COVID related deaths in the province to 4,551.

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah, in a statement issued here on Saturday, has said that 673 new cases of Coronavirus were detected when 12,022 tests were conducted raising the tally to 272,196 while the current detection rate stood at 5.6 percent.

The CM said that 3,462,158 tests have been conducted so far, against which 272,196 were diagnosed positive, of them 95.6 percent or 260,122 patients recovered, including 330 overnight.

Currently 7,523 patients were under treatment, Shah said adding that, of them 7,143 were in home isolation, 10 at isolation centers and 370 at different hospitals.

He added that the condition of 343 patients was stated to be critical, of them 43 have shifted to ventilators.

Sharing district wise data, the CM said that Hyderabad has 99 new cases, Jamshoro 20, Sukkur 16, Badin and Larkana 12 each, Shaheed Benazirabad 11, Ghotki 10, Dadu 9, Thatta 8, Sanghar 7, Qamber, Matiari and Tando Muhammad Khan 6 each, Mirpurkhas 5, Sujawal and Umerkot 4 each, Kashmore, Khairpur, NausheroFeroze and Tando Allahyar 3 each, Jacbobabad 2 and Shikarpur one.

Karachi has 408 new cases, of them 290 were in the district East, 67 in South, 25 in Malir and 16 in Central while West and Korangi districts had 5 new cases each.

Murad Ali Shah urged people to abide by the SOP issued by the government owing to severity of the third wave of the contagion.
AOC AGON Performance Gaming Peripherals Suite "As we continue our growth in the eSports and gaming space, adding these high performance and highly customizable products to our gaming arsenal is a seminal moment, says David Ray, Director of Marketing at AOC North America.

AOC, a global leader in high performance gaming monitors, today adds true mechanical keyboards, gaming mice and mousepads to its eSports and gaming line-up in North America. The new products include:

1. Gaming Keyboards: the AGON AGK700 tournament-grade mechanical keyboard for eSports, and the mid-level AOC GK500 gaming mechanical keyboard

2. Gaming Mice: the AGON AGM700 tournament-grade RGB gaming mouse for eSports, and the mid-level AOC GM500 RGB gaming mouse

3. Gaming Mouse Mat: the AGON AMM700 RGB mouse mat

The product launch is set for April 19, 2021.

In competition, the right equipment often makes all the difference. AGON and AOC gaming monitors with have set a standard, enabling fast and accurate visual feedback to gamers, allowing their unhindered skill to determine their performance. AGON and AOC peripherals similarly enable competition-level performance, while providing complimentary design for a striking desktop system look.

Ever since AOC entered the gaming market, we have strived to put the best-performing, feature-rich, and most reliable products in the hands of our fans. As we continue our growth in the eSports and gaming space, adding these high performance and highly customizable products to our gaming arsenal is a seminal moment, says David Ray, Director of Marketing at AOC North America.



AGON Performance Gaming Peripherals Suite

AGON Competition-Grade Mechanical Keyboard with MX Cherry Blue Switches (AGK700)

The premium AGON Tournament Grade Mechanical Keyboard with MX CHERRY Blue Switches (AGK700) includes 115 high-quality double injection molded keycaps, with CHERRY MX Blue switches for better audible and tactile feedback, and also features n-key rollover and 100% anti-ghosting. It offers a USB pass through (1x USB 2.0), as well as a sleek, circular volume wheel in the aggressive red that gamers know from AOCs AGON monitor line-up. The aluminum body of the AGK700 is built tough for high-energy competitions. All keys are programmable and the custom keyboard layout can be recorded on-board. Users can save up to 5 profiles via AOC G-Tools software. Once set-up, the profiles can be selected on-the-fly without the need to access AOC G-Tools.

The AGK700 also comes with a magnetic, detachable wrist rest with a leather finish for a premium feel. Dedicated macro keys allow the keyboard to control gaming modes (RTS, FPS, Racing) and RGB illumination on supporting monitors, bringing the whole AGON ecosystem together. The light synchronization allows the entire set up, from the monitor to the mouse, keyboard and mouse mat, to pulse with color in unison. Users can choose from lighting effects that include breathing, radar, fireworks, wave, or W wave. The AGK700 includes an extra set of W, A, S, D keys and a braided USB cable with a gold-plated connector (USB 2.0 Type A).

AGON Tournament-Grade RGB GAMING MOUSE (AGM700)

AGON tournament-grade gaming mouse AGM700 is a right-handed mouse with features that allow increased customization. The Pixart 3389 sensor is capable of 16,000 Real DPI resolution, a 400 inches/sec tracking speed and 50G acceleration to easily match competitive gamers swift movements. The left and right buttons feature OMRON switches with a lifetime of 50 million actuations. With the on-the-fly DPI switch, users can switch between DPIs easily. Additionally, with the dedicated DPI sniper button, a lower DPI can be selected with a single button to track opponents more precisely, especially helpful when sniping in shooter games. The weight of the mouse can be fine-tuned with five included weights (1g per unit) to achieve optimal tactility and traction. AGM700s customizable RGB LED offers 16.8 million colors, which can be synchronized with other AOC peripherals. All eight buttons of the AGM700 are customizable via AOC G-Tools software, and three custom profiles can be recorded on-board through the mouse so it can be used in other PCs without the software. The AGM700 comes with a 1.8m braided USB cable and gold-plated connector.

AGON Mouse Mat (AMM700)

The AGON AMM700 mouse mat rounds out the AOC AGON gaming suite. Its micro-textured cloth surface allows mice to glide smoothly over its surface, while providing accurate tracking feedback. Its anti-slip rubber base ensures the mouse pad stays fixed, even under vigorous and extended mouse movement. The surrounding RGB LED can be customized with 16.8 million colors, features four lighting effects, and can be synchronized with the other AOC peripherals/ monitors via the G-Tools software, thanks to the 32-bit micro-controller unit.

AOC Everyday Gaming Peripherals Suite

AOC Gaming Keyboard GK500

The Gaming Keyboard GK500 is equipped with Outemu Blue mechanical switches, n-key rollover (no limit on simultaneous key presses) and 100% anti-ghosting. All 104 keys are programmable via the included AOC G-Tools software. The GK500 also boasts five macro keys for gamers to bind their custom keys for quick access and a magnetic, detachable wrist rest to increase comfort for long gaming sessions. The aluminium top cover and switches guarantee this piece to be a durable companion in battles. The keyboard is also equipped with RGB illumination, supporting 16.8 million colors and a wide variety of lighting effects, all customizable through the AOC G-Tools software. The GK500 also includes an extra set of W, A, S, D keys and a braided USB cable with a gold-plated connector (USB 2.0 Type A).

AOC Gaming Mouse GM500

The AOC Gaming Mouse GM500 is ambidextrous (suited for left or right-handed use) and features a Pixart 3325 sensor supporting 5,000 Real DPI resolution, 100 inches/ sec. tracking speed and 20G acceleration to be able to track fast movements precisely. For increased durability, high-quality OMRON switches with a 50 million actuations lifetime are built into the left and right buttons. All eight buttons of the GM500 are programmable though AOC G-Tools software. With this software, the built-in RGB LED is also fully customizable (16.8 million colors, three light speed options, four light effects) and it can be synchronized with other AOC gaming devices. The GM500 comes with a 1.8m braided USB cable and gold-plated connector.

With the addition of its new suite of gaming peripherals, AOC now offers multiple solutions in one desktop gaming family, which will appeal to a broad swath of gamers ranging from mid-level users to eSports professionals.

Prices and availability

April 2021

AGON AGK700 Keyboard: $179.99

AGON AGM700 Mouse: $39.99

AGON AMM700 Mouse pad: $29.99

AOC GK500 Keyboard: $49.99

AOC GM500 Mouse: $24.99

All AOC gaming peripherals come with 2-year warranty. In North America, the blue switch variant for the GK500 and AGK700 mechanical keyboards will be available at launch.

More information and technical specifications:

https://us.aoc.com/en/gaming/accessories

To request product samples, please reach out to Jamy Reyes at jamy.reyes@epius.com or Huishan Liu at huishan.liu@epius.com.

About EPI

Envision Peripherals Inc. (EPI) is an affiliate of TPV Technology Limited (TPV), who holds all Philips-branded home and personal audio licensing worldwide. EPI also distributes AOC brand monitors and peripherals in the US and Canada. The exciting AOC AGON suite of gaming products is the choice of many of the worlds top gamers, including G2 eSports and Red Bull eSports. AOC also provides an award-winning line-up of quality monitors for everyday use by businesses, school and home users.

EPIs main office is in Milpitas, California. For more information on the complete range of Philips and AOC products, visit usa.philips.com, us.aoc.com/gaming or call (510) 770-9988.

###
One of the three people indicted by the US over involvement in stealing millions of credit card and debit card numbers, which were then either used by the gang or sold, has been sentenced to a 10-year jail sentence by the US District Court in Seattle.

Fedir Hladyr, an Ukrainian citizen, is claimed to have operated as a high-level manager and systems administrator for the FIN7 cyber crime which was also known as the Carbanak Group. The other members of the group who were indicted are also Ukrainians: Dmytro Fedorov and Andrii Kolpakov, the US Department of Justice said in a statement on Friday.

Hladyr was arrested in Dresden, Germany, on an American request and extradited to the US in 2018. In September 2019, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to break into computers.

The FIN7 gang used malware which they developed to attack more than 100 US companies predominantly in the restaurant, gaming and hospitality industries since 2015. Firms that have disclosed attacks linked to FIN7 include such Chipotle Mexican Grill, Chilis, Arbys, Red Robin, and Jasons Deli.

The DoJ said FIN7 had carefully crafted email messages that would appear legitimate to a businesss employees and accompanied emails with telephone calls intended to further legitimise the email.

Once an attached file was opened and activated, FIN7 would use an adapted version of the notorious Carbanak malware in addition to an arsenal of other tools ultimately to access and steal payment card data for the businesss customers. Since 2015, many of the stolen payment card numbers had been offered for sale through online underground marketplaces.

The DoJ said Hladyr had joined FIN7 through a front company known as Combi Security which posed as a cyber security shop.

This criminal organisation had more than 70 people organized into business units and teams," said acting US Attorney Tessa Gorman.

"Some were hackers, others developed the malware installed on computers, and still others crafted the malicious emails that duped victims into infecting their company systems.

This defendant worked at the intersection of all these activities and thus bears heavy responsibility for billions in damage caused to companies and individual consumers.
Federal calls for action after recent mass shootings have put Gov. Greg Abbott and GOP state lawmakers on the defensive. Now theyre laying the groundwork to block federal gun regulations through legislation that would make Texas a Second Amendment sanctuary state, prohibiting state agencies and local governments from enforcing new federal gun rules.

But legal experts say the move is largely symbolic, and that its practical effect would be to make it harder  but not impossible  for federal officials to enforce new gun control measures.

'CONSTITUTIONAL CARRY': Texas House gives initial OK to allow people to carry guns without a license

The push to steel Texas against federal rules comes amid several instances of gun violence nationwide  including a shooting in Bryan on April 8 and another in Austin on Sunday. The longstanding debate in Washington, D.C., over gun control has reignited, moving Democrats in Congress and the White House to call for an assault weapons ban and stronger background checks, among other changes.

We need to erect a complete barrier against any government official anywhere from treading on gun rights in Texas," Abbott said during his annual State of the State address in February.

If the legislation passes, Texas would join Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Wyoming and Arizona  along with more than 400 local governments in at least 20 states  in declaring themselves sanctuaries for gun rights.

This is what Im seeking for Texas  a law to defy any new federal gun control laws, Abbott said in a tweet April 7 about Arizonas recently approved new law. I look forward to signing it.

So what impact would the law have if Congress passes stricter gun laws, like ones floated by President Joe Biden last week?

The sanctuary law would not allow Texas to nullify or override federal gun laws, said Sanford Levinson, a University of Texas School of Law professor. Instead, what they can say [to federal officials] is, If you want to enforce them, do it yourself. Levinson said.

The practical effect, if anything, is really at the margins, added Darrell Miller, co-director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. It doesnt mean the Department of Justice cant enforce federal firearms laws in the state of Texas. It just makes their job more difficult, because they cant rely on assistance from state or local government agents to help them out.

Asked whether the governor agrees with that legal understanding, Abbott spokesperson Renae Eze said in a statement, No state or local government resources will ever be used to infringe upon the 2nd Amendment rights of law-abiding Texans.

Sanctuary for gun rights

Under House Bill 2622 by state Rep. Justin Holland, which cleared its first committee April 6 in a 11-2 vote, Texas state and local governments would be prohibited from enforcing or providing assistance to federal agencies on certain federal gun regulations that do not exist under state law, such as registry, license and background check requirements and programs that would confiscate guns or require people to sell them.

Among the new federal rules the bill would block Texas from enforcing are mandatory background checks for private gun sales. After 2019s mass shootings in El Paso and Midland-Odessa, Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick raised concerns about state laws allowing private sales between strangers without background checks.

READ ALSO: Texas Senate advances bill limiting how and when voters can cast ballots, receive mail-in voting

Abbott stopped short of Patricks push for mandatory background checks, but he suggested the Legislature consider ways to make it easy, affordable and beneficial for a private seller of firearms to voluntarily use background checks when selling firearms to strangers.

The Second Amendment Sanctuary State Act has yet to be considered by the full House and still requires passage in the Senate. A version filed in the upper chamber hasnt yet received a committee hearing.

Holland, R-Rockwall, acknowledged the federal government has its own enforcement mechanisms, even as he and other Texas GOP officials tout essentially freezing in place state gun laws.

We cannot control what the federal government does, Holland said in an interview. Were just trying to say that anything further that restricts or erodes our rights, we will not stand for.

Texas law would likely hold up in court, Levinson said, pointing to a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court decision that said the federal government cant "commandeer" state officials to enforce federal law. States that have gone further than Texas, attempting to nullify federal gun laws, have faced legal challenges.

Its a game of political chicken, but I dont think there is any serious doubt that Texas can say, You have to do this on your own, Levinson said, adding that it is true in a lot of places already that state and local officials are not cooperative with federal laws.

The House last week passed another major piece of gun legislation. House Bill 1927 would nix the requirement that Texas residents obtain a license to carry handguns if theyre not prohibited by state or federal law from possessing a gun. Texans under current state law must generally be licensed to carry handguns, either openly or concealed. That approval in the lower chamber showed there was a bipartisan appeal for a cause long championed by conservative activists. HB 1927 now heads to the Senate.

Federal push for gun control

Biden and congressional Democrats have increasingly called for new federal action following recent mass shootings around the country. Last week, just hours before Bryan police said someone opened fire at Kent Moore Cabinets, killing one person and injuring at least five others, Biden announced a series of executive actions to prevent gun violence.

Gun violence in this country is an epidemic, and its an international embarrassment, Biden said on April 8. The idea that we have so many people dying every single day from gun violence in America is a blemish on our character as [a] nation.

IN HOUSTON: Houston's expanded voting becomes target of GOP restrictions

Biden called for new restrictions on ghost guns, which are built at home and are harder to track, and arm braces for pistols. He also instructed the Department of Justice to create a template that states can use to pass red flag laws, which generally allow judges to temporarily take guns away from people deemed dangerous to themselves or others. Such legislation has previously faced stiff opposition in the Texas Legislature.

Noteworthy in Hollands proposal is that it threatens to deny state funds to any government agencies in Texas that enforce certain new federal restrictions, Miller said.

Not only is this saying state police cant help out the feds in enforcing federal gun legislation, its also saying the city of Austin Police Department cant do it as well, Miller said.

Holland said there has to be teeth to the bill to ensure consistent enforcement across the state.

We cant have standalone cities, counties, jurisdictions running around state laws as some sort of a political statement, Holland said. Dozens of Texas counties have already declared themselves sanctuaries for gun rights.

Lawmakers said its possible Texas could lose some federal funds if the legislation passes.

While there is no significant fiscal impact to state funding as a result of the bill, the impact on federal funding cannot be determined at this time because the response by federal agencies to this legislation is unknown, the bills fiscal note reads.

The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans  and engages with them  about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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Downing Street today accused the United Nations of 'misrepresenting' the findings of a landmark UK race report in an extraordinary bust up.

An arm of the UN accused the Government's Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (Cred) of trying to 'rationalise' and 'normalise' white supremacy in its 'reprehensible' report on race relations in Britain by 'repackaging racist tropes and stereotypes into fact'.

Five human rights experts working for the organisation claimed the controversial report presented by Cred on March 31 effectively whitewashed the history of slavery and colonialism, and 'further distorted and falsified historic facts'.

The UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent condemned the report's assertion there was no institutional racism in the UK, and said the review led by educationalist Dr Tony Sewell 'may licence further racism, the promotion of negative racial stereotypes, and racial discrimination'.

In an extraordinary statement released by the UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, the group of experts said: 'In 2021, it is stunning to read a report on race and ethnicity that repackages racist tropes and stereotypes into fact, twisting data and misapplying statistics and studies into conclusory findings and ad hominem attacks on people of African descent.'

But a furious Number 10 hit back, with the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman telling reporters: 'Our view is that this report misrepresents the findings. We remain proud of the UK's long history as a human rights champion and we encourage everyone to read the original report in full.'

The UN panel warned that the Cred report could 'normalise white supremacy' but the PM's Official Spokesman said: 'Absolutely not. This report in no way condones racist behaviour and in fact it highlights that racism and inequality are still problems for our country.'

One Tory former minister swiped that they were impressed the UN team had 'all of a sudden' managed to reach this 'wonderful conclusion' when travel was banned and they presumably could not even visit the UK: 'The UN, based in New York, would of course know a lot about race relations in the UK.'

Mr Johnson had previously called the Sewell report a 'very interesting piece of work' but claimed more needed to be done to address racism.

In a statement to MailOnline, the Commission said it was 'disappointed that the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent has grossly misrepresented the report's findings, and appears to be a response to negative press coverage rather than the substance of its content'.

Cred, which was set up by the Prime Minister in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests last summer, concluded that though Britain is not yet a 'post-racial society', its success should be a model for white-majority countries.

Its chairman Dr Sewell, who was born in Brixton to Jamaican parents of the Windrush generation and founded the Generating Genius charity, said the UK had progressed into a 'successful multi-ethnic and multicultural community' and was a 'beacon to the rest of Europe and the world'.

However, he was last week forced to insist that he was not denying the existence of racism in the country amid a fierce backlash from Left-wing activists and MPs including Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer.

Critics called the study a 'whitewash' after it found no conclusive evidence of institutional racism. Instead, the report said factors such as geography, family influence, socio-economic background, culture and religion were found to have more impact on life chances than racism.

Commission chairman Dr Tony Sewell (right) said the UK had progressed into a 'successful multi-ethnic and multicultural community' which was a 'beacon to the rest of Europe and the world'. However, UN experts denounced the report in a statement endorsed by Special Rapporteur E Tendayi Achiume (left)

Thousands of people break lockdown regulations during a Black Lives Matter protest in central London, June 2020

Who works on the UN Working Group that criticised the Government's racial relations report? Dominique Day Dominique Day Dominique Day is the chair of the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent. A human rights attorney who has focused 'heavily on racial justice, non-discrimination, and human rights advocacy', Day describes herself on Twitter as a 'racial justice accelerator'. Recent tweets show that she regards the War on Drugs as racist and appears to back claims that reparations could have decreased Covid rates in black communities in the US. Ahmed Reid Ahmed Reid Ahmed Reid is an associate professor of Caribbean history the City University of New York. He is the author and co-author of several articles and is the recipient of several prestigious research fellowships, including from Yale University's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition and the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University. Sabelo Gumedze Sabelo Gumedze Sabelo Gumedze is the Head and Senior Researcher of the Research and Development Unit of the Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority (PSIRA) of South Africa. He has over 10 years of experience in research with a background in legal scholarship and practice, policy development, International human rights law, human security research, analysis, training, teaching, supervising, project management and implementation. In March 2021 Mr Gumedze endorsed calls by Mary Lawlor, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders for Cuba to stop intimidation and detention of human rights defenders working for racial justice in the country. Michal Balcerzak Michal Balcerzak Michal Balcerzak is a professor of international human rights law at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Poland. His research areas include international human rights law, protection of national minorities, international judiciary and litigation and diplomatic protocol. In 2019 Mr Balcerzak called on Belgium to acknowledge the crimes of its colonial past 'to tackle the root causes of present-day racism faced by people of African descent' and urged its government to 'adopt a comprehensive national action plan' after the UN 'found clear evidence that racial discrimination is endemic in institutions in Belgium'. Ricardo A Sunga III Ricardo A Sunga III Ricardo A Sunga III is a tenured Assistant Professor and Chair of Political Law at the De La Salle University College of Law in the Philippines. A member of the Philippine Bar, he has litigated human rights cases for over 24 years before various international and domestic courts and tribunals, such as the United Nations Human Rights Committee and Philippine Supreme Court. In 2017 Mr Sunga claimed people of African descent in Germany suffer racial discrimination, Afrophobia and racial profiling in their daily lives, but their situation remains largely invisible to the wider society. Advertisement

The UN Working Group said it 'cites dubious evidence to make claims that rationalise white supremacy by using the familiar arguments that have always justified racial hierarchy'.

The statement said it had received the backing of E Tendayi Achiume, the UN's Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

The Working Group went on: 'This attempt to normalise white supremacy despite considerable research and evidence of institutional racism is an unfortunate sidestepping of the opportunity to acknowledge the atrocities of the past and the contributions of all in order to move forward.'

The experts said the report omitted any recognition or analysis of institutional racism by international human rights experts, including the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent's 2012 review after its country visit to the UK, the 2016 Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), and the UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance's report following her 2018 country visit to the UK.

'Without exception, these reports have highlighted the damaging impact of institutional racism and deep-rooted inequities in areas such as health, education, employment, housing, stop-and-search practices, and the criminal justice system in the UK,' the experts said.

'The reality is that People of African descent continue to experience poor economic, social, and health outcomes at vastly disproportionate rates in the UK.

'While racial disparities may not always stem from racism or racial discrimination, there is also compelling evidence that the roots of these disparities lie in institutional racism and structural discrimination as they clearly do not reflect the preferences or priorities of the communities facing structural disadvantage.

'Instead, many racial disparities in the UK clearly reflect specific nodes of power and decision-making by employers, teachers, and others who dictate the opportunities and advantages available to people of African descent.

'Too often this decision-making reflects legacy mindsets of racial hierarchy.

'In other words, institutional racism, structural invisibility, and longstanding inequalities have disproportionately impacted people of African descent living in the UK.

'Therefore, the suggestion that family structure, rather than institutionalized and structural discriminatory practices are the central features of the Black experience is a tone-deaf attempt at rejecting the lived realities of people of African descent and other ethnic minorities in the UK.'

The experts urged London to categorically reject the findings of the report.

'We urge the Government to ensure the accurate reflection of historical facts as they relate to past tragedies and atrocities, in particular slavery, the trade in enslaved Africans and colonialism,' the experts said.

'The distortion and falsification of these historic facts may license further racism, the promotion of negative racial stereotypes, and racial discrimination.

Following its publication on March 31, the report was criticised as being divisive, while it was also accused of 'putting a positive spin on slavery and empire'.

In a statement released by the Cabinet Office, a spokesman for the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities said: 'We are pleased that the UK Government welcomed the report, which sets out how to promote racial equality in the UK based on robust evidence and data.

'We are disappointed that the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent has grossly misrepresented the report's findings, and appears to be a response to negative press coverage rather than the substance of its content.

'The misleading claims they have made risk fostering division on the subject of race, rather than constructive discussion on the issues.

'We urge the UK Government to implement the 24 practical recommendations we have made. These will improve the lives of millions and help deliver a fairer society for all races and ethnicities in the UK.'

The Commission has said any suggestion that it would downplay the atrocities of slavery is 'as absurd as it is offensive'.

In the report's foreword, Dr Sewell said a teaching resource should look at the influence of the UK during its empire period and how 'Britishness influenced the Commonwealth' and how local communities influenced 'modern Britain'.

He added: 'There is a new story about the Caribbean experience which speaks to the slave period not only being about profit and suffering but how culturally African people transformed themselves into a remodelled African/Britain.'

The landmark review found children from many ethnic minorities do as well or better at school than white pupils, which was creating fairer and more diverse workplaces.

It called on firms to phase out 'unconscious bias' training because other approaches were needed to 'advance fairness in the workplace'.

The report warned that Britain is not 'a post-racial society' and that 'overt and outright racism persists in the UK', particularly online.

But it said: 'We also have to ask whether a narrative that claims nothing has changed for the better, and that the dominant feature of our society is institutional racism and white privilege will achieve anything beyond alienating the decent centre ground - a centre ground which is occupied by people of all races and ethnicities.'

A spokesman for the commission said at the time: 'We have not seen conclusive evidence of institutional racism in the areas we have looked at. That is not to dismiss it out of hand, but our report is built on data and evidence.

'There is definitely disadvantage, discrimination and there are barriers. That is what our report is about and how to overcome them.'

Last month, the Duchess of Sussex used a US television interview to make allegations about racism in the Royal Family. And Prince Harry claimed racism from the tabloid press that filtered into the rest of society was a 'large part' of why he and his wife left the UK.

But the report suggested that the well-meaning 'idealism' of many young people who claim Britain is still institutionally racist was not borne out by the evidence.

While there remain disparities at the top of the public and private sectors, it is an improving picture and there are increasing levels of diversity in elite professions such as law and medicine.

The report also noted the pay gap between all ethnic minorities and the white majority population had shrunk to 2.3 per cent. It concluded issues of race and racism were becoming less important and, in some cases, were not a significant factor in explaining disparities. Different outcomes had as much to do with social class and family structure as race, it said.

The report added: 'We found that most of the disparities we examined, which some attribute to racial discrimination, often do not have their origins in racism.'

The commission said some minority groups continue to be 'haunted' by 'historic cases' of racism. This creates 'deep mistrust' in the system which could prove a barrier to success. 'Both the reality and the perception of unfairness matter,' the report warned.

It concluded that as the differences between ethnic groups were at least as important as the things they shared, the use of the acronym BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) should be stopped. And it called on organisations 'to move away from funding unconscious bias training'.

Dr Sewell said: 'The report highlights the significance of education as the single most powerful tool in reducing ethnic disparities.

'Another revelation from our dive into the data was just how stuck some groups from the white majority are.'

He told ITV's Good Morning Britain programme: 'No one denies that racism exists. In fact in this report we're doing the opposite. We actually think that institutional racism is being used in a way that's wrong.

'They use different terms... structural racism, systemic racism. A lot of people don't even know what they're talking about.

'They just use it willy-nilly in a way, in a sense that it's not being defined properly. We think it should be deep-seated racism, so we want to protect the term.'

Dr Sewell, a former teacher who grew up in Brixton, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the term 'institutional racism' was 'sometimes wrongly applied' as a 'sort of catch-all phrase for micro-aggressions or acts of racial abuse'.

The ten-person commission also featured Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, space scientist and co-presenter of the BBC's The Sky at Night, and former police superintendent Keith Fraser, chairman of the Youth Justice Board.

However, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said he was 'disappointed' by the findings as he insisted there were structural problems that needed to be addressed.

He told reporters on a visit in Leeds: 'I haven't seen the full report yet and, obviously, I'll want to read that. I've seen the briefings out of it and I'm disappointed.

Pictured: A Black Live Matter Protest, Henley on Thames, Oxfordshire, June 9, 2020

'United Nations' previous interventions into Britain's domestic affairs' This is not the first time that the UN has meddled in UK internal affairs. 2013: 'Bedroom tax caused people to go hungry to pay their rent' Raquel Rolnik In 2013, Raquel Rolnik, the then Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, condemned Britain's housing policy and called for the abolition of the so-called 'bedroom tax'. Mrs Rolnik's report had claimed that the tax - a housing benefit curb for those with extra rooms who claim a spare room subsidy - meant people were going hungry to pay their rent. Mrs Rolnik said she met 'many people who are increasingly having to choose between food and paying the penalty', grandmothers forced from homes and single parents with no space for their children. The Mail then reported that she had stayed at the Rubens at the Palace Hotel in the shadow of Buckingham Palace during her 12-day mission, put up there by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which is supported by UK taxpayers. 2019: 'Conditions for the working poor are 'Dickensian'' Philip Alston The UN accused Britain of violating its human rights obligations by creating 'Dickensian' conditions for the poor. Philip Alston, the UN's then Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty, came to the UK in 2018 to draw up a report on government cuts and their impact on the unemployed and low-paid. His report claimed the UK had 'a harsh and uncaring ethos' and was guilty of 'increasing marginalisation of the working poor and those unable to work'. He said the Department of Work and Pensions appeared to be 'designing a digital and sanitised version of the 19th Century workhouse, made infamous by Charles Dickens'. Mr Alston also warned that Britain could be returning to the state of nature famously described by Thomas Hobbes' in 1668 as 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'. Advertisement

'On the one hand, there's an acknowledgement of the problems, the issues, the challenges that face many black and minority ethnic communities. But, on the other hand, there's a reluctance to accept that that's structural.'

Sir Keir said there had been 'report after report' on the issue as he called for action and the creation of a full race equality act.

Dr Halima Begum, chief executive of the Runnymede Trust, a race equality think tank, said it was 'deeply, deeply worrying' that the commission had denied the existence of institutional racism.

She said she felt 'massively let down' by the review and added: 'Institutionally, we are still racist, and for a Government-appointed commission to look into (institutional) racism, to deny its existence is deeply, deeply worrying.'

Dr Sewell stressed that 'no one denies that racism exists' but argues Britain is not institutionally racist - a term he believes is deployed too 'willy-nilly'.

Amid cries of a 'whitewash', he was branded a Government stooge and compared to Josef Goebbels, Hitler's minister for propaganda, by a Cambridge professor. Dr Priyamvada Gopal initially questioned whether Dr Sewell even had a doctorate.

After finding out that he possesses one from the University of Nottingham, she tweeted: 'Okay, established. It is, in fact, Dr Sewell. Fair enough. Even Dr Goebbels had a research PhD. (University of Heidelberg, 1921).'

Labour MP Clive Lewis even tweeted a picture of the Ku Klux Klan with the caption: 'Move along. Nothing to see here. #RaceReport.'

The backlash became so vitriolic that the Commission's members were forced to issue a joint statement railing against the 'dangerous personal attacks'.

Matthew Ryder QC, lawyer to Stephen Lawrence case and ex-deputy mayor of London, was also critical of the review.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'I'm glad this work's being done, but from what I've seen I'm not optimistic this is going to be a helpful report and there are some glaring things I would mention.

'The report seems to rely very strongly on access to higher education of being a determination of racial equality. And it relies quite strongly on statistics that suggest working class white boys often have the lowest education attainment.

'We've known this for about 10 years so this isn't new, but if you put that statistic in context, it tells you something much more important that isn't mentioned in the report at all.

'And that is: even when white working class boys have lower educational qualifications and a lower likelihood of going to university, they have higher employment rates and higher social mobility, and that was highlighted in 2019 by the University of Aberdeen, and they called this the 'white working class paradox'.

'If you simply trot out what we've known for 10 years about access to education and say 'that shows racism has been solved', it doesn't show what the problem is.'

This is not the first time that the UN has meddled in UK internal affairs. In 2013, Raquel Rolnik, the then Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, condemned Britain's housing policy and called for the abolition of the so-called 'bedroom tax'.

Mrs Rolnik's report had claimed that the tax - a housing benefit curb for those with extra rooms who claim a spare room subsidy - meant people were going hungry to pay their rent.

It criticised the Government for encouraging home ownership and called for rent controls, security for renters, and new social housing.

Mrs Rolnik said she met 'many people who are increasingly having to choose between food and paying the penalty', grandmothers forced from homes and single parents with no space for their children.

The Mail then reported that she had stayed at the Rubens at the Palace Hotel in the shadow of Buckingham Palace during her 12-day mission, put up there by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which is supported by UK taxpayers.

The UN also accused Britain of violating its human rights obligations by creating 'Dickensian' conditions for the poor when Philip Alston, the then Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty, came to the UK in 2018 to draw up a report on government cuts and their impact on the unemployed and low-paid.

His report, released in May 2019, claimed that Britain had 'a harsh and uncaring ethos' and was guilty of 'increasing marginalisation of the working poor and those unable to work'.

He added that the Department of Work and Pensions appeared to be 'designing a digital and sanitised version of the 19th Century workhouse, made infamous by Charles Dickens'.
An Irish language and cultural organisation in Derry is one of the first organisations to be awarded a grant from The Dormant Accounts Fund NI.

Dormant accounts are defined as those which have seen no customer-initiated activity for at least 15 years.

Under the Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Act 2008, money has been released from these unused accounts to the National Lottery Community Fund for distribution to good causes across the UK.

The programme, delivered by The National Lottery Community Fund in conjunction with the Department of Finance, is supporting the voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector to be more resilient and prepared for the long-term future.

An Gaelaras in Derry, which runs Irish language education, music and cultural activities, has been awarded 76,000 to improve their financial resilience by increasing opportunities to generate income.

Padraig Mac Congail, Chief Executive of An Gaelaras, said: We currently receive funding from quite a few funders, but one of our ongoing goals is to become more self-sufficient.

"We want to be able to provide a valuable community hub and services into the future as we develop our educational, cultural, social and employment opportunities.

In recent years our staff and Board have recognised the value in appointing someone to increase our revenue and help with our sustainability, but we havent been able to dedicate the required resources into it.

"So once the Dormant Accounts Fund opened, we were ready to apply straight away as we already had plans in place and knew what we needed - this just gave us the opportunity to finance it.

"Im confident the organisation will be in a stronger position in two years time and it should be very clear that the sustainability of the organisation has been increased.

Dormant accounts are UK bank and building society accounts that have been untouched for 15 or more years, where customers who own the accounts cannot be traced.

Over 20 million is currently available and money will continue to be released each year to support the long-term sustainability of the VCSE sector.

As part of the first phase, organisations can apply for up to 100,000 as part of a flexible and responsive grant programme to help them adapt to future challenges and be more financially resilient.

Kate Beggs, Northern Ireland Director at The National Lottery Community Fund, said: There has been a lot of interest in Dormant Accounts Fund NI and we are delighted to be able to award the first grants.

We know many organisations are trying to plan for the long term and thinking about the changes they need to make to become more sustainable.

"Those changes require leadership, strategic planning, new skills and strong governance. Those are things for which funding often isnt available and thats where the Dormant Accounts Fund comes in. It will provide flexible, multi-year funding and allow a diverse range of organisations to plan for a more secure future.

There is also support for larger investments that will enable collaboration and develop new and creative Northern Ireland-wide or sector-specific approaches to sustainability.

Finance Minister, Conor Murphy said: It is great to see the very first initial awards being made from the Dormant Accounts Fund.

"This funding will support these projects with longer term sustainability and resilience which are at the very core of this Fund.

"I look forward to further awards being made in the near future and seeing the positive longer term impact the Dormant Account Fund has within the voluntary, community and social enterprise sectors."
The United States has reached a key milestone in its COVID-19 vaccination efforts, as every adult in the country is now eligible to receive a vaccine.

As of Monday, all adults in each U.S. state, as well as Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, were eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, according to The New York Times. The final states to open up eligibility to their entire adult population on Monday were Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont, per Axios.

"It's truly historic that we have already reached this milestone," the University of Washington Medical Center's Dr. Nandita Mani told the Times.

President Biden announced in March he was directing states to make all adults eligible for COVID-19 vaccination by May 1. But as states increasingly moved to open up vaccinations to all adults sooner than that, Biden later moved the deadline up to April 19, and the goal of meeting this earlier date was successfully met on Monday.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, half of American adults have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine shot, and about 32.5 percent of adults are fully vaccinated. At this rate, according to the Times, the U.S. is on pace to have 70 percent of its population vaccinated by the middle of June.

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Two police officers have been killed in Anambra State, Nigerias South-east, in a deadly attack by gunmen on a police facility in the state in the early hours of Monday.

Some vehicles parked at the stations premises were razed during the attack at the Zone 13 police headquarters at Ukpo, near Awka.

The slain officers have been identified as Ishaku Aura, an inspector, and Uzoma Uwaebuka, a police constable.

The commissioner of police and some senior police officers visited the scene of the attack, immediately after the incident, PREMIUM TIMES learnt.

PREMIUM TIMES could not immediately get a police comment on the attack, as the police spokesperson in the state was said to be in a meeting, apparently over the development.

There has been a spate of attacks on police officers and police facilities, lately, in the South-east and South-south regions, which has compounded the security challenges in the two regions.

Apart from more than a decade of the Boko Haram insurgency in the North-east, several states in Nigeria have been struggling with kidnapping for ransom, banditry, frequent clashes between farmers and herders, and inter-communal conflicts.

The Anambra attack is coming a few days after governors and heads of security agencies in the five states in the South-east had a regional summit on security, where they agreed to establish a joint security outfit to check the insecurity in the region.

IPOB, a pro-Biafra group, has been accused of being responsible for some of the attacks against the police in the South-east, but the group has denied any involvement.
The report " Post-harvest Treatment Market for Fruits & Vegetables by Type (Coatings, Cleaners, Fungicides, Ethylene Blockers, Sanitizers, and Sprout Inhibitors), Crop Type (Fruits and Vegetables), and Region - Global Forecast to 2026", The post- harvest treatment market is projected to grow from USD 1.5 billion in 2019 to USD 2.3 billion by 2026, recording a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.5% during the forecast period. The growing trade of fruits and vegetables is one of the key factors driving the growth of the post-harvest treatment market.

The fruit segment is projected to grow at the highest rate during the forecast period.

The fruit segment, by crop type, is projected to grow at the highest CAGR, in terms of value, during the forecast period. Fruits are highly perishable in nature and are required to be treated with post-harvest solutions to increase their shelf life for longer storage duration and easy transport of these products. Increasing application of natural flavors in the food and beverages industry is also encouraging the trade of fruits, which in turn, has led to a surge in demand for post-harvest treatment solutions in the major fruits and vegetable producing region such as Asia Pacific.

Download PDF Brochure:

https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=256316169

By type, the coatings segment is estimated to account for the largest share in 2019 in the post-harvest treatment market.

Coatings are one of the methods to increase the shelf life of products and decrease the quality and quantity losses. They are mostly applied to fruits & vegetables during the packaging process for maintaining their softness, color, odor, and flavor. The development of edible coatings has made it easier for fruits and vegetable processors to use the produce without any concerns about their harmful effects. Edible coatings help to prevent unnecessary softening and ripening of fruits & vegetables. Coatings form an integral part of the post-harvest treatment process, as fruits & vegetables are stored for longer periods, thereby making it important to maintain their shelf life and quality.

Asia Pacific is projected to account for the largest share in the post-harvest treatment market during the forecast period.

Asia Pacific dominated the post-harvest treatment market for the fruits and vegetables segments in 2018. Countries such as India and China are the key producers of fruits and vegetables, a majority of which are exported to North America and Europe. Since the Asia Pacific region is a developing region, post-harvest losses of fruits and vegetables are witnessed on a large scale in its countries. Hence, the need for efficient post-harvest treatment mechanisms remains high, which is subsequently projected to drive the growth of the market.

Key players in the post-harvest treatment market include Decco (US), JBT (US), Pace International LLC (US), Xeda International (France), Agrofresh (US), Syngenta (Switzerland), FMC Corporation (US), Nufarm (Australia), Bayer (Germany), Citrosol (Spain), Fomesa Fruitech (Spain), Futureco Bioscience (Spain), Corteva Agriscience (US), BASF (Germany), Sensitech Inc (US), Post-Harvest Solutions (New Zealand ), Janssen PMP (Belgium), Colin Campbell Pty Ltd (Australia), Valent Biosciences (USA), and RPM International (US). These players have a broad industry coverage and strong operational and financial strength.

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Recent Developments:
(@FahadShabbir)

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th April, 2021) Moldovan President Maia Sandu will travel to Strasbourg on Monday to hold talks with representatives of major Council of Europe organizations.

The Moldovan president is expected to meet with Secretary General of the Council of Europe Maria Pejcinovic Buric, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Hendrik Daems, European Court of Human Rights President Robert Spano, and Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic among others.

According to the presidential press service, during the talks Sandu will discuss issues related to the reform of the Judicial system, fight against corruption, development of an economic recovery program, cooperation with local authorities and regional security. The president will also reiterate the commitment of the Republic of Moldova to fulfill the obligations assumed upon joining the Council of Europe on building a viable rule of law in the country.
Kien Giang proposes Covid-19 vaccination for Phu Quoc residents

The southern province of Kien Giang is seeking the Ministry of Health's approval for the supply of Covid-19 vaccination for all people in Phu Quoc District



The proposal was made when a delegation of the Ministry of Health led by Minister Nguyen Thanh Long had a meeting with authorities in Kien Giang on Covid-19 prevention and control on Sunday.



According to the provincial peoples committee, Kien Giang is at high risk of Covid-19 outbreak as the locality is near Cambodia and Thailand which are witnessing a sharp rise in Covid-19 infections.





The delegation of the Ministry of Health inspect the Covid-19 prevention and control in Kien Giang Province on April 18.





Currently, around 103,000 Vietnamese Cambodians are living in Cambodia, including up to 1,700 people in the three Cambodian provinces of Kampot, Kep and Preah Sihanouk which border Kien Giang.



Since February 20, up to 1,300 people have entered Vietnam through Kien Giangs Ha Tien International Border Gate, including 142 illegal migrants. Among those, many have tested positive for Covid-19.



At the meeting, Kien Giang asked the Ministry of Health for assistance in the fight against Covid-19, including the priority of providing Covid-19 vaccination for all residents in Phu Quoc District. This is aimed to help the district ensure safer tourism.



The province also urged the ministry to allow the setup of a 350-bed field hospital in Ha Tien City as well as support the city in raising its Covid-19 testing capacity.



Kien Giang also asked the Ministry of Health to consider the Covid-19 vaccine passport application for Phu Quoc in order to help the district in tourism and economy development.



Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long said that the Ministry of Health is always willing to support localities in the Covid-19 fight in necessary cases. The ministry will take careful consideration into Kien Giangs proposals for timely and suitable assistance.
The Romanian Association of Banks (ARB) has become an affiliated member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development - International Network on Financial Education (OCDE/INFE), starting in April 2021, according to a press release sent on Monday to AGERPRES.

OECD/INFE affiliated membership is reserved for non-governmental and non-profit organizations, such as the Romanian Association of Banks, from academia and foundations that take an interest in the field of education and financial education.

"The granting by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development of affiliated membership within the International Network on Financial Education represents a recognition of the ARB's efforts in the area of financial education programmes, in line with the aim we have assumed as an organization, to support the Romanian economy and to increase the level of financial education. We want to make the best use of the OECD's expertise and know-how in the field of financial education through future initiatives and projects that will be supported in Romania. At the same time, we will connect with other areas of the globe to add value through our own solutions and elements of vision. Anchoring Romania's economy, by joining the OECD as a state, could lead to improved economic development premises," said Sergiu Oprescu, president of the ARB Board of Directors.

According to the source, ARB's affiliation to the OECD's international initiative in the field of financial education involves priority consultations on financial education documents to be issued by the OECD or OECD/INFE for public consultation, participation in OECD's global financial education events and specific sessions dedicated to meetings of the technical committee or activities of OECD/INFE working groups, whenever relevant.

ARB is a signatory to the Collaboration Agreement, concluded in 2018, with the Romanian authorities for the implementation of joint activities in the field of financial education and the elaboration of the National Strategy for Financial Education.

The Romanian Association of Banks has been a member of the European Banking Federation since 1991 (with full rights since 2007), the European Payments Council, the European Mortgage Federation, the European Banking Institute and 26 lucrative national bodies on the development and improvement of the economic framework.

The Romanian Association of Banks represents the banking market and has expanded by including nine affiliated members, non-banking companies, thus laying the foundations for a partnership that aims to contribute to strengthening a predictable, transparent and reliable business environment in Romania.
It was announced a while ago that Allu Arjun would be starring in a new film titled Icon. The announcement had created a lot of anticipation among fans, who have been eagerly waiting for the updates of this project. However, no further details have been revealed, which had created the rumours of this project to have likely gotten shelved by the makers. However, these rumours have been strongly confirmed to be false by producer Dil Raju, who has given a small peek into the current progress of this film as well.

Icon producer denies shelving rumours of the film

Dil Raju had recently made an appearance at a press conference for the promotion of Vakeel Saab, which stars Pawan Kalyan in the lead. He assured during the conference that the filming of Icon is about to begin soon, according to Pinkvilla. He added by saying that the script of Icon was finalised even before that of Vakeel Saab, and that the film will be loved by the audience. He said that while it has been postponed multiple times for various reasons, its shooting would soon be kickstarted.

One of the likely reasons behind the postponing of Icon is the fact that Allu Arjun is currently working on his other upcoming film Pushpa, which also stars Fahad Fazil portraying the role of the villain. The film is being touted as an action thriller and will also see other actors such as Sai Pallavi, Rashmika Mandanna, Fahadh Faasil, Prakash Raj, Dhananjay, Jagapathi Babu, Sunil, Harish Uthaman and others. It has been given the release date of August 13 for the time being. However, in the wake of the ongoing pandemic, the date is subject to change.

Allu Arjun has worked in a list of popular films during the course of his acting career. He had made his debut back in 2003 with the film Gangotri and has strongly established himself as an actor in Telugu films. Some of his other known films include I Am That Change, Sarrainodu, Naa Peru Surya, Naa Illu India and was last seen in Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo, which had released last year.

Promo image courtesy: Allu Arjun Instagram

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Tim Putnam runs a 25-bed hospital in rural southeastern Indiana that got hit hard by COVID-19.

"We were slammed in March of 2020. We had more cases per capita in our region than, I believe, anywhere. We were equal to New York City," says Putnam, CEO of Margaret Mary Health. "We were just unlucky. We had a few people that were positive that went to large events in the region, and we started getting a lot of people coming in here."

At the peak of the pandemic, Putnam's staff was caring for 40 inpatients. Considerations to relocate COVID-19 patients to stadiums or conference centers were dismissed as impractical. The community donated or made masks for health care workers. The local RV dealer even offered up his recreational vehicles for staff to sleep in or as mobile clinics. Several hospital staffers got sick, but they all recovered.

Before the pandemic, hospital planners were more focused on outpatient services and hadnt given a great deal of thought to how to adapt in the event of a massive health care emergency like a pandemic.

"Eighty-three percent of our revenue comes from outpatient work. So we were, like a lot of hospitals, really outpatient focused. But that also meant that a lot of our inpatient facility was underutilized," Putnam says. "We had a lot of space in our inpatient unit that regularly does not get used."

Flexible designs

The pandemic has forced many hospitals to rethink how to keep their communities safe and healthy. Putnam turned to hospital design experts to help better position his medical center for the next pandemic or other significant event, such as a mass shooting, chemical attack or natural disaster.

"Our hospitals have really let our caregivers down in a lot of ways, which I think, it falls back to a failure of imagination on the part of the design and construction industry," says Jim Albert of Hord Coplan Macht. He's an architect who specializes in health care design. "That resiliency of having the ability to, for example, accommodate twice as many patients as you ever have before in the hospital just wasn't built into those systems."

But that's changing, with hospital designers focusing on creating more flexible spaces at a reasonable cost.

"If you plan in advance, it's not overly expensive, and it allows you a far greater flexibility in how you use spaces," Albert says. "Could we put two patients in every room in a true emergency, if we had to? Could we upgrade the acuity of rooms?  Putting a few more gas outlets or power outlets on a wall and increasing pipe sizes by a little bit can go a long way to making sure you can get a ventilator in every patient room. But if you don't have that in there in the beginning, it's a real problem."

For his hospital, Putnam is looking for a malleable design to accommodate changing needs.

"The design cannot be a static design," he says. "In a crisis situation, you've got some areas like your physical therapy area training rooms, or even administration, that need to be converted into patient care space. So, when you design that, it might be putting oxygen lines in the wall, or it might be making your ERs (emergency rooms) be able to turn a switch and be a safe operating room if you're dealing with a mass casualty situation and need more ORs (operating rooms) immediately."

No more emergency waiting rooms?

Infection control is also a more urgent priority in the aftermath of COVID-19.

Public spaces in hospitals, such as waiting rooms, could look different in the future. Patients could be asked to wait in their cars, or outside, until they can be seen. An entire zone within an emergency department might be created to handle infectious patients. Some health systems are already developing apps for smartphones that allow patients to check in on their own phones, eliminating the need to touch any other surfaces or devices.

Staff spaces might be reimagined, with fewer people sharing a workstation, and larger break rooms and locker rooms replaced by smaller spaces. Administrative workers could be moved out of the hospital to another site or establish work-from-home arrangements, Albert says.

Then there's the issue of ventilation. In most hospitals, only about one-third of the air is brought in from the outside. The rest is recycled and filtered. Few hospital rooms have full fresh air.

One of the current projects of Alberts firm has a built-in fresh-air option.

"We're working on inpatient expansion to a hospital, and we're going to be able to, at the flip of a switch, change the airflow so that every patient room in that wing will be negatively exhausted to the outside," he says. "Only new fresh air would be brought out, and that way, there's no chance of cross-contamination from room to room. And all of that fresh air is keeping the patients and the staff and the rooms around that infectious room safe."



But there's a cost. All of that fresh air must constantly be heated or cooled.

Hospitals of the future

In Indiana, Putnam and his colleagues are focusing more on telemedicine and other ways to keep people healthy so they don't have to go into the hospital.

They're also looking ahead and recognizing that community hospitals like theirs need to be ready to tackle the next mass medical emergency.

"We need to take ownership of  whatever medical crisis hits our community," Putnam says. "We need to be able to handle it, manage it, work with our other partners. Sometimes, especially in this situation, everybody's overwhelmed, so you've got to be able to handle it."

That's why he believes it is critical to design facilities that can fit that need.

"I really would encourage people not to design the hospital they wanted for this pandemic," Putnam says, "but think of all the other possible things that could occur."
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The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has dismissed as false, the purported suspension of former Kano State Governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso, from the party.

In a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, in Abuja on Sunday, the PDP also said former governor of Niger, Babangida Aliyu was also not suspended.

The party was reacting to a document being circulated in which Mr Kwankwaso was queried and suspended by the Kano State chapter of the PDP.

The PDP dismissed the document, saying it was circulated by some mischievous individuals.

The PDP states clearly that Kwakwanso is not suspended from the party.

ALSO READ: PDP suspends Kwankwaso over disruption of zonal congress

It also said, Our party frowns as such fabrications aimed at subverting the stability of our party and trigger disagreements and suspicions within our ranks.

The PDP urges our leaders and teeming members in Kano state and Niger to be at alert, resist distractions and continue to work together.

The party added that any claim of suspension by any individual or group, purporting to be representing any organ of the party at any level, was mere fabrication and should be discountenanced.

It stressed that the provisions of the constitution of the PDP were very clear on the suspension of a member of the National Executive Committee (NEC) if and when such occasion arose.

The party cautioned those behind the misleading claims to desist henceforth.

The PDP will not accept such reckless adventure by such misguided individuals, which is capable of destabilising our party and bringing it to public disrepute.

(NAN)
Erik Trautmann / Hearst Connecticut Media

NORWALK  Police arrested two New York men last week for allegedly stealing $9,500 worth of perfume from a cosmetics store on Main Avenue.

Keyshawn Middleton, 23, of the Bronx, and Sean Jasper, 20, of Harlem, were charged Friday with two counts each of third-degree larceny, police said.
The burqa ban announcement caused a stir among Muslims, who saw it as yet another attack on their community. In the past few months, the government has undertaken a number of controversial measures under the banner of fighting extremism, which have increasingly intimidated the Muslim population and disregarded rule of law principles - Farzana Haniffa, Head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Colombo writing in the Al Jazeera on the 12 Apr 2021

by Raj Gonsalkorale

The Justice and the Law Society (JATL) of the University of Queensland is a vital organisation within the TC Beirne School of Law. An active society with diverse membership, JATL performs an important role in promoting awareness of social justice issues in the law. In a well-researched and informative article titled Debate on the Burqa (http://www.jatl.org/blog/2014/10/19/debate-on-the-burqa), the multiple facets associated with the origins and contemporary debate on the Burqa is examined in detail. It is strongly recommended that this article is read in full by anyone interested in the debate surrounding Burqa. The following passage summarises the contemporary ethos surrounding a dress that has caused so much controversy, as well as a misunderstanding of the origins and the religious reasoning behind the Burqa.

The article says, quote Reflecting on practices across the Muslim world, it is apparent that Muslim womens dress clearly comes with political, religious and cultural messages that an observer can decode. Dress can be seen to align the wearer with a Salafi (fundamentalist/literalist) or with a modernist interpretation of Islam. It can signify a political direction either in support of, or against, secularism, or Islamisation, or Western cultural dominance through colonisation, or globalisation. It also can reflect a cultural identity and tradition.

In Afghanistan, a woman wears the light hues of the burqa and secludes herself (purdah) to demonstrate her and her familys honour and respect for social order. On the Arabian Peninsula she wears a black Abaya as a reflection of Salafi traditonalism, which generally restricts her movements in public non-segregated spaces. In conservative Wahhabi-informed Saudi Arabia all women, Muslim or non-Muslim are required by law to wear an Abaya in public places with religious police (muttawa) employed to enforce it. In Malaysia, she wears the vibrant colours of traditional bajukurung with tudong and is not constrained by notions of purdah as Malay women have for centuries worked with and alongside men.

However, these identifications are not static. For example, the spread of Salafi Islam from Saudi Arabia to Southeast Asia has meant that some Malaysian women who want to show their identification with that world view now don black Abaya and Niqab. Wearers of face coverings also believe it brings them closer to God and personifies their piety, spirituality and the highest possible personal level of modesty.

Conversely, there are reports of young Iranian women testing the boundaries of compulsory chador dress code by adopting tighter fitting clothing and minimal or loose headscarves. In democratic Muslim Indonesia, what Muslim women wear is at the forefront of religious and legislative debate both nationally and particularly in the provinces which now have the legislative power to set and enforce their own dress codes and morality programs unquote.

The following passage in the above quoted excerpt is relevant in examining the impact of the Burqa in Sri Lanka. the spread of Salafi Islam from Saudi Arabia to Southeast Asia has meant that some Malaysian women who want to show their identification with that world view now don black Abaya and Niqab. It can be argued that the spread of Salafi Islam from Saudi Arabia has indeed influenced Sri Lankan Muslims as well considering that the extent of self- expression and the linking of a dress towards Islamic piety and modesty has grown and taken hold in parts of Sri Lanka perhaps in the last few decades more than ever before. Fifty years or so ago, this statement by Muslim women, in some instances on their own accord, but arguably at the dictates of men in many other cases, was not so apparent to many who lived in Sri Lanka then.

Salafism is explained well by Jonathan A C Brown in an article on Salafism published in the Oxford Bibiliographies(https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195390155/obo-9780195390155-0070.xml). Brown states in the introduction, quote News reports often mention the Wahhabi movement or Wahhabi Islam without providing any context. This controversial modern Islamic movement actually represents part of a larger phenomenon in Islamic thought: Salafism.

The Salaf are the pious forbearers of Islam, usually understood as the first three generations of the Muslim community (as opposed to the Khalaf, or the later generations). The Arabic adjective Salafi and the English noun Salafism taken from it are complex terms that refer to a trend in Islamic thought that places particular emphasis on a return to the piety and principles of the Salaf as the only correct understanding of Islam.

Although all Muslim scholars look to the Salaf as role models, the majority believe that the institutions and historical developments that scholars have accepted within thought and practice over the centuries represent legitimate expressions of Islam. Establishing and adhering to schools of law (madhhab), adopting the Near Eastern traditions of Greek logic and speculative theology, and the emergence of Sufi brotherhoods were all accepted by mainstream Sunni and Shiite scholars.

The Salafi strain in Islamic thought, however, has questioned the authority and legitimacy of these developments, preferring to emphasize of role of hadith and the literal ways of the Salaf over such historical adoptions. Although this conservative and iconoclastic trend has always existed in Islamic thought, it is most commonly identified with two periods: the burgeoning of classical Salafism with the 14th-century scholar Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), and the Salafism of the 18th-century movements of revival and reform.

This early modern incarnation of Salafism in turn gave birth to two trends in Salafism that have flourished until today. Despite their common use of the term Salafi, these two modern movements are in fact very different, and they will be referred to here as modernist Salafism and traditionalist Salafism. Both classical Salafism and modern Salafism have clashed with the mainstream of Islamic thought, which will be referred to, for the sake of convenience, as Sunni or Shiite orthodoxy. Due to its controversial nature, writings on Salafism often feature heavy biases that need to be taken into consideration. Furthermore, there is scholarly disagreement over whether the term Salafism really represents a unified phenomenon; that is, is the Salafism of Ibn Taymiyya really the Salafism of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1792) or Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905), unquote.

Those who take the view that there is Muslim extremism in Sri Lanka and the Burqa is associated with such extremism, should take note of Browns statement, done with considerable research, that Salafism is a movement towards what some Islamic scholars believe as the trend in Islamic thought that places particular emphasis on a return to the piety and principles of the Salaf as the only correct understanding of Islam.

Whether this is so or not is really a matter for Muslims and something that should be discussed and debated, understood or rejected by Muslims themselves. Salafism, or for that matter, any other branch of the Islam faith or any segment of any other religion, could be called extremist should they take the view that non-believers or non-adherents have no place in society and therefore should be sidelined or eliminated through coercion or violence. But, a movement that takes the view that they represent the real piety and principles of Islam, cannot be called an extremist movement for this reason.

Extremism, whether it is Islamic, Christian or Buddhist is taken as a deviation from an assumed or imaginary norm that these religions teach or their founders pronounced. These norms are highly interpretable as there no direct recordings of what the founders of these religions said in order for present day generations to understand what the norm is or might have been.

What many Buddhists appear to believe and practice today can be described at best as ritualistic, and not consistent with the teachings of Buddha. Rituals are cultural practices and not practices desired, encouraged or dictated by Buddha, but they cannot be called extremist practices.In Sri Lanka, there is a movement that believes Prince Siddhartha Gautama was a Sri Lankan and not an Indian and he became Buddha in Sri Lanka. Could one call this movement or those steeped in ritualism extremist? Misguided perhaps, but not extremist.

In this context, determining or defining what religious extremism means is difficult, and it will mean different things to different people.

In an ideal world where logic, and internal, universal, human characteristics like love and compassion to one self and others, rather than a belief in an external divinity for ones presence, actions and reactions, it would have been easier to desist from any form of self-defined extremism.

Life amongst human beings is far more complex, and therefore a universally accepted understanding of what religious extremism is also very complex.

Perhaps one could approach religious extremism from a different point of view. Whatever the professed religion of a human being is, and whatever they understand and believe as the teaching of that religion is, all human beings live in a society, large or small, more diverse or less diverse, and of all hues and colours, political beliefs and cultural practices. Each such society will be at peace within it and with others, if the constituents of that society maintains a balance or an equilibrium within it, and which can only come about if the constituents accept that there has to be compromise with each other in recognition of the diversity of opinion, beliefs, and practices within that society. Diversity within a society is a healthy sign if that diversity is viewed from a broader societal point of view rather than only as an advancement of individual practices of one segment within it.

Besides this, if each constituent is able to consider the point of view of another from that other constituents perspective, it would greatly help to ease tensions that arise within a society. It would also help if people belonging to different faiths could ponder for a moment how the founders of their faiths would look at todays practices by their followers and how close or distant they are from the founders teachings. The founders may find that interpretations of their teachings and cultural edifices that have been built on such interpretations have taken over the essence of their teachings.

In Sri Lanka, it is perhaps time that the constituents of all religious faiths examined the premise of diversity with mutual regard and respect for that diversity, but, whether individual segments within the Sri Lankan society have looked at only their religious practices without consideration of how others may view such practices.

The Burqa and Salafism too should be looked at in this context. People of all religious faiths should be able to coexist with each other in the Sri Lankan society that has as little turbulence a possible. Words, action and behaviour that encourages turbulence should be questioned by the very people who create that turbulence. This applies to people of all faiths, and it would mean some compromises being made, not on the principles of the faiths, but the practices of the faiths, as increasingly, the growth of practices that does not seem consistent with the principles of different faiths appears to be on the rise.
Im proud that The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) asked me to be the editor-in-chief of the LLS section of Multiple Myeloma Today, said Saad Usmani, M.D. More than ever, we need this type of publication to share updates on the research advances in the field, which are coming at a rapid pace.

Integrated Medical Communications is proud to announce the launch of a new quarterly print publication in which The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) will provide content expertise relating to multiple myeloma.

Multiple Myeloma Today is a first-of-its-kind publication in the medical space that provides hematologists and oncologists content focused specifically on myeloma, rather than all conditions in the oncology sphere.

The mission of Multiple Myeloma Today is to commit to advancement in hematology by providing essential editorial content to hematologists and oncologists in the United States. Multiple Myeloma Today achieves the articulated need of practicing physicians for practical, up-to-date clinical information in multiple myeloma (MM) through a comprehensive journal.

The publication will feature one section with exclusive content from LLS, including a look at whats in the myeloma pipeline, podcast coverage, conference highlights, and more.

Im proud that The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) asked me to be the editor-in-chief of the LLS section of Multiple Myeloma Today, said Saad Usmani, M.D. More than ever, we need this type of publication to share updates on the research advances in the field, which are coming at a rapid pace.

Some of the LLS exclusive content in the first issue includes COVID-19 and how it relates to MM, new product approvals, conference highlights, and in the first Myeloma 101 series, which highlights incidence, disease presentation, and clinical diagnosis. Experts also discuss the latest developments in blood cancers, new and emerging treatment options, side effects management, and survivorship. The LLS editorial board for their section includes seven esteemed hematologists who have contributed editorially to the publication, as well as two patient advocates.

Another section of the publication introduces Urban Health Today, a standing feature of Multiple Myeloma Today that provides racial disparities content. The first issue includes an interview with Dr. Sinisa Dovat, a physician scientist and pediatric oncologist at Penn State Childrens Hospital and Penn State Cancer Institute, who discusses disparities in pediatric Hispanic and Latino patients.

Integrated Medical Communications is proud to be able to offer a quality resource for hematologists and oncologists to access the latest information regarding a very specific subset of oncology patients, said publisher Joe Palumbo, CEO of Integrated Medical Communications. We look forward to meeting what we see as an unmet need in the myeloma space.

About Integrated Medical Communications

Integrated Medical Communications (IMC) is a recently founded medical publishing company aimed at providing the latest in healthcare news and published literature to healthcare professional across multiple specialties. IMC promotes excellence through providing news that is fair, balanced, and accurate. IMC collaborates with societies, organizations, thought leaders and experts to develop high level content in both digital and print platforms. To learn more, visit: https://www.integratedmedicalcommunications.com/

About The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) is a global leader in the fight against cancer. The LLS mission: Cure leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease and myeloma, and improve the quality of life of patients and their families. LLS funds lifesaving blood cancer research around the world, provides free information and support services, and is the voice for all blood cancer patients seeking access to quality, affordable, coordinated care.

Founded in 1949 and headquartered in Rye Brook, NY, LLS has regions throughout the United States and Canada. To learn more, visit http://www.LLS.org. Patients should contact the Information Resource Center at (800) 955-4572, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., ET.

For additional information visit lls.org/lls-newsnetwork. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Editorial Board for LLS Portion of Publication:

Saad Usmani, M.D., M.B.A, FACP, Editor-in-Chief

Orsi Giricz, Ph.D., Associate Editor

Madhav V. Dhodapkar, MBBS

Alfred Garfall, M.D.

Amrita Krishnan, M.D., FACP

Shaji Kumar, M.D.

C. Ola Landgren, M.D.

Sydney Lu, M.D., Ph.D.

Ethan Hawes (Patient Advocate)

Yelak Biru (Patient Advocate)
Kimberly D. Bishop, Attorney at Law

Kimberly Bishop knew she wanted to be a lawyer when she was 9-years-old. I always wanted to help people live better lives, she stated. I learned early in my life that lawyers can really serve as someones personal hero. Since I wanted to help as many people as I could, I was determined to become a lawyer and do just that.

The Bishop Law Firm is a contingency-fee law firm. This enables everyone to have access to legal help since the upfront costs are paid for by the firm. The firm only gets paid if clients win their case. Calling a client on the phone to tell them that they have won their case is one of the best moments of being a lawyer. We work hard for these moments every day, said Bishop.

The firm specializes in personal injury, social security disability and workers' compensation cases. As her case load increased, and her firms longevity, all but certain, Bishop created an annual educational scholarship. The $1,000 stipend is given to a deserving student who is planning to attend an accredited undergraduate or graduate program. For more information on the scholarship, you can click here. The Bishop Law Firm also takes great pride in supporting the community at large by their charitable donations to local homeless shelters.

Born and raised in Salisbury, North Carolina, Attorney Bishop sought her education close to home. She earned her Bachelors degree from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and her Juris Doctorate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a member of the North Carolina Advocates for Justice and the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives. Bishop is admitted to practice in the Eastern and Middle Districts of the United States District Court. She is also a North Carolina State Bar Board Certified Social Security Disability Law Specialist.

For more information on The Bishop Law Firm, you can visit us here. Potential clients can also schedule a free case review at (919) 615-3095.
[April 19, 2021] Wolters Kluwer Lien Solutions Highlights Automation Benefits for Lenders

Automating traditionally offline, manual back-office business functions is no longer merely an option, but rather the necessary choice for many financial institutions aiming to survive in the brave new world of virtual, digitized transactions. That's according to Wolters Kluwer Lien Solutions, writing in a new thought leadership piece. "Application programming interfaces, or APIs, are one of the pivotal elements in realizing automation, given that API functionality allows computer programs to communicate with each other-without any human intervention needed," writes Ryan Zheng, Senior Product Manager, Wolters Kluwer Lien Solutions, in an ABA Industry Insights feature, "Lending automation in a post-pandemic world." "Because machines can 'talk' directly to each other via APIs, resources spent toward paper processing or human operation become unnecessary and can instead be reallocated." The applicability of API capabilities provides enormous benefits for lenders across a range of areas, including lien management, Zheng argues, given that lien applications are a highly specialized area where each state jurisdiction publishes its own regulations, and thousands of county-level jurisdictions may have different rulings in play if fixture collateral is involved. "A lender can leverage the domain expertise from vendors through API integration to achieve re-usability, scalability and agility at a lower R&D cost," he concludes. Zheng notes that shelter-in-place requirements, social distancing measures and other shutdown-related orders during the pandemic altered the way business is conducted. He writes that as in-person branch visits declined precipitously during the pandemic, banks also experienced all-time higs in the number of mobile logins and digital transactions. Automation, he argues, is a key to survival.



"This past year saw unprecedented impact to the financial services industry by way of global shutdowns due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Customer behaviors, corporate decision-making, and the pace of technology advancement all underwent rapid and significant change that has brought with it new business challenges as well as opportunities. However, for many financial institutions, COVID-19 has also unlocked the hidden potential of organizations, removing by necessity many of the traditional barriers that blocked the path to achieving a digital transformation," Zheng says. ABA Industry Insights is a repository for industry commentaries, white papers, case studies and other thought leadership on key issues facing the U.S. banking industry.

Wolters Kluwer Lien Solutions, part of the Wolters Kluwer's Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) division, provides comprehensive lien management, debtor due diligence, monitoring, and risk management solutions to financial professionals-including a comprehensive set of APIs that lenders can use to automate their workflows. Its iLien suite of products provides solutions for asset-backed loan, real-estate and vehicle title processing and management to help reduce complexity in lien lifecycle management and promote more confident lending decisions. Wolters Kluwer's GRC division provides an array of expert solutions to help U.S. financial institutions manage regulatory and risk obligations. Lien Solutions' UCC Manage solution enables lenders to manage and address risks in their entire UCC lien portfolio with analytics, visibility and automation. iLien Motor Vehicle provides for the processing and management of motor vehicle titles and liens, helping solve the unique and most complicated challenges in title perfection. Wolters Kluwer Compliance Solutions' eOriginal suite of purpose-built, digital lending solutions, meanwhile, helps lenders digitize their transactions and features electronic signatures, collateral authentication and an electronic vault. About Wolters Kluwer Governance, Risk & Compliance Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) is a division of Wolters Kluwer, which provides legal and banking professionals with solutions to help ensure compliance with ever-changing regulatory and legal obligations, manage risk, increase efficiency, and produce better business outcomes. GRC offers a portfolio of technology-enabled expert services and solutions focused on legal entity compliance, legal operations management, banking product compliance, and banking regulatory compliance. Wolters Kluwer (AEX: WKL) is a global leader in information services and solutions for professionals in the health, tax and accounting, risk and compliance, finance and legal sectors. Wolters Kluwer reported 2020 annual revenues of 4.6 billion. The company, headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands, serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries and employs 19,000 people worldwide. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005055/en/

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State commission for Asian Pacific Americans support preventative anti-Asian Hate funding

State commission for Asian Pacific Americans support preventative anti-Asian Hate funding

April 19, 2021

Media Contact: Camara Lewis, 517-930-4928

To help combat hate crimes against Asian Pacific Americans (APA) and discrimination taking place during the pandemic, the Michigan Asian American Affairs Commission (MAPAAC) supports the proposed COVID-19 funding brought forth by members of the state legislature.

On March 31, 2021, MAPAAC received a copy of a letter signed by Senator Stephanie Chang, along with State Representatives Padma Kuppa and Ranjeev Puri addressed to Chairman Jim Stamas of the Senate Appropriations Committee and Chairman Thomas Albert of the House Appropriations Committee. The letter urged for the next COVID-19 supplemental appropriations bill to include funding to prevent anti-Asian hate in Michigan.

The Senate and House recently adopted resolutions to condemn anti-Asian hate crimes, harmful rhetoric and discrimination. As a result, the letter of request specifically builds on the passage of the resolutions by seeking:

$250,000 for Michigan Dept. of Civil Rights (MDCR) to include outreach regarding discrimination during COVID-19 and importance of reporting.

$250,000 for the Michigan Dept. of Attorney General (AG) Hate Crimes Unit to include outreach regarding hate crimes during COVID-19 and the importance of reporting.

MAPAAC backs the requests of Senator Stephanie Chang, Representatives Padma Kuppa and Representative Ranjeev Puri, and urges the Senate and House Appropriation Committees to strongly consider this funding to combat anti-Asian hate and discrimination. By dedicating a portion of COVID-19 relief funding to support those who are experiencing discrimination or hate crimes and ensuring Michigan is responding appropriately to our residents, we can create a place where everyone feels welcome and can achieve success.

The MAPAAC mission is to advance the full and equal participation of Asian Pacific Americans in the building of a greater Michigan. As a state commission, MAPAAC has been instrumental in organizing the APA communities during the pandemic by hosting collaborative events with elected officials, community leaders, the University of Michigan, MDCR and AG to educate Michiganders on where to report hate crimes or discrimination, what a hate crime is and why reporting is important. We will continue to be a resource and provide targeted outreach to the different ethnic communities across Michigan.

To learn more how MAPAAC is supporting the APA community, visit Michigan.gov/MAPAAC.
Musician Mike Mitchell passed away on Friday on what was his 77th birthday.

The news was shared on Monday by a publicist for his garage rock band the Kingsmen for which Mitchell served as the lead guitarist for over 60 years.

The band was best known for the hit 1963 recording of Richard Berry's song Louie Louie, which is the story of a sailor returning to Jamaica to see his lady love. The tune went on to be covered by the Beach Boys, the Grateful Dead and R.E.M.

Sad loss for the music industry: Musician Mike Mitchell, bottom left, passed away on Friday on what was his 77th birthday; seen with his Kingsmen bandmates Dick Peterson, Barry Curtis, Norm Sundholm and Lynn Easton in 1965

Hot tune: The band was best known for the hit 1963 recording of Richard Berry's song Louie Louie, which is the first-person story of a Jamaican sailor returning to the island to see his lover. The tune went on to be covered by the Beach Boys, the Grateful Dead and R.E.M.

No cause of death was given.

'We are deeply saddened by Mike's passing. He was the kindest and most generous man on the planet,' drummer Dick Peterson said in a statement.

'Mike is irreplaceable, and he will be greatly missed not only by us but the fans as well. Mike was a favorite for his comedic nature as well as his musicianship,' Peterson added.

Mitchell was the last remaining original member of the group Kingsmen.

The good ole days: (Clockwise from left) Peterson, Mitchell, Sundholm, Easton and Curtis of the rock and roll group The Kingsmen pose for a portrait in circa 1964

A more recent look at the guitarist: The musician seen in a YouTube video; he stayed active with his music career until his passing

The band formed in 1959 in Portland, Oregon; in addition to Mitchell the members were Dick Peterson, Barry Curtis and Norm Sundholm.

Their greatest hit was Louie Louie which reached the number two spot on the US charts in 1963 and became known as the greatest version of the song.

The big standout of the tune was Mitchell's impressive guitar solo in the middle of the song which has been called one of the best riffs in rock n roll history.

But the song had a scandalous past.

Hitmakers: Their subsequent hit songs included Money (That's What I Want), Little Latin Lupe Lu, Death of An Angel and The Jolly Green Giant

It was recorded in one take with low quality recording equipment which gave it a scratchy quality.

The lyrics were not easy to hear due to the poor recording and also because the band members thought it was just a rehearsal. As a result, some of the words seemed to sound indecent which caused complaints calling it pornographic.

Matthew Welsh, the governor of Indiana, did not allow the recording of the song to be sold in his state.

He stayed around: Mike played with the band for more than 60 years. 'His playing just got better as he aged,' the Oregon Music Hall of Fame said in a Facebook post Saturday; seen in 1965

In stepped the FBI which investigated the song, even reviewing the lyrics in a sound laboratory.

The agency decided it was impossible to hear exactly what the band was singing.

Their subsequent hit songs included Money (That's What I Want), Little Latin Lupe Lu, Death of An Angel and The Jolly Green Giant.

Mike played with the band for more than 60 years.

'His playing just got better as he aged,' the Oregon Music Hall of Fame said in a Facebook post Saturday.
Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin's Regular Press Conference on April 19, 2021

2021/04/19

On April 19, the UN Security Council will hold the high-level open debate on enhancing cooperation between the UN and regional and sub-regional organisations. State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi will attend the conference as President Xi Jinping's special envoy. The conference will be held via video link.

CCTV: According to media reports, the UNHRC Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights and the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention have recently issued a statement, saying that the US' anti-terrorism program "Rewards for Justice" is violating the human rights of some of the individuals it targets. Experts have repeatedly urged the US government to review its Rewards for Justice program in order to ensure that its activities are aligned with international law. I wonder if China has any comment on this?

Wang Wenbin: I have taken note of the reports. Relevant UN human rights experts pointed out in the joint statement that some people whom the US government designates as being associated with terrorism have not been charged with any crimes, and are denied access to due justice process. The US practice of accusing people of suspected involvement in terrorist activities and making them carry out tasks against their will under the threat of a penalty for not doing so amounts to forced labour as defined by agreements made through the International Labour Organization. Such actions violate relevant personnel's right to work, freedom of movement, reputation, and life. This runs counter to the humanitarian spirit and international law. UN human rights experts said they have raised this concern with the US government but have thus far not received any response.

The US has repeatedly hyped up the false allegation of "forced labor" in Xinjiang, yet facts have proved that no one deserves the label of "forced labor" better than the US itself. We urge the US side to earnestly heed the concerns of the international community, examine its own serious human rights problems and take concrete steps to address them.

NHK: What's your comment on the US-Japan Joint Leaders' Statement released recently?

Wang Wenbin: Regarding the meeting between the US and Japanese leaders and China-related content in the joint statement, spokesperson of the Foreign Ministry already stated China's stern position. I will make three points as follows:

First, there is but one system in the world, that is, the international system with the UN at its core; there is but one set of rules, namely, the basic norms governing international relations based on the UN Charter. The US and Japan cannot represent the international community. They have no right to define international order, still less the right to impose their own standards on others. While trumpeting "freedom and openness", the US and Japan are forming "small cliques" and create bloc confrontation, which poses real threats to regional peace and stability and reckless damage to international rules and order. The Bandung Conference 66 years ago, on the basis of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, put forward the Ten Principles of Bandung pertaining to state-to-state relations, which is still highly relevant in guiding practices in international relations. This fully shows that only the pursuit of unity over division, equality over hegemony, and cooperation over confrontation is in keeping with the trend of the times and can stand the test of history.

Second, on human rights issues, Japan and the US are in debt to the Chinese people and the world's people. Japan launched aggressive wars in the 1930s, bringing untold sufferings to Asian countries, especially the Chinese people. However, Japan, as a defeated nation, denies and whitewashes the aggression from time to time even till this day. The US has long followed a belligerent policy. In the 21st century alone, wars staged by the US elsewhere caused over 800,000 deaths, including over 300,000 civilians. What Japan and the US should do is to reflect on their aggression in history and redress wrong actions that violate human right in other countries, rather than meddling in China's internal affairs under the disguise of human rights. Denigrating, destabilizing and containing other countries by citing human rights as the excuse is something that the Chinese people and people around the world will never allow. The imperative now is for Japan to face up to the stern concerns of neighboring countries and the international community, act in a responsible manner for the life and health of people around the world, immediately stop implementing the decision to discharge contaminated nuclear water into the sea, and stop actions that bring good to no one.

Third, combating COVID-19 requires a science-based spirit and concerted efforts of all countries. The US has politicized the fight against the epidemic, stigmatized other countries, shifted blame and pulled out of international organizations. This has not only made the American people pay a heavy price, but also created obstacles to and impeded international anti-epidemic cooperation. The US and Japan should stop political manipulation on the issue of anti-epidemic efforts, value life and respect science, and do more practical things to promote international anti-epidemic cooperation rather than causing more trouble.

Nippon TV: Also on the joint statement of Japan and the US. It refers to the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. Do you have any comment on this?

Wang Wenbin: Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's territory. We ask the US and Japan to take seriously China's concerns, abide by the one-China principle, immediately stop interfering in China's internal affairs and harming China's interests. China will take all necessary measures to firmly defend national sovereignty, security and development interests.

Phoenix TV: In the China-US Joint Statement Addressing the Climate Crisis released on April 18, it is mentioned that both countries look forward to the US-hosted Leaders Summit on Climate on April 22 and 23. Will the Chinese leader attend the event upon invitation?

Wang Wenbin: The Chinese side has received invitation from the US side, and is positively considering that.

RIA Novosti: Last week your colleague said China has already received an invitation to participate in the Afghan peace conference in Turkey. I wonder if you can confirm the participation of China and share detail about who will represent China?

Wang Wenbin: China has received the invitation. The Afghan issue cannot be resolved in absence of the support and assistance from the international community. China supports all international effort that is conducive to advancing the Afghan peace and reconciliation process, and is in communication with relevant parties on the meeting.

China Daily: The Chinese side just announced that President Xi Jinping will attend the opening ceremony of the annual conference of the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) via video link tomorrow and deliver a keynote speech. Does China have any expectation or outlook for the annual meeting this year?

Wang Wenbin: The Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2021 is held in Boao, Hainan from April 18 to 21, 2021. President Xi Jinping will attend the opening ceremony virtually and deliver a keynote video speech in the morning of April 20. President Xi Jinping attaches great importance to the development of the Boao Forum for Asia, and this will be the fifth time he personally attends the annual conference. In his keynote speech, President Xi Jinping will focus on the current international and regional situation as well as global risks and challenges, and make a thorough, systematic elaboration on China's philosophy and proposal for promoting development and prosperity in Asia and the world at large.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Boao Forum for Asia. Focusing on Asia and facing the world, the Forum has developed into a high-end international forum with global influence in the past 20 years. This year's annual meeting is a grand diplomatic gathering as it marks the 20th anniversary. The theme of the annual meeting, "A World in Change: Join Hands to Strengthen Global Governance and Advance Belt and Road Cooperation", fully reflects the widespread call of the international community to adapt to changes and strengthen global governance. As the host country, China hopes to pool wisdom and build consensus with other participants under the theme of this year's annual meeting, discuss ways to achieve win-win cooperation, seek solutions for development and prosperity, and make positive contributions to a better future for Asia and the world.

Bloomberg: Just a very quick follow-up on that. We understand another senior leader will attend physically the Boao conference. Can the foreign ministry confirm which Chinese senior leader will attend in person?

Wang Wenbin: We will release information on issues relating to the participation of Chinese leader in due course. Please stay tuned.

Xinhua News Agency: How does China view the outcomes and significance of the China-France-Germany video summit?

Wang Wenbin: On April 16, President Xi Jinping attended the China-France-Germany summit via video link with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel upon invitation. The three leaders had in-depth exchanges on climate change, China-Europe relations, anti-epidemic cooperation and other major international and regional issues. They reached important consensus as follows:

First, it is important to uphold multilateralism, fully implement the Paris Agreement on tackling climate change, and jointly build an equitable and reasonable global climate governance system for win-win cooperation, and promote this summit to achieve positive, balanced, and pragmatic results.

Second, it is important to strengthen climate policy dialogue and green development cooperation, and make climate cooperation an important pillar in China-Europe cooperation.

Third, it is important to ensure success in holding multilateral meetings including the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Kunming, the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP26) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Glasgow, and the 7th International Union for Conservation of Nature's World Conservation Congress in Marseilles to create a new architecture for global environmental governance.

Fourth, it is important to enhance vaccine cooperation, support COVAX, promote the healthy, safe and orderly personnel exchanges, safeguard the smooth and stable operation of industrial chains and bring the international economic and trade cooperation back to normal at an early date.

Fifth, it is important to support developing countries in making their energy supply more efficient, clean and diversified, support Africa in achieving green development and help Africa build more renewable energy projects such as wind and solar power projects.

This is the third China-France-Germany summit. The previous two were held in March 2019 in Paris and December 2020 via video link. It shows the willingness of the three countries to have strategic communication over major issues of common concern. As pointed out by President Xi Jinping, China-Europe relationship is faced with new development opportunities, as well as new challenges; we need to keep to the general direction and keynote of the relationship from a strategic height. I must stress that China and Europe are partners, not opponents. We have far more consensus than differences, and far more cooperation than competition. China and Europe, as two important forces in a multipolar world, bear important responsibilities in addressing international and regional issues and tackling global challenges. On the basis of mutual respect and equal treatment, China and Europe need to step up coordination and cooperation, properly manage differences and explore a path for major countries to get along in the spirit of mutual respect, fairness, justice, and win-win cooperation.

RIA Novosti: Last week the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba Raul Castro announced his resignation. What is China's comment on this? How this change many affect China-Cuba relations?

Wang Wenbin: The Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba is of great significance in making strategic plans and arrangements for the development of the party and the state both at present and in the time to come. It's believed that under the strong leadership of the Communist Party of Cuba, this Congress will provide important guidance and driving force for the development of the cause of socialism with Cuban characteristics.

Raul Castro is an outstanding leader of the Communist Party of Cuba and Cuban socialist cause. For a long time, he has made great contributions to the cause of revolution and construction of the Cuban party and country as well as the development of China-Cuba relations. He has won endorsement and admiration among the Cuban people, and reverence among the Chinese people.

The Chinese party and government attach great importance to the party-to-party and state-to-state relations with Cuba. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has sent a congratulatory message to the Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba. At this important historical moment for the Communist Party of Cuba to build on the past achievements and pursue new progress, we stand ready to work with Cuba to carry forward our longstanding friendship, strengthen political mutual trust, deepen strategic communication, and constantly enrich the connotation and achievements of mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries, so as to jointly score new achievements in the socialist cause of China and Cuba.

The Paper: What's China's expectation of the upcoming Security Council open debate on enhancing cooperation between the UN and regional and sub-regional organisations?

Wang Wenbin: Amid the COVID-19 pandemic and other major changes unseen in a century, the world is witnessing prominent challenges in international peace and security fields, and interwoven traditional and non-traditional security issues. In this context, it is highly relevant that Viet Nam propose to hold the high-level open debate on enhancing cooperation between the UN and regional and sub-regional organisations as President of the Security Council for April. We hope all sides can take this conference as an opportunity to further advance UN's cooperation with all regions and sub-regions, pool the consensus for solidarity and cooperation, jointly uphold multilateralism and build a community with a shared future for mankind.

China Review News: US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry wrapped up his visit to China on April 17, after which the two sides issued a joint statement addressing the climate crisis. How do you comment on his visit? What expectations does China have for future climate cooperation with the US?

Wang Wenbin: At the invitation of the Chinese side, US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry paid a visit to China from April 14 to 17. During the visit, Member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Vice Premier of the State Council Han Zheng met with Special Envoy Kerry in Beijing via videolink, and China's Special Envoy for Climate Change Xie Zhenhua held talks with him in Shanghai. After the talks, the two sides issued the China-US Joint Statement Addressing the Climate Crisis.

During the talks, the two sides had candid, in-depth and constructive communication on climate change cooperation, the Leaders Summit on Climate, COP26 of the UNFCCC and achieved positive progress. They reopened the channel of dialogue and cooperation on climate change between China and the US. The two sides stressed that climate change is a grave and urgent threat to the survival and development of mankind. China and the US will strengthen cooperation and work with other parties to address the climate crisis, fully implement the principles and provisions of the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement, and contribute to advancing global climate governance. The two sides will continue to maintain communication and dialogue and strengthen exchanges and cooperation in such areas as making stronger policies and measures, promoting green, low-carbon transition and supporting low-carbon energy development in developing countries.
(ANSA) - ROME, APR 19 - The government on Monday will start to "verify the conditions for the granting of Italian citizenship to Patrick Zaki", Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Benedetto Della Vedova told Rainews24.

Zaki is an Egyptian Bologna University postgraduate student who has been held in Egypt since February 7 last year on charges of "disseminating false news" and "incitement to protest".

The Senate last week approved a motion calling on the government to grant him Italian citizenship.

Della Vedova likened Zaki's case to the "tragic affair" of Italian student Giulio Regeni, who was tortured to death in Cairo in early 2016.

"The parliamentary motion gives a commitment to the government, which came out in favour of the motion itself," he said.

Zaki, a 29-year-old Coptic Christian, is pursuing an Erasmus Mundus Master's Degree in Women and Gender Studies at the University of Bologna.

He also conducts research and advocacy on gender issues and human rights for the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), a human rights organization based in Cairo.

Petitions for his release have been rejected on countless occasion.

Zaki was arrested on arriving at Cairo International Airport when he returned home from Bologna for a short family visit.

The Egyptian National Security Agency reportedly arrested Zaki, interrogated him about his time in Italy and his human rights work, and took him to an undisclosed location.

During interrogation, he was allegedly frequently threatened, beaten on his stomach and back and tortured with electric shocks.

The European Parliament, Amnesty International and Scholars At Risk have been among the bodies calling for his release, along with the Italian government. (ANSA).


Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) is a reprehensible person. In 2018, she demanded that her supporters harass Republicans over the "kids in cages" uproar  a demand she has not repeated now that Biden is imprisoning more illegal alien kids than ever before. Last week, she told Rep. Jim Jordan to "shut your mouth." And those are just two examples of her bullying, crudeness, and stupidity. Emboldened by the invariable lack of pushback against her excesses, Waters was caught on tape in Minneapolis inciting violence. Her behavior was so blatant that Republicans are currently making noises about punishing her.

Minneapolis is a Democrat-run disaster. After convicted felon George Floyd, while high on fentanyl and a cocktail of other illegal drugs, died while the Minneapolis police were restraining him, BLM encouraged the city's black residents to destroy their communities and convinced the city government to cut back on policing.

Derek Chauvin, the scapegoat for Floyd's drug-induced death, is currently being tried. Not quite two weeks ago, while the trial was ongoing, Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old violent felon, was killed while resisting arrest in Brooklyn Center, a Minneapolis suburb.

The ultimate cause of Wright's death was the fact that a police officer meant to taser him but, in the heat of the moment, used her gun instead. That's a terrible thing to have happened, but it's important to remember that the but-for cause of Wright's death was that he was violently resisting the arrest because he faced a long prison term related to his assaulting and robbing a woman.

BLM and Antifa immediately went to Brooklyn Center, where Wright died, and encouraged the usual rioting and looting. Meanwhile, just a small distance away, in Minneapolis itself, the city has been in lockdown mode because Chauvin's trial is ending this week. To say the area is a powder keg is an understatement.

That did not deter Waters, who traveled to Minneapolis over the weekend to help stir up the mob. She was caught on tape Saturday night telling reporters that Chauvin is "guilty of murder ... [a]s far as I'm concerned, it's first-degree murder."

When a reporter asked Waters what the people should do if the jury didn't convict Chauvin of first-degree murder, she announced that protesters have "got to stay on the street and we've got to get more active, we've got to get more confrontational. We've got to make sure that they know that we mean business."

Just to make it clear, a sitting House member traveled to another state and deliberately inflamed a mob that had already (and repeatedly) engaged in violent protests and looting. Within hours of Waters's demand for "confrontation," a drive-by shooter attacked a Minnesota National Guard and a Minneapolis police team. Coincidence? Maybe.

Republicans, for once, did not sit silently. Several of them called Waters out on her words. Sen. Cruz tweeted that "Democrats [are] actively encouraging riots & violence. They want to tear us apart." Rep. Lauren Boebert (D-Colo.) echoed this sentiment, posting several tweets attacking Waters's conduct:

Why is Maxine Waters traveling to a different state trying to incite a riot? What good can come from this? https://t.co/nXzV0trmN3  Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) April 18, 2021

Molotov cocktails and firecrackers are not enough.



Mad Max wants rioters to get MORE confrontational.  Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) April 18, 2021

Maxine Waters would already be expelled if she was a Republican.  Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) April 18, 2021

House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, a go-along-to-get-along kind of guy, is actually demanding that Nancy Pelosi do something, although he didn't specify what this something is. Cynics who have seen McCarthy make empty threats before were not impressed:

No one believes you.  Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) April 19, 2021

However, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is made of sterner stuff than most people, is planning to introduce a resolution demanding Waters's ouster from Congress.

After traveling across state lines to incite riots, her orders recorded on video last night at the Brooklyn Center, directly led to more violence and a drive by shooting on National Guardsmen in Minnesota early this morning.



Contd..  Marjorie Taylor Greene  (@mtgreenee) April 18, 2021

After traveling across state lines to incite riots, her orders recorded on video last night at the Brooklyn Center, directly led to more violence and a drive by shooting on National Guardsmen in Minnesota early this morning.



Contd..  Marjorie Taylor Greene  (@mtgreenee) April 18, 2021

We all know that nothing's going to come of any of this. Democrats will just say it's Maxine being Maxine, and she was misunderstood, yada, yada, yada. The reality is that Democrats never police their own people, and, as long as they have the majority, no resolution will push Mad Max out of Congress.

It's disgraceful that a stupid, corrupt demagogue like Maxine Waters has the bully pulpit of the House of Representatives at her back. It's even more disgraceful that the entire Democrat party leadership is just fine with that.

Image: Maxine Waters calls for violence. Twitter screen grab.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
This transition pairs the power of the RE/MAX Elevate network on the Front Range with our local team of experienced brokers in the Vail Valley.

RE/MAX Elevate announced today its acquisition of RE/MAX Vail Valley, a luxury brokerage based in Vail, Colorado. The move expands RE/MAX Elevates presence into the Vail Valley real estate market and grows its network of agents to over 150 across Colorado.

Maintaining its Edwards, Colorado office space in the Riverwalk complex, RE/MAX Vail Valley will rebrand as RE/MAX Elevate Vail Valley while incorporating RE/MAX Elevates elite marketing and technology solutions.

RE/MAX Elevate is excited about a synergistic connection between the Front Range and the Vail Valley, said Jay Kalinski, owner of RE/MAX Elevate. Our brokerage has developed sophisticated search and marketing tools which underpin the entire buyer and selling process. We look forward to integrating this with our team of talented agents in Vail.

RE/MAX Elevate, headquartered in Louisville, Colorado is the sister franchise of RE/MAX of Boulder, one of the leading RE/MAX offices in the world. RE/MAX of Boulder was the third franchise to open in RE/MAX history and leads the Boulder Valley market in annual home sales. In 2020, the sister offices together closed over $1.4 billion in real estate sales.

We are very pleased that RE/MAX Vail Valley has become RE/MAX Elevate Vail Valley as an integral part of the RE/MAX Elevate and RE/MAX of Boulder organizations, said Cynthia Kruse, former owner of RE/MAX Vail Valley. This transition pairs the power of the RE/MAX Elevate network on the Front Range with our local team of experienced brokers in the Vail Valley. The depth of the RE/MAX Elevate organization brings a new level of marketing and support to the 30 years of local business presence and expertise of the brokers in our Riverwalk office.

RE/MAX Vail Valley, founded in 1991, has been helping buyers and sellers in the entire Eagle Valley for over 30 years.
Parler could be returning to the App Store soon after Apple gave it the green light. Apple wrote in a letter to Congress that updates Parler proposed for better detection and moderation of hate speech and violent rhetoric were sufficient.

Timothy Powderly, Apple's senior director for government affairs in the Americas, wrote that since it removed Parler from the App Store in January, Apple had "engaged in substantial conversations" with the team behind the app to make it compliant with App Store rules.

"As a result of those conversations, Parler has proposed updates to its app and the app's content moderation practices," Powderly wrote of the decision, which was first reported by CNN. "The App Review Team has informed Parler as of April 14th, 2021, that its proposed updated app will be approved for reinstatement to the App Store. Apple anticipates that the updated Parler app will become immediately available upon Parler releasing it."

Apple sent the letter to Senator Mike Lee and Representative Ken Buck, who asked Apple on March 31st for details on why it booted out Parler. It said the app review team found "a significant number of posts on the Parler app that clearly violated Guideline 1.1.1. [on "Objectionable Content], including posts that encouraged violence, denigrated various ethnic groups, races and religions, glorified Nazism and called for violence against specific people."

On January 8th, Apple gave Parler 24 hours to respond with a sufficient plan to improve moderation on its platform. Parler didn't do that, and Apple removed the app.

Google pulled Parler from the Play Store at around the same time, and Amazon Web Services kicked the app off its servers after months of warnings over violent threats on the platform. Parler later sued Amazon. Apple said that it made its decision independently from Google and Amazon, and didn't discuss the issue with them.

Parler attempted to get back onto the App Store in March, but Apple still found that the service had highly objectionable content. The app bills itself as a "free speech" alternative to Twitter. It garnered popularity among the far-right and Donald Trump supporters before Apple and Google kicked it off their app stores in the wake of the January 6th insurrection on Capitol Hill.

Update (6:50 PM ET): In a statement, Parler CEO Mark Meckler said it would return to the iOS App Store during the week of April 26th, claiming that it "has and will always be a free and open forum where users could engage in the free exchange of ideas" and at the same time "We have worked to put in place systems that will better detect unlawful speech and allow users to filter content undesirable to them, while maintaining our strict prohibition against content moderation based on viewpoint."
- By GF Value





The stock of American Campus Communities (NYSE:ACC, 30-year Financials) gives every indication of being fairly valued, 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 $44.1 per share and the market cap of $6.1 billion, American Campus Communities stock is estimated to be fairly valued. GF Value for American Campus Communities is shown in the chart below.





American Campus Communities Stock Shows Every Sign Of Being Fairly Valued

Because American Campus Communities is fairly valued, the long-term return of its stock is likely to be close to the rate of its business growth, which averaged 2.3% over the past five years.

Link: These companies may deliever higher future returns at reduced risk.

Companies with poor financial strength offer investors a high risk of permanent capital loss. To avoid permanent capital loss, an investor must do their research and review a company's financial strength before deciding to purchase shares. Both the cash-to-debt ratio and interest coverage of a company are a great way to to understand its financial strength. American Campus Communities has a cash-to-debt ratio of 0.01, which which ranks worse than 88% of the companies in REITs industry. The overall financial strength of American Campus Communities is 3 out of 10, which indicates that the financial strength of American Campus Communities is poor. This is the debt and cash of American Campus Communities over the past years:

Story continues

American Campus Communities Stock Shows Every Sign Of Being Fairly Valued

Investing in profitable companies carries less risk, especially in companies that have demonstrated consistent profitability over the long term. Typically, a company with high profit margins offers better performance potential than a company with low profit margins. American Campus Communities has been profitable 10 years over the past 10 years. During the past 12 months, the company had revenues of $870.6 million and earnings of $0.51 a share. Its operating margin of 15.95% worse than 81% of the companies in REITs industry. Overall, GuruFocus ranks American Campus Communities's profitability as fair. This is the revenue and net income of American Campus Communities over the past years:

American Campus Communities Stock Shows Every Sign Of Being Fairly Valued

Growth is probably one of the most important factors in the valuation of a company. GuruFocus' research has found that growth is closely correlated with the long-term performance of a company's stock. If a company's business is growing, the company usually creates value for its shareholders, especially if the growth is profitable. Likewise, if a company's revenue and earnings are declining, the value of the company will decrease. American Campus Communities's 3-year average revenue growth rate is in the middle range of the companies in REITs industry. American Campus Communities's 3-year average EBITDA growth rate is 5.5%, which ranks better than 71% of the companies in REITs industry.

One can also evaluate a company's profitability by comparing its return on invested capital (ROIC) to its weighted average 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 return on invested capital exceeds the weighted average cost of capital, the company is likely creating value for its shareholders. During the past 12 months, American Campus Communities's ROIC is 1.74 while its WACC came in at 5.97. The historical ROIC vs WACC comparison of American Campus Communities is shown below:

American Campus Communities Stock Shows Every Sign Of Being Fairly Valued

In closing, The stock of American Campus Communities (NYSE:ACC, 30-year Financials) is estimated to be fairly valued. The company's financial condition is poor and its profitability is fair. Its growth ranks better than 71% of the companies in REITs industry. To learn more about American Campus Communities 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.






Haiti - NOTICE : The work of writer Jacques Stephen Alexis will not fall into the public domain in 2021





The Haitian Copyright Office (BHDA) of the Ministry of Culture, informs the general public, publishers, producers, screenwriters, that the work of the writer Jacques Stephen Alexis (April 22, 1922 - died in April 1961) will not fall into the public domain in 2021.



The BHDA recalls that according to article 20 of the Decree of 2005 on copyright and neighboring rights provides "the economic rights to a work are protected for the life of the author and 60 years after his death."



However, the BHDA specifies that in the case of Jacques Stephen Alexis his death has never been noted or attested. Moreover, to date, Alexis has not been the subject of any judgment in absence or in disappearance marking the starting point of the "post mortem" protection period. As a result, this deadline, which has never officially started to run, cannot end in 2021, says the BHDA.



The Office whose mission is to ensure the defense of the material and moral interests of authors and performers of intellectual creations, to guarantee the protection and exploitation of the rights of creators of intellectual works, warns all those who would be tempted to print, to popularize for their own benefit, without authorization, the work of Jacques Stephen Alexis.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Subsidiary of Kazakhstans Ministry of Digital Development, Innovation and Aerospace Industry and SES will collaborate to deliver high-speed data services via SESs next-generation O3b mPOWER communications system

The Republican Center for Space Communications (RCSC), a subsidiary of the Ministry of Digital Development, Innovation and Aerospace Industry, and SES, the leading global content connectivity solutions provider, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to explore service agreements for satellite-enabled, high-speed connectivity services using SESs O3b mPOWER communications system in Kazakhstan to accelerate the Digital Kazakhstan project.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210418005072/en/

SES Signs MoU with Kazakhstan Government on O3b mPOWER Connectivity Services (Graphic: Business Wire)

Under this memorandum of understanding, RCSC will explore utilising SESs next-generation, high-performance, low-latency constellation scheduled to launch in Q3 2021. Located at 8,000km away from the Earths surface in a medium earth orbit (MEO), the fully-funded O3b mPOWER system will provide global coverage with as few as six satellites, and will ramp capacity with its current plan of 11 satellites. The system is capable of delivering dedicated services at multiple gigabits per second with unprecedented flexibility and resiliency, ensuring constant, efficient usage of bandwidth.

The parties will also explore creating an in-country gateway for O3b mPOWER. SES has committed to knowledge transfer programmes to advance the digital transformation process of enterprise and government sectors in Kazakhstan. SES has also established a local presence in Kazakhstan as of last year and will be making a direct in-country investment.

O3b mPOWER is built upon the success of SESs current generation of O3b system which has been operational since 2014. Today the O3b system remains the only commercially proven non-geostationary satellite (NGSO) constellation preferred by leading telco and mobile operators, governments, maritime, mining, oil and gas companies due to the robust ground infrastructure developed by SES and its technology partners. In addition, SES has also conducted a demo on the current O3b constellation in Saryagash in central Kazakhstan where it provided 730 megabits per second to a local mobile tower, enabling the delivery of carrier-grade low-latency Wi-Fi services in the region.

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In addition, RCSC and SES will also look into using O3b mPOWER services for other Central Asian countries with ubiquitous broadband access to the Internet.

"Today, the market for satellite communications services is highly competitive as the needs of operators and end users grow on a daily basis. An increase in channel throughput and high-quality requirements calls for an introduction of new services, and we cannot disregard the opportunities that new satellite technologies will deliver. Therefore, we are looking into an international cooperation using next-generation global high-speed, low-latency non-geostationary satellites (NGSO) systems," said Chairman of the Board of JSC "RCSC" Malik Zhuiriktayev.

"In the digital era, high-speed connectivity and reliable network access is of utmost importance to empower business and communities  especially remote ones. At SES, we take pride in leveraging our unparalleled reach and proven technology to contribute to the digital transformation of Kazakhstan through cloud-enabled satellite communications. We are pleased to support RCSC with our services and proven NGSO experience as they continue to innovate and expand their data services in Kazakhstan, and we look forward to more collaborations with other companies in the country," said JP Hemingway, CEO of SES Networks.

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About SES

SES has a bold vision to deliver amazing experiences everywhere on earth by distributing the highest quality video content and providing seamless connectivity around the world. As the leader in global content connectivity solutions, SES operates the worlds only multi-orbit constellation of satellites with the unique combination of global coverage and high performance, including the commercially-proven, low-latency Medium Earth Orbit O3b system. By leveraging a vast and intelligent, cloud-enabled network, SES is able to deliver high-quality connectivity solutions anywhere on land, at sea or in the air, and is a trusted partner to the worlds leading telecommunications companies, mobile network operators, governments, connectivity and cloud service providers, broadcasters, video platform operators and content owners. SESs video network carries over 8,200 channels and has an unparalleled reach of 361 million households, delivering managed media services for both linear and non-linear content. The company is listed on Paris and Luxembourg stock exchanges (Ticker: SESG). Further information is available at: www.ses.com.

About JSC RCSC

Republican Center for Space Communication was designated by the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan as the National Operator of the Space Communication and Broadcasting System "KazSat" and is a leading enterprise in the implementation of activities on communication issues in the telecommunications market of Kazakhstan. The space system "KazSat", which is operated by RCSC, makes it possible to implement efficient and reliable satellite communication channels in the Republic of Kazakhstan. The national space system as a part of communication satellites and ground control stations, including Teleport, provides great opportunities for telecommunication operators of Kazakhstan, national companies and holdings, government agencies and private companies for organizing digital television and radio broadcasting (HD, DTH, IPTV), broadband access to the Internet, data transmission and creation of corporate satellite communication networks of various topologies. Additional information can be obtained at the link: www.rcsc.kz.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210418005072/en/

Contacts

For further information please contact:

Suzanne Ong

External Communications

Tel. +352 710 725 500

suzanne.ong@ses.com

Mr. Bolat Seitov

Head of International Cooperation Division

Seitov@rcsc.kz
Burma Myanmar Regime Detains, Tortures Yangon Residents After Bombing of Govt Office

Images made by Myanmar netizens showing Ma Khin Nyein Thu (top) and Ma Hsu Lin Htet (bottom) before and after their arrests.

Myanmar military regime troops have rounded up and tortured a number of people following a series of deadly blasts that killed at least one soldier and wounded several others in Yangon on Saturday.

The three explosions occurred at the governments General Administration Office in Yankin Township, where troops have been based since March.

Following the blasts, security forces launched night raids of residences in the neighborhood and arrested around three dozen people, locals said.

On Sunday, the regimes Myawaddy TV announced that six people, two women and four men, had been arrested in the township with homemade bombs and related materials after a tip-off.

In pictures aired during the report, the accused show signs of severe torture.

However, locals said that at least 10 of the people arrested, including the six identified by the junta, are being held at an interrogation center in the outskirts of Yangon. The 10 known detainees are Ma Khin Nyein Thu, Ko Wanna Htun, Ko Swan Pyae Lin, Ma Hsu Lin Htet, Ko Min Khant Naung, Ko Yan Naing Soe, Ko Kaung Sett, Ko Phone Myat Win, Ko Swan Htet Hlaing Thaw and Ko Thura Aung.

Numerous explosions and arson attacks have occurred across the country recently following the regimes brutal crackdowns on protesters.

Pro-democracy rallies have been held across the country since early February following the military coup. The junta has responded to the protests with brutal force, slaying more than 700 civilians, including children, so far.

The junta has blamed rioters, the militarys euphemism for protesters, for the destruction. However, some attacks happened during night-time curfew hours when civilians are not supposed to go out.

While most of the blasts caused either minor or no damage, the explosions in Yankin on Saturday appeared to be serious, given the casualties.

A witness told The Irrawaddy that the three explosions occurred after one another and were strong enough to shake homes in the area.

Black billows of smoke engulfed the administration office and an ambulance rushed in there, said a resident.

Other than the announcement of the six arrests, the regime has been tight-lipped about the explosions and the casualties so far.



You may also like these stories:

Japanese Journalist Detained in Myanmar Moved to Prison: Embassy

Myanmar Junta Turns Auspicious New Year into Nightmare of Bloodshed

Hundreds of Villagers Flee After Myanmar Military Raid in Sagaing
The biggest hurdle for President Biden in winning new emissions reduction commitments at this week's White House summit is America's on-again, off-again history of climate change efforts.

Why it matters: The global community is off course to meet the temperature targets contained in the Paris Climate Agreement. The White House wants the summit Thursday and Friday to begin to change that.

The Paris agreement called for warming to be limited to "well below 2 degrees" Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, relative to preindustrial levels.

However, the world is currently on course for 3 degrees Celsius, or 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit, of warming, which raises the odds of potentially disastrous consequences.

The big picture: The U.S. has been playing a game of "red light, green light" on climate change for decades. The country played a leading role in brokering the Kyoto Protocol in 1995, but walked away from that agreement in 2001.

Then the U.S. helped spearhead talks on the Paris agreement during Barack Obama's presidency, only to leave that agreement under Donald Trump and rejoin when Biden took office.

Considering this timeline, other countries  including China, which is by far the world's top emitter today  question the word of the Biden administration when it says the U.S. is fully committed to climate action.

Some Chinese leaders have recently signaled they don't see the U.S. as being in a strong position to prod it to cut emissions after walking away from Paris.

For example, on Friday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said of the U.S. return to the Paris agreement: "Its return is by no means a glorious comeback but rather the student playing truant getting back to class."

Quick take: Kelly Sims Gallagher, a Tufts University professor who helped broker a climate deal with China during the Obama administration, tells Axios the U.S. has a lot of work to do.

"Trust was broken when the United States withdrew from the Paris Agreement," she said.

"The way to rebuild the trust is for this Administration to first explain how the United States will achieve its Paris target and then also provide a concrete plan for enhancing ambition by 2030."

Context: The White House summit will be a major test of just how much credibility the U.S. lost on the global stage, and specifically within the uniquely fraught realm of climate negotiations, when Trump walked away from Paris and worked to gut domestic efforts to cut emissions.

Driving the news: The Biden administration wants countries to agree this week to cut emissions significantly by 2030, on the way to net zero by 2050.

Scientists have shown that in order to keep the Paris agreement's most stringent temperature target of 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, of warming in play, emissions must be slashed deeply by 2030.

The U.S. is expected to unveil an emissions reduction commitment on the order of a 50% emissions cut relative to 2005 levels by 2030, but it's unclear how many other nations will announce anything new ahead of November's U.N. climate talks in Glasgow.

Yes, but: Even if the talks are successful, it's unknown whether new emissions targets will actually happen, considering the lack of an enforcement mechanism to punish countries that don't live up to their word.

University of Washington statistician Adrian Raftery, who has analyzed how nations are not on track to meet even existing commitments, said the targets are "somewhat untethered from what's likely to occur."

The intrigue: The joint communique released by the U.S. and China Saturday night indicates that there may be a window for progress between the world's top two emitters, despite the tensions in that relationship overall.

What they're saying: Rachel Kyte, a former World Bank official who advises the U.N. secretary-general, said policy makers will be looking to the U.S. to back up whatever new targets it offers with a detailed plan on how to get there.

The credibility is all wrapped up with actions not words," said Kyte, now the dean of The Fletcher School at Tufts University. "All eyes are on the plan.

Ben Geman contributed to this story.

Go deeper: U.S. and China agree to take joint climate action
As a parent of a 10-year-old, I chose not to place my daughter in the NVUSD and she is attending a K-8 private school. The main reason for this decision was the lack of NVUSD middle school options. Our home school is Northwood Elementary. If we were guaranteed that my daughter could attend River Middle School, which has a competitive lottery system, I would have considered enrolling her in the NVUSD.

Our home middle school is Redwood, which is the size of my public high school that I attended when I grew up. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic and the transition to distance learning, many parents enrolled their children in private school or home-school programs. I would survey these parents: why did you choose a private rather than a public education? If you close down another middle school, NVUSD will take the risk of more parents enrolling their children in private school or a home-school program.
Both LISD and UISD will be expecting the return of more students Monday as a result of new catch-up face-to-face programs that will invite students who have struggled remotely and would be comfortable returning to campus.

However, with the invitation of more students, a higher risk is posed to both students and staff, according to Texas State Teacher Association of Laredo president Rene De La Vina. As president, he made it clear that if either school district puts a teacher in a position which is unsafe, the TSTA will act.

If a teacher or one of our members calls and says that they have been given more than 15 students, and well work with them, teachers say they feel comfortable maybe around 15 but no more than that, De La Vina said. Now if they get 30 students or more than that, then I am going to file a grievance against the whole school district, and Ill make a statement about that.

De La Vina said he had received a report from a staff member at LISD stating that all students would be returning to school on Monday, something that the district has said was false. He added that teachers are really upset and scared, and despite the vaccination progress among LISD staff members, teachers are still in jeopardy.

Even if she/he has been vaccinated, they are still going to get hit, De La Vina said. Thats like me having the flu vaccine and I am going to go up to somebody knowing that he has the flu; I am still going to get the flu. It may not be as bad, but Im still going to get it because you are going right up to him.

LISD Executive Director Bobbie Ramirez said LISD had done a lot to support the employees in an effort to protect them but that it was time to return to a semblance of normality, including a return to campus.

This Monday, all LISD teachers will be expected to return to class and teach the students who return in addition to those that are working remotely.

When we are talking about returning teachers, yes, over 90% of our staff has already been vaccinated, Ramirez said. Weve provided every opportunity for our employees to get their vaccine; we are now extending it to students.

On April 9, Pfizer requested for permission to be administered to children between the ages of 12 and 15, an expansion from the 16 and older eligible group. Students 18 years and older have had the opportunity to receive the vaccine after they were deemed eligible earlier this month.

De La Vina still disagrees with the act of requiring all staff to return and believes it is unsafe to do so, especially when UISD continues to have a rotating schedule. But, countering his point, UISD High School Executive Director Dolores Barrera said that in the case where more students return, more teachers would be asked to return as well.

And despite hearing about how both districts plans to bring in students on a voluntary basis, he believes that the Texas Education Agency is currently pressuring both districts and parents to have students return to campus.

The culprits behind all this is the TEA, De La Vina said. They just want numbers, and they see numbers and numbers, thats how they fund the school district. Every student brings in so much money at the school district, so thats the problem.

Regardless, Ramirez firmly stated that remote learning is still an option and that the district will not force any student to return. She added that LISD is currently experiencing a steady on-campus enrollment of 2,733 students across all campuses. This has resulted in a small student-to-teacher ratio.

Similarly, at UISD students will be invited to return for instruction for the start of the last six weeks in order to help those that have struggled, but both districts said that safety guidelines will still be in place. They also stated they dont believe the 30-to-1 student-to-teacher ratio will be a realistic return to campus.

He can do whatever he needs to do, I mean thats his job, Ramirez said. We have around maybe 7% here onsite. The classroom ratio is like maybe five kids to a teacher, if that, and thats not all classrooms.

An example given was that in the secondary schools, only 366 students have returned to in-person instruction out of 11,000, Ramirez said. As elementary hosts the greatest number of students with 2,300, Ramirez reiterated that she doesnt believe the 30-to-1 student-to-teacher ratio will happen.

Lastly, Ramirez said that only when the students return will the district know how many students return, but based on her knowledge, she expects around 600 students to return for in-person instruction that will be spread throughout the campuses.

On behalf of UISD, Assistant Superintendent for Operations and Administration Gloria Rendon said that the district expects approximately 10%, or 4,300 students, to return to on-campus instruction. She added that in the case of the seventh grade testing, only six students did not attend.

To prepare for more students, Rendon said the district will be more resolute on safety. On all campuses, masks will be required both inside and out. Another safety measure is zig-zag seating to ensure students face away from others. In addition, as students will continue to eat from their desks, protective shields for all student desks and teacher areas were acquired. And lastly, air filters will be procured to maximize air filtration.

Rendon said that students, staff and families can expect the same measures that have been implemented for the past year.

In response to the ratio, she added that the district will be implementing a 15-to-1 ratio with only 10% of students returning. This will be similar to the summer program that is being planned with the same safety measures.

UISD officials in elementary, middle and high schools were confident in moving forward with the Road to Instructional Excellence program.

Barrera, Executive Director for Elementary Education Cynthia Rodriguez and Executive Director for Middle School Education David Canales all said that the programs main goal is to bring back students who have been struggling amid the pandemic and to help them overcome those struggles.

Rodriguez said there are campuses whose families are showing great interest in returning to face-to-face instruction, while others have little to no interest. Canales adds that the initiative is important as it will allow those students that may not be promoted, not graduate or need to recover their credits to come back to a familiar form of instruction to get back on track.

With that being said, the end goal for both LISD and UISD is to not only gradually phase-in more students back into face-to-face instruction but to prepare for the summer and for the 2021-22 school year which is expected to return to normal.

For now, safety will continue to be a priority, a sentiment shared by all officials spoken with, which is why CDC guidelines will continue to be followed in order to mitigate any risks or concerns by the community.

In his opinion, De La Vina believes that all students and staff should have continued working from home until everyone had the chance to be vaccinated. He also believes that there should be better communication throughout the districts, from the teacher aides to the superintendents, as the effects of administrator decisions affect every employee differently.

Ultimately, he said that he has received word from a number of employees of the 3,000 Laredo represented teachers throughout both districts stating that they are worried about the return but do not speak up for fear of retaliation. But, with everything said, he believes that both school districts now know what to expect from the TSTA and the lengths he and the union will go to ensure the safety of staff and students.

cocampo@lmtonline.com
VistaMilk SFI Research Centre launches new project to measure carbon harvesting potential of Irish soils

Building on the recent investment by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to establish the National Agricultural Soil Carbon Observatory (NASCO), VistaMilk SFI Research Centre today announced the launch of a new and collaborative 1.4 million carbon sequestration research project with Dairy Research Ireland, the group which allocates funding from the dairy levy collected from Irish dairy farmers.

The VistaMilk SFI Research Centre is a joint initiative between researchers at Teagasc, ICBF, Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics, Tyndall National Institute and Walton Institute for Information and Communications Systems Science. The 40 million Research Centre is jointly funded by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM), Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and over 50 industry partners from the agricultural and ICT domains.

Carbon sequestration is the process of capturing carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) from the atmosphere and storing it in plant material or in the soil. Carbon stored in soils is often called soil organic carbon. It is vital for soil health, improving their workability, water holding capacity, and productivity.

The recent addition of both national and EU greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets pose considerable challenges for the Irish agricultural sector. Following the publication of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Bill, the agricultural sector will face legally binding targets with a 5-year target to be set later this summer. VistaMilk believes that there is an opportunity to greatly enhance the ability of the agricultural sector to achieve the new ambitious GHG targets for 2030, and the goal of carbon neutrality for 2050, by putting in place the necessary scientific research and infrastructure to rigorously quantify carbon sequestration.

The collaborative research project announced today will leverage the new Department of Agriculture-funded National Agricultural Soil Carbon Observatory. This network of carbon dioxide monitoring towers is one of the most comprehensive in Europe and places Ireland at the forefront of soil carbon research. Vistamilk researchers will use this network to explore the impacts of farm management practices on a variety of soil types. The 4-year research project will be led by Dr Karl Richards and Professor Gary Lanigan (Environment, Soils and Land Use Research Department, Teagasc) in close collaboration with SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics, UCD and Teagasc Moorepark.

Welcoming the announcement, the Minister for Agriculture Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue, T.D., and the Minister of State with responsibility for research, Martin Heydon, T.D., added, This builds on our investment to-date in measuring the emissions and opportunity for removals through our soils and hedges and is a critical step in developing opportunities that encourage and reward farmers capturing carbon. Moreover, if Ireland can provide rigorous measurements of carbon sequestration on a regular basis, it will underline the positive contribution that farming is making to reduce net emissions.

Commenting on their investment in the project, Jim Beecher, Chairman of Dairy Research Ireland said, Dairy Research Ireland is funded by dairy farmers and supports this project because it will give us the data to understand the emissions and sequestration effects of a variety of grass production systems. It is important that we are proactive in identifying and encouraging practices which reduce our emissions.

Director of Research in Teagasc, Prof Frank OMara congratulated all involved saying This research will point the way towards climate smart farming and will be central to providing the guidance and support to Irish farmers that will facilitate them moving to more climate friendly farming systems.

Endorsing the announcement, Prof Mark Ferguson, Director General of Science Foundation Ireland and Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government of Ireland, said SFI Research Centres like VistaMilk have a key role to play in accelerating innovation in how we sustainably manage the green transition, helping to significantly reduce our carbon emissions. Mitigating and adapting to climate change are critical issues for all and Ireland is well positioned to be a research leader in developing climate action solutions.

Prof Laurence Shalloo, Deputy Director of VistaMilk said: VistaMilk is very excited about this collaboration and the outputs of this project have the potential to put science around measurement of sequestration levels in Irish grasslands across both mineral and peat soils. Clearly this will be a very large part of Irelands overall plan to meet carbon neutrality by 2050. This project also adds to other significant research work currently on-going in VistaMilk in the area of GHG emissions reduction

For more information click on this video link: https://youtu.be/TG1NpnA0z-4

About VistaMilk

The 40m VistaMilk SFI Research Centre, which started in September 2018 aims to be an agent of growth for the Irish dairy industry by being a world leader in fundamental and translational research for precision pasture-based dairying. Internationally, the advances developed in the centre will apply to dairy systems in many countries and will be a catalyst for global growth in the Agri-Tech sector. The VistaMilk SFI Research Centre represents a unique collaboration between Agri-Food and information communications technology (ICT) research institutes and leading Irish/multinational food and ICT companies. The centre under the directorship of Prof Donagh Berry is hosted by Teagasc, in partnership with the Tyndall National Institute (UCC) Irelands national microelectronics institute, the Walton Institute for Information and Communications Systems Science (formerly TSSG) at Waterford Institute of Technology, and the Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics (UCC, UCD, DCU and NUIG) and the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF). The VistaMilk SFI Research centre is funded by industry, Science Foundation Ireland and the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine.

CONTACT DETAILS

Eimear Ferguson,

Education, Public Engagement and Communications Manager, VistaMilk SFI Research Centre

www.vistamilk.ie | +353 (0)25-42481 or 085-7737334 | Eimear.ferguson@teagasc.ie
When a tormented Miguel Diaz-Canel said that there is no time for the long term, he unwittingly emulated that phrase with which the famous intellectual swindler John M. Keynes countered those who demonstrated that, in the long term, his theory was disastrous: calmly and cynically, he stated: "in the long run, everyone's dead." In Cuba the situation is somewhat different: in the short term, everyone is dying ... of hunger.

To avoid the imminent outcome, a commission of experts led by Vice President Jorge Luis Tapia consulted agricultural producers and Cuban scientists, with two measures resulting from this "democratic" forum: to relax the package passed for agriculture, and allow the controlled slaughter of older cattle.

According to Diaz-Canel, the current concept is "to open up everything that can favor the producer, stimulate production and eliminate obstacles", but, to be consistent, he should start by asking himself who is discouraging production, hampering the producer and throwing up obstacles in the first place.

The answer is obvious. If all the measures proposed to facilitate agricultural production are based on suppressing measures previously taken by the Cuban Government, then when will the Government recognize that it is the obstacle? Why are those who placed the obstacles the same ones in charge of removing them? What guarantees are those that those who "with the best intentions" errantly put up the obstacles, now, also "with the best intentions", are going to be able to remove them?

It is a macabre joke that Jorge Luis Tapia, the First Secretary of the Party in Camaguey between 2012 and 2019, is heading up this Commission and announcing the requirements among them, that the livestock numbers should not decrease that producers must meet in order to slaughter one animal per year.

How many Camaguey steaks did Tapia consume while the cows dropped like flies from thirst in the territory he oversaw? Actually, probably none, as the Central Committee prefers gourmet yearling meat imported from Uruguay.

This is a classic case of "I break your legs, give you the crutches and expect you to consider me your savior." The only thing Cuban government officials are doing is dismantling what they themselves created to begin with. Not a previous government, not Yankee imperialism; no, they themselves raised the prices of electricity, water, supplies and everything else just three months ago, and they themselves are "loosening" them now, and then asking the people to appreciate their efforts and to please do them the favor of not starving, or protesting.

And the measures are not even going to benefit everyone. Some will benefit only those producers who comply with a plan that will be "very rigorous." As determined by the implacable Machado Ventura, whoever complies with the plan will be paid better for their milk, and will be able to slaughter a cow. And who lays down the rules? Exactly, Machado Ventura and his people.

What sense does it make when they are going to reduce the expenses that they just increased on growers? This means that they will receive 3.4 billion pesos more from the State budget - which someone will have to pay for. Although the Castro-Callejas family could do it, it has not spoken on the matter, so it seems that it will be all Cubans, those who already allocate between 42 and 50% of their income just for food, who will have to pony up 300 pesos more a year in order to defray the damage that the "Ordering Task" has done to Cuba's already disastrous agriculture.

At this point, some readers might assume that Cuban farmers are incensed with the Government, but this is not, actually, the case. According to Tapia, "at the meeting the producers expressed their support for and trust in the Revolution, its historical generation, and its continuity." In other words, the farmers trust those who put the obstacles in their way and then removed them, all while being coerced.

And Tapia was actually telling the truth, apparently. One of the producers participating in the meeting explained that the ranchers would be delighted if, "having been good and compliant, the State would let them slaughter one animal a year ...". If this is not anthropological damage mixed with Stockholm Syndrome, nothing is.

The sad thing, the macabre twist that the Government so often places on things, is that while Diaz-Canel removes the obstacles that he or his bosses previously placed on them, a pound of rice now costs 60 pesos. Thus, the raise given to those Cuban scientists who are creating vaccines against the coronavirus is not even enough to buy a sack of rice. A 12th-century Chinese farmer was better paid.
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About half of Americas seniors are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and close to three-quarters have gotten at least one shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.

This is good news. Seniors have suffered disproportionately from the coronavirus. They have become gravely ill, passed away, and passed the time over the last year in complete isolation.

When the vaccines first became available, health officials wisely moved older adults to the front of the line. And yet, if we are going to finish the job of vaccinating all of the older members of our community, its essential that we place newfound emphasis on a group of people who will likely determine whether the remaining holdouts get their shots: family caregivers.

According to AARP, there are 53 million family caregivers in the United States and 4.5 million in California. AARP estimates the value of their care at almost $60 billion. They shop for food. They make doctors appointments. They arrange transportation. They pick up prescriptions and administer medications.

In short, family caregivers play a pivotal role in the health care of Americas seniors. And it is they who will determine when the people under their care get their shots.

Or not.

A new survey of family caregivers shows that their own mistrust of vaccines could explain why close to a quarter of older Americans have not yet received their potentially life-saving vaccine shots.

According to the survey, which polled nearly 2,000 caregivers in the United States, 71% of family caregivers harbor doubts about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines. This doubt appears destined to lead to inaction. Just 63% of caregivers who lack confidence in the vaccines safety say theyll take the senior under their care to get vaccinated.

More troubling still, 77% of African American and 74% of Hispanic caregivers lack confidence that the vaccines are completely safe. Given the disproportionate rate of COVID-19-related deaths among these two groups, respondents lack of confidence in the vaccines could translate into a much longer journey to overcome the risk of infection for Americas Black and Hispanic populations.

Additionally, vaccine doubts appear to translate into a hesitancy among caregivers to get themselves vaccinated. Nearly half of family caregivers (47%) say they will either delay or refuse to get vaccinated. The rate jumps to a startling 59% among Black caregivers.

Its as important for caregivers to get vaccinated as it is for the people under their care. After all, if a caregiver becomes sick with the virus, they wont be able to care for the person who relies on themand they could potentially infect their loved one.

These survey results reveal a clear need to take a broader approach to promoting and distributing vaccines. Instead of just focusing on seniors themselves, we should also be focusing on their caregivers. To start, health officials should move family caregivers to the front of the vaccination line. Some states, like Massachusetts and Illinois, have already done this, to some degree. These efforts should be expanded nationally.

Likewise, many caregivers work full-time jobs, and taking time off is often a major impediment to their ability to go to a vaccine site. We should encourage all American employers to offer flexible schedules to family caregivers who either take the person under their care to get vaccinated or get vaccinated themselves.

Also, health care leaders and public officials involved in the vaccination effort should aim to build trust around the vaccines among family caregivers, emphasizing the Black and Hispanic communities.

To accomplish these outreach efforts, physicians will need to play a leading role. Though there is no central database of family caregivers, physicians and their staffs generally know when a patient has a family member caring for them.

As a physician who has worked primarily with older adults, I can say that most of the seniors Ive encountered who live healthy, independent lives rely on family members for some level of care.

95% of the people who died of COVID-19 in the last year were older than 50. We owe it to those who have passedand to those we can saveto ensure that we vaccinate all older Americans. And the way to do that is to talk to their caregivers.

Romilla Batra is an internal medicine physician and chief medical officer, SCAN Health Plan. She can be reached on LinkedIn and on Twitter @batrar.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
The first Trailor for The Fast and Furious 9 has debuted last week, confirming a long-standing rumour about whether or not the cast would be going to space.

The teaser shows Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris in a vehicle with a rocket attached to it as its speeding through the sky. The series has proved that theres certainly no idea that is considered too outrageous by the writers and producers of the longstanding film franchise, and director Justin Lin has agreed to this premise.

During a virtual press conference that showcased the trailer, a journalist bolding asked Justin Lin if he could one day envision a cross-over between The Fast and Furious and cult classic sci-fi film Jurassic World.

Lin responded with Well, Ive never said never to anything. And the fact that part of our philosophy is not to ever be boxed in our labelled.. Thats all I will say.

Cryptic much?! We would certainly love to see the Fast and Furious crew go up against dinosaurs in a future addition to the franchise.

Michelle Rodriguez who plays Letty in the films also adds some fuel to the idea, telling reporters that Once you reach a certain pinnacle, theres nowhere to go but to cross band and merch, its what big corporations do with each-other when they get too big, you know what I mean?

Adding that You just have to brand and merge with each other. But with the only thing standing in the way is lawyers and studios.

Jurassic World and The Fast And Furious are both under the ownership of Universal Studios, making the merge even more of a possibility!

You can check out the trailer for F9 here, with the film set to hit cinemas on or around June 25th.
Chairman of the National COVID-19 Vaccination Coordination Committee (CNCAV) Valeriu Gheorghita said on Monday that the first curbside/drive-thru COVID-19 vaccine centres will become operational by the end of April.

He told Digi FM private broadcaster that people who will be vaccinated at such centres will receive the Pfizer jab without prior appointment.

"By the end of April we will have the first centres in the country of such kind, and they will receive the Pfizer vaccine. I can tell you about Bucharest, Deva in Hunedoara County and there are other counties that plan to set up such curbside/drive-through centres. No prior appointment required. We have sized up about 400 people who can be vaccinated every day (...) People will only go there by modes of transportation, either personal - cars with a maximum capacity of four plus one person - or public transport such as taxi, Uber and other similar modes of transportation. In the triage area you need to show an identity document, preferably fill in the triage questionnaire in advance: it can be downloaded from the application. If the form is not downloaded and filled in, it will be filled in under the doctor's supervision - medical criteria indicating the vaccination are evaluated and the registration with the Electronic National Register of Vaccinations is made," said Gheorghita.
[April 19, 2021] VersaCoin is Offering Rewards to Community Contributors to the Project

BIRKIRKARA, Malta, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- As an open-source cryptocurrency project, VersaCoin is excited to offer a new opportunity to anyone willing to share their experience and skillsets with the community. This is an ideal way to embrace e-commerce with alt-coins on a personal level simply by contributing to the ethical VersaCoin project. "Many who want to secure VersaCoin but are unable through the likes of a financial exchange are welcome to share their talents here and be rewarded for their expertise. There's no better feeling than being part of a team that appreciates your efforts and benefits others," states community member and Public Relations Director Maltiba Ibn.



We currently are interested in securing the assistance of innovative individuals with a drive and passion for the world of cryptocurrency. A few areas we are looking for contributors within include:

Programmers  Developers  Writers  Bloggers  Social Media Experts  Coders  Marketing Experts  Website Managers  Graphic Designers  Video Editors Simply tell us what your strengths are, and we will reach out with details about how you can earn VersaCoin (VCN) through sharing your valued contributions. This global community project not only is a trading opportunity, but it's a platform where talented individuals can showcase their skills while earning VCN.



While maintaining VersaCoin as an open-source project, our aim to contribute on a global level to help build eCommerce and community through personal responsibility and self-governance is one thing missing in the world's online world today. Joining this movement and being a contributor is the creative force that allows us to realize a vision as a community. VersaCoin now trades on VINDAX exchange under VCN/BTC and VCN/USDT trading pairs. VersaCoin promotes diversity and support amid the alt-coin community and is also in talks with other exchanges to add VersaCoin to expand its platform to other exchange markets around the world.





Website: https://www.versacoin.org, Blog: https://www.versacoin.org/articles



This press release was issued through 24-7PressRelease.com. For further information, visit http://www.24-7pressrelease.com. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/versacoin-is-offering-rewards-to-community-contributors-to-the-project-301271174.html SOURCE Versacoin

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US, Japan united to deal with China, NK



U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga agreed to cooperate closely in countering China and North Korea, during their summit in Washington, D.C., Friday. "We committed to working together to take on the challenges from China and issues like the East China Sea, as well as North Korea, to ensure the future of a free and open Indo-Pacific," Biden told a joint news conference after the summit.



Toward that end, the two leaders cited the importance of a trilateral alliance among Washington, Tokyo and Seoul. The summit reconfirms the fact that the U.S.' diplomatic priority has shifted to Asia, with the goal of containing China, in particular. The U.S. has revealed its strong will to solidify its alliance with Japan and South Korea by having a respective face-to-face meeting with the leaders of the two allies, in order to grapple jointly with the challenges from China. Biden is set to have a similar summit with President Moon Jae-in late next month.



Biden and Suga dealt with diverse issues, including human rights in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, signaling further tension with China. They also touched on the sensitive issue of Taiwan by referring to "the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait," amid China's move to increase military pressure on the island.



Tokyo has reaffirmed its support for Washington in a united front against Beijing, despite the potential risks of doing so. Japan has also been attempting to wield more influence in Northeast Asia, riding on the Biden administration's strategy to contain China in the Indo-Pacific region. For one thing, the U.S. has backed Japan's decision to discharge radioactive water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean.



China strongly countered the joint statement saying that Biden and Suga were attempting to interfere in its domestic affairs. What is worrisome is that a backlash from Beijing and rising tension in Northeast Asia will negatively impact the Korean Peninsula. Taking advantage of such growing tension, Japan is expected to enhance its defense capabilities and expand the scope of its military activities in the region.



Suga underscored the need for North Korea's complete denuclearization, though Biden refused to mention the issue in the joint statement, saying the U.S. has yet to finalize its policy toward the North. Washington will likely ask Seoul to join its efforts to check Beijing during Biden's summit with Moon, further aggravating Korea's dilemma. Seoul will face the daunting task of strengthening its alliance with the U.S. on the one hand, and maintaining amicable ties with China on the other.



The growing rivalry between the U.S. and China will further limit South Korea's room for maneuvering. Seoul cannot solve the problem by maintaining an ambiguous attitude. The Moon administration should take a clear and straightforward stance and persuade both the U.S. and China so that they understand and support its position. Seoul should play a more active role in dealing with regional security issues, including North Korean's nuclear weapons program, and in promoting Moon's much-touted "peace process" on the peninsula.


BARCELONA, Spain, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Wallbox, the Barcelona-based electric vehicle (EV) charging solution provider, announced today that it is actively searching for a location to establish a U.S. manufacturing facility.

"The rapid growth we're experiencing in the United States will require us to shortly increase capacity, and we believe by adding a factory in the US will allow us to serve the U.S. market even better with local production and jobs," said Wallbox Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Enric Asuncion.

The company entered the U.S. market in 2020 and launched the US version of Pulsar Plus, its best selling residential charging solution on Feb. 1.

"Pulsar Plus is the first U.S. product we've launched in the US and it is far outperforming our projections. Sales have been growing consistently every week, impulsed by positive reviews from customers and industry experts," added Asuncion.

Last week, the Biden Administration announced that they want to add 500,000 public chargers in the U.S. as part of the $2 trillion USD infrastructure bill.

"This has opened up an opportunity to accelerate the expansion of Wallbox's offerings in this segment," said Asuncion. "Our Supernova public charger was developed to solve the main challenges of building an extensive and reliable public charging network. It is modular, energy-efficient, and simpler to install and maintain, which represents a much lower total cost of ownership."

Wallbox had another record quarter in Q1 2021, thanks in large part to the company's successful global expansion strategy, agile supply chain management during the pandemic and growing government incentives and OEM electrification programs in many regions such as in Europe, United States and China. In some of the largest and fastest growing EV markets in Europe, such as the UK and Germany, Wallbox sales in Q1 have already nearly surpassed 2020 numbers.

"From January of 2020, we have expanded our distribution from just over 30 countries to 61 countries, with more to come," said Asuncion. "In a sector that is heavily fragmented and full of regional players, Wallbox is establishing itself as a global player, achieving triple digit growth across Europe, US, APAC and the Middle East."

Wallbox is also expanding its manufacturing capacity in Europe, where the company is building a new factory in Barcelona to produce chargers for residential, semi-public and public uses. The new factory, announced earlier this year, is planned to start operating in Q3 of 2021.

About Wallbox

Wallbox is a leading energy management company that manufactures smart charging solutions for electric vehicles. Combining state-of-the-art technology with exceptional design, Wallbox creates a smart ecosystem that improves the way we manage, use, and store energy. Created in 2015 and with its headquarters in Barcelona, Wallbox's mission is to facilitate the adoption of electric vehicles today to make more sustainable use of energy tomorrow. Envisioning a world free of fossil fuels, Wallbox's technology enables people to create, use, and share renewable energy in ways they never imagined. It currently sells to more than 60 countries and has 250 staff spread across offices in Europe, Asia, and America, as well as two factories of its own. Wallbox offers four types of chargers, including Quasar, the world's smallest and lightest bidirectional charger for home use with advanced two-way charging technology. It was recognized with the highest distinction by CES, the world's leading technology tradeshow for the industry. During the first half of 2020, Wallbox completed a Series A round of investment of 23 million euros and in February of 2021 got another round of 33 million euros for its expansion into new markets, enlarge production capacity and R&D as for new talent hiring.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

US: Colleen Robar, 313.207.5960, crobar@robarpr.com

GLOBAL: Barbara Calixto, +34.671.518.711, barbara.calixto@wallbox.com

View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/wallbox-scouting-us-manufacturing-location-301271153.html

SOURCE Wallbox
After fleeing the gang violence in El Salvador that killed his cousin, Mario Guzman arrived in San Mateo County five years ago as a frightened 16-year-old unable to speak a word of English.

Today, as he prepares to graduate from Skyline Community College and pursue a bachelors degree in graphic design, Guzman, 21, credits the Promise Scholars program. It not only paid for his college fees and books, but also required that he and the 2,000 other participants meet monthly with a college counselor and attend school full time.

Now the program is expanding to cover an additional 500 students with $2 million from the countys Measure K half-cent sales tax, the San Mateo Community College District announced Monday.

Its been really amazing, Guzman said in an interview Monday. As a first-generation college student, it was a step-by-step process for me to understand how college worked. Im really happy to know there will be more students getting the same support that I receive.

County officials said expansion of the 2017 programwill help San Mateo County families that have had a tough time enduring the pandemic. The program for first-time, full-time students aims to remove financial barriers that often prevent young people from pursuing higher education.

The current Promise Scholars program for 2,000 students pays for college fees, books and counseling for up to three years. The expansion, which adds 500 students, has funds to cover two years for those students.

This is a huge investment in our youth who have struggled mightily during the pandemic, with many of them seeing their family members lose jobs, battle food insecurity or miss rent payments, David Canepa, president of the county Board of Supervisors, said in a statement.

Thats how it was for Guzman, who lives with his aunt in Daly City. Guzmans aunt works for the city of San Francisco as a caregiver for the elderly. But her hours were cut back during much of the pandemic.

Guzman was able to help pay the bills with income from his job as a student assistant in the Skyline college marketing office. He said he wouldnt have had the confidence to apply for the job if it werent for the counseling requirement of the Promise Scholars program.

The program is a replica of the City University of New Yorks highly successful ASAP system  Accelerated Study in Associate Programs.

Statewide, about half of Californias 2.3 million community college students receive fee waivers through the Community College Promise grant, said Paul Feist, a spokesman for state Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley.

Of the states 121 programs, about three-quarters also offer a variety of academic supports, often requiring that students attend at least one college counseling session per semester, or success workshops.

At San Mateo Community College Districts three campuses  Skyline, College of San Mateo and Canada College  the monthly counseling requirement means the counselor-to-student ratio is 1 to 150, about four times better than average, said Richard Rojo, spokesman for the college district. The support and guidance of counselors can be critical for students like Guzman and others who are unfamiliar with how to navigate college systems and offerings. The counseling program helps them stay on track to realize their goals, Canepa said.

The counselors can do much more intensive counseling  intrusive counseling, they call it  and thats a good thing, Rojo said. If a student doesnt show up, the counselors work weekends and nights to track down the student and find out why.

I think this programs tuition and book funds is what catches peoples attention, he said. But when you talk to the students, its the counseling and the camaraderie that really matters to them.

Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NanetteAsimov
New York Times and the courts decisions extending it were policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law, Justice Thomas wrote. In a dissent in a criminal case a few months later, he wrote, quoting a previous opinion, that the media often seeks to titillate rather than to educate and inform.

No other member of the Supreme Court joined Justice Thomass opinion urging it to revisit the foundational 1964 libel decision, and Judge Silbermans dissent was widely criticized. J. Michael Luttig, a former federal appeals court judge who was on President George W. Bushs short list of potential Supreme Court nominees, called the dissent shocking and dangerous in an opinion essay in The Washington Post last month.

But the negative views from the bench of the news media may not be outliers. A new study, to be published in The North Carolina Law Review, documents a broader trend at the Supreme Court. The study tracked every reference to the news media in the justices opinions since 1784 and found a marked and previously undocumented uptick in negative depictions of the press by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The study was not limited to cases concerning First Amendment rights. It took account of all references to the press in its journalistic role, to the performance of commonly understood press functions or to the right of press freedom. Many of these references were in passing comments in decisions on matters as varied as antitrust or criminal law.

A generation ago, the court actively taught the public that the press was a check on government, a trustworthy source of accurate coverage, an entity to be specially protected from regulation and an institution with specific constitutional freedoms, wrote the studys authors, RonNell Andersen Jones, a law professor at the University of Utah, and Sonja R. West, a law professor at the University of Georgia. Today, in contrast, it almost never speaks of the press, press freedom or press functions, and when it does, it is in an overwhelmingly less positive manner.




Nearly one out of three middle and high school students in South Korea mulled suicide over the past year due to academic burden, a survey showed Monday.







In a poll of 5,669 middle and high school students conducted by the state-run National Youth Policy Institute from July to October last year, 27 percent said they had thought of taking their own life within the last year. By gender, 35 percent of female students said so, compared with 19.6 percent of male students.







Asked about the reasons for thinking of suicide, 39.8 percent cited academic problems, such as school grades and academic stress, followed by anxiety about the future and career (25.5 percent), family conflict (16 percent), conflicts with fellow students (4.8 percent) and economic difficulty (1.7 percent), the poll showed.







The ratios of students mulling suicide slightly differed depending on economic level, the institute said.







When economic level is divided into upper, middle and lower, 43.6 percent of students in the upper level thought of suicide, compared with 39.3 percent for the middle level and 29.3 percent for the lower level.







The survey was conducted with the aim of examining the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by the Korean government in 1991, and promoting the human rights of children and youth.







It also polled 2,954 elementary school students from fourth to sixth grades.







Twenty-seven percent of all 8,623 students said they have felt sad or depressed for no reason over the past year, while 23.6 percent said they had felt the urge to quit school. (Yonhap)


Houston, April 19 : At least three people were killed in a shooting incident in the US state of Texas, police said, adding a search in underway for the suspect who has been identified.

During a briefing on Sunday, officials announced that 41-year-old Stephen Nicholas Broderick was identified to be the suspect shooter, reports Xinhua news agency.

Broderick might have known the victims that were targeted, the officials said, adding that however, their relationship remains unclear.

Police said the shooting took place at an apartment complex in the northwest of Austin city, the state capital, earlier in the day.

The deaths were confirmed by the Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Service.

According to Austin Police, the scene is still active and people are advised to shelter in place and report suspicious activity.

"While a suspect is still at large it appears this is a domestic situation that is isolated and there is no risk to the general public," Austin Police tweeted.
Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov held a press briefing on Monday following their return to Earth after a stint on the International Space Station (ISS).

Ryzhikov recalled the moment when he came back to the Earth, saying the planet ''welcomed us with love and hugged us tightly.''

A Soyuz space capsule carrying NASA's Kate Rubins and Russians Ryzhikov and Kud-Sverchkov landed at 0455 GMT Saturday in the steppes of Kazakhstan.

They spent six months aboard the International Space Station after arriving at the orbiting laboratory complex on October 14.

Ryzhikov added they will undergo a rehabilitation program after spending time in Space.

There now are seven people aboard the ISS: NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Russians Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov arrived on April 9; Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Japan's Soichi Noguchi came aboard in November on the SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience, the first ISS docking under NASA's Commercial Crew Program.

Kud-Sverchkov said during the news briefing that the ISS becomes ''quite tight'' at times, but everyone tried to be respectful.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
What's on April 19-25 (Daily updated)

MUSIC & PERFORMANCES





Phu Tho Province- Hung Kings' Temple Festival

April 21









Featuring traditional rituals dedicated to Lac Long Quan and Au Co in the Hung Kings Temple relic site to express gratitude to the ones who laid the foundations of the country.



French musical Les Miserables tours

Mid-April - June.



April 16-18, Hanoi Opera House, 1 Trang Tien Street, Hanoi



May, National Dance and Music Festival, Dak Lak Province



Early June, Ho Chi Minh City



Featuring famed historical French musical Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.



With participation of local artists from the Vietnam National Opera and Ballet Theatre (VNOB), foreign artists from Hanoi Voices Choir, along with director Nguyen Trieu Duong and choreographer Linh An.



Hanoi- Events honouring cultures of Vietnamese ethnic groups







Through out April



Vietnam National Village for Ethnic Culture and Tourism, Son Tay Town















Featuring folk songs, dance, cuisine, specialties, and traditional customs and rituals of ethnic minorities.



________________________________________________________________________________________________



EXHIBITION





Ninh Thuan Province-Exhibition of Ninh Thuan - Quang Nam Cham culture

Until May 15,

Displaying nearly 80 artifacts, including photos, statues, pottery, over 1,500 tools, traditional handicrafts, costumes, jewellery, paintings, ancient musical instruments, and 1,400 books and reference materials.



Featuring the unique cultural and artistic heritages of the Cham people in the land of Ninh Thuan - Quang Nam and the exchange of Cham culture with others throughout history.



Hanoi-Virtual Private Realms Exhibition













Until Apr 19, 10 am  7 pm

Manzi Art Space, 14 Phan Huy Ich Street



From Manzi:



The exhibition Virtual Private Realms brings together the works of 7 artists: Lananh Le, Din Sama, Nguyen uc Huy, mi-mimi, Nghia ang, Trinh Cam Nhi, and Ha Ninh, with a focus on their painting practice.



Binh Dinh Province-Exhibition: ECO-SUS















Opening: Apr 8, 03 pm

Exhibition: Apr 8  Aug 8

International Centre for Interdisciplinary Science and Education, 7 Science Avenue, Quy Nhon City, Binh Dinh Province



From the organizer:



Featuring 11 Visual artists across Vietnam.



ECO-SUS is curated by artists The Son and Uu Dam, opening along with Winter School for Sustainable Development with 100 excellent fellows and respected speakers organized by Danh Nguyen. ICISE, a European-style building inspired by Binh Dinh nature, situated in the heart of a 21 hectares valley surrounded by majestic mountains and a long yellow sand beach. A remarkable architecture design by the famous Jean Francois Milou. See you at this fascinating exhibition.



The thrilling ECO-SUS exhibition will take place on the beach at 3 PM on April 8th:

1. 03 pm  Warm-up, kick start with with a viral and ambitious artwork from ECO-I by artist Nguyen Tran Uu am on Quy Nhon yellow sand beach to raise global awareness about the pollution.

2. 04 pm  Opening exhibition of 11 Vietnamese artists with their world-class artworks. Curatorial tour lead by artist/curator The Son

3. 04:30 pm  Chula Fashion show by designer Del Valle Cortizas Diego.



4. 09 Apr  Explore Lang Song, an old monastery, a beautiful structure that built and stood for 158 years, listen to singing hymns, visit publication in the very historic place where Jesuits record the first Vietnamese sounds in Latin.



HCMC- Exhibitions: Within / Between / Beneath / Upon & Home: Looking inwards to the outer world









Until Jun 6, 10 am  07 pm

The Factory Contemporary Arts Centre, 15 Nguyen U Di, Thao ien Ward, D 2,



From the organizer:



The Factory Contemporary Arts Centre proudly presents two exhibitions: Within / Between / Beneath / Upon and Home: Looking inwards to the outer world.
To reach me for collaborations, sponsorships, and event invitations, I am contactable at

the-ice-angel@hotmail.com


Former US President Donald Trump has faulted Joe Biden's timeline for removing troops from Afghanistan following a 20 year old war with the Taliban controlled state.



Last week, Biden said the withdrawal of American troops will begin on May 1, in line with the agreement the Trump administration made with the Taliban but finish on September 11, the 20th anniversary of the World Trade center bombing by Alqaeda that made the US enter into war with Afghanistan. Though Trump offered his support of President Joe Biden's plans to bring home American troops, he urged his successor to draw an end to America's longest war well before the September 11 deadline that Biden set last week.



Trump said that while leaving Afghanistan is "a wonderful and positive thing to do," he had set a May 1 withdrawal deadline and added that "we should keep as close to that schedule as possible."



"I wish Joe Biden wouldn't use September 11 as the date to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan, for two reasons. First, we can and should get out earlier. Nineteen years is enough, in fact, far too much and way too long," Trump said



"September 11 represents a very sad event and period for our Country and should remain a day of reflection and remembrance honoring those great souls we lost." he added.



Trump's statement didnt go down well with all his allies though .



One of his fiercest allies, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, tweeted Sunday evening: "



I could not disagree more with former President Trump regarding his support for President Biden's withdrawal of all forces from Afghanistan against sound military advice."



"With all due respect to former President Trump, there is nothing 'wonderful' or 'positive' about allowing safe havens and sanctuary for terrorists to reemerge in Afghanistan or see Afghanistan be drawn back into another civil war," Graham added.















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| 2021-04-20 05:43:40|Editor: huaxia

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KHARTOUM -- The Sudanese government on Monday officially approved a bill canceling the law on boycotting Israel.

"Today a draft bill abolishing the law on boycotting Israel was approved in a joint meeting for the Sovereign Council and the Council of Ministers," said Justice Minister Nasr-Eddin Abdul-Bari on his Twitter account.

Earlier in the day, Chairman of Sudan's Sovereign Council Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan chaired a joint meeting for the council and the cabinet at the presidential palace in the capital Khartoum. (Sudan-Israel-Ties)

- - - -

RABAT -- The Moroccan navy rescued over the weekend 165 Spain-bound migrants in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, official news agency MAP reported Monday.

Among the rescued migrants were 103 sub-Saharan people, 34 Moroccans, 27 Bangladeshis and one Burmese, MAP said, quoting a military source.

They were experiencing difficulties aboard several makeshift boats sailing in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, it added. (Morocco-Migrants-Rescue)

- - - -

CAIRO -- Egyptian police killed on Monday three terrorists who were involved in the execution of a Coptic Christian and two tribesmen in Egypt's Sinai, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

After receiving a tip-off, the national security sector struck a hideout of some terrorist elements in al-Abtal area in North Sinai.

"The suspected elements were planning to carry out terrorist operations against some Coptic people, their properties, headquarters of the police and armed forces," the statement said. (Egypt-Terrorists-Police)

- - - -

JERUSALEM -- Israel's Ministry of Environmental Protection on Monday unveiled a new comprehensive climate law to deal with the global climate crisis and global warming.

The law, which will come into effect after the approval of the Israeli parliament, aims to create a comprehensive framework for the state's response to the climate crisis, with an emphasis on preparing for the damage caused by the crisis.

This preparation is intended to promote the sustainable development of society and the environment in Israel, including natural resources, ecosystems, and biodiversity. (Israel-Environment-Law) Enditem
Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Department of Health Secretary Brendan Murphy at a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. Friday, April 9, 2021. (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas)

National Cabinet Meets To Discuss Vaccine Rollout

The meeting of the National Cabinet will aim to get the nations vaccine program back on track and discuss ways to ease international border restrictions, perhaps later in the year.

One route in and out of the country has already eased, after restrictions on two-way travel between Australia and New Zealand were loosened on Sunday night.

It is another significant milestone for Australians, Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt told reporters in Melbourne on Sunday.

That is the first step of a progressive opening  guided by safety, and in partnership with the states and territories and the Australian people.

The National Cabinet will meet on Monday for the first of what will be twice-weekly gatherings following the vaccine rollout being thrown into disarray.

Included in discussions will be alterations to Australias vaccination policy, including state vaccination implementation plans, in the wake of new advice around the AstraZeneca vaccine and additional supplies of Pfizer doses.

Just over a week ago health authorities recommended the AstraZeneca vaccine should only be given to those over the age of 50 after blood-clotting was linked to younger people.

A woman who died from blood-clotting last week was the third case linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine in Australia. The first two cases are still in hospital.

Health Minister Greg Hunt said Australia is now approaching 1.5 million vaccinations after some 330,000 jabs were completed in the past week.

He said GPs continue to be the cornerstone of the program but going forward, with very strong support from governments around the country, national cabinet will consider ways the states can assist with larger vaccination clinics.

From Wednesday, Victorians aged over 70 will be able to show up to a vaccine centre and get jabbed without an appointment as the state prepares to scale up its rollout.

Meanwhile, it has been confirmed that three family members diagnosed with COVID-19 in NSW hotel quarantine picked up the virus from fellow returned travellers.

Health authorities believe the three picked up the virus from a family of four who stayed in the adjoining room of the Adina Apartment Hotel at Sydneys Town Hall.

This latest story again just reinforces the need for a speedy and effective rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines, Labors health spokesman Mark Butler told reporters in Adelaide.

But still Australia is not even in the top 100 nations of the world per head of population in vaccinations. We need to do better.
Kolkata, April 19 : Considering the unprecedented spurt in Covid-19 cases, the West Bengal government has announced that all the state-run schools will remain closed from Tuesday till further notice.

Presently, the state was conducting the Classes 9 to 12 after there was a slowdown in the spread of the disease from January onwards.

"The summer vacations in the schools will commence from Tuesday and all schools will remain closed until further orders. The decision has been taken considering the current Covid situation which is showing an upward trend. I have held talks with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, the state Chief Secretary as well as the Education secretary in this regard," state Education Minister Partha Chatterjee said.

Students of Classes 9, 10, 11 and 12 have been attending the classes in batches in physical mode with Covid protocols. But the department now has decided not to hold further physical classes amid a steep rise in Covid cases. Students from Class 1 to 8, however, were attending classes in virtual mode.

When asked about the board examinations of Classes 10 and 12 that was earlier announced to be held in June this year instead of March, the state education minister said, "There is still reasonable time left before June. Decisions will be taken at the right time." However, schools affiliated to the CBSE board in the city have already curbed physical attendance due to the rise in Covid cases. "We have already shifted to online classes for students of Class 9, 10, 11 and 12 because of the rise in Covid cases. Presently, only students of Class 12 are attending school for practical and oral classes. We will communicate the decision of the state government to the Board and soon take a stand on the students of Class 12," spokesperson of a premiere CBSE school in Kolkata said.
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As a young professional who is trying to build wealth, I invest money. Although there is a myriad of different investment accounts and strategies, I invest in index mutual funds through my employer-sponsored retirement plan and my own Roth IRA. Yes, I have both types of accounts. Let me tell you why.

I invest in my employer-sponsored retirement plan (which is a 403(b), which is very similar to a 401(k) because:

1. I get a match from my employer to invest in their plan. Back in the day, many jobs offered their employees a pension when they retired. This pension would guarantee an employee a certain percentage of their salary even after they retired and stopped working. Although these pension plans were great for the employees, they were extremely expensive for many companies. Thus, most jobs today no longer offer pensions. They instead want to encourage their employees to save for their own retirement and give them an incentive (in the form of a retirement match) to do so. Through this retirement match, your employer will match what you contribute to your retirement plan. Like many other employers, my employer offers a retirement match if I contribute to my work-sponsored retirement account (a.k.a. a 403(b)). Since I dont want to forgo free money, I contribute to my work retirement plan to get their match.

2. It saves me money in taxes. As an unmarried physician with no children, I pay quite a bit in taxes. Although I dont mind contributing money to ensure that our government can run smoothly and fund things like education, infrastructure, and national defense, there are certain incentives in the tax code that can help reduce the amount of taxes Im expected to pay. One of the incentives is contributing to a retirement plan. By contributing money to my employer-sponsored retirement plan, I can defer paying taxes on the money I contribute, decreasing my tax rate. I also have the option of contributing to my work retirement plan via a 403(b) Roth, in which I can choose to pay taxes now and shield the income and profits from taxes when I withdraw the money later. So, whether I choose the pre-tax 403(b) (to help me save money in taxes now) or the 403(b) Roth (to help me save money in taxes later), either way, I get to save money in taxes. Thus, either option is a win-win.

3. It decreases my student loan payments. Like many college graduates, I have student loans. In fact, the amount of student loans I acquired from medical school is so high that I had to consolidate my loans and enroll in an income-based repayment plan to make the payments more affordable. This plan, called REPAYE (revised-pay-as-you-earn), caps my student loan payments at 10 percent of my discretionary income, making my monthly student loan payments much more affordable. As a resident physician who works for a non-profit hospital, I am also considered a public servant. Through a program called Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), after making 10 years of student loan payments, public servants who work for non-profit companies can get the remaining balance of their student loans forgiven, tax-free. Since the student loan payments I need to make are based on my taxable income, the more I lower my taxable income, the less money I have to pay in my student loans. One way I lower my taxable income and lower my monthly student payment is by contributing to my work-sponsored retirement account.

In addition to my work 403(b), I also invest in a Roth IRA because:

1. I can make other types of investments that I cant make in my employers retirement plan. Unlike my 403(b) or 401(k), a Roth IRA is not set up through my employer. Because it is not connected to my employer, I have more options in the way I want to invest my money. Instead of being limited to certain mutual funds or index funds, I can expand my options. Through my Roth IRA, I invest in REITs (real estate investment trusts). By investing in REITs, I can make money via real estate since these REITs invest in various real estate deals and syndications. Adding real estate to my investments helps diversify my portfolio to make me even more money overall.

2. It gives me more flexibility whenever I want to withdraw the money. I really like the Roth IRA because I contribute to it with after-tax dollars; there are fewer restrictions on when I can take the money out of the account. Although it is supposed to stay in the account until I retire, I can withdraw my contributions at any time, with no penalty (as long as I keep all the earnings/profits in the account). Thus, if I contributed $5,000 and made $500 in profits, I can take out the $5,000 I contributed at any time as long as the $500 I made in profit stays in the account. This means that if I ever run into an emergency or decide to use some of the money to pay off student loans or purchase a home, I can withdraw some of the money from this account when I need it. A Roth IRA is like a retirement account that I can technically use as a backup emergency fund if I absolutely needed to.

3. I dont have to pay taxes on the money in retirement when I take it out. Unlike my employer-sponsored retirement plan, I contributed to this Roth account with after-tax dollars. This means, when I withdraw the money in retirement, I dont have to pay taxes on the earnings I made or the money I contributed. Because of this fact, a Roth IRA helps me keep more money! For example, if I retire with $1,000,000 in a pre-tax 401(k) and $1,000,000 in a Roth IRA. I will have to pay 20 to 30 percent in taxes on the money in the pre-tax 401(k). So even though there is $1 million in the account, I will have to pay $200,000 to $300,000 in taxes on that money. With a Roth IRA, I will owe no taxes and will get to keep it all.

My point? Both my employer-sponsored retirement plan and my Roth IRA have advantages. Instead of choosing one over the other, I contribute to both accounts to maximize the benefits. Tell me, do you contribute to your work-sponsored retirement plan and a Roth IRA?

Altelisha Taylor is a family medicine resident and can be reached at Career Money Moves.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
Once upon a time, there was Senator Joe Lieberman speaking out against President Clinton on the floor of the U.S. Senate. It was 23 years ago, but it seems a lot longer than that. Or what about that incident from 1992, known now as Bill Clinton's Sister Souljah moment? In both instances, a Democrat was willing to challenge his party.

No one in today's Democrat party has the backbone or the willingness to take on another Democrat, especially Representative Maxine Waters. The lady from California took recklessness and irresponsibility to another zone with her latest remarks:

Asked about the Chauvin murder trial in nearby Minneapolis, Waters told reporters if the former police officer isn't found guilty of murdering Floyd, "We've got to stay on the street and we've got to get more active, we've got to get more confrontational. We've got to make sure that they know that we mean business." Waters said she was "hopeful" Chauvin would be convicted of murder, but if he isn't, "we cannot go away."

I remember when remarks like that would have at least prompted her hometown's newspaper to call for a resignation. Furthermore, the party leadership would have told her to cut it out and get back to work. What we have here is a member of Congress threatening a jury or inspiring the mob if they don't like the verdict.

I guess that was then and this is now. Today's Democrat party is run by people who think everything is about race or whining about the police. They don't seem to understand that people will get hurt when you speak this way.

PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk).

Image: Gage Skidmore

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
Progress made by Laois people in flattening the Covid-19 curve in the second week of April has continued the latest figures from the National Public Health Emergency Team show (NPHET).

NPHET's daily update for Sunday, April 18 which is published on Monday, April 19 shows that less than five new cases were confirmed on Sunday in Laois. NPHET do not give the number of cases for a county in a day if there have between one and four cases for privacy reasons.

Apart from pushing the daily case number down to seven a day, the latest progress has also pushed the incidence past down to 129.9 per 100,000 population on the back of 110 cases in the past two weeks.

While the county's incidence continues to be above the national average, the situation has continued to improve.

The county figures are no longer published at weekends by NPHET. However, the Covid-19 data hub shows that just two new cases were confirmed in Laois on Saturday, April 17.

Read also: ALL SYSTEMS GO AT LAOIS VACCINATION CENTRE

The last full set published reported on April 15 cases when the Laois incidence was 160.6 per 100,000.

Laois had the fifth-highest incidence last Thursday but by Sunday evening it had improved three places to eight.

Offaly is also finally off the top spot for having the worst incidence of the virus. SEE COUNTY BY COUNTY TABLE AT END OF STORY.

Nationally, NPHET says the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) has today been notified of no additional deaths related to COVID-19. There has been a total of 4,836 COVID-19 related deaths in Ireland.

As of midnight, Sunday, April 18 the HPSC has been notified of 403 confirmed cases of COVID-19. There has now been a total of 243,911 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ireland.

Of the cases notified today:

208 are men / 192 are women

73% are under 45 years of age

The median age is 31 years old

NPHET highlighted 174 new cases in Dublin, 34 in Meath, 20 in Kildare, 18 in Mayo, 16 in Cork and the remaining 141 cases are spread across 20 other counties.

The 7-day incidence has dropped to 54.7 per 100,000 people while the 5-day moving average is now 364 new cases a day across Ireland.

As of 8am today, 183 COVID-19 patients are hospitalised, of which 50 are in ICU. 7 additional hospitalisations in the past 24 hours.

As of April 17th, 2021, 1,204,063 doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in Ireland:

852,189 people have received their first dose

351,874 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.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has thanked His Holiness Pope Francis for his prayer for peace in eastern Ukraine.

He wrote about this on Twitter, Ukrinform reports.

"Every word in support of Ukraine saves lives. Grateful to Your Holiness Pope Francis for praying for peace in Donbas. This is a goal that we can achieve through joint efforts only. Our power is in unity: spiritual, ideological, diplomatic," Zelensky said.

He also posted a photo from an audience with the Pope dated February 8, 2020.

As reported, Pope Francis said in his Sunday address to the faithful that he is following events in eastern Ukraine with great concern and calls for peace and reconciliation.

Russia has lately been building up troops near Ukraines state border in the north, east and south, as well as in occupied Crimea. In addition, the number of ceasefire violations committed by the Russian armed formations in eastern Ukraine has increased. Ukrainian troops suffer casualties. At the same time, Russia carries out a propaganda campaign to justify aggression against Ukraine.

The U.S. and the EU announced their support for Ukraine and called on Russia to withdraw its troops from the Ukrainian border.

ish
Tesla Inc.s growth in China is powering on, with registrations of its electric cars rising to a record last month.

In March, 34,635 China-built Teslas were registered in the country, according to data from state-backed China Automotive Information Net. Thats almost double the 18,155 registrations in February, when the week long Lunar New Year holiday slowed sales, and almost triple the number a year earlier, when the nation was the in the grip of coronavrius lockdowns.
Top US infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci who is the Chief Medical Advisor to the President of the US said that a meeting will be held to discuss the halt in the usage of the Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine and a decision would be made by April 23. He said that he would be "very surprised if we don't have a resumption" in some form by Friday. He said that there would be a decision made over the vaccine, administration of which has been paused over rare blood clots being reported in some cases.

Decision over Johnson & Johnson vaccine by April 23

Dr Anthony Fauci told CBS News that one possibility would be to resume the vaccination of people with some restrictions or in some other form. He said that they cannot anticipate anything regarding the vaccine right now. They would discuss the vaccine and they can reach a conclusion over the vaccine on Friday.

The use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the US has been halted after federal health advisers said that they needed more evidence to decide if a handful of unusual blood clots were linked to the shot. Fauci said that right now only six people have been detected with blood clots after taking the J&J vaccine. He said that it is close to what was seen with AstraZeneca in the European Union and the United Kingdom.

The United States on April 13 has recommended a pause in the use of Johnson & Johnsons single-dose COVID-19 vaccine out of an abundance of caution as the authorities investigate the jabs connection with the blood clots. The US Food and Drug Administration and the Centres for Disease Control are currently determining the potential significance of the six cases reported of blood clots following the administration of the J & J vaccine. Until that process is complete, we are recommending this pause even though the regulator said that as of Monday over 6.8 million doses of the vaccine have been used.

(Image Credits: The Associated Press)
A 17-year-old American, Torian Wilson, has been charged with the murder of a Ghanaian Lyft driver, Elijah Newman, based in the United States.



Wilson faces one count of first degree murder and one count of armed criminal action.



Newman, 45, was shot and killed shortly before 11pm on Thursday night while working. It is unclear at if he was picking up or dropping off a customer.



Newman was shot in the torso and died at the scene.



According to charging documents filed Saturday, Wilson admitted to being at the scene of the shooting after police apprehended him nearby with a gun that matched a bullet casing found next to Newmans body.



Detectives found Wilson by tracing his phone, after linking his email address to a series of recently reported carjackings of ride-hailing companies in the area, police said.





Newman, a father of five, was always dreaming up plans for a better future, said a longtime friend, Elizabeth Hylton of St. Peters. He wrote them down in a diary he kept and talked about them in video calls with his kids in his hometown of Tema, Ghana.



After coming to the U.S. a decade ago, he moved to St. Peters from New Jersey in February to start a new chapter, Hylton said. Newman applied for jobs in information technology, hoping to eventually buy a home and bring his kids here to live with him.



In the meantime, he ferried passengers for the ride-hailing company Lyft to make ends meet.





Newman had been living with Hylton and her children in St. Peters, she said.









Elijah Newman. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Hylton of St. Peters.



Officers responding to the shooting Thursday found a bullet casing in the drivers seat, St. Louis Officer Thomas Walsh wrote in a probable cause statement. A Lyft-branded light was on the dashboard of the vehicle.



At the shooting scene, detectives were informed of recent reports of ride-sharing company drivers being carjacked in the surrounding area, Walsh said.



Detectives searched records of ride-hailing trips and linked them to Wilsons email address, Walsh said, though the email account was set up under the name of a Robert Henderson.



Detectives used a search warrant to trace Wilsons cellphone and located him within a 1,700-meter radius of where Newman had been shot, Walsh said.



Police found Wilson with a handgun in a bag, Walsh said. The gun matched the bullet casing found by Newmans body.



Wilson admitted being at the scene, Walsh said. The probable cause statement did not include more details.



In a statement, Lyft said it was assisting law enforcement with its investigation.





Source: GNA









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Featured Video
Xinjiang is a wonderful place. Now it stands proudly in tranquillity and prosperity in Chinas northwest, opening its arms to welcome people from all over the world. But the accounts contained within the 53-page Break Their Lineage, Break Their Roots report contribute to a growing body of evidence that has forced companies, governments and multinational organisations to reassess how they respond to Chinas denials of ethnic cleansing. A sign warning against uncivilised behaviour is displayed as spectators watch a street performance in the main bazaar in Urumqi, Xinjiang. Credit:Bloomberg The campaign, which had been simmering under the guise of national unity for decades but escalated sharply after violent clashes between Uighurs and Han-Chinese migrants in 2014, has installed a system of mass surveillance, restricted movement, enforced cultural erasure and family separation. Five Uighur leaders identified within the report have faced prison sentences of between 10 years and life in prison for split-ism - including organising study tours of the Koran and sending money overseas. One, Nebijan Ghoja Ehmet, was convicted of inciting ethnic hatred and discrimination for telling others what is haram and halal, and sentenced to 10 years in prison. The terms are used to describe what food is forbidden and permitted under Islamic law.

Two women, Gulzir Mogdyn and an unnamed Kazakh woman who is being represented by Kazakh rights advocate Aiman Umarova, said they were subjected to forced abortions while in Xinjiang. Another said she had been being forcibly implanted with an intra-uterine contraceptive device that sterilises them until they can be surgically removed. There were reports of rape being used repeatedly as punishment and torture by authorities, including the use of electric batons.

In some cases, Chinese authorities have allegedly ordered the removal of Xinjiang orphans from extended families into state institutions. Under the instructions of Xinjiang Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, they have been redefined as children who have lost their parents or whose parents cannot be found. They have been distributed in state institutions in a scattered manner unaware of their family or their past. Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch said Chinese authorities have systematically persecuted the lives, religion and culture of Turkic Muslims in the region. Beijing has said its providing vocational training and deradicalisation, but that rhetoric cant obscure a grim reality of crimes against humanity, she said. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video Beth Van Schaack from the Stanford Centre for Human Rights and International Justice said it was increasingly clear that the policies and practices in Xinjiang meet the standard for crimes against humanity under international criminal law.

The governments failure to stop these crimes, let alone punish those responsible, shows the need for strong and co-ordinated international action, she said. Loading The US State Department on April 6 said it was considering a co-ordinated approach to the Beijing Winter Olympics. Calls for a boycott in response to the human rights abuses led by members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China have grown but there is no appetite for a similar push in Australia. Labor and Coalition MPs are now lobbying for the federal government to get on with legislating a Magnitsky sanctions regime to target Chinese officials involved in human rights abuses months after it was recommended by a bipartisan inquiry. The Liberal chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security James Paterson said it was a gap in our sanctions framework that must be filled. Labors foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong said Australia should introduce an Australian Magnitsky Act as a matter of priority.
COLUMBUS, Ohio, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Big Lots, Inc. (NYSE: BIG) ("Big Lots" or the "company"), today announced that, following a national director search to add diversity to the company's Board of Directors, the company has nominated Sandra Campos, chief executive officer of Project Verte, Inc. and former chief executive officer of DVF (Diane von Furstenberg), and Kimberley A. Newton, former senior vice president consumer experience for Hallmark Cards, Inc., to stand for election at the company's 2021 Annual Meeting of Shareholders (the "Annual Meeting"). The Annual Meeting will be held virtually on Wednesday, May 26, 2021 beginning at 11:00 a.m., Eastern Time.

"We are thrilled to nominate Sandra and Kim for election to the Board, as their leadership and experience in omni-channel retail will be of tremendous value to our organization," said Cynthia T. Jamison, Chair of the Nominating / Corporate Governance Committee.

"Their election will bring both significant expertise and new, diverse perspectives and insight to the boardroom," stated James R. Chambers, Chairman of the Board of Big Lots. "The addition of Sandra and Kim positively complements our diverse Board of veteran industry leaders. We look forward to gaining valuable insights and perspectives from them both, and are confident they will provide significant benefits to support Big Lots' future growth."

Bruce K. Thorn, the company's Chief Executive Officer and President, added: "We are proud to have launched a robust Diversity, Equity & Inclusion initiative, as we truly believe that every difference makes a difference. Adding Sandra and Kim not only will help us drive our growth strategy, it will also put us among only a small percentage of public companies that have a majority of women directors. Each of Sandra and Kim is a long-time, regular customer of Big Lots who will bring a strong understanding of our brand and how we can reach our full potential as a company."

Ms. Campos brings more than two decades of experience building consumer-led global lifestyle brands. She currently serves as the chief executive officer of Project Verte, Inc., a cloud-based supply chain solution company for retailers. Prior to Project Verte, Ms. Campos was chief executive officer at Diane von Furstenberg (DVF), where she focused on innovation and the implementation of omni-channel and unified commerce strategies that drove significant impact to topline revenues. Previously, she was co-president for Women's Apparel at Global Brands Group, leading iconic brands such as Juicy Couture, Bebe and BCBG. A successful entrepreneur, Ms. Campos also founded several retail-related companies. She currently serves as a member of the advisory board of Athena Technology Acquisition Corp., a public special purpose acquisition company.

Ms. Newton is currently the founder and CEO of Alexis Enterprises, LLC, which includes the Intentional Pause Project, an organization aimed at empowering women to expand the impact of their leadership. Ms. Newton spent more than two decades at Hallmark Cards, Inc. in various leadership roles, most recently serving as Senior Vice President Customer Experience. While at Hallmark, she worked on all aspects of consumer marketing, corporate strategy, business development, omni-channel experience and digital transformation, and helped modernize Hallmark's diversified portfolio of retail stores, media networks, Crayola and a global greetings business by reimagining strategies and capabilities through a future-looking, digitally-enabled and customer-focused lens.

About Big Lots

Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, Big Lots, Inc. (NYSE: BIG) is a neighborhood discount retailer operating 1,414 stores in 47 states, as well as a best-in-class ecommerce platform with expanded capabilities via BOPIS, curbside pickup, Instacart, and PICKUP with same day delivery. The company's product assortment is focused on home essentials: Furniture, Seasonal, Soft Home, Food, Consumables, Hard Home, and Electronics, Toys & Accessories. Big Lots' mission is to help people Live BIG and Save Lots. The company strives to be the BIG difference for a better life by delivering unmatched value to customers through surprise and delight, being a "best place to work" culture for associates, rewarding shareholders with consistent growth and top-tier returns, as well as doing good in local communities. For more information about the company, visit www.biglots.com.

SOURCE Big Lots, Inc.

Related Links

www.biglots.com


Usually, orientation can mean the first taste of dining hall food and the introduction to traditions at the University of Georgia. COVID-19 had different plans for the class of 2024. Instead of stepping onto UGAs campus for the first time as a college student, incoming freshmen are logging on to Zoom and watching hours of videos and learning modules to introduce them to campus life.
Australians can now travel around the globe by exploiting a loophole in the New Zealand travel bubble - as long as they're happy to risk being stranded overseas.

Since March 2020, most Australian citizens and permanent residents have been banned from leaving the country for leisure.

But today the trans-Tasman travel bubble opened, allowing Australians to travel quarantine-free to and from New Zealand.

Unlike Australia, New Zealand 'advises' its residents not to travel overseas but has not banned them from leaving.

This means that Australians could fly to New Zealand, before purchasing a new ticket and travelling to a third country like Singapore or the United States.

Australians could be able to exploit a loophole in the New Zealand travel bubble to continue to fly further abroad

However, complications could arise for jetsetters when they go to book a flight home, as they risk joining the estimated 35,000 Australians currently stranded abroad.

The combined cost of flights and government mandated hotel quarantine, as well as the limited seats on planes has made returning home to Australia no easy task.

A spokesperson from Australia Border Force said that New Zealand does not prevent Australian citizens leaving the country and travelling onwards overseas.

This means New Zealand Customs authorities would be unlikely to stop Australians travelling to a third country beyond the trans-Tasman travel bubble.

'Those who travel onwards from New Zealand to another international destination must be aware that returning to Australia or New Zealand may be difficult due to the current restrictions on passenger numbers and the availability of flights', they told the Australian Financial Review.

The Department of Home Affairs have updated their website to advise Australians they would need to special permit to travel beyond New Zealand to another country.

'If you are transiting through New Zealand to another destination you must apply for an outward travel exemption,' it said.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said the opening of the trans-Tasman bubble today is 'truly exciting'

Those that travel further abroad from New Zealand may risk joining the 35,000 Australians currently stranded overseas due to exorbitant prices of flights and hotel quarantine

Under existing Covid rules, Australians can only leave if they get an exemption from the Department of Home Affairs for reasons including work visa purposes requiring a longer stay abroad.

The ban on Australians going overseas was introduced a year ago as non-citizens and non-residents were also stopped from entering the country in a bid to slow the spread of Covid-19.

Former home affairs minister Peter Dutton introduced that travel ban policy, which his successor Karen Andrews is now in charge of.

A human biosecurity emergency was also declared giving federal Health Minister Greg Hunt the power to issue orders to combat the outbreak of COVID-19.
Jeff Davis Sheriffs detectives and Narcotics deputies served a search warrant in the 800 block of Shannon drive, Jennings on Friday, April 16, 2021.

The search revealed illegal narcotics and cash from narcotics sales. Deputies discovered methamphetamine, heroin, marijuana and prescription medication along with over $6,000.00 in currency.

Bryant Ray Wittge, 27, of Jennings,LA was arrested on charges of Distribution of CDS, Possession of CDS I & II, Distribution of CDS II, Illegal transactions involving proceeds.

Robert Renee Prosper, 27, of Kinder, LA was arrested and charged with Possession of marijuana, possession of heroin, possession of CDS II and possession of CDS IV. Both were booked into the parish jail.
Turkey has opened another front against Russia. This time its Ukraine and, since the April 10 meeting in Turkey between the Turkish and Ukrainian leaders, Russia has been seeking ways to strike back at Turkey. President Recep was once again once showing Russia he has a Ukraine card in his hand. The meeting was held to mark a decade of strategic partnership between Turkey and Ukraine. Officially this was the ninth meeting of the Turkish-Ukrainian High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council. Both men emphasized the importance of protecting Ukraines territorial integrity and the need to de-escalate tension in the Black Sea region. The discussions focused on eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatist forces have been fighting since 2014. At a joint press conference Zelensky referred to Crimea and the Donbass region as temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. He added that Turkeys support for the restoration of Ukraines territories is vitally important. Erdogan told Zelensky that Turkey does not recognize Russias 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and that Turkey is ready to provide "necessary support" to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine using the Minsk accords as a basis for resolution. Initially this consisted of offering more Turkish armed UAVs to Ukraine. Turkey hedged when it came to a direct confrontation with Russia. Erdogan said Turkeys cooperation with Ukraine did not mean it was taking a stand directly in opposition to other countries, even though Ukraine considers Turkey the only other nation (after the United States) to offer direct aid versus the month-old Russian invasion threat.

Indirectly Turkey and Ukraine are increasingly valuable to each other. Since the 2014 Russian attack on Ukraine, the world has learned just how important Ukraine is to Russia, and many other countries, as a source for key military items. After 2014 Russia had to revise its warships and helicopter production plans because Ukraine was the only source for key components, China, then Turkey, turned to Ukraine for some of these items because sanctions had made it impossible to obtain the items from the West. Most recently Ukraine has provided Turkey with key tech for tanks and helicopters. Turkey has already exported UAVs to Ukraine. These previous exchanges between Turkey and Ukraine were done quietly, but now these links are getting more publicity and Russia is annoyed, because they are already confronting Turks in the Caucasus (Armenia) and Africa (Libya). Turkey and Russia are technically allies in Syria but that alliance is fraying. (Austin Bay)

April 18, 2021: Its old news thats new news, again. Greece announced it cannot ignore its territorial disputes in the Mediterranean involving Turkey. Solutions are difficult, the Greek statement said, but not impossible. The statement followed a recent meeting in Turkey between the Turkish and Greek foreign ministers. It was the first visit to Turkeys capital by the Greek foreign minister since 2015. The meeting ended with mutual accusations but the fact the meeting took place is a good sign. Its also a good sign that the Turkish foreign minister has been invited to visit Greece  with the possibility of Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis eventually meeting with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. There are many Greek-Turk disputes. Air space and air space control have been issues since the 1950s. Cyprus split into Turkish and Greek halves is a continuing problem. Now competing maritime territorial claims, including extent and boundaries of their continental shelves, is a huge issue since the area may have extensive natural gas reserves.

April 17, 2021: Turkey confirmed that it supports Iraqs Sinjar Deal to rebuild Iraqs second largest city Mosul and insure Iraqs territorial unity. Turkey intends to help rebuild and improve Mosuls infrastructure, which was badly damaged during the war against ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant). The Sinjar Deal was reached in October 2020 between Iraqs central government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The deal may eventually lead to the removal of PKK (Kurdish Turkish separatists) rebels from the Sinjar and perhaps the KRG. The PKK established a base in Sinjar in 2014. It also facilitates the return of displaced Yazidis to their homes. Turkey believes the deal will also help eradicate ISIL fighters in the region.

April 16, 2021: President Erdogan criticized the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus for a court decision he claims will restrict teaching Koran courses. Erdogan threatened to retaliate against the statelet if the court ruling isnt overturned. The court ruled the Republic of Northern Cyprus Ministry of Education should regulate Koran courses, not a Muslim religious commission. Turkey has long had problems with Cyprus because of its mixed Greek-Turk population. This led to a crisis in 1974 when Greek Cypriot guerrillas with links to the Greek "Colonels" junta in Athens attempted a coup aimed at "enosis" -- the unification of Cyprus with Greece. The coup collapsed when the Turkish military garrison in Cyprus was reinforced by Turkey. The Turkish response was generally portrayed in the western media as an aggressive invasion akin to Saddam attacking Kuwait. That was not the case. A 1960 agreement when Cyprus became independent, gave Greece, Turkey and the former colonial power Great Britain the right to guarantee Cyprus' status as an independent state. The Turk intervention left Turk Cypriots (20 percent of the population) controlling 40 percent of Cyprus, with a "Green Line" snaking through the capital, Nicosia. Efforts by Greek and Turkish Cypriots to end the division resulted in the establishment of two entities that seek to become completely foreign (Greek and Turkish) control and relying more on allies like America, Britain and Israel to help protect any independence they have. The current dispute over Islam is another example of that unpopular foreign interference.

April 13, 2021: President Erdogan announced a partial lockdown of Turkey during the first two weeks of the Moslem month of Ramadan to prevent more covid19 infections. In the last month the country has seen a huge increase in cases. One source said daily infections have increased five-fold since March. On April 8 Turkey reported 55,941 new cases, the most in Europe. The lockdown includes a ban on intercity travel. People over 65 and under 18 cannot use public transport. Some areas will have night-time travel restrictions.

April 12, 2021: Egypt announced it has temporarily suspended diplomatic normalization discussions with Turkey and will also freeze bilateral security cooperation. Egypt made these decisions for several reasons, but diplomats said Egypt is particularly incensed because Turkey has failed to withdraw its mercenaries from Libya. Egypt also wants two senior members of the Moslem Brotherhood extradited from Turkey. Despite the rebuff, Turkey indicated it still hopes to sign a new maritime border agreement with Egypt.

April 11, 2021: The Turkish government issued a statement urging Ukraine and Russia to peacefully end their confrontation. The statement indicated Turkey would help resolve the Russia-Ukraine dispute but did not specify how Turkey would be involved. The statement came the day after Erdogan met with Ukrainian President Zelensky.

April 10, 2020: Turkey and Azerbaijan have concluded a two-day joint military training exercise designed to improve interactions between the nations military forces. In February the two nations conducted a joint training exercise in Turkey Turkeys border with Armenia.

April 9, 2021: The U.S. criticized Azerbaijani attacks on civilian targets by in the late 2020 Karabakh war with Armenia. The report noted Turkey supported Azerbaijans invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh. The report also criticized hate speech in Turkey directed against its Armenian community.

April 8, 2021: And now Champion of Islam Erdogan into Sofagate -- a minor diplomatic protocol SNAFU but one thats very awkward for the guy who recently annulled Turkeys ratification of the 2014 EU Istanbul Convention on violence against women. After a photo op preceding a formal meeting at Turkeys presidential palace in the capital, Erdogan and EU Council president Charles Michel sat down in two gilded Ottoman-style chairs. However, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen was left standing by herself, without a chair. Mrs. von der Leyen eventually sat on a sofa away from Erdogan and Michel. Mrs. von der Leyen was also the only woman in the room. According to the EU, diplomatic protocol requires Mrs. von der Leyen have a chair like the other two senior leaders.

April 7, 2021: Twenty-two former members of Turkeys presidential guard regiment were sentenced to life in prison for their roles in the July 2016 coup which attempted to remove Erdogan from power. Two senior officers received life sentences for their roles in seizing the national public television (TRT) main studio building and forcing a broadcaster to read the coup plotters declaration.

April 6, 2021: Yesterday 104 retired Turkish Navy admirals issued a signed public letter harshly criticizing the so-called Istanbul Canal project. President Erdogan is a staunch advocate of the canal. Today ten of the admirals were arrested on charges of conspiring against the constitutional order. Erdogan said the Istanbul Canal letter was about a political debate and implied a coup.

The public letter was about the 104 admirals expressing strong support for the Montreux Convention of 1936 that regulates ship traffic through the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits and sea transit between the Aegean and Black Seas, via those straits and the Sea of Marmara. The admirals contend the Montreux agreement is vital to Turkish security. They are concerned that the unpredictable Erdogan might withdraw from it.

The proposed canal would start on the Black Sea north of Istanbul and connect to the Sea of Marmara. It would be about 45 kilometers in length. Erdogan and canal supporters say Turkey needs an alternative route for shipping. The Bosporus is very narrow. The wider, bigger canal would protect Istanbul from environmentally threatening shipping accidents. It would also be a revenue generator because Turkey would charge a transit fee. However, many residents of Istanbul believe the canal would damage Istanbuls fresh water supplies. Polls indicate a majority of Turks oppose the canal. Ekrem Imamoglu, Istanbuls mayor and an Erdogan opponent, is against the canal project. There is some public concern that a canal circumventing the Bosporus would put the Montreux treaty jeopardy  the retired admirals suggested the canal could undermine the treaty, which gives Turkey complete control of the Bosporus.

The new canal may not be a big revenue producer. The Montreux Convention gives ships the right of free passage through the straits. Why pay for use of the canal when sailing through the Bosporus is free? Which brings us back to why the admirals are concerned that Erdogan might withdraw from the treaty. (Austin Bay)

April 2, 2021: Greece reported several maritime incidents occurred between the eastern Greek island of Lesbos and the Turkish coast. These involved Greek ships and Turkey's coast guard. In six incidents, Turkish vessels were intercepted as they escorted small boats carrying migrants who were trying to enter Greek waters. The small boats carried an estimated 300 migrants. When they were forced to turn back Turkish coast guard boats picked up the migrants. In another case, Greece claimed a Turkish coast guard boat threatened a Greek coast guard boat with dangerous maneuvers.

Meanwhile, Turkeys energy ministry announced that drilling rigs and survey ships will be returning to the Eastern Mediterranean to conduct seismic surveys off Turkeys southern coast.

Turkish police arrested Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu, a Kurdish rights advocate, a former member of parliament and a member of the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP). This year he was removed from parliament after being convicted posting terrorist propaganda on social media.

March 30, 2021: Turkey has reportedly told Israel that it is prepared to exchange ambassadors and normalize relations. President Erdogan initially suggested this at the end of 2020 by saying he wanted to improve relations with Israel and acknowledge that Turkey and Israel already share intelligence information.

March 27, 2021: President Erdogan issued a decree annulling Turkey's ratification of the 2014 EU Istanbul Convention on violence against women. The convention is a legally-binding Council of Europe treaty affecting 34 European countries. Turkish opposition leaders said Erdogan was trying to appease Islamic hardliners in his AKP party and the Felicity Party.
20 YEARS AGO

Hospital undergoing construction

West Shore Medical Center is currently in the middle of a $12 million building expansion project. Construction began in January and the initial phase includes the addition of a new surgical wing and the expansion of cardio-diagnostics and radiology services. Other aspects of the renovation are the remodeling of the registration area and lobby, redesign of the ambulance and main entrance and upgrades in patient rooms and nursing students.

60 YEARS AGO

Forest fire threat down

Although last weekends greatly needed rainfall cut down the forest fire threat in the Manistee Ranger District, Ranger Dick Larson reminded area residents that the burning index will quickly rise again by this weekend without further precipitation. According to the rainfall statistics at the Wellston station of the U.S. Forest Service, .27 of an inch of precipitation was recorded last Friday after 11 days without rain.

Kennedy warns Russia

(FROM THE UPI)  The United States was firmly pledged today to block any Soviet armed intervention in Cuba. President Kennedy warned Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev Tuesday night this country would act immediately to hurl back any military intervention by outside force.

80 YEARS AGO

River bank warning

A warning to parents whose children frequent the river bank was issued today by Chief of Police Roy C. Hebner, who reported that an unidentified, seven-year old boy was rescued from a sinking rowboat near the Maple Street Bridge one recent afternoon. The lad, Hebner said, had been playing in the boat which filled with water within a few inches of the gunwale before he was discovered and brought to safety.

Art exhibit

An interesting exhibit of pen and ink sketches, water colors, pastel drawings and soap sculpture, work of the Onekama High School art class, has been entered in the windows of the Board of Commerce on River Street. Two panels, simulating religious stained glass scenes of colored cellophane are also included in the display which is set up by Gerald Sutton, Onekama High School instructor, and is attracting considerable attention.

Compiled by Mark Fedder at the Manistee County Historical Museum
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - April 19, 2021) - ScreenPro Security Inc. (CSE: SCRN) ("ScreenPro" or the "Company") announces that it has changed its auditor from RSM Canada LLP (the "Former Auditor") to SHIM & Associates LLP (the "Successor Auditor") effective April 14th, 2021.

At the request of the Company, the Former Auditor resigned as auditor of the Company effective April 14th, 2021 and the board of directors of the Company appointed the Successor Auditor as the new auditor until the next Annual General Meeting of the Company.

The Company confirms that there have been no modified opinions in the Former Auditor's reports for the two most recently completed financial years or for any period subsequent to the most recently completed period for which an audit report was issued and preceding April 19th, 2021; the Company's board of directors and audit committee each approved the resignation of the Former Auditor and the appointment of the Successor Auditor in place of the Former Auditor; there were no reportable events (as defined in National Instrument 51-102) in connection with each of the Former Auditor's audit of the Company which occurred prior to their resignation as auditors of the Company; and the Notice of Change of Auditor was approved by the Company's board of directors.

In accordance with National Instrument 51-102, the Notice of Change of Auditor, together with the required letters from the Former Auditor and the Successor Auditor, have been reviewed by the audit committee and the board of directors and have been filed on SEDAR.

About ScreenPro

ScreenPro provides turnkey coronavirus screening solutions to the private sector including testing, track and tracing with GoStop alerting software. ScreenPro's unique access to multiple manufacturers of high quality South Korean test kits and its strategic partnership with Canvas Labs in Vancouver and Integrated Explorations in Ontario. This platform allows ScreenPro to be a nationwide provider of a full-service testing solutions across Canada. In addition to providing test kits, ScreenPro has its own nursing professionals, and access to high quality PPE to ensure that its clients are protected in all aspects of their testing needs. GoStop's passport was developed with a privacy preserving approach that will enable individuals to use the alerting software and downloadable app with authentication certificates. The alerts can be scheduled on an on-demand, daily, weekly, or monthly basis and can be used also for vaccine scheduling.

For additional information on ScreenPro and other corporate information, please visit the Company's website at www.screenprosecurity.com.

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange (the "CSE") nor it's Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

"John A. D. McMullen"

President and CEO

For further information please contact:

John McMullen

Email: info@screenprosecurity.com

Forward Looking Statements:

Certain statements contained in this news release may constitute forward-looking information, including statements relating to expectations regarding the future development of ScreenPro's business. Forward-looking information is often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "anticipate", "plan", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will", "intend", "should", and similar expressions. Forward-looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking information. The actual results of ScreenPro could differ materially from those anticipated in this forward-looking information as a result of regulatory decisions, competitive factors in the industries in which ScreenPro operates, prevailing economic conditions, changes to ScreenPro's strategic growth plans, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of ScreenPro. Management of ScreenPro believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking information herein are reasonable, but no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct and such forward-looking information should not be unduly relied upon. Any forward-looking information contained in this news release represents ScreenPro's expectations as of the date hereof and is subject to change after such date. ScreenPro disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities legislation.

###

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/80902
Scientists are seeking to better understand the threat posed by an infectious disease affecting deer and related species to inform ways to manage outbreaks on farms and in wildlife.

A team led by researchers at the UK's Roslin Institute will investigate the spread of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), a condition similar to BSE in cattle, in European deer.

They will seek to inform efficient strategies to detect and control infections, and to determine what risks are posed by CWD  which involves misfolding proteins, or prions, in the brain  to farmed livestock and humans.

Their findings may help prevent serious outbreaks of the deadly disease, which has become widespread in wild and farmed deer across North America, with small numbers of cases in Europe in recent years. Farmed animals affected by the disease have to be culled.

The scientists will seek to understand how the disease spreads, by studying details of cases in Norway and Sweden, such as location, age, and movements of affected deer, alongside data on deer populations in these countries.

Mathematical tools will be developed to guide disease detection and predict its potential spread, so that control strategies can be devised and tested.

Researchers will also seek to understand the influence of animals genes on their susceptibility to disease, including whether any major species of wild and farmed deer in Europe are less likely to be affected, or whether variants of particular genes may offer protection to some individuals.

Identifying genes that make animals more resilient to infection could inform selective breeding in farmed animals, or support research towards a vaccine.

Given major differences between the species of wild deer, their population sizes and distribution, habitat and management, lessons learned from incidences of disease in North America may not apply in Europe, so more research is needed, scientists say.

The characteristics of CWD cases in Europe are different from those in North America, suggesting that infection has not spread from imported deer, and that there are several different strains or types of CWD.

Dr Fiona Houston, of Roslin Institute said: "We hope to shed light on how this disease could affect deer farms and wild deer populations  how infection occurs, how it spreads among deer and how it could potentially cross into other species.

"With better insight, we can identify useful approaches to monitor and limit the likelihood of costly outbreaks."

Scientists will also carry out tests to examine the likelihood of the disease spreading between farmed species such as sheep, cattle or pigs.

This will involve studies in mice, and in laboratory tests that mimic transmission between species.
LONDON - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has called off a trip to New Delhi amid surging coronavirus cases in India, as the U.K. imposed a travel ban on most visitors from the vast Asian nation.

A police man stops an auto rickshaw at a check point during a weekend lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus in Prayagraj, India, Sunday, April 18, 2021. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

LONDON - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has called off a trip to New Delhi amid surging coronavirus cases in India, as the U.K. imposed a travel ban on most visitors from the vast Asian nation.

The British and Indian governments said Monday that in the light of the current coronavirus situation," Johnson will not be able to travel to India next week as planned. They said Johnson and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi would speak later this month and planned to meet in person later this year.

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson poses for a photo during a visit to Barratt Homes development site Great Oldbury, in Gloucestershire, England, Monday, April 19, 2021, to launch the government's 95 percent mortgage guarantee scheme. (Jonathan Buckmaster, Pool Photo via AP)

The long-planned trip would have been Johnsons first foreign visit since the start of the coronavirus pandemic more than a year ago. It was originally scheduled for January but was postponed when infections soared in Britain.

British Health Secretary Matt Hancock told lawmakers in the House of Commons that India would be added to a red list of countries with high coronavirus rates. Starting Friday, people who have been in India within the previous 10 days won't be allowed into the U.K. The exceptions are U.K. citizens and returning residents of Britain and Ireland, who face 10 days of mandatory hotel quarantine on arrival.

Millions of people in Britain have roots or relatives in India, and Hancock said that between our two countries we have ties of friendship and family.

I understand the impact of this decision, but I hope the House will concur that we must act, he said.

Hancock said the U.K. has recorded 103 cases of a new virus variant that was first identified in India. Scientists are investigating whether it spreads more rapidly or is more resistant to existing vaccines than the original strain.

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson removes his mask in the beer garden during a visit to The Mount pub and restaurant in Wolverhampton, central England, Monday April 19, 2021, during the Conservative party election campaign. (Jacob King/Pool via AP)

India reported 273,810 new infections on Monday, its highest daily rise since the start of the pandemic. It has now reported more than 15 million infections, second only to the United States.

The Indian Health Ministry also reported 1,619 deaths from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, pushing the toll over 178,769. India has the fourth-highest number of deaths after the U.S., Brazil and Mexico but has a much larger population.

New Delhi, where Johnson and Modi had been due to meet, was placed under a weeklong lockdown Monday as the explosive surge in cases pushed the Indian capitals health system to its limit. The soaring cases and deaths come just months after India thought it had seen the worst of the pandemic.

Johnson said it was only sensible to postpone the trip, given the shape of the pandemic there." He said he hoped Modi would be able to come to Britain for the Group of 7 summit in June, to which India has been invited as a guest.

The strain identified in India, known as B.1.617, is currently designated a variant under investigation by British health authorities, rather than a variant of concern, such as those first identified in southeast England, Brazil and South Africa.

Danny Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College London, said my assumption from everything Ive seen is that it will become a variant of concern.

Follow APs pandemic coverage at:

https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic

https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine

https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
As the country grapples with the worst surge in COVID cases amid the lethal second wave, thousands of people across the country have flooded various social media platforms, requesting authorities and users to arrange or inform about where to find ventilator beds, plasma from recovered patients, oxygen cylinders and drugs like Remdesivir and Tocilizumab, among others.

People were posting pictures of relatives, friends and common people in dire need of ventilator beds, oxygen cylinders, plasma and life-saving injections meant for emergency use authorisation (EUA).

"Bangalore Tweeple.. Is there a bed available somewhere for a covid patient? My uncle is in dire need. O2 levels going down. Checked so many.. All beds full in Banshankari area. Anywhere in Bangalore would be fine," Saurabh Joshi said in a tweet.

Stuti Sardana from Delhi tweeted: "Urgent help needed. A bed and oxygen cylinder are required for a Covid positive young girl who is critical. Oxygen level is going down."

Several others asked users to inform about Remdesivir, currently in short supply.

Delhi chief minister (CM) Arvid Kejriwal on Saturday admitted there is shortage of beds and oxygen amid exponential surge in COVID-19 patients in the national capital.

Addressing a press conference, Mr Kejriwal said that coronavirus is spreading exponentially, and nobody knows when it would reach its peak.

"Delhi is fast running out of beds, oxygen and the life-saving drug Remdesivir as COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours have reached 24,000. The situation is very serious and worrisome. The cases have gone up really fast," he said.

Sensing the shortage, the government has slashed the prices of the 'life-saver' Remdesivir injection by nearly 50%, to Rs2,450 per injection now, according to official sources.

In such difficult times, some came forward on social media to help those suffering from COVID infections.

"If you're in isolation in #Gurgaon or have elders living alone, I can do grocery/medicine runs for you or your family. DM me the things needed and the address. I'll get them, and leave the bag outside your door," tweeted Abhishek Baxi.

India has reported 261,500 fresh COVID cases in the past 24 hours, the highest single-day spike ever, pushing the country's overall COVID tally to 14,788,109, according to the health ministry data released on Sunday.

This is the fourth consecutive day that the country has registered over 200,000 COVID cases. India recorded 234,692 cases on Saturday, 200,739 and 217,353 cases on Thursday and Friday, respectively.

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.
Why We Need to be Concerned With the Student Debt Crisis

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(Photo : Why We Need to be Concerned With the Student Debt Crisis)

Canadian students are experiencing a debt crisis. According to the Hoyes Michalos Bankruptcy Study, student debt contributed to more than 17.6% of Ontario's insolvencies in 2018. If we extrapolate this Canada-wide, this means that in 2018 approximately 22,000 former students filed for bankruptcy to deal with their student debt. If we consider this number in relation to the overall population, the young age of the debtors, and the relative health of the economy, then it's safe to say we're looking at an epidemic.

Most of the expense of post-secondary education is being financed through student loans. This is despite the introduction of the Canada Education Savings Grant program and tax-sheltered RESPs. In fact, over 40% of post-secondary students fund their education through either government-guaranteed Student Loans or private student debt.

The problem is that the debt that post-secondary students accumulate lingers. According to recent statistics, only 34% of bachelor graduates had completely paid off their student loans three years after graduation. Furthermore, Canada Student Loans reports that students usually take between nine and 15 years to pay off their student loans in full. Some say that debt consolidation is a solution, and that indeed can be true for many students. However, most don't get there and instead file for bankruptcy or make a consumer proposal to creditors first.

The student debt crisis is also an issue for the average Canadian. This is because students are the future of the economy. Ergo the future is drowning in debt. As a result, the housing market, the health of the economy, and the banking system's liquidity are at risk.

The Student Debt Crisis' Impact on the Housing Market

Due to the massive debt that graduates are carrying, they are delaying moving out of their parents' homes and buying their own property. Consequently, this delay in home ownership is causing a dip in the housing market. Baby Boomers are particularly affected because they are looking to trade their larger houses for something smaller. Furthermore, banks tend to deny mortgages for students because their credit scores have taken a hit through a combination of minimal credit history and a high student loan debt.

The Health and State of the Economy is Affected by Student Debt

A key metric for determining the health and state of the economy is personal disposable income. Post-secondary students and graduates who are dealing with debt have very little disposable income. This is because most of what they're earning goes towards their daily needs and paying off their loans. Purchases such as cars and higher-end electronics are being put on the sidelines. As a result of people spending less, the economy is moving slower.

The student debt crisis is also causing many entrepreneurial dreams to be put on hold. Entrepreneurs and start-ups help the economy to prosper in a lot of ways. For instance, they help create new businesses, increase employment opportunities, create new wealth, and contribute to a nation's overall social development. However, because the average graduate carries about $37,000 in debt, they are not attracted to the risk of being an entrepreneur. Instead, they want to find a good-paying job as quickly as possible. And even if they wanted to pursue a start-up, their poor credit scores would hold them back from getting a loan for the initial capital.

The Student Debt Crisis Affects the Liquidity of the Banking System

According to recent statistics, over half of millennials have no retirement savings. This is attributed mainly to their student debt. Therefore, many individuals aren't putting money in the bank, which is causing the banking system to become less liquid. As a result of this growing imbalance, the loan-to-deposit ratio is affected, making lenders more risk-averse. Thus, the less liquid the banking system is, the more economic pressure there is on everyone.

Conclusion

The student debt crisis is something everyone should be concerned about. When a large segment of the population can't buy houses and doesn't have disposable income, this affects the economy's health. Additionally, because students have such a heavy debt burden, they aren't putting money in the bank, making the banking system less liquid. Consequently, lenders are more risk-averse, which affects anyone who needs a loan.

See Now: Facebook will use AI to detect users with suicidal thoughts and prevent suicide

 2017 University Herald, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Things are definitely heating up in the premium segment of the smartphone market. Joining the likes of Samsung and Apple at the upper-end of this segment is now Xiaomi which recently launched not one, but two, truly premium devices in the form of the Mi 11 Ultra and the Mi Mix Fold. While the new foldable phone is a genre-defining device in itself, its prohibitive price may subdue its impact on the market.

However, that's not the case for the Mi 11 Ultra, which despite being an expensive device, still manages to hit a price point that's not prohibitive for most buyers looking to spend on a high-end smartphone. The phone is currently available for purchase in China at a starting price of RMB 5,999 (approx 67,000) and is all set to launch in India on April 23. While the India pricing of the phone remains unknown, leaks suggest the phone could be sold in India at a starting price of around Rs 80,000.

Mi 11 Ultra: Bringing the price wars to the premium segment

Now, we're not saying the phone will be cheap at that price point. But, it's also true that if Xiaomi actually manages to keep the price of the Mi 11 Ultra down to the expected levels, it will be seriously undercutting competing devices such as the Galaxy S21 Ultra and iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max in the price department.

Both the Apple iPhones and the Samsung Galaxy flagship mentioned above currently retail well over the Rs 1 Lakh price point. Now for Xiaomi to launch its flagship offering at a significantly lower price would not just be a threat for these flagships, but also a direct attack on these Goliath's of the industry who have been sitting comfortably till now at the top-end of the premium segment of the market.

It will be in a way Xiaomi bringing the price wars -- previously seen in the other segments of the market -- to this high-end segment that until now had not seen any major disruptions.

Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra: All about the specifications and features

Although the price will be a major factor in defining the fortunes of the Mi 11 Ultra in India, the bigger factor will be its specifications and the feature list. Currently, the company has revealed little about the device that's launching in India, but the phone is widely expected to bring with itself the same hardware and pretty much the same feature list as the global variant of the device. If this ends up being the case, the Indian buyer is in for a treat as the Mi 11 Ultra looks second to none both in terms of features and specifications.

From design to the hardware and even cameras, the Mi 11 Ultra looks like a winner, with Xiaomi throwing everything but the kitchen sink into the device to make sure it can impress when sat next to competing Galaxy S21 Ultra and iPhone 12 Pro series phones.

To establish the phone as a truly premium device, the Mi 11 Ultra has been made available in China in both glass and ceramic builds, both with triple cameras on the back alongside a mini rear display. Measuring 8.38 millimetres in thickness and weighing 234 grams, the Mi 11 Ultra also comes with an IP68 rating making it resistant to dust and water ingress at up to 1.5 meters for 30 minutes. Pretty standard stuff, right? We'll let's talk about the stuff that promises to make the phone "Ultra".

To begin with, the Mi 11 Ultra features two displays, with the first being a 6.81-inch AMOLED display that offers support for QHD+ (3200x1440 pixels) resolution and supports up to 120Hz refresh rate. This E4 panel is claimed to handle up to 1 billion colours and is certified for HDR10+ playback with Dolby Vision. The peak brightness on this panel is again claimed to be higher than anything seen on a competing phone -- 1700 nits. For protection, Xiaomi has topped this with a layer of Gorilla Glass Victus.

For the second display, we have a 1.1-inch mini AMOLED display on the back that supports the always-on feature and shows notifications and can even be used for clicking selfies while using the rear camera.

Under the hood, Xiaomi has decided to uses only the most powerful hardware available to Android smartphones right now, with the Mi 11 Ultra hiding beneath the surface the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chipset with an octa-core processor and Adreno 650 GPU. This is paired with 12GB RAM and 256GB storage and it tasked to run MIUI 12 out-of-the-box.

Xiaomi's also gone big with the cameras, with the phone's triple cameras offering some really interesting hardware and features. The set-up is headlined by a 50MP primary camera with an f/2.0 aperture and OIS support. This lens is claimed to be the biggest sensor on a phone to date and offer support for technologies such as Dual Pixel Pro for improved autofocus.

The Indian variant of the Mi 11 Ultra is also expected to get a 48MP periscope camera offering upto 5x optical zoom and a 48MP ultra-wide-angle camera with 128-degree field-of-view. If this is the same phone as the one launched in China, all the rear cameras on the device will be able to record in 8K at 24fps and 4K UHD at upto 60FPS.To top it off, the Mi 11 Ultra also gets a 20MP selfie camera on the front which has been housed within a cutout notch.

But that's not it. Because this is Xiaomi's first truly premium phone, the Mi 11 Ultra has got some special attention in the audio department as well, with Xiaomi using stereo speakers optimized by Harman Kardon on the device. There's also a big battery on the device, with the Mi 11 Ultra getting a 5,000mAh battery pack which is expected to supports 67W fast wired and wireless charging.

Mi 11 Ultra: Why it could be more than just a challenger

Putting all things, including the expected price, hardware and the feature list in context, it is easy to understand why the Mi 11 Ultra could be a serious game-changer for the market. If the same device as the one launched in China, Xiaomi's upcoming premium flagship could make for more than just an interesting choice.

The sum of its rich feature list, powerful spec sheet and aggressive price could ensure that the Mi 11 Ultra isn't just another challenger to the premium segment crown. Instead, it could establish itself as a genre-defining phone much like the Mi Mix Fold and bring some serious heat to the top-end of the market.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 16:44:48|Editor: huaxia

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HANOI, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Four students drowned while swimming at a beach in central Vietnam's Khanh Hoa province, Vietnam News Agency reported.

The victims, part of a larger student group from a local school in Khanh Hoa's Cam Ranh city, went to the beach for a bath on Sunday afternoon. They were swept away by the strong waves and drowned in deep water, the news agency cited local authorities as saying.

Bodies of the victims were found as of Monday morning. The report said drowning incidents occur every year in the area, so the locality has put several warning signs along the beach to keep people alert.

An average of 2,000 children in Vietnam die of drowning every year, making it the leading cause of injury-related deaths for children in the country, according to the country's Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs. Enditem
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP)  ABN AMRO has agreed to pay 480 million euros ($574 million) as part of a settlement with prosecutors who accused the Dutch state-owned bank of serious shortcomings in tackling money laundering, prosecutors and the bank said Monday.

The settlement was made up of a 300 million-euro fine and 180 million euros paid to cover unlawfully obtained gains, prosecutors said.

The fine reflects that as a result of the serious shortcomings, certain clients that engaged in ... criminal activities were able to abuse bank accounts and other services of ABN AMRO for a longer period of time, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service said in a statement.

ABN is not the first major Dutch bank to agree a multimillion euro settlement over lax adherence with a law aimed at clamping down on money laundering and terrorism financing. In 2018, ING paid 775 million euros ($897 million) t o settle a huge money laundering case.

Prosecutors said Monday that the ABN AMRO's breaches are attributed to the bank, but added that their investigation also identified three former members of its board who presumably are effectively responsible for the violations. It did not identify the three and said investigations are continuing into whether there is sufficient evidence to prosecute them.

However, in Denmark Danske Bank said its CEO Chris Vogelzang had resigned after being named as one of the suspects. Gerrit Zalm, a former Dutch finance minister and ex-ABN AMRO board member, also quit Danske Bank's board.

Vogelzang said he was surprised by the Dutch probe.

I left ABN AMRO more than four years ago and am comfortable with the fact that I managed my management responsibilities with integrity and dedication, he said. My status as a suspect does not imply that I will be charged.

ABN AMRO said in a statement that it deeply regrets the situation and recognizes the seriousness of the matter, and that it has fallen short in the fulfilment of its role as gatekeeper aimed at combatting money laundering.

Story continues

CEO Robert Swaak added: This is unacceptable and we take full responsibility for this.

____

Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, contributed.
A TV psychic to the stars has been slammed as 'dishonest' by a judge and hit with a 100,000 court bill after lying about losing his powers in a car crash compensation bid.

Celebrity clairvoyant Maurice Amdur, who predicted Daniel Craig would be James Bond and starred in 'Maurice's Psychic World' on Sky TV, damaged his head and spine when his Jaguar was struck from behind at Marble Arch roundabout in January 2015.

Mr Amdur, 56, told Central London County Court he provides 'psychic readings to the rich and famous around the world'.

He said the prang had a catastrophic effect on his life and his work as a clairvoyant - stripping him of the vital concentration needed to 'read' for clients.

He brought a 250,000 damages bid against the insurers for the motorist who hit him, Ilya Krylov, also claiming crash injuries made him impotent and cost him his relationship with his then girlfriend.

But Judge Elizabeth Backhouse, whilst accepting Mr Amdur was injured in the crash, threw out his claim and handed him a 100,000 legal bill after finding he made a 'fundamentally dishonest...untrue statement' that he couldn't work as a psychic reader for two years after his accident.

Maurice Amdur (pictured) alleged he became impotent, temporarily lost the use of his arms and was transformed into a hermit by a crash but a judge determined he had been dishonest

The court heard the celebrity psychic was on his way home from collecting a brand new 80,000 Jaguar XKS convertible - one of only 14 in the world - when he was rear shunted by Mr Krylov.

After the accident he claimed he was racked by pain and reduced to living like a hermit, unable to socialise or work properly.

He also told the court he lost his girlfriend because of the accident, explaining: 'It didn't work out because I wasn't well.

'I became impotent, I had performance anxiety because I couldn't use my arms.'

Mr Amdur, of St John's Wood, London, who also appeared in the Channel Four show 'Four Rooms' in which antique dealers compete against each other, says he has 'read for royalty, heads of state and movie stars', and told the court he began to recognise his strange powers from the age of just four.

'I don't know why I'm a reader, it's weird and freaky,' he told the judge.

Mr Amdur pictured outside the Mayor's and City of London Court. He has clocked up multiple TV and radio appearances in both England and the US, and was on ITV's This Morning in 2009

On top of his clairvoyant skills, Mr Amdur works as a 'face reader' - detecting a person's strengths and weaknesses by examining their features.

He spent time living and working on the west coast of the United States and says he has 'read the faces' of a cluster of A-list stars including Naomi Campbell, Al Pacino and Barbara Streisand.

He clocked up multiple TV and radio appearances in both England and the US, and appeared on ITV's This Morning in 2009 when he 'read' the faces of interior designer and TV personality, Linda Barker, as well as foretelling the future for the show's then presenters, Philip Schofield and Fern Britton.

The insurers' lawyers accepted Mr Amdur suffered soft tissue injuries to his neck and spine, but disputed his claims that the crash also caused major damage to both his shoulders, and lasting chest pain.

They also denied claims that his symptoms lingered on for over two years, suggesting they had cleared up within a year.

A key issue in the case was whether Mr Amdur's crash injuries stalled his psychic reading work for two years - as he insisted.

Mr Amdur when he 'read' the faces of interior designer and TV personality, Linda Barker, as well as foretelling the future for This Morning's then presenters, Phil Schofield and Fern Britton

In evidence, Mr Amdur told the court he couldn't get back to work as a psychic until March or April 2017 'as he felt he did not have the mental sharpness and ability to concentrate sufficiently to do a good job'.

The judge accepted the crash had caused the clairvoyant acute pain in his neck and back, as well as headaches and a numb right arm.

But she found Mr Amdur made an 'untrue statement' in declaring that he couldn't work as a psychic reader for two years after his accident, and had in fact done readings during that time.

Sketching out his case, Judge Backhouse explained: 'His case is that he was in such severe pain from the injuries sustained in the accident that he was not able to work offering psychic readings for two years after it, as he could not concentrate properly.

'He said that he 'just lay on his couch' and did not go out except for treatment in the first few months.

'I am prepared to accept that Mr Amdur does believe that he has a 'gift' and that he considers that he behaves with integrity when working as a clairvoyant, unlike others in the field who are 'charlatans' as he called them.

'It does seem to be the case that Mr Amdur has had the TV exposure he claims and he appears to have enjoyed a wealthy lifestyle, judging by his assets.

'He considers that he was on the cusp of a major upturn in his career as he had a number of opportunities for TV work at the time of the accident and in the months after it but he was not well enough to take those up.

'I am prepared to accept that he may not have felt well enough to do as many as usual or to work to normal capacity, but I am satisfied that he did some readings,' she said.

'Clearly he must have known that he did that work and I find that in this respect he has been dishonest.

'I am also satisfied that this is fundamental dishonesty in that the dishonesty went to a substantial part of the claim,' added the judge.

'For the reasons I have already given I have found that this was an untrue statement and that Mr Amdur was able to, and did do some psychic readings following the accident'.

The psychic - who the judge said 'strenuously denies all allegations of dishonesty' - would have been awarded 10,454 for his crash injuries, but his entire claim was dismissed as a 'punitive' step because it was undermined by 'fundamental dishonesty'.

On top of defeat in court, Mr Amdur must now pick up the costs of the trial, which lawyers in the case said are likely to run beyond 100,000.
[April 19, 2021] Sidley Strengthens Executive Compensation Practice in New York with Addition of David Mollo-Christensen and Eric Wolf

Sidley Austin LLP is pleased to announce that David Mollo-Christensen and Eric Wolf are joining the firm's New York office as partners in its Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation practice. Mr. Mollo-Christensen joins Sidley from Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, and Mr. Wolf will join from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP. Mr. Mollo-Christensen counsels on a broad range of executive compensation and employee benefits matters, with a particular focus on private equity and public mergers and acquisitions. He has represented public, strategic, and private equity clients in connection with transactions ranging from targeted investments valued in the tens of millions of dollars to global public mergers valued in the tens of billions dollars. He also advises companies in connection with IPOs, SPACs, spin-offs, and joint ventures. His extensive experience includes negotiating employment and separation agreements, designing equity-based and other incentive arrangements, and advising companies regarding SEC (News - Alert) and federal securities law compliance and disclosure. Mr. Wolf's practice focuses on executive compensation ad benefits-related matters that arise in connection with corporate transactions including mergers and acquisitions, initial public offerings, and joint ventures. He represents private equity sponsors and their portfolio companies with respect to compensation structures and employment arrangements. He has advised on multi-billion dollar transactions for private equity clients across a variety of sectors including technology and financial services. He also regularly advises public companies and their executives in connection with employment, severance, and equity-based arrangements.



"The addition of Dave and Eric continues our growth in the New York market," said Sam Gandhi, managing partner of Sidley's New York office. "They are critical to help us scale our practice in New York to meet the high demand in corporate deal making that we are experiencing. They are highly valued resources and will be a great fit with our collaborative culture." "Bringing Dave and Eric's experience together to work on complex corporate transactions and the compensation and benefits issues that are associated with those deals, will enhance the value we provide clients involved in such matters," said Brian Fahrney, co-leader of the firm's global M&A and Private Equity practice. "Their deep knowledge across multiple industries will strengthen our high-growth corporate transactions and private equity work."

With 2,000 lawyers in 20 offices around the globe, Sidley is a premier legal adviser for clients across the spectrum of industries. Follow Sidley on Twitter (News - Alert) @SidleyLaw. Attorney Advertising - Sidley Austin LLP, One South Dearborn, Chicago, IL 60603, +1 312 853 7000. Sidley and Sidley Austin refer to Sidley Austin LLP and affiliated partnerships as explained at www.sidley.com/disclaimer. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005896/en/

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Parents are on high alert after hundreds of youngsters were struck down with gastroenteritis in childcare centres across Victoria.

The highly infectious stomach virus is on the rise across the state with outbreaks of at least two cases in almost 400 childcare settings since the start of 2021, according to the latest department of health figures.

Cases have soared by 140 in the last month and remains at a rate four times higher than average for this time of year.

The city of Geelong south-west of Melbourne is the worst affected region with 29 outbreaks, followed by the Melbourne regions of Casey (17) and Wyndham (16) while another 40 have been recorded in the city's eastern outskirts.

The recent alarming spike has sparked concern from the state's health officials.

Almost 400 childcare centres across Victoria have recorded gastro outbreaks so far this year (stock image)

Victoria's Communicable Disease executive directive Dr Bruce Bolam says childcare workers, youngsters and their families can all contribute to limiting the spread of the virus.

'Gastroenteritis can spread quickly through settings such as early childhood education and care services, where children play and interact closely with each other and can readily spread their bugs,' Dr Bolam said.

'It is important that early childhood services have good hygiene practices in place and to respond quickly with thorough cleaning if any children become ill.'

Handwashing with soap and water is the best personal hygiene method to minimise the spread of the virus rather than alcohol-based sanitisers, which are less effective in killing the stomach bug.

'A good old-fashioned scrub with soap and warm water is the best way to remove the gastro virus from our hands and prevent passing it on to infect others,' Dr Bolam said.

The port city of Geelong (pictured) south-west of Melbourne is the worst-hit region with 29 outbreaks in child care centres

GP Dr Abhi Verma has seen a high number of cases in recent weeks at his practice in Melbourne's outer south-eastern suburbs.

He fears people have become complacent with hygiene practices in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

'Perhaps now with a bit of relaxation of social distancing and  people not being as vigilant with hand hygiene compared to this time last year, things might have shifted a little bit,' he told the Age.

Gastro symptoms include nausea/vomiting, diarrhoea, fever, abdominal pain, headache and muscle aches, which can take up to three days to develop and usually last one to two days, sometimes longer.

Parents are advised to keep their sick youngsters at home for at least two days after gastro symptoms ease (stock image)

Parents are urged to keep their children at home for 48 hours after symptoms cease as they may still be infectious.

The same advice applies to childcare workers struck down by the virus.

Anyone recovering from gastroenteritis should avoid visiting hospitals, early childhood services and aged care facilities to avoid spreading the infection to the most vulnerable.

Any person living in a household with someone with gastro should also avoid visiting these high-risk facilities until at least 48 hours after the last person in the household has recovered.
Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi Monday met the UAE Minister of Tolerance and Coexistence Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan and discussed enhancement of bilateral trade, investment in Pakistan especially in hospitality industry

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 19th Apr, 2021 ) :Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi Monday met the UAE Minister of Tolerance and Coexistence Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan and discussed enhancement of bilateral trade, investment in Pakistan especially in hospitality industry.

The meeting took place during the three-day visit of Foreign Minister Qureshi to the UAE started Sunday.

"Good meeting with H.E. Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, UAE Minister of Tolerance and Coexistance and Commissioner General of Expo-2020 Dubai and indeed, widely recognised as a great friend of Pakistan, whose role in strengthening Pakistan and UAE ties is much appreciated," the foreign minister said on Twitter.

Qureshi said during the meeting, they also exchanged views on the important role played by Pakistan diaspora in the success of the UAE and further employment opportunities for Pakistan professionals in the UAE.

He said Pakistan also looked forward to a great Expo 2020, scheduled from October 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022.
Soon after last November's election, an odd meme took hold. On the conservative right, it had suddenly become fashionable to hate Fox News, largely because of Trump-supporters' disappointment in how the channel reported the election results and the aftermath. Many people were advocating boycotting Fox News and even ditching it altogether. I argued then that no news outlet is perfect and that Fox News represented the only major competitive mainstream news outlet that had not become totally corrupt and completely captured by the radical left.

One of my blog posts about this development at American Thinker, to put it mildly, was not well received. In fact, I got more blowback because of that piece than from anything else I had written at AT since 2007. A lot of it was ugly.

The ratings for the three major cable news channels  Fox, CNN, and MSNBC  also shifted during the three months after the election. For the first time in almost two decades, Fox News lost its commanding lead, and CNN and MSNBC were ahead.

Eventually, that changed, and Fox is now back on top  comfortably. Meanwhile, CNN has lost 50% of its target audience since January  a huge deficit.

As the Biden administration settles in, the core conservative opinion programs on Fox News  anchored by Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Steve Hilton, Mark Levin, Jesse Watters, Jeanine Pirro, and others  and the A-list conservative contributors who constitute a majority of the talking head guests on the channel  are unrivaled anywhere.



Tucker Carlson, who has the #1 rated program on Fox News. (Source: Fox News.)

Of particular note is the work of Tucker Carlson. His nightly program Tucker Carlson Tonight has fearlessly taken on the articles of faith of the woke, the cancel culture, and other elements of the Marxist left that now controls the Democrat party and virtually all of the power centers of modern life including academia, the media, and popular culture. What the left doesn't yet totally dominate, like the Supreme Court, it is trying to pack so it will have a permanent leftist majority.

In recent weeks, Carlson has been the target of increasing attacks  including demands that Fox News fire him and that advertisers boycott his program. In response, Fox News has given Carlson unequivocal support and three additional new programs every week on the subscription Fox Nation internet channel with new episodes uploaded on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Ironically, many of the harshest critics of Fox News after the election now routinely tweet what Carlson is doing and share clips from his show.

The Next Revolution with Steve Hilton on Sundays has also been a standout. In a series of exclusive reports, Hilton has broken major news on Dr. Anthony Fauci's involvement in supporting gain of function virus research including in Communist China. According to many observers, that is related to the genesis or cause of the Wuhan virus, as either a bioweapon or an unintended release of the results of dangerous deadly research that was covered up by the Communist Chinese.

Meanwhile, Newsmax TV and One America News  the two other smaller conservative news channels  have yet to live up to the expectations of the Fox News detractors. In fact, Newsmax gave the bum's rush to My Pillow founder Mike Lindell when he appeared on the channel and tried to talk about election fraud.

In the case of CNN, last week, Project Veritas released secretly recorded videos of a CNN technical producer in which the individual admitted that CNN's mission was to destroy Donald Trump and also hype the coronavirus pandemic to make Trump look bad leading up to the election. The mainstream media ignored this news, but Veritas founder James O'Keefe appeared three nights in a row on Hannity's Fox News program to show the videos and discuss them.

By the way, tonight  Monday, April 19  at 9 P.M. E.T., Hannity's program on Fox News will devote the entire hour to the host's sit-down interview with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago. It will be the former president's first in-person on-camera interview since he left office. Most of the rest of his interviews since January have been on the phone on Fox News.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about another instance of a black eye for CNN when its departing daytime host, Brooke Baldwin, gave a series of interviews criticizing CNN as male-dominated and not sufficiently respectful of its female employees, especially the on-air talent like her. Fox News, meanwhile, was the first cable news channel to elevate a woman, Suzanne Scott, to the top leadership position in 2018. Scott had worked her way up through the company since it started a quarter-century ago. This news got hardly any coverage in the MSM.



Suzanne Scott, CEO of Fox News and the Fox Business Network.

People are obviously entitled to their own opinions about cable news channels and everything else. But I suggest that I was correct in sticking with Fox News last fall and suggesting that the momentary ratings high tide would eventually turn again against CNN and MSNBC and Fox News would rebound. These days, with the Republican Party largely ineffective in opposing the Biden administration's appalling overreach, Fox News is the closest thing to a viable mainstream loyal opposition that we have in this country.

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.
A brave mother who had four limbs amputated and was given a five per cent chance of surviving after contracting sepsis admits she 'wished she was dead' due to the illness.

Allison Friday, 56, from Hartlepool, County Durham, was put into a coma in February last year and her family was told to prepare for the worst after she suddenly fell ill overnight.

The former drugs trial manager had meningococcal septicaemia, where bacteria enters the blood stream, damages blood vessels and causes bleeding into the skin and organs. This triggered sepsis, a life-threatening response to infection that can cause organ failure and death.

Allison remarkably survived the sepsis despite doctors' bleak predictions and spent 14 months in hospital, but she is learning how to walk again after having both her arms and legs amputated.

Allison Friday, 56, was put into a coma in February last year and her family was tragically told she only had a five per cent chance of survival after she suddenly fell ill overnight

She is now looking forward to life with her partner David Richardson, 55, and three children, but admits there were many moments of despair when the illness struck, when she wished she was dead.

After taking her first steps in the Easter sunshine, Allison is determined to raise awareness for sepsis, saying: 'We've endured 14 months of highly emotional events that have tested our family to their absolute limits - ones you never think you'll experience.

'But now I'm looking to raise awareness of the devastating impact of sepsis. It strikes at random and is more common than people think. I'd like to show what amputees must go through.'

Allison managed to walk 40 yards outside her house last month, which she said has spurred her on to build a future with David, her sons, aged 24 and 22, and David's 24-year-old daughter.

She said: 'People are often saying I'm an inspiration for reaching that far - but I just had to do it. You just have to.'

Allison and her partner David, who has been furloughed since December from his job as an aviation ground operations manager, have also launched a GoFundMe page to help her regain her independence.

Allison, from Hartlepool, County Durham, (pictured with partner David) had meningococcal septicaemia, which triggered sepsis, a life-threatening response to infection

The mother remarkably survived the sepsis despite doctors' bleak predictions, but is learning how to walk again after having both her arms and legs amputated (pictured on her first walk)

They are asking kind strangers to help raise 25,000 towards the 40,000 they need for specialist equipment, including Cyborg-like Star Wars stormtrooper hands, similar to those seen in video games.

Allison explained: 'Arm manufacturers have hooked up with Disney and Marvel to get permission to make replicas of Cyborg arms. They are great, but they cost 15,000.'

On January 31, 2020, Allison was looking forward to starting a new job and going on her dream holiday to Croatia when she went to sleep that evening.

But less than 24 hours later, the mother had entered a coma and her family were tragically told she only had a five per cent chance of survival.

When Allison first began feeling groggy on January 31 last year, she thought she was developing flu but the next morning could not get out of bed and found a rash on her arms, legs and buttocks.

David immediately came home from work and took her straight to University Hospital of North Tees, in Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham.

WHAT IS MENINGOCOCCAL SEPTICAEMIA? Bacterial meningitis and meningococcal septicaemia are not very common, but when they happen, they can be very serious and can quickly lead to complications such as brain damage, skin damage and amputations, and even death. However, most children and young people make a full recovery if they are treated early. Bacterial meningitis occurs when bacteria infect the lining of the brain (the meninges) and the spinal cord. Meningococcal septicaemia  or blood poisoning  occurs when the bacteria in the blood multiply uncontrollably. Meningococcal disease can appear as meningococcal meningitis or meningococcal septicaemia, or a combination of both. Source: NICE Advertisement

Her work as a clinical project manager on unregistered medicines and past work as a chemist meant Allison already suspected the redness could be a sign of meningitis.

But doctors diagnosed meningococcal septicaemia, which then triggered sepsis, and Allison was told her 'only hope' of survival was being put into a coma, which doctors did at 9pm on February 1.

Allison explained: 'My body was going into multi-organ failure and they said my only hope was to be put into a coma immediately to filtrate my blood.

'My chances of survival were put at only five per cent, so I said I had to speak to my family first.'

Her older son phoned from Edinburgh, while her stepdaughter rushed to hospital, as did her younger son, who was in London.

Allison admitted she can't remember the 20 days she spent in a coma and said she was in 'excruciating pain' when she was first admitted to hospital.

She continued: 'I was already in excruciating pain.

'From the moment I arrived at the hospital door until eight weeks later - even though I was conscious that first day and after my 20 days in the coma - I can't remember any of it except some vivid dreams, where I thought I was swanning about as the Queen and competing in TV survival shows.

'Any knowledge I have of the rest of those two months comes from what people have told me.'

David, who has been with Allison for three years, heartbreakingly said he was adamant that he and the three children should stick together if they lost Allison.

He said: 'I love them all and I wanted them to know we would still be a family unit whatever happened.'

After Allison was put into a coma, David said he was told to 'prepare for the worst', but Allison kept fighting for weeks.

David continued: 'Four hours later, at 1am, the doctor said she wasn't responding and told us to prepare for the worst.

'But she kept going, although for about three weeks they were still rating her survival chances at only five per cent. Every day I'd say hopefully to the doctor, 'Do you think it's maybe just six per cent yet?'

'Meanwhile, blackness was spreading up her limbs and part of her nose, because the tissue was dying.

David Richardson, 55,, Allison's partner of three years, said he was adamant that he, his daughter and Allison's two sons should stick together even if they lost Allison

Allison (pictured as sepsis killed her leg tissue) said she can't remember the 20 days she spent in a coma and said she was in 'excruciating pain' when she was first admitted to hospital

'First I knew she'd lose her foot, and I said, 'Can you save the shin?' Then the shin turned black and I'd ask about saving the knee - and so it carried on, as all her limbs turned black.

'Her kidney and liver function were also shot.'

After three weeks, Allison was brought out of the coma and transferred to the James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire, on February 20 for her legs and arms to be amputated.

Allison has no memory of being told that her limbs were dead, but said that friends told her she wanted to die rather than face life as a quadruple amputee.

But David showed no signs of giving up and showed her positive videos about life with prosthetic limbs to try and keep her fighting.

During March and April last year, Allison had six operations and more than 30 hours of surgery, which saw both her legs removed below the knee, both arms below the elbow, as well as the tip of her nose and part of a nostril.

Covid-19 restrictions meant her children were only allowed to visit her in hospital for one of her son's birthdays in May, while David went to see her occasionally during her 14 months as an in-patient.

But in April, one of Allison's sons developed Covid and shattered his femur after falling over, which needed pinning with a metal rod.

He was moved from hospital in Leeds to the ward next to her in Middlesbrough, and was wheeled in to see her - which was the first time he saw his mother 'with no arms or legs'.

Allison said: 'I was relieved to see him. It was very emotional and tearful and I went straight into mum mode.

'It was hard for him, too, because it was the first time he'd seen me with no arms or legs.'

Allison also endured a series of infections and became dangerously anaemic, while prosthetic services were also suspended amid the pandemic.

But she was still able to join her family every night using video stream on an iPad, which saw her family set her at the table and on the sofa with them.

Allison has no memory of being told her limbs were dead (pictured: Allison's arm with sepsis), but said friends told her she wanted to die rather than face life as a quadruple amputee

During her 14 months as an in-patient, Allison also endured a series of infections and became dangerously anaemic, while prosthetic services were also suspended amid the pandemic

Allison continued: 'I don't know how I would have lasted without being able to see my family that way.'

Finally, in November last year, Allison was fitted with prosthetic limbs in London at Queen Mary's Hospital, Roehampton.

Her appointment was earlier than she had expected because the wounds on her bottom caused by tissue dying meant Allison could not be hoisted into a wheelchair.

But receiving the prosthetic limbs proved difficult for Allison, as she admitted that seeing her legs was a 'reality' check about how her life would be.

She explained: 'It was actually very tough to take in, because seeing my legs was like a reality check that this was how the rest of my life was going to be. I had to wrestle with many psychological battles.'

Allison was finally allowed to go home on March 24, after her physio and rehab had also been disrupted by coronavirus.

Speaking about returning home, she explained: 'Seeing our home was still psychologically difficult, because it was a different me, who couldn't live in the same way as before and needed everything adapted to a new way of living.'

Allison is still facing difficulties as her buttock tissue is still healing, which could take a year, and makes sitting unbearably painful, meaning Allison has to lie on her side when she is awake and sleep on her back, where pressure is less than when seated.

She continued: 'It should eventually get better over the next year, but to go from a bed or sofa to standing I have to psyche myself up and throw myself forward. It takes a long, long time to accept.

'I have to really concentrate to stand up. It's hard work and painful because my legs feel clamped. I even feel pains in my toes, which are phantom as I don't have any.

'Things are so tiring that if I just make toast I literally then have to sleep for two hours.

'Showering and getting dressed in the mornings and getting ready for bed takes an hour and a half with all the medications, too.

'I have physio at home three times a week, an occupational therapist once, and a district nurse.'

When Allison fell ill, she had recently resigned from her job to start a new one, but her new employers withdrew the offer because of her illness - leaving her with no employment protection.

In November last year, amid Covid-19 delays, Allison was fitted with prosthetic limbs in London at Queen Mary's Hospital, Roehampton

The couple started a GoFundMe to help raise 25,000 towards the 40,000 they need for specialist equipment, including Cyborg-like Star Wars stormtrooper hands for Allison

Allison has been living on benefits, savings and David's furloughed wage, which has prompted the couple to turn to crowdfunding to raise money for the equipment they desperately need.

Allison is currently managing with 'claw hand' prosthetics, which she said do not give the same fine motor skills possible using Cyborg-style versions.

She also needs 2,000 for a travel wheelchair, home adaptations including a 12,000 lift, a 8,000 wet room with an electric dryer, and a special 1,200 bidet-like seat available from the USA.

Unable to use a kettle or cutlery, she also needs a hot water tap, an electronic jar opener and a guillotine for chopping.

The couple have already borrowed money to fund some of the equipment, but with Allison losing her job, their finances are very limited.

Allison, who is now trying to raise awareness for amputees, said: 'You see amputees, but never fully appreciate what they've been through and what they need and face.

'Now my aim is also to raise awareness for amputees and for those who have suffered a ravaging illness like sepsis, as well as promoting the magnificent work of the UK Sepsis Trust and the NHS, which is why I started my iomwbh.blogspot.com blog.

'It's been a long and very hard learning process for me, but I've had my first walk of hope and now there's some positive light at the end of the tunnel.

'Now I'm hoping to raise enough for the travel wheelchair so I can go in a car and actually be driven away from my home, and my goal now is to hopefully have day trips where I can walk, and maybe another family break somewhere one day.'

To help Allison's fighting fund for equipment, please visit Allison's blog iomwbh.blogspot.com.
Two passengers aboard a United Airlines plane that had to make an emergency landing after one of its engines blew apart in February are suing the airline.

One of their lawyers described the incident as "terror" that "lasts a lifetime," Fox News reported. In separate lawsuits filed in Chicago last Friday, Joseph McGinley of Honolulu, Hawaii, and Jonathan Strawn of Sioux City, Iowa, said they had suffered personal, emotional, and financial injuries. United Airlines is based in Chicago.

The two passengers were on the flight heading to Honolulu from Denver, Colorado when the Boeing 777's engine blew apart on Feb. 20.

Passengers mentioned hearing an explosion on the United Airlines' plane and seeing a flash of light during the incident. No injuries were reported.

READ NEXT: Maskless Climate Czar John Kerry on a Plane Sparks Outrage

Two Passengers Sued United Airlines

Passengers Joseph McGinley and Jonathan Strawn are both seeking a judgment above a $50,000 limit, The Hill reported.

"Imagine as a passenger looking out the window of a plane and helplessly watching the engine on fire," said Chicago Attorney Robert Clifford. Clifford is overseeing one of the cases filed by the two passengers, USA Today reported.

Clifford's law firm also represents the families of the 72 passengers who died when Boeing 737 MAX crashed in Ethiopia in 2019.

United Airlines Flight 328 Engine Explosion

A video that circulated on Twitter was able to cover an airplane's engine on fire. The fire was seen at the engine's end while it continuously shakes and somehow functions despite the explosion.

A United Airlines Boeing 777 engine on fire. This was moments before it made an emergency landing. One of its engines caught fire moments after takeoff from Denver. Anxious moments but no one was harmed. pic.twitter.com/jAIyf7AQDK  Kariuki (@KiloFxTrot) February 21, 2021

People on the ground witnessed huge chunks of the aircraft dropping, just missing crushing one home and a truck. The engine reportedly dropped debris in Commons Park and across some neighborhoods in Broomfield, Colorado.

Passengers of the said United Airlines flight feared that the plane would crash after the said explosion. The aircraft took off from Denver International Airport, and it was forced to make an emergency landing at the same airport shortly after takeoff.

United Airlines said it was the second incident of a mechanical failure for the same day. The company said a United flight from Cancun, Mexico, to Houston had to be diverted to New Orleans after also experiencing trouble.

In January last year, a United flight bound for Los Angeles also returned to Newark Liberty International Airport minutes after takeoff after the engine caught fire.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it is already investigating the United plane's latest engine failure. However, the NTSB noted that microscopic examination supports early suspicions that a fan blade snapped inside the engine due to wear and tear.

After the incident, the Federal Aviation Administration has ordered a review on all planes that have the same type of engine that malfunctioned on the Boeing 777. United Airlines has yet to comment on the latest cases filed against the company.

READ MORE: United Airlines Passenger Who Lied About COVID-19 Symptoms Dies Mid-Flight

WATCH: United Airlines Flight 328 Passenger Files Lawsuit Claiming 'Severe Emotional Distress' - From CBS Denver
Stefani Reynolds/Getty Images

Sen. Ted Cruz is once again facing backlash - this time for refusing to wear a face mask while on the job.

Last week, the Texas senator announced that he will no longer wear a mask while in the U.S. Capitol or when on the Senate floor. In an interview with CNN, he said his decision was due to everybody in the Senate having already received their COVID-19 vaccinations. He also quoted the Centers for Disease Control, which recently said small groups of vaccinated people can gather without masks.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews is in 'good spirits' despite delaying his return to work until at least June, his deputy says.

Victoria's premier Daniel Andrews' recovery from a fall is progressing well, despite his decision not to return to the job until at least June, his deputy says.

Mr Andrews suffered at least five broken ribs and an acute compression fracture of the T7 vertebra when he slipped on the steps of a holiday home on March 9.

The 48-year-old was released from hospital on March 15 and has been recovering at home since.

Victorian Daniel Premier is in 'good spirits' according to Deputy Premier James Merlino

Mr Andrews has been recovering from his injuries at home since he was released from hospita on March 15

At the time he said he would require at least six weeks off to recover, which suggested a return late in April.

But Mr Andrews took to Twitter on Sunday to confirm he would miss the state's budget on May 20 and will instead return in June.

Deputy Premier James Merlino, who has been acting premier in his absence, said the delay was based purely on doctor's advice.

'You don't mess with a back injury,' he told reporters on Monday, adding the premier was 'very very lucky' to avoid permanent spinal damage in the fall.

Mr Merlino described Mr Andrews' recovery as 'long' and 'painful' but said he was progressing well.

'He's in good spirits. The positive thing out of the announcement yesterday is that Dan's got a clear path back to getting back on his feet and working full time as premier and that will occur in June,' he said.

Deputy Premier James Merlino (pictured) said the Victorian Premier was in 'good spirits'

'In the meantime, every member of cabinet, every member of government is not wasting a day.

'We've been working on the state budget for the last few months, we'll be putting the final touches on it over the next few weeks.'

Mr Merlino said he is in regular contact with Mr Andrews on important issues but, for the most part, he was leaving him to focus on his recovery.

'We need him fit and firing, ready to go when he's back in June.'

On Sunday, Mr Andrews said he had been diligent with his physiotherapy and was now able to walk for an hour a day.

Mr Andrews will now miss the state budget on May 20 as is return to work is delayed to at least June

'A couple of weeks ago when I started daily walks, I could only manage about 15 minutes,' he said.

Mr Andrews said while it was frustrating to be away from work, there was no alternative.

'You only get one chance to properly recover from serious injuries,' he said.

'We just have to wait until the ribs and spinal fracture have properly healed.'

As part of his recovery, Mr Andrews is undergoing regular physiotherapy sessions and is required to wear a brace at all times except when sleeping.

He thanked the health professionals involved in his recovery and all Victorians who had sent messages of love and support.
Michigan Democrats have promised that any bills that attempt to place new restrictions on voting won't get past Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

"Those bills will not get signed into law," Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, a Democrat, told NBC News of the proposals. He called the efforts part of an "anti-voter, anti-democratic participation movement that is sweeping Republican-led legislatures across the nation."

But the state's GOP lawmakers, who enjoy majorities in both chambers but not enough to override a veto, have a unique option that could allow them to enact sweeping changes to elections in a critical presidential battleground without the governor's support: a little-used quirk in the state's ballot initiative process.

Its like this special loophole where they get to cram through a whole raft of bills, said Nancy Wang, executive director of Voters Not Politicians, the group that led the effort to use a ballot initiative to create an independent redistricting commission in the state a few years ago.

Under the Michigan Constitution, citizens can put an initiative on the ballot if they gather a certain number of signatures  at least 8 percent of the total number of votes cast in the last gubernatorial race. This year, that would be about 340,000 voters' signatures.

But before an initiative reaches the ballot, the state Legislature has the ability to pass the proposed law with simple majority vote in each chamber, and such a measure cannot be vetoed. This process is rarely used: Just nine other initiatives have become law this way in the last 58 years, according to the state.

President Joe Biden won Michigan in November, flipping it back blue after former President Donald Trump's upset victory there in 2016.

Since Biden's win, state Republicans have repeatedly cast doubt on the integrity of the election while entertaining Trump's lie that the presidency was stolen from him. Trump's close ally Rudy Giuliani, the lawyer, was given unusual power in a legislative committee hearing last year to call "witnesses" and make allegations of fraud that the former president's legal team was unable to prove in court.

There is no evidence of widespread fraud in U.S. elections, and by all official accounts, the 2020 election was secure and the results certified accurate.

IMAGE: Election challengers in Detroit (Carlos Osorio / AP)

Republicans have proposed 39 election bills that include new voter ID requirements, drop-box restrictions and a prohibition on officials mailing out absentee ballot applications or offering prepaid postage on mail ballots. Hearings are scheduled to begin next week.

Not all of the Republican-proposed bills would limit voting access  one aims to create a weekend day of early voting, for example  but advocates and Democrats have excoriated the bulk of proposals as designed to make voting harder, particularly for people of color, lower income individuals and people with disabilities. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, argued Thursday in a Zoom press conference that the few expansive bills included in the package were written ineffectively and meant to sugarcoat other restrictive laws.

Republican state Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey said in a March radio interview that the bills are "all focused on the tagline or headline of making it easier to vote and harder to cheat" and will restore confidence in elections.

The GOP measures have earned pushback from businesses in the state, mirroring the wave of corporations defending voting access nationwide. On Tuesday, 37 leaders from major Michigan-based companies including General Motors, Ford Motor Company and Quicken Loans/Rocket Mortgage signed a letter opposing efforts that would make it harder to vote and calling for bipartisan election administration. That same day, elected officials, faith leaders and activists gathered at the Michigan Capitol to protest the proposals.

'We have other plans to make sure it becomes law'

Ron Weiser, chair of the Michigan Republican Party, raised the prospect of using the ballot initiative process to enact changes to the state's elections during a late March event for the North Oakland Republican Club, where he also made headlines for calling the state's top three officials  Whitmer, Benson and Attorney General Dana Nessel, all Democratic women  those three witches."

If its not signed by the governor, then we have other plans to make sure it becomes law before 2022, Weiser said of the voting bills under consideration in remarks that were posted on Facebook. That plan includes taking that legislation and getting the signatures necessary for a legislative initiative so it can become law without Gretchen Whitmers signature.

Shirkey and Republican state Sen. Lana Theis, who wrote two of the bills, did not return emails requesting interviews.

At the March event, Weiser said there was also a plan to fund the signature-gathering process. Ballot initiatives are expensive endeavors: Several recent successful or pending high-profile ballot initiatives have ranged from $3 million to more than $16 million, according to campaign finance filings.

Reached by NBC News, Weiser said in a statement that the state GOP wouldn't fund a ballot initiative itself.

"We are committed to making sure it is easier to voter, harder to cheat, and reassure all voters that their vote is protected," he said. "We plan to support initiative efforts if Governor Whitmer chooses to put partisanship ahead of the overwhelming support for Voter ID."

Americans support the concept of voter ID laws, polling suggests. Michigan already has a photo ID requirement, though voters can currently sign an affidavit to vote if they don't have ID. The proposal to tighten ID requirements is just one element of the broad package of bills.

An outside group, the Rescue Michigan Coalition, formed this year vowing to back a ballot initiative to change the states election laws. The group did not respond to a request for comment, but its online proposals suggest it wants to go farther than lawmakers in some ways, like fully banning drop boxes.

The independent redistricting commission supported by Wang's group, as well as another ballot initiative to institute expansive measures like automatic voter registration and no-excuse mail voting, made it through the regular process and onto the ballot in 2018. Both passed with strong support from voters, something state Democrats say indicates a public preference on the GOP-proposed restrictions.

Michigan's in a little bit of a different place than other states, because we weighed in on this. Our voters had had a say in this just over two years ago, and 67 percent came out and said, We want more access to the ballot box and less barriers, said state Sen. Jeremy Moss, a Democrat.

'Their gerrymandered districts are going to go away'

Wang said she believes those 2018 initiatives are part of why Republicans are considering these restrictions. The state's legislative maps  which experts say are gerrymandered to benefit Republicans  will be redrawn this year by an independent redistricting commission following last year's census.

They know that their gerrymandered districts are going to go away, and that theyre going to lose seats," she said.

This wouldn't be the first push by conservatives to sidestep the governor via ballot initiative. Last year, a group called Unlock Michigan set out to limit Whitmers emergency powers in protest of the pandemic shutdown she ordered. The effort was largely bankrolled by a nonprofit with close ties to Senate Republicans in the state, The Detroit News reported. Weiser also personally donated $100,000 to the Unlock Michigan PAC in 2020, campaign finance documents show.

The law the petition aimed to limit was declared unconstitutional by a court, but the state is still processing the signatures.

The groups methods of gathering a half-million signatures in just 80 days have also been called into question. In September, the state launched an investigation into the Unlock Michigan group. Gilchrist, the lieutenant governor, said officials were "certainly going to watch that" if Republicans try to use the ballot initiative process to enact voting changes.

Wang said advocates are now considering a rival ballot initiative or referendum to try and stop efforts to restrict ballot access.

"Faced with this threat, all options are on the table," she said, adding that she hoped corporations and voters could pressure Republicans not to pass these measures in the first place. "If we need to go to the ballot again to protect voters, then we will do so."
[April 19, 2021] Paessler, Inc. named in the 2021 CRN Partner Program Guide

CHICAGO, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Paessler, Inc., the monitoring experts, 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. Paessler's partner program was selected because the company created vertical-specific sales training materials for partners to develop sales strategies in education, healthcare, and industrial IT markets, with customizable marketing campaigns for cohesive and integrated approach to reach potential customers in these high-growth markets. It also created a cloud-based training environment so that partners have a playground to demonstrate technical skills for implementation services. "Paessler is committed to deepening its investment in and building up its resources to help our channel partners increase their margins and revenue goals with PRTG," said Peter Campisi, regional manager, channel sales, North America. "Our partners are now even better positioned to sell into new verticals and to acquire more of their customers' technology budgets with the enhancements we made to our partner program." "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 2021 Partner 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 is featured in the April 2021 issue of CRN and online at www.CRN.com/PPG. To learn more about Paessler's channel partner program, contact partners@paessler.com. About Paessler AG Paessler believes monitoring plays a vital part in reducing humankind's consumption of resources. Monitoring data helps its customers save resources, from optimizing their IT, OT and IoT infrastructures to reducing energy consumption or emissions  for our future and our environment. That is why Paessler offers monitoring solutions for businesses across all industries and all sizes, from SMB to large enterprises. Paessler works with renowned partners, and together they tackle the monitoring challenges of an ever-changing world. Since 1997, when Paessler first introduced PRTG Network Monitor, it has combined its in-depth monitoring knowledge with an innovative spirit. Paessler knows the challenges of complex IT, OT and IoT infrastructures and networks. Paessler products empower its customers to monitor everything, and thus help them optimize their resources. Learn more about Paessler and their products at www.paessler.com 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.







Media Contact Hughes Agency Amanda Long T: +1 864.271.0718 amandal@hughes-agency.com www.hughes-agency.com Paessler AG Gimena Robles Marketing & PR Manager T: +49 911 93775-0 F: +49 911 93775-409 press@paessler.com www.paessler.com The Channel Company Jennifer Hogan jhogan@thechannelcompany.com

View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/paessler-inc-named-in-the-2021-crn-partner-program-guide-301271695.html SOURCE Paessler AG - The Monitoring Experts

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Recently, international crude oil futures ushered in a surge. As of the close of April 14, the price of light crude oil futures for delivery in May on the New York Mercantile Exchange rose 2.97 US dollars to close at US$63.15 per barrel, an increase of 4.94%; the price of London Brent crude oil futures for June delivery rose 2.91 US dollars, closed at 66.58 US dollars per barrel, an increase of 4.57%. Calculated on a spot-month contract, WTI futures and Brent crude oil futures prices both hit their highest closing prices since March 17.

According to industry insiders, following OPEC, the International Energy Agency has also raised its oil demand forecast for this year. Last week, US crude oil inventories fell by 6 million barrels more than expected. Crude oil inventories fell for the third consecutive week, and the decline exceeded expectations. , Boosted peoples optimistic expectations for a recovery in energy demand. The Yemeni Houthi rebels backed by Iran attacked an oil facility in Saudi Arabia, leading to escalation of tensions in the oil-rich Middle East. Geopolitical changes have also helped support crude oil prices.

This year, the chemical industry has seen a subversive market situation, and the tensions of geopolitical remediation have escalated. International crude oil hit a new high in 13 months, and then continued to fluctuate at a high level. The supply of the overseas chemical industry has decreased and the demand for domestic chemicals has soared. Under the supply reduction, the price speculation brought about by the global economic recovery is superimposed. It is expected that the chemical industry will continue to rise in the future, and the supply and demand imbalance in the first half of the year will not be quickly alleviated.

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A recent study revealed that more young black adults are stepping away from the Christian faith, citing racial injustice in the church and secular influences as key reasons.

According to the survey released by Barna Group last week, captured by Christianity Today, only two-thirds of black millennials and Gen Z identify as Christians, 10% fewer than black Gen Xers and 20% lesser than black Boomers.

Shaylen Hardy, national director of black campus ministries for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, said that the decline is caused by racism prevailing in the church.

"Black young adults have become cynical about the gospel's credibility because of the persistence of racial injustice and white supremacy. They reject the silence (and complicity) they find in some church communities. As a result, they may be likely to view the church's entire belief system as uncredible and untrustworthy," she noted.

Hardy also stated that students start to doubt the Christian faith upon seeing the contradiction of Biblical teachings and church practices, tolerating racial injustice on black community, causing them to leave the church completely.

"Without someone to walk alongside them, they cannot isolate the problematic parts while retaining the core," Hardy added.

But the study also showed that black young people are still more likely to identify as Christians, with 65% of black millennials and 67% of black Gen Z, compared to just 63% and 61% of the overall millennials and Gen Z, respectively.

The influence of secularism on the younger generations of black Americans, supporting their doubts over the church, also poses a concern.

"There's a new power and influence of secular media content in the mainstream that has greater impact on younger Black people than on older generations," Jeffrey Wright said, CEO of Urban Ministries, Barna's survey partner.

For the past few years, perseverance of the black Christian community has been tested and displayed in the mainstream media, following the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. In addition, the killings of various black individuals, such as Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Daunte Wright and George Floyd, have contributed to their sentiments and have drawn them more to black Christian views.

Hardy suggested that they have to be given the opportunities to lead.

"Black young adults have more ways and places to invest their leadership energies than prior generations. If we don't make space for them, other people will welcome their time and attention," she said.

Barna's findings also showed that the black church continues to be a refuge for black Americans from their feeling of powerlessness in the political system.

"Black emerging generations still have faith in the core of the black church. Because of this, authenticity and inclusion are both necessary. Don't make the assumption that you are 'winning young souls to Christ.' Instead, show emerging generations what followers of a risen Christ look like in the midst of the turmoil that exists today," Brianna K. Parker said, CEO of Black Millenial Cafe, Barna's another research partner.
The police said the militant top leader and the preacher will be interrogated at the DB office on security grounds and for the source of his huge expenses.

Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate, Debdash Chandra Adhikary, passed the order after the sub-inspector of the police station, Md Sajedul Haque, submitted the remand prayer before the court.

A joint team of the Tejgaon division police and the DMP's detective branch had arrested Mamunul from Jamia Rahmania Arabia Madrasa in Mohammadpur on Saturday afternoon.

In November 2020, Mamunul had called for the government to remove the upcoming statue of the father of the nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, claiming that statues were prohibited to Islam. Later, he had clarified that he 'did not mean to disrespect' the Bangabandhu.

Mamunul and his Hefazat colleagues had led a series of protests against Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Bangladesh on March 26-27, leading to violence that claimed several lifes.

Following Mamunul's arrest, the Deputy Police Commissioner of Tejgaon zone, Harun-or-Rashid, said that Mamunul and other Hefazat leaders have been accused in several cases, including planned attacks on police stations, which are being investigated.

Rashid said that Mamunul is being monitored for quite some time and the investigation into the 2020 case of vahndalism and violence is going on.

d

As many as 17 cases have been filed against Mamunul and other cohorts of the radical outfit in connection with the violence in the Baitul Mukarram area in Dhaka during Narendra Modi's two-day visit to Bangladesh.

Mamunul is one of the 17 people accused in the case, filed with the Paltan police station.

The plaintiff, GM Alamgir Shahin, had alleged that Mamunul had spread hate speech and had himself carried out the attack when the mosque authorities were holding a sermon on March 6, 2020, which also hurt religious sentiments.

Rashid told IANS, "Mamunul was arrested after the investigators found clear evidence of his involvement in the incident."

Mamunul is known for spreading hate speech and aggressive sermons in religious congregations and on social media.

Earlier, Mamunul was arrested in a case filed on March 7 last year over vandalism by the activists of the Qawmi madrasa-based militant outfit in the capital's Mohammadpur area.

The case against Mamunul and seven other named and some 70-80 unnamed persons, accusing them of attempt to murder and vandalism during an attack at a local mosque, and also for threatening the mosque authorities.

From the court, Mamunul was taken to the DB office on Mintoo Road of the capital for questioning.

--IANS

sumi/arm
WORCESTER, Mass., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- On Monday, while other families in Massachusetts will be taking time to get away with their families during school vacation week, most of the St. Vincent Hospital nurses will be reporting to the picket line, beginning their seventh week on strike in their ongoing struggle to convince Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare to address a growing patient safety crisis at the Worcester-based facility.

As the strike continues, the nurses' for-profit owner is projected to spend more than $39 million* to prolong the strike, inclusive of costs for hundreds of replacement nurses paid twice as much as the regular staff, more than $30,000 a day for police details, along with other costs associated with avoiding meeting the nurses demands for better staffing and other patient safety measures.

As the nurses approach their 43rd day on the strike line outside the hospital, they continue to receive alarming reports of substandard care being delivered by hundreds of replacement nurses, flown in from all over the country to deliver care in an unfamiliar hospital and with no connection to the community. One staffer inside the hospital reported more than 10 patient falls on one floor alone in the last two weeks. One of the nurses from inside the hospital was shocked by the chaos they witnessed, and by the poor quality of care being delivered by the replacements; and described seeing an elderly patient being left alone in restraints, naked, while a group of replacement nurses huddled in the break room playing with their phones. The MNA received a report by a former patient who was discharged without instructions, with an IV needle still left in his arm.

"We are extremely shocked and distressed by the many stories we are hearing from inside our hospital as Tenet is spending millions of dollars to fund and promote this dangerous level of care to our patients and community," said Marlena Pellegrino, RN, longtime nurse at the hospital and co-chair of the nurses local bargaining unit with the Massachusetts Nurses Association. "We want to return to our patients and our patients want us back, but to accomplish this, we need sincere assurances from Tenet that we will have the improved staffing to provide the high quality care and dignity our patients and this Community expect and deserve."

The strike began on March 8, after Tenet had refused to negotiate with the nurses over improvements the nurses are seeking to improve unsafe patient care conditions in the hospital. The decision followed earnest and painstaking efforts over the last two years by the nurses to convince Tenet to improve the patient care conditions at the facility, poor conditions that have only been exacerbated by the pandemic. Adding insult to injury, the same day nurses voted to authorize the strike, Tenet announced annual profits of more than $400 million.

The nurses' strike and their stand for safer patient care has galvanized support from a variety of public officials, labor, faith-based organizations and community advocates, including the entire Worcester City Council, the Worcester state legislative delegation, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Edward Markey Congressman Jim McGovern and Attorney General Maura Healy who have all visited the nurses strike line. Senators Warren, Markey and Congressman McGovern sent their own letter to Tenet's CEO in Dallas urging Tenet to negotiate with the nurses to address the nurses' concerns over needed staffing improvements to ensure safe care.

In the last year alone, nurses have filed more than 600 official "unsafe staffing" reports (more than 110 such reports have been filed since January 1, 2021) in which nurses informed management in real time that patient care conditions jeopardized the safety of their patients. The nurses also report their patients in Worcester have experienced an increase in patient falls, an increase in patients suffering from preventable bed sores, potentially dangerous delays in patients receiving needed medications and other treatments  all due to lack of appropriate staffing, excessive patient assignments, and cuts to valuable support staff.

Staffing Improvements Sought by the Nurses

As evidenced by its own report of massive profits, Tenet can well afford the additional positions necessary to implement the MNA staffing proposal that could end this strike. The money being spent to prolong the strike could easily address the proposed staffing improvements the nurses are seeking, which are staffing standards on a par with other hospitals in Worcester and across the state, including:

Improvements to the current staffing guidelines to ensure all nurses have safe patient assignments and support staff to ensure safe patient care. Throughout the hospital Tenet has forced nurses to consistently care for too many patients while it has cut essential support staff positions. The nurses' staffing proposal calls for improved limits on the number of patients nurses are assigned on many units, including a resource nurse (to coordinate care on the unit and provide support with complex cases) and a commitment to provide support staff positions across all units. A critical aspect of the staffing proposal is a four-patient assignment on the medical surgical floors, which is consistent with the standard of care provided at UMass Memorial Medical Center and a number of other hospitals in the state.

Creation of a pool of nurses who are expert in caring for critically ill patients, which is essential to support nurses in the emergency department who in addition to taking care of five or six patients, are also expected to care for patients in need of ICU level care, who are waiting for a bed to open in the ICU. ICU and trauma patients must have a nurse dedicated to no more than one or two patients, which is the safe standard of care for these patients.

The addition of what are called "STAT and Rapid Response" nurses, which are nurses who would be available to respond to urgent and critical situations when a patient is suffering a code or other serious decline in their condition on the medical/surgical floors. When needed these nurses assist in stabilizing and caring for the patient until they can be transferred to the ICU. They are especially important to support newly graduated nurses, who most often work on the off shift where there are often fewer experienced nurses working. Again, UMass Memorial Medical Center provides this level of support to its nurses.

For a more detailed review of the staffing crisis, efforts by nurses to convince Tenet to address the crisis, as well as proposals nurses are seeking to improve patient care, click here to view a previous press release on the matter.

*The estimate of $34 million is based on Tenet's public disclosure at the outset of the strike that the cost of replacement nurses was $5.4 million for the first week multiplied by the seven weeks of the strike, and also including the city's confirmed weekly cost for police details of $210,000 multiplied by six weeks. This figure does not include the hospital's cost for its own expanded internal security force, the installation of special high tech camera systems outside the hospital entrances, and the fleet of buses and vans the hospital is using to transport the strike replacement nurses to and from the facility throughout the day every day of the strike. The MNA last week sent a letter to Tenet CEO Carolyn Jackson, requesting a copy of the contracts for the strike replacement nurses so that the nurses, and the public have a full picture of the resources Tenet is using to prolong this strike.

MassNurses.org  Facebook.com/MassNurses  Twitter.com/MassNurses

Founded in 1903, the Massachusetts Nurses Association is the largest union of registered nurses in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Its 23,000 members advance the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the economic and general welfare of nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view of nursing, and by lobbying the Legislature and regulatory agencies on health care issues affecting nurses and the public.

SOURCE Massachusetts Nurses Association

Related Links

http://www.massnurses.org


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TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / April 19, 2021 / CanAge, Canada's National Seniors' Advocacy Organization, is encouraged by key investments for older Canadians in the new federal budget, but warns that many areas of urgent action remain noticeably absent in today's announcement by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland.

The leading advocacy organization, which represents a diverse national membership base of older people and their caregivers, made a pre-budget submission presenting over 60 evidence-based recommendations to protect the rights and well-being of aging Canadians. CanAge analyzed and scored the budget against its full priority list of asks, using a digital scoreboard on its website.

While the budget did include $3 billion for long-term care over five years, starting in 2022-23, to support provinces and territories in ensuring standards are implemented, CanAge is concerned that this won't go far enough.

"While this investment in long-term care standards is welcome news, the far-reaching and urgently needed impact it will have is unclear," says Laura Tamblyn Watts, CEO of CanAge. "We need true collaboration between the federal and provincial governments in order to prevent the further tragic loss of life." She adds that real systemic change "takes more than just a boosted transfer of dollars. It needs complete investment in, and transformation of, the seniors' care sector."

She goes on to say that there is "no one label of what it means to be a senior in Canada." "That's why our recommendations for this budget were comprehensive, evidence-based and taken straight from the mouths of real older people with diverse lived experiences. We're hopeful that these newly announced investments signal real commitment from the federal government to better represent the needs of Canada's most powerful voters. We look forward to working with our federal ministers every step of the way to put their plans into action."

Among the other noteworthy announcements in support of seniors were:

$90 million over three years to support seniors aging in place through the "Age Well at Home" initiative

$50 million over five years to design and deliver interventions that promote safe relationships, including elder abuse prevention

An increase of OAS at age 75 by 10% plus a $500 one-time payment

$29.8 million over six years to improve access to palliative care

$100 million over three years to support people suffering mental trauma during the COVID-19 pandemic, including seniors

$45 million over two years develop national mental health service standards

$25 million over five years to create a National Framework for Diabetes

$27.6 million over three years for my65+, a Group Tax-Free Savings Account offered by the Service Employees International Union Healthcare to financially support front-line health care workers

4 weeks, up to a maximum of 42 weeks, for the Canada Recovery Caregiver Benefit

Increase disaggregated data collection by government agencies which will help seniors and others be counted and "seen"

These items were among CanAge's recommendations to the federal government.

While these investments represent positive steps taken for older Canadians, concerns persist that the distribution of these dollars will fail to flow. The federal government's commitment of $50 million in 2019 to a National Dementia Strategy has not been disbursed as promised-Tamblyn Watts warns that "these families and their caregivers are still waiting and there is nothing moving dementia care forward in this Federal Budget today."

Concerningly, also missing from the budget was mention of:

Fundamental caregiver supports for seniors' care

Specific investments in the Age-Tech Sector to support innovation and growth

Eradicating Mandatory RRIF withdrawals at 70

"These are also areas of real concern for older Canadians and were noticeably absent from this budget," warns Tamblyn Watts. "We'll continue pressing our current government to address these and other priority issues in the coming months."

CanAge's federal budget recommendations came out of its comprehensive policy platform, VOICES: A Roadmap to an Age-Inclusive Canada, launched late last year. Developed through an exhaustive coast-to-coast-to-coast consultative process, VOICES pulls from evidence-based reviews, highlights best practices, and identifies stubborn or complex issues affecting older people. The 135 recommendations in the document are grouped under sections for Violence and Abuse Prevention; Optimal Health and Wellness; Infection Control and Disaster Prevention; Caregiving, Long Term Care and Housing Resources; Economic Security and; Social Inclusion.

About CanAge

CanAge is Canada's national seniors' advocacy organization, working to improve the lives of older adults through advocacy, policy, and community engagement. We are non-partisan and backed by a pan-Canadian membership base. CanAge has quickly established itself as Canada's national advocate for issues affecting older people in our country, having ramped up operations last year in urgent response to the threat COVID-19 poses to vulnerable seniors in long-term care. Find out more.

Media Contact

Laura Tamblyn Watts

CEO, CanAge

laura@canage.ca

647-969-6793

media@canage.ca

SOURCE: CanAge

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/641249/New-federal-budget-takes-many-important-promising-steps-for-older-Canadians-stops-short-of-fundamental-changeleading-national-seniors-advocate
Bangluru: Centenarian, Kannada writer, editor, lexicographer and critic Ganjam Venkatasubbiah passed away during the early hours of Monday (April 19) due to old age complications. The Kannada writer was 107-years-old.

Ganjam Venkatasubbiah was a recipient of the Kannada Sahitya Akademi Award, the Pampa Award and contributed significantly to the world of Kannada Lexicography.

Venkatasubbiah passed away in the early hours of Monday and dignitaries from various fields have condoled his death.

ALSO READ: Sumitra Bhave, National Award-winning director and writer, passes away

Venkatasubbia was known for his work Igo Kannada, an eclectic mix of Kannada phrases, usages, idioms, phrases, and serves as a reference for linguists and sociologists.

He was renowned as a walking encyclopaedia of the language and culture.

In his lifetime, Venkatasubbia compiled over twelve dictionaries, authored four seminal works on dictionary science in Kannada and edited over sixty books.

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The government should drop the speed limit in South Africas urban areas to help reduce the large number of pedestrian fatalities.

This is according to Open Streets urban designer Kirsten Wilkins, who recently spoke about pedestrian safety in the country on CapeTalk. The discussion followed the release of governments Easter traffic statistics.

There were 235 fatalities on South Africas roads during the 2021 Easter period, of which around 35% were pedestrians.

Wilkins said these statistics highlighted that South Africas pedestrians were vulnerable and that safer spaces were required for their movement.

She said that while South Africas road network in urban areas was generally of good quality, the typical speed limit of 60km/h presented a problem.

Traffic data and studies around the world tells us that if you are hit by a car at 60km/h as a pedestrian, your chance of surviving is practically zero.

One of the important United Nations road safety solutions is to call for a reduction in speed limits in urban areas, Wilkins said.

[This] is the easiest and most effective way to start getting ahead of the problem from the point of view of what government can do,

She said the United Nations was calling for urban speed limits of 30km/h, something she wished the South African government would support.

Wilkins advised citizens to reach out to their ward councillor in instances where they have identified particular areas with speed limits which are particularly dangerous to pedestrians, such as a busy intersections or outside a school.

Certain residential estates  such as Midstream Estate in Centurion and Silver Lakes in Pretoria  already impose a speed limit of 30km/h.

Government has previously said it was considering reducing South Africas speed limits across the board.

In November 2019, the Department of Transport and Road Traffic Management Corporation proposed that baseline top speeds across the countrys roads be reduced by 20km/h.

This would drop the speed limit on various types of roads as follows:

Highways  120km/h to 100km/h

Main roads  100km/h to 80km/hg

Residential areas  60km/h to 40km/h

Department of Transport spokesperson Ayanda Allie-Paine said the legislation was being reviewed to address and bring in place an edifice of various interventions to respond adequately to road safety challenges.

Among these, a review of the international best practice on speed reductions, as is the case in countries such as Sweden and Australia.

However, due to the unique situation in South Africa, these could not implemented without an impact assessment study, Allie-Paine stated.

Since that time, however, government has kept mum on any plans to drop speed limits.

The new AARTO law , which introduces a demerit system for South African drivers among other changes, does not contain any adjustments to speed limits.

Kirsten Wilkins interview

Listen to the full interview with Open Streets managing director Kirsten Wilkins on CapeTalk below.
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Yet another skydiver has died at the Skydive Lodi Parachute Center.

The skydiving school in San Joaquin County is now the site of 22 recorded deaths since opening in 1981. Nine of those deaths have occurred since 2016, according to the FAA.

The woman, identified as 57-year-old Sabrina Call of Watsonville by the San Joaquin County coroner, died on Saturday afternoon, officials said. A parachutist who jumped with her called the sheriff's office reporting that the victim's parachute became tangled.

"We're sad, but it's just like a car wreck or anything else. You have to go on," owner Bill Dause, who was ordered to pay $40 million in March in connection with a previous fatality at his center, told KCRA Monday.

The sheriff's office said that the woman was a "very experienced" skydiver.

"What was reported to us from someone who witnessed the [incident] was that the chute failed to fully open as she was coming down and it was heavily tangled around her," the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office said.

The FAA is investigating, but said their investigations are limited to inspections of the parachute rigging.

"Federal Aviation Administration investigations of skydiving events are limited to inspecting the parachute rigging. The FAA does not investigate to determine the cause of the event, they said in a statement.

This accident comes one month after the parachute center was ordered to pay $40 million in connection with a deadly jump there five years ago.

On Aug. 6, 2016, Tyler Turner, an 18-year-old from Los Banos who had just graduated high school with a 4.3 grade point average, went skydiving for the first time to celebrate a friend's birthday.

Turner jumped in tandem with an instructor. The parachute did not open, and the two hit the ground with a fatal impact. Deputies found the bodies in a vineyard just south of the centers landing zone. It was later revealed by the Sacramento Bee that the instructor reportedly did not have a proper license.

In March, Turner's family was awarded a $40 million dollar judgment against the owner of the skydiving school, Bill Dause, a man who claims to be a skydiving legend with over 50 years of experience.

The 2016 tragedy forms part of a long, troubled history of fatalities at the Lodi Parachute Center.

Before he got on the plane, he knelt down and prayed, made his peace with God, and then turned around and gave me a great big, huge hug, Turner's mom Francine Salazar told the Merced Sun Star in 2016. He said, I love you, Mom, and then he got on the plane.

Salazar also said that she was worried before the jump because an instructor allegedly told the jumpers, gathered for the birthday celebration, they did not need to finish watching the safety video shown beforehand.

Dause told the Sun Star at the time: I know shes grasping for reasons, and were just as upset about it as everybody is.

Paul Van Der Walde, an attorney representing the family of Tyler Turner at the hearing in March, said that since 1981 at least 21 people have died at the skydiving center near Lodi.

In 2019 the Washington Post reported that a 28-year-old woman died during a jump at the same school after a gust of wind sent her careening toward the flow of traffic on Highway 99. She slammed into a big rig and was found dead on the shoulder of the highway.

In 2006, an experienced jumper unsuccessfully sued the parachute center after his leap from a twin-engine plane at 3,000 feet left him with spinal cord injuries; he struck the planes tail before crash-landing in a vineyard near Highway 99.

Another jumper was left dead in a nearby vineyard after a failed jump at the center in 2012.

In 2014 a professional skier from Squaw Valley, Timothy "Timy" Dutton, 27, suffered the same fate at Lodi Parachute Center.

The list goes on.

The multi-million-dollar penalty handed down in March specifically targetted Dause, whose company is also known as Skydivers Guild Inc.

San Joaquin County Superior Court Judge Barbara Kronlund wrote at the time, Following court trial Bill Dause is found to be the alter ego of Skydivers Guild Inc. and is responsible for their entire judgment of $40,030,000."

We hare hoping this will allows us to get this placed closed or be sold to a responsible owner who can operate it safely, Van Der Walde told the Fresno Bee.

The Lodi Parachute Center did not immediately return a request to SFGATE for comment.
The nurses strike at Saint Vincent Hospital entered its seventh week on Monday and the Massachusetts Nurses Association projects that Tenet Healthcare, parent company of the Worcester hospital, has spent $39.4 million to prolong the strike.

The nearly $40 million figure is projected off of the $5.4 million that Tenet said it spent during the first week of the strike for replacement nurses. The union multiplied that number by seven - the number of weeks since nurses began striking - and also included the cost of police details which total $210,00 per week.

The total is likely a bit inflated, though. According to the Boston Business Journal, the hospital is spending between $3 million to $3.4 million on replacement staff salaries alone in the first three weeks. Even at project $3.4 million a week, including the $5.4 million Tenet said it spent on the first week, the costs are likely closer to $30 million including police details.

The figure does not include the hospitals cost for expanded internal security force, the installation of special high tech camera systems outside the hospital entrances, and the fleet of buses and vans that are used to transport replacement nurses to and from the facility, the union said.

The ridiculous and egregious claims the MNA is making about our hospital are nothing more than rumor and innuendo, and are a continuation of the false safety claims filed and encouraged in large part by the bargaining committee members prior to the beginning of the strike, Saint Vincent Hospital said in a statement. This is simply another tactic the MNA is employing that is intended to bully our community into supporting their staffing proposal, which failed in the 2018 ballot initiative.

The MNA last week said it requested a copy of the contracts for replacement nurses.

Emails from U.S. Nursing, obtained by MNA and shared with the Boston Business Journal, show replacement nurses were offered between $95-$110 an hour and guaranteed 60 hours of work the first week, followed by 48 hours in week two and three.

The amounts represent double the rate of what the hospital normally pays for nurses. According to salary charts issued by the hospital, nurses currently earn between $31.13 to $64.15 an hour. According to MNA, the average nurse earns $55 an hour salary for a 35-hour work week.

The strike began on March 8 with nurses calling for increased staffing levels at the hospital. The last meeting between the two was on March 3 when the Massachusetts Nurses Association countered an offer brought by Tenet two days earlier.

Many elected officials have supported the nurses in their effort to increase staffing at the hospital. The entire Worcester City Council, the Worcester state legislative delegation, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Edward Markey, Congressman Jim McGovern and Attorney General Maura Healy have all visited the nurses strike line.

Warren, Markey and McGovern sent their own letter to Tenets CEO in Dallas urging the company to negotiate with the nurses.

Tenet needs to get back to the negotiating table and sit with the nurses and try to work something out for however long it takes, McGovern told MassLive two weeks ago. You cant solve a strike, you cant get moving on this moment, unless you talk.

This week, more community organization will join the nurses in support. The Parents Union of Massachusetts (PUMA), Jobs With Justice, Tenant and Housing Alliance of Worcester, Latinas Unidas and Rock of Salvation Church will host a march to support the nurses on Tuesday.

The event will begin with a prayer at Worcester City Hall before a march toward Foster Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. The march will continue to Bridge Street and then onto Summer Street before concluding at the hospital entrance.

The MNA represents 800 nurses at Saint Vincent Hospital. According to the hospital, about 15 percent of those nurses opted not to participate in the strike.

On Feb. 23, nurses at Saint Vincent Hospital delivered a 10-day notice of their intention to strike. On March 8 at 6 a.m. the nurses strike began and Saint Vincent brought in replacement nurses.

Public complaints from nurses at Saint Vincent Hospital date back more than a year when more than 70% signed a petition calling for safer staffing levels.

A month later, more than 200 nurses attended a negotiation session with management to provide information about the staffing levels.

Last May, after furloughs were implemented, nurses filed a vote of no confidence in Saint Vincent Hospital CEO Carolyn Jackson and her management team.

In December, more than 400 nurses participated in an information picket to protest the same conditions. In January, nurses picketed outside the hospital as part of

Related Content:
Van Phong Economic Zone in the central coastal province of Khanh Hoa. Photo by VnExpress/An Phuoc.

Van Phong Economic Zone in Khanh Hoa Province should be expanded by 1,500 hectares (3,706 acres) toward the sea, its consultant unit stated.

Hoang Dinh Phi, management head of the economic zone (EZ), said the consultant unit, U.S.-based Boston Consulting Group, proposed the sea reclamation in Van Ninh District at a provincial meeting last week.

The area proposed to be reclaimed comprises a solitary swamp apart from the sea conservation zone, with proceedings said to not leave any impacts on the environment or marine ecosystem.

"This is just a preliminary proposal and once it is approved, it would require careful study and specific plans for execution," said Phi.

Apart from the sea reclamation, the consultant unit also suggested adding 3,500 hectares of Van Ninhs hilly and mountainous terrain into the economic zone.

The expansion would help "synchronize industries in the region and localities to promote their strength in industry and hi-tech agriculture to attract investments and promote economic development" in line with the general planning of the economic zone, which lies two kilometers from the resort town of Nha Trang.

Established in 2006, Van Phong EZ covers 150,000 hectares, including 70,000 hectares of land and 80,000 hectares of water area in Van Phong Bay of Van Ninh District in Khanh Hoa.

It is one of three major EZs in Vietnam, with the other two being Phu Quoc EZ and Van Don EZ.

With government approval, Van Phong EZ would function as a multi-sector economic zone, with an international container transit port, petrochemical industry in combination with the development of tourism, aquaculture and other sectors.

Van Phong EZ serves as the economic hub of Khanh Hoa Province, playing a leading role in attracting investment.

Now Phi said compared to the 2014 plan, the new one targets turning the zone into an "active economic center" with focus on new sectors including a high-end service complex and modern casino.

The proposal has been submitted to the Ministry of Planning and Investment and if approved, the management board of Van Phong EZ would collect opinions from related agencies and local residents to draw up detailed plans for later provincial approval.
4As Membership What becoming a member of 4A means to us at Zigma8 creative branding agency, and how it can benefit your business with us. Zigma8 | 360 Creative Communications is the first Iranian agency to become a member of the 4As, is what it says on the acceptance letter we received from New York in December 2015. Its official: we have been selected as a new affiliate member of the long-standing 
Kathmandu, April 19

The government has decided to close all schools in the urban areas of Covid-19-affected districts of Nepal for one month.

A cabinet meeting held on Monday morning made the decision to be effective till mid-May, informs the government spokesperson Parbat Gurung. The meeting also urged the school to adopt online learning again, he informs.

Last week, the Health Ministry under the federal government had urged people in 14 districts including Kathmandu to avoid crowds such as schools. As reported, the ministry had resorted to issuing an appeal after the Ministry of Education refused to close schools.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education had authorised district officials to make an appropriate decision.
The death has occurred of Patrick (Paddy) DUNNE

Dromiskin, Louth / Rathangan, Kildare



Patrick (Paddy) Dunne, Dromiskin, Co. Louth, (Rathangan, Co. Kildare) and Dunnes Drilling Services, peacefully, at his home, 18th April 2021. Predeceased by his loving wife Ann, sister Mary (Portlaoise), brother Denis (Rathangan) and grandson Rory (OBrien). Much loved father of Breda, Brendan, Anna, Mary, Pauline, Deirdre, Dara and Pat. Dearly remembered by his daughters-in-law Patricia and Pauline, sons-in-law Sean, Michael, Tadhg, Michael, Gavan and Anthony. His much adored 21 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren, sister in law Rose (Rathangan), nieces, nephews, cousins and wonderful friends and neighbours.

May He Rest In Peace

House Strictly Private.

Due to Government guidelines, Paddys Funeral Mass will take place privately on Monday at 2pm in St. Peters Church, Dromiskin, followed by burial in Dromiskin Cemetery. The Mass can be viewed on https://www.churchmedia.tv/camera/st-peters-church

There will be an opportunity for the community to pay their respects as Paddys cortege leaves his family home, on the way to the church.

The death has occurred of John P Kelly

Moorefield Park, Newbridge, Kildare



Peacefully at Naas hospital. Sadly missed by his loving wife Breda, sons Graham and Fergal, daughter Lorraine, daughters-in-law Pauline and Marion, son-in-law Declan, grandchildren Dean, Michaela, Mary Kate, Jordan and Kellie, sister Marie, brothers in law, sisters in law, nieces, relatives, neighbours and friends.

May John rest in peace.

Due to current government guidelines regarding public gatherings, a private family funeral will take place. Those who would have liked to attend the funeral, but due to current restrictions cannot, please feel free to leave a message in the condolence page below.





Funeral Arrangements Later

His family understand and appreciate that people would like to offer their condolences. Please feel free to leave a message in the condolence book at the bottom of this page.

All enquiries to Mc Geoughs Funerals

The death has occurred of Mickey Brown

Sallins, Kildare



The death has occurred of the late, Mickey Brown (15th April 2021) peacefully, at home surrounded by his loving family. Husband of the late, Ellen Brown, sadly missed by his loving children, daughters Lena, Helen, Ann, Bride, Eileen and Joan, Sons Mickey and Gerard, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, nieces and nephews, extended family and a large circle of friends.

May He Rest In Peace

A private funeral will take place due to Government advice on Monday (19th April 2021) in our Ladys and St David's church Nass at 10am . Followed to St Corban's Nass Sallins cemetery. A book of condolence will be open on the link below.

The death has occurred of James Conlon

''Glynhill'' Sheane, Rathangan, Kildare



James Conlon, Glynhill, Sheane, Rathangan, Co. Kildare April 17th 2021 at Naas Hospital, predeceased by his parents Patrick & Jane, his siblings Breda, Monica, Ambrose, Berney.

Will be sadly missed by his wife Ellen (nee Mulpeter) brother Dermot, brothers in law, sisters in law, his extended family, neighbours & his friends at Beech Park Nursing Home.

May He Rest In Peace.

Due to Government restrictions a private family funeral will take place on Monday morning at 11 o'clock in the Church of Assumption and St. Patrick, Rathangan (max 10 people) followed by burial in St. Patrick's Cemetery, Rathangan.

James's funeral mass can be viewed on https://www.youtube.com/c/icatholicplayer

Those wishing to leave a message may do so on the condolence section below.

The family thank you for your understanding at his sad & difficult time.

House Strictly Private

The death has occurred of Ann ELDERS (nee Fahy)

Naas, Kildare / Dublin 8, Dublin



Elders (nee Fahy) (Naas and formerly of South Circular Road and The Liberties) - April 16, 2021, (peacefully), after a short illness, at Naas General Hospital, Ann, beloved wife of the late Richard and dear mother of Celine, Tom and Richard; Sadly missed by her loving sons, daughter, brother Liam, daughter-in-law Debs, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, grandchildren Josh, Aoife, Finn, Cathal, Esmee and Hal, nephews, nieces, relatives and friends.

Due to current Government guidelines regarding public gatherings, a private funeral will take place. Those who would like to join the private funeral service remotely by webcam can do so by clicking on https://www.naasparish.ie/our-parish/naas-webcam/ or via the Naas Parish App under the Web Cam Folder on Tuesday at 10.00am. Those who would have liked to attend the funeral, but due to current restrictions cannot, please feel free to leave a message in the Condolence Book below. Family flowers only please. Donations, if desired, to The Alzheimer Society of Ireland or Our Ladys Hospice, Harolds Cross.

The death has occurred of Valentine Henry (Val) TOMKINS

Timolin, Kildare



Former AIB Manager. In his 89th year, peacefully after a short illness in the wonderful care of the staff of Naas General Hospital. Predeceased by his brother Jim.

Val will be sadly missed by his loving wife Louie, sons Trevor and David, grandson Lloyd, daughter-in-law Miriam, brother Stanley, sister Vera, sister-in-law Phyllis, nieces, nephews, relatives and dear friends.

Due to current Government guidelines regarding public gatherings a private family funeral will take place with a memorial service for Val at a later date.

House private please. Family flowers only. Donations if desired to The Friends of Naas Hospital.

Those who wish to attend the funeral but cannot do so due to current restrictions please leave your personal message in the "Condolences" section below.





Funeral Arrangements Later
DUBLIN, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Urban Air Mobility (UAM) Market - A Global and Regional Analysis: Focus on Range, Application, Ecosystem, Operation, End-User, Platform Architecture, and Country - Analysis and Forecast, 2023-2035" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The urban air mobility industry analysis projects the market to have a significant growth of CAGR 27.37% based on the values during the forecast period from 2023 to 2035. The Asia-Pacific region is expected to dominate the market by 2035 with a share of 39.27%. The Asia-Pacific region includes China, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore, but China is expected to acquire a major share in 2035 due to the increase in the population and traffic congestion in megacities in the country.



The urban air mobility market has gained huge importance in the past few years. This is due to the rising demand for an alternate mode of transportation that is quicker and more efficient than the current transportation services. Several government agencies and associations have started drafting policies and regulations to make sure that the airspace is managed to enable higher and safer operations of the aircraft and drones.



Scope of the Global Urban Air Mobility Market



The global urban air mobility market research provides the market information for segmentation, such as the classification of the vehicles based on their range and application, as well as the ecosystem, operations, end-use industry, and platform architecture. The market analysis examines the urban air mobility market outlook in terms of the trends, driving forces, opportunities, technological advancements, and competitive benchmarking, among others.



The report further takes into consideration the market and business dynamics, along with the detailed product contribution of the key players operating in the market.



Global Urban Air Mobility Market Segmentation



The report constitutes an extensive study of the urban air mobility industry. The report largely focuses on providing market information for the air mobility vehicles covering various segments, products, applications, and regions. The travel range included less than 20 kilometers, 20-100 kilometers, 100-400 kilometers, and greater than 400 kilometers. The applications were classified into passenger transportation, cargo transportation, medical and emergency aid transportation, and food delivery. The market is further segmented into operation, end-use industry, and platform architecture such as fixed-wing, rotor-wing, and others.



The urban air mobility market is segregated by region under four major regions, namely North America, Europe, APAC, and Rest-of-the-World. Data for each of these regions (by country) is provided.



Key Companies in the Global Urban Air Mobility Industry



The key players in the global urban air mobility market include Acubed by Airbus S.A.S.(U.S.), Airspace Experience Technologies (U.S.), Aurora Flight Sciences (U.S.), Bell Textron Inc (U.S.), DELOREAN AEROSPACE (U.S.), EHang (China), EVE Air Mobility (U.S.), Joby Aviation (U.S.), Kitty Hawk (U.S.), Lilium GmbH (Germany), NEVA Aerospace (U.K.), Opener (U.S.), Pipistrel Group (Slovenia), Volocopter GmbH (Germany), and other key players.

Key Topics Covered:

1 Markets

1.1 Industry Outlook

1.1.1 Urban Air Mobility Market: Overview

1.1.2 Futuristic Trends

1.1.2.1 Cellular Connected Drones

1.1.2.2 Drone Receptacles

1.1.2.3 Hybrid-Electric Propulsion

1.1.2.4 Hydrogen Propulsion

1.1.2.5 Smart Ground Infrastructure

1.1.2.6 Internet of Things (IoT) Connectivity

1.1.2.7 Fully Autonomous Systems

1.1.2.8 Safety Solutions

1.1.3 Leading Manufacturers, Products, and Technical Specifications

1.1.4 Transition of Urban Air Mobility to Advanced Air Mobility

1.1.5 Commercialization of UAM

1.1.6 Regulatory Framework

1.1.6.1 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)

1.1.6.2 European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA)

1.1.6.3 Drone Regulations

1.1.7 Investment Scenario: Start-Ups and Stakeholders in UAM Market

1.1.8 Patent Analysis

1.1.8.1 Introduction

1.1.8.2 Patent Landscape

1.1.9 Supply Chain Analysis

1.2 Business Dynamics

1.2.1 Business Drivers

1.2.1.1 Growing Need for an Alternate Mode of Transportation in Urban Mobility

1.2.1.2 Demand for an Efficient Mode of Logistics and Transportation Service

1.2.1.3 Adoption of Urban Air Mobility Due to Environmental Concerns

1.2.2 Business Challenges

1.2.2.1 Short-Term Challenges

1.2.2.1.1 Impact of COVID-19 on Urban Air Mobility Market

1.2.2.2 Long-Term Challenges

1.2.2.2.1 Lack of Technology in Infrastructure in Megacities

1.2.2.2.2 Stringent Regulations on Urban Air Mobility Operations by Aviation Authorities.

1.2.3 Key Business Developments

1.2.3.1 Business Strategies

1.2.3.2 Corporate Strategies

1.2.4 Business Opportunities

1.2.4.1 Increasing Demand for Air Ambulance Vehicles

1.2.4.2 Smart City Initiatives Will Demand Urban Air Mobility



2 Application

2.1 Overview

2.2 Global Urban Air Mobility Market (By Range)

2.2.1 <_0 />2.2.2 20 km-100 km

2.2.3 100 km-400 km

2.2.4 >400 km

2.3 Demand Analysis for Global Urban Air Mobility Market (by Range)

2.4 Global Urban Air Mobility Market (by Application)

2.4.1 Passenger Transportation

2.4.2 Cargo Transportation

2.4.3 Medical and Emergency Aid Transportation

2.4.4 Food Delivery

2.5 Demand Analysis for Global Urban Air Mobility Market (by Application)



3 Products

3.1 Overview

3.2 Global Urban Air Mobility Market (by Ecosystem)

3.2.1 Platform

3.2.1.1 Delivery Drones

3.2.1.2 eVTOLs

3.2.1.2.1 Air Taxi

3.2.1.2.2 Personal Air Vehicles

3.2.1.2.3 Air Ambulance and Medical Transportation Vehicles

3.2.2 Demand Analysis for Global Urban Air Mobility Market (by Platform)

3.2.3 Infrastructure

3.2.3.1 UTM

3.2.3.2 Vertiports

3.2.3.3 Charging Stations

3.3 Global Urban Air Mobility Market (by Operation)

3.3.1 Piloted Operation

3.3.2 Optionally Piloted

3.3.3 Autonomous Operation

3.4 Demand Analysis for Global Urban Air Mobility Market (by Operation)

3.5 Global Urban Air Mobility Market (by End-User)

3.5.1 E-commerce

3.5.2 Healthcare

3.5.3 Food Delivery

3.5.4 Transportation and Logistics

3.5.5 Tourism

3.5.6 Others

3.6 Demand Analysis for Global Urban Air Mobility Market (by End-User)

3.7 Global Urban Air Mobility Market (by Platform Architecture)

3.7.1 Fixed Wing

3.7.2 Rotor Wing

3.7.3 Others

3.7.3.1 Tilt Rotor

3.7.3.2 Thrust Vector Control

3.8 Demand Analysis for Global Urban Air Mobility Market (by Platform Architecture)



4 Region

4.1 Global Urban Air Mobility Market (by Region)

4.2 North America

4.3 Europe

4.4 Asia-Pacific

4.5 Rest-of-the-World



5 Markets - Competitive Benchmarking & Company Profiles

5.1 Competitive Benchmarking

5.1.1 Acubed-Airbus

5.1.1.1 Company Overview

5.1.1.1.1 Role of Acubed-Airbus in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.1.1.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.1.1.2 Business Strategies

5.1.1.2.1 Product Developments and Demonstrations

5.1.1.3 Corporate Strategies

5.1.1.3.1 Partnerships

5.1.1.4 Strengths and Weaknesses of Acubed-Airbus

5.1.1.5 R&D Analysis

5.2 Airspace Experience Technologies, Inc.

5.2.1 Company Overview

5.2.1.1 Role of Airspace Experience Technologies, Inc. in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.2.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.2.2 Business Strategies

5.2.2.1 Product Developments

5.2.3 Corporate Strategies

5.2.3.1 Memorandum of Understanding

5.2.4 Strengths and Weaknesses of Airspace Experience Technologies, Inc.

5.3 Aurora Flight Sciences

5.3.1 Company Overview

5.3.1.1 Role of Aurora Flight Sciences in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.3.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.3.2 Corporate Strategies

5.3.2.1 Corporate Strategies

5.3.3 Strengths and Weaknesses of Aurora Flight Sciences

5.4 Bell Textron Inc.

5.4.1 Company Overview

5.4.1.1 Role of Bell Textron Inc. in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.4.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.4.2 Business Strategies

5.4.2.1 Product Developments and Launches

5.4.3 Corporate Strategies

5.4.3.1 Partnership

5.4.4 Strengths and Weaknesses of Bell Textron Inc

5.5 DELOREAN AEROSPACE, LLC

5.5.1 Company Overview

5.5.1.1 Role of DELOREAN AEROSPACE, LLC in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.5.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.5.2 Strengths and Weaknesses of DELOREAN AEROSPACE, LLC

5.6 EHang

5.6.1 Company Overview

5.6.1.1 Role of EHang in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.6.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.6.2 Business Strategies

5.6.2.1 Product Launches, Demonstrations, and Expansions

5.6.3 Corporate Strategies

5.6.3.1 Partnerships and Collaborations

5.6.4 Strengths and Weaknesses of EHang

5.6.5 R&D Analysis

5.7 EVE Air Mobility

5.7.1 Company Overview

5.7.1.1 Role of Eve Air Mobility in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.7.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.7.2 Business Strategies

5.7.2.1 Business Expansion

5.7.3 Corporate Strategies

5.7.3.1 Collaboration

5.7.4 Strengths and Weaknesses of Eve Air Mobility

5.8 Jaunt Air Mobility LLC

5.8.1 Company Overview

5.8.1.1 Role of Jaunt Air Mobility LLC in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.8.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.8.2 Corporate Strategies

5.8.2.1 Partnerships and MoUs

5.8.2.2 Agreements and Acquisitions

5.8.3 Strengths and Weaknesses of Jaunt Air Mobility LLC

5.9 Joby Aviation

5.9.1 Company Overview

5.9.1.1 Role of Joby Aviation in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.9.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.9.2 Corporate Strategies

5.9.2.1 Merger, Agreement, and Acquisitions

5.9.3 Strengths and Weaknesses of Joby Aviation

5.1 Kitty Hawk

5.10.1 Company Overview

5.10.1.1 Role of Kitty Hawk in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.10.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.10.2 Corporate Strategies

5.10.2.1 Partnerships

5.10.3 Strengths and Weaknesses of Kitty Hawk

5.11 Lilium GmbH

5.11.1 Company Overview

5.11.1.1 Role of Lilium GmbH in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.11.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.11.2 Corporate Strategies

5.11.2.1 Partnerships and Collaborations

5.11.3 Strengths and Weaknesses of Lilium GmbH

5.12 NEVA Aerospace

5.12.1 Company Overview

5.12.1.1 Role of NEVA Aerospace in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.12.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.12.2 Strengths and Weaknesses of NEVA Aerospace

5.13 Opener

5.13.1 Company Overview

5.13.1.1 Role of Opener in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.13.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.13.2 Business Strategies

5.13.2.1 Award and Expansion

5.13.3 Strengths and Weaknesses of Opener

5.14 Pipistrel Group

5.14.1 Company Overview

5.14.1.1 Role of Pipistrel Group in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.14.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.14.2 Business Strategies

5.14.2.1 Product Launch

5.14.2.2 Award and Partnership

5.14.3 Strengths and Weaknesses of Pipistrel

5.15 Volocopter GmbH

5.15.1 Company Overview

5.15.1.1 Role of Volocopter GmbH in Global Urban Air Mobility Market

5.15.1.2 Product Portfolio

5.15.2 Business Strategies

5.15.2.1 Product Launch and Demonstration

5.15.2.2 Business Expansion and Cooperation

5.15.3 Strengths and Weaknesses of Volocopter GmbH

5.16 Other Key Players

5.16.1 AMSL Aero Pty Ltd

5.16.2 AutoFlight

5.16.3 Electra Aero, Inc.

5.16.4 Honeywell International Inc.

5.16.5 Hyundai Motor Company

5.16.6 Overair, Inc.

5.16.7 Skyports Limited

5.16.8 Trek Aerospace, Inc.

5.16.9 Varon Vehicles Corporation

5.16.10 Wing Aviation LLC

5.16.11 Wingcopter

5.16.12 Wisk Aero LLC



6 Research Methodology

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/dgfldn

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Children have fallen out of love with reading due to 'boring' and 'preachy' topics such as climate change, gay parents and racism, according to a Sydney book store owner.

Kate Cooley, who runs Better Read Than Dead in inner-city Newtown says children's books have lost their fun and adventure and become 'a little bit boring'.

With a growing rise in titles about 'being different' appearing on store shelves, she believes fun should remain the focus of children's picture books to ensure they continue to enjoy reading.

Childrens books have lost their fun and adventure and become 'a little bit boring', says one leading bookstore owner (stock image)

'There is still a lot of good stuff out there. But an awful lot of them do preach,' Ms Cooley told the Daily Telegraph.

'They preach colour, difference, they preach about (being) gay and lesbian  there is one about how not to be a racist baby.

Ms Cooley believes children can be introduced to these topics in an age-appropriate manner through other family activities instead of books.

The rise in books covering climate change, gay parents and racism has seen children fall out of love with reading (stock image)

UTS children's literacy expert Professor Rosemary Johnson agrees many children's books have 'lost their depth' in the storyline and characters.

'The essence of a book is its story. That's its magic. But some of the so-called 'issues' books are not so well written and are indeed mundane,' she said.

The annual NSW Premier's Reading Challenge open to all students from kindergarten to Year 9 aims to 'encourage a love of reading for leisure and pleasure in students'.

But the official booklist for the popular government initiative is littered with global warming titles from Al Gores An Inconvenient Truth and the Down-to-Earth guide to global warming to Fight for Planet A and Jane Godwin young adult fiction title When Rain Turns to Snow.
A new report from Hong Kong states that Chinese smartphones were once thought of as cheaply made, unreliable and not very durable. But in recent years, Chinese smartphone brands have made large inroads to take a bigger share of the global market. Apple's Chinese competitors are now earning a reputation for being powerful yet affordable, and because they support advanced 5G networks across the budget range they're gaining market share worldwide.

The South China Morning Post report further stated that "Apple, Samsung and LG have struggled to price their phones as low as their Chinese competitors do." To a certain degree that may be true with some like LG who recently dropped their mobile phone division.

Though for Apple, that characterization just doesn't fit. Apple isn't struggling to price smartphones at the lowest tiers of the market that they participate in. They've never done that. Apple focuses on quality at any price point that they wish to compete in.

With Chinese smartphone vendors putting continual pricing pressure on the overall smartphone market, top Chinese smartphone brands such as Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo are seeing growth in worldwide smartphone shipments.

Patently Apple recently reported that Xiaomi just released their all-new Mix Mix Fold forcing Samsung to lower its price of the Galaxy Z fold 2 and Oppo is preparing to be one of the first to market with a smartphone with a rollable/scrollable form factor. Meaning that the Chinese smartphone makers now want to challenge Apple and Samsung with innovation and not just with price going forward.

Over the weekend, The South China Morning Post put together a new video titled "The Rise of the Chinese Smartphones," as presented below. It's an interesting overview of the smartphone market in China that some of you may appreciate.

While Apple has some of the very best smartphones on the market today due to a creative blend of advanced hardware, software and security that captivates the world with no equal, Chinese smartphone vendors are on the rise and great competition will only go to motivate Team Apple to push innovation to the next level which benefits all iPhone fans.

However, for now, the majority of the rise in Chinese smartphones remains connected to low-ball pricing in the low and mid-tier market segments. While we understand that the South China Morning Post (SCMP) wants to cheer on their local companies, innovation from Xiaomi and Oppo have yet to impact the market to any meaningful level. They seem to confuse slick marketing with innovation.

Xiaomi's Mi Mix Fold is simply copying Samsung's innovation and Oppo's concept rollable phone form factor is not yet on the market. So while SCMP's video is worth noting, the Chinese smartphone vendors have yet to make an impact on the market like Apple's iPhone and iPad have made over time. The Chinese have always been good at copying, there's nothing new there. We await the day that Chinese smartphone vendors actually make a mark on history with true innovation that matters.
DJ DOC member Lee Ha-neul, left, accused his bandmate, Kim Chang-yeol, of causing financial debt on his late brother Lee Hyun-bae. Korea Times file



By Lee Gyu-lee



Hip-hop group DJ DOC member Kim Chang-yeol is in the hot seat after his bandmate, Lee Ha-neul, accused him of being responsible for the death of his brother, Lee Hyun-bae, who was found dead at his house on Jeju Island Saturday.



The accusation was first made when Lee Ha-neul commented, "You killed my brother," on Kim's social media post that expressed condolences for Lee Hyun-bae's death.



In a live-streamed video on social media Monday, Lee Ha-neul further claimed that his brother, a member of hip-hop duo 45RPM, had been financially suffering because of Kim.



He explained that the brothers and Kim had made a joint investment to build a pension lodge on Jeju Island. Lee Hyun-bae had sold his apartment in Incheon and moved to Jeju to take part in the construction himself.



"Then, Kim refused to pay his part of the money, saying, 'It costs more money than I expected,' so Hyun-bae was left with the (construction) cost," he said. He added that this laid serious debt on his brother, but he couldn't help cover the debt because he was also short on money from the investment.



"Hyun-bae got a job as a delivery man to pay the debt and then got into a huge motorcycle accident," he said. "(After the accident,) he couldn't even get tested because he didn't have money for an MRI."



Lee Hyun-bae's initial cause of death was listed as a heart attack but his family have requested an autopsy.



In response to Lee Ha-neul's claim, Kim posted on social media that DJ DOC has gone through a lot since its debut in 1994.



"Over the years, we have done business together and we indeed went through some unpleasant times but I ask you respectfully to refrain from making assumptions, especially during this time of mourning," he said.


Add more to your Labor Day weekend with these home decor and appliance sales.

 Our editors review and recommend products to help you buy the stuff you need. If you make a purchase by clicking one of our links, we may earn a small share of the revenue. However, our picks and opinions are independent from USA Todays newsroom and any business incentives.

Home isn't just where the heart isit's also the place you can fill up with the cutest decor items and furniture you can find. It's finally Labor Day weekend, which means you can snag a ton of great deals at leading retailers like Wayfair, Anthropologie, Home Depot, and more if you shop over the next few days.

More: The massive Ulta sale starts this weekendhere's what you need to know

Whether you're sprucing your space up for fall or just trying to make your home a little, well, homier, there's definitely a sale happening right now that can help you achieve your interior decorating goals.

More: The best Labor Day mattress deals you can find this year

1. Get huge savings at Amazon

Every day, we spotlight the best Amazon deals happening, but these are some of the best home goods on sale right now. Here are a few of our favorite deals right now:

2. Save 20% on furniture, decor, and bedding at Anthropologie

Story continues

Anthropologie is one of our favorite stores to shop for pretty much anything on-trend, and right now you can save up to 20% on new furniture, decor, and bedding at the store if you shop their current sale. Here's another reason to get excited: you can also take an extra 50% off sale items headed into Labor Day weekend, including rugs, curtains, and more.

3. Save up to 60% at Bed Bath & Beyond

BB&B is just one of those places where you're guaranteed to save. Right now, you can shop savings with up to 60% off select summer clearance items. They're also offering $100 off select Dyson vacuums and fans (always a good deal), 50% off select patio furniture, and discounts on Brita pitchers, 40% off elite cutlery, and more, which is pretty incredible.

4. Save up to 15% off Casper mattresses

Need a better mattress? This is the week to buy one, and this deal happening right now at Casper is especially perfect for anyone who really relishes a good night's sleep. The company is offering 10-15% off their mattresses with the code LABORDAY15. This is the absolute best sale we've seen on these mattresses, so if you've been wanting to upgrade your mattress, the time is now. The Wave and original mattresses will be 15% off while the more affordable Essential will be 10% off.

5. Save up to 50% on sale items at CB2

You could shop at Crate and Barrel for housewares, or you could take the hipper approach and head to CB2, since they're basically like the brand's Urban Outfitters. You can save up to 50% on select furniture, lighting, and decor. It's a great chance to upgrade your home with some modern flare.

6. Save on upholstered furniture at Crate and Barrel

If you don't exactly find what you're looking for at CB2 but you still really want to stay within the aesthetic, you can always hit up Crate and Barrel. It's an especially good time to shop the store, since you can get up to 20% off upholstered furniture, including chairs, sofas, sectionals, and more.

7. Get up to $150 on popular Dyson vacuums

Dyson is the creme de la creme of vacuums, and they come with a steep price tag because of it. However, if you shop Dyson directly right now, you can get up to $150 off a ton of popular vacuums and gadgets including the V11 Torque, our favorite cordless vacuum, and the V8 Absolute. There are also several cordless vacuums on this list as well as air purifiers for your home.

8. Save up to 40% at the Home Depot

Love shopping at Home Depot and need a few new appliances for around the house? You can get up to 40% off with appliance special buys as part of the retailer's Labor Day Savings event. You can also get up to 40% off select kitchen and bathroom essentials, including vanities, select bath faucets, bath storage, and more right now if you shop the store

9. Get up to 75% off bed and bath at Houzz

Calling it here: one of the best sales to shop this Labor Day is definitely the one happening at Houzz right now. You can get a jumpstart on the savings and get up to 75% off select bedroom, living room, and outdoor furniture essentials during their pre-Labor Day sale, which lasts until the end of the long weekend. It's the perfect time to upgrade before the fall comes around.

10. Save up to 80% at Joss & Main

Joss & Main is a more upscale version of Wayfair in my opinion, which means it can often be out of the usual price range. But right now, you can get up to 80% off rugs, decor furniture, and more with the Labor Day Blowout.

11. Take up to $125 off at Layla Sleep

Layla sets itself apart from other beds in a box because this mattress has two sides, and one is firm and the other soft. If you're curious to try it out, now is the time to do it, since from now until September 12, you can take $125 off mattresses, plus grab foundations for $50 off, weighted blankets for $10 off, and select toppers and sheets for $25 off.

12. Get up to 40% off at Lowe's

Another great place to shop right now headed into Labor Day weekend is Lowe's. You can get up to 20% off select grills and up to 40% off select appliances.

13. Save up to $600 at Mattress Firm

Want to shop around for a new mattress? You can get up to $600 off select mattresses online and in-stores at Mattress Firm. During this sale, you can get select King mattresses for the price of a Queen, and get select Queen mattresses for the price of a Twin. You can also get a free adjustable base with qualifying purchases.

14. Get $100 off a Nectar Sleep mattress

It's a great time to buy a mattress, and especially this week, you can have your pick of incredible ones because almost every major mattress retailer is running a sale. While there's lots to love about Casper (and Tuft & Needle), Nectar is the best mattress we've tested so far. It's especially comfortable for side sleepers and hot sleepers, according to our tests. They started their Labor Day sale early and are offering $100 off and two free pillows with the purchase of one of their mattresses through September 9, so grab one on sale while you can.

15. Get this value bundle at Purple Mattress

If it's luxury that you're after, then Purple Mattress is the mattress you definitely want to grab. This is the best luxury mattress we've ever tested, and so if you've ever wanted to treat yourself to a luxurious nights sleep by purchasing a new mattress, this is an excellent time to do so, since you can also get free sheets and two pillows. It's up to a $327 value, which is an incredible value, if you ask us.

16. Save more at Sears

It's a really good time to shop at Sears right now, specifically if you're looking for deals on appliances and/or mattresses. You can get up to 40% off on a Kenmore Elite Bottom-Freezer Refrigerator, Front-Load Washer with Steam Treat, and Freestanding Electric Range, plus an extra 10% off select appliances and free delivery on all appliances over $399. With mattresses, you can also save up to 60% off top brand mattresses and an extra 10% off select mattresses, so shop around while you're there.

17. Save up to $500 at Serta

Before you decide on a mattress, you don't want to let this deal on Serta mattresses slip by. If you buy a Serta iComfort or iComfort Hybrid mattress, you can get up to $500 in savings and receive a free upgrade to a Serta Motion Slim adjustable foundation of the same size. You can save up to $400 on a qualified Serta adjustable foundation.

18. Save up to 50% off everything at Shutterfly

Summer is winding down, which means it's as good a time as any to add a few new shot to the family photo album. Shutterfly is our favorite online printing photo service, and they've extended their 50% off sale, so you can get a discount on everything, including personalized school gear, no promo code needed. You can also get free shipping on orders over $49 with the promo code "SHIP49."

19. Get an up to 60% off cookware at Sur La Table

Sur La Table sells some of the most coveted cookware on the market like Le Creuset, Staub, and All-Clad. This stuff is usually really expensive, but right now you can get up to 60% off these top brands thanks to this sale. It's a great way to treat yourself or get a gift for those upcoming fall weddings.

20. Get 15% off this Thermapen MK4 in coral

Thermoworks is really on a roll this summer with the MK4, since they released it in limited edition seafoam last month and have now rolled out this exquisite coral-colored version. The MK4 is one of our favorite digital meat thermometers, and you can get it for 15% off its usual price if you grab it in coral ASAP.

21. Get up to 75% off with so many sales at Wayfair

There are so many sales happening at Wayfair right now that it feels too good to be true. They've already kickstarted their Labor Day Sales event, so you can get up to 75% off select living room, bedroom, and outdoor furniture clearance items. You can get up to 65% off outdoor clearance like outdoor seating, lawn decor, and outdoor dining. There's also a Home Renovation sale, so you can save on tackling big projects.

The product experts at Reviewed have all your shopping needs covered. Follow Reviewed on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest deals, reviews, and more.

Prices are accurate at the time this article was published, but may change over time.

This article originally appeared on Reviewed: Labor Day sales 2019: The best home decor, furniture, and kitchen sales you can get this weekend
A 2021 remake of Get Shorty might not have much use for John Travoltas Miami mobster character. The debt collector role could go to a bot.

You can test this hypothesis in a most unlikely place to roll out a new technology: the Indian countryside. The setting is perhaps not as odd as it seems, with about 5% to 10% of the countrys farmers not repaying their tractor loans on time. The explanations for tardiness range from failed crops to medical emergencies and strategic defaults in anticipation of state-mandated debt waivers, a regular feature of the political economy.

But delinquency often stems from more mundane reasons: Borrowers forget their due dates, or fail to withdraw cash to pay the nonbank financiers who provide the bulk of loans for farm equipment purchases.

Like in most emerging markets, these last-mile hurdles pose a frustratingly complex challenge to Indias creditors. They also increase the overall risk premium for rural advances.

Of late, three things have changed. First, the worlds cheapest data prices have made smartphones ubiquitous. Second, a strong push for financial inclusion has seen more than 400 million no-frills savings accounts opened in the last seven years. Finally, banks are now on a nationwide mobile payment network that is fast, convenient and supports like Google Pay and Walmart Inc.s PhonePe. Google has even recommended the architecture to the U. S. Federal Reserve.

Yet for all the help from technology, collections are still hard in villages due to barriers of language, education and entrenched cash use. Farmers simply dont know how to use the new digital tools. Or they may miss a deadline because of a temporary cash flow mismatch. When creditors respond by handing over borrowers to third-party recovery agents, scandals emerge. Its a universal problem. In Indonesia, the 2011 death of a cash-strapped small businessman in Jakarta after alleged harassment by collectors led to a two-year ban on Citigroup Inc. from acquiring new credit card customers in the country. Even when things dont go to such extremes, unpleasantness and soured relationships usually follow.

The best way for a bank or a financial institution to lose a customer is to give the account to a collection agency, says Sumeet Srivastava, the chief executive of a five-year-old startup that aims to boost collections without human contact. You can do collections without collectors.

Before setting up the Mumbai-based Spocto Solutions, Srivastava put in stints at General Electric Co. and Monsanto Co., the seeds and agrichemicals giant later acquired by Bayer AG. His Kisan Pay  Hindi for Farmer Pay  is not an app, but an automated voice call, which lets farmers choose when they can repay loans and how. The selections trigger text messages with online payment links.

The bot stays on the call to help borrowers navigate the unfamiliar world of online money transfers.

It sounds fairly straightforward, until you consider that in a large, multilingual country like India, with more than 146 million operational land holdings, the service has to be offered in 100-plus dialects. Spocto is working on 1.2 trillion rupees ($16 billion) of loan portfolios spread across some of Indias largest banks and nonbank financiers. Its recovery rate in cases where borrowers have missed one installment is 85%, compared with 70% for traditional channels. The cost savings for creditors are in the range of 30% to 40%, Srivastava says.

The value to lenders comes from the behavioral clues Spocto picks up in the process of nudging customers to pay on time. By training his algorithms to mine the data, Srivastava is able to predict which customers will most likely resume paying after missing a couple of installments, and who will probably default. Turning over a much smaller set of problem loans to collection agencies means good customers dont get put off by strong-arm tactics. For creditors, bad loan ratios and loss provisions fall; profitability improves.

From remittances and working capital financing to micro insurance and buy now, pay later, fintech is disrupting conventional finance. However, collection technology has received far less attention and investment. Expect that to change as big-data analysis of repayment kinks and quirks complements the yes/no decisions of underwriting algorithms. The two can even combine  to screen good customers and retain them.

Ten years ago, there were almost 10,000 collection firms in the U. S. Now, their number has dwindled below 7,000. More than 70% have fewer than five employees, and its these small agencies that are consolidating. While letters and phone calls are still the most common across the industry, text messages, artificial intelligence-informed chatbots and other automated tools have been adopted by larger companies, TransUnion said in its 2020 collections report. The credit reporting institutions survey shows 9% of industry participants expect investment in software to be a significant expense over the next year or two.

Thats what is attracting the husband-wife team of Sumeet and Puja Srivastava to test the waters with credit card and other unsecured debt on the East Coast of the U. S. Back in India, Srivastava is considering putting his money where his mouth is. He wants to finance overdue installments where Spoctos analysis shows delinquency is likely to be temporary. Taking on balance-sheet risk may be a leap for a bootstrapped startup, so Srivastava might partner with a bank. But it tells you where debt collection is heading  toward less muscle and more intelligence. Of the artificial kind.
Scientists have sequenced ancient DNA from soil for the first time and the advance will transform what is known about everything from evolution to climate change.

Scientists have sequenced ancient DNA from soil for the first time and the advance will transform what is known about everything from evolution to climate change.

The findings have been described as the 'moon landings' of genomics because researchers will no longer have to rely on finding and testing fossils to determine genetic ancestry, links and discoveries - and it is thanks to Stone Age black bears who defecated in a remote cave in Mexico 16,000 years ago.

A team of scientists from The Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre, University of Copenhagen, led by Professor Eske Willerslev, director of the foundation and a Fellow of St John's College, University of Cambridge, recreated the genomes of animals, plants and bacteria of microscopic fragments of DNA found in Chiquihuite Cave.

The results, which have been published today (April 19 2021) in Current Biology, are the first time environmental DNA has been sequenced from soil and sediment and includes the ancient DNA profile of a Stone Age American black bear taken from samples in the cave.

This 'scientific first' has wider significance as it increases scientists' ability to study the evolution of animals, plants and microorganisms, which has been hailed as the dawn of an 'entirely new era' of population genetics. The work was possible as a result of advanced technology and understanding over the past five years.

This is because working with highly fragmented DNA from soil samples means scientists no longer have to rely on DNA samples from bone or teeth for enough genetic material to recreate a profile of ancient DNA, which opens up the field to what can be tested and studied.

The samples included faeces and droplets of urine from an ancestor of North America's most familiar and common bear - the American black bear - which allowed scientists to recreate the entire genetic code of two species of the animal. The first is the Stone Age American black bear, the second is an extinct short-faced bear called Arctodus simus which died out 12,000 years ago.

Professor Willerslev said: "When an animal or a human urinates or defecates, cells from the organism are also excreted. And the DNA fragments from these cells are what we can detect in the soil samples. Using extremely powerful sequencing techniques, we reconstructed genomes - genetic profiles - based on these fragments for the first time. We have shown that hair, urine and faeces all provide genetic material which, in the right conditions, can survive for much longer than 10,000 years.

"All over the world, everyone scientifically involved in the study of ancient DNA recognised the need to reconstruct genomes from fragments found in soil or sediment. Being able to do that for the first time means we have opened up a new frontier. Analysis of DNA found in soil could have the potential to expand the narrative about everything from the evolution of species to developments in climate change - this is the moon landing of genomics because fossils will no longer be needed."

Chiquihuite Cave, where the samples were taken from, is a high-altitude site, 2,750 metres above sea level. Nearly 2,000 stone tools and small tool fragments, known as flakes, were discovered.

The same group of scientists revealed last year that DNA analysis of the plant and animal remains from the sediment packed around the tools in the cave dates the tools and the human occupation of the site to 25,000-30,000 years ago - 15,000 years earlier than people were previously thought to have reached the Americas. Human DNA has not yet been found.

DNA of mice, black bears, rodents, bats, voles and kangaroo rats was found and the genome of the two species of bear has now been sequenced. The huge predatory short-faced bear, which also lived in North America, stood at nearly two metres just on all fours and could weigh up to 1,000 kilos.

Assistant Professor Mikkel Winther Pedersen, first author of the paper, said: "The short-faced bears that lived in northern Mexico were distinctly different from the population of black bears living in north-western Canada. This is an excellent example of the new knowledge that suddenly becomes available when you reconstruct genomes based on DNA fragments extracted from soil."

Professor Pedersen described the new sequencing as 'the dawn of an entirely new era' of population genomics.

He said: "Studies of ancient environmental DNA have been very limited until now. Fragmented DNA from a soil sample could only tell us whether a specific species lived in a certain locality at a certain time, but it gave us no concrete details about the individual in question.

"So, we couldn't compare this individual with present-day individuals of the same species. But we can now. We have published for the first time a DNA profile of an American black bear that lived in a mountain cave in northern Mexico in the Stone Age. I'm not exaggerating when I say that the potential to extract this type of information from a soil sample of a mere few grams will revolutionise our field."

Fragments in sediment will be able to be tested in many former Stone Age settlements around the world.

Professor Willerslev added: "Imagine the stories those traces could tell. It's a little insane - but also fascinating - to think that, back in the Stone Age, these bears urinated and defecated in the Chiquihuite Cave and left us the traces we're able to analyse today."

Paper and images: https:/ / drive. google. com/ drive/ folders/ 1Vu6hmTsmo1nJLWYEc3KGA4VtC8Uz-YLD?usp= sharing

###
Oh, if only the White Mans Primary Association of Dimmit County could see us now.

They and all the pioneers of similar all-white political organizations that sprang up in counties across Texas after Reconstruction would see their legacy well-preserved, their cunning strategies of restricting Black and Latino voting access well-heeded.

While theyd probably be flattered to see their proteges still relying on the same pretext they used to suppress minority voting  voter fraud  they might wonder why, 100 years later, Texas lawmakers havent gotten some new material. And why, after courts have repeatedly debunked the notion of widespread voter fraud, Texans are still falling for it.

But here we are in 2021, with the Texas Senate having just passed SB 7, another attack on ballot access under the guise of election integrity. It would ban such threatening practices as voting after 9 p.m., drive-thru voting, and dropping off an absentee ballot in a secure drop box.

For anybody under the impression that President Trump invented the boogeyman of widespread voter fraud, or that maybe Republican strategist Karl Rove dreamed it up after that troubling close call in 2000 between George W. Bush and Al Gore, weve got some news for you, and some history.

Texas politicians have been crying voter fraud since at least 1902, when they used it to justify a poll tax. Supporters claimed that charging Black and Mexican-American laborers nearly a whole days pay to cast a ballot would make their votes too expensive for their political bosses to buy.

The true intent for the poll tax, according its architect A. W. Terrell, was to protect the citizen against corrupt methods at the polls and to eliminate irresponsible voters, or so he claimed in a 1906 piece published in the Dallas Morning News, headlined Purity of Ballot.

For ruling conservatives in this state  first white Democrats, now white Republicans  voter fraud is the trusty password that unlocks an arsenal of underhanded, often unconstitutional, tricks to retain political power and keep it out of the hands of those deemed undeserving of a voice and unqualified for a role in governing. Namely, Black and brown folks.

In a chilling exchange cited in the Fifth Circuits 2016 opinion on the Texas voter ID law, the court quotes the testimony of Vernon Burton, an historian of the South and race relations, who was asked about Texas stated rationale for each of its attempts to disenfranchise minority voters.

What, in your opinion, was the stated rationale for the enactment of all-White primaries in Texas? an attorney asked.

The stated rationale was voter fraud, Burton replied.

And for the use of secret ballot provisions in Texas?

The stated rationale was to prevent voter fraud, Burton replied.

And for the use of the poll tax in Texas?

The stated rationale by the State was to prevent voter fraud, Burton replied.

And for re-registration requirements and voter purges?

The stated rationale was voter fraud, Burton replied.

Dr. Burton, the attorney asked, in your expert opinion, did these devices actually respond to sincere concerns or incidents - incidences of voter fraud?

No, Burton replied.

Its not that voter fraud didnt exist in Texas history  it did; see Lyndon Johnsons 1948 Senate election. But voter fraud in this century is extremely rare: only 174 people have been prosecuted out of 94 million votes since 2005.

And its not as if legislative heists of voter rights arent happening elsewhere  they are; see Georgia. But lawmakers in Texas, which has the most restrictive election laws in the country and a perpetually rock-bottom voter turnout rate, appear to have been the most successful in their thievery.

Texans who want it to stop must understand how it came to be.

For more than a century, Texas lawmakers have played whack-a-mole with the voting access of minorities, whom political leaders naturally viewed as threatening to the status quo of systemic racism and white hegemony.

As post-Civil War Reconstruction ended, Texas was among the Southern states that robbed freed Blacks of their newfound voting power through several schemes that were crafted to appear race-neutral but targeted the poor and less-educated, knowing they were disproportionately Black and brown. The laws included barring assistance for illiterate voters and those who needed interpreters, and more overt measures such as white-only primaries that specifically barred Black voters, and in some areas, Mexican-Americans, from choosing candidates in the only elections that mattered in a one-party state.

In his book, historian David Montejano describes Dimmit Countys white primary, quoting from a 1914 issue of the Carrizo Springs Javelin, which frequently editorialized for the system: it absolutely eliminates the Mexican vote as a factor in nominating county candidates, though we graciously grant the Mexican the privilege of voting for them afterward.

Another racist law in 1922 outright banned Black voters from Texas primaries. When the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 1927, lawmakers allowed political parties to decide who could participate in primaries, which Democrats promptly did  once again excluding all non-white voters under a law that wasnt overturned until 1944.

After the 24th Amendment banned the poll tax in 1964, Texas lawmakers wasted no time replacing it with a restrictive annual re-registration policy. After that was ruled unconstitutional in 1971, Texas hustled to enact a voter purge law that required the entire electorate to re-register. The Justice Department stopped it from being implemented.

That was only possible because, in 1975, Texas sordid history of voter suppression earned it a spot on the list of jurisdictions singled out in Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act that required them to prove to the Justice Department or a federal judge that voting changes didnt discriminate.

But in 2011, Texas lawmakers broke norms, suspended rules and sidelined other priorities amid an urgent $27 billion budget shortfall to pass what Gov. Rick Perry deemed emergency legislation: requiring a picture ID to vote.

Even though Republicans claimed to have patterned SB 14 after a similar law in Indiana, Texas version was intentionally callous, providing no work-around for indigent voters, as Indiana and even Georgia had, and tailoring its list of acceptable IDs to the desired electorate: a concealed handgun license was acceptable identification; a student ID was not.

The law was blocked for years in the courts, including almost immediately after a federal judge in Washington D.C. ruled that it didnt pass federal preclearance requirements. But just two years later, Texas dreams were answered by a landmark Supreme Court ruling striking down those requirements.

The justices reasoned that Texas and other states on the list, most in the South, had mended their racist ways enough to skip having to clear voting law changes.

Our country has changed, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, giving way to tragic optimism. While any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.

Texas promptly demonstrated its own current conditions.

Within mere hours of the courts decision, the Texas governor and attorney general both announced that the state would enforce SB 14 immediately, Burton, the historian, wrote in a Louisiana Law Review article. As a result, Texas was able to allow SB 14 to act as a modern-day version of the poll tax, restrictive voter registration laws, and similar devices Texas utilized throughout its history to suppress minority voting rights.

Court challenges continued for several years, during which time a federal judge in Corpus Christi found in 2014 and again in 2017 that lawmakers intentionally discriminated against minority voters. The law should have died when the Supreme Court refused to hear Texas appeal but instead, lawmakers tweaked it just enough for the Fifth Circuit in 2018 to allow it to stand.

The victory, if partial, only encouraged more voting restrictions, out-sized punishments and intimidation tactics to curb minority voting.

In the current session, Texas lawmakers, having ransacked nearly every inch of ballot access that the courts would thus far allow, have run so short on voter suppression ideas that they are getting desperately creative: allowing partisan poll observers to hound voters with cell phone cameras and threatening county clerks with a state jail felony if they attempt to mass-mail ballot applications.

Republican leaders pushing the restrictions accuse critics of race-baiting and insist their efforts are about securing elections. Sure they are: securing elections for themselves.

Integrity is no more the goal for them than it was for the white primary associations of the 1900s. Only todays voter fraud warriors have laser pointers.

In a video presentation leaked earlier this month, a GOP precinct chair calls on thousands of white Republicans in safe Houston suburban precincts to form an election integrity brigade and have the courage to volunteer at polling places where he says problems are occurring.

If they dont, he says, this fraud down here is really going to continue. He doesnt define this fraud or say where down here is. He doesnt have to.

He simply moves his laser pointer along a map, tracing the circumference of greater Houston, the most ethnically and racially diverse city in the nation.
President Joe Biden's administration has banned border officials from using the term 'illegal aliens' when discussing the migrant crisis.

Immigration enforcement officials will stop using the term 'alien, 'illegal aliens' and 'assimilation' altogether, under a new memo from top Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection officials.

Instead, they will use language the administration says is more humanizing, even as the administration confronts an unprecedented surge in crossings at the southern border.

Instead of 'assimilation,' authorities will use 'integration.' The word of choice for those without legal authorization will be 'undocumented'  a term long preferred by immigration advocates.

'As the nation's premier law enforcement agency, we set a tone and example for our country and partners across the world,' wrote Troy Miller of CBP, in a memo obtained by the Washington Post.

Immigration enforcement agencies in the Biden Administration will no longer use the terms 'illegal alien' in their policy statements

A July 2020 executive order signed by President Donald Trump was named 'Excluding Illegal Aliens' from congressional apportionment in its title

'We enforce our nation's laws while also maintaining the dignity of every individual with whom we interact. The words we use matter and will serve to further confer that dignity to those in our custody.'

Miller is the Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Commissioner for CBP, and oversees the organization's 60,000 employees.

The head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement  an agency some critics called for banning during the Trump administration  also issued a memo directing changes.

'In response to the vision set by the Administration, ICE will ensure agency communications use the preferred terminology and inclusive language.' said Tae Johnson wrote in a memo.

The term 'alien' has occurred in official government documents for years.

A July 2020 Trump Administration executive order was titled 'Excluding Illegal Aliens From the Apportionment Base Following the 2020 Census,' and was designed to exclude them from the count for Congress.

The agencies no longer want employees to refer to 'illegal aliens' when describing people who cross the border without documentation. Here, an immigrant child glances towards human trafficker while being smuggled into the United States from Mexico on April 15, 2021 in Roma, Texas

One recent tweet by Miller of CBP sought to put border agents who first interact with would-be migrants crossing the border in a better light.

'Border Patrol agents have RESCUED more than 4,600 individuals along the Southwest border in the last six months. @CBP agents and officers stand ready to provide lifesaving assistance to all who need it,' he wrote. He also retweeted a border agent in San Diego who sent out an image of agents who 'rescued an injured & lost migrant woman Sunday.'

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is among a small group of House Democrats who called to 'abolish ICE' in 2018.

The change in tone comes after Biden reversed course after saying a 15,000 person cap on refugees for the current fiscal year was justified. Biden soon afterward said more refugees would be allowed, and the White House on Monday denied a flip flop.

The Biden has made clear that it places weight on the words officials from Biden on down use to describe immigration. When the president deviated from his homeland chief over the weekend and mentioned an immigration 'crisis,' the White House clarified there was no change in policy.
MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Monday he was prepared to send his military ships in the South China Sea to "stake a claim" over oil and mineral resources in the disputed part of the strategic waterway.

With some critics complaining Duterte had gone soft by refusing to push Beijing to comply with an arbitration ruling, he said the public can be assured he would assert the country's claims to resources like oil and minerals in the South China Sea.

"I'm not so much interested now in fishing. I don't think there's enough fish to quarrel about. But when we start to mine, when we start to get whatever it is in the bowels of the China Sea, our oil, by that time I will send my grey ships there to stake a claim," Duterte said in a late night public address.

"If they start drilling oil there, I will tell China, is that part of our agreement? If that is not part of our agreement, I will also drill oil there," he said even as he reiterated he wanted to remain friends with Beijing.

Duterte has sought to build an alliance with China and has been reluctant to confront its leadership, having been promised billions of dollars of loans and investments, much of which have yet to materialise, frustrating nationalists.

He has repeatedly said the Philippines was powerless to stop China, and that challenging its activities could risk a war his country would lose.

The firebrand leader said there was no way for the Philippines to enforce "without any bloodshed" a landmark 2016 arbitral ruling that clarified the Philippines sovereign rights in its exclusive economic zone.

The Chinese Embassy in Manila did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Philippines has filed several diplomatic protests against China's actions in the South China Sea, with the latest accusing its giant neighbour of undertaking illegal fishing and massing more than 240 boats within its territorial waters.

(Reporting by Karen Lema; Editing by David Gregorio)
Maldives: Sharks on a knifes edge as mulls lifting 10-year fishing ban

by Elizabeth Claire Alberts

April 19,2021 | Source: Mongabay

Its not easy to find sharks these days. Just ask Demian Chapman, a marine scientist who leads Global FinPrint, a project that assesses shark populations on reefs worldwide. But he says there is a spot where theyre often found: the Maldives, a tiny nation of islands speckled in the Indian Ocean. The Maldives is a place where we drop cameras, and we see sharks frequently, which really is very unusual, Chapman told Mongabay in an interview. You know, most places we drop cameras and see nothing [or] one shark or two sharks, but then the Maldives is pretty consistent. Sharks are plentiful in the Maldives thanks to a 90,000-square-kilometer (34,750-square-mile) shark sanctuary  thats about three times as big as Belgium  set up in 2010 with a blanket ban on shark fishing and finning. But conservationists say these advances are now under threat as the Maldivian government considers lifting its 11-year shark-fishing ban. In a parliamentary committee discussion in late March, fisheries minister Zaha Waheed said talks were underway to open a managed shark fishery, which would help boost the economy. Shaha Hashim, chairperson of Maldives Resilient Reefs and project manager for the Blue Marine Foundation, said lifting the ban would have devastating consequences for local shark populations. [Sharks] are easy to overfish due to their biological nature, Hashim told Mongabay in an email. [Theyre] long-lived, late to mature, [and have] long gestational periods and low productivity. The Maldives has never been successful in managing the shark fishery, so a managed shark fishery is just not feasible because of poor enforcement and monitoring as it is. News of the Maldives potentially lifting the shark-fishing ban has garnered local and international attention.



More than 200 organizations formed an alliance to show their support for maintaining the countrys shark sanctuary. From a conservation standpoint, itd be much easier for us to put this incredible pressure on the government not to lift this ban now, rather than allow this ban to be lifted, and then have to fight tooth and nail to get a ban reinstated, Simon Hilbourne, a researcher at the Manta Trust, one of the organizations in the alliance, told Mongabay in an interview. Chapman, an associate professor in the biology department at Florida International University (FIU), says setting up a sustainable shark fishery would be difficult, requiring a lot of time, effort and financial resources to implement. He added that very few nations have managed to do so. The odds are good that youd experience declines, and these declines could well lead to local extinctions, so that the Maldives would look a lot more like some of these other countries in the western Indian Ocean [where sharks are scarce], he said. You could certainly see that happening without any sort of major, major investment to manage those fisheries. Tourism is considered the most significant economic sector in the Maldives, accounting for about 30% of its annual gross domestic product. And according to many experts, sharks play a crucial role in attracting visitors. Chapman says he thinks tourism numbers would drop substantially if shark fishing were allowed to recommence. It wouldnt take much shark fishing to deplete the numbers to the point where divers just wouldnt really see sharks [in the water], and they might actually be more likely to see sharks dead on a beach or in a market, he said.



A 2018 study found that protected shark populations in the Maldives increased demand for scuba diving by 15%, and even produced about $6 million in tourism revenue for the Maldivian economy. It also found that declining shark populations and the presence of illegal fishing during dive trips could decrease dive tourism by up to 56%, and result in an economic loss of about $24 million each year. The question becomes, if Maldives was to open the shark fishery, could they do that and hit that really, really low target? Chapman said. And then the second question is  is it worth it to make all those investments to jeopardize the tourism industry? There are about 30 species of sharks in the Maldives, ranging from vulnerable common thresher sharks (Alopias vulpinus) to endangered whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) to critically endangered scalloped hammerheads (Sphyrna lewini). Many of these shark species are still recovering from the overfishing that occurred before the government set up the sanctuary, experts say. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has slowed the stream of tourists who normally visit the Maldives each year, there have been increased calls to reopen the shark fishery as a way to make a quick buck, Hashim says. Illegal shark fishing also seems to be on the rise in the Maldives. For example, in January 2021, customs officials seized 21 boxes marked as salted fish that contained 429 kilograms (946 pounds) of shark fins, worth about $190,000, at the nations international airport. And in March, authorities detained a group of people after encountering a vessel carrying shark fins, shark meat, and whole sharks at the Southern Ari Atoll. Following a period of local and international outcry, there have been some unofficial reports that the Maldives will not be lifting the ban, which has raised hopes in the conservation community.



In a recent post, the U.K.-based NGO Shark Guardians also wrote that it met with minister Waheed and a senior fisheries officer, Munshidha Ibrahim, who told them the ban would not be lifted. But there is still room for concern, according to Hashim. She said the fisheries ministry is also discussing a reintroduction of long-line fishing for bigeye tuna (Thunnus obesus), which could result in a significant amount of shark bycatch, and would, in essence, abolish the shark sanctuary. There is political pressure to open the shark fishery within the Maldives parliament, and there is huge support from the voter base, so it has unfortunately become a very real threat to the recovering shark populations, she said. I fear that some loophole could be introduced which would pave the way for the black market to operate more easily.

 2021 Copyright Conservation News
Mayfield Man Arrested on Drug, Other Charges

By West Kentucky Star Staff

MAYFIELD - A Mayfield man was arrested Sunday night after complaints of a suspicious person in the city.Around 10:00 pm, Kentucky State Police received a call of a suspicious person walking through the back yards of homes near the area of Clark Street and 15th Street in Mayfield. While on an unrelated complaint, a Trooper came into contact with 28-year-old Philip Vrhovnik of Mayfield, who began yelling and cursing at him.During the interaction, Vrhovnik fled from the Trooper and an officer with Mayfield Police Department, running through residential yards and across a street. Vrhovnik approached a tree line and stopped. After a brief struggle, he was apprehended.

Vrhovnik was arrested and lodged in the Graves County Jail. He's charged with criminal trespassing, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, fleeing or evading police, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of methamphetamine.
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The most remote corners of Alaska have some of the highest Covid vaccination rates in the U.S., with at least one dose given to more than 80 percent of residents over 16 in one island Native community.

That's about twice as high as the statewide vaccination rate. Just shy of 40 percent of Alaskans have have one dose, and 32 percent are fully vaccinated, according to Bloomberg data.

About 96 new cases of COVID-19 are now being recorded in an average day. New infections there have largely been hovering between 100 and 150 since March. Fewer than one person a day dies of COVID-19 in Alaska, and it has the third lowest per capita fatality rate in the nation.

Alaska's rollout is going so well that the state will start offering shots to visiting tourists, beginning June 1, Governor Mike Dunleavy announced on Friday.

Dunleavy, a Republican, outlined plans for a national marketing campaign aimed at luring tourists using federal aid money and said the vaccine offering is 'probably another good reason to come to the state of Alaska in the summer.'

American Indian and Alaska Natives (AIAN) have been harder hit than any other racial or ethnic group in the U.S. A Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) study estimates that Covid fueled the loss of 3,843 potential years of life per 100,000 AIAN people last year, compared to just 632 years per capita for white people.

Native communities have taken the devastation as motivation for a rapid fire vaccination campaign. Coupled with strategies like vaccinating people at their grocery stores or homes, hard to reach tribes are now reaching herd immunity.

Encouragement to get vaccinated is coming from Alaska health officials. They took Twitter by storm this winter with videos of giddy vaccine deliveries by dingy and dogsled. But it has also come from an unlikely set of medical ambassadors: tribal elders.

More than 80% of people in some of Alaska's most remote Alaska Native villages have had at least one dose of Covid vaccine, thanks to the leadership of elders and the use of local providers who residents already know and trust. Pictured: community health aide Nicole Gregory, right, administers a COVID-19 vaccine to Virginia Johnston at the Yukon-Koyukuk Elder Assisted Living Facility in Galena, Alaska

About 30 percent of Native Americans and Alaska Natives have had at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccines, according to a DailyMail.com analysis of CDC data - more than members of any other racial or ethnic group in the U.S.

John Waghiyi remembers rushing his cousin to the clinic in the Bering Sea city of Savoonga in December, worried he was having a possible heart attack while out butchering a bowhead whale. Waghiyi arrived to see elders waiting in the lobby for a COVID-19 vaccine.

Waghiyi, 66, said he joined them and got a shot before returning to the coast to help finish the whale harvest.

Elders, he said, have set the tone in the Alaska Native community of 735 on the coast of isolated St Lawrence Island.

Vaccination rates for eligible residents 16 or older are among the region's best, with over 80 percent having had at least one dose, according to the regional tribal health corporation.

'We live for our children. We want to bring that sense of normalcy back in our lives,' said Wghiyi, adding that protecting the community 'needs to be No. 1.'

REMOTE VILLAGES OUTPACE THE STATE'S OVERALL VACCINATION RATE - BUT STILL FACE LOGISTICAL CHALLENGES AND HESITANCY

Alaska's highest vaccination rates have been in some of its remotest, hardest-to-access communities, where the toll of past flu and tuberculosis outbreaks hasn't been forgotten.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, health officials say local leaders have helped share information, and they cite the importance of residents getting shots from providers they know and at convenient locations, including their homes and grocery stores.

Tribal health organizations had flexibility in deciding how best to distribute vaccine allocations they received from the federal Indian Health Service.

Nurse LaVerne Saccheus providing a vaccination to Unalakleet elder Joseph 'Nupid' Katchatag in Unalakleet, Alaska in December. Elders have led the vaccination drive and inspired younger generations to get their shots in a Alaska

And they played a significant role in Alaska's overall vaccine rollout, sharing doses with outside communities and in some cases expanding eligibility faster than the state.

Nationwide, AIAN people have gotten vaccinated at higher rates than people of any other race or ethnicity.

About 30 percent of Native Americans and Alaska Natives have had at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccines, according to a DailyMail.com analysis of CDC data.

By comparison, only about 23 percent of white Americans, 20 percent of Asian or Native Hawaiian Americans and about 15 percent of black or Hispanic Americans have had at least a first dose.

Although the Alaska Native tribes have rolled out their shots with impressive speed, logistics have at times been challenging.

In Tanana, in Alaska's remote interior, temperatures were so frigid earlier this year the plane a health team flew in on to vaccinate more than 100 people would not start, said Dan Nelson, pharmacy director with the Tanana Chiefs Conference's Chief Andrew Isaac Health Center.

A backup plane also wouldn't start, and a third plane had to be sent to pick up the team so it could visit another community the next day 'at 40 below,' he said.

Nelson said health care staff called thousands of residents in his organization's coverage area, to answer questions and help schedule appointments.

He said Tanana Chiefs Conference planned to rely on the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine for some rural communities, citing in part the logistical ease over the two-dose vaccines. Nelson added that officials would reevaluate the J&J shot following the recommended pause on its use by federal health agencies to allow time to review rare blood clot cases.

Among these remote communities, keeping familiar faces at the helm of the vaccine drive has helped to instill confidence and ensure that the shots get into the arms of those who need them most.

In Mekoryuk, an Alaska Native community of about 205 people in the Bering Sea, nearly all residents eligible for vaccines have gotten one, according to the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp., the regional tribal health organization.

In this undated photo, provided by the Tanana Chiefs Conference, shows a team from the Tanana Chiefs Conference tribal health organization posing outside a plane before leaving for a rural vaccination clinic in Anaktuvuk Pass, Alaska

Alaskan health officials were hoping J&J vaccines would help them easily vaccinate people in remote villages. In light of the pause, they are relying on the more delicate shots made by Pfizer (pictured in coolers to be sent to the rural Alaska communities of Savoonga and Gambell)

The corporation chief of staff, Dr Ellen Hodges, credits well-known mother and daughter health aides who worked to build community confidence in the vaccine.

In White Mountain, an Alaska Native community of 200 east of Nome accessible in the winter only by air or snowmobile, health officials report over 90 percent of eligible residents have gotten vaccinations.

But not all villages are the same, and tribal health officials say they are encountering some of the hesitancy reported in other parts of the state.

Misinformation or unanswered questions could be factors in a slowdown in the Bering Strait region served by the Norton Sound Health Corp., spokesperson Reba Lean said.

She said the corporation has probably reached everyone 'who was willing to be swayed' by prizes, and officials are trying to determine how best to reach others.

Kivalina, a community with fewer than 500 people at the tip of a barrier reef in northwest Alaska, saw a rash of COVID-19 cases this year.

Only 20 percent of its eligible residents have had at least one vaccine dose, according to Maniilaq Association, a tribal health provider.

Lucy Nelson, mayor of the Northwest Arctic Borough, which covers an area the size of Indiana and includes Kivalina, in an email said outreach across the region has been positive. Some simply people don't want a vaccine, which she said is their right.

But she said officials are trying to provide incentives in hopes it will have a 'domino effect.'

Some are taking a stronger approach. Bering Straits Native Corp., an Alaska Native corporation, is requiring its employees, including those who work for its subsidiary businesses, to be vaccinated.

The corporation headquartered in Nome cited the 'painful scar' left on the region by the flu epidemic a century ago that 'negatively affected our Native customs and traditions in ways that endure to this very day.'

It noted accommodations could be made for those with documented medical concerns or religious objections.

ALASKA WILL NOT MANDATE VACCINATIONS BUT IT WILL OFFER SHOTS TO VISITORS THIS SUMMER

Governor Mike Dunleavy has said there would be 'no statewide mandate to compel employees to have vaccines.'

The Republican has called vaccination a personal decision but encouraged Alaskans to get inoculated.

'Each vaccinated person gets us one step closer to putting the pandemic behind us and getting back to living life freely like we did before COVID-19,' he said.

And he's now encouraging travelers from elsewhere to join Alaska's vaccination campaign.

Dunleavy, a republican, said Friday that COVID-19 vaccines would be made available at key airports in the state starting June 1, in unveiling plans aimed at bolstering the state's pandemic-battered tourist industry.

He outlined plans for a national marketing campaign aimed at luring tourists using federal aid money and said the vaccine offering is 'probably another good reason to come to the state of Alaska in the summer.'

Dunleavy and other state leaders have been pushing to allow large cruise ships to return to Alaska after COVID-19 restrictions kept them away last year. That lull came as a massive blow to businesses and communities, particularly in southeast Alaska, which relies heavily on summer tourism.

He said the state has not ruled out suing the federal government, as Florida has, over the issue.

Heidi Hedberg, the state health department's Division of Public Health director, said there is an ample supply of vaccine. She said the airport program will offer the two-dose Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.

Hedberg said officials are hearing from other states that there is 'a lot of vaccine availability,' so if travelers are not still in Alaska when it's time for their second dose, they can follow-up at a clinic or with their provider when they return home, she said.

They would need to make sure that if their first dose was with Pfizer, for example, that their second dose is also a Pfizer shot, Hedberg said.

The state plans to offer vaccines at airports in Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau and Ketchikan, with the clinics outside the security area, she said.

Details released Friday differed from a department solicitation in March that included interest in using a one-dose vaccine subject to availability.

Hedberg said officials would do a 'soft rollout' at the Anchorage airport for five days in late April, between 5pm and 2am, to work through logistics. The state will use an existing contractor for mobile clinics for the trial run, and it would be for Alaskans traveling in or through the airport, she said.

Vaccinations would open more widely, to anyone passing through, starting June 1, she said.

State health officials also have encouraged travelers to test for COVID-19, though the state no longer requires that.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

California hotels and airports must prioritize former staff laid off due to the pandemic when they are hiring.

Gov. Newsom signed the bill Friday, which included fines for companies who don't follow the rules.

Unions say this could help more than 700,000 workers - in particular women and people of color.

See more stories on Insider's business page.

Hospitality workers in California who lost their jobs during the pandemic will get priority for new roles with their former employers, per a statewide bill Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Friday.

The bill requires employers in the hospitality and business-services industries, including hotels, airports, and large event centers, to give qualified former employees priority jobs access through 2024.

Any companies breaking the rules could face a $100 fine and be forced to pay an eligible former employee $500 a day.

Unite Here Local 11, which sponsored the bill and introduced similar legislation in Los Angeles and Long Beach in May, said the statewide policy could help more than 700,000 workers.

The Service Employees International Union California told The LA Times that women and people of color would especially benefit because they are overrepresented in the hospitality sector.

The COVID-19 pandemic has crushed the hospitality sector as companies laid off workers during waves of shutdown orders. Nearly 40% of all jobs lost during the pandemic in California have been in the hospitality industry, the union said.

Read more: 6 workers in the battered hospitality industry reveal just how bad it is right now, from not having time to use the bathroom to fears of getting replaced by cheaper labor

Per the bill, which came into effect immediately, all employees who served at a company for at least 6 months in 2019, and who were dismissed for nondisciplinary reasons related to the pandemic, are eligible.

Employers have to notify these former employees about new vacancies that they are qualified for, and that are similar to their previous role, within five business days of the positions opening.

Story continues

If more than one eligible former employee applies, the company must give the role to the person who served there the longest.

If the company decides to give the role to someone else because the laid-off employee isn't qualified, the company must send a letter to the former employee explaining the decision.

$500 per day to former employees if companies break the rules

Former employees have the right to file a complaint against the employer if it doesn't follow the rules. The company could face a civil penalty of $100 for each employee, as well as pay $500 to the employee for each day their rights were violated.

Companies that changed ownership or structure but still have similar operations must also follow the new rules, but Phil Ting, the San Francisco assemblyman who authored the bill, told CBS Los Angeles that small family-run hotels wouldn't be affected.

Newsom had rejected a similar rehire bill in September 2020 because he said it covered all lay-offs during the pandemic, whether directly related to the pandemic or not.

"As we progress toward fully reopening our economy, it is important we maintain our focus on equity," Newsom said in a statement Friday. "SB 93 keeps us moving in the right direction by assuring hospitality and other workers displaced by the pandemic are prioritized to return to their workplace."

The state has a 8.3% unemployment rate, per its Employment Development Department. Though this is considerably higher than the pre-pandemic rate of 4.5% in March 2020, this is nearly half of its peak of 16% in April 2020.

California's leisure and hospitality sector had just over 1.4 million employees in March 2021, a drop of almost 600,000 in 12 months.

But hospitality businesses and sit-down restaurants have started rehiring as the economy reopens, and a McDonald's in Florida is even paying people $50 just to show up for a job interview as it scrambles to find new staff.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Millicom signs agreements to conclude Africa divestiture program

Luxembourg, April 19, 2021  Millicom International Cellular S.A. (Millicom) announces that it has signed agreements for the sale of its operations in Tanzania and for its stake in the AirtelTigo joint venture in Ghana. Once closed, the transactions will complete Millicoms multi-year plan to divest its African operations and focus on its Latin America markets.

In Tanzania, Millicom has agreed to sell its entire operations to a consortium led by Axian, a pan-African group that was part of the consortium that acquired Millicoms operations in Senegal in 2018.

In Ghana, Millicom along with its joint venture partner, Bharti Airtel Limited, have signed a definitive agreement for the transfer of AirtelTigo to the Government of Ghana. Millicom will take a $25 million charge as a result of this agreement.

Millicom CEO, Mauricio Ramos, commented: Today Tigo is a leading provider of broadband services to consumers, businesses and governments in Latin America, where penetration and data speeds remain low by the standards of more mature markets. Through our investment-led strategy, we are bringing reliable high-speed mobile and fixed broadband to the communities we serve in the region. With todays announcement that we are divesting our remaining African businesses, we close a chapter in our history and open another solely focused on the Latin American region.

Financial details were not disclosed, and completion of each transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals.

-END-

For further information, please contact:

Press:

Vivian Kobeh, Corporate Communications Director

+1 786-628-5300

press@millicom.com Investors:

Michel Morin, VP Investor Relations

+1 786-628-5270 investors@millicom.com







Sarah Inmon, Director Investor Relations

+1 786-628-5303 investors@millicom.com

About Millicom

Millicom (NASDAQ U.S.: TIGO, Nasdaq Stockholm: TIGO_SDB) is a leading provider of cable and mobile services dedicated to emerging markets in Latin America and Africa. Millicom sets the pace when it comes to providing high-speed broadband and innovation around The Digital Lifestyle services through its principal brand, TIGO. As of December 31, 2020, Millicom operating subsidiaries and joint ventures employed more than 21,000 people and provided mobile services to approximately 55 million customers, with a cable footprint of more than 12 million homes passed. Founded in 1990, Millicom International Cellular S.A. is headquartered in Luxembourg.

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By Ishani Sarkar | Published on 2021/04/18

One of the key aspects to the enjoyability of Korean dramas is the fact that they are short, bite-sized stories told in a beautifully engaging fashion. They're usually 16 to 20 episodes long, which is just perfect to be able to invest in a narrative without getting too attached. However, sometimes, within these 16 episodes, Korean dramas feature some of the biggest and most unthinkable plot twists, effectively changing the entire perspective of the viewer. Here are our top 10 K-Dramas with the biggest plot twists.

"Vincenzo"

The latest on the list is Song Joong-ki's return to the small screen as the dark hero, Vincenzo. Vincenzo Cassano is a Korean-Italian Mafia Consigliere who returns to his homeland for some unfinished business after evading an attempt at his life from Paolo, son of the Mafia Boss, who Vincenzo doesn't deem fit to be the next leader. However, he soon finds himself involved in a long drawn-out legal battle of wits with the illusive Babel. The plot twist comes quite soon into the series when we find out the real identity of Babel's Head. Safe to say, things turn biblical pretty soon.

"Mouse"

Another ongoing drama that is rife with all the plot twists a drama could possibly have, Lee Seung-gi's screen comeback with "Mouse" alongside Lee Hee-jun. Both the actors are known for the intense and complex characters they take on and execute effortlessly. This time too, "Mouse" doesn't hesitate to throw the viewers curveballs after curveballs, misleading their judgement even if it means completely changing the genre of the drama.

"Graceful Family"

Known as the top makjang drama before "The Penthouse" came around, "Graceful Family" is popular especially for its gripping storyline, satisfying character arc as well as all the twists and turns that you never see coming until it hits you right in the face. If you're a fan of exaggerated, unpredictable narratives, this one's for you!

"The World of the Married"

The premise of this drama is based on a plot twist is a married couple's relationship in the first place so it is only natural for the drama to be filled to the brim with unexpected turns in not only the series of events but also feelings and very human emotions. Every episode holds the audience's attention like a movie and you can't help binge watching the entire thing.

"The Penthouse"

Makjang dramas in South Korea are usually daily serials with more than 50 episodes. However, "The Penthouse" gives us a taste of all that fun, within the K-Drama format as we know it today. Naturally therefore, the plot twists here are unbelievable and at times, quite unrealistic. However, that exactly is the best part!

"SKY Castle"

Another K-Drama that broke records for its ratings, coming to be known as South Korea's favourite drama, "SKY Castle" deals with the top 1% of the population and the students coming from that small percentage, delving deeper into the extreme pressures they have to endure academically in order to barely survive the rat-race. However, the emotions that this drama evokes go far deeper than that and even though the plot twists are abundant, they don't feel far from the truth.

"It's Okay, That's Love"

One of the only romantic-comedy K-Dramas on this list, "It's Okay, That's Love" features a plot twist that is as heartbreaking as it gets, especially after we grow attached to the characters so much. We laugh with them, cry with them and grow with them and as such, just as we see their reaction, our hearts are meant to break. However, the drama is definitely worth the watch, even more so because of the plot twist.

"Prison Playbook"

One of the most hopeless plot twists in this list is definitely that of "Prison Playbook". Once again, like most of the other dramas mentioned here, the characters begin feeling like they're intimately close to viewers and as such, when at the very end, their high hopes for the future are shattered, viewers are left devastated. However, the fact that this ending is inherently realistic given the circumstances of the drama, makes this a must-watch.

"Chicago Typewriter"

"Chicago Typewriter" has twists peppered in throughout the drama and every single turn takes us somewhere new, quite literally at times. The incredibly convincing acting of the talented cast only adds to the immersion and as such, the effect the plot twists create s amplified.

"Hwarang"

One of the best plot twists on this list comes towards the very end of "Hwarang" making it all the more sweet. Even though there are considerable shocks throughout the entire drama as we find out about the characters and their actual past, their real identities along with them. However, nothing compares to the pure satisfaction of the final plot twist in the last episode.

By Ishani Sarkar
Good morning, Bay Area. Its Monday, April 19, and one Bay Area county may move into the coveted yellow tier Tuesday. Heres what you need to know to start your day.

In 2018, Danville police officer Andrew Hall shot and killed Laudemer Arboleda. In March, he shot and killed Tyrell Wilson.

Yet, 2 years later, the former case is still pending, and Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton has not indicated how she will rule in the death of Arboleda.

If they had followed up on the first shooting and been more decisive, this second one would not have happened, said attorney John Burris, who represents family members of Wilson and Arboleda.

Experts say this is considered an unusually long time for a case of this caliber to drag on. Becton, who was appointed in 2017, is working through a backlog of nine shootings by officers that date back to November 2018. Read more from Rachel Swan.

Justin Phillips: The tragic parallels between Oscar Grants killing in 2009 and Daunte Wrights death in Minneapolis last weekend.

Demanding justice: Nearly 100 people gathered Sunday at a San Leandro Park to honor the life of a man killed by a police officer at a Walmart a year ago.

Coronavirus updates

Amy Osborne / Special to The Chronicle

Women, especially women of color, have experienced a harder economic hit during the pandemic.

Data from the Public Policy Institute of California shows that women experienced sharper declines in employment than men because they tend to be workers in industries most affected by COVID restrictions. And, distance learning has forced more women to be the full-time caregivers at home.

The pandemic has been devastating for womens careers, said Tami Forman, CEO of Path Forward, a return-to-work nonprofit. It has exacerbated an existing problem.

Malavika Kannan examines the pandemics economic impact on working women, and what is being done to help them get back on track.

 California has surpassed its goal to administer vaccine doses to the lowest-income areas. Now what?

 Marin County is on the cusp of moving to the least restrictive yellow tier, which could happen Tuesday.

 A reader who has received one vaccine dose wonders whether she is at risk of becoming infected after dining with a friend who later tested positive.

 How much have San Franciscans gotten out of the house during the pandemic? Turns out, not that much.

 A Chronicle data analysis shows that wealthier neighborhoods saw sharper spikes in crimes during the pandemic.

Around the Bay

Stephen Lam / The Chronicle

 A bureaucracy-free utopia: Fewer than 50 of the thousands of shacks built rapidly after the 1906 earthquake still remain in San Francisco,. Related: An interactive map of the earthquake shacks that still exist. Also: Dozens mark the great quakes 115th anniversary in a uniquely San Francisco way.

 Another Gold Rush? A Canadian mining company believes it has struck gold in Nevada County, but its move to reopen at 150-year-old mine is being met with resistance.

 Climate scientist weighs the odds: Could an April super-typhoon bring late-season rain to parched California?

 Latest in string of fatalities: Another skydiver dies during jump at troubled Lodi parachuting center.

 Ghost kitchens become more visible: The pandemic has breathed new life into the delivery-only concepts, and some experts believe they will continue to evolve and grow.

 Not enough: Embattled Windsor Mayor Dominic Foppoli said he will step back from his active role as mayor, but his colleagues and town residents have said that is not enough.

10 architectural newcomers turning heads in S.F.

As restrictions are lifted, offices and businesses are reopened, new life is coming back to San Francisco. But during the pandemic, construction didnt halt.

Urban design critic John King offers a visual tour of 10 new architectural highlights across the city that have changed downtown San Francisco, from widely spaced benches at Ferry Terminal Plaza to a public staircase at the corkscrew-inspired Jeanne Gang tower to playful art sculptures at the newly built Fifteen Fifty Mission apartment tower.

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.
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Former Prime Minister and veteran Congress leader Manmohan Singh has tested positive for coronavirus. The 88-year-old leader was taken to All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi on Monday.

After the news broke, several senior political leaders from Congress and other parties wished Singh a speedy recovery.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi wished his predecessor a speedy recovery.

Wishing our former Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh Ji good health and a speedy recovery.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) April 19, 2021

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee tweeted: "Just got the news that former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Ji has tested positive for COVID. Sir, our thoughts and prayers for a speedy and full recovery."

Just got the news that former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Ji has tested positive for COVID. Sir, our thoughts and prayers for a speedy and full recovery  Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) April 19, 2021

ALSO READ: Delhi under complete lockdown for six days, from tonight till April 26

Former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi said in a tweet, "Dear Dr Manmohan Singh Ji, Wishing you a speedy recovery. India needs your guidance and advice in this difficult time."

Dear Dr. Manmohan Singh Ji,



Wishing you a speedy recovery.

India needs your guidance and advice in this difficult time.  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) April 19, 2021

Parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor stated, "Sorry to hear this. Wishing Dr ManMohan Singh a speedy & complete recovery. He has become the conscience-keeper of the nation in these challenging times. We all need him to be well."

Congress General Secrretary Priyanka Gandhi tweeted, "My prayers are with Manmohan Singh ji and his family today, and my deepest respect. May he fight this scourge with all his might and get well soon."

ALSO READ: Manmohan Singh writes to PM Modi on COVID-19 crisis, stresses on ramping up vaccinations

Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Pattnaik tweeted, "Deeply concerned to know about the hospitalisation of former Prime Minister Shri #ManmohanSingh after being tested positive for #COVID19. Wishing him speedy recovery and praying for his good health."

Deeply concerned to know about the hospitalisation of former Prime Minister Shri #ManmohanSingh after being tested positive for #COVID19. Wishing him speedy recovery and praying for his good health.  Naveen Patnaik (@Naveen_Odisha) April 19, 2021

Singh had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi On Sunday, listing suggestions to fight the second wave of coronavirus pandemic effectively. The former PM advised his successor to ramp up the pace of vaccination programme in the country. He also advised that one must not look at absolute numbers but the total percentage of population vaccinated.

Noting that India currently has vaccinated only a small fraction of its population, Singh said he is certain that with the right policy design, "we can do much better and very quickly". He added that he is forwarding his suggestions for consideration in a spirit of constructive cooperation in which he has always believed and acted upon.

ALSO READ: Delhi govt appoints officers to monitor procurement, supply of oxygen, remdesivir

(Edited by Vivek Punj)
ONE of the biggest challenges facing Cork city is the lack of available and affordable accommodation. Most commentators refer to it as a crisis, but in crisis there is always opportunity.

To overcome challenges we sometimes need to change the way we look at things, and Cork can lead the way. With the limited amount of available space for housing and development we need to perhaps look to the reason our city was born  the River Lee.

The first phase of Cork citys development started in about 922, founded by a Danish Viking, Ottir Iarla in the area below St Finbarrs Cathedral. Nearby Keyser Street by Elizabeth fort is the last Norse name in the city.

Ottirs homeland, Denmark, has through the years developed a reputation for excellence in modern design and innovative architecture.

Cork  with the Docklands regeneration plans  has a real opportunity to make full use of some of the most under-utilised river frontage in Europe in a most innovative and imaginative way, using a proven modular housing system.

Revitalising the waterfront presents a brilliant way to provide attractive, affordable housing, with a gentler environmental impact while making use of available resources.

An innovative design team, Urban Rigger (urbanrigger. com) has developed a modular housing system to work on water.

With the core values of community, affordability and sustainability, a system has been created allowing for waterfront living.

Like other urban centres with limited space, Copenhagen had a pressing need to provide affordable and sustainable accommodation, so the Danes again looked to the water.

This new but proven system of modular floating houses is ideally suited to part of our current housing requirements and addresses real problems in providing affordable and available housing.

We dont think of converted containers as housing, but the system is perhaps best exemplified by the Grillagh water house in Co. Derry, as featured on Channel 4s Grand Designs and by Urban Riggers own website.

ECONOMY

Cork has become a centre for large IT and hi-tech companies. This growth has bought social and economic vitality to the city, and we need to build on that. However, a major concern for those who work in the field and a determining factor for companies looking to locate here is housing.

The lack of affordable and available accommodation can only have a negative effect on the continued economic development of Cork.

Other cities like Dublin have lost potential employers and opportunities to other locations due to this key requirement. The situation can only be exacerbated by Brexit, as more and more companies look to locate in the EU.

Cork has a unique opportunity in this sense as the city is situated on one of the worlds biggest natural harbours with ample waterfront space in conjunction with the docks redevelopment plan recently announced. By using the river itself, Urban Rigger expands the potential of the docklands redevelopment.

WHATEVER FLOATS YOUR... HOUSE! An Urban Rigger housing unit.

MANUFACTURING

There are few strategies that allow cities to expand. Yet, Corks waterfront remains an under-utilised and underdeveloped area at the heart of the city. Cork is ideally placed for the actual production and development of this very affordable and competitive system.

The modular units themselves can be built in Cork, not only the local market, but for other suitable sites in Ireland, most notably Dublin, as well as further afield through export of modules via the new Ringaskiddy container terminal and base units by sea.

This creates further direct employment and opportunities for a wide range of suppliers and trades in Cork.

SUSTAINABILITY

Among the core values of the Urban Rigger system is sustainability. The modules are incredibly energy-efficient and built with the Scandinavian climate in mind.

Integrated solar panels use a small portion of electricity generated to run a hydro-source system with low-energy pumps providing heat, ventilation and waste-water management. The excess power then runs back in to the grid.

The low carbon cost of the units and their energy efficiency future-proofs them for planned carbon tax increases, and is in-line with our current national aim of radically reducing carbon emissions by 2030.

By their very nature, the issue of flooding in Cork is not an issue, and crucially, the Urban Rigger system due to its modularity allows for a relatively quick build time.

Due to Covid-19, the Irish housing crisis has been compounded by the slow-down of current building programs. The Urban Rigger system could allow for us to make up that time.

The planned lifetime for each module is 100 years with minimal maintenance.

COMMUNITY

Accommodation is more than just a roof. The Danish buzz-word Hygge means a sense of belonging, warmth, community. From the start, the Urban Rigger concept focused on creating sustainable, vibrant and dynamic communities. The system is built around a shared central courtyard with community spaces. One can directly access the water from the courtyard, which also has bike racks and even room for kayaks! The units are modular, finished to exacting and demanding standards of cutting edge Scandinavian design.

With that built in flexibility, the design concept is focused on a mixture of starter apartments, but with a little vision and imagination one can see the development of family homes, offices and business spaces.

The Urban Rigger system is only limited by ambition and imagination  it is in many ways the ideal solution to some of the challenges Cork faces.

The Vikings were at the first phase of Corks development, and now, a millennium later, it may be well time for the Danish to be part of the next phase: the future is floating for the city on the Lee.

For more information visit: urbanrigger.com or contact sj@urbanrigger.com
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 19)  President Rodrigo Duterte is confident there's no need for a loyalty check within the military, his spokesperson said Monday following recently-dispelled rumors that the troops are withdrawing their support for their commander-in-chief.

"Hindi po nababahala ang Presidente. Alam po ng Presidente na tapat siya sa Saligang Batas, at alam po niya na nirerespeto rin ng ating kasundaluhan ang ating Saligang Batas," Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said in a Palace briefing.

[Translation: The President is not alarmed. He knows he has been abiding by the Constitution, and he knows that the military respects the Constitution.]

On Sunday, top officials of the Department of Defense and the Armed Forces of the Philippines dismissed claims making the rounds on social media about the existence of a Viber group of active and retired military officers who allegedly plan to withdraw their support for the President. This is reportedly due to their dissatisfaction with Duterte's apparent silence on Chinese incursions in Philippine waters.

Defense chief Delfin Lorenzana branded the claims as "irresponsible propaganda" created by detractors of the government. AFP chief Gen. Cirilito Sobejana also said they were only meant "to create panic and confusion."

"Sabi nga po niya, kung talagang siya ay inutil, matagal na siyang pinatalsik ng militar," Roque said. "Pero kampante po siya na walang dahilan para naman umakto ng ganyan ang ating kasundaluhan."

[Translation: As the President said, if he's really inutile, the military would've long overthrown him. But he's confident, because there's no reason for our soldiers to act that way.]

Roque also insisted Duterte has not been without a stance on the West Philippine Sea issue. He argued that the pronouncements of Lorenzana and Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. are also the President's, unless he renounces them. Both secretaries have issued stern statements regarding China's lingering presence in the Philippines' exclusive economic zone, but the vessels still would not leave the area.

READ: Palace: Pronouncements of President's alter-egos on WPS row with China also his

"Hindi ko maintindihan ano pa ang gusto ng mga kritiko ng Presidente. Nagsasalita na po ang kalihim ng Foreign Affairs, ang kalihim ng National Defense...Lahat po 'yan, until renounced by the President, are declarations coming from the President himself," Roque said, citing the doctrine of qualified political agency.

[Translation: I don't understand what else the President's critics want. The secretaries of the departments of Foreign Affairs and the National Defense have already issued statements on the matter. All of these, until renounced by the President, are declarations coming from the President himself.]

He added that Duterte already invoked the country's sovereign rights over the West Philippine Sea before the United Nations General Assembly in September last year.
Nelson noted that officers who first went to the corner store where Floyd allegedly passed a counterfeit $20 bill were struggling with Floyd when Chauvin arrived as backup. The defense attorney also pointed out that the first two officers on the scene were rookies and that police had been told that Floyd might be on drugs.
Ballymahon's economic future has been given a major shot in the arm with government bosses today giving the go-ahead for the development of a new 5.9m community services hub.

The seven figure investment will see a number of locally based agencies including Bridgeways Family Resource Centre relocate to the south Longford town's old school convent building.

The new facility is also expected to pave the way for the development of an innovative remote working hub.

Minister for Rural Affairs Heather Humphreys sanctioned the move towards the latter end of last week under her department's Rural Regeneration Development Fund (RRDF) programme.

Official confirmation of the announcement is expected to be made later this morning.

Cathaoirleach of Longford County Council Cllr Paul Ross saluted the news as one which will bring untold economic benefits to the town.

"This is absolutely fantastic news and will bring transformational change to Ballymahon," he said.

"The new hub, when complete, will incorporate Bridgeways Family Resource Centre, the Day Care Centre, Men's Shed, a remote working hub and will provide a unique and state of the art space for other services to operate from."

Cllr Ross paid tribute to the endeavours of local body, Ballymahon Town Teams in submitting the application for a new community services hub last October and Longford County Council who are the lead agency behind the venture.

"Ballymahon is the fastest growing town in Longford with fantastic employment opportunities already there with the likes of Center Parcs and Kepak," he said.

"It is a massive growth town, but growth has to be managed. This new community services hub will do just that and ensure Ballymahon is one of the midlands' leading towns in which to live and do business in."

Minister of State for Planning and Local Government, Peter Burke TD, welcomed the news. I want to welcome this significant funding from my colleague Minister Heather Humphreys, who understands the importance of investing in our rural towns."

Minister Burke continued, "Longford County Council have put huge work into this proposal and the community have all worked together in order to achieve a common goal  to address the social, economic and physical needs of Ballymahon which has grown significantly in recent years and needs further investment from government to keep apace with the growth.

As Minister for Planning, it is a goal of mine to see derelict buildings within towns be brought back into use, and the key historic buildings which are central to our communities developed and used by current generations, as they have done in the past. This will bring more footfall into our town centres and benefit our business community also. I look forward to work beginning in Ballymahon and to see the benefits this investment will bring to South Longford and the region. I am glad to see Fine Gael in government continue to prioritise and invest in our rural towns, and I will be working to ensure this investment is maintained as we exit from the pandemic."

Senator Micheal Carrigy also expressed his delight. "This project will bring a number of vacant buildings in the town back into use to provide key services for the local community including enhanced family support services, a new dedicated youth club, enhanced elderly care services and a new rural working hub."


Application Engineer Santa Clara Valley (Cupertino) , California , United States Software and Services Summary

Posted: Apr 14, 2021 Weekly Hours: 40 Role Number: 200235667 Imagine what you could do here. At Apple, innovative ideas have a way of becoming extraordinary products, services, and customer experiences very quickly. Bring passion and dedication to your job and there's no telling what you could accomplish! The Crypto Services Team here at Apple is seeking an Application Engineer to join it's new and growing Application Engineering Team. If you are a keen problem solver who loves to work on a broad spectrum of challenges then this could be the role for you! You will use a broad spectrum of skills to seek out new integrations, help architect and design some of the new services being developed in Apple and often be trail blazing new technology and services in Apple to define how users use Crypto Services products and services there. Key Qualifications Expertise in Java and Java Enterprise technology applications architecture, design, development and support

Experience in building, orchestrating, and deploying highly scalable REST based stateless APIs/web services

Experience with deploying and managing applications on Kubernetes

Experience in GoLang applications architecture, design, development and support

Demonstrated experience architecting, developing and debugging large-scale multithreaded applications

Understand security concepts to build reliable and safe distributed applications

Proven understanding of a PKI system works

Creative, critical thinking and troubleshooting skills

Understanding of AWS cloud and deploying applications to cloud infrastructure

We seek a self starter, forward-thinking person with strong leadership capabilities

Strong teamwork desire and time leadership skills

Excellent analytical skills, critical thinking, and interpersonal skills

Extraordinary problem solving and critical thinking skills

Strong written and verbal communication Description Apple is known for its innovation and when something gets in the way of that then the Application Engineering Team is there to remove those road blocks. You will need to listen to and translate inner team requirements into high-level technical specifications, design and develop recommended systems. Solutions can range from as simple as providing links to the correct documentation to helping design and architect large, complex solutions that span systems across Apple. All while making Apple more secure and work more effectively. You will not be part of just a single development team within Crypto Services but you will need to be able to develop and contribute code changes and features to any of the services or products offered by Crypto Services. To do this you will need to align your change with that products Software Engineering team's requirements and exceptions. Being able to quickly pick up and develop on multiple code bases is a must to be successful in the role. With the nature of the role of an Application Engineer you will be the person who generally knows best what is needed by other inner teams in Apple. You will need to collate that data, collecting metrics and other supporting data to present to management in Crypto Services to help plan and Roadmap in Crypto Services, helping craft the future of the team. You will also need to develop and build tooling, integration and applications for the purpose of unblocking internal teams and achieving new product integrations for Crypto Services. As part of this you will need to work closely with teams to voice support for the Crypto Services Team and seek out new partnerships. Education & Experience BS degree in computer science or similar plus 7-10 years of experience, or MS degree plus 5-7 years, or equivalent. Additional Requirements Experience developing and leading apps written in Python

Knowledge of TLS and mTLS

Experience developing and leading apps written in Swift

Experience developing and running a Mac O/S user interface

Has some experience in developing applications designed for use in cloud services

Experience managing or contributing to large open source projects






NEW YORK, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Mazars, a leading audit, tax, and advisory firm in the US, is pleased to announce the first release of Mazars DataPath360 for Healthcare on Microsoft's App Source. This new Mazars/Microsoft IP offering is the first in a series of industry-specific offerings that leverage the Microsoft Toolset, with Azure, Dynamics 365, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), and the Power Platform. Mazars DataPath360 architecture was born out of the Mazars Healthcare Consulting Practice, as a result of our extensive industry knowledge and Microsoft expertise.

The Mazars DataPath360 for Healthcare solution provides organizations with quick operational support analytics and key insights to drive vendor efficiencies, optimize reimbursement processes, improve financial outcomes, enrich quality of care, and mitigate risk. The Vendor Management module is the first in the lineup from Mazars, incorporating a robust set of report visualizations built using Microsoft's Power BI and surfaced directly in Microsoft Dynamics 365. Because Mazars DataPath360 is implemented as a native Dynamics 365 solution, all the enhanced capabilities are available.

Mazars DataPath360 for Healthcare directly addresses key pain points of vendor management and performance to support Revenue Cycle optimization throughout the lifecycle of patient service claims. Using automation, Mazars DataPath360 imports data from clinical and financial systems which is then combined with our analytics tools to create visual representations quickly summarizing trends focused on vendor management, contract monitoring, compliance and performance, as well as claim to invoice reconciliation. This provides healthcare leadership the ability to review data and make informed decisions.

"Working with the Mazars Microsoft Practice team, led by John Accardi, it quickly became evident that Mazars is developing a large amount of unreleased IP globally and across many different industry areas. We are pleased to see this initial offering for healthcare providers get wider exposure through the Microsoft ISV Connect program and Microsoft AppSource ecosystem. We look forward to working with Mazars on additional IP and Services offerings," said John O'Donnell, Global Strategic ISV Alliance Manager  Biz Apps, Microsoft.

John Accardi, Principal, Mazars Management & Technology Consulting, Microsoft Platform, said, "Our Microsoft IP Development team, in collaboration with the Healthcare Consulting Practice, is proud to release our first IP product. Microsoft's support of our Microsoft Practice has been instrumental in our rapid growth. We will continue to enhance Mazars DataPath360 with additional healthcare functionality as well as additional industry versions."

For more information, contact:

Mazars USA LLP, Beth More, [email protected]

Makovsky, [email protected]

About Mazars USA

Mazars USA LLP is an independent member firm of Mazars Group, an international audit, tax and advisory organization with operations in over 90 countries. With roots going back to 1921 in the US, the firm has significant national presence in strategic geographies, providing seamless access to 26,000+ professionals around the world. Our industry specialists deliver tailored services to a wide range of clients across sectors, including individuals, high-growth emerging companies, privately-owned businesses and large enterprises.

For more information, visit us at www.mazars.us

SOURCE Mazars USA LLP
Tribune Publishing said on Monday that it had ended talks to sell itself to Newslight, a company set up last month by the Maryland hotel executive Stewart W. Bainum Jr. and the Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss, after Mr. Wyss withdrew from a planned offer on Friday.

Tribune Publishings special committee, which evaluates bids, said in a news release on Monday that the Newslight plan could no longer reasonably be expected to lead to a superior proposal than the binding agreement the company had reached in February with Alden Global Capital, a New York hedge fund. (An earlier version of this item misstated that the agreement was nonbinding.)

Mr. Bainum and Mr. Wyss had swooped in last month with a proposal of $18.50 per Tribune share, beating out the bid from Alden, which was for $17.25 a share.

The pathway to a deal involving Mr. Bainum, the chief executive of Choice Hotels, one of the worlds largest hotel chains, is not completely blocked.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

A Bahraini man was sentenced to five years in prison for conning a high-ranking GCC personality out of BD3 million after convincing him that he would invest the money for him in properties.

The High Criminal Court found the accused, in his 40s, did not have the required licenses from the Central Bank of Bahrain and he was already held guilty in similar cases before.

It also fined him BD100,000 and ordered him to pay BD3 million to the victim.

According to court files, the victims lawyer reported to the Anti-Economic Crime Department that the defendant was working in one of the international banks and he owned several construction companies, which were all deleted by the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism several years ago.

He offered to my client the chance to invest in the real estate.

He introduced him to several people, stating that they were his partners in investment. As a result, my client made six transfer transactions at a total amount of BD3 million, the lawyer said, revealing that the two started making transactions in 2011. He gave him some of the profits reaching BD85,000 until he stopped transferring any money. The defendant was reportedly convicted in money laundering cases. He allegedly conned several other people.
[April 19, 2021] OneStar Launches VolunteerTX, an Online Hub for Volunteerism Throughout the Lone Star State

AUSTIN, Texas, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In celebration of National Volunteer Week set for April 18-24, OneStar is launching VolunteerTX, a new digital hub that connects individuals with volunteer opportunities throughout Texas. "When we realized the primary barrier standing between many Texans and volunteering was a way to find meaningful volunteer opportunities, we knew we had to do something. VolunteerTX connects individuals with projects and organizations that inspire them to serve," said Chris Bugbee, OneStar CEO. " VolunteerTX is a major milestone. It is the first single source for volunteering across the state. We are honored to work with incredible local partners whose work helps make this achievement possible." National Volunteer Week recognizes the impact volunteer service has on communities, as well as the power of volunteers to tackle society's greatest challenges and provides the perfect opportunity for OneStar to launch VolunteerTX, Bugbee said. "Texans truly are generous by nature. We have seen again and again  during floods, fires and hurricanes, or even in the challenges of daily life  that no force of nature is more powerful than Texans helping Texans," said Texas First Lady Cecilia Abbott. " VolunteerTX is the perfect tool to help Texans make even more of a positive difference in their communities. The Governor and I thank OneStar for creating an even brighter future for the Lone Star State." In essence, VolunteerTX will be a one-stop shop connecting people who want to help with organizations and causes that need support. VolunteerTX is publicly available for anyone to search and currently features nearly 2,000 listings, which can be filtered by geography, issue area, commitment level, and more. The website is the most comprehensive atabase of volunteer opportunities in Texas and pulls in volunteer opportunities from local volunteer connector organizations, including:



Volunteer Houston

Volunteer South Texas at the United Way of South Texas

at the United Way of The United Way of San Antonio & Bexar County Volunteer Center

& Bexar County Volunteer Center The Volunteer Center of Lubbock

Volunteer El Paso at the United Way of El Paso

at the United Way of El Paso The Volunteer Center, a program of the Round Rock Area Serving Center VolunteerTX was developed in partnership with Points of Light using the technology behind the Points of Light Engage volunteer aggregator in its first statewide application. "As a lifelong Texan, I know the giving spirit of Texans  we're here to help, to support, to build hope and community," said Neil Bush, board chair, Points of Light. "My dad instilled a commitment to service in our family from a very early age, and as the board chair of Points of Light, the world's largest organization dedicated to volunteer service, I have seen firsthand the power of people to create change. I know there are thousands of points of light across Texas, citizens ready to step in and give their time, talent and treasure to help others."

VolunteerTX was created after OneStar surveyed Texas nonprofit organizations in late 2020 with a goal of better understanding how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting their work and missions ( Texas Nonprofit Leaders' COVID-19 Impact Report , December 2020). The survey showed that: 42% of respondents faced increased demand for services from their clients and communities due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

76% of respondents endured moderate to severe reductions in volunteer engagement for delivering their programs and services due to the COVID-19 pandemic. VolunteerTX will help create pathways for individuals to engage in their communities and, likewise, accelerate the impact of organizations that rely on volunteers. Individuals interested in volunteering said the top three barriers to volunteering were all related to not knowing how to find meaningful service opportunities ( Points of Light Civic Engagement Topline Report , September 2020), with the following findings: 44% of respondents were unsure how to get involved or where to find opportunities

44% of respondents could not find opportunities near them

43% of respondents were not sure what they could do that would be helpful As COVID-19 vaccines are distributed and all forms of volunteering become less risky, VolunteerTX provides a convenient way to find both remote and in-person opportunities for Texans to serve their communities. Visit volunteertx.org to find local volunteer opportunities. LINK TO IMAGES: https://bit.ly/3thJlu9 About OneStar

OneStar strengthens Texas communities by creating pathways for individuals and organizations to engage, connect and accelerate their impact. We advance service and volunteering as effective solutions to our state's toughest social challenges. We are recognized as a statewide voice for the Texas nonprofit sector and a respected partner to foundations, state agencies and the business community. Born from state government in 1974, we carry out our mission with direction and guidance from the Office of the Texas Governor. Learn more at onestarfoundation.org . Contact:

Joelle Polisky

(615) 516-0358 View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/onestar-launches-volunteertx-an-online-hub-for-volunteerism-throughout-the-lone-star-state-301271240.html SOURCE OneStar

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British Ambassador Melinda Simmons and Minister of the Environment and Natural Resources Roman Abramovsky discussed the plans of the Ukrainian government to develop a "green" economy and the value of British experience in this area.

"Recently, British Ambassador Melinda Simmons met with Minister of Environment and Natural Resources of Ukraine Roman Abramovsky. They discussed: Ukraine's dedication to combating climate change, in particular through the second edition of nationally determined contributions in accordance with the Paris Agreement, the importance of an intergovernmental approach to issues of climate preservation, the plans of the Ukrainian government to develop a 'green' economy and the value of the British experience in this area," the press service of the British Embassy said on Facebook.

The Ambassador and Minister also discussed preparations for and expectations from the UN Conference on Climate Change (COP26).

"According to the Paris Agreement, each participating country must make consistent nationally determined contributions, that is, introduce domestic measures to mitigate climate change in order to achieve the objectives of the agreement. Ukraine, as one of the first countries to sign this agreement, plays an important role in this process," the Embassy said.
Slate has relationships with various online retailers. If you buy something through our links, Slate may earn an affiliate commission. We update links when possible, but note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change. All prices were up to date at the time of publication.

Why would someone ever get into the business of selling other human beings? Thats the dark question that drove historian Joshua Rothman to write The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America, his tremendous new book about the lives of 19th-century businessmen Isaac Franklin, John Armfield, and Rice Ballard. The observation that Franklin, Armfield, and Ballard lived in a nation that sanctioned and rewarded the market exchange of people as property is true, Rothman begins. But it is inadequate. From there, the history intertwines a careful biography of a very successful business with unflinching attention to the monstrosity that business was built upon.

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The Ledger and the Chain tells the story of how these three men profited from the United States decision to outlaw the foreign slave trade, in 1808. The change, of course, did not put an end to slavery inside the United States, and because the slaveholding states of the Upper South were finding that their land was increasingly difficult to work after decades of tobacco cultivation, they profited by selling people further South, where cotton and sugar production was booming.

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Rothman documents how Franklin, Armfield, and Ballard, canny operators to the end, jumped into the breach and made the most of the expanding domestic slave trade. They figured out how to build what Rothman calls an enormous operation still nimble enough to adjust to abrupt market shifts, swooping up smaller traders and incorporating them into their company. They analyzed political shifts and worked skillfully around Southern states occasional half-hearted efforts to regulate the domestic trade. They steered their way through disruptions to the market due to events like Nat Turners uprising in Virginia in the summer of 1831, a global cholera epidemic in 183233, and the Panic of 1837. They signaled their status as serious businessmen by purchasing and renovating urban facilities that combined beautiful private residences with large jails for penning up people to be sold. And they were the first slave-trading company in America to buy and outfit their own ships to take captives from the Upper South to markets in Louisiana and Mississippi, a big initial expense that allowed them to cut out middlemen and increase their profits.

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The Ledger and the Chain intertwines this business history with a group biography of a trio of everyday monsters. Rothmans book never strays far from the fact that this big business was built on forced removal, a process that entailed, for the people being trafficked, a tremendous amount of pain: The uprooting of the familiar, the heartache of loss, the stress of isolation, the darkness of a ships hold, the fear of the unknown, the threats of intimidating men, the violence of fists and feet and whips, the humiliation of being ogled and inspected and groped  How, Rothman wonders, did capitalist entrepreneurs profiting from slavery perceive all of this trauma? Franklin, Armfield, and Ballard, at least, viewed it as manageable, and well worth it. They cared about enslaved peoples pain, and the way some other white people judged them for causing it, only insofar as those things made their jobs more challenging and their profits more difficult to attain.

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In fact, Rothman suggests, the three men at the heart of the book may have seen the terror of the trafficked as a feature, not a bugsomething they actually liked about their occupations. Their professional dominance came in part from their command of the intimate daily savageries of the slave trade, Rothman writes. The exhilarating thrill of acting with impunity animated them, feeding a roguish swagger and bold ambitions.

This dynamic is most visible in the traders letters discussing teenage girls who were sold as sex slaves. In trading these young women, identifiable in documentation by their much-higher-than-usual prices (and, sometimes, by the traders explicit discussion of their likelihood to sell for those purposes), Franklin, Armfield, and Ballard prided themselves on their ability to know what buyers might wanttheir success speculating on the erotic desires of slaveholders. They also raped such women, themselves; Rothman found many ribald references to those activities in their own correspondence, interspersed with discussions of everyday business matters.

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The Ledger and the Chain disproves a commonly held 19th-century myth about slave traders: that the more genteel people of the South saw them as disreputable and wouldnt socialize with them, outside of conducting some supposedly regrettable, but necessary, business. This was an idea white Southerners often advanced when in conversation with Northern visitors inquiring about the slave trade. Displacing responsibility for slaverys degrading viciousness was a way for slaveholders to extract themselves from the transactional element of merchandizing human beings, Rothman writes. It was a denial of the fact that at some point or another, every slaveholder would effectively be a slave trader.

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But while elite Southerners may actually have disdained small-fry traders, they didnt have the same issue with the wealthy threesome of Franklin, Armfield, and Ballard. As the men got older and richer, they married much younger women of high status: classic Southern belles. They became directors of banks, elected officers in militias, delegates to the state Democratic convention. When an enslaved man, condemned to hang for murder, gave a salacious interview to a newspaper, alleging that he had worked for Isaac Franklin and witnessed him cheating and swindling customers, a different paper ran an entire column refuting the calumnies of the mans account. The refutation included a quote from former President Andrew Jackson, who said that Franklin had always sustained the character of an honest and high-minded man.

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Rothmans previous book, Flush Times and Fever Dreams: A Story of Capitalism and Slavery in the Age of Jackson, about a rash of extralegal violence in Mississippi in 1835, had some of the same concerns of The Ledger and the Chain: How did white Southerners live with the fact that their culture rested on such brutal foundations? Flush Times, which was one of my favorite sources for Slates History of American Slavery podcast, showed how enslavement was part of a broader economy of speculation and exploitation, and how economic instability had the tendency to bring the brutality of the system to the surface. (Rothman appeared as a guest on Episode 5 of that show.)

The Ledger and the Chain distills these crucial questions to their core. This is a story about three men who made that brutality their business, and lived very prosperous lives built on a foundation of exploitation. What more can one say, after looking this history in the face? Rothman, after years of looking at their letters and documents, throws up his hands. They understood that Black people were human beings, the historian concludes. They just did not care.

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Over the course of my career at Slate, Ive worked on a few Slate Plus podcasts on heavy historical topics: the history of American slavery, Reconstruction, and the history of fascism. The deep research I did while putting together those projects still serves me, years later, while writing historical pieces for Slate. Thanks very much for supporting this kind of work! Rebecca Onion, staff writer
It is likely that Gov. Andrew Cuomo is not too happy about the latest Siena College poll. His favorability among registered voters has hit a record low, with a majority disapproving of the job he has been doing in recent weeks. Just a third of them say they would support a bid for a fourth term in office, and a plurality of 44% of those polled believe he has sexually harassed his aides. They do these polls all the time, Cuomo told reporters at a Monday virtual press conference. I'll tell you the truth: I don't put too much stock in them.

Maybe he should. Despite some tough numbers in the poll, things are actually going pretty well for the governor considering the scandals he faces. The new poll shows that the governor is retaining political support among the all-important Black voters who could determine his political fate as multiple investigations continue into alleged sexual misconduct and an alleged cover-up of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes. Political and nonprofit leaders continue to appear at his side at public events across the state. Barring reporters from press conferences has helped the governor project normalcy to the general public while avoiding uncomfortable questions from the Albany press corps, whose attention he welcomed back when the political going was good during his time in the national limelight last year.

Black voters form the base of the Democratic Party, so it is no accident that Cuomo has paid so much attention to them since nearly every prominent elected official  including some Black elected leaders like state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins  in the state began calling for his resignation weeks ago. While his popularity has waned with voters overall, the latest Siena poll shows two out of three Black registered voters are sticking by the embattled governor. A majority of Democrats feel the same, and voters overall continue to give the governor high marks for his handling of the pandemic and the vaccine distribution process that he has highlighted by staging press-free events this month.

Some of these events have featured prominent elected officials like Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes, former Rep. Charles Rangel and Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown singing Cuomos political praises without the presence of reporters, who have not seen the governor in-person since early December. Thank you for your vision and your bold leadership toward building back a better and stronger New York, Brown said at one recent event. While members of the media lament the lack of access to the governor, it does not appear to affect his standing with voters, most of whom are undoubtedly not following every new development in state politics.

Despite all the unflattering stories about the governor, most voters still credit him for doing an excellent job communicating with them. The vast majority of them say they are familiar with the sexual harassment allegations against him, but just 37% want him to resign. A majority of voters even say they are satisfied with the apology that Cuomo has offered, though being sorry for making people uncomfortable has no bearing on the legal standards of sexual harassment.

So while everything is not perfect for the three-term governor, he appears to be doing OK considering all the political setbacks that transformed him from a national political star to pariah in just over two months time. That doesnt mean that he does not face immense political peril in the upcoming weeks. Ongoing probes by state Attorney General Letitia James and federal investigators could unearth additional unflattering details about alleged sexual harassment and the reported removal of the true total of nursing home residents who died of COVID-19 from a July 2020 state Department of Health report. An impeachment probe could always push Cuomo one step closer to becoming the first governor to be removed from office in more than a century. But as things stand now, the governor is holding onto power.
The Boao Forum for Asia, 20 years on: A boost for the development of Asia and the world

People's Daily Online) 15:48, April 19, 2021

The 2021 Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) Annual Conference is being held from 18 to 21 April. The Forum was launched 20 years ago amid the opportunities and challenges at the turn of the century, and has become a high-level platform for political and economic dialogue with worldwide influence. With a founding purpose to promote economic integration in Asia and a current mission to pool positive energy for the development of Asia and the world, the BFA contributes wisdom to global development and prosperity. The theme of this years annual conference  A World in Change: Join Hands to Strengthen Global Governance and Advance Belt and Road Cooperation highlights the will and resolve of all parties to respond to great changes in the world and seek development.

Photo taken on April 17, 2021 shows the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) International Conference Center in Boao, south China's Hainan Province. (Xinhua/Yang Guanyu)

The BFA builds a broad consensus for common development. At the beginning of the new century, aiming at promoting regional cooperation to jointly respond to the Asian financial crisis, the proposal of establishing the Boao Forum for Asia received wide support. Since then, the annual conference has become one of the most closely watched conferences in the world. It brings together political leaders, entrepreneurs, experts and scholars from Asia and beyond to discuss plans for future development.

Disruptions to the flow of personnel, production factors and goods worldwide by COVID-19 have made countries aspiration for development even stronger. In this context, the Forums focus on Belt and Road cooperation shows the determination of Asian countries to advance international cooperation. This will help countries build more consensus on development and boost confidence in growth. With the help of the BFA, the Belt and Road cooperation will gain stronger vitality and better contribute to the common development of countries.

The BFA presents Asian initiatives for win-win cooperation. While taking a global perspective, the Forum has always focused on Asia. President Xi Jinping pointed out in his keynote speech at the 2015 annual conference that We should, through efforts towards such a community for Asia, promote a community of common interest for all mankind. It was also at the BFA that many major cooperative mechanisms originated in the Asia-Pacific region were improved, including the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations (CDAC) . Thanks to the Forum, these mechanisms achieved greater cooperation results, injecting vitality to mutually beneficial cooperation of countries in the region.

This years annual conference will discuss topics such as the shared aspirations of Asia and the prospects and influences of the RCEP. With in-depth discussion, the BFA is sure to present more strategic and forward-looking proposals for Asias development.

The BFA provides a Boao approach for global governance. In recent years, facing waves of anti-globalization, China has repeatedly voiced support for openness, cooperation and multilateralism at the BFA. In 2018, President Xi Jinping pointed out in his keynote speech at the BFA annual conference that Chinas door of opening-up will not be closed and will only open even wider, giving a powerful boost to the world economy overshadowed by protectionism, decoupling, and severance of industrial or supply chains.

As the world is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century, global governance faces unprecedented challenges. In this context, while prioritizing economic development, the BFA broadens its scope to cover such fields as innovation, health, education, culture, and media. Major topics for discussion include health, multilateral trading system and financial system reforms, high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, poverty reduction and inclusive growth, climate change and green development, digital economy, and artificial intelligence. The Forum will provide new ideas, approaches and methods for improving global governance and achieving sustainable development.

Over the past two decades, the Forum has played a significant role in boosting the development of a prosperous Asia and building a community with a shared future for mankind and delivered fruitful results. For the next two decades, the BFA will continue to focus on Asia while maintaining its global perspective and make new contributions to the common development and mutual benefit of countries around the world.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun)
Realtors and securities investors have been pocketing big money in recent months.

In early 2020, Pham Thanh Bien, who works in Bac Thang Long Industrial Zone (IZ) in Hanoi, sought to buy land in Hai Boi commune of Dong Anh district. The landlord had set the price of VND25 million per square meter, which Bien rejected. At that moment, apartments at Kien Hung project in Ha Dong district were priced at VND16 million per square meter.

In January 2021, when he returned to meet the landlord, the land plot was still available, but the price had surged to VND50 million per square meter. The price of Kien Hung apartments moved up to VND19 million.

Bien then made a decision to buy an apartment as he thought the prices would rise further.

The land price hike in Hanoi broke out after the news about the Red River subdivision planning. A real estate broker in Dong Anh district said there were transactions in which the prices of the same land plots increased by VND5 million per square meter within days.

According to the Vietnam Association of Realtors, the land price has increased by 10 percent in the last month on average. In some areas, the prices have doubled or tripled in the last 1-2 months.

The land fever is not only seen in Hanoi, but in many other cities and provinces as well because of information about infrastructure project development.

The land prices increase when the stock market is hot. Real estate stocks are the most hunted, acting as the pillar of VN Index.

Together with industrial zone stocks which have been on the rise over the last two years, real estate stocks are also rising quietly. Some of them have reached the historic peak area.

PDR shares of Phat Dat Real Estate Development JSC, for example, reached a new peak of VND68,000 per share on April 13. The price of the shares has been increasing for the last nine months and is now at the highest level since it began listing.

DIG of the DIC Corporation and the shares belonging to Becamex family, including TDC and IJC, have also been increasing for a long time.

IJC, which has seen big benefits from the real estate wave, was traded at over VND27,000 per share on April 13.

Major realtors are all quietly accumulating land in their long-term development plans for the next decade. The six real estate firms with large land banks reportedly own 27,673 hectares of land for project development, an increase of 15 percent over 2019.

Analysts say that the price increases of real estate shares have close relations with the land bank realtors have. The companies with large land banks have long-term advantages amid the land scarcity. The business results of the firms in 2020 were highly satisfactory because of bright prospects in the long term.

'Kings of land

BHS Group President Nguyen Tho Tuyen believes that the land price will keep rising. When the supply drops, foreign investors will flock to the market with deals worth up to billions of dollars in Hanoi and HCM City. Meanwhile, the number of F0 investors is believed to be much higher than the 30 percent announced by some analysis firms.

According to JLL, the firms with large clean-land banks will have better advantages. The projects with good legal status will be pricier than others.

Vinhomes land bank (HOSE, VHM) reached 16,200 hectares as of the end of 2020. The land bank of the enterprise is believed to be the largest in the market. Of the 16,200 hectares, 60 percent is ready for concentrated development in Hanoi and HCM City.

The other firms which have large land funds include Novaland, Hung Thinh Land, LDG Investment, Nam Long and Phat Dat.

Becamex IJC (HOSE, IJC), with 215 hectares in Binh Duong alone, and C.E.O (HNX, CEO), with hundreds of hectares of clean land, especially in Phu Quoc and Van Don, and DIC Corp (HOSE, DIG) with large land area in the south are also very rich in land.

Of real estate stocks, CEO of C.E.O Group is one of a few shares which still have not seen a price hike, which is attributed to Covid-19. However, with the large clean-land bank of hundreds of hectares in hot areas such as Ha Nam, Phu Quoc and Van Don, price increases are expected.

Major realtors are all quietly accumulating land in their long-term development plans for the next decade. The six real estate firms with large land banks reportedly own 27,673 hectares of land for project development, an increase of 15 percent over 2019.

Vinaconex is planning an additional 5,000 hectares of land for 2021-2025. Khang Dien has increased capital for its two subsidiaries in a plan to expand the land bank in district 2 in HCM City. Meanwhile, Novaland continues to seek land in provinces, and Vinhomes is considering developing new projects in a number of cities and provinces.

BVSC and VNDirect Securities both predict that the real estate M&A market will be bustling in 2021.

Do Thanh

Securities investors expect new bank share wave Many commercial banks now pay trillions of dong worth of dividends to shareholders and have completed restructuring after a decade of difficulties. As a result, their share prices are expected to rise.
Bel Ga JSC and partners opening the new high-tech hatchery in Tay Ninh

The opening ceremony of the hatchery was attended by diplomatic representatives from various nations, as well as provincial and ministry delegations, in addition to the leaderships of stakeholder companies and more than 450 customers from agents and large-scale livestock farms in Central and South Vietnam.

Bel Ga is a market leader in Belgium with more than 80 years of experience in producing premium day-old chicks in Europe.

Established in Vietnam in 2013, Bel Ga currently has four hatcheries and two incubation factories with a modern self-contained farming process according to Global G.A.P standards, providing more than 35 million premium day-old chicks for the Vietnamese and Cambodian markets every year.

Possessing strong potentials and unique experiences and visions, in September 2017, Bel Ga and De Heus LLC, Hung Nhon Group, Koyu & Unitek Co., Ltd., and partners were successful in building a value chain of clean chicken with traceability according to Global G.A.P standards, ISO 22000 that meets conditions to export clean chicken products to Japan  one of the most demanding markets in the world.

Following the success of Bel Gas incubation factory in Lam Dong province, Bel Ga JSC has invested in the second Bel Ga high-tech hatchery in Tay Ninh  a province which is part of the key economic region of South Vietnam, with the advantage of a temperate climate, relatively flat topography, and undeniable potential for comprehensive development in agriculture, industry, and construction.

Kris Van Daele, general director of Bel Ga Vietnam and Cambodia, said that this position improves the quality of broilers, helping to reduce the pressure on chicks due to long-distance transport, as the facility cuts transport time to the Mekong Delta areas to 4-5 hours and Cambodia to only 1 hour. In addition, the distance from Tay Ninh to Ho Chi Minh City is also very short so it is possible to transport chickens by air to the north, which sets the premise for Bel Gas development in the north of Vietnam.

The Bel Ga Tay Ninh poultry incubation factory has a total investment capital of VND200 billion ($8.7 million), with a total area of 15,000 square metres and the design capacity of over 19 million chicks per year in the first phase and will expand the capacity up to 38.4 million chicks per year in the second phase.

The main products of the factory are day-old chicks and day-old layers of the best quality to meet the demand of famers in Vietnam and Cambodia.

Bel Ga breeders are sourced from the world's leading breeding companies Aviagen and Hendrix Genetics and are hatched using the most advanced modern European technology. The Bel Ga Tay Ninh factory is a unique factory model with the application of many advances in technical innovations of construction design, including facilities for farms and hatcheries which meets the European standards, thanks to the support of leading experts and technicians in the world.

All technologies used in the factory use technology to ensure the efficiency and accuracy of information in the production while at the same time investing in modern machinery and equipment.

Machinery and equipment used at the Bel Ga Tay Ninh factory Embryo-Response Incubation, manufactured by Petersime Belgium. With the OvoScan system, the incubator temperature is continuously adjusted according to the actual eggshell temperature. CO2 concentration management: Accurate maintenance of CO2 levels throughout the incubation cycle has a positive effect on the development of the circulatory system of the embryo. Energy management produced by Petersime, Belgium. Eco-Drive helps to reduce the energy consumption of the engine pulses during the less critical stages of the incubation process. Petersime's pressure control system allows the regulation of the amount of air circulating in different areas of the incubation plant. Monitoring and control produced by Petersime: Eagle EyeTM surveillance system is a package of software programmes that monitors and controls the entire incubation process from a central host computer station, including an incubator, room ambient conditions, water temperature, and air circulation system parameters, among others. Biostreamer: This series uses Biostreamer Re-Store technology, a new technique in short incubation, allowing to maintain a higher incubation rate and better embryo vitality when storing eggs for a long time.

The day-old-chicks products of Bel Ga Tay Ninh will ensure the highest standards according to Global G.A.P standards through the management and strict control of biosafety in livestock and the production, quality monitoring of incubation eggs and GP farms with low stocking densities, combined with effective temperature control through modern incubation machines helpful in the creation of optimal environment to ensure that the best 1-day-old chicks are always produced and traceable throughout the entire production chain.

At the grand opening ceremony of Bel Ga Tay Ninh high-tech hatchery, Bel Ga company, De Heus group, Hung Nhon Group contributed VND500 million ($21,740) to the COVID-19 prevention fund in Tay Ninh province; donated one ambulance worth VND1 billion ($43,480) to Tay Ninh Young Business Association and donated VND300 million ($13,040) to the Fund for the Poor of Trang Bang Town to build Dai Doan Ket House for families in extremely difficult circumstances, the total sponsorship value is VND1.8 billion ($78,260).

In recent years, Vietnam's poultry production has made great leaps in both productivity and product quality.

Fully complying with the guidelines of the government and ministries, as well as the orientations of potential provinces, the Bel Ga Tay Ninh poultry incubation factory promises to become a strategic knot, contributing to the development of the value chain of high-quality breeds, clean meat production with traceability and export standards, bringing many benefits to Vietnamese farmers and consumers.

The hatchery operates with top-range technology and equipment reaching European standards

Bel Ga and partners will continue investing in a $141.5 million high-tech agricultural complex including two parent chicken farms (capacity of 25 million eggs a year), 250 safe broiler farms (25 million broilers per year), and a complex of factories producing and processing high-quality agricultural products in a closed chain.

The entire breeding process at the project will be operated and monitored according to European standards to control the quality of livestock in the area, optimise livestock performance, and reduce product costs and achieve high economic efficiency.

The project is equipped with a system of Europe's leading automatic production lines, which are strictly operated and supervised by international experts.

Once completed, the project will become a high-tech application centre in broiler farming for export in a closed chain, including the supply of broilers, broiler rearing, slaughtering, and trading meat products. The project will create job opportunities for 350-500 local workers and transfer advanced breeding technology to hundreds of workers, promoting the development of high-tech agriculture in the locality.

The inauguration of Bel Ga Tay Ninh high-tech poultry incubation factory and investment cooperation for a high-tech agricultural complex in Tay Ninh will help Bel Ga, De Heus Group, and Hung Nhon Group to promote the strengths of the units, expand and perfect the high-tech livestock chain.

It also reaffirms the long-term vision of Bel Ga, De Heus Group, Hung Nhon Group, and partners to contribute to the development of a sustainable and prosperous Vietnamese agricultural sector, improving the quality, added value, and competitiveness of agricultural products, as well as environmental and ecological protection. It will also improve the incomes of people in rural areas and ensure food security and national security in Vietnam while improving the position of Vietnam's livestock industry and creating high-value products that are competitive in the international market.
The University of Houston has received a nearly $1.35 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to establish a free, open-access digital portal for anyone to learn about or teach Puerto Rican literature.

"El proyecto de la literatura puertorriquena/The Puerto Rican Literature Project" (PRLP) includes a database in Spanish and English of approximately 50,000 assets (photographs, manuscripts, poems, videos and archival materials), a digital archive and additional resources that document the material existence and experiences of key Puerto Rican poets in the archipelago and U.S. diaspora. The data collected dates back to 1917, when President Woodrow Wilson enacted the Jones-Shafroth Act extending U.S. citizenship to all residents of Puerto Rico, to the present.

Gabriela Baeza Ventura, executive editor of Arte Publico Press (APP) and co-founder of the U.S. Latino Digital Humanities program at UH, will lead the project in collaboration with a collective, or Colectivo, of prominent scholars, writers and translators from Puerto Rico and the U.S. diaspora composed of Raquel Salas Rivera, Ricardo Maldonado, Claire Jimenez and Enrique Olivares Pesante.

The Colectivo's primary goal is to make Puerto Rican literature widely accessible through the gathering, transcription and translation of poetic materials that until now have been physically archived in different collections, or not archived at all.

"The Colectivo chose the Jones-Shafroth Act as a starting point because it brings into relief the markers and intricacies of literary traditions shaped by linguistic colonialism and the limited circulation of texts," explained Baeza Ventura. "The archival mission is anchored in a deep sensitivity to Puerto Rican linguistic richness, which stands in contrast to the violence of monolingualism that reflects forced histories of migration within the archipelago and abroad."

By bringing more public attention to a body of writing that is extraordinary in scope, PRLP will consolidate, reflect and respond to grass-roots community exchanges by Puerto Rican poets across all regions, as well as provide a means to make these voices visible to poets and reading communities at large.

"As a Hispanic-Serving Institution, the University of Houston is committed to honoring the achievements of these incredible writers," said Paula Myrick Short, senior vice president for academic affairs and provost. "UH will serve as a focal point for students and scholars to learn about those who have made an impact on Puerto Rico's rich history through their work."

In 2019, The Mellon Foundation awarded UH $750,000 to launch the first-of-its-kind U.S. Latino Digital Humanities Program, which gives scholars expanded access to a vast collection of written materials produced by Latinos and archived by the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage ("Recovery") program and Arte Publico Press, the oldest and largest publisher of Hispanic Literature in the nation. Baeza Ventura and Carolina Villarroel, Brown Foundation Director of Research, oversee the digital humanities grant.

"Baeza Ventura and Villaroel believe the 'Puerto Rican Literature Project' is an important contribution to Latino literature in the U.S. and abroad as well as a great example of the collaborations fostered from their work in U.S. Latino Digital Humanities since the creation of their program," said Nicolas Kanellos, Arte Publico Press founder and director.

In addition, PRLP will serve as a great resource for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies scholars. Not only does Puerto Rico share a similar history of colonization, slavery and military intervention as the rest of the Caribbean and Latin America, but it also produces a literature that documents the effects of that colonialism and offers decolonial counter-traditions. By creating a bilingual resource, the archive will open the door to the formation of essential Trans-Caribbean connections.

"This generous grant and continued support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation highlights Arte Publico Press's important role in ensuring broader attention and mainstream accessibility to Hispanic literature," said Eloise Brice, vice president for University Advancement.

###
Russia should ensure de-escalation of tensions near its borders with Ukraine, said French President Emmanuel Macron.

"The situation today and the level of tension at the border is absolutely counterproductive and unacceptable," he said in an interview with CBS.

Macron recalled that he is in favor of a calm and open dialogue with Russia. At the same time, he believes that the West should clearly explain to Moscow what actions it will consider completely unacceptable. Speaking about sanctions against Russia, Macron said that he considered them sometimes a necessary tool, but noted that by themselves they are not a solution to all problems.

"As far as Ukraine is concerned, we need to speed up the political dialogue. And Europe, the United States - all of us - must make it clear to Russia that we do not want to see another military operation on Ukrainian territory," added Macron.
[April 19, 2021] First Trust Lists April Series of Target Outcome Buffer ETFs

First Trust Advisors L.P. ("First Trust") a leading exchange-traded fund ("ETF") provider and asset manager, announced today that it launched the April Series of Target Outcome ETFs: the FT Cboe Vest U.S. Equity Buffer ETF-April (Cboe: FAPR) and the FT Cboe Vest U.S. Equity Deep Buffer ETF-April (Cboe: DAPR) (collectively, the "funds" or "April Series"). The funds are the latest additions to First Trust's suite of Buffer ETFs, which has over $2 billion in total net assets for the product line as of 3/31/21 and are among the fastest growing in the Target (News - Alert) Outcome Investments/defined outcome space. The funds seek an outcome that provides investors with returns (before fees and expenses) that match the price return of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust ("SPY" or "underlying ETF"), up to a predetermined upside cap, while providing a buffer against potential SPY losses. The funds are managed and sub-advised by Cboe Vest Financial LLC ("Cboe Vest") using a "target outcome strategy" or pre-determined target investment outcome. Cboe Vest is the creator of Target Outcome Investments and manager of the longest running buffer strategy fund. Outcome period values for the April Series of the Target Outcome ETFs are shown below:







TICKER CAP (Net)* BUFFER UNDERLYING ETF FAPR 12.00% (11.15%) 10% SPY DAPR 7.50% (6.65%) 25%** SPY

*The upside caps shown are for the Target Outcome Period from 4/19/2021 - 4/14/2022. The gross cap is before fees, expenses and taxes. The net cap is after fees and expenses, excluding brokerage commissions, trading fees, taxes and extraordinary expenses not included in the funds' management fee. The upside cap is set by a fund on inception date of the Target Outcome Period and is dependent upon market conditions at the time. The cap investors will experience may be different than what is illustrated herein. **FT Cboe Vest U.S. Equity Deep Buffer ETF seeks to shield investors against losses from -5% to -30%, over the outcome period, before fees and expenses. If an investor purchases shares after the first day of the Target Outcome Period, they will likely have a different return potential and buffer than an investor who purchased shares at the start of the Target Outcome Period and the buffer the funds seek may not be available. At the end of the Target Outcome Period, the upside cap for the new Target Outcome Period is reset to prevailing market conditions. The funds have a perpetual structure and may be held indefinitely, providing investors a buy and hold investment opportunity. First Trust believes a buffer against a level of losses can help investors stay invested during volatile times. The funds offer a way to gain access to outcome-based investing-specifically to buffer against a level of downside risk while allowing growth to a maximum cap-eliminating bank credit risk in a convenient, flexible investment vehicle. Karan Sood and Howard Rubin, of Cboe Vest, will serve as a portfolio managers for the funds. The portfolio managers are jointly and primarily responsible for the day-to-day management of the funds. For more information about First Trust, please contact Ryan Issakainen at (630) 765-8689 or RIssakainen@FTAdvisors.com. About First Trust First Trust is a federally registered investment advisor and serves as the funds' investment advisor. First Trust and its affiliate First Trust Portfolios L.P. ("FTP"), a FINRA registered broker-dealer, are privately held companies that provide a variety of investment services. First Trust has collective assets under management or supervision of approximately $186 billion as of March 31, 2021 through unit investment trusts, exchange-traded funds, closed-end funds, mutual funds and separate managed accounts. First Trust is the supervisor of the First Trust unit investment trusts, while FTP is the sponsor. FTP is also a distributor of mutual fund shares and exchange-traded fund creation units. First Trust and FTP are based in Wheaton, Illinois. For more information, visit www.ftportfolios.com. About Cboe Vest: Cboe Vest is the creator of Target Outcome Investments, which strive to buffer losses, amplify gains or provide consistent income to a diverse spectrum of investors. Today, Cboe Vest's Target Outcome StrategiesTM are available in mutual funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), unit investment trusts (UITs), collective investment trusts (CITs), and customizable managed accounts / sub-advisory services. For more information about Cboe Vest and the evolution of Target Outcome Investments, visit www.cboevest.com or contact Linda Werner at lwerner@cboevest.com or 703-864-5483. You should consider the funds' investment objectives, risks, and charges and expenses carefully before investing. Contact First Trust Portfolios L.P. at 1-800-621-1675 or visit www.ftportfolios.com to obtain a prospectus or summary prospectus which contains this and other information about the funds. The prospectus or summary prospectus should be read carefully before investing. Risk Considerations Investors buying or selling fund shares on the secondary market may incur customary brokerage commissions. Market prices may differ to some degree from the net asset value of the shares. Investors who sell fund shares may receive less than the share's net asset value. Shares may be sold throughout the day on the exchange through any brokerage account. However, unlike mutual funds, shares may only be redeemed directly from a fund by authorized participants, in very large creation/redemption units. If a fund's authorized participants are unable to proceed with creation/redemption orders and no other authorized participant is able to step forward to create or redeem, fund shares may trade at a discount to the fund's net asset value and possibly face delisting. The funds have characteristics unlike many other traditional investment products and may not be appropriate for all investors. If the underlying ETF experiences gains during a target outcome period, the funds will not participate in those gains beyond the cap. In the event an investor purchases fund shares after the first day of a Target Outcome Period and the fund has risen in value to a level near to the cap, there may be little or no ability for that investor to experience an investment gain on their fund shares. Similarly, in the event an investor purchases fund shares after the first day of a Target Outcome Period, the buffer the fund seeks to provide may not be available. A shareholder may lose their entire investment. A fund's shares will change in value, and you could lose money by investing in a fund. One of the principal risks of investing in a fund is market risk. Market risk is the risk that a particular security owned by a fund, fund shares or securities in general may fall in value. The outbreak of the respiratory disease designated as COVID-19 in December 2019 has caused significant volatility and declines in global financial markets, which have caused losses for investors. The COVID-19 pandemic may last for an extended period of time and will continue to impact the economy for the foreseeable future. In managing a fund's investment portfolio, the advisor will apply investment techniques and risk analyses that may not have the desired result. There can be no assurance that a fund's investment objectives will be achieved. Large capitalization companies may grow at a slower rate than the overall market. A fund with significant exposure to a single asset class, country, region, industry, or sector may be more affected by an adverse economic or political development than a broadly diversified fund. There can be no assurance that an active trading market for fund shares will develop or be maintained. A fund may be a constituent of one or more indices which could greatly affect a fund's trading activity, size and volatility. The use of options and other derivatives can lead to losses because of adverse movements in the price or value of the underlying asset, index or rate, which may be magnified by certain features of the derivatives. The funds may invest in FLEX Options that reference an ETF, which subjects the funds to certain of the risks of owning shares of an ETF as well as the types of instruments in which the reference ETF invests. Because the funds may hold FLEX Options that reference the index and/or reference ETFs, the funds have exposure to the equity securities markets. The FLEX Options held by the funds will be exercisable at the strike price only on their expiration date. Prior to the expiration date, the value of the FLEX Options will be determined based upon market quotations or other recognized pricing methods. There can be no guarantee that a liquid secondary trading market will exist for the FLEX Options and FLEX options may be less liquid than exchange-traded options. Each fund's investment strategy is designed to deliver returns that match the reference asset if a fund's shares are bought on the day on which a fund enters into the FLEX Options (i.e., the first day of a target outcome period) and held until those FLEX Options expire at the end of the target outcome period. If an investor does not hold its fund shares for an entire target outcome period, the returns realized by that investor may not match those a fund seeks to achieve. In the event an investor purchases fund shares after the first day of a target outcome period or sells shares prior to the expiration of the target outcome period, the value of that investor's investment in fund shares may not be buffered against a decline in the value of the reference asset and may not participate in a gain in the value of the reference asset up to the cap for the investor's investment period. A new cap is established at the beginning of each target outcome period and is dependent on prevailing market conditions. As a result, the cap may rise or fall from one target outcome period to the next and is unlikely to remain the same for consecutive target outcome periods. A fund that effects all or a portion of its creations and redemptions for cash rather than in-kind may be less tax-efficient. A fund may be subject to the risk that a counterparty will not fulfill its obligations which may result in significant financial loss to a funds. As the use of Internet technology has become more prevalent in the course of business, a fund has become more susceptible to potential operational risks through breaches in cyber security. Large inflows and outflows may impact a new fund's market exposure for limited periods of time. The funds intend to qualify as regulated investment companies ("RICs"), however, the federal income tax treatment of certain aspects of the proposed operations of the funds is not entirely clear. If, in any year, the funds fail to qualify as RICs under the applicable tax laws, the funds would be taxed as ordinary corporations. A fund classified as "non-diversified" may invest a relatively high percentage of its assets in a limited number of issuers. As a result, a fund may be more susceptible to a single adverse economic or regulatory occurrence affecting one or more of these issuers, experience increased volatility and be highly concentrated in certain issuers. First Trust Advisors L.P. is the adviser to the funds. First Trust Advisors L.P. is an affiliate of First Trust Portfolios L.P., the funds' distributor. The information presented is not intended to constitute an investment recommendation for, or advice to, any specific person. By providing this information, First Trust is not undertaking to give advice in any fiduciary capacity within the meaning of ERISA, the Internal Revenue Code or any other regulatory framework. Financial professionals are responsible for evaluating investment risks independently and for exercising independent judgment in determining whether investments are appropriate for their clients. Cboe is a registered trademark of Cboe Exchange, Inc., which has been licensed for use in the name of the funds. The funds are not sponsored, endorsed, sold or marketed by Cboe Exchange, Inc. or any of its affiliates ("Cboe") or their respective third-party providers, and Cboe and its third-party providers make no representation regarding the advisability of investing in the funds and shall have no liability whatsoever in connection with the funds. The funds are not sponsored, endorsed, sold or promoted by SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust, PDR, or Standard & Poor's (together with their affiliates hereinafter referred to as the "Corporations"). The Corporations have not passed on the legality or suitability of, or the accuracy or adequacy of, descriptions and disclosures relating to the funds or the FLEX Options. The Corporations make no representations or warranties, express or implied, regarding the advisability of investing in the funds or the FLEX Options or results to be obtained by the funds or the FLEX Options, shareholders or any other person or entity from use of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust. The Corporations have no liability in connection with the management, administration, marketing or trading of the funds or the FLEX Options. Target Outcome Investments and Target Outcome ETF are registered trademarks of Cboe Vest Financial. Target Outcome Strategies is a trademark of Cboe Vest Financial. Source (News - Alert) : First Trust Advisors L.P. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005524/en/

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) can provide humans great relief from numerous repetitive tasks, with automation increasing productivity. Furthermore, AI powered machines and devices are fast and efficient: learning, predicting, and deciding with superhuman accuracy.

Concurrently, the use cases for augmentative AI are expanding, with numerous industries and organizations looking to tap into the potential. This is clearly the situation in two key Healthcare and Life Sciences (HCLS) areas: neuroscience and radiology.

Deep learning and image recognition

In both areas, radiologists, MRI technicians and physicians must spend hours sifting through images, searching for markers and anomalies that may spur a disease diagnosis. Whether it be lung cancer or Alzheimers, it could traditionally take hours or even days for a clear diagnosis. But now, with the advent of AI and the capabilities brought about by deep learning (DL) for image recognition, were seeing clear advances and positive patient outcomes.

Lets look at two recent research-based case studies involving AI augmentation and image recognition. These are both exceptional examples of human-machine interaction and collaboration, showcasing the possibilities of our continued co-existence and development.

McGill University and Courtois NeuroMod Project

Researchers and technologists from McGill University and University of Montreal have come together in the Courtois NeuroMod project, aimed at building more robust AI systems that will eventually replicate human brain patterns.

The research team is collecting and analyzing massive datasets from a small group of volunteers who watch videos, look at images and play video games, all while inside an MRI machine. This allows researchers to track and record brain activity of these subjects. They then develop benchmarks that are essentially decoding the brain, paving a path to mimicking it in more versatile AI models and neural networks. In this way, they hope AI will behave more like humans in the transfer of knowledge.

To accomplish these tasks, the researchers needed leading-edge AI tools and advanced IT resources to accelerate brain mapping. They turned to Intel and Dell Technologies to provide the compute and storage infrastructure along with the data science and supercomputing resources of Dell Technologies HPC & AI Innovation Lab in Austin, Texas. And the Courtois NeuroMod team keeps driving groundbreaking brain research, opening new areas for AI, enabling processing of massive datasets, and accelerating the training of complex AI models.

SURFsara

Radiology is an exacting and time-consuming discipline, one that requires hours of assiduous analysis of X-ray images. Its clearly an area where AI can assist in lightening the workload. To this effort, scientists and researchers in the Netherlands turn to SURFsara, a national HPC center in the Netherlands that enhances its capabilities by collaborating with other organizations to deliver breakthroughs in AI and machine learning.

The cooperative research teams recently began collaborating with Intel and Dell Technologies in the development of new and enhanced radiology systems and techniques. Together, they built and trained a powerful new augmentative AI model, an AI radiologist to assist in detection of lung diseases.

The goal in this work was to aid radiology in delivering better and faster diagnosis of thoracic pathologies, such as pneumonia and emphysema, from chest X-rays. The researchers began the effort with a standard AI image recognition model called CheXNet, developed at Stanford University. This model offered state of the art machine detection of pneumonia. It leveraged a National Institutes of Health (NIH) dataset with over 112,000 multi-labeled chest X-rays spanning 14 different thoracic diseases.

By working with the HPC & AI Innovation Lab at Dell Technologies to scale-out the required compute and storage systems, the team was able to improve the performance of the AI radiologist, making it 187 times faster than before, thus reducing the model training time from months to hours. And diagnosis accuracy was bettered for most of the initial thoracic diseases represented in the dataset.

Better AI models, Better insights

If an altruistic goal of technology advancements is the betterment of humankind, then the application of augmentative AI and DL in Healthcare and Life Sciences is a brilliant example of how technology is truly enabling researchers, scientists, and practitioners to save time and lives.

To Learn More

read the McGill University case study, watch the video, and listen to the podcast. Also, read the SURFsara case study and watch the video.

Explore AI solutions from Dell Technologies and Intel.
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BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - U.K. stocks edged up slightly on Monday as investors cheered the progress of reopening of the economy amid rapid COVID vaccinations and corona curve flattening. The benchmark FTSE 100 inched up 0.1 percent to 7,028 after rising half a percent on Friday. Equiniti Group shares soared as much as 16 percent. The financial services company confirmed today that it has received a highly conditional non-binding takeover proposal from Siris Capital Group, LLC of 170 pence per share in cash. BP Plc and Royal Dutch Shell fell about 1 percent as oil prices fell on concerns that stronger measures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic in India would hurt economic activity. Kier Group jumped 5 percent. The construction company has agreed to sell Kier Living Limited to Foster BidCo Limited. Takeover specialist Melrose Industries dropped 1 percent after it entered into an agreement to sell its Nortek Air Management business to Chicago-based Madison Industries for about 2.62 billion pounds or $3.625 billion, in cash. Chemicals company Johnson Matthey gained 1 percent after it announced strategic developments in the commercialization of eLNO. 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.
YEREVAN, APRIL 19, ARMENPRESS. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) will discuss the issue of Armenian prisoners of war whom Azerbaijan illegally refuses to repatriate at the upcoming plenary session.

The head of the Armenian delegation to PACE Ruben Rubinyan said the Armenian POWs, other captives and displaced persons item was included in the plenary session agenda by voting. The discussion will take place on April 20, he said.

Lawmaker Edmon Marukyan, a member of the Armenian delegation, said the item was included by a 93-21-18 vote.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
The Facebook symbol is seen on a motherboard in an illustration photograph. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters)

Facebook to Remove Some Posts About George Floyd Ahead of Verdict in Chauvin Trial

Facebook is preparing for the verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin by removing some posts about George Floyd and deleting missives calling for arms to be brought to areas in Minneapolis.

Chauvin is the former Minneapolis police officer accused of killing Floyd in the city in May of last year.

Closing arguments in the trial were taking place on Monday, after which jurors will deliberate and eventually issue a verdict.

Facebook teams are working around the clock to monitor potential threats both on and off the platform and Instagram, which it owns, so we can protect peaceful protests and limit content that could lead to civil unrest or violence, Monika Bickert, its vice president of content policy, said in a blog post.

This includes identifying and removing calls to bring arms to areas in Minneapolis, which we have temporarily deemed to be a high-risk location. We will continue to monitor events on the ground to determine if additional locations will be deemed as temporary, high-risk locations. We are also working to protect the memory of George Floyd and members of the Floyd family from harassment and abuse. Under our policies, we will remove content that praises, celebrates or mocks George Floyds death, she added.

Floyd died after being restrained by law enforcement officers, including Chauvin. He was placed under arrest for allegedly using a counterfeit bill in Cup Foods. He resisted being placed in a police car, leading to officers restraining him on the ground next to the car, outside the store.

Bickert said Facebook was working to strike a balance between letting users talk about the trial and the upcoming verdict while doing its part to protect everyones safety.

The moderation includes removing posts that violate Facebooks community standards, such as policies against hate speech, graphic violence, and incitement.

Workers fortify government buildings downtown as the city prepares for possible unrest following the verdict in the Derek Chauvin murder trial, in Minneapolis, Minn., on April 19, 2021. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

As Facebook has done in emergency situations in the past, Facebook moderators may choose to limit the spread of content that is deemed likely to violate the standards. Actions will include removing pages, groups, events, and accounts that violate the violence and incitement policy.

Because Chauvin is considered a public figure for voluntarily placing himself in the public eye, Facebook will remove severe attacks against him but leave others up. Floyd is considered an involuntary public figure, so moderators will use a higher level of moderation on posts concerning him.

Facebook is also working on limiting misleading information about Chauvin and Floyd, utilizing its third-party fact-checking partners, and staying in touch with federal, state, and local law enforcement, with plans to respond to valid legal requests and to support any probes that align with its policies.

Gunshots were fired at members of the Minnesota National Guard early Sunday. Members are in Minneapolis to help protect people and buildings from potential post-verdict unrest.

We know this trial has been difficult for many people. But we also realize that being able to discuss what is happening and what it means with friends and loved ones is important, Bickert said. As the trial comes to a close, we will continue doing our part to help people safely connect and share what they are experiencing.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.  Every New York City public school across the five boroughs will receive 100% of their student funding starting next school year, which can be used for hiring teachers and staff, and for purchasing materials and educational resources for student and family activities, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Monday.

The mayor announced an additional $600 million annual investment in Fair Student Funding (FSF) for city public schools, beginning in the 2021-2022 school year, thanks in part to federal and state funds. De Blasio also thanked the efforts of the City Council, as well as Speaker Corey Johnson, for making Fair Student Funding a budget priority.

From this point forward, every New York City public school will get 100% Fair Student Funding, de Blasio said during his Monday press conference. That will now be the standard for every single school starting in the school year that begins in September.

De Blasio said that when schools receive the funding they deserve, progress in schools will be supercharged  building on the citys high graduation rates, low drop-out rates, improved student performance, rising college enrollment, and closing the achievement gap in schools.

FSF provides the majority of most individual school budgets and is used at the principals discretion.

Schools Chancellor Meisha Porter, who called the announcement the best news ever, said that principals can use this money to hire staff, materials, supplies and more at a time when students need an incredible amount of academic and social-emotional care.

With these new resources, next year, all schools, every New York City public school, will receive their Fair Student Funding entitlement, Porter said. This means all community school districts will receive 100% of Fair Student Funding. And as the chancellor who never forgets what it means to be a principal, I know what this means for schools. I know the tremendous work that our school leaders will do to make sure that every single dollar hits every single classroom. Providing every school with 100% of their Fair Student Funding allocation is something that has never been done before and will give even more support to our school communities.

Historically, schools were provided with resources based primarily on the size of their student body. The FSF formula was introduced in 2007 by the Department of Education (DOE) and provides additional funding per student based on need, including additional funding for students with disabilities, English Language Learners, low-income students and students performing below grade level.

Johnson explained that the funding comes at a time when New York City families, students and educators have endured one of the most challenging academic years in history, including a switch to remote learning, canceled student activities and social isolation.

FSF seeks to eliminate inequities that have existed within the school system for decades. Thats why the City Council pushed for 100% of the funding in the latest budget.

We have to be laser-focused on ending inequities and theres no better place to start in our schools, Johnson said. ...This is an historic day. And just to be clear for folks to understand what this means, what this means is that now principals can hire additional teachers with this money. They can put money toward an art teacher, they can put money toward a music teacher, they could hire an additional guidance counselor or social worker in their school. This is a really important pod of money that can go toward sporting activities or art supplies. This is an historic milestone for our city.

Prior to Mondays announcement, schools received no less than 90% of their FSF allocation. In 2018, the 90% floor was established after de Blasio said the city would invest an additional $125 million annual in FSF. At the beginning of the de Blasio administration, that floor was 81%.

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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Android updates in mobile have been improving in the past years. While not directly stating that its system is nearly resembling what desktop operating systems can do, the obvious comparison could be seen from its difference to iOS or iPad OS platform.

This time, Google seems to be bringing a "Recycle Bin" or "Trash Bin" feature to Android users. Even though desktop features have several options for the platform, the involvement of third-party apps is required to enable them.

The new leaked feature will also feature an auto-app translating tool so if the developers did not create one for them, there will be no problem when it comes to the users' end.

Google Could Possibly Bring 'Trash Bin' in Android 12

It has been known that the system that Android uses does not apply to Apple, simply because the Cupertino giant did not implement it in iOS. Google seems to be independent when it comes to filing management apps since it did not rely upon it until the Files came to it.

For many years, only those manufacturers and third-party apps have created their app in managing files. At any time, we could be seeing a new feature called either "Trash" or "Recycle Bin" where we could restore our deleted files if we want.

The most recent system, Android 11 boasted such a feature but users could only access it on a per-app basis. However, at the moment, Android 12 seems to be on its way through its early build that is already out for the developers.

XDA reported on Friday, Apr. 16, that the early leak about the upcoming OS suggested that the Trash folder might soon arrive through the Storage Settings of Android.

Read Also: TomTom AmiGO is now on Android Auto as New Navigation Tool: Could This Be a Waze Alternative?

Currently, users could access it through the Settings app of their smartphones so they could now empty the Recycle Bin. However, it is not yet stated in the leaked build if users could restore the files there after being deleted.

This only meant that Google could adopt the Files app which would handle its Trash Bin intended only for all Android users. On a side note, Google could still count the said feature as non urgent so there could be a new set of it that could be released earlier.

Android 12's Automatic App Translation

In a report by Slash Gear on Sunday, Apr.18, Android 12 could also boast another feature besides Recycle Bin. Now, we could look forward to the automatic translating ability of this OS to any application. You could access it via language settings.

For those numerous applications which do not have auto-translation capability, this could be promising for the developers to pave the way for users' ease of use and interface.

There is also speculation that this feature could develop on a lower level instead of utilizing screen translations made possible through Google Lens.

However, all we could do is wait for the official announcement of Google if they will launch these features on Android 12. Based on the Android Developer Preview 2, we could see the features by August.

Related Article: Android 12 Update Leaks Reveal New Privacy Features and More!

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Joen Coronel

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The mother of a Grenadier Guard has shared her pride after her son was chosen to be one of the pallbearers that carried Prince Philip's coffin at his funeral on Saturday.

Dan Coghlan was one of the soldiers tasked with transporting the Duke of Edinburgh's coffin to a custom-built Land Rover that then carried the Duke to St George's Chapel in Windsor ahead of his funeral service and burial.

Members of the Royal Marines then carried the coffin up to the West Steps of the chapel.

The Guardsman's mother, Dawn Monk, took to Facebook to share a photo of her son carrying the coffin and shared her pride.

She said: 'A very proud moment for this family, my son at Philip's left shoulder. GDSM D Coghlan carrying the Prince's coffin. RIP Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh.'

The guardsman previously crossed paths with the Duke in 2015 when Philip visited Wellington Barracks, where he was stationed.

A photo from the visit shows Philip sitting in the front row with Gdsm Coughlan stood in the back row.

The bearer Party found by The Queen's Company, 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards carry the coffin of HRH Prince Philip including Gdsm Dan Coghlan (circled)

Gdsm Dan Coughlan's mother Dawn Monk took to Facebook to share a photo of her son carrying the coffin and shared her pride

Other photos show the guardsman taking part in Trooping the Colour and 'passing out' in 2014.

Gdsmn Coghlan was one of several soldiers tasked with transporting the Duke to his final resting place on Sunday.

Deputy Colonel Commandant of The Rifles Major General Rupert Jones, the son of Herbert 'H' Jones who was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross by the Queen for his heroism during the Falklands War, was another pallbearer.

H Jones, as he was known to all his comrades, was killed as he led the 2nd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, into battle on the occupied British islands in the south Atlantic. He was mortally wounded by machine gun fire as he personally led the attack near Goose Green.

His son, Major General Jones, is a leading officer in The Rifles.

Philip, who served heroically in the Royal Navy during the Second World War was Colonel-in-Chief of the regiment, one of 42 appointments he enjoyed in the British armed forces and the Commonwealth.

Lt Alec Heywood, a Grenadier Guard whose grandfather served at both the funeral of George VI and the Queen's coronation, was in command of the bearer party carrying Prince Philip's coffin.

Lt Alec Heywood led the unit from The Queen's Company, 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards as it moved the coffin from Windsor Castle's private chapel to the inner hall before the start of the funeral procession.

The guardsman (sat in the back row) previously crossed paths with the Duke in 2015 when Philip visited Wellington Barracks, where he was stationed

Gdsm Coghlan and the other pallbearers carried the coffin onto the custom-built Land Rover

Royal Marines then carried it up the steps of the chapel before a one minute's silence ahead of the service

As a third generation Grenadier Guard Lt Heywood's family have a long history of service in the British Army. His grandfather captained The Queen's Company at George VI's funeral and the Queen's Coronation in 1953.

The Duke of Edinburgh's beloved Royal Marines accompanied his coffin on its final journey.

Commandant General Royal Marines Major General Matthew Holmes walked alongside the hearse during the procession.

Other pallbearers included Brigadier Ian Mortimer, Colonel of The Queen's Royal Hussars, Lieutenant General Roland 'Roly' Walker, Regimental Lieutenant Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, and Brigadier James Roddis, Deputy Colonel of The Royal Regiment of Scotland.

Lieutenant General Paul Jaques, Master General of the Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME), the regiment who helped Philip design his Land Rover hearse, also helped carry the coffin, as did Lieutenant General Sir James Hockenhull, Colonel Commandant of the Intelligence Corps, and Group Captain Nick Worrall, Station Commander RAF Northolt Group.

Military duties began hours before the funeral at 3pm on Saturday afternoon, with Philip's coffin - covered with his personal standard and surmounted with his sword, naval cap and a wreath of flowers - moved at 11am by a Bearer Party found by The Queen's Company, 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, from the private chapel to the inner hall of Windsor Castle.

Queen Elizabeth watches as pallbearers carry the coffin of the Duke of Edinburgh during his funeral

By 2.15pm, the service detachments recognising Philip's special military relationships were in position in the Quadrangle, which was also lined by the Household Cavalry and The Foot Guards.

The Band of the Grenadier Guards, of which Philip was Colonel for 42 years, led the procession to St George's Chapel.

They were followed by the Major General's Party, and then the Service Chiefs, which included the Chief of the Air Staff, Naval Staff and Defence Staff.

Philip had a distinguished career in the Royal Navy and while he gave up active service in 1951, he remained closely connected to it and other military elements throughout his public life.
Press Release

19 April 2021

Bexhill's Cooden Beach Hotel Acquired by Hong Kong Hotelier and Singapore-Based Partner at GBP6.9 Million

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Hong Kong hotelier, Grace Leo, and her Singapore-based partner, Tim Hartnoll have acquired the 41-key Cooden Beach Hotel at a guided price of GBP6.9 million from entrepreneur James Kimber. Built in 1928, the four-star freehold property is a beachfront hotel in Bexhill on Sea, East Sussex. Hartnoll, the executive chairman of Singapore-based global shipping company, Sea Consortium group, is a hotel investor whose hospitality interests include the Bawah Reserve in the Anambas Archipelago in Indonesia. Leo, with resort development experience in remote destinations, mentioned that they envision to create an idyllic resort experience for guests to rest and relax in the unique seaside setting. The deal was perceived to be a rare opportunity due to the unique location on the beach and the immense potential to increase the business volume. Therefore, there was a high volume of interest from buyers that were hoping to capture the UK staycation boom forecast once COVID-19 restrictions ease. This acquisition is their second purchase in less than six months, with the first being 35-key The Red Lion Hotel in Henley-on-Thames, which will be refurbished and reopened as the 40-key Relais Henley later this year.

Cross Hotels & Resorts Signs Seven Franchise Hotels in Japan

Thailand-based hospitality operator, Cross Hotels & Resorts ("CHR"), announced their entrance into Japan on 6 April 2021, through the signing of a master franchise agreement with Japan-based hospitality company, AB Accommo Company Limited ("AB Accommo"). The agreement comprises seven properties with 844 keys to be constructed over the next four year across Japan, including Okinawa and Hokkaido. The inaugurated property, Away Okinawa Kouri Island Resort, would feature a boutique beachfront resort that faces the East China Sea. Slated to be opened in July 2021, the property is located on Kouri, an island connected to the main Okinawa island by a two-kilometre sea bridge. Harry Thaliwal, chief executive officer of CHR, stated that Japan has observed one of the largest increase in international tourists and have a strong domestic market. He further states that this strategic entry into the Japanese market is a milestone in the company's international expansion plan. CHR will be able to tap on AB Accommo's strong operating platform with an existing 26 hotels and a proven track record of cooperation with investors and developers in Japan. CHR currently operates 21 hotels across Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia, featuring three distinct brands, namely Cross, Cross Vibe and Away.

Cambodia to Construct Domestic Airport in Mondulkiri Province

On 1 April 2021, the State Secretariat of Civil Aviation ("SSCA") announced the construction of a domestic airport in the Mondulkiri province of Cambodia. This announcement was made after a meeting held on 30 March 2021, where SSCA and various representatives from China-based PowerChina International Group ("PIG"), discussed the feasibility of the airport development and a nearby industrial park in the region. The construction is expected to commence in 2022 on a 300-hectare site, with an estimated cost of USD80 million. The proposed site is located about 22-kilometres south of Sen Monorom town in the O'Raing district's Sen Monorom commune, with the provincial government demarcating a 600-hectare plot for this project. SSCA elaborated that this project models the development of Preah Sihanouk province, where a strong surge in tourism, commerce, investment, and transport volume was observed. The development of Preah Sihanouk has also increased passenger movements, with the Sihanouk International Airport observing a 300% jump from 2017 to 2019. SSCA believes that the construction of the Mondulkiri airport would capitalise on the country's growing ecotourism projects and aims to attract more investors to the area.
Farming and manufacturing have been named as key sectors in the federal governments push to achieve net zero carbon emissions, as Prime Minister Scott Morrison promises action on climate change ahead of a global summit that is likely to demand a 2050 deadline for the plan.

Mr Morrison said the road to net zero was already under way and would include energy and industry as well as agriculture and manufacturing.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has named farming and manufacturing as key sectors in the federal governments push to achieve net zero carbon emissions. Credit:Janie Barrett, Wolter Peeters, Kate Geraghty

But he put no timeframe on the ambition in a speech on Monday night to the Business Council of Australia, which supports the Paris agreement on climate change and achieving net zero by 2050.

Mr Morrison is expected to come under pressure from other leaders to commit to net zero by 2050 at a series of global meetings this year, starting with a gathering hosted by United States President Joe Biden this week, followed by a meeting of G7 nations in Cornwall in June and culminating in the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow in November.
Reclaimed water takes up 30 percent of Beijing's annual water supply

10:33, April 19, 2021 By He Yong ( People's Daily

Photo shows a water reclamation plant in Gaobeidian, Beijing that can treat a million tonnes of domestic sewage on a daily basis. (People's Daily Online/Deng Jia)

As Beijing enhances its efforts on sewage disposal and raises relevant standards, it is also expanding the usages and consumption of reclaimed water. At present, reclaimed water accounts for nearly 30 percent of the capital's total annual water supply, becoming an indispensable resource of water supply.

Xiaohongmen Water Reclamation Plant is a modern plant under Beijing Drainage Group Co., Ltd. It receives domestic sewage from the western and southern parts of Beijing and transforms it into water that meets the standards for class IV groundwater after 12 purifying procedures. The reclaimed water is then pumped into the Yongding River, the mother river of Beijing, through a 33.4-kilometer tube.

Before getting into the Yongding River, the reclaimed water has to flow across a piece of wetland to further degrade the nitrogen and phosphorus it carries. By the time when it enters the mother river, it has met the standards for class III groundwater.

This is a typical scenario that showcases Beijing's efforts to turn sewage into resources. According to the Beijing Water Authority, the city reclaimed 120 million cubic meters of water last year.

The average annual precipitation of Beijing over the years stands at 585 mm, and the average annual available water resource is 3.74 billion cubic meters. The city's per capita annual available water resource is less than 200 cubic meters. It once had to over exploit its underground water to maintain water supply due to continuous drought.

"In the past a dozen of years, Beijing's underground water level was dropping one millimeter each year, and every drop meant a storage reduction of 500 cubic meters ," said Liao Ping'an, an official with the Beijing Water Authority.

To alleviate the situation, the exploitation of reclaimed water, rainfalls and other unconventional water resources was put onto the capital's agenda.

In 2013, the municipal government of Beijing proposed to build 47 water reclamation plants in three years. After that, a sewage treatment plant in Beijing's Gaobeidian was transformed into a water reclamation plant. Now the plant reclaims around a million tonnes of water on a daily basis.

Since 2013, the city has requested all of its newly built water reclamation plants and those transformed from sewage treatment plants to have their water meet the standards for class IV groundwater.

As of the end of 2020, Beijing had a total of 67 major sewage treatment plants and water reclamation plants that could treat a million tonnes of water each every day. Their total daily capacity added up to nearly 6.8 million cubic meters, with a reclamation rate of 95 percent.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
Chinese health officials knew Wuhan's Huanan Seafood Market was a disease risk for years before the Covid pandemic started there, an Australian scientist has claimed.

Professor Eddie Holmes, a virologist at the University of Sydney, said he was taken on a tour of the market by public health officials in the now-infamous city in 2014.

Although the exact origin of the Covid pandemic is unknown, the disease is thought to have first emerged in the market, where caged wild animals were kept in close confines with human crowds.

Professor Holmes told The Telegraph: 'The discussion was "where could a disease emerge?" Well, heres the place  thats why I went.'

The World Health Organization last week called for a ban on all global sales of living wild mammals in markets in a bid to prevent more diseases jumping from animals to humans.

Scientists' best theories suggest that the coronavirus first emerged in bats before transmitting to a bigger animal, potentially a pangolin, which was captured by people and taken into a market where the infection spread.

The WHO and US intelligence officials are also investigating the not-yet-disproven possibility that the virus was leaked from a lab where scientists were studying it.

Professor Eddie Holmes, a virologist at the University of Sydney, said he was taken on a tour of the market by public health officials in the now-infamous city in 2014

The food market in Wuhan is one where people can buy food and drink like in a normal market, but some of this kind  known as wet markets  also sell live animals that have been caught wild and then caged by sellers

Pictured in January 2020, the Wuhan market had to be shut down for testing and decontamination after dozens of the first coronavirus cases were in people who had worked or visited there

The food market in Wuhan is one where people can buy food and drink like in a normal market, but some of this kind  known as wet markets  also sell live animals that have been caught wild and then caged by sellers.

The Huanan market had one of these wild sections, where stalls can sell unusual or even rare animals, including snakes, beavers and porcupines.

Government officials were photographed catching a salamander outside of the market in January last year.

Professor Holmes said: 'I've been to a few of these markets but this was a big one. It felt like a disease incubator  exactly the sort of place you would expect a disease to emerge.'

He had gone on the mission as part of a project specifically to find viruses or bacteria that might cause a serious outbreak in the future.

SARS, a bug almost identical to the Covid virus, also emerged in China in 2002 and was also transmitted from animals to humans.

That epidemic was better contained because the virus did not spread as quickly and people had more obvious symptoms.

The connection to the Huanan food market was made right at the start of the Covid pandemic, when officials found that around a third of the first 168 people to get infected had been there recently.

WHO CALLS FOR END TO SALES OF LIVE WILD ANIMALS The World Health Organization has called for a ban on the sale of live wild mammals in food markets to help protect against future pandemics. It comes after a joint WHO-Chinese study into the origins of Covid published last month said that markets in Wuhan selling both live and dead animals, including wild mammals, were a likely source of the current pandemic. The WHO had previously recommended that so-called 'wet markets' remain fully open to secure food supplies and jobs, but that conditions should be improved. 'The guidance calls on countries to suspend the sale of captured live wild mammals in food markets as an emergency measure,' the WHO said. 'Animals, particularly wild animals, are the source of more than 70 percent of all emerging infectious diseases in humans, many of which are caused by novel viruses,' 'Wild mammals, in particular, pose a risk for the emergence of new diseases,' it said. 'Traditional markets, where live animals are held, slaughtered and dressed, pose a particular risk for pathogen transmission to workers and customers alike,' said the guidance. It also called on governments to close sections of food markets selling live wild mammals unless adequate risk assessments were in place. Advertisement

Cases started to spring up in people across the city, home to 10million people, but the original outbreak was clearly linked to the market.

It is unclear whether the virus first spread from an animal to a person inside the market  known as the spillover event  or whether it was the host of a super-spreader event when someone who was already infected walked into a crowd there.

Some researchers suggest the virus was contracted by a farmer or visitor from somewhere more rural who then took it into the market and triggered an outbreak.

Professor Holmes added: 'In my mind, the wildlife trade is the most likely source of it.

'The role of that market is still uncertain but there was clearly a lot of transmission and, to me, it smells like theres a strong link. We need to follow it through.'

Health experts have repeatedly warned that people being in close contact with wild animals is a high risk factor for sparking new disease outbreaks, and it is listed as one of the biggest threats to human health worldwide.

Ebola, in Africa, is spread to people from monkeys when people eat bushmeat, and the MERS virus in the Middle East was spread to humans from camels.

In a bid to try and prevent something like the Covid pandemic happening again, the World Health Organization has called for a ban on taking wild animals to market.

A joint WHO-Chinese investigation into the origins of Covid, published last month, said that markets in Wuhan selling both live and dead animals were a likely source of the current pandemic.

The WHO had previously recommended that the wet markets should stay open to secure food supplies and jobs, but that conditions should be improved.

But it changed its stance in guidance published last week.

The global health authority said: 'The guidance calls on countries to suspend the sale of captured live wild mammals in food markets as an emergency measure.'

It added: 'Animals, particularly wild animals, are the source of more than 70 percent of all emerging infectious diseases in humans, many of which are caused by novel viruses.

'Wild mammals, in particular, pose a risk for the emergence of new diseases.

'Traditional markets, where live animals are held, slaughtered and dressed, pose a particular risk for pathogen transmission to workers and customers alike.'

As well as the market, officials have still not yet ruled out the claim that the virus may have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a prestigious laboratory in the city.

Former US president Donald Trump was outspoken about the theory and Washington is continuing to investigate it under Joe Biden.

The WHO's 120-page report from a visit to China praised Wuhan's labs as 'well-managed', and supported Beijing's theory that the virus could have originated elsewhere and been imported.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO's own director-general, criticised the report and said it hadn't done enough to rule out the possibility of a lab leak.

'Although the team has concluded that a laboratory leak is the least likely hypothesis, this requires further investigation,' he said.

Teams of public workers in protective suits had to thoroughly disinfect the Huanan seafood market after the government realised the coronavirus was spreading uncontrollably
Back in February, Toyota announced it would debut three electric vehicles in the US by the end of 2021. Of that trio, it said two would be fully electric models, while one would be a plug-in hybrid. The automaker today detailed a broader EV vision as it tries to become carbon neutral by 2050. In particular, Toyota says it plans to sell around 70 different electric cars globally by the end of 2025, including 15 new fully electric models.

Toyota

Roughly half of those will fall under the company's new Beyond Zero brand, with the bZ4X SUV Toyota unveiled today kicking things off. While only a concept currently, Toyota plans to quickly turn it into a road-ready car after production gets underway in Japan and China. The company says it hopes to start selling the bZ4X by the middle of 2022, with details on the US version to come at a later date.

Toyota

Toyota didn't share much more information about the bZ4X. We know it was co-developed by Subaru and will feature all-wheel drive and take advantage of Toyota's new battery-electric e-TNGA powertrain. It will also include a long-wheelbase frame for a roomy interior. Outside of the bZ4X and other Beyond Zero-branded cars, the company also plans to electrify its pickup trucks. That's something other truck makers like Ford plan to do as well.
Huawei: Optimizing portfolio to boost business resilience and navigate a challenging environment

SHENZHEN, China, and NEW DELHI, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Huawei held its 18th Global Analyst Summit in Shenzhen recently. More than 400 guests, including industry and financial analysts, key opinion leaders, and media representatives joined the event on-site, along with analysts and media representatives from around the world who attended online.



Eric Xu, Huawei's Rotating Chairman, shared the company's business performance in 2020 as well as five strategic initiatives moving forward. According to Mr. Xu, Huawei will:

Optimize its portfolio to boost business resilience. As part of these efforts, Huawei will strengthen its software capabilities and invest more in businesses that are less reliant on advanced process techniques, as well as in components for intelligent vehicles. Maximize 5G value and define 5.5G with industry peers to drive the evolution of mobile communications. Provide a seamless, user-centric, and intelligent experience across all user scenarios. Innovate to reduce energy consumption for a low-carbon world. Address supply continuity challenges.

"Rebuilding trust and restoring collaboration across the global semiconductor supply chain is crucial to bringing the industry back on track," stressed Eric Xu.



"Moving forward, we will continue to find ourselves in a complex and volatile global environment. Resurgence of COVID-19 and geopolitical uncertainty will present ongoing challenges for every organization, business, and country. We believe deeply in the power of digital technology to provide fresh solutions to the problems we all face. So we will keep innovating and driving digital transformation forward with our customers and partners to bring digital to every person, home and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world," he added.



William Xu, Director of the Board and President of Huawei's Institute of Strategic Research, began his keynote by discussing challenges that will affect social well-being over the next decade, including ageing populations and increasingly high energy consumption. He followed with Huawei's outlook on the intelligent world of 2030, including nine technological challenges and proposed directions for research efforts. These include:

Defining 5.5G to support hundreds of billions of different kinds of connections Developing nanoscale optics for an exponential increase in fiber capacity Optimizing network protocols to connect all things Providing advanced computing power strong enough to support the intelligent world Extracting knowledge from massive amounts of data to drive breakthroughs in industrial AI Going beyond von Neumann architecture for 100x denser storage systems Combining computing and sensing for a hyper-reality, multi-modal experience Enabling people to more proactively manage their health through continuous self-monitoring of personal vital signs Building an intelligent Internet of Energy for the generation, storage, and consumption of greener electricity

"In the decade to come," said William Xu, "we can expect to see many great improvements in society. To promote these efforts, we hope to join forces with different industries, academia, research institutes, and application developers to address the universal challenges facing humanity. With a shared vision, we all have a role to play as we explore how to make connections stronger, computing faster, and energy greener. Together, let's march ahead towards an Intelligent World in 2030."



The first Huawei Global Analyst Summit took place in 2004, and has been held annually ever since. This year's summit, "Building a Fully Connected, Intelligent World", ran from April 12 to 14, with a number of breakout sessions where industry experts from around the world shared their unique insights and discussed future trends.



About Huawei



Founded in 1987, Huawei is a leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and smart devices. We have more than 1,97,000 employees, and we operate in more than 170 countries and regions, serving more than three billion people around the world.



Our vision and mission is to bring digital to every person, home and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world. To this end, we will drive ubiquitous connectivity and promote equal access to networks; bring cloud and artificial intelligence to all four corners of the earth to provide superior computing power where you need it, when you need it; build digital platforms to help all industries and organizations become more agile, efficient, and dynamic; redefine user experience with AI, making it more personalized for people in all aspects of their life, whether they're at home, in the office, or on the go. For more information, please visit Huawei online at www.huawei.com or follow us on:



http://www.linkedin.com/company/Huawei



http://www.twitter.com/Huawei



http://www.facebook.com/Huawei



http://www.youtube.com/Huawei

(Disclaimer--Features may vary depending on the regions; subject to change without notice.)
SAN DIEGO, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Think You Know how to escape rip currents? If you answered Swim Parallel to the beach, you might want to think again.

Dr. Jaime MacMahan of the Monterey Institute of Oceanography, after a lengthy study, concluded swimming parallel to escape rip currents is more dangerous than doing nothing.

Enter Milton and Michael Willis, identical twin brothers, World Champion Giant Wave Surfers and Ocean Safety Experts, who advise using waves to escape rip currents.

Milton explains, "Experienced surfers have always used the natural occurring rip currents to get out to the surf and the waves to get back to shore."

Milton and Michael began surfing in Solana Beach, California, soon after the pair set out to Hawaii's North Shore in pursuit of the biggest waves.

While preparing to enter the ocean on a particularly big day (pre-leashes and inflatable vests), Milton was approached by Hawaiian big wave surfer Eddie Aikau.

Aikau informed Willis, "If you lose your surfboard, stay in the waves; they will bring you back to shore." Milton and Michael heeded the wise council, and in 25 plus years surfing big waves, were never caught in a rip current nor ever had to be rescued themselves.

Both brothers were involved with 100's of successful rescues. Milton was awarded the Certificate of Life Saving Merit from the City and County of Honolulu, Hawaii.

Michael is credited with rescuing legendary surfer Titus Kinimaka at Waimea Bay, considered the most dramatic rescue in surfing history.

In 1998 the Willis brothers rode what many believe are the largest waves surfed during Hawaii's first-ever "Condition Black," lawfully closing beaches due to unprecedented high surf.

No swell has exceeded 1998 Condition Black to this date.

Circa 2000, the brothers realized the vast majority of beachgoers, lifeguards and surfers were unaware of using waves to escape rip currents, so they began teaching surfing and ocean safety.

Today N. O. A. A. and U. S. L. A. have adapted the Surfers Way using waves to escape rip currents in pictograph format.

Though the average public remains unaware of using waves to avoid or escape rip currents, Milton and Michael continue working to prevent drowning by making sure they become aware. As the Willis brothers say when it comes to rip currents, "Think Waves, Reach the Beach!"

Visit thinkwaves.org

SOURCE Think Waves

Related Links

https://www.thinkwaves.org


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San Francisco, 19 April 2021: The Report Capnography Devices Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Component, By Product, By Technology (Mainstream, Sidestream, Microstream), By Application, By End-use, By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2021 - 2028

The global capnography devices market size is expected to reach USD 1.1 billion by 2028, according to a new study by Grand View Research, Inc. The market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 9.7% from 2021 to 2028. Introduction of regulatory guidelines for procedural sedation and growing adoption of capnography in patient monitoring due to higher reliability and efficiency are anticipated to propel market growth over the forecast period. In addition, associated advantages such as ease of usage, minimally invasive nature, and medical efficiency with its usage are the key growth drivers for the market. Moreover, rising incidences of respiratory diseases that need continuous patient monitoring are expected to fuel the demand for EtCO2 monitors in coming years.

The COVID-19 pandemic had a positive impact on the market as companies such as Medtronic witnessed increased demand for EtCO2 monitors during the pandemic. Some companies such as Capsule Technologies also received product approvals for their EtCO2 monitors during the pandemic, which further resulted in positive market growth.

The market is highly competitive in nature and a limited number of players have a high level of dominance over the overall revenue share. The key market players account for a considerable share owing to their product offerings. Market leaders are involved in the establishment of extensive distribution systems as well as increasingly involving in mergers and acquisitions to capture a larger share of the market. For instance, in January 2021, Koninklijke Philips N.V. announced the acquisition of Capsule Technologies, Inc., hence enhancing its position in the patient care management solutions for hospitals.

Access Research Report of Capnography Devices Market @ https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/capnography-device-market

Capnography Devices Market Report Highlights

The handheld capnography segment dominated the market in 2020, owing to associated benefits such as portability, light-weighted, ease of use, and treatment efficiency

The microstream segment is expected to witness the fastest CAGR of 10.4% over the forecast period. This growth can be attributed to the fact that this technology is more effective and easier to incorporate as compared to sidestream and mainstream technology

The emergency medicine segment dominated the market in 2020 owing to its usage to optimize pre-hospital ventilation, correct pediatric emergencies, and as a prognostic indicator to maintain pulmonary blood flow

In Asia Pacific, the market is anticipated to register rapid growth in coming years owing to the presence of high unmet needs coupled with increasing patient awareness levels and improving healthcare infrastructure

The hospital segment dominated the market in 2020 owing to the shifting preference of hospitals from conventional patient monitoring devices to capnographs

Moreover, stringent norms for product approval and post-approval performance monitoring which are regulated by authorities such as the U.S. FDA and American Academy of Implant may act as a threat for new participants

List of Key Players of Capnography Devices Market

Masimo

Smiths Medical, Inc.

Dragerwerk AG & Co. KGaA

Welch Allyn (Hill-Rom Holdings, Inc.)

Koninklijke Philips N.V.

Medtronic

Nonin Medical, Inc.

Nihon Kohden Corporation

BD

Diamedica (UK) Limited

Edan Instruments, Inc.

Access Press Release of Capnography Devices Market @ https://www.grandviewresearch.com/press-release/global-capnography-device-market
It's sad, but true, that the entryway is one of the most neglected spaces of the home. It's a low priority as a home renovation project, and most homeowners don't give it the TLC it deserves. But entryway design is all about making a good first impression, and if you think about it, the look and feel of this area mattersa lot.

Making a good first impression is especially important if you're a home seller. According to a study by Strutt & Parker, a resounding 84% of prospective home owners say that having a good feeling when they walk through the front door is what they consider the most important thing about buying a property.

So while you as a homeowner may breeze through this space without thinking about it or even really seeing it, a potential home buyer is probably going to study every detail.

Is all this talk of optimizing your entryway piquing your interest? Good! We consulted several real estate and interior design experts on their top entryway upgrades, keeping budgets and time constraints in mind.

We're happy to report you don't need to have a fancy foyer or a hefty budget to give your entryway a boost. Whether you're looking for a quick-fix project or a renovation you can really sink your time into, we have all the info below.

If you have 5 minutes

In just five minutes, you can seriously upgrade your entryways overall appeal. Geordie Romer, a managing broker for Windermere Real Estate in Wenatchee, WA, reminds buyers to take a quick peek outside first.

The front door is your guests first interaction with your home, Romer says. Make sure the porch light is clean and has a good bulb. Is the doorknob clean and shiny? Does the hardware need lubrication or adjusting? Shake out the welcome mat, or better yet, get a new one. I always ask clients to replace their welcome mat when listing their homes. Think bright and seasonal.

Cost: Doormats cost $10-plus.



To make your entryway look more like a welcoming area and less like a shoe graveyard, Romer recommends buying a shoe tray or basket so that you and your family will have a way to keep shoes organized.

Cost: Shoe trays are $15-plus.



If you have 30 minutes

Even if your entryway is small, clutter tends to pile up there, says James Bruno, chief construction officer at Curbio in Potomac, MD. Start with the stoop and move inside, cleaning up mail, any debris and newspapers, along with jackets or shoes.

Next, he recommends sweeping the inside area carefully and going over the nooks, crannies, baseboards, and windows by the front door with a wet cloth, to remove the dirt and dust that accumulates in the area. Flowers are also a nice touch if you have a place to put them, as they add life and a beautiful fresh scent to the home.

Cost: Flowers are $5-plus.



Sometimes a quick upgrade is needed. Betsy Ronel, a real estate salesperson with Compass in Bedford, NY, recommends buying a fresh rug or a new table or bench from HomeGoods, Target, or a local resale shop.

A small, new piece can really make the entryway pop, she explains. It can also set apart the entryway as a separate space.

Cost: $75-plus



Another fast way to rev up your entryway's appeal is to add a statement mirror.

This works even for small entryways, says Ronel. A cool, oversized mirror adds light and opens the space up. And who doesnt want to give themselves a wink on the way in or out?

Cost: Mirrors are $50-plus.



If you have 1 hour

If you haven't invested in statement lighting for your entryway yet, the time is now.

Because there is relatively little furniture in an entryway, I recommend going big with lighting, says Philip Ash, founder of Pro Paint Corner in Washington, DC. Its also a great way to accentuate the architectural style of the home and draw eyes up.

The chandelier has been an iconic symbol of good taste and luxury for centuries, but if it simply isnt practical for your home, a more modern light fixture can deliver oomph as well.

Cost: $75-plus, plus labor for installation, if necessary



If you have 3 hours

Reset the entryway with some color and visual interest.

It takes less than an hour to transform entryways with a painted accent wall, wallpaper, or paneling, says Marcia Castro Socas, a real estate broker at Castro Realty Group in Orlando, FL. It is especially transformative in smaller or darker spaces.

Horizontally lined wallpaper makes the space look larger, and wainscoting is the way to go for homeowners with a more traditional aesthetic.

Cost: $50-plus



Next, look around the space, and see if there is a better way to separate the entryway from the rest of the home. After decluttering, consider arranging a folding screen or console table that will clearly delineate the space.

A lightweight console table decorated with a small plant, a scented candle, and a few hardcover books can add an element of sophistication and luxury, says Michelle Madison, a professional home stager in Miami, FL. The scent in that area should be refreshed frequently, especially if there are a lot of people going in and out and removing their shoes.

Cost: $60-plus for a console table; $50-plus for console table decor



If you have a weekend

With a full two days, you can take care of several of the projects mentioned above, while also tackling both of the to-dos below.

If sellers have a weekend, I recommend that they use that time to sand, prep, prime, and paint the entry door and trim, Bruno says. Coordinate the paint with the exterior color scheme, and use a daring color like robins egg blue, which buyers love.

Cost: $75 for tools and paint



One feature that every homeowner or buyer wants is highly specific storage spaces, says Marie Bromberg, a licensed salesperson with New York Citys Compass.

This can mean many things depending on space, she says, but adding floor- or wall-mounted shelving units with designated places for keys, phone, and mail, in addition to coats and shoes, adds a lot of appeal.

Cost: Simple shelving costs upward of $20 per shelf. Larger shelving units are $400-plus.

The post 10 Entryway Upgrades To Tackle, Based on How Much Time You Have appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com.
NEW YORK and SAO PAULO, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Bloomberg today announced that art lovers around the world can now experience a panoramic digital tour of the exhibit, "OSGEMEOS: Secrets" via Brazil's Pinacoteca de Sao Paulo's website.



The exhibition presents the work of identical twin brothers and street artists Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo, whose imagination inspired by hip-hop, break dancing and Brazilian Folk Art. Pinacoteca opened the exhibition in March 2020, but has had to close in-person visits intermittently over the past six months due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The virtual tour provides the general public an opportunity to view the artworks even with the uncertainty of the reopening of the museum.



Bloomberg Corporate Philanthropy is sponsoring the virtual experience to the exhibit, which features more than 1,000 items by the duo including paintings, sculptures, drawings and notebooks, some that have never been seen before in Brazil. The online tour includes views throughout the museum's galleries and an exclusive video of the curator and general director at Pinacoteca in Portuguese with English subtitles. The digital experience is available to anyone globally via the site.



"At Bloomberg, we believe that art can inspire and make a lasting positive impact on communities," said Geraldo Coelho, Bloomberg Head of Latin American sales. "We use innovative global technology to address unmet needs and to create dynamic cultural experiences for our employess, clients and partners in LatAm, as well as to enhance lives around the world."





"OSGEMEOS: Secrets is a very special exhibition to Pinacoteca de Sao Paulo and the artists. It celebrates the comeback of Gustavio and Otavio Pandolfo to Pinacoteca. It was in this very museum that, at age 9, they both participated in an educational art workshop that was fundamental to the twins' artistic development. This exhibition also reaffirms the importance of art and culture in these difficult times of pandemic".

Jochen Volz  Exhibition Curator and General Director at Pinacoteca de Sao Paulo.

OSGEMEOS: Segredos at Pinacoteca de Sao Paulo is sponsored by Bradesco, Samsung, Grupo Boticario, IRB Brasil RE, Iguatemi Sao Paulo, GOL, Mattos Filho, Allergan, Comgas, Cielo and Havaianas.





About Pinacoteca de Sao Paulo

Pinacoteca de Sao Paulo is the city's oldest art museum, founded in 1905, and has around 12.000 art pieces from some of the most important Brazilian artists, including Anita Malfatti, Lygia Clark, Tarsila do Amaral, Almeida Junior, Pedro Alexandrino, Candido Portinari and Oscar Pereira da Silva. The museum has also brought to Sao Paulo renowned collections and exhibitions from all around the world. Bloomberg has been a proud sponsor of Pinacoteca de Sao Paulo since 2016.





About Bloomberg

Bloomberg, the global business and financial information and news leader, gives influential decision makers a critical edge by connecting them to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas. The company's strength  delivering data, news and analytics through innovative technology, quickly and accurately  is at the core of the Bloomberg Terminal. Bloomberg's enterprise solutions build on the company's core strength: leveraging technology to allow customers to access, integrate, distribute and manage data and information across organizations more efficiently and effectively. For more information, visit www.bloomberg.com or request a demo.





SOURCE Bloomberg

Related Links

http://www.bloomberg.com


MADISON, Wis. - Foxconn Technology Group, the world's largest electronics maker, has reached a new deal with reduced tax breaks for its scaled back manufacturing facility in southeast Wisconsin, Gov. Tony Evers and the the company announced on Monday.

FILE - In this June 28, 2018 photo, President Donald Trump takes a tour of Foxconn with Foxconn chairman Terry Gou, right, and CEO of SoftBank Masayoshi Son in Mt. Pleasant, Wis. Foxconn Technology Group, the world's largest electronics manufacturer, has reached a new deal with reduced tax breaks for its scaled back project in southeast Wisconsin, Gov. Tony Evers and the the company announced on Monday, April 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

MADISON, Wis. - Foxconn Technology Group, the world's largest electronics maker, has reached a new deal with reduced tax breaks for its scaled back manufacturing facility in southeast Wisconsin, Gov. Tony Evers and the the company announced on Monday.

Details of the new deal were not immediately released. It was scheduled to be approved at a Tuesday meeting of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., the state's top jobs agency that previously negotiated the initial deal with Foxconn.

The new deal will reduce the potential tax breaks by billions of dollars and still have potential tax breaks worth more than $10 million for the company, a person with knowledge of the new contract who was not authorized to speak publicly about the deal said Monday.

The original contract with nearly $4 billion in state and local tax incentives was struck in 2017 by then-Gov. Scott Walker. It was based on Taiwan-based Foxconn's promise to build a massive $10 billion flat screen panel manufacturing facility in Mount Pleasant, near the Illinois border, employing up to 13,000 people.

Then-President Donald Trump heralded the original deal as a sign of a revitalized American manufacturing economy, calling the envisioned plant transformational and the eighth wonder of the world. He travelled to Wisconsin in 2018 for the ground breaking ceremony.

But Foxconn, best known for making Apple iPhones, has continually scaled back its plans for the site and missed employment targets that would trigger state tax credits. The state told Foxconn last year that it would not award it tax credits because the company had made substantial changes in its manufacturing plans and was out of compliance with the tax credit agreement. Foxconn employed 281 people in 2019 in Wisconsin, according to the state economic development agency.

David Callender, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., said the agency does not comment on its discussions with companies unless and until action has been taken by the board.

One of the agency's board members, Democratic Assembly Minority Leader Gordon Hintz, said he was encouraged that both sides had agreed to a deal but he still had questions about the contract he will be voting on at the Tuesday meeting.

All of us want more transparency and clarity on whats happening," Hintz said. "Thats something the company has been dishonest, deceptive and failed on.

Evers, a Democrat who ran as a critic of the project in 2018 and defeated Walker, a Republican, said in a statement that the new deal works for everyone.

Ive said all along that my goal as governor would be to find an agreement that works for Wisconsin taxpayers while providing the support Foxconn needs to be successful here in our state, Evers said.

Jay Lee, Foxconn's vice chairman, said Foxconn approved the new deal with a desire to lower taxpayer liability in exchange for the flexibility to pursue business opportunities the meet market demand." He said Foxconn was grateful that a solution could be found.

After the original deal was signed, Foxconn said it was downsizing the factory to be built over 2,500 acres (1,012 hectares) of land from what is known as a Generation 10.5 plant to a Generation 6 plant that makes smaller thin-film transistor liquid crystal display screens for cellphones and other devices, rather than the larger screens that were first proposed.

Foxconn has announced, and then quickly ended, other projects at the site including a cutting-edge, cloud-based, robotic retail platform for caffeine sales and ventilators to help the state respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Most recently, Foxconn's chairman said last month it was now considering making electric vehicles at the facility.

The company's changing plans led Evers to call for its contract to be rewritten.

Foxconn also made promises about basing its North American headquarters in Milwaukee and hiring 500 employees, but that has not happened. It also promised to open innovation centres in Green Bay, Eau Claire, Racine and Madison that would employ up to 200 people each. Buildings were purchased, but the company did not move forward with its plans.

In 2018, Foxconn said it planned to invest $100 million in engineering and innovation research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Since then, research centre and off-campus location have not been established. Foxconn did sponsor a $700,000 research project at UW-Madison and university officials said in March that talks with Foxconn were ongoing.
New Delhi, April 19 : Leading payments and business banking platform Razorpay on Monday said it has raised $160 million led by Sequoia Capital and GIC at a market valuation of $3 billion.

With this, Razorpay that became a unicorn in October last year has tripled its valuation in under six months.

The company said that it plans to infuse fresh funds capital to scale up its business banking suite, invest in new acquisitions and go global in South-East Asian countries.

"We believe there's a dire need to develop new banking technologies that meet the rising demand. So we plan to use these funds to further expand our banking and lending product suite so that we not only provide a better experience to businesses and their customers but significantly contribute to the growth of our partner businesses," explained Harshil Mathur, CEO and Co-founder of Razorpay.

The company said it is hiring more than 600 employees to fuel its growth plans.

The fresh round was co-led by Sequoia Capital and GIC, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, along with participation from Ribbit Capital and Matrix Partners.

Razorpay is helping small businesses and large enterprises modernise their financial infrastructure by providing intelligent automated payment and business banking solutions to manage their money flow end-to-end.

The company's neo-banking platform, RazorpayX is powering over 15,000 Indian businesses to manage their money.

The neobank saw 400 per cent growth in transaction volume in the last 12 months.

The company said it has been disbursing credit of upwards of Rs 700 crore per month, helping entrepreneurs get access to working capital, and now plans to scale this up to Rs 1,000 crore per month by the end of 2021.

"In the next 12 months, Razorpay will look to introduce more such products, through strategic partnerships and acquisitions which fit into our vision of making financial infrastructure easy and available to businesses across the country," said Shashank Kumar, Co-Founder & CTO, Razorpay.

"We expect digital payments to become a $500 billion market over the next 4-5 years. The Razorpay team, with their constant focus on executional excellence, has grabbed early leadership in this space," added Ishaan Mittal, Principal, Sequoia India.

In the last six months, Razorpay has witnessed a 40-45 per cent growth, month-on-month.
ALISO VIEJO, Calif., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Avanir Pharmaceuticals, Inc. has joined the Decentralized Trial Research Alliance (DTRA), a recently launched coalition of 90 life sciences and healthcare organizations, as a founding member. DTRA is uniting industry stakeholders, including healthcare companies, regulators, patient groups and research organizations with a singular mission to make clinical-trial participation widely accessible by advancing policies, research practices and new technologies in decentralized clinical research.

"We look forward to working with the DTRA to strengthen accessibility for clinical trial participation," said Wa'el Hashad, president and CEO of Avanir. "By sharing collective knowledge, we can help improve broad adoption of patient-focused, decentralized clinical trials and research that can enhance the lives of patients and their care communities."

Inclusion of representative patient populations in clinical trials by race, age and geographic location has long been an operational challenge. COVID-19 has likely impacted participation due to prospective patients' inability or reluctance to schedule visits at physical research locations.i Decentralized approaches to conducting research could help facilitate participation by a more diverse patient population and help ease COVID-19-imposed difficulties for both patients and clinical investigators.

Nadine Knowles, executive director, clinical management and operations at Avanir, will be participating on the DTRA Leadership Council. "At Avanir, we are consistently working to meet the needs of patients with central nervous system conditions," said Knowles. "Accelerating the adoption of decentralized clinical trials standards and research will be an important step in providing innovative solutions."

"We welcome Avanir's commitment to advancing decentralized trials," said Dr. Amir Kalali, founder of several collaborative life science communities, and co-convenor of DTRA. "By collaborating around decentralized research methodologies we can make the clinical trial process more patient-focused, increase trial efficiency and encourage use of technologies."

Avanir joins with its peer DTRA Member organizations to identify and address gaps and needs and advance best practices through effective education and communication. To learn more, visit DTRA.org .

About Avanir Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Avanir Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a pharmaceutical company committed to delivering innovative central nervous system (CNS) solutions to improve the lives of patients and their care communities. As part of our commitment, we have extensively invested in our pipeline and are dedicated to advancing CNS treatments in areas of high unmet medical need. For more information about Avanir, please visit http://www.avanir.com .

About Otsuka

Avanir is a subsidiary of Otsuka America, Inc. (OAI), a holding company established in the U.S. in 1989. OAI is wholly owned by Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., a global healthcare company with the corporate philosophy, "Otsuka-people creating new products for better health worldwide."

Otsuka researches, develops, manufactures and markets innovative and original pharmaceutical products for the treatment of diseases and nutraceutical products for the maintenance of everyday health. In pharmaceuticals, Otsuka is a leader in the challenging area of mental health and also has research programs on several under-addressed diseases including tuberculosis, a significant global public health issue. These commitments illustrate how Otsuka is a "big venture" company at heart, applying a youthful spirit of creativity in everything it does.

Otsuka Pharmaceutical Company, Ltd. is a subsidiary of Otsuka Holdings Co., Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. The Otsuka group of companies employed 47,000 people worldwide and had consolidated sales of approximately $13.4 billion in 2020.

You can visit Otsuka Pharmaceutical's global website at https://www.otsuka.co.jp/en .

About DTRA

The Decentralized Trials & Research Alliance ( DTRA ) was convened to enable collaboration of stakeholders to accelerate the adoption of patient-focused, decentralized clinical trials and research within life sciences and healthcare through education and research. It works to make research participation accessible to everyone, enabled by the consistent, widespread adoption of appropriate decentralized research methods. Follow DTRA on Twitter and LinkedIn for more information.

For further information, please contact:

Corporate Communications, Avanir Pharmaceuticals, Inc.:

T: 202-332-8551

E: [email protected]

DTRA Media Contact:

Glenn Silver

Lazar  Finn Partners

T: 646-871-8485

E: [email protected]

DTRA Non-Media Inquiries:

DTRA Secretariat

T: 619-209-7371

E: [email protected]

i Yates I, et al. "Representation in Clinical Trials: A Review on Reaching Underrepresented Populations in Research." Clinical Researcher, 34:7. August 10, 2020.

https://acrpnet.org/2020/08/10/representation-in-clinical-trials-a-review-on-reaching-underrepresented-populations-in-research/

SOURCE Avanir Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.avanir.com


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The incredible sight of a brand-new 310ft- (94m) long superyacht being very carefully transported through tiny quaint villages in Holland before entering the North Sea for pre-delivery trials has been captured in a set of mesmerising pictures.

Photographer and videographer Tom van Oossanen followed the vessel, called Viva, as she was guided for three days last week along narrow canals and rivers, with her eye-catching 88ft- (27m) high frame towering over houses, church spires and windmills.

Viva, built by Feadship, spans 44ft (13.4m) from port to starboard and some of the sections she squeezed through were only 46ft (14m) wide. Van Oossanen told MailOnline Travel that moving her was a 'very delicate operation'.

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The incredible sight of a brand-new 310ft- (94m) long superyacht being very carefully transported through tiny quaint villages in Holland before entering the North Sea for pre-delivery trials has been captured in a set of mesmerising pictures

Photographer and videographer Tom van Oossanen followed the vessel, called Viva, as she was guided for three days through narrow canals and rivers, with her eye-catching 88ft- (27m) high frame towering over houses, church spires and windmills

Viva, built by Feadship, spans 44ft (13.4m) from port to starboard and some of the sections she squeezed through were only 46ft (14m) wide. Van Oossanen told MailOnline Travel that moving her was a 'very delicate operation'

Two tugboats were attached to each of the pontoons to manoeuvre the yacht, pulling and pushing from the front and rear all the way from the Feadship shipyard on Kaag Island to the North Sea via Gouda and Rotterdam

He explained that pontoons were attached to the front and the rear of the yacht to lift her out of the water slightly, otherwise she would have been too deep for the canals.

Then two tugboats were attached to each of the pontoons to manoeuvre her, pulling and pushing from the front and rear all the way from the Feadship shipyard on Kaag Island to the North Sea via Gouda and Rotterdam.

The crew covered the sides of the ship with very thin wooden boards wrapped in fabric to protect her pearl-white finish at the tightest spots.

Van Oossanen said that watching Viva journey through the canals was 'quite unusual'  she was only the fourth yacht measuring over 295ft (90m) that he had seen being transported in such a way.

He added: 'Seeing these big yachts on transport to open sea is always very impressive and attracts loads of crowds.

'Some boats are bigger than others, so they take more time and more people will watch. A lot of people are actually kind of used to seeing the big boats pass their houses a few times a year.'

Van Oossanen said that watching Viva journey through the canals was 'quite unusual'  she was only the fourth yacht measuring over 295ft (90m) that he had seen being transported in such a way. He added: 'Seeing these big yachts on transport to open sea is always very impressive and attracts loads of crowds'

To capture the colossal vessel in action, Van Oossanen used a combination of techniques. He revealed: 'Some of the images I took using a drone and I took others from buildings or from ground level to show the yacht from different perspectives'

Feadship said the anonymous owner had 'chartered virtually every Feadship available in the global fleet over recent years' and the priority with this yacht - which was first unveiled in February - was to make it as eco-friendly as possible

The vessel, also known as Project 817, features a hybrid propulsion system that allows it to travel 'a comfortable 12 knots (14mph) on diesel-electric power in the pristine areas the yacht is set to explore'

To lessen its impact on the environment there is an onboard waste treatment plant and a system to recycle waste heat

To capture the colossal vessel in action, Van Oossanen used a combination of techniques.

He revealed: 'Some of the images I took using a drone and I took others from buildings or from ground level to show the yacht from different perspectives.'

Feadship said the anonymous owner had 'chartered virtually every Feadship available in the global fleet over recent years' and the priority with this yacht - which was first unveiled in February - was to make it as eco-friendly as possible.

As a result, the vessel, also known as Project 817, features a hybrid propulsion system that allows it to travel 'a comfortable 12 knots (14mph) on diesel-electric power in the pristine areas the yacht is set to explore'.

There is also an onboard waste treatment plant and a system to recycle waste heat.

On the design front, the owner's 'less is more approach' resulted in a slick exterior fashioned by De Voogt and Azure and an 'open beach-house-style interior' by architecture firm Peter Marino.

On the design front, the owner's 'less is more approach' resulted in a slick exterior fashioned by De Voogt and Azure and an 'open beach-house-style interior' by architecture firm Peter Marino

There is no word on how many bedrooms the yacht includes or the facilities onboard. However, Van Oossanen's aerial images show that she boasts three outdoor pools and an impressive swathe of sundecks

At the tightest spots, the crew covered the sides of the ship with very thin wooden boards wrapped in fabric to protect her pearl-white finish

Floor-to-ceiling windows run from the bow to the stern, allowing for plenty of natural light inside the vessel

Van Oossanen said that many people living around the waterways in the Netherlands are 'used to seeing big boats pass their houses a few times a year'

There is no word on how many bedrooms the yacht includes or the facilities onboard. However, Van Oossanen's aerial images show that the yacht boasts three outdoor pools and an impressive swathe of sundecks.

Floor-to-ceiling windows run from the bow to the stern, allowing for plenty of natural light inside the vessel.

Van Oossanen's fascination with boats started as a child, as he grew up in Den Helder, which is the Netherlands' main naval base.

He continued: 'With my dad being in the navy, I was always around boats and got interested in photography at a very young age.

'When I knew that the Netherlands was the top superyacht builder in the world I tried to find out when boats were launched or transported to take photos.

'After 10 years of doing this as a hobby, I got offered a job at Superyacht Times, where I worked for three years and got to know the industry and build a name for myself. Now, almost three years as a freelance, things are going very well, and I am lucky enough to travel the world and work for all the world's superyacht shipyards.'

Van Oossanen takes photos on behalf of Feadship, but on this occasion he did it 'because I love doing what I do'.

Van Oossanen's fascination with boats started as a child, as he grew up in Den Helder, which is the Netherlands' main naval base

The superyacht photographer worked for three years at the Superyacht Times, where he got to know the industry and build a name for himself
A South Florida doctor with a history of disciplinary issues has been stripped of his medical license after being accused of letting a new mother bleed to death following a difficult delivery while he went home to change out of his blood-soaked scrubs and go to bed.

Dr Berto Lopez, 62, had been practicing obstetrics and gynecology in West Palm Beach for 38 years. His medical career, which was marred by the deaths of two new mothers and a botched pregnancy termination, came to an end earlier this month, when his license was revoked by the state.

Administrative hearing judge Robert Cohen wrote in his opinion earlier this year that Lopez made multiple mistakes the day Onystei Castillo Lopez died in 2017, the most serious among them being leaving his patient in critical condition at Good Samaritan Hospital in West Palm Beach.

Dr Berto Lopez, 62 (left), has been stripped of his medical license over the 2017 death of his patient Onystei Castillo Lopez (right)

Castillo Lopez, pictured during her pregnancy with his husband and daughter, died from cardiac arrest just hours after welcoming a baby son

Lopez claimed that his scrubs were drenched in his patient's blood, and that he did not have clean clothes at the hospital, so he headed home, leaving a badly bleeding Castillo Lopez in the care of a nurse, an anesthesiologist and an ICU doctor available only via telemedicine, reported Miami Herald.

The married mother-of-two, 40, who had only hours earlier delivered her long-hoped-for second child, a son, went into a cardiac arrest and died while Lopez was at home.

Cohen concluded that Lopez's decision to leave the hospital to go home, clean up and go to sleep 'was where is failure to complete his care for his patient, led, ultimately to her untimely death.'

The judge added that had Lopez returned to the hospital after changing into a fresh set of scrubs, he might have saved his patient.

'Perhaps, his patient still would not have survived, but we will never know that because [Lopez] left her to go home,' Cohen wrote.

The judge recommended only a year-long license suspension and a ban on performing surgeries or delivering babies, to which Lopez had already voluntarily agreed, but the Florida Board of Medicine went beyond Cohen's recommendations and stripped Lopez of his license.

Castillo Lopez delivered her second child on January 25, 2017, but suffered tears in her cervix. Dr Lopez would later claim he could not see the cervix well because of the bleeding and bad lighting in the birthing suite

Lopez's defense attorney said she plans to appeal the decision, arguing that the patient died because of a clotting issue that she claimed ICU doctors failed to diagnose after her client left for the night, reported The Palm Beach Post.

Castillo-Lopez went to Good Samaritan Medical Center on July 25, 2017, for a scheduled inducement and delivered a baby boy, Jorge Jason, just after 8am.

During the delivery, the mother suffered tears in her cervix, which needed to be repaired. Lopez would later claim that he could not see the cervix clearly because of the bleeding and a lighting problem.

Lopez, who has been practicing medicine for 38 years, performed a partial hysterectomy, but the patient continued bleeding

Lopez did not immediately transfer the patient from the delivery suite to an operating room, where different positioning and lighting might have made a difference, according to expert testimony.

An administrative complaint alleged that Lopez made his second mistake of the day when, after finally taking an unresponsive Castillo-Lopez to an operating room, he performed a partial hysterectomy instead of a total hysterectomy, which would have been the more appropriate course of action, given the patient's condition.

After the surgery, blood was seen gushing from the incision in Castillo-Lopez's abdomen. Instead of re-opening the incision, Lopez ordered a nurse to apply pressure dressings to stop the bleeding and ice the incision, according to the complaint.

Lopez left the hospital at 11.39pm to go home. He testified during a disciplinary hearing that the leg of his scrubs, his sock and shoe were saturated with blood and he could not find clean scrubs at the hospital.

Castillo-Lopez died at 3am the following morning, leaving behind her husband, their newborn son and seven-year-old daughter.

'When asked whether he felt at all responsible for O.C.s death, Dr. Lopez placed the blame on the ICU staff and the hospital system,' Judge Cohen wrote.

While Lopez went home to change out of his blood-soaked scrubs and go to sleep, Castillo Lopez (right) bled out and died

At the time of Castillo-Lopez's death, Lopez was under a settlement agreement with state health officials to not perform any surgeries without supervision, stemming from the April 2014 death of another patient who bled out after a C-section.

His record also includes a prior settlement agreement dated 2004 related to a pregnant woman whose baby died in utero, who who went to Lopez to have him remove the fetus in 2002.

According to a complaint in that case, Lopez failed to remove all of the contents of the uterus, and a month later the patient ended up delivering the remains of her unborn baby, a girl, in the bathroom.

Lopez did not admit wrongdoing in that case but paid a fine and agreed to perform community service and take classes in medical record keeping.

Castillo-Lopez's widowed husband filed a civil lawsuit against Lopez and reached a settlement with him in 2019, but had to go back to court when the physician failed to make monthly payments.
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NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter has become the first craft to complete a powered flight on another world, according to NASA, after waiting three hours for the data to travel the 180 million miles from the Red Planet.

Taking off at exactly 08:34 BST, it climbed up to 10ft in the air, maintained a stable hover for 30 seconds before descending and touching back down on the surface of Mars. It spent 39.1 seconds in flight, NASA said.

Flying on Mars is particularly challenging due to the fact its atmosphere is just 1% of Earth's at ground level, and while the lower gravity, a third of that on Earth, helps, it is only a partial offset against the thinner atmosphere.

This means that in order to fly, the helicopter has be ultra-light and rotate its blades extremely fast in order to achieve lift. For today's test flight the blades span to 2,500rpm, allowing it to hover 10ft off the ground.

The space agency had originally planned the flight for April 11 but postponed it over a software issue that was identified during a planned high-speed test of the aircraft's rotors. The issue was soon resolved.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) tweeted after the data came in: 'Perseverance got us to Mars. With Ingenuity, we soar higher,' describing the drone as the 'little rotorcraft that could.'

The first image to come back from Ingenuity on Mars showed the shadow of the helicopter on the surface of the planet in black and white. It was taken by the navigation camera mounted under the 4lb rotorcraft.

MiMi Aung from the Ingenuity team described the flight as the 'Wright Brothers moment,' in reference to the first powered flight on Earth, achieved by the Wilbur and Orville Wright in 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

She said 'we know from history Wilbur and Orville got straight back to work,' adding we 'must take a moment to celebrate this moment but after that 'lets get back to work with more flights.'

To further mark the link to the first Wright Brothers flight, NASA confirmed they had named the first airfield on another world 'Wright Brothers Field' in recognition of their 'ingenuity and innovation.'

The first image to come back from Ingenuity on Mars showed the shadow of the helicopter on the surface of the planet in black and white. It was taken by the navigation camera mounted under the 4lb rotorcraft

The second image shared by NASA showed a picture taken by Perseverance with the Ingenuity helicopter floating just above the Martian surface

"Wow!"



The @NASAJPL team is all cheers as they receive video data from the @NASAPersevere rover of the Ingenuity #MarsHelicopter flight: pic.twitter.com/8eH4H6jGKs  NASA (@NASA) April 19, 2021

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter preps for its 'Wright brothers moment' NASA is set to fly where no one has flown before  Mars' atmosphere. Named Ingenuity, the craft will fly at an altitude that is similar to 100,000 feet on Earth, allowing it to gather geology data in areas the rover can't reach. NASA is comparing this mission 'to the Wright brothers moment,' as it will be the first time in history an aerial vehicle has flown on another world. It will first spend up to 60 days charging strapped to the Perseverance rover, before being released. If it survives the hard -90C Martian night, NASA will make the first flight attempt within 30 days. 'Since the Wright brothers first took to the skies of Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, December 17, 1903, first flights have been important milestones in the life of any vehicle designed for air travel,' NASA said in a statement Advertisement

Dr Daniel Brown, an astronomy expert at Nottingham Trent University, described getting something to fly on Mars as an 'enormously challenging feat.

He said the biggest challenge was the fact the ground level atmosphere was 1% of that on Earth, or the same level as it is 10 miles above sea level on the Earth.

'So this is not the usual altitude for helicopters to fly on Earth, with the altitude record held at about 12.4km (7.7 miles),' Brown explained.

The lower gravity does help to compensate for the thinner atmosphere, but at a third of that found on Earth, it isn't enough, so the craft has to be incredibly light and powerful to take off.

Ingenuity is just 19 inches high, has blades 4ft in diameter and can run its rotas at 2,500 rpm.

Each rotor blade on Ingenuity is made of 2 ounces of composite material, powering a body the size of a tissue box.

With that in mind, the achievement is remarkable, according to Brown.

'We dont know exactly where Ingenuity will lead us, but todays results indicate the sky  at least on Mars  may not be the limit,' said acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk, comparing it to the experimental crafts that came before it.

'The X-15 was a pathfinder for the space shuttle. Mars Pathfinder and its Sojourner rover did the same for three generations of Mars rovers.'

Getting data back to Earth from Mars relies on a number of different pieces of technology, including the Perseverance rover and orbiting satellites know as the NASA Deep Space Network.

This first flight was a 'very basic one' designed to send it up for 40 seconds, take a couple of photos and land.

It was completely autonomous with flight signals sent from Earth which triggered a series of pre-programmed commands.

The NASA team plan to send Ingenuity up again within the next few days, with up to five progressively more daring flights over the next 30 days assuming each is a success.

After the first flight, Ingenuity sent Perseverance technical data on what it has done, including a single, black and white photo from its ground facing camera, and that information was transmitted back to Earth.

'One of the great things about this helicopter is that it has a very powerful processor giving us a lot of data, it is 100 times as powerful as the one on the rover.

'As the data begins to arrive from the data centre on Earth it will include a vast amount of information on how the flight went in stages, which will be used to verify if it was a success,' explained Tim Cannon, Ingenuity Operations Lead.

'The #MarsHelicopter made history today by being the first craft to achieve controlled, powered flight on a planet beyond Earth,' NASA JPL tweeted.

The helicopter traveled to Mars attached to the underside of the rover, which touched down on the planet on February 18 on a mission to search for signs of extraterrestrial life.

The data went through a number of people at NASA mission command, including someone to review the quality of the data, someone to review the flight status and another to review the status of the helicopter.

Information on the survival of the small helicopter, which is 19 inches tall but with 4ft blades took nearly four hours to return to Earth after the 08:30 BST flight on the Red Planet - due to the time to get data 180 million miles, as well as the 14 minute light time delay between Earth and Mars, according to NASA.

'We are beginning to fetch data from Mars 2020': The MarsHelicopter team is beginning to see data flowing back through the Deep Space Network

The goal of the Ingenuity mission is to prove a flying vehicle can operate on Mars. I won't contribute to the wider science mission this time, but if a success will be a base for future science missions on other worlds.

Ingenuity will pave the way for future flyers that will dramatically change our exploration of celestial bodies because they can reach areas that rovers can't go, and travel much faster.

Bailey said 'sending an aerial vehicle is really important as it elevates the next stage of space exploration and opens up new science as it can go to areas the rover can't.'

NASA engineers cheered as the data revealed the helicopter had successfully flown on the Red Planet

NASA Tweeted: 'It happened. Today our #MarsHelicopter proved that powered, controlled flight from the surface of another planet is possible. It takes a little ingenuity, perseverance, and spirit to make that opportunity a reality.'

British astronaut Tim Peake tweeted: 'Huge congratulations to the whole team who have just made history. The #MarsHelicoper has flown today from the newly named Wright Brothers Field on #Mars'.

'The Mars Helicopter project has gone from blue sky feasibility study to workable engineering concept to achieving the first flight on another world in a little over six years, said Michael Watkins, director of JPL.

'That this project has achieved such a historic first is testimony to the innovation and doggedness of our team here at JPL, as well as at NASAs Langley and Ames Research Centers, and our industry partners. Its a shining example of the kind of technology push that thrives at JPL and fits well with NASAs exploration goals.'

British astronaut Tim Peak tweeted his congratulations to the NASA team, declaring that they have 'made history'

NASA Associate Administrator for Science Thomas Zurbuchen announced the name for the Martian airfield on which the flight took place - calling it the 'Wright Brothers Field' after the famous inventors.

'Now, 117 years after the Wright brothers succeeded in making the first flight on our planet, NASAs Ingenuity helicopter has succeeded in performing this amazing feat on another world,' Zurbuchen said.

'While these two iconic moments in aviation history may be separated by time and 173 million miles of space, they now will forever be linked.

'As an homage to the two innovative bicycle makers from Dayton, this first of many airfields on other worlds will now be known as Wright Brothers Field, in recognition of the ingenuity and innovation that continue to propel exploration.'

Ingenuitys chief pilot, Havard Grip, announced that the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) presented NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration with official ICAO designator IGY, call-sign INGENUITY.

These details will be included officially in the next edition of ICAOs publication Designators for Aircraft Operating Agencies, Aeronautical Authorities and Services.

The location of the flight has also been given the ceremonial location designation JZRO for Jezero Crater.

NASA mission control during as the data is being received moments before the confirmation at 11:52 BST

'We can now say that human beings have flown a rotorcraft on another planet,' said Aung, project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, prompting rapturous applause.

'We've been talking so long about our Wright brothers moment on Mars  and here it is!'

NASA tweeted a black-and-white image from Ingenuity's on-board navigation camera that points straight down at the Martian surface (showing Ingenuity's shadow).

Ingenuity is also equipped with a colour camera with a horizon-facing view for terrain images, but that picture is expected to take a day to come back as the helicopter has to recharge.

'The little rotorcraft that could': NASA tweets a photo of Ingenuity's shadow on the Martian ground

Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson described the Mars Ingenuity helicopter as 'badass' after it successfully took to the Martian sky

The most spectacular images are expected to come from the rover Perseverance, which will film the flight from a few feet away. Perseverance will also relay data to Earth from Ingenuity on its flight operations.

Shortly after filming, six videos of 2.5 seconds each will be sent to Earth. NASA hopes at least one of them will show the helicopter in flight. The entire video will be sent over the following few days.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, responsible for the mission, announced the flight by tweeting 'Mars Helicopter, you are cleared for takeoff. Flight commands are being sent.'

This prompted Arnold Schwarzenegger to pull out one of his many famous movie lines, this time from Predator, telling NASA to 'Get to the Chopper'!

'This is fantastic, you are all celebrating having the first helicopter take off on Mars, I can't wait to see what the footage looks like,' Schwarzenegger said.

When the footage started to come through from NASA JPL it showed Ingenuity go into the air, wiggle side to side, then land back on the Martian surface.

Over the coming days more detailed videos of the flight are expected to be sent back to mission control.

Other celebrity NASA fans have been celebrating the succesful flight, including science educator Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson who tweeted: 'The #MarsHelicopter is badass.'

The Perseverance team tweeted in the voice of the SUV-sized rover 'you wouldn't believe what I just saw' along with a gif of the first flight on the Red Planet

The flight will be autonomous, pre-programmed into the aircraft because of the 15 minutes it takes for signals to travel from Earth to Mars

Ingenuity's trip, which is to be the first-ever powered, controlled flight on another planet, is set for Monday April 19

The issue has since been resolved after engineers uploaded an update to the four-pound (1.8 kilograms) drone that required it to be powered off and started up again while on the frozen Martian surface

Ingenuity as seen on Mars on April 7, 2021 in a photo taken by the rover Perseverance. If the 08:30 BST flight is a success then it will become the first powered, controlled flight to take off and land on another planet, giving NASA their own 'Wright Brothers moment'

NASA plans another flight of Ingenuity no more than four days after this flight made history. It plans as many as five altogether, each successively more difficult, over the course of a month.

NASA hopes to make the helicopter rise five meters (16 feet) and then move laterally. Ingenuity's 'lifetime will be determined by how well it lands' each time, said Aung - meaning whether it crashes.

'Once we get to the fourth and fifth flight, we'll have fun,' she said. 'We are going to take very bold flights and take high risk.'

'The technology tested in this Mars copter could allow additional support to survey the terrain for rovers and humans alike in the future,' Brown explained.

'It could also access difficult to access cliffs that cannot be reached by rovers. A whole new way to explore the alien terrain in our solar system is now at our disposal.'
Controversial lateral flow tests may have been sent out to millions of schoolchildren with the wrong instructions, it has emerged.

Many of the Chinese-made kits contained guidance saying they were to be used by people suffering symptoms of coronavirus  going against official UK guidance.

The devices were also sent out with a notice that they were to be administered to people 'suspected of Covid by their healthcare provider', The Telegraph reports.

It comes despite the Government claiming the main purpose of the 30-minute tests is to catch asymptomatic carriers, who make up a third of all new infections.

Britons who fall ill are supposed to get a PCR test, which is much more accurate. This process automatically logs the case in the Government's coronavirus contact tracing programme.

Experts fear the oversight may lead to patients choosing not to report their results or being tracked down by Test and Trace, risking spreading the disease further.

About 3million lateral flows are being deployed every week, mostly in schools where children and staff are required to be tested twice weekly.

Britain's drug watchdog, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), has confirmed it is investigating the issue.

The Government has been criticised for rolling the lateral flow devices out for people to do themselves, despite manufacturers admitting they are built for professional use and on people with symptoms.

Numerous studies have shown the kits are far less accurate when self-administered and leaked Department of Health emails last week revealed senior officials fear they only pick up on 10 per cent of infections when done this way.

The tests have been mired in controversy since they were put into mass use when schools in England reopened last month. They are now available for free to all adults with no Covid symptoms.

Many lateral flow test kits were handed out with this advice marked as v.1.1.4, 24 November 2020, stating the swabs could be used for symptomatic and asymptomatic people

But others contain second advice saying those with symptoms should refer to the NHS website. Official guidance says those with symptoms should get a PCR test

Lateral flow devices were designed as the rapid alternative to PCRs, taking 30 minutes to give results compared to at least 24 hours with the initial tests. But scientists have raised concerns over how sensitive they are

Online, the NHS says lateral flow tests are only for people 'without coronavirus symptoms'

PCR AND LATERAL FLOW TESTS: THE KEY DIFFERENCES A PCR test can cost upwards of 180 per person, with the swab needing to be processed in a lab. The UK, on the other hand, favours faster tests which are not lab based and give a result within 15 minutes. These rapid coronavirus tests, known as lateral flow tests, are ones that can be done on the spot using portable equipment. They are faster and cheaper than lab-based PCR tests, which the government uses to diagnose people, but are less accurate. Advertisement

Some schools have given pupils tests with out-of-date leaflets marked as 'Version 1.1.4, 24 November 2020'.

They state: 'You can use this self-test kit if you have symptoms or if you are asymptomatic (you do not have symptoms).'

But guidance issued in a separate version marked as version 1.3.2, 15 January 2021 signposts those with symptoms to the NHS website.

Online, the NHS says lateral flow tests are only for people 'without coronavirus symptoms'.

A scientist whose children were handed the out-of-date tests told The Telegraph the packages were 'deeply confusing'.

'If symptomatic people use lateral flow instead and fail to report their result, then we'll lose control and it won't give contact tracers a chance,' they said.

Experts have already raised concerns over the sensitivity of these tests in asymptomatic cases.

But Government officials insist the benefits of testing people without Covid symptoms  weeding out silent carriers of the virus  far outweigh their pitfalls.

A Cochrane Review found the kits fell short of the World Health Organization standard that every Covid test must pick up at least 80 per cent of infected people.

Covid infections were spotted 72 per cent of the time in symptomatic cases on average, but this dropped to 58 per cent among asymptomatic individuals.

And Public Health England (PHE) data shows one in ten positive results were false in March.

All lateral flow tests that come back positive should be followed up by more reliable PCR checks.

One outspoken critic of the self-testing policy, Professor Jon Deeks, said last week that tens or hundreds of people could be affected by one person getting a false positive result.

He added: 'If you get a positive result it is essential that it is confirmed by a PCR test as soon as possible to check that you and your contacts do not isolate unnecessarily.'

The UK Government has spent billions of taxpayers money securing the tests, despite concerns over how well they work.

Graeme Tunbridge, the MHRA's director of devices, said: 'We are aware of these reports and are looking into them.

'We gather safety information from a range of sources and take all reports relating to the safety of testing kits for Covid very seriously. This includes missing and/or damaged components.

'Anyone who is concerned about their Covid testing kit or finds it has missing or broken parts should report this via our Yellow Card scheme.'

A review found they rooted out symptomatic infections in 72 per cent of cases, but only spotted ones without warning signs 58 per cent of the time. Pictured: A student in Hull takes a lateral flow test

Ministers hope the multi-billion-pound swabbing blitz  which involves Boots and other local pharmacies  will help life revert back to normal.

But scientists have warned the scheme could result in a 'public health disaster', with thousands forced needlessly to self-isolate and others given false confidence that they are safe.

One of the biggest issues is that the tests have low sensitivity, meaning they do not pick up everyone who is carrying the virus.

People who have the virus but still test negative  false negatives  might get misplaced confidence from the test result and be less strict about following lockdown rules that someone who hasn't been tested, experts say.

This could lead to them going back out into the community and spreading the virus without knowing.

But government experts are satisfied the DIY swabs, widely used by schools, care homes and the NHS, are a key tool in reopening society.

The tests are said to already have identified 120,000 cases that might not otherwise have been picked up.
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The image of U.S. Rep. Yvette Herrell standing in front of stockpiled steel at the U.S.-Mexico border recently was telling. Not a worker could be seen at the remote site in Luna County where contractors have stockpiled steel, rock and old vehicle barriers. Construction equipment sat idle. Trailers sat empty near a collection of portable toilets.

After 450 miles of frenetic construction under former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden stopped work on the border wall on his first day in office. Biden has not yet announced whether he will resume construction on unfinished segments or say what he will do with the isles of piles of paid steel baking in the sun a few miles east of Hachita.

Herrell urged President Biden to finish the border wall, and called on Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to deploy the New Mexico National Guard to the border to stem a new, once again unprecedented tide, of migrants. But Biden has indicated no interest in completing the border wall, and Lujan Grisham told Herrell to redirect her concerns to the federal government.

Meanwhile, border agents encountered more than 172,000 migrants in March on the U.S.-Mexico border, a 20-year high. That included nearly 19,000 children traveling by themselves, a record high for a single month. U.S. Customs and Border Protection recently released a video showing two smugglers dropping two young sisters from Ecuador, ages 3 and 5, from the top of a 14-foot barrier near Santa Teresa, New Mexico.

ADVERTISEMENTSkip



................................................................

Whether its called a crisis or a mere challenge, some 20,000 children mostly from Central America are currently in federal custody. What it really is, is a tragedy.

And more than 35,000 unaccompanied migrant children are expected by June. They will all require immediate care while authorities search for family members and sponsors in the United States.

Herrell, R-Alamogordo, led a congressional delegation to the Santa Teresa Port of Entry on April 12. Several Republicans on the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform came along to visit El Paso and southern New Mexico and to speak with U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel, local farmers and ranchers, and select invitees.

The problem? The delegation didnt include any national Democrats, although it did include Luna County Sheriff Kelly Gannaway, a Democrat whose jurisdiction includes 54 miles of border with Mexico.

In fact, Vice President Kamala Harris  who has been appointed to lead this administrations efforts in addressing the border migrant issues  has yet to visit the border herself. Instead, Harris has announced plans to visit Mexico and Guatemala to deal with the root causes of the influx at border crossings.

Whether its a crisis or a challenge, its disheartening to see our political leaders of different political parties unable to play in the same sandbox while unaccompanied children are literally being dropped over the wall. Ultimately it is up to Congress to negotiate true immigration reform  thats the only solution to this recurring problem.

Biden and Harris need to use their clout and behind-the-scenes deal-making skills to push for a bipartisan long-term solution. But first, one of them  or both  should see for themselves the tragedy that is unfolding on the border as we speak.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rubicon Organics Inc. (TSXV: ROMJ) (OTCQX: ROMJF) (Rubicon Organics or the Company), a licensed producer focused on cultivating and selling organic certified and premium cannabis, today announced that it has signed a Cannabis Purchase and Sale Agreement (the Agreement) with the Yukon Liquor Corporation for the distribution of its portfolio of cannabis products to consumers in Yukon territory.

The Company has received its first purchase order and is expecting to make its first shipment under the Agreement in April 2021. Simply BareTM Organic super-premium flower will now be available in stores and online in seven provinces and territories, representing more than 90% of the Canadian population.

"Simply BareTM Organic will now be heading due north to our friends and partners in the Yukon territory, expanding Rubicon Organics geographic coverage across Canada. As we build on our vision of developing a global premium cannabis brand, each step towards reaching new consumers is very valuable to our organization, said Jesse McConnell, Chief Executive Officer.

Grant of Restricted Share Units & Options

The Company has granted an aggregate of 2,540,000 restricted share units (RSUs) in accordance with the Company's equity incentive plan to certain executives of the Company as compensation for their services. The vesting conditions of the RSUs are as follows: (i) 350,000 vesting between one and three years from the date of grant; and (ii) 2,190,000 vesting in tranches based on 12-month EBITDA targets.

In addition, the Company also granted 79,000 stock options to certain employees of the Company pursuant to the equity incentive plan. The stock options are exercisable at $3.25 per share for a period of five years from the date of grant.

ABOUT RUBICON ORGANICS INC.

Rubicon Organics Inc. is becoming the global brand leader in organic cannabis products. Through its wholly owned subsidiary Rubicon Holdings Corp, a licensed producer, the Company cultivates, processes and sells organic certified, sustainably produced, super-premium cannabis products from its state-of-the-art hybrid greenhouse located in Delta, BC, Canada. Rubicon Organics is focused on achieving industry leading profitability through a focus on innovation and the development of brands and cannabis 2.0 products, including its flagship super-premium brand Simply BareTM Organic and its super-premium concentrate brand LAB THEORYTM.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Margaret BrodieChief Financial OfficerPhone: +1 (437) 929-1964Email: ir@rubiconorganics.com

The TSX Venture Exchange, its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward Looking Information

This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. All statements that are not historical facts, including without limitation, statements regarding future estimates, plans, programs, forecasts, projections, objectives, assumptions, expectations or beliefs of future performance, and statements such as the expected first shipment date to the Yukon Liquor Corporation, and the Companys intention of achieving industry leading profitability are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking information can be identified by the use of words such as will or variations of such words or statements that certain actions, events or results will be taken, occur or be achieved. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, events or developments to be materially different from any future results, events or developments expressed or implied by such forward looking statements. The forward-looking information in this press release is based upon certain assumptions that management considers reasonable in the circumstances, including that its capital needs will be as currently projected. Risks and uncertainties associated with forward looking information in this press release include, among others, information or statements concerning the Companys expectations of financial resources available to fund operations; Rubicon Organics' limited operating history and lack of historical profits; obtaining the necessary regulatory approvals; that regulatory requirements will be maintained; general business and economic conditions; the Companys ability to successfully execute its plans and intentions; the Companys ability to obtain financing at reasonable terms through the sale of equity and/or debt commitments; the Companys ability to attract and retain skilled staff; market competition; the products and technology offered by the Companys competitors; that our current relationships with our suppliers, service providers and other third parties will be maintained; and the impact of the current global health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. These factors should be considered carefully and readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. Although Rubicon Organics has attempted to identify important risk factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other risk factors that cause actions, events or results to differ from those anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in forward-looking statements. Rubicon Organics assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement, even if new information becomes available as a result of future events, new information or for any other reason except as required by law.

Source: Rubicon Organics
Prince Philips funeral in hallowed St. Georges Chapel was thoroughly Christian

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The ceremonial funeral Saturday of Prince Philip was a theologically orthodox service as expressed through the timeless Anglican rites of the Church of England, observers said.

It also came at a time when faith in the public square is more often than not watered down to accommodate the panoply of beliefs and nonbeliefs.

It was a fitting liturgy for a man in whom the traditional and the modern combined, the Right Rev. Anthony Clavier said. Originally from England and today a cleric in the Episcopal Church, he noted the late duke of Edinburghs steadfast service to God, the Queen, the nation and the Commonwealth.

Others in the Anglican tradition  Queen Elizabeth II is supreme governor of the Church of England, the mother church of the wider Anglican Communion  were impressed with the funerals overt Christianity, which was reflective of the deeply rooted faith held by Philip.

With minor exceptions, the order of service was essentially the liturgy of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. It also blended seamlessly with the pomp and pageantry that the British do so much better than anyone else.

The service was very traditional, said Lord George Carey, archbishop of Canterbury from 1991 until 2002. It echoed the funeral service for Princess Margaret, which I took part in some 20 years ago.

Philip, born the grandson of the Danish and Greek kings, was baptized into the Greek Orthodox Church. Later, he was received into Englands Anglican state church before marrying the then-Princess Elizabeth at Westminster Abbey in 1947. His mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, was a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria who lived out her later years a Greek Orthodox nun. Her aunt, the Lutheran-turned-Anglican-turned-Orthodox Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia, is canonized as a saint in the Russian Orthodox Church.

He had a questioning faith, Carey said, but was a strong believer.

Of a lesser rank than a state funeral, Philips ceremonial funeral was equivalent to the funerals of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in 2002 and Philips uncle, the Earl Mountbatten, in 1979 with one notable exception. While those funerals brought together hundreds, Saturdays funeral included just 30 mourners  the maximum number allowed under the U.K. governments coronavirus restrictions on gatherings.

Although Prince Philips service had the ornaments of royalty and military honor, at the core of the service was the hope of eternal life available to all, said the Rev. Steven J. Kelly, rector of St. Johns Episcopal Church in Detroit. Whether at St. Georges Chapel, a local church or graveside, the words strike to the same core truth.

Presiding within the quire of a socially distanced St. Georges Chapel at Windsor Castle were the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. and Right Hon. Justin Welby, and the Right Rev. David Conner, dean of Windsor and a former suffragan bishop in the Church of England.

This is like every other funeral and distinct from every other funeral, Welby told Sky News on the eve of the funeral. Its like every other funeral because the family is the family is the family and its distinct because they are having to bear this loss and sorrow in the glare of, goodness knows, how many people watching [the royal family] from around the world.

St. Georges Chapel, built between the reigns of King Edward IV in 1475 and King Henry VIII in 1528, is one of the finest examples of perpendicular Gothic architecture. It has regularly served as the backdrop of royal occasions, including the 2018 wedding of the present duke and duchess of Sussex in which the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church gave the sermon.

One of the chapels most notable architectural features is the elaborate fan vaulting above the quire, where the service took place. This dates to the late 15th century.

Before the pandemic the chapel was open to visitors as part of admission into Windsor Castle. Another way to get inside was attendance at one of the regular church services. Both paid admission and free services are expected to resume May 17, when some U.K. government coronavirus restrictions are lifted.

Follow @dennislennox on Twitter and Instagram.
NASHVILLE --- The Tennessee Fish and Wildlife Commission will set the 2021-22 migratory gamebird hunting seasons at its April 22-23 meeting to be held at the Cedars of Lebanon State Park in Wilson County. Thursdays meeting begins at 1 p.m. while the Friday session starts at 9 a.m.

In addition, the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency will present a preview of the big game hunting seasons and bag limits proclamation and the wildlife management areas (WMAs), public hunting areas, and refuges hunting seasons, limits, and miscellaneous regulations. The TFWC will vote on that proclamation at its May meeting.

The meeting will be the first for five commissioners who received their confirmation March 31. The new commissioners are Bill Cox (Collierville, statewide), Wally Childress (Bogota, statewide), Monte Belew (Paris, TFWC District 7), Stan Butt, Sr. (Columbia, TFWC District 6), and Chris Devaney (Lookout Mountain, TFWC District 4),

The meeting will also be the first for Jim Ripley as chairman. The Kodak resident moves into his role after serving as vice chairman. Angie Box (Jackson) is the new vice chairman and Tommy Woods (Piney Flatts) is the new secretary.

In other agenda items, an overview of chronic wasting disease (CWD), a summary of last years sampling and testing results will be given. Dr. Krysten Schuler, from Cornell University, will join the meeting by Zoom to provide an overview of a collaborative CWD-modeling project of which TWRA is a member.

An update on Asian carp will be given which will include control efforts. Control efforts include the Asian Carp Harvest Incentive Program and research efforts by TWRA and partners including Tennessee Tech, United States Geological Survey, and United States Fish and Wildlife Service.

---TWRA---
According to South African authorities, an alleged poacher was killed by a group of breeding elephants he met while avoiding park rangers.

Wild Justice

According to South African National Parks authorities, rangers spotted three people attempting to flee the Kruger National Park, one of Africa's biggest game reserves, on Saturday.

Officials said that after one of the suspects was apprehended, he told park rangers that the gang had come across a herd of elephants and that he wasn't sure if his supposed accomplice had managed to flee.

The man was later found "badly trampled" and died from his injury by Rangers.

A Common Occurrence

As related reports emerged similar to the poacher had been trampled to death by an elephant, social media reacted. However, the situation isn't that cut-and-dry.

Poaching wild animals is rampant, with millions of animals from thousands of species hunted or taken from their natural environments around the world. Elephants, rhinos, and other charismatic mammals, and smaller and less well-known species like lizards and monkeys are also under attack from poaching.

Expecting large sums of money, the illicit industry is fraught with risks, including the aforementioned animal-related deaths.

What Happened?

The five men entered South Africa's Kruger National Park unlawfully with one goal in mind: to kill a rhinoceros. Just four people went home after their mission failed. An elephant charged and trampled the first, and a pride of lions devoured his body. Just his skull and broken slacks are discovered.

Not a Black and White Scenario

Though poachers are often attacked or maimed, this case focused attention on poaching and our perception of an increasingly complicated problem.

In an unprecedented move, Kruger National Park (KNP) managing executive Glen Phillips expressed his condolences to the man's relatives, saying, "It's very sad to see the deceased's daughters grieving the loss of their father, and even worse, just being able to recover very little of his remains."

Related Article: Sea Cucumbers Now the Face Of Aquacentric Organized Crimes





Social Media Lashed Out

The aim of such an explicit declaration of condolences was to elicit discussion and raise questions about motives. However, there was no such sympathy on social media.

On the surface, the cynical and often aggressive remarks make sense; the market for ivory, rhino horn, pangolin scales, lion and tiger bones, and other animal parts is triggering the extinction of hundreds of animals. Poaching has also resulted in the extinction of two subspecies of rhinos in the wild: the western black rhino and the northern white rhino.

Many Poachers are forced by Circumstances

The first thing to remember is that poaching cannot be taken at face value.

Individuals such as the man killed in Kruger are not the ones that started the violence. They aren't the smugglers' bosses, whose avarice drives them to commit heinous offenses against animals. They aren't rejoicing in the income produced by East Asian demand. These poachers are typically vulnerable people who live in deplorable conditions and receive little to no compensation from the emerging eco-tourism companies that work near their homes.

Also Read: Despite Low Seizure Amount, Illegal Wildlife Trade May Boom Because of Covid-19

For the most recent updates from the animal kingdom, don't forget to follow Nature World News!
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Two grocery stores in Long Beach closed permanently on Saturday after parent company Kroger took issue with the city's "hero pay" law.

Back in February, Kroger announced plans to close a Ralphs and a Food 4 Less, shortly after elected officials in Long Beach passed a temporary hazard pay mandate for large grocery chains.

The "hero pay" rules require larger employers to pay their frontline grocery workers an extra $4 per hour over four months. Proponents said the goal is to compensate employees who have faced enormous risk while working through the pandemic.

Kroger said the pay bump made it financially impossible to keep the two stores open. The company described both the Ralphs on N. Los Coyotes Diagonal and the Food 4 Less on E. South Street as "underperforming."

Workers Offered Transfers

"The irreparable harm that will come to employees and local citizens is a direct result of the City of Long Beach's attempt to pick winners and losers, and is deeply unfortunate," a Kroger spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

The two stores employed about 150 workers. Kroger said it offered to transfer all employees to other stores. While most workers planned to accept transfers, some could have a tough time getting to their new job, said Andrea Zinder, president of the local chapter of the UFCW grocery union.

For example, she said a long-term bakery clerk was told she'd have to split her job between two stores.

"She walks to work right now," Zinder said. "She lives across the street. She's going to have to go to two different stores and take several buses in order to keep her full-time status."

Union leaders say Kroger's decision to close the two stores is "retaliation" for workers demanding better pay during the pandemic.

Kroger maintains the city overstepped its bounds, requiring a pandemic-related pay bump for some, but not all, essential workers. And the company insists the employee transfers are in line with union contracts.

Customers Will Have To Adjust To New Stores

In both neighborhoods, customers will have other stores nearby to fill the void.

But North Long Beach resident Norberto Lopez -- a project director with the housing rights group Long Beach Residents Empowered (LiBRE) -- said with the Food 4 Less near his apartment closing, his nearest alternative will be a non-union store.

"For me, the fact that Food 4 Less was a union store made a difference, because I knew I was supporting not just the store, but the workers," Lopez said.

Kroger announced three more store closures in Los Angeles after elected officials in that city passed a temporary $5-per-hour "hero pay" mandate. Two L.A. Ralphs stores and one Food 4 Less are set to close on May 15.

The California Grocers Association has sued Long Beach and other cities in an attempt to overturn the ordinances.

"We hate to see any community lose a grocery store, but store closures are one of the unintended consequences we warned about before the ordinance passed," CGA spokesperson Nate Rose said in an emailed statement.
Health workers keep vigil as passengers exit the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport upon their arrival from London in Mumbai on Dec. 22, 2020. (Punit Paranjpe/AFP via Getty Images)

UK Bans Travellers From India to Curb New CCP Virus Variant

The UK will ban travellers from India from Friday to prevent the spread of a new CCP virus variant first identified in that country, the government has announced.

Addressing the House of Commons, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the government had made the difficult but vital decision to add India to the UKs travel red list.

Under the ban, which will come into force at 0300 GMT on April 23, anyone who is not a UK or Irish resident or a British citizen will not be allowed to enter the UK if they have been in India in the previous 10 days.

UK and Irish residents and British citizens who have been in India during the 10-day period before their arrival will need to stay in hotel quarantine for 10 days.

Health workers register passengers to collect samples for virus test at the Yesvantpur railway station in Bangalore, India, on April 5, 2021. (Manjunath Kiran/AFP via Getty Images)

Hancock said that 103 cases of the new Indian variant, known as B.1.617, have been found in the UK, the vast majority of which have links to international travel.

He said the authorities have been analysing samples from these cases to see if this variant has any concerning characteristics like greater transmissibility or resistance to treatments and vaccines.

Earlier on Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he had cancelled his planned trip to India, due to concerns over the ongoing CCP virus surge in that country.

India is going through a second wave of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, with infections passing the 15 million mark. Delhi went into into lockdown on Monday night.

UK health authorities said last week they had begun investigating the new COVID-19 variant first identified in India.

According to the World Health Organisation, the variant was first seen in two Indian states at the end of 2020, and since then has accounted for an increasing proportion of COVID-19 cases in the country.

This variant has two mutationsE484Q and L452Rwhich have been seen in other variants around the world and are thought to contribute to increased transmissibility and resistance to vaccines.

Hancock also gave an update on the South African variant of the CCP virus.

He said a total of 557 cases of this variant have been found in the UK. Around two thirds of which are related to international travel, but there have been a small amount of community transmission, he said.

UK health authorities have been carrying out surge testing operations in London and Birmingham, where new cases of the South African variants have been found.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Panaji, April 19 : Forty National Students Union of India (NSUI) activists were detained by the Goa Police amid protests outside Chief Minister Pramod Sawant's official residence in Panaji, demanding scrapping of exams for Class X and XII due to the spike in Covid-19 cases in the coastal state.

Reacting to the detention, Leader of Opposition Digambar Kamat said that the detention of students, when they were expressing concern over the pandemic, was unfair.

"Students expressing concern over risking life to Covid is not a crime. I condemn the act of @BJP4Goa Government of arresting students led by @NSUIGoa who were protesting to demand postponement of SSC & HSSC exams. @goacm must unconditionally release all of them immediately," Kamat said.

"Strongly condemn the act of @BJP4Goa @goacm of arresting SSC/HSSC students along with @NSUIGoa leaders while peacefully protesting with a demand to postpone exams due to rising cases of #Covid. @INCGoa strongly demands immediate & unconditional release of all of them from Pernem PS," state Congress president Girish Chodankar also said.

The 40 students were detained during the protests outside the Chief Minister's official residence and were detained at the Pernem police station subsequently.

In all 43,547 students in Goa are qualified to appear for Class X and XII exams which will begin from May 13 and April 25 respectively.A A On Sunday, Goa reported its highest tally of daily Covid-19 cases with 951 persons testing positive. The state currently has 7,052 active Covid-19 patients.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
US, EU warn Russia over Alexei Navalny

US, EU warn Russia over Alexei Navalny

The United States on Sunday warned Russia of "consequences" if the hunger-striking Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny dies in prison, as the opposition politician's team called for mass protests across Russia to help save his life.



A day after Navalny's doctors said Vladimir Putin's most prominent critic could die "any minute", US President Joe Biden's national security advisor said Washington had warned the Kremlin that it would be "held accountable by the international community" if he died.



France, Germany and the European Union on Sunday joined a growing international chorus of protest at Navalny's plight, and EU foreign ministers will discuss the situation on Monday.



Concerns over Navalny's health have mounted against the background of a new spike in tensions between Moscow and the West over a litany of issues, including Russia's troop build-up on Ukraine's border, interference in US elections and other perceived hostile activities.



Navalny's team on Sunday called for massive protests across Russia on Wednesday evening, just hours after Putin is set to deliver his state of nation address.



"It's to time to act. We are talking not just about Navalny's freedom but his life," Navalny's right-hand man Leonid Volkov said on Facebook.



Volkov said Wednesday's rally could become a decisive battle against "absolute evil" or Russia's last opposition rally for years to come.



"Call on all your acquaintances and take to central squares," wrote Volkov, who heads Navalny's regional offices, adding that the protests should be massive.



There was no immediate reaction from the Kremlin but the Russian ambassador in London, Andrei Kelin, said Navalny "will not be allowed to die in prison."



"But I can say that Mr Navalny, he behaves like a hooligan," Kelin told the BBC.



Authorities have ramped up pressure on Navalny's supporters in recent months, detaining more than 10,000 protesters at opposition demonstrations in January and February.



On Friday, Russian prosecutors asked a court to label Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation and the network of his regional offices as "extremist" organisations, in a move that would outlaw them in Russia and could result in jail time for their members or even supporters.



Navalny was arrested in January on returning to Russia after recovering from a near-fatal poisoning attack he says was orchestrated by the Kremlin. The Kremlin denies the allegation.



The Putin critic is serving two and a half years on old embezzlement charges -- which he says are politically motivated -- in a penal colony in the town of Pokrov around 100 kilometres east of Moscow.



Navalny began a hunger strike on March 31 to demand proper medical treatment for back pain and numbness in his legs and hands.



On Saturday, Navalny's doctors said his health had rapidly deteriorated and demanded prison officials grant them immediate access.



"Our patient can die any minute," cardiologist Yaroslav Ashikhmin said, pointing to Navalny's high potassium levels and saying he should be moved to intensive care.



A team of doctors including Navalny's personal doctor Anastasia Vasilyeva made an new attempt on Sunday to see Navalny but were not allowed in, they said in a video. (AFP)
DEERFIELD, Ill., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- FoodChain ID, a market-leading provider of technology-enabled food safety, quality, and sustainability solutions, has launched a Bioengineered (BE) Compliance Service to assist food manufacturers in meeting the USDA's National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard's upcoming deadline.

The past decade has seen increasing consumer concern regarding the foods they eat. Following in the footsteps of states like Vermont, the Federal Government has now taken a more assertive approach to meeting public outcry for greater transparency.

Logo

In 2016, Congress amended the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946 with the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Law. It directed the USDA to establish a standard requiring food manufacturers, importers, and individual retailers to ensure bioengineered foods are appropriately disclosed.

Dubbed the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard [NBFDS] it has a mandatory compliance date of Jan. 1, 2022, which is less than a year away. The 13 currently listed foods at high risk to be bioengineered can be translated into thousands of ingredients and products sourced from numerous global suppliers. Hence, detectability becomes a critical element of determining compliance.

Heather Secrist, senior vice president and managing director of the Americas at FoodChain ID, said, "The standard is complex and an adequate interpretation of it is a challenging task. As such, companies have the daunting task of understanding which ingredients are a BE risk, reviewing them against the standard, and determining which elements apply to their formulation. Companies must then determine whether their products are required to make a BE disclosure and how best to do so."

FoodChain ID has found that many companies do not have the internal technical expertise, resources, or time required to do this - particularly in light of the supply chain disruptions caused by the global pandemic. Companies have the opportunity to outsource this effort to an expert, who can help with assessment, documentation, and determining if disclosure Is necessary, or the appropriate compliance pathway to avoid disclosure.

FoodChain ID's BE compliance service identifies products containing BE ingredients, offers pathways to achieve compliance, and provides recordkeeping and supply chain management using Foodchain ID's SupplyTrak compliance database.

SupplyTrak is a cloud-based multi-assessment compliance database that maps customer's supply chains, shares data between programs (Non-GMO Project Verification/USDA Organic/BE Compliance). It enables clients to manage, track and comply with them all efficiently. It also effectively reduces the time and complexity of the BE evaluation and yearly program renewals.

If disclosure is required, FoodChain ID will recommend appropriate disclosure per the requirements of the NBFDS. If a client prefers, FoodChain's advisory services offers options and perspectives on how to avoid using bioengineered substances.

"Of the many lessons learned by our company in dealing with the global food supply chain, one of the most critical, is that leaner teams mean a renewed focus on operational effectiveness," said Secrist. "Our BE Compliance service is a crucial tool that food manufacturers and brand owners can leverage to quickly and efficiently meet the new NBFDS deadlines."

For more information about Foodchain ID's NBFDS Compliance Service, visit https://www.foodchainid.com/nbfds-compliance/.

About FoodChain ID

Founded in 1996 and headquartered in Deerfield, Illinois, FoodChain ID has a global presence and provides technology-enabled food safety, quality, and sustainability solutions that address challenges and opportunities in the rapidly evolving food industry. Serving more than 30,000 customers in over 100 countries with a market-leading portfolio of testing, inspection, certification, and compliance solutions, FoodChain ID helps companies navigate the increasingly regulated global food economy with greater levels of transparency, accountability, safety, and sustainability. A pioneer of the GMO food identification industry, the company's services now include clean labels, food safety, sustainability claims; food safety certifications; regulatory compliance solutions; and testing. FoodChain ID is a portfolio company of Berkshire Partners.

Contact:

Ann Willets/PR Representative/(908) 433-7821/[email protected]

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Dr. Anthony Fauci was asked about Republican bomb-thrower Rep. Jim Jordans extended congressional hearing rant against protective measures meant to save lives during a pandemic.

Jordans attention-seeking attack against Fauci as he testified before Congress went viral this week when Jordan made baseless accusations claiming the government censors medical professionals who dont agree with Fauci. After the false charge, Fauci sternly responded to Jordan, saying, Youre making this a personal thing. Jordan interrupted, saying he was not, causing Fauci to reply, That is exactly what youre doing.

"You're making this a personal thingthat is exactly what you're doing." Dr. Fauci fires back at Rep. Jim Jordan in heated exchange before Coronavirus Select Subcommittee: "We're not talking about libertieswe're talking about a pandemic that has killed 560,000 Americans." pic.twitter.com/UYXaj03mx4  ABC News (@ABC) April 15, 2021

On Sunday, CNNs Dana Bash brought the heated exchange up to Fauci, who said he doesnt enjoy those kinds of confrontations.

Fauci explained that Jordans point about Covid-19 mitigation efforts such as wearing masks and not gathering in large groups are not about liberties that were being restricted as the congressman charged, its about saving lives.

This has nothing to do with liberties. Were talking about the fact that 560,000 people in our country have died, Fauci said. Were talking about 60 to 70,000 new infections per day. Thats the issue. This is a public health issue. Its not a civil liberties issue.

Fauci also addressed vaccine hesitancy among Republicans. According to a recent Quinnipiac poll, 45 percent of Republicans say they do not plan on getting vaccinated.

The doctor explained his frustration with Republicans who rail against the protective measures and restrictions while at the same time refusing to take a remedy that would mostly offset the need for those same measures.

It is quite frustrating because the fact that one may not want to get vaccinatedin this case, a disturbingly large proportion of Republicansonly actually works against where they want to be, Fauci said.

Fauci continued, They [Republicans] want to be able to say these restrictions that are put on by public health recommendations are things that theyre very concerned about. Were all very concerned about that. We share that concern.

He concluded, Its almost paradoxical that on the one hand, they want to be relieved of the restrictions but on the other hand, they dont want to get vaccinated. It just almost doesnt make any sense.
Thats one small step for a woman ...

No, forget about that one -- surely the first woman to set foot on the moon wont begin with such a derivative line. One imagines that shell say something completely her own, memorializing the remarkable distance that she, and all other women, have traveled over these many years.

On Friday, NASA awarded a contract to build the next lunar lander as part of the Artemis program to SpaceX, the company headed by Elon Musk, of Tesla fame. The plans are to put another crew of humans -- with a woman and perhaps a person of color -- back on the moon, maybe as soon as 2024. That would mean that a woman would put her footprint on the lunar surface fully 55 years after Neil Armstrong took his initial steps in 1969. That mission, of course, was part of the Apollo program; in Greek mythology, Artemis was Apollos twin sister. How apt a name for the program to send the first woman to the lunar surface.

Imagine the impact sending a woman to the moon would have on young girls who are drawn to science, technology, engineering and math, the so-called STEM fields. Imagine further the impact that seeing a person of color walk on the moon would have on all boys and girls, all men and women of color.

Space, the final frontier, will soon enough be erasing the color and gender barriers. Space, soon enough, will be fully inclusive.

Fridays decision by NASA came as a fairly big surprise, as the space agency had been expected to award contracts to two separate companies. The thinking there? Its best to have a bit of redundancy so theres a Plan B if one of the companies runs into some unexpected troubles. But in the end, partly because of financial considerations, NASA went with SpaceX, which has had more than its share of success. Its a SpaceX rocket that has been ferrying astronauts to the international space station of late. This is the sort of public-private partnership that will doubtless be the future of space exploration.

If we are going to get to the moon again, and then head onto Mars and beyond, private money and private enterprise are going to play a significant role in those ventures.

Private enterprise working with the government, with women and people of color in key positions throughout. The moon is about to get really interesting again.
In August 2020, when the Vietnam - EU Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) took effect, Trung An High-tech Agriculture JSC exported about 150 tons of rice to the European Union.

In particular, ST25 rice was sold for more than $1,000 per ton and Jasmine rice for $600 per ton.

The Vietnam National Seed Group (Vinaseed) has also inked many contracts to export rice to Australia, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic at high prices.

The first batch of Vietnamese rice exported in 2021 was 1,600 tons of Trung An High-tech Agriculture Joint Stock Company. Its two types of Jasmine rice were sold for $680 and $750 per ton.

Pham Thai Binh, general director of Trung An, told VietNamNet that the company has changed its policy: producing and exporting high quality rice only.

Vietnam's rice prices higher than Thailand, India



Vietnam was known for exporting low-grade, low-priced rice for the past 30 years. Now, Vietnamese firms export high-quality rice for high prices. Vietnam is also the producer of ST25, the most delicious rice product in the world.

According to Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Quoc Doanh, after more than 30 years of conquering the world rice market, Vietnam is no longer inferior to others in terms of the quality and price of its exported rice. The country currently has many valuable rice varieties and the price for Vietnamese rice is sometimes higher than that of Thailand and India.

Doanh said that five to six years ago Vietnam had 35-40% of high-quality rice varieties, but now the ratio is 75-80%. As the quality of rice has increased, the export price has risen very quickly. The rice industry has been successfully restructured in recent years, although the rice cultivation area has been reduced.

Recently, many people were "startled" by the information that Vietnam imported rice from India. But for experts, this is the new normal of Vietnamese rice. Vietnam lacks and has to import low-grade rice to process cattle-feed as the proportion of high-grade rice varieties is overwhelming.

The Bangkok Post on January 25 commented that this is "Vietnam's wise rice strategy". Vietnam chose to import Indian rice at lower prices to meet domestic demand, while focusing on producing high-quality rice for export. The production of high-quality rice is on the right track with the world, taking advantage of export opportunities to the EU when the EVFTA went into effect.

Dr. Dang Kim Son, former director of the Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development, acknowledged that rice is the most successful export commodity in recent years. From exporting 1 million tons per year, Vietnam has become the world's leading rice exporter. If in the past, the price for Vietnamese rice was much lower than the world rice price, especially Thai rice, now it is equal or even higher.

Vietnamese rice holds No. 1 position in world

In mid-2018, when the price Vietnamese rice surpassed Thailand's, many people called it a "miracle" because, for many years, Vietnamese rice had been inferior to Thai and Indian rice in both quantity and quality.

As a result, the position of Vietnamese rice has changed. In 2020, Vietnam overtook Thailand to become the world's second rice exporting country, with 6.15 million tons, earning $3.07 billion. Notably, the export volume decreased by about 3.5% but turnover increased by 9.3%.

Vietnam has shifted from producing low-quality to high-quality rice.

Vietnamese rice has surpassed both Thailand and India to take the number one spot in the world in terms of selling price. In 2020, with an average export price of $499 per ton, an increase of 13.3% compared to 2019, Vietnamese rice farmers earned high profits. It is estimated that with an output of about 7 million tons per hectare, farmers can earn from VND65-VND70 million per hectare, while the cost is only about VND16-VND17 million per hectare. It means a profit of 70%, equivalent to about VND50 million per hectare.

In early 2021, Vietnamese rice maintained its top position in price. On March 25, the price for Vietnam's 5% broken rice increased to $515-520 per ton, compared to $500-$518 per ton for Thai rice and $398-403 per ton for Indian rice of the same kind. In January 2021, Vietnam's rice export price hit $551.7 per ton.

'Heavenly pearls'

According to the Vietnam Food Association (VFA), rice exports in 2021 will be very positive. The Asian rice market started to heat up again as customers were rushing to buy. Many countries have great demand for fragrant rice and sticky rice, which are an advantageous commodity of Vietnam. Vietnam's export outlook is wide open thanks to opportunities from a number of markets that have signed free trade agreements (FTA) with Vietnam. In particular, under the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA), Vietnam has a quota of 80,000 tons of rice per year with 0% tax.

However, Pham Thai Binh said that to ensure a stable future for Vietnams rice export, it is necessary to strengthen the link between enterprises and farmers to improve quality of rice. Local governments need to find solutions to promote these links. This is a prerequisite for enterprises and farmers to jointly produce rice for export to serve various needs of the international market.

Agricultural expert Hoang Trong Thuy said that rice trading firms should keep shifting the structure of exported rice to high value-added types because if Vietnam produces low-grade rice, it will not be able to compete with India and Pakistan. Investing in the production of high-quality rice will help increase export value and enable Vietnamese rice to enter big markets such as Japan, Korea, and the EU.

Tam An

Surpassing Thailand, Vietnamese rice ranks first in world on price Overcoming Thailand and India, Vietnamese rice ranked first in the world on average selling price, which in the first quarter was US$547 per ton, up 18.6% year on year.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Monday that the state Senate does not currently have the votes to pass permitless carry of handguns but that he will try to see if there is a path to change that.

The news from the Republican presiding officer of the Senate came days after the House approved a permitless carry bill, commonly referred to as constitutional carry by supporters.

If we have the votes to pass a permitless carry bill off the Senate floor, I will move it, Patrick said in a statement. At this point we dont have the votes on the floor to pass it. I plan to meet with law enforcement who oppose permitless carry and with the [National Rifle Association] and [Gun Owners of America] who support it to see if we can find a path that a majority of senators will vote to pass.

In most cases, Senate bills require 18 votes from the 31-member chamber to be considered on the floor. There are only 18 GOP senators, so a permitless-carry bill would need the support of every Republican in the chamber to reach the floor  or at least one Democratic vote if any Republicans defect.

On Friday afternoon, one key GOP senator, Sen. Kel Seliger of Amarillo, suggested he may not be immediately supportive of the proposal. He told The Texas Tribune that his office was still researching the issue and he tends to support just about all bills related to gun rights, but the system that we have now works. He said it was too early to say whether he would block the bill from coming to the floor or vote against it if it made it to the floor.

House Bill 1927 would get rid of the requirement for Texas residents to get a license to carry handguns if they are not already prohibited by state or federal law from possessing a firearm. The House gave final approval to the legislation on Friday morning in an 87-58 vote that included seven Democrats in support of it.

Supporters of permitless carry, including gun rights groups and conservative Republicans, argued the measure simply allows Texans to exercise rights guaranteed under the Second Amendment. Many Democrats, joined by some law enforcement officers and faith leaders in opposition, instead cited the need for stricter gun safety measures following the 2019 mass shootings in El Paso and Midland-Odessa. The debate over gun laws in Texas has emerged as a top issue this session as gun violence nationwide  including a shooting in Bryan on April 8 and another in Austin on Sunday  has reignited the longstanding debates over gun control.

The passage of the bill in the House last week was a notable development since such proposals have not made it nearly as far in recent sessions. House Speaker Dade Phelans predecessor behind the gavel, Dennis Bonnen, and his predecessor, Joe Straus, were resistant to the idea and especially chafed at the tactics of its supporters. Bonnen declared the proposal dead last session after a gun rights activist showed up at his Lake Jackson home to advocate for the proposal.

The Senate under Patrick is generally seen as the chamber more interested in pressing for hot-button conservative issues. But Patrick has has expressed reservations about permitless carry in the past. Ahead of the 2015 session, he said he did not think there was enough support among lawmakers or the public, a sentiment he reiterated in 2017 while citing law enforcement concerns with anyone being able to walk down the street with a gun and they dont know if they have a permit or not.

A permitless carry bill has also been filed in the Senate this session, but it was referred to a committee over a month ago and has not received a hearing yet.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2021/04/19/texas-constitutional-carry-senate/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
Islamabad, April 19 : Pakistani Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid on Monday announced that after a successful round of negotiation with Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), the banned outfit had released 11 policemen taken hostage from Lahore a day earlier.

"First round of negotiations have been successful which have led to TLP releasing the policemen it had held hostage. The second round of negotiations will begin after 'sehri'," The Express Tribune quoted the Minister as saying in a video message.

The 11 hostages included a Deputy Superintendent of Police.

On Sunday, clashes erupted between TLP members and police at Multan road in Lahore, leaving "a few" group supporters killed and more than 100 injured, according to sources.

For at least three days, TLP protesters have choked Pakistan, staging sit-ins at the main highways.

Angry mobs have had violent confrontations with the security forces, resulting in martyrdom of three police officers, while hundreds others were critically injured due to the torture and assault they suffered in the hands of the TLP protesters.

On April 14, the Pakistan government decided to put a ban on TLP under the anti-terrorism law, the summary of which was later approved by the Prime Minister.

In November last year, the TLP had staged a sit-in in Rawalpindi demanding expulsion of the French Ambassador over publication of blasphemous caricatures.

The protest brought the capital Islamabad and other major cities to a complete standstill as highways were blocked by the protesters and violent confrontations with tear gar, rubber bullets and water cannons were used by security forces to disperse the mob.

However, the group ended the protest after reaching an agreement with the government, claiming that all of its four demands had been accepted.

The government had agreed to involve Parliament to decide the matter of expulsion of French Ambassador within three months.

As the deadline ended on February 16 and the government failed to meet the agreement terms, TLP decided to take to the streets again with the same demand.
This is the moment a pair of inquisitive toucans were captured standing in front of a traffic camera before they starting trying to eat the device in Brazil.

The birds were filmed walking around and preening themselves in front of the camera on the SP-330 motorway in the south-eastern Brazilian municipality of Campinas yesterday.

Footage from the traffic camera shows how one toucan appeared on the railing next to the camera.

This is the moment a pair of inquisitive toucans were captured standing in front of a traffic camera before they starting trying to eat the device in Brazil

The birds were filmed walking around and preening themselves in front of the camera on the SP-330 motorway in the south-eastern Brazilian municipality of Campinas yesterday

Footage from the traffic camera shows how one toucan appeared on the railing next to the camera

At first, the bird has its back to the camera but then suddenly pops its head up to fill the screen with its brightly coloured beak.

A minute later, a fellow toucan ambled into view and the pair take it in turns to peck at the camera with their long orange beaks.

The incredible spectacle lasted around two minutes before the tropical birds flew off.

According to AutoBAn, which manages the motorway, it was the fifth such occurrence of birds being caught on traffic cameras in April, three of them taking place in Campinas.

A minute later, a fellow toucan ambled into view and the pair take it in turns to peck at the camera with their long orange beaks

One of the toucans was caught trying to eat the camera by pecking it in Campinas, Brazil

Toucans are native to southern Mexico, Central America and northern and central South America and are famed for their bright markings and large and often brightly-coloured bills.

They mostly live in forests, apart from the toco toucan, which is found in savannah and open woodlands.

The toucans that were captured by the traffic camera appear to be toco toucans, with their black bodies, white throats and chests and blue skin around the eye.

Given its preference for open habitats, the toco toucan has benefitted from widespread deforestation in tropical South America.

The pair of toucans, which are fast becoming an internet sensation, are not the only birds who have shot to fame after showing off their moves in front of a traffic camera.

In 2019, two inquisitive seagulls became famous after repeatedly landing on top of a traffic camera in London.

The seagulls were spotted at the camera by the East London junction in 2019

The birds were filmed over two days walking around in front of the camera at a junction on the approach to the Blackwall Tunnel in Poplar, East London.

Transport bosses told how the seagulls have been nicknamed 'Graeme' and 'Steve', with a series of tweets having left Twitter users laughing.

Seagulls have previously photobombed traffic cameras in Glasgow - once on the M8 near the airport in April 2014.
Moscow, April 19 : Detained Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny is in "satisfactory" condition after he was moved to a prison hospital, the country's jail authority said on Monday.

"Alexei Navalny's health condition is considered to be satisfactory. A general practitioner examines him every day," dpa news agency quoted the federal penitentiary authority as saying in a statement.

"The patient has given his consent that vitamins be prescribed to him," the statement said, adding that the hospital where he was moved is specialized in "dynamic observation of such patients".

Navalny has been on hunger strike for more than two weeks to protest the lack of medical care in the prison camp.

His team has repeatedly sounded alarms about his deteriorating health, warning of possible heart failure.

On Sunday, the US, the European Union, Germany and others urged the Russian leadership to provide adequate medical treatment to Navalny.

Washington also threatened consequences should the 44-year-old die in hail.

After surviving a Novichok nerve agent attack last year and receiving treatment in Germany, Navalny returned to Russia in January and was immediately arrested.

He blames the Russian state for the attack.

He has since been sentenced to a prison term on charges of violating parole for a 2014 fraud conviction while he was being treated in Germany.
In another scientific breakthrough, researchers from Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre, US have discovered that coronavirus survivors might need only one shot of vaccine to get completely immune against the lethal respiratory infection. The issue of administering single jabs has become more urgent, especially at a time when major vaccines are blanketed in doubts about their safety. If accepted by the scientific community, the idea of single-dose administration could free more than 110 million shots, directly helping the global immunization process.

The researchers said that after nearly four months of rigorous research, they discovered that people who had recovered from COVID responded to their first shot so robustly that the results rivaled never infected colleagues who had received both the jabs. Therefore, they reached the conclusion that any person who had been infected by SARS-CoV-2 in the past needed only one vaccine shot. The study was published in journal New England Journal of Medicine.

"We did not expect that this was going to jump out like a smoking gun," said Cheng, who co-authored the Nature Medicine write-up. In fact, if you already had the virus, your immune response after one vaccine is likely to be even better than a never-infected person's after two, says the research.

894 million doses administered

As per the Bloomberg Vaccine tracker, more than 894 million doses have been administered across 155 countries till now. The latest rate was roughly 16.6 million doses a day. As opposed to some third world countries which are still awaiting their first doses, over 209 million doses have been administered in the US alone. Amidst calls for global vaccine equality, recent data has revealed that countries with the highest incomes are getting vaccinated 25 times faster than those with the lowest.

According to a press release of WHO, more than a hundred countries have received COVID-19 vaccines from COVAX. The COVAX facility has sent these vaccines within the first 42 days of delivering the COVAX vaccines to Ghana on 24 February 2021. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General said that COVAX has given the world the best way to ensure the "fastest, most equitable rollout of safe and effective vaccines. He said that nations should work together to prioritise vaccine supply through COVAX.

Image Credits: Associated Press
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 16:16:10|Editor: huaxia

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Chen Dongming, a 54-year-old wood-block painter from northeast China's Liaoning Province, learned his craft from his grandfather as a child.

As an inheritor of Huanren wood-block painting, a provincial intangible cultural heritage in Liaoning, Chen is committed to interpreting traditional Chinese landscape paintings and wood-block paintings to promote the craft in an innovative way.

Nowadays, a local wooden craft factory has more than 1,000 varieties of products. The products are sold in cities and provinces such as Beijing, Shandong, Jiangsu, Hebei, and more than 30 direct sales stores have been established across the country. They are also exported to Russia, Finland, Japan, and other countries, with more than 100 villagers benefitting from the sales.

Produced by Xinhua Global Service
Five people have been hospitalised after being shot in Shreveport, Louisiana, local television station KSLA reported, the third public multiple shooting reported in the United States in 24 hours.

In a briefing to local news outlets on Sunday (Monday AEST), police said they were in the first stages of investigating the incident, without confirming the number of people admitted to hospital or their condition.

An investigator looks for evidence outside the Somers House Tavern in Wisconsin. Credit:The Kenosha News

Officers were responding to traffic congestion reports when shots were heard, a police spokesman told reporters.

We responded this evening to a traffic congestion and during that congestion, numerous shots were fired, he said.
CHICAGO, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Stella is proud to announce the nationwide expansion of access to the trauma treatment technique called the Stellate Ganglion Block (SGB), a breakthrough treatment for PTSD recently featured in Forbes . While the technique is over one hundred years old and historically used for pain management, one of the world's foremost experts on trauma Dr. Eugene Lipov has pioneered this procedure for the treatment of post-traumatic stress.

Dr. Lipov is the Chief Medical Officer of Stella, a managed services organization dedicated to treating PTSD using SGB. Founded in May 2020, Stella is expanding from Chicago to clinics in cities across the nation: in Florida, Coral Gables, Bonita Springs, and West Palm Beach; in Texas, Austin and Dallas; Anchorage, Alaska; San Diego, California; New York City, New York; Mahtomedi, Minnesota; Seattle, Washington; and Viktor, Idaho offering more access to treatment for the 8 million adults in the US who suffer from PTSD.

Joining Dr. Lipov in leading Stella is Chief Psychologist Dr. Shauna Springer, a leading expert on psychological trauma, military transition, and suicide prevention who is known for her groundbreaking work with military veterans.

"We need to expect that we will be seeing a lot more cases post-pandemic." says Dr. Lipov. "Our current situation has put pressure on all areas of society, and my sense is that we will be seeing a lot more people silently suffering from PTSD from everyday walks of life."

That's why Stella is rolling out access to the SGB across the U.S. In addition to the home of Stella in Chicago, Dr. Lipov himself has certified and advised a dozen leading pain specialists and anesthesiologists on administering the SGB procedure.

PTSD has been misinterpreted - it is a physical injury, not a disorder, to the sympathetic nervous system. The stellate ganglion block is a non-invasive, 30-minute procedure: an anesthetic injection into a nerve cluster in the neck that treats the injury by "pruning" extra nerve growth and eliminating the source of the often life-crippling sensory conditions that PTSD patients experience on a daily basis. To date, 80% of patients treated with the SGB at Stella experience both immediate and long-term freedom from trauma related symptoms.

Trauma is much more common than we think and extends far beyond combat veterans and victims of violence. Research from Stella shows 25% of patients report "Other" as the cause of their trauma, on par with warfare experiences and sexual trauma. The pandemic's taxing conditions have pulled on the veil back, with experts predicting that 15% of Americans could suffer PTSD after Covid-19 . This groundbreaking treatment is now available in the following cities under the guidance of doctors that have been advancing pain treatment in their own right:

Florida

Coral Gables - Dr. Raul Cruz

Bonita Springs - Dr. Jennifer Sandadi

West Palm Beach - Dr. Rosemary Daly

- Dr. - Dr. - Dr. Texas

Dallas - Dr. Robert Groysman

Austin - Dr. Brannon Frank

- Dr. - Dr. Anchorage, Alaska

Dr. Luke Liu

Dr. San Diego, California

Dr. John How

Dr. New York City , New York

Dr. Jonathan Kuo

, Dr. Mahtomedi, Minnesota

Dr. Ron Hanson

Dr. Victor, Idaho

Dr. Allison Mulcahy , MD

Dr. , MD Seattle, Washington

Dr. Jason Attaman



Emerald-Jane Hunter

myWHY Agency

[email protected]

312.291.1099

SOURCE Stella
DETROIT -- A man allegedly opened fire on a car Saturday morning that was being driven by his wife with their two children inside. According to the Associated Press, the 29-year-old man was arrested by Detroit police following the shooting which took place outside of a bar on the citys westside.

Police say the woman went to the bar around 1:15 a.m. Saturday after receiving a call from her oldest child that the kids were scared. The children -- ages 6 and 4 -- were allegedly left alone in a car outside the bar while their father was inside. When the mother arrived, she got in the car and began driving away with the children.

The husband allegedly began shooting at the car with two guns, striking his wife who suffered a grazing wound. However, she was able to drive away from the scene. The children were not injured in the shooting.

Multiple slugs struck the vehicle according to police and both guns used in the shooting were recovered when police arrested the husband.

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KENOSHA, Wis.  Authorities say they have apprehended a person in connection with a shooting at a busy tavern in southeastern Wisconsin early Sunday that left three men dead and three men injured.

Kenosha County Sheriffs Department spokesman Sgt. David Wright said the suspect is facing a charge of first-degree intentional homicide, with additional criminal charges likely after further investigation. Authorities said earlier they werent sure if there was more than one shooter.

There is no threat to the community at this time, Wright said in a release. He said no further information on the suspect would be released Sunday.

Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth said earlier a suspect was asked to leave the Somers House Tavern in Kenosha County but returned and opened fire. Beth said shots were fired inside and outside the bar, which he described as very busy at the time. He said he believed at least one handgun was used.

Kenosha is about 30 miles south of Milwaukee, not far from the Wisconsin-Illinois border.

Officials originally said two people were injured but said they were checking with hospitals for people who may have been hurt in the shooting. Wright said in the updated release that authorities believe there is one possible unknown shooting victim.

Beth said two people died at the scene. The third person hopped in a car with two other people, who moments later flagged down a police vehicle. The officer drove the victim to a hospital where that person was pronounced dead, Beth said.

Wright said investigators have reviewing surveillance video from the scene. The tavern installed video cameras a couple of years ago, Beth said, but he didnt know if the surveillance video is from the business.

Wright called it a complex investigation that involves several crime scenes.

Detectives have followed up on multiple leads and gathered surveillance video evidence during extensive neighborhood canvasses, he said.

A man who lives near the bar, Peter Ploskee, told WLS-TV that he heard gun shots, looked out a window and saw people running from the bar in every direction.

It was just chaos, he said. People are just running, people screaming.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers called it a senseless tragedy and said he and his wife are thinking of the families and loved ones affected and the entire Kenosha community as they grieve and grapple with yet another tragic incident of gun violence.

It was the latest in a recent string of shootings across the country, including the killings of eight people at a FedEx warehouse in Indianapolis on Thursday. Last month, four people were killed at an office shooting in California, eight people were fatally shot at massage businesses in the Atlanta area, and 10 died in gunfire at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado.

The nearby city of Kenosha was the scene of serious unrest last summer, after police shot a young Black man, Jacob Blake, leaving him paralyzed. A white Illinois teenager was accused of fatally shooting two people during the Kenosha protests. Kyle Rittenhouse of Antioch is charged with homicide and attempted homicide in the Aug. 25 shootings. He has pleaded not guilty and says he fired in self-defense.
New Delhi: Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Lieutenant General Anil Baijal will hold a meeting with senior government officers on Monday (April 19) over the COVID-19 situation in the national capital.

According to the reports, the Delhi government led by CM Arvind Kejriwal is planning to extend the weekend lockdown to weekdays as the national capital is witnessing a huge surge in COVID-19 cases. It is also expected that CM Arvind Kejriwal may announce further restriction once the meeting gets over.

Given the rising COVID-19 cases in the national capital, the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP government on Thursday (April 15) announced a weekend curfew to prevent the deadly infection from spreading further. CM Arvind Kejriwal said that the restrictions announced are necessary to curb the spread of coronavirus in Delhi. The Chief Minister also announced sweeping restrictions, including the closure of malls, gyms, spas and auditoriums, in a bid to break the chain of COVID infections in the city.

Delhi recorded the biggest jump in its daily COVID-19 tally with 25,462 fresh cases, while the positivity rate shot up to 29.74 per cent; which means almost every third sample being tested in the city is turning out to be positive.

As the situation got severe, CM Arvind Kejriwal wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Commerce and Industries Minister Piyush Goyal urging them to ramp up bed capacity in central government-run hospitals and to ensure uninterrupted supply of medical oxygen.

The COVID situation has become very serious in Delhi. There is a huge shortage of beds and oxygen. I request that at least 7,000 out of 10,000 beds in central government hospitals in Delhi be reserved for COVID patients and oxygen be immediately provided in Delhi, the letter mentioned.

Arvind Kejriwal further added by saying that Delhi is facing an acute shortage of oxygen for COVID-19 patients and alleged the quota of the city has been diverted to other states.

Live TV
Reave Bell is a veteran of the restaurant industry and moved to New Orleans from his hometown Los Angeles 10 years ago to work at SoBou. Bell and Roxy Eve Narvaez started their Tacos Para La Vida pop-up in December 2019 and made it a full-time focus during the pandemic. A friends mother, Keta Bocanegra, who is from Reynosa, Mexico, makes the tortillas and is the third member of the team. Tacos Para La Vida pops up regularly at Pals Lounge, Okay Bar, St. Roch Tavern, Zony Mash Beer Project and elsewhere.

Gambit: How did you start the pop-up?

Reave Bell: We started in December 2019 out of the Black Penny in the French Quarter. We were at Rendezvous Tavern for a while as well. When the pandemic hit, we were shut down for three weeks, and then we started doing a taco kit delivery sort of thing. Wed deliver our taco kits with a dozen tortillas, a pound of meat, a pint of salsa, onions, cilantro, limes and all that kind of stuff  everything youd need to assemble tacos at your house because nobody was going out and that was the safest way to do it.

(Last summer) we were offered to start doing Tuesdays at Manolito in the French Quarter, and that was right in the heart of the pandemic. As things started opening, we started talking about other spots.

Gambit: Why did you focus on birria tacos?

Bell: When I first moved here 10 years ago, there werent a bunch of great Mexican options. I just wanted to bring something from growing up in Los Angeles and traveling in Mexico. So weve latched onto our signature thing: birria. We do birria de res (beef).

We focused on birria because its something Ive enjoyed eating forever and it was something I was taught to cook it down in Mexico. The more traditional is birria de chivo, which is goat, from Jalisco. Thats the birthplace. As it got closer to the northern border, beef became more common. So if you went to Tijuana, which was closest to where I grew up, youd find more beef. Were toying with bringing [goat] around for special occasions, but its hard to source. And the quantity were going through at this point is pretty large.

The [pop-ups] meats are birria, pollo tinga  which is chicken in a red adobo sauce with chipotle peppers  and we are doing mushrooms, our vegan option. We saute mushrooms in our salsa macha, which is seven types of dried chilies, sesame seeds, olive oil, garlic and a little bit of apple cider vinegar. We always have that on the menu. We started doing al pastor where we can do it.

We try to keep it fresh. We started doing birria ramen on certain days. There are always specials like tortas. We do brunch sometimes and make chilaquiles and breakfast tacos. For St. Patricks Day, we made corned beef and green tortillas at Pals. Keta was beside herself, but we said, Its just for today.

We also do a second pop-up inside our pop-up called Bells Tacos. We started it for my girlfriends birthday, because her guilty pleasure is Taco Bell, so we created an entire logo and Instagram page. We do it at Pals the last Wednesday of every month, but were going to start doing it on Tuesdays. Its basically a grown-up Taco Bell menu, but with quality ingredients and handmade tortillas and we fry all the shells ourselves. Its basically taco supremes and Mexican pizzas and crunch wraps.

Nikki Thompson started the nondairy ice cream venture Hood Cream Nikki Thompson started making her own ice cream during the pandemic. Though she moved to New Orleans six years ago to work as an interior desi

Gambit: Whats next for Tacos Para La Vida?

Bell: Its been a wild year. Our business has expanded, and I think its because we could flex and do different things. We were able to help out friends in mutual benefit relationships that bring both of the brands up.

Weve been doing it full time since the beginning of the pandemic, but its starting to ramp up right now. Well be doing five days some weeks and four days the next week. Prior to the pandemic, our Instagram page had 220 followers. Now it has 3,100. Its a matter of interacting with the rest of the community. Its a small town, and if youre in the food business, you see people around town and become friends with other people who do pop-ups. Amanda [Alard] at Que Pasta has been super helpful because shes been doing this a lot longer than us. Were friends with Bubs Burgers and Zees Pizza and stuff like that.

Well probably keep this same thing going until possibly a brick and mortar. We like travelling around to different places. The next step is a trailer, so we dont have to put everything in the back of the car. One of the eventualities is getting people together to find an outdoor space so multiple people can pop up and theres coffee and beer, kind of like what Zony Mash is doing with their outdoor space. More is better to me. Id rather there be three options for people, and they can congregate outside. I think thats where people are at right now.

Find the pop-up schedule on Instagram at @tacosparalavida.

+2 Morning Call returns in new Mid-City spot Its been a long two years for Morning Call fans
It is with mixed emotions that Willamette Law shares the exciting news that international childrens rights expert Professor Warren Binford has been named to an endowed chair position at the University of Colorado, effective July 1, 2021. Binford will be the inaugural W.H. Lea for Justice Endowed Chair for Pediatric Law, Ethics and Policy and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine, as well as Professor of Law at the University of Colorado Law School. She will leave Willamette Law at the end of the 202021 academic year.

Teaching at Willamette has been one of the highlights of my life, Binford says. I feel so fortunate to have been able to support our law students these past 16 years as they worked to provide first-rate legal services in Oregon and beyond.

Binford joined Willamette Law in 2005 as an assistant professor of law and director of the Clinical Law Program. She immediately began significantly expanding the College of Laws experiential programs, including creating more clinical and externship opportunities and practical skills courses for law students.

Since then, Binford has continued to be engaged as a passionate teacher and clinic director, while also establishing an international reputation as a childrens rights advocate and scholar. She has provided expertise and support to UNICEF, Save the Children, and the International Red Cross, among others. Her commentary and expertise has been featured in media outlets such as The New York Times, Newsweek, CNN, BBC and NPR.

Willamette Law Dean Emeritus Symeon Symeonides says he still remembers the powerful impression Binford made on him when she interviewed 17 years ago.

Since then, she has more than exceeded my expectations. Besides doing such an outstanding job reorganizing and reenergizing the [Clinical Law] program, she has been a respected community leader, a thoughtful university citizen and a trustworthy colleague, Symeonides explains. I continue to be amazed by her inexhaustible energy, but also by her thoughtfulness and selflessness in always lending a helping hand to those who needed it.

As a law professor, Binford taught international childrens rights, business and nonprofit law, and almost all of Willamette Laws clinics at one point or another. Her core clinic was the Child and Family Advocacy Clinic, which she created in 2006 to provide free legal services to children and families in crisis.

Binford also designed and taught many other courses, including Civil Rights and the Law in Education, Deposition Skills and others. She taught in the Atkinson School of Management, Willamettes former School of Education, and supervised and mentored Willamette undergraduate students, in addition to forming collaborative learning opportunities for law students with OHSU and the Oregon Department of Justice.

Professor Binford has made numerous contributions to our community, and we are so proud of her many accomplishments. I know I speak for our entire community when I say that we will miss seeing her on campus, says Willamette Law Dean Brian Gallini. We congratulate her and wish her well in this next chapter of her career.

Binford was selected as a Fulbright Scholar in 2012 in South Africa and the inaugural Fulbright Canada-Palix Foundation Distinguished Visiting Chair in Brain Science and Child and Family Health and Wellness in 2015 at the University of Calgary in Alberta, where she researched the multidisciplinary effects of child sex abuse trauma on survivors. She received the 2020 Hans Linde Award from the American Constitution Society Oregon Lawyer Chapter and was named a Woman of Influence in 2020 by the Portland Business Journal for her work advocating for children and families at the US-Mexico border.

The decision to leave Willamette was the most difficult decision I have ever made, Binford says. I dont think most people understand what a special and unique place Willamette is. The Willamette community  its students, alumni, faculty and staff  are like family to me, and I will always consider Willamette my first academic home.
YEREVAN.  The Prime Minister spoke about the impossibility of giving [Azerbaijan] a corridor via [Armenias] Zangezur. I believe no corridor [also] via Meghri will be given to Azerbaijan. Armen Khachatryan, a member of the majority My Step faction in the National Assembly (NA) of Armenia, on Monday told this to reporters in the NA.

"Yes, the roads should be unblocked. Nut there are definitely at least 3-4 options for unblocking the roads; in those options, the Republic of Armenia will be in a very favorable position," he added.

To the question as to what the beneficial option is, the MP responded: "I will not show [it] on a map now, but I can say that what [Azerbaijani president Ilham] Aliyev wants, that in his opinion, a short corridor should be provided to connect Nakhchivan to Azerbaijan via Meghri; it is not acceptable and it will not be."

He added that when Aliyev talks about investing in Zangezur, his real plan is to keep the Armenian society in tension, to try to intimidate it. "Before his boasting, cynicism, Aliyev should first answer in which country his forebears were born, what the name of that country was. There was no Azerbaijan at that time. Then he should think about whose territory Zangezur is," the My Step lawmaker stressed.
Police picked up a person of interest in a shooting that left at least three people dead overnight Sunday in Kenosha, Wisconsin, at a bar popular with local college students.

Police responded to Somers House Tavern just before 1 a.m. and found multiple gunshot victims, according to the Kenosha Police Department. Three people were declared dead and two others hospitalized with serious injuries.

On Sunday evening, the Kenosha County Sheriffs Office said they had apprehended a suspect and that he would be charged with first-degree intentional homicide, with additional criminal charges likely after further investigation, The Associated Press reported. Police declined to release any other information about the suspect on Sunday.

There is no threat to the community at this time, Sgt. David Wright said in an updated statement, after earlier calling the shooting a targeted and isolated incident.

Victims identities had not been released, but police said that six shooting victims had been confirmed, with at least one possible unknown shooting victim, three of them dead and three injured and hospitalized. They were still being identified Sunday evening, including their names and ages.

Sheriff David Beth said at a news conference Sunday morning that officials have not ruled out the possibility of more than one gunman, but they later said just one person of interest appeared to be involved.

I dont know if the gunman was known to the victims, but I currently believe that the gunman knew who the victims were, he said. Whether the victims knew the gunman, I dont know that.

Beth also said that a suspect had been asked to leave the Somers House Tavern in Kenosha County but returned and opened fire, AP said.

Police said they had impounded several vehicles and that the investigation involved dozens of officials from seven law enforcement agencies and eight fire departments in a complex investigation involving several crime scenes.

Somers House Tavern is frequented by students from Carthage College, whose campus is less than half a mile down the road, according to Kenosha News.

A Facebook page for the bar advertises nightly events including beer pong and Karaoke, as well as Jolly Rancher shots and $1 Long Island iced teas.
Rare ibises spotted in SW Chinas Yunnan province

People's Daily Online) 11:03, April 19, 2021

A glossy ibis is seen at a wetland in Menglian county, southwest China's Yunnan province. (Photo/Chen Yonggang)

A group of glossy ibises, once thought to be extinct in China, have been spotted recently in Menglian county, southwest China's Yunnan province.

The 10 glossy ibises were observed by Chen Yonggang, a local shutterbug, who promptly notified the countys forestry and grasslands bureau.

Glossy ibises were seen in Menglian last year, but I didnt take pictures of them since they flew somewhere else so soon. I never expected that I would see 10 glossy ibises this year, the photographer said excitedly.

The glossy ibis, a close relative to the endangered crested ibis, is under first-class state protection in China. Experts once believed the birds had become extinct in the country until they were spotted again in 2009.

In recent years, the birds have been discovered in provinces including Yunnan, Guizhou, and Hubei thanks to improvements in the ecological environment.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
Two brothers and a couple friends have lofty aspirations for a new restaurant.

The GOAT Pub and Pie is scheduled to open April 26 at 700 Main St. in Stockertown. Its the location of the former Deverys Pub and Grill, which closed last year.

Owners Sam Ashton and John Quayle have teamed up with brothers Matthew Cosover and Tim Cosover on the venture. And they have set their expectations high by naming their new restaurant with the acronym for greatest of all time.

Ashton and the Cosover brothers had worked together as bartenders at Rip Van Winkles Pub in Bar-Don Lanes in Palmer Township. Ashton said the pandemic put them out of work, so they decided to open their own place, later bringing in Quayle as co-owner.

We shut down when the pandemic hit, Ashton said. Days turned into weeks, which turned into months not having the bartending job.

The restaurant menu will focus on Detroit-style pizza, which can be described as something between a Sicilian pizza and a pan pizza. The cheese is spread to the crust and runs down the sides of the pizza in the pan giving it a crispy, cheesy edge, Ashton said.

Food items other than pizza will be available along with 20 bottled beers, 12 draft beer taps, wine and several specialty cocktails.

Our idea is to serve basic pub food at a slightly upscale and elevated level, Ashton said, with freshly made sauces and freshly made dressings.

The group has spent the last several months performing cosmetic renovations inside the pub.

People are going to be surprised coming in if they were used to coming in to Deverys, Ashton said.

Ashton said the owners are prepared to deal with the ongoing, pandemic-related capacity restrictions in Pennsylvania. Once restrictions are lifted, the pub has a stage area where live bands will perform, he said.

John Best is a freelance contributor to lehighvalleylive.com. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
As public health restrictions ease further this Monday, a senior public health official says there is a lot to be positive about in Limerick and across the region.

However, Public Health Mid-West says it is currently managing a small number of "Covid-19 situations" across a range of settings including workplaces, households, families and extended families, schools and in the community.

As of April 16, the incidence rate in the Mid-West was 68.1 (per 100,000 population), less than half the incidence rate of 142.1 on March 11.

The most recent data also shows the incidence rate in Limerick is 76.4 - significantly below the national rate.

Despite the progress, Covid-19 continues to circulate in the community, which means it is normal for infections to occur in any setting where there is close contact of any kind.

However, Public Health Mid West, says it is seeing positive trends of strong compliance with public health guidelines.

"For example, on a large number of occasions in recent months, we have seen incidents where a single case or small cluster could have potentially led to a significant outbreak, but were likely prevented by small numbers of close contacts, mask-wearing and social distancing," said a spokesperson.

Commenting on the latest data, Dr Mai Mannix, Director of Public Health Mid-West, said: We have a lot to be positive about in Limerick and the Mid-West, and that is thanks to the Trojan efforts of the public. But for as long as we are seeing evidence of infection and onward transmission in the community and various settings, we must maintain our vigilance when in contact with other."
AUSTIN, Texas, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Virdee, a SaaS company delivering digital check-in and virtual concierge services to the hospitality and commercial real estate industries, has added a strategic round from seasoned SaaS investors to further accelerate its growth across hospitality, multifamily, student housing and medical verticals where demand has been strong.

Financing was provided by Silverton Partners, an early-stage investment firm based in Austin. Also participating in the round were LiveOak Venture Partners, an Austin-based early-stage venture capital firm that partners with visionary entrepreneurs to build world class, category dominating companies; and DJR Advisors, which invests in high-return businesses that use state of the art technology to maximize owners' return on investment.

"Virdee's suite of SaaS solutions is uniquely positioned to remake the market for digital check-in and virtual customer engagement," said Morgan Flager, Managing Partner at Silverton. "With demand for the company's products rising faster than anyone could have expected, we are pleased to partner to help Virdee strategically scale its businesses."

In a time of rising costs and shifting models of customer service and operation, Virdee's software is leading the real estate industry toward the adoption of contactless, customer-centric solutions that elevate the guest experience while reducing cost and increasing margins for operators. With early customer adoption at leading hotel, multifamily and corporate housing brands, the company's API-first solutions have already demonstrated savings in staff time and reduction in friction around the check-in/out process. Virdee's products integrate seamlessly with the leading door lock and property management systems and provide the only complete solution for frictionless, contactless check in  serving 100% of guests 100% of the time, simply and cost-effectively, independent of guest loyalty status or affiliation.

Branigan Mulcahy, Virdee Co-Founder, said, "We are deeply appreciative of the participation of each of our new investors. This is a group of visionaries with amazing experience in scaling and building out disruptive SaaS businesses. We could not be more excited about the insights and strategic guidance each of them brings to the table and look forward to working closely with all of them to build Virdee's exciting future."

In addition to Silverton, the investment group represents some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the SaaS space. Leading the investment for LiveOak Partners is co-founder and partner Krishna Srinivasan, who has more than 20 years of experience investing in early stage Texas-based technology companies, having helped create more than $2 billion in enterprise value. Led by Richard W. Gray, DJR Advisors specializes in travel-related corporate development, technology due diligence, digital transformation and demand generation. Among other innovations, Mr. Gray is the co-founder and former CEO-Chairman of TravelClick, a company that provides state of the art, cloud-based and data driven solutions that enable hotel owners and managers in more than 175 countries maximize revenue and optimize profit. TravelClick was sold in 2018 to Amadeus.

Virdee Co-Founder Nadav Cornberg said, "We are grateful to welcome these esteemed investors to our seed round investment group which includes Rajiv Trivedi, past CEO of La Quinta and Chairman of TST Capital. Along with them, we believe the debate about whether automated check in, verification and payment solutions will replace legacy methods is now long settled, and the question is now not 'if' but 'when.' We believe the time is now, and Virdee is the company best positioned to lead hotel and other real estate owners toward a completely contactless, efficient model of operation."

For more about Virdee and its solutions, visit www.virdee.co.

About Virdee

Based in Austin, Texas, Virdee is an innovative software company serving the commercial real estate industry. Its API-first approach provides the most comprehensive solution of check-in/out, ID verification, payment collection, and remote support. Virdee helps clients elevate the customer experience, reduce costs and generate ancillary revenue. Virdee was founded by experienced real estate operators and visionary technologists  Branigan Mulcahy and Nadav Cornberg. It is chaired by Rajiv Trivedi, former President of La Quinta, whose C-Suite experience in hotel real estate and operations spans more than a quarter of a century. Visit www.virdee.co to learn more.

About Silverton Partners

From idea to exit, Silverton Partners works with exceptional entrepreneurs who are committed to attacking growth markets and building lasting companies. In partnering with Silverton, companies benefit from the firm's deep network and lessons learned over many decades of operating and investing experience. Founded in 2006, Silverton Partners is based in Austin and has been the initial investor behind WP Engine, Storable, SailPoint, Silicon Labs, TurnKey Vacation Rentals, The Zebra, AlertMedia, Aceable, Self Financial, Wheel, and Billie, among many others. For more information, visit www.silvertonpartners.com.

Contact: Michael Frenkel, MFC PR

Email: [email protected]

Phone: (201) 317-7035

SOURCE Virdee

Related Links

http://www.virdee.co


By Alexander Cornwell

ABU DHABI (Reuters) -Pakistan on Monday urged the Taliban to remain engaged in the Afghan peace process after the armed group said it would now shun summits about Afghanistan until all foreign forces leave.

The decision was taken after the United States said last week it would withdraw all troops by Sept. 11 this year, later than a May 1 deadline set out by the previous administration.

"They take their own decisions but we will do whatever we can to convince them that it is in their national interest to remain engaged," Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said of the Taliban in an interview with Reuters in Abu Dhabi.

The refusal has thrown the peace process into disarray with Turkey scheduled for Saturday to host a summit that diplomats had hoped could create new momentum towards a political settlement between the Taliban and Afghan government.

The Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 when they were ousted by U.S.-led forces, but they still control wide areas.

Qureshi said withdrawal delays were always a possibility due to logistics but that the Taliban had largely succeeded in their objective for foreign troops to withdraw and so should show flexibility towards the new Sept. 11 deadline.

"The troops will be out and a date has been given and the process starts on the 1st of May and goes on until the 11th of September so there is a definite time frame," Qureshi said.

Sources have told Reuters Pakistan was putting pressure on the militants to come back to the table.

Qureshi said he believed the Taliban would benefit from staying involved but said he had no contact with the group.

Pakistan, which helped facilitate U.S.-Taliban negotiations in Doha that resulted in the initial May 1 withdrawal deal, wields considerable influence with the Taliban.

The insurgents have sanctuaries in Pakistan, whose main military-run intelligence service gives them support, according to U.S. and Afghan officials. Pakistan denies the allegation.

Story continues

Qureshi said he feared violence could escalate if the peace process remains deadlocked, plunging Afghanistan into civil war and leading to an exodus of Afghans.

Pakistan, which hosts close to 3 million Afghan refugees and economic migrants, has built 90% of a fence along its disputed 2,500 km (1,500 mile) border with Afghanistan and would hopefully be completed by September, he said.

He also said Pakistan was ready to engage in direct dialogue with arch-rival India once Jammu and Kashmir statehood was restored, which New Delhi in 2019 split into territories.

"We are two atomic powers that cannot, should not go into a direct conflict. It would be suicidal," Qureshi said.

But he said he had no plans to meet with his Indian counterpart who is also in the United Arab Emirates this week.

Top intelligence officers from India and Pakistan held secret talks in Dubai in January in a new effort to calm military tension over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, sources have told Reuters

(Reporting by Alexander Cornwell; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Alison Williams)
EDWARDSVILLE  The Madison County Health Department will host a COVID-19 vaccine clinic at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday, April 21 in the Student Fitness Center on the Edwardsville campus. Appointments are available for the Pfizer vaccine, and are open to SIUE faculty, staff and students ages 16 and older.

We value our partnership with the Madison County Health Department (MCHD), and appreciate the opportunity to host a vaccine clinic on our Edwardsville campus, said SIUE Health Service Director Riane Greenwalt. Hosting this clinic on campus will allow many faculty, staff and students to receive both doses of the Pfizer vaccine prior to returning to their hometown, enjoying the local community or embarking on safe travel this summer.

Pfizer is an mRNA vaccine and is considered 80% effective after the first dose. The completed series, including two doses, offers more than 90% effectiveness for the prevention of infection.

SIUE School of Pharmacy Associate Dean Jessica Kerr, PharmD, emphatically recommends receiving the vaccine. She notes that vaccines are an important way to prevent transmission and decrease the severity of the COVID virus and related hospital stays.

As a practicing pharmacist and professor in the School of Pharmacy, I am thrilled about the opportunity for our students to receive the vaccine on campus, and to potentially complete the vaccination series just after finals week, Kerr said. This action will lead to a greater campus population becoming fully vaccinated by the end of May.

College student personnel administration graduate student Lindsy Perry received the Pfizer vaccine.

I got vaccinated so I can help us get back to normal, and to protect my family and friends, Perry said.

SIU System Student Trustee Jacob Graham, a senior economics and management double major, plans to get his vaccine on campus.

Receiving the vaccine will help me do my part in keeping my community and myself safe, he said.

Senior early childhood education major Avalyn Mosby is getting vaccinated for the protection of herself and her community.

I chose to get the Covid-19 vaccine because I will be in contact with various children and their families; therefore, I want to protect the students, their parents, as well as myself, Mosby said. The vaccine will give me added protection to safely visit my family in Illinois and travel to Texas to see my grandpa. Thank you to Health Service and the Madison County Health Department for providing this on-campus clinic.

School of Nursing Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Programs Ann Popkess, Ph.D., RN is grateful for SIUEs partnership with the MCHD in providing the on-campus clinic.

Vaccination of our campus community means we can continue to offer in-classroom teaching experiences, utilize our School of Nursing Simulation Learning Lab to its fullest capability and continue to provide clinical patient experiences in our partner agencies, Popkess said. All of this supports our mission to educate exceptional nursing graduates at SIUE.

First dose appointments for the Pfizer vaccine will be available from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday, April 21. To make an appointment, visit https://events.juvare.com/IL-IDPH/3hw7x/.

Second dose appointments will be available from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday, May 12. Students who are unable to schedule their second dose at the SIUE clinic and need assistance in scheduling a second dose in their home area should connect with SIUE Health Service via CougarCare@siue.edu for direction and assistance.

Complete details related to the on-campus vaccine clinic, including requirements and health advisories, are available at siue.edu/coronavirus in the Campus Updates & Status section.
Congress leader on Monday accused the government of jeopardising India's national security, and termed its talks with China as "wasteful".

"Chinese occupation of Gogra-Hot Springs and Depsang plains is a direct threat to India's strategic interests including the DBO airstrip," he said on Twitter



"National security massively jeopardised by GOI's wasteful talks. Our nation deserves better," he said.

His remarks come after reports that China has refused to pull back its troops from Hot Springs, Gogra and Depsang in eastern Ladakh.

The Congress on Sunday asked the government to explain why disengagement talks with China have "not yielded results" in other friction points in eastern Ladakh.

Citing media reports about China's refusal to withdraw its troops, senior Congress spokesperson Ajay Maken asked the government to come clean on the issue.

"Why has the disengagement talks as promised by the Defence Minister on remaining friction points not yielded any results for India," he said.

There has been no visible forward movement at the latest round of military talks between the two countries early this month.

The Indian Army had said in a statement that both sides held a detailed deliberation on disengagement of troops in the remaining friction points of Hot Springs, Gogra and Depsang in eastern Ladakh and agreed to jointly maintain stability on the ground, avoid any new incidents and resolve outstanding issues in an "expeditious manner".

(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.)
Pakistan's foreign minister has welcomed mediation efforts by the United Arab Emirates between his country and India but told UAE newspaper Khaleej Times that he was not planning to meet his Indian counterpart in the country.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar are visiting the Gulf state at the same time.

"I am here for a bilateral visit. I am not here for a India-specific agenda," Qureshi told the daily, which published a video excerpt of the interview.

"We welcome third party facilitation ... But no matter what friends like the UAE say the initiative has to be indigenous," he added.

A senior Emirati diplomat said last week that the UAE is mediating between India and Pakistan to help the nuclear-armed rivals reach a "healthy and functional" relationship after military tension over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.

India's foreign ministry spokesman had tweeted that Jaishankar's discussions in the UAE would focus on economic cooperation and community welfare.

Ties between India and Pakistan have been frozen since a suicide bombing of an Indian military convoy in Kashmir in 2019 traced to Pakistan-based militants that led to India sending warplanes to Pakistan.

Later that year, India's prime minister withdrew Indian-ruled Kashmir's autonomy in order to tighten his grip over the territory, provoking outrage in Pakistan and the downgrading of diplomatic ties and suspension of bilateral trade.

Live TV
HARTFORD  After 16 hours of sometimes heated debate over the rights of parents and the importance of public health, the state House voted 90-53 early Tuesday to eliminate Connecticuts so-called religious exemption for school children whose parents do not want them vaccinated for childhood diseases.

The bill, which was finally approved at 2:55 a.m., next heads to the Senate. Debate began at about 10:53 a.m. on Monday in a socially distant House chamber that rarely had more than 20 members in it at any one time, while most lawmakers stayed in their offices around the Capitol complex as the pandemic continued to underscore issues of public health.

Five Republicans joined majority Democrats in the final vote, while seven Democrats, mostly urban Democrats including Rep. Robyn Porter of New Haven, Anne Hughes of Easton, David Michel of Stamford and Jack Hennessy and Andre Baker of Bridgeport, voted against it.

Rep. William Petit of Plainville, a physician who is the ranking member of the Public Health Committee, voted in favor of the legislation, which Gov. Ned Lamont said Monday that he supports.

Illustrating an apparent split among majority Democrats, an amendment was submitted Monday to allow about 8,000 currently enrolled school kids to retain the exemption. Under the original bill, only children already-enrolled in grades seven through 12 would be allowed to remain unvaccinated.

After more than three hours of debate, with sometimes emotional criticism from conservative Republicans including Rep. Mitch Bolinsky of Newtown, a test vote on the issue passed easily, 106-36, with eight absent. That vote indicated the likely passage of the bill, depending how long GOP lawmakers wanted to talk about the legislation.

Ten liberal Democrats opposed the proposal in the first vote, out of support for its original intent to allow only seventh through twelfth graders to remain unvaccinated. But 26 Republicans joined Democrats in favor of the legislation, indicating the possibility of eventual bipartisan passage. Republicans planned as many as 47 amendments, signaling that the debate could continue throughout the day and into the evening.

I would sign it, said Gov. Ned Lamont during his daily news conference in the State Capitol. We have learned over and over again over the last six months that vaccines are safe.

Sixth-term Rep. Christie Carpino, R-Cromwell, said she was worried about the potential for a major public health crisis in the school system, charging that the Department of Public Health kept their head in the sand, while the state Education Department dodged important questions and declined to meet with Republicans during the legislative process.

As a parent of public school children and as a policy maker I have to make this decision today and I know many will disagree with it, said Carpino said, who also voted for the final bill. But I am voting today and supporting this amendment to prevent a public health emergency. The best way to address an emergency is to avoid it.

After the preliminary vote, at about 2:20 p.m., a motion to sidetrack and send the bill to the Education Committee, was offered by Bolinsky. It was rejected in a mainly partisan vote.

I know the passions on this bill are extremely high and raw, said Rep. Tom ODea, R-New Canaan, who sided with Democrats in the early vote. But he stressed the need to provide children with a public education. We are going to be throwing kids out of school, he warned. An estimated 800 kindergarten and newly enrolling children would be required to show proof of measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccines, in September 2022, if the legislation becomes law.

We need to ensure that these children stay in school, said Rep. Michelle Cook, D-Torrington, who introduced the Democratic compromise to allow all current students under the religious exemption to remain.

While he voted in favor of the expansion of exemptions from the original bill to include all current students, Rep,. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, noted that declining vaccination rates statewide are a warning, particularly at the elementary school level. I have concerns about grandfathering children all the way down to the kindergarten level because of the data, he said. It is not an emergency today, but everyone will tell you that good public health policy is proactive.

Steinberg said he hoped that if the bill becomes law, more families will foster better relationships with family doctors and discuss their concerns that could lead to medical exemptions, which would still be allowed under the bill. Currently there are about 1,200 school kids with medical exemptions.

We need to act and act before we have an epidemic, an epidemic that we can prevent, Steinberg said. No one wants to declare any student ineligible for attending school, but efforts by health care professionals and educators to educate families about vaccines have been unable to compete with the fear instilled by the misinformation net. There are many well-meaning families refusing to vaccinate because they bought into slickly produced presentations which question safety and efficacy while inciting fear of Big Pharma and secret cabals intent on inserting microchip made it really hard to have a calm and constructive conversation on the subject.

Republicans critical of the bill charged that Connecticut has the fifth-highest rate in the nation for students with childhood vaccinations and the legislation wasnt needed. They added that there is no enforcement system in the legislation to assure compliance.

During the 2019-20 school year, 8,328 kids had the religious exemption, including 5,667 in K thru 6, and 2,661 in the 7 through 12 group. But more than 20,000 other children in the 550,000-student public school system are non-compliant for proof of vaccination.

Today we will be voting on one bill and only one bill is our expectation, Speaker of the House Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, told reporters during a morning news conference. The issue was discussed during a House Democratic caucus on Sunday night.

Pending a special election in Stamford, Democrats have a 96-54 majority in the House, and the first two hours of the debate, Republican opposition focused on religious freedom and charges over legislative overreach.

It feels like were trying to solve a problem that has nothing to do with our problem here, said Bolinsky, R-Newtown. To me this is segregating the children and families in the state of Connecticut.

In recent years a growing number of parents have opted out of the inoculations, reducing the immunity of school populations in about 120 schools throughout Connecticut below the recommended 95 percent. Steinberg, who as co-chairman of the Public Health Committee introduced the overall bill, said the coronavirus pandemic has underscored the need to build up community immunity.

These are potential vectors for disease in the future, Steinberg said, stressing that over the last seven year, the rate of unvaccinated children in the school system has risen from 1.4 percent to 2.3 percent, with last year at a 2.5-percent rate. To be proactive in this regard means we get ahead of it.

This bill protects all Connecticut residents, said Rep. Lucy Dathan, D-New Canaan.

In 2020, the legislation drew thousands of opponents to the State Capitol complex in a 23-hour public hearing before the coronavirus pandemic shut down the General Assembly in mid-March. Two months ago, the legislative Public Health Committee held a 24-hour virtual public hearing on the issue. Last week the bill was approved by the budget-writing Appropriations Committee.

The advocacy group Vaccine Freedom CT held an early evening rally in opposition to the legislation at the State Capitol. About 50 people, most of whom were unmasked, gathered outside the south entrance of the Capitol carrying signs in opposition to the bill. They chanted My child, my choice, outside a portable steel barrier, while State Capitol police watched on.

House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, predicted that if the law passes, it will set off a class-action lawsuit. If approved, Connecticut would join Maine, California, New York and Mississippi in not having religious exemptions.

By around 3:30, about four-and-a-half hours after the start of the debate, the first GOP amendment was introduced. It would give the power to approve new childhood vaccines to the General Assembly, but it was defeated most along party lines, 92-52.

This is not a good policy for us, Steinberg said recommending rejection of the proposal.

Another Republican proposal, submitted shortly after 5 p.m., would allow parents of private school children to claim the religious exemption. That failed 91-54. A third GOP fell was defeated 96-49 at 7:30 p.m.

In a statement later in the afternoon, Dr. Robert Russo, executive director of the Connecticut State Medical Society, stressed the organizations support for the overall bill.

As medical professionals, scientists and members of the community, physicians firmly believe that the best way to protect Connecticuts children from dangerous and preventable infectious diseases is to ensure that all residents receive adequate and appropriate immunizations, Russo said in a statement.

Note: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the states that do not have religious exemptions.


Ljubljana Airports General Manager, Zmago Skobir, has said talks are underway with a carrier from the European Union to set up a base in the Slovenian capital. Speaking to the Sierra5 portal, Mr Skobir said, It is no secret that we are working on having at least one of the EU airlines set up a smaller base at the airport. We believe this would be the fastest and most effective way to improve our countrys air connectivity. He added that talks were also being conducted with low cost airlines but ruled out Ryanair, which will set up a base in nearby Zagreb this September. Ljubljana Airports General Manager, Zmago Skobir, has said talks are underway with a carrier from the European Union to set up a base in the Slovenian capital. Speaking to the Sierra5 portal, Mr Skobir said, It is no secret that we are working on having at least one of the EU airlines set up a smaller base at the airport. We believe this would be the fastest and most effective way to improve our countrys air connectivity. He added that talks were also being conducted with low cost airlines but ruled out Ryanair, which will set up a base in nearby Zagreb this September.





Although Mr Skobir did not mention the names of any carrier, it is believed LOT Polish Airlines will establish a mini base at the airport. It has filed for slots to operate seasonal one weekly services from Ljubljana to Podgorica, Brac and Olbia from late May, although these plans are preliminary and subject to change. Even though it has not put tickets on sale for its newly planned flights out of Ljubljana, its timetable for services between the Polish and Slovenian capitals change on May 29, indicating that the inbound and outbound service will not be operated by the same aircraft. The Slovenian government recently met with LOT executives in Poland to discuss the countrys air connectivity.





Slovenia has seen one of the biggest declines in passenger numbers in Europe last year as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, with the trend continuing during the first quarter of 2021. It handled 18.364 passengers during the January  March period, down 90.4% on last year. Commenting on the results, Mr Skobir noted, Statistics and analysis must be put into context. Air traffic in Slovenia is exclusively international in nature (there are no domestic flights). We are among the countries that had the longest and strictest lockdowns and Slovenia does not have traffic generated by expatriates, nor can it rely on mass tourism.












He excluded his grandchildren from the will, leaving his assets, amounting to 4.3 million euros, as an inheritance to an animal rights association.

It happened in Carinthia, Austria, where the last wishes of a wealthy elderly woman who passed away have created a real media case.

In fact, the Supreme Court of Vienna dealt with the affair, which confirmed the validity of the will of the 93-year-old woman signed in England.

The old woman died in 2016 at the age of 93 and her wishes were drawn up according to Austrian law, which provides for a minimum share for descendants. English law, on the other hand, does not have these constraints and, since the woman was an English citizen and also considering that the assets are managed by two investment funds from the Isle of Man, English law has been imposed.

In this way, and the heritage will now end up in the Tierschutzverein association, an Austrian organization that protects animals.

"The money - explained Tara Geltner, president of the association - will be used, among other things, for an ambulance for animals and for a 'reintegration' project for problem dogs".

From what has been learned, the two granddaughters of the old woman will not remain dry-mouthed, but will receive other assets, registered in a will according to Austrian law. But the "English" slice of the "pie", on the other hand, will have nothing.

(Unioneonline / lf)
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UniFirst's donation includes 500,000 disposable masks, nearly 200,000 reusable face masks, , and over 120,000 bottles of hand sanitizer. The supplies will be distributed to GBFB's 600 food distribution partners in 190 cities and towns across the region. This PPE will also be used to help keep GBFB team members and volunteers safe.

"Keeping employees and volunteers at GBFB's partner food pantries and direct distribution sites safe is of paramount importance so they can continue serving over double the number of clients served since the beginning of the pandemic," said Catherine D'Amato, president and CEO at GBFB. "We're incredibly grateful for UniFirst's generosity in providing these necessary protective items to help ensure that GBFB and our hunger-relief network partners can continue to serve those in need."

As a member of Feeding America, the nation's largest hunger-relief organization, GBFB is the largest organization dedicated to providing emergency support through food in New England and among the largest food banks in the country. Last year, GBFB distributed 98.9 million pounds of healthy food, the equivalent of 82.4 million meals. Recent reports from GBFB food pantry partners show a chronically high demand for emergency food in their region with an average of over 600,000 people who may be receiving help from a food pantry every month, more than double the number reported prior to the start of the pandemic.

"The pandemic has created urgent needs for health and safety precautions, and it has also reinforced the importance of community support  two missions that are essential to our business," says Steven Sintros, UniFirst president and CEO. "The work that Feeding America and The Greater Boston Food Bank are doing in our community and across the U.S. is inspiring, and we're proud to provide resources that will make it easier and safer for their team members to continue their important efforts."

This donation is just the latest included in UniFirst's ongoing national efforts in 2020 and 2021 that has provided hundreds of thousands of protective face masks and significant supplies of hand sanitizer and other PPE in support of small business revitalization across North America. For more information on UniFirst and the company's philanthropic endeavors, please visit UniFirst.com.

About UniFirst

Headquartered in Wilmington, Mass., UniFirst Corporation (NYSE: UNF) is a North American leader in the supply and servicing of uniform and workwear programs, as well as the delivery of facility service programs. Together with its subsidiaries, the company also provides first aid and safety products, and manages specialized garment programs for the cleanroom and nuclear industries. UniFirst manufactures its own branded workwear, protective clothing, and floorcare products; and with 260 service locations, over 300,000 customer locations, and 14,000 employee Team Partners, the company outfits more than 2 million workers each business day. For more information, contact UniFirst at 800.455.7654 or visit UniFirst.com .

About Greater Boston Food Bank

The Greater Boston Food Bank (GBFB) is the largest hunger-relief organization in New England and among the largest food banks in the country. In response to the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, GBFB distributed the equivalent of nearly 82 million meals in 2020 through its network of 600 dedicated food distribution partners and programs in the 190 cities and towns across Eastern Massachusetts. A member of Feeding America, the nation's food bank network, GBFB's mission is to end hunger here and it is committed to providing at least three healthy meals a day to everyone in need. For more information, visit us at GBFB.org, follow us on Facebook, Twitter (@gr8bosfoodbank) and Instagram, or call us at 617.427.5200.

SOURCE UniFirst Corporation

Related Links

https://unifirst.com


Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 19)  Over 18,000 families had to seek temporary shelters in Bicol and Eastern Visayas regions due to Typhoon Bising, the country's disaster management agency said.

In a situational report released on Monday morning, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said 18,467 families or 68,490 individuals were evacuated in Regions 5 and 8.

A total of 22 barangays were also reportedly flooded in Eastern Samar.

Due to threats brought by moderate to intense rains, sea and air travel are also affected.

Data from the NDRRMC showed that as of 8 a.m., a total of 17 sea trips were canceled in Central Visayas.

More than 2,000 passengers, 896 rolling cargoes, and 61 vessels were stranded in ports of Regions 5, 7, and 8.

Flights in Tacloban Airpot were also canceled on Sunday.

The municipality of Saint Bernard in Southern Leyte, meanwhile, logged one death as Typhoon Bising batters Eastern Visayas.

The local office of Saint Bernard reported that a male resident died after he was hit by a falling coconut tree on Sunday.

He was rushed to the Anahawan District Hospital but was declared dead on arrival. There were no additional details provided.

Meanwhile, local government units in Eastern Visayas also suspended classes and work in all government offices on Monday due to Typhoon Bising.

They include those in Samar, Eastern Samar, Tacloban City, Naval town in Biliran province, and Leyte town in Leyte province.

Northern Samar province also issued an executive order for the localized suspension of classes and work in government offices.

Local governments in Northern Samar that declared work and class suspension include those in the island municipality of Biri, the capital town of Catarman, and towns of Palapag, Mapanas, Lapinig, Laoang, Allen, Rosario.

Meanwhile, a 47-year-old woman in Catmon, Cebu died due to the effects of the storm. According to the Cebu Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, the woman was sleeping inside her home in Barangay Panalipan when a coconut tree fell on the house on Sunday.

Rhee Telen, spokesperson of the of the CPDRRMO, said there were no storm alerts in Catmon but winds were strong on Sunday.

READ: Typhoon Bising keeps its strength as it batters Bicol Region, Eastern Visayas

In its 11 a.m. bulletin, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration said 'Bising' (international name: Surigae) was last seen 235 km east northeast of Virac, Catanduanes carrying maximum sustained winds of 195 km/h near the center and gustiness of up to 240 km/h.

It is moving northwestward at a slow pace, but the state weather bureau said it may gradually weaken.

'Bising' will keep traversing this track until Wednesday or Thursday morning, then the typhoon will move east northeastward by Friday away from the landmass of Luzon, PAGASA added.

Stringers Wil Mark Amazona and Dale Israel contributed to this report.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 22:12:22|Editor: huaxia

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ISLAMABAD, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan here on Monday reiterated the intention of his government to provide business-friendly environment to investors to attract the much-needed foreign direct investment.

Khan made the remarks during a meeting with a delegation of leading Russian businessmen who have shown a great interest in investing in various projects in Pakistan, according to a statement from the Prime Minister Office.

During the meeting, increased cooperation between Russia and Pakistan in large scale manufacturing, railways and energy sector was discussed in detail, said the statement.

The two sides agreed upon expediting the projects that are already in the pipeline.

Federal ministers of relevant Pakistani ministries and other senior government officials also attended the meeting.

Earlier in April, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov paid a visit to Pakistan, and the two sides agreed to strengthen bilateral ties and deepen cooperation. Enditem
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In the New York Times, David Leonhardt writes about Irrational COVID Fears. The subhead: Why do so many vaccinated people remain fearful? Oh, I dont know. Maybe because of constant media hysteria, and the insistence by Dr. Fauci and others that vaccinated people continue to wear masks?

That isnt where Leonhardt is going, of course. He begins with the fact that most people are terrible at objectively assessing risk. That is both true and unfortunate, but not exactly news. It does apply to covid vaccination:

The vaccines have nearly eliminated death, hospitalization and other serious Covid illness among people who have received shots.

***

If youre vaccinated, Covid presents a minuscule risk to you, and you present a minuscule Covid risk to anyone else. A car trip is a bigger threat, to you and others. About 100 Americans are likely to die in car crashes today. The new federal data suggests that either zero or one vaccinated person will die today from Covid.

Nevertheless, Leonhardt endorses post-vaccine mask wearing, basically as a concession to irrationality:

Its true that experts believe vaccinated people should still sometimes wear a mask, partly because its a modest inconvenience that further reduces a tiny risk  and mostly because it contributes to a culture of mask wearing.

But if youve been vaccinated (and in my opinion, even if you havent), the culture of mask wearing is stupid and harmful.

It is the decent thing to do when most people still arent vaccinated.

Why is it decent to do something that is entirely pointless, potentially damaging to ones health, and contributes to the irrational fears that Leonhardt has already described?

If youre vaccinated, a mask is more of a symbol of solidarity than anything else.

Solidarity with whom? Dr. Fauci? The perennially masked, although vaccinated, Joe Biden? In reality, wearing a mask post-vaccine is a symbol of submission to irrational state power.

How about this for a symbol? How about if we all declare ourselves free from the nonsense, take off our masks, and get back to normal life?

I cant explain why some people are so needlessly afraid of covid. Leonhardt concludes with this sad anecdote:

Dr. Ashish Jha of Brown University told us about his own struggle to return to normal. He has been fully vaccinated for almost two months, he said, and only recently decided to meet a vaccinated friend for a drink, unmasked. It was hard  psychologically hard  for me, Jha said.

Wow. We need to help people like Dr. Jha recover from covid hysteria. Lets show solidarity with him by removing our masks so he and others like him can see that normal life is, indeed, possible.

Happily, we have a few leaders who havent succumbed to covid mania. Like Ron DeSantis:

When you tell people, oh yeah, yeah, this important. Go get the vaccine, but then youve still got to social distance, you cant do this, you cant do that, you cant eat in a restaurant. Some of the people are still saying that kind of stuff.

***

My view is if you get a vaccine, vaccines are effective, youre immune, so act immune. If you tell people the opposite, then gee, you know why if its not effective for them and its not going to change anything, then whats the point of going through it?

In other words: take off the damn masks.
Republicans and other civil rights Second Amendment activists have a trump card (please pardon the expression) to play against President Biden's attempts to expand gun laws that penalize law-abiding citizens and in effect exempt criminals.

Simply demand that Biden's bureaucrats enforce existing gun laws before passing new ones. Specifically, enforce the law against his son, Hunter.

If you are unfamiliar with Hunter's apparent felony violation of gun control laws, Deanna Fisher of Victory Girls has a good essay on this and related issues (hat tip: Darah Hoyt, Instapundit).

Does anyone remember this barely-touched story, where Hunter Biden lied in order to buy a gun? Not only that, but his sister-in-law/ex-girlfriend Hallie Biden, is an absolutely dangerous fool. You see, Hunter Biden bought a gun in 2018  but he had to lie on his 4473 form in order to buy it. One would think that Hunter Biden, having a few brushes with the law and being the former vice-president's son at the time, would have known that lying on that form is a felony. Again, what are rules to Hunter Biden? POLITICO obtained copies of the Firearms Transaction Record and a receipt for the gun dated Oct. 12, 2018." Hunter responded "no" to a question on the transaction record that asks, "Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?" Five years earlier, he had been discharged from the Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine, and he and family members have spoken about his history of drug use." Lying on the form is a felony, though prosecutions for it are exceedingly rare." Maybe if prosecutions weren't "rare," then people would take the 4473 form seriously and, oh, NOT LIE WHILE FILLING IT OUT. It's a thought. So, Hunter was able to purchase a gun by lying. Then we get to the boneheaded stupidity of Hallie Biden. The incident began when Hallie searched Hunter's pickup, which was parked at her home in Wilmington, because of unspecified "suspicions she had," according to the Delaware State Police report. Inside the truck, she found a .38 revolver." Hallie took the gun to Janssen's Market, a nearby high-end grocery store where the Bidens are longtime regular customers. There, she tossed the gun, wrapped in a black shopping bag, into a trash bin outside of the store." What in the actual hell was this woman thinking. Hallie Biden should never be allowed to own a pet ever again, much less a firearm. And the tale only gets worse. Later that day, Hallie informed Hunter of what she had done, and he instructed her to retrieve the gun, according to the police report. When Hallie returned to the grocery store, she found that the gun was missing from the garbage bin and reported the issue to the store. Police received calls from the store's general manager, Paula Janssen, and from another person, according to the report." The missing gun caused heightened concern, according to the police report, because the grocery store sits across the street from Alexis I. du Pont High School." Whenever you think you've done something stupid, perhaps you can console yourself with "At least I'm not as stupid as Hallie Biden." Also, we have now learned that Hunter was not only "dating" Hallie, but also "dating" her sister Elizabeth at the same time. Hallie seems to have to have some major delusions when it comes to Hunter, and deciding to get rid of a gun by tossing it in a garbage bin across the street from a high school is the gold medal of absolute batshit reasoning.

Every Republican should be hammering this point: gun laws are no good unless they are enforced, and letting Hunter Biden's felonious behavior go unprosecuted sends a message to criminals to ignore all gun laws.

No new laws until Biden enforces the law against his son!

Republicans also should be demanding an investigation into the apparent effort by Secret Service agents to confiscate evidence of Hunter's crime. If the GOP gets a majority in either the House or Senate in 2022, there must be hearings about this story that Politico uncovered:

While police questioned Hunter and Hallie, two Secret Service agents arrived at the store where Hunter had purchased the gun, StarQuest Shooters & Survival Supply in Wilmington, according to the two people familiar with the incident. The agents showed their badges and identification cards to Palmieri, the store's owner, and asked to take possession of the Firearms Transaction Record that Hunter had filled out to buy the gun earlier that month, according to the people familiar with the incident. Palmieri refused to hand over the transaction record to the Secret Service agents because such records fall under the purview of the ATF. The Secret Service agents left without the records, according to the people familiar with the case. Later that day, the ATF arrived at the store to inspect the records.

It's time for a little message discipline on new gun laws. The media will do their best to suppress the story, but constant repetition in Congress and on the streets will get the message through. Now that the left is the establishment, Alinksy works for us (hat tip: Michelle's Mirror).

Rule #4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules."

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
Billionaire Lawrence Stroll is probably the driving force behind Aston Martin's current legal threats against Formula 1 authorities, according to Ralf Schumacher.

Red Bull's Dr Helmut Marko, with an opinion echoed by many of his peers, says Aston Martin threatening to sue over the 2021 aerodynamic rule tweaks is "incomprehensible".

The team has insinuated that Liberty Media, the FIA and even Pirelli conspired to make key changes in order to slow Mercedes down - with Aston Martin described as "collateral damage" by Toto Wolff.

On Sunday, Pirelli boss Mario Isola rejected claims the tyre design was changed for 2021 for that reason.

"Any change suits someone more, someone less," he said. "You can't make everyone happy.

"But no one expected a pandemic that would stop the whole world. We discussed the situation with the teams, but when the FIA made changes to the technical regulations, we could not guarantee that we would be able to supply tyres with the appropriate characteristics," Isola added.

"The factories were closed, we stayed at home, we couldn't do anything. When the opportunity to develop something arose, we made prototypes, double-checked the reliability, and then tested them on the track.

"Everything was done quickly, with limited testing. Obviously we don't want to hurt any teams, we only adjusted to the changes affecting all of them and, in my opinion, we chose the most reasonable solution," the Italian said.

As for Aston Martin, Ralf Schumacher joined those who are critical of the team's complaint.

"It's a bit strange to conclude at the second race weekend that you are being disadvantaged," he told Sky Deutschland.

Schumacher suspects it is not team boss Otmar Szafnauer who is driving the legal threat, but rather Aston Martin team owner Lawrence Stroll.

"The 'big boss' doesn't like to lose. As a successful businessman, he is not used to that," said the former F1 driver.

"He's also the type of person who always wants to assert himself, so apparently he's trying it this way now. But my guess is that they'll get a bloody nose in the process."

Schumacher also suspects that Stroll is angry that the Silverstone based team was penalised last year for the 'pink Mercedes' car copying affair.

"Maybe that's why they think they are entitled to a favour now," he said.

(GMM)
Abuja, Apr 19 (UNI) At least a dozen people, including one child and three women, have died as a result of an oil tanker explosion in Nigerias southeastern Benue State, Premium Times reports.

Sector Commander of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) in Benue State, Yakubu Mohammed, told the newspaper on Sunday that an oil tanker lost control and crashed at Oshigbudu village in Agatu Local Government Area earlier in the day, spilling its contents.

The resulting explosion and fire led to the death of eight men, three women and a little boy, according to the FRSC spokesperson.

Local shops and houses were affected by the fire and FRSC operatives and other rescue agencies were called to the scene to bring the situation under control.

UNI XC-ASN
Former president of the Philippines, Joseph Estrada, is among the many COVID-19 patients receiving leronlimab under compassionate special permit

The company said it expects to soon initiate a clinical trial in the US for critically ill COVID-19 patients

CytoDyn Inc ( ) said that it has submitted the crucial manufacturing section (CMC) of the application, for an interim order to Health Canada for its flagship drug leronlimab to be considered as a medical treatment for coronavirus (COVID-19), under a rolling review.

Vancouver, Washington-based CytoDyn is developing leronlimab (PRO 140) for multiple indications. The company explained that the crucial part of the application documents the companys manufacturing practices are in full compliance with GMP requirements. The company said it anticipates the remaining sections will be submitted in the very near future.

In a statement, CytoDyn CEO Nader Pourhassan said: Our entire regulatory team has been working non-stop to complete the submission of the manufacturing section of the Interim Order to Health Canada for leronlimab to be considered as a therapeutic for COVID-19.

Our clinical team is working on initiating three trials in parallel. In Brazil, two clinical trial protocols for COVID-19 will be submitted to ANVISA, the Brazilian regulatory authority. In the US, we will soon finalize a COVID-19 trial protocol to potentially include a dosage regimen utilizing IV (intravenous) as the first dose and three subcutaneous doses thereafter.

Pourhassan noted that the company is quickly advancing leronlimab along multiple regulatory paths, including securing additional manufacturing from Samsung BioLogics in 2021 and 2022.

Meanwhile, CytoDyn revealed that the former president of the Philippines, Joseph Estrada, was administered leronlimab under compassionate special permit (CSP), among other medications, as a treatment for COVID-19.

Estrada remains hospitalized and news reports indicate he may be transferred from the ICU to a regular hospital room soon, said the company. CytoDyn continues to ship vials of leronlimab to the Philippines, while its distribution partner, Chiral Pharma Corporation, works closely with the Philippine FDA to consider expanding the CSP, added the company.

Pourhassan said: We have been working with Chiral Pharma for several months to provide COVID-19 patients in the Philippines access to leronlimab under CSP. CytoDyn is grateful for the opportunity to help the former President and his family and we wish him a full and speedy recovery.

While we pursue emergency use authorizations in many countries and initiate final trials for the severe and critical COVID-19 patient populations to strengthen these applications, our teams remain hopeful their dedication and efforts will help COVID-19 patients around the world.

CytoDyns leronlimab works by mitigating what is known as the cytokine storm, a hyperactive immune response that can cause inflammation, fatigue and in severe cases, organ failure in COVID-19 patients.

Aside from COVID-19, the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Fast Track designation to CytoDyn for two potential indications of leronlimab for critical illnesses. The first is a combination therapy with HAART for HIV-infected patients and the second is for metastatic triple-negative breast cancer.

We also are happy to report our BLA resubmission for HIV is on track and we are encouraged with the advancements in our expanding cancer program, said Pourhassan.

Contact the author Uttara Choudhury at uttara@proactiveinvestors.com

Follow her on Twitter: @UttaraProactive
Danville police Officer Andrew Hall had been through it before: A deadly shooting. Hours of interviews with investigators. A quiet return to work.

And then, the wait. When Hall shot and killed Tyrell Wilson on March 11, he was still anticipating a legal decision in a separate killing that occurred more than two years ago.

Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton has given no indication of where  or when  she might land on the 2018 death of Laudemer Arboleda, an unarmed man who was slowly driving away from police when Hall stepped in the path of his Honda, firing 10 rounds through the windshield and passenger side window.

Two and a half years is an unusually long time for a district attorney to linger over a criminal probe of a fatal police shooting. Records from neighboring jurisdictions show that other top prosecutors tend to review these cases at a faster clip. Attorney John Burris, who represents family members of Wilson and Arboleda, said he felt disheartened by the slow process in Contra Costa County.

If they had followed up on the first shooting, and been more decisive, this second one would not have happened, Burris said.

The controversial slaying of Arboleda loomed over Danville as Becton emerged as a possible nominee for state attorney general  a seat that will probably go to Assembly Member Rob Bonta. Had Becton been picked, decisions on police killings would have been a high-profile aspect of her job: The role comes with a new mandate to review all such killings of unarmed civilians, as well as other lethal incidents upon request.

Scott Alonso, a spokesperson for Becton, said the Arboleda case is still pending. He cited a 2018 policy that made investigations of police shootings more rigorous: Prosecutors now have to release detailed reports to the public whenever they decline to file charges for an officer shooting. Becton also shifted to a team-based approach, assigning several attorneys to scrutinize police shootings and in-custody deaths.

The first case to fall under this standard was the October 2018 shooting of Salvador Morales by Pittsburg police. It took more than two years to produce a December 2020 report that found justification for the officers actions. Arboleda is next, Alonso said.

DA Becton wanted to ensure that in order for the public here to understand what our office was doing, we needed to re-evaluate how we approach the entire investigation, how we document everything, and ultimately how we even investigate from a personnel standpoint, Alonso said. All those things combined take time, they take evaluation, they take further analysis.

While prosecutions of police officers are rare, many district attorneys say they try to move deliberately in these cases. Some are motivated by a deep-seated desire to bring quick resolutions for families and hold law enforcement accountable. Others say they feel the emotional burden of these cases.

It weighs on the family of the decedent, and it weighs on the officer, San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said.

Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle

During his 11 years in office, Wagstaffe said hes hewed to an eight- to 10-week time frame to review lethal uses of force, with two exceptions. One was the 2018 Tasing death of Chinedu Okobi in Millbrae, and the other was a 2019 incident in which a San Mateo police officer shot and wounded two women in a car.

Both cases prompted Wagstaffe to retain outside use-of-force experts to evaluate the officers actions. After a five-month analysis, Wagstaffe opted not to file charges in Okobis death. He took nine months to reach the same conclusion on the San Mateo officer.

Wagstaffe characterized both delays as extraordinary, saying the experts spent months preparing lengthy reports.

In Alameda County, District Attorney Nancy OMalley made findings in eight fatal incidents from Jan. 3, 2018, to April 18, 2020, charging voluntary manslaughter in one of them. She pored over the evidence for 10 months, on average. Her longest two investigations, for people who died in the custody of the Fremont Police Department, lasted 14 months, a Chronicle analysis of public records found.

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin is prosecuting three officers he believes used excessive force, all for incidents that occurred before he took office in January 2020. He decided not to file charges in two police shootings last year, including a fatal shooting of a carjacking suspect that took 60 days to review.

Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen seeks to complete investigations of all shootings by officers within 90 days, but that timeline may be protracted, a spokesperson said, especially if we are engaging outside experts or submitting evidence to the crime lab for analysis.

Becton was appointed in 2017 and won election the next year as a reformer, with promises to change the bail system and address racial disparities in sentencing. She also pledged to set a higher standard for investigations of fatal incidents, even if they took longer to complete. Becton is chipping through a backlog of nine shootings by officers since the beginning of November 2018, along with the death of Antioch man Angelo Quinto, days after police restrained him.

UC Berkeley law Professor Franklin Zimring, who specializes in criminology and policing, said its not monstrously atypical to spend 2 years considering whether to charge an officer. But Halls second shooting puts pressure on Becton to wrap up the first case, Zimring said.

This case has already stepped clearly outside the ordinary, Zimring said. Becton has either got to find very good reasons for further delay, or shes got to hurry up.

Hall took three days of leave after shooting Arboleda, then returned to work, according to his attorney, Michael Rains. Nine months later, he was cleared by the Contra Costa County Sheriffs Office, which has a contract to provide police services in Danville.

The sheriffs office declined to answer specific questions about training or counseling that Hall received after the Arboleda shooting, or about his duties when he returned to work. Department policy requires employees to take 48 hours of paid administrative leave after a fatal incident and relegates them to an office assignment until they finish the required interviews as well as a counseling session with an occupational health services professional.

Records from the internal affairs investigation that cleared Hall show he was sequestered and interviewed by investigators in the hours after Arboledas death, that he submitted to drug tests and that he testified in a coroners inquest in July 2019, which ruled the shooting a homicide.

He was working in the traffic division when he shot Arboleda, and had returned to the same unit by the time he encountered Wilson last month. He remains on paid leave, Rains said, and expects a new assignment related to patrol of waterways as soon as this week.

Wilsons family members have urged Contra Costa Sheriff David Livingston to fire Hall, saying the officer has shown a pattern of poor judgment in tense situations. So far, the sheriff has released no body camera footage of the March 11 incident, leaving a vacuum from which two competing narratives emerged.

Police say Wilson advanced toward the officer with a knife. Burris says Wilson, who was Black, mentally ill and unhoused, appeared to be backing away moments before Hall fired.

Burris sued Danville on behalf of Wilsons family this month, noting in the complaint that Hall is responsible for the citys only other police shooting in the past 20 years  that of Arboleda.

Rains is less concerned than Burris over the pace of charging decisions in Contra Costa County.

Do I think they need to be faster? I certainly do, he said. But I dont want the District Attorneys Office to cut corners on the evaluation of important evidence to meet an arbitrary deadline.

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @rachelswan
The Mad Max series is roaring back to life.

After the resolution of an ugly legal dispute with Hollywood studio Warner Bros, director George Miller is preparing to shoot a fifth movie, Furiosa, in the celebrated action series in NSW.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian, Treasurer Dominic Perrottet, Federal Communications Minister Paul Fletcher and Minister for the Arts Don Harwin, along with George Miller, Chris Hemsworth and Doug Mitchell announce the major new blockbuster Furiosa at Moore Park. Credit:Brook Mitchell

It is a prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, with Anya Taylor-Joy, the breakout star of the hit series The Queens Gambit, playing a younger version of the heroic warrior played by Charlize Theron.

The cast will also include Chris Hemsworth, who is filming Thor: Love and Thunder in Sydney, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, best-known for Aquaman and The Trial of the Chicago 7.
Rio Tinto Chief Executive Jakob Stausholm said: "We achieved an overall solid operating performance in the first quarter. We have maintained guidance ranges in all our products, with site teams successfully managing the effects of significant rainfall, in particular at our Australian iron ore assets.

"It has been a period of deep reflection for the company, and I have personally spent a significant amount of time listening, learning and taking actions, in particular to better manage Traditional Owner partnerships and cultural heritage. I have appointed a new leadership team and the transition is progressing well. We have set out clear priorities to develop a stronger Rio Tinto. Our focus is to become the best operator, strive for impeccable ESG credentials, excel in development and secure a strong social licence. This ambition will enable us to continue to deliver superior returns to shareholders, invest in sustaining and growing our portfolio, and make a broader contribution to society."

Production* Quarter 1

2021 vs Q1

2020 vs Q4

2020 Pilbara iron ore shipments (100% basis) (Mt) 77.8 +7% -12% Pilbara iron ore production (100% basis) (Mt) 76.4 -2% -11% Bauxite (Mt) 13.6 -2% +2% Aluminium (kt) 803 +3% -1% Mined Copper (kt) 120.5 -9% -9% Titanium dioxide slag (kt) 279 -5% +3% IOC iron ore pellets concentrate (Mt) 2.3 -8% -14% *Rio Tinto share unless otherwise stated

Q1 Operational update

Health, safety and well-being remains our top priority. Our all injury frequency rate (AIFR) of 0.35 improved versus the first quarter of 2020 (0.40). However, we recognise there is no room for complacency and continue to focus on providing strong support for our employees, contractors and host communities, while maintaining critical COVID-19 controls.

Pilbara iron ore shipments of 77.8 million tonnes (100% basis) were 7% higher than the first quarter of 2020. Production of 76.4 million tonnes (100% basis) was 2% lower, driven by above average wet weather in the mines through February and fixed plant reliability. Labour resource availability and weather challenges disrupted maintenance. Tropical Cyclone Seroja impacted mine and port operations in April. Full year iron ore guidance remains unchanged.

Bauxite production of 13.6 million tonnes was 2% lower than the first quarter of 2020 due to wet weather in Eastern Australia. The port at the Amrun mine closed for 14 days due to large swells and cyclones. Full year bauxite guidance remains unchanged.

Aluminium production of 0.8 million tonnes was 3% higher than the first quarter of 2020, with the Becancour smelter, Quebec operating at full capacity and Kitimat, British Columbia nearing the end of its pot relining cycle.

Mined copper production of 120.5 thousand tonnes was 9% lower than 2020, with lower recoveries and throughput at Escondida and Kennecott partly offset by the anticipated higher grade from the Oyu Tolgoi open pit. Kennecott saw a marginal increase in head grade as it begins the transition into higher grades from the south wall ore, with grades expected to gradually increase through 2021. Oyu Tolgoi shipments have been affected by Chinese border restrictions due to increased cases of COVID-19 in Mongolia. We continue to work closely with authorities and our customers to manage the risk of supply chain disruptions.

Titanium dioxide slag production of 279 thousand tonnes was 5% lower than 2020 due to a planned furnace rebuild at the Rio Tinto Fer et Titane (RTFT) metallurgical complex in Quebec resulting in operation of 8 out of 9 furnaces.

Production of pellets and concentrate at Iron Ore Company of Canada (IOC) was 8% lower than 2020 due to the impacts of weather, loading unit availability on mine feed and reduced concentrator mill availability. There was a fire at one of the two reclaimers at the port on 31 March. Full year production guidance remains unchanged.

On 8 April, we released Taxes Paid: Our Economic Contribution 2020, showing that we made a total direct economic contribution of $47 billion in the countries and communities where we operate, including $8.4 billion of taxes and royalties.

As part of our Climate Strategy, in the first quarter of this year, we entered into two partnerships to progress our work to decarbonise our value chain. Together with Paul Wurth S.A. and SHS-Stahl-Holding-Saar GmbH Co., we are exploring the viability of transforming iron ore pellets into low-carbon hot briquetted iron, a low-carbon steel feedstock, using green hydrogen generated from hydro-electricity in Canada. At our Boron site in California, we are exploring the deployment of Heliogen's breakthrough solar technology which will use heat from the sun to generate and store carbon-free energy to power the mine's industrial processes. Further details in the Climate change and our value chain section.

The full first quarter production results are available here

This announcement is authorised for release to the market by Rio Tinto's Group Company Secretary.

LEI: 213800YOEO5OQ72G2R82

Classification: 3.1 Additional regulated information required to be disclosed under the laws of a Member State

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005931/en/

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Category: General
NORWALK  A Bridgeport man injured in a vehicle collision that sent three people to the hospital nearly two years ago is suing the city of Norwalk, alleging the two-vehicle crash was caused by a missing stop sign.

The lawsuit, filed earlier this month in state Superior Court in Bridgeport, claims the city failed to maintain a stop sign at Woodbury and Connecticut avenues on April 23, 2019, leading to a violent wreck on the busy road.

The crash occurred when Moses Rowley, the plaintiff in the lawsuit and the driver of one of the two vehicles involved in the accident, attempted to make a leftward turn onto Connecticut Avenue. Rowleys vehicle collided with a car traveling on that road, according to the complaint.

The collision was caused by the carelessness and negligence of the defendant, the City of Norwalk, lawyers for Rowley wrote in the complaint, referring to an alleged missing stop sign. The lawsuit is seeking $15,000 in monetary damages.

Rowley, a passenger in his car and the driver of the second vehicle were all transported to Norwalk Hospital after emergency personnel responded to the scene. Rowley was later issued an infraction for unsafe movement, according to Norwalk police.

Attorneys for the city concede the Woodbury Avenue stop sign was not standing on the date of the accident, but they claim the sign had been removed by a construction crew working to install a new sidewalk as part of a state-run project.

Norwalk Deputy Corporation Counsel Jeffrey Spahr said Rowley had an obligation under state law to yield to highway traffic, regardless of if a stop sign was standing at the junction.

The presence or absence of a stop sign had absolutely nothing to do with it, Spahr said.

Sharon Skyers, an attorney for Rowley, did not respond to requests for comment on Monday.

In a filing last week, city attorneys offered a compromise in the dispute. If Rowley agrees to drop his lawsuit, they proposed, the city will waive its right to pursue damages for bringing a frivolous lawsuit.

The city is not liable at all, Spahr said.

richard.chumney@hearstmediact.com
ROCHESTER, Minn. - The Rochester Police Department has extra enforcement on-call in the event of protests tonight. However, officers arent expecting any large gatherings at the moment.

Capt. Aaron Penning says Rochester has experienced much more peaceful protests in the past year compared to Minneapolis and Brooklyn Center.

Penning says the department is focused on building community partnerships so in the event of civil unrest theres a better understanding between law enforcement and the intent of local protesters.

He explained, We discussed the importance of community partnerships that build trust on the front end so that in instances where there's a potential for civil unrest, or civil concern, we have a better understanding and bond with our community.

The department says it will continue to work on clear lines of communication and transparency with the community.
It may be a strange ambition for a movie based on a video game set in a fantasy world in which fighters with supernatural powers battle each other to the gruesome end, but director Simon McQuoid was determined to make Mortal Kombat as real as he possibly could.

Its all about believing in a world, says the Perth-based director of the brutal action movie, which was shot in South Australia in 2019. What Im trying to do is make the unreal real, the unbelievable believable. Theres so much stuff now thats totally visual effects, and really great visual effects, its just that I think you can never beat reality.

Josh Lawson as Kano in Mortal Kombat. Credit:

To that end, McQuoid insisted on shooting as much of his movie as possible in camera. Of course, he didnt have a four-armed actor at his disposal to play the giant Goro (voiced by Angus Sampson). But he did have some spectacular locations within an hour or two of Adelaide to create the location of Outworld, the setting for most of the films many, many battles for the very soul of the universe.

It makes it harder to shoot, its not as easy as lining a soundstage with green screen, says McQuoid. It means youve got to go up to the base of a disused coal mine, or into an old-growth pine forest and film there. But for me thats a very valuable ingredient in the tonal quality Im trying to create.
Markham Mayor Roger Agpawa, whose win in 2017 tagged him with the title of mayor-elect until the question of whether he could legally hold office was clarified, won handily in a field that included the city clerk and two write-in candidates who he had faced four years ago.
A three-line amendment on a three-page bill added nearly 46,000 students to Gov. John Bel Edwards' measure to ban the paddling of public school students with disabilities.

The little-noticed change to House Bill 79 means that nearly one out of five students will be off limits for corporal amendment, well above the original target.

Even the sponsors of the bill did not know how much the amendment would expand the prohibition in a state where corporal punishment remains an option, especially in rural areas.

+2 Paddling students with disabilities in Louisiana is about to be illegal A bill that would ban paddling of public school students with disabilities cleared its final

But Rep. Franklin Foil, R-Baton Rouge, who the governor asked to back the measure, said he was pleased with the addition after initial concerns that it might make the bill too controversial. "I would rather have the bill broad to cover those who are vulnerable," Foil said.

The House had rejected a separate proposal  House Bill 497  that would outlaw corporal punishment entirely, amid arguments voiced for years that local school systems should make that call.

"We did not want to make my bill too broad," Foil said.

While 31 states have outlawed paddling, it remains an option in 38 of 69 school districts in Louisiana, including the Livingston Parish School District.

About 16 percent of students paddled had disabilities in the 2015-16 school year, according to figures compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The legislation, which Edwards included as part of his modest public schools agenda, was originally aimed at students with Individual Education Plans, or IEPs. That includes about 88,000 students with autism, speech or language impairment, developmental delay and emotional disturbance, according to state figures.

The change that expanded the students covered by more than 50 percent was added in the Senate Education Committee by Sen. Mike Walsworth, R-West Monroe.

Walsworth said that that, before the alteration, the proposed law was drawing too fine a line, and that lots of other students with medical issues should be off limits to paddling.

His amendment expanded the bill to include students with Individual Accommodation Plans, or IAPs, also known as 504 students after the 1973 federal law aimed at assisting them. That added 45,638 students, according to figures from the state Department of Education. More than half are those with attention deficit hyperactive disorder, officials said.

Walsworth said that, while some medical issues are obvious, others are known only to school officials and the amendment would give those systems needed flexibility.

The scoop on state politics in your inbox Get the Louisiana politics insider details once a week from us. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

In some cases, he said, discipline problems could erupt simply because a parent forgot to give a child medicine before school. "Just because he is acting up does not mean he should be paddled," Walsworth said.

Foil, Walsworth and others knew the amendment would widen the scope of the governor's bill.

However, no one seemed to know exactly how much.

"I don't think we ever got a number," Walsworth said.

Senate Education Committee Chairman Blade Morrish, R-Jennings, said the same thing.

Despite widening the ban on paddling, and years of defeats for bills to make all corporal punishment illegal, the expanded legislation sailed through the Legislature with questions but no major pushback.

It won Senate approval 36-0 one week before adjournment and the House endorsed it 89-0 with two days left.

The governor on Thursday night cited the measure as one of the success stories in a session that ended in chaos, forcing a special session to approve an operating budget.

Officials of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which favors an outright ban on corporal punishment, supported Walsworth's amendment, said Sarah Omojola, policy counsel for the group.

"This is a welcomed and long-overdue policy change that will ensure that our most vulnerable students are protected from this cruel and ineffective practice," Omojola said in a statement issued when the bill won final approval.

The ban includes using physical force to discipline a student with or without an object. That includes hitting, paddling, striking, slapping or any other physical force that causes pain or physical discomfort.

The bill excludes students who are gifted or talented.

Foil said he heard from parents who wanted children protected from paddling sparked by medical issues beyond the original intent of the plan.

"I do want to protect children who do not understand the reason for the punishment," he said.
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The village of Kongiganak, population 439, had half of its eligible residents vaccinated with at least one dose as of April 9.



BETHEL, Alaska (AP)  A village in Alaska has mandated that only fully vaccinated people will be allowed into the community's stores and businesses.

Kongiganak had 50% of its eligible residents vaccinated with at least one dose as of April 9, KYUK-AM reported Wednesday, citing the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation.





. . .
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - April 19, 2021) - Embark Delta Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Embark Health Inc. ("Embark" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the Company has successfully completed its first shipment of products to the province of Saskatchewan through our arrangement with Open Fields Distribution, Embark's wholesale distribution partner in the province and one of the leading cannabis distributors in Saskatchewan. Embark's products will be available online and at selected retail locations throughout the province.

The Hank Co. ("Hank") is part of Embark's portfolio of 2.0 solventless concentrate brands. In addition to securing Hank's Mid and High THC Bubble Hash, Open Fields Distribution will be distributing Hank's Pressed Hash. Embark will continue to rollout additional concentrate products within the provinces combined with the launch of other product Cannabis 2.0 SKUs in the very near future.





To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/7351/80811_6f63b9eb4449da02_001full.jpg

"The Embark team is pleased to share that our best-in-class bubble hash and pressed hash is available in the province of Saskatchewan," said Dr. Luc C. Duchesne, CEO of Embark. "We are enthusiastic about working with the SLGA and Open Fields Distribution as our distribution partner in the province. Embark's expanding presence to Saskatchewan is another example of Embark's capacity to deliver our best-in-class concentrates such as the Hank Bubble Hash and Pressed Hash. Additionally, we are delighted that we will be supplying our newly launched Cannabis 2.0 products, including The Hazel Co. Hash Stick, and Distilled + Infused Liquid Beverage Shot."





To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/7351/80811_6f63b9eb4449da02_002full.jpg

The Hazel Co. ("Hazel") is also launching in Saskatchewan with the shipment of the signature product, the Hazel Hash Stick. Launching in Saskatchewan and Ontario, the Hazel Hash Sticks are a unique solventless concentrate for discerning cannabis connoisseurs and those who wish to expand their "go-to" options for concentrates. The Hazel Hash Stick is a solventless concentrate in a pre-roll form, hand-crafted into a 1-gram hollow tube. The hand-crafted hash stick comes without paper or filter; it can be enjoyed as is, without the use of additional specialized tools such as dab rigs or pens.





To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/7351/80811_6f63b9eb4449da02_003full.jpg

Distilled + Infused is Embark's first product offering in the beverage category and comes in two different SKUs. The initial launch includes the THC-infused Liquid Shot and the CBD-Infused Liquid Shot. Both options are unflavoured and can be mixed with the adult consumers beverage of choice. Embark will be launching flavoured shots in May starting with the strawberry lemonade and raspberry flavours; both of which are all-natural.

Packaged in a convenient "grab and go" option, all varieties contain Embark Nano's proprietary bitter blocker, which eliminates any bitter taste typically found in current market offerings. When combined with your preferred drink, the Liquid Beverage Shot results in a clear, translucent blend that will not compromise taste or flavour and requires no stirring. The Distilled + Infused Liquid Shot is ideal for those who desire an alternative to traditional cannabis consumption or beverage alternative to alcoholic beverages such as spirits, wine, or beer.

Embark will be launching the Distilled + Infused Powdered Beverage Mix in Q4 of 2021. The Powdered Beverage Mix will be available in lemon, lime and orange flavours.

About Embark Health Inc.

Embark Health Inc. is a leader in solventless cannabis extraction, with a focus on the formulation and production of advanced 2.0 products for the B2B, medical and adult-use markets. Embark continues to be at the forefront of production of concentrate products including bubble hash, traditional pressed hash, rosin, and dry sift. With the acquisition of Embark Nano Inc. ("Embark Nano", formerly, Axiomm Technologies Ltd.) in Q3 of 2020, Embark is preparing to launch the next generation of Cannabis 2.0 products. The acquired portfolio of products and formulations support the mass production and distribution of advanced 2.0 products including cannabis-infused beverages, topicals, edibles and water-soluble powders. For more information, please visit www.embarknano.com.

It is Embark's mandate to pursue best-in-class production processes resulting in premium quality commercial and consumer extraction products. Embark Health Inc. is dedicated to unleashing the full potential of the cannabis plant through scientific approaches to extraction and the production of quality products to enhance everyday life. For more information, please visit www.embarkhealthinc.com.

Investor Relations Contact:

IR@embarkhealthinc.com

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws including statements regarding the ability to leverage its existing Cannabis 2.0 products for the Canadian market, access to future markets, Embark's ability to increase production and offer new products and services following receipt of applicable licences, the continued business-to-business activities of Embark, and the effects of the aforementioned activities on the operational and financial condition of Embark. Although Embark believes in light of the estimates by management, current conditions and expected future developments and other factors, that the expectations reflected in this forward-looking information are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on them. Accordingly, Embark can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Actual results and developments may differ materially from those contemplated by these statements depending on, among other things, changes in economic conditions or financial markets; regulatory delays; increases in costs; litigation; legislative, environmental and other judicial, regulatory, political and competitive developments; and technological or operational difficulties. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect our forward-looking information. The statements in this press release are made as of the date of this release. The Company assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements, or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those reflected in the forward-looking statements unless and until required by securities laws applicable to the Company.

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO US NEWS WIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES

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In honor of the 93rd annual Academy Awards on Sunday (April 25), lets look back at some Oscar winners with New Orleans connections.

Elia Kazans 1950 Panic in the Streets was the first Oscar winner to be filmed entirely on location here. It earned an Oscar in the now-defunct best story category.

It would be 1991 before New Orleans would appear on the Oscar winner list, when Oliver Stones JFK, filmed here and based on a book by former Orleans Parish District Attorney Jim Garrison, competed for eight Academy Awards. It won two, for cinematography and film editing.

Three actors won Oscars for their roles in movies filmed here: Susan Sarandon, who starred as Sister Helen Prejean in Dead Man Walking, Halle Berry, for "Monster's Ball and Jamie Foxx for Ray. New Orleans native Patricia Clarkson earned a best supporting actress nomination in 2004 for Pieces of April.

Blakeview: Taking a trip through Hollywood South Beginning this week and continuing through the month of August, well take a trip through Hollywood South, revisiting some of the movies filme

Quentin Tarantinos Django Unchained, which was shot here, won the 2013 Oscar for best original screenplay. The locally-filmed Beasts of the Southern Wild also competed for four Academy Awards that year.

In 2015, 12 Years a Slave became the first movie filmed substantially in New Orleans to win best picture. That same year, the locally-shot Dallas Buyers Club was also nominated for best picture. Co-stars Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto won best actor and best supporting actor.

There are several New Orleanians to root for at this years Oscars. Terence Blanchard and Jon Batiste are both nominated in the best original score category. New Orleans-based filmmaker Garrett Bradley is nominated in the best documentary feature category. The film One Night in Miami, which was shot in New Orleans, is competing in three categories: best adapted screenplay, best supporting actor (Leslie Odom Jr.) and best original song (Odom, for Speak Now).
[April 19, 2021] NJPRF and Overdeck Family Foundation Partner with TCNJ to Launch Summer Tutoring Corps Program to Tackle COVID-Related Learning Loss

EWING, N.J., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- To accelerate student learning and address COVID-related learning loss, the New Jersey Pandemic Relief Fund, in conjunction with Overdeck Family Foundation, announce that they've partnered with The College of New Jersey's (TCNJ) School of Education to launch the NJ Summer Tutoring Corps Program in late June. The program will provide tutoring this summer for thousands of K5 students who have experienced pandemic-related learning loss. TCNJ designed the NJ Summer Tutoring Corps Program based on best practices from other statewide initiatives and research that has consistently demonstrated the power of small-group tutoring to address students' academic and social-emotional needs and the potential of summer to offer extended learning time. "NJPRF is proud to collaborate with Overdeck Family Foundation and TCNJ to help New Jersey's students bridge the learning gap created by the COVID pandemic," said New Jersey First Lady Tammy Murphy, Founding Chair of the New Jersey Pandemic Relief Fund. "TCNJ's incredible history in training the next generation of New Jersey educators makes them the perfect partner and facilitator for this crucial program." "The learning loss caused by the pandemic is nothing short of an emergency, and it is imperative to address it before the coming school year," said Laura Overdeck, chair of Overdeck Family Foundation and a founding board member of the NJPRF. "It has been an honor to work with The College of New Jersey, the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, and others to create a tutoring program designed to accelerate student learning and help students recover both academically and socio-emotionally from the pandemic. Their futures depend on it." The program will recruit tutors from teacher preparation programs at TCNJ and other New Jersey universities, as well as substitute teachers, paraprofessionals, and community members with the appropriate background. Tutors will be matched with children attending summer programming at Boys and Girls Clubs of America, YMCAs, and other community organizations for eight weeks of mathematics instruction. ELA instruction could be added in the future. TCNJ will take on all program management, including hiring tutors, selecting the curriculum, training tutors, and evaluating the program's success. The NJ Summer Tutoring Corps Program is made possible through a combined $2.4 million grant from the New Jersey Pandemic Relief Fund and John and Laura Overdeck. It is expected to reach over 2,000 students during Summer 2021. "New Jersey's reputation as having one of the strongest public school systems in the nation can obscure the fact that some of our youth have always been left behind," said Suzanne McCotter, dean of TCNJ's School of Education. "The learning gaps among New Jersey students are not new, but the disparities have been exacerbated bythe COVID-19 pandemic. This model creates a tutoring program that can be embedded in established networks of community-based organizations in high-need communities, providing access to tutoring for the families and children who need it most."



Through the NJ Summer Tutoring Corps Program, each tutor will work with groups of three to four students in one-hour sessions, meeting three times per week. This offers students consistent relationships and ongoing assessment of learning growth. A recent study found that the majority of New Jersey's students in grades 3-8 at the start of the 2020-21 school year were not on grade level due to COVID. In some New Jersey school districts, students have alternated between remote and in-person learning, while in others, students have been fully remote for the entire school year. Regardless of which method of learning students have been a part of, bridging the digital divide to provide equal access to technology, learning-related equipment, and other crucial materials has been a focus for NJPRF and the State of New Jersey this past year.

TCNJ hopes to extend the NJ Summer Tutoring Corps Program into the 2021-2022 academic year, pending funding availability, allowing tutors and site coordinators to continue working with students for 10 hours per week, primarily during after-school hours. You can find more information about the program here: https://education.tcnj.edu/summer-tutoring/. If you are interested in supporting or participating in the NJ Summer Tutoring Corps Program, please contact Eileen Heddy at TutorNJ-group@tcnj.edu. The College of New Jersey

Founded in 1855 as the New Jersey State Normal School, TCNJ delivers an exceptionally high-quality education, in a collaborative and supportive environment. The college has the sixth-highest four-year graduation rate among all public colleges and universities. It is ranked by Money as one of the top 15 public colleges "most likely to pay off financially," and U.S. News & World Report rates it the No. 1 public institution among regional universities in the northeast. The college is situated on 289 tree-lined acres in suburban Ewing Township, New Jersey, in close proximity to both New York City and Philadelphia. A strong liberal arts core forms the foundation for a wealth of degree programs offered through the college's seven schools: Arts and Communication; Business; Education; Engineering; Humanities and Social Sciences; Nursing, Health, and Exercise Science; and Science. New Jersey Pandemic Relief Fund (NJPRF)

The New Jersey Pandemic Relief Fund (NJPRF) was launched in March 2020 to marshal resources to meet critical needs and fight the economic and social impact of COVID-19 within New Jersey. Over the past year, NJPRF has raised over $65 million from 62,000 individual donors. NJPRF, to date, has also allocated over $56 million to over 500 organizations across the State of New Jersey. One hundred percent of every dollar received online by NJPRF goes to organizations that provide essential services to those in need and assist those on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. NJPRF is proud to be hosted by the Community Foundation of New Jersey, which has been serving the needs of New Jersey non-profits and philanthropists for more than 40 years. To learn more about NJPRF, please visit: www.NJPRF.org, and make sure to follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. Overdeck Family Foundation

Overdeck Family Foundation was established in 2011 by John and Laura Overdeck, with the goal of providing all children the opportunity to unlock their potential. The Foundation focuses exclusively on enhancing education, funding efforts both inside and outside of school in the areas of early childhood, informal STEM education, and K-9 programs that include supporting educators and student-centered learning environments. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/njprf-and-overdeck-family-foundation-partner-with-tcnj-to-launch-summer-tutoring-corps-program-to-tackle-covid-related-learning-loss-301271715.html SOURCE New Jersey Pandemic Relief Fund

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MINNEAPOLIS, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- After a year's hiatus, college students are back for a national entrepreneurship competition that seeks to find the next big idea. And with a national economy recovering from COVID-19, those big ideas are more needed than ever.

Twenty-five teams will compete virtually later this week in the University of St. Thomas-hosted e-Fest competition. The event will award more than $215,000 in prizes to jumpstart their business ideas, ranging from energy-harvesting vehicle shock absorbers to a hyperpigmentation-relieving deodorant designed for women of color.

Sponsored by the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation, the Schulze School of Entrepreneurship at the University of St. Thomas, and EIX.org (a non-profit online platform for entrepreneurship education), e-Fest celebrates student teams who submitted the top business pitches in a preliminary online competition. At e-Fest, student teams compete in a Pitch Slam, an Innovation Challenge and the featured event, the Schulze Entrepreneurship Challenge.

Last year's event was cancelled due to the pandemic, although the Schulze Family Foundation still awarded $75,000 to finalist teams. With this year's award, the competition will have awarded more than $1 million since it started in 2017.

With their ability to drive innovation, social change and create new jobs, the roles of these entrepreneurs are critically important as a devastated global economy fights its way back from the coronavirus pandemic.

"Entrepreneurs will be more important than ever as we build back our economy," said Laura Dunham, Associate Dean of Schulze School of Entrepreneurship. "It will be the work of entrepreneurs and innovators to reimagine a society and economy that works for all its citizens, that creates opportunity for all, that fosters equity, fairness and justice. It will be the work of entrepreneurs to create the businesses and generate the jobs that will restore and revitalize our economy."

Here are the 25 finalists:

AeroPest, Drexel University

Base2Base, US Airforce Academy

Boosted Chews, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Brave Virtual Worlds, University of Virginia

Cress Health, Hofstra University

EthioPay, Georgia State University

Finalysis, George Washington University

Hydrova, Georgetown University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Keyrift, Florida Gulf Coast University

KicksTrader, University of Virginia

Magna-Shox, Colorado State University

MassApply, Virginia Tech

MELA, George Washington University

Mo.Na Gems, Johns Hopkins University

Nutrivide, Rutgers University

Pill Skills, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Renter Chat, Northeastern University

Safet E Sense, Seton Hill University

SCOUTS, California State University-Monterey Bay

sidekickk, Grove City College

SPAITR, University of New Hampshire

Stormie Seas, Florida Gulf Coast University

Telo, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Virgo, University of Northern Iowa

VisUplan, University of St. Thomas

Schulze School of Entrepreneurship

The Schulze School at the University of St. Thomas cultivates the next generation of entrepreneurial problem solvers and innovators. The school offers undergraduate and graduate programs in entrepreneurship and corporate innovation, as well as community resources to support new ventures, family businesses and corporate entrepreneurs.

Media Contact: Vineeta Sawkar

[email protected]

651-962-6404

SOURCE Schulze School of Entrepreneurship
A new tranche of 511,290 doses of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine arrives in Romania on Monday, announces the National COVID-19 Vaccination Coordination Committee (CNCAV), informs a press release sent to AGERPRES.

They will be delivered by air and will arrive at the Otopeni, Cluj-Napoca and Timisoara airports.

Transport to storage centers is provided by the manufacturing company, including by land.

Vaccines are carried safely in special containers in carbonated ice and sealed foil.

So far, our country has received 3,886,019 doses of vaccine produced by Pfizer, and 3,362,997 have already been used to immunize the population, says CNCAV.

The vaccination centers will use both doses received by Romania from the current tranche as well as the previous tranches, based on requests sent to the National Center and regional storage centers, through the county and Bucharest public health directorates.
New Delhi: The United Kingdom (UK) Prime Minister Boris Johnson's visit to India has been cancelled yet again due to the prevailing COVID-19 situation, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said on Monday (April 19, 2021).

In response to the media queries on the upcoming visit of the UK PM, the MEA stated, "In view of the prevailing Covid situation, it has been decided by mutual agreement that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom will not visit India next week."

The official statement added that the two sides will be holding a virtual meeting in the coming days to launch plans for a transformed India-U.K. relationship.

"Both leaders attach the highest importance to taking the India-U.K. partnership to its fullest potential and propose to remain in close touch in this regard and look forward to an in-person meeting later in the year."

Johnson's visit to India was scheduled for April 26 and would have been his first visit abroad since the UK left the European Union.

The Prime Minister's spokesperson at 10 Downing Street had recently said, "We have been in close contact with the Indian government about the Prime Minister's upcoming visit in light of the Covid situation in India. As a result of these discussions, the Prime Minister has made the decision to reduce the length of the visit, due to take place at the end of this month, to a shorter programme in New Delhi."

Earlier, the UK PM was scheduled to visit the country in January, as the Chief Guest for the Republic Day celebrations. However, it was cancelled due to the national lockdown in the UK.

"In light of the national lockdown announced last night, and the speed at which the new coronavirus variant is spreading, the Prime Minister said that it was important for him to remain in the UK so he can focus on the domestic response to the virus," the statement had read from a UK spokeswoman.

Meanwhile, the second wave of COVID-19 in India has taken the country's total caseload to over 1.50 crore, the figures from the Union Health Ministry showed on Monday (April 19, 2021) morning.


Cllr Mary Hilda Cavanagh told councillors at today's virtual meeting of Castlecomer Municipal District council that two of North Kilkenny's most iconic historical landmarks are facing the risk of 'imminent collapse'.

Grangefertagh Round Tower and Clomantagh Castle were the sites cited by the Fine Gael councillor.

"We have one of the best round tower structures in Ireland located in Grangefertagh and it needs to be addressed," she said.

Kilkenny County Council Representative Martin Prendiville told councillors that he would raise the issue of Grangefertagh Round Tower with the Office of Public Works (OPW) and likewise will seek contact with the owners of the Clomantagh site.

"There has been a dedicated committee established in Clomantagh attempting to tackle this very issue and they are seeking the relevant funding to help put it right," Cllr Cavanagh added.

Cllr Pat Fitzpatrick told the meeting that both structures are a "very important part of North Kilkenny heritage" and that their upkeep is integral to driving tourism to North Kilkenny going forward.
Two people have died after a crash involving a Tesla in Texas, with authorities saying there was no one in the drivers seat.

A Harris County constable told television stations in Houston that there was a person in the front passenger seat and another in a rear passenger seat after the crash in the Houston suburb of Spring.

Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman said authorities are certain that no one was driving the car at the time of the crash.

They feel very confident just with the positioning of the bodies after the impact that there was no-one driving that vehicle, Constable Herman told KHOU-TV.

It is not clear if Teslas driver-assist system was being used.

Deputies said the car was traveling fast and failed to navigate a turn before running off the road, hitting a tree, and bursting into flames on Saturday night.

The identity of the victims had not been released by Sunday afternoon. KHOU reported that one was 69 and the other was 59.

Tesla did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

Federal traffic safety officials are investigating several Tesla crashes in which the vehicles Autopilot function may have been used, including crashes in which cars drove under tractor-trailers.

The company warns customers that its driver-assist system, called Autopilot, is not an autonomous-driving program, and that they must pay attention and be ready to take control of the vehicle.

However, the National Transportation Safety Board said last year the design of the system allows drivers to avoid paying attention and fails to limit where Autopilot can be used.
Sense of winning under difficult conditions and a loving life.

Malcolm Lloyd Dubber revisits the story of naval officer, lieutenant commander Ewan Jones and nurse Hazel Almonde in his latest publication titled Signal from Malta (published by AuthorHouse UK).

A sequel to Return to Malta, this book finds the romance between Ewan and Hazel caught up in the closing days of World War II. Now a married couple, Ewan and Hazel are involved in naval intelligence operations to capture for escaping Nazis. Hazel is assigned to lead a party of nurses to Italy, while Ewan patrols the Albanian coast in search of a German SS Panzer division. Ironically, the Nazis have enlisted help from the Russian secret police (NKVD) in exchange for weapons communist insurgents in the Balkans. A vengeful SS Officer abducts the group of nurses and what follows is a dramatic rescue.

Signal from Malta will appeal to those who are interested in a WWII romance and drama based in a Mediterranean setting. It will also draw to both old and young generation who have not yet experienced some of the more obscure episodes of the Second World War.

When asked what he wants readers to take away from the book, Dubber says, Sense of winning under difficult conditions and a loving life.

Visit https://www.authorhouse.com/en-gb/bookstore/bookdetails/821927-signal-from-malta to purchase a copy.

Signal from Malta

By Malcolm Lloyd Dubber

Hardcover | 6 x 9in | 270 pages | ISBN 9781665585682

Softcover | 6 x 9in | 270 pages | ISBN 9781665585675

E-Book | 270 pages | ISBN 9781665585668

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the Author

Malcolm Lloyd Dubber is a scientist, specializing in explosives chemistry, CBRNe and emergency planning. He gained a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) degree in Explosives Chemistry from the City University, London. He is a Chartered Scientist (CSci), Chartered Chemist (CChem), Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry (MRSC), and a Fellow of the Emergency Planning Society (FEPS). He is a former U.K. Home Office Civil Defence Scientific advisor (stood down in 1992). He has the unusual combination of working with explosives and radioactive substances that led him to work at the U.K.s Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) Aldermaston. He has worked as a local government emergency planning officer and has undertook the preparation of special emergency plans, such as Chernobyl, Ukraine. Although experienced in writing reports and plans, he has ventured into the world of writing fiction, mainly based on life-time experiences, characters encountered, places visited, and set against suitably fictionalized real scenarios. He has written technical articles for professional journals and lectured at the U.K. cabinet offices Emergency Planning College (EPC), Easingwold, and at international conferences, such as the International Disaster and Emergency Resilience (IDER) conference, where he was a committee member (2005-2012). His first novel, Return to Malta, was set in WWII 1942 Malta.

AuthorHouse, an Author Solutions, Inc. self-publishing imprint, is a leading provider of book publishing, marketing, and bookselling services for authors around the globe and offers the industrys only suite of Hollywood book-to-film services. Committed to providing the highest level of customer service, AuthorHouse assigns each author personal publishing and marketing consultants who provide guidance throughout the process. Headquartered in Bloomington, Indiana, AuthorHouse celebrates over 23 years of service to authors. For more information or to publish a book visit authorhouse.co.uk or call 0-800-014-8641.
Burma Villagers Flee Heavy Fighting Between KIA and Myanmar Military

The villagers at Kachin Baptist Convention in Momauk Township on Monday. / Bhamo Platform

More than 1,500 villagers from Momauk Township in Kachin State have fled their homes following fierce fighting between the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and Myanmars military in the previous week.

The displaced are from Si Hut, Kone Law, Myo Haung, Myo Thit, Shwe Myaung, Namt Lan, Mone Khat, Naung Kon and Nant Ngoe villages in Momauk Township.

An administrator from one of the villages told The Irrawaddy: Everyone is fleeing. Nobody dares to stay in the village when heavy artillery is being fired frequently.

Military tensions have been rising. Villagers decided to flee as fighting could break out at any time, including the possibility of bombing by fighter jets, he said.

Reverend Seng Awng from the Kachin Baptist Convention in Momauk Township told The Irrawaddy that the church had sheltered at least 150 households or around 600 people.

They came to us because they are Baptists. Others took refuge at monasteries, he said.

As some people were killed by artillery, they fled the villages. They did not have time to take any belongings. We provided what they needed, including accommodation and meals, Rev. Seng Awng added.

Buddhist monasteries and Catholic churches in Bhamo Township also provided shelter for about 900 Momauk villagers.

Military tension has risen in Momauk since the KIA attacked two police outposts and a military base at the Tarpein Bridge on April 11.

Four villagers were killed by the militarys artillery.

Fighting has also been reported near the strategic Alaw Bum base. In late March the KIA seized the key position near the Chinese border, prompting the military to launch several airstrikes to recapture the base.

The powerful rebel army still occupies the base and an estimated 100 junta soldiers, including a battalion commander, have been killed during heavy fighting.



You may also like these stories:

Thai PM Wont Join ASEAN Summit on Myanmar: Bangkok Post

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Myanmar Villagers Battle Junta Troops to Free Detainees
Islamabad, April 19 : Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has lashed out at political and religious parties in the country for misusing religion for their own personal gains.

"In our country, it is a great misfortune that many times our political parties and religious parties use Islam wrongly and use it such that they deal damage to their own country.

"So I am saddened that many times this love for the Holy Prophet and Islam is misused. Does the government not worry about this? That when there is disrespect of Holy Prophet's honour then aren't we pained?" he said.

Prime Minister Imran Khan's statement comes amid raging violence by protestors of the recently proscribed organisation Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) has left cities paralysed and claimed lives of locals and security personnel.

The TLP's main demand is release of their leader Saad Hussain Rizvi, who was arrested hours after he announced a march against the government, demanding immediate expulsion of the French Ambassador and severing of ties with France due to the blasphemous cariacatures of Prophet Mohammad and the statement by French President Emmanuel Macron on freedom of expression.

The TLP claimed that several of its protestors were shot dead by security forces, while it took at least 11 policemen hostage after an attack on a police station in Lahore. The officials were later released after negotiations with the government.

"Violent protests in Pakistan will make no difference to the country where the blasphemous act has occurred," said PM Imran Khan, adding that such actions did not benefit Islam in any way.

He said that he is in contact with other Muslim leaders to join together and put forward a case of Prophet Mohammad's honour at international forums, such as the European Union and the United Nations.

"When we begin a campaign by bringing together all Muslim countries, it will make a difference and change will come in the West. Otherwise, we will continue vandalising the country and it will make no difference to the Western world," he said.

Khan also demanded the governments of the western countries to "penalise those, who deliberately indulge in such abuse and hate under guise of freedom of speech clearly lack moral sense and courage to apologize to the 1.3 billion Muslims for causing this hurt".

"We demand an apology from these extremists," he asserted.

"I also call on Western governments who have outlawed any negative comment on the holocaust to use the same standards to penalise those deliberately spreading their message of hate against Muslim by abusing out Prophet (PBUH)," he added.

Imran Khan also maintained that his government will not allow anyone to challenge the writ of the state through violence and attacking public and the law enforcing agencies, asserting that "no one is above the law and the Constitution".
Meyersdale takes down Shade for fifth district title in six seasons

Meyersdale took down Shade in the District 5 Class A softball championship on Friday, marking its fifth overall title win in the last six years.
Asking for Barabbas is a supremely bad idea

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Im sure you know the story. Its the portion of Christs passion narrative, recorded in all four gospels, where Pilate attempts multiple times to set Jesus free from the illegal grip of the Jewish religious leaders, and finally he tries a legal maneuver that allows him to free a current prisoner.

He gives the people a cant-miss comparison choice between Jesus and a man named Barabbas, who is labeled a notorious prisoner in Matthew (27:16), an insurrectionist and murderer in Mark and Luke (15:6; 23:19), and a robber in John (18:40). On one hand, you have a guilty, violent, murderer and on the other you have the innocent, peaceful, sinless Jesus of Nazareth.

What seems like a braindead choice to Pilate ends up going south fast: But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to ask him to release Barabbas for them instead. Answering again, Pilate said to them, Then what shall I do with Him whom you call the King of the Jews? They shouted back, Crucify Him! But Pilate said to them, Why, what evil has He done? But they shouted all the more, Crucify Him! Wishing to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas for them, and after having Jesus scourged, he handed Him over to be crucified (Mark 15:11-15).

The stark comparison between Christ and Barabbas becomes even more spiritually significant when one discovers the meaning behind the latters name. Bar means son of and abba is father in the Greek.

The crowd asked for the wrong son of the father[1].

Perhaps no event in Scripture depicts the words of Isaiah 5:20 better: Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!

Choosing Barabbas reveals your spiritual character

In 2015, 75% of Americans identified as Christian, with more recent polls pegging that number at 65%. Even with such a decline, if nearly two-thirds of the population is truly Christian, then the shape in which we find our country is truly a head-scratcher.

When given a choice, spurred on by a minority of radical voices, the crowd still seems to ask for Barabbas.

The woke mobs we have today are asphyxiating our society as they cry for the guilty to be set free (and in record numbers today), while innocent unborn babies are sentenced to death. Crime is celebrated while justice is ignored and those who enforce the law are persecuted. Political rioting and massive protests are welcomed while churches are barricaded with three layers of chain link fence and their pastors imprisoned by the government for daring to meet and worship God.

Enabling these travesties are the current politicians who are the spitting image of Pilate. Rather than doing what is right, their goal (other than staying in power) is perfectly summed up in the verse, wishing to satisfy the crowd (Mark 15:15), a sad statement that should be framed and hung behind their office desks.

Instead of making Godly decisions, the Barabbas-styled choices Americans make today far more resemble a set of lyrics from AC/DCs song Hells Bells:

I'll give you black sensations up and down your spine

If you're into evil you're a friend of mine

See my white light flashing as I split the night

Cause if good's on the left,

Then I'm stickin' to the right

Choosing Barabbas comes with consequences

Were constantly reminded in Scripture that asking for Barabbas results in terrible consequences. Paul simply describes the aftermath for Barabbas-seekers as those, whose end will be according to their deeds (2 Cor. 11:15).

For the Jewish people of Jesus time, embracing a guilty killer and murdering their prophesied Messiah ended with Titus and the Roman army destroying Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and a scattering of the Jewish nation, which was a fulfillment of Jesuss words: Behold, your house is being left to you desolate! (Matt. 23:38).

For us today, the upside-down culture were living in was predicted (ironically) by the atheist Nietzsche who said that, since God was dead, a universal madness would globally consume the world. Theologically speaking, the term that describes our current state is abandonment wrath where God simply pulls back from those who have rejected Him and gives them over to their corrupt desires (see Romans 1:18-32).

In other words, Gods judgment isnt coming; its already here.

The remedy for this awful predicament starts with each one of us. The process involves you and me examining our own lives, uncovering how we embrace the wrong son of the father each day, and repenting of that decision. Then we can collectively work towards making more disciples of Christ out of the crowd whose hearts currently crave Barabbas instead of Jesus.

[1] Some manuscripts and early church fathers append Jesus to Barabbas name, but no definitive proof exists of this being his full name.
The Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Mr Samuel Abu Jinapor, has lauded the bipartisan nature of discussions at the National Dialogue on Small Scale Mining at the Accra International Conference Centre.

He, therefore, commended the leaders of political parties for their participation and support for the two-day event.



"This is a true Ghanaian adventure. This clearly shows that with a bipartisan attitude,we can achieve a lot for the country," he said in his opening remarks on day two of

the dialogue.



Plenary



He, among other things, cited the chairing of the first plenary session by a former Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Mr Inusah Fuseini, as an example of the

commitment of political parties to the fight against illegal mining.



The dialogue was opened last Wednesday by the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, who among other things, called for consensus building on issues regarding

mining.



It is on the theme: "Sustainable Small Scale Mining for National Development", it is being attended by chiefs, representatives of political parties, Parliamentary Select

Committees on Lands and Forestry, Mines and Energy and Environment, civil society organisations, industry players, among other groups, and personalities.



Chiefs



Mr Jinapor also lauded the chiefs for their commitment and sitting through out the dialogue, adding that it was a clear testimony of patriotism and nationalism.



The minister said the enthusiasm with which the discussions had been held was quite remarkable and commendable.



"Yesterday, I think we remember the spirited nature with which the contributions, observations, critique and inputs were made," he said.



He, on behalf of the President and the people of Ghana, thanked the participants for coming together to make their inputs heard on issues concerning small scale mining.



"The feedback we are getting from across the country is that people are excited about the dialogue," he said.



Making a contribution at one of the sessions, the Leader and Founder of the Ghana Freedom Party (GFP),Madam Akua Donkor, praised the President for the dialogue.



However, she said, she wished the discussions were held in the local language so that majority of the people involved in small scale mining would appreciate what was being said.









Source: Graphiconline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Byron Bay locals are demanding Netflix cancel a new reality TV series about the glamorous coastal community in northern New South Wales.

Dozens of protesters staged a paddle out against the docu-soap titled 'Byron Baes' on Tuesday morning, while other locals displayed placards that read 'give Netflix the flick' and 'consult traditional owners'.

Ben Gordon, owner of The Byron Bay General Store, is leading calls to snub the Netflix production - and asking other local businesses to do the same.

'They've simply turned up unannounced and they are proposing to drag our name through the mud, and make millions of dollars without offering anything back to the community,' he told Today hosts Karl Stefanovic and Allison Langdon.

Byron Bay locals are seen gathering in protest against the Netflix reality show on Tuesday

Dozens of residents staged a paddle out against the reality series on Tuesday morning

'Our community not your commodity': Byron Bay locals are boycotting a Netflix reality series titled Byron Baes

Byron Baes has been announced as the new Australian Netflix Original and will run for eight episodes in total

Mr Gordon said the prospective reality series is 'a complete misrepresentation of who we are as a community'.

'Today, what we've seen, is the real Byron, the community coming together for issues that we believe in,' he said.

'What they're proposing is manufactured drama, gossip and bickering about how many likes we have on Instagram.

'There's no one in the show that's actually from Byron.

'They're simply trying to use our name and image for profit, and it's not hard to see why we are upset about this.'

There are now more than 7,000 signatures on a petition named 'Boycott Byron Baes' - but the Netflix series is seemingly undeterred by the campaign.

A Byron Bay resident holds a sign that reads 'you don't get Byron' during the protest on Tuesday

Ben Gordon, owner of The Byron Bay General Store, is leading calls to snub the Netflix production - and asking other local businesses to do the same

An Instagram account, which appears to be the TV show, commented on a picture of locals protesting the series.

'The more of this exposure, the better for the (already approved) show,' the comment reads.

'We invite you all to be part of the filming.

'Byron Bae is a very special location and many of the cast, crew and businesses are local!'

A press release for the program describes Byron Baes as a 'docu-soap series' and calls it 'our love letter to Byron Bay' that will also offer audience 'fights, flings and heartbreak'.

A petition to boycott 'Byron Baes' popped up online after Netflix announced the town in the Northern Rivers region of NSW would be 'the perfect setting for our next Australian Netflix Original'

Stefanovic said the show came to be because Byron Bay became 'so popular'. 'I like to think the Hemsworths had something to do with this,' he said

It continues: 'It's not just Chris [Hemsworth] and Zac [Efron]'s backyard; it's the playground of more celebrity-adjacent influencers than you can poke a selfie-stick at.'

Stefanovic said the show came to be because Byron Bay became 'so popular'.

'I like to think the Hemsworths had something to do with this,' he said.

'It became such a spot, a cool spot to be, with everything that's going on there, with really cool people, that everyone wanted a piece of it and now they all want to get their Instagram in front of the pubs there and all the cool coffee shops.

'You're a victim of your own popularity.'

Mr Gordon agreed with Stefanovic that the coastal town's popularity had reached an all time high.

'All our popularity has culminated to this point which is a bit of a wake up call for all of us, myself included,' he said.

There are now more than 7,000 signatures on the 'Boycott Byron Baes' petition

A press release for the Netflix show said: 'It's not just Chris [Hemsworth] and Zac [Efron]'s backyard; it's the playground of more celebrity-adjacent influencers than you can poke a selfie-stick at'. Pictured: A protest poster

Byron Baes is being produced by Eureka Productions.

Emma Lamb, who is known for her work on Married At First Sight and The Real Housewives of Sydney, will serve as the executive producer.

Chris Culvenor, Co-CEO of Eureka Productions said: 'With a compelling cast, spectacular settings and some truly addictive drama, Byron Baes has all the binge-worthy ingredients.

'Eureka is thrilled to be working with Netflix on this love letter to one of the world's most perfect playgrounds.'

Mr Gordon earlier told Daily Mail Australia he was contacted by the show's producers to feature his cafe in the series.

He declined their request to film at the venue and urged other businesses to do the same.

Zac Efron reportedly met his Australian girlfriend Vanessa Valladares while she was working at The Byron Bay General Store.

While Mr Gordon recognises that social media is a 'big part of our lives' and his venue is regarded as an 'Instagram cafe', he believes the show is 'crossing the line'.
Chicago's Mayor Lori Lightfoot hit back at rumors that she is planning to resign over the fatal police shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo, calling them 'homophobic, racist and misogynistic' on Sunday.

'It's shocking and disappointing to see some media members and verified Twitter handles are peddling this trash as truth,' Lightfoot wrote on Twitter.

'I will continue to lead a group of the willing all across our city who are about doing the people's work. The people of Chicago elected me mayor, and I will continue to serve today, tomorrow and into the future. Back to work,' she continued.

Chicago's Mayor Lori Lightfoot (pictured April 15) hit back at rumors that she is planning to resign over the fatal police shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo, calling them 'homophobic, racist and misogynistic rumors' on Sunday in a string of tweets

Lightfoot's comments came in a string of tweets on Sunday, in which she also called for unity in Chicago when it comes to tackling its 'major challenges'.

The mayor, who is married to wife Amy Eshleman, said Chicago 'doesn't have any time for homophobic, racist and misogynistic rumors, today or any day.'

Former Chicago mayoral candidate Ja'Mal Green seemed to apologise for playing a part in spreading the rumors that Lightfoot intended to resign, but called a number of her election promises 'lies'.

'I know Lori is mad that folks have started rumors and I'm sorry I helped by saying she's resigning but the reality is, we've been lied to since the beginning of this administration,' Green wrote on Twitter on Sunday after Lightfoot's earlier tweets.

'So much that the people have lost hope. 73 percent of Chicagoans think we're on the wrong path!' he added.

The rumors come amid criticism over Lightfoot's handling of the death of Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old boy who was shot and killed by a Chicago police officer - Eric E. Stillman - on March 29, 2021.

The rumors come amid criticism over Lightfoot's handling of the death of Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old boy who was shot by a Chicago police officer - Eric E. Stillman - on March 29, 2021. Pictured: Toledo with his hands up moments before being shot in the chest and killed

The release of police body camera footage of Toledo's death left Chicago on a knife edge, with police on high alert over protests and fears gangs could retaliate over the shooting

Activists were furious when the mayor called for 'calm' in the wake of Toledo's death, which she called a 'complicated and nuanced story.'

'No parent should ever have a video broadcast widely of their child's last moments, much less be placed in a terrible situation of losing their child in the first place,' she said earlier this month, according to The Chicago Tribune.

'Even as our understanding of this incident continues to evolve, this remains a complicated and nuanced story. And we all must proceed with deep empathy and calm.'

The following day, protesters were calling for her resignation. Chants of 'Hey hey, ho ho, Lori Lightfoot's got to go' were heard at rallies calling for justice for Toledo.

Chigaco's police review board released body camera footage of the March 29 shooting on Thursday last week.

The video showed that Toledo's hands were empty when he was shot, despite police saying he was holding a gun at the time.

'It's shocking and disappointing to see some media members and verified Twitter handles are peddling this trash as truth,' Lightfoot wrote on Twitter on Sunday in a series of tweets

Police say the teen had a handgun on him that morning, and that less than a second passed from when Toledo is seen with a gun in hand and when Stillman opened fire.

The bodycam footage shows the officer shining a light on a handgun on the ground near the teen after he shot him.

Earlier footage also appears to show the boy was carrying a gun in the moments before he was shot, throwing it behind a fence before turning to face the cop.

An attorney for Adam's family said Thursday: 'It could be a gun, Im not going to deny that but its not relevant, because if he had a gun, he tossed it.'

The video's release left Chicago on a knife edge, with police on high alert over protests, and fears that the Latin Kings gang could retaliate for the shooting which took place in their neighborhood of Little Village.
NEWS PROVIDED BY

Catholic League

April 19, 2021

NEW YORK, April 19, 2021 /Standard Newswire/ -- Catholic League president Bill Donohue (photo) comments on Rep. Maxine Waters' latest call for racial division:

Over the past year, there has been an explosion in anti-police rhetoric and behavior, much of it violent. Indeed, the cops are under siege in many American cities. Now Rep. Maxine Waters has thrown gas on the fire. Her goal is to racially divide America, targeting the police as enemy number one.

Waters, whose district is in California, traveled to Minneapolis on Saturday to insist that Derek Chauvin must be found guilty of murdering George Floyd (the former police officer is not being charged with first degree murder).

She joined a rally Saturday night telling the protesters, some of whom have resorted to violence, "We've got to stay on the street and we've got to get more active, we've got to get more confrontational. We've got to make sure that they know that we mean business." Everyone knew what she meant.

To understand the serious nature of Waters' remarks, her comments must be taken in context. The police have been continuously demonized by celebrities, pundits and politicians.

Hollywood star Alyssa Milano recently charged, "Police exist to uphold white supremacy." Never mind that the mostly non-white police force in our nation's largest cities might find this risible. Madonna is just as keen. She has called for police officers involved in fatal shootings to be denied due process, saying there should be "no trial."

Rep. Rashida Tlaib went a step further tweeting, "Policing in our country is inherently & intentionally racist." She demanded that we end policing and incarceration. She did not say in whose neighborhood we should release the murderers and rapists, nor did she renounce taxpayer-funded security for herself.

These pleas for injustice are not without effect. In Minneapolis, the police are banned from using chokeholds, tear gas and tasers, leaving them with no other choice but to use their guns when they are threatened. In New York City, the NYPD's budget has been slashed and the plainclothes anti-crime unit--a major success--has been eliminated. This is happening at a time when the qualified immunity that police officers have earned has been nixed.

Policies matter. There are 1,500 state parolees living in New York City shelters. Every morning when I come to work there are dozens of crazed men hanging out inside and outside of Penn Station, and nothing is done about it. The cops are told to stand down.

Now an Asian undercover cop was almost thrown onto the subway tracks in Queens. The offender, who has a long rap sheet, went before a judge and was quickly let go. "My hands are tied because under the new bail rules, I have absolutely no authority or power to set bail on this defendant for this alleged offense," said the judge.

Last June, city leaders in Portland slashed $16 million from the police budget; they also eliminated the gun-violence unit. Guess what happened? Gun violence surged. Conditions are so bad--the result of intentionally disabling the police--that now the mayor is demanding they refund the police.

Chris Cuomo told his declining CNN audience that police reform will not happen until "White people's kids start getting killed." He is not likely to get his wish. As CNSNews writer Michael Chapman notes, "For black victims of violent crime, a Department of Justice report for 2018 shows that 70.3% of their offenders were black and 10.6% of their offenders were white." Moreover, because whites are involved in relatively few interactions with the police, Cuomo's dream is not likely to come true.

Attempts to blame the police for the violence committed by Black Lives Matter protesters doesn't square with the evidence. Last year, researchers at Princeton University studied this issue for a three month period. They counted approximately 570 Black Lives Matter riots in nearly 220 locations throughout the nation. Last month, it was revealed that Black Lives Matter is responsible for at least 25 deaths and thousands of injuries.

It is not the average African American who wants to destabilize the police. Indeed, in a Gallup survey released last August, 61% of them want policing to remain the same. Of those who have had an interaction with the police, 79% of blacks want the cops to spend more or the same amount of time in their neighborhood.

Maxine Waters does not speak for African Americans. In fact, she is not their ally: She is their enemy. It's time she, and others like her, were exposed for what they are--race baiters and cop bashers.
Ask Paul Timphony how business has been at his Hobnobbers Variety Bar & Restaurant and he might hold up the days receipt pad, all thumb-worn and filled with completed orders crossed out in ink.

Theres been a pop, no doubt about it, he said. People remember us.

Hobnobbers certainly is memorable. Tucked into a gritty stretch of Carondelet Street, just off Canal, this all-but-hidden restaurant serves a repository of down home Creole cooking, with a daily-changing menu that includes dishes rarely seen away from the family table, never mind at other downtown restaurants.

Heaps of mirliton and shrimp casserole fill plates on Wednesdays, followed by smothered turkey wings with dirty rice on Thursdays, giving a hint of Creole Thanksgiving any time of year.

Every day, theres a long list of breakfast plates and fried seafood plates, po-boys, bread pudding and comfort food in carton-testing portions like mustard greens thick with pickle meat, seeping potlikker into the cornbread around it, with a paneed pork chop on top and an ice cream scoop of potato salad. Its a lot of food for $10.

For the uninitiated though, visiting the Hobnobber can require a leap of faith. You enter either through the Variety Bar, an unabashed dive where Mardi Gras decorations are never fully stowed and daylight never seems to fully penetrate, or you venture down a long corridor lined with delivery bikes.

Either way, you arrive at the counter where Paul and his wife Cheryl work in the galley-like confines of a small kitchen hemmed behind a plastic screen, installed long before coronavirus protocols saw such barriers proliferate.

+20 Plate lunch index? Old school New Orleans diners give clues to downtown recovery Of all the ways to assess where New Orleans stands in the ongoing pandemic, the best gauge for Despina Patselikos is the phone line at Lenis 

Hobnobbers regulars work in offices that are slowly re-populating. They also work in French Quarter restaurants and downtown hotels, where employees there like the cheap prices and delivery service when they cant leave their own work sites.

Food and restaurant news in your inbox Every Thursday we give you the scoop on NOLA dining. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

Timphony, now 55, has been cooking here since he was a kid, back in 1985. Its in his blood. Different branches of his family have run restaurants for decades, including the Hobnobber Cafe in Metairie.

Making sure all these dishes are ready to serve for the lunch rush while also preparing short order breakfasts means getting an early start. Timphony is up at 3 a.m. each morning.

Thats the only way you can do it, if you want to do it right, and thats the only way were doing here, he said

+14 To survive a changing CBD, vintage New Orleans diner bets on brunch, burgers, bloody marys The clanging, mechanical cash register was in use at Majorias Commerce Restaurant right up until the pandemic hit, ringing in Monday red bean

Hobnobbers re-opened in June when it hardly seemed like anyone was back downtown. It stayed that way for months, with the phone quiet and the streets empty. Timphony sold his fishing camp to keep some cash flow going.

Now though, the upswing is evident and, like so many others in the business, his main concern currently is hiring back staff. An operation that once employed 17 is running with five people today.

Its a lot of work, but this is us, he said. Were going to do it right.

Hobnobbers Variety Bar & Restaurant

139 Carondelet St., 504-525-5428

Mon.-Sat., 7 a.m.-2 p.m.

+3 Ian McNulty: Neighborhood bars, endangered by the pandemic, see a shot at making it now Just earlier this year Cecile Dalton was afraid shed have to draw the final curtain on Seals Class Act Lounge. Closed through the pandemic, 

+9 At Metairie sushi bar Yakuza House, the hand roll trend finds a cozy new home In the galaxy of sushi styles, hand rolls are the speedsters  fast, efficient, direct. The chef rolls them by hand, without sushi mats, then 
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 19)  Amid criticisms of President Rodrigo Dutertes apparent silence on the presence of Chinese vessels in the West Philippine Sea, his spokesman notes the utterances of his Cabinet officials on the issue are the chief executives, too.

Kapag hindi po dini-disown ng Presidente ang mga sinasabi ng kanyang mga alter-egos, parang siya na po ang nagsasalita. Hindi na siya kailangang magsalita, said Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque during a virtual briefing when asked on the chief executives lack of comment on the matter.

[Translation: When the President is not disowning what his alter-egos say, its as if hes the one also talking. He need not talk anymore.]

Roque noted that the utterances of Dutertes alter-egos  Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. and Defense Affairs Secretary Delfin Lorenzana in this case  are the chief executives too unless he renounces these, and that he hasnt done so.

RELATED: Palace mum on next move vs West PH Sea intrusion, says no need to publicize Duterte's diplomatic affairs

Locsin and Lorenzana had been speaking out the past weeks against the presence of Chinese vessels in the West Philippine Sea, with the former announcing the filing of multiple diplomatic protests against China.

https://www.cnnphilippines.com/news/2021/4/14/Locsin-DFA-diplomatic-protest-240-Chinese-vessels-West-Philippine-Sea.html

Lorenzana, meanwhile, had slammed the East Asian giant for refusing to exit the area. The Defense chief said earlier this month that he was "no fool" to buy Beijings excuse of its vessels seeking refuge in the area due to bad weather.

https://cnnphilippines.com/news/2021/4/3/chinese-vessels-julian-felipe-reef-lorenzana.html

Still, Dutertes spokesman took the opportunity to point out Duterte's previous remarks during the United Nations General Assembly last September.

He said that we will not give away any of our territory, we believe that the West Philippine Sea should be resolved under UNCLOS, and we stand by the arbitral decision, said Roque.

RELATED: Duterte admin consistent in asserting PH sovereignty over WPS  Malacanang

China has consistently refused to honor the 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling which recognizes the Philippines sovereign rights to areas within its exclusive economic zone, instead continuing to assert its claims over nearly the entire South China Sea.

Duterte has been criticized for his amicable attitude towards Beijing despite its continuous rejection of the landmark decision.

RELATED: 'Not foolish, but deliberate': Duterte showing no signs of turning against China  lawmaker
by Nirmala Carvalho

She takes care of migrant workers left penniless by the lockdown, far from home. For her work, the Archdiocese of Bombay acknowledged her defence of life by giving her the Lily and Rose Award. The pandemic has led to alarming levels of vulnerability, indignity and exclusion.

Mumbai (AsiaNews)  The Diocesan Human Life Commission (DHLC) of the Archdiocese of Bombay (Mumbai) gave Mary Goretti Xalxo the Lily and Rose Award for her work with tribal migrant workers.

The prize, which acknowledges people who defend life, was established in 2000 by Father Mathew Habiger at Human Life Internationals 7th Asia-Pacific Congress in Mumbai.

The ceremony was virtual due to the ongoing pandemic, explained Pascoal Carvalho, a DHLC member, speaking to AsiaNews. For him, it is essential that we continue to recognise and celebrate life around us.

Her selfless service to tribal migrants had to be recognise. COVID-19 showed us their vulnerability, pushing them to the brink of starvation amid alarming levels of vulnerability, indignity and exclusion.

Mary Goretti's contribution raised awareness of the laitys missionary service. Inspired by the Gospel, they carry out works of charity, justice, peace and solidarity for the most vulnerable.

Speaking via Zoom to the participants of the ceremony, Mary Goretti Xalxo described her mission.

I have been a professional social worker for 35 years, and I have used my skills to serve society as best I could. On many occasions I had the opportunity of meeting tribal migrants from the Chota Nagpur[*] who live in Mumbai. Most work as maids, labourers, drivers or in the informal economy.

Her work with tribal people reflects her own life. I was born into the Khadia tribe and I married an ethnic Oraon, she explained. I came to Mumbai to study in 1985. At that time, hardly anyone openly claimed to be of tribal origin because of prejudice.

Tribal migrants are the most vulnerable section of the population in Mumbai. They have no identity, even as a scheduled tribe. They are simply domestic workers. For this reason, with my family and the help of then Auxiliary Bishop Agnelo Gracias we decided to work towards preserving their identity and protect their human rights.

One concrete action concerned marriage. I realised that many couples lived together without being married, for cultural reasons but also for difficulties with the Church, Xalxo noted. These couples had children who were hidden, not participating in the Eucharist and other celebrations. Their number kept growing. So in 2013, together with the Archdiocese of Mumbai, we started to organise collective weddings on Sundays.

Helping tribal migrants has become particularly urgent with the pandemic. With the sudden lockdown, a year ago, migrant workers turned into refugees overnight.

With the Redemptorists, we founded PAHUNCH, a ministry to reach out and feed migrants, and arrange trips back to their villages so that they did not have to walk thousands of kilometres. As a team we protected some 10,000 people from chaos, anxiety and hunger. This work continues. Our next goal is to build a network of contacts in home villages and parishes.

Archbishop John Barwa of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar was one of the first to congratulate Mary Goretti Xalxo. You deserve this award, he said. God sees and knows better our sincerity and genuineness than we know ourselves. May He bless you and allow you to continue this service for a long time.

[*] Chota Nagpur is a plateau that straddles several India states (Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, and Odisha) in eastern India.
New, detailed study of the Renland Ice Cap offers the possibility of modelling other smaller ice caps and glaciers with significantly greater accuracy than hitherto. The study combined airborne radar data to determine the thickness of the ice cap with on-site measurements of the thickness of the ice cap and satellite data. Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute - University of Copenhagen gathered the data from the ice cap in 2015, and this work has now come to fruition in the form of more exact predictions of local climate conditions.

The accuracy of the study allows for the construction of models for other smaller ice caps and glaciers, affording significantly improved local projections of the condition of glaciers locally, around the globe. The results have recently been published in Journal of Glaciology. A combination of approaches results in greater accuracy

The initial, principal aim of the study, was to assess the thickness and volume of the Renland Ice Cap, and in the process, validate computer-modelled data against real data. Airborne radar, which measured the thickness of the ice, was compared with measurement results that were known in advance. In addition, researchers availed of satellite-based measurements of the ice velocity on the surface of the ice cap, again juxtaposed with various parameters entered into the computer model, e.g. "basal slide" - in other words, the velocity of movement at the bottom of the ice cap. The combined results provided researchers with an extremely detailed basis material for constructing a computer model that can be applied in other situations.

From Renland to the rest of the world

Iben Koldtoft, PhD student at the Physics of Ice, Climate and Earth section at the Niels Bohr Institute, and first author of the scientific article, explains: "We now have the most optimal parameters for this ice flow model, the Parallet Ice Sheet Model, for the Renland Ice Cap. But despite these being specific local measurements for Renland, we can use these modelling parameters to simulate the ice cap over an entire ice age cycle, for example, and compare the results with the Renland ice core we drilled in 2015. We can examine to what extent the ice cap has changed over time, or how quickly the ice will melt if the temperature rises by a few degrees in the future. Or put more concisely: We now know how the model can be "tuned" to match different climate scenarios. This ensures greater accuracy and a method that is also transferable to other smaller ice caps and glaciers".

"In fact, we can see that our scientific article initially received many views from Japan and Argentina. At first this was a bit surprising - why there, exactly? But it makes absolute sense. These are countries with smaller local ice sheets and glaciers, who are now excited to be able to project the future evolution of these", comments Iben Koldtoft.

Smaller scale provides greater visibility

The larger ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are of course the most important, when assessing temperature changes and the effects of melting on global climate. However, the smaller ice caps react faster and can be considered as "mini- environments", where it is possible to follow developments across a shorter timescale. In addition, it is easier to model the smaller scenarios more precisely, points out Iben Koldtoft.

"If we look at Svalbard, an archipelago that lies very far north, they experience climate change as having a far greater local effect than one sees in Greenland, for example. Over time, of course, all these changes will eventually affect the entire climate system, but we can observe it more clearly on a smaller scale".

The Renland ice core reveals more secrets

In 2015 a core was drilled on the Renland Ice Cap. In the intervening years, scientists have extracted data from the recovered ice core in the form of water isotopes, gases and chemical measurements. These are all proxies for temperature, precipitation accumulation, altitude changes and other climate conditions of east Greenland, where the Renland Ice Cap is located. This data can now be compared with the detailed study and with data from other locations in Greenland. As a result, the study contributes to the increasingly detailed picture of how the climate is changing. Iben Koldtoft emphasises the importance of combining the observational data with computer modelling, and that climate research in general is at a stage where the use of advanced computer simulations and the ability to "tune" them correctly, is now a vital competence. Although glaciers across the globe can be monitored with incredible accuracy by satellites today, there is a need to develop strong computer-based models, combining physics and mathematics, in order to calculate how glaciers will change in the climate of the future, and their effect on future increases in sea levels.

###
Bengaluru, April 19 : Karnataka Governor Vajubhai Vala would preside over an all-party virtual meeting on the Covid pandemic's second wave sweeping the southern state on Tuesday, an official said on Monday.

"Vala will hold the all-party meeting on virtual mode to review the situation arising out of rising Covid cases across the state and measures being taken to contain the virus spread, said an official of Raj Bhavan here.

State Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa will also participate in the virtual meeting from a private hospital where he is under treatment for Covid symptoms since April 16.

Opposition Congress leader Siddaramaiah, Congress state unit president D.K. Shivakumar, Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) leader H.D. Kumaraswamy, former Congress deputy chief minister G. Parameshwara and JD-S minister H.D. Revanna and opposition leader in the legislative council S.R. Patil have been invited to participate in the virtual meeting from their respective places.

As Yediyurappa has been in the hospital since Friday, the all-party meeting he earlier convened on Sunday was deferred.

"The meeting will assess the situation and discuss additional measures to be taken to break the chain of transmission during the pandemic's second wave across the state, especially in Bengaluru, which accounts for over 70 per cent of the cases," said the official.

According to the state health department bulletin, 15,785 new cases were reported on Sunday, taking the state's Covid tally to 11,76,850, including 1,42,084 active cases.

As epi-centre of the pandemic, Bengaluru registered 9,618 fresh cases on Sunday, taking the city's Covid tally to 1,03,178 active cases.

The virus has claimed 146 lives across the state in the last 24 hours, with 97 from Bengaluru, taking Karnataka's death toll to 13,497 and the city's toll to 5,220 since the pandemic broke out in mid-March a year ago.

Of the 720 patients in the intensive care units (ICUs), 166 are in Bengaluru hospitals, 107 in Kalaburagi, 69 in Tumakur, 44 in Kolar, 43 in Davangere, 40 in Mysuru, 29 in Dharwad and 28 in Chamarajanagar districts across the state.

State Revenue Minister R. Ashoka held a review meeting with members of Parliament, legislators and ministers from Bengaluru on the situation in this tech city, which has been grappling with shortage of beds, drugs and oxygen due to rising Covid cases over the last 3 weeks.

The Corona curfew between 10pm and 5pm from April 10-20 in 8 districts across the state, including Bengaluru is likely to be extended to contain the virus spread.

Alarmed by the surging cases in the state, Vala on Sunday directed the state government to bring the Covid situation under control soon.

"Take all steps to bring the Covid situation under control in the state at the earliest," Vala told the state's top officials at an emergency meeting he convened at Raj Bhavan in the city centre.

"The Governor advised the officials to ensure enough oxygen supply, drugs and beds for Covid patients in hospitals across the state to reduce the cases," said Raj Bhavan in a communique here./Eom/495 words.
Ever wondered what happened to that restaurant you once loved and have memories of dining at with your family and friends? We did! There is an amazing website called Lost Tables, dedicated to celebrating the restaurants of our past. We are partnering with the sites creator Harley Hammerman and celebrating these wonderful stories. Hammerman and his wife Marlene are members of Shaare Emeth, and she is past president of the National Council of Jewish Women of St. Louis. Visit Lost Tables on Facebook

In the mid 1970s, St. Louis television featured a commercial with two brothers selling auto parts. It started with the oldest hollering to his brother, Whats the story, Larry?

This is Larrys story.

ADVERTISEMENT

Nathan (Nat) Lampert was born in St. Louis in 1908. He married Adele Kaskowitz and together they had three sons  Marvin Donald (Donnie) in 1938, Jack in 1941 and Lawrence (Larry) in 1950.

In 1946, Nathan Lampert opened Lampert Home & Auto Supply at 1629 South Broadway. The family lived in a four-room flat above and the boys worked in the store as soon as they were able.

After their father retired in 1972, the Lampert brothers took the business in a new direction, specializing in high-performance parts and accessories that appealed to teenagers with automobiles.

With the new direction came new advertising, which proved highly successful.

Take the Lampert brothers, Larry and Jack. They do their own ads to help sell tires, automobile parts and accessories. Jack, the oldest, starts off by hollering to his brother: Whats the story, Larry? Larry, who is short and heavyset, tells whats for sale by racing through a loose script twice as fast as most announcers would. In the process hell knock his competitors by name and attempt to convince the viewers that he wants their business because he is ambitious and aggressive. The brothers may do a clumsy song and dance or other slapstick routine. Larry finishes by saying, And thats the story, Jack. The Lamperts say they have become local celebrities of sorts because of the ads, even though some people write letters saying they would never shop at the stores because of the ads. Jack takes it philosophically: We cant do all the business. He says the commercials have helped the business expand to 11 stores. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Feb 27, 1977

The Lampert brothers would part ways at the end of 1977, with the business bifurcating into Jack Lampert Auto Centers and Larry Lampert Auto Centers. And by the end of 1985, after AutoZone and Advance Auto Parts had come along, the Lamperts were forced to liquidate their stores when it became impossible to compete as independents.

In 1979, Larry Lampert underwent intestinal bypass surgery. The man who loved to cook (and eat) then shed 130 pounds.

In 1980, to celebrate his weight loss, Lampert opened a potato chip factory. The Grand Potato Chip Company was located on South Grand, just south of Juniata.

I just got sick of eating the potato chips that we get around St. Louis here. I am a connoisseur of potato chips. I was a connoisseur of food.

Lampert claimed his chips were superior because his potatoes were superior.

These potatoes . . . these are special grown potatoes. Thats the secret. These potatoes are grown just for potato chips. You cant use a white potato or russet potato; we tried it. It took me 800 pounds of throwing away potatoes to find out that we did the wrong potato. These potatoes that we use now are potato chip potatoes  low sugar content so that they dont burn up. They come out of the ground, theyve got some dirt on em. We plop em into the peeler and just scrub off the dirt and scrub a little bit of the peeling off; we want to leave as much peeling as we can. From there they go into a slicer. We measure that slicer out so that we get the same size chip every time. The salt that we use is a fine flake potato chip salt. We get that here in St. Louis. Thats it. Its potato, pure vegetable oil and salt. We put in no preservatives, no chemicals to keep the shelf life up. Youd be surprise, you can get a good shelf life without putting any chemicals in.

Lamperts Grand Potato Chips were sold at Dierbergs, Schnucks and Amighettis. They were so popular that within three years Lampert was forced to close the business, as he couldnt keep up with the demand.

In April on 1985, Lampert turned from chips to pizza. He opened Papa Nates Pizza at 2627 Cherokee Street in a building that had housed one of his auto parts stores.

The pizza was made from Lamperts own recipe and incorporated traditional toppings, such as hamburger and pepperoni. The menu also featured a mixed green salad, soft drinks and pizza chips  an Italian version of bagel chips which were baked and seasoned with butter and garlic.

The pizza dough was made in balls by a commissary on the Hill. When rolled out, it was closer to a thin than thick crust. Sauce was a prepared mix that Lampert had blended to his specifications and the toppings were prime grade.

Lampert offered home delivery, which he guaranteed in 30 minutes. He promoted his new venture with 10-second TV commercials in which, like his auto center spots, he was the star.

By November of 1985, a second Papa Nates location had opened at 9773 Olive at Warson, in Creve Coeur. In addition to pizza, the menu included deli subs. While the sandwiches sold well, Lampert saw his pizza business lagging.

By May of 1986, Papa Nates Pizza had become Papa Nates Pizzadel, and by July it was Papa Nates Subs & Pizza.

In June of 1986, Lampert formed Fatmans Sub Shop, branding the business with his pre-bypass persona. The first location was at 10204 Page in Overland.

By October, the original Papa Nates on Cherokee had closed and the Papa Nates at Olive and Warson had been converted to a second Fatmans location.

Lamperts signature sandwich was the Fatmans Supreme, with ham, salami, mortadella and cheese, plus the standard sub garnish of lettuce, tomato, onion and a dash of salad dressing. Also popular were the meatball sandwich, the chicken parmigiana sandwich and an Italian beef sandwich called The Bernie, named for one of Lamperts employees.

Fatmans took off. The following year locations opened in Rock Hill at 2813 South McKnight Road and Downtown at 215 North 9th Street.

Lampert stirred up the competition by advertising on television, opening stores next door to his rivals and cutting prices on his sandwiches.

Marketing is the key. Im not a restaurateur. Im a retailer . . . We arent afraid to advertise and promote our product.

Lampert starred in 10-second TV spots, which began with the question, Whats the story Larry?

Click here to read the Harleys complete story on Fatmans.
BEIJING (Reuters) - China's exports to in March rose to a six-month high, with outbound shipments to its neighbour that month nearly 400 times more than January-February combined, in a sign of easing border restrictions imposed due to COVID-19.

exported $12.978 million of goods to in March, up from $3,000 in February and $33,000 in the first two months, according to Chinese customs data released on Sunday.

The shipments in March were the highest by value since $18.882 million in September last year.

imported $1.308 million of North Korean goods in March compared with $1.75 million in February.

Early last year, banned almost all cross-border travel, and some countries including Britain, France and Germany withdrew their local representatives.

(Reporting by Ryan Woo and Lusha Zhang; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In another major shift in vaccine policy, the Centre also allowed states to directly procure vaccine doses from manufacturers

Vaccine manufacturers have been asked to supply 50 per cent of their stock to the Centre, and split the rest 50 per cent between state governments and the open market. (Photo: AP)

New Delhi: Under pressure to open up vaccines for all age groups as Covid-19 cases surge in India, the Centre on Monday announced that vaccinations will be available to all above the age of 18 from May 1. In another major shift in vaccine policy, the Centre also allowed states to directly procure vaccine doses from manufacturers. Vaccine manufacturers have been asked to supply 50 per cent of their stock to the Centre, and split the rest 50 per cent between state governments and the open market.

The decision for liberalised and accelerated Phase 3 Covid-19 vaccination drive from May 1 was announced after Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a series of meetings over India's response to record daily surges in Covid cases.

With Covid-19 cases rising at an alarming speed and hospital beds, oxygen supply and medicines in short supply, the government was under tremendous pressure to open up vaccination and allow states access to medical essentials.

India on Monday reported 2.74 lakh cases and 1, 619 deaths.

As per the decisions, taken after Mr Modi held a series of meetings with doctors and leaders of the pharmaceutical industry, pricing, procurement, eligibility and administration of vaccines have been made flexible in Phase 3 and all stakeholders have been given flexibility to customise to local needs. However, vaccines in the government sector will continue to be administered free of cost. States too have been given the freedom to procure additional vaccine doses directly from the manufacturers while the Centre will also continue to supply them.

Vaccine manufacturers can scale up their production as well as attract new national and international players. Private hospitals would have to procure their supplies of Covid-19 vaccine from the 50 per cent supply earmarked for states or from the open market. Private vaccination providers will have to declare their self-set vaccination price.

Government will allow the imported ready-to-use vaccines to be utilised in the private sector and state facilities. Centre, from its share, will allocate vaccines to states/UTs based on the criteria of extent of infection (number of active Covid cases) and performance (speed of administration).

Incidentally, this move comes a day after former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh wrote a letter to PM Modi urging him to ramp up vaccination efforts and let states decide priorities for age groups. Dr Singh was himself admitted in New Delhi AIIMS on Monday after testing positive for Covid-19. However, the letter written by Dr Singh was not received by the government in the same spirit of "constructive cooperation".

In a rather terse reply, Union health minister Dr Harsh Vardhan replied to the former Prime Minister and gave a political spin to his suggestions, saying the Congress leader should first advise his junior party leaders who have been critical of the Centres vaccine programme.

History shall be kinder to you Dr Manmohan Singh ji if your offer of constructive cooperation and valuable advice was followed by your @INCIndia leaders as well in such extraordinary times! Dr Harsh Vardhan said while attaching his reply to the mild-mannered Dr Singh on Twitter only to face criticism on social media with netizens accusing him of playing politics at this time of pandemic instead of taking suggestions.

The government has been scrambling for a response as the second wave has exposed the country's weak and uncaring health care system more than the first wave. With Covid-19 cases shooting, and the situation getting worse each day, harrowing stories have been emerging of hospitals overflowing with patients, patients suffering and dying due to shortage of medicines, oxygen and hospital beds.

Facing severe criticism for its poor handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, and for preferring elections and Kumbh Mela to public health, the Union government on Monday went into a huddle to find ways to wriggle out of this politically volatile situation.

Miffed with the handling of the situation on ground, Allahabad high court on Monday stepped in and ordered lockdown in five prominent cities of Uttar Pradesh -- Lucknow, Prayagraj, Varanasi, Kanpur and Gorakhpur -- till April 26 to contain the virus spread. If popular government has its own political compulsions in not checking public movements during a pandemic, we cannot remain mere passive spectators," it said.

In any civilized society if the public health system is unable to meet the challenges and people die for want of proper medication, it means there has been no proper development. Health and education go side-by-side. Those in the helm of affairs of governance are to be blamed for the present chaotic health problems and more so when there is democracy which means a government of the people, by the people and for the people, the Allahabad HC observed while adding: "If people die of pandemic in a large number due to paucity of sufficient medical aid it would be the governments to blame which failed to counter the pandemic even after one long year of experience and learning. One would only laugh at us that we have enough to spend on elections and very little to spend on public health.
NEW HAVEN  On a cold, rainy recent night, a contingent of the small but dedicated longtime supporters of Cine 4 came back to their favorite movie theater, which had gone dark for 13 months because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Im very happy that its back, said Carol Cannon of Hamden as she bought a ticket to see the 5 p.m. showing of Nomadland.

I like this theater, she said. Its convenient, the (free) parking is great, the price ($7 for seniors, $9.50 for others) is very good and they generally have first-run movies.

Its a good night out, said Mary Ann Attianese of New Haven, who was there with Cannon. We love their popcorn. And I love the (ticket) prices.

Although Cine 4 is on Middletown Avenue, off Interstate 91 north, and virtually all customers drive there rather than walk, Attianese said, It has that neighborhood feel.

She said coming to Cine 4 reminds her of the Lawrence Theater (long gone), where she saw movies as a kid growing up in New Havens East Rock neighborhood.

Alex Weekes had driven from Guilford to be at Cine 4 that night. I came here all the time before it closed, every week or two, he said as he bought soda and popcorn. Its nice to be back. I love going to the movies.

The customers were also glad to be able to once again banter with Stuart Stu Soffer, who co-owns Cine 4 with his brother Alan. They alternate work shifts, so Alan wasnt there that night.

What I missed most of all was Stus personality! Attianese joked. Hes a joy to talk to. Hes a charmer.

This was an affectionate dig at the guy behind the counter, who is known to offer complaints about the endangered movie theater business while selling that limited number of tickets.

But Soffer said he was happy because his familys business for 50 years had at last reopened. The first night of business was last Wednesday.

The offerings for the first week are four films that are all nominees for the Academy Awards Best Picture: Mank, The Father, Nomadland and The Trial of the Chicago 7.

But when Cine 4 reopened its doors that first night, a total of only about a half-dozen people showed up for the 7:30 p.m. showings.

If Mank doesnt get anybody tonight, Soffer said, thatll be three nights in a row without a customer. Not one person. (That film leads the pack with 10 Oscar nominations.)

On the second night, there was a total of three or four customers, Soffer said. It was pouring rain, he noted.

And yet he wasnt discouraged by the turnout of the first three nights. We never got a lot of business, especially on weeknights. Were a little independent theater with a few customers.

But Soffer added of his loyal patrons: They know where we are. Theyre gonna come. Im not worried about that.

He revealed that in the past he had considered not opening on Mondays and Tuesdays. But my brother said, The seniors will get all goofed up and they wont know what night were open.

Its those senior citizens who keep Cine 4 afloat. They love it, Soffer said. They cant handle the stadium seating in other theaters. They like it nice, level and flat.

Soffer said he can relate to their mindset, as he turned 65 last year. Ive got health issues and my brother is in the same boat. You cant work forever.

Somethings going to give out, he said. Either my body or well get a buyer, somebody willing to purchase the property. For now, its a movie theater, ongoing.

Soffer said, Im not a mask kind of guy but he is abiding by the states requirement that customers wear masks when not in their seats and he and his employees are masked.

Social distancing is also required, he said. Youve gotta give people their space. But thats one thing we never had trouble with. Weve always had a lot of space.

Soffer noted, The pandemic really slaughtered the film industry. It took product away from the theaters. Now everybody stays home and watches in their house. (Soffer refuses to subscribe to streaming services.)

Nevertheless, in the face of such adversity, the Soffers are carrying on a family legacy. Their father, Joseph Soffer, opened Cine 1-2 in May 1971, showing Oliver! and The Owl and the Pussycat. In 1984 and 1985 the two other screens were added.

I only got involved in this thing because my father got sick, Soffer said. He told me, I cant do it on my own. I need help. He reached out to Alan and me.

That happened in 2000. After Joseph Soffer died in 2005, his sons took the helm.

Their mother, Barbara, remains a regular customer. Shes right at home here, with all her friends, Soffer said.

He is even more relieved than his customers to be back in business. It bothered me that this building was just sitting here. I came in at 4 oclock every morning to make sure the heat and air conditioning were working and that nobody had dumped any garbage in the parking lot. The projectors had to be turned on and the batteries charged every week.

However, Soffers proprietary interest in Cine 4 is forever waging war with his complaints about the headaches he said it entails - including the 15 grand in property taxes every six months to the City of New Haven. He added: Fifty years is enough to give up of your life. Its time to sit back and enjoy the efforts you put forth.
Community News Editor / Librarian

Jeannie Maschino is community news editor and librarian for The Berkshire Eagle. She has worked for the newspaper in various capacities since 1982 and joined the newsroom in 1989. She can be reached at jmaschino@berkshireeagle.com.
Five people have been injured including two foreign contractors after rockets slammed into a dormitory and canteen of an Iraqi airbase hosting U.S. troops.

The base hosting US soldiers was targeted by five rockets on Sunday, in the latest attack coinciding with tensions between Baghdad's allies Tehran and Washington.

Two of the rockets fired at Balad airbase, north of Baghdad, crashed into a dormitory and a canteen of US company Sallyport, a security source told AFP.

Two foreign contractors and three Iraqi soldiers were wounded, the source added.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the United States routinely blames Iran-linked Iraqi factions for such attacks on its troops and diplomats.

F-16 fighters are stationed at the Balad airbase, and several maintenance companies are present there, employing Iraqi and foreign staff.

At least five people were injured after rockets hit an Iraqi air base housing US troops north of Baghdad. Al-Balad (pictured), was the target of the attack which is the latest in a string of attacks Washington routinely blames on Iran-linked factions [File photo]

There have been around 20 bomb or rocket attacks against American interests, including bases hosting US soldiers, since US President Joe Biden took office in January.

Dozens of others took place from the autumn of 2019 under the administration of Donald Trump.

Two Americans and an Iraqi civilian have been killed in such attacks since late 2019.

An Iraqi civilian working for a firm maintaining US fighter jets for the Iraq airforce was also wounded in one attack.

The Balad base was also targeted earlier this month, without causing any casualties.

The attacks are sometimes claimed by shadowy Shiite armed groups aligned with Iran who are demanding the Biden administration set a pullout date for Iraq as it has for Afghanistan.

There have been around 20 bomb or rocket attacks against American interests, including bases hosting US soldiers, since US President Joe Biden took office in January. Pictured: A US airman cleans a military aircraft at Joint Base Balad in Iraq (file photo)

On Wednesday, an explosives-packed drone slammed into Iraq's Arbil airport in the first reported use of such a weapon against a base used by US-led coalition troops in the country, officials said.

There were no casualties in the strike on the capital of northern Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, although it did cause damage to a building in the military part of the airport.

In February, more than a dozen rockets targeted the military complex inside the same airport, killing an Iraqi civilian and a foreign contractor working with US-led troops.

Pro-Iran groups have been ratcheting up their rhetoric, vowing to ramp up attacks to force out the "occupying" US forces, and there have been almost daily attacks on coalition supply convoys across the mainly Shiite south.

The United States last week committed to withdraw all remaining combat forces from Iraq, although the two countries did not set a timeline for what would be a second US withdrawal since the 2003 invasion which toppled Saddam Hussein.

The announcement came as the Biden administration resumed a "strategic dialogue" with the government of Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi, who is seen as too close to Washington by pro-Iranian groups.

On March 3, an American sub-contractor died after suffering a heart attack during a similar attack against another airbase, Ain Al-Assad, in Iraq's western desert. Pictures circulating on social media purportedly show the burnt out truck that was used to launch the attack [File photo]

Biden last week announced a full US pullout from Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks that also led to the US-led invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq three years later.

Sworn foes Tehran and Washington have both since had a presence in Iraq, where 2,500 US troops are still deployed and Iran sponsors the Hashed al-Shaabi, a state-integrated paramilitary coalition.

Tensions have spiked to the edge of war, in particular after Trump ordered a drone strike near Baghdad airport in January 2020 that killed top Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani.
Americans awoke Friday to news of yet another mass shooting, this time at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis, where eight people were killed late Thursday.

By the end of the weekend, at least a half dozen more mass shootings took place across the country.

Since March 16, when eight people were killed and one wounded in shootings at three Atlanta-area spas, at least 50 mass shootings have been reported in the United States. CNN defines a mass shooting as incident with four or more people killed or wounded by gunfire -- excluding the shooter.

Some shootings this weekend fell short of that definition. But together, they underscored the fact the United States faces not just the Covid-19 pandemic, but a gun violence epidemic, as well.

Chicago

A 7-year-old girl died after she was shot multiple times in the drive-thru lane of a McDonald's in Chicago Sunday afternoon, according to CNN affiliate WLS.

Police officers drove Jaslyn Adams in their squad car to the hospital where she was pronounced dead, Chicago Police Public Information Officer Sally Bown said.

Jaslyn was with a 29-year-old man at the time of the shooting that WLS identifies as her father. The man was shot in the torso and is hospitalized in serious condition, police said.

The shooting is under investigation. No one is in custody, police said Monday.

'I am heartbroken and angered that a 7-year-old child was killed this afternoon on Chicago's West Side,' Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in a tweet Sunday. 'This unthinkable act of violence has no place here. The epidemic of gun violence cutting our children's lives short cannot go on.'

Austin, Texas

Three people were killed in a shooting in Austin, Texas, on Sunday, according to Austin-Travis County EMS. Police said the incident occurred when a man shot his ex-wife and two others as a scheduled custodial visit was to happen.

The other two victims -- a woman and a man -- also knew Broderick, police said.

Emergency responders found the three victims near two cars that appear to have been in an accident, officials said.

Authorities identified the suspect as 41-year-old Stephen Nicholas Broderick, a former Travis County Sheriff's Office detective. He was charged last year with sexual assault of a child, a sheriff's office spokesperson told CNN.

Broderick was arrested Monday morning without incident while walking down a road in Manor, Texas, Police Chief Ryan Phipps told CNN. The suspect had a pistol in his waistband, Phipps said.

Broderick resigned from the sheriff's office last year following his arrest in June, and he was released on bond later that month.

Kenosha, Wisconsin

A shooting at a tavern in southeast Wisconsin early Sunday left three people dead and three others wounded, according to the Kenosha County Sheriff's Office.

Gunfire erupted at The Somers House tavern around 12:40 a.m. Sunday, according to Sheriff David G. Beth.

On Monday, the Kenosha County Sheriff's Office said Rakayo Alandis Vinson, 24, has been arrested in connection to the shooting.

Police allege Vinson got in a scuffle with three men and shot them as he returned to the bar. Three more people were hit by bullets meant for the other men, Beth said.

Dozens of law enforcement officials from at least seven agencies and eight fire departments were working the case, which involved several crime scenes, the sheriff's office said.

Columbus, Ohio

One person was killed and five others -- including a 12-year-old -- were wounded by gunfire Saturday as they attended a vigil for a shooting victim in Columbus, Ohio, the Franklin County Sheriff's Office said.

According to a news release from the sheriff's office, a small group had gathered in the parking lot of a Dollar General to remember Jarrin Hickman, who was murdered there a year ago.

A dark-colored SUV drove by around 7:30 p.m., the sheriff's office said, and the people inside started shooting at the crowd. Five people were struck by gunfire and were hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries.

But 39-year-old Latoya Carpenter was killed as she drove by the store, the sheriff's office said. A bullet hit Carpenter in the head and her vehicle crashed into a parked car. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

No suspects were in custody, the news release said, and the shooting remained under investigation.

Omaha, Nebraska

A 21-year-old was killed in a shooting Saturday at Westroads Mall in Omaha, Nebraska, according to Omaha police. A 22-year-old was injured but was expected to survive.

Police arrested two people in connection to the shooting: A 16-year-old was arrested on suspicion of first-degree murder, while an 18-year-old was arrested on suspicion of being accessory to the homicide.

The shooting happened around noon, said Omaha Police Lt. Neal Bonacci, sending customers including Celia Davis searching for cover.

Davis told CNN affiliate KMTV she and her 3-year-old daughter waited for help with about 10 strangers in a bathroom.

While they were hiding, Davis said she texted her mother and her boyfriend, 'I love you guys.'

LaPlace, Louisiana

Nine juveniles were wounded by gunfire during a 12-year-old's birthday party Saturday in LaPlace, Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans, authorities said.

Deputies found multiple people shot when they responded to the scene Saturday, officials said in a statement posted to the St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff's Office Facebook page.

The agency initially said six people were injured, but in a subsequent post said nine were shot or grazed by gunfire, including two who remain in a hospital -- a 14-year-old boy shot in the head and a 16-year-old hit in the stomach.

The shooting started 'when verbal confrontations during a child's birthday party led to gunfire,' officials said.

The sheriff's office said that it is not aware of any fatalities related to the Saturday shooting, and no arrests have been made.
Security camera footage has a Florida homeowner questioning whether dinosaurs still exist.

Fox 35 Orlando reported that a Palm Coast viewer, Cristina Ryan, said her security camera captured footage last week of a dinosaur-like creature running across her yard.

Ryan thinks it looks like a baby dino, and everyone shes shown the video to, agrees.

Any animal we can come up with that would be walking at 3:40 in the morning, wouldnt walk this way, she told Fox 35 News. Maybe Ive watched Jurassic Park too many times, but I see a raptor or other small dinosaur!

What did online viewers have to say?

While some say its a large bird, Ryan told the news outlet, that makes no sense -- since whatever it is appears to have front legs. So not sure? Lol. Im sticking with raptor myself, she joked.

Viewers online passed their opinion as to what the animal could be, some of which Fox 35 cited below:

Looks like a Komodo dragon or some type of lizard! one person said.

That is a dog wearing a harness dragging a leash. You can see all four legs and the harness and leash dragging behind it, another stated.

Yet another commenter wrote, UFO recently sighted and guess this could be the CEO checking things out.

Fox 35 noted that there has to be a logical explanation for this, but suggested readers take time to watch the video and draw their own conclusions.

READ MORE:
A mayor found unconscious hours after making a chilling Facebook post has woken from a coma - as calls grow for him to resign over bullying and harassment allegations.

Dubbo mayor Ben Shields, 40, was transferred to Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in an induced coma after being discovered in his family home on March 31.

In the hours before paramedics were called to an address in central western NSW, Cr Shields wrote on Facebook 'I have only ever done what is right for Dubbo'.

Cr Shields - whose condition has since stabilised - was transferred back to Dubbo Base Hospital on Saturday after friends said his condition had 'improved immensely'.

Doctors are now treating the embattled mayor for an infection.

During his recovery though, seven Dubbo Regional Council councillors have called for Cr Shields to resign after he was publicly accused of bullying and harassment.

The condition of Dubbo mayor Ben Shields, 40, (left) has 'improved immensely' in hospital, his friends have said. Hours before paramedics rushed him to hospital on March 31, he wrote: 'I have only ever done what is right for Dubbo'

Cr Shields' predecessor Mathew Dickerson said the bitter war between councillors meant the council may have to be placed into administration, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Greg Mohr - a family friend of Cr Shields - had earlier called for instances of malicious gossip on social media to end.

'Please don't speculate on what has happened  Please don't share or fuel any hurtful and unhelpful rumours  instead, please share a thought for Ben today and join us in wishing him a full recovery,' he said.

Cr Shields also stands accused of the alleged mismanagement of a multimillion-dollar development at the city's former air force base.

Multiple councillors have stated they have 'no confidence' in the embattled mayor.

The development comes as Tony Abbott's sister Christine Forster defended Shields after he was publicly accused of bullying.

Forster, the sister of the former prime minister Tony Abbott, threw her support behind Mayor Shields on Friday and slammed 'purely politically motivated attacks'.

'My friend Ben Shields is a better Liberal and a better servant of his community than just about anyone I could name,' she wrote on Facebook.

'His tireless commitment to the people of Dubbo and surrounding region has been his life's work for 22 years and the current success of the city and its people is testament to that.

'The purely politically motivated attacks on him are a disgrace.'

Dubbo mayor Ben Shields was rushed to hospital on March 31 but his condition has since stabilised

Forster said she hoped Mayor Shields would soon be back doing his best for the community as soon as possible.

Her wife Virginia Flitcroft also shared a Facebook post praising the mayor in the wake of the medical emergency.

'Ben Shields is an honourable man, who has always put his beloved Dubbo first, to hear that he is in a critical condition in hospital is beyond devastating,' she wrote.

'This is political bullying at its most shocking.'

The 40-year-old's family earlier revealed his prognosis is uncertain.

With his condition said to be 'very serious', Greg Mohr - a family friend of the Shields' - called for malicious gossip to end

Moments before paramedics arrived, Cr Shields shared on Facebook: 'I have only ever done what is right for Dubbo'

Mayor Shields was also accused of mishandling of a multimillion-dollar proposed Bunnings development..

Deputy Mayor Stephen Lawrence and councillor John Ryan claimed Mayor Shields didn't adhere to consultation protocols.

A letter written on Wednesday - signed by councillors - said Mayor Shields' colleagues no longer had confidence in him and his abilities.

'The council condemns and will not tolerate abuse of power, bullying, harassment, threats and intimidation,' the letter read.

His hospitalisation came just hours after six councillors accused him of bullying and 'intolerant behaviour,' and signed a letter calling for him to resign immediately

Christine Forster, the sister of former prime minister Tony Abbott, threw her support behind Mr Shields in a Facebook post Friday (pictured left)

'The council has no confidence in the mayor and calls upon him to resign immediately as mayor and from council and enable council to move forward in the best interests of the community.'

The councillors called for a confidential report to be prepared 'advising on any and all complaints, allegations and suggestions of misconduct on behalf of the mayor that have any stage of the term of council been brought to the attention of any council staff and not been the subject of a code of conduct process'.

Mayor Shields' colleagues were also pushing for him to hand back his mayoral robes, phone, car and office within the next seven days.
New Delhi :

Oppo is all set to launch its bezel-less F5 smartphone on October 26 in the Indian market along with Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

Ahead of its official launch, the smartphone has been subjected to several leaks and rumours. Few images of the smartphone have also been leaked over the internet a few days ago.

Talking about its specifications, Oppo F5 will be the first smartphone of the company to offer full display with 6-inch Full HD display with a resolution of 2160x1080 pixels.

Oppo F5 will also be a selfie-centric smartphone and feature AI Beauty Recognition Technology. The company says the AI will self-learn and enhance each shot, as it takes more and more selfies.

The new AI-powered tool can recognise skin tone and type, the gender and age of all subjects within an image and analyze environment lighting conditions by referencing other facial images from a massive global photo database, to beautify a selfie shot.

Oppo F5 will come with a 20-megapixel camera along with LED flash in the rear and dual 16-megapixel camera in the front.

Oppo F5 is expected to be launched in 4GB and 6GB variants with 64GB and 128GB of storage respectively.

The smartphone is also expected to be powered by 4,000 mAh battery. However, official announcement of its features is yet to be made.

Oppo F5 is expected to be in direct competition with Vivo V7+, OnePlus 5, Xiaomi Mi Mix 2.
Mumbai, April 19 : All-rounder Ben Stokes took a shot at the commentary for the Indian Premier League (IPL) match between Delhi Capitals (DC) and Punjab Kings (PBKS) at the Wankhede Stadium.

"Commentator: "Such a poor bouncer,if you want to bowl a bouncer it must be over Off Stump" REPLAY: bouncer line directly over Off Stump Me: (facepalm emoji)" Stokes tweeted on Sunday.

The incident that Stokes was referring to happened in the 11th over of the PBKS innings in which DC fast bowler Kagiso Rabada conceded 20 runs. Mayank Agarwal hit two sixes in the over while PBKS captain KL Rahul hit one off the third ball.

Former India captain Sunil Gavaskar said at the time in the commentary box that Rabada needed to bowl his bouncers over the off stump.

"This is a poor delivery because if you are going to bowl the bouncer, you have got to bowl it around the off stump," said Gavaskar. Replays showed that the ball was indeed soaring above the off stump and Rahul got into position early to hook it over backward square.

PBKS scored 195/4 but eventually lost the match by six wickets with 10 balls to spare due to Shikhar Dhawan's 92 off 49 balls.

Latest updates on IPL 2021
Press Release

April 19, 2021 De Lima lauds public's concerted effort to set up community pantries to address hunger amid pandemic Opposition Senator Leila M. de Lima has lauded the joint efforts of Filipino people from different social classes to ensure that immediate food relief will be provided to residents affected by COVID-19 pandemic through their contributions in community pantries that have been set up within Metro Manila and other provinces. De Lima, Chairperson of the Senate Committee on Social Justice, Welfare and Rural Development, acknowledged the success of the Maginhawa Community Pantry which inspired different barangay residents to set up their own community pantries. "The setup of a community pantry of essential goods in Maginhawa, Quezon City is truly commendable as it created a ripple effect that inspired citizens from different parts of the country to come to the aid of those struggling to feed their families amid the pandemic," she said. "Saludo po tayo sa mga kababayan nating nagkukusang-loob na tumulong. As we see strangers helping strangers during these hard times, we are reminded that Filipinos' Bayanihan spirit is very-much alive and that a simple act of kindness goes a long way," she added. The original community pantry dubbed as "Maginhawa Community Pantry" was first set up on April 14 with a bamboo cart and two cardboard signs beside a tree in Maginhawa, the area in Quezon City known as a food hub, by Patreng Non who said she started the pantry because she is tired of the (government's) inaction. Non first stocked the pantry with vegetables she bought from local vendors, along with basic necessities from the grocery including alcohol, face masks, canned goods, and rice. With the tenet of "Magbigay ayon sa kakayahan, kumuha batay sa pangangailangan," the pantry's purpose is to build a community that will give and take by their own will, without the intervention of third parties. The said community pantry was replicated in various neighborhoods from as near as the Sikatuna Village also in Quezon City and all the way to Sampaloc, Manila, to as far as Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya. "Lubos tayong nagpapasalamat sa mga gaya ni Patreng na may mabubuting loob at tunay na malasakit sa kapwa, sa kanyang malikhaing pag-iisip at kahandaang tumulong sa gitna ng pandemya. Sa kabila ng kawalang aksyon at pagkukulang ng mga inaasahang tumugon sa krisis, nakita natin ang mga walang alintanang magbukas-palad upang sama-sama nating malampasan ang pagsubok na kinakaharap ng bansa at ng mga Pilipino," De Lima stressed. While Non stressed that community pantries cannot address the root cause of hunger incidence rate in the country amid the height of COVID-19 pandemic, she said that "Okay na din na pantawid gutom sa mga nangangailangan. Mahirap magtrabaho, mag-aral at lumaban habang kumakalam ang tyan." Meanwhile, De Lima urged the national and local government to support the communities setting up community pantries and step up their efforts to assist the Filipinos greatly affected by the crisis. "While the community pantries showed the good in people, it also highlighted the government's lack of support for Filipinos. I hope that this recent initiative by the public will prompt the government to step up its COVID-19 response. Ang kailangan: Bayanihan, hindi kapabayaan," she said. Last October 2020, De Lima filed Senate Resolution (SR) No. 534 underscoring the need to review and re-evaluate the intermediate and long-term policy and program interventions of the national government surrounding hunger and food insecurity that has affected generations of Filipinos.
Samsung has filed a patent in South Korea, the USA and in Europe for the name Armor Frame. It's intended for use in for smartphones but other than that, the description doesn't reveal much.

Some rumors point to a frame made of either carbon or titanium - materials lighter and stronger than standard aluminum and more importantly, ones that don't lose rigidness over time.

The timing of the Armor Frame patent seems to be in line with Samsung's plans to release its Galaxy Z Flip2 and Galaxy Z Fold3. They would surely benefit from the extra rigidness and lower weight. Then again, patents don't always make it to final products, so don't hold your breath just yet.

Via (in Dutch)
Jean-Claude Juncker today lashed out at David Cameron saying the then-PM stopped him convincing Britons not to back Brexit in 2016.

The former EU commission president said he 'made a mistake' listening to David Cameron's orders to stay quiet as he could have 'defended' the bloc.

Mr Juncker also admitted that the slow vaccine rollout had been damaging to the European project - and angrily denied 'hurtful' allegations about his heavy drinking.

It will be another unwelcome intervention for Mr Cameron, who has already been struggling to fend of criticism over his lobbying activities on behalf of Greensill Capital.

In an interview with the i newspaper, Mr Juncker said that as the battle stepped up for the 2016 referendum the former British premier told him not to conduct interviews with the British media.

Jean-Claude Juncker (right) said he 'made a mistake' listening to David Cameron's (left) orders to stay quiet on Brexit as he could have 'defended' the bloc

'I should not have listened to David Cameron,' he said.

'He told me not to interfere in the debate in the UK, not to come to London, not to do interviews with the British press.'

Mr Juncker added: 'I made a mistake because I did not defend the EU's point of view in the UK.

'They asked me to shut up, so I shut up. That is something I criticise myself for. I should have spoken out rather than stay silent.'

The UK eventually left the European Union on January 31 2020, nearly four years after the referendum's 52-48 per cent result.

The decision left the EU in shock, and Mr Cameron immediately resigned as PM.

A deal was finally brokered with Mr Juncker's successor Ursula von der Leyen after Boris Johnson took over from Theresa May and won an historic majority on a manifesto to 'get Brexit done'.

A trade framework was then agreed before Christmas last year with the transition period ending on January 1.

Mr Juncker also criticised Ms von der Leyen and the EU over the handling of the vaccine rollout.

Although the bloc has been catching up, it is still far behind the UK.

Asked whether that had damaged the project, Mr Juncker said: 'Yes, because the promises made at the beginning of the year, that it was 'the hour of Europe' - and it's always the hour of Europe - and that everyone would be vaccinated before the deadline, well, those promises were not kept,' he said.

A Brexit deal was finally brokered with Mr Juncker's successor Ursula von der Leyen after Boris Johnson (pictured) took over from Theresa May

'But in an extraordinary situation like this, it is inevitable that some mistakes will be made. Even the UK, in its splendid isolation, has made some errors.'

Mr Juncker addressed jibes about his drinking head-on, insisting they were not true and he had a medical condition.

'I still have the sciatica,' he said. 'I still limp. And yet they say the guy is drunk again.

I've never been drunk in my life.'

He added: 'It hurt me. I can't really give a press conference to say: ''I'm not an alcoholic.'' That would have been incompatible with my basic dignity.'
Hong Kong has suspended international flights from India as coronavirus cases rise at an unprecedented pace. The ban will be effective from April 20 till May 2. The decision to suspend flights from India was taken after 50 passengers on two Vistara flights tested positive for coronavirus upon arrival. The Asian business powerhouse country has also banned flights from Pakistan and the Philippines.

As per the rules, all passengers arriving in the country will have to produce a COVID-negative RT PCR result report, which should be conducted within 72 hours of arrival. To contain the virus spread, Hong Kong authorities have also announced the suspension of all Vistara flights on the Mumbai-Hong Kong routes till May 2, PTI reported, citing aviation ministry sources.

Also read: COVID-19: Govt may reduce passenger capacity in domestic flights

On the Delhi-Hong Kong route of Vistara airline, as many as 47 passengers have tested positive for COVID-19 in Hong Kong so far. Vistara's flights on the Delhi-Hong Kong route had earlier been banned from April 6 to April 19.

Neither Vistara nor the aviation ministry has come up with any official statements in this regard.

Also Read: Flying on Air India? Read these new rules before you board the flight

Meanwhile, given the deteriorating coronavirus situation in India, the aviation ministry has ordered that airlines will not serve meals on flights that have a duration of fewer than two hours. There are no curbs on in-flight meals on international and domestic flights longer than two hours, but the meal servicing will be staggered among adjoining seats, the order added.

The ministry had permitted the airlines to serve in-flight meals under certain conditions when scheduled domestic flights were resumed on May 25 following the COVID-19 lockdown last year. The ministry modified the order last week, saying the airlines "may provide meal services on board, where the in-flight duration is two hours or more."

India reported its highest-ever single-day spike of 261,500 coronavirus cases and 1,501 deaths on Saturday, the latest health ministry data said. The country had 18,01,316 active cases as of 9 am on Sunday.
HARTFORD  A city teen was charged Monday with a drive-by shooting on April 10 that killed 3-year-old Randell Jones.

Jaziah Smith, 19, of Atwood Street, was taken into custody after investigators obtained a warrant charging the teen with murder, Lt. Aaron Boisvert said.

Hartford Police Chief Jason Thody said detectives had enough probable cause to put together an arrest warrant Saturday.

After thanking entities who helped, Thody emphasized that the investigation is not over.

We still have work to do here  theres still aspects of this investigation that need to be followed up on and more information may be forthcoming on that, Thody said in a Monday news conference streamed by FOX61. I can say at this point, we still believe that there is a relationship between the Magnolia Street shooting and the Nelson Street shooting.

Randell was shot around 2:25 p.m. in the 100 block of Nelson Street. Police responded to a ShotSpotter gunfire activation alert and while canvassing the area, hospital personnel alerted police to a 3-year-old victim that had been brought to the hospital with a gunshot wound.

The boy was initially in critical condition, but later died at the hospital, police said.

That same day, police say New Britain resident JaMari Preston, 16, was shot on Magnolia Street. The teenager was later pronounced dead at a hospital.

Aside from saying that Preston wasnt the shooter, Thody said that any further comments on the relationship between those two cases, were going to hold off on because those two investigations are still very active.

Mayor Luke Bronin offered condolences on the citys behalf to both families.

I mourned this morning with the family of Randell Jones, a 3-year-old who was laid to rest today, Bronin said. This was a hard week for our community, a devastating weekend.

Detective William Cote of the Major Crimes Division  a parent to a 7-year-old, a 5-year-old and an 11-month-old  said that his heart goes out to the boys mother and their family.

After a week-long investigation, on April 17, detectives identified the alleged shooter in Jones homicide and applied for an arrest warrant.

Members of the Fugitive Task Force, Violent Crimes Unit and Auto Theft Division took Smith into custody without incident Monday morning.

Smith remains in custody on a $1.75 million bond.

Anyone with information is asked to call 860-722-TIPS.
Jaipur, April 19 : Although it has been two days since the by-polls are over in Rajasthan, the tweet shared by former CM Vasundhara Raje on voting day continues to be a point of discussion. It raised eyebrows in political corridors and surprised many senior leaders as she did not mention the party even once: rather, she asked voters to follow Covid protocol while voting.

In one of her tweets shared on Saturday, Raje said, "Voting for by-polls is scheduled on three seats today on Rajsamand, Sahada and Sujangarh. I appeal to all voters to cast their votes following corona guideline and inspire others to vote too. #votekar," she tweeted.

She also put out two other tweets on the same day. In one of them, she paid tributes to former PM Chandra Shekhar "Tributes to former Prime Minister of India Shri Chandra Shekhar Singh ji on his birth anniversary," she said tagging #chandrashekharsingh.

Her third tweet was a prayer offered to Durga in which she tweeted, Sarwamangal Mangalye, Shive Sarwarth Sadhike, Sharanye Triyambake Gauri, Narayani Namostate.

"Raje's tweets sounded more like the tweets of the election commission team who guided the voters to vote cautiously amid the pandemic following protocols but she did not endorse her party in the tweet," said a senior party worker. "While other party workers worked religiously on ground to ensure we win all three seats, Raje did not even come once to show her face. Now, this tweet shows that she is least bothered for the party," he told IANS.

In fact, Raje had distanced herself from bypolls, both in terms of campaigning and strategising, which were held on three seats namely Sahada, Rajsamand and Sujangarh.

While the union ministers Gajendra Shekhawat, Kailash Chaudhary, Arjun Ram Meghwal all endorsed the party in their tweets, the BJP national vice-president Raje had other priorities, pointed out BJP workers.

However, they opined that the party works at a larger level aiming at bigger goals and this is a trivial issue and hence no one is paying attention towards it.

"We have bigger concerns as of now and hence let's not talk on this small issue," said a party worker.
April 19 : With curfew clamped in Maharashtra, Bollywood celebs are jetting off to Maldives yet again. Last year, after the lockdown was relieved, many BTown celebs rushed out of Mumbai to unwind in the beach nation. Now, with the same situation coming back with the second wave of coronavirus pandemic, celebs are once again jetting off to Maldives. While today Alia Bhatt and Ranbir Kapoor were spotted at the Mumbai airport before they took the flight to Maldives, on Sunday, Disha Patani and Tiger Shroff were seen leaving for the island.

Taking to social media, Disha shared a picture from her Maldives vacay with Tiger Shroff. In her Instagram post, the diva can be seen posing on the beach in an orange bikini. Disha can be seen sitting on the white sand, soaking up the sun on the beach. She captioned her post with an octopus emoji.

The Malang actress shared more pictures and videos from the trip on her Instagram stories. In one picture, the actress can be seen enjoying coconut water by the beach. In another video, the actress gave a glimpse of her resort and the mesmerising surroundings.

While Disha didnt post any picture with Tiger, the Baaghi 2 actor also didnt post any pictures from his current Maldives trip. However, Tiger shared an informative post by journalist Faye D'Souza on his Instagram stories. The post gives tips on how to stay safe during the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic. In the post, people of the country have been advised to stay at home.

Image Source: Instagram/tigerjackieshroff Tiger Shroff shared on his Instagram story

Disha and Tiger were in Maldives in January this year. Though they go on trips together, they make it a point not to share pictures on social media posing together. Though the couple have been rumoured to be dating for many years, the actors never confirmed it officially.

Meanwhile, on the work front, while Disha had completed shooting for Radhe: Your Most Wanted Bhai with Salman Khan, she had also started shooting for Ek Villain 2 with John Abraham. On the other hand, Tiger was last seen in War with Hrithik Roshan in 2019. He has not yet started shooting for his upcoming projects that include Ganapath and Baaghi 4.
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Russian air force has hit militants' base northeast of Palmyra in Syria, killing up to 200 militants, Interfax news agency reported on Monday, citing the Defence Ministry.

It said the Russian planes also destroyed ammunition, cars and components for manufacturing explosive devises.

(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Leslie Adler)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 04:22:32|Editor: huaxia

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WASHINGTON, April 18 (Xinhua) -- NASA is targeting early Monday for the first flight of its Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, according to NASA.

The helicopter is scheduled to lift off at approximately 3:30 a.m. Eastern Day Time on Monday.

It will be the first powered, controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet.

The first flight was originally scheduled on April 11, but the date shifted as engineers worked on preflight checks and a solution to a command sequence issue.

Ingenuity arrived at Mars' Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, attached to the belly of NASA's Perseverance rover. The helicopter is a technology demonstration with a planned test flight duration of up to 30 Martian days.

The Perseverance rover will provide support during flight operations, taking images, collecting environmental data, and hosting the base station that enables the helicopter to communicate with mission controllers on Earth. Enditem
How COVID-19 affects the fishing industry

by Brooklyn Quallen

April 19,2021 | Source: Borgen

The global seafood market is a huge industry that employs millions of people. Valued at $159 billion in 2019, it will grow to almost $200 billion by 2027. The system is a network of formal and informal producers and distributors, retailers and consumers. In low-income countries, the fishing industry is especially important as a way to reduce poverty. Developing countries employ 97% of the people, directly and indirectly, working in the fishing industry. About 90% of the fishing workforce are small-scale fishermen. By exporting seafood, low-income countries can boost their economies through the oceanic sector. The fishing industry also helps to increase nutrition and food security for the impoverished. Unfortunately, COVID-19 has devastated the fishing industry, just as it has most other industries.



The pandemic has disrupted supply chains and lowered demand, reducing profits in the industry. Lockdowns and curfews have also reduced catch sizes, which in turn means that fisherfolk make less per day of work. What they do not sell often goes to waste as cold storage is expensive and not widely available to small-scale fishermen. The most affected groups are small and medium-scale fisheries, especially in rural areas, as they lack the resources that large-scale fisheries have to be able to transition and adapt during COVID-19. Furthermore, they do not have the safety net of social protection programs that large-scale fisheries may have.



Many developing countries with large fishing sectors have been struggling to offset the effects of COVID-19. In Thailand and India, migrant fish workers were met with lockdowns and nowhere to sell their products. Traders in India and Myanmar reported a 15% drop in fish prices post-lockdowns. In China, a shift to frozen and processed seafood left fresh-catch fishers floundering.



Besides the loss of income, supply chain disruptions have led to a reduction in fish consumption in low-income countries. Fish is very important to the global food chain as it represents a nutritious source of food that is often more affordable than meat or poultry. The FAO estimates that in 2016, fish provided about 3.2 billion people with almost 20% of their average intake of animal protein, with an even higher proportion in low-income countries. But, as household incomes have decreased due to lockdowns, people around the world have bought less fish. Small-scale farmers in Myanmar, a country with a large fishing sector, have reported buying less animal-sourced food and shifting toward staple foods during the pandemic.



There is a diminished supply of fish available for those in low-income countries, which makes a once staple food in low-income households, a food that is no longer available. It is also unaffordable because the lower supply means that fish prices are seeing a sharp rise, which puts fish products out of reach for the impoverished. This situation directly impacts overall nutrition in low-income households.



Luckily, there are many organizations working to address this global issue. PROBLUE, a Multi-Donor Trust Fund run by the World Bank, helps countries develop their oceanic sectors with the goals of ending extreme poverty and increasing the quality of life of the impoverished in a sustainable way.



Under the umbrella of PROBLUE, there are other trust funds focusing on more targeted issues. One of them is PROFISH, which focuses on maximizing the economic benefits of fisheries in developing countries. It works to capture the sunken billions  an estimated $80 billion that is lost every year by the fishing industry. PROFISH does this by designing and implementing good governance systems through investments and partnerships as well as providing knowledge to those in the aquaculture sectors on how to create sustainable wealth and improve the efficiency of the fishing industry.



If efficiency increases, millions of impoverished people in the fishing industry could improve their economic circumstances. PROFISH has been put in place in developing countries all around the world that hold an opportunity for the fishing sector to dramatically improve.



Future of Fish is a nonprofit working to directly mitigate the effects of COVID-19 on the fishing industry in South America. In Peru, it works with other NGOs, fishermen, chefs and local media to increase demand for seafood to offset the pandemic drops. It has used social media to facilitate buying and selling and supported transport logistics to help move fish from the coast to market centers and customers.



It also launched a campaign to supply small fishing villages with the protective equipment needed to safely sell seafood products. Future of Fish also runs on-the-ground initiatives to help fishermen export their catches. In Peru, the mahi mahi fishery is the second-largest artisanal fishery, Future of Fish has implemented traceability programs along all steps of the supply chain to make sure that the catches can be verified as Best Choice by Seafood Watch, and therefore, be accepted into the U.S. by the FDA.



Creative solutions are also popping up. Developed by USAID as part of the Fish Right project, online fish markets in the Philippines allow fisherfolk to maintain their main source of income. Fish Tiangge is an online marketplace that connects 6,000 fisherfolk with consumers from more than 300,000 households. By connecting fishers and consumers online, the U.S. government is helping to protect fisherfolk income and prevent a food crisis, while ensuring that conservation measures are not compromised in areas that are hard-hit by COVID-19, says U.S. ambassador, Sung Kim.



COVID-19 has significantly impacted the lives of fisherfolk across the globe. Fortunately, governments and organizations are working to help them by creating lasting impacts that will remain even when the COVID-19 pandemic is over. With the sustained investment of the global community, the fishing industry can reach its full potential as a vehicle for poverty reduction.

 The Borgen Project

Theme(s): Others.
Two acts with Alabama ties went home empty-handed on Sunday after the 56th Academy of Country Music Awards.

Little Big Town and Florida Georgia Line were among the nominees, but lost in their categories to other artists.

Little Big Town, a harmonizing country-pop band, was nominated for Group of the Year. Little Big Town includes Jimi Westbrook of Sumiton and Karen Fairchild and Kimberly Schlapman, who met as undergraduates at Samford University in Birmingham.

The award for Group of the Year went to Old Dominion. Little Big Town performed as part of the ceremony, however, minus band member Phillip Sweet, who recently tested positive for COVID-19.

.@littlebigtown wrapped up a night of #CountryMusic in the best possible waylive from Broadway in Nashville with their performance of "Wine, Beer, Whiskey!"  West Coast, the #ACMawards have begun, don't miss it on @CBS and @ParamountPlus! pic.twitter.com/3cy0gEik64  ACM Awards (@ACMawards) April 19, 2021

Florida Georgia Line was nominated for Duo of the Year. The principals of Florida Georgia Line are Tyler Hubbard (from Monroe, Ga.) and Brian Kelley (from Ormond Beach, Fla.). Hubbards parents, the late Roy Wayne Hubbard and Amy Eady Hubbard, are from Bibb County. Hubbard has other relatives in Tuscaloosa and Centreville.

The award for Duo of the Year went to Dan + Shay.

The ACM Awards ceremony aired live on CBS from three music venues in Nashville: the Grand Ole Opry House, the Ryman Auditorium and The Bluebird Cafe.

Top winners were Luke Bryan (Entertainer of the Year), Thomas Rhett (Male Artist of the Year), Maren Morris (Female Artist of the Year and Song of the Year for The Bones) and Chris Stapleton (Album of the Year for Starting Over).

One popular artist who was notably absent from the proceedings this year: Morgan Wallen. The Academy of Country Music barred Wallen from involvement and eligibility in the ACM Awards this year, after a video showed him stumbling around outside his house, yelling with friends, tossing F-bombs and using the N-word. Wallen apologized for the drunken racial slur, but the video provoked outrage in the music world and put his skyrocketing career on hold.
Photo: Contributed

The latest poll from Insights West indicates widely held misconceptions and uncertainties around COVID-19 vaccines.

As the pace of vaccinations increases across the country, a new survey by Insights West shows that the vast majority of Canadians intend to get the vaccination when their age group comes up, however, there is a sizeable minority who do not intend to get it, and that there are significant concerns about the vaccine among both those who intend to receive the vaccine and those who do not.

The survey says 50 per cent are concerned about the short and long-term side effects of the vaccines and a notable minority, 25 per cent, think the vaccine will not be effective.

In addition to those who have received the vaccine to date, just under half of remaining Canadians, 43 per cent are 100% certain they will get the vaccine when it is made available to them. However, nearly one-in-six, or 15 per cent, will not or are unlikely to get itspecifically, 9 per cent are not likely to get it, and 5 per cent are 100% certain they will not receive the vaccine.



Interesting differences arise in vaccine hesitancy among various subgroups. British Columbia residents are more likely than those from other provinces to express with 100 per cent certainty that they will be getting the vaccine, 54 per cent as opposed to between 37 per cent and 48 per cent for other provinces. Federal conservative voters, 20 per cent, are three times as likely as Liberal, 7 per cent or NDP, 7 per cent, voters to be hesitant.

There are a wide range of concerns Canadians have about COVID-19 vaccines, and despite assurances of public health officers, politicians and medical community about the safety of the vaccines, these beliefs are fairly widespread. About half of Canadians are concerned about short term, 50 per cent, and long-term 56 per cent, side effects of the vaccines. This belief likely stems at least in part from the general feeling that the vaccine development was too rushed.

Nearly half, 46 per cent, also believe that they dont have enough information about the safety of the different vaccines, and 35 per cent dont trust the information coming out about the vaccine. Nearly four in ten or 38 per cent, believe that big pharma is just trying to profit from the vaccine, and a 26 per cent think they are taking enough precautions so they dont feel the need to get the vaccine. Its also interesting to note that 23 per cent of Canadians are afraid of injections, which may be a issue as well.

In our nation-wide poll on vaccine hesitation, Im surprised at the amount of uncertainty, misinformation, and outright conspiracies around the effectiveness and safety of the COVID-19 vaccine, says Steve Mossop, president of Insights West.

These misconceptions are not held among a small, fringe segment of our society, but a rather significant minority, potentially threatening the efforts of health authorities across this nation in fighting the pandemic. Experts have said we need to reach a threshold of 80 per cent vaccinations to beat this virus, and the current polling numbers suggest this will be a challenge.

One of the more alarming findings is that a full 25 per cent of those polled do not believe the vaccines will be effective. The study shows that males under the age of 55-years-of-age and federal conservative voters are more likely to hold these views.



More than one-third of those who have either received the vaccine or are 100 per cent committed to receiving it say they are concerned about long-term or short-term side effects, three-in-ten believe the vaccine was too rushed.
A painful past united two men of different races, who came together to discover a common purpose: help Americans "rise above racism" through prayer and healing.

Will Ford and Matt Lockett are speakers and authors of the book "The Dream King" and creators of the seven-part retreat "Seven Days to Change," which facilitates racial reconciliation. But the two were formerly strangers, until God brought them together one fateful day.

Will Ford, an African-American and Matt Lockett, who is white, first met at the Lincoln Memorial during a prayer meeting right where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. The two immediately became friends through their shared faith and beliefs.

However, six years ago the two found out that they were actually linked by a very painful past. They learned that Lockett's ancestors had owned Ford's ancestors as slaves. The sons of slaves and slave owners, who are now friends, discovered a new layer to their relationship.

Ford shared to CBN, "I had to go to a deeper level of forgiveness because now I had a face connected to these stories of slaves being beaten. And why we had to have secret prayer meetings."

Ford's ancestors used to pray near a big old black kettle so that their violent slave masters would not hear the prayers and beat them up. Lockett shared, "It was hard because all of the pain of history and the pain of a community where that pain is endured, it had a face, and it had a name. And it was a face that I love."

The sons of slaves and slave owners admitted that it was a "struggle for several months" to deal with the effect of the revelation to their friendship, but both were glad they "hashed it out." Because of this, they believe that America as a country can also has it out. Ford said, "Racism is everybody's problem. We can definitely rise above racism in America."

Lockett added that now is a good time for racial reconciliation because the United States is "in a learning moment right now, whether we like it or not." He added that racism today not only covers the black vs white discrimination, but also the the discrimination against Asian-Americans in the face of a global pandemic that began as a virus from China. In fact, the CDC had already declared racism as "a serious public health threat" earlier this month.

Ford and Lockett proposed that for America to "rise above racism," people should address the "dismissive attitude" that isn't being addressed in the Church. Lockett argued, "We dare not dismiss the pain that has historical roots, that has endured to this day." Ford added that a unified Church will be key in "healing a divided nation."

The sons of slaves and slave owners also highlighted the importance of forgiveness, just as Jesus had done for Christians. Lockett and Ford are counting on a "Great Awakening" through their "Seven Days to Change'' retreat, which facilitates racial reconciliation. This is done through seven practical teachings which have, at the center of it, Biblical principles, historical insights, and inspiring personal experiences, all geared towards healing a divided nation.
(Fixes spelling of Gujarat in paragraph 1)

By Sumit Khanna, Alasdair Pal and Saurabh Sharma

AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) - Gas and firewood furnaces at a crematorium in Gujarat have been running so long without a break during the COVID-19 pandemic that metal parts have begun to melt.

"We are working around the clock at 100% capacity to cremate bodies on time," Kamlesh Sailor, the president of the trust that runs the crematorium in the diamond-polishing city of Surat, told Reuters.

And with hospitals full and oxygen and medicines in short supply in an already creaky health system, several major cities are reporting far larger numbers of cremations and burials under coronavirus protocols than official COVID-19 death tolls, according to crematorium and cemetery workers, media and a review of government data.

India on Monday registered a record 273,810 new daily infections and 1,619 deaths. Its total number of cases now stands at more than 15 million, second only to the United States.

Reliable data is at the heart of any government response to the pandemic, without which planning for hospital vacancies, oxygen and medicine becomes difficult, experts say.

Government officials say the mismatch in death tallies may be caused by several factors, including over-caution.

A senior state health official said the increase in numbers of cremations had been due to bodies being cremated using COVID protocols "even if there is 0.1% probability of the person being positive".

"In many cases, patients come to hospital in an extremely critical condition and die before they are tested, and there are instances where patients are brought dead to hospital, and we do not know if they are positive or not," the official said.

'VERY IRKSOME'

But Bhramar Mukherjee, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Michigan, said many parts of India were in "data denial".

"Everything is so muddy," she said. "It feels like nobody understands the situation very clearly, and that's very irksome."

Story continues

In Surat, Gujarat's second largest city, Sailor's Kurukshetra crematorium and a second crematorium known as Umra have cremated more than 100 bodies a day under COVID protocols over the last week, far in excess of the city's official daily COVID death toll of around 25, according to interviews with workers.

Prashant Kabrawala, trustee of Narayan Trust, which manages a third city crematorium called Ashwinikumar, declined to provide the number of bodies received under COVID protocols, but said cremations there had tripled in recent weeks.

"I have been regularly going to the crematorium since 1987, and been involved in its day-to-day functioning since 2005, but I haven't seen so many dead bodies coming for cremation in all these years," even during an outbreak of the bubonic plague in 1994 and floods in 2006.

Government spokesmen in Gujarat did not respond to requests for comment.

India is not the only country to have its coronavirus statistics questioned. But the testimony of workers and a growing body of academic literature suggest deaths in India are being underreported compared to other countries.

Mukherjee's research of India's first wave concludes that there were 11 times more infections than were reported, in line with estimates from studies in other countries. There were also between two and five times as many deaths than were reported, far in excess of global averages.

WORKING DAY AND NIGHT

In Lucknow, capital of the populous northern state of Uttar Pradesh, data from the largest COVID-only crematorium, Baikunthdham, shows double the number of bodies arriving on six different days in April than government data on COVID deaths for the entire city.

The figures do not take into account a second COVID-only crematorium in the city, or burials in the Muslim community that makes up a quarter of the city's population.

Crematorium head Azad, who goes by only one name, said the number of cremations under COVID protocols had risen five-fold in recent weeks.

"We are working day and night," he said. "The incinerators are running full time but still many people have to wait with the bodies for the last rites."

A spokesman for the Uttar Pradesh government did not respond to a request for comment.

Elsewhere, India Today reported two crematoriums in Bhopal, the capital of the central state of Madhya Pradesh, 187 bodies were cremated following COVID protocols in four days this month, while the official COVID death toll stood at five.

Last week Sandesh, a Gujarati newspaper, counted 63 bodies leaving a single COVID-only hospital for burial in the state's largest city, Ahmedabad, on a day where government data showed 20 coronavirus deaths.

The Lancet medical journal noted last year that four Indian states making up 65% of COVID fatalities nationally each registered 100% of their coronavirus deaths.

But fewer than a quarter of deaths in India are medically certified, particularly in rural areas, meaning the true COVID death rate in many of India's 24 other states may never be known.

"Most of the deaths are not registered so it's impossible to do a validation calculation," Mukherjee said.

(This story was refiled to fix the spelling of Gujarat in paragraph 1)

(Reporting by Sumit Khanna in Ahmedabad, Saurabh Sharma in Lucknow and Alasdair Pal in New Delhi; Editing by Nick Macfie)
WordPress, a popular content management system, has said it will begin to block Googles FloC as it considered the ad-tracking technology a security concern.

The company has released set codes that allow developers to block the FloC for their websites.

WordPress powers approximately 41% of the web  and this community can help combat racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination and discrimination against those with mental illness with four lines of code, it said in a post.

WordPress also cited a blog post from the Electronic Frontier Foundation that had deemed Googles FloC a terrible idea. The post had criticised Googles decision to put people in groups based on their browsing habits. It added that it could lead to different types of discrimination and even predatory targeting of unsophisticated consumers.

In case you did not know, FloC stands for Federated Learning of Cohorts. It is Googles new technology that replaces the current practice of using third-party cookies for tracking. Google believes that the new system is more secure than the previous one as it shows ads based on your cohort instead of individual data. The company adds that the method will also help improve user privacy as federated learning involves sharing fewer data.

Not everyone has bought Googles privacy argument with FloC. Already, privacy-focused browser DuckDuckGo, Brave and Vivaldi have raised concerns over the technology and even vowed to block on their platforms.

"After a short trial period, Google decided not to make this new tracking method a user choice and instead started automatically including millions in the scheme. If you're reading this in Chrome while logged in to a Google account, yes, that likely means you too, and if not now, then eventually," DuckDuckGo said in a post recently.

ALSO READ: Brave to block Googles FloC ad-tracking technology

Vivaldi in its post raised similar concerns and announced blocking the technology from its browser. The company said that FloC was a privacy-intensive tracking technology. It also said that the FloC tech could continue to run in parts of the world that were not covered by the EUs stringent GDPR.
The Supreme Court in November 2020 in Washington. (J. Scott Applewhite / AP)

The Supreme Court may allow the Biden administration to decide how to handle the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who have been granted a temporary, but not permanent, right to live and work in the United States.

Most of them came from El Salvador, Honduras or Haiti, and have had "temporary protected status" for decades. They have established careers and families. The Biden administration would like to offer them green cards, and if Congress agrees, a pathway to citizenship.

But during an unusual argument Monday, a Justice Department lawyer defended the government's long-standing position that the 1990 law passed by Congress did not give these TPS holders a right to permanent lawful status if they entered the country illegally years ago.

These immigrants "did not make a lawful entry to the United States," Michael Huston, an assistant to the U.S. solicitor general, told the court. The law refers to those who were "admitted" to the United States and that could include, for example, foreign students.

So, while the law provides "temporary protection during a crisis," it does not give all of these immigrants "a special pathway" to a green card or citizenship, he said.

When questioned by the justices, however, Huston said the administration would prefer the court rule tentatively that this legal position is a "reasonable" one. Doing so would not prevent the Department of Homeland Security from changing its view later, he explained.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. openly questioned the tentative tone of the administration's legal brief. Did the government really want to win the case, he asked.

But Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh appeared to agree the court should defer to Congress and the new administration. "Why should we jump in when Congress is very focused on immigration," he said.

The Trump administration had moved to end the temporary protected status for the Central Americans, but its plans were blocked by the courts. And since taking office in January, the Biden administration has extended the protection to cover Venezuelan and Burmese immigrants. And it proposed legislation that would give green cards to TPS recipients and allow them to seek citizenship.

Story continues

The Supreme Court agreed in early January to take up the issue because lower courts were split on whether TPS holders were eligible for green cards. The 9th Circuit Court in California said they were, while the 3rd Circuit Court in Philadelphia said they were not.

The case of Sanchez vs. Mayorkas arose from an appeal by a Salvadoran married couple  Jose Sanchez and Sonia Gonzalez  who have lived in New Jersey for more than 20 years. He is a mechanic for Viking Yachts, and they have four sons.

Salvadorans were granted temporary protection in 2001 after their home country was devastated by several earthquakes. Sanchez sought a green card but was turned down by immigration authorities.

During Monday's argument, it appeared the justices will uphold the government's authority to deny green cards to immigrants like Sanchez.

But such a ruling will not prevent the administration or Congress from extending such protection to immigrants who have lived here for years.

The other countries with TPS designations are Nicaragua, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Nepal and Yemen.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
The orbit of nearby systems has threatened the existence of habitable planets which have been watched closely by a study, particularly as it generates the "greenhouse effect" that renders it unusable. The study has been able to see how much the proximity of planets affects each other, especially with orbit, as it goes around a certain path.

Space still has a lot in store for people, especially as the discoveries are not yet that wide or numerous compared to the things that are out there, lurking around and waiting for interaction. While it is still early to look for habitable planets that can be a possible substitute for Earth, certain studies have been looking into their interaction with one another out there.

Currently, there are no ways for an average person to travel to other planets, much like astronauts who are bound to waiting for the vessel with the likes of SpaceX's Starship bound for Mars. The world is yet to come to a time where going to another planet to live and thrive on is already possible, as permitted by technology and governing bodies.

Read Also: SpaceX Gets $2.89B Contract from NASA for Artemis Moon Mission to Use HLS Starship Lander Since the Apollo

Orbit Perturbations Threat to Habitable Planets

According to a study by Meredith Vogel from Missouri State University in her research entitled "Orbit Perturbations of Habitable Zone Planets Due to Inner Planetary Companions" habitable planets face massive threats. The research was published under Astrobites' platform, as part of the Undergraduate Research series, presenting discoveries in astronomy.

The paper has been made in collaboration with Dr. Sarah Morrison from MSU, under a NASA-Missouri Space Grant which has taken a deep dive into habitable planets and orbiting nearby. The study has focused specifically on its actual habitability, especially its proximity if changes would occur in the coming future, changing its composition.

Greenhouse Effect

Vogel has discovered that habitable planets, despite having a rocky stature, with water and air that is a viable substitute to live on, have been plagued with their positioning with other planets that orbit around a fixed object in space. The closeness of its neighbors has a massive effect on it, acting as a threat to the said habitable planet.

The orbit's threat to habitable planets is the risk of developing or generating the so-called "greenhouse effect" inside the planet, making it too hot to cool and live on. The greenhouse effect is caused by greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane, and others, which are trapped inside a certain place that leads to its harm or toxicity.

Related Article: Exoplanets in Greater Detail Through the Sun? Scientists Propose a Way to See Individual Contintents of Faraway Worlds

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Isaiah Alonzo

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Oxford scientists will soon carry out human challenge studies to determine the effects of the immune system on COVID reinfection.

It is suspected that those with coronavirus antibodies could be protected from reinfection for several months. Oxford scientists will now explore the effects of the immune system on COVID reinfection in a series of human challenge trials.

What is a human challenge trial?

Human challenge trials involve infecting a group of healthy subjects with a disease in a controlled manner to monitor the bodys response. This method of testing has proven helpful in the past for understanding diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria and even gonorrhoea.

Researchers at Oxford University have recently gained research ethics approval to carry out a human challenge study to analyse the effects of the immune system of COVID survivors when it comes to reinfection. Helen McShane, a professor of vaccinology at the University of Oxford and chief investigator on the study, revealed:

The point of this study is to determine what kind of immune response prevents reinfection.

Oxfords human challenge study is not the first for COVID. Another study began earlier this year, carried out by Imperial College London. The trial set out to discover the smallest amount of COVID exposure needed to infect people who had not had coronavirus before. Professor Danny Altmann of Imperial College London explained the benefits of ethical human trials:

Human challenge studies can be done safely and ethically to fast-track discoveries in infectious disease and vaccine research. Some of the key points that cant easily come out of other, less controlled studies are the earliest immune correlates of the response to infection.

How will the COVID human challenge study work?

McShane explained that her team would measure the immune response of COVID survivors, including their T-cells and antibodies, to determine whether or not a subject became reinfected when re-exposed to coronavirus. Recruitment for the upcoming trial is expected to start within the next few weeks.

Those taking part in the study are expected to be between the ages of 18-30 and will have tested positive for coronavirus within the three months prior. Participants will also need to have coronavirus antibodies and be considered low-risk for a coronavirus infection.

In the first phase of the trial, 24 subjects will be split into groups of 3-8 people and will each be exposed to coronavirusthrough the nose. Doses of the original COVID strain will first be administered at a low dose which will be gradually increased if necessary.

The second phase of the study will involve a different group of subjects who will have their immune system closely monitored both before and after exposure to the virus. Participants that do become reinfected will then have the severity and symptoms of their infection monitored.

Participants who do become symptomatic during either stage of the trial will be given a monoclonal antibody treatment. Those who volunteer for the entire study will also be reimbursed nearly 5,000 as they will need to quarantine for 17 days during the trial and be subject to monitoring for the following 12 months.

What is the study expected to reveal?

Oxfords coronavirus human challenge trial will uncover what immune response is needed to prevent reinfection and give insight into how long the immune response protects against coronavirus in previously infected persons. This information will also help develop future vaccines and coronavirus treatments as well as future human challenge studies that explore reinfection with different variants. McShane explained:

If we can determine the level of immune response above which an individual cannot be infected, then that will help us determine whether new vaccines will be effective without necessarily having to test them in phase three efficacy trials.
Flag burning activist Gene Stilp has reached two more settlements totaling $20,000 with two more Pennsylvania communities he accused of impeding his constitutional right to free speech.

Lebanon and Wellsboro are the latest boroughs to settle lawsuits filed by the Dauphin County man. Other governments that have settled such cases include Harrisburg and the state of Pennsylvania, which in December agreed to pay $17,500 to settle a civil rights lawsuit Stilp filed over an aborted attempt to torch a flag at the Capitol fountain.

Stilp has been setting fire to Trump/Nazi/Russian flags ar various venues across Pennsylvania.

He also reached a $10,000 settlement with Middleburg and a $6,000 settlement with Mifflinburg. Stilp has said the money from the deals will finance more demonstrations.
It knocked us all out, like dominoes, she said. We were out for at least a week with general body aches, nausea and loss of appetite. It was just about trying to get through. Geelong and a number of outer areas of Melbourne have topped the list for the largest number of outbreaks. There have been 29 reported in Greater Geelong, 17 in the council area of Casey, 16 in Wyndham and 15 in the Yarra Ranges. Jenna Rogers, daughter Jorgie and partner Adrian Jarrad all fell sick with gastro. Few areas however have escaped the illness, recorded from East Gippsland (two outbreaks) to the Glenelg Shire in the west of the state (six outbreaks). It reached the small rural town of Casterton last month, where Jenna Rogers initially thought her family had a lucky escape. But about a week later, the infection was again shutting down childcare centres, as it was reported at 140 different sites across the state in just one month.

Within days, Ms Rogers entire family had it. I had never had gastro in my life, said the mother-of-two, who is expecting her third baby in July, said. It felt like a scene in a horror movie for about 48 hours in our house. Dr Abhi Verma. Credit:Jason South Parents and childcare operators have been urged to step up hand washing with soap and water as the best defence against the intestinal infection. Victorias executive director for communicable disease, Dr Bruce Bolam, said while alcohol-based sanitiser helped tackle coronavirus, it was much less effective against bugs such as norovirus, the predominant cause of the current childcare outbreaks.

A good old-fashioned scrub with soap and warm water is the best way to remove the gastro virus from our hands and prevent passing it on to infect others. Dr Abhi Verma works in Casey, one of the worst-hit council areas, and said it was possible the end to strict coronavirus lockdowns in Victoria was a factor in the horror gastro season. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video Perhaps now with a bit of relaxation of social distancing and  people not being as vigilant with hand hygiene compared to this time last year, things may have shifted a little bit, he said. Symptoms of gastroenteritis include nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, fever, abdominal pain, headache and muscle aches.

They can take up to three days to develop and usually last one or two days, sometimes longer. In rare cases it can lead to more serious illness, according to the Health Department. Loading Weve certainly had one or two [patients] that weve had to put some IV fluids into and send to hospital because theyve just not been able to keep up with the drinking, Dr Verma said. The key with this thing is to make sure you maintain adequate hydration. Government guidelines require children to stay home from childcare for at least 48 hours after their symptoms have subsided.
The Fresh Factory, a plant-based food and drink contract manufacturer in the US, has acquired healthy snack bar business Phyter Food.

Illinois-based The Fresh Factory says it also partners with emerging food and beverage brands and has created a vertically-integrated platform to accelerate the growth of new brands in the plant-based arena. Consequently, it has purchased Phyter Food, a business jointly founded in 2016 by Gloria Athanis, chef David Choi Jr., and Jeff Adeszko.

Financial terms for the deal, which is expected to close in July, have not been disclosed.

Phyter Food, also located in Illinois, produces a range of chilled organic snack bars such as a cocoa brownie, peanut butter cookies and carrot cake all made with 100% plant-based ingredients. They are free-from gluten, soy, dairy and GMOs.



"Phyter will give us the ability to reach more customers in a food category that we have been looking to get into," Bill Besenhofer, the president and COO of the Fresh Factory, said in a statement. "This acquisition will help us to continue our expansion into all corners of the plant-based food space."

Phyter's Choi added: "This will only help further our mission to create delicious plant-based snacks that support a healthy lifestyle. We look forward to continuing Phyter's growth and development as part of this innovative company."
It was hugs and tears all round today as family and friends reunited on the first day of the trans-Tasman bubble.

Thousands of people flew into New Zealand today from Australia on quarantine-free flights.

RNZ photographers and reporters were at Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Queenstown airports capturing the emotional reunions on camera.

Reporter Tess Brunton and camera operator Simon Rogers - both Australians - were on the first flight leaving Auckland this morning, heading to Sydney.

Photo: RNZ/ Simon Rogers.

By 9.30am, 10 flights had departed Auckland for Australia and Brunton and Rogers had almost arrived in Australia. They were welcomed at Sydney Airport by drag queens and Kylie Minogue's Can't Get You Out Of My Head blaring over the loud speaker.

Photo: RNZ/ Tess Brunton.

Meanwhile, in Auckland, people were starting to gather to welcome loved ones arriving from Australia.

Photo: RNZ / Dan Cook.

Air New Zealand estimated roughly three-quarters of passengers crossing the ditch today would be family and friends reuniting after months apart.

Photo: RNZ / Dan Cook.

The first commercial flight to arrive from Australia was from Sydney. It arrived in Auckland about 12.30pm, an hour after it was due.

Photo: RNZ / Dan Cook.

Photo: RNZ / Dan Cook.

Photo: RNZ / Dan Cook.

Photo: RNZ / Dan Cook.

Lily was at the airport waiting for her best friend Lilli. She said the two of them cried on the phone when she booked her flight.

Photo: RNZ/ Kate Gregan.

Finally, Lilli arrived.

Photo: RNZ/ Dan Cook.

Wellington Airport had not received any international passengers through its terminal in more than a year - until today.

Workers created a big black 'welcome whanau' sign yesterday, just in time for the trans-Tasman bubble flights.

Photo: Supplied / Wellington Airport.

Photo: Samuel Rillstone.

Photo: Samuel Rillstone.

Christchurch also welcomed its first quarantine-free flight this afternoon.

Photo: RNZ/ Nate McKinnon.

Photo: RNZ/ Nate McKinnon.

Queenstown Airport had a band, face painters and stilt performers ready to welcome people arriving from Australia.

Photo: RNZ / Belinda McCammon.

After touching down, the first quarantine-free flight into Queenstown went through the water arch - a salute to welcome the special visitors.

Photo: RNZ/ Belinda McCammon.

Passengers onboard Qantas Flight 121 were welcomed by cheers from the ground crew.

Photo: RNZ/ Belinda McCammon.

About 100 passengers were onboard the flight, the first into the town in 387 days.

Photo: RNZ/ Belinda McCammon

This Canberra couple were on the first flight into Queenstown. They've never been to the resort town before, but made the special trip for their honeymoon.
A spy drone manufacturing plant that could employ 100 workers is being proposed for Charleston Executive Airport on Johns Island.

Site plans presented to the city of Charleston show a light industrial development called "Project Rose" that includes three structures near an abandoned taxiway at the airfield off River Road.

Charleston-based Qatari defense firm Barzan Aeronautical is identified on the document.

The company's website says it is "focused on the application and use of aerial (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) systems that support the defense and security requirements of Qatar, the United States and NATO allies."

Barzan established a Charleston operation "to build out a large military aircraft initiative that is expected to support numerous jobs," according to a white paper distributed to members of Congress by Qatars ambassador.

The company was formed in 2018 after Qatari officials met with South Carolina political and business leaders and Boeing Co. executives at the planemaker's 787 Dreamliner campus in North Charleston.

At the time, leaders with the Qatar Investment Authority said they were looking for investment opportunities in the Palmetto State.

A Barzan representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the Johns Island project.

Elliott Summey, CEO of Charleston County Aviation Authority, which owns the small airport, declined to identify the manufacturer, citing a confidentiality agreement.

But he called the project "a nice investment" of possibly several million dollars and said it could create about 100 jobs at the general aviation airfield near Kiawah and Seabrook islands that serves small planes and corporate jets.

Site plans show a 54,000-square-foot aircraft manufacturing plant, an 18,400-square-foot office building and another structure near the parking area with offices, conference room and classroom.

The assembly plant design shows spaces for five small aircraft inside the building next to several smaller production spaces.

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They include a 3,500-square-foot machine welding shop, a nearly 5,000-square-foot shipping and receiving room, a nearly 1,300-square-foot electronics department and a 4,300-square-foot systems integration lab.

The proposed main office building includes several offices as well as a lunchroom with a kitchen and another kitchen for employees.

An adjacent structure with the classrooms and conference space is flanked by two large fountains and adjoins a smaller manufacturing structure. Next to it is room for a future hangar.

"Project Rose" is expected to take up about 10 acres on the 1,333-acre airport site. A 200-space parking area is proposed to the west of the abandoned taxiway, according to site plans.

Plans also show a 20-by-40-foot cooling tower as well as a future assembly building of just over 11,000 square feet and a future multiuse structure of 4,850 square feet.

The company has reportedly secretly developed a drone called Nightwarden, which can be armed, in Charleston after previously purchasing an Aerosonde unmanned aircraft from Providence, R.I.-based Textron Systems.

The Nightwarden aircraft is based on the Aerosonde technology, and both companies have been production partners since 2019, according to a recent report by the Online Intelligence website.

The drone Barzan purchased from Textron weighs 80 pounds, has an 11.9-foot wingspan and a 20-pound payload capacity, according to the companys marketing materials. The aerial device, which can be operated from a mobile control center, has a 15,000-foot ceiling and a 75-mile range.

Ahead of the site plan filing, Barzan held meetings with the Aviation Authority and Charleston County economic development officials, according to a Barzan filing under the federal Foreign Agent Registration Act.

Barzan Aeronautical is a division of Barzan Holdings, which is owned by the Qatari Ministry of Defense. According to the Barzan website, the entity is responsible for empowering the military capabilities of the Qatari Armed Forces through partnerships with international companies.

Barzans website says the company picked Charleston because it is home to one of the largest hubs in aviation, engineering and advanced manufacturing in the United States.

It also touted the region's "can do" business attitude and academic institutions that the company said "made Barzan's decision easy."
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Royal Mail has released a set of commemorative stamps to mark the 550th anniversary of the Battle of Tewkesbury.

They depict key battles in the Wars of the Roses between the House of Lancaster and the House of York as they fought for control of the English throne.

Each stamp depicts a vivid drawing of each key battle in the 15th century dispute between the two rival camps which lasted for 30 years.

King Richard III is seen with his men before his final charge in The Battle of Bosworth (depicted above). It was one of the last battles of the Wars of the Roses since Henry VII killed Richard III. King Henry VII married Elizabeth of York which united the two sides together going into the Tudor era

Supporters of the House of Lancaster are symoblised by a red rose and supporters of the House of York are symbolised by a white rose.

The Battle of Tewkesbury took place in Gloucestershire on May 4th 1471 and was won by the House of York. The stamp shows Yorkist King Edward IV leading his men forward after an attack by soldiers supporting the House of Lancaster.

Knights are seen attacking each other on another stamp at the Battle of Wakefield in 1460, won by the House of Lancaster.

One stamp shows soldiers doing battle in the show in the Battle of Towton in a chilly March 1461, won by the House of York amid a snowstorm.

The Battle of Bosworth was one of the last battles of the Wars of the Roses since Henry VII from the House of Lancaster killed Richard III of the House of York. King Richard III is depicted above on the same stamp.

The Yorkist King Edward IV is seen leading his men forward. Royal Mail released the set of commemorative stamps to mark the 550th anniversary of the Battle of Tewkesbury on May 4th 1471

Yorkist knight Sir Richard Herbert is seen fighting on the front line in the Battle of Edgecote Moor. The stamp set shows key battles in the Wars of the Roses between the House of Lancaster and the House of York as they fought for control of the English throne

But King Henry VII married Elizabeth of York which united these two sides together going into the Tudor era. Their eldest son, Henry, went on to become King and one of the most famous Tudors of all time, Henry VIII.

The illustrations are by medieval and military artist Graham Turner and historian and researcher Dr David Grummitt also worked on the stamps for Royal Mail.

David Gold from Royal Mail, said: 'The Wars of the Roses fascinated both Shakespeare and historians alike.

'These striking illustrations bring to life a period of British history that was steeped in drama, betrayal and a quest for power that still enthrals today.'

The full set of eight stamps, available in a Presentation Pack, will sell for 12.40 and can be pre-ordered on the Royal Mail website.

Edward IV is depicted leading his army into battle during the Battle of Barnet in 1471. The battle was won by the House of York and Warwick the Kingmaker was killed

Knights are seen attacking each other at the Battle of Wakefield in 1460, won by the House of Lancaster. Other key battles include the Battle of Barnet, the Battle of Edgecote Moor and the Battle of Northampton

One of the stamps depicts Edward, the Earl of March, the future Edward IV, proclaiming his loyalty to Henry VI at the Battle of Northampton

This stamp shows knights arriving into the city of St Albans (near London) amid the first battle there in May 1455, won by the House of York
Elation marked the opening Monday of a long-anticipated travel bubble between Australia and New Zealand. The start of quarantine-free travel was a relief for families who have been separated by the coronavirus pandemic as well as to struggling tourist operators. It marked the first, tentative steps toward what both countries hope will become a gradual reopening to the rest of the world.

The idea of a bubble between Australia and New Zealand had been talked about for months but faced setbacks because of several small virus outbreaks in both countries, which were eventually stamped out. To mark the occasion, Wellington International Airport painted an enormous welcome sign near its main runway and Air New Zealand ordered some 24,000 bottles of sparkling wine, offering a complimentary glass to adult passengers.

Air New Zealand's Chief Operating Officer Carrie Hurihanganui said the carrier had previously been running just two or three flights a day between the two countries but that jumped to 30 flights on Monday carrying 5,200 passengers. She said the day marked a turning point and people were excited.

"You can feel it at the airport and see it on people's faces," she said. The leaders of both countries welcomed the bubble, saying it was a world-leading arrangement because it aimed to both open borders and keep the virus from spreading.

"Today's milestone is a win-win for Australians and New Zealanders, boosting our economies while keeping our people safe," Australian Prime Scott Morrison said. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said her country was welcoming new arrivals.

"The bubble marks a significant step in both countries' reconnection with the world and it's one we should all take a moment to be very proud of," she said. Travelers who lined up at Sydney and Melbourne airports early Monday said they were excited or relieved to finally fly to New Zealand after more than a year. Some were visiting family and friends, while others were attending funerals.

Both countries have managed to keep out the virus by putting up barriers to the outside world, including strict quarantine requirements for travelers returning from other countries where the virus is rampant. Australia had previously allowed New Zealanders to arrive without going into quarantine but New Zealand had taken a more cautious approach, requiring travelers from Australia complete a quarantine.

The start of the bubble comes ahead of the New Zealand ski season and is welcome news for many tourist towns, including the ski resort of Queenstown.

Also read: Hong Kong suspends flights from India, Pakistan till May 2
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell went after Rep. Maxine Waters for saying in Minneapolis Saturday that Black Lives Matter protesters should 'get more confrontational' if officer Derek Chauvin is found not guilty.

'It's harder to imagine anything more inappropriate than a member of Congress flying in from California to inform local leaders - not so subtly - that this defendant had better be found guilty or else there will be big trouble in the streets,' McConnell said on the Senate floor.

The Kentucky Republican said that Waters' demand for a guilty verdict was 'like somebody window-shopping or ordering off a menu.'

'Every single American deserves a fair trial. This is sacred. You do not balance the scales of justice by trying to tip them,' McConnell said.

The top Senate Republican noted that through much of the country's 'quest for civil rights and equal justice has been the fight to get rid of extra-judicial violence, to get rid of rigged trials where the outcome was molded by public sentiment or angry mob.'

'It is beyond the pale for a sitting member of the United States Congress to look at what happened last summer and imply there should be some kind of a sequel if a legal case does not unfold as she thinks it should,' he said.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell went after Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters on Monday for comments she made about officer Derek Chauvin's trial over the weekend while protesting alongside Black Lives Matter activists in Minneapolis

Rep. Maxine Waters, a Democrat from California, was in Minnesota Saturday night, saying that demonstrators needed 'get more active, more confrontational' as they marched for police reform

McConnell also alluded to Democratic complaints about former President Donald Trump and other GOP lawmakers who spoke in advance of the January 6 MAGA riot.

'Earlier this year, of course, the country heard many strong opinions from Democrats about whether leaders bear responsibility when reckless words precede criminal violence,' he said.

As Chauvin's trial was wrapping up Monday, the officer's attorney Eric Nelson brought up Waters' comments.

'Now that we have US representatives threatening acts of violence in relation to this trial its frankly mind-blowing,' he said.

The judge, Peter Cahill denied Nelson's move for a mistrial but said, 'I grant you Congresswoman Waters may have handed you grounds for appeal and the turning over of this trial.'

'I wish elected officials would stop talking about this case. They should respect a co-equal branch of government,' he added.

He called their failure to do so 'abhorrent.'

'I don't think it's given additional material with which to prejudice the jury. A congresswomans opinion really doesn't mean much,' the judge said.

Waters made her initial comments Saturday evening while demonstrating in Minneapolis, where the trial over George Floyd's death is taking place, and where BLM activists are also responding to the police shooting of Daunte Wright.

'I hope we get a verdict that says guilty, guilty, guilty,' she told the press. 'And if we don't, we cannot go away. We've got to stay on the street. We get more active, we've got to get more confrontational. We've got to make sure that they know that we mean business.'

McConnell follows a number of Congressional Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, in criticizing Waters words.

The White House did not condemn her comments, while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Waters did not need to apologize.

Water defended herself Monday by telling The Grio that Republicans were trying to 'send a message to all of the white supremacists' by condemning her statement.

'Republicans will jump on any word, any line and try to make it fit their message and their cause for denouncing us and denying us, basically calling us violent,' Waters continued.

'Any time they see an opportunity to seize on a word, so they do it and they send a message to the white supremacists, the KKK, the OAth Keepers, the [Proud] Boys and all of that,' she said.

She also accused Republicans of using the tactic to raise money off the Democrats' backs.

Walters said she was 'not worried that they're going to continue to distort what I say.'

'This is who they are and this is how they act,' she added. 'And I'm not going to be bulled by them.'

While Republicans pointed a finger at Waters and accused her of inciting violence, White House press secretary Jen Psaki didn't condemn the California Democrat's quotes when asked about them Monday.

'Well, I can speak to the president's view,' Psaki said. 'He has been very clear that he recognizes the issue of police violence against people of color, communities of color is one of great anguish and it's exhausting and quite emotional at times.'

White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about Waters comments and didn't condemn them. Instead she talked about President Biden's views on police violence against communities of color

Psaki reminded reporters that Biden had met with Floyd's family shortly after the Minneapolis black man's Memorial Day death at the hands of Chauvin, a white police officer.

Chauvin is being tried for second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

Psaki said Biden is closely following the trial.

'And is committed to undoing this long-standing, systemic problem,' she said.

'His view is also that exercising First Amendment rights and protesting injustice is the most American thing that anyone can do, but as he also always says, protests must be peaceful that's what he continues to call for and what he continues to believe it the right approach for responding,' Psaki added.

On Sunday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy threatened to bring 'action' against Waters after she joined protesters in Minnesota on Saturday night.

The House Republican leader warned he would do so if Pelosi did not.

'Maxine Waters is inciting violence in Minneapolis  just as she has incited it in the past. If Speaker Pelosi doesnt act against this dangerous rhetoric, I will bring action this week,' he wrote on Twitter.

Pelosi told Capitol Hill reporters on Monday that Waters didn't need to apologize for her comments.

'No, Maxine talked about confrontation in the manner of the Civil Rights movement,' Pelosi said. 'I myself think we should take our lead from the George Floyd family. They've handled this with great dignity.'

'No, I don't think she should apologize,' Pelosi added.

McCarthy said Monday afternoon that he planned to propose a resolution to censure Waters that could remove her from her committee assignments - but given Democratic control of the House, it will go nowhere if Democrats stick together.

'We've heard this type of violent rhetoric from Waters before, and the United States Congress must clearly and without reservation reprimand this behavior before more people get hurt. But Speaker Pelosi is ignoring Waters' behavior,' McCarthy said. 'Thats why I am introducing a resolution to censure Rep. Waters for these dangerous comments, and I hope that all my colleagues  both Republican and Democrat  will stand up for peace on Americas streets,' the California Republican first told Breitbart.

Republicans pounced on Waters remarks to the Black Lives Matter protesters.

Sen. Ted Cruz and controversial Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene also criticized Waters, who, over the weekend, joined demonstrations over the police shooting of Daunte Wright, a black 20-year-old shot and killed at a traffic stop by a white police officer, Kimberly Potter.

But many of these Republicans accusing Waters of inciting violence did not make the same charge against then-President Donald Trump in the wake of the January 6th MAGA riot on Capitol Hill, that left five dead and trail of destruction throughout the Capitol.

Cruz and Greene were some of Trump's most ardent defenders. McCarthy did take to the House floor to declare Trump, who riled up the crowd with his false claims the election was stolen, 'bears responsibility' for the attack on Congress. McCarthy later flew to Mar-a-Lago to make peace with the former president after Trump became furious at him for his words.

Republicans have turned Waters into a punching bag before - notably for her urging the public to harass Trump White House staffers when they saw them in public.

A bullet hole is seen in the windshield of a Minnesota National Guard vehicle that was targeted in a drive-by shooting early on Sunday. Two Guardsmen suffered minor injuries

Demonstrators gather on Sunday for a solidarity rally lead by community organizers in the Black and Asian communities in memory of George Floyd and Daunte Wright

The city of Minneapolis prepares for a verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial with National Guard on patrol in the streets

Waters traveled to Minneapolis the weekend before closing arguments in the trial of Derek Chauvin, charged with murdering George Floyd on May 25.

The city is bracing for the verdict in the Chauvin case. More than 3,000 members of the National Guard are in Minneapolis, in addition to 1,100 officers from public safety agencies across the state as part of what has been termed Operation Safety Net.

In the early hours of Sunday, two members of the National Guard were injured - although not seriously - in a drive-by shooting.

Waters said she hoped Chauvin was found guilty.

'I am not happy that we have talked about police reform for so long,' Waters said, demanding a guilty verdict in the Chauvin trial and adding: 'If we don't [get it], we cannot go away. We've got to stay on the street.'

She added that protesters needed 'get more active, more confrontational' and they should ignore the curfew in place.

'Weve got to stay on the street and weve got to get more active, weve got to get more confrontational. Weve got to make sure that they know that we mean business,' she said when it comes to police shootings.

Hours after Waters' passionate speech, a Minnesota National Guard and Minneapolis police team were fired upon in a drive-by shooting.

People gather at George Floyd Plaza in the Powderhorn Park neighborhood of Minneapolis Minnesota to listen to the families of victims of police violence

A bullet hole in a National Guard vehicle is seen after Guardsmen were targeted on Sunday

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senator Ted Cruz, and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene blasted Rep. Maxine Waters for her comments in Minneapolis

The team was providing neighborhood security in Minneapolis when, at about 4.19am local time, a light colored SUV drove by and blasted shots at an occupied National Guard vehicle.

No team members were seriously injured, though two National Guard members suffered minor injuries: One was injured by shattered glass and taken to a local hospital, while the other suffered only superficial injuries.

Cruz accused Waters and fellow Democrats of seeking to 'to tear us apart.'

'Why is Maxine Waters traveling to a different state trying to incite a riot? What good can come from this?' asked Lauren Boebert, representative for Colorado.

Fellow Colorado representative Ken Buck said: 'Why is a sitting member of Congress encouraging protesters to get confrontational?'

Arizona Republican Andy Biggs added: 'The Radical Left dont care if your towns are burning, if theres violence in your streets, or if the police are too defunded to defend their communities.

'As long as the Left appeases their anti-America base, their job is done.'

And Marjorie Taylor Greene, congresswoman for Georgia, called for her to be expelled from Congress.

'As a sitting United States Congresswoman @MaxineWaters threatened a jury demanding a guilty verdict and threatened violence if Chauvin is found not guilty. This is also an abuse of power. #ExpelMaxineWaters'

She called Waters 'a danger to our society.'

On Twitter, others joined in the outrage at Waters' remarks.

'Of course she'll get away with saying that while anyone else would've been thrown in jail,' Rick Santella tweeted.

Another user tweeted, 'Good grief lady, leave get out of here.'

One person also accused Waters of 'stirring people up again with her calls for violence.'

Pictured: Congresswoman Maxine Waters leaving the protest at the Brooklyn Center Police Department on Saturday

Maxine Waters (D-CA) joins demonstrators in a protest outside the Brooklyn Center police station on Saturday night

Maxine Waters (D-CA) joins demonstrators in a protest outside the Brooklyn Center police station on Saturday night

Waters is planning on staying in town until Monday.

According to CBS Minnesota, officials stated that there was a brief altercation between reporters and protesters as Waters was leaving on Saturday, the first reports of any skirmishes.

The Pioneer Press reports demonstrators gathered Saturday afternoon at the home of Washington County Attorney Pete Orput, responsible for the second-degree manslaughter charges against Potter

The protesters stood outside of Orput's home before marching through is neighborhood in Stillwater.

Black Lives Matter activist Nekima Levy Armstrong said that Orput left his home briefly to engage in a conversation with protesters.

Pictured: Peaceful protesters in front of the Brooklyn Center Police Department on Saturday night

Demonstrators raise their fists at Union Station near the U.S Capitol, during a march in Washington, D.C. on Saturday

A demonstrator holds a Black Lives Matter sign during a protest outside the Brooklyn Center police station on Saturday

Protests have also been taking place in Chicago following the death of 13-year-old Adam Toledo, as well as New York City and across the rest of the United States.

On Friday night, many protests across the nation started off peacefully before sporadic clashes broke out between Black Lives Matters protesters and the police.

University of Minnesota medical students and doctors also marched on the Brooklyn Center Police Department on Saturday, a day after it was the site of most of the night's unrest.

Peaceful protests on Friday devolved into clashes between protesters and police, with flash bangs and pepper spray utilized by the cops.

There originally was not expected to be a curfew for the first time in several days, before one was suddenly imposed during the night's demonstrations.

Media members were briefly detained and 136 people were arrested.

A temporary restraining order was filed to prevent police from arresting or harming journalists.

'Following feedback from media, and in light of a recent temporary restraining order (TRO) filed in federal court, MSP will not photograph journalists or their credentials,' the Minnesota State Patrol said in a statement.

According to the Washington Post, several protesters were arrested on Saturday night. It's unclear why they were arrested, as the protest of about a hundred was drawing to a close.

Earlier in the day, there were peaceful protests across the nation, including Columbus, Ohio, and Philadelphia.

According to NBC Philadelphia, crowds in that city walked through City Center towards City Hall peacefully in a protest that lasted around five hours.

Nevertheless, some businesses did board up and 1,000 National Guard troops were preemptively deployed.
MIDDLETOWN  The chamber calendar is hot with activity as the weather warms up in Middlesex County.

Two exciting grand openings in different parts of Middlesex County highlight another busy week for the chamber team. On Monday, I will join chamber Chairman Tom Byrne, Central Business Bureau Chairwoman Pam Steele and Mayor Ben Florsheim for the grand opening of Orthopedic Associates of Middletowns new Physical Therapy and Clinical Services Office on South Main Street.

OAM Physical Therapy provides a full range of pain management and injury prevention services that complements its orthopedic care. We wish their entire team all the best moving forward, and look forward to supporting them along the way.

On Friday afternoon, I will join Chester First Selectwoman Lauren Gister, Chamber Vice President Jeff Pugliese, and other county dignitaries for the grand opening and ribbon cutting at Honeycone Cream Co. on Main Street in Chester. Honeycone works to craft the highest quality frozen desserts one small batch at a time, all while supporting the community where they operate. We wish Tula McDougal and her team all the best, and I know the chamber team looks forward to sampling their menu.

Other important items on this weeks calendar include meetings of our Westfield Division, Arrigoni Bridge Committee, Business and Education Advisory Council, Human Resources Steering Committee, Chamber Finance Committee, and East Haddam and Haddam Division. I also look forward to a meeting with my fellow metro chamber executives from throughout the state on Tuesday, a meeting which will cover a variety of topics important to the business community.

As I mentioned last week, we are excited about the return of our successful Tuesday Tips campaign, which brings in professionals from a variety of industry sectors to address topics of importance to small businesses. This Tuesdays event, COVID-19 Vaccinations: What Employers and Employees Need to Know, is presented by Christopher Brigham and Valerie Ferdon with Updike, Kelly & Spellacy P.C.

They will provide practical advice to employers and employees regarding their legal responsibilities and rights in connection with COVID-19 vaccinations. For more information, please visit middlesexchamber.com.

On the tourism front, I attended a meeting of the Connecticut Tourism Council last Tuesday and look forward to participating in these important biweekly meetings moving forward. The meetings will continue to focus on supporting the hospitality and lodging business, and making sure our tourist attractions come back strong after a tough stretch through the pandemic.

This group will also be discussing federal dollars coming into the state via the American Rescue Plan, and how a portion of those funds can be used to support the vital tourism industry.

Switching gears a bit, I want to take a moment to mention that the Middlesex County Historical Society will hold its annual meeting this Thursday evening through virtual means. Founded in 1901, the Middlesex County Historical Society is dedicated to preserving the history of Middletown and Middlesex County. I thank this wonderful organization for its commitment to our history, and encourage everyone to check out the terrific content that they provide.

Briefly on the legislative front, the chambers Legislative Leadership Series will wrap up with a special meeting featuring Senate Minority Leader Kevin Kelly April 29. This event follows up on our successful legislative breakfast with the Middlesex delegation in January, and our events with Speaker Matt Ritter in February and Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff in March. Our Legislative Committee will continue to stay engaged as this important session moves forward.

Before closing, I would like to once again ask that chamber members and other interested parties save April 27 for our annual Business & Education Partnership and Hal Kaplan Middletown Mentor Program Recognition Luncheon, sponsored by Liberty Bank. This years event will be held virtually, and will feature Wesleyan University President Michael Roth as keynote speaker.

President Roth will address a number of important topics, including how Wesleyan has managed the pandemic over the past year, and how their students are doing as we approach the end of another academic year. I would like to thank him once again for speaking, and of course, Liberty Bank for sponsoring.

This event has really become a celebration of our efforts to connect the business community and the education community in our region, efforts that we are very proud of.

I am afraid I must close this weeks column on a sad note after the recent passing of Mario Vinci at the age of 63. Mario was a really good man and a friend to many people in this community.

He was a longtime member of the Middlesex YMCA and was dedicated to staying fit. I always enjoyed working out with Mario and catching up with him about whats going on in town, sports, and most notably, family. After his retirement from the state Department of Corrections, Mario worked part time for the Duksa Family Funeral Homes in Newington, which he really enjoyed.

He was also a longtime supporter of our chamber who attended many events over the years. I will miss Marios fresh-grown tomatoes that he would share with family and friends, but most importantly, I will miss our conversations at the Y, and his friendship.

Our thoughts and prayers are with Marios wife, Linda, and his entire family at this difficult time. Mario Vinci will be missed by many.

Larry McHugh is president of the Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce in Middletown.
WEAVERVILLE, Calif.  Authorities arrested a man they say is connected to burglaries at the cemetery and airport in Weaverville.

In early April 2021, Trinity County Sheriffs deputies investigated a burglary at the Weaverville Cemetery. Deputies said a supply and equipment building was ransacked and the cemetery maintenance vehicle was stolen.

Around the same time, two hangers at the Weaverville Airport were burglarized, a plane was also vandalized and moved across the airports runway, deputies said.

A transient from Weaverville, Robert David Bayer Jr., 48, was identified by the TCSO as a suspect in the airport and cemetery burglaries.

Bayer was later taken into custody on an outstanding warrant for a non-related case. During that time, investigators interviewed Bayer, who confessed to the auto and plane theft, vandalism, along with the burglaries, deputies said.

He was booked into the Trinity County Detention Facility for several charges including two counts of auto theft and two counts of burglary.
The last three weeks of the Derek Chauvin trial provided jurors with a comprehensive understanding of George Floyds final moments, pieced together from hours of video and witness testimony. But there is one part of the case that lawyers for both sides have spent little time on: the $20 bill that brought the police to the scene in the first place.

Mr. Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer accused of killing Mr. Floyd on May 25, was one of four officers who took part in the arrest, which began when a clerk for the Cup Foods convenience store called 911 to report that Mr. Floyd had used a fake $20 bill to buy cigarettes.

In opening statements, a prosecutor showed jurors a photograph of two $20 bills that had the same serial number, suggesting that they were counterfeit. One of the bills was ripped in two, a sign that the other one may have been the bill that Mr. Floyd used to buy cigarettes, though prosecutors did not discuss the photograph in more detail.

The police officers could have written him a ticket, and let the courts sort it out, Jerry W. Blackwell, the prosecutor, told jurors during opening statements.
A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
"We are delighted to welcome Sophia to the CHOP family," said Madeline Bell, President and CEO of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "She not only brings the technical competencies to succeed in this role, but she has also demonstrated a personal commitment to developing people and leading teams, two invaluable skills that will help further CHOP's mission of transforming care and improving the lives of children."

As Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Sophia will work with CHOP leadership to ensure the hospital thrives in an evolving healthcare ecosystem, while maintaining its focus on groundbreaking research, family-centered care, education and advocacy. She will oversee all financial functions in support of the institution, upholding a culture of collaboration, transparency, and accountability.

In her role at Boston Children's, Sophia spearheaded employee engagement efforts in Finance and was an active participant in efforts associated with the enterprise's Equity Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) goals. She sponsored Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system implementations, co-led initiatives to implement new Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) solutions, as well as executed a number of process improvement initiatives that supported operational excellence goals for the hospital.

Before joining Boston Children's, Sophia spent six years at the University of Vermont Medical Center, where she served as the Vice President for Finance, as well as the Interim Chief Financial Officer. While at the University of Vermont Medical Center, she participated in councils and committees that supported projects to integrate, align, coordinate and consolidate affiliate partners within University of Vermont Health Network. She began her healthcare career at Mass General Brigham in Boston, where she held numerous leadership positions, including serving as the Controller of the Brigham and Women's Faulkner Hospital.

Throughout her career, Sophia has maintained a passion for mentoring and developing next generation leaders, as well as serving and supporting the community, with a focus on the underserved.

Sophia received a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology, with a minor in business administration, from Boston University, earning a CPA at the start of her distinguished career in accounting and finance. Sophia is a member of the National Association of Health Services Executives, the Healthcare Financial Management Association, and Chief, a private organization specifically designed for senior women leaders to strengthen their skills and promote the exchange of leadership ideas.

Sophia replaces Chief Financial Officer Tom Todorow, who is retiring after 20 years of service to CHOP.

About Children's Hospital of Philadelphia: Children's Hospital of Philadelphia was founded in 1855 as the nation's first pediatric hospital. Through its long-standing commitment to providing exceptional patient care, training new generations of pediatric healthcare professionals, and pioneering major research initiatives, Children's Hospital has fostered many discoveries that have benefited children worldwide. Its pediatric research program is among the largest in the country. In addition, its unique family-centered care and public service programs have brought the 595-bed hospital recognition as a leading advocate for children and adolescents. For more information, visit http://www.chop.edu

Contact: Ashley Moore

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

215-630-4683

[email protected]

SOURCE Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

Related Links

http://www.chop.edu


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The Delhi government on Sunday ordered Delhi Police to lodge FIRs against four airlines for ferrying passengers from Maharashtra without valid RT-PCR reports.

Sources told IANS that around 130 such passengers have been carried by four airlines - IndiGo, Vistara, SpiceJet and AirAsia.

"The Delhi government has directed the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) police station to lodge FIRs against IndiGo, Spicejet, Vistara and AirAsia," the Delhi Chief Minister's Office said.

The action would be taken under the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) norms to combat the Covid-19 pandemic.

The DDMA, the apex authority in the Covid fight, had earlier made RT-PCR tests, not older than 72 hours before departure, mandatory for all passengers coming from Maharashtra to Delhi. Passengers who are found positive will be quarantined at home or hospital for 10 days. Those without a negative report will be placed in quarantine for a period of 14 days, it had said.

The stringent action comes at a time when the national capital is recording a surge in daily Covid-19 cases which crossed 24,000 mark on Saturday.
DUBLIN, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "United States Real Estate Market by Segments (Private, Public) Construction, Category (Residential & Non- Residential), Company Analysis, Forecast" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

United States Real Estate Industry was USD 1,208 Billion in 2020 and is expected to reach USD 1,751 Billion by 2027 and will grow with a CAGR of 5.45%

The United States is among the largest construction market globally. Infrastructure constructions take lots of time and capital to build and design project. In the United States, massive numbers of infrastructure and construction industry are built with government and private companies' support. Constructions made to provide support to the maximum population.

In the United States, the market of Real estate is surging despite the pandemic COVID-19 crisis. For many Americans, residence is the highest source of prosperity and investment. Non-Residential or Commercial construction includes lodging, Office, health care, Educational, temples, Amusement and recreate, transportation, manufacturing, etc. It provides a source of more revenue in return.



The construction project is booming in the country, changing lifestyle and increasing population will propel the Real Estate market in this country.



U.S real estate is growing year on year, and numerous infrastructure projects are being introduced every year. Northern Arizona University is planning for large construction projects that include STEM disciplines and the Biological Sciences Building renovation.

The Southwest Florida International Airport is planning an enormous US$ 250 Million terminal expansion, and Citizens in the city of Shoreline will see a US$ 64.3 Million roadway reconstruction project launched in 2022 and many more cities. The upcoming year promises to bring a construction project to every region of the United States.

Key Topics Covered:



1. Introduction



2. Research & Methodology



3. Executive Summary



4. Market Dynamics

4.1 Growth Drivers

4.2 Challenges



5. United States Real Estate Market



6. United States Real Estate Market Share

6.1 By Segments

6.2 By Private Non-Residential Categories

6.3 By Public Non-Residential Categories



7. Segment - United States Real Estates Market

7.1 Private Construction

7.2 Public Construction



8. Private Construction by Categories

8.1 Residential

8.2 Non-Residential

8.2.1 Lodging

8.2.2 Office

8.2.3 Commercial

8.2.4 Health care

8.2.5 Educational

8.2.6 Religious

8.2.7 Public safety

8.2.8 Amusement and recreation

8.2.9 Transportation

8.2.10 Communication

8.2.11 Power

8.2.12 Sewage and waste disposal

8.2.13 Water supply

8.2.14 Manufacturing



9. Public Construction by Categories

9.1 Residential

9.2 Non-Residential

9.2.1 Office

9.2.2 Commercial

9.2.3 Health care

9.2.4 Educational

9.2.5 Public safety

9.2.6 Amusement and recreation

9.2.7 Transportation

9.2.8 Power

9.2.9 Highway and street

9.2.10 Sewage and waste disposal

9.2.11 Water supply

9.2.12 Conservation and development



10. Company Analysis

10.1 Jones Lang Lasalle Incorporated

10.1.1 Overviews

10.1.2 Recent Developments

10.1.3 Revenues

10.2 Cbre Group Inc.

10.3 Brookfield Properties LLC

10.4 Berkshire Hathaway home services

10.5 Cushman & Wakefield Holdings Inc.

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/2c1zjf

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1904

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com


Beijing, April 19 : The Chinese mainland on Sunday reported 11 new Covid-19 cases, all of which were imported, the National Health Commission said in its daily report on Monday.

Of them, four were reported in Hainan, two each in Guangdong and Yunnan, and one each in Tianjin, Shanghai and Shaanxi, Xinhua news agency reported.

One new suspected Covid-19 case arriving from outside the mainland was reported in Shanghai, according to the commission.

No new deaths related to Covid-19 were reported.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
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Rev Al Sharpton on Monday led a prayer surrounded by George Floyd's family as the jury retired following a morning of closing arguments in the murder case against former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin.

Before Sharpton prayed, he told those around him that on Thursday he would be eulogizing Daunte Wright, 20, a black man who was killed by a white cop on April 11 during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota.

'This is why this trial is so important. Because it was not even a year later that death by police hit this city,' Sharpton said.

'So we do this global prayer because it has not stopped with George Floyd but because many of us whether it been in the Congress or in the streets have kept this fight going and we are going to keep this fight going. Whatever way this verdict goes, we won't stop until the laws change and the behavior changes,' he added.

Sharpton then locked arms with the family and led the crowd in prayer. In the crowd was Gianna Floyd, George's daughter. Also joining Sharpton outside the Hennepin County Courthouse was attorney Ben Crump, Rev. Jesse Jackson, attorney Chris Stewart, Rep Joyce Beatty, Rep Sheila Jackson Lee and Rep Ilhan Omar.

The murder case is now with the jury. Twelve jurors - four of them white, six black and two multiracial - are beginning deliberations in a city on edge against another round of unrest.

Before Rev Al Sharpton (pictured at the podium) prayed, he told those around him that on Thursday he would be eulogizing Daunte Wright, 20, a black man who was killed by a white cop on April 11 during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center

Sharpton then locked arms with the family and led the crowd in prayer. In the crowd was Gianna Floyd, George's daughter (right in purple jacket)

Also joining Sharpton outside the Hennepin County Courthouse was attorney Ben Crump, Rev Jesse Jackson, attorney Chris Stewart, Rep Joyce Beatty, Rep Sheila Jackson Lee and Rep Ilhan Omar

Daunte Wright's family also joined the Floyd family on Monday for the closing remarks of the trial. Civil rights attorney, Ben Crump, is see at the podium outside the Hennepin County Courthouse in Minneapolis on Monday

Floyd's daughter Gianna was held by a family member on Monday as she gathered with a crowd to address the media

Gianna was seen smiling as Sharpton and others addressed the media outside the Hennepin County Courthouse on Monday

Sharpton (center right) walks with Rev Jesse Jackson (second from left) after leaving a news conference outside the Hennepin County Government Center on Monday

Attorney Ben Crump with George Floyd Family members, Rev Jesse Jackson and Reverend Al Sharpton walking back into the Hennepin County Court House on Monday

During closing arguments Monday, prosecutors contended that Chauvin squeezed the life out of Floyd by pinning his knee against Floyd's neck last May, ignoring bystanders, his own training and common sense.

The defense argued that the now-fired white officer acted reasonably and that the 46-year-old black man died of an underlying heart condition and illegal drug use.

Earlier on Monday, prosecutors told the jury during closing arguments that Chauvin 'had to know' he was squeezing the life out of Floyd as he cried over and over that he couldn't breathe and finally fell silent.

'Use your common sense. Believe your eyes. What you saw, you saw,' Steve Schleicher said, referring to the excruciating bystander video of Floyd pinned to the pavement with Chauvin's knee on or close to his neck for up to 9 minutes, 29 seconds, as bystanders yelled at the white officer to get off.

Chauvin attorney Eric Nelson countered by arguing that Chauvin did what any 'reasonable' police officer would have done after finding himself in a 'dynamic' and 'fluid' situation involving a large man struggling with three officers.

Floyd's death last spring set off protests in the city and across the US that at times turned violent.

Prosecutor Jerry Blackwell had the final word, offering the state's rebuttal argument. The prosecutor, who is black, said that the questions about the use of force and cause of death are 'so simple that a child can understand it'.

'In fact, a child did understand it, when the nine-year-old girl said, "Get off of him,"' Blackwell said, referring to a young witness who objected to what she saw. 'That's how simple it was. "Get off of him." Common sense.'

Under the law, police are given certain latitude to use force, and their actions are supposed to be judged according to what a 'reasonable officer' in the same situation would have done - a point the defense stressed repeatedly.

Nelson noted that officers who first went to the corner store where Floyd allegedly tried to pass a counterfeit $20 bill already were struggling with Floyd when Chauvin arrived as backup.

Chauvin is facing three charges in connection with George Floyd's death on May 25: second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter

Derek Chauvin is pictured in court on Monday morning during closing arguments in his murder trial

The attorney also noted that the first two officers on the scene were rookies and that police had been told that Floyd might be on drugs.

'A reasonable police officer understands the intensity of the struggle,' Nelson said, saying that Chauvins body-worn camera and his police badge were knocked off his chest.

During the prosecution's argument, Schleicher replayed portions of the bystander video and other footage as he dismissed certain defense theories about Floyd's death as 'nonsense,' saying Chauvin killed Floyd by constricting his breathing.

Schleicher rejected the drug overdose argument, as well as the contention that police were distracted by hostile onlookers, that Floyd had 'superhuman' strength from a state of agitation known as excited delirium, and that he suffered possible carbon monoxide poisoning from auto exhaust.

The prosecutor sarcastically referred to the idea that it was heart disease that killed Floyd as an 'amazing coincidence.'

'Is that common sense or is that nonsense?' Schleicher asked the racially diverse jury.

But Nelson said the prosecution brought in experts to testify that Floyd died because of asphyxia, or lack of oxygen, while the person who actually performed the autopsy, the county medical examiner, reached a different finding.

Hennepin County Medical Examiner Dr. Andrew Baker, who ruled Floyd's death a homicide, said Floyds heart gave out because of the way police held him down. He listed Floyd's drug use and underlying health problems as contributing factors.

Nelson also showed the jury pictures of pills found in Floyds SUV and pill remnants discovered in the squad car. Fentanyl and methamphetamine were found in Floyds system.

The defense attorney said the failure of the prosecution to acknowledge that medical problems or drugs played a role 'defies medical science and it defies common sense and reason.'

But Blackwell said prosecutors only have to prove that Chauvins actions were a substantial causal factor in his death, not the sole cause.

He also ridiculed the idea that Floyd, who didnt have a pulse, would come 'back to life' and go on a 'rampage.'

'That's the sort of thing you see in Halloween movies., ladies and gentlemen, not in real life. Not in real life,' Blackwell said.

And he rejected the theory that Floyd died because of an enlarged heart: 'The truth of the matter is that the reason George Floyd is dead is because Mr Chauvins heart was too small.'

Earlier, fellow prosecutor Schleicher described how Chauvin ignored Floyds cries and continued to kneel on him well after he stopped breathing and had no pulse.

Chauvin was 'on top of him for 9 minutes and 29 seconds and he had to know,' Schleicher said. 'He had to know.'

He said Chauvin 'heard him, but he just didn't listen'.

The prosecutor further argued that Floyd was 'not a threat to anyone' and wasn't trying to escape when he struggled with officers. Instead, Schleicher said, he was terrified of being put into the tiny backseat of the squad car.

He said a reasonable officer with Chauvin's training and experience - he was a 19-year Minneapolis police veteran - should have sized up the situation accurately.

Chauvin, wearing a light gray suit with a blue shirt and blue tie, showed little expression as he watched himself and the other officers pinning Floyd to the ground on bodycam video played by his attorney. He cocked his head to the side and occasionally leaned forward to write on a notepad.

Demonstrators gather for a solidarity rally led by community organizers in the Black and Asian communities in memory of George Floyd and Daunte Wright outside Cup Foods in Minneapolis

Demonstrators gather for a solidarity rally in memory of the deceased George Floyd and Daunte Wright outside Cup Foods

An unidentified woman occupied the single seat set aside in the pandemic-spaced courtroom for a Chauvin supporter.

Floyd's brother Philonise represented the family in court, as he often has during the trial.

Schleicher also noted that Chauvin was required to use his training to provide medical care to Floyd but ignored bystanders, rebuffed help from an off-duty paramedic and rejected a suggestion from another officer to roll Floyd onto his side.

'He could have listened to the bystanders. He could have listened to fellow officers. He could have listened to his own training. He knew better. He just didnt do better,' Schleicher said.

'Conscious indifference. Indifference. Do you want to know what indifference is and sounds like?' Schleicher asked before playing a video of Chauvin replying, 'Uh-huh' several times as Floyd cried out.

Nelson, in a closing argument that took about 2 hours and 45 minutes, played portions of bystander video that showed the increasingly agitated onlookers shouting at Chauvin to get off Floyds neck. He said officers may have determined it wasn't safe to render medical aid to Floyd in that environment.

Nelson described what he called a 'critical moment': Floyd took his last breath, Chauvin reacted to the crowd by taking out his Mace and threatening a use of force, and the off-duty paramedic walked up behind Chauvin, startling him.

'And that changed Officer Chauvins perception of what was happening,' Nelson said. He added: 'I cannot, in my opinion, understate the importance of this moment.'

The downtown courthouse is surrounded by concrete barriers and razor wire, in a city heavily fortified by National Guard members and just days after a new round of unrest over the police killing Daunte Wright in a nearby suburb. Some businesses boarded up their storefronts with plywood.

Chauvin, 45, is charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. All three charges require the jury to conclude that Chauvin's actions were a 'substantial causal factor' in Floyd's death and that his use of force was unreasonable.

Second-degree intentional murder carries up to 40 years in prison, third-degree murder 25 years, and second-degree manslaughter 10 years. Sentencing guidelines call for far less time, including 12 1/2 years on either murder count.
SARATOGA SPRINGS  There is no need to do a double take: that was Owen Wilson you just saw.

Over the next few weeks, the city will be home to comedic stars including Wilson, Michaela Watkins, Wendy McLendon-Covey and Stephen Root who are shooting a new independent film.

Blue Creek Pictures has confirmed that the city has been selected as a location for Brit McAdams' picture Paint.

While the locations have not yet been disclosed, the plot has. The movie will center on the fictional character Carl Nargle, an artist who paints on Vermonts Number 1 television show. Producer Rick Bosner describes the title character as having a signature whisper keeping viewers from Pittsfield to St. Albans breathlessly hanging on his every stroke.

But Nargles life falls apart when the station hires a younger, better painter.

For weeks, Hudson Valley Casting has been seeking extras for the film with an emphasis on men who are 65 years and older with comedic skills. Heidi Eklund, who heads Hudson Valley Casting, is also looking for Black male actors age 55 and older with comedic skills.

She told the Times Union she was not at liberty to discuss the project.

Chatter about the film has been quietly going on for weeks, with those working to arrange the film fearing that discussing it would "compromise the integrity" of the deal.

Annamaria Bellantoni, vice president of tourism at the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce, helped to arrange the film locations with the help of the city and Discover Saratoga-Saratoga Convention and Tourism Bureau. She said while the locations will remain a secret - so that crowds don't flock there and interrupt the action - she said the filmmakers will be working throughout the county. She also said that the city has received many requests for locations since the beginning of the year and that filming in and around the area is great for hotels, restaurants, short-term rentals and businesses in general.

"They are using our companies, our services," Bellantoni said. "They are going out and doing what tourists do. It spills over into everything."

At this point, she doesn't know how many cast and crew members will stay in the city through mid-May, but she does think it will have an economic impact.

"The Association of Film Commissioners International give a general idea of what feature film or TV show or commercial will bring into an area," she said. "A feature film brings in about $125,000 a day to the local economy. Once it's over, we will be able to break down the figures and see what kind of impact it has had."

Certainly, Wilson's films have had an impact at the box office. Known for his roles in such films as "Wedding Crashers," "Zoolander" and the animated hit "Cars," Wilson has raked in $2.4 billion at the box office worldwide, according to TheNumbers.com.

His costar Watkins was a cast member of "Saturday Night Live," while McLendon-Covey played Rita in the comedy "Bridesmaids." Root has carved out a niche playing unforgettable characters in movies such as "Office Space" and "Get Out," as well as appearing in television sitcoms like "NewsRadio" and "King of the Hill."

Paint is not the only film project using the Capital Region as a backdrop. The HBO series The Gilded Age will soon begin shooting in Troy. Christine Baranski, Cynthia Nixon, Carrie Coon, and Denee Benton are cast in the show that is described as a prequel to the PBS hit series Downtown Abbey.



Another HBO series, The White House Plumbers, will also begin shooting in the Hudson Valley. A five-episode limited series will star Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux as E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy and will follow their undoing as the architects of the 1972 Watergate break-in of the Democratic Party headquarters in Washington.
U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told "Fox News Sunday" that the Vienna talks with Iran were "constructive" and that there is a real effort to get back to mutual compliance of the 2015 nuclear deal.

But he added that the U.S. wont lift sanctions unless it has "clarity and confidence" that Iran will fully return to compliance of all its obligations under the 2015 agreement.

"What I will say is that the United States is not going to lift sanctions unless we have clarity and confidence that Iran will fully return to compliance with its obligations under the deal," the agency cited Sullivan as saying.
The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), continues to spread globally. Skyrocketing cases have been reported amid vaccination campaigns. To date, more than 141 million infections are reported globally, and the death toll now sits at over 3 million.

The United States reports the highest number of SARS-CoV-2 infections, reaching over 31.6 million. The country commenced mass vaccination efforts to mitigate the virus spread on December 14, 2020, following the FDA's approval of the PfizerBioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on December 10, 2020. The Moderna COVID-19 vaccine was later approved for use on December 17, 2020, and the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine was approved for use on February 27, 2021

The country has jabbed over 131 million Americans (39.5% of the Total Population), including over 84 million who have been fully vaccinated (25.4%% of the Total Population).

Vaccination efforts

Three vaccines are currently being used in the U.S., the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine (over 109.1 million doses), the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine (over 92.1 million doses), and the Johnson & Johnson's Janssen vaccine (over 7.9 million doses).

The country has made significant progress in vaccinating seniors who are over the age of 65. Overall, 81 percent of seniors have now had at least their first shot. It is expected that all adults across the country will be eligible for their vaccine in the coming days.

"This means that there has never been a better time than now for seniors and those eligible to get their shots. Make an appointment today. And if you have someone in your life, particularly a senior, who has not gotten a shot yet, reach out and see what help they need," the White House COVID-19 Response Team urged.

They added that the fast pace of the country's vaccination program would help combat the current pandemic. In the last seven days, the country has administered 26,959,025 million shots, which is more than 8.2 percent of the adult population in one week.

The country aims to add at least a dozen new mass vaccination sites by April 19, with the opening of 36 mass vaccination sites that can administer 124,000 shots per day. The number of pharmacies, who will participate in the retail pharmacy program to increase the number of those administering shots, will also be increased.

The country also aims to increase the number of testing sites to detect COVID-19 cases. This way, they can rapidly detect and isolate positive COVID-19 patients to reduce the risk of its further spread.

Image Credit: Melinda Nagy / Shutterstock

Increasing COVID-19 cases

Dr. Fauci reports that the seven-day average for new cases surged by 3 percent. Over the weekend, the CDC reported 75,000 cases and 81,000 cases of COVID-10 each day.

That being said, hospital admissions have also increased, reaching about 5,300 admissions per day, equivalent to a 6.6 percent increase from the past seven days. However, the number of deaths tied to COVID-19 decreased 5.2 percent to a seven-day average of 684 per day.

"Today, CDC is releasing two reports in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that underscore the need to address health inequities in our country, including in our vaccination efforts," Dr. Fauci reported.

The first report showed trends in racial and ethnic disparities and COVID-19 hospitalizations in the U.S. It reports that people from racial and ethnic minority groups are disproportionately affected by COVID-19, including being at risk for being admitted to the hospital. Hispanic and Latino individuals make up a more significant proportion of patients hospitalized with COVID-19.

Meanwhile, the second report revealed that based on emergency department visits for COVID-19 between October and December 2020, Hispanic and American Indian and Alaskan Native individuals were 1.7 times more likely to seek emergency care for COVID-19 related illness. Also, Blacks were 1.4 times more likely to seek care in emergency departments.

"At CDC, we have a critical role to play in addressing health equity," Dr. Fauci explained. "We have made new and expanded investments in racial and ethnic minority communities and other disproportionately affected communities around the country to provide the foundation and resources to help address disparities to COVID-19 and, importantly, to create the infrastructure to address the other health conditions," he added.

The health officials pledged to continue to support and expand efforts to address disparities. They also plan to improve longstanding health disparities through blood pressure management, childhood vaccination, diabetes control, and mental health programs.
By Li Mengyang

DILI, Apr.19 -- On April 17, four mobile field containerized kitchen systems provided by China successfully completed the emergency relief mission in East Timor in response to the flood disaster therein, and withdrew from Lagoa village amid the warm farewell of local victims.

A few days ago, affected by tropical cyclone Seroja in Savu Sea, East Timor was hit by a catastrophic flood that has not been seen for many years. Plenty of roads, bridges, and residential houses in Dili, capital of East Timor, were shattered, leaving the whole city severely affected and the residents stranded in floods, on the verge of life and death.

On April 10, the East Timor Defense Forces (ETDF) dispatched four China-assisted mobile field containerized kitchens to the disaster area to supply food for the local victims. After wading through the damaged sections of roads and arriving at the village of Lagoa, the mobile field containerized kitchens were immediately put into operation to provide food for the starving victims.

After several days of intense work, the emergency rescue mission came to the end as of April 16. In addition to the mobile field containerized kitchens, the China-assisted squad tents, field boots and rain-proof uniforms also played an important role in the relief and rescue mission.

According to Senior Colonel Liu Miao, Chinese Defense Attache to East Timor, the Chinese Ministry of National Defense assisted the East Timor Ministry of National Defense and its National Defense Forces in 2019 with a batch of logistic equipment, including seven mobile field containerized kitchen systems. The systems can not only provide food supplies for the troops, but also be used for disaster and humanitarian rescue missions.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 13:24:04|Editor: huaxia

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VIENTIANE, April 19 (Xinhua) -- The COVID-19 vaccination program in Laos is underway and the majority of people in target areas have had their first dose of the vaccine.

The Lao government plans to vaccinate at least 150,000 people in the initial stages of the program.

Local daily Vientiane Times on Monday quoted Director General of the Department of Hygiene and Health Promotion under the Lao Ministry of Health Phonepaseuth Ounaphom said that the sectors involved had vaccinated 85 percent of the target population.

As of April 4, some 103,000 people in at-risk groups had received their first vaccination, while 6,171 people have had their second doses, according to the National Taskforce Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control.

The vaccination drive is part of COVID-19 prevention and control plans which health authorities are going all out to implement in a bid to keep the virus in check.

The vaccination program has been expanded to cover more target groups in addition to health workers.

Civil servants and officials from ministries, ministry-equivalent organizations, local departments, foreign embassies, international organizations and their families, as well as some businesses categorized as being at risk, are now targeted under the expanded program.

An earlier report said that about 22 percent of the population, or about 1.6 million people, will be vaccinated in 2021, said the report.

Vaccination coverage is expected to rise to 70 percent of the population by 2022, with more people to be vaccinated in the following years.

The Lao Ministry of Health asked everyone to be mindful of the risks posed by COVID-19.

Authorities and people must strictly follow government guidelines concerning virus prevention measures.

Laos has now confirmed 58 cases of COVID-19, with nine people undergoing treatment in hospitals.

The country reported its first two COVID-19 cases on March 24 last year. Enditem
UPDATE: Fire that gutted Portland Garment Factory was arson, officials say

A large fire caused extensive damage to a textile manufacturing facility in Portland early Monday morning, officials said.

The first reports of the blaze came in around 3:30 a.m. at a commercial building in the 400 block of Southeast 79th Avenue, said Lt. Liz Thompson, a spokeswoman for Portland Fire & Rescue.

The first firefighters on the scene saw flames coming from the second story of the building and quickly made their way inside to fight the blaze, Thompson said.

They soon saw signs that the roof was becoming unstable, though, and had to pull back and fight the fire from the exterior before the roof partially collapsed.

The building is home to the Portland Garment Factory, a small textile manufacturing business that changed course and began making masks in early 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic first took hold.

A nearby apartment building was evacuated, Thompson said, and the Red Cross was assisting those residents in finding accommodations.

Fire officials said they were mopping up the fire around 7 a.m.

At its peak, more than 70 firefighters were battling the blaze. No injuries were reported, and the cause was under investigation. Fire officials asked any witnesses with information to call 503-823-INFO.

Several streets in the immediate vicinity were closed Monday morning.

-- Kale Williams; kwilliams@oregonian.com; 503-294-4048; @sfkale
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 11:39:08|Editor: huaxia

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LISBON, April 18 (Xinhua) -- Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa announced on Sunday that 183,000 jabs were administered against COVID-19 this weekend, with the vaccination of 170,000 teachers and school staff completed.

The immunization of Portuguese education professionals had been interrupted due to questions raised about the AstraZeneca vaccine.

According to Costa, "the vaccination process is proceeding in its normal terms" and Portugal "is ready to fulfill the objective" of its immunization process.

The Portuguese head of government predicted that "the entire population over 70 years old may be vaccinated" by the end of this month of April, and people over 60 years old by the month of May.

This would represent the immunization of "96 percent of the population in the age group" with a higher mortality rate of COVID-19, said Costa.

Over 2.5 million people have been vaccinated, the Portuguese health authorities said.

As the world is struggling to contain the pandemic, vaccination is underway in an increasing number of countries with already-authorized coronavirus vaccines.

A total of 272 candidate vaccines -- including 88 in clinical trials -- are being developed worldwide, including in Germany, Britain, China, the United States, and Russia, according to data provided by the World Health Organization up to Tuesday. Enditem
Amazon told Bloomberg that it has canned its Lord of the Rings, developed with the help of China's Leyou, after being "unable to secure terms" to continue its development. However, sources claim that Tencent's recent acquisition of Leyou led to a contract dispute that ultimately killed the project.

Amazon Game Studios is struggling to get games out there and keep them on sale. It canceled Breakaway in 2018 after lack of progress, and it dropped Crucible after poor feedback during testing. Another MMO, New World , has faced multiple delays and isn't expected to launch until the end of August. While Amazon remains committed to its Game Studios efforts  its incoming CEO has stated his support  they clearly haven't delivered results quickly.

If its the Lord of the Rings part youre more upset about missing out on, dont worry  theres still Amazons Prime TV series incoming. Two seasons of it .

 Mat Smith

The incident raises questions about Tesla's Autopilot claims.

Engadget

Two men have died after a 2019 Model S collided with a tree north of Houston, with no one in the driver's seat. One was in the front passenger seat, police officer Mark Herman told the media, while the other was in the back.

If the Model S was unmanned, the occupants might have misunderstood Autopilot, Full Self-Driving (FSD) or both. Concerns persist that some customers overestimate the tech, assuming they can take their hands off the steering wheel or even leave the driver's seat entirely. However, even the FSD beta doesn't offer complete autonomy, and you have to be ready to take control at any given moment  the car will ask you to grab the wheel if you leave it alone for long enough.

The large lithium batteries of EVs like the Model S present a different kind of fire to deal with, too. It apparently took first responders about four hours to put out the Model S fire, and the team even contacted Tesla for help. Continue reading.

The pre-production EV is among the first built on a new PPE platform.

Audi

At Auto Shanghai 2021 expo, which kicks off this week, Audi offered a peek at its new A6 e-tron, a luxury sedan with EV bones. It follows the hybrid A6 that we saw back in 2011. According to the company, the A6 EV could offer driving ranges up to 700 KM (434 miles) and hit 100KMPH (62MPH) from a standstill in less than four seconds. But for now, there are no prices or launch windows being announced. Continue reading.

No, not that Bowser.

Getty

Nintendo has sued Gary Bowser, a leader of the Switch hacking group Team Xecuter, for allegedly violating copyright by making and selling hacks. Law enforcement had already arrested Bowser in the fall, but the company hoped the suit would punish the leader for both the copyright violation and two counts of trafficking.

A lot of the lawsuit focuses on Bowser reportedly running an "international pirate ring," distributing hacking tools SX Core, SX Lite and SX Pro for use with Nintendos Switch. While some critics have argued that bootlegs are helpful for preserving games, Team Xecuter has been selling the SX suite for profit, which probably ruin that defense in court. Continue reading.

Users will pay $15 for 25 Mbps internet and $20 for broadband over 200 Mbps.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has signed a bill requiring all internet service providers to offer $15 per month broadband for low-income users, in a state where the average monthly bill is $50. Service providers must provide at least 25 Mbps download speeds or their current low-income internet speeds if those are greater. Continue reading.

But wait, theres more...

Peloton opposes US demand for Tread+ recall following child injuries

The best smart speakers you can buy in 2021

Engadget Deals: Apple's 512GB Mac Mini M1 returns to a record-low $800 at Amazon

US investigates code testing hack that could affect thousands of companies
GG Spring Festival Headliner Champions Crowned; Gottlieb Wins Fourth Title

April 19, 2021 Will Shillibier

It was another night of intense poker action on GGPoker with the continuation of the GG Spring Festival. The series, which features a line-up of 110 events across three tiers each including two $10M guaranteed tournaments, is on pace to outstrip the $185M tournament series record set by PokerStars last year.

On the penultimate weekend, PokerNews was on hand with extensive live reporting of five different events, with three winners crowned in the $400 PLO-NL Headliner-M, the $400 NLHE Headliner-M and the Bounty Hunters Main Event.

Be Part of GGPoker's Biggest Spring Series Ever Find out more about the $150M guaranteed GG Spring Festival! Click Here

Connor Drinan Wins Headliner By Completing Epic Comeback in Record Time

The GGSF Headliner-M: $400 PLO-NL, $1M GTD saw 1,962 unique players rebuy 709 times. That meant the 2,671-entry field resulted in a $1,004,296 prize pool. On Day 2, 451 players returned to action looking to play down to a winner.

After 8.5 hours of play, it was poker pro Connor Drinan walking away with the title and accompanying $127,453 first-place prize. Drinans win was especially impressive given he was down to just one big blind during three-handed play, but only 10 minutes later he was the last player standing.

It was a testament to the big swings involved in a pot-limit Omaha variant that featured no-limit action after the flop.

Read More: GGPoker Launches New 'OmahaSquad'

GGSF Headliner-M: $400 PLO-NL Final Table Results

PLACE PLAYER COUNTRY PRIZE 1 Connor Drinan Canada $127,453 2 Mads Amot Norway $92,150 3 Rui Ferreira Brazil $66,626 4 Kosei Ichinose Japan $48,172 5 Ami Barer Canada $34,830 6 Jin JackLuck Su China $25,182 7 Mark Berente Hungary $18,207

Read Full Updates on Drinan's Comeback Win

Juan Pardo Wins GGSF Headliner-M: $400 NLHE, $2.5M GTD for $381,668

After almost nine hours of play, Juan Pardo came out on top of the GGSF Headliner-M: $400 NLHE, $2.5M GTD. He made it through more than 9,000 Day 1 runners, and 1,365 Day 2 players to take down the top prize of more than $380,000. That was the biggest share of a prize pool that ended up at $3,403,176, well over the $2.5 million guarantee.

Pardo is no stranger to the winner's circle or big prizes. With more than $3 million in live poker winnings, this score would only rank fifth on his best live cashes. His biggest score came in 2019 at EPT Barcelona where he won the 50,000 No-Limit Hold'em for more than $1.1 million.

GGSF Headliner-M: $400 NLHE Final Table Results

PLACE PLAYER COUNTRY PRIZE 1 Juan Pardo Spain $381,668 2 v_Nistelrooy Russia $286,206 3 Elliott "gr00thedegen" Peterman United Kingdom $214,624 4 Daniel Smiljkovic Austria $160,945 5 Byron Kaverman United States $120,692 6 Anton Wigg Sweden $90,506 7 5Dinks4all Andorra $67,870 8 Joshua "IyasusSake" Gebissa Germany $50,895 9 Hazes Austria $38,166

Read Full Updates from the $400 NLHE Headliner-M

Lev "LevMeAlone" Gottlieb Wins Fourth GGSF Title in $5,250 Bounty Hunters Main Event ($316,692)

After winning three GGSF events so far, Lev "LevMeAlone" Gottlieb has now made it four by taking down the 2021 GG Spring Festival H-72: $5,250 Bounty Hunters Main Event for a whopping $316,692 which including an amazing $214,297 in bounties. The tournament attracted 228 unique players who reentered 89 times. This created a prize pool of $1,585,000 with 44 players cashing.

After winning H-05: $10,300 Super MILLION$ for $586,075, H-15: $10,3000 Super Tuesday for $320,729, and H-35: $10,300 PLO-NL High Roller for $199,771, Gottlieb has increased his total winnings on GGPoker to $2,210,839 which is an incredible achievement in itself. The WSOP online bracelet winner was near the top of the counts for most of the day and came into the final table second in chips to close it out in the end by defeating Chris Klodnicki heads-up.

H-72: $5,250 Bounty Hunters Main Event Final Table Results

PLACE PLAYER BOUNTY PRIZE TOTAL 1 Lev "LevMeAlone" Gottlieb Mexico $214,297 $102,395 $316,692 2 Chris Klodnicki United States $36,719 $102,237 $138,956 3 Gergely "Land on it!" Kulcsar Hungary $41,406 $78,467 $119,874 4 Arie Muller Germany $10,156 $60,178 $70,334 5 Sami Kelopuro Finland $11,250 $46,151 $57,401 6 Ottomar Ladva Estonia $7,188 $35,394 $42,582 7 Hannes "BlackFortuna" Speiser Austria $19,375 $27,144 $46,519 8 Anton Wigg Sweden $32,422 $20,817 $53,239 9 Darrell Goh Austria $15,469 $15,965 $31,434

Check Out Updates from Gottlieb's Fourth GGSF Win

GGSF Final Tables confirmed

Two final tables were confirmed last night in Event H-75: $25,500 Sunday 5 Million and GGPoker Spring Festival Super MILLION$ $10,300 ME-H.

Be sure to head to the PokerNews GG Spring Festival Live Reporting Hub to follow along until a winner is crowned!

Fox and Badziakouski Lead Star-Studded Sunday 5 Million Final Table

Out of a field of 208 entries, only nine players remain in the $25,500 Sunday 5 Million to battle for the lion's share of the $5,200,000 prize pool. In order to get there, the 107 unique entries fired an extraordinary 101 re-entries and four of the finalists entered multiple times.

Elio Fox ended up as the chip leader with a stack of 3,656,185 while Mikita Badziakouski follows fewer than half a big blind behind with 3,632,732. Timofey Kuznetsov completes the overnight podium with 3,338,980 chips. Among the finalists is also Michael Zhang, who required six bullets to run up the stack and finished Day 1 with 1,833,032, good enough for the sixth position.

POSITION PLAYER COUNTRY CHIP COUNT BIG BLINDS 1 Elio Fox United States 3,656,185 73 2 Mikita Badziakouski Belarus 3,632,732 73 3 Timofey Kuznetsov Russia 3,338,980 67 4 Matthew "Nator" Hyman Mexico 2,475,159 50 5 Michel "CrossfireX" Dattani Portugal 1,929,184 39 6 Michael Zhang United Kingdom 1,833,032 37 7 Sebastian "TheodoreRhye" Trisch Germany 1,595,152 32 8 Sean Winter United States 1,271,052 25 9 Ronny Kaiser Switzerland 1,068,524 21

Joakim Andersson Leads GGSF Super MILLION$ $10,300 ME-H Final Nine

In one of the biggest online poker events of the year, a field of 1,089  across five starting flights  in the GGPoker Spring Festival Super MILLION$ $10,300 ME-H has been reduced to a final table of nine after about seven hours of Day 2 play.

The remaining players have a very handsome prize of $1,537,605 waiting the champ, with everyone having locked up $192,201.

The player who has best positioned himself for that career-defining score is Joakim Andersson. A Swedish player without much in the way of live cashes, Andersson has been a consistent force in the biggest online stuff over the past year or so, and he'll bring a very impressive stack of more than 100 big blinds into the final day.

The final table participants get the next day off before convening on Tuesday afternoon at 2 p.m. EDT for the live-streamed final table. Come back to PokerNews and the GGPoker channels to find out who becomes the next poker millionaire.

PLAYER COUNTRY CHIPS BIG BLINDS Joakim Andersson Tunisia 31,727,557 105 level29 India 22,041,776 73 Julian Stuer Austria 15,894,312 53 Roman "RRomashka" Emelyanov Russia 8,691,020 29 Darrell Goh Austria 8,518,257 28 Stevan "Steve Austin" Chew Indonesia 7,026,744 23 Alex Foxen Canada 6,281,784 20 Gergely "Land on it!" Kulcsar Hungary 5,797,126 19 Taylor Paur Canada 2,921,424 9

Be sure to watch the final table live stream this Tuesday on GGPoker.TV and follow along with the PokerNews live updates.

Sign Up for a GGPoker Account Through PokerNews

If you want to play in this record-setting festival, you'll need to sign up for an account at GGPoker. The great news is if you don't have an account you can help yourself to an amazing welcome package.

Simply, download GGPoker via PokerNews and you will be awarded a huge welcome bonus with your first deposit 100 percent matched up to a maximum of $600, setting you up nicely in time for the Spring Festival.

The bonus releases into your account in $10 increments each time you earn 6,000 Fish Buffet Points, which is the equivalent of $60 in rake or tournament fees.
DUBLIN, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "In-vehicle Air Purifier - Global Outlook and Forecast 2021-2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global in-vehicle air purifier market by revenue is expected to grow at a CAGR of approx. 11% during 2020-2026.



The global automotive air filter market is observing a shift from conventional purifiers to smart technology. The inclusion of prominent technologies - HEPA, active carbon systems, and photocatalytic is likely to increase vendors' growth opportunities. Vendors are expected to incorporate features such as Bluetooth speaker, USB, lights, air conditioner to cool, fan to circulate air, dehumidifier to remove moisture to increase penetration. Hence, multifunctional in-vehicle air purifiers are expected to increase the market demand during the forecast period.

Further, the increased awareness of air filters among consumers has driven innovations in the industry. An increasing trend of multifunctional compact and simple designs of these devices is driving market adoption. Major vendors are investing in R&D activities to manufacture augmented products for the future. Innovations and feature-enrichment in-car air purifiers have evolved as a trend among the key players.



Global In-Vehicle Air Purifier Market Segmentation



The market is expected to be strong in the next six years. Also, vehicle production in this region is the highest globally, and it is estimated that the region would show promising growth. Moreover, countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia are taking initiatives to increase awareness of these technologies.

Although the hybrid in-vehicle air purifier market is currently at the introductory phase, the increased knowledge of these products is expected to increase during the forecast period. The increasing collaboration between manufacturers is likely to contribute to the global in-vehicle air purifier market growth.



Standardization of air purifiers in sedans and SUVs is expected to increase OEMs' market share during the forecast period. High-end manufacturers in the US have started including built-in air filters and fragrance disseminators in their vehicles. Hence, the increase in air pollution and product standardization is expected to drive automobile manufacturers to provide in-built air purifiers as a standard accessory, thereby providing growth opportunities for OEMs.



A high percentage of passenger vehicles are equipped with in-vehicle air purifiers, which are likely to increase the market share. Several automobile manufacturers in China have shown interest in automotive air purifiers (AAP). Moreover, automotive air purifiers are becoming handy solutions against allergies and ensure sanitization. They are exported to the Americas and Europe. However, India is emerging as the most lucrative market for these products as the country is witnessing deterioration in air quality levels. The commercial in-vehicle air purifier market is expected to grow as several heavy vehicle manufacturers are expected to invest in this technology.



The demand for HEPA filters increases as they effectively remove small particles and pollutants; however, they require high maintenance. APAC accounts for maximum demand for HEPA filters on account of high air pollution levels in several countries. Strict government regulations to improve air quality and the increasing consumer spending are expected to drive the demand. The HEPA purifier market is fragmented due to several small and national vendors and is expected to be highly competitive with increased investments.



With the increase in e-commerce worldwide, manufacturers have shifted to online sale platforms. The online in-vehicle air purifier market is currently observing growth. However, the offline segment is expected to flourish during the forecast period as the B2C segment will gradually shift toward B2B with vendors' partnerships with automotive manufacturers. In 2020, the online segment observed growth, particularly due to the COVID-19 virus. Moreover, online platforms are growing as they offer discounts and free-of-cost aftermarket service.

INSIGHTS BY VENDORS



The global in-vehicle air purifier market is in the growth stage, and it has achieved popularity and penetration in several countries such as China and the US. The market consists of several players, making it highly fragmented. Philips Ltd., 3M, and Honeywell are the major vendors capturing the largest market share. In APAC, Europe, and North America, major players account for more than 80% of the overall share. There are immense opportunities for vendors to expand their business in high pollution regions and densely populated areas. Since the entry barriers are low, the in-vehicle air purifier market is flexible. This increases the focus of mergers or acquisitions and is also expected to enable manufacturers to intensify product innovation and improve the customer experience.

Market Dynamics

Market Opportunities & Trends

Increasing Technological Advancements

Increasing Use Of Multi-Functional In-Vehicle Air Purifiers

Market Growth Enablers

Growing Urbanization

Increasing Health Problems Due To Air Pollution

Growth In Automotive Sector

Market Restraints

In-Built Filters In Air Conditioning Systems

Emission Of Pollutants From Smart Air Purifiers

Prominent Vendors

Philips Ltd.

3M

Honeywell

Other Prominent Vendors

Sharp

Blueair

Blaupunkt

Amway

Airlabs

Boneco

Coway

Eureka Forbes

IQAir

GreenTech Environmental

Pure Enrichment

Ansio

Kent RO

Livpure

Nebelr

Olansi Healthcare

Purafil

Purita

Vantro

Xiaomi

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/yxhwo8

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



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By Keita Nakamura, KYODO NEWS - Apr 19, 2021 - 12:57 | All, Japan, Coronavirus

Japan's exports in March grew 16.1 percent from a year earlier, the largest gain in over three years, as the pace of recovery from the initial impact of the coronavirus pandemic picked up on brisk material shipments to China, government data showed Monday.

Exports stood at 7.38 trillion yen ($68 billion), with its year-on-year expansion marking the biggest increase since a 16.2 percent jump in November 2017, the Finance Ministry said in a preliminary report. They declined 4.5 percent in February.

Rising from 6.36 trillion yen a year ago when the virus outbreak began to dampen global demand for cars and other Japan-made products, the latest monthly exports figure surpassed a pre-pandemic level of 7.20 trillion yen seen in March 2019 in terms of value.

"It's natural that the March exports rose remarkably from a year earlier because there was a huge impact from the pandemic, but when compared with two years ago, we can still see how robust they are to a certain degree," a ministry official told reporters.

By country, exports to China were up 37.2 percent to 1.63 trillion yen to hit the highest level since comparable data became available in January 1979, underpinned by strong demand for plastics and raw materials such as copper.

Exports to other Asian nations, including China, the United States and the European Union increased 22.4 percent, 4.9 percent and 12.8 percent, respectively. All were the sharpest rises in more than a year and a half.

Imports rose 5.7 percent to 6.71 trillion yen, up for the second straight month, which led to a goods trade surplus of 663.72 billion yen, the second consecutive month of black ink.

Kazuma Kishikawa, an economist at the Daiwa Institute of Research, said special factors also contributed to March's "remarkable" exports growth, such as China's weak factory activity last month during its annual weeklong Lunar New Year holiday and a cold wave in the United States that hit auto sales.

Looking forward, an extended global shortage of semiconductors, which are indispensable parts for car production, is clouding the outlook for Japanese exporters.

"The negative effect of the chip shortage may begin appearing in a few months, and could be a long-term risk factor for Japan's car exports," Kishikawa said.

Meanwhile, he said exports of chipmaking equipment, which saw an 18.1 percent rise from a year earlier, are expected to remain robust amid increasing global demand for semiconductors.

As for fiscal 2020 through March, Japan's exports sank 8.4 percent from the previous year to 69.49 trillion yen due to repercussions from the pandemic, especially in the first six months.

They posted the sharpest decline since a 17.1 percent drop logged in fiscal 2009 in the wake of the global financial crisis.

Imports in the previous business year sank 11.6 percent to 68.18 trillion yen, also the steepest fall in 11 years, mainly because of declining crude oil and other energy prices.

Both exports and imports shrank for the second successive year, which left Japan with a goods trade surplus of 1.31 trillion yen, the first black ink in three years.

All figures were compiled on a customs-cleared basis.
MEDFORD, Ore-- On Sunday, Jackson County Public Health reported 20 new cases of coronavirus, taking last week's total to around 280 cases. This means for the fifth week in a row, Jackson County has experienced a rise in new Covid-19 cases.

According to reports taken by Jackson County Public Health, Jackson County has seen a steady rise in new Covid-19 cases dating all the way back to the week of March 14.

In that time, going from March 14 till last week, Jackson County has reported 168, 195, 229, 267 and now 280 cases.

To find the last time that Jackson County experienced five weeks in a row of cases increasing, you'd have to go all the way back to October. During that streak, cases had increased every week over a six-week time frame and hit all-time Covid records for the county.

Jackson County is also 77 cases away from reaching 10,000 total cases since the start of the pandemic.

But even with new Covid-19 cases rising, vaccinations in Jackson County are increasing.

According to data collected by the Oregon Health Authority, Jackson County health officials have vaccinated almost 70,000 Oregonians throughout the county. That's more than one in every four residents have recieved at least one shot of a Covid-19 vaccine.

Jackson County is also making progress when it comes to getting people fully vaccinated. OHA says that of the 68,435 people in Jackson County that have been vaccinated, 43,389 of those people are fully vaccinated.
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President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday hosted his Nigerien counterpart, Mohamed Bazoum, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the visiting Nigerien leader, who is on a two-day official visit to Nigeria, was received by President Buhari at the forecourt of the villa at about 1.22 p.m.

Among those who joined the president to welcome Mr Bazoum are the Chief of Staff to the President, Prof. Ibrahim Gambari, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Muhammed Bello and some presidential aides.

The governors of Sokoto, Borno, Yobe, Kebbi and Zamfara states were also at the villa to welcome Bazoum, who was sworn in for the first five-year term as President of Niger Republic on April 2.

Mr Bazoums inauguration marked the first successful transfer of power from the outgoing president to an elected Nigerien leader since the countrys independence in 1960.

NAN reports that the two West African leaders went into closed doors bilateral talks immediately after the brief welcoming ceremony.

NAN gathered that Mr Bazoum, 61, would also be hosted to a private breaking of fast by President Buhari at about 6.50 p.m

President Buhari had earlier received a briefing from Vice-President Osinbajo, shortly before the arrival of the Nigerien President.

The Nigerian leader had, on Thursday, returned to Abuja after 16-day medical check-up in the United Kingdom.

(NAN)
EV

Steve Carlisle, the executive vice president and president of General Motors in North America, issued a correction that confirms the survival of internal combustion if the legislation doesn't get as prohibitive as initially thought. We intend to win wherever were competing and irrespective of the propulsion system, he told Automotive News . At the same time, were setting ourselves up for this pivot [to electrics], which is inevitable.Loose language has always been a part of General Motors, and this quote reveals how the automotive industry feels about new-energy vehicles as a whole. The switch from internal combustion to electric propulsion is too dramatic based on the current limitations of the power grid and charging infrastructure of the United States. Nevertheless, waxing lyrical about environmentally-friendly goals is a sure way of winning over customers.Former Chevrolet general manager Pete Estes pretty much paved the way for loose language at the Detroit-based automaker when introducing the first-gen Camaro in the 1960s. As the story goes, Estes told the U.S. media that a Camaro is a small vicious animal that eats Mustangs. Almost six decades later, the Mustang outsells the Camaro by a huge margin. For example, in the first quarter of 2021 the Blue Oval's pony sold 17,274 units compared to 7,089 examples of the General Motors pony.Turning our attention back to electric vehicles, take a wild guess how many GM electric vehicles are currently offered in the United States. The answer is two, and the upcoming EVs are way costlier than the currently available Bolt siblings . The GMC Hummerpickup truck serves as the perfect case in point at $112,595 for the sold-out Edition 1 and $79,995 for the entry-level EV2 specification.On a related note, the Ford Motor Company is far more ambitious than its rival. A press release from February 2021 reads  completely electric by 2030 , although that refers to the Dearborn-based automakers European arm.
FORMER University of Zimbabwe vice chancellor Levi Nyagura, who is accused of illegally awarding a doctorate degree to former first lady Grace Mugabe, has denied the allegations, arguing that the conferment was lawful.

His trial opened last Thursday before chief magistrate Munamato Mutevedzi, with Nyagura, through his lawyers, telling the court the granting of the degree was above board.

Nyagura argued that the university has not yet cancelled the degree or withdrawn it, a sign that everything was lawful.

The accused strongly denies any unlawful act or illicit intent in any of his actions or inactions as regards a doctorate to Ntombizodwa Grace Marufu.

In fact the university to date has neither withdrawn, cancelled nor disowned the degree conferred to Ntombizodwa Grace Marufu, which is, therefore, proof of the fact that the degree is authentic and deserved, he argued.

Nyagura said he had no role in how the former first lady ended up at the institution and had no interference with the department that conferred her with a doctorate degree.

The conferment of a degree to Ntombizodwa Grace Marufu is an act occasioned by the relevant functionaries who acted within the discretion afforded to them.

To the accuseds knowledge the conferment of the qualification was done lawfully and in accordance with the latitudes afforded such functionaries, his lawyer Tawanda Zhuwarara argued.

Accused person did not solicit for or occasion the acceptance of Ntombizodwa Grace Marufus application for admission for postgraduate studies at the University of Zimbabwe.

By virtue of the accuseds previous position as vice chancellor of the University of Zimbabwe, such accused did not participate, influence or interfere in the interaction of Ntombizodwa Grace Marufu and the department of sociology and has no direct information as to how the relationship progressed, he argued. Daily News
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-20 04:14:46|Editor: huaxia

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UNITED NATIONS, April 19 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations Security Council on Monday underlined the importance of using the capacities of regional and subregional organizations to prevent conflicts.

"The Security Council recognizes that regional and subregional organizations are well positioned to understand the root causes of armed conflicts owing to their knowledge of the region which can be a benefit for their efforts to influence the prevention or resolution of these conflicts," said a presidential statement of the Council, which is led by Vietnam this month as rotating president.

"The Security Council reaffirms its commitment to the pacific settlement of disputes, in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations, in particular Chapter VI. The Council also recognizes the need to enhance efforts in support of conflict prevention and resolution, including by the promotion of confidence-building measures and political dialogue through full engagement with concerned parties," according to the statement.

"The Security Council stresses the necessity of mobilizing the efforts of the international community in order to build sustainable peace, in particular of regional and subregional organizations, to promote peace and trust among concerned parties. The Security Council also recognizes that the scale and nature of the challenge of sustaining peace calls for close strategic and operational partnerships between national governments, the United Nations, regional and subregional organizations, and other relevant stakeholders, including, inter alia, civil society organizations, women's groups and youth organizations," it said. Enditem
Bartender Joey Goetz and his partners, all with crossed fingers, aim to open their new upper Meeting Street cocktail bar in June.

We were delayed because of COVID for sure, but we're back in the saddle, said Goetz, who gained a loyal following while tending bar at The Belmont, the King Street cocktail venue at the vanguard of the citys drinks scene. Goetz last year opened Bar George on James Island with a separate set of business partners.

Goetz said his teams now obtaining the necessary permits to open, having begun in February the buildout of a Charleston single house sandwiched between The UPS Store and a mobile phone shop.

Its kind of a diamond in the rough, he said.

As Goetz describes it, Last Saint will comprise a pair of approaches to drinking.

We didnt want to make a huge, cavernous bar, so we split space in two, he said, explaining that the streetside bar will function primarily as a neighborhood hangout, with booths and a short food menu to underscore the casual vibe.

By contrast, the bar in back will be a dark, dark, tiny six-seater with no menu in place. Instead, bartenders will tailor cocktails to customers likes and dislikes.

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That format is a carryover from Attaboy, the acclaimed New York City bar where one of Goetzs partners worked; the third person in the partnership owns Attaboys expansion location in Nashville.

But unlike bars in Manhattan, Last Saint will offer up to 25 customer parking spaces. While the bar officially shares its lot with tenants of the adjacent strip mall, Goetz said none of them do nighttime business.

According to Goetz, it took a minute to come up with a name for the new bar, which was intentionally located away from the King Street corridor thats now dominated by tourists and college students. The partners settled on Last Saint because it has undertones of the Holy City without being very overt.

Plus, Goetz said, playing the part of downtowns last saint makes him feel like its doorkeeper. His longtime fans are no doubt excited to see him serve.
Coming down heavily on the lackadaisical approach of the Uttar Pradesh government towards the grim COVID situation in the state, the Allahabad High Court on Monday ordered a complete lockdown in five cities in Uttar Pradesh till April 26.

The five cities are Lucknow, Prayagraj, Kanpur, Varanasi and Gorakhpur. All these cities have been reporting a high virus load.

Responding to a Public Interest Litigation, the bench, comprising Justice Siddhartha Verma and Justice Ajit Kumar, directed the state government to strictly enforce the curbs.

Allahabad High Court

The Court noted that even the Chief Minister of the State is in isolation and only VIPs are getting medical treatment.

"We find from the scenario that emerges from the Government Hospitals that admission of patients to ICUs are largely being done on the recommendation of VIPs. Even supply of life saving antiviral drug namely Remdesivire is being provided only on the recommendation of VIPs..Even the Chief Minister of the State is in isolation in Lucknow," the order said.

Those in the helm of affairs of governance are to be blamed for the present chaotic health problems and more so when there is a democracy which means a government of the people, by the people and for the people," the order said.



Here's what will remain closed during the lockdown:

The court said that all establishments, be it government or private, except financial institutions and financial departments, medical and health services, industrial and scientific establishments, essential services including municipal functions, and public transport, shall remain closed till April 26.

The judiciary will however, function on its own discretion. All shopping complexes and malls shall remain closed during this period and all grocery shops and other commercial shops, excluding medical shops, with more than three workers shall also remain closed.



AP/Representational Image

All hotels, restaurants and even the small eating points on carts etc shall remain closed.

The court further said that all institutions like educational institutions and other institutions relating to other disciplines and activities, be it government, semi government or private shall remain closed -- their teachers and instructors and other staff included.

No social functions and gatherings including marriage functions shall be permitted till April 26.

However, in case of already fixed marriages, a necessary permission would have to be taken from the District Magistrate of the district concerned.

Gatherings would be limited to 25 persons and the District Magistrate concerned shall take decisions after giving due consideration to the prevailing situation of the impact of Covid-19 including notification of containment zones in the area where such marriage has to take place.

AFP

All religious activities in public of any kind, is directed to remain suspended in this period and all religious establishments of any kind will also remain closed.

All hawkers, including fruits and vegetable vendors, milk vendors and bread vendors, shall go off the road by 11 AM every day till April 26.

All public movements on roads would remain restricted completely, subject to above directions. Movements would be only allowed in case of medical help and emergencies.

The court has further directed the state government to continue implementing the current vaccination programme.
Walk-in COVID-19 vaccine clinics are now all the rage in Houston, as larger allocations and dwindling demand change the scarcity-fueled dynamic of the past several months.

Now, there is more supply than there is demand, said Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo during a Monday afternoon news conference at NRG Park. That means we have more vaccines than we have people willing to get them.

As of Monday, 44 percent of Texans have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. In Texas, vaccine administration is beginning to plateau at 250,000 doses per day, while vaccine manufacturers produce more doses a week, with 14.5 million shipped nationwide every week as of mid-April.

Harris Countys vaccine site, NRG Park, has abandoned the waitlist system that frustrated residents who found it difficult to schedule a time slot in advance. While the site, run jointly by the county and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, still recommends scheduling an appointment ahead of time to guarantee a dose, anyone age 16 or older can arrive on foot or by car during operating hours for a shot.

In addition, St. Lukes Health is operating a walk-in clinic at Texas Southern University this week. Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center offers walk-up vaccines for veterans, caregivers and spouses.

WASTE NOT: Houston researchers have been checking your poop during COVID

At Texas Southern University on Monday morning, a trickle of Houston residents came in for their shots, although many were receiving second doses. St. Lukes Health announced Friday that it would start walk-in vaccinations to expand vaccine access, registering people on-site.

The Texas Southern site was the first place to notify Clinton Metu, who lives in the Galleria, that there were vaccines available. Metu returned Monday morning for his second shot, eager to fill out his vaccination card with the date he was administered the next dose of Pfizer vaccine.

Metu decided to get vaccinated for two reasons. The altruistic one was about curbing the exponential growth of the pandemic. I feel like Im contributing to a greater cause, Metu said.

The selfish one, he said, was being able to travel again. Once past the 14-day post after his second dose, he plans to book a trip abroad  wherever U.S. travelers are accepted.

In February, when local officials and hospital executives opened the Texas Southern clinic, lines snaked around the building as rumors swirled about whether people could enter without appointments. Some waited more than an hour for their Pfizer shots, driving from as far as The Woodlands for a vaccine.

In the first two days of the clinics opening, 1,200 people filed in for dose one of the vaccine. On Monday, the first day of walk-in vaccinations, clinicians administered 360 doses to both first and second-dose recipients by 4 p.m.

For people receiving their doses at the St. Lukes clinic Monday morning, the longest part of the process was the 15-minute wait after the jab. The white tents outside the Nabrit Science Building sheltered no one; the few who walked up to the glass doors for their vaccines passed through the corridors between the temperature screening and staff handling paperwork in mere seconds.

When Hagar Cohen and her father, Guy Cohen, came in for her first Pfizer dose at the end of March, the clinic had a steady stream of vaccine recipients but was not crowded. Upon their return Monday, it was even emptier.

Guy Cohen went to a vaccine site in Pearland for his first dose, half an hour away from his home in Meyerland, the first one available after he signed up for several waitlists. He had better luck signing up his daughter, and he said the process went smoothly.

I can do a little bit more stuff, but Ill still wear a mask, Hagar Cohen said.

St. Lukes hopes traffic will pick up as the week progresses and will determine by Friday if it will do a second walk-in clinic next week, a St. Lukes Health spokesperson said.

A VACCINE ANGEL: She's found vaccine appointments for 500 people. For free.

At NRG, Harris County is shifting the vaccine sites operating hours from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. to 12 p.m.-9 p.m to ensure greater access, Hidalgo said.

In recent days, the site  which can administer as many as 6,000 vaccines daily  has averaged 2,000 to 3,000 doses per day.

Perhaps I should say were leaving vaccines in the freezer  theyre not being used, Hidalgo said.

The Houston Health Department and various private pharmacy providers were not offering walk-up shots as of Monday.

gwendolyn.wu@chron.com

twitter.com/gwendolynawu
EL CONSEJO, Venezuela, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- SANTA TERESA, Venezuela's oldest producer of award-winning single-estate rum, announces today that its SANTA TERESA 1796 rum has been awarded a gold medal rating at the 2021 London Spirits Competition.

SANTA TERESA 1796 is a bold, elegant rum blend aged up to 35 years in bourbon oak barrels, then processed using the artisanal Solera Method, resulting in an exceptionally rich rum with an unexpected dry finish. This complex craftsmanship infuses a variety of subtle flavors and aromas into the finished liquid's unique flavor profile - such as wood, dark chocolate, leather and nuts.

This marks the first gold medal for the super-premium rum brand at the London Spirits Competition, following a silver medal in 2020. Recognized as a definitive seal of approval in the global spirits industry from bar managers, commercial buyers, mixologists and drinkers, this year SANTA TERESA 1796 achieved a score of 91 out of 100 at the competition based on three primary criteria: quality, value and packaging.

This caps off a stellar last year for the storied rum, where it also received a 95-point rating at the 2020 Ultimate Spirits Competition (certified as 'Extraordinary, Ultimate Recommendation') and a gold medal at the 2020 San Francisco World Spirits Competition.

SANTA TERESA is an independent, family-owned distillery in Venezuela built on over 220 years of tradition and unexpected thinking in blended and aged rums, making it the third oldest rum producer in the world.

"We're thrilled to see SANTA TERESA 1796 recognized at these major spirits industry awards in the past year. It's testament to our 220-year old heritage, craftsmanship and passion for our unique super-premium rum blends. This endorsement from industry experts and bartenders also shows the rising premiumization of the rum category and discovery of SANTA TERESA 1796 as a versatile serve, both as an aged spirit and in classic cocktail expressions. We've tripled our volume in the past few years and are excited to see new consumers and trade continue to discover us and stay loyal to our brand," said Edwin Hincapie, Brand Director, SANTA TERESA 1796.

For more information on the award-winning SANTA TERESA 1796, please visit:https://www.santateresarum.com/

About SANTA TERESA

To commemorate the bicentennial of the Hacienda Santa Teresa, the fourth generation of the Vollmer family (Alberto J. Vollmer), challenged the Master Distillers to elaborate the best crafted rum in the world. The final result was SANTA TERESA 1796. Launched in 1996, it is a bold and elegant rum with blends of up to 35 years of aging in bourbon oak barrels then further aged through the artisanal Spanish Solera Method, resulting in a rum that is rich, refined yet unexpectedly dry. Each aspect of SANTA TERESA 1796, from the special pot still rum, the artisanal production process, to the bottling system, and the hand application of the wax used to seal the cork, makes every bottle a unique piece. It is the perfect spirit for whisky drinker looking to discover new flavors, with notes of wood, dark chocolate, leather and nuts.

SANTA TERESA is an independent rum brand owned by Ron Santa Teresa, a publicly traded company headquartered in El Consejo, Venezuela, and controlled by the Vollmer family for five generations. In 2016, SANTA TERESA forged a global distribution alliance with Bacardi Limited, headquartered in Hamilton, Bermuda. Bacardi Limited refers to the Bacardi group of companies, including Bacardi International Limited.

For more information please visit:https://www.santateresarum.com/

ENJOY RESPONSIBLY.

2020. SANTA TERESA IS A TRADEMARK.

Media Contact:

Nike Communications

Eva McGarry

[email protected]

SOURCE SANTA TERESA 1796
PRESS RELEASE

Public Joint Stock Company Mining and Metallurgical Company NORILSK NICKEL (PJSC "MMC "Norilsk Nickel", "Nornickel" or the "Company")



NORNICKEL AGREED WITH JOHNSON MATTHEY ON CRITICAL SUPPLY OF NICKEL AND COBALT

Moscow, April 19, 2021 - Nornickel, the world's largest producer of palladium and high-grade nickel and a major producer of platinum, cobalt and copper, has signed a term sheet with Johnson Matthey (JM) on long-term supply of critical metals for their battery materials production in Finland.

Earlier in April Nornickel announced plans to ramp up sustainable nickel and cobalt production at its refinery in Finland - NN Harjavalta - in response to the growing European demand for high quality and responsibly sourced metals for the EV industry. NN Harjavalta's product range will be playing an important role in satisfying Johnson Matthey's requirements for its precursor and cathode active materials production in Finland as well as for its existing factory in Poland.

Johnson Matthey announced the development in Finland of its second commercial plant with a nameplate capacity of 30 kt of ultra-high energy density cathode materials required by EV producers. The factory will be powered solely by renewable energy and incorporate an innovative effluent treatment solution.

Nornickel and Johnson Matthey have also signed a memorandum of understanding to explore options to further extend metal supply in the future. The parties also intend to collaborate in other important parts of the battery materials value chain, including new metal dissolution technology, circular economy opportunities, and tokenization of the supply chain using blockchain technology. Implementation of token-based smart contracts allows combining metal deliveries with complete provenance as well as ESG credentials including carbon footprint to ensure the unprecedented level of responsible sourcing.

Vladimir Potanin, President, Nornickel commented: "We are delighted for this opportunity to develop our business together with Johnson Matthey - a new important player in the Finnish battery materials ecosystem - and help the company expand on the European EV market. Our memorandum should enable us to identify mutually beneficial sustainability initiatives that support the ambition of achieving the most sustainable battery materials value chain in Europe".

Robert MacLeod, CEO, Johnson Matthey commented: "Securing the long term supply of nickel and cobalt with Nornickel is an important milestone on our journey towards developing a sustainable battery materials ecosystem and further demonstrates the progress we are making on the commercialisation of our business. With sustainability at the heart our strategy and an increasingly important requirement for our customers and consumers, we are delighted to be working with Nornickel to deliver sustainable cathode materials to the market."

ABOUT THE COMPANY

MMC Norilsk Nickel is a diversified mining and metallurgical company, the world's largest producer of palladium and high-grade nickel and a major producer of platinum and copper. The company also produces cobalt, rhodium, silver, gold, iridium, ruthenium, selenium, tellurium, sulphur and other products.

The production units of Norilsk Nickel Group are located at the Norilsk Industrial District, on the Kola Peninsula and Zabaykalsky Krai in Russia as well as in Finland and South Africa.

MMC Norilsk Nickel shares are listed on the Moscow and on the Saint-Petersburg Stock Exchanges, ADRs are traded over the counter in the US and on the London, Berlin and Frankfurt Stock Exchanges.

Media Relations: Investor Relations:

Phone: +7 (495) 785 58 00 Phone: +7 (495) 786 83 20

Email: pr@nornik.ru Email: ir@nornik.ru
In a Monday morning news release, Tribune Publishing said it was notified Saturday that Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss had pulled out of a fully financed nonbinding offer of $680 million for the company made with Choice Hotels Chairman Stewart Bainum. Because that offer no longer can be reasonably expected to lead to a superior proposal to the $633 million offered by Alden, Tribune Publishing said it is no longer allowed to have discussions and negotiations, or share information, with Wyss/Bainum entity known as Newslight or its principals.
SAN FRANCISCO, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The global radiation oncology market size is expected to reach USD 11.7 billion by 2028, registering a CAGR of 7.0% over the forecast period, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. The rising incidence of cancer and technological advancement in radiation therapy equipment are some of the major factors driving the growth of the market.

Key suggestions from the report:

Due to the high availability of External Beam Radiation Therapy (EBRT) equipment and penetration of innovative diagnostic instruments and understanding of available treatment options, EBRT dominated the market in 2020

In IBRT application, the prostate cancer segment dominated the market in 2020, majorly due to the promising applications for brachytherapy in the treatment of prostate cancer

In 2020, North America dominated the market and accounted for a revenue share of more than 44.0%. Favorable reimbursement policies, quality of healthcare infrastructure, and the presence of key players in the region are some of the factors driving the market in the region

Read 130 page research report with ToC on "Radiation Oncology Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Type (External Beam Radiation Therapy, Internal Beam Radiation Therapy), By Application, By Technology, By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2021 - 2028" at: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/radiation-oncology-market

There have been various technological advancements in radiotherapy equipment over the last decade, which has been a major factor for growth. Advancement from 2D to 3D conformal radiotherapy, motion tracking, and real-time imaging has helped improve radiation targeting and thereby reduce exposure to the surrounding healthy tissues. For instance, Accuray Incorporated introduced its motion monitoring and correction tools, Synchrony, for the Radixact device in April 2019. In contrast to traditional radiotherapy devices, this technology increases dosage accuracy and treatment times and is comparatively more effective.

Strategies such as partnerships, innovative product launches, and acquisitions are the priority of major players in the industry. For instance, in February 2020, Varian received FDA 510K clearance for its Ethos Therapy. It is an AI-driven solution designed to deliver an entire adaptive treatment plan in 15 minutes, including patient set-up to treatment delivery. In December 2019, Elekta signed a non-binding MoU with ViewRay, Inc. for the advancement of the knowledge and application of MR-LINACs.

According to an article published in Seminars in Radiation Oncology in 2017, it is expected that in low- and middle-income countries alone, more than 12,000 additional treatment machines will be needed by 2035. Besides, by 2035, it is projected that China, India, and Brazil will need over 3,800, 1,200, and 400 additional equipment, respectively. Companies are taking several initiatives to meet this demand. For instance, in 2019, Tata Trust signed a 3-year agreement with Varian Medical Systems Inc. for the installation of new advanced radiotherapy equipment in India, to improve patient access to treatment.

However, the lack of skilled radiotherapy professionals is expected to be a major restraining factor for the growth of the market, particularly in developing countries. The recommended number of radiation oncologists in the developed world is around 4 per million population. There are around 0.8 radiation oncologists per million population in India. Similar is the situation in other countries in the Indian sub-continent.

Grand View Research has segmented the global radiation oncology market on the basis of type, technology, application, and region:

Radiation Oncology Type Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2028)

EBRT



Linear Accelerators (Linacs)





Compact Advanced Radiotherapy Systems





Cyberknife







Gamma Knife







Tomotherapy



Proton Therapy



Cyclotron





Synchrotron



Internal Beam Radiation Therapy



Brachytherapy





Seeds







Applicators and Afterloaders







Electronic Brachytherapy





Systemic Beam Radiation Therapy





Others

Radiation Oncology Technology Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2028)

EBRT



Image-Guided Radiotherapy (IGRT)





Intensity Modulated Radiotherapy (IMRT)





Stereotactic Technology





Proton Beam Therapy





3D Conformal Radiotherapy (3D CRT)





Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy (VMAT)



Brachytherapy



Low-Dose Rate Brachytherapy





High-Dose Rate Brachytherapy

Radiation Oncology Application Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2028)

EBRT



Prostate Cancer





Breast Cancer





Lung Cancer





Head and Neck Cancer





Colorectal Cancer





Others



Internal Beam Radiation Therapy



Prostate Cancer





Gynecological Cancer





Breast Cancer





Cervical Cancer





Penile Cancer





Others

Radiation Oncology Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2028)

North America



U.S.





Canada



Europe



Germany





U.K.





Spain





Italy





Russia





France



Asia Pacific



China





Japan





India





South Korea





Australia





Singapore



Latin America



Mexico





Brazil





Argentina



MEA



South Africa





Saudi Arabia





UAE

List of Key Players of Radiation Oncology Market

Varian Medical Systems, Inc.

Elekta AB

Accuray Incorporated

Ion Beam Applications (IBA)

C.R. BARD, INC. (BD)

Isoray Medical

Mevion Medical Systems, Inc.

Nordion Inc.

NTP Radioisotopes SOC Ltd.

Curium Pharma

Viewray Technologies, Inc.

Find more research reports on Medical Devices Industry, by Grand View Research:

Microfluidics Market  Global microfluidics market size was valued at USD 17.9 billion in 2020 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.3% from 2021 to 2028.

in 2020 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.3% from 2021 to 2028. Biosensors Market  Global biosensors market size was valued at USD 22.4 billion in 2020 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.9% from 2021 to 2028.

in 2020 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.9% from 2021 to 2028. Brachytherapy Market  Global brachytherapy market size was valued at USD 788.5 million in 2020 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.1% from 2021 to 2028.

Gain access to Grand View Compass, our BI enabled intuitive market research database of 10,000+ reports

About Grand View Research

Grand View Research, U.S.-based market research and consulting company, provides syndicated as well as customized research reports and consulting services. Registered in California and headquartered in San Francisco, the company comprises over 425 analysts and consultants, adding more than 1200 market research reports to its vast database each year. These reports offer in-depth analysis on 46 industries across 25 major countries worldwide. With the help of an interactive market intelligence platform, Grand View Research helps Fortune 500 companies and renowned academic institutes understand the global and regional business environment and gauge the opportunities that lie ahead.

Contact:

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Corporate Sales Specialist, USA

Grand View Research, Inc.

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SOURCE Grand View Research, Inc
Gardai have launched an investigation into the death of a man in Limerick city this Monday morning.

The alarm was raised at around 8am when the man's body was discovered at a house in the Castletroy area.

It's understood he was aged in his 60s.

Gardai from Henry Street attended the scene and a post mortem is to be carried out at University Hospital Limerick later this week.

At this stage, the death is not being treated as suspicious.

"Gardai are investigating a sudden death incident following the discovery of a body on April 19, 2021 at a house in Castletroy, Limerick," said a garda spokesperson.

A file will be prepared and forwarded to the local coroner.
New Delhi, April 19 : The Finance Industry Development Council (FIDC) has urged the government to include the education sector under the Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme (ECLGS).

The NBFC body in a letter to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman noted that the business of many NBFCs include education loans to students to finance their higher education expenses in India and abroad and education institution loans (EIL) for financing education infrastructure growth needs of schools, colleges and universities.

Last week, the government had expanded the scope of ECLGS 2.0 and said that Special Mention Accounts-1 (SMA-1) will now be eligible for credit under the scheme.

SMA-1 borrowers in the healthcare sector and 26 other high stress sectors as identified by the Kamath Committee are now eligible under ECLGS 2.0.

Noted that the education Sector was excluded from the scope of ECLGS, FIDC said that all the other sectors have been allowed to operate with significant relaxations whereas educational institutions are still closed.

"It is a well-established fact that educational institutions have a deep social and economic impact and depriving the sector of adequate and timely support will have serious consequences for the nation as a whole.

"We believe that inclusion of education sector under ECLGS will not only provide regular source of funding to educational institutions enabling them to cope up with short term liquidity problem arising out of closure of schools/colleges etc, but also the cash flows would be more aligned to the elongated repayment term," the letter said.

The lending institutions would also be able to cover the risk of educational infra loan portfolio and it would provide an enhanced business opportunity as well, it said.
Little Jacob Phipps, an energetic 2-year-old with cerebral palsy, will have much more exploring to do with his newfound mobility. The Phipps family will be gifted and presented a fully customized, off-road capable, adaptive bike designed by Freedom Concepts.

Catholic Charities of East Tennessee is sponsoring the bike for the Phipps family using funds gifted by the James Wallace West Estate. These funds were specifically gifted to support individuals navigating a disability and/or are wheelchair-bound.

Born premature, Jacob has endured many health complications in his short lifetime, one of which resulted in the lifelong diagnosis of cerebral palsy. Though his motor functioning has improved with physical therapy, Jacob still requires support when mobile. His new Discovery Series adaptive bike comes equipped with more than 10 safety features and is custom built based on his body measurements. This provides maximum stability while fostering improvement in his overall mobility.

With decreased limitations, the Phipps family are excited for Jacobs increased quality of life. They look forward to enjoying a broadened scope of places to explore as a family.
The AstraZeneca vaccines made in Australia can be delivered to Vietnam apart from cold storage and other support, says Australian ambassador Robyn Mudie.

"Australia will be exploring options to procure vaccines which we can support Vietnam with. Some of those vaccines in due course are likely to be manufactured in Australia," Mudie said at a Hanoi press conference Monday.

Responding to VnExpress International on any bilateral sharing of the Covid-19 vaccine, she said that while Australia has been manufacturing AstraZeneca vaccines in the country, the current focus is on supporting Vietnam to procure vaccines from safe and reliable sources.

Over time, Australia expects some of the homemade vaccines will be part of the country's contribution to Vietnam, she added.

At the beginning of the conference, Mudie and Rana Flowers, UNICEF Representative in Vietnam, announced an A$13.5 million ($10.5 million) package to support Covid-19 vaccine delivery in Vietnam.

Mudie said the support will help Vietnam purchase cold chain equipment to store and transport vaccine doses to where they are needed around the country. It would also fund training courses and materials to ensure Vietnam's health workers and officials are ready, and assist with the development of immunization plans in Vietnam's remote provinces to ensure equitable and uniform vaccine coverage.

An aircraft carrying 811,200 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine doses delivered via global scheme Covax lands at Noi Bai Airport in Hanoi, April 1, 2021. Photo by VnExpress/Phan Cong.

Flowers said introducing a new vaccine, especially for Covid-19, was a colossal task for any government with many important steps involved.

"No one is safe until everyone is safe, so mass vaccination against Covid-19 is an important step to contain the pandemic, protect frontline workers who serve children and for Vietnam to reopen to the rest of the world."

The program will support Vietnam to vaccinate the prioritized 20 percent of population by the end of 2022 and set the foundation necessary for immunizing the remainder of the population as vaccines are rolled out nationwide. Funding for the program is drawn from Australias A$523.2 million ($404 million) regional Vaccine Access and Health Security Initiative, as well as from Australias bilateral development cooperation program with Vietnam.

In total, Australia has committed A$40 million ($31 million) over three years to support Vietnams vaccine procurement and delivery efforts.

Ambassador Mudie noted that in addition to the partnership with UNICEF, Australia was exploring options to procure vaccines through the global market to distribute to Vietnam and other partners in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. In the coming months, Australia will liaise with the Vietnamese Ministry of Health to plan how the country can best complement Vietnams vaccination roll-out, she said.

"Australia is determined to work closely with Vietnam over the coming years on the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines and will continue to support Vietnams recovery from the pandemic," she added.
The Governors Official Program is comprised of a wide range of constitutional and legal duties and ceremonial and community engagements. Each year, the Governor hosts thousands of visitors to Government House to take part in investiture and award ceremonies, Open Days, receptions and meetings, and travels widely throughout Queensland to support the activities of Patron groups. View a chronological record of the Governors daily program below.

On Friday, in the morning, at Government House, His Excellency the Honourable Paul de Jersey AC and Mrs Kaye de Jersey hosted a morning tea for St John Ambulance Australia Queensland, and the Governor addressed guests and presented awards.

In the afternoon, at Government House, His Excellency received the Premier of Queensland and Minister for Trade, the Honourable Annastacia Palaszczuk MP to sign a message of condolence to the Royal Family following the death of His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Following, at Government House, His Excellency received the Leader of the Opposition, Mr David Crisafulli MP to sign a message of condolence to the Royal Family following the death of His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Following, at Government House, His Excellency received 25th Governor of Queensland, the Honourable Penelope Wensley AC to sign a message of condolence to the Royal Family following the death of His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Following, at Government House, His Excellency received 23rd Governor of Queensland, Major General the Honourable Peter Arnison AC CVO retd to sign a message of condolence to the Royal Family following the death of His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

In the evening, at the Queensland Club, Brisbane City, His Excellency and Mrs de Jersey attended the 2021 Queensland Club Governors Dinner, and the Governor addressed guests.
NEW YORK, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Curb, the leading mobility platform for licensed taxi and for-hire rides in North America, today announced a strategic partnership with Gett, a global technology leader in corporate ground transportation management, to bring over 50,000 vehicles and 100,000 licensed drivers to the Gett platform. As Gett's first taxi partner in the U.S., Curb will power on-demand rides for business travelers in 65 cities across the country, including major metro areas like New York City, Chicago, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. The partnership was cemented in anticipation of a rebound in corporate travel as companies begin to reopen offices and international travel resumes as restrictions are lifted.

According to data from the Global Business Travel Association, global business travel is expected to grow by 21 percent in 2021, helped largely by the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. To stay ahead of the busy travel season, Curb and Gett's partnership will drive new integration between the two platforms, providing Gett's corporate clients traveling in the U.S. with a seamless taxi booking experience.

Dave Waiser, CEO and co-founder at Gett commented, "Today's partnership cements Gett's position as a technology platform focused on corporate Ground Transportation Management, where spend is worth $79.6B globally. Our cloud-based software aggregates existing transportation providers into a single platform, helping businesses manage all of their ground transportation spend. ringing corporate fleets and ride-hailing companies together on one platform saves corporations both time and money, optimising the entire employee experience, from booking and riding to invoicing and analytics.."

As a leading corporate Ground Transportation Management (GTM) solution, Gett aggregates a range of ground travel providers in-country, and across geographies, on a single booking platform. The partnership enables Gett to bring Curb-powered taxis across the U.S. into the Gett ecosystem, providing business travelers with a wider range of transportation options.

Once integrated, Curb's nationwide driver network will be embedded into Gett's platform for business travelers, allowing users to book on-demand rides in any of Curb's markets at the touch of a button. Curb users traveling abroad will also be able to book Gett vehicles in international markets using the Curb app.

"To ensure the taxi industry is around for years to come, taxis have to be everywhere riders are, which is why integrations with travel platforms like Gett are so important," said Amos Tamam, CEO of Curb Mobility. "As corporate travel begins to rebound, we anticipate an influx of international travelers in the U.S. and look forward to welcoming them with a safe, reliable transportation option that's easily accessible through the Gett platform."

The integration coincides with the anticipated return of corporate travel, and comes at a crucial point for the taxi industry as it recovers following the COVID-19 pandemic-driven decline. As travel resumes over the next several months, Curb is continuing to expand its partnerships with government agencies, healthcare providers, businesses, and transportation platforms like Gett to increase taxis' digital presence to make booking a taxi easier and more efficient for riders.



The upcoming integration with Gett expands on Curb's efforts to bring the taxi industry online by integrating with ride aggregators and other transportation-focused platforms. Last month, Curb partnered with public transit navigation app Transit to integrate taxis as a new mobility option for Transit users. Curb also debuted a PaaS solution with the City of Chicago to enable centralized booking of all wheelchair accessible taxis on-demand.

About Curb Mobility

Curb is reimagining urban mobility by creating the foundation for an intelligent, scalable, and efficient transportation network of the future. Each year, the Curb's open platform powers millions of taxi rides across the US and UK and facilitates billions of dollars in payment transactions. Curb has built a comprehensive mobility, payments, and media platform that powers millions of rides for consumers, transit agencies, and businesses, as well as effortless payment and advertising that reaches captive audiences of millions. Curb Mobility's platform is connected to over 100,000 taxis and for-hire vehicles across the US and UK, and it's out of home advertising network delivers more than 1 billion impressions monthly.

About Gett

Gett is a technology platform solely focused on corporate Ground Transportation Management (GTM), a market worth $79.6B globally.

Gett is the GTM category leader, serving over a quarter of the Fortune 500 companies.

Their cloud-based software aggregates existing transportation providers into a single platform, helping businesses manage all of their ground transportation spend. Additionally, they expand companies' coverage and reach by connecting them to a global transportation grid.

Gett organizes corporate fleets, ride-hailing, taxi, and limo providers on one platform, optimizing the entire employee experience, from booking and riding to invoicing and analytics, saving corporations both time and money.

Founded in 2010 and headquartered in London, Gett has raised more than $750M in funding to date, including $300M+ from the Volkswagen Group. It employs over 800 employees globally.

SOURCE Curb Mobility
Ailing Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has been transferred to a prison hospital as the EU warned it would hold Moscow responsible for the state of his health.

The United States on Sunday threatened Russia with "consequences" if President Vladimir Putin's most prominent domestic opponent dies in jail.

Navalny launched a hunger strike three weeks ago and his private doctors warned over the weekend he could die at "any minute".

Russia's prison service, which has barred the dissident's medical team from visiting him, said Monday its doctors had decided to move him to a medical facility at another penal colony outside Moscow.

But it insisted the anti-corruption campaigner's condition was "satisfactory", and said he was taking vitamin supplements as part of medical treatment.

Fears over Navalny's fate have further worsened relations between Moscow and the West, already strained over a Russian troop build-up along the border with Ukraine and a diplomatic row with EU member state the Czech Republic.

As the European Union's 27 foreign ministers held virtual talks Monday, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the bloc held the Russian authorities responsible for Navalny's health.

Germany said the EU would be closely watching to ensure Navalny received the necessary care, while Britain urged Navalny's release.

- Russia dismisses protests -

The Kremlin has dismissed the outcry from foreign leaders over the condition of the 44-year-old, who last year came close to death after being poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok.

"The health of convicts in the Russia Federation cannot and should not be a topic concerning them," Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Navalny was arrested in Russia in January after returning from being treated in Germany for the August poisoning, which he says was carried out by Moscow -- an accusation denied by Putin's administration.

Sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for embezzlement -- charges he says are politically motivated -- Navalny began a hunger strike on March 31 demanding medical treatment for back pain and numbness to his hands and legs.

Story continues

The EU in October imposed sanctions on six Russian officials over the nerve agent attack, and in February added another four individuals over Navalny's arrest and sentencing.

The dissident's supporters have called for major rallies on Wednesday to demand his release, scheduled just hours after Putin delivers his state-of-the-nation address.

But police, who detained thousands during earlier protests, warned people not to demonstrate.

And Russia's anti-monopoly regulator said Monday it was investigating YouTube for making "biased" decisions about comment moderation on the platform often used by Navalny for calls to protest.

His spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh tweeted Monday that YouTube had notified her Russia's media regulator had ordered the company to delete a video calling for Wednesday's demonstrations.

- 'Red lines' -

The fraught ties with Russia dominated the agenda as EU foreign ministers held their regular monthly meeting.

They held talks with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba over the Russian troop build-up along the country's eastern border and the surge in fighting with Russian-backed separatists.

The EU said more than 100,000 Russian troops were now massed along Ukraine's borders and in the annexed Crimea peninsula, scaling down Borrell's earlier comment on the numbers.

A Pentagon spokesman said Moscow's military build-up on the border is even bigger than in 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea.

Later Monday, the US State Department branded Kremlin plans to block parts of the Black Sea -- which could ultimately impact access to Ukrainian ports -- as an "unprovoked escalation".

Kiev has been battling Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine since 2014 and fighting intensified early this year, effectively shredding a ceasefire agreed last July.

On Twitter, Kuleba proposed more sanctions "to discourage Moscow from further escalation".

EU foreign ministers are also set to be briefed on the new tensions between Russia and the Czech Republic.

Moscow on Sunday ordered 20 Czech diplomats to leave the country, a day after Prague announced it was expelling 18 Russian diplomats identified as agents of the SVR and GRU security services.

Czech authorities accused them of involvement in a 2014 explosion on its soil at a military ammunition warehouse that killed two people.

Czech police said they were seeking two Russians in connection with the explosion -- and that the passport photos they carried matched those used by suspects in the 2018 poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Britain.

The EU said the Czech Republic had its "full support", adding that they were deeply concerned by the "negative pattern of dangerous malign behaviour by Russia in Europe".

del-dl/bp/rbu/jah
A female South Korean diplomat stationed at the country's Embassy in Costa Rica has died in an apparent suicide, the foreign ministry said Monday.







The official died early last week and is believed to have taken her own life, a ministry official said.







The ministry declined to provide more details, citing the privacy of the deceased and the family.







Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong has ordered a thorough probe into the death, the official added.







The ministry is discussing funeral procedures with the family of the deceased, the official said. (Yonhap)






The worst mass extinction event in the history of the Earth, 252 million years ago, took ten times longer on land than it did in the water, according to a new study.

Known as the End-Permian mass extinction or 'The Great Dying', it saw as much as 97 per cent of species that leave a fossil record disappear forever.

Chicago's Field Museum scientists studied fossils of 588 animals alive towards the end of the mass extinction in what is now South Africa's Karoo Basin.

The extinction was the result of massive volcanic eruptions that caused catastrophic climate change, killing off the vast majority of animal species on the Earth.

In the new study researchers found that while extinctions happened rapidly in the oceans, life on land underwent a longer, more drawn-out period of extinctions.

The team say it took about 100,000 years to kill life in the oceans as the waters quickly adapt to higher levels of carbon dioxide, but it took up to a million years on land to kill off species as the changes were slower and more subtle.

The worst mass extinction event in the history of the Earth, 252 million years ago, took ten times longer on land than it did in the water, according to a new study. An illustration showing Lystrosaurus during the end-Permian mass extinction

Fairydale, Bethulie is one of the extensively studied Permo-Triassic Boundary sites in South Africa's Karoo Basin

What was the End Permian mass extinction, known as the 'Great Dying'? Around 250 million years ago, the Permian period ended and the Triassic period started on Earth. Marking the boundary between these two geologic eras is the Permian mass extinction, nicknamed 'The Great Dying'. This catastrophic event saw almost all life on Earth wiped out. Scientists believe around 96 per cent of all marine life perished during the mass extinction, and less than a third of life on land survived the event. In total, it is believed that 90 per cent of all life was wiped out. All life on Earth today is descended from the roughly ten per cent of animals, plants and microbes that survived the Permian mass extinction. Previously, it was believed a huge eruption blanketed the Earth in thick smog, blocking the sun's rays from reaching the planet's surface. However, new findings suggest a massive volcanic eruption that ran for almost one million years released a huge reservoir of deadly chemicals into the atmosphere that stripped Earth of its ozone layer. This eradicated the only protection Earth's inhabitants had against the sun's deadly UV rays. This high-energy form of radiation can cause significant damage to living organisms, causing the death toll to skyrocket. Advertisement

'People assumed that because the marine extinction happened over a short period of time, life on land should have followed the same pattern,' said author Pia Viglietti.

'But we found that the marine extinction may actually be a punctuation to a longer, more drawn-out event on land.'

Until this new research the focus for studying terrestrial extinction has been 'can we match up the pattern in the terrestrial realm with what's observed in oceans,' explained co-author Ken Angielczyk, adding 'the answer is not really'.

'This paper is the first really focusing on vertebrates and saying, 'No, something was going on that was unique to the terrestrial realm.''

Part of why scientists had looked to the marine extinctions for clues as to what happened on land is that there's a more complete fossil record of life underwater.

If you want to become a fossil, dying by water, where your body will rapidly get covered by sediment, is a good way to make that happen.

As a result, palaeontologists have known for a while that 252 million years ago a mass extinction hit at the end of the Permian period, and within 100,000 years, more than 85% of the species living in the ocean went extinct.

While that may seem a long time in human years - about as long as humans have lived outside of Africa - in geologic time it is very quick.

The marine version of the end-Permian extinction took up 100,000 years out of the entire 3,800,000,000 years that life has existed.

That is the equivalent of just 14 minutes if all of life was compressed into a year.

To learn what happened to life on land, Viglietti, Angielczyk, and their colleagues examined fossils from 588 four-legged fossil animals that lived in what's now South Africa's Karoo Basin at the time of the Permian mass extinction.

'The region where we found the fossils for this study is absolutely beautiful,' says Zaituna Skosan, co-author of the study from the Iziko South African Museum.

'The green mountainous slopes are so inviting on a crisp summer morning, it makes the heat that is still to come bearable.'

'Finding good fossils is the best feeling, but also short lived as you must focus and continue to look for your next find. Even the best fossil finder overlooks a great find sometimes.'

The researchers created a database and separated the fossils by age, grouping together specimens by 300,000-year time intervals.

This approach allowed the researchers to quantify the appearance and disappearance of different species and look at the bigger picture of life over time, rather than just relying on individual specimens to tell the whole story.

Zaituna Skosan, Collections Manager at Iziko Museum in Cape Town, South Africa, glues together a broken up fossil during fieldwork in the Karoo Basin

EXTINCTION LOOMS FOR MORE THAN ONE MILLION SPECIES Nature is in more trouble now than at any time in human history with extinction looming over one million species of plants and animals, experts say. That's the key finding of the United Nations' (UN) first comprehensive report on biodiversity - the variety of plant and animal life in the world or in a particular habitat. The report - published on May 6, 2019 - says species are being lost at a rate tens or hundreds of times faster than in the past. Many of the worst effects can be prevented by changing the way we grow food, produce energy, deal with climate change and dispose of waste, the report said. The report's 39-page summary highlighted five ways people are reducing biodiversity: - Turning forests, grasslands and other areas into farms, cities and other developments. The habitat loss leaves plants and animals homeless. About three-quarters of Earth's land, two-thirds of its oceans and 85% of crucial wetlands have been severely altered or lost, making it harder for species to survive, the report said. - Overfishing the world's oceans. A third of the world's fish stocks are overfished. - Permitting climate change from the burning of fossil fuels to make it too hot, wet or dry for some species to survive. Almost half of the world's land mammals - not including bats - and nearly a quarter of the birds have already had their habitats hit hard by global warming. - Polluting land and water. Every year, 300 to 400 million tons of heavy metals, solvents and toxic sludge are dumped into the world's waters. - Allowing invasive species to crowd out native plants and animals. The number of invasive alien species per country has risen 70 per cent since 1970, with one species of bacteria threatening nearly 400 amphibian species. Advertisement

'Our approach unifies the data and says, okay, within this time bin we have these species, but as we go up, we have these other species,' says Viglietti.

'By applying sampling methods to these bins, we can help correct for issues like having more or fewer specimens collected in different time intervals or places.

'Ultimately, it lets us quantify how much extinction is happening and how quickly new species are appearing,' he said.

One of the species that helped reveal patterns of extinction and recovery was Lystrosaurus, an herbivorous early mammal relative that ranged from the size of a small dog to a cow, depending on the species.

Lystrosaurus is what palaeontologists call a 'disaster taxon' - a group that thrived during a time when most other life was struggling.

'Lystrosaurus is like a poster child for the end-Permian extinction that's always been portrayed as this animal that flourishes in the aftermath of all this extinction and just takes over,' says Viglietti.

The creature had already started appearing before the mass extinction got started, appearing abundant in the fossil record, the team explained.

'It got us thinking about what was driving that abundance - if Lystrosaurus just took over the barren landscape after other animals went extinct, or if the environment was changing and Lystrosaurus adapted to these changes that were causing extinction for all these other species. Our best guess is the latter,' Viglietti said.

Examining fossils like Lystrosaurus showed the researchers that the Permian extinction looked very different on land than it did in the oceans.

It's not clear exactly why the mass extinction event happened so much more slowly on land, taking ten times as long as it did in the oceans - up to a million years.

'The changes to the Earth's climate were cumulative and added up over time,' explained Vigligetti, adding that it got to a point where everything collapsed.

One reason for the discrepancy could be that the oceans can absorb chemical changes and stabilise themselves, up to a point.

'In today's climate crisis, the oceans can absorb a lot of carbon dioxide or rise in temperature without people realising, and then all of a sudden you get sudden ecosystem breakdowns like ocean acidification and coral bleaching,' says Viglietti.

The same might be true for the late Permian oceans, with volcanic activity pouring higher levels of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gasses into the oceans.

Understanding what happened in the end-Permian mass extinction gives us clues about the rise of the dinosaurs many of the ancient mammal relatives went extinct, leaving ecological vacancies that dinosaur ancestors evolved to fill.

A fossil of the dicynodont Lystrosaurus, a mammal relative that survives the end-Permian mass extinction event, is collected during fieldwork in South Africa's Karoo Basin

The end-Permian extinction also provides insights into the mass extinction event that the Earth is currently undergoing due to climate change and habitat destruction.

'The environmental changes that we are causing and the impacts we are having on animal and plant species are getting to the point where the scale is such that there isn't really anything in human history that is comparable,' says Angielczyk.

'The fossil record can give us some idea of what massive biodiversity crises are like and how they proceed.'

'It takes a long time to recover from extinction. When we lose diversity, it's not going to recover in our lifetime, it's going to take hundreds of thousands of years, or even millions,' says Viglietti.

'Studies like this one show what our society should be focusing on.'

The findings have been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
When LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, learned of what she called the black snake  a 1,170-mile-long underground pipeline that would stretch from the shale oil fields of northwest North Dakota to Illinois  she volunteered the use of her land to establish a resistance camp.

That camp became the base for a global protest movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline, which Ms. Allard said would veer too close to sacred burial grounds, including the grave of one of her sons; could contaminate the regions water supplies if it ever leaked; and violated longstanding treaties between Native Americans and the federal government.

The movement stood not only for stopping the pipeline but also against excavating fossil fuels in general while embracing tribal sovereignty, environmental justice and the protection of water sources everywhere.

Ms. Allard died on April 10 at her home in Fort Yates, N.D. She was 64. Her family announced the death online; local media outlets said the cause was brain cancer.
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The Ohio State Highway Patrol has sent 100 troopers to Minnesota after the states governor requested it in response to civil unrest there.

Staff Lt. Craig Cvetan, a state highway patrol spokesman, said the troopers will be assigned to help protect property, and to free up Minnesota police to deal with routine emergency calls. Minnesota will be picking up the costs under the terms of an interstate agreement through which law enforcement agencies can request help from each other regardless of state lines, he said.

The troopers left for Minnesota on Monday, and were pulled from assignments around Ohio, he said. Cvetan wouldnt say when they might be back or provide other details about the assignment, citing security reasons.

A lot of what theyll be doing there is similar to what they do here, he said.

Protests in Minnesota have escalated this month following the April 11 death of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man who was shot and killed by a police officer in Brooklyn Center, a Minneapolis suburb. The now ex-officer, Kim Potter, has been charged with manslaughter. The citys now former police chief has said Potter meant to use her taser during a traffic stop and attempted arrest, and accidently pulled her gun instead, according to media reports.

Police arrested roughly 100 people in Brooklyn Center on Friday, according to ABC News, after some people breached a barrier around the citys police headquarters, leading to clashes between demonstrators and police. Some of those detained were journalists covering the protests. Two members of the Minnesota National Guard suffered minor injuries on Sunday after officials said they were shot at while patrolling a Minneapolis neighborhood about 5 miles from Brooklyn Center.

Minnesota officials are also preparing for possible unrest at the end of the ongoing murder trial of Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer. Chauvin is accused of killing George Floyd, an unarmed Black man in an incident that sparked nationwide protests last May. Closing arguments in the case were held Monday.

Its not common for Ohio to send its troopers to other states, Cvetan said, but there is a recent precedent. In October 2016, Ohio sent fewer than 50 troopers to North Dakota following clashes there between police and demonstrators who were protesting against a controversial oil pipeline that ran through the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this article.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-20 02:25:52|Editor: huaxia

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KUWAIT CITY, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Kuwait and Russia are prepared to further boost bilateral relations, the Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) reported Monday.

Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah on Monday talked by phone with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in which both sides affirmed mutual desire to elevate relations, KUNA said.

They discussed in detail issues related to bolstering the two countries' cooperation in commercial, economic and investment spheres, it added.

In addition, the two sides affirmed necessity of maintaining the current dynamism in promoting commercial ties, resuming exchanges in the cultural and humanitarian sectors, and improving health and epidemical conditions. Enditem
Rational 360 has signed a $600K pact to provide strategic communications services to Kenya.

The one-year agreement calls for Rational 360 to handle relationship building with US government and non-government officials, plus communications counsel and management for the African state.



Kenya, which has a population of 55M people, has been battling the Shabab terror group, an Al Qaeda east African affiliate.

A Shabab attack on a Kenyan military base in January 2020 killed three Americans.

Defense secretary Lloyd Austin last month ordered an investigation into the attack and potential security shortfalls.

Rational 360 managing partner Patrick Dorton, who was Arthur Andersens chief spokesperson during its implosion and a member of Bill Clintons communications shop, heads the Kenyan team.

Hes assisted by Joe Lockhart, who was Clintons press secretary, Facebooks VP-global communications and the NFLs executive VP-corporate communications; and Nicolas Fitzgerald, a veteran of Target and Gibraltar Associates.
He was left heartbroken after discovering his bride Rebecca Zemek had cheated on him before their final vows.

But on Monday, Jake Edwards confirmed he's moved on from his 'ex-wife' and is now dating Sophie Guidolin.

'I've moved on. I've got a partner and we're looking forward to just being public now and being normal,' the charity CEO, 33, told The Kyle and Jackie O show.

Moving on: Jake Edwards (pictured) finally confirmed he has a new girlfriend and revealed he NEVER slept with Rebecca Zemek during filming for Married At First Sight on Monday

'I went on the show to find love and now I've found it,' he said.

During the interview, Jake also revealed that he wasn't intimate with Rebecca while filming the show.

He said: 'We didn't sleep together during the duration of the show. I was respecting her boundaries.'

'I've moved on. I've got a partner and we're looking forward to just being public now and being normal,' the charity CEO, 33, told The Kyle and Jackie O show. Pictured Jake's girlfriend Sophie Guidolin

Last month, Jake and his new nutritionist girlfriend Sophie were spotted enjoying a romantic Noosa getaway.

At the time, Sophie also confirmed she was in a new relationship by sharing a photo of herself cuddling a man in a green shirt.

While the man's face wasn't visible in her Instagram post, the shirt resembled one Jake was pictured wearing during filming in November.

The man's upper-arm tattoos also matched Jake's.

New man: Last month, Sophie also confirmed she was in a new relationship by sharing a photo of herself cuddling a man in a green shirt. While the man's face wasn't visible in her Instagram post, the shirt resembled one Jake was pictured wearing during filming in November

'We didn't sleep together': During the interview, Jake also revealed that he wasn't intimate with Rebecca (pictured) while filming the show

It comes after Rebecca left Jake hurt and physically ill after she was busted kissing an old flame on camera during Sunday night's finale.

Former AFL star Jake was visibly shaken while viewing the video and demanded to see it again, after Beck initially claimed it was her brother she was kissing in the clip.

Beck had flown home to Perth to care for her sick dog, and during that time asked her ex to take the dog to the vet with her.

Shocked: It comes after Rebecca left Jake hurt and physically ill after she was busted kissing an old flame on camera during Sunday night's finale

In the video, she says to camera: 'I spoke to Jake before and made sure he was all okay without us.'

She added: 'I'm only just waiting for the results back (for the dog), but hopefully can get back soon and see Jake again, cause I kind of miss him'.

A man is then seen walking in the room, and the camera fell to the bed.

'Hey, my baby,' Beck said, before the man said, 'Hello' back and the pair were heard kissing out of shot as the dog jumped on the bed, obscuring the view.
In a move to fight Islamic radicalism, France enacted a legislation that restricts religious freedom in the country -including that of Christians.

The bill titled "Supporting respect for the principles of the Republic," was passed last week, garnering 208-109 votes, with 27 abstentions. According to the country's interior minister, Gerald Darmain, the proposal aims to stop "an Islamist hostile takeover targeting Muslims" that "like gangrene [is] infecting our national unity."

It came after the nation suffered numerous Islamic terror attacks last year, including the beheading of Samuel Paty, knife attack in the former offices of Charlie Hebdo and stabbings at a church in Nice. It is now called "Law to Uphold Republican Principles and the Fight Against Separatism."

However, religious leaders are concerned that the action to protect France from the violence of Islamic extremism has also targeted all other religions, Christianity Today reported.

The law will regulate greater monitoring of religious associations. Foreign funding of French religious groups will be limited to 10,000 euros ($12,000) annually, more of such requires reporting to authorities. The rule aims to prevent foreigners from taking control of an association in the country.

The regulation also entails further government surveillance on ministers' teachings, as well as increasing the legal liability of religious leaders, penalizing speech that are deemed to encourage disobedience of laws in France.

Clement Diedrichs, general director of the National Council of Evangelicals in France, said the law shows that the nation is "no longer in a Christian society."

Francois Clavairoly, president of Protestant Federation of France, also noted that secularism in the country is now defined differently.

"We're shifting from a separation of church and state based on liberty to a separation based on control. Laicite is no longer really a laicite of trust and intelligence but is now a laicite of distrust, suspicion, and control," Clavairoly stated.

The laicite principle, generally known as secularism, is the separation of church and state. Enshrined in a 1905 law, it aims to defend religious freedom in the country.

French Christians uphold the government's efforts to address Islamic radicalism but they are troubled with restrictions that do not actually fight terrorism but equate other religions with threat of Islamist extremism.

"Our Western societies-I think it's also true for American society-have more and more difficulty understanding religious belief and the way it guides the faithful in their lives in society. Terrorism's extreme Islamist ideology that misrepresents Islam has further clouded understanding of religious life," Claivairoly said.

"Religious practice has become something menacing for many political leaders. ... So our advocacy explains that religion isn't a threat, but on the contrary, it's a resource for intelligence and citizenship," Claivairoly added.

The idea of limiting donations from abroad appeared to be unfavorable for churches, especially the new ones.

Etienne Koning, Saint-Lazare Church pastor, said that their newly-planted church is largely supported by donors from other countries. He added that the law will have a big impact in their daily lives, making it more difficult "to do church."

With the new law, Koning is also concerned with the state's increased control, as well as its impact on freedoms of speech and convictions.

But the despite this, French Protestant leaders are determined not to be bound by fear, stating that they will continue to defend the former definition of laicite.

"Without fearing at all for our faith, we can legitimately express our concerns and the fact that we will remain attentive to the preservation of our legitimate freedoms, in defense of a well-understood laicite," Erwan Cloarec said, director of formation of the Federation of Evangelical Baptist Churches of France and a pastor in Lyon.

"It seems important to me to continue this fight, without fear or weakness. The Lord is with us, and he invites us to faith, trust, and prayer," Cloarec further stated.

Diedrichs argued that Christians "must look for the good of the city" where they are. He further noted that they are not in "Jerusalem" anymore, but in "Babylon," wherein believers do not enjoy a Christian society. With this, he said that French evangelicals must proclaim the Gospel as early believers had done before.

However, Koning said that Diedrichs' response to the issue was "too kind and a little naive," stating that the law's implications are enough reasons for Christians to be concerned with. But he agreed that there are a number of reasons not to feel afraid, considering that France is a democratic country and that elections can change things.

Diedrichs urged Christians from other countries to pray for France.

"Pray for us that we will be courageous in advancing the gospel," he said.

Gerard Kelly, a British pastor that has ministered in France for three decades, stated that believers must pray for the revival and growth of the church.

"We need to pray for vibrant churches so that when laws like this come up, people don't see the evangelicals as a sort of weird, fringe cult thing. Instead, they see people they know as neighbors," he said.

The pastor added that Christians can learn from what is currently happening in Europe.

Acknowledging that being in a "Babylon" society is challenging for Christians, Kelly said that exile is also beneficial for mission.

"Your dialogue with the culture is not 'You should join our enclave.' It's 'You should find Jesus,'" he declared.

"When the church is strong and rich and powerful, it forgets missional engagement because it doesn't need to. It stops engaging creatively with its neighbors and becomes complacent. God solves complacency by allowing exile to happen-because we were never meant to be separatist," Kelly concluded.
Federal and local law enforcement were searching Sunday night for a former sheriff's deputy suspected of killing three people late Sunday morning in Austin, Texas. The suspect, Stephen Broderick, 41, was a property crimes detective for the Travis County sheriff's office until last June, when he resigned after being arrested on suspicion of sexually abusing a child. After spending 16 days in jail last June, Broderick posted bail; Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza said his office filed a motion Sunday to revoke Broderick's $50,000 bond.

The victims, described only as two Hispanic women and one Black man, were all known to Broderick, who is Black, interim Austin Police Chief Joseph Chacon said. "At this point, we do not think this individual is out there targeting random people to shoot. That does not mean he is not dangerous." The FBI and U.S. Marshals Service are aiding in the manhunt.

The shooting in Austin was the second multiple gun homicide on Sunday. Wisconsin's Kenosha County Sheriff's Department said Sunday afternoon that law enforcement has apprehended and charged with first-degree homicide a "person of interest" in a shooting at a Kenosha tavern early Sunday morning. At least three people died the three people were hospitalized with gunshot wounds after the shooting.

There have been about 150 mass shootings  defined as four or more people shot  in 2021, and in the 34 days since a gunman murdered eight people at Atlanta-area spas in March, an average of nearly two mass shootings have happened every day, The Washington Post reports, citing the Gun Violence Archive. CNN made a map, posted before the Austin shooting, which in any case falls one death short of that definition of a mass shooting.

This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it.

In the 34 days since the Atlanta shootings, 82 people have been killed in mass shootings and 228 injured, the Post reports.

More stories from theweek.com

The new HBO show you won't be able to stop watching

Donald Trump's most dangerous political legacy

Former Trump aides are reportedly frustrated he didn't become vaccine 'salesman-in-chief' as planned


Curbs should be imposed on travel from India because its new Covid-19 variant poses an unknown level of risk, a member of the Sage advisory committee says.

Professor Andrew Hayward urged Boris Johnson to err on the side of caution  amid criticism that he is refusing to act to avoid having to cancel his own trade trip to the country next week.

The B.1.617 strain has been linked to a dramatic surge in infections which is wreaking havoc across India, with evidence it may be capable of evading antibodies and T-cells.

There have been 77 confirmed cases in the UK, but India  unlike Pakistan  is not on the red list of countries from which travellers must enter 10 days of hotel quarantine.

Prof Hayward, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at University College London, pointed out that Hong Kong had imposed a two-week travel ban on India.

There are number of concerning features about this  both in terms of mutations that this variant carries as well as the epidemiological picture overall in India, he told BBC Radio 4.

The evidence of increased transmission and escape from immunity is circumstantial. That said, it is going to take a number of weeks at least before that evidence gets firmed up and we find out more.

He acknowledged the harm from restrictions on India  with both families and economies closely linked  but added: On the other hand, what we have is an unknown level of risk.

My own preference in all of this is to err on the side of caution and to act sooner rather than later. But, ultimately, that is going to be a political decision.

Across India, there have been reports of a shortage of hospital beds, life-saving drugs and medical oxygen.

But Dr Susan Hopkins, the chief medical adviser for NHS Test and Trace, has said there is not yet enough data to classify the new Indian strain as a variant of concern.

We have seen a couple of cases [of the Indian variant] that havent arisen from travel, but were still trying to look in great detail at where they might have acquired it from, she said on Sunday.

No 10 has insisted the trade trip  already curtailed to as little as one day, from a planned four  will prioritise the safety of those involved and all elements will be Covid secure.

But Labour has joined calls for it to be scrapped, after members of the Indian cabinet reportedly tested positive for coronavirus and with business leaders reluctant to travel for meetings.

George Eustice, the environment secretary, defended the governments decision not to further restrict travel to India, but said the situation was being kept under regular review.
Chandigarh:

Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi, who also heads the Group of Ministers (GoM) to look into the technical issues of GSTN, said petroleum products should be brought under the Goods and Services Tax.

Modi, also a member of the GST council, said that many states are of the view that petrol and diesel should come under the new indirect tax regime, while some have apprehensions.

I think in the coming days... issues will also be resolved and I think very soon petroleum products would also become part of the GST, he told reporters here.

In response to a question, Modi, also Bihar Finance Minister, said he believes that petroleum products should be part of the GST.

It is my personal opinion, he said, adding that petroleum products were part of the GST worldwide.

Modi, who chaired the ministerial panel meeting last month to set a road map for resolving the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN), said he can say with confidence that in the coming days, the economy will grow and whatever initial problems surfaced would be tackled.

He admitted that in the initial days of implementation of the GST, there may be some problems but the economy would be on far stronger track in the coming days.

If the growth rate has come down in one or two quarters, it does not mean it is an economic slowdown. It is a cycle. During the UPA regime, you have also seen there were a plenty of quarters in which growth rate came down.

... the GST is a big reform and I can say that after demonetisation (and) GST, the economy is on a far stronger track than what it was earlier, he said in a response to a question regarding slowdown of the economy.

He claimed the GST would have been implemented during the UPA rule, if the then Finance Minister P Chidambaram had taken the initiative.

Chidambaram made no efforts to resolve the issues of the states. He made no serious efforts to implement the GST. Compensation to the states was not given, he said.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley started giving pending compensation to the states, he said.

The trust deficit was during the Congress regime, Modi said.

The Bihar leader also clarified that neither Gujarat nor Madhya Pradesh had ever opposed the GST implementation.

Never Narendra Modi (as Chief Minister) or Gujarat opposed the GST. Never, never, never. It was in the manifesto of the BJP and I was the chairman of the empowered committee constituted by the then Prime Minister, the Bihar minister said.

Pranab Mukherjee, the then Finance Minister, appointed me as chairman of the empowered committee with the consent of BJP leaders. Never Madhya Pradesh or Gujarat ever opposed GST, he said.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
by Francis Khoo Thwe

Ethnic armed groups are increasingly involved in operations against the junta. Yesterday demonstrations in dozens of cities. The resistance of the Myingan population. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, junta head, will go to Jakarta for an ASEAN rally. A Japanese journalist arrested.

Yangon (AsiaNews) - Two army military bases were captured this morning by the Kachin Independence Army (Kia), one of the best trained armed ethnic groups in the north of the country. The two bases that fell into the hands of Kia are located in the Hpakant area.

For several weeks, clashes have been taking place in the region between junta soldiers and KIA troops, who have decided to fight to defend the civilians demonstrating against the coup d'etat, at the mercy of army violence and snipers. Along with the Kia, other armed ethnic groups are increasingly involved in the fight against the junta.

The resistance of the civilian population also continues. Yesterday there were new demonstrations in different parts of the country: in Palaw, Hpakant, Sagaing, Mogok, Mandalay, Meiktila, Magway, Myingyan.

Yesterday afternoon in the Myingan area, about 200 members of the security forces broke down the barricades and made at least six arrests. According to local sources, no civilians died in the clashes, but there are casualties among the military because people used artisanal weapons and shotguns.

Junta opponents rebuilt the barricades overnight, but today around 10 am the soldiers destroyed them again. To sow terror, they fired in all directions. A rice seller, who was closing his shop, was badly hit.

The new government of national unity

Meanwhile, the interim government, which brings together parliamentarians and members of ethnic groups (see photo), declared on April 16, has asked ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) not to recognize the military junta and instead invite their representative to the next meeting of the association.

A special ASEAN meeting will be held in Jakarta on April 24, where the Burmese crisis will be addressed. According to Thai Foreign Ministry rumours Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the head of the junta that took power after the coup, will attend.

ASEAN members have never condemned the coup, but have strongly criticized the violence against the civilian population. Some of them said they were in favour of a resumption of dialogue between the army and parliamentarians, pending new elections, in the wake of what the junta promised.

The interim government, which calls itself a "government of national unity", claims to be the legitimate political authority of Myanmar and has asked the international community and ASEAN to be recognized as such.

In recent days, to celebrate the New Year, the junta freed 23,184 prisoners, but according to many locals, almost no political prisoners. The Association for Assistance to Political Prisoners says that as of yesterday 737 people have been killed by the junta; 3229 people have been injured.

The Japanese journalist Yuki Kitazumi was arrested yesterday in Yangon, and transferred overnight to Insein prison, where political prisoners are usually jailed. Kitazumi has often filmed demonstrations and events related to the pro-democracy movement and was briefly arrested last February. The Japanese government has asked for his release.
Vice-foreign minister says competition must not be 'vicious, zero-sum game' Beijing and Washington should "avoid creating confrontation" as they roll out efforts at a working level to translate into reality the consensus reached at the recent high-level strategic dialogue in Anchorage, Alaska, a senior diplomat said. China and the United States are cooperating on some specific issues, as they "have provided favorable COVID-19 vaccination arrangements for each other's diplomats", Vice-Foreign Minister Le Yucheng said in a recent interview with the Associated Press. He noted that John Kerry, climate envoy for US President Joe Biden, visited China for discussions on cooperation on climate change, adding that "all these are positive trends that should be encouraged". The interview was done at a time when bilateral ties have been overshadowed by Washington stepping up official contacts with Taiwan and seeking greater alignment with some Asia-Pacific allies to pressure Beijing, experts said. In the interview, Le addressed key topics related to the two largest economies, such as Taiwan, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, South China Sea, COVID-19 and climate change, according to a transcript released by the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Sunday. "For two big countries like China and the US, competition might be inevitable. But competition must be healthy and should not be allowed to become a vicious zero-sum game," Le said. Some people in the US are competing to see who is tougher on China and taking this as a politically correct thing to do, which Le said is "dangerous" and could "derail this relationship and lead the world to catastrophes.  Such a tendency must be stopped." Last week, the White House added to the Taiwan Straits tension by sending to Taiwan a delegation of former officials, including a former senator and two former deputy secretaries of state. In response, Le reiterated China's resolute objection to any form of official engagement between the US and Taiwan, saying that the Taiwan question bears on China's core interests and "there is simply no room for compromise". "Whether it be a low-level or high-level (delegation), official engagement is what we firmly oppose. The US should not play the 'Taiwan card'. It is dangerous. The one-China principle is China's red line. No one should try to cross it," he said. When asked about the timetable for the Taiwan question, Le said, "It's a process of history." Wang Yiwei, professor at the School of International Studies of Renmin University of China, said that while the Biden administration's China policy is still far from taking its final shape, it has inherited the previous administration's strategy of blocking China. Washington's recent and frequent aggressive moves serve its aim to "coerce and frustrate China, in particular, the production chain and supply chain that matter to China's economy and its technology-driven sectors". Speaking on the US presence in the South China Sea, the vice-foreign minister cited data that the US flew military airplanes over the South China Sea nearly 4,000 times and sailed military vessels through the area over 130 times last year alone. "We hope that the US will do more things conducive to regional stability, rather than making provocations and creating troubles, because this could cause accidents," he said, adding that the two countries could, instead, embark on maritime cooperation there. When asked about the issue of trust between China and some US-led Western countries regarding Xinjiang, Le said, "The US doesn't trust us because it has its own calculations. It prefers to believe in the presumption of guilt." "Xinjiang is open to the outside. We welcome everyone, including journalists, to Xinjiang, but some are unwilling to come and visit. We have invited Western diplomats to Xinjiang, but they are still reluctant to accept our invitation. I wonder what are they afraid of?" Le added. Le criticized Washington and its allies' disinformation campaign targeting Xinjiang, called it "extremely harmful", and he noted that a package of washing powder was used as the excuse to start the war in Iraq, and a staged video the excuse for military interventions in Syria.


[April 19, 2021] KingSwap Open Official Limitless Token Swap Mode for All Holders of $KING Tokens for 100 Days

Singapore, April 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- (via Blockchain Wire) - KingSwap announced today that its Official Token Swap Mode is now open for all holders of old $KING tokens, who can participate without limitations, and with no restrictions on the slots opened. Previously, the Stage 1 Layer 2 Implementation kickstarted the Beta Token swap program that allowed holders of the old ERC-20 $KING tokens, but who did not purchase any NFTs, a chance to swap their old tokens for new $KING Tokens. The initial program also provided a chance for some NFT holders to take up limited slots in the beta testing stage.

KingSwap has now transitioned to a full-scale deployment which allows token holders to progress to the current Stage 4, where all users are able to swap limitless amounts of their old $KING tokens from April 17, 2021 to April 25, 2021. However, once token swaps have occurred, users will not have the ability to convert tokens back to the old $KING ERC-20 tokens.

For those users who are holding onto KingSwaps NFTs, there will be an exclusive tier of benefits for each tier of NFTs that they hold. Please refer to KingSwaps website for further details.

Both NFT and non-NFT Holders will be able to convert their old ERC-20 $KING Tokens through the NFT Rewards Conversion feature. They will be able to swap limitless amounts during this program, with all swapped tokens to be credited to their wallets by July 27, 2021. By April 25, 2021, users must place all old $KING into the NFT conversion system so that the systems smart contract will distribute the new $KING tokens gradually to the users. No further swaps may be executed after April 25. Users who place $KING in the NFT Rewards Conversion will be able to extract the rewards of their new tokens daily every 24 Hours after deposits.

These swaps will be held on the KingSwap Layer 1 mainnet, and once the KingSwap Layer 2 mainnet is fully implemented, token holders may also do the same via the xDai Layer 2 system (for lower gas fees).

For users that did not swap completely or place their $KING in the system, KingSwap will not be liable for any losses or claims as these announcements have been made since January 2021 and the public has been duly notified.

ABOUT KINGSWAPS LAYER 2 IMPLEMENTATION PROGRESS

In summary, KingSwaps Layer 2 Implementation will:

Reduce the costs of interacting with the netwok by reducing gas fees and aligning incentives across all participants.





Improve collaboration and move forward to a HyFi (hybrid finance) platform. KingSwap aims to facilitate joint initiatives, like interfaces with combined CEX ventures like Bitmart and Hotbit, which will improve protocol development, shared community resources, and insurance pools. Extensive progress has been made by members of KingSwap towards researching mechanisms that can accomplish all of the above on-chain.



Establish a robust network moat on co-beneficial ground, reducing the likelihood of the network being forked. The software can always be copied, but decentralized ecosystems such as crypto networks are resilient to attack.

KingSwap also pioneered Layer 2 implementation to be able to achieve highly-scalable growth. This first token swap will set a precedent for KingSwaps future, as well as establish the collaborative need to build effective KingSwap ecosystem interfaces, and other infrastructure.

KingSwaps Layer 2 implementation will be deployed in three stages: Stage 1: Swapping OLD $KING Token to NEW $KING Token, Converting OLD $KING Token to USDT if desired

Stage 2: Rolling out ERC1155 NFTs

Stage 3: Deploying Layer 2 Ecosystem and Gateway contract

For users requiring support in their swaps, please reach out to KingSwaps

Telegram group, or email hello@kingswap.io/

ABOUT KINGSWAPS FEATURES AND ADVISORY TEAM

KingSwap is a high-yield liquidity platform that offers extensive staking rewards, digital collectibles, and fiat conversions. An evolution of Uniswap, KingSwap provides user-friendly features that provide real-time benefits in terms of price curves and contributor rewards. In its first three days on Uniswap alone, KingSwap achieved $4 million USD in transaction volume.



KingSwap was founded and advised by a team of experienced leaders in banking, finance, and crypto, with its advisors including Dr. Anish Mohammed, who has advised and worked for companies including HSBC, Lloyds, and Zurich, and was an early advisor to Ripple and Ocean Protocol; Venture Capitalist Dr. Giampaolo Parigi (PhD); Professor Alex Nascimento (MBA), Faculty and Co-Founder, Blockchain at UCLA; Michael Terpin, Founder and CEO of Transform Group and Co-Founder of BitAngels; Lionel Iruk, Esq.(J.D), Dr. Robert Choi (PhD), Malcolm Tan (LLM) and Frank D.(MBA).





To learn more about KingSwap, join the KingSwap Telegram group, or follow the project on Twitter.

ABOUT KINGSWAP

KingSwap (https://www.kingswap.io/) is a DeFi project based out of Singapore that is introducing a liquidity pool platform with fiat conversions. KingSwaps high-yield liquidity platform offers extensive staking rewards, digital collectibles, and fiat conversions. An evolution of Uniswap, KingSwap provides user-friendly features that provide real-time benefits in terms of price curves and contributor rewards. Websites: kingswap.io??kingswap.info??kingswap.exchange? Telegram Twitter Instagram Linkedin Facebook

Transform Group Media Contact: kingswap@transformgroup.com Company Contact: Amanda Tan Email Contact: Hello@KingSwap.io

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Washington  A small Central New York fashion design firm has won a $46.8 million contract from the U.S. Marine Corps to produce a new line of fitness training uniforms for service members.

American Fashion Network of DeWitt will supply the Marines with up to 1.8 million T-shirts and shorts over the course of the five-year contract.

The woman-owned small business was among four companies that won contracts to supply lightweight, breathable physical training clothes to the Marines, according to the Department of Defense.

All told, 17 companies submitted competitive bids for the deal, Pentagon officials said.

Jackie Wilson, owner and CEO of American Fashion Network, said its the single biggest federal contract her fashion design firm has received since she spun it off from a partnership in 2011.

Its a wonderful order, Wilson told syracuse.com | The Post-Standard. I have so much pride to be able to be outfitting the U.S. Marine Corps.

Until now, Wilsons top customers have been mid-tier retailers Kohls, JC Penney, American Eagle Outfitters and Belk.

The federal contract has already allowed American Fashion Network to hire five new employees at its design studio and the company will seek to fill three more openings in DeWitt, Wilson said.

The business directly employs 16 people at its DeWitt headquarters and in satellite offices in Los Angeles and Milwaukee.

Wilson said the Marine Corps training uniforms  the product of designers, brand managers and artists that work at her DeWitt headquarters  will be 100% American-made, as required by terms of the contract.

Her company will work with long-time suppliers in the Los Angeles area that will manufacture the clothing, Wilson said.

American Fashion Network typically designs private-label apparel and exclusive store brands for retailers, and contracts with factories around the world that produce the finished goods.

Wilson said shes glad the federal government insisted on American-made clothing  a move that will help her suppliers add jobs and create a stable U.S. manufacturing base.

I feel very fortunate and very excited, Wilson said. It means more jobs all over the country, not just in Syracuse. The U.S. government is really putting their money with their mouth is by awarding contracts to small, women-owned businesses.

The fashion design firm saw revenue grow 10-fold from 2013 through 2016. But the company suffered a setback during the coronavirus pandemic when millions of dollars in sales were canceled, Wilson said. She declined to provide specific revenue figures for the privately-owned firm.

To diversify, the company decided to begin competing for government contracts last year, Wilson said.

The Marine Corps physical training uniforms will be made of synthetic material, similar to other tech clothing, with reflective taping, she said.

Marines will be issued the physical training uniforms upon entering boot camp. The uniforms also will be sold on Marine bases to those who want to buy an extra supply. Wilson declined to disclose the per-unit cost.

She said the contract will provide long-term stability for her design studio in a business thats constantly changing.

In the fashion business, theres an ebb and flow of business, Wilson said. This gives us a foundation. The contract goes for five years. Its just a wonderful contract for us to grow on. The government is really investing in our country to give us this foundation for growth.

Most clothing sold at American retail stores is manufactured overseas. But Wilson said she hopes the industry will follow the federal governments example.

Now its time for the American retailer to step up and do the same thing, she said.

Got a tip, comment or story idea? Contact Mark Weiner anytime by: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 571-970-3751
NEW YORK, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- J.Crew today announced the launch of "Re-imagined by J.Crew," an initiative to realize specific corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability goals focused on products, supply chain, the planet and third-party partnerships.

Developed in support of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, a universal language for corporate responsibility and framework for businesses to take action against the biggest challenges facing our world today, J.Crew's new sustainability initiatives are intended to be a force for change in the retail landscape through enhanced responsible business practices, product innovation and industry partnerships.

"We know there are many areas of sustainability that are in our power to impact positively, including tackling issues deeper in our supply chain and supporting the industry's transition to circularity," said J.Crew Group CEO, Libby Wadle. "By activating our employees, partnering with our stakeholders and listening to our customers, we are developing strategies to address the issues that will have the biggest impact on our products, supply chain and the apparel industry."

As the J.Crew brand continues to evolve, its commitment to CSR, including supporting factory workers, reducing the brand's environmental footprint and providing opportunities for associates to give back, remains a key priority. J.Crew's Re-imagined goals to achieve sustainability include:

Fabrics, Re-imagined : By 2025, 100 percent of key fibers will be sustainably sourced , including 100 percent of cotton.



: By 2025, , including 100 percent of cotton. Factories, Re-imagined : By 2025, over 90 percent of J.Crew cashmere and chino collections will be produced in Fair Trade Certified facilities .



: By 2025, over 90 percent of J.Crew cashmere and chino collections will be . Operations, Re-imagined : By 2025, 100 percent of plastic and paper used for packaging will be sustainably sourced, which includes a commitment to eliminate virgin plastic from all packaging, and by 2030, J.Crew operations will be 100 percent carbon neutral.

To further its CSR efforts in line with its "Re-imagined by J.Crew" initiative, J.Crew is partnering with various groups to integrate sustainability plans to reduce its environmental impact. The brand is collaborating with supply chain partners to decrease its greenhouse gas impact throughout its global supply chain and has committed to setting a science-based target with the SBTi by the end of 2021, as well as participating in the CanopyStyle initiative, a collaboration of the fashion industry to help conserve the world's remaining Ancient and Endangered Forests and forward innovative next generation solutions.

Earlier this year, J.Crew advanced its sustainability goals when it announced that 100 percent of all cashmere sweaters and nonapparel pieces from the Spring 2021 collection and onward would be produced using The Good Cashmere Standard (GCS) certified cashmere. The GCS was developed by the Aid by Trade Foundation, a nonprofit organization aiming to improve the welfare of cashmere goats, the lives of farmers and farming communities, and the environment in which they live. Through its partnership with The GCS, J.Crew is not only able to guarantee a sustainable cashmere supply chain, but also provide full traceability for certified cashmere pieces. J.Crew also announced its partnership with the Sustainable Fibre Alliance to empower women herders in Mongolia to improve their economic and social standing.

To shop J.Crew's Re-imagined products and check out its planet goals, please visit jcrew.com .

About J.Crew:

J.Crew is an internationally recognized omnichannel retailer of women's, men's and children's apparel, shoes and accessories. As of February 17, 2021, the Company operates 152 J.Crew retail stores and jcrew.com. For more information visit jcrew.com.

About The Good Cashmere Standard

The Good Cashmere Standard by the Aid by Trade Foundation is an independent standard for sustainably produced cashmere wool. Developed in 2019 in close collaboration with animal-welfare specialists and independent cashmere-production experts, its goal is to improve the well-being of the cashmere goats and the working conditions of the farmers, as well as the environment in which they live. The Standard focuses on the framework conditions for cashmere production in Inner Mongolia. thegoodcashmerestandard.org.

About The Sustainable Fibre Alliance

Founded in 2015, the Sustainable Fibre Alliance (SFA) is a global nonprofit organization with a mission to ensure the long-term viability of the cashmere sector through its SFA Cashmere Standard. The SFA works with herders across Mongolia and China to produce cashmere in a way that protects biodiversity and ensures the well-being of their animals. For more information, visit sustainablefibre.org.

About Canopy

Canopy is a not-for-profit environmental organization dedicated to protecting forests, species and climate. Canopy has collaborated with more than 750 companies to develop innovative solutions, make their supply chains more sustainable and help protect our world's remaining ancient and endangered forests. Canopy's partners include H&M, Inditex/Zara, Penguin Random House, Scholastic, Stella McCartney, Target, Gap Inc. and The Guardian Media Group. Canopy's work relies on the support of individual donors who share our passion for the planet. www.canopyplanet.org

Media Contacts:

Nike Communications

[email protected]

SOURCE J.Crew
Welcome to Pandemic Problems, an advice column from The Chronicles engagement reporters that seeks to help Bay Area residents solve their pandemic-related conundrums  personal, practical or professional. Send your questions and issues to pandemicproblems@sfchronicle.com.

Todays question is fielded by The Chronicles Kellie Hwang.

Dear Advice Team: I am 2 weeks after my first Pfizer dose, and had an unmasked outdoor lunch with someone who tested positive a day later. Am I considered exposed? What about my 13-year-old daughter, who was not at lunch but with whom I live?

Dear Reader: As more people get vaccinated, many questions and scenarios can pop up about what is safe, and what isnt.

I spoke with Robert Siegel, professor of virology and immunology at Stanford University, and he said this scenario is a gray area right now and its difficult to calculate the exact risk. But, because youre 2 weeks outside of your first dose, you have a high level of protection. A recent CDC study showed that one dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine was 80% effective at preventing infections.

There have been documented cases after a single shot, but the likelihood of these cases drops after two weeks, Siegel said. There is a small risk of infection after being exposed.

More Information About Pandemic Problems Send your questions and issues to pandemicproblems@sfchronicle.com. We cannot respond to all questions, but your submission will be read and considered. Please be as specific as possible, but try to keep it concise. We may edit your submission for space, clarity or spelling and grammar. Keep the people and situations in your letter anonymous by changing the names (including yours) and details. We will remove any identifying information. Emails, letters, tweets or other messages you send become the property of The Chronicle and may be published online and in print. Important: This column cannot address immediate risks to your health and safety. Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 to reach a counselor at a locally operated crisis center 24 hours a day for free. Text "Connect" to 741741 to reach a crisis counselor any time for free. Emails or other communications you send become the property of The Chronicle and may be published online and in print. By submitting a question, you agree to The Chronicle's Terms of Use, which are available for review at sfchronicle.com/terms_of_use, and acknowledge its Privacy Notice, which is available for review at sfchronicle.com/privacy_policy. The advice offered in this column is intended for informational purposes only. Use of this column is not intended to replace or substitute for any professional, financial, medical, legal, or other professional advice. If you have specific concerns or a situation in which you require professional, psychological or medical help, you should consult with an appropriately trained and qualified specialist. The opinions or views expressed in this column are not intended to treat or diagnose; nor are they meant to replace the treatment and care that you may be receiving from a licensed professional, physician or mental health professional. This column, its authors, the newspaper and publisher are not responsible for the outcome or results of following any advice in any given situation. You, and only you, are completely responsible for your actions. See More Collapse

There is also the concern of variants. The B.1.1.7. variant that originated in the United Kingdom is 60% more infectious and is now the dominant source of the virus in the U.S. Experts say the available vaccines offer good protection against the variant. But a recent study out of Israel showed that the Pfizer vaccine is less effective against the B.1.351 variant originally from South Africa. Other emerging variants may also be more infectious and evade vaccine antibodies.

But in your situation, several factors appear to have lessened the risk of infection.

This risk is further decreased by the fact that the encounter was outside, Siegel said. It would also be less if the exposed person was separated by the distance of a table.

Other questions to ask are: Did you hug or interact more closely with your friend? Did you wear your masks when not eating or drinking? Was it windy outside? Was it noisy so you had to raise your voices when speaking?

Having closer, unmasked contact and speaking loudly with your friend could raise the risk of infection. But if it was windy outside and you wore your masks whenever you werent eating, that could have helped lower your risk.

Your next question is about possibly exposing your daughter. This is a tough situation because people younger than 16 are not yet approved to receive a coronavirus vaccine, and its difficult to avoid interactions with your family members, especially your children.

Children are far less impacted by COVID than adults, Siegel said. On the other hand, it is a mistake to conclude there is no risk at all, especially for a 13-year-old.

He said its a good idea to err on the side of caution, and maintain some physical distance from your daughter, wear masks when possible and keep indoor spaces well ventilated. Also, think about other interactions you might have, and avoid exposing others in the week after your lunch.

It is definitely worth getting tested, if only for the peace of mind, Siegel said. Remember that it takes several days between the exposure and when the test would be positive.

Experts recommend getting tested five to seven days after exposure, and Siegel said if you were to test negative a week after exposure, you can feel confident that you dont pose a risk to your family members.

Kellie Hwang is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kellie.hwang@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @KellieHwang

Pandemic Problems is written by Chronicle Advice Team members Annie Vainshtein and Kellie Hwang, combining thorough reporting and guidance from Bay Area experts to help get answers and find a way forward.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 19)  The Department of Education (DepEd) signed separate agreements with the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and two ICT firms to improve digital connectivity in public schools and give more access to students to its digital learning platforms.

The product of the two government agencies agreement is the establishment of the Public Education Network, which will provide more digital communication between public schools nationwide and DepEd.

The DICT will be responsible in encouraging public schools to hire ICT service providers, providing online resources, materials, and systems for educational use, and coordinating with National Telecommunications Commission for any problems in digital connectivity.

In addition, the DICT will be tasked to augment future satellite capacity of DepEd for Last Mile Schools students to access digital education using fiber-optic network connection. Last Mile Schools are those which have less than four classrooms, no funds for repairs, and are located in a far-flung area that is more than one hour away from the city center.

The two agencies will also work together to determine suitable real estate properties, owned or under the administration of DepEd, where cell sites can be built to further enhance digital connectivity of public schools.

Amidst the challenges of the present, the national government is stepping up and embracing the advantages of digital transformation to support education delivery and build an enabling and innovative future for the Filipino people, DepEd said in a statement.

Meanwhile, DepEd also inked an agreement with ICT firms Converge and Pacific Kable Net for the free use of their fiber connectivity and cable channels in delivering digital learning materials to learners.

DepEd Usec. Alain Pascua said the agencys learning platforms like DepEd Commons, DepEd TV, DepEd Learning Management System, and Learning Resources Portal will reach more disadvantaged and marginalized communities because of the deal inked with Converge and Pacific Kable Net.

Connectivity and accessibility will no longer become challenges but will now become realities, connecting the disconnected, and ensuring that no Filipino learner will be left behind, said Pascua.

Filipino learners are utilizing blended learning modes in their classes amid the COVID-19 pandemic, where all schools are ordered closed by the government to prevent further transmission of the coronavirus. This involves internet-based sessions, radio and TV broadcasts of educational materials, and printed self-learning modules for children.

President Rodrigo Duterte has banned face-to-face classes until a vaccine is available for wide distribution.
Cooperative fertiliser major IFFCO on Monday said it will set up four medical oxygen plants with an investment of about Rs 30 crore in the next 15 days in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Odisha, in a bid to supply it for free to hospitals.

The plant will be put up at Kalol (Gujarat), Aonla and Phulpur (Uttar Pradesh) and at Paradeep (Odisha), it said.

"The order has been already issued. It will take at least 15 days from today to transport, install and commission an oxygen plant. A dedicated team is working on this project. IFFCO will try to commission it as soon as possible for the service of the nation," IFFCO spokesperson told PTI.

IFFCO is investing around Rs 30 crore on four oxygen plants, he added.

On Sunday late night, IFFCO Managing Director and CEO U S Awasthi had announced that the cooperative is going to establish an oxygen plant with capacity of 200 cubic meter per hour in its Kalol unit in Gujarat.

"IFFCO will give free oxygen to hospital, each cylinder of 46.7 litres," he had said.

The proposed oxygen plant in Kalol will generate medical grade oxygen and fill 700 big D-type cylinders daily and also 300 medium B-size cylinders on demand, which will be supplied to all hospitals for free, he had added.

Awasthi had also said that IFFCO will fill up the oxygen cylinders free of cost for hospitals, but they need to bring their own cylinders for refill. A security deposit will be taken if cylinders taken from IFFCO to avoid hoarding of oxygen.

In view of the recent surge in COVID-19 cases, there is huge demand for oxygen for effective clinical treatment of COVID-19 patients.

As a result, there are reports of shortage of medical oxygen in some parts of the country, especially in Maharashtra and Delhi.
LOS ANGELES, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Atlanta's Viva Tequila Festival was honored at this year's TASTE AWARDS (aka, the TASTY Awards). Often called the "Oscars of Food, Fashion and Lifestyle Media," this edition of the Taste Awards highlighted Viva Tequila Mexico Experience under the category of OUTSTANDING CULINARY & TRAVEL EXPERIENCE. This year, as for many awards shows, the Taste Awards had a virtual broadcast that reached viewers across the globe, from Japan and South Africa to England, Poland and Italy, and from New Zealand to Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.

Hosted by wine, beer and spirits purveyor Juan Bonilla, dubbed "Mr. Tequila," the Viva Tequila Festival Mexico Experience tour takes participants on an exclusive trip down the historic timeline of Mexico's Tequila Trail, providing in-depth understanding of the different regions that cultivate Tequila, the history of this iconic Mexican spirit and its importance in local, national and international economies.

The Viva Tequila Festival Mexico Experience tour visits several cities, including Tlaquepaque, Tequila, Atotonilco and Guadalajara to provide a local perspective of the manufacturing of Tequila. Participants are able to mingle with locals and admire and shop for unique Mexican works of art, both folk and fine, all while sipping limited edition craft Tequilas from distilleries that embody traditional to modern styles of manufacturing. Highlights includes visits to the Fortaleza and Don Nacho craft distilleries as well as hacienda of Jose Cuervo, where participants bottle their own Reserva de la Familia, and enjoy a tasting in the property's private cellar and then dinner at the Tienda de Raya, both opened exclusively for Viva Tequila Festival.

Tour participants are treated to stays in centuries-old haciendas that were once home to some of Mexico's wealthiest people. They can enjoy a morning horseback ride at the historic, 17th century Hacienda Labor de Rivera or disconnect and relax with a spa treatment at Hacienda El Carmen Hotel & Spa.

Other winners at this year's Taste Awards included recipients of the new ANDREW ZIMMERN DISCOVERY AWARD. This award honors the mission to discover new cultures, flavors or talent. The inaugural honorees of this new award are noted chefs Andrew Zimmern and Tyler Florence.

Other well-known personalities who won or were honored at the Taste Awards include Ming Tsai, Selena Gomez, Idris Elba, Dylan Dreyer, Chef John Folse and Lidi Bastianich, along with Bravo's Top Chef, America's Test Kitchen, NHK, the Africa Channel and New Soul Kitchen.

Viva Tequila Festival's tours are booked via the company's concierge service by contacting [email protected]. For more information on upcoming tours or information, please visit www.vivatequilafestival.com

Photos:

https://www.prlog.org/12866170

Press release distributed by PRLog

SOURCE Viva Tequila Festival

Related Links

http://www.vivatequilafestival.com


At U. of C., health officials will analyze the genomic sequences of viruses involved in the current outbreak, which likely include the B.1.1.7. strain that originated in the United Kingdom and the Brazilian variant P.1, according to the message. Preliminary information indicates these strains are behind the surge and can cause more severe illness in younger people. It can take up to two weeks after exposure for new cases to be identified. University officials believe the campus peak occurred last week.
Diageos Zacapa rum Heavenly Cask series

Category  Spirits, rum, Guatemala, 40% abv

Available  From this month

Location  Markets include Czech, France, Germany, Guatemala, Italy, Panama, Spain, Switzerland, Benelux and the Nordics

Price  SRP of EUR80 (US$96) per 70cl bottle



Diageo is kicking off a four-strong series of limited-edition rums from its jointly-owned Zacapa brand.

The line, entitled the Heavenly Cask collection, starts this month with Zacapa 23 La Doma, The Taming Cask. With all four bottlings designed to highlight parts of the maturation process of the Zacapa 23 expression, the debut expression has experienced additional ageing in ex-American whiskey casks.

Zacapa 23 contains rums aged between six and 24 years that have been matured in four casks during their time in barrels  two former American whiskey casks (one of which has been charred), an ex-Sherry cask and then a cask previously used to hold Pedro Ximenez wines.

The four expressions will be released annually in limited, albeit unspecified, quantities.

Thematic Reports Are you worried about the pace of innovation in your industry? GlobalData's TMT Themes 2021 Report tells you everything you need to know about disruptive tech themes and which companies are best placed to help you digitally transform your business. Find out more

Diageo took on Zacapa in a distribution and marketing arrangement with brand owner Industrias Licoreras de Guatemala back in 2008. Today, the two companies jointly own the rum brand after Diageo bought a 50% holding almost exactly ten years ago..

Why copying gins template for growth risks doing rum a grave disservice  Click here for a just-drinks comment
Family and domestic violence is the main reason women and children leave their homes in Australia and is the leading cause of homelessness for women. According to federal government data, in 201920, 119,200 people or 41 per cent of all people who accessed government-funded services to prevent or seek help for homelessness had experienced family and domestic violence. This represented an increase from 105,600 or 38 per cent in 2015-16. We have had experiences of taking women to view around 20 properties and just not having any luck with accessing them. Starick chief executive Leanne Barron Starick chief executive Leanne Barron said the housing crisis had worsened the issue in WA. We do know that family and domestic violence is one of the main causes of homelessness for women and children so in a market like this, women are aware of that, that they dont have anywhere else to go, and so they are more likely to stay put in a relationship, she said.

Since the beginning of 2021, Ms Barron said women were staying in the organisations refuges for an average of six months, rather than the usual three months. We are finding at the moment that we cant move women on because they cant access longer term housing, Ms Barron said. What that means is the refuges are clogged up and not able to bring in new women and children in crisis because we cant move on the women and children that are already staying with us. Starick provides services for women and children escaping domestic and family violence in Perths south-eastern metropolitan region, including at two refuges. Starick is also the provider of the regions emergency response service, which supports high-risk women and children referred by police that cant find a refuge bed. What we have experienced in the last month is we have had to put these high-risk women into motels, she said.

In March, six women and seven children were accommodated in motel accommodation for an average stay of three nights. The average is normally a night or two in our crisis bed before we find them a place in a refuge but that is full so we have had to use motels. Loading Its a stretch on our service and for women and children who are very fearful it is not a great option to be in a motel. There are three lead refuges across the metropolitan area that provide that crisis emergency response and everyone is having the same experience. Ms Barron said the state government needed to consider solutions to Western Australias housing issues that prioritised the safety of women and children, with a focus on affordability. Many of the women who come to us are often disadvantaged in the housing market, she said.

A lot of them are on Centrelink benefits and quite a lot of them dont have a rental history because it might have been their partners name on the lease, they might have been in home ownerships, or there might have been trouble in the tenancy, such as damage to the property, that was linked to the violence. In a competitive housing marketing they fall to the bottom. We have had experiences of taking women to view around 20 properties and just not having any luck with accessing them. Ms McGurk said the state government had injected significant additional resources as part of the WA Recovery Plan to deal with any increased demand for services. The department continues to work with the lead womens refuges to understand the impacts of the current rental market pressures on WAs refuge system, she said. As a result of these meetings, the department has been exploring options to assist survivors of family and domestic violence who are ready to transition from refuges, and working with family and domestic violence services to support their operations.

Mr Sheehan said demand for Relationship Australias services had increased before the housing crisis added pressure to the situation, reporting a 15 per cent jump in crisis calls to Relationship Australia during WAs 2020 lockdown. Loading Relationships Australia and other agencies providing domestic violence services had hoped for more funding from the state government but had received the same level of funding after the last round of reviews, he said. This meant it had to close some its services to offset higher operating costs and keep its waitlists capped. They usually have about 10 people on them, but the organisation closed them when they hit 40 people. The number of people wanting to join could be even larger, he said.

Ms McGurk said the McGowan government had allocated $76 million in new funding to address family and domestic violence since being elected in 2017, including launching two state-funded womens refuges in November. The refuges are now being expanded to increase their capacity. Safe housing is one element of the broad range of actions needed to address family and domestic violence in the community, Ms McGurk said. In addition to accommodation, we are investing in initiatives to prevent family and domestic violence, support family safety, hold perpetrators to account, and - wherever possible - ensure that women and children can remain safely in their own homes. Last month WAtoday exposed how the social housing crisis was impacting the states hospitals. Shelter WA chief executive Michelle Mackenzie said bed blockages in mainstream health services were just another symptom.
South Africa: Service provider ordered to pay back profit earned irregularly

The Special Investigating Unit (SIU), has successfully instituted civil proceedings in the Special Tribunal to review and set aside a R4 899 000 contract irregularly awarded to Rosette Investments by the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Social Development.

The contract was for the supply of 12 000 blankets.

The SIU approached the Special Tribunal in October 2020 to review and set aside four contracts awarded by the Social Development Department to supply 48 000 blankets to the tune of more than R18 million as part of the COVID-19 pandemic relief and to recover financial losses suffered by the Department.

The Rosette Investments contract is the second of the four contracts that were successfully reviewed and set aside, said the SIU in a statement on Sunday.

The SIU investigation had found that Rosette Investments had indeed delivered the blankets as per the terms of the irregular contract.

As a result, the SIU calculated the profit earned from the procurement contract by the investment company and demanded that it be paid back.

Rosette Investments agreed to pay back R864 005 and the agreement was made an order of the Special Tribunal.

The Special Tribunal ordered Rosette Investments on Friday to pay back the money to the SIU within seven days.

The company was also ordered to pay legal costs of the SIU, including the costs of counsel, consultations with counsel, opinions and advises sought and drafting of the application documents.

Head of the SIU, Advocate Andy Mothibi welcomed the Special Tribunal order.

This is a continuation of implementation of the SIU investigations outcomes and consequence management to recover financial losses suffered by government departments, municipalities and State Owned Entities due to the irregular award of personal protective equipment (PPE) contracts.

There are other cases enrolled in the Special Tribunal awaiting adjudication and will result in further recoveries for the State institutions, Mothibi said.

The SIU received allegations of the irregular award of blanket contracts through its whistle-blower hotline and investigated the allegations as part of the Proclamation R23 of 2020 authorising the corruption busting unit to investigate allegations of corruption and maladministration in PPE procurement by State institutions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The SIU is an independent statutory body with a primary mandate to investigate allegations of corruption, malpractice and maladministration in the affairs of government departments, municipalities and state owned entities and to recover financial losses suffered by State institutions.

Fraud and corruption allegations may be reported via the following platforms: siu@whistleblowing.co.za / Hotline: 0800 037 774.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2021-04-19. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
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Biotechnology Market Growth & Trends

The global biotechnology market size is expected to reach USD 2.44 trillion by 2028, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. It is expected to expand at a CAGR of 15.83% from 2021 to 2028. The factors driving the market include favorable government policies, the launch of new and advanced products, robust investment in the biotechnology sector, and rising demand for synthetic biology.

Robust funding through alliance investment in start-up biotechnology companies for adopting new and advanced products is contributing to market growth. For instance, in February 2021, Illumina, Inc. invested in nine new genomics companies through Illumina Accelerator in 4 start-ups in the U.K. and 5 start-ups in the U.S. The companies include MultiplAI Health LTD.; BiotaX Labs LTD.; Mitra Bio Limited; Broken String Biosciences Limited; Flightpath Biosciences, Inc.; Doloromics Inc.; Oshun Medical Inc.; Parallel Health Inc.; and Rubik Therapeutics, Inc. Illumina Accelerator is an initiative through which selected startups can access to seed investment, genomics expertise, and Illumina sequencing systems and reagents and seek business guidance.

The bioinformatics application segment is expected to expand at the fastest CAGR from 2021 to 2028 owing to the increasing adoption of these tools for analyzing complex sequencing data. By technology, nanobiotechnology is expected to expand at a lucrative growth rate of 16.8% over the forecast period owing to the growing focus on nanotechnologies for efficient drug delivery and increasing research using this technology.

Supportive government initiatives are significantly contributing to market growth. For instance, in September 2020, the Government of India supported research institutes in agriculture biotechnology, including organic farming. Since the last 3 years, around USD 42.67 million had been invested to support this endeavor.

Moreover, the emergence of the SARS-COV-2 infection is driving the market. Companies are developing new solutions for combating the pandemic situation. For instance, in December 2020, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. announced CE-marking for TaqPath COVID-19 that can be used to perform in-vitro diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) A/B, and influenza A/B infections. The new kit will help in the detection and differentiation between diseases that have similar clinical symptoms.

Request a free sample copy or view report summary: Biotechnology Market Report

Biotechnology Market Report Highlights

The health application segment accounted for the largest share of 48.64% in 2020 owing to the COVID-19 impact, prevalence of diseases, increasing focus on the development of regenerative medicines, and improving healthcare infrastructure

The DNA sequencing technology segment held the second-largest share in 2020 owing to its growing penetration in the development of precision medicines

North America held the largest share of 44.19% in 2020. Companies operating in the region are launching advanced solutions to cater to the needs of the biotechnology industry

For instance, in February 2021, Waters Corporation launched Waters ACQUITY PREMIER Solution. It is a next-generation liquid chromatography solution for improving analytical data quality

Asia Pacific is expected to expand at the fastest CAGR of 16.8% from 2021 to 2028 owing to favorable government initiatives and changes in drug approval regulations in India and China

Access Press Release@ https://www.grandviewresearch.com/press-release/global-biotechnology-market

Biotechnology Market Segmentation

Grand View Research has segmented the global biotechnology market on the basis of technology, application, and region:

Biotechnology Technology Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion, 2017 - 2028)

Nanobiotechnology

Tissue Engineering And Regeneration

DNA Sequencing

Cell-based Assays

Fermentation

PCR Technology

Chromatography

Others

Biotechnology Application Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion, 2017 - 2028)

Health

Food & Agriculture

Natural Resources & Environment

Industrial Processing

Bioinformatics

Others

Biotechnology Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion, 2017 - 2028)

North America US. Canada

Europe Germany UK. Spain France Italy

Asia Pacific Japan China India South Korea Australia

Latin America Brazil Mexico

Middle East & Africa South Africa Saudi Arabia



List of Key Players of Biotechnology Market

AstraZeneca

Gilead Sciences, Inc.

CELGENE CORPORATION

Biogen

Abbott

Amgen Inc.

Novo Nordisk A/S

Merck & Co.

Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc.

Novartis AG

Sanofi

Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd.

Pfizer, Inc.

Lonza

About Grand View Research

Grand View Research, Inc. is a U.S. based market research and consulting company, registered in the State of California and headquartered in San Francisco. The company provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. To help clients make informed business decisions, we offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across a range of industries, from technology to chemicals, materials and healthcare.
By Kwon Mee-yoo





Kim Hae-yong, former Korean ambassador to New Zealand, was appointed as the fifth secretary general of the ASEAN-Korea Centre on April 16.







The new secretary general said he "is both honored and humbled to represent the ASEAN-Korea Centre at this critical time, as the two regions are joining efforts to overcome the COVID-19 crisis and together preparing for a powerful post-pandemic transition and cooperation."







"The ASEAN-Korea Centre will spare no effort in strengthening the ASEAN-Korea partnership for a more sustainable, thriving and mutually beneficial future together," Kim said upon taking office.







Kim studied linguistics at the undergraduate level, and public administration in graduate school at Seoul National University. He earned a second master's degree in East Asian studies from Indiana University.







Kim joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1983, where he has worked in various posts, including serving as Korean ambassador to New Zealand and Myanmar, as well as director-general for FTA negotiations, and minister-counselor at South Korea's Permanent Mission to the United Nations in Geneva.







Starting in 2018, he taught international trade at Dong-A University as a contract professor.







The ASEAN-Korea Centre was established in 2009 to increase trade, accelerate investment, invigorate tourism and enrich cultural and people-to-people exchange between ASEAN and Korea. The member states include Korea and the 10 ASEAN countries: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.


Durham, NC - A study released today in STEM CELLS Translational Medicine suggests a new way to correct facial atrophy of localized scleroderma (LoS) in patients. It shows how applying grafts made up of the patient's own fat enhanced with adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs) is a safe, feasible and attractive alternative to conventional fat grafting or fat grafting combined with stromal vascular fraction in treating this condition.

LoS is a rare autoimmune disease caused when the body makes too much collagen, which results in the skin becoming stiff and hard. "Presenting mainly as subcutaneous tissue atrophy and hyperpigmentation, this disorder seriously affects the life quality and mental health of patients," said the study's first corresponding author, Xiaojun Wang, M.D., chief of the plastic surgery department at Peking Union Medical College Hospital (PUMCH). Along with Prof. Wang and her PUMCH colleagues, the study team included researchers at Jimo Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital, Shanghai University, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, and the University of Oxford.

Autologous fat grafting (AFG) is currently the primary surgical treatment used to improve facial atrophy in LoS patients, but for various reasons most of the fat graft does not survive. "As a result, the patient has to undergo numerous rounds of grafting procedures to maintain their appearance, which is not only hard on them physically and mentally but poses a financial burden as well," said the study's first authors, Chenyu Wang, M.D., and Xiao Long, M.D.

Some studies indicate that SVF-assisted fat grafting can improve fat graft retention by about 35 percent in healthy people, but it hasn't been proven to induce a similar increase in people with LoS. "However, ADSCs have shown potential for improving fat retention," Prof. Long said. ADSCs, which are harvested from adult fat, have many advantages, researchers believe. They have been proven to be safe, they have self-renewal capacity and can undergo differentiation to mature cells. These cells also are very easy to propagate in cell culture, compared to other cell types.

The Wang team's study is believed to be the first clinical study employing ADSCs-assisted fat grafting to treat facial atrophy of LoS. It is also the first to perform a side-by-side comparison of these grafting therapies, revealing significant differences in graft retention. It was performed on 18 LoS patients exhibiting facial atrophy on their foreheads and cheeks. One group received conventional AFG; a second group was treated with SVF-assisted AFG; and a third group received fat grafting with ex vivo-enriched ADSCs. The mixture of ADSCs-enriched fat grafts was supplemented with 5  105 ADSCs/ml fat, a concentration chosen based on the protocols of previous clinical studies of ADSC transplantation.

Magnetic resonance imaging was then used to measure the facial atrophy volume of each participant preoperatively, as well as postoperatively at intervals of three and six months. Clinical photographs also were taken for outcome evaluation.

"The results showed that the fat graft retention of the ADSCs-assisted group was significantly higher than that of the SVF-assisted and the conventional fat grafting groups," Prof. Wang said. "The ADSCs-assisted group showed notable graft retention over the rest of the groups at an early stage and exhibited the highest level of graft retention among the three groups in the long run.

"Although this pilot study was with a limited number of participants and relatively brief follow-up, it showed that the ADSCs-assisted fat grating was not only safe and well-tolerated in LoS patients, but it also may be more feasible and superior to conventional fat grafting or SVF-assisted fat grafting in improving facial atrophy," she added.

"Longer-term, larger and controlled clinical trials will be important to confirm the efficacy of this novel cell therapy for improving fat retention in LoS patients."

"This pilot study suggests that fat grafts combined with their stem cells potentially provide for a safe and feasible alternative to conventional treatment methods to correct facial atrophy that can occur for scleroderma patients," said Anthony Atala, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of STEM CELLS Translational Medicine and Director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. "We look forward to the continuation of this research to further document clinical efficacy."

###

The full article, "A pilot study on ex-vivo expanded autologous adipose-derived stem cells of improving fat retention in localized scleroderma patients," can be accessed at https:/ / stemcellsjournals. onlinelibrary. wiley. com/ doi/ abs/ 10. 1002/ sctm. 20-0419 .

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.
Bosses at HSBC have fallen victim to the bank's cut back on office space as it continues its move towards home-working amid the pandemic.

Senior staff have been pushed out of their private offices on the 42nd level of the group's Canary Wharf headquarters and will instead be forced to hot-desk two floors below.

The executive floor on one the city's most recognisable buildings will now be turned into client meeting rooms and collaborative spaces.

It is the latest in a set of sweeping changes being brought in by the bank to set out post-pandemic working practices.

Senior staff were recently pushed out of their private offices on the 42nd level of the group's Canary Wharf headquarters and will instead be force to hot-desk two floors below

The new plan will even affect chief executive Noel Quinn, who believes sharing a desk with other senior colleagues in the London headquarters is 'a new reality of life'.

'Our offices were empty half the time because we were travelling around the world. That was a waste of real estate,' he told the Financial Times.

Mr Quinn added that the old arrangement had been 'a waste of real estate', saying: 'Our offices were empty half the time because we were travelling around the world.'

'If I'm asking our colleagues to change the way that they're working, then it's only right that we change the way we're working.'

Mr Quinn is referring to HSBC's offer to more than 1,200 of its call centre employees to work from home permanently as a result of the coronavirus crisis.

Contract changes for those who agree to the plan are still being drawn up, with the employees only required to come in to HSBC offices for training.

The new plan will even affect chief executive Noel Quinn (pictured), who believes sharing a desk with other senior colleagues in the London headquarters is 'a new reality of life'

HSBC has a goal of cutting 40 per cent from its global head-office costs as part of a modernising programme and are understood to not be renewing many of its city-centre leases due in the next three to five years.

The bank is also still working through 35,000 job cuts that will reduce total headcount to about 200,000.

Mr Quinn added: 'We will have a very different working style going forward that will be much more hybrid, where colleagues can part work in the office, part at home

The new arrangements for streamlining the business and reducing office costs will see two employees sharing each desk in offices, although this is not the case for local branches.

The bank is also still working through 35,000 job cuts that will reduce total headcount to about 200,000

HSBC's plans appear match the trend among financial institutions as they look to cut down on office space and offer staff more flexible conditions.

Nationwide has given its 13,000 office workers the choice of deciding where they want to work, after more than half  57%  said they wanted to work from home full-time.

More than a third  36%  said they preferred a mix of home and office-based work.

Around 22,000 staff at accounting firm PwC were recently told they can spend around half their working hours at home and end shifts early on Fridays in the summer.

The company said the 'Deal' would allow workers to spend on average 40 per cent to 60 per cent of their time on remote working, if they choose.

Lloyds is carrying out trials of hybrid working this spring after 77 per cent of employees 'expressed a desire' to continue working remotely.

Standard Chartered signed an agreement with flexible office company IWG to allow many of its 95,000 staff to work from 'near-home' locations rather than commuting into cities.

It has also been suggested HSBC sees its strongest future in Asia, after Mr Quinn moved another of his top executives from London to work in Hong Kong.

Nicolas Moreau, the bank's head of asset management, will be the fourth of the bank's bosses to have so far been relocated to the former British territory.

HSBC has been ramping up its business in Asia as it cuts back its less profitable divisions in Europe and the US.

It already makes the vast majority of its profits in Asia, but now almost all of the bank's global revenue will be run out of Hong Kong.

In the staff email, Quinn said the executive moves 'underscore the importance of the Asia-Pacific region' which is 'central to our future growth'.

The Canary Wharf office, which has been its headquarters since 2002, is run on a 20-year lease signed in 2007, but is believed to have a break clause in 2022.
A complicated tax swap supported by the legislative leadership passed an important step Monday when it won approval from the state House Ways and Means Committee.

House Bills 274 and 278 would eliminate a popular tax break that allows individuals to deduct their federal tax payment on their state income tax return while reducing income tax rates. Most people would pay about the same amount of tax, and the state would collect about the same amount of revenue, said the bills sponsors, state Rep. Stuart Bishop, R-Lafayette, who is working with state Sen. Bret Allain, R-Franklin.

Ways and Means also approved a different proposal that would eliminate the federal tax deduction and establish a flat 4% tax rate on taxable income above $12,500 for individuals and $25,000 for joint filers. The sponsor of House Bills 171 and 207 is state Rep. Jerome Zeringue, the Houma Republican who chairs the House Appropriations Committee.

Committee members, however, rejected a different measure that would have raised taxes on people who earn at least $500,000 per year. The sponsor of House Bill 529 is state Rep. Mandie Landry, D-New Orleans.

Amidst the competing proposals, state Rep. Buddy Mincey, R-Denham Springs, asked for guidance on which one was the best.

The one that has the name of two chairmen on it, said Bishop.

He was referring to the bills sponsored by him and Allain, and his answer also applied to Zeringues efforts. Bishop chairs Ways and Means while Allain chairs the Senate tax-writing committee, Revenue & Fiscal Affairs. Zeringue chairs the Appropriations Committee, which writes the Houses version of the budget.

Meanwhile, Landry is a freshman Democrat who frequently challenges the Republican leadership. Besides, in recent years, Republicans have consistently rejected income tax increases on higher income people.

The Bishop and Zeringue measures now advance to the House floor. An Allain bill that is a companion to Bishops bills is scheduled to be heard on the Senate floor Tuesday.

To become law, all of the bills have to pass both chambers, not be vetoed by Gov. John Bel Edwards and win voter approval in a statewide referendum either in October 2021 or October 2022.

Effort underway to lower income taxes in Louisiana-- but at a cost; here's the proposal A complicated tax swap that would eliminate a popular deduction in exchange for lowering income tax rates passed its first step when it won ap

The effort to carry out the tax swap has the support of outside groups from the left, the center and the right, and it has the support of Edwards as long as its revenue neutral.

Robert Travis Scott, president of the centrist Public Affairs Research Council, a Baton Rouge think tank, brought a stack of past studies by experts dating to 2013. Each one recommended that lawmakers eliminate the federal tax deduction and offset that with a reduction in tax rates.

The scoop on state politics in your inbox Get the Louisiana politics insider details once a week from us. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

He and Allain said that Louisiana has a higher top tax rate than neighboring states and that that discourages investors from coming to Louisiana.

Under the Bishop-Allain bill, the 6% tax rate would drop to 4.25% on net income above $50,000, the 4% rate would drop to 3.51% on net income between $12,500 and $50,000 and the 2% rate would drop to 1.85% on net income the first $12,500 of income.

Allain said tax rates would drop more in the top bracket because the loss of the federal income tax deduction and other kinds of tax deductions  but not those for medical expenses  are taken more by upper income taxpayers.

Allain said a key reason to push the bill is that outside groups such as The Tax Foundation give Louisiana a low ranking in its state-by-state rankings. He noted that Louisiana ranks 42nd in the foundations State Tax Business Climate Index.

Big corporate tax swap vs. special-interest lobbyists: A look at who won the 1st legislative battle A limited but significant revamp of Louisianas corporate tax code on Wednesday passed the first of many steps before it can become law, but b

Allain didnt note that Louisiana actually ranks in the mid-30s on corporate (35) and individual income taxes (32) and that what sinks Louisiana is that it ranks 49th in sales taxes  both because its average 9.52% combined local and state sales tax is the second highest in the country and because the state has a plethora of tax exemptions for all kinds of transactions.

In an interview after the hearing, Allain said the tax swap he is proposing is a good first step to cleaning up the states tax code.

The Bishop-Allain bill also had the support of Dawn McVea, state director for the National Federation of Independent Business. She said that 70-80% of her members file their state taxes as individuals.

Jan Moller, the director of the left-leaning Louisiana Budget Project, praised the bill for simplifying the tax code. But he said a better bill would be one that raised more revenue and addressed a tax system that makes low income people pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than it does the wealthy.

People who earn less than $17,100 per year pay 11.9% of their income in income taxes, property taxes and sales and excise taxes combined while people who earn over $475,000 pay only 6.2%, according to Moller's group.

Companion measures to the Bishop-Allain bills would eliminate the federal deduction for corporate taxes while lowering the top corporate tax rate. Sponsored by state Rep. Neil Riser, R-Columbia, they passed the Ways and Means Committee last week.
Moldova's President Maia Sandu said on Monday that she discussed the country's political situation with the President of Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Rik Daems, and thanked him for supporting democratic reforms in the country

CHISINAU (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th April, 2021) Moldova's President Maia Sandu said on Monday that she discussed the country's political situation with the President of Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Rik Daems, and thanked him for supporting democratic reforms in the country.

Sandu is currently on an official visit to PACE headquarters in Strasbourg, France on Daems' invitation. She will take part in the PACE's opening session on Monday and is expected to deliver a speech.

"I had a fruitful meeting with President Daems during which we discussed the political situation in the country, challenges our society face due to COVID-19 and ways to overcome them together.

We also exchanged views on the status of Moldova's democratic institutions, the reforms of the justice sector, our program of European integration and settling the conflict in Transnistria," the statement said.

According to Sandu, she thanked Daems for "the PACE continued support of democratic reforms in Moldova."

She added that her main priority as the president is fighting corruption and reforming the judicial system.
Controversial Married At First Sight star Bryce Ruthven was spotted spending time with Kyle Sandilands and his best friend John Ibrahim in Sydney last month.

And on Monday, the radio shock jock, 49, finally revealed inside details of the groups' discussion, during a live radio chat on The Kyle and Jackie O Show.

Speaking alongside co-host Jackie 'O' Henderson, Kyle revealed that John thought Bryce had made a 'bit of a c**k' of himself on MAFS, before he had the chance to meet him in the flesh.

Meeting: Bryce Ruthven hit headlines at the beginning of April, as he was spotted spending time with Kyle Sandilands and his best friend John Ibrahim in Sydney. Pictured with girlfriend Melissa Rawson

'It was a hell of an experience, to meet your mates! But they're good blokes, I'll give you that,' Bryce, 32, said to Kyle.

'John was our biggest fan, wasn't he Kyle?'

'John loves the show,' Kyle responded. 'He did say you got yourself in a bit of sticky water there, made a bit of a "C" of yourself on the show.

Speaking out: On Monday, the radio shock jock, 49, finally unveiled the details of the groups' in-depth discussion during a live radio chat on The Kyle and Jackie O Show

'Then you explained to John, "hey you don't see this, you don't see that" - it was quite an eye-opener.'

'Yes, I probably said a bit too much to you guys at that catch-up,' Bryce laughed. 'It wouldn't be the first time I've said to much!'

Kyle, Kings Cross identity John and former radio star Bryce had met up in the city alongside Bryce's on-screen wife Melissa Rawson, also 32.

Friends forever: Kyle has been best friends with John Ibrahim (right) for years. Pictured with Kyle's ex-girlfriend, Imogen Anthony

While Melissa's visit appeared to have been brief, Bryce was later sitting at an outside table at a local cafe with Kyle and John, 52.

A source told Daily Mail Australia: 'Bryce is wanting to get back into radio so he caught up with Kyle at his office for some advice.

'They then went across the road for lunch with John for more of a chat about Bryce's career.'
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The For the People Act of 2021, also known as HR1, which passed the House of Representatives in early March and now awaits Senate action, has been touted as a landmark voting rights measure. Its also a judicial ethics bill.

Section 7001 of the bill is titled Supreme Court Ethics. It consists of a single sentence, instructing the Judicial Conference of the United States to issue a code of conduct to govern the behavior of Supreme Court justices.

The Judicial Conference is a body of 26 federal judges presided over by the Chief Justice.

It might come as a surprise to learn that Supreme Court justices are constrained by no formal set of ethical rules. Federal judges serving at every other level of the judicial hierarchy are bound by the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, but the Code specifically exempts the justices.

ADVERTISEMENTSkip



................................................................

The Judicial Conferences Regulations on Gifts use many roundabout words to say that federal judges should be satisfied with their handsome salaries and lavish perks and decline to accept any gift of value that might be misconstrued as the B-word. The Regulations exempt the justices, too.

In January 1991, members of the Supreme Court issued a resolution, signed by then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist, declaring their intention to comply with the Regulations on Gifts.

But that resolution was issued nine months before Justice Clarence Thomas, currently the longest-serving justice, took his seat. If current members of the court continue to abide by the Regulations (and how would we know if they dont?), its as a matter of personal choice.

Five years ago, the New Mexico Supreme Court censured a well-regarded Santa Fe judge, the late Sarah Singleton, upon finding she had created the appearance of impropriety by engaging in a phone conversation with plaintiffs attorney that involved substantive matters and was outside the presence of the other party or the other partys attorney.

Saying such ex parte communications create an appearance of impropriety is a little like saying shoplifting creates an appearance of larceny. New Mexicos Code of Judicial Conduct, like its federal counterpart, flatly prohibits all such communications.

And yet, in October 2019, Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito not only met privately with representatives of the National Organization for Marriage, at a time when the group was involved in a case pending before the Supreme Court, but actually posed for a group photo posted to social media.

The case involved LGBT rights. NOM, which opposes gay marriage, was participating as amicus, or friend of the court, and not as a named party. That distinction doesnt change the ethical calculus. The purpose of the prohibition on ex parte contacts is to protect the rights of the absent party, the one against whom NOM was litigating, and to maintain public confidence in judicial neutrality.

If Kavanaugh and Alito had been serving as lower federal court judges, they would have been subject to the same kind of censure meted out to Judge Singleton.

More recently, Alito gave what veteran Supreme Court reporter Joan Biskupic termed an ireful speech to the Federalist Society, the influential conservative legal organization. The intemperance of the justices language shocked court watchers. Justices typically hide their personal feelings behind abstract legalese.

Alito left no doubt about his strong views on gun rights, abortion, gay rights and pandemic-related restrictions on religious gatherings, all but announcing how he would rule in future cases.

Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman, writing in the New York Review of Books, described Alitos rousing, ideological speech as his apparent bid to compete with (Justice Neil) Gorsuch for leadership of the conservative legal movement.

I think Alitos purpose was more straightforward. I think he was encouraging Federalist Society members to bring cases raising those issues to the Supreme Court because, after Amy Coney Barretts confirmation, they have an excellent chance of winning.

The Code of Conduct for United States Judges prohibits public comment on matters likely to come before the court. When Supreme Court nominees of either party refuse to answer questions during their confirmation hearings, its in reference to that ethical canon. Alito flouted it.

Kavanaugh and Alito did things that would be unethical if done by lesser judges. And yet we can be quite sure that neither man questions his own ethics.

Both are former circuit court judges. Both know the ethical rules. But they also know their current courts unique powers and responsibilities. Theyre telling us they dont believe that Supreme Court justices have an ethical duty to maintain the appearance of neutrality.

If an ethical code is enacted for the Supreme Court, whose ethics will it embody?

Joel Jacobsen is an author who in 2015 retired from a 29-year legal career. If there are topics you would like to see covered in future columns, please write him at legal.column.tips@gmail.com.
Trump Urges Against Bidens Sept. 11 Afghanistan Pullout Deadline

President Joe Bidens decision to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan past the deadline agreed upon by the Trump administration is the wrong one, former President Donald Trump says.

I wish Joe Biden wouldnt use September 11th as the date to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan, for two reasons, Trump said in an April 18 statement issued by his office. First, we can and should get out earlier. Nineteen years is enough, in fact, far too much and way too long.

Trump said that he made early withdrawal possible by pulling out most of Americas equipment and reducing U.S. military presence to fewer than 2,000 troops from 16,000.

Secondly, September 11th represents a very sad event and period for our Country and should remain a day of reflection and remembrance honoring those great souls we lost, he said. Getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do. I planned to withdraw on May 1st, and we should keep as close to that schedule as possible.

Biden announced last week that all U.S. troops will leave Afghanistan by Sept. 11, although his administration declined to say whether that includes special operations forces.

Biden noted that he inherited the commitment that all U.S. troops would leave Afganistan by May 1.

It is perhaps not what I would have negotiated myself, but it was an agreement made by the United States government, and that means something. So, in keeping with that agreement and with our national interests, the United States will begin our final withdrawalbegin it on May 1 of this year, he said in remarks from the White House.

We will not conduct a hasty rush to the exit. Well do it responsibly, deliberately, and safely. And we will do it in full coordination with our allies and partners, who now have more forces in Afghanistan than we do. And the Taliban should know that if they attack us as we draw down, we will defend ourselves and our partners with all the tools at our disposal.

Asked if Biden could end up extending the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on April 14 that Biden made his decision after closely consulting with top officials and taking various factors into consideration.

So, no, he remains committed to the timeline that he intends to set out in the speech, she said.
Bayonne Assemblyman Nicholas Chiaravalloti announced Monday that he will drop out of the 31st legislative district assembly primary, ending an unusual race that saw the incumbent challenging his own party for his own seat.

As a strong supporter of (Gov. Murphy), I do not see any benefit to running against a ticket he leads, Chiaravalloti said in a statement. This election is too important. We need to continue the progress we have made and make New Jersey a stronger and fairer state by supporting Governor Murphys re-election.

Chiaravallotis withdrawal appears to clear the way for William Sampson IV, a crane operator and longshoremans union member, to coast to victory in the heavily Democratic district. Sampson could not immediately be reached for comment.

The decision, which comes just 20 days after Chiaravalloti announced plans to run for re-election, is the latest twist in a surprising primary race. Earlier this year, Bayonne Mayor Jimmy Davis unexpectedly endorsed Sampson, a political unknown, instead of Chiaravalloti, a longtime ally.

Tradition dictates that the Hudson County Democratic Organization (HCDO) defers to mayors when it comes to making Assembly endorsements. That means that Sampson will receive the county line, which will group him on the ballot with Gov. Phil Murphy and other Democrats that have the HCDOs blessing.

A spokesman for Davis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In his statement today, the assemblyman said he was frustrated and disappointed at the way the race turned out.

Unfortunately, in the culture of Hudson County politics, there is no current process for me to present my record, no screening committees, no interviews, and no participation on the part of the elected Democratic committee members, Chiaravalloti said.
Caroline Walsh Grassland Farmer of the Year - Social Media Takeover & Live Interview

Event Time All Day

Venue Online



Join Caroline Walsh, 2020 Grassland Farmer of the Year, on the Teagasc social media accounts as she takes us through a day in the life on her dairy farm in Ballinascarthy, Co. Cork

On Wednesday, 21 April, Overall and Dairy Category Winner of the 2020 Grassland Farmer of the Year Competition, Caroline Walsh from Ballinascarthy in Co. Cork will invite us on her farm throughout the day through the use of social media.

Follow Caroline throughout the day on Teagasc Grass10 Twitter or Teagasc Instagram on Wednesday, 21 April to see how she has achieved such success on her family farm.

This social media takeover will be followed by a live interview with Caroline at 7.30pm on her farm, with special guest host, Aidan Brennan, of the Irish Farmers Journal.

Find out more about Carolines farm here or watch the video below
A Christian family in an indigenous community in eastern India was beaten and forced to remain confined in their home for months after converting to Christianity and were subsequently charged by police for breaching the peace and public tranquility.

A woman, identified as Asha Korwa, and her family, who live in Khala village of Jharkhand states Garhwa District, converted to Christianity in early January and the harassment began soon after that, Morning Star News reported, noting that Korwa is a mother of two young children, ages 3 and 6.

Taking about one of the earliest attacks on Jan. 31, she told MSN, The mob brought with them the village president, media and police officers. As the media clicked our pictures and videotaped the attack, the police watched as mere spectators. They did not stop the assailants or the media.

The Christian woman said the attack took place around midnight and her husband, Sukender Korwa, and two children were also beaten.

Source:The Christian Post
Peaky Blinders has shared their unique tribute to star Helen McCrory, as filming resumed on series six following her death aged 52.

In a moving Instagram post, director Anthony Byrne revealed that one of the show's clapper boards had been decorated with a beautiful sketch of the actress in character as the series matriarch Polly Gray.

It comes after Peaky Blinders' star Cillian Murphy joined a slew of actors paying tribute to Helen after her death was announced following a 'heroic battle' with cancer.

Moving: Peaky Blinders has shared their unique tribute to star Helen McCrory, as filming resumed on series six following her death on Friday

Filming for Peaky Blinders sixth and final series has been underway for several weeks, and as production continued on Monday, Anthony shared a touching image of the crew's tribute to Helen.

Overlooking a sunny countryside, the clapper board had been decorated with a sketch of the star along with the words 'Rest In Peace Helen.'

Alongside the post, which was also shared to BBC's Instagram account, Anthony wrote: 'Today was beautiful and strange and sad and surreal. We found ourselves in the most beautiful environment.

'The sun beating down on us and it felt ok. It was incredible but not surprising to read the many tributes and articles dedicated to Helen over the weekend.

Touching: Director Anthony Byrne revealed that one of the show's clapper boards had been decorated with a beautiful sketch of the actress in character as Polly Gray

Emotional: In the caption Anthony praised fans for their own tributes to Helen over the weekend, and described their return to filming as a 'strange, sad and surreal day'

'This is our A camera board and Polly Gray is always in front of our cameras.

'This board was designed by @lo_marie_s a super talented tattoo artist in Manchester. It has meant a huge amount to me and the crew on Peaky to have an image of Helen on set with us everyday.

'Thanks to @francesca.caterina for marking up the clapper board like that.'

On Friday, Peaky Blinders star Cillian Murphy, who plays Tommy Shelby in the Birmingham-based BBC show, nephew to Helen's Polly Gray, said in a statement that he was 'broken-hearted' over her tragic death.

'Broken-hearted': On Friday, Peaky Blinders star Cillian Murphy said in a statement that he was 'broken-hearted' over her tragic death

In a touching tribute, Cillian said: 'I am broken-hearted to lose such a dear friend. Helen was a beautiful, caring, funny, compassionate human being.

'She was also a gifted actor  fearless and magnificent. She elevated and made humane every scene, every character she played.

'It was a privilege to have worked with this brilliant woman, to have shared so many laughs over the years. I will dearly miss my pal. My love and thoughts are with Damian and her family.'

Showrunners of the programme also released a statement, saying: 'Helen's performance as Polly Gray was inspirational, joyous, transgressive, hilarious and incredibly moving.

Tribute: Showrunners of the show also released a statement, saying: 'Helen's performance as Polly Gray was inspirational, joyous, transgressive, hilarious and incredibly moving'

'She was an extraordinary and remarkable person': Sophie Rundle, who plays Polly's niece Ada Shelby, said she could not 'overstate how much I admired her'

Poignant: Finn Cole, who plays Polly's son Michael, shared a picture of them both in character and praised her for being a 'force of nature'

'As a person she was off-the-scale charismatic, and deeply caring. We feel so privileged to have worked with her over the last decade.'

They added: 'All our thoughts and love are with Damian and family.'

Sophie Rundle, who plays Polly's niece Ada Shelby, shared her thoughts after receiving news of Helen's tragic passing.

Sharing a picture of Helen in character, Sophie wrote: 'God she was so f***ing cool though. It is entirely senseless and brutal to lose Helen, she was an extraordinary and remarkable person.

'Quite shockingly talented. What a privilege to have worked with her these past years, I can't overstate how much I admired her.

She will be missed: Sam Claflin, who plays Oswald Mosely in the programme, shared a tribute to Helen on Instagram, calling her an 'icon'

In her honour: Sam wrote, 'Thank you for all you have done. For all that you brought. And all you have left. You have been a teacher. A guide. A leader. An inspiration. And a friend'

'My thoughts are with her family and loved ones. Our Pol. What a heavy loss. We will miss her so dearly.'

Finn Cole, who plays Polly's son Michael, shared a picture of them both in character and praised her for being a 'force of nature.'

In the caption of his post, he wrote: 'Mother, wife, and an all round amazing role model. A force of nature who's advise I'll carry forever.

'From day 1 on Peaky I felt blessed, and I will always aspire to be as awesome as Helen McCrory. Thank you mum. Rest easy x'

Sam Claflin, who plays Oswald Mosely in the programme, shared a tribute to Helen on Instagram, calling her an 'icon'.

Tragedy: Helen's husband Damian Lewis announced her tragic passing in a statement on Friday (pictured together in 2012)

Helen's husband Damian Lewis announced her tragic passing in a statement on Friday, tweeting: 'I'm heartbroken to announce that after a heroic battle with cancer, the beautiful and mighty woman that is Helen McCrory has died peacefully at home, surrounded by a wave of love from friends and family.

'She died as she lived. Fearlessly. God we love her and know how lucky we are to have had her in our lives. She blazed so brightly. Go now, Little One, into the air, and thank you.'

McCrory, who was awarded the OBE for services to drama in the 2017 New Years Honours, was best known for playing the matriarch Polly in Peaky Blinders and Narcissa Malfoy in the Harry Potter films.

Her other movie roles included playing MP Clair Dowar in Skyfall and Cherie Blair in The Queen and The Special Relationship.

The couple were last seen during an appearance on Good Morning Britain last month, where they appeared to speak about their charity work for the Prince's Trust and the Prince's Trust Awards.
(Photo : Screenshot From Pexels Official Website) Microsoft Wins $21.9B Bet to Supply US Army with AR Headsets: Set Win $10B Jedi Cloud Computing Contract With Pentagon

Microsoft has recently announced that it had just officially won a deal to supply the US Army with AR or augmented reality headsets. These upcoming headsets are reportedly going to be based on the company's HoloLens product and also backed up by the Azure cloud computing services.

Microsoft AR Headset Contract with the US Army

The contact could reportedly be worth all the way up to $21.88 billion over the course of 10 years according to a Microsoft spokesman's statement to Reuters. It was also said that over the course of the past two years, Microsoft has actually been working with the US Army on the new prototyping phase of what would be called the IVAS or the Integrated Visual Augmentation System.

According to the story by The Star, the company noted on Wednesday that the US Army had actually moved into the official production phase of this project. Alex Kipman, a Microsoft Technical Fellow, released a blog post detailing that the headsets are actually designed to deliver a more enhanced situational awareness which would then enable information sharing and also decision making in a whole lot of scenarios.

Microsoft AR Headset Manufacturing

The headset will reportedly be manufactured over in the United States according to the statement of a Microsoft spokesperson to Reuters. Microsoft was also reportedly in line to win another huge deal aside from the $21.9 billion deal with the United States Army. This deal could potentially bring Microsoft another few billions.

Microsoft was reportedly in line to win the massive $10 billion JEDI cloud computing contract with none other than the Pentagon. However, the whole contract still remains in dispute in a certain lawsuit that was filed by Amazon.com. The Pentagon officials then noted to the US lawmakers back in February that the massive Defense Department might actually jettison the contract if the whole dispute would linger in the courts.

Read Also: Amazon, Microsoft Developing Killer AI That Puts The World At Risk, Says Study

Microsoft Deals with US Army

After Microsoft had previously announced another massive $480 million contract back in 2018 in order to supply prototypes to the United Army. There were apparently at least 94 workers that had petitioned against the company's decision in a bid to cancel the deal and also stop developing any and even all types of weapons technology.

On Wednesday, the Microsoft worker's group on Twitter posted that they would much rather see Microsoft used today in order to stand up for Transgender people all around the world on the Transgender Day of Visibility instead of actually building weapons of war. Microsoft hasn't really given any response regarding the views of its workers in response to the recent tweet.

On the Microsoft blog post, the company noted that they appreciate the partnership that they have with the official US Army and are also thankful for their continued trust in the company as they transition IVAS from its prototyping to the rapid fielding.

Related Article: Kuo Says Apple AR Headset to be 150 Grams Lightweight, Thanks to Fresnel Lens--Debuts in 2022?

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Urian Buenconsejo

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Scranton school teachers are outraged and would like to go on strike right now against the financially distressed school district, according to their union president, Rosemary Boland.

Regarding the Scranton School District, there is plenty of outrage to go around. That expressed by the districts 900 teachers, who have authorized a no-risk strike, is no greater than that of the citys tens of thousands of taxpayers. All of the outraged parties should express it to its source: the state government.

The teachers contract expired in 2017, and four years is indeed a long time to go without a contract. But since then, it clearly has been established that Scranton is among urban districts around the state that systemically are shortchanged by the state government.

Scranton alone is underfunded by more than $30 million a year under a nonsensical state law that allows fair distribution of state funding, based on the state governments own formula, only for money appropriated since 2015. Under the law adopting the distribution formula, only new money appropriated after that date, rather than all state education money, fairly could be distributed so as not to penalize districts receiving more than their fair share.

Democratic state Rep. Mike Carroll of Avoca, in a column published Friday in The Times-Tribune, called out his colleagues for the appalling inequity in the funding and expressed hope that a pending lawsuit filed by adversely affected districts will correct the funding.

But it is indeed outrageous that court intervention should be necessary for state legislators to ensure fair funding to all students statewide. Gov. Tom Wolf gets it. Under his proposed budget to compensate for the disparity, the Scranton district alone would receive an additional $39 million a year.

So teachers, taxpayers, school board members and administrators all should express their outrage  toward the feckless state legislators who could not bring themselves to fairly distribute school money for fear of political blowback in their own districts.
By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 04/19/2021



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Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.

couple Raven Gates and Adam Gottschalk have finally tied the knot after four years of dating and three postponed weddings due to the coronavirus pandemic.Raven, 29, and Adam, 30, got married in an intimate wedding ceremony on Friday, April 16 at a 40-acre estate called The Olana in Dallas, TX, People reported "We've been waiting for this day for a long time!" Raven, who wore a beautiful lace trumpet gown with her hair down and a veil, told People."I'm so happy to get married to someone I love so much."Adam added, "We're just so excited that it's finally happening. And we're going to have a wonderful future together."In order to take proper precaution amid the spread of COVID-19, Raven and Adam asked guests to take COVID tests prior to the wedding and have their temperatures taken.The couple, however, reportedly only had 20 family members in attendance and many of them were already vaccinated."We wanted to make sure it was safe for everyone," Adam shared. "Everything changed from our original plan. But life can throw curve balls. You have to adapt!"Now that the couple is officially married, they said they look forward to continuing their life together and starting a family in the near future."I'm so excited to spend my life with Adam," Raven gushed. "He makes every day better."Raven and Adam got engaged in May 2019 after falling in love on 's fourth season.The pair had initially scheduled their wedding for May 30, 2020."I've replanned the wedding three times now," Raven, 29, told Us Weekly on the magazine's "Here for the Right Reasons" podcast in August 2020. "So I just totally stopped. I'm like, 'I'm not doing this anymore.'"Raven didn't clarify at the time whether she and Adam had actually set and rescheduled several wedding dates or if her plans were just changed and altered."We have options to elope, we have options to get married and cut down our guest list by, like, 150 people -- I'm not doing that," Raven said last year, adding, "I'm not uninviting people.""So I told Adam by December [2020], if there is no end in sight, we're just going to elope and get married by ourselves, in our house. And if there is a light at the end of the tunnel by December, then we'll schedule this wedding for the fourth time."Raven intended to let nature run its course instead of trying to plan her nuptials during uncertain times."You know what? If we accidentally get pregnant along the way [to the wedding], that's totally fine," Raven told Us in August 2020."I have baby fever, but Adam has extreme baby fever. He is read-y. He is ready."Last week, Raven posted a video with Adam in which she was kissing him on the cheek and holding up their marriage license."It's happening. 3 more days!" Raven captioned the post.The day before her wedding, Raven posted a video of Adam dipping her in front of white and yellow balloons and a giant lit "Adam & Raven" sign.Adam also wrote at the time on his own Instagram account next to a similar video, "Tomorrow I'll be dancing with my Mrs."Raven previously said she was sure about Adam being her future partner when they had an overnight Fantasy Suite date in Mexico on in 2017."I was attracted to her right away," Adam, a real estate agent from Dallas, gushed to People of his now wife. "And our relationship really started post-show. We came together and we made it work.""We're so completely different in every way. He's type A, I'm laid-back," Raven, a boutique owner and Arkansas native explained."He's a city boy, I'm a Southern girl. But we have common values. And I think our differences have made us better people."Prior to appearing on , Raven competed to win Nick Viall 's heart on The Bachelor's 21st season and finished as the runner-up.Nick popped the question to winner Vanessa Grimaldi on The Bachelor's March 2017 finale, but they split five months later For Adam's part, he competed for Rachel Lindsay 's heart on The Bachelorette's thirteenth season in Spring 2017 before his BIP stint on Season 4.Interested in more The Bachelor news? Join our The Bachelor Facebook Group
At the end of the last week, a steel mill in the Izmir region booked a European cargo at $417 per tonne cfr for HMS 1&2 (80:20).



And a steel mill in the Iskenderun region booked a Venezuelan shipment of 25,000 tonnes of HMS 1&2 (80:20) at $415.50 per tonne cfr.



However, the Venezuelan cargo was not taken into the index calculation, as it was not a traditional supplier.



These deals compared with the previous deep-sea cargo sold on April 9, when a steel mill in the Iskenderun region paid an average price of $436 per tonne cfr for 35,000 tonnes of HMS 1&2 (95:5) and 15,000 tonnes of shredded.



As a result of the fresh transactions on Monday, the daily scrap indices went down.



Fastmarkets daily index for steel scrap, HMS 1&2 (80:20 mix), North Europe origin, cfr Turkey was calculated at $417 per tonne on April 19, down by $6.27 per tonne day on day.



And the daily index for steel scrap, HMS 1&2 (80:20 mix), US origin, cfr Turkey was $422.97 per tonne on Monday April 19, also down by $6.27 per tonne day on day, leaving the premium for US material over European scrap at $5.97 per tonne.



In addition, a steel mill in the Iskenderun region was heard adding more HMS 1&2 (80:20) to its previously purchased UK cargo at $422 per tonne cfr.



And another European cargo came to light after the calculation of the indices, with a mill in the Izmir region booking another European cargo at $416 per tonne cfr for HMS 1&2 (80:20).



Suppliers in the United States and the Baltic Sea were trying to maintain their existing offer prices, market sources said.



Deep-sea scrap import prices have gone down as expected, a Turkish mill source said. Suppliers in the US, for example, are still aiming to sell at $430 per tonne cfr and above, as they have good domestic demand. However, the new price level for Turkey is $415-420 per tonne cfr, [so] mills will not want to pay any higher.



A supplier in the Baltic Sea region, meanwhile, told Fastmarkets it had a cargo on offer at around $425 per tonne cfr on HMS 1&2 (80:20) basis.
One of Cork's oldest charities received an exceptionally kind donation today from two children, who selflessly gifted their pocket money to the organisation.

Cork Penny Dinners took to social media this morning, sharing a handwritten note addressed to the head of Penny Dinners, Caitriona Twomey.

These are the days .... Thank you Ewan, Evie and Nanny  pic.twitter.com/5FEFYwagJs  Penny Dinners Cork (@PennyDinnersCor) April 19, 2021

The note was from a brother and sister duo who explained that their nanny had been speaking to them about the work Penny Dinners do.

"My name is Ewan Collins. Nanny got my sister Evie and me a money box and we put our pocket money into it.

"Nanny told us you are a very good lady and you help and feed all the people who need food.

"We would like you to have the money box.

"I hope it will be enough money to buy some food," it read.

Sharing the note, Ms Twomey expressed her gratitude writing:

"These are the days .... Thank you Ewan, Evie and Nanny."
Cambodians who break Covid rules could face 20 years in prison under a new law that human rights groups say takes the country a step towards a totalitarian dictatorship. The Prime minister warned that Cambodia was on the brink of death as a two-week lockdown was imposed to try to control the spread of the virus. Cambodia has among the fewest coronavirus cases in Asia, but an outbreak that started in late February has seen cases rise to 5,480 within two months and 38 fatalities. Read here

vaccination rate now on investors' radar Investors in global financial markets are starting to put their money in places where rollouts of vaccines have made the most progress. The British pound and the US dollar have both seen marked rises since the beginning of the year as investment money flows into the two countries, which are racing ahead of other big markets. Meanwhile, currencies in Japan, Eurozone and other emerging markets have been faltering. This trend, taking place against a backdrop of still-raging infections, reflects strong expectations among investors that as more people get their shots economies will recover quickly. Read here

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CNN anchor Chris Cuomo has said that police reform won't happen until "white peoples kids start getting killed" after a string of police shootings of people of colour.

"George Floyd, Daunte Wright, I wonder if you'll remember their names six months from today because there'll be replaced by so many others," Mr Cuomo said during his show on Friday.

Mr Cuomo criticised those who blame victims after police shootings. He specifically blasted those who have resisted calls for police accountability, and have tried to justify the shootings of 13-year-old Adam Toledo in Chicago and others who died during altercations with police.

The CNN host said: "What are you going to do when you see these shootings? You know what you're going to do. 'That George Floyd, did you hear about him? That Daunte Wright, did you hear about him? That 13-year-old Adam, you know he was a gangbanger.'

"Why do that? Because you want to make the problem 'Them,' takes the onus off the idea that you're wrong about policing not needing to change.

Forget that. Police are trained to deal with non-compliance, with force that is not lethal. Hey, comply or die, you know what I mean.

Mr Cuomos remarks come after protests in Minnesota and Chicago over the deaths of Duante Wright last Sunday, and Adam Toledo in March.

Body camera footage revealed that 13-year-old Adam appeared to be surrendering when the fatal shooting occurred, The Independent reported.

Mr Cuomo suggested that if the victims of the police killings were white, the attitude of many white Americans would be different.

He said: "Oh, I know when they'll change. Your kids start getting killed, White people's kids start getting killed, smoking that doobie that's actually legal, probably in your state now, but they don't know what it was, and then the kid runs, and then 'Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!'," the CNN anchor said, while imitating gunfire.

Those start piling up, What is going on with these police? Oh, what? Maybe we shouldnt even have police! Mr Cuomo argued. That kind of mania, that kind of madness, thatll be you. Thatll be the majority because its your people.

The police officer involved in the fatal shooting of Adam Toledo has not been identified.

Officer Kimberly Potter has been charged with second-degree manslaughter in the death of Mr Wright. The Brooklyn Center police department said that she mistook her gun for her Taser.

Racial justice protests erupted across the US in the wake of the police killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky.

A verdict in the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin, who is accused of murdering Mr Floyd, could come as early as Monday, The Independent reported.

Calling for unity, Mr Cuomo said: "Us and them, us and them. There's never a solution that doesn't begin with we. We, the people."
Pharmaceutical company BioNTech and its US partner Pfizer say they will provide 100 million more doses of their vaccine to the European Union this year.

The two companies said Monday that the 27-nation group's executive Commission exercised an option to purchase the additional doses, bringing the total number of shots to be delivered to the EU in 2021 to 600 million.

The announcement offers a much-needed boost to the EU's sluggish and much-criticised vaccine rollout.

Sean Marett, the chief business officer of BioNTech, said deliveries of the company's mRNA-based vaccine this year will cover two-thirds of the EU population.

The bloc has so far administered about 105 million shots to its population of some 450 million. Most vaccines require two shots to provide full immunisation.
NEW HAVEN  Though he received several blows to the head, Rabbi Shua Rosenstein said things could have been much worse.

I survived it because Im healthy and young, relatively, but if theyd done this to an older person I dont think they could have survived that, which scares me, he said.

Last spring, Rosenstein, 38, stepped outside the Chabad House at Yale University where he works, and was assaulted by two teenagers. He said they shouted anti-Semitic slurs and epithets at him while dealing him blows to the head before stealing his car keys and driving off.

Although his attackers shouted religious abuse at him, he said he cannot know whether he was targeted on the basis of his religion. He said city police, who apprehended the alleged attackers after they crashed Rosensteins car, told him the teenagers previously had victimized non-Jews.

Five teenagers were charged, and the two assailants received hate crime charges.

I havent felt unsafe since then. I havent had any reason to, Rosenstein said. I did get a tremendous amount of support from the local and state government, both New Haven and the state of Connecticut.

Rosenstein said Mayor Justin Elicker was on the phone with him within an hour and the police have supported Chabad by providing additional security during the high holidays.

We take hate crimes very seriously, said Elicker in a statement. In the instance of a potential hate crime, our Police Department responds aggressively both to ensure that the persons involved are held accountable and to ensure that victims who may be traumatized feel a sense of safety and resolution.

Eli Sabin, the alder for Ward 1, authored a resolution condemning anti-Semitism that passed unanimously in the aftermath of the attack on Rosenstein.

We need to do much more to invest in real public safety and to address the root causes of violence as well as the racism and hate that can sometimes fuel it, he said.

brian.zahn@hearstmediact.com
Hawaiis lush rainforests and stunning beaches have long drawn travelers to the island state. According to the Hawaii Tourism Authority, more than 10 million visitors traveled to Hawaii in 2019, a 5.4% increase from the 9,888,845 visitors who went there in 2018. Thats a lot of visitors for an island state with a population of about 1.4 million people.



But the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020 halted travel to the islands in March 2020, as the state implemented a strict 14-day quarantine for all incoming flight passengers. A limited number of ICU beds and ventilators, coupled with the fear of a potentially overwhelmed health care system if there was an outbreak, were enough to cause the state to close its doors to travelers for months last year.

The lockdown meant that there was protection from COVID-19 for Hawaiis residents, but an incredible loss of jobs in the tourism industry. The states seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in March 2020 was 2.1%; in April and May 2020, it was 21.9%, according to Hawaiis Department of Labor and Industrial Relations.

On Oct. 15, 2020, the Hawaii government began welcoming travelers again through the Safe Travels Hawaii program, which requires all travelers to Hawaii to do a mandatory 10-day quarantine upon arrival to the islands. Alternatively, travelers can present a negative COVID-19 pre-travel test, taken 72 hours before departure to Hawaii to avoid the 10-day quarantine.



While some may criticize the strict measures being taken, the Safe Travels Hawaii program has done its fair share of good for Hawaii while bringing tourists back. As of April 8, 2021, Hawaii has seen a total of 2,342,281 travelers since the Safe Travels Hawaii program began in October 2020. Almost 75% of those travelers were visitors, and because of the programs safety measures, there have been few travel-related COVID-19 cases in the state.

That 72-hour testing window is tight, says Hawaii Lt. Gov. Josh Green. And because of that tight window, weve been able to keep our case number really low and have really not had travel-related COVID-19 cases of significance. Green also cites a recent Lancet study that found that PCR tests taken within 72 hours of traveling, like the Safe Travels Hawaii pre-test, reduce the number of infectious travelers by 88%.

Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag

The program also helped restore jobs that were lost during the pandemic and aid in the states economic recovery. For every 50 people that travel to Hawaii, one full-time job is restored for a year, says Green.

Currently, more than 46,000 jobs have been restored in Hawaii, helping decrease food and housing insecurities. It really gave us a lot of hope for the future, Green says. The states unemployment rate in March 2021 was 9%, higher than what it was historically, but much less than its peak at 21.9 in the first two months of the pandemic lockdown.



Hawaii has the lowest COVID-19 mortality rate in the United States, due in part to the precautions of the Safe Travels Hawaii program. Critically, the state has been able to demonstrate that safe travel during a pandemic is possible. For me, it wasnt just about slashing the number of cases by having the pre-test, says Green.

It was also about forcing people into a very thorough process where they knew theyd have to get a test, theyd have to be asymptomatic, and they would need to plan for travel by going through this process. That makes a really big difference, Green says.

And so far, more than 2.3 million travelers have been committed to the process and traveled safely throughout Hawaii.

Many in Hawaii are still leery over the return of tourism, especially with badly behaving tourists regularly making headlines in their efforts to dodge Hawaiis restrictions. But for some small-business owners, especially those whose businesses have been decimated by the lockdown, the reopening has been welcome.



As the world continues vaccination and reopening efforts, Hawaii plans to continue the program through 2021. Green notes that the state will likely reach herd immunity around July 4, making it easier for the islands to open widely, as residents will not have to worry about outbreaks.

But given the concern for virus variance and spread in certain parts of the world, its likely we will stay very vigilant, especially regarding international travel for all of 2021, he says.



Green also adds that the state is working on a safe travels card, which would allow vaccinated people to travel freely through Hawaii. With the safe travels card, travelers would upload their vaccine card, which would be their ticket to come in safely. The Safe Travels Hawaii program would also remain in place as an option for travelers, for those that choose to quarantine or do not have the vaccine.

Amanda Ogle is a freelance writer and editor covering travel, sustainability, food and drink, health and wellness, and general lifestyle topics. Her work has appeared in Travel + Leisure, National Geographic, Texas Highways, OZY, Virtuoso Traveler, American Way and more. You can find all of her work at amandaogle.com.
The Mekong is one of the worlds great rivers - a 5,000-kilometer waterway which threads from China through Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

However, dams have subverted the ecosystem, bringing drought in monsoon season and high water when it should be dry. That has forever changed the lives of those dependent on the river's water for food and work in northeastern Thailand.



Panning for flecks of gold on the bank of the Mekong River in northeastern Thailand, Rodjana Thepwong says the waterway has been her playground, food supply and source of income throughout her 64 years.



But it is changing at a speed she can barely believe. She says that when she was younger, the water would be so low in the dry season that she could walk over to the Lao side, a few hundred meters away. Now the water rises in the dry season so she stays on the Thai side of the river and pans for tiny amounts of gold.



Upstream dams - many built by China - have upended the natural cycles of the river, a waterway that subsists 60 million people as it snakes through Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar and Vietnam.



The riverbank used to provide farmland to the poorest Mekong villagers. Now water levels rise and fall without warning when the dams are closed to generate electricity, and the land yields little.



Campaigners say fish species have been decimated as the river downstream now lacks vital sediment, sending a shock through the entire ecosystem.



Locals fear a new $2 billion China-backed hydroelectric dam planned for Sanakham on the Mekong in Laos - less than 2 kilometers away - will be the end of the living river in northern Thailand -- that it will lack nutrients and the sediment that provides nutrients for fish.



The dam is currently undergoing a consultation process, but that is widely seen as a formality.



From a rare conservation area on the Thai bank, a few kilometers downstream from the proposed dam, local researcher Apisit Soontrawirat maps the destruction of the river.



He says the Chinese and Lao dams have ruined the ecosystem and dozens of species of fish have vanished due to lack of sediment.

Dam operators say they have taken all precautions to mitigate environmental damage, including creating a fish ladder to allow species to migrate during spawning season.



From his riverside view, Apisit says big business - in China, Laos and Thailand - is wringing money from a shared natural resource.



He says villagers are not getting the benefits of the dams. Instead, the gain goes to the big businesses behind the hydropower.



From a small hut, a network of fishermen defends the river from the big hydropower plants, a holdout outsized by the business interests ranged against them.



Chaiwat, one of the fishermen, says locals call the Mekong the River of Life, and all they want is for it to be returned to them, so they can live from its bounty, even if its not the same as before.



With fish stocks depleted, many fishermen have left the waterway for work in rubber fields or factories in the city.



For those who eke out a living from the river, another proposed dam in Pak Chom, the first across the Thai stretch of water, would make the people who still eat, live and work along its waters destitute.



Fisherman Sudta Insamran has a simple plea.

Its time to stop building dams, he says, and return the Mekong River to the people.


A High Court judge has questioned whether a council's children's services are fit for purpose after it 'utterly failed' three young people.

Mr Justice Keehan said he had rarely encountered such 'egregious and long-standing failures' as with Herefordshire Council.

The judge, who is based in the court's Family Division, outlined his criticisms in a ruling published online after considering the childrens' case at a recent family court hearing.

David Hitchiner, the authority's council leader, apologised for the 'appalling failings' brought forward in the hearing and promised 'swift and decisive action' to improve their services.

Three years ago Mr Justice Keehan complained of 'dreadful failures' in the council's handling of children in its care, after considering two separate cases.

The High Court's Mr Justice Keehan has questioned whether Herefordshire Council's children's services are fit for purpose after it 'utterly failed' three young people. Pictured: The High Court in London

Mr Hitchiner said the ruling shows that 'previous steps' taken to improve children's services had 'fallen short'.

He said an extraordinary general council meeting is planned to 'agree swift and decisive action'.

Mr Justice Keehan said the young people at the centre of the most recent case are now 17, 13 and 11.

Council leader David Hitchiner said he was deeply disturbed by Mr Justice Keehan's latest judgment and apologised to the family involved

He said another child died nearly two years ago, at the age of 14, after becoming ill.

The four siblings had been placed with foster carers in 2012.

Mr Justice Keehan said their mother had been 'completely and exclusively sidelined' by the council.

He said there had been 'wholesale failure' to include her in their lives or in decision-making processes - and that had been 'tragically but graphically' illustrated by events leading the death of one of the children.

The judge said the council had 'ignored' and 'challenged' the advice of a 'hugely experienced' child psychiatrist for reasons he did not 'begin to understand'.

A call, by another judge at an earlier stage of proceedings, for a re-evaluation of the approach the council was taking had been 'treated with contempt'.

Mr Justice Keehan said the council's 'actions, omissions and failures' had been spread over a period of more than eight years.

'The children have been utterly failed by this local authority,' said the judge.

'In the whole of my professional life I have rarely encountered such egregious and long-standing failures by a local authority.'

The judge said he could not understand 'why or what motivated' the council to fail the children 'as appallingly and for as extended a period of time'.

He added: 'The whole history of the role of this local authority in the lives of these children is highly inexplicable.

'The only matter which is clear to me is that it did not have the welfare best interests of the children at the heart of its decision-making, such as it was.

'This must call into question whether this local authority's children's services department is fit for purpose.'

Mr Justice Keehan has ruled that the family involved cannot be identified.

He considered the case at a private hearing and delivered his judgment to the parties involved in late March.

The ruling has now been published online.

Mr Justice Keehan said the young people at the centre of the most recent case are now 17, 13 and 11. Another child, who was their sibling, died nearly two years ago, at the age of 14, after becoming ill. Mr Justice Keehan said their mother had been 'completely and exclusively sidelined' by Herefordshire council (pictured)

Mr Justice Keehan had criticised the council in 2018 and complained of 'egregious abuse' of legislation designed to provide accommodation to children who did not have somewhere suitable to live.

Bosses had been too slow to ask family court judges to take control of cases and make long-term term decisions about children's living arrangements, he said.

The judge had outlined criticisms and concerns after analysing the cases of two children in the council's care at a family court hearing.

'I am deeply disturbed and saddened by this judgment,' said Mr Hitchiner, in a statement.

'On behalf of the council, I would like to apologise to the family affected by the appalling failings identified by Mr Justice Keehan.

'The latest judgment shows the previous steps taken to make improvements in children's services have fallen short of what is required to protect and safeguard the children of Herefordshire.'

He added: 'Cabinet have requested the monitoring officer calls an extraordinary meeting of council to agree swift and decisive action to improve these services.
Mumbai, April 19 : Actor Rahul Bose on Monday shared words of encouragement with netizens at a time when the nation is battling the second wave of Covid.

"Anger, exhaustion, confusion, despair, feed off each other. Infighting inevitably follows. How many times have we seen this in sport. A team that was winning in the first half, suddenly staring at a massive defeat in the second," he wrote on Instagram.

"The only way to break this is to gather again, take a deep breath, believe in each other, list where things are going wrong, go back to what worked for the team, and then push harder than ever before to implement those solutions. #winthis," he added.

On the work front, the actor features in the recently-released web series "Bombay Begums" alongside Pooja Bhatt, Shahana Goswami, Plabita Borthakur, Amruta Subhash, Aadhya Anand, Vivek Gomber, Danish Husain and Nauheed Cyrusi.
New Delhi, April 19 : Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was admitted to the AIIMS for treatment after testing Covid positive on Monday.

He has been admitted to the Trauma Centre, said sources.

Wishes came in as the news spread.

"Dear Dr. Manmohan Singh Ji, Wishing you a speedy recovery. India needs your guidance and advice in this difficult time," Congress leader Rahul Gandhi tweeted.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, in a tweet, said: "Just got the news that former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Ji has tested positive for COVID. Sir, our thoughts and prayers for a speedy and full recovery." "My prayers for the speedy recovery and good health of Former Prime Minister Shri Manmohan Singh who has tested positive for #Covid19. May he get well soon and continue to guide us all with his experience and wisdom," Congress's Karnataka unit President D.K. Shivakumar.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Reuters

DUBLIN (Reuters) -Ireland's finance minister said he remained confident the country's low-tax economy would continue to attract multinational investment and jobs even as an overhaul of global corporation tax rules moved a major step closer on Saturday. The United States, Britain and other leading nations agreed to back a minimum global rate of at least 15% and for firms to pay more tax in the markets where they sell goods and services rather than in countries like Ireland where they book profits. Ireland, long resigned to having more to lose than most from the reforms due to the attractiveness of its 12.5% rate to foreign multinationals, continued to press the case that any final deal must meet the needs of small and large countries.
Knox Financial, a Boston, MA-based fintech company making it easier to own investment property and optimize returns, raised $10M in Series A funding, bringing total funding to $14.7M.

The round was led by G20 Ventures, with participation from Greycroft, Pillar VC, 2LVC, and Gaingels.

The company is currently operational in four major metropolitan areas and expanding to six more in 2021.

Led by David Friedman, CEO, Knox provides a financial platform for property investors to optimize cash flow and wealth creation.

Once a property is enrolled on the Knox Frictionless Ownership PlatformTM, Knox automates and oversees the propertys finances and taxes, insurance, leasing and legal, tenant and property care, banking, and bill pay. The company is overseeing a portfolio of more than $100M in investment properties in 6 states and is expanding rapidly across the US.

FinSMEs

19/04/2021
ESD 2 Moves Forward With Plans For Hillsboro Facility The Emergency Services District (ESD) 2 Board of Commissioners met in a regular session Tuesday, April 13, and made changes to the district's latest project to build an ambulance station in Hillsboro.



The board previously approved a request for proposals outlining the project but voted to amend the project description based on new information that the architect received from Texas Accessibility Specialists regarding Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance.



Board President Tad Duncan said that the latest standards require that both restrooms be ADA compliant instead of just one. Accomplishing that will also cause other aspects of the project to be altered.



With the changes made, the board will now change the due date for proposals from contractors to Friday, May 14, and bids are expected to be opened on Monday, May 17. The winning bidder will have five months to construct the facility, with a completion date of November 30. That date was also adjusted due to current delays in the delivery of construction supplies.



The 4,500 square-foot building will be located at 108 Outlet Drive in Hillsboro and will serve as an emergency medical services station with living areas and an administrative office.



In another agenda item related to the district's facilities, the board voted to resume billing of CareFlite for rental fees at stations in Whitney, Hubbard and Itasca.



The district offered a rent abatement to CareFlite last year in appreciation of their efforts during the pandemic. As per the contract between the parties, rental fees are $1,100 per month on the Whitney station and $500 per month on all other stations.



It was reported that the automated external defibrillators (AEDs) that the district has purchased for Hill County Sheriff's Office patrol units have been delivered, and CareFlite will be holding training for deputies on the devices in the near future.



Mount Calm Volunteer Fire Department submitted a request to the ESD for an AED unit. The department reported that its device is no longer working and the department does not have the funds to purchase a unit.



Board members questioned whether the department's First Responder Organization (FRO) status had been approved, and a CareFlite representative said that the department has completed the steps but is awaiting an inspection from the state.



Commissioners voted to approve the request for a unit contingent upon the department's approval as an FRO. The agreement will be the same as the district's agreement with the sheriff's office, with the ESD retaining ownership and the department responsible for upkeep and maintenance.



The board also approved compensation to area FRO-licensed fire departments for medical calls made in the first quarter of 2021. Seven departments were compensated for their response to a total of 112 medical calls.



The monthly report from CareFlite showed 361 responses in March with a response time compliance rate of 92% and a transport rate of 59%.



The majority of patients26%were transported to Providence Health Center in Waco, followed by Baylor Scott & White Medical Center - Hillcrest in Waco with 22% and Hill Regional Hospital with 16%. There were 47 transfers made out of Hill Regional, according to the district's data.



ESD 2 is expected to hold a special meeting Monday, May 17, to open bids on the Hillsboro station, and the next regular meeting is set for Thursday, May 20, at 5:30 p.m. at the county annex on Covington Street.


Beijing, April 19 : Bejing will announce the name of its first Mars rover on the Space Day of China, which falls on April 24, according to authorities on Monday.

Nanjing, capital city of Jiangsu province, will host the main events marking this year's Space Day of China, Lyu Bo, an official of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), said while addressing a press conference on Monday.

The events include the opening ceremony, bilateral talks on the international lunar research station, and the fourth China Space Conference, reports Xinhua news agency.

The name of China's first Mars rover will be announced at the opening ceremony on Saturday, Lyu said.

China launched Tianwen-1 on July 23, 2020.

The spacecraft, consisting of an orbiter, a lander and a rover, entered the parking orbit of Mars after performing an orbital manoeuver on February 24.

The global campaign of naming the rover kicked off last July.

Netizens at home and abroad were invited to vote for their favorite among 10 candidates from January 20 to February 28.

Last month, three possible names emerged, with "Zhurong", a fire god in ancient Chinese mythology, topping the list.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Zymeworks Inc. (NYSE: ZYME), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing multifunctional biotherapeutics, today announced that Diana Hausman, M.D., will be transitioning out of her role as Zymeworks Chief Medical Officer (CMO) and assuming an executive advisory role until November 15th, 2021. Neil Josephson, M.D., who currently oversees Zymeworks global clinical studies in his role as Senior Vice President, Clinical Research, will assume the role of interim CMO.

I am extremely grateful for Dianas contribution to our clinical programs, as a member of the executive team, and to Zymeworks as a whole, said Ali Tehrani, Ph.D., Zymeworks President and CEO. I look forward to working with Diana through the transition as she continues to help us advance zanidatamab and ZW49 to the next set of clinical and commercial inflection points.

For the past two years, alongside Diana, Neil has been one of the key architects and contributors to our clinical strategy, accomplishments and growth, Dr. Tehrani added. Under Neils leadership, I am confident that we are in good hands as we proceed toward the commercialization of zanidatamab.

It has been an honor to lead the talented clinical team at Zymeworks during the last five years, said Dr. Hausman. I feel extremely proud in having been able to help advance our lead candidate, zanidatamab, from preclinical studies to our first pivotal trial in biliary tract cancer last year and our recent IND submission to the FDA for Zymeworks first randomized phase 3 study in 1st line HER2-positive gastric cancer.

Dr. Hausman added, I look forward to continuing to work with Neil over the next few months as we launch the phase 3 trial in gastric cancer and Im confident in his leadership and the strength of our experienced clinical team as we enter this next phase of clinical development through to commercialization.

Dr. Hausman has had a rewarding 20-year career in clinical drug development at several biopharmaceutical companies including Oncothyreon Inc., ZymoGenetics, Inc., Berlex, Inc., Immunex Corporation, and as Zymeworks first CMO, since 2016. During her tenure, Dr. Hausman built the clinical research division at Zymeworks from two to over 120 people and oversaw the clinical development of ZW49 and zanidatamab, the latter currently in five phase 2 clinical trials including a pivotal trial in relapsed or refractory HER2amplified biliary tract cancer (HERIZON-BTC-01).

Assuming the role of interim CMO is Dr. Neil Josephson, who joined Zymeworks in 2019 as Vice President, Clinical Research and was promoted to Senior Vice President, Clinical Research last year. Prior to joining Zymeworks, Dr. Josephson spent nearly six years at Seagen Inc., most recently as Vice President of Clinical Development, where he worked on multiple early and late-stage programs, including leading the approval of ADCETRIS for the 1st line treatment of advanced Hodgkins lymphoma. Before joining Seagen, he was an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology at University of Washington. He received an M.D. degree from Columbia University and an A.B. from Dartmouth College.
A team of scientists in Germany recently evaluated the specificities and sensitivities of different serological assays for detecting antibodies against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The study is currently available on the medRxiv* preprint server.

Background

In the context of the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the importance of non-pharmacological control measures, such as mask wearing, physical distancing, and hand sanitizing, in curbing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 has already been established. According to epidemiological experts, rapid testing, contact tracing, and isolation are the key steps in controlling the trajectory of any pandemic situation.

While reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) or rapid antigen testing is conducted to diagnose the status of an individuals current SARS-CoV-2 infection, serological testing of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies primarily provides information about both ongoing and previous infection. Thus, large-scale serosurveillance is more effective than RT-PCR/antigen testing in estimating the actual prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the general population, which also includes asymptomatic individuals.

Regarding antibody kinetics, studies have shown that most SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals develop antibodies within 2 weeks of infection. Moreover, IgA- and IgM-specific antibodies are developed earlier than IgG-specific antibodies. Because of high immunogenicity, the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 is the major target of neutralizing antibodies. Similarly, because of the robust immune dominance among all human coronaviruses, the nucleocapsid protein of SARS-CoV-2 is another important target of neutralizing antibodies.

In the current study, the scientists have aimed to analyze the kinetics of anti- SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in patient sera, as well as to examine the diagnostic performance of 8 serological assays.

Study design

The scientists collected a total of 129 serum samples from 42 COVID-19 patients to examine the anti- SARS-CoV-2 antibody kinetics. The samples were collected on known days after the symptom onset. Specifically, the samples were collected at different phases of the infection: 11  20 days, 21  60 days, and more than 60 days after the symptom onset.

They determined the presence of IgG, IgM, and IgA antibodies in SARS-CoV-2-infected cells using indirect immunofluorescence testing. Moreover, using five different enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA), they determined the presence of IgG and IgA specific antibodies against the S1 domain of viral spike protein and IgG and IgM specific antibodies against the viral nucleocapsid protein.

Important observations

The study revealed significant variations between assay sensitivities. Specifically, the estimated sensitivities of indirect immunofluorescence testing for IgG, IgA, and IgM specific antibodies were found to be 94%, 72%, and 65%, respectively. Similarly, ELISA showed 75% and 80% sensitivities for IgG and IgA specific anti-spike S1 antibodies and 82% and 19% sensitivities for IgG and IgM specific anti-nucleocapsid antibodies, respectively. Overall, the highest sensitivity of IgA and IgM assays was observed at the initial phase of the infection (11  20 days post-infection), whereas IgG detection assays showed the highest sensitivity during the intermediate phase of infection (20  60 days post-infection).

In the initial phase of infection, ELISA detected IgG and IgA specific anti-spike S1 antibodies in 70% and 88% of samples, and IgG and IgM specific anti-nucleocapsid antibodies in 86% and 50% of samples, respectively. Similarly, the indirect immunofluorescence testing detected IgG, IgA, and IgM specific anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in 96%, 93%, and 96% of samples, respectively.

During the intermediate phase of infection, ELISA detected IgG and IgA specific anti-spike S1 antibodies in 93% and 82% of samples, and IgG and IgM specific anti-nucleocapsid antibodies in 96% and 12% of samples, respectively. Similarly, the indirect immunofluorescence testing detected IgG, IgM, and IgA specific anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in 100%, 87%, and 100% of samples, respectively.

In the late phase of infection, ELISA detected IgG and IgA specific anti-spike S1 antibodies in 85% and 80% of samples, and IgG and IgM specific anti-nucleocapsid antibodies in 81% and 0% of samples, respectively. Similarly, the indirect immunofluorescence testing detected IgG, IgA, and IgM specific anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in 98%, 44%, and 30% of samples, respectively.

Importantly, the agreement analysis between anti-SARS-CoV-2 QuantiVac ELISA (an assay used to quantify antibodies) and anti-SARS-CoV-2 ELISA (qualitative) revealed a strong correlation between results obtained from these two methods.

Study significance

Overall, the study reveals that the sensitivities of serological assays may vary depending on the phase of infection. Specifically, the findings reveal that indirect immunofluorescence testing is almost 95% sensitive in detecting IgG specific anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in serum samples obtained from PCR-confirmed COVID-19 patients. In contrast, ELISA is particularly useful in determining the prevalence and quantity of IgG, IgA, and IgM specific antibodies targeting selected SARS-CoV-2 antigens.

*Important Notice

medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
Deputy President William Ruto has cried foul at Uhuru Kenyattas failure to shield him from humiliation by individuals close to the president.

Speaking in an interview on Citizen TV, Ruto said should he become President he would never allow his deputy to be humiliated the way he has been humiliated.

Very many deputy presidents are fought. It is an unfortunate situation. Given an opportunity, I would not allow my deputy president to be humiliated the way former deputy presidents have been humiliated and the way I have been humiliated, said Ruto.

The DP further noted that Uhurus leadership style changed after the 2017 elections as he prioritized other agendas like BBI and opted to have other people in his inner circle to advice him on the mode of operation.

The way I worked with my boss from 2013-2017 is different from the way we have worked from 2017 to now and it is a change of style. From 2013-2017 we worked as a pair and we conducted government business in a manner in which we agreed. I held most of the meetings of the Cabinet meetings, he said.

The president has broken no law he has just chosen a different style. It is his prerogative. My space is to advice the president and which advice, which when sort, I have been very forthright and honest. If the president decides to deliver government business in a different way and elevate other people, consult more with the former leader of opposition and work with other ministers to deliver government business, I have taken it with grace. You have not heard me complain because of the respect I have for the office of the president, said Ruto.

At the same time, Ruto said when he decided to support Uhuru Kenyatta in 2012, he did not do so on condition that Uhuru would return the favour.

When I decided to support Uhuru Kenyatta, I did not give him any conditions I did not tell him that when he finishes, he should hand over the baton to me. I knew I would have to assemble myself and face the people of Kenya with an agenda, said Ruto.

There has been a narrative built because the President said, Yangu kumi ya Ruto kumi. I have never said such kind of a statement. The President is an adult, he can change his mind I will not take offence because he owes me nothing. The President remains my friend whether he supports me or not we have been together since KANU days, we work together we were taken to the Hague together so he remains my friend, said the DP.
PLANS for a new student accommodation development in the city are back on the table, the Limerick Leader can today reveal.

Despite An Bord Pleanala rejecting proposals for a new multi-storey development at the old John Moloney garage by Punchs Cross last year, Cloncaragh Developments has returned with a fresh planning application.

It will be made to the national planning authority this week  and due to the fact more than 100 units are being provided, it is being fast-tracked under laws designed to make the delivery of housing quicker.

According to the proposals, 100 apartments accommodating over 300 students will be built, with the facility designed to meet the needs of those studying at Mary Immaculate College, the University of Limerick (UL) and the Limerick Institute of Technology (LIT).

Both UL and LIT have ambitious growth plans.

In a statement, Cloncaragh Developments said the project will transform and regenerate the former garage site, which has lain idle for 20 years.

It will also be helping to address Limericks student accommodation and housing needs in the city, they added.

Derick Walshe, Cloncaragh, said; Todays announcement demonstrates our commitment to Limerick city and its future. Limerick is the third largest city in Ireland and has a large student population. This development will help to address the housing need for many students who wish to study in the city.

He believes by adding the housing stock, it will help rents in the locality become more affordable by increasing supply.

Mary Immaculate College is located in close proximity to the proposed development. The college is supportive of this project as it will allow for students to live close by in quality fit for purpose accommodation. Mary Immaculate College is a well-recognised and growing third level educational institution whose reputation attracts students from all over Ireland and internationally and it is important that they have appropriate accommodation available to meet their needs. The University of Limerick also plans to develop a campus on Sarsfield Street and this will also feed into the demand for this accommodation type, added Mr Walsh.

As part of the development, over 400 bike storage stands will be delivered, with adequate storage and outdoor amenity spaces for residents.

Below: an overhead shot of the proposed student village

The development will also see improved local infrastructure, such as widened footpaths, a proposed road widening on the Rosbrien Road to allow for an extra traffic lane; and a new centrepiece plaza at Punches Cross. The accommodation will be fully supervised and managed with security and concierge services for its residents.

Mr Walshe concluded: We want to see the site turned into something that contributes economic positives for Limerick City as well as meeting the rising demand for quality accommodation. Limerick City is currently undergoing significant regeneration and it is important that critical infrastructure such as housing keeps up with demand, so that our city can continue to flourish. It is our intention, if planning permission is granted, to begin construction as soon as possible and this in turn will also stimulate local employment in Limericks construction sector.

There has been a guarded welcome to the proposals, including from Labour councillor Joe Leddin, who has said he welcomes the fact that on-site security will be present in these new plans  something lacking from the rejected proposal.

Its a welcome move, because that development site has been derelict for a long time. But its important the local community have relevant contact with the management company to ensure good relationships, he said.

Cllr Daniel Butler, Fine Gael, added: I hope lessons were learned from the last time this application was before us and that local residents are met with and that their genuine concerns are addressed. Previously, local residents were not engaged with in any way and their voices largely ignored and it is important in showing they plan to be good neighbours that they actively engage with them this time around.
US climate envoy John Kerry has reaffirmed Washingtons confidence in Japans decision to release contaminated water from its crippled Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea despite concerns raised by South Korea.

Kerry arrived in Seoul on Saturday to discuss international efforts to tackle global warming, on a trip that included a stop in China ahead of President Joe Bidens virtual summit with world leaders on climate change this month.

South Korean Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong sought to rally support behind the countrys protest against the Fukushima plan at a dinner meeting with Kerry.

Under the plan, more than one million tonnes of water will be discharged from the plant wrecked by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011 into the nearby sea off Japans east coast.

Seoul strongly rebuked the decision, with the foreign ministry summoning the Japanese ambassador and President Moon Jae-in ordering officials to explore petitioning an international court.
Amidst the surging COVID-19 cases in the national capital, the Delhi government on Monday announced a 6-day lockdown from 10 pm on Monday till 6 am on April 26 to control the spread of infections.

While the movement of people involved in essential services like shops dealing with groceries, fruits and vegetables, meat, medicines, among others, banks and insurance offices, petrol pumps, delivery of food, among others, will be allowed, they will need to produce an e-pass. An order from the Delhi government said that District Magistrates will be responsible for the issuance of e-passes.

Also read: COVID-19: Gennova Biopharma to start mRNA vaccine trials this month

Here's how to apply for and get the e-pass:

1. Go to the Delhi government's website

2. Click on the link to apply for e-pass

3. Enter your name, contact number, district, among others, and upload a government ID proof

4. Submit a letter from the employer or establishment stating that the person is associated with providing essential services or commodities

5. Click on 'Submit'. Upon submitting the form, an e-pass number will be generated

6. Upon confirmation of the e-pass, the applicant will receive an SMS. The e-pass can be downloaded on the mobile or a hard copy can be taken

The national capital had reported over 25,000 COVID-19 cases on Sunday. While announcing the lockdown, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said given the massive surge in cases, the health system might crumble in the coming days. He said the national capital's health system "has been stretched to its limit, is under stress."

Scarcity of hospital beds, medicines, and oxygen have been reported from across Delhi.

Also read: Lockdown in Delhi: Guidelines, rules, timings, dates; what's allowed, what's not allowed
A 34-year-old man was injured in a shooting Sunday at a motel in Cherry Hill, authorities said.

The man was brought to a local hospital after being shot around 6 p.m. at The Express Inn Motel on Route 38, the Camden County Prosecutors Office said in a statement.

No arrests have been made the investigation is ongoing.

The prosecutors office couldnt immediately be reached early Monday for more information.

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.
Washington: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on American diplomats around the world to challenge nations whose actions set back efforts to address climate change, according to prepared remarks.

Blinken delivered his first address on climate change in Annapolis, Maryland on Monday (Tuesday AEDT) ahead of a US-hosted virtual summit this week.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken: US diplomats to make the case about climate change to laggard nations. Credit:AP

President Joe Biden has invited 40 world leaders to discuss new measures theyll take to strengthen commitments they made to reduce emissions under the Paris climate agreement in a bid to signal that he is prioritising the issue and trying to rally global action early in his administration.

Our diplomats will challenge the practices of countries whose action  or inaction  is setting the world back, Blinken said.
(Newser)  The Johnson & Johnson vaccine will remain on pause in the US until at least Friday, when a CDC advisory panel is scheduled to meet. In the meantime, more details are emerging about the rationale behind the pause and the rare clotting cases in question. Coverage:

Backfiring: The feds acted after six women between the ages of 18 and 48 developed a particularly rare type of blood clot, and the Wall Street Journal reports that four of the six received the blood thinner heparin. While the drug is a standard treatment for clots, it might actually make things worse in these cases. The story details the case of a 48-year-old who improved after the heparin was replaced by a different blood thinner. Part of the rationale for the pause was the concern that doctors needed more information on treatment.

The feds acted after six women between the ages of 18 and 48 developed a particularly rare type of blood clot, and the Wall Street Journal reports that four of the six received the blood thinner heparin. While the drug is a standard treatment for clots, it might actually make things worse in these cases. The story details the case of a 48-year-old who improved after the heparin was replaced by a different blood thinner. Part of the rationale for the pause was the concern that doctors needed more information on treatment. 'Flying blind': One of the women who received heparin was an 18-year-old in Nevada, reports the New York Times. Doctors were surprised that someone so young developed such serious clots, then more surprised when they kept returning after standard treatment. "We were flying blind, based on reports from Europe and the UK hematological society," says Dr. Brian Lipman, who helped care for the woman at Dignity Health St. Rose Dominican Hospital in Henderson. The reference is to clots that emerged overseas in recipients of the AstraZeneca vaccine, developed with a similar technology as the J&J vaccine.

story continues below

Possibilities: The J&J vaccine is expected to be made available to the public again perhaps in a week or sooner, though health officials may restrict its use to men and women over 50, per the Journal. Or it may be made available to all, but with a stronger warning about the risks.

The J&J vaccine is expected to be made available to the public again perhaps in a week or sooner, though health officials may restrict its use to men and women over 50, per the Journal. Or it may be made available to all, but with a stronger warning about the risks. 8 cases: The Times notes that since the pause went into place, two more cases have been added to the sixa man who developed clots during the vaccine's clinical trials and a woman who received a shot after it was authorized for use. One woman in this group has died.

The Times notes that since the pause went into place, two more cases have been added to the sixa man who developed clots during the vaccine's clinical trials and a woman who received a shot after it was authorized for use. One woman in this group has died. One view: In an op-ed at the Washington Post, two writers with specialties in medical ethics argue that the decision to continue the pause for another week is a "deadly mistake." The justification for a short pause to educate doctors and the public is valid, but "there is no evidence the vaccine's risks universally, or even typically, outweigh its benefits in preventing a pandemic disease with serious and unknown consequences," write Govind Persad and Dr. William F. Parker. The CDC and FDA "should end the pause, keep sharing information, and let patients decide."

In an op-ed at the Washington Post, two writers with specialties in medical ethics argue that the decision to continue the pause for another week is a "deadly mistake." The justification for a short pause to educate doctors and the public is valid, but "there is no evidence the vaccine's risks universally, or even typically, outweigh its benefits in preventing a pandemic disease with serious and unknown consequences," write Govind Persad and Dr. William F. Parker. The CDC and FDA "should end the pause, keep sharing information, and let patients decide." Criticism: J&J responded to the pause by saying that clots also have been linked to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, but a slew of experts interviewed by CNN say that isn't true. "That is a really irresponsible thing to say," says Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at the University of Pennsylvania. He's a member of the FDA advisory panel that reviewed all three vaccines.

(Read more Johnson & Johnson stories.)
A nurse fills up a syringe with a COVID-19 vaccine at a senior center in San Antonio, Texas, on March 29, 2021. (Sergio Flores/Getty Images)

Walgreens Store Mistakenly Administers Saline Instead of COVID Vaccine

Employees at a Walgreens store in North Carolina mistakenly injected people with saline rather than a COVID-19 vaccine, the company confirmed.

A spokesperson for Walgreens told local media outlets that a limited number received saline at its Monroe location, and those who were affected had been informed about the mistake.

We are investigating what happened and have taken immediate steps to review our procedures with the location to prevent this from occurring again, Walgreens said in a statement to local media over the weekend. It will not affect recipients second dose, the company added.

These patients will later receive their second dose within the appropriate time frame.

One patient, Lisa Strawn, told WCCB in Charlotte that she was told a pharmacist accidentally didnt mix the vaccine, meaning saline was administered instead.

I asked the guy, I said, How did you figure out that we only got saline?' she told WCCB. And he said, Well at 5, when she called me and said she had a lot of vaccine left over; what was she to do with it? and he said You shouldnt have any vaccine left over, so thats how they discovered it.

Its not clear how many recipients got saline instead of the vaccine.

I just thought it was important that people know, just be careful. You know, check behind them, Strawn said.

Company officials didnt immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

In March, a Kroger location in Virginia injected people with empty syringes instead of the COVID-19 vaccine. Officials with Kroger said they initially thought people who got the vaccine received saline but those syringes were empty.

The CCP virus, which causes COVID-19, is also known as the novel coronavirus.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks to the media about the cruise industry during a press conference at PortMiami in Miami, Fla., on April 8, 2021. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Exclusive: Gov. DeSantis Says CCP Should Be Held Accountable for Abetting Pandemic

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) should be held accountable for its coverup and misfeasance which exacerbated the CCP virus pandemic, according to Floridas Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

At a minimum, I believe this is something that likely escaped from that lab. They knew. They covered it up. They didnt say anything for a long time. They didnt provide access, DeSantis told The Epoch Times on April 1.

They knowingly made that decision, and I think probably cost a lot of lives in the process. So they absolutely should be held accountable.

CCP officials were aware of a viral outbreak in Wuhan for at least six weeks before warning the world about the contagion. In the meantime, the regime arrested whistleblowers and censored online discussions about the outbreak. The CCP sealed off Wuhan from the rest of China while continuing to allow international flights in and out of the megacity.

During an interview with The Epoch Times on April 1, DeSantis accused the CCP of promoting its draconian lockdowns to other nations as an essential mitigation measure, leading nations like Italy to destroy their economies. DeSantis also faulted some of the top health officials in the United States, including Anthony Fauci, for blindly adopting the communist regimes lockdown model.

I think the people like Fauci were relying on the Communist Party of China for some of this stuff. You cant trust what comes out of the Communist Party of China, DeSantis said. I think it was a huge mistake to give them any validity in terms of what they were doing.

Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has been a stalwart proponent of mass lockdowns, masking, and social distancing measures as a way to stem the pandemic. He has largely ignored the thousands of medical and public health scientists who have assessed the available data and concluded that lockdowns and other blanket restrictions and mandates are futile.

Under Faucis leadership, NIAID spent U.S. taxpayer dollars on researching bat coronaviruses in China, including controversial gain-of-function research looking into how coronaviruses evolve the ability to jump from animals to humans. The Trump administration cut funding to the projects after news reports showed that some of the researchers involved were linked to the Wuhan virology lab located close to where the first cases of CCP virus were reported.

Anthony Fauci, Director of NIAID and Chief Medical Advisor to the President, testifies at a House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis hearing on April 15, 2021 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. (Amr Alfiky-Pool/Getty Images)

NIAID did not respond to a request for comment.

Itd be interesting to see with people like Fauci and their relationship with the CCP because  in those early days they were not of a mind to hold China accountable at all, DeSantis said. They were buying the propaganda that was coming out there. And thats had obviously negative consequences because I think it helped lead them to embrace lockdowns.

Nearly 14,000 medical and public health scientists opposing the lockdowns have signed the Great Barrington Declaration, which calls on elected leaders to focus mitigation measures on the vulnerable population while letting the rest of society go on with life as normal. DeSantis has adopted that approach and the virus metrics in his state have vindicated his decision.

The governor, who describes himself as a knee-jerk anti-communist, believes the CCPs promotion of lockdowns was rooted in the communist regimes scheme to get other countries to damage their economies with ill-advised restrictions. He specifically pointed to the government of Italy, which shut the country down in an attempt to stop the spread of the disease.

The West did a lot of damage to itself by adopting some of these policies, which have proven to not work to stop the spread, but to be very economically destructive, DeSantis said.

I do think there was an information operation angle to this, where they really believed that if they could get these other countries to lock down, and they were willing to do some propaganda along the way, particularly in Europe, that ultimately would help China. And I think it has helped China.

In September last year, President Donald Trump called on the United Nations to hold China accountable for its actions. Neither Trump nor the UN took any overt steps to punish the regime.

The Chinese government, and the World Health Organizationwhich is virtually controlled by Chinafalsely declared that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission, Trump said in an address on Sept. 22, 2020. Later, they falsely said people without symptoms would not spread the disease.

President Donald Trump prepares to sign the United StatesMexicoCanada Agreement, known as USMCA, during a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on Jan. 29, 2020. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

This is not the first time DeSantis has called out the communist regime. In May last year, he called on the CCP to stop hoarding personal protective equipment in an attempt to screw over the rest of the world.

On March 1 this year, flanked by Republican state legislators, he proposed a law that would penalize Florida universities who fail to report donations from foreign sources, specifically China. The purpose of the measure was to make it more difficult for Chinese agents to infiltrate universities and steal trade secrets and intellectual property.

American universities accepted $1.5 billion in gifts and contracts from China, according to the Department of Education. A significant portion of the money went unreported until the department opened an investigation into the matter during the Trump administration.

China has made it a mission to steal intellectual property from our businesses, our government, and our academic institutionsall to further fuel their global objectives, DeSantis said at the time.

The growing presence of the Chinese Communist Party influence in domestic and international affairs is one of the most pervasive threats to American security and prosperity.

This article is the second in a series based on interviews conducted with Gov. Ron DeSantis and senior members of his cabinet in early April 2021. You can read the first article of the series here: Exclusive: Florida Gov. DeSantis Says Lockdowns Were a Huge Mistake.
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The Police in Osun on Monday said three persons were shot during a failed kidnapping attempt at Koka Village in Ibokun Local Government Area on Sunday.

Yemisi Opalola, spokesperson of the police in the state, in a statement, said suspected armed hoodlums invaded Koka Village at about 11:45 p.m. on Sunday to kidnap residents.

Mr Opalola, however, said residents and hunters of the community were able to mobilise and engage the hoodlums in a gun battle, thereby aborting the kidnap operation.

At about 11:45 p.m. on Sunday, unidentified hoodlums attacked Koka Village in Ibokun Local Government Area and attempted to abduct some villagers.

Consequently, villagers and hunters mobilised and engaged the hoodlums in a gun battle and liberated themselves.

Three villagers and hunters, however, sustained bullet wounds during the operation.

The injured victims are receiving treatment at the State Hospital in Asubiaro, Osogbo and they are responding to treatment.

The police have, however, drafted officers to join the locals to carry out a cordon and search operation in the area.

Efforts are also ongoing to apprehend the fleeing culprits, she said

(NAN)
Virtually all parts of Nigeria are currently battling with one form of insecurity or the other with various crimes going on, largely unabated.

Despite attempts by the Muhammadu Buhari administration to curb the rising criminalities and killings across the country, the nations security apparatus appears to be overwhelmed with criminals having a field day killing, maiming and extorting their victims.

The police, poorly funded and motivated, and the military, which is fighting a decade-long insurgency in the North-east, appear to be at the end of their wits on how to curtail the downward spiral in security.

Swathes of the North-west have, virtually, been taken over by rampaging bandits who kidnap for ransom and kill victims who cannot pay for their freedom.

The North-central is not free from the deadly assaults by these bandits, and kidnap gangs who now operate freely in parts of Niger, Kogi and Nasarawa and are making inroads into the Federal Capital Territory.

The North-east is yet to experience peace as Boko Haram insurgents are in a deadly battle of supremacy daily with the nations military in a bid to carve out an Islamic state.

Now largely degraded as stated by federal officials, and focusing more on soft targets and solitary military formations, the insurgents still carry out attacks in a bid to terrorise the numerous communities in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa.

The activities of criminals hiding under the banner of herders have also become a source of worry for those who live in the South-west, South-east and South-south. This has been linked to the age-long herders-farmers clashes, but security experts believe that criminals, displaced insurgents and ex-fighters from other troubled African nations, may have infiltrated the ranks of the once peaceful herding community to perpetrate crimes and violence across the nation.

The South-east is also battling the activities of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra, who are seeking separation from the Nigerian State.

At least 10 police officers were killed and six police stations burnt down in two regions of Nigeria within two weeks, a PREMIUM TIMES review of newspaper and police reports showed recently.

The attacks occurred in the South-east and South-south regions between February 23 and March 9.

Gloomy records

At present, Nigeria is regarded as one of the most dangerous places to live in. The 2020 Global Terrorism Index identified it specifically as the third most affected by terrorism.

Also, the Nigeria Security Tracker documented 2,769 violent deaths recorded between February 2020 and February 2021 in just one northern state

Kidnappings carried out by various armed groups increased in the past five years. A recent report noted that over $18 million was paid as ransoms for victims abducted between 2011 and 2020.

Kidnapping scourge

Nigerias present security woes appear worse due to sporadic attacks by bandits on schools and the abduction of schoolchildren, and other vulnerable persons. This has sent shivers down the spines of state governors across the North.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how the mass kidnapping of schoolchildren in Nigeria in the last seven years appears to be the new goldmine for criminals today. This is especially a result of the huge cash the government and individuals reportedly pay for the release of victims.

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As a result of the attacks on schools, over 618 schools have been closed in recent months by states in the north adding to the already worsening out-of-school children Nigeria faces.

Downward spiral

The Terrorism index in Nigeria 2011-2019 outlines how political, economic, and social grievances are the major pegs for violence and deaths in Africas most populous nation.

It says, inter alia, that several militant groups are active in the country, leading to attacks to both civil and military targets.

Boko Haram is the deadliest terrorist group, an affiliate of the Islamic State. Over the years, the terrorism index in Nigeria experienced an increase. As of 2019, the indicator stood at 8.31. The index measures the direct and indirect impact of terrorism on a scale from 0 (no impact) to 10 (highest impact). Despite a decrease compared to the previous five years, Nigeria is (still) one of the countries with the highest terrorism threat levels in the world.

In 2019, Nigerian recorded the second largest number of deaths related to terrorism worldwide.

The Nigeria Security Tracker (NST), a project of the Council on Foreign Relations Africa program, also paints a gloomy picture.

Different groups in Nigeria resort to violence. The militant Islamist movement Boko Haram is active in northern Nigeria. Violence among ethnic groups, farmers, and herdsmen sometimes acquires religious overtones. A new generation of Niger Delta militants threatens war against the state. Government soldiers kill civilians indiscriminately. Police are notorious for extrajudicial murder(s).

Intelligence gaps

Experts opine that Nigerias poor intelligence gathering processes have crippled its ability to nip crime, violence and killings in the bud as done in more advanced climes.

Many of the crimes committed and violence recorded could have been averted if Nigeria had a virile intelligence network and there is greater collaboration, not rivalry, among the government units tasked with providing intelligence and security, say some of these experts.

The truth is that if the obvious lack of actionable intelligence is properly addressed among all the security, intelligence agencies and the military, then insecurity would have been solved 50%, said Timothy Avele, the Chief Executive Officer of Agent-X Security Ltd. From the president down the ladder of the leadership of various security agencies and the military, all acknowledged this thorny issue of lack of actionable intelligence.

The problem I see there is that while everyone wants intelligence, sadly, no one wants to invest in its acquisition. Imagine the military top leadership asking villagers to provide intelligence. Intelligence could only be produced by trained intelligence analysts. Sadly, the entire police force has less than 70 trained modern analysts, the military less than 100, he said in an interview with PREMIUM TIMES.

The intelligence network is apparently not working. The security architecture is obviously inadequate to secure the country. A centralised security architecture cannot secure a country as large as this. It is even against a federal arrangement, said Azeez Olaniyan, a professor at the department of Political Science, Federal University Oye Ekiti.

Oladayo Olujuwon, an academic, described intelligence as the product resulting from the collection, collation, evaluation, analysis, integration, and interpretation of collected information.

Governments try to protect three things regarding intelligence gathering: their intelligence personnel, their intelligence facilities & resources and their intelligence operations, he said.

Collecting intelligence to build up a detailed knowledge of threats to the country is at the heart of secret service work. Security intelligence (SI) is the information relevant to protecting an organisation (nation) from external and inside threats as well as the processes, policies and tools designed to gather and analyse that information. People tend to associate intelligence with crime prevention; meaning probably that the availability of timely intelligence can prevent the occurrence of crime.

Other security experts believe that if the three major outfits tasked with providing intelligence cover for security operations in the country: the Nigeria Police Force, the State Security Service and the National Intelligence Agency, were virile and united, the pervasive insecurity would be greatly curbed.

In his paper, Solving Security Challenges in Nigeria Through Intelligence Gathering and Surveillance, an academic, Ashaolu Oluwadiya, says the dearth of intelligence gathering capabilities will continue to stall Nigerias search for a lasting solution to insecurity.

Nigeria has not come of age. The Nigeria Police do not possess the required skill to secure a crime scene, conduct efficient evidence-gathering procedures such as lifting fingerprints from the crime scene, have no credible criminal database, cannot use forensic science in solving crime, and so on.

Until recently, we could not trace a criminal using his mobile phone records. Policemen are barely literate. Their educational requirement is not high, and it has become the last resort to school drop-outs who probably had no other options in life. The kind of training they receive is abysmal.

There is also a huge level of corruption within the ranks of the Force. People do not trust them, neither do they respect them. And for the other intelligence agencies such as the SSS, people deal with them with suspicions, he wrote.

An ex-military general, who asked that his name should not be used in the report, however, told PREMIUM TIMES that while the intelligence capabilities of the country could be strengthened, the challenges are much deeper than portrayed.

The challenge of insecurity is beyond laying blames on the military of allied security organisations. Pensioners are owed salaries across the states and their concerns are not being addressed. It is the children of these and the readily available army of unemployed youth who have increased since the return to democratic governance that provides ready fodder for those who are behind insecurity, he said.

He said the increasing number of young people who are hopeless amidst narrowing economic opportunities needs to be addressed first to solve Nigerias security challenges.

There is a limit to what the military can do. We need an all-society approach that involves the re-orientation of everyone, the leaders, the led and security outfits, the retired general said.

Intelligence units

Nigeria, like other countries across the globe, does not lack relevant outfits tasked with providing intelligence. The Nigerian police have the Force Criminal Investigations Department (FCID) and the Federal Investigations and Intelligence Bureau (FIIB).

The FCID conducts investigations and prosecutes complex crimes within and outside the nation. The FIIB carries out intelligence gathering and surveillance to aid other police units.

The SSS (also known as DSS), formed in 1986, operates under the presidency and answers directly to the National Security Adviser (NSA). It manages domestic intelligence and ensures the national security of the country is not compromised.

The SSS is also empowered to eliminate national threats and provide security for top government officials and visiting dignitaries.

The National Intelligence Agency (NIA), also under the NSA, is charged with gathering international intelligence. Established also in 1986, it is responsible for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence. It collates external intelligence aimed at protecting Nigerias security interests outside its shores.

There is also the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) established in 1986 to provide an efficient system of obtaining military intelligence for the Armed Forces.

The NSA, Babagana Monguno; defence spokesperson, Nwachukwu Onyema, and Force spokesperson, Frank Mba, did not respond to calls and messages seeking reactions to the report.

It is not correct to conclude that the government and/or security agencies lack intelligence capabilities, Peter Afunanya, the spokesperson of the SS said in a response to comments. Security challenges have become global without the exception of any particular country. We are committed to the safety of life and property and call on the media to play a positive role in ensuring peaceful coexistence in our country, Nigeria.

Lessons from another clime

The Heritage Foundation, in 2013, said it tracked 60 terror plots against the U. S., foiled largely by American intelligence outfits, since 9/11.

The foundation said the victories were attributable to the Bush-era policies of enhanced information sharing/collaboration and intelligence gathering.

It also advised that for any government to win the war against crime and violence, it must ensure a proactive approach to halting terrorism; maintain essential counterterrorism tools; break down silos of information; streamline the domestic counterterrorism system, and fully implement a strategy to counter violent extremism.

Way forward

Mr Avele of the Agent-X Security Ltd says citizens should be encouraged to provide intelligence information and not intelligence.

Secondly, human and modern electronics/cyber-intelligence operations cost good money, he said.

Some solutions I want to proffer include, recruitment and training of both law-enforcement and civilian personnel to fill the void in good intelligence analysts. Money should be made available for modern intelligence-gathering equipment, cyberwarfare capabilities and personnel, especially analysts training.

Current intelligence agencies should be reorganised and restructured (NIA, DSS, DIA, FIB etc) to meet modern-day intelligence operations. Most personnel of these agencies do not have basic computer and internet knowledge, not to talk of intelligence software etc.

A new combined intelligence agency majoring in open-source and cyber warfare should urgently be established and equipped. I believe if all these are critically looked at holistically and applied, insecurity will be reduced to the barest minimum.

Also, the ex-military general who asked not to be named noted some measures the government must explore to address the mounting security challenges.

The government needs to equip all the (intelligence) agencies more with the necessary tools and gadgets they need to do their work, he said. The police and SSS, especially have to be empowered to focus so that we can limit the constabulary duties the military currently carries out while assisting sister agencies.

To address the inter-agency rivalry, which he said has worsened the situation, he said: efforts must be made to unify the agencies so they can share intelligence. To reduce the struggle for relevance that usually attends achievements, they (agencies) can rely on an agency like the National Orientation Agency or information ministry to publicise any strides they make to address the clamour to be the one to take the glory for any achievement.

Above all, he added, there is a need for the re-orientation of the mindsets of all Nigerians.

Although insecurity is a global phenomenon, other advanced climes have learnt to repose confidence and strengthen their institutions rather than individuals. We must begin to do this. When Nigerian leaders begin to subdue their ambitions and strive for nationhood, we would begin to see the security agencies follow suit. We must also ensure that our reward system is not subjective

To address insecurity in this country, there must be a decentralised security network. We need a localised arrangement. The state must be everywhere. Let the local people be constituted into local security network. They are better placed to secure their territory, added Mr Olaniyan, the security expert.
The latest developments of Super Typhoon Surigae showed that it will not likely head to the East Vietnam Sea, but its circulation will still result in downpours in southern Vietnamese provinces.

Surigae was 270 kilometers east of the central Philippines as of 7:00 am on Monday, with average wind speed at 200-220km per hour, according to the National Center for Hydro-meteorological Forecasting.

The typhoon is expected to travel northwest in the next 24 to 72 hours and will have been 200 kilometers northeast of Luzon Island by 7:00 am on Thursday.

Wind speed will decrease to 150-165km per hour.

In the next 72 to 120 hours, Surigae will travel north before changing its direction to northeast, heading toward the Pacific Ocean.

A map detailing the route of Super Typhoon Surigae from April 19 to 24, 2021. Photo: National Center for Hydro-meterological Forecasting

Although the typhoon is situated far from Vietnam, its circulation is powerful enough to affect the weather pattern in southern localities, said Le Dinh Quyet, an official from the southern hydro-meteorological station.

As a result, rains accompanied by strong gusts and thunderstorms may occur in the region at any time of the day, Quyet elaborated.

However, UV readings in Ho Chi Minh City and other southern localities will remain at very high levels over the next three days.

The highest UV level will be recorded between from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm every day.

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Abu Dhabi Hazardous Materials Management Team (AD-HMMT) has implemented the strategy and executive plan approved by the Security, Justice and Safety Committee of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council through-out a five-year period.



AD-HMMT, which includes 28 entities representing multiple government authorities and federal agencies, has implemented all projects and programs of the executive plan of the total of 48 since it was formed in 2015.



Since the formation of the team, which is led by Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi (EAD), 78 working group meetings have been held, in addition to more than 50 meetings of the formed technical working groups. In addition, seven decisions were issued by the Security, Justice and Safety Committee, and 23reports were submitted to the Security, Justice and Safety Committee.



The teams main role is to identify and manage hazardous materials in the Emirate. It keeps detailed records of all dealings with such materials and coordinates with other authorities to draft relevant legislations. Other responsibilities include developing the Emirate's governance system and assessing risks related to retail outlets which handle hazardous materials.



The main outcome of this work will be the safe management of potentially harmful substances such as pesticides, flammable liquids, and radioactive material. The teams work is vital in preventing environmental pollution or incidents which can have serious consequences to local residents and property.



Dr Shaikha Salem Al Dhaheri, Secretary General of the Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi and Head of the AD-HMMT, said: The management of hazardous materials is one of the most critical priorities in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. This comes in accordance with the requirements of federal and local laws related to security, safety and the environment, as well as the directions of the Abu Dhabi government to impose control on hazardous materials to protect society, and the environment from the dangers that these materials cause.



According to Dr Al Dhaheri, the teams work involves going through the inventory and control of hazardous materials, as well as managing an inventory of all handlers. It ensures adherence to rules around security, and environmental and safety requirements that must be taken when practicing any activity related to the circulation of the materials.



The implementation plan covers stages of import, export and release, transportation, manufacturing, storage, trade, and distribution, as well as treatment and safe disposal, all carried out within a legislative and regulatory framework.



Dr Al Dhaheri added: The sound management of hazardous materials is of utmost importance, as mishandling of such materials, whether it is the result of negligence or ignorance, or both, will inevitably lead to unforeseen risks such as causing environmental pollution or the occurrence of disasters which threaten human lives, property, security and public safety.



Salem Al Braiki, General Coordinator of the team, explained that the team conducted gap analysis and reviewed the current challenges in the management of hazardous materials, as well as looking into the global best practices. This led to the preparation and approval of a governance system, list of materials of security concern, as well as management procedures based on governance systems and security were developed.



Al Braiki said: The team worked on preparing a plan to respond to emergencies resulting from accidents of hazardous materials transport vehicles, accidents in stores and facilities.



The team also worked on inspecting and evaluating industrial and commercial hazardous materials storage facilities in terms of security and safety of the environment. Also, the team finalized the requirements for drivers of materials vehicles, evaluating hazardous materials warehouses and preparing a tracking system for vehicles transporting these materials.



These projects contribute to improving security and safety, so the emirate is proactive in identifying risks and preventing negative consequences. All of projects and programs within the executive plan of the total of 48 have been completed, he said.



Several technical work teams have been formed to implement specific tasks, including more than 70 technicians and administrators to implement the hazardous materials monitoring program in the facilities operating in Abu Dhabi.  TradeArabia News Service




Kolkata, April 19 : Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee blamed the people coming from outside for election purposes responsible for the rapid spread of Covid-19 in the state. Asking the people not to panic, the chief minister said that the government will take every possible step to put a check on the uncontrolled spread of the virus.

Speaking at a press conference in Malda district on Monday, "More than one lakh people have come from outside to do the campaign and they are sitting here for months. They should go back. I cannot send the people of my state outside but people should cooperate. If they go then it can help in controlling the disease. The Prime Minister and Home Minister are coming with people from outside and I don't know whether they have Covid or not.

"So, if I have already told you that the central forces who are coming to the state should have their RTPCR test done. They are more than 1.5 lakh and they are moving from one district to another. People who are coming from outside the state should behave responsibly," she added.

The chief minister again reiterated her demand to club the next three phases. "I had told the election commission officially to club the next three phases. There is provision and if the commission wanted, they could have done it. Due to the election the important people in the administration are engaged and they cannot work for Covid. This is creating a hindrance for the state. If the process of the election would have completed, we could have used this workforce for the control of the disease," the chief minister said.

Assuring the people that the state government will take every possible step to control the disease, the chief minister said, "The state government has increased 1000 beds in the last 4 days and we will increase 3500 beds in the next few days. All the hospitals in the government sector including ESI, a total of 100 is being prepared for Covid patients. We have also spoken to 58 private hospitals to ensure a greater number of Covid beds. We will use hotels as hospitals if needed".

Asking the people not to panic, she said, "We currently have 2000 serious patients among those who are infected, these people have comorbidities. In this fight vaccines, oxygen and Remdisivir are needed and there is a shortage of these. I have already written to the Prime Minister regarding this. I have requested him to provide us with these things immediately. We are trying to buy these from outside but it is not available in the market. But still, we are buying 1500 per day because only that much is available".

"The Election Commission has taken many houses for the election, so there are fewer safe homes. We have 11,000 beds with 200 safe homes. The control room is working daily, 400 ambulances are working. We have made 50% attendance in government departments. The rest will work from home. We have taken 58 hospitals and built 200 safe homes. We have taken super speciality and multispeciality hospitals for treatment in the districts where elections have already been held," she added.

Ruling out any possibility of lock-down and night curfew the chief minister said, "Night curfew and Lockdown is not the solution. It only adds to the woes to the people. The people should be given time so that they can get prepared. You impose a lockdown and that only increases the harassment of the common people. The state government is strongly against any kind of lockdown or night curfew".

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
UAE Trade Connect (UTC), a new nationwide blockchain platform co-created by Etisalat Digital and seven leading UAE banks and Avanza Innovations and initially ideated by First Abu Dhabi Bank, went commercially live today (April 19).



This unique platform invites all UAE banks and the supply chain industry to join the platform to combat fraud and duplication, among other issues in the trade finance space.



The commercial launch took place earlier today at a virtual press conference in the presence of senior management from UTC and partnering banks.



The steering committee for the platform consists of the Central Bank of the UAE and seven leading banks namely Commercial Bank International (CBI), Commercial Bank of Dubai (CBD), Emirates NBD, First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB), Mashreq Bank, National Bank of Fujairah (NBF), and RakBank.



Dr Sabri Al Azazi, Chief Operating Officer at the Central Bank of the UAE, said: The Central Bank promotes financial and monetary stability, efficiency and resilience in the financial system. The launch of the UTC Digital Trade Platform is one of the key steps towards achieving this goal as it will help to minimize the risks of fraud inherent in the existing paper-based system in trade finance. It also reflects the banking sector's commitment to step up the digital transformation process to prepare the UAE to enter into the new digital banking era.



The new platform will enhance international collaboration and innovation, and produce fruitful results for the trade finance industry globally, he added.



Zulqarnain Javaid, CEO, UTC, said: Todays announcement is a milestone moment in the financial sector in UAE. Technological advancements are presenting innovative solutions to historic problems and enabling the sector to power forward. The solution is aligned with the UAE governments vision to bring futuristic technologies like blockchain and will be yet another enabler for economic growth.



The steering committee commented: UTC has created a platform to find duplicates and close-matches of trade invoices, from within millions of invoices being handled by UAE banks. By de-risking trade financing it is envisaged that SMEs will have improved access to funding for trade and supply chain related finance.



The platform is based on blockchain and other disruptive technologies enabling data to be shared in a secure manner. Technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) read invoices to identify duplications, frauds and dubious transactions within the banking trade finance offering.



The initial phase will focus on addressing the risks of double-financing and invoice fraud before turning to other key areas of trade finance, such as digitalizing bills of lading and e-invoices. UTC is aimed at driving digital transformation of trade in the UAE by enabling banks, enterprises and government authorities to collectively benefit from future technologies.



Etisalat Digital, along with the seven banks, has formed a working group to further develop and extend the solution to other areas of trade. This nationwide platform, which is open for all UAE banks to join, will safeguard banks from potential fraud losses through advanced detection tools, allowing them to extend additional financing to their corporate and SME clients.



The platform has also won the Fintech Partnership of the Year award at Fintech Abu Dhabi Awards organised by Abu Dhabi Global Market and the Central Bank of the UAE last year.  TradeArabia News Service


Priyanka Chopra Jonas has always spoken her mind. In her interviews she has revealed how in the past she has faced racism and people calling her dark and from the land of the curries. The actress has always been strong enough to deal with these situations and today she comes out in support of her The white Tiger director Ramin Bahrani.



Ramin Bahrani, an Iranian-American director recently faced a racist comment from a stranger on the street. In one of his interviews Ramin explained the scenario and said, I was in Atlanta on location in a residential neighbourhood directing a TV pilot for Apple. We had worked late that day, so I had to do my Zoom interview with Ava on my phone while we were still in the street. During the interview, I noticed a car parked behind me. When the driver saw me and my colleague (who is South Asian) he said, 'You all think you run the world. You all don't run s---.' His friend told him to calm down and leave it alone. As the driver pulled away, he shouted, 'Go back to your own country!







Supporting the director, Priyanka Chopra Jonas spoke about Ramin in one of her interviews for an International magazine. Priyanka said, Asking me about my thoughts on what happened to Ramin is a sign of where we stand today, and the work we have to continue to do. So my question in response is - who belongs here, and who doesn't? Isn't America a melting pot of all people from all backgrounds? This country was built on the back of immigrants in search of the American dream, a life of freedom, opportunity, and a safe place not only for themselves but for their families. Looks like the actress is deeply saddened that racial abuse still exists in this day and age.





The White Tiger has been nominated at the Academy Awards for Adapted Screenplay. The film stars Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Adarsh Gourav and Rajkumar Rao and the film has been praised critically worldwide. Priyanka will be next seen in Russo Brothers Citadel, a Hollywood flick Text For You, We Are The Heroes 2 and Matrix 4.
A 74-year-old man was killed in a skydiving accident in Monroe County Sunday morning.

Ed Harney, of Paramus, New Jersey, was found dead in a wooded area in Smithfield Township, near East Stroudsburg, WNEP is reporting.

According to reports, Harneys parachute opened, but it got separated from him during his descent. Witnesses saw him disappear into the wood line.

Harneys friends told police he was an experienced skydiver and had jumped many times before.

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the incident, WFMZ is reporting.

He had jumped with three other experienced skydivers from a plane with Skys the Limit Skydiving Center, reports indicate.

They jumped from about 14,000 feet, and it appeared Harneys parachute was the first to open, but he began spiral and spin until he was separated from his parachute, reports indicate.

An autopsy is set for this week.
[April 18, 2021] Smart Technology Empowers Consumer Products at the 129th Canton Fair

GUANGZHOU, China, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The ongoing 129th China Import and Export Fair (Canton Fair), also its 3rd digital exhibition, introduces 2.7 million products, among which more than 820 thousand are new to the market. Buyers can not only find them on the virtual exhibition halls, attend 137 new product launch events online, but also learn more from the Canton Fair Design Awards (CF Awards) 2020 winner list during the Fair to embrace the latest game-changing smart technology that can make life easier and better. Products at the CF Awards exhibition hall were selected by world-leading designers and buyers based on market potential and design value. The showcase presents the creation of Chinese suppliers, demonstrating premium products and detailed innovations that can help inspire buyers in their sourcing process. "It is important for our exhibitors to utilize the latest technology to drive innovation in their product development process so that consumers around the world can enjoy their life with easy access, convenience and joy," said Quandong Liu, Deputy Director General of Foreign Affairs Office of theCanton Fair. "Canton Fair, as a connection between Chinese manufacturers and the world market, endeavors to provide support for our buyers to find these exceptional products."





Future Smart Home Comes True Home appliance manufacturers at the Canton Fair have combined multiple technologies into one product, allowing consumers to enjoy a hand-free and digital homelife. Smart technology products on exhibition at the Fair include a robot vacuum with an AI camera and a 3D structured light scanning sensor. The vacuum enables a long-distance detection mechanism, which can achieve accurate and easy positioning without accidental collision. It is also equipped with a smart dust collector, which can automatically collect and store dust for up to 30 days.

There were also smart devices that enhance the kitchen and bathroom. Featured products include a smart electric towel rack and UV-powered trash, which can kill 90 percent of bacteria in the trash barrel. Advanced Technology Enables a Healthier Lifestyle With increasing demand among global consumers for a healthy and sustainable lifestyle, Chinese suppliers are making effort to design products that can make people feel comfortable at home, integrating technologies that cover air purification and healthcare supporting functions. Aiming to bring a breath of fresh air into the kitchen, a newly designed cooker hood at the Canton Fair is introducing a smart air-purifying function, which can be controlled by mobile.

There is also another air purifier self-developed by a Chinese manufacturer that applies a virus purification system that uses high-voltage ionization technology to destroy bacteria and proteins of the virus.

Consumers' health is also cared by a newly introduced electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring health watch, which can conduct 24/7 continuous heart rate tracking. The device also measures the sleep stage and offers support and reference for consumer's physical health. For more information of these award-winning products, please visit https://exhibitor.cantonfair.org.cn/#/cfWinnerListEn To register for more business opportunities, please visit https://buyer.cantonfair.org.cn/en/register/selectiveId SOURCE Canton Fair

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Mayur Shelke a pointsman at the Vangani railway station near Mumbai has become an overnight sensation after his daring rescue of a childs life. Shelke has was complimented by Railway Minister for his bravery. The Asian Institute of Transport Development has also announced an award of Rs 50,000 for Shelke.



The incident happened at around 5pm on Saturday, April 17. According to the CCTV camera footage, a child accompanied by a visually challenged lady was seen walking on the railway platform. While walking towards the platform shed, the child slipped and fell on the railway tracks. The distraught visually challenged woman can be seen calling out and scrambling to reach the child, but she is unable to find him. A train is then seen approaching while the child struggles to come back on to the platform.



There is disaster impending on the deserted railway station with the childs life in severe danger. Suddenly Shelke appears in the frame running towards the child on the railway tracks. With speed that would otherwise be gifted only to Atalanta (the Greek goddess of running), Shelke manages to outrun the train, reach the child and fling him out of danger to the platform. He then swiftly jumps back up to the platform.



Very proud of Mayur Shelke, Railwayman from the Vangani Railway Station in Mumbai who has done an exceptionally courageous act, risked his own life & saved a child's life. pic.twitter.com/0lsHkt4v7M  (@PiyushGoyal) April 19, 2021

This daring rescue was tweeted by Goyal who said that Shelke has done an exceptionally courageous act, risked his own life and saved a child's life. Later, Shelke was also appreciated by the staff of Mumbai Division of the
Line of Dutys Gregory Piper has revealed he sees it as 'a compliment' that his character Ryan Pilkington is viewed as one of the 'most punchable' villains on TV.

The criminal-turned police officer PC Ryan Pilkington, played by Gregory Piper, 23, has come a long way from the violent teenage thug first introduced in series one.

Then working for OCG (Organised Crime Group) member Tommy Hunter, Ryan memorably tried to cut off DS Steve Arnott's fingers with a pair of bolt cutters.

He next appeared in series five, by which point he had graduated to a fully-fledged OCG member and killed undercover officer John Corbett by slitting his throat.

Speaking to The Telegraph about how he's seen as 'punchable,' the actor said: 'I think its a compliment. I dont take it literally. Its an expression of how people are feeling about the character.'

He's back! Line Of Duty viewers were sent into a frenzy when criminal-turned police officer PC Ryan Pilkington (Gregory Piper) returned in last night's episode, pictured

Criminal past: First introduced in series one, by series five (pictured), Pilkington was a fully-fledged OCG member working alongside the likes of Lee Banks (Alastair Natkiel), right, and John Corbett (Stephen Graham), left, an undercover officer known as John Clayton

But it's no surprise people have such a strong opinion on Ryan, considering his track record.

Viewers have already watched the corrupt copper drown fellow police officer Lisa Patel and make an attempt on Terry Boyle's life, as well as threaten Acting Detective Superintendent Joanne Davidson into keeping him on the murder squad.

However, the actor went on to say how he's 'a little bit' worried about being typecast as a baddie, adding: 'But villains are very cool characters to play, with lots of different layers.'

Gregory has spent lockdown living with his girlfriend, fellow actor Rebecca Fuller, who appeared in the Channel 4 sitcom Raised by Wolves, in Halesowen.

He has praised Rebecca for 'helping him massively' during his time on Line of Duty.

'Im dyslexic, so she helps me a lot with the scripts,' he told the publication. 'It just takes more work to get the information into my head, to understand everything.

Bent copper: Gregory Piper hinted his Line Of Duty character Ryan Pilkington may kill again as he appeared on This Morning on Thursday

He continued: 'I think I felt it a little bit with Line of Duty because of how detailed the scripts are. Rebecca has really helped me to understand that.'

The comments come just days after the actor hinted his Line Of Duty character Ryan may kill again as he appeared on This Morning on Thursday and told Dermot O'Leary and Alison Hammond: 'Anything is possible.'

During the interview, Gregory talked about his return to the BBC crime drama, after originally starring in series one as a young teenager recruited into the Organised Crime Group by Tommy Hunter.

He said: 'It's an absolute dream. It's mad to think what the show turned into when I was a little kid. It is mind-blowing, it's absolutely crazy. It's an amazing experience, I'm very, very lucky.'

And when Alison made a blunder asking: 'Is he actually going to kill anybody?', despite viewers having already witnessed the PC commit murder, Gregory replied: 'I mean, you've seen what he's done before so anything is possible'.

Scary: Fans have already watched the corrupt copper drown fellow police officer Lisa Patel and threaten Acting Detective Superintendent Joanne Davidson (pictured)

On getting the call back to reprise his role for series five, the actor said: 'I had absolutely no idea anything would come from it after season one. I got the call for season five, I couldn't believe it. It was a dream come true.

'You don't know what the amazing Jed is going to do next.

'Jed's character's are very grey, they're neither good nor bad. Ryan is not very nice at all. It's hard to see the good in him.'

Gregory also said how being with such experienced actors on set was amazing.

He told the hosts: 'It's like a masterclass. Kelly is fantastic. To just watch at all of them at work is a privilege itself.'
In the last few weeks, India has seen a large number of cases, and several states have placed partial lockdowns. However, the large number of rallies by national parties in election-bound states has drawn criticism from across the country.

In the wake of a spike in coronavirus cases, Congressman Rahul Gandhi cancelled all of his public rallies in the election-bound state on Sunday, advising all politicians to consider the repercussions of conducting massive public rallies. In the last few weeks, India has seen a large number of cases, and several states have placed partial lockdowns. However, the large number of rallies by national parties in election-bound states has drawn criticism from across the country.

The Election Commission has imposed some limitations as well, but they make no difference because of the essence of their imposition. The time for campaigning has been shortened to 7 p.m. by the poll panel. It had been up to 10 p.m. previously. According to the Election Commission, there will be no campaigning in the state between 7 p.m. and 10 a.m. on election day. How does it make any difference?. The crumbling health infrastructure of many states has already created major concerns among the citizens of this nation.

In certain states, medical oxygen, Remdesivir, and bed facilities are all in short supply. Maharashtra, Karnataka, Delhi, and Uttar Pradesh are the states most affected by the rise in cases. Maharashtra and Delhi government has already informed the central government about shortages of these medical facilities.

Read More: Indias fight against deadly Covid continues: Time to stop politics and devise an action plan

Heres a list of steps that can be taken as soon as possible. India is currently experiencing an Oxygen Crisis, as medical oxygen use is at capacity in high-burden states. Government should give its attention towards the remote areas too and ensure the continuous supply of oxygen there too.

One effective topic is for India to pursue self-sufficiency by constructing PSA plants in the 100 hospitals that have been built to generate its own oxygen. Large storage tanks with a 10-day capacity should be installed in hospitals. To carry oxygen and save time, trains should be used.
A lot has happened in April, and a little lost in the mix is the fact that its National Poetry Month. As the month draws to a close, there are still ways to celebrate.
Over the weekend, the president of Planned Parenthood, Alexis McGill Johnson, wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times, formally criticizing her institutions infamous founder, Margaret Sanger.

The articles title announced, Were Done Making Excuses for Our Founder, and the subheading indicated that the group is ready to reckon with Margaret Sangers association with white supremacist groups and eugenics.

Planned Parenthood is remarkably late to acknowledge what the rest of us have been saying for quite some time: Sanger was a foremost proponent of the eugenics movement in the U.S., motivated especially by her particular animus toward poor nonwhites. Her crusade to legalize birth control was motivated in large part by her desire to prevent the unfit and feeble-minded from reproducing.

Sangers goal was not primarily to liberate American women by legalizing birth control; rather, it was to make the coming generation into such physically fit, mentally capable, socially alert individuals as are the ideal of a democracy.

The sudden effort to disentangle Planned Parenthood from its founders role in the racially motivated eugenics movement of the 20th century is too little, too late, even by the Lefts own standards. Last July, amidst racial tension and riots across the country, Planned Parenthoods affiliate in New York City removed Sangers name from its flagship clinic, labeling her a racist, white woman and accusing the organization of institutional racism.

Yet the national organization didnt say a word about it. Now, almost a year later, the groups leadership has finally managed to workshop a careful way of attempting to guard its legacy while disavowing its founder.

We have defended Sanger as a protector of bodily autonomy and self-determination, while excusing her association with white supremacist groups and eugenics as an unfortunate product of her time, Johnson writes.

That it took until 2021 for Planned Parenthood to condemn Sangers racism and support for eugenics is unsurprising, considering that the institutions modern-day work is well in line with her hideous views. Far from being a victory for women, the last half-century of legalized abortion has deepened the effects of racial inequality in the U.S.  and Planned Parenthood profits from that reality.

Story continues

Nearly 80 percent of Planned Parenthoods clinics are located within walking distance of neighborhoods occupied predominantly by black and Hispanic residents. Despite constituting only 13 percent of the female population, black women represent more than one-third of all abortions in the U.S. each year. Black women are five times more likely than white women to obtain an abortion, and abortions are highly concentrated among low-income women. In recent years in New York City, more black babies were aborted than were born alive.

Contrary to what abortion advocates suggest, it is not privileged white progressives who most often avail themselves of the right to abortion. Defenders of legal abortion refuse to acknowledge this inconvenient reality, even as they insist that choosing abortion is a sign of womens liberation and social progress.

Abortion supporters talk about things like reproductive justice or reproductive freedom, but this language doesnt trickle down, African-American pro-life activist Christina Bennett told me of her work for a pregnancy-resource center in Connecticut. The women having the abortions arent thinking in this language. Its really the elite, privileged women who push this message that abortion is health care.

Bennett told me about a pro-choice group that created candles with the phrase Abortions are magical to give to volunteers at abortion clinics. If I was to take those to the inner-city abortion clinic in Hartford and try to hand them out, Bennett said, the girls actually getting abortions wouldnt want those candles. Thats not their reality. Theyre getting an abortion because they have to feed their kids. They already have another child at home or theyre thinking about how their man is going to leave if they have that kid.

Though abortion-rights proponents recently have advanced the historically illiterate argument that the pro-life movement is rooted in white supremacy, the truth is quite the opposite. White supremacists have long supported legal abortion, because they recognize and applaud that nonwhite women are disproportionately more likely to obtain abortions than are white women.

For instance, Richard Spencer, a leading white supremacist, is highly supportive of legalized abortion, because the people who are having abortions are generally very often black or Hispanic or from very poor circumstances. As he puts it, abortion is a good thing because the unintelligent and blacks and Hispanics . . . use abortion as birth control.

Defending unlimited legal abortion while maintaining ones progressive bona fides requires erasing this reality, which is why Johnsons Times op-ed ignores the way in which Planned Parenthoods bottom line profits from minority women who feel as if they have no option other than abortion.

We are committed to confronting any white supremacy in our own organization, and across the movement for reproductive freedom, Johnson wrote.

She could start by acknowledging the way that the abortion industry and her own organization profit by perpetuating Margaret Sangers racist legacy.

More from National Review
The Hong Kong court controlled by the Chinese government has sentenced a prominent pro-democracy activist for participating in a protest against Beijing in 2019.

One of Hong Kong's most prominent pro-democracy activists, Jimmy Lai has been ordered to serve a 14-month prison sentence by the court after he was found guilty of organizing and participating in anti-communism protests in 2019.

Lai, who is a media tycoon and founder of the Apple Daily tabloid is a major critic of the Chinese Communist Party and was first detained under China's national security law last year. Among the other detainees were his sons and employees.

According to The Federalist, the Hong Kong pro-democracy activists were detained for "colluding with foreign forces." Lai was later released on bail, but again was taken under Chinese police custody in December for using his "company's headquarters for purposes not permitted by its lease."

The company's headquarters are located in a building that is owned and managed by a government-established corporation. The very same judge who heard Lai's "fraud" case was found to be a national security judge "hand-picked by the city's leader."

Unlike Lai, other Hong Kong pro-democracy activists who were arrested because they resisted communism have been given less severe punishment.

Martin Lee, who is 82 years old and is known as the "father of democracy," had his sentences suspended and did not need to be imprisoned unless he is "convicted of another crime in the next two years." According to the BBC, the sentence of 73 year-old lawyer Margaret Ng was also suspended.

Unfortunately for Lai, he needs to serve jail time for at least 12 months for his participation in the peaceful protests against CCP's "national security" power grab in Hong Kong. He is also forced to face more severe sentencing when tried for his original charges enacted under the new national security law. Other Hong Kong pro-democracy activists are also facing jail time for up to 18 months.

Among the Hong Kong pro-democracy activists who were arrested, Lai will be facing 12 months for participating in the August 18, 2019 protests and eight months for his participation in the August 31, 2019 protests. The judge allowed him to serve the two sentences concurrently except for two months. In addition, former lawmaker Lee Cheuk-yan was also sentenced to jail for his participation in the two protests.

Lai faces six more charges, two of which were imposed under the country's new National Security Law, which punishment is a term of life in prison. Before his sentence, Lai wrote to his employees at the Apple Daily, saying that "freedom of speech is dangerous work now."

"The situation in Hong Kong is becoming more and more chilling," the media tycoon said. "The era is falling apart before us, and it is, therefore, time for us to stand with our heads high."

The imprisonment of Hong Kong pro-democracy activists is yet another demonstration of communist China's takeover of the region that is fighting for its autonomy from the communist state.
[April 19, 2021] Signify Health to Report First Quarter 2021 Earnings and Host Earnings Call on Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Signify Health, Inc. (NYSE: SGFY), a leading value-based healthcare platform enabled by advanced analytics, technology and nationwide healthcare networks, announced that it will release its financial results for the first quarter 2021 after the market closes on Tuesday, May 11, 2021, and will hold a conference call at 9:00 a.m. ET on Wednesday, May 12, 2021 to discuss the results. Pre-registration is required for participation in the conference call. Please follow the link below to pre-register. After registering, you will be provided with your access details via email. https://www.incommglobalevents.com/registration/client/7382/signify-health-q1-2021/ A webcas of the conference call will also be available live on the investor relations section of Signify Health's website at https://investors.signifyhealth.com/events/default.aspx. Please go to the website at least 15 minutes prior to the call to complete the registration process.



The webcast replay will be available through July 12, 2021 on Signify Health's website at https://investors.signifyhealth.com/events/default.aspx. About Signify Health

Signify Health is a leading healthcare platform that leverages advanced analytics, technology, and nationwide healthcare provider networks to create and power value-based payment programs. Our mission is to transform how care is paid for and delivered so that people can enjoy more healthy, happy days at home. Our solutions support value-based payment programs by aligning financial incentives around outcomes, providing tools to health plans and healthcare organizations designed to assess and manage risk and identify actionable opportunities for improved patient outcomes, coordination and cost-savings. Through our platform, we coordinate what we believe is a holistic suite of clinical, social, and behavioral services to address an individual's healthcare needs and prevent adverse events that drive excess cost, all while shifting services towards the home. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005827/en/

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People gather at the site where train carriages derailed in Qalioubia province, north of Cairo, Egypt April 18, 2021. REUTERS-Yonhap



A passenger train derailed Sunday north of Cairo, injuring around 100 people, Egyptian authorities said. It was the latest of several rail accidents to hit the country in recent years.



Four train wagons ran off the railway at the city of Banha in Qalyubia province, just north of Cairo, the railway authority said in a statement. Videos on social media purportedly showed wagons overturned and passengers escaping to safety along the railway.



The train was travelling to the Nile Delta city of Mansoura from the Egyptian capital, the statement said.



The Health Ministry said in a statement that at least 97 people were injured. Around 60 ambulances were sent to the scene and the injured were taken to nearby hospitals, the ministry added.



Salvage teams could be seen searching for survivors and removing the derailed wagons. It was not immediately clear what caused the train to derail. Prosecutors said they were investigating the causes of the crash.



Last week, at least 15 people were injured when train carriages derailed in the Nile Delta province of Sharqia.





People gather at the site where train carriages derailed in Qalioubia province, north of Cairo, Egypt April 18, 2021. REUTERS-Yonhap
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), on Friday, imposed penalties of Rs12 lakh and Rs6 lakh on CPR Capital Services Ltd and PRB Securities Pvt Ltd, respectively for multiple violations with respect to using National Stock Exchange (NSE)'s co-location (Colo) facility.

SEBI said, both trading members indulged in unfair trade practice by repeatedly connecting to the secondary server. The two separate but similarly worded orders are yet another example in a long series of too late and too little penal actions from the market regulator and its failure to crack the whip and bring to book errant, petulant trading members.

SEBI had received multiple complaints pertaining to allegations of malpractices with respect to the co-location facility being provided by NSE. In the wake of allegations of preferential access to tick-by-tick (TBT) data feed given by the Exchange to certain trading members (TMs), SEBI ordered a detailed probe.

CPR Capital Securities and PRB Securities were two of the trading members identified for comprehensive investigation, including forensic audit, for primary and secondary server connects.

In 2015, an anonymous whistleblower had written to Sucheta Dalal. managing editor of Moneylife alleging that some trading members on the NSE, who had subscribed to the Exchanges co-location server facility were getting an unfair advantage by way of faster access to the Exchange. The whistleblower also alleged the collusion of NSE officials.

It may be recalled that Moneylife was the first to expose this scam in mid-2015 , for which NSE had filed a defamation case against us. A single-judge in Bombay HC dismissed the frivolous suit and ordered the NSE to pay a fine of Rs50 lakh (mainly to two Mumbai hospitals). After filing an appeal against the order, NSE paid up the penalty. Meanwhile, in the wake of the scam, the top brass of NSE had to resign and a new management team took charge.

In the colo issue, there were two detailed reports. One by SEBIs Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) and the other one was a forensic audit report from Deloitte. The detailed investigation by TAC and forensic audit by Deloitte pointed out how brokers could get advantage in connecting to the NSEs servers because the Exchange had no load balancers and randomisers in its systems architecture. Debashis Basu, editor of Moneylife had written about how NSE had quietly and illegally started TBT high frequency or algo trading (HFT) and co-location services in January 2010 while SEBI looked the other way.

A comprehensive investigation, including a forensic audit, of the two entities (CPR Capital Services Ltd and PRB Securities Pvt Ltd) was carried out and reports submitted to SEBI in 2019. Ernst & Young LLP did the probe of CPR Capital Services and that of PRB Securities was carried out by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP.

The investigation period varied from June 2010 to November 2014, depending on the segments. It was June 2010 to April 2014 for futures and options (F&O), October 2010 to November 2014 for cash market (CM) and January 2012 to April 2014 for currency derivatives (CD).

As per NSE's co-location guidelines, secondary source for TBT data is to be used only in case of non-availability of data from TBT primary source and the trading members should not routinely connect to the secondary server. Detailed investigations found that these two entities continuously logged into the secondary server in F&O, CM and CD segments without any valid reason.

In the two new orders which came out on Friday, SEBI said that the secondary server was meant for use in case of non-availability of data from the primary source.

By circumventing the primary source on a regular basis, the entities ''engaged in conduct which undermined the trading system set up to provide fair and equitable access to all brokers who connected to it,'' SEBI said in the orders.

SEBIs adjudicating officer Prasanta Mahapatra also noted that CPR Capital Services continued to connect to the secondary servers despite NSE reprimands. In the case of CPR Capital Services, SEBI also observed that it had failed to provide complete information to the investigating authority during investigation.

''The noticee has connected to the secondary server in the CM, F&O and CD segments during the relevant period even after reprimand from NSE and also failed to provide complete information to the IA (Investigating Authority) during investigation,'' SEBI said in its order passed against CPR Capital Services.

CPR Capital Services contended that it had no knowledge about secondary server, reprimand mails received from NSE, and verbal suggestion of NSE to connect secondary server.

SEBI refused to accept this contention and pointed that the colo guidelines are addressed to all trading members of NSE and being unaware of guidelines cannot be accepted as an excuse.

Further, the market watchdog also pointed out that NSE in its e-mail advised CPR Capital Services not to connect to the secondary server without intimating the Exchange. SEBI said, It is evident from the e-mail correspondences between CPR Capital Services and the NSE that CPR Capital connected to the secondary server in multiple IPs even after getting reprimanded by NSE.

The said correspondences indicate the concerns of NSE and the requirements that the Noticee had to follow i.e., connecting to secondary server can be done only if it is unable to connect to the primary server. The language and the tenor of the said email demonstrate the intent of the NSE to convey its concern or objection to the Noticees connecting to the secondary server and expectation of positive compliance by the Noticee. The reasonable and legitimate expectation from the Noticee would be that it will adhere to all such rules and procedures as required by NSE from time to time in writing or otherwise. In this case, it is established that the Noticee had connected to the secondary server on several occasions and the same was not disputed by the Noticee, SEBI said.

While passing the order against PRB Securities, SEBI said that the trading member was not reprimanded by NSE for the violations, unlike some other brokers who had more frequent secondary server connections.

''However, it is established that the noticee has failed to comply with aforesaid guidelines and hence violated the aforesaid provisions of Code of Conduct specified under Stock Broker Regulations, 1992 and PFUTP Regulations, 2003,'' the order said. PFUTP refers to Prohibition of Fraudulent and Unfair Trade Practices.
Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Yevhen Enin has announced the name of the Russian diplomat who will be expelled from Ukraine in response to the expulsion of the Ukrainian consul in St. Petersburg.

A note on the expulsion of the Russian senior diplomat will be sent to the Russian embassy on Monday morning.

"This is a Russian senior diplomat [who will be expelled from Ukraine], the Russian side will hear this literally tomorrow morning when it receives the relevant note [...]. We have responded quite symmetrically in this situation. I hope that in this way we will be able to additionally check the mobilization readiness of Russian diplomats here," Enin said on the Ukraine 24 television.

The Russian diplomat was given 72 hours to leave Ukraine, he said.

"This senior diplomat is one of the advisors of the Russian embassy in Kyiv. There is a specific person. His surname is Chernikov. The relevant note will be sent to the Russian embassy as early as tomorrow morning," the deputy foreign minister said.
More than 6 million Australians could be vaccinated in the last 12 weeks of the year in an ambitious plan floated by the Prime Minister ahead of a meeting of state and territory leaders on Monday afternoon.

Scott Morrison also conceded there was a possibility not all states would embrace home quarantine, another milestone he hoped to reach in the second half of the year for vaccinated returned travellers.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison spoke ahead of the national cabinet meeting on Monday. Credit:Brook Mitchell

National cabinet is holding the first of its new biweekly meetings to discuss a reset of the countrys COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

The federal government expects to receive 20 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine from October, as well as doses of the yet-to-be-approved Novavax vaccine. The Prime Minister said he hoped to get the bulk of under-50s immunised in the last three months of the year with the help of mass vaccination hubs.
Dr Anthony Fauci said he believes nearly all children in the U.S. will be eligible to receive a coronavirus vaccines by the start of 2022.

Speaking with CNN, Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, added that he would not be surprised if high schoolers were vaccinated over the summer before the start of the fall semester.

'As we get later into the year, towards the end of the year. I think by the time we get to the first quarter of 2022, we'll be able to vaccinate children at virtually any age,' he said.

'Hopefully before then. But I think that's going to be the latest we'll see it.'

It comes just 10 days after Pfizer Inc asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to expand emergency use of its vaccine to Americans between ages 12 and 15.

Dr Anthony Fauci (pictured), the nation's top infectious disease expert, said he believes that nearly all children in the U.S. will be able to receive COVID-19 vaccines by 2022

Fauci added that he thinks vaccines will be available earlier for high schoolers, who may be able to be vaccinated before the new school year. Pictured: Marisol Gerardo, 9, is held by her mother during the Pfizer vaccine clinical trial at Duke University, April 12

Currently, multiple coronavirus vaccine manufacturers are in the middle of clinical trials in younger people.

Recently, Phase III clinical trial data from Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech SE showed that their shot was 100 percent safe and effective in 12-to-15 year olds.

The results led the companies to ask the FDA to allow teenagers to receive their vaccine, which requires two injections around three weeks apart.

It's unclear which children Dr Fauci meant would fall outside of eligibility, but with data already available for the safety of Pfizer's vaccine for kids 12 and up, this age group will likely become eligible soonest, with access expanding to younger children later.

Pfizer is also studying how well its vaccine works in children between ages six months and 11 years old.

The first volunteers in the early-stage trial were given their initial injections in March and the companies hope to expand eligibility to that age group by early 2022.

Moderna has also begun running its own trial with researchers enrolling 3,000 participants between ages 12 and 17.

Half of the volunteers will be given two shots of Moderna's immunization four weeks apart and the other half will get salt water placebos.

Meanwhile, in the UK, AstraZeneca has been testing its vaccine, giving the jab to 80 percent of a group of 300 children between ages six to 17 and the remaining volunteers a control meningitis vaccine.

Children are often the last group to be tested during clinical trials because they cannot just be treated as smaller adults.

Their bodies and immune systems behave differently, meaning they might have different treatment needs.

More than three million shots are being put in arms every day and the U.S. has hit Joe Biden's goal of more than 200 jabs by his first 100 days in office

So far, 131.2 million Americans - 39.5% of the population - have received at least one dose and 84.2 million - 25.4% - are fully immunized

What's more, children may need different doses or needle sizes depending on their height, weight and age - which is why most children are only vaccinated after safety has been well-documented in the adult population.

Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, also warned that even after people are fully vaccinated, people have to keep wearing masks.

He explained that vaccinated people may be infected without knowing it and may accidently transmit the virus to an unvaccinated person.

Research into whether a fully-vaccinated person can still transmit and infect others with COVID is ongoing, with some preliminary evidence suggesting that having a vaccine may make people completely immune from infection.

So far, 131.2 million Americans - 39.5 percent of the population - have received at least one dose and 84.2 million - 25.4 percent - are fully immunized.

More than three million people are being vaccinated every day, with the U.S. recently surpassing President Joe Biden's goal of 200 million vaccinations in his first 100 days in office.
SAGINAW, MI - The Michigan State Police Saginaw Major Crimes Unit has identified a 16-year-old Saginaw male who was shot multiple times Saturday evening as Carmelo DaRon Jackson, according to a news release.

Officers from the Saginaw Police Department and Michigan State Police troopers were dispatched to the 900 block of N. Harrison Street between Holland Avenue and Miller Street around 8 p.m. Saturday, April 17 for reports of a victim of multiple gunshots.

Upon their arrival, officers discovered Jackson, who was pronounced deceased at the scene from the injuries hed suffered in the shooting, according to Michigan State Police.

Police are currently investigating the shooting and encourage anyone with information about the shooting to call 989-759-1289.

Read more:

12-year-olds heart transplant inspires Bay City community, creates Aarons Army

Firefighters were not told child was in burning Detroit home, official says

Full-grown black bear hit and killed on I-75 near Flint
Fire Damages Rear of Downtown Building

By Bill Hughes

PADUCAH - Paducah Firefighters responded Monday afternoon to a historic section of downtown.Paducah Fire Chief Stephen Kyle said the truck from Fire Station One was nearby when they received the call and was quickly on the scene. They responded to 612 Broadway for a fire on the rear exterior stairwell.He said, "The unit is an apartment building, at least the second and third floors are, and at that time primary focus was trying to get the fire knocked down and get the occupants out of the building."Kyle could not say how many were evacuated from the building, but did say that everyone was able to get out safely. He said two adjacent buildings, including the historic Hotel Irvin Cobb, were also able to evacuate themselves safely. No firefighters were injured.Kyle said there was no preliminary information on the cause of the fire, and couldn't say how long the investigation would take.He said investigators had already been on the scene, but, "they've got to wait for it to be completely cool to start digging through it, so they're waiting to do that next."The ground floor of the building is home for Innovations Branding House. On Facebook, they said everyone got out safely and they thanked firefighters for their quick response. Since employees are also set up to work remotely, their goal is to continue meeting the needs of their clients while they pick up the pieces at their downtown office.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 19)  The Department of Education on Monday dismissed claims that it has been individually profiling teachers who are members of certain groups.

During a Malacanang briefing, Education Secretary Leonor Briones said it is a standard procedure for the department to acquire a list of all those part of legitimate teacher organizations, including the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) and the Teachers' Dignity Coalition (TDC).

"Itong dalawang organisasyon na 'to [These two organizations] constitute, as of our latest count, about 10% of 847,000 mga [of our] employees," Briones said. "As open organizations, of course they are expected to submit the list of their members. It is standard."

The ACT on Saturday said the department has been collecting data on its membership tally, as well as the TDC's, in various localities.

The group called this "dubious," saying it sees no good reason behind the move, as DepEd has "consistently and actively refused to recognize [its] standing as a legitimate teachers' union on multiple occasions."

Education Undersecretary Nepomuceno Malaluan, meanwhile, said they are looking into the updated membership count, as this plays a part in any negotiation process with the department.

"We would like to assure organizations and teachers within DepEd na walang ginagawang individual profiling ang DepEd [that the DepEd is not conducting any individual profiling]," he said.

"We have a data protection officer in DepEd, and so any disclosure or sharing of this information comply with data protection," he said. "So, there's no individual profiling that the department is doing outside of the required submission of information."

Briones also said such data gathering is needed since the department also collects certain fees from members of teachers' groups.

"Everything, any action that we have undertaken is always covered by the law," the education chief said. "We don't discriminate."

ACT has described DepEd's current actions "eerily reminiscent" of the 2019 police profiling of its members, which it said preluded worse attacks on the organization, including the detention of two teachers over allegedly trumped-up charges. The group has earlier been accused by the anti-communist task force of being a legal front of communist rebels  an allegation it has vehemently denied.

"We call on DepEd to immediately halt their information-gathering on ACT and instead, face us in a dialogue, answer the pile of issues and challenges that confront your own frontliners," ACT Secretary General Raymond Basilio said.

"That will be a more productive use of your time, and for once, you may actually be helpful to teachers," Basilio added.
Last November, Nicolas Rodriguez and his wife Carmen had to scale back their hours at the medical equipment factory where they have worked for 21 years.

He never fully recovered his lung capacity after catching COVID-19 in the fall, and coughing and gasping for breath keeps him up most nights. His wife has been sick for months and needs another surgery on her gallbladder, but the high deductible for her first surgery, along with the mortgage on their Hamden home, drained their savings.

Anxiety cripples him. He cant pay for the next surgery his wife needs or the mortgage for the home his three children need. Nicolas and Carmen are undocumented immigrants and dont qualify for state health insurance, they earn too much to get help from any of the nearby hospitals charitable programs, and Nicolas was turned away when he sought mortgage assistance from the state.

Im really feeling a lot of pressure about how to pay all of these bills and cover the costs, Rodriguez said. I tapped into my savings. Ive spent all of my savings to keep up with the mortgage. I dont even want to think about how Im going to make the payments in the future. Im living day-to-day. Were living paycheck-to-paycheck. Its terrifying.

The Rodriguez family is not alone.

Across Connecticut, lower-income families are facing foreclosure at higher rates, renters are facing a wave of evictions, and a hot housing market and ever-changing banking rules are putting home-ownership further out of reach. Federal aid might help, but the problems have deep roots  and in many ways, the coronavirus pandemic has only made things worse.

The brunt of the housing insecurity that was brought on by the pandemic is primarily falling on certain families and neighborhoods. Its easy to understand how it happens  lower-income families have less of a financial cushion, and when they lose their jobs or have to cut their hours at work, paying the bills quickly becomes an issue.

At least one out of every 14 residential mortgages in Connecticut was delinquent or in foreclosure in February, the 13th-highest rate in the United States and well above the states pre-pandemic level, according to the real estate data firm Black Knight.

But in ZIP codes in Connecticut where more people of color live, there are much higher rates of people behind on their mortgages or in forbearance, a special agreement with the lender to avoid foreclosure, data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta show. For example, in the Hill neighborhood in New Haven, one out of every nine residential mortgages was behind in November, compared to one in 31 mortgages a few miles away in Branford.

In Southwest Connecticut, one out of every six homeowners with a Federal Housing Association mortgage  designed for low- to moderate-income borrowers  were seriously behind on Aug. 31, the seventh-highest rate of the countrys 169 largest metro areas, according to an analysis of federal data by the conservative think-tank the American Enterprise Institute. In New Haven and its nearby suburbs, one in eight FHA homeowners were behind, the 22nd-highest rate in the country.

Things havent improved since late August. The Connecticut Fair Housing Center reports that one in six FHA loans are seriously delinquent in Southwest Connecticut and one in seven in the New Haven region. The civil rights organization estimates that during the next 18 months, the normal number of FHA foreclosures will swell by at least 6,000. Given that FHA mortgages make up 20 percent of Connecticuts housing market, the number of people more than 90 days behind on their mortgages offers some insight into how profoundly the pandemic has affected the states lower-income homeowners, said Jeff Gentes, an attorney at the center specializing in foreclosure prevention.

This give us a sense of how pronounced the fallout will be, Gentes said. The question is, have we provided enough income support for some people and temporary mortgage relief to stave off a housing market-triggered recession?

All this is happening in a state that had high housing costs, segregation, and some of the largest home-ownership gaps in the nation. And the hot housing market that has been celebrated by Gov. Ned Lamont and many others is putting homeownership farther out of reach for more lower- and moderate-income residents trying to buy a home. A massive 32 percent drop in the supply of homes for sale throughout Connecticut, coupled with the influx of buyers, has driven up the average sale price 50 percent and is causing bidding wars.

Amy Berquist, a Hartford resident and real estate broker, said that in a normal market, about 10 percent of the home she sells or buys would have multiple offers. Of the 22 homes she has sold or has closed this year, only one did not have multiple offers. Two weeks ago, her client offered $15,000 above asking price for a single-family home in South Windsor but was outbid by one of the 21 other offers that were made on the property. Well-off cash buyers are able to box out those who rely on a mortgage, and sometimes the appraisals arent matching what the home is selling for, so some are struggling to secure a mortgage.

Ive had people bid $70,000 over on houses this spring and not win because theyve been outbid, said Berquist of homes listed for sale in the mid-$400,000 range. These are my stories, but hundreds of agents across the state have very similar stories to me. Im in a Facebook group of agents, and every day, everyones lamenting, My clients are bidding 40, 50, 10s of thousands over asking price  and theyre losing.'

She suspects the prices arent going back down.

This might be the new floor, she said.

Home sales up across the state

The rising costs are worrisome for Leslie Hammond, a real estate agent primarily in Hartford, who believes lower-income and working-class families are being priced out of buying a home.

They cant compete with these other buyers. Some of the other buyers are cash buyers, some have 10 percent down, 20 percent down, and the seller is going to go for who they are sure everythings going to work out, and the highest price. And then if the buyer asks for closing costs, theyre definitely getting shut out, she said. When I hear that there are 12 buyers and people are bidding $20,000 over asking price, that makes me really concerned.

State data are showing that fewer lower-income residents are buying homes, specifically with Connecticut Housing Finance Authority mortgages, which typically help get first-time, lower-income residents into a home. The number of CHFA mortgages closed in 2020 was nearly half of previous years.

The competitive market may have squeezed out low- and moderate-income borrowers who dont have access to as many resources as higher-income borrowers, said Nandini Natarajan, the chief executive officer of the quasi-public state agency. That is of concern to us. We are looking at the reasons and ways we could mitigate that.

In his budget address in February, Lamont listed a more affordable Connecticut as a top priority for this legislative session.

Over the last year, weve experienced a real estate boom in Connecticut, with tens of thousands of new residents discovering  Connecticut is a beautiful state, he said of the 24,000 additional families moving into the state in 2020 compared to 2019. When asked about how to make Connecticut affordable and an attractive place to live, Lamont regularly makes the point that he wants more residents to tax rather than raising taxes on those who are here.

In Lamonts budget, he recommended appropriating $150 million next year to construct subsidized affordable housing, an amount that will help to slightly blunt steady declines in the amount of affordable housing construction being funded by the Department of Housing. The administration submitted no proposed legislation aimed at tackling the larger systemic issues driving up housing costs.

Help on the way?

When Rodriguez cut his hours in half as the effects of COVID lingered, he went to his lender to ask permission to miss some payments and not face foreclosure. He proposed tacking on the payments to the end of his mortgage.

Instead, what his bank offered him was a three month forbearance  and a balloon payment due after those 90 days.

I was given the forbearance, but where did it get me? Forbearance is only postponing the payments? At the end of the day, Im just strapped with a bigger debt than I had in the first place, he said.

He called the state to see if he qualified for the pandemic mortgage assistance program  $10 million in federal pandemic aid that the state set aside last June  but was turned away.

The answer was theres no help for homeowners. Theres only help for renters. And so it seems like all the doors are closed, and its terrifying, he said.

Of the 976 families that sought assistance through the program, only three households received mortgage assistance, totaling $37,000. Anyone whose lender offered a forbearance program did not qualify, and 86 percent of applicants had that option, a key factor in the low participation rate. The remainder was returned to the states coffers.

Congress and regulators early in the pandemic required lenders of federally backed mortgages to offer deferral options to homeowners and prescribed rules to prevent balloon payments for many of those mortgages. It has helped  foreclosures are way down, even though many people arent getting the mortgage relief they were promised.

But Connecticut homeowners whose mortgages are not federally backed and lenders who are regulated by the state Department of Banking  about 25 percent of all mortgages in the state  have not been required to provide such protections. These lenders in Connecticut include Well Fargo and Webster Bank.

Theres no rules. This is the wild, wild west, said Gentes, who believes homeowners with non-federally backed mortgages are disproportionately Black and Hispanic. So some of them are offering pretty good forbearance, or theyre more willing to put things on hold.

The governor and the banking commissioner early in the pandemic reached an agreement with several of those lenders to voluntarily offer forbearance options, but that program expired months ago, and several lenders did not participate, including Wells Fargo. The Department of Banking, however, doesnt believe its an issue.

Even though technically the agreement that banks would follow if they wanted to participate in the program, when they get consumers and their customers ask for it, theyre still honoring it. I dont have data as to whether thats across the board, said Matt Smith, a spokesman for the agency.

Smith added that balloon payments on federally backed mortgages after a forbearance shouldnt be happening. Those mortgage payments should have been at the end of the mortgage. He added that the department believes that a state program to require banks to offer certain forbearance options wasnt necessary because most non-federally backed mortgage lenders were already offering forbearance options akin to the federal rules.

Legislation that would have required such protections failed to make it out of the banking committee, Gentes said.

Mortgage assistance is on the way  but will it help communities of color?

The stakes to get this right are higher for communities of color.

Thats because just as the economic impact of the pandemic has disproportionately fallen on communities of color, so too has the inability of Black and Latino resident to pay their mortgages. The U.S. Census Bureaus bi-weekly surveys of households have repeatedly reported that Connecticuts white residents are at least four times more likely to be caught up on their mortgage payments than Black and Latino residents.

Officials at the Department of Housing said while they havent determined yet how they plan to use the new round of federal pandemic recovery funding to keep people in their homes, they believe it will help prevent many foreclosures and people becoming homeless. Housing Commissioner Seila Mosquera-Bruno said it is hard to know whether it will entirely erase all the missed payments.

Gentes estimates roughly $100 million is headed for the state for mortgage assistance from the Homeowners Assistance Fund approved recently by Congress. That aid must go to those with a loan of less than $550,000 and whose income is under the median income of the region where they live.

We hope it will have a big impact, she said.

But historically, it hasnt turned out well for certain communities during previous housing crises.

Universally, we as a country have historically recovered our white neighborhoods and our white households after disasters very well, said Fionnuala Darby-Hudgens, community outreach coordinator for the CT Fair Housing Center, pointing to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the Great Recession. In the 2008 foreclosure crisis, we recovered and repaired white neighborhoods at a much greater rate, and the data show that Black and Latinx homeowners in Connecticut have yet to recover from that foreclosure crisis.

Theres also legislation that is gaining some momentum that vies to chip away at historical discrimination that has prevented Black and Latino residents from purchasing a home and generating wealth  and narrow the states worst-in-the-nation homeownership rates among its Black and Latino residents and white people. That bill  dubbed Baby Bonds  would have the state invest $5,000 for every child born into poverty so that by the time they reach age 18 they would have an estimated $16,000 to spend purchasing a home or going to college.

It will help families to break the cycle of poverty, said state Treasurer Shawn Wooden, one of the bills chief proponents. It will help level the playing field no matter what the ZIP code.

Renters

A surge of evictions is looming, and many are happening already, despite the federal and state eviction moratoriums.

Thousands have faced eviction since the pandemic began, but Latino residents are three times as likely to face eviction as white residents, according to a CT Mirror analysis of eviction records that could be matched to Census tracts. And while evictions are happening in nearly every community, residents living in the states lowest-income communities are facing evictions much more frequently. In Bridgeport, for example, 778 households have faced eviction, compared to 58 next door in Fairfield and 30 in Westport, court data tracked daily by Fair Housing show. That means renters in Bridgeport are being evicted at almost twice the rate as renters in Fairfield and Westport, a CT Mirror analysis shows.

Exceptions to the moratorium  such as if the landlord wants to use the rental unit as their primary residence, or if the tenant is at least six months behind on rent  have led to evictions reaching about half the level they were before the pandemic. But as the economic fallout of the pandemic continues, housing advocates worry more people will reach the six-month threshold and face eviction.

Research has linked evictions to the spread of the coronavirus and deaths.

One study compared states where eviction moratoriums have expired to places where they remain, controlling for stay-at-home orders, mask mandates and school closures. The researchers estimate that as many as 502,000 additional infections and 12,500 deaths were the result of evictions resuming. In the states that lifted moratoriums, the COVID-19 incidences those states 16 weeks later was twice as high as the states that kept some protections in place. The mortality rate was at least three times as high.

Evictions often lead to people cramming into a friends or familys place  or homelessness, making it incredibly difficult to follow public health experts pleas to physically distance and quarantine if exposed or contracted. Those being impacted the most by evictions are Black and Hispanic residents, the same population more likely to contract and die from the virus.

An influx of federal recovery aid for rental assistance  $424 million  aims to help clear the backlog of missed rent. In the first three weeks the program has been open, more than 8,000 people applied and 15 have been processed and approved for payment. The state has already receive $235 million of this aid and is expected to get another $189 million in the latest federal recovery package Congress passed.

But some landlords are hesitant to participate because the program  UniteCT  will pay only six months in missed rent, and many tenants are behind more than that, said John Souza, the leader of the Connecticut Property Owners Association. Fair housing attorneys have complained that the state is not explicit about whether it will provide rental assistance if the landlord refuses to participate or whether the program is open to undocumented immigrants. During an interview, the states housing commissioner said undocumented immigrants are eligible, the program is available for those whose landlords will not participate, those who need to move elsewhere and those who need help with rent.

Souza said the eviction moratorium put into place is hurting low-income communities more than it is helping the renters that the moratorium aims to help. He said landlords are going to fall into foreclosure, and the home that they rent is going to become blighted and an eyesore. For those landlords who remain, they are going to be more strict about whom they will rent to.

It just becomes a long drawn-out system. The people that are hurt the most are of course going to be the people in the low-income neighborhoods, lets be honest, he said. Property is going to either fall into disrepair, blight, you know, they rip the plumbing out, and then that propertys going to be offline for six months to a year or two years until it gets redone. And unfortunately, landlords are raising their standards. They dont want to take any chances. Theyve gotten really hurt from this whole thing, said Souza. This is a tale of two cities, and in the lower income neighborhoods, they will be hurt the worst.
The government coalition is scheduled to meet today at 17:00 hrs for the first time after the dismissal of Vlad Voiculescu, a high-profile member of the USR PLUS junior coalition partner, from the position of Health Minister.

"We are not giving in. We will not replace Florin Citu. We are not yielding any ministry as to what was negotiated in December, we are not giving up any government agency as to what was negotiated. I cannot tell you that white smoke will be billowing out tonight, after the coalition meeting. Most likely, both parties will take a position of power, but I can guarantee you, as I did in December, that things will be sorted out by tomorrow night and that we will move forward in the same formula," Deputy Chairman of the National Liberal Party Rares Bogdan declared before the meeting of the Liberal leadership that takes place at the Palace of Parliament.

Prime Minister Florin Citu decided on Wednesday to remove Vlad Voiculescu from office. On Sunday he said that he is waiting for USR PLUS to make a nomination for Health Minister.

"I am waiting for USR PLUS to make their appointment for Health Minister, this portfolio belongs to USR PLUS, I will serve as interim until then and I will make sure that things work well. (...) Everything that means political discussion will take place at the coalition meeting with the three political formations," Florin Citu said on Sunday after attending the meeting of the National Intervention Management and Coordination Center in Ciolpani.

The USR PLUS leaders criticized in recent days the decision to dismiss Vlad Voiculescu from office, in what they term as a unilateral act, and requested an emergency meeting of the ruling coalition to discuss withdrawing political support for the Prime Minister.
In a recent study posted to the medRxiv* preprint server, a research group from Italy has demonstrated that the antibody response can be blunted in subjects with certain risk factors shortly after the second dose of mRNA vaccine against the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

Among the major risk factors for complicated coronavirus disease (COVID-19) caused by SARS-CoV-2, adiposity and excess visceral fat are certainly those that endanger the infected individuals. Other important ones are diabetes, high blood pressure (hypertension), chronic lung disease, and smoking.

There are also issues with the correlations of immune protection in individuals with the risks mentioned above, especially central obesity. Thus, even before vaccines were on the market, there were grave concerns that their presence may result in lower protection.

A recent study has shown that a higher body mass index (BMI) is associated with lower serological responses after the COVID-19 vaccine in Italian healthcare workers. Likewise, hypertension and inadequate response to vaccines may have roots in the dysfunctional immune system, at least according to some recent research evidence.

In order to explore variables associated with the serological response after Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 mRNA vaccine in more depth, a research group led by Dr. Mikiko Watanabe from the Sapienza University of Rome in Italy conducted a comprehensive, single-center observational study.

From laboratory assays to imaging methods

In this study, a total of 86 healthcare workers that underwent vaccination against COVID-19 were enrolled in January and February 2021. All subjects were given two COVID-19 mRNA vaccine inoculations (Pfizer/BioNTech) three weeks apart.

Consequently, blood samples were taken for the analysis before the first shot and one to four weeks after the second shot. Antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 were measured by using a commercially available sandwich electrochemiluminescence assay.

Clinical history, demographic data, and vaccine side effects were recorded. Moreover, anthropometric parameters were measured at baseline, while body composition measurement has been performed using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry.

Blunted production of antibodies

This study has shown that patients with central obesity had lower titers of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in comparison to those without central obesity; furthermore, smokers exhibited a blunted immune response when compared to non-smokers, which was also the case when comparing individuals with increased blood pressure or lipids to those with normal levels.

A detailed analysis has also shown that higher circumference of the waist, smoking, increased blood pressure, and longer time since second vaccine dose was linked to lower titers of antibodies  Independent of body mass index, gender and/or age.

Nonetheless, the link between waist circumference and antibody titers was not demonstrated when controlling for body fat, pointing towards visceral accumulation as a potential explanation. Interestingly, eventual side effects after the first or second dose of the vaccine were not related to different antibody titers, and neither was influenza vaccination in the preceding 12 months.

Serological response of analyzed subpopulations. Anti SARS CoV-2 Antibody titers were significantly lower in subjects with central obesity (A), subjects belonging to the second quartile of waist circumference compared to those belonging to the fourth quartile (overall p= .046) (B), smokers (C), hypertensive subjects (D), dyslipidemic subjects (E). *p<.05, **p<.01, **p<.001, ***p<.000

Shifting the optimal vaccine schedule?

Although it is currently impossible to appraise whether a lower amount of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies leads to a higher likelihood of developing COVID-19, previous experience teaches us that this may well be the case; hence, all factors above linked with a blunted immune response warrant further scrutiny.

The fact that the antibody response is blunted in certain subjects shortly after the second inoculation must lead to a highly vigilant approach, as medium and long-term data will become available only when the schedule will have been necessarily set already, caution study authors in this medRxiv paper.

This means that smokers and individuals with central obesity and/or hypertension could benefit from earlier vaccine boosters or different vaccine schedules, which is why further research endeavors on schedule adjustments should be conducted.

*Important Notice

medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
NAIROBI, Kenya  France played a significant role in enabling a foreseeable genocide in Rwanda, according to a report commissioned by the Rwandan government that was released on Monday and that echoed the findings of a recent appraisal by France.

The report offered a damning new perspective on the events that led to the killing of at least 800,000 people in 1994, arguing that France did nothing to stop the slaughter of ethnic Tutsi by a Rwandan government dominated by members of the Hutu ethnic group.

Twenty-seven years after the genocide, both France and Rwanda are making attempts to set the record straight on what happened during the bloodletting, government officials have said, both to respond to domestic demands and to improve bilateral relations.

The 600-page report, generated by a Washington law firm, concluded that the French government was neither blind nor unconscious in regard to the imminent genocide, yet continued in its unwavering support for the government of the Rwandan president then, Juvenal Habyarimana. It accused the government of the French president at the time, Francois Mitterrand, of doing so in order to advance and reinforce its own influence and interests in the country.
In a much-awaited move, India has allowed Covid for all above 18 years of age, starting May 1. The decision, taken at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister on Monday, is expected to change the course of the pandemic currently raging through the country. India Inc and political parties have for long demanded the opening up of for all adults.

In a departure from the current policy, the government has also allowed states to procure additional doses directly from the manufacturers. supply to open market and industries has been permitted as well with conditions. In fact, the government will allow the imported ready-to-use vaccines to be entirely utilised in the open market. While the pricing arrangements have not been revealed, the latest announcement clubbed with the recent proposal to fast-track clearances could attract a host of foreign vaccine-makers, according to officials.

would continue free of cost in government centres for healthcare and frontline workers and also those above 45 years of age, the government has said, indicating that jabs for the proposed 18 plus category would be priced and be accessible in private hospitals and open market.

In its Phase-III, the National Strategy aims at liberalised vaccine pricing and scaling up of vaccine coverage, a statement issued by the Union Health Ministry said.





ALSO READ: Coronavirus LIVE: UK to add India to travel red-list, says health minister

Vaccine manufacturers would supply 50 per cent of their approved monthly doses to the Centre, according to the vaccine policy for the third stage. They would be free to supply the other half to state governments and in the open market. This 50-50 division of supply would be applicable uniformly across for all vaccines manufactured in the country, while imported ones could be available fully in the open market, the statement elaborated.



The government has been working hard for over a year to ensure that maximum number of Indians are able to get vaccine in the shortest possible time, Modi was quoted as saying in the statement. Vaccine manufacturers are incentivized to further scale up their production, as well as attract new national and international players, the statement added.

Manufacturers would have to transparently make an advance declaration of the price for 50 per cent supply that would be available to state governments and in the open market before May 1. Private hospitals would have to procure their supplies of Covid-19 vaccine exclusively from open market or through state governments. Private vaccination providers shall transparently declare their self-set vaccination price.

ALSO READ: Former PM Manmohan Singh tests positive for Covid-19, admitted to AIIMS

Based on the extent of infection and speed of vaccine administration, the Centre will also allocate vaccines to states from its own share. Wastage would be a factor which can work to the disadvantage of a state when getting its vaccine quota from the Centre. State-wise quota would be decided and communicated to the states adequately in advance.

Ten States including Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Karnataka, Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Rajasthan reported nearly 80 per cent of the new cases.

All vaccinations would be part of the national vaccination programme, and mandated to follow all protocols such as entering data on the CoWIN platform, linked to adverse effects following immunisation (AEFI) reporting. Stocks and price per vaccination applicable in all vaccination centres will also have to be reported real-time.

The vaccine policy also said that the second dose of all existing priority groups wherever it has become due, would be given priority, for which a specific and focused strategy would be communicated to all stakeholders.
AVON LAKE, Ohio -- Two Avon Lake mothers who have children in the military will be attending the citys Memorial Day ceremony on Monday, May 31. They will bring with them the perspective of parents of soldiers about what military life is really like and the worries and concerns that are part of the entire experience -- an experience that automatically includes the whole family.

Pam and Laura, not their real names, were willing to talk about their experiences as members of Blue Star Mothers of America Inc.

Blue Star Mothers was originally formed during World War II. It is a private, nonprofit organization that provides support for mothers who have sons or daughters in active service in the U.S. Armed Forces.

Pams son is serving in the U.S. Army and is currently stationed in Texas. Her sons future seemed to have been foretold from the time he was very young.

Our son was an avid reader since he was a toddler, Pam said. His favorite subject was military history. He always had an interest. Then, my father-in-law gave him books from the time he was 7, and he read incessantly about all things military.

Pams father was in the military in World War II and her husbands father served in the Korean War. The couple also have three grown daughters who have no interest whatsoever in serving in the military.

Pams son was accepted into the United States Military Academy at West Point, from which he graduated in 2007. After graduation, he began active duty at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, then was deployed to the conflict in Iraq.

Pam said it was a surprise that the deployment happened so quickly.

After a year, her son returned to Fort Bragg and was then sent to Haiti on a humanitarian mission, followed by a stint in Seattle at Joint Base Lewis McCord. After that, he was deployed to Afghanistan.

After the second deployment, he began studies for a masters degree in geography, then taught for a few years at West Point. Today, he is an Army strategist with the rank of major.

As often happens, her son met his wife-to-be, who was from Wisconsin, in the Army. She was in the same class at West Point, but they met officially on an education assignment in Virginia in 2013. Her sister was also in the military.

Pam said their career paths were similar, as her sons wife works as a quartermaster, which involves military logistics. Quartermaster officers are responsible for making sure equipment, materials and systems are available and functioning for missions.

The couple married in 2015 and have two young children. Pam noted that other than the stress of the entire family living day to day with the possibility of deployment, the military couple live their lives not very differently from any other American couple.

Pam was asked what the worry level was when her son was first deployed.

While he was in West Point, we thought we didnt have anything to worry about. But then, when he was graduating and Iraq was still an issue, that was unnerving for us -- very stressful and difficult, she said.

After the three deployments, Pam said, We thought that was enough -- but you never know in a military career. You have no choice, so you just pray for all to work out for him and everyone else and just hope and pray for the best.

Lauras experience as a Blue Star Mother was somewhat different. Her son had been out of the Army for five years when her daughter visited her brother and met a fellow soldier.

So, we are now a military family again, Laura said.

Her son was also a West Point graduate, but then went through Ranger School -- a very scary thing she said. It is so intense. We could not talk to him. They are in constant training. Phone calls are not even once a week.

The family had a scare when they heard that a student had been killed at the ranger school.

The radio was talking about a problem at the school in Florida, she said. It was like a knife in the heart until I heard my son was all right.

Due to the separation and the stress, Laura said she developed her own philosophy and perspective for dealing with the dangers her son was facing.

I believe in giving them roots and wings. I would tear up about it, but I decided not to be an interfering mom. If the next time I see him in full uniform, I cry, I would be interfering, and I wanted him to go with a happy heart. I believe you dont own your kids.

Her son was stationed in Hawaii for his entire five-year stint.

He was an aide to an Air Force general and traveled with him throughout the Pacific. I never knew where he was, she said.

Laura had a friend who asked her, how can you stand it, referring to him traveling all over the world.

She answered, I told her, well, he could be living in the basement and watching Jerry Springer.

Read more from the Sun Sentinel.
Delhi will be under lockdown from 10pm of April 19 to 5 am of April 26 to contain the spread of Covid-19 cases, said Chief Minister on Monday as the warned that the citys healthcare system was under stress".

Delhis hospitals are overwhelmed; 25,000 patients are coming in daily, said Kejriwal as he explained the reasons for the "short lockdown".

"Essential services, food services, medical services will continue. Weddings can be held with a gathering of only 50 people, passes will be issued separately for it. A detailed order will be issued shortly, he said.

Delhi on Sunday reported 25,462 new Covid-19 cases and 161 deaths, straining the national capitals healthcare system. Less than 100 intensive care unit (ICU) beds are available in hospitals, Kejriwal said on Sunday.

The city last week declared a weekend curfew, restricting public gatherings and reducing public transport.

Kejriwal on Sunday said Delhi is facing an "acute shortage" of oxygen for COVID-19 patients and alleged that the quota of the city has been diverted to other states. He wrote on Twitter about his claim after sending a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi requesting his help in enhancing the number of hospital beds and immediate oxygen supply for patients in Delhi.
Image via Getty/Tertius Pickard-Pool

A woman believed to be the oldest known person in the United States passed away this weekend at the age of 115, The Charlotte Observer reports. Hester Ford died peacefully at her Charlotte home Saturday, leaving behind a family that includes 68 grandchildren, 125 great-grandchildren, and at least 120 great-great-grandchildren.

She was a pillar and stalwart to our family and provided much needed love, support and understanding to us all, Fords great-granddaughter, Tanisha Patterson-Powe, said in a statement. She was the seed that sprouted leaves and branches which is now our family. God saw fit to make her the matriarch of your family and blessed us to be her caretakers and recipients of her legacy.

Ford was born in Lancaster County, S.C., but its unclear what year exactly, as there is some suspicion that she could have been 116 years old at the time of her death. U.S. Census Bureau documents indicate that she was born in 1905, while another set of paperwork shows her birth year as 1904. Despite the discrepancy, Ford still stood as the oldest recorded person living in the U.S.

She not only represented the advancement of our family but of the Black African American race and culture in our country. She was a reminder of how far we have come as people on this earth, Patterson-Powe said, per the AP.

Hester got married to John Ford at 14, and gave birth the following year to the first of their 12 children. The couple sold their farm and moved to a house in Charlotte around 1960. John died in 1963, but she remained in that same home by herself until she was 108, when her family insisted on having someone live with her after she bruised her ribs from a fall in the bathtub. Fords injury marked the first time that she ever needed to be hospitalized.

In 2019, Charlotte mayor Vi Lyles announced that Aug. 15 would be recognized as Hester McCardell Ford Day.

Ford became the oldest living person in the United States in November, following the death of Alelia Murphy at the age of 114 years and 140 days old. The oldest person in the world is Kane Tanaka of Japan, who turned 118 on Jan. 2.

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Even before the pandemic, people with minor urgent health needs had started to turn to companies that offer on-demand video chats with physicians they dont normally see.

Insurers and employers even started buying access to this direct-to-consumer form of virtual care, hoping it might reduce in-person care, including emergency department visits.

But a new University of Michigan study casts some doubt on whether that will actually happen.

Published in the April issue of Health Affairs, the study finds that patients who had an on-demand virtual care visit for an upper respiratory infection in the three years before the pandemic began were slightly more likely to receive additional follow-up care than similar patients who had their first visit in person.

The study compared data from more than 28,700 virtual visits with data from more than 57,400 in-person visits for acute respiratory infections in 2016 through 2019. Those visits, and any follow-up care, were all covered by a large insurer. All the virtual visits were done through a direct-to-consumer telehealth company with which the insurer had partnered.

The authors say its important to note that the vast majority of the patients did not require any further care for their infections, which included ear infections, bronchitis, laryngitis, sore throat and pneumonia.

But 10.3% of the patients first seen through a direct-to-consumer telehealth visit ended up having an in-person visit in the next week, compared with 5.9% of those who had their first visit in person. This includes second telemedicine visits or visits to clinics, urgent care centers and emergency rooms.

Less than 1% of all the patients in the study visited an emergency department after their initial visit, and the percentage was only slightly lower among people whose first visit was through a direct-to-consumer virtual provider compared with those who started with an in-person visit.

Kathleen Li, M.D., M.S., the first author of the paper and an alumna of the IHPI Scholars program at the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation, conducted the study. She notes that direct-to-consumer telehealth providers usually dont have access to patients electronic health records, so they may not know the patients full medical history or underlying conditions.

As an emergency physician at Michigan Medicine, Li notes that often patients will come to the emergency department after trying to reach their primary care physician and not being able to get an appointment quickly.

Li was a co-author on a recent National Poll on Healthy Aging report from IHPI that found that 1 in 8 older adults had gone to the emergency room after not being able to get a timely appointment with their regular provider.

If an appointment with a patients regular provider isnt available right away, or the patient isnt able to get to the clinic in person during standard business hours, on-demand virtual care does offer convenience, she says. But things have changed so much with the pandemic, and more primary care providers are now offering telehealth visits with themselves or members of their teams. It remains to be seen how primary care-based telehealth models will affect downstream use and cost of care.

Senior author Chad Ellimoottil, M.D., M.S., who directs IHPIs Telehealth Research Incubator, says that while the insurance claims data in the study were available to the IHPI team, that may not be the case for most direct-to-consumer telehealth, especially if the patient pays directly rather than using insurance.

As more companies enter the marketplace of direct-to-consumer telehealth, its going to be important to understand the outcomes for patients, and the broader implications for the health care system, says Ellimoottil, a urologist and telehealth researcher.

Data transparency is essential. We need to be able to directly compare outcomes of patients seen by direct-to-consumer telehealth companies with in-person care and with telemedicine provided by the patients own primary care provider.

For employers that offer a direct-to-consumer telehealth option through their benefits package, Li says, the bottom line comes down to balancing how much the instant access may result in an increase in visits or additional follow-up care, against the benefit of less time spent away from work and a potential reduction in inappropriate emergency department visits.

We need to optimize both the use of telehealth and of in-person emergency care, she says.

In addition to Li and Ellimoottil, the study was done by Ziwei Zhu of the Department of Urology and Sophia Ng of IHPI.

The research was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. Ellimoottil receives funding from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (HS027632).

Original study: Direct-To-Consumer Telemedicine Visits For Acute Respiratory Infections Linked To More Downstream Visits
The Queen's new corgi puppies are likely to play an important role consoling Her Majesty as she mourns the loss of her husband Prince Philip, a royal expert has claimed.

Poignant images from The Duke of Edinburgh's funeral on Saturday showed the monarch sitting alone in St George's Chapel at Windsor, while on Wednesday she will mark her 95th birthday and will only able to meet those outside her household in the open air.

But the grieving Queen will have two lively new companions - a corgi called Muick and a dorgi (a Corgi-Dachshund cross) named Fergus - running around her feet and providing a 'distraction', along with her elderly dorgi Candy.

Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty Magazine, said: 'The thinking was enough was enough, and that she was getting too old for new dogs and who would look after them when she was gone.

The Queen's new corgi puppies are likely to play an important role consoling Her Majesty as she mourns the loss of her husband Prince Philip, a royal expert has claimed. The Queen is pictured with Prince Philip and her Corgi in 1974

Poignant images from The Duke of Edinburgh's funeral on Saturday showed the monarch sitting alone in St George's Chapel at Windsor, while on Wednesday she will mark her 95th birthday and will only able to meet those outside her household in the open air

'But clearly that decision was reversed and, as it turned out, it probably is very fortuitous. I think it's useful to have these puppies in her life now as way of a distraction.'

The Queen's life-long love of horses and dogs is well known and, while Philip spent his final period in hospital, it emerged the Queen had been given the puppies.

Mr Little believes that, while Buckingham Palace will remain the seat of the royal court, the Queen may make Windsor Castle her permanent home, only travelling to the capital for official events.

The Queen's birthday will fall during the period of royal mourning so any public events to mark it - such as the release of an official picture - are likely to be cancelled.

The Queen's life-long love of horses and dogs is well known and, while Philip spent his final period in hospital, it emerged the Queen had been given the puppies . The Queen with some of her corgis at the Windsor Horse Trials in 1980 (left) and walking with two of the dogs in the the grounds of Windsor Castle (right)

Mr Little said: 'She will mark her first birthday as a widow, and 95 is quite a significant birthday.

'I don't think there would have been a fuss made of it, but nevertheless 95 is quite something. This is going to be a private day for her and that's how it should be.

'Royal mourning continues until Friday so that makes it even more of a sombre occasion.'

In February, the monarch reportedly bought two new puppies on popular pet-buying website Pets4Home, paying 2,650.

One of the furry companions, Fergus, is a dorgi, a cross between a corgi and daschund, he was named after Fergus Bowes-Lyon, the Queen's maternal uncle who died in France during World War I.

The royal has always been synonymous with pets and has owned more than 30 during her reign. Pictured: The Queen as a girl with one of the family's corgis. The breed has been synonymous with the royal family since the 1930s

The second, a corgi, is called Muick - pronounced Mick - after Loch Muick, a lake on the Balmoral Estate in Scotland.

Fergus Bowes-Lyon, the Queen mother's brother, died during the Battle of Loos in 1915, aged 26.

In 1932, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the future Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, laid her bouquet on the grave of The Unknown Soldier at Westminster Abbey in memory of her brother Fergus, starting a tradition for royal brides

Her Majesty was pictured at the around the loch last summer with Sophie, Countess Wessex, Lady Louise Windsor and James, Viscount Severn.

It comes after Her Majesty's loyal companion Vulcan, a dachshund-corgi cross, died a few weeks before Christmas last year

Earlier this month, breeder Denise Thomas, 60, claimed she was not aware who the puppy, who was at first called Charlie, was for, but was promised the cute pet would have 'the best life.'

Denise had advertised her litter of two puppies online: Charlie, who was swept away to Windsor Palace, and his brother George. The Queen only took Charlie - now Muick- and it is not known where the other new puppy comes from.

Denises son, Craig Skyrme, 40, told The Sun that a woman pulled up in a blackout Range Rover on February 26 to take the pup away, and wouldn't reveal the identity of its new owner.

'She would only say he is going to a home in Windsor  but wouldnt tell my mum who the owners were,' Craig said.

'My mum asked if it was anyone famous and the woman said, "I cant say, but hes going to have the best life possible",' he added.

Queen Mother and then Princess Elizabeth on the grounds of their London home in 1936 with two of their corgis

The family had a strong hunch the corgi pup might be on its way to meet the Queen, who is historically very fond of the breed.

Craig revealed the curious family googled the name of the woman who came to pick up the pup and saw she worked for the royal household, which allowed them to connect the dots.

Craig said it was an honour to see their puppy selected to go live with the Queen and rejoiced it might appear in royal pictures in the future.

According to the publication, Palace sources confirmed the new pup was indeed Charlie, but added he might have been given a new name. Skyrme admitted the dog was initially called 'Charles' due to the corgis' royal associations.

The pup, which was born on 5th December, is described as a playful fellow who loves to play fetch, but would do well with some house training.

Craig admitted to walking in wet patches and that the teething pup had nibbled his way around a few items around the house.

A source close to the royal household who was not named by the Sun revealed it was 'highly unusual' for the Queen to buy one of her dogs off a website and that Charlie must have been a very special pup.

In 2012 Her Majesty's dog Monty appeared alongside James Bond's Daniel Craig in a clip for the opening ceremony of the London Olympics

They added Her Majesty was very involved with the breeding of her dogs in the past and was a very responsible dog owner who always made sure the dogs were healthy.

It is believed the canines were a gift who are said to bring a lot of noise and joy to the Palace.

They are also the first corgis Her Majesty has owned that are not direct descendants of her very first corgi Susan - which she was given in 1944 by her parents for her 18th birthday.

In December, the Queen's loyal companion Vulcan, a dachshund-corgi cross, died at Windsor Castle, leaving her with just Candy as the last remaining descendant of Susan.

In December, the Queen's loyal companion Vulcan, a dachshund-corgi cross, died at Windsor Castle, leaving her with just Candy as the last remaining descendant of Susan. The Queen is pictured with Candy

He had had been the Queen's loyal pet since at least 2007, making him more than 13 years old - a good age for the breed.

The Queen's love of dogs is well documented. One of her favourites, Monty, appeared alongside her and James Bond actor Daniel Craig in a skit for the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics. Sadly, Monty died that same year.

In 2018, her corgi Willow, who was the 14th generation descended from Susan, was put down after suffering from cancer.

In paying tribute to Philip, who died peacefully at Windsor on 9th April, aged 99, members of the royal family have been rallying to the Queen's side and said they will continue to support her in the future.

Prince Philip died on 9th April peacefully at Windsor Castle, aged 99. His funeral was held on Saturday. Pictures is his coffin being taken into St George's Chapel

The Queen returned to public duties a few days after the death of her 'beloved' husband and is expected to return to a full diary of official events after the period of royal mourning ends this week.

Mr Little added: 'I think she will be personally devastated by this, but I don't think the death of the Duke of Edinburgh, her husband of 73 years, is going to impact on her working role.

'I think, as monarch, although she doesn't have him there for guidance, I think her role will continue pretty much as it has for the last 69 years.

'There's the public queen and there's the private queen, and she's great at being able to compartmentalise.'

The Queen has been spending the lockdown at Windsor Castle with a reduced number of staff and aides dubbed HMS Bubble and, under Covid regulations, will be restricted in the number of birthday well-wishers she can see outside.

But Philip's funeral would have provided the opportunity for her to speak with the Duke of Cambridge, the Duke of Sussex and her other grandchildren.

Asked about the funeral during a briefing, the Prime Minister's official spokesman highlighted that Boris Johnson had observed the national minute's silence in memory of the duke on Saturday afternoon.

He added: 'Alongside many of us across the country, he thought that the funeral was a poignant and fitting tribute to a much-loved and highly respected public figure, whose extraordinary life we will forever remember with gratitude for his decades of selfless service to this country.'
The four newest Brazilian hospitals to join the global community of partner hospitals on Clinerions Patient Network Explorer platform are:



Hospital Sao Lucas  PUCRS, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul

Hospital Martagao Gesteira, Salvador, Bahia

Hospital Ana Nery, Salvador, Bahia

Centro Regional Integrado de Oncologia (CRIO), Fortaleza, Ceara

They are projected to go online in Patient Network Explorer by the end of May, 2021.

The hospital network in Brazil comprises hospitals of varied sizes, locations and specializations.

Through Patient Network Explorer, patients in Brazil are visible to international clinical trials sponsors, increasing the likelihood of their hospital being selected as a trial site and their being accepted to join trials of next generation treatments. Joining the Patient Network Explorer platform brings physicians and researchers at partner hospitals additional opportunities to offer innovative medical care to patients.

Clinerion matches academic and sponsored trials with clinical trial sites on the Patient Network Explorer platform, according to electronic health records (EHRs) at the sites. The system supports the search and re-identification of candidates for clinical trial recruitment by querying the EHRs in hospital information systems, i.e. demographics, medications, diagnoses, laboratory test results and procedures, without compromising patient privacy. Clinerions global patient network currently covers 35 million patients in hospitals in 17 countries around the world, including major clusters in Turkey, Poland and Brazil. Access to this real-world data supports site selection and recruitment for randomized clinical trials (RCTs), and the generation of real-world evidence.

We are committed to putting the patient first in drug development and we are able to bring patients in Brazil expanded opportunities for treatment due to our strong and rapidly growing footprint in the country, which creates a critical mass of patients for sponsored and academic trials, says Bars Erdogan, CEO of Clinerion. We thank iHealth Group for their continued support for the Clinerion Community of hospitals in Brazil .

iHealth Group supports the expansion of Clinerions coverage in Brazil and the fulfilment of Clinerions services inside the country. It is estimated that Brazil currently has the potential to move to the 10th in the world ranking of clinical research, which would bring benefits to more than 55 thousand patients. We are very motivated to be able to bring this innovation system from the Swiss company Clinerion to clinical research in Brazil and aware that we still have a lot of work ahead of us, says Leonardo Nunes Alegre, COO of iHealth.

Details of the four new hospitals:

Hospital Sao Lucas - PUCRS: A general hospital, funded through philanthropy, where more than 18 thousand people circulate per day, PUCRS has 580 operational beds, 94 ICU beds, 111 consulting rooms, 18 operating rooms, 2,010 medical staff and 80 clinics in the Clinical Center.

Martagao Gesteira Hospital: The largest exclusively pediatric hospital in the North and Northeast of Brazil, a center of reference for the service of diverse pediatric specialties, with respected professionals at the head. There are 220 beds and about 30 specialties. They perform 500,000 free consultations per year for highly complex treatments such as neurosurgery, cardiology and oncology.

Ana Nery Hospital: Center of reference for the treatment of patients with diseases in the areas of cardiology, nephrology, vascular surgery and transplants. All procedures performed at the Ana Nery Hospital are exclusively funded by SUS, being a publicly managed hospital, strengthened by the agreement between the Secretary of Health of the State of Bahia (Sesab) and the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), through its Foundation Support for Research and Extension (FAPEX).

CRIO (Integrated Regional Oncology Center): Considered one of the largest and best equipped cancer treatment centers in the state of Ceara. Qualified by the Ministry of Health as a Unit of High Complexity in Oncology - Unacon. It provides an outpatient clinic for clinical consultations and prevention, a radiotherapy service, chemotherapy, hormone therapy, imaging, hospital beds, surgical interventions and ICUs for patients under private health plans and those coming from the Unified Health System - SUS.

The full list of hospitals in Brazil on the Patient Network Explorer platform is:

Hospital Portugues da Bahia, Salvador, Bahia

Hospital Martagao Gesteira, Salvador, Bahia

Hospital Ana Nery, Salvador, Bahia

Centro Regional Integrado de Oncologia (CRIO), Fortaleza, Ceara

Hospital Felicio Rocho, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais

Hospital Angelina Caron, Campina Grande do Sul, Parana

Hospital Erasto Gaertner, Curitiba, Parana

Hospital Sao Vicente de Paulo, Passo Fundo, Rio Grande do Sul

Santa Casa de Misericordia de Porto Alegre, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul

Hospital Ernesto Dornelles, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul

Hospital Sao Lucas  PUCRS, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul

Hospital Regional do Oeste, Chapeco, Santa Catarina

Hospital PUC-Campinas, Campinas, Sao Paulo

Hospital Amaral Carvalho, Jau, Sao Paulo

Centro Medico Ribeirao Shopping, Ribeirao Preto, Sao Paulo

Instituto do Cancer Dr. Arnaldo, Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo

A.C. Camargo Cancer Center, Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo

About Clinerion

Clinerion accelerates clinical research and medical access to treatments for patients. We generate real-world data from our global network of partner hospitals for Real World Evidence analyses. Clinerion's Patient Network Explorer radically improves the efficiency and effectiveness of clinical trial recruitment by offering data-driven protocol optimization, site feasibility evaluation and real-time patient search and identification to match patients to treatments.

Clinerion facilitates the participation of partner hospitals in leading-edge, industry-sponsored trials and time savings in patient recruitment. Researchers gain access to real-time, longitudinal patient data from electronic health records for analysis. We enable pharmaceutical companies, CROs and SMOs to shorten patient recruitment and save costs by streamlining operations and leveraging strategic intelligence. Clinerions Patient Network Explorer also provides a platform for integration of diverse patient data sources into real-world data ecosystems. Clinerions proprietary technologies comply with international patient privacy and data security regulations. Clinerion is a global data technology service company headquartered in Switzerland.

Clinerion website: http://www.clinerion.com

Clinerions Patient Network Explorer: http://www.clinerion.com/index/PatientNetworkExplorerSolutions.html

For more information, please contact:

Le Vin Chin

Director, Head of Marketing & Communications

Clinerion Ltd

Elisabethenanlage 11, 4051 Basel, Switzerland

Tel.: +41 61 865 60 54

media@clinerion.com

About iHealth Group

The iHealth Group has a multidisciplinary team focused on serving the health informatics industry. Our team has extensive experience in this topic, leading the process of computerization of more than 30 Brazilian hospitals. Digital health transformation will enable us to improve communication with our patients, optimize our queues, improve the safety of our processes, expand our planning capacity, reduce costs, eliminate waste and, especially, do evidence-based management. However, we must understand that it is not the technology, but strategic management that will guide us correctly to the computerization of our health processes. IT cannot be a strategic goal, but an instrument to achieve a goal.

iHealth Group website: http://www.ihealthgroup.com.br

For more information, please contact:

Leonardo Nunes Alegre

iHealth Group

Tel.: +55 51 9 9192-9222

leonardo.alegre@ihealthgroup.com.br
With an anticipated completion in 2022, the 4-storey building will benefit from Appolonia City's existing world-class infrastructure, such as roads, power, water, waste management and ICT.

"Like all our real estate solutions across Africa, Appolonia City's office building will have quality leases and strong counterparties, starting with Appolonia City itself," commented Andre Janari, GREA Chief Investment Officer.

Appolonia City CEO Bright Owusu-Amofah said: "We already have high demand for office and retail space from companies and individuals wishing to enjoy our Live, Work, Play environment, with offices, homes, schools and shops all within walking distance."

Appolonia City is a 2,325-acre master-planned new city in Greater Accra. Designed and delivered by Rendeavour, Africa's largest city developer, Appolonia City is designed to cater for integrated living. With more than 700 homes completed or under construction, Appolonia City is rapidly becoming the destination of choice for companies and individuals moving away from Accra's heavy traffic for a healthy, congestion free environment.

The construction of GREA's commercial office building will support Accra's economy, thanks to GREA's synergies with Ghanaian professionals such as construction specialists, highly qualified engineers and construction workers.

GREA is affiliated with Grit Real Estate Investment Group (Grit), the largest pan-African real estate income group. Sir Samuel Jonah, one of Africa's and Ghana's leading businessmen, is a member of the Grit board.

Sir Samuel said: "Gateway Real Estate Africa's investment in Appolonia City's first office building is a demonstration of GREA and Grit's vision for superior quality real estate in Africa and setting a benchmark for international investment in Ghana."

Samuel Obiri-Yeboah, [email protected], [email protected]

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1489984/Rendeavour_Gateway.jpg

SOURCE Rendeavour
Married At First Sight stars Belinda Vickers and Patrick Dwyer professed their love for each other during their final vows.

And now this season's golden couple have revealed plans for their future.

Just one day after the grand finale, the pair told Woman's Day they've already discussed their joint desire to become parents.

Scroll down for video

Baby joy! Married At First Sight's lovebirds Patrick Dwyer and Belinda Vickers (pictured) have spoken about their marriage and family plans just ONE DAY after grand finale aired on Nine

'I definitely think Pat would be a great dad, there's no doubt in my mind,' Belinda, 30, told the publication.

However, while they both want children one day they have put plans slightly on the backburner to appreciate their newfound relationship away from the cameras.

'We've talked about it. I definitely want them (children),' Patrick, 27, said, adding that he's already floated the idea of moving in together in Melbourne and popping the question for real.

'I definitely think Pat would be a great dad': While they both want children, they have put plans slightly on the backburner to appreciate their newfound relationship away from the cameras

'I joked about it (marriage plans) last week and she freaked out... so I was like OK, I'll wait a bit,' he added.

Patrick and Belinda were one of few couples this season to get their happily ever after on the series.

Standing in front of each other for their final vows last week, the duo professed their love for each other.

'I joked about it (marriage plans) last week and she freaked out': Patrick and Belinda have already spoken about moving into together in Melbourne and having a REAL wedding soon

An emotional Belinda praised Patrick for being patient with her, and said she was 'so grateful' he'd come into her life.

Patrick confessed he wasn't popular with girls and admitted he 'was worried if the person I got matched with was ever going to like me'.

An overjoyed Patrick pulled Belinda in for a passionate kiss after earlier admitting he was unsure if his feelings for her were reciprocated.
Las Vegas city officials have found that a lot of grass is useless.

The plant is never laid on, played on or even stepped on. The grass is only there to look nice.

The city in the American state of Nevada is built in a desert. And officials have found that there are 21 square kilometers of useless grass.

Now, Las Vegas is trying to become the first place in the country to ban that kind of grass often seen between streets, in housing developments and in office parks.

It is estimated that useless grass makes up 40 percent of all the turf in Las Vegas and it needs a lot of water to survive. Grass needs four times more water than dry climate plants like cactus or succulents. By tearing out the grass, the city could reduce yearly water usage by 15 percent.

Las Vegas may be known to the outside world for its partying, casinos and excess. But officials say community residents have strongly supported saving water.

The city is asking the Nevada state legislature to ban useless grass. California temporarily banned grass watering during an extremely dry period several years ago. But no state or large city has tried to permanently ban watering some kinds of grass.

Justin Jones is a commissioner in Clark County. He said the ban will not change peoples lives very much.

To be clear, we are not coming after your average homeowners backyard, he said. But grass in the middle of a highway is, in his words, dumb.

The only people that ever set foot on grass thats in the middle of a roadway system are people cutting the grass, Jones said.

Jones said some communities oppose the ban. But after years of campaigns for better water use, there has been a cultural change.

In 2003, the Southern Nevada Water Authority banned developers from planting grass in front of new homes. It also offered homeowners $30 for each square meter of grass they tear out. But fewer people are now using the program.

Water usage has increased in southern Nevada by 9 percent since 2019. And last year, Las Vegas went a record 240 days without major rainfall.

The Colorado River provides much of Nevadas drinking water. The river also supplies Arizona, California, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming and Mexico.

The river could lose more water as climate change affects it. Arizona, California and Nevada are expected to have their amount of river water cut in the future.

Water officials in other dry cities said water usage needs to be reduced. But they fear the reaction to reforms like the ones in Las Vegas if their communities do not accept them.

Cynthia Campbell is the water resources adviser for the city of Phoenix in Arizona. She said trees and grass combat urban heat islands: areas in cities that can get dangerously hot.

She said there might come a point when city restrictions get too severe for some residents.

Theyll say, This is the point of no return for me, Campbell said. For some people, its a pool. For some people, its grass.

Colby Pellegrino is the director of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. He does not know if the plan to ban grass will spread to other cities.

But, he said, every community that relies on Colorado River water, will have to make changes.

Im Jonathan Evans.

Sam Metz and Ken Ritter reported this story for the Associated Press. Dan Novak adapted it for VOA Learning English. Mario Ritter, Jr. was the editor.

________________________________________________

Words in This Story

turf- n. - the upper layer of ground that is made up of grass and plant roots

casino n. a building or room that has games of chance that people play for money

excess- adj. an amount that is more than the usual or necessary amount

backyard- n. an area of grass behind someone's house
She is set to to jet to Australia in the near future to film Mad Max prequel, titled Furiosa, to play a younger version of the character Charlize Theron portrayed in 2015.

And Anya Taylor-Joy definitely looks ready to get back to work.

The 25-year-old American-born Argentine-British actress was seen looking stylish as always in a pair of flared green overalls while out and about in New York City on Monday.

Scroll down for video

Chill: Anya Taylor-Joy was seen looking stylish as always in a pair of flared green overalls while out and about in New York City on Monday

No doubt she was in need of an energy boost as she picked up a caffeinated beverage from La Colombe Coffee Roasters.

She teamed the simple but stylish jumpsuit with a pair of black leather studded heels.

Anya accessorized with a beige tote bag draped over her shoulder along with black wayfarer shades and a matching scarf draped around her neck which doubled as a face covering.

Fashion forward: The 25-year-old American-born Argentine-British actress teamed the simple but stylish jumpsuit with a pair of black leather studded heels

Caffeine run: No doubt she was in need of an energy boost as she picked up a caffeinated beverage from La Colombe Coffee Roasters

Her signature platinum tresses were worn down as she accentuated her porcelain skin with complementary make-up contrasted with a swipe of bright ruby red lipstick.

She was later joined on the outing by a gal pal as they galivanted around the Big Apple together.

No doubt she is spending all the time with loved ones that she can as a flight to Australia will soon be in Anya's future as the New South Wales government has announced that the highly anticipated Mad Max prequel, Furiosa, will be filmed locally.

Pals: She was later joined on the outing by a gal pal as they galivanted around the Big Apple together

Premier Gladys Berejiklian made the announcement at a press conference in Sydney on Monday, alongside star Chris Hemsworth, director George Miller and producer Doug Mitchell.

Berejiklian stated that it will be the 'largest film ever to be filmed here', adding 850 local jobs and injecting at least $350million into the local economy.

Anya will dive into the character's backstory, who was originally portrayed by Charlize Theron in the Mad Max: Fury Road film from 2015.

Legendary: Anya will soon dive into Furiosa's backstory, who was originally portrayed by Charlize Theron in the Mad Max: Fury Road film from 2015.

In addition to Taylor-Joy and Hemsworth the film will also star Emmy-winning Watchmen actor Yahya Abdul-Mateen III.

Anya will star in the main role that Miller will direct, co-write and produce with his longtime Oscar-nominated producing partner Doug Mitchell.

Miller told The New York Times last year that he was looking for an actress in her 20s to fill the role.

Coming soon: The New South Wales government has announced that the highly anticipated Mad Max prequel, Furiosa, will be filmed locally. Pictured, Chris Hemsworth at the announcement in Sydney on Monday

In an interview with The New York Times in May last year, Miller said he originally considered using de-aging technology to make Charlize, 45, appear younger.

'For the longest time, I thought we could just use CG de-aging on Charlize, but I don't think we're nearly there yet,' the 76-year-old filmmaker told the publication.

He eventually settled on Anya, who has won recent praise for her roles in The Queen's Gambit and Emma.

Mad Max Furiosa is slated for release in 2023
Management team exploring possible acquisition at 80 pence per share

( ) said its management team has been given extra time to evaluate a possible acquisition of the motor retail group.

The management team has been given put up or shut up deadline of 5.00pm on May 17 by the UK Takeover Panel.

On March 22, the board of Cambria announced that it had consented to chief executive Mark Lavery, finance director James Mullins and Tim Duckers, managing director of the Motor Division, exploring a possible acquisition at a price of 80 pence per share in cash.

Discussions between the parties are ongoing, the company said today.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 22:36:40|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday stressed adhering to the direction of building world-class universities with Chinese characteristics to serve national rejuvenation as he visited Tsinghua University ahead of its 110th anniversary.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, extended congratulations to Tsinghua's faculty, students and alumni at home and abroad on behalf of the CPC Central Committee. He also sent greetings to young students across China.

Xi said as the new journey to fully build a modern socialist China has begun, the cause of the Party and the country is in unprecedented need of higher education, scientific knowledge and outstanding talents.

China's higher education should make contributions to the prosperity of the country, the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and the well-being of the people, Xi said.

He encouraged young people in China to rise up to the mission of national rejuvenation. 
April 19, 2021 - At the current rate of change, it will take more than 200 years for the proportion of women in orthopaedic surgery to reach parity with the overall medical profession, according to a study in Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research (CORR), a publication of The Association of Bone and Joint Surgeons. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

"Substantive changes must be made across all levels of orthopaedic education and leadership to steepen the current curve," concludes the report by Atul F. Kamath, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and colleagues. "Our findings support the need for changes in medical schools, orthopaedic residency programs, as well as at the level of professional specialty and subspecialty societies."

Orthopaedic surgery remains 'dead last in gender diversity'

The researchers queried the National Provider Identifier Registry of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which requires clinicians to identify themselves as male or female. As of April 2020, the registry included data on 31,296 practicing orthopaedic surgeons, of whom 8 percent were women. That's far lower than the proportion of women in the medical profession overall: 36 percent in 2019.

Between 2010 and 2019, the compound annual growth rate of women orthopaedic surgeons was 2 percent (20 percent over the decade). Assuming this rate were sustained after 2019, it would take 217 years - until 2236 - to achieve gender parity with the rest of the medical profession. Time to achieve parity with the US population - currently 51 percent female - would be 326 years, or until 2354.

The researchers also analyzed trends by orthopaedic subspecialty and by region. In 2019, women accounted for 26 percent of surgeons in pediatric orthopaedics and 14 percent in foot and ankle surgery, but only 3 percent in adult reconstructive surgery and 3 percent in spinal surgery. After 2019, the gains in subspecialty representation are projected to be just 1 or 2 percent, with no growth in adult reconstructive surgery.

The Midwest had the greatest growth in proportion of women orthopaedic surgeons, 27 percent; followed by the Northeast, 20 percent. Rates in the West and South were 17 percent and 19 percent, respectively: less than the rate of national growth.

Dr. Kamath and colleagues call for changes throughout orthopaedics to hasten the rate of change. Medical schools should offer an orthopaedic surgery rotation to foster interest among women students and to help curb concerns related to work-life balance and a culture dominated by men. The authors also suggest benchmarks to increase the proportion of women trainees and faculty in orthopaedic surgery training programs, particularly in the South and West; and more women among the leadership of orthopaedic subspecialty societies.

In an accompanying 'Take 5' interview with Dr. Kamath, CORR Editor-in-Chief Seth S. Leopold, MD, writes: "Literally every other medical and surgical specialty has overcome this problem to a greater degree than has orthopaedic surgery; we're dead last in gender diversity." He calls on his specialty to stop paying "lip service" to "the substantial absence of women from our specialty and the lack of progress towards remedying the disparity over time."

Dr. Kamath believes the orthopaedic community should seek help from other fields that have been more successful in increasing representation of women: "It is not impossible to achieve gender parity; we just have to actually acknowledge that it is a problem, and then do something about it."

"We applaud these authors for highlighting this critical issue," comments Julie Samora, MD. Dr. Samora is President of the Ruth Jackson Orthopaedic Society, a support and networking group for the growing number of women orthopaedic surgeons. "The projection of over 300 years to achieve gender parity with the US population is alarming."

"We are missing out on outstanding talent and doing a disservice to our patients," Dr. Samora adds. "The time is now to commit to action, to have intentional efforts to increase the representation of women in orthopedics. Improving gender diversity will not only make our programs and profession better, but will also improve the overall care of our patients."

###

Click here to read "How Long Will It Take to Reach Gender Parity in Orthopaedic Surgery in the United States? An Analysis of the National Provider Identifier Registry."

DOI: 10.1097/CORR.0000000000001724

###

About CORR

Devoted to disseminating new and important orthopaedic knowledge, Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research is a leading peer-reviewed orthopaedic journal and a publication of The Association of Bone and Joint Surgeons. CORR brings readers the latest clinical and basic research and informed opinions that shape today's orthopaedic practice, thereby providing an opportunity to practice evidence-based medicine. With contributions from leading clinicians and researchers around the world, we aim to be the premier journal providing an international perspective advancing knowledge of the musculoskeletal system.

About the Association of Bone & Joint Surgeons

The mission of The Association of Bone and Joint Surgeons is to advance the science and practice of orthopaedic surgery by creating, evaluating, and disseminating new knowledge and by facilitating interaction among all orthopedic specialties. Founded in 1947 as the "American Bone and Joint Association," ABJS membership is offered by invitation only to orthopaedic surgeons who have been certified by the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery.

About Wolters Kluwer

Wolters Kluwer (WKL) is a global leader in professional information, software solutions, and services for the clinicians, nurses, accountants, lawyers, and tax, finance, audit, risk, compliance, and regulatory sectors. We help our customers make critical decisions every day by providing expert solutions that combine deep domain knowledge with advanced technology and services.

Wolters Kluwer reported 2020 annual revenues of 4.6 billion. The group serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries, and employs approximately 19,200 people worldwide. The company is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands.

Wolters Kluwer provides trusted clinical technology and evidence-based solutions that engage clinicians, patients, researchers and students in effective decision-making and outcomes across healthcare. We support clinical effectiveness, learning and research, clinical surveillance and compliance, as well as data solutions. For more information about our solutions, visit https:/ / www. wolterskluwer. com/ en/ health and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter @WKHealth.
The results of Jo Davidson's DNA match were finally revealed during Sunday's very dramatic show - confirming that she is indeed related to Tommy Hunter.

And some eagle-eyed fans have now said they've spotted a hidden post-it note which goes even further to claim the police officer is 'both his niece and daughter'.

Several viewers took to Twitter after noticing the easy-to-miss clue and started to theorise how and why Jo [Kelly Macdonald] got involved with the OCG.

Shock development: Eagle-eyed viewers claimed they had discovered the real relationship between Jo Davidson (pictured) and Tommy Hunter after Sunday's Line of Duty episode

At the start of Sunday's show, Steve Arnott [Martin Compson] told Kate Fleming [Vicky McClure] about the DNA match, with Ted Hastings [Adrian Dunbar] declaring that Jo had 'pulled the wool over her eyes'.

Arnott told Kate, who has been working for her new gaffer throughout the latest series, that there was a partial match and spoke about 'homozygosity in their DNA'.

His update left Kate reeling as 'homozygosity' suggests that Davidson and Hunter are very closely related and there could even be some incest in the family tree.

This only added to the buzz when avid fans later claimed they spotted a post-it note pinned against Tommy Hunter's picture in the show.

Giving it away? Taking to Twitter, several people shared a moment from the episode which saw a yellow note by the side of Tommy Hunter's picture

Sharing it on Twitter, one person explained how it read: 'Jo Davidson's DNA has been identified at Farida Jatri's house. A match has been made to TOMMY HUNTER, stating she is both his niece and daughter.'

Explaining the term, one fan wrote: 'In case anyone missed the homozygosity reference in @Line_of_duty it basically means Jo Davidson is both Tommy Hunter's daughter AND niece.'

And armed with this new information, it didn't take long for fans to start coming up with new theories to explain Jo's behaviour.

One fan suggested: 'Jo is Tommy Hunters niece and daughter with the homozygosity in their DNA but did the incest continue and Ryan is Jo's son, the lingering looks between them, the over the top way he calls her Ma'am (mum) and someone had to have fast tracked him into MIT.'

It read: 'November 2020. Jo Davidson's DNA has been identified at Farida Jatri's house. A match has been made to TOMMY HUNTER, stating she is both his niece and daughter'

Here come the theories: It didn't take long for fans to suggest their own ideas about the relationship between Davidson and Hunter

And another said: 'Jo says she hasn't any family. I think it's because she doesn't want it known that she is Tommy Hunter's daughter as she'd most likely lose her job. Hence why OCG have a hold over her.'

While someone else suggested: 'So Tommy Hunter most likely raped his sister and that's what Steve meant about homozygosity. Post it note says Jo is both his niece and daughter .'

Tommy's name was most recently brought up to John Corbett - who is now dead - by Lisa McQueen in the second episode of series five. She told Corbett that Hunter was the leader of the OCG before he was a part of the syndicate.

While head of the OCG, Tommy groomed Matthew 'Dot' Cottan as a teenager, before encouraging him to join the police as a mole for the crime gang.

Viewers will also recall that he has links to Ryan Pilkington, who worked for him as a juvenile delinquent.

Unexpected: Arnott had left Kate looking stunned after speaking about the 'homozygosity' in the DNA results during the show

Tommy was 'killed off' during series two after being ambushed while being moved into witness protection and then later murdered in hospital.

Elsewhere in Sunday's episode, which saw an eye-popping 10m viewers tune in to see what was coming next int he drama, fans were sent wild as it ended on a nail-biting cliffhanger as Kate and Ryan were locked in a showdown.

After viewers learnt about Davidson's relationship with Hunter, the fifth episode ended with Vicky McClure's character Kate Fleming in a tense showdown with Ryan Pilkington, played by Gregory Piper.

Soon after the show aired, Twitter was flooded with wild reaction from fans, who demanded bosses show the next episode now, as the suspense was too much to wait another week to see the outcome of the shoot off.

However some fans are convinced the series six trailer gives away who survives the shoot out between DI Fleming and PC Pilkington.

Yet keen fans have claimed they already know the outcome from watching the trailer, while Adrian Dunbar - who plays Superintendent Hastings - has revealed that there's already been 'a very big clue' about what happens in next week's episode.

Putting their amateur detective skills to the test, several Line of Duty fans took to Twitter after Sunday's show to suggest that the series six trailer had the answers.

Line Of Stress! Line Of Duty fans were also sent wild on Sunday evening as the latest episode ended on a nail-biting cliffhanger as Kate and Ryan were locked in a showdown

Wah! The fifth episode ended with Vicky McClure's character Kate Fleming in a tense showdown with Ryan Pilkington, played by Gregory Piper

They were quick to point out one blink-and-you-miss-it scene which sees Kate standing next to Acting Detective Superintendent Jo Davidson [Kelly Macdonald] - which has yet to air on the show.

Fans thus deduced the scene must happen in the aftermath of the shooting - indicating Kate survives. Although nothing is known of Ryan's fate.

One person declared: 'Screen grab from #Lineofduty session 6 @BBC trailer. #katefleming looks p***ed, #jodavidson has her hands in the air. THIS SCENE HASN'T OCCURRED YET. #katefleming lives for at least 1 more episode.'

And another wrote: 'Nah shes no dead! Major spoiler if you Look back at the original season 6 trailer - both Jo and Kate get stopped by armed police, exact same clothes they were wearing just now. I reckon Ryan either missed or the second shot was Jo.'

Adrian appeared to back up the theories as he appeared as the first guest back in the Good Morning Britain studio on Monday, pointing fans away from the misspelt 'definately' but insisting many 'already know' her fate.

Look what you've caused: Davidson seemed genuinely distraught when she thought Kate could be shot, however it was her messages that got her in the position

Reflecting on Sunday's dramatic show, Adrian said: 'Great cliffhanger again, Jed loves his cliffhangers. And a lot of LOD fans know [what's coming next for Kate]

Presenter Adil Ray then jumped in asking: 'Theyve worked it out you mean?'

Adrian continued, knowingly nodding his head: 'A lot of Line of Duty fans know whats going on. All will be revealed in the fullness of time.'

Susanna then despaired as she said: 'I feel like you're giving us a really heavy piece of information that I can't for the life of me work out.'

Have they cracked it? Line Of Duty fans are convinced the series six trailer gives away who survives the shoot out between DI Fleming and PC Pilkington

Adrian then dropped the bombshell: 'Yes, theres been a very big clue. Im giving you a scoop. As the first guest back on the show, I am giving you a massive scoop.

'Theres a clue out there as to what happens next.'

Viewers were also left reeling after fan favourite Ted Hastings was tipped as being the elusive H again, and Ryan left in a standoff with DI Kate.

In typical AC-12 style, a twist emerged in the form of a throwback clue to the 2019 series showing the word definitely misspelt as 'definately' in Davidson's messages - a clue that previously suggested Hastings could be one of the bent coppers he is so hellbent on finding.

What's next? Although fans were already reeling with the twist, the show ended with shock, with the tense cliffhanger seeing PC Pilkington drawing his gun at DI Fleming
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / April 19, 2021 / Amarc Resources Ltd. ("Amarc" or the "Company") (TSXV:AHR)(OTCQB:AXREF) is pleased to announce it has entered into an Exploration Agreement (the "Agreement") with Lake Babine First Nation (the "Lake Babine") of Burns Lake, British Columbia ("BC"). The Agreement will guide ongoing interactions between Amarc and the Lake Babine with respect to the DUKE Cu-Au District.

The Lake Babine's traditional territory includes Amarc's DUKE Cu-Au Project, located 80 km northeast of Smithers in central BC. The Agreement was negotiated by Amarc and Lake Babine representatives over the past several months to define how respectful and productive engagement between the parties should proceed, as well as an approach for cooperative planning and achieving mutual benefit.

"We've enjoyed a positive and productive relationship with the elected leadership of the Lake Babine First Nation, as well as their communities and members, for a number of years as our exploration activities at DUKE have advanced," said Dr. Diane Nicolson, Amarc President & CEO.

"We're thrilled to announce today a formal agreement that will guide how respectful engagement and cooperation will proceed in the future, and how benefits will be shared. It's an important step, and we extend our thanks to the Lake Babine for sharing their vision for economic and social development in their territory, and for the consistency and goodwill of their leadership."

Lake Babine Chief Gordon Alec said the Agreement signed with Amarc is consistent with his Nation's pursuit of a healthy, traditional and prosperous future for its members, through good governance and responsible management of its territories.

"We welcome investment in responsible resource development in our territory so long as it is pursued with honesty and respect and in a way that creates meaningful opportunities for our people," Chief Alec said.

"This Exploration Agreement is not an end point but a starting point for our relationship with Amarc. It ensures that the protocols and commitments are in place now to develop a mutually beneficial relationship and a partnership for the future."

The DUKE Cu-Au District comprises 704 km2 of provincial mineral claims, in which the Company holds a 100% interest. The Project includes the DUKE porphyry Cu deposit and a series of new and compelling porphyry Cu style exploration targets. The Company has synthesized valuable public and historical exploration data from across the DUKE tenure with its own geological information, collected using modern surface and subsurface mineral exploration techniques and analysis, to define the district-wide Cu-Au potential of the DUKE Project.

Amarc has drilling and ground geophysical survey permits in place to conduct further exploration work at DUKE in 2021. The Company uses the well-developed transportation and power infrastructure in the Babine Region to support its field crews undertaking exploration activities.

Amarc is currently planning both an expanded drill program at the DUKE deposit with the goal of establishing a mineral resource to provide the basis to commence preliminary engineering and economic studies, and ground exploration surveys to advance the high potential Cu-Au exploration targets within the District. More information about the DUKE District can be found at https://amarcresources.com/projects/duke-project/highlights/.

About Lake Babine First Nation

Lake Babine Nation (LBN) is the third largest First Nation in British Columbia with over 2,700 members. LBN members are Nadut'en speaking people. LBN is home to five communities of Old Fort, Donald's Landing, Fort Babine, Tachet and Woyenne and has 27 reserves. LBN's administrative centre of Woyenne is located in Burns Lake BC, 228 km north of Prince George.

About Amarc Resources Ltd.

Amarc is a mineral exploration and development company with an experienced and successful management team focused on developing a new generation of long-life, high-value BC porphyry copper-gold mines. By combining high-demand projects with successful management, Amarc has created a solid platform to create value from its exploration and development-stage assets.

Amarc is advancing the 100%-owned IKE, DUKE and JOY porphyry coppergold deposit projects located in different prolific porphyry districts in southern, central and northern BC, respectively. Importantly, each of the three projects is located in proximity to industrial infrastructure - including power, highways and rail. These projects represent significant potential for the development of multiple and important-scale, porphyry coppergold deposits.

Amarc is associated with HDI, a diversified, global mining company with a 30-year history of porphyry discovery and development success. Previous and current HDI projects include some of BC's and the world's most important porphyry deposits - such as Pebble, Mount Milligan, Kemess South, Kemess North, Gibraltar, Prosperity, Xietongmen, Newtongmen, Florence, Casino, Sisson, Maggie, IKE and Pine. From its head office in Vancouver, Canada, HDI applies its unique strengths and capabilities to acquire, develop, operate and monetize mineral projects.

Amarc works closely with local governments, indigenous groups and other stakeholders in order to advance its mineral projects responsibly, and to do so in a manner that contributes to sustainable community and economic development. We pursue early and meaningful engagement to ensure our mineral exploration and development activities are well coordinated and broadly supported, address local priorities and concerns, and optimize opportunities for collaboration. In particular, we seek to establish mutually beneficial partnerships with indigenous groups within whose traditional territories its projects are located, through the provision of jobs, training programs, contract opportunities, capacity funding agreements and sponsorship of community events. All Amarc's work programs are carefully planned to achieve high levels of environmental and social performance.

Qualified Person as Defined Under National Instrument 43-101

Mark Rebagliati, P. Eng., a Qualified Person as defined under National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the technical content in this release.

For further details on Amarc Resources Ltd., please visit the Company's website at www.amarcresources.com or contact Dr. Diane Nicolson, President and CEO, at (604) 684-6365 or within North America at 1-800-667-2114.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

Dr. Diane Nicolson

President and CEO

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor any other regulatory authority accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward Looking and other Cautionary Information

This news release includes certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements". All such statements, other than statements of historical facts that address exploration drilling, exploitation activities and other related events or developments are forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Assumptions used by the Company to develop forward-looking statements include the following: Amarc's projects will obtain all required environmental and other permits and all land use and other licenses, studies and exploration of Amarc's projects will continue to be positive, and no geological or technical problems will occur. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include market prices, potential environmental issues or liabilities associated with exploration, development and mining activities, exploitation and exploration successes, continuity of mineralization, uncertainties related to the ability to obtain necessary permits, licenses and tenure and delays due to third party opposition, changes in and the effect of government policies regarding mining and natural resource exploration and exploitation, exploration and development of properties located within Aboriginal groups asserted territories may affect or be perceived to affect asserted aboriginal rights and title, which may cause permitting delays or opposition by Aboriginal groups, continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions, as well as risks relating to the uncertainties with respect to the effects of COVID-19. Investors are cautioned that any such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. For more information on Amarc Resources Ltd., investors should review Amarc's annual Form 20-F filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission at www.sec.gov and its home jurisdiction filings that are available at www.sedar.com.

SOURCE: Amarc Resources Ltd.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/640802/Amarc-Signs-Exploration-Agreement-with-Lake-Babine-Nation
The Ambassador of the United States of America to Ghana H.E Stephanie S. Sullivan on Friday 16th April paid a courtesy call on the Director- General of the National Disaster management Organization of Ghana (NADMO) Hon. Eric Nana Agyemang-Prempeh at the Headquarters of Nadmo Accra.



The Ambassador H.E Stephanie S. Sullivan was accompanied by LTC Mark Mcevers NDNG State Partnership Program Director Ghana-Togo-Benin, Maj. Jarrod R. Simek Regional Bilateral Affairs Officer. Ghana-Togo-Benin and Kevin Brown Supervisory Program Officer.



The US delegation was received by the Director General of Nadmo Hon Eric Nana Agyeman-Prempeh, Madam Charlotte Nana Norman Director, Climate Change Adaptation DRR and Mr. Nana Asafo-Adjei Director, International Relations and Protocol.



The two parties discussed key issues bothering on Disaster preparation, communication, prevention and response, Hon. Agyemang-Prempeh used the opportunity to outline the commitment of the Ghana Government led by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to fighting disaster particularly earthquake, flood and fire outbreaks in the country.



Mr Agyemang-Prempeh presented the outcome of the stakeholders consultative conference organised by the Ministry of Interior and NADMO to the Ambassador and appeal for support from the American Government to help in implementing the key actions plans of the framework.



The Ambassador used the opportunity to enquire about the status of the perineal northern floods , which in response The Director General enumerated Governments initiative and construction of the Pwalugu dam project with the assurance to her that he would keep her updated with developments.



The Ambassador further pledged to work closely with NADMO in finding solutions to disaster challenges of the country, she also admonished NADMO Ghana to work closely with the neighbouring counties on issues relating to disaster.



The DG of NADMO used the opportunity to outline the commitment of the Ghana Government led by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to fighting disaster particularly earthquake, flood and fire outbreaks in the country.



The Ambassador pledged to work closely with NADMO which is the lead Cordinating agency in disaster management in Ghana to help in infinding solutions to disaster problems of the country, she also admonished MADMO Ghana to work closely with the neighbouring counties on issues relating to disaster.





Source: Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
STAMFORD, Conn., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Aircastle Limited ("Aircastle") announced today that it has delivered an Embraer E195-E2 aircraft to KLM Cityhopper. This is the first of fifteen E195-E2 aircraft that Aircastle will deliver to KLM through 2024. The next E195-E2 is expected to be delivered by Aircastle before the end of April 2021. The Embraer E195-E2 is both quieter and more economical than its predecessor, with a noise footprint that is 63% smaller and fuel-burn that is reduced by 9% per flight, meaning that carbon emissions that are 31% lower per passenger.

Mike Inglese, Aircastle's Chief Executive Officer, commented, "Aircastle's first E195-E2 delivery to KLM represents a significant milestone in a difficult period for the aviation industry. We are proud to be playing a meaningful role in KLM's fleet renewal, facilitating a shift to more environmentally conscious operations and helping KLM meet their goal of reducing their carbon footprint by at least 50% per passenger by 2030."

Mr. Inglese concluded, "We look forward to being a valued and trusted partner to KLM for many years to come as they promote their industry leading sustainability initiatives. We will be delivering fourteen additional E195-E2 to KLM through 2024."

Warner Rootliep, Managing Director KLM Cityhopper: "Our fleet renewal with the Embraer E195-E2 enables us to make a good contribution to making our operation more sustainable and also fits perfectly within our Fly Responsibly approach. The efficient, more sustainable and comfortable E2 will further strengthen our competitive position."

About Aircastle Limited

Aircastle Limited acquires, leases, and sells commercial jet aircraft to airlines throughout the world. As of November 30, 2020, Aircastle owned and managed on behalf of its joint ventures 269 aircraft leased to 80 customers located in 45 countries.

Contact:

Aircastle Advisor LLC

Frank Constantinople, SVP Investor Relations

Tel: +1-203-504-1063

[email protected]

SOURCE Aircastle Limited

Related Links

http://www.aircastle.com


Nearly every place you visit in the Caribbean offers gorgeous views, incredible wildlife and sea creatures and beautiful beaches.

It is an ideal location for anyone who truly appreciates a once-in-a-lifetime photo opportunity. Here are eight Caribbean locations you can take some amazing photographs in.

1. Devil's Bridge, Antigua

Many cruises from Florida will take you through the Caribbean and there are some locations you won't want to miss. Comprised of a natural rock bridge filled with numerous natural blowholes, Devil's Bridge offers amazing views of the surrounding ocean as well as some memorable water action to photograph. If you time it right, you'll catch waves blown by the tradewinds as they crash into the formation causing incredible water plumes shooting high into the air. Walking around you'll find numerous spots to perfect your craft photographing rock formations, waves and shoreline.

2. Tobago Cays Marine Park, The Grenadines

The ultimate in tropical destinations, Tobago Cays Marine park contains five gorgeous uninhabited islands that will be great for capturing sailboats, palm trees, and seascapes. You won't run out of inspiration as you are surrounded by sunny scenes. Visit the shallow reefs to snap some sea creatures and intricate coral structures. A sailboat tour through the islands will offer additional opportunities to document the beauty all through the islands.

3. Great Etang National Park, Grenada

A hike through the rainforest will certainly bring many amazing photos to your portfolio. Gorgeous exotic birds abound in the vast forests. Be sure to make one of the region's extraordinary waterfalls the final destination on your hike. Your hard work to make it to the top will pay off when you get the shot of a lifetime.

4. The Pitons, St. Lucia

Featuring both mountains and a beautiful coastline, you won't run out of material visiting this destination. The peaks of Petit Piton and Gros Piton offer great photos from shore or from out on a boat in the water. The surrounding mountains and beaches will also keep you busily snapping away.

5. Old Havana, Cuba

If you prefer photographing buildings and people, check out Old Havana for great shots all around town. It is filled with old Colonial buildings full of character, culturally significant landmarks and classic American cars that look right at home in its streets. Include some of the locals in your photos and collect their stories along the way.

6. Stingray City, The Cayman Islands

Offering stunning clear water, Stingray City is the perfect place to practice your underwater photography skills. Snorkel with the area's namesake sea creatures to capture them in action. You won't tire of watching them move majestically through the water while you snap away at some great action shots. When you tire of snorkeling, spend some time on the gorgeous Cayman beaches and catch some great horizon, sunset or sunrise photos.

7. Grace Bay, Turks and Caicos

You won't ever want to leave the beautiful white sand beaches of Grace Bay. Crystal blue water surrounds the blindingly white beaches to make for some amazing photo opportunities. The contrast of blue sky and blue ocean to the sand photographs beautifully. This is the perfect location to enjoy an amazing vacation and go home with some even more amazing photos to remember it by.

8. Renaissance Island, Aruba

The population of gorgeous pink flamingos living on Renaissance Island will give you the opportunity for some beautiful, colorful photos. Be sure to also capture some shots of the cool overwater bungalows on this private island. The beaches and an interesting shoreline will give you even more to photograph while you enjoy the perks of the island.

Whether you are an amateur who wants to capture lifetime memories or a professional looking to build your portfolio, the Caribbean offers endless photo opportunities you can grab while also soaking up the sun. Check out one or all of these amazing locations for some of the best pictures you have taken.
DUBLIN, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "2021 Asia-Pacific Power Rental Market With Covid-19 Impact" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The Asia Pacific Power Generation Rental market research report includes market size, growth rates, vertical end user split, competitive market share data and revenue forecasts from 2020-2027 for the Asia Pacific region with a with COVID-19 impact. The study is a comprehensive analysis including market share splits by fuel type (diesel-based vs. gas-based), generator size (<_00 kw_="kw_" _00kw-1="_00kw-1">1 MW), application (prime, continuous, standby), end user group (mining, utilities, manufacturing, oil & gas, construction, others), and rental provider. Furthermore, profiles of key companies, growth drivers, restraints, challenges, and quotations from industry participants are also included in this analysis of the temporary power opportunity.

The Asia Pacific Power Rental Market is highly competitive and fragmented. The market contains many local companies competing against each other and trying to gain a foothold. The market is projected to experience a steady growth rate during the forecast period (2020-2027). Drivers include increasing demand for power, poor grid infrastructure, and frequent power outages caused by natural disasters.

This study aims to provide a detailed analysis on the Asia Pacific Power Rental Market along with a competitive analysis for the year 2020.

The market numbers included in this report represent revenues generated from the rental of generator sets. The base year for the study is 2020 and the forecast period is from 2020 until 2027.

This study captures the following information on Asia Pacific Power Rental Market:

Market Size, Growth Rate, Revenue Forecasts (2020-2027)

Growth Drivers & Restraints

Market Data

Quotes by Key Industry Participants

Market Share Analysis

Market Trends

Key Topics Covered:



I. Research Scope

II. Market Definitions

III. Methodology

IV. Asia Pacific Power Rental Market: Executive Summary

a. Market Growth Trends

b. COVID-19 Impact

c. Opportunities

d. Future Trends

e. Competitive Factors

V. Asia Pacific Power Rental Market: Market Drivers and Impact

VI. Asia Pacific Power Rental Market: Market Restraints and Impact

VII. Asia Pacific Power Rental Market: Market Trends

a. Alternative Fuels

b. Energy Efficiency

c. Technology

d. Carbon Emission

e. Emerging Opportunities

VIII. COVID-19 Impact

a. COVID-19 Impact

b. Impact on Mining

c. Impact on Construction

d. Impact on Automotive Manufacturing

IX. Market Data

a. Revenue Forecast, 2020-2027

b. Market Drivers' Impact, 2020-2027

c. Market Share of Companies by Revenue, Asia Pacific, 2020

d. Market Share by Revenue, End User Industry (Mining, Utilities, Manufacturing,

Oil & Gas, Construction, Others) , Asia Pacific, 2020

e. Market Share by Revenue, by Fuel Type (Diesel-based vs. Gas-based), Asia Pacific, 2020

f. Market Shares by Revenues, by Generator Size (<_00 kw_="kw_" _00="_00" kw-1="kw-1"> 1MW), Asia Pacific, 2020

g. Market Shares by Revenues, by Application (Prime, Continuous, Standby), Asia Pacific, 2020

X. Company Profiles

XI. About the Analyst



Companies Mentioned

Aggreko plc

APR Energy LLC

Atlas Copco AB

Aver Asia (S) Pte Ltd

(S) Pte Ltd CAPS Australia Pty Ltd

Caterpillar Inc.

Coates Hire Ltd

Cummins Inc

East Coast Generators

Energy Power Systems Australia Pty Ltd

GoRental LLP

Hirepool Ltd.

Kohler Co. (Clarke Energy)

Macfarlane Generators Pty. Limited

Pace Power & Air

PowerGen Australia Pty Ltd

PR Power Australia

PT Sumberdaya Sewatama

RMG Industrial

Total Generators

TransDiesel Ltd

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/8jz8v3

About ResearchAndMarkets.com

ResearchAndMarkets.com is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

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SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com


Facebook's plan to introduce technology that could aid online paedophiles will be heavily criticised by Priti Patel today.

In a major intervention, the Home Secretary will say that social media companies have a 'moral duty' to protect children from harm on the web.

She will warn that progress made in tackling online sex abuse will be undermined by 'encryption technology'  which is intended to improve online privacy but will make it virtually impossible to trace sex offenders.

It comes as children's charity the NSPCC publishes research showing a majority of the public believe protecting young people online is more important than web privacy.

Facebook's plan to introduce technology that could aid online paedophiles will be heavily criticised by Priti Patel (pictured) today

Miss Patel will say: 'Sadly, at a time when we need to be taking more action, Facebook are pursuing end-to-end encryption plans that place the good work and progress achieved so far in jeopardy.

'The offending will continue, the images of children being abused will proliferate  but the company intends to blind itself to this problem through end-to-end encryption which prevents all access to messaging content. This is not acceptable.

'We cannot allow a situation where law enforcement's ability to tackle abhorrent criminal acts and protect victims is severely hampered.

'Simply removing accounts from a platform is nowhere near enough.'

In a major intervention, the Home Secretary will say that social media companies have a 'moral duty' to protect children from harm on the web (stock image)

Government, law enforcement and tech companies all 'have a moral duty to act', she will say in a speech at an NSPCC online safety conference.

It comes as an NSPCC poll, conducted by YouGov, showed public support for end-to-end encryption would almost double if platforms could demonstrate children's safety would not be compromised.

Major tech firms currently use a range of technology to identify child abuse images and detect grooming and sexual abuse in private messages.

But concerns have been raised that proposals to end-to-end encrypt Facebook Messenger and Instagram would render these tools useless.

She will warn that progress made in tackling online sex abuse will be undermined by 'encryption technology'  which is intended to improve online privacy but will make it virtually impossible to trace sex offenders

There are estimates that 70% of global child abuse reports could be lost, according to the NSPCC.

The NSPCC says there is currently too much emphasis on the investigation of abuse after it has already taken place, rather than focusing on the loss of platforms' ability to detect and disrupt abuse earlier.

Sir Peter Wanless, NSPCC chief executive, said: 'Private messaging is the frontline of child sexual abuse but the current debate around end-to-end encryption risks leaving children unprotected where there is most harm.

'The public wants an end to rhetoric that heats up the issue but shines little light on a solution, so it's in firms' interests to find a fix that allows them to continue to use tech to disrupt abuse in an end-to-end encrypted world.'

The NSPCC survey found that 33% of UK adults support using end-to-end encryption on social media and messaging services, a figure which rose 62% if tech firms could ensure children's safety was protected.

Concerns have been raised that proposals to end-to-end encrypt Facebook Messenger and Instagram would render these tools useless (stock image)

It also found that more than half (55%) of adults believe the ability to detect child abuse images is more important than the right to privacy.

Over 90% supported social networks and messaging services having the technical ability to detect child abuse images on their sites.

Some 91% supported a technical ability to detect adults sending sexual images to children on their services.

Sir Peter continued: 'We need a coordinated response across society, but ultimately Government must be the guardrail that protects child users if tech companies choose to put them at risk with dangerous design choices.'

Ms Patel is also expected to call on Facebook to deepen their engagement with the Government to embed the safety of the public in their system designs.

A Facebook spokesperson said: 'Child exploitation has no place on our platforms and Facebook will continue to lead the industry in developing new ways to prevent, detect and respond to abuse.

'End-to-end encryption is already the leading security technology used by many services to keep people safe from hackers and criminals.

'Its full rollout on our messaging services is a long-term project and we are building strong safety measures into our plans.'
It felt like everyone had a baby in their arms at Melbourne Airport on Monday morning. But it was the adults shedding tears, as the Australia-New Zealand travel bubble brought families separated by COVID-19 together again.

I was thinking it wasnt going to happen until we had the vaccine, said Christina Cassin after touching down from Wellington just before 9am and embracing her five-month-old grandson Wolfe for the first time in the arrival hall.

But when they opened that bubble up I just knew I had to come on the first flight.

Christina Cassin meets her new grandson Wolfe Rodgers, with her daughter Stacey and granddaughter Peyton. Credit:Justin McManus

The opening of the long-awaited bubble means people can travel freely between the two countries without going into quarantine, for the first time since their borders shut in March last year as the coronavirus spread rapidly around the world.
Officials from the Pawtucket School District, the State of Rhode Island, and the City of Pawtucket joined representatives from Colliers, The S/L/A/M Collaborative, and Gilbane Building Company to celebrate the official groundbreaking of the 93,000-SF Henry J. Winters Elementary School in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

Henry J. Winters Elementary School will welcome 600 plus students in grades pre-K through fifth upon its completion in 2022. Through purposeful design, the school will offer Pawtuckets youngest learners an enriching environment for learning infused with science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics components to bolster 21st century learning.

During his ceremonial remarks, Rhode Island General Treasurer Seth Magaziner noted, Every child deserves facilities that are warm, safe and dry and that prepare them for a future of success. As a former public school teacher, I know firsthand the deep and lasting impacts facilities can have on a students ability to learn. I am pleased that the statewide school construction plan we enacted has delivered millions of dollars to the Winters School project and dozens of other projects across the state, and I congratulate the City of Pawtucket on being a leader in putting these resources to work.

The new elementary school will be a welcomed addition to the neighborhood and play a large role in Pawtuckets ongoing revitalization. Considerations for a student drop-off area with optimal traffic flow, increased security measures, as well as energy efficient HVAC systems have all been incorporated into the buildings design and will provide students and staff with a state-of-the-art facility in which to teach and learn.

The Henry J. Winters Elementary School is slated for completion by the summer of 2022.

About Gilbane Building Company

Gilbane provides a full slate of construction and facilities-related services  from pre-construction planning and integrated consulting capabilities to comprehensive construction management, general contracting, design-build and facility management services  for clients across various markets. Founded in 1870 and still a privately held, family-owned company, Gilbane has more than 46 office locations worldwide. For more information, visit http://www.gilbaneco.com.


A fire in New Bedford early Monday killed two people and left dozens more displaced, according to authorities.

The fire broke out at two mixed-use residential and commercial buildings on Acushnet Avenue, leaving roughly 40 residents displaced, according to a statement from acting New Bedford Fire Chief Scott Kruger.

Sadly, two fatalities have been confirmed as of this morning, he wrote. The thoughts of the New Bedford Fire Department are with the victims and their families. Next of kin have not yet been notified, so further details will be provided at a later time.

As of around 11:30 a.m., New Bedford firefighters were still at the scene of the fire, continuing to examine the structures that were ablaze, according to Kruger.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation by the New Bedford Police and Fire Departments, the State Fire Marshals Office and Massachusetts State Police.

An update from Acting Fire Chief Scott Kruger regarding this mornings fire on Acushnet Avenue. An early morning... Posted by New Bedford Fire Department on Monday, April 19, 2021

The city, the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army are offering services to those in need after the fire, according to New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell.

I am grateful for the swift and skillful response of our firefighters and the prompt support of all the responding agencies and organizations, he wrote in a statement. I wish to express my deepest sympathy for the families of the victims, along with the many residents and businesses that were displaced by the fire.

He noted the fire broke out in an area typically covered by New Bedfords Fire Station 8, which was previously expected to be taken offline in the future. According to Mitchell, though, while theres no basis to believe the response to Mondays fire would have been materially different without Engine 8s participation, no change to the stations status is planned for this fiscal year.

The economic effect of the pandemic of course has caused considerable strain on the citys finances, which prompted reductions in services across city government, including the Fire Department, the mayor said. Since that time, we have pursued alternate funding sources and are exploring solutions to streamline Fire Department operations that do not include the decommissioning of Engine 8.

The citys goal is to keep the Fire Department financially sustainable so it can deliver the services residents need, the mayor said.

While a reduction in operating expenses will be necessary to achieve this goal, my preference is to do so without taking Engine 8 offline, even beyond this fiscal year, he added.
Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who is accused of slandering a Russian World War Two veteran, stands inside a defendant dock during a court hearing in Moscow on Feb. 20, 2021. (Press Service of Babushkinsky District Court of Moscow/Handout via Reuters)

Hunger-Striking Navalny Being Transferred to Hospital

MOSCOWPrison doctors have decided to transfer Russias main opposition leader Alexei Navalny to hospital, its prison authority said on Monday, 20 days into a hunger strike that has brought international warnings of consequences should he die in jail.

Allies of Navalny, who have had no access to him since last week, said they were braced for bad news about his health. They are planning mass countrywide demonstrations later this week.

Navalnys case has further isolated Moscow at a time when U.S. President Joe Bidens administration has announced tougher economic sanctions and the Czech Republic, an EU and NATO member, has expelled Russian spies, accusing Moscow of a role in deadly 2014 explosions at an arms storage depot.

Russias prison service said in a statement that a decision had been taken to transfer Navalny, 44, to a regional prison hospital, although it did not make clear whether the transfer had already taken place.

It said his condition was satisfactory and he was being given vitamin therapy with his consent.

Ivan Zhdanov, head of Navalnys Anti-Corruption Foundation, called the move a transfer to the same torture colony, only with a bigger hospital, where they take seriously ill people.

So it can only be understood to mean Navalnys condition has worsened, and worsened in such a way that even the torturer admits it, he said on Twitter.

Opposition leader Alexei Navalny is escorted out of a police station in Khimki, outside Moscow, following the court ruling that ordered him jailed for 30 days, in Russia on Jan. 18, 2021. (Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images)

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny writes a note in a cage during a hearing on charges of defamation in the Babuskinsky District Court in Moscow on Feb. 12, 2021. (Babuskinsky District Court Press Service via AP)

Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner who achieved fame with viral videos cataloging the vast wealth accumulated by senior Russian officials he brands swindlers and thieves, is serving a two-and-a-half year sentence on old embezzlement charges that he calls trumped up.

He was arrested on returning to Russia in January after recuperating in Germany from what German authorities say was poisoning with a banned nerve agent in Russia, which he and Western governments called an attempted assassination. The Kremlin denies any blame.

Navalny went on hunger strike on March 31 to protest against what he said was the refusal of the prison authorities to provide him treatment for leg and back pain. Russia says he has been treated well and is exaggerating illness to gain attention.

The United States has warned Russia of unspecified consequences should Navalny die in Russian jail. EU foreign ministers were due to discuss the case on Monday.

The Kremlin said on Monday it would retaliate against any further sanctions and rejected foreign countries statements on the case. The state of health of those convicted and jailed on Russian territory cannot and should not be a theme of their interest, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Shrugging Off Pressure

Moscow has largely shrugged off international pressure since becoming a pariah to the West in 2014 when it seized Ukraines Crimea peninsula and backed an insurgency in eastern Ukraine.

Ukrainian servicemen with their tank close to the front line of clashes with Russian-backed separatists near Lysychansk, Ukraine, on April 7, 2021. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

But the arrival of a new administration in Washington in January could change the calculus if Biden presses ahead with tougher sanctions than under former President Donald Trump.

Moscow expelled 20 Czech diplomats on Sunday in retaliation for the Czech Republic expelling 18 Russians at the weekend, after Prague accused Russia of a role in the arms depot blasts.

The Czech Republic said on Monday that Moscows decision to expel more Czechs than it had expelled Russians was unexpected, and it called for a show of support from European allies.

The arms depot explosions in October and December 2014 came at a time when NATO was considering transferring Czech arms to Ukraine to help it fight Russian-backed separatists. Two people were found dead at the depot after the initial blast.

Prague said it had learned that two Russian agents, later accused by Britain of poisoning a former Russian spy in England, had been in the Czech Republic at the time of the blasts. Russia has denied any role.

A policeman walks by a poster attached by protesters to a gate of the Russian embassy in Prague, Czech Republic, on April 16, 2021. (Petr David Josek/AP Photo)

Last week Russia also expelled 10 U.S. diplomats in retaliation for U.S. expulsions of Russians and tougher U.S. sanctions imposed by the Biden administration.

Navalnys allies are calling for mass protests this week to save his life. The Russian authorities have banned such demonstrations, cracked down on organizers, and so far succeeded in preventing a sustained opposition movement in the streets. Police said on Monday that people should not participate in banned demonstrations.

Navalny ally Lyubov Sobol said his friends were braced for bad news about his health.

We dont know what happened to him over the weekend because the lawyers arent allowed to visit him then, she told Ekho Moskvy radio station. I think there is no hope we will receive good news about his health today. I think his state is really very close to critical, close to being very grave. Twenty days on hunger strikethat is an awful lot.

By Anton Zverev
(@fidahassanain)

The Interior Minister has said that negotiations were successfully carried out by the Punjab government, hoping that the matters will be resolved in the second round of talks.

ISLAMABAD: (UrduPoint/UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News-April 18th, 2021) Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid said on Monday that 11 policemen including a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) taken hostage by a religious group in Lahore were released.

Sheikh Rasheed said they held successful talks with Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP).

First round of talks have been successful after which TLP released the policemen it had held hostage. The second phase of talks will start after Sehri, announced Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed.

According to the Punjab Police, TLP workers attacked Nawankot police station early in the morning in Lahore and and took the policemen including a DSP hostage.

The Interior Minister said that negotiations were successfully carried out by the Punjab government and expressed hope that matters would be resolved in the second round of talks.

(Details to Follow)
The prodigal son: Coming home to God

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The Dutch artist Rembrandt created my favorite painting called Return of the Prodigal Son, which is on display at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. Rembrandt based his work on a story Jesus once told his disciples and the teachers of the law. Its the story of the unchanging heart of God and a man Jesus calls the prodigal son.

Jesus begins His story with a father who has two sons. The younger son says, essentially, Dad, I want my inheritance now. I want to make my own way in the world. In biblical times, if you were to tell your parents you wanted your inheritance, you were essentially telling them, I wish you were dead. Jesus' hearers wouldve thought, This son is not treating his father as he should.

Read more at: https://www.christianpost.com/voices/this-2000-year-old-story-still-calls-us-home.html
 "Qualifying Prosecutorial Immunity Through Brady Claims" | Main | New report highlights need for improved criminal justice data and means thereto 

April 19, 2021

Previewing how SCOTUS will sort through Rehaif reverberations

Writing over at SCOTUSblog here, Evan Lee effectively previews the pair of criminal cases that the SUpreme Cout will hear Tuesday morning. The post is titled "Pondering the aftermath of a landmark ruling in felon-in-possession cases," and here is how it starts and concludes:

On June 21, 2019, the Supreme Court handed down its opinion in Rehaif v. United States, holding that a conviction under the federal statute penalizing felons in possession of a firearm requires not only the defendants knowledge that he possessed a gun, but also that he knew he had the legal status of a convicted felon. The 7-2 decision overruled precedent in every circuit that had considered the issue. Rehaif applies to every federal felon-in-possession conviction not yet final as of the date of that decision. Now the question is whether some or all of those cases need to be sent back for new pleas or trials. On Tuesday, in the companion cases of Greer v. United States and United States v. Gary, the court will hear argument on how to sort out the affected cases. Greer asks whether jury verdicts are valid if there was no consideration at trial of whether the defendant knew of their felon status; Gary presents a similar question in the context of guilty pleas. Perhaps even more important than the issue of plea versus jury verdict is the question of whether the defendant should have to prove that he likely wouldnt have been convicted if knowledge of felon status had been an essential element of the offense when he was first charged. Still another critical question is what materials a court may look to in deciding whether the defendant suffered such prejudice.... At oral argument, if Justices Stephen Breyer (the author of Rehaif), Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor show no interest in the structural error argument, it may be doomed, as the more conservative justices seem unlikely to be more enthusiastic. Perhaps the most interesting thing that might emerge at argument is questioning about the psychology of felons. Can counsel for Greer and Gary offer a sufficiently plausible scenario or scenarios in which felons might not actually realize that they fit into the felon box for purposes of the statute? For example, do some felons erroneously believe that a guilty plea or suspended sentence keeps them out of that category? For that matter, do some felons believe that if they have paid their debt to society by serving their prison sentences, their felon status has been legally erased? Scenarios like these could give rise to some interesting hypotheticals at argument.

April 19, 2021 at 07:10 PM | Permalink

Comments

There is an excellent example of a juror who did not realize that he was a convicted felon, when he filled out his juror questionnaire and sat as a juror in a high profile Northern Kentucky murder trial. In October 2012, Shayna Hubers shot and killed her departing boyfriend (he was trying to break up with her), who was a 29-year old Northern Kentucky attorney. She was convicted at her first (2014) trial and sentenced to 40 years in prison. While her appeal was pending, her attorneys discovered that one of the jurors who sat on her jury, a 53-year old man with a 9th grade education, was a conviction felon. The juror tests out at a 3rd or 4th grade reading level. In 2016, the Court granted defendant's Motion to Vacate and Set Aside her conviction because a felon had sat on her jury (which is prohibited by the Kentucky Constitution). She was convicted again at her second trial (in 2018) and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after serving 25 years. Hubers's jail cellmate testified against her during the second trial. The juror honestly did not realize that his conviction (by guilty plea) at age 19 for "felony non-support" (not paying $8,250 of child support) was a felony. He never spent a day in jail. He was placed on probation and successfully paid all of the child support arrearages during his period of probation. Upon completion of probation, he was discharged. He had always believed that the conviction was a misdemeanor. Subsequently, he had legally bought guns, and had always passed the criminal background check. As difficult as it might be for some lawyers to believe, he made an honest mistake.

Posted by: Jim Gormley | Apr 19, 2021 10:21:01 PM

In my neck of the woods, the federal courts have not been too receptive to the claims when raised as plain error.

If defendant stipulated to his prior conviction (not that uncommon as it avoids the jury hearing what the conviction was for), the courts have excused the lack of additional evidence that defendant knew it was a conviction. And, most of the time, when the defendant does not stipulate, the evidence was pretty clear that it was a felony conviction (i.e. the defendant did time for it) and so, at least in the eyes of the judges, the jury would have found the knowledge element if they had been instructed on it.

Posted by: tmm | Apr 22, 2021 1:44:04 PM

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When the coronavirus halted Texas eviction proceedings in March 2020, no one expected that a patchwork of federal, state and local government protections would disrupt evictions well into 2021.

But its now clear that the moratoriums and millions of dollars in government aid for tenants and landlords worked as intended: From April 2020 through March 2021, landlords in Bexar County filed less than half as many eviction lawsuits as in the same period a year earlier, according to court data.

As long as we have this assistance ... I think everythings going to be fine, said Judge Roberto Vazquez, who oversees the justice of the peace court on the Northwest Side. Eviction lawsuits are filed in the JP courts.

But as you reopen, people are going to go back to some of the jobs that they had  then you have to also wonder about the jobs that they had before: Are they really enough to sustain them? he continued. Thats a completely different issue.

Landlords here filed roughly 20,000 eviction lawsuits each year before the pandemic, a figure that soared over the last decade as housing prices skyrocketed and wages for the working class stagnated.

But between April 2020 and the end of March, landlords filed about 8,500 eviction lawsuits, according to state court data. The ever-changing landscape of pandemic-induced rule changes and rent relief  which also brought confusion for judges, attorneys, landlords and tenants  staved off the usual demand.

One of the most beneficial programs, according to tenants and landlords, stemmed from the citys decision early in the pandemic to launch one of the first  and most robust  housing assistance efforts in the country. It has since paid out more than $87 million to nearly 33,000 families struggling to pay bills.

In the beginning part of the pandemic, the big talk was theres gonna be mass evictions, and then rent is not going to be paid, and there are going to be foreclosures, and were all going to fall off this proverbial cliff, said Kyle Hendricks, the president of the San Antonio chapter of the National Association of Residential Property Managers. It just really became apparent pretty early on that that just wasnt happening.

Landlords who mainly serve middle- and higher-income renters, for the most part, have seen just a slight uptick in missed payments when compared with before the pandemic, according to several interviewed by the San Antonio Express-News.

But that hasnt been true for some landlords renting out some of San Antonios cheapest rental homes.

Mike Rust runs Highland Commercial Properties, which has about 1,600 rental units in San Antonio that rent for an average $784 per month, lower than the citys typical rent. In March 2020, only 1.4 percent of tenants were late on rent, Rust said, compared with 10 percent now.

Our customers in workforce housing, a lot of them were devastated by not being able to work, Rust said. When all the forced shutdowns happened, they couldnt go to work anymore  whereas if youre in a $2,500 rental home, you probably were in a position where you were able to work from home.

A look back at a contentious City Council meeting on rental assistance, evictions. Click here for Puro Podcast: Eviction Friction

San Antonio is one of the poorest big cities in the U.S., and half of all renters spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent, according to census estimates.

The economic gaps are widest along racial lines. The poverty rate among Black and Latino residents is roughly double the rate of those who are white. In ZIP codes that are mostly white, about 18 percent of people have medical debt in collection, compared with 35 percent in neighborhoods that are home mostly to people of color, according to the city.

The pandemic is bound to make that worse.

All the inequities that have been laid bare, we knew they were there, said Veronica Soto, who oversees the citys housing programs. Now, theyre raw and open, and are something that we have to continue to address.

Landscape changing

As the virus spread across Texas last March, state and local leaders stalled most eviction proceedings so families wouldnt end up on the street. Congress followed by doling out the first stimulus payments and temporarily barring evictions in federally backed rentals  which covered at least half of San Antonios rental stock.

After a three-month pause, Bexar County courts opened briefly in June to hear cases that werent protected by the federal rule, only to retreat again as the virus threatened to overwhelm hospitals.

Then, by the time judges were preparing to reopen courtrooms at the end of the summer, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came out with its own moratorium on evictions if tenants lost income and couldnt afford rent. Evictions that werent related to financial issues, such as those involving lease violations or criminal issues, could still move forward.

William Luther /William Luther

The moratorium has been extended twice since then, but last month, the Texas Supreme Court let its own order that told judges to enforce it expire. The states training center for judges went on to say that landlords  not judges  were responsible for following the order, effectively giving the green light to resume court as normal.

Thats really where that confusion comes from: Despite justice of the peaces still being given the discretion to do as they please, theyre being recommended to allow eviction cases to proceed, completely undermining the CDC order, said Lizbeth Parra, an attorney with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid.

It was yet another whiplash for judges, landlords and attorneys. San Antonio tenants, however, got lucky: Judges in Bexar County disagreed with the state, issuing a recent statement that said they would continue upholding the federal rule.

Unlike the constant changes in courts, what has been consistent is the citys push to ensure that families make ends meet. Over the last year, the city has poured nearly $134 million in federal and local funds into emergency housing assistance, of which more than $87 million has been spent. It marks an astronomical increase from before the pandemic, when the city used about $1 million each year to help residents with rent or mortgage payments.

The city will continue to receive federal dollars through 2024. But even after the coronavirus fades, Soto hopes that some of the pandemic-era policies will be here to stay  including increased funding to support families who might lose their homes because of sudden drops in income, hefty medical bills or emergency expenses such as car repairs.

Then theres the city staff who are now working during eviction court to link tenants and landlords to assistance. Prior to the pandemic, the hundreds of tenants that flooded eviction courts each week were left on their own to navigate scarce funding sources.

I do see our landscape changing when it comes to housing policy, Soto said. The question will be for the policymakers ... because everything comes at a price.

Afraid of being evicted

Last September, Victoria Guajardo had just signed a new lease and moved into an apartment that demanded more of her income. That same month, she got furloughed.

She loved working at Hulus call center in San Antonio, but soon her sadness about losing her job turned into fear that she wouldnt be able to make rent with unemployment payments alone. She applied for city housing assistance, which covered her rent for two months.

By the start of 2021, Hulu still hadnt brought her back to work, so she applied for help from a new $1 billion fund the state launched in February called the Texas Rent Relief Program. But months later, she still doesnt know if shell be approved for help. In the meantime, shes racked up late fees when shes struggled to pay on time  about $25 per day after shes more than five days late.

I am afraid of being evicted, she said.

William Luther /William Luther

In Texas, landlords can start the eviction process as soon as a tenant pays rent late, and theres no requirement that they must accept the payment if a tenant comes up with the money later. Guajardo is among tenants who are afraid their landlords will lose patience: As of Thursday, 93,000 tenants had submitted applications to the state for financial assistance, but only 1,600 had been paid out, according to the state.

Need help paying rent? Apply for the city's housing assistance at SanAntonio.gov/NHSD/Programs/FairHousing or the state's Texas Rent Relief Program at TexasRentRelief.com. The state is currently expediting reviews for people facing eviction, and renters who fall in that category should answer "yes" to the eviction diversion question and provide the eviction case number during the application process. Tenants who have already filed applications can call 1-833-989-7368 to let program administrators know their landlords are moving forward with evictions. See More Collapse

But some housing attorneys and advocates fear that even once the program irons out its initial kinks, millions of dollars in rental assistance still wont be enough to keep renters in their homes long term as housing costs soar. Over the last decade, the typical monthly rent payment in Bexar County jumped 33 percent, outpacing a 23 percent rise in household income, according to census estimates.

Rental assistance is a stopgap solution  its like a temporary Band-Aid, said Matthew Garcia, an attorney with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid. I think that the larger issue is economic inequality.

For some landlords, missing out on months of rent has made them want to lower their own financial risk by renting to people with higher incomes.

Robert Chavez Jr. owns about five rental homes in San Antonio and recently started managing almost 40 properties for his father, who is in his 90s. His father slipped and fell in the bathtub on New Years Day, and when he arrived at the hospital, doctors discovered he also had COVID-19.

Chavez, who works as a music professor in Los Angeles, flew back San Antonio to help his father recover and run his rental business. Chavezs own tenants never paid late over the last year, but he found out that about 10 of his fathers tenants were behind  including one family who owed $10,000.

Some of them have cooperated in trying to find rental assistance, but others havent, he said. Its made him rethink who hell rent to in the future, and now hes planning to renovate the houses to attract families who earn more money.

Im afraid it might be like in California, where you pay the first months rent, deposit and last months rent, Chavez said. Thats gonna be tough for a lot of people unless you have a good job, and its going to force a lot of people into cheaper housing  probably on the poor side of town.

marina.riker@express-news.net
Good morning.

The past year has been momentous for so many reasons its hard to even begin to describe them. A harsh spotlight has been cast on deep inequities in American life and on the myriad ways that racism and hatred afflict our nation.

But if theres one thing I hope we carry forward, it is a greater understanding of the history, breadth and growing power of the diverse Asian communities in California and across the country. Among them is the Chinese diaspora.

Today, Im excited to introduce Rong Xiaoqing, a journalist who each Friday will write a revamped version of The New York Timess Chinese-language newsletter. (The rest of the week, the Chinese Daily Briefing will highlight the best of our journalism in Chinese.)

I asked Rong to tell me about the launch. Heres our conversation:

First, tell us a little bit about the new newsletter  who will it be geared toward and what can subscribers expect?
Muzaffarnagar : , April 19 (IANS) Fifteen men, including two minor boys, have been booked for allegedly raising pro-Pakistan slogans at a village in Muzaffarnagar district.

A video of the young group sitting on a tractor, shouting objectionable slogans 'just for fun' went viral on social media on Sunday.

An FIR has been registered and police traced and arrested six of the accused.

The incident reportedly took place in Chandasina under the Ratanpuri police station of Muzaffarnagar district last week.

The police swung into action after the video went viral and identified six suspects from the clip. Two were found to be minor and were handed over to their parents after a warning.

Four others were arrested.

A case has been registered under IPC section 505/2 (statements conducive to public mischief) against 15 individuals.

Ratanpuri station house officer (SHO), Vindyachal Tiwari, said, "Six persons have been held for raising pro-Pakistan slogans. There are others involved. Raids are being conducted to arrest them as well. Investigation is on and action will be taken accordingly." Budhana Deputy Superintendent of Police, Vinay Gautam, said, "Two were detained and handed over to their parents as they were minors. They were given a stern warning and issued a notice. The four others were arrested while the remaining ones are being traced."
Nielsen does not report viewership statistics for OAN, which is not a Nielsen client. (Charles Herring cited Nielsens heavy fees.) In a survey last month, Pew Research reported that 7 per cent of Americans, including 14 per cent of Republicans, had got political news from OAN. By contrast, 43 per cent of Americans and 62 per cent of Republicans had got political news from Fox News, the survey found. While OAN appeals to a relatively small audience, its coverage reflects views commonly held by Republicans. In a Reuters/Ipsos poll last month, about half of Republicans said they believed that the January 6 attack, which left five dead, was largely a nonviolent protest or was the handiwork of left-wing activists. Six in 10 Republicans surveyed said they also believed Trumps claim that the election was stolen. Many people have raised concerns. And the thing is, when people speak up about anything, you will get in trouble. Former OAN news producer Allysia Britton, who left the network in the wake of the Capitol riot. OAN, which started in 2013, gained attention when it broadcast Trumps campaign speeches in full before the 2016 election. In recent months, it has courted viewers who may have felt abandoned by Fox News, which on election night was the first news outlet to project Biden as the winner of Arizona, a key swing state. In a mid-November promotional ad, OAN accused Fox News of joining the mainstream media in censoring factual reporting. OANs stories appeal to people who want to believe that the election was not legitimate, said Stephanie Edgerly, an associate professor at Northwestern Universitys Medill School of Journalism. These are two mutually reinforcing narratives of people who want to believe it and continue to get that fire stoked by OAN.

Marty Golingan, a producer at the channel since 2016, said OAN had changed in recent years. At the start of his employment, he said, it concentrated more on neutral coverage based on reports from The Associated Press or Reuters. He saw it as a scrappy upstart where he could produce cheeky feature stories, he said. During the Trump presidency, it moved right, Golingan said. And when he was watching coverage of the pro-Trump mob breaking into the Capitol, he said, he worried that his work might have helped inspire the attack. Into April, news articles on the OAN website consistently referred to Donald Trump as President Trump and to Biden as just Joe Biden or Biden. Credit:AP He added that he and others at OAN disagreed with much of the channels coverage. The majority of people did not believe the voter fraud claims being run on the air, Golingan said in an interview, referring to his colleagues. He recalled seeing a photo of someone in the Capitol mob holding a flag emblazoned with the OAN logo. I was like, OK, thats not good, Golingan said. Thats what happens when people listen to us.

Charles Herring defended OANs coverage. A review process with multiple checks is in place to ensure that news reporting meets the companys journalist standards, he said. And, yes, weve had our fair share of mistakes, but we do our best to keep them to a minimum and learn from our missteps. Golingan added that, since Inauguration Day, OANs news director, Lindsay Oakley, had reprimanded him for referring to Biden as President Biden in news copy. Oakley did not reply to requests for comment. OANs staff White House reporters use the term President Biden and then may use Mr. Biden, Charles Herring said. The term Biden or Biden administration may also be used. He declined to reply to a question on the channels use of President Trump for Trump. Allysia Britton, a news producer, said she was one of more than a dozen employees who had left OAN after the Capitol riot. She criticised some of what the channel had reported, saying it was not up to journalistic standards. Many people have raised concerns, Britton said in an interview. And the thing is, when people speak up about anything, you will get in trouble.

Charles Herring confirmed that about a dozen OAN workers had left in recent months, saying many of them were not high-level employees. Loading OANs online audience is significant, with nearly 1.5 million subscribers to its YouTube channel. One of its most popular videos, with about 1.5 million views since it went online November 24, criticised Dominion Voting Systems, the election technology company whose equipment was used in more than two dozen states last year, including several won by Trump. Hosted by the OAN White House correspondent, Chanel Rion, the video shows a man who said he had infiltrated Dominion and heard company executives say they would make sure Trump lost. Dominion has sued Fox News and two of Trumps lawyers, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, accusing them of making or promoting defamatory claims. A lawyer for Dominion, who did not reply to requests for comment, has said the company is considering further legal action. Golingan, the producer, said some OAN employees had hoped Dominion would sue the channel. A lot of people said, This is insane, and maybe if they sue us, well stop putting stories like this out, he said.
Flushing a toilet can generate large quantities of microbe-containing aerosols depending on the design, water pressure or flushing power of the toilet. A variety of pathogens are usually found in stagnant water as well as in urine, feces and vomit. When dispersed widely through aerosolization, these pathogens can cause Ebola, norovirus that results in violent food poisoning, as well as COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2.

Respiratory droplets are the most prominent source of transmission for COVID-19, however, alternative routes may exist given the discovery of small numbers of viable viruses in urine and stool samples. Public restrooms are especially cause for concern for transmitting COVID-19 because they are relatively confined, experience heavy foot traffic and may not have adequate ventilation.

A team of scientists from Florida Atlantic University's College of Engineering and Computer Science once again put physics of fluids to the test to investigate droplets generated from flushing a toilet and a urinal in a public restroom under normal ventilation conditions. To measure the droplets, they used a particle counter placed at various heights of the toilet and urinal to capture the size and number of droplets generated upon flushing.

Results of the study, published in the journal Physics of Fluids, demonstrate how public restrooms could serve as hotbeds for airborne disease transmission, especially if they do not have adequate ventilation or if toilets do not have a lid or cover. Most public restrooms in the United States often are not equipped with toilet seat lids and urinals are not covered.

For the study, researchers obtained data from three different scenarios: toilet flushing; covered toilet flushing and urinal flushing. They examined the data to determine the increase in aerosol concentration, the behavior of droplets of different sizes, how high the droplets rose, and the impact of covering the toilet. Ambient aerosol levels were measured before and after conducting the experiments.

"After about three hours of tests involving more than 100 flushes, we found a substantial increase in the measured aerosol levels in the ambient environment with the total number of droplets generated in each flushing test ranging up to the tens of thousands," said Siddhartha Verma, Ph.D., co-author and an assistant professor in FAU's Department of Ocean and Mechanical Engineering. "Both the toilet and urinal generated large quantities of droplets smaller than 3 micrometers in size, posing a significant transmission risk if they contain infectious microorganisms. Due to their small size, these droplets can remain suspended for a long time."

The droplets were detected at heights of up to 5 feet for 20 seconds or longer after initiating the flush. Researchers detected a smaller number of droplets in the air when the toilet was flushed with a closed lid, although not by much, suggesting that aerosolized droplets escaped through small gaps between the cover and the seat.

"The significant accumulation of flush-generated aerosolized droplets over time suggests that the ventilation system was not effective in removing them from the enclosed space even though there was no perceptible lack of airflow within the restroom," said Masoud Jahandar Lashaki, Ph.D., co-author and an assistant professor in FAU's Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatics Engineering. "Over the long-term, these aerosols could rise up with updrafts created by the ventilation system or by people moving around in the restroom."

There was a 69.5 percent increase in measured levels for particles sized 0.3 to 0.5 micrometers, a 209 percent increase for particles sized 0.5 to 1 micrometers, and a 50 percent increase for particles sized 1 to 3 micrometers. Apart from the smallest aerosols, comparatively larger aerosols also pose a risk in poorly ventilated areas even though they experience stronger gravitational settling. They often undergo rapid evaporation in the ambient environment and the resulting decreases in size and mass, or the eventual formation of droplet nuclei, can allow microbes to remain suspended for several hours.

"The study suggests that incorporation of adequate ventilation in the design and operation of public spaces would help prevent aerosol accumulation in high occupancy areas such as public restrooms," said Manhar Dhanak, Ph.D., co-author, chair of FAU's Department of Ocean and Mechanical Engineering, and professor and director of SeaTech. "The good news is that it may not always be necessary to overhaul the entire system, since most buildings are designed to certain codes. It might just be a matter of redirecting the airflow based on the restroom's layout."

During the 300-second sampling, the toilet and urinal were flushed manually five different times at the 30-, 90-, 150-, 210-, and 270-second mark, with the flushing handle held down for five consecutive seconds. The restroom was deep cleaned and closed 24 hours prior to conducting the experiments, with the ventilation system operating normally. The temperature and relative humidity within the restroom were 21 degrees Celsius (69.8 degrees Fahrenheit) and 52 percent, respectively.

"Aerosolized droplets play a central role in the transmission of various infectious diseases including COVID-19, and this latest research by our team of scientists provides additional evidence to support the risk of infection transmission in confined and poorly ventilated spaces," said Stella Batalama, Ph.D., dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science.

###

Study co-authors are Jesse H. Schreck, first author and a graduate student in the Department of Ocean and Mechanical Engineering; and Javad Hashemi, Ph.D., associate dean for research and a professor in the Department of Ocean and Mechanical Engineering.

About FAU's College of Engineering and Computer Science:

The FAU College of Engineering and Computer Science is internationally recognized for cutting edge research and education in the areas of computer science and artificial intelligence (AI), computer engineering, electrical engineering, bioengineering, civil, environmental and geomatics engineering, mechanical engineering, and ocean engineering. Research conducted by the faculty and their teams expose students to technology innovations that push the current state-of-the art of the disciplines. The College research efforts are supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Department of Defense (DOD), the Department of Transportation (DOT), the Department of Education (DOEd), the State of Florida, and industry. The FAU College of Engineering and Computer Science offers degrees with a modern twist that bear specializations in areas of national priority such as AI, cybersecurity, internet-of-things, transportation and supply chain management, and data science. New degree programs include Masters of Science in AI (first in Florida), Masters of Science in Data Science and Analytics, and the new Professional Masters of Science degree in computer science for working professionals. For more information about the College, please visit eng.fau.edu.

About Florida Atlantic University:
New construction moves forward in the Portola Springs neighborhood of Irvine, Calif., on Feb. 16, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

Housing Plan Calls for 1.5 Million New SoCal Homes

Commentary

Southern California counties, cities, and jurisdictions need to provision for 1.5 million new homes throughout the next eight years.

Californias Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) works with local jurisdictions, analyzing population growth, job growth, and transportation infrastructure to develop mandates for how many new homes jurisdictions must plan for.

The approach includes city planning as well as working with local transportation, safety, and utility authorities to ensure home builders and housing developers have what they need to build 1.5 million new homes in the next 8 1/2 years.

Cities, of course, cannot force economic expansion nor force property developers to build. Housing will only get built if the economic opportunity for the property developer exists to build. However, town planning, utility hookups, fire and safety, and transportation networks also have to exist, and those are all the work of counties, cities, and other local jurisdictions to accomplish.

Using economic, transportation, and population projections from 2019, which relied on then-just-released data from 2016, the HCD approved the Regional Housing Need Allocation Plan of the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) on March 22. Members of SCAG include governments within the counties of Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Imperial.

Governments in San Diego County belong to a different coalition of governments. Their housing plan was approved by the HCD in 2019.

The state wants the counties, cities, and towns within the SCAG coalition to plan and help build about 1.3 million new homes before October 2029. The state wants the local jurisdictions within San Diego County to plan and help get built another 171,685 new homes during that same time period. Combined for all of Southern California (SCAG jurisdictions and San Diego), Southern California governments are expected to approve about 1.5 million new homes.

The fifth cycle of statewide planning ends this year, and lasted from 2014 to 2021. The sixth cycle of determining and implementing the Regional Housing Need Allocation Plan will go from this year to October 2029. The state-mandated planning process goes back to 1969, when Ronald Reagan was governor of California.

Slow Growth

Under the analyses done for the plan about to expire, data from 2011 was used to determine how much housing had to be built from 2014 to 2021 across the member jurisdictions of the SCAG governments (southern California excluding San Diego county). Under that analysis, it was projected that Southern California would have about 6.5 million households in 2021.

However, now that 2021 is actually here, the states current planning process expects that there are only 6.25 million households in Southern California (again excluding San Diego County).

Somehow, even though household formation was 250,000 households less than expected, there is still a severe housing shortage in the region.

Indeed, its so severe that, according to a recent analysis by the controller for the City of Los Angeles, three homeless people per day are dying just in Los Angeles.

The California housing crisis is literally a matter of life and death.

Housing Surge Expected

Over the next planning period, from 2021 to 2029, the number of households in Ventura, LA, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside, and Imperial counties is expected to grow from 6.25 million households to 6.8 million households, or about 550,000 new households.

So 550,000 of the 1.34 million new housing units the state wants that regions governments to facilitate building are for new household formation.

However, the other approximately 800,000 units are to increase supply for housing and reduce the overall cost of housing in California. That part of the plan is shown in the nearby table as adjustments for vacancies and to reduce overcrowding and reduce housing costs.

Within that number, the city of Los Angeles alone is expected to facilitate the building of about 450,000 new housing units.

The jurisdictions within San Diego County are supposed to facilitate the construction of about another 172,000 new housing units.

No Easy Task

Of course, none of this will be easy.

Five years ago, some three-quarters of Los Angeles voters approved bond measure HHH, which provided $1.2 billion in subsidized financing and other subsidies for the construction of new housing intended for people struggling with homelessness.

Since that time, up through the most recent report done by the citys controller Ron Galperin, less than 200 units had actually been constructed.

High costs of land in some areas, stifling bureaucracy and other issues can dramatically slow a property developers ability to build new homes.

Now that the state of California along with the counties, cities, and townships of Southern California have agreed they need to see 1.5 million homes built over the next eight years, the much more difficult part will be seeing it done.

Tim Shaler is a professional investor and economist based in Southern California. He is a regular columnist for The Epoch Times, where he exclusively provides some of his original economic analysis.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
From the safety and security of a gated community, the tranquility assured by quality concrete construction, and the ease that stems from smart home living, each community's elevated coastal lifestyle invites residents to escape from the typical rental experience.

Today, Mize & Sefair Development and Belleair Development Group, two Tampa-based development companies, unveiled plans for five affordable, gated, multi-family communities, providing a total of 1,000 new rental homes throughout Central Florida. The project fills each respective community's growing need for reasonably-priced, well-appointed rentals.

The project, titled The Keys Homes, will launch with its first two locations, The Keys Homes at Cotee River and The Keys Homes at Wildwood. The Keys Homes at Cotee River will include 126 units over 36 acres located in the heart of Port Richey, Florida. The Keys Homes at Wildwood sits just 2.5 miles away from The Villages and will consist of 200 units over 20 acres. These projects represent the first of a four-phase development plan.

The Keys Homes is co-developed by two Tampa Bay-based companies, Mize & Sefair and Belleair Development Group. Mize & Sefair brings more than 18 years of proven experience in residential construction and property development. Belleair Development Group, a privately-held, self-funded firm, has successfully developed more than 300 residential and commercial properties over the past 25 years.

"Our portfolio has always focused on delivering multi-family communities with high-quality amenities and The Keys Homes is no different," said Dan Sefair, CEO of Mize & Sefair. "In evaluating markets throughout Central Florida, there was a consistent gap between the increasing demand for rentals and the availability of upscale options that still offered an affordable price point. The Keys Homes allows young families to experience a beautifully-appointed rental community that feels like homeownership."

As its name suggests, The Keys Homes will transport residents to the Florida Keys with its coastal style. Each community will feature three-bedroom villas adorned with pastel blue, gray and white exteriors. Inside, residents will enjoy wide plank floors, shaker cabinets, and granite countertops. Residences will also offer modern conveniences from Vivint Smart Home, including a smart hub panel, thermostat controls, doorbell camera and keyless entry. The wide range of amenities extends outdoors, including private parking, resort-style pool, state-of-the-art fitness center, dog park, and car wash. Close proximity to top-rated schools and large employers makes each community an ideal option for young families looking for upscale living without the price tag. Three-bedroom villas will start at only $1,350 per month.

"The island lifestyle invites you to live worry-free, and that is a feeling we aim to invoke for the residents of The Keys Homes, said Carlos Yepes, Owner of Belleair Development Group. From the safety and security of a gated community, the tranquility assured by quality concrete construction, and the ease that stems from smart home living, each community's elevated coastal lifestyle invites residents to escape from the typical rental experience."

Phase one construction launches with The Keys Homes at Cotee River, which breaks ground this month. Cotee River will begin accepting leases later this summer, with occupancy slated for the fall of 2021. The Keys Homes at Wildwood will break ground in the fall of 2021. Leasing will open during the first quarter of 2022 and will officially welcome residents in the spring of 2022.

Phase two of the project will introduce three new locations for The Keys Homes, with two properties in Ocala and another near The Villages, totaling nearly 600 villas. Phase two construction is anticipated to begin in early 2022.

For more information, visit http://www.KeysHomesFlorida.com.

About Mize & Sefair

For more than 18 years, Mize & Sefair Development has created single-family, multi-family, retail, and office projects across Tampa Bay. With a relentless commitment to detail, the company boldly acquires, develops, and constructs each project with integrity and visual appeal. If it can be developed, Mize & Sefair has done it. To learn more, visit mizesefair.com.

About Belleair Development Group

Established in 1997, Belleair Development Group is a family business focused on developing assets for a long-term hold strategy. Belleair is a privately-held, self-funded development firm operating throughout the southeastern United States. Since its inception, it has delivered over 300 commercial and residential projects and partnered with some of the countrys most prominent single-family, multi-family, and hi-rise home builders to bring quality residential projects to the market. To learn more, visit belleairgroup.com.

Media Contact: Jessica Eckley, jessica@crackerjackmedia.com, 813.484.9080
The Debian GNU/Linux project has voted to stay out of the controversy over Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman rejoining the board in March, by backing the option of not releasing a statement on the issue as an organisation.

This option was one of seven that developers voted on in a general resolution over the fortnight from 4 April onwards.

Stallman announced on 19 March, during the FSF's annual LibrePlanet conference, that he was rejoining the board. He had stepped down in 2019, following controversy over remarks he made about the victims of the late Jeffrey Epstein, an American financier and convicted sex offender.

Several past Debian leaders and also individual developers have signed a petition calling for Stallman to go and for the entire board to follow suit. Right now, this petition has the backing of 61 organisations and 3010 individuals, apart from its 16 main signatories. Nineteen organisations have published their own statements, all calling for Stallman to go.

Supporters of Stallman have put up their own letter calling for him to stay on the board. As of this writing, there are a total of 6400 signatories.

Both Red Hat and SUSE, the two largest open source vendors, have supported the move against Stallman. But while SUSE has put its name as a company to the letter calling for Stallman to be removed, Red Hat has not done so.

The Debian GR had the following as options for members to vote on:

remove the entire FSF board as mooted in an existing letter;

the entire FSF board as mooted in an existing letter; seek Stallman's resignation from all FSF bodies;

Stallman's resignation from all FSF bodies; discourage collaboration with the FSF while Stallman remains in a leading position;

collaboration with the FSF while Stallman remains in a leading position; ask the FSF to further its governance processes;

the FSF to further its governance processes; support Stallman's reinstatement;

Stallman's reinstatement; denounce the witch hunt against Stallman and the FSF; and

the witch hunt against Stallman and the FSF; and issue no public statement on the issue.

While all options received sufficient votes to achieve a quorum, the option to support Stallman's reinstatement (54 votes) and to denounce the witch hunt (84 votes) received the least support and were dropped as they did reach a majority.

The option that emerged as the winner received 277 votes.

While the voting was in progress, the FSF issued a statement saying that it had voted to bring back Stallman "after several months of thorough discussion and thoughtful deliberation".

Stallman issued his own statement a minute before the FSF did so, offering his justification for having behaved the way he did and also offering an apology.
The decision this week by Judge Sykes was disappointing but will not deter our quest for justice for Mikey LaPorta, attorney Antonio Romanucci said. We have begun the necessary steps to prepare to bring this case before the United States Supreme Court because it is the right thing to do for Mr. LaPorta, but it will also be a valuable opportunity to advance legal precedent holding police departments accountable for the cultures they create. This moment in our nations history is crying for that accountability and this case is a testament to that quest for justice.
(Newser)  The first one must have seemed like a minor annoyance. Somebody tossed an empty coffee cup from McDonald's on the lawn of Edward and Cheryl Patton of Lake View, NY. But as the Buffalo News explains, the minor nuisance became an almost daily occurrence over the next three years. The same vehicle would drive by, usually after sunset, and toss a cup on the lawn, sometimes with a cigarette butt or two inside. Edward Patton, 80, set up security cameras and bought binoculars, but he could never get the license plate or a clear view of the driver. Finally, neighbors spotted the SUV in the act, followed, and got a plate number. Then police set up a stakeout of sorts and pulled over 76-year-old Larry Pope.

story continues below

As it turns out, Cheryl Patton, also 76, used to work with Pope at Fisher Bus Service in Hamburg and described him as a "nemesis" because of issues involving her role as a union officer. "I found it very hard to believe that someone I knew would do something like that, especially at his age," she tells the News. Her husband says he is "flabbergasted." Pope has been charged with second-degree harassment and depositing trash on a highway, per the Hamburg Sun. He hung up on a News reporter when asked for comment. Lake View is about 15 miles south of Buffalo, on Lake Erie. (Read more weird crimes stories.)
Boris Johnson defended senior Civil Service figures amid a growing Government lobbying scandal today, insisting they were not all 'double-hatting' with lucrative second jobs.

The Prime Minister said it was 'simply not the case' that 'loads of people' were gaming the system to earn eye-watering amounts while on the Government payroll in a potential conflict of interest.

It came as he faced demands from his own backbenchers for 'meaningful change' as the lobbying storm threatens to derail the elections battle.

The Conservative chairman of a cross-party committee investigating the issue has warned that 'something must be done' after a slew of revelations about links between politics and business.

Cabinet minister George Eustice insisted yesterday that only 'tweaks' are needed to the system, as he stressed that former PM David Cameron had broken no rules despite anger over how he approached colleagues on behalf of Greensill Capital.

But William Wragg, who heads the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, suggested that fiddling at the edges will not be enough.

Speaking on a visit to Gloucestershire today, Mr Johnson told reporters: 'People should not, in my view, form the impression that the upper echelons of the British Civil Service have got loads of people who are double-hatting, as it were, doing two jobs - it just isn't true.

'We've got one of the best civil services in the world. They are fantastically hard working people, they have been doing an amazing job throughout this Covid pandemic, apart from anything else, and I just wouldn't want people to get that impression. It is simply not the case.'

The Prime Minister (pictured today in Gloucestershire) said it was 'simply not the case' that 'loads of people' were gaming the system to earn eye-watering amounts while on the Government payroll in a potential conflict of interest.

A roll call of power players is expected to be summoned by William Wragg's Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee

David Cameron (pictured on a trip to Saudi Arabia with Lex Greensill) has already indicated he will give evidence to inquiries

A roll call of power players is expected to be summoned by the PACAC inquiry.

Mr Cameron has already indicated he would give evidence, while Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and John Major are also set to be called as the committee looks at the 'revolving door' between government and the private sector.

Theresa May is the only living premier unlikely to be grilled, as she is still an MP serving in the Commons.

Mr Wragg told BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour: 'There's an understanding that something must be done, but as often in politics we have to translate that natural understanding into tangible proposals.

'I think we can all approach this in a fairly consensual, cross-party way to make sure that we do have meaningful change.'

Mr Johnson has ordered a separate Cabinet Office investigation overseen by legal expert Nigel Boardman as he scrambles to defuse the lobbying row.

The premier is also on the verge of appointing a new adviser on ministerial interests, months after the departure of Sir Alex Allan in a row over his report on alleged bullying by Priti Patel.

The PACAC probe is one of a bewildering array of inquiries being launched into ties between politics, Whitehall and business.

Mr Cameron has been hit with criticism over securing access to ministers for finance firm Greensill, whose collapse now risks thousands of jobs, particularly in the steel sector. He has denied breaking rules, but admitted he should have used more formal routes to make approaches.

The saga deepened last week after it emerged the former head of government procurement, Bill Crothers, took a part-time position with the firm while in his Whitehall post.

Mr Eustice - a former press secretary for Mr Cameron - yesterday insisted his old boss had not broken any rules or 'taken advantage' of the arrangements.

He also suggested there will only be tweaks to the protocols for avoiding conflicts, saying the current arrangements were 'pretty good'.

Mr Cameron has denied any wrongdoing but conceded that in hindsight he should have made approaches in a more 'formal' way.

Mr Eustice told Sky News' Ridge On Sunday: 'I think the right thing is for these reviews to go through their process, to conclude, to work out exactly what did and what did not happen and then yes, of course there may come a time after that when it is right to consider tweaks to policy.

'But fundamentally, I think the systems we have in place with ministers declaring interests with the ministerial code and the focus on that and how ministers conduct themselves in office is actually a pretty good one.

'But that is not to say you couldn't make tweaks or changes, and also there will be a time and a place for that after these reviews have concluded.'

Mr Eustice insisted Mr Cameron had not broken any rules or 'taken advantage' of the arrangements.

'Well look, he himself has said that with hindsight it probably would have been better if, rather than texting ministers, if he had instead written letters to set out his views more formally,' Mr Eustice said.

'But I think the real point is. 'has he done anything wrong?' Well, on the face of it, no. There's a review that is going on, we mustn't prejudge that.'

Pushed on whether Mr Cameron exploited the rules, Mr Eustice added: 'I don't think he took advantage of any rules, no. He meticulously observed the rules there that he himself actually put in place after some concerns around lobbying a decade ago.

'He put in place these restrictions on what ministers can do for a period of two years.

'But look, he himself has conceded that with hindsight, if he had his time again, he wouldn't have texted Rishi Sunak and wouldn't have texted others  he would instead have written through formal channels.'

David Cameron (left) has faced a wave of criticism about his lobbying of ministers on behalf of Greensill. Tony Blair (right) could also be called by PACAC

Theresa May is the only living former PM unlikely to be grilled, as she is still an MP serving in the Commons

Gordon Brown and John Major could be summoned by the Parliamentary Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee to discuss the issues of links between government and business

Labour accused the government of 'shrugging its shoulders' in the face of the backlash.

Shadow Cabinet Office minister Rachel Reeves said: 'Having failed to deflect the blame, the Government's latest approach appears to be to shrug their shoulders and say ''scandal? What scandal?''.'



Mr Johnson was yesterday warned failure to tackle the 'shameful' lobbying storm could cost him votes as a crucial round of elections loom.

Senior Tory Sir Bernard Jenkin appealed for the PM to get a grip after a slew of revelations in the wake of Greensill Capital's collapse into administration.

Unless he is more 'transparent' the row could hit the 'Red Wall' support that delivered Mr Johnson's historic 2019 majority, Sir Bernard said.

The scale of damage could become clear within weeks, with a wave of elections on May 6 including councils, mayors and a by-election in Hartlepool - a seat traditionally held by Labour but within the grasp of the Conservatives if their working-class surge continues.
A museum devoted to Jane Austen has sparked fury by announcing plans to subject the author to a 'historical interrogation' over alleged links to the slave trade.

The celebrated author - and noted abolitionist - wrote Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park while living in a cottage in the Hampshire village of Chawton, which has now been turned into a museum.

But staff at the property devoted to the 18th century author are planning a revisionist attack on her alleged involvement in 'Regency era colonialism'.

Austen does have links to the slave trade through her father George Austen, the rector for a Hampshire parish who was at one point a trustee for an Antigua sugar plantation.

The museum however want to look for potential connections to slavery through her use of sugar in her tea and her wearing of cotton clothing, which experts say are all 'products of empire' brought back to Britain from colonies in Africa.

Lizzie Dunford, the museum's director says these links will be highlighted with future display boards to be installed at the property.

She says this will be part of a 'steady and considered process' of 'interrogation' into her life and how slavery-linked aspects can be better displayed.

But critics have slammed the plans as 'madness', saying the museum had fall victim to 'wokeism'.

Staff at a museum devoted to 18th century author Jane Austen are now re-evaluating her place in 'Regency era colonialism', including her love of tea drinking. Pictured: Mia Goth and Anya Taylor-Joy star in Emma, an adaptation of her 1815 novel

Though quite secluded as a family, Austen saw tea as a 'comforting, refreshing, recuperative beverage' which provided reason to socialise with her neighbours, and she even wrote the drink into several of her books.

The move towards greater transparency in Austen's slavery links comes in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests sparked by the killing of unarmed black man George Floyd in Minneapolis last year.

The movement quickly spread to Britain before becoming more focused on the country's links to slavery and historical racism.

It led to demands for the removal of statues of Cecil Rhodes and Winston Churchill and for organisations to admit if they had benefited from slavery.

Ms Dunford told The Daily Telegraph: 'This is just the start of a steady and considered process of historical interrogation.

Austen's links to the slave trade come through her father George Austen, the rector for a nearby parish who was at one point a trustee for an Antigua sugar plantation

'The slave trade and the consequences of Regency era Colonialism touched every family of means during the period. Jane Austen's family were no exception.

'As purchasers of tea, sugar and cotton they were consumers of the products of the trade, and did also have closer links via family and friends.'

However there is also evidence of Austens distaste for slavery and other forms of oppression seen in her novels Mansfield Park and Emma.

Another proposed display that talks about her abolitionist views will state that 'Black Lives Matter to Jane Austen'.

The museum's plans have sparked a wave of backlash among Austen fans on social media.

Bob Smith wrote: 'We have now reached the very heights of lunacy.'

Twitter user Sophie suggested she would buy 'an entire Jane Austen collection before theyre all burnt.'

Another commented: 'We have now crossed into insane territory. Leave Jane alone!'

Having left her home in Southampton for the more settled life of Chawton in 1809, Austen suffered from ill health and eventually moved to Winchester in 1817 where she died a few months later.

Jane Austen Memorial Trust raised funds to buy the house in 1947, and it opened to the public two years later.

Now a museum it does not receive regular public funding and is dependent on visitors and supporters. Last year it was threatened with closure from the financial pressures of lockdown and launched an appeal to raise 75,000.

Though quite secluded as a family, Austen saw tea as a 'comforting, refreshing, recuperative beverage' which provided reason to socialise with her neighbours, and she even wrote the drink into several of her books. Pictured: Josh O'Connor and Tanya Reynolds in Emma

The wave of Black Lives Matter protests over the last year have led several high profile organisations behind historic properties to 're-evaluate' their links to slavery and racism.

In September, The National Trust was accused of 'wokeism' after it published a report into 93 historic houses' links to slavery.

And last month Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden warned UK museums they cannot allow themselves to be 'pushed around by the zeitgeist of the day'.

Mr Dowden said the 'principal duty' of the nation's cultural institutions is to 'preserve and conserve our heritage'.

He said some institutions feel like they have been 'bullied, particularly by left-wing campaigns'.

Having left her home in Southampton for the more settled life of Chawton (pictured, her cottage) in 1809, Austen suffered from ill health and eventually moved to Winchester in 1817 where she died a few months later

His comments are likely to be viewed as a sign that the Government intends to continue its so-called 'war on woke'.

Speaking at the Policy Exchange UK think tank's History Matters Conference, Mr Dowden said cultural organisations should act as 'custodians' of our cultural heritage and not seek to erase certain aspects of it.

Discussing his advice to museums and cultural institutions, he said: 'Don't allow yourself to be pushed around by the zeitgeist of the day.

'Take a longer-term view of things, make sure you do things in a rigorous way and understand that your principal duty is to preserve and conserve our heritage.'

He added: 'One of the things that prompted me to come into this debate in the first place was talking to some of the institutions who felt like they were being bullied, particularly by left-wing campaigns.
It all started with a simple passion for restoring cars.

Ive always had vintage cars my entire life. I have restored probably 20 to 30 vintage cars, Joe Cicchetti said. When the coronavirus first happened, I thought of making a corona car just to make it ... and the idea kind of sat for awhile.

While it may have sat still for some time, this idea is now fully in motion  and goes far beyond merely refurbishing a car to its former glory. Cicchetti and his partner of 12 years, Shirley Limburg, launched a service this month in which they pick up people from their homes in their self-designed coronavirus car and drive them to their vaccine appointments free of charge.

They call this service Joes Covee Car, a name they decided upon as a result of both a technical issue and an interest in slang words for the coronavirus.

I was creating the Facebook page (for the service), and it wouldnt let me call it the corona car, Limburg said. So originally we were Joes Corona Car, and Covee happened because one of his friends said, Oh, as long as I dont catch the Covee.

Shirleys daughter is a nurse, and I find that the nurses have a lot of different words for coronavirus. And this is one of them ... one of the more humorous ones, Cicchetti added.

Hunterdon County and Warren County residents can book rides for Joes Covee Car by sending an email to joescoveecar@gmail.com or calling 908-328-6730.

Cicchetti and Limburg are both fully vaccinated, and will drive people to any appointment that is no more than an hour away from where they pick them up. Beyond that, all passengers are asked to adhere to guidelines that include wearing a mask while in the car, disinfecting their hands with sanitizer offered by the driver, and allowing the driver to check their temperature prior to the drive.

Throughout the pandemic, Joe Cicchetti, left, and his partner Shirley Limburg, right, have been finding ways to help friends and family that had contracted the virus, including shopping for their groceries and cooking them meals.Keith A. Muccilli | For NJ Advance Media

Cicchetti, 58, and Limburg, 59, are retired and living in Bloomsbury Borough. Throughout the pandemic, they began finding ways to help friends and family that had contracted the virus, including shopping for their groceries and cooking them meals.

Since the rollout of the vaccines last December, they began offering a rides to a few people fortunate enough to get appointments  and decided the endeavor was worth doing for as many others as they possibly could.

For us to drive somebody is a little thing, but for somebody who has no car and is maybe unemployed right now ... for them its a big thing, Limburg said. We know theres some people where theyre just not going to be able to get to (the appointment). And maybe they cant afford to Uber.

Or are too old to drive, Cicchetti added.

So maybe if we can help somebody out  were both retired, and lifes been good to us, so we figured we would do something good for our community, Limburg finished.

Although the service is free, Cicchetti and Limburg have established an online fundraiser to help defray the costs of gas, hand sanitizer, masks, and other costs affiliated with the ride.

Many people have asked to donate, and thats why we added a donation link to the site: because people wanted us to do it, Cicchetti said. And thats definitely not something we ever planned to do.

Rides to vaccine appointments are given in this coronavirus-themed car.Keith A. Muccilli | For NJ Advance Media

Despite the services recent launch, both Cicchetti and Limburg believe in its ability to quickly explode in popularity. She and Cicchetti have already been contacted by residents from all over the state who are in need of a ride, and as a result have started to seek out volunteer drivers who can expand their endeavor.

All volunteer drivers must show proof of vaccination, insurance and have a clean license as well as own a clean, running vehicle to join Joes Covee Car. A young woman from Freehold will begin offering her driving services within the next few weeks after she becomes fully vaccinated, according to Cicchetti.

I would definitely be happy if someone else in another county said, I want to get involved with this and do this. I would do everything I can to get them up and running ... and moving to the future, even if COVID goes away or diminishes, I know theres people out there who need rides for other things, Cicchetti said. Nothings really off the table right now.

Joe Cicchetti, right, and his partner Shirley Limburg, left, both of Bloomsbury, offer free rides to vaccine appointments for residents of Hunterdon and Warren counties.Keith A. Muccilli | For NJ Advance Media

On Tuesday, New Jersey stopped administering the one-shot Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine after federal authorities shared concerns about rare blood clots in six women between the ages of 18 and 48 that occurred six to 13 days after vaccination. Nearly seven million people in the U.S. have received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine so far, meaning that theres a less than one in a million chance of getting a rare blood clot after receiving it.

Gov. Phil Murphy urged state residents not to panic or worry, stating the vaccines pause is a precautionary and smart step.

In reflecting on the purpose of their driving service, both Cicchetti and Limburg underscored their hope that it spreads awareness about the safety of becoming inoculated.

Others faith in the vaccine is especially important to Limburg, who believes her life was irreparably changed at a young age because she wasnt able to get vaccinated for a significant illness.

When I was a child ... I had probably had an undiagnosed case of mumps because I lost hearing in my left ear somewhere around first grade, Limburg said. And I know so many people from my generation who had childhood illnesses that are now preventable, and yet we have people who are not wanting to take vaccines even though these things are preventable. And it makes me crazy.

Describing his partner as an extraordinarily interesting and intelligent woman who never got to live out her dream of becoming a pilot because of her hearing loss, Cicchetti hit an impassioned note in defending the safety of the coronavirus vaccine.

In the few times weve taken out the car, weve had people come up to us and ask us, Is the vaccine safe? Thats one of the questions that keeps coming up, and Im amazed people are asking me that question, Cicchetti said. Im a little rough when people ask me that question, because Ill give them an answer theyre not expecting. Itll put them on their heels and theyll think for a second, Maybe that was a dumb question.

Tell us your COVID-19 vaccination stories, send us a news tip or questions about the vaccination process on our tip form.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Caroline Fassett may be reached at cfassett@njadvancemedia.com.
Boao Forum to further integrate Asian economies, boost global governance

(Global Times) 14:35, April 19, 2021

Boao Forum for Asia annual conference 2021 opens in Boao, south China's Hainan Province, April 18, 2021. Wang Tianyu/CGTN

The 2021 Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) kicked off in Boao, a coastal resort in South China's Hainan Province on Sunday. In the post-COVID19 era, attendees' anticipation for the conference, also the first international forum comprising mostly offline conferences this year, includes not only helping Asian countries shore up confidence in accelerating economic growth, but also taking it as an international exchange forum that has a global impact.

The four-day annual conference, which is themed around "A World in Change: Join Hands to Strengthen Global Governance and Advance Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Cooperation," is scheduled to be held from Sunday to Wednesday this week.

On-site pandemic control was strict and thorough during the BFA. A security person, sitting next to a temperature checking robot at the entrance of the conference halls of the BFA, told the Global Times on Sunday that whoever has a body temperature over 37 C will not be allowed to enter the conference area and will be directly taken away for nucleic acid testing and go through medical treatment or observation.

Temperature screening, masks and alcohol disinfection products are seen at entrance of every major venue hall. Dining sites were also separated by glass for epidemic control.

"Despite the pandemic, a total of approximately 2,600 representatives from more than 60 countries and regions, and more than 1,200 journalists from 160 media organizations from 18 countries and regions attended the conference, BFA Secretary General Li Baodong, told a press conference on Sunday.

"In total, more than 4,000 participants have registered offline for the event, an unprecedented scale, and is the world's largest offline conference so far this year," said Li.

Moreover, 40 dignitaries and former dignitaries, 74 ministerial and former officials, dozens of heads and senior leaders of international organizations, dozens of envoys in China, representatives of international organizations, and nearly a hundred executives from world-renowned companies, will also attend the meeting via online or offline channels, Li said.

Topics including carbon neutrality, climate change, and digital economy will top the agenda in the following days. An official opening ceremony will be held on Tuesday.

"The fact that we are sitting face-to-face and in crowded places, and yet we know we are safe is an indication that the pandemic can be prevented and managed, which shows strong political will," Siddharth Chatterjee, the United Nations Resident Coordinator in China, said in a group interview on Sunday, adding that it also shows the discipline, resilience and how science has prevailed in China.

"I hope the rest of the world embraces the same method and then we would be able to overcome the pandemic much faster," he noted.

Increasing Asian role

The BFA has released an annual report on the Asian economy on Sunday, saying that under the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, Asian economies have experienced a sharp drop in growth rates, however, Asian economic performance as a whole has been significantly better than the rest of the world.

In terms of purchasing power parity, Asia's share in the global economic aggregate in 2020 reached 47.3 percent, up 0.9 percentage points from 2019, the report showed, indicating the increasing role of Asia in the global economy. As Asia's largest economy, China led Asia with an impressive GDP growth rate of 2.3 percent last year.

In the first quarter of 2021, China's economy grew by 18.3 percent year-on-year.

The report also shows that the economic integration of all Asian economies is accelerating. By February 2021, there had been 186 regional trade agreements in force inside and outside Asia, accounting for 54.9 percent of the total regional agreements around the world.

In particular, the signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP) in November 2020 has been injecting strong momentum into regional and global economic growth, which is expected to give renewed impetus to further accelerate the negotiation of free trade agreements in Asia.

The integration of the trade of goods and services in Asia is accelerating. The trade dependence of Asian economies among each other is nearly 50 percent in 2019, with bilateral trade volumes continuing to grow, said Lin Guijun, vice president of the University of International Business and Economics, during a press conference at Boao on Sunday.

Looking ahead to 2021, the Asian economy will likely experience consistent growth, with a growth rate of more than 6.5 percent, the report noted, citing the pandemic as the main variable that affects regional economic growth.

"At present, pandemic prevention and control and the subsequent economic recovery still face great uncertainties, and it is urgent that all countries around the world work together to overcome the difficulties stemming from it," Hu Qimu, chief researcher at the Sinosteel Economic Research Institute, told the Global Times on Sunday.

However, the recent actions from the US, for example, show that unilateralism still attempts to dominate global governance. The convening of the Boao Forum, a multilateral forum, at this juncture is of great significance to pandemic prevention and control, economic recovery and the easing of regional tensions, Hu said.

Higher expectations

Participants of the forum are also expecting to seek experiences, discuss latest issues from climate change to pandemic control, and find opportunities in the world's second-largest economy, also the only major economy in the world that has achieved positive economic growth for 2020.

"Since its launch 20 years ago, the Boao Forum for Asia has provided a high-end platform for political, business and academic leaders in Asia and the world. It has made positive contributions to the promotion of regional economic integration, common development and the building of a more prosperous and harmonious Asia," Thomas Leung, Managing Partner of Markets at PwC China, told the Global Times.

COVID-19 has had a major impact on the global economy and community over the past year. We hope to discuss this and other significant issues with the parties present at this year's meeting, Leung said.

Sylvain Laurent, Executive Vice President of Dassault Systemes, a French software corporation, said the Boao Forum has become an important bridge connecting China and the world, and an international exchange platform with global influence." Through this year's BFA, we expect to have a deeper understanding of the needs of enterprises in China and Asia during the intelligent transformation period," he told the Global Times in an interview on Sunday.

Erik Solheim, Convener of the BRI International Green Development Coalition Advisory Committee and former Executive Director of the UN Environment Program (UNEP), said he hopes China will introduce more of its experience regarding environmental technology to the world during the BFA.

"China is the number one provider of environmental technology in the world. More than half of all solar energy comes from China. China is number one on electric vehicles, on building hydrogen energy. Therefore, China should use the Boao Forum to expose all these practices and ideas to the world," Solheim said.

(Web editor: Xian Jiangnan, Liang Jun)
The Coast Guard said on Monday that it was suspending its search for eight crew members of a commercial lift boat who have been missing since the vessel capsized in treacherous weather in the Gulf of Mexico near Louisiana on April 13. That development likely brings the number of people killed in the episode to 13.

The bodies of five crew members have been recovered, Capt. Will Watson, the Coast Guards sector commander for New Orleans, said at a news conference where he announced that the search-and-rescue effort would end at sundown on Monday.

Five, unfortunately, have been recovered deceased and eight persons remain missing, he said.

We just came here from talking to the families, he said. Told them what Im telling you all now. There was a lot of hugging and a lot of crying. There was a lot of sadness and grief. But there was also a lot of hope and a lot of faith, still. I just want to say to all those folks, our deepest sympathies extend to you all.

The focus now will shift to a National Transportation Safety Board investigation, Captain Watson said.
Education & Training

Innovation

Scientific Events

Delegation Visits Between Hospitals

Bilateral Research

"This partnership will boost our vision for Tampa General Hospital to be the safest and most innovative academic health center in America," said Tampa General Hospital president and CEO John Couris. "In partnership with the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, and our combined Office of Clinical Research, we will be sharing our talents in the areas of education, training, research and technology that will directly impact the lives of the people we care for in Tampa, and across the region and state, and eventually even beyond."

Sheba Medical Center is the largest hospital in Israel and consistently ranks among the top medical facilities in the world. Sheba Medical Center takes great pride in their international collaborations and believes sharing their medical knowledge and research with other institutions benefits the rest of the world.

"We are very excited about the prospect of working directly with Tampa General Hospital, one of America's foremost academic medical facilities" said Yoel Har-Even, director of Sheba International. "As hope has no boundaries, we believe that combining our collective medical knowledge and injecting our innovative technological know-how will be beneficial to everyone in the metro Tampa region, the state and internationally."

Tampa General Hospital and Sheba Medical Center share a passion for innovation and leading change in the healthcare setting and investing in technologies to improve patient experience and outcomes. Both have actively embraced the use of artificial intelligence to monitor care and regulate patient flow throughout their institutions.

Additionally, both are launching innovation hubs to support emerging companies and technology to develop effective solutions for clinical care needs. In 2020, Tampa General founded TGH Innoventures to spur innovation within the institution and transform the future of healthcare through the support of early-stage startups and direct investments. Sheba Medical Center established the ARC Center in 2019, which stands for "Accelerate, Redesign, Collaborate" to give Israeli healthcare startups the opportunity to collaborate with expert physicians and hospital staff to implement global change in medicine.

In recent months, hundreds of new ideas and designs for finding technological models to help predict patient deterioration from the coronavirus have originated at Sheba's Corona Hub, located on campus at the ARC Innovation Center.

Over the next few months, Tampa General Hospital and Sheba Medical Center will work together to identify best opportunities and paths forward to extend innovation and new developments into real world applications to improve the health of patients and local, statewide and global communities.

This new collaboration is not the first experience Tampa General Hospital and Sheba Medical Center have working together. The organizations first came together in June 2020 to present a coronavirus- focused webinar where they shared experiences and insights. The successful event sparked the idea for a greater partnership between institutions.

About Tampa General Hospital

Tampa General Hospital, a 1007-bed non-profit academic medical center, is one of the largest hospitals in America and delivers world-class care as the region's only center for Level l trauma and comprehensive burn care. Tampa General Hospital is the highest-ranked hospital in the market in U.S. News & World Report's 2020-21 Best Hospitals, and one of the top four hospitals in Florida, with five specialties ranking among the best programs in the United States. It is one of the nation's busiest adult solid organ transplant centers and is the primary teaching hospital for the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine. With five medical helicopters, Tampa General Hospital transports critically injured or ill patients from 23 surrounding counties to receive the advanced care they need. Tampa General houses a nationally accredited comprehensive stroke center and its 32-bed Neuroscience Intensive Care Unit is the largest on the West Coast of Florida. It also is home to the Jennifer Leigh Muma 82-bed Level IV neonatal intensive care unit, and a nationally accredited rehabilitation center. Tampa General Hospital's footprint includes 17 Tampa General Medical Group Primary Care offices, TGH Family Care Center Kennedy, TGH Brandon Healthplex, TGH Virtual Health and 19 outpatient Radiology Centers. Tampa Bay residents also receive world-class care from the TGH Urgent Care powered by Fast Track network of clinics, and they can even receive home visits in select areas through TGH Urgent Care at Home, powered by Fast Track. As one of the largest hospitals in the country, Tampa General Hospital is first in Florida to partner with GE Healthcare and open a clinical command center that uses artificial intelligence and predictive analytics to improve and better coordinate patient care at a lower cost. For more information, go to www.tgh.org.

About Sheba Medical Center

Born together with Israel in 1948, Sheba Medical Center, Tel HaShomer is the largest and most comprehensive medical center in the Middle East. Sheba is the only medical center in Israel that combines an acute care hospital and a rehabilitation hospital on one campus, and it is at the forefront of medical treatments, patient care, research and education. As a university teaching hospital affiliated with the Sackler School of Medicine at Tel-Aviv University, it welcomes people from all over the world indiscriminately. For the past two years (2019 and 2020), Newsweek Magazine has named Sheba one of the top ten hospitals in the world. For more information, visit: eng.sheba.co.il.

Media Contact: Karen Barrera Steve Walz Assistant Director of Communications & Partnerships International Media Spokesperson/PR (813) 844-8725 972-52-233-0430 [email protected] [email protected]

SOURCE Tampa General Hospital
Damascus, April 19 : The Syrian presidential elections will be held in May, seven years after the last polls took place in the war-torn country, the country's Parliament announced.

Addressing Parliament on Sunday, Speaker Hamoudeh Sabbagh said the commencement of candidacy for elections will begin from Monday onwards, Xinhua news agency reported.

Sabbagh called on those who wish to run to submit their candidacy applications to the Supreme Constitutional Court within a period of 10 days which ends on April 28.

The Speaker added that the Election Day for the Syrians abroad is set on May 20, while for the citizens inside the country, it will be held on May 26.

"I call upon Syrians to practice their right in choosing the President of the Syrian Arab Republic," he said.

Some of the requirements to become a presidential candidate under Syrian law are the person must be a Muslim; has to be 40 years and above; be a Syrian Arab nationality by birth; must not be convicted of any crime; not have a foreign spouse; and must not carry any other nationality.

Candidates must also have the backing of at least 35 members of Parliament, which is dominated by incumbent President Bashar al-Assad's Baath party.

Meanwhile, the President, who took office following the death of his father Hafez al-Assad in 2000, is yet to make an official announcement if he was going to contest.

In the uncontested 2000 and 2007 elections, he received 97.29 per cent and 97.6 per cent support, respectively.

Amid the raging conflict, Bashar al-Assad was sworn in for another seven-year term in July 2014 after another non-democratic election gave him 88.7 per cent of the vote.

The Syrian crisis entered its 10th year in March this year.

According to the UN Refugee Agency, there are 6.2 million people, including 2.5 million children, displaced within Syria as a result of the war, the biggest internally displaced population in the world.

According to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at 387,118 people have been killed as of December 2020, among them 116,911 civilians.

There were 205,300 people missing or presumed dead, including 88,000 civilians believed to have died of torture in government-run prisons.
Indias urban unemployment is at a historic high and, more important, the participation rate of Indias labour force is at a historic low

You cannot expect to be given a position on the UN Security Council, as India does, when the world sees what you are doing with distaste. (Photo: PTI)

What sort of India is the present generation growing up in and what will they live through? I am over 50 and with good health and good luck might see another couple of decades or so but in productivity terms my best years are behind me. The future belongs to those who are today children and young adults. What do they have in store for them? Having looked at the data and the facts of the last seven years in detail for my next book, I can see a little bit into the future and what it has in store.

Economically, the future is slightly different from what it was when I was coming into the job market. India had liberalised its economy in the year that I turned 21 and in the few years after that the market for jobs vastly improved in the cities. Even people with a generic college degree with no specialisation could get a white-collar job in an airconditioned office if they had just basic knowledge of English.

This greatly benefited the middle class which had always had access to quality schools but not that many options in terms of work (which is why parents kept insisting on specialisation in education and asking children to become doctors and engineers). Now it was possible even for a BA, BSc or BCom woman or man to access an upper-class lifestyle. I was one who benefited from this, as did lakhs of others.

The majority of Indians did not benefit from this, of course, because they had access neither to the big cities or to a decent education. But they had hope, and this explains the thousands of private educational institutions that sprang up in Indias towns and semi-urban spaces that attempted to replicate what was happening in the cities.

This period is now over. Indias urban unemployment is at a historic high and, more important, the participation rate of Indias labour force -- meaning those who are employed or looking for work -- is at a historic low. This means crores of Indians of working age (15 and above) have given up hope of finding a job. This was the case even before the Covid-19 pandemic and the position has been steady for over three years, meaning that it is not cyclical and will not change on its own. The lack of work will in time result in a lack of hope and this will have consequences. One of them will be an increase in crime and lawlessness.

Long term trends globally are also negative in terms of both trade and employment and so, unlike in the past when some of us benefited, the future does not hold out hope for those who are today young.

Socially also, the India that I grew up in and knew has changed. India has always had a problem of reconciling its theoretical secular status with the reality that communal tensions existed. The 1980s and 1990s give us enough evidence to prove this was the case. However, this communal impulse was dampened by efforts from the government. However poor these efforts may have been, the government did not actively inflame the impulse as has happened since 2014. This has consequences both internally and, less important, externally. Within India our politics has become dark and election campaigns are run by the dominant political party actively targeting Indian Muslims. Because this is electorally rewarding as we have seen, we will see more of it. The consequence is that it has damaged Indian society and produced violence in neighbourhoods. To give one clear example, there were zero beef lynchings before 2015. We have introduced a new category of violence.

This will have downstream consequences also, such as economic, which will affect the wider population, but there is no point talking about that today. Externally, our love for hate has brought the worlds attention on us. Just to give an example from this week, this is what the European Parliament said on April 14: "Members have expressed concern over the deteriorating human rights situation in India, echoing comments by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and several UN Special Rapporteurs. This includes reports that human rights defenders and journalists in the country lack a safe working environment. The report also voices alarm regarding Indias Citizenship Amendment Act, which according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is fundamentally discriminatory in nature against Muslims and dangerously divisive.

This text was approved by 61 votes in favour and six votes against. Indias attempts to stop it or soften the criticism failed. The Indian government will brush it off as it has several other reports this year, but again, this comes with consequences. You cannot expect to be given a position on the UN Security Council, as India does, when the world sees what you are doing with distaste.

India was viewed from the outside as a place which was chaotic and noisy but likeable. This was so when I first went abroad at the age of 16. This has now changed in the view of those who study and observe India. It will change soon for the rest of the world also. The optimism has gone. It is disappointing as an Indian to record this, but one cannot look away from what one has found.
"I have been waiting for so many years, I managed to get that, thanks to OTT, which is doing roles other than comedy because in cinema I was mostly getting comedy parts. "OTT has offered me various serious roles, I am happy as I am doing most of them," Warsi told PTI in an interview over Zoom.

Bollywood actor Arshad Warsi is truly one of the most versatile actors who never got his due in the industry. Arshad is one of the most underrated and under-utilised actor of today's time and age who is usually limited to Comedy genre.

However, with OTT platforms making their way into Pandemic, Arshad got more lot of scope to show his serious side as an actor.

Arshad is much more than Circuit from Munnabhai or Madhav in Golmaal. He is undoubtedly the best in comedy but given the other genres, Arshad nails there too. On his birthday, let's take a look at Arshad's finest performances over the years - non comic. You'll be surprised to know he's quite a star.

1. Asur

screengrab

We re-disocvered this hidden gem (Arshad Warsi) during the lockdown and we're so glad. The crime-thriller series on Voot, Asur is a tale of a brutal serial killer. Arshad plays the role of Dhanajay Rajput who along with Barun Sobti (Nikhil Nair) who are caught in the middle of suspense, Indian mythology and murders of people unrelated. Arshad Warsi shocks you with his brilliant performance in every episode. The eight part series leaves you wanting for more.





2. Durgamati

Arshad Warsiplays the role of Central Minister Ishwar Prasad, the main antagonist. Infact, the movie starts with him vowsing to resign from his post if the government fails to recover idols stolen over six months. Starring alongside Bhumi Pednekar who is an IANS officer, Arshad Warsi has given a fine performance who is accused of stealing. Durgamati is full of suspense and horror. Even the title background music can manage to givethe required chills.

3. Guddu Rangeela

Twitter

The movie is about two cousins (Arshad Warsi and Amit Sadh) who are trying to make their ends meet growing up in crime infested environment. They play orchestra during the day and ecome informants at night. The gritty writing, fast pace and wonderful performances by the lead makes this a must watch.





4. Ishqiya

screengrab/Ishqiya

Arshad Warsi is known to give sequels or installements in most of his films. Yep, come to think of it. Golmaal, Dhamaal, Asur, Munnabhai. Infact, he starred in Ishqiya and that got it sequel Dedh Ishqiya too. It is black comedy and Arshad plays the role of a criminal Razzak Hussain aka Babban (Arshad Warsi), who along with Iftikhar aka Khalujan (Naseeruddin Shah) mess up a job and escape from their boss, Mushtaq (Salman Shahid). The two land up in Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh to seek refuge in the house of Vidyadhar Verma. Stellar performance by the entire cast makes it a memorable watch.





5. Jolly LLB

screengrab

Well, this one again was so good that it got a sequel, only that one didn't feature Arshad Warsi. But he surely was in the original. The film revolves around the early life of lawyer Jagdish Tyagi a.k.a. Jolly (played by Warsi). In his witty best, Arshad attempts to earn six innocent wage earners their rights against judicial corruption. The movie does make you feel that its happening in reality as it gives out a social message.

6. Zila Ghaziabad



Twitter

Zila Ghaziabad movie is based on the true story of the gang war that lasted between two groups in the 80s and 90s in Ghaziabad. Arsahd Warsi lays the role of a gangster who is willing to do anything to make a quick buck. The movie might have not been a big success but Arshad Warsi's role is outstanding.

7. Kabul Express

screengrab

Is there anything this man can't do. The most underrated and under-utilised gem took on Kabul Express early on in his career. Arshad who plays the role of Jai Kapoor is an Indian journalist working for Star News who is sent into Afghanistan along with John Abraham. Shocked looking at the ruins in the country, the two are seen following an escape from capture by the Taliban. Easy to say, one of the top performances of Arshad Warsi's career.





8. Chocolate

Not many people have seen this film but they most definitely should. Way before thrillers like Race became big in Bollywood, Chocolate was one multi starrer that had many jaw dropping twists and turns.





9. Sehar

Screengrab

A 2005 crime drama film, Sehar is based on real-life incidents. The movies shows how organized crime takes place in Uttar Pradesh and the way their State Police tackles it. Arshd Warsi plays the role of a newly appointed 31-year-old SSP of Lucknow, Ajay Kumar who has a turbulent journey. You must watch the film for its powerful performance and Arshad's look as a cop.

10. Tere Mere Sapne

screengrab

The movie introduced new comers consisting of Chandrachur Singh, Arshad Warsi, Priya Gill and Simran. And guess who lasted till the very end! Well, the movie is so memorable especially its song that it was even re-used in Ranveer Singh starrer Simmba where Chandrachur featured too.





Well, here's to seeing more of him. Because we love Circuit but we adore the serious angry Arshad too.
SUGAR LAND, Texas, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Noble Corporation ("Noble" or the "Company") today announced that the Company's Board of Directors has appointed Paul Aronzon to serve as a Director.

Charles M. Sledge, on behalf of the Board of Directors, commented, "We are pleased to welcome Paul to Noble's Board of Directors. We look forward to adding his knowledge and experience as we remain focused on safe and efficient operations for our customers and continue our drive towards sustainable value creation for all of Noble's stakeholders."

Mr. Aronzon was added as an additional member of the Board of Directors and was designated by Pacific Investment Management Company LLC in accordance with its director appointment right. Mr. Aronzon is a strategic financial consultant with over 40 years of experience as a lead advisor for a wide range of companies. He was formerly co-managing partner of Milbank's Los Angeles office and Co-leader of Milbank's Global Financial Restructuring Group. He served as the Executive Vice President and co-head of the Corporate Finance Group at Imperial Capital, between 2006 and 2008. Previously, he was a partner/associate for finance and restructuring Groups at Gendel, Raskoff, Shapiro and Quittner, Los Angeles, CA. Mr. Aronzon holds a J.D. from the Southwestern University School of Law and a B.A. degree in Political Science from the California State University at Northridge, Los Angeles, CA.

About Noble Corporation

Noble is a leading offshore drilling contractor for the oil and gas industry. Noble owns and operates one of the most modern, versatile and technically advanced fleets in the offshore drilling industry. Noble and its predecessors have been engaged in the contract drilling of oil and gas wells since 1921. Noble performs, through its subsidiaries, contract drilling services with a fleet of 24 offshore drilling units, consisting of 12 drillships and semisubmersibles and 12 jackups, focused largely on ultra-deepwater and high-specification jackup drilling opportunities in both established and emerging regions worldwide. Noble is an exempted company incorporated in the Cayman Islands with limited liability with registered office at P.O. BOX 31327, Ugland House, S. Church Street, Georgetown, Grand Cayman, KY1-1104. Additional information on Noble is available at www.noblecorp.com .

Forward-looking Disclosure Statement

This communication includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act and Section 21E of the Exchange Act. All statements other than statements of historical facts included in this communication are forward-looking statements. When used in this report, or in the documents incorporated by reference, the words "anticipate," "believe," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "might," "plan," "project," "should," "shall" and "will" and similar expressions are intended to be among the statements that identify forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, the Company cannot assure you that such expectations will prove to be correct. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this communication and the Company does not undertake any obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statement for any reason, except as required by law. The Company has identified factors, including, but not limited to, market conditions, the Company's financial results and performance, the effects of public health threats, pandemics and epidemics, such as the recent and ongoing outbreak of COVID-19, and the adverse impact thereof on the Company's business, financial condition and results of operations (including but not limited to the Company's growth, operating costs, supply chain, availability of labor, logistical capabilities, customer demand for the Company's services and industry demand generally, the Company's liquidity, the price of the Company's securities and trading markets with respect thereto, the Company's ability to access capital markets, and the global economy and financial markets generally), the effects of actions by, or disputes among OPEC+ members with respect to production levels or other matters related to the price of oil, market conditions, factors affecting the level of activity in the oil and gas industry, supply and demand of drilling rigs, factors affecting the duration of contracts, the actual amount of downtime, factors that reduce applicable dayrates, operating hazards and delays, risks associated with operations outside the US, actions by regulatory authorities, credit rating agencies, customers, joint venture partners, contractors, lenders and other third parties, legislation and regulations affecting drilling operations, compliance with regulatory requirements, violations of anti-corruption laws, shipyard risk and timing, delays in mobilization of rigs, hurricanes and other weather conditions, and the future price of oil and gas, that could cause actual plans or results to differ materially from those included in any forward-looking statements. These factors include those "Risk Factors" referenced or described in Noble's most recent Form 10-K, Form 10-Q's, and other filings with the Commission. The Company cannot control such risk factors and other uncertainties, and in many cases, the Company cannot predict the risks and uncertainties that could cause the Company's actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements. You should consider these risks and uncertainties when you are evaluating us.

SOURCE Noble Corporation

Related Links

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WYOMISSING, Pa., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- After more than thirty-two years of legal and trial experience, James Gavin is running for Judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Berks County because Integrity & Experience Matter. In a testament to Gavin's integrity and experience, he earned the endorsement of the Philip C. Melley Memorial Lodge #65 of the Pennsylvania State Troopers Association representing over 600 current and former Pennsylvania State Police Officers from Berks County, Schuylkill County and Lebanon County. He has also been endorsed by the Pennsylvania State Lodge Fraternal Order of Police representing police officers throughout Pennsylvania, Le-Hampton Lodge 35 of the Fraternal Order of Police and Berks County Lodge 71 of the Fraternal Order of Police. This comes on the heels of earning the endorsement of Berks County District Attorney John Adams.

James Gavin said, "The men and women of law enforcement put their lives on the line every day to protect the rights, privileges, and interests of our communities, our families and our children. I am honored and humbled that the members of both statewide and local law enforcement have confidence in my ability to perform the incredibly important job of being a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas."

Gavin intends to bring his lengthy experience as an attorney and counselor at law to the Court of Common Pleas and will serve the community with honor and distinction. He possesses all of the qualities necessary to serve the people of Berks County.

Gavin began his career as an assistant district attorney where he prosecuted literally hundreds of cases. At the time of his departure, he held the position of Chief of Trials.

While in private practice as a partner in the Wyomissing law firm of Masano Bradley, Gavin's experience expanded exponentially. He remains grounded in a litigation practice, handling all types of cases throughout Pennsylvania. He also a broad appellate practice with cases in the Pennsylvania Superior Court, Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court, Pennsylvania Supreme Court and the United States Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

Additionally, he has litigated cases before various state and federal agencies including the labor relations boards, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

In May of 2021, Gavin will celebrate his thirty-first wedding anniversary with his wife, Ruth. Gavin and his wife have three daughters. In the fall of 2019, they welcomed their first grandchild to their family.

Contact: Michael Barley

717-576-6733

SOURCE Committee to Elect James Gavin
London: Seeking to salve an old wound at a time of sorrow for Britains royal family, the political leader of the Irish republican movement has apologised for the 1979 assassination of Louis Mountbatten, an uncle of Prince Philip.

Mary Lou McDonald, the leader of Sinn Fein, which was once the political wing of the underground Irish Republican Army, told a London radio station, Of course, I am sorry that happened; of course, that is heartbreaking.

Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald. Credit:Getty

McDonald offered the landmark apology a day after the Queen buried her husband, Philip, in a ceremony at Windsor Castle that paid tribute to his military career. His uncle Lord Mountbatten, a celebrated commander during World War II who later served as the last viceroy of India, overseeing its partition and transition to independence, was killed after a bomb exploded on his fishing boat off the coast of Ireland.

The assassination, carried out by members of the IRA, was one of the highest-profile attacks during the Northern Ireland Troubles, and the one that struck closest to the heart of the royal family. In addition to his ties to Philip, Lord Mountbatten was friendly with the Queen and a mentor to the couples eldest son, Prince Charles.
HYDERABAD: Coming down heavily on the state government for not taking steps to reduce gathering of people in public places, the Telangana High Court on Monday asked the government to take a call on the matter in 48 hours.

If the government does not do so, the court would be compelled to order enforcement of night curfew or weekend lockdown in view of the steep spurt in Covid-19 cases, a division bench of the court said.

The division bench comprising Chief Justice Hima Kohli and Justice B. Vijaysen Reddy, referred to the courts earlier advisories to the government, and reiterated that the number of participants in marriages should be no more than 50 and at funerals 20.

Occupancy in the cinema halls should be half or one-third, the bench said, and added that steps should taken to reduce the footfalls in pubs, malls, celebrations, functions etc.

Keeping in view public health and safety, we have been asking the government to issue circulars or GOs. But it appears that the government is hesitant. Obviously, priority should be given to public health. Do whatever you can in the next 48 hours. If not, this court will take a call, the bench told the government.

The court said: We are refraining from directing the government to impose night curfew or weekend lockdown. But, at the same time, we dont want the situation in Telangana state to be like in many states like Delhi, Maharashtra and etc, where curfews and lockdowns were imposed. If the state government is not going to take a call to reduce footfalls at public places, then the court will take a call.

The bench was dealing with PILs seeking directions to the government for steps to contain the spread of Covid-19 and treatment of infected patients.

On April 10, the court had specifically directed the government to furnish circulars issued to enforce the provisions of the Disaster Management Act and Epidemics Act.

The government only furnished a circular it had issued for imposing a fine against those who were not wearing masks, and submitted that all other standard operating procedures issued by the Centre in November 2020 during Unlock-6 were being followed.

Advocate-General BS Prasad said the government was monitoring the situation by the minute.

Irked by a lack of crucial information about the availability of oxygen beds and ICU beds for Covid patients, in the report submitted by the public health department, Chief Justice Hima Kohli had asked for the presence of the health secretary and the director of public health in the court. They appeared in the virtual mode in the post-lunch session.

The bench grilled them for not furnishing the data and details it had asked for and sought to know the minute details of the steps that were taken to contain the second wave.

Reacting to the submissions that the government was following the SOPs issued by the Centre, the court asked whether the situation now was like November last year. When the positive cases were escalating, does the state not have the power to take adequate steps, it asked.

The court also checked the website of the health department and the hyperlink of the beds status details in each notified Covid hospital, to cross-check the contentions of the officers. The officers said the government was closely monitoring the situation. The court pointed out many flaws in the daily media bulletin which showed fewer cases as compared to the district-level reports.

What is the state going to make of the public of the Telangana state? Sitting ducks!, the court said.

Sorry for being tough with the government, as this is a question of life and death of the citizens. Your monitoring is not good enough. The state government perhaps expects of the High Court to do the R&D work for the state. The state has left it to us to collate and tabulate the entire data sought for, and we take strong exception to the report filed by it. The report is beautifully silent on the number of issues and details sought by the court, observed Chief Justice Hima Kohli.

Justice B. Vijaysen Reddy asked whether the revenues and finances are more important to the government than public health. Why delay in imposing restrictions when the cases are largely increasing? How are the hospitals asking for positive reports from the patients who deserve to be in hospitals? Your report only says that 84 per cent of the cases are asymptomatic. Then how they are compelled for a positive report?

The court issued the following directions to the government:

* Occupancy rate in cinema halls should be 50 per cent or even 1/3rd of the hall capacity depending upon the situation

* Tabulated statement showing number of tests conducted for the last one week through RT-PCR, RAT etc

* Steps be taken to monitor cases at airports, railway stations, inter-state bus terminals

* A decision on putting a curb on the passengers coming from neighbouring states

* A decision to be taken by the government to impose night curfew or partial lockdown during the weekends in the state and the districts where the cases are more

* Directions to be issued to the Kumbh Mela returnees to get themselves tested, quarantined etc.

The next status report should be filed within two days and PILs have been adjourned to April 23.
JOHANNESBURG  Firefighters in Cape Town battled a wildfire on Monday that had engulfed the slopes of the citys famed Table Mountain and destroyed parts of the University of Cape Towns library, a devastating blow to the worlds archives of Southern African history.

Helicopters dumped water on the area to try to contain the blaze, which began on Sunday and was likely caused by an abandoned fire, according to South African national parks officials. But as wind picked up overnight, the fire spread to neighborhoods in the foothills of the mountain and forced some homes to be evacuated on Monday. Monday evening, officials warned that the blaze would likely rage for days.

Hopefully we can get containment very soon but to extinguish the fire, in other words to put it out completely, thats going to take more than a week, Philip Prins, fire manager for Table Mountain National Park, told reporters on Monday.
Inno, in your life, you lived a life of purpose. In the short time you lived in this world, you clearly identified your life purpose, fulfilled it and died empty, after given it your all. Inno, like Apostle Paul, you fought the good fight. You finished the course and you kept the faith. Your integrity and dedication to humanity were unquestionable.

The goal of life is not to die old but to die empty. I want you to die with nothing else to do. I want you to die because you have poured out all of your dreams, ideas, visions, books, music, inventions, publications, that you died empty. You died because there is nothing to keep you alive. You have done what you were born to do and that is the greatest service to humanity.  Dr. Myles Munroe

My brother, friend and comrade, Innocent Chukwuma, I never imagined I would be writing a tribute to you a few weeks after our last phone conversation. During that conversation in late January, your voice beamed with life as you shared your post-Ford Foundation aspirations. Part of this was to use the opportunity of a fellowship you had been accepted into at Oxford to write your memoir. As you pondered about what might be the best way to approach the collection of data for the writing, you asked that I help check my library for materials that might be relevant to what you planned to write. In addition, you asked that I should be ready for an interview on our collective exploits as comrades, roommates and colleagues during the hey days of the struggle against military dictatorship in Nigeria.

During the conversation, we both went down the memory lane and reminisced on our days as roommates in the Fadeyi area of Lagos, while both working for the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO). You emphasised the need for a proper recollection of our roommate years because you wanted them to be fully reflected in the memoir as part of your formative years in Lagos. After our conversation, I went to bed that night reflecting on all that we did together in Lagos, and I made a promise to myself to share all the details I can remember with you whenever we meet.

But to my utter shock, I woke up in the morning of April 4 to read a WhatsApp message from a mutual friend, Dr. Bheki Moyo, inquiring if it is true that you had passed away. I was frozen and confused. In that state of mind, I picked up the phone and called your soulmate and wife, Josephine Effah Chukwuma. The phone rang twice, but I ended the call before she could pick it up. I realised that she would not be the right person to call to make such inquiry. I then called Abdul Oroh, the Executive Director of the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO), while we both worked there. As Abdul confirmed the sad news to me, we both burst into tears. As I write this, I still cannot come to terms with the fact that the Inno that I knew is no longer with us on this earth.

Inno, as many of us fondly call you, we both came from the students movement to join the CLO almost at the same time. We were friends and comrades as students activists, through which many of us in that generation cut our activism teeth. As a students leader from the University of Jos and you from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, we had met at several meetings at the national level, where the place of birth, ethnic origin, language, and tongue never mattered to any of us. What mattered was the idea of a prosperous Nigeria, where all of us can aspire to become whatever we want to in life. As such, it was easy for us to quickly bond when we became colleagues. We joined the CLO as fresh university graduates full of ideas and optimism about the future of our generation and that of Nigeria. Thus, it was exciting for us when we joined the CLO, where Olisa Agbakoba was President and Ayo Obe, Vice President. Beside those two legal icons were Emma Ezeazu, who was General Secretary; Chima Ubani, Head of Campaigns; Lanre Enhowa, Head of Research; and Chidi Odinkalu, Head of the Legal department.

One of the main issues we faced as young entrants to the CLO was where to live. At that time, Chima Ubani and Emma Ezeazu had a two-bedroom apartment in the Fadeyi area of Lagos. As it is with many comrades of that era, my comrades rented apartment is also my own apartment. So it was for Inno and I when, one day, without consulting Chima Ubani or Emma Ezeazu, we both showed up at their apartment with our bags, no questions asked, and it became our resident. Chima had two of his younger brothers with him and we basically occupied Ezeazus section of the apartment. Again, with no questions asked, Ezeazu perfectly understood that comrades would have to live, hence his decision to let us stay in his room while he temporarily moved to live with his Uncle in the Ikoyi area of Lagos. Such was the camaraderie of living as a comrade in Lagos and indeed Nigeria during that period. We were all our brothers keepers, always protecting each other. That was how we ended up being roommates and sleeping on the same bed for two years.

Inno, your wittiness and sense of humor were unparalleled, which made me to question your innocentness, which we laughed at every time I did that (but you never let this go without a response). Sometimes you did drive all of us crazy, but in a perfect way. Several times, I almost cracked my ribs from laughter. And, of course, your intellectual depth was equal to none. In the tradition we grew up in as students leaders, reading and intellectual rigour was one of our benchmarks and you excelled in all of these characters, by not only reading but doing so widely. There was never a dull moment in having intellectual and political conversations with you. In most cases, the discussions we had were about governance and development  of Nigeria, the African continent and the world in general. From our student days, we were committed to the anti-apartheid movement. As such, the anti-apartheid struggle was one reccurring theme in our discussions. While Chima, I and most of our comrades leaned towards the African National Congress (ANC), you supported the Pan African Congress (PAC). I recall how furious you were when we heard the news of the killing of Chris Hani, leader of the military wing of the ANC and General Secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP), on April 10, 1994. That day, we were all downcast and furious. In many of our conversations, you never hid your disappointment with how the ANC is governing post-apartheid South Africa.

As colleagues and roommates, we sometimes treated our work as a continuation of everything we did, whether we were having dinner, drinks or light conversations. To us, work never ends. The discussion in the office would continue at home and our house became the engine room of the Campaign for Democracy (CD), especially when Chima Ubani, its Chief Strategist was living in the same apartment with us.

You were insightful, dogged, strategic, unassuming, disciplined, humble, simplistic and programmatic  never taking extreme positions, engaging in grandstanding, or seeking the limelight. Inno, you lived a simple lifestyle and were not given to extravagance. You worked quietly to advance the course you committed your life to.

At the CLO, we shared one thing in common: We both looked for ways to add value to the human rights work of the organisation. And, we brought some innovation into the work of the CLO. We were not content with issuing press releases condemning human rights violations or going to courts to seek redress for victims. While you were assigned to work on the Police project, you realised you had to collaborate with the Police to change the institution from within. On my part, I led the Membership and National Expansion programme. In that capacity, I was responsible for membership recruitment and establishment of branches of the organisation throughout the country. Just like you, I realised that after we recruit members and issued them membership cards, the question became: What next? In order to answer this critical question, I birthed the Human Rights Education and Empowerment Programme. A central component of this was the Church and Human Rights Programme (because of this programme, Olisa Agbakoba own the Human Rights Prize of the German Association of Judges in 1993). When I initiated the programme, being as witty as ever, you quipped, Edigheji, you never go to church, but you are now an agent of the church. Many of our other friends and comrades would tease me about working for the church. Sometimes, I would pick on you and respond with wit that you are also now working for the Nigerian Police Force. We all would laugh endlessly, even at the seriousness of the kind of work we were all doing to make Nigeria a better place for all. More importantly, we both recognised that working from inside with these stakeholders  the church and the Police  would have meaningful impacts beyond the common approach of criticising them from outside. Thus, while many highlighted human rights violations, and engaged in advocacy, you worked with the Police to change the institution.

You were insightful, dogged, strategic, unassuming, disciplined, humble, simplistic and programmatic  never taking extreme positions, engaging in grandstanding, or seeking the limelight. Inno, you lived a simple lifestyle and were not given to extravagance. You worked quietly to advance the course you committed your life to. At the CLO, we worked on weekends, Christmas days and even New Years eves. We required little supervision to carry out our work, a fact that Olisa Agbakoba and Ayo Obe will attest to. To us, human rights activism was not a career but a calling. Hence you were so passionate about your work, and driven by the need to meet the deadlines you set for yourself. This was the same for most of us. It was no surprise that we found ourselves working throughout some nights in the office.

You crafted and implemented the police project on the basis of your passion and knowledge, while also establishing the necessary relationships within the Force for the project to succeed. At the same time, you recognised early on the need for us to broaden our knowledge and acquire critical skills to enhance our human rights work. My brother, Inno, you championed the combination of passion with the acquisition of critical skills for activism to have sustainable impacts. To you, activism must be combined with professionalism for human rights organisations to be successful. These were the qualities that subsequently led you to establish and run one of the most successful human rights organisations in the history of Nigeria, the CLEEN Foundation. This was you sowing and nurturing of a seed to serve Nigerians and humanity. At the time you established it, I had left the CLO to South Africa for my Masters degree but I kept abreast with developments at CLEEN.

Our time in the CLO was interesting, and we learned a lot from Olisa Agbakoba, Abdul Oroh, Emma Ezeazu and Chima Ubani. Agbakoba deserves much credit for assembling committed activists who changed the course of human rights advocacy in Nigeria. He also taught us that human rights and pro-democracy work were and continue to be struggles against systematic issues, and should never be personal. As such, he advised us never to use abusive language in our press releases and reports. We were to tell the story and make our demands. The readers would get the gist. Also to Olisas credit, he ignored those who advised him not to recruit communists as staff of the CLO. Had he listened to them, Inno and a number of us who came from the students movement would not have worked at the organisation. The CLO would have been poorer for it. At the time, one thing stood out in the human rights and pro-democracy movement: They were pan-Nigerian movements, without regard to the religious or ethnic backgrounds of their staff and members.

CLO was the incubator and, at some point, we all dispersed in different directions, but we never left each other. Inno, whenever you and I met or chatted on the phone, we never stopped teasing each other on the basis of our lived experiences. One issue we usually threw banters at each other on was our experience in hands of the State Security Services during the campaign to actualise the June 1993 presidential election. Following the annulment of the June 12 presidential election won by Chief M.K.O Abiola, by the military government of General Ibrahim Babangida, the Campaign for Democracy (CD) called for mass protests. The onus of mobilising for these protests fell on people like you and I. In the process of mobilising the people, Lagos was divided into five zones, with you responsible for leading the mobilisation in Apapa and I responsible for Lagos Island. For the one week leading to the protests, we mobilised day and night, and in my own case, our team in Lagos Island were accommodated in the homes of market women in Balogun Market.

We only returned home on the third day of the protests, which was ten days after we had left the house. We were exhausted after being in the streets for ten days. You returned with a wound in your hand, which came from a broken bottle used as a weapon against you by one of the angry protesters who wanted to set a trailer truck ablaze. But as the leader of the zone, you stopped them and in anger, a protester stabbed you with a bottle. Inno, you had the scar from that wound until your death. Just to be clear, the democracy that Nigeria enjoys today came through the blood of Inno and countless others. It was not a gift from God or the work of politicians, who are its main beneficiaries today.

When we finally returned to the house after ten days in the street, you put on a movie, Boyz n the Hood for us to watch and relax. As we were watching the movie, there was a knock on the door. I opened the door and there were four men with guns standing outside the door. Their first question was: Where is Chima Ubani? We both said we didnt know where he was. Then they asked for both of our names. Once we told them, they smiled and said with commanding voices, You are both under arrest! Of course, we wanted to know who they were, and they said they were from the State Security Service (SSS). I told them, OK, I have to pack  take my books, clothes and toothbrush and toothpaste. They refused. Being the pragmatist that you were, you were not ready to argue with them. That was how we were arrested and taken to the Shaginsha SSS headquarters in Lagos. While there, they left us at a sitting room. We slept on the couch for the first night of our detention. Then the following morning, they brought some miserable food for us. I insisted that they have to get us toothbrushes and toothpaste before we could eat. Again, Inno, you felt my demand was an exercise in futility. You kept your calm. The punishment for my demand was that the SSS kept me in solitary confinement for a week, where I slept on the bare floor in a room with broken windows. Mosquitoes feasted on me. Inno, you were released a day earlier than I was. Upon our release, we began to look for accommodation, knowing that the Fadeyi apartment was no longer safe for us. We both found separate accommodations and started living apart.

Inno, you played your part as a positive change agent to make Nigeria, in particular, and the world, in general, a better place. Your contribution to human rights and pro-democracy struggles and how you used the platform of the Ford Foundation to support causes that promote good governance, development, and social enterprise will not be forgotten.

Inno, every time we met or chatted, I always teased you that you got me arrested for suggesting that we should watch a movie. You would jab back by saying, Edigheji, your unreasonable demands in detention made the SSS to be more hostile to us. You never called me by my first name, Omano. Only you and Olisa Agbakoba called me by my last name, even when we were all on first name terms at the CLO.

While I was away in South Africa, we kept in regular contact. We never left each other. On several occasions, whenever I am was visiting Nigeria, we would arrange for me to spend a night at your home. There was always food and red wine for me, even if it was a late-night arrival. Your soulmate, Josephine, would join us briefly for discussions and laugh at our banters. Some nights we would stay up until 2:00 a.m. trying to catch up on conversations. And we had to wake up after a few hours sleep for me to catch the first flight either to Abuja or Kaduna. Thank you for your hospitality and friendship.

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Inno, you lived a happy life  one full of gratitude. I will attribute this to two reasons, you married your soulmate, who stood with you through thick and thin; and you discovered your life purpose that you were so passionate about to fulfill. Luckily for you, your soulmate shared the same purpose and even had a stronger passion. Josephine was your pillar.

This brings me to the conversation we once had in your hotel room in Abuja. We were reflecting on our lives and what we needed to do to live meaningful lives. It was then you told me about a conversation you had with one of your closest family members. You said, she told you she, feared dying without living. And you told me your response  empowering her to be herself and live a life of purpose. Inno, in your life, you lived a life of purpose. In the short time you lived in this world, you clearly identified your life purpose, fulfilled it and died empty, after given it your all. Inno, like Apostle Paul, you fought the good fight. You finished the course and you kept the faith. Your integrity and dedication to humanity were unquestionable. Using the platforms of civil society organisations and the Ford Foundation, you made a lasting impact on humanity. You were an institutional builder, a leader who uplifted others, a bridge builder and an effective networker. You fought for human rights and democracy in Nigeria. Your work contributed to the gradual transformation taking place in the Nigerian Police Force. Indeed, much more needs to be done to transform the police into a force to serve the Nigerian people; entrench democracy; and institutionalise a human rights culture in the country.

Inno, you played your part as a positive change agent to make Nigeria, in particular, and the world, in general, a better place. Your contribution to human rights and pro-democracy struggles and how you used the platform of the Ford Foundation to support causes that promote good governance, development, and social enterprise will not be forgotten.

The last time we met was in the company of Abdul Oroh in Abuja after the public presentation of my new book, Nigeria: Democracy Without Development, How To Fix It. You supported the book project through the Ford Foundation. From your hotel, you suggested that we go to see Professor Ebere Onwudiwe, who happened to be a mutual friend. I am glad I yielded to your request to go with you to Professor Onwudiwes house because that was the last time I saw both of you. And I thank providence for the time we shared together on this planet. You made positive impacts on my life, as a friend, brother and comrade. We trusted and confided in each other. It will be remiss on my part not to acknowledge that you were a loving husband and a father. Everytime you talked about your family, there was that beam smile on your face. I am prouder of you for loving your girls.

My brother, Inno, I will sorely miss you. Your sudden death has left a void in our lives. And it certainly leaves a huge void in the lives of your soulmate, best friend and wife, Josephine Effah Chukwuma, and the pride of your life, your three wonderful, confident and loving daughters  Chidinma, Amarachi and Nkechi. May God strengthen and protect them.

Omano Edigheji is currently Special Adviser (Research and Documentation) to the Governor of Kaduna State. He wrote in his personal capacity.
People deal with grief in different ways. Many decide to translate tragic events into opportunities for learning and growth, like when Home Town host Erin Napier decided to have another baby while attending her beloved grandmothers funeral.

Most fans didnt even realize the HGTV star was pregnant until she and her co-star husband, Ben Napier, announced they were expecting a second child in spring 2021. And now Erin is opening up about why theyre expanding their family.

Ben and Erin Napier have been busy filming Home Town Takeover

The pregnancy didnt slow Erin down one bit.

The popular host has been hard at work filming the 6-epsiode special series where she and Ben help revitalize an entire town. This was inspired by the massive changes they made in their hometown of Laurel, Mississippi. Home Town Takeover will feature several inspiring upgrades in Wetumpka, Alabama.

We wanted to take all of the things weve learned in 12 years of historic revitalization [in Laurel] and teach another small town, Erin told People. She and Ben helped transform 12 businesses and homes in Wetumpka. And they did it all while Erin was secretly pregnant.

Erin Napier decided her daughter Helen needed a sibling at a funeral

Ben and Erin Napier | Nathan Congleton/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank

Sadly, Erins grandmother died in May 2020. This is the event that made her realize she wanted to give her daughter a sibling despite the risks.

My grandmother passed away in May. At the funeral, my dad and his only brother stood over her casket, and it just made me think about how important a sibling bond is and how we wanted that for Helen, Erin told People in an interview. We want her to have somebody to share her life with.

Her hesitation to have another child spurred from some health issues Erin experienced prior to her pregnancy with Helen. She explained how she kept the first pregnancy secret for months because she was worried something would go wrong.

Its an incredibly sensitive processthats why we kept it a secret forever, the Home Town host revealed. Literally, tomorrow wasnt promised, and it felt best not to make a fuss. Its such a tender subject.

The new season of Home Town will wrap right before the baby comes

#HGTVHomeTown is back tonight with a cottage for my first time home owner designer friend, Whitney! If you fancy bohemian meets modern style, this episodes for you  See you tonight on @hgtv at 8/7 ct or anytime on @discoveryplus! pic.twitter.com/YrWnIRj4z8  Erin Napier (@ErinRNapier) March 28, 2021

RELATED: Home Town Stars Ben and Erin Napier Reveal 2 Cheap and Easy Home Renovation Tips

The Napiers have been busy filming both their original series, Home Town, and their special Home Town Takeover show even throughout Erins pregnancy. The couple confirmed theyd finish up in May 2021, which happens to coincide with the babys due date.

Its been the absolute hardest thing weve ever done, Erin told HGTV of filming two intense projects during pregnancy. Ive never felt this kind of tired in my bones.

But all their hard work will pay off soon. The highly anticipated Home Town Takeover premieres May 2 while new episodes of Home Town will come later. Even with their maternity leave, the Napiers fans wont have to go long without seeing their renovation skills.

Catch new episodes of both Home Town and Home Town Takeover on HGTV.
Read what is in the news today:

COVID-19 Updates

-- Vietnam recorded one imported case of COVID-19 from Japan on Monday morning, bringing the national tally to 2,785 infections, with 2,475 recoveries and 35 virus-related deaths, according to the Ministry of Health.

-- As many as 79,182 people had been vaccinated against COVID-19 in Vietnam as of Sunday.

-- The Ministry of Health ordered the Pasteur Institute in Ho Chi Minh City, an epidemiological research institute, to set up a COVID-19 testing lab in Ha Tien City in Kien Giang Province, which borders Cambodia. Illegal immigration from Cambodia remains rampant in the southern Vietnamese locality while the COVID-19 situation in the neighboring country stays complicated.

Society

-- Road users in Ho Chi Minh City complained about tens of motorcyclists blocking a section of Truong Chinh Street in District 12 to organize an illegal race on Sunday afternoon.

-- Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh has ordered the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, and the chairs of the Peoples Committees of 13 provinces where the North-South Expressway will pass through to ensure the supply of building materials for the construction of the mammoth project.

-- Police in Ho Chi Minh City discovered over 100 people testing positive for drugs at a nightclub on Le Van Khuong Street in District 12 at around 1:00 am on Sunday.

Business

-- Vietnams ratio of debt-to-GDP was over 140 percent and the country is among those with the highest rates against international standards, Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam Nguyen Thi Hong reported to Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh on Saturday morning.

Lifestyle

-- The eighth Vietnam Book Day kicked off at Ho Chi Minh Citys Book Street on Nguyen Van Binh Street in District 1 on Sunday, featuring various activities, both online and offline.

World news

-- Two men died after a Tesla (TSLA.O) vehicle, which was believed to be operating without anyone in the driver's seat, crashed into a tree on Saturday night north of Houston, authorities said, Reuters reported.

-- Germany, represented by Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, held a national memorial service in a Berlin concert hall on Sunday for its nearly 80,000 victims of the coronavirus pandemic, putting aside deep divisions over COVID-19 restrictions to share the pain of grieving families, according to AFP.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Homicide squad detectives investigating the murder of a young woman 27 years ago have turned their attention to a Newcastle home and whether a domestic incident took place before her death.

The body of Melissa Hunt, 22, was found near the weir wall of Burrenjim Dam along Blue Gum Creek in Stockrington on April 25, 1994. She had been thrown into the water with rocks in her clothing.

Melissa Hunt died from severe head injuries. Credit:NSW Police

Homicide squad commander Detective Superintendent Danny Doherty said Ms Hunts murder was brutal and she died of horrific and severe head injuries.

Theres a lot of planning that wouldve had to have gone into place, he told reporters in Newcastle on Tuesday. Not only to take Melissa to the dam, and to place her in the dam.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 19)  The Department of Environment and Natural Resources defended on Monday the government's move to lift the moratorium on new mining deals, saying this can fuel the Philippine economic recovery battered by the coronavirus pandemic.

In a virtual briefing on Monday, DENR Usec. Jonas Leones said the government should take advantage of the Philippines' mining sector "to generate income for the economy."

Last week, President Rodrigo Duterte signed Executive Order No 130, allowing the government to enter into new mineral mining agreements as long as the deals comply with local laws.

READ: Gov't lifts moratorium on new mining agreements

EO 130 said that, to date, less than 5% of the country's mineral resources have been tapped, and the mining industry can support government projects such as the Build, Build, Build Program and increasing employment opportunities in areas where there are mining activities.

According to Leones, the government has about 100 mining projects, which can inject billions of pesos for the country's COVID-19 response.

"Kapag na-implement natin ito they can generate 21 billion para sa coffers ng pamahalaan," he said. "Ito ang nakita natin na isang paraan para ma-resolve ang mga problema sa financial."

[Translation: Once we implement this, they can generate 21 billion for government coffers. This is what we see as one way to resolve financial problems.]

The DENR official said they are now in the process of evaluating the deals in the pipeline.

He noted one of the big-ticket projects includes the Silangan Mining in Surigao, which will have a funding requirement of $700 million.

Under the EO, the DENR is tasked with the creation and the strict implementation of mine safety and environmental policies.
Sri Lankas Investment Showcase to the World on 7-9th June

Themed Sri Lanka  Asias Next Growth Haven, the Sri Lanka Investment Forum (SLIF) 2021 jointly organized by the Board of Investments (BOI), The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce and the Colombo Stock Exchange will kick off on the 7th of June 2021 on a virtual platform.

SLIF 2021 will showcase to the world, Sri Lankas attractiveness as an investment destination through the exposition of a blend of Mega Projects, Strategic Investment Initiatives, Private Equity Opportunities and Portfolio Investment propositions of Public Listed Corporates listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange. The forum will attract direct and portfolio investors including sovereign wealth funds, private equity funds, Development Finance Institutions, MNCs, High Net Worth Individuals, and all other investor classes from across the globe.





Sri Lankas leading Policy-makers, sector experts and industry leaders featured as Keynote Speakers and Expert Resource Personnel at SLIF 2021 will showcase Sri Lankas Investment Proposition to the Global Investment Community. The forum will feature a wide spectrum of Expert Keynotes and discussion forums covering key aspects of Sri Lankas Investment Proposition including but not limited to Foreign Investment Policies, Capital Markets, Ease of Doing Business Measures, Facilitating Legislation and Incentive regimes. SLIF 2021 will accordingly empower institutional, corporate and individual investors and businesses with a comprehensive set of information with respect to Sri Lankas FDI and Portfolio Investment environment.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, HSBC, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Port City Sri Lanka will bolster the first of its kind International Forum in the capacities of Knowledge Partner, Banking Partner, and Strategic Partners respectively. Microsoft, Technology Partner to SLIF 2021 will power the virtual collaboration platform enabling Plenary Sessions, Virtual Forum and Exhibition rooms and One on One Corporate Sessions with participation from across the Globe.

The 3-day forum presents a first of its kind opportunity for the Corporate Sector as well as State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) to explore partnerships with participating investors. The event will provide listed companies with an opportunity to reach out to foreign portfolio investors and likewise, Project and Strategic Initiative promoters from across the Public and Private Sectors to showcase Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) opportunities. Investment Banking and advisory firms as well as Private Equity Promoters, Consultants and Stock Broking firms will be key participants at the forum.

SLIF 2021 is also supported by FairFirst Insurance (Insurance Partner), Dialog (Telecommunications Partner), Asia Securities (Platinum Partner), Citibank (Gold Partner), NSB Fund Management (Silver Partner) and Softlogic Stockbrokers and Melstarcorp (Bronze Partners).
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Prince Charles has left for his cottage in Wales to privately grieve the loss of his father  following an extraordinary summit with Prince William and Prince Harry immediately after Prince Philip's funeral.

I have learned the grief-stricken Prince of Wales fled to Llwynywermod in Llandovery on his own within 24 hours of his father being laid to rest.

He departed after a face-to-face meeting within the grounds of Windsor Castle with his two sons, where they started the 'baby steps' towards a reconciliation following Harry and Meghan's bombshell Oprah Winfrey interview.

But, in an unprecedented development that lays bare the depth of their rift, Charles and William preferred to meet with Harry together so that nobody's words could be misconstrued afterwards.

Prince Charles left for his cottage in Llwynywermod, Wales, within 24 hours of his father being laid to rest on Saturday to grieve privately

The royal decided he needed to contemplate on a solitary basis in peace at his Welsh hideaway, a 1.2million converted farmhouse in the Brecon Beacons (pictured)

It is believed his wife Camilla has remained in London, where she is continuing with private commitments, while Charles is in his Welsh cottage (pictured)

Prince William, Prince Harry, Peter Phillips and Vice-Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence during the funeral procession of the Duke of Edinburgh

A senior royal insider said: 'Obviously after the worldwide fallout of the Oprah interview trust has to be rebuilt.

'There was no official wake after the funeral, but Charles, William and Harry took the opportunity to speak and catch-up face to face after many months apart.

'They were only able to spend a short time together outdoors given Covid restrictions and also without staff, including senior courtiers, overhearing what was being said.

'It was important to Charles and William that they were both there together. It means nothing spoken about can be misconstrued in the future.'

Kate also attended parts of the talks, some of which took place at Frogmore Cottage, Harry's home within the grounds of Windsor Castle, according to The Sun.

Given the tensions, sparked by claims of racism and uncaring behaviour by the Royal Family when Meghan says she was suffering from mental health issues, a full rapprochement did not occur.

Another senior royal insider said: 'There is much pain and hurt on both sides, so this reconciliation will take place in baby steps.

'First, they need to decide on some ground rules as to how they conduct business going forward in a way that makes all parties feel safe and protected.'

Crucially, Charles and William have the Queen's support to deal with the situation.

The source explained: 'The Queen has made it clear to senior advisers that she is united with Charles and William, and was disappointed with aspects of Harry and Meghan's interview.'

Harry remains in Windsor on an open-ended ticket, with a source revealing earlier today that he could stay for the Queen's 95th birthday on Wednesday before returning to his pregnant wife in California later in the week.

But Charles decided he needed to contemplate on a solitary basis in peace at his Welsh hideaway, a 1.2million converted farmhouse in the Brecon Beacons.

It is believed his wife Camilla has remained in London, where she is continuing with private commitments.

My source added: 'Charles felt he wanted to reflect alone.

'He also wants to attend to the thousands of letters sent to him in condolence of his father's death.

'He is acutely aware that this is a hugely significant moment in his life and he feels like he has the weight of the world of his shoulders.

'All his life he has been heir to throne, but Prince Philip was the patriarch of the family.

'Overnight that's changed, and it's impacted him both professionally and personally.

'He needs time to think and contemplate the future of the Royal Family after what was a very difficult week.'

Prince Charles (pictured during a drinks reception at his 1.2million Welsh property in Llwynywermod in Llandovery in 2009) departed after a face-to-face meeting within the grounds of Windsor Castle with his two sons

Prince Charles walks behind the Duke of Edinburgh's coffin at it makes its way to St George's Chapel in Windsor

Senior royals, including Princes Charles and William and Princess Anne, walk behind Prince Philip's coffin during Saturday's funeral in Windsor

Her Majesty sits alone and looks towards the altar during the poignant service for Prince Philip inside St George's Chapel on Saturday

The Daily Telegraph reported today that Charles and William are planning a major summit on the future of the monarchy following the death of Prince Philip.

The two direct heirs will plan which members of 'The Firm' will be working royals and what they should do.

Prince Edward and Sophie Wessex are expected to take on more prominent roles, stepping into the void left by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

Charles usually spends a week in Llwynywermod every July and it is a perfect location for him to seek solace.

The hideaway has its own 192-acre organic farm but the nearest shop is a mile away.

The no-frills cottage has no TV but features bare floors, traditional Welsh weavings on the walls and local pottery.

The Duchess of Cambridge and the Duke of Cambridge look towards Philip's coffin before it is lowered into the Royal Vault

Prince Harry was sat directly across from his older brother and his wife Kate having flown in without his wife Meghan

Charles has previously revealed it took 'a long search lasting some 40 years' to find the property, which he believes is 'very important'.

In an interview, he said: 'Several houses and sites were explored until, finally, we came across Llwynywermod in an exceptionally beautiful part of Carmarthenshire, on the edge of the Brecon Beacons and within reasonable reach of Cardiff.'

The secluded and fully sustainable three-bedroom property has been Charles and Camilla's country retreat in Wales since March 2007, but they tend to spend a couple of weeks there a year.

The source added: 'There is no better place for Charles to come to terms with his grief and start to think about his future.

'He has a daunting amount to consider, including the ongoing tensions between William and Harry which will not be easily resolved.'

Clarence House declined to comment.

Prince Charles 'walked and talked' with Prince Harry before 'family summit' after funeral - as it's revealed Duke of Sussex flew to UK with his own US private security team to be met by Met Police at Heathrow

By Rory Tingle and Izzy Nikolic for MailOnline

Prince Charles 'walked and talked' with Prince Harry at Windsor Castle after his father the Duke of Edinburgh's funeral before later taking part in a 'family summit', a source said today.

It is not clear what was discussed at the meeting, but the source said they began the 'long task' of looking at condolence letters sent from around the world.'

The talks come as speculation whirls around when the Duke of Sussex will fly back to LA to be with pregnant wife Meghan Markle.

Prince Harry arrived in the UK on April 11, reportedly with his own US private security team.

According to the Telegraph, the Duke was met at Heathrow Airport by Met Poilce officers, who helped whisk him off to the royal residence of Frogmore Cottage - where he was placed into quarantine ahead of the funeral.

The prince is said to have booked a return flight on British Airways. The airline has just one direct flight to LA, which left Heathrow at 4.30pm. It is not clear if Harry left on that flight.

Prince Harry (left) and Prince Charles (right) at Philip's funeral in Windsor Castle on Saturday, where they walked behind his personalised Land Rover hearse

Meghan and Harry personally chose the locally-sourced flowers for their wreath (second from right) - including Acanthus mollis and Eryngium. Pictured: Wreaths from members of the royal family lie against the pews during the funeral

Meghan's note for Prince Philip: Duchess left handwritten card on wreath for Duke of Edinburgh and watched funeral from her LA home at 7am Meghan Markle left a handwritten card on a wreath for the Duke of Edinburgh at St George's Chapel on the day of his funeral. The Duchess of Sussex - who is around six-months pregnant with Prince Harry's second child - was advised not to make the 10-hour flight to Britain for the funeral by her physician. Instead, she watched the ceremony - which began at 7am Pacific time - on television from her and Harry's 11million mansion in California while the Duke of Sussex attended. A wreath from the couple was earlier left in St George's Chapel, Windsor, to mark their respects, sources told PA news agency. Meghan and Harry personally chose the locally-sourced flowers for their tribute - including Acanthus mollis (Bear's breeches), the national flower of Greece, to represent Philip's heritage, and Eryngium (sea holly), to represent the Royal Marines. The wreath also features campanula for gratitude and everlasting love, rosemary to signify remembrance, lavender for devotion, and roses in honour of June being Philip's birth month. Advertisement

If Harry did return today, he will miss the Queen's upcoming 95th birthday on Wednesday.

A source told MailOnline it was likely the Prince would leave for LA this afternoon, but that the Prince had managed to hold talks with his family.

The source said: 'Harry and Charles walked and talked at Windsor after the funeral. My understanding is that Harry goes back today. They talked with Harry as a family.'

It comes as a royal expert said that the Queen's new puppies will play an important role as she continues to mourn for her beloved husband of 73 years.

Harry made the 10-hour flight to Britain for the funeral this week while his wife Meghan - who is around seven-months pregnant with their second child - remained in LA.

Arrivals from the US must quarantine for 10 days upon landing - but can leave after five days if they provide a negative test under the Government's Test to Release scheme.

Harry was allowed to attend the funeral at St George's Chapel in Windsor on Saturday in line with Government rules that make exceptions for such occasions.

He arrived in England last Saturday, which means - should he have tested negative - the duke no longer needs to isolate in Windsor.

He is understood to be based in Frogmore Cottage for the rest of his stay. He and Meghan lived in the house on the Windsor estate during their time as senior royals.

It is there that he is said to have met Prince Charles, just weeks after the Sussexes plunged the monarchy into crisis when they accused the royals of racism and the institution of failing to support Meghan when she was suicidal in their Oprah Winfrey interview.

Following the bombshell tell-all - which included Harry's claim that he needed to 'educate' his relatives - Prince Charles was said to be 'deeply hurt' but resolved to 'mend the broken relationship' with his son.

Poignant images from Philip's funeral on Saturday showed the Queen sitting alone in St George's Chapel at Windsor, and on Wednesday she will mark her 95th birthday - only able to meet those outside her household in the open air.

Prince Harry speaks to Prince William as they leave the service at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle on Saturday afternoon

The source told MailOnline this morning: 'Harry and Charles walked and talked at Windsor after the funeral. My understanding is that Harry goes back today. They talked with Harry as a family.' Pictured: Prince Philip's funeral

Frogmore Cottage was Harry's old address where he previously lived with his wife Meghan Markle

Duchess of Cornwall dedicates the second season of her online book club in memory of 'great fellow reader' Prince Philip By Jessica Green for MailOnline The Duchess of Cornwall has shared a touching dedication to her late father-in-law the Duke of Edinburgh following his funeral on Saturday. Having launched her very own online book club at the start of this year, Camilla, 73, dedicated its second season in memory of 'great fellow reader' Prince Philip, who died on April 9, aged 99 at Windsor Castle. On Instagram today, the duchess revealed the second four personal picks for her Reading Room - ranging from fantasy novels to romantic tales. She shared the titles alongside a special message, in which she dedicated the second season of her project to Prince Philip. The duchess wrote: 'As Patron of Booktrust, which I inherited from my late father-in-law His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh, I would like to dedicate the next series of my Reading Room to him, in memory of a great fellow reader..... C.' The Duchess of Cornwall has shared a touching dedication (pictured) to her late father-in-law the Duke of Edinburgh following his funeral on Saturday Advertisement

But the grieving Queen will have two lively new companions - a corgi called Muick and a dorgi named Fergus - running around her feet and providing a 'distraction', along with her elderly dorgi Candy.

Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty Magazine, said: 'The thinking was enough was enough, and that she was getting too old for new dogs and who would look after them when she was gone.

'But clearly that decision was reversed and, as it turned out, it probably is very fortuitous. I think it's useful to have these puppies in her life now as way of a distraction.'

The Queen's life-long love of horses and dogs is well known and, while Philip spent his final period in hospital, it emerged the Queen had been given the puppies.

Mr Little believes that, while Buckingham Palace will remain the seat of the royal court, the Queen may make Windsor Castle her permanent home, travelling to the capital for official events.

The Queen's birthday will fall during the period of royal mourning so any public events to mark it - such as the release of an official picture - are likely to be cancelled.

Mr Little said: 'She will mark her first birthday as a widow, and 95 is quite a significant birthday.

'I don't think there would have been a fuss made of it, but nevertheless 95 is quite something. This is going to be a private day for her and that's how it should be.

'Royal mourning continues until Friday so that makes it even more of a sombre occasion.'

In paying tribute to Philip, who died peacefully at Windsor on April 9, aged 99, members of the royal family have been rallying to the Queen's side and said they will continue to support her in the future.

The Queen returned to public duties a few days after the death of her 'beloved' husband and is expected to return to a full diary of official events after the period of royal mourning ends this week.

Mr Little added: 'I think she will be personally devastated by this, but I don't think the death of the Duke of Edinburgh, her husband of 73 years, is going to impact on her working role.

'I think, as monarch, although she doesn't have him there for guidance, I think her role will continue pretty much as it has for the last 69 years.

'There's the public queen and there's the private queen, and she's great at being able to compartmentalise.'

The Queen has been spending the lockdown at Windsor Castle with a reduced number of staff and aides dubbed HMS Bubble and, under Covid regulations, will be restricted in the number of birthday well-wishers she can see outside.

But Philip's funeral would have provided the opportunity for her to speak with the Duke of Cambridge, the Duke of Sussex and her other grandchildren.

Asked about the funeral during a briefing, the Prime Minister's official spokesman highlighted that Boris Johnson had observed the national minute's silence in memory of the duke on Saturday afternoon.

Prince Andrew left his father's funeral in back of his new 220,000 Bentley that replaces older model Prince Andrew left the Duke of Edinburgh's funeral in the back of his new 220,000 racing-green Bentley which he had fitted with personalised number plates. The Duke of York, 61, sat in the back of the 200mph Bentley Flying Spur - which was blue when first delivered in September before being spray-painted. The motor, with its personalised number plate, was pictured driving out of Windsor Castle on the way to nearby Royal Lodge, the home Andrew shares with ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, 61. Prince Andrew left Prince Philip's funeral in a brand new 220,000 racer-green Bentley Just hours earlier, Prince Andrew walked behind his father's coffin as it was slowly carried to St George's Chapel in Windsor on the back of a custom-built Land Rover hearse. Inside the chapel, Andrew sat closest to the Queen - with the family still separated by several empty chairs due to social distancing rules. Previous Bentley: The Duke of York driving a Bentley Continental GT - the old Bentley he replaced Advertisement

He added: 'Alongside many of us across the country, he thought that the funeral was a poignant and fitting tribute to a much-loved and highly respected public figure, whose extraordinary life we will forever remember with gratitude for his decades of selfless service to this country.'

Sources told the Telegraph official and personal duties cannot be decided separately because they are too closely linked.

Prince Charles is said to be taking the lead in the talks due to him becoming king first and because any immediate decisions will impact his reign.

But he is understood to have wanted his son the Duke of Cambridge involved every step of the way for major policies that affect him when he inherits the throne.

Meanwhile Prince Edward and Sophie, Countess of Wessex are believed to be stepping into the void left by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's exit.

They are expected to take on bigger roles despite already fulfilling 544 duties as of the last year before the coronavirus lockdown.

Harry and Meghan did 558 jobs between them in 2019, meaning the Royals have to review how these will be redistributed.

Prince Andrew, who stepped back from duties after his Newsnight interview over his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, also has roles that may need to be dished out.

The Duke of York, Prince Philip and Prince Harry have hundreds of patronages and military titles that now need to be taken on.

The Prince of Wales and Duke of Cambridge are expected to decide over the next few weeks and months how they will tackle the issues.

They are said to have rocketed in importance for the Queen and Charles after Harry and Meghan's review period ended last month.

But the decline in the Duke of Edinburgh's health followed by his death just over a week ago shifted the focus.

Prince Charles had wanted a smaller monarchy made up of the Queen, Prince Philip, himself, his wife the Duchess of Cornwall, the Cambridges and Prince Harry.

In these plans the Duke of Sussex was expected to help out until William and Kate's children George, Charlotte and Louis grew up and took on roles.

Insiders revealed Charles, William and the Queen will need to discuss whether to continue with thousands of engagements annually or cut them down.

A source said: 'The question is whether you start off by deciding how many patronages and engagements there should be, and then work out how many people are needed to achieve them, or whether you decide how many people there should be, which will dictate how many engagements and patronages they can take on.'

Prince Charles took part in 550 Royal duties in 2019 while the Duke of Cambridge focused on 220.

Prince William is believed to prefer a targeted approach so he can lend more support to each cause.

Currently around 15 members of the Royal Family take part in more than 3,000 duties per year.

Princes Charles and William 'will lead summit within weeks to decide the entire Royal Family's future including how many members it will have and who will do what after Prince Philip's death and Megxit'

By James Gant for MailOnline

Princes Charles and William will meet to discuss the future of the monarchy after the death of Prince Philip, reports say.

The two heirs will reportedly plan with the Queen which members of 'The Firm' will be working Royals and what they should do.

It comes after the Duke of Edinburgh's death on April 9 raised questions over if his hundreds of patronages should be passed down.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's departure complicated matters by reducing the number of people available to help the monarch in high-profile roles.

Princes Charles (pictured at his father's funeral on Saturday) and William will meet to discuss the future of the monarchy after the death of Prince Philip, reports say

The two heirs (pictured, William at his grandfather's funeral on Saturday) will reportedly plan with the Queen which members of 'The Firm' will be working Royals and what they should do

Duke of Edinburgh's death (pictured, his funeral on Saturday) on April 9 raised questions over if his hundreds of patronages should be passed down

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's (pictured during their Oprah chat) departure complicated matters by reducing the number of people available to help the monarch in high-profile roles

Sources told the Telegraph official and personal duties cannot be decided separately because they are too closely linked.

Prince Charles is said to be taking the lead in the talks due to him becoming king first and because any immediate decisions will impact his reign.

But he is understood to have wanted his son the Duke of Cambridge involved every step of the way for major policies that affect him when he inherits the throne.

Meanwhile Prince Edward and Sophie, Countess of Wessex are believed to be stepping into the void left by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's exit.

Prince Edward and Sophie, Countess of Wessex (pictured with their children on Saturday) are believed to be stepping into the void left by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's exit

Prince Andrew (pictured on Saturday), who stepped back from duties after his Newsnight interview over his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, also has roles that may need to be dished out

They are expected to take on bigger roles despite already fulfilling 544 duties as of the last year before the coronavirus lockdown.

Harry and Meghan did 558 jobs between them in 2019, meaning the Royals have to review how these will be redistributed.

Prince Andrew, who stepped back from duties after his Newsnight interview over his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, also has roles that may need to be dished out.

The Duke of York, Prince Philip and Prince Harry have hundreds of patronages and military titles that now need to be taken on.

The Prince of Wales and Duke of Cambridge are expected to decide over the next few weeks and months how they will tackle the issues.

They are said to have rocketed in importance for the Queen and Charles after Harry and Meghan's review period ended last month.

But the decline in the Duke of Edinburgh's health followed by his death just over a week ago shifted the focus.

Prince Charles had wanted a smaller monarchy made up of the Queen, Prince Philip, himself, his wife the Duchess of Cornwall, the Cambridges and Prince Harry.

In these plans the Duke of Sussex was expected to help out until William and Kate's children George, Charlotte and Louis grew up and took on roles.

Insiders revealed Charles, William and the Queen will need to discuss whether to continue with thousands of engagements annually or cut them down.

A source said: 'The question is whether you start off by deciding how many patronages and engagements there should be, and then work out how many people are needed to achieve them, or whether you decide how many people there should be, which will dictate how many engagements and patronages they can take on.'

Prince Charles took part in 550 Royal duties in 2019 while the Duke of Cambridge focused on 220.

Prince William is believed to prefer a targeted approach so he can lend more support to each cause.

Currently around 15 members of the Royal Family take part in more than 3,000 duties per year.

Prince Harry 'may delay return to LA to stay for Queen's birthday this week after two hours of peace talks with brother William after Prince Philip's funeral', royal sources claim

By James Gant for MailOnline

Prince Harry may delay his return to Los Angeles to stay for the Queen's birthday on Wednesday, reports say.

The Duke of Sussex is said to have booked an open flight to the US - meaning he could go back after his grandmother turns 95.

It comes after it was reported he held two hours of peace talks with his older brother Prince William.

They are said to have met with their father Prince Charles after Prince Philip's funeral on Saturday.

Prince Harry's plane ticket means he could spend Wednesday with the Queen for her first birthday without her beloved husband.

The Duke of Sussex (pictured on Saturday)is said to have booked an open flight to the US - meaning he could go back after his grandmother turns 95

It comes after it was reported he held two hours of peace talks with his older brother Prince William (pictured together on Saturday)

Prince Harry's plane ticket means he could spend Wednesday with the Queen (pictured in October) for her first birthday without her beloved husband

It would mean a delay in seeing his 23-month-old son Archie and his wife Meghan Markle, who is pregnant with their second child.

500 years of history in piper's lament By Arthur Martin for The Daily Mail Pictured: Colour Sergeant Peter Grant As the duke's coffin was lowered into the royal vault, a lament was played by the Pipe Major of the Royal Regiment of Scotland. Commonly heard during Remembrance Sunday services, Flowers of the Forest is a traditional folk song commemorating England's defeat of Scottish king James IV at the Battle of Flodden in 1513. The significance of the key role given to the Pipe Major, 33-year-old Colour Sergeant Peter Grant, is two-fold. Firstly, Prince Philip was Royal Colonel of the Highlanders, 4th Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Scotland. And secondly, the Queen has started almost every weekday since she came to the throne with the sound of a lone piper playing beneath her window  a tradition dating back to Queen Victoria. Members of the Royal Household can practically set their watches by the pipes, which start at 9am and last for exactly 15 minutes. At Philip's funeral, the piper's lament was followed by Buglers of the Royal Marines sounding The Last Post. Moments later a rendition of the Reveille was played by the State Trumpeters of the Household Cavalry. Buglers then played Action Stations, a stirring call to arms on naval warships. Advertisement

A source told the Sun: 'If all goes well, he could stay for the Queen's birthday.'

The Duke of Sussex had to quarantine at Frogmore Cottage in Windsor when he flew in from the US where he lives in a 11million Montecito mansion.

Travellers from America are supposed to self-isolate for ten days but are allowed to go to funerals on compassionate grounds.

Reports say Harry used the UK Government's test-and-release scheme so he could leave isolation after five days following a negative Covid test.

He went to Prince Philip's funeral on Saturday and was seen talking to Prince William and his wife Kate Middleton after the ceremony - raising hopes they could make up.

The Duke is reported to have later had a meeting with his brother and Prince Charles for two hours after the encounter.

It would have been the first time they have spoken in person since Harry and Meghan's bombshell Oprah Winfrey chat earlier this year.

They are said to have met away from the television cameras in Windsor Castle after Saturday's coverage ended.

The warring brothers are expected to meet again in the summer when they unveil a new statue to Princess Diana at Kensington Palace.

Insiders hope the July 1 event - done to commemorate what would have been their mother's 60th birthday - will help heal their relationship.

A source said: 'It's early days but you'd hope this is exactly the first step Philip would have wished for.'

Prince Harry rocked his family with bombshell accusations during his and his wife's interview with Ms Winfrey in March.

They 36-year-old claimed his 38-year-old brother and 72-year-old father were 'trapped' in 'The Firm'.

All three of them were said to have talked after the interview but they were believed to have been 'unproductive'.

The Duchess of Sussex, who also levelled claims against the Royal Family in the chat, did not travel with Harry after doctors advised against it due to her pregnancy.

Instead the 39-year-old watched the ceremony on TV and sent a hand-written note to leave with a wreath at the funeral.

Harry and William were seen talking after the Duke of Edinburgh's funeral at St George's Chapel on Saturday.

Prince William (left) and Prince Harry (right) walk either side of Peter Phillips and behind Prince Andrew at Windsor Saturday

Prince William and Kate Middleton (left) sit on the opposite side of St George's Chapel to Prince Harry (right) who sat alone

They were separated by The Queen and Prince Philip's eldest grandson, Peter Philips, during the funeral procession.

But in a sign of a possible reconciliation the brothers were seen speaking as they left the chapel and walked towards Windsor Castle.

Harry was initially seen speaking to his sister-in-law Kate but she appeared to hang back so he could talk to William for a few moments without her.

The chat came after an impromptu decision by some of the Royal Family to walk back to the castle.

This was despite state cars having been put on for them - and it gave the cameras a chance to see them talk.

Meanwhile sources told The Mail on Sunday Harry experienced 'a great deal of frostiness' from many of his relatives since arriving in Britain.

Princess Anne, Prince Edward and his wife Sophie failed to acknowledge him before or during the service, it was claimed.

One source said: 'Ironically the only one who has expressed any sympathy towards him is Prince Andrew.

'He knows from Sarah Ferguson  and now first-hand  how it feels to be the outsider, which Harry very much is.

'As far as the others are concerned, there is a deep sense of protection towards the Queen and resentment towards Harry. There is little sympathy for him after what he and Meghan said on Oprah.'

The Sussexes accused the Royals of institutional racism during the bombshell 90-minute interview.

They claimed one member of the family  not the Queen or Prince Philip  questioned what colour their son Archie's skin would be.

'They are still very upset,' the source added. 'They are putting on a united front for the Queen. They all think he has behaved appallingly.'

The siblings maintained stony expressions as they walked behind their grandfather's cortege.

The Duke of Cambridge strode ahead of his brother as they entered the 15th Century chapel and inside the atmosphere remained frosty.

William sat with Kate directly opposite Harry but did not appear to make eye contact, instead preferring to focus his gaze towards his grandfather's coffin.

But it was reported last week William had spoken briefly with his brother on the phone - although the source said communication had been 'more texts than calls'.

Harry has spoken to his cousin Princess Eugenie who remains a steadfast friend.

'He is thought to have seen Eugenie, most likely outside since she's being strict with her new baby,' said the insider.

According to one report, William requested that Peter Phillips stand between him and Harry during the funeral cortege.

Asked about the claim, a friend of Harry said: 'He's just doing what he's told and getting on with it.'

The last time the brothers were seen together in public was on March 9 last year when they attended a Commonwealth service at Westminster Abbey.

Aides were reported to have 'been walking on eggshells' all week as the funeral plans were tweaked, but there was relief the brothers spoke and did so publicly.

The princes talked while walking out of St George's Chapel following the service, in a sight which triggered hopes among royal fans of a reconciliation.

As the Royals filed out of the chapel, Prince William spoke to the Right Reverend David Conner, the Dean of Windsor, while Harry chatted with Kate behind them.

William was initially ahead of his wife and brother but turned back towards them to speak to Kate while Harry exchanged pleasantries with the Dean.

Harry then caught up with his brother and sister-in-law and they walked together for a while as William removed his face mask.

Then, Kate stepped away to speak to the Countess of Wessex and her daughter Lady Louise  leaving the brothers alone.

Harry's friend Tom Bradby, who was presenting ITV's coverage of the funeral on Saturday, said: 'Funerals are a time of reconciliation and that a sight, let's be honest, that's many wanted to see. Not least the family itself.'

The Queen wiped away tears and was forced to mourn alone away from her family as she said an emotional final goodbye to her 'strength and stay' after 73 years.

Her Majesty looked grief-stricken and bowed her head in reverence as she accompanied her beloved husband's coffin on its final journey.

Their eldest son Prince Charles cried as he walked behind the casket into church followed by other devastated royals.

The Duke of Edinburgh's coffin was covered in his personal standard and carried his sword, naval cap and a wreath of flowers with a handwritten note from his wife.

Pallbearers placed him on to his self-designed green Land Rover Defender hearse in the castle's quadrangle packed with hundreds of armed personnel.

The Queen kept her husband poignantly close during the service by carrying special mementoes from their life together inside her handbag.

According to a Royal insider, the Queen was planning to include one of Philip's trademark white handkerchiefs, made by his Savile Row tailors Kent & Haste.

Massed military bands stood still as the Duke of Edinburgh's coffin past by in a Land Rover that he had built himself

The crisply folded squares, inserted into the breast pocket of a sharply cut suit, were an enduring feature of the Duke's classic sartorial style.

In honour of their long marriage, she is also said to have carried a small photograph of the two of them together, thought to have been taken in Malta.

The island was a deeply special place for both the Queen and Philip.

As newlyweds they lived in Villa Guardamangia, on the outskirts of the capital Valletta, between 1949 and 1951, while the Prince was stationed there as a naval officer with HMS Magpie.

The Queen later said it was one of the best periods of her life as it was the only time she was able to live 'normally'.

The couple returned often, including to celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary in 2007.

The grief-stricken monarch left a personal, handwritten message to Philip placed alongside a wreath of white lilies, small white roses and white freesia chosen by her.

Photos show only a glimpse of the note, which appears to be written on official card from Buckingham Palace. It has not been confirmed what it said.

After the eight-minute procession and the 50 minute service, Prince Philip's coffin was lowered into the Royal Vault.

A lament was played by a lone piper of the Royal Regiment of Scotland and the Last Post was then sounded by buglers of Philip's beloved Royal Marines.

The Duke of Edinburgh's coffin on the back of the Land Rover with royal family members walking behind

They then also played Action Stations at the specific request of The Duke of Edinburgh.

Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, pronounced the Blessing before the 30 royal mourners silently filed out of the church into cars to take them the short journey back to castle.

Harry and William decided to walk back with Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, and were seen smiling speaking animatedly as they were reunited for the first time in a year where their relationship became fractured.

The emotional Queen had arrived at the funeral as the national anthem played and the royal Bentley stopped next to her beloved husband's coffin.

She poignantly paused for a moment of reflection as cannons fired and bells tolled in remembrance of the duke, wiping tears from her eyes.

Her Majesty was then driven to St George's Chapel with her lady in waiting Susan Hussey, before being sat alone at the front of the church.

She stood and bowed her head during the national minute's silence.

She looked at the coffin throughout the poignant service, where the majority of her children and grandchildren were on the verge of tears.

Following behind the coffin was the royal procession, led by Philip's children Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward.

The grandchildren, including William and Harry, followed but the brothers were separated by their cousin Peter Phillips, viewed as a 'peacemaker' between the two.

The Duke of Cambridge entered the chapel one place ahead of his younger brother as mourners filed into the historic gothic chapel without speaking.

But they later chatted as they walked back to the castle, with Kate taking a step back to let them spend time alone.

The Queen had decided that no royals should wear military uniform after Prince Andrew demanded to dress as an Admiral and Prince Harry was stripped of his titles.

But they were allowed to wear their medals. Andrew was seen driving away in a casual suit and aviator sunglasses around an hour after the funeral ended.

The Queen wore Queen Mary's Richmond Brooch, while Camilla wore the Rifles Brooch.

The Duchess of Cornwall wore the brooch in July 2020 when Philip's role as Colonel-in-Chief of the infantry regiment The Rifles was formally handed over to her.

Kate wore a necklace and earrings borrowed from the Queen.

After the funeral ended at 3.49pm, the Queen led the Royal Family from the chapel, followed by the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall.

She had a brief conversation with the Dean of Windsor outside the chapel before being driven away.

Other members of the royal family walked away from the chapel in small groups, chatting as they walked through the sunlit grounds, including William and Harry.

Many of the royals only stayed at the castle for a short period before heading home.

RICHARD KAY: A funeral masterstroke by Charles that may just reunite his warring sons

On a day of meticulous planning, it was the one and only off-the-cuff decision. And it turned out to be a masterstroke.

As the limousines drew up to take mourners from the Galilee porch of St George's Chapel back to Windsor Castle's private quarters, Prince Charles used the briefest of gestures to send them, empty of their royal passengers, away.

Impromptu perhaps, common sense even, but it was a signal every bit as eloquent as the spine-tingling music that accompanied the coffin containing the earthly remains of his 'dear papa' to its resting place in the royal vault.

For instead of hiding behind the bulletproof glass of their chauffeur-driven cars, the family walked side by side together, ripped off their face masks and talked.

This could have been a moment of risk, instead it allowed us the first glimpse of the possibility that somehow William and Harry can put their bitter split behind them and rebuild that once whisper-close bond.

Prince Charles and members of the royal family walk outside St George's Chapel during the funeral service of Prince Philip

Kate Middleton, Prince Harry and Prince William are seen talking as they walk away from St George's Chapel after Prince Philip's funeral service

The royals walk back to Windsor Castle after Prince Charles sends his car away after the funeral service

It is hard to read too much into this encounter, for it was all too brief, but if there is to be reconciliation between the brothers, this was surely the moment of its inception.

More than a year has passed since they were last seen in public together, a year in which so many assumptions about their relationship have been torn asunder.

The fall-out from Harry and Meghan's Oprah Winfrey interview is still raw and its issues, not least the claims that a member of the Royal Family had made racist comments about the colour of their son Archie's skin, remain unresolved.

That it should be Kate playing the role of peacemaker was significant too.

Her sister-in-law had discourteously referred to Kate's pre-marriage 'Waity Katie' nickname during the interview and claimed that it was the Duchess of Cambridge who had made her cry over the bridesmaids dresses for her wedding  a claim that was met with deafening silence.

For Charles, who needs both his sons now as never before, this was the first sign of his new role as head of the family.

In the past week his life has changed utterly and he now must, above all, ensure that his own difficult and often misunderstood relationship with his father is not repeated with his sons.

Was this what was going through his mind as he led the sombre line of mourners out of the chapel into the sunshine?

By sending his car away he was laying down his first act as the Royal Family's new paterfamilias. The others had to follow and did.

What it demonstrated was that, for all the military precision and formality of the funeral behind which bereavement could seek refuge, there was a willingness to show that the Windsors were as bereft as any family losing a loved one.

Kate Middleton, Prince Harry, Prince William thank the Dean of Windsor after the poignant funeral service for the Duke of Edinburgh

Clambering into cars to travel silently back to the castle might have preserved royal dignity, but going by foot allowed us to see them in all their vulnerability.

Crucially it also provided a chance to build bridges between William and Harry and it was Kate who seized the opportunity.

As they emerged into the castle precincts she was already chatting animatedly with Harry. With no cars to collect them there was no alternative but to walk.

Soon William, who had exchanged pleasantries with the Dean of Windsor, the Right Reverend David Conner, had joined them.

And just as she had arrived at Harry's side, Kate then melted away.

By now both brothers had removed their Covid masks and there was just a flicker that the frost between them might be thawing as they began the walk up Chapel Hill.

'Make no mistake, this was as much for the benefit of the cameras as anything substantial', says a royal figure. 'Don't read too much into it. Baby steps maybe.'

All the same the fact that they were talking at all seemed anything but likely when they had emerged from the castle an hour or so earlier.

The distance between them then looked unbridgeable with the impassive Peter Phillips, their former rugby-playing cousin, sturdily between them.

This could have been a moment of risk, instead it allowed us the first glimpse of the possibility that somehow William and Harry can put their bitter split behind them and rebuild that once whisper-close bond.

Prince William was as inscrutable as on that September day almost 24 years ago when he walked behind his mother's coffin. He looked neither left nor right, keeping his gaze steadily ahead.

For his part Harry seemed to be taking in the pageantry of the occasion, perhaps in the knowledge that it no longer plays any part in his life now he has stepped back from royal duties.

At the steps to the chapel's west door the cortege paused for the national minute's silence and Peter appeared to pull back as if to allow the brothers a chance to move together.

They did not and William proceeded to his seat along with Peter while Harry walked to his with their other cousin David (the Earl of) Snowdon.

Once inside the chapel they sat apart too. William and Kate on one side of the quire, Harry facing them directly opposite, but alone. If they did make eye contact, the television cameras did not record it.

If there had been hope that their grandfather's death and funeral might mean some kind of royal reconciliation, the hopes at that moment looked to have been dashed.

Since his return to Britain a week ago, Harry had been isolating at Frogmore Cottage, the house given to him and Meghan as a wedding present by the Queen.

But his presence had brought about one change to Saturday's proceedings: the royals' decision not to wear military uniform.

This was to spare Harry, who was no longer entitled to ceremonial dress since being obliged to give up all his military patronages.

There were reports that the brothers had exchanged texts but nothing more.

After the service as they walked back to the castle the two continued to talk and this time Kate was with them.

For a moment it was just like turning back the clock to the years before Meghan came into his life when Harry shared everything  on and off duty  with William and Kate. But with no formal wake because of social distancing the funeral party broke up quickly.

'Everyone stood around in the quadrangle chatting for a little while and then left,' says one insider.

It is understood that Prince Edward and his family did stay for tea with the Queen.

For Prince Charles, his is a future of dizzying and perplexing family problems, not eased by his father's passing but deepened by it.

He must be a rock for the Queen who will depend on him more than ever, but also find the will to restore the unity of the Royal Family by bringing his sons together.

Talk of a family summit and even of Charles taking his son for a walk round Windsor to look at the flowers left in tribute to Prince Philip  just as he did after Diana's death all those years ago  are, I am told, wide of the mark.

Although Harry is understood to have an open return air ticket  meaning he could travel at any time  he is anxious to return to America to be with Meghan, who is thought to be seven months pregnant with their second child.

It is inevitable that Charles will look to William to take the lead in this.

The one hope is a date in the calendar both princes have  the unveiling of the statue of their mother on what would have been her 60th birthday on July 1.

It does not involve their father but it can surely only happen if the brothers are properly talking.

This week Charles has been concentrating on the wider family, speaking to them all and sharing memories of his father.

He has asked them all to pull together to help the Queen. Many watching on were shocked by the Queen's apparent frailty at the funeral but the prince knows that his mother will not slacken her pace.

Life for her revolves around Windsor Castle. All being well, next year will mark her platinum jubilee, 70 years on the throne, and it is already being planned.

For Charles, as sad as his father's passing undoubtedly has been, the priority now is the reintegration of Harry into royal life.

There was palpable tension at Windsor on Saturday.

Some reports yesterday said that neither his aunt Princess Anne nor his uncle Prince Edward acknowledged Harry before or during the service.

If there is to be a dividend from the sadness of Philip's death, Charles will fervently hope that it will come thanks to his decision to send away the cars and force his sons to start to bury their differences. An awful lot depends on it.
April 19 : Janhvi Kapoor, who recently wrapped up the shoot of her movie Good Luck Jerry, and has been on back-to-back vacations since then, shared a new video on her Instagram handle. After wrapping up Good Luck Jerry, she first visited her sister in New York and then the siblings went to Los Angeles. After returning to India, Janhvi jetted off to the Maldives with her friends. Now, it seems she is holidaying in some other place with her team.

Taking to her Instagram handle, the Gunjan Saxena actress shared a video clip, wherein the actress can be seen dancing with celebrity fitness trainer Namrata Purohit. The young actress is seen dressed in a white top teamed with blue denim shorts, while Namrata can be seen in a blue bikini top and a pair of multi-hued bottoms. The actress can be seen acing some dance moves to Cardi B's hit song, Up next to a swimming pool.

Sharing the video clip, Janhvi wrote, Missing the Filmfare stage so the poolside will have to do for now. As soon as Janhvi shared the video, her friends and fans loved her performance and sent heart and fire emojis on the comment section. While one wrote, Day by day you are becoming a good dancer..keep it up, another wrote, another wrote, teach me.

Last week, Janhvi had shared another video with her entire team, wherein they were seen dancing to the same song. The fun video showed everyone performing one step each, and at the end they came together and performed the dance.

On Sunday, Namrata shared a series of pictures with Janhvi as the two can be seen twinning in bikini tops and denim shorts. The divas can be seen sharing a fun moment, flashing their million dollar smiles for the camera. Namrata captioned the post as, Thank you for bringing more sunshine into my life @janhvikapoor.

Meanwhile, on the work front, Janhvi was last seen in Hardik Mehtas horror comedy film Roohi with Rajkummar Rao and Varun Sharma. The film was released in theatres and did fairly well. Now the film is streaming on an OTT platform. The actress will next be seen in Good Luck Jerry. The film is directed by Siddharth Sengupta and produced by Aanand L Rai. Janhvi will also be seen in Karan Johars production, Dostana 2. Earlier, she was cast opposite Kartik Aaryan, now with Kartiks exit from the film, a new lead will be announced opposite her soon.
Xi's answer to "questions of our time" reverberates beyond Boao

People's Daily Online) 08:19, April 19, 2021

BEIJING, April 18 (Xinhua) -- In an increasingly complex world where economic globalization faces headwinds with a threat looming over multilateralism and free trade, where is humanity headed and what is the future of Asia?

Chinese President Xi Jinping answered these "fundamental questions of our time" at the annual conference of Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) in 2018, vowing to open China further and calling for building a community with a shared future for humanity.

The past three years have seen China's persistent efforts in translating the opening-up initiatives Xi put forward into reality, sharing the opportunities of China's development with the rest of the world.

Photo taken on April 17, 2021 shows the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) International Conference Center in Boao Town, south China's Hainan Province. (Xinhua/Yang Guanyu)

A NEW PHASE OF OPENING-UP

Xi announced a batch of opening-up measures at the annual conference of BFA in 2018, with the expectation that the country's opening-up efforts will benefit all enterprises and people in China and around the world as soon as possible.

The measures included significantly broadening market access, creating a more attractive investment environment, strengthening the protection of intellectual property rights and taking the initiative to expand imports, among others.

"Opening-up is a strategic decision made by China based on its need for development as well as a concrete action taken by China to move economic globalization forward in a way that benefits people across the world," Xi said.

Accordingly, China put into effect the landmark foreign investment law on Jan. 1, 2020. The law grants foreign-invested enterprises access to government procurement markets through fair competition and bans using administrative licensing and penalties to force foreign investors to transfer technology.

The negative list for overseas investors was shortened time and again to further ease market access.

More specifically, the country scrapped foreign ownership restrictions on the automotive industry in 2018, with overseas car-making giants such as BMW and Tesla responding quickly by expanding their presence in the Chinese market.

A man works at the Tiexi Plant of BMW Brilliance Automotive (BBA) in Shenyang, capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province, Feb. 17, 2020. (Xinhua/Pan Yulong)

While accelerating the development of 21 pilot free trade zones nationwide, China released a master plan of building Hainan, the southernmost province where the BFA is held, into a globally influential and high-level free trade port by the middle of the century.

This month, the country unveiled more policies to further liberalize and facilitate trade in the Hainan free trade port, allowing certain regions to relax their control of import and export qualifications for and quantities of commodities such as crude oil, refined oil and sugar, and cancel their licensing systems for imports such as mechanical and electrical products.

Figures speak for themselves. As global capital flows remain volatile due to uncertainties triggered by COVID-19, foreign direct investment into the Chinese mainland, in actual use, expanded 6.2 percent year on year to a record high of 999.98 billion yuan (about 153.16 billion U.S. dollars) last year.

The latest data also showed that the country's total imports and exports of goods surged 29.2 percent year on year to 8.47 trillion yuan in the first quarter of this year.

People work at the construction site of the West-coast Internet Headquarters Base in Haikou, south China's Hainan Province, Oct. 21, 2020. (Xinhua/Pu Xiaoxu)

A SHARED FUTURE

BFA was founded in 2001 when Asian countries sought economic integration in the aftermath of the 1998 financial crisis. Two decades after its inception, the world again stands at a critical moment in history.

Facing a world with growing anti-globalization sentiment, populism, unilateralism and protectionism, China has come up with its own vision of global governance.

Xi called on BFA participants in 2015 and 2018 to build "a community with a shared future for humanity," pursuing an open, inclusive, clean and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security and common prosperity.

China, together with many countries, is working to put this concept into practice.

A total of 138 countries and 31 international organizations have signed cooperation agreements with China on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which aims to achieve policy, infrastructure, trade, financial and people-to-people connectivity along and beyond the ancient Silk Road trade routes.

"The initiative, meeting the development needs of China, countries along the routes and the region at large, will serve the common interests of relevant parties and answer the call of our time for regional and global cooperation," Xi said when addressing the annual conference of BFA in 2015.

Trucks run at Youyiguan border gate in Pingxiang City, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, April 13, 2020. (Xinhua/Lu Boan)

Meanwhile, the China-proposed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which has grown to 103 approved members worldwide, has been dedicated to promoting infrastructure construction, regional connectivity and mutual development in Asia.

By January, the bank had provided over 22 billion U.S. dollars in infrastructure investment for its members and approved 108 projects.

Between April 2020 and Oct. 16, 2021, the bank's crisis recovery facility will offer up to 13 billion U.S. dollars worth of financing to both public and private sector entities in AIIB members facing or at risk of adverse pandemic-induced impacts.

Xi said the BRI and the AIIB are both open initiatives. China welcomes all countries along the routes and in Asia, as well as friends and partners around the world, to actively participate in these endeavors.

In the meantime, China has also played an active role in global environmental governance and is willing to work with others to build a green home.

Photo taken on Jan. 13, 2021 shows the headquarters building of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in Beijing, capital of China. (Xinhua/Li Xin)

Xi has on many occasions called for joint efforts from the international community to tackle climate change and other environmental challenges and protect the blue planet.

He announced at the general debate of the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly that China aims to have CO2 emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.

"To scale up efforts to address climate change and promote sustainable development bears on the future of humanity," Xi said in his special address at the World Economic Forum Virtual Event of the Davos Agenda this January.

Over the years, the BFA has witnessed how China, as the host country, firmly supported the development of the forum and committed to advocating dialogue and cooperation among Asian countries.

The forum, now celebrating its 20th anniversary, has not only played a unique role in pooling consensus and putting forward valuable "Boao proposals," but also engaged countries outside of Asia in addressing global issues and promoting world development and prosperity.

This year's annual conference, welcoming more than 2,600 attendees from more than 60 countries and regions offline, is themed "A World in Change: Join Hands to Strengthen Global Governance and Advance Belt and Road Cooperation."

(Web editor: Xian Jiangnan, Bianji)
avid_creative, Contributor / Getty Images

A head-on crash on Sunday in Jasper County left one woman dead, according to a Texas Department of Public Safety news release.

The DPS crash investigation shows that 33-year-old Colby Danielle Gates was driving a Honda SUV near Pentecostal Street in Brookeland, Texas when she crossed the center dividing line for an unknown reason and collided head-on with a commercial motor vehicle.
A teenage boy was awarded 56,000 in damages after a cup of tea spilt on his leg and left him with a scar during a flight from Dublin to Istanbul.

Emre Karakaya, of Ursuline Crescent, Waterford, claims he was permanently scarred when a scalding cup of tea was knocked out of his hand onto his right thigh by a member of cabin crew.

Karakaya, who was 13 at the time of the incident, later sued Turkish Airlines Inc through his mother Leeanne Karakaya.

Emre Karakaya, of Ursuline Crescent, Waterford, was awarded 56,000 in damages after a cup of tea spilt on his leg and left him with a scar during a Turkish Airlines flight from Dublin to Istanbul

The 56,000 settlement was approved by a High Court judge on Monday.

Karakaya's mother told the court she had taken her son to a consultation with a plastic and reconstructive surgeon after the incident.

The doctor told the pair Emre had been scalded by the hot tea and that though the wound had healed in three weeks, he would be left with permanent noticeable scarring.

Karakaya's lawyers argued in favour of the 56,000 settlement in court on Monday, telling Mr Justice Garret Simons they felt the sum was reasonable

Karakaya's lawyers argued in favour of the 56,000 settlement in court on Monday, telling Mr Justice Garret Simons they felt the sum was reasonable.

The boy's case had been valued at a settlement fee of between 47,000 - 64,000.

Mr Simons said he accepted the defence's fee because it was 'slap-bang' in the middle of the range.

There was also concerns the Karakayas would be awarded less if the case went to court because of new guidelines on personal injury awards.
Now that America is once again looking to send humans up, competing nations seem to have awakened as well. Once a formidable foe of the Americans in space, the Russians have been relegated to taxi duties ever since the space shuttle program ended, sending people up to the International Space Station in their mighty Soyuz rocket-capsule assembly.But now, thanks to SpaceX and soon Boeing, the U.S. and Europe have alternatives, and the Russians cannot count on ferrying astronauts and cosmonauts up and down forever. Also, they cannot allow the U.S. such a big head start in the colonization of the Moon. So, for the first time in a very long time (about 45 years), Roscosmos is finally planning a mission to the Moon.Luna 25 is how its called, and it is scheduled for take-off in the fall of this year. The target is the lunar south pole, pretty much the same area where Artemis astronauts will disembark from their fancy SpaceX lander by the middle of this decade. Luna 25 has no complicated equipment on board and is essentially just meant to validate landing technology developed in Russia.Why are the Russians doing this? Well, in the words of an adviser for the Russian Space Research Institute, the Moon is the center of our program for the next decade," because, lets face it, everyone will be going there over the following years.In the longer term, Russia has already announced it partnered with China to look into ways to create a joint scientific moon station either on the surface or in orbit.
Matt Chandler-led Acts 29 celebrates 'Church Planting Sunday': 'Critical to fulfilling the mission of Jesus'

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Church planting is God's primary mission strategy for expanding His work  and every member of the Body of Christ has a role to play in bringing the message of Jesus Christ to people in all contexts, the head of a global church planting network has said.

Church planting is critical to fulfilling the mission of Jesus. Its a myth that there are enough churches already. We need to be treating North America as a mission field in the same way that we in the West have oftentimes seen the rest of the world, Brian Howard, executive director of Acts 29, told The Christian Post.

Church planting is not just the thing for pastors; it's something that we all need to be involved in, he said, adding that Acts 29 strives to take the importance of church planting beyond just pastors and seminary classrooms and into congregations.

Church planting not only revitalizes older congregations, but its the best way to reach new people groups and generations and achieve diversity, he said. And we all have a role to play in that, whether we give financially or volunteer.

As part of this goal, Acts 29 will celebrate this Sunday as its first-ever Church Planting Sunday  and is urging other gospel-focused churches to join them in commemorating the church-planting movement.

On Church Planting Sunday, were celebrating what God has done through Acts 29 and other networks, Howard said. Were just so excited about what is going on all over the country.

In 2014, Village Church Pastor Matt Chandler assumed the role of president of Acts 29, and Howard became executive director of the network in May 2020  just months after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization.

Howard revealed that despite the pandemic, the network was a part of planting 25 new churches last year. These churches, he said, are reaching their communities in new and innovative ways.

The biggest thing that stands out to me is churches that are feeding people in their communities, Howard shared. These churches are coming together during COVID, looking for ways to serve and honor their communities, even during difficult times.

One church the group planted, he recalled, called every person living alone in a particular community to figure out what kind of support they needed during the pandemic.

It hasnt always been easy, but these churches are really sensing the needs in their communities and meeting them, he said. Theyre really stepping into this cultural moment.

Founded over two decades ago, Acts 29 has nearly 700 member churches worldwide, with about 500 in the United States. This year, Acts 29 Espanol and Acts 29 Urban were launched to start and grow Gospel-centered churches in diverse contexts.

Its really important for us to be planting churches for new immigrants and in difficult places like cities and rural places, Howard said. When we look at the kind of ministry we're doing, we are planting churches in places where there are new generations, new residents, new people groups, immigrants from all kinds of different countries. New churches are essential to reach people in those demographics.

Earlier this year, Acts 29 also announced a new partnership with Grimke Seminary, a diverse, reformed seminary solely devoted to training pastors for church ministry. Grimke is named after Dr. Francis Grimke, a biracial man born a slave but was later freed, becoming a pastor and a leading advocate of civil rights.

There is, Howard stressed, an urgency to church planting, though it might look a little different post-COVID.

Church planting is not slowing down, he said. But I don't think we expect to have a completely normal year this year because church planting oftentimes is a year or two long processes before you launch a church. COVID has made that a little difficult.

I still think we're going to see church planting really move forward, he added. Because despite the pandemic, weve seen the church move past tremendous barriers and impact their communities for Christ.
The Syrian parliament Sunday set May 26, the date for next presidential elections with incumbent Bashar al Assad expected to run for third term in office.

I call on Syrians to exercise their right to elect the president, parliamentary speaker Hammouda Sabbagh said after parliament announced the election date.

Despite the expectations of Syrias enemies, the presidential ballot will go ahead, said Husam al Deen Khalsi, a politician from Latakia province, a bastion of Assads Alawite sect. Our rulers have not followed Washingtons or Israels dictates.

Candidates will have 10 days from Monday to bid for the elections, the second since the eruption in 2011 of the civil war opposing the President to rebel and terror groups.

Bashar, in power since 2000 following the death of his father Hafez al-Assad, faced two challengers in 2014 elections that he won by landslide.

The opposition rejected the victory that it branded charade. It also slammed the Sunday announcement as it questions the legitimacy of the parliament.

We consider Assads parliament to have no legitimacy, and this is a theatrical farce and a desperate effort to reinvent this criminal regime, said Mustafa Sejari, a prominent opposition figure.

The core opponents, living in exile, will likely not be able to run as one of the polls rules requires that candidates must have lived in Syria for the last 10 years.
Gov. Phil Murphy will hold a 1 p.m. coronavirus press conference on Monday  the day everyone in New Jersey at least 16 years old is eligible to be administered a vaccine.

The press conference at the Trenton War Memorials George Washington Ballroom will be streamed live on the governors YouTube.com channel.

Murphy will be joined by state health commissioner Judy Persichilli, state epidemiologist Dr. Christina Tan and State Police Superintendent Colonel Pat Callahan.

Since the first vaccine shot in New Jersey was given in mid-December, at least 6,007,738 doses have been administered as of 10:30 a.m. Sunday. About 2,476,998 have been fully vaccinated  more than one-third of adults in New Jersey, according to the states dashboard.

On Sunday, officials disclosed 2,765 more COVID-19 cases, significantly less than the state health department models projected April 7.

The moderate model discussed at length by the governor that day said cases would peak with 5,445 cases on April 18 while the best model called for 4,344 cases. That means Murphys best case model was off by 36.3% and his moderate model overestimated cases by 49.2%.

The states models did somewhat better with hospitalizations. There were 2,062 people in the states 71 hospitals with 250 on ventilators as of 10 p.m. Sunday. The best case model predicted 2,219 patients with 255 on ventilators. The moderate model released by Murphy on April 7 said hospitals would have 2,669 patients with the coronavirus or a case under investigation, including 319 on ventilators. The patient count predicted under the moderate model was off more than 22%.

The state of about 9 million people has reported 25,143 deaths from complications related to COVID-19  including 22,551 confirmed deaths and 2,592 fatalities considered probable.

Murphy has no other scheduled public appearances on Monday.

Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JGoldmanNJ.

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There are so many different ways that you can hug a person. Obviously, each type of hug is going to have a little different meaning to it,...
After a lengthy campaign, backed by President Biden and substantial sections of the political establishment and corporate media, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) received only 738 votes in favor, or less than 13 percent of the 5,800 workers at the Bessemer, Alabama, Amazon warehouse.

The humiliating rejection of the RWDSU by Amazon workers has produced a wave of rationalizations and apologetics from the pseudo-left attorneys for the RWDSU executives.

The infamous tent on the last day of voting (Source: WSWS Media)

Among those seeking to salvage the credibility of the RWDSU is Left Voice, which is affiliated with the Socialist Workers Party in Argentina (Partido de los Trabajadores Socialistas-PTS). Over the past several months, Left Voice has sought to portray the RWDSU campaign as a historic opportunity for the working class throughout the country.

In its April 8 article, Amazon Bullied and Bribed Their Way to Anti-Union Votes, But Its Not Over, Left Voice now shifts to describing the campaign as a valiant but failed effort against overwhelming odds. From the outset, the organizing drive was a David-versus-Goliath storyand the Amazon Goliath used every legal mechanism in its arsenal.

What were the main elements in this contest between David and Goliath? Amazon, it states, invested in an epic anti-union campaign, spending more than $10,000 a day to stop the unionization effort. However, if the corporate behemoth with a market capitalization of $1.7 trillion only spent $10,000 a daythe equivalent of a mere three shares of Amazon stock, selling for approximately $3,400 eachthat would indicate that Amazon owner Jeff Bezos and the rest of management were not particularly alarmed by the RWDSU campaign.

As for the supposed David in this David vs. Goliath narrative, the AFL-CIO is a multi-billion-dollar business, controlling vast investment and pension funds. Had the Retail Workers union equaled Amazons anti-union budget, the cost of a six-month campaign would have been $1.8 million, which is precisely $100,000 less than annual combined salary of RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum and the unions next eight highest paid bureaucrats. The union disburses another $6 million annually to the rest of its staff.

The central action by Amazon cited by both the RWDSU and Left Voice that supposedly determined the outcome was the installation of a mailbox on company property, which workers could use to submit their ballots, though they did not have to do so. This mailbox, Left Voice writes, installed in the dead of night, was central to Amazons union busting strategy. Amazon wanted to make employees bring ballots to work so that they could pressure and monitor employees to submit no votes. The mailbox was removed right after the union election.

That the RWDSU invests this mighty mailbox with such awesome power only exposes the pathetic character of its own campaign.

The history of violent class struggle in America

The gist of Left Voices argument is that the RWDSU lost the vote because Amazon opposed the union. It was not enough that President Biden and Senator Rubio endorsed the union. The victory of the RWDSU presumably required the support of Jeff Bezos as well.

The cowardly bureaucrats and their toadies from Left Voice crying about the brutal anti-union campaign have never been involved in a real labor struggleas opposed to the top-down operation to install the RWDSU at Amazonand have no idea what real class struggle in the US looks like. The history of the American labor movement, from its earliest days, has been marked by state-corporate violence.

Striking Alabama miners in 1934

During the 1870s, the Molly Maguires in the coal fields of Pennsylvania faced arrest and execution at the hands of the Coal and Iron Police. The struggle for an eight-hour day and was met with brutal reprisals, including the Haymarket massacre of 1886. The formation of the mass industrial unions in the 1930s and 1940s was waged in the face of industrial spies, the firing and blacklisting of militants, the massacre of striking workers by hired gun thugs and state militias and the frame-up and murder of union organizers.

In Alabama, miners, steelworkers, sharecroppers and others, from the 1870s to the 1960s, faced the violent resistance of the employers, the state and the Ku Klux Klan in their battles to organize.

Mine guard watching company-housing settlement near Birmingham

In Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression, Robin D.G. Kelley explains how Birminghams industrialists controlled settlements of company-owned housing in steel and mining towns that were structured along the lines of an armed camp. These settlements were intended to insulate workers from outside influences, namely labor organizers. Employers maintained a private police force, paid spies to collect information and monitor workers activities, and employed every available means to create an impenetrable shield around the community.

Kelley describes the persecution of the members of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers during the 1934 strike against the US Steel-owned Tennessee Coal and Iron Company (TCI) and other Birmingham area steel companies.

Prodded by rank-and-file committees [led by Communist Party members], local Mine Mill leaders issued a strike call in May 1934 to ore miners at TCI, Republic Steel Corporation, the Sloss-Sheffield Iron and Steel Company, and the Woodward Iron Company demanding higher wages, shorter hours, and union recognition. The companies refused to arbitrate and responded by firing and evicting dozens of union members [from company owned housing]. Violence between strikers and company police left two strike breakers dead and at least nine workers wounded. Despite the intervention of state troops, bombs exploded and gunfire was exchanged intermittently throughout most of the summer.

Through the intervention of Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, an agreement between Mine Mill and TCI was finally reached on June 27, though it was hardly a victory for the union. Mine Mill remained unrecognized, and wages increased only slightly.

Kelley also describes the 1934 strike of cotton pickers led by the Sharecroppers Union (SCU) to demand a dollar raise per hundred pounds: In Lee County, police arrested seven union members for distributing strike leaflets, and in Tallapoosa vigilantes shot a least three strikers, including a woman [Communist] Party organizer. Pinned to the doors of several suspected strikers was the following message: WARNING: TAKE NOTICE. If you want to do well and have a healthy life you better leave the Share Croppers Union.

KKK flier from the 1930s

KKK violence continued into the 1960s and was employed both against the civil rights and the labor movement.

David North, in his 1972 pamphlet, Where Wallace Really Stands, describes the violence directed at the working class movement by the states governor, George Wallace.

While Wallaces reign of terror began against black leaders and civil rights workers, which culminated in the murder of Viola Liuzzo on an Alabama highway by three members of the Klan, North notes: Another aspect of this terror which is rarely discussed was its use against the Alabama labor movement. Wallace increased the size of the state highway patrol which was led by Al Lingo, a supporter of the Klan. One of its principal functions was the criminal harassment of union organizers.

A trade union official who participated in a 1965 organizing drive told North: While we were organizing Black workers, the union hall was frequently harassed. Police would ride around it. One time we feared that a bomb had been placed in a car of an organizer. The state police wouldnt even check the car. I called the Governor and asked if a union man doesnt have protection for his life. All this racism was used to keep unions weak; to make it so that if you signed up a white, you couldnt sign up a black, and vice-versa.

The reactionary racialist appeal of Left Voice

The RWDSU faced nothing like the conditions that existed in Alabama 50 years ago.

In continuing its lawyers brief for the RWDSU, Left Voice then argues that Alabama is a deep red, right to work state, which proliferates anti-union propaganda regularly and therefore was an unlikely place to successfully take on the Amazon Goliath.

However, the 7th Congressional District of Alabama, which includes Bessemer and other predominantly African American neighborhoods in and around Birmingham, is hardly a center of Republican right to work propaganda. Indeed, the district is one of only 11 in the country that were so uncompetitive in the 2020 election cycle that the Republican Party did not even bother to field a candidate. It is one of only three such districts in the US South. In the presidential election, Biden won by 70 percent. Given the fact that the majority of workers at Bessemer are African American, there is no doubt that most of those who voted in the elections voted for Biden.

Indeed, it is precisely for this reason that the RWDSU and AFL-CIO selected the Bessemer plant. However, they did not direct their appeal to workers on a class, but rather a racialist basis. With support weakest among young Black men in the plant many are hoping that the Black Lives Matter movement can get younger Black activists more engaged on their behalf, one ally of the AFL-CIO wrote in the Pay Day Report.

Left Voice played a leading role in seeking to frame the union campaign in racial terms, as an extension of Black Lives Matter.

In its March 7 article, Battlefield Bessemer, Left Voice wrote, This unionization struggle is a direct product of the Black Lives Matter movement. The movement, alongside the devastation of the coronavirus pandemic, laid bare all the injustices of racist capitalism. Those who mobilized over the summer declared in no uncertain terms that Black people deserve better. Black lives should matter. But they dont matter to the cops who systematically terrorize and murder Black people. And Black lives dont matter to Amazon either.

This tactic backfired, however, as workers in the region have a long experience with the reactionary role of the politics of racial division.

After the laundry list of lawyers arguments on behalf of the RWDSU, Left Voice then turns to blaming the supposed backwardness of workers. It quotes a RWDSU flunkey denouncing the younger workers at the Bessemer warehouse: They dont know anything about a union so [Amazon] can feed them anything and theyll just eat it up. According to the upper-middle class hacks who write for the Left Voice, the workers are simply not worthy of the RWDSU.

The real problem for the RWDSU was not that the workers knew little about the union. Rather, they knew too much.

No program, no workers

The RWDSU never issued a single demand for improved wages and working conditions, which itself branded the campaign as a top-down operation. In all the great organizing campaigns of the past, the fight for union representation was clearly linked to specific demands related, at the very least, to such basic issues as wages, the length of the work week, line speed, safety and job security.

But the RWDSU advanced no demands, because to do so would have cost it the support of the Biden administration and the Democratic Party. Moreover, there is nothing more frightening to the high-paid executives of the RWDSU (President Stuart Appelbaum 2020 salary: $344,464) than a militant upsurge of the working class.

One Amazon worker interviewed by the New York Times explained that she did not vote for the RWDSU because when a representative called her about the vote, he couldnt answer a pointed question about what the union could promise to deliver. He hung up on me, she said. If you try to sell me something, I need to be able to sell that product.

The fact that the RWDSU had almost no contact with workers has been substantiated in a series of articles after the defeat. Jane McAlevey of the Nation, a supporter of the campaign, wrote, The results were not surprising, however, for reasons that have more to do with the approach used in the campaign itself than any other factor.

From the beginning, she writes, the RWDSU did not even know how many workers were in the warehouse when it filed for a union election in November 2020. It assumed there were 1,500 workers, not 5,800. The RWDSU did not send organizers to workers homes, and the primary way it sought to make contact with workers was having unions across the country phone them. RWDSU organizers outside the plant gates handing out leaflets could not find any pro-union Bessemer workers to appeal to their coworkers as they were driving out. Instead, what workers saw was the paid staff of the union and outside supporters, McAlevey writes.

The union could not produce photos or a public poster, flyer or website that displayed the signature or faces of workers stating their intent to vote yesbecause it had none.

The RWDSU used celebrities to make public statements, inviting Bernie Sanders in to speak. The Sanders rally in Birmingham on March 26 was a flop that brought virtually no one. In an earlier article, Left Voice itself acknowledged that Sanders came to town and spoke to a crowd of mostly press, and local activists. Of the 5,800 who work at the fulfillment center, only 1015 workers were at the event; some of them heard about the rally after the fact.

Only a handful of Amazon workers attended Sanders March 26 rally

Left Voices rank-and-file fraud

After covering for the RWDSU debacle, Left Voice proceeds to put forward a left critique. They complain that the RWDSU leadership should have run a better unionization campaign and criticize it for failing to establish greater contact with workers. During the decades of neoliberalism, the tradition of militant unionism was lost, and many union bureaucrats have led unions to become tools of the bosses to keep their workers under control. Building a more combative labor movement requires the self-organization of the rank and file.

Unfortunately, they write, the RWDSU did not take any concrete measures to organize workers in rank-and-file assemblies to strategize and decide on the direction and future of the struggle. Workers at the fulfillment center had little or no contact with the union beyond a few text messages and a phone call This was a fatal mistake.

Lone RWDSU organizer with three members of pseudo-left organizations at Amazon plant gate in Bessemer (Source: WSWS Media)

Left Voice never bothers to ask, let alone answer, the question as to why the AFL-CIO operates as a business union, because to do so would expose the bankruptcy of their own perspective. The defeat of the RWDSU at Amazon is the product of forty years of unending betrayals by the AFL-CIO, dating back to the deliberate isolation of the PATCO air traffic controllers who were fired by Reagan in 1981. The executives of the AFL-CIO have transformed themselves into arms of corporate management, profiting off of the exploitation of workers as they have imposed concession contract after concession contract.

To bring these organizations into workplaces will only serve to place a straitjacket on the development of genuine rank-and-file organizations, subjecting workers to the array of labor laws that sanction the union as the sole legitimate representative of the workers. The only direct outcome of bringing in the RWDSU or any organization in the AFL-CIO into Amazon would be that workers would be paying dues to an organization over which they have absolutely no control.

Left Voice is well aware of the growing influence of the Socialist Equality Party among Amazon and other workers. Like the trade union executives they serve, they see the development of a network of rank-and-file committees, not controlled by the AFL-CIO, as a serious danger.

In an acknowledgment of the support for independent organizations, Left Voice even calls for the formation of rank-and-file committees, but their purpose is the exact opposite of genuinely independent workers organizations. Referring to the union drive, they write in their April 11 article, Bessemer Union Falls Short, But United Rank-and-File Workers Can and Will Win at Amazon, that Rank-and-file committees could have organized and held mass rallies throughout the areaand called on workers from other unions to join themwhere they explained what unions are, why theyre important, and the tremendous gains theyve won for workers in this country.

In other words, the rank-and-file committees Left Voice is seeking to build are committees of middle-class pseudo-lefts whose main job is to lie to workers, cover up the real role of the unions and try to contain the rebellion of workers against these organizations.

In return for its services in bolstering the unions, the forces around Left Voicealong with Jacobin magazine, the Democratic Socialists of America, etc.seek opportunities for themselves. They hope to serve as middlemen between the wealthy executives in the headquarters of the AFL-CIO and workers who look on with hostility at the corporatist organizations in the employ of management.

In Argentina, the PTS, with which Left Voice is affiliated, has positions in the leadership of the Argentine teacher unions, where they have played a critical role in suppressing opposition to the reopening of schools as the pandemic spreads.

The way forward for Amazon workers

The various organizations promoting the RWDSU at Amazon could never explain why the campaign they backed also had the support of dominant sections of the ruling class political establishment, including not only the president of the United States, Biden, but also arch-reactionaries like Republican Senator Marco Rubio.

Bidens aggressive intervention on behalf of the unionization campaign, including a video all but calling on workers to vote yes, expresses definite strategic considerations. The response of the ruling class to the pandemic has led to the deaths of more than 580,000 people in the United States alone. This, combined with the massive growth of social inequality and the disastrous situation facing millions of workers, is having a profoundly radicalizing impact on the consciousness of workers and youth.

A significant section of the ruling class sees in the AFL-CIO and the corporatist organizations within it a critical instrument for smothering social opposition. Under conditions of increasing militarist provocations directed at Russia and China, moreover, the ruling class sees in the unions an instrument for subordinating the working class to the war plans of American imperialism.

For Bezos, his concern is not that bringing in the AFL-CIO at Amazon would lead to pressure for increasing wages. After all, the workers under the control of the unions in other companies often make less even than at Amazon. Rather, he would be concerned that the union could be used as a mechanism for exerting pressure on behalf of Amazons competitors or subordinating his own business interests to the geopolitical imperatives of the ruling class as a whole.

To develop its own counteroffensive against the ruling elite, the working class requires its own organizationsthat is, a network of rank-and-file committees that will unite workers at individual workplaces, across industries and sectors, throughout the US and internationally.

Even as the Amazon vote failed disastrously, there are significant expressions of working class opposition throughout the US. Only 25 miles southwest of Bessemer, 1,100 miners at Warrior Met Coal in Brookwood, Alabama, are continuing their strike after rejecting a sellout agreement between the company and the United Mineworkers of America (UMWA). In recent weeks, there have been significant struggles by steelworkers, autoworkers, graduate students and health care workers.

This is only the beginning of an upsurge of working-class struggle throughout the country and around the world. The Socialist Equality Party and the World Socialist Web Site are assisting workers in forming a network of independent rank-and-file committees in factories, schools and all work locations. Our call for rank-and-file committees today is a development of the struggle to free the working class from the existing structures and rebuild the workers movement on the basis of an international and revolutionary socialist program.

For help forming a committee at your workplace, contact the WSWS by filling out the form at wsws.org/workers.


Photo: Nathan Congleton/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images

Last week, Moulin Rouge! star Karen Olivo left the show to show support for those who have made abuse allegations against producer Scott Rudin earlier this month. The silence about Scott Rudin? Unacceptable, she said. Thats the easy one, yall. Thats a monster. By contrast, many felt Sutton Foster and Hugh Jackman, the stars of Rudins hot-ticket Broadway revival The Music Man, were disappointedly quiet about the accusations that Rudin physically and psychologically harassed his subordinates throughout his career. On Sunday, Foster finally addressed the allegations, detailed in an April 7 Hollywood Reporter story, and Rudins decision to step away from his Broadway productions on Saturday. Said the Younger star about Rudins exit: The only positive outcome is the one that is happening.

Foster weighed in on the situation Sunday in an Instagram Live conversation with fellow stage performer Beth Nicely, according to the Hollywood Reporter. THR had previously reported Foster had threatened to leave The Music Man if Rudin didnt step away. I am so honored to be a part of The Music Man and I cant wait to create an incredible, safe, inclusive, loving environment for everyone involved, and thats all I care about moving forward, said the actress.

I apologize if it seems like I wasnt actively trumpeting my feelings, but I felt like the noise of  I couldnt get a clear mind, and I really needed to step away, explained Foster. I never had to deal with anything like this before, and I think 46 years on this Earth deserves that. Im mature enough to be able to take the time, and I think people should allow it. I really am excited about returning to Broadway, and may we just continue the change and thats all Im going to say. I just feel, really, its an unbelievably unfortunate situation, but the only positive outcome is the one that is happening. Added Foster, And I know Hugh feels exactly the same way.

In his announcement about stepping away from his current productions, which, before the shutdown, were To Kill a Mockingbird, West Side Story, and The Book of Mormon, Rudin apologized for his alleged years and years of abusive behavior. Said the producer, Much has been written about my history of troubling interactions with colleagues, and I am profoundly sorry for the pain my behavior caused to individuals, directly and indirectly.

Update: In a video statement also released on Sunday, David Graham-Caso, the twin brother of Rudins former assistant Kevin Graham-Caso, called out the producer for intimidation and harassment, detailing how he believes Rudins abuse in the workplace contributed to his brothers mental distress ahead of his suicide, and asked performers and studios to refuse to work with Rudin and feckless thugs like him to enact actual change.

Im going to make sure that people know that when they choose to work with you, they are choosing to work with a bully, he says. They are choosing to work with a racist. They are choosing to work with a small and petty person who hurts those who help him succeed. Im going to make sure that people know the value and importance of a union, and the sort of protections that need to be in place to stop feckless thugs like you from ruining the lives of the people who work with you.

In an interview with Variety, Graham-Caso alleges, among other abuses, that Rudin once shoved his brother out of a moving car. Suffering the producers vitriol, however, seemed like the price one had to pay to make it in the industry. He never wanted to speak out, he always felt it would be the iron nail in the coffin of his career, it would be admitting that he would never make it, says Graham-Caso of his twin. But when the Hollywood Reporter [article] hit, I felt it was an opportunity to really do right and share his story and his truth and hopefully help other people. Concludes Graham-Casos message to Rudin: The abuse you inflict has consequences, and real consequences are coming for you.

A message to Scott Rudin. pic.twitter.com/mvOqTvH2S9  David Graham-Caso (@dgrahamcaso) April 18, 2021
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.
After 40 years of clinical practice, OMS specialist B.D. Tiner is announcing his retirement. Treating patients has been my passion and my calling, but I turned 70 last October and after spending five or more days a week working for the past 40 years, Im ready to spend more time with my family

On May 1, 2021, after 40 years of clinical practice, B.D. Tiner, DDS, MD, FACS, has decided he will retire from Alamo Maxillofacial Surgical Associates, a USOSM partner practice with three locations, treating patients in San Antonio and Boerne, Texas.

Treating patients has been my passion and my calling, but I turned 70 last October and after spending five or more days a week working for the past 40 years, Im ready to spend more time with my family, checking items off my bucket list with my wonderful wife, Brenda, said Dr. Tiner. The most satisfying part of my time with Alamo Maxillofacial Surgical Associates has been the hundreds of lives Steve, Bob and I have impacted with life changing orthognathic surgery in conjunction with many excellent orthodontists  and I could not have done any of this without them. I am grateful to them and feel blessed that they will have our practice and our patients care in their capable hands.

In addition to his duties with Alamo Maxillofacial Surgical Associates, Dr. Tiner is the president of American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons (AAOMS), a diplomate and past president of the American Board of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and a fellow of both AAOMS and the American College of Surgeons. Additionally, Dr. Tiner is an active member and past president of the Southwest Society of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons and the Texas Society of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons, and he serves as an ambassador for the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Foundation.

Dr. Tiner is one of the best oral surgeons I know. Hes an industry leader, a compassionate and highly skilled practitioner and a trusted mentor, who has made outstanding contributions both to his practice and to OMS as a whole, said Richard Hall, USOSM president and CEO. The retirement of a great leader is always a little bittersweet  were sad to see him go, but we also rejoice with him because this is what he wants. We support him in his decision and wish him well, wherever this new journey may take him.

A retired U.S. Navy Captain, and currently an adjunct clinical professor in the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Dr. Tiner has served as a mentor and teacher to countless OMS students and professionals throughout his career. In addition, he has authored or co-authored numerous scientific publications and book chapters.

Dr. Tiner holds a bachelors degree in zoology from Arkansas State University, a DDS from the University of Tennessee College of Dentistry and his MD from the University of Texas Medical School at San Antonio. Dr. Tiners post-graduate training included an internship in anesthesia and a residency in OMS at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

I want to take a moment to thank my patients for entrusting me with their care  it has truly been my honor. And to thank my fellow doctors, our staff and my colleagues. Thank you for your long-standing support and dedication. The past 40 years have truly been a great ride, but its time to hang up my spurs!
By traveling across state lines to incite the mob in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, Maxine Waters has opened the door on her possible expulsion from Congress, as Andrea Widburg notes today. But she may have shot herself in her other foot when it comes to the lawsuit she and other Democrats have filed against former president Trump over the January 6 Capitol incursion. Jonathan Turley explains:

Waters insists that Trump telling his supporters to go to the Capitol to make their voice heard and "fight" for their votes was actual criminal incitement. Conversely, Waters was speaking after multiple nights of rioting and looting, telling protesters to stay on the streets and get even more confrontational.

Waters has now guaranteed that she could be called as a witness by Trump in his own defense against her own lawsuit.

Waters' most recent words could well be cited in the ongoing litigation over the Jan. 6 riot on Capitol Hill. As I have previously discussed, the lawsuit by House members and the NAACP may prove a colossal mistake. It is one of a number of lawsuits, including one filed by Rep. Eric. Swalwell, D-Calif., that could ultimately vindicate Trump shortly before the next election.

While it is possible that members could find a trial judge to rule in their favor, these lawsuits should fail on appeal, if they get that far. Moreover, they would fail under a lower standard of proof than the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard in criminal law. Such a result would eviscerate the claim that Trump was guilty of criminal incitement in his speech.
ElectraMeccanica Vehicles Corp., the designer and manufacturer of the three-wheeled SOLO electric vehicle (earlier post), has appointed Kevin Pavlov as its new Chief Operating Officer (COO) effective 1 May 2021. Pavlov will be responsible for overseeing operational growth as ElectraMeccanica ramps up commercial production with a focus on enhancing profitability and efficiency.

Pavlov brings more than two decades of automotive experience to ElectraMeccanica. Prior to joining ElectraMeccanica, Pavlov most recently served as the COO of Karma Automotive. Pavlov has held various other senior leadership roles in his career, most notably at Magna International where he was, at different points in time, the COO of its E-Car Joint Venture, Global President and General Manager of Magna Electronics, and Executive Vice President of Magnas Services, Ventures, and Innovation Group.

Pavlov assumes the role which had been previously held by ElectraMeccanicas Co-Founder and Board Member, Henry Reisner, who will now become Executive Vice-President of ElectraMeccanica and President of its wholly-owned subsidiary, InterMeccanica. Reisner will continue to work actively with Pavlov to ensure a smooth transition in the coming months.

In their new roles, both Pavlov and Reisner will report directly to Paul Rivera, who, as part of these changes, assumes the additional title of President along with remaining Chief Executive Officer of the Company.

ElectraMeccanica Vehicles flagship vehicle is the purpose-built, single-seat EV called the SOLO. SOLO is currently powered by a 17.3 kWh NCA battery that is liquid-cooled and provides up to 100 miles of range. Pricing starts at $18,500.
Most public pools operated by municipalities in Onondaga County say they plan to open this summer.

But what that actually looks like is uncertain, until the county or state sets specific rules.

Syracuse plans to open seven pools for public swimming in June, although the staff isnt sure yet how many will be allowed in the pools at one time and other specifics, said Julie LaFave, Syracuse parks commissioner.

Thats a big change from last summer, when the city initially opened just two pools because of the pandemic. When the Kirk Park and Schiller Park pools opened in July, swimmers had to make reservations in 40-minute time blocks and only 50 could be in the pool at once. (Through a fundraising drive by the Syracuse Parks Conservancy, the city also was able to open pools at Thornden Park and Onondaga Park.)

Many pools and swimming areas operated by towns and village parks departments told Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard they plan to open this summer.

Van Buren is one exception. The town posted on its website late last week that it will not open the Van Buren pool.

The town board made the very tough decision to not open the Van Buren pool this summer,' the statement reads. The state has not changed any social distancing rules since last summer. We cannot control social distancing in a pool nor substantiate the expenses of running the pool for minimal attendance.

The towns await guidelines from the New York State Department of Health. Visitors to the pool might have to continue to socially distance from each other, either six feet apart from others (or three feet if the guidance changes). The state may also dictate how many people can be a group in or out of the water.

Officials expect masks to be required when swimmers arent in the water. There also will likely be a maximum number of people allowed in the pool at one time. Last year, the city pools limited the number of people in the water to 50.

Reservations were required at pools last year; that also isnt known yet.

Those visiting the pool will have to monitor themselves for any signs of illness. Its not known if staff will take temperatures for fevers. The rules also may change before the pools open - which for most is in June.

East Syracuse is definitely opening Hanlon Pool in the village the second week of June, officials said. The village is awaiting guidance which among other things will determine whether the village can open up access to the town or other areas.

Last summer the town opened the pool but only to village residents with reservations.

Salina operates four pools, and intends to open them as long as they can hire enough staff for them, said Debbie Vandewalker, parks and recreation clerk. The town needs lifeguards and other staff, she said.

Right now, they have 15 people hired, but need close to 40, she said. Its still early, but finding people to work may be an issue, she said.

This will be a great thing for the kids,' she said. Everyone needs a break. We dont see any reason why we cant open, as long as get staff.

The town wont offer swim lessons, she said.

Lysander and Camillus operate splash pads, and officials in both towns said they intend to open. Solvay Village Mayor Derek Baichi has said he intends to open the villages pool.

Pools at Gillie Lake in Camillus and Clift Park in Skaneateles will be open, as they were last summer. Skaneateles needs to secure a permit again from the state, said Skaneateles Supervisor Janet Aaron.

18 Two Syracuse city pools open at Onondaga and Thornden (July 2020)

Elizabeth Doran covers education, suburban government and development, breaking news and more. Got a tip, comment or story idea? Contact her anytime at 315-470-3012 or email edoran@syracuse.com
New Delhi: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar spoke to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday, covering recent developments in India's immediate and extended neighbourhood. Jaishankar and Blinken reportedly also discussed issues relating to cooperation in the area of health as well as exchanged views on the agenda of the UN Security Council.

Jaishankar tweeted: "Spoke to my US counterpart Secretary of State Blinken this evening. Conversation covered recent developments in India's immediate and extended neighbourhood. Exchanged views on the UNSC agenda. Also discussed issues pertaining to our health cooperation."

Spoke to my US counterpart Secretary of State @SecBlinken this evening. Conversation covered recent developments in Indias immediate and extended neighbourhood. Exchanged views on the UNSC agenda. Also discussed issues pertaining to our health cooperation.  Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) April 19, 2021

It is understood that the evolving situation in Afghanistan following the US announcement of withdrawal of its troops from the war-ravaged country by September 11 figured in the conversation.
Bir Lahlou (Liberated Territories) April 18, 2021 (SPS) - The President of the Republic, Secretary General of the Polisario Front, Mr. Brahim Ghali, sent a message of congratulations to his counterpart, President of Zimbabwe, Mr. Emmerson Mnangagwa, on the occasion of the 41st anniversary of his country's independence day.



"On behalf of the people and government of the SADR, I send to your esteemed Excellency, and through you, to the government and the Zimbabwean people, the warmest and sincere words of congratulations on the occasion of the 41st anniversary of Independence Day," the President of the Republic said in his congratulatory message.



On this occasion, the President of the Republic expressed to his Zimbabwean counterpart the solidarity of the SADR with its sister Zimbabwe in the face of the sanctions imposed on it.



He stressed that Zimbabwe has never stopped supporting just causes in the world, despite all the circumstances it is going through, especially the support for the freedom and independence of the Sahrawi people, expressing his gratitude for these positions and principled support. (SPS)



062/090/T
The Dubai Supreme Council of Energy has extended the submission deadline for the fourth Emirates Energy Award (EEA) until August 31, 2021.

The EEA will be held under the theme, "Inspiring Innovation for Sustainable Energy". The award seeks to strengthen Dubai's global role in supporting and implementing strategies for the use of renewable energy and energy technologies, a WAM report said.

"We work to achieve the goals of the Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050, which aims to provide 75% of Dubai's total power capacity from clean energy sources by 2050. The EEA reflects the vision of the wise leadership in developing and transforming the energy sector in the UAE into a more efficient and sustainable one while promoting innovation in this vital field to find practical solutions to fulfil the increasing demand for energy in the future," said Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, Vice Chairman of the Dubai Supreme Council of Energy, and Chairman of the Emirates Energy Award.

"The decision to extend the deadline for the award comes in response to the ongoing challenges that the world faces due to the Covid-19 pandemic, giving room for many regional institutions and individuals in the energy sector to participate and contribute to the award through their innovative solutions," Al Tayer added.

Ahmed Butti Al Muhairbi, Secretary-General of The Dubai Supreme Council of Energy and Vice Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Emirates Energy Award said: "We always strive to ensure maximum participation in the Emirates Energy Award by showcasing innovative projects and experiences of specialists, experts and stakeholders to support and consolidate their efforts, on the regional and global energy systems' scale, thus reinforcing Dubai's pioneering role as a global hub for energy and sustainability."

The award also recognises the public and private sectors' efforts across the region in energy efficiency, energy projects, education, and research in the energy sector.

Participation in the EEA is open for everyone, including individual innovators and inventors, business organisations from the public and private sectors, as well as research centres and scientific institutions.

The EEA will be granted in 10 categories. These are Energy Efficiency-Public and Private Sectors; Energy Efficiency - Private Sector; Large Energy Project; Small Energy Project; Connecting Solar Power to Buildings Project for Large Projects (more than 500 KW); Connecting Solar Power to Buildings Project for Small Projects (less than 500 KW); Education and Capacity Building; Applied Research and Product Development and Young Professional Energy Award and Special Recognition Award.

Submission of entries can be made online by visiting the EEA's website at www.emiratesenergyaward.com. -- Tradearabia News Service
Korean publication ET News reports that the 3D Time of Flight (ToF) sensor will not be making a comeback next year with the Galaxy S22 series. ToF sensors were featured on recent high profile releases like the Galaxy S10 5G and S20 Ultra.

However, the company swapped in a simple Laser AF system for the Galaxy Note20 Ultra launch and found that the change didnt negatively impact user experience. So, ToF was out and Laser AF was in for the Galaxy S21 Ultra launch as well, which will carry over to next years S22 series.

According to insiders, Samsung thought about bringing the ToF sensor back after Apple included one on the iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max. But after some consideration and looking at consumer feedback (users found the Laser system to be good enough), the company reportedly made the decision to stick with the simpler setup.

This will impact Samsung LSI, which introduced its first ToF sensor, the Vizion 33D, a few months ago. The division was expecting to receive a large order for sensors, which would have boosted its shipments. Now, the ToF sensors are expected to go to smartphone makers in China.

Sony is the market leader in this segment, supplying sensors for Apples iPhones and iPads, among other customers. Without the millions of sensors that would have gone in the next Galaxy S flagship, Samsung LSI will have a tough time challenging Sonys dominance.

A ToF sensor like a 3D camera  it measures the distance to objects to create a depth map (with 0.3 MP resolution in the case of the S20 Ultra). In contrast, Laser AF is like a single pixel, so it can only help with autofocus. Anyway, the depth map is used (among other things) to separate the subject from the background in portrait shots.



Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra portrait shots (zoomed), 12MP



Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra portrait shots (native), 12MP

There are other ways to achieve that, of course, and in our review of the S21 Ultra we found subject separation is great even without the ToF sensor.

Source | Via
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Monday that the state Senate does not currently have the votes to pass permitless carry of handguns but that he will try to see if there is a "path" to change that.

The news from the Republican presiding officer of the Senate came days after the House approved a permitless carry bill, commonly referred to as "constitutional carry" by supporters.

If we have the votes to pass a permitless carry bill off the Senate floor, I will move it," Patrick said in a statement. "At this point we dont have the votes on the floor to pass it. I plan to meet with law enforcement who oppose permitless carry and with the [National Rifle Association] and [Gun Owners of America] who support it to see if we can find a path that a majority of senators will vote to pass.

READ ALSO: Texas Republicans vow to defy any new federal gun rules. Experts say it's largely a symbolic gesture

House Bill 1927 would get rid of the requirement for Texas residents to get a license to carry handguns if they are not already prohibited by state or federal law from possessing a firearm. The House gave final approval to the legislation on Friday morning in an 87-58 vote that included seven Democrats in support of it.

A permitless carry bill has been filed in the Senate, but it was referred to a committee over a month ago and has not received a hearing yet.

During and around previous sessions, Patrick has previously said there is not enough support for permitless carry, and in 2017, he echoed law enforcement concerns about anyone being able to walk down the street with a gun and they dont know if they have a permit or not."

On Friday afternoon, one key GOP senator, Sen. Kel Seliger of Amarillo, suggested he may not be immediately supportive of the proposal. He told The Texas Tribune that his office was still researching the issue and he tends to support "just about all" bills related to gun rights, but the "system that we have now works." He said it was too early to say whether he would block the bill from coming to the floor or vote against it if it made it to the floor.

In most cases, Senate bills require 18 votes from the 31-member chamber to be considered on the floor. There are only 18 GOP senators, so a permitless-carry bill would need the support of every Republican in the chamber to reach the floor  or at least one Democratic vote if any Republicans defect.

The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans  and engages with them  about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Charlize Theron as Furiosa in 'Mad Max: Fury Road'. (Credit: Warner Bros)

Filmmaker George Miller is returning to his native Australia to film Furiosa, the fifth entry in the Mad Max film series, sharing the first details about the long-awaited film.

The prequel to 2015's award-winning Mad Max: Fury Road will star Anya Taylor-Joy (The Queen's Gambit) in the title role  previously portrayed by Charlize Theron  alongside Chris Hemsworth and Aquaman's Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in as-yet-undisclosed parts.

The film's writer-director said the film will be an epic 'saga'.

Whereas Fury Road essentially happened over three days and two nights, this happens over many years, Miller said at a press conference for the film. You try to make films that are uniquely familiar.

Read more: How Tom Hardy's feud with Charlize Theron impacted Fury Road

This will be familiar to those people who know Mad Max, and in particular Fury Road, but also it will be unique.

Anya Taylor-Joy is in the frame for a 'Mad Max' spin-off focused on Furiosa. (Credit: Warner Bros/Jacopo Raule/Getty Images)

Tom Hardy's Max Rockatansky is not set to play a part in the film. Fury Road filmed in Namibia after an unseasonably wet year left the Australian outback looking too green for the wasteland of the dystopian future.

Australian Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced the movie would be 'the largest film ever to be filmed' in New South Wales and would bring at least 196 million into the economy.

The insane action of Mad Max: Fury Road (Warner Bros)

Marvel star Hemsworth, currently shooting Thor: Love and Thunder in Sydney is thrilled to be involved the return of the iconic Aussie action series.

Read more: Charlize Theron 'heartbroken' to not return for Furiosa

This will be my fourth or fifth film here in Australia, the actor told AP.

Actor Chris Hemsworth attends at a press conference to announce the new "Mad Max" film at Fox Studios Australia in Sydney, Monday, April 19, 2021. (Mick Tsikas/AAP Image via AP)

It really is, out of everything Ive done, the biggest pinch-myself moment, because Ive grown up watching it and its so iconic. It is a huge honour. A lot of pressure, but exciting pressure that is certainly motivating.

Furiosa, which will explore the origins of Theron's shaven-headed wasteland warrior, is slated for release mid-2023 and will film across locations in New South Wales, including the desert mining town of Broken Hill.

Story continues

American actor Mel Gibson on the set of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior written and directed by George Miller. (Photo by Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)

The remote town was the inspiration Kenneth Cook's 1961 novel Wake in Fright, and has featured in many movies including Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

Furiosa secured lucrative filming incentives to return to shoot in Australia following a long legal battle between Miller and Warner Bros over unpaid earnings that delayed production. Miller has put the legal battle behind him now saying: Since we started Fury Road I think theres been six different regimes at Warner Bros.

George Miller,Tom Hardy and Mel Gibson arrives at the "Mad Max: Fury Road" - Los Angeles Premiere 2015 (Steve Granitz/WireImage)

"Now its stabilised very much and theyre able to basically pay attention coherently to the films they want to make and this is one of them.

Fury Road was a surprise hit when it was released in 2015, having endured a tortuous shoot that saw Hardy and Theron feuding on set. Despite a muted box office reception, it received ten Oscar nominations, winning six, and Empire magazine recently named it the best film of the 21st century so far.

Watch: Mad Max star Hugh Keays-Byrne dies in 2020
Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died of natural causes a day after defending the Capitol during the January 6 assault, the D.C. medical examiner's office announced Monday. Sicknick was previously believed to have died from injuries sustained during the riot.

Sicknick died from strokes, the chief medical examiner's office said in a report summary, citing "acute brainstem and cerebellar infarcts due to acute basilar artery thrombosis." In an interview with The Washington Post, chief medical examiner Francisco J. Diaz said Sicknick suffered two strokes at the base of his brainstem caused by a clot in an artery.

At approximately 2:20 p.m. on January 6, Sicknick was sprayed with a chemical substance outside the Capitol, the office said. He collapsed eight hours later and died the following evening.

Despite being sprayed with a chemical substance, Sicknick's manner of death was determined to be "natural," the medical examiner's office said. In the interview with the Post, Diaz said the autopsy found no evidence of internal or external injuries, or of an allergic reaction to the chemical substance  but did say "all that transpired played a role in his condition."

The "natural" classification is used "when a disease alone causes death," the medical examiner's office said in the summary. "If death is hastened by an injury, the manner of death is not considered natural."

The medical examiner's office has not publicly released the full report.

When first announcing Sicknick's death in January, the Capitol police said he died from "injuries sustained while on-duty."

Officer Brian Sicknick / Credit: United States Capitol Police via AP

"Officer Sicknick was responding to the riots on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol and was injured while physically engaging with protesters," police said in a statement. "He returned to his division office and collapsed. He was taken to a local hospital where he succumbed to his injuries."

Story continues

In a Monday statement, Capitol Police said it accepted the finding that Sicknick died of natural causes but said "this does not change the fact Officer Sicknick died in the line of duty, courageously defending Congress and the Capitol."

"The United States Capitol Police will never forget Officer Sicknick's bravery, nor the bravery of any officer on January 6, who risked their lives to defend our democracy," the department added.

Two suspects were charged with assaulting Sicknick in March and were accused of disabling him with a chemical spray.

Sicknick, who first joined the Capitol Police in 2008, lay in honor at the Capitol weeks after his death, and was remembered as a "peacekeeper" who was "caught in the wrong place at the wrong time."

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden pay their respects to Officer Brian Sicknick as he lies in honor in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., on February 2, 2021. / Credit: LEAH MILLIS/AFP via Getty

"A peacekeeper, not only in duty, but in spirit," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said of Sicknick during a Congressional tribute in early February. "Talk to his colleagues, and they will tell you that Brian was a kind and humble man, with profound inner strength, the quiet rock of his unit."

Sicknick was only the fifth private citizen to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda, joining Rosa Parks; Billy Graham; and Capitol Police officer Jacob Chestnut and Capitol Police detective John Gibson, who were fatally shot at the Capitol in 1998.

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'Britain's grumpiest postman' has been caught in a second foul-mouthed rant in a week, complaining 'they're never f*****g in' while trying to deliver a package.

The Royal Mail postie was filmed last week calling a house in Walsall a 'f*****g s***hole' on a Ring camera, and was at it again this weekend.

The worker is heard saying in the new video, 'Right, I ain't having that, they're never f*****g in.

'Here's the other one, f****g have them.'

The homeowner, who did not wish to be named, told The Sun: 'This isn't the sort of thing you'd expect from your neighbourhood postman.

'When we saw the footage we were utterly shocked.'

The worker is heard saying in the new video, 'Right, I ain't having that, they're never f*****g in'

The postman appears to be the same man in earlier footage seen by Annette Barrett, 40, as she tried to track a lost package.

He can be seen ringing Ms Barrett's doorbell before saying out loud, 'What a f*****g s***hole.'

The Jaguar Land Rover worker said she prides herself on keeping the house tidy and was 'shocked' by what she heard.

The Royal Mail worker was standing in for Ms Barrett's regular postman and appeared to deny referring to her house after the homeowner's partner left a note saying he had been reported.

The postman appears to be the same man in earlier footage (pictured) seen by Annette Barrett, 40, as she tried to track a lost package. He can be seen ringing Ms Barrett's doorbell before saying out loud, 'What a f*****g s***hole'

The postman could be seen spotting the note and says: 'I didn't, I wasn't talking about that.'

A Royal Mail spokesman said today: 'Royal Mail expect the highest standards of behaviour from our people while out on deliveries and collections at all times.

'We regularly remind our postmen and postwomen of the important role they play in their local communities. We were very sorry to learn about this incident, and for the distress this incident has caused.

'We will be in touch with the customer concerned to apologise and to inform them we are investigating this incident.'
Baghdad, April 19 : Several rockets hit an Iraqi airbase, hosting US forces on Sunday, injuring two Iraqi guards, the military said.

Five rockets struck Balad airbase, north of Baghdad, the military media centre added in a statement, DPA news agency reported.

Two rockets fell into the airbase, injuring two soldiers, one of them seriously, chief of the facility Diaa Mohsen told Iraq's official news agency INA.

So far, there has been no claim of responsibility for the attack.

In recent months, the heavily-fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, home to the US embassy and American troops in Iraq have been the target of repeated attacks blamed on pro-Iranian groups.
VANCOUVER, BC, OTTAWA, ON, TORONTO, MONTREAL and LONDON, ON, April 19, 2021 /CNW/ - This Earth Day, parents across Canada are taking action to hold decision makers accountable for environmental progress, needed now more than ever. Motivated by love for their children, they are acting in covid-safe ways in their communities and through a national network called For Our Kids.

For Our Kids Logo (CNW Group/For Our Kids)

These parents and and their activities include:

Marianne Ariganello in Ottawa working with other local parents and kids on pop up art displays drawing attention to municipal decisions that don't align with the city's climate emergency declaration.

Natalie Caine in Montreal working with other local parents to clean up discarded disposable masks around schools and neighbourhoods and asking Quebec Premier Francois Legault to change the rules leading to this waste.

Marian Hakze in North Vancouver working with other local parents to create two banners urging BC Premier John Horgan to protect old growth forests.

Lella Blumer in London contacting her financial advisor and the CEO of TD to urge the bank to stop funding billions in fossil fuel projects, and encouraging other parents to do the same.

Brianne Wyte in Toronto working with other local parents to contact their MPs to strengthen Bill C-12, federal climate accountability legislation.

Eugenie Waters, a mom and a doctor co-releasing a video message to Prime Minister Trudeau in collaboration with the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

For quotes, pictures, and more information about these parents and actions visit https://www.forourkids.ca/earth_day_actions

SOURCE For Our Kids

Cision

View original content to download multimedia: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/April2021/19/c7414.html
Ecuador's National Electoral Council on Sunday confirmed former banker Guillermo Lasso as winner of the second round of presidential elections, with 52.36 per cent of the votes. Lasso, the right-wing candidate from the Creo alliance (Creando Oportunidades movement), beat leftist Andres Arauz, who received 47.64 per cent of votes.

The president of the National Electoral Council, Diana Atamaint, hailed the electoral process as a "triumph" for the Ecuadorean people and "all of us who defend peace and democracy." Ecuador held the runoff on April 11 under strict public health measures amid a surging coronavirus pandemic.

The result brings to an end the so-called Correismo era, named after former President Rafael Correa who governed Ecuador from 2007 to 2017. Correa grew increasingly authoritarian in the latter years of his presidency and was sentenced to prison last year in a corruption scandal.

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)
France "bears significant responsibility" for enabling the genocide in Rwanda and still refuses to acknowledge its true role in the 1994 horror, said a report commissioned by Kigali that was released Monday.

The damning report, commissioned in 2017 and running to nearly 600 pages, labels France a "collaborator" of the extremist Hutu regime that orchestrated the pogrom of some 800,000 people, and outright rejects the position that Paris was blind to their genocidal agenda.

However both countries appeared keen to turn the page on years of often poisonous ties.

A source in the French presidency, asking not to be named, hailed the fact that complicity in the genocide was excluded and said the report would "open a new political space" between the two countries.

Meanwhile a statement from the Rwandan cabinet looked forward to "the prospect of a new chapter in the relations between France and Rwanda".

The years-long investigation by US law firm Levy Firestone Muse said France knew a genocide was coming but remained "unwavering in its support" of its Rwandan allies, even when the planned extermination of the Tutsi minority was clear.

"The French government bears significant responsibility for enabling a foreseeable genocide," states the Muse report, which drew on millions of pages of documents and interviews with more than 250 witnesses.

It found no evidence, however, that French officials or personnel directly participated in the killing of Tutsis.

France has long been accused of not doing enough to halt the massacres, and the Muse report follows the publication last month of a separate inquiry into the same events commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron.

- 'Neither blind, nor unconscious' -

The Duclert Commission, named after the historian leading that investigation, concluded that France bore "overwhelming responsibilities" over the genocide and acknowledged a "failure" on its part, but no complicity in the killings.

Story continues

But the Muse report asserts greater French culpability, saying the Duclert Commission stopped short of explaining what France was responsible for, and erred in concluding that Paris "remained blind" to the looming genocide.

"The French government was neither blind nor unconscious about the foreseeable genocide," the report stated.

Rwanda's Foreign Minister Vincent Biruta told Le Monde newspaper that his country would not seek legal action against France.

"The main thing is that the two commissions come to common conclusions, that France has... heavy and overwhelming responsibilities (and) allowed a genocide which was foreseeable to take place," he separately told journalists in Kigali.

- 'Indispensable collaborator' -

The genocide between April and July of 1994 began after Rwanda's Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana, with whom Paris had cultivated close ties, was killed when his plane was shot down over Kigali on April 6.

Within a few hours extremist Hutu militia began slaughtering Tutsis, and some moderate Hutus, with a scale and brutality that shocked the world.

The Muse report said nobody worked closer with Habyarimana than France under then leader Francois Mitterrand, who was most to blame for the "reckless enabling" of the radical Hutu regime as it prepared for genocide.

France provided critical military and political support to the regime to protect its own strategic interests in Africa, the report said, and ignored internal warnings of a looming slaughter even as hateful rhetoric and violence against the Tutsi surged.

"Only the French government was an indispensable collaborator in building the institutions that would become instruments of the genocide. No other foreign government both knew the dangers posed by Rwandan extremists and enabled those extremists," the report states.

"The French government's role was singular. And still, it has not yet acknowledged that role or atoned for it."

President Paul Kagame -- who has led the country since the end of the genocide -- welcomed the recent Duclert Commission as "an important step toward a common understanding of what took place" but said a decades-long effort by France to avoid responsibility had caused "significant damage".

The Muse report accused France of concealing documents, obstructing justice and spreading falsehoods about the genocide in a deliberate campaign to "bury its past in Rwanda".

"The cover-up continues even to the present," the report added, saying French authorities refused to cooperate with their inquiry or turn over critical documents pertinent to their investigation.

On April 7 -- the 27th anniversary of the start of the genocide -- France ordered the opening of key archives concerning the work of Mitterrand between 1990 and 1994, including telegrams and confidential notes that were sources in the Duclert investigation.

The Muse report noted that the recent disclosure of some documents related to the Duclert Commission suggested "a move toward transparency".

np-fb/mjs
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MDOT to lift some weight restrictions in U.P. Monday

MDOT to lift some weight restrictions in U.P. Monday

Dan Weingarten, MDOT Office of Communications, 906-250-4809 Transportation

April 9, 2021 -- Effective 6 a.m. Monday, April 12, the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) will lift seasonal weight restrictions on all state trunkline highways from the southern Michigan border north to and including US-2/US-141 at the Menominee River bridge west of Iron Mountain, then east on US-2 to St. Ignace.

Frost restrictions are still in effect for the remainder of the state and will be imposed and enforced on all state trunkline highways north of US-2 and on M-185 on Mackinac Island.

In the restricted areas, the following will apply:

- On routes designated as "all-season" (designated in green and gold on the MDOT Truck Operators Map), there will be no reduction in legal axle weights.

- On routes designated as "seasonal" (designated in solid or dashed red on the MDOT Truck Operators Map), there will be a posted weight reduction of 25 percent for rigid (concrete) pavements and 35 percent for flexible (asphalt) pavements.

- All extended permits will be valid for oversize loads in the weight-restricted area on the restricted routes. Single-trip permits will not be issued for any overweight loads or loads exceeding 14 feet in width, 11 axles and 150 feet in overall length on the restricted routes.

County road commissions and city public works departments put in place their own seasonal weight restrictions, which usually, but not always, coincide with state highway weight restrictions. Signs are generally posted to indicate which routes have weight restrictions in effect.

For weight restriction information and updates, call 800-787-8960, or you can access this information on MDOT's website at www.Michigan.gov/Truckers, under "Restrictions." All-season routes are designated in green and gold on the MDOT Truck Operators Map, which is available online. You also may sign up to receive e-mail alerts.

Trucking companies located in New Jersey and Canada can obtain information by calling 517-373-6256.
Six60s biggest concert at Eden Park is making history and its been announced that they will also be live-streaming it to the Pacific Islands! The broadcast will be live this Saturday from 8.30 pm-10.30 pm (NZT).

The concert will be broadcast in the Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Tonga and Vanuatu via its Pacifika TV service.

Te Moana nui o kiwa is what bonds Aotearoa and the Pacific, so it is quite fitting that this historic occasion for SIX60 at Eden Park, is also met with an historic FIRST for broadcasting a concert LIVE from Tamaki Makaurau into the Pacific

"SIX60 have been great to work with and their embedded values of culture, language and whanau resonate well with Pasifika. Their hit single 'Don't forget your roots' epitomises who they are as a group, and when they re-released that hit in Te Reo, it further demonstrated a deep-rooted connection to their cultural identity. SIX60's kind gesture to share their concert with more than 10.5 million people across 11 Pacific islands - makes them natural ambassadors of music for Aotearoa." Natasha Meleisea, PCBL Chief Executive Officer said.

Six60 have said,

Its an amazing feeling to share the Eden Park show with Aotearoas extended community throughout the Pacific Islands. For a lot of people, its been too long since theyve seen their loved ones and we wanted to open our hearts to those families and broadcast our concert so that family members can enjoy the experience together.

The stage times for Six60 Saturdays have also been released too!

4.00pm Gates Open

4.30pm Maimoa

4.55pm JessB

5.35pm Troy Kingi and The Clutch

6.20pm Sir Dave Dobbyn

7.20pm Drax Project

8.30pm SIX60

10.30pm Show End

It's awesome that our whanau can join in on SIX60 SATURDAYS from home! We cant wait for this historic concert and to share our local kiwi acts to those around the world.
Paris, April 19 : French President Emmanuel Macron said it was "unacceptable" that Russian troops are amassing along Ukraine's eastern border and called for a tough stance against the threat of fresh military aggression from Moscow.

"The situation today and the level of tension at the border is absolutely counterproductive and unacceptable," Macron said in an interview that aired on Sunday, DPA news agency reported.

While he was in favour of accelerating diplomatic efforts to ease the tensions, Macron said the discussions with Moscow needed to be "clear and tough".

"I think we have to define clear red lines with Russia," Macron told US television channel CBS.

"This is the only way to be credible. I think that sanctions are not sufficient in itself, in themselves, but sanctions are part of the package," he said.

Macron has put himself at the forefront of the diplomatic push to ease the latest flare up in Ukraine's conflict.

He held discussions with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday. The three demanded Russia pull back troops and urged that a shaky ceasefire in eastern Ukraine be recommitted to.

New consultation-level talks with Franco-German mediation are planned for Monday, according to Zelensky.

Anxiety is growing about the conflict that erupted between the Ukrainian military and Russian-backed separatist rebels in 2014, the same year that Russian forces annexed the Crimean peninsula further south.

Parts of Ukraine's eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions along the Russian border have been controlled by rebels supported by Moscow for nearly seven years.
WASHINGTON  A decision on how to resume vaccinating Americans with the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus shot will probably come by Friday, the top U.S. infectious-diseases specialist said, a faster timeline than other health officials have indicated.

I doubt very seriously if they just cancel the J&J vaccine, one of three approved for use in the U.S., Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on NBCs Meet the Press, one of four Sunday talk-show interviews.

It would be surprising if we dont have a resumption in some form by Friday, Fauci said on CBS Face the Nation. One of those possibilities would be to bring them back, but to do it with some form of restriction or some form of warning.

U.S. health officials paused use of the J&J COVID-19 shots while they seek more data on a rare side effect. Six U.S. women who received the shots developed a severe form of blood clotting six to 13 days after vaccination.

On Thursday, public health officials concluded a meeting on the vaccine without a vote. Advisers to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they lacked adequate information to make recommendations on how to respond to reports of the clots.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is set to resume on Friday, according to Rochelle Walensky, the agencys director.

I would think that were not going to go beyond Friday in the extension of this pause, Fauci said on ABCs This Week.

On Thursday, though, the head of the CDC panel thats expected to make a recommendation on the whether the J&J shots should resume said more data is needed and that it was possible the pause could last for several weeks.

If we make a wrong decision about this, it will impact our credibility and credibility of the vaccine safety system, Jose Romero told Bloomberg News in an interview. So its very important that we get this right.

Fauci said on CBS that any new guidance on the vaccine could be gender-based, but we dont know that yet. You dont want to jump ahead of yourself and assume you know the total spectrum of this, he said.

The six cases under investigation were reported in women between the ages of 18 and 48, raising questions about whether the syndrome primarily affects females or young people generally.

I do think that there will likely be some sort of warning or restriction or risk assessment, Fauci said on NBC.

South Africas health regulator asked its government on Saturday to lift a pause on the Johnson & Johnson shots provided certain conditions are met.

Separately, Fauci, a top adviser to President Joe Biden, said officials would determine soon  likely by the end of summer  whether people whove been vaccinated against COVID may need to get booster shots or new vaccines aimed at emerging strains.

Officials with vaccine makers Moderna and Pfizer have indicated that a booster dose may be required, or that the COVID-19 vaccines become annual events like flu shots, but Fauci on NBC said that such a call would be a public health decision.

Its not going to be a decision thats going to be made by a pharmaceutical company, he said. Were partners with them because theyre supplying it. Itll be an FDA-CDC decision.

On CNN, Fauci added that the U.S. will be prepared for coronavirus variants either by boosting with the current vaccine, or boosting with a variant-specific vaccine.

He spoke as the U.S. approached another milestone in its monthslong push to inoculate most Americans against the coronavirus.

Some 49.7% of people in the U.S. age 18 and older have had at least one vaccine dose, the CDC said Saturday on its website. Almost 32% in that age range are fully vaccinated.

Among older people, who are at the most risk for complications if they contract COVID-19, almost 81% have had a first vaccine dose and over 65% are fully vaccinated, the CDC said.

The U.S. should be able to vaccinate children of virtually any age by first quarter of 2022, Fauci said on CNN.



(With assistance by Tony Czuczka and Yueqi Yang.)
were little changed on Monday, supported by a weaker US dollar but pressured by concerns about the impact on demand from rising cases in India and other countries.

Brent crude was down 4 cents, at $66.73 a barrel by 11:06 AM ET (1506 GMT), after rising 6% last week. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) US oil was up 3 cents at $63.16 a barrel, having gained 6.4% last week.

The US dollar traded at a six-week low versus major peers on Monday, with Treasury yields hovering near their weakest in five weeks.

With oil priced in dollars, a softer greenback could spur demand from holders of other currencies.

"If today's broad-based weakness in the US dollar is sustained, the energy complex should be able to maintain the bulk of last week's gains," said Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch and Associates.

"The primary hazard to continued oil price strength is the possible pre-emergence of Covid-19 case counts on a broad scale" India reported a record rise in infections, which lifted overall cases to just over 15 million, making the country the second-worst affected after the United States, which has reported more than 31 million infections.





ALSO READ: India's m-cap declines 2.5%, only top-15 nation to see erosion in April

Deaths from COVID-19 in India also rose by a record 1,619 to nearly 180,000.

The capital region of Delhi ordered a six-day lockdown, joining around 13 other states across India that have decided to impose restrictions, curfews or lockdowns in their cities.

"This new wave of measures, while so far likely to be less stringent than what we saw in March 2020, when gasoline and gasoil/diesel demand in the country fell by close to 60%, is nevertheless set to weigh on transportation fuel consumption," consultancy JBC said.

Hong Kong will suspend flights from India, Pakistan and the Philippines from April 20 due to imported infections, authorities said on Sunday.

Lending some support, Saudi Arabia's crude oil exports fell in February to their lowest in eight months, the Joint Organisations Data Initiative (JODI) said on Monday, as the world's biggest oil exporter voluntarily capped output to support

JP Morgan now expects Brent prices to break the $70 mark by May, compared with September in its previous forecast, the bank said in a recent note. It still expects them to finish the year at a similar level of about $74.
LOUISVILLE, Ky., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Louisville Gas and Electric Company, Kentucky Utilities Company and more than a dozen parties to the utilities' current rate review, have reached an agreement that helps the utilities continue to provide safe and reliable energy at some of the lowest costs in the nation. The agreement was filed today with the Kentucky Public Service Commission for their consideration in resolving the review.

The agreement addresses almost all of the issues in the review including: a reduction in the rate increase requested by the utilities; the Economic Relief bill credit proposed by the utilities that will mitigate the impact of the increase for one year; no change to the current residential basic service charge; the rollout of advanced meters without a rate impact; and a commitment by LG&E and KU to not increase base rates for at least four years. LG&E and KU also agreed to increase contributions to certain agencies that assist low-income customers in paying their utility bills, by the same percent as the KPSC-approved rate increase. The agreement does not address the net metering proposal including the amount utility customers should pay for the excess energy created by private generation.

"These are difficult and sometimes emotionally charged topics, further complicated by the more challenging conditions presented by COVID-19," said LG&E and KU Chief Financial Officer Kent Blake. "However, all parties worked together in a professional manner to ease the impact on customers to the extent possible, while still providing the utilities an opportunity to recover their costs of providing safe and reliable service."

The utilities requested the increases based upon investments that help continue safe and reliable service. Key investments include upgraded distribution and transmission lines; replacing aging wooden poles with steel and aging steel natural gas lines with plastic; new circuit breakers and substation equipment; cycle-based vegetation management; and advanced technology that immediately pinpoints the location of power outages, and in many cases, limits the impacted area and automatically restores service for all other customers.

If approved:

KU residential customers using an average of 1,120 kWh per month would see an increase of $7.87 in their total monthly electric bill for the first 12 months after the ruling. When the relief credit expires in mid-2022, a KU residential customer using the same amount of energy would see their monthly bill increase approximately 76 cents.

LG&E residential electric customers using an average of 894 kWh per month would see an increase in their total monthly bill of $4.10 for the first 12 months after the ruling. An LG&E residential customer using the same amount of energy would see the additional monthly increase of $3.07 when the relief credit expires in mid-2022.

LG&E residential natural gas customers using an average of 54 Ccf per month would see an increase of $3.89 in their total monthly bill for the first 12 months following the ruling, and the additional monthly increase of 33 cents in mid-2022.

The parties to the rate review and settlement agreement are the Kentucky Attorney General; the United States Department of Defense; Kentuckians for the Commonwealth; the Kentucky Industrial Utility Customers; Kentucky Solar Energy Society; Kentucky Solar Industries Association; The Kroger Company; Walmart; Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government; Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government; Mountain Association; Metro Housing Coalition and the Sierra Club.

If approved by the KPSC, new rates and the Economic Relief bill credit would take effect July 1, 2021.

Louisville Gas and Electric Company and Kentucky Utilities Company, part of the PPL Corporation (NYSE: PPL) family of companies, are regulated utilities that serve more than 1.3 million customers and have consistently ranked among the best companies for customer service in the United States. LG&E serves 332,000 natural gas and 425,000 electric customers in Louisville and 16 surrounding counties. KU serves 564,000 customers in 77 Kentucky counties and five counties in Virginia. More information is available at www.lge-ku.com and www.pplweb.com.

Contact for news media: LG&E and KU media hotline, (502) 627-4999

SOURCE Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities
WASHINGTON  A decision on how to resume vaccinating Americans with the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus shot will probably come by Friday, the top U.S. infectious-diseases specialist said, a faster timeline than other health officials have indicated.

I doubt very seriously if they just cancel the J&J vaccine, one of three approved for use in the U.S., Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on NBCs Meet the Press, one of four Sunday talk-show interviews.

It would be surprising if we dont have a resumption in some form by Friday, Fauci said on CBS Face the Nation. One of those possibilities would be to bring them back, but to do it with some form of restriction or some form of warning.

U.S. health officials paused use of the J&J COVID-19 shots while they seek more data on a rare side effect. Six U.S. women who received the shots developed a severe form of blood clotting six to 13 days after vaccination.

On Thursday, public health officials concluded a meeting on the vaccine without a vote. Advisers to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they lacked adequate information to make recommendations on how to respond to reports of the clots.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is set to resume on Friday, according to Rochelle Walensky, the agencys director.

I would think that were not going to go beyond Friday in the extension of this pause, Fauci said on ABCs This Week.

On Thursday, though, the head of the CDC panel thats expected to make a recommendation on the whether the J&J shots should resume said more data is needed and that it was possible the pause could last for several weeks.

If we make a wrong decision about this, it will impact our credibility and credibility of the vaccine safety system, Jose Romero told Bloomberg News in an interview. So its very important that we get this right.

Fauci said on CBS that any new guidance on the vaccine could be gender-based, but we dont know that yet. You dont want to jump ahead of yourself and assume you know the total spectrum of this, he said.

The six cases under investigation were reported in women between the ages of 18 and 48, raising questions about whether the syndrome primarily affects females or young people generally.

I do think that there will likely be some sort of warning or restriction or risk assessment, Fauci said on NBC.

South Africas health regulator asked its government on Saturday to lift a pause on the Johnson & Johnson shots provided certain conditions are met.

Separately, Fauci, a top adviser to President Joe Biden, said officials would determine soon -- likely by the end of summer -- whether people whove been vaccinated against COVID may need to get booster shots or new vaccines aimed at emerging strains.

Officials with vaccine makers Moderna and Pfizer have indicated that a booster dose may be required, or that the COVID-19 vaccines become annual events like flu shots, but Fauci on NBC said that such a call would be a public health decision.

Its not going to be a decision thats going to be made by a pharmaceutical company, he said. Were partners with them because theyre supplying it. Itll be an FDA-CDC decision.

On CNN, Fauci added that the U.S. will be prepared for coronavirus variants either by boosting with the current vaccine, or boosting with a variant-specific vaccine.

He spoke as the U.S. approached another milestone in its monthslong push to inoculate most Americans against the coronavirus.

Some 49.7% of people in the U.S. age 18 and older have had at least one vaccine dose, the CDC said Saturday on its website. Almost 32% in that age range are fully vaccinated.

Among older people, who are at the most risk for complications if they contract COVID-19, almost 81% have had a first vaccine dose and over 65% are fully vaccinated, the CDC said.

The U.S. should be able to vaccinate children of virtually any age by first quarter of 2022, Fauci said on CNN.



(With assistance by Tony Czuczka and Yueqi Yang.)
China holds national parent-child reading event

Xinhua) 11:22, April 19, 2021

BEIJING, April 18 (Xinhua) -- A national parent-child reading event was held on Sunday in the run-up to the 26th World Book Day on April 23.

Aimed at passing down revolutionary legacy to future generations, this year's event featured a series of activities including awarding of revolutionary history books to family representatives and a tour of the Museum of the War of Chinese People's Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in Beijing in which children and their parents participated.

During the event, over 100 kinds of books were recommended to the participating families, which introduce the revolutionary history of the Communist Party of China (CPC). Some books were read out at the event.

The event was also held in tandem with cities and places renowned for rich revolutionary heritage, including Shanghai, where the first CPC National Congress was held in 1921, and the Jinggang Mountains, known as the "cradle of the Chinese revolution", in east China's Jiangxi Province.

(Web editor: Xian Jiangnan, Hongyu)
Amid COVID-19 Surge, CM Mamata To Not Campaign In Kolkata Anymore, Says Derek O'Brien

As West Bengal slowly moves towards the final phase of Assembly elections, TMC leader Derek O'Brien on Sunday night took to his official Twitter handle and said that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will not campaign any further in Kolkata. Pointing towards the rising COVID-19 cases across the state, the TMC supremo will only hold one "symbolic" meeting on the last day of campaigning in Kolkata on April 26, the TMC leader added.

Mamata Banerjee will NOT campaign in Kolkata anymore. Only one symbolic meeting on the last day of campaigning in the city on April 26.

Slashes time for all her election rallies in all districts. Restricted to just 30 minutes. #BengalElection2021 #Covid  Derek O'Brien |  ' (@derekobrienmp) April 18, 2021

Read full story here

SC To Hear 2 Pleas Seeking COVID-19 Vaccination For All Above 18 Years Of Age On April 19

Amid the exponential rise in COVID-19 cases across the country, the Supreme Court (SC) on Monday is all set to hear 2 pleas seeking COVID-19 vaccination for all above 18 years of age. The plea filed by advocate Rashmi Singh said that widespread vaccination of all young and working population is essential to arrest the deadly upsurge of the Coronavirus in its second wave. The petition filed in the court stated that the administration of the vaccine in itself takes between 6 to 8 weeks for both doses and hence by the time the vaccine will reach the age group of 18 years and above, the Coronavirus would have spread rapidly and may give rise to a serious situation.

Read full story here

Amid Rising COVID-19 Cases, Rajasthan To Observe 'Anushasan Pakhwada' In State

In a move to control the growing surge of COVID-19 cases in the state, the Rajasthan government has planned for 'Anushashan Pakhwada' or a self-discipline fortnight starting from today. Several restrictions have been imposed including non-operation of all workplaces, markets, businesses, and general activities. This will go on till May 3.

Read full story here

Oxford Begins First-of-its-kind Trial Study To Reinfect Recovered Coronavirus Patients

As Oxford begins its first-of-its-kind trial study that may help to shed light on how to develop a more effective vaccine against the Coronavirus infection, people who have fought off with the COVID-19 virus will be deliberately reinfected. The UK University on Monday said that the researchers are looking for 64 healthy, previously COVID-19 infected volunteers from 18 to 30 years of age to be studied under controlled, quarantine conditions for at least 17 days. Participants will be infected with the original strain from Wuhan, China and followed for a year.

Read full story here

For Another Week, Meeting Over COVID-19 On April 19

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to create havoc in BanBangladesh Likely To Extend Lockdowngladesh as 102 deaths were recorded due to the novel virus in the past 24 hours. Amid the surge in COVID-19 cases, the Bangladesh government is likely to extend the lockdown in the country for another week, ANI quoted Minister for Public Administer Farhad Hossain as saying to Dhaka Tribune.

Read full story here
One of many collaborations happening between Travelodge and NPCA this week to mark National Park Week, the challenge grant, which aims to raise a combined $50,000 between Travelodge and other donors, comes amid rising visitation and increased strain on park resources due to lingering effects of the ongoing pandemic. Last year, over 237 million people visited America's national parks, with 15 parks setting a new recreation visitation record 1 . Travelers are invited to make a donation to help match the challenge grant by visiting, www.travelodge.com/npca .

"National Park Week is a chance to celebrate and show appreciation for our nation's parks, which throughout the pandemic have played a critical role as a safe and fulfilling escape for travelers and their families," said Haley Maglio, brand leader of Travelodge by Wyndham. "As a brand with a deep love and connection to the outdoors, we're incredibly proud to help champion NPCA with this grant, supporting its mission and further enabling the critical work it does as it protects and enhances America's national park system for current and future generations."

In tandem with the challenge grant, Travelodge also announced today a three-year renewal of its commitment to NPCA along with plans to participate in other coordinated National Park Week activities, including a virtual "Park Talk" webinar with Maglio. The two organizations have collaborated together since 2016 and in that time, Travelodge has provided more than $750,000 in support of NPCA and its work to protect the parks. Over 75 percent of all Travelodge hotels are within an hour's drive of a national parks.

"Our national parks are as unique as the people visiting them, offering unforgettable experiences that we carry with us and share with a hope that future generation will continue to see these places the way we do today," said Theresa Pierno, president and CEO for the National Parks Conservation Association. "We are thankful for the years-long and generous support of Travelodge where together, we're reaching park adventurers about ways to speak up and protect the places they love, from Yellowstone to Everglades, and how to do so responsibly throughout their travels."

Travelodge's continued support of NPCA and the nation's parks is complemented by its ongoing commitment to promoting eco-friendly travel. Known for being travelers' basecamp for adventure, the brand's Travelodge + Go Green program aims to reduce the carbon footprint of over 450 hotels throughout North America with eco-friendly initiatives around breakfast, housekeeping and bath amenities.

To learn more about Travelodge's work with NPCA, including how to make a donation and help NPCA raise a combined $50,000 with the brand's National Park Week challenge grant, visit www.travelodge.com/npca. Donation deadline is April 25, 2021.

About Travelodge by Wyndham

With more than 450 hotels across North America, Travelodge by Wyndham is your basecamp for adventure, offering a clean, comfy room along with free breakfast and Wi-Fi, at affordable rates. Known coast to coast for its laid back, California roots and iconic Sleepy Bear mascot, today, more than 75 percent of all Travelodge hotels are located just an hour's drive from some of the nation's most celebrated National Parks. That's why, in an effort to help protect these vital landmarks, the brand is proud to serve as an official sponsor of National Parks Conservation Association. For more information, or start planning your next adventure, visit www.travelodge.com. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Instagram. For development opportunities, visit www.wyndhamdevelopment.com.

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.

About National Parks Conservation Association

Since 1919, the nonpartisan National Parks Conservation Association has been the leading voice in safeguarding our national parks. NPCA and its more than 1.6 million members and supporters work together to protect and preserve our nation's most iconic and inspirational places for future generations. For more information, visit www.npca.org.

1"National Parks Hosted 237 Million Visitors in 2020"

https://www.nps.gov/orgs/1207/02-25-21-national-parks-hosted-237-million-visitors-in-2020.htm

SOURCE Wyndham Hotels & Resorts

Related Links

http://www.wyndhamhotels.com


RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP)  Police in Southern California have arrested a man they allege was involved in a house fire that killed an 85-year-old woman and injured two others.

Charles Tyson Christian, 47, was arrested Saturday on suspicion of murder and attempted murder for the blaze, which occurred early that morning in San Bernardino.

Christian was identified as the son of the 68-year-old man and 67-year-old woman who were injured. No details were released on a potential relationship between Christian and the woman who died, Charlotte Kathryn Knight.

The San Bernardino County Sheriffs Department said Christians parents had escaped the fire but went back inside the home to try to rescue Knight.

The two were hospitalized with burns. The father was still in intensive care as of Saturday night, while the mother had been released, the Press-Enterprise reported.

Police did not provide any information regarding a potential motive or how they identified Christian as the suspect, and it wasnt immediately clear whether Christian had an attorney.

The fire was examined by homicide detectives and arson investigators.
NORWALK  Norwalk Hospital is the only site in Connecticut participating in a new study determining the effectiveness and safety of a condensed breast cancer treatment regimen.

The study, conducted by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, looks at the efficacy of an expedited radiation therapy treatment for women with early stage invasive breast cancer, said Dr. Pradip Pathare, of Norwalk Hospitals Whittingham Cancer Center.

Norwalk Hospital is the sole hospital in the state which partners with and acts as a satellite of Memorial Sloan Kettering, leading to the hospitals involvement in the study, Pathare said.

Between two and four years ago, they came and looked at hospitals in Connecticut, Pathare said of the partnership. They liked what they got to see at Norwalk and the quality of work. They said we will enter into partnership with you, but we will run the radiation department to our own standards.

Those eligible for the study must be 45 or older and been diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ or early stage invasive breast cancer. The cancerous tumor must measure less than 3 centimeters and be able to be removed with a lumpectomy, according to a hospital statement.

Typically, women with early stage breast cancer who underwent a lumpectomy receive radiation therapy to the whole breast over the course of three weeks, or partial breast treatment over a five- to 10-day period, Pathare said.

In the partial breast treatment study, patients will receive the same total dose of radiation, but in three sessions rather than between five and 10 sessions, Pathare said.

As the same amount of radiation is being used over the three days of treatment, the level of radiation in each treatment will be higher, which is the key factor the study is testing, Pathare said.

Partial breast treatment has been around for a while, but the way it was initially being done is patients had to go in twice a day for the whole work week, Pathare said. The treatments were disruptive.

Partial breast treatment allows patients to retain more of the breast and treats only the problem area rather than receiving a mastectomy, if it can be avoided.

The study, which received approval in February and began in March, was born of necessity due to the coronavirus pandemic, Pathare said.

Last year when the pandemic struck and patients were reluctant to go into Manhattan for radiation treatment for fear of catching the virus Memorial Sloan Kettering said lets see if we can shorten the number of treatments, Pathare said.

A similar study was recently conducted in Florence, Italy, where a higher fraction of radiation was used in a shorter number of sessions and the results were encouraging, Pathare said.

Among Memorial Sloan Kettering and its various satellite cancer centers throughout New York, New Jersey and in Norwalk, the study has 140 participants, Pathare said. The participants arent exclusively from Fairfield County or even Connecticut, but anyone who attends Sloan Kettering for treatment and is willing to drive to Norwalk or another satellite hospital to participate in the study.

Its very attractive to the patients, Pathare said. They dont have to take time off of work for more than four sessions, one is planning and three treatment, so that is so much better.

The goal of the study is to see if the ultra-short treatment is well-tolerated and effective for preventing the cancer from returning, according to Sloan Kettering study description.

While the immediate results have been positive, it will take at least three years of monitoring to see if the study has truly been successful, as the main concern is long-term effects of the increased radiation doses, Pathare said.

Radiation is typically done in conjunction with a lumpectomy, as the surgery alone leads to a recurrence rate more than twice that of lumpectomy and radiation treatment recipients, Pathare said.

While the study is nearly full, he said more studies are sure to arise.

There are so many nuances in breast cancer, it isnt just one disease, Pathare said. When one study ends, we start another one. So, dont be discouraged if you cant get into this one.

Women who may be eligible or physicians looking to refer a patient can call 203-739-7997 for more information.

abigail.brone@hearstmediact.com
Chinese President Xi Jinping. Credit:AP Prior to that, climate work was quite gloomy. Internally we had the slowing down of the economy, the US-China trade war and then the pandemic hit, and many local regions wanted to relax environmental controls and to grow their way out of trouble. In China, short-term economic stimulus meant firing up coal-fired power stations and steelworks to build massive infrastructure projects. Last year, Chinese provincial entities proposed building 73.5 gigawatts of new coal-powered plants, five times the rest of the world combined. The share of coal in its energy mix remains around 85 per cent. At the same time, it built 52 gigawatts of wind power, three times the level of the US and more than Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America put together. New solar power capacity also jumped to 48.2 gigawatts last year. Within the next decade, it wants to shift the share of renewables in the energy mix to more than 25 per cent. So basically China is moving very fast in renewables but is also the largest consumer of fossil fuel including coal and oil, says Liang Wanliang, the China director of the Global Wind Energy Council.

This is the crux of the China puzzle: How does it maintain economic growth and uninterrupted power supply while keeping its skies clear and reducing emissions? Loading Unusually, for a one-party state, the Chinese Communist Party has set this as a test of its legitimacy. Peaking carbon emissions and achieving carbon neutrality is a tough battle, and it is also a major test of the Partys capabilities in governing the country, the Xi-led meeting of the Central Committee for Financial and Economic Affairs said on March 15. Ma says it is a contribution to global climate work but it is also based on very local interests.

China emits 28 per cent of the worlds carbon and any effort to tackle climate change will fail without its support. Chinas net-zero emissions target was actually a result for the local people who want the smog control to be controlled, says Ma. Still, the dizzying speed of climate developments in China this year has taken many environmental experts by surprise. In February, China brought Xie Zhenhua, its lead negotiator for three UN climate conferences out of retirement to lead its global climate agenda. By June, its emissions trading scheme will be up and running, allowing more than 2000 of its largest polluters to buy emission quotas from others with a lower carbon footprint. In October, it will host the UNs biodiversity conference to establish a Paris agreement for nature, in an attempt to stop and reverse rampant biodiversity loss around the world. And in a push to co-operate in one of the few areas in which it has a genuine chance to work with the United States  the two superpowers will chair a G20 working group on climate-related financial risks this year despite the rising animosity between them.

After days of negotiations last week, US climate envoy John Kerry and his counterpart Xie announced on Sunday the two governments were committed to co-operating with each other and with other countries to tackle the climate crisis, which must be addressed with the seriousness and urgency that it demands. China has pledged to become carbon neutral by 2060. Credit:Getty Can China be believed? Thats the Chinese way  the Party makes the targets and shows the road map then suddenly the private sector has a long-term guarantee of their business, says Liang. Each province also needs to think about their own road map to reach the target and the most developed provinces need to reach their emissions peak earlier.

Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video So now we can see there will be two replacements: One is replacing traditional power sources with renewables in the electricity system. The second will be to replace fossil fuel consumption with electricity in society. For China, like Australia, the construction of renewable energy projects is not the largest hurdle: It is getting them to provide stable power to the grid. The coming challenge is not price or cost, says Liang. Wind and solar are not stable. It is a challenge to the grid system. The grid companies need to find a solution to take more energy into the system. They need to find new solutions. Battery storage and hydrogen production could be part of the solution. The other part is if we have millions of electric cars that they can charge and become energy storage, says Liang. They can charge when there is not much consumption of electricity. You can charge your car at night when the wind is strong but the consumption is limited. That can help balance the grid.

Loading Nuclear also looms large as a cleaner but riskier replacement for fossil-fuel intensive energy sources. For the first time, it was mentioned in the Chinese Communist Partys annual report at the National Peoples Congress in March. While promoting the clean and efficient use of coal, we will make a major push to develop new energy sources, and take active and well-ordered steps to develop nuclear energy on the basis of ensuring its safe use, said Premier Li Keqiang. For Australian exports, which have been driven by up to 80 per cent of its $200 billion-a-year trade in emissions heavy resources industries, the signs are ominous. It is already facing an informal ban on Australian thermal coal, which is used in power generation, after multiple disputes over the coronavirus, national security and human rights last year.
TORONTO, April 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Platinex Inc. (CSE: PTX) (Frankfurt 9PX) (the "Company" or "Platinex") is pleased to provide an update on its exploration activities at its 100% owned Shining Tree project, northern Ontario. The Shining Tree Property (Property) is situated in the Abitibi Greenstone Belt comprising 21,720 ha (53,648 ac.), making it the largest land position in the Shining Tree area. The property is located to the east of IAMGOLDs Cote Gold deposit and along 21 km of the Ridout-Tyrrell deformation zone (RTDZ) and borders Ariss Golds Juby Deposit.



Drilling Program Commenced:

The phase 1 drill program will total 3,500 metre, and the first 1,000m tranche has commenced. The program will test 2-5 targets including intersections of a collection of east-northeast-trending veins and a slaty pyritic and graphitic metasedimentary rock unit known locally as the Evelyn vein. The program will attempt to characterize the mineralization in the intersection between the wide mineralized zone and the slaty band, plus drill the mapped but previously untested veins along the projected strike of this slaty unit. The Company will report assays as they become available.

Gold-in-till:

The company is pleased to report exceptional results from its ongoing gold-in-till sampling program. Highly anomalous gold-in-till samples are now pointing to the RTDZ as the high potential place to find gold on the property. From all gold in till work on the Shining Tree property and publish data nearby a total of 766 till samples have been collected with a highest grain count of 207 and 23 samples containing greater than 50 grains of gold.

A total of 42 till samples were processed recently by Overburden Drilling Management Ltd. revealing 22 samples returning counts equal to or greater than 10 grains of gold, 3 samples having counts equal to or greater than 25 grains, and 1 sample containing 79 grains.

The program will be continued in 2021 to identify gold targets along the Ridout Tyrrell Deformation Zone.

Channel Sampling Program:

The Company is also pleased to report that a program of mechanized stripping and channel sampling was conducted at surface to test an area of multiple quartz-carbonate veins within a system of shear zones on the east side of the Caswell prospect (see image). The Caswell prospect is one of twenty old gold prospects, on the Shining Tree property, most of which were explored and developed underground and are very prospective warranting modern exploration.

To put the current channel sampling work in perspective the cumulative stripping and sampling has now uncovered <0.5% of the target area (1,800m X 700m) of the project which included eight areas that were stripped with 559 channel samples collected in 2020. Of these samples: 126 assayed >0.1g Au/t., 28 assayed more than 2.0 g Au/t and 5 assayed greater than 4.0 g Au/t with the best assay results being 4.13 g Au/t/1.11m and 5.75g Au/t/0.35m. Of the areas exposed the quartz carbonate shear zones comprise 70-80% and the quartz vein content comprises 1-10%. The attached map shows areas sampled with highlighted results.

Geochemical analyses of a select number of samples from 2010 and 2020 were conducted and anomalous trends for silver, copper, zinc, tellurium, and arsenic were plotted. Threshold values of 209 parts per million for copper, 116 parts per million for zinc, 64 parts per million for arsenic, 419 parts per billion for silver and 138 parts per billion for tellurium were calculated for the covariant plots shown with the gold channel sample results. It is evident among other things that anomalous tellurium appears to be marginal to zones of higher gold values.

Trace to 1% pyrite is associated with the mineralized zones with recognizable copper mineralization in some cases. This suggests that the mineralization might be amenable to detection and meaningful definition for the purposes of drill targeting by spectral IP or equivalent. Therefore, the additional geochemical analyses were done to help vector into stronger mineralization, but given the size of the target area, and the relatively small area of the sampling, IP will be used next to define priority drill targets on the Caswell Ronda prospect.

James R. Trusler, Chairman & CEO of Platinex Inc. stated, The body of work on the Caswell prospect has identified a broad area of what we believe to be associated mineralization in ENE trending veins hosted within shear zones. The near surface veins combined with the other known mineralized NNW trending veins such as the Saville and the Evelyn are targets for the possible location of a near surface gold deposits. Indications of disseminated sulphides associated with the gold mineralization suggest that IP may be used to locate targets with stronger mineralization. The Ridout Tyrrell deformation zone is believed to trend just south of or within the Herrick deposit, and this may explain the thicker zones of mineralization intersected in the Herrick drilling. If so, any associated IP anomalies will represent priority targets.

The company has also granted 600,000 options to consultants. The options are priced at seven cents and expire five years from today's date.

The information presented in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Mr. James R.Trusler, PEng, Chairman and CEO of the Company, and the qualified person for exploration at the Shining Tree property, as defined by National Instrument 43-101 -- Standards for Disclosure for Mineral Projects.

About Platinex Inc.  Advancing a District Scale Project in an Abitibi Gold Camp

Platinex is focusing its efforts on the exploration of its property in the Shining Tree District. Platinex has created the largest combined gold focused property package in the Shining Tree District, northern Ontario, which has received little modern exploration compared to other gold camps in the Abitibi Greenstone Belt. Shares of Platinex are listed for trading on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the symbol "PTX".

See the new video coverage titled  Active Exploration Program at Caswell

Greg Ferron, Director/Corporate Development Consultant

Tel: (416) 270-5042

Lori Paradis, Assistant Secretary

Tel: (416) 268-2682

Email: lparadis@platinex.com

Web: www.platinex.com

To receive Company press releases, please sign up on the website.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS:

This news release may contain forward-looking statements and information based on current expectations. These statements should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results. Such statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those implied by such statements. We assume no responsibility to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances, except as required by applicable securities laws.

Investing into early-stage companies, inherently carries a high degree of risk and investment into securities of the Company shall be considered highly speculative.

The Canadian Securities Exchange has not approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/3892274e-6ba5-425a-bee7-2dd316195050
A man looks at items on a table calling for the recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom outside the Pineapple Hill Saloon & Grill in Sherman Oaks, Calif., on Jan. 7, 2021. (Jamie Joseph/The Epoch Times)

California Lawmakers Debate Privacy Rights of Recall Petitioners

Proposed legislation in California that would allow targets of future recall movements to identify and contact petition signers to potentially change their minds sparked lengthy debate in a recent state Senate committee meeting.

Senate Bill 663 (SB 663) would provide data access to recall targets, allowing them to contact petition signers and correct any potential misleading information they might have received from signature gatherers.

Sen. Josh Newman (D-Fullerton), who authored the legislation, said voters are often tricked into signing recall petitions and should be more easily able to withdraw their signatures if they feel theyve been deceived.

It is a fundamental tenet of the American justice system that the accused should always have the right to face his or her accusers. This is what were endeavoring to donothing more, nothing less than that, Newman said.

But Orrin Heatlie, founder of the campaign to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom, told the Senate Committee on Elections and Constitutional Amendments on April 12 that the bill is dangerous and reckless, and said it should be scrapped.

I talked to people every day who were afraid to participate in the petition-gathering process because they were afraid their personal private information would be disclosed to the target himself, Heatlie said.

And they actually would walk away from the tables and turn away from participating in the lawful, peaceful petition-gathering processtheir First Amendment rightbecause they were afraid of retaliation and retribution.

The bill would give the target of a recall access to all of that data, all of that personal information, and it would stifle the constitutional process that people are guaranteed, Heatlie said. It would disenfranchise the voters of the state, and it would basically just nullify the petition gathering process for recalls as a whole.

Heatlie pointed out that as founder of the Recall Gavin 2020 effort, he doesnt have access to the personal information of signersand neither should those who oppose it.

No Impact on the Current Recall

Newmanwho was recalled in 2018 and then reelected last yearsaid SB 663 has nothing to do with this years Newsom recall movement.

If signed into law, it will not go into effect until next year. As such, it will have no impact whatsoever on the current recall effort against Gov. Newsom, Newman said.

But he added that the target of future recall efforts should have recourse to at least ascertain whether or not voters understood what they were signing, particularly given the implications to that elected officials career and their relationship to the voters.

He said signers rarely take the time to read the actual text of a petition, and instead often rely upon the representations of the signature gathers.

This means that the signature gatherers often operate without any sort of transparency, routinely and systematically misleading voters about not only the rationale but the process, and with little if any concern about legal repercussions, Newman said.

Alina Evans, a spokesperson for Newman, told The Epoch Times that SB 663 stems from the senators own experiences when he was recalled in 2018, and having people in his district tell him that what they signed was not in fact what they had intended to sign.

Many people told him they were tricked into signing the recall petition.  So, this is a way to correct that, Evans said.

Sen. Connie Leyva (D-Chino) told the committee she had participated in signature gathering for 30 years prior to running for office. She supported the bill, despite concerns over privacy.

Everyone who testified against the bill may have pure intentions, but I can tell you that most of the people that I have encountered in those 30 years did not have pure intentions, she said.

Withdrawing a Signature

Election Integrity Project, California (EIPCa), a watchdog group, submitted a letter of opposition to the committee. According to the letter, the bill jeopardizes the citizens right of privacy by disclosing their name, address, and contact information to the target of the recall petition, allowing entities to target them with mass mailings, telephone calls, or electronic media communications.

This constitutes an egregious breach of voter privacy and exposes the voters to the potential of a barrage of phone calls, snail mail and possibly even personal visits in an attempt to convince them to withdraw their signature, the letter states. Not only is this demeaning and insulting to voters intelligence, it is likely to produce understandable reluctance for them to sign any petition in the future.

EIPCa contends that Newman offered no evidence to support allegations that signature gatherers frequently communicate inaccurate information to voters in order to obtain their signatures on petitions, as stated in the bill.

That in itself is offensive in the extreme to citizens taking advantage of their constitutional right to hold elected officials accountable to their oath of office, whether as petition circulators or signers, the letter states.

Ruth Weiss, EIPCas legislative director, told The Epoch Times that its wrong to base legislation on the supposition that most signature gatherers are deliberately misleading the public.

Its very unfair to all of these patriotic people who go out and work their tails off to gather signatures because they want to hold public officials accountable for not doing the job they were elected to do, Weiss said.

She said the bill has the potential to suppress the willingness of the people to hold elected officials accountable if they know that they are going to be either by mail, email, or phone calls, somehow annoyed or harassed by the people theyve already decided that they want to recall.

The Republican Party of Orange County (OC GOP) also released a scathing newsletter opposing SB 663, calling the bill an attack on the constitutional rights of all Californians and a form of cancel culture on steroids.

Let us make this insanity perfectly clear: In California, you do not need an ID to cast a secret ballot in a Presidential election, but if you try to exercise your constitutional right to sign a recall petition, your private information will be handed over, the newsletter stated.

The Future of the Bill

Newman has proposed several amendments to soften the bill, according to his spokesperson Evans.

One amendment would prohibit recall targets from reviewing signers information if the target holds an office representing fewer than 50,000 registered voters, where the likelihood of retaliation could be greater; others would prohibit a government official from discriminating against a person for signing a petition, or make it a misdemeanor offense to misuse signer information.

Still, hiring signature gatherers who are paid on a per-signature basis creates an incentive that can be problematic and result in misleading voters, Evans said. Because they are hired to get as many signatures as they can, its in their interest to kind of use whatever tricks they can to get people to sign as quickly as possible.

The bill isnt intended to be condescending to petitioners, but is meant to be informative, Evans said. It wouldnt necessarily be in the interest even of the target of the recall  if they were insulting the people who signed the petition. If it was not really what you wanted to sign, you can remove your name  and this bill provides a path to do that.

Newman has also proposed another bill, Senate Bill 660 (SB 660), to ban the practice of hiring signature gatherers on a per-signature basis. However, they could still be hired for an hourly rate.

SB 660 would prohibit the compensation of signature gatherers in a manner that gives signature gatherers an incentive to deceive voters in order to obtain their signatures. The bill would also provide an enforcement mechanism  to ensure compliance.

The Vote

On April 12, dozens of opponents called in to oppose SB 663, including the representatives for the California Chamber of Commerce. Despite the opposition, the committee voted 41 to move the bill forward, with Sen. Jim Nielsen (R-Tehama), the committees lone Republican, casting the dissenting vote.

SB 660 also passed in the committee by a 32 vote, with Sen. Steve Glazer (D-Orinda) joining Nielsen in opposition.

Sen. Majority Leader Bob Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys) and Sen. Leyva voted in favor of the bills.
Martha's Vineyard Giving Away Food Today

By Tim Brockwell

PADUCAH - Martha's Vineyard of Paducah is giving away a large shipment of food Monday afternoon.Martha Bell told West Kentucky Star the shipment includes a variety of perishable goods that must be given away today, since they don't have a place to store it."A lot of [the food] is perishable food, like squash, tomatoes, apples, oranges. We've also got crackers, cookies and chips." Bell said.Bell said everyone must bring their own containers to carry food home, and must wear a mask when picking it up.Martha's Vineyard is located at 1100 N. 12th street in Paducah. For more information, call 270-575-0021.All food is provided free of charge, but Bell said she will gladly accept donations in any amount to help with bills and other operating expenses.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) looks to be facing another investigation.

New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) has opened an investigation focused on Cuomo's alleged use of state resources during the writing of a book he published about the COVID-19 pandemic last year, The New York Times reports. The attorney general had received a referral from New York's comptroller authorizing a criminal investigation.

This comes after the Times reported last month that staffers and aides for the New York governor worked on his book American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic. Cuomo, the Times wrote, reportedly relied on aides and staffers for "everything from full-scale edits to minor clerical work, potentially running afoul of state laws prohibiting use of public resources for personal gain."

Following this reporting, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli reportedly suggested there be an investigation examining "the drafting, editing, sale and promotion of the governors book and any related financial or business transactions." The governor has said that some staffers volunteered to help work on his book, but Cuomo adviser Richard Azzopardi told the Times that "every effort was made to ensure that no state resources were used in connection with this project."

Azzopardi also said Monday that "idea there was criminality involved here is patently absurd on its face and is just the furthering of a political pile-on."

Cuomo has already been facing an investigation focused his administration's handling of data on COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes, as well as an investigation into sexual harassment allegations against him. The governor has continued to resist calls to resign amid these scandals.

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DUBAI (Reuters) - Pakistan's foreign minister has welcomed mediation efforts by the United Arab Emirates between his country and India but told UAE newspaper Khaleej Times that he was not planning to meet his Indian counterpart in the country.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar are visiting the Gulf state at the same time.

"I am here for a bilateral visit. I am not here for a India-specific agenda," Qureshi told the daily, which published a video excerpt of the interview.

"We welcome third party facilitation ... But no matter what friends like the UAE say the initiative has to be indigenous," he added.

A senior Emirati diplomat said last week that the UAE is mediating between India and Pakistan to help the nuclear-armed rivals reach a "healthy and functional" relationship after military tension over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.

India's foreign ministry spokesman had tweeted that Jaishankar's discussions in the UAE would focus on economic cooperation and community welfare.

Ties between India and Pakistan have been frozen since a suicide bombing of an Indian military convoy in Kashmir in 2019 traced to Pakistan-based militants that led to India sending warplanes to Pakistan.

Later that year, India's prime minister withdrew Indian-ruled Kashmir's autonomy in order to tighten his grip over the territory, provoking outrage in Pakistan and the downgrading of diplomatic ties and suspension of bilateral trade.

(Reporting by Ghaida Ghantous in Dubai and Sanjeev Miglani in New Delhi; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
New Delhi, April 19 : Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge has questioned the government over an UAE diplomat's claims of brokering contacts between India and Pakistan.

At a virtual press conference, the Congress leader said: "We have seen reports of a UAE diplomat claiming to have brokered contacts between India and Pakistan. It has been one of the successes of Indian diplomacy since the 1972 Simla agreement to ensure that we deal with Pakistan bilaterally, and to prevent foreign mediation." Kharge alleged that under this government, "not only are others now mediating between India and Pakistan but our internal affairs like J&K are being internationalised".

"We hope that our government sees reason and returns to India's tried and tested policies," he added.

As per media reports, United Arab Emirates (UAE) envoy to the United States has claimed that the Gulf country is playing the role of a mediator between India and Pakistan.
As millions of Americans get vaccinated for COVID-19, many of us are starting to hope those painful nose swab tests will soon be a thing of the past.

Alas, the future of COVID-19 testing is more complicated than less testing, especially as we head into a potential fourth surge of cases. Testing is still a valuable tool in our COVID-19 prevention toolkit, but the technologies and motivations behind it are shifting. Well also have to shift our understanding of test results and metrics. To interpret the test numbers on the news or your local public health departments website, there are two patterns you should think about: who will be tested less in the coming months and who will be tested more.

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That first group is easier to predict: Its those of us who have been vaccinated. As of April 11, more than one-third of the U.S. population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and one-fifth is fully vaccinated. While some experts are careful to specify that we dont yet have data on whether the vaccines prevent coronavirus spread from one person to another, the data we do have suggest transmission is unlikely.

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As a result, if youve been vaccinated and are experiencing cold or allergy symptoms, you probably wont need to go get a PCR test just in case, as you might have had to do previously. And if you were getting tested every two weeks to check your COVID-19 status before you got vaccinated, you likely arent doing that as often, if at all. This will likely mean a decrease in what epidemiologists call diagnostic testing, tests that are used to provide an answer to a specific patient who suspects they have COVID-19.

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Some of the symptomatic testing is going down just because vaccines work, says Mara Aspinall, diagnostic testing expert and managing director of the Health Catalysts Group. Still, we cant stop testing. Thats especially true with concerning variants spreading across the country. At the individual level, tests are a tool to tell you if you have COVID-19; but at the community level, they can tell the local public health department how much coronavirus spread is currently taking place.

You can explore the need for continued testing through this modeling tool, developed by health tech company Color Health and University of Washington researchers Carl Bergstrom and Ryan McGee. Until the majority of a population is vaccinated, the model shows, well need some level of regular testing. So we wont necessarily see a huge drop in test numbers overall. Rather, more people may have the opportunity to get tested if they need it, and the way we use tests may change to a more community-centric mindset.

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Plus, of course, even those who have been vaccinated may still be able to get sick with COVID-19. These caseswhich experts call breakthrough caseshave been incredibly rare so far, but continued testing will be key as public health experts monitor vaccine safety.

There are parts of the country that still struggle with diagnostic testing. A FiveThirtyEight study published in July found that Black and Hispanic neighborhoods had far less access to testing sites than white neighborhoods; while more resources have poured into testing sites since then, gaps like these are hard to fill.

I do worry that a lot of the testing efforts for underserved areas will be pulled back [as vaccinations increase], says Saskia Popescu, infectious disease epidemiologist at George Mason University and the University of Arizona. So I feel its important that we focus on stable and sustainable testing and vaccination resources in those vulnerable areas and neighborhoods.

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If local public health departments and community partners play their cards right, we could see those surplus tests that vaccinated Americans no longer want going into previously underserved areas and helping to control previously underreported outbreaks.

The question of who will get tested more amid vaccination is more complicated to answer. Tests may become more regular fixtures for travelers as Americans take long-awaited vacations this summer. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and many foreign countries require a negative test for international travel, even if youve been vaccinated, while those traveling domestically may still want a negative test as an extra precaution before or after a trip.

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Its not only the use of testing that will shift but the kinds of tests being used. As individuals feel more protected by the vaccine and seek out fewer diagnostic tests, tracking community spread may be better met not by precise-but-slow PCR tests but by rapid, at-home tests, a major area of investment for the federal government in recent months.

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In late March and early April, the Food and Drug Administration gave emergency use authorization to several rapid tests, adding to a growing arsenal of tests that are now available. Three of the newly authorized tests are permitted for over-the-counter use, meaning you may soon be able to pick up a test at your local pharmacy and administer it yourself at home, no doctors note or urgent care visit requiredjust like a pregnancy test.

That same week, the CDC and National Institutes of Health announced a new study that will evaluate how well these do-it-yourself tests actually work in preventing outbreaks. Up to 160,000 people in Pitt County, North Carolina, and Chattanooga/Hamilton County, Tennessee, will get free access to antigen tests, which they can administer themselves up to three times a week for one month. A free app will provide testing reminders, instructions, and a way to report results.

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This study is a big deal for some of the experts who have long advocated the potential of rapid tests for surveillance. Unlike PCR tests, which look for coronavirus genetic material and may make patients wait several days for a result, antigen tests detect a COVID-specific molecule on the surface of a virus; this process can happen in as few as 15 minutes. Even though antigen tests have a higher rate of false negatives than PCR, their advocates argue, millions of Americans testing themselves before they go to work each morning would catch more cases than a fraction of that population getting tested only when they feel sick.

The new study will show how well rapid tests live up to their potential at a broad, community level, says Dan Larremore, a statistician at the University of Colorado (and one of those advocates). If people can  use a boatload of rapid tests regularly for a few weeks, and we can watch the new cases spike as we find those positives and then crash as we break all the transmission chains, thats the thing Im looking out for in these new trials.

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If rapid tests are, indeed, shown to be good at breaking transmission chains, their widespread use can help prevent future outbreaks as coronavirus variants circle through a mostly vaccinated U.S. Rapid testing comes with its own communication challenges, thoughespecially if someone tries to use one for an individual diagnosis. A negative test is one moment in time and antigen testing really has been most utilized and successful in symptomatic people, Popescu says. Its important we stress the nuances of rapid testing and where it can be utilized most successfully.

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Finally, we should expect to see more testing in one group of Americans who wont be vaccine-eligible for a while yet: kids. While clinical trials are now in place to determine vaccine efficacy and safety in children (and early results have been promising), it will likely be late 2021 before anyone under 16 is able to get a shot. As a result, kids have become a testing priority.

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The Biden administration devoted $10 billion to K12 school testing via the American Rescue Plan. Organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation are showing how that money can be put to good use by facilitating partnerships between school districts and testing labs. The foundation developed a National Testing Action Program, intended to give schools a road map to testing-supported reopening. Key points of the plan include screening students once a week and staff twice a week, and clear communication among everyone in a schools broader community.

Testing builds confidence and comfort in going back to school, says Aspinall, who serves as an adviser to the Rockefeller Foundation. Parents may be more keen on opting into in-person learning when they know that any cases among their childrens peers or teachers will be easily identified.

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And its not just schools that may adopt this type of regular testing, either. Many college campuses have used rapid tests to screen their students for months already, as have nursing homes and other health settings. Some offices are using rapid tests to screen employees who come back to working from work, and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has proposed rapid tests as a way to clear people for attendance at entertainment venues.

Diagnostic testing will change with vaccination and public health priorities, while more schools and workplaces start screening their entire communities and rapid, at-home testing becomes more easily accessible. What does all this mean for the numbers on your local dashboard?

When you dont know how many rapid tests are being used in your community, much less how many are coming back positive, you cant use the information to make judgments about where the coronavirus is circulating.

Test positivity is still a valuable metric to examine the success of diagnostic testing, Popescu says. In other words: Yes, we still want to see below a 5 percent PCR test positivity rate, even as vaccination rates go up. (Five percent is a widely used benchmark recommended by the World Health Organization.) If more than 5 percent of diagnostic tests done in a state or city are coming back positive, that suggests that a lot of people are currently infected with the coronavirus and the virus may be spreading quickly. It can also mean that some cases are being missed. A higher rate can be caused by a lower denominator; in other words, not enough people are getting tested in that region because some sick people either cant access a test or dont know that theyve been exposed. Michigan, which may be a harbinger for a fourth surge, has seen a positivity rate over 15 percent for diagnostic tests in the first week of April.

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Since tests used for screening in a school or business cast a wider net (rather than mainly testing those who think they may be sick or have a likely exposure), the test positivity target for these tests should be lower. Jesse Papenburg, pediatric infectious disease specialist at McGill University, suggests 1 or 2 percent as the danger threshold to watch out for.

In short: If youre monitoring testing data on your local COVID-19 dashboard, look out for a 5 percent positivity rate among diagnostic, PCR tests. But if you are getting email updates on testing at your kids public school, look for a 1 or 2 percent rate.

Test turnaround time, or the length of time a test result takes to reach a patient, is also a key metric to measure how easily accessible tests are for a specific community, Papenburg says. It is less commonly reported, but if your public health department does make the information available, look for a turnaround time of one day or less. The more quickly a test result arrives, the more quickly a patient can go into quarantine and contact tracers can get to workand the more easily low-wage workers who cant afford a day off can get tested.

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Rapid tests are harder to follow. The U.S. doesnt have standardized data pipelines for antigen tests or other forms of rapid tests as exist for PCR tests, and such data are not published by the Department of Health and Human Services or CDC. While some individual states do publish rapid test numbers, these figures are generally assumed to be significant undercounts.

This is definitely a pain point for some researchers: When you dont know how many rapid tests are being used in your community, much less how many are coming back positive, you cant use the information to make judgments about where the coronavirus is circulating or whether the tests are effectively catching cases and preventing outbreaks. Public health departments at every level should strive to improve their rapid test reporting in the coming months.

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Still, Larremore thinks theres a bright side to this dilemma: Rapid, at-home tests may be preferable for those who would rather keep their COVID-19 status private. As much as I would like to know exactly what is happening with the pandemic, he says, if the trade-off for lower cases is that we dont know about a lot of cases among folks who would rather not report their data, I think thats a fair trade-off.

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In the absence of standardized government data, we can watch the NIH study to see how well rapid tests work, along with schools, workplaces, and other settings that use rapid tests for screening. We may also see other testing technologies become more widely available in the coming months, such as anosmia screens, wastewater testing, and COVID-sniffing dogs; each new test type will come with its own data needs and challenges.

As we enter a vaccinated summer and look forward to the next cold-weather months, your favorite local COVID-19 dashboard may shift functions or add new test types to its array of data. But by thinking back to the two purposes of testingfirst, finding out if individuals are sick, and second, identifying infection levels in a populationyou can roll with the changes and continue monitoring your community.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
A 22-year-old Senior High School (SHS) student, Patrick Nyarkoh, who defiled 18-month-old twin-sisters at Nsuta in the Assin South District of the Central Region has been sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in hard labour by a Cape Coast Circuit court.

The convict admitted the offence of defilement but claimed he was under the influence of an unknown evil spirit and pleaded for forgiveness.



Their mother left them in my care while I was charging my phone in my room. I fell asleep in no time and before I realized, I had sex with the younger of the twins and I believe I was possessed by an unknown evil spirit to do so, I am pleading for forgiveness, he implored the court as he wept profusely.



Prosecuting, Inspector Gilbert Ayongo, told the Court presided over by Mrs Dorinda Smith-Asante that the convict lives in the same house with the victims mother at Assin-Nsuta in the Assin South District of the Central Region.



However, he said, on Sunday, March 21, the mother of the victims left them in the care of the convict to purchase some edibles not far from the house but upon her return she did not meet the convict and her daughters at home.



After looking for them for a while, the mother of the victims became suspicious that the twins were in the room of the convict, because he was the only person who was around when she was leaving the house.





The prosecution said she then forcibly opened the convict's door only to find one of her daughters lying prostate and unconscious with the convict pretending to be asleep.



He said she quickly took hold of the girls where the younger of the twins pointed to her vagina while pointing to the suspect; she also noticed some fluid in their vagina.



The prosecution said terrified by events, she quickly called her husband and shouted for help from her neighbours who responded immediately.





Mr Ayongo said the victims were taken to St. Francis Xavier Hospital in Assin-Fosu where it was confirmed that they had both been defiled.



He said an official complaint was made to the Police and the suspect was arrested.







Source: Graphiconline.com









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The HSE says vaccination is by appointment only and people will not be vaccinated if you do not have an appointment and photo ID.

Appointments will be spaced out to keep everybody safe. Don't be late for your appointment. If you do not arrive on time, you will not get your vaccine.

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 identification form with a photograph signed by a member of the Gardai - get this from a Garda station

You will not be vaccinated if you do not have photo ID.

All 65-69-year-olds should register online if you havent already been vaccinated or you havent received an appointment yet. If you have an appointment for vaccination already, through work, or because of a health condition, you dont need to register online. The quickest and easiest way to register is online at www.hse.ie.

It is a new system that will register people, manage appointments, and provide a secure record of your vaccination. This group will be the first to use it and most groups being vaccinated from now on will also use it.

 Register online at www.hse.ie or by phone at 1850 24 1850 for HSE vaccination appointments

 Vaccines will be given during April and May

 Information video explaining how to register is available at https://youtu.be/v1JoC01Omgc

 Privacy statement for the Vaccine Information system https://www.hse.ie/eng/gdpr/ data-protection-covid-19/data- protection-covid-19-vaccine- information-system.html

 HSELive is here to answer your questions, 8am-8pm, 7 days a week. Tel: 1850 24 1850 https://www.hse.ie/eng/ contact-us

Further Information

Who should register for their vaccines?

People aged 65 to 69 are being vaccinated next, please register online or on the phone.

The easiest way is to do it online, but you can ring HSELive if you cant.

When should you register?

To avoid delays when we open registrations this week, we are asking people to register by age:

If you are 69  please register on Thursday 15 April, or any time after

If you are 68  please register on Friday 16 April, or any time after

If you are 67  please register on Saturday 17 April, or any time after

If you are 66  please register on Sunday 18 April, or any time after

If you are 65  please register on Monday 19 April, or any time after and remember, there is no hurry to register today - registering first wont get you vaccinated first.

What do you need to register online?

To register online you will need your PPSN, your eircode, a mobile phone number and an email address. You can use a mobile, computer or tablet.

When and where will you be vaccinated?

Vaccinations for this group will start in HSE vaccination centres around 1 to 2 weeks after registration opens.

What vaccine will you be given?

People aged 65-69 will be offered the AstraZeneca vaccine. You can read all about this vaccine on the HSE website here. www.hse.ie/COVID19vaccine

When will you be in touch with me after registration?

Once you are registered, we will send your appointment details by SMS, 3 to 7 days before your vaccination appointment.

What happens at the vaccination centre?

You can read all about our vaccination centres here. https://hse.ie/vacctr

Can you help someone else to register?

A friend or family member can help you register if you dont have an email address or mobile phone.

You can use a single email address and phone number for multiple registrations.

You can also ring HSELive to register someone else.

Im a healthcare worker aged 65-69

If you have not registered on the HCW portal you should register on this system. If you have an appointment for a vaccine already, through work, or because of a health condition, you dont need to register here.

Im in this age group, but in a different allocation group, do I need to register?

All 65-69 year-olds should register if you havent been vaccinated or you havent received an appointment. If you have an appointment for a vaccine already, through work, or because of a health condition, you dont need to register here.

What about people who cannot or do not want to register online?

Our team in HSELive is here to help and can register you on the phone. Just have your PPSN, Eircode and mobile phone number. If you dont have a mobile phone you can provide us with the phone number of someone you trust to receive your appointment details.

HSELive can also be contacted through the Irish Remote Interpreting Service in Irish Sign Language or by a dedicated text number for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Information is available on the HSE website.

Why did we merge allocation group 5 and part of group 6?

This was based on our experience of earlier allocation groups, where identifying people by condition was very challenging and led to delays contacting people. In addition we now have an increase in supply of vaccines  this approach is the most efficient and timely way of vaccinating everyone in this group, including those with high-risk conditions.

What information is asked for when registering  and why?

 Mobile phone number so we can text you your appointment details

 Your email address so you can set up your account

 Eircode and Address so we can assign you to your nearest vaccination centre

The following are needed so we can find your Individual Health Identifier which means we can securely record your vaccination against your health record.

 PPSN

 Mothers birth family name

 Gender

 Nationality

Why do you want the GPs name?

We capture GP information so we can send your vaccination record to your GP.

What if you dont have a GP?

There is an option to say you dont have a GP.

Why do we ask about ethnicity?

Ethnicity is captured so we can make sure there are no communities left out of the vaccination programme, and that we are able to report on the performance of the programme for all our population. If you do not want to share your ethnicity with us you can select this option in the list on this page.

What if I dont have a PPSN, Eircode or mobile phone?

You can call HSELive and they will register you on the phone.

How do we stop people registering out of their turn?

The system will alert anyone not aged 65-69 that is it not their turn to register.

Data Security

Data security is a priority for the HSE. The Vaccination Information System has been designed to ensure only necessary information is captured and stored securely in line with HSE data retention policies. All information is encrypted in transit and at rest. The privacy statement for the Vaccine Information system is available here https://www.hse.ie/eng/gdpr/ data-protection-covid-19/data- protection-covid-19-vaccine- information-system.html

User accounts created on registration use two factor authentication, email and mobile phone number, to provide people with secure access to their own information about their vaccination.

Why we ask for your gender

We ask for your gender as it appears on your passport, medical card or national age card, so we can match your registration to your Individual Health Identifier (IHI).

Your IHI is the number that matches you to your existing health records.

We understand this may not match your current gender or how you self-describe but it is important that we are able to correctly identify you when you come for your vaccine.

Vaxzevria COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca

AstraZeneca is not recommended for those aged under 60 years including those with medical conditions with very high or high risk of severe COVID-19 disease. A second dose of Vaxzevria the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine should not be given to anyone who developed unusual blood clots with low platelets after the first dose.

Advice for those who have received a first dose of Vaxzevria COVID-19 vaccine AstraZeneca is

Those aged 60 and older should receive their second dose 12 weeks later as scheduled.

 Those aged under 60 years with a very high risk or high-risk medical condition should receive their second dose 12 weeks later as scheduled.

 Those aged under 60 years without a very high risk or high-risk medical condition should have the scheduled interval between doses extended to 16 weeks to allow further assessment of the benefits and risks as more evidence becomes available.
(Natural News) Indian scientists have discovered a double mutant strain of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) in their country. An Indian virologist stated that the variant has raised alarm bells because it could bypass the immune system and become more infectious.

The variant features two mutations coming together in the same virus. Speaking to the BBC, Ashoka University virologist Dr. Shahid Jameel explains that this double mutation in key areas of the spike protein may increase [serious infection] risks and allow the virus to escape the immune system. Jameel also warns that the mutations may cause the new variant to evade antibodies and cause vaccines to be less effective.

The double mutant strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus  the pathogen behind COVID-19  was traced to the western Indian state of Maharashtra, the countrys second-most populous state. Scientists from the Indian SARS-COV-2 Consortium on Genomics (INSACOG), a group of 10 national laboratories under the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, identified it alongside 770 other strains using genomic sequencing.

From the more than 10,000 samples collected across 18 Indian states, 736 showed the B117 variant from the United Kingdom first identified in December 2020. The B1351 South African variant appeared in 34 samples, while the P1 variant from the city of Manaus in Brazil showed up in one sample.

According to INSACOG scientists, none of the variants appeared to be circulating widely enough to cause a surge in cases. Their comments followed a spike in COVID-19 cases in India, after the country managed to dramatically bring down case counts earlier. Based on Johns Hopkins University data, India currently has 11.8 million COVID-19 cases, with 160,949 deaths and 11.2 million recoveries.

Nevertheless, INSACOG said it would monitor the new double mutant variant. The consortium also called on Indian authorities to boost testing efforts and ensure new cases caused by the double mutant variant are swiftly quarantined. The government subsequently implemented additional restrictions, alongside an ongoing vaccination drive, to curb the coronaviruss spread.

The new double mutant strain is another challenge in Indias fight against the coronavirus

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said in a March 24 statement that samples collected from Maharashtra state reflected an increase in the fraction of samples with the E484Q and L452R mutations. It continued that such [double] mutations confer immune escape and increased infectivity.

But the health ministry denied that the double mutant strain was responsible for Indias rising caseload. Though [variants of concern] and a new double mutant variant have been found in India, these have not been detected in numbers sufficient to  explain the rapid increase in cases in some [Indian] states, the statement added. (Related: India discovers first double-mutant COVID strain as new cases surge.)

Jameel posited that there may be a separate lineage developing in India which merged the E484Q and L452R mutations into one. As such, he called for extra vigilance to ensure the mutations do not circulate.

We need to constantly monitor and make sure none of the variants of concern are spreading in the population. The fact that it is not happening now doesnt mean it will not happen in the future, he told BBC News correspondent Soutik Biswas earlier in March.

The latest COVID-19 surge that commenced in March comes amid a delicate phase for India. The countrys healthcare system had been exhausted after fighting a year-long battle against the pathogen. Given this, states have already begun reintroducing various restrictions  including curfews and intermittent lockdowns  to stop the coronavirus in its tracks. (Related: Indias coronavirus lockdown devolves into a catastrophe.)

The cities of Delhi and Mumbai have also ordered randomized rapid antigen testing at transportation hubs such as airports and train stations. Shopping malls and other crowded areas are also mandated to test people for the coronavirus using antigen test kits. But despite these restrictions, Indians had them as the last thing on their minds during the week-long Holi celebrations  which commemorate the start of spring.

Visit Pandemic.news to read more about the Wuhan coronaviruss different strains circulating worldwide.

Sources include:

ZeroHedge.com

BBC.com

TheHindu.com

Coronavirus.JHU.edu

PIB.gov.in
Former President Donald Trump on Sunday praised withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan, while knocking his successor's timeline for doing so.

Though the former President offered his support of President Joe Biden's plans to bring home American troops, he urged his successor to draw an end to America's longest war well before the September 11 deadline that Biden set last week. Trump said that while leaving Afghanistan is 'a wonderful and positive thing to do,' he had set a May 1 withdrawal deadline and added that 'we should keep as close to that schedule as possible.'

'I wish Joe Biden wouldn't use September 11 as the date to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan, for two reasons. First, we can and should get out earlier. Nineteen years is enough, in fact, far too much and way too long,' Trump said, adding: 'September 11 represents a very sad event and period for our Country and should remain a day of reflection and remembrance honoring those great souls we lost.'

Trump is the latest former commander in chief to weigh in on Biden's plan, with both former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama having spoken to Biden ahead of his announcement last week. Obama praised Biden's decision to end the nearly 20-year war, which has spanned all four administrations.

Trump's statement earned a pointed rebuke from one of his fiercest allies, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who tweeted Sunday evening: 'I could not disagree more with former President Trump regarding his support for President Biden's withdrawal of all forces from Afghanistan against sound military advice.'

'With all due respect to former President Trump, there is nothing 'wonderful' or 'positive' about allowing safe havens and sanctuary for terrorists to reemerge in Afghanistan or see Afghanistan be drawn back into another civil war,' Graham, a noted foreign policy hawk, added.

Biden said the withdrawal of American troops will begin on May 1, in line with the agreement the Trump administration made with the Taliban. Some US troops will remain to protect American diplomats, though officials have declined to provide a precise number.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani told CNN's Fareed Zakaria in an exclusive interview on 'GPS' on Sunday that he supports Biden's decision to pull US troops out of the country, saying the move 'radically changes' the context of the situation in the country, the region and the Islamic world. He added that his 'entire energy' is now focused on working in that new context.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan insisted earlier Sunday that US objectives had been achieved in Afghanistan, though he stopped short of saying the US 'won' the war there. Instead, he told CNN's Dana Bash on 'State of the Union' that the US must now focus on the battles of the 'next 20 years' rather than the last 20.

'The terrorist threat has changed dramatically over the last 20 years,' he said, citing the spread of al Qaeda to Syria, Yemen, Somalia and ISIS in Iraq.

'Against that dispersed and distributed terrorist threat, we need to allocate resources in a way that allows us to protect the homeland against a variety of threats from a variety of countries and continents, not just Afghanistan.'

This story has been updated with comments from Sen. Lindsey Graham.
SAO PAULO, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Petlove, the largest digital ecosystem for pet owners in Brazil, and Health for Pet, a branch of the Porto Seguro business group and leader in the animal health insurance segment, announced the conclusion of an agreement that will combine their operations within the Brazilian market. After this transaction, Porto Seguro will hold a 13.5% interest in Petlove and, in return, will transfer the ownership rights of Health for Pet to the e-commerce company. This alliance will also result in the launch of Porto.Pet, a service that will replace Health for Pet's insurance activities and become part of the Petlove ecosystem, whilst having Porto Seguro as a strategic shareholder.

The main objective behind this merger is to strengthen Porto Seguro and Petlove's portfolios by potentializing their growth and expansion agendas, as well as focusing on what customers really care about: the health and happiness of pets. From now on, Petlove will operate on an expanded portfolio and Porto Seguro will be able to offer Petlove's entire set of solutions to its customer base.

The combination of the companies occurred a few months after Petlove merged with DogHero, the largest pet services company in Latin America, acquired Vetus, one of the largest management systems for animal clinics, and received significant contributions from Softbank and L Catterton.

Porto.Pet is currently responsible for 41 thousand lives in its customer base and, after merging with Petlove, the company accelerated its expansion plan for national coverage, meeting an important criteria established by stakeholders. The possibility of verticalization, as well as the creation of its own service units for pets, are factors being considered. With this agreement, Porto.Pet should become one of the largest integrated pet care networks in Brazil.

"This synergistic enterprise reinforces our mission of becoming the largest platform for pet products and services, while also guaranteeing ultimate convenience to all links in the pet chain: not only for pet tutors, but also for doctors, veterinary clinics, hospitals and pet shops from all over Brazil," says Marcio Waldman, founder of Petlove. "The combination between Porto Seguro and the Petlove ecosystem, as well as the launching of Porto.Pet, are important steps towards expanding our vetenarian's sphere of influence within the brazilian market. These professionals are our key to success", adds Waldman.

"It is an opportunity that will strengthen our objective of integrating businesses, making client-centered decisions, and expanding the number of solutions offered within the pet market. Launching Porto.Pet and joining Petlove is an important step towards accelerating Porto Seguro's strategic growth", explains Marcos Loucao, Vice President of Financial Business and Services at Porto Seguro. "We want to improve the life of pet tutors by developing a complete ecosystem dedicated towards Insurance, Health, and Financial Services", adds Loucao.

The agreement is subject to approval by the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE).

About Petlove



Created by veterinarian Marcio Waldman, Petlove is the largest digital ecosystem for pets in Brazil. In addition to Petlove, other companies such as VetSmart, Vetus, and DogHero also participate in the business group by offering solutions that contemplate all spheres within the pet segment: doctors, veterinary clinics and hospitals, pet shops and consumers.

With a portfolio that contains more than 15 thousand items, including its own and exclusive brands, the company offers a complete approach when it comes to animal care. Petlove has a subscription service that offers a 10% discount on all its portfolio, as well as appointments with veterinarians and deliveries throughout the entire country.

The company also acts as a technology provider for the Brazilian pet market and has more than 3000 partners, such as doctors, veterinary clinics, hospitals and pet shops. With technologies such as the Pet Profile, Petlove focuses on making pet owners' lives more practical by bringing together, in one place, specialists, products and helpful tips.

About Porto Seguro

Porto Seguro is more than an insurance company, it is a network of protection services that applies technological solutions to improve customer experience. With more than 70 years of experience, the company's operations are centered around four strategic business pillars: Insurance, Health, Financial Products and Services. In addition to 8.4 million unique customers, 13 thousand employees, 12 thousand providers and 35 thousand partner brokers, the company also has 101 branches and regional offices throughout Brazil. Altogether, 27 companies are part of the Porto Seguro universe - among them: Azul Seguros, Itau Seguros de Auto e Residencia, Porto Seguro Saude, Porto Seguro Servicos and Porto Seguro Uruguay. In 2020, the company's net profit was R$ 1,695.8 million. Porto Seguro's primary objective is to accelerate growth whilst expanding new business fronts to launch more innovative products and become a Safe Harbor for everyone.

About SK Tarpon and Kamaroopin

Tarpon is a company where capital and talent are at the service of entrepreneurship, innovation and corporate legacy. After 18 years of experience, the company recently decided to create an ecosystem of new business leaders, each focused on specific activities. Kamaroopin is one of these leaders and assists by accelerating the growth of companies under collaborative management. Its approach consists of the elaboration of highly secure investment metrics related to changes in consumption habits. In order to do this, Kamaroopin conducts strict approval processes, valuing the business' legacy and existing talents, whilst identifying opportunities for improvement to ensure business growth.

Press Contacts - Loures Consultoria

Petlove

Ana Augusto - [email protected] - (11) 97113-5097

Olivia Moderno - [email protected] - (11) 96594-3608

Press Contacts - Corporate Image

[email protected]

Antonio Junior - (11) 3526-4568

Fabiana Couto - (21) 99742-9748

SOURCE Petlove
 Big new report examines "U.S. Criminal Justice System in the Pandemic Era and Beyond" | Main | SCOTUS grants cert on Confrontation Clause case, and Justice Sotomayor has much to say about two criminal case denieal 

A few weeks ago in this post I flagged the notable new empirical research indicating that nonprosecution of nonviolent misdemeanor offenses produced a large reductions in the likelihood of new criminal complaints. This research is rightly getting a lot of attention, though this new National Review piece wonders if it might be getting too much attention. The piece, by Charles Fain Lehman, is headlined "Progressives Are Overreacting to a Startling Crime Study." And though I might dicker with some points made in the piece, I recommend the full discussion. Here are excerpts:

Every year, something like 13 million misdemeanor charges are filed in the United States. These charges, ranging from traffic violations to serious assaults, may be less flashy than felonies, but they are the main way Americans experience the criminal-justice system.

We prosecute misdemeanors because, among other things, we want there to be fewer of them, and we believe prosecution deters reoffending. But a recent blockbuster paper makes a startling claim to the contrary: Prosecuting misdemeanants actually increases the likelihood that they will offend again.

The paper has been heralded by supporters of progressive district attorneys who have used their position to unilaterally impose reforms on the criminal-justice system, including refusing to prosecute many misdemeanants. Boston D.A. Rachael Rollins, who provided the data for the study, has claimed it confirms the wisdom of her approach. So have other reformers such as Chicago-area states attorney Kim Foxx and San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin.

Policy-makers, however, should exercise caution before reaching such expansive conclusions. The paper can just as easily be read to endorse more modest reforms  especially keeping in mind long-established principles of criminal justice on which it is silent....

Most of the non-prosecution effect they measure is the result of first-time offenders, who become much more likely to commit crime if prosecuted. By contrast, prosecuting repeat offenders of any sort has little discernible effect on the likelihood they will offend again in the future.... Diverting [first-time misdemeanants] offenders, with the threat of more serious punishment if they reoffend, could help clear dockets while minimizing crime. It would also free ADAs to focus on repeat misdemeanants....

The above approach is different from the idea that we should in general prosecute misdemeanants a lot less  a valid interpretation of the papers findings, but not necessarily the right one, for two reasons.

First, deterrence is not the only reason to prosecute an offender. Advocates of not prosecuting misdemeanors tend to invoke victimless crimes such as drug possession and prostitution. But misdemeanors can also include offenses such as simple assault and auto theft  crimes that harm others. Such crimes reasonably elicit a demand for retributive justice. It offends our moral sensibilities to think that a person who commits a serious but not felonious assault could get off scot-free.

Second, systematic reductions in leniency may affect all criminals decision-making, increasing their propensity to offend in the long-run. The paper shows that Rollinss move toward non-prosecution of misdemeanors did not in the aggregate increase misdemeanor offenses, but the data it uses account only for the period between her election in January 2019 and March 2020, when the coronavirus crisis began. Its entirely possible that criminals will adapt, and misdemeanor offending will increase, in the long run....

Coming face to face with the justice system can be time-consuming and exhausting, and may, at the margins, increase rather than reduce a persons propensity to offend. Even those of us highly concerned with public safety should be interested in creative solutions that minimize crime and disorder.

At the same time, policy-makers should not get ahead of themselves  as some have in the rush to defund police departments and decrease the use of more serious charges. Good research is the basis of good policy, and this research makes a valuable contribution to public-safety policy. But we should be cautious in how far we go with it  careful changes around the edges are always safer than blanket transformations.
Thane, April 19 : The Mumbai Bharatiya Janata Party President and legislator M. P. Lodha on Monday demanded action against Shiv Sena MLA Sanjay Gaikwad for allegedly threatening Leader of Opposition Devendra Fadnavis after a row erupted over the seizure of a Remdesivir stock on Saturday-Sunday night.

A MLA from Buldhana, Gaikwad created a flutter yesterday by slamming Fadnavis for the Remdesivir incident in Mumbai and asked him what he would have done if he (Fadnavis) had been the chief minister during the pandemic.

"If I could find the Coronavirus, I would stuff it inside Fadnavis' mouth...They are playing dirty politics over the supply of Remdesivir when thousands of people are dying," Gaikwad warned, sparking off an uproar in the BJP circles.

Lodha demanded the intervention of Union Home Minister Amit Shah and said Gaikwad should be booked under Indian Penal Code provisions for threatening to kill Fadnavis by forcibly putting Coronavirus in his mouth.

"By this, he has tried to spread terror among the people of Maharashtra, especially BJP leaders and workers and anybody speaking out against the Maha Vikas Aghadi or its corruption would be eliminated," Lodha said.

The state on Sunday witnessed a massive political row after the Mumbai Police intercepted a businessman from the Union Territory of Daman & Diu with a consignment of 60,000 Remdesivir vials.

Shortly afterwards, the BJP's Leaders of Opposition Fadnavis and Pravin Darekar went to the Bandra Kurla Complex Police Station and protested vehemently, arguing that the consignment was procured with permission of Maharashtra FDA for distribution to the state government.

The Mumbai Police questioned the company official and later allowed him to go after a nightlong drama, even as the ruling MVA Shiv Sena-Nationalist Congress Party-Congress accused the local BJP leaders of allegedly indulging in illegal activities when the masses were suffering due to Remdesivir shortages.

Earlier on Saturday, the NCP National Spokesperson and Minister Nawab Malik had said that the while Remdesivir was being supplied to Gujarat free of cost from a BJP office in Maharashtra, the Centre had allegedly barred companies from selling the injection in this state.

"This is the kind of low level and petty politics played by the Centre and Fadnavis. Is this the time for such politicking? They should be ashamed of their acts," said Malik.

On his part, Fadnavis maintained that he has done nothing wrong and was ready to face any enquiry.
Yes, no matter what

Yes, but it depends on variety

No, for medical reasons, uncertainty

No, principle

Vote

View Results
SCOTTSDALE, AZ, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Sagicor Life Insurance Company (Sagicor) receives five awards for its 2020 entries in the AVA DIGITAL AWARDS and HORIZON INTERACTIVE AWARDS competitions, which recognize excellence in digital creativity, branding, strategy, web design and creative media.

"We are extremely proud of our entire team. These award-winning efforts reflect our commitment to providing consumers an enriched, user-friendly, interactive experience and our partners with the web-based resources they need to succeed," said Bart Catmull, President and Chief Operating Officer. "We will continue to push the envelope to deliver innovative solutions for our D2C and B2B markets."

"We enhanced our direct-to-consumer site, SagicorNow.com .1 We also created a producer portal with customizable direct marketing and social media campaigns, and conversation starters to help agents drive business," stated Michael Stricker, Chief Administrative Officer. "While all of these initiatives were well advanced prior to the pandemic, they became even more significant and timely as social-distancing became the norm and consumers have begun to gravitate toward a more streamlined way to purchase life insurance."

AVA DIGITAL AWARDS

GOLD WINNER for Web-Based Production  Web Element  Landing Page  "Prospecting Tools"

for Web-Based Production  Web Element  Landing Page  "Prospecting Tools" PLATINUM WINNER for Digital Marketing  Content Marketing  White Paper  "Make sure your plan for retirement covers all the bases  Covering chronic illness care"

for Digital Marketing  Content Marketing  White Paper  "Make sure your plan for retirement covers all the bases  Covering chronic illness care" PLATINUM WINNER for Web-Based Production Creativity (Web Design)  Website Redesign  "SagicorNow  A smarter way to buy life insurance"

for Web-Based Production Creativity (Web Design)  Website Redesign  "SagicorNow  A smarter way to buy life insurance" PLATINUM WINNER for Web-Based Production  Website  Redesign  "SagicorNow  A smarter way to buy life insurance"

HORIZON INTERACTIVE AWARDS

BRONZE WINNER for Websites  Bank/Finance  "SagicorNow  A smarter way to buy life insurance"

"It truly took teamwork, involving ongoing cross-departmental collaboration, to develop these award-winning initiatives," said Katie Owens, AVP Corporate Communications. "We look forward to continuing to expand the capabilities for our family, friends and neighbors to protect themselves how they want and when they want to get that coverage."

About Sagicor Life Insurance Company

Sagicor Life Insurance Company (Sagicor) is a full-service life insurance company that helps clients make wise financial decisions today to ensure they're protected tomorrow. Sagicor is licensed in 45 states and the District of Columbia and is rated "A-" (Excellent) by A.M. Best Company (4th best out of 16 possible ratings), affirmed as of September 11, 2020.

Sagicor is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sagicor Financial Company Ltd. (SFCL).2 Founded in 1840, SFCL is one of the oldest insurance groups in the Americas, with operations in 21 countries mainly in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean. Sagicor is committed to offering customers world-class service with integrity and value. To learn more about Sagicor, visit Sagicor.com .

1SagicorNow is the marketing name of the online sales portal of Sagicor Life Insurance Company.

2Sagicor Financial Company Ltd. is a separate entity and is not responsible for the insurer's financial condition or contractual obligations.

AWD-PR211

SOURCE Sagicor Life Insurance Company
The offices incident management team was not mobilized until after the flight landed and did not deploy to the site until Jan. 31, the report said. That led to broad confusion about who was in charge, with Preparedness and Response officials believing they were there to support other agencies. Pentagon officials interviewed by investigators said that Health and Human Services employees lacked an understanding of how to finance the effort, obtain proper clearances and manage the health and safety of the mission.

The report describes other significant missteps, some of which had already been made public. It cites last years report from Health and Human Services lawyers describing a scene at the base in which an A.C.F. official told Health and Human Services employees to remove personal protective gear at a meeting with evacuees to avoid bad optics.

The health agencies also struggled to stop those on the base from leaving in the absence of a federal quarantine order, which lasted several days, the report said. One person with the potential to spread Covid-19 tried to leave the base.

The investigators also wrote that federal health officials disagreed on which agency was responsible for infection control on the base, while the use of personal protective equipment was uneven among poorly trained federal employees there.

The dispute led to an almost comical bureaucratic tangle.

At first, A.C.F. and Preparedness and Response officials viewed the C.D.C. as the agency with more expertise and authority under a section of the federal governments guidance on repatriation procedures related to Ebola. But C.D.C. officials told their colleagues that the section was not applicable to other diseases, and that the agency was not responsible for managing the employees of other agencies. Still, the C.D.C. offered training after it was requested.

According to H.H.S., C.D.C. personnel on the ground provided inconsistent and informal infection prevention and control guidance for the first three days of the mission because of a lack of clear roles, the report said.

The investigators noted that the Department of Health and Human Services did not feature repatriation in its planning exercises for a pandemic and therefore was not equipped to coordinate such an effort. That could hamper responses to a future pandemic.
By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) - U.S. Supreme Court justices on Monday appeared reluctant to let people who have been allowed to stay in the United States on humanitarian grounds apply to become permanent residents if they entered the country illegally.

The justices heard arguments in an appeal by a married couple from El Salvador who were granted so-called Temporary Protected Status of a lower court ruling that barred their applications for permanent residency, also known as a green card, because of their unlawful entry.

The case could affect thousands of immigrants, many of whom have lived in the United States for years. President Joe Biden's administration opposes the immigrants in the case. The dispute puts Biden, who has sought to reverse many of his Republican predecessor Donald Trump's hardline immigration policies, at odds with immigration advocacy groups and some of his fellow Democrats.

A federal law called the Immigration and Nationality Act generally requires that people seeking to become permanent residents have been "inspected and admitted" into the United States. At issue in the case is whether a grant of Temporary Protected Status, which gives the recipient "lawful status," satisfies those requirements.

Some justices suggested it might be a stretch to interpret the law as deeming the plaintiffs "admitted."

"They clearly were not admitted at the borders, so is that a fiction, is it metaphysical, what is it? I don't know," conservative Justice Clarence Thomas asked.

Liberal Justice Elena Kagan also cast doubt on whether the law broadly considers people who the government categorizes as "non-immigrants," including those with Temporary Protected Status, as having been legally admitted.

Some justices suggested that the law's meaning is not so clear cut.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor told Justice Department lawyer Michael Huston, "If you're asking us to find the better reading of the statute, we should go by its terms: Those people have been admitted."

Story continues

Foreign nationals can be granted Temporary Protected Status if a humanitarian crisis in their home country, such as a natural disaster or armed conflict, would make their return unsafe. There are about 400,000 people in the United States with protected status, which prevents deportation and let them work legally.

The case involves Jose Sanchez and Sonia Gonzalez, who live in New Jersey. They have four children, the youngest of whom was born in the United States.

The couple twice entered the country illegally: in 1997 and 1998. After a series of earthquakes in 2001, the United States designated El Salvador as covered under the Temporary Protected Status program. The couple received protection under the program that same year. U.S. officials rejected their 2014 applications for green cards because they had not been lawfully admitted.

They sued in federal court, saying that those with lawful status, including Temporary Protected Status recipients, are deemed to have been lawfully admitted, and may apply for permanent residency. Last year, the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the couple.

Besides El Salvador, 10 other countries have such designations: Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
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Conceptually, the Buhari administrations worldview has several drawbacks. The longer-term threat is to the development of our democracy. In this sense, arguments in favour of the kings, his men, and their steeds infallibility are essentially designed to stifle opinion that isnt in alignment with the thrones

The Buhari administration has floundered much of late. The suddenness of the onset and sheer scale of the disruptions wrought by the coronavirus pandemic would account for some of the slippage. Especially given the paucity of infrastructure  healthcare and social security systems  that would have helped manage the crisis better. But even before March last year, the administrations crown jewels were beginning to lose their sparkle. The larger number of its infrastructure projects, bruited about as the killer solutions to the nations problems, were considerably behind schedule and had gone way above budget. And this is before you add questions as to whether, as constructed, their benefits, over any time horizon of ones choosing, will cover those increasingly princely costs. The economy, on the other hand, for want of a better word, has tanked. Choose any measure of economic well-being, and it has been headed in the wrong direction for a while, and rapidly so.

Still, in the run up to new elections in barely two years time, a slackening of pace was to be expected. But because President Buhari is term-bound, and his party will need to put up a new candidate for office of the president, this slackening of pace has been compounded by an extra ingredient  a distractedness, as would-be candidates for office, and their minions jostle for both relevance and attention. However, because this does not suffice as explanation for the economys current woes, some argue instead that this distractedness is hardwired into the governments DNA.

And examples abound. From the closure of the nations land borders, designed, we were told, to curb the parallel imports of goods that were hurting domestic productivity and capacity in agriculture and hence driving up prices, to the ban on the registration of new SIM packs by GSM operators, until existing subscribers had obtained a NIN and linked this with their current phone numbers, three phenomena were observable. First, is that we saw a public policy space that is incapable of properly describing policy goals. Second, is the spectacle of the same system struggling to put in place a framework of rule changes that will lead to the achievement of its predefined goals. Third, is the eventual walk back of the new policy without it having achieved any of the goals set it  without accounting for the frittering away of scarce resources in pursuit of a madcap scheme or consequence for anyone.

This reading, does, unfortunately, ignore a further possibility  one that is regularly marshalled by opponents of the Buhari administration against it. And this is that the administrations default recruitment policy (described as nepotistic, by most of the opposition) favours sameness.

In this regard, there is scope for arguing that a regular infusion of new blood into government over the last eight years would have helped address this burden. At the very least, new perspectives and new faces at the conversation table might well lend policy making a fillip simply by asking questions as to the propriety of the current direction. And with some luck help propel a pivot in the right direction.

This reading, does, unfortunately, ignore a further possibility  one that is regularly marshalled by opponents of the Buhari administration against it. And this is that the administrations default recruitment policy (described as nepotistic, by most of the opposition) favours sameness. Largely, this is a preference for people who favour the primacy of the state  not just in making policy and executing it, but in actually running the economy. This are folks who do not understand the private sector  even if they dont loath it as their distractors are wont to accuse them of. And hence, a large number of them think of the state as the Yoruba in the 15th century thought of the Kabiyesi.

In the near-term, however, there are few embarrassments more likely to mark a people as unprepared for the challenges of modern governance than the verbal contortions that senior government officials are prone to as a result of this heady policy cocktail.

Conceptually, the Buhari administrations worldview has several drawbacks. The longer-term threat is to the development of our democracy. In this sense, arguments in favour of the kings, his men, and their steeds infallibility are essentially designed to stifle opinion that isnt in alignment with the thrones. This, more than any other ailment of good governance, erodes a fundamental pillar of the democratic form of government. Indeed, we have managed, since 1999, to hold regular elections. But without a vigorous exchange of ideas in the inter-vote years, the quality of choice every four years will be that much poorer.

In the near-term, however, there are few embarrassments more likely to mark a people as unprepared for the challenges of modern governance than the verbal contortions that senior government officials are prone to as a result of this heady policy cocktail.

Uddin Ifeanyi, journalist manque and retired civil servant, can be reached @IfeanyiUddin.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 03:54:32|Editor: huaxia

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MOSCOW, April 18 (Xinhua) -- The Russian Foreign Ministry said Sunday that it is expelling 20 staffers of the Czech embassy in Moscow in response to the expulsion of 18 Russian diplomats from the Czech Republic.

The ministry said in a statement that it summoned the Czech ambassador to Russia Vitezslav Pivonka and strongly protested against the unfriendly act of Czech authorities.

Pivonka was informed that these 20 people from the Czech embassy must leave Russia by the end of Monday.

The ministry also required the Czech embassy to reduce the number of locally hired staffers to the same level as that of the Russian embassy in Prague.

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said Saturday that the country was expelling 18 staffers from the Russian embassy in Prague for the alleged involvement of the Russian special services in two ammunition depot explosions in 2014.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said earlier on Sunday that Czech authorities used "unfounded and far-fetched pretexts" to continue their anti-Russian tirade in recent years and to please the United States following recent U.S. sanctions against Russia. Enditem
The Bishops of Costa Rica organize a Day of Prayer this 22 April for all those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.

By Vatican News staff reporter

A special "Day of Prayer for the situation caused by the Covid-19 pandemic" will take place on the 22 April in Costa Rica.

The goal of the initiative, which has been organized by the countrys Bishops Conference, is to express the Churches solidarity with the entire population.

In a statement the Bishops write, "We appeal to the responsibility of all because only together can we overcome this serious disease and we will succeed in doing so if we faithfully respect the hygienic and sanitary measures established by the authorities."

So far, the country has reported at least 229 thousand cases and over 3 thousand deaths. There are also concerns at the growing rates of infections.

For this reason, the Bishops' Conference is urging the population to "redouble its efforts to avoid overload and the collapse of health systems," adding, "it is important to be aware of the seriousness of not taking the necessary action" to stop the spread of the virus.

National Catholic Church

At the same time, the national Catholic Church is asking priests of "all parish communities in the country to organize and promote the Day of Prayer," saying that " the Liturgical Commission will also provide an appropriate subsidy as soon as possible."

Concluding their statement, the Bishops offer their prayers for all the victims of the pandemic and invoke the Lord to give strength and consolation to their families, relatives and friends.
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As insecurity ravages the land, the call by some for self-determination is getting louder, bolstered by the actions and inactions of a Commander-in-Chief who critics have described as a Divider-in-Chief. As a country, Nigeria has never been this divided along tribal, religious and regional lines. Where we once had cracks, we now have chasms, under President Buharis watch.

The #EndSARS protests in October 2020 captured the state of the nation when defenceless youths on a peaceful protest at the Lekki Tollgate were allegedly mowed down with flags in their hands and the national anthem on their lips for daring to demand for a better Nigeria. For many, that day was Nigerias darkest hour but for a government not used to being held accountable, the killings never happened. Although the protests were primarily directed at the abolition of SARS and the end of police brutality, the demonstrations were essentially a cry for a better and prosperous Nigeria. The protests simply echoed the frustration of long-suffering Nigerians, tired of the injustice and inequality in society, tired of the worsening state of insecurity in the country, tired of corruption, and tired of an economy seemingly in reverse because of the incompetence of political leadership that have had their knees on the neck of the people for so long.

It is hard to find a socio-economic index where Nigeria is not leading from the rear or in the bottom five per cent, but by far the greatest challenge facing the country today is insecurity. In a country regressing economically, banditry and kidnapping have become Nigerias fastest-growing industry and the greatest threat to the country.

Buoyed by their successes, bandits have become more daring, launching attacks and even overrunning police and military establishments, seemingly confident they have the upper hand in a country where crime pays. No one is safe in todays Nigeria, not even governors with all their security, as Governor Ortom discovered to his horror when on March 20 he was forced to run for his life from an ambush by suspected Fulani herders. This criminal fraternity of nomads, who some say are not even Nigerians, has taken over the countrys forests and highways, forcing farming communities to flee and abandon their means of livelihood. For these murderous groups, Nigeria has become a fertile grazing ground for ransom payments

With Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps springing up in different parts of the country, Nigerians have become hostages in their own country because of the inability of the government to protect the lives and property of citizens. Kidnapped victims are having to sell assets they spent a lifetime acquiring to pay ransom to criminals.

The insecurity in Nigeria is having a huge socio-economic impact on the country, with over 600 schools reported closed in the north. Statista, one of the worlds leading research organisations, estimates that terrorism has cost Nigeria $142 billion since 2007  nearly 30 times the projected revenue from oil in the 2021 federal budget.

In times of adversity, citizens turn to their commander-in-chief for hope and reassurance. Sadly we have in Aso Rock an unresponsive president who likes to wear the epithet Baba go-slow on his sleeves as if it is a virtue; a president who must be pleaded with and cajoled to empathise or even speak to his fellow citizens. Ghanas President Akufo-Addo has probably done more press interviews in a month than Buhari has done in nearly six years in office. The notion of a leader who works hard in the background but would not speak or dialogue with fellow citizens is a fallacy and a contradiction in and of itself.

Critics have noted that whilst the president is quick to mobilise the nations arsenal against agitators in the South-East, his response to bandits that have been ravaging the entire country has been lukewarm at best. The Global Terrorism Index has named Fulani militants as one of the deadliest terror groups in the world. Large swathes of Nigerian territory in the North are reportedly under the control of warlords who embark on ethnic cleansing, even levying taxes on conquered communities.

Without security, there is very little a country can achieve. The insecurity in Nigeria is having a huge socio-economic impact on the country, with over 600 schools reported closed in the north. Statista, one of the worlds leading research organisations, estimates that terrorism has cost Nigeria $142 billion since 2007  nearly 30 times the projected revenue from oil in the 2021 federal budget.

The world needs to pay attention to what is happening in Nigeria. An implosion of Nigeria would have huge consequences for the region. Displaced Nigerians are already fleeing across the border to IDP camps in Niger, Chad, Cameroon and Benin Republic. The country is under the siege of armed groups on all fronts, who have all calibres of weapons and ready recruits of unemployed youths. In the North-East, there is Boko Haram and its Islamic State offshoot, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), that have been waging a war against the State since 2009. In the North-West and the Middle Belt, banditry, ethnic cleansing and mass abductions have become commonplace, with militia gangs waging a guerrilla war against citizens for ransom. In the South, kidnapping and armed robbery are rife, as armed groups keep launching brazen attacks on businesses and police establishments. The audacious attack on the police headquarters in Owerri is troubling and may well be a precursor of the challenging times ahead for Nigeria. These militants are no doubt exploiting the weakness of public institutions and Nigerias corrupt political and socio-economic systems.

Until the problem of hunger and unemployment are addressed in Nigeria, security is bound to get worse. The collective leadership of the country must start taking the growing insecurity in the country very seriously. It is in their own best interest. The urgency is now.

As insecurity ravages the land, the call by some for self-determination is getting louder, bolstered by the actions and inactions of a Commander-in-Chief who critics have described as a Divider-in-Chief. As a country, Nigeria has never been this divided along tribal, religious and regional lines. Where we once had cracks, we now have chasms, under President Buharis watch.

With millions of naira exchanging hands daily in ransom payments and no arrests or consequences for criminality, it is hard to see how the country can come out of this quagmire. Our security forces seem overwhelmed by the magnitude of the challenge. The police and the military that were once feared are now targets of gunmen. Ironically, the security challenges facing the country today is a product of many years of poor governance and mismanagement of the nations resources. The resources that would have been used to develop the country and create jobs for the masses were arrogated by a few, leaving the rest of the population to forage for crumbs falling from their tables. The chicken, it would seem, has come home to roost.

Addressing the current state of insecurity in Nigeria would require leadership. It would require a radical reform of Nigerias entire security apparatus, including the pay and conditions of the police. It would require the urgent establishment of state police services that are adequately trained and resourced, made up of locals. It would require lots of boots on the ground to overwhelm the enemy. It would require addressing the legitimate concerns of large sections of the population who feel marginalised and without a stake in the Nigerian project. More importantly, it would require addressing the high level of youth unemployment in the country. The solution is not in doling out cash handouts to young people who can work, but in creating real jobs through investment in infrastructure projects. Until the problem of hunger and unemployment are addressed in Nigeria, security is bound to get worse. The collective leadership of the country must start taking the growing insecurity in the country very seriously. It is in their own best interest. The urgency is now.

Emmanuel Nwachukwu is a U.K.-based business consultant. Twitter: @Emman321
Tokyo:

An American military helicopter burst into flames after landing in an empty field in Okinawa today, the Japanese defence minister said, with no injuries reported.



The US military told Japanese authorities that their CH- 53 transport helicopter "landed" before the fire erupted in the early evening just outside a training ground on the island, said Itsunori Onodera.



National broadcaster NHK showed dramatic footage of firefighters battling orange flames after dark and plumes of black smoke billowing into the sky.



"When the US Marine Corp CH-53 helicopter landed, a fire started. We have received information that all crew members were safe," Onodera told reporters.



Japanese authorities asked the US military to provide a full report and take steps to prevent a similar accident.



"Accidents by the US Marine Corps are continuing. We want to communicate to the US side that we demand safe operations," Onodera said.



According to eyewitnesses cited by NHK, the accident occurred shortly after 5:30 pm (local time).



Officials from the US Marines based in Okinawa could not immediately comment.



In December, five crew members aboard a US Marine MV-22 Osprey were injured after what the Pentagon described as a "mishap" resulting in the plane landing in shallow water off Okinawa.



At that time, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said it was "very regrettable" that a "serious accident" had occurred and stressed that the plane's safety record was a "pre-requisite" to the aircraft's deployment in Japan.



The deployment of Ospreys in Japan has prompted protests by Okinawa residents after a series of accidents in other countries involving the hybrid aircraft.



In August, US Marines were forced to mount a major search and rescue mission after an MV-22 Osprey crashed of the east coast of Australia.



They rescued 23 out of the 26 personnel and eventually called off the hunt for the three remaining crew.



More than half the approximately 47,000 American troops in Japan under a decades-long security alliance are stationed on Okinawa, the site of a major World War II battle that was followed by a 27-year US occupation of the island.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Hispanic leaders questioned naming the school for the Obamas, citing the former president as the chief deporter of migrants during his term in office. Along with Lewis, the Obamas were one of the three finalists for Jefferson schools new name, along with Cesar Chavez and Delores Huerta, the two founders of the National Farm Workers union In the late 1960s.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-20 02:33:51|Editor: huaxia

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RABAT, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Morocco's COVID-19 tally rose to 505,949 on Monday as 138 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours.

According to a statement by the ministry of health, the death toll rose to 8,952 with seven new fatalities during the last 24 hours, while 435 people are in intensive care units.

The total number of recoveries from COVID-19 in Morocco increased to 492,100 after 290 new ones were added, the statement said.

The COVID-19 fatality rate in Morocco stands at 1.8 percent while the recovery rate is 97.2 percent.

Meanwhile, 4,672,326 people have received so far the first vaccine shots against COVID-19 in the country, and 4,188,336 people have received the second doses.

The North African country launched a nationwide vaccination campaign on Jan. 28 after the arrival of the first shipment of China's Sinopharm vaccines. Enditem
Jerry, I was so upset, and trying to post my opinion online  a very judgmental post about the parents. And then I came upon your (column), wrote Jennifer D, a single mother. I just had to write and tell you your article made such an impact on me. Thanks for helping us all see both sides to a story.
NWS Weather Alert NOTE: This information is provided by the National Weather Service. Forecast may differ from local information provided by our own 69News Meteorologists

...AIR QUALITY ALERT IS IN EFFECT FOR SUNDAY JUNE 6... The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has issued a code orange air quality alert Sunday for The Lehigh Valley/Berks County area. A code orange air quality alert means that air pollution concentrations within the region may become unhealthy for sensitive groups. Sensitive groups include children...people suffering from asthma... heart disease or other lung diseases...and the elderly. The effects of air pollution can be minimized by avoiding strenuous activity or exercise outdoors. For more information on ground-level ozone and fine particles...visit http://www.depweb.state.pa.us
China hit back at the joint statement issued by the U.S. and Japan Saturday, saying they are "in no position to define the international order."

In the statement, the U.S. and Japan expressed concerns over human rights in Hong Kong and for China's ethnic Muslim minority.

At a news briefing Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin urged Japan and the U.S. to correct their "wrong behaviors" of violating other countries' human rights, citing Japan's war of aggression against China in the 1930s and U.S. invasions abroad since 2001.

The statement also mentioned the importance of "peace and stability" in the Taiwan Strait, marking the first time a Japanese prime minister had spoken out in a communique with the United States on Taiwan since 1969 talks between Richard Nixon and Eisaku Sato.

In response, Wang reasserted China's claims over Taiwan, urging the two countries to "immediately stop meddling in China's domestic affairs and harming Chinese interests."

The U.S. and China have clashed over a wide range of issues in the last few years, including human rights in Tibet and the Xinjiang region, a crackdown on protests and political freedom in Hong Kong, China's assertion of its territorial claims to Taiwan and most of the South China Sea and accusations Beijing was slow to inform the world about the COVID-19 outbreak.

Separately, Wang hailed Raul Castro as an "outstanding leader" of Cuba who has greatly contributed to China-Cuba relations, following Castro's announcement Friday that he is stepping down as Cuban Communist Party leader.

China attaches "great importance" to relations with Cuba and is willing to enrich their friendship continuously, said Wang.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
Something buzzy is happening in San Marcos.

On April 19, Atlanta-based cannabis operators Parallel announced the creation of a $25 million cannabis cultivation, production, and retail facility in city, expanding access for medical marijuana patients in San Antonio.

The company says the 63,000-square-foot facility is expected to bring hundred of jobs to the region, specifically in the cultivation, manufacturing, analytical chemistry, formulation science, marketing, customer support, and retail sectors.

A Parallel rep said the company is committed to cultivating a diverse and inclusive workforce, and expects a limited number of job positions to become available soon, with the remainder of the positions opening in the following months.

READ MORE: San Antonio Zoo breaks ground on one-of-a-kind jaguar skywalk

According to a release, the Parallel facility is designed to "meet the growing patient demand for medical cannabis products in the Lone Star State."

That demand will likely grow rapidly if the Texas Legislature passes HB 1535, a bill that would dramatically expand the number of Texans who qualify for medical marijuana. The bill was unanimously voted out of committee last week and is expected to pass when it hits the House floor before the end of the 2021 session.

Along with its new facility, Parallel announced it is changing the name of its retail brand from Surterra Texas to goodblend Texas. Goodblend offers virtual clinic services, as well as a line of cannabis-infused goodies such as gummies, lozenges, and tinctures.

"We are thrilled to break ground today on our new facility in San Marcos. We look forward to creating economic empowerment opportunities in this community through new jobs and cannabis career-building programs," said Marcus Ruark, President of goodblend Texas. "We are encouraged that there is a growing recognition, trust and demand for our medical cannabis products in Texas. While our customers will now know us as goodblend Texas, we will continue to offer registered patients with the state's largest assortment of cannabis-based product formats."

Currently, goodblend Texas has a partner clinic in San Antonio where registered patients can pick up the brand's cannabis products. It also has outposts in Plano, Fort Worth, and Houston.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will today chair a meeting to review the COVID-19 situation in Varanasi. The meeting will be attended by top officials, local administration and doctors who are involved in fighting COVID in Varanasi. The Centre could also announce major decisions regarding the handling of coronavirus situation in the country post the meeting.

At 11 AM, Prime Minister @narendramodi will be chairing a meeting to review the COVID-19 situation in Varanasi.



The meeting will be attended by top officials, local administration and doctors who are involved in fighting COVID in Varanasi. a PMO India (@PMOIndia) April 18, 2021

Two days back, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had chaired a meeting to review the status of preparedness to handle the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. In the meeting, various aspects relating to medicines, oxygen, ventilators and vaccination were discussed.

ALSO READ: COVID-19 vaccine out of stock in Andhra, CM writes to PM Modi for 60 lakh dose

The PM said together India had defeated Covid last year and it can do it again, with the same principles but faster speed and coordination. He said there is no substitute to "testing, tracking and treatment". Early testing and proper tracking remains the key to reduce mortality and local administrations need to be proactive and sensitive to people's concerns, he said.

The Prime Minister also said a close coordination with states must be ensured in handling the pandemic. He said all necessary measures must be taken to ramp up the availability of hospital beds for Covid patients.

The PM also directed that additional supply of beds through temporary hospitals and isolation centres should be ensured. The high-level meeting comes amid an unprecedented rise in coronavirus cases in India and several states going ahead with localised lockdowns. Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan, in a meeting with health ministers of 11 states and UTs on Sunday, said the rate of death has grown to 10.2 per cent from 5.5 per cent in June 2020.

Continuing its record upward trend, India has reported 2,73,810 new COVID-19 cases, 1,619 fatalities, and 1,44,178 recoveries in the last 24 hours, the health ministry data showed on Monday, April 19.

India's COVID-19 tally had crossed 20 lakh on August 7; 30 lakh on August 23; 40 lakh on September 5; and 50 lakh on September 16. It went past 60 lakh on September 28; 70 lakh on October 11; crossed 80 lakh on October 29; 90 lakh on November 20; and surpassed the one-crore mark on December 19.

ALSO READ: 'Kumbh Mela should now only be symbolic,' says PM Modi

ALSO READ: 'Despite a year to prepare India caught off guard': Sonia Gandhi criticises Modi govt
Part of the danger is that when youre languishing, you might not notice the dulling of delight or the dwindling of drive. You dont catch yourself slipping slowly into solitude; youre indifferent to your indifference. When you cant see your own suffering, you dont seek help or even do much to help yourself.

Even if youre not languishing, you probably know people who are. Understanding it better can help you help them.

A name for what youre feeling

Psychologists find that one of the best strategies for managing emotions is to name them. Last spring, during the acute anguish of the pandemic, the most viral post in the history of Harvard Business Review was an article describing our collective discomfort as grief. Along with the loss of loved ones, we were mourning the loss of normalcy. Grief. It gave us a familiar vocabulary to understand what had felt like an unfamiliar experience. Although we hadnt faced a pandemic before, most of us had faced loss. It helped us crystallize lessons from our own past resilience  and gain confidence in our ability to face present adversity.

We still have a lot to learn about what causes languishing and how to cure it, but naming it might be a first step. It could help to defog our vision, giving us a clearer window into what had been a blurry experience. It could remind us that we arent alone: languishing is common and shared.

And it could give us a socially acceptable response to How are you?

Instead of saying Great! or Fine, imagine if we answered, Honestly, Im languishing. It would be a refreshing foil for toxic positivity  that quintessentially American pressure to be upbeat at all times.

When you add languishing to your lexicon, you start to notice it all around you. It shows up when you feel let down by your short afternoon walk. Its in your kids voices when you ask how online school went. Its in The Simpsons every time a character says, Meh.

Last summer, the journalist Daphne K. Lee tweeted about a Chinese expression that translates to revenge bedtime procrastination. She described it as staying up late at night to reclaim the freedom weve missed during the day. Ive started to wonder if its not so much retaliation against a loss of control as an act of quiet defiance against languishing. Its a search for bliss in a bleak day, connection in a lonely week, or purpose in a perpetual pandemic.
New Delhi, April 19 : The Supreme Court on Monday sought response from Centre and states on a plea seeking permanent ban on all unauthorised production, and companies and individuals carrying out illegal adulterated honey business.

The plea, filed by the Anti-Corruption Council of India Trust, through advocate Manju Jetley, cited the report from researchers of Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), stating that major Indian brands of honey "were mixing honey with a modified sugar from China which bypasses some basic tests used to detect the adulteration in honey".

A bench, headed by Chief Justice S.A. Bobde and comprising Justices A.S. Bopanna and V. Ramasubramanian, after a brief hearing in the matter, issued notice on the plea.

"Most of the honey sold in the Indian market is adulterated with sugar syrup. Therefore, instead of honey, people are eating more sugar, this is immensely worrying as it will further compromise health in the troubled times of Covid-19," said the plea.

The plea also sought direction to the companies to submit to investigation or test reports of different honey brands or products before the top court. "Major brands Dabur, Patanjali and Zandu are selling honey adulterated with the modified sugar from China which can bypass some of the basic tests used to detect adulterated honey, research from the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has alleged," added the plea.

Submitting that spokespersons from Dabur, Patanjali and Zandu claimed that their honey brands meet the regulatory requirements laid down by the Food Safety and Standard Authority of India (FSSAI) and denied that their honey products were adulterated, the plea argued that as per the news published, out of 70 samples, only three could pass the internationally accepted by NMR spectroscopy test.

"It is a food fraud more nefarious and more sophisticated than CSE found in 2003 and 2006 investigation into soft drinks, more damaging to our health than perhaps anything that they have found till now keeping in mind the fact we are still fighting against a killer Covid-19 pandemic with our backs to the wall," the plea said.

The plea is based on a CSE investigation, which alleged Chinese companies were exporting sugar syrup as fructose syrup to India with claims that it could bypass the basic test specified for selling honey in the Indian market.
The masterpiece 'Portrait de Mademoiselle Phuong' (Portrait of Miss Phuong) by a Vietnamese painter, Mai Trung Thu, was sold for US$3.1 million at a Hong Kong auction on Sunday, posting a record-high price for a Vietnamese painting.

The price broke the record of $1.4 million set two years ago by Le Pho, another Vietnamese painter, for his nude artwork.

Record price shakes Vietnamese art scene

The auction 'Beyond Legends: Modern Art Evening Sale' was conducted by Sotheby's Hong Kong, which initially estimated that the oil painting might be sold for only $900,000 - 1.2 million.

But the price for this oil painting, which was composed 90 years ago, eventually came to the tune of $3.1 million  an unexpected price tag that shook the art scene in Vietnam.

Thus artwork was initially offered at $500,000, a relatively low starting price, but only two minutes later, it was pushed up to $1.9 million, which was far higher than the price of Phos work of art in 2019.

The exhibition of paintings at the Indochina Fine Arts College in 1930. Photo: Sotheby's

Five minutes later, only two bidders were left in the playground and the two sides, who offered prices by phone as they did not appear at the auction, competed with each other little by little to become the auction winner.

Accordingly, the price was boosted to $2 million and then $2.1 million before soaring to $2.5 million.

Eventually, the auction operator knocked the hammer to announce the winning price of $2.573 million.

After tax and fee, the final price for the masterpiece amounted to $3.1 million.

The artwork could have been purchased by a Vietnamese collector, said researcher Pham Long.

This is a beautiful and rare work of Mai Trung Thu," the researcher remarked.

"Hopefully one day, the painting will be displayed in Vietnam."

In addition to 'Portrait de Mademoiselle Phuong' at this auction, eight other paintings by Vietnamese artists Vu Cao Dam, Le Pho, and Le Thi Luu were also very attractive to international collectors.

90-year history

Painter Mai Trung Thu (1906-1980), or Mai Thu, is one of the artists who graduated from the first course (1925 - 1930) of the Indochina Fine Arts College. He lived and worked mostly in France.

Three artworks of painters Mai Trung Thu, Nguyen Nam Son, Nguyen Phan Chanh are seen in the booklet of the 1932 International Colonial Exhibition. Photo: Sotheby's

He was once placed among the 'Four Masters of Artworks' of Vietnam, along with three other well-known artists Pho, Luu, and Dam.

Artist Mai Thu made a lot of important contributions to the formation of diverse color harmonies for Vietnamese silk paintings.

His topics usually focused on women, children, and everyday life.

The 'Portrait de Mademoiselle Phuong' was first displayed at the Indochina Fine Arts College in 1930.

After that, the masterpiece was selected for display at the 1931 International Colonial Exhibition in Paris.

This exhibition lasted for six months, attracting more than 33 million visitors from France and other countries all over the world.

This event was believed to open an important gateway for Vietnamese artists to enter the European art world.

Since then, the 'Portrait de Mademoiselle Phuong' painting has been owned by Do Thi Lan (also known as Madame Dothi Dumonteil).

Lan and her husband Pierre Dumonteil, a renowned art collector, have possessed many works by Vietnamese artists.

'Portrait de Mademoiselle Phuong' appears in many scenes of the movie 'The Scent of Green Papaya' (1993). Photo: Getty Images

This $3.1 million masterpiece is part of the Les Souvenirs d Indochine: The Madame Dothi Dumonteil Collection.

This work also appeared in many scenes of the movie 'The Scent of Green Papaya' (1993) directed by Tran Anh Hung.

After 90 years, the work is still in good condition now.

Sothebys describes the painting as an imposing but very gentle and intimate artwork.

The portrait also captures "Mai Thus deep admiration for his sitter, a noble lady rumored to be the artists love interest, Sothebys commented on its website.

Miss Phuong was a young woman of the Hanoi aristocracy, well known for her natural beauty and grace, Sothebys said.

Miss Phuong and the artist were said to have fallen in love with each other, but their romantic relationship was forbidden because of the restrictions of social class and moral norms, according to Sothebys.

A series of works by Vietnamese painters Le Pho, Bui Xuan Phai, and Ton That Dao have been scheduled to be auctioned at the Modern Art Day Sale of Sothebys Hong Kong on April 19. This reflects the reality that famous auctions as well as international collectors increasingly pay attention to Vietnamese works of art.

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Los Angeles County's sheriff has revealed that he has only spoken to the county's new reform-minded district attorney once since he took office as he warns that criminals believe they will face no consequences under his tenure.

Sheriff Alex Villanueva is an outspoken critic of DA George Gascon, who won his seat this past fall on a reform agenda that Villanueva says gives comfort to criminals and shortchanges victims.

Villanueva is increasingly concerned with whether Gascon will fully prosecute any violent protesters as the city braces for possible demonstrations in the wake of the police-involved deaths of Daunte Wright in Minneapolis, 13-year-old Adam Toledo in Chicago and the pending verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the officer involved in George Floyd's death.

'If there is a lack of prosecutorial fist, that might actually embolden some of our antifa, anarchist crowd, the radical elements, to try to hijack peaceful protest for their own personal gain or agendas', Villanueva said in an appearance on Fox 11 LA in which he said he's had only one phone call with Gascon since he took office.

LA County Sheriff Alex Villanueva says he's only had one phone call with the new reform-minded DA, George Gascon

Gascon is flanked by his wife Fabiola Kramsky as he is sworn in as DA on Dec. 7, 2020

Gascon is an attorney and former cop who has served as the DA of San Francisco from 2011 to 2019, as an assistant chief of police for the LAPD from 2003 to 2006, as chief of police in Mesa, Arizona from 2006 to 2009 and as the top cop in San Francisco from 2009 to 2011.

He was elected LA's district attorney this past fall and took office in December in the wake of widespread protests against police after several cop-involved shootings over the past year.

Upon taking office, Gascon declared that 'Those in the profession of holding people accountable cannot themselves escape accountability'. He pledged to do away with cash bail and capital punishments and promised to stop charging juveniles as adults and prosecuting most nonviolent misdemeanors.

He also promised to reevaluate any criminal sentences were time was tacked on for alleged gang affiliation or the use of a firearm in the commission of a crime.

Just months into his tenure, Villanueva says the evidence is in: 'It's not working. It has dire consequences for victims of crime.

'Yes there is consequence when you eliminate consequences', Villanueva said.

'He issues 10 commandments, special directives, expects the entire world to just go with it, promises somehow it's going to work, well it's not working,' Villanueva said.

A protester throws a trash can into a fire during a protest over the death of George Floyd on May 30, 2020, in Los Angeles

Firefighters put out a blaze in a looted store in Los Angeles on May 30, 2020

People march in Los Angeles on Oct. 5, 2020 in protest of the police-involved death of Johnathan Price in Texas

Gascon's agenda already has run into trouble in the courts. In February, a judge ruled that his plan to discontinue sentencing enhancements was unlawful, the LA Times reported.

Judge James Chalfant ruled that California's 'three strikes' requires prosecutors to 'plead and prove' all prior felony offenses, and said Gascon didn't have the authority to tell his prosecutors not to file such enhancements.

He also faces a recall effort. Critics have started the process and need some 800,000 signatures to force the DA out of office.

'A lot of victims have come forward and said they feel threatened by his policies, so this is a victim- and community-led effort,' said Siannah Collado, member of the Recall George Gascon campaign.

'I agree there needs to be some reform, but the pendulum has swung too far left. Now victims are last and criminals come first,' she said.

Villanueva agrees. He said Gascon is exceeding his authority and essentially changing laws by declining to prosecute existing statutes. The sheriff contends that the DA has 'basically legalized' prostitution by refusing to prosecute cases his office refers to him.

Villanueva, left, says there 'is consequence when you eliminate consequence'. Gascon already faces a recall effort

Villanueva accused Gascon of a go-it-alone approach and said he would be more successful if he worked with others.

'There are ways we can reform the criminal justice system in the places that need to be fixed. There is a way to do it properly where you incorporate all the stakeholders', Villanueva said.

'We want him to be successful but it can't come at the expense of public safety, at the expense of victims of crime'.

As Los Angeles braces for more protests, Villanueva said the city was able to avoid the worst scenes of violence seen in places like Portland and Minnesota in the past year but it will 'strive to do better this time around.

'And we want to encourage people who protest peacefully,' the sheriff said. 'Do so in daylight, in places that are acceptable for that. But when the sun fades and you only see people that are dressed with helmets and shields and frozen bottles of water, rocks... if you're in that crowd and you think you're a peaceful protester, you're not.

'Walk away and we'll deal with the people that are left behind'.
Shaw-Ross International Importers, LLC (Shaw Ross), announced today Colangelo & Partners as its agency of record. The agency will be responsible for developing and executing a comprehensive communications plan targeting domestic and international industry audiences through key media. As a premier importer of beverage alcohol brands, Shaw-Ross offers route to market services to over 30 supplier partners and provides access to a robust distribution network that includes all 50 US states, plus the District of Columbia.

With a balanced portfolio of wine and spirits that covers the spectrum from boutique gems to powerhouse brands, Shaw-Ross offers a range of exciting products that are relevant in todays ever-changing environment.

Since 1968 we have proven that Shaw-Ross can build brands and develop category leaders, stated Managing Director Bruce Hunter. Shaw-Ross is excited to begin working with Colangelo & Partners and launch a public relations campaign to share the story of Shaw-Ross and how we have been leaders in the industry for the past 50 years.

Shaw-Ross partners with the strongest distributors across the country, which adds tremendous value to the suppliers in Shaw-Ross portfolio. Shaw-Ross closely manages their distributor network at the national, regional, and local levels  an approach that increases collaboration in market execution. This approach has allowed Shaw-Ross to build prestigious brands such as Whispering Angel, Gekkeikan, Frescobaldi, La Scolca, Marques de Riscal, Real Sangria, and Vina San Pedro.

Its national footprint allows Shaw-Ross to develop both domestic and international suppliers with a creative marketing and brand management team, dynamic sales force that includes national accounts representatives, advanced back-office services and analytics. These are key capabilities that have earned Shaw-Ross the respect of international brands owners and the trust to advance their US business.

We're very excited to welcome Shaw-Ross International Importers to our industry-leading portfolio, says Colangelo & Partners COO Felipe Gonzalez-Gordon. They share our client-centered philosophy and long-term relationships that are necessary to build impressive brands in the beverage alcohol industry.

About Shaw-Ross International Imports

Founded in 1968 as a boutique wine and spirit importer representing a handful of brands, Shaw-Ross is one of the nations leading importers representing over thirty suppliers from around the world whose brands enjoy full national distribution through a network of outstanding wholesalers.

About Colangelo & Partners

Colangelo & Partners is the leading fine wine and spirits integrated communications agency in the United States, sought after by top brands and industry players for the quality of their results, creativity, and return on investment. The professionals at Colangelo & Partners work with integrity and passion to influence how US audiences perceive their clients: earning consistent, high-quality positive media coverage; organizing signature events; strategizing and executing standout digital campaigns; and implementing trade programs that strengthen relationships within the industry. Colangelo & Partners' clientele includes global, instantly-recognizable brands and passionate, up-and-coming vignerons and distillers; regional and national institutions; and technology and e-commerce companies innovating in the beverage alcohol sector.
Military.com

16 Apr 2021

Medill News Service | By Karli Goldenberg

"Let's remember all that was sacrificed, all that was sanctified by our proud, brave Americans who served in World War I," President Joe Biden said during pre-recorded remarks. "The commitment and valor of the American women and men who stepped up to serve, whether here at home, or on the front lines in Europe was the same spirit that has always defined American service members."

The flag raised during the ceremony also flew over D.C. on April 6, 2017, recognizing the 100th anniversary of U.S. involvement in World War I. The commemorative flag also flew over several American battlefield cemeteries in Europe, according to a news release from the World War I Centennial Commission.

Terry Hamby, a Vietnam veteran who spent 26 years in various military services, told Military.com that serving as chairman of the World War I Centennial Commission was "a humbling experience."

"Somewhere along the way  we forgot 4.7 million Americans that sacrificed so much for our generation today," he said. "It became a mission for all of us to make sure that all those World War I veterans and their families were recognized in their sacred place."

Hamby knew that his grandfather served during WWI, but said he learned more recently that his great-uncle was also killed during the war.

"And then from that point forward, it was really personal. My family was one of those 116,516 people that gave the ultimate sacrifice," he said.

Architect and lead designer Joe Weishaar told Military.com that he was inspired to submit a design after looking through WWI photos in the National Archives.

"Looking at those photos, the thing that struck me was that everybody in them was 20 to 25 years old. And at the time, I was 24 or 25, when I submitted the design, and so it resonated with me," Weishaar said. "I don't have any relatives who were in the war, but just to see people my age, if I had been alive 100 years ago, that would have been me."His design was inspired by the need to tell the soldiers' stories to younger generations, he said.

"It's been 101 years since the end of World War I; there are no living veterans. The only way that we can remember them is by telling stories," Weishaar explained.

Hamby said he hopes that the memorial will be a place to learn about and reflect on our history.

"I'm looking forward to America seeing it. I'm looking forward to America coming here and seeing a 21st century memorial," he added. "I'm interested in them coming here  to learn more about what this generation did for us today.  Even though we were the greatest country in the world, we still made mistakes. And it was in that period that we started correcting them."












Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-20 05:16:39|Editor: huaxia

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ROME, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Italy reported 8,864 new coronavirus cases on Monday, as the country's authorities were planning to ease restrictions significantly by late April.

Over the past 24 hours, active infections decrease by 11,122 to 493,489, falling under the threshold of 500,000 for the first time since March 12, data by the Health Ministry showed.

The number of people cured since the beginning of the pandemic grew to over 3.2 million after 19,669 new recoveries were registered. Meanwhile, 316 new fatalities took the country's death toll to 117,243.

Overall, considering active infections, deaths, and recoveries, the country counted 3,878,994 coronavirus cases.

Meanwhile, the cabinet and health authorities were detailing the scheduled reopening on April 26, as announced by Prime Minister Mario Draghi on Friday.

Starting next week, 17 out of 20 regions turned orange (signaling a medium-level risk and consequent restrictions), while southern Apulia, northern Aosta Valley, and Sardinia Island remained in the so-called "red zone" under the toughest measures.

The reopening announcement came as a huge relief for thousands of entrepreneurs, who desperately want to relaunch their businesses so far subject to prolonged closures or stringent restrictions.

After setting April 26 as the day to significantly start easing restrictions on business, school, travel, and social life, both Draghi and Health Minister Roberto Speranza explained the government was taking "a calculated risk" with such a step.

They stressed reopening should not lead people to "let down their guard" against the virus, for example by relaxing the basic sanitary measures on social distancing and face masks.

Their cautious comments took into consideration the concerns expressed by several health figures who had warned that reopening too rashly might mean facing another summer under closure.

"This is a very fragile situation, and if the 'calculated risk' is understood as 'freedom for all,' we will see the (pandemic) situation worsen in May," Nino Cartabellotta, president of GIMBE healthcare research foundation, told Radio Cusano Campus on Monday. "Should the curve restart, we risk losing the next tourist season."

Hopes are pinned on the ongoing vaccination campaign to reduce pressures on the healthcare system and allow the country to restart at the same time.

As of Monday, some 15.4 million doses have been administered (or 87.2 percent of 17.3 million doses available in the country), and 4.5 million people were fully immunized after receiving both doses, according to statistics by coronavirus commissioner Francesco Figliuolo's office.

Meanwhile, 272 candidate vaccines are still being developed worldwide -- 88 of them in clinical trials -- in countries including Germany, China, Russia, Britain and the United States, according to information released by the World Health Organization (WHO) late last week. Enditem
[April 19, 2021] mPhase Negotiates Paydown of $0.8 Million of Debt at Significant Discount

Company Completes Capital Structure Cleanup, Including Removal of All Variable-Rate Convertible Notes and Paydown of Decade-Old Debt at Significant Discount Gaithersburg, MD, April 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- mPhase Technologies, Inc. (OTC: XDSL) (mPhase or the Company), a leading technology driven development company that creates and commercializes solutions that impact everyday people, today announced that it reached an agreement to pay off $784,000 of legacy debt at a significant discount to current value. The judgement settlement agreement, reached with John Fife (dba St. George Investors), represented $784,000 of debt on the balance sheet and was settled for a one-time payment of $235,000. We are pleased to have fortified our balance sheet through the elimination of this decade-old debt, as well as all prior variable-rate convertible notes, said Anshu Bhatnagar, Chief Executive Officer of mPhase Technologies. Our recent capital structure cleanup protected our shareholders from significant dilution while currently preserving our cash for high-value, near-term operational initiatives. These efforts have served to strengthen our financial position to ensure we can continue to innovate and work towards creating sustainable, long-term value for our shareholders. I look forward to providing our shareholders with an update in the short-term on our refined business strategy in 2021 and beyond. About mPhase Technologies mPhase Technologies (OTC: XSDL) is a technology driven, innovative development company that creates and commercializes products and applications tat impact everyday people. The Company is assembling industry-leading teams specializing in artificial intelligence, machine learning, software, consumer engagement, and other advanced technologies. Additional information can be found at the mPhase website, www.mphasetech.com . Please follow us on twitter: @mPhase_Tech for the latest updates.



Safe Harbor Statement This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are identified by the use of the words could, believe, anticipate, intend, estimate, expect, may, continue, predict, potential, project and similar expressions that are intended to identify forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this press release. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Although we believe that our plans, objectives, expectations and intentions reflected in or suggested by the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we can give no assurance that these plans, objectives, expectations or intentions will be achieved. Forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties (some of which are beyond our control) and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from historical experience and present expectations or projections. Actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements and the trading price for our common stock may fluctuate significantly. Forward-looking statements also are affected by the risk factors described in the Companys filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, after the date on which the statements are made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

Investor Relations Contact

Brian Prenoveau

Managing Director

MZ Group - MZ North America

(561) 489-5315

SNWV@mzgroup.us

www.mzgroup.us



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The Vietnamese labor market has been heavily affected since the third outbreak of COVID-19, with nearly 1.1 million working-age people out of work in the first quarter of 2021, an increase of 12,100 people year-on-year, a press conference was told last week.

Pham Hoai Nam, director of the Department of Population and Labor Statistics under the General Statistics Office (GSO), released the figures at the conference held by the GSO in Hanoi regarding the employment situation on Friday.

However, compared to the previous quarter, the number of jobless working-age people reduced by 137,000, Nam added.

The working-age unemployment rate was 2.42 percent in the first three months of this year, up 0.08 percentage points from the same period last year, the GSO reported.

The nationwide workforce aged 15 and over decreased by 1.1 million people from the previous quarter and 180,900 people year-on-year, according to the agency.

As reported at the press briefing, 9.1 million workers aged 15 and over have been suffering from the impacts of COVID-19.

Between January and March, 540,000 people lost their jobs, 2.8 million people suspended their business activities, 3.1 million were underemployed or laid off, and 6.5 million people saw their income reduced because of the pandemic.

By economic sector, those suffering the least from COVID-19 were agriculture, forestry and fisheries, with only 7.5 percent of their workers affected.

Meanwhile, the ratios of affected workers in the industry-construction and service sectors were 16.5 percent and 20.4 percent, respectively.

The third quarter also saw 971,400 people become underemployed, an increase of 143,200 people from the previous quarter and 78,700 people versus the same period last year.

The overall underemployment rate of working-age workers in the period was 2.2 percent.

By sector, the rates of 3.88 percent, 1.51 percent, and 1.76 percent were recorded in agroforestry and fishery, industry-construction, and service, respectively.

The third outbreak of COVID-19 has undermined the recovery of the labor market achieved in the second half of 2020, causing many people, especially women, to work as non-official workers, the press conference was told.

A total of 910 community cases have been recorded since the third wave started hitting Vietnam in late January.

The average monthly income of laborers in the first quarter was reported at VND6.3 million (US$273), marking the increases of VND339,000 ($14.6) and VND106,000 ($4.6) from the previous quarter and the same period of last year, respectively.

The above data reflects the hefty difficulties facing the job market in particular and the economy in general, challenging the efforts to achieve the governments dual goal of containing the pandemic and boosting economic recovery, Nam told the conference.

The GSO has proposed the government and agencies concerned consider the issuance of 'vaccine passports' and develop necessary criteria for opening international tourism to help revive the employment market.

It is essential to introduce specific policies to attract 3.5 million self-employed agricultural workers to participate in the labor market in order to improve productivity and livelihoods, the GSO suggested.

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Kate Winslet has spoken out about her daughter Mia's acting career.

The actress, 45, who shares Mia with her first husband Jim Threapleton, appeared on Lorraine on Monday, where she detailed Mia's career and explained that due to the fact they have different surnames she has managed to flourish on her own merit.

She said: 'Whats great for her is she has a different surname so she slipped under the radar and the people who cast her didnt know she was my daughter and that was important for her self-esteem of course.'

Opening up: Kate Winslet has spoken out about her daughter Mia's acting career

Kate is currently blazing the promo trail for her new show Mare Of Easttown and during her appearance she not only spoke about herself but also Mia.

She said: 'Mia is 20 and acting. Shes away now in the Czech Republic about to start on a TV series over there. I think I knew it was coming, I always suspected...

'And then a few years ago she turned around and said, Id like to give it a go...

'Whats great for her is she has a different surname so she slipped under the radar and the people who cast her didnt know she was my daughter and that was important for her self-esteem of course'.

Starring role: The actress, 45, who shares Mia with her first husband Jim Threapleton, appeared on Lorraine on Monday, where she detailed Mia's career (Mia, pictured in 2020's Shadows)

Slipping: She said: 'Whats great for her is she has a different surname so she slipped under the radar and the people who cast her didnt know she was my daughter and that was important for her self-esteem of course'

Kate was married to Mia's father Jim from 1998 to 2001, before she married Sam Mendes, with whom she shares son Joe, 17, two years later and subsequently split in 2011.

She is now married to Edward Abel Smith, with whom she shares son Bear, seven.

Mia made her acting debut last year in Ireland-set chiller Shadows, which was directed by Italian movie heavyweight Carlo Lavagna and largely shot in an abandoned hotel in the woods near Howth.

Speaking about the part last year, the superstar offspring said: 'Shadows was the first film Id received an audition for, and the first script I had ever been given to read. I couldnt believe my luck. I read it and didnt put it down...

Debut: Kate is currently blazing the promo trail for her new show Mare Of Easttown and during her appearance she not only spoke about herself but also Mia

Her love: Kate was married to Mia's father Jim from 1998 to 2001 (pictured in 2000)

'Which is admitting a lot because Im dyslexic and that means I have to read slowly and steadily to be able to absorb things fully sometimes.'

She also touched on being the daughter of a famous actress, saying: 'I never actually spent much time around sets that my mum was working on...

'It was always a special treat. Its a very different experience when it is happening to you, and not just something I was getting to observe from time to time...

'I really understand why my mum has always impressed on us how hard the work is. She is right! And I loved every second of it.'
Guy Frank wears a silver watch on his right arm. Its a memento from his brother Joe, who died of cancer last April during Frank's 20th year in prison.

The deaths mounted as Frank served a 23-year sentence for stealing two shirts from a Canal Street department store under Louisianas version of a three strikes law. The 11th and last relative to go was his father, who died weeks before Frank walked free on April 8.

It hurt me to see these people die while I was in prison, Frank said Friday, his voice choking with emotion. I cant go back and get them out of the grave.

Progressive vote up for grabs? DA Jason Williams endorses Troy Carter in congressional race Troy Carter snagged a key endorsement in the congressional race Thursday when Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams offered his support.

Until this month, Frank was one of an untold number of people still imprisoned by a harsher era of criminal justice. But the 6th Ward native now has nearly three years of his life back, thanks to parallel projects from a non-profit law firm and the District Attorneys Office to review and reverse old, unjust sentences.

At least six people from Orleans Parish serving life prison terms under the habitual offender statute have been freed so far during Jason Williams term, and prosecutors have filed a motion to remove the sentencing enhancement from another case, according to a review of state prison records. The District Attorneys Office declined to give its own count.

Frank, 66, was freed early with the blessing of Williams office after a tough upbringing and a long journey through Louisianas prison system. He was one of seven boys and two girls who grew up in a family on Dumaine Street where mom was the daddy and the mother, Frank says. By the time of his arrest, he often stole store goods to support a heavy heroin habit.

+2 From prison to a Trump pardon, the story of a New Orleans woman's path to criminal justice advocacy It was around midnight Tuesday when Syrita Steib, the leader of a womens re-entry program in New Orleans, heard the news from one of her lawy

But he never made it home with the shirts stolen from the Saks Fifth Avenue store on Canal Street in September 2000. Store security caught him, and with three prior felony convictions for theft, Frank was eligible for a much longer sentence as a habitual offender under Louisiana law.

Proponents say the law is aimed at punishing career criminals who have shown they cannot reform themselves.

Frank has long maintained that he had no idea what he was getting himself into when he pleaded guilty to felony theft. He initially received a 2-year sentence, but former District Attorney Harry Connick Sr.s office invoked the habitual offender law, raising his minimum sentence to 20 years, and Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Judge Sharon Hunter went further to give him 23 years in prison.

Franks current attorney, Meredith Angelson of the Innocence Project New Orleans, says the entire system, including Franks court-appointed lawyer, failed him.

Nobody ever offered a story of his life, she said. Nobody ever proposed drug treatment. They just told him to shut up.

Thats essentially what appellate judges and a series of district attorneys told Frank for the next two decades, too. His appeals were rejected over and over.

The Louisiana Legislature has since softened the habitual offender law and sentences for non-violent offenses, but only going forward. A theft of under $500 would now be a misdemeanor, according to Angelson.

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

Meanwhile, former District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro agreed to release a number of prisoners serving time under the habitual offender law after a 2018 Louisiana Supreme Court decision applied some changes retroactively. However, Frank never filed a motion under that decision and his case went nowhere.

His luck changed this year thanks to Williams election and a new initiative from the Innocence Project New Orleans. As its name suggests, the group has long focused on freeing people it believes were wrongly convicted.

With a new unjust punishment project, the group is also training its resources on guilty people with disproportionate sentences. The project has won the release of seven people statewide since it began last year, Angelson said.

The non-profits initiative began before Williams was elected, but he is also pursuing a similar project using his power as a prosecutor.

Angelson said she was gobsmacked when she saw Franks sentence on a list of habitual offenders she received from the state Department of Public Safety. How could a man be serving 23 years for shoplifting? In a hastily-arranged video call with Frank, she confirmed the details.

John Esteen, inmate behind landmark La. Supreme Court decision, wins parole from 100-year sentence John Esteen, a state prisoner whose legal fight over his 100-year sentence for nonviolent drug crimes led to a landmark state Supreme Court de

She reached out to prosecutors under Williams, who quickly agreed to file a motion to remove Franks sentencing enhancement. Judge Benedict Williard agreed to set Frank free.

Angelson has already returned to the Orleans Parish Criminal District courthouse to secure another mans release. Last week, prosecutors filed a motion to remove the sentencing enhancement of Emanuel Randall, who was serving a life sentence as a habitual offender on a 2009 conviction for possession of 0.12 grams of cocaine.

Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Judge Nandi Campbell resentenced Randall to time served on Thursday.

Unlike Frank, Randall had been convicted previously of a crime of violence, manslaughter. The appellate judges who upheld Randalls sentence cited that conviction as the justification for his life without parole term.

In a statement, First Assistant District Attorney Bob White said prosecutors had once offered Randall, now 49, a 10-year plea agreement on the cocaine charge. It made no sense to keep Randall locked up any longer, he said.

Mr. Randalls prior crimes occurred when he was a young man or teenager, White said. Louisiana taxpayers would have paid around $700,000 from now until Mr. Randall died to keep him in prison to punish him for his drug addiction. This office believes that is inhumane and a waste of community resources that could be used for helping people who struggle with substance abuse to get the support they need for rehabilitation.

Randalls prior record points to some of the knotty issues that will confront the district attorneys civil rights division as it surveys old sentences and considers requests from lawyers like Angelson.

Frank said the review is long overdue and gave thanks to Williams. Hes living with his sister in Mid-City, enjoying slow mornings and dreaming of becoming an church deacon. He knows the memories of everything hes lost while he was in prison will come back to him, but he doesnt want to focus on them.

I just want to be happy, he said.
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Kicking off the glorious video? None other than ex-Speaker of the House and turned cannabis pitchman, John Boehner. Lucifer in the flesh, reads the quote, which Boehner told an audience at Stanford University in 2016, per the Stanford Daily. "I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.

Although it seems Florida Senator Marco Rubio doesn't view the Texas lawmaker and Zodiac Killer as Satan incarnate, his philosophy on his fellow lawmaker can be best summed up by the title of every 2015 indie boy's favorite song  The Less I Know The Better. Ted has had a tough week because whats happening now is people are learning more about him, Rubio said, according to Rolling Stone.

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Lindsey Graham, too, has also echoed Rubio's sentiments spoken out about Cruz's apparent abominable nature, taking his biting critique of the notoriously soup-guzzling politician to new, Roman heights. If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you, the South Carolina Senator said of Cruz, as CNN noted.

While Graham apparently fantasizes about taking Cruz down Caesar style, former President George W. Bush reportedly didn't mince words when it came to his feelings for the senator. I don't like the guy, 43 allegedly said about the lawmaker, ABC News reported.
Islamabad on Sunday for the first time publicly acknowledged the efforts being made by the United Arab Emirates to bring India and Pakistan back on the table of negotiation, although New Delhi refrained from confirming it officially.

The visit of External Affair Minister S Jaishankar and his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi to the United Arab Emirates around the same time lent credence to speculation over the behind-the-scenes role Abu Dhabi has been playing to bring the two South Asian nations back on the negotiation table.

Jaishankar reached Abu Dhabi on Sunday  just a day after Qureshi flew from Islamabad to Dubai to embark on a three-day visit to the UAE.

Read | UAE mediating between India, Pakistan on Kashmir, says top Emirati diplomat

(The) UAE has sizable number of Pakistanis and the presence of Indians is even higher, Qureshi told the Gulf News in an interview on Sunday. Obviously, looking at the interest of peace and stability in the region, it only makes sense that the UAE feels that two players (Indian and Pakistan) in this region, who are estranged, should sit together and talk out their differences.

New Delhi so far refrained from making any official statement to confirm or deny the reports about the UAEs behind-the-scenes efforts to make India and Pakistan restart bilateral dialogue, which remained suspended since 2013.

Qureshi told Gulf News that Pakistan had always welcomed third party mediation to help settle its disputes with India  be it by the UAE or any other nation. He, however, denied reports about his possible meeting with Jaishankar, reported the newspaper, which is published from Dubai.

Prime Minister Narendra Modis government in 2019 and 2020 repeatedly turned down offers made by the then United States President Donald Trump to mediate between India and Pakistan.

New Delhi has since long maintained that the 1972 Simla Agreement between India and Pakistan and the 1999 Lahore Declaration by the two sides had left no scope for the United Nations or any third party to play any role in resolving the outstanding issues between the two South Asian neighbours.

Jaishankar met the Foreign Minister of the UAE, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, in Abu Dhabi on Sunday.

Another productive interaction with FM @ABZayed on our bilateral cooperation. Took forward our ongoing discussions on this subject, starting in February. The strong focus on post-Covid economic recovery will remain a priority for us, the External Affairs Minister tweeted after his meeting with the Emirati Foreign Minister.

Jaishankar and Sheikh Abdullah discussed the historic relations between India and the UAE and ways to enhance cooperation, particularly in commercial and health fields. They also discussed the latest developments related to the Covid-19 pandemic, the efforts made by the two countries to contain its repercussions, and the global efforts to provide vaccines to all countries, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the UAE Government stated. Abdullah noted during his discussion with Jaishankar that the UAE-India strategic partnership contributes to creating more opportunities for growth in commercial, economic, cultural and other fields.

Qureshi is expected to discuss regional and global issues of mutual interest during his meeting with Abdullah, tweeted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Pakistan Government.

Abu Dhabis envoy to the United States, Yousef Al Otaiba, recently stated that the UAE had indeed helped de-escalate tension between India and Pakistan over Kashmir and played a role in making the two neighbours agree to stop firing across the LoC. Absolutely, they might not sort of become best friends but at least we want to get it to a level where its functional, its operational, where they are speaking to each other, where theres lines of communication and thats our goal, he said at a virtual discussion organized by the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

Also read: At least 7 police and rangers taken hostage in Pakistan protests

The UAE purportedly played a behind-the-scenes role in making the Indian Army and the Pakistan Army on February 25 agree to de-escalate tension and stop exchange of fire across the Line of Control (LoC). A day later, Jaishankar hosted Sheikh Abdullah in New Delhi and they purportedly had a discussion on the possibility of working out a roadmap towards restarting the stalled talks between India and Pakistan.

The UAE also purportedly hosted an under-the-radar informal meeting between top security and intelligence officials of India and Pakistan a few weeks back.

Qureshi confirmed to the Gulf News on Sunday that the two South Asian neighbours had sittings in the UAE.

New Delhi had suspended its formal bilateral talks with Islamabad in January 2013 after Pakistan Army personnel had brutally killed two Indian Army soldiers along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K).

Though the Modi Government had in December 2015 agreed to restart the engagement between the two neighbours as the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue, the process was derailed by attacks on the Indian Air Force (IAF) base at Pathankot in Punjab and on the Indian Armys brigade headquarters at Uri in J&K by the terrorist outfits based in Pakistan.

The Indian Armys surgical strike on terrorist camps in Pakistan in September 2016, the terror attack on Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel at Pulwama in J&K and the retaliatory bombing by the Indian Air Force (IAF) aircraft on the terror camps in the neighbouring country in February 2019 worsened the relations between the two nations. Islamabad also launched a global campaign against New Delhi to protest against the Modi Governments August 5, 2019 decision to strip J&K of its special status and reorganize it into two Union Territories.

But when the armed forces of the two nations agreed to strictly adhere to the 2003 ceasefire agreement a few weeks back, it fuelled speculation about back-channel talks between New Delhi and Islamabad for exploring the possibility of restarting the stalled bilateral dialogue.

Imran Khan, Prime Minister of Pakistan, on March 17 said that the Narendra Modi Government in New Delhi would have to first make the move to restart the stalled bilateral dialogue between the two nations. The chief of Pakistan Army, Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, on March 18 said that it was time for his country and India to bury the past and move forward.

India, however, put the onus back on Pakistan to create a conducive atmosphere for resumption of the bilateral dialogue.
The sun rises behind the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on Nov. 10, 2020. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

Temporary Protected Status Holders From El Salvador Urge Supreme Court to Let Them Apply for Green Cards

The Supreme Court heard arguments from the Biden administration that Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders from troubled countries shouldnt be allowed to upgrade to lawful permanent resident status from inside the United States.

The case, Sanchez v. Mayorkas, court file 20-315, comes at a time when the federal government finds itself overwhelmed by a rush of would-be immigrants flooding the nations border with Mexico, a situation President Joe Biden finally labeled a crisis on April 17. Biden said that situation prevents him from raising the refugee quota at this time.

A ruling in favor of the petitioners could allow thousands of TPS holders now living in the U.S. to apply for green cards without first having to leave the country and apply from abroad. There are reportedly around 400,000 TPS recipients in the U.S. who are allowed to temporarily stay in the country and work.

The petition seeking high court review of the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals decision was granted Jan. 8.

The petitioners, Jose Santos Sanchez and Sonia Gonzalez, a married couple from El Salvador living in New Jersey, were represented in the telephonic hearing April 19 by Amy M. Saharia. The Department of Justice was represented by Michael R. Huston.

Chief Justice John Roberts seemed to suggest the governments case was weak.

I was struck by the extent to which your brief undersold your position, he told Huston.

Throughout it, you said things like the text doesnt foreclose your position; the court was not required to accept the petitioners reading; the statute does not clearly exclude your reading; Congress did not unambiguously mandate the opponents position. And, of course, you ended by saying that it would not be entirely unreasonable for the court to rule in your favor.

I made that last one up, but thats  what I was expecting to see. Do you want us to say that your interpretation of the statute is the correct one?

The case revolves around whether recipients of Temporary Protected Status privileges are deemed to have been admitted to the United States.

Sanchez and Gonzalez, who now have four childrenone of whom was born in the United Statesentered the United States illegally in 1997 and 1998. The United States gave El Salvador the TPS designation in 2001 after a series of earthquakes in that country and gave protection to the couple under the program. In 2014, their applications for green cards were turned down because they were deemed not to have been lawfully admitted to the United States.

The hearing consisted largely of discussions of the legal definitions of terms appearing in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), a statute Justice Stephen Breyer suggested during oral arguments was a difficult read.

I have to admit that the immigration statute is pretty complicated, Breyer said.

Under the program, some foreigners are allowed to stay in the United States if their country of citizenship is considered to be in crisis because of a natural disaster, armed conflict, or extraordinary and temporary conditions.

Eleven countries currently have the TPS designation, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS): El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen.

The Biden administration has followed the example set by the Trump administration, arguing that the INA makes nearly all TPS holders ineligible to adjust their status to lawful permanent residents, or green-card holders.

From an institutional perspective, the governments argument is somewhat counter-intuitive: In a statute that undisputedly authorizes executive discretion to alleviate hardship in the immigration process, the government argues that it should not be allowed to exercise discretion at all to noncitizens present for humanitarian reasons, writes Maryellen Fullerton at SCOTUSblog.

During the 59-minute hearing, justices disagreed on the meaning of the word admitted.

Huston said the governments position was reasonable.

An agency does not act contrary to law when it interprets a statutory term in its accordance with its statutory definition. For petitioners to be eligible to adjust to lawful permanent resident status, they need to show, among several other things, that they were admitted into the United States, he said.

But admitted is a defined term within the INA, and petitioners concede that they do not meet that definition. They did not make a lawful entry into the United States after inspection and authorization by an immigration officer. Petitioners instead contend that Congress implicitly deemed TPS recipients to be admitted by giving them lawful status as nonimmigrants.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor disagreed with Huston, telling him, If youre asking us to find the better reading of the statute, we should go by its terms: Those people have been admitted.

Justice Clarence Thomas seemed perplexed. He told Saharia the couple clearly were not admitted at the borders, so is that a fiction, is it metaphysical, what is it? I dont know.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh told Saharia: You have an uphill climb, textually speaking.

We need to be careful about tinkering with the immigration statutes as written, particularly when Congress has  such a primary role here.

Dont you think  if Congress was intending to do what you want, it was almost certain there would be more explicit language?
WASHINGTON  The Supreme Court seemed ready on Monday to rule that immigrants allowed to stay in the United States temporarily for humanitarian reasons may not apply for green cards if they had entered the country unlawfully.

The case, which could affect tens of thousands of immigrants, was brought by Jose Sanchez and Sonia Gonzalez, natives of El Salvador who entered the United States unlawfully in the late 1990s. In 2001, after earthquakes devastated El Salvador, the United States made that countrys nationals eligible for the temporary protected status program, which shields immigrants from parts of the world undergoing armed conflicts and natural disasters from deportation and allows them to work in the United States.

Mr. Sanchez and Ms. Gonzalez, a married couple, were granted protection under the program. In 2014, they applied for lawful permanent residency, commonly known as a green card. After their application was denied, they sued.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, ruled against them, saying they were ineligible under a part of the immigration laws that requires applicants to have been inspected and admitted into the United States.
[April 19, 2021] D. E. Shaw Renewable Investments Completes Financing of 79-Megawatt Assembly Solar III Project

NEW YORK, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- D. E. Shaw Renewable Investments (DESRI), a leading provider of cost-effective renewable energy across North America, today announced the financial closing of Assembly Solar III, a 79-megawatt solar project in Lennon, Michigan. DESRI is moving forward with construction after securing both construction debt and tax equity financing for the project. The Assembly Solar III project is the third phase of the Assembly Solar project in Michigan to begin construction. The projects were developed by Ranger Power, a utility-scale solar developer headquartered in Chicago, in partnership with DESRI, and are being constructed by McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. Assembly I began operating in December 2020 and Assembly II is slated to reach commercial operation in the third quarter of 2021. Assembly III signed a long-term power purchase agreement with DTE Electric for the project's output in the first half of 2020. "DTE is leading Michigan's transition toward a clean energy future and we're proud to play a role in helping the state's largest producer of renewable energy provide solar energy to people across Michigan," said Paul Harris, president of Ranger Power. "In addition, solar energy projects like Assembly Solar create jobs, generate local tax revenue, promote energy independence, and preserve farmland. We look forward to completing this project and developing future projects in Michigan and throughout the Midwest." "DTE Energy plans to add significantly more clean energy to its portfolio over the next ten years," said Dave Harwood, director, Renewable Energy for DTE Energy. "Adding Assembly Solar will help our company achieve Michigan's 15% Renewable Portfolio Standard, and we are excited to see the project move into the next phase of the construction process and look forward to its completion." Once completed, the Assembly Solar cluster will total 239 megawatts and is expected to provide low-cost, high-quality power to more than 43,000 Michigan homes annually, according to metrics provided by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Financing for the cnstruction and operation of the project was provided by a syndicate of lenders, including HSBC as Coordinating Lead Arranger and CIBC, National Cooperative Services Corporation, and Truist as Joint Lead Arrangers. PNC Bank provided a commitment for tax equity financing.



"Closing financing on the final phase of the Assembly Solar projects represents another important step forward in DESRI's mission to bring cost-effective, renewable energy to communities across the U.S.," said Tom de Swardt, chief commercial officer of DESRI. "We particularly appreciate the continued support of our partners at PNC, HSBC, CIBC, National Cooperative Services Corporation, and Truist amid the headwinds from COVID-19." "PNC is pleased to provide DESRI with tax equity financing for Assembly III. This project underscores our commitment to supporting customers and communities throughout the U.S. with financing for high-quality renewable assets," said Mark Williams, managing director in PNC's Renewable Energy Finance Group.

About PNC Bank PNC Bank, National Association, is a member of The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. PNC is one of the largest diversified financial services institutions in the United States, organized around its customers and communities for strong relationships and local delivery of retail and business banking including a full range of lending products; specialized services for corporations and government entities, including corporate banking, real estate finance and asset-based lending; wealth management and asset management. For information about PNC, visit www.pnc.com. About D. E. Shaw Renewable Investments (DESRI) D. E. Shaw Renewable Investments (DESRI) and its affiliates acquire, own, and manage long-term contracted renewable energy assets in North America. DESRI's portfolio of contracted renewable energy projects currently includes 75 wind and solar projects across 32 states with 5,372 MWac of aggregate capacity. DESRI is a member of the D. E. Shaw group, a global investment and technology development firm with more than $55 billion in investment and committed capital as of March 1, 2021, and offices in North America, Europe, and Asia. Please visit www.deshaw.com for more information about the D. E. Shaw group. This press release is provided for the reader's information only and does not constitute investment advice or convey an offer to sell, or the solicitation of an offer to buy, any securities or other financial products. Please also note that this press release has not been updated since its dateline for any information contained in it that may have changed, including any beliefs and/or opinions. In addition, no assurances can be given that any aims, assumptions, expectations, and/or goals described in this release will be realized or that the activities or any performance described herein did or will continue at all or in the same manner as at the time of the press release. Contact:

Randall Whitestone or Theresa Kim

The D. E. Shaw group

media-inquiries@deshaw.com View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/d-e-shaw-renewable-investments-completes-financing-of-79-megawatt-assembly-solar-iii-project-301271013.html SOURCE D. E. Shaw Renewable Investments

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Real Madrid put the ball in the back of Getafe's net during the first half of their Sunday night meeting in LaLiga Santander, but the goal was ruled out for offside.

Mariano was said to have been ahead of the last defender when the ball was played forward by Eder Militao, with Jose Luis Munuera Montero in the VAR room advising Jose Maria Sanchez Martinez that the goal shouldn't count.

However, the frame shown in the graphic depicting the offside has created some confusion.

That's because, if you look closely, the ball had already left Militao's boot in the frame selected by the officials.

Fran Martinez (@LaLigaenDirecto), who analyses LaLiga refereeing decisions, claimed that the previous frame would have shown Mariano to be in a legal position. The image he published on Twitter can be seen below.
New Delhi:

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is currently conducting public rallies across Gujarat. On Friday, he criticised Congress and their Vice President Rahul Gandhi in Valsad.

Updates

# 5 Congress workers detained in Gujarat's Valsad while they were protesting against UP CM Yogi Adityanath, by showing black flags

# People who couldn't build a collectorate in Amethi after ruling there for 3 generations, what development will they bring to Gujarat?: UP CM

# For 41 years Congress did not bother to give Bharat Ratna to Sardar Patel when Atal Bihari Ji became PM he raised it: Yogi Adityanath

People who couldn't build a collectorate in Amethi after ruling there for 3 generations, what development will they bring to Gujarat?: UP CM pic.twitter.com/XT39NBajWF  ANI (@ANI) October 13, 2017

# Congress defeat is guaranteed in those places where Rahul Gandhi goes for election campaigns - UP CM in Valsad

# Even after ruling there for 14 years Rahul Gandhi did not facilitate building of a collectorate in Amethi: Yogi Adityanath in Valsad

For 41 years Congress did not bother to give Bharat Ratna to Sardar Patel when Atal Bihari Ji became PM he raised it: Yogi Adityanath pic.twitter.com/4zlv0Sx8i0  ANI (@ANI) October 13, 2017

# A thing was famous about Ex-PM Manmohan Singh, for any approval he always looked at Nehru-Gandhi family & stayed mum if they said no: UP CM

Even after ruling there for 14 years Rahul Gandhi did not facilitate building of a collectorate in Amethi: Yogi Adityanath in Valsad pic.twitter.com/1aNsRouR2M  ANI (@ANI) October 13, 2017

# Amit Shah comes here and Rahul Gandhi runs away to Italy. During those times he doesn't remember Gujarat - UP CM

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
As a history of art graduate, Carine Maillard was working with the curator on fine arts exhibitions at Genevas Musee dArt et dHistoire, (MAH) when the City of Geneva decided to give its backing to the nascent Grand Prix dHorlogerie de Geneve (GPHG). The MAH also appointed her as coordinator of the third edition of the GPHG in 2003, assisting the two founders of the competition for the awards ceremony at the Grand Theatre de Geneve opera house. The Gabriel Tortella / Jean-Claude Pittard duo opened the doors of watchmaking to Maillard  and taught her everything her academic studies had not. When the entity was sold to Edipresse in 2007, Maillard was the sole employee of the limited company. Under the oversight of Edipresse, she worked to secure the independence of the GPHG and helped set up the GPHG Foundation, a public-interest organisation, together with former President of the Swiss Council of States Carlo Lamprecht.

Carine Maillard  GPHG

The Foundation was officially established in 2011. Carlo Lamprecht became its President, and Maillard its director. They created real synergy, taking the GPHG to another level altogether. In 2012, they achieved institutional recognition for time measurement as the 12th art. To ensure the independence and spark of life the GPHG needed to remain in existence, its workings were completely rethought: the financial model, the organisation of the competition, voting procedures, rules, and even the ceremony itself. It was also during this period that the GPHG became more international, in particular through exhibitions organised in capital cities worldwide. Its influence spread, and it became established as watchmakings Oscars  a not-to-be-missed event in the watch industry calendar. Some one hundred brands take part every year, presenting over 200 watches as candidates for nomination. The expansion has continued under the presidency of Raymond Loretan, appointed in 2018. The former diplomat and businessman has implemented the vision of an Academy, reflecting the GPHGs unifying mission. Launched in 2020 to coincide with the GPHGs 20th edition, the GPHG International Academy has 350 members from across the entire watchmaking industry.

*On the occasion of GMT Magazine and WorldTempus' 20th anniversary, we have embarked on the ambitious project of summarising the last 20 years in watchmaking in The Millennium Watch Book, a big, beautifully laid out coffee table book. This article is an extract. The Millennium Watch Book is available on www.the-watch-book.com, in French and English, with a 10% discount if you use the following code: WT2021.

Order now
Ukraine fully supports the decision of the Czech government to expel 18 Russian diplomats from the country, taken after the release of information about the involvement of the Russian intelligence, whose employees, according to Prague, are in fact the said diplomats, in the explosion of an arms depot in the Czech Republic in 2014.

The corresponding statement was made by Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba on Sunday.

"Ukraine supports Czech Republic's response as Czech law enforcement confirmed Russia's involvement in the massive ammunition depot explosion in 2014 which caused loss of life. We in Ukraine know Russia's malicious methods all too well. Such acts should not go unpunished," Kuleba said.

As reported, the Czech authorities are expelling from the country 18 diplomats of the Russian embassy in Prague associated with Russian military intelligence.
The UK isn't going to sit idly by while other countries launch digital currencies. Today, the Bank of England and HM Treasury announced that they will jointly explore "a new form" of virtual money for the public and private sector. A dedicated taskforce has been appointed to assess the risks and practicalities of introducing a digital currency. To help glean new use cases, officials will consult with stakeholders including banks, fintechs, payment infrastructure providers, and technology companies. For now, the UK is simply doing its research and has made no commitment to feasibly act.

Despite emphasizing that the digital currency would complement banknotes and deposits instead of replacing them, the massive undertaking still poses huge implications for the financial system. On the one hand, experts believe virtual money could increase the speed of domestic and cross-border transactions, lower costs and even help connect more people to the economy. But, it could also undermine the status of traditional banks, including central banks that help maintain financial stability.

The new taskforce will also monitor international digital currency developments. According to the World Economic Forum, about 86 percent of the worlds central banks are scrutinizing the pros and cons of virtual cash. China is in the lead, but others including Japan and Switzerland have launched their own experiments with digital currency. Britain, a former EU member, will also likely be paying close attention to the bloc's preparatory work on a digital euro.

The impetus is largely a reaction to the progress made by the private sector. In 2019, Facebook announced its own digital currency, currently branded as Diem. A number of companies are also embracing cryptocurrencies including payment providers such as PayPal and Visa and EV maker Tesla.
Thiruvananthapuram, April 19 : At one point of time in Kerala in the late eighties and nineties and till he left the Congress in a huff in 2001, Cherian Phillip had a prime place in the party and that was primarily because of his closeness to A.K. Antony and Oommen Chandy.

In those times, public relation companies were not on the horizon and he is best known for being the image building man of Antony, especially to highlight his spartan lifestyle.

At that time the Congress was deeply divided between K.Karunakaran and Antony and thanks to Phillip, he managed to create the brand image of Antony, much to the dislike of Karunakaran.

Phillip, was one who used to give out the minutest details of whatever Antony does to the very few vernacular dailies here and used to call up photographers from the print media to come and click Antony's simplicity, which used to make front page pictures, then.

One statement of his about Antony is even now ringing in the minds of all when he said after a press meet in Antony's house that since he has only few cups, tea cannot be served to all who have come for the press meet, Antony was the Chief Minister on three occasions -- 1977, 1995 and in 2001.

Phillip, 67, rose in the Congress party through the student wing and was the president of the Kerala Students Union ( KSU) in 1980 and later became a top leader in the Youth Congress and also in the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee.

Initially, he was not interested in electoral politics and in 1991 he contested the Assembly polls from Kottayam but lost to top CPI-M leader T.K. Ramakrishnan.

But things turned for the worse in 2001, when Phillip thought due to his close access to both Antony and Chandy, he will get a safe seat to contest, but the party did not accede to his demand that he should be given a seat in the capital city, he decided to quit from the party and the CPI-M known for using the strategy -- 'enemy's enemy is friend' offered him a seat to contest against his onetime idol -- Chandy.

But things went haywire as Chandy won easily at his home turf -- Puthupally, which he has been representing since 1970.

Phillip is a bachelor and after his defeat in 2001, the CPI-M accommodated him at the party backed TV channel-- Kairali TV.

In the 2006 Assembly polls, he was again given a seat by the CPI-M, and again he lost and when the then V.S. Achuthanandan led CPI-M government was formed in 2006, he was given the plum post of the chairman of the Kerala Tourism Development Corporation.

Then again at the 2011 polls, he was given another Assembly seat, but lost again and he returned again to the Kairali TV.

Then came the 2016 assembly polls and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan after some time he took over, gave a cabinet status post to Cherian and in between the word came that he would be given a Rajya Sabha seat, but he failed to get it after the party decided to give it to a top flight CPI-M veteran.

And when vacancies to the Upper House again surfaced in March this year, Phillip's name was again taking the rounds and all thought he would get it this time as the CPI-M took the two seats that they are certain to win, but at the eleventh hour Vijayan dumped Phillip and gave it to one of his closest aide -- John Brittas ( managing director of Kairali TV) also the one who handled his 'image/brand building', and V.Sivadasan, who was handling Vijayan's social media.

After being looked down, a visibly upset Phillip wrote in his Facebook that he is turning his focus into writing and is planning to write a book- "Left and Right".

Incidentally on Monday, the Congress party organ 'Veekshenem' came out with an editorial that Phillip should seriously consider returning to the Congress and it can be possible, if he apologises for his decision to leave the party.

At places the editorial is a bit harsh, where Cherian's life in the CPI-M, is compared to that of being compared to a chained monkey.

Popular media critic Sunnykutty Abraham pointed out that the editorial piece is debatable if it's in good or bad light.

"Recently, I had a chat with Phillip and he said he did not contest the recent polls because he was given an assurance by Vijayan that he would be considered to the Upper House and expected that," said Abraham.

Meanwhile reacting to the editorial, Phillip said at the appropriate time he will react.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Downton Abbey 2 has began filming, Hugh Bonneville has confirmed.

The actor, 57, took to Twitter on Monday to reveal he was on set, as he stated: 'Good to be back', while the show's official Twitter shared further details.

In the announcement, bosses confirmed that Hugh Dancy, Laura Haddock, Nathalie Baye and Dominic West have joined the cast while a Christmas release date was confirmed.

Happy to be back! Downton Abbey 2 has began filming

Producer Gareth Neame said: 'After a very challenging year with so many of us separated from family and friends, it is a huge comfort to think that better times are ahead and that next Christmas we will be reunited with the beloved characters.'

Focus Features chairman Peter Kujawski said: 'There's no place like home for the holidays, and we can't imagine a better gift than getting to reunite with Julian, Gareth, and the entire family in 2021 to bring the Crawleys back home for their fans.'

In February, Hugh revealed he'd seen a script for a Downton Abbey film sequel, saying it's likely to happen once Covid is 'under control in a sensible way'.

The star, who plays Lord Grantham in the movie and previous series of the hit period drama, chatted about plans for another film on The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show.

Back again: Hugh Bonneville took to Twitter on Monday to reveal he was on set, as he stated: 'Good to be back', while the show's official Twitter shared further details

He told the BBC Radio 2 show: 'Here's the deal, if everybody who is offered a vaccine takes a vaccine, we can make a movie, we will make a movie.'

The actor, who has acted as a volunteer marshal at a COVID vaccination centre, told Zoe he's seen a script for the film and added: 'The planets are circling. They are beginning to get into alignment.

'There is a thing called coronavirus knocking around and until that is under control in a sensible way, we are not going to be able to get all those ducks in a row.'

An honour: He told the BBC Radio 2 show: 'Here's the deal, if everybody who is offered a vaccine takes a vaccine, we can make a movie, we will make a movie'

He added: 'But there is certainly the intention to do it. We would love to do it. We are desperate to do it.'

Hugh also said that he thinks audiences would 'enjoy' another Downton movie after the 'mess we have been through' in the past year.

The Downton Abbey movie saw beloved characters Robert (Hugh) and Cora Crawley (Elizabeth McGovern) told that they will be visited by the King and Queen and the estate have to prepare for the royal visit.

Fingers crossed: Hugh said 'if everybody who is offered a vaccine takes a vaccine, we can make a movie' (pictured Michelle Dockery as Mary and Elizabeth as Cora in the 2019 film)

However the family have to deal with a number of set backs and problems along the way including a suspected assassin attempt.

Cast members including Matthew Goode, Laura Carmichael, Jim Carter, Michelle Dockery, Dame Maggie Smith all returned for the film.

The Daily Mail revealed that Maggie Smith, who plays Violet Crawley, and French actress Nathalie Baye will appear together in Downton 2.

Interesting: The sequel is thought to be Dowager Countess Violet Crawley's last hurrah and will see her friend come to visit (Maggie pictured in character with Imelda Staunton)

Downton 2 will be the Dowager Countess of Grantham's last hurrah. The theatrical dame has been delighting Downton fans since the series, created by Julian Fellowes, launched on ITV back in 2010.

In the new Downton film, Ms Baye will play an old friend of Violet's who comes to visit her. Of course, the countess will be surrounded, as usual, by her family  including Hugh's Lord Grantham and Elizabeth McGovern as his wife Cora.

Michelle Dockery's Lady Mary and husband Henry (Matthew Goode) will be centre stage, too; along with her sister, Lady Edith, played by Laura Carmichael.
Photo taken on April 15, 2021 shows a flag-raising ceremony held at the Hong Kong Police College in south China's Hong Kong. (Xinhua/Li Gang)

HONG KONG, April 15 (Xinhua) -- "March!" A team of Hong Kong police officers strode forward and performed the Chinese-style goose-stepping at a flag-raising ceremony held in the Hong Kong Police College on Thursday.

April 15 marked the first National Security Education Day since the implementation of the Law of the People's Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) in late June last year.

Colleges of five disciplined services of the HKSAR government, including the Hong Kong Police Force, the Fire Services, the Correctional Services, the Customs and Excise, and the Immigration, held an Open Day and performed the People's Liberation Army-style foot drills to show nationalism and enhance awareness of safeguarding national security.

Among them included the police college, when a guard of honor composed of dozens of instructors performed the Chinese-style marching for the first time.

At around 10 a.m. local time, the police band played the "Ode to the Motherland" and the flag-raising team goose-stepped into the playground.

The flag bearer unfurled the five-star red flag in the air while the national anthem was played.

"Align to the right", "look forward", "salute to the national flag" ... the team completed a series of actions according to the commands called out in Cantonese Chinese.

One side of the playground was filled with spectators who responded excitedly with loud applause at the end of the marching performance.

"This year's marching team looks more refreshing and dignified," said Lee Hoi-woo, who watched Chinese-style foot drills for the first time, adding that she was deeply impressed by the performance.

The British-styled marching has been practiced in Hong Kong for years before the Chinese-style marching gained popularity here.

Hong Kong College Students Military Life Experience Camp was launched in 2011, when training of the Chinese-style marching was introduced, attracting a large number of young people to sign up.

In 2015, the Hong Kong Army Cadets Association, the only uniformed group trained with the Chinese-style military marching in Hong Kong, was established. At the flag-raising ceremony to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement last year, many youth uniformed groups in Hong Kong switched to the Chinese-style marching.

"Marching is an important part of discipline and team spirit training," Secretary for Security of the HKSAR government John Lee said, adding that all departments are encouraged to adopt the Chinese-style marching that meets their development needs. Enditem

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[ Editor: JYZ ]
FILE PHOTO: A well head and drilling rig in the Yarakta oilfield, owned by Irkutsk Oil Company (INK), in the Irkutsk region, Russia, March 11, 2019. REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko/File Photo

By Devika Krishna Kumar

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Oil prices edged higher on Monday, supported by a weaker U.S. dollar but gains were capped by concerns about the impact on demand from rising coronavirus cases in India.

Brent crude settled up 28 cents, or 0.4%, at $67.05 a barrel, after rising 6% last week. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) U.S. oil ended the session up 25 cents, or 0.4%, at $63.38 a barrel, having gained 6.4% last week.

The U.S. dollar traded at a six-week low versus major peers on Monday, with Treasury yields hovering near their weakest in five weeks.

A weaker dollar makes oil cheaper for holders of other currencies. However, COVID-19 cases have surged in India, the world's third biggest oil importer and consumer, dampening optimism for a sustained global recovery in demand.

"If today's broad-based weakness in the U.S. dollar is sustained, the energy complex should be able to maintain the bulk of last week's gains," said Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch and Associates.

"The primary hazard to continued oil price strength is the possible pre-emergence of COVID-19 case counts on a broad scale ... large portions of Asia are seeing a renewed increase in cases that could force a re-appraisal of recent upward global oil demand adjustments."

India reported a record rise in infections, which lifted overall cases to just over 15 million, making the country the second-worst affected after the United States, which has reported more than 31 million infections.

Deaths from COVID-19 in India also rose by a record 1,619 to nearly 180,000.

The capital region of Delhi ordered a six-day lockdown, joining around 13 other states across India that have decided to impose restrictions, curfews or lockdowns in their cities.

"This new wave of measures, while so far likely to be less stringent than what we saw in March 2020, when gasoline and gasoil/diesel demand in the country fell by close to 60%, is nevertheless set to weigh on transportation fuel consumption," consultancy JBC said.

Hong Kong will suspend flights from India, Pakistan and the Philippines from April 20 due to imported coronavirus infections, authorities said on Sunday.

Lending some support, Saudi Arabia's crude oil exports fell in February to their lowest in eight months, the Joint Organisations Data Initiative (JODI) said on Monday, as the world's biggest oil exporter voluntarily capped output to support oil prices.

JP Morgan now expects Brent prices to break the $70 mark by May, compared with September in its previous forecast, the bank said in a recent note. It still expects them to finish the year at a similar level of about $74.

(Additional reporting by Ahmad Ghaddar in London, Aaron Sheldrick in Tokyo; Editing by David Gregorio and Mark Potter)
A Maryland hotel executive is trying to assemble new financing for a $680 million offer to buy Tribune Publishing after his partner, a Swiss billionaire, pulled out of the bidding for the newspaper chain.

Stewart Bainum is talking to other potential investors after Hansjorg Wyss dropped out in the last few days, a person familiar with the matter said Sunday.

Wyss told Bainum that it would require too much investment to turn the chains flagship Chicago Tribune into a nationwide publication, according to the person, who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss the private negotiations.

Wyss and Bainum offered to buy the chain for $18.50 per share, topping a previous offer of $17.25 per share, or $634 million, by Tribunes largest shareholder, hedge fund Alden Global Capital. Bainum told Tribune representatives about Wyss withdrawal on Friday, and they authorized him to talk to other potential investors, according to the person familiar with the matter.

Bainum was initially interested in buying one of Tribunes papers, The Baltimore Sun, but is committed to acquiring the entire company. Two investors have expressed interest in buying Tribunes Orlando (Florida) Sentinel: former Thomson Financial CEO Mason Slaine and Craig Mateer, who founded a baggage-handling company based in Orlando.

Through a spokesman, the special committee of the Tribune Publishing board that is handling the offers declined to comment. An attempt to contact Wyss through his foundation was not successful.

Tribune also owns the New York Daily News, the Hartford (Connecticut) Courant and other newspapers.

Alden owns many newspapers through its MediaNews Group subsidiary, including the Boston Herald, the Denver Post and the San Jose Mercury News. Alden became Tribune Publishings largest shareholder in 2019 and now holds a 32% stake in the Chicago-based company. It plans to take Tribune private.

Wyss, 85, founded medical device maker Synthes USA, which he sold to Johnson & Johnson for about $20 billion in cash and stock in 2012. Forbes recently estimated his wealth at $6 billion. Wyss now lives in Wyoming.

Wyss withdrawal was reported earlier by the Chicago Tribune.

By DAVID KOENIG

AP Business Writer
BRISBANE, Australia, April 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --

MARCH QUARTER 2021 KEY HIGHLIGHTS1

Olaroz Lithium Facility (Olaroz) operations increased the Gross Cash Margin more than $1,800/tonne with the sales price up more than 50%. Costs remained near all-time lows despite much a greater proportion of sales being battery grade material which has higher production costs. Market conditions have improved materially and this will be reflected in higher June quarter product pricing. Operations continued under the established Bio-Security Protocol.

OLAROZ LITHIUM FACILITY (ORE 66.5%)2

Activities continue to focus on the health and well-being of our staff, contractors and communities while maintaining production and expansion works with no COVID-19 related stoppages during the period

Production of 3,232 tonnes was the highest achieved in a March quarter and up 18% on the previous corresponding period ( PCP ). It was down 13% quarter on quarter ( QoQ ), due mainly to a nine day planned maintenance program undertaken during February and an increase in the proportion of battery grade product

). It was down 13% quarter on quarter ( ), due mainly to a nine day planned maintenance program undertaken during February and an increase in the proportion of battery grade product Sales volume of 3,032 tonnes was up 18% on PCP, but down 30% QoQ after record sales to clear inventory in the December quarter

Sales revenue was up 7% QoQ to US$17.7 million with the realised average price achieved up 54% to US$5,853/tonne on a free onboard basis ( FOB ) 3 with stronger lithium market conditions. Prices have now increased by nearly 90% over the last six months

) with stronger lithium market conditions. Prices have now increased by nearly 90% over the last six months Cash costs (on a cost of goods sold basis) 4 were down 3% to US$3,867/tonne on PCP excluding the export tax of US$210/tonne. Importantly, costs were only up 7% QoQ despite the proportion of battery grade sales increasing from 34% to 47% QoQ

were down 3% to US$3,867/tonne on PCP excluding the export tax of US$210/tonne. Importantly, costs were only up 7% QoQ despite the proportion of battery grade sales increasing from 34% to 47% QoQ Gross cash margin was up materially to US$1,986/t, an improvement of US$1,812/t on the December quarter with better pricing

An agreement has been reached with Prime Planet Energy and Solutions ( PPES ), the automotive battery cell manufacturing joint venture between Toyota (51%) and Panasonic (49%) for supply of battery grade lithium carbonate during Japanese fiscal year 21/22 ( JFY21/22 ). Future annual discussions will determine details for subsequent years leading to supply of 30,000 tonne per annum ( ktpa ) of lithium carbonate equivalent ( LCE ) by CY25. Orocobre has commenced dispatching product from Olaroz to a bonded warehouse in Japan in preparation for the first delivery of battery grade lithium carbonate to PPES.

), the automotive battery cell manufacturing joint venture between Toyota (51%) and Panasonic (49%) for supply of battery grade lithium carbonate during Japanese fiscal year 21/22 ( ). Future annual discussions will determine details for subsequent years leading to supply of 30,000 tonne per annum ( ) of lithium carbonate equivalent ( ) by CY25. Orocobre has commenced dispatching product from Olaroz to a bonded warehouse in Japan in preparation for the first delivery of battery grade lithium carbonate to PPES. Lithium prices continue to recover and Orocobre price guidance has now been raised with Q4 FY21 prices expected to be approximately US$7,400/tonne (FOB)3. Budgeted FY22 production is fully contracted and subject to variable pricing related to benchmarks that will benefit from the expected continued improvement in market conditions

____________________________

1 All figures presented in this report are unaudited

2 All figures 100% Olaroz Project basis

3 Orocobre report price as FOB (Free On Board) which excludes insurance and freight charges included in CIF (Cost, Insurance, Freight) pricing.

Therefore, the Companys reported prices are net of freight (shipping), insurance and sales commission. FOB prices are reported by the Company to provide clarity on the sales revenue that is recognized by SDJ, the joint venture company in Argentina

4 Excludes royalties, export tax and corporate costs

LITHIUM GROWTH PROJECTS

During the March quarter work at Olaroz Stage 2 continued with strong adherence to the COVID-19 bio-security protocol. At the end of March, 70% of contracts had been awarded and a further 8% were at award recommendation stage. Additional accommodation facilities were completed in the quarter and more will become available in the June quarter

Stage 2 is expected to be complete in H1 CY22 and to commence production the following half. Production will ramp up over two years to full capacity of 25ktpa of primary grade lithium carbonate by H2 CY24

Naraha Lithium Hydroxide Plant construction has continued throughout the period and is now approximately 94% complete. Commissioning will be delayed until Q1 CY22 due to COVID-19 related delays of travel to site by international technicians

A scoping study into a further expansion at Olaroz (Stage 3) commenced during the March quarter. The study will investigate options for additional production of 25-50ktpa from Olaroz, Cauchari or a combination of both, leveraging existing Stage 1 and 2 infrastructure

Discussions continue with Toyota Tsusho Corporation (TTC) regarding an expansion of lithium hydroxide production to meet forecast growth in demand



BORAX ARGENTINA

Overall sales volume for the December quarter was 10,282 tonnes, down 3% QoQ and 4% on PCP

Sales revenue was up 5% QoQ due to higher average prices that were up 8% QoQ with strong customer demand

CORPORATE

At 31 March 2021, Orocobre corporate had available cash of ~US$241.6 million of which US$11.1 million and US$85.5 million have been set aside as pre-completion guarantees for the Naraha debt facility and Olaroz Expansion debt facility respectively

Including SDJ and Borax cash and project debt, net group cash at 31 March 2021 was US$97.7 million, down from US$119.8 million at 31 December 2020

OLAROZ LITHIUM FACILITY

COVID-19

During the first quarter of CY21 the epidemiological situation in Argentina was under control, with low infections in our areas of operation. The team is planning additional preventive actions to manage any impact from an expected second wave across the country. As vaccination for all employees is not yet an option, our first and most effective barrier remains a strong Bio-security Protocol.

Daily monitoring of the workforce health continues throughout 14-21 day rosters that apply to all personnel and include those employees who would normally reside in local communities. Since July 2020, the Company medical service has performed more than 9,500 COVID-19 tests (Serological and PCR). At this point, approximately 35% of our employees have had the disease and have generated high levels of antibodies.

Additional accommodation facilities are being installed to enable the growing construction workforce to operate within the COVID-19 bio-security protocol.

SAFETY

Health and safety remains a key priority for the Company. One Lost Time Injury (LTI) was recorded with a contractor at Olaroz on February 27th after 446 days without an LTI in both the operations and the expansion project. The worker involved was provided immediate medical assistance and is now recovering.

In March the ISO 14001 & 9001 & 18001 audit was performed. No major findings were reported and recertification was granted. A new work permit system and hazard analysis tool will be implemented in the next several weeks. The Dupont programs continue to enhance our safety culture and remain a key priority. Orocobre is consolidating all key leading and lagging indicators following the ACSI Future Health and Safety reporting.

OPERATIONAL UPDATE

QUALITY

Brine concentration remains well above prior years supporting excellent plant stability and reliability. The continuing high process capability ratio (CpK) demonstrates the ongoing ability of Olaroz to produce lithium carbonate well within specification limits.

Product quality continues to improve with reduced magnetic particles and increased product consistency.

PRODUCTION

Production for the March quarter was 3,232 tonnes, up 18% from 2,732 tonnes in the PCP with 55% of production being battery grade lithium carbonate. Brine concentration remains at higher levels than in recent years resulting in high daily production rates, higher plant recovery and continued low costs. A nine day plant shutdown was undertaken in February for planned maintenance.

SALES AND COMMERCIAL

Product sales were 3,032 tonnes of lithium carbonate up 20% on PCP but down 30% QoQ after a strong December quarter. Total sales revenue was up 7% QoQ to US$17.7 million and up 46% on PCP. The average price received was up 54% QoQ to US$5,853/tonne on an FOB3 basis and up 22% on PCP with stronger pricing relative to a year ago.

Approximately half the sales in the March quarter reflect contracts that were agreed in late November and early December prior to significant movement in lithium prices.

More than 50% of forecast sales for the June 2021 quarter are expected to be allocated to long term battery grade contracts as Olaroz commences delivering product to PPES. Such percentage of battery grade product sales is expected to increase into FY22.

Several customers have recently expressed an interest in increasing their volume offtake allocation for FY22 as they struggle to secure volumes with other vendors suggesting that the market is now in a deficit position. Budgeted production at Olaroz for FY22 is fully sold and additional volumes will only become available when Olaroz Stage 2 commences production in the second half of CY22.

The estimated average price for the June 2021 quarter is expected to be approximately US$7,400/tonne FOB3, subject to shipping schedules.

PPES MOU

An agreement has been reached with Prime Planet Energy and Solutions (PPES), the automotive battery cell manufacturing joint venture between Toyota (51%) and Panasonic (49%) for supply of battery grade lithium carbonate during Japanese fiscal year 21/22 (JFY21/22). Future annual discussions will determine details for subsequent years leading to supply of 30,000 tonne per annum (tpa) of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) by CY25. Orocobre has commenced dispatching product from Olaroz to a bonded warehouse in Japan in preparation for the first delivery of battery grade lithium carbonate to PPES.

COSTS/MARGINS

Cash cost of goods sold for the quarter (including COVID-19 related costs) decreased by 3% on PCP remaining near all-time lows at US$3,867/tonne4. This excludes export duties for the quarter of US$210/tonne. Importantly, costs increased by only 7% QoQ, while the proportion of battery grade sales increased from 34% to 47% QoQ.

Total cost of sales has been maintained at low levels demonstrating the significant focus and reduction of fixed costs within the operating business. Lower reagent usage due to improved process efficiency and an increase in the export incentive refund with higher product prices have also contributed to the strong cost performance.

Gross cash margins for the quarter returned to being strongly positive at US$1986/tonne, this is expected to further improve with better pricing in Q4 FY21.

STAGE 2 EXPANSION AT OLAROZ

ACHIEVED MILESTONES

Commissioned and partially operating the brine handling system for Stage 2

8 out of 9 harvestable ponds are in service and 5 out 22 evaporation ponds are in service

Lime plant #2 has been operating since February

TK1100, a new brine collection pond has been in operation since January

4 new wells are in service and four additional wells in the final stages of completion



FUTURE MILESTONES

Work in H2 CY21 will focus on the delivery of additional gas fired power generators, completion of pond construction and construction of lime plant #3. In the first half of CY22 all new wells, the soda ash facilities and carbonation plant will be completed.

PROJECT STATUS

During the March quarter work at Olaroz Stage 2 continued with strong adherence the COVID-19 bio-security protocol. At the end of March, 70% of contracts had been awarded and a further 8% were at award recommendation stage. Additional accommodation facilities were completed in the quarter and more will become available in the June quarter.

Stage 2 is expected to be complete in H1 CY22 and to commence production the following half. Production will ramp up over two years to full capacity of 25ktpa of primary grade lithium carbonate by H2 CY24.

INFRASTRUCTURE

Construction camp expansion works continue with 250 additional beds available in March. It is expected another 200 beds will become available in April. Further beds will be available in May to cater for the rapidly growing construction workforce which currently is ~500 personnel. The camp mess has also been completed and further sewage treatment facilities are being planned. A variety of medium voltage lines and other electrical works are in progress. Overall infrastructure works are now 75% complete.

WELLS AND BRINE GATHERING

Brine extraction works are now 58% complete. Six wells are currently at various stages of completion. Five drill rigs are currently in operation. Brine gathering networks are progressively being installed with the TK1100 facility operating since January.

PONDS

Ponds construction is well progressed with approximately three quarters of work completed. Geomembranes continue to be installed as ponds are completed. Civil and electrical work is underway at six ponds. A total of 13 harvestable and non-harvestable ponds have now been completed, a further 17 are under various stages of construction.

CARBONATION, LIME AND SODA ASH FACILITIES

Carbonate plant construction commenced in February along with soda ash handling facilities. Earthworks are advancing with foundations being established. All of the steel structure for the carbonation and soda ash plants has now arrived at site including cladding, roofing and overhead cranes.

Planning for lime plant #3 is well underway and contracts are likely to be awarded by the end of April. This additional liming capacity is expected to be available by the end of the year.

NARAHA LITHIUM HYDROXIDE PLANT

PROGRESS TO DATE

The Naraha Plant, the first of its kind to be built in Japan, is designed to convert primary grade lithium carbonate feedstock into battery grade lithium hydroxide. Feedstock for the 10,000 tpa Naraha Plant will be sourced from the Olaroz Lithium Facilitys Stage 2 Expansion that will produce primary grade (>99.0% Li 2 CO 3 ) lithium carbonate.

Since construction commenced at the Naraha Plant there have been no LTIs recorded with nearly 100,000 hours worked on the project. An earthquake occurred on 13 February which caused only minor damage to the office building, no defects have been found in the plant. A further earthquake occurred in March with no damage or injury to personnel or the site.

At 31 March, approximately US$50 million has been spent on engineering, civil works, electrical, instrumentation, fabrication and procurement at the Naraha Plant. Capex spend has remained relatively static due to the agreed payment schedule with Veolia, the EPC contractor.

Site operations have continued throughout the period with construction now approximately 94% complete. Commissioning will be delayed until Q1 CY22 due to COVID-19 related delays of travel to site by Veolias international commissioning engineers and technicians.

SHARED VALUE PROGRAM AND COMMUNITY

The Shared Value team built on their knowledge of local communities and sustainability with a combination of remote work and a number of visits to communities that are directly and indirectly influenced by the companys operations.

Key actions during the quarter included:

Community Relations

Management of work rosters within COVID-19 limitations: Communication with Community Coordinators, local government contacts and local suppliers to manage and confirm the date and location of PCR sample collection (COVID-19 tests) and the transfer schedules for rostered employees

Identification of risks and opportunities for the social development of communities within the COVID-19 environment. COVID-19 has presented new challenges for the management of interaction and implementation of programs within local communities

Ongoing engagement and field visits with community leaders and community members to respond to their queries related to development programs

The expansion project director and team made presentations to local communities on plans and opportunities for local suppliers and future employee needs

Community development programs

Program to Support Food Independence: Family Food Production Units UPAF

A program to encourage independent food supply in local communities continued during the quarter. In Coranzuli families are finishing the harvesting stage with excellent results for vegetables and fruit such as chard, lettuce, tomatoes, beans, strawberries and raspberries. In Olaroz the community continued with construction of greenhouses that are now 70% complete. Plans and materials are being arranged for a planting of winter crops which is expected in May.

Sustainable Management of Vicunas at Olaroz Chico

Participants in the Vicuna management program at Olaroz Chico were supported in the development of a conservation and management plan. Family Farming program technicians from the National Institute of Technology (Jujuy) and community members have been planning and obtaining approval for construction of additional infrastructure for management of the Vicuna herd.

MARKET

The lithium market continued recovering during the March 2021 quarter. Average global prices for lithium carbonate increased by more than 50% from the December 2020 quarter as demand from cathode manufacturers continued to increase production in response to the Electric Vehicle (EV) driven demand.

DEMAND

Demand for Electric Vehicles (EVs) continues to accelerate with global sales during January and February 2021 more than double those of January and February 2020 as sales were constrained by COVID-19 in China.

EV models with lithium carbonate dominant chemistry batteries continue to be the preference in China where the battery grade lithium carbonate spot prices increased approximately 90% during the March quarter as cathode manufacturers rushed to secure supply. Prices in Asia-ex China increased by approximately 25% during the quarter.

Support from national governments towards EVs strengthened during the March 2021 quarter particularly in North America with the Biden administration committing US$174 billion investment in EVs through a mix of subsidies to individuals and the private sector, as well as replacing the governments vehicle fleet with EVs.

Longer- term EV demand outlook has been revised upwards by a range of market analysts in recent months, suggesting that estimated global sales will increase from 3.2 million units in 2020 to approximately 14 million units by 2025. Demand for lithium chemicals is expected to increase to approximately 1 million tonnes by 2025 following recent investment commitments on battery giga factories by the private sector.

SUPPLY

Lithium chemicals production continued at reduced capacity in China during March 2021 which was impacted by the spring holiday as well as restricted feedstock supply from Chinese brines due to cold weather conditions and reduced production capacity from Australian spodumene producers. Such market dynamics coupled with increased demand from cathode manufacturers led to further inventory reductions in the region and pricing increases for spodumene and lithium chemicals in the spot market.

In response to the favourable market conditions, Australian spodumene producers and Chinese convertors are expected to increase production/conversion capacity throughout the rest of CY2021. Additional lithium chemicals production is also anticipated from South American producers towards late 2021. However, its estimated that global lithium chemicals production will not be able to catch up with growth in demand in the short term.

BORAX ARGENTINA S.A.

SAFETY

Borax has improved safety performance and the team have worked hard to restore the safety commitment and accountability at all levels of the operating business.

Subsequent to the safety review last year, there have not been any LTI or Environmental incidents at the three operational Borax sites. As at 31st March, Sijes recorded 274 days free of accidents, Tincalayu achieved 258 days and Campo Quijano has had 217 days without an LTI.

This quarter Borax successfully finished the annual shutdown in Sijes and in Tincalayu without any Safety or Environmental incidents.

A Monthly Safety Committee was developed. Initiatives that will be implemented over the rest of the year include the development of a local emergency response team, improvement of the work permit safety system and the use of Intelex workflows to report, investigate and track corrective actions of adverse events.

The Management team is setting objectives for the next financial year to fully implement leading and lagging indicators. Some of the Dupont initiatives implemented in SDJ are being considered for implementation at Borax.

PRODUCTION, SALES AND OPERATIONAL UPDATE

The March quarter achieved sales of 10,282 tonnes, down 3% QoQ and down approximately 4% from the PCP. Total sales revenue was up 5% QoQ with the average price received up 8% QoQ.

Operations have continued under the Orocobre Bio-security Protocol.

COMBINED PRODUCT SALES VOLUME BY QUARTER

CORPORATE AND ADMINISTRATION

FINANCE

CASH BALANCE

At 31 March 2021, Orocobre corporate had available cash of ~US$241.6 million of which US$11.1 million and US$85.5 million have been set aside as pre-completion guarantees for the Naraha debt facility and Olaroz Expansion debt facility respectively.

The US$5.2 million corporate net cash reduction from the previous quarter was the result of US$3.8 million advanced to SDJ Joint Venture as a shareholder loan to largely fund finance payments, US$1.5 million corporate costs and US$0.2 million other project payments partially offset by US$ 0.3 million of interest income.

Including SDJ and Borax cash and project debt, net group cash at 31 March 2021 was US$97.7 million, down from US$119.8 million at 31 December 2020 as calculated below and after including Naraha facilities:

ARGENTINA ECONOMIC CONDITIONS

Currency: The official foreign exchange rate depreciated by 9.3% in the March quarter from AR$84.15 at 31 December 2020, to AR$92 at 31 March 2021. The accumulated 12-month period from 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021 resulted in a ~43% devaluation of the AR$ against the US$.

Inflation: March inflation was 4.8% and accumulated ~13% in the quarter. The accumulated 12-month period from 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021 resulted in inflation of approximately ~43%.

Authorised by:

Rick Anthon

Joint Company Secretary

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

Andrew Barber

Chief Investor Relations Officer

Orocobre Limited

P: +61 7 3720 9088

M: +61 418 783 701

E: abarber@orocobre.com

W: www.orocobre.com


BRIDGEPORT  A recently retired city police officer, awaiting trial for allegedly raping an 11-year-old girl, pleaded not guilty Monday to allegedly sexually assaulting another girl more than a dozen years ago.

Ivan Delgado, a 13-year member of the Bridgeport Police Department, had been arrested in November on a warrant charging him with first-degree sexual assault.

His plea hearing had been delayed because of the pandemic.

Delgado pleaded not guilty virtually before Superior Court Judge Kevin Russo and asked for a jury trial.

The judge continued the case to Feb. 25 when a pretrial conference is scheduled for Delgados other pending case.

Delgados lawyer, John R. Gulash, declined comment.

Delgado was on administrative leave without pay after his first arrest in September and then retired from the department.

On Aug. 29, police said they received notice from the state Department of Children and Families that the mother of an 11-year-old girl was reporting her daughter had been allegedly raped by Delgado, according to the arrest warrant affidavit.

During a forensic interview, the girl told them Delgado, who is acquainted with the girls family, allegedly touched her inappropriately a number of times earlier and the severity of the assaults had increased recently to rape, the affidavit said.

In September, Delgado pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree sexual assault and three counts of risk of injury to a minor. He was released after posting $250,000 bond.

In the second case, police said a 32-year-old woman complained that she had been repeatedly sexually assaulted by Delgado from 1993 to 2005.

According to the arrest warrant, the woman said she had gone to live with Delgado and his wife when she was 6 because of domestic unrest in her home. Soon thereafter, she said Delgado allegedly began sexually assaulting her in a basement room in his home that he had converted into a gym, the affidavit states.
Union Home Minister has said that the production of the life saving drug Remdesivir is 'adequate' and as a precautionary measure its export has been banned.

Shah said on Sunday, "The production of Remdisivir is adequate. We have banned export as precautionary but in panic people are buying in bulk which is leading to a shortage."

"I appeal to the people to buy it when only the doctor prescribes," he added.

The response comes after many state governments,including Maharashtra have complained about the shortage of the injections .

India on Sunday reported 2,61,500 fresh Covid cases, the highest single-day spike ever, pushing the country's overall Covid tally to 1,47,88,109, according to the Health Ministry data.

--IANS

rak/miz/dpb

(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 McGowan government has been accused of complacency after staff at Royal Perth Hospital were put at risk of exposure to COVID-19.

An investigation is continuing into the infection-control breach involving the captain of the AquaGenie bulk iron ore carrier.

A service lift was not properly cordoned off after it was used to transport the man in his 60s from the RPH emergency department to the intensive care unit on Saturday.

'Review of CCTV footage has identified that three staff members, who were not wearing PPE, unknowingly entered the lift within 15 minutes of the patient transport, prior to it being cleaned,' East Metropolitan Health Service Chief Executive Liz MacLeod said.

Liberal health spokeswoman Libby Mettam said the breach revealed 'gaping holes' in the health department's protocols for managing infected patients (pictured, Labor premier Mark McGowan)

'WA Health public health officials have been assisting RPH and said the three staff members involved had followed correct current procedures and that any risk of COVID-19 transmission was deemed to be very low.'

The staff members have been placed in self-quarantine in 'an abundance of caution' and are being monitored daily for symptoms.

Two of the three were fully vaccinated against COVID-19, while the third had received their first dose, the statement said.

'There is no public health risk to other members of staff or hospital patients or visitors,' Ms MacLeod said.

A service lift was not properly cordoned off after it was used to transport an infected man in his 60s from the RPH emergency department to the intensive care unit on Saturday

Liberal health spokeswoman Libby Mettam said the breach revealed 'gaping holes' in the health department's protocols for managing infected patients.

'This seriously raises the question about what the McGowan government has been doing 12 months into a pandemic, where it can't effectively manage one patient,' she said.

'The McGowan government has had more than a year to prepare and such basic measures and procedures should well and truly be in place.'

The AquaGenie vessel has departed Australian waters and set sail towards the Philippines after being docked off the coast of Karratha.

A legal direction had been issued blocking the ship from entering WA waters after a crew member returned a positive coronavirus test.

Both he and the ship's captain were removed from the ship and transported to Perth where they were placed in isolation in hospital.
BOSTON - At the end of 2020, experts led by allergists at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) examined all information related to possible allergic reactions to COVID-19 vaccinations. Now the team has published updated insights based on their experience overseeing more than 65,000 employees who have become fully vaccinated since that time. The group's latest findings are published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice.

"Our main goal is to enable as many individuals as possible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine safely and avoid unnecessary vaccine hesitancy due to a lack of knowledge around allergic reactions to vaccines," says lead author Aleena Banerji, MD, clinical director of the Allergy and Clinical Immunology Unit at MGH.

In addition to updated guidance on the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, this guidance also includes the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine, which had not yet been authorized for emergency use at the end of 2020.

With additional clinical data and authorization of the third COVID-19 vaccine in the United States, the investigators propose modified approaches to the evaluation of patients with a history of allergies. This includes clear and simple initial questions to identify individuals who are eligible for all COVID-19 vaccines without needing an allergist evaluation.

"With more time and experience, we have been able to significantly narrow the group of patients with prior allergies who require an allergist assessment before COVID-19 vaccination," says senior author Kimberly G. Blumenthal, MD, MSc, co-director of the Clinical Epidemiology Program within MGH's Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology. "We now advise that only the rare individuals who have had a recent severe allergic reaction to polyethylene glycol, an ingredient in the vaccines, see an allergist or immunologist for evaluation, which may include skin testing." Individuals with severe allergies to foods, oral drugs, latex, bee stings or venom can safely receive the COVID-19 vaccines.

The team noted that severe allergic reactions to the vaccines remain exceedingly rare. Vaccine clinics should continue to observe higher-risk individuals for 30 minutes after vaccination, and they should have staff trained in recognizing and managing allergic reactions that may occur.

###

About the Massachusetts General Hospital

Massachusetts General Hospital, founded in 1811, is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The Mass General Research Institute conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the nation, with annual research operations of more than $1 billion and comprises more than 9,500 researchers working across more than 30 institutes, centers and departments. In August 2020, Mass General was named #6 in the U.S. News & World Report list of "America's Best Hospitals."
A drunk passenger claims a cop acted aggressively towards his Uber driver after accusing him of speeding despite not using a radar gun.

TikTok user Danny Burchard was in the backseat of a rideshare car in Melbourne on Friday night when his driver was pulled over by a police officer.

'I was completely blind. My Uber driver got pulled over and this cop was so aggressive. I don't have any problem with cops at all but this guy was just a knob,' the TikTok star said.

The male police officer could be heard in the video yelling at the driver: 'Stop arguing with me! Just stop bloody arguing with me.'

TikTok user Danny Burchard was in the backseat of a rideshare car in Melbourne on Friday night when his driver was pulled over by a police officer

The male police officer could be heard in the video yelling at the driver: 'Stop arguing with me! Just stop bloody arguing with me'

The driver responded: 'Why are you shouting [at] me?'

'If you weren't so argumentative as soon as I started speaking to you,' the officer yelled back, before the rideshare driver accused the cop of calling him a liar.

'Have you caught me with the [speed] gun?' the driver asked.

The officer responded: 'You only want -- you know I didn't get you on the radar. I know you [were speeding] because I know how fast cars are going because I can estimate your speed and I know how fast you were going.

'And yes I can fine you on an estimation. I know how fast I had to come up here to catch up to you because you were going that fast.

'Just shut up now,' the cop said before walking away from the Uber driver's car.

In a second clip, the officer could be seen breath testing the driver.

'Alright, that's clear. You need to slow down and I know how fast you were going,' he told him.

The TikTok star said the cop was 'so aggressive' and a 'knob'

It's not clear from the footage whether or not the driver was fined.

Hundreds of TikTok ursers commented on the video, titled 'Overly Aggressive cop vs. Uber driver,' blasting the officer for his hostility.

'You can't fine someone based on estimated speed without proof,' one woman said.

'He's not argumentative... he's sticking up for himself. Good on the driver!' wrote another.

'The officer isn't even making sense. I'm with the Uber driver,' a third wrote.

Others praised the Uber driver for standing his ground during the clash with the officer.

'
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A mass shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis Thursday left eight people dead in the latest instance of mass-fatality gun violence in the United States  a longstanding issue Staten Island District Attorney Michael E. McMahon said the country is falling short on addressing.

Brandon Hole, the 19-year-old shooter, legally purchased two semiautomatic firearms used in the attack just months after police seized a shotgun from him when his mother raised concerns about his mental state, the New York Times first reported.

Despite the warning and the seizure of the weapon, the Times reported that Hole was not subject to Indianas red flag law, which would have barred him from possessing a firearm if found by a judge to present dangerous risk. Authorities told the Times is was unclear if such a hearing occurred after the seizure.

While our hearts break for the victims and their loved ones, including those members of the Sikh community, this tragedy is a reminder that our nation is not doing near enough to address preventable gun violence, said McMahon on Twitter Sunday.

The system is not working, added McMahon.

While our hearts break for the victims and their loved ones, including those members of the Sikh community, this tragedy is a reminder that our nation is not doing near enough to address preventable gun violence. The system is not working. https://t.co/cswmLJnXrN  Michael E. McMahon (@StatenIslandDA) April 18, 2021

Four of the six victims of the shooting were members of the Sikh community in Indianapolis. Authorities have not publicly speculated on a motive of the attack.

The shooting is the latest mass shooting across the country and the third in Indianapolis this year alone.

There is no concrete definition of a mass shooting. For example, The Violence Project, which maintains a mass shooter database, uses the Congressional Research Service definition, which the organization notes is quite conservative.

Under that definition, a mass shooting is an attack where four or more victims are murdered with firearms in public  excluding domestic shootings and shootings attributable to underlying criminal activity.

Nevertheless, the plague of gun violence has wrought significant devastation across the United States.

Since March 16, when eight people were shot and killed at a stretch of Atlanta-area spas, at least 45 mass shootings have been tracked by the Gun Violence Archive, which categorizes a mass shooting as an instance when more than four people  excluding the shooter  are killed or injured.

Last year, more than 600 mass shootings were recorded by the Gun Violence Archive, the nonprofits data shows, compared to 417 in 2019.

Earlier this month, President Joe Biden announced a series of executive actions aimed at combatting gun violence, including cracking down on homemade firearms that lack serial numbers. However, he noted that legislation would need to be drafted and passed to create lasting change.

His administration called on Congress to pass a national red flag law, as well as legislation incentivizing states to pass red flag laws of their own. The Justice Department is expected to publish model red flag laws for states in the coming months.

Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island/South Brooklyn) did not respond to an emailed request Sunday asking if she supports the creation of national red flag legislation that would temporary bar people in crisis from accessing firearms if they present a danger to themselves or others.
According to UN Nuclear Watchdog, Iran is enriching uranium up to 60 percent. The purification process is getting done at the above-ground Natanz nuclear plant. Iran is enriching Uranium once again

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has reported that Iranian officials have announced that the enrichment process is getting done at Natanz on Saturday, reported Epoch Times.

All the uranium is getting enriched at a nuclear plant to reach 60 percent fissile purity, the highest level done by the Iranians.

Based on a report by a U.N. watchdog that told Reuters in a statement. "The Agency confirmed that Iran had started to produce UF6 with a 60 percent U-235 enrichment by simultaneously introducing UF6 with a 5 percent U-235 enrichment into two cascades of IR-4 centrifuges and IR-6 centrifuges at the Natanz Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant."

Part of the process is feeding uranium hexafluoride (UF6), which is forced into the centrifuges to start the purifying process.

Reuters also cited parts of an internal IAEA study to member states that elaborated on the enrichment process.

The declaration of Iran to the nuclear agency says enrichment level of the UF6 produced at PFEP was 55.3 percent U-235. The nuclear watchdog has given a sample of the UF6 for weapons-grade use analysis to verify if Iran is telling the truth independently. In time the study of the sample will be reported.

Iran's nuclear refinement of UF6 is shady, intentions of Iran enriching uranium is the suspect. It's considered an atomic threat if the weapons-grade uranium is used. If the U-235 is at 90%, this will be regarded as something else by other nations.

Iran Builds New Construction at Underground Nuclear Site with US Tension

When Iran was able to have a U-235 purity at 20%, it violated the nuclear deal. The only percentage of the Islamic nation is allowed at 3.67%, which is not considered as pure as 20% when processed by atomic scientists.

One of the reasons why Tehran processed a purity of 60% U-235 is due to equipment damaged at the larger underground Fuel Enrichment Plant at Natanz. The Iranians blame Israel, and they had someone in mind which caused the nuclear accident.

On another page, President Joe Biden called the move to offer the nuclear watchdog agency a sample good start. He intends to talk to Iran to continue the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or the Nuclear deal that President Trump ended in 2018 because of the vague intention of Tehran. Even before President Biden won the White House in 2021, Obama-era officials were in continuous contact with Iranian officials.

"We do not support and do not believe that Iran's declaration that it will move to 60 percent enrichment is at all beneficial," Biden said during a joint press conference with the Japanese Prime Minister.

He added that Iran is taking measures to have indirect discussions with the U.S. and its partners to continue the nuclear deal without making unnecessary agreements.

According to the U.S. State Department, the Biden administration is sticking to a similar stand of the former Trump administration not to engage until Iran's enriching Uranium is limited to remove the economic sanctions against it. The Trump administration made it hard to have nuclear grade U-235 processed, but Iran is getting bolder with Biden.

Iran Pursues Nuclear Production and Nuclear Submarines If the US Reset Sanctions

Iranian Revolutionary Guard Fires Missiles Against Dummy US Aircraft Carrier

@ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
[April 19, 2021] SAFFRON TECH ANNOUNCES TWO MICHELIN-STAR CHEF KIKO MOYA AS NEW GLOBAL BRAND AMBASSADOR

Chef Kiko Moya brings his expertise as a legendary chef that has been fascinated by the red gold that grows from the driest lands that are virtually barren. Understanding the nature of saffron through the eyes of a culinary expert will further advance Saffron Techs protocols for vertical farming the spice. Tel Aviv, Israel, April 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Critically-acclaimed chef Kiko Moya has been named the first global brand ambassador for Saffron Tech, a subsidiary of Seedo Corp. (OTCQB: SEDO). As part of Saffron Techs new integrated marketing initiative, Chef Moya will test the saffron produced through vertical farming methods and provide expert feedback on the quality and flavor of the product. Chef Moya will promote Saffron Tech across all social media channels and introduce vertically farmed saffron to other notable chefs across the globe. Kiko Moya is one of Spains most decorated Michelin-star chefs, says David Freidenberg, CEO, Seedo Corp. We want to be sure that the saffron grown using our vertical farming technology and protocols meet the highest standards. We welcome Chef Moyas expertise and adviseent as we continue to advance in our mission to create a reliable source of saffron that equals the product grown through traditional agricultural methods.



Kiko Moya co-owns Lescaleta, a +40 year old family-run restaurant located in a quaint town in the southeast region of Spain. The legendary restaurant is frequented by locals and travelers alike to appreciate the cuisine that experiments with local ingredients and ancient techniques, according to Chef Moya. Saffron has a complex flavor and unmistakable aroma that can elevate a variety of dishes, says Chef Kiko Moya. The versatility of saffron allows us to use it in a large number of elaborations, from hot dishes, rice dishes, fish, white meats and of course, desserts. This is the reason why I decided to contribute my knowledge of the multiple qualities of this flower.

Saffron, known as the red gold of Spain, is mostly produced using the traditional labor-intensive farming practices in the Castilla-La Mancha region. The spice is an essential ingredient in Spanish cuisine, especially in traditional paella dishes the country is known for. Spain is the second-largest exporter of Saffron. About Seedo: Seedo Corp. (OTC: SEDO) is an agritech company that focuses on the research, development and commercialization of agriculture products. Seedos technology is aimed at transforming the way agriculture id done by offering a responsible and sustainable way to grow crops in a world confronted by environmental challenges and dwindling earth reserves, diminishing water sources and unstable weather conditions. Saffron Tech is a wholly owned subsidiary of Seedo Corp. ?Media Relations Contact: David Freidenberg, Chief Executive Officer,

info@saffron.ag

(800) 608-6432



Attachment Chef Kiko Moya



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New Delhi, April 19 : Concerned with the rising case of Covid, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday decided not to hold big rallies in poll bound West Bengal.

The party has decided to hold small public meetings of not more than 500 people to be addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and senior central leaders.

In a statement the BJP said that all these small public meetings will be organised in open spaces following all the Covid guidelines."Assembly polls in West Bengal are going on and the completion of this constitutional and democratic process is also very important.

"Keeping this in mind, the BJP Chief J P Nadda, has decided that only in West Bengal small public meetings of all the central leaders including the Prime Minister ANarendra Modi will be held in which not more than 500 persons will be allowed to attend," the BJP said in a statement.

The BJP said it has decided to stop big rallies in West Bengal as it is much needed to break the chain of Covid infections.

Yesterday former Congress president Rahul Gandhi cancelled his political rallies in West Bengal. After Gandhi's announcement,the Trinamool Congress announced that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will not be campaigning in Kolkata and she has also decided to hold rallies for not more than 30 minutes in other districts.

Of the eight phases of West Bengal Assembly, polling has taken place in five phases and voting for eight and final phase will take place on April 29. Counting of votes for the West Bengal Assembly will take place on May 2.

On Sunday, Nadda held a virtual meeting of the party national office bearers and state unit presidents to discuss the growing cases of Corona in the country.

The BJP Chief asked them to start the campaign of "Apna Booth Corona Mukt" (My Booth Corona Free) and make it a success.

Nadda also directed all state units of the BJP should immediately set up a 'Corona Helpdesk' and also start a 'Corona Helpline' to help the people in their states.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Jim Weiss

Fee income at ODwyers Top 50 ranked healthcare firms grew 30.5 percent to $910.4.M during pandemic 2020 as they scrambled to counsel clients on how to deal with the national medical emergency. The Top 10 firms boasted even heftier growth, soaring 34.5 percent to $760M.

Real Chemistry, the former W2O Group, tightened its grip on the No. 1 healthcare rankings spot as CEO Jim Weiss registered a robust 59.5 percent surge in income to $349.2M, driven in part by an acquisition binge that added seven firms to the San Francisco-based firms roster.

Edelman maintained its second position in the healthcare category as income rose 9.2 percent to $168.8M.

Ruder Finn took the No. 3 slot with income of $36M, up 15.4 percent from last year's performance

Finn Partners, up 10.3 percent to $34.2M, advanced to the No. 4 slot. The New York firm passed APCO Worldwide, which grew 3.2 percent to $32.6M, and Spectrum, down 2.9 percent to $32.9M.

Evoke KYNE (+23.5 percent to $31M), Crosby Marketing Communications (+20.5 percent to $28.2M), imre (+14.3 percent to $24.1) and ICR (+21.2 percent to $22.9M) round out the Top 10 firms.

Health is Everyones Business

Kirsty Graham

Kirsty Graham, CEO of Edelman Public Affairs and global chair of its healthcare sector, said the COVID-19 pandemic made it clear that healthcare is everyones business.

From new partnerships across the health industry to new voices joining vaccine confidence efforts, even those once considered far outside the health sector now have a role to play, she said. Healthcare is a societal rather than personal responsibility, an explicit expectation and an opportunity that applies to individuals, organizations and communities alike.

While the healthcare sector made record achievements in launching world-class vaccines, Graham said there is an urgent need to address the inequities in the system.

She noted that Edelmans Trust Barometer found that globally, 62 percent agree that those with less education, less money and fewer resources are being unfairly burdened by the pandemic.

This is an urgent call to address not only the symptoms and spread of COVID-19 but the flaws and inequalities it exposed in our healthcare systems and our coordination mechanisms in and across countries, said Graham.

She said corporate commitments to diversity, inclusion and equity in healthcare must be rooted in public policies and backed by action.

Graham is encouraged to see healthcare companies getting their own houses in orderincreasing diversity in their leadership and workforce, building relationships within their communities, and ensuring better representation across races and ethnic groups in clinical trials.

She said Edelman and its sister agency, Salutem, are proud to work alongside leaders from Merck, Bristol Myers Squibb and Eli Lilly and Company to support these important efforts.

Our future achievements in healthcare will be rooted in trusttrust that an organization is sharing truthful information, trust that the benefits of science are available to all, said Graham, who joined Edelman from Pfizer just before the COVID-19 outbreak. The profile and importance of health issues will endure long after the pandemic, as will the need to ensure healthcare is treated as a right and not a privilege.

Finn Keeps Double-Digit Growth Record Intact

Gil Bashe

Finn Partners healthcare group has achieved double-digit annual growth every year since it was launched in 2015.

Gil Bashe, who heads the unit, said the practice has grown from $5M in 2015 to more than $34M in 2020, which was one of the most challenging years for US business.

The practice champions product innovators, providers, patient advocacy groups, payers, and policy organizationsincluding Lets Win for Pancreatic Cancer, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Alkermes, Amgen, Amylyx, Biogen, Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, Sheba Medical Center, and other firms that are changing the future of health delivery.

Bashe noted the addition of Lazar Partners has helped the health group expand its offerings to include brand and corporate communications, integrated digital marketing services, investor relations, patient recruitment services, scientific writing, executive thought leadership, social media analytics and research, sustainability and social impact, and medical meeting support.

He also noted that the numbers given to ODwyers complement the larger collaborative role that the health practice plays within Finn Partners in generating fees and business for other practices and specialty services, which ODwyers tracks separately.

Finn Partners 2021 is shaping up to be an equally promising year, as the healthcare unit has added more than 20 new clients with $4 million in annualized fees.

M Booth Health Settles in during Pandemic

Tim Bird

Next Fifteen Communications acquired Health Unlimiteds US arm and merged it into M Booth as M Booth Health just as the pandemic outbreak hit.

While the first year of any acquisition can be challenging in the best of times, M Booth Health CEO Tim Bird said staffers spent their start-up year working remotely at a new agency with new colleagues to build a new brand to position the shop as one the catalyzes conversation and connections that lead to better health.

Bird said the COVID-19 outbreak did provide his firm a boost. As the world was shutting down, a new specialty in public health consultancy took shape at M Booth Health: COVID-19 communications for all our clients across the health spectrum of pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, government agencies, universities, medical societies, and advocacy organizations, said Bird. His firms long track record in public health and issues communications gained it several highly prestigious clients working on COVID-19 such as the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, focused on containing the pandemic and educating the public about where this epidemic was heading.

He said the M Booth connection helped his healthcare unit land clients, which would have been beyond reach prior to the deal.

Penn State University tapped us to develop a campaign to encourage students to wear a mask so they could return safely to school and keep campus open, he said. Within six weeks, our Mask Up or Pack Up campaign was launched across 24 campuses.

It was a full collaboration with M Booth, landing on a message and creative execution that Bird knew from their research would resonate with those reluctant to wear masks.

Booth Health is a growing and exciting agency, ahead of the curve and well-positioned in the new normal, said Bird. Our success is a testament to the resilience and resourcefulness demonstrated by our talented team working together.

Remote Work is Second Nature at Sam Brown

Laura Liotta

Staffers at Sam Brown Inc. Healthcare Communications have been working remotely since Laura Liotta launched the firm 22 years ago, so while the PR world adjusted to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, it was business as usual at ODwyers 15th ranked healthcare firm.

Sam Browns fees jumped 27 percent to $8M in 2020 due to organic growth and the addition of a slew of new innovative clients

Liotta said the shop helped Biohaven Pharmaceuticals take a digital-first approach to win FDA approval for the launch of Nurtec ODT, for the acute treatment of migraine.

The agency formulated and executed a far-reaching celebrity PR and media campaign for the drugs launch, featuring Khloe Kardashian, Tori Spelling and Whoopi Goldberg.

A grassroots storytelling campaign featuring migraine macro-influencers in a variety of settings reached multiple audiences, raising the company profile among multiple key stakeholders.

Liotta said key wins for 2020 include Adverum, Axial Therapeutics, Code Bio, Graphite Bio, JSR Life Sciences, Neximmune, Passage Bio, Sensei Bio, Trillium and Zymeworks.

These are among the broad array of innovative pharma and biotech companies who are on course to treat and cure serious diseases though their bold science in immuno-oncology, gene therapy, vaccine development, and other cutting-edge scientific fields, she said.

McCabe Message Partners Counsels Pandemic Pivot

Patrick McCabe

Washington, DC-based McCabe Message Partners represents nonprofits and philanthropies, including organizations that advocate for infectious disease experts, older adults, nurses, public health workers, emergency physicians, senior housing providers and hospitals.

Patrick McCabe said many of his firms clients were on the front lines of the COVID-19 crisis, so his firm had to quickly reposition communications plans to provide and maintain emergency responses to Covid-19.

Account leaders stretched their consulting muscles by helping nearly every client through a rapid 'pandemic pivot' to ensure their messaging and strategies were appropriate and timely, he said.

"MMPs nonprofit healthcare clients have long focused on disparities, but 2020 meant looking at the impact of race, ethnicity, age and income in a new light. Events demanded more direct communication acknowledging and beginning to act upon painfully obvious inequities and racial discrimination in America, McCabe said.

Working remotely challenged the MMP team to think more creatively and reimagine tactical implementation. We rethought events, trainings, even media outreach, said McCabe. In many instances we never would have approached client assignments the way we did in 2020 had it not been for the pandemic. In most ways the end products were even better, in part because they needed totally fresh thinking.

During 2020, MMP invested in new team members to handle clients quickly evolving and expanding needs, especially in message development, media outreach, social media strategy and graphic design. Recruiting, hiring and onboarding team members via Zoom presented obvious challenges, as did sharing office culture.

McCabe said his firm experienced personal losses and felt the deep pain of nationwide angst. While MMP refuses to acknowledge "silver linings" when more than 550,000 Americans died from the virus, the shop learned a lot over the past year. The gratitude team members have for clients and the meaningful work they do deepened. Our old way of working was profoundly challenged and the agency was nimble, fast, and flexible in its response. As we return to the office over the next several months we will be challenged to marry the new way with the old. To state the obvious, it is a challenge we eagerly look forward to."

LaVoieHealthScience Forges Tie with Omnicom

Donna LaVoie

LaVoieHealthScience formed a global strategic alliance with Omnicom in early 2020 that fueled expansion of business with US-China company launches, social media and digital programming and IPO/SPAC strategy, preparation and execution.

The firm launched 12 new companies spanning gene therapy, ophthalmology, neurology, rare diseases and moreall with unique platform technologies that promise to advance the way these diseases are treated today, according to Donna LaVoie.

LVA moved its headquarters within Boston and launched a New York regional unit under the leadership of James Heins, senior VP/managing director.

Our team came together remotely, building from both markets and adding team members from the South Florida and London markets, said LaVoie. We were tied together by our strong history of working together and our past success in building LHS and doing the right things for our health and science clients.

JPA Health Rebrands

Carrie Jones

Carrie Jones said JPA Health spent the pandemic year rebranding the agency, tapping new talent, investing in professional development and launching new offerings.

We also established specialist practice groups for our client segments: biotech PR, patient advocacy, public affairs, brand marketing, public health and federal government, she said.

JPA's HR team expanded company benefits, including taking added steps to support working parents and caregivers and offering reimbursement for the cost of emergency backup care for children, older relatives and dependent adults.

This program was designed to help staff manage backup care needs, so they did not have to miss time at work.

The firm also changed its eight-hour workday policy to a more flexible work week policy in support of employees who act as caregivers or were facing challenges navigating these unprecedented times.

Watershed Year for Crosby Marketing Communications

Ray Crosby

Ray Crosby, who heads Crosby Marketing Communications, called 2020 a watershed year, saying clients counted on the firm more than ever before for trusted counsel to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic to educate and motivate consumers, patients, providers, payors, and policymakers.

The firms ability to rapidly develop content and deliver integrated paid, earned, shared and owned programs proved invaluable to drive important conversations and positive health behaviors, he said.

The Annapolis-based firm handled the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services effort to connect with the American public about COVID-19 through social media; helped drive record online donations for Shriners Hospitals for Children; supported the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force through national media relations efforts; and created a business-to-business campaign for Kaiser Permanente that positioned its forward-thinking care and coverage to major employer groups.

Led by executive VP Denise Aube, Crosbys health practice landed new clients including Refuah Health in upstate New York, the Santa Clara County California Department of Health, and a major contract to support the launch of Telehealth.HHS.gov to engage the consumer and provider community.

To support its growth in public health and commercial sectors, the firm added senior executives including Edelman alums Megan Humphries as an EVP and Julia Krahe as senior VP, as well as Julian Hernandez as a VP.

Crosby said one of his major challenges is finding exceptional talent who have a passion for working with health care brands and causes and are a strong fit for the agency's culture. We are also carefully thinking through what the future of the workplace looks like while there are still so many variables at play, he said.

Ruder Finn Helps Non-COVID Clients Get Noticed

Christie Anbar

Ruder Finn healthcare head Christie Anbar said the pandemic made it more difficult to capture mindshare for non-COVID related health issues and treatments, though they were equally important.

The firms rich healthcare heritage in biotech and pharma communications and digital first, "whats next" mindset, was well positioned to help existing and new clients quickly pivot when the pandemic hit, according to Anbar. From optimizing virtual medical congresses to dialing up digital and social storytelling, to going beyond Zoom for high-impact virtual eventsRuder Finn ensured clients' messages resonated with the right person at the right time, inspiring changes in mindset and behavior, she said.

The 2020 acquisition of Osmosis Films, which specializes in innovative visual storytelling, further elevated the agencys ability to break through the virtual health content clutter.

Anbar added that the firm's leadership has long understood that an agency is only as good as it is people and prioritizes employee well-being and job satisfaction by keeping a collaborative, supportive culture, emphasizing the importance of training and bringing in new clients that offer diverse, rewarding work across therapeutic categories.

This priority never waned during the pandemicfrom making sure employees had the right technology to support remote work, to hosting virtual happy hours and morning 'Coffee, Tea and Chat' sessions, to training staff on new technology platforms or regulatory processes to expanding the agencys biotech and pharma client roster, she said.

Anbar said RF's health group thrived in 2020 by partnering with an expanding array of clients to deliver on their business goals through powerful storytelling, which fueled team expansion and growth.
International student enrollment decreased by 13 percent for Texas public colleges and by nearly 12 percent at private or independent institutions, according to preliminary reports from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

Staff at the coordinating board called the COVID-19 pandemic the most significant disruption to higher education institutions since the end of the Second World War, noting its dire effects on enrollment and college completion rates for students, particularly international students.

In the Houston area, the pandemic had less dire effects.

Texas A&M University, which the Institute of International Education ranked 21 for international students for the 2019-2020 academic year, saw a 5 percent decline in its international students, which includes students enrolled outside of the U.S., according to a university spokeswoman. University of Houston experienced roughly a 6 percent decline, and Rice University saw its degree-seeking international population dip by 2.5 percent. Houston Baptist University alternatively had enrollment increase by 9 percent, with a total of 161 international students in the fall, according to numbers provided by the university.

At University of Texas at Austin, which was previously ranked No. 34 for international students, enrollment among international students decreased by 20 percent  dipping from 5,326 to 4,437  one of the highest declines in the state.

But Sonia Feigenbaum, the vice provost for global engagement and the strategy/chief international officer at UT-Austin, said the university has experienced less of a hit to student enrollment compared to other colleges across the country.

Feigenbaum said UT officials anticipated roughly 1,050 more international students than they actually enrolled. Of that group, around 600 deferred and 400 were a part of a reciprocal or student exchange program with partner institutions.

We have been working really hard to bring everyone in the fold. We have people taking courses from all over the world, Feigenbaum said. Its been difficult, by and large, but students are very happy to continue their course work.

The pandemic presented many difficult moments for international students, Feigenbaum said, with some unable to enter the country due to closed consulates or visa delays  but UT has worked since March to pivot to a hybrid format that can engage the international community. International students who were able to stay enrolled took advantage of the colleges hybrid or online courses, which Feigenbaum credits as a reason why the decline in international students was not as steep.

For international students, this immediate challenge can have long-term implications for themselves and the academic communities that rely on them, the coordinating board wrote in its statement. That means financial consequences, including the reduced collection of tuition and fees for the institutions, especially those with high international student enrollments.

The revenue stream isnt as relevant at UT-Austin, Feigenbaum said.

We look at our international students like our domestic students. They contribute to the diversity of the student body.  It was very difficult on the university in terms of the fact that (international students) could not come for one reason or another  but it was more of a tone of disappointment rather than finances, Feigenbaum said. All of our institutions have been impacted, but thats not how we qualify it.

Still, UT is optimistic that it will welcome more international students in the future  particularly with consulates around the world reopening and promising research and development in regards to vaccines.

We anticipate things will be a lot better in January, definitely in the summer as well as next fall, Feigenbaum said, noting that UT will be welcoming international students this spring.

Nationally, the total enrollment of international students decreased by 16 percent this fall and new enrollment of international students decreased by 43 percent, according to the report released by the Institute of International Education. Additionally, 90 percent of campuses reported foreign students deferring attendance to a future term.

The positive news is that leaders and faculty across Texas higher education institutions have been working tirelessly to support all students continued academic progress and success, including converting nearly all of their courses to online delivery, which is a benefit to our scholars from Texas and across the nation and globe, the coordinating board wrote.

brittany.britto@chron.com
A crowd of childhood sexual abuse survivors, their families, and supporters rallied Monday in Harrisburg for the Pennsylvania legislature to finally open a legal window for abuse victims to sue their abusers.

We are close and we are hopeful, which is why were here, said Marci Hamilton, founder and CEO of Child USA. Its time in Pennsylvania to do the right thing...No more waiting, no more games. Its time. Its time for a window.

There was a moment of silence honoring the abuse survivors who did not live to see the legislation cross the finish line.

The powers that be have heard you. You have made a difference. You have made a difference to the survivors who have lived in the shadows for so long, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro told the crowd. Now we find ourselves in need of taking one more step in this process. A step that, candidly, we had hoped we wouldnt have to take, but for the shameful conduct of the department of state, we find ourselves here today.

The Pennsylvania Department of State failed to advertise a proposed state constitutional amendment that would have allowed a two-year window for litigation by child sexual abuse survivors for incidents currently outside the statute of limitations.

Because of the procedural misstep, the amendment will not appear on the ballot this spring and has been delayed until 2023. Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar resigned following the mistake.

Shapiro is a familiar face for the crowd. His groundbreaking grand jury report on sex abuse in the Catholic Church in the commonwealth identified 301 predator priests and more than 1,000 victims.

Shapiro said now is a moment of reckoning in the state senate; supporters know there are more than enough votes to pass a two-year legal window.

The votes are there to put a bill on the governors desk, by the end of this week if they wanted to, so you could finally have that reckoning in a court of law here in Pennsylvania, he said. I want you to know, I will never quit on you. We will keep fighting for you. Weve got a little bit of ways to go, but I know were going to get there.

Monday marked the first day back in session for the state legislature, and rally attendees want representatives to pass House Bill 951, which would create a two-year civil liability window for child sex abuse survivors, or similar legislation in the Senate.

No window, no justice, Kathryn Robb, executive director of CHILD USAdvocacy and a survivor of child sex abuse, led the crowd in a chant during the rally.

Two years is too long to wait. Two months is too long to wait. Two hours too long to wait. Two minutes is too long to wait. Now is the time, said Patrick Duggan. Many priests and bishops shoveled pedophile priests from parish to parish and its time for state senators to quit shoveling paperwork around their desks.

Duggan, who grew up in Harrisburg, claims a teacher at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic School molested and then raped him, from when he was 13 until he was 17. The teacher, Ronald Stewart, died in 2010.

The delay of justice is actually the injustice. The freedom that has been given to the wolves has revictimized the sheep. This has happened time and time again, said Michael McDonnell was abused by two Catholic priests and now works with the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Its time. Shift the cost of abuse back to where it belongs, at the scene of the crime. Its time. Pennsylvania, its time.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to lehighvalleylive.com.

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com.
'Taiwan seeking more long-range missiles from US'

Taiwan's armed forces are in the midst of a modernisation programme to offer a more effective deterrent, including the ability to hit back at bases far from China's coast in the event of a conflict. File image: Shutterstock

Taiwan is seeking to acquire long-range, air-launched cruise missiles from the United States, a defence official said on Monday, as the Chinese-claimed island bolsters its forces in the face of increasing pressure from Beijing.



While Taiwan is developing its own long-range missiles, to give it an ability to strike back deep into China in the event of war, it has also looked to the United States to help provide it more advanced weaponry.



Asked in parliament which weapons systems Taiwan wants to buy but the United States has not yet said it can, Lee Shih-chiang, head of Taiwan's defence ministry's strategic planning department, named Lockheed Martin Corp's AGM-158.



"We are still in the process of seeking it" from the United States, Lee said.



"Communication channels are very smooth and normal." He did not elaborate.



The AGM-158 JASSM - standing for Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile - can have a range of almost 1,000 km depending on the model, and be fixed to aircraft including F-16s, which Taiwan operates.



Lockheed Martin says the missile is designed to destroy high-value, well-defended, fixed and relocatable targets, and be launched far enough away to keep the launch aircraft well away from enemy air defence systems.



China has stepped up military activity near Taiwan, as it tries to force the government in Taipei to accept Beijing's claims of sovereignty.



Taiwan's armed forces, dwarfed by China's, are in the midst of a modernisation programme to offer a more effective deterrent, including the ability to hit back at bases far from China's coast in the event of a conflict.



President Tsai Ing-wen has stressed the importance of developing an "asymmetrical" deterrent, using mobile equipment that is hard to find and destroy, and capable of hitting targets far away from Taiwan.



Washington, Taipei's main foreign arms supplier, has been eager to create a military counterbalance to Chinese forces, building on an effort known within the Pentagon as "Fortress Taiwan". (Reuters)
Could student loan forgiveness be in the cards

CNBC - The odds of student debt forgiveness becoming a reality have never been greater. President Joe Biden said on the campaign trail that hes in support of cancelling $10,000 per borrower, and now hes asked his education secretary to prepare a report on his legal authority to wipe out as much as $50,000 for all.

Yet even among those in support of cancelling education debt, there are disagreements, particularly over how big the relief should be and who should get it. For example, some have floated the idea of forgiving the loans of essential workers or only low-income Americans.

Higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz recently put a report together, comparing some of these different forgiveness plans and their potential impacts.

Read the full story at CNBC
Hina Khan & Shaheer Sheikh Come Together For A Surprise; Jasmin Indulges In A Game Of Ludo With Aly Goni

Hina Khan and Shaheer Sheikh are undoubtedly two of the most popular and adored personalities on Indian television. Well, just a few hours ago they decided to give their fans a phenomenal surprise on social media. They shared candid pictures together and hinted at something special coming up. Shaheer also took to his Instagram story to share clips of Hina singing while they traveled together. We cant help but wonder if the two are coming together for a music video. No matter what the project is, we are sure itll be a hit because they look amazing together! Take a look:

View this post on Instagram A post shared by HK (@realhinakhan)

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sadath loves Shaheer (@shaheerismylife2)

Bigg Boss 14s love birds Jasmin Bhasin and Aly Goni, on the other hand, decided to spend their time at home with the latters family. The two recently returned from their Dubai holiday to celebrate the month of Ramadan with Alys family. His sister Ilham also shared sneak peeks of how they prepared the Iftar feast together a few days ago. Well, last night Ilham shared yet another clip which features Aly and Jasmin indulging in a game of ludo, something most of us did during the lockdown to pass time. While Jasmin embraced her goofy side, Aly can be seen thinking of his next move with a serious expression on his face.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Ilham Goni Tak (@ilhamgoni)

On the work front, Aly and Jasmin were last seen together in Tony Kakkars music video Tera Suit. It took the internet by storm and left #Jasly fans wanting more. Well, yesterday Aly posted a new picture of him and Jasmin with the caption: Coming soooooooon #jasly #9days. Can we expect another music video of the adorable couple?
Two killers who hacked a drill rapper to death with knives and machetes in a 'merciless' attack have each been jailed for 28 years.

Crosslon Davis, 20, known as Bis, suffered at least nine wounds to his head, back and chest when he was set upon by four youths armed with knives and machetes.

Most of the attack in Deptford, south-east London, early on December 6, 2019, was caught on shocking CCTV footage.

Mr Davis had been a 'highly regarded' drill artist and member of the Harlem Spartan collective based in Kennington, south London, and was shooting a video for his latest track the day before he was killed, the Old Bailey heard.

Elijah Morgan (right), 20, and Jedaiah Param (left), 21, were found guilty of murder and possessing a blade following a trial. The pair have each been jailed for life with a minimum term of 28 years

Elijah Morgan, 20, and Jedaiah Param, 21, were found guilty of murder and possessing a blade following a trial.

The defendants were on licence at the time of the killing, having both been convicted of knife-related offences in the past.

On Monday, the pair were each jailed for life with a minimum term of 28 years.

Judge Angela Rafferty QC said it was a 'sustained and vicious attack'.

She said: 'This was a savage murder of a defenceless man. He was hacked to death.

'It is clear he had been shown no mercy whatsoever and he died in the street despite extensive efforts of emergency services to save his life.'

She added that it was a 'heartless and merciless crime'.

Crosslon Davis, 20, known as Bis, suffered at least nine wounds to his head, back and chest when he was set upon by four youths armed with knives and machetes

The judge said Param and Morgan both had 'appalling' records for violence and possession of weapons which was a 'very significant' aggravating factor.

Earlier, the victim's mother Vivienne Davis tearfully paid tribute to her son, who had been rapping since he was aged two and was about to start university.

She told the court: 'He was intelligent and had the whole world in front of him, such a bright future cruelly cut short.

On his killers, she said: 'These cowards pleading not guilty and causing us to have to go through this horrifically detailed trial on how they brutally and callously murdered my baby, refusing to acknowledge guilt or responsibility for their heinous crime, speaks for itself.

'They have made me watch my son being killed around 15 times on the CCTV footage which was shown to the court.'

Most of the attack in Deptford, south-east London, early on December 6, 2019, was caught on shocking CCTV footage. Pictured: Police at the scene of the murder

She added: 'The last time I held my baby was December 5, 2019.

'We hugged and said: ''I love you'', as we usually do when he leaves, but this time I said: ''Break a leg'' for luck, as I would normally do when he is performing or going to shoot a video.'

That day, Mr Davis had filmed in Kennington and Cambridge, accompanied by friends, including Elhaj Diarrassouba, aka Els, the court had heard.

On the journey back to London, Mr Davis appeared to become 'angry' with someone on the phone.

The court heard he had got the impression the caller was being 'disrespectful' about Latz, real name Latwaan Griffiths, a fellow Harlem Spartan who had been stabbed to death in July 2018.

Pictured: Police officers at the scene of the murder

Mr Diarrassouba suggested they meet the caller to sort it out and they arrived in the Deptford Creek area at around 1.15am.

The defendants had just got into a cab in Deptford when Mr Davis, armed with a mallet, opened the rear door and tried to attack Morgan, the court heard.

The cab sped off but the driver was told to stop and the occupants got out and ran back, the court heard.

Mr Davis dropped the mallet and was set upon by the defendants and two other unidentified assailants.

Just 11 days after the murder and while on the run, Morgan was involved in another street stabbing in Nuneaton.

He admitted violent disorder, threatening with a blade, possessing cannabis and two charges of assaulting police officers.

Param also admitted separate offences relating to an attack on a man with a Lucozade bottle containing ammonia at a probation office in May 2019.

The sentences for those offences were ordered to run concurrently.

Param, of Norwood, south London, and Morgan, of no fixed address, had each denied murder.
Five people were hospitalized after being shot and critically injured in a drive-by shooting at a liquor store in Shreveport, Louisiana, on Sunday.

Authorities described the injuries as life-threatening, with police on the lookout for a white Ford car, the report said.

The incident comes amid fresh debate over U.S. gun controls, stoked by an incident last week where a gunman shot eight people dead and injured several others at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis before taking his own life.

Five people were hospitalized after being shot and critically injured in a drive-by shooting at a liquor store in Shreveport, Louisiana, on Sunday

Authorities described the injuries as life-threatening, with police on the lookout for a white Ford car

A police spokesman told reporters. 'We responded this evening to a traffic congestion and during that congestion, numerous shots were fired'.

In Sunday's Shreveport incident, four people were outside the store, in Hearne Avenue, while one person was inside the store when the shooting happened.

Police officers were responding to traffic congestion reports when shots were heard.

A police spokesman told reporters. 'We responded this evening to a traffic congestion and during that congestion, numerous shots were fired'.

Eleven police units were at the scene of the incident, which happened around 9 p.m. local time Sunday.

At least five people were taken to Ochsners LSU Health and other hospitals near the site of the shooting for treatment.

One victim was shot in the head, while another suffered multiple gunshot wounds, according to local news outlet Love Shreveport-Bossier.

Multiple evidence markers were placed at the scene by police who are on the lookout for a white car

Eleven police units were at the scene of the incident, which happened around 9 p.m. local time Sunday

In Sunday's Shreveport incident, four people were outside the store, in Hearne Avenue, while one person was inside the store when the shooting happened

Earlier, three friends were killed and two were left wounded in a shooting at a bar in Kenosha County, Wisconsin, in the early hours of Sunday.

The bar is a popular hangout for students from nearby Carthage College and was also the trios favorite bar to go to.

Two men died at the bar while a third man succumbed to his wounds in hospital.

Cedric Gaston, Kevin Donaldson, and Atkeen Stevenson were named as the victims.

The suspect had been asked to leave the Somers House Tavern in the village of Somers in Kenosha County just after midnight, but then returned and opened fire killing the trio.

Earlier, three friends were killed and two were left wounded in a shooting at a bar in Kenosha County, Wisconsin, in the early hours of Sunday

Cedric Gaston, 25, aka Cartier Ced aka King Cedric, left, and friend Atkeen Stevenson, 26, were killed in the shooting, according to social media

Rapper Kevin Donaldson, aka GBG KEVO, is seen in a photo from his YouTube channel, left, and Instagram page, right, was also shot to death at the bar in Kenosha

Separately, on Sunday three people died at an apartment complex in Austin, Texas and authorities were hunting for a former Deputy Sheriff Stephen Nicholas Broderick, 41, wanted in connection with the fatal shooting.

A high school football star and recent signee with the University of North Texas, Willie Simmons, and two women were among the fatalities.

The victims are believed to have been known to Broderick, who was put on unpaid leave last June after he was charged with raping a 16-year-old girl. He later resigned.

Broderick, pictured left, was arrested on June 6 by the U.S. Marshals Service and charged with sexual assault of a child. He was placed on administrative leave without pay and later resigned from Travis County Sheriff's Office

Willie Simmons, a linebacker from Elgin, was among Brodderick's victims, UNT coaches and players confirmed on social media on Sunday

Austin Police Interim Chief Joseph Chacon walks away from a press briefing across from the Arboretum Oaks apartment complex in Austin, Texas on Sunday

Broderick was arrested on June 6 on a charge of sexually assaulting a child, and spent 16 days behind bars before posting a $50,000 bail.

The alleged assault took place in a home in Elgin, a town about 20 miles east of Austin, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.

The victim made an outcry to her her mother, who took her for a medical exam that confirmed the abuse.

Helicopters, SWAT teams and FBI agents are now involved in a frenzied search for Broderick, and police are urging anyone who sees him to consider him armed and dangerous and call 911.

On Sunday afternoon, a seven-year-old girl was shot dead in an attack at a McDonald's drive-thru in Chicago.

It happened just after 4pm in the Windy City's Homan Square neighborhood.

A McDonald's employee told reporters two men jumped out of another car in the drive-thru queue, ambushed the vehicle, repeatedly firing at the passengers.

Seven-year-old Jaslyn Adams was fatally shot on Sunday afternoon while her father sustained gunshot injuries as they sat inside a vehicle at a McDonald's drive-thru

Police investigate a crime scene in the Windy City's Homan Square neighborhood. Investigators are still searching for the suspect

Jaslyn Adams, 7, was hit multiple time and rushed to hospital where she was pronounced dead.

Her father, Jontae Adams, 28, was also seriously injured as the pair waited in line in the family car to get food.

Police are still hunting for the suspect. It is not clear what led up to the shooting.

The spate of shootings has increased public pressure to tighten gun regulations.

Most Americans support tougher gun laws, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling, but Washington has done little to address the problem in recent years.
Press Release

19 April 2021

STR's Tourism Consumer Insights team has been keeping a close eye on traveler and tourism trends as the industry moves through the most optimistic point of the pandemic. The twists and turns of the COVID-19 pandemic have contributed to seismic changes in tourism. These include the cessation of international travel for some countries, and, as discussed in previous "Tourism After Lockdown" pieces, shifting preferences when it comes to choosing accommodation and places to visit.

Advertisements

In February 2021, STR conducted quantitative research via its Traveler Panel to examine attitudes toward travel in this "new COVID world".

In this blog, we evaluate the barriers influencing travelers' decisions not to book or undertake an overnight trip.

The obvious factorCOVID-19

Our research gauged travel activity during the first few months of the year. Although a sizeable number of respondents had undertaken or booked a trip, the majority had not traveled.

Unsurprisingly, among these respondents, COVID-19 was flagged as a major reason for not booking or undertaking travel. While 4% stated that COVID-19 hadn't influenced their decision to not book or take an overnight trip, the remainder (96%) declared that their travel bookings were affected by the pandemic.

So, why has COVID-19 influenced travelers' decisions not to book or undertake travel?

Photo: STR

Government legislation and restrictions along with the potential hassle of quarantine were two key barriers to travel for respondents.

The travel industry has little control over these barriers. However, as vaccine programs continue to expand globally, easing travel restrictions and loosening quarantine requirements are likely to follow, which bodes well for the industry.

Areas in which the travel industry can have an impact are in the next set of barriers, which are segmented into comfort and financial barriers.

Nearly two-thirds (64%) of respondents flagged fellow travelers not following the rules as a reason for not booking or undertaking travel. Personal health concerns were also a notable barrier mentioned by over half.

Travelers from North America and the U.K. viewed comfort and wellbeing as a greater barrier, while Europeans seemed less concerned, which is likely linked to their younger, more carefree, age profile.

Photo: STR

While one size doesn't fit all, effective COVID-safe measures and clear communications by travel brands can do much to reassure consumers and mitigate the impact of these comfort barriers. However, one caution is that this reassurance must be communicated delicately so as not to alarm travelers.

There is less variation across regions when looking at financial barriers. Last-minute cancellations and refund challenges due to cancellations were stated as the main financial barriers to travel for respondents across all regions.

Photo: STR

While one size doesn't fit all, effective COVID-safe measures and clear communications by travel brands can do much to reassure consumers and mitigate the impact of these comfort barriers. However, one caution is that this reassurance must be communicated delicately so as not to alarm travelers.

There is less variation across regions when looking at financial barriers. Last-minute cancellations and refund challenges due to cancellations were stated as the main financial barriers to travel for respondents across all regions.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. Representative Steve Stivers of Ohio plans to step down next month, he said on Monday, further tightening the balance of power in the narrowly Democratic controlled House of Representatives.

Stivers, a former Ohio state senator, has been a congressman for the past decade in Ohio's 15th congressional district, which covers the suburbs surrounding Columbus, the state's largest city. He has served on the House of Representatives' Financial Services Committee.

"I'm grateful to the people of #OH15 for putting their trust in me to represent them in the halls of Congress; it has been one of the biggest honors of my life," Stivers said on Twitter, adding that he would become the head of Ohio's Chamber of Commerce.

Democrats currently hold 218 House seats and Republicans have 212.

Stivers' departure comes ahead of redistricting. Ohio, like every other U.S. state, must redraw its electoral maps every 10 years after the decennial count known as the Census. The changes affect the size and borders of individual districts.

(Reporting by Makini Brice; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
CHICAGO (AP)  Chicagos public high schools were set to reopen Monday for the first time since the nations third-largest school district went fully remote amid the coronavirus pandemic over a year ago.

The Chicago Teachers Union announced Sunday that its members overwhelmingly approved a reopening plan that includes helping students 16 and older and their families get COVID-19 vaccines, with priority given to certain ZIP codes hit hard by the pandemic. Also included in the agreement with Chicago Public Schools is more leeway for educators to work remotely, like if they dont have in-person students that day

This agreement secures critical safety standards for returning in-person to high schools, delivers groundbreaking wins for the protection of our students and defends the safety and working conditions of all members in CPS, CTU President Jesse Sharkey said in a statement.

A CPS spokeswoman didnt have comment Sunday beyond a joint statement issued Thursday by Mayor Lori Lightfoot and CPS CEO Janice Jackson after a tentative deal was reached.

It is a critical milestone for our families and its a tremendous step forward for the academic and social-emotional well-being of our students, the statement from both leaders said.

Younger students have returned in phases this year after tough battles with the union over teacher vaccinations, reopening metrics and other issues. That union accepted that agreement for students in preK-8 in February after defying district orders to teach in person, city threats to lock them out of teaching systems, and talk of a potential strike.

Roughly 36% percent of the districts approximately 73,000 high school students had expressed interest in returning to limited days of classroom instruction, but the number could be lower.

___

Follow Sophia Tareen on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sophiatareen.

By SOPHIA TAREEN

Associated Press
Mumbai: As the number of coronavirus cases in Maharashtra registers an alarming spike the government has been issuing a slew of measures to curb the infection. To this effect, State Health Minister Rajesh Tope informed that grocery shops will now function only for four hours between 7 am to 11 am every day.

The decision was taken after a meeting convened by Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar.

It is must to keep a tab on people who come out of homes in the name of purchasing grocery. Dada ( Ajit Pawar) said that we must keep grocery shops open only for four hours between 7 am to 11 am. It was decided that the notification regarding this decision will be issued at the upper level ( at State governments level) and not at District Collectors level, Tope told reporters.

Further, Tope said notification in this regard will be issued soon and accordingly grocery shops in the State will have to operate.

The meeting also discussed the execution of the governments package of Rs 5,400 crores to help individuals who will be directly affected by the restrictions and closure of business. Ajit Pawar said the help must reach targeted beneficiaries as soon as possible.
~ Also questions imminent hire at Fire Department ~

Independent Member of Parliament Christophe Emmanuel wants the Minister of Public Health Richard Panneflek and Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs to explain to the public why an Australian is being recruited for the Director position at St. Maarten Medical Center and a Dutchman as Head of Repression at the Fire Department. The hospital falls under the responsibility of Panneflek, while the Fire Department under the Prime Minister.

MP Emmanuel also wants Panneflek to confirm or deny if the board of the SMMC has negotiated a NAf 500,000 golden handshake payout to the Director of SMMC Kees Klarenbeek who has been off duty for more than a year due to medical reasons. This handshake he said, is being proposed by Klarenbeeks two closest friends on the board, namely the Chairman of the board Richard Jan James and Jim Rosen.

He said that he was made to understand that the board of SMMC has contracted the firm Deloitte Dutch Caribbean out of Curacao to execute the recruitment of a new Director, a position which has been carried out by Dr. Felix Holiday in the absence of Klarenbeek.

Apparently, there is a foreign board member in the person of Jim Rosen who is calling the shots at SMMC and who is not standing behind Dr. Felix Holiday for Director. Here we go again with this ridiculous practice of a foreigner who came here and got positions through political friendships, keeping my people down and out of positions they deserve. This is who is in the way of one of St. Maartens finest taking over the helm at SMMC, in favor of an Australian. This must be a bad joke, Emmanuel said.

Why even conduct a recruitment drive if Holiday has been doing the job? Just make the man the Director, he is more than qualified and has been doing the job for the past year and a half since Klarenbeek has been out. We have to stop this nonsense of letting others step all over our people. We have to stop being silent when these things are happening. I for one will never be silent and I want a public explanation from the Minister, the MP noted. He also reminded that he has asked Minister Panneflek several questions about the tenure of Klarenbeek and has yet to receive any answers.

As for the Fire Department, the MP said it is hard to believe that St. Maarten does not have a local candidate to fill the position of Head of Repression and called on the Prime Minister to show some spine and protect her people.

There is a time and place for recruitment of people and then there is just plain out making sure St. Maarten people are placed plain and simple. We act as if we always have to spend money on firms to go through a bunch of candidates from all over the world. If we have the local in-house who can do the job, give it to the local.

What is so wrong with our people that they are always thought of last? The Fire Department must have local personnel who can be Head of Repression. Why bring in a Dutchman and give him the salary that a local deserves and earned? We have to think of these things in terms of building our nation and putting our people in positions to be the leaders of this nation on all levels. When are we going to stop subjugating them to onlookers while others rise above them? I expect public answers on all of the above, the MP concluded.
Malaysia dairy business Dutch Lady Milk Industries is planning a new production facility to replace its existing plant in the south-east Asian country.

The company, of which Dutch dairy giant FrieslandCampina owns just under 51%, has hired a contractor to design and build the factory, which will be located in the town of Bandar Enstek in the west Malaysian state of Negeri Sembilan. The current production site manufacturing halal dairy products, operational since 1963, is situated in Petaling Jaya in Selangor, the same state as the capital Kuala Lumpur.

Tarang Gupta, the managing director for DLMI, said: As Malaysias leading dairy company, Im very excited to partner [with] Royal Haskoning DHV to build our new production facility that will revolutionise our supply chain processes to enable us to produce DLMIs range of nutritional products, with the added scalable capacity to manufacture other innovative variations in the future driven by consumer trends and occasions.

DLMI produces fresh and UHT milks, milk powders, yogurts and flavoured milk drinks under the Dutch Lady brand, including special formulations for children such as Dutch Lady 123 and Dutch Lady 456. The company claims to be the first Malaysian dairy company to introduce fortified milk powder for kids in 1988.



In the nine months to the end of September, DLMI generated MRY811.5m (US$196.8m), up from MRY784.9m. Higher cost of sales meant nine-month profit after taxation was MRY53.2m, versus MRY76.3m.
Mantou.tv scored 40 Social Media Impact. Social Media Impact score is a measure of how much a site is popular on social networks. 2/5.0 Stars by Social Team

This CoolSocial report was updated on 26 Dec 2012, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want.

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Six lions had been found dead with several body parts missing in the Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda. This has been the latest attack within the protected area, and the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) has been on the case, suspecting it to be the work of desperate poachers suffering the economic downturn brought by COVID-19.

Along with the lions, there were also dead vultures. This led the UWA to believe that the big cats were poisoned prior to dismemberment. Lion parts have been recently sought in the illegal wildlife trade for a number of reasons.

Natural park authorities suspect desperate poachers killed lions

Specifically, poachers pluck out claws and teeth for use in alternative medicines as well as tribal jewelry. It is now the latest trends in the black market that have fuelled threats to the animal's population (alongside unmonitored trophy hunting and conflicts with local farmers).

In some worst-case scenarios, hunters, farmers and poachers may even undertake illegal cullings as a quick means to escape destitution.

Still, the UWA assures the general public that the perpetrators will be caught and still has confidence in its conservation efforts. The Queen Elizabeth National Park continues to hold the highest number of lions for miles around, and treats any threat to its prides as a threat to the park's mission as well as its sustainability. These animals, along with many others, have become important assets for the country's long-term economic gain.

Also read: Lions Gain Protection Under Endangered Species Act

COVID-19 economy linked with Uganda natural park poisonings

The UWA's dedication to its nature parks is based on their importance for tourism, which in turn helps it make a strong case for sustainable economies that do not rely on the destruction of national habitats. (For conservationists, the stakes could not be higher given how other African countries still struggle to embrace the same model.)

To date, the UWA states that $1.6 billion has been earned by nature tourism alone, and this accounts for much of the amount allocated to improving local communities. Were it not for the circumstances of the pandemic, Uganda was gradually making its way to becoming a good example of wildlife preservation contributing to the welfare of developing countries.

However, the global impact of COVID-19 has certainly been bad news, with lockdowns, social distancing measures and decline of tourism forcing the country's economy to contract.

These developments have also, at least indirectly, led to a greater increase in poaching incidents due to the worsening poverty rates. The loss of tourism has also made it harder for the national parks to maintain revenue and maintain its standing security personnel. It is feared that, if nothing is done soon, the resurgence of attacks against nature sanctuaries will only worsen (both in Uganda and across Africa).

Also read: Owner Mauled To Death by 400lb White Lions, Plus 5 Other Cases of Pets Killing Their Owners
We had mentioned in the previous weeks closing report that Nifty, Sensex were indecisive. On Monday, the indices opened lower and suffered a major correction. On the NSE, there were 379 advances, 1,595 declines and 68 unchanged.

The trends of the major indices in the course of Mondays trading are given in the table below:

Jubilant Pharmova has developed a novel oral formulation of Remdesivir, which, the company said, is likely to ease the capacity constraint that injectable formulation faces and ensure wider and timely availability for COVID-19 patients.

HDFC Bank reported an 18.2% YoY growth in standalone profit at Rs 8,433 crore for the quarter ended March 2021.

Mindtree reported 53% YoY rise in net profits for the March 2021 quarter at Rs 317 crore. Revenue grew 4% YoY to Rs 2,148 crore.

Bajaj Consumer posted consolidated net profit at Rs 54.7 crore against Rs 23.3 crore in the corresponding period of the previous year. Revenue was up 39% at Rs 249 crore versus Rs 179 crore YoY.

Den Networks reported a higher consolidated profit at Rs 36.98 crore in March 2021 quarter against Rs 24.65 crore YoY. Revenue fell to Rs 326.23 crore from Rs 327.8 crore YoY.

Caplin Point Labs received the final approval from USFDA for its ANDA for Milrinone Lactate Injection USP.

Subex has announced the launch of a new AI automation platform which would be unveiled on the launch day.

HCL Tech has signed a multi-million dollar contract with Japan-based UD Trucks for end-to-end IT transformation spanning across digital platforms, agile digital application development, migration, support and maintenance and digital workplace services.

Isgec Heavy Engineering has signed a project-specific collaboration agreement with United Conveyor Corporation, USA, for dry sorbent injection (DSI) technology. The technology can be used to reduce sulphur dioxide emissions from thermal power plants.

The top gainers and top losers of the major indices are given in the table below:

The closing values of the major Asian indices are given in the table below:
Li Bo, the deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, said on Monday said that Bitcoin and stablecoins could be an investment option that should play a major role in the future

The deputy governor of the Peoples Bank of China (PBoC), the countrys central bank, has shown a rare display of support for Bitcoin despite the country having previously taken a restrictive approach to crypto usage.

Speaking at the Boao Forum on Sunday, Li Bo was reported by journalist Colin Wu to have said that the central bank believed Bitcoin and stablecoins, cryptos that are pegged to other assets and currencies to provide a stable value, are encrypted assets and could be an investment option that should play a major role in the future.

However, Li also said there were still regulatory risks around crypto for the central bank, and that it will continue to maintain the current measures and practices as it explored any potential changes to the rules.

The deputy governors comments may be interpreted by some as a softening of the approach by Chinas authorities towards the potential for crypto use in the economy, despite the fact that crypto exchanges are still banned in the country.

This sentiment may improve further as the PBoC continues its pilot of a digital version of Chinas yuan, which could be put into use at the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing.

Given China accounts for a large portion of Bitcoins mining infrastructure, with around 60% of all Bitcoin in circulation mined in the country, any softening of regulation is likely to be greeted with optimism by crypto investors and exchanges, many of whom are eyeing increased access to Chinas rapidly expanding economy and consumer market.

The comments will also have helped to offset nervousness in the market caused by recent developments in Turkey, where crypto payments were recently banned, and in India where similar moves are reportedly being considered by government ministers.

Bitcoin was trading 5.8% higher at US$57,215 in early afternoon deals in London on Monday.
Nine cases of the Indian coronavirus variant have been detected in Korea. They were found in nine out of the 94 people who arrived here from India since January -- two in March and seven this month.

Earlier, Indian health authorities said the B.1.617 variant, which carries two mutations and is feared to partially evade immunity, was detected in the western state of Maharashtra. Health officials there are worried that the 60,000 infections detected there daily might be with this variant.

The number of daily coronavirus infections in New Delhi declined to 94 at one point in mid-February, only to surge 207 times to 19,486 at present, and experts fear that the new variant is to blame. As of last week the cumulative total had risen to 14.53 million cases.
[April 19, 2021] Commonwealth Hires Industry Executive as New General Counsel

Commonwealth Financial Network, a national firm dedicated to providing advisor-focused business solutions, announces the hiring of Peggy Ho, senior vice president, general counsel. She will replace outgoing general counsel Jim Adelman, who is slated to retire after nearly 17 years with the firm. Ho will oversee all legal and regulatory aspects of the firm. Her role will include advising the executive management team on strategic initiatives and regulatory issues and providing counsel on all legal-related issues within the investment adviser and broker/dealer entities. She will report to Trap Kloman, Commonwealth's president and chief operating officer. "I'm truly excited to be joining such a talented, enthusiastic community and am honored to take the reins and lead Commonwealth's Legal team," said Ho. "Our industry has changed so much in recent years from a regulatory perspective. Jim and his team have done a terrific job addressing these changes and have really put Commonwealth in a strong position for the future." "We are thrilled to welcome Peggy to the Commonwealth community," said Kloman. "Peggy joins us with a wealth of experience that includes compliance, legal, risk management, and government advocacy. In the ever-evolving regulatory landscape in our industry, we will rely heavily on her knowledge and insights to move our firm forward." Ho graduated from Harvard University, magna cum laude, and received her law degree and master's degree in international relations from Georgetown University. She began her career as a corporate associate at Ropes & Gray LLP and brings extensiv industry experience, having served a variety of roles over the past 14 years with LPL Financial, most recently as executive vice president, chief of staff for compliance, legal, and risk and head of government relations. She is highly engaged in the industry, serving on the boards of the Insured Retirement Institute, The New England Council, Greater Boston Legal Services, and the Asian American Lawyers Association of Massachusetts. She is also engaged in her community, serving as secretary of Harvard University's Committee for the Choral Endowment and as a board member for the Wellesley Theatre Project. In 2019, Ho received the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly Top Women in Law Award and was named a Get Konnected! 50 Most Influential Attorneys of Color.



"One of Jim's greatest qualities is that he was never afraid to roll up his sleeves," said Peter Wheeler, Commonwealth's vice chairman, of outgoing Adelman. "Whether it was building the Legal team into the powerhouse it is today, managing outside counsel, or delivering annual AML training to our advisors in uncommon ways, he gladly took on every challenge he faced with confidence, determination, and a high quality of care-always." Wheeler added, "Jim undoubtedly made his mark on the Commonwealth community, and as he works to ensure a smooth transition in leadership to Peggy, we once again thank him for all of his contributions."

About Commonwealth Financial Network Commonwealth Financial Network, Member FINRA/SIPC, a Registered Investment Adviser, provides a suite of business solutions that empowers more than 2,000 independent financial advisors nationwide. J.D. Power ranks Commonwealth "#1 in Independent Advisor Satisfaction Among Financial Investment Firms, Seven Times in a Row." Privately held since 1979, the firm has headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts, and San Diego, California. Learn more about Commonwealth by visiting www.commonwealth.com. Commonwealth received the highest score in the independent advisor segment of the J.D. Power 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2018, 2019, and 2020 Financial Advisor Satisfaction Studies of customers' satisfaction among financial advisors. Visit jdpower.com/awards. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005090/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
The newly formed strategic partnership between Willow Lake Metis Group and Melloy Industrial Services Inc., part of the PCL family of companies, will increase support to heavy industrial maintenance, capital projects, turnarounds and emergency outages, servicing the Wood Buffalo Region while generating economic opportunities for the Willow Lake Metis Nation.

REGIONAL MUNICIPALITY OF WOOD BUFFALO, AB, April 19, 2021 /CNW/ - Willow Lake Metis Group (WLMG) and Melloy Industrial Services Inc., announced today they will enter into a newly formed partnership agreement.

The newly formed strategic partnership between Willow Lake Metis Group and Melloy Industrial Services Inc., part of the PCL family of companies, will increase support to heavy industrial maintenance, capital projects, turnarounds and emergency outages, servicing the Wood Buffalo Region while generating economic opportunities for the Willow Lake Metis Nation. (CNW Group/Willow Lake Metis Group)

The WLMG was created to support and contribute to the local economy and the future sustainability of the Willow Lake Metis Nation (WLMN). This latest partnership is one component of a larger effort to establish strong relationships with industry partners, allowing WLMG to become the strategic Indigenous industry partner of choice. WLMG is working to provide the industry with a different Indigenous community-based business model by providing full-service expertise for large scale projects, including maintenance, turnaround and facility services.

"We are thrilled to have entered into a strategic partnership with Melloy Industrial. To have a partner with their exceptional level of experience, capacity, and expertise, as we continue to grow our operations to take on larger projects across the industry, is an invaluable and exciting opportunity for WLMG," said Willow Lake Metis Group CEO, Justin Bourque. Adding, "Over the last 18 months WLMG have worked to identify suitable strategic partnerships for both our business and our nation. Melloy Industrial is a trusted heavy industrial specialty service provider and this partnership furthers our mission of becoming the industries strategic Indigenous industry partner of choice."

Melloy Industrial's partnership with the Willow Lake Metis Group provides an opportunity to contribute to the economy and sustainability of the Willow Lake Metis Nation. The intent of this partnership is to support the continuous engagement of business with Indigenous peoples, Indigenous-owned businesses and Indigenous communities in the Wood Buffalo region.

Story continues

"Decisions we make today have long lasting impacts on our communities," said Mitch Soetaert, district manager of Melloy Industrial Services. "Melloy is excited to enter into this partnership and to contribute to the success of the WLMN. Bringing our capabilities and experience as a mechanical contractor to the WLMG provides the Wood Buffalo Region access to a turn-key Indigenous contracting solution."

To learn more about this new strategic partnership, visit: www.willowlakemetisgroup.ca

About Willow Lake Metis Group



The Willow Lake Metis Group exists to ensure our community has an opportunity to be industry leaders that contribute to our local economy and the future sustainability of our community. We are proud to have established strong relationships with industry partners that allow us to become your strategic Indigenous industry partner. Working with each of the industry partners allows us to provide full-service expertise for large scale projects. We can handle a multitude of services related to maintenance, turnaround, and servicing of your facility.

We are continuing to work towards building capacity and strengthen our mandate. Willow Lake Metis Group looks forward to working with the major industry players in our region in Northern Alberta to provide service and partnership at a new standard.

For more information, visit: willowlakemetisgroup.ca

About Melloy Industrial Services Inc.



For more than 35 years, Melloy Industrial Services Inc. has been a trusted provider in heavy industrial maintenance, capital projects, turnarounds and emergency outages throughout Western Canada. As part of the PCL family of companies we provide integrated construction services including planning, general mechanical, engineering, modular design, large-scale fabrication, electrical and instrumentation work. Our lean construction approach make us flexible enough to tackle jobs of any size and we have the resources and expertise to take on any project, no matter how complex. Melloy believes in giving back to the communities in which we live and work. As employee owners we are more accountable, more responsible, and more invested in the success of our projects and communities. We actively invest in the communities where we work by supporting local businesses, community-based organizations and providing career opportunities.



For more information, visit: www.melloy.com

SOURCE Willow Lake Metis Group

Cision

View original content to download multimedia: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/April2021/19/c9706.html
The board of Future Retail along and its lenders have approved a resolution plan to restructure the existing secured financial debt from the banks under the resolution framework for Covid-19 related stress.

In a regulatory filing, the company said that the board approved the plan in its meeting on Saturday.

It now requires the approval of the expert committee, under the chairmanship of the K.V. Kamath constituted by the Reserve Bank of India.

"As part of the resolution plan, the debt raised through the non-convertible debentures issued by the Company under Series IA, IB and II ("NCDs") are also part of the Existing Debt and are proposed to be restructured," it said.

The company has received the written consent of 100 per cent of the holders of the NCDs to amend the terms and conditions of the NCDs as per the resolution plan approved by the other lenders of the existing debt.

"The Board took these consents on record, in the aforementioned Board meeting, and approved the restructuring of the NCDs, in line with the resolution plan approved by the other lenders of the Existing Debt," the filing said.

Further, the company shall, prior to undertaking the restructuring of the NCDs as per the resolution plan, obtain the approval of the relevant stock exchanges where the NCDs are listed, under the applicable provisions of the LODR Regulations.

The resolution plan shall be implemented after execution of necessary agreements, deeds, undertaking and other relevant documents between the company and the lenders which shall be executed on or before April 26, 2021, said the filing.

It further said that pursuant to the implementation of resolution plan of the existing debt the board expects that the company would recover from the financial stress caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, within the resolution timeframe.

It may be noted that 5.6 per cent US Senior Secured notes 2025 issued by the company and non-convertible debentures issued by the company to certain trusts are not part of the resolution plan.

"The Board also places its sincere appreciation to all the lenders, whether financial or otherwise, who have extended their support and posed their faith in the long-term viability of the business operations of the company," it said.

Disclaimer: Information, facts or opinions expressed in this news article are presented as sourced from IANS and do not reflect views of Moneylife and hence Moneylife is not responsible or liable for the same. As a source and news provider, IANS is responsible for accuracy, completeness, suitability and validity of any information in this article.
Germany will not let down its Afghan staff as the international military mission in the country winds down after nearly two decades of war, German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer pledged.

Kramp-Karrenbauer told German news agency dpa in comments published Sunday that she wants to get employees who may face danger if they remain in Afghanistan to Germany quickly.

"We are talking here about people who in some cases have worked for years by our side, at danger to their own safety, also have fought with us and made their personal contribution," she said. "I see it as a deep obligation for ... Germany not to leave these people behind unprotected now that we are finally leaving the country."

The Welt am Sonntag newspaper, citing the Interior Ministry, reported that Germany plans to set up an office in Kabul and probably also one in Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan to help process cases.

Germany already has a procedure to allow in some Afghan employees, under which the Defense Ministry says 781 have been taken in since 2013. However, there have been some disputed cases.

"From my point of view, we have a changed situation because we are not talking about the rearrangement of a mission but about the end," Kramp-Karrenbauer said. "And that possibly means a different security situation and a different evaluation."

Germany aims to complete its withdrawal by mid-August.

U.S. President Joe Biden and NATO on Wednesday announced that they would withdraw the roughly 10,000 foreign troops still in Afghanistan by Sept. 11. Germany is the second-largest contingent with about 1,100 troops.

The withdrawals have raised concerns that Afghanistan could erupt into full-scale civil war, providing al Qaeda space in which to rebuild and plan new attacks on U.S. and other targets.

The German forces currently employ about 300 Afghans as interpreters and in other jobs, according to the defence ministry in Berlin.

Since 2013 Germany has admitted nearly 800 Afghans at risk in their own country after working for the foreign military, as well as about 2,500 family members.
MIAMI, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Look both ways! Soon Florida drivers could see a hike in their auto insurance.

Florida's uncommon auto insurance system which is considered "no-fault," could be a thing of the past.

Miami Personal Injury Attorney David Lipcon

State lawmakers are set to make changes to Florida's automobile insurance laws, the first in nearly 50 years. The changes proposed in Senate Bill 54, would do away with the no-fault provision and mandate each driver to carry bodily injury coverage.

The bill is sponsored by Republican Senator Danny Burgess and co-sponsored by Democratic Senator Darryl Ervin Rouson.

According to Miami personal injury attorney, David Lipcon, the possible new law has been a long time coming.

"This is something the citizens of Florida have needed for decades. Under the current system, drivers in Florida are not required to carry the type of insurance that would compensate the person they injured if they were at fault in a car accident. Currently, drivers are only required to carry Personal Injury Protection (PIP), which pays for their own medical bills, regardless of fault, but does not allow for claims for future medical expenses, future lost ages, mental anguish or pain and suffering. The new law would require every driver to carry what is known as 'Bodily Injury Coverage' which would allow for all of these types of claims against the party responsible for the accident. This is obviously better for the innocent victims of automobile negligence," said personal injury attorney, David Lipcon with Lipcon & Lipcon.

Florida leaders passed Senate Bill 54 38-1, debating the legislation in just 39 minutes.

If passed, each motorist in Florida would have to adhere to the new law by Jan. 1, 2022.

Press Contact:

Andrea Lyon

Social Firestarter

Media Outreach

Email: [email protected]

Phone: (407) 274-6178

SOURCE Lipcon & Lipcon

Related Links

https://www.lipconlawfirm.com


TSX, NYSE American

Symbol: TMQ

VANCOUVER, BC, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Trilogy Metals Inc. (TSX: TMQ) (NYSE American: TMQ) ("Trilogy" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority ("AIDEA") has formally approved the proposed plan and budget for the 2021 summer field season activities and services of up to $13 million for the Ambler Access Project ("AAP"). The cost will be shared 50/50 by AIDEA and Ambler Metals LLC ("Ambler Metals"), the joint venture operating company equally owned by Trilogy and South32 Limited (ASX: S32) (LSE: S32) (JSE: S32) (ADR: SOUHY) ("South32").

The Board of AIDEA has authorized up to $6.5 million for field season activities. These funds will be matched by up to another $6.5 million from Ambler Metals under the terms of the Ambler Access Development Agreement (the "Development Agreement") that was approved by the AIDEA Board on February 10, 2021 and subsequently executed by both parties, resulting in a total budget for 2021 of up to $13 million.

The AAP is a proposed 211-mile, east-west running controlled industrial access road that would provide industrial access to the Ambler Mining District in northwestern Alaska. The area currently lacks the transportation infrastructure necessary for the operations of mines in the district. The Ambler Mining District is one of the largest copper-zinc mineral belts in the world and is home to the Company's projects.

AIDEA has also confirmed that it has entered into a land access agreement with Doyon, Limited ("Doyon") to conduct final feasibility and permitting activities to advance the AAP.

Doyon is the Alaska Native regional corporation for Interior Alaska. With more than 12.5 million acres of land in Alaska allocated to the corporation under ANCSA (Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act), Doyon is the largest private landholder in Alaska and one of the largest in North America. Headquartered in Fairbanks, Alaska and led by a 13-member board of directors, Doyon is a for-profit corporation with more than 20,000 shareholders.

The land access agreement with Doyon allows AIDEA, and its contractors, controlled access to land owned and managed by Doyon along the proposed road route to the Ambler Mining District. AIDEA is working in conjunction with Ambler Metals through the Development Agreement, signed in February 2021, to collaborate with local stakeholders, landowners, communities, and tribes.

Tony Giardini, President and CEO of Trilogy, commented, "I would like to applaud the hard work being carried out by AIDEA which, in a span of a few months, has made a number of significant accomplishments in the advancement of the AAP. I am also very encouraged with the work AIDEA has invested in with respect to its engagement with Doyon Limited. The development of relationships with all stakeholders is the key to creating opportunities for Alaskans and other stakeholders."

Background

On February 11, 2021, the Company announced that it had provided approval for Ambler Metals to enter into the Development Agreement, which defines how AIDEA and Ambler Metals will work cooperatively together on the pre-development work for the AAP to address funding and oversight of the project's feasibility and permitting activities until the parties reach a decision on the construction of the project by the end of 2024 at the latest. The cost of the pre-development work and activities will be paid 50% by AIDEA and 50% by Ambler Metals based on an annually agreed program and budget.

Under the Development Agreement, Ambler Metals and AIDEA agree to contribute up to $35 million each for pre-development costs of the AAP through to December 31, 2024.

On January 6, 2021, AIDEA signed agreements for Right-of-Ways for the AAP with the United States Bureau of Land Management ("BLM") and the National Park Service. The agreements grant a 50-year right-of-way on federally owned and managed land by the federal agencies for the future development of the AAP.

On July 23, 2020, the BLM issued the Joint Record of Decision ("JROD") for the AAP that authorizes a right-of-way across federally managed lands to AIDEA. The northern or "A" route, which is being considered for a 211-mile-long controlled industrial access road in the southern Brooks Range foothills to the Ambler Mining District, was selected as part of the decision. Along with the JROD, a Section 404 Permit, which is governed by the Clean Water Act, was issued by the United States Army Corps of Engineers to AIDEA.

AIDEA is a public corporation of the State of Alaska with the purpose is to promote, develop and advance the general prosperity and economic welfare of the people of Alaska.

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 Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects ("UKMP") in northwestern Alaska. On December 19, 2019, South32, which is a globally diversified mining and metals company, exercised its option to form a 50/50 joint venture with Trilogy. 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 a land package that spans approximately 172,636 hectares. Ambler Metals 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 permitting and construction of the AAP, the timing and benefits of the AAP and the merits of the UKMP 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 whether the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority will build the AAP; the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic; success of exploration activities, permitting timelines, requirements for additional capital, 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


People of the She ethnic group celebrate traditional Shangsi Festival in Fujian province

People's Daily Online) 09:48, April 19, 2021

People of the She ethnic group stage a traditional wedding ceremony performance in Podou village, Yunxiao county, Zhangzhou city of southeast Chinas Fujian province, April 14. (Photo/Xie Qinjie)

People of the She ethnic group in southeast China's Fujian province held various activities to celebrate the Shangsi Festival, an ancient Chinese festival celebrated on the third day of the third lunar month, which fell on April 14 this year.

Singing folk songs, dancing, staging fashion shows, and holding a traditional wedding ceremony performance, local people not only showcased the glamor of She culture, but also the developmental achievements of She villages.

Fujian province is home to over half the population of the She ethnic group in China.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
The Constitution provides for very limited powers for the President, and in no way does the President have the power to comment on his concerns about a bill, just like the President did two days ago. This is what deputy of the My Step faction of the National Assembly of Armenia Hamazasp Danielyan told reporters in parliament today.

The Constitution clearly states that the President either signs a law adopted by the National Assembly or forwards it to the Constitutional Court, if there is any problem with constitutionality, and its clear that there is no problem with constitutionality in regard to the bill on amendments to the Electoral Code. This is also stated in the Presidents statement. The President doesnt have the powers to make comments. He is probably trying to justify why he isnt going to sign the law. If this bill was signed earlier, it would provide the opportunity to adopt the larger package of bills on amendments to the Electoral Code earlier, he said.

Asked when the large package of bills on amendments to the Electoral Code will be introduced in the parliaments agenda, Danielyan said the package will be introduced next week. I believe we can consider the package and hold a voting next week. If the President doesnt sign this package and a 21-day period is set, this will pose a risk for implementation of all the points of the bills during the snap elections set for June 20, he added.
The University of Georgias 39% acceptance rate for the class of 2025 is the lowest it has ever been, but David Graves, UGAs interim senior executive director of undergraduate admissions, cautioned students against focusing too much on that single percentage.

The acceptance rate was so low mainly due to an increase in applications. The number of applicants increased by about 40% this year, Graves said. Since UGA can only accept a certain number of incoming freshmen  this year, it was 15,350 the acceptance rate went down.

Some people in the world, as far as looking at admissions, think that [a low acceptance rate] means its a better quality school, Graves said. I just dont go with that. I just think it means a lot of people applied. Thats all.

UGAs admissions office isnt focused on decreasing the schools acceptance rate, Graves said. He said the number doesnt take into account what the applicant pool looks like. Id be thrilled if we had less applicants, because it means less volume and [would] make my life a little easier, he said.

A crazy year in college admissions

Graves said this years admissions cycle was a little crazy. It was impacted by three big things  the COVID-19 pandemic, going test-optional and switching to the Common App.

UGA didnt require high school seniors to submit standardized test scores this year because many exam sessions were canceled due to the pandemic, and the Common App allows students to apply to multiple colleges using a single application. In past years, UGA used its own unique application portal.

These changes and the increase in applicants meant the admissions office began reviewing applications two weeks earlier and extended the process a week later than normal, adding a total of three weeks to the review process. Graves said the office also hired part-time readers to look over applications.

Some readers had worked part-time in admissions offices before, he said, while others had knowledge about applicants high schools. Some were students at UGA that had made an impact on campus and really knew UGA, knew the situation at UGA and what the [application] system was like, Graves said.

Admissions also shifted to a holistic look at applicants for both early action and regular decision cycles, Graves said. Holistic review means admissions officers look at all aspects of an application instead of just grades and test scores.

In past years, early action applicants were reviewed with a stronger emphasis on grades and test scores, while regular decision applications were looked at more holistically. Graves said eight years ago, early action was based mostly on grades and scores. Around four years ago, admissions began to use a slightly more holistic approach on early action applicants.

This years shift to a more holistic review for early action was caused partly by the lack of test scores to allow admissions officers to get a better look at each applicant, Graves said.

Graves said there was an almost 50/50 split between the number of early and regular applications. Some competitive applicants were deferred from early action so the office could review the regular decision applications as well.

Being deferred from early action doesnt mean a student wont get in. Not accepting all competitive applicants who applied early is a strategy that the admissions office uses to ensure there are enough spots for regular decision applicants as well, Graves said.

Itd be sort of like if an Olympic figure skating judge made a decision after four skaters who got the medals, and you still have five more to go, Graves said.

Whats next?

Graves said its up to the University System of Georgia to decide whether UGA will continue to be test-optional in future years. Over 40% of admitted students didnt send standardized test scores to UGA this year, according to a UGA admissions blog post by Graves.

Graves said even if UGA requires standardized test scores in the future, those are not the primary factor in admissions decisions.

The primary factor for how successful you will be in the classroom here is going to be, How did you do in four years in high school, and how did you challenge yourself? Graves said.

Extracurricular and community involvement will also continue to be a significant factor, as admissions officers use that to guess how involved students will be at UGA.

Graves said although he doesnt know for sure if UGAs admissions will continue to use a more holistic approach to applications, he thinks the office will move in that direction.

We still focus on academics initially. We want to make sure the student is ready for the classroom here, and thats an important factor, Graves said. [Were] also trying to say, How will they impact the soul of the university?
I feel our younger people believe theyre at less risk, but I worry about the variants because were seeing more hospitalizations. Even if youve had COVID, its important to get vaccinated, said Weaver.
A couple of weeks ago, the Hollywood Reporter published a story about theater and film giant Scott Rudin and the decades of alleged mistreatment that employees suffered at his hands. This past weekend, the Washington Post broke the news that Rudin, in a moment of contrition, is planning to "step back" (whatever that means) from his role as lead producer on shows like The Music Man and To Kill a Mockingbird, so as not to disrupt Broadway's long-awaited return.

Rudin's career on Broadway is unparalleled. Tainted now as these shows are by the allegations (which range from the physical violence of throwing objects to verbal and emotional abuse), he's responsible for some of my favorite productions of the past 20 years, Death of a Salesman with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Skylight with Carey Mulligan, Ivo van Hove's brilliant View from the Bridge, Hello, Dolly! with Bette Midler, George C. Wolfe's astonishing Shuffle Along. He's led deserving playwrights like Stephen Karam and Annie Baker to mainstream success, and used the publicity machine to help Laurie Metcalf, Lindsay Mendez, Reed Birney, Jayne Houdyshell, Denzel Washington, and Viola Davis win Tonys. Over the course of a decade, the John Golden Theatre has basically become his own personal Manhattan Theatre Club.

One sentence in the Washington Post story, penned by critic/pundit Peter Marks, stuck in my craw. I've come to realize that it's gotten stuck in a lot of craws since Saturday morning. It read "An exit by Rudin has potentially immense consequences for an industry that is short on visionary leaders." I chewed on that for a day until I read a similar statement by fellow critic/pundit Charles McNulty in the Los Angeles Times a day later. "In truth," he says, "I fear what Broadway will revert to without his visionary zeal. Other producers can spot a promising new play, but Rudin, with his Hollywood cachet and theatrical know-how, brought clout that impressed the Shubert chieftains. He could sell what others would get laughed out of the room for considering."

That is, if others could actually get in the room, which they often cannot. As we all know  and as has been made even clearer over the past year  Broadway is a club for the old guard. Deals are made on handshakes at the Sardi's Restaurant bar. Theaters are promised to the generally white men who have track records. It's difficult, near impossible, to gain a foothold if you're not part of the "establishment." It's an all-around problem, not one that's just limited to producing.

But lacking in visionary leaders? Absolutely not. They're just blocked from the table by their status as a young person, or as a queer person, or as an artist of color. Producer Brian Moreland is a visionary. When he was not afforded a Broadway house for his upcoming production of Blue by Charles Randolph-Wright, which was to star Lynn Whitfield and Leslie Uggams, with Phylicia Rashad directing, they booked the Apollo Theatre. "It was very challenging to think that a show of this caliber, with the history that every single person in this cast has," Moreland told Deadline last April, "Usually that would trigger a house, but it didn't for us. It was heartbreaking, and of course you ask yourself 'Why?'" (While the Blue run was jeopardized by Covid, Moreland secured the Golden Theatre for an upcoming run of Keenan Scott II's Thoughts of a Colored Man.)

I look at Paula Vogel as a visionary. Vogel had three productions shut down by Covid  one on Broadway, two in London  and immediately after grieving, she created the Bard at the Gate online play reading series, featuring works that were either rarely seen or virtually unproduced. "There's a frustration that I think literary managers share with people who run MFA programs," she told me last August, "which is, we see extraordinary things and can't convince our bosses to produce them. I've taken all of these scripts around from theater company to theater company, and Oskar Eustis or whoever I brought it to would pat me on the head and go 'Oh, that's nice.' They think that students are students, whereas I think of students as the next generation of my colleagues."

How can you look at a Tina Landau show or an Alex Timbers production and not think "visionary" when they've figured out how to basically blow the theater up? How can you look at a journalist colleague of mine like Jose Solis and not think "visionary" when you read about the development and mentorship program he created for rising BIPOC critics? Mia Katigbak cofounded the National Asian-American Theatre Company as a way to allow for greater Asian representation in the theater industry. Is NAATCO, which has created jobs for thousands of theater artists, not a visionary organization? And Jeremy O. Harris is certainly a visionary leader for the future, not only calling for federal ticket subsidies, but including a discretionary fund in his HBO development deal expressly for producing or commissioning new theater projects.

That's just off the top of my head and for the sake of brevity. There are countless visionary theater leaders  young people, older people, trans people, Indigenous people, women  who we've never been given the opportunity to get to know because they don't get given the opportunity to show us. The theater industry is filled with extraordinarily creative thinkers who aren't allowed to sit at the red-checkered Sardi's booth.

But they do exist. They can sell a play to the powers that be just as well as anyone, their taste is just as good, and their reputation is much more humane. And anyone who doesn't think that is being willfully ignorant. As the reopening process becomes clearer and clearer, it's time to tear down the walls that block the next generation of visionary leaders and acknowledge their existence. It's irresponsible not to.
The Finance Ministry gave in-principle approval to sanction supply credit to Bharat Biotech and Serum Institute of India to ramp up COVID vaccine production, as per a CNBC report.

It will be sanctioned to the nodal ministers in charge who then shall pass it on to the companies to ramp up vaccine production, as per reports.

PTI

Rs 3000 crore credit for Serum Institute and Rs 1500 crore to Bharat Biotech is the division.

The payment will be released at the earliest.

Business Standard

Earlier in April, Adar Poonawalla, who is the CEO of Serum Institute of India had asked the government for financial aid.


When officers from the Rochester Police Department arrived on the scene of a family dispute involving a 9-year-old girl in emotional distress in January, a brand-new tool was at the citys disposal: Rochesters new Person in Crisis team. Launched earlier that month, the PIC team was created as an alternative response to mental health, substance abuse and other emergency calls that would normally involve police or paramedics. Instead of police officers being the first responders to these calls  and risking the potential that the encounter could escalate into a violent one, as was the case in the death of Daniel Prude in Rochester last year  a two-person team of crisis intervention counselors and social workers would show up with the aim of de-escalating, assessing what level of care the person in crisis needed and helping to connect the person to the relevant resources, such as a mental health urgent care center.

The PIC team was not dispatched that January day, however. Because the original call to 911 was to report a stolen car within the family, not a child in distress who was suicidal, it didnt trigger a PIC team response. Once on the scene, officers did not call upon the PIC team or another team of mental health responders managed by Monroe County, known as the Forensic Intervention Team. Instead of directing the 9-year-old girl to medical care or other resources, the interaction ended with police pepper-spraying and handcuffing her in the back of a squad car.

Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren was quick to point out at the time that the just-launched PIC team couldnt have responded at first because the 911 dispatcher wouldnt know to send them for a call about a stolen car. And while they operate 24/7, the PIC team is still a pilot program, consisting of just 16 people, with plans to expand to 30 people later this month. Rochester, a city of over 200,000 people, has a police force of roughly 700.

The challenge of delivering an adequate and safe response to mental health calls is not a new problem, nor is it one unique to Rochester.

The explanations provided for why a mental health response was not deployed in this situation  or for Tyshon Jones, a man who was experiencing a mental health crisis when Rochester police shot and killed him last month  fail to satisfy some of the police reform and mental health advocates who have been pushing for the removal of police from calls like these. The suffocation death of Daniel Prude, a man who was in mental distress when cops restrained him with handcuffs and a mesh hood over his head last year, has forced the issue into the spotlight. But the challenge of delivering an adequate and safe response to mental health calls is not a new problem, nor is it one unique to Rochester.

Hawa Bah has been advocating for the removal of the New York City Police Department from mental health response since officers killed her son Mohamed in 2012. Hawa Bah had called for an ambulance in Manhattan because Mohamed was experiencing a mental health crisis, but cops arrived instead and eventually shot him eight times. What happened to Mohamed, I don't want that to happen to no one. My life changed, my whole familys life changed. We will never be the same, Bah told City & State recently. And Im not alone. A 2015 report by the Treatment Advocacy Center, a mental health organization, found that people with untreated serious mental illness are 16 times more likely than other people to be killed when approached by law enforcement.

For years, advocates for mental health and police reform have been pushing for communities to remove, or at least limit, law enforcements involvement in responding to people in mental health crises. Governments are starting to listen to those calls  creating pilots like Rochesters Person in Crisis team, New York Citys Behavioral Health Emergency Assistance Response Division or Nassau Countys Mobile Crisis Team.

Rochesters PIC team, which will be evaluated for future phases in June, complements an existing program run by Monroe County that partners mental health professionals with law enforcement agencies to respond to calls alongside police. There is a commitment from City Council and there is a cry from the community to see this type of service provided to the citizens, said Rochester City Council Vice President Willie Lightfoot of the PIC team. Lightfoot, a Democrat, said he anticipates the pilot will be expanded in the citys upcoming budget cycle.

Little data is available on just how often the PIC team is being dispatched in Rochester. Justin Roj, a spokesperson for Warren, said that the PIC team has responded to hundreds of calls, and he said the city plans to publish a dashboard with more specific data in the coming weeks. The team can be dispatched either by either calling 911 or by calling 211, a separate line for city services.

In its first few months, a few speed bumps have appeared in the pilot, even as its had some successes. Rochester City Council Member Mary Lupien said that shes heard some positive feedback from situations where PIC was deployed. One of the situations I heard of was a woman who was afraid at a grocery store, she was afraid of men and was screaming. The PIC team came, they calmed her down, they got her home, Lupien said. But a call later on about that same woman triggered a police response instead of a PIC response, displaying some of the kinks to be worked out in how the team is dispatched by 911. Because of the way the dispatcher phrased the questions, she ended up with a police response the second time. And that ended up with her being MHAd, Lupien said, using shorthand for Mental Hygiene Arrested to describe when a person who appears to be mentally ill is deemed to be at serious risk of harming themselves or others and is placed into emergency custody.

Another complaint from local lawmakers and advocates is that the pilot program is underfunded and its clinicians are overloaded with work. Just over $660,000 has been allocated to the program. We have a police department that has an over $90 million budget. Mental health has to take priority, said Shani Wilson, chair of Rochesters Police Accountability Board.

People in the city are really concerned about whether their loved ones are going to be safe if they actually call the police on their behalf.  Shani Wilson, chair of Rochesters Police Accountability Board

Pilot programs and promised investments in new training or resources for mental health responses dont automatically undo what some say is the inherent problem in having police involved in these interactions. Wilson said that in her job as a physician assistant, shes never sure whats going to happen when she places a mental health call for a patient. I think people in the city are really concerned about (whether) their loved ones are going to be safe if they actually call the police on their behalf because they cannot control the mental health issue that theyre having, Wilson said. People are tired of rolling the dice, wondering whats going to happen to their loved one.

Rochesters PIC team falls short of what some advocates refer to as the gold standard of mental health response: the CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets) model pioneered in Eugene, Oregon, a mobile crisis team that sends a mental health crisis worker and medic to respond to mental health calls instead of the police. Police are only called in as backup if needed. Lupien and Wilson both said theyd like to see a similar model implemented in Rochester. But Lightfoot stopped short of calling for the complete removal of police from responding to some mental health calls. Im more in favor of a hybrid approach or a joint response, in certain instances where weapons are involved or where highly erratic behavior is happening, Lightfoot said.

Where there is widespread agreement, however, is that Rochesters PIC team represents an important first step for a city looking to overhaul how it responds to people in mental health crises. Daniele Lyman-Torres, the commissioner of Rochesters Department of Recreation and Human Services, which oversees the pilot, did not respond to requests for comment. But in a recent Police Accountability Board meeting, she previewed what may be next steps for the program after the initial pilot phase, including incorporating trained peers  those with lived mental health experience  in responding to these calls.

Rochester is not the only city that has been in the spotlight for its response to people in mental health crises. For years, following the deaths of people including Mohamed Bah, Saheed Vassell and Deborah Danner, New York City has been mulling alternative approaches to mental health calls. Some efforts have been launched already. Mobile Crisis Teams made up of clinicians and peers can be dispatched through the citys mental health crisis hotline, public hospitals or health care providers. These teams can respond within 48 hours, and are deployed about 20,000 times a year, according to Susan Herman, Director of the Mayors Office of ThriveNYC, the citys wide-ranging mental health initiative. With a two-day response window, these teams arent responding to emergencies, but less time-sensitive crises where a person can wait hours for mental health assistance. Co-Response teams, which pair police officers with a behavioral health clinician, have been deployed over 10,000 times since 2016. And Health Engagement Assessment Teams (HEAT), composed of a clinician and peer, are tasked with preemptively engaging people who frequently call 911 or present mental health issues.

None of these programs yet achieve a real alternative to police. Mobile Crisis Teams come close, but theyre not immediate responders, though the city said it plans to shorten their response time to within a few hours of a call. Last year, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a new initiative that aims to make mental health professionals, and not police, the default response to 911 calls. First set to launch this February, the B-HEARD (Behavioral Health Emergency Assistance Response Division) pilot program is now planned to start later this spring, a city spokesperson said. The pilot will pair a New York City Health + Hospitals social worker with two emergency medical responders, who will be dispatched to respond to mental health calls that go to 911. De Blasio announced the initiative with the support of some mental health organizations, lawmakers and even a director in Eugenes CAHOOTS system.

Are we going to say, Please dont have your mental health crisis at 9 a.m. because we wont be able to get you the right response.  Ruth Lowenkron, director of the Disability Justice Program at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest

But like any pilot, there are a few caveats to note in this programs lofty ambitions. To start, it will only be available in certain precincts in East and Central Harlem, and the teams will only be available to respond 16 hours per day. Are we going to say, Oh, honey, please dont have your mental health crisis at 9 a.m., because we wont be able to get you the right response. Could you hold off until noon time? asked Ruth Lowenkron, director of the Disability Justice Program at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest. The citys goal is to expand geographically and to 24/7, but that may be a ways down the road.

Other advocates said that the pilot still relies too heavily on the existing police infrastructure and counts on 911 dispatchers to decide whether a call will be routed to the police or the new teams. Theres still a chance that dispatch would still call the NYPD to the scene, said Reem Fareed Ramadan, lead organizer at the New York City Anti-Violence Project, an advocacy and counseling organization. Police and EMTs will also still be the default response for mental health situations in which a weapon or serious risk of harm is involved.

Suburban counties are also shifting mental health responses away from cops. Nassau County has a mobile crisis team made up of trained social workers and nurses who can respond to mental health crisis calls seven days a week, but it currently responds on the scene only from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. While police officers are still the default response to those calls, the county plans to shift to a two-tiered response, with only mobile crisis teams responding to calls where a person isnt aggressive, violent or in possession of a weapon. Under the countys recently approved police reform plan, the mobile crisis teams will also shift to operating longer hours, enhancing mental health training for 911 dispatchers and adding more teams of nonpolice responders. I think that the framework is  on par for what I would have expected at this point, said Nassau County Legislator Siela Bynoe, a Democrat who has sponsored bills to study alternatives to police mental health response.

Nassau Countys mobile crisis team has been around in some capacity since 1985, and Ulster, Albany, Orange and Rockland counties are just a few localities with mental health response teams. What still eludes most cities and counties, however, is a true alternative to the default police response to mental health calls, at any hour of the day.

Legislation from state Sen. Samra Brouk and Assembly Member Harry Bronson, both Democrats from Rochester, would prompt the entire state to reevaluate how all of New York responds to mental health calls. Daniels Law, named for Daniel Prude, would create a statewide mental health council and then regional mental health councils, tasked with creating nonpolice mental health response units in every part of the state. The whole objective here really is to recognize having law enforcement as the first responder to mental health crisis isn't always the most appropriate, and is typically not the most appropriate, Bronson said. Having mental health providers and experts in that field be the first responders would be what's most appropriate, and that's where we're trying to move the system.

While Bronson said the legislation wasnt ready to be part of the state budget this year, it will be a priority for him as a post-budget item. Time and time again, weve seen police response to mental health emergencies escalate the situation, leading to what I consider unnecessary violence and at times death, Bronson said. The tragic death of Daniel Prude, and then recently, the pepper-spraying of a 9-year-old child, have outraged our communities, and its shown that real change is needed to prevent these tragedies from occurring.



If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide, you can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
The South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra) has recommended the pause on the rollout of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine be lifted.

SA temporarily suspends J&J jab The South African Department of Health has put the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine on hold temporarily, while it investigates a possible link between the jab and a rare blood clot disorder...

The country's health department put the J&J vaccine on hold, after the US Food and Drug Administration paused the vaccine after reports of six women, out of 6.6-milion doses administered, developed rare cerebral venous thrombosis, with low blood levels of blood platelets.Sahpra said in a statement that it had engaged with the J&Js Sisonke phase 3B implementation study team and Janssen Pharmaceutica to discuss the safety of the vaccines as well as the adverse findings reported in the US.Based on their review of the available data, Sahpra has recommended that the pause in the Sisonke study be lifted, provided that specific conditions are met.Healthcare workers participating in the Sisonke study will also be informed about the possible risks of developing a blood clotting disorder after vaccination.They will also be advised to seek immediate medical assistance if they develop early signs and symptoms associated with blood clots or low platelet counts. The study team will submit the required updated documents, procedures and study arrangements to Sahpra for approval.
New research from Singapore has found that gas pipelines for the onshore transport of green hydrogen and the cables for the transport of electricity to produce it at a distant location have similar costs at a 4000 km transmission distance. For longer distances, gas pipelines were found to be cheaper than cables, although the electric lines are said to benefit from scaling up and higher utilization. For both options, however, a currently too high hydrogen LCOE remains the biggest barrier to overcome.A group of scientists from the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore has examined the challenges ...

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.
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The Oscar-nominated documentary Hunger Ward, by award-winning filmmaker Skye Fitzgerald, chronicles doctors struggle to save lives of starving children in conflict-ridden Yemen. VOAs Penelope Poulou spoke with the Oscar nominee and filed this report.
[April 19, 2021] Cattle Dog Digital Capitalizes on FinancialForce PSA to Increase Productivity and Fuel Rapid Growth

SAN FRANCISCO, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- FinancialForce , the leading customer-centric ERP and #1 professional services automation ( PSA )* business suite, today announced one of its premier partners, Cattle Dog Digital , has dramatically improved its operations and scaled its business by using the same solution it implements for many of its clients: FinancialForce PSA. Headquartered in Sydney, Australia, Cattle Dog Digital delivers ERP, financial, revenue, and marketing operations technology solutions through seasoned practice teams. The firm was also recently named "Partner of the Year'' for the APAC region at this year's FinancialForce Partner Summit after doubling the size of its practice in 2020. As a fast-growing boutique consulting practice, Cattle Dog Digital needed a PSA system that could support the company's rapid growth while driving consistency across all its business processes. Before implementing FinancialForce PSA, the company relied on unconnected and siloed systems to manage its consulting practice, including Google Sheets and tools such as Jira, Trello, and Asana. "We are dedicated to providing the best digital transformation services and producing revolutionary results for our clients, and we wanted to apply that focus to our own business," said Matt Campo, Director of Operations, Cattle Dog Digital. "We needed to drive efficiency as we scaled, so getting everything in one system was important. As a FinancialForce partner, we understood the value FinancialForce brings to our clients, so it was the bvious choice for our business too."



Since adopting FinancialForce PSA, Cattle Dog Digital has experienced tremendous time savings and productivity improvements. Project reporting has transformed from a manual process taking up to five hours of offline spreadsheet analysis to a quick pull of relevant info straight from FinancialForce PSA; this gives Cattle Dog's accounting team more time to focus on the strategic side of the business. Forecasting was another big challenge for Cattle Dog Digital. Achieving its goal of 80% utilization rate was sometimes at risk due to limited visibility into project teams. Implementing FinancialForce PSA resolved these issues by enabling the company to get the right people on the right projects at the right time. Having one source of truth, as well as a forward-looking view of the business, helped ensure the company was as prepared as possible for future projects and staffing.

The digital transformation set in place by FinancialForce PSA impacted the entire business from time cards to invoicing. Financial processes that typically took 15 days to settle are now down to two or three days. Cattle Dog's improvements have led to an increase in repeat projects as well, with 85% of clients being repeat customers. "Cattle Dog Digital has been a fantastic partner in bringing our solutions to businesses across APAC and it's great to see the company make FinancialForce PSA part of its own digital transformation," said Simon Peterson, Managing Director, APAC at FinancialForce. "By running its business with FinancialForce on the Salesforce platform, Cattle Dog Digital can tap into the strategic insights and operational improvements it needs to keep customers happy and rapidly grow the business." Cattle Dog Digital provides full-stack implementation services , specializing in Salesforce and FinancialForce for clients, large and small. Always focused on delivering successful outcomes, the team adheres to best of breed governance practices with all teams fully aligned, using Agile delivery. The company uniquely provides expertise across all business functions including sales, marketing, services and finance which benefits clients with the most efficient, 360 degree end-to-end view of their business. Practice teams are fully certified across FinancialForce, Salesforce CRM, Marketing Cloud, Pardot and more. For updates, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn . For more information, visit www.cattledogdigital.io . Please contact: hello@cattledogdigital.com or call (+61) 0408 819 933. About FinancialForce FinancialForce offers customer-centric business applications on the leading cloud platform from Salesforce. We accelerate business growth with the only modern ERP suite and the #1 professional services automation (PSA), enabling real-time insights and intelligent decision-making. See your customers in full color with Salesforce and FinancialForce. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in San Francisco, FinancialForce is backed by Advent International, Salesforce Ventures, and Technology Crossover Ventures. For more information, visit www.financialforce.com . *Most adopted PSA solution in SPI Research's 2021 PS Maturity Benchmark; most adopted PSA solution by Technology Services Industry Association in 2020; leader in IDC MarketScape for Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled Midmarket Finance and Accounting Applications, 2020; #1 Enterprise and Mid-Market PSA and leader in Accounting by G2. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cattle-dog-digital-capitalizes-on-financialforce-psa-to-increase-productivity-and-fuel-rapid-growth-301271895.html SOURCE FinancialForce

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President Muhammadu Buhari has assured that Nigeria will continue to assist its close neighbours in diverse ways as required.

The Presidents spokesperson, in a statement in Abuja on Monday, said Mr Buhari gave the assurance when he hosted the newly inaugurated President of Republic of Niger, Mohamed Bazoum, who was in Nigeria on his first international visit.

The Nigerian leader also assured Mr Bazoum that Nigeria would continue to do all it could to stabilise the West African sub-region, saying that Nigerians and Nigeriens shared similar culture and language.

He said: We will stabilise our region for the benefit of the two countries. Nigerians and Nigeriens are people with similar culture, language and ways of life, and we also share about 1,500 kilometres of land border, so we cannot ignore each other.

The president congratulated Mr Bazoum on winning the recent presidential election, and his successful inauguration into office.

You have been in the system for a long time. The only thing is that you had never been president. Now you are one, he said,

On terrorism, as perpetrated by Boko Haram, Mr Buhari observed that Republic of Niger also suffers high casualties, vowing: We will do all it takes to secure our two countries.

Mr Buhari was thankful to the immediate past president, Mahamadou Issoufou, for what he called his understanding and sacrifices to help stabilise the region, urging the successor to maintain the institutions his predecessor had established.

Mr Bazoum had earlier said he was delighted to make Nigeria his first port of call, noting that the two countries had common interests, and, therefore, a good relationship is very important.

On security, he observed that the fact that some Nigerians flee to Niger during terrorist attacks shows that we need to cooperate, and we will face our challenges together.

Mr Bazoum, who is on a two-day official visit to Nigeria, would be hosted to a private breaking of fast by Mr Buhari.

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After the original deal was signed, Foxconn said it was downsizing the factory to be built over 2,500 acres of land from what is known as a Generation 10.5 plant to a Generation 6 plant that makes smaller thin-film transistor liquid crystal display screens for cellphones and other devices, rather than the larger screens that were first proposed.
Why it matters: Is Nvidia's $40 billion acquisition of Arm on shaky ground? It looks that way after the UK Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport issued a public interest intervention notice. The uncertainty has seen team green's pre-market share price fall up to 3.1% as investors get nervous.

Nvidia's acquisition of Arm has been a controversial subject since it was revealed back in September. Qualcomm, Google, and Microsoft are just some tech giants concerned about what it would mean for Arm's open-licensing model and customer neutrality. Even its co-founder, Hermann Hauser, believes the sale would be a disaster.

The acquisition was always going to come under the scrutiny of regulators. In January, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) requested interested third parties submit their views on the deal before a formal investigation is launched later this year.

Largest tech deals in history:

Company Acquisition Price Year Dell EMC $64 billion 2015 Avago Technologies Broadcom $37 billion 2015 IBM Red Hat $34 billion 2018 Softbank ARM Holdings $31.4 billion 2016 Microsoft LinkedIn $26.2 billion 2016

Now, the UK's Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has announced he is intervening in the sale on national security grounds. The CMA has until July 31 to "prepare a report on the competition and national security aspects of the proposed transaction" and submit it to the Secretary of State, who will then decide whether to allow it.

Nvidia's share slump comes a week after the price hit a record high following the GTC conference, where the company announced better-than-expected revenue and new Arm-based data center CPUs called Grace and Grace Next.

Nvidia will pay $12 billion in cash and $21.5 billion in shares to Softbank, which paid $31 billion for Arm in 2016. SoftBank may receive up to an extra $5 billion based on financial performance targets by Arm, and Nvidia will issue $1.5 billion in equity to Arm employees.

Nvidia has many reasons to hope the deal goes through, not least the $1.25 billion it must pay Softbank in the event the acquisition fails to close.
New Delhi: In a big respite to the citizens, the central government has announced that everyone above 18 years of age will be eligible to get COVID-19 vaccine from May 1.

Until now, the minimum age limit to get inoculated against the virus was 45 years.

Zee News Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Chaudhary on Monday (April 19) hailed the governments decision to lower the age bar for getting vaccinated and also discussed the reasons behind the move.

As the governments decision comes into effect, about 12 crore people between 18 and 45 years of age will get the benefit of vaccines in the country.

In addition to this new age group, the vaccination campaign for people above the age of 45 years will continue at the governments vaccination centres free of cost.

People belonging to the 18-45 years age category will be vaccinated by the state government or in private hospitals as well. This will accelerate the vaccination drive across the country.

For this there will be an agreement between the vaccine manufacturing companies and the state governments. The price of each dose of vaccine will be agreed upon in advance.

The Centre has said that it will allow the vaccine manufacturers to supply 50% of their production to the government of India, while allowing them to sell the remaining 50% to the states and in the open market as well.

What is the reason behind the Centre's big move?

There are three main reasons why the central government took this decision:

The first reason is that in the second wave of coronavirus pandemic, it is the youth who seem to be more vulnerable as the numbers indicate. A major portion of deaths being reported in the country also belong to the under 45 years category.

The second reason is that the government wanted to eliminate the doubts raised by many that there is a shortage of vaccines which is why the government has put age restrictions. The latest decision to provide access to all above 45 years clears the air in this regard.

Lastly, the government did it to check the rising number of cases in the country, most of which were being transmitted by the youth.

The other big decision by the government of India recently was to clear the way for foreign vaccine candidates. The Centre has made it easier for all vaccines that are approved by WHO to enter India. This means COVID vaccines such as Pfizer, Moderna, Sputnik V and Johnson & Johnson could soon make an entry in the country, thus giving a major boost in the war against the pandemic.

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The poultry industry has reacted with alarm following the announcement of the new hard line measures which have been designed to reduce pollution.

In January the Welsh government announced that it will introduce a Nitrate Vulnerable Zone (NVZ) designation across the whole of Wales.

It claimed that agricultural pollution incidents remain very high and that these had led to the pollution of waterways and the contamination of drinking water.

The initial requirements came into force on 1 April, whilst the remainder will be phased in over three years to give farmers time to understand the rules and seek advice.

As part of the rules, farmers will be prohibited from spreading manure on most grassland between 15 October and 15 January.

Poultry producers will be expected to provide sufficient storage for all manure produced between 1 October and 1 April.

There are also strict measures regarding the amount of livestock manure that is permitted to be spread on the holding.

In any 12 month period from 1 January 2023, the total amount of nitrogen in livestock manure applied to the holding, whether directly by an animal or by spreading, should not exceed 170kg multiplied by the area of the holding in hectares.

This is set to leave many poultry producers without enough land to spread on and having to find ways to export manure.

In addition to this, farmers will also be hit with added paperwork and record keeping.

The new regulations insist that producers must draw up risk maps, highlighting areas where spreading may cause pollution, as well as nutrient management plans, strict records of the import and export of manure, and a need to be on top of calculations.

NFU Cymru has been particularly vocal in opposition to the new restrictions, with president John Davies saying he was particularly concerned about the impact on poultry farmers.

He said an all-Wales NVZ designation was 'indiscriminate and punitive', which would 'cause problems' for free range egg producers in terms of meeting storage of manure regulations and application rate limits.

He added it would leave "many businesses to question whether they can afford the required additional investment in infrastructure to meet compliance and the difficulties they may face in manure spreading or export to other farms."

Mr Davies said: It will affect every sector, every area of Wales, and every farmer will be subject to draconian record keeping and complex restrictions on the day-to-day running of their business for environmental benefits that appear to be quite small.

We have put forward to Welsh government farmer-led voluntary initiatives, which have worked in the past, supplemented by targeted and proportionate regulation.

"Yet Welsh government has failed to take into account any relevant information and feedback from stakeholders."

Robert Gooch, CEO of the British Free Range Egg Producers Organisation (BFREPA), said that the new measures would lead to more work and expense for already hard pressed free range egg producers.

Slapping most of Wales in an NVZ is an over-reaction to alleged pollution incidents from farmland into Welsh river catchments," he explained.

"But I am confident that Welsh producers will be able to adapt to the new spreading requirements when they come into force.

Large areas of England are already covered by NVZs and the English experience suggests that relationships with arable farmers will be important where muck has to be exported to comply with requirements.

"As ever, members should contact BFREPA if they need support in meeting the new requirements.
That Russia placed "bounties on the heads of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan was one of the most-discussed and consequential news stories of 2020. It was also, as it turns out, one of the most baseless  as the intelligence agencies who spread it through their media spokespeople now admit, largely because the tale has fulfilled and outlived its purpose.

The saga began on June 26, 2020, when The New York Times announced that unnamed American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan  including targeting American troops. The paper called it a significant and provocative escalation by Russia. Though no evidence was ever presented to support the CIA's claims  neither in that original story nor in any reporting since  most U.S. media outlets blindly believed it and spent weeks if not longer treating it as proven, highly significant truth. Leading politicians from both parties similarly used this emotional storyline to advance multiple agendas.

The story appeared  coincidentally or otherwise  just weeks after President Trump announced his plan to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2020. Pro-war members of Congress from both parties and liberal hawks in corporate media spent weeks weaponizing this story to accuse Trump of appeasing Putin by leaving Afghanistan and being too scared to punish the Kremlin. Cable outlets and the op-ed pages of The New York Times and Washington Post endlessly discussed the grave implications of this Russian treachery and debated which severe retaliation was needed. This is as bad as it gets, said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Then-candidate Joe Biden said Trump's refusal to punish Russia and his casting doubt on the truth of the story was more proof that Trump's entire presidency has been a gift to Putin, while Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) demanded that, in response, the U.S. put Russians and Afghans in body bags.
US Deports Woman Who Lied About Role in Rwandan Genocide

CONCORD, N.H. A woman who served a 10-year sentence in U.S. prison for lying about her role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide to obtain American citizenship, and then lost her bid for a new trial, has been deported to the East African nation and is likely to face prosecution there.

Beatrice Munyenyezi, who a U.S. judge said was actively involved in the killing of Tutsis in Rwanda, was convicted and sentenced in 2013 in New Hampshire. It was her second trial; the first jury could not reach a verdict. Munyenyezi served a 10-year sentence in Alabama and had faced deportation.

She lost her latest court battle in March, when the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a federal district judges rejection of her petition challenging how the jury was instructed during her trial in federal court in New Hampshire.

Her lawyer, Richard Guerriero, confirmed in an email Saturday that Munyenyezi had been deported to Rwanda. She arrived Friday and was handed over to Rwandan authorities, according to state-run media there.

Her deportation means a lot in terms of justice delivery to genocide victims, said Thierry Murangira, spokesperson for the Rwanda Investigation Bureau, according to The New Times.

Munyenyezi is accused of seven crimes connected to the genocide, including murder and complicity in rape, according to Rwandan investigators. She will be detained as investigations continue and her case sent to prosecutors, the newspaper reported.

In the United States, Munyenyezi was convicted of lying about her role as a commander of one of the notorious roadblocks where Tutsis were singled out for slaughter. She denied affiliation with any political party, despite the leadership role of her husband, Arsene Shalom Ntahobali, in the extremist Hutu militia party.

She requested a new trial based on a U.S. Supreme Court decision that came in 2017, well after her sentencing, and limited the governments ability to strip citizenship from immigrants who lied during the naturalization process.

Munyenyezi alleged that the jury was given inaccurate instructions on her criminal liability. A judge denied her request, saying that even if the instruction fell short, the error was harmless.

As part of her appeal, Munyenyezis trial lawyers, who are now New Hampshire superior court judges, said in court documents that they would have presented Munyenyezis case differently if the U.S. Supreme Court decision had been law during her trial.

They added that they believe if the jury had been instructed based on the court decision, the verdict may have been different.

Having served her sentence and lost her appeal, she was removed from the country, Guerriero said in a statement. It is possible a further challenge to her conviction may be filed despite her removal.

Munyenyezi fled to Nairobi, Kenya, with a young daughter in July 1994 in the waning days of the genocide. She gave birth to twin girls there four months later. She entered the United States as a refugee and settled in Manchester, New Hampshires largest city.

She got a $13-an-hour job working for the city housing authority and earned an associates degree in college. She financed a comfortable lifestyle through mortgages, loans and credit cards, but filed for bankruptcy in 2008 and had about $400,000 in debt discharged.

Ntahobali and his mother were convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes of violence and are serving life sentences. Both were deemed to be high-ranking members of the Hutu militia party, which orchestrated the attacks on Tutsis.

U.S. District Judge Steven McAuliffe, who sentenced her, said Munyenyezi was not a mere spectator.

He added, I find this defendant was actively involved, actively participated, in the mass killing of men, women and children simply because they were Tutsis.

McAuliffe acknowledged that Munyenyezi led a crime-free and productive life since her arrival in New Hampshire, but said it was a life lived under false pretenses.

By Kathy McCormack
SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- PFU America, Inc., based in Sunnyvale, California, a member of the PFU group of companies, announced it joined the DNA Data Storage Alliance, led by Twist Bioscience Corporation, Illumina, Inc., Western Digital and Microsoft. PFU has been promoting digital transformation worldwide through the provision of its mainstay image scanner products and has contributed to digital archiving projects for various historical artifacts. With its digitalization technology and experience, PFU will support the advancement of the DNA data storage ecosystem with the alliance members.

The future of data storage solved by DNA

Cultural assets of art, history, and science are valuable information that need to be preserved for the future. However, despite the hard work put into their preservation, many of them are disappearing due to natural disasters and age-related deterioration. Also, as digital transformation becomes more widespread in society, the born-digital information is increasing at an unprecedented rate. According to International Data Corporation ("IDC") in 2020, 64.2ZB (ZettaByte; one zettabyte is equal to a trillion gigabytes) of data were created or replicated, of which only less than 2% was saved and retained into 2021. Recording and maintaining the cultural information is one of the most expensive and energy-intensive issues facing society. A sustainable solution is needed to ensure the valuable data can be safely recorded and preserved in a format that will always be available to future generations.

DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) is a molecule that contains the genetic instructions for all living organisms. It goes without saying that DNA is an "information medium" and scientists around the world can now learn about the global environment tens of thousands of years ago by analyzing the DNA preserved in fossils and other materials. DNA is a molecule that can exist stably in the natural environment and does not require a large amount of energy for storage. Because of these characteristics, DNA is attracting attention as an emerging technology to realize future data storage needs.

Established in October 2020, the DNA Data Storage Alliance aims to drive awareness and adoption of DNA data storage through use cases and the development of an industrial roadmap. As a member, PFU America, Inc. joins a diverse group of industry leaders that each contribute expertise on a unique aspect of synthetic biology and data storage. Members support the organization's mission by contributing to white papers, events and technical discussions.

"PFU has contributed to the business of customers by providing solutions that convert analog information into digital. However, as the world continues to shift toward a data-driven society, we recognize that there are still many issues for customers to utilize digital assets over the long term," said Kenjiro Tsurumi, the CEO at PFU America, Inc. "DNA data storage is an environmentally friendly technology that not only solves the problems of information explosion and long-term storage, but also has the potential to have a major impact on the society in the coming decades. And we believe the technology and experience we have developed in digitalization will help the DNA Data Storage Alliance achieve its goals."

About PFU America, Inc. http://www.pfu.fujitsu.com/us/

PFU America, Inc., based in Sunnyvale, California, is the "innovation" arm of PFU group companies worldwide. PFU Limited is a Fujitsu company and provide the world's leading brands of Fujitsu and ScanSnap image scanners and solutions. PFU aims to be a leading solution partner that paves the way to a brighter future for our customers involved in both analog and digital technologies.

SOURCE PFU America, Inc.

Related Links

https://www.pfu.fujitsu.com/us/


They both failed to find love on this year's season of Married At First Sight.

And after filming Sunday night's episode of the much-anticipated reunion, Rebecca Zemek and Beth Moore were spotted jetting out of Sydney.

The Perth-based duo appeared to be in good spirits, despite a turbulent time on the Channel Nine dating show.

Love is still in the air! Rebecca Zemek [R] and Beth Moore [L] were spotted posing for photos with romantic display while jetting out of Sydney after filming the reunion

Daily Mail Australia spotted Beck, 27, and Beth, 39, happily chatting as they made their way through the departures lounge before catching their flight.

Beck was dressed for comfort in an all-black ensemble, which consisted of a long sleeve sweater paired with bike shorts.

The business manager wore her long blonde tresses up and styled in a high ponytail.

Bye bye! Daily Mail Australia spotted Beth, 27, and Beth, 39, happily chatting as they made their way through the departures lounge before catching their flight

Comfortable: Beck was dressed for comfort in an all-black ensemble which consisted of a long sleeve sweater which she paired with bike shorts

Meanwhile, Beth looked casual-chic in a Hyper Kenzo T-shirt which she teamed with black trousers and sandals.

She completed her look wearing a light coloured beanie.

Both brides were required to wear face masks inside the airport, amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Stylish: The business manager wore her long blonde tresses up and styled in a high ponytail

Cool: Beth looked casual-chic in a Hyper Kenzo T-shirt which she paired with black trousers

Happy: The Perth-based duo appeared to be in good spirits, despite a turbulent time on the Channel Nine dating show

At one stage, the reality star brides were seen taking selfies and posing for photos by an oversize display of a paper plane with the words 'Love Is In the Air'.

Beck was paired with charity CEO Jake Edwards, while Beth was paired with Diesel Mechanic Russell Duance.

The sighting comes just moments after learning of Rebecca's infidelity.

Strike a pose! At one stage, the reality star brides were seen taking selfies and posing for photos by an oversize display of a paper plane with the words 'Love Is In the Air'

Missed connections: Beck was paired with charity CEO Jake Edwards, while Beth was paired with Diesel Mechanic Russell Duance

During the show, it was revealed that when Rebecca had flown home to Perth to care for her sick dog, she asked her ex to take the dog to the vet with her.

As she filmed an update on the pup's condition, a man then walked in the room, and the camera fell to the bed.

The pair exchanged a passionate kiss, with Rebecca claiming the man was her brother before confessing it was in fact a man she was seeing - she still had feelings for him, and had even stayed in contact with the mystery man.

Jake was utterly devastated, admitting: I'm empty, mate. I'm shattered.'

Kisses: Rebecca had flown home to Perth to care for her sick dog and had filmed an update on the dog's condition. A man then walked in the room, and the camera fell to the bed
April 19, 2021 -- Ensuring COVID-19 vaccine access for refugee and displaced populations, and addressing health inequities, is vital for an effective pandemic response. Yet, vaccine allocation and distribution has been neither equitable nor inclusive, despite that global leaders have stressed this as a critical aspect to globally overcoming the pandemic, according to a paper published by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Read "Leave No-one Behind: Ensuring Access to COVID-19 vaccines for Refugee and Displaced Populations" in the journal Nature Medicine.

As of April 1st, high and upper-middle-income countries received 86 percent of the vaccine doses delivered worldwide, while only 0.1 percent of doses have been delivered in low-income countries. Worldwide, over 80 percent of refugees and nearly all internally displaced persons are hosted by low and middle-income countries - nations at the end of the line for COVID-19 vaccine doses.

"As the world grapples with supply challenges and inequitable vaccine access on local and global scales, marginalized groups, particularly refugees, internally displaced persons and stateless persons, face a double burden of access, even within countries that are themselves marginalized on the global stage," said Monette Zard, MA, Allan Rosenfield Associate Professor of Forced Migration and Health and director of the forced migration and health program at Columbia Mailman School. "Legal status should have no place in decisions about vaccine access, and relying on regularization as a route to vaccination will unacceptably delay the protective effects for migrants and refugees, particularly in higher risk groups."

In fragile settings with weak governance, competition for scarce COVID-19 vaccines may heighten tensions and exacerbate conflict, while unequal access raises the prospect of populations moving in an effort to access vaccines that are not available in their country or region, according to the authors.

The COVAX facility allocates around 5 percent of total available vaccine doses for humanitarian use, including vaccinating refugees, yet the total 2 billion vaccine doses targeted by the end of 2021 will only cover 20 percent of participating countries' populations, at most. Poorer countries may not be able to widely vaccinate their populations until 2023.

To create an equitable and inclusive COVID-19 vaccination strategy, Zard and co-authors believe lessons can also be drawn from experience managing conditions such as HIV and TB among mobile populations, as well as previous large-scale vaccination campaigns in humanitarian settings. They point out how the global community approaches COVID-19 vaccinations may further entrench the inequities and distrust experienced by refugees and displaced populations around the world or is a chance to build stronger, fairer health systems that are better prepared to respond to COVID-19 and future health emergencies. "Engage, listen, and mobilize trusted community and religious leaders -- involving the community, including displaced populations, in vaccine activities is vital,"noted Zard.

"Policy makers need to seize the opportunity of the pandemic to strengthen health systems more broadly and sustainably, to better respond to the challenges of COVID-19, while addressing the comprehensive health needs of refugees and host populations," observes one of the authors S. Patrick Kachur, MD, professor of population and family health at Columbia Mailman School. "As the world confronts one of the most formidable public health challenges in recent history, how we respond today will not only determine the course of this pandemic, but also who benefits from public health advances for years to come."

###

Co-authors are: Ling San Lau, Goleen Samari, Rachel Moresky, Mhd Nour Audi, and Claire Greene, Program on Forced and Migration and Health, Columbia Mailman School; Diana M. Bowser and Donald Shepard, Brandeis University; Fouad M. Fouad, American University of Beirut; Diego Lucumi and Arturo Harker, Universidad de los Andes; and Wu Zeng, Georgetown University.

About Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health
Due to global warming, not only the temperatures in the atmosphere and in the ocean are rising, but also winds and ocean currents as well as the oxygen distribution in the ocean are changing. For example, the oxygen content in the ocean has decreased globally by about 2% in the last 60 years, particularly strong in the tropical oceans. However, these regions are characterized by a complex system of ocean currents. At the equator, one of the strongest currents, the Equatorial Undercurrent (EUC), transports water masses eastwards across the Atlantic. The water transport by the EUC is more than 60 times larger than that of the Amazon river. For many years, scientists at GEOMAR have been investigating in cooperation with the international PIRATA programme fluctuations of this current with fixed observation platforms, so-called moorings. Based on the data obtained from these moorings, they were able to prove that the EUC has strengthened by more than 20% between 2008 and 2018. The intensification of this major ocean current is associated with increasing oxygen concentrations in the equatorial Atlantic and an increase in the oxygen-rich layer near the surface. Such a thickening of the surface oxygenated layer represents a habitat expansion for tropical pelagic fish. The results of the study have now been published in the international journal Nature Geoscience.

"At first, this statement sounds encouraging, but it does not describe the entire complexity of the system", says project leader and first author Prof. Dr. Peter Brandt from GEOMAR. "We found that the strengthening of the Equatorial Undercurrent is mainly caused by a strengthening of the trade winds in the western tropical North Atlantic", Peter Brandt explains further. The analysis of a 60-year data set has shown that the recent oxygen increase in the upper equatorial Atlantic is associated with a multidecadal variability characterised by low oxygen concentrations in the 1990s and early 2000s and high concentrations in the 1960s and 1970s. "In this respect, our results do not contradict the global trend, but indicate that the observed current intensification likely will switch back into a phase of weaker currents associated with enhanced oxygen reduction. It shows the need for long-term observations in order to be able to separate natural fluctuations of the climate system from trends such as oxygen depletion caused by climate warming", says Brandt.

The changes in oxygen supply in the tropics due to circulation fluctuations have an impact on marine ecosystems and ultimately on fisheries in these regions. "Habitat compression or expansion for tropical pelagic fish can lead to altered predator-prey relationships, but also make it particularly difficult to assess overfishing of economically relevant fish species, such as tuna", says Dr Rainer Kiko, co-author from the Laboratoire d'Oceanographie de Villefranche at Sorbonne University, Paris.

The investigations are based partly on a ship expedition carried out along the equator at the end of 2019 with the German research vessel METEOR. This expedition included a physical, chemical, biogeochemical and biological measurement programme that supports the development of climate-based predictions for marine ecosystems as part of the EU-funded TRIATLAS project. While another expedition with RV METEOR along the equator had to be cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, several long-term moorings in the tropical Atlantic - including the one at the equator - will now be recovered and redeployed during an additional expedition with RV SONNE in June-August 2021, of course under strict quarantine conditions.

###




Haiti - FLASH Travel Warning : Increase in rabies in Haiti





The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the United States Federal Agency for the Protection of Public Health, issued a travel advisory for Haiti after reports of annual dog vaccination campaigns have been halted in Haiti and health officials have reported an increase in rabies in dogs in that country.



Additionally, health officials are warning travelers that the human rabies vaccine is limited in Haiti, so if you are exposed to rabies you may not be able to get proper treatment.



Rabies is almost always fatal if left untreated, but it can be prevented by getting rabies post-exposure treatment (PEP) as soon as possible after and before symptoms appear. Be prepared to travel to the United States (or another region) to receive this treatment. Because of the above, the CDC recommends considering medical evacuation insurance.



Advice from CDC for travelers to Haiti :



Do not touch dogs, puppies, cats, kittens or other animals, even if they are pets. Even animals that appear healthy can spread rabies;



Watch children closely, especially around dogs and puppies, cats and kittens and local wildlife;



If you are traveling with pets, have them vaccinated against rabies before travel.





In case of bites or scratches :

Act quickly if you are bitten or scratched by a dog or other animal, immediately wash the sores with soap and running water for at least 15 minutes. Seek immediate medical attention even if you do not feel ill, the injury does not appear to be serious, or have been vaccinated against rabies before travel.



Consider rabies vaccine before travel :

If possible, get yourself vaccinated against rabies before travel. The pre-exposure rabies vaccine series is given as three injections over three to four weeks. However, people who receive the full set of pre-exposure rabies vaccine still require immediate medical attention after any animal bite or scratch.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Food is cultural, familial and nostalgic, and for me, few foods inspire memories of home as much as migas.

The Mexican breakfast takes me back to my childhood. There's something therapeutic about cooking it up with the family recipe and recalling the memories that come along with it.

Frying up the tortilla pieces, seasoning as I scramble the eggs mixed with a touch of tomato sauce for a taste reminiscent of my mother's migas  that's food heaven for me.

My mother would make her version of migas on Sunday mornings, whipping up a rendition that was a cross between the traditional Mexican dish and chilaquiles.

Sonia Ramirez

While similar to each other, migas and chilaquiles each consist of their own unique set of ingredients.

BEST TAMALES: Where to find the best tamales in Houston

Chron reached out to a resident expert in both dishes, decorated Houston chef Hugo Ortega, to break down the differences between the two dishes.

"Migas originated in Spain (torn pieces of bread pan-fried with garlic, smoked paprika and chorizo)," Ortega said. "Migas in Mexico evolved from bread to crispy tortilla pan-fried with tomato, onion and fresh jalapenos and scrambled with eggs. We had to give our spin to it."

Kenn Stearns

Chilaquiles, you might say, are the cousins of migas, as Ortega explained.

"Chilaquiles are crispy (typically stale) tortillas bathed in salsa (your choice) and tossed in the pan. Protein is optional. Topped with crema and queso fresco. Topping with a fried egg is also optional," Ortega said.

Paula Murphy

Both are popular breakfast dishes, especially on weekends, Ortega said. He shared his chilaquiles recipe with Chron for all to try. Find it at the end of this story.

If you're not feeling up to cooking, don't worry. Houston is home to a few places that serve migas and chilaquiles with their own special twist. Below are a few I've tried and recommend.

The Original Ninfa's on Navigation

This longtime East End staple serves its own version of the popular dish known as Chilaquiles Verdes.

BeccaWright

"Its a very popular dish with fried eggs topped with avocado, tomatillo salsa, sour cream, cotija cheese, onions and cilantro for $11. Its one of Chef Alex Padillas favorite brunch dishes as well," a representative for the restaurant told Chron.

This has to be one of my favorite places for migas because they remind me of my mother's. The first bite always takes me back to when I was a little girl watching my mother make them.

Sonia Ramirez

The only difference between my mother's and Dona Maria's is that she added tomato sauce to hers, making it a cross between the two Mexican staple dishes.

Yelp/Bubba B.

Yelp/Ana M.

Rebecca S. recommends the chilaquiles at La Guadalupana and wrote on Yelp: "Order the chilaquiles. Your butt will do the happy dance right in your chair. Thank me later."

Phillip B.

Reviews for Tejas Taco House were four stars or more for its authentic Mexican food, including its migas.

This affordable staple may be a favorite of many Houstonians for tacos, but it also has great reviews for its migas plate.

Yelp/Patrick S.

Patrick S. said the migas were his favorite dish at Brother's Taco House: "Hands down this is the best breakfast place in 77002. This [migas] probably my favorite dish period. Viva La Brothers!!"

Ortega's recipe for chilaquiles:

Ingredients for a serving of 4 includes the following:

1/2 cup corn oil, divided

1/4 cup white onion

6 cups corn tortilla chips (approximately 60 chips)

4 cups salsa de ajo (recipe follows)

3 cups grilled chicken breast, large dice

12 eggs

Heat 1/4 cup of the oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Crack the eggs two at the time into the pan and cook, to the desired doneness, 2 to 3 minutes for slightly runny sunny-side-up eggs.

Meanwhile, heat remaining oil in a large saute pan until simmering. Add onion and saute for 1 minute, add tortilla chips and saute for 30 seconds more, stirring often. Add Salsa de Ajo, mix well and cook for 30 seconds more. Add grilled chicken, incorporate ingredients and cook for 1 minute more. Divide chilaquiles among the plates. Top each plate with two eggs. Garnish with fresh sliced radish, sliced onion, fresh cheese, fresh cilantro leaves, beans, and guacamole.

The recipe for Chef Ortega's salsa de ajo includes the following:

10 guajillo peppers, deveined and toasted

2 died arbol pepper, deveined and toasted

1-1/2 cups water

2 garlic cloves

1/2 cup chopped onion

Kosher salt as needed

Clean and devein the dry peppers and toast on the flat grill, being careful to not burn. Once toasted, rehydrate by covering them with hot water for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, roast garlic with a little bit of oil in the oven until its caramelized. Place all ingredients in blender and mix to as smooth a texture as possible. Season to taste.
A principal at a public school in Bergen County plans to sue the school district and is seeking to get his job back, claiming he was suspended after he reported a family member was victimized by another student.

Christopher Iasiello, principal of Eisenhower Middle School in Wyckoff, was suspended Jan. 15 for allegedly failing to follow procedures to investigate a report of a sexting incident, his attorneys say in a complaint filed with New Jersey education officials.

The bullying and sexting occurred to a member of Iasiellos family, who is a special-needs student in the district. The incident occurred Oct. 16, 2020 away from school grounds, according to legal documents.

Hes been suspended for more than three months with no formal charges against him, in violation of school district policy, his attorney, Stephen J. Edelstein, told NJ Advance Media on Monday.

Edelstein filed a complaint April 13 with the commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Education seeking Iasiellos reinstatement. The complaint was filed in addition to a tort claim notice his office filed March 17 threatening to sue the district.

According to the tort claim notice, Iasiellos family member was a victim of invasion of privacy of a sexual nature by another Wyckoff student, also a minor, and another minor from a neighboring municipality.

Iasiello learned of the alleged bullying in October 2020 and, when he found out the victim was a family member, immediately alerted the next administrator in line of the incident for an investigation, his attorneys say in legal documents.

The principal, as he has done in the past, recused himself of any further involvement with the situation, the documents state.

The manner in which Iasiello handled the situation apparently got him removed from his job and barred from school grounds, his attorneys say.

In a letter dated Jan. 15, Superintendent Kerry L. Postma suspended Iasiello and demanded he return his keys and laptop in three days.

I am hereby suspending you with pay from your position (as) a result of serious allegations concerning your failure to properly follow the boards policies and procedures to investigate a report of a sexting incident, the letter states.

Iasiello was also told to preserve documents and other evidence in the case. Iasiello remains suspended with pay  his career in limbo  despite not having been charged with violations, Edelstein said on Monday.

In a Jan. 23 email, Stephen R. Fogarty, attorney for the Wyckoff Board of Education, told Iasiellos lawyers that the principal was being investigated for not following district procedures with regard to reporting sexting.

Fogarty said in the email that the investigation was dragging because Iasiello had refused to cooperate with the superintendent.

When your client was asked to meet with the superintendent, he walked into her office, offered up his keys, told her he was recording anything she had to say and that he would not answer any questions without his lawyer present Fogartys email states.

I suspect that if (Iasiello) had cooperated with Dr. Postma, as he is required to do, his suspension may well have been avoided, the email states, without addressing the fact that Postma had already suspended the principal in her earlier letter.

Fogarty did not immediately respond Monday morning to a phone message and email seeking comment on the matter.

Attorneys for Iasiello claim hes been suspended for reporting the victimization of a family member and for removing himself from an investigation that was personal in nature.

The notice of tort claim also accuses the superintendent of sexually harassing Iasiello, saying she made comments about Iasiellos physical appearance, telling him your tan looks good after he returned from vacation.

She also allegedly commented on his style of dress and remarked suggestively that his wife was feisty, the notice of tort claim states. In one instance, Postma allegedly caressed Iasiellos arm without warning or consent, the claim states.

Postma did not immediately respond Monday morning to a request for comment on those allegations or on Iasiellos suspension.

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.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 14:45:17|Editor: huaxia

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PUL-E-KHUMRI, Afghanistan, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Eight people including six militants and two security personnel were killed as a clash broke out in Afghanistan's northern Baghlan province on Monday, provincial police spokesman Ahmad Jawed Basharat said.

The clash erupted after a group of Taliban militants attacked the security checkpoints in Baghlan-e-Markazi district of the restive province early morning, triggering heavy fighting which lasted for a couple of hours. The militants fled after leaving six bodies behind.

Two security personnel were also killed in the fighting, the official said. Six more security personnel and eight insurgents were injured.

The security forces would continue to chase the militants in Baghlan-e-Markazi district and its vicinity, Basharat said.

Taliban militants who are active in parts of Baghlan province have yet to comment. Enditem
GameStop Corp said on Monday Chief Executive Officer George Sherman would resign, as it pivots from a brick-and-mortar video game retailer to an e-commerce firm.

Sherman will be stepping down on July 31 or earlier upon the appointment of a successor, the company said in a statement.

Its board is searching to identify chief executive officer candidates.

The development, first reported by Reuters last week, is the biggest shakeup at GameStop since Ryan Cohen, the co-founder and former chief executive of online pet food company Chewy Inc, joined the company's board in January.

GameStop has been in the process of shifting its business away from the brick-and-mortar retailer model into an e-commerce business that can compete with large-scale retailers such as Walmart Inc, as well as technology Microsoft Corp and

(Reporting by Akanksha Rana in Bengaluru; Editing by Aditya Soni)
NEW YORK, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- According to new research by World Animal Protection, a global animal welfare nonprofit organization, public waterways next to factory farms contain antibiotic resistance genes (ARG)the building blocks of superbugsthat may pose a risk to public health.

The study provides new evidence of the presence of antibiotic resistance in the environment near large factory farms in the US, suggesting intensive farms could be polluting local waterways and communities with resistant bacteria as a result of their practices. Differences in sample results taken downstream compared to upstream suggest the target farm sites are contributing to the contamination of ARGs.

Antibiotics are routinely used in factory farms to mask poor welfare and prevent stressed animals from getting sick. The animals are often confined to cages or barren concrete pens, endure painful physical mutilations and are taken from their mothers too young. ARGs are the building blocks of superbugsbacteria resistant to the antibiotics used to fight themthat emerge and spread rapidly due to antibiotics overuse.

World Animal Protection's investigation tested samples of water and soil collected in an area of North Carolina heavily concentrated with large factory farms. Samples were taken both downstream and upstream from target farm operations. However, the high density of pig and poultry farms in the area means that upstream sample sites may be regularly impacted by discharges from farms further upstream.

"The implications of antibiotic resistance throughout the environment near large factory farms are extremely concerning," says Cameron Harsh, Farming Campaign Manager, World Animal Protection US. "The contamination of waterways and air puts nearby communities at high risk. Drug residues and resistant bacteria do not obey the boundaries of the farm operation. They are carried away via the waste stored in lagoons or sprayed on fields, on insects, rodents, and other wildlife, on farmworkers headed home to their families, and on the animals processed for our food, potentially spreading resistance to other bacteria as they persist and travel."

The new report reveals very wide evidence of ARGs conveying resistance to streptomycin, fluoroquinolones, cephalosporins, macrolides, and most broadly, tetracycline. In particular:

All 45 water samples and all 45 soil samples taken across eight sample sites returned a positive result for at least one antibiotic resistance gene.

92% of samples had positive results for three or more different resistance genes, with the largest number of genes in a single sample being ten.

Genes conveying resistance to tetracycline drugs were identified in nearly all samples (89/90), and roughly half of samples were positive for three or more different tetracycline-resistance genes. According to 2019 data, tetracyclines were the largest class of drug sold by volume in the US for use in farmed animals, and the pork industry accounted for 50% of these sales. Data from producer surveys indicate that tetracyclines account for 60% of total antibiotics used by US pork producers.

Genes conveying resistance to tetracycline drugs were identified in nearly all samples (89/90), and roughly half of samples were positive for three or more different tetracycline-resistance genes. According to 2019 data, tetracyclines were the largest class of drug sold by volume in the US for use in farmed animals, and the pork industry accounted for 50% of these sales. Data from producer surveys indicate that tetracyclines account for 60% of total antibiotics used by US pork producers. Genes related to extended-spectrum -lactamase (ESBL)-producing bacteria (which includes Salmonella, E. coli , and Klebsiella) were identified in one in four samples. Their prevalence near swine farms has been previously reported, and the World Health Organization (WHO) identifies them as a global threat. The genes can convey resistance to cephalosporin, penicillin, and carbapenem antibiotics. Carbapenems and some cephalosporins are considered antibiotics of last resort.

, and Klebsiella) were identified in one in four samples. Their prevalence near swine farms has been previously reported, and the World Health Organization (WHO) identifies them as a global threat. The genes can convey resistance to cephalosporin, penicillin, and carbapenem antibiotics. Carbapenems and some cephalosporins are considered antibiotics of last resort. Genes conveying resistance to aminoglycoside, amphenicol, and macrolide antibiotics were found in a larger number of downstream than upstream samples. Macrolide antibiotics are categorized as Highest Priority Critically Important Antimicrobials by WHO.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), each year in the US alone, 2.8 million people get an antibiotic-resistant infection and more than 35,000 die. Economists have projected that, if nothing is done to address business-as-usual, by 2050, antibiotic resistance will cause 10 million deaths each year and cause USD $100 trillion in global economic losses.

Animal waste and other contaminants containing ARGs, superbugs, or drug residues can be carried off-farm in a variety of pathways that directly or indirectly reach people. Manure stored in lagoons or sprayed on fields can leach into groundwater and public waterways. Particulate matter released into the air can settle on the soil and vegetation nearby. Farmworkers, insects, rodents, wild birds, and farmed animals headed to slaughter may all carry ARGs or superbugs with them.

World Animal Protection conducted similar testing of water and soil samples collected near to factory farms in Canada, Spain, and Thailand. ARGs conveying resistance to important medicines were identified in all countries, including resistance to cephalosporins and fluoroquinolones. This cross-country research is the first of its kind and adds to the mounting evidence of public health harms attributed to intensive livestock production. Testing in Canada found ARGs resistant to tetracycline, streptomycin, cephalosporins, fluoroquinolones, and macrolides in surface water and sediments. In Spain, testing found ARGs resistant to tetracycline, sulfonamides, cephalosporins, and fluoroquinolones. ARGs from surface water samples were up to 200 times higher than the baseline levels. And in Thailand, results showed ARGs and superbugs resistant to third-generation cephalosporins, fluoroquinolones, or colistin plus co-trimoxazole, gentamicin, amikacin, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, or amoxicillin.

In 2019, World Animal Protection documented antibiotic-resistant bacteriaalso called "superbugs"on pork sold at Walmart stores in the US Eighty-one percent of bacteriaincluding E. coli, Salmonella, Listeria, and Enterococcusisolated from the pork samples were resistant, and 38% were multidrug-resistant, meaning they had resistance to three or more classes of antibiotics.

Notes to Editors

Superbugs are antibiotic-resistant bacteria and have been called one of the biggest threats to global health and development. The overuse of antibiotics has led to the spread of superbugs and impacts millions of people around the world, especially in developing countries. Seven hundred thousand people worldwide die each year from antibiotic-resistant infections, and this is projected to rise to 10 million deaths annually by 2050. The United Nations Environment Programme has acknowledged that antibiotics are used to mask low welfare conditions on farms and called for an end to unsustainable agricultural practices and more investment in sustainable, agroecological systems1. A 2020 poll commissioned by World Animal Protection across 15 countries found that 88% of people are concerned about superbugs from farmed animals, and want animals treated well. Two-thirds of people would help test for pollution from farms to hold big business to account. There is no international standard describing the concentration at which superbugs in the environment become dangerous to people. Consequently, no one is being held responsible, and farm discharge of antibiotics and superbugs into waterways are unmonitored.

Key outcomes from each country from the investigation

Canada Testing found ARGs resistant to tetracycline, streptomycin, cephalosporins, fluoroquinolones, and macrolides in surface water and sediments. Spain Testing found ARGs resistant to tetracycline, sulfonamides, cephalosporins, and fluoroquinolones. ARGs from surface water samples were up to 200 times higher than the baseline levels. Extremely high levels of ARGs were found in dust samples collected adjacent to farms. Testing of groundwater near farms also revealed very high levels of ARGs. Thailand Testing of water and sediment found ARGs and superbugs resistant to third-generation cephalosporins, fluoroquinolones, or colistin plus co-trimoxazole, gentamicin, amikacin, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, or amoxicillin. USA Testing of water and sediment or soil found very wide evidence of ARGs conveying resistance to streptomycin, fluoroquinolones, cephalosporins, macrolides, and most broadly, tetracycline.

1 United Nations Environment Programme, Preventing the next pandemic: Zoonotic diseases and how to break the chain of transmission. 2020.

SOURCE World Animal Protection

Related Links

http://www.worldanimalprotection.us.org


Progressive Christian leaders call for abolishing Senate filibuster blocking Biden's agenda

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A group of more than 20 progressive religious leaders has joined the Poor Peoples Campaign in demanding a repeal of the U.S. Senate filibuster, claiming it subverts democracy by denying the will of the majority.

The filibuster is a centerpiece of the arcane, obstructionist rules of the United States Senate. It bars that body from the deliberative role it is supposed to have, Poor Peoples Campaign Co-Chair Rev. William J. Barber II, the pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Goldsboro, North Carolina, said during a press conference last Thursday.

The filibuster discourages public debate. It impedes the publics capacity to find out whether or not their elected representatives are blocking legislation that would serve them and lift them up. The filibuster creates an impoverished democracy.

The filibuster is a loosely defined term for action designed to prolong debate and delay or prevent a vote on a bill, resolution, amendment or other debatable question in the Senate. Before 1917, the Senate rules did not provide for a way to end debate and force a vote on a measure.

That year, the Senate adopted a rule to allow a two-thirds majority to end a filibuster through a procedure known as "cloture." In 1975, the Senate reduced the threshold for cloture from two-thirds to three-fifths (60 senators.)

The current division of seats in the Senate is 50 Republicans, 48 Democrats, and two Independents who caucus with the Democrats. Democrats hold the majority due to the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris.

However, this slim majority does not meet the 60-seat threshold required to advance much of President Joe Bidens ambitious policy agenda, which has led to mounting calls to repeal the filibuster.

Responding to questions from The New York Times Editorial Board just over a year ago, Biden indicated that he did not support repealing the filibuster, expanding the Supreme Court, abolishing the Electoral College or setting term limits for Supreme Court justices.

The group of religious leaders who have joined in the Poor Peoples Campaigns call to end the filibuster includes Rev. Frederick Douglass Haynes III, senior pastor of Friendship West Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas; Rev. Reginald Buckley, senior pastor of Cade Chapel Baptist Church in Jackson, Mississippi; and Bishop Yvette Flunder, senior pastor of City of Refuge UCC in Oakland, California.

The group has also signed onto a Pastoral Letter to the Nation urging legislators not to allow the filibuster to prevent passage of federal voting rights protections this year.

Many people have supported the filibuster as a procedural rule that promotes bi-partisanship by encouraging Senators to work across the aisle in pursuit of policies that benefit all Americans. While this may be a noble ideal, the sad reality is that the filibuster has been used over and again to subvert democracy by denying the will of the overwhelming majority of Americans who want to protect the promise of unfettered access to ballot for every American, they argued. The filibuster must step aside so that democracy can survive.

During the press conference, all of the pastors remained united in their call.

The filibuster and voter suppression bills across the country have been united in unholy wedlock and yet having the nerve to be dressed up in a tuxedo of political respectability, Rev. Haynes argued.

Its morally reprehensible. Its democratically unsustainable and we have a clear choice in this battle. Will we have a government by the few for the few, or will we have a government by the people and for the people?

Rev. Liz Theoharis, the co-chair of the Poor Peoples Campaign and director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice, noted that ending the filibuster is necessary to save the soul of our democracy.

As a white Christian, as a pastor, and a biblical scholar, Im motivated to speak out against using the filibuster in this country to filibuster democracy, to filibuster the expansion and protection of voting rights, to filibuster living wages, and healthcare, and housing, and adequate guaranteed incomes, and debt cancellation, and water, and sanitation, and housing rights, and so much more, she said.

We must end the filibuster. We must do this to save the soul of our democracy. We must do this to stand against racism, and poverty, and ecological devastation, and militarism, and this distorted, false moral narrative of Christian nationalism. And we must do it now.

FLASHBACK -- Presidential candidate Joe Biden in 2020 was asked which of these ideas he supported: expanding the size of the Supreme Court, setting term limits for justices, abolishing the legislative filibuster.



"None." - Biden responded.



Joe Biden should listen to Joe Biden. pic.twitter.com/9IJiQSU88Y  Rep. Brian Mast (@RepBrianMast) April 15, 2021

While some Democrats want to nix the filibuster rules so that it will be easier to advance a liberal agenda with control of both legislative chambers, others are wary of the idea.

Ronald Weich, dean of the University of the Baltimore School of Law who served as chief counsel to Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and Harry Reid and served as an assistant attorney general during the Obama administration, argues against repealing the filibuster.

Progressives pushing to end the filibuster are suffering from a bad case of amnesia, Kennedy wrote in an op-ed for Politico last Wednesday.

The past three decades, in fact, are filled with moments when the filibuster prevented Republicans from pushing through legislation that would have made America a far darker place, Weich continued. The Democrats now in power should weigh the present opportunity against future peril. Republicans have their own ambitious agenda which they will be delighted to enact over the helpless cries of a filibuster-less Democratic minority as soon as they can.

He argued that while the filibuster has been used to block noble bills in the past, leaving a political majority unchecked can wreak havoc.

Proponents of filibuster abolition correctly point out that the filibuster has been sometimes deployed to block noble bills such as the mid-20th century civil rights legislation. But obstruction by the minority can eventually be overcome by popular will and presidential leadership, as eventually occurred with civil rights. In contrast, an unchecked majority can wreak havoc, he argued.

Without the filibuster, the Senate would become revenge-soaked, Hatfield and McCoy-style, as the two sides take turns passing laws over the futile objections of their adversaries. If Democrats expand voting rights, the next Republican majority will constrict voting rights. If Democrats expand the membership of the Supreme Court, Republicans will expand it further to add GOP appointees.

Weich argues that the filibuster is valuable in its own right, as a device to encourage bipartisanship and moderation, consistent with other checks and balances in our constitutional system.

But one need not admire the filibuster as a positive force to recognize how dangerous its absence would be, the law school dean asserted. There is a reason a unilateral rules change is known as the nuclear option. Unless the doctrine of mutually assured destruction is respected, the Senate blows up.
When the pandemic started, Lanny McInnes wasnt sure what it would all mean for home building in Manitoba.

When the pandemic started, Lanny McInnes wasnt sure what it would all mean for home building in Manitoba.

"Our industry was very concerned with what the impact was going to be," said the president and CEO of the Manitoba Home Builders Association. "Nobody knew what to expect, and like most other economic sectors, we were preparing ourselves for troubled times."

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Lanny McInnes, president and CEO of the Manitoba Home Builders Association, says at the start of the pandemic last year, home-building activity slowed, but things have sped up as the province entered its second year of pandemic life.

For a few months, industry activity slowed significantly. But as the summer went on and fall arrived, a shift in momentum came, and according to McInnes, it hardly slowed down in the first quarter of 2021 or since; if anything, things have sped up as the province enters its second year of pandemic life.

"What were seeing is significant activity on new construction and very strong activity on the home renovation side," McInnes said, saying that in Winnipeg, permits for new builds are up 150 per cent as compared to this time last year. "Were expecting that to continue."

According to the most recent seasonally adjusted data from the provincial bureau of statistics, the value of residential building permits issued in February 2021 was $168.5 million, an 8.1 per cent increase over February 2020; about $109 million of that value was in permits for single-family dwellings. As of the end of February 2021, the data showed the total value of residential permits was up 48 per cent as compared to the same period in 2020; on the non-residential side, there was a 32 per cent decrease year-over-year. Permits are considered a leading indicator of economic activity to come.

Nationally, the value of building permits issued reached an all-time single-month high in January of $9.9 billion, a surge driven primarily by a record $7.1 billion value in the residential sector, and in particular, single-family homes. In February, that value dropped, but still remains extremely high at $6.8 billion.

In Manitoba, as elsewhere, McInnes points to low interest and mortgage rates as reasons for the stable activity in renovations and new construction for the industry during unstable times. As well, many people renovating or upgrading their homes havent experienced significant negative impact on their income.

Another element is tied to the available housing supply on the resale market, which for the majority of the pandemic has been low, leading to a hugely competitive market where bidding wars have become commonplace and demand is higher than ever. With that reality, McInnes said people who might have looked to buy a resale house in the past could be weighing the option of building instead as a more attractive choice.

The Canadian Press reported Thursday that the hot housing market has begun to experience a slight rebound in supply across the country as sellers look to take advantage of a scenario that favours them: new listings increased by 50 per cent in March compared to March 2021 (see related story, below).

In Manitoba, new MLS listings between April 1 and April 15 were up about 60 per cent compared to the same period last year, said Peter Squire, spokesperson for the Winnipeg Regional Real Estate Board. However, that rebound is likely not strong enough to restore balance to the well-entrenched sellers market, he said. Despite the increase in new listings, inventory was still down more than 40 per cent, and prices remained high.

A rebound in housing stock would be good for the local economy, McInnes said, as it would create a more balanced and equal market. What really concerns him is the cost of building materials, which throughout the pandemic have skyrocketed, while supply on products such as lumber is low, creating a squeeze on an industry working in high gear to meet consumer demand.

Natural Resources Canada statistics show that between April 2020 and March 2021, the price per thousand board feet of softwood lumber increased by about 200 per cent. Oriented strand board costs about 350 per cent more now than it did in April 2020, the statistics showed.

Those increased costs add tens of thousands of dollars to typical home construction, and the volatility of prices and shortage of supply complicates matters for builders. Canadian Forest Industries magazine concluded in its report from the Montreal Wood Convention in March that theres "no relief in sight" for the high prices as the repair and remodel market is expected to thrive in 2021.

"Whats happening here is not unique to (Winnipeg or Manitoba)," McInnes said.

"The demand and the (costs) North America-wide is something nobody alive today has ever seen," he said. "Its a demand thats certainly far outpacing supply and it is really having an impact on the costs of construction."

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca
There are no coincidences. That is a sentiment often associated with Judaismeverything happens for a reason. It certainly would explain how a local Jewish doctor just happened to be at the right place at the right time last month to save a life.

Dr. Jeffrey Davis was vacationing with his family in San Diego and on March 26, they went on a whale watching excursion.

We were on a pretty small boat, and the water was rough so we were all feeling a little green, said Davis, 46. We were heading back into San Diego Harbor by the military base near Coronado. And thats when we randomly happened upon another boat. There were three people on the boat and three people in the water and our captain slowed down to take a look. We pulled alongside and I noticed a kid being lifted out of the water. His leg was chopped off at the knee. You could see his femur sticking out.

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The boys leg had been hit by an outboard motor propeller. In the whale watching boat, Dr. Tasha Davis (Jeffreys wife and a pediatrician) immediately knew something was wrong.

There was blood in the water, blood all over the side of the boat, she said. His femur and the upper half of his tibia looked like a skeleton. You just saw bone and tissue. And Jeffrey yells out youve got to put a tourniquet on it! but nobody reacted on the other boat.

Fortunately, Jeffrey Davis knew exactly what to do. In addition to heading up a medical practice (Link Primary Care), he is the former chief of emergency medicine at Missouri Baptist Medical Center, where he continues to work in the emergency room. He could tell the young passengers on the other boat were in shock and had no idea what to do.

I jumped from our boat to their boat, and I pulled my belt off which is like a nylon belt with a buckle and used it as a tourniquet on his left thigh because I could see he was bleeding out onto the deck of the boat. I cranked it down as hard as I could and he looked just terrible and is a kid, probably about 19. He said, Please dont let me die and I said, Im an ER doctor and everythings going to be fine. Weve got you.

Meanwhile, the captain of the whale watching boat had contacted first responders and the police who arranged to meet the boat in distress at a nearby dock. When they arrived, paramedics put two actual tourniquets on the young mans leg and rushed him to a hospital. Tasha Davis saw Jeffrey speaking to the paramedics and he gave her a thumbs up. He subsequently learned the boys leg had to be amputated, but Jeffrey Davis had saved a life. Tasha described him as calm, cool and methodical. Just another day at the office.

Its not really a transition where I went from vacation mode to whoa, I need to be a doctor, said Jeffrey Davis. Its sort of who you are, you know, Ive been practicing medicine for 20 years. Its what I do, which in this case meant jumping on a boat to get a tourniquet on his leg. Ive had those some of those experiences, where Ive been the doctor on the plane when they said, Can someone come help? and you being the first responder at a car crash. But Ive never had an experience where we were so close to what was going to be a bad outcome, where it was really only going to be a few seconds that was going to make a difference.

While he is no stranger to trauma injuries, Davis said the incident marked a first for him, since St. Louis is not in an ocean environment. He acknowledged the timing in this instance was more critical than most emergencies. He said his whale watching boat must have arrived in the harbor less than a minute after the teenager sustained his injury.

In a devastating injury like this you can lose a lot of blood, he said. You can lose a finger or a toe and bleed, and youll be fine. But if you get a proximal arterial injury like this, then you could easily bleep death in 30 seconds. I think it was a matter of truly just being in the right place at the right time.
Hyderabad, April 19 : The Telangana High Court on Monday directed the state government to take a decision within 48 hours on imposing night curfew or weekend lockdown to check the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The court made it clear that if the government fails to take a decision in 48 hours, it would pass appropriate orders.

Hearing the petitions relating to Covid-19 situation in the state, a bench of Chief Justice Hima Kohli and Justice B. Vijayasen Reddy termed as "disappointing" the state government's handling of the situation.

When Advocate General B.S. Prasad informed the court that the government is monitoring the situation, the court remarked that this is time for action, not monitoring.

The court wanted to know from the government as to why it is not taking any steps to prevent gathering of people for election rallies, marriages and funerals. It also asked the government why no action was taken to prevent crowds at cinema theatres, bars and pubs.

The court heard the matter twice in the day. Earlier, it termed as disappointing the affidavit filed by the state government, observing that the affidavit has no details of the measures taken by the government to check the spread of the pandemic. It wanted to know why the affidavit has not listed details like measures to check footfall in cinema halls and other public places.

At one point, the court wanted to know if the state was contending to be the Covid-19 topper in the country.

Posting the hearing after lunch break, the court asked the government to submit all the details.

It asked if the government had any problem in restricting the number of people thronging pubs, bars, cinema halls, malls, banquet halls and other public places as it also pulled up the authorities for not taking steps to control people entering the state through buses, trains or private vehicles.

The court wanted to know if the government constituted emergency teams at ward levels. It also sought to know the assistance being provided by the government if all members of a family are infected by the virus.

The bench directed the government to ensure that the results of RT-PCR tests are available in 24 hours. It asked the government to submit a report with all the details before April 22.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald has apologised for the IRAs assassination of Lord Mountbatten following the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh.

Ms McDonald described the murder of Lord Mountbatten  who died along with two members of his family and a Co Fermanagh teenager  on a fishing boat in County Sligo, Ireland, in 1979 as heartbreaking.

Her comments came a day after a funeral service was held for Philip, Lord Mountbattens nephew, at Windsor Castle on Saturday.

When asked on Times Radio whether she would apologise to the Prince of Wales over the assassination  which her predecessor Gerry Adams reportedly refused to do  she said: The army and the armed forces associated with Prince Charles carried out many, many violent actions on our island.

The apology came a day after the Duke of Edinburghs funeral (Leon Neal/PA)

She added: And I can say of course I am sorry that that happened, of course that is heart-breaking.

And my job, and I think Prince Charles and others would absolutely appreciate this, is to lead from the front now in these times.

And I believe it is all of our jobs to ensure that no other child, no other family, irrespective of who they are, face the kind of trauma and heartbreak that was all too common on all sides on this island and beyond.

Im happy to reiterate that at the time and on the weekend that your Queen buried her beloved husband.

She relayed how Charles had written her a lovely letter last year after she fell ill with Covid-19, adding: I thought that was most decent and kind of him.

Whereas we are not obviously monarchists, were republicans, thats our political view, we have the utmost respect for that family and for who they are and what they represent to British people and indeed to unionists and loyalists here.

And interestingly, the conversations that you have when people like us meet people like the royal family are not conversations around recriminations or theres never a demand for apologies.

The bomb planted on the fishing boat by republican paramilitaries also killed Lady Doreen Brabourne, the 83-year-old mother-in-law of the earls daughter, his 14-year-old grandson Nicholas Knatchbull and 15-year-old Paul Maxwell, from Killynur, Enniskillen.
Wally the wandering walrus was spotted basking in the sunny weather over the weekend as he continues to delight tourists in Wales.

The animal, who first arrived in British waters in March from his Greenland home, entertained visitors by playing in the sun in Tenby, Pembrokeshire.

Wally was even spotted balancing a starfish on his nose as he rolled around in the waves.

Amy Compton, a volunteer for the Welsh Marine Life Rescue, said: 'It's an incredible experience to monitor such a beautiful & amazing creature, it's such a character!

Wally the walrus entertained crowds by playing in the water, even balancing a starfish on his nose

'I couldn't believe it when it popped up with a starfish on its face, it was so funny and something you just didn't expect to see!

But she also issued a warning to people keen to see the walrus in person.

'We're urging people to listen to our advice that it is a wild animal and to admire it from afar, don't disturb it and keep dogs on leads.'

Wally was first seen in Ireland before being spotted in Pembrokeshire.

Welfare groups believe he came to British waters aboard an ice floe from his Greenland home

Animal welfare groups monitoring the animal, said to be the size of a cow, believe it came across the North Atlantic Ocean from Greenland on an ice floe.

The animal has become a local celebrity in Wales, with claims that tourists from as far as Essex have travelled to catch a glimpse of the aquatic visitor.

Photographer Gareth Davies has been a Wally-watcher since the entertaining creature first swam into Carmarthen Bay last month.

He has previously pictured the Arctic visitor snoozing and stretching on the RNLI slipway, but said he has never seen such an animated display as wonderful Wally put on this morning.

The playful animal has built up a huge following, with people travelling from Essex to catch a glimpse of him

Gareth said: 'He was really enjoying himself swimming through the swell on the high tide near the slipway and then diving down for up to ten minutes at a time to feed.

'He's looking very good indeed - he's clearly feeding and resting well and has put on a lot of weight in the last couple of weeks.

'Everyone would like to think that eventually he will find his way home, but in the meantime he seems to be living his best life in Tenby.'
Centrifuge machines in the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran in a file photo released on Nov. 5, 2019. (Atomic Energy Organization of Iran via AP)

Iran Enriching Uranium to 60 Percent, UN Nuclear Watchdog Confirms

Iran has started enriching uranium at an above-ground nuclear plant at Natanz to 60 percent fissile purityits highest level everthe U.N. nuclear watchdog confirmed on April 17.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed announcements made by Iranian officials on April 16 that it has started the process of enriching at the plant.

The Agency today verified that Iran had begun the production of UF6 enriched up to 60 percent U-235 by feeding UF6 enriched up to 5 percent U-235 simultaneously into two cascades of IR-4 centrifuges and IR-6 centrifuges at the Natanz Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant, the U.N. watchdog told Reuters in a statement.

UF6 is uranium hexafluoride, the form in which uranium is fed into centrifuges for enrichment.

Reuters also cited parts of an internal IAEA report to member states that elaborated on the process of enrichment.

According to Irans declaration to the Agency, the enrichment level of the UF6 produced at PFEP was 55.3 percent U-235. The Agency took a sample of the produced UF6 for destructive analysis to independently verify the enrichment level declared by Iran. The results of this analysis will be reported by the Agency in due course, the report stated.

The move has complicated talks aimed to revive Irans nuclear deal with major powers as its a step toward producing weapons-grade uranium. Weapons-grade levels stand at 90 percent.

Iran had previously only reached 20 percent purity, and that was already a breach of the deal, which states that Iran can only enrich to 3.67 percent.

Iran made the increase to 60 percent in response to an explosion that damaged equipment at the larger, underground Fuel Enrichment Plant at Natanz. Tehran has blamed Israel and identified a man wanted in connection with the blast.

President Joe Biden on April 16 called the move unhelpful, but added that the United States is pleased that Iran has agreed to continue talks on the topic of compliance with the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)known commonly as the Iran nuclear dealwhich then-President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from in 2018.

President Joe Biden speaks from the Treaty Room in the White House about the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, in Washington, on April 14, 2021. (Andrew Harnik-Pool/Getty Images)

We do not support and do not think its at all helpful that Iran is saying its going to move to enrich to 60 percent, Biden said during a joint press briefing with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga in Washington.

We are, though, nonetheless pleased that Iran has continued to agree to engage in discussionsindirect discussionswith us and with our partners on how we move forward and what is needed to allow us to move back into the [nuclear deal]  without us making concessions that we are just not willing to make, Biden said.

The U.S. State Department reiterated earlier this month that the Biden administration wont offer unilateral incentives to get Iran back to the negotiating table on the nuclear pact between Iran and six major powers under which Tehran agreed to limit its nuclear program in return for the easing of U.S. and other economic sanctions.

The deal made it harder for Irans atomic program to be used to produce nuclear weapons, an ambition Tehran denies. Trump pulled the United States out of the deal in 2018 and reimposed sanctions on Iran, saying at the time that America would not be held hostage to nuclear blackmail. He called it a horrible one-sided deal that is defective at its core.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema spent her Sunday sipping sangria in a pink newsboy cap and a ring that says Fuck Off. The Arizona Democrat got someone to take a photo of her, ring proudly displayed in the foreground. Then, she posted the image to her Instagram stories.

Sinemas outfit, which also included oversized fuchsia glasses and gigantic earrings containing a charm of what appears to be a skull and butterfly, is right in line with her sartorial M.O. The former Congresswoman and first-term senator has long been the flashiest dresser in the Capitol, and during the pandemic, her wardrobe has gotten even weirder.* Shes worn several highlighter-hued wigs on the Senate floor to hide her grown-out dye job as she stayed home from the salon. (According to her spokesperson, the wigs were a reminder to constituents to practice COVID-19 precautions.) In February, she wore a pink sweater emblazoned with the phrase Dangerous Creature, a nod to a line from one of romance novelist Lisa Kleypas books: A well-read woman is a dangerous creature.

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Ive always been a fan of Sinemas flamboyant getups, which have gotten more daring over the course of her tenurenot because I particularly like the clothes she wears, but simply because they make Congressional fashion a lot more interesting. Her eschewal of the traditional array of solid neutrals and jewel tones, sheath dresses, and conservative pumps would seem to suggest a healthy disregard for fusty, outdated customsboth explicit and implicitof political dress, which were devised with a certain race, class, and gender of politician in mind. Thats probably the exact interpretation Sinema intended: It supports her self-presentation as an independent-minded outsider, beholden to no party or standard of Congressional dress. One would be forgiven for assuming that a neon-wigged, go-go bootclad, Dangerous Creaturewearing senator was a hippie-dippie liberal, but one would be wrong. Sinemas weirdo wardrobe isnt an outgrowth of some anything-goes progressive ideology, but rather a matching complement to her weirdo politics, which have drastically changed over the years and dont seem to coalesce into any discernible, deeply-held ideology at all.

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But Sinemas Fuck Off ring marks a new phase of her wardrobe still. The cheeky display is maybe the clearest indication weve received of how Sinema views her own role in the Senate this term, especially since she rarely speaks to the national press. Since the Democrats took control of all three branches of government in January, Sinema has relished her new role as one of just a few Democrats standing in the way of an ambitious progressive wish list. While Sen. Joe Manchin has received a possibly outsized share of the attention (and blame) for his near-singlehanded ability to thwart the Democrats plans, Sinemas relatively moderate politics and obsessive fixation on bipartisanship is equally limiting to her own partys ability to implement its agenda. That includes a voting rights bill that could counter some of the partisan Republican attacks on the franchise, which would stand no chance of passage in the 50-50 Senate without filibuster reforma step Sinema has repeatedly said she will not consider.

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In this context, Sinemas ring oozes contempt. When elected officials adopt a posture of mockery toward their critics or constituents, they lose their claim to an image of thoughtful, measured leadership. Sinema is behaving like a drama-seeking celebrity caught in a cycle of clap-backs, not like a senator who has the power to block, or implement, policies that would improve the lives of millions. Her style, in other words, has overtaken her substance.

Some people, invested with the power of a Sinema or a Manchin, would develop a solemn understanding of their own responsibility and seek to convey that to the people who elected them. Sinema, however, has been flaunting her power in highly visible and unseemly ways. When she voted against including a $15 minimum wage mandate in the most recent pandemic relief bill, she made a spectacle of it, popping her hip and giving an exaggerated thumbs-down to the vote counters. The moment, viewed by progressives as a vindictive show of indifference toward the poor, became a meme. Sinema wasnt the only Senate Democrat who voted against the provision; seven of her colleagues joined her. But none of them made themselves the focus of the story the way Sinema did. Whatever plausible reason she might have offered for her position, such as protecting small businesses, was subsumed by her smugness.

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Her Fuck Off ring has the same effect, making it appear that Sinema is driven more by a chip on her shoulder than an earnest desire to improve American lives. Like Melania Trumps I dont really care do u? jacket, the fuck off ring does not make its addressee clear. Could the fuck off be directed at Sinemas constituents, whove been beseeching her to end poverty wages in one of the richest countries in the world? Her fellow Democrats in the Senate, most of whom probably resent her for blocking filibuster reform? Members of the media, whom her spokesperson has accused of sexism for their coverage of her thumbs-down vote? The ring also depicts a rose, a symbol historically associated with socialism and part of the official logo of the Democratic Socialists of America. Perhaps its a general dig at leftists whove bemoaned her evolution from a member of the Green Party to a senator who appears to sassily thumb her nose at minimum-wage workers.

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All fashion makes a statement; clothing and accessories with words on them are usually chosen with particular care to the image they project. Sinema has never embraced the established rules of political fashion. We know she gives more thought to her wardrobe than the average skirt suitwearing legislator. The Fuck Off rings prominent positioning in Sinemas social media presence was a choiceand whomever its audience was intended to be, it serves to shift the focus of recent policy and strategy debates from the actual arguments at hand to the political theater surrounding them. A saucy put-down is the last missive Sinema should be sending at the height of her legislative power, especially as she prepares to build support among colleagues and constituents for her $11 minimum wage bill. There is a very cry more, lib vibe to the sangria photo, a suggestion that Sinema is as motivated by spite and ego as her most insufferable Republican counterparts. There are plenty of norms of political self-presentation worth breaking. A veneer of compassion isnt one of them.

In my six years at Slate, Ive written about multiple national elections, social movements, and major cultural phenomena. With support from Slate Plus members, Ive also gotten to dive deep into stories and angles no other outlets were covering, and that Slate wouldnt have otherwise had the time or resources to tackle. Christina Cauterucci, senior writer
MEADVILLE, Pa., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Allegheny College, one of the nation's oldest and most innovative four-year colleges where multidisciplinary learning breaks the conventional mold, is calling on higher education institutions in the U.S. to accelerate climate action by tackling intertwined issues of climate, social and economic inequality and public health. The College has developed a seven-point resolution aiming to decarbonize campuses by transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy, to support the development of regional energy efficiency and renewable energy programs, and to cultivate and participate in more inclusive and resilient local communities.

Allegheny College was one of the first 10 institutions of higher education in the United States to achieve carbon neutrality, doing so in 10 years without a substantial endowment, a large staff or a big budget. For the last five years, the College's Environmental Science and Sustainability program has been listed among the top five in the U.S. for its interdisciplinary, experiential approach.

"Allegheny College is building on our carbon neutrality to achieve community resilience, while moving to ensure inclusion and success for all students in everything we do," said President Hilary Link, Ph.D. "Climate action is not only about preserving natural spaces, protecting endangered species and reducing global emissions, but also about improving rural and urban environments and ensuring equity and participation for communities that have been disproportionately impacted by climate change."

For Allegheny College, climate justice means that those who have traditionally been most harmed must be most involved in developing solutions and visioning the future. To this end, the College has launched a new Office for Economic, Civic and Community Engagement that will move beyond campus-focused climate action to involving the local and regional community in inclusive solutions and a vision for a strong and resilient future.

Allegheny College's resolution for individual colleges and universities includes seven short- and long-term steps to simultaneously confront climate, social and economic, as well as public health issues on their campuses and in their surrounding communities.

Join Allegheny College and other colleges and universities by partnering with organizations such as We Are Still In , Second Nature , and Better Buildings Challenge . Decarbonize your campus  become carbon neutral sooner rather than later while simultaneously transitioning to campus operations that are carbon-free by shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. Review and reflect on historical institutional policies and practices that still exist and/or affect present-day decisions. Be willing to have the hard conversations and take action to change them in ways that are interrelated with climate security, which may improve quality of life for marginalized communities and threatened ecosystems. Focus on resilience. Design solutions that are inclusive and equitable, e.g., housing and transportation that reduce carbon emissions, increase a sense of community and improve mental and physical health. Purchase 100 percent of electricity from renewable sources. Educate future environmental and business leaders to create and implement sound, participatory, long-term solutions that help develop new local and regional renewable resources. Create opportunities for students to participate in climate action through internships and research projects with businesses, community groups, governments, non-profits and agencies around the region, the country and the world, in areas such as community organizing, sustainable agriculture, ocean plastics, carbon offset development, solar energy and more. To the greatest extent possible, intentionally and actively align investment portfolios with your college's mission, values and commitments to climate action and community justice.

"We are calling on the higher education community to join our commitment to climate action, catapulting off the challenges posed by the pandemic, social injustice and financial adversities to dramatically address the impact of our environmental footprints on our campuses and the surrounding communities," noted President Link, a member of Second Nature's Climate Leadership Steering Committee.

About Allegheny College

Allegheny College, founded in 1815, is one of the nation's oldest and most innovative four-year colleges where multidisciplinary learning breaks the conventional mold. It is one of the few colleges in the United States with a unique requirement to choose both a major and minor for graduation, to provide students with a cross-disciplinary path in the sciences and humanities for educational depth and intellectual growth. Located in Meadville, Pennsylvania, Allegheny College is one of 40 colleges featured in Loren Pope's "Colleges That Change Lives." In its 2021 rankings, U.S. News & World Report recognized Allegheny College in its Top 20 Best in Undergraduate Teaching and Top 30 Most Innovative National Liberal Arts Colleges.

Media Contact

Josh Tysiachney

Allegheny College

814-332-2746

[email protected]

SOURCE Allegheny College
Ben Carson argued in a new op-ed that the push for racial equity - using tools like reparations and 'anti-poverty' stipends - can lead to more racism and is 'un-American.'

'Proponents of equity see no problem with treating groups of people differently based solely on race, as long as it serves their agenda,' Carson wrote Sunday in The Washington Post. 'This is what we used to call racism, and those not blinded by identity politics still recognize it as such.'

As examples, Carson pointed to the House Judiciary Committee passing Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee's bill to study reparations for descendants of slaves and an Oakland, California initiative that gives anti-poverty stipends to resident who are 'BIPOC' - black, indigenous or people of color.

Ben Carson, who served as President Donald Trump's Housing and Urban Development secretary, wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post warning that the push for racial equity through devices like reparations and anti-poverty stipends is racist

Proponents of equity see no problem with treating groups of people differently based solely on race, as long as it serves their agenda. This is what we used to call racism, and those not blinded by identity politics still recognize it as such.

Oakland's Mayor Libby Schaaf announced in March a privately funded program that gives $500 a month to low-income families of color, giving them no rules on how to spend it.

'That program explicitly excludes poor white families,' Carson argued.

Last week, the House moved H.R. 40 - which would form a commission to study reparations - out of committee for the first time in the resolution's 32-year history.

An estimated 40 million black Americans could receive some sort of payment to the tune of trillions of dollars.

The reparations bill isn't guaranteed to see a vote on the House floor - and has an even less likely chance of getting attention in the Senate.

Ten Republicans would need to support it in order to survive a filibuster.

Carson argued that 'those alive today are not culpable for misconduct that took place long before they were born' adding 'it would be unjust to hold them responsible for it.'

He said it was also unjust to give benefits to people who weren't actually the victims of the misdeeds.

Additionally, Carson argued distributing government benefits to a group based on race or gender is 'guaranteed to produce resentment among the disfavored group.'

Ben Carson knocked the reparations bill, sponsored by Rep. Shelia Jackson Lee (pictured) that passed the House Judiciary Committee last week. The bill forms a commission that would study the issue of reparations for the descendants of slaves

'Redistribution agendas driven by race-based victimization narratives that demonize entire groups are bound to fail on many fronts,' the former HUD secretary wrote.

'All available evidence indicates that family structure, educational attainment and workforce participation are the keys to reducing disparities. Thus, reforms that strengthen the family, prioritize student achievement and restore decent-paying jobs for the American working class would do much better at addressing the issues that equity initiatives ostensibly aim to solve,' he said.

Instead, Carson wrote that he's noticed a change in conversation.

'Its focus has moved from equality to equity,' he said. 'That is, instead of pursuing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.s ideal of judging people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, equity would reward and punish people because of the color of their skin.'

'Rather than equality of opportunity, equity would mandate equality of outcome,' he continued. 'This goal is not only un-American - it is impossible to attain.'

Ben Carson also used as an example of 'anti-poverty' stipends in Oakland, California announced by Mayor Libby Schaaf (pictured) that are being given to low-income families of color

During his 2016 presidential run, and in the op-ed, Carson touted his success story, pointing out he was the product of a single, black mom from Detroit.

'I certainly experienced racism. But I took responsibility for my own life and achieved more than what equity advocates would say our current system allows,' Carson wrote.

Carson went on to become the youngest chief of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Children's Center.

He participated in the first successful separation of conjoined twins who were attached at the back of the head.

'Rather than teach our children that they are victims of a racist system in which they can only be made whole by making people who have done nothing wrong pay for the past sins of others, we should teach them that they are in charge of their own dignity and their own future,' Carson said.
Watches And Wonders 2021 is nearly at an end, and Im elated to share with you that your brave WorldTempus team is still standing (barely). Although the vast majority of new watches were launched during the Geneva (digital) segment of the salon, a few brands kept some surprises in store in order to delight the attendees of Watches And Wonders Shanghai.

Take the Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Nonantieme, for example, which premiered on the first day of Watches And Wonders Shanghai. Although certainly not as groundbreaking and flat-out stunning as the Reverso Hybris Mechanica Calibre 185 Quadriptyque, the Nonantieme is a beautiful celebration of Jaeger-LeCoultres most iconic watch design and deserved a separate launch date  to better enjoy the spotlight on its own merit.

Reverso Nonantieme  Jaeger-LeCoultre

There has been much discussion of the trends that were observed during Watches And Wonders, such as the prevalence of timepieces with green dials that appeared this year. Any discussion of aesthetic trends in watchmaking has always been slightly bewildering to me, because in every other aspect of watchmaking, we emphasise values like longevity, durability and adherence to tradition. Even when the subject of innovation arises, its always delimited by tradition. How many times have you heard a new watch described as creativity anchored in tradition? There is an ingrained reluctance and antipathy towards anything thats too disruptive, so perhaps it doesnt make much sense to talk about stylistic trends, because how impactful is that really?

Much more interesting for us as a community would be trends that do not necessarily relate to aesthetics, but direction and strategy. Brands such as Panerai, IWC and Cartier made some very strong statements about their commitment to sustainable watchmaking, responsible sourcing of materials, signalling an increased sensitivity to environmental and ethical concerns. Models such as the eLAB-ID Submersible PAM01225, which is 98.6% recycled material by weight, show that ecologically responsible watchmaking is an attainable goal in the near future.

eLAB-ID Submersible PAM01225  Panerai

One issue very close to my heart is the topic of gender-free watches  or more accurately, freeing watches from the constraints of gender categorisation. I moderated the live Q&A session with Jaeger-LeCoultre CEO Catherine Renier, and when a question came in about whether the company would be releasing a complicated Reverso timepiece for women later this year, I was beyond thrilled to hear her reply (without any hesitation), Ladies can wear the Quadriptyque. The Reverso watches we release this year, including the Quadriptyque, can be worn by men or women. Ive questioned several times before who benefits from this practice of separating watches by gender. I dont think it helps brands or retailers to put this idea into peoples minds, that there is an entire category of watches out there that is explicitly not for them. It certainly doesnt benefit the buyer  I would feel actively annoyed if I went into a watch boutique and was presented only with the watches that are labelled as womens watches. Men who enjoy smaller watches might be mentally deterred from buying a watch that they actually like, just because its in the womens category.

Brands seem to be paying attention, because we are seeing a far greater amount of diversity in case diameters across feminine and masculine designs, with much less emphasis on classifying watches as mens or womens models. Free the watch, I say, and free the consumer!
Mears said he had already spoken to legislators in the past about lengthening the two-week timeline for holding a red flag hearing and he reiterated that call on Monday. Extending the time frame would give prosecutors more time to investigate a persons background and mental health history before going in front of a judge, he said. He added that he would also like to see the statute prohibit a person under investigation from buying a gun until the hearing is held and the judge makes a final ruling.
April 19 : Actor Arjun Rampal took to his social media profile and shared a picture for his fans, who were worried as the actor has been tested positive for COVID-19.

Arjun Rampal confirmed his corona infection in a social media post. He issued a statement that read, I have tested positive for COVID-19. Even though I am asymptomatic, I have isolated myself and home quarantined, getting the needed medical care. I am following all the protocols as is required of me. To all those who have been in contact with me in the past 10 days, please take care and take the necessary precautions. This is a very scary time for us but if we are aware and wise for a short span of time, it will yield long-term benefits. Together we can and we will fight corona.

Now the actor dropped his Day 2 picture with the caption, Day 2 #quarantinelife #books #thoughts #contemplate #write #gettoknowme...All of you out there stay smart, stay safe

The actor is spending his quarantine reading books!

Meanwhile on the work front, Arjun Rampal has an interesting line-up of releases. He will be seen in Dhaakad, The Battle of Bhima Koregaon, Hari Hara Veera Mallu and Nastik.

Nastik revolves around the journey of an inspector and how a little kid changes his perspective of life. The film is directed by Shailesh Varma, also starring Meera Chopra and Harshaali Malhotra.
CHICAGO, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the new market research report "DDI Market by Component (Solutions and Services), Application (Network Automation, Virtualization and Cloud, Data Center Transformation, Network Security), Deployment Mode, Organization Size, Vertical, and Region - Global Forecast to 2026", published by MarketsandMarkets, the DDI Market size to grow from USD 400 million in 2021 to USD 836 million by 2026, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 15.9% during the forecast period. Increased demand for DDI due to COVID-19 outbreak, growing trends of BYOD and WFH across verticals, and rising demand for enhanced security are major growth factors for the market. Increasing need for IPAM and advent of IPv6 would provide lucrative opportunities for vendors in the DDI Market.

Browse in-depth TOC on "DDI Market"

328  Tables

33  Figures

232  Pages

Download PDF Brochure: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=162005891

By component, Solutions segment to hold the largest market size during the forecast period

DDI solutions are gaining popularity with the increasing usage across all the major industry verticals such as telecom & IT, BFSI, government and defense, education, and healthcare. One of the main reasons for the growth of DDI solutions is the rising challenges faced by enterprises to manage their core networks with the rapid increase in network devices due to IoT and digitization. Network failure in an enterprise may have a significant impact on its operations. Thus, integrated DDI solutions are evolving as a convenient solution to manage and ensure network availability to support the core services of enterprises.

In application, virtualization, and cloud to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period

Virtualization is the capability to run several operating systems on a single physical system and share the core hardware resources. It is used to improve IT throughput and costs by using physical resources as a base from which virtual resources can be allocated. Today the cloud is a proven delivery model, with a growing number of organizations realizing dexterity and competence. Cloud computing takes virtualization one step further by reducing costs of owning the hardware and only installing required operating systems according to client's requirements. Implementing virtualization by cloud computing requires secure network interface, DHCP and DNS automation, secure secondary storage, secure run-time environment, and robust IPAM.

Request Sample Pages: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/requestsampleNew.asp?id=162005891

North America to hold the largest market size during the forecast period

North America accounts for the major chunk of the global DDI solutions and services market, and it is considered as one of the most advanced regions in technology adoption and infrastructure. Furthermore, the various verticals operating in the region, such as IT & Telecom, have been increasingly adopting new ways to monitor network security and IPAM. These factors are expected to fuel the demand for DDI in the region.

Major vendors in the global DDI Market include Nokia Corporation (France), BlueCat Networks (Canada), Microsoft Corporation (US), Infoblox (US), Cisco Systems (US), Men & Mice (Iceland), EfficientIP (US), BT Diamond IP (US), FusionLayer (Finland), PC Network (US), TCPwave (US), Apteriks (Netherlands), ApplianSys (UK), NCC Group (UK), Solarwinds Network (US), NS1 (US), Empowered Networks (Canada), Datacomm (Indonesia), INVETICO (Australia).

Browse Adjacent Markets: Data Center and Networking Market Research Reports & Consulting

Related Reports:

Domain Name System (DNS) Firewall Market by Deployment Type (Cloud, On-Premises, and Virtual Appliance), End-User (DNS Providers, Domain Name Registrars, Service Providers, and Website Hosts), End-Use Vertical, and Region - Global Forecast to 2023

https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/dns-firewall-market-181714125.html

Managed Domain Name System (DNS) Services Market by DNS Service, DNS Server (Primary Servers and Secondary Servers), Deployment Mode (Cloud and On-premises), End User (Service Providers and Enterprises), and Region - Global Forecast to 2025

https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/dns-service-market-240632025.html

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A hint of optimism has been added to the Climate Clock, the set of decreasing numbers on the facade of a building in New Yorks Union Square that was conceived by two artists and activists, to communicate the urgency of curbing carbon emissions.

Seven months ago, the artists Andrew Boyd and Gan Golan, assisted by others, redid Metronome, a public art project commissioned by the developers of One Union Square South and unveiled in 1999: Its clock, instead of measuring the time of day, would measure the time remaining, by some counts, to reduce emissions and prevent some effects of global warming from becoming irreversible. (About seven years, the clocks creators said.)




By Kim Jae-heun







Former Vice Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Chung Seung-il has been practically nominated as CEO of Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO), the ministry said, Sunday.







According to the ministry, the appointment for KEPCO's leader position will be announced officially by next month. The state-run enterprise has been publicly recruiting its CEO since March and Chung has been the only applicant. KEPCO extended the recruiting period to receive additional applicants but no one joined.







Chung passed the 33rd Higher Civil Service Examination in 1989 and has served key positions in the ministry including director general for the energy industry and head of the international trade and investment team.







The five power corporations of KEPCO held a general meeting of shareholders individually from April 14 to 16 to nominate their own CEOs.







Korea Southern Power selected Lee Seung-woo, former chief of Korean Agency for Technology and Standards, as its new CEO.







Korea South-East Power appointed former KEPCO Vice President Kim Hoe-cheon as its new leader.







Korea Midland Power tapped its company official Kim Ho-bin, who leads the technology security team, as its new president.







Korea Western Power chose former KEPCO Vice President Park Hyung-duk as its new leader.







Lastly, Korea East-West Power nominated former Commissioner of Korea Customs Service Kim Young-moon.


Few African countries have facilities needed to identify new variants

Experts believe the spread of new coronavirus variants in Africa has contributed to an increase in both cases and deaths across the continent.

At least a dozen countries have so far confirmed presence of the variant first detected in India late last year.

But there is concern that new variants can't easily be tracked because the testing required to identify them isn't widely available.

What's the role of the Indian variant?

The new wave of infections in Africa is thought to be partly associated with the emergence of some variants that are more transmissible.

Uganda was the first country on the continent to confirm the presence of a variant first identified in India late last year.

This variant has now been reported in Kenya, Morocco, Algeria, South Africa, Botswana, Angola, DR Congo, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

It has been classified by the WHO as a "variant of global concern" with possible increased transmissibility.

Another variant of the virus which emerged in South Africa last year contributed to record case numbers in the southern African region, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

South Africa has had the most cases on the continent

This variant has also been recorded in more than 20 other African countries.

It's highly likely to have reached other countries, but few are able to carry out the specialised genomic sequencing to detect coronavirus variants.

In Nigeria, scientists have also identified a new variant of the virus, although there is currently no evidence to indicate it is contributing to increased transmission.

Twenty countries have also reported the presence of a Covid-19 variant first identified in the UK.

The WHO and the African Centres for Disease Control launched a network of laboratories last year to try to boost the continent's capacity to identify these variants.

It said the emergence of new, and more contagious variants "reinforced the need to step up genomic surveillance."

Story continues

This involves analysing the code of the virus to understand its genetic makeup.

However, a recent article in The Lancet pointed out that while efforts were underway to expand this type of work, there were issues around funding, as well as shortages of reagents and staff with the skills required.

What's happening to case numbers?

Over the past month, new cases across the continent declined by 9%, according to the CDC.

New cases have been rising in countries such as South Africa, Egypt and Nigeria but dropping in DR Congo, Ethiopia and Kenya.

Click here to see the BBC interactive

"Africa is not out of the woods yet, and complacency is not an option at this time," says the head of immunisation at the WHO Africa office, Richard Mihigo.

Most countries have launched Covid-19 immunisation campaigns, but there are still a few countries yet to roll out or even acquire vaccines.

Death rates have been rising

The number of Covid-related deaths rose by 4% in the past month, according to CDC data.

During the first stage of the pandemic, Africa's overall fatality rate - the proportion of those with Covid who then die - was lower than elsewhere in the world.

There were a number of theories put forward as to why that might be the case, such as the relatively younger population, and possible cross-immunity from other coronaviruses.

Funeral workers prepare for a burial near Harare, Zimbabwe

But the Africa CDC has warned about rising fatality rates in the continent, saying that of the 55 countries they monitor, 21 are reporting fatality rates above the current global average of 2.2%.

The fatality rate for Africa has crept up since July last year when it was on average 2.1% - to 2.7% in April this year (measured over the duration of the pandemic).

A study published in The Lancet suggests hospital patients who are critically ill with Covid-19 in Africa are far more likely to die than in other parts of the world because of limited healthcare resources.

Researchers, who looked at patients in hospitals across 10 African countries, found that nearly half of those who needed intensive care died, whereas the global average was less than a third.

The global fatality rate has fallen since the start of the pandemic, which in itself would put more African countries above the global average.

And fatality rates are also affected by how much testing is done - a country with low levels of testing will show a higher death rate because many non-fatal Covid cases are going undetected.

Click here to see the BBC interactive

More importantly, data for deaths should be treated with caution, given the wide variations in how countries record them.

In South Africa, research into excess deaths - that's the number of deaths in a certain period above what would normally be expected - shows that there were 153,668 more deaths between 6 May last year and 10 April this year.

The official death toll from Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic is just above 53,000.

And South Africa was just one of eight countries on the continent that the BBC found had adequate death registration systems.

So coronavirus deaths across Africa as a whole are likely to be under-recorded.

There are wide variations in testing rates and while some countries have reduced testing, others have maintained or even increased it at different points during the pandemic.

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Another 44 Russian minors returned from Syria aided by Child Rights Commissioner

 The press service of Russia's Child Rights Commissioner

10:59 19/04/2021

MOSCOW, April 19 (RAPSI)  The first aircraft of 2020 transferring 44 Russian children from Syria has landed in the Moscow Region, according to the countrys Child Rights Commissioner Anna Kuznetsova has announced.

The minors aged from 2 to 16 years have been transported from refugee camps accompanied by the Minors Ombudsman.

The work on the childrens repatriation has been ongoing since 2018. Over 100 minors have been already returned to their homeland with the assistance of Kuznetsova.




STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.  States in America are ranked by the best places to live, where to work, how much fun they are and more  but a recent poll asked Americans to choose the better of two states in a series of head-to-head matchups.

YouGovs poll ranked states based on their win percentage  which is how often that state won the head-to-head matchup when it was against another state. All 50 states and Washington, D.C., were included in the poll of 1,211 people.

So where does New York rank?

Eighth. It won 59% of its matchups in the poll.

Its no surprise that Hawaii, known for its beautiful beaches and warm weather, took the top spot by winning 69% of its matchups. Colorado took second place with 65%, for its scenic mountains, hiking paths, and recreational marijuana industry, according to YouGov.

Heres a look at the top 10 states in America, according to the YouGov poll:

Hawaii  69% Colorado  65% Virginia  64% Nevada  61% North Carolina  61% Florida  61% Arizona  60% New York  59% Georgia  58% Texas  58%

The two lowest-rated states were Alabama (38%) and Mississippi (38%), which often rank low in other assessments of income and health care access, according to YouGov. Both are states located in the south, where almost all the bottom 10 states are situated, the poll found.

The only exception is New Jersey, which comes third from the bottom at 39%. While panelists didnt provide context for their picks, New Jersey is usually the butt of jokes, YouGov said, including for its occasional odor or being the setting of MTVs The Jersey Shore.

But Washington, D.C., scored the worst of all  winning only 35% of its matchups.

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India to become No 1 electric vehicle manufacturer in world: Nitin Gadkari

Union minister Nitin Gadkari on Sunday expressed confidence that lithium-ion batteries would be manufactured fully in the country in the next six months and India will become number one electric vehicle maker in the world in due course of time. Addressing Amazon's Smbhav Summit virtually, Gadkari further said that the government wants to encourage automakers to introduce flex-fuel engines in India and he is in the final discussion with manufacturers.

Railway Ministry to transport liquid oxygen to help states combat COVID surge

Railway ministry on Sunday said that it is getting ready to transport Liquid Medical Oxygen (LMO) and oxygen cylinders across the key corridors amid the raging second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. To begin with, ten empty cryogenic road tankers are likely to be dispatched tomorrow to fetch oxygen from the industrial belt of Jharkhand for the state of Maharashtra

AstraZeneca likely to have COVID-19 vaccine against South African variant by 2021-end

A modified version of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine tailored to combat a coronavirus variant first documented in South Africa could be ready by the end of 2021, an AstraZeneca official in Austria said in an interview published on Sunday. The EU has put a warning label on the vaccine over its possible linkage to extremely rare blood clots, Denmark has completely halted use of the vaccine and Britain has advised people under 30 to get another brand of vaccine.

Domino's India database likely hacked, 1 million credit card details leaked along with mail IDs, cell numbers

Popular pizza outlet Domino's India seems to have fallen victim to a cyber attack. According to Alon Gal co-founder of an Israeli cybercrime intelligence, the hackers have access to Domino's India 13TB of internal data which includes employee details of over 250 employees. The hackers claim to have got all customer details and 18 crore order details which include customer's names, phone numbers, email IDs, delivery address, payment details including more than 10 lakh credit card details used to purchase on Domino's India app. The hackers are aiming to sell the entire data to a single buyer.

Manmohan Singh writes to PM Modi on COVID-19 crisis, stresses on ramping up vaccinations

Former prime minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the COVID-19 crisis, stressing that ramping up vaccination was the key to battling the pandemic. In a letter to the prime minister, the veteran Congress leader said one must not look at absolute numbers but the total percentage of population vaccinated.

China to expand digital yuan experiments to more cities

China will expand digital yuan experiments to more cities, but there is no specific timetable for its official rollout. China is one of the frontrunners in the global race to launch central bank digital currencies to modernise financial systems, ward off the threat from cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and speed up domestic and international payments.
Earlier this year, a modernist mansion overlooking Biscayne Bay, marketed as the only solar-powered house in Miami Beach, sold for $15.25 million. By some estimates, the 112 photovoltaic panels on its roof are enough to operate the entire 5,500-square-foot building for weeksor even months.

Does that mean the house is green? As with so many things, definitions matter. Building a housea process that can include pouring concrete, importing marble, and forging steelrequires vast amounts of energy. Producing that energy releases tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, exacerbating the greenhouse-gas effect that causes climate change. In fact, buildings are responsible for about 40 percent of the worlds greenhouse-gas emissions. And much of that isnt from operational energythe electricity to power lights and air-conditioningbut from energy used to construct the buildings in the first place. Thats known as embodied energy.

Theres no denying that homes of this size and complexity contain lots of embodied energy, says architect Max Strang, who designed the Miami Beach residence. He hopes that the solar panels will produce enough excess energy to pay off some of that debt over time. To not try to offset embodied energy would just be sitting idly by, Strang says.

But that repayment could take 100 years or more. Today, Strang and his peers are grappling with the reality that the world doesnt have that kind of time. If were going to hold warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, which is the goal of the Paris agreementor anything close to thatwere going to have to deal with embodied energy right now, says Vancouver architect Michael Green.

So when Green renovated a 1912 craftsman-style house in North Vancouver for a couple with grown children, the did whatever he could to minimize the energy expended. The first green thing we did was to not tear down the house. Reusing what youve got is a big part of sustainability, he says. And when he enlarged the back of the house, he chose wood as the main structural material. Unlike steel and concrete, wood is created using the power of the sun, he says. Id rather use photosynthesis than photovoltaics, he adds, meaning that reducing embodied energy now, by choosing wood, is better than trying to produce more energy in the future. (Particularly because it takes a lot of energy just to manufacture PV panels.)

Story continues

Soo Valley // Perkins&Will Andrew Latreille

LEED, the leading green building-certification system, puts little weight on embodied energy, which is why architects are turning to apps like Tally (from the Philadelphia architecture firm KieranTimberlake) to add up the energy that goes into their buildings. Even with an app, computing a buildings embodied energy isnt easy. But common sense goes a long way. The less you build, and the less concrete and steel you use, the better. And the less shipping you have to do, the better. Thomas Bercy and Calvin Chen of the Austin architecture firm BERCY CHEN STUDIO tend to use stone rather than concrete whenever possibleit requires no energy to produce and, because they work with local quarries, little energy to transport to the building site. When designing a private house on Whidbey Island, outside Seattle, local architecture firm Miller Hull used reclaimed materials (some from another home in the clients family) wherever it could.

Of course, operational energy still matters. Bercy Chens houses often have rooftop solar hot-water heaters (essentially glass-top tanks exposed to the sun), which are affordable and practically foolproof, along with other energy-saving systems. HouseZero, Snhettas experimental transformation of a Harvard University building into a laboratory for energy-use research, employs a glass solar chimney to ventilate its basement. Back on Whidbey Island, Miller Hull placed a photo-voltaic array in a meadow not far from the house. The takeaway, says Chris Hellstern, a sustainability director at the firm, is that energy-efficient homes are possible.

Some architects go further, adhering to a set of guidelines for reducing houses operational-energy needs to a bare minimum. So-called Passive Houses rely on natural phenomenasunlight, shading, cross ventilationrather than on active heating, cooling, and lighting. Lots of insulation and triple-glazed windows keep heat inside in winter and outside in summer. Perkins&Wills SoLo House, an alpine prototype in the Soo Valley north of Whistler, in British Columbia, follows some of those principles, meeting the Passive House Institutes PHI Low Energy Building criteria despite its large windows, which are strategically placed and sized to maximize solar gain when closed and promote cross ventilation when open.

Almost any kind of dwelling can become a Passive House. In Brooklyn, GRT Architects is renovating a pair of 1840s Greek Revival houses that, when completed to Passive House standards, will require only 10 percent as much energy to operate as conventional houses. One challenge is that the required insulation takes up lots of space, but, GRT cofounder Tal Schori says, weve made the thickened walls a distinct feature of the designa quilted surface that has rounded edges reaching out toward doors and windows. For homeowners who dont want to reinvent the wheel, a California company called Plant Prefab is offering a variety of factory-built Passive Houses.

As for the embodied-energy problem, there are some positive signs. Membership in the Carbon Leadership Forum, an organization for architects and engineers exploring ways to reduce the embodied energy in buildings, has risen from fewer than 400 to more than 6,500 in just over two years. And local chapters are springing up all over the country. Kate Simonen, the founder of the forum, says, Architects are finally seeing the urgency and starting to act. Fred A. Bernstein

Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
He is no stranger to transforming himself for film roles, famous shedding almost 30kg and shocking with his skeletal frame in The Machinist.

And now Christian Bale is showing off his new bald look for Thor: Love and Thunder.

The 47-year-old actor flew under the radar thanks to his new haircut during a jog on Whale Beach, Sydney on Sunday.

Holy Batman! Christian Bale looked unrecognisable as he showed off his new bald look while going for a jog on Whale Beach, Sydney on Sunday, after secretly touching down to film Thor: Love and Thunder

Christian worked up a sweat in a pair of camouflage shorts and a navy T-shirt.

He went barefoot for the soft sand run and flaunted a slight tan.

The Batman star quietly touched down in Australia recently to film the upcoming Marvel movie.

Just like a local! The 47-year-old actor flew under the radar thanks to his new haircut

Christian's wife Sibi Blazic and their two children, Emmaline and Joseph, have joined the star Down Under.

Thor has been filming at a number of locations around Sydney including the city's Centennial Park.

Christian will play a villain opposite Chris Hemsworth in the new Marvel flick.

Soft sand run: Christian worked up a sweat in a pair of camouflage shorts and a navy T-shirt

The movie is scheduled for a February 11, 2022 release, but due to COVID-19 nothing is set in stone.

Tessa Thompson, who plays Valkyrie in the film, recently revealed the actor had been cast as a malevolent as-yet-unnamed character.

Speaking to ET in October, she explained: 'Christian Bale is going to play our villain, which is going to be fantastic.

Villain: Christian will play a villain opposite Chris Hemsworth in the new Marvel flick

'I've read the script. I can't tell you much. Lots of exciting text messages exchanged between Natalie [Portman] and I.'

Gushing about working with Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi, she said they were 'going to have fun'.

'Taika is writing [and] directing. Some familiar faces,' she began.

'Some new people coming into the mix.'

Much-anticipated: The movie is scheduled for a February 11, 2022 release, but due to COVID-19 nothing is set in stone
More than 600 San Antonio community members tuned in to a virtual accountability session where city politicians and candidates addressed police reform, workforce development, education and Februarys power outages.

Communities Organized for Public Service and the Metro Alliance, or COPS/Metro, hosted the session Sunday in the runup for the city election May 1. Early voting starts Monday.

Nearly 40 incumbents and challengers running for mayor, city council and San Antonio Independent School District board seats joined the conversation.

One notable absence was mayoral candidate Greg Brockhouse, whod agreed to participate on April 5, but sent an e-mail declining the opportunity hours before the Zoom-based panel began, organizers said.

In a later interview, Brockhouse said COPS/Metro mischaracterized his commitment to attend and provided a copy of an email exchange March 30 in which he told organizers he had an appointment Sunday afternoon that he wasnt sure he could break. The emails set up the April 5 conversation in which the group said he affirmed he was planning to be there.

Mayor Ron Nirenberg attended the session and voiced his support of the COPS/Metro agenda, saying of police reform efforts, I am not silent on this agenda as we're currently bargaining, and I will not be silent if we have a contract that falls short.

On ExpressNews.com: Would Prop B hold San Antonio police accountable or defund them? Both arguments are a stretch

Sonia Rodriguez, a COPS/Metro leader from Saint Margaret Marys Catholic Church, found Brockhouses absence disappointing.

It was quite a surprise to find out this morning, at around  nine o'clock, that he had a previous commitment, she said, adding that the candidates actions spoke loud and clear - we got it.

Regarding workforce development, Nirenberg noted his collaboration with COPS/Metro on developing the SA Ready to Work program to be paid for with the 1/8-cent sales tax that San Antonio voters approved in November.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio's job-retraining program off to a slow start

It is our greatest generational opportunity to turn back cycles of generational poverty and turn this once low-wage town into one that is equitable for all people, he said.

Nirenberg also voiced support for an independent investigation into Februarys mass power outages and plans to make recommendations to help ensure a similar situation doesnt occur again.

The mayor also said, It was one of the great honors of my life to lead the development and ratification of an affordable housing framework that is comprehensive and compassionate, and we will also lead the way as we currently are underway with implementation of that framework.

When letting them know on Sunday morning that he couldnt be at the accountability session, Brockhouse said, according to an email he provided, I appreciated our talk last week and am thankful for the invitation. My positions stand on all items as a yes, with the exception of Prop B, which I am a No and will be voting against.

According to COPS/Metro, five people in addition to Brockhouse didnt participate after previously agreeing to do so.

They included District 2 councilwoman Jada Andrews-Sullivan, District 10 councilman Clayton Perry, District 2 council candidate Chris Dawkins, District 2 council candidate Kristi Villanueva and SAISD District 3 candidate Leticia Ozuna.

We've heard from the candidates, and yes, we've even heard from those who didn't show up, said Jerry Dailey, Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church pastor and COPS/Metro leader. But more important than that, I hope and pray that the candidates heard from us.

I hope that they heard from our track record, that we speak truth to power.

On ExpressNews.com: Dallas Fed: Weatherization of Texas power plants could cost hundreds of millions, but price tag is 'justifiable'

Yolanda Turner, a COPS/Metro leader from Macedonia Missionary Baptist, said she was disappointed that incumbent office-holders were among the no-shows.

COPS/Metro will use the candidates answers from the session to develop a report card to help educate voters.

We're big believers in making this democracy work, and it works when people are educated on the issues and they vote, Rodriguez said. Our job is to make sure we get every single person that we can to the polls.

We will do whatever we can to fight the kinds of voter suppression that is going on not just in Texas, but in so many states throughout the country.

Turner agreed that getting people to vote is critical for democracy.

That's the only voice we've got, and every voice needs to be heard, she said. That's the voice that we need to hear - we the people - and so that's my thing, voter education and getting those voters to the polls.

Brandon Lingle writes for the Express-News through Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. ReportforAmerica.org. brandon.lingle@express-news.net
Duson Police responded to reports of money stolen from a till in the 200 block of Austria Road in Duson. Duson Police were told that while the employee of the casino was busy with other customers an unknown male reached over the counter and took $1,300.00 from a register till. The employees reported that this was verified by surveillance video.

As the initial investigating officer was reviewing video which captured the theft, the suspect returned at 12:34PM in an apparent attempt to steal additional money. The officer gave chase on foot, the suspect was able to reach a black Nissan Versa and flee, the officer did not immediately capture the suspect.

The Duson Officer developed a lead on where the suspect was possibly hiding out and with the assistance of Lafayette Parish Sheriffs Deputies located the vehicle driven by the same suspect leaving the area from which the lead came.

The officer and deputies attempted to stop the car at 1:35 PM, however the driver refused to pull over and a vehicle pursuit ensued. The pursuit traveled east to University, north to Gloria Switch, East to I-49, south to Willow, east to Moss Street and North to Alexander. At 1:45 PM the suspect crashed into a row of trees at the intersection of East Alexander and Lajaunie Road, the crash damage trapped the suspect inside the car, Lafayette Fire Fighters responded and extricated the suspect who was then transported to a local trauma center by Acadian Ambulance Service.

Officers were able to identify the subject as 22 year Triston Dupuis of Opelousas who is going to remain hospitalized with serious injuries but is reportedly in stable condition.

Dupuis will face felony theft charges, aggravated flight, resisting an officer as well as possession of marijuana charges.

Since the pursuit, Duson Police have discovered that two other thefts were committed by Dupuis at the same Casino Truck Stop one of those thefts exceeded $1,000 and the other was for approximately $300. And Lafayette Police have outstanding arrest warrants for Dupuis for a domestic abuse battery that he committed approximately a week ago.

So upon release from the local hospital Dupuis will be booked on charges of 2 counts felony theft, 1 count theft misdemeanor, aggravated flight, resisting an officer, possession of marijuana and a hold for Lafayette Police for domestic abuse battery.

Assisting Duson Police were Lafayette Police, Lafayette Parish Sheriff, Acadian Ambulance and Lafayette Fire and Rescue.
After the immediate COVID-19 crisis passes, Pennsylvania will have a rare, one-time opportunity to upgrade its emergency response plans.

Federal funds will cover the planning, but state money will be needed to sustain the improvements, according to Acting Secretary of Heath Alison Beam said. It wont happen without buy-in from state lawmakers.
If you analyze all our statements, you can see that the ANC has never made any statement in support of [PM] Nikol Pashinyan or his government. The deputy chairman of the Armenian National Congress (ANC) party, Levon Zurabyan, said this in an interview with RFE/RL.

Zurabyan responded to the remark that initially the ANC supported Nikol Pashinyan, its various members, including Vladimir Karapetyan, were appointed to government positions, but now the ANC criticizes the incumbent authorities. "If you analyze all our statements, you can see that the Congress has never made any statement in support of Nikol Pashinyan or his government. We have always presented alternative programs, we have always presented criticism toward the establishing democracy in Armenia. As for the appointment of Vladimir Karapetyan, it was his personal decision which had nothing to do with the ANC's position. We have reached an agreement with him that Vladimir Karapetyan is suspending his membership in the ANC in order to be able to take a seat in Nikol Pashinyan's government. "

Referring to Nikol Pashinyan's statement made in the parliament on April 14 that First President Levon Ter-Petrosyan had told him in July 2018, "You have to give the lands already," in connection with the Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) conflict Zurabyan said. "I must state with sorrow that the leader of Armenia is a liar. There was no such thing, it is an absolute lie. If he wants to save his standing, we suggest bringing any evidence that Ter-Petrosyan said such a thing. We are other representatives of negotiations or state policy; of course, we do not open the content of confidential conversations. Something completely different was said."

To the clarifying question, that is, was there no talk about lands, Zurabyan said that it was an absolute lie.

Levon Zurabyan noted that Ter-Petrosyan's position on the settlement of the Karabakh issue is known and it has not been changed. "We have always talked about the danger of war. For some reason, we, not being in power, could have done these analyzes, whereas Nikol Pashinyan, being in power since 2018, should have known 15 times more than us, and it is not clear, or maybe it is clear, why Nikol Pashinyan failed this analysis and pulled Armenia into the devastating war."

When asked whether it was destructive before Nikol Pashinyan, Zurabyan responded: "Before referring to Nikol Pashinyan's fault, we can also talk about what the former leaders are guilty of. But we should not consider that all this justifies Nikol Pashinyan. Let me present with a simple example as to what Nikol Pashinyan's fault is. He had written an article, entitled The Causes of the 44-Day War, which was followed by the response of OSCE Minsk Group [Russian] Co-Chair [Igor] Popov. This is the first document which actually reveals what the plan [the Russian FM Sergey Lavrovs plan] by the co-chairs put on Nikol Pashinyan's table in July 2019 envisioned. Nikol Pashinyan rejected this plan in the most short-sighted ways, in fact challenging the whole world, saying that What was on the negotiating table is unacceptable to me, I have to start from my point; that is, Pashinyan wanted to wrap his own point around the worlds neck. Popov says that both Armenia and Azerbaijan accepted these proposals as a blueprint of possible agreement, but then Nikol Pashinyan came and said, I do not accept anything like that, I will not negotiate at all until you let Karabakh sit around the [negotiating] table and other preconditions. He essentially rejected the negotiations."

Zurabyan stressed that the Turkish-Azerbaijani attack on Artsakh could have been prevented through negotiations. "Nikol Pashinyan himself has said several times that, I could have given the five districts, solve the issue, but in exchange they were not giving me the independence of Karabakh; that is, it turns out that he knew very well that by accepting this plan he could have established peace. But why did he not do that? Why did he lead our people to a one-sided massacre? He did not have the courage, the wisdom, to solve this issue from a position that was most convenient for him, when all the people listened and trusted him. 

And touching upon the snap parliamentary elections slated for June 20 and asked whether the ANC will run in them, Levon Zurabyan said that now they are preparing for their party congress, holding regional meetings, trying to assess their resources, capacities, and the people's demand for the ANCs running in this voting. "But this work is not over yet, and we do not have a decision yet," he added.
Georgians adopted voter-integrity measures supported by a large majority of Americans, that are in the mainstream of state regulation and in fact are less stringent than the rules in Delaware, President Joe Bidens home state, and New York. By more than a 2-1 margin, Americans think such rules are not unfair or discriminatory.
British warships will sail for the Black Sea in May amid rising tensions between Ukraine and Russia, according to a report.

The deployment is aimed at showing solidarity with Ukraine and Britain's NATO allies, the Sunday Times newspaper reported, citing senior naval sources.

One Type 45 destroyer armed with anti-aircraft missiles and an anti-submarine Type 23 frigate will leave the Royal Navy's carrier task group in the Mediterranean and head through the Bosphorus into the Black Sea, according to the report.

RAF F-35B Lightning stealth jets and Merlin submarine-hunting helicopters will stand ready on the task group's flag ship, the carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, to support the warships in the Black Sea, the report added.

While the Ministry of Defence insists the pre-planned deployment is routine, it comes at a time of heightened fears of conflict between Russia and Ukraine which has seen a build-up of Russian troops along the border and clashes in eastern Ukraine between the army and pro-Russian separatists.

British warships will sail for the Black Sea in May amid rising tensions between Ukraine and Russia, according to a report. One Type 45 destroyer (of the type pictured above) armed with anti-aircraft missiles will leave the Royal Navy's carrier task group in the Mediterranean and head through the Bosphorus into the Black Sea, according to the Sunday Times [File photo]

RAF F-35B Lightning stealth jets (pictured) and Merlin submarine-hunting helicopters will stand ready on the task group's flag ship, the carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, to support the warships in the Black Sea, according to the report [File photo]

Last week, Vladimir Putin escalated fears of a possible Russian invasion by ordering the blockade of the strategically important Kerch Strait.

Russian warships moved into position to control the strait on Friday, cutting off sea access to Ukraine's south-eastern coastline and eastern Crimea.

The Kremlin confirmed all foreign and Ukrainian military vessels will be forbidden to sail from the Black Sea into the Sea of Azov for the next six months, although commercial vessels will not be affected.

The blockade was announced a day after President Joe Biden cancelled plans to send two American destroyers to the Black Sea for fear of increasing tensions.

Last week, Vladimir Putin escalated fears of a possible Russian invasion by ordering the blockade of the strategically important Kerch Strait. Three Ukrainian artillery boats threatened to shoot five FSB coast guard vessels near the Kerch Strait overnight between April 14 and 15, observers said, after the Russian ships made 'provocative manoeuvres'

UK defence chiefs confirmed six Royal Air Force Typhoon super-jets will fly to eastern Europe as part of another pre-planned mission.

The Typhoons will be supported by troops from the RAF's No1 Expeditionary Logistics Squadron and No2 Mechanical Transport Squadron. They are deploying from bases in the UK this week and will police the skies around the Black Sea.

A ministry spokesman told the Sunday Times that the UK government was working closely with Ukraine to monitor the situation and continued to call on Russia to de-escalate.

According to the Ukrainian government, Russia has sent at least 41,000 troops to the border in eastern Ukraine and 42,000 to Crimea

The Ukrainian army conduct a drill with military tanks on Sunday as Russian troops amass in near the Donbas region

Ukrainian troops man trenches in the eastern Donbas region as the country's foreign minister warns Moscow it will bear 'very painful consequences' if it invades

'The UK and our international allies are unwavering in our support for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity', the newspaper quoted the spokesman as saying.

According to the Ukrainian government, Russia has sent at least 41,000 troops to the border in eastern Ukraine and 42,000 to Crimea.

The Kremlin has played down the deployment as a military exercise, not a threat. However, Russian state TV last week warned Moscow is 'one step away from war'.

A Russian tank is seen on the back of a flatbed truck on a road leading towards Mariupol, in eastern Ukraine, as Russian forces continue to mount in the region

Russian support vehicles are seen on the a road leading between Rostov-on-Don in Russia and Mariupol in Ukraine

More than 14,000 people have been killed since 2014, when Russia annexed eastern Ukraine.

Security experts now fear Russia is planning to reoccupy eastern Ukraine on the pretence of protecting native Russian speakers who live there.

Nato has expressed serious concern over the build-up of forces on the border, while Pope Francis on Sunday called for a lowering of tensions in eastern Ukraine and expressed anxiety over a military buildup.

'Please! I strongly hope that an increase in tension can be avoided. On the contrary, there is a need for gestures that can promote reciprocal trust and foster reconciliation and peace, both so necessary and so desired.'

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky (left) and his wife Olena (second left) were in Paris today where they met with President Macron (second right) and his wife Brigette in a show of unity (right)

Pope Francis on Sunday called for a lowering of tensions in eastern Ukraine and expressed anxiety over a military buildup

On Friday, Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared their support for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and called on Russia to rapidly withdraw troops from the border region.

Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine's foreign minister, warned of 'very painful consequences' if Putin invades as he said 'words are not enough' and allies would need to provide practical support.

He spoke following a meeting with the foreign ministers of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia - NATO allies in the region - saying 'the four of us condemn the exacerbation of the situation by Russia.'

'The world is on the side of Ukraine and international law, and this is one of the elements of restraining Russia from reckless actions,' Kuleba added.

Biden has also offered to hold a summit with Putin in an attempt to cool relations, a move which has been hailed in Moscow as evidence that the US had blinked first in the standoff.

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said the Russian president is 'studying' plans for a summit but added that it is 'too early' to discuss specifics.
on Monday said that the Centre is working together with states to protect lives and livelihoods.

In a tweet, the Minister said that she has spoken to business leaders and took their view on industry-related matters.

"Spoke on telephone with each of the following business/Chamber leaders. Took their inputs on industry/Association related matters. Informed them that GoI at various levels from @PMOIndia is responding to #Covid management. Working together with states for lives and livelihoods," she said.

The statement comes at a time when India has been reported highest single-day spike in fresh Covid cases every other day and cities and states are going back to curfews and lockdowns.

India has reported 2,73,810 fresh Covid cases in the last 24 hours, the highest single-day spike ever, pushing the country's overall Covid tally to 1.5 crore, according to the Health Ministry data released on Monday.

This is the fifth consecutive day that the country has registered over two lakh Covid cases taking the total tally to 1,50,61,919 cases.

--IANS

rrb/sn/sdr/

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By John Burton





North Korea is ground zero for international humanitarian efforts. For the first time since foreign aid workers were allowed into the country following the great famine of the 1990s, which Pyongyang described as the "Arduous March," no U.N. or NGO staff members reportedly remain in the country, due to local COVID-19 restrictions.



This situation creates an uncertain future for international assistance at a time when North Korea leader Kim Jong-un recently warned party officials that they would need to "wage another more difficult Arduous March." His remarks suggest that the country faces serious economic problems as a result of Pyongyang closing the national borders in response to the threat posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.



The latest annual report by the U.N. Panel of Experts on North Korea, which was released last month, paints a dire picture of the conditions faced by NGOs trying to deliver aid from China or monitor their distribution within North Korea in 2020. One NGO told the U.N. Panel that "Humanitarian work has literally come to a standstill," while another warned that the continued border lockdown could "undo much of the progress" of aid projects.



Some of the blame rests with North Korea's overzealous response to the COVID-19 threat. For example, Pyongyang created a transportation bottleneck for delivering aid by requiring that some supplies be shipped by sea rather than over land routes, in spite of a shortage of available vessels. North Korean officials were also slow in granting permission for aid deliveries.



But other NGOs have said that the international sanctions against North Korea also contributed to the current crisis. A major source of complaints was that NGOs had difficulties in financing their operations, since most international banks refuse to handle money transactions for North Korean aid projects out of fear of violating U.S. law. One NGO told the U.N. Panel that the "U.N. Security Council says that U.N. sanctions are not applied for humanitarian operations, but they actually hinder humanitarian operations."



The U.N. Panel acknowledged that, "Sanctions likely had unintended effects affecting the civilian population." It noted that limited fuel imports have cut energy production. Restrictions on imports of agricultural machinery and fertilizer have led to reduced food availability, and healthcare has been affected by import restrictions on medical equipment.



The current crisis might create an opportunity to reassess the international sanctions regime when it comes to humanitarian aid to North Korea. The U.N. Panel, for example, suggested that more attention be paid to the views of the NGOs on ways to improve the delivery of aid, particularly concerning greater access to banking channels and streamlining the processes for applying for humanitarian exemptions from the U.N. Security Council.



There are also currently moves in the U.S. Congress to eliminate some of the roadblocks that Washington has imposed on aid to North Korea, at a time when the administration of President Joe Biden is conducting a North Korea policy review.



Senator Edward Markey and Representative Andy Levin, both Democrats who hold senior positions on Asia-related congressional committees, recently reintroduced their "Enhancing North Korea Humanitarian Assistance Act," to expedite the delivery of aid by American NGOs to North Korea.



"This legislation will allow dedicated aid workers, many of them Christian missionaries, to provide vital supplies to the North Korean people and make sure we're not standing in the way of life-saving work," Levin said. "If we've learned anything in the past year, it is that public health is global health. Ensuring the health of North Korean people is a moral imperative and in the best interests of the American people."



The lawmakers cited the example of dealing with drug-resistant tuberculosis, which requires not only just food and medicine, which are automatically exempt from sanctions, but also basic materials to construct temporary patient isolation wards, for which exemptions must be sought. "Even the laptops that humanitarian workers need for their projects can too easily trigger sanctions-related delays," they noted.



They want the U.S. to expand the list of humanitarian items that are automatically exempted beyond food and medicine, while removing travel restrictions for U.S. aid workers in North Korea.



Meanwhile, the U.N. Human Rights Council is pressing North Korea to ease its COVID-19 border restrictions to allow humanitarian workers and aid deliveries into the country.

Although North Korea appears committed to maintaining tight border controls for the time being, it also suggested that it would resume cooperation with U.N. agencies, including the World Health Organization (WHO), in the future.

Pyongyang's administrative newspaper, the Minju Joson, recently noted that the global COVID-19 pandemic, "Has had a serious negative impact on the development of our society and economy," but added that, "We will strengthen cooperation with the WHO and push ahead with projects to improve public health."

Let us hope that North Korea sticks to that pledge.





John Burton (johnburtonft@yahoo.com), a former Korea correspondent for the Financial Times, is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist and consultant.


The federal government has tweaked its housing and infrastructure plans in the budget, but held back on an overhaul. Charles Rochfort, left, and Jonathan Grenier work on a home as Quebec lifts the ban on residential construction due to the COVID-19 pandemic Monday April 20, 2020 in Deux-Montagnes, Que. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz
A test tube labelled "vaccine" in front of an AstraZeneca logo in this illustration taken, Sept. 9, 2020. Reuters-Yonhap



Korea will bring in another 7 million doses of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccines, enough for 3.5 million people, between May and June, health authorities said Monday.



AstraZeneca vaccines will make up about 60 percent of the country's rollout by the end of June, with a goal set to vaccinate 12 million out of the country's 52 million population.



The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) confirmed that AstraZeneca vaccines for 1 million people will arrive in the country in May and those for another 2.5 million people in June.



The vaccines will be the first two batches provided under a direct contract for 10 million people between the British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant and the Seoul government, the KDCA said.



The country's health authorities have been struggling to alleviate safety concerns over AstraZeneca vaccines amid mounting concerns over a possible supply shortage.



The planned shipment also comes as the authorities have been speeding up the rollout of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines to members of the general population.



Earlier, the Seoul government said it has secured enough vaccines to administer to 79 million people, more than its 52 million population.



A series of mishaps in securing COVID-19 vaccines as scheduled spawned concerns that the country's nationwide inoculation scheme may be delayed, which in turn may put its goal to create herd immunity by November in jeopardy.



Last week, the country was again taken aback by the news that the United States would pause the use of Johnson & Johnson's Janssen products over blood clotting, dealing a further blow to the country's vaccination campaign.



Korea has planned to receive 6 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The bottles are scheduled to be provided in the third quarter.



Since the country started its vaccination program on Feb. 26, a total of 1,517,390 people, or 2.92 percent of the population, have been given COVID-19 vaccine shots, including 4,859 the previous day.



AstraZeneca's vaccine has been administered to 1,000,258 people, while 517,132 have received that of Pfizer.



The KDCA said 60,585 people have received two doses.



The country added 532 more COVID-19 cases Monday as daily cases fell back below 600 for the first time in six days, with the total caseload at 114,646, the KDCA said.



Earlier this month, South Korea resumed AstraZeneca vaccinations after a brief suspension over blood clot concerns, but people under 30 were excluded from the vaccination.



KDCA Commissioner Jeong Eun-kyeong said 640,000 people under 30 had been scheduled to receive AstraZeneca shots, but such shots will be administered to people aged between 60 and 64 in late May.



This week, South Korea started giving AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine to health care workers and airline crews to speed up the vaccination drive. (Yonhap)


A key innovation of Expanse is its ability to support composable systems, which can be described as the integration of computing elements such as a combination of CPU, GPU, and other resources into scientific workflows that may include data acquisition and processing, machine learning, and traditional simulation. While the main Expanse system is funded by the National Science Foundation, SDSC has recently installed additional capacity to support industrial workloads.

Exposing SDSC's Expanse supercomputer platform via Core Scientific's Plexus software stack provides customers with a consumption-based HPC model that not only solves for on-premise infrastructure, but also has the ability to run HPC workloads in supercomputer centers as well as in the any of the four major public cloud providers - all from a single pane of glass.

"We are excited to make the power of the Expanse supercomputer available to industry researchers and other customers who need state-of-the-art supercomputer capabilities," said Ron Hawkins, SDSC director of industry relations. "Core Scientific's Plexus software stack provides end-customers access to our infrastructure in an intuitive, cloud-like point and click experience, which is a potential game changer for supercomputer centers."

Expanse, which entered service in December 2020, consists of nearly 800 AMD EPYC (Rome) based compute nodes with a 12 petabyte parallel file system and Mellanox InfiniBand HDR interconnect, with over 100,000 cores available to the most demanding HPC workloads.

"SDSC's Expanse is a unique and innovative supercomputer that supports a wide range of scientific workloads," said Core Scientific Chief Product Officer of Artificial Intelligence Ian Ferreira. "Being able to democratize this infrastructure via our Plexus software stack will enable researchers and scientists to seamlessly work between CPU and GPU bound classes of problems, all via a single, easy to use interface."

Core Scientific Chief Product Officer of Artificial Intelligence Ian Ferreira is available for interview. Please contact [email protected].

About Core Scientific

Core Scientific equips and enables data scientists to take on the world's most advanced AI challenges. Through delivery of high-end leading-edge AI hardware infrastructure in a near-cloud environment and delivering best-in-class software tooling to streamline AI workflows, Core Scientific delivers the ease of public cloud with benefits of colocation. To learn more, visit www.corescientific.com .

About San Diego Supercomputer Center

The San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego is considered a leader in advanced computation and all aspects of "Big Data," which includes data integration and storage, performance modeling, data mining and predictive analytics, software development, and more. SDSC provides resources, services, and expertise to the national research community including academia, industry, and government. SDSC supports hundreds of multidisciplinary programs spanning a wide variety of domains, from astrophysics and bioinformatics to environmental sciences and health IT.

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The Vietnam National Museum of Nature describes Vietnams animal and plant life over 3.6 billion years and becomes an ideal destination for nature lovers and researchers.

Located at No.18 Hoang Quoc Viet street in Hanoi, the Vietnam National Museum of Nature covers 300 square meters. On display are 1,400 items describing the life cycles of mammals, retiles, amphibians, insects, and plants which were present in Vietnam millions of years ago and recently discovered.

Opened in 2014, the museum is a great source of information on Vietnams flora and fauna. Nguyen Thi Ha of Tran Hung Dao high school in Hanoi said, Im learning a lot during my trip to the museum. I can see the diagrams and fossils with my own eyes. Im really impressed by the specimens on display.

The Vietnam National Museum of Nature takes visitors on trip back to ancient times, of which the species are categorized.

Visitor Nguyen Van Nam of Hanoi elaborated that The exhibition is lively and thrilling. The exhibits demonstrate the knowledge that pupils learn at school so that they remember easily.

The exhibition of the history of life features warm light and colors, very pleasing to the eyes. On display are fossils of the four geological development periods on Earth: the pre-Cambrian period (4,500 - 541 million years ago), the Mesozoic (541 - 252 million years ago), the Mesozoic (252 - 66 million years ago) and the Great Neoplasm (66 million years to present day).

The exhibition of animals features bone specimens of frogs, carp, king cobras, tigers, ostrichs, and pig-tailed monkeys, precise to the smallest details. The collection of insect exhibits at the Vietnam National Museum is the biggest of its kind in Vietnam, grouped into beetles, dragonflies, cicadas, mantis, and stick insects, some of them lived 400 million years ago.

Specimens of animals that lived on this planet millions of years ago. (Photo: VNA)





Nguyen Thanh Tuan of Cau Giay Secondary School in Hanoi said, I have never seen such butterflies in real life. They are incredibly colorful and totally different from what I can imagine. My visit to the museum today is really helping enrich my knowledge.

The exhibition of marine creatures features corals, shellfish, amphibians, and reptiles that are extinct. A panel is erected at each exhibition providing a short description.

Visitors to the Vietnam National Museum of Nature can learn to create specimens, paint the animals, and watch 3D movies about the evolution of humans, fish, dinosaurs, and insects and how the universe and the ocean have changed.

Vu Van Lien, Vice Director of the Vietnam National Museum of Nature, said, Visitors are introduced to the formation of life. Here we teach them about the nature and infuse their love for nature. Everyone is responsible for protecting the environment.

Entrance to the Vietnam National Museum of Nature is free from Thursday to Sunday.

VOV

Unique Bat Trang Ceramic Museum Built with inspiration from the curves of pottery wheels, the Bat Trang Pottery Museum is becoming a new destination for Hanoians.
Published: 19 April 2021

Number of new students grew in universities of applied sciences education

According to Statistics Finlands education statistics, a total of 132,800 students attended education leading to a university of applied sciences degree in 2020. The number of students was four per cent higher than in the previous year. The number of students attending education leading to a higher university of applied sciences degree was 16,000, altogether 12 per cent more than in the previous year. The number of new students in education leading to a university of applied sciences degree grew by 14 per cent from the previous year and that in education leading to a higher university of applied sciences degree by 25 per cent.

Students and degrees in education leading to a higher university of applied sciences degree in 2004 to 2020

In 2020, the number of completed university of applied sciences degrees was just under 25,000, which is on level with the previous year. A total of 3,900 higher university of applied sciences degrees were completed in 2020. The number of attained higher university of applied sciences degrees grew by 15 per cent from the previous year.

Women attended education leading to a university of applied sciences degree more often than men in 2020. Fifty-two per cent of the students attending education leading to a university of applied sciences degree and 66 per cent of the students attending education leading to a higher university of applied sciences degree were women. Fifty-four per cent of new university of applied sciences students were women, as were 67 per cent of those studying for a higher university of applied sciences degree.

Among those having completed a university of applied sciences degree in 2020, six out of ten were women. The corresponding share for higher university of applied sciences degrees was seven out of ten.

In 2020, the number of students in education leading to a university of applied sciences degree was highest in the field of health and welfare. Close on one third, or 29 per cent, studied in this field. Nearly one fourth (24%) studied in the field of technology and good one fifth in the field of business, administration and law.

Of those who studied in the field of health and welfare in education leading to a university of applied sciences degree, 83 per cent were women in 2020. As in previous years, men studied more in the fields of technology. In these fields, mens share of students was 81 per cent.

In 2020, altogether 34 per cent of those studying for a higher university of applied sciences degree studied health and welfare fields. Good one fourth (27%) studied in the field of business, administration and law and close on one fifth (17%) in the field of technology.

The number of students in education leading to a degree was highest at Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, around 16,600 students. There were also over 10,000 students at Turku University of Applied Sciences, Tampere University of Applied Sciences and Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences. The smallest universities of applied sciences by the number of students were Aland University of Applied Sciences (around 500 students) and the Police University College (good 1,100 students).

The highest number of university of applied sciences degrees was attained in 2020 at Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, almost 2,700. Over 1,700 degrees were attained at Turku University of Applied Sciences, Tampere University of Applied Sciences and Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences. The clearly highest number, almost 500, of higher university of applied sciences degrees were attained at Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences. Over 300 higher university of applied sciences degrees were completed at Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences, Turku University of Applied Sciences and Laurea University of Applied Sciences.

More detailed time series data on university of applied sciences students and degrees according to education, sex and university of applied sciences, for example, are available in the database tables. More detailed data on foreign students can be found in the database tables of the statistics on students and qualifications.

Source: Education. Statistics Finland

Inquiries: Vesa Hamalainen 029 551 2594, koulutustilastot@stat.fi

Head of Department in charge: Hannele Orjala

Publication in pdf-format (216.1 kB)

Updated 19.4.2021

Referencing instructions: Official Statistics of Finland (OSF): Students and qualifications [e-publication].

ISSN=2737-0410. 2020. Helsinki: Statistics Finland [referred: 6.6.2021].

Access method: http://www.stat.fi/til/opiskt/2020/opiskt_2020_2021-04-19_tie_002_en.html
Ray Mears has spoken of the public's need to get out and experience nature first hand, as he insists 'we've forgotten how to be outdoors'.

The survival expert, 57, has expressed his concerns that nature has become 'something that's seen solely through the television screen'.

Ray called for a 'rewilding of people' and gushed about the experience of actually being out in nature.

Important message: Ray Mears, 57, has spoken of the public's need to get out and experience nature first hand, as he insists 'we've forgotten how to be outdoors'

He told the Radio Times: 'I get bored when I watch wildlife programmes. What's missing is the breeze on your face, smelling the air, feeling things with your own hands  the ambience and excitement of actually being there.'

Ray sat down with the publication to talk about his new book, We Are Nature.

Released in February, the British woodsman's latest release is billed as 'a journey of discovery through our natural world'.

A description for the book - which is Ray's fourteenth - on his website reads: 'In We Are Nature, Ray gathers together both his incredible lived experience and extensive practical knowledge of the outdoors into a compelling and enchanting narrative, telling us stories of the forest, the Arctic, the deserts and the oceans and their myriad of inhabitants.

'He brings us face to face with the creatures who share our planet, and shows the innumerable ways we can learn from them.'

Wildlife expert: The survival expert, 57, has expressed his concerns that nature has become 'something that's seen solely through the television screen'

Ray said: 'What's missing is the breeze on your face, smelling the air, feeling things with your own hands' (pictured: Ray during an appearance on This Morning last month)

Ray, who has been teaching bushcraft for nearly 40 years, is on a mission to encourage the public to use their 'eyes and ears' more.

Out now: The full interview with Ray can be found in the latest issue of Radio Times

He told i News last month: 'Rewilding the human spirit is about rediscovering our latent abilities and reaching out to the world.

'We all have incredible latent abilities from our distant past but we make very little use of those. '

He added: 'But when we do it's massively rewarding.'

Elsewhere, Ray recently joined the search for missing teacher Darren Blyth, who has not been seen for five days as of Monday.

Darren, who is a teacher at North Yorkshire's Stokesley School, was last seen on Wednesday evening after he left his home near Trimdon Station at around 7pm.

Ray, who is a friend of Darren's family, is helping the police search by studying the area where Darren was last seen.

Ray is suggesting where he might go for shelter and food, the Sunderland Echo reports.

The full interview with Ray can be found in the latest issue of Radio Times, out now.

Helping hand: Elsewhere, Ray recently joined the search for missing teacher Darren Blyth, who has not been seen for five days as of Monday
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Russia has massed over 150,000 troops along the Ukrainian border and in the annexed Crimean peninsula in a new military camp revealed by satellite images.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell confirmed the news on Monday after talks involving Ukraine's foreign ministry and said: 'It is the highest Russian military deployment at Ukrainian borders ever'.

He warned: 'The risk of further escalation, it's evident.'

The camp, located next to Kachyk Lake on the south coast of Crimea, appeared over the course of a month to house Russian soldiers and vehicles that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been ferrying to the region on the back of trains and trucks.

Images taken by PlanetLabs satellites on April 13 show at least 1,000 vehicles on site, lined up in fenced-off areas opposite infantry tents. Only a fraction of that force was visible in another image taken a month earlier on March 15.

A secondary sub-camp is also visible around a mile to the west of the main camp, on the shores of Kachyk Lake. That camp primarily consists of vehicles in fenced-off pens, with a handful of infantry tents visible.

While Ukraine has previously warned that as many as 40,000 new Russian troops have been stationed in Crimea, in addition to another 40,000 on the mainland, it is the first time that a camp housing the force has been pictured.

Tensions have spiralled over the build-up of Russian troops around its southwestern neighbour as an intensification of clashes with Moscow-backed separatists has fuelled fears of a return to widespread fighting in Ukraine.

Satellite images of an area next to Kachyk Lake in Crimea have revealed a new Russian military camp (right) and sub-camp (left) which have been constructed between March 15 and April 13 amid a wider troop build-up on the Ukraine border

Images of the camp show thousands of vehicles in fenced-off pens (right) alongside infantry tents (left) which have been organised into rows

Moscow's military says it is conducting exercises along its frontier in response to moves by Western military alliance NATO that 'threaten Russia'.

Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said last week that 'two armies and three airborne units were successfully deployed' to the Russia's western border and that the drills would be over 'within two weeks'.

Ukraine is pushing the West for more practical support as it looks to deter any further aggression from Moscow.

Kiev's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba pressed the EU to prepare 'a new set of sectoral sanctions' against Russia in talks with his counterparts from the 27-nation bloc on Monday.

But Borrell said that there were currently no further sanctions being proposed or under consideration.

It comes after more satellite images revealed another camp has been built near the Russian city of Voronezh, around 500miles north of the new camp and 150miles from the Ukrainian border.

Satellite images of the Voronezh camp, first published 10 days ago, confirm it is arranged in a similar fashion - with vehicles including mobile missile launchers and armoured personnel carriers lined up inside pens.

Infantry tents, presumably used by units operating the vehicles, can then be seen positioned in looser formations just a short distance from the vehicles.

Kiev believes there are now more than 80,000 Russian troops in the region - possibly as many as 115,000 - a force larger than at any time since Putin gave the order to annex Crimea in 2014.

Moscow insists the troops are being deployed only for training exercises and in response to a build-up of NATO troops which the alliance has insisted does not exist.

That has raised fears they could actually be used for an invasion of eastern Ukraine, particularly the Donbas region where Russian-backed rebel groups are involved in a years-long conflict with Kiev's forces.

Observers have also suggested the unannounced build-up could be designed as a test for Joe Biden, as Putin attempts to get the measure of his new counterpart.

Biden has called for the Russian president to 'de-escalate' tensions and proposed a summit which could take place in Finland in the coming months.

The move has been hailed as a win by Moscow, after Biden previously took a hard line against Putin - calling him 'a killer' and refusing to meet with him on the basis that he was too busy.

As well as seeking support from the US, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has turned to his European allies, last week meeting with France's President Emanuel Macron in Paris and speaking with German Chancellor Angela Merkel via videolink.

The pair pledged their backing for Ukraine, but offered little in the way of practical support.

Meanwhile, the UK has offered to send two warships to the Black Sea as a warning to Putin, according to leaked documents, after the US cancelled the deployment of two of its own vessels to the region.

The images are the first to be taken of new Russian camps in Crimea after Ukraine warned there are now more than 40,000 of Putin's troops on the peninsula - with another 40,000 thought to be on the mainland

This image shows a nearby sub-camp, located around a mile west of the main base and on the shores of the lake, which is mainly comprised of vehicles with just a few infantry tents nearby

One Type 45 destroyer armed with anti-aircraft missiles and an anti-submarine Type 23 frigate will leave the Royal Navy's carrier task group in the Mediterranean and head through the Bosphorus into the Black Sea, according to the report.

RAF F-35B Lightning stealth jets and Merlin submarine-hunting helicopters will stand ready on the task group's flag ship, the carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, to support the warships in the Black Sea, the report added.

While the Ministry of Defence insists the pre-planned deployment is routine, it comes at a time of heightened fears of conflict between Russia and Ukraine which has seen a build-up of Russian troops along the border and clashes in eastern Ukraine between the army and pro-Russian separatists.

UK defence chiefs have also confirmed that six Royal Air Force Typhoon super-jets will fly to eastern Europe as part of another pre-planned mission.

The Typhoons will be supported by troops from the RAF's No1 Expeditionary Logistics Squadron and No2 Mechanical Transport Squadron. They are deploying from bases in the UK this week and will police the skies around the Black Sea.

A ministry spokesman told the Sunday Times that the UK government was working closely with Ukraine to monitor the situation and continued to call on Russia to de-escalate.

'The UK and our international allies are unwavering in our support for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity', the newspaper quoted the spokesman as saying.

Ukraine has appealed to its European allies for support as Putin continues massing his forces, and it has since been revealed that Britain will send two ships including a Type 45 destroyer (file image) into the Black Sea in the coming weeks

Kiev has warned the Russia force now sitting on its border is the largest assembled by Putin since his 2014 annexation of Crimea, amid fears of a fresh invasion (pictured, tank units train in eastern Ukraine)

The Kremlin has played down the deployment as a military exercise, not a threat. However, Russian state TV last week warned Moscow is 'one step away from war'.

More than 14,000 people have been killed since 2014, when Russia annexed eastern Ukraine.

Security experts now fear Russia is planning to reoccupy eastern Ukraine on the pretence of protecting native Russian speakers who live there.

NATO has expressed serious concern over the build-up of forces on the border, while Pope Francis on Sunday called for a lowering of tensions in eastern Ukraine and expressed anxiety over a military buildup.

'Please! I strongly hope that an increase in tension can be avoided. On the contrary, there is a need for gestures that can promote reciprocal trust and foster reconciliation and peace, both so necessary and so desired.'

On Monday, Russian defence chiefs released videos of aerial strike training on a 'mock enemy'.

In the footage, a MiG-31BM high-altitude fighter is seen firing an air-to-air missile and pilots practise carrying out air combat, interception and striking air targets at speeds of 1,550mph, and an altitude of 12.5 miles.

Heavyweight Tu-160 'White Swan' (pictured) and Tu-95MS strategic bombers were seen in footage of aerial training exercises released by the Russian defence ministry on Monday

'Tactical techniques were performed at high, low and extremely low altitudes,' said the Russian defence ministry.

More footage shows heavyweight Tu-160 'White Swan' and Tu-95MS strategic bombers as they take off to launch cruise missiles in exercises.

The planes are normally based in Saratov in southern Russia, but the exercises were conducted from Komi in the country's north, far with the flights lasting seven hours, according to reports.

The Tu-160 can carry up to a dozen nuclear missiles and unleash them from a distance of 2,175 miles from their target. Il-78 refuelling aircraft were also involved.

Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine's foreign minister, warned of 'very painful consequences' if Putin invades as he said 'words are not enough' and allies would need to provide practical support.

In the footage released by the Russian defence ministry on Monday, a MiG-31BM high-altitude fighter is seen firing an air-to-air missile

He spoke following a meeting with the foreign ministers of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia - NATO allies in the region - saying 'the four of us condemn the exacerbation of the situation by Russia.'

'The world is on the side of Ukraine and international law, and this is one of the elements of restraining Russia from reckless actions,' Kuleba added.

The Russian build-up comes as clashes between Ukrainian forces and Moscow-backed separatists have flared in the east in recent weeks, shredding a ceasefire brokered last year.

A Ukrainian soldier was killed and one more wounded in the latest bloodshed in the conflict-ridden east, the military said on Monday.

Kiev has been battling pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donetsk and Lugansk regions since 2014, following Moscow's seizure of Crimea.

Talks between advisers to the heads of state of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France - which have been negotiating over the conflict since 2015 - are scheduled to be held later on Monday in Kiev.
TIRANA, Albania (AP)  Albania opened a low-cost airport Sunday at the site of a former refugee camp to boost tourism in one of its poorest northeastern areas.

The first domestic flight landed at Kukes International Airport, also known as Zayed-Northern Wings, after traveling from Tirana. The site of the airport 90 miles northeast of Albanias capital sheltered hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees from the Kosovo War in 1999.

Prince Mohammed bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates had a runway built there for airplanes bringing aid to the refugees, so the international airport was named in his honor. A brutal 1998-1999 war between separatist ethnic Albanian rebels and Serb forces in Kosovo ended after a 78-day NATO air campaign that drove Serb troops out. Photos from that period cover the walls inside the airport.

The 100-hectares (200-acre) airport has a single runway and three parking spots for planes. Authorities said it is expected to start handling international flights in about two months, and they forecast 300,000 passengers a year eventually circulating through the facility. .

Domestic airline Air Albania has planned a flight to Britain, where many residents of northeast Albania have immigrated.

The Kukes airport is Albanias second after Tirana International Airport, where an air traffic controllers strike grounded flights for two days this month.

The Albanian Infrastructure Ministry has said that air traffic in Albania fell 57% during the last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

By LLAZAR SEMINI

Associated Press
The OECD Workshop on insurance and private pensions in Baltic States was organised back to back with the Regional Meeting of the International Network of Pensions Regulators and Supervisors for the Central and Eastern European countries in Tallinn, Estonia.

The first session of the Workshop on insurance and private pensions in Baltic States was devoted to three major insurance policy issues: e-insurance, policyholder protection funds and insurance of emerging systemic risks. The second session focused on common insurance and private pension issues, i.e. portfolio management and annuities. The regional INPRS meeting mainly discussed options for legal form, governance and supervision of pension schemes, as well as fee structure, disclosure and education.

The documentation from the two meetings is detailed below. Click on the title to download the document in pdf.

OECD Workshop on Insurance and Private Pensions in Baltic States

Agenda and Summary Record

Session 1 E-insurance

Policyholder Protection Funds

Insurance of Systemic Risks

Session 2 Portfolio Management: Guidelines and Practices

Portfolio Management: Interactions with Guarantees

Session 3 Annuities

Regional Meeting of the INPRS for Central and Eastern European Countries

Session 1: Recent Developments

Session 2: Options for Legal Form, Governance and Supervision

Session 3: Fee Structure and Disclosure and Education
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The gunmen who kidnapped David Oyewumi, the Obadu of Ilemeso Ekiti, four days ago have demanded N20 million ransom.

six armed men last Thursday at about 9 p.m. and taken to an unknown destination. Mr Oyewumi was abducted bylast Thursday at about 9 p.m. and taken to an unknown destination.

Although the police said they were on the trail of the kidnappers, nothing much had been heard from them.

During the attack, the gunmen came firing into the air, scaled the fence into the palace and entered the monarchs living room.

Ilemeso, in Oye Local government Area of Ekiti State, borders Isan Ekiti, the home town of Governor Kayode Fayemi.

A family source confirmed the kidnappers demand to journalists in Ado Ekiti on Monday.

We have been contacted. They called us around 7.03 p.m. on Saturday and demanded that we pay a sum of N20 million for the king to be released, said the source, who did not want to be named because he had not been authorised to speak about the matter.

We are really worried by this demand. The family is taking further steps to ensure that Kabiyesi is released as soon as possible.

Kidnappers have been on a rampage in Ekiti in the last month, kidnapping several high profile persons in the state and collecting millions of naira in ransom.

On April 8, kidnappers struck in Isan Ekiti, dragging away with them a petrol dealer, Itakorede Adebayo.

Mr Adebayo is the General Manager of Prosperous Filling Station located at Isan Ekiti.

Before Mr Adebayos kidnap, another petrol dealer, and a leader of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria(IPMAN), Suleiman Akinbami, was earlier kidnapped by unknown gunmen at his filling station along Ado-Ijan road.

The Police Public Relations Officer, Ekiti Command, Sunday Abutu, said the police and other security agencies were efforts to rescue the monarch from captivity.

We are taking all security measures to ensure that we rescue the Oba. We are not resting at all, he said.

We are working with other sister agencies in this regard and also working on intelligence gathering we have at our disposal.

The police want to work more to prevent this kind of crime and we are relying on information from the members of the public, because we work more on information we found to be veracious.

We appeal to members of the public to help us with information. Let them report any strange face or suspected person to the police. We assure you that the police will protect the identities of such informants.
In part 5 of this series, John Hinderaker picked up the story of the carjacking yesterday in Burnsville, Minnesota. The authorities gunned down the carjacker as he shot at authorities and sought a second vehicle to carjack. John held out hope that the carjacker was white and therefore that the incident might not give rise to another week of riots.

The Star Tribune story on the incident fails to get inside the deliberations of demonstrators in St. Paul over adding the death of the carjacker to their grievances against the man:

Word of Sundays police shooting came as demonstrators were taking a knee during a moment of silence outside the Governors Residence on Summit Avenue. Some in the crowd said they were planning to head to Burnsville, although organizers told protesters to go to Brooklyn Center instead.

The Star Tribune somehow overlooked the race or testimony of the carjack victim captured in the video below.
Moldovan President Maia Sandu said at a briefing on Monday that the Council of Europe had officially presented an action plan for the republic for the years 2021-2024, which focuses on improving the legislation and combating corruption and the pandemic

CHISINAU (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th April, 2021) Moldovan President Maia Sandu said at a briefing on Monday that the Council of Europe had officially presented an action plan for the republic for the years 2021-2024, which focuses on improving the legislation and combating corruption and the pandemic.

Sandu is currently on an official visit to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe's headquarters in Strasbourg.

"I am happy to take part today in the official presentation of the Council of Europe's action plan for Moldova for 2021-2024. The new action plan reaffirms Moldova's commitment to intensifying our cooperation with the Council of Europe and our intention to further changes in the country," Sandu said.

According to the president, the main priority of the new action plan is the fight against corruption, as well as the development of the capacity of law enforcement agencies in the fight against money laundering.

Sandu noted that the main priority of the new action plan was the fight against corruption, as well as the development of the capacity of law enforcement agencies in the fight against money laundering. The document also provides for the improvement of local legislation in various areas, including elections, media work, combating violence against women and children and others. The action plan for Moldova also includes measures to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

Sandu stressed that she was determined to return Moldova "to the path of the democratic development and establish the rule of law." She added that Chisinau counts on the support of the Council of Europe in reaching these goals.

Sandu, a pro-European politician, assumed the office in December, succeeding pro-Russian Igor Dodon.
Environmental nonprofit WildEarth Guardians lauded Interior Secretary Deb Haaland for her latest decisions protecting the environment, public lands, as well as restoring accountability, scrutiny, transparency, and justice in the U.S. Department of the Interior.

"Today is a watershed moment in the history of the U.S. Department of the Interior," said Jeremy Nichols, WildEarth Guardians' climate and energy program director, in a statement. The environment nonprofit recognizes Secretary Haaland's actions as a testament to her efforts toward communities, science, and justice. Nichols extended gratitude for her "bold action to put people over polluters."

READ ALSO: National Milestone: New Mexico May Send All-Female, All-Colored US Delegation to Congress

Haaland's Actions for the Interior

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has recently issued a pair of Secretarial Orders last April 1, both of which are directed at addressing the Interior Department's sordid track record of support for fossil fuel interests, efforts toward climate denial, and supposedly supporting environmental injustice - most policies put into place by the previous administration.

The first one, Secretarial Order 3398, reverses multiple orders from the Interior under the Trump administration that basically used the department's platform for climate and science denial, as well as prioritizing fossil fuel interests under the pretense of "energy dominance." Under the previous orders, the U.S. saw more lands opened for fracking and mining, as well as streamlining environmental reviews, cutting the public out of managing public lands and resources, and pushing denial of climate science.

More importantly, Secretarial Order 3398 allowed Secretary Deb Haaland to rescind a previous Secretarial Order that lifted a federal coal leasing moratorium. With the latest move from the Interior, the moratorium on coal leasing first adopted during the Obama administration is effectively back in effect.

"Today's Orders makes certain that the Interior Department is no longer going to serve as a rubberstamp for the coal and oil and gas industries," the WildEarth Guardians director adds. He says that Secretary Haaland's actions will "set the stage for deep reforms" in the Interior that would set the federal government "out of the business of fossil fuels and into the business of confronting the climate crisis."

On the other hand, Secretarial Order 3399 sets the Interior Department to take a series of actions that aligns its agencies with climate science and action. The second Secretarial Order creates a climate task force, requires consultation and cooperation with native tribal governments.

The Biden Administration's Commitment to Society, Environment

"The Interior Department is in a powerful position to drive bold action for the climate in the United States," Nichols added, with Haaland's actions showing the commitment of the Biden administration to "rein in fossil fuels and make climate action and climate justice a reality."

The concrete actions from Secretary Deb Haaland come after different groups - tribal communities, justice, and climate organizations like WildEarth Guardians - called on the U.S. Department of the Interior to end fossil fuel leasing on public lands and to phase out federal production of oil, gas, and coal.

The WildEarth Guardians' climate and energy program director noted: "We can't have fossil fuels and a safe climate." The grassroots nonprofit reiterated the importance of the Secretarial Orders to push the climate battle forward.

READ NEXT: Mexican President Says Mexico's Future is Coal Not Renewable Energy
Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has ordered a crackdown on student rape culture and called for universities to follow new emergency code.

England's universities watchdog has published its 'statement of expectations' - which outlines the practical steps that institutions should be taking to tackle harassment and sexual misconduct on campus.

The Office for Students (OfS) said all institutions should have processes in place to allow students to report any incidents and work to minimise potential barriers to reporting.

On the statement of expectations, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said: 'We expect universities to follow these and I would urge all universities to look at this seriously and take appropriate action where necessary'

Providers should ensure that investigatory procedures are fair - and that those involved get effective pastoral support - and they should set out behavioural expectations for all students, staff and visitors.

On the statement of expectations, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said: 'We expect universities to follow these and I would urge all universities to look at this seriously and take appropriate action where necessary.

'No student or young person should ever have to experience abuse, and I urge anyone who feels they have been a victim of sexual harassment to speak to someone they trust, whether that be family, friends, their university or the police.'

The watchdog will consider connecting this statement of expectations directly to the registration conditions for universities and colleges in future.

Soma Sara, the 22-year-old who started the 'Everyone's Invited' website on which teenagers have been posting accounts of sexual harassment and abuse

Universities and colleges should take urgent action and do more to tackle sexual misconduct and harassment affecting students, the regulator has said.

The (OfS) is calling on all providers to review their sexual misconduct and harassment policies, systems and procedures by the summer.

The call came after more than 80 British universities were named on a website where students have been anonymously sharing experiences of sexual harassment, abuse, assault and misogyny.

A number of the UK's top institutions, including Exeter and Oxford, were mentioned more than 50 times on the Everyone's Invited website - which has highlighted allegations of a 'rape culture' in education settings.

Nicola Dandridge says progress has been 'uneven' and students continue to report 'worrying cases'

OfS chief executive Nicola Dandridge said: 'Despite some improvements, progress has been uneven. We still see a lack of consistent and effective systems, policies and procedures across the sector.

'As a result, students continue to report worrying cases that have not been properly addressed by their university or college.'

On the OfS's statement, Ms Dandridge added: 'It is now for all universities and colleges registered with the OfS to put these principles into practice.

'Having the right processes is important. Students should feel confident reporting and disclosing incidents, knowing that they will be listened to and their reports will be dealt with appropriately.

'Staff need the right training to enable them to respond effectively and sensitively to disclosures and reports from students - if only to know to refer students on quickly to whoever is best placed to provide the right support.

'Good communication matters too. Universities and colleges need to explain clearly to students, staff and visitors what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable behaviour.

'By providing this clarity, as well as raising awareness of the nature and impact of harassment and sexual misconduct, they can help prevent harmful incidents.'

A number of the UK's top institutions, including Oxford (pictured), were mentioned more than 50 times on the Everyone's Invited website

In a blog for the OfS website, she said: 'Using this statement of expectations as a yardstick can go a long way to ensuring students have confidence that cases of harassment and sexual misconduct will be properly addressed.'

At this stage, the higher education watchdog is not formally connecting the statement of expectations to regulatory requirements.

'This should give universities and colleges the time and opportunity to review their policies, systems and procedures before the next academic year, drawing on these expectations,' Ms Dandridge said.

On the statement of expectations, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said: 'We expect universities to follow these and I would urge all universities to look at this seriously and take appropriate action where necessary.

'No student or young person should ever have to experience abuse, and I urge anyone who feels they have been a victim of sexual harassment to speak to someone they trust, whether that be family, friends, their university or the police.'

The move came after Soma Sara, founder of the Everyone's Invited website, told the PA news agency that 'rape culture' is in all universities.

Earlier this month, Ofsted said it would be visiting a sample of schools and carrying out a review into whether institutions have effective safeguarding measures in place following allegations of sexual abuse.

Everyone's Invited has now turned its attention to UK universities and colleges which have been recently named by students.

The Everyone's Invited website has highlighted allegations of rape culture in education settings

Ms Dandridge added: 'Publishing this statement of expectations represents a major step in ensuring that all students feel safe during their time in higher education. It is a real opportunity for universities and colleges to make a difference and I would strongly urge them to grasp it.

'Over the next year we will examine how universities and colleges have responded. We will particularly want to hear from students and students' unions that things are changing for the better.

'As part of this process, we will consider options for connecting the statement directly to our conditions of registration.

'Dealing effectively with harassment and sexual misconduct - wherever it may occur - will require action, commitment and collaboration.

'The result should be that meaningful support is provided to students when they need it, and that all incidents are dealt with effectively and sensitively. That is the least students should expect and we are determined to make sure they get it.'

A Universities UK (UUK) spokesperson said: 'We welcome the OfS's commitment to tackling all forms of harassment in higher education and are pleased to see that the statement of expectations draws heavily on UUK's existing Changing the Culture framework.

'Universities have accelerated efforts to address harassment and misconduct in recent years and are in no doubt of the urgent need for progress, but the evidence shows there is still a long way to go.

'We will continue supporting our members to bring about culture change and embed policies and best practice to ensure universities become safer places to live, work and study - including online.

'We look forward to working with the OfS to more fully understand how they intend to implement the statement of expectations, including timescales, as well as how it aligns with the OfS' role as a risk-based and proportionate regulator.'
An Athens man was arrested Friday on charges of first degree sexual abuse.

Torey Devonte Brooks, 22, was arrested Friday on a warrant. According to court documents, investigators say Brooks subjected a victim to forcible sexual contact sometime this year.

Athens police told WAFF the victim in this case is 10-year-old and related to Brooks.

Brooks was booked at the Athens Police Department and has since been transferred to the county jail.

The case is under investigation.
Starting Monday, April 19, eligibility for the COVID-19 vaccine expanded to millions more who live, work, or study in Massachusetts.

Now those 16 years or older may book an appointment. Due to high demand and limited supply, it may take several weeks for newly eligible residents to find an appointment.

People ages 16 and 17 are only qualified to receive the Pfizer vaccine. People age 18 and older can get any vaccine.

How to book an appointment at a large-scale vaccination or regional site

People who live, work or study in Massachusetts can pre-register for a COVID-19 vaccine appointment at a large-scale vaccination site or regional collaborative location by going to mass.gov/covid-19-vaccine.

After registration is completed, residents will receive weekly updates regarding their eligibility.

We will contact you when there are appointments available for you and provide you with a link to use to select and book your appointment, the website states.

Large-scale vaccination locations include:

Gillette Stadium

Hynes Convention Center

Reggie Lewis Center

Danvers DoubleTree Hotel

Natick Mall

Eastfield Mall, Springfield

Former Circuit City, Dartmouth

Regional collaborative locations currently on the preregistration system include:

Amherst clinic location of Northampton Regional Collaborative, Bangs Community Center, 70 Boltwood Walk, Amherst

Marshfield Regional Collaborative, Marshfield Fairgrounds, 140 Main St., Marshfield

MetroWest-Westborough Regional Collaborative, DoubleTree Hotel, 5400 Computer Drive, Westborough

Northampton clinic location of Northampton Regional Collaborative, Northampton Senior Center, 67 Conz St., Northampton

Palmer Regional Collaborative, Converse Middle School, 24 Converse St., Palmer

West of the River Regional Collaborative, Eastern States Exposition, 1761 Memorial Ave., West Springfield

To preregister and be notified about available vaccine appointments you will need the following:

Name

Address

Date of birth

Contact information

Preferred method of communication such as email, text, or phone call

Option to ask for help scheduling over the phone

Information about eligibility (living situations, medical conditions, occupations)

To help older people and others who are unable to use the form, family members, caregivers, or other companions can fill out the form on behalf of someone else. People who do not have internet access can call 2-1-1 to preregister.

Are appointments still available elsewhere?

Yes, the states website is only for large-scale vaccination and regional collaborative sites. There are hundreds of other vaccination locations now open across the commonwealth.

Want to get the vaccine at a grocery store, local board of health-run site or retail pharmacy? Availability varies but new appointments are available daily. Search for appointments here.

How to get an appointment at CVS

Appointments can be made directly through the pharmacys website.

CVS Health is expected to post new appointments online daily. Walk-in vaccinations without an appointment will not be provided.

Massachusetts CVS locations were among the first nationwide to offer vaccination appointments.

Eventually, vaccines will be available at pharmacy locations across the country, with the company estimating its vaccination capacity at 20 to 25 million shots per month.

How to get an appointment at Walgreens

Appointments can be made directly through the pharmacys website.

Eligible individuals can schedule vaccine appointments at select Walgreens locations. New appointments are made available approximately every 2 hours each day from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m. Eastern Time.

After an appointment is scheduled through Walgreens, a confirmation and vaccination consent form will be shared via email or SMS text message. Residents must bring the completed vaccination consent form to the scheduled appointment.

How to get an appointment at Walmart

The retail chain is offering the vaccine at thousands of sites across the country, including dozens of locations in Massachusetts.

Eligible customers can schedule a vaccine appointment directly via the Walmart website when times are available.

Walmart said it hopes to expand vaccine administration to all 5,400 Walmart and Sams Club pharmacies. The company noted it has partnered with dozens of community organizations to host off-site clinics across the country and is planning to expand its efforts with Walmarts Mobile Wellness Fleet.

Got a news tip or want to contact MassLive about this story? Email newstips@masslive.com or message us on Facebook or Twitter. You can also call our news tips line at 413-776-1364.

Related Content:
TRONDHEIM, Norway, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Plugging wells is a key part of the modernisation of the Valhall field centre, and thus also in the ambition to produce a total of two billion barrels from the giant in the North Sea.

The Maersk Invincible drilling rig left the Valhall field centre this week. That marked the end of several years of plugging operations on the field. A total of 30 old wells from the original drilling platform (DP) have been plugged over the course of three campaigns since 2014.

Originally Aker BP estimated the operational time of the plugging campaigns to 10 years at a cost of NOK 15.5 billion. The work was completed in 4 years and at a cost of NOK 10.1 billion.

"Plugging wells from the shutdown drilling platform is an important part of the Valhall modernisation. There are considerable remaining resources in the Valhall area, and our vision is to produce from the field up to 2050. We will maximise value creation from the area through new wells, flank developments and new technology," says Valhall Asset Manager Ole Johan Molvig.

Aker BP is operator and Pandion partner in Valhall. First oil flowed from the field in 1982.

Contacts:

Kjetil Bakken, VP Investor Relations, tel.: +47 918 89 889

Ole-Johan Faret, Press Spokesperson, tel.: +47 402 24 217

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/aker-bp-asa/r/extending-valhall-s-lifetime-with-well-plugging,c3325537

The following files are available for download:

SOURCE Aker BP ASA
Reducing the cost of capital for offshore wind power projects in Vietnam will be the main driver for lowering electricity costs and encouraging investment in such projects,

argue several international energy experts, with the right government policies needed to be implemented quickly to follow through with the countrys energy development schedule.

Conditions in place for offshore development, illustration photo

Refrigeration Electrical Engineering Corporation (REE) is planning to work with foreign investors to pilot an offshore wind power project with a total capacity of about 2,000-3,000MW, according to chairman Nguyen Thanh Mai at the companys annual general shareholders meeting on March 30.

Electricity being in short supply and the future increase in selling price while coal and oil power sources pollute the environment were cited as the core factors by Mai to convince REEs shareholders to invest in the companys new project. She hopes to get a good price when investment costs fall to about 10 US cents per kilowatt-hour and offshore wind prices will be at 11 US cents per kWh.

Mai said that the current technology allows for offshore wind power projects with poles tens of metres high. An offshore wind speed of about 10m per second could then operate a 10-17MW turbine. However, the current situation of wind power development in Vietnam, as well as the risks that investors may face, was not discussed.

Capacity higher than target

The combination of strong winds, shallow water, and skilled workers is an ideal condition for Vietnam to develop offshore wind power. According to data from the Energy Conservation Research and Development Center (ENERTEAM) under the Department of Science and Technology of Ho Chi Minh City, 11 provinces have developed separate plans for wind power, including Thai Binh, Quang Tri, Ninh Thuan, Binh Thuan, and Dak Lak.

Tran Quang Cu, an expert of ENERTEAM, found that the total planned installed wind power capacity of these 11 provinces was much higher than the national target, about 2,600MW by 2020 compared to 800MW; and about 15,700MW by 2030 compared to 6,000MW for the whole country.

Cu realised that when funding wind power in this country, many investors encounter various problems related to the appraisal process, project approval time, and access to preferential credit capital from the state or official development assistance, while high investment rates would also lead to a long payback period.

Currently, 91 wind power projects with a total installed capacity of about 7,000MW have been added to the national wind power plan, and 250 projects, accounting for around 45,000MW, are waiting to be added to the plan.

Power purchase agreements (PPAs), according to Cu, are still a barrier to the development of wind power. As of June last year, about 31 projects have had PPAs with Electricity of Vietnam (EVN) with a total capacity of 1,662MW expected to be put into operation in the 2020-2021 period. If on time, by the end of 2021, the total installed capacity of wind power could amount to around 2,200MW, reaching 36 per cent of the planned target by 2025.

Under the current PPA, EVN is exempt from payment obligations, even when it is unable to receive electricity to the grid due to a transmission or distribution network failure of EVN. But Cu said that up to now, there is no penalty mechanism in Vietnam if EVN does not receive electricity even if the state-owned company does not cooperate to implement it.

Ideal conditions

Cooperative research from Vietnam, Ireland, and Japan has used statistical models to show that the annual average wind speed at 100m height can reach around 9-10m per second in many of Vietnams coastal areas.

The study also showed that energy density is equally large in some areas of the south-central coast and the Gulf of Tonkin and reaches capacities of over 50GWh per square kilometre per year. Only in the waters around Phu Quy or Bach Long Vi islands, the potential for the installed capacity could be around 38GW each, with the technical potential within a range of 185km from the shore on the territorial sea reaching 500-600GW or more.

According to the International Energy Agency, Vietnam could become one of the major offshore wind power centres in Southeast Asia. Data from the Ministry of Industry and Trade as of last September showed that the country had a total of 67 promising nearshore power projects, with a capacity of nearly 10GW and 14 offshore wind power projects with a capacity of nearly 30GW, which means that the total number of upcoming projects will be around 40GW.

The development of intertidal and nearshore wind power in Vietnam has been driven by government policies, including feed-in tariffs. However, at the moment, there is no official definition or specific policy for offshore wind power projects in Vietnam.

Up to now, no offshore wind farm has been established in Vietnam. The country is in the early stages of offshore development, and projects focus on coastal and intertidal or nearshore areas that are easier to invest in and come with shorter development periods. Developers are calling on the government to secure the industry, which will allow them to invest. The government can do this by setting offshore wind power goals as well as a dedicated offshore wind policy.

Given the existing conditions, Vietnam can benefit from a complete supply chain in Asia including wind power developing markets such as Taiwan, Japan, China, and South Korea  which is an important factor to reduce investment costs.

Dinh Van Nguyen, project head of Offshore Renewable Energy Development at Cork Universitys SFI Research Centre for Energy, Climate, and Marine in Ireland, said that strong offshore winds are an important point to consider following Vietnams demand for electricity.

The country plans to upgrade 5-10GW of new offshore wind capacity by 2030 and 35-70GW by 2050. Nguyen believed this process needs to begin right away because it will take 5-10 years for design, planning, and construction.

To reduce capital costs, Nguyen said the government should encourage financial measures including the participation of multilateral lenders and the adoption of green standards. The government should also consult international lenders and investors to determine suitable solutions.

The prime minister and the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) in 2019 agreed to allow Enterprize Energy group to study and survey the Thang Long offshore wind power project in the central province of Binh Thuan with a capacity of 3,400MW and the total investment capital of around $11.9 billion. However, so far this project is still in the appraisal process by the MoIT. The investment in offshore wind power projects is in line with the development orientation of renewable energy sources of Binh Thuan Peoples Committee. The Thang Long project will be financed to about 70-75 per cent by loans, with the remainder being the companys equity. However, realising a loan of more than $8 billion will not be easy as investment in renewable energy is still facing many difficulties. Investors need to consider costs that will increase due to many factors arising in the construction process. The arrangement of loans mainly comes from foreign banks. In addition, financing arrangements for clean power projects in Vietnam are still facing problems with power purchase agreements. Although such contracts stipulate arbitration, investors and international banks will want to comply with international practices.

VIR
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 14:23:33|Editor: huaxia

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NANNING, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Thai-speaking tour guide Zhou Xingxing was skeptical when cross-border e-commerce company Tus-Innovation asked her to promote an 85-yuan (about 13 U.S. dollars) stylus to Thai consumers during a livestream weeks ago on Lazada, a leading Southeast Asian e-commerce platform.

"At first, I didn't have a lot of confidence selling electronic products to online consumers in Southeast Asian countries since I thought they might not have the habit of shopping online," Zhou said.

Yet Zhou introduced eight different electronic products in her first one-hour livestream, which was viewed by more than 1,000 people. "Although it was far less popular than the livestreams of major online influencers on domestic e-commerce platforms, I saw the potential market of the digital economy in Southeast Asian countries."

Brands including Chinese tech giant Huawei have launched livestreaming promotions in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Data shows that more than 350,000 brands and online shops participated in Lazada's Biggest One-Day Sale on Nov. 11 last year.

In order to foster a bilateral e-commerce industry chain, Lazada's cross-border Eco-Innovation Service Center was built in Nanning, capital of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, in 2019.

The center has served more than 30 well-known Chinese companies, incubated over 400 small and medium-sized cross-border online retailers, trained more than 1,000 e-commerce recruits, and attracted more than 200 livestreaming hosts from Southeast Asian countries, according to the center.

"The rapid development of the e-commerce industry in China makes shopping more convenient," said Hong Thi Linh. As a Vietnamese citizen living in Guangxi, she learned how to be a livestreaming host earlier this year.

"Today, with the improvement of digital infrastructure in Southeast Asian countries, consumers there can also enjoy the convenience," she said.

"Livestreaming can help display more diversified products to consumers from my country at lower prices, so it's my pleasure to do something good for my compatriots," she added.

Since 2020, more than 1,000 people from China, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam received training as livestreaming hosts at the Lazada center in Nanning, according to Zhao Hui, the center's managing assistant.

"Our debut livestream on Lazada was only viewed by dozens of people in 2019, but our livestreams are viewed by thousands or even tens of thousands of people this year," Zhao said. "Watching livestreams and shopping online have gradually become parts of daily life in some ASEAN countries."

In China, the value of cross-border e-commerce trade climbed 31.1 percent to 1.69 trillion yuan in 2020, when China and ASEAN first became each other's largest trading partners.

It is estimated that ASEAN's digital economy will increase from 1.3 percent of GDP in 2015 to 8.5 percent in 2025, according to ASEAN Secretary-General Lim Jock Hoi.

China is playing a leading role in the development of digital infrastructure and is an important partner of ASEAN in promoting the development of the digital economy in the region, Lim noted. Enditem
[April 19, 2021] Ad Fraud Rates Improve but Brand Risk Rises Globally, New IAS Report Shows

NEW YORK, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Integral Ad Science (IAS), a global leader in digital ad verification, today released its H2 2020 Media Quality Report (MQR) with insights into the performance and quality of global digital media. "As marketers evolved their strategies in the second half of 2020, our latest MQR report shows greater adoption of tools that mitigate ad fraud and brand risk around digital content," said Tony Marlow, Chief Marketing Officer, IAS. "These unique insights also showcase the huge opportunities for marketers related to contextual targeting and emerging platforms such as CTV. Right now, every impression counts and ensuring ads are viewable by real people in the environments that align with campaign objectives has never been more important." As consumers continued to focus on digital media during stay-at-home orders, viewability rates showed mixed results. With the continued growth of CTV viewership and ads, this MQR report includes inaugural data for connected TV (CTV) viewability, which topped the video viewability rankings worldwide. CTV viewability reached 93.3% globally, while mobile app video, another new metric for H2 2020, followed closely at 92.6%. Mobile web video viewability followed at 73.7%. A shift in consumer behaviors contributed to the greatest year-over-year (YOY) growth for viewability in mobile app display environments, with North American markets yielding improvements, an increase of 8.1 percentage points in the U.S. and 7.1 percentage poits in Canada.



As marketers adopt the latest tools to measure and prevent fraud, global ad fraud rates improved overall and optimized-against-ad-fraud levels dropped across all devices and environments reported. The global fraud rates among optimized campaigns dropped between 0.3% to 0.8% worldwide, while non-optimized campaigns registered 5.1% to 8.6% based on format and environment. During a period of unexpected news and events, IAS data shows that brand risk increased across several categories. IAS measures brand risk globally based on the number of pages scored as medium or higher risk to brands. Adult content was the primary driver of increased brand risk across all formats globally, generally followed by hate speech. The report uncovered that while mobile web video remained the safest inventory when optimized against ad fraud, holding steady at 0.3% for all of 2020, it was the highest for global brand risk at 8.6%. The data reflects hate speech content more than tripled its share of brand risk for desktop video in the U.S., in tandem with the presidential election, while adult content doubled its share year-over-year. The U.S. registered one of the largest increases in brand risk for desktop video content, up 2.9 percentage points, when compared to H2 2019, while Canada was the only market to witness a decrease in brand risk and lower shares in the alcohol and illegal drugs categories, driving brand risk down 2.4 percentage points year-over-year to 5.4%.

Integral Ad Science's H2 2020 Media Quality Report provides insights on brand safety, ad fraud, and viewability trends across display and video ad formats, as well as connected TV (CTV), desktop, mobile web, and in-app environments. The Media Quality Report analyzed trillions of global data events from ad campaigns that ran between July 1 and December 31, 2020. The H2 2020 report covers 20 countries, including five new markets: Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Poland, and Vietnam. About Integral Ad Science

Integral Ad Science (IAS) is a global leader in digital ad verification, ensuring that ads are viewable by real people in safe and suitable environments. IAS's mission is to be the global benchmark for trust and transparency in digital media quality for the world's leading brands, publishers, and platforms. We do this through data-driven technologies with actionable real-time signals and insight. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in New York, IAS works with thousands of top advertisers and premium publishers worldwide. IAS is part of the Vista Equity Partners portfolio of companies. For more information, visit integralads.com . View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ad-fraud-rates-improve-but-brand-risk-rises-globally-new-ias-report-shows-301271106.html SOURCE Integral Ad Science, Inc.

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Pakistan's prime minister has called on Muslim-majority countries to lobby Western governments to criminalise insulting the Prophet Mohammed.

'We need to explain why this hurts us, when in the name of freedom of speech they insult the honour of the prophet,' Imran Khan said in a televised address on Monday.

'When 50 Muslim countries will unite and say this, and say that if something like this happens in any country, then we will launch a trade boycott on them and not buy their goods, that will have an effect.'

Khan said insulting Islam's Prophet should be treated in the same way as questioning the Holocaust, which is a crime in some European countries.

The address came as the government on Monday opened negotiations with a radical religious group over anti-blasphemy protests against France.

Pakistan's prime minister Imran Khan has called on Muslim-majority countries to lobby Western governments to criminalise insulting the Prophet Mohammed [File photo]

The Tehrik-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) freed 11 police abducted during the protests in which four officers were killed, Pakistan's interior minister said.

Most main businesses, markets, shopping malls and public transport services were closed in major cities in response to a strike call by the TLP and its affiliated groups.

Pakistan's PSX 100 stock exchange opened 500 points down in the morning though recovered later in the day.

The police officers were abducted during clashes outside TLP headquarters in the eastern city of Lahore, which according to the group also killed three of its members.

Photographs of the police officers, with their heads, legs and arms heavily bandaged, were posted on social media by their captors.

'They've released the 11 policemen they had held hostage,' Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmad said in a video statement, adding that negotiations with the TLP were under way.

'There have been two rounds of the talks and there will be another later in the evening,' Religious Affairs Minister Noor-ul-Haq Qadri told parliament.

'We believe in negotiations and reconciliation to sort out issues.'

The government outlawed the TLP last week after it blocked main highways, railways and access routes to major cities, assaulting police and burning public property.

Four police officers were killed and more than 500 wounded in the fray.

Khan's address came as the government on Monday opened negotiations with a radical religious group over anti-blasphemy protests against France. Pictured: TLP supporters throw stones at tsecurity forces in Lahore on April 12 [File photo]

The government outlawed the TLP last week after it blocked main highways, railways and access routes to major cities, assaulting police and burning public property. Four police officers were killed and more than 500 wounded in the fray. Pictured: TLP supporters in Lahore on April 12

The violence erupted last week after the government detained TLP leader Saad Hussain Rizvi ahead of a planned countrywide anti-France campaign to pressure the Islamabad government to expel the French ambassador in response to the publication of cartoons in France last year depicting the Prophet Mohammed. Pictured: A tank patrols the streets of Lahore

The TLP has presented four main demands in the talks with the government, officials from both sides said. They included expulsion of the French ambassador, release of the TLP leader and around 1,400 arrested workers, lifting the ban on the group and the dismissal of the interior minister. Pictured: TLP supporters in Lahore on April 12

The violence erupted after the government detained TLP leader Saad Hussain Rizvi ahead of a planned countrywide anti-France campaign to pressure the Islamabad government to expel the French ambassador in response to the publication of cartoons in France last year depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

The TLP has presented four main demands in the talks with the government, officials from both sides said.

They included expulsion of the French ambassador, release of the TLP leader and around 1,400 arrested workers, lifting the ban on the group and the dismissal of the interior minister.

Khan said expelling the French ambassador would only cause damage to Pakistan, and diplomatic engagement between the Muslim world and the West was the only way to resolve disputes.

'When we send the French ambassador back and break relations with them it means we break relations with the European Union,' he said in Monday's televised address.

'Half our textile exports go to the EU, so half our textile exports would be gone.'

Pictured: Police patrol the streets of Karachi on Monday during a clash with supporters of the TLP

Relations between Paris and Islamabad have worsened since the end of last year after President Emmanuel Macron defended freedom of speech while paying tribute to a French history teacher who was beheaded by an 18-year-old man of Chechen origin for showing cartoons of the Prophet during a lesson. Pictured: Traders burn pictures of Macron in Peshawar on Monday

Pictured: TLP supporters clash with police in Karachi on Monday after a nationwide shutdown was announced to show solidarity with the banned religious group

Relations between Paris and Islamabad have worsened since the end of last year after President Emmanuel Macron defended freedom of speech while paying tribute to a French history teacher who was beheaded by an 18-year-old man of Chechen origin for showing cartoons of the Prophet during a lesson.

Protests erupted in several Muslim-majority countries over France's response to the killing of Samuel Paty. The Prophet cartoons were re-printed elsewhere as well.

At the time, Khan's government signed a deal promising to present a resolution in parliament by April 20 to seek approval for the expulsion of the French envoy and to endorse a boycott of French products.

Blasphemy is an extremely sensitive subject in Pakistan, where forms of the crime can carry a mandatory death sentence.

At least 78 people have been murdered in relation to blasphemy accusations since 1990, according to an Al Jazeera tally.
Former New York Times editor Bari Weiss has accused her previous employer of being too 'woke' to cover the growing row about New York City's private schools, after a teacher and a parent objected to the curriculum in two of the city's most elite academic institutions.

Paul Rossi, a math teacher, was told on Sunday that he had been 'relieved of his teaching duties' by Grace Church School in the East Village of Manhattan following his April 13 essay published on Weiss' site.

Andrew Gutmann, whose daughter attended The Brearley School, an all-girls private school in New York City, located on the Upper East Side, wrote a letter, also on April 13, to other parents complaining about efforts to 'brainwash' students with 'woke' philosophies rather than teaching them how to think on their own.

Weiss, who was the first to publish Gutmann's letter on April 16, on Monday denounced her former employer for ignoring their stories.

'In a sane world, you would have read Paul Rossi's essay or Andrew Gutmann's letter in the paper of record,' she wrote.

Bari Weiss's most recent substack newsletter attacks her former employer, The New York Times, and says 'in a sane world' an essay from Paul Rossi, right, who has been relieved of his teaching duties at Grace Church School, would have been 'in the paper of record'

'But such pieces will not appear in the Op-Ed pages of The New York Times or The Washington Post because those papers have mostly ignored the story of the ideological takeover of schools.

'In part, that is because they are implicated in the story: The same ideological force transforming schools like Grace Church and Brearley has also transformed the establishment press.'

GRACE CHURCH SCHOOL 'DIVERSITY MISSION STATEMENT' The following is a 'mission statement' from Grace Church High School that spells out its commitment to 'antiracism, equity, and belonging.' Grace Church School seeks to provide its students with an outstanding education and with the desire to use it to make the world a better place. Every facet of our work is enhanced by the diversity and strength of our community. We believe that equity and inclusion are not only hallmarks of a just society, but also virtues essential to sound learning. And so, Grace seeks to recognize and honor the unique gifts of its students, families, faculty, and staff - and the cultures, beliefs, values, and experiences that have shaped them - striving always to cultivate mutual understanding, humility, respect, and kindness. But inclusion is not enough and equity is an impossibility if we cannot name, acknowledge, and oppose the forces of racism and all forms of bias, hate, and fear that exist in our society and that seek to diminish so many in our midst. Knowing this, we commit ourselves to the work of antiracism and to the cause of justice: that all students may find in Grace a home, may learn from Grace their precious worth, and may hear from Grace a call to serve the common good and the dignity of humanity. Advertisement

Weiss resigned in part because of what she saw as a stifling atmosphere, where free thinking was discouraged in favor of adherence to 'woke' mantras.

The New York Times has written about Grace Church School's expansion plans, and in the context of parents debating whether school fees were worth it. But it does not appear to have covered Rossi's row with head teacher George P. Davison, which ended with his dismissal.

Weiss said in her newsletter that she had received an email from a former parent at Grace Church, who said that one week of every month was devoted to 'CRT'- Critical Race Theory.

'I'm a former parent. My son had Paul Rossi,' the email stated.

'Sadly, Mr. Rossi's account is not hyperbole. One week out of the month is now fully devoted to CRT (not academics).

'Grace was in the news earlier this year as well for it's language guide, which suggested (among other things) that students and teachers say folks or parents or family and not specifically mom and dad because not all kids have mom and dads and such a person might be offended if you ask about their mom and dad.

'The goal of education cannot be to eliminate all possibility of offense.'

Weiss added: 'The problem is that The New York Times would never have printed this at all. It'd be like the Catholic Church embracing John Calvin. The inability to tell such stories is one of the reasons I left.'

Rossi on Monday responded to Grace Church's decision to bar him from classrooms.

In a letter to the head of the school, Davison, Rossi said he was 'compelled to share what you have told me in our previous conversations'.

Rossi complained that Grace Church, which charges $57,000 a year, was overly focused on anti-racism training, and that it was hampering students' education.

He said that Davison shared his views privately, writing - in an email published by campaign group Fair For All - that Davison had told him he had 'grave doubts about some of the doctrinaire stuff that gets spouted at us, in the name of antiracism.'

Grace Church School, in the East Village, told Paul Rossi on Sunday he would no longer teach

Following Rossi's scathing post, principal George P. Davison sent a letter to parents and staff saying he was 'disappointed' the math teacher had chosen to air his 'differences' in a public forum

Rossi on Monday said head George Davison privately agreed the school is now 'demonizing white people for being born'

Rossi also hit back at Davison's complaint at the issue being shared in the press. Rossi said he had shared his concerns privately over several years, but was 'repeatedly shut down'.

Rossi said Davison had admitted privately that the school was 'demonizing white people for being born'.

Topher Nichols, the school spokesman, told DailyMail.com Monday: 'I can confirm that Paul was relieved of his teaching duties.

'He has been invited to spend the remainder of his contract with the school contributing to a new task force that will review best practices nationwide around belonging.'

Rossi on Tuesday came forward with allegations in a blog post that he published on Substack

Nichols elaborated on why Rossi was 'relieved of his teaching duties,' saying it was because 'numerous students requested to be removed from his class because of his unprofessional conduct and because he demeaned them in the press.'

Last week, Rossi said he decided to come forward because he could no longer stay silent while 'witnessing the harmful impact' that anti-racism instruction has on children.

He said it cultivated in children 'despondency, resentment, and moral superiority'.

Last week, Rossi said he decided to come forward because he could no longer stay silent while 'witnessing the harmful impact' that anti-racism instruction has on children.

He is claiming headteacher Davison, privately agreed the school is 'demonizing white people for being born'.

Topher Nichols, the school spokesman, confirmed to DailyMail.com Monday: 'I can confirm that Paul was relieved of his teaching duties'

That note from Davison is said to have read: 'You should know that Paul has declined his contract so will not be returning in the fall.

'The wellbeing of our community is our first priority, and we take it seriously whenever students raise concerns about the professionalism of a teacher.

'It is clear to me that Paul cannot be effective as a teacher at Grace any more. I have informed him that he is relieved of his teaching duties, and we've asked two support teachers to take over his math classes for the final quarter.

'He has been asked to not come into the building without prior coordination.'

Gutmann, 45, said that he penned his 1,700-word letter he mailed to 650 different families because 'someone had to speak out.' He said he does not regret sending the letter.

'She hasn't been brainwashed yet by the school  but she's had me at home. I'm not so sure that's true of the other kids,' Gutmann said.

'Someone had to do it. Someone had to light the match. Everyone's so afraid of cancel culture. We're going to destroy the city, we're going to destroy the country.'

Brearly School is an elite New York school which includes Tina Fey and Drew Barrymore among its parents

Jane Fried, Brearley's head of school, sent a message to the school's families on Friday in which she said students were 'frightened' to receive the letter at home

Jane Foley Fried, head of the Brearley School, is pictured in an undated photo

Gutmann said he he refused to sign the school's anti-racism pledge in October.

The school had started the required pledge after black alumnae accused the school of racism in posts made to the Instagram account account 'Black at Brearley,' according to the Washington Free Beacon.

The school's antiracism and diversity plans are extensively described on its website.

'I thought they were going to kick my daughter out then,' Gutmann said. 'They didn't but next year they have the pledge built into the yearly school contract.'

The concerned dad claimed that the school's 'once-rigorous curriculum' completely changed after administrators 'managed to sneak' in an increased emphasis on race during the pandemic 'when everyone was distracted,' the New York Post reported.

'I don't know who's really driving this and nobody does,' he told the outlet.

Gutmann said the thing he resented the most about Brearley is that the school 'has begun to teach what to think, instead of how to think.'

Jane Fried, Brearley's head of school, sent a message to the school's families on Friday in which she slammed Gutmann's letter as 'deeply offensive and harmful.'

'This afternoon, I and others who work closely with Upper School students met with more than one hundred of them, many of whom told us that they felt frightened and intimidated by the letter and the fact that it was sent directly to our homes,' Fried wrote.

'Our students noted that as this letter, which denies the presence of systemic racism, crossed their doorways, the evidence of ongoing racism  systemic or otherwise  is daily present in our headlines.'

But Gutmann claims that Brearley students should not be 'frightened' by receiving a letter at their homes.

'The upper schoolers are afraid of getting a letter at their home?' Gutmann said Saturday.

'They're frightened and intimidated? The school has said it's number one priority is to teach the girls intellectual bravery and courageousness. Either they are lying or else they have done an atrocious job.'

It was not immediately clear how Gutmann managed to receive the home addresses of the 650 families to home he sent the letters.

Gutmann said has received supportive emails from parents across the city.

'There's a whole underground-like movement out there,' he told the New York Post.

Brearley's alumni includes Caroline Kennedy, the actress Tea Leoni, Elisabeth Murdoch, Dorothy Schiff and Alice Gore King.

Jane Fried, head of Brearley, doubled down on the school's position on Instagram, waving Gutmann and his daughter goodbye

This is Brearley's exhaustive anti-racism calendar for the school year of 2020 to 2021 which includes training sessions for parents

In his letter, Gutmann mapped out what he called Brearley's 'critical race theory' which he said is 'advocating that Blacks should forever be regarded as helpless victims'.

One of the examples he gave was the school's 'sophomoric' and 'simplistic' anti-training sessions for parents, and the fact that materials that have been taught for years are now suddenly considered offensive in light of the BLM movement.

He didn't say which books had been pulled but said it applied to his daughter's fourth grade class.

Gutmann fumed that the girls are being taught to hate their own country and that white students are being judged for the color of their skin.

He also denied that there was systemic racism in the US, saying there hadn't been since the 1960s.

'Systemic racism, properly understood, is segregated schools and separate lunch counters. It is the interning of Japanese and the exterminating of Jews. Systemic racism is unequivocally not a small number of isolated incidences over a period of decades,' he said.

He also called out the school for claiming to care about diversity with its race stances while also prioritizing legacy students, siblings of other students or 'families with especially deep pockets'.

'I cannot tolerate a school that not only judges my daughter by the color of her skin, but encourages and instructs her to prejudge others by theirs.

'By viewing every element of education, every aspect of history, and every facet of society through the lens of skin color and race, we are desecrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and utterly violating the movement for which such civil rights leaders believed, fought, and died,' he said.

Gutmann went on to say that the school was 'indoctrinating' the girls into a single mindset that is 'most reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.'

'Over the past several months, I have personally spoken to many Brearley parents as well as parents of children at peer institutions,' he wrote.

'It is abundantly clear that the majority of parents believe that Brearleys antiracism policies are misguided, divisive, counterproductive and cancerous.'

He added: 'Many believe, as I do, that these policies will ultimately destroy what was until recently, a wonderful educational institution.'
This Week in Review

A weekly review of the best and most popular stories published in the Imperial Valley Press. Also, featured upcoming events, new movies at local theaters, the week in photos and much more.
This is the fourth in a series of articles on the 2021 Berlin international film festival, the Berlinale, which took place March 15. The first part was posted March 1 6, the second March 20 and the third March 25.

The 71st Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) was held in early March in the form of online screenings of selected films to an audience of film professionals and some journalists. Public showings and the official award ceremony are planned for June.

Natural Light

Natural Light (Termeszetes feny) is an anti-war film of a special kind. It was for me an intriguing experience to base a feature film solely on a motionless face, declared the young Hungarian director Denes Nagy about his film, which won the Silver Bear for direction at this years Berlinale. He describes this as the essence of his work.

Indeed, the dark, furrowed face of Hungarian sergeant Istvan Semetka (Ferenc Szabo) is nearly always present, barely illuminated by the rays of light that occasionally break through the trees in a swamp. Semetka is one of the 100,000 soldiers of the authoritarian Hungarian regime of Admiral Miklos Horthy (who ruled from 1920 to 1944), allied with Hitler, deployed against partisans in Soviet territory invaded and occupied by the German military.

Ferenc Szabo in Natural Light  Tamas Dobos

The film takes place in the Second World War but has a more universal significance. It is also more than just a response to todays Hungary, where the Viktor Orban government celebrates the countrys former fascist collaborators as heroes.

Semetka is not a hero. He is a simple Hungarian peasant recruited for a war he instinctively rejects but does not rebel against. We do not see or hear much about the war against the partisans and the punitive actions taken against the civilian population. There is very little dialogue. The blows and screams become all the more frightful when local residents are terrorized and rounded up in a village square.

They are peasants like Semetka. He fixes his gaze on their feet, which the thin light illuminates in an eerily dark environment: gnarled and old, dirty, in tattered peasant shoes, interposed are naked children, girls feet. These are images that get under the skin.

During a patrol in the soggy forest, the commander falls victim to partisan fire and at short notice Semetka is called upon to lead the unit. He shows compassion for some villagers locked in a barn. When the light falls on the face of a young girl with her infant, he complies with her request to fetch us water. The young mother first gives her child a sip and then hands the cup to other fellow prisoners.

One senses the deep shame behind Semetkas stoical expression. It is not his war but sees no possibility of intervening. Nagy explains: He is a man who doesnt want to hurt anybody, who tries to stay away from violence but, at the same time, he tries to avoid complications and problems for himself. We could say he is a good man. But he is a weak man too. The director wanted to show this contradiction.

Anastasija Jegorova in Natural Light  Tamas Dobos

When a new commander arrives and sends him on patrol in the forest, Semetka takes a long look at the barn where people are being heldone suspects terrible things lie ahead. Semetka, however, follows orders. When his squad returns, through the trees the structure can be seen in flames.

Later, when reporting back to headquarters, Semetka does not mention the brutal crime. He remains silent with a stony face when the general declares, Lets forget all about this!, and urges him to take a few days holiday with his family. At the end, we see Semetka on a moving train, with his motionless, sombre soldiers face, sitting opposite a civilian from the present day, a person who is relaxed, friendly, carefree, somewhat complacent.

The contrast makes one shudder. As the director says in an interview, there is war all around us today. He wanted to show how people suddenly find themselves in an unknown situation, not knowing what to expect and realizing too late what is taking place.

Natural Light is based on a novel of the same title by Pal Zavada, which was published in 2014 and is a bestseller in Hungary. In the book, Semetka cannot cope with the trauma of his war experiences and commits suicide a few years later.

Nagy, however, has only taken one small excerpt from the novel, set in the year 1943. He didnt want to deal with the story to its end, but rather focus on a snapshot: What led him to become involved in the murders? What choices did he fail to make along the way? The director wanted to show a person who realizes his situation too late, adding, I think we can easily be in the same situation.

Natural Light (2020)  Tamas Dobos

To make his film as authentic as possible, Nagy cast his film solely with non-professionals. For years, he searched for the right people in the rural populations of Hungary, Lithuania and Russia. He also wanted the movies location to resemble the actual situation during the Second World War as closely as possible. The Hungarian actors were brought thousands of kilometres to the Lithuanian-Russian border, where they faced the actors of the Soviet villagers. They were in an unknown place, as is the case in a real war, together with people speaking another language who, like themselves, come from the agricultural population.

The director uses images of nature and the four elements of water, earth, fire and air, which never appear friendly or gentle or civilised, but rather raw, powerful and indifferent to human life. His approach includes showing raw animal meat at the beginning of the film when soldiers cut open an elkaccording to Nagy, this is the only means today for a direct encounter with nature.

Nagy counts famed Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky amongst his strongest influences, especially the latters award-winning film Andrei Rublev (1966), about the 15th-century Russian icon painter, which focused on the precarious relationship between artist and society.

Tarkovskys films create deliberative moods through an almost static visual imagery. The filmmaker, who died in Paris in 1986, asserted in Sculpting in Time (1987) that he did not want to communicate with the viewer about content that could be easily recounted. It was necessary instead to create a basic psychological state that was universally valid and comprehensible. The logic of poetry in cinema was closer to Tarkovsky than traditional theatrical writing which links images through the linear, rigidly logical development of the plot, since the latter is based on a facile interpretation of lifes complexities. This approach is successful in some of Tarkovskys work, although not all.

Nagy also cites the Lithuanian film Three Days ( Trys dienos ) by Sharunas Bartas (1991) and the French film Flanders(2006) by Bruno Dumont, which won the Grand Prix in Cannes and tells the story of a man who experiences the horrors of a war in the Middle East in which he increasingly and unthinkingly takes part.

Natural Light  Tamas Dobos

Nagys impressive debut feature film deservedly won a Silver Bear. The two imperialist world wars sacrificed humanity to barbarism, and millions of people were dragged into the carnage and its catastrophic consequences. The results of any future world war carried out with nuclear weapons must be grasped before it is too latethat is the unstated conclusion to be drawn from Nagys film.

However, at the end the film lands in a philosophically questionable cul de sac and tends towards a Christian humanist outlook. While it is entirely correct to point out the contradictory nature of the individual, Nagy tends to view the main problem as one of immutable human nature. The roots of wars past and present, stemming from a capitalist system riven by social inequality, remain in the dark. Before Semetka takes his seat in the train, we see a short scene of believers kneeling and praying in front of images of saints.

Nagy refers to this in his interview: The question is addressed to us, to me. We think we know what is right and wrong, who has failed and who has succeeded. We believe we have acquired a clear judgement about the things around us, we believe we know what our task in life is. The film wants to challenge that image of ourselves.

His comments downplay the critical foundations of human progress and the ending once and for all of the scourge of war, enlightenment and reason. Nagy continues: I want to show that what actually unites people is this kind of fragility, not consciousness. In that sense, this fragility is what we all share, while consciousness only divides us.

Such culturally pessimistic and irrationalist positions derive in part from the Stalinist betrayal of an international socialist perspective. The 41-year-old Nagy was just nine years old when the disastrous, reactionary policies of the Stalinist bureaucracy led to the restoration of capitalism in the USSR and Eastern Europe.

Particularly in Hungary, where the suppression of the 1956 workers uprising left deep scars, and where today an extreme right-wing government is enforcing the super-exploitation of Hungarian workers, lessons must be drawn from the experiences of the Semetkas of that time and today: it was not socialism that failed, but rather its opposite, Stalinism. The unification of workers and all of suffering humanity in a world without war and barbarism is the essence of the programme of socialism and requires the elimination of the capitalist profit system.

To be continued
Dr. Patrick Kuma Aboagye, Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, has applauded the work of the health workers at the forefront of the fight against COVID-19.



Speaking on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo' programme, Dr. Kuma Aboagye was pleased with the selfless attitude of the frontline health workers in attending to COVID-19 victims.



He further praised the Ghana Health Service management and staff for their strategic work, particularly in the area of administering vaccines to protect Ghanaians against the pandemic disease.



Dr. Aboagye was optimistic the health authorities and workers are on top of their job and will work harder to vaccinate and keep Ghanaians safe, ensuring the nation is COVID-19 free.



"So far, we have vaccinated 850,000 people. So far, we have received about 966,000 vaccines. Ghana Health Service, we have a very, very effective deployment plan. Last year, in COVID, we vaccinated 6 million people with yellow fever in less than a week," he disclosed.



He, however, advised Ghanaians not to let their guard down but keep observing the COVID-19 preventive protocols till the nation is declared safe from the disease.





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
Caitlyn Jenner is considering a run for governor of California and is reportedly talking with Republican political advisors on any possible steps.

Caitlyn Jenner, a former reality TV star and Olympian, is now a transgender rights activist. On Sunday, Caitlyn Jenner tweeted that she will "decide soon" whether she will run for California governor.

"I am with Californians and will decide soon. I have been here for 45+ years and love CA," Jenner wrote.

They dont want a #lgbt fiscal conservative and socially liberal candidate running. I am with Californians and will decide soon. I have been here for 45+ years and love CA  Caitlyn Jenner (@Caitlyn_Jenner) April 18, 2021

The 71-year-old former decathlete added that the state is not ready yet for an "LGBT conservative and socially liberal" candidate.

CBS News earlier reported that Caitlyn Jenner is getting guidance from Republican fundraiser Caroline Wren. However, Jenner said it was not true.

Wren was known to have worked for Trump's 2020 campaign fundraising committee and helped organize the rally that led to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

Other news outlets reported that Brad Parscale is also providing guidance. Parscale is a former Trump campaign manager. Caitlyn Jenner has also reportedly contacted Dave Rexrode, the executive director of the Republican Governors Association.

In October 2018, Jenner said she had ended her support for President Donald Trump for relentlessly attacking the transgender community. However, she continued to align with the Republican party on several key issues, The Guardian reported.

Caitlyn Jenner's possible candidacy earned some criticisms, noting that the former "Keeping Up With The Kardashians" star has no experience when it comes to electoral or policymaking.

Many Republicans beg to differ, including former GOP Rep. Mimi Walters, who thinks that Jenner is a formidable candidate, according to a Los Angeles column. Former GOP Chairman Jim Brulte also called the former Olympian "viable."

READ NEXT: Caitlyn Jenner Feuding With Family Members, Kardashian Sisters Over Changing Attitude?

Recall Campaign Against California Gov. Gavin Newsom

Republicans have spearheaded the recall campaign against California Governor Gavin Newsom. Republicans have opposed Newsom's pandemic-era business shutdowns, including immigration and tax policies.

The recall campaign earned support from big business donors and a few Silicon Valley venture capitalists. The petition began picking up traction late last year as Newsom faced increasing criticisms for his pandemic response.

Recall leaders have collected 1.95 million signatures more than a week before the deadline. Their goal was two million signatures to jumpstart a recall election this year, Sacramento Bee reported.

Recall proponent Mike Netter said he does not think he has seen a volunteer movement like this.

"We have a diversity across the board collecting and united (on) one thing, and that's the fact that California needs a new governor," Netter said in a report.

California has imposed business-related shutdowns and COVID restrictions that were stricter as compared to other states like Florida and Texas.

Newsom has also received backlash for his stay-at-home winter order, slow vaccine distribution, and students being forced to learn from home.

On top of that, the California governor was caught violating his own COVID restrictions when he dined at the high-end French Laundry restaurant with a group of people.

Democrats in California and D.C. have backed Newsom. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has expressed his support to Newsom, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris, who dubbed Newsom as a real champion inside and outside of California.

The California governor earlier admitted that he has made several mistakes.

"I've made mistakes. But we own them, we learn from them, and we never stop trying," Newsom said in a Sara Carter report.

READ MORE: California Restaurant Owner Sues Newsom Over Order of Forced Closure

WATCH: Report: Caitlyn Jenner Exploring Run For California Governor - From CBS Los Angeles






(Newser)  The pace of retirements among baby boomers, those born from 1946 to 1964, accelerated during the pandemic, a Pew Research Center analysis of monthly labor force data found. The number of boomers who reported that they were out of the labor force due to retirement grew 3.2 million in the third quarter of 2020 compared with the previous year, per the AP. Before the pandemic, the number of retired boomers had been growing an average of 2 million each year since 2011, when the first boomer turned 65. Some people retired to avoid COVID-19 exposure, while others may have been nudged to seize the day by the pandemics reminder of our mortality. But massive job losses may have forced many into early retirement, economists and financial planners say.

story continues below

Older workers lost jobs faster and returned to work slower last year than midcareer workers, according to a study by the New Schools Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis that tracked unemployment from April through September last year. The study found that for the first time since 1973, workers 55 and older faced persistently higher unemployment rates than workers ages 35 to 54. Certain older workerswomen, Black people, and those without college degreeswere even more likely to lose their jobs. Also of note: Fewer federal employees retired in 2020 compared with the two previous years, perhaps because they found working from home agreeable. An analysis found that 92,008 federal employees retired in 2020, the fewest since 2010 and down from 101,580 retirements in 2019 and 107,612 in 2018.

(Read more baby boomers stories.)
The former employee who shot and killed eight people at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis legally purchased the two assault rifles used in the attack despite red flag laws designed to prevent that, police said.

A trace of the two guns found by investigators at the scene revealed that suspect Brandon Scott Hole, 19, of Indianapolis, legally bought the rifles in July and September of last year, officials with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said Saturday.

IMPD did not share where Hole bought the guns, citing the ongoing investigation, but said Hole was witnessed using both rifles during the assault.

Deputy Police Chief Craig McCartt said Hole began firing randomly at people in the parking lot of the FedEx facility late Thursday, killing four, before entering the building, fatally shooting four more people and then turning the gun on himself.

Paul Keenan, special agent in charge of the FBIs Indianapolis field office, has said that agents questioned Hole last year after his mother called police to say that her son might commit suicide by cop. He said the FBI was called after items were found in Holes bedroom but he did not elaborate on what they were. He said agents found no evidence of a crime and that they did not identify Hole as espousing a racially motivated ideology.

A police report obtained by The Associated Press shows that officers seized a pump-action shotgun from Holes home after responding to the mothers call. Keenan said the gun was never returned.

Indiana has had a red flag law allowing police or courts to seize guns from people who show warning signs of violence since 2005, when it became one of the first states to enact such a law after an Indianapolis police officer was killed by a man whose weapons had to be returned despite hospitalization months earlier for an emergency mental health evaluation.

The law is intended to prevent people from purchasing or possessing a firearm if they are found by a judge to present an imminent risk to themselves or others.

Authorities have two weeks after seizing someones weapon to argue in court that the person should not be allowed to possess a gun, according to the law. Officials have not said whether a judge made a red flag ruling in Holes case.

McCartt said Hole was a former employee of FedEx and last worked for the company in 2020. The deputy police chief said he did not know why Hole left the job or if he had ties to the workers in the facility. He said police have not yet uncovered a motive for the shooting.

Investigators searched a home Friday in Indianapolis associated with Hole and seized evidence, including desktop computers and other electronic media, McCartt said.

Holes family said in a statement they are so sorry for the pain and hurt his actions caused.

Members of Indianapolis tight-knit Sikh community joined with city officials to call for gun reforms Saturday as they mourned the deaths of four Sikhs who were among the eight people killed.

At a vigil attended by more than 200 at an Indianapolis park Saturday evening, Aasees Kaur, who represented the Sikh Coalition, spoke out alongside the citys mayor and other elected officials to demand action that would prevent such attacks from happening again.

We must support one another, not just in grief, but in calling our policymakers and elected officials to make meaningful change, Kaur said. The time to act is not later, but now. We are far too many tragedies, too late, in doing so.

The attack was another blow to the Asian American community a month after authorities said six people of Asian descent were killed by a gunman in the Atlanta area and amid ongoing attacks against Asian Americans during the coronavirus pandemic.

About 90% of the workers at the FedEx warehouse near the Indianapolis International Airport are members of the local Sikh community, police said Friday.

Satjeet Kaur, the Sikh Coalitions executive director, said the entire community was traumatized by the senseless violence.

While we dont yet know the motive of the shooter, he targeted a facility known to be heavily populated by Sikh employees, Kaur said.

There are between 8,000 and 10,000 Sikh Americans in Indiana, according to the coalition. Members of the religion, which began in India in the 15th century, began settling in Indiana more than 50 years ago.

The shooting is the deadliest incident of violence collectively in the Sikh community in the U.S. since 2012, when a white supremacist burst into a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and shot 10 people, killing seven.
GameStop Corp's George Sherman, pictured, will step down as chief executive officer at the end of July, it has been announced

GameStop Corp's George Sherman will step down as chief executive officer at the end of July, it has been announced.

Company shares rose more than 8 per cent before the opening bell on Wall Street Monday.

Sherman's move to step down comes as Ryan Cohen, co-founder and former CEO of online pet food company Chewy Inc, tightens his grip on GameStop after taking over as chairman earlier this month.

GameStop's former CFO, Jim Bell, and former chief customer officer, Frank Hamlin, are among the senior executives who have also left the company in recent weeks.

Cohen had been buying huge stakes in the company and pushing for a digital transformation. GameStop has suffered as more gamers turn to digital downloads rather than the discs the chain sells on its shelves.

Cohen was joined by two of his former colleagues on the board.

They're arrival coincided with the meteoric January rise of GameStop's shares in a bizarre market phenomenon that pitted smaller investors who banded online against major, institutional investors who had been shorting the stock, or betting it would fall below the $20 price level in January.

Company shares rose more than 8 per cent before the opening bell Monday

Shares of Gamestop Corp. now cost around $170, up 720% this year. At the end of a flurry of trading in January, the shares were close to $500 each.

Last month in a regulatory filing, GameStop said that it had and hired an executive headhunter as it evaluated company leadership and that its directors had spoken to potential candidates from gaming, e-commerce and technology sectors.

Earlier this month, GameStop said that it would sell up to 3.5 million of its shares.

The shares will be sold through an 'at-the-market' offering, which allows companies to place their stock on the market over a period of time.

Video game retailer GameStop says CEO George Sherman will be stepping down from his post

The changes have coincided with the meteoric January rise of GameStop's shares thanks to the so-called 'Reddit rally'

Reuters had earlier reported that GameStop's board was working with an executive headhunter on the CEO search and that its directors had spoken to potential candidates from gaming, e-commerce and technology sectors.

GameStop also said Sherman had refused to receive compensation for his role as a director, both before and after separation date, and had agreed to cancel his 2020 performance-vested restricted stock award

Sherman has already forfeited more than 587,000 shares for failing to meet his performance targets, a regulatory filing showed last week.

Separately, Bloomberg reported that the man known as 'Roaring Kitty' on social media, whose online posts helped spark January's trading frenzy in GameStop, exercised call options on the stock to acquire 50,000 more shares at a strike price of $12.

Bloomberg cited a screenshot of Keith Gill's portfolio showing that he exercised 500 GameStop call options expiring Friday, when the stock closed at $154.69.

The screenshots were posted on Reddit by Gill, and his mother confirmed the posts to Bloomberg. Reuters could not immediately reach the Gills for comment on Saturday.

His total investment in GameStop is now worth more than $30 million, giving him a profit of nearly $20 million, Bloomberg said. Gill has 200,000 shares in the company, the report said.

Sherman's move to step down comes as Ryan Cohen, right, co-founder and former CEO of online pet food company Chewy Inc, tightens his grip on GameStop after taking over as chairman earlier this month.

Gill was a key figure in the so-called 'Reddit rally,' which saw shares of GameStop surge 400% in a week before crashing back to pre-surge levels.

He began sharing his positions on Reddit's popular Wallstreetbets trading forum in September 2019, posting a portfolio screenshot indicating he had invested $53,000 in GameStop.

By late January, Gill, known as 'Roaring Kitty' on YouTube and 'DeepF***ingValue' on Reddit, was up over 4,000% on stock and options investments in the company.

Last month, Gill appeared before Massachusetts securities regulators to testify as part of an examination into his activities.

Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin, the state's top securities regulator, had subpoenaed Gill, who touted GameStop stock in his spare time while he was a registered broker and working at the insurer MassMutual.
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A rally in support of legalizing marijuana in Pennsylvania will be held at the state capitol Tuesday.

Legalize PA: A Cannabis March on Harrisburg will begin at 11 a.m. on April 20, a date that has become known as a national holiday for the cannabis culture. The event, organized by Lehigh Valley NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), will be held with COVID-19 precautions of masks and social distancing.

The march is scheduled to run from the Susquehanna riverfront at State Street up to the stairs of the Capitol complex at Third Street. At 11:30, marchers will be joined at the capitol by Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman.

Capitol police confirmed that the rally at the capitol was granted a permit, and is expected to include roughly 300 people.

The possibility of legalizing marijuana for recreational use has gained increasing attention since Pennsylvania legalized marijuana for medical use for certain conditions. In addition, both Fetterman and Gov. Tom Wolf have endorsed the idea of decriminalizing weed, and the issue has been adopted by the states Democratic Party. New York and New Jersey are the latest states neighboring Pennsylvania to legalized its use by adults.

Thousands attended the two-day Pennsylvania Cannabis Festival in Kutztown over the weekend that was billed as a kickoff for Tuesdays march.

Were hoping that the demonstration shows the legislature that were ready to have something happen here in Pennsylvania, said Jeff Riedy, Executive Director of Lehigh Valley NORML. Weve got half a million Pennsylvanians that are now medical cannabis patients. And we know that there are a lot more consumers in Pennsylvania than just medical cannabis patients. So legalization just seems like a smart thing, and it seems like a really easy way to eliminate 20,000 arrests annually for small amounts of marijuana in Pennsylvania.

Riedy noted that several other states have recently had legislative action or debates on legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana, including Delaware and Connecticut, as well as New York and New Jersey. He added that were kind of in a race to legalize, and unfortunately Pennsylvania is falling behind the times in the Northeast.

According to a recent Quinnipiac University poll, nearly 70 percent of Americans surveyed support legalization of marijuana.

Riedy admitted that, thus far, the Republicans that control both the Pennsylvania House and Senate chambers have not been swayed, but said a recent bipartisan effort from two state senators - Republican Dan Laughlin and Democrat Sharif Street - may signal a change is in the air.

We have high hopes - and I use the high hopes word with some fun - but I have hopes that maybe the Republicans are ready to talk, Riedy said.
New Delhi: The Delhi government has issued an order making it mandatory for all residents of Delhi who visit the Kumbh in Haridwar to quarantine themselves at home for fourteen days on return. Anyone who violates the order will face legal action.

According to news agency ANI, an order issued by Chief Secretary Vijay Dev states, "All those residents of Delhi, who have visited or are going to visit Kumbh, will be required to compulsory home quarantine themselves for 14 days on arrival to Delhi."

"Residents of Delhi who visited the Kumbh Mela between April 4 and April 17 are required to upload their details on a link provided on the Delhi government website within 24 hours," he added in an official letter.

"Those who are going to visit Kumbh between April 18 and April 30 must fill in their details before leaving Delhi. This will allow the government to effectively trace all Kumbh Mela visitors," the letter reads.

It further stated that If anyone who visits the Kumbh Mela fails to upload their information, they will be sent to an institutional quarantine centre for two weeks, the official order reads.

Over 1,700 people have tested positive for COVID-19 after attending the Kumbh in Haridwar. The COVID-19 protocol including wearing of masks and social distancing was openly violated as lakhs gathered for the major Hindu pilgrimage.

Similar guidelines were issued by the Gujarat, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh state governments as well.

In order to curb the spread of COVID-19 in the already severely affected state, the Gujarat CM said that no Kumbh returnee will be allowed to enter their respective places without taking an RT-PCR test.

Meanwhile, Delhi reported 24,374 fresh COVID-19 cases in 24 hours on Saturday in its highest ever single-day tally. There are now almost 70,000 active cases in Delhi.

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The is considering legal action against pharma major for not meeting the supply requirements for Covid-19 antiviral drug Remdesivir.

Calling it a breach of contract by Cipla, Chhattisgarh Health Minister T S Singh Deo said the state was forced to buy the antiviral from another pharma company at twice the price. According to Singh Deo, the Indian pharma major had reneged on the contract signed on April 3 to supply Remdesivir injections to the state at the rate of Rs 594 plus 12 per cent goods and services tax (GST) per dose.

With not supplying the medicine according to the requirement shared with the state government, it was instead forced to place an order with Mylan Laboratories in a relatively expensive deal worth Rs 1,400 plus 12 per cent GST per dose.

We are mulling legal action against We are going to hold talks with the law department to examine what legal action we can take and to what extent it has reneged on the contract. I hope other states facing such a situation are also exploring legal action, said Singh Deo.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 19)  The Palace has apologized for the slow distribution of financial aid to families affected by stricter lockdown measures as the country faces an alarming surge in COVID-19 cases.

"Patuloy po nating ipamamahagi ang ayuda na 23 billion. Sa ngayon po 4 billion pa lang po ang ating napamimigay," said Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque during his regular virtual briefing.

[Translation: We will continue distributing the cash aid of 23 billion. For now, we have only given out 4 billion.]

"Humihingi po tayo ng paumanhin dahil talagang medyo may kabagalan," he said.

[Translation: We would like to apologize because it has been slow.]

However, the official also reminded the public of health concerns amid efforts to distribute the financial assistance.

"Sa panahon po kasi ng pandemya, hindi natin maiiwasan na talagang mag-ingat dahil baka mamaya mabigay nga yung ayuda, eh magkaroon naman ng COVID yung mga taumbayan," Roque further explained.

[Translation: In this time of pandemic, we cannot avoid taking much precaution because while the cash aid may have been distributed, our fellow citizens may have contracted COVID too.]

The Departments of the Interior and Local Government, and Social Welfare and Development have already extended the deadline for the distribution of cash aid in the Greater Manila Area as local governments scrambled to meet the initial 15-day period prescribed for such efforts.

However, they have yet to announce the actual number of days of the extension. https://cnnphilippines.com/news/2021/4/19/DILG--DSWD-OKs-deadline-extension-cash-aid-distribution-.html

RELATED: MMDA to appeal to DILG to extend cash aid distribution as mayors pressed for time

Roque also noted that the financial assistance comes on top of other support handed out by agencies like the DSWD in the form of food packs, and cash aid from the Department of Labor for workers displaced by the pandemic.
Leading automobile companies like Maruti Suzuki India (MSI), Toyota Kirloskar Motor and Honda Cars fear dent in sales as COVID-19 cases surged across the country. The country's largest carmaker MSI stated that the auto sales were correlated closely with economic growth and also (being a discretionary purchase) with the consumer sentiment.

"The COVID-19 situation deterioration is obviously a negative for customer sentiment and thus has a negative impact on sales," MSI Executive Director (Sales and Marketing) Shashank Srivastava told PTI when asked about the impact of second wave of the pandemic on the company's sales.

Lockdowns make it physically not possible to deliver cars but even the deterioration in COVID-19 situation without lockdown also psychologically dents consumer propensity to buy, he noted. Similarly, Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) Senior Vice President Naveen Soni acknowledged that localised restrictions have impacted order flow and delivery schedules.

"We will be able access trends and define numbers only by the end of the month depending on the severity and extension of the restrictions. As of date, we have had a good number of pending orders that had to be carried forward from the month of February and March to April. Therefore, we are striving to meet the customer demand in spite of the local restrictions and lockdowns," he noted.

On manufacturing operations, Soni said the company continues to cautiously proceed with vehicle production. "Our immediate focus is to fasten and streamline the demand and supply processes with more accuracy and manage production, along with faster deliveries making it easier and convenient for customers by reducing the delivery time," he added.

Well-being of the employees as well as dealer and supplier staff are sacrosanct and the automaker has already reintroduced monitoring systems which were in place including submission of a self-declaration health form, Soni said.

"As responsible corporates, we are continuously monitoring the situation carefully and will take accurate actions, as and when required. More importantly, this time we have precious lessons from last year to learn, unlearn and reflect upon," he noted.

Honda Cars India said it is keeping a close look at the emerging situation. "Lockdown and weekend curfews will impact sales as showrooms will be shut in some of the markets. We are currently assessing and taking feedback from various cities about its extent," Honda Cars India Senior Vice President and Director (Marketing and Sales) Rajesh Goel noted.

India's total tally of COVID-19 cases crossed the 1.50 crore mark on Monday with a record single-day rise of 2,73,810 new coronavirus infections, while the active cases surpassed the 19-lakh mark. The total tally of COVID-19 cases has mounted to 1,50,61,919 and the death toll increased to 1,78,769 with a record 1,619 daily new fatalities.

Registering a steady increase for the 40th day in a row, the active cases have increased to 19,29,329 comprising 12.81 per cent of the total infections, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate has dropped to 86 per cent.

Also read: Nissan ramps up production at Chennai plant to meet demand for 'Magnite'
A source said the building that was shot at was the Rogers Park District station, 6464 N. Clark St., and that an officer standing outside was shot at, but Rocco said as the shooting remained under investigation, she was unable to provide additional information.
Rep. Maxine Waters said Monday that Republicans were trying to 'send a message to all of the white supremacists' by criticizing her call for Black Lives Matter to 'get more confrontational' if Derek Chauvin is found not guilty.

Waters made her initial comments Saturday evening while demonstrating in Minneapolis, where the trial over George Floyd's death is taking place, and where BLM activists are also responding to the police shooting of Daunte Wright.

'I hope we get a verdict that says guilty, guilty, guilty,' she told the press. 'And if we don't, we cannot go away. We've got to stay on the street. We get more active, we've got to get more confrontational. We've got to make sure that they know that we mean business.'

Speaking to the Grio on Monday, Waters said, 'I am nonviolent.'

'Republicans will jump on any word, any line and try to make it fit their message and their cause for denouncing us and denying us, basically calling us violent,' Waters continued.

Rep. Maxine Waters, a Democrat from California, was in Minnesota Saturday night, saying that demonstrators needed 'get more active, more confrontational' as they marched for police reform

White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about Waters comments and didn't condemn them. Instead she talked about President Biden's views on police violence against communities of color

'Any time they see an opportunity to seize on a word, so they do it and they send a message to the white supremacists, the KKK, the OAth Keepers, the [Proud] Boys and all of that,' she said.

She also accused Republicans of using the tactic to raise money off the Democrats' backs.

Walters said she was 'not worried that they're going to continue to distort what I say.'

'This is who they are and this is how they act,' she added. 'And I'm not going to be bulled by them.'

While Republicans pointed a finger at Waters and accused her of inciting violence, White House press secretary Jen Psaki didn't condemn the California Democrat's quotes when asked about them Monday.

'Well, I can speak to the president's view,' Psaki said. 'He has been very clear that he recognizes the issue of police violence against people of color, communities of color is one of great anguish and it's exhausting and quite emotional at times.'

Psaki reminded reporters that Biden had met with Floyd's family shortly after the Minneapolis black man's Memorial Day death at the hands of Chauvin, a white police officer.

Chauvin is being tried for second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

Psaki said Biden is closely following the trial.

'And is committed to undoing this long-standing, systemic problem,' she said.

'His view is also that exercising First Amendment rights and protesting injustice is the most American thing that anyone can do, but as he also always says, protests must be peaceful that's what he continues to call for and what he continues to believe it the right approach for responding,' Psaki added.

On Sunday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy threatened to bring 'action' against Waters after she joined protesters in Minnesota on Saturday night.

The House Republican leader warned he would do so if Pelosi did not.

'Maxine Waters is inciting violence in Minneapolis  just as she has incited it in the past. If Speaker Pelosi doesnt act against this dangerous rhetoric, I will bring action this week,' he wrote on Twitter.

Pelosi told Capitol Hill reporters on Monday that Waters didn't need to apologize for her comments.

'No, Maxine talked about confrontation in the manner of the Civil Rights movement,' Pelosi said. 'I myself think we should take our lead from the George Floyd family. They've handled this with great dignity.'

'No, I don't think she should apologize,' Pelosi added.

McCarthy said Monday afternoon that he planned to propose a resolution to censure Waters that could remove her from her committee assignments - but given Democratic control of the House, it will go nowhere if Democrats stick together.

'We've heard this type of violent rhetoric from Waters before, and the United States Congress must clearly and without reservation reprimand this behavior before more people get hurt. But Speaker Pelosi is ignoring Waters' behavior,' McCarthy said. 'Thats why I am introducing a resolution to censure Rep. Waters for these dangerous comments, and I hope that all my colleagues  both Republican and Democrat  will stand up for peace on Americas streets,' the California Republican first told Breitbart.

Republicans pounced on Waters remarks to the Black Lives Matter protesters.

Sen. Ted Cruz and controversial Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene also criticized Waters, who, over the weekend, joined demonstrations over the police shooting of Daunte Wright, a black 20-year-old shot and killed at a traffic stop by a white police officer, Kimberly Potter.

But many of these Republicans accusing Waters of inciting violence did not make the same charge against then-President Donald Trump in the wake of the January 6th MAGA riot on Capitol Hill, that left five dead and trail of destruction throughout the Capitol.

Cruz and Greene were some of Trump's most ardent defenders. McCarthy did take to the House floor to declare Trump, who riled up the crowd with his false claims the election was stolen, 'bears responsibility' for the attack on Congress. McCarthy later flew to Mar-a-Lago to make peace with the former president after Trump became furious at him for his words.

Republicans have turned Waters into a punching bag before - notably for her urging the public to harass Trump White House staffers when they saw them in public.

A bullet hole is seen in the windshield of a Minnesota National Guard vehicle that was targeted in a drive-by shooting early on Sunday. Two Guardsmen suffered minor injuries

Demonstrators gather on Sunday for a solidarity rally lead by community organizers in the Black and Asian communities in memory of George Floyd and Daunte Wright

The city of Minneapolis prepares for a verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial with National Guard on patrol in the streets

Waters traveled to Minneapolis the weekend before closing arguments in the trial of Derek Chauvin, charged with murdering George Floyd on May 25.

The city is bracing for the verdict in the Chauvin case. More than 3,000 members of the National Guard are in Minneapolis, in addition to 1,100 officers from public safety agencies across the state as part of what has been termed Operation Safety Net.

In the early hours of Sunday, two members of the National Guard were injured - although not seriously - in a drive-by shooting.

Waters said she hoped Chauvin was found guilty.

'I am not happy that we have talked about police reform for so long,' Waters said, demanding a guilty verdict in the Chauvin trial and adding: 'If we don't [get it], we cannot go away. We've got to stay on the street.'

She added that protesters needed 'get more active, more confrontational' and they should ignore the curfew in place.

'Weve got to stay on the street and weve got to get more active, weve got to get more confrontational. Weve got to make sure that they know that we mean business,' she said when it comes to police shootings.

Hours after Waters' passionate speech, a Minnesota National Guard and Minneapolis police team were fired upon in a drive-by shooting.

People gather at George Floyd Plaza in the Powderhorn Park neighborhood of Minneapolis Minnesota to listen to the families of victims of police violence

A bullet hole in a National Guard vehicle is seen after Guardsmen were targeted on Sunday

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senator Ted Cruz, and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene blasted Rep. Maxine Waters for her comments in Minneapolis

The team was providing neighborhood security in Minneapolis when, at about 4.19am local time, a light colored SUV drove by and blasted shots at an occupied National Guard vehicle.

No team members were seriously injured, though two National Guard members suffered minor injuries: One was injured by shattered glass and taken to a local hospital, while the other suffered only superficial injuries.

Cruz accused Waters and fellow Democrats of seeking to 'to tear us apart.'

'Why is Maxine Waters traveling to a different state trying to incite a riot? What good can come from this?' asked Lauren Boebert, representative for Colorado.

Fellow Colorado representative Ken Buck said: 'Why is a sitting member of Congress encouraging protesters to get confrontational?'

Arizona Republican Andy Biggs added: 'The Radical Left dont care if your towns are burning, if theres violence in your streets, or if the police are too defunded to defend their communities.

'As long as the Left appeases their anti-America base, their job is done.'

And Marjorie Taylor Greene, congresswoman for Georgia, called for her to be expelled from Congress.

'As a sitting United States Congresswoman @MaxineWaters threatened a jury demanding a guilty verdict and threatened violence if Chauvin is found not guilty. This is also an abuse of power. #ExpelMaxineWaters'

She called Waters 'a danger to our society.'

On Twitter, others joined in the outrage at Waters' remarks.

'Of course she'll get away with saying that while anyone else would've been thrown in jail,' Rick Santella tweeted.

Another user tweeted, 'Good grief lady, leave get out of here.'

One person also accused Waters of 'stirring people up again with her calls for violence.'

Pictured: Congresswoman Maxine Waters leaving the protest at the Brooklyn Center Police Department on Saturday

Maxine Waters (D-CA) joins demonstrators in a protest outside the Brooklyn Center police station on Saturday night

Maxine Waters (D-CA) joins demonstrators in a protest outside the Brooklyn Center police station on Saturday night

Waters is planning on staying in town until Monday.

According to CBS Minnesota, officials stated that there was a brief altercation between reporters and protesters as Waters was leaving on Saturday, the first reports of any skirmishes.

The Pioneer Press reports demonstrators gathered Saturday afternoon at the home of Washington County Attorney Pete Orput, responsible for the second-degree manslaughter charges against Potter

The protesters stood outside of Orput's home before marching through is neighborhood in Stillwater.

Black Lives Matter activist Nekima Levy Armstrong said that Orput left his home briefly to engage in a conversation with protesters.

Pictured: Peaceful protesters in front of the Brooklyn Center Police Department on Saturday night

Demonstrators raise their fists at Union Station near the U.S Capitol, during a march in Washington, D.C. on Saturday

A demonstrator holds a Black Lives Matter sign during a protest outside the Brooklyn Center police station on Saturday

Protests have also been taking place in Chicago following the death of 13-year-old Adam Toledo, as well as New York City and across the rest of the United States.

On Friday night, many protests across the nation started off peacefully before sporadic clashes broke out between Black Lives Matters protesters and the police.

University of Minnesota medical students and doctors also marched on the Brooklyn Center Police Department on Saturday, a day after it was the site of most of the night's unrest.

Peaceful protests on Friday devolved into clashes between protesters and police, with flash bangs and pepper spray utilized by the cops.

There originally was not expected to be a curfew for the first time in several days, before one was suddenly imposed during the night's demonstrations.

Media members were briefly detained and 136 people were arrested.

A temporary restraining order was filed to prevent police from arresting or harming journalists.

'Following feedback from media, and in light of a recent temporary restraining order (TRO) filed in federal court, MSP will not photograph journalists or their credentials,' the Minnesota State Patrol said in a statement.

According to the Washington Post, several protesters were arrested on Saturday night. It's unclear why they were arrested, as the protest of about a hundred was drawing to a close.

Earlier in the day, there were peaceful protests across the nation, including Columbus, Ohio, and Philadelphia.

According to NBC Philadelphia, crowds in that city walked through City Center towards City Hall peacefully in a protest that lasted around five hours.

Nevertheless, some businesses did board up and 1,000 National Guard troops were preemptively deployed.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has cancelled his planned visit to India next week due to the coronavirus situation in the country, Downing Street said on Monday. Johnson will instead speak to Prime Minister Narendra Modi later this month to launch their plans for the future UK-India partnership, with their physical meeting expected later in the year. "In the light of the current coronavirus situation, Prime Minister Boris Johnson will not be able to travel to India next week, Downing Street said in a joint statement on behalf of the British and Indian governments.

"Instead, Prime Ministers Modi and Johnson will speak later this month to agree and launch their ambitious plans for the future partnership between the UK and India. They will remain in regular contact beyond this, and look forward to meeting in person later this year," the statement said.

Pressure had been mounting on Johnson to call off the visit amid growing concerns of a new variant of COVID-19 detected in the country. Over the weekend, UK Opposition Labour Party joined calls for him to conduct the discussions remotely via Zoom and cancel the physical visit, which had already been shortened to focus on a day-long packed schedule on Monday, April 26.

Both sides were to agree on a Roadmap 2030' for re-energised India-UK relations across trade and investment and climate action, which is now likely to be signed off remotely later this month.

The visit, previously postponed from a Republic Day tour in January, was to be the first major bilateral visit for Johnson outside Europe since the UK general election in December 2019 and the conclusion of the Brexit transition period at the end of December 2020.

"The visit of PM Johnson is expected to positively transform the partnership across the wide-spectrum of issues and areas relating to Defence and Security, the Indo-Pacific and Western Indian Ocean Region (WIOR), Trade and Investments, Health care, Climate Change and people-to-people connect, the High Commission of India in London said last week.

"India and UK are set to agree on a Roadmap 2030' for future relations. The 2030 vision is for revitalised and dynamic connect between people; re-energised trade, investment and technological collaboration; enhanced defence and security cooperation and closer engagement on regional issues Including the Indian Ocean Region and the Indo-Pacific. The India-UK Partnership in Climate Action, clean energy and health care is geared for mutual benefit and a better world, it added.

As part of the UK's post-Brexit Global Britain engagement as a non-member of the European Union (EU), all eyes have been on a proposed Enhanced Trade Partnership (ETP) with India which will pave the way for a full-fledged Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in the future. The ETP was expected to take firm shape during Johnson's visit this month but it remains to be seen how that progresses given the cancellation.

Prime Minister Modi is invited to the G7 Summit in Cornwall in June, with India among the guest countries. That is now likely to be their next face to face meeting, if Modi is able to travel for the summit.

Also read: UK PM Boris Johnson urges people to 'behave responsibly' as COVID-19 lockdown eases
On April 19, a meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council will take place. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba will also participate in it. The main topics of discussion are the aggravation of the situation in Donbass and "Russia's aggressive actions near the Ukrainian border," the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry reports.

"Dmitro Kuleba will inform colleagues from the European Union about the current security situation, propose a number of practical steps to strengthen the effective support of Ukraine by the EU," the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The ministry also noted that "the agenda of the meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council with participation of the head of diplomatic corps of the European Union and the foreign ministers of all 27 member states will include issues of aggravation of the security situation in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine and around the borders of our state, caused by destructive and aggressive actions of the Russian Federation."

The EU Foreign Affairs Council is a body of the European Union, through which foreign ministers of the member states coordinate their foreign policy decisions and form a common foreign policy line of the union.
AUSTIN, Texas  Matthew McConaughey has said he would be a fool not to honestly consider running for governor in his home state of Texas. A poll released Sunday shows that the Academy Award-winning actor isnt the only one considering the valid possibility of a McConaughey governorship.

The star of The Dallas Buyers Club and the Minister of Culture at the University of Texas garnered more support for governor than incumbent Greg Abbott, according to a poll by The Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas at Tyler released Sunday.

In a hypothetical contest, McConaughey garners 45% support, with Abbott getting 33% and 22% saying they would vote for someone else, according to the poll.

More: Gov. Greg Abbott in South Texas says Biden administration 'invites illegal immigration'

But Abbott remains likeable in Texas, especially among Republicans. The poll showed that 50% of respondents approve of the way Abbott is handing his job as governor, with 36% disapproving and 15% saying neither.

The poll, conducted April 6-13, comprised 37% self-identifying Republicans, 30% Democrats and 33% no party affiliation. The poll surveyed 1,126 registered voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.92 percentage points.

The majority of McConaugheys support came from the Democratic respondents, 66% of whom chose McConaughey over the other two possibilities, with 44% of independents doing the same, and 30% of Republican voters saying they would vote for the actor over the governor or an unspecified third party.

Actor Matthew McConaughey presents his new film ?The Gentlemen? during a special screening for students and athletes inside the Hogg Memorial Auditorium on the University of Texas campus, Tuesday, Jan., 21, 2020.

Would a centrist view work for Matthew McConaughey?

McConaughey told the American-Statesman in March that he had not gone so far as to consider which party, if any, he would affiliate with in a gubernatorial run, but he made clear that his politics hew to the middle.

Im a Meet You in the Middle man, McConaughey said. When I say aggressively centric, that sometimes gets parceled over there with Oh, thats a shade of gray, a compromise. And I say, B********. Thats a dare. Right now, thats radical. You wanna be brave? Come on over here. Why? Because you got more agility, cause you got more adaptability. Because theres different situations for different sides. Sometimes the left is better at this, sometimes the right. Theres different choices for different circumstances.

Story continues

Given the response of the voters questioned in the recent poll, McConaugheys desire to stay in the middle may make for tricky political calculus in a two-party system.

When asked if they would most likely support Abbott, someone more centrist, more conservative, or more like Donald Trump in a Republican Party, Republicans polled said they would prefer Abbott (47%), followed by a more centrist candidate (20%), with someone like Donald Trump (18%) or a more conservative candidate (14%) coming in third and fourth.

Among Democrats, 51% polled said they would prefer a progressive gubernatorial candidate, 25% a moderate choice and 24% declaring they did not know.

McConaughey told the Statesman last month that he doesnt think one party or another can claim ownership of any set of values or virtues, and he doesnt believe broad stereotypes of either are fair or accurate.

The left thinks the rights racist and the right thinks the lefts socialist. Well, that aint true, McConaughey said. Then you go, well, the left is for empathy, compassion and solidarity; well the rights for resilience and work ethic and responsibility. Im like, I like all six of those. Those are values that our mamas taught us. The right and the left dont have ownership of those, excluding the other side.

A representative for McConaughey said the actor had no immediate comment on the poll.

More: Abbott, GOP see the border as a defining issue for 2022, and the Democrats might help them

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Matthew McConaughey leads Gov. Abbott in new Texas gubernatorial poll
The governments confused effort to retrieve Americans overseas during the early weeks of the coronavirus outbreak compromised the safety of the evacuees, federal employees and communities near where Americans returned to, according to a new report published on Monday by Congresss nonpartisan watchdog.

The effort was so dysfunctional that federal health agencies could not even agree on the purpose and terms of the mission, contradicting one another about whether it was classified as an evacuation or repatriation.

The more-than-yearlong investigation by the Government Accountability Office concluded that the evacuation of Americans from China bogged down badly as different divisions within the Department of Health and Human Services argued over which was responsible. That fighting undermined the earliest attempts to protect those Americans after they returned from China, where the coronavirus was believed to have originated.

The G.A.O. said three agencies within the department  the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, and the Administration for Children and Families  did not follow plans or guidance delineating their roles and responsibilities for repatriating individuals during a pandemic  an event these agencies had never experienced.
Press Release

April 19, 2021 Hontiveros urges DSWD, DILG: Fix problems affecting safe, speedy release of 'ayuda' Senator Risa Hontiveros today urged the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) to address reported problems surrounding the latest release of cash aid to struggling Filipinos, such as erroneous lists and crowded distribution venues. "Maliit na nga ang ayuda na ibinibigay sa ating mga kababayan, sana naman ay huwag na yan patagalin pa o ibulsa. The DSWD and DILG should look closely into all reports of problems involving the distribution of financial assistance, which is a matter of life and death for many Filipinos during this crisis," Hontiveros said. The DILG recently revealed that only around P4.47 billion or 40 percent of allocated funds for cash aid or ayuda has been so far distributed in the National Capital Region (NCR) by local government units. On top of this, Hontiveros noted the growing number of incidents - both reported in news and social media - stemming mainly from errors in government's list of beneficiaries for the cash distribution program. "Mayroong mga reports na may listahan ng beneficiaries na may pangalan ng patay na tao o menor de edad, na di dapat qualified sa ayuda. Mayroong mga beneficiaries ng kasalukuyang Pantawid Program (4Ps) na nawala ang pangalan sa listahan para sa ayuda. Mayroon ding mga report ng mga beneficiary na hindi sinama sa listahan dahil hindi sila botante sa lugar. These stories are way too many to be mere fabrications and should be fully investigated," Hontiveros said. Hontiveros added that due to erroneous list of beneficiaries and other issues, aid distribution venues in several areas have become regularly crowded with applicants, thus creating potential "super-spreaders" for COVID-19: "Nakakabahala iyan, dahil kasama sa mga pumipila at nakikipagsiksikan para sa ayuda ay maraming senior citizen na mas vulnerable sa COVID-19 at iba pang sakit." "Nakakalungkot na 2021 na pero hindi pa rin maayos ang proseso ng pagbibigay ng ayuda. Ang haba-haba ng pinipila ng mga kababayan natin para lang kumuha ng ayuda, pero pagdating nila sa distribution venue, madami ang wala sa listahan at walang mauuwi sa kanilang pamilya. There has been an entire year to fix the database of cash aid recipients and devise a better aid distribution, but it seems not much progress has been made," Hontiveros said. The senator then urged the DSWD and DILG to create a unified and comprehensive database of cash aid recipients from the various existing lists of aid beneficiaries held by the DSWD and local government units. To do this, Hontiveros said the DSWD must complete its 'poverty survey' to determine the true number and identities of poor Filipinos who need financial assistance during the pandemic. In the meantime, the DSWD and DILG should remove errors in government's list of aid beneficiaries, including removing dead, fictitious or unqualified persons, Hontiveros said. She also said that government officials or employees involved in acts of corruption or fraud using these assistance funds should be immediately investigated and prosecuted. To avoid the spread of COVID-19 in aid distribution venues, Hontiveros then reminded local officials to see to it that health protocols, such as physical distancing and wearing of masks, are followed by everyone. She also recommended using large facilities with open ventilation such as public gyms for such large activities. "The government should act with a sense of urgency and due diligence. Buhay ng Pilipino ang nakataya dito. Kung makupad ang pamahalaan sa pagbigay ng ayuda, baka hindi sa virus mamatay na ang mga kababayan kundi sa gutom," Hontiveros concluded.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 04:24:16|Editor: huaxia

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People cross the road in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia in Moscow, on April 16, 2021. (Xinhua/Evgeny Sinitsyn)



These 20 people from the Czech embassy must leave Russia by the end of Monday.



MOSCOW, April 18 (Xinhua) -- The Russian Foreign Ministry said Sunday that it is expelling 20 staffers of the Czech embassy in Moscow in response to the expulsion of 18 Russian diplomats from the Czech Republic.

The ministry said in a statement that it summoned the Czech ambassador to Russia Vitezslav Pivonka and strongly protested against the unfriendly act of Czech authorities.

Pivonka was informed that these 20 people from the Czech embassy must leave Russia by the end of Monday.

The ministry also required the Czech embassy to reduce the number of locally hired staffers to the same level as that of the Russian embassy in Prague.

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said Saturday that the country was expelling 18 staffers from the Russian embassy in Prague for the alleged involvement of the Russian special services in two ammunition depot explosions in 2014.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said earlier on Sunday that Czech authorities used "unfounded and far-fetched pretexts" to continue their anti-Russian tirade in recent years and to please the United States following recent U.S. sanctions against Russia. 
Caitlin Clarkson Pereira, a former candidate from Fairfield for the state House of Representatives, drew national attention when, in 2019, she filed a lawsuit to make child care an allowable expense in Connecticuts publicly financed campaigns.

Pereira lost her race but won her lawsuit against the State Elections Enforcement Commission, which had turned down her request. Still, she and her supporters, including Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, said the judges ruling should be codified into law.

This week, the General Assemblys Government Administration and Elections Committee moved to do that, advancing a bill that would allow candidates to spend public campaign money on child care costs directly related to campaign activity by a vote of 15-3.

In 2018, when Pereira, a Fairfield Democrat, ran against Republican state Rep. Brenda Kupchick, she went to the State Elections Enforcement Commission, known as SEEC, for a declaratory ruling on whether public funds she received from the voluntary Citizens Election Program could be used to pay for child care for her daughter, Parker, who was 3 at the time. That would allow her to hit the campaign trail, she argued, so it should be a campaign expense.

The all-male commission said state law did not allow it. But the commission offered to work with the legislature to change the states campaign finance laws.

The debate over the bill comes as responses to the coronavirus pandemic at both the state and federal levels have focused on funding for child care as way to help women and working mothers.

Access to affordable and quality child care is critical to gender equity and has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, Nicole Sanclemente, policy and program associate for the Connecticut Womens Education and Legal Fund, said in submitted testimony. Women, especially women of color, continue to shoulder the majority of the caregiving responsibilities of their families, including child care and elder care.

The issue grabbed the attention of former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who tweeted her support in April 2019, and Ellen Weintraub, then the chair of the Federal Elections Commission.

Pereira appealed the SEECs ruling and won. A Connecticut Superior Court judge ruled in her favor last August, stating that candidates for political office in Connecticut can use public campaign funds to reimburse child care expenses as long as they are the direct result of campaign activity, that they are reasonable and customary for the services rendered and are properly documented by the campaign.

The bill advanced by the elections committee, which could now be taken up by the full General Assembly, would establish an age and spending limit for eligible child care expenses.

The proposal would apply to any child who is under thirteen years of age and for whom such candidate is the parent or legal guardian, which services are necessary as a direct result of campaign activity that would not exist but for such candidates campaign, and would limit spending to $2,000 for a candidate for state Senate and $1,000 for a state House candidate.

The next step, Pereira said, should be making sure the reimbursement process for parents is accessible and easily understandable.

By Pereiras count, 10 other states are working on similar legislation, so this is an opportunity for Connecticut to lead the way.

Bysiewicz, who chairs the Governors Council on Women and Girls, has said child care continues to be a barrier for women running for office, especially low-income mothers who cant afford outside help.

The proposal was included in a legislative package pushed for by the council, which has the support of Gov. Ned Lamont.
Maxine Waters says she is not going to be bullied after Republicans attacked her for urging Minneapolis protesters to get more confrontational if former police officer Derek Chauvin is acquitted for the killing of George Floyd.

The longtime California congresswoman said Monday that GOP criticism of her was trying to send a message to their white supremacist supporters.

Republicans will jump on any word, any line and try to make it fit their message and their cause for denouncing us and denying us, basically calling us violent, Ms Waters told thegrio.

She said that Republicans send a message to all of the white supremacists, the KKK, the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys and all of that, how this is a time for Republicans to raise money on Democrats backs.

And she added: This is who they are and this is how they act. And Im not going to be bullied by them.

Ms Waters sparked criticism from Republicans after she visited Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, where 20-year-old Daune Wright was shot and killed by police during a traffic stop earlier this month.

Weve got to stay in the streets, and weve got to demand justice, she told a crowd of racial justice protesters over the weekend.

The Democratic politicians appearance came as the jury in Minneapolis is set to consider a verdict in the Chauvin trial for the murder of Floyd.

Were looking for a guilty verdict, she told reporters about the case.

And if we dont, we cannot go away, weve got to get more confrontational. Weve got to make sure that they know that we mean business.

House Minority Leader Republican Kevin McCarthy accused her of condoning political violence.

Maxine Waters is inciting violence in Minneapolis  just as she has incited it in the past. If Speaker Pelosi doesnt act against this dangerous rhetoric, I will bring action this week, Mr McCarthy, the Houses top Republican, tweeted on Sunday.

Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said on Sunday that she planned on introducing a resolution to expel Ms Waters from Congress.

Mr McCarthy took to Twitter on Monday to announce that he intended to file a resolution of censure against Ms Waters.

This weekend in Minnesota, Maxine Waters broke the law by violating curfew and then incited violence, Mr McCarthy tweeted.

Speaker Pelosi is ignoring Waters behaviorthats why I am introducing a resolution to censure Rep. Waters for these dangerous comments.
MADRID, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- International Airport Finance, S.A. (the "Issuer") announced today that it is soliciting consents (the "Consent Solicitation") from all registered holders (individually, a "Holder," and collectively, the "Holders") of its 12.000% Senior Secured Notes due 2033 (the "Notes"), upon the terms and conditions described in the Issuer's Consent Solicitation Statement, dated April 19, 2021 (the "Statement"), to certain proposed amendments that seek to amend the covenant (the "waterfall" provision) in the Issuer Security and Accounts Agreement, dated as of March 14, 2019 (the "Issuer Security and Accounts Agreement"), among the Issuer and Citibank, N.A., as trustee, notes collateral agent and notes account bank, that governs transfers from the Issuer Collections Account in order to permit the Issuer to use funds on deposit in the Issuer Collections Account to pay fees, costs, expenses or reimbursements related to (i) its business and operations, including without limitation taxes, and (ii) the issuance and offering of Additional Notes or any amendments or waivers to or consents under the Notes Documents (the "Proposed Amendments"). The Issuer believes that these changes would provide the Issuer with additional operational efficiencies. Unless otherwise defined herein, capitalized terms used herein have the meanings given to them in the Statement.

The Consent Solicitation will expire at 5:00 p.m., New York City Time, on April 30, 2021, unless extended or earlier terminated by the Issuer in its sole discretion (such date and time, as the same may be extended, the "Expiration Date"). The record date of the Consent Solicitation is 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on April 16, 2021.

The Consent Solicitation is subject to, and conditioned upon, the satisfaction or waiver of certain customary conditions described in the Statement, including receiving the consents of holders (in minimum denominations of US$200,000 and integral multiples of US$1,000 in excess thereof, subject to a scaling factor of the current par amount of US$997.68) of a majority in aggregate principal amount of the outstanding Notes (the "Required Consents"). In accordance with the Indenture, Notes owned by the Issuer, Corporacion Quiport S.A. (the "Borrower"), the shareholders of the Issuer or the Borrower or any of their respective affiliates will not be deemed outstanding, and such persons will not be able to vote for the purposes of the Required Consents needed to effect the Proposed Amendments.

In the event that the Required Consents for the Notes are received on or prior to the Expiration Date, the Issuer will pay an aggregate cash payment equal to US$0.30 per US$1,000 principal amount of the Notes (the "Consent Payment") for which the Required Consents to the Proposed Amendments are validly delivered on or prior to the Expiration Date and not validly revoked prior to the earlier to occur of (i) the receipt of the Required Consents and (ii) the Expiration Date. The Consent Payment is expected to be paid on a date promptly following the Expiration Date, but no later than five business days following the Expiration Date.

The amendment to the Issuer Security and Accounts Agreement reflecting the Proposed Amendments will be effective and operative immediately upon execution thereof as to all Holders, whether or not such Holders delivered a Consent.

Santander Investment Securities Inc. is the solicitation agent in the Consent Solicitation and Morrow Sodali Ltd has been retained to serve as the information and tabulation agent. Persons with questions regarding the Consent Solicitation should contact Santander Investment Securities Inc. at (toll free) 1 (800) 404-3636 or (collect) +1 (212) 940-1442. Requests for the Statement should be directed to Morrow Sodali Ltd, at +1 203 609 4910 (Stamford), +44 208 089 3287 (London), +852 2319 4130 (Hong Kong) or by email to [email protected], or can be accessed through the Consent Website https://bonds.morrowsodali.com/quiport.

None of the Issuer, the solicitation agent, information and tabulation agent, trustee, notes collateral agent and notes account bank or any of their respective affiliates is making any recommendation as to whether Holders of the Notes should deliver consents in response to the Consent Solicitation. Holders must make their own decisions as to whether to deliver consents.

This press release is for informational purposes only and is neither an offer to sell nor a solicitation of an offer to buy any security. This announcement is also not a solicitation of consents with respect to the Proposed Amendments or otherwise. The Consent Solicitation is being made solely through the Statement referred to above and related materials. The Consent Solicitation is not being made to Holders of Notes in any jurisdiction in which the Issuer is aware that the making of the Consent Solicitation would not be in compliance with the laws of such jurisdiction. In any jurisdiction in which the securities laws or blue sky laws require the Consent Solicitation to be made by a licensed broker or dealer, the Consent Solicitation will be deemed to be made on the Issuer's behalf by the solicitation agent or one or more registered brokers or dealers that are licensed under the laws of such jurisdiction.

Neither the Statement nor any documents related to the Consent Solicitation have been filed with, and have not been approved or reviewed by any federal or state securities commission or regulatory authority of any country. No authority has passed upon the accuracy or adequacy of the Statement or any documents related to the Consent Solicitation, and it is unlawful and may be a criminal offense to make any representation to the contrary.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are information of a non-historical nature or which relate to future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties. No assurance can be given that the transactions described herein will be consummated or as to the ultimate terms of any such transactions. The Issuer undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information or future events or for any other reason.

Contact:

Morrow Sodali

Quiport

[email protected]

phone +1 203 609 4910

SOURCE International Airport Finance, S.A.
Nine Teams to Compete in UW Virtual Ellbogen $50K Entrepreneurship Competition April 23-24

Nine student-led teams are vying for seed prize money to get their business plans off the ground in the John P. Ellbogen $50K Entrepreneurship Competition sponsored by the University of Wyomings College of Business.

The competition encourages students to act on their talents, ideas and energy to produce tomorrows leading businesses. It will be held Friday and Saturday, April 23-24, as a public webinar.

The dedication and work ethic shown by our nine finalist teams have been outstanding, says Patrick Kreiser, the UW College of Business Rile Chair of Entrepreneurship and Leadership. More than anything, the purpose of experiential learning is to convince students to dream big and then provide them with the support to turn those dreams into reality. We are confident that all nine teams offer compelling value propositions and sustainable business models to help support the Wyoming economy.

The John P. Ellbogen $50K Entrepreneurship Competition awards cash prizes to outstanding student-led entrepreneur teams showing significant business potential. Teams enter the competition from various disciplines across the UW campus or Wyoming community colleges. The final nine student teams created startups with innovative business models, each enrolled in a class called ENTR 4700: Business Model Creation and Launch, and each team was paired with a mentor.

The nine John P. Ellbogen $50K Entrepreneurship Competition finalists, their business concepts, team members, majors and hometowns are:

-- AI Understand U: Stephanie Bowman, a first-year doctoral student in UWs School of Counseling, Leadership, Advocacy and Design, from Chicago. AI Understand U provides accessible and nonjudgmental mental health and wellness support tailored specifically to college students in the form of an app that features conversational artificial intelligence (a chatbot).

-- Armour Glove: Team members are Matthew Jensen, a sophomore majoring in business at Sheridan College, from Windsor, Colo.; and Teegan Hartman, an information technology analyst for Comcast, from Loveland, Colo. The automotive technician of today faces more and more every day in the way of dangerous chemicals, sharp car parts and confined spaces. Armour Glove is a glove made to meet the demands of todays automotive technicians and protect them from all sides.

-- B3: Team members are Perri Meeks, a senior in mechanical engineering at UW, from Big Piney; and Brayton Sanders, a machine learning engineer at Flowstate and 2020 UW MBA graduate, from Evanston. B3 is an online web application designed to optimize inventory management for online retail companies. Inventory management refers to the practices of maintaining optimum inventory levels, just enough but not too much. The costs associated with poor inventory management are incredibly high: cost of missed sales, cost of reputation and costs of tying up cash with stale inventory. With the help of B3, entrepreneurs can feel confident in knowing how long their current inventory will last, when they should order more, and how much.

-- Bedrock Outdoors: Team members are Emma Dixon, a junior majoring in outdoor recreation and tourism management/environmental systems science, with a minor in honors at UW, from Lawrence, Kan.; and Taylor Davis, a sophomore majoring in outdoor recreation and tourism management at UW, from Wylie, Texas. Bedrock Outdoors is a community-centered hub of outdoor activities that will offer rentals, retail and educational sessions. There is a need to increase access to outdoor opportunities by supporting people as they gain the confidence, skills and gear needed to have positive experiences in nature.

-- Cooking With Community: Team members -- all culinary arts majors at Central Wyoming College (CWC) -- are Brittney Niedo, a freshman, from Fort Washakie; and from Jackson: Oliver Chambers, a freshman; Amelia Nolan, a sophomore; Jair Jimenez, a freshman; Rodolfo Jimenez, a freshman; and Stephanie Roche, a sophomore. Also on the team is Amy Madera, a faculty member and program director of CWCs culinary arts and hotel and restaurant management. Cooking With Community is a mobile commercial teaching kitchen designed to offer year-round culinary instruction in Jackson and training on regional farms and the Wind River Indian Reservation. The trailer will be available for catering of special events.

-- FabSampler: Team members are Sarker Ramproshad, a second-year UW chemistry graduate student, from Khulna, Bangladesh; Debashis Dutta, a UW chemistry faculty member, from Pune, India; Rajesh Deb, a fifth-year UW chemistry graduate student, from Cumilla, Bangladesh; and Sakur Mahmud, a sixth-year UW chemistry graduate student, from Patuakhali, Bangladesh. FabSampler was founded to develop a sampling platform and a testing process to continuously monitor for airborne viruses in indoor spaces, including transportation vehicles.

-- LifeGlass: Team members are Ryan Bettcher, a UW molecular biology graduate student, from Brighton, Colo.; and Thomas Boothby, a UW molecular biology faculty member. LifeGlass uses the survival mechanisms of desiccation-tolerant organisms to stabilize inherently unstable pharmaceuticals in a thermotolerant, glass-like state.

-- Ormans Sweets: Story Roberts, a senior majoring in business management and entrepreneurship at UW, from Cheyenne. Ormans Sweets is a place where you can find either the perfect treat or the perfect gift, producing handmade candy.

-- WireDraw LLC: Jared Henderson, a UW junior majoring in business economics, from Greybull. WireDraw LLC is an information management company, designing systems to store, organize and distribute project data to the team. Systems are tailor-made for each client.

To register to attend the webinar, click here.

For more information, email Josie Voight at voight@uwyo.edu.
Gov. Kay Ivey said this morning she was disappointed that the investment bank Barclays has withdrawn from underwriting the financing of two privately owned prisons that Alabama would lease and operate.

The governor said Barclays decision would not stop the plan to lease new prisons, which the Ivey administration and the Alabama Department of Corrections have been working on for more than two years.

The state is fully committed to this project and has put in place new options to advance this vital transaction in a timely and efficient manner, Ivey said in an email this morning.

The chairman of the General Fund budget committee in the state Senate said the news is troubling. The Ivey administration has pursued the plan without seeking approval of the Legislature.

It shows that the Legislatures concerns about the program continue to be justified, Sen. Greg Albritton, R-Atmore, said. Among those concerns include the cost of the plan and the fact that the state would not have ownership at the end of the 30-year leases, he said.

Bloomberg News reported the decision by Barclays and reported that a second investment bank involved in the deal, KeyBanc Capital Markets, has pulled out. A third firm, Stifel, declined comment on whether it would remain involved.

A statement from Barclays said: We have advised our client that we are no longer participating in the transaction intended to provide financing for correctional facilities in the State of Alabama. While our objective was to enable the State to improve its facilities, we recognize that this is a complex and important issue. In light of the feedback that we have heard, we will continue to review our policies.

Bloomberg had reported last week that Barclays membership in the the American Sustainable Business Council was terminated because of its involvement in the Alabama prison deal. Critics said Barclays participation in the Alabama deal contradicted its announcement two years ago that it would no longer provide new financing for private prisons. Barclays said the Alabama plan was different because the state will staff and operate the prisons.

Ivey, in response to this mornings announcement that Barclays was backing out, said in an emailed statement: The state of Alabama is disappointed that Barclays Plc has elected to no longer participate as an underwriting entity in the Alabama Prison Program. These new facilities, which will be leased, staffed, and operated by the state, are critical to the states public infrastructure needs and will be transformative in addressing the Alabama Department of Corrections longstanding challenges.

In February, Ivey announced that she had signed leases on new mens prisons in Escambia and Elmore counties. They would be built by a development team led by CoreCivic, a national private prison firm. At that time, the governors office said the financial close for the deals would be on June 1.

A third prison is planned for Bibb County. It would be built by a different development team.

In January, 13 organizations signed an open letter to state legislators calling the prison plan a 30-year mistake. The plan calls for 30-year leases of the three prisons at a total cost of over $3 billion.

LaTonya Tate, founder and CEO of the Alabama Justice Initiative, said other groups involved in opposition to the new prisons include Alabama Students Against Prisons, the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice, The Ordinary People Society, the ACLU of Alabama, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Fighting Toxic Prisons, the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women & Girls, Southern Crossroads, Block The Brierfield Prison, and No Prison For Tallassee.

State Auditor Jim Zeigler has been an outspoken opponent.

In December, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Alabama, alleging the state violates the constitutional rights of inmates by failing to prevent prisoner-on-prisoner violence and sexual abuse, failing to prevent excessive use of force by correctional officers, and failing to provide safe conditions.

The Ivey administration and the Department of Corrections have maintained that new prisons are part of a broader fix for the problems that have resulted from decades of neglect.

The three new prisons would replace as many as 11 of the 13 mens prisons.

Our current correctional facilities are dilapidated, structurally failing, and in need of significant upgrades, Ivey said in this mornings statement. It is not a matter of if our current facilities will fail, but when. Given the exorbitant deferred maintenance costs associated with renovating our existing facilities, replacing this infrastructure, which has far outlived its useful life, is the best path forward and the only fiscally responsible decision for the state.

The new facilities have been specifically designed for the State to address our urgent needs and are a key part of a comprehensive solution to concerns identified in current and pending litigation. These new, state-of-the-art facilities will provide safer, more secure correctional environments that better accommodate inmate rehabilitation, enhance medical and mental health services, and improve the quality of life for all those who live and work in them.

Replacing our current infrastructure, which was never designed to accommodate inmate rehabilitation, will empower the state and the ADOC to make the important shift from warehousing individuals to rehabilitating returning citizens. This is a bed replacement program as up to 11 of our existing, failing facilities will be closed, which, along with associated staff savings, underpins affordability on the project.

Pursuant to the lease agreements, the Alabama Department of Corrections will be the only tenant of the new facilities and will be solely responsible for prison operations. To be abundantly clear, these are not private prisons  they will be run by the State. As the sole operator and tenant, the ADOC will be contractually obligated to make lease payments that cover all facility maintenance, lifecycle replacement, and financing costs for the full term of the bonds.

CoreCivic also released a statement in response to the decisions by the investment banks to pull out of the deal.

The state of Alabama is facing a humanitarian crisis, and were proceeding with efforts to help deliver desperately needed, modern corrections infrastructure to replace dilapidated, aging facilities that originally were designed with one purpose in mind  to warehouse individuals, not rehabilitate returning citizens, CoreCivic Public Affairs Director Amanda Gilchrist said. Our partners in Alabama appreciate the solutions were providing to help improve conditions for the incarcerated people in their care, and they appreciate those in the investor community who continue to support these critical infrastructure projects.

The reckless and irresponsible activists who claim to represent the interests of incarcerated people are in effect advocating for outdated facilities, less rehabilitation space and potentially dangerous conditions for correctional staff and inmates alike. This type of extremism does nothing but put politics over people, and exacerbates rather than solves the challenges facing our criminal justice system.

Carla Crowder, executive director of the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice, said in response to CoreCivics statement about irresponsible activists:

Alabama is too poor a state to dump $3 billion into buildings to warehouse thousands of Alabamians. This is space only, no funding for rehabilitative and educational programs and services. To suggest expensive new buildings will solve the persistent human rights crisis that has defined the Alabama Department of Corrections for nearly a decade is disingenuous at best.

Were advocating for Alabama to not have a higher incarceration rate than nearly every other jurisdiction on the planet. And that means sentencing reform, parole reform, investments in people and communities, not cages. Additionally, we are certain ADOC could add abundant education, programming and treatment space for well under $3 billion and actually own the buildings.

This story will be updated. Edited at 12:16 p.m. to say Bloomberg News reported the decisions by the investment banks to pull out of the deal.
WILLIAMSPORT  A man charged with killing his girlfriend in Montoursville in 2003 and cutting off her legs will not pursue a mental infirmity defense.

The reason, Lycoming County chief public defender Nicole J. Spring said Monday, is no records can be found indicating Jade G. Babcock, 51, was insane when Brenda Lee Jacobs was killed more than 17 years ago.

Without records, it would be difficult to establish his mental condition that long ago, she said. At his arraignment in 2019, Babcock claimed to be bipolar and addicted to crystal methamphetamine and alcohol.

He is awaiting trial on an open count of homicide and charges of tampering with evidence, obstruction of justice and abuse of corpse. It is Springs opinion the allegations dont support first-degree murder. The prosecution is not seeking the death penalty.

Part of its evidence is a recorded interview by state police in which Babcock said he killed Jacobs on Dec. 26, 2003, in Montoursville and took the remains with him when he moved to Philadelphia in April 2019.

Trooper Joel Follmer at Babcocks preliminary hearing gave this summary of his confession:

Jacobs and he were drinking heavily around the holidays in 2003. They argued over losing their jobs and being unable to buy gifts for children.

He hit her several times, she fell to the floor and did not get up. He never called 911. When the body got cold he wrapped it in a comforter and placed it in a living room closet.

A few months later when it got warmer he moved the body to a coal bin in a barn at the rear of the Montoursville property where it remained until the house was sold on Nov. 18, 2018.

He tried to fit the remains in a wooden box his father used when ice fishing but it did not fit, so he cut off the legs with a bow saw.

He moved the legless remains to a storage unit in Williamsport where they stayed until April 2019 when he and his then-girlfriend moved to Philadelphia using a rental truck.

State police believe remains found inside a storage facility in a section of Philadelphia are that of Brenda Jacobs, who was reported missing in 2003. Authorities say her remains could be linked to the severed legs found in the Susquehanna River in Williamsport in May.

The legs were thrown into the Susquehanna River from the Maynard Street Bridge in Williamsport. Fisherman found them on the rivers edge 75 yards apart and a short distance downstream on May 11, 2019.

The rest of the remains were found Sept. 17, 2019, in a storage unit in Philadelphia. They were directed there by Brenda Jones who had lived with Babcock for four years first in Montoursville and then in Philadelphia.

Jones told police she turned in Babcock out of fear after he told her he had killed Jacobs.

A trial date has not been set as there are several pretrial issues pending before Judge Nancy L. Butts. Babcock is jailed without bail.
Advocates for School Reopening Speak Out as Adverse Consequences of Remote Learning On the Rise

The largest school district in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, has been taking a step-by-step approach to reopen the K-12 schools. In a message released earlier this week, superintendent Dr. William R. Hite provided a detailed plan for the rollout of the Hybrid Learning Plan Phase III.

For Phase III, all students grades 6-9 who have not yet returned to the classroom and students with complex needs in grades 10-11 will be able to opt into the hybrid learning modeltwo days of in person learning and three days of remote learning each weekbeginning the week of May 10.

Phase III is the final rollout of the Hybrid Learning Plan for this school year and will allow older students to join younger students already doing hybrid learning.

All the schools in Philadelphia were locked down on March 16, 2020, due to the breakout of the CCP Virus pandemic. The Hybrid Learning plan in the district started for pre-K through second grade on Feb. 22.

Hite has been hosting a Facebook Live video session every other Wednesday to give district updates. In the latest video, he pointed out that as part of the American Rescue Plan Act 2021, the Philadelphia school district will receive $1.2 billion in one-time federal relief to help support the long-term recovery work.

The most important types of investments we should consider making in three critical areas: the social and emotional, mental health needs of our students and staff; student learning recovery and learning acceleration for the interrupted learning that has happened since last March; and making sure our buildings are safe places for teaching and learning, he said in the video. All the guidance is indicating that it will be safe to bring children back in the fall.

School reopening has become a hot topic of discussion across the nation.

Delaware Lawyer Julianne Murray, who ran for the governor last year, disagrees with the position that schools should be closed. She says she believes kids need to be back in school.

The (Delaware) governor was going to leave it to the school districts to determine whether they can open or not open. I called it the indecision decision, Murray said. But you school districts that want to do this, you have to still follow the CDC guidelines, which at the time related to school buses, cuts it to only about 20 percent of students can be on the school bus. So its basically saying, if you can work it out, you can go back to school. But here, let me give you all of these difficulties, procedure and policy wise, that make it impossible for you to go back to school, Murray told The Epoch Times.

The Cape Henlopen school district in Sussex County is open now but other counties that do not have the financial means to implement the CDC guidelines are still on remote learning.

So the kids who are most disadvantaged financially are now also most disadvantaged educationally. So its the complete opposite of what you would want to happen, Murray said.

The reality is, there have been no fatalities in this state of anybody under the age of 18. COVID-19 is not fatal to kids. Sometimes you have to do a balancing test. Youre balancing the chance that they could contract (the virus), against the uprise in depression and anxiety, the socialization issues. I have talked to hundreds of kids that just want to be around their friends in school; they want to get back into sports. These kids have fallen behind educationally.

I spoke with a colleague of mine, who knows of five kids that have committed suicide over being out of school. And the parents, when they talk about it, say COVID killed my kid, and he didnt have the virus.

Kids are killing themselves because they have no outlet, Murray said. Thats a problem. In this case, the cure is worse than the disease in terms of this remote learning.

Clarice Schillinger, chair of the Pennsylvanian Political Action Committee (PAC) Keeping Kids in School told The Epoch Times, We decided after school closures for over a year now that we were going to take some political action.

We believe that a full return, five days a week, in person instruction should be a choice for families and is essential for our childrens welfare, the PACs website reads.

Schillinger added that the lobby groups prime focus is school board candidates across the state, as they have a lot more power than what the common person may think they have.

Keeping Kids in School treasurer Misty Law Flurry pointed out that there are almost 2 million school-aged kids in Pennsylvania, and 33 percent of those kids are in single parent homes. This means that so many parents have had to come out of the workforce to take care of their children during remote learning.

Just in Pennsylvania alone, 28 percent of women have been pulled out of the workforce based on what was happening before COVID happened. So this is not just talked about getting kids in, its also talked about getting women in, Flurry said. In person (learning) is that we can get our economy back by putting people back to work. Children learn more; they need social interaction.

Our suicide rates have gone through the roof; student harm is up 333 percent; kids are harming themselves, she said, citing a report of statistics from August 2019 to August 2020 in the northeast for ages 13-18 recently published by Fair Health.

Regarding the virus, Flurry said, The data shows schools are not places where kids are spreading COVID. If anything has happened, its been from teachers, other adults spreading it to kids, versus the opposite. And seeing all this data shows us that thats one huge obstacle that no longer is in front of us.

She added that she was glad to see the CDC had endorsed the three feet social distancing rule, which will allow more kids to return to school.

Schillinger added that its very helpful to look at schools that have fully returned in person. And to my knowledge, those schools are still up successfully running and the children are learning happily in the environment that they should be in, she said.

Despite teachers having received the vaccine, Schillinger said its concerning that many schools still remain closed.

Whats the next moving goalposts that we have to catch? The first was vaccines, but what is it next? Its ventilation that weve heard. But I will note that many schools including my very own daughters school does not even have HVAC to support the better ventilation request, and many schools within urban communities do not, so its troubling.

I hope that the vaccine is the hope of returning these kids five days a week in person. But we have seen some moving goalposts, she added.

Mr. Ron Russo is the founding president of the Charter School of Wilmington with over 40 years experience in secondary education. He told The Epoch Times that while some students have excelled with the distance learning, statistics show that youth suicide rates and drug use are going up.

Theres a lot more to school than people realize, he said. And I think it really showed itself during this pandemic.

I think we should have gotten the kids back before now. Again, if you take a look at the science, 80 percent of the deaths, which obviously, is the critical end of the virus, were people 65 and older. And when they took a look at kids, as you went along, the kids were not really that affected by the virus. So Im saying to you, its good that were getting ourselves in a position to get the kids back into school.

Meanwhile, Russo said that if the parents prefer remote learning, they should be allowed continue or enrol in the hybrid learning form. After all, he said, the customers in education for school-aged kids are the parents.
PHILIPSBURG:--- In an effort to facilitate and empower all districts on the island, the Minister of Justice, Ms. Anna E. Richardson, has opened discussions with the various Community Council representatives to address safety and security issues that are being experienced within the communities. The Minister stated that the aim is to both identify the issues that are being experienced in the neighborhoods and assess the relationship between the communities and their Community Police Officers (CPOs). Minister Richardson has committed the service of the Justice Ministry in supporting the communities in combatting issues that are being experienced. As Minister of Justice, it is my duty to act on the safety and security grievances expressed by our communities. Having these meetings will provide a better understanding of how the ministry can support our communities in feeling more safe and secure, stated the Minister.

According to the Minister, there have been many complaints by the councils of issues that their communities have been facing that are either not being addressed or not being reported to the right authorities. It is vital that we create a stronger working relationship together so that we can reach the best results for our neighborhoods, stated the Minister.

The meeting between Minister Richardson and the Community Councils of the Cay Bay to Simpson Bay area was the first of the district council sit-downs to take place. The Minister has made it a priority to meet with all Community Council representatives over the course of the coming weeks to further discuss issues faced within each district. The meeting which took place on Wednesday, April 14th, 2021 proved to be of high importance to the communities, whose issues were articulated by each representative. Moving forward we cannot continue to do things alone. By working together we will be able to accomplish so much more in creating the safe environment that we all want, stated the Minister.

The councils representatives highlighted some key issues that were expressed as ongoing matters. For example, it was pointed out by the council representative that many illegal vessels enter the shorelines with undocumented persons that disembark and go into their communities to either find shelter or to escape through the districts. The Minister gave her reassurance that a plan of action is being developed between the various agencies that fall under the Justice Ministry to effectively combat this problem.

The councils also expressed their frustration of residents being affected by noise pollution. The councils said that noise pollution is a largely reported nuisance in their communities. Between the different businesses around and persons playing loud music from their homes and vehicles, its frustrating for our residents, stated a representative. Minister Richardson made it known to the councils representatives that this issue is being taken up as a collaborative effort by the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Tourism, Economic Affairs, Transportation and Telecommunications (TEATT). I can further assure you that the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Public Health, Social Development and Labor (VSA) and the Ministry of Tourism, Economic Affairs, Transportation and Telecommunications (TEATT) are working on a protocol to conduct joint controls within the communities to tackle among a list of other prudent issues, this nuisance, stated the Minister.

The Minister urged the Community Councils representatives to be patient. All I am asking for is your patience as efforts are underway to help and support the communities with these issues that are being experienced - some of which will take time, stated the Minister. The Minister inquired on the relationship of the communities and their Community Police Officers (CPOs), asking the councils representatives if there is a high awareness throughout their districts of who their CPOs are and if contact information of the various authorities is widely known. It is important that the Community Councils and Community Police Officers have a close working relationship. Awareness within the communities is also crucial in knowing who their CPOs are and who to contact when faced with an issue, stated the Minister.

Several issues were tabled which fall under the responsibility of the Justice Ministry and a number of other issues that extends under the responsibility of the other Ministries. The Minister told the councils that my priority is to exercise my authority in addressing the issues that fall within my responsibility. Although the other mentioned issues do not fall under the Ministry of Justice, I will see to it that they be communicated to my respective colleagues of the other Ministries so that they too can also be addressed.

The councils representatives were informed by the Minister of the existence and duty of the Committee for District Councils (CDC) in Parliament which was recognized and established as a means for Community Councils to have their grievances communicated in Parliament. The Committee for District Councils purpose is to act as a liaison between the Community Councils and the Ministers. The Minister indicated that during her tenure as a Parliamentarian she pushed for the establishment of this entity to empower and support Community Councils with the ability to take community issues to Parliament. It is important that the Community Councils use the CDC to hold the Ministers accountable for issues that fall under their respective portfolios, stated the Minister. Minister Richardson sent a letter on Friday, April 16th, 2021 to Member of Parliament Solange L. Duncan, who is also the Chairperson of the Committee for District Councils of the Parliament, requesting for the Committee to commence meetings with Community Councils.

A list of additional issues was submitted to Minister Richardson by the councils and the CPO, which will be further investigated. The Minister aims to use the results of these meetings to create a plan of action that focuses on effectively tackling the issues that are detailed by the communities.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 14:26:51|Editor: huaxia

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VIENTIANE, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Some of the families who lost their homes during the catastrophic flood that hit southern Laos' Attapeu province in July 2018 have moved into new houses and finally started to rebuild their lives.

Families have taken occupancy of 153 newly-built houses, while the construction of another 547 houses is underway, local daily Vientiane Times reported on Monday.

The houses were officially handed over on April 12 by Deputy Governor of Attapeu province Bounseut Setthilath. The remaining houses are expected to be complete by the end of 2021.

Following the collapse of a dam at the Xe Pian-Xe Namnoy hydropower plant, some 560 km southeast of Lao capital Vientiane, homeless families were initially accommodated in tents and shelters before moving into the temporary housing in Sanamxay district.

The flood triggered by the dam collapse killed over 40 people with many more going missing while thousands of others were left homeless. Several villages were wiped out by the flood.

The dam has now been rebuilt in a different location and is more structurally sound after construction was supervised by specialist engineers from international energy companies.

All hydropower projects are currently under scrutiny by the government, with officials ordered to inspect all dams under construction and ensure their safety. Enditem
WASHINGTON  It's an off-year for national electoral politics, with only a few big gubernatorial races later in the year in Virginia and New Jersey. Still, polling data show the great shift in the nation's two major political parties is continuing and some of those changes could have significant impacts at the ballot box.

Earlier this month Gallup released data showing a sharp drop in the number of people who chose to identify as Republican in the first quarter of 2021.

The 9-point gap between the two parties was the largest Gallup had recorded in almost a decade.

Democrats celebrated the numbers, but Republicans and analysts were quick to point out the figures dont necessarily represent a departure from past political norms. The last time the Democrats held this large an advantage, Barack Obama had just won his second term in the White House.

In fact, going back in time, Democrats have held even larger advantages in Gallups partisan affiliation data, particularly when the party was riding an election wave.

Back in 2008, when the Great Recession was just beginning and Barack Obama was cruising to his White House first win, Democrats held a massive 14-point edge in party affiliation. In 1999, just after Democrats did surprisingly well in Bill Clinton's second midterm election, the party had an 11-point advantage. And in 1993, just after Bill Clinton first won the White House, Democrats had a 12-point edge in party ID.

That's all good evidence for the Republican argument that "we've seen this before." And further bolstering their point of view is the fact those numbers bounced back, of course. Republicans held the affiliation edge in the mid-1990s and the early '00s, and the two parties were basically even in early 2020.

But another trend in politics suggests that what we are seeing might be more than a somewhat typical election-related bump for Democrats. Data from the Pew Research Center show that, increasingly, different people are populating the two major political parties  with Republicans and Democrats moving in sharply different directions among college-educated voters.

At the beginning of this century, Republicans held an 11-point edge on party affiliation among college-educated voters. By the time Barack Obama was president, the figures had flipped to become a 4-point edge for the Democrats. And as President Donald Trumps term was winding down, the numbers had come full-circle and the Democrats had a 13-point edge among college-educated voters on party affiliation.

So, the data suggest that what we are seeing might be more than just a sudden Democratic edge in party affiliation. Those 2021 changes are coupled with a larger shift in party composition. And that might have real impacts come election time because voters with different levels of educational attainment have long exercised their right to vote at different rates.

In 2018, voters with a bachelor's degree cast ballots at a much higher rate than other parts of the electorate, according to data from the U.S. Census. Their 64-percent voting rate was 12 points higher than those with some college and 25 points higher than those whose highest level of educational attainment is a high school diploma.

As Republicans shed college-educated voters, the party could find a new challenge that compounds the Democratic edge in affiliation. Even if the affiliation numbers bounce back this time, the different people in the GOP might make it more difficult for the party to get big turnout numbers in 2022. Midterm elections in particular are often about which party can excite and turn out their voters.

To be sure, there are still a lot of question marks. It's not yet clear what Trump's impact will be on the 2022 race, or how voters will feel about President Joe Biden 18 months from now.

But the drop in GOP party ID, coupled with the Republican's loss of college-educated voters, could spell trouble for the party in coming elections. It's not just how many people are calling themselves Republicans in early 2021 that looks like a potential problem for the party, it is which voters are identifying with the GOP.
New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday (April 19, 2021) took a big decision to break the transmission of coronavirus in the national capital. CM Kejriwal announced that Delhi will be put under complete lockdown from the night of April 19 till April 26 morning.

The AAP made the announcement in a press briefing, a day after Delhi witnessed its biggest surge in the daily COVID-19 caseload with 25,462 fresh cases.

            | Press Conference | LIVE https://t.co/zAECIEcZ53  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) April 19, 2021

He said that the lockdown will be placed from 10 pm on Monday till 5 am on April 26.

"Essential services, food services, medical services will continue. Weddings can be held with a gathering of only 50 people, passes will be issued separately for it. A detailed order will be issued shortly," said the Delhi CM.

Kejriwal told the citizens of Delhi that his government has been honest from day one and informed about the deteriorating COVID-19 situation in the hospitals in the national capital. Kejriwal reiterated that there is a huge shortage of ICU beds in the hospitals.

"Delhi's health system has reached a limit," he said.

"We have received the full support of the Delhi people and two crore residents are an extended family, we will fight against this pandemic together," he expressed.

Kejriwal took this decision after a meeting with Delhi L-G Anil Bajai.

Earlier on Sunday, he had stated that Delhi is facing an acute shortage of oxygen and needs much more than the normal supply. He alleged that the Centre, rather than increasing the supply, is diverting Delhi's quota to other states.

"OXYGEN HAS BECOME AN EMERGENCY IN DEL," Kejriwal had tweeted.

Del facing acute shortage of oxygen. In view of sharply increasing cases, Del needs much more than normal supply. Rather than increasing supply, our normal supply has been sharply reduced and Delhis quota has been diverted to other states. OXYGEN HAS BECOME AN EMERGENCY IN DEL  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) April 18, 2021

This is to be noted that a night curfew followed by a weekend curfew was also put in the national capital to check the spread of COVID-19.

(This is a developing story)

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Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick suffered two strokes and died of natural causes after battling rioters, a medical examiner has ruled.

Washington DCs chief medical examiner says that there is no evidence that bear spray, or any other chemical irritant, caused an allergic reaction that resulted in Officer Sicknicks death.

But Francisco J Diaz noted that Officer Sicknick was among the Capitol Police detachment attacked by pro-Trump rioters in violent scenes on 6 January and that all that transpired played a role in his condition.

Investigators had focussed in on the chemical irritant that protesters allegedly used on Officer Sicknick and his colleagues, as the crowd tried to force their way into the Capitol to prevent the certification of Joe Bidens election victory.

Two men are currently accused of assaulting Officer Sicknick by spraying a powerful chemical irritant at him during the mayhem, and it is unclear how the medical examiners determination will impact any prosecution.

Mr Diazs report says that Officer Sicknick suffered two strokes at the base of the brain stem caused by a clot in the artery that supplies the area with blood, according to The Washington Post.

Officer Sicknick, who had been on the force since 2008, collapsed at his office after returning there after the riot, and was rushed to hospital where he later died.

The Capitol Police said at the time that the officer was injured while physically engaging with protesters.

Authorities arrested two men in March and accused them of assaulting Officer Sicknick with chemical spray during the violence. No charges have been filed related to Sicknicks death.

Julian Elie Khater, 32, of Pennsylvania and George Pierre Tanios, 39, of Morgantown, West Virginia, grew up together in New Jersey, said officials.

Court documents stated that the two men engaged with police officers, including Officer Sicknick, on the Capitols Lower West Terrace.

And the court papers add that Mr Khater was caught on video telling Mr Tanios to give me that bear sh**.

Prosecutors say that Mr Khater is seen on the video discharging a canister of a toxic substance into the face of Sicknick and two other officers.

Officer Sicknick was honoured in a ceremony at the Capitol in February, that was attended by Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden.

The US Capitol Police said in a statement that Officer Sicknick had died courageously defending Congress and the Capitol.

The USCP accepts the findings from the District of Columbias Office of the Chief Medical Examiner that Officer Brian Sicknick died of natural causes. This does not change the fact Officer Sicknick died in the line of duty, courageously defending Congress and the Capitol, the statement read.

The Department continues to mourn the loss of our beloved colleague. The attack on our officers, including Brian, was an attack on our democracy.
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A mobile Court in Benin City, Edo State, on Saturday sentenced 23 persons for illegal parking and displaying of wares for sale in unauthorised places.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported that while 16 persons were convicted for illegal parking, seven others were convicted for trading in unauthorised places.

The prosecuting counsel, I. O Kadiri, said the 23 offenders were apprehended within Benin metropolis.

They all pleaded liable to the offences.

The Chief Magistrate, Mutairu Oare, ordered 16 of them found guilty of illegal parking to pay a fine of N25,000 each.

Mr Oare ordered the remaining seven convicted of trading in unauthorised places to pay a fine of N2,000 each, with an option of community service (clearing drains, grass cutting, among others), within Kings Square for one hour daily, for two days.

The chief magistrate, however, cautioned and discharged three other persons brought before the court.

He said the order was in line with the Correctional Centres non-custodian regulation.

(NAN)
Human Rights Watch (HRW) says China's communist government is committing crimes against humanity in its treatment of Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim people in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.

The Chinese leadership is responsible for widespread and systematic policies of mass incarceration, torture, and cultural persecution, among other offenses, HRW said in a report published on April 19, urging coordinated international action to impose sanctions on those responsible, advance accountability, and press the Chinese government to reverse course.

The United States has used the word genocide to describe the treatment of the Uyghurs.

China denies genocide. It has described Xinjiang as an internal matter and rejected abuse allegations. Beijing claims internment camps in the region provide vocational training and help fight Islamic extremism.

The report, titled "Break Their Lineage, Break Their Roots": China's Crimes Against Humanity Targeting Uyghurs and Other Turkic Muslims, documents a wide array of human rights violations such as: mass arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearances, mass surveillance, cultural and religious erasure, separation of families, forced returns to China, forced labor, and sexual violence and violations of reproductive rights.

"Acts of torture include interrogation in 'tiger chairs' using electroshock and other violent means of interrogation, and beatings, prolonged solitary confinement, sexual violence, and deprivation of food or water that are arbitrarily inflicted on detainees," the report says.

The abuses are "part of a widespread and systematic attack directed against a population," says the report put together with assistance from Stanford Law School's Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic.



"Chinese authorities have systematically persecuted Turkic Muslims -- their lives, their religion, their culture," said Sophie Richardson, China director at New York-based HRW.

"Beijing has said it's providing 'vocational training' and 'deradicalization,' but that rhetoric can't obscure a grim reality of crimes against humanity," Richardson said.

The report lists a number of acts that it says represent "cultural persecution," such as: the razing of mosques and other religiously or culturally important sites, the involuntary implantation of contraceptive devices in Turkic Muslim women, and the forced indoctrination of Turkic Muslims both inside and outside of camps.

The report notes that in recent years, the level of official oppression of Turkic Muslims has reached "unprecedented levels," adding higher levels of forced labor, broad surveillance, and unlawful separation of children from their families to methods already in use like mass detention and restrictions on practicing Islam.

"It's increasingly clear that Chinese government policies and practices against the Turkic Muslim population in Xinjiang meet the standard for crimes against humanity under international criminal law," said Beth Van Schaack, from the Stanford Center for Human Rights and International Justice.

"The government's failure to stop these crimes, let alone punish those responsible, shows the need for strong and coordinated international action," Van Schaack said.

The authors of the report urge the UN Human Rights Council to establish a body invested with authority to probe allegations of crimes against humanity, identify officials responsible for abuses, and come up with ways to hold them accountable.

The report recommends imposing visa and travel bans as well as targeted sanctions on those responsible for crimes committed against people in Xinjiang, as well as trade restrictions and other moves to end the use of forced labor in China.

"It is increasingly clear that a coordinated global response is needed to end China's crimes against humanity against Turkic Muslims," Richardson said. "That China is a powerful state makes it all the more important for holding it accountable for its unrelenting abuses."
Killeen, TX (76540)

Today

Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 67F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 67F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph.
Kolkata. April 19 : The family members of Manas Santra - a 51-year-old businessman from South Kolkata who was detected with Covid-19 on Sunday mornin -- allege he was rejected by all the government hospitals before he was admitted to a private nursing home where there is hardly any facility to treat a covid patient.

"The local doctor treating him told that his oxygen level is going down and he needs oxygen support and so he will have to be admitted in a hospital immediately. We took an ambulance and tried in all the government hospitals but we know the government hospitals can give us the best treatment but all the hospitals refused and finally we had to get him admitted in a private hospital. He is undergoing treatment there but we are trying to shift him in a government health care facility soon," Santra's elder brother said.

Manas is not alone: thousands of patients in and around the city are experiencing the shortage of beds and the scarcity of medicines after the second wave of Covid-19 lashed the city in the last 15 days.

Not only common people, those closely associated with the government are also facing trouble getting patients admitted in government hospitals. A senior physician who is at the forefront of strategising the state's Covid response as part of the expert committee, faced problems getting beds for three patients, one of them a former judge, and the other his relative. Another senior health department official who is coordinating Covid management had a trying time finding a bed for a relative.

With the daily increase of positive cases doubling in little more than a week coupled with lack of beds and paucity of emergency medicines like Remdesivir and Tollizumab (Actemera) the state as well as the city is reeling under the head of Covid virus. The health department recorded 8419 positive cases in the state on Sunday which has doubled its count in just eight days when it was 4043 on April 10.

Kolkata also doubled its count in a week. The number of cases jumped from 1109 on April 11 to 2197 on April 18. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has already written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to augment the supply of emergency medicine and vaccine in the state.

"The situation is alarming and the state government has decided to untilise nearly 86 per cent of the beds in government facilities for the purpose of Covid treatment," a senior official of the health department said. There are 5,157 Covid beds in the city. Officially, Kolkata had 13,773 active cases on Sunday, with 2,197 new cases reported over the last 24 hours. Across Bengal, too, the new case count (8,419) was the highest ever, taking the total active case count to 49,638.

"The state government has increased 1000 beds in the last 4 days and we will increase 3500 beds in the next few days. All the hospitals in the government sector including ESI, a total of 100 is being prepared for Covid patients. We have also spoken to 58 private hospitals to ensure a greater number of Covid beds. We will use hotels as hospitals if needed".

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
UW Trustees to Hold Special Meeting Wednesday

The University of Wyoming Board of Trustees will hold a special meeting via teleconference at 7 a.m. Wednesday, April 21.

The meeting will begin in executive session to consider the purchase of real estate, possibly followed by action in open session.

The public session will be livestreamed via UWs WyoCast system and YouTube at https://wyolinks.uwyo.edu/trusteesapril/.
BEATTY, Ore.  Forestry officials say that evacuation levels have been lowered north of Beatty as fire crews work to contain the Ponina Fire, though two structures have been destroyed.

Firefighters made "great progress" overnight on the Ponina Fire, officials said, raising containment to 10 percent. The fire is now estimated at 1,400 acres.



Photo courtesy Christopher Trotchie Photo courtesy Christopher Trotchie

The fire was first reported around 2:30 p.m. on Sunday. After an initial response from firefighters, a local Type 3 Incident Management Team took over control of efforts on Monday morning.

"Yesterday firefighters were assisted by two air tankers from San Bernardino that came up from California, which were a great help in the firefighting," officials said. "Two local interagency Hotshot Crews will be starting work on the fire this morning. Additional resources will be on the fire today."

According to the South Central Oregon Fire Management Partnership (SCOFMP), two structures were lost to the flames. Nevertheless, the Klamath County Sheriff's Office has dropped evacuations in the area to Level 2 after Sunday night's progress, allowing residents to return home if they wish. They are warned to be prepared for evacuation again if conditions change.

"Smoke is highly visible in the surrounding area, including Oregon State Highway 140," officials said. "There will be increased fire traffic in the area, including on Hwy 140 and the Sycan Road. Travelers in the area should use caution, reduce speed and be prepared for possible delays."

The Ponina Fire burns in an area with narrow roads, and the public has been advised to avoid the fire area for their own safety and that of responding fire crews.

"Temperatures continue to be unseasonably warm and summerlike," officials said. "Relative humidity is expected to remain very low, in the teens. Fuels remain dormant and dry, meaning fire can carry quickly. The public is urged to use extreme caution with fire on private and wildlands, especially as the area is already seeing early wildfires."

Klamath County suspended open burning last week, and that suspension is expected to continue amid the current dry conditions.
Tucked into Esther Steinberg safety deposit box in Wichita, Kansas was her prized recipe for strudel. She kept it a secret, sharing it with only a few people like her granddaughter Jacqueline Winch. Learning to make the strudel, was like a right of passage. Really, it was like a bat mitzvah of cooking, Jacqueline, who is the mother of famed baker Duff Goldman, explains.

It was a two day ordeal, I had to spend the night and the apartment was as big as a normal persons living room and the kitchen was as big as a closet, Jacqueline recalls. Mamo, as Esther was known in the family, showed Jacqueline how to stretch the dough across her dining room table, how to bend her wrist just so to prevent the dough from tearing. The result was a translucent dough that was stuffed with an apple marmalade. The secret ingredient? Canned pineapple, mixed into the apple filling. Jacqueline says she was sworn to secrecy.

Its one of many recipes Esther left behind in her unique style of writing. She wrote English phonetically, Duff explains. She spelled everything with a Russian accent, which is really funny. So, everything is misspelled, but when you read it, it sounds like you have a Russian accent. Many of the recipes, which now live in Duffs Southern California home, are written on stationary from the Hollywood Hat Shop, the store Esther owned in Wichita.

And, most of her recipes were from the old country, Jacqueline adds. Esther lived in Halych, a town in western Ukraine until she was a teen, when she immigrated to the United States, settling in Wichita. Inspired by her new home, some of her recipes took on American twists. As for the strudel, no one is quite certain about the recipes origin.

Esther was a gifted baker. She could make any kind of dough. She never took out a book, she just knew what to put in: how many eggs for this kind of dough and how much oil for that kind of dough, Jacqueline adds.

Among her baking recipes is one for babka, that was forgotten and later revived when Duff was asked to contribute a babka recipe to the Food Network Magazine. He called his mother Jacqueline who shared it with him. Its not a recipe she makes, but its one she loves. A couple of years ago, Duff invited Jacqueline for Seder to meet his then girlfriend Johnna. Knowing his moms love of babka, and not living in a traditionally observant home, he baked her a loaf. Even though its very not kosher for Passover, he acknowledges.

It was shared between Johnna and Jacqueline. My mom and her were eating it after the Seder and they kind of bonded and it was nice to watch them eat babka and drink coffee, Duff recalls. After cleaning up, Jacqueline pulled Duff to the side and said quietly: I like her. And that was when I really knew, ok, I can marry this girl.

Today, both recipes are treasured, but neither lives under lock and key. Duff and Jacqueline have decided to share their family recipes  thankfully, with us.
A 20-year-old man on probation is suspected of carjacking, kidnapping and raping an ex-girlfriend one day after being released from a Southern California jail, authorities said.

Lizandro Diaz Salgado pleaded guilty earlier this month to two misdemeanor counts of contempt of court for disobeying court orders. He was sentenced to eight days in jail, but released on April 12 with credit for time served, CBS 2 News reported.

On April 13, Salgado ran up behind his ex-girlfriend while she was walking to her car in Placentia, the woman told police. She said she was able to lock herself in the car, but Salgado jumped on the hood and battered the windshield until it shattered.

As she tried to escape, Salgado forced the woman back into the car then drove to a commercial complex where he sexually assaulted her before letting her go, investigators said.

Salgado was arrested the next day while riding a bike in nearby Anaheim.

Salgado faces multiple charges including rape, sexual penetration with a foreign object, kidnapping, carjacking, domestic battery and criminal threats, according to court documents. A lawyer for Salgado could not be found.

The victim was treated at a hospital for non-life threatening injuries, the news station said.

SANTA ANA
YEREVAN, APRIL 19, ARMENPRESS. President of Lebanon Michel Aoun received Minister of Youth and Sport Vartine Ohanian ahead of her upcoming visit to Armenia, the Lebanese Presidential Office said on social media.

President Aoun asked the minister to convey his greetings to Armenias President Armen Sarkissian and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

The Lebanese President has recently received an invitation to visit Armenia to attend the Armenian Genocide commemoration events on April 24. However, he was not able to visit Armenia and instead instructed the Minister of Youth and Sport to attend the commemoration events.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
Police at the scene used their squad car to rush critically injured Jaslyn Adams, 7, to Stroger Hospital, after she had been shot at a West Side McDonalds drive-thru in April. Adams was pronounced dead a short time later.
I-69 Traffic Stop Leads to Meth, DUI Charges

By West Kentucky Star Staff

MARSHALL COUNTY - A traffic stop Friday night in Marshall County resulted in a man's arrest on DUI and drug charges.The Marshall County Sheriff's Office said deputies stopped a vehicle on I-69 at approximately 9:45 pm. Deputies made contact with the driver and identified him as 43-year-old Steven Gibson.As a result of the stop, Gibson was arrested and lodged in the Marshall County Detention Center. He's charged with DUI 2nd degree, possession of methamphetamine, possession of controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia, no registration and no registration receipt.
By Juliet Nalwooga

The Annual Crime Report 2020 has revealed that crime cases decreased by 8.9 percent compared to the cases reported in 2019.

While launching report at the police headquarters in Naguru, the Inspector General of Police (IGP) Martins Okoth Ochola said the crime cases decreased from 215,224 in 2019 to 195,931 in 2020.

He has attributed the decrease to among others; the Covid-19 induced lock down that confined the masses in their homes, increased investment in anti-crime infrastructure like CCTV cameras and increased police presence among others.

He however says that they are currently working to urgently address incidents of corruption, indiscipline, human rights abuse amongst police officers and also roll out constant refresher trainings to enhance service delivery.

The police Annual Crime Report is a form of accountability on the progress of the institution in efforts to ensure peace, law and order that eventually leads to economic stability.
Bengaluru, April 19 : Karnataka Chief Minister B. S. Yediyurappa said on Monday that decisions to issue fresh rounds of curbs to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in the state will be taken after discussing it in an all-party meeting that is scheduled to be held virtually at 4:30 pm on Tuesday (April 20).

Yediyurappa made this statement after attending Bengaluru legislators and MPs meeting virtually on Monday from hospital that was convened by Revenue Minister, R. Ashoka to discuss in detail with Bengaluru legislators here in Vidhana Soudha here.

After the surge in Covid cases, Karnataka government had enforced night curfew in eight cities - Bengaluru, Mangaluru, Udupi-Manipal, Mysuru, Kalaburagi, Bidar and Tumkur - from April 10 to April 20.

The night curfew is active from 10 pm to 5 am every day. The state government directed civic marshalls and police officials to initiate action against those who violate the night curfew in the state.

But after COVID-19 cases continued to rise in the state, particularly in Bengaluru, the state government decided to announce stringent rules on Monday. It also comes at a time hospitals in Bengaluru are complaining about severe shortage of oxygen, beds and medicines.

Meanwhile, taking a dig at the spike in Covid cases, Karnataka leader of the Opposition, Suddaramaiah quipped that Karnataka chief minister (Yediyurappa) is in the hospital and the state government is in ICU.

Yediyurappa was admitted to a private hospital on April 16, after he was tested Covid positive.

Siddaramaiah also demanded that Yediyurappa government to table a white paper on its preparedness to tackle the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, in Bengaluru.

"Covid patients complaining about no hospital beds in government hospitals and they cannot afford private hospitals. There is an acute shortage of lifesaving drugs like Remdesivir and oxygen. Hence, the state government must table whitepaper on its preparedness," he argued.

Siddarmaiah observed that last year, when Covid struck for the first time, it was an unexpected assault.

"But instead of preparing itself to tackle the pandemic, the BJP government used the pandemic as an excuse to indulge in corruption, as a result of this, the virus has gained upperhand and the government is struggling to contain disease. The ruling BJP stands exposed before the people today," he charged.

"The second wave is turning fatal and the state government is helpless," added Siddaramaiah./Eom/390 words

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Liz Hart studied city planning with an eye on helping her hometown, and a foot in the door working for the former Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero. But his persistent sexual harassment led her to abandon that dream.

Virg Bernero is a charismatic leader who built a national brand as Americas Angriest Mayor by going to bat for the city of Lansing. He has connections all over the city, and some statewide pull, too; he was the Democratic candidate for governor in 2010.

He had mounted another mayoral run, which he abruptly ended on Sunday after women including Hart told MLive he had sexually harassed them.

Hart started working for Bernero as an intern in his mayoral office in 2013. She agreed to join his campaign leading fundraising efforts later that year, and it was then  mostly in conversations at the campaign office  that she started feeling uncomfortable around him.

When you work with people you get to know them. And thats kind of what it was at first. And then he would slip in like sexual comments, like things that he liked. Or he would ask me questions of things that I would like. I would never answer, I never felt comfortable with it. But that was how it started, Hart said.

But thats not how it ended. His conversations with her grew more explicit. She started ignoring phone calls from him late at night, and fending off sexual conversations, advances and requests.

At a lunch with other campaign workers and mayoral staff one day, Hart was wearing sandals and had one foot crossed over her leg when Bernero picked the spot next to her.

He sat down, put his stuff down, and somehow he decided to just take his finger and run it along my foot. I just... I moved legs, I switched them, and didnt say anything, she said.

Later, she said, he told her he had a foot fetish.

Emily Heverly, a friend of Harts, volunteered on the Bernero campaign. She remembers Hart describing uncomfortable incidents with Bernero, including having touched her foot, and an uncomfortable situation in his mayoral office.

Hart said at one point, Bernero called her into his mayoral office, but hid her from other staff members. He asked her to drink vodka he kept in his desk.

He was like really, really persistent about it, and finally I just said sure, so I took a sip and that was it, Hart said.

He was ranting about the city council and getting physically close to her, she said. Then, he asked me to show him one of my breasts and I was just like absolutely not. She texted Heverly to call her and used the call as an excuse to leave.

Hearing about the sexual harassment Hart was experiencing at the time, I remember feeling so powerless to not be able to help her. Because I cant tell my friend to like quit her job. Shes a few months out of undergrad, Heverly said.

And Berneros sexual harassment ended up impacting Heverly, too.

Hart and Heverly both remember an incident when, while they were working at the campaign office and he dropped by, he propositioned them for a threesome.

He steered the conversation in the direction of threesomes, and then he roundaboutly suggested that Liz and I should have sex together in front of him and that he should participate. It was very bizarre. It was very uncomfortable, Heverly said.

She thinks one of them said no, and Bernero moved on.

But Heverly saw it as a numbers game  Bernero was just constantly throwing out sexual innuendo and propositions, seeing if anything would stick. And a lot of that targeted Hart.

She was being sexually harassed every single day, and I happened to be there for that one, Heverly said.

In an initial April 16 statement to MLive when asked about these incidents, Bernero said after he left the mayors office he worked on himself and his marriage.

But I realize my past actions and words impacted people outside my family, and I sincerely apologize to anyone whom I have caused pain, especially the women who have come forward. It was never my intention to hurt anyone, and I apologize to each of them, he said.

He was running, he said, not as a perfect man but as a better man.

In a Sunday update, he took himself out of the running, saying in a Facebook post, My wife and family have forgiven me for the mistakes of the past, but politics is less forgiving.

Hart and Heverlys accounts come on top of allegations about other sexual harassment from Bernero printed in a weekly Lansing newspaper, The City Pulse. Two women spoke to the paper anonymously.

One, a former House staffer who confirmed details of the encounter to MLive, described a 2010 incident where Bernero met her on the street and touched her, running his hand along her thigh over her clothes and laying his whole hand flat on her thigh as he moved to grab and examine her House employee badge hanging from her belt loop.

I just froze. I didnt know what to do. What do you do in that situation? said the woman, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution.

She was shaken by the incident, and when she got back to the office there was an email from him waiting for her with his phone number in it. She deleted it.

Her account was corroborated in the City Pulses account by a male intern who was with her at the time and witnessed the incident.

Bernero initially issued a generic apology to the City Pulse, but later denied the incident had occurred and called it character assassination he implied was linked to an opponents campaign. In a statement to MLive, he said the incident did not happen, period, not on a public street or anywhere.

The woman found his response insulting, and said she had no involvement in any mayoral campaign.

The fact that he made himself into the victim just made me sick. Hes not the victim. And no, its not like a political smear campaign, she said, adding,...if he un-apologized he clearly is not a changed man.

Another woman, who worked in television, told City Pulse that when Bernero was a lawmaker, he called her from the floor to tell her how great her legs looked on a recent report. She recalled at least three calls from him, all sexual in nature.

Bernero said he did not recall the reported phone calls, but I apologize if I offended someone with crude or inappropriate language. It was not a regular practice then and does not happen now.

Lansing-based political consultant Emily Dievendorf also experienced crude comments from Bernero. When she ran for political office in 2015 he gave her unsolicited advice on her appearance and said that if she wore her hair a particular way, he wouldnt be able to control himself around her.

She knows she isnt the only woman hes made inappropriate comments to and said some are not able to speak up because of the influence he still has in the city.

I think especially with Virg, theres a charisma that people will latch on to. And they will excuse other behavior, Dievendorf said.

Hart said back when she was working on the Bernero campaign she was learning, in-between all the sexual harassment. Bernero went into meetings engaged and enthusiastic. He sold people on the city, which interested her from an economic development and planning perspective.

I mean, he was a total pervert, but he was really good at being a politician, Hart said.

After working on the mayoral campaign, Hart went to work for a political consultancy, and then with the Board of Water and Light, Lansings municipal utility.

But she still saw Bernero regularly through work, and his influence in the city loomed large. People thought Hart was Berneros mistress. A professional contact asked her directly about it. Berneros wife was mean to her, she said. And she got the feeling he was encouraging those false rumors.

I know he liked it. And then, you know, for some reason that turned against me, Hart said.

The experience led her to leave the state. Shes since found success and used her city planning expertise to help grow other communities. And shes never coming back to Lansing.

For Hart, who started out wanting to help her hometown, having to leave was a big blow.

It started off as sexual harassment, and it really did ruin my life and my hometown for me. And he got away with it, Hart said.

Years later, shes done with Lansing and done staying silent.

I know women dont speak up because they think it could ruin their career. And I didnt speak up and it still ruined mine.
A woman holds an EU flag next to police officers during a protest over the Russian intelligence services alleged involvement in an ammunition depot explosion in Vrbetice area in 2014, outside the Russian Embassy in Prague, Czech Republic, on April 18, 2021. (David W Cerny/Reuters)

Czechs Say Russian Retaliation Stronger Than Expected, Urge EU Solidarity

PRAGUEThe Czech Republic said on April 19 that Russias eviction of 20 Czech Embassy employees in response to Pragues expulsion of 18 Russian staff was a stronger-than-expected reaction and that the government will consider further steps.

Acting Czech Foreign Minister Jan Hamacek said he had asked fellow European Union foreign ministers for an expression of solidarity at a video conference on April 18.

I expect that also on the basis of this  we will learn about more expressions of support and it will be up to member states if they add some concrete decisions, he said.

The central European country ordered the Russian diplomats out on April 17, saying it suspected Russian intelligence was involved in explosions at an ammunition depot in October and December 2014.

A man carrying a NATO flag walks past police officers outside the Russian Embassy in Prague, Czech Republic, on Apr. 18, 2021. (David W Cerny/Reuters)

The Czech government has said it has reason to suspect that two Russian intelligence agents accused of a nerve agent poisoning in Britain in 2018 were behind the ammunition depot blasts four years before that killed two people.

Russias Foreign Ministry criticized Pragues decision not to disclose all details of the investigation to Moscow, describing the affair as a blow to bilateral relations.

This is proof that this whole story is a fabricated, dirty, disgusting fake, RIA news agency cited Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying.

The row is the biggest between Prague and Moscow since the end of decades of Soviet rule over Central and Eastern European countries in 1989.

The Kremlin, commenting on the allegations that Russian intelligence was involved in the explosions and on the subsequent diplomatic expulsions, called the Czech Republics actions provocative and unfriendly.

The Czech Foreign Ministry said the Russian Embassy in Prague had 129 diplomats and other personnel, and two regional consulatesabout twice the size of the Czech Embassy in Moscow.

By Jason Hovet, Jan Lopatka, and Alexander Marrow
U.S. Republican Representative Chris Smith, the co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, in a Congressional hearing on April 15 described the South Korean government's ban on sending propaganda leaflets -- or "bible and BTS balloons" -- as a "retreat from its longstanding commitment to human rights," and said he is "extremely" alarmed by it.

In the same hearing his co-chair, Democratic Representative James McGovern expressed hope that the National Assembly will "fix the bill" and provide the "redress" which democratic process allows. Both U.S. political parties believe the South Korean ban to be an infringement of freedom of expression and human rights. Witness after witness testified that the South Korean government is suppressing criticism of the North Korean regime in its harebrained pursuit of cross-border rapprochement.

That is a spectacular embarrassment for the government, but the Unification Ministry vowed to uphold the leaflet ban. One supposedly progressive academic who is thought to be Moon's mentor accused the U.S. of "meddling" in South Korea's internal affairs, and some die-hard supporters of the president gathered in Seoul to stage an anti-U.S. protest. One ruling-party lawmaker said, "Such a hearing based on preconceptions must never be held again."

But Smith said the South Korean government's infringements have been described as "democratic decay" and urged it to "resume its commitment to civil and political rights in particular, and human rights in general. It must do so, not only for the sake of Korea both South and North, but also for the entire world." The U.S. Congress accusing South Korea of violating human rights and suppressing democracy and the South accusing the U.S. of meddling is reminiscent of the military dictatorships of the 1970s and 80s. That it should be replayed now, with a government that has set itself up as a shining beacon of democracy, is a disgrace.


9 Texas High School Seniors to Graduate With Incredible 5.0 GPAsAll Named Valedictorians

Bellaire High School is attracting media attention and making history in the process. Nine BHS seniors with perfect GPAs of 5.0 will complete their schooling this yearall as valedictorians.

The nine star students and the colleges they plan to attend are:

Daniel ChenCarnegie Mellon University

Alkiviades BoukasUniversity of Texas

Evie Tsen-Ying KaoUniversity of Texas

Miles MackenzieUniversity of Texas

Angela Lingundecided

Wenson Tsiah-Hao TangCarnegie Mellon University

Christopher ZhouRice University

Shirley Zhuundecided

Annie ZhuStanford

I think a big part of school is just being able to explore interestsso Ive just really enjoyed taking all of my classes and pushing myself to do the best of my ability, Annie Zhu told 12 News.

Interestingly, Annies twin sister, Shirley, who hasnt decided on a post-secondary institution yet, is also graduating as a valedictorian.

(TOP ROW, L-R) Angela Ling, Annie Zhu, Shirley Zhu; (MIDDLE ROW L-R) Alkiviades Boukas, Christopher Zhou, Daniel Chen; (BOTTOM ROW L-R) Evie Tsen-Ying Kao, Miles Mackenzie, Wenson Tsiah-Hao Tang. (Courtesy of Houston Independent School District)

Take joy in learning! There will be challenges, but challenges are what make something rewarding in the end, she suggests. Put the time, effort, and energy into classes, but also explore your interests with different clubs and please prioritize your mental health. When you start to have tunnel vision  take a step back and take a breather.

This major achievement proves that anything is possible when you work hard. These students took online classes for the majority of the year due to the pandemic and proved that theres nothing bigger than their ambitions.

Just not being able to see all your other classmates makes it feel like you arent really in classso having that discipline was definitely more important this year, said Annie.

The twins have been in the news before this milestone. Their activities garnered attention when they co-founded Fresh-Hub, a nonprofit organization that redistributes unwanted food to the locals.

And thats something thats going to continue on after we leave Bellaire High School with juniors taking the lead, said sister Shirley.

Both unweighted and weighted scores are calculated in Houston Independent School District (HISD). The school is expected to hold its graduation ceremony on Sunday, June 13.

These students are inspiring examples of what can be achieved through dedication and hard work, said HISD interim superintendent Grenita Lathan. I am incredibly proud of all of them for this milestone achievement and know that they are also actively involved at Bellaire High School.

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
Tufted Puffins Return to Oregon Coast - Cannon Beach, Bandon, Coos Bay

Published 04/18/21 at 6:05 PM PDT

By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff

(Cannon Beach, Oregon)  Eagerly awaited every spring, they are back on the Oregon coast. Those beautiful, graceful and thoroughly enchanting tufted puffins have returned, at least at Cannon Beach's Haystack Rock and likely a few other spots. (Photo courtesy Ram Pampish)

The Friends of Haystack Rock and the Haystack Rock Awareness Program (HRAP) both gleefully announced the return earlier this month, with HRAP providing volunteers on the beach to point them out to you as well as posting various puffin trivia on their Facebook page. See the HRAP schedule.

The southern Oregon coast has them as well, along with a few other spots along these beaches, but they're not nearly as accessible as Cannon Beach's Haystack Rock. They've been known to linger at Simspon Reef near Coos Bay, where they're a little closer than most areas down south.

Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) said they can also be found at Coquille Point, although not every year, but more prominently in Bandon.

From May to August, tufted puffins nest on islands at Haystack Rock in Cannon Beach and Face Rock in Bandon. Remember to bring binoculars or a spotting scope to see them, ODFW said. A great time to check out the coast for offshore pelagic seabirds is after a large storm.

In the Tillamook County area, tufted puffins can be seen at Three Arch Rocks at Oceanside. There is no firm confirmation of sightings in areas other than Cannon Beach, but it's common by this time of year.

Last spring, the Oregon coast was still under quarantine and beaches were closed, so HRAP was not operating  and visitors could not check out the new batch on Haystack Rock. This time around, the adorable black, white and orange creature is back in full view, as are the volunteers.



Face Rock in Bandon, courtesy Manuela Durson

Even in Cannon Beach you'll need optics to zoom in on the rock and properly see the puffins.



Some of the near-shore rocks at Bandon also host quite a few, but that part of the south coast has had more issues with people treading on nests. ODFW said that if a human steps on or near one of their burrowed nests the tufted puffin may not even return to that area for a whole year or longer.

The bird is not considered rare, but it's certainly scare to human eyes. However, ODFW and HRAP have told Oregon Coast Beach Connection their numbers are in serious decline. Some figures have their numbers down more than three quarters of what they were in the 80s, from around 5,000 in Oregon down to below a thousand.

Shawn Stephensen, a biologist with US Fish and Wildlife out of its office in Newport, explains further.

Historically, along the Oregon coast we've had 5,000 but we're down to a few hundred," he said. "They're also found in California, Washington and Canada along the coasts. In Alaska, there's a huge population: thousands of colonies of tufted and horned puffins in Alaska. We only get tufted puffins along the Oregon coast, although occasionally a horned puffin washes onshore from somewhere out on the ocean.

A funny thing about Puffins is that many don't know they're here in Oregon, and even when experts like HRAP present the idea some folks are so skeptical they even reject the idea. It actually takes some convincing at times.

That's the reaction that we get all the time, just about every time, HRAP told Oregon Coast Beach Connection in 2019. They find out there are puffins here and then there is shock and awe. And then sometimes they think they're not actually there. MORE PUFFIN PHOTOS BELOW

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Photos above courtesy Ram Pampish

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The Centre has withdrawn the insurance scheme of Rs 50 lakh for healthcare workers who die in the line of COVID-19 duty.

The Union Health Ministry, in a circular sent out last month, informed the states about the conclusion of the Pradhan Manti Garib Kalyan Package (PMGKP).

Although the Rs 50 lakh insurance scheme expires on April 24, the Union Health Ministry is holding talks with an insurance company to come up with a new dispensation, it said. As per the ministry, the Garib Kalyan Package insurance policy claims of healthcare workers will continue to be settled till April 24. Following this "a fresh insurance policy for COVID warriors will become effective."

Also Read: Centre asks states to stop fresh registration of healthcare, frontline workers for COVID-19 vaccine

However, the health ministry's circular, sent last month, noted that the insurance scheme concluded on March 24 while only 287 claims have been processed so far.

"The PMGKP: insurance scheme for the healthcare workers fighting Covid-19 was implemented with effect from 30 March 2020, initially for a period of 90 days to provide an insurance cover of Rs 50 lakh to the healthcare workers fighting the pandemic, the duration of the scheme was extended up to 24 March 2021," stated the ministry's circular.

Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said in the letter that although "the scheme has acted as a very effective safety net and has been able to provide relief to the healthcare workers who have lost their lives due to Covid-19, it had to be concluded on the same day".

The circular further stated that 287 claims had been approved/paid so far by the insurance company under the scheme. However, at least 736 doctors have succumbed to COVID-19, as per the Indian Medical Association (IMA).

"Pertinent to note that only 287 doctors out of 736 deceased have been given Rs 50 lakh," said Dr. Ravi Wankhedkar, National President, IMA. Meanwhile, the Centre hasn't released the official data on the healthcare workers who passed away in the line of duty during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Centre had announced the PMGKP scheme last year as part of its Rs 1.7 lakh crore COVID relief package to provide a safety net for healthcare workers and their families.

Also Read: Delhi under complete lockdown for six days, from tonight till April 26

Centre says new cover coming soon

With the reports of the Centre concluding the insurance scheme extended to healthcare workers came up, the Union Health Ministry came out with a clarification that it had not withdrawn the insurance scheme to them. The ministry further cleared that the scheme played a key psychological role in boosting the morale of the healthcare workers in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. The ministry added that a new dispensation will be extended to cover the corona warriors, for which it is in talks with an insurance company.

"Garib Kalyan Package Insurance Policy Claims of Covid Warriors will continue to be settled till 24th April 2021, thereafter a Fresh Insurance Policy for Covid Warriors will become effective-MoH&FW, GoI," the ministry said.

#Unite2FightCorona

Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Package(PMGKP) was announced on March 2020, and was extended thrice till 24 April '21. It was launched to provide safety net to Health Workers to ensure that in case of any adversity due to #COVID19,their families are taken care of. a Ministry of Health (@MoHFW_INDIA) April 18, 2021

"The claims under PMGKP will be settled by the Insurance Company till 24th of April 2021. Thereafter a new dispensation will be provided to cover the Corona Warriors, for which the Ministry is in talks with the Insurance Company (New India Assurance)," it added.
NASHVILLE, Tenn., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- GEODIS announced today that Anthony Jordan has been promoted to the role of Executive Vice President (EVP) and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the Americas region.

An industry veteran with more than 35 years of experience, Jordan is appointed EVP and COO after serving most recently as Senior Vice President and Head of Market Line Operations for GEODIS in Americas. Jordan has dedicated the past 15 years of his career at GEODIS in various senior-level positions.

Anthony Jordan, EVP and COO of the Americas Region

"Throughout Anthony's 15-year tenure at GEODIS, he has proven himself as a true logistics professional who has played an instrumental role in supporting our company's growth," said Mike Honious, GEODIS in Americas President & CEO. "Since his start at GEODIS, Anthony has been an integral team member responsible for cultivating impactful customer relationships, and his experience and vision will be critical to the continued success of the company as we move into the future."

Jordan began his career at GEODIS in 2005 as the Director of Customer Care where he led critical initiatives such as its customer satisfaction survey, net promoter score and quarterly business reviews across key accounts. In 2010, he was promoted to Vice President of Account Management. Among his many accomplishments, he was responsible for implementing its Customer Relationship Management Program to maintain and enhance its client service capabilities.

In 2013, Jordan was promoted to Senior Vice President of Contract Logistics Operations where he oversaw the design and implementation of customized logistics solutions from production and warehousing to distribution to the final customer. Prior to his promotion as EVP and COO, Jordan served as Senior Vice President and Head of Market Line Operations where he developed and executed strategies to optimize key accounts utilizing multiple GEODIS sites across its vast network.

In his new role, Jordan will be responsible for developing the strategic vision and providing operational leadership across GEODIS in Americas. Leveraging his expertise, Jordan will continue developing strategies to further grow the company's high level of customer service.

Prior to joining GEODIS, Jordan spent 18 years in similar industry positions at FedEx Supply Chain. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Memphis in Tennessee.

To learn more about GEODIS, visit www.geodis.com

GEODIS  www.geodis.com

GEODIS is a top-rated, global supply chain operator recognized for its commitment to helping clients overcome their logistical constraints. GEODIS' growth-focused offerings (Supply Chain Optimization, Freight Forwarding, Contract Logistics, Distribution & Express, and Road Transport) coupled with the company's truly global reach thanks to a direct presence in 67 countries, and a global network spanning 120 countries, translates in top business rankings, #1 in France, #6 in Europe and #7 worldwide. In 2020, GEODIS accounted for over 41,000 employees globally and generated 8.3 billion in sales.

SOURCE GEODIS
State-owned operator Telecom Egypt and Sudatel Group, a leading telecommunications service provider in Sudan, have signed a cooperation agreement in the field of international connectivity.

The agreement, signed last week, notes that the two countries plan to make optimal use of the terrestrial optical fibre that connects them, and to develop the latest technologies to support the transport of international traffic. There are also plans to link Sudatel Group's landing station, which is in Port Sudan, to Telecom Egypt's landing stations on the Red Sea.

The main aims of the agreement, according to Adel Hamed, Telecom Egypt's CEO, quoted by Ecofin Agency, are to exchange experiences and maximize the benefits of the current connection between Egypt and Sudan, and to work towards creating new opportunities for international connectivity via submarine cables with the aim of pushing towards digital transformation in Egypt and the region.

A number of media outlets point out that Telecom Egypt's aim to work more closely with Sudatel Group is part of the companys general efforts to develop its broadband connectivity with neighbouring countries and play a key role in the sub-region.

Demand for broadband connectivity is growing quickly across Africa, as it is in many other places, but broadband is still not widely available; Telecom Egypt's ambition is to be an active part of the digital transformation of the continent.

At the same time, Telecom Egypt is said to be looking to expand its internet capabilities with the aim of building future revenue streams from data.
Pioneering Second World War codebreaker Alan Turing would be 'disgusted and horrified' by the idea he is 'the nation's victim', according to his nephew.

Dermot Turing, 60, has penned a new book Reflections of Alan Turing: A Relative Story which he says tells the true story of the mathematician, who cracked the German Enigma code and was known as the 'father of computer science' for his innovative methods.

In June 1954 Turing, then 41, who had been given hormone therapy and dragged through the courts for being a homosexual, was found dead with a half-eaten apple on his bedside table, with the death ruled a suicide.

However, speaking to The Times, Dermot said he has found no evidence his uncle was 'singled out for evil treatment', saying: '[The Imitation Game] portrays him as being a victim and pathologically unable to form relationships. It also portrays him as someone who was very isolated and unable to achieve any of his work other than in a completely solitary environment. I believe all of those things to be completely and utterly wrong.'

Pioneering Second World War codebreaker Alan Turing would be 'disgusted and horrified' by the idea he is 'the nation's victim', according to his nephew Dermot, 60

Dermot hit back at the portrayal of Alan in the smash hit film The Imitation Game, suggesting it was 'a cracking good movie' but wildly inaccurate.

He argued Turing's big breakthroughs were the result of his interactions with other people and his best work came as a result of team work.

Dermot said Turing wasn't unsociable, as is depicted in the film, but instead argued it was just that most other people, including his family, had no interest of understanding in his passion.

He believes that Alan's life 'started going wrong' after he was put on hormone therapy in the 1950s, when homosexuality was treated as 'some kind of mental condition.'

Dermot said he believes much of what the British public believes about Alan is a myth, arguing Benedict Cumberbatch's portrayal in The Imitation Game was 'completely wrong'

Saying his uncle was 'treated like a lab rat', he said Alan complained of 'growing breasts'.

Yet Dermot has uncovered letters which suggest the WWII hero 'brushed off' the treatment 'as a bit of a joke' and said there isn't any evidence that he was 'affected badly mentally by it.'

While researching his book, Dermot said Alan's mother Ethel was a particularly dominant figure in his life, saying she was 'always controlling' him and he found it 'increasingly difficult.'

Alan he was disgraced in 1952 when he was convicted for homosexual activity, which was illegal at the time and would not be decriminalised until 1967.

Dermot doesn't doubt how difficult the trial must have been for his uncle, but argued he was never 'hung out to dry'.

While researching his book, Dermot uncovered letters form his uncle that suggested he 'brushed off' hormone therapy he was subjected to as a gay man

He explained how colleagues of Alan's from GCHQ and Manchester University spoke in his defence, helping to convince the judge not to send Alan to prison,

Before his death, Alan was encouraged by his psychiatrist to document his dreams and thoughts in a journal, with Dermot arguing he detailed the break-down of his relationship with Ethel.

After learning of his passing, the family frantically searched through Alan's house in a bid to stop the journal from falling into his mother's possession.

Adding to speculation about whether Alan's death was really a suicide, Dermot said that Alan's psychiatrist, with whom Alan had a very close relationship, was surprised by the sudden death.

He said: 'We have to remember that Alan had a great relationship with his psychiatrist, and he was seeing him very regularly and I don't think the psychiatrist was expecting this.

Before his death, Alan was encouraged by his psychiatrist to document his dreams and thoughts in a journal, with Dermot arguing he detailed the break-down of his relationship with Ethel

'If he was still around to talk about it, I'm sure he'd have some very interesting opinions.'

Last month, Britain's spy centre devised its 'toughest ever' quiz to celebrate Alan becoming the new face of the 50 note by the Bank of England.

It was confirmed in 2019 that Alan would be the next person to feature on the note, after the Bank of England asked the public to nominate a person with a historic scientific contribution for the new note.

Governor Mark Carney revealed Turing was chosen from a list of 989 candidates put forward in more than 220,000 nominations.

The new polymer 50 note is expected to enter circulation by the end of 2021.
After 3 years of waiting, the much-awaited romantic-comedy drama, starring SNSD's Sooyoung, Choi Tae Joon, and 2PM's Chansung, is about to meet the audience this 2021.

Korean Adaptation of "So I Married an Anti-Fan" to Premiere Sometime this 2021

A Korean remake of the hit Chinese film "So I Married an Anti-Fan" is finally coming this 2021. Chinese streaming platform iQIYI dropped the first trailer of their newest project.

On April 16, the fans who have been waiting for the release of the said series got the chance to see a glimpse of the story and characters that they are looking forward to watching.

"So I Married an Anti-Fan" tells the story of the unexpected romance between a Korean superstar and an anti-fan. Choi Tae Joon is Ho Joon, an A-list and famous K-Pop idol who'll find himself entangled with his notorious anti-fan Lee Geun Young to be played by SNSD's Sooyoung.

ALSO READ: Korean Female Celebrities With Attractive Long Legs

Despite his rude and cold appearance, the known superstar turns out to have a warm and kind personality.

After he met Lee Geun Young, Ho Joon started to show his true self to her and began to quietly take care of her.

Meanwhile, 2PM member and "What's Wrong with Secretary Kim?" actor, Chansung, is expected to portray the character of Ho Joon's longtime friend named JJ. But due to jealousy, JJ will become the great rival of Ho Joon in his life and career.

Joining them in the drama is actress Han Ji An, who will be playing the role of Oh In Hyung, a struggling actress who will be torn between JJ and Ho Joon, whom she finds helpful in her career as an artist.

Things to Know More about the Upcoming Rom-Com Drama and Its Cast

"So I Married an Anti-Fan" was originally finished last 2018 but did not have any specific release date due to some circumstances. And this 2021, iQIYI is proud to present that they will be the one to produce the said series.

In 2016, EXO member Chanyeol starred in a film adaptation of "So I Married an Anti-Fan" and was loved by the fans and viewers. Chinese actress Yuan Shanshan was his leading lady in the movie. Girls' Generation's Seohyun also appeared as the character of Irene.

This drama marks Choi Tae Joon's return on the small screen following his 2017 series "Suspicious Partner," alongside Ji Chang Wook and Nam Ji Hyun.

Idol-turned-actress Choi Sooyoung is about to meet her fans again with this new romantic drama following the success of her 2021 project "Run On." The Girls' Generation member will be showing her sweet and friendly side in "So I Married an Anti-Fan," a persona that was far from his previous role as Seo Dan Ah (Run On).

Are you excited to watch this new romance series, starring three of your favorite Korean stars SNSD's Sooyoung, Choi Tae Joon, and 2PM's Chansung? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!

For more K-Drama, K-Movie, and celebrity news and updates, keep your tabs open here at Kdramastars.

Kdramastars owns this article.

Written by Shai Collins
By Jerri-Lynn Scofield, who has worked as a securities lawyer and a derivatives trader. She is currently writing a book about textile artisans.

Four California communities  the counties of Los Angeles, Orange, and Santa Clara, and the city of Oakland  today faced off against four drugmakers, Allergan, Endo International, Johnson & Johnson, and Teva Pharmaceutcal  in a trial via videoconference in California.

This is the second opioids action to move forward to trial. The first resulted in a $572 million verdict against J & J, handed down by Oklahoma state judge Thad Balkman in August 2019 (see Judge Issues $572 Million Verdict Against J & J in Oklahoma Opioids Trial: Settlements to Follow?). Thousands of similar proceedings are pending, and the California action will help litigants define a reasonable settlement values for these lawsuits. Next up after the California action is a case due to commence in federal court in West Virginia in May, followed by a New York state trial slated for June.

Im posting this bit later than I usually like to do. The reason: I wanted to be sure the California trial went forward as scheduled before I filed. Litigants often settle just before a trial is due to start  as indeed was the case the last time I wrote about an upcoming opioids trial, in October 2019, Four Companies Settle Just Before Bellwether Opioids Trial Was to Begin Today in Ohio. I remember that event well, as I was waiting for the trial to begin before uploading my post discussing the pending trial. I was in Madrid and had plans for a short visit to the Prado once my post was up. Instead, when the last-minute settlement was announced, I scuppered those plans and revised my post to reflect the late-breaking development.

So, today, I decided to hold off on finalizing any post until I could confirm the California trial had begun.

While I was waiting to figure out what was happening in California (which did begin as scheduled, according to Reuters), I spied an NPR piece, Court Blasts Drug-Maker Endo For Trying To Improperly Corrupt Opioid Trial, reporting on a Tennessee state judges entry of a default judgment against Endo Pharmaceuticals for discovery misconduct. According to NPR:

The judge presiding over the civil trial also concluded the drug maker and its attorneys made at least a dozen false statements during the pre-trial fact-finding process. It appears to the court that Endo and its attorneys, after delaying trial, have resorted to trying to improperly corrupt the record, wrote Chancellor E.G. Moody 

Judge Moody didnt mince words, describing at length the discovery abuses that led him to issue his order, which I have embedded at the end of this post. This order represents an unusual reprimand for a law firm of the stature of Arnold & Porter.

The judges ire is apparent:

This court has already held Endo and its attorneys in contempt of court for failing to conduct a reasonable search and for failing to produce responsive documents in response to Plaintiffs discovery requests. The Court is especially concerned about the many false statements to Plaintiffs counsel and to the Court by the Endo Defendants attorneys in the course of the discovery process. Now that Endo has completed its productions, the only remaining question is what sanctions to impose.

The judge didnt buy Endos argument that what he called discovery misconduct was merely a simple misunderstanding between plaintiffs counsel and defense counsel. Instead:

The Court finds that the record demonstrates otherwise. It is clear to the Court that Endo and its counsel at Arnold & Porter wilfully withheld responsive records in violation of this Courts September 28, 2018 Order to Compel, in violation of this Courts February 12, 2020 Certification Order, and (more generally) in derogation of Plaintiffs reasonable document requests and Endos discovery obligations. Many of the records that Endo knowingly withheld were highly relevant  It is apparent that Endo intended to defend itself at trial by touting its anti-diversion measures, while simultaneously depriving Plaintiffs of evidence that would have undercut that defense. Accordingly, the Court finds that Endo wilfully withheld this information during the discovery phase to gain a litigation advantage at trial. The Court further finds that Endo and its attorneys false statements violated the Tennessee Rules of Civil Procedure and the Tennessee Rules of Professional Conduct.

After continuing in a similar vein for another page and a half, judge Moody reaches the crux:

Under the circumstances, the Court finds that entry of a default judgment is warranted. This case involves a clear record of delay or contumacious conduct [citation omitted]. This Court had to compel or sanction Endo to participate fully in discovery multiple times, which was part of a pattern of delay. Endos discovery misconduct (and untruthful statements to the Plaintiffs and the Court) were repeated, without reasonable excuse, delayed various aspects of discovery by more than a year, and were intensely prejudicial. Plaintiffs did not contribute to these delays. The Court finds that this was part of a coordinated strategy between Endo and its counsel to delay these proceedings, deprive Plaintiffs of information that would support their case, and interfere with the administration of justice.  It is obvious that monetary sanctions are not sufficient. Endo and its attorneys have not shown any remorse, admitted their wrongdoing, or apologized to opposing counsel or the Court for their actions. For all of these reasons, the Court hereby enters a DEFAULT JUDGMENT in favour of the Plaintiffs. Although this is a harsh sanction, justice demands it under the circumstances. Anything else would make a mockery of the attorneys who play by the rules and the legal system [original emphasis].

If the judges recitation of the facts is correct, I think its unlikely his decision will be overturned on appeal. So the next phase of the proceedings will be a bench trial during which he will determine the amount of the damages to be awarded. Over to NPR again:
New Delhi: Two sisters in Kolhapur have filed a police complaint against their husbands due to being subjected to mental and physical torture over a 'virginity test', according to reports.

The sisters got married to the men belonging to the Kanjarbhat community last year and have alleged that one of their husbands and his parents attempted to annul their marriage after one of the sisters failed a 'virginity test'.

One of the sisters recounted their harrowing experience after getting married and the consequences of failing their 'virginity test', in an interview with the Times of India.

She said, "I got married on November 27 with Sandip Kanjarbhat. My mother-in-law Shobha Sunny Khanjarbhat tortured me two days after the wedding. My husband tried to hang me by the ceiling. My mother-in-law hit me on the face and she used to pinch me."

"About virginity test, they asked us to get ready and have dinner. Their relatives were present at the spot. The beds were ready with white sheets but I had no idea they

were planning this. I didn't bleed so they alleged that I wasn't a good character. My husband used to threaten me that he will ask someone to rape me in Belgaum. My husband

said if I have any self-pride left I should go home or die by suicide or they will force me to die by suicide," she further stated in the interview.

To threaten her, the complainant's mother-in-law would tell her about her son getting other marriage proposals as stated in the interview.

She revealed, "Mother-in-law used to say there are other women ready to marry her son and heavy dowry such as gold ornaments and four-wheelers."

According to the complainant, her husband and his family misled her to her mother's house and abandoned her there. "My husband works with Indian Army as Havaldar. They misled me to come to my mother's house for a ceremony and left me there," she stated.

Since one of the sisters failed the 'virginity test', her in-laws attempted to call off the wedding with the authority of the caste panchayat.

"They have called off the wedding not in the courtroom but before the caste panchayat. The caste panchayat panch said my husband can now remarry," the complainant explained.

As per reports, on April 8, the sisters had lodged an FIR against the husband and his parents for unofficially declaring a divorce and the case is under investigation. Before filing a police complaint, the complainant's mother had sought help from the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti, an organisation that helps fight superstition in India.
Ranchi: The second wave of coronavirus is proving to be infectious than the first one. There is an increasing demand of Remdesivir for critical patients in Jharkhand, thus the state government sought permission from the Centre to import 50,000 vials of the COVID-19 drug from a Bangladeshi pharmaceuticals company.

Chief Minister Hemant Soren on Sunday (April 18) wrote a letter to Union Cabinet Minister DV Sadanand Gowda asking for permission to import the supply as soon as possible.

#COVID19: Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren writes to DV Sadananda Gowda, Minister of Chemicals & Fertilisers, requesting permission to purchase 50,000 vials of Remdesivir injection from a Bangladesh-based company. pic.twitter.com/vH57TZmNjO  ANI (@ANI) April 18, 2021

"We had anticipated the second wave to be less virulent due to vaccination and herd immunity. But, on the contrary, a large proportion of patients are showing major symptoms and require hospitalisation and other such treatment protocols...Remdesivir is a vital medicine in the treatment protocol of a COVID-19 case. Unfortunately, there is an acute scarcity of the medicine in Jharkhand," read the letter.

The letter further said that the supply from Indian manufacturers fell short of the growing demand for the drug which led it to explore the international market for the medicine.

"Since we could not get the Remdesivir as per our requirement from Indian manufacturers, we started exploring the international market for procuring Remdesivir. We have been able to get a quotation from Bangladesh's Beximo pharmaceuticals for 50,000 vials of the drug which the Jharkhand government is willing to procure at the earliest in light of the pressing needs of the medicine," the letter added.

"In view of the above, I would request you to allow us to import and use the medicine from the said company," the letter concluded.

Earlier on Saturday (April 17), CM Hemnat Soren urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to direct the Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Defence to issue necessary instructions for permitting the state government to deploy doctors and paramedics of the CPMFs and Military Hospitals for the treatment and management of COVID-19 patients.

Live TV
Srinagar, April 19 : One terrorist has been killed in an ongoing encounter between terrorists and security forces in the Zeipora area of South Kashmir's Shopian district on Monday.

Police said one unidentified terrorist has been killed in encounter at Shopian.

"Operation is going on," police said.

The gunfight between terrorists and security forces took place after a joint team of the police and the army cordoned off the area and launched a search operation on the basis of specific information about presence of terrorists.

As the security forces zeroed in on the spot where terrorists were hiding they came under a heavy volume of fire that triggered the encounter in which one terrorist has been killed.
Imperial Valley News Center

Should pregnant women be vaccinated for COVID-19?

Rochester, Minnesota - Pregnant women are at an increased risk for serious illness if they become infected with COVID-19. Pregnant women have altered immune systems, and that could make them more susceptible to COVID-19. Also, research shows that pregnant women with underlying comorbidities or medical health conditions are at higher risk of having worse outcomes if they are infected. Compared to women who are not pregnant, have the same health conditions and are at the same age, a pregnant woman is about 1.3 to 1.4 times more likely to be hospitalized if infected with COVID-19.

While there are limited data about current COVID-19 vaccines in pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers, it is important to understand the risks and benefits for you and your baby. Early research indicates that antibodies induced by the vaccine, which are passed to the baby through the placenta and in breast milk, may be beneficial to the baby. Studies are ongoing and women should talk with their health care providers about any concerns.

But since the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorization for COVID-19 vaccines, The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine have firmly recommended that pregnant women have access to them if they so choose.

I have received many questions about whether a fetus can be exposed to COVID-19 by a mother being vaccinated for COVID-19. The answer is no. Any vaccine that has a live virus that replicates is not used in pregnant women because of any theoretical risk. The COVID-19 vaccines are not using live virus. Therefore, the baby should not be exposed to the virus, as the COVID-19 vaccines are the genetic code for a single protein. It doesn't replicate in a person. It doesn't cause an infection of COVID-19.

Because the COVID-19 vaccines are for emergency use, they were not tested in pregnant women during the first trials. So, there is no direct evidence of safety in pregnancy. What is known is that there is a lack of theoretical evidence of harm.

There is no reason why COVID-19 vaccines should harm pregnant women. None of the components of the vaccines  the nanoparticles  are known to be harmful in pregnancy. The best evidence for pregnant women suggests that being vaccinated for COVID-19 is a lot safer than getting COVID-19. Likewise, there is no indication that COVID-19 vaccines are harmful or damaging to women who are breastfeeding or to their infants.

Recently, a safety study compared women who were pregnant and not pregnant, and who received COVID-19 vaccines. The report showed no significant differences in reactions between the two groups.

The data review, which was performed by the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, indicates that over 30,000 women who are pregnant have safely been vaccinated for COVID-19. The preliminary safety study, which took place between December 2020 and January 2021, compared women who were pregnant and not pregnant, and who received the Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.

The advisory committee found that one day after vaccination, local reactions in both study groups were similar. In nearly all cases, no significant differences in reactions were experienced, such as localized pain, redness, fatigue, headache or fever.

Women who are pregnant and have received the COVID-19 vaccination are encouraged to participate in V-safe  a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention safety monitoring program following COVID-19 vaccination. These women are being followed at these specific intervals to monitor for longer-term adverse effects: once per trimester, after delivery and when the infant is 3 months old.

So far, 1,949 patients have been enrolled in the V-Safe monitoring program and 275 patients have completed pregnancies to date, including 232 live births. Pregnancy outcomes such as miscarriage, stillbirth, pregnancy complications and infant outcomes among participants are no different than general rates in women who are pregnant and have not been vaccinated for COVID-19.

I often am asked whether the vaccines could cause infertility and if women should wait to become pregnant if they are not already. There's no evidence of COVID-19 vaccines causing infertility. For my patients, I share the recommendation that women who are trying to conceive should stay on their contraception, go through the COVID-19 vaccination series and then revisit conception.

Although it is a personal choice for each person, COVID-19 vaccines are known to be effective. Knowing how dangerous infection can be in pregnancy, I believe that the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccine outweigh the risks for pregnant women.

Regardless of your decision, it is important that you  and everyone  continue social distancing and masking.  Dr. Regan Theiler, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota
Anyone sexually active under age 30 should be offered testing for chlamydia and gonorrhea, according to a new guideline from the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

Chlamydia and gonorrhea are the most commonly reported sexually transmitted bacterial infections (STIs) in Canada and are treatable with antibiotics. Without treatment, these infections can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, pain and possibly infertility.

"If people are under 30 and sexually active, it's a good idea to get tested," says Dr. Ainsley Moore, a family physician and associate clinical professor, Department of Family Medicine, McMaster University, and chair of the task force chlamydia and gonorrhea working group. "Many people are asymptomatic and may not seek treatment so we're recommending opportunistic testing -- that is, at any health care visit."

The guideline recommends that health care providers in Canada offer routine testing for chlamydia and gonorrhea annually to all sexually active patients younger than 30 who are not known to belong to a high-risk group. Sexual activity is defined as anyone who has had oral, vaginal or anal intercourse.

Why is the task force recommending screening?

1 in 20 sexually active individuals 15-29 years old will get chlamydia.

Reported rates for this age group are 1.0%-1.9% (chlamydia) and 0.2%-0.3% (gonorrhea).

Many people are asymptomatic or do not seek care and are not included in reported cases.

True rates of chlamydia in 15- to 29-year-olds may be as high as 5%-7%.

Rising rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea in people aged 25-29 years since 2000.

Screening may reduce pelvic inflammatory disease in females.

This recommendation does not apply to pregnant people, people known to the clinician to be at increased risk based on sexual behaviours, or patients seeking care for a possible STI. Clinicians should consult national, provincial, or local guidance when providing care for these individuals.

Current practice in Canada recommends screening sexually active people who are not at high risk up to age 25.

"This recommendation to extend screening to age 30 reflects increasing rates of infection among Canadians aged 25 to 29 years," says Dr. Donna Reynolds, a member of the working group, family physician and an assistant professor at the University of Toronto. "As it's an easy test, usually a urine test or vaginal swab, it can be done at any visit to a physician, nurse practitioner or sexual health clinic."

The recommendations also consider the potential for anxiety and embarrassment around screening for STIs.

"Although we recommend this as routine, clinicians know to expect feelings of fear, anxiety or embarrassment on the part of some patients and be ready to discuss these," says task force member Dr. Brenda Wilson, a public health physician and professor at Memorial University, St. John's, Newfoundland.

The guideline recommends also screening males as the primary source of infection for females, for whom the health consequences can be greater.

"Screening males, who are often without symptoms, may reduce transmission and complications in females and may improve health equity for females," says Dr. Moore.

Target Audiences

Clinicians - The guideline is aimed at clinicians in primary care, sexual health and student clinics and other settings.

Public - As the guideline is aimed at people younger than 30, an infographic, Instagram campaign and frequently asked questions will help explain why it's a good idea to get tested.

The task force engaged Canadians to understand their values and preferences around screening to inform recommendations. They expressed a strong preference for screening.

The College of Family Physicians of Canada, the Nurse Practitioner Association of Canada and the Canadian Association of Perinatal and Women's Health Nurses have endorsed the guideline.

In a related commentary http://www. cmaj. ca/ lookup/ doi/ 10. 1503/ cmaj. 210604 , Drs. Troy Grennan, BC Centre for Disease Control, Vancouver, British Columbia, and Darrell Tan, University of Toronto, write a "potential benefit of the authors' recommendations is its potential to normalize conversations about sexual health and STIs between clinicians and patients, which have long been marred by stigma and shame. Offering screening may help patients feel that they 'have permission' to discuss health issues that may seem difficult to talk about."

The commentary authors note that the lack of high-quality evidence on the topic should spur researchers to engage in future studies to inform guidelines and clinical practice.

###

For the guideline, public infographic, clinician and patient FAQs, visit the chlamydia and gonorrhea guideline page at http://www. canadiantaskforce. ca . Listen to a podcast with author Dr. Ainsley Moore: https:/ / soundcloud. com/ cmajpodcasts/ 201967-guide/ s-9efVPEXmdA3

About the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care

The Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care is an independent panel of health professionals who are experts in clinical preventive health care and guideline methodology. The task force's mandate is to develop and disseminate evidence-based clinical practice guidelines for primary and preventive care.
Two police officers have been forced to apologise after they were caught kissing in a patrol car at a Tesco supermarket.

One witness said they saw the officers kissing for 20 minutes in the carpark in Blackburn, Lancashire.

The witness said the female officer then got out and walked round to the driver's side to continue smooching through the window.

One man who saw them was so stunned that he began filming the interaction.

He said of the incident in a Tesco car park off Carl Fogarty Way: 'I was sat with my friend in the car park, I'd gone to fix my car.

One witness said they saw the officers kissing for 20 minutes in the carpark in Blackburn, Lancashire

'After we were done we were just parked in the supermarket car park having a little break.

'My friend noticed the police officer in his mirror and saw that a woman had got into his car. It just didn't feel right.'

He said the pair were initially in their own cars - the male officer in a liveried police car and the woman in an unmarked car on Good Friday.

While he was on-duty it appears she was not working at the time of the incident, although is an officer with the Lancashire force.

The witness said the female officer then got out and walked round to the driver's side to continue smooching through the window. One man who saw them was so stunned that he began filming the interaction

The witness went on: 'Initially they were in their own cars. They pulled up next to each other and were talking from car to car. She then got out and got into his car.

'They were kissing in the car - their faces were colliding. They were sat in the car for about 20 minutes.

'This is an on-duty police officer sitting in a car for 20 minutes doing b***** all.

'It annoyed me. People were walking past and taking a double look into the vehicle and thinking ''Is that really happening?'' They were laughing and joking and kissing. I don't think they should be doing it on police time, even if he was on his lunch break it looks bad.'

He said of the incident in a Tesco car park off Carl Fogarty Way: 'I was sat with my friend in the car park, I'd gone to fix my car'

And he added: 'They were there for a long time - all in all about an hour if not longer. That's what made me think it couldn't be a lunch break.

'It's a big town, there will be a lot going on, enough for them to do. People are getting burgled and they don't bother going out to them.'

A spokesman for Lancashire Police described it as an 'isolated incident.'

A spokesman said: 'Lancashire Constabulary appreciates the impact social media videos can have on public confidence.

'This was an isolated incident involving one off duty and one on duty police officer.

'The officers have since been spoken to and apologised for their conduct and understand how this may have been interpreted, the matter is now closed.'
Newest Deals Bring Portfolio To 29 Investments in 30 Months Since Launch

LOS GATOS, Calif., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Since its launch less than three years ago, National Grid Partners (NGP) has put $227 million to work in dozens of startups at the intersection of energy and information technology.

(PRNewsfoto/National Grid Partners)

Now the utility industry's first Silicon Valley-based corporate venture and innovation group is poised to continue disrupting the future of energy with a new investment allocation of $150 million.

"Earth Week is a perfect time to announce this vote of confidence from our senior leadership," said Lisa Lambert, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer of National Grid (LSE: NG; NYSE: NGG) and the Founder and President of National Grid Partners.

She noted that National Grid this week kicks off its sponsorship of the United Nations' COP26 climate conference  the biggest convening of global environmental policy and industry leaders since the 2015 Paris Agreement.

As part of its COP26 activities in the United Kingdom this fall, NGP plans to hold its first annual summit of the Next Grid Alliance. This consortium of more than 60 worldwide utility companies provides senior level executives a platform to share industry best practices and to solve some of the biggest challenges facing the energy sector.

Lambert also announced today that NGP has invested $7.5M in two Silicon Valley companies that help enterprise customers protect physical and cyber infrastructure. They are:

Mountain View, Calif.- based Pathr, which uncovers human behavior and interaction in physical spaces like office buildings and factories. Pathr's cutting edge Spatial Intelligence platform uses existing hardware infrastructure to generate anonymous location data in real time. Better understanding of movement patterns can help Pathr customers increase revenue, optimize operations, improve energy efficiency, and strengthen physical security at their facilities.

AccuKnox, a Cloud Security innovator headquartered in Menlo Park, Calif. Formed in partnership with Stanford Research Institute, AccuKnox provides a Zero-Trust run-time Kubernetes platform for comprehensive security, compliance and governance in public and private clouds. The company's KubeArmor technology is built on seminal innovations in container security, unsupervised learning, and data provenance.

"We're backing companies that can help National Grid serve its customers more safely and securely, so adding Pathr and AccuKnox to our portfolio is a significant step toward fulfilling that objective," said Lambert.

Story continues

While more than 70 percent of NGP's portfolio companies have strategic engagements with National Grid  such as LineVision, which also joined the portfolio this month  seed-stage startups like AccuKnox and Pathr reflect NGP's commitment to invest in every stage of the innovation ecosystem. That stage-agnostic approach also includes NGP's Incubation office in San Francisco, and an Innovation team who turns ideas into prototypes that can be deployed in National Grid's business units or spun out as stand-alone companies.

NGP has led more than 60 percent of its startup investment rounds, with two M&A exits.

"We are investing in and deploying technologies across National Grid's networks to enhance resilience and reliability, while more easily integrating renewable energy," said Lambert. "Our company's ambition is to become the most intelligent, cleanest transmission and distribution network in the world."

About National Grid Partners

National Grid Partners (NGP) is the venture investment and innovation arm of National Grid plc., one of the world's largest investor-owned energy companies. NGP invests for strategic and financial impact and leads companywide 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 venture 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_) and LinkedIn.

Cision

View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/national-grid-partners-announces-150-million-in-fresh-investment-capital-adds-two-disruptive-startups-to-its-fast-growing-portfolio-301271087.html

SOURCE National Grid
Moderate mag. 4.8 earthquake - 25 km northwest of Tacna, Peru, on 18 Apr 7:27 pm (GMT -5) -

Moderate magnitude 4.8 earthquake at 10 km depth

19 Apr 00:33 UTC: First to report: GFZ after 5 minutes.

19 Apr 00:34: Magnitude recalculated from 4.9 to 4.8. Epicenter location corrected by 5.6 km (3.5 mi) towards N.

Update Mon, 19 Apr 2021, 00:39

4.8 quake 25 km northwest of Tacna, Peru, 18 Apr 7:27 pm (GMT -5)



According to preliminary data, the quake was located at a shallow depth of 10 km. Shallow earthquakes are felt more strongly than deeper ones as they are closer to the surface. The exact magnitude, epicenter, and depth of the quake might be revised within the next few hours or minutes as seismologists review data and refine their calculations, or as other agencies issue their report.

A second report was later issued by the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC), which listed it as a magnitude 5.0 earthquake.

Based on the preliminary seismic data, the quake was probably felt by many people in the area of the epicenter. It should not have caused significant damage, other than objects falling from shelves, broken windows, etc.

In Yarahuay (pop. 16) located 12 km from the epicenter, and Tacna (pop. 280,100) 25 km away, the quake should have been felt as light shaking.

Weak shaking might have been felt in Chipispaya (pop. 1,900) located 40 km from the epicenter, Ilabaya (pop. 9,500) 47 km away, Quilahuani (pop. 3,200) 57 km away, Chuquitira (pop. 4,200) 69 km away, San Antonio (pop. 15,600) 89 km away, and Moquegua (pop. 54,500) 91 km away.

VolcanoDiscovery will automatically update magnitude and depth if these change and follow up if other significant news about the quake become available. If you're in the area, please send us your experience through our reporting mechanism, either An earthquake of magnitude 4.8 occurred early evening on Sunday 18 April 2021 at 7:27 pm local time near Tacna, Provincia de Tacna, Peru, as reported by the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ).According to preliminary data, the quake was located at a shallow depth of 10 km. Shallow earthquakes are felt more strongly than deeper ones as they are closer to the surface. The exact magnitude, epicenter, and depth of the quake might be revised within the next few hours or minutes as seismologists review data and refine their calculations, or as other agencies issue their report.A second report was later issued by the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC), which listed it as a magnitude 5.0 earthquake.Based on the preliminary seismic data, the quake was probably felt by many people in the area of the epicenter. It should not have caused significant damage, other than objects falling from shelves, broken windows, etc.In Yarahuay (pop. 16) located 12 km from the epicenter, and Tacna (pop. 280,100) 25 km away, the quake should have been felt as light shaking.Weak shaking might have been felt in Chipispaya (pop. 1,900) located 40 km from the epicenter, Ilabaya (pop. 9,500) 47 km away, Quilahuani (pop. 3,200) 57 km away, Chuquitira (pop. 4,200) 69 km away, San Antonio (pop. 15,600) 89 km away, and Moquegua (pop. 54,500) 91 km away.VolcanoDiscovery will automatically update magnitude and depth if these change and follow up if other significant news about the quake become available. If you're in the area, please send us your experience through our reporting mechanism, either online or via our mobile app . This will help us provide more first-hand updates to anyone around the globe who wants to know more about this quake.

Download the Volcanoes & Earthquakes app to get one of the fastest seismic alerts online:

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Earthquake data:

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please share your experience and submit a short "I felt it" report! Other users would love to hear about it!

Also if you did NOT feel the quake although you were in the area, please report it ! Your contribution is valuable also to earthquake science and earthquake hazard analysis and mitigation efforts. You can use your device location or the map to indicate where you were during the earthquake. Thank you! If you felt this quake (or if you were near the epicenter),Other users would love to hear about it!Alsoalthough you were in the area, please! Your contribution is valuable also to earthquake science and earthquake hazard analysis and mitigation efforts. You can use your device location or the map to indicate where you were during the earthquake. Thank you!

Data for the same earthquake reported by different agencies

Info: The more agencies report about the same quake and post similar data, the more confidence you can have in the data. It takes normally up to a few hours until earthquake parameters are calculated with near-optimum precision.

Magnitude Depth Location Source 4.8 10 km Near Coast of Peru GFZ unspecified n/a Near Ilo, Moquegua, Peru VolcanoDiscovery 4.5 40 km SOUTHERN PERU EMSC 5.0 24 km 55 Km Al NO De Tacna, Peru GUG (U. Chile) 4.5 28 km 10 Km W of Sama Grande, Peru USGS 4.8 28 km Near Coast of Peru USP

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South Koreas government, the Republic of Korea (ROK), on April 19 said that it had proposed a law to require its citizens to get official permission before using the internet to exchange digital material, such as movies, music, scanned books, or artwork, with anyone in North Korea. While speaking at a news briefing, Lee Jong-joo, a spokeswoman for South Korea's unification ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, said that the law already regulated physical goods sent into or out of North Korea. But now the proposed changes would add digital content as well.

Lee said, While in the past the main target (of the law) was the movement of goods, gradually there have been cases of transferred or received scanned files or software via the internet becoming a focus.

When asked whether ROK was considering restricting radio broadcasts, Lee said that such broadcasts are not categorised as a transfer of digital materials. Now, if approved by the parliament, the latest measure would be the first major amendment to South Koreas Inter-Korean Exchange and Cooperation Act in three decades. It will also be a part of its recent efforts to improve relations with North Korea.

Seouls measures may infringe freedom of expression

The measure comes after the South in December banned the launching of propaganda leaflets into the North. It is worth noting that the measure announced in December had drawn criticism of right activists, who have for decades sent anti-North Korean leaflets over the border using balloons or bottles in the sea. The measure had also attracted negative attention from some politicians in the US, which is South Koreas biggest ally.

Last week, the Human Rights Commission of the US House of Representatives raised concerns that some measures taken by Seoul may infringe on freedom of expression. The proposed law will affect the defectors in South Korea, who often try to remain in touch with family members through calls or the internet, and campaigners as well, who have also sent food, medicine, money, mini radios and USB sticks containing South Korean news and dramas. North Korea, on the other hand, have long denounced the practice and has also stepped up its condemnation of it, to the alarm of the South Korean government intent on improving ties on the divided peninsula.

(Image: AP)
The central bank of China seems to have shifted its tone this time towards bitcoin after considering it to be an "investment alternative." Besides, the Chinese government official said that the crypto assets will likely accelerate after clarifying that it is not a currency by itself.

Because of this sudden statement, it was now being watched closely for some changes which might happen. What pushed China bank to release a surprising bitcoin comment despite the crypto crackdown that happened in 2017.

PBOC Says Bitcoin is Crypto Asset and an Alternative in Investment

The People's Bank in China (PBOC) now regarded the said cryptocurrency as a true asset. PBOC's deputy governor, Li Bo shared that they are "investment alternatives" during a panel interview with CNBC at the Boa Forum for Asia.

Despite the banning of initial coin offerings (ICOs) in 2017, China has once transformed into one of the most massive bitcoin buyers globally.

At 12:25 pm Beijing time, the value of Bitcoin has skyrocketed at an approximate 2%, as per data provided by Coindesk.

ICOs were headed to initiate money-raising activities for those firms that handle cryptocurrencies. This is done by issuing digital tokens.

However, final instability would likely hit the economy at the time after the closing of local cryptocurrency exchanges in the same year. This has sparked many concerns that the crackdown could cause a lot of trouble in finance.

Read Also: Tesla CEO Elon Musk Not the Richest Man Anymore After Bitcoin Tweet Cost Him $15 Billion Loss

Li's statement not only suggests how the Chinese bank views bitcoin at the moment but also their "change of heart" to shift gears in cryptocurrency ideals.

Moreover, China together with other countries is now exploring what regulatory requirements could happen upon considering bitcoin as an investment alternative.

Babel Finance founder Flex Yang referred to the comments as "progressive," while Luno business development head, Vijay Ayyar said in a CNBC email that the PBOC is quite significant and is now contrasting to what they commented about cryptocurrencies over the past years.

China is Currently Developing Own CryptoCurrency

In the United States, huge tech companies like Tesla have already invested in bitcoin acquisition. Around the globe, bitcoin seems to be far from over, since many investors eye it for their financial stability despite Ray Dalio's prediction of a bitcoin ban in the US.

Last week, bitcoin hit an impressive record of over $64,000 which accounts for a 95% increase this 2021.

In another statement, Ayyar spoke that what China is doing to its cryptocurrency will provide an industry boom around the globe. This is also in line with the achievement of the government to grow through purchasing its assets.

At the moment, China seems to be creating digital yuan, its own digital currency. The difference of it from bitcoin is its purpose of not being a cryptocurrency.

PBOC targets it to be a replacement of cash and coins which are presently in the economic circulation.

By the 2020 Beijing Winter Olympics, Li stated that the digital yuan could undergo significant trials involving foreign investors. Currently, China seems focused on conducting a series of digital currency tests in its major cities.

Despite its drop earlier this week, bitcoin will still be a hyped trend in virtual trading.

Related Article: China Bitcoin Mining Could Reach 296.59 TWh: This Could Affect Its Climate Change Reduction Programs



This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Joen Coronel

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
's ( ) Jonathan Rowland joins Proactive London to explains the firm's ambitions to trade on the OTCQB Venture Market in the US.

Rowland describes this move as 'a natural progression' given the attention from US based investors and his experience working in the country.

He also highlight the 'huge interest from the US in Fintech'. Addresses the recent moves in crypto, Rowland says they have a long term plan and short term moves don't really matter to us.
Ghana has been asked to make a law on campaign expenditure and finance to enhance the overall transparency and accountability of political finance, the European Union (EU) Election Observation Mission to Ghana (EU EOM) has suggested.



It said the law should establish disclosure requirements of incomes and expenses for parties and candidates and limits on expenditure and donations, including for in-kind donations.



The Chief Observer of the EU EOM, Mr. Javier Nart, made the call when the team presented its observations and recommendation on Ghanas 2020 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections at a press conference.



The Mission returned to Ghana to present its final report on its observation of the elections and to discuss with stakeholders the proposed reforms contained in it.



Justification



It said such legislation established effective oversight, sanctions and enforcement mechanisms that included a timely publication of all campaign finance reports, including online.





The EU EOM also asked Ghana to introduce an effective sanctioning mechanism against the misuse of state resources, including administrative and security apparatus, during the election period.



It also asked the government to provide the National Media Commission (NMC) with sufficient resources to conduct media monitoring and properly oversee the work of the media.



Collation



Mr. Nart further called for improved procedures for counting and collation and for the publication of detailed results.



He stated that the recommendations were proposals for consideration by Ghanaians, adding that they aimed at improving future electoral processes and strengthening Ghanas democracy.





He said the return visit was the EU EOMs final activity and explained that afterwards the EU Delegation was going to support Ghanaian authorities and civil society in efforts to implement the recommendations.



Mandate



The teams mandate was to assess the electoral process against international obligations and commitments for democratic elections as well as the laws of Ghana.













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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Austin shooting suspect Stephen Broderick has been taken into custody in Austin, according to the Travis County Sheriff's Office.

Broderick, 41, was arrested without incident around 7 a.m. Monday after police received reports of a man walking along US 290 in Manor, KVUE reported. He was taken into custody by Travis County Sheriff's Office deputies.
DEAR ABBY: I recently met a man, and I have fallen in love with him. He says he feels the same way and tells me often that I treat him better than anybody ever has.

Unfortunately, when the time came to move our relationship to an intimate level, I found my attraction to him was one-sided. When I asked him why, he said he did not find me desirable because of my weight. He also mentioned that in the past he had always dated "Barbie dolls" who did him wrong, so he decided to look for something different, and that's when he found me.

I don't understand how you can love someone and not desire them. What are your thoughts? -- ONE-SIDED IN TEXAS

DEAR ONE-SIDED: This man may love your many attributes -- intelligence, honesty, sense of humor, etc. -- but he is not IN love. If you want a romantic relationship, you need to find someone who values you for YOURSELF -- inside and out. Give him marks for honesty and send him back to his Barbie dolls because you deserve better, and he deserves more of the same.

DEAR ABBY: While I was battling cancer, my husband vanished into thin air with all our money. It has been years now, and we finally were divorced, but I have never been able to get over what he did to me. Talking to professionals helped some, but I still wonder what happened.

We were together for 20 years. I was left in a remote part of Alaska to fend for myself when I could hardly get around after the surgery and radiation treatments. It's like he wanted me dead. How can I possibly get over what I thought was the love of my life? -- CAN'T LET GO

DEAR CAN'T LET GO: Your husband may have been the love of your life, but the love of HIS life was ... him. That he not only ran when the chips were down but cleaned out the bank account, leaving you battling a life-threatening illness, was beyond the pale. Why he did it was fear, weakness and lack of character.

Having prevailed over cancer and poverty, getting over your ex should be a cinch. However, finding the ability to trust again may be another matter, and no one would blame you if you couldn't do it. An important step forward might be more counseling to help you cope.

DEAR ABBY: My friend has an adult child with a drug addiction. Sometimes when we are together, this child will call begging for money. My friend gives in every time. She feels terrible about doing it but can't seem to say no. She has attended several Nar-Anon meetings, but no longer wants to go because she says it's depressing. As a friend, what's the best way to support her? -- HER CARING FRIEND

DEAR FRIEND: Although those meetings may be "depressing," they can also be enlightening if someone is open to it. Point out to your friend that even MORE depressing would be losing a child to addiction and knowing that she was the enabler. Then volunteer to attend meetings with your friend until she gains the strength to act responsibly.

Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.
Photo: (Photo : Photo by Yulianto Poitier from Pexels)

To honor the death of their son, they will fund a children's swimming lessons program to lessen the drowning rate on their farm. He loved people and was known as "Phar Lap's heart," with blue eyes and great, cheeky smiles. He loved them.

However, during a flirtation accident in Grahamvale, the beloved 2-year-old sadly drowned, leaving Matt Boyle and Ashlie Napolitano behind his distraught parents.

The family members now face the unthinkable - the loss of "their precious little soul," which they said shone every day. During a visit to his grandfather's farm, Hunter drowned in the Grahamvale dam. He fed horses around 11:20 a.m. when he was lost in a split second and tragically discovered to be in the water unresponsive a short time later.

They also thanked the police officers and Ambulance paramedics, who immediately attended the scene. They stayed with the couple as they helplessly watched their son fight for his life.

READ: Why Should Children Take Swimming Lessons?



Hunter was raced into Shepparton's Goulburn Valley Health to spend nearly seven hours battling to save his life. The physicians and health care workers were Royal Children's Hospital PIPER Unit members. Around 30 employees at GV Health struggled relentlessly to revive Hunter and miraculously succeeded in making his heartbeat again.

For little Hunter, the struggle was excessive, and he died that night around 6:30.

Matt and Ashlie accepted with heartfelt condolence from all the GV Health workers as the couple struggling to cope with the loss of their only child.

They also thanked the police and paramedics who were present at the scene and in Ambulance. That was already eight months ago. The nightmare of a parent, Ashlie Napolitano, when the two-year-old son of her husband drowned in a barrage on his grandparents' farm, can't go in vain. Hunter is one of thirteen children who drowned since last July in Victoria.

ALSO READ: Viral Video: Baby Tossed into a Swimming Pool by an Instructor

Children's swimming lessons a must

Now, Ms. Napolitano and fiancee Matt Boyle honor their kid's memory by collecting money to cover children's bathroom lessons for the families in difficulty. They founded the Hunter Boyle Children's Swim Program.

The couple in Shepparton want money in the countryside for families. They said they have friends on the farms who struggle financially. Sadly, sometimes swimming lessons have to sit back and hold the roof over them, buy food and maintain electricity. So, they decided to take the pressure away, since in farms there will always be a dam, or a canal, or creek or river or some open body of water. They want to remind those living on a farm must know how to swim.

Currently, they work with the Kidsafe child crash prevention organization, which refers to families in need of the Bridge Street Youth Services in Shepparton.

READ MORE: Your Child's Extra Lessons Do Cost You a Little Extra



So far, they earned almost $40,000 for swimming lessons, and the money went to the first families last week. Ms. Courtney of Kidsafe said that the curriculum was necessary because Victoria has a high drowning rate. The swimming lessons had been disrupted as a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic.

Hunter's parents are now adamant about ensuring that no family has no awareness of water security and reinforces parents' message that they don't indulge in water.

Ms. Napolitano said, "We would love one day to fund lessons for children Australia-wide. There are children everywhere, due to a range of reasons, who don't have the opportunity to attend lessons."

Ms. Napolitano added that there are so many ways children can drown in the home. The parents will never know how many lives they will save, but they will surely make a difference.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI  A man who has spent much of his adult life locked up was sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison for robbing a Fifth Third Bank in Grand Rapids.

Kimatha Roderico Smith, 48, of Grand Rapids, was on supervised release in an earlier holdup when he robbed the bank at 700 Bridge St. NW, on Nov. 2.

He was desperate for cash. After finishing a lengthy prison sentence, he wasnt equipped for a return to society, his attorney said.

Mr. Smith recognizes that this is not his first bank robbery, James Stevenson Fisher, an assistant federal public defender, wrote in court documents.

However, the fact and circumstances of his offense conduct demonstrate that this was a crime of despair committed by a person who has become utterly institutionalized after decades in prison.

Smith was convicted in a 2000 bank robbery and sentenced to six years, eight months in prison. Eight years later, he was sentenced to 12 years, 7 months in a second bank robbery.

U.S. District Judge Janet Neff in Grand Rapids on Friday, April 16, sentenced Smith to 12 years, 7 months in the 2020 robbery. Once his sentence ends, he has to serve three years on supervised release.

Neff set restitution at $791.

Smith told his probation officer he was drunk and high in the latest holdup, a federal prosecutor said.

Smith grew up in a rough, poor neighborhood, his attorney said.

Mr. Smith never really had a chance to excel in life. He grew up in a community in Southeast Grand Rapids where poverty and violence were all he knew and witnessed almost daily, Stevenson wrote.

While in school, he was a victim of what is now labeled as the school-to-prison pipeline, often disciplined harshly, suspended, or expelled because of behavioral problems.

He said his client did not envision a world where he could overcome his surroundings. He was taught from a young age, especially by his school, that reaching out for intervention and help by acting out only got him kicked out of school, thus driving him deeper into a cycle of bad behavior and punishment.

After spending nearly 20 years in jail or prison, Smith hasnt learned how to be a productive member of society. When he last left prison, he was overwhelmed. During the pandemic, he couldnt find a job or housing. He was facing eviction from a hotel when a friend offered money to stay another week, his attorney said.

The friend, however, threatened Smith if he didnt repay immediately, the attorney said.

He felt he had no choice but to come up with the money quickly; his life literally depended on it, Stevenson said.

He said Smith confessed the crime to his probation officer but didnt think of sharing his struggles before the robbery.

The entire episode demonstrates Mr. Smiths institutionalization, Stevenson said.

Read more:

Man pleads guilty in 3rd bank robbery

Alleged drink tampering at Kalamazoo bar prompts thousands to sign online petition

Golf course, dentist, Kroger, Blue Cross Blue Shield fined for COVID-19 violations
Police at the scene used their squad car to rush the critically injured child to Stroger Hospital, where she was pronounced dead a short time later, police said. The man was also taken to Stroger, where he was listed in serious condition.
Israel has fully reopened its education system in the latest easing of coronavirus restrictions following its mass vaccination drive.

All primary and secondary school grades returned to classrooms on Sunday, and health officials ended a year-long requirement to wear a mask in public spaces.

Masks are still required indoors and in large gatherings.

Israel has speedily inoculated a majority of its population against the coronavirus in a world-leading vaccination campaign.

Over 53% of its 9.3 million citizens has received two shots of the Pfizer vaccine.

It has lifted most of its coronavirus restrictions and announced last week that it would be reopening the country to vaccinated foreign tourists starting in May.

In the months since Israel launched its vaccination campaign in December, serious cases and deaths have fallen precipitously and allowed the economy to fully reopen.

The vaccination campaign in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza has been slow to get off the ground, with Israel facing criticism for not sharing more of its supplies.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
Meet Edgar Corona and Micheal McClure, two groundbreaking recruits for the Whitfield County Sheriffs Office.



Theyre the first recruits chosen for Sheriff Scott Chitwoods new Deputy Training Program and left April 7 to begin 11 weeks of state-mandated training at the Georgia Public Safety Training Center in Forsyth.



While Corona and McClure took different paths on the way to their new careers, both men share the same basic reason for joining the Sheriffs Office  a strong desire to serve their community.



A first-generation American who grew up in Dalton as the son of Mexican immigrants, Corona says he knew he wanted to join law enforcement as a young child. After graduating from Southeast Whitfield High School in 2016, he earned a degree in criminal justice from Dalton State College in December 2020.



Corona then received his first taste of real-world law enforcement duty during a five-week internship with the Sheriffs Office, where he spent the first and last weeks with detectives and a week each with Patrol, Detention, and Court Services.



Ive always found it interesting to work for law enforcement, I guess since I was six or seven, he said. Nowadays, police officers as a whole are sometimes seen as intimidating, but to me, I have always thought they were the good guys. My parents always taught me to respect the law, to always abide by the law.



McClure, meanwhile, wasnt as sure about his career path after graduating from North Murray High School in 2014, first working in carpet mills before deciding to sign up for a four-year stint in the Air Force at age 21.



Once his time was up, McClure says it was the lure of family and friends waiting back home that led him to Whitfield County.



Youre in a different world out there by yourself, he said of his military days that included time in Texas and California, and youre missing holidays and birthdays and nieces being born. I have a big family, and they are really important to me.



In years past, the two recruits wouldnt have gone straight into the Patrol Division, instead having to join the staff at the Whitfield County Jail, almost like paying your dues, before being approved to attend the Police Academy and become a patrolman, says Lt. Juan Martinez, training officer.

With the current struggle to find enough Patrol officers, though, the department decided to scrap that method and begin the new program that Lt. Martinez believes will put two new patrolmen on local roads by the end of May.



Because the state requires all participants in the mandate training to complete a grueling physical fitness test within two minutes and six seconds, Whitfield County constructed a similar course that local participants must first pass before even being able to join the Deputy Training Program.



Two weeks ago, they went down and took the test at state, and both of them actually improved their times here by 20 to almost 30 seconds, Lt. Martinez said. With McClures military background, of course, he smoked it. And Edgar had really been running and prepping for it. Theres a big ol dummy that weighs like 150 pounds that they have to move, simulating an officer down and dragging them out of danger. Edgar had been practicing getting himself ready for that, and he smoked it, too.



Corona is quick to point out that he believes the actions of a few bad apples highlighted by the media dont reflect all lawmen. You cant let the bad things overshadow the good things, he says. I feel like law enforcement gets a bad rap. But in reality, I mean, who else are you going to call when something goes down?



During his internship, Corona says he came away impressed with the professionalism, courtesy and respect displayed by his fellow officers. What I saw with my patrol officers, is they treated everyone with respect. Yes, the suspect might have committed a crime, but theyre still people at the end of the day and deserve respect. Its truly amazing that these officers can put up a straight face, take the scrutiny, put on the badge, put on the boots, go to work. Thats something I want to do. I want to help somebody, at least change one mind.



McClure says joining the Sheriffs Office was a natural leap for someone whos already been in the military.



I couldnt think of anything else that I would rather do than help people, he says. And, you know, Ive seen it on the big scale where youre serving your country as a whole and you dont really get to see the return on what youre putting in on an everyday basis. But I feel like when youre working for your community, you can see all those little things you do on a daily basis that help people.



Hes excited about the opportunity to take the mandate training. I cant wait to get down there and start going through it and learning, he said. I want to be a sponge when we get there. I just want to absorb everything I can.



Martinez encourages other local residents interested in a law enforcement career to visit wcso.com.



I can personally tell you, from my experience, its not the career path I thought I might take, the 11-year veteran said, but its one that Im very glad that I did. I love my job. I think everybody that works here at the sheriffs office, they do it because this is our community and we want to take care of it.
NEW YORK, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Rowley Law PLLC is investigating potential securities law violations by Knoll Inc. (NYSE: KNL) and its board of directors concerning the proposed acquisition of the company by Herman Miller, Inc. (NASDAQ: MLHR). Stockholders will receive $11.00 and 0.32 shares of Herman Miller common stock for each share of Knoll stock that they hold. The transaction is valued at approximately $1.8 billion and is expected to close by the end of the third quarter of 2021.

If you are a stockholder of Knoll Inc. and are interested in obtaining additional information regarding this investigation, please visit us at: http://www.rowleylawpllc.com/investigation/knl/. You may also contact Shane Rowley, Esq. at Rowley Law PLLC, 50 Main Street Suite 1000, White Plains, NY 10606, by email at info@rowleylawpllc.com , or by telephone at 914-400-1920 or 844-400-4643 (toll-free).

Rowley Law PLLC represents shareholders nationwide in class actions and derivative lawsuits in complex corporate litigation. For more information about the firm and its attorneys, please visit http://www.rowleylawpllc.com .

Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Cision

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/alert-rowley-law-pllc-is-investigating-proposed-acquisition-of-knoll-inc-301271815.html

SOURCE Rowley Law PLLC
Canadians are concerned about climate change, with 96 per cent reporting that they care about protecting the environment and 92 per cent wanting to make a positive environmental impact, according to a 2020 survey conducted by Angus Reid and Maple Leaf Foods. Maple Leaf's climate-themed crayons and colouring book is a small way that the brand is addressing these expectations and helping Canadian families understand the importance of climate action now.

Picture a Better World

Aligning with the theme of Earth Day 2021 "Restore Our Earth", Maple Leaf's Picture a Better World Climate Change Colouring Kits display the realities of climate change from coast-to-coast with the introduction of six unconventional crayon colours: "Ocean Green," "Sky Orange," "Grass Yellow," "Forest Black," "Sand Blue" and "Freshwater Brown."

These colours challenge our notions of what Canadian landscapes are supposed to look like and reflect the environmental changes that could face future generations if we do not take climate action now. The colouring book concludes with eight simple lifestyle changes that every individual and family can make to reduce their environmental footprint, protect our earth, and ensure that Canada retains its natural beauty and vibrancy.

"Climate change is happening now, making it essential that education and climate action also happens right now," says Tim Faveri, Vice President of Sustainability and Shared Value, Maple Leaf Foods. "Maple Leaf is committed to doing our part to create a healthy planet for future generations and we are proud to share this commitment with Canadians in a way that brings families and communities together."

Learning through Play

Learning through play and family bonding have become especially important over the past year as Canadians have adjusted to working and schooling from home. As a proud partner in Canadian family traditions, Maple Leaf wants to encourage quality family time while also enabling climate education, and the Climate Change Colouring Kits offer exactly that.

Marley, an adventurous young climate hero will take families on a cross-Canada adventure in the colouring book, explaining the effects of climate change in a family-friendly way to help parents explain the basics of an often complicated and unapproachable issue to their children.

Designed with the Environment in Mind

Maple Leaf Foods believes that real change results from meaningful action and is actively working to address the significant environmental challenges facing the planet. In November 2020, the company celebrated its one-year anniversary as the world's first major carbon neutral food company and is on a purposeful journey to becoming the most sustainable protein company on earth. To achieve this goal, the company has committed to science-based targets, reducing its absolute Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions produced from its operations and the intensity of its Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions produced from its supply chain by 30 per cent by 2030.

Maple Leaf's Climate Change Colouring Kits reflect the company's values and commitment to sustainability and have been thoughtfully produced to have a net-zero carbon footprint.

Each colouring book (including packaging) is 100% recyclable and FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) Certified

The crayons are made from eco-friendly soy and beeswax and come in a metal reusable container

Maple Leaf's Colouring Kits were produced using minimal energy, and to offset the unavoidable emissions, Maple Leaf invested in AIM composting activities at Hamilton, Ontario's Central Composting Facility which turns food waste and into renewable energy and compost, reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The Climate Change Colouring Kits will be available to order free of charge online at the following link beginning on Earth Day (April 22nd), while supplies last: www.mapleleafcrayons.ca. Unlimited supplies of a downloadable version of the colouring book are available here: https://www.mapleleaf.ca/carbonneutral.

About Maple Leaf Foods



Maple Leaf Foods Inc. ("Maple Leaf Foods") is a carbon neutral company with a vision to be the most sustainable protein company on earth, responsibly producing food products under leading brands including Maple Leaf, Maple Leaf Prime, Maple Leaf Natural Selections, Schneiders, Schneiders Country Naturals, Mina, Greenfield Natural Meat Co., Lightlife, Field Roast and Swift. Maple Leaf Foods employs approximately 13,500 people and does business in Canada, the U.S. and Asia. The company is headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, and its shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange (MFI).

For further information: Contact us: [email protected]; Media: [email protected]



Survey Methodology

From September 21-22, 2020 Angus Reid conducted an omnibus survey among 1,500 Canadians ages 18+. The margin of errorwhich measures sampling variabilityis +/- 2.53%, 19 times out of 20.

SOURCE Maple Leaf Foods Inc.

Related Links

http://www.mapleleaf.ca


Police officer mistaking her gun for her taser was not racism By Rachel Alexander

Protesters have been rioting and looting since former veteran Brooklyn Center Police Officer Kim Potter accidentally used her handgun to fatally shoot Duane Wright, a black man, instead of using her taser. If Wright had been white, there would have been little to no protesting or publicity. Potter would have been disciplined and received a typical sentence for a fatal accident like that. But because the victim was black, its been declared police racism and Potter is likely to get a long prison sentence. Afraid of saying otherwise, officials will chime in denouncing it as racism, giving it more credibility. The racism activists will use it as an example of how racist Americans are and create more division. However, lets look at it analytically. Was it really racism? We are now living in an era of heightened awareness of racist police actions. Police officers realize if they do anything that could be remotely perceived as being racist, they will have their lives destroyed. They will have hate hurled at them from all over, forced out of their homes due to angry rioters, and subjected to high-profile criminal trials that may put them away for life. Attacking someone due to their race would follow them around for the rest of their life, changing their life in a horrible way. The last thing most police officers want to do is subject a minority to more severe treatment. As a result of this occurring, fewer and fewer people are becoming police officers. Potter was well aware of this when she drew the gun instead of the taser. And there was no doubt she intended to use the taser, because video of the incident shows her yelling, Taser! Taser! several times. These kinds of accidents happen occasionally , less than once a year nationwide. In the heat of the moment, pumped up by adrenaline and fear, the officer reaches for the wrong gun and doesnt realize it. Theres even a name for it,  slip and capture , where officers perform the opposite of their intended actions under stress. But these incidents happen to white suspects too, you just never hear about them because theyre white. The fatal shooting of young black man Oscar Grant in 2009 was made into a movie,Fruitvale Station. Part of the reason the radical left activists get away with this mantra about racist police is because there isa problem with police brutality in many other countries. A lot of it is directed toward ethnic groups, religious groups or tribes. People are so used to hearing about that kind of police violence, that its not much of a stretch to believing it takes place here. No one questions that there may be an occasional racist police officer, or that there were more incidents involving racist police officers in the past. But it is not a systemic problem today and most of the incidents involving the police killing minorities nowadays do not appear to be a result of racism. The problem is not going to go away as long as things have gotten so twisted that to question accusations of racism by Black Lives Matter on incidents where cops shoot minorities is considered racist itself. In most cases, officers who accidentally used their gun instead of a taser did not face criminal charges. In 2019, a police officer who accidentally shot Brian Riling in the abdomen using a gun was not charged. His name wasnt even released. Riling is white. In 2014, Officer Jason Schuck accidentally shot homeless man Eric David Butts, resulting in Butts being forced to use a colostomy bag. Schuck was allowed to keep his job and was only charged with a misdemeanor. Butts is white. Whereas in at least two cases where officers fatally shot black suspects, the officers received prison sentences. Johannes Mehserle, who fatally shot Grant, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and served 11 months in prison. Robert Bates, who fatally shot Eric Harris, was also convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to four years in prison. Wrights family hired well-known attorney Benjamin Crump to represent them, who says great things we all support about how we should not discriminate against minorities  but on the other hand insists that incidents like this are due to racism. He issued a statement that said in part, "What will it take for law enforcement to stop killing people of color? Protests and rioting went on for days, resulting in the arrests of over 110 people. Compounding the problem is the nearby police killing of George Floyd last year. Most reasonable people believe former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin did not use good policing. So anger is extra inflamed in Minnesota. But even in his case, there is no evidence his actions were due to racism. He had a history of 18 complaints against him. Almost all of them were closed with no discipline. Maybe it was just plain old bad policing. There is no evidence that Potter was a racist. If she was, activists and journalists would probably have dug it up by now. She has been charged with second degree manslaughter, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years behind bars. Will she be treated fairly, or will she get a more severe sentence because the suspect was black? Rachel Alexander and her brother Andrew are co-Editors of Intellectual Conservative . She has been published in the American Spectator, Townhall.com, Fox News, NewsMax, Accuracy in Media, The Americano, ParcBench, Enter Stage Right and other publications.mericano, ParcBench, Enter Stage Right and other publications. Home
When President Joe Biden announced he was ending the forever war in Afghanistan by pulling out the last 3,500 or so U.S. troops based there by Sept. 11, my mind flashed to Afghans I know for whom that speech could spell prison or death.

I thought of Fawzia Koofi, a female member of the Afghan team negotiating with the Taliban, who was shot several months ago in an attempted assassination and fears for her daughters. And Suraya Pakzad, who runs shelters for battered women. And the female students of the Marefat School, which teaches K-12 students humanitarian values in a poor, Shiite area in Kabul.

By giving up our leverage before U.S.-brokered peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government make progress, we are dooming millions of women, girls, and urban Afghans to civil war hell and eventual Taliban takeover. Hundreds of thousands of students, female activists and ordinary Afghans face arrest or desperate flight in a massive refugee exodus.

So there will be a terrible human  and moral  cost to this pullout from Afghanistan, which is why so many former U.S. officials who have served there have been so depressed and angry during phone interviews this week. (And thats even before one gets to the strategic cost the United States will pay for leaving Afghanistan now.)

There is a humanitarian disaster coming, I was told by David Sedney, a former top Pentagon official dealing with Afghanistan under President Barack Obama, who then became president of the American University of Afghanistan from 2019-21.

The Taliban are taking names, and they will start taking vengeance on women and young people, teachers, and their families, who believed in U.S. values. They will be killed and tortured because they bought into a vision the U.S. supported and encouraged, ideas of democracy and free speech.

I know Afghans who have and will die.

Let me say here that Biden faced only bad choices. He inherited a disgraceful U.S.-Taliban peace deal negotiated early last year under President Donald Trump. It basically conceded Afghanistan to the Talibs in return for a dubious Taliban pledge not to harbor al-Qaida or Islamic State. Under the Trump deal, U.S. troops were scheduled to leave by May 1.

President Trump wanted U.S. troops out and he wasnt paying attention to the details, I was told by a former official in the Trump administration. He could have used U.S. leverage to far more effect. Why throw U.S. allies [in Afghanistan] under the bus?

The Biden team tried to accelerate political negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government, which had barely started. They got nowhere. The Taliban made clear that, with U.S. troops leaving, they believed victory was in hand. They opposed any form of constitutional democracy or elections in favor of harsh Islamic rule.

Eager to focus on relations with China and Russia, and skeptical things would get better, Biden followed Trumps lead, calling for an exit with a three-month delay for logistical reasons. The White House says it will encourage the peace talks, and continue humanitarian and military aid.

But, when U.S. troops leave, the war will continue. Peace talks will become a dead letter, and the ensuing chaos will rule out aid deliveries.

Deprived of critical U.S. air support and intelligence in battle, Afghan forces are likely to crumble. The country is likely to descend into full-blown civil war with an eventual Taliban victory. U.S. intelligence agencies predict this will happen in two to three years.

Such circumstances are perfect for an al-Qaida and Islamic State comeback. And the Taliban have made no believable pledge to cut their ties with these Islamists.

So it would have made much more strategic sense for the Biden team to change the narrative. Instead of forever war, we would keep around 3,000 troops in the country indefinitely as an insurance policy to prevent a Taliban win until such time as a regional peace could be negotiated.

After all, we have kept troops in Germany and South Korea for decades, as a preventative. And in Afghanistan, the military casualties have long been on the Afghan side, not ours.

Instead, the Taliban will crow that they have defeated another superpower, after beating the Soviet Union. Especially since, for some bizarre reason, the final pullout date is set for the anniversary of al-Qaidas greatest triumph, at the twin towers.

This is a surrender. Everybody, China and Russia included, is taking note, says former U.S. ambassador to Kabul Ryan Crocker.

And the damage to Americas reputation will be even greater if America abandons those Afghan allies who believed in the U.S. message of the last two decades. The least the Biden team can do is open the door wide to Afghan refugees  as the United States did with endangered Vietnamese after we quit that country.

Yet the Biden administration has yet to lift Trumps draconian limits on legal refugee admissions. Even special congressionally approved visas for endangered Afghan translators for the U.S. military remain frozen.

All those Afghan women I personally encouraged to step forward because we had their backs, what happens to them? Crocker asked, in frustration. Will history record them as one more group of civilian allies abandoned to disaster by Americans when the going got too tough?

TRUDY RUBIN writes for the The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Rating Action: Moody's changes Papua New Guinea's outlook to negative from stable; affirms B2 ratingGlobal Credit Research - 19 Apr 2021Singapore, April 19, 2021 -- Moody's Investors Service ("Moody's") has today changed the outlook on the Government of Papua New Guinea's (PNG) ratings to negative from stable. Concurrently, the B2 long-term issuer and senior unsecured ratings have been affirmed.The decision to change the outlook to negative from stable reflects the risks that a marked weakening in PNG's fiscal strength and debt position and elevated borrowing requirements raise liquidity risks, notwithstanding the government's strategy to increase reliance on concessional external financing. Moreover, the extent of the fiscal pressures, combined with an uncertain near-term macroeconomic outlook as the economy emerges from a large contraction, will continue to challenge the government's economic and fiscal reform plans and further raise implementation risk.The affirmation of the B2 rating incorporates Moody's assessment that while PNG's domestic government liquidity and external liquidity risks remain credit constraints, these are somewhat balanced against credit strengths stemming from prospects for higher GDP growth potential over the medium term as investment in PNG's natural resource wealth is realized, although a degree of execution risk in progressing large resource projects to fruition remains. The rating is also underpinned by credit challenges related to weaknesses in government effectiveness and moderate political risks.PNG's local- and foreign-currency country ceilings remain unchanged at Ba2 and B1, respectively. The wider-than-average three-notch gap between the local currency ceiling and the sovereign rating reflects low predictability and reliability of government institutions, as well as domestic political risks. While the government does not possess a major footprint in the economy -- it's ownership in large resource ventures is in most cases a minority share -- its revenue base is heavily reliant on the resources sector. The two-notch gap between the foreign currency ceiling and the local currency ceiling takes into account relatively high external indebtedness, weak macro policy effectiveness, and capital account restrictions, as there continues to be a backlog of FX orders due to the country's FX regulations, which have periodically delayed offshore payments. These ceilings typically act as a cap on the ratings that can be assigned to the obligations of other entities domiciled in the country.RATINGS RATIONALERATIONALE FOR CHANGING THE OUTLOOK TO NEGATIVE FROM STABLEELEVATED BORROWING REQUIREMENTS ENTAILS GREATER FINANCING AND REFORM RISKS AMID FISCAL DETERIORATIONEven before the impact of the global coronavirus crisis, PNG faced a deteriorating fiscal position and a rising government debt burden, as revenue shortfalls, expenditure overruns and the clearance of government arrears led to a widening of the deficit over 2018-19.The global coronavirus pandemic has had a further dampening effect on the government's revenue intake, as slower mining and petroleum activity and restrictions on other domestic economic activity curbed tax revenue. Moreover, trade-related taxes declined as demand for PNG's exports fell amid significantly impaired global economic activity in 2020. Combined, these are estimated to have reduced government revenue by approximately PGK2.7 billion, or 3.4% of 2020 forecast GDP[1]. Total government revenue and grants declined by an estimated 17% compared to 2019. While a supplementary budget in 2020 delivered approximately PGK740 million (0.9% of GDP) in spending cuts, this was offset by the government's fiscal stimulus package that increased spending on health, security and social protection measures.Moody's estimates PNG's fiscal deficit to have increased to around 8.5% of GDP in 2020, driven primarily by these revenue shortfalls. While the government has introduced a medium-term fiscal framework with revised fiscal rules and ongoing focus on a range of fiscal reforms, the implementation risks to reforms that would durably improve fiscal discipline, such as a medium-term revenue strategy, tax administration, SOE policies and expenditure restraint and rationalization, are material.As such, Moody's expects PNG's fiscal deficit to only gradually narrow to around 7% of GDP in 2021 and around 5% of GDP over 2022-23. Further downside risk to the government's fiscal consolidation efforts also stems from the recent rise in COVID-19 infections in the country, which in the event it led to prolonged periods of domestic activity restrictions and/or closures of large mining and gas operations, would negatively impact revenue.Moody's expects PNG's debt burden to increase to around 55% of GDP over 2021-22, from around an estimated 40% of GDP at the end of 2019, while debt affordability -- as measured by interest payments as a share of revenue -- will worsen to a high level of over 20% over the same period. PNG's fiscal position will remain susceptible to exchange rate risk, with around half of its debt stock denominated in foreign currency.As a result of the near-term outlook for wider fiscal deficits, Moody's expects PNG's gross borrowing requirements to remain high for a sovereign with limited financing sources. Moody's estimates PNG's gross borrowing requirements to have exceeded 26% of GDP in 2020 and remain elevated at around 18% of GDP over 2021-22, driven by these wider deficits and a large stock of short-term domestic debt that keeps the government vulnerable to potential shifts in domestic financing conditions.PNG's weaker fiscal outlook, combined with slower implementation of economic and fiscal reforms, are likely to increase uncertainty over the availability of external financing, to cover substantial borrowing requirements. While entrance into an IMF staff-monitored program (SMP) has supported crowding-in of broader external, concessional financing over the last twelve months, Moody's foresees risks in maintaining this amount of external financing over the next few years.Should the government increasingly need to finance wider deficits domestically, Moody's expects this would further erode PNG's already weak debt affordability and fragile debt structure, in addition to likely facing constraints in the domestic financial system's ability to absorb greater government borrowing. Government securities as a share of commercial bank assets have increased to 31.5% as of September 2020 from around 25% at end 2019[2].While domestic financing costs have not risen over the last twelve months, supported by Bank of PNG's monetary policy accommodation, weaker realization of external financing inflows and weaker external liquidity buffers may further constraint monetary policy. Foreign exchange reserves remain thin at around $2.1 billion as of November 2020[3], which amounts to around 7 months of import cover.RATIONALE FOR THE AFFIRMATION OF THE B2 RATINGPNG's rating considers significant susceptibility to external shocks, including prolonged periods of lower commodity prices or sudden climate events, given its small size and reliance on commodities production and exports. PNG's credit profile also incorporates prospects for higher growth potential should investment in natural resources wealth be realized, although ultimate implementation risks to project completion and ultimately realizing economic benefits will remain a challenge over the coming years.Large investments in the country's natural resources wealth bolster growth potential, both in terms of the foreign direct investment associated with long construction phases and increased export volumes from higher production over the longer term. Additionally, these projects have spillover benefits to the non-mining economy, as increased availability of foreign exchange supports domestic business confidence.Despite the challenging global macroeconomic environment precipitated by the coronavirus pandemic, especially for PNG's natural resources sector, the government has ratified the fiscal stability agreement for the $15 billion Papua LNG project that was originally negotiated and agreed upon in April 2019. The government also granted an environmental permit for the $5.4 billion Wafi-Golpu copper and gold project in January 2021.However, given the delays in progressing these projects along, final investment decisions and production dates are likely further out than Moody's previously anticipated. With production dates pushed out, the growth, revenue and external stability benefits for PNG are also likely to materialize later than previously assumed.ENVIRONMENTAL, SOCIAL, GOVERNANCE CONSIDERATIONSPNG's very highly negative (CIS-5) ESG Credit Impact Score reflects very high exposure to environmental and social risks, further weakened by institutional challenges related to government policy effectiveness, control of corruption and overall legal structures, notwithstanding ongoing support from development partners.The Environmental issuer profile score is very highly negative (E-5). PNG is both exposed to ongoing climate change, particularly extreme rainfall and heat stress, as well as longer-term carbon transition risks, given the economy's and government's reliance on hydrocarbons as a source of revenue. Economic growth is inextricably tied to the potential impact from both gradual and sudden climate events. Moreover, PNG's resources sector, which includes oil, gas, gold and copper, among others, contributes more than one-fourth of the economy's total value-added and around 90% of export revenue, while the government's revenue performance fluctuates with prevailing commodity prices and the tax take on resource agreements. In scenarios of global carbon transition proceeding at a steady pace, PNG would be hit severely. Separately, given large areas of land that are underdeveloped, access to water remains a constraint on economic development, although it provides for high levels of natural capital, in both strong forestation and large untapped deposits of natural resources.We assess PNG's Social issuer profile score as very highly negative (S-5). Access to basic services continues to constrain economic development, while other societal issues, including gender-based violence, political unrest, and widespread poverty, particularly in the country's most rural areas, remain present, although these issues are not significantly more severe than for similarly-rated developing economies. The government continues to direct resources towards its long-term development plan, which prioritizes raising living standards and increasing formal job opportunities.PNG's weak institutions and governance profile constrain its rating, as captured by a highly negative Governance issuer profile score (G-4). Weaknesses prevail in government effectiveness, control of corruption and rule of law, exist, and the credibility of legal structures is also limited. While ongoing support from development partners provides technical capacity in some areas, overall structural reforms remain limited.GDP per capita (PPP basis, US$): 4,018 (2019 Actual) (also known as Per Capita Income)Real GDP growth (% change): 5.5% (2019 Estimate) (also known as GDP Growth)Inflation Rate (CPI, % change Dec/Dec): 2.9% (2019 Actual)Gen. Gov. Financial Balance/GDP: -4.9% (2019 Actual) (also known as Fiscal Balance)Current Account Balance/GDP: 21.9% (2019 Actual) (also known as External Balance)External debt/GDP: 75.1% (2019 Actual)Economic resiliency: b2Default history: No default events (on bonds or loans) have been recorded since 1983.On 14 April 2021, a rating committee was called to discuss the rating of the Papua New Guinea, Government of. The main points raised during the discussion were: The issuer's economic fundamentals, including its economic strength, have not materially changed. The issuer's institutions and governance strength, have not materially changed. The issuer's fiscal or financial strength, including its debt profile, has materially decreased. The issuer's susceptibility to event risks has not materially changed.FACTORS THAT COULD LEAD TO AN UPGADE OR DOWNGRADE OF THE RATINGSWHAT COULD CHANGE THE RATING DOWNA materially weaker outlook for fiscal consolidation and stabilization of the government's debt burden and affordability would result in negative pressure on the rating. Moreover, Moody's would also likely downgrade the rating should weaker implementation of the government's reform agenda contribute to higher liquidity pressures than currently assumed.Negative pressure on the rating would also materialize should there be a significantly bleaker outlook for execution on large investments in PNG's natural resource wealth, which would threaten PNG's growth potential and external position. This could come in the context of diminished commercial viability of projects, potentially owed to domestic or external factors, that leads to significant delays or outright abandonment.Furthermore, Moody's would also consider downgrading the rating upon a likely sustained decline in the stock of foreign exchange reserves, and/or worsening foreign exchange shortages. Such diminished external liquidity buffers would heighten risks to PNG's external debt servicing capacity and significantly restrict monetary and fiscal institutions' policy flexibility to effectively respond to potential shocks or implement credit-profile enhancing reforms.WHAT COULD CHANGE THE RATING UPUpward pressure on the rating would likely emanate from a durable and material reduction in refinancing risks, consistent with a significantly greater fiscal adjustment, reduction in gross borrowing requirements and strengthened access to external sources of finance than Moody's currently expects.Moody's would also consider upgrading the rating should a sustained increase in non-debt-creating external inflows lead to a sustained accumulation in foreign exchange reserves. Such an improved position in external liquidity buffers would enhance PNG's external debt servicing capacity, aid economic activity in the non-resource sector, and provide monetary and fiscal authorities with improved policy flexibility.Over the longer term, should implementation of key resource sector investments generate positive economic spillovers in the non-resource economy, the positive impact on growth potential would contribute to upward rating pressure.The principal methodology used in these ratings was Sovereign Ratings Methodology published in November 2019 and available at https://www.moodys.com/researchdocumentcontentpage.aspx?docid=PBC_1158631. Alternatively, please see the Rating Methodologies page on www.moodys.com for a copy of this methodology.The weighting of all rating factors is described in the methodology used in this credit rating action, if applicable.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 ratings have been disclosed to the rated entity or its designated agent(s) and issued with no amendment resulting from that disclosure.These ratings are 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.REFERENCES/CITATIONS[1] Department of Treasury 10-Nov-2020[2] Bank of Papua New Guinea 25-Jan-2021[3] Bank of Papua New Guinea 22-Feb-2021Please 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. 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MJKK and MSFJ are credit rating agencies registered with the Japan Financial Services Agency and their registration numbers are FSA Commissioner (Ratings) No. 2 and 3 respectively.MJKK or MSFJ (as applicable) hereby disclose that most issuers of debt securities (including corporate and municipal bonds, debentures, notes and commercial paper) and preferred stock rated by MJKK or MSFJ (as applicable) have, prior to assignment of any credit rating, agreed to pay to MJKK or MSFJ (as applicable) for credit ratings opinions and services rendered by it fees ranging from JPY125,000 to approximately JPY550,000,000.MJKK and MSFJ also maintain policies and procedures to address Japanese regulatory requirements. 
An ordinary suburban house surged in value by $1million in just five months.

The home at Marsfield in Sydney's north-west was sold for $1.76million in November last year.

But on Saturday it sold for $2.74million - a 56 per cent increase in just five months with the new owner set to knock down the old house, built in 1960, and replace it with duplex on the 923 square-metre block.

That is even more dramatic that the 11 per cent rise in Sydney's median house price between November and March, which took mid-point values to a record $1.112million, CoreLogic data showed.

Belle Property Ryde principal Phillip Allison said the seller was a developer who had obtained council permission to build a five-bedroom duplex at 6 Julie Street.

An ordinary suburban house surged in value by $1million in just five months. The home at Marsfield in Sydney's north-west was sold for $1.76million in November last year. But on Saturday it sold for $2.74million - a 56 per cent increase in just five months

In a hot market, the new owner outbid developers and plans to live on one side of the new duplex and rent out the other side.

'Typically, it's just been developers, now the home owners are looking at the duplexes as really good options for them,' Mr Allison told Daily Mail Australia.

'This is the best I've seen it in over ten years, absolute best.'

Ryde council, before the auction, had given approval to Julie Holding for the house to be knocked down and replaced with a duplex, leading to 13 registered bidders actively competing on Saturday morning.

In just five months, the existing four-bedroom, two-bathroom house at Marsfield surged in value by $980,000 even though it is near Macquarie University, which has lost international students as a result of Australia's border being closed to non-residents.

The soaring price showed buyers are eyeing homes with a backyard in middle-distance suburbs of Australia's big cities, and not just houses in very desirable locations by the beach.

Sydney's weekend auction clearance rate surged to 84.8 per cent, CoreLogic revealed.

Apartment prices in the nearby North Ryde and Macquarie Park area, however, aren't rising much in value with oversupply an issue.

Belle Property Ryde principal Phillip Allison, the selling agent, said the seller was a developer who obtained council permission to build a duplex. Pictured are approved council plans

'Units aren't performing anywhere near as well as the houses and the duplexes,' Mr Allison said.

'There are a lot of units that have been built over the last couple of years stretching anywhere from Meadowbank to through to Top Ryde and then through to Macquarie University area heading up towards North Ryde - there are a lot of those on the market at the moment.'

Janus Henderson Investors head of fixed interest Jay Sivapalan said Australian house prices were likely to surge by 15 per cent in 2021 but growth would slow to between five and 10 per cent next year as the banks started raising their variable mortgage rates.

'The outcome will be a slowing down - the rising of house prices - as opposed to a fall in house prices,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

The four-bedroom, two-bathroom house at Marsfield surged in value by $980,000 even though it is near Macquarie University, which has lost international students as a result of Australia's border being closed to non-residents

'Over a one, two, three-year period, Australian house prices will hold very well.'

Mr Sivapalan said the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority was likely to impose stricter rules of deposits to get a home loan in a bid to cool an overheating market.

'The pace at which house prices rise should start gradually moderating,' he said.

From July, the banks will no longer be able to access $90billion in funding from the Reserve Bank of Australia to provide cheap home mortgages and small businesses loans.

Apartment prices in the nearby North Ryde and Macquarie Park area, however, aren't rising much in value with oversupply an issue. Pictured is an apartment tower at Macquarie Park

The Term Funding Facility was introduced in March last year as Covid shutdowns sparked Australia's worst quarterly economic downturn since the 1930s Great Depression.

This means the big banks will have to start sourcing more of their funds to lend out from either deposits or the wholesale money market.

Mr Allison is also expecting a slowdown in house price growth.

'There could be a shift around that time,' he said.

The Reserve Bank of Australia was expected to keep its promised to hold the cash rate at a record low of 0.1 per cent until 2024.

Three of Australia's big four banks are still offering fixed rate of less than 2 per cent.
Three police officers have been injured in a vicious all-in brawl that erupted outside a popular Sydney nightclub over the weekend.

Dramatic footage captured a number of police officers struggling to contain rowdy patrons outside the MVP nightclub in the city's CBD.

Officers were responding to reports a man had repeatedly punched and kicked another patron just before midnight on Saturday March 17.

The 25-year-old Yagoona man had already been removed from the club by security guards, but the trouble didn't end there.

Police were responding to reports of a man repeatedly punching and kicking another patron inside Sydney's MVP nightclub and arrived just before midnight on Saturday night

Shortly after officers arrived to the Pitt Street nightclub they experienced resistance from a crowd of disgruntled punters.

'While officers were attempting to arrest the man, a number of other individuals became involved,' NSW Police said.

'The man then allegedly shoved a constable in the chest.'

One officer was allegedly punched in the face by a 22-year-old woman, while two other officers were shoved by patrons.

In a handheld video of the violent scuffle, one officer can be seen using pepper spray to ward off a female patron, who lies on the ground holding her face.

Police finally gained control of the crowd and were able to handcuff the Yagoona man, who had to be asked repeatedly to put his hands behind his back.

It took a team of nearly a dozen officers to place the man inside a police vehicle.

A total of five people were arrested on Saturday night with the assistance of the Public Order and Riot Squad.

The Yagoona man along with two other men and one woman were arrested and taken to Surry Hills Police Station.

Police were met with resistance shortly after arriving at the Pitt Street nightclub (pictured)

All four were charged with the assault of a police officer in execution of duty among other charges, and appeared at Parramatta Local Court on Sunday.

They were granted conditional bail and will appear at Downing Centre Local Court on April 29.

A 26-year-old man from Kingsgrove was also arrested at the scene and charged with two counts of resist or hinder police officer in the execution of duty.

He was given conditional bail to appear at Downing Centre Local Court on 19 May.

Attending police officers were treated for minor injuries.
Update: State police Monday afternoon announced Hannah Riley has been located and is back with her family.

Original report

Windsor, N.Y.  The New York State Police in Binghamton has issued a request for the publics help in locating a missing 16-year-old girl.

Hannah Riley never returned home from school in Windsor on Thursday, police said in a news release Monday. Windsor is a village of fewer than 1,000 people east of Binghamton in Broome County.

She was last seen wearing sweatpants, a pink sweatshirt with the word Fly on it, teal Crocs and carrying a pink backpack with the word Champion on it, police said. Hannah does not have a cellphone with her, they said.

Police ask anyone who sees Hannah or knows her whereabouts to contact them at (607) 775-1241.
TICKERS: MGR; MGLQF

Source: Rick Mills for Streetwise Reports (4/19/21)

Rick Mills of Ahead of the Herd profiles Magna Gold and explains why he believes it is on the verge of leading the next line of mid-tier precious metals producers in Mexico.



In the mining industry, location is often the key determinant of a project's success.

For precious metals, although gold and silver can be mined in various regions of the world, few could match the steady production and exploration potential of Mexico.

Since the arrival of Spanish Conquistadors in search of gold and silver some 500 years ago, Mexico has grown into one of the world's largest metal producers. Today, the Latin American nation is the largest producer of silver in the world and a top 10 global producer of gold.

According to the US Geological Survey (USGS), Mexico's silver production reached 5,600 tonnes in the past year, representing just over 20% of the global mined output. Gold production in 2020 was 111.4 tonnes, good for ninth place in the world.

While mining activities occur throughout Mexico, many of the notable gold and silver operations are found in Sonora and Zacatecas, with the former producing more than one-third of the country's gold, and the latter more than one-third of its silver. Collectively, these two states account for roughly 55% of Mexico's mining GDP.



Top gold-producing states in Mexico (Source INEGI)

Mining-Friendly Jurisdiction

In many countries, the regulatory framework surrounding mining remains one of the biggest hurdles in unlocking their resource potential. Mexico, on the other hand, possesses a favorable environment for those operating in the mining industry.

Given its long tradition, mining is essentially enshrined in Mexico's constitution, with mineral exploration having a preference over any other land use. Laws exist to provide a well-defined mining regime that operates under a concession system, whereby concessions are required for exploration or extraction.

Exploration concessions are granted for six years and are not renewable. However, production concessions are awarded for 50 years and are renewable for a similar time. This encourages active and efficient exploration activity geared toward development and mineral production. There are no limits to the number of mining concessions a company can hold.

The concessions in Mexico commonly have specified expenditure requirements, as well as provisions for conforming to established standards for health, safety and environmental protection.

Over the past decade, Mexico's environmental regulations have become increasingly stringent because of international agreements that it has ratified, including the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (parallel to NAFTA), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Nowadays, mining companies must obtain environmental impact permits from SEMARNAT (Spanish: Secretaria de Media Ambiente y Recursos Naturales) prior to any mining and exploration activities, and such activities are subsequently subject to several environmental permits from different offices with SEMARNAT.

All mining companies must meet environmental impact permitting regulations that include tailings and water remediation plans before being allowed to commence operations. This is especially important as ESG (environmental, social and governance) practices remain a key area of concern among mining investors.

As part of the comprehensive structural reforms passed by the Mexican government, new duties were approved for mining companies: 7.5% of a figure similar to EBITDA and 0.5% of gold and silver sales.

Moreover, the current administration under President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is very supportive of mining. Last year, Lopez Obrador included the industry as part of his $2.5 billion economic package. The President has also been active in resolving the various issues across mines in Mexico.

Sierra Madre Occidental

Despite centuries of mining activity, the geological potential of Mexico remains strong, as the country's terrain is one of the most tectonically active and complex in the world. Orogenesis has pushed up mountain chains across Mexico.

A key feature of Mexico's geology is the Sierra Madre Occidental, a high plateau forming part of a chain of mountain ranges that runs from western Antarctica, up through South America, Central America, through Mexico, and into the western United States.



Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range

This high plateau is cut by deep river valleys and was formed through volcanic activity and sits atop a sedimentary basement composed of metamorphic rocks. The basement is part of the Older North American basement, which itself is underlain by a Precambrian basement and is intertwined with Paleozoic-era sedimentary layers.

The Sierra Madre Occidental extends from the northern part of Sonora state and south, where it meets the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt that covers central-southern Mexico. Gold and silver mineralization is commonly linked to the two belts of hydrothermal veins and gaps that stretch out underneath both sides of the Sierra Madre Occidental.

Geology in the mining state of Zacatecas, also part of the mountain range, comprises several marine beds of the Lower Cretaceous era and Upper Triassic greenstones, lava and sedimentary rocks. Mineralization occurs mainly in epithermal veins, which are prime targets for precious metals exploration.

Zacatecas is located within the Mexican Silver Belt, considered to be the world's largest silver region. The Fresnillo area in Zacatecas state has seen significant mining activity since the 1500s.

Two other mountain ranges, Sierra Madre Oriental and Sierra Madre del Sur, located to the northeast and south respectively, also form some of the nation's key metallogenic areas.

The nation's geological potential has attracted more than 250 private exploration companies to Mexico, with operations concentrated in the northern states of Sonora, Zacatecas and Chihuahua.

Magna Gold Corp. (TSXV: MGR, OTCQB: MGLQF)

Among those actively exploring the mineral-rich regions of Mexico, one miner that is on a fast track to achieving intermediate status is Canada's Magna Gold Corp. (MGR:TSX.V; MGLQF:OTCQB), which has been actively acquiring and developing quality precious metals properties in Mexico.

The company's flagship project is the past-producing San Francisco mine, located 150 km north of Hermosillo, Sonora's state capital. The 47,395-hectare property consists of two previously mined open pits (San Francisco and Chicharra)which Magna plans to reopen soonand associated heap leaching facilities located close to the San Francisco pit.



Resource potential along the San Francisco district

"We have a simple business model; it starts with growing organically. We only acquire properties in near-term production that were either mismanaged or forgotten in previous years," Magna President and CEO Arturo Bonillas said in a 2020 interview with Resource Stock Digest. He added the San Francisco mine was "such a perfect match" for this operating model.

The company is led by a management team that has decades of experience in the country, along with a track record of success. Bonillas himself is an industrial engineer with over 40 years of experience in the Mexican mining industry and extensive experience in all aspects of exploration, financing, building and operations.

Before joining Magna, Bonillas had a 10-year tenure as president of Timmins Gold Corp. (now Alio Gold), where he spearheaded that company's transition from one of exploration and development to a mid-tier gold producer.

Miguel Angel Soto, Magna's vice president of exploration, also has over 40 years of experience in the Mexican mining industry, including 25 years in roles as senior executive geologist for several mining companies. He is widely recognized as one of the top mining professionals in the country, with extensive knowledge of all mining districts in Mexico.

As co-founder of Timmins Gold, Soto successfully increased the gold resources of the San Francisco mine from 611,000 to 2.4 million ounces, which eventually led to the sale of the project to Magna in May 2020. Now, he is looking to take the former mine back into the fold and advance it further.

San Francisco Mine

The San Francisco mine was previously developed and operated by Geomaque from 1995 through 2000. During that time, approximately 13.5 million tonnes of ore at a grade of 1.13 g/t gold were treated by heap leaching, and 300,834 oz of gold were recovered.

Mining operations ceased in 2001 because of low gold prices, although leaching and rinsing of the heap continued for approximately one year after this.



San Francisco open pit

In 2005, Timmins Gold acquired the mine and processing equipment, and began commercial operations in 2010. Since then, the mine has processed more than 1.2 million ounces of gold, producing over 100,000 oz of gold per year on average. This makes San Francisco one of the most successful mining operations in recent history in terms of economic performance and operational results.

Last year, the mine entered a period of residual leaching, during which it is expected to recover between 12,500 and 15,000 oz of gold, but that did not deter buyer interest.

Looking to re-establish San Francisco as a profitable mine, in spring 2020, Magna agreed to acquire the Sonora-based project for nearly 20% of the company's share capital, which could turn out to be a bargain considering how much gold prices have risen over the past 12 months.

Since the acquisition, Magna has already completed an updated pre-feasibility study (PFS) on the property, showing nearly 100 million tonnes of mineral resources (Measured and Indicated) with an average gold grade of 0.446 g/t.

"The numbers were great. The study shows that we have 1.5 million ounces of resources in the ground. We have close to 800,000 ounces of gold that we're going to extract from the mine over the next seven years, at a rate of 70,000 ounces per year," chief executive Arturo Bonillas elaborated on the PFS.



San Francisco  plan view of operations

Magna also intends to execute a mine operational improvement plan, including a full review and update to the mine design and production plan, metallurgy and processing, workforce management, and local and regional exploration. Based on Magna's review to date, the company believes it can re-commence mining operations in the near term.

Other Gold Projects

Aside from the past-producing San Francisco mine, Magna is also looking to develop several exploration-stage gold projects across Mexico.

One of those is the Mercedes project located within the Sierra Madre Occidental province, a historically productive, regionally extensive tertiary volcanic field that stretches from the U.S.-Mexico border to Central Mexico.



Mercedes project location map

Previous work at the La Lamosa area, one of the mineralized targets within the mining concessions, displays disseminated gold mineralization hosted within an andesitic and rhyodacitic volcanic complex intruded by a quartz-feldspar porphyry. The property exhibits textures and alteration consistent with high sulphidation epithermal mineralization, typical of important discoveries in the region.



Exploration targets on the Mercedes property

Notable producers in the area include Alamos Gold's 3 Moz Mulatos gold mine, Agnico's 1 Moz La India gold mine, and Minera Alamos' Santana and Santa Rosa projects.

Another project that Magna is exploring is San Judas, which comprises two contiguous claims within the municipality of Trincheras, Sonora. This property is at the southern end of the Caborca orogenic gold belt or Sonora-Mojave Megashear, a trend known to host several orogenic and related intrusive gold-bearing deposits.



San Judas location map

There are several large open-pit heap leach gold operations within the Caborca belt, including Magna's San Francisco property. Others are La Herradura, Soledad-Dipolos and Nochebuena (Fresnillo), Cerro Colorado (Gold Group), El Chanate (Alamos Gold), and La Choya (Hecla Mining).

The combined gold reserves and resources identified within the trend to date total in excess of 10 million ounces, but this figure could be doubled (~20 million ounces) according to the current exploration results.

Silver Portfolio

In addition to these gold assets, Magna has also assembled a portfolio of silver exploration properties in northern Mexico, led by the recently acquired Margarita silver project in Chihuahua state.

Margarita is located within the prolific Sierra Madre Gold Belt that hosts numerous multimillion-ounce gold-silver deposits. The property lies 15 km northwest on strike with Sunshine Silver Corp.'s Los Gatos mine.



Location of the Margarita project

The mineralization at Margarita represents a low-intermediate sulphidation epithermal Ag-Pb-Zn system. There are 7 km of multiple outcropping veins inside the property, and only one of them has been drilled. Channel sampling in the past has returned values ranging from 100 to 900 g/t Ag.

In February, exploration activities began on the project, where the company has taken 5,097 meters of HQ drill core from 35 drill holes acquired from the project's previous owner and plans to re-log these drill cores. It will also re-sample the vein and vein extensions, and compile sections based on drilling in 2018-2019.

Field work at Margarita is scheduled to begin soon, which will be used to plan a drill campaign for Q3 2021.

Elsewhere, Magna is also planning work programs on its two other early-stage silver properties: La Pima and Los Muertos.

On the La Pima property, located 24 km northwest of Magna's San Francisco mine, a second phase of exploration comprising 2,000 meters of drilling is planned along silver breccias hosted in limestone, targeting the source of a supergene enrichment halo at depth that has shown high-grade silver values on surface and an enrichment zone near surface.

The drill program, also expected to commence in Q3, will be focused on exploring continuity at depth and the source of the silver mineralization encountered to date. During phase 1 drilling, Magna completed a total of 1,719 meters in nine core holes. The target is a high-grade silver in replacement deposits hosted in sedimentary rocks.

At Los Muertos, which lies 25 km southeast of Argonaut's operating La Colorada mine, the next steps on this property will comprise soil and rock chip sampling, geology mapping and an IP geophysical survey to support an initial 2,000-meter drill program that is planned for later this year.

Conclusion

With a handful of intriguing gold-silver assets in its portfolio, Magna Gold is on the verge of leading the next line of mid-tier precious metals producers in Mexico, a premier gold and silver mining jurisdiction.

Its primary asset, the past-producing San Francisco mine, already has more than one million gold ounces in the ground, making it a potential game-changer for the company. Once reopened, the San Francisco mine would become a dual open-pit and underground operation, which will further lower costs and increase the company's cash balance.

Speaking of cash, Magna President and CEO Arturo Bonillas says his company does not like to engage in debts, but rather prefers to build projects with their own generated cash. Cash flows are currently at $20$25 million, which gives the company ample capital to grow its projects.

I'll repeat myselfMagna Gold is on the verge of leading the next line of mid-tier precious metals producers in Mexico. Cash flows are currently at $20$25 million, which gives the company ample capital to grow its projects. Shares Outstanding are just 89.4 million. When was the last time you read something like that?

Never.

Please have a hard look at the following share structure chart.

Commenting on San Francisco, the company's prized asset, Bonillas says: "We bought the asset at a very good price, and we are turning it around without any external money. The mission here is to generate and unlock tremendous value on the property with our own sources, which we are successfully doing."

But the work doesn't stop at San Francisco; there is more gold production coming in the pipeline. Another asset that is being fast-tracked to production is the Mercedes project.

"The idea at Mercedes is to start mining by Q2 2021, extract and produce 20,000 ounceswhich are the ones in the resourceand generate approximately $20 million, because the cash cost and production cost at Mercedes are quite low," Bonillas adds.

This type of high-growth potential hasn't gone unnoticed in the market. Within the span of one year, Magna's stock has increased by over 200% since the beginning of 2020. IMO, it's only getting started.

Magna Gold Corp.

TSX.V:MGR, OTCQB:MGLQF

Cdn$0.97, 2021.04.07

Shares Outstanding 89.4m

Market cap Cdn$89.4m

Magna Gold Corp.website

Richard (Rick) Mills

aheadoftheherd.com

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Richard (Rick) Mills, AheadoftheHerd.com, lives on a 160-acre farm in northern British Columbia. Richard's articles have been published on over 400 websites, including: Wall Street Journal, USA Today, National Post, Lewrockwell, Montreal Gazette, Vancouver Sun, CBSnews, Huffington Post, Beforeitsnews, Londonthenews, Wealthwire, Calgary Herald, Forbes, Dallas News, SGT report, Vantagewire, India Times, Ninemsn, Ib times, Businessweek, Hong Kong Herald, Moneytalks, SeekingAlpha, BusinessInsider, Investing.com, MSN.com and the Association of Mining Analysts.

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Disclosures:

1) Rick Mills: I, or members of my immediate household or family, own shares of the following companies mentioned in this article: Magna Gold. I personally am, or members of my immediate household or family are, paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None. My company currently has a financial relationship with the following companies mentioned in this article: Magna Gold is an advertiser on Ahead of the Herd. I determined which companies would be included in this article based on my research and understanding of the sector. Additional disclosures/disclaimer above.

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5) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the decision to publish an article until three business days after the publication of the article. The foregoing prohibition does not apply to articles that in substance only restate previously published company releases. As of the date of this article, officers and/or employees of Streetwise Reports LLC (including members of their household) own securities of Magna Gold, companies mentioned in this article.

Charts and graphics provided by the author.
70% of advisors under the age of 40 use separately managed accounts; 67% use ESG products;

25% of advisors plan to increase their engagement with wholesalers in 2021, showing the changing dynamics in the advisor-wholesaler relationship

NEW YORK, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: BR), a global Fintech leader, today released results from an annual survey of 400 financial advisors, revealing that a majority of advisors across channels use ESG products, citing direct interest from investors. The study also shows how the advisor-wholesaler relationship is evolving post-pandemic.

Sixty-one percent of advisors use ESG products, and usage is even higher among female advisors (71%) and advisors under 40 (67%). Of advisors who use ESG products, 81% plan to increase their usage over the next two years as investors actively seek out these products. Wirehouse advisors are the most likely of all channels to use ESG products and to cite both inclusion on their broker-dealer platform and promotion by their home offices as reasons for doing so.

Broadridge 2021: Reasons for ESG Usage Among Financial Advisors

Sixty-two percent of financial advisors use separately managed accounts (SMAs), and that number is even higher among advisors under 40 (70%). Fifty-six percent of advisors who use SMAs plan to increase their usage over the next two years.

As advisors explore new investment vehicles such as ESG and SMAs, half of advisors (51%) are now also using private funds. Eighty-one percent of advisors who use private funds also use SMAs.

"Now more than ever, investors are speaking up about the types of products they want to invest in, whether it be ESG, private markets or other emerging asset classes. As advisors become more focused on providing the best client-centric experience and are optimistic about the year to come, they are looking to be equipped with the right tools and products to service their clients and investments," said Matthew Schiffman, Principal of Distribution Insight at Broadridge Financial Solutions. "Asset managers are primed to step up and address the demand for these products."

Story continues

The "New Normal" For Advisor-Wholesaler Relationships

On average, advisors maintain 48% of their AUM with their top-five asset management firms. However, 28% of advisors are very open to adding new asset managers, identifying an opportunity for asset managers to uncover new ways to showcase their value, win over prospects and retain AUM.

A quarter of advisors (25%) plan to engage with external wholesalers more in 2021 and 70% of advisors say that an external wholesaler is one of their top-three most preferred methods of engaging with an asset manager.

"Forced into a fully remote environment just over a year ago, many advisors dramatically accelerated their digital journey to maintain and grow their business. Today's advisors are actively focused on business development and client-facing activities, and are increasingly using model portfolios as part of their practice to allow for increased efficiency in a post-COVID world," added Schiffman. "Advisors were not able to engage with wholesalers in the same way they did before the pandemic and were initially hesitant to engage virtually. Now, as the COVID-19 vaccine rollouts progress and we may see a return to normal sooner than expected, advisors are eager to re-engage with wholesalers and are receptive to new relationships."

Advisors continue to feel positive about conditions for success today and in the future, with the study showing that 77% are favorable (somewhat or very) about growing and scaling their practice today, and 67% expect conditions to be better three years from now. Further, 66% of advisors are confident (somewhat or very) in acquiring new clients today and 56% expect to see improvements three years from now.

View Broadridge's 2021 report The Evolving Advice Business Model.

Methodology

This Broadridge survey was conducted by 8 Acre Perspective to assess the world of financial advice and guidance. A total of 400 financial advisors across wire, regional, IBD and RIA channels completed the survey, which was fielded in January and February 2021. For further details on survey methodology, please contact a Broadridge media representative.

About Broadridge

Broadridge Financial Solutions (NYSE: BR), a global Fintech leader with over $4.5 billion in revenues, provides the critical infrastructure that powers investing, corporate governance and communications to enable better financial lives. We deliver technology-driven solutions to banks, broker-dealers, asset and wealth managers and public companies. Broadridge's infrastructure serves as a global communications hub enabling corporate governance by linking thousands of public companies and mutual funds to tens of millions of individual and institutional investors around the world. In addition, Broadridge's technology and operations platforms underpin the daily trading of on average more than U.S. $10 trillion of equities, fixed income and other securities globally. A certified Great Place to Work, Broadridge is a part of the S&P 500 Index, employing over 12,000 associates in 17 countries. For more information about us and what we can do for you, please visit www.broadridge.com.

Media Contacts:

Matthew Luongo

Prosek Partners

+1 646-818-9279

mluongo@prosek.com

Linda Namias

Broadridge Financial Solutions

+1 631-254-7711

Linda.Namias@broadridge.com

Cision

View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/esg-and-sma-usage-primed-to-increase-as-financial-advisors-service-next-generation-investor-demand-new-broadridge-study-finds-301270660.html

SOURCE Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc.
English French

Rueil Malmaison, 15 April 2021

VINCI Energies to build electricity infrastructures in Benin

1,500 km of power lines and distribution networks and 11 transformer stations

Works lasting three years

Contract worth 292 million

VINCI Energies has signed a contract worth 292 million with the Ministry of Economy and Finance and the Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Benin for the construction of electricity transmission and distribution infrastructures. Its financing is supported by the French authorities.

Overall, the works will involve more than 900 people and will last for three years. They cover the construction of 500 km of extra-high and high voltage overhead and underground power lines, more than 1,000 km of medium and low voltage distribution networks and the connection of several thousand homes. Seven extra-high voltage transformer stations will also be built, and works will be done to extend the capacity of four existing high voltage stations.

Local teams will benefit from training and transfer of expertise with the support of VINCI Energies French and Moroccan subsidiaries.

The project, which covers eight of Benins twelve departements, will contribute to the countrys socio-economic development by meeting residents energy requirements and by supplying several economic and industrial activity zones currently under development, including an airport, an administrative city, a hospital and new residential areas. It forms part of Benins Programme for Sustainable and Secure Access to Electrical Energy, which aims to ensure universal, secure and reliable access to electricity both for the population and for industrial and strategic sites.

In addition to our full mobilisation on the ground to ensure the technical success of this project, we have committed to training 300 young technicians while it is being completed. We are very happy to be embarking upon this collaboration with the Benin authorities and with local communities, which will pave the way for a permanent foothold in Benin and will support the local economy with the jobs created. This is in fact the basis of our companies development model, said Arnaud Grison, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of VINCI Energies.

About VINCI

VINCI is a global player in concessions and construction, employing more than 217,000 people in some 100 countries. We design, finance, build and operate infrastructure and facilities that help improve daily life and mobility for all. Because we believe in all-round performance, we are committed to operating in an environmentally, socially responsible and ethical manner. And because our projects are in the public interest, we consider that reaching out to all our stakeholders and engaging in dialogue with them is essential in the conduct of our business activities. Based on that approach, VINCIs ambition is to create long-term value for its customers, shareholders, employees, partners and society in general. www.vinci.com





This press release is an official information document of the VINCI Group

PRESS CONTACT

VINCI Press Department

Tel: +33 (0)1 47 16 31 82

media.relations@vinci.com

Attachment
Wrexham Library to reopen to the public on an appointment basis as part of a phased reopening

The Wrexham Library will be opening to members of the public this week on an appointment basis.

Up until now Wrexhams libraries have been solely operating on a click and collect service due to the level four restrictions in place.

However the Welsh Government recently gave the green light for libraries to reopen, and the booking-system is part of a phased approach being taken in Wrexham.

From today members of the public can book a 30-minute appointment slot to pop in and browse, borrow and return books at the Wrexham Library.





The order and collect service will also remain in place across all libraries in the county borough.

Wrexham Council are encouraging anyone who does visit the library to follow these tips to help keep everyone safe:

Make sure you book in advance, and stick to your allocated time.

You can only visit by yourself or with another person from your household or support bubble.

Stick to social distancing, wear a face covering and use the hand sanitiser provided.

Make sure youve left the building by the time your 30 minutes is up.

If you have any symptoms, please dont visit (even if youve booked)  self-isolate and arrange a test.

The library wont be offering photocopying, scanning or access to public computers  youll only be able to browse, borrow and return books.

Shan Cooper, who overseas the councils library services, says: The booking system will help us manage visitors-numbersso we can make sure theres plenty of space to social distance.

We want to reopen our libraries in the safest way possible, and if the system works well in Wrexham, well roll it out to other libraries in the county borough next month (May).

In the meantime, all of our libraries will continue to offer order and collect services, which have proved popular during the pandemic.

You can book an appointment by phoning 01978 292090 or emailing library@wrexham.gov.uk. To find out more about order and collect, and other online library services, visit the councils website.
Romania's Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu on Monday attended a videoconference of the European Union's Foreign Affairs Council (FAC), underscoring the need for a strategic vision on the Eastern Partnership (EaP) and an ambitious post-2020 agenda.

According to a press statement released by Romania's Foreign Affairs Ministry (MAE), the meeting focused on the situation in Georgia, Belarus, the Navalny case, EU-India relations, the situation in Myanmar, the latest developments in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on the Iranian nuclear file, the situation in Mozambique and the post-Cotonou Agreement, agerpres.ro confirms.

At the same time, the actual thematic agenda of the meeting included discussions on developments in Ethiopia and the situation in Ukraine. The ministers also had an informal exchange of views with Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.

The officials also welcomed the adoption of conclusions on the Southern Neighbourhood, the EU Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, and the EU Integrated Strategy for the Sahel.

Regarding Georgia, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell presented the latest developments in EU mediation efforts between political actors and called for reflection on future steps.

"Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu welcomed the joint EU-US statement of April 18, 2021 on support for the proposal made the same day by European Council President Charles Michel to facilitate an agreement between the Georgian political actors involved. He voiced hope that, based on the said proposal, the best political solution to the crisis will be reached that avoids any possible impact on the European course, and stressed the vital importance of the European Union's support for further supporting Georgia's European goals, including in the wider context of the challenges facing the states in the Eastern Neighbourhood," according to MAE.

Regarding Belarus, Aurescu mentioned the need to "adopt new sanctions, given a continuous degradation of the internal situation and continuous violations of human rights." He pointed out to the importance of stepping up the publication by the European Commission of its economic plan for a democratic Belarus, an idea supported since September 2020 in a joint letter signed by the presidents of Romania, Lithuania and Poland.

Regarding the case of Alexei Navalny, Aurescu voiced concern over the worsening health of the Russian dissident and support for a proposal to get the Red Cross involved in this case. In addition, in the context of Russia's ongoing destabilising actions on the Eastern Neighborhood countries and also on EU member states, Aurescu reiterated the importance of an EU strategic approach of its relations with Russia.

During the discussions on the latest developments in the preparations for an EU-India summit to be held in Porto, Portugal, on May 8, 2021, the Romanian chief diplomat put forth an ambitious and comprehensive agenda.

"He underlined that the partnership with India on connectivity and agreements on climate change and investment has the potential to materialise in concrete benefits for both parties. At the same time, the Romanian official appreciated that deepening the EU-India relationships has the vocation to contribute to an enhanced European commitment in the Indo-Pacific region and welcomed the adoption of the European Council conclusions on an EU strategy for co-operation with this region in many areas, such as connectivity, cyber security, maritime co-operation and healthcare. The Romanian minister also highlighted the interest of Romania in taking a more active profile in the Indo-Pacific region and in contributing to the implementation of the future strategy," according to MAE.

The meeting's debate on Ukraine took place after a visit by President of the European Council Charles Michel to Kiev on March 3 and a meeting of the EU-Ukraine Association Council on February 11.

"Minister Bogdan Aurescu reiterated support for Ukraine's European course and deepening the political association process under an agreement signed by the EU and Ukraine in 2014, and economic integration under a 2016 Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA). He emphasised the importance of the EU's constant and sustained support for Ukraine's continued efforts to carry out reforms as an essential condition for strengthening the rule of law, democracy and resilience of the country," the release reads.

Aurescu also expressed concern over the deployment of Russian troops and military equipment to Crimea and Ukraine's eastern border, reiterating Romania's key position on "upholding Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty."

"The head of Romanian diplomacy underscored the need for a strategic vision on the Eastern Partnership (EaP) and an ambitious post-2020 agenda, including strengthening security co-operation with partner states. He mentioned that Romania supports a more active role for the EU in addressing prolonged conflicts in the Black Sea region. Discussions on the subject will take place at an informal Gymnich meeting in May 2021," according to MAE.

During the informal exchange of views with the head of Ukrainian diplomacy, Dmytro Kuleba, the foreign ministers discussed recent political and security developments in Ukraine and the region.

Aurescu extolled Ukraine for its progress with implementing reforms and underscored the need for Ukraine to continue its efforts to the benefit of all citizens of the country, especially in the fight against corruption, and justice reform.

Aurescu joined the other European foreign ministers in voicing concern over repeated violations of the ceasefire agreement and the intensification of the mobilisation of Russian military forces in eastern Ukraine and illegally-annexed Crimea, and over Russia's intention to close navigation on certain sectors of the Black Sea. He also expressed support for an ambitious agenda of the Eastern Partnership summit scheduled for the second half of 2021 that will send a strong political message of support to EU's partners.
US President Joe Biden is very familiar with both Poland and Ukraine. His decades of service has taught him that the two countries are among Americas most devoted friends and allies.

Yet he waited until April 2  just as Russian troops were once again massing on Ukraines eastern border  to call Ukraines president, and he still has not spoken to his Polish counterpart.

Bidens relative silence seems to speak of a policy of benign neglect, a term coined by Daniel Patrick Moynihan when he was a domestic policy adviser to US President Richard Nixon.

Bidens decision to keep Poland and Ukraine at a distance may seem surprising. Although Poland is sliding from liberal democracy into populist dictatorship, Ukraine is desperately trying to consolidate its democracy, despite constant Russian meddling.

Moreover, even Polands illiberal government still tries to position the country as if it was Americas 51st state, with the US embassy in Warsaw playing a role similar to that of the Soviet embassy before 1989.

Ukraine, still at war with Russia and heavily reliant on US support, is in a very different position. US support has indeed helped, not least by halting the progress of little green men (Russian soldiers without insignia) in the eastern Donbas region after they had claimed some 7% of Ukraines national territory back in 2014.

As a result, Russias strategy of aggression has not paid off. Its occupation of Crimea and the Donbas  both economically devastated and cut off from the global economy  has come at a massive cost to its budget. More to the point, Russia has squandered centuries of goodwill among Ukrainians, who are now united around their national sovereignty.

Without Ukraine, Russia cannot be considered a global power  Russian President Vladimir Putins goal in annexing Crimea and invading the Donbas in 2014. At home, Putins approval ratings, which had been flagging, soared above 80% following that invasion. But these gains were only temporary.

If Russia were to conquer Ukraine now, Poland would be next in line. For 250 of the last 300 years, Poland was also part of the Russian Empire. The independence that Poland and Ukraine achieved with Americas victory in the Cold War thus remains a lasting testament to US primacy.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Biden understands that Ukraines anti-corruption reforms are the key to its survival as an independent democratic country

And yet, while Bidens election victory was met with euphoria in Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky had to wait two months for a call. Bidens coolness toward the two countries should not be interpreted as a change in US policy toward the region. After all, he has repeatedly stated  including in a conversation with Putin  that the US will never recognise Russias annexation of Crimea. Rather, Biden slow-rolled his call to Zelensky precisely because he knows Ukraine so well.

Biden understands that Ukraines anti-corruption reforms are the key to its survival as an independent democratic country. Without these reforms, Ukraines oligarchs  some with close Kremlin ties  can simply steal financial and even military aid to the country. Through a show of benign neglect, Biden sought to motivate Zelensky to act against the oligarchs on his own.

So far, the strategy appears to be working. In February, Zelensky approved a decision by Ukraines National Security and Defense Council to shut down three Russian-language TV channels linked to the oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk, who is so close to Putin that he lists Putin as godfather to one of his daughters. More important, Zelensky also moved against Ihor Kolomoisky, the oligarch who had bankrolled his earlier career.

These moves triggered a series of violent incidents on the informal border between Donbas and the rest of Ukraine, killing more than 20 Ukrainian soldiers since the start of the year. With Russian troop movements near the Ukrainian border threatening the security of both Ukraine and Poland, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has claimed that anyone inciting a new war in the Donbas will bring about Ukraines destruction.

But it is unlikely that Russias ostentatious troop movements are preparation for an actual invasion. Rather, with his popularity nose-diving in the run-up to Duma (legislative) elections this September, Putin is resorting to his old bag of dirty tricks. Indeed, the prospect of a Ukraine-style democratic revolution in Moscow haunts Putin.

Meanwhile, Duda has yet to hear from Biden. Unlike in Ukraine, Americas benign neglect of Poland has not persuaded that countrys populist rulers to suspend their war on democracy. Instead, the Polish government seems to have decided that maintaining good relations with the US would require too many concessions, threatening PiSs position at a time when its pandemic policies have dented its popular support.

Under PiS, Polands foreign policy is ultimately a function of domestic policy. As public support for PiS declines, more and more Poles may begin to realise why even their US patron is keeping its distance.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - April 19, 2021) - Snowy Owl Gold Corp. (CSE: SNOW) ("Snowy Owl" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that work is currently underway on both of the company's 100% owned Abitibi greenstone belt assets. For the recently acquired Panache Property (see news release: https://bit.ly/3mZlLQv), Snowy Owl has retained Geologica Groupe Conseil of Val d'Or, Quebec, to perform a geoscientific compilation of the property consisting of the geology, geophysics, geochemistry, and historical exploration data, with the goal of generating exploration targets for boots on the ground this summer.

"The Panache Property is surrounded by Osisko and Bonterra projects, contains greenstone rocks and geological structures which may represent exploration targets," (See Figures 1 and 2), states Raymond Wladichuk, CEO of Snowy Owl Gold Corp.

Simultaneously, to aid in the production of 2021 exploration targets on the Golden Eagle property (see news release: https://bit.ly/32nT1Yt), Snowy Owl has engaged Joel Simard, a consulting geophysicist, who has been re-processing and performing in-depth analysis of the results of the Company's high-definition heliborne magnetic survey completed in 2020. Details of the 2020 exploration program can be found in the below news release link: https://bit.ly/3ak6Qv6.

The objective of the in-depth analysis is to define prospective areas of interest by three-dimensionally delineating and characterizing magnetic anomalies and possible structures to define exploration targets to ground-truth, sample, and map for the 2021 exploration program. The company looks forward to the results of this analysis.

"We are very confident in the technical team we have started to assemble, their experience in the Quebec mining world will be vital in Snowy's growth and success," states David Patterson, Chairman of Snowy Owl Gold Corp.

Geologica has more than 33 years of expertise in Canadian and International exploration and comprises a highly qualified technical team. Their expertise includes more than 500 precious, base metals, diamonds, rare earth elements and industrial minerals for junior and significant company clients.

Raymond Wladichuk, P.Geo., CEO of Snowy Owl, and a "Qualified Person" for National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects has reviewed and approved the scientific and technical information contained in this news release.

About Snowy Owl Gold Corp.

Snowy Owl Gold Corp. is a mineral exploration company focused on acquiring, exploring, and developing gold projects in Quebec, Canada. The Company has 100% interest in the Panache Property, which consists of 12 map designated claims ("CDC") covering a total of 678 hectares, and the Golden Eagle Property, which consists of 161 map designated claims ("CDC") covering a total of 8,887.65 hectares (88.87 km2) within the Abitibi region located in Quebec, Canada. Additional information on Snowy Owl Gold Corp. is available at http://www.snowyowlgold.com/

On Behalf of the Board of Directors,

SNOWY OWL GOLD CORP.

"Raymond Wladichuk"

Chief Executive Officer

For further information, please contact:

Elyssia Patterson - CFO

Tel: +1 (778) 683 4324

Email: info@snowyowlgold.com

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor it's Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the CSE policies) accepts responsibility for this release's adequacy or accuracy.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains statements that constitute "forward-looking statements". Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause Snowy Owl Gold's actual results, performance or achievements, or developments in the industry to differ materially from the anticipated results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such 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 Snowy Owl Gold believes the forward-looking information contained in this news release is reasonable based on information available on the date hereof, by their nature, forward-looking statements involve assumptions, known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause our actual results, performance or achievements, or other future events, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.

Examples of such assumptions, risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, assumptions, risks and uncertainties associated with general economic conditions; the COVID-19 pandemic; adverse industry events; future legislative and regulatory developments in the mining sector; the Company's ability to access sufficient capital from internal and external sources, and/or inability to access sufficient capital on favorable terms; mining industry and markets in Canada and generally; the ability of Snowy Owl Gold to implement its business strategies; competition; and other assumptions, risks and uncertainties.

The forward-looking information contained in this news release represents the expectations of the Company 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 except as required in accordance with applicable laws.





Figure 1 - Panache Property Area Map



To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/7300/80845_figure1.jpg





Figure 2 - Panache Geologica



To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/7300/80845_figure2.jpg

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/80845
The demand for medical has jumped manifold amid the second wave of Covid, according to industry players who said it much sought-after since the start of the pandemic last year.

According to industry figures, the pre-Covid demand for liquid medical (LMO) before the pandemic was 700 tonne per day (TPD) across the country. During the first wave of Covid-19 last year, the demand for LMO increased four times to 2,800 TPD. Further, with the second wave, the demand has gone up more than seven times the pre-Covid levels -- 5,000 TPD.

While we hope that the spike in cases is arrested, the success of therapy in Covid treatment means that there will be sustained demand for liquid medical oxygen in the months to come, said Siddharth Jain, director, INOX Air Products. His company is meeting more than 60 per cent of the total medical oxygen demand in the country.

The supply of medical oxygen is currently being allocated centrally and monitored by the empowered group, EG II, headed by the secretary in the department for promotion of industry and internal trade, mandated by the Union government. This explains the pressure from states on the Union government, since quotas are allotted by the central committee. The Delhi government had on Sunday alleged the Centre was diverting from its quota to other states.

The EG II has members nominated from all the states, along with all major oxygen manufactures, All India Industrial Gases Manufacturers Association (AIIGMA), Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation (PESO), the Ministry of Road Transport, and the Indian Railways. While medical oxygen is not a controlled commodity, the prices are controlled by the National Pharma Pricing Authority. In normal times, India had an excess supply of medical oxygen, so there was no restriction on interstate movement earlier. We believe that once the pandemic subsides, there will be no restriction on the movement of LMO, said Jain.

Following criticism of Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyals remarks asking states to keep oxygen demand in control, his ministry went on a publicity drive to showcase the movement of oxygen by train, though it was a small quantity run on a trial basis to gauge if movement by train is faster than by road.

On Monday, the Railways sent seven empty tanker trains owned by the ministry of defence on a RoRo (roll-on-roll-off) train to Kalamboli goods yard in Navi Mumbai for further movement to Visakhapatnam to fetch medical oxygen for Maharashtra.

A person close to the development said while the Visakhapatnam industrial area had excess oxygen, demand was not high there so it was moved to Maharashtra.

While the government banned the use of oxygen in industrial facilities, except for identified sectors on Sunday, several firms, especially government ones, have diverted oxygen supply for medical purposes. Indian Oil Corporation (IndianOil), on Monday announced it had started supply of 150 tonne of oxygen at no cost to various hospitals in Delhi, Haryana, and Punjab.

In the face of a massive surge in demand for medical oxygen during the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, IndianOil has diverted the high-purity oxygen used in its Mono Ethylene Glycol (MEG) Unit to produce medical-grade liquid oxygen at its Panipat Refinery & Petrochemical Complex. The throughput of the Unit has also been scaled down for a more critical cause, said a statement.

Jain said his firm had been running all units 24x7 to ensure continuous production of medical oxygen to more than 800 hospitals. It has a production capacity of 2,000 TPD, with 25 of its 44 units making it. Our dedicated fleet of VTS-enabled 550 transport tanks and more than 600 drivers were critical to facilitating the supply of medical oxygen. INOX AP manufactures 3,300 TPD of liquified gases.

Bharat Petroleum also announced the supply of 100 tonnes of oxygen at no cost to various hospitals. Last week, Reliance Industries, too, had decided to divert oxygen from its refinery use for the more urgent medical requirement.

IFFCO announced that its oxygen plant at Kalol would produce 33,000 litre of medical-grade oxygen every day. The company plans to set up three more oxygen plants at Aonla, Phulpur, and Paradeep.

INOX Air Products moved its oxygen by rail on Sunday at the request of the Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh governments. It has tied up with the Railways to run tankers.
NESS-ZIONA, Israel, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Vidac Pharma LTD (Vidac) a clinical-stage Israel biopharmaceutical company, announced today that it has signed an agreement with GEM Global Yield LLC SCS ("GEM") a Luxemburg-based private alternative investment group for a EUR 20 million capital commitment.

Under the agreement, GEM commits to provide Vidac with a share subscription facility of up to EUR 20 million for a 36-month term following the public listing of the company shares on a European National Stock Exchange. Vidac will control the timing and maximum amount of drawdown under the facility and has no minimum drawdown obligation. Concurrent to the public listing of Vidac Shares, GEM will receive warrants to purchase shares of the company.

Subject to the funding becoming available, the proceeds will be used to further progress the clinical development of Vidac's lead product, VDA 1102, currently in Phase 2 clinical trials for the treatment of the pre-cancerous condition Actinic Keratosis (AK) and for Cutaneous T-Cell Lymphoma (CTCL) a rare type of Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. Proceeds will also be used for developing additional products from the company's proprietary HK2-focused discovery platform. This platform is based on the novel paradigm that detachment of HK2, a key enzyme in cellular metabolism, from the VDAC mitochondrial channel restores normal metabolism in malignant cells, resulting in the elimination of tumors through apoptosis (Programed death) without harming the surrounding normal cells.

"We are very pleased by the GEM commitment" said Max Herzberg PhD, founder and active chairman of Vidac. "This funding, and becoming a public entity, will help us to continue the development of drugs based on our novel anti-cancer paradigm of selectively restoring normal metabolism in malignant cells. These are presently being developed for skin related cancers, such as AK, CTCL and later squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), but are expected to fight solid tumors as well. Unlike many of today's anti-cancer drugs, safety and tolerability of the new treatments are projected to be very good as normal cells are not affected by the new paradigm. "

About Vidac:

Vidac Pharma was founded in Israel in 2012 by Dr Max Herzberg and aims to develop anti-cancer drugs based on restoring normal cellular metabolism. Cancer cells are characterized by a high rate of glycolysis and by suppressed apoptosis (programmed death) both of which favorizes high cellular reproduction and Tumor formation. Vidac's platform technology restores normal glycolysis and triggers apoptosis in these malignant cells. As normal cells are not subject to overexpression of HK2 they are not affected by Vidac's drugs. Vidac's lead drug, VDA-1102, has successfully completed a Phase 2b clinical trial in actinic keratosis (AK) under an IND from the FDA and is presently in a Phase 2a clinical trial in CTCL in Israel. The company's strategic intellectual property portfolio covers broadly its general approach as well as its drug candidates.

About the GEM group:

Global Emerging Markets (GEM) is a 3.4 Billion $ alternative investment group with operations in Paris, New York and Los Angeles. GEM manages a diverse set of investment vehicles focused on emerging markets and has completed 400 transactions in 70 countries. Each investment vehicle has different sets of operational concepts of risk adjusted return and liquidity profile. The family of funds and investment vehicles provide GEM and its partners with exposure to: Small-Mid Cap Management Buyouts, Private Investments in Public Equities and select venture investments. For more information : www.gemny.com

For Further information about Vidac Pharma:

Max Herzberg, PhD. Active Chairman of the Board info@vidacpharma.com www.vidacpharma.com

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1490442/Vidac_Pharma_Logo.jpg
The U.S. Department of State announced on Monday it will issue a 'Level 4: Do Not Travel' advisory, its highest warning, for about 80 percent of countries.

In an official statement, the agency said the risk of COVID-19 while traveling remains too high and urged Americans to 'reconsider all travel abroad.'

'This does not imply a reassessment of the current health situation in a given country, but rather reflects an adjustment in the State Department's Travel Advisory system to rely more on CDC's existing epidemiological assessments,' the statement read.

Level 4 is generally reserved for war-torn countries or nations that would be hostile to Americans such as Afghanistan and North Korea.

Most countries are currently listed on the State Department website with a 'Level 3 - Reconsider Travel' warning, the second-highest alert.

The U.S. Department of State announced on Monday it will be issuing 'Level 4: Do Not Travel' advisories for 80% of countries

Currently, there are 34 countries listed as Level 4 (in red), which is generally reserved for countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea and Syria

Currently, there are 33 countries listed as Level 4.

They include: Afghanistan, Argentina, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Central African Republic, Chad, Cuba, Curacao, French Guiana, French West Indies, Georgia, Haiti, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kenya, Kosovo, Libya, Mali, Montenegro, Mozambique, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Turkmenistan, Turks and Caicos, Venezuela, Yemen.

It is unknown which countries will be added to the list, but it is believed the list will include several nations in Asia, Central America and Europe.

According to the statement, the advisories will begin being updated this week to be in line with Travel Health Notices issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

The advisories also 'take into account logistical factors, including in-country testing availability and current travel restrictions for U.S. citizens.'

Only three countries - Macau, New Zealand and Taiwan - are currently listed as 'Level 1: Exercise Normal Precautions.'

It comes two weeks after the CDC issued new guidelines stating that people who are fully vaccinated can travel safely within the U.S and internationally. Pictured: Travelers reclaim their luggage at the airport in Denver, Colorado, November 2020

On April 2, the CDC issued new guidelines stating that people who are fully vaccinated can travel safely within the U.S and internationally.

Travelers are considered fully vaccinated if it has been more than two weeks after their second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines or after the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

However, the agency still advised against non-essential travel due to spread of the virus and not enough people vaccinated yet to reach herd immunity.

'Every time there's a surge in travel, we have a surge of cases in this country,' CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky said last month.

'We're hopeful that our next set of guidance, will have more science around what vaccinated people can do, perhaps travel being among them.'

The CDC still requires a negative test result within the last 72 hours for people of all nationalities flying to the U.S., including Americans returning from abroad.

Those who are fully vaccinated, both U.S. citizens and foreigners, do not need to self-quarantine after arriving.

Although the CDC can make nationwide recommendations for what it deems safe, the agency cannot enforce rules.

Each U.S. state sets its own requirements when it comes to testing, quarantining or other precautions visitors need to take.

The majority of states have dropped travel restrictions for travelers but there are exceptions, including Hawaii.

It comes as more than a million people continue to pass through Transportation Security Administration checkpoints every day, which has been occurring since March 10.

On Sunday, 1.57 million Americans were screened by airport security, which was the highest number in more than two weeks - and higher than figures seen over the Christmas and New Year's holiday.
A welcome sense of normality is at last beginning to return to Britain. As shops and bars re-open and families reunite, the long ordeal of lockdown appears to be coming to an end.

Given the current positive trends, the Governments target of full freedom by June 21 looks like it should be met.

But that is not the message conveyed by a number of pessimistic experts. Full of bleak foreboding, they warn that the lifting of Covid restrictions could plunge us into another health crisis.

Last week, Professor Jeremy Brown, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), told the BBC that a big third wave could still end up with 30,000 to 50,000 deaths, potentially, if it was a similar sort of size to the previous waves.

Gloom

The model called the Predictor Corrector Coronavirus Filter (PCCF) looks at what will happen if the R-rate is held at 0.6

In the same vein, at the beginning of the month, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage)  whose modelling has provided the basis for the tough lockdown policy  warned that Britain is highly likely to suffer a third wave, while any attempt to return to life as it was in February 2020 would probably result in a big epidemic.

This gloom has been compounded by fears about the advent of more infectious variants of the virus, such as the new B.1.617 type from India, whose spread across the subcontinent has just forced the Prime Minister to cancel his forthcoming visit there.

But as a scientist specialising in risk management, I believe this negativity is overdone. There is little convincing evidence to back the claim that, as lockdown is eased, Britain is about to be hit by a third wave, accompanied by a renewed surge in deaths.

On the contrary, it is my view that if there is indeed an increase in infections over the coming months, it will have little significant impact and the death toll will remain extremely low. That is because of the huge success of the vaccine programme, which will mean that by June, the overwhelming majority of the population is protected.

Professor Philip Thomas (pictured) believes negativity is overdone

The reality is we are beating the pandemic. As we move into the summer, immunity will grow. In such circumstances, there would be no justification for keeping restrictive measures in place.

This optimism is based partly on the mathematical model I have created, which uses data to project the trajectory of the virus. This is tested against independent measurements made by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

My work on modelling has proved accurate in the past, notably in the 1990s when there was deep concern in government circles about the incidence of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE)  known as Mad Cow Disease  and its human equivalent, the brain disorder Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).

Based on my analysis of the data, my contention made in 1996 was that CJD would claim 20 to 520 lives, with a central estimate of 130. That turned out to be remarkably close to the real figure of 180.

Advocate

In contrast, the official advisory team, led by Professor Sir Roy Anderson of Imperial College London, set out scenarios where the death toll ranged from 100 to 10 million.

Based on my analysis of the data, my contention made in 1996 was that CJD would claim 20 to 520 lives, with a central estimate of 130. That turned out to be remarkably close to the real figure of 180. Pictured, coronavirus cases are falling

Intriguingly, one member of Professor Andersons team was Professor Neil Ferguson, who has gained a high public profile during the Covid crisis as one of the most voluble advocates of lockdown.

In studying the coronavirus, I developed a model called the Predictor Corrector Coronavirus Filter (PCCF). It is a simple software device, inspired by the work of two pioneering Scots: the mathematical epidemiologist Anderson McKendrick and the biochemist William Kermack, who came up with a hypothesis that could track the spread of an infectious disease.

Like all models, the PCCF had a number of assumptions fed into it, including high levels of both the take-up and effectiveness of the vaccines, based on field data.

What the PCCF model indicates is that there is little danger of our society being overwhelmed by a third wave.

My prediction is that, although the total number of active infections in England could reach a peak of 160,000 in the early autumn of this year, this rise will not lead to a spike in deaths or hospitalisations.

Like all models, the PCCF had a number of assumptions fed into it, including high levels of both the take-up and effectiveness of the vaccines, based on field data. Pictured, how the vaccine rollout has progressed

That is because, thanks to the vaccines, the link between Covid infections and fatalities has been broken.

In this new, safer environment, roughly one third of people who are infected will have no symptoms at all, while the vast majority of the remainder will have only mild symptoms. As a result, even when the peak is reached, the death toll will probably be less than 20 per day.

I can have full confidence in this forecast because my PCCF model has proved reassuringly accurate over recent months. Its figures are updated daily online and, each week, they turn out to be retrospectively validated by the latest Covid report from the ONS, which surveys the population through the use of Covid tests on 150,000 participants every fortnight.

Every time, my own data and that of the ONS are reconciled almost exactly, which can hardly be said of all the predictions from Sage.

What the most recent findings prove for certain is the efficacy of the vaccines. That is why we are winning the war on Covid. Even the new variants are a far less deadly threat because the jabs have drawn their sting, to use the phrase of the epidemiologist Professor Andrew Hayward.

Before the programme started, there were concerns about hesitancy in the public to have the jab, but they have proved unfounded. According to the ONS, 65 per cent of Englands adult population have received at least one dose, while that figure rises to 97 per cent for the over-50s.

Moreover, they have proved even more effective than expected. My PCCF model has turned out to be justified in its assumptions that a first jab provides 69 per cent protection against infection and transmission, as well as reducing the chances of dying by 85 per cent after eight weeks.

What the most recent findings prove for certain is the efficacy of the vaccines. Pictured, Prime Minister Boris Johnson at a pub in Wolverhampton on Monday

Threat

So why are some other experts so pessimistic? I think it is because they are fixated by the goal of eradicating Covid, no matter what the social and economic cost, so they view any measure of freedom as a potential threat.

But this approach lacks any sense of perspective. It fails to take into account the huge collateral damage done by the lockdowns, including poor mental and physical health, financial insecurity, business failures and unemployment.

It has been cruel to the older people locked in care homes and to students trapped on university campuses. One clear indicator of a societys prosperity is life expectancy. Thanks to the fall-out from lockdown, our average length of life in Britain may already be reducing, which means that people of all ages will die earlier than they should.

We have stored up colossal problems for the future. The last vestiges of lockdown should not continue a moment longer that was planned in the Governments roadmap. And my model shows that they will not need to. That is a cause for celebration, not anxiety.
Deborah Rose /Hearst Connecticut /

NEW MILFORD  Beginning April 20, New Milford Public Librarys Knit & Stitch (formerly the Library Knit Wits) will start meeting on the Green on Tuesdays from 3:30-5:30 p.m. (weather permitting).

Those interested in attending are asked to call the library at 860-355-1191, ext. 2 on Tuesday mornings to confirm that there will be a session.
Northern Ireland farmers are being warned that the peak risk period for Nematodirus worm infection in young lambs has arrived.

The Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) has issued a 'high risk' warning to sheep farmers in the region.

Nematodirus infection results from the ingestion of large numbers of infective worm larvae present on contaminated pasture.

Lambs grazing the same pasture in the previous year act as the source of this contamination.

For Nematodirus eggs to hatch they must experience a period of cold weather followed by warmer conditions.

These conditions are usually achieved during the winter and spring of each year.

The AFBI said: "Nematodirus eggs passed out by lambs in 2020 will generally have remained unhatched on the ground over the winter season.

"Given suitable conditions of moisture and temperature, eggs will undergo mass hatching in the spring of 2021, resulting in a high risk of infection for lambs."

Using a forecasting system based on climate data, staff at the institute have predicted that hatching of Nematodirus eggs has commenced.

Current meteorological readings also indicate that peak hatching took place during first and second week of April 2021.

Nematodirus normally only affects lambs between 6 and 12 weeks of age and clinical signs usually appear two weeks after ingestion of large numbers of larvae.

Affected lambs develop profuse scour and can die rapidly. Although rare, Nematodirus infection can also occasionally cause problems in young calves.

Therefore, the AFBI said farmers should be on the alert for signs of scour in lambs from mid April into May.

"Farmers should be aware that Nematodirus infection can be confused with coccidiosis, another disease which causes severe scour in young lambs," it said.

"As the treatments for Nematodirus infection and coccidiosis are different, accurate diagnosis and treatment recommendation, through your veterinary surgeon, are essential."
Geoscientists are uniquely positioned to help solve the critical challenges that society faces today and into the future on our ever-changing planet. The undergraduate and graduate curriculum of the Department of Geosciences at Virginia Tech is designed to prepare you to meet these challenges. So its not surprising that our students and alumni of the Department of Geosciences at Virginia Tech embody the universitys motto Ut Prosim, or That I May Serve.

Our undergraduate program has six options: Geology, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geobiology and Paleobiology, Environmental and Engineering Geosciences, and Earth Science Education. These curriculum paths are designed to relate to the variety of career possiblilities within the geosciences.

Our graduate program offers M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in one of our many research areas. We encourage interdisciplinary approaches to research in the geosciences, both within our department and in the other programs across the Virginia Tech campus.
Lucknow: About 60 per cent polling was recorded till 5 pm on Monday for the second phase of the Uttar Pradesh panchayat polls in 20 districts, where 3.48 lakh candidates are in the fray for over 2.23 lakh posts.

While Gautam Buddh Nagar recorded the highest polling percentage of 70.20 per cent, Pratapgarh recorded the lowest at 52.12 per cent, the State Election Commission (SEC) said.

Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav did not exercise his franchise in his native Saifai village in Etawah district following request from family members to keep his safety in mind in view of the pandemic.

According to family sources, the 81-year-old had never missed voting in any election till now.

"We requested Netaji (Mulayam Singh Yadav) not to come to Saifai to cast his vote this time for the panchayat elections in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and he agreed to our request. Netaji is in Delhi," his nephew Dharmendra Yadav told PTI.

BJP MLA from Lambhua in Sultanpur Devmani Dwivedi said he could not cast his vote as his name was not in the voters' list.

"Barring me, names of my other family members, including my mother, who is no more, were in the voters' list," Dwivedi told PTI.

Violence was reported in Etah where Praveen Kumar, husband of a village pradhan candidate, Suman Yadav, from Bhagipur was shot at and injured by unidentified assailants on Sunday night.

SHO of Kotwali police station, Subhash Katheria, said the incident took place near Shikohabad road.

Polling started at 7 am and went on till 6 pm on Monday. Over 3.23 crore voters were eligible to exercise their franchise.

In the second of the four-phase election, polling is being held in Lucknow, Varanasi, Amroha, Azamgarh, Etawah, Etah, Kannauj, Gonda, Gautam Buddh Nagar, Chitrakoot, Pratapgarh, Budaun, Baghpat, Bijnor, Muzaffarnagar, Mainpuri, Maharajganj, Lakhimpur Kheri, Lalitpur and Sultanpur.

For the 787 posts of member of zila panchayat, there are 11,483 candidates and for the 19,653 seats of kshetra panchayat, as many as 85,232 candidates are in the fray.

As far as the gram panchayats are concerned, there are 1,21,906 candidates for 14,897 posts and for the gram panchayat wards, there are as many as 1,30,305 candidates for 1,87,781 posts.

The candidates are contesting on "free symbols" given by the Election Commission.

More than 2.31 lakh poll officials have been deployed by the SEC for a smooth conduct of the panchayat polls.

In the first phase of the polls, which was held on April 15, an average polling percentage of 71 was recorded.

The 2015 panchayat polls had registered a polling percentage of 72.11, according to the SEC.

In view of the coronavirus situation, the SEC had said last month that not more than five people would be allowed to accompany a candidate during door-to-door campaigning for the panchayat elections.

Additional Election Commissioner Ved Prakash Verma said three-member teams were formed under the additional district magistrates to ensure that the directives issued by the SEC were being followed.

At the district level, the chief medical officers have been made the nodal officers and stress has been laid on COVID-19 prevention.

Voters will mandatorily have to wear masks and maintain social distancing at polling booths. Instructions have also been issued to make circles and maintaining a distance of six feet between voters standing in the queue.

Verma said COVID-19 norms would be followed during the counting of votes and personal protective equipment (PPE) kits would be arranged according to requirements.

The Allahabad High Court had asked the Uttar Pradesh government to conclude the panchayat election process by May 25.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 20)  The Department of Science and Technology said the country is preparing to conduct clinical trials for the use of ivermectin against COVID-19.

DOST chief Fortunato dela Pena said this during a televised meeting with President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday.

Dela Pena said Friday last week that he and Health Secretary Francisco Duque III discussed the matter after Duterte raised it in their Thursday meeting. On Saturday, it was agreed that an expert would lead the trials.

Dr. Aileen Wang from the Philippine General Hospital will be spearheading the clinical trials that will involve quarantine centers near the said healthcare facility.

The Heath Department has already allocated funds for the said program, he noted.

It's an apparent deviation from officials' earlier pronouncements. The government said on April 10 that it has no plans to conduct such trials to determine efficacy of the anti-parasitic drug against the coronavirus since similar studies are ongoing in other parts of the world.

Hopefully po ay pag natapos ang trial na iyan ay magkakaroon tayo ng mas reliable estimates ng epekto ng ivermectin bilang isang anti-viral agent na makapagre-reduce ng virus shedding sa mga mild at moderate patients at makikita natin ang epekto ng ivermectin sa hospitalization ng iba, Dela Pena explained.

[Translation: Hopefully after this trial we will have more reliable estimates of the effect of ivermectin as an anti-viral agent that will reduce virus shedding in mild and moderate patients and we will see the effect of ivermectin on hospitalization of others.]

However, he said this could run for six months, depending on the number of volunteers that will join the program.

Earlier, the Food and Drug Administration granted two hospitals special compassionate permits for the use of ivermectin for COVID-19 patients.

This was despite warnings from experts that the drug has unproven efficacy against the disease, and high doses of it could cause brain damage or death.

Apart from the special permit, the regulator only allows the use of oral ivermectin products on animals to prevent heartworm diseases and treat infections due to parasites. Doctors can also prescribe topical ivermectin to treat parasitic infestations such as head lice and other skin conditions for humans.

Trial for other treatments

The Cabinet official also said they have recently approved holding clinical trials in the country to use methylprednisolone on COVID-19 patients.

This corticosteroid hormone is currently used to treat arthritis, blood disorders, and immune system disorders, among others.

The clinical trial for melatonin, a drug most commonly used for insomnia, is also underway at the Manila Doctor's Hospital.

DOST is also in the process of studying other natural products such as virgin coconut oil, lagundi, and tawa-tawa as therapeutics.

"Marami po tayong sinusubukan. Hindi man bakuna (pero ito) ay makakapagpabilis po sa recovery kung sakali," dela Pena said.

[Translation: We are looking at many medicines. Even though these are not vaccines, it could help fast track the recovery of patients.]
In this handout photo provided by ISAF Regional Command (South), Australian defense engineers carry the casket of their friend and colleague Cpl. Richard Atkinson at Multinational Base Tarin Kot in Uruzgan, Afghanistan on February 5, 2011. (Australian Cpl. Christopher Dickson/Australian Department of Defense via Getty Images)

New Defence Minister Overturns Decision to Strip Afghan Veterans of Medals

Newly appointed Australian Defence Minister Peter Dutton has overturned a decision to strip 3,000 soldiers of their citations after their service in Afghanistan.

Last year, Chief of Defence Angus Campbell recommended the Meritorious Unit Citation be revoked for the Special Operations Task Group as a collective punishment after the release of a report that revealed evidence of war crimes committed by Australian personnel.

However, Dutton said that only those convicted of war crimes would lose their medals.

We shouldnt be punishing the 99 percent for the sins of one percent, Dutton told 2GB radio.

This says to people very clearly before Anzac Day that we want to reset, that we want to provide support to those people who have served our country and who have died in that service, he said.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison (L) and Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton look on during Question Time in the House of Representatives at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on March 15, 2021. (Sam Mooy/Getty Images)

The minister noted that around 40,000 Australians served in Afghanistan, with many losing mates and family. Anzac Day should be used to properly commemorate their contributions, he said.

Australia and New Zealand observe Anzac Day on April 25 to commemorate military personnel who have served in war and conflict.

The announcement by Dutton comes after the Brereton Inquiry in November found evidence up to 25 Australian soldiers while serving in Afghanistan were involved in the alleged murders of at least 39 Afghan civilians and prisoners. The Inquiry recommended formal charges be laid against 19 defence personnel.

Weve now set up an office of a special investigator, and those individuals will be investigated by that office, and they can look at those individual matters, Dutton said.

General Campbells recommendation to strip the citations received backlash from the public and Prime Minister Scott Morrison just hours after it was released.

Meanwhile, Dutton was also critical of restrictions around Anzac Day events.

I dont understand why you can have 30,000 people at a footy game, but you cant have that same number at an Anzac Day service, he said. But he did implore Australians to comply with registration measures.

I do want to see good numbers, and I do want to see people register.

While Anzac Day events were cancelled last year with the onset of COVID-19, this year, the marches have been subject to strict contract tracing and registration rules.

In Melbourne, only 900 veterans have registered out of a capacity of 5,500. Simultaneously, only 600 individuals and 120 associations have registered for the 10,000-capacity event in Sydney.

Vietnam War Veteran John Haward said a portion of veterans might be holding back their registration to protest the regulations, while RSL Victorias CEO Jamie Twidale suggested the issue was more nuanced.

Its a bit of a combination, he told 3AW radio.

Theres potentially a small element of a bit of a protest saying, Well, if I have to register for contact tracing, I just wont register at all, he said.

There is also a group that think while theres limited spots, Let someone else have my spotIll go commemorate somewhere else.
The federal government could send some of Victorias share of AstraZeneca vaccines to GPs, under a recalibrated program aimed at speeding up the vaccine rollout, acting Premier James Merlino has suggested.

National cabinet held an emergency meeting on Monday aimed at fixing the failures and delays in the vaccine rollout.

Ahead of the meeting, Mr Merlino said Victoria would argue the Pfizer vaccine should be available only for people aged under 50, the AstraZeneca vaccine should soon be offered to everyone aged between 50 and 70 and that the immunisation program should be recalibrated to send some of the state governments share of AstraZeneca jabs to GPs.

We stand ready, willing and able to do more in terms of mass vaccination, but that is subject to supply, Mr Merlino said.
Turning to find out the constitutional mandate on privatization, Indian Constitution, though, inherently socialist in character, policy attitude of the government has been mixed (economic) approach.

by Vijay Kumar

The Central Government of India is on a spree of privatization. It can be well-understood from Prime Minister Modis statement that the government has no business to be in business. The government is selling or disinvesting many public sector units including banks.Such announcement of privatisation has created an uproar from opposition political parties and generated an apprehension among the general public, especially to those who are working in government sectors.

If we analyse the statement government has no business to be in business, we may find that it is well-founded in the core of philosophical and jurisprudential understanding infused by various thinkers namely, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. To this understanding one see the role of the state to provide subsistence, to produce abundance, to favour equality, and to maintain security for the citizens. However, it can not be denied that there is no possibility of a contrary notion of the role of the state, To assert that there are different schools of thought as well.

Turning to find out the constitutional mandate on privatization, Indian Constitution, though, inherently socialist in character, policy attitude of the government has been mixed (economic) approach. In a way, thus, it may be argued that encouraging private participation with the element or tilt to socialism-aspect is not something ultra-virus. Therefore, the onus is on the government to maintain the basic features of the welfare state especially when it is hosting a large section of the population living below the poverty line and to bridge the economic disparity/rich-poor divide.

The obvious question arises here is why people are apprehensive of privatization? Such apprehension has been well-explained in Marxian philosophy based on economic condition of the society. The philosophy emphasis that in any epoch of the history a society has been dominated by the superstructure created by the class of people who controls the economic resources. The concerns of Indian citizen is perfectly based on the way of governance adopted by the various governments mainly after the Independence. Such Concerns of people can be broadly categorized as follows:Firstly, social security  this is one among the top reason which is absent in the governance of private enterprises. The existing labour law provides minimal standards for the employees working in the private sector. Even those minimal standard has very poor implantation on the ground. Secondly, the welfare of employees is generally of no priority or at least priority of the private employers. In this fast technology-driven life where mental stress, happiness quotient (India is already a very poorly ranked country in this aspect) of employees need priority, a hurried-decision will deteriorate the situation.Thirdly, there are many affirmative actions that the government is taking to uplift the lower-strata of the society. Such as equal opportunity and reservations for a certain group of peopleis/are inherently preserved in the government jobs, it is not clear that how the central government is going to continue with this. Despite, many allegations of corruption and discrepancies in the appointment process of government jobs, by and large, the process is open and subject to much scrutiny. Such checks and balancesare not there with regard to the appointment process in the private sector.Fourthly, but not the last,many governmental bodies and PSUs falls under the definition of State under the definition provided in article 12 of the Indian Constitution, thereby, bound to many special laws, for example, Right to Information Act (RTI) 2005 where they are obliged to disclose certain information to the public. Such mandate is not there and no clarity on this aspect is available in this regard. And moreover, the application of Part III of the Constitution, i.e., fundamental rights of the citizens can be secured in such scenario. In recent interpretation, a private person or entities can also held responsible for the violation of the fundamental rights of the citizens, however, there is no uniformity, certainty, and predictability in their application. Thus, in this regard also, government has to come up with concrete plan.

So far, the government has not shown its intent on the abovementioned issues to bring private sectors into the ambit of stringent legal regime. The government has also not looked effectively into the implementation of the barely enacted laws to regulate the private sectors and their activities.

Mis-governanceor letting the private sector loose can lead to disaster. Where there is already a perceived notion of collusion of the private sector (especially MNCs and TNCs) and government officials and political class, it will be just a matter of time to turn any republic intoa banana republic. A recent example of such mis-governance can be seen from the logger-head between Reliance and Amazon over the RIL-Future Group deal. It is beyond the imagination how a foreign investor could investin a Indian company having business in the retail sector when there was an FDI bar in that sector. It is the best illustration to depict the inefficiency from the Competition Commission of India (CCI) to clear that investment. At the same time, it is of real concernthat how one clause of an agreement between two private entities can put at stake the direct employment of 25,000 persons and about 11 lakhs jobs in total.

These are the well-founded reasons why people are apprehensive of the random privatization steps from the government. If the government intends to privatize, it has to do many preparatory works in terms of enacting laws and stringent policies to keep checks and balances over private sectors mainly inthe abovementioned areas. However, such intent is barely visible from recent actions.

Vijay Kumar: Assistant Professor (Law) Reva University Bangalore. He is also pursuing his Ph.D. from IIT Kharagpur in the areas of International Law.
Documents released by the US Marshals Service (USMS) confirm that the Trump administration conducted a nationwide program to deputize hundreds of federal agents during its crackdown on protesters last summer and fall. In many cases, those deputized were local police officers.

The documents reveal that the deputations under Operation Legendlaunched by the US Justice Department on July 8, 2020 and promoted as a force for fighting crime in major US citieswere expedited across the country at the height of the protests against police violence triggered by the murder of George Floyd.

President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto at the White House in Washington, October [Credit: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster]

The nonprofit watchdog group American Oversight obtained the documents533 pages of internal email messages and Special Deputation Oath of Office formsthrough a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. While Trumps Attorney General William Barr reported last December that 6,000 people had been arrested by Operation Legend agents, the USMS has yet to provide American Oversight with the arrest data it is seeking as part of the FOIA request.

A report published by American Oversight on Thursday says the records it obtained provide details about where many of the deputations took place as the program, which began in Kansas City, Mo., expanded to other cities. Deputation forms included in the records contain details about the officers parent law enforcement agency, where they made their oath of office, and the length of their deputation.

While the names of the officers and the representatives of the sponsoring local agency are redacted from the forms, the records show 24 deputation oaths signed in Kansas City, 25 signed in Chicago, 15 signed in St. Louis, 38 signed in Milwaukee. The American Oversight report states, The highest number of deputations in the records occurred in Albuquerque, with 58 oaths signed on Sept. 4 and Sept. 16. In some cases, the deputations were set to last months. In others, such as those involving the Milwaukee Police Department, the deputations appear to only extend for days or weeks.

The internal email messagesalso with identities of the individuals involved redactedshow that those submitting the oath documents were eager to get the deputations approved. For example, a representative of the Great Lakes Regional Fugitive Task Force (GLRFTF), with offices in Chicago and Hammond, Indiana, submitted a group of applications on July 23 to the USMS Special Deputations Branch saying, the sooner we can get this back the better because the operation started Wed.

An email from a USMS investigative analyst from the District of New Mexico requested a fast-track approval of deputation applications: Please be advised that this is for Operation Legend. Please expedite.

The American Oversight report explains that Operation Legendwhich fraudulently exploited the death of four-year-old LeGend Taliferro, who was shot and killed while sleeping in his home in Kansas City, Missouri, on June 29, 2020was essentially a rebranding of a previous USMS program called Operation Relentless Pursuit (ORP) that was launched by the Justice Department in December 2019 to surge federal law enforcement resources into seven of Americas most violent cities.

The actual purpose of the ORP program was to further then-President Trumps reelection campaign law and order message. Once the protests against police violence began, following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, the Trump agenda shifted to a campaign against the protesters.

The American Oversight report explains that the federal deputation of officers was used to bring increased federal charges against defendants and that USMS task forces often operate without the same oversight measures that may generally be required by local jurisdictions. As was the case in the killing of Michael Reinoehl on September 3 in Lacey, Washington, agents from the FBI and USMS Pacific Northwest Violent Offender Task Force were mobilized by the Trump administration to execute the Portland protester in a hail of gunshots in complete violation of his constitutional rights.

In February, the criminal justice investigative journalism organization the Marshall Project published a report reviewing violence by federal marshals or deputized police officers in USMS task forces between January 1, 2015 and September 10, 2020. This report shows that 177 people were shot by these groups, 124 of whom died. The Marshall Project reported that federal officers shot 31 people a year and killed 22, a number greater than city police forces of similar sizes.

The Operation Legend program also took place alongside of the deployment by the Trump administration of paramilitary forces such as the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC) of the Department of Homeland Security against protesters in cities such as Portland. As reported by the World Socialist Web Site, in July at least seven people were kidnapped by militarized camouflaged DHS agents driving unmarked vehicles and held for hours in unknown locations without cause or due process.

The expansion of federal agents operating in major US cities in violation of the US Constitution was part and parcel of the attack waged by the Trump administration on democratic rights and the attempt to establish a personalist dictatorship in the White House. This campaign reached a high point in June when Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 seeking to mobilize active US troops against peaceful protesters in Washington D.C., and culminated in the assault on the US Capitol on January 6 by a fascist mob attempting to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential elections.

The increasing militarization of the police and the slandering of protests as violent riots by the right wing has been aided and abetted all along by the Democrats, who have endorsed the use of federal police in major cities under the guise of fighting crime. Throughout the summer, as Trump and Barr were mobilizing newly deputized federal agents, Democratic Party mayors Lori Lightfoot in Chicago and Mike Duggan in Detroit, for example, vouched for the White House and said that they needed the help.
The blatant disregard of the dusk to dawn curfew by Kenyans informed the decision by police to blockade major highways in Nairobi on Saturday night, police have said.

Acknowledging that the operation may have inconvenienced many, especially essential service providers, Nairobi Regional Commissioner James Kianda on Sunday said it was necessary.

The operation was necessitated by Kenyans who have been defying curfew hours repeatedly.

Yesterdays (Saturdays) traffic snarl-up along Thika Road was occasioned by efforts of our police officers to strictly enforce the curfew restrictions, and we acknowledge the inconvenience this may have caused the road users, he said.

The regional commissioner said should the violation of the COVID-19 containment measures continues, Kenyans should expect more of such drastic measures.

Following our routine review and assessment of implementation of the Covid-19 containment measures, we have established that compliance with the said guidelines within the Nairobi metropolitan area is below 50 percent, said Mr Kianda.

We also note with concern that there is willful violation of these protocols in estates, especially prohibition of large in-person gatherings and compliance with curfew restrictions and other health protocols, he added.

Nairobians should expect more going forward. It was not possible to arrest people because of numbers but several revelers were arrested and they will appear in court, said the police commissioner.

Kianda added that it was the responsibility of all Kenyans to help the government flatten the Covid-19 curve before re-opening the country.

We wish to remind Kenyans that each life matters, and we must all take part in breaking the chain of transmission of the virus.
A study of more than 3,000 Marine recruits indicates that having a case of COVID-19 doesn't necessarily keep young people from getting the illness again.

The research, conducted during six months last year at the Marine Corps' recruit depots, found that 10% of 189 recruits known to have previously had COVID-19 became reinfected with the virus while in quarantine or during boot camp.

The risk of reinfection was five times lower than the infection risk among those who hadn't previously had the virus, but shows that people can get COVID-19 more than once and can pass it along to others, wrote researchers from the Naval Medical Research Center and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

Read Next: Two Guardsmen Return to Duty After Being Shot in Minneapolis; 3K Troops Brace for Unrest

"Our findings indicate that reinfection by SARS-CoV-2 in healthy young adults is common," said senior author Dr. Stuart Sealfon, a neurology professor at the medical school, using the technical name for the disease. "Despite a prior COVID-19 infection, young people can catch the virus again and may still transmit it to others."

The study, published April 15 in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, assessed 3,249 18- to 20-year-old Marine recruits, 90% of whom were male, who were tested for COVID-19 antibodies after arriving for supervised restriction of movement at boot camp.

During the six-week study period, 2,346 were followed for the duration and were tested for COVID-19 every two weeks after quarantine.

Initial antibody testing found that 189 were "seropositive" on arrival at boot camp, indicating they previously had a COVID-19 infection. Of those, 19 contracted COVID-19 during the study period. Of the recruits who showed no evidence of a previous coronavirus infection, 1,079, or 48%, were diagnosed with COVID during the six-week study period.

The viral loads of the reinfected recruits were roughly 10 times lower than those in the newly infected, and most of the reinfected had asymptomatic or mild cases of COVID-19, according to the report.

The authors said the study is significant because it can help determine the rate at which reinfection occurs following natural immunity or vaccine-induced immunity. That calculation could help determine when the U.S. population may reach "herd immunity" -- the proportion of the population with immunity developed by either having the illness or receiving a vaccine -- that can deprive the coronavirus of hosts, leading to a decline in prevalence and cases.

"Despite a prior COVID-19 infection, young people can catch the virus again and may still transmit it to others," Sealfon said. "This is an important point to know and remember as vaccine rollouts continue. Young people should get the vaccine whenever possible, since vaccination is necessary to boost immune responses, prevent reinfection, and reduce transmission."

The authors also said the study had some limitations, including that it likely underestimated the risk of reinfection in previously infected individuals because it didn't include individuals with low levels of antibodies.

In commentary accompanying the research, two infectious disease experts also noted that without having sequenced the virus in both the first and second infections, it's difficult to determine whether the repeat cases were actually reinfections and not the result of the patient harboring a persistent COVID strain.

But the results do show that having had a COVID-19 infection does provide "an important, albeit limited protection, for new infections," even as it does not provide an "almost universal and long-lasting protective immunity unlike that seen in measles, for example," wrote Dr. Maria Velasco of Hospital Universitario Fundacion Alcorcon, and Dr. Carlos Guijarro of Rey Juan Carlos University, both in Madrid.

They added that the results show that even young people with a previous COVID-19 infection should be vaccinated to target transmission from asymptomatic individuals and improve immune response.

"Reports suggest that vaccine-induced immune response might be higher than that elicited by SARS-CoV-2 infection, suggesting that vaccination might be more effective in preventing new infections," they wrote.

As of Monday, there have been 183,875 cases of COVID-19 diagnosed in U.S. service members, including 66,598 in the Army, 37,379 in the Navy, 30,538 in the Air Force and 21,353 Marines. Nearly 27,000 cases have been tallied in the National Guard and 1,105 additional cases among personnel assigned to Defense Department agencies.

Twenty-four service members have died, including three active-duty Army soldiers, five active-duty Navy sailors, six Army Reserve members, two Navy Reserve members and eight Air Force or Army National Guard members.

-- Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Monster.com. Follow her on Twitter @patriciakime.

Related: Navy Will Make COVID-19 Vaccination Mandatory 'As Soon as We Can:' 3-Star Admiral
Amid the alarming covid situation in India, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has cancelled his April 25 visit to India due to current coronavirus situation.

He will instead hold a virtual meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi later this month to launch their plans for the future UK-India partnership, the Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement.

"In view of the prevailing Covid situation, it has been decided by mutual agreement that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom will not visit India next week. The two sides will be holding a virtual meeting in the coming days to launch plans for a transformed India-UK relationship.
Chinese Regime Is Greatest Adversary of US: Former Director of National Intelligence

The Chinese regime is the greatest adversary of the United States, having the capability to unseat it as a global hegemon, according to former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe.

China is our greatest adversary in the sense of the only other nation-state that is capable of challenging, and even supplanting the U.S. as the worlds superpower economically, militarily, and technologically, Ratcliffe, who served as DNI during the Trump administration, said during an April 19 event hosted by Washington-based think tank The Heritage Foundation.

He described Beijing as both an adversary and competitor to the United States, noting that they should be more of a competitor and less of an adversary, and its the other way around right now.

His remarks come after the Office of the DNI last week released its annual threat assessment that described the Chinese communist regimes push for global power as the leading threat to U.S. national security. DNI Avril Haines, at a Senate hearing a day later, said Beijing is on its way to becoming a near-peer competitor for the United States and represents an unparalleled priority for the countrys intelligence community.

Haines and other senior Biden officials have cast the Chinese regime as an adversary in some areas. But on the whole, the administration has framed the relationship in terms of extreme competition and has expressed willingness to cooperate with the regime on issues including climate change. President Joe Biden previously described the regime as the United States most serious competitor.

As DNI, Ratcliffe took the unusual step of writing an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal last December highlighting the seriousness of the threat posed by communist China, calling it a once-in-a-generation challenge.

He wrote the piece in the hopes of clearing up the question of which country poses the No. 1 threat to the United States. As DNI, Ratcliffe was able to look at all the intelligence collected across U.S. agencies, and it was so clear that China, and China alone, presented the greatest national security threat, Ratcliffe said at the event. That wasnt something that I had seen as a member of Congress, he said, referring to his time as a representative for Texas immediately before taking the position of DNI.

What worries me most about China now is that theyve got a lot of momentum, he said. They didnt just become our No. 1 adversary overnight.

Beijings aggressive efforts to advance cutting-edge technology are of particular concern to Ratcliffe.

Chinas investment in things like artificial intelligence and machine learning and biometrics  are a way that they know they can close the gap with the United States even faster, he said.

The U.S. administration should continue to recognize the regime as the top threat, so the United States can counter them in a productive way that we really should have been for the last few years, not just starting now.

Officials when discussing the issue should set aside political narratives and be honest about the intelligence, he said.

The intelligence is clear  so we must be clear as we talk about it, when we talk about China, he said. I think thats whats been missing.
Federal officials recently found that a lack of risk assessment, issues with incident management and command safety and inadequate staffing were contributing factors in the December 2018 death of Worcester Firefighter Christopher Roy, who became trapped on the second floor of 7 Lowell St. after an arson fire spread from the basement.

Almost two years after the investigation into Roys death began, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) issued more than two dozen recommendations for U.S. fire departments and municipalities to help prevent future fatalities, many of which the Worcester Fire Department has already implemented or initiated.

The recommendations focus on improved risk assessment and response training; updates to standard operating procedures for basement or below-grade fires and Rapid Intervention Crews; bolstered staffing levels and enhanced training for acting officers; and better communications to ensure proper command structure and to prevent a lack of crew integrity, which can lead to firefighters getting separated or lost.

Fire departments must ensure a detailed scene size-up and risk assessment is conducted during initial fireground operations and must change up their incident action plans on the spot if the situation demands it, NIOSH said.

NIOSHs Fire Fighter Fatality Investigation and Prevention Program is not intended to enforce compliance with regulations or assess culpability; the program is geared toward preventing future fatalities across the country by identifying factors playing a role in firefighter deaths.

The medical examiner listed smoke inhalation as the cause of Roys death, which was determined to be a homicide, NIOSH investigators noted. The case against Momoh Kamara, a former resident of 5-7 Lowell St. whos been indicted on charges of second-degree murder and arson, remains ongoing.

Roy, a 36-year-old Shrewsbury resident, was assigned to Ladder 4 at the Webster Square Fire Station.

First and foremost, the family of Firefighter Christopher Roy remains in our thoughts as we continue to heal and grow from the tragic events that claimed his life in the line of duty on Dec. 9, 2018, Worcester City Manager Edward M. Augustus, Jr. and Fire Chief Michael J. Lavoie said in a joint statement Monday evening. We acknowledge and accept the findings of the NIOSH investigation into that incident and are fully committed to addressing and correcting any areas of concern.

On Dec. 9, 2018, Firefighter Jeremiah M. Lucey III was trapped on the second floor with Roy but was able to make it out alive. NIOSH investigators said a pair of firefighters were separated from the other crews and from each other as firefighters worked to knock down the fire.

Lucey found Roy after hearing an alarm from Roys depleting air tank, but Roy did not respond when Lucey asked for his name, investigators said. Lucey found and smashed open a window, called a Mayday on the radio and yelled for help. He also led Roy to the window and put the firefighters hands on the windowsill before descending a ground ladder, investigators said. But Roy did not follow after, and firefighters over the course of an hour used a rope-haul rescue system to remove Roy from the building.

The son of Jeremiah M. Lucey, one of six firefighters killed in the Worcester Cold Storage and Warehouse Co. fire on Dec. 3, 1999, Lucey now wears a bracelet in memory of his fallen comrade.

The department was also hit with tragedies in 2011, when a fire at an Arlington Street three-decker led to the death of Firefighter Jon Davies Sr., and November of 2019, when Fire Lt. Jason Menard was killed battling a blaze at a Stockholm Street three-decker.

To conduct its investigation, NIOSH met with local firefighters, department leaders and city and state officials, listened to dispatcher and firefighter audio, visited the fire site, checked out personal protective equipment, turnout gear and air tanks (none of which were found to be factors in Roys death), and reviewed training records and standard operating procedures in place at the time of the fire.

NIOSH said incident commanders in Worcester experienced several command safety issues during the fire, and noted the fire department is addressing these issues as part of its recovery process.

NIOSH said the areas addressed included improved communication; continuous scene size-up and risk assessment; a stationary Command Post; and a personnel accountability system that readily identifies both the location and function of all members operating at an incident scene, paired with a tactical worksheet focused on crew integrity.

The city has already added a shift incident safety officer and implemented extensive command-level training for all chief officers and officers, which will culminate in Blue Card Command certifications, Augustus and Lavoie said.

They added the city is also dispatching a second district chief to reported structure fires for additional command support and deploying more resources to fires by striking additional alarms more quickly to ensure a steady supply of resources.

The agency recommended that fire departments ensure all firefighters and officers are trained in managing a mayday call, four of which were called during the Worcester fire. Investigators noted that any delay in calling a mayday reduces the chance of survival and increases the risk to other firefighters trying to rescue the downed firefighter.

NIOSH called on fire departments to undertake or refresh training in fireground survival procedures and watch out scenarios, such as when a firefighter can hear fire burning above but cannot see it, an air tank alarm sounds before finding the fire, or a firefighter is unable to communicate with crew leaders.

Augustus and Lavoie noted the city also already implemented or started fire dynamics training, mayday training, and new and revised guidelines.

NIOSH said fire department administrators should incorporate more emergency response resources outside the department in deployment strategies. Whether recalling off-duty personnel or using automatic aid and mutual aid, the additional resources not only assist with large fires but also help provide adequate coverage when the same city or town is hit with multiple fires or other incidents simultaneously.

In the Lowell Street fire, the distance to the rear side of the house required more than the usual number of firefighters per hoseline, NIOSH noted. The structures that had to be searched for flames totaled more than 14,500 square feet spread across four levels, and the fire had to be fought on several levels as the balloon frame construction, stairways and utility chases provided vertical flow paths to enable rapid vertical fire extension, investigators found. Such conditions indicated a need for more than 26 firefighters, which NIOSH described as the minimum full-alarm assignment.

NIOSH, which operates under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also recommended that fire departments and city and county offices ensure detailed information on hazardous and unsafe buildings is readily available, including within any fire departments computer-aided dispatch system.

The agency asked state, local and municipal governments, building owners and other authorities to consider requiring smoke alarms in all residential units regardless of when they were constructed, and added that when renovations or alterations occur, fire warning systems should be updated to meet current fire and building codes.

Investigators found that only one smoke detector in the Lowell Street building was operational at the time of the fire.

City officials expect the results of a third-party assessment of the fire department by this summer.

Along with the steps already being taken, we will use the results of the NIOSH investigation and the assessment in our continued efforts to improve the department and provide the residents of Worcester with the best fire services possible, Augustus and Lavoie said.

Related Content:
The protester was eventually dragged away by security. Aly Song/Reuters

A protester jumped on top of a Tesla Model 3 at the Shanghai auto show.

The woman reportedly claims that faulty brakes caused her father to crash and is demanding a refund.

Tesla has faced mounting scrutiny from Chinese regulators over quality-control issues.

See more stories on Insider's business page.

A peeved Tesla owner caused a scene at the Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition on Monday by jumping on top of a Model 3 to protest the carmaker's quality-control issues.

The woman stood on top of the electric car wearing a t-shirt with the phrases "Invisible Killer" and "The Brakes Don't Work," according to The Wall Street Journal. In videos posted to social media, security guards can be seen attempting to hide the woman from the crowd using umbrellas as she screams about how Teslas have defective brakes.

She was eventually carried away by security.

This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it.

The woman seen protesting is a Tesla owner whose father crashed a Model 3 in February, according to a statement Tesla put out on Chinese social media that was viewed by the Journal. She claims the incident was the result of faulty brakes and is insisting on a full refund on the car, but Tesla says the crash was due to excessive speed, according to the statement.

This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it.

A Tesla representative told Bloomberg that it has tried to resolve the issue to no avail. The company did not respond to a request for comment from Insider.

The incident comes as Tesla's relationship with officials in China, the world's largest electric-vehicle market, grows increasingly tense.

Chinese regulators called in Tesla for a meeting in February over issues consumers had raised including battery fires and unintended acceleration. And in March, multiple outlets reported that Beijing had restricted the use of Teslas by military and other government-related personnel over security concerns involving the vehicles' cameras.

Read more: Apple can definitely build a car - but it wouldn't want to sell it in the US

Story continues

CEO Elon Musk has attempted to make nice with the Chinese government by appearing at a government conference and by praising the country's climate goals on state television. After the February meeting, Tesla said it had "deeply reflected on its shortcomings" in a statement posted to social media.

The news also comes as Tesla faces regulatory scrutiny in the US. Federal regulators said Monday that they will investigate a crash involving a Tesla without a driver that killed two people in Texas on Saturday.

Are you a Tesla customer or employee with a story to share? Contact this reporter at tlevin@insider.com.

Read the original article on Business Insider
An F-16 fighter jet from the US on the tarmac at Iraq's Balad air base

Five rockets targeted an Iraqi airbase hosting US soldiers Sunday, wounding two foreign contractors and three Iraqi soldiers, in the latest attack coinciding with tensions between Baghdad's allies Tehran and Washington.

Two of the rockets fired at Balad airbase, north of Baghdad, crashed into a dormitory and a canteen of US company Sallyport, a security source told AFP.

Two foreign contractors and three Iraqi soldiers were wounded, the source added.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the United States routinely blames Iran-linked Iraqi factions for such attacks on its troops and diplomats.

F-16 fighters are stationed at the Balad airbase, and several maintenance companies are present there, employing Iraqi and foreign staff.

There have been around 20 bomb or rocket attacks against American interests, including bases hosting US soldiers, since US President Joe Biden took office in January.

Dozens of others took place from the autumn of 2019 under the administration of Donald Trump.

Two Americans and an Iraqi civilian have been killed in such attacks since late 2019.

An Iraqi civilian working for a firm maintaining US fighter jets for the Iraq airforce was also wounded in one attack.

The Balad base was also targeted earlier this month, without causing any casualties.

The attacks are sometimes claimed by shadowy Shiite armed groups aligned with Iran who are demanding the Biden administration set a pullout date for Iraq as it has for Afghanistan.

On Wednesday, an explosives-packed drone slammed into Iraq's Arbil airport in the first reported use of such a weapon against a base used by US-led coalition troops in the country, officials said.

There were no casualties in the strike on the capital of northern Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, although it did cause damage to a building in the military part of the airport.

In February, more than a dozen rockets targeted the military complex inside the same airport, killing an Iraqi civilian and a foreign contractor working with US-led troops.

Pro-Iran groups have been ratcheting up their rhetoric, vowing to ramp up attacks to force out the "occupying" US forces, and there have been almost daily attacks on coalition supply convoys across the mainly Shiite south.

The United States last week committed to withdraw all remaining combat forces from Iraq, although the two countries did not set a timeline for what would be a second US withdrawal since the 2003 invasion which toppled Saddam Hussein.

- Sworn foes -

The announcement came as the Biden administration resumed a "strategic dialogue" with the government of Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi, who is seen as too close to Washington by pro-Iranian groups.

Biden last week announced a full US pullout from Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks that also led to the US-led invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq three years later.

Sworn foes Tehran and Washington have both since had a presence in Iraq, where 2,500 US troops are still deployed and Iran sponsors the Hashed al-Shaabi, a state-integrated paramilitary coalition.

Tensions have spiked to the edge of war, in particular after Trump ordered a drone strike near Baghdad airport in January 2020 that killed top Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani.
Description



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THE JUMP

Monday, April 19, 2021

Virtual Screening Online @ 7PM with 48 hours to view TICKETS ON SALE NOW!THE JUMPMonday, April 19, 2021Virtual Screening Online @ 7PM with 48 hours to view

In 1970, off the coast of Cape Cod, Lithuanian sailor Simas Kudirka jumped from his Soviet ship onto a US Coast Guard vessel seeking asylum. Denied refuge by the American crew, Simas was sentenced to a Soviet labor camp for treason, sparking an international cause celebre. As his dramatic case played out in the media and up through the highest levels of the US government, this ordinary man became a symbol for freedom-seeking refugees everywhere. It was later discovered and verified that his mother had been born in Brooklyn and gone to Lithuania at a young age, which meant she was a U. S. citizen. As a result, Kudirka was declared a U. S. citizen and in 1974 released by the Soviets. His story was told in a 1978 made-for-TV movie, THE DEFECTION OF SIMAS KURDIRKA, starring Alan Arkin as Kudirka.

Running Time: 85 Minutes

Guest Speaker recorded via Zoom: Director Giedre Zickyte, moderated by Tom Needham, Host of The Sounds of Film at WUSB radio.
China's female consumer market last year exceeded 4.8 trillion yuan

People's Daily Online) 13:24, April 19, 2021

The total amount of consumption last year by Chinese women stood at 4.8 trillion yuan ($730 billion). The growing consumption has not only expedited the transformation of consumer spending patterns in China, but has also stimulated an upgrade in the composition of that spending.

Customers select electronic products at a duty-free shop in Haikou, capital of South Chinas Hainan province. (Photo/Xinhua)

Chinese women demonstrate strong purchasing power in the field of e-commerce, as they comprise 70 to 80 percent of all vertical e-business users. Moreover, consumers of cosmetics, food, parenting products, clothing, jewelry and healthcare products are also dominated by women.

According to big data compiled by China's online retailer JD.com, rankings of spending power in the eyes of investors from highest to lowest saw women on top, the elderly demographic next and men coming in last. In a bid to win over the hearts and minds of Chinese women, business owners from across the country have endeavored to do their best to cater to this growing consumer groups demands.

Haidilao, the largest hotpot chain in China, started last year to provide its female customers with a kit for fixing up their makeup, comprised of a cleansing wipe, oil blotting paper and matchstick-shaped lipsticks. Furthermore, some of its chain stores have gone to great lengths to furnish themselves with deluxe dressing tables, with some even offering hair washing services.

In addition to Haidilao, the wine market that used to rely heavily on men has also rolled out new products to capture the interest of female consumers. Among them, RIO, a Chinese ready-to-drink alcopop beverage brand, has had great success by targeting a younger demographic of consumers, especially young women.

Meanwhile, driven by the increasing purchasing power of female consumers, emerging varieties of business models, including live streamed e-commerce and community-based e-commerce, have boomed over the past year, which in turn have also led to gradual changes in women's consumption preferences and behaviors.

Luo Ying, a tour guide in Tongren city in southwest China's Guizhou province, takes great pleasure in watching the live streamed e-commerce programming on China's e-commerce giant Taobao.

"I often provide touring services for tourists from Shanghai, as well as cities in Guangdong and other big cities, and I share the same hobbies with the girls from these first-tier cities," Luo said, adding that "Thanks to live streaming, I not only can buy things that are not available locally, but also know what products are favored by girls from the big cities and how theyre living their lives."

(Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun)
New Delhi, April 19 : The Supreme Court on Monday appointed a committee headed by former top court judge Justice B.N. Srikrishna to manage the affairs of the ancient Gokarna Mahabaleshwara Temple in Karnataka, as an interim arrangement.

In a judgment, a bench headed by Chief Justice S.A. Bobde said: "As an interim arrangement, the said 'Overseeing Committee' shall administer the temple pending consideration of this appeal... we direct that the 'Overseeing Committee' shall function under the Chairmanship of Justice B.N. Srikrishna, former judge, Supreme Court of India and manage the affairs of the temple in all respects." The temple, situated in Uttara Kannada district, is known as 'Dakshina Kashi'.

The bench, also comprising Justices A.S. Bopanna and V. Ramasubramanian, said: "The appropriate course in the interest of the temple as well as the devotees as also the 'Mutt' would be to allow the administration of the temple by an independent committee so that the temple is administered in an appropriate manner for the benefit of all devotees until a final determination is made." The bench added that the Srikrishna committee will take over the management of the temple from Ramachandrapura Math within 15 days.

The committee also consists of: Deputy Commissioner, Uttara Kannada District, Superintendent of Police, Uttara Kannada District, and Assistant Commissioner, Kumta SubDivision, Kumta, as well was "two eminent persons/scholars, capable of discharging their functions as members of the Committee, to be nominated by the state government; and two Upadivantas of Gokarna Temple to be nominated by the Deputy Commissioner in consultation with the state government".

"The committee shall oversee the functioning of the temple by adhering to all traditions," said the top court, noting that this arrangement will continue till the matter is finally decided by the top court.

The Ramchandrapura Math had moved the top court challenging the Karnataka High Court's judgement passed on August 10, 2018, quashing the B.S. Yeddyurappa government's decision of August 12, 2008 to hand over control of the temple to it.

"The proceedings of the Government resulting in the order dated 12.08.2008 to delete the temple, prima facie indicates to be a unilateral proceeding to which the contesting respondents were not parties," noted the top court.
RBI Master Direction on export of goods and services states that ECGC claims are not treated as realisation and so, BRC cannot be issued. While writing off bills on the basis of ECGC claims and closing my shipping bill in EDPMS, the bank wants me to surrender export incentives, whereas HBP states that ECGC claims can be considered for claiming export incentives. Under which conditions can ECGC claims be considered for availing export incentives, so that without I can get my shipping bill closed in the EDPMS without surrendering incentives?

Para C.24 of the RBI Master Direction no.16/2015-16 dated January 1, 2016 (as amended), deals with write-off in cases of payment of claims by ECGC and private insurance companies regulated by Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India. It clearly says that surrender of incentives, if any, in such cases will be as provided in the (FTP). So, your bankers must proceed in accordance with Para 2.85 of HBP and not demand surrender of incentives.

A foreign national of non-Indian origin, resident abroad, wants to purchase commercial properly in India and rent it out to a branch of a foreign company. Is it permitted?

Foreign Exchange Management (Acquisition and Transfer of Immovable Property in India) Regulations, 2018) does not specifically allow a foreign national of non-Indian origin to buy immovable property in India for any commercial purpose. Indeed, the Government of India through a press release dated February 1, 2019 has specifically cautioned against foreign nationals buying immovable property illegally in some parts of the country, particularly in Goa. Click here for further details.

I manufacture tags for garment industries, and also export to various countries worldwide. My invoice value is mostly less than $50 and I get paid around $20 after deduction of overseas bank charges. Since the realisation value is less than 75 per cent of the shipping bill value, my bank refuses to close the bill. How to resolve this issue?

I have not been able to locate any precise RBI instructions in this regard. However, CBIC Circular no.33/2019-Cus dated September 19, 2019, deals with the contention of exporters that short realisation of export sale proceeds due to bank charges deducted by foreign banks should be treated as full realisation of export proceeds. The Circular says that RBI has clarified that such deductions are enabled under notification No. FEMA 23(R) 2015-RB dealing with Foreign Exchange Management (Export of Goods and Services) Regulations 2015.

It also says that as per Para 2.52 of FTP 2015-20, free foreign exchange remitted by buyer after deduction of bank service charges are taken as full export realisation. Based on this, you may approach your bankers. If they still dont agree, you may approach RBI through your bankers, in accordance with Para C.23.10 and Para A.1(vi) of the Master Direction no. 16/2015-16 dated January 1, 2016 (as amended) on Export of Goods and Services.
CARROLLTON, Texas, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Propelled Brands, a newly formed corporate umbrella set to focus on operating and growing service-oriented franchises, announced today that its two portfolio brands, FASTSIGNS International, Inc. and NerdsToGo , have been named to FranServe's annual FRAN-TASTIC 500 . The list recognizes 500 industry-leading franchise brands guiding franchisees on the path to becoming successful business owners through franchising.

"Franchising is a doorway for many people looking to be their own boss," said Alesia Visconti, CEO of FranServe Inc. "A brand that makes our annual 'FRAN-TASTIC 500' list demonstrates that it goes above and beyond the norm in helping people fulfill their dreams of business ownership through franchising! It's a brand that sets itself apart!"

Brands on the FRAN-TASTIC 500 list were nominated and chosen for their turnkey model, operational support, and superb training, among other criteria.

"For both FASTSIGNS and NerdsToGo to be selected for FranServe's FRAN-TASTIC 500 following the recent launch of Propelled Brands is strong validation for the vision we've created for the corporate group," said Mark Jameson, CFE, Chief Support and Development Officer at Propelled Brands. "Both FASTSIGNS and NerdsToGo have experienced strong growth in the first quarter of 2021, and this prestigious industry recognition is the first of what we believe will be many accolades for Propelled Brands."

This announcement comes on the heels of FASTSIGNS opening nine centers in the first quarter across the U.S., including in Texas, Florida, New York, California, Michigan, South Carolina, and Illinois, as well as a location in Alberta, Canada. In 2021, FASTSIGNS is aiming to sign at least 35 franchise agreements, targeting Southern California, the Midwest, New England, and along the Northeast Corridor. FASTSIGNS is particularly focused on its co-brand and conversion programs, which help existing business owners add a FASTSIGNS to their store or fully convert their business to a FASTSIGNS franchise. FASTSIGNS has helped countless owners of print shops, photography studios, camera stores, embroidery shops, and more, diversify their product lines and services to meet the growing demand for signs, graphics, and visual communication solutions.

Additionally, NerdsToGo, which offers a variety of consumer and B2B services including residential IT support, business consulting, commercial virus removal, spyware, and more, opened three new locations in the first quarter. The brand aims to sell 30 franchises nationwide as part of its plans to grow the brand's footprint in new and existing markets. With a long-term goal of growing to over 500 locations, the company is seeking expansion in markets that serve more than 100,000 people.

Both FASTSIGNS and NerdsToGo offer a special incentive for prospective franchisees that are veterans or first responders, including paramedics, emergency medical technicians, police officers, sheriffs, and firefighters, which includes a 50% reduction on the franchise fee  a savings of $24,875.

Propelled Brands is looking to partner with other service-oriented franchise concepts that align with its forward-thinking growth objectives. For more information or to learn about opportunities with Propelled Brands, visit propelledbrands.com. To learn about franchise opportunities with FASTSIGNS or NerdsToGo, contact Mark Jameson ([email protected] or call 214.346.5679).

About FASTSIGNS

FASTSIGNS International, Inc. is the leading sign and visual communications franchisor in North America, and is the worldwide franchisor of more than 750 independently owned and operated FASTSIGNS centers in 9 countries including the United States and Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, Canada, Chile, Grand Cayman, the United Arab Emirates, Malta, the Dominican Republic and Australia (where centers operate as SIGNWAVE). FASTSIGNS locations provide comprehensive signage and graphic solutions to help companies of all sizes and across all industries attract more attention, communicate their message, promote their products, help visitors find their way and extend their branding across all of their customer touchpoints.

FASTSIGNS is consistently ranked as a top franchise opportunity. Recognized as an invaluable resource for potential franchisees, the Franchise 500 ranks FASTSIGNS as #44 overall  the only sign, graphics, and visual communications franchise to be recognized in the top 100  for its outstanding performance in areas including unit growth, financial strength and stability, and brand power. In 2021, FASTSIGNS was named one of Franchise Direct's Top 100 Global Franchises and Franchise Gator recognized FASTSIGNS as one of the Top 100 Franchises . In 2020, Entrepreneur magazine named FASTSIGNS a Top Growth Franchise and one of the Top Franchises for Veterans . Additionally, FASTSIGNS was ranked on Franchise Times' annual Top 200+ list and Franchise Business Review named FASTSIGNS one of its Top Franchises for Second Careers and Top Franchises for Veterans . In 2019, the brand was named to America's Best Franchises to Buy list by Forbes magazine. Franchise Business Review has also recognized FASTSIGNS as one of the "Best of the Best" for franchisee satisfaction for the last 10 years, as well as one of its Top 50 Franchises for Women and Top Service Franchises lists in 2019. FASTSIGNS has also received the Canadian Franchise Association Franchisees' Choice for 8 consecutive years.

In 2020, Fastsigns Holdings Inc. acquired GTN CAPITAL GROUP, LLC the parent company of NerdsToGo, an emerging IT services franchise brand. Learn more about sign and graphic solutions or find a location at fastsigns.com . Follow the brand on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/company/fastsigns , Twitter @FASTSIGNS or Facebook at facebook.com/FASTSIGNS . For information about the FASTSIGNS franchise opportunity, contact Mark Jameson ([email protected] or call 214.346.5679).

About NerdsToGo

NerdsToGo, Inc. launched its original location in Guilford, CT in 2003 and quickly became the emerging leader in providing computer and technology-based services to both the small and medium-sized business market and the residential market. NerdsToGo began franchising in 2017 and quickly grew to 25 independently owned franchise locations in 16 states. In 2020, Propelled Brands acquired GTN CAPITAL GROUP, LLC, the parent company of NerdsToGo. NerdsToGo locations provide the total solution in computer and technology support to customers, and the company's signature service is delivered by sending a Nerd onsite to customer locations in a well-branded, eye-catching Nerd Van. Customers can also receive service through remote support or by visiting a local NerdsToGo service center. NerdsToGo acts as the IT department for small to medium sized businesses by helping to design, implement and support IT networks, provide data backup & continuity services, cybersecurity solutions, cloud services, remote support, vendor management services and overall routine maintenance.

For information about the FASTSIGNS or NerdsToGo franchise opportunities, contact Mark Jameson ([email protected] or call 214.346.5679).

Contact:

Nate Rubinstein

Fish Consulting

954-893-9150

[email protected]

SOURCE Propelled Brands

Related Links

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Secretary of State Andrei Baciu from the Health Ministry told Digi 24 on Monday that in the next period another 73 intensive care beds could be made operational, but specified that this depends "exclusively" on the human resource.

Referring to vaccination, the secretary of state said that interest has increased, but recent data show that less than 10% of the population has "a significant hesitation towards vaccination," indicating that the desire for vaccination has increased, agerpres.ro confirms.

In Bucharest and in the counties of Cluj, Salaj, Sibiu, Maramures, the vaccination rate is over 20%, he added.

"We offer greater access to vaccines for localities with a higher incidence, precisely to come up also with this vaccination tool in support of local authorities," the secretary of state said.
Oscar winner Halle Berry showcased her drumming skills in a video she Instastoried on Sunday.

The 54-year-old wellness influencer - who boasts 11.3M social media followers - captioned her raucous clip rocking out: 'Mood.'

After viciously pounding a silver drum set, Halle (born Maria) concluded her cathartic musical expression by tossing the drumsticks.

Multi-talented: Oscar winner Halle Berry showcased her drumming skills in a video she Instastoried on Sunday

Berry look comfortable dressed down in a white zip-up hoodie and matching sweatpants for her practice session.

The re.spin founder has easy access to instruments considering her boyfriend since July - Grammy winner Van Hunt - sings and plays drums, guitar, bass, keyboards, and saxophone.

Halle's post came the same day she confessed to Good Housekeeping about how 'inferior' she felt as a biracial teen attending an all-white high school in Ohio.

'[There were] very few other black kids. So, I felt inferior a lot. I felt like I didn't fit in. I didn't see images of beauty or even a lot of success around me with people that looked like me,' Berry told the mag.

The 54-year-old wellness influencer - who boasts 11.3M social media followers - captioned her raucous clip rocking out: 'Mood'

Mic drop: After viciously pounding a silver drum set, Halle (born Maria) concluded her cathartic musical expression by tossing the drumsticks

Learning new things: Berry look comfortable dressed down in a white zip-up hoodie and matching sweatpants for her practice session

'I'll be ya groupie baby': The re.spin founder has easy access to instruments considering her boyfriend since July - Grammy winner Van Hunt (pictured April 9) - sings and plays drums, guitar, bass, keyboards, and saxophone

'So I went through my early preteen and adolescence, like, really struggling with my self worth and feeling confident.'

The Flow brand ambassador is mother to 13-year-old daughter Nahla Ariela with her ex-boyfriend Gabriel Aubry, and seven-year-old son Maceo Robert with her ex-husband #3 Olivier Martinez.

'When I say to [Nahla], "You know how lucky you are to have a role model like Zendaya?" And she says, "Well, that's no big deal. Of course I have Zendaya,"' Halle said.

'There weren't many women of color that were highlighted in pop culture that I could look to to identify myself with [at Nahla's age].'

'I really struggled with my self worth and feeling confident': Halle's post came the same day she confessed to Good Housekeeping about how 'inferior' she felt as a biracial teen attending an all-white high school in Ohio

'The moments that matter most': Berry (pictured April 1) is mother to 13-year-old daughter Nahla Ariela with her ex-boyfriend Gabriel Aubry, and seven-year-old son Maceo Robert with her ex-husband #3 Olivier Martinez

'"You know how lucky you are?"' The Flow brand ambassador said her teenage daughter Nahla should feel 'grateful' to have someone like Zendaya (pictured April 4) as a role model

Berry will next glam up to serve presenting duties onstage Hollywood's Dolby Theatre during the 93rd Academy Awards, which air next Sunday on ABC.

The John Wick 3 action star 'broke some bones' in November 2019 while shooting her directorial debut Bruised, which premieres later this year on Netflix.

In the Rocky-style drama - Halle's character Jackie must conquer her demons, face one of the fiercest rising MMA stars, and reunite with her estranged six-year-old son Manny (Danny Boyd Jr.).

'Our incredible cast!' Halle will next glam up to serve presenting duties at the 93rd Academy Awards, which air next Sunday on ABC
CHICOPEE  A woman suffering from end-stage renal disease has been unable to receive daily home dialysis because officials at the Chicopee Housing Authority have declined her requests to transfer to a unit on the first floor or accessed by an elevator, according to a lawsuit filed on Monday.

Acting U.S. Attorney Nathaniel R. Mendell filed a suit against the Chicopee Housing Authority and Executive Director Monica Blazic alleging they violated the Fair Housing Act for their failure to accommodate the tenants disability.

The tenant applied to move to a unit that was easier to access in 2017 after she became disabled. She was never granted the transfer, according to a statement from Mendell about the lawsuit.

Since that time, the Chicopee Housing Authority offered 10 vacant apartments, any one of which could have accommodated the tenant, to other individuals, the statement said.

The complaint was investigated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which found there was probable cause for discrimination. The tenant elected to have the charge decided in federal court, authorizing the U.S. Attorney to file suit, the statement said.

Common decency and  thankfully  the Fair Housing Act both require reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities. The allegations here deserve attention, and we are happy to provide it, Mendell said.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Springfield, seeks an order requiring the Chicopee Housing Authority staff to accommodate the tenants disability, pay the defendant monetary damages and cease discrimination against any tenant based upon disability, he said.

Tenants who have information about discrimination and the Chicopee Housing Authority are asked to contact the U.S. Attorneys Office Civil Rights Unit at 617-748-3100 and ask for the Civil Rights Intake Specialist. People can also email usama.victimassistance@doj.gov

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Gregory Dorchak and Michelle Leung of Mendells Civil Rights Unit are handling the matter.

Related content:
Direct Provision has been a cruel and harsh system that has failed utterly in terms of how we as a country evaluate Asylum Seekers request to live among us.

Whilst regulation and assessment are important, a system that has left men, women and children restricted for up to 10 years in cases in a limbo situation is outrageous. The recent reports concerning Mother and Baby homes of the past has rightly evoked great anger, hurt and pain.

I have no doubt future generations will read reports of our shameful Direct Provision System. I wholeheartedly welcome the Programme of Government decision to end this system and I, like many taxpayers, are greatly concerned by last week's details in this paper of the huge cost to provide these centres and how individuals have profited millions over the past 15 years.

Covid- 19 has a great attraction for the most vulnerable, the elderly, members of ethnic communities including Travellers, meat factory workers and especially residents in cramped and crowded Direct Provision Centres. During the third wave of this dreadful virus, locally here in Abbeyleix, 17 residents of the Hibernian became Covid positive. It's impossible to social distance when a family of two parents and three children live and sleep in a tiny room sharing very basic toilet and washing facilities with all their families.

Half of the people living in direct provision have been unable to social distance from other residents during the Covid-19 pandemic, while more than 40 per cent continue to share a room with a non-family member, according to new research seen by The Irish Times.

The Irish Refugee Councils (IRC) Powerless report, which examines the experiences of direct provision residents during the pandemic, says asylum seekers are suffering fear and trepidation because of their inability to control their health and safety during the pandemic.

The call to end direct provision has become more compelling than ever in the context of the pandemic, the council says. This Government has committed to ending the system.

Two levels of safety standards have been created during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to IRC chief executive Nick Henderson. One for the general public, where social distancing is encouraged, and another for people in residential settings such as direct provision, where sharing of intimate space is implicitly accepted.

The study was carried out through an online survey made available to residents during 2020. Some 418 people  5.4 per cent of people living in direct provision  from 38 direct provision centres and 22 emergency accommodation centres took part.

The IRC found 55 per cent of people surveyed felt unsafe due to the pandemic, while 50 per cent were unable to social distance themselves from other residents. Some 42 per cent said they were sharing a room with a non-family member.

More than 15 per cent shared a room with three people and 5 per cent shared with four people. One respondent said they were sharing a room with 11 others.

More than half of respondents said they shared a bathroom with non-family members and 53 per cent said they continued to eat in a communal dining area. Nearly one-quarter said they did not have regular access to soap and hand sanitiser in their centre.

Respondents expressed concern about overcrowded living conditions. One remarked: We are powerless, just sitting ducks waiting to die. A pregnant woman said she lived in constant fear of being infected as she shared a kitchen with more than 100 people.

Some participants said they were concerned about the behaviour of fellow residents as some were acting irresponsibly.

Many complained about a lack of communication from managers about the spread of the virus, saying there was no visibility about the number of cases at their centre. However, in a small number of cases, respondents said managers had been a source of support in recent months. Respondents said some local communities presumed residents had Covid-19 because they lived in direct provision, while one respondent recalled having been described as Covid people.

Parents who took part in the survey said the closure of schools meant their children had to learn in overcrowded conditions and were left without a sense of normalcy in their lives, according to the report.

On a more positive conclusion, a local family here who reside in the Direct Provision Centre, recently shared to me how they and the other residents enjoy great support and appreciate the warm welcome they have received from our local community.

Matthew 25:35-36

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.
The stormy weather that has hindered search and rescue efforts in the Gulf of Mexico finally relented Sunday, but the day's push to find nine missing crew members of the overturned Seacor Power lift boat hadn't yielded any results as of early evening.

Six of the 19 people aboard the 234-foot vessel were rescued Tuesday, the day a sudden storm capsized it 8 miles south of Port Fourchon. Searchers then recovered four bodies through Saturday.

But relatives of the nine missing crew members remained in a heart-wrenching limbo, and they increasingly took to social media Sunday to voice their frustration at the pace of dive operations over the weekend.

Divers had paused Saturday night due to stormy weather, but they returned to the water Sunday in an attempt to find anyone trapped inside the vessel, according to Crystal Saddler, the sister of 62-year-old Gregory Walcott, of Abbeville, one of the missing crew members.

During an hours-long meeting at the Cut Off fire station, officials told relatives that they havent moved the boat for fear of disturbing air pockets that may have allowed missing crew members to survive.

They are still trying to give us hope, Saddler said.

Above the water, the weather provided better visibility for the Coast Guard crews scouring the area, according to Petty Officer John Michelli. The improved conditions also allowed searchers to work longer without having to rotate out, he said.

Two cutters, two small boats, two helicopters and an airplane were involved in the Coast Guard search. They were joined by the United Cajun Navy, the volunteer rescue group, which arranged for private seaplanes to conduct searches in coordination with the Coast Guard's efforts.

Divers contracted by Seacor, the Houston-based company that operated the boat, have repeatedly searched the vessels rooms for missing crew members. Amid pleas from relatives, the number of divers assigned to the effort increased from eight to 14 earlier in the weekend. But when Saturdays storms forced a pause that continued into Sunday morning, relatives weary of continued delays took to Facebook to press Seacor to do more.

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

As conditions improved Sunday, relatives reported divers returned to the boat.

Blessing today is, God delivered good weather conditions for the divers to start back up their operations, Danielle Boteler, a relative of missing Slidell man Chaz Morales, wrote on Facebook on Sunday.

The comments from anguished relatives, much of it relayed on social media, made up the bulk of the available information other than the statement from the U.S. Coast Guard. A Seacor spokesperson didnt respond to a request for comment.

The Coast Guard said Sunday evening that it will provide an update Monday at 1 p.m. at the Greater Lafourche Port Commission office in Cut Off and will be joined by officials from the National Transportation Safety Board and Seacor.

Boteler said that in regular closed-doors meeting with family members, search officials have said the same things over and over after countless hours.

But Boteler said she and other relatives continued to do whatever they could from land.

Chaz would hold out every ounce of hope if he were here with us and standing on this ground, so that is what we will do! she wrote.

The Seacor Power was about three hours out and 8 miles south of Port Fourchon when heavy winds flipped it over at about 4:30 p.m. Tuesday.

The confirmed dead are Anthony Hartford, 53, of New Orleans; James "Tracy" Wallingsford, 55, of the northeast Louisiana village of Gilbert; Capt. David Ledet, 63, of Thibodaux; and Ernest Williams, 69, of Arnaudville.

Dry weather is forecast until Friday.

Staff photographer David Grunfeld contributed to this report.
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 Online Masters in Gifted And Talented Education Degree Programs.

Intelligent.com analyzed 182 schools, on a scale of 0 to 100, with only 34 making it to the final list for Online Masters in Gifted And Talented Education Degree Programs. To access the complete ranking, please visit: https://www.intelligent.com/best-online-masters-in-gifted-and-talented-education-degree-programs/

2021 Online Masters in Gifted And Talented Education Degree Programs featured on Intelligent.com (in alphabetical order):

Alvernia University

Arizona State University

Arkansas State University

Cleveland State University

Converse College

Drury University

Eastern Kentucky University

Eastern New Mexico University

Florida Atlantic University

Fort Hays State University

Grand Canyon University

Lamar University

Liberty University

Lindenwood University

Louisiana State University Shreveport

Mary Baldwin University

McNeese State University

Millersville University

Northwest Missouri State University

Northwestern State University

Regent University

The University of Alabama

The University of Southern Mississippi

University of Georgia

University of Louisiana at Monroe

University of Missouri

University of Nebraska at Kearney

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

University of North Dakota

University of North Texas

University of Northern Colorado

University of South Florida

Western Kentucky University

Wichita 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/.
[April 19, 2021] Gigantor Launches the Next Evolution of AI Acceleration

Gigantor Technologies Inc. is set to disrupt the market with its multiple patent-pending revolutionary technology, GigaMACS. Co-founders Don Gaspar, CEO, and Mark Mathews, CTO, formed Gigantor after analyzing the market's existing approach to acceleration using stock hardware solutions or imprecise model altering strategies. GigaMACS optimizes your machine learning model by converting it to a synchronal parallel circuit that runs as fast as the input pixel rate while minimizing latency. Most importantly, GigaMACS does not require changes to the model, and it will accelerate your convolutional neural network model to new heights. "The key to maximum performance is to take the exact computation of your model and express it as an optimized, zero overhead pipelined circuit by eliminating redundancy and bottlenecks from your model," says Mark Mathews, CTO for Gigantor. Some solutions in the market alter portions of your AI/ML model by filtering low weighted calculations, altering the results, which may require recertification and retraining for your model to reclaim the original accuracy. In systems being used today, stock hardware solutions throw excessve memory and faster clock speeds at the problem, leading to a dead-end solution as the workload continues to increase with model complexity. GigaMACS takes your TensorFlow, Pytorch, Caffe, ONNX, or other format model and converts it for you into a highly optimized circuit that runs faster and reduces latency to under a millisecond. Now, you can run your model against 4K or even 8K video in real-time.



Need proof our concept works? Watch this short video. About Gigantor Technologies Inc.

Don Gaspar and Mark Mathews founded Gigantor Technologies to boost neural network performance into real-time frame rates for complicated, high load Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence models. Our first product, GigaMACS, takes your existing TensorFlow or other neural network format models and converts it to a high-performance circuit to use with existing FPGAs or custom ASICs. GigaMACS will accelerate your neural network model to keep up with your high-speed input. Have a fast full frame camera, radar, lidar? GigaMACS will make your model keep up with it without altering your results. About Don Gaspar The CEO, Don Gaspar, graduated with a B.S. in Physics from CSU Long Beach, an M.B.A. from the Graziadio School at Pepperdine University, and an M.S. in Distributed Systems from DePaul University. His career includes being a CTO for ISGN, Yapstone, and ImproveNet. Most notably, Don was an engineering lead who worked on the Mac OS, A/UX ( Apple (News - Alert) Unix), the Finder, and the PowerPC proof of concept at Apple Computer. About Mark Mathews The CTO, Mark Mathews, has developed complex and innovative IP for more than 30 years. Mark joined Microsoft (News - Alert) in 1980 as their 17th employee and originated MultiPlan, which is better known today as Excel. Specializing in recovery of failed hardware and software projects, he also designed massively parallel machine vision circuits implementing custom and standard algorithms (e.g., LKT) as synchronal pipelines for maximum throughput at minimal power. Mark also designed and implemented proprietary tools to reduce license costs and built world-wide collaborative systems for ASIC production. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005490/en/

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Researchers at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in collaboration with Stanford Medicine and the San Raffaele Hospital have demonstrated with preclinical studies the effectiveness of a new biomedical implant for the treatment of glioblastoma multiforme

Genova (Italy), 16th April 2021 - A micro-sized polymeric net wrapping around brain tumors, just like a fishing net around a shoal of fish: this is the microMESH, a new nanomedicine device capable to conform around the surface of tumor masses and efficiently deliver drugs. It has been described by the researchers of the IIT - Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italian Institute of Technology) in Nature Nanotechnology. The new biomedical implant has been validated in preclinical studies that demonstrate its effectiveness for the treatment of glioblastoma multiforme.

This work has been carried out by the group of Prof. Paolo Decuzzi, head of the IIT Laboratory of Nanotechnology for Precision Medicine, in collaboration with the Neural Stem Cell Biology Laboratory of Dr. Rossella Galli at the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan and the group of Prof. Gerald Grant at the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital of Stanford University. The study was originated within the research activities conducted by Decuzzi in the context of projects supported by the European Research Council and the Marie Sk?odowska-Curie Action program.

Although they are quite rare, brain tumors are among the most aggressive and difficult to cure. In particular, glioblastoma multiforme is the tumor with the most severe prognosis: the average survival is just over 12 months and only 5% of the patients survive beyond 5 years. Glioblastoma multiforme typically affects men and women between 45 and 75 years of age. Furthermore, unlike other malignancies, there has been no significant diagnostic and therapeutic improvements for this malignancy over the past 30 years. In fact, both the incidence of new cases and the number of deaths has remained practically unchanged. The only therapeutic strategy currently used is based on surgery, which consists of removing a part of the tumor mass and reducing intracranial pressure, followed by radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy.

The biomedical system developed by IIT and its collaborators can play a very important role in the fight against the disease, representing a possible effective alternative to the few pharmacological treatments used to date.

The microMESH has the shape of a micrometric polymeric net, it is made with biodegradable materials and wraps around the tumor mass. In fact, the micrometric thick polymeric fibers are very flexible and are arranged to form regular openings, which are also micrometric, just like the size of cancer cells. This unique feature allows the microMESH to achieve a closer interaction with the tumor mass, increasing the therapeutic efficacy. Its structure consists of two separate compartments in which different drugs can be loaded which are released towards the tumor mass in an independent, precise, and prolonged fashion. The microMESH can 'attack' glioblastoma by combining different therapies: chemotherapy, nanomedicine, and immunotherapy.

Prof. Paolo Decuzzi and his collaborators, in particular Daniele Di Mascolo and Anna Lisa Palange, will continue to develop the microMESH by integrating different types of drugs and therapies to tackle other types of tumors. In the short term, their major objective will be to validate the technology on glioblastoma patients.

###
Two men were killed in separate weekend incidents in Bessemer, including one who was beaten to death with a kitchen pot and another who was shot while walking home from his grandparents house.

Family members say Deterrious Kieth-Bernerd Steele, 21, had left his grandparents house Sunday night and was just walking to his girlfriends house several blocks away. A short time later, Bessemer police and fire medics were dispatched to Hard Park, also known as Enoch Brown Park, after someone found him wounded.

It wasnt immediately clear what time the shooting actually happened, but the family last saw him about 7:45 p.m. Steele was found unresponsive at 9:48 p.m. and pronounced dead on the scene.

Bessemer police Lt. Christian Clemons said investigators have very little information about what happened and said the investigation is in its early stages.

Steeles grief-stricken mother, LaTosha Bonner, said she has no idea what happened or why. He was just walking through the cut-through to his girlfriends house,' Bonner said. I just want to know what happened to him.

Steele was a graduate of Jess Lanier High School and had worked at multiple jobs in the Bessemer area, including at The Bright Star and Torme Foods. At the time of his death, he worked in the school cafeteria at the UAB. He had no criminal record.

He didnt bother nobody,' his mother said. I just want to know who did this to my baby. They hurt my family.

Bonner is pleading with anyone who has information about her sons death to come forward. They didnt have to do him like that,' she said. He didnt deserve that.

I want to tell all the children,' she said, to put the guns down. "

In the other Bessemer homicide, 46-year-old Sean Coker of Georgia was found dead Saturday inside the Quality Inn on Academy Lane. It wasnt immediately clear when he was killed, authorities said, but he was pronounced dead on the scene at 10:29 a.m.

Coker was discovered by motel staff inside a motel room and was found to have sustained blunt force trauma, according to the Jefferson County Coroners Office.

Bessemer police Lt. Christian Clemons said Coker, a truck driver, met two unidentified suspects at the motel. The two suspects left at some point, and it was later that Coker was found.

The investigation is ongoing, and no arrests have been announced.

The homicides are Bessemers 16th and 17th in 2021. The city investigated 18 total last year. Anyone with information is asked to call Bessemer police at 425-2411, the Tip Line at 205- 428-3541 or Crime Stoppers at 205-254-7777.
Karmen Bastyur is one of thousands of people from Roma families in Hungary that have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic. Many already marginalized Roma adults lost their jobs as Hungary's economy buckled under lockdowns, pushing their families into deeper impoverishment and food insecurity.

Some have reported selling their belongings, like mobile phones, to make ends meet. The local municipality provides one hot lunch per school-aged child each weekday in place of the free meals students normally receive at school. But Bastyur's family still struggles to put enough food on the table. "If we sit around the table, I rather feed the kids, letting them eat something. Food is short, but we are happy with any little we get," she said.

Bastyur lives with nine other family members: her children, grandchildren and cousins. As a devastating surge in the COVID-19 pandemic swept Hungary in the spring, classes were suspended and students were ordered to study online. Many Roma children living in segregated villages are unable to attend these online classes with some homes having no internet, and sometimes no electricity.

Mihaly Horvath, Bastyur's grandnephew, doesn't have a computer or internet access at home. Instead Horvath, part of Hungary's large Roma minority, studies in the yard of a dilapidated house where he lives. He admitted he's falling behind in his lessons as a result. "It's more difficult for Gypsy kids like us, because we could only study well in school. Some kids didn't even have writing utensils or anything, and I think they still don't have them," the 12-year-old said.

According to an August 2020 survey by the National Democratic Institute, a US-based nonprofit organization, only 41% of Roma households in Hungary have access to both cable and mobile internet, and 13% report no access to the internet at all. A November 2020 report from Hungary's deputy ombudsperson for national minorities acknowledged that for Roma children from poor families, "the transition to digital education multiplied their already existing disadvantages."

Horvath's relatives, like many Roma, rely on seasonal work or informal day labour for income. But business closures and other pandemic restrictions have caused many of those opportunities to dry up. David Vig, director of human rights organization Amnesty International Hungary, said the state has done little to help such workers, who were ineligible for unemployment benefits or wage support when their jobs disappeared.

Roma make up nearly 10% of Hungary's population, according to some estimates, and many live in the 1,300 segregated slums across the country. Bodvaszilas is located in northern Hungary, one of the least developed regions in the European Union. GDP per capita was only 40% of the EU average in 2013, according to Eurostat.

Two weeks ago, Bastyur's family was informed that the small, decaying house they rent had been sold to another owner, and that if they were not out within a month, the police would be called to evict them. The family was told to clean up the yard, clean the house, remove all their furniture and leave. But they don't know where to go.

"Every night I wonder how I could go forward. And the kids. I feel sorry for them the most. What future they will have?" Bastyur said through tears. Hungary reopened kindergartens and the first four grades of elementary schools on Monday, and Horvath is looking forward to May 10, when his grade can return to class. But by then, his family isn't sure he'll have a house to come home to.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
YEREVAN, APRIL 19, ARMENPRESS. Member of the Armenian delegation to the PACE, head of the parliamentary faction of ''Bright Armenia'' Party Edmon Marukyan said that by opening a ''trophy park'' in Baku, Ilham Aliyev equalized himself with dictators like Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein used to be, ARMENPRESS reports Marukyan said in his speech at the PACE.

On April 12, 2021 Azerbaijani state TV channel dedicated an hour-long reportage to the museum opened in Baku about the 44-day war in Nagorno Karabakh. In this terrorist-style exhibition Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev dressed in military uniform was proudly touring and showing the Armenian military equipment and the real-size wax mannequins mocking the Armenian soldiers. The central part of the so-called ''trophy park'' was a long path filled with helmets of Armenian servicemen who had been killed or taken hostage'', Marukyan said, emphasizing that this has taken place in a country that is a member to the Council of Europe.

''Let me remind that Azerbaijan is a country that continues to illegally keep over 200 Armenian POWs and civilian hostages', Marukyan said, showing a number of photos taken from the 'trophy park''. He added that all those photos demonstrate the racial hatred in Azerbaijan against Armenia and Armenians.

''There are long queues to visit this park, which is disgusting and simply unacceptable. With this act Aliyev joint such dictators as Hitler and Saddam Hussein used to be', Marukyan said, bringing the example of a similar park in Iraq constructed by Saddam Hussein using the helmets if over 5000 Iranian soldiers, which Hussein called ''Victory Arch''. ''I see also another similarity between the two dictators  like Hussein, Aliyev does not want to return war prisoners'', Marukyan said, adding that the Baku park clearly shows the aggressive nature of the Azerbaijani authorities and their real face.

''They promote racial hatred and think that the demonstration of ill-treatment and torture to the future generation and the entire world is a normal phenomenon. History has proved that if timely measures are not taken to stop dictators, it stops being local and spreads throughout the world. I urge you to pay attention to these developments and hope that necessary and immediate measures will be taken to condemn the activities of Azerbaijan. The so-called ''trophy park'' must be closed'', Edmon Marukyan concluded.
We have an exciting, blended portfolio of energy assets, with our operated renewable energy portfolio sitting alongside our investments in the non-operated Duyung PSC and ion Ventures," James Parsons said.

( ) said it is excited about its potential to add value for shareholders in the next 12 months and beyond, as it released its financial results statement for 2020.

The company is being positioned towards renewable energy and is supporting the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy in south east Asia.

Presently, it is advancing interests in flagship wind and solar projects in the Philippines, following recent acquisitions, and it retains gas assets in the region  assets in Italy are deemed non-core and are being divested.

In Mondays statement, chairman James Parsons highlighted: Coro not only managed to successfully weather the storm in 2020, we progressed to an inflection point in our transition to becoming a regionally focused, low-carbon energy company.

We have an exciting, blended portfolio of energy assets, with our operated renewable energy portfolio sitting alongside our investments in the non-operated Duyung PSC and ion Ventures.

Having raised new capital early in 2021, and with a strengthened executive team, we are excited about the potential to add value for shareholders in the next 12 months and beyond.

In terms of the financial results, Coro reported a US$7.9mln loss and said it ended December with US$1.7mln of cash and equivalents.

Subsequent to the reporting period, the company has acquired a portfolio of early-stage, operated renewable energy projects in South East Asia and raised some US$5.3mln of net proceeds from a share placing and open offer.
An aspiring Georgia rapper convicted in the 2014 murder of his ex-girlfriend was captured by U.S. Marshals in Alabama Monday morning after being on the run for more than three years.

Maurice Nesbitt, featured last week on Americas Most Wanted, had been on the run since 2017, when he failed to show up for the final day of his trial in the death of Rashawn Jackson. Nesbitt, according to authorities, was out on bond during the trial. He cut off his electronic monitoring anklet and bailed on the last day of the trial.

Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Cliff LaBarge said the Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive Task Force was acting on an anonymous tip to Crime Stoppers. The team, before 7 a.m., set up surveillance in the 1200 block of 10th Avenue North after receiving information via Crime Stoppers that Nesbitt was staying at a home there.

A short time later, LaBarge said, the team found a person resembling Nesbitt inside a nearby residence. After a brief interaction with the man, he admitted to being the fugitive. He was taken into custody without further incident.

Crime Stoppers is a huge asset for us and the entire law enforcement community,' LaBarge said. It gives the citizens of Birmingham and the surrounding metro area an opportunity to help rid their neighborhoods of crime and make their communities safer.

A jury, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, found the absent Nesbitt guilty of felony murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. He was sentenced to life in prison.

According to FOX 5 Atlanta, in 2014, Jacksons mother found her 34-year-old daughter dead in an apartment complex off Campbellton Road in southwest Atlanta. Nesbitt had shot her in the head.

Her mother apparently made the discovery, investigators said.

Prosecutors told FOX 5 News Nesbitt repeatedly beat and abused Jackson over six years, and prior to her death, she hoped to end the relationship.

Nesbitt, then 35, was arrested on murder charges and allowed to be released on bond by a magistrate judge, prosecutors said. He was arrested once again after a 2016 failed court appearance.

Investigators know he took off his monitor device and fled on Interstate 75. They said initially they believed it was possible he was still in Atlanta or embedded in a gang and could be surviving through illegal activities. Nesbitt speaks Spanish as his mother is from Mexico.

Nesbitt was booked into the Jefferson County Jail at 8:09 a.m. Monday and is held without bond awaiting extradition to Georgia.
Highlights Huawei is in talks with several automakers to use their car plants to manufacture its own EVs.

The company has got four EV related patents to its name this week.

Huawei will target a mass-market segment through its EVs.

A month after China's Xiaomi announced its plans to build electric vehicles, Huawei now seems to be on a similar path. The tech major is reportedly planning to make electric vehicles under its own brand. Interestingly, some of these EV models by Huawei can make their way to the markets as early as this year.

Citing two people familiar with the matter, a report by Reuters confirms that Huawei is in talks with several automakers to use their car plants to manufacture EVs under its own brand. One of these automakers was identified as Changan Automobile, a Chinese state-owned automobile manufacturer headquartered in Chongqing, China.

Note that a Huawei spokesman has denied any such plans for the company. "Huawei is not a car manufacturer," the spokesman cleared in a statement. However, the company might build on its work as a components provider to other EV OEMs through its expertise in information and communications technology.

That does not stop the speculations, though, as the report by Reuters cites another source confirming the company's ongoing discussions with Beijing-backed BAIC Group's BluePark New Energy Technology to manufacture its EVs.

Huawei's speculated EV plans

If or when Huawei decides to build its own EVs, the work will mark a major addition to the company's portfolio. With its core business being hit by the US sanctions set by Donald Trump, Huawei might even find EVs to be a success in its revenue generation efforts.

Even if not for the end goal, the fact that Huawei recently got four EV related patents to its name this week hints at its potential move. These patents include methods for checking battery health and charging between electric vehicles.

Citing sources, Reuters states that Huawei will target a mass-market segment through its EVs. The divisions will be headed by Richard Yu, head of Huawei's consumer business group, who gained success in Huawei's smartphone business.

Huawei will not be the only one to mark an entry into the electric vehicle domain if it decides to do so. Other than Xiaomi, Baidu Inc and Foxconn also announced their plans to develop electric vehicles earlier this year.

Other than the complete production of EVs, industry majors are also investing in the electric vehicle space through related technologies developed in-house or by funding EV start-ups.
SUV

PHEV

Weve already seen what sustainable mobility is all about with the high-riding Mercedes-Benz EQB or the funky three-row Volkswagen ID.6 , but this time around, Ford is trying to be futuristic in a different way.The company has finally debuted the highly anticipated and much-discussed Evos crossover/station wagon that will herald a new direction for the retired Fusion and (soon to be axed) Mondeo sedan lines.Although the Blue Oval directly calls it part of thebreed, the lines are eternally blurred at least in terms of styling, so we might see the advent of a new niche that well tentatively call the crosswagon alternative.As far as we know, the Chinese-spec Evos is part of the companys China 2.0 plan (which mostly focuses on electrification, with the local Mustang Mach-E and the EscapeSUV), as well as the hero model for the brands Progressive Energy in Strength. The latter is a styling philosophy thats said to be aligned with Chinese aesthetics.Rumored, leaked, photographed by spies, rendered on countless occasions, the Evos doesnt hide too many surprises in terms of exterior design. Frankly, we dont have an issue with the styling coming to Europe and North America as it is even though we have a little reserve since the official gallery doesnt show the rear as well.On the other hand, the cockpit literally hides a massive surprise in the form of a 3.6-feet (1.1-meter) wide digital screen that spans almost the entire width of the cabin. Its a dashboard treatment weve seen from other premium brands (take Mercedess MBUX Hyperscreen , for example) but didnt expect from a mass-market OEM too soon.Ford uses a 12.3-inch digital instrument cluster and a 4k touch screen with a whopping 27-inch diagonal to create the new experience, promising neat integration of the all-new Fully Networked Vehicle E/E architecture, SYNC+ 2.0, as well as its first Virtual Personal Assistant.Interestingly, the Evos also features the new BlueCruise SAE Level 2 driver-assist technology. That means that China will also be getting the hands-free operation associated with the Hands-Free Blue Zones (mapped sections of divided highways that were surveyed by Ford).
Agreement designates an aspirational goal of 25% diverse spending with District-based businesses

Washington, D.C., April 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Public Service Commission of the District of Columbia (Commission) signed revised Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) with Pepco, Washington Gas and Verizon DC to renew their commitment to increased opportunities for diverse businesses. Through the revised MOUs, the utilities are expected to provide diverse suppliers with the maximum opportunity to participate in and compete for contracts and subcontracts in the utilitys supply chain for goods and services that support the utility. Each utility has designated an aspirational goal of 25% diverse spending with District-based businesses. Also, the definition of diverse suppliers was expanded by designating veterans, service-disabled veterans, and LGBTQ owned enterprises as diverse suppliers. Each year, the Commission will hold a legislative-style hearing to review the results of each utilitys commitment.

The revised MOUs are the result of work by the Advisory Council on Supplier and Workforce Diversity (Advisory Council) which was established by the Commission in 2019. The Advisory Council was formed to provide advice and recommendations on areas related to improving diversity and inclusion within the energy workforce and utility suppliers in the District. The Advisory Councils primary goals were to: establish a guide of suggested best practices, to recommend revisions to the 2010 MOUs between the Commission and the utilities, and to drive results on supplier and workforce diversity issues. For the course of a year, the Advisory Council developed the revisions before submitting final recommendations to the Commission.

Willie L. Phillips, DCPSC Chairman stated, The DCPSC is committed to increasing opportunities for diverse businesses in the District. I want to congratulate the Advisory Council on facilitating this process of revising the MOUs to incorporate best practices for diversity, equity and inclusion in contracting and employment within the public utility sector. With the revised MOUs, Pepco, Washington Gas and Verizon DC will significantly increase the pool of diverse suppliers doing business in the District. I also want to thank Advisory Council Chair David Velazquez and Vice-Chair David Gadis for their leadership in this effort.

Story continues

David Velazquez, President and CEO of Pepco Holdings and Chair of the Advisory Council stated, As companies in the District, we must ensure that we are doing everything we can to advance the social vibrancy, equity, and long-term economic and environmental health of the communities that we are a part of and privileged to serve. At Pepco, that includes advancing diversity, equity and inclusion within our company and communities, as well as expanding economic opportunities to local and diverse businesses all while helping the District achieve its goal of being the healthiest, greenest, most livable city in the nation.

Through the outstanding commitment and effort of the Advisory Council, diverse suppliers will now be afforded more engagement in the economic activities of District utilities, said David L. Gadis, DC Water CEO and Vice Chair of the Advisory Council. We know that supporting diversity and inclusion provides myriad benefits including better decision-making and problem-solving. This revised MOU and guidance further positions utilities to be strong partners for business development, business utilization, and job retention.

Throughout the process, the Advisory Council has brought together over 40 organizations to identify the opportunities and challenges of diversity and inclusion in the utility industry. The members of the Advisory Council include: local government agencies, colleges and universities, utility contractors, trade associations, and public utilities, including Pepco, Washington Gas, Verizon DC and DC Water.

Visit the Commission website for more information about the Advisory Council.

CONTACT: Kellie Didigu Public Service Commission of the District of Columbia 202-626-5124 kdidigu@psc.dc.gov




mVaccination has already been used in South Africa to register 279,000 inoculations of health workers

Vodafone PLC ( ) announced a partnership with the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) to offer a digital toolbox to help with the Coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine rollout.

The mVacciNation mobile platform will manage vaccination appointments and stock availability across up to 55 countries, following a successful pilot project in South Africa.

In South Africa, the National Department of Health has used mVacciNation to register health workers on its Electronic Vaccine Data System (EVDS), and nearly 279,000 vaccinations have been administered to date.

Each time someone is vaccinated their digital record is updated and, if a further dose is required, the platform automatically schedules and sends a follow-up date via SMS.

Once vaccination is completed, the individual will receive electronic certification.

Countries can link mVacciNation into their choice of temperature-controlled supply chain, drug safety and vaccination travel passport platforms.

The platform will also be used to manage infant inoculations in Mozambique, Tanzania and Nigeria.

The roll-out of mVacciNation, developed by Mezzanine, a member of the Vodacom Group, is the first project as part of a wider agreement to boost Africa's digital transformation.

"The response to the Covid-19 crisis has significantly accelerated the adoption of frontier technologies, said Dr Ibrahim Mayaki, chief executive of AUDA-NEPAD, in a release.

Africa's booming digital sector offers great opportunities for public-private partnerships to help build resilience in the aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis and respond to critical continental priorities. As the development agency for the African Union, we act as a channel to connect innovators and governments to roll out and localise these solutions."

Shares were flat at 134.96p on Monday morning.
Samsung India expanded its contactless service offerings in the country with a new pick-up and drop service for mobile devices. Consumers visiting Samsung service centers can also opt for drop-only service to get their mobile devices delivered to their home post repair. This will ensure Samsung smartphone and tablet consumers do not have to step out of the safety and comfort of their homes to get their devices serviced.

The pick-up and drop service for mobile devices has been kicked-off in 46 cities  Delhi, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Pune, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Ghaziabad, Faridabad, Noida, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Jaipur, Udaipur, Jodhpur, Agra, Lucknow, Varansi, Dehradun, Guwahati, Bhubaneswar, Patna, Durgapur, Ranchi, Thane, Aurangabad, Kolhapur, Nagpur, Surat, Vadodara, Bhopal, Indore, Raipur, Rajkot, Jabalpur, Coimbatore, Madurai, Kochi, Calicut, Tirupati, Hubli, Hyderabad, Vijayawada and Vishakapatnam  for non-containment zones falling within municipal limits and with adherence to curfew rules.

Customers can register for service of their Galaxy A, Galaxy M, Galaxy S, Galaxy F, Galaxy Note and Galaxy Fold series smartphones as well as tablets. Personnel involved in the pick-up and drop of the devices from the homes of consumers will follow all safety protocols.

The pick-up and drop and drop only service for mobile device repair can be availed at a nominal convenience fee of INR 199 & INR 99, respectively. Consumers can pay for the service through several digital payment options.

Samsung offers several contactless service options to its consumers, helping them resolve their issues without stepping out of their homes. Consumers can opt for WhatsApp, Remote Support, Live Chat, technical assistance through the call center or access do-it-yourself videos on the Samsung Website and on YouTube.

Samsung Contactless Service Offerings

WhatsApp Support: Consumers can send a simple message on Samsungs WhatsApp support number 1800-5-SAMSUNG (1800-5-7267864) to register for the service. On WhatsApp, they can seek technical support, get information about service centre locations, status of a repair, new offers and also request for demo and installation of Samsung products they have just bought. This service is available 247.

Remote Support: Samsung call center agents can work on a consumers Galaxy smartphone or Smart TV remotely through the internet and diagnose the issue online to provide instant resolution.

Live Chat: Consumers can reach out to Samsung instantly on its website www.samsung.com/in/support wherein trained agents and an Artificial Intelligence (AI) based Chat Bot provide instant and accurate information for any queries 247, without any wait time.

Technical Assistance Through Call Center: Expert call center executives offer technical support over call. Consumers follow the technical advice given to them to resolve issues.

Video Tips on Samsung Website & YouTube: Consumers can find useful product care tips and do-it-yourself videos on the Samsung website and on YouTube that provide solutions to common problems.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 19)  President Rodrigo Duterte signed an administrative order on Monday that will grant a one-time 20,000 financial aid to pensioners of the Employees' Compensation (EC) program.

Around 31,000 pensioners of the Social Security System (SSS) and Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) will benefit from the financial assistance under Administrative Order 39.

"The ECC (Employees' Compensation Commission) approved the proposed grant of a one-time financial assistance, based on the observation that pensioners experience undue financial hardships because of their vulnerabilities, and in anticipation of the prolonged economic impact of the pandemic on their lives," the order reads.

The order directed the ECC, SSS, and GSIS, to set aside funding from the Social Insurance Fund.

The Employees' Compensation Program was designed to provide a compensation package to public and private workers and their dependents for work-related sickness, injury, or death.

Sea-based Overseas Filipino workers and maids are private sector workers that are considered compulsory SSS members.

Government employees who are compulsory GSIS members include uniformed personnel of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, Philippine National Police, Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, Bureau of Fire Protection, and Philippine Coast Guard.

Since the start of lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the national government provided cash aid to low-income households and other vulnerable sectors of the society.

When another enhanced community quarantine rule was imposed in Metro Manila and nearby provinces late March, the government provided cash or in-kind assistance of 1,000 each or up to a maximum 4,000 for a family.

Earlier today, Malacanang apologized for the slow distribution of financial aid to families affected by stricter lockdown measures as the country faces an alarming surge in COVID-19 cases.
The WenchI High Court has for the second time ordered the Electoral Commission (EC) to make available the original documents of the 2020 Techiman South parliamentary election for inspection by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) parliamentary candidate, Mr Christopher Beyere Baasongti.



According to the court, the inspection of the documents would be done at the Registry of the court on April 19, this year, between 2.00 p.m and 4.00 p.m.



The presiding judge, Justice Frederick Nawurah, however, gave a stern warning that the exercise was strictly official as it was part of the court process, and, therefore, it was out of bounds for supporters of the parties.



The order given by the court yesterday followed the inability of Mr Baasongti to obtain the original documents despite a previous order by the court on April 1 granting him the greenlight to inspect the documents.



Petition



The case was initiated by Mr Baasongti, who filed a petition challenging the election of the NPP MP for Techiman South, Mr Martin Kwaku Adjei-Mensah Korsah



It is the case of Mr Baasongti that per the votes counted at all the polling stations in Techiman South, he (Baasongti) should have been declared the MP-elect.



The petitioner contended that apart from getting the highest number of votes, there was no collation of the results as required by Regulation 43 of the Public Elections Regulations, 2020 (C.I. 127), but the ECs returning officer ended up declaring Mr Korsah the winner.



Among other reliefs, the petitioner is seeking an order from the court directed at the EC to collate the results of all the polling stations in Techiman South and also for the EC to publicly declare him as the winner of the 2020 parliamentary election in the constituency.



Arguments



At yesterdays hearing, counsel for the petitioner, Mr Justin Pwavra Teriwajah, told the court that the EC had not complied with the orders of the court given on April1, 2021.



According to counsel, apart from the failure of the EC to allow his client to inspect the original documents, the answers to some interrogatories by the EC were not satisfactory, and should, therefore, be struck out.



Counsel urged the court to order the arrest of the Returning Officer of the Techiman South during the 2020 election, Nana Dwamena Frempah, who he said refused to answer interrogatories served him.



In his response, counsel for the EC, Mr Emmanuel Addae, said his client was within the seven-day order and that the plaintiff could still go to the EC for the inspection.



He also stated that the returning officer of the Techiman South, Nana Dwamena Frempah, did not answer the interrogatories because he argued that he was no more an officer of the EC.



According to him, Nana Frempah objected to the interrogatories because his appointment from October to December 2020 had elapsed.



Ruling



In his ruling, Justice Nawurah held that although the Returning Officer was no longer an employee of the EC, the interrogatories were within his personal knowledge due to the role he played in the elections and, therefore, it would be fair for him to answer them.



He, therefore, gave him seven days to answer the agreed interrogatories.



There were jeers and shouts by female supporters of both parties which neatly resulted in scuffles.



Among the people in the packed courtroom were the General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr Johnson Asiedu Nketiah and Mr Peter Mac-Manu, a leading member of the NPP.

Source: Daily Graphic









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Featured Video
NEW YORK and MONTREAL, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - IFM Investors ("IFM") and Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec ("CDPQ"), a global investment group, are pleased to announce that CDPQ has acquired a 15% interest in the Indiana Toll Road ("ITR") from a subsidiary of the IFM Global Infrastructure Fund ("IFM GIF"). Following completion of the sale, IFM GIF continues to own more than 70% of ITR.

The Indiana Toll Road is a 157-mile (252 km), limited access, divided highway in the state of Indiana which is operated and maintained under a Concession and Lease Agreement with the Indiana Finance Authority ("IFA"). The road spans northern Indiana, from its border with Ohio to the Illinois state line near Chicago, feeding directly into two toll roads at the state lines  the Chicago Skyway in the west and the Ohio Turnpike in the east. Since IFM's acquisition in 2015, ITR has successfully undergone the largest capital improvements to its roadway and structures since its original construction (Project "PUSH" or "Pavement Upgrade for a Superior Highway"). The Concession and Lease Agreement grants the concessionaire the exclusive right to collect toll and other revenues from the toll road for the next 60 years.

CDPQ and IFM Investors share similar objectives, having invested together across geographies in sectors such as ports, roads and energy.

"The success of this transaction demonstrates the high-quality nature of the ITR and the significant valueadding initiatives that IFM Investors has undertaken since acquisition of the asset in 2015. We are delighted to welcome CDPQ, another like-minded, long-term partner into this key piece of U.S. infrastructure," said Kyle Mangini, Global Head of Infrastructure at IFM Investors.

"ITR is a critical channel for the flow of goods in the United States whose resilience and importance for the logistics industry have been demonstrated in recent months. It will be as essential as ever as the economic recovery takes off," said Emmanuel Jaclot, Executive Vice-President and Head of Infrastructure at CDPQ. "We are delighted to once again team up with a business partner of IFM's caliber to ensure the success of this high-quality asset."

About IFM Investors

IFM Investors was established more than 25 years ago with the aim to protect and grow the long-term retirement savings of working people. Owned by a group of Australian pension funds, the organization has US$116bn under management as of 31 December 2020. Because IFM is owned by industry pension funds, we seek to prioritize the interests of more than 510 like-minded investors worldwide by focusing on assets that combine excellent long-term risk/reward characteristics with broad economic and social benefits to the community. As a signatory to The United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment, IFM actively engages on ESG issues with the companies in which we invest with the aim of enhancing their net performance while minimizing investment risk. Operating globally from offices in Melbourne, Sydney, London, Berlin, Zurich, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul and Tokyo, IFM manages investments across infrastructure, debt, listed equities and private equity assets. For more information, visit www.ifminvestors.com

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.

SOURCE Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec

Related Links

https://www.cdpq.com/


[April 19, 2021] Brian Morrissey, Former Principal Deputy General Counsel for the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Rejoins Sidley in D.C.

Sidley Austin LLP is pleased to announce that Brian Morrissey, who previously served in senior roles at the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the U.S. Department of Justice, has rejoined the firm's White Collar: Government Litigation and Investigations practice as a partner in Washington, D.C. He will represent clients in high-stakes enforcement actions, regulatory disputes, and other complex litigation. As Treasury's Principal Deputy General Counsel - the second-highest ranking attorney in the Department - Mr. Morrissey led multiple initiatives to implement the CARES Act and other COVID-19 relief measures, including the Paycheck Protection Program. He advised the Treasury Secretary and senior officials on a wide range of legal issues, managed significant litigation and congressional oversight matters, and supervised teams of attorneys in areas including financial regulation, tax, international trade, economic sanctions, anti-money laundering, and cybersecurity. Prior to that, Mr. Morrissey served in leadership positions at the U.S. Department of Justice, as Counselor to the Attorney eneral, and Deputy Associate Attorney General where he provided strategic oversight and advice on high-profile civil, antitrust, environmental, and tax matters. He is also a former law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.



"We're very pleased to welcome Brian back to Sidley," said Mark Hopson, co-leader of Sidley's global Litigation group and managing partner of the firm's Washington, D.C. office. "Brian's expertise will allow him to provide important guidance to clients who are addressing the impact of COVID-19 on government enforcement actions and regulatory priorities. We look forward to Brian rejoining our stellar litigation and regulatory teams in Washington." Sidley has approximately 750 litigation lawyers in North America, Asia, and Europe that practice in virtually every area of business disputes, including commercial trials, intellectual property, class action defense, appellate, international arbitration, and white collar. The firm's "built-to-win" approach to litigation earned Sidley recognition as a finalist in The American Lawyer's 2020 "Litigation Department of the Year" competition. "Built-to-win" emphasizes diversity, bringing together dynamic, cross-functional teams from different disciplines, practices, and perspectives to handle the most complex litigation matters and deliver winning results.

With 2,000 lawyers in 20 offices around the globe, Sidley is a premier legal adviser for clients across the spectrum of industries. Follow Sidley on Twitter (News - Alert) @SidleyLaw. Attorney Advertising - Sidley Austin LLP, One South Dearborn, Chicago, IL 60603, +1 312 853 7000. Sidley and Sidley Austin refer to Sidley Austin LLP and affiliated partnerships as explained at www.sidley.com/disclaimer. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005707/en/

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Minister of Foreign Affairs Nanaia Mahuta, speaks to media while Associate Minister of Foreign Affairs, Aupito Sio (L), and Minister for Trade and Export Growth, Damien O'Connor, in Wellington, New Zealand on December 01, 2020 (Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

NZ Uncomfortable With Expanding Scope of Five Eyes, Says Foreign Minister on China Relationship

In a move likely to appease Beijing, New Zealands foreign minister is distancing the nations foreign policy away from close democratic allies, preferring to chart its own course on relations with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta was speakingin her second major address since assuming officeat the New Zealand China Council on Monday, where she outlined what the nations contemporary relationship with China would look like.

While Mahuta warned local exporters of the need to diversify their trade markets and raised concerns on Beijings expansion in the South Pacific, she indicated that the Ardern government preferred not to align with the Five Eyes nations on issues outside of intelligence-sharing.

We are uncomfortable with expanding the remit of the Five Eyes, she told reporters. We would much rather prefer to look for multilateral opportunities to express our interests.

New Zealand has been very clear, certainly in this term since weve held the portfolio, not to invoke the Five Eyes as the first point of contact on messaging out on a range of issues, she said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, right and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, left shake hands before the meeting at the Great Hall of the People on April 1, 2019, in Beijing, China. (Kenzaburo Fukuhara  Pool/Getty Images)

Matters such as human rights should be approached in a consistent, country agnostic manner, she added.

At times, we will do this in association with others that share our views and sometimes we will act alone.

Alexander Gillespie, professor of international law at the University of Waikato, said the CCP would be pleased by the ministers speech.

This is a comment China will be happy with, as it will act as a brake on the expansion of the somewhat informal alliance that is the Five Eyes, he told The Epoch Times.

The Five Eyes allianceAustralia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and the United Stateswas formed in the 1940s originally as an intelligence-sharing network.

However, in recent years the network has been leveraged to discuss and partner on other pressing issues, including the economy, defence, Big Tech regulation, and foreign relations.

Foreign ministers from the Five Eyes have recently jointly condemned Beijings takeover of Hong Kong and the persecution of Uyghurs in China.

Mahutas comments also continue a departure from the foreign policy position of predecessor and former Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters.

Peterswho governed in coalition with Jacinda Ardern during her first termwas consistently outspoken on Beijings transgressions, including its takeover of Hong Kong, its expansion into the South Pacific, and foreign interference.

Former Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters at Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand, on Oct. 16, 2018. (Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

However, following the 2020 landslide victory for Jacinda Arderns Labour Party, which saw Peters New Zealand First party ousted, the government has shifted in its position.

In early April, New Zealand opted out of criticising the World Health Organisations (WHO) investigation into COVID-19, despite WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus admitting information was withheld from investigators.

Mahuta, meanwhile, likened New Zealand-China relations to that of a Dragon and Taniwha, a mythical Maori sea serpent.

There are some things on which New Zealand and China do not, cannot, and will not, agree, she said.

On many occasions, New Zealand has raised issues privately with China. Where there is tension between the Dragon and the Taniwha, we take a consistent and predictable approach through diplomacy and dialogue.

New Zealand has long been accused of being the soft underbelly of the Five Eyes network, with critics panning the Ardern government for avoiding offending Beijing to maintain its trade relationship.

China is currently the nations largest export market, receiving over $20.1 billion worth of goods.

In January, New Zealand Trade Minister Damien OConnor caused a diplomatic stir with close ally and neighbour Australia after suggesting it should show more respect to Beijing if it wished to emulate the mature relationship between New Zealand and China.

If they (Australia) were to follow us and show respect, and I guess show a little more diplomacy from time to time, and be cautious with wording then, they too, hopefully, would be in a similar situation (to New Zealand).
New Delhi, Apr 19 (UNI) Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi for the first time has acknowledged that there have been "sittings" in the UAE for talks between his country and India, reports Gulf News.

In an interview with the daily, Qureshi lauded the UAEs role in the Pakistan-India mediation leading to ceasefire on Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir.

UAE has sizeable number of Pakistanis and the presence of Indians is even higher. Obviously, looking at the interest of peace and stability in the region, it only makes sense that the UAE feels that two players (Indian and Pakistan) in this region, who are estranged, should sit together and talk out their differences," Qureshi said

Last week, the UAE Ambassador to Washington Yousef Al Otaiba had said that the UAE is mediating between India and Pakistan to help the two countries reach a healthy and functional relationship.

Relations between India and Pakistan have been frozen since 2019. Qureshi, who is in the Emirates to meet the leadership of the Gulf country, said that Pakistan is ready to resume bilateral talks with India.

Now, we have to see what the way forward is and how we can sit and talk as two neighbours to sort out our issues. I can assure you that Pakistan is ready to talk, provided India revisits the decision on Jammu and Kashmir, which in our opinion is not only illegal but also unilateral, he said.

UNI SRJ SB 1652
Alabamas First Class Pre-K program again has won national accolades for the 15th consecutive year.

The National Institute for Early Education Researchs annual report, released Monday, found Alabama is one of only six top-ranking states meeting benchmarks for curriculum standards, teacher training and class size. The other states were Michigan, Mississippi, Rhode Island, Hawaii and Missouri.

Ensuring our youngest learners have a strong start to their educational journeys is important now, more than ever, Gov. Kay Ivey said in a press release Monday.

Enrollment was down nationally for the 2020-21 school year as, according to NIEER, parents feared sending children to in-person school during the pandemic. Alabamas program also saw lower enrollment and currently serves 18,906 students in 1,250 classrooms statewide.

Alabamas state-funded program served 20,439 or 37% of eligible 4-year-old children in 1,039 classrooms across all 67 counties in both public and private settings during the 2019-20 school year.

On a press call, Ivey said children who participate in the program demonstrate higher readiness with kindergarten, are less likely to be chronically absent, are less likely to be held back a grade, and are less likely to need special education services in k(indergarten) through 12.

Related: Prekindergarten a shining success in rural Alabama: Black Belt 2020

Folks, these results speak for themselves and there is simply no better return on investment than high-quality early childhood education, Ivey said.

While Alabamas program is lauded for its high quality, access is a different issue.

Nationally, Alabama ranked 17th in the number of 4-year-olds who have access to the states program. And access is uneven statewide, with percentages of eligible 4-year-olds enrolled in the program varying from 14% in Lowndes and Shelby counties, to 90% in Butler County.

This image shows the percentage of 4-year-olds enrolled in Alabama's First Class Pre-K program in each county.

Ivey defended the programs expansion rate.

Were making good steady progress, she said, and we have developed a plan where we can see our way clear to achieving our goal of 70% of all 4-year-olds being in the program by the year 2025.

Alabamas program does not serve any 3-year-olds, something NIEER has called for states to provide. Steven Barnett, the institutes senior co-director, encouraged the state to consider further expansion.

Ivey has touted the states pre-K program as a way to improve education overall and has asked lawmakers for $151 million for the program for the coming year. She says that money would fund 1,452 classrooms and serve 44% of Alabamas 4-year-olds.

Last month, the Senate approved the full request, but the education budget has not yet been taken up by the House.

In Alabama, average state spending per First Class Pre-K student was $6,008, up from $5,654 in 2018-19, but slightly lower than the $6,800 average per-student spending for kindergarten through twelfth grade in 2019-20. Nationally, state spending per pre-K student was $5,499 according to NIEER.
Two Indian men among six new imported Covid-19 patients in Vietnam

Two Indian men and four Vietnamese people who recently arrived in Vietnam from abroad have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, raising the total number of patients in the country to 2,791, the Ministry of Health reported on Monday evening.















Illustrative photo







According to the ministry's report, the two Indian men aged 31 and 35 recently arrived to work in Ho Chi Minh City and Yen Bai Province. They were sent to quarantine areas upon arrival and are now being treated at local hospitals.

The four Vietnamese patients include three men and a woman aged between 22-67. They recently returned from Japan, Cambodia, South Korea, and the USA to Ho Chi Minh City and Phu Yen and Tay Ninh provinces.

They were sent to quarantine areas upon arrival and are now being treated at local hospitals and healthcare centres.



With these new infection cases, the number of Covid-19 patients in Vietnam has increased to 2,791, including 910 locally-transmitted cases reported since the new outbreak started in Hai Duong on January 28.



As of 6 pm on April 19, a total of 2,475 Covid-19 patients had recovered and been discharged from hospital. There have been 35 deaths, most of them being the elderly with serious underlying diseases.



At present, over 40,000 people who had close contact with Covid-19 patients or returned from virus-hit areas are being monitored at hospitals, quarantine facilities, and at home.
Florid Gov. Ron DeSantis listens to a report from a member of his administration during a meeting at the governor's office in Tallahassee, Florida, on April 1, 2021. (Screenshot via Epoch Times)

Florida Lawsuit Against Bidens Immigration Policy Seeks to Force Him to Follow the Law: DeSantis

Floridas Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said the lawsuit his state filed against the Biden administration over its early immigration decisions is seeking to compel the federal government to actually follow the law.

The lawsuit seeks to have them actually follow the law, follow the Constitution. Maria, you will hear excuses for why they dont enforce immigration laws in certain instances, prosecutorial discretion, focus on the most threats, DeSantis told Fox News Maria Bartiromo on Sunday.

These are the most threatening folks. They are criminal convicted aliens. And they are not even doing that. You cannot totally default on your responsibility to enforce the law under the Constitution.

State Attorney General Ashley Moody announced Floridas lawsuit in early March, arguing that the series of new rules narrowing the administrations immigration enforcement priorities dubbed interim enforcement priorities jeopardized the safety of Floridians as well as illegal immigrant victims.

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 guidelines were established by two memorandaknown as the Jan. 20 memo and Feb. 18 memothat modified the way federal immigration and other law enforcement agencies would operate.

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 by saying that DHS cannot respond to all immigration violations or remove all persons unlawfully in the United States due to limited resources.

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 after 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.

DeSantis characterized the policy changes as reckless.

Normally, when wed have a criminal alien, convicted of a felony, they obviously served their sentence in Florida state prison. And prior to the Joe Biden administration, ICE would take control of them when they finish their sentence and remove the criminal alien and send them back to the home country, he said.

That should be like clockwork. That is the biggest no-brainer there is.

He also expressed concern that, due to the memos, the administration is no longer honoring ICE detainers and that criminal aliens are being released into the community.

Other states have since filed lawsuits against the Biden administration over the two memoranda. In early April, attorneys general from Texas and Louisiana took the Biden administration to the court alleging that it is refusing to take custody of illegal immigrants convicted of serious crimes.

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.

The 100-day suspension on deportations order has been blocked by a federal court indefinitely after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the administration. The judge found that the Lone Star state would be harmed by the moratorium.
MILWAUKEE, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ademi LLP is investigating Knoll (NYSE: KNL) for possible breaches of fiduciary duty and other violations of law in its transaction with Herman Miller.

Click here to learn how to join the action: https://www.ademilaw.com/case/knoll-inc or call Guri Ademi toll-free at 866-264-3995. There is no cost or obligation to you.

Ademi LLP alleges Knoll's financial outlook is excellent and yet Knoll shareholders will receive only $11.00 in cash and 0.32 shares of Herman Miller common stock for each share of Knoll common stock they own. Based on Herman Miller's five-day volume weighted average price of $43.94 per share, the transaction terms imply a purchase price of $25.06 per share. The merger agreement unreasonably limits competing bids for Knoll by prohibiting solicitation of further bids, and imposing a termination penalty if Knoll accepts a superior bid. Knoll insiders will receive millions of dollars as part of change of control arrangements. We are investigating the conduct of Knoll's board of directors, and whether they are (i) fulfilling their fiduciary duties to all shareholders, and (ii) obtaining a fair and reasonable price for Knoll.

If you own Knoll common stock and wish to obtain additional information, please contact Guri Ademi either at gademi@ademilaw.com or toll-free: 866-264-3995, or https://www.ademilaw.com/case/knoll-inc.

We specialize in shareholder litigation involving buyouts, mergers, and individual shareholder rights throughout the country. For more information, please feel free to call us. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.

Contacts

Ademi LLP

Guri Ademi

Toll Free: (866) 264-3995

Fax: (414) 482-8001



Cision

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/shareholder-alert-ademi-llp-investigates-whether-knoll-inc-has-obtained-a-fair-price-in-its-transaction-with-herman-miller-inc-301271686.html

SOURCE Ademi LLP
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In 2018, while serving a life sentence for three killings dating back to the 1980s, Samuel Little, then 77 and in poor health, began talking. Over hundreds of hours, he confessed to a total of 93 murders. At least 50 of these confessions have been verified by law enforcement, and all are considered credible by the FBI. In other words, Little, a former competitive boxer from Georgia, got away with murder for decades  until he decided the jig was up.

Littles grizzly crimes began making headlines. Those revelations meant that Little became, as the unfortunate parlance goes, the most prolific known serial killer in the history of the United States. Yet, despite the scope of his crimes, Littles name soon dropped off the news cycle. There was another wave of headlines when he died in 2020, but the level of coverage dedicated to the Little case remains minute when weighed against the number of his victims.

A new documentary is attempting to right this wrong. Confronting a Serial Killer, streaming on Starz from 18 April, is a five-part exploration into Littles crimes, and the criminal justice system that failed to stop him. Behind the camera is Joe Berlinger, the director of such high-profile true-crime offerings as the Paradise Lost trilogy on the West Memphis Three, the 2019 documentary Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, and Zac Efrons Bundy biopic Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. Po Kutchins, whose credits include the 2017 true-crime series The Murder of Laci Peterson, is one of the documentarys executive producers.

Berlinger and Kutchins are acutely aware of the boom in true-crime documentaries, having both contributed to it. But the case of Samuel Little seemed a worthy addition to an increasingly crowded field. In true crime, you have a responsibility, Berlinger says. If youre going to take on a story that has potentially sensationalistic aspects to it, you have a responsibility to the victims to make sure that theres a reason to tell it.

Confronting a Serial Killer is told through the experience of Jillian Lauren, a journalist and writer who built a rapport with Little starting in 2018, and wound up on the receiving end of his many convoluted admissions. To Berlinger, that was the compelling reason he needed to get on board with the project: When I read that this powerful woman was able to get this unrepentant serial killer who had been denying all of his crimes to talk, and that those clues were being used to identify victims, it called to me.

Back in 2018, Lauren shared some of her experiences investigating Littles crimes in a piece for The Cut, which now reads as a prelude to Confronting a Serial Killer. In it, she cited Los Angeles detective Mitzi Roberts (also featured in the documentary), who helped first piece together the Little case. Roberts, Lauren wrote, posited that Little was able to get away with dozens of crimes because he went after the less dead, whom Lauren defined as people who live on the margins of society and whose murders have historically tended to be not as thoroughly investigated as those of their wealthier, whiter, and perhaps more sober counterparts. Or, as Lauren puts it in the documentary: Pretty, white college students are the most dead. Black [sex workers] are the least dead.

According to the FBI, Little has confessed to 93 murders, having taken place, he says, between 1970 and 2005. If 93 is indeed Littles exact number of victims, he would have murdered on average two to three people a year for 35 years. During that time, and before his 2012 conviction, Little had multiple run-ins with law enforcement. He was even tried for the 1982 murder of Patricia Ann Mount, a 26-year-old woman with an intellectual disability, but was acquitted in 1984 due to insufficient evidence.

And so, we are told, Little remained free and carried on killing. His victims, as underlined by the bureau as well as the documentary, were mostly women of colour, some of them involved in sex work or with a history of addiction. He bet on that, Kutchins says. Samuel Little bet on that bias to help him, and it did.

Throughout Confronting a Serial Killer, Little recounts his crimes in phone calls with Lauren. The tapes are, in Berlingers own words, horrifying and chilling. Some serial killers tend to dance around specifics when discussing the murders they have committed; they are prone to paraphrase, and are reluctant to provide details. Little does not fall into that category. There is only one threshold he refuses to cross. Dont call him a rapist, Roberts once told a Texas Ranger who was due to speak to Little. Hes way more sensitive about that than being a killer. Everything else is on the table.

I reached out and wrapped my hands around her throat and squeezed until she went limp, Little tells Lauren of one victim. When Lauren asks whether he meant to kill the woman, Little doesnt demure. I meant to do it, he says. I meant it because it felt good.

Samuel Little is seen in a composite timeline of various booking photos from 1966 to 1995 (FBI via Getty)

Berlinger says that using Littles audio was the result of a considered decision. There is a knee-jerk overreaction to true crime today, he says. I think theres a certain camp that says any true crime is bad true crime and is exploitative. I understand where some of that is coming from, and I think theres a tremendous amount of irresponsible true crime. So any time you tell a story with a device that could be viewed as sensational, you have to think about it and its impact on the audience.

For Kutchins, there is value in hearing Little describe the women he targeted, and how and why he did it. His whole rationale is incredibly telling and important because it reflects the society and the biases he was counting on to let him get away with it, she says. The result is a compelling, thorough documentary, with a directness that comes off as uncompromising rather than voyeuristic.

At the heart of the entire series is the rapport Lauren builds with Little, one prison visit and one phone call at a time. You ask a question, and then you listen really carefully, and if you listen hard enough, you can hear what they need you to be, she explains. When Little at one point worries that his accounts might cause Lauren to despise him, she insists immediately: No, Mister Sam, you know I dont judge you. Im just here to listen.

Writer Jillian Laurens rapport with Samuel Little is examined in Confronting a Serial Killer' ( 2021 Starz Entertainment, LLC)

The process pays off: Little not only goes on to state that he loves Lauren like a sister or a mom or something, but he opens up to her about his crimes, his past, and his modus operandi. Every interaction he has is transactional, Lauren observes about her subject.

Of course, that aspect goes both ways: Lauren has no interest in excusing or lightening the weight of Littles crimes. Its quite the contrary, since shes investigating them in the hopes of identifying some of his victims. Shes just telling him what he needs to hear in order to talk. Her rapport with him exemplifies the difference between empathy and sympathy: it is possible, and necessary even, to try to understand why and how someone did what they did, without liking or forgiving them in return.

More than 40 of Littles confessions remain to be definitively corroborated by law enforcement, and most of his victims remain to be identified. Little died in December 2020 aged 80. Only by publicising his crimes can we now hope to put names to the people he killed. Only by telling his story can we hope for answers.

Confronting a Serial Killer begins 18 April on StarzPlay (via Amazon Prime)
FILE PHOTO: American Airlines passenger planes crowd a runway where they are parked due to flight reductions to slow the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at Tulsa International Airport in Tulsa

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - American Airlines Co said on Monday it will reduce flights to some destinations in South America because the COVID-19 pandemic has reduced demand.

The U.S. airline said it was suspending service to Manaus, Brazil, from Miami until Nov. 2 and delaying the start of service from New York to Santiago until July 2, instead of the planned May 7 start. It will also reduce the frequency of flights to Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo in Brazil, and to Lima from some U.S. airports.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Leslie Adler)
Berlin, April 20 : At least 200 fighters were killed in an airstrike on a rebel camp in Syria by Russian fighter jets, according to military sources in Moscow on Monday.

In addition, large quantities of ammunition and other combat material were destroyed at the camp near Palmyra, reported the TASS news agency, citing Russian military leaders in Syria, DPA reported.

About two dozen trucks with heavy machine guns and around 500 kgs of weapons material were destroyed, it said.

According to the information, the camp was used to train combat groups to stage terrorist attacks in various parts of Syria.

The Russian information cannot be independently verified Militants from the Islamic State terrorist group are active in the region.
Prince Harry may delay his return to Los Angeles to stay for the Queen's birthday on Wednesday, reports say.

The Duke of Sussex is said to have booked an open flight to the US - meaning he could go back after his grandmother turns 95.

It comes after it was reported he held two hours of peace talks with his older brother Prince William.

They are said to have met with their father Prince Charles after Prince Philip's funeral on Saturday.

Prince Harry's plane ticket means he could spend Wednesday with the Queen for her first birthday without her beloved husband.

It would mean a delay in seeing his 23-month-old son Archie and his wife Meghan Markle, who is pregnant with their second child.

The Duke of Sussex (pictured on Saturday)is said to have booked an open flight to the US - meaning he could go back after his grandmother turns 95

It comes after it was reported he held two hours of peace talks with his older brother Prince William (pictured together on Saturday)

He went to Prince Philip's funeral on Saturday and was seen talking to Prince William and his wife Kate Middleton after the ceremony - raising hopes they could make up

As the limousines drew up to take mourners from the Galilee porch of St George's Chapel back to Windsor Castle's private quarters, Prince Charles used the briefest of gestures to send them, empty of their royal passengers, away.

Prince Harry's plane ticket means he could spend Wednesday with the Queen (pictured in October) for her first birthday without her beloved husband

A source told the Sun: 'If all goes well, he could stay for the Queen's birthday.'

The Duke of Sussex had to quarantine at Frogmore Cottage in Windsor when he flew in from the US where he lives in a 11million Montecito mansion.

Travellers from America are supposed to self-isolate for ten days but are allowed to go to funerals on compassionate grounds.

Reports say Harry used the UK Government's test-and-release scheme so he could leave isolation after five days following a negative Covid test.

He went to Prince Philip's funeral on Saturday and was seen talking to Prince William and his wife Kate Middleton after the ceremony - raising hopes they could make up.

The Duke is reported to have later had a meeting with his brother and Prince Charles for two hours after the encounter.

It would have been the first time they have spoken in person since Harry and Meghan's bombshell Oprah Winfrey chat earlier this year.

They are said to have met away from the television cameras in Windsor Castle after Saturday's coverage ended.

The warring brothers are expected to meet again in the summer when they unveil a new statue to Princess Diana at Kensington Palace.

Insiders hope the July 1 event - done to commemorate what would have been their mother's 60th birthday - will help heal their relationship.

A source said: 'It's early days but you'd hope this is exactly the first step Philip would have wished for.'

Prince William and Prince Harry were separated by their cousin Peter Phillips as they walked behind Prince Philip's coffin on Saturday

Prince Harry rocked his family with bombshell accusations during his and his wife's interview with Ms Winfrey in March.

They 36-year-old claimed his 38-year-old brother and 72-year-old father were 'trapped' in 'The Firm'.

All three of them were said to have talked after the interview but they were believed to have been 'unproductive'.

The Duchess of Sussex, who also levelled claims against the Royal Family in the chat, did not travel with Harry after doctors advised against it due to her pregnancy.

Instead the 39-year-old watched the ceremony on TV and sent a hand-written note to leave with a wreath at the funeral.

Harry and William were seen talking after the Duke of Edinburgh's funeral at St George's Chapel on Saturday.

They were separated by The Queen and Prince Philip's eldest grandson, Peter Philips, during the funeral procession.

But in a sign of a possible reconciliation the brothers were seen speaking as they left the chapel and walked towards Windsor Castle.

Harry was initially seen speaking to his sister-in-law Kate but she appeared to hang back so he could talk to William for a few moments without her.

The chat came after an impromptu decision by some of the Royal Family to walk back to the castle.

This was despite state cars having been put on for them - and it gave the cameras a chance to see them talk.

Prince William (left) and Prince Harry (right) walk either side of Peter Phillips and behind Prince Andrew at Windsor Saturday

Prince William and Kate Middleton (left) sit on the opposite side of St George's Chapel to Prince Harry (right) who sat alone

Meanwhile sources told The Mail on Sunday Harry experienced 'a great deal of frostiness' from many of his relatives since arriving in Britain.

Princess Anne, Prince Edward and his wife Sophie failed to acknowledge him before or during the service, it was claimed.

One source said: 'Ironically the only one who has expressed any sympathy towards him is Prince Andrew.

'He knows from Sarah Ferguson  and now first-hand  how it feels to be the outsider, which Harry very much is.

'As far as the others are concerned, there is a deep sense of protection towards the Queen and resentment towards Harry. There is little sympathy for him after what he and Meghan said on Oprah.'

The Sussexes accused the Royals of institutional racism during the bombshell 90-minute interview.

They claimed one member of the family  not the Queen or Prince Philip  questioned what colour their son Archie's skin would be.

'They are still very upset,' the source added. 'They are putting on a united front for the Queen. They all think he has behaved appallingly.'

The Duchess of Sussex did not fly with Harry to the UK after doctors advised her not to travel due to her pregnancy. Pictured: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during their bombshell interview with Oprah

The siblings maintained stony expressions as they walked behind their grandfather's cortege.

The Duke of Cambridge strode ahead of his brother as they entered the 15th Century chapel and inside the atmosphere remained frosty.

William sat with Kate directly opposite Harry but did not appear to make eye contact, instead preferring to focus his gaze towards his grandfather's coffin.

But it was reported last week William had spoken briefly with his brother on the phone - although the source said communication had been 'more texts than calls'.

Harry has spoken to his cousin Princess Eugenie who remains a steadfast friend.

'He is thought to have seen Eugenie, most likely outside since she's being strict with her new baby,' said the insider.

According to one report, William requested that Peter Phillips stand between him and Harry during the funeral cortege.

Asked about the claim, a friend of Harry said: 'He's just doing what he's told and getting on with it.'

The last time the brothers were seen together in public was on March 9 last year when they attended a Commonwealth service at Westminster Abbey.

Aides were reported to have 'been walking on eggshells' all week as the funeral plans were tweaked, but there was relief the brothers spoke and did so publicly.

The princes talked while walking out of St George's Chapel following the service, in a sight which triggered hopes among royal fans of a reconciliation.

As the Royals filed out of the chapel, Prince William spoke to the Right Reverend David Conner, the Dean of Windsor, while Harry chatted with Kate behind them.

William was initially ahead of his wife and brother but turned back towards them to speak to Kate while Harry exchanged pleasantries with the Dean.

Harry then caught up with his brother and sister-in-law and they walked together for a while as William removed his face mask.

Then, Kate stepped away to speak to the Countess of Wessex and her daughter Lady Louise  leaving the brothers alone.

Harry's friend Tom Bradby, who was presenting ITV's coverage of the funeral on Saturday, said: 'Funerals are a time of reconciliation and that a sight, let's be honest, that's many wanted to see. Not least the family itself.'

The Queen wiped away tears and was forced to mourn alone away from her family as she said an emotional final goodbye to her 'strength and stay' after 73 years.

Her Majesty looked grief-stricken and bowed her head in reverence as she accompanied her beloved husband's coffin on its final journey.

Their eldest son Prince Charles cried as he walked behind the casket into church followed by other devastated royals.

The Duke of Edinburgh's coffin was covered in his personal standard and carried his sword, naval cap and a wreath of flowers with a handwritten note from his wife.

Pallbearers placed him on to his self-designed green Land Rover Defender hearse in the castle's quadrangle packed with hundreds of armed personnel.

The Queen kept her husband poignantly close during the service by carrying special mementoes from their life together inside her handbag.

According to a Royal insider, the Queen was planning to include one of Philip's trademark white handkerchiefs, made by his Savile Row tailors Kent & Haste.

The crisply folded squares, inserted into the breast pocket of a sharply cut suit, were an enduring feature of the Duke's classic sartorial style.

In honour of their long marriage, she is also said to have carried a small photograph of the two of them together, thought to have been taken in Malta.

The island was a deeply special place for both the Queen and Philip.

As newlyweds they lived in Villa Guardamangia, on the outskirts of the capital Valletta, between 1949 and 1951, while the Prince was stationed there as a naval officer with HMS Magpie.

The Queen later said it was one of the best periods of her life as it was the only time she was able to live 'normally'.

The couple returned often, including to celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary in 2007.

The grief-stricken monarch left a personal, handwritten message to Philip placed alongside a wreath of white lilies, small white roses and white freesia chosen by her.

Massed military bands stood still as the Duke of Edinburgh's coffin past by in a Land Rover that he had built himself

Photos show only a glimpse of the note, which appears to be written on official card from Buckingham Palace. It has not been confirmed what it said.

After the eight-minute procession and the 50 minute service, Prince Philip's coffin was lowered into the Royal Vault.

A lament was played by a lone piper of the Royal Regiment of Scotland and the Last Post was then sounded by buglers of Philip's beloved Royal Marines.

They then also played Action Stations at the specific request of The Duke of Edinburgh.

Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, pronounced the Blessing before the 30 royal mourners silently filed out of the church into cars to take them the short journey back to castle.

Harry and William decided to walk back with Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, and were seen smiling speaking animatedly as they were reunited for the first time in a year where their relationship became fractured.

The emotional Queen had arrived at the funeral as the national anthem played and the royal Bentley stopped next to her beloved husband's coffin.

She poignantly paused for a moment of reflection as cannons fired and bells tolled in remembrance of the duke, wiping tears from her eyes.

Her Majesty was then driven to St George's Chapel with her lady in waiting Susan Hussey, before being sat alone at the front of the church.

She stood and bowed her head during the national minute's silence.

She looked at the coffin throughout the poignant service, where the majority of her children and grandchildren were on the verge of tears.

The Duke of Edinburgh's coffin on the back of the Land Rover with royal family members walking behind

Following behind the coffin was the royal procession, led by Philip's children Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward.

The grandchildren, including William and Harry, followed but the brothers were separated by their cousin Peter Phillips, viewed as a 'peacemaker' between the two.

The Duke of Cambridge entered the chapel one place ahead of his younger brother as mourners filed into the historic gothic chapel without speaking.

But they later chatted as they walked back to the castle, with Kate taking a step back to let them spend time alone.

The Queen had decided that no royals should wear military uniform after Prince Andrew demanded to dress as an Admiral and Prince Harry was stripped of his titles.

But they were allowed to wear their medals. Andrew was seen driving away in a casual suit and aviator sunglasses around an hour after the funeral ended.

The Queen wore Queen Mary's Richmond Brooch, while Camilla wore the Rifles Brooch.

The Duchess of Cornwall wore the brooch in July 2020 when Philip's role as Colonel-in-Chief of the infantry regiment The Rifles was formally handed over to her.

Kate wore a necklace and earrings borrowed from the Queen.

After the funeral ended at 3.49pm, the Queen led the Royal Family from the chapel, followed by the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall.

She had a brief conversation with the Dean of Windsor outside the chapel before being driven away.

Other members of the royal family walked away from the chapel in small groups, chatting as they walked through the sunlit grounds, including William and Harry.

Many of the royals only stayed at the castle for a short period before heading home.

RICHARD KAY: A funeral masterstroke by Charles that may just reunite his warring sons

On a day of meticulous planning, it was the one and only off-the-cuff decision. And it turned out to be a masterstroke.

As the limousines drew up to take mourners from the Galilee porch of St George's Chapel back to Windsor Castle's private quarters, Prince Charles used the briefest of gestures to send them, empty of their royal passengers, away.

Impromptu perhaps, common sense even, but it was a signal every bit as eloquent as the spine-tingling music that accompanied the coffin containing the earthly remains of his 'dear papa' to its resting place in the royal vault.

For instead of hiding behind the bulletproof glass of their chauffeur-driven cars, the family walked side by side together, ripped off their face masks and talked.

This could have been a moment of risk, instead it allowed us the first glimpse of the possibility that somehow William and Harry can put their bitter split behind them and rebuild that once whisper-close bond.

Sad return: Charles takes out his handkerchief as he follows Andrew

Chat: Kate Middleton, Prince Harry and Prince William talk as they walk away from the service

It is hard to read too much into this encounter, for it was all too brief, but if there is to be reconciliation between the brothers, this was surely the moment of its inception.

More than a year has passed since they were last seen in public together, a year in which so many assumptions about their relationship have been torn asunder.

The fall-out from Harry and Meghan's Oprah Winfrey interview is still raw and its issues, not least the claims that a member of the Royal Family had made racist comments about the colour of their son Archie's skin, remain unresolved.

That it should be Kate playing the role of peacemaker was significant too.

Her sister-in-law had discourteously referred to Kate's pre-marriage 'Waity Katie' nickname during the interview and claimed that it was the Duchess of Cambridge who had made her cry over the bridesmaids dresses for her wedding  a claim that was met with deafening silence.

For Charles, who needs both his sons now as never before, this was the first sign of his new role as head of the family.

In the past week his life has changed utterly and he now must, above all, ensure that his own difficult and often misunderstood relationship with his father is not repeated with his sons.

Was this what was going through his mind as he led the sombre line of mourners out of the chapel into the sunshine?

Unscripted: The royals walk after Charles sends his car away after the service

By sending his car away he was laying down his first act as the Royal Family's new paterfamilias. The others had to follow and did.

What it demonstrated was that, for all the military precision and formality of the funeral behind which bereavement could seek refuge, there was a willingness to show that the Windsors were as bereft as any family losing a loved one.

Clambering into cars to travel silently back to the castle might have preserved royal dignity, but going by foot allowed us to see them in all their vulnerability.

Crucially it also provided a chance to build bridges between William and Harry and it was Kate who seized the opportunity.

As they emerged into the castle precincts she was already chatting animatedly with Harry. With no cars to collect them there was no alternative but to walk.

Soon William, who had exchanged pleasantries with the Dean of Windsor, the Right Reverend David Conner, had joined them.

And just as she had arrived at Harry's side, Kate then melted away.

Service over: Kate Middleton, Prince Harry, Prince William thank the Dean of Windsor

By now both brothers had removed their Covid masks and there was just a flicker that the frost between them might be thawing as they began the walk up Chapel Hill.

'Make no mistake, this was as much for the benefit of the cameras as anything substantial', says a royal figure. 'Don't read too much into it. Baby steps maybe.'

All the same the fact that they were talking at all seemed anything but likely when they had emerged from the castle an hour or so earlier.

The distance between them then looked unbridgeable with the impassive Peter Phillips, their former rugby-playing cousin, sturdily between them.

This could have been a moment of risk, instead it allowed us the first glimpse of the possibility that somehow William and Harry can put their bitter split behind them and rebuild that once whisper-close bond.

Prince William was as inscrutable as on that September day almost 24 years ago when he walked behind his mother's coffin. He looked neither left nor right, keeping his gaze steadily ahead.

For his part Harry seemed to be taking in the pageantry of the occasion, perhaps in the knowledge that it no longer plays any part in his life now he has stepped back from royal duties.

At the steps to the chapel's west door the cortege paused for the national minute's silence and Peter appeared to pull back as if to allow the brothers a chance to move together.

They did not and William proceeded to his seat along with Peter while Harry walked to his with their other cousin David (the Earl of) Snowdon.

Once inside the chapel they sat apart too. William and Kate on one side of the quire, Harry facing them directly opposite, but alone. If they did make eye contact, the television cameras did not record it.

If there had been hope that their grandfather's death and funeral might mean some kind of royal reconciliation, the hopes at that moment looked to have been dashed.

Since his return to Britain a week ago, Harry had been isolating at Frogmore Cottage, the house given to him and Meghan as a wedding present by the Queen.

But his presence had brought about one change to Saturday's proceedings: the royals' decision not to wear military uniform.

This was to spare Harry, who was no longer entitled to ceremonial dress since being obliged to give up all his military patronages.

There were reports that the brothers had exchanged texts but nothing more.

After the service as they walked back to the castle the two continued to talk and this time Kate was with them.

Making peace? Prince William and Prince Harry still in conversation after the service

For a moment it was just like turning back the clock to the years before Meghan came into his life when Harry shared everything  on and off duty  with William and Kate. But with no formal wake because of social distancing the funeral party broke up quickly.

'Everyone stood around in the quadrangle chatting for a little while and then left,' says one insider.

It is understood that Prince Edward and his family did stay for tea with the Queen.

For Prince Charles, his is a future of dizzying and perplexing family problems, not eased by his father's passing but deepened by it.

He must be a rock for the Queen who will depend on him more than ever, but also find the will to restore the unity of the Royal Family by bringing his sons together.

Talk of a family summit and even of Charles taking his son for a walk round Windsor to look at the flowers left in tribute to Prince Philip  just as he did after Diana's death all those years ago  are, I am told, wide of the mark.

Although Harry is understood to have an open return air ticket  meaning he could travel at any time  he is anxious to return to America to be with Meghan, who is thought to be seven months pregnant with their second child.

It is inevitable that Charles will look to William to take the lead in this.

The one hope is a date in the calendar both princes have  the unveiling of the statue of their mother on what would have been her 60th birthday on July 1.

It does not involve their father but it can surely only happen if the brothers are properly talking.

This week Charles has been concentrating on the wider family, speaking to them all and sharing memories of his father.

He has asked them all to pull together to help the Queen. Many watching on were shocked by the Queen's apparent frailty at the funeral but the prince knows that his mother will not slacken her pace.

Life for her revolves around Windsor Castle. All being well, next year will mark her platinum jubilee, 70 years on the throne, and it is already being planned.

For Charles, as sad as his father's passing undoubtedly has been, the priority now is the reintegration of Harry into royal life.

There was palpable tension at Windsor on Saturday.

Some reports yesterday said that neither his aunt Princess Anne nor his uncle Prince Edward acknowledged Harry before or during the service.

If there is to be a dividend from the sadness of Philip's death, Charles will fervently hope that it will come thanks to his decision to send away the cars and force his sons to start to bury their differences. An awful lot depends on it.
MONTERREY, Mexico, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Metalsa, S.A. de C.V. (" Metalsa " or the " Company ") announced today that it has commenced a cash tender offer (the " Tender Offer ") for any and all of the outstanding U.S.$300,000,000 aggregate principal amount of its 4.900% Senior Notes due 2023 (the " Notes ").

In conjunction with the Tender Offer, Metalsa is also soliciting consents (the " Consent Solicitation ") from the holders of the Notes for the adoption of proposed amendments (the " Proposed Amendments "), which would, among other things, (i) eliminate substantially all of the restrictive covenants, as well as various events of default and related provisions contained in the indenture governing the Notes (the " Indenture "), (ii) reduce the minimum required notice period for the redemption of Notes from 30 days to three business days prior to the date fixed for redemption (maintaining the maximum notice period of 60 days) and (iii) amend the covenant in the Indenture with respect to consolidation, merger, sale or conveyance to allow the Company to effect a corporate reorganization, as described in the Offer to Purchase (as defined below).

The Tender Offer and the Consent Solicitation are being made pursuant to an Offer to Purchase and Consent Solicitation Statement, dated April 19, 2021 (as amended or supplemented from time to time, the " Offer to Purchase ").

Holders who tender Notes must also consent to the Proposed Amendments to the Indenture. Holders of Notes may not deliver consents to the Proposed Amendments without validly tendering the Notes in the Tender Offer and may not revoke their consents without withdrawing the previously tendered Notes to which they relate. The Proposed Amendments will be set forth in a supplemental indenture (the " Supplemental Indenture ") relating to the Notes and are described in more detail in the Offer to Purchase. Adoption of the Proposed Amendments requires the delivery of consents by holders of Notes of a majority of the aggregate outstanding principal amount of Notes (not including any Notes which are owned by the Company or any of its affiliates).

Certain information regarding the Notes and the terms of the Tender Offer and the Consent Solicitation is summarized in the table below.

Description of

Notes CUSIP/ISIN Outstanding

Principal Amount

of Notes Tender Offer

Consideration(1) + Early

Tender

Payment(1) = Total

Consideration(1)(2) 4.900% Senior Notes due 2023 59132V AA6 and P6638M AA9/ US59132VAA61 and USP6638MAA91 U.S.$300,000,000 U.S.$1,035.00

U.S.$30.00

U.S.$1,065.00

______________________ (1) Per U.S.$1,000 principal amount of Notes validly tendered (and not withdrawn) (2) Inclusive of Early Tender Payment (as defined below)

The deadline for holders to validly tender Notes and deliver consents and be eligible to receive payment of the Total Consideration (as defined below), which includes the Early Tender Payment, will be 5:00 p.m. (New York City time), on April 30, 2021, unless extended or earlier terminated by the Company (such date and time, as the same may be modified, the " Early Tender Payment Deadline "). The Tender Offer will expire at 11:59 p.m. (New York City time), on May 14, 2021, unless extended or earlier terminated by the Company (such date and time, as the same may be modified, the " Expiration Time "). Notes tendered may be withdrawn and consents for the Proposed Amendments delivered may be revoked at any time prior to 5:00 p.m. (New York City time) on April 30, 2021 (the " Withdrawal Deadline "), but not thereafter, unless required by applicable law.

The total consideration payable to holders for each U.S.$1,000 principal amount of Notes validly tendered and purchased pursuant to the Tender Offer will be U.S.$1,065.00 (the " Total Consideration "). The Total Consideration includes an early tender payment of U.S.$30.00 per U.S.$1,000 principal amount of Notes (the " Early Tender Payment ") payable only to holders who validly tender (and do not withdraw) their Notes at or prior to the Early Tender Payment Deadline. Holders who validly tender (and do not withdraw) their Notes after the Early Tender Payment Deadline but at or prior to the Expiration Time will be eligible to receive U.S.$1,035.00 per U.S.$1,000 principal amount of Notes (the " Tender Offer Consideration "), which amount will be equal to the Total Consideration less the Early Tender Payment. In addition, the Company will pay accrued and unpaid interest on the principal amount of Notes accepted for purchase from the most recent interest payment date on the Notes to, but not including, the applicable settlement date for the Notes accepted for purchase (" Accrued Interest "). Payment in cash of an amount equal to the Total Consideration, plus Accrued Interest, and additional amounts thereon, for such accepted Notes will be made on the early settlement date, which is expected to be within two business days after the Early Tender Payment Deadline (the " Early Settlement Date "), or as promptly as practicable thereafter.

The Company's obligation to accept for purchase, and to pay for, Notes validly tendered and not validly withdrawn pursuant to the Tender Offer is conditioned upon the satisfaction or, when applicable, waiver of certain conditions, which are more fully described in the Offer to Purchase, including, among others, the receipt of consents by the Company in respect of at least a majority of the aggregate outstanding principal amount of the Notes, the execution of the Supplemental Indenture and the consummation of an offering by the Company (the " New Notes Offering ") of new senior notes (the " New Notes ") at or prior to the Early Settlement Date on terms satisfactory to the Company. The New Notes Offering will be exempt from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the " Securities Act "), and therefore will only be offered and sold to "qualified institutional buyers" (QIBs) in accordance with Rule 144A under the Securities Act and outside the United States to non-U.S. persons in reliance on Regulation S under the Securities Act. The New Notes Offering is not conditioned on the successful consummation of the Tender Offer.

Tendering holders of Notes who wish to tender their Notes and subscribe for New Notes in the New Notes Offering should quote an allocation identifier code (" Allocation Identifier Code ") through ATOP. An Allocation Identifier Code can be obtained by contacting the dealer managers identified below and is only relevant (but is not required) if a tendering holder wishes to subscribe for New Notes. An Allocation Identifier Code is not required for a holder to tender its Notes and will not be taken into account in the acceptance of Notes in the Tender Offer. The Allocation Identifier Code is only being provided to facilitate identification of tendering holders of Notes that may be interested in subscribing for New Notes and should not be considered consideration or an entitlement of any nature.

The Company intends to use the net proceeds from the New Notes Offering to pay the consideration payable pursuant to the Tender Offer and the Consent Solicitation and the related fees and expenses. To the extent the net proceeds from the New Notes Offering are not sufficient, Metalsa expects to use available cash on hand and/or borrowings under available lines of credit. Following payment for the Notes accepted pursuant to the terms of the Tender Offer, Metalsa may, but is not obligated to, redeem all or a portion of the Notes that remain outstanding in accordance with the terms of the Indenture. Neither the Offer to Purchase nor this press release constitutes a notice of redemption or an obligation to issue a notice of redemption.

In no event will the information contained in the Offer to Purchase or this press release regarding the New Notes Offering constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any New Notes.

Subject to applicable law, the Company reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to (i) extend, terminate or withdraw the Tender Offer and the Consent Solicitation at any time or (ii) otherwise amend the Tender Offer and/or the Consent Solicitation in any respect at any time and from time to time. The Company further reserves the right, in its sole discretion, not to accept any tenders of Notes with respect to the Notes.

BofA Securities, Inc. and Citigroup Global Markets Inc. are acting as dealer managers for the Tender Offer and as solicitation agents for the Consent Solicitation and can be contacted at their respective telephone numbers set forth on the back cover page of Offer to Purchase with questions regarding the Tender Offer and the Consent Solicitation.

Copies of the Offer to Purchase are available to holders of Notes from Global Bondholder Services Corporation, the information agent and the tender agent for the Tender Offer and the Consent Solicitation. To contact the information agent and tender agent, banks and brokers may call (212) 430-3774, and others may call U.S. toll-free: (866) 470-3700 or email [email protected]. Additional contact information is set forth below.

By Mail, Hand or Overnight Courier:



65 Broadway, Suite 404



New York, NY 10006



USA



Attention: Corporate Actions By Facsimile Transmission:



(for eligible institutions only)



+1 (212) 430-3775/3779



Confirmation by Telephone



+1 (212) 430-3774

Neither the Offer to Purchase nor any related documents have been filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, nor have any such documents been filed with or reviewed by any federal or state securities commission or regulatory authority of any country. No authority has passed upon the accuracy or adequacy of the Offer to Purchase or any related documents, and it is unlawful and may be a criminal offense to make any representation to the contrary.

The Tender Offer and the Consent Solicitation are being made solely on the terms and conditions set forth in the Offer to Purchase. Under no circumstances shall this press release constitute an offer to buy or the solicitation of an offer to sell the Notes or any other securities of the Company or any of its subsidiaries. The Tender Offer and the Consent Solicitation are not being made to, nor will the Company accept tenders of Notes or deliveries of consents from, holders in any jurisdiction in which the Tender Offer and the Consent Solicitation or the acceptance thereof would not be in compliance with the securities of blue sky laws of such jurisdiction. This press release also is not a solicitation of consents to the Proposed Amendments to the Indenture. No recommendation is made as to whether holders should tender their Notes or deliver their consents with respect to the Notes. Holders should carefully read the Offer to Purchase because it contains important information, including the terms and conditions of the Tender Offer and the Consent Solicitation.

About Metalsa

Metalsa is a sociedad anonima de capital variable (a variable capital corporation) organized under the laws of the United Mexican States involved in the production of structural components for automotive light vehicle and commercial vehicles, with more than 60 years of experience. Currently, Metalsa supplies the global market with manufacturing plants, offices and technology centers worldwide in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, India, Japan, Mexico, Thailand, and the United States. It also offers Just in Time services in sequencing centers located in strategic areas close to its customers. With this international presence, Metalsa can effectively fulfill and carry out locally the global customer strategies. The Company's main office is located in "Pabellon M" at Benito Juarez Street, Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, 64000. For additional information, visit http://www.metalsa.com/. The information on the Company's website is not a part of, and is not incorporated by reference into, the Offer to Purchase or this press release.

Important Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains statements that constitute estimates and forward-looking statements. These statements appear in a number of places in this press release and include statements regarding the Company's intent, belief or current expectations, and those of the Company's officers, with respect to (among other things) the Company's financial condition.

The Company's estimates and forward-looking statements are based mainly on current expectations and estimates of future events and trends, which affect, or may affect, the Company's business and results of operations. Although the Company believes that these estimates and forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, they are subject to several risks and uncertainties and are based on information currently available to the Company.

The words "believe," "may," "may have," "would," "estimate," "continues," "anticipates," "intends," "hopes," and similar words are intended to identify estimates and forward-looking statements. Estimates and forward-looking statements refer only to the date when they were made, and neither Metalsa, the dealer managers and solicitation agents, the information agent and tender agent or any affiliate of any of them undertakes any obligation to update or review any estimate or forward-looking statement due to new information, future events or any other factors. Estimates and forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties and do not guarantee future performance, as actual results or developments may be substantially different from the expectations described in the forward-looking statements. In light of the risks and uncertainties described above, the events referred to in the estimates and forward-looking statements included in this press release may or may not occur, and the Company's business performance and results of operation may differ materially from those expressed in its estimates and forward-looking statements, due to factors that include but are not limited to those mentioned above. The Company cautions you not to place undue reliance on any estimates or forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made.

DISCLAIMER

This press release must be read in conjunction with the Offer to Purchase. This announcement and the Offer to Purchase contain important information which must be read carefully before any decision is made with respect to the Tender Offer and the Consent Solicitation. If any holder of Notes is in any doubt as to the action it should take, it is recommended to seek its own legal, tax, accounting and financial advice, including as to any tax consequences, immediately from its stockbroker, bank manager, attorney, accountant or other independent financial or legal adviser. Any individual or company whose Notes are held on its behalf by a broker, dealer, bank, custodian, trust company or other nominee or intermediary must contact such entity if it wishes to participate in the Tender Offer and the Consent Solicitation. None of Metalsa, the dealer managers and solicitation agents, the information agent and tender agent and any person who controls, or is a director, officer, employee or agent of such persons, or any affiliate of such persons, makes any recommendation as to whether holders of Notes should participate in the Tender Offer and Consent Solicitation.

SOURCE Metalsa, S.A. de C.V.

Related Links

https://www.metalsa.com


Nearly 25 years after opening, The Healthy Grocer in Hampden Township announced today the store is closing on May 1.

The grocery at 3800 Trindle Road was one of the first in the Harrisburg area to offer healthy, natural and organic foods, supplements and cleaning supplies well before supermarkets stocked the items.

The Healthy Grocer was founded by Jeff Wolfson in 1996. Wolfson sold the business in 2016 to William Roche, who had previously worked in the food and manufacturing industry.

Twenty four years later the marketplace has changed, Roche wrote in a post on the stores website and Facebook page.

Over the years, Roche said the store grew from a small footprint to more than 6,000 square feet and supported dozens of local farmers as well as local small businesses and artisans. A deli operated inside the store with a juice bar, to-go offerings and hot meals.

In addition, The Healthy Grocer offered free workshops and distributed free resources including articles and magazines.

Customers are already saying their final farewells at the store where a 30% off sale is underway.

We have been incredibly busy the last few hours, said Susan Kiskis, general manager. We have been stopped by customers in the aisles who they are sad to see the Healthy Grocer closing. This is a community institution for them.

In the post, Roche hinted at a transition to an online marketplace, which Kiskis confirmed will launch this summer with organic and all-natural shelf-stable items and supplements.

Unfortunately, with the economy the way it is with COVID, it doesnt make sense. The bricks and mortar, independent stores are not in good position right now, she said.
In Nagorno Karabakh, life is returning to normal after the 44-day war between September and November last year that killed 5,000 and created thousands of displaced people and refugees.

But some things are still far from what they used to be in the self-declared Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), a territory mostly home to ethnic Armenians that the Soviets allocated to Azerbaijan in 1921. It is recognised as Azerbaijani by the international community.

Soldiers stranded in abandoned military positions, schools housing orphans and the children of refugees, villagers in need of aid and the evident scars of a war that has brought 2,000 Russian peacekeepers to monitor the ceasefire agreed in the middle of the night on 10 November are now part of the landscape in this troubled region.

Armenian soldiers Erik and Vahan pay tribute to a comrade before his grave at the Military Heroes Cemetery in Yerevan, Armenia (EPA)

The face of a soldier who died aged 20 during the Karabakh war is engraved in a tombstone at the cemetery (EPA)

Relatives lay flowers at the cemetery in Yerevan every day where hundreds come at sunset for ceremonies that last for a few hours to pay tribute to the fallen in the war (EPA)

A group of relatives and friends of a killed soldier pray and listen to the words of a priest. People attending cemetery ceremonies leave flowers and hold red candles. Red is an important colour for Armenians, it is used to remember the genocide of 1915 (EPA)

Months after the end of the war Nagorno-Karabakh is no longer in the headlines but a visit to the military cemeteries in Yerevan, the Armenian capital, where entire families mourn their dead, wandering among recently filled graves, is enough to learn about the impact of the conflict that ravaged the area.

Vahan and Erik, two young soldiers in uniform, pay tribute to their fallen comrade Parkev Kasparian, 19. Facing the tomb, they tell the story of how he died during a tank battle in Mardakert, tearfully asking him for forgiveness. Nearby, sitting on a grave, Katia, cries for a 20-year-old friend who was killed in Djibrail on the southern front. His portrait is engraved on the headstone.

Two months after the end of hostilities, empty graves are still open, waiting to receive the bodies still coming from the front.

Soldier Hamlet (R) and a comrade next to a trench near the eastern city of Martuni (EPA)

Armenian soldiers wait at a military control point in a north-eastern city, Martakert, in the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. Morale is low and in some of the military positions the traditional hard discipline has now relaxed (EPA)

Passengers sit in a bus at a bus station in Stepanakert, de facto capital of Nagorno Karabakh. The conflict pushed some 70,000 people out of the territory into Armenia during the conflict (EPA)

A stray dog with a cattle leg at a soldiers front position near Martuni. The soldiers only leave their positions to refill water tanks and get food from villagers (EPA)

Abandoned Army

Much of the Karabakh army has all but abandoned the area. Until recently, journalists could not access these positions, but now the officers have left. Near Martuni, an eastern city of Nagorno-Karabakh, Hamlet and his soldier comrades are delighted to have guests as they wait for word on when they will finally be relieved. Their superiors do not tell them anything, they say. Their only visitors are stray dogs and the boy from the next farm along. In the ditches which serve as their trenches, Hamlet says that many comrades fell under the drones shelling. The Armenians had not anticipated that kind of weapon and technology. The ruins of the surrounding buildings are a testament to his words.

Hratchik Avakian, a retired grocer, stands in his house in Martuni destroyed by shelling on 27 September (EPA)

Children play in Martuni in the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. The Monte Melkonian school has already repaired its roof and director Narine Kevorkian has been welcoming its students (EPA)

People light candles during a Sunday Mass at the Gandzasar monastery in Martakert province. Nagorno-Karabakh has dozens of monasteries and churches built in the 10th century. Some of the temples are now under control of Azerbaijani authorities (EPA)

Teenagers sit near the We are our Mountains monument (Dadik u Papik in Armenian) in Stepanakert, capital of Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. The agreement negotiated by Russia has yet to show how the normalisation of relations between Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia and Azerbaijan would be possible and most people are frightened of a resumption of the conflict (EPA)

Rebuilding

People who have lived through war know well that you cannot rebuild a house with tears. In Martuni, one of the most affected towns by the shelling, men are busy at work, erasing the wounds of war. A two-storey house on the corner of a residential street belongs to Hratchik Avakian, a retired grocer. His home was one of 800 others that were destroyed in shelling on 27 September. It will be rebuilt, like the others, he insists.

Across town at the Monte Melkonian school, which has already repaired its roof, director Narine Kevorkian has been welcoming students for a few days.

She takes special care of those who have lost a father or a brother as well as their house, which is now on the other side of the separation line. Thirty children are refugees from territory that was lost and 20 of them are orphans or have lost relatives.

An elderly woman asks a soldier to escort her to her house in Shurnukh, Syunik province, Armenia. A road splits Shurnukh in two parts, one on the Armenian side and another one in Nagorno-Karabakh. With the Azerbaijani control of Nagorno-Karabakh the villagers need a permit from the Russian peacekeepers and escort of local militaries to move across the village (EPA)

A girl and her mother spin a ball of wool in a house in Martuni. Both are refugees from Hadrut, Khojavend District of Azerbaijan and like many other families found a shelter in the city (EPA)

A long queue of exhausted refugees forms outside the Red Cross Aid Distribution Centre in Stepanakert. They had tried to find refuge in neighbouring Armenia but now they are coming back home after the Yerevan government promised to help pay for their return.

According to Hayk Khanumyan, of the Social Affairs Ministry, 10,000 families lost their homes and fled the combat zones.

In Karabakh political tensions are on the rise. Some want answers, and there are voices demanding that those responsible for the bloodshed be punished and a complete change of the failing leadership.

Despite the resentment, people are mostly frightened of a resumption of the conflict.

EPA
Whats different now is there really is an opportunity  a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity  to address this backlog and have Congress address the funding thats needed, said Diane Yentel, the president and chief executive of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. This may be the moment, at long last.

When Mr. Biden outlined his proposal last month, he called for more than $40 billion to improve public housing infrastructure. At an event in New York on Sunday, a group of lawmakers from the state, including Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, pushed for at least double that figure.

Public housing has been neglected, left to get worse, and were not going to stand for it anymore, Mr. Schumer said. The presidents plan, he added, was a good start, but it aint enough.

Mr. Sanders, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and their allies envision their proposal costing $119 billion to $172 billion over 10 years to meet the needs of the country, according to an estimate from the Climate + Community Project provided to The New York Times. It aims to create thousands of maintenance and construction jobs.

While some lawmakers have floated the prospect of splitting apart Mr. Bidens plan and moving a scaled-back version first in an effort to win the 10 Republican votes needed to overcome the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate, the progressives are pushing for one huge bill that goes even further.

Probably our best bet would be one bill  and it should be a large bill, Mr. Sanders said in an interview. I think its just easier and more efficient for us to work as hard as we can in a comprehensive broad infrastructure plan, which includes human infrastructure as well as physical infrastructure.

Republicans, who have sought to portray the Green New Deal as federal overreach that would harm the economy, have already seized on the climate and housing provisions in Mr. Bidens plan as far beyond the traditional definition of infrastructure. Mr. Biden is also preparing a second proposal that would focus even more on projects outside what Republicans call real infrastructure and could bring the total cost to $4 trillion.
TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / April 19, 2021 / StageZero Life Sciences (TSX:SZLS), a company dedicated to early detection of multiple disease states through whole blood, today announced that it will be presenting at the Planet MicroCap Showcase: VIRTUAL on Thursday April 22 at 8:30 AM EST. James Howard-Tripp, Chairman and CEO of StageZero will be hosting the presentation and answering questions from investors.

To access the live presentation, please use the following information:

Planet MicroCap Showcase: VIRTUAL 2021

Date: Thursday, April 22, 2021

Time: 8:30AM Eastern Time (5:30 AM Pacific Time)

Webcast: https://www.webcaster4.com/Webcast/Page/2059/40838

If you would like to book 1on1 investor meetings with StageZero, and to watch StageZero's presentation, please make sure you are registered for the virtual event here: https://planetmicrocapshowcase.com/signup

1on1 meetings will be scheduled and conducted via private, secure video conference through the conference event platform.

The Planet MicroCap Showcase: VIRTUAL website is available here: https://planetmicrocapshowcase.com/

If you can't make the live presentation, all company presentations "webcasts" will be available directly on the conference event platform on this link under the tab "Agenda": https://planetmicrocapshowcase.com/agenda

News Compliments of Accesswire

About StageZero Life Sciences

StageZero Life Sciences is dedicated to the early detection of multiple disease states through whole blood. The Company operates a CAP accredited and CLIA certified high complexity reference laboratory based in Richmond, Virginia. A specialist in PCR testing for the early identification of Cancer through blood, the Company is uniquely positioned to provide both COVID PCR testing (swab and saliva) and blood test analysis (Antibody testing). Our full service, telehealth platform includes access to physicians and phlebotomist who can prescribe and draw samples for individuals and groups. As we provide COVID-19 test during this Pandemic, we continue making progress with our mission to eradicate late stage cancers through early detection. Our next generation test, Aristotle, is a multi-cancer panel for simultaneously screening for 10 cancers from a single sample of blood with high sensitivity and specificity for each cancer. www.stagezerolifesciences.com

About SNN.Network

SNN.Network is your multimedia financial news platform for discovery, transparency and due diligence. This is your one-stop hub to find new investment ideas, check in on watchlist, gather the most up-to-date information on the Small-, Micro-, Nano-Cap market with the goal to help you towards achieving your wealth generation goals. Follow the companies YOU want to know more about; read and watch content from YOUR favorite finance and investing influencers; create YOUR own watchlist and screen for ideas YOU'RE interested in; find out about investor conferences YOU want to attend - all here on SNN.Network.

If you would like to attend the Planet MicroCap Showcase, please register here: https://planetmicrocapshowcase.com/signup

Contact:

Name: Rebecca Greco

Phone: 1-855-420-7140 ext. 1838

Email: rgreco@stagezerols.com

SOURCE: StageZero Life Sciences via SNN Network

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/641059/StageZero-Life-Sciences-to-Present-at-the-Planet-MicroCap-Showcase-VIRTUAL-on-Thursday-April-22-2021
LOS ANGELES, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- California Congressional candidate Joe Collins spoke out again this week after his opponent, Rep. Maxine Waters, seemingly incited violence against police officers during an anti-cop protest in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota.

Joe Collins speaks out after Maxine Waters tells protesters to get more confrontational

In response to Waters' statements, Collins declared, "Maxine should be ashamed of herself. Inciting violence in an already emotionally torn city. This is the type of leadership the United States does not need. Violence is up 33% and young black men are killing each other on our streets every day and she has been silent on those issues."

Collins continued, "She is not a victim and instead of pretending like one she should be doing her job and creating police reform legislation. This is why we have restarted our campaign for 2022. I will be a representative who actually works instead of pandering."

Maxine Waters was in Brooklyn Center following the fatal shooting of Daunte Wright by a Brooklyn Center police officer. While there, Congresswoman Waters was caught on camera telling a crowd that they should be prepared to "stay on the streets" and "get more confrontational" depending on the outcome of the trial of police officer Derek Chauvin for the death of George Floyd. This trial is taking place in nearby Minneapolis.

Joe Collins released another statement last week on the shooting of Daunte Wright where he declared, "Our leaders need to take action to remove officers with a history of complaints and infractions and also to introduce new training for their officers." Since the shooting, the offending officer has resigned and been arrested while large scale protests and looting are happening across the city.

Collins himself grew up in Waters' district in South Los Angeles. His district saw a 33% increase in murders between 2019 and 2020 and a 150% increase during the first 30 days of 2021 alone.

Joe Collins has made it a key point of his campaign to work on reducing incidents of police violence through practical solutions such as more police training and removing legislators and city officials who have failed to fix long-standing issues in urban communities. Collins believes that, given the opportunity, he can give a voice to the silent majority of people who want to see drastic improvements in both our law enforcement and communities.

In 2020, Joe Collins challenged Maxine Waters for California's 43rd Congressional District. Collins managed to receive nearly double the votes of any Republican in the history of the district and out fundraised Waters 5-to-1. Collins has already filed to run in California's 43rd Congressional district again in 2022. Collins' platform consists of ending homelessness, bringing quality jobs and housing back to the community, creating paths for families to create generational wealth, significantly improving the education system, and reducing crime through border security and police reform.

Joe E. Collins Socials

Instagram: @joeecollins3

Twitter: @joeecollins3

YouTube

Facebook

LinkedIn

www. joecollinsforcongress.com

Media Contact:

Brittani Daniels, MPP

[email protected] | 310-617-9974

SOURCE Joe Collins for Congress
A Real (Consumer) Revolution Is Starting to Take Over Education

Commentary

You can forgetor at least try to ignore for a few minutesthe riots going on in our cities, as repellent and often frightening as they may be.

A real and ultimately more significant revolution is brewing, in this case, a positive one, in education. And its manifesting from kindergarten to college.

People are fed up. Theyre trying to change and often leaving the educational system altogether.

Theyve had enough of the woke taking over our schools.

Just one recent example of this is how a letter from an angry father who is pulling his daughter out of New York Citys upscale Brearley School has gone viral. This father, Andrew Guttman, accused the all-girls private school of cowardly and appalling lack of leadership [for] appeasing an anti-intellectual, illiberal mob.

The letter, something of a tour de force, hits many nails on present-day heads, among them:

If the administration was genuinely serious about diversity, it would not insist on the indoctrination of its students, and their families, to a single mindset, most reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

The overnight popularity of this letter (read the whole thing, as they say) across the internet is a measure of how this man is speaking not just of Brearley but of what is now the majority of educational institutions, public and private, in this nation.

Families are voting with their childrens feet, you might say, taking them out of these doctrinaire institutions, an increasing number to be homeschooled. Percentages are way upaided by the pandemic, which encouraged homeschooling when traditional schools were shut.

Also contributing during the pandemic was the ability for parents to see what their children were being taught via Zoom. They didnt like it.

So what is evolving is a consumer revolution in the most crucial field to our countrys futureeducation.

This includes charter schoolsopposed by the teachers unions and many Democratswhere people who cant afford the Brearleys of the world can send their childrennot that they should want to send them to the Brearleys at this point.

Schools supposedly exist for the students and their families, to prepare the students to be educated citizens of a democratic republic and to contribute to society as members of the working world. They dont exist for the teachers, administrators, or ideologically interested politicians.

The former, anyway, are the people whose services are being purchased, either by taxes or tuition, by the consumers (the students and their families), no matter what our teachers unions seem to be saying through their militant and often stubborn actions.

Teachers are supposed to provide a service that will be of use to their students, to teach them how to think for themselves, not to indoctrinate them.

This consumer approach is beginning to percolate, consciously and unconsciously, through the educational system. It goes from the lower grades, where homeschooling (some with new forms that make it more enriching than most conventional schools) takes precedence, all the way up to college and graduate school where new methods of evaluating their usefulness are being scrutinized.

Should everyone go to college? Is it worth it? And if so, where?

The vaunted Ivy League these days has turned into the very fount of woke, with Princeton admitting a mere 30 percent white students to its new freshman class. Thats roughly half the percentage of whites who live in our country, if you count Hispanics as white, and considerably less if you dont.

Affirmative action is one thing. This is affirmative action on steroids and radically discriminatory. Somethings out of whack. Some people (those in control of elite institutions) are out of whack.

Meanwhile, beyond the Ivies and similar institutions, college is becoming less desirable with fewer people applying across the country.

Many colleges are suffering economically and are on the edge of shutting their doors. Some are even looking for (gasp!) conservative students. This offers many opportunities for the students and their families to take more control of their educationas consumersand to effectuate change.

If the consumer wants a more balanced education, whether they know it or not, he or she has the leverage to demand it. As colleges struggle for students, this will become clearer. Change will have to occur for the colleges to stay in business.

This kind of change is possible at private prep schools as well, and even at some public schools.

We all need to take this consumer power over education for the sake of our countryand almost all of us can. Almost everyone has a friend or relative going to school.

Seize the day. The movement to change education is one in which every citizen can participate. If youre looking to do something to make up for a troubling election, its a good place to start. Youll be subversive in the best way.

Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Oscar-nominated screenwriter, co-founder of PJMedia, and now editor-at-large of The Epoch Times. He was recently interviewed by Dr. Carol Swainhere.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Director-General Dr Balram Bhargava on Monday provided key details regarding the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic that has struck India, taking the total caseload to the highest ever 1,50,00,000 mark. Dr Bhargava explained the difference between the severity of the symptoms in the first and the current wave of Coronavirus, saying that symptoms in the second wave are much less compared to last year.

If you see the symptoms, the severity is very less this time. In this wave, we have witnessed more cases of breathlessness while in the previous wave, symptoms like dry cough, joint pain, headaches were more, he explained.

Refuting rumours surrounding the efficiency of the RT-PCR test in detecting various mutants of the virus, Bhargava said, RT-PCR test is a gold standard, we measure two genes or more, foreign country measure only one gene. Therefore, there is no chance of missing detection of any mutant

The ICMR chief noted that in both the waves, 70% of infected patients are above 40 years. We have national COVID-19 Registry, which has recorded data of 10,000 patients. It says that in the first wave, the average age of infected persons was 50 years, and in the second wave the average age is 49 years.

"From zero to 19 years - the difference was 5.8 per cent versus 4.2 per cent, and in 20-40 years, the difference was 25 per cent versus 23 per cent. There is a marginal difference in this. More than 70 per cent were above or equal to 40 years of age. A higher number of asymptomatic individuals got admitted this year, than a higher proportion of patients admitted with breathlessness," he said.

Dr Bhargava added that the older population remains vulnerable to be admitted to the hospital in the current wave. He also noted that a higher requirement of oxygen was found in this wave, yet there is no difference in the percentage of fatalities between the first wave and second waves based on the ICMR data.

The reason behind COVID-19 surge

Stating the reasons behind the sudden spike in positive cases, he said that people have shown a tremendous amount of laxity in following COVID-19 inappropriate behaviour and various unidentified mutation of the virus have also contributed to the surge. He said some mutated virus strains from the UK, Brazil and South Africa are of concern as they demonstrated to have higher transmissibility. We have also found a double mutant in India but the higher transmissibility of this is not established, he added.

India so far has recorded over 1,50,61,919 positive cases, out of which 1,29,53,821 have successfully recovered and 1,78,769 have died. As per the latest reports from MoHFW, in the past 24 hours 2,73,810 new cases, 1,44,178 fresh recoveries and 1,619 deaths have been reported. Currently, the total number of active cases in India is 19,29,329.
Export Finance Australia has also obtained conditional credit approval for a $45 million senior debt facility with a 10-year tenor.

APC holds 100% of Lake Wells Sulphate of Potash Project, around 500 kilometres northeast of Kalgoorlie, in Western Australia's Eastern Goldfields.

( ) has received green-loan verification for the debt issued to partly fund development at its flagship Lake Wells Sulphate of Potash Project (LSOP) in Western Australia.

The Green Loan Principles build on and refer to the Green Bond Principles and can apply to new or existing Green Projects.

Green Loan verification confirms that Lake Wells will make a positive environmental contribution to the global production of SOP, producing significantly less carbon emissions than Mannheim SOP

In a further boost for APC, Export Finance Australia has obtained conditional credit approval to provide a $45 million senior debt facility with a 10-year tenor.

Efforts recognised

Managing director and CEO Matt Shackleton said: APC is firmly committed to an environmentally sustainable development at Lake Wells, where we will produce high-grade SOP using a high renewable energy penetration rate hybrid-power solution.

Green Loan verification provides assurance to our lenders and broader stakeholder group that we will honour this commitment, adopting a governance and reporting framework in line with Green Loan principles.

It is very satisfying to have our efforts in this regard recognised, and to be able to pass on this third-party assurance to our lenders, as we move rapidly towards development of the LSOP.

Conditional credit approval

Export Finance Australia has completed initial due diligence on providing a senior debt facility to develop Lake Wells and has obtained conditional credit approval for a $45 million senior debt facility with a 10-year tenor.

The provision of any debt facility will be subject to formal documentation and the satisfaction of conditions precedent for a facility of this nature.

This debt facility is in addition to the approved $140 million 17-year tenor Northern Australian Infrastructure Facility (NAIF) tranche announced in February 2021

Commercial banks continue with due diligence on the final tranche of the debt funding facility.

Documentation of the senior debt facility, comprising the NAIF facility, the Export Finance Australia facility and the commercial bank facility, is expected to be completed in mid-2021.

The Lake Wells Sulphate of Potash Project is approximately 500 kilometress northeast of Kalgoorlie, in Western Australia's Eastern Goldfields.
OKLAHOMA CITY -- With an overall survival rate of 9% for those diagnosed, pancreatic cancer remains exceedingly difficult to treat. However, the patient's primary tumor typically isn't what leads to death - it is the cancer's ability to evade detection and metastasize to other organs.

A team of researchers at the OU College of Medicine has published a new study in the journal Gastroenterology, the world's leading publication on GI tract disease, that sheds new light on the ability of pancreatic cancer cells to spread throughout the body. Understanding why metastasis occurs is crucial for developing a therapeutic strategy to stop the spread.

The study, led by scientist Min Li, Ph.D., and physician-scientist Courtney Houchen, M.D., centers around ZIP4, a protein that transports zinc throughout the body. While zinc is important for good health, too much of the heavy metal causes problems. In the new study, researchers found that when ZIP4 is overexpressed in patients with pancreatic cancer, it essentially prompts the tumor cells to transform themselves in a manner that allows them to stealthily travel to the body's other organs. In scientific terms, the tumor cells transition from an epithelial to a mesenchymal phenotype.

"That transition means the tumor cells are doing everything they can to avoid the surveillance of the body's immune system, as well as chemotherapy and other therapies," Li said. "They become more evasive and are able to penetrate the blood vessels, which permits them to go anywhere in the body."

Several things occur during the epithelial-mesenchymal transition. The cells are shape-shifters, taking the form of a square in the primary cancer site, but switching to a spindle shape that helps them to sneak away and begin to metastasize. The cells' growth also slows, allowing them to "fly under the radar" of the immune system.

"This is important because when tumors are in the form of epithelial cells, they are easier to kill with chemotherapy," Li said. "But when they switch to mesenchymal cells, they become resistant to treatment. Tumor cells are very smart and are like creatures with multiple faces. That's why we are looking for the right moment to target them with different strategies."

More than 60% of patients with pancreatic cancer experience metastasis within the first 24 months after surgery. The epithelial-mesenchymal transition is increasingly recognized as a major component of that spread, Houchen said.

"Once a patient has metastatic disease, no therapy can extend life more than six to eight months," Houchen said. "It's clear that metastatic spread has to be stopped if we're going to improve survival rates. This study helped us to understand the role of ZIP4 in the epithelial-mesenchymal transition. Somewhere in that shape-shifting process is where we need to intervene to stop the metastasis."

This publication is the third in the past three years in the journal Gastroenterology for Li and Houchen's research team. Each study has focused on a different role for ZIP4, which serves as a "master switch" for several things to occur in pancreatic cancer. In their first publication, they demonstrated that ZIP4 plays a role in the onset of cachexia, a muscle-wasting condition that affects at least 80% of people with pancreatic cancer. The next publication focused on how the overexpression of ZIP4 causes pancreatic cancer cells to be more resistant to chemotherapy.

"People diagnosed with many other types of cancers have seen an increased survival rate in the past 30 years, but that's not the case with pancreatic cancer," Li said. "We are making progress because our research is truly a group effort; no single person could do this. We have many talented people in our lab. I think we're entering a different phase where we can soon start developing a drug to specifically target the process involving ZIP4."

###

Li and Houchen's research has received significant federal funding from the National Institutes of Health, as well as local funding in the form of a team science grant from the Presbyterian Health Foundation and support from the Department of Medicine in the OU College of Medicine, where both hold faculty appointments.

OU COLLEGE OF MEDICINE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

Founded in 1910, the OU College of Medicine at the University of Oklahoma trains the next generation of healthcare professionals. With campuses in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, the College of Medicine offers the state's only Doctor of Medicine degree program and a nationally competitive Physician Assistant program. For more information, visit ouhealth.com/collegeofmedicine.

OU HEALTH

OU Health -- along with its academic partner, the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center -- is the state's only comprehensive academic health system of hospitals, clinics and centers of excellence. With 11,000 employees and more than 1,300 physicians and advanced practice providers, OU Health is home to Oklahoma's largest physician network with a complete range of specialty care. OU Health serves Oklahoma and the region with the state's only freestanding children's hospital, the only National Cancer Institute-Designated OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center and Oklahoma's flagship hospital, which serves as the state's only Level 1 trauma center. Becker's Hospital Review named University of Oklahoma Medical Center one of the 100 Great Hospitals in America for 2020. OU Health's oncology program at Stephenson Cancer Center and University of Oklahoma Medical Center was named Oklahoma's top facility for cancer care by U.S. News & World Report in its 2020-21 rankings. OU Health was also ranked by U.S. News & World Report as high performing in these specialties: Colon Surgery, COPD and Congestive Heart Failure. OU Health's mission is to lead healthcare in patient care, education and research. To learn more, visit ouhealth.com.
Grizzly mauling near Yellowstone kills backcountry guide View Photo

WEST YELLOWSTONE, Mont. (AP) 

A Montana backcountry guide has died after he was mauled by a large grizzly bear that was probably defending a nearby moose carcass just outside Yellowstone National Park, officials said Monday.

Charles Carl Mock, 40, who lived in the park gateway community of West Yellowstone, died Saturday, two days after he was attacked while fishing alone in a forested area along the Madison River several miles north of West Yellowstone, Gallatin County Sheriffs Office spokesperson Christine Koosman said.

The male bear, which weighed at least 420 pounds, was later shot and killed when it charged wildlife workers investigating the attack.

The moose carcass was found about 50 yards (45 meters) from the site of the attack, said Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks spokesperson Morgan Jacobsen.

Mock, who suffered significant scalp and facial wounds, managed to call 911 after the attack and was found after searchers looked for him for about 50 minutes.

He was transported by toboggan and snowmobile to an ambulance before being taken to a hospital in the city of Idaho Falls, where he died, according to the sheriffs office.

Mock was a guide at Backcountry Adventure, which provides snowmobile rentals and tours in Yellowstone National Park and surrounding areas of national forest, according to the companys Facebook page.

A fundraising website set up on Mocks behalf following the mauling said he was passionate about the outdoors and a beloved guide for Yellowstone visitors.

Mock when attacked had bear spray  a Mace-like deterrent meant to protect against attacks. Bear spray residue was found on Mocks clothing, but officials could not determine to what extent he was able to use it against the bear.

He was the only one who was there and we were never able to talk to him, Jacobsen said.

The grizzly was killed Friday after it charged a group of seven game wardens and other personnel as they approached the scene of the attack. Several people fired at the animal and it died about 20 yards (18 meters) from the group, Jacobsen said.

Officials said they are confident the bear that was killed is the one that attacked Mock.

The Yellowstone region of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming has more than 700 bears. Fatal attacks on humans are relatively rare but increased in recent decades as the grizzly population grew and more people moved into rural areas near bear habitat. Since 2010, grizzlies in the Yellowstone region killed eight people including Mock. Three died inside the park.

The most recent death was in 2018, when a hunting guide and his client were attacked in Wyoming and the guide was killed.

Grizzlies bears have been federally protected as a threatened species outside Alaska since 1975 after being widely exterminated by trappers and hunters early last century.

Hunting grizzlies is not allowed. But lawmakers from Idaho, Montana and Wyoming are trying to force wildlife officials to lift protections so the bears can be hunted.

Mocks friend, Scott Riley, said he was an extremely experienced guide who knew the risks of living and working in proximity to grizzly bears.

Mock, who was single and originally from Pocatello, Idaho, had been fishing in the same area all week without incident, Riley said. His friend said he spent ample time outdoors with Mock, who also kayaked, hunted and rode his motorcycle, and theyd seen lots of bears but never had any problem.

He was the best guide around, Riley said. He had sight like an eagle and hearing like an owl.  Carl was a great guy.
We will make the Russian authorities responsible for the health situation of Navalny, Borrell said before a video conference of the EUs 27 foreign ministers on Monday. US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN on Sunday the administration had warned Russia there would be consequences if Navalny died in prison. He did not elaborate. Navalnys wife was allowed to visit him in prison last week for the first time. Yulia Navalnaya said she spoke to her husband by telephone through glass. She said he had difficulty speaking and had to put the receiver down and lie down because he was so weak. Navalnys Twitter account said on Friday that authorities had threatened to put him in a straitjacket and force-feed him. He has no access to the account, but lawyers have regular contact with him, and posts are made by his team. The post said: Now I just point a finger at the point of the law and say: Sorry. Dont force-feed me.

Navalny was poisoned with a chemical weapon in the same class as the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok while travelling in Siberia last August. US and European authorities have blamed the attack on Russian state agents; theyve responded with sanctions against Russian organisations and individuals. For two days after the attack, Russian authorities refused his familys demands to allow his evacuation to Germany for medical treatment. The Kremlin says there is no evidence Navalny was poisoned, and prosecutors have declined to open a case into the incident. Navalny suggested on Friday that his recent symptoms, which include numbness in his legs and one hand, could be related to that poisoning, or a new state attack. A protester in St Petersburg on January 23 holds up a sign with a Alexei Navalny and the slogan One for all and all for one. Credit:AP

His Twitter feed has recounted efforts by Russian prison authorities to break him during his hunger strike, including slipping candies into the pockets of his prison clothing and frying chicken in front of him while recording his reaction. The doctors who warned that Navalnys life was in danger included Yaroslav Ashikhmin, Alexei Erlikh, Alexei Kashcheyev, Alexander Polupan, and Andrei Volna. We, the doctors, are ready to act, tweeted several physicians associated with Anastasia Vasilyeva, a Navalny ally who heads a small independent medical workers union. The question remaining is whether the penal colony is willing to cooperate to save the life of Navalny. Loading The group said high potassium levels in Navalnys blood were indicative of kidney failure and that severe heart-rhythm disturbances threatened cardiac arrest.

Action must be taken immediately, the group said. Navalny was arrested when he returned from Germany in January and imprisoned for failing to report to authorities as part of his probation conditions on an earlier case. He said he couldnt report because he was being treated in Germany and the many charges against him are political cases intended to silence him and deter others. Russian President Vladimir Putin. Credit:AP Navalnys Friday post said he had a right to see a doctor and a right to refuse to be force-fed. I protest not only for myself, but also for hundreds of thousands of those who have no rights, it said.
Courtesy of Danielle Honea Photography

The big news in travel (and life) this week was the widespread opening of COVID-19 vaccine eligibility, which means more of us will be able to do things like visit beautiful Buellton. Most famous, perhaps for being home to one of Californias most beloved roadside institutions, Andersens Pea Soup, Buellton is now home to another attraction: a former saloon and steakhouse, Zaca Creek.

In the 1960s, it was a raucous bar and wildly popular restaurant, where you could ride your horse right up to the door and hitch it up while you went inside to tie one on. Closed for 20 years and reopened during the pandemic, Julie Tremaines profile of The Inn at Zaca Creek is a love letter to Central Coast ranch culture, delicious food, and a Santa Ynez Valley town embracing its history.
SAN FRANCISCO, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Hexnode, a leading Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) solution company, today announced it is now a Samsung Knox validated partner.

Samsung Knox validation plays a key role in distinguishing UEM providers that support the critical features of Samsung Knox devices. In order to achieve validation as a certified partner, Samsung must evaluate each UEM solution provider's security, management, and productivity capabilities. The unique capabilities of Samsung Knox protect business-critical data and apps against malicious attacks and security breaches.

If a Samsung device goes down, Hexnode UEM can access the device by remote-control and provide real-time diagnostic support. This minimizes device downtime and gets remote usersand their devicesback online faster. Hexnode UEM's close integration with Samsung ensures that it provides best-in-class remote control in Samsung devices.

Hexnode UEM integrates with Knox Mobile Enrollment (KME), Knox Service Plugin (KSP) and DeX customization. This allows users to remain productive at all times as IT admins can issue over-the-air deployment and updates.

"Samsung Knox integration with Hexnode UEM provides users a best-in-class UEM solution, allowing them to take complete control of their critical business operations, security, and innovation," said Sahad M, Co-founder and CTO of Hexnode.

"The importance of properly managed digital workspace solutions that allow creativity and productivity to flourish regardless of device or location has never been more apparent. Samsung and Hexnode have been working closely towards the common goal of providing our mutual customers with the very best that our industry can offer," said Nick Dawson, Global Head of B2B Solutions at Samsung Electronics.

Dawson added that Samsung is "thrilled" to recognize Hexnode UEM as a digital workspace platform that officially supports Samsung Knox features.

About Hexnode

Hexnode MDM is the award-winning Unified Endpoint Management platform from Mitsogo Inc. The company has been helping organizations in over 100 countries to stay agile and competitive in an increasingly mobile world.

Mitsogo Inc. is a leading provider of Endpoint Management and security solutions. From SMBs to Fortune 500s, enterprises of all sizes have leveraged Mitsogo's prowess in device management to drive business productivity and compliance. Mitsogo's solutions adapt to the most complex of business environments.

Contact

Elizabeth Hale

[email protected]

Ph: +1 415 930 4434



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Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has received his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

The Democratic governor got his shot at the Family First Health Center in York Monday morning. Wolf had said he wanted to wait until everyone in Pennsylvania was eligible to get the vaccines before he received his shot.

It was a privilege to get my first dose of COVID vaccine today at Family First Health in York, Wolf said on Twitter. I decided to wait until ALL Pennsylvania adults were eligible to be vaccinated.

Wolf had previously said he didnt want to move ahead of others in line before getting vaccinated.

Even under the states rollout plan, Wolf met the criteria for a COVID-19 vaccine a few months ago. In January, the state expanded vaccine eligibility to those 65 and over and younger adults with certain health conditions. The governor is 72 years old.

The governor is encouraging everyone to get vaccinated. Last week, Wolf expanded vaccine eligibility to everyone 16 and over (the vaccines arent approved for those under 16 years old).

Wolf tested positive for the coronavirus in December but said he did not suffer any symptoms.

The governor isnt the only elected official to get vaccinated Monday.

State Sen. Ryan Aument, a Lancaster County Republican, said on Twitter he received his first shot today at the Vaccinate Lancaster mass clinic at Park City Center in Lancaster. Aument, a member of the bipartisan COVID-19 vaccine task force, said there are about 15,000 open appointments at Vaccinate Lancaster through next Monday.

Heres a quick guide to getting appointments for COVID-19 vaccines in central Pennsylvania.

Penn State Health

Register on Penn State Healths website or by calling 844-774-8883. Many have been calling by phone to register so wait times could be longer than normal.

UPMC

You can go online and register at UPMCs vaccine website or call 844-876-2822. UPMC is also hosting its first vaccine clinic for the Lebanon area at the Lebanon Valley Advanced Care Center on Saturday, April 24, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., 1251 East Main Street, Annville.

Vaccinate Lancaster

Lancaster Countys mass vaccination clinic is located at Park City Center in Lancaster. Register at VaccinateLancaster.org or by calling 717-588-1020. The clinic has begun offering a limited number of same-day appointments beginning at 1 p.m. daily. People can register for same-day appointments but registration isnt required.

WellSpan

Register on MyWellSpan.org or call WellSpans COVID-19 vaccine hotline is (855) 851-3641.

Cumberland County Community Vaccine Clinic

The Cumberland County Community Vaccination Clinic is located at 1180 Walnut Bottom Road in South Middleton Township near Carlisle. You can schedule an appointment at www.qcpharmacy.com. Or call 717-918-9880 between 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

More from PennLive

What should Pa. learn from COVID-19? And will we embrace the lessons in such divided times?

Pa. can improve pandemic response capability, shouldnt let partisan politics interfere, top official says
Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Tsinghua University on Monday.

The inspection tour by Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, came ahead of the university's 110th anniversary.

Xi visited the Academy of Arts and Design, a laboratory on imaging and intelligence, an exhibition on the university's key education and scientific research achievements, and a gymnasium.

He learned about Tsinghua's reform, human resources development, innovation in education and scientific research, as well as the university's role in serving national development, before meeting representatives of the faculty and students at a symposium and delivering a key speech.
Dorset Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG) decision to remove the ambulance car in Purbeck peninsula reveals the callous indifference of health authorities to the lives of patients.

The privatization of the National Health Service (NHS) and slashing of vitally needed health provision has leapt during the pandemic as the Conservative government, using its emergency coronavirus legislative powers, dispensed with nominal consultative processes, competitive tendering and public scrutiny.

Ambulances stationed at the Emergency Department of the Royal Bournemouth Hospital (credit: WSWS media)

People living on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, located on Englands south coast, were told last year that their ambulance car was going to be scrapped. The paramedic car, along with a trained crew, was introduced in 2008 following the closure of the minor injuries unit in Swanage, Purbecks main town.

The service is provided by the South Western Ambulance Service Foundation Trust (SWAST) in collaboration with Dorset CCG. The purpose of the service was to reach remote areas quickly, carry out initial assessment of patients, and attend time critical calls promptly. Those attending could then seek further assistance from a ground or air paramedic crew to avoid unnecessary deaths and suffering.

Removal of this vital service will have catastrophic consequences for patients who will have to wait longer to access ambulance services. More than 45,000 people live in the area and each year three million tourists visit the Isle of Purbeck.

A freedom of information request submitted by the Defend Dorset NHS group found that there were 996 callouts, with the majority dealt with by 999 emergency calls in 2019. A significant number of patients called emergency services with life threatening conditions like heart attacks.

The imminent withdrawal of the ambulance car from Purbeck is all the more criminal as the emergency department, paediatric services, maternity and emergency stroke services in the relatively closer Poole General Hospital are being shut down. Patients in remote villages in Purbeck will have to be transported nearly 30 miles to access these crucial services either at The Dorset County Hospital in Dorchester or The Royal Bournemouth Hospital (RBH) in Bournemouth. Longer journeys to access emergency care and treatment will inevitably lead to excess deaths.

Residents opposing the removal of the ambulance rapid response service have gathered nearly 8,000 signatures.

The Dorset CCG and the SWAST issued a joint statement to placate opposition, claiming, No changes will be made to the existing service until we've had the opportunity to engage and work with local stakeholders and representatives.'

This is part of an ongoing slashing of services in the county. In 2016, the Dorset CCG launched the Clinical Service Review (CSR) to streamline, i.e., reduce services.

CCGs across the country have been forced to make massive savings through rationing and slashing services, while Tory-led governments kept yearly funding increases for the NHS at historically low levels over the last decade. Dorset CCG forecasted a 19.3 million budget deficit in July 2020.

Embarking on the CSR, Dorset CCG claimed that their aim was to deliver care closer to home. Well paid PR experts for the CCG presented this as a golden opportunity to increase the number of people supported in the community as an alternative to major hospitals, and increase the range of services in the community.

The CCGs claimed during the CSR consultation that longer ambulance transport times would be offset by the presence of trained professionals. The real objective of the CSR, however, was not only to cover a 158 million budget shortfall in the CCG created by years of underfunding but to accelerate the privatisation process. All three major hospitals in the county set up private patient units, creating a two-tier system with preferential treatment.

As a result of the CCGs plan, Dorsets population of 765,680 have already lost St. Leonards Community Hospital and two other community hospitals, Alderney and Westhaven, are earmarked for closure.

The Royal Bournemouth Hospital (RBH), in east Dorset, is to become the Major Emergency Hospital while Poole General Hospital (PGH) will be turned into a major planned care hospital. These two hospitals merged last October to become University Hospitals Dorset. The changes mean that many people in the Poole conurbation will face increased travel times to reach the emergency services and treatment in Bournemouth.

The pandemic has proved that the destruction of NHS services costs lives. Health workers of RBH and PGH who spoke out during the first and second surge of COVID-19 cases pointed out the perilous conditions facing health workers and the terrible impact on patients due to the rundown of services.

Nationally, over the last decade dozens of Accident and Emergency (A&E) units, NHS walk in centres, sexual health clinics, mental health facilities and GP surgeries were downsized or totally shut down. Substantial parts of NHS provision have been handed over to private companies such as Virgin Healthcare, Circle and Serco who are piling up profits.

NHS Trust leaders, with the blessings of the government, carried out temporary closures or downsizing of A&E departments, Intensive Care Units, paediatric wards and community hospitals during the pandemic. Many such shutdowns and downsizing will be made permanent.

 Using the pretext of maintaining a COVID-free hospital, United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust (ULHT) dress rehearsed its previous long hatched plan to downsize its A&E unit at Grantham Hospital in Lincolnshire last summer. ULHT indicated that they would restore the services at the Grantham hospital. Campaigners opposed to the plans have raised concern that the A&E department will not be fully restored and that the restoration plan includes a reduction of medical beds.

 Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (LTH) closed the doors of Chorley and South Ribble Hospitals part time A&E department at the end of March 2020. Well before the pandemic broke out, the CCG planned to convert the Chorley A&E into an urgent treatment centre which can treat minor cases like boils and grazes. In April 2016, the 24-hour department closed due to staff shortages. It was only reopened in January 2017 as a 12-hour service.

 In March 2020, Birmingham and Solihull CCG announced the temporary closure of the Childrens A&E at Good Hope Hospital.

 During the first wave of the pandemic, Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust (BHRUT) in London closed the childrens ward at King George Hospital saying that the measure was temporary.

 In May last year, Leicestershire Partnership Trust shut down its Lutterworth Community Hospital saying it could not maintain a COVID secure environment. Over the last five years, the closure of hospital was prevented as people in the area fought against it.

These cuts are the tip of an iceberg. In March, documents accompany the budget revealed a planned cut of 30 billion in day-to-day in health and social care spending from April this year. Spending will fall from 199.2 billion to 169.1 billion. This is under conditions in which an estimated 4.7 million people were waiting for routine operations and procedures in England in February, the most since 2007.

The White Paper launched by Health Secretary Matt Hancock in February is based on an overhaul of the NHS to streamline privatisation.

All experiences over the last decade shows that health workers and the wider public who are confronted with escalating attacks on the pay, terms and conditions and loss of vital health services cannot rely on the pro-capitalist trade unions and Labour Party to defend them.

To successfully oppose the onslaught of the ruling elite, the working class needs fighting organisations. The Socialist Equality Party established the NHS FightBack campaign, which calls for the creation of rank-and-file safety committees of healthcare workers, to fight for better pay, terms, and conditions, and to safeguard health and safety at work. These committees must take up a political struggle to secure the resources needed for a fully funded and resourced health care system as part of the fight for a workers government based on a socialist programme.

For further information visit NHS FightBack
One non-brokered private placement for gross proceeds of $1 million consisted of 6,250,000 flow-through units (FT units) of the company at a price of $0.16 each

Additionally, Newrange said it has closed the first tranche of a non-brokered private placement for gross proceeds of $705,400 consisting of 5,878,332 non-flow-through units

( ) ( ) (FRA:X6C) has announced the closing of a non-brokered private placement for gross proceeds of $1 million consisting of 6,250,000 flow-through units (FT units) of the company at a price of $0.16 each.

Additionally, the company said it has closed the first tranche of a non-brokered private placement for gross proceeds of $705,400 consisting of 5,878,332 non-flow-through units (NFT Units). The second and final tranche of approximately $1,294,600 is expected to close within about a week and is fully subscribed.

Each FT unit consists of one common share of the company and one-half share purchase warrant. Each FT warrant entitles the holder to purchase one common share at an exercise price of $0.25 at any time until April 16, 2023. Proceeds will be used to advance the companys North Birch Project in the Red Lake Mining Division of Ontario.

Each NFT unit consists of one common share of the company and one-half share purchase warrant. Each NFT Warrant entitles the holder to purchase one common share at an exercise price of $0.25 at any time until April 16, 2023. Proceeds will be used to advance the companys flagship Pamlico Project in Nevada and for general working capital.

Cash finders fees or commissions in the amount of $97,860 were paid on the financings and the company issued 232,167 share purchase finders warrants. Each finders warrant entitles the holder thereof to purchase one common share at an exercise price of $0.25 for a two-year period. Additionally, the company issued 625,000 share purchase finders units exercisable at $0.16 per finders unit. Each finders unit entitles the holder to purchase one common share and one-half share purchase warrant at an an exercise price of $0.25 for a two-year period.

IBK Capital Corp. of Toronto was the lead in placing the flow-through financing and assisted with the non-flow-through portion. All securities issued are subject to a four-month hold period from the date of issuance and subject to TSX Venture Exchange approval.

The securities offered have not been registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements.

Newrange is focused on district-scale exploration for precious metals in favorable jurisdictions including Nevada, Ontario and Colorado. With locally high-grade, near-surface oxide gold mineralization, the companys flagship Pamlico Project is poised to become a significant new Nevada discovery. Focused on developing shareholder value through exploration and development of key projects, the Company is committed to building sustainable value for all stakeholders.

Contact the author at jon.hopkins@proactiveinvestors.com
Aclassic sketch by the British comedy duo Mitchell and Webb sees a pair of Nazi SS officers in the grip of an existential crisis.

One says to the other: Have you looked at our caps recently?  Theyve got skulls on them. Have you noticed that our caps have actually got little pictures of skulls on them?

Realization dawns: Hans  are we the baddies?

Contemporary Western culture finds itself curiously split on the question of moral absolutes. On the one hand, in the golden age of prestige TV, we pride ourselves on the moral complexity of our stories: the flawed protagonist, the tortured hero, the sympathetic villain. Using the tools of psychology and sociology, we do our best to understand what has gone wrong for those who do wrong, and we accept (more or less) that were all damaged, striving people.

On the other hand, we seem to define more rigidly every day the boundaries of whats acceptable, in the process cheerfully consigning larger and larger swaths of our fellow citizens to that no mans land beyond the cultural pale.

Do we or do we not believe in goodies and baddies? How do we treat those we place in that second camp? And what happens when other people place us there?

In his short and very readable book Being the Bad Guys: How to Live for Jesus in a World That Says You Shouldnt, Australian pastor and blogger Stephen McAlpine sails into the contested waters of Christian cultural engagement with admirable calmness. Its a delicate moment for discussions of this kind. Christians across the political and ecclesial spectrum probably would agree that the relationship between the church and the wider culture is currently rocky, but they would also disagree, vigorously, about what exactly has gone wrong and what a constructive response looks like.

Good bad guys

For McAlpine, a good place to start is taking seriously accusations that Christians are the bad guys. Particularly in the wake of Christian involvement in the Capitol riots of January 6, and with revelation upon revelation of abuse by prominent church leaders, it is right for outside criticism to prompt soul-searching rather than defensiveness. Some hostility arises from our own failings; and humility is always in order for the Christian.

But from McAlpines read of an increasingly post-Christian culture, on some fronts there simply isnt going to be an honorable way around being the baddie: The fact is that often we are accused of doing wrong not because we are living too little like Jesus but because we are living too much like him.

Being the Bad Guys takes seriously those flash points where a Christian ethicespecially Christian sexual ethicscomes into conflict with social orthodoxy. But it also suggests that if fear and outrage are the default response to encountering cultural opposition, then were doing it wrong:

So this book isnt about how to stop being the bad guys; its about how to be the bad guys. Its about how to be the best bad guy you can beto refuse to be surprised, confused, despairing and mad about it, and to find a way to be calm, clear-sighted, confident and even joyful in it.

Being a good bad guy, McAlpine counsels us, is all about having Bible-shaped expectations. If we Christians are astonished and resentful when we experience pushback from the culture, we have forgotten the insistence of the entire New Testament that oppositioneven hatred and persecutionare par for the course for followers of Jesus. If we find ourselves on the back foot, feeling besieged or helpless, we have lost sight of who we claim to serve. As McAlpine puts it:

If we are focused on Jesus, then we will not become self-entitled or embittered Christians who play the victim card and get angry when society pushes against us. We will instead be filled with joy. When we dont join in the cheers when our cultural enemies lose a battle, or when we dont shout angrily at them when they win a battle, it will only be because Jesus is our hope and joyand he is our example of what it looks like to entrust yourself to the One who judges justly (1 Pet. 2:23).

Article continues below

Those who have trod this path before us include Daniel, the one for whom God is big and humans are therefore only human-sized, neither to be feared nor despised. Or Haggai, who took Gods people to task for their complacency, their reluctance to poke their heads above the parapet. Or Peter, the reformed culture warrior who went from cutting off the ear of an enemy to exhibiting and counseling joy as the fitting response to unjust suffering. Being the Bad Guys makes it abundantly clear that pressure, and the grace to be cheerful under it, is nothing new or strange for the people of God.

Antipathy and neediness

McAlpines proposed way forward has a lot to do with embracing a place at the cultural margins, and with forming communities that are thick and rich and dont get caught up in the increasingly toxic culture war. Ideally, he observes, churches will offer programs of discipleship more effective and life-giving than the alternative religion of the day, the individualistic narrative of the authentic self.

At its best, Being the Bad Guys offers a grace-filled vision of what various tactics of Christian cultural engagement are actually for. At the end of the day, for the Christian, the reason to be alarmed at cultural tides pulling away from the shore of Judeo-Christian ethics is not because this leaves the church stranded, but because those ethics further the good of our neighbors. As McAlpine writes:

Our primary concern isor ought to benot that our personal lives will become harder, nor that our children will have to grow up in a hostile sexual setting, nor even that we might lose our jobs because of our faith. Rather, it is that the rapid rejection of this binary understanding of the world will both destroy and be used to destroy those who have been made in the image of God. It is a rejection of God himself. Human flourishing is at risk because of this rejection.

McAlpines analysis of our cultures religion of authenticity and self-creation is frequently incisive and helpful, including how Christians too have been drawn into it. However, his decision to keep the spotlight trained throughout on issues around gender identity and sexual ethics wont sit as well with some readers. He insists that this book deals with sexuality a lot not because I am obsessed with it (an accusation often levelled at orthodox Christians) but because the culture is.

Perhaps hes right to place sexuality at the epicenter of the current clash between kingdom values and the worldI dont know. But while concern for people wounded or confused by the various waves of the sexual revolution is clear in these pages, so too, at times, is a cynicism or dismissiveness towards those who embrace a progressive narrative around sex and gender, a posture that may well exacerbate this divide. Where such thorny and deeply personal questions are involved, jibes about the hope of a new world that is all glitter and rainbows, or how coming out in the public eye hits the authenticity jackpot, sit uneasily beside the more compassionate, inviting vision the book holds out.

Are we the baddies? Being the Bad Guys brings into focus not only the antipathy but also the neediness of our world; not only the call to stand firm in the face of opposition but also the call to actively and lovingly serve those around us; not only the rapidly shifting ground of cultural change but also the utterly secure future promised to those whose Lord is Jesus. In other words, it simply unpacks what it might look like, in 21st-century Western culture, to live such good lives that, though our neighbors accuse us of being the bad guys, our words and actionsand the grace to be found in our communitiestell a very different story.

Natasha Moore is a senior research fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity in Sydney.
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Israel signed Monday an agreement with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer enabling the Jewish state to obtain millions more doses of vaccines, a government statement said.

Nearly five million Israelis, or over half the population, has received two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, according to statistics published by Israel's health ministry.

"We have signed an agreement with Pfizer to acquire millions (more) doses of the vaccine which will allow us to continue our battle against coronavirus through to the end of 2022," a joint statement by the health ministry and the prime minister's office said.

Israel has since late December undertaken the most rapid per capita vaccination campaign in the world.

It began to emerge from a third lockdown in early February.

The requirement to wear a mask in public was lifted on Sunday.

The Jewish state sent its coronavirus caseload tumbling after striking a deal for a vast stock of Pfizer/BioNTech jabs.

In exchange, it agreed to pay above market price and share data it gathers on the recipients, using one of the world's most sophisticated medical data systems.

"If we are not confronted by a surprise with variants that the vaccine cannot fight, we will be in a position to vaccinate the entire populationadults and children," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in the statement.

Israel has recorded 837,199 coronavirus cases, including 6,340 fatalities.

Separately, 72,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, donated through the Covax scheme, were handed on Monday to the Palestinian Authority, an Israeli official said on condition of anonymity.

Of that consignment, 28,000 jabs were transferred to the Gaza Strip, according to the same source.

The vaccination effort in the Palestinian territories has massively lagged that undertaken in Israel.

Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak

 2021 AFP
Nestled in the rolling hills of Berkshire County, in the western edge of Massachusetts, are a number of cannabis businesses that for more than four years have been the closest place for New Yorkers to legally buy marijuana.

In that time, Massachusetts shops have seen a healthy portion of their customer base come from across the border from New York to shop. How will this customer demographic and revenue base shift with New York becoming the 16th state in the country to legalize recreational marijuana?

Berkshire dispensaries shouldnt fear competition from over the border  at least not for now, said Erik Williams, chief operating officer of Canna Provisions in Lee. I think it's going to be another solid year and a half, almost two years after that first store opens before there's any competition with product selection.

This is because New York still needs to build the infrastructure to supply the huge demand for legal marijuana. Building a whole industry from the ground up takes time. Like every other state legally selling marijuana, all cannabis sold within New York must be grown in-state, in keeping with federal regulations prohibiting the interstate movement of controlled substances.

Its not like you can call the factory and order things, Williams said. Things need to be grown, things need to be processed, things need to be built.

And long before Berkshire dispensaries started selling legal weed, the area was an established tourist destination  a distinction that gives Massachusetts a competitive advantage over the fairly rural New York counties abutting the border, dispensary owners there say.

Williams estimates that about 25 percent of Canna Provisions customers present New York state identification. This is not surprising due to the fact that Western Massachusetts is full of seasonal homes and a destination for out-of-state tourists.

Although Massachusetts cannabis is meant to be purchased and consumed within the state, there are few ways to enforce it, Williams said. This is the way border towns throughout the Northeast have operated forever. I don't know about you, but I dont have an alarm that goes off when I cross the border.

How that cross-border interaction will evolve as New Yorks cannabis industry matures is what makes the market so intriguing to watch.

Taxation could shape competition

In another twist, a lower sales tax in New York could potentially lure Massachusetts residents into New York to buy their marijuana. New Yorks sales tax is 13 percent on cannabis products. In Massachusetts, the sales tax is currently 17 percent, with a three percent local option for towns and cities.

Consumers living close to the border where two recreational-use states meet might begin to do a cost-analysis of where to buy their marijuana. Though not necessarily if the difference is minimal.

The same issue is going to be in New York and New Jersey, said Matt Karnes, founder of cannabis advisory company Greenwave Advisors. (New Jersey will be taxing based on weight of marijuana versus the price itself.) Does it make sense to drive over a bridge or in a tunnel just to save a few bucks?

Bordering states may agree to work together. For the economies of scale to grow rapidly to meet demand, cross-border cooperation might ease the cost of prohibition, Karnes said.

I would not be surprised if we see some type of cooperative agreement between New York, New Jersey, maybe Pennsylvania,  which is currently only a medical marijuana state  a tri-state cooperative for interstate commerce.

Cannabis drinks, food products may create market differentiation

For the time being, the big focus for Massachusetts producers is finding ways to specialize recreational marijuana products to give customers unique ways to consume cannabis.

At one point, hash oil vape pens were not as ubiquitous as they are now. Finding the next vape pen-type product could be huge for a cannabis business. As the states industry has grown, market segmentation has allowed different businesses to focus on innovation that attracts new customers.

Melissa Ostrow

Canna Provisions, for example, just launched a curated line of marijuana strains from Massachusetts native and famed cultivator Greg Chemdog Krzanowski called Smash Hits. The hope is this exclusive line of unique marijuana flower (bud) will appeal to return customers with one-of-a-kind flavor profiles versus just pricing perks on similar products sold in other stores.

Its this kind of effort to create exclusivity around certain items that business owners are betting will differentiate dispensaries and producers from one another, creating brand identity among buyers in what is quickly becoming a crowded marketplace.

The biggest new category that we've been working on is infused beverages and I think that's going to be very popular, said Brandon Pollock, co-founder and CEO of Theory Wellness in Great Barrington. There's a company that just got permission to start making infused ice cream, so you will see a lot of fun niche opportunities for entrepreneurs.

New Yorks legalization is a boon for the industry because it encourages new entrepreneurs by being the most progressive cannabis reform bill that's passed in the country, Pollock said.

Forty percent of tax revenue from cannabis sales will be redirected back into an equity program intended to create economic inclusion in the burgeoning legal cannabis industry among people of color and communities that have been disproportionately affected by past drug policy.

While the neighboring states will both be in the cannabis market, sources told Times Union: Hudson Valley that its big enough to offer opportunities to new business owners in both Massachusetts and New York  and for multiple states to take advantage of the tax perks.

Massachusetts has benefited from being one of the first recreational-use states on the East Coast and it has been a cash cow for localities for over four years now, said State Representative Smitty Pignatelli of the fourth Berkshire district.

The Massachusetts provision offering a local option to add an extra three percent of taxes on legal marijuana allowed certain communities to accept the growth of retail cannabis businesses. Pignatelli is not concerned that NYs legalization will eat into the local Berkshire County market.

It's not going to hurt our business too much because those same folks who are coming here to purchase cannabis are the same folks that are coming here to see James Taylor on the Fourth of July, Rep. Pignatelli said.

We have no problems with New York doing it, but the better cannabis is in the Berkshires.
YEREVAN, APRIL 19, 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
All good things must come to an end. That includes Masahiro Tanakas 28-game regular-season winning streak in Japan.

Tanaka made his season debut Saturday for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, and it didnt go as planned, giving up three runs and four hits in five innings with five strikeouts and a walk.

Introducing Yankees Insider: Get exclusive news, behind-the-scenes observations and the ability to text message directly with beat writers

Tanaka, who returned to Japan in January after completing a seven-year, $155 million contract with the New York Yankees, gave up a pair of home runs in the 4-1 loss to the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters at the Tokyo Dome.

The 32-year-old right-hander signed with Japans Pacific League over the winter after completing a seven-year, $155 million contract with the Yankees, getting a two-year, $17.2 million deal from Rakuten.

Tanaka was 78-46 with a 3.74 ERA for the Yankees and was 99-35 with a 2.30 ERA in seven seasons with the Golden Eagles.

Last year, Tanaka went 3-3 with a 3.56 ERA during the coronavirus-shortened 60-game MLB regular season.

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.

(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a subscription.

Mike Rosenstein may be reached at mrosenstein@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here.
Noida: Amid the worsening COVID-19 situation, the Gautam Buddh Nagar Police in Uttar Pradesh has launched an initiative for facilitating plasma for coronavirus patients, according to officials.

Plasma therapy involves taking antibodies from the blood of a person who has recovered from COVID-19 and transfusing those into a coronavirus-infected patient to help kick-start the immune system to fight the infection.

The police commissionerate has launched a helpline number  8851066433  to connect people in need of plasma with donors, the officials said.

The district police has also created a Google document form that could be accessed online by people to provide information of the patient for finding a plasma donor, a spokesperson said.

"The initiative aims at both the purposes  receiving as well as donating plasma," the police spokesperson said.

While police personnel, who have recovered from COVID-19, are volunteering for the plasma donation through the initiative, senior officials have appealed to people to join the effort.

"Please help more people join this initiative for plasma donation so that a collective effort can be made to overcome this humanitarian crisis and save lives," Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police Ranvijay Singh said in a message to residents.

Gautam Buddh Nagar adjoining Delhi is among the worst-hit districts of Uttar Pradesh with over 3,300 active cases of COVID-19 and 103 deaths due to the pandemic so far, according to official figures updated till Sunday.

Live TV
Photo: Gage Skidmore\Wikipedia

In Foreign Affairs Magazine earlier this year, presumptive President-Elect Joe Biden set out a plan for restoring the United States position of global leadership.



Below, is an excerpt from the published article.

By nearly every measure, the credibility and influence of the United States in the world have diminished since President Barack Obama and I left office on January 20, 2017.

President Donald Trump has belittled, undermined, and in some cases abandoned U.S. allies and partners. He has turned on our own intelligence professionals, diplomats, and troops. He has emboldened our adversaries and squandered our leverage to contend with national security challenges from North Korea to Iran, from Syria to Afghanistan to Venezuela, with practically nothing to show for it.

He has launched ill-advised trade wars, against the United States friends and foes alike, that are hurting the American middle class. He has abdicated American leadership in mobilizing collective action to meet new threats, especially those unique to this century.

Most profoundly, he has turned away from the democratic values that give strength to our nation and unify us as a people.

Meanwhile, the global challenges facing the United Statesfrom climate change and mass migration to technological disruption and infectious diseaseshave grown more complex and more urgent, while the rapid advance of authoritarianism, nationalism, and illiberalism has undermined our ability to collectively meet them. Democraciesparalyzed by hyperpartisanship, hobbled by corruption, weighed down by extreme inequalityare having a harder time delivering for their people.

Trust in democratic institutions is down. Fear of the Other is up. And the international system that the United States so carefully constructed is coming apart at the seams. Trump and demagogues around the world are leaning into these forces for their own personal and political gain.

The next U.S. president will have to address the world as it is in January 2021, and picking up the pieces will be an enormous task. He or she will have to salvage our reputation, rebuild confidence in our leadership, and mobilize our country and our allies to rapidly meet new challenges. There will be no time to lose.

As president, I will take immediate steps to renew U.S. democracy and alliances, protect the United States economic future, and once more have America lead the world.

This is not a moment for fear. This is the time to tap the strength and audacity that took us to victory in two world wars and brought down the Iron Curtain.

The triumph of democracy and liberalism over fascism and autocracy created the free world. But this contest does not just define our past. It will define our future, as well.

Read rest of story here.
Pune, India, April 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The global ultra-low temperature freezer market is set to gain impetus from the increasing support of the government to conduct advanced research in the field of life science. This information is published by Fortune Business Insights in a new report, titled, Ultra-Low Temperature Freezer Market Size, Share & COVID-19 Impact Analysis, By Type (Chest and Upright), By Capacity (Less than 300 Liters, 301-500 Liters, 501-700 Liters, 701-900 Liters and More than 900 Liters), By Application (Bio Banks & Hospitals, Academic & Research Laboratories and Others) and Regional Forecast, 2020-2027. The report further states that the ultra-low temperature freezer market size was USD 547.0 million in 2019 and is projected to reach USD 783.1 million by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 4.6% during the forecast period.

COVID-19 Pandemic to Affect Growth Positively Owing to Rising Number of Bio Banks

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the supply chain, thereby obstructing production. But, the pandemic is likely to affect growth positively because of the increasing number of plasma treatment providers and biobanks worldwide. ULT freezers are therefore being demanded more to prevent transmission of the virus.

To get to know more about the short-term and long-term impact of COVID-19 on this Ultra-low Temperature Freezer Market,





Please visit: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/ultra-low-temperature-freezer-market-104479





How Did We Create This Report?

As customer expectations are changing, the aspirations of dealers are also changing at a fast pace. Distribution channels are becoming complicated. To provide our clients with detailed information, we have conducted extensive primary and secondary research. We have thoroughly investigated each opportunity qualitatively and quantitatively so that our clients get a complete picture of both emerging and existing opportunities. We have also conducted a techno-economic study.

Drivers & Restraints-

Rising Awareness about Blood Donation Camps to Augment Growth

The high demand for pharmaceuticals storage equipment from hospitals, research and academic institutes, and blood banks is set to propel the ultra-low temperature freezer market growth in the coming years. Apart from that, the increasing awareness of blood donation camps and organ donation practices in emerging countries would also contribute to growth. However, ULT freezers require regular maintenance to operate smoothly. Therefore, it needs high cost spending, thereby hampering growth.





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Segment-

Bio Banks & Hospitals Segment Held 51.5% Share Stoked by Need to Store Plasma

Based on application, the bio banks and hospitals segment earned 51.5% in terms of the ultra-low temperature freezer market share in 2019. It is anticipated to grow substantially in the near future backed by the rising usage of ULT freezers for storing plasma, red blood cells, white blood cells, and other blood components.

Regional Analysis-

North America to Remain at Forefront Owing to Presence of Major Companies

Geographically, in 2019, North America earned USD 199.5 million in terms of revenue and is likely to remain in the dominant position throughout the forthcoming years. This growth is attributable to the presence of various prominent ultra-low temperature freezer manufacturers in the region. Asia Pacific, on the other hand, is expected to grow significantly fueled by the rising number of biotechnology & pharmaceutical companies in the region.





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Competitive Landscape-

Key Players Focus on Acquisition Strategy to Compete with Their Rivals

The market for ultra-low temperature freezer houses numerous local and regional companies that are mainly engaging in the strategy of mergers and acquisitions to generate more sales. A few others are focusing on launching innovative ULT freezers to gain a competitive edge. Below are the two latest industry developments:

March 2020 : Eppendorf AG is planning to acquire Koki Holdings Co., Ltd.s premium himac brand, as well as its centrifuge business. It will help the former to strengthen its position as one of the worlds leading producers of high-end centrifuges for life science and plasma industries. It will also help the company to broaden its centrifuge business.

: Eppendorf AG is planning to acquire Koki Holdings Co., Ltd.s premium himac brand, as well as its centrifuge business. It will help the former to strengthen its position as one of the worlds leading producers of high-end centrifuges for life science and plasma industries. It will also help the company to broaden its centrifuge business. June 2019: PHC Holdings Corporation successfully acquired Thermo Fisher Scientifics Anatomical Pathology business worth USD 1.14 billion.

A list of all the renowned ultra-low temperature freezer manufacturers in the market:

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (United States)

PHC Holdings Corporation (United States)

Eppendorf AG (Germany)

Esco Micro Pte Ltd. (Singapore)

Helmer Scientific (United States)

Arctiko A/S (Denmark)

BIONICS SCIENTIFIC TECHNOLOGIES (P) LTD. (India)

Glen Dimplex (Ireland)

Haier Biomedical (United Kingdom)

LABCOLD (United Kingdom)

BINDER GmbH (Germany)





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Table Of Content:

Introduction Definition, By Segment Research Approach Sources

Executive Summary

Market Dynamics Macro and Micro Economic Indicators Drivers, Restraints, Opportunities and Trends Impact of COVID-19 Short-term Impact Long-term Impact

Competition Landscape Business Strategies Adopted by Key Players Consolidated SWOT Analysis of Key Players PESTLE Analysis Porters Five Force Analysis Global Ultra-Low Temperature Freezer Market Share Analysis and Matrix, 2019

Key Market Insights and Strategic Recommendations

Profiles of Key Players (Would be provided for 10 players only) Overview Key Management Headquarters etc. Offerings/Business Segments Key Details (Key details are subjected to data availability in public domain and/or on paid databases) Employee Size Key Financials Past and Current Revenue Gross Margin Geographical Share Business Segment Share Recent Developments

Primary Interview Responses

Annexure / Appendix Global Ultra-Low Temperature Freezer Market Size Estimates and Forecasts (Quantitative Data), By Segments, 2016-2027 By Type (Value) Chest Upright By Capacity (Value) Less than 300 Litres 301-500 Litres 501-700 Litres 701-900 Litres More than 900 Litres By Application (Value) Bio Banks & Hospitals Academic & Research Laboratories Others (Pharmaceuticals, etc.) By Region (Value) North America South America Europe Middle East & Africa Asia Pacific North America Ultra-Low Temperature Freezer Market Size Estimates and Forecasts (Quantitative Data), By Segments, 2016-2027 By Type (Value) Chest Upright By Capacity (Value) Less than 300 Litres 301-500 Litres 501-700 Litres 701-900 Litres More than 900 Litres By Application (Value) Bio Banks & Hospitals Academic & Research Laboratories Others (Pharmaceuticals, etc.) By Country (Value) U.S. By Application (Value) Bio Banks & Hospitals Academic & Research Laboratories Others (Pharmaceuticals, etc.) Canada By Application (Value) Bio Banks & Hospitals Academic & Research Laboratories Others (Pharmaceuticals, etc.) Mexico By Application (Value) Bio Banks & Hospitals Academic & Research Laboratories Others (Pharmaceuticals, etc.)



TOC Continued!





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Russia will launch the country's only female cosmonaut into space in 2022.

This comes as Russia announces its intention of leaving the International Space Station (ISS) to construct its own national next-generation orbital service station.

According to Sputnik News, Roscosmos General Director Dmitry Rogozin has instructed the cosmonaut training center to include Anna Kikina in one of the upcoming Soyuz crews scheduled to travel to the International Space Station in 2022.

"A decision will be made soon on whether she will be included in a spring or fall crew of next year," sources told Sputnik News.

Kikina told Sputnik in March that she was attending preliminary training while waiting to be assigned to a special ISS crew. Roscosmos announced in June of last year that Kikina would join a Russian crew on the ISS within two years.

Since September 2016, Kikina has become the only Russian woman in space. She took part in the international SIRIUS (Scientific International Research In Unique Terrestrial Station) project in November 2017, which simulates Moon missions to study the impact of isolation.

Why is Russia Quitting ISS in 2025?

Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov said that Russia will abandon the International Space Station program in 2025 and focus on developing its own space station.

Prime Minister Borisov, who is in charge of Russia's space industry, announced during a television interview about the government's efforts to construct a new space station with foreign partners.

The International Space Station (ISS) is scheduled to remain in orbit until at least 2030, despite all of its modules planned to last just 15 years.

The first module was deployed in 1998, and the first astronauts of the International Space Station landed in 2000.

Russia's space agency Roscosmos said that the decision to abandon the program was not yet final, The National News quotes Russia's Interfax news agency report. Roscosmos has previously stated that it is willing to continue its involvement in the project beyond 2024.

"Lately, reports about technical malfunctions have been coming more often. [To] avoid any risks in case of accidents, it's necessary to carry out a technical inspection of the station. After this, a decision should be made," Prime Minister Borisov said in a TASS report.

ALSO READ: Russian Astronauts Found Two Hull Cracks in ISS; Should We Be Worried?





"And they [partners] should be fairly notified about the withdrawal from the ISS since 2025," Borisov was quoted as saying in Moscow. Kremlin. Putin program on Rossiya-1 TV channel.

Russia has maintained its role as a significant player in space exploration thanks to its Soyuz rockets.

Soyuz rockets were the only ones qualified to fly astronauts to the International Space Station for almost a decade since the last launch of the US space shuttle fleet.

Hazza Al Mansouri, the first Emirati astronaut, launched the International Space Station in 2019 on a Soyuz spacecraft.

However, as part of Nasa's Commercial Crew Program, Elon Musk's SpaceX sent the first astronauts to the International Space Station last year, dethroning rival Boeing and ending Russia's manned launch supremacy.

A second crewed SpaceX flight to the International Space Station is scheduled to launch later this week.

Last month, Russia commemorated the 20th anniversary of the de-orbit of Mir, the Soviet Union's final national space station, which burnt up in the Earth's atmosphere after a pioneering 15-year mission.

RELATED ARTICLE: Russia Open to Extending Its Collaboration In The International Space Station (ISS) To 2028

Check out more news and information on Space on Science Times.
This road in Estonia has been partially closed

to help frogs and toads migrate to their breeding grounds

Location: Tallinn, Estonia

(SOUNDBITE) (Estonian) ESTONIAN NATURE FUND VOLUNTEER, KRISTEL SAARM, SAYING:"On Astangu (street), the frogs cross the road, because the ponds they are born in are on one side of the road, and their wintering place is on the other side. So, they are forced to cross the road (to lay eggs)."

Volunteers say the amphibiansare very sleepy after a long winter

and are unable to move quickly out of the way of oncoming traffic

The road will be closed from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. for a two week period

as the animals are most active at night

(SOUNDBITE) (Estonian) ESTONIAN NATURE FUND VOLUNTEER, KRISTEL SAARM, SAYING:"Usually, when it is really, really warm and good weather, it may be that there are up to 300 frogs crossing the road at the same time. // Unfortunately, it is not possible to solve this problem solely by traffic signs, so the volunteers have to help the frogs as well as educate drivers: make them take into consideration the regulations at least for these nine hours in the twenty-four-hours span."
By Chang-Ran Kim

TOKYO (Reuters) -A recent surge in COVID-19 cases could see major parts of Japan slide back into states of emergency with authorities in Tokyo and Osaka looking at renewed curbs to stop the spread.

The new wave of infections complicates preparations for the Tokyo Olympic Games, which are due to start in July having already been postponed due to the global coronavirus outbreak last year.

Japan this month put Osaka, Tokyo, and eight other prefectures under "quasi-states of emergency" aimed at controlling the spread of COVID-19 with shorter business hours for restaurants and bars and stronger calls for teleworking.

But those measures have done little to reverse the trend so far, with Osaka reporting a record 1,220 cases on Sunday, two weeks after those restrictions took effect as a mutant strain fueled the spread.

"The fruits of these measures should be appearing now," Osaka Governor Hirofumi Yoshimura told reporters in comments carried online.

"Medical services are also in a dire state, and we've decided that we need a state of emergency. We need stronger measures such as those that would stop the movement of people," he said, adding that Japan's third-most populous prefecture would make the formal request to the government on Tuesday.

In a TV Asahi poll published Monday, just over half of respondents said they believed the "quasi-emergency" restrictions were ineffective.

Tokyo is also considering a state-of-emergency request, Governor Yuriko Koike told reporters late on Sunday, in a step backwards as Japan scrambles to bring the pandemic under control ahead of the Summer Olympics.

"Taking pre-emptive action is crucial right now," Koike said. Tokyo reported 543 new cases on Sunday, the 18th straight day of seven-day increases.

Asked about possible requests from Osaka and Tokyo, Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato, the government's top spokesman, said any such calls would need to be considered "swiftly."

(Reporting by Chang-Ran Kim, Makiko Yamazaki, Daniel Leussink; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Sam Holmes)
Patriots' Day: A gun rights case study By Mark Alexander

Joe Biden recently announced six incremental executive orders to advance the Left's constant pursuit of deconstructing and repealing the Second Amendment . Ironically, he rolled out the latest round of leftist gun control measures just ahead of our Patriots' Day commemoration of the battle of Lexington and Concord  a case study of consequences when tyrannical governments attempt to disarm the people. This effort was, of course, met with defiance. The result? The rise of American Liberty and the birth of a new nation. Biden declared, "No amendment to the Constitution is absolute." But in fact, the Second Amendment assurance of self-defense, and defense of Liberty, is the not only the First Civil Right but the most fundamental of rights of all people. Ahead of Patriots' Day, April 19th, let's take a brief stroll down the path that gave rise to our Republic by recalling the last time the central government attempted to confiscate weapons from grassroots Americans Patriots . On the evening of April 18, 1775, General Thomas Gage, acting as the Crown's military governor of Massachusetts, dispatched a force of 700 British Army regulars with secret orders. These troops, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, were to arrest 53-year-old Boston Tea Party leader Samuel Adams, Massachusetts Provincial Congress President John Hancock, and merchant fleet owner Jeremiah Lee. But what directly tied Gage's orders to the later enumeration in our Constitution's Second Amendment of the innate "right to keep and bear arms" was the primary mission of his Redcoat brigades. They were charged with undertaking a preemptive raid to confiscate arms and ammunition stored by Massachusetts Patriots in the town of Concord. Patriot militia and minutemen, under the leadership of the "radical" Sons of Liberty, anticipated this raid, and the confrontations with British regulars at Lexington and Concord proved to be the fuse that ignited the American Revolution. On April 18 near midnight, 41-year-old Paul Revere, who had arranged for advance warning of British movements, departed Charlestown (near Boston) for Lexington and Concord in order to warn John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and other Sons of Liberty that the British Army was marching to arrest them and seize their weapons caches. After meeting with Hancock and Adams in Lexington, Revere was captured, but his Patriot ally, Samuel Prescott, continued to Concord and warned militiamen along the way. The Patriots in Lexington and Concord, with other citizen militias in New England, were bound by "minute man" oaths to "stand at a minute's warning with arms and ammunition." The oath of the Lexington militia read thus: "We trust in God that, should the state of our affairs require it, we shall be ready to sacrifice our estates and everything dear in life, yea, and life itself, in support of the common cause." In the early dawn of April 19, their oaths would be tested with blood. Under the command of 46-year-old farmer and militia Captain John Parker, 77 militiamen assembled on the town green at Lexington, where they soon faced Smith's overwhelming force of seasoned British regulars. Parker did not expect shots to be exchanged, but his orders were: "Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here." Within close musket range from the Patriots' column, British Major John Pitcairn swung his sword and ordered, "Lay down your arms, you damned rebels!" Not willing to sacrifice his small band of Patriots on the green, as Parker later wrote in a sworn deposition, "I immediately ordered our Militia to disperse, and not to fire." But his Patriots did not lay down their arms. Then under Pitcairn's orders, as Parker testified, "Immediately said Troops made their appearance and rushed furiously, fired upon, and killed eight of our Party without receiving any Provocation therefor from us." Ten other Patriots were wounded. As the American militia retreated toward Concord with the British in pursuit, their ranks grew to more than 400. In Concord, the British divided in order to search for armament stores. Before noon, the second confrontation between regulars and militiamen occurred as 100 British light infantry from three companies faced the ranks of militia and minutemen at Concord's Old North Bridge. From depositions on both sides, the British fired first, killing two and wounding four. This time, however, the militia commander, Major John Buttrick, ordered, "Fire, for God's sake, fellow soldiers, fire!" And fire they did. The volley commenced with what poet Ralph Waldo Emerson later immortalized as "The Shot Heard Round the World." With that shot, farmers, laborers, landowners, and statesmen alike brought upon themselves the sentence of death for treason. In the ensuing firefight, the British suffered heavy casualties. In discord, the Redcoats retreated to Concord proper and, after reinforcing their ranks, marched back toward Lexington. During their Concord retreat, British regulars took additional casualties in sporadic firefights. The most notable of those was an ambush by the reassembled ranks of John Parker's militia, which became known as Parker's Revenge. Despite reinforcements when they returned to Lexington, the King's men were no match for the Patriot ranks. The militia and minutemen inflicted heavy casualties upon the Redcoats along their 18-mile tactical retreat to Boston. By day's end, the Patriots suffered 49 killed, 39 wounded, and five missing. The British casualties totaled 73 killed, 174 wounded, and 26 missing. Upon hearing of those first shots in what would become an eight-year struggle for American Liberty, Samuel Adams declared to fellow Patriot John Hancock, "What a glorious morning this is!" Indeed it was, and remains with every sunrise over our nation since. Undoubtedly, President Post Turtle has forgotten whatever American history he once knew, exacerbated by a half-century of chronic Potomac Fever. But he and his cadre of useful idiots should take a refresher course on the founding catalyst giving rise to our nation. Patriots, through the trials we face now, stand firm and fast , and remember who YOU are, brothers and sisters  who WE are together. Mark Alexander is the executive editor of the Patriot Post. Home
While the needs may vary from one school to the next, its critical that schools are strategically planning to maximize their return on investment, in turn achieving the greatest outcomes for students.
Our ultimate guide on what to see and what to do in Ventotene.

Ventotene is the smallest inhabited island of the Pontine archipelago and the smallest municipality of Lazio with its 743 inhabitants. Named in the Odyssey as the Island of the Sirens and setting of the classic Italian comedy by Daniele Virzi,, Ventotene is a small jewel rich in history and ancient remains, with a sea and natural habitats among the most beautiful and exclusive of the Mediterranean.The surface of the island is just 2 square kilometers and, a little less than a mile to the east, there is the small island of Santo Stefano, completely uninhabited and a destination for excursions and guided tours that can be experienced thanks to a cab boat service.The seabed of the islet is a real paradise for divers who can admire red gorgonians and intertwining sea roses of a size hardly found elsewhere.

For those who seek close contact with nature without putting aside the discovery of a millennia-long history, the island of Ventotene is ideal. The extraordinary morphology of the volcanic rocks, the colors and scents of the Mediterranean saltwater and the warm hospitality of the inhabitants of the island make Vontetene unforgettable.

Ventotene: from an Island of Exile to a Summer Getaway Spot

The island was one of the favorite destinations of the Romans for their holidays and became famous because it was used as a place of exile for many members of the imperial family.The most famous of these exiles was certainly the only daughter of Emperor Augustus, Giulia, who took refuge in the extravagant complex called Villa Giulia, which you can still visit today.For various reasons, Agrippina Major, Livilla, Octavia and Flavia Domitilla were all confined on Ventotene.

The island is also significant because it is here that was signed the Ventotene Manifesto that, in 1941, in the midst of World War II, called for the union of European countries and that will be the ideal reference to which many will look, in later years, for the process of continental integration.

Where is Ventotene?

Ventotene is the southernmost of the Pontine islands. Geographically, it is part of the Flegree Islands even if administratively it is part of the archipelago of the Ponziane Islands, in the province of Latina.

With the Flegree it shares the dark beaches and limestone tuffaceous rocks, and, in part, the culture: the inhabitants of Ventotene have origins from Campania and it can be heard in the dialect and tasted in the traditional cooking.

What to see in Ventotene

Santo Stefano Island

Ancient Roman Remains

A little more than one sea mile from Ventotene there lies the island of Santo Stefano, dominated by the imposing bulk of the penitentiary built in 1700 by the architect Francesco Carpi, who designed a model penitentiary on behalf of Ferdinand IV King of Naples.It was used until 1965 and saw illustrious prisoners during the twenty years of Fascism, including the future President of the Republic Sandro Pertini. Unfortunately, visits to the Bourbon prison of Santo Stefano have been forbidden for some years due to the unsafe state of the structure. The Roman port of Ventotene is carved into the tuff and today is a fascinating example of stratification, where history meets the modern day, and deciphering what is ancient and what is not becomes almost impossible.The wharfs, jetties, and piers where Roman ships were moored are still visible at the port, andcoexist alongside the contemporary moorings.Ancient Romans also dug a fishpond in the soft sedimentary rock, which was equipped with complicated technologies that allowed the flow of freshwater into the saltwater,without affecting the towns water supply. In fact, the fresh water attracted fish that were captured and bred within the fishponds.

Grab a mask and snorkel and dive under the cliff of the lighthouse of Ventotene and you can still see the remains of Roman fish farms.

The Romans inhabited the island of Ventotene making it a fairly prosperous port.

Villa Giulia

high land that juts out into the sea).

Roman cisterns of Ventotene

Cisterna di Villa Stefania (

Cisterna dei Detenuti (

Cisterna dei Detenuti,

Octavian Augustus had his villa built at a panoramic point of Ventotene, on Punta Eolo (theToday you can visit the baths of Villa Giulia and enjoy the magnificent view from the ruins.The Archaeological Museum of Ventotene organizes guided tours of Villa Giulia, though they must be booked in advance.TheCistern of Villa Stefania) and theCistern of the Prisoners) are accessible by foot from Piazza Castello, the main square of the small town.Once you have reached theyou can view the murals and graffiti of daily life painted and engraved by prisoners who lived here during the Bourbon era (1734- 1860).

The Cistern of Villa Stefania is a perfect example of a rainwater supply system leftover from Ancient Rome: it is perfectly stuccoed and intact.

Island Views

Following the Via degli Ulivi in the opposite direction of the town, there is the Semaforo, an old anti-aircraft post dating back to the Second World War.The Semaforo is an excellent observation point not only to view in one glance the whole island but also to admire the flight of seagulls and kestrels.

Both Ventotene and the islet of Santo Stefano are of great importance for the stopover of migratory birds on their way from Europe to Africa. There are 194 species of birds that stop over the islands throughout the year. There is even the Ornithological Museum of Ventotene that can be visited throughout the year.

From this vantage point, you can also admire the sea. Along the coast, observe posidonias and seaweeds while, in the tidal pools, just below the surface of the water, you can spot: jellyfish, corals, gorgonians and actinias, molluscs, crustaceans, starfish and sea urchins. It is not uncommon to see evolutions of a small group of dolphins that frequent the waters of this sea and plunder the networks of fishermen along the reef called Moggio di Terra.

The waters are rich in squid, groupers, mullets, snappers, breams, mullets, amberjacks, turbot. The characteristics and the abundance of fish species and avifauna on the island have meant that in 1999 Ventotene was included, by the Ministry of Environment, among the Marine and Terrestrial Parks. Rich in beaches and coves, some reachable only by sea, the island also lives on tourism.

Among the typical products of the island there is the very precious Ventotene Lentil, as well known as the one from Castelluccio. The inhabitants serve it in soup with an abundant amount of basil and fish.

The Emerald and Turquoise Beaches of Ventotene

Cala Nave

Lighthouse rocks

Cala Rossano

Punta Pascone

The coast of Ventotene is mostly rocky, however there are some beautiful beaches. One of the iconic beaches of Ventotene is located below the town and is called Cala Nave. It takes its name from the sedimentary rock that emerges in front of the beach and resembles a ship. It is narrow and has dark sand. Cala Nave is a private beach with umbrellas and sunbeds that you can rent for the day.Adjacent to the small beach of Cala Nave the rocks of the lighthouse offer comfortable spaces to lie down, and trampolines of tuff perfect for diving.There is the possibility to rent sunbeds, or to lay in the sun directly on the rocks. Just below the lighthouse is a bar and restaurant where you can grab a drink and lunch.Cala Rossano is small and can be reached on foot from the port. It is located just in front of the passage of boats and ferries and is not the most relaxing beach spot, but it can be an alternative to vary the routine of the island.Ventotene and the beautiful, government protected marine reserve lend themselves particularly well to diving and snorkeling.Punta Pascone has a 15-meter seabed of black lava sand, populated by tracine and turbot.

Secca dell'Archetto is a shoal located about 300 meters from the coast of the island in the open sea. The underwater tunnel inhabited by sea sponges leaves you breathless.

How to get to Ventotene

Ventotene is an island that looks a bit like a raft in the middle of the sea.It is located halfway on the Ponza-Ischia route.The nearest port to Ventotene is the port of Formia which can be easily reached by car or by train from Rome (from Formia train station to the port is a short 10 minute walk).With the ferry it takes 2 hours to arrive from Formia, while with the high- speed hydrofoil the time is halved.

In addition to the port of Formia, ferries to Ventotene leave from the ports of Terracina and Anzio. Also, the islands of Ponza and Ventotene are connected by ferries.

Disembarkation fee

Those who arrive in Ventotene by ferry or dock at the port with a private boat are required to pay a landing fee of 1.50 euros. The tax is paid to reach the island, but not to return to the mainland.

As of 2018, even boats that moor in Ventotene waters are required to pay a fee, regardless of landing on land (information at the AMP-RNS Visitor Center tel. 077185239 e-mail: centrovisite@riservaventotene.it website: http://www.riservaventotene.it).

Where to Eat in Ventotene

Brigantino

Situated on the rocks below the lighthouse, this place is great for a first or second course, maybe for lunch with a sea view, in your bathing suit and with wet hair.

Address: Spiaggia Calanave. Phone: 0771 854041

Il Giardino

This restaurant offers a beautiful location, great service and simple but refined dishes.

Address: Via Olivi 45. Phone: 0771 85020

L'Isola dei Sapori

Located directly on the Porto Romano, this cafe prepares a delicious menu for an aperitif or light dinner.

Address: Via Porto Romano 3. Phone: 0771 85292

From the port you can get to the center by climbing the magnificent yellow zig-zag staircase. The island is easily navigated by foot. On the opposite side of the harbor the streets are not well lit, and in an evening walk illuminated by moonlight and starry skies is beautiful.

At times, the silence is only interrupted by the sound of the surf. If you visit in May you will find the island full of flowers and plants that fill the air: depending on the roads that travel there will be different scents to keep you company. The inlets, the landscapes, the colors of the sky and the sea make Ventotene fabulous.
A glance over the news of the last week feels like being stuck in a time loop. A Minnesota police officer killed a Black man. Protests broke out. A man took a gun into a public place and killed eight people. Newly released video footage showed that a Chicago police officer had shot and killed an unarmed child. Health officials in Colorado warned of a new potential surge in COVID-19 infections. Polls show that many Republicans are hesitant about getting vaccinated. People are dying from COVID-19. Though each of these stories felt dismally and predictably repetitive, the stories themselves are new, bearing fresh violence, fresh tragedy, and fresh grief. In many ways, individual cases of state brutality, public protest, gun violence, coronavirus infections, and political misuse of a public health emergency are part of the same old story; at the same time, theyre each singularly meaningful. The repetition reflects broken systems and ongoing crises; the stories are unique. And the press is responsible for placing individual stories in context even while allowing each story its own particular relevance.

News outlets continue to grapple with the challenge of connecting the dots between incidents that are unique but not isolated. The New York Times reported on Saturday that police officers have been responsible for the deaths of more than three people per day since the first day of Derek Chauvins trial for the murder of George Floyd. In another story, the Times reported how a Chicago police officer killing seventh-grader Adam Toledo has brought back memories of Chicago police killing seventeen-year old Laquan McDonald in 2014 (in both cases, city officials attempted to obscure video evidence). The Washington Post reported that the coronavirus pandemic in the United States has turned into a patchwork of regional hotspots, with some states hammered by a surge of infections and hospitalizations even as others have seen the crisis begin to ease. A Times investigation found that counties that had voted for Donald Trump in Novembers election had lower vaccination rates, on average. On Friday, CNN published a map noting the forty-five mass shootings that had taken place within the past month. More shootings have been reported in the two days since CNNs map was released. On early Sunday morning, a gunman in a Wisconsin tavern killed three people and injured two more; later that day, another gunman killed three people in Austin, Texas.

Another day, another mass shooting, Jon Allsop wrote in this newsletter on March 22, after a gunman in Colorado killed ten people in a grocery store. The repetition of these horrors is, in a sense, just as much the point as their individuality. And here we are again. Another day, another mass shooting, another act of police brutality, another community facing illness, another poll showing the fallout of misinformation and exploitative politics, another sister, aunt, grandfather, bus driver, colleague, or friend lost to COVID-19.

ICYMI: Its time to rethink how journalism covers guns and mass shootings

New Yorker staff writer Jelani Cobb was in Minneapolis reporting on Derek Chauvins trial last week when Minnesota police shot and killed Daunte Wright, another Black man. The connections between their stories had already been secured in the publics mind, Cobb wrote for The New Yorker, calling Floyds and Wrights deaths installments in a serial American tragedy that no one wishes to see but is set to be replayed for the foreseeable future. On Friday, Cobb was on CJRs podcast, The Kicker, describing a moment in which he listened as George Floyds brother Philonise considered what he might say to Daunte Wrights mother. This man who lost his brother was sorting out how to console this woman who lost her son, and really trying to give her the lay of the land about how this would all play out in the public eye and so on, Cobb told Kyle Pope, CJRs editor and publisher. That is never an expertise that anyone should have. The two stories have been cemented together in a national conversation by the thru-line of police brutality, but each family is experiencing a grief and loss all their own.

The routine has become so predictable that some gun-control activists see the familiarity of tragedy as their biggest obstacle to achieving the change theyve been seeking for the past decade, Washington Post reporters wrote on Saturday of the repetitive prevalence of gun violence. Thats the trouble for the press, too: the familiarity of tragedy: the tragedy of police killings, gun violence, deaths from COVID-19. But tragedy is never so familiar as when it strikes you. Telling human stories takes special attention and time. Andas much as the contextits the specific humanity within each instance of crisis that must be foregrounded again and again and again and again, lest we lose sight of each loss in the overwhelming tumult of the crisis.

Sign up for CJR 's daily email

Below, more on intersecting crises:

Press freedom in Minnesota: On Friday, a federal judge issued a fourteen-day order prohibiting Minnesota State law enforcement from detaining or using force against journalists covering the protests, the Minnesota Reformer reported . (The order does not apply to the National Guard or local law enforcement). On Saturday, groups of media organizations covering the Minnesota protests signed a letter to state officials detailing mistreatment at the hands of police . In one case, the letter describes law enforcement officers arresting CNN producer Carolyn Sungan Asian-American womanby throwing her to the ground as she tried to comply with a dispersal order; her hands were zip-tied, and one trooper yelled to ask her if she spoke English. She was detained for over two hours. The letter also details examples of physical assaults on other journalists, including the use of chemical agents. Later that day, Minnesota governor Tim Walz called the assault and detention of journalists covering protests in the state  unacceptable in every circumstance.  Just a reminder that police violence toward journalists is bullshit because police violence is bullshit and not because its happening to journalists, Cierra Brown Hinton, Scalawag magazines executive director and publisher, tweeted .

Children and police officers: Gillian Brockell, a staff writer for The Washington Post s history blog, Retropolis, wrote about being charged for menacing a deadly weapon just before turning thirteen, comparing her own experiences with law enforcement to the killing of thirteen-year-old Adam Toledo . In one encounter with police, Brockell was attempting to stab a neighbor with a butcher knife; in another, she fired a gun on a dare. In both circumstances, she walked away unharmed. The charges against Brockell were dropped; her record was expunged. I have understood since that day in court that my privilege  my Whiteness and my family having just enough money for an attorney  allowed me to get a better deal in the justice system, one that would enable me to live a whole full life, good and bad, average and extraordinary, Brockell wrote. It isnt just that I got the privilege of moving through the world without a criminal record. When the cops showed up, they didnt shoot me.

The trust crisis: For Nature , Jeff Tollefson wrote about efforts to combat the spread of vaccine misinformation. A research consortium called the Virality Project is attempting to use intervention strategies for misinformation developed during the election. Elsewhere, the COVID States Project has been conducting monthly surveys about public opinion surrounding the pandemic across all fifty states.

A note from the home front: Covering Climate Now, the collaborative co-founded by CJR and The Nation to encourage better and more reporting on the climate crisis, continues its focused week of coverage. Look for stories about living through the climate emergency at Covering Climate Nows 450 media partners, including CJR, and join the conversation on Twitter at #ClimateEmergencyWeek.

Other notable stories:

ICYMI: What does the future hold for nonprofit newsrooms?

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Lauren Harris is a freelance journalist. She writes CJR's weekly newsletter for the Journalism Crisis Project. Follow her on Twitter @LHarrisWrites.
Redditors are sharing the things that are totally fine to do and say in the United States but would not go over well across the pond.

This weekend, Reddit user TownImmediate9060 asked fellow fans of the platform: 'What is socially acceptable in the U.S. that would be horrifying in the U.K.?'

Thousands of people have replied, sharing the American customs  like taking leftover food home from a restaurant  and American vocabulary  like 'fanny pack'  that would earn some raised eyebrows if someone tried them out in the UK.

Differences: Redditors are sharing the things that are totally fine to do and say in the United States but would not go over well in the UK (stock image)

Several people pointed to ways that dining at a restaurant in the US can be different from doing so in the UK.

'When my Brit friends were visiting, they were horrified when the waiter took their credit card to swipe back at the terminal. This made them REALLY uncomfortable,' wrote one.

Another said that taking food home from a restaurant  in a to-go bag or doggie bag  may be commonplace in the US, but is a no-no in the UK.

'You scavenge your next meal from the leftovers of your current one? Ask a British restaurant for a box to take your meal home, and youll get a look that says youre difficult and a penny-pinching a**e,' wrote another.

Some couldn't believe that most Americans make their tea by heating up water in a microwave, rather than a kettle. But hot tea is hardly as popular in the US as it is in the the UK: According to Quartz, Brits drink 4.281 pounds of tea per person annually, compared to just .503 pounds per person in the US  meaning Brits drink over eight times as much tea as Americans.

Coffee is a much more popular beverage, so most US homes have coffee makers, while kettles are rendered an unnecessary appliance.

And according to the Washington Post, 80 per cent of tea consumed in the US is iced tea.

To that end, some Redditors were baffled by the popularity of iced tea.

Other things people listed that are normal and acceptable in the US include gaps in bathroom stalls, 'chatting casually at the lift,' 'politicians mentioning religion when campaigning,' and routine circumcision.

'Its pretty rare over here, we quite like our floppy little blankets,' said one commenter.

Multiple commenters are amazed that pharmaceutical ads are commonplace in the US  they frequently air on TV and appear in magazines  while one said that 'the length and frequency of commercial breaks in general' was surprising.

'Always horrified by the ads  both the content and the recurrence! Bloody hell, all your TV has like an ad a minute,' wrote another.

The tendency to reward and encourage overworking struck others as shocking, with one American writing: 'During my time in the U.K. my colleagues were horrified by the long hours and lack of holidays that was the norm in the U.S.'

One Brit said the 'style of customer service' in the US was commonly 'way too over the top,' prompting Americans to reply that British customer service was too gruff.

By that same token, though, one commenter said that American friendliness is a nice thing to encounter.

Careful! One said that in the US, it doesn't matter which way you hold a peace sign  but if this woman (stock photo) turned her hands around, it would be offensive in the UK

'Taking 20+ minutes to help a complete stranger who is struggling with something,' they wrote. 'The amount of times a total stranger has stopped to assist me or someone I know? Y'all really make my heart melt!'

Quite a few people also gave examples of vocabulary that has a different meaning in the US and the UK and can make for some awkward interactions.

While 'rubber' refers to a type of elastic substance in the US that is used for car tires and rain boots, in the UK means condom.

Whereas Americans have 'fanny packs,' Brits have 'bum bags'  since 'fanny' doesn't mean backside in the UK.

One said that a person would never say someone 'has a lot of spunk' in the UK. Though it means guts or determination in the US, in the UK it means semen.

Naming a child Randy  sometimes short for Randall  is also not uncommon in the US, but would get some odd looks in the UK from those who understand the word to mean sexually excited.

'Ive learned from my British friends that you have to be very careful giving peace signs,' said one more commenter. 'If you have your hand facing a certain way, its like a f*** you in the UK basically, whereas in the US it doesnt matter which way its facing really.'
YEREVAN, APRIL 19, ARMENPRESS. The issue of the Armenian prisoners of war who are being held captive in Azerbaijan has been discussed in the political groups of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Member of the Armenian Delegation to PACE, MP Naira Zohrabyan said on Facebook.

The PACE spring session has kicked off, and the discussion of the issue of the Armenian POWs has started in the political groups. The discussion over the Armenian POWs in the political group of European reformists and democrats was quite heated. I have presented undeniable facts about the number of the POWs as approved by the Red Cross and the European Court, I have presented facts about the tortures of the Armenian POWs and have talked about the international law and the international conventions according to which Azerbaijan is ought to return the Armenian POWs without any precondition, Zohrabyan said.

She said Azerbaijans claim that Armenians captured after November 10 are not prisoners of war is a total lie which violates the international law. She called on the Council of Europe to use all its means for releasing the Armenian POWs.

The main discussion of the Armenian POW issue will take place on April 20. And as the view according to which Azerbaijan must immediately implement the 3rd Geneva Convention and release all Armenian POWs, prevails in most of the political groups, I am sure that the discussions will be effective, MP Zohrabyan said.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
On April 15 workers at the Continental Auto plant in Karben, Hesse carried out a 24-hour strike to protest against the decision to close the factory by 2023.

Continental intends to wipe out 30,000 jobs worldwide and close a series of factories. The plan was decided by the corporations executive at the beginning of September 2020 in order to save 1 billion by 2023. The German engineering union IG Metall, which has known about the plans for more than a year, is focusing protest actions at individual plants in order to isolate workers and prevent a joint struggle by all Conti employees.

Along with the Karben plant in Hesse, where 1,088 workers produce car components, Conti factories in Babenhausen, Hesse (2,570 jobs), Roding in the Upper Palatinate (520 jobs) and Conti-Vitesco in Nuremberg (almost 500 jobs) are also to be closed. The planned cutbacks, however, go far beyond this list and affect around 13,000, or one in four jobs in Germany alone.

Strikers in front of the Continental plant in Karben (Banner reads This factory is on strike - Photo WSWS

Many of those losing their jobs have been with the company for decades, like Ms. Weber. She told the World Socialist Web Site, We found out about the closure on April 9. That was the day I celebrated my 35th anniversary at the company. On the same day, new apprentices started work, only to learn at noon that the factory was closing.

Ms. Weber confirmed that the workforce had suffered wage cuts for the past 11 years, all in order to keep the factory open and save jobs. And then you get a blow like this! She reported that she trained at the VDO works in Frankfurt-Heddernheim and worked in Bockenheim, before joining Continental in Karben when the company was taken over. She enjoyed her work and does not think she can find anything else comparable. Also she drew attention to the temporary contract workersaround 200 are employed in the factorywho are likely to be the first to be made redundant.

To prevent the risk of coronavirus arising from large gatherings, workers had been told to stay home and only a handful of strikers manned the strike post at the factory gate. They were mainly members of the works council and IG Metall, seeking to demonstrate that we are capable of striking. An indefinite strike has also been planned.

The entire auto and related supplier industry is facing a huge upheaval. Auto companies are converting production to electric mobility and using the pandemic as an excuse to implement long-planned strategies for rationalisation. Production is being relocated and concentrated, and tens of thousands of previously well-paid jobs are being wiped out. Production in Karben will probably be undertaken in the future in Eastern Europe, Romania, Lithuania or the Czech Republic, where workers are exploited under much worse conditions than those currently prevailing in Germany.

With 230,000 employees, Continental is the worlds second largest supplier to the car industry. The corporation, with a 150-year long history, has long since developed from a rubber tyre manufacturer in Lower Saxony into a globally active supplier producing components for auto, rail and air transport. During the Nazi era, the company employed tens of thousands of forced labourers and was an indispensable part of the Nazi armaments and war industry.

Today, Continentals largest shareholder, with 46 percent, is the Schaeffler family, the countrys sixth wealthiest company and one of the worlds super-richest. The Continental corporation, which is currently laying off 30,000 workers, paid out 600 million in dividends to its shareholders as recently as last summer, despite the coronavirus crisis.

Ten years ago there was already a big wave of layoffs and plant closures at Continental. At the time, Schaeffler had just taken over Continental, which was three times its size, when the international stock market collapsed. In order to meet the banks demands, workers were subjected to a brutal austerity programme. Many plants were closed, including a tyre factory in Clairoix, France and the truck tyre plant in Hanover-Stocken.

The French workers occupied the factory in northern France and contacted their German colleagues in Saargemund and Hanover. When workers from Clairoix and Lower Saxony demonstrated together with those in Hanover on April 24, 2009, the company executive reacted with alarm. In order to nip any effective international industrial action in the bud, the management quickly offered workers relatively high severance payments.

They then recovered this outlay through wage concessions agreed to by the IG Metall and IG BCE. At Schaeffler, with the help of the trade unions, a wage cut of 17 percent was imposed, which the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Left Party also supported. Workers at Continental have now undergone wage cuts for the past 12 years now, as Ms. Weber and the Karben works councils confirmed. Nevertheless, the plant is still being closed.

It is clear that workers can only defend themselves against these attacks by organising together internationally in the various Conti factories and across national borders. This is the policy of the Socialist Equality Party and its affiliated parties in the International Committee of the Fourth International. We propose that workers form action committees that can act completely independently of the IG Metall, IG BCE and all of the trade unions.

Earlier this year, the SGP launched the Network of Action Committees for Safe Workplaces. The appeal for action stated: We created the network because we are no longer prepared to accept the mass redundancies planned for industry, dangerous working conditions and the cover-up of the infection figures in the factories. We are striving to organise the growing resistance independently of Bundestag parties and trade unions and coordinate it internationally.

For decades, the unions have repeatedly pressured the Conti workforce into making concessions and forcing them to give up the gains fought for in prior contract struggles. The unions claimed that such concessions were necessary to secure jobs and factories. Now tens of thousands of jobs and entire plants are being surrendered without a fight.

IG Metall was involved in the planning of the mass layoffs and closures from the start. Its executive committee member Christiane Benner is deputy chair of the Conti supervisory board. The union has taken on the task of enforcing company policy in the factories, and the current protests are part of this. Instead of mobilising workers at all plants against the capitalists, the IG Metall is dividing the workforce on the basis of its long-standing single location policy.

In the media, union bosses complain that the company wants to relocate jobs to Eastern European low-wage countries out of pure greed for profits. In Karben the workers are being told: We, the IG Metall, actually reject the closure outright. We are only negotiating a social contract in order to establish a legal basis for industrial action.

In the end, however, the unions signature will set the seal on the closure, coupled with its familiar methods of pressuring workers to take early retirement, severance pay and a transfer into a subsidiary company, which in turn leads to unemployment after a few months.

IG Metall has just repeated these tactics at the nearby Continental plant in Babenhausen. The union declares it has secured a great victory because the factory will not close in 2025 as planned, but instead three years later, in 2028. Up until then, most of the 3,300 jobs at the factory will be phased out.

The agreed severance payments, ranging from 20,000 to a maximum of 190,000 gross, are based on years of service and the readiness of workers to sacrifice their jobs. Those who decide quickly are to receive a turbo bonus amounting to an additional three months salary. It was also agreed that this severance offer would only apply to IG Metall members. The fate of one-third of the workforce, who are not union members, will be decided by arbitration. Temporary and contract workers can expect nothing at all.

Since the announcement of this deal, angry comments from employees have been piling up on social media. One commentator said that the agreement reached by IG Metall was a very small crumb from a mouldy cake. Another described the deal was a slap in the face and a ridiculous offer.

The statement of the chairperson of the works council at the Babenhausen plant, Anne Nothing, following the agreement is significant. In her opinion it had never been realistic to save all jobs at the factory. This should give workers in Karben food for thought.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 01:44:10|Editor: huaxia

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People visit the Royal Mummies' Hall at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization (NMEC) in Cairo, Egypt, April 18, 2021. The Royal Mummies' Hall of the NMEC opened to the public on Sunday. The Mummies' Hall is specially designed to display the mummies belonging to kings and queens from the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th dynasties that ruled ancient Egypt over 3,000 years ago. (Xinhua/Sui Xiankai)

by Mahmoud Fouly

CAIRO, April 18 (Xinhua) -- With its dark-walled and dimly-lit open rooms, the crypt-like Royal Mummies Hall at Cairo's new National Museum of Egyptian Civilization (NMEC) was opened to visitors for the first time on Sunday, displaying 20 mummies of Ancient Egyptian kings and queens.

The showcased mummies were among the 22 transferred earlier in April from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo to the NMEC in a remarkable parade.

The opening of the magnificent mummies hall coincided with the International Day for Monuments and Sites, also known as the World Heritage Day.

"We have planned to open the Royal Mummies Hall on the World Heritage Day after restoration of the mummies," Fayrouz Fekry Selim, deputy director for management and operation, told Xinhua at the museum.

"The turnout of visitors today is high. Three Germans were the first to tour the Royal Mummies Hall after its opening," Selim added, noting that the museum has received more than 150,000 visitors since the inauguration by Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi on April 3.

The mummies belonged to 18 kings and four queens that ruled Ancient Egypt over 3,000 years ago.

The Royal Mummies Hall is located beneath the Main Hall. It is reached by a downward stairway at the entrance of the Main Hall of the museum.

Once inside, visitors can follow the direction arrows on the floor to go through the passages, tour the entire hall, and see all the mummies, most of which are showcased next to the coffins they were found in.

The first mummy that visitors encounter is that of King Seqenenre Taa II, followed by those of Queen Ahmose Nefertari, King Amenhotep I, King Thutmose I, King Thutmose II, Queen Hatshepsut, King Thutmose II, King Amenhotep II and Thutmose IV.

The rest of the mummies include those of King Ramses II and Queen Tiye, which amazingly still have head hair in a good condition of preservation.

"It was beautiful and very impressive to see all those mummies from such a long time ago together in one area," Judith Adriaanse, a young lady from the Netherlands, told Xinhua after she visited the Royal Mummies Hall.

She added that she has been working in Egypt for six months and will bring her parents to visit the museum.

Another Dutch visitor Thomas said that he was amazed by the conditions of the mummies.

"They all have pretty nice, fair white teeth," the young man said with a smile. "We've only heard about the names of those pharaohs, but it's pretty cool to see all of them in one place."

Although 22 mummies were moved to the NMEC, the Royal Mummies Hall accommodates 20, which are currently in display. The other two mummies will be exhibited in rotation with others, according to Mahrous el-Sanadidy, a senior curator at the museum.

"The area of the Royal Mummies Hall is 850 square meters. It exhibits 20 mummies, 12 coffins and some of the special belongings of Amenhotep II and Thutmose IV," Sanadidy explained, stressing that the royal mummies are the pride of the new museum.

The NMEC's foundation stone was laid in 2002 and its temporary exhibition hall was opened in 2017, through joint efforts of the UNESCO and the Egyptian government.

The total area of the museum is approximately 138,600 square meters. The Main Hall, whose area is about 2,000 square meters, exhibits artifacts from the prehistoric times, the pharaonic dynasties, the Islamic and Coptic eras until modern-day Egypt.

"What I saw is unbelievable," said Mohamed Saada, a senior architecture student, after he visited the mummies hall. "It really makes me feel proud of being Egyptian." Enditem
Beijing's Daxing district to build 40-hectare commercial aerospace industry base

Global Times) 09:28, April 19, 2021

Aerial photo taken on June 14, 2019 shows the terminal building of the Beijing Daxing International Airport in Beijing, capital of China. Photo: Xinhua

The first Beijing commercial aerospace development conference was held in Daxing district on Sunday. Daxing district signed several commercial aerospace industry projects and an agreement for future cooperation with 16 commercial aerospace companies during the conference, with plans to build a 600-mu (40-hectare) commercial aerospace industry base in Anding town within the district.

The commercial aerospace industry base will center on areas including commercial rocket research, key components, system integration and satellite internet demonstration applications with a variety of supporting enterprises, such as satellite applications, information technology, and aerospace materials, the Beijing Daily reported on Sunday.

The base would establish an incubation, sharing and innovation platform for commercial aerospace enterprises and create a sound environment for the aerospace industry to collaborate and develop together, said the report.

The industry base will benefit from a series of policies involving talent, technology, finance, listing, the internet and other aspects, according to the Beijing Daily. Meanwhile, Daxing district will study and issue specific policies to support commercial aerospace programs and set up an industry development fund to accelerate the industry's development and attract more talent.

Daxing district has incorporated the aerospace industry into its 14th Five-Year development plan, aiming to build the base into a benchmark and a demonstration base in the commercial aerospace industry. The district will take advantage of the industry base's convenient location to build an aerospace industry ecology, which is close to the Beijing-Taipei Expressway and 12 kilometers from Daxing International Airport.

(Web editor: Xian Jiangnan, Hongyu)
(TNS)  To build a computer chip resistant to hacking, University of Michigan students took inspiration from a structure uniquely designed to stop intruders: the human immune system.A professor and a group of graduate students at UM spent six years building Morpheus, a computer chip that sought to defeat the sort of cyberattacks that threaten Americans every day, from banking and financial systems to computer security and medical data.The UM chip was put to the test from June through August in a competition called FETT (finding exploits to thwart tampering) from the U.S. Department of Defense.More than 500 hackers were offered up to $50,000 to try to crack Morpheus in a mock medical database.None succeeded."What our chip does is it actually protects software from hacking," said Todd Austin, the professor who led the project."Computer security is not in a very good state. It seems like there's the attackers and the protectors, and the attackers definitely have the upper hand right now. ... The goal is to try and stop people from hacking into databases and stealing sensitive information."Because of Morpheus' success in thwarting the hackers, Austin and a colleague plan to pursue efforts to turn the chip into a commercial venture that can benefit companies and perhaps consumers.According to UM, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA, partnered with the Department of Defense's Defense Digital Service and Synack, a crowdsourced security platform, to conduct FETT."Winning a DARPA competition is a big deal," said James Lewis, director of the strategic technologies program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C., think tank. It shows the technology has the potential to make it in the real world, perhaps on a larger-scale basis.Cyberattacks have plagued governments, companies and enterprises for years. The attacks are increasing, though often under-reported, according to ISACA, an international association focused on information technology governance.In 2015, the UM team started to work with DARPA to design and develop a computer chip and test its security.More than 500 hackers around the world were offered up to $50,000 last summer by DARPA to crack UM's computer chip and four others.Not one of the cybersecurity researchers was able to get into the Morpheus system, thanks to technology that allows the computer chip to change its coding every time it senses an attack."What's really unique about Morpheus is it can stop attacks that it doesn't know about," Austin said. "If it thinks someone's attacking, it starts changing really, really quickly ... and that makes it hard for attackers because one thing attackers need to do, they need to understand how the system is built."It was named for its attributes: the ability to morph whenever there is a cyberattack.Austin said the idea came from the human immune system. Whenever the human body realizes a virus has entered, the immune system immediately goes into a specialized attack to tryto get rid of it.Morpheus also goes into defense mode under attack. Instead of the research team creating one stagnant defense for a very specific cyberattack, as most computer chips do, Morpheus changes its coding every 100th millisecond whenever it senses an attack, making it almost impossible for a hacker to have time to learn its technology."What was really nice about working with DARPA is they put in all the money to incentivize all these attackers to test our security claims and, in the end, nobody was able to penetrate Morpheus," Austin said.Four other institutions participated in the program: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the University of Cambridge in England; nonprofit tech institute SRI International; and defense contractor Lockheed Martin.DARPA did not release the results of how each participant's computer chip held up against the hackers, though participants could announce the results themselves. The agency said overall, hackers found 10 vulnerabilities. None of those came from Morpheus.But for Morpheus to have a real-world impact, the UM researchers need to commercialize the technology, Lewis said.The challenges of getting Morpheus into real-world applications are two-fold, according to security experts."The ... first is you have to commercialize it. If it's just a research project, it won't get us anywhere," Lewis said. "The second issue is scale. ... It will still take some time before it shows up in enough devices to make a difference, but there's a big demand for this stuff. Everyone's tired of being hacked."Austin said Morpheus has the potential to help industries protect information on databases such as emails and logins to medical and financial information.He and another UM computer science and engineering professor, Valeria Bertacco, started Agita Labs to continue to advance Morpheus and seek to commercialize it.There have been discussions with Amazon and Microsoft to use Morpheus to protect cloud space, Austin said."I'm excited to see how Morpheus evolves now that it has proven itself in FETT and as security becomes a more and more pressing challenge in the tech world," Austin said."We are adapting the technology to protect the most sensitive data in the cloud, including medical and genomic data, biometrics and financial credentials."
American schools are going down the tubes because they have been infected with woke culture that has sacrificed the idea of excellence by indoctrinating students, according to a leading critic.

Vivek Ramaswamy spoke out in response to two separate controversies that impacted elite New York City prep schools where parents complained their children were being brainwashed with anti-racism ideology.

Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur and the author of Woke, Inc, compared the wave of wokeness in schools to Chinas Cultural Revolution of the 60s and 70s, when the people were indoctrinated with Maoism by the Communist Party.

Vivek Ramaswamy (above) spoke out in response to two separate controversies that impacted elite New York City prep schools where parents complained their children were being brainwashed with anti-racism ideology

Diversity is a good thing when its about the diversity of thought, Ramaswamy told Fox News on Sunday.

But today what's happening, especially in our schools, is we have taken this notion in the name of diversity - we have sacrificed true diversity itself.

Candace Owens says parents must SUE woke schools who want to cancel conservative thinking and blasts 'meaningless' degrees like gender studies Candace Owens is pictured Candace Owens has said parents need to start suing woke schools who want to cancel conservative thinking. The conservative commentator said: 'Parents have to start speaking out, not just speaking out, but suing. You have to start suing the schools because they're ruining the lives of young children.' She was joined on Fox News by Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk, who added: 'Where are the adults that are going to start to stand up and realize that the next generation that's standing up for freedom in our country is worthy of protection, in this situation? 'It takes courage to be a young conservative. It's time for adults to start to protect young people's right to organize and speak their mind.' Owens added: 'This thought process that we keep seeing that conservatives are not allowed to exist, that being conservative is backwards and it's wrong, and especially when it comes to the education system taking part in this, right? 'Smearing and labeling their own students, these students having to transfer out of schools. This is systematic bullying that's happening, but worse than that, it's propagandist.' She later praised Andrew Gutmann, 45, who pulled his daughter from $54,000 a year Brearley school as 'an absolute hero' before blasting 'meaningless' degrees like gender studies. Responding to one student's claims that they were punished for studying her in black history month, Owens said: 'This young girl you brought up...picked me, a black person, for Black History Month, and she was accused of being a racist. 'I mean, that is so twisted and perverted and wrong. It would be funny if it wasn't so cruel that led to her actually having to transfer out of this school.' Advertisement

Ramaswamy added: We have also sacrificed the idea of excellence and when we have gotten rid of excellence, I think our schools are going down the tubes.

His comments came just days after a father removed his daughter from an elite, all-girls Manhattan private school, Brearley, that counts Tina Fey and Drew Barrymore among its parents.

Andrew Gutmann, 45, had announced in an April 13 letter shared by Bari Weiss this week that he has chosen not to reenroll his daughter in the all-girls school where annual tuition is $54,000.

He pulled his daughter from the school over its woke antiracism 'obsession.' He accused the school of 'teaching what to think not how to think.'

The school responded by slamming him for being 'offensive.'

Last week, a math teacher who went public with his complaints that another elite New York City prep school, Grace Church School, was indoctrinating students with anti-racism ideology.

Grace Church School teacher Paul Rossi on Friday revealed that he will have to teach remotely rather than return to his classroom at the elite prep school in Manhattan's East Village Monday.

Rossi told DailyMail.com he received an email from school Principal George P. Davison this morning saying he should stay home until further notice for 'security concerns.' He is said to have been asked to stay home after another colleague threatened him in the wake of his complaints being published.

Rossi drew media attention earlier this week after publishing a blog post accusing the school of indoctrinating students with 'anti-racism' ideology that 'induces shame' in white students for being 'oppressors'.

He said he decided to come forward because he could no longer stay silent while 'witnessing the harmful impact' that anti-racism instruction has on children.

Principal Davison addressed the scathing post in a letter to parents and staff Tuesday saying he was 'disappointed' the teacher had chosen to air his 'differences' in a public forum.

Topher Nichols, chief communications officer for Grace Church School, however, told DailyMail.com Thursday that Rossi wouldn't be fired or face discipline over his post.

But Ramaswamy told Fox News that these incidents illustrate the extent to which American children are being brainwashed.

'I think it's going to be really damaging, poisoning the minds of our next generation,' he told Fox News.

'The thing about America as a country is that we are not like many other countries throughout history - defined on the basis of a single ethnicity, or a single language, or a single monarch.

'America is an idea, and part of being an idea as a country means this.

'The way we describe America affects that America actually works, that's why we call it the American dream. It's what we aspire to. E pluribus unum (out of many, one). That's what we should be aspiring to, ideas that bind us together.

He added: 'Instead we have been obsessing over diversity, our differences, for a decade now forgetting all of the ways in which we are actually the same, and now that's getting transmitted to the next generation.

'I think the way we describe this country to them will affect the way it works in the next generation, and that's something to be really frightened of.'

Gutmann, who runs his family's chemical business, told the New York Post on Saturday that he penned the 1,700-word letter he mailed to 650 different families because 'someone had to speak out.' He said he does not regret sending the letter.

'She hasn't been brainwashed yet by the school - but she's had me at home. I'm not so sure that's true of the other kids,' Gutmann told the outlet, referring to his daughter.

George P. Davison (right) the head of the Grace Church High School in Manhattan, sent a letter to parents and staff saying he was 'disappointed' math teacher Paul Rossi (left) had publicly blasted the private school in a blog post

'Someone had to do it. Someone had to light the match. Everyone's so afraid of cancel culture. We're going to destroy the city, we're going to destroy the country.'

Gutmann said he refused to sign the school's anti-racism pledge in October.

The school had started the required pledge after Black alumnae accused the school of racism in posts made to the Instagram account account 'Black at Brearley,' according to the Washington Free Beacon.

The school's antiracism and diversity plans are extensively described on its website.

'I thought they were going to kick my daughter out then,' Gutmann said.

'They didn't, but next year they have the pledge built into the yearly school contract.'

The concerned dad claimed that the school's 'once-rigorous curriculum' completely changed after administrators 'managed to sneak' in an increased emphasis on race during the pandemic 'when everyone was distracted,' the New York Post reported.

'I don't know who's really driving this and nobody does,' he told the outlet.

Gutmann said the thing he resented the most about Brearley is that the school 'has begun to teach what to think, instead of how to think.'

Rossi on Tuesday came forward with allegations in a blog post that he published on Substack

Grace Church High School is a $57,000-a-year private school whose famous alumni include actor David Duchovny and New York Times columnist David Brooks

Jane Fried, Brearley's head of school, sent a message to the school's families on Friday in which she slammed Gutmann's letter as 'deeply offensive and harmful.'

'This afternoon, I and others who work closely with Upper School students met with more than one hundred of them, many of whom told us that they felt frightened and intimidated by the letter and the fact that it was sent directly to our homes,' Fried wrote.

'Our students noted that as this letter, which denies the presence of systemic racism, crossed their doorways, the evidence of ongoing racism  systemic or otherwise  is daily present in our headlines.'

But Gutmann claims that Brearley students should not be 'frightened' by receiving a letter at their homes.

'The upper schoolers are afraid of getting a letter at their home?' Gutmann said Saturday.

'They're frightened and intimidated? The school has said it's number one priority is to teach the girls intellectual bravery and courageousness. Either they are lying or else they have done an atrocious job.'

It was not immediately clear how Gutmann managed to receive the home addresses of the 650 families to home he sent the letters.

Gutmann said he has received supportive emails from parents across the city.

'There's a whole underground-like movement out there,' he told the New York Post.

Brearley's alumnae include Caroline Kennedy, Tea Leoni, Elisabeth Murdoch, Dorothy Schiff and Alice Gore King.

In his letter, Gutmann mapped out what he called Brearley's 'critical race theory' which he said is 'advocating that Blacks should forever be regarded as helpless victims'.

The Brearley School on Manhattan's Upper East Side, where tuition fees are more than $56,000-a-year, has been accused of indoctrinating students. One parent pulled his daughter from the school

This is Brearley's exhaustive anti-racism calendar for the school year of 2020 to 2021 which includes training sessions for parents

Jane Fried, head of Brearley, doubled down on the school's position on Instagram, waving Gutmann and his daughter goodbye

One of the examples he gave was the school's 'sophomoric' and 'simplistic' anti-training sessions for parents, and the fact that materials that have been taught for years are now suddenly considered offensive in light of the BLM movement.

He didn't say which books had been pulled but said it applied to his daughter's fourth-grade class.

Gutmann fumed that the girls are being taught to hate their own country and that white students are being judged for the color of their skin.

He also denied that there is systemic racism in the US, saying there hadn't been since the 1960s.

HEAD OF DALTON RESIGNS AMID ROW OVER WOKE POLICIES Jim Best said he would see out the year at the $50,000-a-year institution then step down to pursue 'other opportunities' The head of the elite Manhattan school Dalton is stepping down this year after being slammed by parents for pushing an 'obsessive', antiracism agenda on students. Jim Best said he would see out the year at the $50,000-a-year institution then step down to pursue 'other opportunities'. His resignation is in response to parents' complaints that Dalton, like other prestigious private schools Grace Church and Brearley, is indoctrinating students with its woke agenda. Dalton parents penned an anonymous open letter to the school earlier this week. 'Every class this year has had an obsessive focus on race and identity, racist cop reenactments in science, de-centering whiteness in art class, learning about white supremacy and sexuality in health class. 'Wildly inappropriate, many of these classes feel more akin to a Zoom corporate sensitivity-training than to Daltons intellectually engaging curriculum,' it read. Advertisement

'Systemic racism, properly understood, is segregated schools and separate lunch counters. It is the interning of Japanese and the exterminating of Jews. Systemic racism is unequivocally not a small number of isolated incidences over a period of decades,' he said.

He also called out the school for claiming to care about diversity with its race stances while also prioritizing legacy students whose relatives previously attended, siblings of other students or 'families with especially deep pockets'.

'I cannot tolerate a school that not only judges my daughter by the color of her skin, but encourages and instructs her to prejudge others by theirs.

'By viewing every element of education, every aspect of history, and every facet of society through the lens of skin color and race, we are desecrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and utterly violating the movement for which such civil rights leaders believed, fought, and died,' he said.

Gutmann, 45, went on to say that the school was 'indoctrinating' the girls into a single mindset that is 'most reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.'

'Over the past several months, I have personally spoken to many Brearley parents as well as parents of children at peer institutions. It is abundantly clear that the majority of parents believe that Brearleys antiracism policies are misguided, divisive, counterproductive and cancerous.

'Many believe, as I do, that these policies will ultimately destroy what was until recently, a wonderful educational institution.

'But as I am sure will come as no surprise to you, given the insidious cancel culture that has of late permeated our society, most parents are too fearful to speak up,' he said, urging other parents not to stay quiet and assuring them many feel the same way he does.

In response, Brearley doubled down on its position. He is now waiting to hear whether his daughter can complete the academic year before moving her to another school.

'Many of our students of color, especially those who identify as Black, felt the letter questioned their belonging in the Brearley community.

'Their belonging and their excellence are unquestionable,' Jane Fried, the head of the school, wrote.

The school's antiracism and diversity plans are extensively described on its website.

It is the latest example of a prestigious, private school, pontificating to parents about their behavior.

At Dalton, another elite Manhattan school, parents have complained about its 'obsessive' anti-race agenda, which includes reenactments of racist cops in science classes.

'Wildly inappropriate, many of these classes feel more akin to a Zoom corporate sensitivity-training than to Daltons intellectually engaging curriculum,' parents said in a letter to the school that was obtained by The New York Post.

Jim Best, the head of Dalton and the architect of the new anti-racism agenda, is leaving the school at the end of 2021.
A heartbreaking photograph of a four-year-old homeless girl eating her 'one hot meal a day' on the side of the street has sparked an outpouring of both empathy and anger.

In the shocking picture, which was taken at an Irish soup kitchen earlier this week, the little girl can be seen sitting alone on a crate as she eats the meal out of a plastic container.

The image, captured by a volunteer at the Ballymun Soup Run in North Dublin as she handed out food to families living in emergency accommodation, was shared to Twitter by the group, alongside a caption which read:

'Our Government are to blame for this. It's so normal that they pop down for dinner, it's sad. No cooking facilities, what option has mammy got?'

A heartbreaking photograph of a four-year-old homeless girl, from Northern Dublin, eating her 'one hot meal a day' on the side of the street has sparked outrage online (pictured)

The image, captured by a volunteer at the Ballymun Soup Run in North Dublin, has since gone viral on Twitter - with many branding it 'truly heartbreaking' (pictured)

Tony Walsh, co-founder of Feed Our Homeless, also posted the photo on social media and branded it 'shameful and totally unacceptable' - before slamming the Irish government over the housing crisis.

He penned: 'No child or any individual should have to sit on the streets like this eating their dinner because they have no place to call home.'

'Shame on our Government. When will enough be enough?'

It wasn't long before social media users took to the comments section - with many branding the image 'truly heartbreaking.'

'I cannot begin to express how angry this makes me feel. A little child, or anyone, homeless and eating on the street. It is not acceptable, it never was and it never will be,' wrote one.

A second penned: 'The mental issues these children will suffer as a result of this up bringing will be devastating and be with them all their lives.There are so many things wrong with that image.'

Taking to social media, one person branded the heartbreaking photograph 'disgraceful,' while another called it 'scandalous' (pictured)

Speaking to DublinLive, the volunteer who took the image said she had 'no words' for the heartbreaking image - adding that the government should 'hang their heads in shame.'

According to the most recent statistics from the Department of Housing, there are 8,238 homeless people in Ireland - with 2,264 of these being children.

Taking to social media, one person penned: 'It's so sad when you see children on their own in all different countries trying to survive nobody to care for them or love them. I don't know how they manage to survive or stay safe so frightening for them.'

Another branded it ''disgraceful,' while a third added: 'Scandalous, poor little mite.'

Elsewhere, a further commented: 'Yes I felt so angry when I saw this a minute ago that I couldn't even put words to the feeling, its beyond horrific!'
Weve come a long way on stewardship of San Francisco Bay since 1955, when the local head of the Army Corps of Engineers enthusiastically told The Chronicle, Weve been nibbling at bay tidelands for a long time, but before long we can attack acres and acres, building new land.

Unfortunately, we havent come far enough. Its good to have moved past the idea that shallow waters exist only to be filled. But if we want to nurture the marshes and mudflats that remain while restoring former wetlands  steps that can help protect our shorelines from climate change  then all branches of government need to work together, and soon.

Thats one of the key messages of a hefty new report, Sediment for Survival, by the San Francisco Estuary Institute. The group spells out with scientific precision the potential for using clean sand and soil to help marshes take root against rising sea levels. The report also shows that upward of 3 million cubic yards of such sediment is dredged annually from bay shipping channels by the Army Corps.

In a logical world, that mud would be put to environmentally friendly use close to home. Instead, thanks to federal standards that define the product of dredging as waste that should be disposed of in the least costly manner, the Army Corps plops it onto barges and dumps most of it into deeper waters in the bay or the open ocean.

This bottom-line approach is a classic example of doing long-term damage in pursuit of short-term savings. According to the Estuary Institute, our region will need roughly 450 million cubic yards of soil to restore and maintain 75,000 acres of marshes along the bay shoreline by 2100. At least one-third of this could come from what is now disposed of in deep waters.

Nor is the value of dredged mud a new discovery. Back in 2015, the local office of the Army Corps reached an agreement with the Bay Conservation and Development Commission to beneficially reuse 40% of the soggy sediment for wetlands restoration. But higher-ups in Washington nixed the deal, starting a legal battle that is expected to go before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in June.

The Army Corps and other federal agencies should look beyond their yearly budgets and work with local governments and environmental organizations to coordinate the regions dredging and restoration efforts. The mud scooped from the bottom of the bay could help bring long-planned tidal wetlands to life.

This wont happen without Gov. Gavin Newsom and Californias congressional delegation persuading the Biden administration that it makes sense to allow the Bay Area and other coastal regions to tap into a natural resource that is replenished each year. The more we do now to strengthen the natural environment, the more prepared we will be as climate change intensifies. One easy step is to make sure our mud stays right here.

This commentary is from The Chronicles editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.
Her 2020 involved a split from her husband of four years.

And Melissa Leong seemingly alluded to her personal struggles in an emotional speech to contestants during Monday night's MasterChef Australia premiere.

'Last year, our world turned upside down,' began the food writer.

Hidden meaning? Melissa Leong has seemingly alluded to her personal struggles in an emotional speech to contestants during Monday night's MasterChef Australia premiere

'And although it was tough, it forced us all to reassess what is most important in our lives. Last year may have been a time of change, but this year is a time of opportunity,' the TV personality continued.

Addressing the show's new social distancing regulations, Leong said, 'Now usually you'd be here surrounded by your family and friends, but sadly this year that's not possible.'

'So I would like to invite you to take a look around at each other because as of today, we welcome you to the MasterChef family.'

Emotional: 'Last year, our world turned upside down,' began the food writer. Flanked here by Andy Allen [L] and Jock Zonfrillo [R]

A new era: Addressing the show's new social distancing regulations, Leong said, 'Now usually you'd be here surrounded by your family and friends, but sadly this year that's not possible'

Melissa then said, 'Support each other, celebrate each other's successes, have each other's backs when things are not so great. We want to see you grow and thrive and be the best that you can be.'

'That's what makes us so proud to be part of this family together,' she concluded.

It comes four months after Melissa announced she'd split from her husband, bar owner Joe Jones.

Rousing: 'So I would like to invite you to take a look around at each other because as of today, we welcome you to the MasterChef family,' Leong concluded

In a heartfelt Instagram post on December 20, the food critic wrote: 'It has brought us such happiness to walk together, but the time has come for Joe and I to part ways and walk on, apart.'

'We ask for your kindness and consideration for our privacy, we will not be making any further comment as our private lives have, and will always remain exactly that.

'We wish you peace at the end of such a challenging year for all.'

The pair married in a small ceremony at California's Joshua Tree National Park in February 2017, after dating for just five months.
NAPLES, APR 19 - Italian police on Monday arrested 26 people and seized over 50 million euros in assets in a cross-Italy operation against the Naples-based Camorra mafia. The arrests were made in the provinces of Naples, Salerno, Imperia, Cosenza, Ancona and Reggio Emilia. The op targeted two separate Camorra groups, police said. One was the Fabbrocino clan, historically present at Poggiomarino, and the other was another big mafia group led by Rosario Giuliano. The latter is in jail but still led his gang via his girlfriend Teresa Caputo, police said. She got instructions from Giuliano, nicknamed "o' minorenne" (The Kid), during jail visits, and conveyed them to the gang members, police said. Investigations have shed light, police said, on a series of extortions and intimidations, using firearms, and also drug trafficking, with much of the drugs being supplied by the Calabria-based 'Ndrangheta mafia which controls the European cocaine trade. Drugs were transported from 'Ndrangheta suppliers in coffee vans and trucks, police said. Searches turned up some 62 explosive devices at Poggiomarino, police said. They said bombs were used in Camorra extortion activities. (ANSA).
[April 19, 2021] Axele Free Webinar: Driver Recruiting in the Post-COVID Era

DALLAS, April 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Axele, LLC, a Transportation Management System (TMS) company, will be hosting a free webinar, "Predictive Hiring: Driver Recruiting in the Post-COVID Era," on Wednesday, April 21, 2021, at 2:00 PM EDT. Dylan Tinney of JOBehaviors is the featured speaker.

With the ongoing truck driver shortage, high turnover rates, and revolving door-style employment with many carriers, the time to change recruitment techniques is now, says Ryan Camacho, Director of Strategy and Business Development, Axele, LLC. This free webinar will help businesses learn to hire better and improve driver retention. Many carriers are turning to a new and better method of hiring and recruiting called predictive hiring. In this webinar, attendees will see how predictive hiring can help to: Increase driver logging of miles by more than 25%

Decrease injury rate by one-third

Provide 67% fewer missed days and restricted duty

Reduce turnover up to 42%

Stop wasting time and money on the wrong hiring practices Dylan Tinney is passionate about helping companies and jobseekers achieve lon term success through predictive hiring technology. A graduate of The King's College in New York City, Dylan worked for Fox Business, the Charles Koch Institute, the New York Times and the BBC all while consulting for the family business, JOBehaviors before jumping in full time in 2019.



To register for the free webinar on Wednesday, April 21 at 2:00 PM EDT, visit https://optym.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_T-RrlBQHQ1e7AuJn5vLQfg . About Axele

Axele offers transportation management system (TMS) cloud software for truckload carriers leveraging decades of experience and insights into optimization and automation technology. Launched by Optym in 2020, Axele is the industry's first intelligent, connected solution, built specifically for small to mid-sized truckload carriers. Axele serves for-hire truckload operators and private fleets who haul general freight, dry van, flatbed, and refrigerated loads. The Axele TMS integrates with load boards, ELDs, market rates, maps, and accounting systems, to enable an owner-operator or carrier to find better loads, increase profits, and grow their business. For more information about Axele, go to www.axele.com. Media Contact for Axele:

Becky Boyd

MediaFirst PR

(770) 642-2080 x 214

Cell (404) 421-8497

Becky@MediaFirst.Net



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DALLAS, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Credera, a consulting firm focused on strategy, transformation, data and technology, today announced it has agreed to acquire a majority stake in Areteans, a leading global services and solutions company, to extend its depth in digital transformation, digital marketing and ecommerce capabilities. Credera is part of Omnicom Precision Marketing Group (OPMG), the digital and customer relationship management specialist practice area within Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE: OMC).

Areteans specializes in the design, delivery, and implementation of real-time interaction management (RTIM) and digital customer relationship management (CRM). The company serves some of world's biggest brands across banking, insurance, consumer products, telecom, and government and has a presence in Australia, India, New Zealand, Singapore, and the UK. Areteans will retain its brand, culture, and values and will continue to be led by the founding team of CEO Mahesh Agrawal, Chief Technology Officer Sidhartha Mohanty, Executive Vice President of Technology Sanjeev Singh, and Global Head of Sales Subhakanta Mishra as well as its current executive management.

"Areteans brings a depth of expertise that enables meaningful customer experiences," said Justin Bell, president and CEO of Credera. "Together, Credera, Areteans, and the broader Omnicom network of companies provide a comprehensive strategy of creating meaningful experiences for our clients' customers. As a part of Credera's growth strategy, we will continue to invest in organizations that enhance digital transformation and customer experience."

"Areteans is ready to take the next step of growth in partnership with Credera and Omnicom," said Mahesh Agrawal, founder and CEO of Areteans. "We desired a strategic partner with the right cultural fit who can accelerate our reach and vision globally. Together, we can create compelling value propositions for our clients, bringing innovative solutions from idea conception to downstream execution."

"We are continuously evolving our approach for serving our clients and enabling world-class experiences for their customers," said Luke Taylor, CEO of Omnicom Precision Marketing Group. "We believe that technology skills in RTIM and decisioning are critical components of modern marketing, and the addition of Areteans to our group will help us meet our goals of creating innovative solutions and meaningful results for our clients."

The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter.

ABOUT ARETEANS

Areteans (areteanstech.com) is a global services and solutions company focused on Pegasystems Technologies that excels in enabling businesses to evolve and transform digitally. We work with our customers to achieve accelerated business outcomes by providing them the most optimized service/solution, across the technical spheres of CRM, intelligent automation, real-time artificial intelligence, MarTech, RTIM, robotics, sales automation, legacy transformation, and process optimization. Areteans was founded in 2015. Headquartered in Hyderabad, India, today the company employs over 600 consulting professionals with offices in London, Sydney, Kolkata, Bangalore, Auckland, and Singapore.

ABOUT CREDERA

Credera ( credera.com ) is a consulting firm focused on strategy, transformation, data and technology. As a part of Omnicom Precision Marketing Group, our more than 800 consultants across the globe partner together with clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to emerging industry leaders from strategy to execution to create tangible business results. Credera's deep business acumen and technical expertise, combined with a deep dedication to building trusted relationships, unlock extraordinary business performance for our clients. Our mission is to make an extraordinary impact on our clients, people, and communities.

ABOUT OMNICOM PRECISION MARKETING GROUP

Omnicom Precision Marketing Group aligns Omnicom's global digital, data and CRM capabilities to deliver precisely targeted and meaningful customer experiences at scale. Using its universal framework of connected data, connected intelligence and connected experiences, OPMG provides services that include data-driven product / service design, AdTech / MarTech strategy and implementation, CRM / loyalty strategy and activation, econometric and attribution modeling and digital experience design and development. At the core of delivering these services is Omni, an advanced technology platform that combines a powerful cultural insights engine with massively scaled data insights from first-, second- and third-party sources, including several proprietary Omnicom data partnerships.

ABOUT OMNICOM GROUP

Omnicom Group ( www.omnicomgroup.com ) is a leading global marketing and corporate communications company. Omnicom's branded networks and numerous specialty firms provide advertising, strategic media planning and buying, digital and interactive marketing, direct and promotional marketing, public relations and other specialty communications services to over 5,000 clients in more than 70 countries.

SOURCE Omnicom Precision Marketing Group

Related Links

https://www.omnicomgroup.com/


Israeli military intelligence and senior officials in the Mossad briefed a meeting of the nation's security cabinet that talks in Vienna between Iran and other world powers will lead to the U.S. returning to the 2015 nuclear deal, two officials who attended the meeting told me.

Why it matters: The Israeli government is very concerned about a U.S. return to the nuclear deal and is trying to convince the Biden administration not to take the pressure off the Iranian regime.

Driving the news: The Mossad mainly briefed the cabinet meeting on the status of the Iranian nuclear program. Military intelligence officials discussed Iranian actions in the region at the meeting.

The two intelligence agencies gave similar assessments on where the Vienna talks stand.

What they are saying: We are not very optimistic to say the least," a senior Israeli official who attended the meeting told me. "We will not be surprised if within weeks the U.S. and other world powers sign a deal with Iran.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told "Fox News Sunday" that the Vienna talks with Iran were "constructive" and that there is a real effort to get back to mutual compliance of the 2015 nuclear deal.

Sullivan added that the U.S. wont lift sanctions unless it has "clarity and confidence" that Iran will fully return to compliance of all its obligations under the 2015 agreement.

Whats next: Israeli officials told me there were no new policy decisions made during todays cabinet meeting, and Israel will continue the dialogue with the Biden administration on the negotiations with Iran.
On Sunday afternoon, a McDonald's drive-thru in Chicago turned into a crime scene after a seven-year-old girl was killed in a shooting at around 4 PM in the Windy City's Homan Square neighborhood.

The victim was identified as Jaslyn Adams. She sustained multiple shots before being rushed to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead. The girl's 28-year-old father was also severely injured during the incident.

The pair were waiting in their car for their food when the shooting took place.

As of the moment, authorities are still searching for the suspect of the horrific crime. There is still no information on how or why the shooting occurred.

Footage of the shooting taken by those who were at the scene showed police officers pulling out the seven-year-old and taking her to the police car in a race to get her quickly to the hospital. There were several witnesses to the shooting who were able to take videos, Hastings Tribune reported.

In one of the videos, a bystander can be heard stating that someone killed a baby.

After the shooting, the 28-year-old father, Jontae Adams, immediately called his mother and told her what happened to his daughter.

In a statement to Chicago Sun Times, the seven-year-old's grandmother, Lawanda McMullens, said that her son was frantic when he called her to come and get her because his child was shot.

The seven-year-old girl was nicknamed 'Pinky' by her family and schoolmates at Cameron Elementary School. Her family stated that the nickname was given to her due to her bright personality and because her favorite color was pink.

Meanwhile, Jaslyn's aunt, Tawny McMullen, described the victim as a sweet and beautiful child.

ALSO READ: Teacher Trying to Rob Jalisco Cartel Shot to Death

Possible 'Gang-Related' Violence

On the other hand, the Medical Examiners Office of Cook County confirmed that Jaslyn was shot multiple times before she finally died. It was also stated that her father sustained a gunshot wound in the torso during the horrific incident, Daily Mail reported.

The pair's car was also covered in bullet holes, and several shell casings were found inside and surrounding the vehicle.

Jaslyn and her father were both taken to John Stroger Hospital, where her father is currently being treated due to his serious condition. The seven-year-old girl was also pronounced dead in the same hospital.

The police believe that the shooting that killed Jaslyn is gang-related.

Despite the speculations of gang-related violence, the exact circumstances surrounding the shooting are still not clear. There are still no suspects in custody, and the detectives are still in the middle of their investigation.

In light of the event, Marvin Edwards, the president of an advocacy group against gun violence, 100 Men Standing, encouraged witnesses and anyone who has information related to the incident to come forward.

Edwards pleaded to those who know the suspect to immediately give information to help in expediting the investigation. He added that it is devastating to know that this could happen to a girl who was just trying to get something to eat.

RELATED ARTICLE: Teen Couple Faces Murder Charges for Killing the Girls Father in Las Vegas

WATCH: 7-year-old girl killed, father shot while sitting at McDonald's drive-thru on West Side - WGN News
NEW YORK, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Following a flurry of investment activity in recent months, New York is now home to 21 Israeli-founded unicorns  privately held companies valued at $1 billion or more  according to the United States  Israel Business Alliance. Each of these companies' global or U.S. headquarters is based in Manhattan, establishing New York as the city with the second most Israeli-founded unicorns in the world, behind Tel Aviv.

"The numbers we're seeing in New York are unprecedented," USIBA president Aaron Kaplowitz said. "Despite a year filled with challenges and uncertainty, New York remains a global hub for growth industries that Israeli entrepreneurs continue to disrupt."

Over the past six months, 10 Israeli-founded companies based in New York have achieved unicorn status: Axonius, BigID, Forter, Kaltura, K Health, Melio, Papaya Global, SimilarWeb, Talkspace, and Yotpo. They joined Gett, Monday.com, OrCam, Outbrain, Payoneer, Riskified, Sisense, Taboola, The We Company, VAST Data, and Via.

"There's no doubt that Covid-19 disoriented the investment community," Kaplowitz said. "Once investors and growth-stage companies got their bearings, and some technologies gained more relevance from the pandemic, investment activity picked up in a big way  especially in 2021."

Since the beginning of the year, seven New York-based Israeli-founded companies crossed the $1 billion threshold. In January, Talkspace announced a $1.4 billion merger agreement with Hudson Executive Investment Corp., a special purpose acquisition company, that will take the online therapy provider public. Melio, an accounts payable tool for small businesses, closed a $110 million round to boost the company's valuation to $1.3 billion. Soon after, K Health, an AI-driven telemedicine app, announced a $132 million raise based on a $1.5 billion value.

After a brief February respite, Axonius led another unicorn charge. On March 1, the cybersecurity asset management firm, with its U.S. headquarters located on the top floor of 330 Madison Ave., closed a $100 million funding round that cemented a $1.2 billion valuation. That same week, Papaya Global, a workforce management platform, completed a $100 million round, pushing its valuation above $1 billion. Yotpo, an e-commerce marketing platform, raised $230 million for a $1.4 billion valuation, And, most recently, Kaltura, a live and on-demand video platform service, set terms for its forthcoming initial public offering that will give the Gramercy-based company a $2 billion valuation.

These deals helped drive a record-setting first quarter for Israeli-founded companies, which raised $5.37 billion total  double the capital they raised over the first quarter of 2020.

The 2021 activity extended a late 2020 trend, when a trio of unicorns took flight. SimilarWeb, a market intelligence platform that monitors website and mobile app traffic, reached a $1 billion valuation after closing a $120 million round in October. The following month, Forter, a pioneer in fraud detection for retailers, secured $125 million, which more than doubled its valuation to $1.3 billion. And to close out the year, SoHo-based BigID, a data privacy and protection platform, completed a $70 million round that increased its valuation to $1 billion.

"The real story here is the impact Covid-19 has made on accelerating the widespread adoption of specific technologies, such as telehealth and platforms that enable smoother remote work experiences," Kaplowitz said. "These forward-thinking companies will create more jobs at home and contribute much-needed commercial activity to a recovering local economy."

Newest Israeli-Founded Unicorns Based in NYC

Company Valuation Date Solution SimilarWeb $1.0 billion October 2020 Market intelligence Forter $1.3 billion November 2020 Fraud detection for retailers BigID $1.0 billion December 2020 Data privacy and protection Talkspace $1.4 billion January 2021 Teletherapy Melio $1.3 billion January 2021 Accounts payable tool for small businesses K Health $1.5 billion January 2021 Telemedicine Axonius $1.2 billion March 2021 Cybersecurity asset management Papaya Global $1.0 billion March 2021 Workforce management Yotpo $1.4 billion March 2021 E-commerce marketing Kaltura $2.0 billion March 2021 Live and on-demand video solutions

In 2019, when the United States  Israel Business Alliance released the findings from the first-ever New York  Israel Economic Impact Report, only five Israeli-founded unicorns maintained headquarters in New York City. Over the past year, two of those businesses shed the unicorn status by going public: Lemonade, the online insurance provider, enjoyed a scintillating debut on the New York Stock Exchange in July, and, earlier this month, Compass, the real estate tech company, also IPO-ed.

Each of the three remaining unicorns from the original 2019 list announced earlier this year a merger agreement that will take the company public via SPAC. Those deals valued Payoneer at $3.3 billion, Taboola at $2.6 billion, and The We Company at $7.9 billion.

"SPACs have introduced a new investment tool to the market that can accelerate the billion-dollar valuation while initiating a rapid transition to an initial public offering," Kaplowitz said. "In the coming months and years, we should expect blank-check companies to play a prominent role in helping the Start-Up Nation mature to the Scale-Up Nation."

About the United States  Israel Business Alliance

The mission of the United States  Israel Business Alliance is to strengthen the economic relationship between individual states and Israel. Headquartered in New York, USIBA recently opened its second office, in Miami. Learn more about the impact Israeli companies are having on local communities at www.nyisrael.org.

SOURCE United States - Israel Business Alliance

Related Links

http://www.nyisrael.org


- Increase in use in elevated temperature applications and lubrication of metal, rubber, and plastic products drive the growth of the global graphite coating market.

PORTLAND, Ore., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Allied Market Research recently published a report, titled, "Graphite Coatings Market Application (Lubrication, Anti-seize Agent, Release Agent, and Other) and End-Use (Automotive, Display & Sensors, Metal Coatings, and Other): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20202027". As per the report, the global graphite coatings industry was pegged at $0.6 billion in 2019, and is projected to reach $0.9 billion by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 6.82% from 2020 to 2027.

Allied_Market_Research_Logo

Major determinants of the market growth

Increase in use in elevated temperature applications and lubrication of metal, rubber, and plastic products drives the growth of the global graphite coatings market. However, health hazards regarding the inhalation of graphite coatings hinder the market growth. On the contrary, advancements in the technology of graphite coatings are expected to open lucrative opportunities for the market players in the future.

Request PDF Brochure: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/11041

Covid-19 scenario:

The Covid-19 pandemic presented unprecedented challenges in front of major consumers of graphic coatings including the automotive, electronics, and aerospace sectors. In addition, the reduced demand for passenger vehicles negatively affected the graphic coatings market.

The pandemic and tariff war between China and the U.S. forced the relocation of several market players involved in the manufacturing of display and sensors, which are the prime end-users of graphic coatings.

Moreover, the prolonged lockdown across several regions and travel restrictions resulted in disruption of the supply chain.

The lubrication segment held the largest share

By application, the lubrication segment held the largest share in 2019, accounting for nearly two-fifths of the global graphite coatings market. Moreover, the segment to manifest the highest CAGR of 7.2% during the forecast period, as graphite coating can strongly bond with the surface of an object and offers enhanced shearing stress under the frictional force, making it effective to be used as lubrication in moving parts. The report includes a detailed analysis of segments such as anti-seize agent, release agent, and others.

Story continues

Get Detailed COVID-19 Impact Analysis on the Graphite Coatings Market @ https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-for-customization/11041?reqfor=covid

The automotive segment to portray the highest CAGR through 2027

By end use, the automotive segment would showcase the highest CAGR of 7.2% from 2020 to 2027. In addition, the segment dominated the market in terms of revenue in 2019, contributing to more than one-third of the global graphite coatings market, due to rise in use of flock adhesives for the manufacturing of glove boxes, sun visors, headrests, and others. The report provides an in-depth analysis of segments including displays & sensors, metal coating, and others.

Asia-Pacific, followed by Europe and North America, contributed the highest share

By region, Asia-Pacific, followed by Europe and North America, held the largest share in 2019, accounting for more than half of the market. Moreover, the global graphite coatings market across Asia-Pacific is projected to manifest thehighest CAGR of 7.9% from 2020 to 2027, due to rise in a number of automotive and textile manufacturers in China and India.

Key Market Players

Asbury Carbons

Imerys Graphite & Carbon

Elcora Advanced Materials Corp.

Mersen

CONDAT Corporation

Triton Minerals

Van Sickle Paint Mfg. Company

Whitford

BECHEM

Final Advanced Materials

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James Nesbitt has revealed that he lied about feeling snubbed by Jed Mercurio over not being offered a role on Line of Duty, all the while filming for the hit show.

The Cold Feet star, 56, made a surprise appearance in the police show on Sunday night as police officer Marcus Thurwell, who was first mentioned in series three.

Viewers were stunned at James' appearance in the very dramatic episode, however the actor and writer had intended to shock all along with their sneaky plan.

Very well played: James Nesbitt has revealed that he lied about feeling snubbed by Jed Mercurio over not being offered a role on Line of Duty, all the while filming for the hit show

Speaking with The Sun, James said: 'I had a lot of fun saying how Jed has snubbed me for Line Of Duty, all the while knowing our little secret.'

In February, it was reported he felt 'galled' about never being asked to appear in Line of Duty despite being from Northern Ireland and the show being filmed in Belfast.

The Cold Feet star told the Radio Times: 'Even though Line Of Duty had been shot here for years I was never considered for it, which has always slightly galled me.'

However, James explained after Sunday's show that it was all a ploy cooked up by himself and Jed to keep fans off the trail of his role on the hit police show.

Shock: The Cold Feet star, 56, made a surprise appearance in the police show on Sunday night as character Marcus Thurwell, who was first mentioned in series three

So clever: Line of Duty's creator Jed (pictured) asked James to star in the show while he was filming Bloodlands in Belfast, creating the perfect cover story for anyone asking questions

And when Jed asked him to appear on the show, he was filming Bloodlands in Belfast, creating the perfect cover story for if he was seen around the city.

Jed said: 'It was easier to keep it secret by plotting the scheme between the two of us... It worked brilliantly, because everyone thought he was genuinely annoyed.'

James added: 'I've kept it to myself for over a year and couldn't even tell my closest friends or family.'

Devoted fans of the show had been tipped off to a mystery star joining the cast during the week after a spoiler was leaked on Tuesday night.

BBC Maestro, a hub for budding screenwriters, inadvertently uploaded a post revealing a brand new character and a key plot twist.

On Sunday's episode pictures were shown of James' character in Spain, however the team actually filmed the scene in Belfast.

In hiding? The shady detective was last known to be in Spain, with writer Jed revealing they filmed the scene at Belfast Marina

Piecing it together: Steve Arnott connected the dots to realise Thurwell was connected to AC-12s earlier case involving a paedophile ring

Committing to the ruse, Jed even revealed to the publication that he told members of the public that James was modelling for a catalogue when he was spotted shooting in shorts at Belfast Marina.

The writer added that they had some practice in fooling fans about actors making surprise appearances as Keeley Hawes reappeared in series three unexpectedly.

James' character Marcus Thurwell is a detective who worked on the racist killing of Lawrence Christopher  a storyline that appears to be based on the real-life murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence.

The fictional case was being investigated by journalist Gail Vella, whose killing is the focus of the current run.

Thurwell was also featured in another earlier series as the SIO investigating the death of social worker Oliver Stephens Lloyd.

'The biggest shock!': Fans couldn't believe their eyes when James appeared on screen

Several fans theorised that Thurwell and Hastings might have a connection, with them both being Irish, in the upcoming episodes.

One person said: 'Calling it now, #TedHastings was at police college with #Thurwell #JamesNesbitt in NI #LineOfDuty.'

And another tweeted: 'What are the odds on Hastings having known James Nessbits character in NI?'

While a third pointed the to misspelling of definitely, as they wrote: 'James Nesbitt is definately going to have a Northern Ireland accent next week on #LineOfDuty - just like Ted.'

Involved: James' character is a detective who worked on the racist killing of Lawrence Christopher (pictured)  a storyline that appears to be based on the real-life murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence

Part of it: Thurwell was also featured in another earlier series as the SIO investigating the death of social worker Oliver Stephens Lloyd (middle right)

Line of Duty fans were treated to a rollercoaster of an episode on Sunday which saw fan favourite Hastings tipped as being the elusive H yet again.

In typical AC-12 style, a twist emerged in the form of a throwback clue to the 2019 series showing the misspelt word 'definately' in Jo Davidson's messages.

And if this wasn't enough to keep fans reeling, the dramatic instalment ended with a tense cliff hanger involving Ryan Pilkington [Gregory Piper] and DI Kate Fleming [Vicky McClure].

The shock reintroduction of 'definately' came as Davidson typed on her laptop to whoever is calling the shots, with them misspelling the word definitely.

Theories: Several fans theorised that Thurwell and Hastings might have a connection, with them both being Irish, in the upcoming episodes

Back in 2019, viewers watched as 'definitely' was misspelt by whoever was talking via an online chat to undercover cop John Corbett.

And while many thought it was simply a spelling blunder at first, Hastings [Adrian Dunbar] then went on to type 'definitely' with an A during a police hack the following week, leaving fans convinced the AC-12 Superintendent was in fact villain H.

The reappearance of the incorrectly spelt word caused some avid watchers to think that perhaps H is really the fourth man, despite him seeming to have been cleared of suspicion following his misconduct hearing last series.

Dozens of people took to Twitter to discuss their theories over the word, with one penning: 'Ted spelled 'definitely' wrong before. If Ted is H I'm done'

Could it be? Elsewhere on the show, Ted Hastings was tipped as being the elusive H yet again during Sunday night's episode of Line of Duty

Shady: Jo Davidson was seen under even more pressure as she chatted online and agreed to 'get rid' of Kate so long as it was her 'last job'

A clue! The word definitely was spelt wrong, with the faceless person using an A, just like Ted Hastings used back in 2019

While another added: 'Ted Hastings only split definitely 'DEFINATELY' but who else would know Ted spelt it like that, that's the question.'

And someone else said: 'Well we all know Ted can't spell definitely right, but Mother of God, please don't let him be the final H!'.

Making things even shadier, it was during this conversation with the faceless crime boss that Davidson was told to 'get rid' of Kate.

Davidson looked distraught at the idea as she sat staring into her laptop screen, however replied saying she'd do it so long as it was the last task asked of her.

Ideas: Dozens of people took to Twitter to say that Ted must be H after the misspelling

Coming through on her promise, Davidson arranged to meet Kate outside of work before changing the location at the last minute.

In the closing moments, Kate  a goodie (at least we hope)  and PC Ryan Pilkington  a baddie through and through  are seen with their guns trained on each other.

Leaving viewers on the edge of their seats, the episode then ended after the duo and Davidson shouted at each other to drop their guns.

Drama: Sunday's show also saw a very tense ending after Davidson lured Kate to an isolated lorry park

It's a MATCH: Davidson's relative ended up being Tommy Hunter of series two

Has Kate  whom we've watched snaring bent coppers over six series  been killed in the line of duty? Or has she finished off corrupt and psychopathic Pilkington?

And if she's only wounded, will DI Steve Arnott  Kate's partner in crime-fighting  manage to save her?

Kate had managed to send him a text just before the intense final scene, however it remains to be seen if he makes it to her in time to help and catch Ryan.

Also during Sunday's show Davidson's DNA match was revealed, with it being discovered that she's related to Tommy Hunter.

Will she make it? Kate was seen holding up her gun, after concealing a weapon all episode, but the show finished before viewers could discover what happened to her
[April 19, 2021] Satori Selected as Finalist for RSA Conference 2021 Innovation Sandbox Contest

TEL AVIV, Israel, April 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Satori , a DataSecOps company revolutionizing data access, security and privacy for the modern data infrastructure, announced today that it has been named one of 10 finalists for the RSA Conference 2021 Innovation Sandbox Contest for its work democratizing and protecting sensitive data in the cloud using a SaaS-based transparent setup. On Wednesday, May 19, Satori, will present its technology to a panel of renowned cybersecurity industry judges and a live virtual audience at RSA Conference 2021.

Since 2005, the RSAC Innovation Sandbox has served as a platform for the boldest young cybersecurity companies to showcase their groundbreaking technologies and compete for the title of Most Innovative Startup. The competition is widely recognized as a catapult for success, as the top 10 finalists have collectively seen over 50 acquisitions and $8.2 billion in funding since the start of the contest. Satori will have three minutes to pitch the panel of judges before a question-and-answer round. We are happy to welcome the RSAC Innovation Sandbox Contest finalists to our virtual stage and we look forward to hearing about their innovative ideas that are sure to combat tomorrows cybersecurity threats, said Linda Gray Martin, Vice President, RSA Conference. For the last 16 years, RSAC Innovation Sandbox Contest finalists have gone on to make significant impacts on the world of cybersecurity. We are confident that this years finalists will continue the trend with their thought-provoking approaches and will make a lasting impact on the industry. Satori allows monitoring and governing of data usage and data access in the cloud. Many organizations are challenged with barriers to identifying sensitive data, monitoring data usage, and enforcing security, privacy and compliance policies. Satoris platform addresses these challenges through an integrated, automated and scalable solution. Satori can enforce regulations such as GDPR and CCPA, meet compliance requirements for data access auditing and control such as SOC2 and HIPAA, and provide full visibility and control of sensitive data usage across all enterprise data stores. We realized 2 years ago that current ways of managing data access and security will not stand the test of time with more companies modernizing their data infrastructure and moving to the cloud, said Eldad Chai, Founder and CEO f Satori. We built the first DataSecOps platform, creating a universal, SaaS-based data access and security platform.



What I love about Satori is the way it helps teams work together, not only security and data but throughout the organization, it helps automate data access and prevent ad-hoc work and eliminates the need to manually review and implement every single data access request, said Andy Roth, Chief Privacy Officer at Intuit. Satoris service is a real game changer for DataSecOps, providing both control and visibility over data compliance and security issues across multiple data stores, said Arun K. Buduri, Vice President of Engineering, IT and CISO at Innovaccer. We were able to deploy Satori quickly because it does not require making any changes in existing data flows.

The contest kicks off on May 19 at 9:20 AM PT and winners will be announced at 10:45 AM PT that same day. Hugh Thompson , Program Committee Chair of RSA Conference, will return to host the contest. The renowned panel of expert judges includes Dorit Dor , VP Products, Check Point Software Technologies; Niloo Howe , Principal and Founder, Razi Ventures; Paul Kocher , Security Researcher and Entrepreneur; Shlomo Kramer , Co-founder and CEO, Cato Networks; and Christopher Young , Executive Vice President, Microsoft. For more information regarding RSA Conference 2021, taking place as a virtual experience, visit www.rsaconference.com/usa . Satori has also been named as a SC Media 2021 Trust Award Finalist and a winner in over 10 categories for the Cybersecurity Excellence Awards, including Most Innovative Cybersecurity Company. About Satori

Satori is a DataSecOps company that is revolutionizing data access, security and privacy for the modern data infrastructure. Satoris Universal Data Access Service enables companies to embrace DataSecOps and streamline access to data while automating entitlements, classification and security. About RSA Conference

RSA Conference is the premier series of global events and year-round learning for the cybersecurity community. RSAC is where the security industry converges to discuss current and future concerns and have access to the experts, unbiased content and ideas that help enable individuals and companies advance their cybersecurity posture and build stronger and smarter teams. Both in-person and online, RSAC brings the cybersecurity industry together and empowers the collective "we" to stand against cyberthreats around the world. RSAC is the ultimate marketplace for the latest technologies and hands-on educational opportunities that help industry professionals discover how to make their companies more secure while showcasing the most enterprising, influential and thought-provoking thinkers and leaders in cybersecurity today. For the most up-to-date news pertaining to the cybersecurity industry visit www.rsaconference.com . Where the world talks security. To learn more about Satori, visit https://satoricyber.com/ . Media Contacts:

Deb Montner

Montner Tech PR

dmontner@montner.com



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Zelensky Follows British Orders

April 18 , 2021 (EIRNS)On April 13, the Daily Mirror tabloid ran a story ridiculing Russian state TV for a broadcast during which the on-air principals claimed that MI6 is conniving with Ukraine to trigger a bloody new war in Europe. The allegations, the Mirror went on, appear to be a bizarre bid to justify Vladimir Putin massing forces on the frontiers of its close neighbor, and in the strategic Black Sea.

The Russian guest, one Sergey Kurginyan, charges that British intelligence has become a dominant force in Ukraine. Referring to MI6 Chief Richard Moore, he alleged Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelensky was obediently following a British playbook towards conflict. If continental Europe is a bit scared of potential accidents, these ones (the British) dont give a damn, and they continuously push for exacerbation, Kurginyan is reported to have said. Zelensky is eating out of their hands, claimed Kurginyan, and, Since everything is anyway collapsing around them, they prefer to go in the situation of conflict.

The funny thing about this is that when he visited London last October, Zelensky had a meeting with Richard Moore. The 112.International news site (a media which opposes the Kiev government) published an extensive report, (originally published in strana.ua), on it, but the fact of the meeting was first leaked by the British press, at which point, Zelensky publicly admitted to it.

Of the entire volume of questions from our long two-hour meeting, most were information about helping and protecting our sovereignty and territorial integrity. I cannot spread the details, Zelensky admitted, the 112.International account says. According to him, one of the topics was countering disinformation and fake news. They just said that we have a big problem with the fact that the media are funded not only by Ukrainians. That in Ukraine, unfortunately, many of the TV channels that we know are funded by various groups, the President said. This referred not to Radio Free Europe of the CIA, but opposition channels owned by Opposition Platform For Life leader Viktor Medvedchuks associate Taras Kozak (Zik, 112, NewsOne). They are constantly accused of allegedly being financed by Russia, which the channels themselves call a lie and an attempt to justify the pressure of the authorities.

After he returned from London last October Zelensky took a number of steps, the third of which was on the topic of military assistance from the U.K. and the U.S. (the first two concerned control of anti-corruption agencies and the central bank). Zelensky apparently began talking up the idea of using the Budapest Memorandum, the 1994 document which provided security guarantees to Ukraine in return for giving up the nuclear weapons that remained on its territory after the fall of the Soviet Union, to seek military assistance from the U.S. and Britain.

Zelensky also went to Ankara shortly after his trip to London. Richard Moore is a specialist in Turkey, speaks fluent Turkish, having been ambassador there before he was the head of MI6. In Ankara, Zelensky and Erdogan discussed the creation of a kind of Crimean platforman international alliance, which, according to Kiev, can help return Crimea. And we hope for a serious role of Turkey in this issue. After all, is it possible to solve something without Turkey in our region? Of course not, Zelensky said. It will be recalled that Zelensky was in Turkey again just a week ago and met with Erdogan, but in Istanbul, not the capital.

With respect to broadcast media not under the control of the Kiev regime or the West, Zelensky is also apparently following British orders. On Feb. 20, Zelensky signed a decree imposing sanctions approved by the National Security and Defense Council on Medvedchuk, his wife and six other individuals associated with him, reported 112.International. Earlier, on Feb. 2, Zelensky signed a decree on the application of sanctions against the TV channels 112 Ukraine, NewsOne and Zik. According to the decree, which came into force from the moment of signing, sanctions were applied to TV channels for five years. This provides for blocking the broadcasting of all three TV channels.

Taras Kozak, the owner of the Novyny holding company which owns the three broadcast channels, blasted the Feb. 2 decree as a political reprisal by Zelensky. President is simply enraged because of the collapse of the rating of his political force Servant of the People, which now takes 4th place on the list, while Opposition PlatformFor Life, which I represent, has been heading the rating of Ukrainians sympathies for a long time, he said.
(CNN)  At least 11 people were killed and 98 injured when a train went off the tracks near the city of Toukh, north of Cairo on Sunday, according to Egypt's Ministry of Health.

More than 50 ambulances were dispatched by the Ministry of Health to rescue the injured from the crash.

The Egyptian Railways Authority said it was still investigating why the train, which was heading from Cairo to Mansoura, derailed.

"During the passage of train No. 949/3209 heading from Cairo to Mansoura, at 13:54, 4 cars derailed near Sandanhour station (near Toukh)," the Egyptian Railway authority said in a statement.

Most of the injuries were minor or moderate, with only a few critical cases, Khaled Megahed, a health ministry spokesman, told a local TV station.

Video posted on social media showed the victims and the injured passengers scattered along the railway line, next to the overturned train cars. Sounds of distress could also be heard.

Train movement has stopped in the East Delta.

This is the third major train accident to occur in Egypt in less than a month. At least 32 people were killed and 165 injured last month after two trains collided in the Tahta district of the Upper Egypt governorate of Sohag.
EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR MONDAY, APRIL 19, 2021

British Prepare To Deploy the U.S. To Wage War With Russia

April 18 , 2021 (EIRNS)The British Empire, after losing their American colony in the Revolutionary War, and failing to take it back through the British-sponsored Civil War, are now engaged in an open, deadly conspiracy to drag the United States into a suicidal war with Russia, which they imagine will help create their new Global Britaina modern version of the Empire they never relinquished. British brains and American brawn has served them well over this past century and a half, dragging the U.S. into two World Wars launched by John Bull, and more recently a few lovely little warscolonialist wars in Southeast Asia and Southwest Asiaserving no human purpose, costing millions of lives, unimaginable misery, and leaving the world today in a state of moral and cultural disintegration.

Will the American people, and their European allies, sleepwalk into yet another world war, this time with thermonuclear weapons? That appears to be the intention of the government in Ukraine, put in place in 2014 by the Obama Administration with significant help from George Soros and the regime change experts at the National Endowment for Democracy. At the time, Obama gave Vice President Joe Biden the portfolio for overseeing the regime change against the elected government of Ukraine, working together with neoconservative killer Victoria Nuland, then the Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, to put the overtly neo-Nazi followers of Hitlers Ukrainian asset Stepan Bandera into power in Kiev. Now, Biden (or at least his senile current self) and Nuland are back, as President and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. They are pushing for Ukraine and its fascist leaders to be brought into NATO. Ukraines Ambassador to Germany Andriy Melnyk told the German press that Germanys responsibility for the Nazi holocaust requires that it must play a leading role in order for Ukraine to become a NATO member, and as quickly as possible, with no ifs or buts.  Failure to do so will mean a new large-scale war in Europe, he implied.

Consider the implication: Pay compensation for having allowed the Nazi Holocaust by placing Nazis in power in Ukraine, to provoke yet another war on Russia? Do the citizens of the Western world not recall that it was Russia that fought the vast majority of the battles with the Nazis in the Great Patriotic War, as the Soviet Union called it, and lost by far the greatest number of casualties among its citizens? Are they oblivious to the fact that Russia is watching NATO expand its nuclear-armed forces up to Russias borders, that the U.S. has unilaterally ended most of the arms limitation treaties, and that the NATO powers have appointed themselves superior to the UN Security Council, established to prevent another global war, by imposing sanctions without Security Council approval, and waging regime-change wars without Security Council approval?

Ambassador Melnyk went further: If Ukraine is not accepted into NATO, he said, then the only option is to arm by ourselves, and maybe think about nuclear status again. Nazis armed with nuclear weapons. Who could allow it?

As you will see below, the answer is British intelligence. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has been taking orders from MI6 Chief Richard Moore. In a two-hour meeting in London last October, described by Zelensky as being about helping and protecting our sovereignty and territorial integrity, Moore and Zelensky set in motion plans for more U.S. and U.K. armaments for Ukraine, open support for Kievs Nazi militia assaults on the Donbas, shutting down the remaining opposition press in Ukraine, and even reconsideration of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum by which Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons.

Citizens of good will in the U.S., the U.K. and the EU do not have the privilege to ignore this rush to thermonuclear obliteration. The LaRouche Organization and the Schiller Institute addressed the moment of civilizational crisis in the March 20-21 Conference, and will do so again on May 8. The war drive must be stopped. The wars and sanctions policies now threatening the death of millions in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere, must also be stopped. To reverse the collapse of Western civilization, however, there must also be a full implementation of Lyndon LaRouches Four Laws, to put the bankrupt monetary system of Wall Street and the City of London out of our misery, with a New Bretton Woods Conference of the worlds leading nations, to restore the idea of peace through development, to build modern health systems in every part of the world, unite all nations in developing fusion power and in the exploration of outer space, and to restore beauty and classical culture to the western cultural wasteland. The task is huge, but nothing less can succeed, and never has it been more urgent.
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On March 22, 2021, I lost a friend and colleague.

After a long illness, Kevin Boberg passed away on that day. When I met him, he was working as a professor at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. He was the first international logistics experts I met when I become a trade specialist 30 years ago. I remember being introduced to him and the talk turned to the soon-to-be-established Santa Teresa Port of Entry in southern New Mexico. He strongly argued that an intermodal yard incorporating rail and truck modes needed to be established there.

When I started asking questions about this concept, he ushered me to a boardroom at the back of the business school. He had a mad scientists look on his face as he outlined on a blackboard what an intermodal facility should look like. I had just started my career and he was well into his own career as a professor of business. I dont think too many experts would take a novice like me and carefully explain every facet of how commerce moves in containers in a modern intermodal facility. I remember being absorbed in all the information he was imparting to me.

As luck would have it, I got to work on two intermodal facilities in Santa Teresa, the first of which was opened in 2001 and which has its own short line railroad company; and exactly 20 years after Kevins initial lesson to me, the establishment of the huge Union Pacific intermodal facility just north of the short line. As we were inaugurating Union Pacifics facility, my mind wandered back to the first meeting with Kevin and what a visionary he was to see the role an intermodal facility would play in southern New Mexicos border industry. Little did I know that the first meeting would launch a long relationship in which we worked together on a multitude of international projects.

He and I nurtured a cooperative internship program that lasted more than two decades, in which we would position students from various institutions in my Mexico City and Santa Teresa offices. It would give them practical experience while they completed their degrees. Most were amazed that they were immediately given a lot of responsibility to complete projects, often in contact with high-ranking elected officials. Over the years, many of these interns have worked for my company, and several still do today. Kevin always took pride at the success most of these interns are having in their careers. Many have worked in foreign posts and hold high-ranking positions. Every single ex-intern that I have kept in touch with respected and held Kevin in high esteem, as he would do anything for his students.

Years later, when Kevin was no longer in charge of the internship program, an intern of mine from Mexico had her internship canceled midway through her graduate studies, due to lack of funding. The money that she was being paid as an intern was important and I could cover that 100% on my side; however, the real crisis was losing her ability to qualify for in-state tuition. It would be impossible for her to pay out-of-state tuition in her financial situation. I called Kevin up because he knew the student and had worked with her before he changed positions. He immediately created a special class that would allow her to retain her internship, and guided her through the end of her studies. This intern is now a full-time member of my staff. When she found out that Kevin had passed, she cried, remembering his kindness. I imagine many of our interns also cried.

Lest a person think that he was simply an academic, they would quickly find out they were wrong. This was no ordinary professor or man. One day when we were meeting, he stretched his arms behind his head, and my eyes popped out of my head when I could spy a series of tattoos covering his forearms. He was a Harley man. Another time, one of our newly hired interns kept calling him Dr. Boberg. Kevin kept politely telling the student to call him Kevin, but the intern ignored his request. After being called Dr. Boberg one last time, Kevin turned toward the intern and said, If you call me Dr. Boberg again, Ill sock you in the face, and smiled. I loved that he was not even a bit pretentious.

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Always a very humble man, he never liked to draw attention to himself. However, I always made it publicly known that he was the visionary behind the intermodal yard. When I did this, he would always get a nervous smile and stare at the floor. Im sure that if he knew I was again saying it in this article, he would be embarrassed.

He never complained to me about his battle against a horrible illness, which hospitalized him numerous times and even resulted in amputation. Little by little, I saw him less, as he transitioned into retirement. From time to time, he would send me an email about a particular subject, and I would communicate with him in that manner. When I got the news of his death, I was truly saddened. I always appreciated the times we worked together. I will always be grateful that he was kind enough to take a rookie like me and treat me as an equal that first day we met.

Jerry Pacheco is the executive director of the International Business Accelerator, a nonprofit trade counseling program of the New Mexico Small Business Development Centers Network. He can be reached at 575-589-2200 or at jerry@nmiba.com.
The H2 2020 Media Quality Report highlighted brand safety, ad fraud, and viewability trends across display, video, mobile web, and in-app advertising. It analysed trillions of global data events from ad campaigns that ran between 1 July and 31 December 2020.The study found that brand risk on desktop display rose 3.2 percentage points from H2 2019 to reach 5.8%. This said IAS represents a level of risk the UK has not seen since 2017  a year defined by tragic domestic events and brand safety scandals. Brand risk on mobile web display rose by 2.3 percentage points when compared year-over-year (YoY), reaching 6%. Brand risk on video formats increased at lower rates than display - desktop video increased to 6.7% and mobile web video hit 8%. This risk level was still lower than its peak of 11.6% back in H2 2018.Viewability within the mobile-app display environment increased 4.2 percentage points YoY to 72.9% in H2 2020, increasing the ability for digital ads to be seen by consumers. This suggested IAS was likely a result of wider adoption of the IAB Tech Labs Open Measurement Software Development Kit (OM SDK) . However, viewability levels slightly decreased across other media environments due to more digital content consumption, increased demand and constraints on high quality ad inventory during the busy holiday period.Overall, UK display inventory still ranked above global averages. Desktop display viewability in the UK was 71.3% compared with the global average of 68.8% and mobile web display is 67.8%, versus the global average of 62.9%.With consistent use of anti-fraud technology, ad fraud levels in the UK decreased in all digital ad environments throughout H2 2020, except for desktop video, which increased by 0.1 percentage points. All inventory optimised against fraudulent activity was on par or below the worldwide averages of 0.8% for desktop display and video, 0.4% for mobile web display, and 0.3% for mobile web video in H2 2020. In contrast, advertising campaigns that did not use optimisation tools and strategies encountered fraud levels up to 11 times higher than those optimised against fraud. The H2 2020 Media Quality Report also found that as consumers have spent more time with digital content across 2020, the average time that ad content is in-view increased, providing UK advertisers , said IAS, a greater opportunity to engage with their audiences. Time-in-view increased YoY for desktop display from 20.11 in H2 2019 to 21.34 seconds in H2 2020, and for mobile web display from 14.84 to 15.68 seconds over the same period.
The Londonderry Chamber of Commerce and EURES Cross Border Partnership in collaboration with the Letterkenny Chamber will host a free online tax briefing for cross-border employers and employees on Thursday, April 22, from 11am to 12 noon.

Anna Doherty, Events Manager of Londonderry Chamber, said: This seminar will be facilitated by Rose Tierney of Tierney Tax Consultancy.

Rose is a qualified chartered accountant and chartered tax adviser in both the UK and Ireland. Rose will provide cross- border workers and employers with information on social security and tax issues such as redundancy payments, pension lump sums, tax relief on pension contributions, tax requirements for cross border workers, social insurance benefits and pensions in a cross-border situation.

Attendees will also receive information on implications for companies with staff members who work in both jurisdictions.

The event will also introduce the free services offered by EURES that help establish and strengthen networks between EURES advisers and employers.

To book your place at this free event, you can email anna@londonderrychamber.co.uk.

Or you can register online at the website of the Londonderry Chamber of Commerce.
The 29billion sale of Britain's world-leading computer chip maker Arm has been called into question after ministers intervened on national security grounds.

American giant Nvidia wants to buy the Cambridge-based company from Japan's Softbank, which has owned it for five years.

But yesterday Oliver Dowden, the Culture Secretary, instructed the UK competition watchdog to probe security concerns about the deal, raising the prospect it could be blocked outright. Arm's computer chip designs power most smartphones around the world, as well as many other digital gadgets.

The Government said these chips also 'underpin the UK's critical national infrastructure and are found in defence and national security-related technologies'.

American giant Nvidia wants to buy the Cambridge-based company from Japan's Softbank, which has owned it for five years

Tech deal fears: US-based Nvidia is seeking to buy the British chip maker from Japan's Softbank

It prompted Mr Dowden to issue a so-called 'intervention notice', calling on the Competition and Markets Authority to investigate whether there are any security implications before he decides whether to approve or block the deal.

Huawei 'listened in' on Dutch calls Chinese telecoms giant Huawei was able to eavesdrop on all phone calls made on one of the Netherlands's biggest mobile phone networks, a leaked report warned. But the bombshell claims  made more than a decade ago  were buried by Dutch network KPN because of fears it would lose its licence. Staff in both the Netherlands and China may have been able to listen in on mobile phone calls  including of the then prime minister, according to the De Volkskrant newspaper. While KPN acknowledged the existence of the report, it said it 'never observed that Huawei took client information'. The technology giant denied any wrongdoing. But the report will raise fears yet again over the use of Huawei technology in mobile networks around the world. Last year the UK banned it from being installed in 5G networks after warnings it could leave the country vulnerable to spying. Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the foreign affairs committee, said the report proved the UK was 'right to raise serious questions' about using Huawei. Advertisement

The move comes after thousands of business leaders wrote to Boris Johnson, arguing that Nvidia's takeover would reduce competition and threaten UK jobs. Arm has been described as the 'jewel in the crown' of Britain's technology industry.

But the firm was sold to Softbank in the aftermath of the EU referendum, with ministers portraying the deal at the time as a vote of confidence in the UK after Brexit.

Since then US-China trade disputes have highlighted the importance of computer chips in crucial technologies such as 5G communications and artificial intelligence  as well as concerns they could be exploited for spying. It has led to calls for Western countries to make their technology supply chains more secure.

Mr Dowden said yesterday: 'Following careful consideration, I have today issued an intervention notice on national security grounds. The UK's independent competition authority will now prepare a report on the implications of the transaction, which will help inform any further decisions.

'We welcome foreign investment, but it is appropriate that we properly consider the national security implications of a transaction like this.'

The CMA was already examining competition concerns around the deal before Mr Dowden's announcement. It will now have to report on potential security issues as well by July 30, with the Culture Secretary then deciding whether to clear the deal or refer it for a more in-depth investigation.

Nvidia insists its bid for Arm poses no competition concerns and that it will continue to expand the company's presence in the UK.

It denies claims that it wants to restrict sales of Arm's chips to rivals.

ANvidia spokesman said: 'We do not believe this transaction poses any material national security issues. We will continue to work closely with the British authorities.'
Moderna's CEO says the biotechnology company's COVID-19 vaccine booster - a third shot given to people to enhance their protection - will be available by fall.

Stephane Bancel told CNBC that researchers have been testing three different types of third doses at the same time to see which is most effective at protecting against the South African coronavirus variant.

'Our goal is to work really hard to get this ready before the fall,' he said on Squawk Box.

'I want to make sure there are boost vaccines available in the fall so that we protect people, as we're going to see next fall and winter season in the U.S.'

Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel (pictured) said on CNBC that the company has been testing three coronavirus vaccine booster shots in parallel

Bancel said emergency use should be filed with the FDA in the third quarter of 2021, making the booster shots available by the fall. Pictured: A vial of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, April 2021

Although U.S. health regulators have not recommended that Americans receive coronavirus vaccine boosters, experts fear the increased transmissibility of variants from the UK, South Africa and Brazil.

The South African variant has been the most worrying because several studies have found that it evades vaccines more easily than older types of the virus.

Recently updated data from Moderna's phase III clinical trial showed its vaccine is 90 percent effective at protecting against COVID-19 six months after the second dose.

Although this is a downgrade from estimates in its earlier clinical trials, which suggested it could prevent 94.5 percent of infections, it is still proof of long-lasting protection.

Bancel said it is possible that after another six months, or one year since a person received their second dose, protection from the virus may fall to between 70 percent and 80 percent.

'What I think this really shows is what we have been saying for now, for months, is that we believe we are all going to need boosting,' he said.

'We are testing in the clinic right now, boosting our currently authorized vaccine. And we believe that's going to be helpful because it's basically going to boost all the neutralizing antibodies to people who have received our vaccinations already.'

In the new study, volunteers will receive three types of booster shots, which are modified versions of Moderna's original vaccine.

One-third of participants will receive 50 micrograms of the booster candidate, which has been dubbed mRNA-1273.351.

The booster vaccine serum contains a bit of genetic code for the mutated spike protein of the South African variant, which the virus uses to enter and infect human cells.

More than three million people are being vaccinated every day as the U.S. continues to ramp up vaccination efforts

Currently, more than 131.2 million Americans - 39.5% of the population - have received at least one dose and 84.2 million - 25.4% - are fully immunized

Another third will receive a higher dose, 100 micrograms, of the candidate.

The last group will be given a shot called mRNA-1273.211, which combines Moderna's original vaccine and the booster shot in one dose.

Researchers will evaluate the safety of the booster as well as whether or not it is able to induce an immune response.

They will also look at potential side effects including redness and pain at the injection site, fever, headache, fatigue and muscle aches.

If results are positive and the third dose is determined to be safe, Moderna will seek emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the third quarter of 2021.

As of Monday, more than 131.2 million Americans - 39.5 percent of the population - have received at least one dose and 84.2 million - 25.4 percent - are fully immunized.

More than three million people are being vaccinated every day, with the U.S. recently surpassing President Joe Biden's goal of 200 million vaccinations in his first 100 days in office
OMAHA, Neb. (WLFI)  No. 7 seed Purdue volleyball topped the No. 10 seed Oregon, 3-1 (25-17, 25-16, 22-25, 26-24) in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA volleyball tournament on Sunday in Omaha, Nebraska.

Purdue will move on to the Elite 8 for the first time since 2013.

Caitlyn Newton led the Boilers with 17 Kills

Hayley Bush added 50 assists in the victory.

Purdue opened the match on a 9-2 run, forcing Oregon to use both of its timeouts. The Boilers did not sacrifice a lead in the opening set of play, and claimed victory 25-17.

Set two was much closer in the early going, with Oregon taking its first lead of the outing, 5-4. Purdue quickly answered back with a Caitlyn Newton ace, followed by strong net play to force another early timeout from the Ducks. Purdue took the second set 25-16.

The third set featured 13 ties. Oregon reached set point at 24-19, but Purdue went on a 3-0 run to make it 24-22. Oregon forced a 4th set on a kill.

Purdue closed out the fourth set, 26-24.

The Boilers will play the 2 seed Kentucky in the Regional Finals (Elite 8) on Monday at 9pm.

More information will be posted on this web story throughout the night.
Chennai, April 19 : Tamil Nadu Health Minister C. Vijayabaskar has said there is a stock of 8.8 lakh corona vaccine doses and several districts in the state have reported a shortage of vaccines even as Covid-19 cases witness a resurgence.

Coimbatore reported 727 fresh Covid-19 cases in a single day on Sunday but the number of people who took the vaccine dropped from 7,850 on Saturday to 918 on Sunday.

While the Coimbatore Corporation officials maintained that 9,550 Covid vaccine jabs were available, residents complained that the vaccines were in short supply.

In Avinashi, Udumalpet and Palladam, people had to return owing to the non-availability of the vaccine jabs.

Jagdish Kumar, Deputy Director of Health services, Tiruppur, speaking to IANS said,"In a day or two we will get adequate number of vaccines and the issue will be sorted out." In Madurai and Nagapattinam, the vaccination camps which were to be held on Sunday were cancelled following shortage of vaccines. In Trichy district, the state Health department allocated 2,000 doses of Covaxin to various vaccination camps in the district. However, Madurai was the worst-hit district in terms of vaccines in short supply.

There were complaints in Chennai that private hospitals have sent back people without being vaccinated though they had registered on the CoWIN portal for taking the vaccine jab.

However, state health authorities and corporation officials have put up a brave front saying that vaccines are available in sufficient numbers.

G Prakash, Chennai Corporation Commissioner, speaking to IANS said,"There is no such shortage of vaccines in Chennai. We are not for wasting the vaccine and a vial is opened only if there are 10 people ready to get vaccinated so that there is no wastage." If a vial is opened, it has to be used within three or four hours or it would be wasted.

Tamil Nadu Health minister, C. Vijayabaskar, speaking to IANS said,"We have adequate stock of vaccines and are looking into the issues facing certain districts of Tamil Nadu. However, I can assure that there is no major issues as far as vaccines are concerned."

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
The Pennsylvania Farm Show food is hosting an outdoor Spring Food Fest next month at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex & Expo Center in Harrisburg.

The event will take place in the north lot of the complex from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. May 7-9.

While our virtual Pennsylvania Farm Show in January was an absolute success, we all missed the opportunity to taste Pennsylvania agriculture, said Russell Redding, Pa. agriculture secretary. Were excited to host a second Farm Show Food Fest this spring to satisfy cravings for the Farm Show foods that give us comfort.

The Farm Show was held virtually in January due to the coronavirus pandemic. The department also hosted a similar food festival in the fall.

READ MORE: ShreddRRz food truck expands with restaurant selling shredded meats, mac-n-cheese and sweet corn cakes

Along with favorites such as Pa. Dairymens milkshakes, visitors can order from other vendors including Pa. Livestock Association, Pa. Mushroom Farmers and Pennsylvania Maple Syrup Producers, among others. In addition, there will be a PA Preferred Marketplace where vendors will be selling foods such as beer, wine, jerky, teas and hot sauces.

And more good news - -parking is free. However, all food and beverages will be available for purchase to grab-and-go only. Onsite seating will not be available and face masks are required onsite.

Heres a list of vendors scheduled to attend:

PA Dairymens Association

PA Livestock Association

PA Mushroom Farmers

PA Potato Cooperative

PennAg Industries

Snyders Concessions

FFA Pizza

Pennsylvania Maple Syrup Producers

The fest will also include a small PA Preferred marketplace which will include:
ROCHESTER, Minn. - A 24-year-old Rochester man is facing a litany of charges after he had to be wrestled to the ground by police.

It happened Sunday at 1:34 p.m. at the Valhalla Apartments when a man began yelling at a couple in the parking lot.

The couple thought he had a gun, and Spencer Tlougan, 24, was located in the 1900 block of Viking Dr. a short time later.

Police said the man was agitated and kicked and spit on officers before he was wrestled to the ground.

He was wearing a police-style belt with a collapsible baton and had a can of mace.

He's facing two counts of fourth-degree assault, terroristic threats, disorderly conduct and damage to property.
Fast-food restaurant chain Lotteria  a subsidiary of the Republic of Korea's Lotte Group  could close its Vietnamese franchise due to tepid performance.

The famous South Korean hamburger chain Lotteria of Lotte Group may shut down its business in Vietnam, after its closure in Indonesia.

Lotte Group's restaurant business unit (Lotte GRS) has been shutting down its Lotteria restaurant chain in Indonesia in 2020. Furthermore, the Republic of Korea (RoK) giant also implied that it would close down Lotte Groups food material supplier in Vietnam, which was established in early 2020 to expand Lotte GRS' business in neighbouring Southeast Asian countries.

According to Lotte GRS and Lotte Holdings, Lotteria hamburger chains overseas are being shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Lotte GRS' overseas office in Indonesia is currently undergoing liquidation.

Lotteria franchises in Vietnam have all stopped operations and its headquarters in Seoul is reviewing the possibility of closing down the business within 2021, according to Koreatimes.

As of 2020, Lotte GRS boasted two overseas franchises, which was Lotteria Indonesia and Lotteria Vietnam. After Lotte Holdings was established in 2017, it took control of the overseas restaurant business.

Lotteria Indonesia, which operates more than 20 stores there, is in the process of closing down due to its losses.

Specifically, Lotteria Vietnam did not make any profit for Lotte GRS last year. Lotteria Vietnam's book value stood at KRW26.8 billion (more than $24 million) as of early last year, but declined to KRW15.6 billion (nearly $14 million) after losses. Its net loss surpassed KRW10 billion ($8.97 million) in one year.

Vietnam is considered as one of the most critical markets of Lotte Group since its very first entrance to the country in 1990.

According to Korea Times, Lotte GRS planned to expand its business to neighbouring countries using Vietnam as a regional base by building a raw material company. In July last year, Lotte Food  an affiliate of Lotte GRS  also invested in a new Vietnamese corporation. However, the adverse impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has delayed further progress.

"Lotteria Vietnam and others have met the requirements for closure starting this year," said the company representative.

VIR

World fast-food revenues slow in Vietnam, struggling to lure local consumers The downward trend in the growth rate of the leading fast-food chain stemmed from market changes, consumers mindset as well as the emergence of alternative segments.
2020 was one of three warmest years on record, according to a new report, despite La Nina  the large-scale cooling of the ocean surface temperatures in the Pacific.

Global average temperatures last year reached around 2.16F (1.2C) above the pre-Industrial Revolution levels (1850-1900), reveals the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

The six years since 2015 have been the warmest on record, while the period 2011 to 2020 was the warmest decade on record, WMO says in its State of the Global Climate 2020 report, published today.

Not even the economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus could 'put a brake' on the drivers of climate change, including greenhouse gas emissions, WMO says.

2020 was one of the three warmest years on record, despite a cooling La Nina event, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reveals. The global average temperature for last year was about 1.2 Celsius above the pre-industrial (1850-1900) level. The six years since 2015 have been the warmest on record. 2011-2020 was the warmest decade on record

Statistically, 2020 was just behind 2016 and just ahead of 2019 in terms of global temperatures, putting it within the top three.

But a WMO spokesperson told MailOnline that the difference between the three is so small that it falls within the margin of error.

WMO uses five datasets to calculate the global figure  Copernicus, NOAA, NASA, Met Office HadCRUT and Japan Met Agency  to come up with a comprehensive figure.

But the long term trend  the fact we have had warmest six years and the warmest decade  are more important than the ranking of an individual year, it says.

Global annual mean temperature difference from pre-industrial conditions (18501900) for five global temperature data sets - Copernicus, NOAA, NASA, Met Office HadCRUT and Japan Met Agency

The warmth of 2020 was comparable to that of 2016, despite La Nina conditions developing by late September, the report claims.

La Nina  the large-scale cooling of the ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean  leads to variations in global weather.

Overall, the report new documents the various causes and effects of climate crisis, including greenhouse gas concentrations, increasing land and ocean temperatures, sea level rise, melting ice and glacier retreat and extreme weather.

WHAT IS LA NINA? La Nina occurs in the Pacific Ocean every three to seven years. The weather pattern causes abnormally strong winds, making the ocean colder. This small change in temperature can trigger local weather patterns globally, including torrential rain, plunging temperatures and cyclones. Rain clouds normally form over warm ocean water. La Nina blows all of this warm water to the western Pacific. This means that places like Indonesia, Australia and southern Africa can get much more rain than usual. It typically unfolds during the end of autumn or early winter. Advertisement

'It has been 28 years since the World Meteorological Organization issued the first State of the Climate report in 1993, due to the concerns raised at that time about projected climate change,' said WMO Secretary-General Professor Petteri Taalas in the report.

'We now have 28 more years of data that show significant temperature increases over land and sea as well as other changes like sea level rise, melting of sea ice and glaciers and changes in precipitation patterns.

'All key climate indicators and associated impact information provided in this report highlight relentless, continuing climate change, an increasing occurrence and intensification of extreme events, and severe losses and damage, affecting people, societies and economies.

'The negative trend in climate will continue for the coming decades independent of our success in mitigation.'

According to Professor Taalas, time is 'fast running out' to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement  which aims to keep the global average temperature rise to well below 3.6F (2C), compared to pre-industrial levels.

Elsewhere in the report, WMO points out that concentrations of the major greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide (CO2) methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), continued to increase in 2020.

CO2 is produced by fossil fuels like coal and gas, which are still being used to generate power in place of greener alternatives like solar and wind.

Covid temporarily depressed new greenhouse gas emissions due to an economic slowdown due to global lockdowns, but overall had no 'discernible impact' on atmospheric concentrations for the year, WMO adds.

In fact, Covid added 'a new and unwelcome dimension to weather, climate and water-related hazards', with wide-ranging combined impacts on human health and well-being.

For example, response and recovery operations after natural disasters like Cyclone Harold in Asia were hampered due to lockdowns  leading to delays in providing equipment and assistance.

A coal fired power plant. CO2 is produced by fossil fuels like coal and gas, which are still being used to generate power in place of greener alternatives like solar and wind

According to the organisation, the ocean absorbs around 23 per cent of the annual emissions of human-generated CO2 into the atmosphere and acts as a buffer against climate change.

However, CO2 reacts with seawater, lowering its pH and leading to ocean acidification  leading to problems like coral bleaching, decimating our natural reefs.

This in turn reduces its capacity to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere.

The ocean absorbs more than 90 per cent of the excess heat from human activities  and while 2019 saw the highest ocean heat content on record, this trend likely continued in 2020, WMO says.

Also in the report, WMO addresses a rise in sea levels.

The global mean sea level has constantly risen since the first State of the Climate report in 1993, according to satellite altimeter measurements.

A small drop in global mean sea level in the summer of 2020 was likely associated with developing La Nina conditions, but overall, global mean sea level continued to increase in 2020.

Graph shows global mean sea level for January 1993 to January 2021 (last data: 21 January 2021) based on satellite altimeter measurements. It includes data from the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative Sea Level project (January 1993 to December 2015, thick black curve), data from CMEMS (January 2016 to November 2020, blue curve) and near-realtime altimetry data from the Jason-3 mission beyond November 2020 (red curve). WMO says: 'The thin black curve is a quadratic function that best fits the data'

Today's report comes ahead of the virtual Leaders Summit on Climate running from April 22 to 23, convened by the US.

'This report shows that we have no time to waste,' said United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who launched the report at a press conference on Monday with Professor Taalas.

'The climate is changing, and the impacts are already too costly for people and the planet.'

It also comes ahead of the 26th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26, which will be held in Glasgow in November.

COP26 was delayed from November last year due to Covid-19.

Guterres said countries need to submit 'ambitious national climate plans that will collectively cut global emissions by 45 per cent compared to 2010 levels by 2030' well ahead of COP26.

'This is the year for action,' said Guterres. 'Countries need to commit to net zero emissions by 2050.

'They need to act now to protect people against the disastrous effects of climate change.'
Chandigarh, April 19 : Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Monday urged the Centre to send immediate supplies of vaccines and also give quick approval for two new oxygen plants in the state amid concerns over depleting stocks of both.

On the availability of vaccines, Chief Secretary Vini Mahajan told the Chief Minister that the situation was critical, with only three days of stocks left, but the Central government has assured that more would be coming soon.

Medical Education Minister O.P. Soni cited shortage of oxygen supply in Amritsar hospital, while the Chief Secretary said though Indian Oil Ltd (OIL) was providing the state with supplies, the situation was a matter of concern.

A close watch was being kept on the demand-supply situation at both government and private hospitals, she said.

A committee has been formed by the state government, under the Principal Secretary Industries, to monitor the situation and coordinate with the centre in this regard, said Mahajan.

Health Secretary Hussan Lal said three plants had been operationalised since the last surge, and two plants at Medical Colleges in Amritsar and Patiala were awaiting the Centre's approval. While there was a shortage currently, supplies were being diverted from one district to another to meet the requirements.

The meeting was informed that vaccination appeared to be having a positive effect in the police department, with only one vaccinated personnel testing positive in the past 24 hours, and a total of only 397 positive cases among those who have been immunised.

The Chief Minister directed all departments to make all efforts to maximise vaccination among the eligible population. He also urged large industries to take responsibility for getting their employees vaccinated.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Tiger Shroff and Disha Patani are probably leaving for a holiday together, in the latest pictures shared by a paparazzo. The photographer captured the rumoured pair at the Mumbai airport on Sunday morning. Disha wore a pink crop top with a pink mask, a blue shrug, and distressed jeans. She completed her look with a pair of dark glasses and a LV bag. Tiger was dressed all in black, with a black t-shirt, black trousers, dark shades. One of the accounts that shared the picture captioned their post by saying, Bon voyage #tigershroff #dishapatani as they take off to the Maldives for holidays.

Tiger Shroff and Disha Patani leave for a vacation in the Maldives

Disha Patani's Instagram story later saw a photo from what appeared to be an airport lounge. She was seen seated on a leather sofa, pouting and making the peace sign with her eyes closed. For years, Disha and Tiger have been rumoured to be dating. They've gone on many holidays together (without sharing photos), as well as lunch dates, dinners with his family. They haven't yet, however, made their relationship public.

Disha and Tiger have entered the ranks of other Bollywood stars such as Sara Ali Khan, Taapsee Pannu, Janhvi Kapoor, and Riteish Deshmukh, among others, who have left town for the time being for a vacation. Cinemas have been closed, and the Maharashtra government has requested that all film and television shoots be halted immediately due to an increase in COVID-19 cases.

On the professional front

Meanwhile, Disha is looking forward to the release of Radhe, a film starring Salman Khan. Prabhudheva's film also stars Randeep Hooda among its cast. Aside from that, she will be working with filmmaker Mohit Suri again in Ek Villain 2. Disha will also appear in Ekta Kapoor's film KTina. Sunny Singh and Akshay Oberoi also star in the movie. Tiger Shroff also has some interesting films lined up which he is working on currently. On the occasion of his birthday, the actor had announced that Heropanti 2 was in the works and called the film his first love. Apart from Heropanti 2, another one of Tiger Shroff's films he is also working on right now is Ganapath.

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.
KLAMATH FALLS, Ore.  The Klamath Falls Police Department arrested two men on Saturday after an investigation found that they'd tried to run over and shoot a man to death, according to the agency.

Officers responded shortly before 11 p.m. on Thursday to the High Lakes apartments at 2660 Shasta Way for reports of gunshots in the area. Once on the scene, the officers found 41-year-old Nathan Robbins suffering from a gunshot wound to the abdomen. He was taken to Sky Lakes Medical Center for treatment.

Investigators later learned that there had been another attempt on Robbins' life earlier in the evening, when suspects in a black Jeep Cherokee tried to "run him over" on S 6th Street. Police reviewed video that confirmed part of Robbins' account, along with a better description of the vehicle.

KFPD canvassed the area, but were unable to find the Jeep Cherokee that night. The next day, officers responded to a report of a black Jeep Cherokee parked near a business. The abandoned Jeep matched the vehicle seen in video from S 6th Street, the agency said.

Police identified two suspects in the murder attempt as 28-year-old James Henry Wilson and 30-year-old Robert William Edwin Metcalfe, KFPD said. The men were found separately and taken into custody on Saturday, and police recovered the gun that they say was used to shoot Robbins.

Wilson has been charged with two counts each of Attempted Murder, Unlawful Use of a Weapon, and Criminal Conspiracy. Metcalfe was charged with Attempted Murder, Assault I, Assault II, two counts of Unlawful Use of a Weapon, and Felon in Possession of a Firearm.

According to a police affidavit, Metcalfe is from Texas and lived in California before recently coming to the Klamath Falls area. Metcalfe reportedly said that Robbins had a "beef with [Metcalfe's] younger brother" before shooting him with a handgun, the statement said.

KFPS said that the investigation is ongoing and anyone with information should call the Klamath Falls Police Department at 541-883-5336, or call the anonymous tip line at 541-883-5334.
Columbia, MO (65201)

Today

Mostly clear this evening then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low 68F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Mostly clear this evening then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low 68F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph.
Generally, to examine a jewelry stand dangling with Fruity Poms statement earrings is like marvelling at a vase carefully curated with rare and colorful curiosities. But if youve happened to spot the latest collection  the Merienda line  youll know it's more akin to peering over sugar-studded glass, feeling warm and fuzzy at your most beloved bakery, only later planting yourself in a cozy kitchenmug of hot coffee in hand. Time ceasing as you share a treat with someone you love.

By now, if you havent heard of the San Antonio-based jewelry brand by artist Daniela Cavazos Madrigal, either from your Instagram feed, a fashionable friend, or from cruising past a popup at Feliz Modern, its worth being in on the buzz. Since its founding in 2017, Fruity Poms, which started out as just a hobby for Madrigal, has now amassed almost 16 thousand followers.

Despite or in part of the pandemic, much of the growth has happened this past year.

READ MORE: San Antonio will soon have a late night Chinese food spot serving until 2 a.m.

Courtesy of Fruity Poms

2020 was my highest selling grossing year. It was crazy! I opened my website in November of 2019, but 2020 just exploded, explained Madrigal excitedly.

I was doing a lot of online shopping during the lockdown you know, I dont know if that has anything to do with it.



Fruity Poms, with large, pendulous pieces ranging from Takashi Murakami inspired flowers, to electric hued pom-poms and fuzzy conchas, seems like the type of shop your funkiest friend would fawn over  and it is. Increasing demand and the overwhelming popularity of Merienda, the most recent collection, has prompted Madrigal  a team of one and a mother of two to hire an assistant while temporarily shuttering the site for a stint to catch up on fulfilling orders.

The newly popular snack-time inspired accessories also happen to be the favorite of the Laredo-born jewelry artist, as they originate from fond memories she has with her family.

I made Merienda thinking about my grandmother. My Guela Oli passed away  it's gonna be five years ago in May. I was just so close to her, I always have that memory. The first time I ever had pan had to be at her house. Wed go visit her in Mexico and she'd always have it there ready for us, you know, a lot of people can relate to that. Merienda is a time when youre gathering with your family or friends, probably relaxing... its just kinda a moment of respite. When I made it I was thinking of that idea, I didn't know it was going to be that crazy. And even people who aren't Latino or Hispanic responded to it so well, said Madrigal.

Courtesy of Fruity Poms

I think it's just universal  like pan is love.

While theres no place like her grandmother's home for fresh pan, Madrigals cites her friends at Sunshine Bakery to be her favorite in San Antonio. Shes also a fan of the conchas at La Panaderia.

In addition to earrings, Madrigal, a self proclaimed shoe addict, just conjured a color-blocked Fruity Poms shoe line. But earring lovers need not worry, as summer will bring new drops and restocks, including a return of Merienda, featuring unseen warm and fuzzy treats.

For more on the latest from Daniela and Fruity Poms, you can find her on Instagram @FruityPoms.

Camille Sauers is a freelance writer based in San Antonio. Follow her on twitter @camillesaccount. Send her emails to camillefrancissauers@gmail.com.
Mumbai, April 19 : Actress Saiyami Kher on Monday requested all to keep politics and religion aside, as we pass through one of the darkest phases in human history owing to the pandemic.

"We are witnessing the darkest times in human history. Please let's keep politics and religion away and just show some humanity. Do whatever it takes in our capacity to help. Every stranger is a loved one to someone else," Saiyami shared in an Instagram post.

A few days ago, Saiyami took to social media to express that she misses travelling and normal life.

"As I sit reminiscing about the times when we could pick our bags and go where we wanted to -- this quote by Mahatma Gandhi came to mind. Remember, this too shall pass. When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it, always. - Mahatma Gandhi," Saiyami wrote last week.

The actress features in the new Telugu action thriller "Wild Dog", starring Nagarjuna and Dia Mirza.
Boat Crash Leaves 1 Dead, 4 Hurt, 2 Missing

By The Associated Press

LOUISVILLE - Authorities say a boat accident in the Ohio River has left one person dead and injured four others while two people remain missing.News outlets report seven people were on a pleasure craft when it collided with a barge Saturday night near a boat dock in Louisville. A search for a man and woman who were missing from the boat resumed Sunday.Pleasure Ridge Park Fire Chief Doug Recktenwald says the injured were taken to the University of Louisville Hospital.Their conditions arent immediately known. The cause of the accident is under investigation.The accident occurred at the end of the citys Thunder Over Louisville fireworks.
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Everyone in United States aged 16 years and above is now eligible for COVID-19 vaccination, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Monday.

'Folks, I have good news. Everybody is eligible, as of today, to get the vaccine. We have enough of it, you need to be protected, and you need, in turn, to protect your neighbors and your family,' said President Joe Biden in a video posted to Twitter, announcing the eligibility expansion.

'So please, get the vaccine.'

The majority of U.S. states have already expanded their COVID-19 vaccine rollouts to people from this age group, and it's up to states to decide who becomes eligible when. The CDC's guidance is a formality, endorsing the use of the shots in people between 16 and 18.

Alaska was the first state to lower statewide eligibility to age 16 and was followed by states including Georgia, Texas and California. Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont barely hit Biden's deadline, expanding access on Monday.

More than half of U.S. adults have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, according to the CDC, but people younger than 18 make up less than one percent of those who have had a first dose, and 0.3 percent of Americans who are fully vaccinated.

It comes as COVID-19 rates remain stubbornly high in the U.S., despite the ongoing push to expand vaccination. Meanwhile, hospitalizations remain stable at about 5,459 a day, an increase of less than one percent compared to last week.

The average number of daily deaths remains stable at 737, including 313 fatalities recorded on Sunday.

New daily COVID-19 cases finally fell below 70,000 over the weekend, but still hovers near that figure, which experts say is too high.

On Sunday, the U.S. recorded 42,018 new cases of COVID-19, driving the seven-day rolling average down to 68,664. That's slightly lower than a week prior, when the average number of new cases was 70,196.

President Biden announced that all states had expanded vaccine eligibility to those 16 and older as of Monday, meeting his deadline and coinciding with updated CDC guidance, in a short video clip posted to Twitter

Less than one percent (0.8) of people who have had a first dose of vaccine are younger than 18. People between 18 and 29 represent about 11.5% of those who have had one dose. More than a quarter of people who got their first dose are between 50 and 64 (left). People between 50 and 64 and aged 65 to 74 each make up about a quarter of all fully vaccinated Americans. Only 0.3% of fully vaccinated people are under 18 (right)

The Biden administration is also expected to allocate additional $150 million in funding to community health centers across the country in an effort to get shots to underserved communities, an official told CNN.

Community health centers are often the primary medical resource for people in low-income communities and do not require insurance to provide care. It will take nearly a month for the funding to actually get into the hands of these centers, however, because they will have to apply for the funds and be approved by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

People in these communities, especially people of color, face higher risks of contracting COVID-19, being hospitalized for the infection and dying of coronavirus. That makes them high priority people to get vaccinated, yet the vast majority of shots have gone to white Americans and people living in wealthier neighborhoods.

As the vaccination campaign ramps up, case rates are still stubbornly high.

'Seventy thousands cases a day is not acceptable,' Dr Barry Bloom, former dean of the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health told The New York Times.

'We have to get that down.'

Over the past week, new cases were still rising in at least 20 U.S. states., according to tracking from Johns Hopkins University.

After a remarkable run of low Covid figures despite its early reopening, Florida is now seeing more new cases a day than any other state in the aftermath of Spring Break.

The Sunshine State recorded 6,834 new COVID-19 cases and 35 new fatalities on Sunday.

Maine is seeing the steepest increase, however, with its seven-day rolling average of new cases rising to 478 on Sunday, compared to 423 average new cases a week prior.

In Delaware, 411 new cases are now being reported a day, compared to 359 the previous Sunday.

After a harrowing surge in new COVID-19 cases that began in mid-February, Michigan is finally seeing its new daily cases decline.

The state's seven-day rolling average of new infections is now down to 5,779, compared to its latest peak of 7,873 on April 10.

Hope is likely on the horizon for all four states, however.

Each has now vaccinated more than 60,001 per every 100,000 residents, according to the CDC's tracking.

Hospitalizations are holding stable, at fewer than 5,500 new admissions per day on average, but up slightly from March

Nationwide, more than a quarter of Americans are fully-vaccinated, and 40 have had at least one dose of vaccine.

Among adults 18 and older, rates are considerably higher.

Nearly a third of people 18 or older are fully vaccinated and 50.4 percent of adult Americans are have had at least one shot.

Vaccinations are ramping-up across the country as supply and eligibility expand - but a few states lag behind.

Alabama has the lowest vaccination rate in the country, with 46,751 doses administered per 100,000 residents. Mississippi has fared little better, with 49,251 doses given per 100,000 people.

On the other end of the spectrum, New Mexico now leads the pack with 77,605 dose administered per 100,000 residents, and Alaska is close behind with 70,467 shots-in-arms per capita.

Alaska became an early leader in the vaccination race, thanks in part to its large Alaska Native population. Native American tribes received separate federal allocations of vaccines which weren't subject to some of the state-specific hiccups that led to delays in the first weeks of rollout. New Mexico's large Native American population likely offered the state a similar advantage.

It is unclear why Mississippi and Alabama lag behind, but vaccine hesitancy is high in these states compared others. In Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Arkansas and Tennessee had still used less than 70 percent of their available doses as of April 15, according to CDC data.

Their high vaccination rates are likely driving encouraging trends in new COVID cases in each state. Last week, just 2.3 percent of COVID-19 tests administered in New Mexico and 2.6 percent of tests in Alaska were positive.

According to tracking from Bloomberg, cases have begun to decline in 16 states where at least 35 percent of people are now vaccinated.

Four countries - Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands, Israel and Seychelles - have seen their COVID curves flatten nationwide after 40 percent of their populations were fully vaccinated.

And at the current pace, the U.S. is on track to reach herd immunity, with 75 percent of its population vaccinated, within four months.

People aged 16 years and above who have underlying medical conditions that increase the risk of serious, life-threatening complications from COVID-19, should be among those offered the vaccine first, according to the U.S. health agency's latest recommendations.

Earlier in April, U.S. President Joe Biden had directed states to widen the vaccine eligibility to people aged 18 or above by April 19. No COVID-19 vaccine is authorized yet for those under 16, although testing is underway.

Currently, the CDC and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have placed a pause on the use of Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine amid fears that it may cause life-threatening blood clots in rare cases.

Guidance on the use of the shot is expected within days, US Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy told CNN. It may offer different advice depending on a person's gender and age, he said.

The pause on J&J's vaccine could slightly hamper the rollout of vaccines in the U.S., but issues at a Baltimore manufacturing plant last month meant that America was predominantly relying on the other two manufacturers - Moderna and Pfizer - already.
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Furious British tourism chiefs today accused Emmanuel Macron of 'playing politics' and ignoring scientific data after he hinted that millions of vaccinated UK holidaymakers could be prevented from visiting France this summer in a ploy branded 'illogical' and 'economically stupid'.

The French President last night said that Americans and Europeans could travel to the western EU nation if they have been jabbed or have proof of a negative coronavirus test result - without specifying if Britons would be included in a continental passport regime.

Responding to the announcement, travel bosses slammed Mr Macron's 'incredibly disappointing' move and said it made 'no sense' to cut off vaccinated Britons while allowing unvaccinated Americans and Europeans to visit.

More than 60 per cent of the UK population have been given their first jab, and 10 million people have now had second doses, while EU countries including France and Germany play catch-up amid a third wave of infections and lockdowns. In the US, just 23 per cent the population is fully immunised.

Speaking to MailOnline, Dr Steven Freudmann, Chairman of the Institute of Travel & Tourism and former President of ABTA, suggested the ploy is 'politically motivated and not guided by the scientific reality'.

He also pointed out that UK tourism is an incredible boon to the French economy, with statistics showing that British holidaymakers spent more than 5billion while visiting the country during 2017.

The Tourism Alliance also said that the UK is France's largest inbound tourism source market, with more than 13 million visitors per year - and that 'with one of the highest vaccination rates of any country in the world, enabling travel from the UK will be a priority for the French tourism industry'.

Dr Freudmann said: 'It would be incredibly disappointing for British holidaymakers and our travel companies if Mr Macron chose to open up his country only to Americans and Europeans, but not Brits.

'In real terms, the Americans represent a small number in comparison with the huge number of Brits who holiday in France each year. There are clearly other priorities on the political agenda for Mr Macron.

'I can't help but think it would be frankly so stupid economically if he did that. British tourism is a major boon to the French economy, France is the number one destination in Europe for UK holidaymakers. People think it's Spain, and certainly that's number one for package holidays, but it's actually France in terms of travel.

The French President said his government was working on a certificate for travel between European countries

The French President last night said that Americans and Europeans could travel to the western EU nation if they have been jabbed or have proof of a negative Covid-19 test result. Pictured: Beach on the Croisette, Cannes

Another 221,193 people got their booster jabs on Sunday, taking the total to 10,152,039

He told CBS News: 'We are building a certificate to facilitate travel after these restrictions between the different European countries with testing and vaccination.' Pictured: Paris in February

98% of French teachers say 'non' to AstraZeneca: Mass vaccination centre offering jab to over-55s is forced to close after just 58 people out of 3,000 signed up French teachers in the city of Nice have overwhelmingly rejected AstraZeneca's Covid jab after just 58 out of a possible 3,000 signed up to be vaccinated. The jabs were being offered at a mass vaccination centre in Nice's Palais des Expositions this weekend, with 4,000 available to those aged over 55 in high-risk occupations, meaning 3,000 teachers eligible to take part. But the centre was forced to close after just four hours on Saturday due to lack of demand with just 58 appointments registered, and did not reopen today despite being scheduled to do so. That means the take-up rate among eligible teachers was just 2 per cent, with one local official blaming vaccine hesitancy caused by scaremongering around the British-made jab. Anne Frackowiak-Jacobs, sub-prefect of nearby Grasse, said people had 'turned around' when they learned they would be given AstraZeneca. Advertisement

'It's a no brainer, given it's so close and just 20 minutes across the Channel. I would hope that by Europeans he doesn't just mean people from the EU but us as well, given that we're still a part of Europe and were until recently part of the bloc.

'And given that we're so much further ahead in terms of having people vaccinated than other countries including France, it really wouldn't make any sense to cut off British holidaymakers, to punish them.

He added: 'I think it would be illogical if Mr Macron chose to spite us.

'The fact is, if Brits can't get to France this summer they will vote with their feet and they will go elsewhere. Other countries have welcomed us with open arms, it would be a bigger loss to France than to us.'

British visitors are currently required to present results of a negative coronavirus test on arrival to France and to self-isolate for seven days before taking another test.

It comes as Mr Macron prepares to impose tough entry restrictions on travellers from Argentina, Chile, South Africa and Brazil, while the UK placed India on its own red list amid fears of the so-called Indian variant.

Mr Macron told CBS: 'We are building a certificate to facilitate travel after these restrictions between the different European countries with testing and vaccination.'

He said: 'We will progressively lift the restrictions of the beginning of May, which means that we will organise in the summer time with our professionals in France for French European citizens, but as well for American citizens.

'So we are working hard to propose a very concrete solution, especially for US citizens who are vaccinated, so with a special pass, I would say.'

Mr Macron spoke as the government prepares to impose tough entry restrictions on travellers from four countries. Argentina, Chile, South Africa and Brazil face new rules in hopes of keeping out especially contagious virus variants.

The number of countries on the list could grow, France's foreign minister said Saturday.

The restrictions include mandatory 10-day quarantines with police checks to ensure people arriving in France observe the requirement.

Travellers from all four countries will be restricted to French nationals and their families, EU citizens and others with a permanent home in France.

Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian (pictured) said the Brazil suspension will be lifted followed by 'drastic measures' for entering France from all four countries, plus Guiana

India is added to UK's travel 'red list' from 4am Friday as Matt Hancock warns it is 'vital' to protect against new variant - after Boris Johnson CANCELS visit to country amid surging coronavirus cases India is being added to the UK's travel 'red list' after Boris Johnson cancelled his visit amid surging coronavirus cases and alarm about a new variant. Matt Hancock told MPs today that the government had made the 'difficult' decision to place the country in the highest level of restrictions from 4am on Friday. Some 103 cases of the variant first identified in India have now been identified in the UK, with the 'vast majority' linked to international travel, he said. 'After studying the data and on a precautionary basis we have made the difficult but vital decision to add India to the red list,' the Health Secretary said. Travel from destinations on the 'red list' is banned, and any British residents returning home must check into quarantine hotels. Earlier, a joint statement from the British and Indian government said Mr Johnson's trip - already scaled back - will not go ahead 'in light of the current situation'. Mr Hancock said the latest move means 'anyone who is not a UK or Irish resident or a British citizen cannot enter the UK if they've been in India in the previous 10 days'. Advertisement

France previously suspended all flights from Brazil. The suspension will be lifted next Saturday, after 10 days, and the new restrictions 'progressively' put in place by then.

Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the Brazil suspension will be lifted followed by 'drastic measures' for entering France from all four countries, plus Guiana.

Mr Macron, summarising the French approach, said 'the plan is always to control the virus, to maximise the vaccination and to progressively lift the restrictions.'

France has been among the hardest hit European countries and is guarding against highly contageous variants, notably deciding to target four countries.

The four countries 'are the most dangerous in terms of the number of variants that exist and in the evolution of the pandemic in these countries,' Le Drian said.

But the list of countries subject to tougher border checks could be extended, he added.

Under the new restrictions, travellers must provide an address for where they plan to self-isolate for 10 days and police will visit and fine those who are found in violation. France is also requiring more stringent testing for Covid.

Travellers must show proof of a negative PCR test taken less than 36 hours instead of 72 hours before they boarded a flight, or a negative antigen test less than 24 hours.

France has reported the deaths of 100,00 people in the Covid-19 pandemic. A variant first identified in Britain spread to Europe and is responsible for about 80 per cent of the virus cases in France.

The variants first seen in Brazil and South Africa make up less than 4 per cent of French infections, Health Minister Olivier Veran said last week. MailOnline has contacted the Foreign Office and the Department for Transport asking if Mr Macron's comments will include Britain.

Meanwhile the European coronavirus vaccination drive could catch up with Britain 'in the coming weeks' despite a slow start plagued by delays.

Europe's jab roll-out was condemned as 'unacceptably slow' by the World Health Organisation this month, with leaders blaming delays for 'prolonging the pandemic'.

The roll-out is now finally taking off as the EU faces soaring infection rates - with some even suggesting the mass vaccination drive could soon rival the UK.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said this week the EU has administered 100 million doses, adding this is a 'milestone we can be proud of.'

Some 27 million Europeans are fully vaccinated, meaning the bloc has edged closer to its goal of having vaccinated 70 per cent of the adult population by the end of the summer.

More than 32 million Britons have received the first dose of a vaccine, and nine million have been administered both jabs.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen confirmed this week that the EU has administered 100 million vaccine doses, adding this is a 'milestone we can be proud of'

Matt Hancock confirms booster Covid vaccines will be rolled out this autumn as he hails milestone of fully jabbing 10MILLION Britons and insists No10's lockdown-easing plan is still on track despite threat of variants Matt Hancock today confirmed the UK will have a booster vaccination programme later this year as he announced 10million people have now had second doses. The Health Secretary hailed the 'terrific milestone' today after another 221,193 people got their booster jabs on Sunday, taking the total to 10,152,039. It means almost one in five adults in Britain have the best available protection against Covid, with almost all of the country's most vulnerable people now covered. A total of 32.9million people have had their first dose of a vaccine, meaning well over half of the adult population have at least some protection. Experts estimate the jabs have already saved 10,000 people's lives while the country's three-month lockdown brought down case rates and hospital admissions. Mr Hancock said uptake of the jab so far has been 'astonishingly high' and that the country remains on track to offer a first jab to all adults by the end of July. It also remains on track, he said, to come out of lockdown in June. Advertisement

But medics in Germany are currently administering around 200,000 more daily vaccines than the British, the Telegraph reported.

The country set a new national record on Wednesday with 738,501 jabs given in a day. This compared to 547,465 jabs administered in the UK.

Around 18.5 per cent of Germans have now received the first dose of a vaccine - an increase of 12 per cent from April 1. Some 6.4 per cent are fully vaccinated.

In France, more than 450,000 jabs are now regularly given out per day following the launch of 40 mass vaccination sites.

However, the nation became the eighth to pass 100,000 Covid deaths this week, with an average of 300 people succumbing to the virus per day.

Elsewhere, in Italy, medics have continued to consistently give around 200,000 jabs per day since the end of March.

The vaccination drive got off to a slow start in Europe after the bloc failed to order enough doses and grant vaccinations swift approval.

At the start of April, only 10 per cent of Europe's population had received a first dose, compared to nearly 60 per cent of Britons. However, despite a swift start, the roll-out of Covid vaccines to new patients in the UK has slowed to a crawl in comparison to how it performed in March.

An average of 91,000 people are getting their first dose each day now after the roll-out peaked at just over 500,000 per day in the middle of last month.

The roll-out itself has managed to keep moving quickly, reaching an average 462,000 people per day over the last week, but most doses now are boosters.

A bottleneck in supplies and a need to give second jabs to millions of people who got their first in January have meant the roll-out has lost momentum.

Figures from the NHS show 117,835 people got their first vaccine dose on Wednesday, which was up from just 59,905 on Monday but significantly lower than the one-day record of 614,930 on March 19.

The focus has switched now to second doses, with four times as many of those being administered each day  an average of 346,000.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock and NHS bosses warned at the end of March that April would be a month dedicated to second doses and preserving supplies.

Although the introduction of a third vaccine, made by Moderna, has allowed some newcomers to get their first jab  the programme opened up to 45 to 49-year-olds this week  Pfizer and AstraZeneca supplies for newcomers are running low.

Medical chiefs said in a warning on March 17 that, for four weeks or more, 'volumes for first doses will be significantly constrained'.

Britain today announced four coronavirus deaths in the lowest daily count in more than seven months.

Department of Health figures showed there were also 2,963 new infections in the past 24 hours, down 17 per cent on last week's figure of 3,568.

Today's Covid deaths are the lowest they've been since the start of September after falling almost 70 per cent compared to last Monday's 13.

There is no indication that opening outdoor pubs, gyms and hairdressers last week, or reintroducing the rule of six late last month, has caused an uptick in cases.

The statistics pile more pressure on Boris Johnson to speed up his roadmap out of lockdown , with the next relaxations not due for almost another month.

Mr Johnson has promised to stick to 'data, not dates' when it comes to easing curbs but has refused to move quicker despite vanishingly low death numbers and just 2,000 Covid patients in the NHS.

Health officials revealed another 300,000 vaccines were administered on Sunday - the most recent day- with 221,000 people getting their second jab and 83,225 their first.

It means a total of 10.1million Britons are now fully vaccinated against the disease and almost 33m are waiting on their follow-up appointment.
Kukes International Airport in Albania has begun operations, with the first flight arriving from London, UK on April 18 following a short stop at Tirana International Airport to pick up Prime Minister Edi Rama for the official inauguration.

The airport, which has been constructed on a former refugee campsite 144km northeast of Albanias capital, Tirana, at a cost of US$28.7m, will open the gates to the economic development of the Kukes district, according to Prime Minister Rama.

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Flights to and from the UK were given the go-ahead by the Albanian governments Committee of Experts following its positive assessment of the Covid-19 situation in the UK. Regular international flights between the airport and other locations are expected to begin by May 20.

Taking into account the significant improvement in the epidemic situation in the United Kingdom, a country that has had an exemplary performance in terms of vaccination, also reflected in the significant decline in hospitalization and fatalities, [the Committee of Experts]has proposed the resumption of flights with this country, said Minister of Health Ogerta Manastirliu.

According to its CEO, Altin Progonati, Kukes has been designed to operate as a low-cost airport and will offer travelers competitive prices.
Jeffrey Groeneweg / ANP / AFP via Getty Images

As more and more Bay Area residents are vaccinated, many are looking forward to summer air travel as a way to celebrate. But before you throw away those face shields or dream about indulging in a leisurely in-flight cocktail, UCSF Department of Medicine chair Dr. Bob Wachter cautioned people it may be too soon for that type of traveling in a recent Washington Post article.

When [planes] turn into a flying restaurant, the dynamics of spread become very different, he told the Post. I would not eat at an indoor restaurant at this point, even being fully vaccinated, and so the time during which the plane is, in fact, an indoor restaurant is a time when it is somewhat less safe.
A GP has been struck off after telling one of his female patients she was 'very hot' and turning up at her house uninvited.

Dr David Creed tried to engage in romantic relationships with two married women who told a disciplinary tribunal that he made them feel 'extremely uncomfortable' and 'uneasy'.

The 51-year-old told one of them - known only as Patient A - 'your husband is really lucky' as well as 'you are perfect the way you are' and 'I know this is wrong, but you are very hot'.

But Dr Creed denied that he was 'sexually motivated' and argued he had been 'misunderstood'.

GP Dr David Creed has been struck off for trying to engage in romantic relationships with two married women who told a disciplinary tribunal that he made them feel 'extremely uncomfortable' and 'uneasy'

Over a three year period, Dr Creed breached regulations by repeatedly turning up at the woman's house for a home visit when she was alone and had insisted she could come into the GP surgery, the disciplinary tribunal heard.

It also heard the 'experienced GP' told the other woman - Patient B - her husband is 'an idiot' after they separated and made inappropriate comments about her sex life.

Patient B was left feeling 'vulnerable' after Dr Creed turned up at her work when she was no longer under his care and told her he 'had been by a few times but she was busy'.

At a hearing in 2020, Dr Creed, who worked at York Street Medical Practice in Cambridge - where GPs have an average salary of 60,000 - was found guilty of a total of 29 offences between February 2015 and March 2018.

The hearing concluded Dr Creed was 'sexually motivated' in relation to Patient A by insisting on visiting her home for routine issues such as stomach pains.

At a hearing in 2020, Dr Creed, who worked at York Street Medical Practice in Cambridge (pictured) was found guilty of a total of 29 offences between February 2015 and March 2018

Patient A said: 'I suffered quite a few periods of ill health including urine infections, sore throats and headaches and as a result had quite a few consultations with Dr Creed.

'I started to feel more uncomfortable with things that he was saying as he made comments about my personal appearance.

'Dr Creed would also attend my home address on regular occasions... After a while, my husband became concerned at the amount of visits and said that Dr Creed "cares too much" about me.

'I repeatedly told Dr Creed that I was happy to come to the Practice but he kept turning up at my house.'

He also told Patient A 'I really care about you, you know that, maybe I shouldn't say that but I really like you as a person' and repeatedly complimented Patient B.

It also heard the 'experienced GP' told the other woman - Patient B - her husband is 'an idiot' after they separated and made inappropriate comments about her sex life

Patient B, recalling a time when he turned up at her work, said: 'I felt extremely uncomfortable and vulnerable. He told me he had been by a few times and every time I had been busy.'

Dr Creed, who has a special interest in dermatology, argued he was 'misunderstood' and had simply 'gone the extra mile' but he was suspended for 12 months.

Now a review tribunal has found that Dr Creed, who qualified in 1993, is unfit to practice and will be struck off the Medical Register as he had not 'sufficiently demonstrated that he has addressed the behaviour'.

The latest tribunal - headed by chair Graham White - said Dr Creed's case would be assisted by his acceptance that he attempted to engage in an inappropriate emotional relationship and that his behaviour was sexually motivated.

But the GP refused to do so.

In a statement, read at the tribunal, Dr Creed said: 'Having now had almost four years of detailed reflection, I very much understand that my actions in visiting a patient at home and another at her place of work were unwise and ill-considered in that they were open to misinterpretation.

Dr Creed, who worked at the Buckden Surgery in Cambridge (pictured) blamed on his conduct on being a 'friendly enthusiastic' doctor who 'goes the extra mile'

'I am therefore extremely sorry for any upset experienced by my patients. Furthermore I understand why the MPTS considered my actions to be inappropriate.

'Whereas I understand the findings of the Tribunal and their significance, I firmly do not believe that lying is an appropriate action to satisfy the requests of the Tribunal.

'I cannot therefore lie and say that I 'accept I attempted to engage in an inappropriate emotional relationship with Patient A and Patient B.'

'Neither can I "accept that my behaviour with Patient A was sexually motivated."

'Despite this, I very much acknowledge that I made some considerable mistakes leading to some inappropriate actions in my professional care of Patient A and Patient B.

'I submit that my considerable reflection and learning and the actions I have taken, have now produced an end result which is similarly protective of others, as if my behaviour had been sexually motivated and then made changes from a recognition of that motivation.'

The tribunal determined that Dr Creed had not sufficiently demonstrated that he addressed the behaviour meaning patients safety and wellbeing was still 'at risk'.

Concluding his fitness to practise remains impaired, it ordered he be struck off.
Married At First Sight couple Bryce Ruthven and Melissa Rawson consummated their TV marriage on their wedding night.

And on Monday the couple insisted their sexual chemistry is stronger than ever since leaving Nine's controversial experiment.

Appearing on KIIS FM's Kyle and Jackie O on Monday, Bryce boasted: 'Yeah, we are in a pretty good sex life.'

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Loved-up! Married At First Sight's Bryce Ruthven and Melissa Rawson shared details of their VERY active sex life on KIIS FM's Kyle and Jackie O on Monday

'I know you [Kyle] are very intrigued and when we caught up you were asking for a lot of details,' Bryce joked.

Co-host Jackie 'O' Henderson exclaimed that it was 'creepy' Kyle prodded the former radio host about the couple's sex life as he wasn't a sex therapist.

Bryce and Melissa certainly looked smitten as they left another radio interview in Melbourne on Monday morning.

Melissa gazed lovingly at Bryce as they made their media interview rounds following Sunday's grand finale on Nine.

Look of love: The couple struggled to keep their eyes off one another as they left another radio interview in Melbourne

Dressed to impress: Melissa with dressed in a rocker-chic look with a flaming heart T-shirt, a leopard print skirt and boots

Keeping it casual: Meanwhile. Bryce was dressed comfortably in a grey sweater, jeans and a baseball cap

Melissa with dressed in a rocker-chic look with a flaming heart T-shirt, a leopard print skirt and boots.

Despite the early wakeup call, the blonde beauty looked effortlessly glam with a bright red lipstick and glossy makeup palette.

Meanwhile. Bryce was dressed casually in a grey sweater, jeans and a baseball cap.

In April, Melissa and Bryce had met up with Kyle in person in Sydney's King Cross after the shock jock had defended the controversial groom on his radio show.

Kyle said he believed the couple were 'a real love story' and not 'phony' at all, joking the secret to their success was 'banging on the first night' of the experiment.

'We are in a pretty good sex life': The stars have insisted their sexual chemistry is better than ever since leaving Nine's controversial experiment

The REAL deal: Kyle said he believed the couple were 'a real love story' and not 'phony' at all, joking the secret to their success was 'banging on the first night' of the experiment

Bryce and Melissa quickly became the most controversial couple on this season of Married At First Sight.

After the MAFS finale aired on Sunday night, the groom shared a post to Instagram to mark the end of his TV journey.

'Thank you to those that have supported us through our MAFS experiment. We finish with love and look forward to a happy future together!' he captioned a picture of the couple, adding a ring and baby emoji.

Throwback: Married At First Sight couple Bryce and Melissa consummated their TV marriage on their wedding night on the show (filmed in September)

On Sunday, Bryce also appeared to confirm rumours he and Melissa could be set to tie the knot in real life.

'We're still together, living together very happily in Melbourne and I can't see things changing,' he told Weekend Today with a large grin.

Bryce added: 'I've also even seen a Sportsbet thing [suggesting that] we're getting married and that's something to get on.'

Last week, Bryce and Melissa decided to stay together during the final commitment ceremony despite the ups and downs their relationship has experienced throughout the experiment.
An Australian mum has revealed before and after pictures of her newly organised fridge - after sickness and school-holidays lead to kitchen chaos.

The mum said after two weeks of school holidays and having her children home sick for two weeks before that her fridge was a mess.

'Things were just shoved wherever they would fit,' she admitted before revealing her amazing fridge transformation.

The mum swapped chaos for order, chopping all of her vegetables and organising her lunch meat into containers.

An Australian mum has revealed incredible before and after pictures of her newly organised fridge - after sickness and school-holidays lead to kitchen chaos.

The mum loves having everything ready to go in the fridge - and says it makes lunches and dinners easier

'Yesterday was spent chopping cheese cubes, kabana and vegetables and putting things into tubs,' she said, sharing photos of her impeccable fridge.

'Having everything prepped makes lunch and dinner so much easier,' she said.

The photos reveal there is now a place for everything in the fridge, including a bucket for chocolate crackles, a container for yoghurt and a plastic tub for cheese sticks.

Everything appears to have a spot in the fridge now - where it was once cluttered

'Things were just shoved wherever they would fit,' she admitted before revealing her amazing fridge transformation

What are the tricks for organising the fridge? Section the fridge into categories Store milk in the door rather than on the shelf of the fridge Buy multiple fridge containers to store the food to keep it fresh and easily accessible Make use of labelling the containers Store snacks for children in one section only Place jars in the draws and locate fruits and vegetables in containers on the top shelf so they aren't forgotten about Store bulk frozen meat in a separate smaller freezer if possible Advertisement

Lemons, apples and avocados are arranged in silver tubs on the middle shelf and grapes below that.

Cucumber is chopped in circles and sticks - ready for salad and sandwiches, alongside tubs of spinach and celery.

Grated cheese, lunch meats, butter and pickles are stacked at the top of the fridge.

Busy mums appear to be constantly looking for meal-prepping and fridge organisation ideas online.

One mum has revealed how her family use two fridges to save them at the checkout.

The Australian woman called Tanya posted on Facebook, where she said she was recently inspired to re-organise her fridge, shopping habits and 'the way we eat'.

Since doing the fridge re-haul, not only is Tanya saving money, but her entire family are much healthier and it has even helped her husband's diabetes.

She posted on Facebook: 'I bought a second cheap $120 fridge/freezer on Facebook Marketplace, bought clear Kmart containers and labelled from our meals.

'Our other fridge is filled with healthier snacks that we can reach for.'

The Australian woman called Tanya then puts the foods for all her meals inside another fridge she picked up for $120 (pictured)

Tanya explained that because she can clearly see the meals her family plan to eat in containers labelled 'Meal One', 'Meal Two', 'Meal Three' and so on, she always knows that she has food in and isn't tempted to go to the shops or buy takeaway.

She then slices up fruits and veg and puts them in clear containers in the other fridge, so her kids always have something healthy to reach for if they're hungry.

'Our breakfast overnight mueslis are Kmart jars, the fruit and vegetable snap containers and jars are Kmart and the bento-style lunchboxes are Kmart also,' Tanya explained.

A mother has shared her simple fridge storage method (pictured), and claims it has stopped her family from wasting hundreds of dollars; she puts snacks in one fridge

'I bought the clear containers and fruit sliders from Kmart and the baskets are from Howard's Storage World, but Kmart has them too.'

She said the method has helped her 'husband with diabetes to reach for healthier options' and also 'saved us from throwing things out'.

The method has also bought the mum some extra precious time, as she can clearly see what she needs to cook for dinner that night.
An areal view of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant undergoing decommissioning work and tanks (bottom) for storing treated water. STR/JIJI PRESS/AFP via Getty Images

Washington has backed Japan's plan to release radioactive water from Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean.

On Sunday, US climate envoy John Kerry said the US has "confidence" that Japan will be "transparent."

South Korea, China, and Russia all object to the release of 1.2 million tons of contaminated water.

Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

The US has backed Japan's controversial decision to release over 1.2 million tonnes of contaminated water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean.

Climate envoy John Kerry said during a press conference in Seoul on Sunday that he was "confident" that the Japanese government would "continue following due procedures."

The US has thrown its weight behind Japan even as the country faces strong pushback from its neighbors on its decision, first announced on April 13, to release the contaminated water from Fukushima into the sea. The objections have not ceased despite Japan's repeated assertions that the contaminated water would be released only when it is "safe to drink."

"The US is confident that the government of Japan is in very full consultations with the International Atomic Energy Agency," Kerry said on Sunday, adding that the IAEA has "set up a very rigorous process."

He noted that Washington would be monitoring the release of the water closely, to make sure the release of the water would not pose a threat to public health.

According to Al Jazeera, Kerry also clarified that the US would stay out of the "process that's already underway," as there are "very clear rules and expectations" in place.

Kerry's comments on Sunday followed South Korean foreign minister Chung Eui-yong's attempt to bring up Korea's objections to Japan's Fukushima water release plan at an official dinner on Saturday.

"Minister Chung conveyed our government and people's serious concerns about Japan's decision, and asked the US side to take interest and cooperate so that Japan will provide information in a more transparent and speedy manner," said the South Korean foreign ministry in a statement on April 17.

Story continues

Japan has been storing some 1.2 million tons of radioactive water - enough to fill 500 Olympic-size swimming pools - in more than 1,000 tanks following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami which decimated parts of northern Japan and its coastal regions.

The water - which was used to cool the melted-down core reactors in the wake of the disaster - has been handled by the Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) for the last decade. In 2018, TEPCO admitted that not all the radioactive material it claimed to have filtered out of the water had been processed.

The discharge of the water is set to begin in 2023. It will not be released in one go, but in gradual stages that could take twenty to thirty years.

South Korea, China, and Russia object to radioactive water release

China and South Korea have objected to Japan's plan to release the contaminated water in stages, arguing that the sheer volume of contaminated water flowing into the Pacific Ocean could become a health, food safety, and environmental hazard.

Environmental groups in South Korea staged rallies last week calling for Japanese prime minister Yoshihide Suga to reconsider his decision to release the contaminated water. Protesters gathered outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul with banners bearing pictures of salmon steaks, prawns, and mussels with radioactive symbols slapped onto them.

South Korean environmental activists wearing protective clothing and a mask (R) of Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga perform during a protest against Japan's decision on releasing Fukushima wastewater, near the Japanese embassy in Seoul on April 13, 2021. (Photo by Jung Yeon-je / AFP) (Photo by ) JUNG YEON-JE/AFP via Getty Images

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian gave a snappy comment that went viral on social media site Weibo (China's version of Twitter), where he dared Japanese finance minister Taro Aso and other officials to "drink the water first" to prove that it is safe, calling Japan's move "highly irresponsible."

Zhao's comments came as hashtags including "Fukushima water could destroy half the Pacific Ocean in 57 days" and "Japan is inflicting a disaster on other nations" trended on Weibo, with some calling for a boycott of Japanese seafood.

Russia has also expressed "serious concern" over Japan's plan to release the treated wastewater, asking for a "detailed explanation."

Read the original article on Insider
The newly-released data on the protective effects of China's Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine is encouraging, Chile's Minister of Science, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation Andres Couve said at a press conference on Sunday.

The minister hailed the vaccine as very effective in preventing symptomatic infections, hospitalization, severe illness and death.

He said the mass vaccination in Chile is well underway, with more than 5 million people having received two doses. By the middle of this year, 15 million people will be inoculated.

Couve called on the public to continue taking such preventive measures as wearing masks and practicing social distancing while getting vaccinated.

Chile's Ministry of Health on Friday released the results of the vaccine from its huge real-world study, which shows that the vaccine is 67 percent effective in preventing symptomatic infection, 85 percent effective against hospitalizations, 89 percent effective in preventing intensive care admission, and 80 percent effective in warding off deaths from the disease.

A real-world study involves the collection of patient-related data in everyday settings to obtain evidence of the value of use and potential benefits or risks of medical products.

The Sinovac vaccine, one of the main vaccines used in mass vaccination in Chile, shows very good results in the study, said Rodrigo Yanez, undersecretary of the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Chile launched its nationwide COVID-19 vaccination program on February 3. Over 7.6 million people in the country have been vaccinated with at least one dose, nearly 90 percent of which are Sinovac vaccines.

(CGTN)
AKRON, Ohio  Breweries keep popping up in neighborhoods, small towns and urban pockets throughout every cranny of Ohio. Some with fanfare, some with screaming social-media presence. And others, like Two Monks Brewing Co., settle in comfortably and quiet.

Steve Prough and Patrick Armstead  the business partners behind the Akron brewery - took a love of home brewing, considered locations, and landed in a residential south-side neighborhood. This year, Two Monks will mark its fifth anniversary.

Well, we decided we were just going to hide from the public, Prough joked.

The genesis of the brewery actually dates to 1993, when Prough started brewing. A buddy received a home-brewing kit, and after Christmas he asked: " Hey, I got this kit, want to make some beer? "

The initial brew they made was a Scottish Ale, and Prough was hooked. He bought a kit for himself so they could make double batches in a day.

Prough eventually met Armstead, who also started with a kit. Years past and batches were made, and the two mulled the possibility of brewing in retirement. As it happens with brewing buddies, talk turned to reality. And several things converged neatly - the building, schedules, timing.

Well, Prough remembered, weve got no better chance to start than now.

The brewery opened in September 2016, just a few months before the initial Summit Brew Path, which recently launched its annual run.

The name goes back to months of brainstorming, the two quaffing a few beers while spitballing themes attached to Akron, the rubber industry  trying to come up with something that was associated with the city, Prough said. They considered Wadsworth as a location, and thought of symbols like the grizzly. Then, one night, Prough read an article that sparked their creativity.

Steve Prough is co-owner and brewer at Two Monks.

Beer, the story said, would be very different today had the monks of medieval times not  written about it during the Black Plague and all that, he said. Everyone else could barely read and write and they are dying left and right. So the monks kept the knowledge of beer through those dark and troubled times.

Then they had another conversation about the dark ages of American beer drinkers that time after Prohibition when American Pilsners dominated the brewing landscape. Decades later, home brewers broke out of that homogenous mold and started crafting all sorts of styles.

One of us said, Were just like two monks. It was like Bing! "

Their epiphany led the business owners to adopt the name, though they dont wear brown robes cinched with rope.

Prough brews on a tiny one-barrel system. He brews once a week, he said, and while they dont have a burning desire to branch into a major canning distribution, they do have a single-can production unit. In addition to draft, the brewery offers howlers and pint cans.

Of 10 beers on tap, five are core offerings:

Brewberry: The flagship, an Irish ale base with blueberries added. Its 6.3% alcohol, 30 International Bittering Units. I probably spent more time on that beer alone, Prough said.

Meancog: Dry Irish Stout. Meancog in Gaelic means Mistake. This one is 4.8% alcohol, 36 IBUs.

Weiss Bier: 4.3% alcohol, 14 IBUs.

ESB: Extra Special Bitter style beer, 6% alcohol, 44 IBUs.

Schwartzbier: A Black Lager at 5.4%, 16 IBUs.

Two Monks has five core beers among 10 total taps.

Craft-beer heads will notice whats missing right away:

No IPAs, Prough said, laughing.

India Pale Ale will rotate in during spring-summer, but its not among the cores.

For every one person who comes in and tells me Youve got to have an IPA on, I get two people who tell me Thank you for not having four or five IPAs. I think what happened was at the beginning, the hopheads really pushed (IPAs), but as it became more mainstream that brought all the regular people who are not hopheads into it.

While the brewery remains small, Prough said he recently came across some equipment that will allow us to double our production, which means they will be able to do some limited distribution. And thats just fine with the two monks who have settled well into their space.

The stars aligned, Prough said, and here we are.

Two Monks Brewing Co. in Akron looks to mark its fifth anniversary this year.

Six-pack of facts about Two Monks Brewing Co.

 Its at 352 Massillon Road, Akron, less than a mile south of Interstate 76. Hours: 5-8 p.m. Wednesday; 5-9 p.m. Thursday; 4-9 p.m. Friday; 1-9 p.m. Saturday; noon-3 p.m. Sunday. A small, dedicated lot is adjacent to the building.

 Nearest brewery: Hoppin Frog Brewery is less than 3 miles to the south. Two Monks is 40 miles from downtown Cleveland.

 No fryers in the kitchen, but food is offered. Paninis, hot dogs and snacks are available.

 About 10 tables are spaced out throughout the space, which covers less than 2,000 square feet.

 The building previously was a used appliance store, but Prough said it had a multitude of other uses, including a flooring company, uniform-supply firm and others.

 Local photographer Susan Lilley has artwork hanging for sale.

I am on cleveland.coms life and culture team and cover food, beer, wine and sports-related topics. If you want to see my stories, heres a directory on cleveland.com. Bill Wills of WTAM-1100 and I talk food and drink usually at 8:20 a.m. Thursday morning. And tune in at 7:05 a.m. Wednesdays for Beer with Bona and Much, Much More with Munch Bishop on 1350-AM The Gambler. Twitter: @mbona30.

Get a jumpstart on the weekend and sign up for Cleveland.coms weekly In the CLE email newsletter, your essential guide to the top things to in Greater Cleveland. It will arrive in your inbox on Friday mornings - an exclusive to-do list, focusing on the best of the weekend fun. Restaurants, music, movies, performing arts, family fun and more. Just click here to subscribe. All cleveland.com newsletters are free.
No new cases of rare, life-threatening blood clots in recipients of Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine have been confirmed, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials said Monday - but they are keeping a close eye out for them.

Last Tuesday, the CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) suggested clinicians stop using the shot after seven reports of rare, but serious, blood clots out of more than 7.2 million vaccinations.

A panel that advises the CDC on vaccines is now reviewing data on these reports, and has added two more potential cases to its review, for a total of nine cases of clots.

'We are encouraged that it hasn't been an overwhelming number of cases but we're looking and seeing what's come in,' said CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky during a press briefing on Monday.

She added that the agency and the FDA were monitoring the U.S. government's database for additional reports of side effects.

The primary concern is a type of blood clotting that can affect the brain, called a cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, in combination with a low platelet-count condition known as thrombocytopenia.

CDC's system for reporting vaccine reactions lists just one of these (although the CDC is actively investigating nine). The system also lists seven reports of low platelet counts, and 10 reports of blood clots in general.

Importantly, reports to the adverse event system, known as VAERS, have to be investigated before officials conclude that patients really developed the conditions their doctors became concerned about, or determine that these issues were linked to the vaccines they received.

A CDC spokesperson told AOL that no additional cases have been confirmed in an emailed statement.

Dr Walensky did not provide any additional specifics on how many more cases of concerning vaccine reaction there have been, or what those reactions were.

SCROLL DOWN FOR THE VIDEO

CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky said on Monday (pictured) the agency is looking into additional reports of people who suffered severe side effects from the J&J vaccine

Walensky did not elaborate on how many people suffered side effects from the J&J vaccine or what side effects people may have experienced. Pictured: A vial of the J&J's COVID-19 vaccine in Bay Shore, New York, March 2021

On Tuesday, the CDC and FDA recommended a pause in the rollout of J&J's vaccine, after nine people out of more than 7 million people developed blood clots after receiving it

J&J's vaccine combines genetic material from the new virus with the genes of the adenovirus - which causes the common cold - to induce an immune response.

It is the same technology the company used to make an experimental Ebola vaccine for people in the Democratic Republic of Congo in late 2019.

The vaccine was hailed as a game changer in the fight against coronavirus because it is a single-dose and it does not have to be stored at freezing temperatures unlike the Pfizer-BioNTech and the Moderna vaccines.

So it was a shock when a report found that six women under age 50 who received the J&J COVID-19 vaccine had developed cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) blood clots.

CVST is a rare type of blood clot that blocks the brain's sinus channels of draining blood, which can cause hemorrhages.

It occurs in about five per million people in the general population.

In the six cases, CVST occurred in combination with low levels of blood platelets, also known as thrombocytopenia.

This figure of six was later updated to include nine people, but it's not clear if the other three experienced thrombocytopenia.

After delaying a vote on Wednesday on whether or not to recommend lifting the pause, the CDC's advisory committee meet again on April 23 to decide.

Members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which develops guidelines for vaccine administration as well as schedules, appeared to want more data before proceeding with a decision.

Meanwhile, Dr Anthony Fauci said on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday that he does not believe the J&J vaccine will be taken out of circulation.

More than three million people are being vaccinated every day as the U.S. mass vaccination campaign picks up speed

As of Monday, more than 131.2 million Americans - 39.5% of the population - have received at least one dose and 84.2 million - 25.4% - are fully immunized

'My estimate is that we will continue to use it in some form,' Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, said.

'I doubt very seriously if they just cancel it. I don't think that's going to happen. I do think that there will likely be some sort of warning or restriction or risk assessment.'

Fauci added that when the ACIP meets, there could be new restrictions or warnings related to the J&J vaccine.

'I do think that there will likely be some sort of warning or restriction or risk assessment,' he said.

'I don't think it's just going to go back and say: "OK, everything's fine. Go right back." I think it'll likely say: "OK, we're going to use it, but be careful under these certain circumstances."'

As of Monday, more than 131.2 million Americans - 39.5 percent of the population - have received at least one dose and 84.2 million - 25.4 percent - are fully immunized.

More than three million people are being vaccinated every day, with the U.S. recently surpassing President Joe Biden's goal of 200 million vaccinations in his first 100 days in office
CHARLOTTETOWN - Prince Edward Island is tightening border restrictions in an effort to limit the number of new COVID-19 cases in the province.

Dr. Heather Morrison, chief medical officer for Prince Edward Island, speaks to the media in Charlottetown Wednesday, December 16, 2020 at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Prince Edward Island is tightening border restrictions in an effort to limit the number of new COVID-19 cases in the province. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Brian McInnis

CHARLOTTETOWN - Prince Edward Island is tightening border restrictions in an effort to limit the number of new COVID-19 cases in the province.

Effective immediately, most non-resident travel to the Island from outside Atlantic Canada is on hold until at least May 17. Chief medical officer of health Dr. Heather Morrison is recommending Islanders avoid non-essential travel.

"We need to buy more time," Morrison told reporters Monday.

"These measures are intended to further reduce the risk of importation of COVID-19 and lower the likelihood that people could come here and get sick with COVID-19, putting an additional strain on our health-care resources," she said.

Morrison said seasonal residents who had been approved to arrive before May 17 will need to show results of a negative COVID-19 test that had been taken within 72 hours of their arrival. She said those travellers will be tested a second time during the 14-day isolation period.

"New pre-travel applications for seasonal residents from outside of Atlantic Canada will be processed over the next month. However, tentative dates for arrival will be after May 17," she said.

Rotational workers and truck drivers will need to isolate until they receive a negative test result  even if they have been vaccinated, Morrison said.

"I know these measures are not what people want to hear," she said. "We would much rather hear about what we can do to open up our province for the spring and to plan and welcome and visit with friends off-Island."

Morrison reported three new cases of COVID-19 in the province Monday. All three cases, she said, involve people who arrived in the province from travel outside the Atlantic region.

The new measures announced Monday are scheduled to last until May 17  well after the May 3 proposed date to reopen the Atlantic bubble, which would allow residents of Atlantic Canada to travel freely within the region without having to isolate.

Premier Dennis King told reporters the new travel restrictions target people from outside the region. King said he still wants to have unrestricted travel within Atlantic Canada, but only when it's safe to do so.

The premier said the bubble isn't his top priority right now.

"We have to make sure we are doing everything we can to keep individuals safe and to try to do our best to push COVID back and if that requires a little bit longer to not have interprovincial travel beyond essential travel, then that's what we will do," King said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 19, 2021.

 By Kevin Bissett in Fredericton.
New research by Irelands leading chiropractic clinic group reveals that 44% of people from Connacht working from home due to Covid-19 restrictions are experiencing back or neck pains, or both. The Chiropractix Your Spine Matters study found that of the 47% of people working from home all or some of the time, 57% use ordinary home furniture while 18% use a mix of home and office furniture. 22% have personally provided office furniture while 4% have had office furniture organised by their employer.

The research also found that 41% of people working from home in Connacht would value exercises for reducing back or neck pains. 38% would value regular chiropractic or physiotherapy sessions to manage back/neck pain while 21% would value advice on the correct posture while working.

Paul Bradley, Clinical Director, Chiropractix, said, Weve seen a significant increase in patients experiencing back or neck pain as a result of working from home. It is so important to use an ergonomically designed chair and ensure that your computer screen is at the appropriate height. Taking regular breaks away from the desk to stretch is also vital. Dont let the situation fester  talk to your employer about getting proper office furniture, a supportive chair at a minimum  or make an appointment with your chiropractor.

25% of people surveyed are, or have a family member, working from home most or all the time with a further 14% working from home sometimes.

Maaike van der Leeden, a 33-year-old data analyst living in Galway, was very conscious of having the correct posture while working from home.

As someone who suffers from acute neck and back pain it is important that I use an ergonomically designed chair and have the correct desk and laptop set up, said Maaike. Working from home due to the lockdown means Im missing the exercise that occurs naturally during the day  walking to and around the office, up and down stairs, out to lunch etc. Now I have to make an effort to remember to walk in the evening after work."

The International Association for the Study of Pain has designated 2021 the Global Year About Back Pain. The organisation aims to help clinicians, scientists, those living with pain, and the public understand the nature of back pain and available treatments.

Chiropractix operates clinics in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim and Galway City and including Mount Merrion, Dublin and Longford Town. Chiropractic care is the gentle manipulation of joints to help the spine and nervous system function at their optimum. Chiropractors registered with the regulating body the Chiropractic Association of Ireland, hold a minimum of a four-year full-time degree from an accredited university and undergo continuous professional development.




Haiti - News : Zapping...





2 ransomers killed by the PNH

On Friday April 16, two armed bandits, Ronaldo Dieujuste and Deslicieux Mackenson, who had just ransomed passengers in a van were fatally shot in Gerald Bataille, after firing on a police patrol which immediately came up.



Resignation of the Secretary General of Religions for Peace

Following the withdrawal of the Religions Pour la Paix platform from the dialogue process shunned by political groups, Pastor Clement Joseph, Representative of the Protestant sector and Secretary General of the Platform resigned, saying he was "saddened and shocked by the public statements which cruelly tarnish the image of the platform."



Words of the new PM

"Complex pasts, diverse futures", it is under this theme that the International Day for Monuments and Sites was celebrated on Friday, April 18, 2021 "[...] I take this opportunity to invite my brothers and sisters of the Common Fatherland to seriously reflect on the role and importance of sites and monuments for the memory and vitality of the Haitian people," declared the new Prime Minister ai Claude Joseph.



Transformer station for the 69 kV line

Construction work on the transformer station and the 69 kV line at the new natural gas power plant with a capacity of 60 Mw at Carrefour is progressing, informed Evenson Calixte Coordinator of the National Regulatory Authority for the Sector of Energy (ANARSE)



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-33272-haiti-news-zapping.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-33038-haiti-news-zapping.html



Taiwan : Future medical collaboration

At the invitation of Jean William Pape, new member of the Scientific Council of the World Health Organization (WHO), the Ambassador of Taiwan (Republic of China) Wen-jiann Ku paid a visit to the GHESKIO Center in Port-au-Prince, during which cordial and fruitful exchanges focused on a future medical collaboration.



Delivery of electric poles

The electric poles which will be used for the construction of the line connecting Port-a-Piment and the Commune of Chardonnieres (South) arrived on April 18, 2021 at 4:15 am.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Employees of Community-Based Environmental Protection and Enhancement Programme (CEPEP) say they have were blindsided with a 33 1/3 per cent pay cut in their salaries.

While some workers were under the impression the cut was supposed to occur next fortnight, many were unprepared for managements move.

One employee told the Express yesterday while talk was being bandied about a few days ago with regard to the pay cut, she thought more notice would have been given to staff since globally theres a pandemic. I am hurt and disappointed.
Click here to read the full article.

After enduring production in the pandemic age, Season 3 of the critically acclaimed Starz series The Girlfriend Experience finally returns on May 2nd.

Based on Executive Producer Steven Soderberghs 2009 film of the same name, this third installment of the anthology series will continue to examine the transactional relationships between exclusive escorts and their wealthy clientele. These women, known as GFEs, provide The Girlfriend Experience a high-priced romantic service that implies far more than just sex.

This season, true to form, you can expect a fresh story, characters and setting with accomplished German Independent filmmaker Anja Marquardt at the series helm. With an introspective and engrossing directing style, Marquadt immediately sets her iteration of the GFE format apart, crafting a narrative that combines big tech with clandestine sex work in the most stylish season yet.

Starz

Past seasons of The Girlfriend Experience focused on the unseemly parallels between sex work and the industries of law and politics. This time around, the story is set amidst the sleek and sterile backdrop of the London tech scene mixing debauchery with data, VR and AI.

Marquardt claims that Soderberghs The Girlfriend Experience film is an identifiable inspiration for her 2014 debut feature Shes Lost Control, which follows the life of a sexual surrogate who begins to develop feelings for a client.

Naturally, Marquardt was kismet for the roles of Writer and Director this season in which she incorporates her vast knowledge of future-facing technology into the world of GFEs. Viewers can look forward to an exciting and provocative approach to the familiar paradigm of the show in a more global setting.

Well meet Iris (Julia Goldani Telles), an American new to London. Shes a scholar focused in Behavioral Psychology & Neuroscience who works as a neuro researcher at tech start-up NGM by day, while providing the girlfriend experience for clients by night. Working at a futuristic escort agency known only as The V allows Iris to quickly realize that her sessions with GFE clients give her a unique and compelling edge at NGM.

Iriss night job steadily becomes the testing ground for her data-driven day job. What follows is one womans increasing obsession with defining and quantifying love and desire. Telles performance as Iris is fearless and in the moment. She exudes a sultry determination and intense control of the Soderbergh brand of detachment present in all of the anthologys former protagonists.

Iris seems to be pursuing the same end as previous season leads Christine (Riley Keough), Anna (Louisa Krause) and Bria (Carmen Ejogo), but by much different means. This version of Girlfriend Experience supposes that the secret life of the lead character could benefit her professional life instead of hindering it or so she thinks.

Starz

Set in the stark corporate surroundings of London, this is the first season depicted internationally. The impersonal environments seem especially befitting of the social-distance era. However, the show often depicts realistic sex and nudity posing an especially heightened risk for production during the pandemic.

Participating in Safe Way Forward, Hollywoods guidelines and best practices to fend off Covid-19, Marquardt had to be methodical in her composition. Even with the physical limitations of production, Season 3 of The Girlfriend Experience proves to be more cerebral with plenty of sci-fi overtones, observing human behavior through the lens of tech.

These days every facet of our lives is digitized, aggregated and catalogued, creating massive amounts of data fueling a growing concern with digital privacy. Marquardts rendition of GFE questions whether AI could possibly use the data we generate to predict our free willmorphing the anthology into an ultramodern and erotic techno-thriller.

The sleek and sexy cinematography of this season can be accredited to Zack Galler. Besides collaborating with Marquardt on Shes Lost Control, Galler is also responsible for the look of other suspenseful dramas like The Act, Manhunt and Briarpatch. Together Galler and Marquardt depict sterile luxury apartments, glimmering skyscrapers, offices devoid of humanity and the blank digital space of VR, resulting in an enveloping sense of futuristic danger and eroticism.

A common pursuit of all of the empowered Girlfriend Experience protagonists is the search for a better understanding of themselves. Each main character is asked to be honest about her goals and motivations, even if its not what society expects from her. Marquardt intends to deliver her own unique take on the format of the series through the character of Iris and Julia Goldani Telles stellar performance.

Soderbergh, along with series creators Seimetz and Kerrigan, never set out to make a courtesan cautionary tale but rather offer an unbiased look at this type of sex work while dispelling the misperceptions of other industries. The addition of Anja Marquardts insightful writing and direction will surely elevate the essence of The Girlfriend Experience anthology to new frontiers.

Season 3 of The Girlfriend Experience premieres Sunday, May 2 across all STARZ platforms.

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A Washington state doctor has been charged with a plan to hire hitmen through the dark web to abduct and extort his estranged wife and maim a former employee.

The allegations have been brought against Dr. Ronald Ilg, a neonatologist from Spokane, and involve a polyamorous relationship, bitcoin payments to potential contract killers, chilling text messages and an attempted suicide.

He has been charged with attempted kidnapping, a federal offence that carries a 20-year prison term, after the FBI were tipped off by his wife, who herself was informed by a group of unnamed international journalists investigating the so-called 'dark web', according to The Spokesman-Review.

The unnamed woman gave the FBI text messages in which she is shown accusing Ilg of trying to hire someone to carry out a seven-day kidnapping - with a set of harrowing instructions - before he left for a trip to Mexico last weekend.

According to posts made to the dark web found by investigators, the criminal-for-hire was to take the woman and meet several 'goals' in order to receive bonus payments from - it is alleged - the Spokane doctor, who was posting under the moniker Scar215 in February, March and April this year.

These goals allegedly included making sure the woman stayed silent about the kidnapping and forcing her to inject heroin twice a day, with photographic evidence.

Dr. Ronald Ilg (pictured) has been charged with hiring someone to kidnap his estranged wife over the 'dark web', and to assault a former employee

Ilg's wife told the FBI that the couple married in 2016, and had a baby together less than two years later. The doctor then met a woman on the internet whom he 'invited into the relationship,' she said.

The wife 'increasingly became uncomfortable with the relationship,' and made plans to end their marriage, the criminal complaint says.

It claims that Ilg tried to hire someone to carry out his plot in March and April this year, to make her drop her divorce plans and return home.

Investigators also allege that Ilg attempted to hire someone to break the hands of a different woman - a former employee - also using the dark web and agreeing to pay someone to carry out the attack with the cryptocurrency bitcoin, according to The Spokesman-review.

'The target should be given a significant beating that is obvious. It should injure both hands significantly or break the hands,' the posting on the dark web, linked to Ilg by investigators, reads.

The post indicates around $2,000 worth of bitcoin would be placed in escrow to pay for the assault on the former employee.

It is unclear from the court documents if Ilg found someone to take his offer. It is well known that many murder-for-hire schemes on the dark web are scams, according to the Daily Beast.

Ilg denied the allegations during an interview with the FBI, according to The Spokesman-Review, citing court documents.

The so-called dark web is a section of the internet that is encrypted, and can only be accessed using specific software, configurations or authorisation to access.

Instructions for the kidnapping of his estranged wife were included in the posting, with it saying that if the woman's co-workers or friends questioned the woman's whereabouts, she 'could say she has COVID and is quarantined.'

'I need a rush job for next week. I need the target kidnapped for five to seven days. While being held she is given at least daily doses of heroin. She is also strongly persuaded to do a few things within two weeks,' the post under Scar215 says.

'1, stop ALL Court proceedings, 2, return to your husband and the chaos you created, 3. Tell absolutely no one about this. Also, the team should plant heroin and used needles with her DNA inside. After about seven days she is returned to her home,' the message listed.

According to posts made to the dark web found by investigators, the criminal-for-hire was to take the woman and meet several 'goals' in order to receive bonus payments from - it is alleged - the Spokane doctor, who was posting under the moniker Scar215

In another post, the user Scar215 wrote: 'She should be told that her families health, including her father and her kids, depend on her completing these rules. It would be unfortunate if her older boy became addicted to heroin. Or her dad be severely beaten or her dog be slaughtered. Any and all persuasion should be used.'

Scar215 also set up a bonus incentive system which would see the kidnapper paid extra sums of money for getting the wife to do certain things - including an agreement that she would have sex with him three times a week.

'She is strong for a woman. And she is stubborn and will need lots of persuasion,' he wrote in the post.

The post also assured that $40,000 would be made available in bitcoin to pay for the kidnapping, according to court records seen by The Spokesman-Review.

On April 11, the FBI discovered evidence at Ilg's home in Otis Orchards of online negotiations to kidnap the woman, inject her with heroin, and force her to drop 'court proceedings' against him, The Review reported.

That same day, upon his return from Mexico, Ilg is said to have told the FBI under questioning at the Spokane International Airport that he used a disposable phone to contact the kidnapper-for-hire.

The unnamed woman gave the FBI text messages in which she is shown accusing Ilg of trying to hire someone to carry out a seven-day kidnapping - with a set of harrowing instructions - before he left for a trip to Mexico last weekend

However, he said he disposed of the phone in a pool at a Mexican resort, where he was with another woman.

According to The Review, Ilg also told authorities that he'd attempted to hire a person as a way of committing suicide, so that his assets would transfer to the woman he was on the trip to Mexico with, as opposed to his estranged wife.

The following day, Spokane County Sheriff's deputies responded to a call to Ilg's home on reports of an assault.

There, he allegedly confessed to the plot in a note discovered by authorities when they found him unconscious from an apparent Xanax overdose, which he survived. He is reported to have been found with a black eye and 46 missing Xanex pills.

'I f***ed it up. Irreparable f**k up', he is said to have written in the note. 'I am about to drift off to sleep. I pray that God forgives me.' The note was addressed to his estranged wife and the woman he was in Mexico with, according to reports.

The woman, who is said to have been Ilg's girlfriend, is said to have tried to warn his estranged wife of his plot to kidnap and hurt her by sending him text messages of a conversation she says she had with the doctor.

'Some strange stuff has happened while we have been here,' she wrote. 'I need to talk to you ASAP when we get back.'

Ilg is now behind bars, charged with attempted kidnapping. He was listed in custody of the Spokane County Jail on Friday (April 16) evening.
In view of the six-day lockdown imposed in Delhi to curb the spread of COVID-19 infections, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation on Monday released revised guidelines for metro services and timings.

Delhi Metro services will be available at a frequency of 30 minutes during peak hours, while the services across the network will be available at a frequency of 1 hour during rest of the day during the lockdown.

The DMRC classified 8 am to 10 am period in morning and 5 pm to 7 pm slot in evening as peak hours.

Also read: Lockdown in Delhi: Guidelines, rules, timings, dates; what's allowed, what's not allowed

During the lockdown period, metro services can be availed only by the exempted category of people as per the latest government order on production of valid IDs, DMRC said.

"During this period, travel will be allowed only up to 50 per cent seating capacity in the Metro. In addition, no standing passenger shall be allowed during the travel," it added.

Public Service Announcement regarding Delhi Metro's services till 26th April 2021. pic.twitter.com/8FjpFAWlSc - Delhi Metro Rail Corporation I    (@OfficialDMRC) April 19, 2021

Earlier today, the Delhi government announced a 6-day lockdown from 10 pm on Monday till 6 am on April 26 amidst the surging COVID-19 cases in the national capital.

While essential services will be allowed to operate during the lockdown, government officers, judicial officers, court staff, medical personnel, media, people coming and going for COVID-19 vaccination, among others, will be exempted from the lockdown restrictions.

Also read: Delhi lockdown announcement creates storm on Twitter

Also read: Former PM Manmohan Singh tests COVID-19 positive, rushed to AIIMS
Shannon Airport has received a multi-million euro boost with confirmation it's to receive more than 6m in government funding.

Details of the allocation, under the Regional State Airports Programme 2021, has been announced by Minister of State at the Department of Transport, Hildegarde Naughton

A further 4,781,193 has been allocated to Donegal, Ireland West (Knock) and Kerry airports under the Regional Airports Programme 2021-2025.

The money will be used to contribute towards capital investment in the areas of safety, security and sustainability at the four airports. Shannon Airport itself will provide a level of top-up matching funding, with the projects to be completed this year.

"This funding represents a strong commitment by government to help Irelands regional airports remain financially sustainable as they plan to move beyond the largest exogenous shock that the sector has ever faced," said Minister Naughton.

"I am pleased to say that this funding has also taken climate objectives into account for the first time, representing an important step in the process towards the greening of Irish Airports. I am confident that todays allocations, coupled with the impending funding to address the impacts of Covid, will help airports regain their foothold in the aviation market when recovery begins," she added.

Limerick TD, Kieran O'Donnell has welcomed the allocation of 6.3m to Shannon Airport.

"Since the Covid-19 virus arrived, it had been an incredibly difficult time for everyone involved in aviation, airport, airlines and the 140,000 people employed in the industry here in Ireland. We need to ensure that the entire aviation sector can come through the extremes of Covid-19 and indeed be able operate in a world with the ever threating presence of Covid-19," he said.

Separately, the government and the Department of Transport has announced an additional stream of funding for eligible airports, including Shannon, under the Covid-19 Irish Airports Scheme, which was recently approved by the European Commission.

This new Scheme, which has an overall budget of 26m, will provide airports with flexibility to roll out route incentives/charge rebates, in consultation with airlines, with a view to supporting recovery and growth of connectivity when circumstances allow.
Gov. Tim Walz (D) spoke out Sunday over allegations that journalists covering unrest in the Twin Cities suburb of Brooklyn Center have endured police violence, telling CBS Minnesota: "Apologies are not enough, it just cannot happen."

Why it matters: Since violations of press freedoms came to national attention last year, with reports of journalists being arrested and assaulted while covering anti-racism protests, violent encounters with law enforcement seem to have become the norm.

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Walz told CBS Minnesota, "We all need to recognize the assault on media across the world and even in our country over the last few years is chilling. ... We cannot function as a democracy if they're not there."

Driving the news: Media attorney Leita Walker, representing nearly 30 news outlets and government transparency groups, sent Walz and Minnesota law enforcement leaders a letter Saturday outlining allegations of police assaulting and harassing journalists during protests over the fatal police shooting of Daunte Wright.

These include allegations that two New York Times photojournalists were "harassed by officers" and the alleged violent treatment of CNN producer Carolyn Sung, who Walker said was trying to comply with a dispersal order when she was arrested by state troopers.

Zoom in: Walker writes that "troopers grabbed Sung by her backpack and threw her to the ground, zip-tying her hands behind her back" while she repeatedly identified herself as a journalists, noting she had shown her credentials.

After being zip-tied a trooper allegedly yelled at Sung, who is Asian American, "Do you speak English?"

"She was patted down and searched by a female officer who put her hands down Sungs pants and in her bra, fingerprinted, electronically body-scanned, and ordered to strip and put on an orange uniform before attorneys working on her behalf were able to locate her and secure her release, a process that took more than two hours."

Story continues

Excerpt from Walker's letter

Freelance photographer Joshua Rashaad McFadden, who was covering the demonstrations for the New York Times, told the outlet Sunday police used batons to bang on the windows of the car he was in last Tuesday to "force" him out, allegedly attacking him and his camera.

"It was definitely scary  I've never been in a situation like that with so many police officers hitting me, hitting my equipment," he said.

What they're saying: Minnesota State Patrol said in a statement Saturday that, in accordance with a federal judge's temporary restraining order issued a day earlier, members of the press "are exempted from general dispersal orders."

"Following feedback from media, and in light of a recent temporary restraining order ... MSP will not photograph journalists or their credentials," the statement said.

"In addition, MSP will no longer include messaging at the scene advising media where they can go to safely cover events.

"While journalists have been detained and released during enforcement actions after providing credentials, no journalists have been arrested."

Minnesota State Patrol

Of note: Des Moines Register reporter Andrea Sahouri was last month acquitted of all charges by a jury following her arrest while covering a Black Lives Matter protest last summer  which observers noted had flown in the face of First Amendment protections.

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When Hector O hEochagain is in favour of something, he doesn't hold back.

The TV presenter and podcaster is known for his love of all things Irish, including the importance of the local GAA club to communities around the country.

That love shines through in the video he recorded to support a fundraiser for Garnish GAA.

The West Cork club has come up with an innovative way to raise funds, hosting a raffle for a vintage 1967 Massey Ferguson 135 tractor.

Thanks to the legend that is @hectorirl @tommyhectorshow for supporting our tractor fundraise - Massey Ferguson 135 at https://t.co/MUsUdaqy98 pic.twitter.com/3jYSQ55gMp  Garnish GAA (@GarnishGAA) April 18, 2021

I think it's safe to say Hector wants people to support the draw.

"The money raised will contribute to the strategic developmentof the club, including a refurbishment of its club facilities," the club says. "This vintage tractor has been carefully and immaculately restored and is valued at over 10,000.

The exclusive raffle is limited to 500 tickets and each ticket costs 100, find out more here.
Despite the best efforts of transit agencies to sanitize buses and trains, a skeptical riding public has been slow to return to riding them.

Enter the ferry and its not-so-secret weapon  a breezy open-air upper deck, perfect for the biggest germaphobe.
This is the heart-stopping moment a quick-thinking father saves the life of his four-year-old son as an out of control car careens towards them.

The pair had been food shopping when the incident took place on a busy street in St. Petersburg, Russia, on Wednesday April 14.

In the footage, captured on CCTV, the boy can be seen leaving the grocery store and standing on the pavement ahead of his father who is following seconds behind.

Just a moment later a car is seen losing control on the other side of the road as it appears to get stuck accelerating in reverse gear whilst trying to park.

To avoid colliding with the cars driving up the road the driver turns to drive onto the pavement, putting the young child and his father directly into its path.

Thankfully the father is seen looking up in the direction of the black SUV just moments before it would have hit them.

The father's reflexes kick in as he swoops down picking up his son and running to safety with a split second to spare.

After getting a safe distance away the pair look back to see the car has smashed into the building in the exact spot they had been standing.

The pair had been shopping for groceries when the incident took place on a busy street in St. Petersburg, Russia, on Wednesday April 14

The father's reflexes kick in as he swoops down picking up his son and running to safety with a split second to spare

The car's airbags are deployed as it smashes into the shop right behind where the father and son had been standing

The car's airbags are deployed in the crash as bystanders rush to help the driver inside.

A shocked shop assistant is seen coming out of the nearby grocery storer after hearing the crash.

It is not known if anyone was injured in the incident.

The footage which was shared widely on social media where the father was hailed as a hero for saving the boy.

One social media user wrote: 'Great grab Dad!'

Whilst another said: 'The question is: why do cars go in reverse with such speed?'
ABN AMRO accepted settlement offer in the anti-money laundering investigation in the Netherlands

Today ABN AMRO Bank N.V. (ABN AMRO) announced that it has accepted a settlement offer from the Dutch Public Prosecution Service (DPPS) in connection with the previously announced investigation by the DPPS into ABN AMRO's compliance with its obligations under the Dutch Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Terrorism Financing Act (Wet ter voorkoming van witwassenen financiering van terrorisme, AML/CTF Act) between 2014 and 2020. As part of this settlement, ABN AMRO will pay EUR 480 million.

ABN AMRO fully cooperated with the DPPS throughout the investigation. Based on the investigation, the DPPS identified serious shortcomings in ABN AMRO's processes to combat money laundering in the Netherlands, such as the client acceptance, transaction monitoring and client exit processes (the so-called 'Client Life Cycle' processes) in the period between 2014 and 2020, as a result of which, in certain instances, clients were able to abuse ABN AMRO accounts.

ABN AMRO deeply regrets the situation and recognises the seriousness of the matter, and that it has fallen short in the fulfilment of its role as gatekeeper aimed at combatting money laundering. ABN AMRO will continue to make every effort to fulfil its role as gatekeeper.

ABN AMRO CEO Robert Swaak: "As a bank we do not merely have a legal, but also a moral duty to do our utmost to protect the financial system against abuse by criminals. In fulfilling this duty, we aim to make a meaningful contribution to a safer society. Regretfully, I have to acknowledge that in the past we have been insufficiently successful in properly fulfilling our important role as gatekeeper. This is unacceptable and we take full responsibility for this."

In recent years, ABN AMRO had itself already identified shortcomings in the way it implemented its 'Client Life Cycle' processes. To address these shortcomings, the bank has prioritised remediation and enhancement programmes in each of the business lines of the bank over the years, as well as bank-wide with respect to transaction monitoring. ABN AMRO has invested heavily in these remediation and enhancement programmes over several years, including investments in its systems and the growth of its staff . Unfortunately, ABN AMRO has to recognise that, despite all of its efforts and intentions, its improvement programmes have not always had the desired effect, and that several shortcomings, some of which serious, have been identified in its 'Client Life Cycle' processes.

In response to the identified shortcomings in its 'Client Life Cycle' processes and in order to address increasingly strict regulations and continuously evolving forms of financial crime, ABN AMRO decided to centralise the execution of the 'Client Life Cycle' processes in October of 2018. To this end, ABN AMRO set up the Detecting Financial Crime (DFC) programme and made substantial additional (financial) resources available for investments in staff, systems and processes. The DFC programme is progressing according to the timetable as agreed upon with DNB, and the programme is expected to be completed by the end of 2022. By the end of 2020, the total number of full-time employees involved in ABN AMRO's 'Client Life Cycle' processes had increased to 3,800 (one in five jobs at ABN AMRO). The bank is convinced that its current approach is the right way to systematically remediate shortcomings across the bank, and to embed this remediation in its day-to-day operations. Besides this, ABN AMRO is also actively involved in various public-private partnerships aimed at of contributing to safer society.

As part of the settlement announced today, ABN AMRO agrees to pay a fine of EUR 300 million and EUR 180 million as disgorgement. The amount of the fine reflects the seriousness, scope and duration of the identified shortcomings. The amount of the disgorgement reflects the amount of costs that ABN AMRO saved according to the DPPS. The total amount of EUR 480 million will impact the bank's first quarter results in 2021.

Robert Swaak: "This settlement marks the end of a painful and disappointing episode for ABN AMRO. The lessons we have learned from this experience drive us in our continued effort as gatekeepers to achieve a safer society and a financial system that meets the highest standards of integrity."

ABN AMRO Press RelationsABN AMRO Investor Relations

Jarco de Swart Ferdinand Vaandrager

Media Relations & Public Affairs Investor Relations

pressrelations@nl.abnamro.cominvestorrelations@nl.abnamro.com

+31 20 6288900

This press release was published by ABN AMRO Bank N.V. and contains inside information within the meaning of Article 7(1) to (4) of the Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 (Market Abuse Regulation)

Attachments
AUSTIN, Minn.  A Mower County man accused of sexually assaulting a teen is pleading guilty.

Kristopher Lin Cook, 21 of Austin, pleaded guilty Monday to second-degree criminal sexual conduct. According to court documents, Cook was accused of having sex with a 15-year-old victim multiple times. Authorities say at least one of the instances was when the victim was heavily intoxicated and that Cook at another time had choked his victim into submission.

Cook was arrested in September 2020 and initially charged with seven felony counts of criminal sexual conduct.

A sentencing hearing is scheduled for June 17 in Mower County District Court.
New Delhi: The central government on Monday (April 19) announced that people over 18 years will be able get COVID-19 vaccine from May 1.

The third phase of the vaccination plan aims to accelerate the inoculation drive across the country. The Centre has said that it will allow the vaccine manufacturers to supply half of their production to the government of India, while they would be free to share the remaining half with the states and in open market as well.

"Under Phase 3 of COVID vaccination strategy, vaccine manufacturers would supply 50% of their monthly Central Drugs Laboratory released doses to Govt of India & would be free to supply the remaining 50% doses to State Govts and in the open market," ANI reported citing a government statement.

Govt of India, from its share, will allocate vaccines to States/UTs based on criteria of extent of infection (number of active COVID cases) & performance (speed of administration). Wastage of vaccine will also be considered in this criteria & will affect criteria negatively: Govt pic.twitter.com/jVmzG5nKuf  ANI (@ANI) April 19, 2021

"Govt of India, from its share, will allocate vaccines to States/UTs based on criteria of extent of infection (number of active COVID cases) and performance (speed of administration). Wastage of vaccine will also be considered in this criteria and will affect criteria negatively," the statement added.

The Centre further said that the vaccine would be provided free of cost to the eligible population such as the healthcare workers, frontline workers and people above 45 years of age at government of India vaccination centres.

Earlier, the government had allowed only those above 45 years of age to get vaccine. The order has been in effect from April 1.

Live TV
Students with multicultural backgrounds attend a foreign language and culture class at an elementary school in Seoul in this file photo. Korea Times file



By Lee Hyo-jin



Tailored support measures are needed for children from multiracial backgrounds living in rural areas, as they showed a lower level of psychosocial adaptation compared to those in large cities, according to a study by the National Youth Policy Institute released Monday.



Such findings were included in the results of an 11-year-long longitudinal study conducted on school life, family environment, social adaptation and bicultural identity of multiracial children nationwide.



According to the findings, compared with those living in the metropolitan area, multiracial teenagers living in small towns showed lower levels of self-esteem and social competence  they exhibited relatively lower capabilities in terms of feeling positive about themselves and interacting with others.



They also had lower assessments for physical and mental health and had less interaction with their parents, having fewer daily conversations on topics such as school life, personal problems, movies, books and hobbies.






THIS weeks federal budget, the first since the pandemic began, is expected to include details about a massive stimulus package that will cost between $70 billion to $100 billion over the next three years. And yet, if Canadas past experience with stimulus measures is any guide, this latest effort will not kick-start the economy as intended but instead may impede economic recovery while simply adding more government debt.

Opinion

THIS weeks federal budget, the first since the pandemic began, is expected to include details about a massive stimulus package that will cost between $70 billion to $100 billion over the next three years. And yet, if Canadas past experience with stimulus measures is any guide, this latest effort will not "kick-start" the economy as intended but instead may impede economic recovery while simply adding more government debt.

Indeed, pre-budget, theres limited information available about how the Trudeau government plans to spend this stimulus money, but the governments recent fall economic statement provided some hints, frequently mentioning infrastructure and the "green economy." Stimulus spending will also be "backloaded," with the majority of spending occurring in 2022-23 and 2023-24 rather than the current fiscal year.

This approach raises some key concerns.

First, most of the money will be spent well after the economy has recovered and, therefore, will have little to no effect on economic growth during Canadas recovery from the COVID-19 recession, which is the stated purpose of the stimulus. Indeed, the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) recently stated "the size and timing of the $70 to $100 billion for stimulus may be mis-calibrated" because the economy will have largely recovered by the end of 2021-22.

Second, the plan seemingly ignores Canadas experiences with stimulus during the past recessions. In the 2008-09 recession, the Harper government enacted a $47-billion stimulus package over a two-year period that emphasized infrastructure spending. But a 2010 study found government spending on infrastructure played a negligible role in the economic turnaround.

In fact, the data demonstrated that business investment and increased net exports were responsible for improved economic growth during the last six months of 2009.

These results are unsurprising, because infrastructure projects include long planning horizons and typically arent as "shovel ready" as governments suggest. There are delays associated with various approvals, environmental assessments and negotiations between multiple levels of government over projects.

Their findings, however, estimate that the multiplier tends to be below 1.0. In other words, stimulus spending crowds out private-sector activity rather than stimulates it, which is not what the Canadian economy needs.

As seen in 2009, actual "stimulus" spending on infrastructure often starts after the recovery is already underway. This means additional government spending competes with the private sector for resources including skilled workers, which raises costs, resulting in fewer private-sector projects.

Empirical evidence from the United States supports these findings. Multiple studies from Valerie Ramey (UC San Diego) and Robert Barro (Harvard University) analyzed the effect that each additional dollar of government spending has on the economy using a concept called the "fiscal multiplier." In simple terms, a fiscal multiplier above 1.0 demonstrates that stimulus is effective because a $1 increase in government spending increases overall economic activity by a value greater than $1.

Their findings, however, estimate that the multiplier tends to be below 1.0. In other words, stimulus spending crowds out private-sector activity rather than stimulates it, which is not what the Canadian economy needs.

Finally, stimulus spending will also add to the federal debt burden. According to the governments latest projections, the federal budget deficit in 2021-22 will be between $157 billion and $167 billion  an increase from the baseline $121.2 billion estimate  after accounting for the impact of COVID-19s second wave and stimulus spending.

The result? Federal debt (as a share of the economy) will reach roughly 56 per cent, which would be the highest amount since 1998.

The Trudeau government should understand Canadas past experiences with stimulus packages and avoid unnecessarily increasing an already large debt burden. Spending money in an attempt to stimulate the economy after its already recovered is not a winning strategy for Canada in a post-COVID-19 world.

Jake Fuss and Alex Whalen are analysts at the Fraser Institute.
Western intelligence is only aware of around 10 per cent of Russia's 'aggressive' activities in Europe, a former head of MI6 warned today as the Kremlin was implicated in yet more criminality.

Sir John Sawers spoke as the Russian agents accused of orchestrating the deadly Salisbury nerve agent attack were implicated in a deadly explosion in Czechia in 2014.

The UK has backed Prague after it expelled senior diplomatic figures representing Vladimir Putin's regime, prompting a tit-for-tat reply, over the ammunition depot blast, which left two people dead.

Sir John, who ran the Secret Intelligence Service from 2009 to 2014, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'It shouldn't be a surprise that Russian intelligence are very active across Europe, and I think the Czechs have pieced this together really rather well.

'They were supplying arms to the Ukrainian army in 2014 and the Russians had an interest in preventing that taking place, so the Russian military intelligence blowing up the ammunition stores in the Czech Republic and then poisoning the Bulgarian intermediary a year later

'It all has the hallmarks of a Russian intelligence operation, and I think the Czechs have got these two people who tried to assassinate Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, I think they've got them bang to rights.'

He added: 'We see the extent of Russian aggressive intelligence activities across Europe, we probably only know 10 per cent of what they're doing. There will be a great deal that intelligence services do that we're simply not aware of.'

Sir John Sawers spoke as the Russian agents accused of orchestrating the deadly Salisbury nerve agent attack were implicated in a deadly explosion in Czechia in 2014.

The UK has backed Prague after it expelled senior diplomatic figures representing Vladimir Putin's regime, prompting a tit-for-tat reply, over the ammunition depot blast, which left two people dead.

Czech police said they were searching for men carrying various passports, including Russian documents in the names of Alexander Petrov (right) and Ruslan Boshirov (left). The aliases match those used by the pair - real names Alexander Mishkin and Anatoliy Chepiga - who Britain believes poisoned turncoat Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in 2018.

Foreign spies face prosecution and deportation under new laws Foreign spies operating in Britain will be prosecuted and deported under new laws to protect the country from hostile states. The Queens Speech on May 11 will reportedly be used by the Prime Minister to announce a bill outlining measures to protect Britain from the likes of Russia and China. It will mandate that all individuals working on behalf of foreign governments in the country will have to register their presence - not doing so will become a criminal offence, The Times reported. Intelligence agencies have warned that under current laws, foreign spies are immune from the law unless they are caught acquiring official secrets. It is believed that Britain will aim to have a similar register to the Foreign Agents Registration Act in the US, which extends to anyone representing the interests of a foreign state. The Official Secrets Act, which is intended to protect the United Kingdom from espionage, will be updated so it can be used against anyone attempting to undermine Britains interest from abroad. With some parts written in 1911, ministers hope to adjust the legislation so it can be used against those carrying out foreign cyberattacks. They are also considering whether to raise the maximum sentence - which is currently two years for most offences - for any breaches of the act. Advertisement

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab last night condemned 'malign' activities by the Kremlin's intelligence services after Czech police said they were searching for men carrying various passports, including Russian documents in the names of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov.

The aliases match those used by the pair - real names Alexander Mishkin and Anatoliy Chepiga - who Britain believes poisoned turncoat Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in 2018.

Czech police suspect the men passing themselves off as Petrov and Boshirov were members of a Russian spy cell involved in an explosion in an ammunition warehouse in October 2014, which killed two contractors working there.

Eighteen Russian diplomats have been ordered to leave the country in an attempt to hobble its intelligence capabilities.

Mr Raab said: 'The UK stands in full support of our Czech allies, who have exposed the lengths that the Russian intelligence services will go to in their attempts to conduct dangerous and malign operations in Europe.

'This shows a pattern of behaviour by Moscow, following the Novichok attack in Salisbury. My sympathies are with the families of the victims in Vrbetice.

'We are as determined and committed as ever to bring those responsible for the attack in Salisbury to justice, and commend the actions of the Czech authorities to do the same. Russia must desist from these actions, which violate the most basic international norms.'

Czech authorities said the men are suspected of operating in the country between October 11, when they arrived in Prague, and October 16, the day of the blast.

They say the men travelled from Prague to the eastern village where the blast took place - destroying a warehouse containing 58 tonnes of ammunition - and then left the country shortly afterwards.

Another explosion, which took place in December 2014, then destroyed another warehouse at the same site containing 98 tonnes of explosives - but Czech authorities have not said who they think is responsible for that.

Investigative website Bellingcat, which revealed the true identities of both Petrov and Borishov, has previously reported that Petrov - or Mishkin - was in Prague earlier in 2014.

Mishkin was in Prague for eight days from January 26 until February 2 alongside a man named Denis Sergeev - who is also a suspect in the Salisbury poisoning.

During their visit to Salisbury, former KGB spy Sergei Skripal, right, and his daughter Yulia, left, received life-threatening doses of a chemical agent novichok

Czech authorities yesterday accused the men of causing an explosion on October 16, 2014 at a warehouse with 58 tonnes of ammunition. It was followed months later by another big blast at a nearby warehouse with 98 tonnes of ammunition

Sergeev, who used the alias Sergey Fedotov, is thought to have provided Mishkin and Chepiga with support during the Salisbury mission - including calling them after the attack to tell them to head back to Russia.

It is not known why Mishkin or Sergeev were in Prague just months ahead of the warehouse bombings.

Col. Mgr. Jaroslav Ibehej of the NCOZ issued the notice for the two men who were first using Russian passports with the names Alexander Petrov, born on July 13, 1979 and Ruslan Boshirov, born April 12, 1978.

The pair then switched to one Moldovan passport in the name of Nicolai Popa, born July 18, 1979 and a Tajikistan passport in the name of Ruslan Tabarov, born October 23, 1975.

According to Czech police they were first in Prague, and later in the Morovian-Silesian region and then finally in the Zlin region.

The investigation relates to a decision by the Czech government to expel 18 Russian diplomats identified by local intelligence as secret agents of the Russian SVR and GRU services that are suspected of involvement in a 2014 explosion.

Foreign Minister Jan Hamacek said: 'Eighteen employees of the Russian embassy must leave our republic within 48 hours.

Prime Minister Andrej Babis said Czech authorities had 'clear evidence' linking GRU officers to an explosion in an ammunition warehouse in 2014 which left two people dead.

'We have good reason to suspect the involvement of GRU officers from unit 29155 in the explosion at the ammunition warehouse in Vrbetice' in the east of the country, Babis said.

He added he had received the information on Friday, without explaining why it had taken so long.
New Delhi: With migrant workers starting to crowd railway stations and bus terminals amid a rising number of COVID-19 cases across the country, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman reached out to industry associations to reassure them that the government has no plan to impose another such lockdown.

Sitharaman on Monday (April 19) spoke to various business and Chamber leaders and took their inputs on industry and association-related matters.

Taking to Twitter, Sitharaman said that she informed the leaders that the Central government is responding to COVID-19 management at various levels and is working together with states for lives and livelihoods.

The Finance Minister tweeted, "Spoke on telephone with each of the following business/Chamber leaders. Took their inputs on industry/Association related matters. Informed them that GoI at various levels from @PMOIndia is responding to #Covid management. Working together with states for lives and livelihoods."

Spoke on telephone with each of the following business/Chamber leaders. Took their inputs on industry/Association related matters. Informed them that GoI at various levels from @PMOIndia is responding to #Covid management. Working together with states for lives and livelihoods.  Nirmala Sitharaman (@nsitharaman) April 19, 2021

The leaders who spoke to the Finance Minister included Kotak Mahindra Bank CEO Uday Kotak, Uday Shankar from Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI), Deb Mukherjee from Bengal Chamber of Commerce, T R Parasuraman from Bangalore Chamber of Commerce and Pawan Munjal from Hero MotoCorp.

Notably, the second wave of COVID-19 has taken the country's total caseload to over 1.50 crore, according to the figures from the Union Health Ministry showed on Monday morning. The country recorded 2.73 lakh new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, witnessing its worst phase of COVID-19, with close to 20 lakh active cases.

There were 2,73,810 new infections, 1,619 fatalities and 1,44,178 recoveries in the last 24 hours, the official data reportedly said.

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The Islamic State has claimed another Christian victim.

And Egypts Coptic Orthodox Church has won another martyr.

We are telling our kids that their grandfather is now a saint in the highest places of heaven, stated Peter Salama of his 62-year-old father, Nabil Habashi Salama, executed by the ISIS affiliate in north Sinai.

We are so joyful for him.

The Salamas are known as one of the oldest Coptic families in Bir al-Abd on the Mediterranean coast of the Sinai Peninsula. Nabil was a jeweler, owning also mobile phone and clothing shops in the area.

Peter said ISIS targeted his father for his share in building the citys St. Mary Church.

In a newly released 13-minute propaganda video entitled The Makers of Slaughter (or Epic Battles), a militant quotes the Quran to demand the humiliation of Christians and their willing payment of jizyaa tax to ensure their protection.

Image: Wilayat Sinai / Telegram screenshot by Christianity Today

Nabil was kidnapped five months ago in front of his home. Eyewitnesses said during his resistance he was beaten badly before being thrown into a stolen car. It may be that these were separate kidnappers, because in the video that shows Nabils execution, he said he was held captive by ISIS for 3 months and 11 days.

On April 18, he was shot in the back of the head, kneeling.

As you kill, you will be killed, states the video, directed to all the crusaders in the world.

It addresses all of Egypts Christians, warning them to put no faith in the army. And Muslims which support the Egyptian state are called apostates. Two other Sinai residentstribesmen who cooperated with the militaryare also executed in the video.

Peter Salama said that in the effort to drive Nabil from his faith, his teeth were broken.

Nabils daughter Marina joined in the tribute.

I will miss you, my father, she wrote on Facebook. You made us proud during your life with your virtues, and in your martyrdom with your strong faith.

The Coptic Orthodox Church issued an official statement, calling Nabil a faithful son and servant who adhered to his religion until death.

It then reiterated support for the Egyptian army and state. Such acts, it stated, will only raise our determination  to preserve our precious national unity.

Earlier this month Egypt announced an additional 82 churches had been legalized, increasing the total to 1,882 since a corrective law was passed in 2016.

Three militants have been killed, with three others being pursued, stated the Ministry of Interior today, which referred to Nabil as a citizen.

But the video and execution raise fears of renewed ISIS activity after a relatively long period of quiet. In 2017, the affiliate opened fire on Muslims praying in a Bir al-Abd mosque, killing over 300 in the deadliest terrorist attack in modern Egyptian history.

That same year, they also targeted Christians living in nearby Arish, driving over 100 families from their homes.

Since then, the Egyptian army launched a massive campaign to defeat the local ISIS branch, which has never managed to seize and hold territory. In 2018, state security announced that over 900 militants were killed.

In 2019, Christian families slowly began to return, though no hard numbers were available at the time of publishing. In 2012, Coptic Orthodox Bishop Cosman stated there were 740 Christian families in his North Sinai diocese. But prior to the exodus, church officials stated the total was down to only 160.

Today, the women wear head coverings so as not to stand out as Christians. After informing authorities of a ransom demand of $318,000 (the Associated Press reports $127,000), Peter said, state security told him and his family to relocate for safety.

We live in ruins after closing our means of subsistence, he told the Coptic publication Watani.

Two other Copts, kidnapped in Sinai last year, were recently released after the payment of ransom.

President Sisi has been personally committed to promoting peaceful co-existence between Christians and Muslims in Egypt, and his government has taken some encouraging steps, stated Mervyn Thomas, president of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, offering his condolences to the Salama family.

[But] abductions  highlight that far more must be done to uproot sectarianism, protect vulnerable communities, promote social cohesion, and uphold fundamental human rights for all Egyptians.

Meanwhile, the president of the Protestant Churches of Egypt echoed the sentiments of the Coptic Orthodox.

Together with the Egyptian state, we face all challenges and evils with zeal, Andrea Zaki told CT, and we always and forever affirm our authentic Egyptian unity.

Peter Salama, however, focused on eternity.

Do not think that I am building this church for here, he recalled his father Nabil saying. I am building for myself a home in heaven.

And it was this peace that allowed Nabil to tell his son prior to his execution, while under the duress of his captors:

All is fine, thank God.

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She is currently filming new political series Anatomy Of A Scandal.

Yet Sienna Miller took a break from filming to step out in London on Sunday, as she showcased a low-key look during a solo jaunt down the street.

The actress, 39, wore loose-fitting white jeans and a cosy knit, while her hair was worn in a mussed style and she went make-up free.

Jean-ius: Sienna Miller took a break from filming to step out in London on Sunday, as she showcased a low-key look during a solo jaunt down the street

Sienna looked low-key and lovely as she emerged in the loose-fitting jeans, which she paired with box-fresh Nike trainers.

She added a designer touch with a Gucci tote bag while juggling a coffee and a copy of The New Yorker.

Sienna is starring in Anatomy Of A Scandal as the wife of a shamed politician played by Rupert Friend. The plot of the movie follows the trial of the Eton-educated politician after he's accused of sexually assaulting a young political aide.

Anatomy Of A Scandal is based on the acclaimed 2018 bestseller by former political journalist Sarah Vaughan.

All white? The actress, 39, wore loose-fitting white jeans and a cosy knit, while her hair was worn in a mussed style and she went make-up free

Stepping out: She added a designer touch with a Gucci tote bag while juggling a coffee and a copy of The New Yorker

The serious plot revolves around James Whitehouse's rape accusation filed by an aide with whom he'd been having an affair.

The cast of the six-part series, which Netflix describes as 'an insightful and suspenseful series about sexual consent and privilege', also includes Downton Abbey actress Michelle Dockery as the high-flying prosecutor and Naomi Scott as the aide.

Sophie, played by Sienna, is convinced that he is innocent and will do whatever it takes to protect her family in the wake of the scandal.

Meanwhile, criminal barrister Kate (Michelle) is equally convinced that James is guilty and is determined to see he pays for his crimes.

Shooting: She is currently filming new political series Anatomy Of A Scandal

Chic: Sienna looked low-key and lovely as she emerged in the loose-fitting jeans, which she paired with box-fresh Nike trainers

It's thought the series could focus on a different political scandal each season in an anthology style, similar to BBC's A Very English Scandal according to Deadline.

It is being directed by SJ Clarkson, with David E. Kelley, the man behind the Sky drama The Undoing starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant, acting as writer, showrunner, and executive producer.

Keeping busy, Sienna starred in the drama film Wander Darkly this year, while she appeared as Roger Ailes' wife Beth in the miniseries The Loudest Voice the year before.
Handing off your Kubernetes clusters to a managed service provider can feel like sending your kids off to collegeits scary at first, but eventually theres a lot less work to do around the house.

The managed Kubernetes optionsor Kubernetes as a service (KaaS)from the Big Three public cloud providers Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure have all made huge strides over the past few years, helping customers run and orchestrate their containerized workloads without having to know the ins and outs of YAML configuration files or to worry about autoscaling, updates, and cluster management.

When enterprises consider something strategic, the initial inclination is to run it themselves. Then they realize over time as they acclimate that not only is it not giving them any competitive advantage, it is more likely than not the vendors can run it better than they can, said Stephen OGrady, cofounder of the developer-focused analyst firm RedMonk. Is every enterprise going down this route? Not yet, but the appetite and direction of travel seems clear, he added.

Here are six reasons to consider a managed Kubernetes service.

Lower management overhead

Lets start with the obvious reason first. It is less work, lets be clear, said Sylvain Roy, senior vice president of technology platforms and engineering at travel technology firm Amadeus. It is operated for us and that matters, because we have a challenge to have all the people we need to run [Kubernetes].

Similarly, a small group of engineers at the construction company Strabag have been running containers themselves since 2006, transitioning to a self-managed open source Docker and Kubernetes setup over the past four years. Now the group is looking to automate as much of the cluster management as possible, either by modernizing existing apps and handing off the management of the underlying Kubernetes clusters to Google Cloud or by empowering developers to run new applications in the cloud or in a hybrid setup using the Anthos service, specifically when some on-premises data transfer is required.

The journey is to hand tasks off that are fit to be handed off, said Mario Kleinasser, team leader for cloud services at Strabag.

Similarly, at financial data giant Bloomberg, it makes sense to leverage a vendor when you dont have SRE [software reliability engineering] teams or teams managing the release cycle of Kubernetes, for those focused on running their apps and dont want to manage Kubernetes, said Andrey Rybka, head of compute infrastructure at Bloomberg.

Today, Bloomberg is still running most of its Kubernetes workloads on-premises, but it is also starting to use all three major cloud vendors for managed workloads where appropriate.

You will need fewer experts

Kubernetes management skills are hard and costly to come by, especially when you are writing your own YAML config files. If you have people who can hand-tune a Kubernetes cluster, you will probably want to free them up to manage your internal platform or any particularly important or tricky workloads by handing off the management of clusters for more-vanilla workloads.

Its not easy to get and keep people for these technologies, and that is clearly a challenge, Amadeuss Roy said.

Better reliability

Simply put, mega cloud vendors are often better placed to manage your Kubernetes clusters than you can do yourself, due to the scale of their engineering teams, their wide lens of customer deployments, and their access to the underlying telemetry of those deployments.

It is more likely than not the vendors can run it better, RedMonks OGrady said. Vendors have the telemetry and the advantage of seeing all of their customers run this, as opposed to a single enterprise only having their own model to go by.

Take Bloomberg, which turned to Kubernetes in the heady days of 2015, when it was still only an alpha release, before moving into production in 2017 once the necessary continuous integration, monitoring, and testing were proved out. While Bloomberg engineers still largely self-manage Kubernetes clusters for on-premises applications, it increasingly makes sense to use managed options, especially from a reliability perspective, when workloads are run in the public cloud, Rybka said.

Dont worry about upgrades and patches

Upgrades and patches are two of the least enviable jobs for anyone managing their own Kubernetes, which is why the managed providers prioritize taking these tasks off your plate.

To patch, update, and manage Kubernetes yourself is complex and complicated and is completely undifferentiated heavy lifting, said Deepak Singh, vice president of compute services at AWS.

Maintaining cloud momentum

For organizations pushing forward with public-cloud-first strategies, adopting more managed services can help boost momentum.

Amadeus recently signed a deal with Microsoft to do just this. They move fast and we want to benefit from that, so using more managed services is something we will consider every time, Roy said. The way I see it, that is the way to benefit from this momentum.

Now, vendors are converting their knowledge and experience around Kubernetes best practices into more opinionated versions of Kubernetes services, with simplified paths for adoption, like GKE Autopilot.

Some will see it as training wheels, but I see Autopilot as a seatbelt, said Kelsey Hightower, a principal engineer at Google. The car can drive at the same speed but there is more safety by default; its a bullet-proof configuration. People always ask us for best practice and what decisions do they have to make; Autopilot gives them that.

Similarly, AWSs Singh says that the company is becoming better at taking what it has learned about running Kubernetes at scale and building that operational posture into EKS ... which allows us as service providers to build that into these managed services out of the box. That is another reason you will see this trend accelerate.

However, these sorts of services tend to naturally arouse fears of vendor lock-in. Autopilot is a harder one because I remember being asked the question about why people are focused on Kubernetes as a middleware layer if no one ever switches between vendors. The answer is having the option to say I can walk away, said RedMonks OGrady. The more you rely on vendor-specific options, that [ability to walk away] goes away, so that is a harder choice for enterprises.

Its still open source, and portable

Managed providers have had to earn the trust of the open source community and of customers who want to be sure that they are consuming a distribution of Kubernetes that is as close to the vanilla open source version as possible, to allow for greater portability and avoid lock-in.

There was a fear when Kubernetes came out that it was a bait-and-switch, a land grab from vendors to take from open communities and that it would morph into open core. It has taken five, six years almost to disprove that, said Googles Hightower.

Similarly, AWSs Singh says it is important to some customers that EKS stays close to the open source distribution of Kubernetes, with no weird voodoo going on there that would create differences. AWS recently open-sourced its EKS Distro on GitHub as a way to prove this out.

Joe Beda, Kubernetess cofounder and principal engineer at VMware Tanzu, admits that it is hard to have this conversation without talking about lock-in. He urges anyone making these buying decisions to assess the risks appropriately.

How likely are you to move away? If you do what will be the cost of doing that? How much code rewriting will you need to do and how much retraining? Anybody making these investments needs to understand the requirements, risks, and trade-offs to them, Beda said.

For its part, the CNCF runs a Certified Kubernetes Conformance Program that ensures interoperability from one installation to the next, regardless of who the certified vendor is.

So, why isnt everyone doing this?

For large, complex organizations, like Amadeus and Bloomberg, there likely always will be some workloads that you dont feel comfortable handing off to a managed service provider, whether that is sensitive data security concerns, tricky on-premises dependencies, or overprotective platform teams wanting to hand-tune their own clusters.

Those who want to self-manage parts will be worried about the data plane; they need to customize or specialize in certain areas. They dont mind a managed control plane, Googles Hightower said.

The reality, however, is that all the reasons to operate Kubernetes on your own are becoming less and less convincing.

Perhaps you see it as an existing investment that no one wants to write off as a sunk cost yet, or there are conservative organizational concerns about a set of workloads or the business, RedMonks OGrady said. Or there is apprehension to have a piece of your infrastructure, which is perceived as strategic, leave your control. But when you see your peers doing it, that apprehension goes away, and you will see more people realizing the benefits.
Ukrainian tour operator Travel Professional Group launched direct flights between Ukraine and Kenya, Ukrinform reports with reference to the Embassy of Ukraine in Kenya.

Kenya received the first charter flight on the route Kyiv-Mombasa on April 17. The solemn ceremony was attended by Ambassador of Ukraine to Kenya Andriy Pravednyk and Minister of Tourism and Wildlife of Kenya Najib Balala, as well as Honorary Consul of Ukraine in Mombasa Oleksiy Serkov, representatives of TPG and the Kenyan Tourist Board.

"According to the previously reached agreement between the Ukrainian and Kenyan parties, a direct dialogue was initiated between the Ukrainian company TPG and the Kenyan Tourist Board. In the context of challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the new tourist destination and direct flights will be an additional opportunity for the development of interpersonal contacts, including in the tourism sector, reads the report.

The embassy noted that Kenya's tourism potential is perhaps the unique and diverse on the African continent. In particular, the country is known for the "Big Five" (lion, rhino, leopard, elephant and kaffir buffalo).

Ukrainian diplomats said they hope that in the future direct flights will provide an opportunity for Kenyan partners to discover Ukraine's diverse tourism potential.

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A former sheriffs deputy in Texas has been taken into custody Monday following a manhunt that began after three people were fatally shot in Austin, authorities said.

Stephen Broderick, 41, was arrested without incident about 7:30 a.m. along a rural road in Manor, an Austin suburb, Manor Police Chief Ryan Phipps said. He had a pistol in his waistband, Phipps said.

Police had received two phone calls about a suspicious person matching Brodericks description, Phipps said. He said Broderick was taken to Travis County jail, where authorities did not immediately return messages Monday.

Interim Austin Police Chief Joseph Chacon said Broderick was suspected in Sundays deaths of two women and one man, all of whom Broderick knew.

Police initially told Austin residents who lived nearby to shelter in place, but they lifted that request later Sunday when they said it was unclear whether Broderick was still in the city.

Chacon said that Broderick was a former deputy with the Travis County sheriffs office, which is based in Austin.

Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza said in a statement that Broderick had been arrested for sexual assault of a child last June and was released on $50,000 bond. He said that the district attorneys office on Sunday filed a motion to revoke that bond.

Sheriffs spokeswoman Kristen Dark told the Austin American-Statesman that Broderick, a property crimes detective, resigned after the arrest.

The newspaper also reports that Brodericks wife filed for a protective order and divorce shortly after his arrest.
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The domestic indices trimmed losses in afternoon trade. A spike in domestic coronavirus cases and localized lockdown being announced by various state governments dented investors sentiment. The Nifty index re-claimed 14,300 level.

At 13:20 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, dropped 957.14 points or 1.96% at 47,874.89. The Nifty 50 index tumbled 285.85 points or 1.96% at 14,332.

Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC) (down 3.32%) and ICICI Bank (down 3.26%) were major drags.

In the broader market, the S&P BSE Mid-Cap index lost 2.07%. The S&P BSE Small-Cap index declined 1.71%.

Sellers outnumbered buyers. On the BSE, 647 shares rose and 2,217 shares fell. A total of 182 shares were unchanged.

Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) bought shares worth Rs 437.51 crore, while domestic institutional investors (DIIs), were net buyers to the tune of Rs 657.55 crore in the Indian equity market on 16 April 2021, provisional data showed.

COVID-19 Update:

Total COVID-19 confirmed cases worldwide stood at 14,14,14,180 with 30,19,660 deaths. India reported 19,29,329 active cases of COVID-19 infection and 1,78,769 deaths while 1,29,53,821 patients have been discharged, according to the data from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India.

Several states like Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka etc. continued to witness a record surge on Sunday. In view of the unprecedented surge, governments have imposed weekend lockdowns, night curfews etc. in their respective states. The state of Rajasthan, for example, began a "self-discipline fortnight" on Monday which will be in effect till 5 AM on 3 May 2021.

From today onwards, Delhi will reportedly be under complete curfew till next Monday morning amid a record rise in COVID-19 cases that has severely strained the city's resources and health infrastructure. All private offices will Work from Home and only government offices and essential services will be open, media reports stated.

Economy:

According to the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) weekly statistical supplement, India's foreign exchange reserves rose $4.344 billion to stand at $581.213 billion during the week ended 9 April 2021 from $576.869 billion reported for the week ended 2 April 2021.

Similarly, the value of the country's gold reserves rose $1.297 billion to $35.320 billion. The SDR value climbed $6 million to $1.492 billion. The country's reserve position with the IMF inched higher by $24 million to $4.946 billion during the same tenure.

Gainers & Losers:

Dr Reddy's Laboratories (up 1.52%), Infosys (up 1.50%), Wipro (up 1.37%) HCL Technologies (up 1.51%) and Cipla (up 0.76%) were major gainers in Nifty 50 index.

Axis Bank (down 4.73%), IndusInd Bank (down 4.43%), ONGC (down 4.19%), Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone (down 4.05%) and Ultratech Cement Co. (RIL) (down 4%) were major losers in Nifty 50 index.

Earnings Impact:

HDFC Bank skid 2.75%. The private lender reported 18.2% rise in net profit to Rs 8,186.51 crore in Q4 FY21 compared with Rs 6,927.69 crore in Q4 FY20. Total income of the bank rose 5.8% year-on-year (Y-o-Y) to Rs 38,017.50 crore during the quarter. Net interest income for the quarter ended 31 March 2021 grew by 12.6% to Rs 17,120.20 crore from Rs 15,204.10 crore for the quarter ended 31 March 2020, driven by advances growth of 14%, and a core net interest margin of 4.2%. Other income stood at Rs 7,593.90 crore in Q4 FY21, up by 25.9% from Rs 6,032.60 crore in Q4 FY20.

On the asset quality side, Gross non-performing assets were at 1.32% of gross advances as on 31 March 2021, as against 1.38% (proforma approach) as on 31 December 2020 and 1.26% as on 31 March 2020. Net non-performing assets were at 0.40% of gross advances as on 31 March 2021, as against 0.40% (proforma approach) as on 31 December 2020 and 0.36% as on 31 March 2020. Provisions and contingencies for the quarter ended March 31, 2021 were Rs 4,693.7 crore (including a build of approximately Rs 1,300 crore in contingent provisions) as against Rs 3,784.5 crore for the quarter ended 31 March 2020.

The bank continues to hold provisions as on 31 March 2021 against the potential impact of COVID-19 based on the information available at this point in time and the same are in excess of the RBI prescribed norms. The bank held floating provisions of Rs 1,451 crore and contingent provisions of Rs 5,861 crore as on 31 March 2021. Total provisions (comprising specific, floating, contingent and general provisions) were 153% of the gross non-performing loans as on 31 March 2021.

"Given that the current second wave has significantly increased the number of COVID-19 cases in India and uncertainty remains, the board of directors of the bank, at its meeting held on 17 April 2021, has considered it prudent to currently not propose dividend for the financial year ended 31 March 2021," the private lender said in a statement. Separately, the bank informed that the board of directors of the bank approved issuance of Perpetual Debt Instruments (part of Additional Tier I capital), Tier II Capital Bonds and Long Term Bonds (financing of infrastructure and affordable housing) up to a total amount of Rs 50,000 crore in the period of next twelve months through private placement mode.

Den Networks fell 1.66%. Its consolidated net profit surged 50.5% to Rs 33.89 crore on a 0.5% decline in net sales to Rs 326.23 crore in Q4 FY21 over Q4 FY20. On a consolidated basis, subscription revenues fell 15% to Rs 190 crore and activation revenues surged 63% to Rs 34 crore in Q4 FY21 over Q4 FY20. EBITDA rose 2% to Rs 65 crore in Q4 FY21 from Rs 64 crore in Q4 FY20. EBITDA margin stood at 20% in Q4 FY21 over 19% in Q4 FY20. As on Q4 FY21, cash and cash equivalents stood at Rs 2,394 crore.

ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company declined 3.33%. Its net profit jumped 22.6% to Rs 345.68 crore on a 22.2% surge in net sales to Rs 3,628.23 crore in Q4 FY21 over Q4 FY20. Gross Direct Premium Income (GDPI) of the company stood at Rs 3,478 crore in Q4 FY2021 compared to Rs 3,181 crore in Q4 FY2020, registering a growth of 9.4% Y-o-Y (year-on-year). The industry growth for Q4 FY2021 was at 14%.

Stocks in Spotlight:

Bharti Airtel lost 2.20%. The government of Ghana, Bharti Airtel and Millicom International Cellular S.A. on Friday announced execution of the definitive agreement for transfer of 'AirtelTigo' to Government of Ghana, on a going concern basis. In the proposed agreement, the Government of Ghana (GoG) will acquire 100% shares of AirtelTigo along with all customers, assets and liabilities. Basis the agreement, the transaction will entail a takeover by the Government of Ghana post which AirtelTigo would become and operate as a state-entity.

Coal India slipped 2.74%. The state-run coal major has incorporated two wholly-owned subsidiaries, CIL Solar PV, for manufacturing of solar value chain (ingot-wafer-cell module) and CIL Navikarniya Urja for renewable energy on date.

Global Markets:

Shares in Europe and Asia advanced on Monday as the global economic recovery and corporate earnings prospects bolstered sentiment despite rising COVID-19 infections. Chinese stocks outperformed amid easing concerns about the health of state enterprise China Huarong Asset Management Co., a bad-debt manager.

China's financial regulator on Friday reportedly said Huarong had ample liquidity, the first official comments since the company missed a deadline to report earnings. That was enough to cement a rally in Huarong bonds and ease contagion fears.

Japan's exports posted their strongest growth in more than three years in March. Ministry of Finance data showed on Monday exports surged 16.1% in March from a year earlier, marking the steepest rise since November 2017. That was followed by a 4.5% contraction in February.

U.S. stocks rose again on Friday as the market's rally to records carried on amid strong earnings from blue-chip companies as well as solid data signaling a snapback in the economy. Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said Friday the U.S. economy is set to take off, but there's still no reason to start tightening policy.

The University of Michigan said Friday its preliminary consumer sentiment index rose to a one-year high of 86.5 in the first half of this month from 84.9 in March.

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WASHINGTON, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Wowing a client on the first try with an amazing proposal sounds like the dream, but the best thing you can do for a client is let them tell you no, a lot.

That's the advice of major sales consultant and business development expert Mason Harris, author of the book The Chutzpah Advantage: Go Bigger. Be Bolder. Do Better. (2021, Indie Books International ).

The Chutzpah Advantage: Go Bigger. Be Bolder. Do Better.

"No one likes hearing objections, but listening is the first rule of communication," says Harris. "It becomes more difficult to persuade, handle the inevitable complaints, and provide a solution that benefits all parties if you fail at this listening."

Harris, known as The Chutzpah Guy, turned his decades of experience as an entrepreneur in emerging tech and sales to develop a model for success that he now teaches as a motivational speaker and listener. He advises clients on how to use objections to their advantage, rather than viewing them as a dead end.

"Sometimes we give up too quickly," Harris explains. "For many of us, someone's simple act of disagreeing, often without much thought, is enough to prevent our idea from moving forward."

According to Harris, objections aren't something to avoid, but rather guiding posts that point towards a client's fears and needs. They're also pretty much a guarantee, no matter how well prepared one may be.

"Suppose your idea is genuinely remarkable. Unless it's presented exclusively to people who work for you and tend to agree with everything you say anyway, you should plan on objections."

So how can people approach objections from clients in a way that progresses the meeting instead of ending it? Here are five tips from Harris about what to do when a client inevitably says no.

Never take offense at an objection. We should understand the objection. Ask good questions. Be polite with our response. Don't tell or argue with the other person. No one likes to feel bullied or openly challenged. Instead, ask questionslots of them.

Do not back down! Do we need a confrontation? Yes. Here's why. The objection may not be well thought out. Some people just love to disagree. Others are scared of change. Customers may not want to agree too quickly; they're unsure if your solution is worth overcoming the easy decision to stay with a current product, service, or company.

Be prepared for a lot of objections. Most mediocre ideas benefit from being challengedby becoming a better idea or being abandoned. If you haven't heard any objections and there hasn't been adequate discussion, you're doing something wrong.

The first objection may not be the real issue. Many of the objections we hear aren't severe or even the real issue; they're kind of a warm-up to the real objection, which you may never learn because people tend to give up too quickly. Every good idea has the potential to be accepted after it is challenged, and you have the opportunity to understand the basis of the rejection.

The more objections the better! Keep questioning and listening carefully. You can't overcome an objection if you don't truly understand its basis. When you feel you have uncovered most of the objections, you can move forward with a specific resolution or clarification.

Harris adds that even though handling objections one at a time may seem more straightforward, collecting as many as possible illuminates your client's actual needs.

"By understanding the complete picture, you can adequately address concerns with the most meaningful solutions, not the benefits you assume are important."

About Indie Books International

Indie Books International (www.indiebooksintl.com) was founded in 2014 in Oceanside, California by two best-selling business authors. Since then the company has released more than 100 titles. Similar to indie film companies and indie music labels, the mission of Indie Books International is to serve as an independent publishing alternative to help business thought leaders create impact and influence.

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Growing up in Greece, Landolf Rhode-Barbarigos was surrounded by art.

The son of a painter who was also trained as an engineer, the University of Miami assistant professor of engineering learned from his mother that art is not typically utilized. Its simply appreciated for its beauty.

But when Rhode-Barbarigos saw a piece of art that contained mathematical properties, he was intrigued. He first glimpsed whats known as a tensegrity structure while in college at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. The unique system of cables and bars piqued his curiosity, so Rhode-Barbarigos went on to study the form as a graduate student in engineering. Today, he is among just a handful of artists, engineers, scientists, and mathematicians considered tensegrity experts in the world.

Rhode-Barbarigos

Tensegrity is a structure composed of pre-tensioned cables and bars, and it is the interplay of the forces inside these cables and bars that gives the structure its form and defines its behavior, said Rhode-Barbarigos, who holds secondary appointments in the School of Architecture and at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. Its often a challenge to find an engineer who understands the aesthetic language of tensegrity.

Yet, in early April, a 24-foot high and 10-foot wide tensegrity structure titled Tencylinder, designed by artist Clement Vieille, with Rhode-Barbarigos as engineer, and Filippo Broggini and Felix Stampfli as architects, was unveiled in Geneva, Switzerland, to showcase a new line of Hermes watches. Crafted after a year of video conferences to finalize the design and construction, Rhode-Barbarigos said the structure was originally created for Switzerlands annual 2020 Watches and Wonders trade show. But because of the pandemic, the luxury manufacturer postponed its debut for a year. Two weeks ago, as watch aficionados viewed the new Hermes line at an exclusive in-person event, Tencylinder was suspended in the center of the showroom.

Its really exciting to see this come together, said Rhode-Barbarigos. Its unique to have projects where you combine an engineering challenge with aesthetics. Its different because I can apply my research to something unconventional. Its not an everyday opportunity, and when you build one of these, even a small one, you appreciate how hard it is. Nothing is stable until you reach a certain stage. So, what we accomplished is a big deal and it looks great.

He now plans to work with Vieille and Broggini to take Tencylinder on tour, so that art museums and university students around the world can appreciate the structure and learn about tensegrity. Thats possible because Tencylinder is collapsible and easily transportable, a design feat that Rhode-Barbarigos said required extra planning and analysis.

From an engineering perspective, this opens the door for more structures that could use the tensegrity principles, he pointed out.

This was not Rhode-Barbarigos first tensegrity structure or artistic project. He spent much of his graduate studies in engineering deciphering how tensegrity structures function. His dissertation project was a movable footbridge prototype that uses tensegrity concepts to open and close as needed (presumably, when tall boats need to pass under it). He also worked on a suspended structure of more than 12,000 Bic pens that was displayed in a Paris train station in 2017.

As a faculty member at the University, Rhode-Barbarigos discovered the research of Spanish mathematician Miguel de Guzman Ozamiz, who proved that all tensegrity structures are based on the same basic units. And once you form the first cell, the rest of the structure can be combinations of that first one. Rhode-Barbarigos then worked with a de Guzman collaborator, David Orden, from the University of Alcala in Spain and one of his UM graduate students to build upon the theory and make it applicable to engineers, who focus on the structural behavior of tensegrity structures.

De Guzman passed away [in 2004] and nobody really went after his theory, but for me it was the holy grail. And no one had used this before, he said, adding that this research helped him analyze the stability of Tencylinder.

Tensegrity structures were first created by American sculptor Kenneth Snelson in the late 1940s. Although Snelson had experience with photography and painting, he spent his childhood building models of boats and airplanes. As an art student in college, Snelson heard a guest lecture on geometry from architect Buckminster Fuller, who spoke about balancing tension and compression in structures, and the young painter was inspired. Soon after, Snelsonwho had always been interested in the interplay of science, engineering, and artbegan exploring the role of these forces to create sculptures from suspended cables and bars. When Snelson showed his first sculpture to Fuller, the architect coined the term tensegrity to describe the structure. Fuller later developed the geodesic dome using his theories about compression and tension that were confirmed by Snelsons early pieces. These also drew the attention of experts in the math, science, and engineering fields.

Snelson went on to create tensegrity structures that are featured in museums and as outdoor sculptures in Denver, New York City, Washington, D.C., and even Japan and the Netherlands. He passed away in 2016; but according to Rhode-Barbarigos, NASA scientists continue to use his ideas to build modules for planetary exploration that need to be folded during transport.

[A tensegrity sculpture] may seem like a series of floating bars that look chaotic, but they are there because the forces are in equilibrium, said Rhode-Barbarigos. So, its not chaotic or random, its actually well-defined.
Incumbent, vice president

Occupation: Consultant

City of residence: Port Arthur

Q: What do you think is the importance of the port to the community and the region?

A: The importance of the port to the community and the region is job creation, opportunity, service and expansion of the tax base. The port helps create jobs by receiving and shipping products across its docks. Thousands of man hours are worked every year in the loading and unloading of cargo at our docks.

Because of the amount of cargo handled by the port, it has become necessary to acquire more space for storage and miscellaneous activities. Expansion of the tax base can occur when vendors are able to secure a steady stream of products for manufacturing and hire workers. Part of the ports mission is to promote this type of activity.

Q: What do you see as the purpose of a port commissioner and how would you try to fulfill it?

A: The purpose of a Port Commissioner is to be aware of port activities as well as business strategies and to make sound decisions that benefit the growth and development of the port and the area. Port Commissioners are policy makers who hire an executive director to coordinate the activities of the port. The commissioners are also charged with the responsibility to provide guidance and direction as to expansion and growth.

Q: How would you approach introducing new generations to opportunities in the maritime industry?

A: My approach to introducing new generations to opportunities in the maritime industry is to continue the growth of programs such as Camp Seaport which is currently active at the Port of Port Arthur. Camp Seaport is an enrichment activity sponsored by the port to introduce high school students to the maritime industry by exposing them to port activities as well as various other activities to stimulate their thinking and to encourage the furthering of their education.

Related; Voter Guide: PA voters asked to consider allocating $3M to parks

Gerald Hatch Sr.

Candidate

Occupation: General Contractor

City of residence: Port Arthur

Q: What do you think is the importance of the port to the community and the region?

A: I think the importance of the port to the community and the region is to assist with the import and exports of cargo goods around the world. The port will bring jobs to the area which will allow increased revenue to the community. Also addressing concerns and/or issues to protect the environment in the city and surrounding areas.

Q: What do you see as the purpose of a port commissioner and how would you try to fulfill it?

A: I see the purpose of a port commissioner is to represent and be the voice of the community which is my campaign slogan Let me represent your voice and your vision. I will listen to the community and address and resolve any complaints or concerns. My vision is to employ many area citizens so that we may circulate income in the community while being environmentally friendly is how I would fulfill as port commissioner.

Q: How would you approach introducing new generations to opportunities in the maritime industry?

A: I would approach introducing new generations to opportunities in the maritime industry by promoting and educating information on what the port is and the purpose of the port. Furthermore, I will explain how it may be beneficial to the new generation community to know of all the job skills required in hopes they will get the training needed for job opportunities which will allow us to grow together in our community.

Related: Voter Guide: Port Arthur ISD unexpired term

Charles A. Joseph

Candidate

Occupation: Retired

City of residence: Port Arthur

Joseph could not be reached by the Enterprise.

Norris Simon Jr.

Incumbent, president

Occupation: Retired

City of residence: Port Arthur

Q: What do you think is the importance of the port to the community and the region?

A: The Port of Port Arthur is foremost the Economic Engine in The City, by continuing to expand Port not only on the waterfront but by purchasing viable land we are increasing opportunities for Local business owners and job opportunities for our citizens.

Q: What do you see as the purpose of a port commissioner and how would you try to fulfill it?

A: As Port Commissioner your first and foremost role is to represent the Citizens of Port Arthur, and work in unison with the Executive Director and fellow Commissioners setting Policy. As an Incumbent my experience and proven leadership speaks for itself. Continuing to work with my fellow commissioners leading Port of Port Arthur into the future is the reason I am seeking Re Election Vote # 4 on the ballot.

Q: How would you approach introducing new generations to opportunities in the maritime industry?

A: The Port of Port Arthur created Camp Seaport, a vision of one of our commissioners. Camp Seaport introduces young high school students into several different opportunities in the Marine Industry. I would encourage young students of high school age to contact the Port of Arthur If they are interested.

I would also encourage anyone who would like to understand the workings of the Port to attend Port of Port Arthurs open meeting section at our monthly meetings.

Related: Voter Guide: Port Arthur ISD School Board

Linda Turner Spears

Incumbent

Occupation: Educator

City of residence: Port Arthur

Q: What do you think is the importance of the port to the community and the region?

A: Being recognized as a Texas World Class Port, it is important that the Port continues to be the economic force that benefits all of the local and regional communities. The Port is growing and developing services with our diverse import and military cargo. We are setting records with our diesel and lumber tonnages, Job opportunities for local and regional workers keep a steady flow of money moving through our local economy. The Port of Port Arthur is a great economic asset to all citizens of our communities.

Q: What do you see as the purpose of a port commissioner and how would you try to fulfill it?

A: The main purpose of Port Commissioners is to represent the local voters who elected them to office. Port Commissioners set, review, and amend port policies. Commissioners work with the Ports Executive Staff to grow and develop economic opportunities which bring revenue into the local and regional communities. Commissioners help build and maintain a business relationship with local and regional businesses to achieve the overall purpose of the Port.

Q: How would you approach introducing new generations to opportunities in the maritime industry?

A: I would continue to develop new local and regional relationships with businesses that are willing to support our National Recognized Education Program Camp Sea Port. This program was designed and created to teach local high school students the Maritime Industry. Phase One of the camp is a one-week hands-on learning experience with the Coast Guard, Pilots, Longshoremen, Engineers, Seamen and Women, and many other maritime businesses. Phase Two of the camp is a six-week hands-on learning experience that uses the STEAMS elements to design and build a boat. Campers are assisted by Jefferson County AgriLife Services. They also learn how to prepare galley meals for ship crews during the six weeks. For 11 years now this has been the best way for The Port of Port Arthur to introduce the maritime industry to the new generation.

Related: Beaumont Enterprise 2021 Voter Guide

Mary Wycoff

Candidate

Occupation: Retired

City of residence: Port Arthur

Q: What do you think is the importance of the port to the community and the region?

A: The port is one of the most important aspects of Port Arthur. It makes us globally known due to its inter-coastal canal and docks. It allows us to create partnerships and conduct business with people all over the world. Most importantly its an asset to our community because it is a great source of revenue for our city and also creates several employment opportunities.

Q: What do you see as the purpose of a port commissioner and how would you try to fulfill it?

A: Port Commissioners are extremely important and much needed. Of course In all businesses there is a boss, president, committee or a governing board that makes sound decisions in the best interest of that specific entity to maintain order and success. There always has to be someone that oversees and reviews major decisions that arise.

Q: How would you approach introducing new generations to opportunities in the maritime industry?

A: Im glad you asked that because increasing awareness is a major part of my platform. In speaking to community residents both younger and older Ive noticed that there are plenty of people who have no knowledge of the port and what it has to offer. I plan to partner with other community boards such as the city and school board to collaborate on getting our new generation involved through new education programs and community events.
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Nigerias Minister of Defence, Bashir Magashi, on Sunday, led the service chiefs on an assessment visit to Operation Lafiya Dole in Borno State.

According to a statement by the Army spokesperson, Mohammed Yerima, he was accompanied by the Chief of Defence Staff, Leo Irabor, Chief of Army Staff, Ibrahim Attahiru, Chief of Naval Staff, Awwal Gambo and Chief of Air Staff, Oladayo Amao.

The security helmsmen were received by the theatre commander, Farouq Yahaya, in Maimalari Cantonment in Borno State.

The commander lauded the sustained commitment shown to the operation by the minister and service chiefs, adding that troops were grateful for the ministers visit to interact with them.

He noted that immediately after their appointments, the service chiefs, led by the CDS, visited the theatre and had been doing so regularly.

Mr Yahaya explained that apart from collective visits by the service chiefs, led by the CDS, the former also visited individually to ensure smooth operations.

He thereafter presented a detailed brief on the operation covering updates, deployments, challenges and projections of the operation.

On his part, the minister conveyed the appreciation of President Muhammadu Buhari for their efforts and sacrifices.

He assured the troops of the federal governments continued support, more equipment and other logistics to OPLD in ending insurgency and indeed other criminalities across the country.

Highlight of the visit include visit to wounded in action troops admitted at 7 Division Medical Services and Hospital where the minister interacted with them. He promised to support the various services to improve on the welfare of troops, the statement said.

Not the first visit

The service chiefs had, upon their appointments, made their first trip to Borno State, the epicentre of the insurgency.

Their first point of call was the Borno State Government House where they met Governor Babagana Zulum in Maiduguri, the state capital.

The president in January appointed the new service chiefs following the resignation of their predecessors.

The resignation of the former service chiefs followed cries by Nigerians for their sack due to rising insecurity in the country.
Tesla Autopilot accident resulted in the death of driverless death that has claimed the lives of two men that slammed against the tree. This incident takes place amidst the company releasing a Q1 Safety Report and the announcement of FSD beta release. The vehicle was said to be "driverless" which meant that there were no people behind the wheel, entrusting all the process to Autopilot.

One of the most advertised features of Tesla vehicles is not its speed and performance, rather its safety, which it specializes in, as one of the leading electric vehicle brands of the era. However, it would still go down to the responsibility of the driver, especially as the company recommends its technology for certain purposes or situations only.

Driver intervention is still encouraged by Tesla, especially in the country where it is still illegal to let a car drive by itself without any drivers ready to take action whenever there is a nearby accident. Recently, a Tesla EV slammed against a semi-truck, which went under the vehicle in the process, with a reckless driving case pending the injured driver.

Read Also: Elon Musk Teases Tesla FSD 'Beta Button to Come in July, Subscriptions to Start on May, But What Exactly Is It?

Tesla Autopilot Accident is Driverless

According to the report by the New York Times, a Tesla has crashed and caught on fire, killing two of its passengers (counting the driver) in the process. The initial findings have discovered that there were no drivers on the seat, meaning that the vehicle was speculated to use the "Autopilot" feature. The accident happened at around 9 PM Sunday night, at Spring, Texas, says authorities.

"Autopilot" is not recommended by Tesla for a driverless feat or situation inside the vehicle, as it is only prescribed for use on highways, as it goes at certain speeds and also overtakes on slower ones. The only driverless function for Tesla EVs is the Full-Self Driving (FSD) which is yet to see its release date for this year.

Tesla Q1 Safety Report for Autopilot

In recent days, Tesla has released its 2021 Q1 Safety Report which has determined the standards of its electric vehicles in terms of their safety features, which has made people sought after it. In the report, Autopilot was regarded as 10 times safer than an average person driving the Tesla EV, which in turn was also 10 times better than an average car.

Tesla with Autopilot engaged now approaching 10 times lower chance of accident than average vehicle https://t.co/6lGy52wVhC  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 17, 2021



Tesla has upgraded and updated the Autopilot to be 10 times safer than its previous version, optimizing the functions and features of the vehicle for the convenience of the driver using it.

Tesla FSD Release Date

The Tesla FSD is nearing its release date, as revealed by Elon Musk, which was slated for June or July, featuring its public beta release after its confirmation as a subscription service for users. The FSD button is coming soon, but the main reason for holding it back was to ensure its full safety and effectiveness as it releases to the public's hands.

Related Article: Tesla's Q1 Statement Supported by Elon Musk: He Claims Autopilot Feature Now 10x More Efficient

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Isaiah Alonzo

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
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.

Vote

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It is the first cement brand from India to be awarded this label

Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], Apr 19 (ANI): Ambuja Kawach, the high quality water-repellent cement brand of Ambuja Cement, has been endorsed globally by the Solar Impulse Efficient Solution label, recognising the company's innovative product that protects the environment in a profitable way.

Ambuja 'Kawach' is the first cement brand from India to be awarded this label. It is one of ten LafargeHolcim solutions recognised by Solar Impulse Foundation's efficient solution label, for its world-leading technologies that protect the environment in a profitable way.

In 2018 the Solar Impulse Foundation began its challenge to select 1,000 solutions that can protect the environment in a profitable way. The aim was to present these solutions to decision-makers to fast-track their implementation.

Selected solutions receive a label from the Solar Impulse Foundation as proof of their positive environmental and economic impact. Each awarded solution was strictly assessed by a pool of independent experts.

Ambuja 'Kawach' is a cement that shields against water seepage and chemicals, making structures more durable and sustainable. The product has 33 per cent less carbon footprint in comparison to standard (OPC) cement.

"The product is developed in collaboration with LafargeHolcim's global R&D Centre at Lyon in France. We are very determined to follow responsible and cost-effective measures, to deliver sustainability and innovation into our product design, production and supply chain management," said Neeraj Akhoury, CEO and Managing Director of Ambuja Cements Ltd.

Since its launch in 2020, a total of 3.88 lakh tonnes of Ambuja 'Kawach' cement has been consumed. (ANI)
The volume of Kolte-Patil Developers jumped 27.1% to 0.85 million square feet (sq. ft.) in Q4 FY21 over 0.67 million sq. ft. in Q4 FY20.

Strong sales momentum sustained in Q4 FY21 across regions, projects and product categories. Sale value surged 42.7% to Rs 510.90 crore in Q4 FY21 as against Rs 358.10 crore in Q4 FY20.

Sales realization soared 12.3% to Rs 5,988 per sq. ft. in Q4 FY21 from Rs 5,333 per sq. ft. in Q4 FY20. Realizations improved both in Q4 and FY21 due to increased contribution from Mumbai portfolio.

Collections spurted 16.8% to Rs 441.50 crore in Q4 FY21 as compared to Rs 378.10 crore in Q4 FY20. The Q4 FY21 collections were the highest ever in the company's three-decade history.

There has been a further reduction in net debt during Q4 FY21. Hence, strong collections and low debt have resulted in healthy OCF in FY21, despite being a year impacted by COVID-related disruptions. The company signed three new projects with a combined saleable area of 2.2 msf in Pune under capital light models.

Gopal Sarda, Group CEO, Kolte-Patil Developer, "Q4FY21was the best ever quarterfor us in terms of collections-highest in the company's three-decade history. We have had consecutive record breaking quarters in terms of collections this year and have managed to reduce net debt further during Q4. Given our collections growth and lower interest outgo, we have delivered healthy free cash flows despite FY21 being a pandemic year."

On a consolidated basis, Kolte-Patil Developers reported a net profit of Rs 25.05 crore in Q3 December 2020 as compared to a net loss of Rs 14.32 crore in Q3 December 2019. Net sales surged 46.1% to Rs 190.27 crore in Q3 FY21 over Q3 FY20.

Kolte-Patil Developers is a real estate company with dominant presence in the Pune residential market.

Shares of Kolte-Patil Developers dropped 4.59% to Rs 224.60 on BSE. The scrip hit an intraday high of Rs 216.20 and an intraday low of Rs 240 so far.

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Photo: The Canadian Press A tribute to Kristen Beaton and her unborn child is one of 22 along a memorial walk in Victoria Park to mark the one-year anniversary of the April 2020 murder rampage in rural Nova Scotia, in Truro, N.S. on Sunday, April 18, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

A lone bagpiper played slow airs outside a church Sunday as relatives of 22 people slain during a killer's rampage in rural Nova Scotia gathered for an emotional ceremony to honour the victims one year later.

The sombre event at First United Church in Truro, N.S., which was livestreamed in lieu of being open to the public, began with a provincewide moment of silence.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shared remarks through a pre-recorded statement, saying he wished he could have attended the service.

"Even a year later, I know there is no comfort for the anguish of having an adored parent or precious child torn away," he said, standing in front of a row of Canadian flags. "So all I can say is this: You are not alone. All Canadians stand with you and grieve with you."

The prime minister described one of the worst mass shootings in Canadian history as an act of evil that should not define the memories of those lost on April 18 and 19, 2020.

"It will not define the communities that still grieve them," he said. "Instead, we will remember the kindness and joy of each person taken from us."

At the front of the church was a blue platform, upon which painted rocks displayed a single rose and the first name of each victim. At one point, relatives placed flowers next to each stone as each victim's name was read aloud.

Nova Scotia Premier Iain Rankin told the 60-member congregation it was important for those experiencing great loss to come together and seek strength from their community.

"As you and our communities continue on the journey of healing, my hope is that you'll be strengthened by the continued outpouring of support from Nova Scotians and people throughout the world," he said.

The hour-long service was organized by a committee of the Nova Scotia Remembers Legacy Society, led by Jenny Kierstead, the sister of Lisa McCully  a neighbour of the gunman who was among the first killed on the night of April 18.

"We have all suffered so much this year that it is our intention to bring some light and beauty to our lives on this dark day," she said in a pre-recorded statement.

"What we know is that a trauma such as the one that we've endured can shatter a person's life. I know it has mine. May this ceremony help you hear the whisper of your own heart, calling you back home to the love, peace and the wholeness that resides within."

Earlier in the day, hundreds of people took part in a series of memorial walks and runs in and around Truro.

The atmosphere in Victoria Park, where the races ended, was one of both sad reflection and optimism, as the crowd cheered and clapped for the runners crossing the finish line -- many with reddened eyes. Money raised from those events will help pay for a permanent memorial, the plans for which are still in the early stages.

Denise Burgess, one of the organizers, said the events were aimed at healing and remembrance.

"We want to turn the lens away from what happened to who these people were," she said in an interview Sunday. "It gives us a chance to reflect on their lives  that they were full, beautiful lives and they were wonderful, giving people who contributed to our community."

A large art installation in the park pays tribute to the victims. Crafted by welder Wayne Smith, the statue features hearts with the name of each victim, including an unborn child.

"There's a bit of healing that takes place when we can make this for people," said Burgess, a teacher in Truro whose students once included Emily Tuck, a 17-year-old Grade 12 student who was killed with her parents in Portapique on April 18.

Willa Kray, who travelled to Truro from Pictou County, said the memorial walk helped her grapple with the anniversary of the mass shooting.

"It was just so horrific," she said. "I wanted to come here to pay my respects and it did give me a sense of closure."

The anniversary was also marked by a peaceful march to the RCMP detachment in nearby Bible Hill, where some protesters expressed their dismay with the Mounties' response to one of the worst mass killings in Canadian history.

Tara Long, the sister of Aaron Tuck, one of the victims, said shes still struggling to understand how someone could go on a shooting spree for 13 hours.

Our province and our country is sad because this shouldn't be able to happen here, she said before the march began under darkening skies.

Sarah Jollimore, whose family was close with one of the victims, said she attended the march to remember the lives lost and to call for transparency from the police.

Theres still so many unanswered questions that we all deserve to know, she said. We need to work better and do better and just be better.

Nova Scotia RCMP Assistant Commissioner Lee Bergerman said the police force would observe a moment of silence at 2 p.m. on Monday.

"We understand people have questions and want to know as much as possible about the incidents," Bergerman said in a statement on Sunday, adding that a federal-provincial public inquiry will provide some answers.

"It is our hope that the Mass Casualty Commission will provide a full accounting of what happened for the families of the victims and the public."

The Mounties have confirmed that on the night of April 18, 2020, the killer assaulted his common-law spouse, set fire to several homes and proceeded to kill 13 people in Portapique, N.S., a rural community on the north shore of the Bay of Fundy.

Dressed as a Mountie and driving a car he modified to look exactly like an RCMP cruiser, the killer evaded police by driving through a field shortly after officers arrived at the chaotic scene some time after 10 p.m.

Having spent the night hiding at the rear of a welding shop in Debert, N.S., the killer resumed murdering people he knew and others at random early the next day. He was fatally shot by two Mounties at a gas station about 35 kilometres north of Halifax.

The Enfield Big Stop had its jumbo Canadian flag lowered to half-mast Sunday, a reminder of the gruesome events that unfolded there a year ago.

Speculation about the killer's motives has included evidence he was paranoid about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying at one point in an email he was glad he was well-armed because the pandemic would make people desperate "once the money runs out."

As well, the RCMP have said a behavioural analysis revealed he was likely an "injustice collector," whose grudges built up over time and eventually exploded in horrific violence.

The killer's propensity for violence was well known among some of his neighbours in Portapique, who have said he had a long history of abusing his common-law spouse. She survived the mayhem in Portapique.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 18, 2021.
Digitalization fast-forwards the transformation of China's traditional enterprises

People's Daily Online) 17:30, April 19, 2021

Digitalization has become an important means for traditional enterprises in China to upgrade their business activities in recent years, thanks to the accelerated digital transformation of the Chinese economy and society.

China State Shipbuilding Co., Ltd. has designed and constructed intelligent ships with fully digitalized functions, including remote control and autonomous navigation capabilities. China's State Grid, the countrys main power supplier, has established a new energy cloud platform to promote greater collaboration between more than 3,000 upstream and downstream enterprises.

An employee remotely controls equipment at a smart wharf at the Tangshan port in north China's Hebei province. (Peoples Daily Online/Liu Mancang)

The Hong Kong-based Shing Kee Godown Logistics Co., Ltd., which is principally engaged in logistics businesses in over 60 countries and regions, has put a high priority on technological transformation, deploying new technologies such as big data, cloud computing, and the internet of things to improve its management and operational efficiency.

Data and information are vital to modern trade, said Guo Taicheng, chairman of the logistics company, adding that the development of the logistics and transportation industry is closely linked with advancements in information technology.

According to Guo, the company is currently promoting the construction of the World Commodity Trade Center, a major warehousing facility, and integrating the development of its online and offline businesses.

Digital technologies can help to effectively advance the development of other industries, according to Liu Dacheng, deputy director of the Internet Industry Research Institute of Tsinghua University.

The digital transformation of traditional industries plays an increasingly important role in their capacity to achieve the optimal allocation of resources, matching differentiated supply and demand, and helping enterprises lower their costs and improve efficiencies, Liu noted.

Liu added that digital transformation promotes the development of other businesses, enabling all-scenario applications, and creating more job opportunities.

In order to strengthen the in-depth integration of digital technologies with the real economy, local governments have continued to roll out their own plans.

Southwest Chinas Chongqing municipality aims to promote the intelligent transformation of industrial enterprises to build more digitalized workshops and smart factories and establish 10 industrial internet platforms of considerable influence to enable more small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to embrace cloud services.

Fujian province in southeast China plans to build more than 100 high-level digital innovation platforms and foster more than 3,000 pioneering companies and innovative digital companies by 2022. Meanwhile, south China's Guangdong province aims to develop the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area into a central hub for the worlds digital economy.

"Currently, Chinas digital economy has been deeply integrated with the real economy," said Pan Helin, executive dean of the Digital Economic Research Institute at the Zhongnan University of Economics and Law.

While facilitating the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, the digital economy is creating new growth points for various industries and transforming the way we produce things and live our lives, Pan added.

In an attempt to help enterprises accelerate their digital transformation, China has implemented a series of targeted measures. According to a recent notice jointly issued by Chinas National Development and Reform Commission along with other departments, the country will vigorously develop intelligent manufacturing so as to promote a fundamental change in the development model applied to manufacturing and business operations, accelerating the development of industrial software and the industrial internet, and fostering collaboration between manufacturing, design and data platforms.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
HAMBURG, Germany and ARLINGTON, Va., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CoreMedia, developer of the agile content management and digital experience platform, CoreMedia Content Cloud, today announced its 25th anniversary as the technology engine behind many of the world's most iconic online brands. The company is capping this milestone by welcoming a new addition to its leadership team  Chief Marketing Officer, Gretchen Nemechek. With the help of this new leadership, the company will focus on expanding its global market presence and enhancing its core technology platform in 2021, delivering increased business flexibility, openness, affordability and faster time to value.

CoreMedia began in 1996 as a software project in the Computer Science department at the University of Science and Technology in Hamburg, Germany. Its founders included the company's current CEO, Soeren Stamer, his fellow student, CoreMedia Distinguished Engineer, Andreas Gawecki, and their academic advisors, Prof. Joachim W. Schmidt and Prof. Florian Matthes.

The company developed its advanced content management and brand orchestration engine by working with some of the world's most demanding and competitive organizations, including T-Mobile, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Emerson Electric, and the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada. It has brought these same capabilities  including composability, flexibility, scalability and speed  to a new generation of clients in the retail and fashion space including Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Under Armour, and Deckers Brands.

"As we enter our second quarter century as a company, I could not be prouder of the team and what we have accomplished," said Stamer. "But we would not have achieved any of it were it not for our amazing customers and partners. It is the effort of these iconic brands and allies that have really made this possible. As we move forward, the pace of change will only accelerate. As business spins faster and information is exchanged quicker than ever, we will have to collaborate even more closely to build the models that will sustain the next generation of brands and futureproof organizations."

The company's new Chief Marketing Officer, Gretchen Nemechek, comes to CoreMedia from SAP where she led Product Marketing for their Customer Experience Solutions and acted as SVP for Sales Learning Strategy, Enablement Programs and Content. Gretchen brings more than 20 years of experience in enterprise software, holding leadership roles in Marketing, Sales Enablement, Product Management, Product Marketing, Business Development, Channel Management, and Go-To-Market strategy. She is also passionate about advancing equality, diversity and inclusion in the workplace and the power of connected leadership.

"CoreMedia is in a very unique position in the markethaving been one of the first content technology companies on the scene at the dawn of eCommerce," said Nemechek. "During the last 25 years, their platform and continuous innovation has set the tone for the digital experiences of some of the world's most iconic brands. In fact, CoreMedia has been a pretty well-kept secret among such brands."

"What attracted me to CoreMedia is their mission and the opportunity to bring their best-in-class digital experience platform to a broader range of brands across the globe," Nemechek added. "This is a company with a very loyal customer base and an amazingly talented team  with expertise and tenure in this industry that is difficult to match. I am thrilled to be joining CoreMedia at such a momentous point in their history and to help lead the strategy for driving ever higher levels of market awareness and customer satisfaction."

One of the first goals of the expanded leadership team will be a series of technology and business initiatives designed to drive innovation and growth  as well as to modernize the company's core software architecture and expand its global footprint  thus ensuring that the company is prepared to achieve even greater success in its next quarter century and beyond.

About CoreMedia AG

CoreMedia is the digital experience and content management engine behind today's most iconic online brands. Our flagship product, CoreMedia Content Cloud, is a flexible, composable Digital Experience Platform (DXP) built on an agile CMS and advanced DAM that enables leaders in all industries to orchestrate personalized experiences and deliver them to any channel  reliably, efficiently, and at enterprise scale. Marketers, merchandisers, and developers can work collaboratively and efficiently on omnichannel experiences that drive engagement, increase loyalty, improve brand visibility, and boost revenue. Leading global B2C companies (including Deckers Brands, Under Armour, Luxottica, PVH Corp, Finnair, and T-Mobile) as well as major B2B firms (Continental, Claas, Emerson, DMG-Mori) create world-class digital experiences powered by CoreMedia. For more information, or to set up a demo, visit us at www.coremedia.com. You can also follow us on LinkedIn, on Twitter @contentcloud, or read our blog at blog.coremedia.com.

Contact: Doug Heise

Phone: +1.415.371.0400

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE CoreMedia

Related Links

https://www.coremedia.com


A day after the government of the Czech Republic blamed operatives from Russias military intelligence agency for a series of mysterious explosions at an ammunition depot in 2014 and expelled 18 Russian diplomats, the Russian government announced on Sunday that 20 Czech diplomats would be ejected in response.

The expulsions signal further escalation of tensions between the Kremlin and western governments, reaching an intensity not seen since the Cold War. The spat between the Czech Republic and Russia comes just days after the United States imposed heavy sanctions on Russian government officials and businesses in response to a large-scale hacking of American government computer systems.

In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry called the Czech accusations absurd and accused the government of being an American puppet.

In an effort to please the U.S.A. following recent American sanctions against Russia, the Czech government in this instance even exceeded its overseas masters, the Russian Foreign Ministry statement said.
Today it is the duty of all the countrymen who believe in the ideology and constitution of Dr. Ambedkar, to mobilize against the Hindutva agenda of RSS / BJP to establish a Hindu Rashtra and make it a failure.

by SR Darapuri

April 14 is celebrated as Dr. Ambedkars Jayanti, that is, Dr. Ambedkars birth anniversary, not only in the country but also abroad. On this day, while he is officially paid tribute and he is praised by government representatives, his devotees also pay homage to him. All these events mostly take the form of a celebration and ritual. There are very few such events where on this day there is a serious discussion about Dr. Ambedkars life philosophy and its present relevance. Its festive form has its own significance. But discussing the relevance of Dr. Ambedkars philosophy in the current scenario can be more useful. Therefore, it would be more expedient to evaluate the current political and economic scenario in the light of Dr. Ambedkars philosophy and ideology.

Lets first look at the current political scenario. As everyone is aware that at present, there is BJP government in the Centre and many states whose main agenda is the establishment of Hindu Rashtra. Its Hindutva concept does not believe in the constitutional values of secularism, pluralism and unity in diversity, whereas Dr. Ambedkar was a strong supporter of all of them. The RSS-backed BJP government is committed to the establishment of a Hindu Rashtra. Dr. Ambedkar cautioned the demand for a religion-based nation of Pakistan in the 1940s, saying, If India becomes a Hindu Rashtra, then of course there will be a great threat to this country. Whatever Hindus say, Hindutva is a threat to liberty, equality and fraternity. On this basis, it is unsuitable for democracy, Hindu raj should be stopped at all costs. About 80 years ago today, the danger that Dr. Ambedkar had warned about is knocking at our door. At the moment, even though the Constitution has not been changed and India is still, formally secular, in real life, the Hindutva forces have established effective control over society and culture as well as the state.

Ambedkar wanted to prevent the formation of a Hindu Rashtra under any circumstances, because he considered the Hindu code of life completely opposed to liberty, equality and fraternity. The reason for his opposition to the Hindu Rashtra was not limited only to the hatred of Hindus towards Muslims. The truth is that he considered the Hindu Rashtra to be more dangerous for Hindus than Muslims. He considered the Hindu Rashtra to be against Dalits and women. He had clearly stated that maintaining the caste system is an essential condition that women should be prevented from inter-caste marriages. He believed that no social brotherhood could be imagined in the face of this inequality. Caste inequality is the essence of Hindutva. This led him to the conclusion that Hindutva and democracy stand at two opposing ends. All the facts show that Hindus can leave everything, but not caste which is their basis and Ambedkar did not imagine a democratic society without its demolition.

Therefore, today it is the duty of all the countrymen who believe in the ideology and constitution of Dr. Ambedkar, to mobilize against the Hindutva agenda of RSS / BJP to establish a Hindu Rashtra and make it a failure.

Now if we look at the economic policies of the present BJP government, these are pro-corporate policies based on finance capital whereas Dr. Ambedkar was a strong advocate of state socialism. In his own draft of constitution, which he circulated to the members of the Constituent Assembly on behalf of the of Scheduled Castes Federation of India and which later appeared as a book titled States and Minorities, the nationalization of agricultural land, formation of plots of the acquired land of the appropriate size. Dividing into farms, allocating them to rural family groups to cultivate as units, collective farming on them, giving agriculture the status of industry, etc. were revolutionary suggestions. At the same time, he was in favour of keeping all the major industries under government control, industries which are not major but basic to be run by the government or government undertakings. He was in favour of keeping insurance in the hands of the government only and compulsory insurance policy for every person. He was also in favour of keeping all types of mining in government hands. In fact, he was a strong supporter of state socialism in place of free capitalism.

On the contrary today we are seeing that the present Modi government is implementing the policy of privatization and globalization with rigor. Instead of making agriculture profitable through collective farming, by making new agriculture laws and making arrangements for handing over farming to big companies and corporates, against which the nationwide farmers movement has been going on for a long time. Private companies have entered the insurance sector and the government insurance company LIC is being sold. The public sector undertakings made with public money are being sold. The electricity system established by Dr. Ambedkar is being privatized by making a new law. Mining is being increasingly privatized.

After independence, the whole economy is being handed over to the corporates driven by global finance capital and the open market is being promoted which is not in the interest of the common citizen. In the Constitution, instead of ensuring equitable distribution of national wealth and preventing centralization in a few hands, all national wealth is being sold to a few hands. Mining is being increasingly privatized, leading to loot of mining wealth. Modi government is a corporate supported government which is completely reversing the socialist provisions/laws contained in the constitution to benefit them. It should be opposed in the national interest.

It is well known that as Labour Member of the Viceroys Executive Counsel before independence, Dr. Ambedkar had enacted lot of labour laws for the welfare and protection of workers which were still in force. These include 8 hours of work, employees insurance scheme, maternity leave, equal pay for equal work, housing facility, EPF, right to strike, representation of workers in management, employment exchanges and trade union rights etc. In fact, Babasaheb got the rights of labourers in India in a period of four years (1942 to 1946), which others got after a long struggle in other countries of the world. On the contrary, the present Modi Government has abolished all those laws and has created four Labour Codes, which are totally anti-labour. It is actually a document of slavery of workers. In this, the working hours have been enhanced to 12, the take home salary has been reduced and contract workers right to be made permanent has been taken away. The weekly holiday has been abolished, the contractors have been exempted from registration and the employers have been relieved of the social and life safety responsibilities of the workers. The Modi government is doing all this in the name of running the industries with ease. This work of the Modi government is extremely anti-worker and promotes their exploitation. This is negation of laws made by Dr. Ambedkar for labour welfare.

Therefore, it is clear from the above brief discussion that the present Modi governments effort to establish a Hindu Rashtra, implement privatization and globalization rapidly and subject the economy of the country to global finance capital, corporate farming, and handing over grain markets, industry, mining and insurance to them, abolishing labour laws, etc. and is following the anti-people policies vigorously. It is contrary to the philosophy and ideology of Dr. Ambedkar. Hence, on the occasion of Ambedkar Jayanti, the current economic policies and efforts to make the country a religion based Hindu Rashtra in place of a secular state should be discussed and opposed which will be a true tribute to Dr. Ambedkar.

SR Darapuri, National Spokesperson, All India Peoples Front.
The United States has passed a significant milestone in its vaccine rollout: All adults are now eligible for the Covid-19 vaccine in every state. More than half of the adult population has received at least one dose of a vaccine.

Share of age groups that have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine Jan. 1 2021 Feb. 5 March 5 April 2 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Under 18 18-29 30-39 40-49 50-64 65-74 75+ Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Data as of April 18.

The country has come a long way since vaccines first arrived at hospitals and long-term care facilities in December. More than 209 million doses have been shot into arms. And universal eligibility comes on the heels of a confusing, patchwork system that may make a person eligible in one state, but not another.

But the next phase of the rollout will bring new challenges. Some scientists and state and local health officials believe that making more people eligible will ultimately get more people vaccinated more swiftly. But others have said they are worried that some of the most vulnerable people, including those 65 and older, may have trouble competing for a shot.

As it stands now, older adults are the most vaccinated age group in America  quite likely because they have been eligible in most states for months. But about a fifth of those 65 and older, a group that is particularly vulnerable to serious complications and death from the virus, have not received even one shot. Among them are some residents of long-term care facilities, which have represented more than a third of overall coronavirus deaths in the United States for much of the pandemic.

In mid-March, President Biden challenged states to accelerate the rollout and expand eligibility to include all people 16 and older. And for the past several weeks, states have been shifting away from complicated phase-based plans that have prioritized certain vulnerable individuals, like older Americans, critical workers and those with certain medical conditions.

No more having to sort out if youre in or if youre out, Julie Willems Van Dijk, the deputy secretary of the Department of Health Services in Wisconsin, said in a speech in late March as the state made plans to expand eligibility. Its time to just move forward and get everybody with a shot in their arm.

See How the Vaccine Rollout Is Going in Your County and State

Vaccinations have sped up considerably since Mr. Bidens announcement, when providers were administering, on average, about 2.2 million doses each day. Now, about 3.2 million shots are given, on average, every day.

One by one, states have made eligibility universal, meaning all people 16 and older qualify for shots. On Monday, the last group of states opened the floodgates, and some experts expressed worry over unvaccinated older adults.

It may not just be those in some parts of the country who have difficulty snatching up fast-changing appointments online. Cindy A. Prins, an epidemiologist at the University of Florida, said that high-risk people who had been eligible for a vaccine for months but had not gotten one might be struggling with access.

There may be people who are not necessarily homebound, but maybe they dont drive, Dr. Prins said. Maybe its not easy and convenient for them to get somewhere to get vaccinated.

She said that adding more younger people into the mix could spur states and counties to open more mass vaccination sites, but those sites might be intimidating or uncomfortable for older people  or anyone who is particularly vulnerable to the virus and does not want to participate in a crowded event.

I think there are some folks who want to get the vaccine, but theyre still very worried about getting exposed to other people, Dr. Prins said. Its a little bit of a strange situation where were like, Stay away from everyone, but please come here to our massive vaccine clinic.

Dr. Prins added that some older adults could be waiting until their regular doctors or other health care providers can give them the vaccine.

Covid-19 vaccinations among adults 65 and over Older adults have been eligible for the vaccine for months, but some still have not gotten a shot, and progress is uneven from state to state. Fully vaccinated At least one dose 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Hawaii West Virginia Alabama Mississippi Arkansas Tennessee Wyoming Missouri Louisiana Georgia District of Columbia Nevada New York Idaho North Carolina Montana Alaska Indiana Michigan Arizona Ohio Oregon Oklahoma South Carolina Kentucky North Dakota United States Virginia Colorado Illinois Maryland Florida Utah New Jersey Nebraska Washington Iowa New Mexico Wisconsin Delaware California Minnesota Kansas Pennsylvania South Dakota Connecticut Maine Massachusetts Rhode Island Texas Vermont New Hampshire Notes: Data as of April 18. Extra doses and reporting inconsistencies may result in the percentage of doses being artificially high.  Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There are many reasons eligible people may not be vaccinated, including, in some areas, lingering issues of short supply, limited access to vaccination sites and confusing procedures for booking appointments. Some older people may also be hesitant or unwilling to get a shot.

The New York Times recently analyzed vaccine records and voter records in every county in the United States and found that both willingness to receive a coronavirus vaccine and actual vaccination rates were lower, on average, in counties where a majority of residents voted to re-elect former President Donald J. Trump in 2020.

But the partisan split is smaller among older adults, and polling has suggested that older Republicans are less reluctant to get a shot than younger ones.

Back in March, when Debra Furr-Holden, an epidemiologist at Michigan State University, heard President Biden urge states to make all adults eligible for the vaccine by May 1  essentially, to scrap slower plans that emphasized certain priority groups with higher vulnerability  she said she started to tear up with disappointment. It was not what she wanted to hear.

The eligibility categories were designed to ensure that those most at risk were served first, said Dr. Furr-Holden, who was appointed last year by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to Michigans Coronavirus Task Force on Racial Disparities. Weve fallen very short of that goal.

Tracking Coronavirus Vaccinations Around the World

In March, a Times analysis showed that people of color in the United States, for example, had received a smaller share of available vaccines.

Dr. Furr-Holden said she worried that vulnerable people, who, for whatever reason, had not gotten a shot quickly enough were inappropriately being made to forfeit their place in line. And she worried that a new privileged priority group would emerge.

This is tantamount to sanctioned line-jumping, she said. You have transportation? Youre at the front of the line. Youve got the kind of job where you can stand at a mass vaccination site for five hours? Youre at the front of the line.

Those who are concerned that universal eligibility might sacrifice equity are thinking about creative solutions. Dr. Lisa Cooper, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity, suggested that, with the eligibility floodgates opened, health officials might directly encourage young people to help them vaccinate the older people in their lives.

She explained, We need to start asking the younger folks, Wheres your mom? Your grandmother? Have they all gotten their vaccines yet? If not, weve got several slots and we want your whole family here.
More than 10m people in the UK have now received their second dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to Government figures.

The milestone means that more than 19% of all adults in the country have received both jabs, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said.
Aml and I found each other when he started to dip his toe in the L.A. scene. He has an entrepreneurial spirit that, to be perfectly honest, isnt encouraged in British culture. I always felt like he would do great things, especially in the States. Malachi and I met through a program at BAFTA; hes been my mentee for four or five years now. And I met Cynthia in L.A. Shes also of Nigerian descent, but we really bonded over the fact that when she was cast as Harriet Tubman in Harriet (2019), she got some flak because she was a Black British actress playing an African-American icon. I experienced some of that when I played Dr. King in Selma (2014), so I became a sounding board for her.

These are friends with whom I share an outlook on life and interests, whether its our faith, our culture or our aspirations. To be Black in America is to sometimes feel gaslit, so its important to have people around you who get it, who help you remember that youre not crazy. And then, of course, central to any great friendship is encouraging one another, cheerleading from the sidelines and really making sure the people you love see how you see them.
The city of Tikal was found by a gum sapper in 1853 (Getty)

A mysterious new pyramid has been unearthed using laser scans of an ancient "lost city" of the Maya, in northern Guatemala.

Scientists using airborne light detection and ranging technology, or LiDAR, spotted signs of the ancient structure near Tikal, Guatemala's premier archaeological site.

The ruins of Tikal were abandoned more than a thousand years ago, and were rediscovered by a gum sapper in 1853.

Tikal was the capital of a warring state that became one of the most powerful kingdoms of the Maya.

But the new ruins were unusual, and different from the rest of Tikal, showing off the distinctive architecture found in Teotihuacan, more than 800 miles to the west.

Watch: Passion for pigeons persists in Egypt

Read more: Five mysterious abandoned cities  and why their occupants left

The complex  a pyramid  is thought to be a replica of a square at Teotihuacan known as the Citadel, National Geographic reports.

Stephen Houston of Brown University told National Geographic: The similarity of the details was stunning.

Further excavations found artefacts suggesting the site may have been a quasi-autonomous settlement within Tikal.

The city of Tikal flourished between 300 and 850AD, and was known to the Maya themselves as Mutul.

Edwin Roman-Ramirez, director of the South Tikal Archaeological Project, said: We knew that the Teotihuacanos had at least some presence and influence in Tikal and nearby Maya areas prior to the year 378.

But it wasnt clear whether the Maya were just emulating aspects of the regions most powerful kingdom. Now theres evidence that the relationship was much more than that.

Read more: Nasa imaging technology reveals hidden script in Dead Sea Scrolls

Research last year hinted at why Tikals inhabitants abandoned the city, finding toxic levels of pollution in reservoirs that suggested its water became undrinkable after droughts in the ninth century.

Researchers from the University of Cincinnati found toxic levels of mercury and algae in four central reservoirs in Tikal.

Story continues

The conversion of Tikals central reservoirs from life-sustaining to sickness-inducing places would have both practically and symbolically helped to bring about the abandonment of this magnificent city, the study concluded.

Geochemical analysis found that two reservoirs nearest the city palace and temple contained extremely high and toxic levels of mercury.

The researchers traced the contamination back to a pigment the Maya used to adorn buildings, clayware and other goods.

During rainstorms, mercury in the pigment leached into the reservoirs, where it settled in layers of sediment over the years.

Watch: Two tombs in Guatemala could shed light on decline of Mayan civilisation
She celebrated her 47th birthday on Saturday.

And Victoria Beckham didn't seem ready to stop the fun as she shared a romantic moment with husband David while the couple hit the town in Miami this week.

The fashion designer took to her Instagram Stories to post the gorgeous snap, which showed her embracing David, 45, and staring into his eyes.

Loved up: Victoria Beckham didn't seem ready to stop the fun as she shared a romantic moment with husband David while the couple hit the town in Miami this week

She wrapped her arms around David's neck and fixed her gaze on him as she hid her face from the camera.

Victoria and David both sported all-black ensembles, with the former Spice Girls songstress draping a blazer over her shoulders.

She amped up the glam with a low cut top and styled her chestnut locks in a sleek up-do, with her curled fringe left down to frame her face.

Celebrations: The fashion designer sported an all-black ensemble and draped a blazer over her shoulders while wearing a low cut top

The former Manchester United star looked typically suave in a black shirt and smart suit trousers as he beamed at her wife and held her hand.

Victoria shared the snap with her 28.9million followers, and simply penned: 'I love you x'.

Earlier on Monday, she shared a series of clips of her continuing birthday celebrations as she is presented with a five tier cake.

The star appeared to be in great spirits as she was presented with the large gold and white cake which had her name across the second tier.

Birthday: Earlier on Monday, she shared a snap of her continuing the celebrations as she is presented with a five tier cake

On Saturday, Victoria gushed over David once again as she thanked him for making her birthday celebrations 'so special'.

She shared a rare cosy snap with her love as they enjoyed an intimate night with their family on the beach.

David also took to social media to celebrate Victoria as he declared that she deserved the 'best day ever'.

The couple, who jetted out to Miami, Florida, earlier this year looked loved-up as they cosied up in the snap.

Victoria looked effortlessly chic in a white plunging maxi dress while David looked dapper in a grey shirt and jean combo.

She captioned her photo with: 'Thank you @davidbeckham for making my birthday so special. I love you so much!!! Kisses @brooklynbeckham @romeobeckham @cruzbeckham #HarperSeven xx.'

While David penned: 'Happy Birthday mama  we love you so much and you deserve the best day ever..

'To the best mummy and wife happy 47th birthday @victoriabeckham ( Im still 45 btw ) we Love u x @brooklynbeckham @romeobeckham @cruzbeckham #HarperSeven.'
During a podcast last month, Matthew McConaughey said he is considering a gubernatorial run.

The Oscar-winning actor, who graduated from Longview High School in 1988, has not said how serious he is about challenging Gov. Greg Abbott next year but expressed that he would like to have a leadership role in an interview with the Longview News-Journal.

On Sunday, the Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas at Tyler released a poll that suggests he could potentially do well if he decides to run.

But it is early. The Texas primary is not until March and there is not much known about McConaughey's politics. Plus, other politicians could throw their names in the bag.

Last month, the actor hosted a virtual concert to raise money for Texans recovering from the winter storm in February.

Here is what the poll found:

How was the poll conducted: More than 1,100 registered voters were surveyed from April 6-13.

Overall: Forth-five percent said they would vote for McConaughey compared to 33 for Abbott. Another 22 percent said they would vote for someone else.

Among Republicans: The governor holds a healthy lead with his party. Fifty-six percent say they would vote to give Abbott a third term. Only 30 percent said they wold vote for McConaughey. The primary voters say they want a conservative candidate  18 percent want someone like former President Donald Trump and another 14 percent want someone more conservative than Abbott. Only 20 percent said they would for a centrist.

Among Democrats: The film actor leads big among Democrats, with 66 percent saying they would vote for McConaughey. Only 8 percent would vote for Abbott. However, 51 percent of Democratic primary voters said they want a progressive candidate compared to only 25 percent who want a centrist.

Among independents: Forty-four percent said they would vote for McConaughey, while 28 percent favor Abbott.

Peter.Rasmussen@mysa.com
On Sunday night, 28-time Grammy winner Beyonce Knowles-Carter shared a stairwell snap of herself looking leggy in a green dress and opera gloves.

The 39-year-old R&B diva - who boasts 269.3M social media followers - returned from Las Vegas where she and husband Jay-Z celebrated their 13th wedding anniversary on April 4.

Beyonce originally met the 51-year-old rap mogul (born Shawn Carter) back in 1998, and she's been unafraid to sing about the good and bad times.

Queen Bey: On Sunday night, 28-time Grammy winner Beyonce Knowles-Carter shared a stairwell snap of herself looking leggy in a green dress and opera gloves

The Carters are proud parents of nine-year-old daughter Blue Ivy, who won her first Grammy Award for best music video for Brown Skin Girl.

The On the Run couple are also parents of three-year-old twins, son Sir and daughter Rumi.

Last Thursday, Netflix unveiled the trailer for the second season of Selena: The Series - premiering May 4 - which features a young version of Beyonce with her mother Tina.

'Who's that?' Tina asked her little future superstar, who replied in awe: 'That's Selena.'

Still going strong! The 39-year-old R&B diva returned from Las Vegas where she and husband Jay-Z (R) celebrated their 13th wedding anniversary on April 4

Hitting the strip together: Beyonce originally met the 51-year-old rap mogul (born Shawn Carter) back in 1998, and she's been unafraid to sing about the good and bad times

Precocious: The Carters are proud parents of nine-year-old daughter Blue Ivy (pictured March 31), who won her first Grammy Award for best music video for Brown Skin Girl

Family-of-five: The On the Run couple are also parents of three-year-old twins, son Sir and daughter Rumi (pictured March 31)

In an unearthed MTV interview, the Destiny's Child alum confirmed she did meet the late, great Queen of Tejano at Houston shopping mall, The Galleria.

'I didn't say much to Selena. I wasn't a celebrity, I just saw her and said hello and kept moving,' Beyonce recalled.

'Definitely growing up in Texas, I heard her on the radio, and I think listening to her album, even though I didn't know exactly what she was singing, it helped me in the studio.'

Grammy winner Selena Quintanilla-Perez was tragically gunned down, age 23, by her trusted fan club president Yolanda Saldivar in 1995.

Premiering May 4! Last Thursday, Netflix unveiled the trailer for the second season of Selena: The Series, which features a young version of Beyonce with her mother Tina

'Who's that?' Tina asked her little future superstar, who replied in awe: 'That's Selena'
Mariposa Takes Flight The NFT space is so full of wonder, and as a woman-owned company, we celebrate this unique connection between creativity and cannabis.

Alibi Cannabis (https://alibicannabis.com), an Oregon Tier 2 craft cannabis farm, has acquired the exclusive 1 of 1 Genesis NFT (non-fungible token) from Cryptop0p in collaboration with Cannacity LLC. This sexy NFT, Mariposa Takes Flight, sold on OpenSea at auction, and is the first in an animated series of anticipated drops celebrating empowered, fierce females set to synth/hip-hop/orchestral driving music.

Mariposa Takes Flight will be displayed online on Alibis website, in their social media, and a still from the piece will also be featured in select printed material and merch. We are really excited to support artists and share this creation with our community. The NFT space is so full of wonder, and as a woman-owned company, we celebrate this unique connection between creativity and cannabis says Alibi Cannabis CEO and Cofounder Marianne Cursetjee.

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are a type of digital asset where ownership is recorded on blockchain. Each NFT is unique and can be viewed as a collectible that cannot be duplicated, making them singular and potentially valuable. This NFT may be a valuable investment, but more importantly supports female-empowered art says Cursetjee.

The curated collection of artists and art weve put together highlights the intersection of feminine beauty and cannabis, and were so excited to not only have worked with Alibi on marketing but to have been found by Cryptop0p. We especially take care to make sure the smoke in the pieces are practically their own character. Seeing our work animated and set to music has been totally magical. says Cannacitys CEO Lisa Lindo.

Mariposa Takes Flight is displayed on OpenSea and also on Alibis website.

ABOUT ALIBI CANNABIS

Founded in 2017, Alibi Cannabis has focused on growing top quality, hand crafted cannabis flower for the licensed Oregon market. Their signature strains include Rainbow Crush, London Pound Cake, and Grape Octane. With a distribution network across the state, Alibi Cannabis is available in licensed retailers throughout Oregon.

ABOUT CANNACITY

Cannacity is a high-fashion hemp streetwear brand founded in 2019.

###

Media contact

Marianne Cursetjee

Cofounder and CEO, Alibi Cannabis

http://alibicannabis.com

info@alibicannabis.com

503-714-6191

Lisa Lindo

CEO Cannacity LLC

http://www.thecannacity.com

cannacityart@gmail.com

310-421-6414
[April 19, 2021] Pyxis Oncology Hosting Key Opinion Webinar on Antibody-Drug Conjugates

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pyxis Oncology ("Pyxis" or the "Company") today announced that it will host a key opinion leader (KOL) webinar on antibody-drug conjugates on Tuesday, April 27, 2021 at 1pm Eastern Time.

The webinar will feature presentations by KOLs Jeremy Barton, M.D. and Rakesh Dixit, Ph.D., DABT, who will discuss antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and their potential for improving the lives of patients with difficult-to-treat cancers. Also featured will be a presentation by Pyxis Oncology Chief Executive Officer Lara Sullivan, M.D., and Ronald Herbst, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer, who will discuss the Company's ADC programs. Pyxis is currently advancing three ADC candidates: PYX-201, PYX-202, and PYX-203. All three candidates leverage site-specific conjugation technology to improve these drugs' stability and activity and target both novel and established tumor antigens. PYX-201 and PYX-202 candidates also have local immuno-modulatory effects and may act synergistically in a combination treatment setting with immunotherapies. PYX-201 is a first-in-class non-internalizing ADC that targets a tumor-restricted antigen that is overexpressed in several solid tumor types and designed to selectively kill tumor cells while enhancing a robust anti-cancer immune response. PYX-202 targets a tumor cell surface antigen that is expressed in a range of solid tumors and is designed to reduce toxicity by using a highly stable linker and a well-understood cytotoxic agent. PYX-203 targets an antigen expressed in certain hematologic malignancies and utilizes a highly potent DNA-damaging agent designed to reduce the potential development of drug resistance and disease relapse. Drs. Barton and Dixit, and the Pyxis management team will be available to answer questions following the formal presentations. To register for the webinar, please click here.



Jeremy Barton, M.D. is a strategic oncology drug development consultant with experience at the chief medical officer level working across a broad range of technologies and both solid and hematological tumors. He has more than two decades of experience in oncology drug development in the U.S. and Europe across all phases from preclinical through commercialization. Career highlights include serving as vice president, head of oncology, biotechnology clinical development at Pfizer and filling the CMO role for eFFECTOR Therapeutics and Mirati Therapeutics. He earned his M.A. from University of Oxford and his M.D. from University College Hospital Medical School in London. Rakesh Dixit, Ph.D., DABT is president and chief executive officer of Bionavigen, a virtual biopharmaceutical company specializing in biologics, cell and gene therapy and small molecule drug development. He is an accomplished executive, inventor, and scientist with over 30 years of success with top biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, including Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Medimmune, AstraZeneca. Dr. Dixit is the winner of the prestigious Long-Standing Contributions to the ADC Field award at the 2020 World ADC Awards, hosted by ADC Review Journal of Antibody Drug-Conjugates. He earned his Ph.D. in toxicology from the University of Lucknow and graduate work at Case Western Reserve University.

About PYX-201

PYX-201 is a first-in-class non-internalizing ADC that targets a tumor-restricted antigen that is overexpressed in several solid tumor types to selectively kill tumor cells while enhancing a robust anti-cancer immune response. About PYX-202

PYX-202 targets a tumor cell surface antigen that is expressed in a range of solid tumors. PYX-202 is an ADC designed to reduce toxicity by using a highly stable linker and a well-understood cytotoxic agent. About PYX-203

PYX-203 is an ADC that targets an antigen expressed in certain hematologic malignancies. PYX-203 utilizes a highly potent DNA-damaging agent designed to reduce the potential for development of drug resistance and disease relapse. About Pyxis Oncology

Founded by Longwood Fund, Pyxis Oncology is building a differentiated portfolio of biologics, including antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and immunotherapies, to improve the lives of patients with difficult-to-treat cancers. Pyxis is employing site-specific conjugation technology to develop highly stable ADCs with superior therapeutic indexes. Pyxis is also advancing a diverse portfolio of immunotherapies that target broad immune regulators as well as novel immune checkpoints identified through its immuno-oncology and cold tumor platforms. For additional information, visit www.pyxisoncology.com. Media Contact

Jason Braco, Ph.D.

LifeSci Communications

+1-646-751-4361

jbraco@lifescicomms.com



[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-20 05:53:32|Editor: huaxia

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HOUSTON, April 19 (Xinhua) -- A new variant of COVID-19 was found by scientists at the U.S. Texas A&M University, media reported Monday.

The variant, BV-1, was found in just one case: an individual who had mild symptoms, media quoted the Texas A&M scientists as saying.

The patient, a student who lives off-campus, first tested positive on March 5. A second test on March 25 was still positive, indicating the variant may cause longer-lasting infections than other variants, the scientists said. An April 9 test was negative.

The student showed mild, cold-like symptoms the first few weeks. The symptoms did not fully go away until April 2.

According to the scientists, BV-1 is related to the United Kingdom variant of SARS-CoV-2 and has a "potentially concerning genetic make-up" that indicates it might not respond to antibodies.

"We do not at present know the full significance of this variant, but it has a combination of mutations similar to other internationally notifiable variants of concern," said Ben Neuman, the Global Health Research Complex Chief Virologist at Texas A&M University.

"This variant combines genetic markers separately associated with rapid spread, severe disease and high resistance to neutralizing antibodies," Neuman said.

Neuman said the scientists will continue to monitor for more cases of the variant. Enditem
EMPIRE, MICH. -- Piping plovers, the tiny endangered shorebirds named for their soft, high-pitched song, have officially returned to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore for the summer.

Over the weekend observers reported sighting the first 2021 plover at the park, near Sleeping Bear Point. That bird turned out to be a particularly speedy six-year-old male that holds the distinction of being the first plover back at Sleeping Bear every spring for several years running.

The fast-flying male was joined by a second piping plover, a female, with a third plover reported later in the weekend.

Great Lakes piping plovers are migratory birds, spending their winters in warmer climates  often along the Atlantic coast in the southeastern United States. When the weather warms they return to the Great Lakes region to pair up and breed, and those first sightings are always welcomed as happy news for birders and researchers alike.

For those of us that work with the plovers, thats kind of like our spring, said Sleeping Bear Dunes wildlife biologist Vince Cavalieri. You know theyre coming back, but still its always good to see those first ones.

Plover monitoring and protection programs like those at Sleeping Bear have been instrumental in helping the birds population slowly recover from an all-time low of a dozen breeding pairs in the mid-1980s, when piping plovers were listed as an endangered species.

In recent years, the Great Lakes piping plover population has held steady between 65 to 75 nesting pairs, with Sleeping Bear Dunes providing habitat for anywhere from one-third to half of those birds. Cavalieri said that in recent years, the park has averaged about 30 pairs each summer  and that this weekends first two plovers back, the male and female, might just be the first pair of 2021.

Already that [first] day, they were courting, so theyre wasting no time, he said.

Learn more about the Great Lakes Piping Plover Recovery Effort here.

RELATED:

Worlds oldest loon pair returns to Upper Peninsula wildlife refuge for 25th summer
The F-15 Eagle is one of the best military aircraft produced; on September 13, 1985. One was flown by Maj. Wilbert D. "Doug" Pearson dubbed "Celestial Eagle" F-15A lobbed an anti-satellite missile more than 300 miles up high.

Most ambitious F-15 Eagle mission

It took out a Solwind P78-1 satellite at 345 miles (555 km) in the atmosphere with an ASM-135 ASAT weapon. Flying out 200 miles from west of Vandenberg Air Force Base to engage in anti-satellite warfare, reported Task and Purpose.

Even before the F-15 had been planned to mount large hypersonic missiles, the AGM-135 in1985 was a feat in itself, showing then it had the power in its older A versions. Vought designed the Prototype Miniature Air-Launched System (PMALS) based on the Short Range Attack Missile, armed with a nuclear warhead found on the B-52.

PMALS had a second stage booster that powered the satellite killer to push into space, picking up a satellite with an infrared-guided sensor package homed into its target. This was a rare satellite killer that was plane mounted, compared to stationary ones used by the U.S. military.

Using the Eagle, twin-engine, heavy fighter AGM-135 could hit any non-American satellite anywhere and anytime.

That time in 1985, the Air Force planned to buy 112 AGM-135s and have 48 F-15 Eagle fighter jets adapted as mobile launchers, and they would be parked in Washington and Virginia. It was stopped as it was in the cold war; the USSR would interpret any untoward actions as an act of war.

United States Air Force Calls New F-15EX Fighter the Eagle II

In 1988, a source said U.S. Congress stopped the ASAT buy with limitations on testing, budget restrictions, and concerns that it will be a match to bring another arms race into outer space, which the soviets would not back off from. Cold War concerns were hair-trigger, and both the U.S. and Russian had thumbs on the red button precociously.

Despite the reservations of America in starting a rush to space-based equipment, it only stopped the placement of global positioning satellites, like the American GPS, Russian GLONASS, or Chinese Beidou. That would be less of a threat had ASAT F-15s been deployed before. Now, the U.S. has competition with space-based weapons like China, Russia, and India have in use now.

The AGM-135 is considered the predecessor to current missile systems made to kill satellites from any platform, whether mobile or stationary. U.S. SM-3 cab shoots down long-range or short-range ICBMs and takes out satellites.

In 2008, the SM-3 was able to shoot at U.S. military reconnaissance satellite that had malfunctioned that destroyed it on re-entry. SM-3 missile system protects the U.S. from missile attacks; a similar AGM-135 missile type is armed on MiG-31 Foxhound fighter. China tested its first ASAT weapon in 2007, while India had its own ASAT in 2019.

Other military actions to develop their satellite killers are naturally a great power competition, with China and Russia in the 2020s. It seems the U.S. is not revealing if the AGM-135 satellite killers in development. The Pentagon might have it or not, playing its hand when ASAT weapons on the F-15 Eagle Cs heir apparent Eagle II will have one.

F-15EX Eagle Learns New Tricks That Include the Ability to Jam Enemy Air Defense Systems

F-15 E-Strike Eagle Mounts Extra JDAMs on Undercarriage for Bombing Iraq Targets

https://prnt.sc/11nd7g0

@ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The UK is deploying warships to the Black Sea next month, further ratcheting up provocations by the United States and its stooge regime in Ukraine against Russia.

Russia has amassed substantial forces near the Ukrainian border, after the Ukraine regime endorsed a strategy to recover Crimea. The strategically vital peninsular was annexed by Russia following the far-right 2014 coup in Kiev, which was backed by the US and the European Union (EU).

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence told the Times, The UK and our international allies are unwavering in our support for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The Royal Navy Type 45 Destroyer, HMS Defender. HMS Defender is the fifth of the Navys six 1 billion Type 45 destroyer (credit: Open Government Licence)

They added, We are working closely with Ukraine to monitor the current situation and continue to call on Russia to de-escalate.

Our armed forces continue to support Ukraine through our training mission Operation Orbital, which has trained over 20,000 members of the armed forces of Ukraine, and the UK-led Maritime Training Initiative.

Britain is sending a Type 45 destroyer, equipped with anti-aircraft missiles, and an anti-submarine Type 23 frigate. F-35B Lightning stealth jets and Merlin helicopters based on the HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier will be on standby to provide supportan international treaty currently prohibits aircraft carriers themselves from entering the Black Sea, although this arrangement is under threat .

The UK already has special forces and Royal Air Force (RAF) aircraft deployed to the region. An SAS special forces team and Royal Signals electronic unit were officially sent to Ukraine last week, alongside a US special operations team, to monitor Russian activity. Six RAF Typhoon jets, armed with Paveway bombs and Brimstone missiles, have been despatched to Romania as part of a NATO air policing mission to patrol the Black Sea region.

These developments make clear that US President Joe Bidens decision to cancel the deployment of two American warships to the region last week was a tactical pause in a still escalating conflict.

Russia responded to the news that US warships were on their way with a statement warning of a high likelihood of serious incidents. Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov said, There is absolutely nothing for American ships to be doing near our shores, this is purely a provocative action. Provocative in the direct sense of the word: they are testing our strength... They will not succeed.

We warn the United States that it will be better for them to stay far away from Crimea and our Black Sea coast. It will be for their own good.

There are currently more than a dozen Russian naval vessels on deployment in the Black Sea. Fifty Russian fighter jets, bombers and attack aircraft are engaged in exercises over the Black Sea, according to Russian news organisation Interfax, including missile launches and bombardment of naval targets. The Russian air force and Black Sea fleet are also scheduled to carry out joint exercises designed to ensure security in the Black Sea.

Military planners in the US and allied militaries clearly drew from this warning the necessity of getting their pieces in place before making such an incendiary move. The US has neither confirmed nor denied the dispatch of its warships or the cancellation of the operation. Meanwhile, the UK will establish a significant presence.

British forces have been leading participants in anti-Russian provocations in Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Last September, 250 soldiers in the 16th Air Assault Brigade, including from its elite Pathfinder platoon, parachuted into Ukraine just 100 miles from Crimea in the largest British army parachute drop in decades. They took part in an 8,000-strong exercise with Ukrainian, US and Canadian forces.

Ukrainian General Yevhan Moysiuk commented, The main message for Russia is that the UK is our true and reliable partner who will help us in our hardship. The UK is ready to stand up to Russian aggression with us.

Later this year, British soldiers will take part in NATOs Operation Cossack Mace, involving 1,000 troops from at least five NATO member states and which will simulate offensive strikes on positions held by pro-Russian and Russian forces.

The UKs taking a lead in additional deployments to the Black Sea is proof that the ruling class intends to follow through on the warmongering plans outlined in the recent Integrated Review of foreign and defence policy.

The document positioned the UK at the head of the US war drive against Russia, describing the country as the most acute threat to our security. It argued that the UK should place itself at the forefront of implementing NATOs new Deterrence and Defence Concept across the Euro-Atlantic region and supporting others in the Eastern European neighbourhood and beyond to build their resilience to state threats. This includes Ukraine, where we will continue to build the capacity of its armed forces.

The review also called for an increase in the UKs stockpile of nuclear weapons to meet the full range of state nuclear threats.

Military deployments are being matched with an escalation of anti-Russian agitation and propaganda. On Sunday, the Czech Republic claimed that two Russian agentsthe same two alleged by Britain to have been responsible for the Salisbury poisoningswere behind an explosion at a Czech munitions factory in 2014.

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab quickly declared the UKs full support for our Czech allies, who have exposed the lengths that the GRU [the Russian secret service] will go to in their attempts to conduct dangerous and malign operations.

He continued, This shows a pattern of behaviour by Moscow, following the novichok attack in Salisbury. We are as determined and committed as ever to bring those responsible for the attack in Salisbury to justice and commend the actions of the Czech authorities to do the same.

Tom Tugendhat, Conservative MP and chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, tweeted, Czech Republic is standing up to Putins Russia committing warlike acts in Prague. Theyre right and all NATO must stand with them. We are all threatened by such violence. We defend ourselves best when we defend each other.

The UKs stepped-up aggression against Russia is bound up with the crisis of British imperialismattempting to maintain its position on the world stage after Brexit and to create an outlet for explosive domestic tensionsand of world capitalism, racked by escalating class and nationalist antagonisms. The ruling class in every country is seeking a way out through an increasingly reckless deployment of military force, turning the world into a tinderbox. Provocations in the Black Sea have already come close to sparking a major confrontation.

In November 2018, Ukrainian naval vessels entered Russian-claimed waters near Crimea and were fired upon and seized by the Russian Coast Guard. The Ukrainian regime declared martial law and put the army on full alert, receiving assurances from Washington that it would provide full support, full assistance, including military assistance.

In June 2015, Russian jets intercepted the US destroyer USS Ross after the ship set a course which would have taken it into Russian territorial waters in the Black Seathe ship changed course. Russian military sources latter commented, Scrambled Su-24 attack jets demonstrated a readiness to forcibly suppress border violations and defend the countrys interest.

The deployment of more forces to Ukraine and the Black Sea makes military confrontation ever more likely. Any incident could escalate into a full-scale engagement and war between nuclear-armed states. The urgency of the situation demands an urgent struggle by the international working class to form an anti-war movement to bring an end to the insane warmongering of the ruling elite.
Upcoming political events in the Bay Area. Events take place online unless otherwise noted:

SATURDAY

World Naked Bike Ride: Clothing-optional bike ride, with an environmental theme in conjunction with Earth Day and the 11th anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster. Gather at 11 a.m. at the platform just north of the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero in San Francisco. More information is here.

Asian American organizing: Perspectives of intergenerational and cross-cultural organizing in the Asian Pacific American community. Participants include Harvey Dong, UC Berkeley professor of Asian American and Asian diaspora studies; Amy Lin, community member at ASPIRE; Loan Thi Dao, author of Generation Rising; Nathaniel Tan, co-director of the Asian Prisoner Support Committee; and Sunita Sohrabji, staff reporter at India West. Hosted by the Oakland Asian Cultural Center. 1 p.m. More information is here.

Earth Week: Music, speeches and a procession to celebrate work toward environmental justice and climate regeneration. Hosted by Extinction Rebellion Bay Area and 350 Bay Area. 4 p.m. beginning at Snow Park, Harrison and 19th streets in Oakland, and continuing to Lake Merritt amphitheater between 12th Street and First Avenue. More information is here.

MONDAY

Rep. Ro Khanna: Fremont Democrat holds a town hall meeting. Noon. More information is here.

George W. Bush: Former president on his new book, Out of Many, One: Portraits of Americas Immigrants. Hosted by the Commonwealth Club. Noon. More information is here.

TUESDAY

Housing solutions: A discussion with the affordable housing and homelessness advocates who created Roadmap Home 2030, a plan to end homelessness and create affordable homes over the next decade. Hosted by the Commonwealth Club. 3 p.m. More information is here.

Rep. Mark DeSaulnier: Concord Democrat hosts a town-hall meeting on COVID-19 vaccines and the pandemics effects on the hardest-hit communities in Contra Costa County. 6 p.m. Submit a question in advance here; join meeting here.

WEDNESDAY

Progressive prosecutors: Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner discusses progressive steps toward transforming the criminal justice system. Hosted by the Commonwealth Club. 3 p.m. More information is here.

Tax time: Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, and Californias Internal Revenue Service congressional district liaison take questions about economic impact payments and tax filing. 4 p.m. Submit a question in advance here; join meeting here.

Environmental justice: A forum on the connections between environmental racism and climate change and what people can do to address the damage of both. Participants include Gopal Dayaneni, co-founder of Movement Generation: Justice and Ecology Project, and community organizer and environmental justice advocate Carla Maria Perez. Hosted by the California Institute of Integral Studies. 7 p.m. More information is here.

WEDNESDAY-THURSDAY

Climate change and food security: A two-day program on feeding a growing population during changes in the planets climate, culture, and political landscape. Both programs start at 5:30 p.m. Hosted by the UC Santa Cruz Arts Division, Division of Physical and Biological Sciences and Division of Social Sciences. More information is here.

THURSDAY

S.F. redistricting: A discussion of the once-a-decade process of redrawing San Franciscos supervisorial district boundaries. Participants include Eric McDonnell, who chaired the 2011 redistricting task force, and Helen Hutchison, statewide redistricting lead for the League of Women Voters of California. Hosted by the League of Women Voters. 6 p.m. More information is here.

MAY 1`

May Day march: A rally and march for workers rights and racial justice, re-creating the 1934 May Day march up Market Street. Hosted by the San Francisco Labor Council. 10 a.m., starting from Embarcadero Plaza. More information is here.

MAY 2

Rally against anti-AAPI hate: A march and rally in Palo Alto to protest anti-AAPI hate and to register voters. Starts at 2 p.m. at 528 High St. and proceeds to City Hall. More information is here.

MAY 1-2

Social and Economic Justice Film Festival: Films made by independent filmmakers who are affirming labor and other human rights, and advocating for social and economic justice. Hosted by the Alliance for Social and Economic Justice. 1 p.m. May 1, noon May 2. More information is here.

MAY 4

Race and diversity in Hollywood: A discussion of problems that people of color face in entertainment, as well as steps toward industry changes to increase representation. Participants include Franklin Leonard, founder of the Black List, and Sheldon Lyn, co-author of Black Representation in Film and TV: The Challenges and Impact of Increasing Diversity. Hosted by the Commonwealth Club. Noon. More information is here.

To list an event, please email Chronicle politics editor Trapper Byrne at tbyrne@sfchronicle.com
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to create havoc in Bangladesh as 102 deaths were recorded due to the novel virus in the past 24 hours. Amid the surge in COVID-19 cases, the Bangladesh government is likely to extend the lockdown in the country for another week, ANI quoted Minister for Public Administer Farhad Hossain as saying to Dhaka Tribune.

Lockdown in Bangladesh

Farhad Hossain said a decision on lockdown has not been made yet. He said that the government will hold a meeting on April 19 to analyse the current COVID-19 situation in the country. He has advised people to continue staying at home and following COVID-19 protocols. The National Technical Advisory Committee on COVID-19 has advised fresh lockdown and based on the recommendation, ongoing lockdown might be extended for another week.

''The decision to extend lockdown will be known within 1-2 days as the coronavirus infections keep spreading. If people follow health guidelines properly and stay home, then the infection rate will come down.

According to Bangladesh Health Ministry, the country has reported 3698 COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours while 102 people lost their lives due to the pandemic. The total number of COVID-19 cases reported in the country stands at 718,950 while 6,14,936 have recovered from the novel coronavirus. 10,385 people have lost their lives due to the virus in Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh on April 12 announced an eight-day total shut down of the workplaces and the public transportation facilities. The Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh (CAAB) on April 11 also suspended international air travel for at least one week effective April 14 amid the rising cases of COVID-19.

(Inputs from ANI)

(Image Credit: AP)
Patna: The Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) has decided to cancel as many as three exams in view of the rising number of COVID-19 cases in the state. These examinations were scheduled to take place in the months of April and May.

Giving information to this effect, the Bihar School Examination Board tweeted, "The exams that were cancelled are Bihar Board 10th compartmental exam 2021, BSEB inter compartmental exam 2021 and D.El.Ed exams 2021. These exams were earlier scheduled to be held in late April and early May."

The Bihar School Examination Board's Twitter notification further said that these exams are being postponed till further notice. The board added, "The board will take the decision about new dates for these exams in due course of time."

The Bihar Board Class 10th and inter compartment exams were earlier scheduled to commence from May 10 and April 29 respectively, and Bihar DElEd exams 2021 were slated to be conducted from April 26.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Sunday issued an order to extend the closure of schools, colleges, and other educational institutes till May 15, amid the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Live TV
A crash with a Tesla Model S left two men dead in Texas, Reuters reports, quoting local police authorities that said the car was driverless.

"There was no one in the driver's seat," said a sergeant from the Harris County police.

According to a local TV station also quoted in the report, the Model S was moving fast, failed to navigate a curve, and went off the road, hitting a tree and exploding.

Tesla has repeatedly warned drivers, following crashes where the driver blamed the Autopilot, that the system does not turn the vehicle into a self-driving car. Meanwhile, CEO Elon Musk has advertised the full self-driving mode of Teslas, which, taken literally, does seem to suggest that it can operate as a fully autonomous vehicle.

In January, Musk said he expected solid profits from the Tesla "full self-driving" software as the company planned to make it available to more customers.

The crash adds to a grim tally of crashes involving Teslas in self-driving mode. This has prompted the National Transport Safety Board to call on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to tighten regulation on self-driving technology, noting Tesla's Autopilot as a case in point.

"Tesla recently released a beta version of its Level 2 Autopilot system, described as having full self-driving capability. By releasing the system, Tesla is testing on public roads a highly automated AV technology but with limited oversight or reporting requirements," NTSB board chairman Robert L. Sumwalt wrote in a letter to the NTSB in March. "NHTSA's hands-off approach to oversight of AV testing poses a potential risk to motorists and other road users."

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened 27 investigations into crashes involving Tesla cars. Of these, at least three occurred recently. One of these happened in early March when a Tesla hit a semi-truck and got stuck under its trailer.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Italian engineer and inventor Enrico Forlanini built the first hydrofoil 115 years ago, speeding across Lago Maggiore at an astonishing 40 miles per hour.

Powering his vessel was a 60-horsepower steam engine, which spun propellers mounted in front and behind the cockpit. He launched his boat just three years after the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk.

The early 20th century witnessed one of the most profound technological revolutions in human history. The early 21st century is proving quite similar, with energy playing a defining role.

TOMLINSONS TAKE: Oil and gas companies have thousands of ways to clean up

In 1898, the U.S. fought Spain with horse cavalry and cannon, but for the first time, infantrymen used repeating rifles. By 1917, tanks fueled with petroleum rolled across France, fighter planes soared overhead, and both carried machine guns.

More than a century later, Swedish boatbuilder Candela Speedboat is offering test drives of its new hydrofoil, made of carbon fiber and balanced by computers. An electric motor can sustain the speedboat at 20 knots for 2 1/2 hours.

The transformation from steam to electric-powered hydrofoils was not steady nor guaranteed. Biologists will tell you evolution is also neither slow nor steady. Change comes in fits and starts, often triggered by a sudden environmental shift. Technological change follows a similarly zigzag path.

Forlanini, for instance, did not dream up the hydrofoil. The British granted a patent to a Parisian named Emmanuel Denis Farcot in 1869. The Italian, though, applied new technology to Farcots principle, commercializing his research the way the best business people do today.

More importantly, though, Forlaninis hydrofoil addressed a societal challenge: how to cross a lake, river or ocean quickly and efficiently. He had a significant total addressable market, and today, thousands of hydrofoils transport passengers every day.

The most important innovations in this century involve energy, not only to get from one place to another, but to make our shelters comfortable, to communicate across great distances and, as the recent Texas Blackout proved, to meet the necessities of life.

The challenge we face is how to deliver those things to everyone on the planet without making the climate inhospitable.

When I think about addressing challenges, I think about how we drafted battle plans in the Army. The first step is to determine the desired end-state. Do you want to capture an enemy position, destroy a militant base, or take over the entire country? One requires a few missiles, the other a few infantry divisions.

I brought this up while discussing climate change with Maynard Holt, CEO of the energy investment bank Tudor, Pickering & Holt, on his companys podcast. We both want to find a way to turn down the partisan rhetoric and begin making progress.

Recent commentators have demanded that I unreservedly support Texas oil and gas industry. They insist our economy relies on energy jobs, or they argue cheap fossil fuels are necessary for economic development in emerging countries. Holt usefully asks that we spend more time doing cost-benefit analyses.

Lets start then with the desired end state of energy policy. Most would agree that we want affordable, reliable energy that will lift humanity out of poverty and stabilize the climate. That is the goal that drives my analysis.

Undoubtedly, achieving that goal may take centuries, but lets be clear: we wont have centuries to address our challenge if we do not stabilize the climate first. The climate is changing faster than most people expected, and were not doing enough to slow it down.

The United States has done a great job switching from coal to natural gas, and the electric power industry has done amazing things in the absence of federal regulation. But higher natural gas prices this year means U.S. coal use will go up in 2021 and 2022, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

TOMLINSONS TAKE: US oil and gas companies playing catch up in clean energy

Transportation fuels have become the nations largest contributor of carbon dioxide emissions, despite the rise in electric vehicle purchases. Emissions dipped due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but transportation emissions are expected to rise above 2019 levels next year.

Meeting the Paris Climate Accords will not keep the planet from warming more than 2 degrees Centigrade above pre-industrial levels, most studies tell us.

Looking outside the United States, the picture is no better. China, the worlds largest emitter, has set emissions reduction goals, but President Xi Jinping has not released a realistic game plan.

The same is true of the fossil fuel industry.

The oil and gas industry is full of geniuses. If we focus on the desired end-state and worry less about sunk costs and stranded assets, the quicker well be quietly flying across the water in a boat we never imagined possible.

Tomlinson writes commentary about business, economics and policy.

twitter.com/cltomlinson

chris.tomlinson@chron.com
HYDERABAD: Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao has been tested positive for Covid-19. Chief secretary Somesh Kumar said the CM has been advised isolation and he would remain at his farmhouse for a few days.

Chandrashekar Rao had mild symptoms, following which he had undergone Covid-19 tests. A team of doctors is monitoring the CM's health. His health condition is normal and there was no fever on Monday.

Dr M.V. Rao, the CM's personal doctor, said, "We have conducted antigen test as well as RT-PCR test. The results were positive. He has only mild symptoms. Home isolation will suffice. We have advised KCR to remain in home isolation for nine days."

Dr M.V. Rao said the tests conducted on the personal staff of the CM have come negative. The CM made his last public appearance on April 14, at a public meeting in Halia to campaign for the TRS candidate in the Nagarjunasagar Assembly bypoll.

After the public meeting, the CM proceeded to Pragathi Bhavan. He stayed there till April 16 and went to his farmhouse on April 17. The CM complained of uneasiness on Monday, after which the tests were done.

The CM has not taken the Covid vaccination though his daughter K. Kavitha and his nephew and Rajya Sabha member Joginapally Santosh Kumar took the Covid jabs.

The CM's son and IT minister K.T. Rama Rao on Monday Tweeted, "Hon'ble CM KCR garu has tested positive for Covid with mild symptoms. He is currently isolated & being monitored by doctors. Been receiving a lot of messages with concern for his well-being. He is a gritty man & a fighter. Am sure he will recover soon with all of your prayers.(sic)"

AICC incharge for Telangana Manickam Tagore tweeted, "Wishes for speedy recovery of Telangana CM Shri K Chandrashekar Rao garu.(sic)." AICC spokesperson Dr Sravan Dasoju tweeted, "Saddened to know that Telangana CM Garu is tested Covid-19 positive. Our prayers for his

safety and speedy recovery.(sic)".

Two more CMs tested positive for the Coronavirus so far  B.S. Yediyurappa (Karnataka), Yogi Adityanath (Uttar Pradesh)  apart from Union home minister Amit Shah and many Union ministers and ministers of other states.

Leaders cutting across party lines besides prominent personalities from various fields prayed for Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao's speedy recovery.

Reaction poured in from various quarters wishing CM a speedy recovery. Several leaders took to Twitter to share their 'get-well soon' messages.

Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan led the state in expressing concern. Speaker Pocharam Srinivas Reddy, ministers G Jagadish Reddy, Vemula Prashanth Reddy, Allola Indrakaran Reddy were among those who prayed for speedy recovery of CM.
The Filatov Institute of Eye Diseases and Tissue Therapy of the National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine (Odesa), after the end of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, intends to resume work on the creation of branches in other countries, Director of the institute Natalia Pasechnikova has said.

"The demand for ophthalmological medical services is growing all over the world. The lack of highly qualified specialists has created the preconditions for the signing of memorandums on the establishment of branches of the institute in other countries [currently in China and Bulgaria]. Unfortunately, this issue is still difficult due to the pandemic. However, I hope that after humanity cope with the pandemic, we will be able to resume these projects," she said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

According to Pasechnikova, the institute receives offers of cooperation and participation in global international research.

"We have signed agreements on cooperation with organizations and companies in Israel, Switzerland, Germany, Mexico, India, and Hawaii. We cooperate with Linkoping University [Sweden] in the development of an artificial cornea; we participate in a global study conducted by the National Institute of Health [U.S.] in the field of research of hereditary ophthalmological diseases and the development of technologies for their diagnosis," she said.
A Black man who was paralyzed from a police shooting has reached an $8 million settlement with an Iowa city, officials say.

Attorneys for Jerime Mitchell, who was shot by a Cedar Rapids police officer during a 2016 traffic stop, said Monday the settlement is believed to be the largest for a police-involved shooting in the states history. A jury trial in the long-running case was scheduled to begin Tuesday.

States Insurance, the insurer for Cedar Rapids, agreed to pay the Mitchell family to dismiss the claims without acknowledgment of fault or liability by the defendants, according to the city. The insurance company has control over the settlement of the case and decided it was in the citys best interest, officials say.

This case has been divisive to our community and it is our hope that we can continue to enhance relationships that build trust between our community and our Police Department, the city said in a statement. We all share the desire for a safe community.

On Nov. 1, 2016, Cedar Rapids police officer Lucas Jones pulled over Mitchell because his license plate light was purportedly not functioning, the Associated Press reported.

Dash cam video obtained by The Gazette shows a struggle ensued as Jones attempted to handcuff Mitchell. When Mitchell attempted to drive away, Jones fired into the truck as he clung to the moving vehicle.

Activists called for Linn County Attorney Jerry Vander Sanden to appoint a special prosecutor in the case because he had previously cleared Jones in a 2015 fatal shooting, the AP reported. But he took the case to a grand jury, which declined to charge Jones.

Vander Sanden argued Jones was defending himself and said police found a pound of marijuana in Mitchells truck, the AP reported.

However, Jones was fired by the police department for violating department policy, The Gazette reported.

Mitchells attorney, Larry Rogers Jr. of Power and Rogers in Chicago, said the lawsuit forced a deposition from Jones, who admitted to intentionally shutting off his audio equipment to hide policy violations during the shift prior to Mitchell being shot. Jones was fired in June 2020 based on the deposition testimony, Rogers said.

While the settlement will allow Jerime and (his wife) Bracken to provide for Jerimes future health care needs, the most significant result of the litigation for Jerime and Bracken was getting Lucas Jones fired as a police officer, Rogers said in a statement.

Man convicted of killing friend and encasing him in tomb, Colorado officials say
Chinese female doctors are increasingly earning public trust for their commitment and dedication to offer treatment to their South Sudanese patients. Liu Fang, a 38-year-old dermatologist with the eighth batch of the Chinese medical team in Juba is always seen busy in her office at the Juba Teaching Hospital with patients seeking treatment for various skin diseases. Liu treats both children and adults with skin diseases such as eczema, scabies, dermatitis, drug eruption and tinea. Liu from Anhui Province is also an expert in Chinese traditional medicine which gives her wide knowledge on how to treat several types of skin diseases in her patients. The number of patients who make daily visits demonstrates the trust and strong relationship she has built with the public in Juba, since arriving in Juba in August 2020. "My patients listen to my medical prescription and some of the patients who live far away are unable to come to me regularly for more medical examinations. This is the main reason why I prescribe them enough medicine so that they continue with treatment from home," Liu told Xinhua in Juba on Friday. Liu, who treats between 70-80 patients daily, however, said that at first, she experienced challenges due to the language barrier as most of her patients speak the local Juba Arabic language. "My challenge is the language but this is solved by our South Sudanese medical assistants who help us to translate into local Arabic for the patients. South Sudanese are very patient and very cooperative which helps my work," she said. "Most of the medicines I need to prescribe for the patients are available so the patients often get what they need. The treatment is free of charge," she added. The doctor was part of the Chinese medical team that in December last year treated more than 2,000 locals in the Lado area of Terekeka in Central Equatoria State. Joseph Kenyi, a medical assistant who works with Liu in their crowded office hailed the Chinese medical team for their generosity. "I have been working with the Chinese medical teams for the last six years here. They are helping people with free treatment for skin diseases and their other teams are helping in treating other diseases. They are giving free treatment to South Sudanese who are suffering," said Kenyi. "We deal with many patients with tinea versicolor, tinea pedis, tinea corporis, tinea capitis that affect the nails. We are here helping people with free treatment," he added. Sun Yangchun, a 38-year-old gynecologist from Anhui Medical University, said that for the few months she has spent in the main referral hospital she noticed that the high number of women suffering from cervical cancer is largely due to lack of health awareness. "I think health awareness is still low in South Sudan, many women come here with terminal cancer and this is due to lack of health awareness. Some of these women do not turn up for timely checkup that is why some of these small problems turn into terminal cancer," said Sun who has worked for over 20 years as a gynecologist. She operates the only colposcopy machine in the hospital donated by the Chinese government to help detect cancer and other diseases among women. Sun disclosed that 30 percent of the inpatients in the gynecology ward suffer from cervical cancer, adding that a quarter of these suffer from terminal cancer which is extremely difficult to treat. "From what I know cervical cancer is prevalent among South Sudanese women because of early child marriages and also due to vaginal inflammation and this is worsened by failure to seek medical examination," said Sun. "What we can do is to use the colposcopy machine and do surgery but for terminal cancer there is no way we can treat," she added. Enditem


The United States of 2 Americas

Commentary

If you havent noticed, the United States is reorganizing itself into two Americasblue and red. Although there is a president of the United States, state governors are in many ways now driving the national narrative in this new America.

The president and the vice president are who they are now because six Republican-controlled states forwarded questionable electoral votes, and Vice President Mike Pence missed a historic opportunity to challenge those votes. The current president and vice president seem trapped in foggy and abstract ideological slogans rather than providing executive leadership. Vague generalities and virtue signaling arent replacements for executive leadership.

And who are the true executive leaders of the two Americas? Florida and Texas on one side, California and New York on the other side. Their governors essentially dominate the bully pulpit formerly occupied by a sitting president. Many of the rest of the American states have aligned with one side or the other.

The American political conversation has become a modern Dr. Seusss Sneetches With Stars on steroids as Americans are now beginning to group, assemble, and march separately according to our ideologies. Both sides have equal ownership of this behaviorneither side should be excused or let off the hook on this matter.

Two Americas/Two Systems

A part of this blue/red separation is the manifest Digital Apartheid that is being applied by the blue side to the red side to create two social media systems. This Digital Apartheid is pervasive and driven by the new, vicious, lockstep, social justice mantra that has taken over the automatons who lead U.S. social media.

We are experiencing an unprecedented shakedown by groups such as Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Antifa who broadcast through their relentless bullhorn of social media and old media.

There are now two business systems in Americablue and red. Many of the businesses that lead major market sectors have now revealed themselves to be de-facto thought police to enforce Social Justice.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is the poster child of this, as he has been targeted for elimination by the self-appointed high priests of wokism.

Were also finding out there are two financial systems in America, as those with capital now act as the gatekeepers of who receives capital and who is excluded. Bank of America has become Bank of who I decide to allow access to the capital system. Thats a far cry from the intent of its founder, who wanted to make sure all had access. The modern bank staff has now become an appendage of the virtue-signaling synchronized chorus.

There are now two media systems in America. The Hollywood award shows are now a Roman circus of self-loathing, lecturing, and virtue signaling. Few are watching these award showsin fact, few are watching legacy media as ratings collapse.

Its curious from an agnostic business perspective how CNN even survives at this point in time. Somehow the citizens pocketbook is being fleeced by corporations and advertisers who recycle ad revenue through woke media to keep them alive when its patently obvious the viewership has implodedbut thats the beauty of the new era of crony capitalism (which is a transition phase to socialism).

The citizens of our nation have consciously or unconsciously chosen sides. If youre angry at yourself for not being woke enough and have righteous virtue-signal signs in your yard lauding BLM, youre likely on the blue side. If the drivel of virtue signaling makes no sense to you, youre probably on the red side.

US Population Relocates

The biggest manifestation of this rapid reset of America into blue and red camps is the incredible internal movement of Americans.

Americans are moving to Texas from California in significant numbers. California has seen its first decline in population since 1900. Americans are on the move, and its mostly from blue to red, with Texas and Florida receiving the refugees from New York and California. My dreams of a large, inexpensive home in Florida have evaporated with the rise in home prices in my target localities.

I would suggest the numbers are even greater than what is being reported. This type of socio-economic data traditionally lags in reporting due to the time it takes to collect, aggregate, sort, and analyze. I would say there is easily six months to a year of lag in this reporting.

Last year, I found it difficult to find data on the population flows. Yet, at the same time, anecdotal data pointed to a strong movement not yet reflected. I was in New York in July 2020 and was shocked by the abandoned streets, yet little data pointed to movement at that time.

The data is starting to hit now. Among blue locales, Washington state is still showing population gainsI would suggest theyve hit their apogee and will start down the backside of an arc as Seattle expands its footprint of boarded-up stores and restaurants, and major companies leave, as well as population.

Were seeing the beginnings of the Detroit Syndrome on scale in blue states as Americans vote with their feet. The common refrain from conservatives is Im concerned this will flip Texas and Florida! I, however, prefer to look at this from an optimistic perspective as an opportunity.

Where Are We Headed?

Despite the attempts of the current administration to transform American society with uncontrolled borders, I see unanticipated consequences of the Blue strategy that will work in the red states favor. Big Governments plans always go awry and deliver unintended consequences.

Trend lines are bad for bluethe elites can socially engineer all they wanttheir blue states are collapsing because of the brilliant plans of the leaders of the four corners of deceit in modern America: Big Tech, Big Finance, Big Government, and Big Academia.

By fortifying Washington, D.C.in a way that is eerily reminiscent of the American Civil WarHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has rendered fortified our capital of diminishing relevance. Austin, Tallahassee, and most importantly, Mar-a-Lago, are now the centers of gravity for America.

Big Tech can manipulate search results all they want; they are now living in their self-made Ministry of Truth and will go the way of MySpace and the Sears catalog, as Lindell and other innovators establish alternatives.

The real game, the one that I havent mentioned yet, is the fast-approaching showdown with China. Red states, in many ways, control the worlds food and energy suppliesboth of which China is desperate for. The third leg of strategic essentials for national success is access to the worlds capital markets, and financial firms are beginning to exfiltrate to red areas from New York.

China is estranged from access to capital, which is the lifeblood of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Hopefully, the evolving United States is able to deter open conflict with an increasingly isolated CCP, but if kinetic conflict begins, likely nothing will be off the table for the CCP, and the blue states are still highly concentrated with their diminishing populations, which make them very vulnerable to additional biological, and God forbid, nuclear strikes from the CCP.

Bottom line, let blue wallow in their destructive and nihilistic French Revolution bloodbath of trying to out-virtue-signal each other. Theyll never be happy, never satisfied, and seem to be removing themselves from the gene pool of their own accords. The rest of us can focus on defeating the CCP.

Retired Col. John Mills is a national security professional with service in five eras: Cold War, Peace Dividend, War on Terror, World in Chaos, and now, Great Power Competition. He is the former director of cybersecurity policy, strategy, and international affairs at the Department of Defense. On Gab: @ColonelRETJohn. On Telegram: Daily Missive

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
New Delhi, April 19 : The Centre on Monday informed the Supreme Court that it is awaiting the receipt of Rs 10 crore compensation for the kin of two Indian fishermen killed by Italian Marines off the Kerala coast in February 2012.

A bench headed by Chief Justice S.A. Bobde, at the outset, asked Centre's advocate Rajat Nair, whether the amount has been deposited? Nair responded, "We are awaiting the receipt of money." The bench told Centre's counsel "you were in a hurry last time, but we also know how ministries work." The Centre' counsel submitted before the top court that as soon as the money is received, it will deposit the compensation with the apex court as per the April 9 direction.

The bench, also comprising Justices A.S. Bopanna and V. Ramasubramanian said it will hear the matter next week. Nair submitted before the bench that Italy has initiated the transfer of money.

The top court was hearing Centre's application for closure of case against the two Italian marines -- Salvatore Girone and Massimiliano Latorre. "We will keep it next week," said the top court concluding the hearing.

On April 9, the Supreme Court had directed the Centre to deposit Rs 10 crore compensation, with the court within a period of one week. The bench had noted the case against Italian Marines will be closed only after compensation is deposited.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta had told the bench that after the Indian government receives money from the Italian government, it will be transferred in the top court account within three 3 days. Chief Justice Bobde had told Mehta: "We wish the government showed such prompt other in other cases listed before us." Mehta replied, "it depends on which ministry is involved in a case." Italian Government has offered a compensation of Rs. 10 crore, out of which Kerala government proposed to disburse Rs. 4 crore, to the dependents of each deceased and Rs. 2 crore to the owner of the boat St. Antony. "We direct that after the amount is received by the Union of India, the same shall be deposited in this Court within a period of one week. List the matter on 19th April, 2021", said the top court in its order on April 9.
In a statement, it said the decision was made at a party congress held over the weekend.

It remained unclear whether Dashnaktsutyun will join an electoral alliance or run for parliament on its own. The statement said the congress authorized the partys governing body in Armenia to decide the format of Dashnaktsutyuns participation in the elections expected in late June.

Reports in the Armenian press have said that Dashnaktsutyun could team up with former President Robert Kocharian. The latter stated earlier this month that he will lead an alliance comprising at least two opposition parties.

Dashnaktsutyun is a key member of the Homeland Salvation Movement, a coalition of more than a dozen opposition groups that have held street protests in recent months in a bid to topple Pashinian over his handling of last years war in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Pashinian has refused to step down and pledged to hold the snap elections instead.

Although the Homeland Salvation Movement has insisted that such polls be held by an interim government, only one of its members, former President Serzh Sarkisians Republican Party of Armenia (HHK), has called for an election boycott so far.

Other members of the alliance, notably Gagik Tsarukians Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK), made clear their intention to join the parliamentary race already in March.

The Dashnaktsutyun statement stressed that the upcoming vote is only one of the means of ousting the treasonous authorities.

It also said: Although the authorities had to call the early parliamentary elections as a result of the popular struggle, it is evident that the authorities will do everything to prolong their rule under the guise of the elections.

Dashnaktsutyun, which has branches in major Armenian communities around the world, is not represented in the current parliament, having garnered only about 4 percent of the vote in the last elections held in December 2018.
New Braunfels, TX (78130)

Today

Mainly clear. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 68F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Mainly clear. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 68F. Winds light and variable.
Samsung has obtained a patent for a Galaxy Z Flip smartphone model, which boasts an in-display fingerprint sensor and has a dual punch-hole camera. You can fold the model in two directions.

In its attempt to roll out more foldable devices in the market, Samsung has been putting various foldable designs to test. If a recently surfaced report from LetsGoDigital is anything to go by, the South Korean tech giant has already patented the Galaxy Z Flip smartphone design.

The tech blog cites a new patent from Samsung to claim that the popular handset maker is hard at work making a Galaxy Z Flip-type smartphone. You can fold the device inwards, as well as outwards. This eliminates the need for a massive cover display.

Advertisement

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip folds in both directions

The patent, which was applied in October 2020, hints at a clamshell phone. The device features an elongated display that bears resemblance to the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip.

The phones unique ability to fold in both directions can be attributed to a redesigned hinge. In the folded form, the phones flexible screen is safe from external influences.

When folded the other way, the device gives access to a big screen on the front and rear. The phone is usable in a fully open position, which enables you to take advantage of the entire flexible screen.

Advertisement

New Patent reveals more new features

Upfront, theres a dual punch-hole camera. Citing safety concerns, Samsung eliminated the flash from the device. The company decided to illuminate the display to compensate for the lack of a flash.

The double punch-hole camera will come in handy for capturing pictures and shooting videos. Meanwhile, the top part of the screen continues to serve as a viewfinder, and the bottom portion acts as a flash.

Moreover, the phone features an in-display fingerprint sensor. If this proves to be true, it will be the first time for a phone with a foldable screen. There is no foldable phone that features an under-display fingerprint scanner at the moment.

Advertisement

It is worth mentioning here that the patent is from Samsung. There is a chance that the tech behemoth may not launch such a device anytime soon.

However, the company is gearing up to bring a slew of foldable smartphones such as the Z Fold 3, Z Flip 3, Z Flip (5G). These phones are slated to hit the store shelves later this year.
NEW YORK, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Future FinTech Group Inc. (NASDAQ: FTFT) ("hereinafter referred to as Future FinTech", "FTFT" or "the Company"), a leading blockchain e-commerce company and a service provider for financial technology, today announced that on April 16, 2021, the Company closed its acquisition of a 60% equity interest in Sichuan Ticode Supply Chain Management Co., Ltd. ("Ticode") from Sichuan Longma Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. ("Longma"). As previously announced in the Company's press release on March 1, 2021, the Company and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Future Supply Chain Co., Ltd., entered into a definitive share exchange agreement (the "Agreement") with Longma and Ticode to acquire a 60% equity interest in Ticode from Longma.

The 60% equity interest in Ticode was valued at approximately $66.45 million and was paid in 7,789,882 shares of FTFT common stock priced at $8.53 per share. The Agreement also stipulates that an additional 5% of equity interest in Ticode shall be transferred to the Company at no cost should Ticode not achieve Earnings Before Interest and Taxes ("EBIT") of at least RMB 50.0 million (approximately $7.69 million) for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021, and an additional 5% equity interest in Ticode shall be transferred to the Company at no cost should Ticode not achieve EBIT of at least RMB 57.5 million (approximately $8.85 million) for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2022.

Mr. Shanchun Huang, Chief Executive Officer of Future FinTech, stated, "We are pleased to consummate the acquisition of 60% of Ticode since it substantially enhances our competitiveness and brings strong financial performance and future growth potential to the Company. The acquisition represents a milestone in our business transformation strategy as we further expand in the fintech sector. Through the linking of finance and the real economy, we plan to build a sustainable platform for banks, manufacturing enterprises and suppliers as well as create a comprehensive financial services platform to further expand the value chain of our financial technology services."

Story continues

Mr. Jiancao Wang, Chairman of Ticode said, "Future Fintech is in the process of building an international financial technology service network armed with advanced blockchain technology and Ticode is one of the leading supply chain companies in China. Becoming a part of FTFT will expand our international business channels, gain entry to a wide range of customers and help us to access the overseas capital markets. With the help of FTFT's expertise in blockchain technology, we believe that we will have a competitive advantage in the supply finance industry. The acquisition is a win-win for both companies."

The Company has also filed a Form 8-K for the completion of acquisition of Ticode with SEC on April 19, 2021 and will file complete financial statements of Ticode for the years ended December 31, 2019 and 2020 as soon as possible but no later than 71 days after the Form 8-K must be filed.

About Future FinTech Group Inc.

Future FinTech Group Inc. ("Future FinTech", "FTFT" or the "Company") is a leading blockchain e-commerce company and a service provider for financial technology incorporated in Florida. The Company's operations include a blockchain-based online shopping mall platform, Chain Cloud Mall ("CCM"), a cross-border e-commerce platform (NONOGIRL), an incubator for blockchain based application projects and financial services for the supply chain industry. The Company is also engaged in the development of blockchain based e-Commerce technology as well as financial technology. For more information, please visit http://www.ftft.com/.

Safe Harbor Statement

Certain of the statements made in this press release are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning and protections of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or the Exchange Act. Forward-looking statements include statements with respect to our beliefs, plans, objectives, goals, expectations, anticipations, assumptions, estimates, intentions, and future performance, and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may be beyond our control, and which may cause the actual results, performance, capital, ownership or achievements of the Company to be materially different from future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be forward-looking statements. You can identify these forward-looking statements through our use of words such as "may," "will," "anticipate," "assume," "should," "indicate," "would," "believe," "contemplate," "expect," "estimate," "continue," "plan," "point to," "project," "could," "intend," "target" and other similar words and expressions of the future.

All written or oral forward-looking statements attributable to us are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary notice, including, without limitation, those risks and uncertainties described in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020 and our other reports and filings with SEC. Such reports are available upon request from the Company, or from the Securities and Exchange Commission, including through the SEC's Internet website at http://www.sec.gov. We have no obligation and do not undertake to update, revise or correct any of the forward-looking statements after the date hereof, or after the respective dates on which any such statements otherwise are made.

SOURCE: Future FinTech Group Inc.

Cision

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/future-fintech-announces-the-closing-of-the-acquisition-of-sichuan-ticode-supply-chain-management-co-ltd-301271118.html

SOURCE Future FinTech Group Inc.
A recent John Hopkins University tally noted that the COVID death toll worldwide has surpassed three million.

Out of the total number, more than 566,000 of those deaths have been in the United States. The county is now seeing a peak in COVID cases despite vaccination efforts, according to a CBS News report.

Dr. David Ho of Columbia University said that good thing the vaccine rollout is in a great pace.

"The bad news is that the variants are emerging everywhere," Ho was quoted in a report.

The rise in deaths have resulted in the World Health Organization issuing a warning, noting that it is growing exponentially.

WHO Technical lead Maria Van Kerkhove said that this is not the situation they want to be in 16 months into a pandemic where they have proven control measures.

"It is time right now where everyone has to take stock and have a reality check about what we need to be doing," Van Kerkhove was quoted in The Hill report.

READ MORE: COVID-19 Death Toll Hits 2 Million Globally

COVID Death Toll

More deaths have been reported in the United States as compared to any other country.

The U.S. is followed by Brazil with more than 368,000 deaths; next is Mexico with over 211,00; and India with around 175,000.

Cases in India have spiked in February after seeing a steady decline in the cases, according to an Associated Press report.

In New Delhi, only 178 ventilators were free on Wednesday afternoon. The city has a population of 29 million, with 13,000 infections reported last week.

Meanwhile, several countries in Europe, particularly Turkey, France, and Germany are seeing a peak in infections.

Turkish officials have implemented new measures to curb the spread of the virus, including banning traditional Ramadan gatherings and restricting travel, according to a BBC News report.

France currently has the third most number of cases in a European country, next to UK and Italy.

Meanwhile, Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico have all recorded more than two million cases.

Mexico published a revised death toll, noting that COVID fatalities was more than 60 percent higher.

Global Vaccination Programs

The WHO said that up to 60 countries might not receive any more shots until June.

Meanwhile, over 100 countries have also received about 40 million doses of the COVAX vaccine.

This covers 0.25 percent of the world's population.

Rich countries around the world have already received about 86 percent of the 700 million doses, while poorer countries are relying more on vaccines made by China and Russia.

Scientists believe those vaccines have less protection against the virus as compared to those made by Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca.

Vaccine makers in the U.S. are preparing for booster shots to fight off the emerging variants.

The country's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said that there are already ongoing clinical trials to boost the vaccine, while targeting a specific variant.

READ NEXT: COVID-19 Pandemic Death Toll Actually Higher Than What's Reported, New Research Says

WATCH: Global COVID-19 death toll passes 3-million mark - from DW News






The University of Cape Town's library has been destroyed and students evacuated after the fire that started on the slopes of Table Mountain near Rhodes Memorial yesterday spread onto the Rondebosch campus.

Student evacuation

Any UCT res students who have been directly affected by the fire are welcome to come over to Den Anker this evening.

We will serve you a plate of food, you will need to provide us with proof of your res card.#DenAnker #NewlandsFire #UCTStudents #Fire #CapeTownFire  Den Anker Restaurant (@den_anker) April 18, 2021

This is a free ride to get to safety. Please only use this code (SafeUCT) if you need to get somewhere safe  #capetownfire pic.twitter.com/bVCqXHzGZ6  Bolt South Africa (@Boltapp_za) April 18, 2021

For those needing to evacuate the UCT campuses, please apply the promo code UCTFIRES in your Uber app. This offers you 2 free trips (up to R100 each) from this location! Valid until 19 April 2021 - please evacuate safely. #UberCommunity  Uber South Africa (@Uber_RSA) April 18, 2021

Emergency relief efforts for Rhodes Memorial, UCT fire under way - here's how to help Emergency relief efforts are under way in Cape Town after a runaway fire destroyed parts of the Rhodes Memorial restaurant and caused unknown damage to...

Public assistance

Emergency relief fund

Counselling services

SA Depression and Anxiety Group: 080 024 2526



ICAS: 080 111 3945

Academic impact

A message posted on the UCT Libraries' Facebook page from Ujala Satgoor, Executive Director of Libraries, said: "At this stage, we can confirm the Reading Room is completely gutted and thankfully the fire detection system in place triggered the fire shutters thereby preventing the spread of the fire to other parts of the Library. Some of our valuable collections have been lost, however a full assessment can only be done once the building has been declared safe and we can enter the building."A release issued by UCT last night established that emergency accommodation was being arranged for students evacuated from residences.It also confirmed that arrangements for food were being made: "Approximately 4000 meals were prepared for distribution on Sunday evening and further meals will be prepared at Old Mutuals offices in Pinelands, Cape Town and from there these will be distributed to the locations where our students are accommodated. The necessary arrangements have also been made to cater for our Muslim students."Yesterday, Den Anker Restaurant offered meals to displaced students:The restaurant has since extended its offer for the rest of the week, with spaghetti bolognese on the menu tonight:E-hailing services have also jumped on board to provide assistance to stranded students, with Uber offering two free rides of up to R100 each, while Bolt is providing one free trip.The public is asked to donate any essential items and food which they may wish to contribute at Old Mutual West Campus, 91 Jan Smuts Road, Pinelands, Cape Town.An emergency relief fund has been set up for those willing and able to donate. The details are as follows:Account name: UCT Donations AccountBank: Standard Bank of South AfricaBranch code: Rondebosch Branch, 025009Account number: 07 152 2387Swift code: SBZAZAJJDonors should please include their name if you so wish to, as well as the purpose/reference for your donation (#UCTFire).Counselling services are being provided to students and staff who had to be evacuated. The following services are standing by on a toll-free phone line to support the affected members of the campus community:All academic activities have been suspended today and tomorrow (Tuesday, 20 April 2021). Further information regarding the reopening of campus and classes will be provided in due course. UPDATE | 20 April: Classes have been suspended for the remainder of the week and will resume on Monday, 26 April.Said the UCT statement: "We thank all emergency services support staff who have worked with the university, City of Cape Town and SanParks thus far. Our thoughts are with the incredible fire fighters at this time, we wish them strength and endurance as they work tirelessly to extinguish this devastating fire."Further updates will be provided via the UCT website as and when more information becomes available.
The mineral exploration corporation has acquired a 30% minority interest in the Hazeur property and extended the Obalski property by acquiring 46 claims just south of the property

Tomagold said preparations for a 10,000-metre drilling program on Obalski is underway as the latest assays continue to show the project's potential

TomaGold Corporation ( ) (OTCMKTS:TOGOF) (FRA:OTM) revealed that it has signed two agreements for the acquisition of interests and mineral properties aimed at strengthening its position around the Obalski and Monster Lake properties.

The Montreal-based mineral exploration corporation has signed an agreement with to acquire its 30% interest in the Hazeur property, located just south of Monster Lake and Monster Lake East in a cash-and-stock deal.

TomaGold will issue two million shares on closing the transaction and will make a $50,000 cash payment by May, an additional $100,000 by July, and another $100,000 by November 30, 2021. will hold a 2% net smelter return royalty, with 1% redeemable by TomaGold for $500,000, said the company.

TomaGold has also signed an agreement to acquire a 100% interest in 46 claims located just south of the Obalski property. As consideration, TomaGold will issue three million shares on closing of the transaction and will issue an additional two million shares, or make a cash payment of $250,000 (at the option of the corporation) one year after closing. The vendors will hold a 2% net smelter return royalty, with 1% redeemable by TomaGold for $1 million.

These transactions will strengthen our position around Monster Lake to a total of 151 wholly-owned claims covering 8,304 hectares (83 km) situated around the IAMGOLD deposit, and will extend the Obalski property towards the south, which also has interesting geological potential, said TomaGold CEO David Grondin in a statement.

In addition, in line with the spring thaw, we are preparing the core material from historical drilling on Obalski to be sent to Corem for reanalysis using a leaching procedure and we will soon begin, depending on the availability of the drilling crews, our 10,000-metre drilling program on the same property, he added.

The transactions are subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange.

TomaGold has interests in five gold properties near the Chibougamau mining camp in northern Quebec: Obalski, Monster Lake East, Monster Lake West, Hazeur and Lac Doda. It also participates in a joint venture with Evolution Mining and New Gold through which it holds a 24.5% interest in the Baird property, in Ontario.

Contact the author Uttara Choudhury at uttara@proactiveinvestors.com

Follow her on Twitter: @UttaraProactive
Trail of Tears under Mount Rushmore: a look into the United States deep-rooted colonialism and racialism

14:04, April 19, 2021 By Chi Zao ( People's Daily Online

The statues of four US presidents, gazing over the edge of Mount Rushmore, are considered a treasured destination for travelers from around the globe. Their statues are hailed by many as a shrine of US democracy, but to Native Americans, such monuments can represent a stinging ever-present legacy, as well as a living example of the countrys long-standing tradition of colonialism and racialism.

Located in the Black Hills mountain range at Keystone, South Dakota, the conception and creation of Mount Rushmore is a story filled with tears, conflict, and death. Long before the white settlers arrived, the Lakota Sioux, the original occupants of the area, regarded the Black Hills as a sacred place which had always been the heart of everything that is. The area was reserved for the Lakota in the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, but the discovery of gold in the region ignited the rapacity of the US government, who eventually forced the Native Americans to give up their claims to the land.

By 1877, the US government officially confiscated the ancestral lands of the Lakota, less than a decade after they promised the area to the Native Americans. Lakota protestors were treated cruelly as they fought for their lawful rights. Even worse, their sacred land was transformed with the stone carvings of four US presidents, all of whom either made racist remarks or acted in ways to remove Native Americans from their home, an unforgivable desecration that has continued to torture indigenous peoples in the US for decades.

None of the four presidents etched into the mountainside is innocent in their discrimination or persecution of Native Americans.

George Washington, the founding father of the United States, was nicknamed by the Native Americans as town destroyer when he called for the destruction and devastation of the American Indian settlements located across upstate New York.

Thomas Jefferson, a primary author of the Declaration of Independence, was an advocate for the assimilation and forceful relocation of the Native tribes.

Abraham Lincoln, issuer of The Emancipation Proclamation, publicly claimed that he was in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position, and signed off on an execution order to hang 38 Dakota in what became the largest mass execution in US history.

Theodore Roosevelt was even more aggressive when it came to the treatment of Native Americans, having claimed in his book The Winning of the West that the truth is, the Indians never had any real title to the soil.

Not unexpectedly for a monument built on the tears and blood of the Native Americans, conflicts and protests have remained the scourge of Mount Rushmore. Native Americans to date have been fighting for their rights, while condemning the theft and desecration of their spiritual site, but their soaring ambitions have been constantly thwarted by the deep-rooted colonialism and racialism that have remained defining features of US history, making any return of the Black Hills territory to American Indians hands an impossible mission.

The centuries-long suffering of the Native American peoples is albeit just one of the many scars of colonialism and racialism in the US. Apart from American Indian populations in the country, Asians, Latinos, Africans and other racial and ethnic minorities have all faced similar tragedies, with many finding that the situation in the country appears to be far from perfect in our modern day.

(Web editor: Kou Jie, Liang Jun)
More than 60 migrants including a baby crossed the English Channel earlier today on inflatable boats without engines in one of the busiest days of the month so far.

Four young children were among the latest to brave the dangerous 21-mile journey on as many as four boats.

The first group of six men were brought into Dover Marina before 8am on a Border Force vessel towing their grey rigid hulled inflatable boat.

They were seen cloaked in light blue blankets around their shoulders for warmth as they were escorted up the gangway by Immigration Enforcement officers.

Around 20 migrants crossed the English Channel earlier today on inflatable boats without engines, including a tiny sleeping baby

Many of the group were barefooted despite the bitter temperatures at sea and were handed white disposable flip flops as they arrived.

The inflatable craft was not equipped with an outboard engine and paddles could be seen in the hull.

The first group of six men were brought into Dover Marina before 8am on a Border Force vessel towing their grey rigid hulled inflatable boat

They were seen cloaked in light blue blankets around their shoulders for warmth as they were escorted up the gangway by Immigration Enforcement officers

About 15 more migrants arrived on a Border Force cutter about an hour later.

One man appeared to be in visible distress and held his back as he walked up the harbour for processing.

They are among the latest arrivals since 42 migrants were detained in three incidents last Wednesday.

As many as five young children including a sleeping baby just a few months old wrapped in a foil blanket were on board.

The inflatable craft was not equipped with an outboard engine and paddles could be seen in the hull

About 15 more migrants arrived on a Border Force cutter about an hour later

One man appeared to be in visible distress and held his back as he walked up the harbour for processing

The first group of six men were brought into Dover Marina before 8am on a Border Force vessel towing their grey rigid hulled inflatable boat

Around 20 migrants crossed the English Channel earlier today on inflatable boats without engines, including a tiny sleeping baby

She disembarked at Dover Marina, Kent along with a man, woman and two children thought to be her parents

French authorities also prevented three attempted crossings overnight and into Wednesday morning involving 45 people.

A total of 161 people have made the dangerous crossing in ten boats in April.

And at least 1,523 have now made the 21 mile journey from the French coast in 2021.

A Home Office spokesperson earlier said: 'People smugglers are putting lives at risk by facilitating these dangerous journeys.

'We are working closely with our partners in France to stop migrants from leaving French beaches and since Monday attempted crossings involving more than 150 people have been stopped.

'The Government's New Plan for Immigration will break the business model of people smugglers and overhaul the broken asylum system.'
BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. (AP)  As protests intensified in the Minneapolis suburb where a police officer fatally shot Daunte Wright, a group of Black men joined the crowd intent on keeping the peace and preventing protests from escalating into violence.

Hundreds of people have gathered outside the heavily guarded Brooklyn Center police station every night since Sunday, when former Officer Kim Potter, who is white, shot the 20-year-old Black motorist during a traffic stop. Despite the mayors calls for law enforcement and protesters to scale back their tactics, the nights have often ended in objects hurled, tear gas and arrests.

The Black men at the edge of the crowd wear yellow patches on protective vests that identify them as members of the Minnesota Freedom Fighters, a group formed to provide security in Minneapolis north side neighborhoods during unrest following the death of George Floyd last year. They are not shy about casting a forceful image  the groups Facebook page features members posing with assault-style weapons and describes itself as an elite security unit  but on Friday the Freedom Fighters didnt appear to be armed and said they intended only to encourage peaceful protesting.

As several people began to rattle a fence protecting the Brooklyn Center police department, the Freedom Fighters communicated to each other over walkie-talkies. They declined to say how many are in their group.

On recent nights, the Freedom Fighters have moved through the crowd in formation, wearing body armor and dark clothing, weaving past umbrella-wielding demonstrators to create separation along a double-layer perimeter security fence. Their passive tactics are intended to deescalate the tension, preventing agitators from pressing forward and provoking the law enforcement officers standing at attention with pepper-ball and less-lethal sponge grenade launchers at the ready.

We can keep it peaceful, said Tyrone Hartwell, a 36-year-old former U.S. Marine who belongs to the group. Theres always somebody in the group that wants to incite something, adding that throwing objects at the police takes the focus away from their calls for justice and seeps energy from the movement.

Minneapolis is on edge  simultaneously watching the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin in Floyds death and reeling from the shooting of Wright. In the midst of that, Hartwell said the Freedom Fighters are trying to push the movement for racial justice forward, while keeping at bay the violence and destruction that often acutely affects minority communities.

Hartwell pointed to the apartments across the street from the Brooklyn Center police department, where residents have complained of tear gas streaming into their homes. They are the ones who suffer when clashes between law enforcement and demonstrators escalate, he said.

The group was formed after the NAACP put out a call for armed men to organize and protect their neighborhoods from looting and arson following Floyds death. Hartwell said groups of white people had come into predominantly Black communities and harassed children.

As the group came together, Hartwell formed bonds with and mentored other Black men as they took an active role in protecting their neighborhoods.

We care about our community, he said. We all have kids so weve got to start at home first.

They have also formed relationships with the city government and police department. City spokeswoman Sarah McKenzie said there are several formal and informal relationships with members of the Freedom Fighters, but it does not fund or contract with the organization because it is an armed group.

However, some demonstrators said those ties mean the Freedom Fighters act at the behest of the police and are not aggressive enough in calling them to account.

As the crowd grew Friday, umbrella-carrying demonstrators became emboldened. Chants of Daunte Wright and George Floyd gave way to insults to the police. A handful of Freedom Fighters, visibly and vocally angry at the growing tension, refused to leave at the urgings of their comrades. They grabbed at the umbrellas, calling for calm and pleading for outsiders to stop escalations.

Errant flash-bang canisters exploded overhead, scattering spectators and giving those eager to confront law enforcement their opportunity to push forward into the fracas. The Freedom Fighters disappeared in the confusion, unable to prevent the altercation after a peaceful evening of protest fell into chaos.

About the photo: Michael Odiari leads a chant as he attempts to deescalate an altercation between demonstrators and police during a protest decrying the shooting death of Daunte Wright outside the Brooklyn Center Police Department, Friday, April 16, 2021, in Brooklyn Center, Minn. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The Damascus government forces renewed their bombardment, at dawn and until Monday morning, with dozens of rockets and artillery shells, on al-Fatira, Sufuhn and Kansafra and its surroundings in Jabal al-Zawiya in the southern countryside of Idlib, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

This coincided with an intense flight of Russian reconnaissance planes in the airspace, while Turkey-backed mercenaries, targeted members of the Damascus government forces stationed in Dara Kabira town in the southern countryside of Idlib with snipers, wounding at least one member.

Since Sunday, these areas have been witnessing violent shelling by the Damascus government forces, amid continuous flight of Russian aircrafts in the airspace, without any information about casualties.

J.O
Red Education already operated training hubs across ANZ, Asia and the Americas, and has now expanded into Europe.

"Strategically Europe was the last bastion we needed to add to our growing and expanding business," said Red Education managing director Mike Baird.

"We now cover all continents, providing a one-stop cyber security training shop for enterprise and global service integrators. Global sales require truly global training and support."

He added "Red Education is known throughout the world for providing outstanding IT training experiences and we are excited to bring these experiences to Europe, disrupting the traditional IT training model.

"We support close to twenty major vendor technologies across the full cyber security spectrum, including firewall, DNS, AP I.D., hyper-convergence, dashboard reporting and now cloud services."

Baird suggested that the rapid rollout of technology as a way of coping with the COVID-19 pandemic has strained businesses' cybersecurity capabilities.

And the lack of skills isn't helping. Baird pointed to a recent Deloitte/RMIT Online survey that found 88% of 600 Australian businesses said it is difficult to find skilled employees.

"While those businesses are doing what they can to address skill shortages, many (49%) rely on attracting new employees  but only 45% are focusing on training and education," he said.
Under the auspices of the OECD Working Party on Biotechnology and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Economics, Family and Youth, an workshop entitled Outlook for Industrial Biotechnology was held in Vienna, Austria the 13-15 of January 2010.

Click here for : Programme, Presentations and Background papers



Why Industrial Biotechnology

There is broad consensus that Industrial Biotechnology has significant potential in such areas as: sustainable chemistry, innovative pharmaceuticals, textile, food and feed industries, renewable energy, etc. In addition, most major OECD economies have recently implemented significant economic stimulus packages, many of which contain specific elements focused on innovation-led green growth. The recent financial crisis has provided even more incentive to boost national green growth initiatives and policies and there is growing consensus that industrial biotechnology might underpin green growth and innovation worldwide.



To fully realise this potential, there is a clear need to analyse the current and emerging Industrial Biotechnology-related trends and policies through the whole innovation cycle  from the early R&D stages up to commercialisation  and evaluate their impact.

The Workshop

About 50 experts came together in Vienna to discuss the current and emerging trends and policies related to Industrial Biotechnology. Coming from different horizons  such as industry, academia and policy - workshop participants actively raised and examined the main issues which surround the development of industrial biotechnology for green growth and innovation worldwide. Issues ranging from technological development to policy challenges, investment or business models were addressed.

The main objective of the workshop was to develop a short data intensive report, the OECD Outlook on Industrial Biotechnology. This OECD Outlook is intended to provide data and information on a number of Industrial Biotechnology-related trends and issues. It is expected that the themes addressed during the workshop will also provide the basis for creation of datasets and indicators to improve evidence-based policy making.



For more information please contact: alexandre.bartsev@oecd.org; or james.philp@oecd.org
Bollywood lovebirds Alia Bhatt and Ranbir Kapoor recently recovered from COVID. The couple was spotted at the Mumbai airport as they headed to Maldives for a much-needed vacation amid the rising Coronavirus cases in Mumbai. Ever since the international travel ban was lifted last year, Maldives has been a favourite holiday destination for several Indian film stars.

Both Ranbir and Alia are working on the high budget socio-fantasy magnum opus, Brahmastra. Ranbir is also shooting for Shamshera, while the shootings for Alias two much-awaited pan-India films, RRR and Gangubai Kathiawadi, were halted after she tested positive for COVID-19. The star couple will return to Mumbai in a week or so to resume shooting.









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A Palm Beach County doctor has lost his medical license earlier this month after his third Florida discipline issue, this one involving a new mother who bled to death after a difficult delivery in 2017.

Dr. Berto Lopez, administrative hearing judge Robert Cohen said, erred in several ways, most prominently going home while the new mother remained in critical condition at West Palm Beachs Good Samaritan Hospital.

...[Lopez] leaving the hospital at a time when he believe everything to be under control and the time had come for him to go home, clean up and go to sleep for the night was where his failure to complete his care for his patient, led, ultimately, to her untimely death, Cohen wrote. Had he returned to the hospital after cleaning up, he might have saved his patient. Perhaps, his patient still would not have survived, but we will never know that because [Lopez] left her to go home.

Lopez, 62, said he needed to change his scrubs. The woman was the second new mother to die after heavy bleeding under Lopezs care.

Still, Cohen recommended only license suspension and a ban on doing surgery or delivering babies, two things Lopez already had said he would no longer do.

The Board of Medicine rejected that recommendation and revoked the license Lopez has held since 1987. Online records say the Board has dealt with Lopez before.

Indicted Orlando doctor wanted to work in Miami. That was after the butt surgery death.

Fines and not-so-fine care

 2004: Lopez paid a $10,000 fine, $3,310 in administrative costs, did 200 hours of community service and 15 hours of continuing medical education (CME) in medical record keeping.

As described in the Florida Department of Health administrative complaint, two ultrasounds found no heartbeat in a womans 15-week fetus. On Oct. 31, 2002, Lopez did a uterine dilatation and curettage (commonly called a D&C), described as a surgical abortion done during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy to remove the contents of the uterus.

Story continues

On Dec. 1, the patient passed bloody tissue. Lopez described the bloody tissue the next day as a female fetus with normal head, neck, abdomen, legs and back.

The complaint says Lopez fell short of the minimum standard of care by not completely evacuating the uterus; not following up with a pathology report that showed no fetal tissue identified; and not recommending another D&C.

 2014: Lopez paid a $22,500 fine; $6,254 in administrative costs; could no longer do surgery except under the supervision of a board certified OB/GYN doctor; had to do 10 hours of CME in treating cesarean section complications; five hours of CME in risk management; five hours of CME in emergency obstetrics; and another five hours of CME in risk management or sit through eight hours of Board of Medicine disciplinary hearings.

This administrative complaint accused Lopez of 12 errors of care in a woman at the 36-week point of her pregnancy and six errors of care in a woman on whom he performed a cesarean section, both at Wellington Regional Center and involving postpartum hemorrhaging.

Though the complaint didnt say so, the account of the administrative hearing on the most current case says one of these women died under similar circumstances.

When asked about the 2014 case, Dr. Lopez was evasive and defensive, Cohen wrote. He claimed he did not recall why his license was restricted. Then, when asked several times whether the 2014 case resulted in a patients death, he refused to answer directly until prompted by the administrative law judge.

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Fourth big mistake, second death

The administrative complaint on the case that lost Lopez his license says he delivered a baby from mother O.C. by scheduled inducement at 8:03 a.m. on July 17, 2017, at Good Samaritan. While trying to repair a laceration, Lopezs records say he couldnt see O.C.s cervix clearly because of the bleeding and, the administrative hearing testimony says, a lighting problem.

Still, Lopez didnt take O.C. from the delivery room to an operating room, where testimony from both Lopez and the states experts said different positioning and lighting wouldve alleviated these problems. Lopez said he needed to wait for an operating room to be ready, but the assisting nurse testified theres always an operating room at the ready on the Labor and Delivery floor for just such an emergency.

At 9:40 p.m., O.C. was taken to the operating room in an unresponsive state and Lopez performed a supracervical hysterectomy, which removes only the uterus, rather than a total abdominal hysterectomy, which removes the uterus and cervix.

The latter, the administrative complaint said, was the more appropriate procedure considering Patient O.C.s cervical lacerations. Following the surgery, blood was observed flowing from the incision in Patient O.C.s abdomen. [Lopez] declined to re-open Patient O.C. and instead ordered the application of pressure dressings to treat the bleeding.

Lopez left Good Samaritan at 11:39 p.m. He testified that a leg of his scrubs, as well as a sock and a shoe were contaminated with blood and there were no clean scrubs available at Good Samaritan. Even Lopezs own expert medical witness said he wouldnt have left the patient or gotten into his own car with blood-covered scrubs.

Each sides expert medical witness said hes never known of having to go home to get clean scrubs. Lopez left O.C. with a nurse, an anesthesiologist and an ICU doctor available only via telemedicine. Neither doctor was a trained surgeon with knowledge of O.C.

O.C. died at 3 a.m.

When asked whether he felt at all responsible for O.C.s death, Dr. Lopez placed the blame on the ICU staff and the hospital system, Cohen wrote.

Palm Beach County court records say O.C.s husband filed a lawsuit against Lopez and reached a settlement in July 2019. A March filing says Lopez has fallen behind on the payments.
Nabil Habashi Khadim, 62, was an esteemed merchant and philanthropist. He was kidnapped on 8 November last and killed with a Kalashnikov shot to the head. His murder was posted online by the jihadist movement who accused him of having contributed to the construction of the only Christian place of worship in Bir Al-Abd,

Cairo (AsiaNews) - The Islamic State (IS, formerly Isis) has executed an Egyptian Orthodox Coptic Christian, killing him with a bullet to the head in an execution filmed and posted online yesterday on the jihadist group social channels and shared by numerous users and platforms.

The victim, already considered a "new martyr" by the country's Orthodox, is an esteemed intellectual and businessman: 62 year-old Nabil Habashi Khadim who was kidnapped on November 8 in the city of Bir Al-Abd, in northern Sinai. In teh video he is seen being shot in the head with a Kalashnikov while kneeling on the ground.

Local sources report that the man had contributed to the construction of the only Christian place of worship in the city, the church of the Madonna dellAnba Karras (Our Lady). This is also one of the reasons that led the jihadist commando to kidnap him.

In the video, one of the executioners belonging to the local Daesh cell (Arabic acronym for IS) explicitly accuses the man of having contributed, even financially, to the construction of the church just before pulling the trigger and executing him. The jihadist group also accuses the Church of "collaboration" with the Egyptian army, police and secret services.

Still others link the timing of the killing to the upcoming Easter holidays, which fall on May 2 for the Coptic Orthodox.

Witnesses say that Nabil Habashi Khadim, the latest in a "long line of North Sinai martyrs" was an esteemed jeweller from the city of Bir Al-Abd. His family is considered to be among the oldest in the Coptic community in the area, very active in the gold trade as well as owning a clothing store and a cell phone resale business.

On 8 November a group of men, armed but in civilian clothes, kidnapped him on the street in front of his house and fled undisturbed. In all these months the searches of the police and the appeals of the family for his release have been in vain.

His death caused grief and emotion in the Egyptian Coptic community, whose leader Pope Tawadros II issued a stark condemnation and asked for prayers for the man "kidnapped by Takfiri elements in North Sinai five months ago and subsequently martyred".

The Church, continues the note, "weeps for a son and a faithful servant" who is now in the heavenly glory of Christ for having "testified to his faith even to the sacrifice of blood". The declaration concludes by confirming the support of the Coptic Orthodox community "for the efforts of the Egyptian state" to counter "these hateful acts of terrorism" and "to preserve our dear national unity" for a "future of peace and prosperity".

Islamic extremist groups have been fighting for years in northern Sinai, which intensified following the overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi in 2013 and the rise of the Islamic State in the region the following year. Several Christians have also been targeted, killed in attacks against individuals and groups of faithful.

In February 2018, the Egyptian security forces, the army and the police launched a massive campaign against armed groups and jihadists, with particular attention to the North Sinai area.

In just over two years, more than 840 terror suspects and over 60 soldiers have been killed.
NEW YORK, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Euclid Transactional, LLC ("Euclid Transactional"), a leading managing general agent (MGA) focused on transactional insurance underwriting, today announced the hiring of Simon Chung as Head of Middle Market, and Jeff Lash and Bryce Pressentin as tax underwriters joining Justin Pierce Berutich, the firm's Head of Tax. With these new hires, Euclid Transactional further expands its bandwidth to support its clients on transactions in the middle market and on tax matters.

Chung brings more than 10 years of experience working on mergers and acquisitions with a specific focus on clients involved in deals with enterprise values below $200 million. "The past year has seen substantial growth in demand for representations and warranties insurance underwriting, and our clients have shown a particular interest in support for their middle market deals," said Jay Rittberg, Managing Principal of Euclid Transactional. "Simon's deep experience in this sector will further expand our ability to help clients manage risk."

Lash and Pressentin bring substantial experience managing domestic and international tax challenges for a wide range of taxpayers. Lash comes from Covington & Burling LLP, where he advised clients in a broad range of industries on complex and high-stakes federal income tax issues. Pressentin joins from the tax department of Chevron. Prior to that, he held senior roles advising on international and oil and gas tax issues for EY's National Tax Department and the American Petroleum Institute.

"Over the past several years, we've seen a growing number of clients recognize the value of insuring their potential tax exposures," said Berutich, Head of Euclid Transactional's Tax Practice. "With Jeff and Bryce on board, Euclid Transactional can further expand its offering of bespoke commercial insurance solutions for complex tax matters. We are thrilled to have these talented tax lawyers available to assist our clients and deal partners."

The new hires come amidst rapid growth for the company, which now employs over 60 people. Since its founding in 2016 Euclid Transactional has underwritten more than 2,600 policies and insured deals with a combined value of over $2 trillion.

"We could not be more excited about these new hires," added Rittberg. "We are proud to offer some of the most consistent, dependable underwriters in the industry across our RWI, contingent and tax coverages, and to remain a destination of choice for industry-leading professionals."

About Euclid Transactional

Euclid Transactional, LLC is a managing general agency specializing in the underwriting of representations & warranties, tax liability, contingent liability and other transactional insurance coverages. Operated by one of the industry's largest teams of experienced underwriters and claims executives, Euclid Transactional provides the size and security of a large insurer with the customer service of a boutique. The firm has offices in New York, London, Chicago, Frankfurt and Toronto, and offers full-service underwriting for deals across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Euclid Transactional is a subsidiary of Euclid Insurance Services, a program administrator that provides its subsidiaries with advisory, accounting, information technology and human resource services. Euclid Transactional's insurance capacity is provided by premier insurers, all of which are rated AM Best A (Excellent) or better.

Media Contact:

Davis MacMillan

RF|Binder

[email protected]

212-994-7509

SOURCE Euclid Transactional, LLC

Related Links

https://euclidprograms.com/


Solving climate change is the grand challenge of our time; the solutions proposed range from trillions of dollars in government spending to free-market absolutism. The truth is, we need both government spending and a business-led approach to technology development.

Some have claimed that government-led moonshots will not help solve the climate crisis, and that private companies, such as those developing fusion energy, can solve technological challenges faster and cheaper than government efforts. Private companies are often more adept and innovative, but the most effective way to create and bolster a new, impactful industry is with public-private partnerships, supported by government funding, particularly when this goal serves a public purpose.

Fusion is the process that powers the stars; here on Earth, scientists have engaged in government-supported basic fusion research for over sixty years. Every so often, though, commentators call for a moonshot  an endeavor supporting a rapid increase in government funding. Indeed, one of us authored a paper in 2014 outlining the steps for a Fusion Apollo Program. Essentially, if scientists can prove they could create a fusion reaction that produces more energy than it consumes, fusion would offer reliable and limitless carbon-free energy. Unfortunately, even as the scientists met their targets, their budgets were repeatedly limited, and at times, cut entirely.

Fortunately, entrepreneurs have risen to this challenge, funded by private investment. A burgeoning private fusion industry now exists, with the goal of developing fusion energy on a more impactful timeline. Currently, 24 fusion start-ups, and even more affiliated companies have joined the Fusion Industry Association (FIA), a coalition formed to promote and advocate for the industry.

While we agree with those who imply that the private sector is better equipped to develop commercially-viable fusion energy, we disagree with the opinion that public funding is unnecessary.

Many of these newly formed fusion companies would not exist if it were not for targeted government funding. For example, Zap Energy, a Seattle-based fusion start-up, was formed in 2017 thanks to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) funding for fusion research at the University of Washington and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Zap was subsequently funded by the ARPA-E OPEN 2018 and BETHE programs. It has now succeeded in drawing investment from Chevrons investment arm and is rapidly expanding and reporting promising results.

The government also must spur further advancements within private industry by creating new and innovative public-private partnerships - bringing together the best from the government, the private sector, and academia. This approach would be modeled on previous collaborative efforts at bringing advanced technologies to market.

In May 2020, SpaceX became the first commercial company to launch NASA astronauts to the International Space Station; a private company returned human spaceflight capabilities to the U.S. for the first time in nearly a decade. SpaceX would not have been successful without NASAs Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. Beginning in 2005, the COTS program challenged U.S. private industry to develop, own, and operate their own space transportation systems.

Importantly, the program included a performance-based, fixed-price milestone structure where funding was only issued after completion of pre-defined objectives. With responsibility for cost overruns allotted to these private companies, there was incentive to keep projects on schedule and reduce costs, limiting risk to the taxpayer. The demonstrated success of the COTS program illustrates a structure worth replicating, including a milestone-based approach that successfully shifts incentives and risks, and an establishment of high-level requirements that strongly promotes innovation.

Today, the status of the fusion industry is comparable to that of the space industry in the early 2000s. A similar public-private partnership funding model could propel the growing number of private fusion companies even further. Private fusion companies have the ability to efficiently innovate by taking ideas directly from the lab to the marketplace, while fully understanding that the technology must work and meet the market requirements for quality and costs.

A properly designed public-private partnership would allow private fusion companies to leverage the unquestionable knowledge and technical capabilities throughout the DOE and its national labs. This effort would incorporate certain milestones to be completed by the private sector partners that would be verified by DOE expert review teams. Unlike traditional government programs, compensation would be provided only upon completion of these agreed-upon milestones, creating an incentive for fusion companies to minimize costs and schedule delays. Ultimately, a government-led portfolio approach of diverse fusion concepts would reduce risk, leverage shared resources and knowledge, and accelerate us to the date of energy breakeven and eventual commercialization.

The FIA has been championing this funding model since its inception in 2018, and the idea is slowly beginning to gain more traction. The U.S. Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee, under the purview of the DOE, recently released a report that amounts to an ambitious new mandate to prioritize fusion-energy development, and stresses the importance of leveraging public-private partnerships to propel this development. In addition, the National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine also released a new report detailing how to bring fusion to the U.S. grid within the 2035-2040 timeframe, and making a key recommendation for the DOE to move forward with the creation of public-private partnerships.

Congress has affirmed this approach by including an amendment to the Covid relief and omnibus appropriations bill of December 2020 that authorized $325 million over five years for the creation of a new milestone-based public-private partnership program, as explained above. The Department of Energy is setting up this program now, and significant government funding, which we anticipate could come through the upcoming infrastructure bill, can assure the beginning of this common-sense initiative.

America is at its best when society as a whole is working together towards a common goal. While that includes partnerships between the private and public sectors, it also warrants combined efforts among philanthropists, academics, scientists, and engineers to meet this common goal. The government-run Apollo Program was effective because it had one task: get to the moon before the USSR. The U.S. cannot settle for simply surpassing other countries efforts to demonstrate the first self-sustained fusion reaction; American fusion plants must be designed so that they are economical enough to sell tickets to the moon. In so doing, America will take the lead in the industry of the future, providing cheap and clean energy to the world.

Andrew Holland is the Executive Director of the Fusion Industry Association.

Daniel Slesinski is a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University.
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PLEASANT HILL, Iowa (KCCI) -- A Des Moines couple faces charges after police said their 16-year-old son with special needs was zip-tied to a chair. Court documents detail abuses the boy suffered.

Court documents show the incident happened Feb. 22. According to police, 48-year-old Jennifer Marie Ryan brought her 16-year-old son to work with her at Smith Automotive in Pleasant Hill. She then zip-tied the boy to a chair by his left ankle and pants belt loop in a chair adjacent to her desk.

Court documents show Pleasant Hill Police were contacted and the boy was removed by Iowa Department of Human Services officials and transported to Blank Childrens Hospital. The boy, identified as J.R. in court documents, was examined there and diagnosed with severe malnutrition, weighing only 78 pounds when he was admitted.

Further investigation found that J.R. was routinely confined to his bedroom for several months and on occasion restrained to his bed frame by zip ties. He was not allowed to leave his room or use the restroom at night without permission or without escort by other family members. An alarm was placed on his door to alert his family if he attempted to leave to use the restroom. Permission to use the restroom was often denied necessitating him to urinate out his bedroom window or to wet the bed. As punishment for wetting the bed his mattress and blankets would be removed and he would be required to sleep on the floor, court documents show.

The boy was not permitted to eat breakfast, according to arrest warrants. He usually ate lunch or dinner, which consisted of leftovers from the day before.

J.R. would sneak food when he could and hide it in his bedroom. If the food was discovered, he was punished by being deprived a meal. He also endured physical abuse often being struck in the face or on the head with a wooden back scratcher or repeatedly thrown to the floor, court documents show.

According to police, the boy had several non-healing abrasions and bruises from the abuse and bone deformities to one of his feet, believed to have been caused by wearing shoes that were too small for extended periods of time.

After the COVID pandemic, J.R. was brought to work on days when J.R.'s father also had to work. While at work with Jennifer, J.R. was zip-tied to the chair for the duration of Jennifer's 8-hour work schedule, deprived of water and not allowed to use the restroom, court documents show.

Jennifer Ryan, and her husband 47-year-old Richard Joe Ryan, are charged with one count of first-degree kidnapping. They were booked into the Polk County Jail Monday morning and are awaiting an initial court appearance.

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Another Solar Company Plans Hill County Project The Hill County Commissioners Court met in a regular session Tuesday, April 13, and heard from another solar company planning a new development in Hill County.



The court heard a presentation from Dominic Salinas, energy attorney and solar developer with Core Solar of Austin, regarding a planned solar project near Carl's Corner south of Farm Road 934 in the Itasca school district.



The company is expected to submit an application for a tax abatement agreement to the county, and Salinas told the court that he was attending the meeting to introduce himself before submitting the paperwork.



The $400 million project includes about 2,500 acres of land leased from private landowners, Salinas said.



He stressed that the company prides itself on having good relationships with landowners and said that Core Solar does not set up projects without the intention of developing them.



"I know there's a lot of development and proposed development, but this is our Dallas project. We don't set up projects thinking that they won't be completed," he said.



He said that an 18-month construction process is expected, with operations likely to begin in 2024.



More information and a decision on a tax abatement agreement is expected to be before the court after the company submits its application.



Commissioners also approved the purchase of body cameras and in-car cameras for Hill County constables.



Precinct 4 Constable Kevin Cordell explained that another constable was recently involved in a situation that "did not go bad but could have." He said that if the constable had needed to take action, there would not have been a camera to record the incident.



He proposed the purchase of four body cameras for constables and two in-car cameras for the vehicles that do not already have them installed.



Commissioners reviewed two proposals, with the system from WatchGuard coming in at $16,000, less than half the price of the second proposal.



Cordell said that he has had previous experience with WatchGuard devices at another agency and trusts the product.



County Judge Justin Lewis said that the cameras were a matter of public safety and liability to the county, and the court approved the purchase.



The court also discussed whether to seek bids for remaining repairs on the Hill County Courthouse following February's winter storm or to utilize pre-bid purchasing cooperatives approved by the state.



The court opted to avoid adding additional time to the process by seeking bids. A decision on which company will be selected to perform the work is expected to be made at a special meeting this week.



The court also approved the preliminary plat for the Hidden Meadows subdivision on HCR 1345 in Precinct 1.



In another sign of the county's rapid growth, commissioners approved adding a part-time position to the 9-1-1 Addressing and Signage office. Coordinator Karin McClendon reported that over 200 flood plain permits have been given out this year.



Obtaining the permit is the first step before a home or any new development can be constructed, and the number of permits the county issues has been rapidly increasing.



The court also approved the sale of fireworks for Memorial Day weekend. Commissioners consider the issue based on current conditions before a holiday and decided that with rain in the forecast, approval would be granted for Memorial Day.



County Judge Justin Lewis said that the current COVID-19 hospitalization rate is around five percent, and about one-third of Hill County residents had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine as of the meeting date. The judge said that residents are doing a good job of keeping Texas open.


Ahram Online (excerpt: read the full interview here.)

Ahram Online:In light of the AfDBs latest African economic outlook report, how is the COVID-19 pandemic expected to affect the continents economy during 2021 and 2022?

Malinne Blomberg:The negative impact on economies has been massive. Africa has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Gross domestic product (GDP) in Africa contracted by 2.1 percent in 2020. In just one year, the continent lost five years' worth of gains in terms of economic development. We expect to have turned the corner and Africas economic growth rate is projected to recover to 3.4 percent in 2021.

AfDBs greatest and most urgent goal is to save as many lives as possible; reverse the trends; protect livelihoods and put Africas economy back on more resilient recovery pathways. Thats why we put in place up to $10 billion in a crisis response facility to help African governments and the private sector deal with the impact of COVID-19.

The bank also launched a $3 billion 'Fight COVID-19 Social Bond' on global capital markets and provided $27 million to the Africa Center for Disease Control and Prevention. This so that they can take the lead in tackling the pandemic.

The economic recovery process from the pandemic will mainly depend on the financial capacity of African countries in addressing immediate shocks, stabilising their economies and investing in growing back. With the leverage of our AAA financial standing, the bank will continue to mobilise the funds Africa requires to cement the continents status as the worlds next business frontier.

AO:How do you see Egypt's economic performance amid the pandemic?

MB:Faced with the COVID-19 outbreak, the Egyptian economy has demonstrated great resilience and agility to a large extent. Thanks to the reforms undertaken since 2016 to stabilise the economy.

The national economy, which expanded by 3.6 percent in 2020, was one of the few in Africa that posted positive growth for the year. Indeed, Egypt has weathered the crisis well due to its macroeconomic stabilisation and recent efforts to enhance health, education and economic diversification outcomes.

Meanwhile, the pandemic has accentuated pre-existing vulnerabilities in many economies across the globe, undoing significant progress made in recent years. Egypts economy has also been deeply affected, with trade and supply chains disrupted, tourism and other industries were hit hard.

Egypts youthful and educated population, its growing competitiveness and the potential of its private sector give us reason to be confident that the country can overcome the COVID-19 crisis. To achieve this potential, we anticipate that a second wave of bold economic reforms will be implemented, to a large extent focusing on the business environment, which in turn will create more job opportunities.

AO:How does the AfDB see the role Egypt plays on the continent, especially in economic and trade areas?

MB:Egypt is playing a key role in Africa, with its economy being more and more integrated within the continent. All whilst focusing on a swift and sustainable recovery. Egypt also has an opportunity to strengthen its competitiveness and integration into the global economy, which remains essential for longer-term growth. Considering that Africa is one of the fastest-growing regions in the world, further integrating with other African countries makes a strong business sense. The Banks support to regional integration includes assessing the skills needed for tomorrows jobs in the Suez Canal Economic Zone, with the aim of contributing to securing a suitable workforce for those investing in the zone.

Furthermore, as many world economies turn inward, we see great potential for closer African integration over the medium term. Despite huge trade and investment opportunities in the region, intra-regional trade in North Africa is among the lowest of any world region (below five percent) and represents an opportunity in itself.
For nearly two decades, 34-year-old Sheilla Akwara battled mental illness and attempted to take her own life.

She talked to Nation about her journey and what inspired her to establish Jenga Africa, a mental illness support programme for the youth.

*******************************

As a child, I was very troubled, and growing up with mental health issues was a struggle. I suffered from depression, suicidal attempts, and ideation for about 20 years and I accepted this as my life sentence.

Even though I was around people, I simply wasnt there. I wanted to sleep all the time because this was my escape. I kept to myself and I locked myself in my room. I dreaded any gatherings.

Growing up, I didnt have a close relationship with my family members, but its important to note that when youre depressed, sometimes everyone can seem like an enemy to you.

I have amazing parents and two adorable sisters, but I would be lying if I said life was rosy. My parents were going through their battles as they separated when I was young.

Life at school and home proved difficult, and for some reason, I was always in trouble.

While a pupil at this boarding school, canning was a norm. We were beaten because of our grades. They gave us a ridiculous scale, and if you didnt meet it, you were beaten severely. Some of my classmates ended up transferring to other schools.

From there, I couldnt fit in anywhere and everything felt forced. Relationships with friends or family were a battle. I remember feeling my first emotion of deep sadness at the age of seven, and this feeling just kept piling as the years went by.

In the year 2000, at 13, I had enough and decided that I was done with life and it was time to end it. One morning, after plotting in the night, I proceeded to the schools clinic and took a bunch of pills.

It was a Sunday and the whole school had gathered at the cafeteria for our Sunday services. I proceeded to sing worship songs with the rest of the school. I remember the song. hakuna Mungu kama wewe was on.

Suddenly, my vision went blurry, I panicked and ran out of the room, rather staggered, hitting students as I struggled to make my way out. Once I got to the door, two women grabbed me and took me to the dorm. I passed out. I awoke with a strong urge to throw up. It was the most bizarre situation, and that day I knew that I was not meant to die.

Even after this incident, I still felt the need to end my life. As a family, we moved to the US, but my problems followed me.

There was no difference when it comes to experiencing depression in Kenya versus the US. Depression and suicidal issues similarly affect everyone. Its just that people have different levels of experience in regards to symptoms and the care they receive.

It was however easier to deal with my condition in the US because people really listened to me and I immediately had support. The only reason I started opening up about my struggle with suicidal issues, was because of the openness to discussing such matters at school. We were never beaten in schools and guess what! I was a straight As student.

In high school, a counselor frequently checked on me to make sure I was doing okay. After about eight years of silence, I finally spoke up.

After high school, I interacted with celebrities in different capacities because I had got into music. I had a stint as a hip-hop musician, releasing about five songs.

During this period, I worked in organisations like ASCAP (music publishing company in the US), the UN (in NY) and I even assisted with an MTV/ UNICEF project for Shuga (radio version) between 2015 and 2016.

Despite working with prestigious organisations and even rubbing shoulders with different celebrities, I was still depressed and suicidal.

For me, my battle ended in 2013 when I was spiritually rescued from my situation. I didnt think this would ever be an option for me, and this drew me closer to God. I am a Christian. I know it sounds crazy, but really, all I received was one night of prayer and that was it.

Theres something to say about spiritual growth as a tool that can be used to address mental issues. I had a turning point and switched to gospel music.

It is during this time that I had this urge to do something to help others suffering from the same. I would find myself speaking to young people and they were expressing similar issues that I had faced. It pained me to see them going through these problems, and I started offering mentorship sessions.

In 2017, Jenga Africa (jengaafrica.com) was born. The organisation addresses many developmental issues in Africa  beginning with depression and suicide.

We have mentored young people in South Africa and Kenya, and have four programmes in schools in which 2000 students have gone through our hands.

We are working towards having a mental health app, which will help provide psychosocial support and reaching young people, who would otherwise not be able to receive help.

We are also launching our school club programmes aimed at providing mentorship and peer support, a mental health curriculum, and an upcoming boot camp session.

As I have grown older, I learnt to forgive and I let go of anything and anyone that hurt me in the past. I learned that forgiveness doesnt make them right, it sets you free.

This helped repair my family relationships and we are now best friends.

When I started Jenga Africa, my parents were supportive but a bit hesitant because its a sensitive topic, but now, they are my biggest cheerleaders and are very involved in the work.

Looking back, life drove me through many roads I didnt want to travel, only to bring me to this point. I believe that everything we go through in life is linked to what we are to become in the future.
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Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is proposing a guaranteed basic income pilot program in his upcoming budget, putting L.A. front and center in the debate over how government can most effectively combat poverty and spur equitable economic recovery in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

The $24 million program would be the largest experiment of its kind in the United States.

Under the proposal, dubbed "BIG: LEAP" (Basic Income Guaranteed: L.A. Economic Assistance Pilot), 2,000 Angeleno families at or below the federal poverty line would receive $1,000 a month for one year, no strings attached. "We have to end America's addiction to poverty," Garcetti said in an exclusive interview with LAist. "For families who can't think past the next bill, the next shift or the next health problem that they have, we can give them the space to not only dream of a better life, but to actualize it."

The selection criteria for participant households is still being developed, but will likely include supporting a child under the age of 18 and a demonstrated medical or financial hardship connected to COVID-19, the Mayor's office said. Each council district would have a share of funding based on its poverty rate. The program would be open to everyone regardless of immigration status.

The goal? If successful, the Los Angeles pilot would serve as a major proof-of-concept for direct cash assistance that is divorced from the work requirements attached to many safety net programs for poor Americans, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit.

The concept of a guaranteed basic income is not new, but it's gained steam with recent high-profile tests in Finland; Ontario, Canada; Marica, Brazil; and Stockton, California. The economic fallout from the coronavirus crisis has also cracked open the long-running conversation about financial assistance and poverty alleviation. Last year, Garcetti used his nonprofit, The Mayor's Fund, to raise money for cash transfers via prepaid debit cards, which were distributed to more than 100,000 city residents. (Demand for these far outstripped supply  over four times that many people applied for the so-called Angeleno Card.)

"This pandemic has thrown everything up in the air," Garcetti said. "This is an America willing to say, If we were so good, why did so many people die? Why was it so disproportionate in certain communities? And if we're not as good as we thought we were, how can we become better?"

The ambitious guaranteed income experiment is part of an "Equity and Justice Budget" the Mayor will introduce in his State of the City speech Monday evening, which will also include a sharp increase in spending on housing and homelessness programs.

It's a dramatic shift from the grim math of last spring, when Garcetti laid out his initial plan to survive the looming fiscal calamity of COVID-19: service cuts, worker furloughs and digging deep into the city's reserve funds. It was a road map cobbled together as public health officials were still coming to terms with the scope of the pandemic, and shortly before George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer, setting off months of protests and calls to defund law enforcement and reimagine public safety.

It isn't just the biggest budget I've ever overseen  it's the most progressive.  L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti

Last month, the Biden Administration and congressional Democrats threw local governments a life-preserver in the form of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. It includes $1.3 billion in aid for the city of L.A.Garcetti says he plans to use the money to "transform systems," including funding a new Youth Development Department and upping the city's investment in unarmed response to mental health crises.

"This is not small ball," Garcetti said. "It isn't just the biggest budget I've ever overseen  it's the most progressive, and I would argue the most progressive in the country."Another guaranteed income pilot program focused on single parents is already in the works for Council District 9, including large parts of South Los Angeles and downtown Los Angeles. Councilmember Curren Price plans to use $6 million to pay for the experiment, earmarked from funding that was cut from the LAPD budget last summer.

Learning From Stockton

An unconditional monthly check means "acknowledging the dignity of people and giving people some agency over their time," said former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs, who founded the group Mayors for Guaranteed Income and is working with Garcetti on the Los Angeles pilot. He credits the Black Lives Matter movement with propelling the effort.

"Economic insecurity was an issue before COVID-19. Income inequality was an issue before COVID-19," Tubbs said. "Dr. King called for guaranteed income in 1967. But the pandemic really illustrated the ways the economy isn't working for many people."

The two-year Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration was funded by private donations and recently ended. Through the program, 125 residents received $500 per month, starting in February, 2019. Researchers with the University of Pennsylvania found the program did not discourage people from working, and it leveled out income volatility, improved health outcomes, and lowered anxiety and depression in participants.

Full-time employment increased for people receiving the $500 a month by 12 percent, compared to five percent in the control group. Participants spent the vast majority of the money on staples such as groceries, utilities, gas and rent  and less than one percent on cigarettes or alcohol. "People did amazing things with the money," Stockton's former mayor said. "Whether it was to pay for childcare, take time off to apply for a full-time job, or pay off credit card debt."

My words for critics are  we know the status quo isn't working.  Former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs

The Wall Street Journal editorial board recently criticized the University of Pennsylvania analysis as politically biased "hype," reliant on self-reporting and a too-small sample size. The research team that evaluated the Stockton program, led by Amy Castro Baker and Stacia Martin-West, have signed on as partners in the design of the Los Angeles pilot.

"My words for critics are  we know the status quo isn't working," Tubbs said. "And that's why we're doing pilots across the country. Data, unfortunately, doesn't drive enough decision making in our country. See the gun debate, or climate change."

The Compton Pledge

L.A.'s big pitch for guaranteed income follows the launch of a program in Compton, called The Compton Pledge, championed by outgoing Mayor Aja Brown.

Starting in January, the program began delivering strings-free cash payments to Compton households below the poverty line. Last week, the group announced it had reached full enrollment, with 800 households representing 1,770 participants, including families and dependents. They are receiving an average of $300-600 a month for two years, scaled by household size. The effort is being funded by more than $8 million in private donations.

In the Compton model, participants can choose to get the money via Venmo, Paypal, direct bank deposit or a prepaid debit card. They aren't required to produce a social security or taxpayer I.D. number, making the process available to immigrants without documentation.

The program's director, Nika Soon-Shiong, says the cohort is representative of Compton as a whole in terms of race, gender, immigration status and whether they were ever incarcerated. She hopes the findings of the study will help inform future policy decisions and answer questions around the most effective timing and size of cash transfers.

"The welfare programs that exist today are insufficient, and too many people fall through the cracks," Soon-Shiong said. "What we need is a system that looks at the well-being of all residents, and that's less punitive. We really see this policy as a window of opportunity to enhance the social safety net across the board."

"Honestly, at first I thought it was a scam," laughed Roslyn Ford, a Compton Pledge recipient. She's a mother of three with a 15-year-old son and twin nine-year-old daughters. When the pandemic hit, she struggled with the extra cost of internet at home for distance learning for her kids, on top of her regular bills.

Roslyn Ford is a participant in The Compton Pledge, a new guaranteed basic income pilot program in Compton, CA. (Courtesy of The Compton Pledge)

"Everything was adding up  my water bill, my cable bill, electricity. I did not know where my help was coming from," Ford said. "When I got the first deposit, I ran to the water company  I paid everything. And I had a little extra to spend on my children. I'm really appreciative of that."

Feedback from participants such as Ford will guide the future of cash transfer programs, according to Soon-Shiong.

"Their voices are really important because they are going to be the policy experts when it comes to how to inform the way that we approach guaranteed income implementation moving forward," Soon-Shiong said.

The Debate Over Work Requirements

Cash assistance for working-age, able-bodied adults has been a political sticking point for decades. During the Trump Administration, the federal government and Republican-led states pushed to tie more types of government assistance to work.

Conservative policy makers operate on the theory that cash or medical assistance for able-bodied people discourages them from finding employment that could lead to an escape from poverty. It's the same argument that motivated the "welfare reform" legislation signed by President Clinton in 1996, which added time limits and work requirements to assistance for needy families. Conservative scholar Scott Winship with the Manhattan Institute argues that the initiative was a success  a combination of restructuring welfare, refundable tax credits and non-cash benefits such as food stamps reduced child poverty considerably between 1996 and 2014.

Liberals dismiss the idea that cash assistance makes people lazy, and say evidence shows the Clinton-era changes exacerbated severe poverty.

"It's about illustrating that we can trust people  including people who struggle economically, including people of color, including women  to make their own decisions on what to do with money," Stockton's Tubbs said. "Poverty isn't some deficiency in people. What's lacking, in every case, is cash."

While Clinton-era welfare reform initially appeared to boost employment, it's hard to separate those effects from the roaring economy of the 1990s. Research by the University of Kentucky found that any earnings gains for poor women with children were mostly offset by the loss of federal help, and "have left the most vulnerable ... either running in place or falling behind." Analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities echoed this conclusion and found that employment gains were modest and faded over time. Most people worked even if they were not forced to, and income for the bottom 10 percent of single mothers with kids declined in the decade after welfare reform.

"The dichotomy between welfare and work, I think, is a false dichotomy when you look at the persistence of involuntary unemployment across America, especially in communities such as Compton," Soon-Shiong said. "It's a really important time to revisit the assumptions that have been underlying our existing welfare programs."

There is a long-running example of no-questions-asked payments to consider: In Alaska, every resident gets a yearly cash dividend from oil reserve royalties  maybe the closest thing to a universal basic income that academics can sink their teeth into. A study of the state's program by University of Chicago researchers found no significant impact on employment.
The Nagol is Back! VTOs guide to this years Nagol, plus where to stay and play in south, central and north Pentecost.




By Jung Da-min







Former Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl's popularity as a potential presidential candidate has outstripped the two major contenders from the ruling party.







Public favorability of him as a potential presidential contender has increased after he resigned from his post in early March, and he now has a big lead over Gyeonggi Province Governor Lee Jae-myung, a member of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), and former DPK Chairman Lee Nak-yon







In a survey of 1,011 adults by local pollster Realmeter and released Monday, 37.2 percent said they support Yoon, followed by Governor Lee with 21 percent and the former DPK Chairman, 11 percent.







In a hypothetical two-way race between Yoon and Governor Lee, Yoon garnered 51.1 percent of support, far surpassing the governor's 32.3 percent. Yoon led the governor even in Gwangju and North and South Jeolla provinces, whose residents have traditionally showed support for the liberal bloc, although the margin was much smaller at 41.4 percent to 40.8 percent.







In a virtual two-way race between Yoon and former DPK Chairman Lee, 51.6 percent said they supported Yoon, while 30.1 percent supported the former chairman.







People in their 40s preferred the two Lees over Yoon in the hypothetical two-way races, but Yoon outstripped them in all other age groups.







Before resigning, Yoon had been at odds with the Moon Jae-in administration, especially with its former justice ministers, over the government's prosecutorial reform. Since then he has been recognized as a symbol of protest against the government, with the opposition political parties wooing him to join them.







The next presidential election is slated for March 2022.


She's fast approaching her one year anniversary with her French billionaire husband, Antoine Arnault.

And Natalia Vodianova looked happier than ever when she attended the launch party for the Vogue Travel app in Moscow, Russia, on Monday night.

The supermodel, 39, didn't fail to make a style statement as she displayed her toned legs in an ornately patterned sweater dress and orange sock heels.

Chic: Natalia Vodianova looked happier than ever when she attended the launch party for the Vogue Travel app in Moscow, Russia, on Monday night

The dress featured a silver and black heart print embroidered panel across the bust and an intricate lace hem.

Natalia was fashion forward as ever as she completed the chic outfit with a pair stilettos covered by tan coloured socks.

She showed off her supermodel legs in the cut off tights and toted a matching mustard beaded mini-bag for the occasion.

The Russian catwalk star looked effortlessly flawless as she accentuated her natural beauty with a slick of lipgloss and some copper eyeshadow.

And Natalia ladened herself with multiple stylish accessories, including a a floral clip to keep her tresses away from her face and a pair of gold link earrings by Missoma.

All smiles: The supermodel looked happier than ever when she attended the cocktail party for the Vogue Travel app in Russia

On trend: Natalia was fashion forward as ever as she completed the chic outfit with a pair stilettos covered by tan coloured socks

The model was joined at the cocktail party by the writer and journalist Mikhail Zygar who looked similarly chic in a black T-shirt and blazer with satin lapels.

Natalia and husband Antoine were married in September last year at a low-key Paris registry office service after cancelling their wedding due to Covid-19.

Antoine and Natalia, who have been together for 10 year, initially planned to marry at the Saint-Pierre d'Hautvillers Abbey before the pandemic derailed their plans.

Pals: The model was joined at the cocktail party by the writer and journalist Mikhail Zygar (R) who looked similarly chic in a black T-shirt and blazer with satin lapels

Details: Natalia ladened herself with multiple stylish accessories, including a a floral clip to keep her tresses away from her face and a pair of gold link earrings

Flawless: She toted a mustard beaded mini-bag for the occasion and accentuated her natural beauty with some copper eyeshadow

Appearing on Suzie Menke's podcast Creative Conversations last summer Natalia revealed her divorce from Justin Portman put her off the idea of tying the knot again.

She said: 'Honestly, after the last divorce I wasn't rushing to get married. But time has shown that this relationship is very strong.'

And the supermodel confirmed she would again sign a pre-nuptial agreement before she wed the fashion mogul.

Celebration: Natalia's outing comes as she fast approaches her one year anniversary with her French billionaire husband, Antoine Arnault

Congratulations: The pair were married in September last year at a low-key Paris registry office service after cancelling their wedding due to Covid-19

She said: 'When you build a relationship for life you have to have discussed all possible scenarios.

'If you love each other you will want to love each other even if you separate, and the best way to keep the relationship amicable is to have a solid agreement in place.

'You stay together for the right reasons as well because the financial side, which can be the very painful part of a relationship, is out of the way and it's just love.'

Venue change: Antoine and Natalia, who have been together for 10 year, initially planned to marry at the Saint-Pierre d'Hautvillers Abbey before the pandemic derailed their plans

The supermodel and Berluti's CEO, whose father, Bernard, chairs the brand and is the boss of the world's largest luxury-goods company, LVMH Moet Hennessy, have been together for 10 years.

'This year has been beautiful and very memorable,' Natalia, who has two children, Maxim, five, and Roman, three with her future husband, said of her engagement at the time.

'2020 here we come. I can't wait to celebrate [the new] year with our loved ones', the delighted star added.

Mother-of-five Natalia, who also shares Lucas, 18, Neva, 13 and Viktor, 12, with her ex-husband Justin Portman, was raised in the Russian neighbourhood of Nizhny Novgorod and would help make ends meet by working on a fruit stand.

Aged 15, she was signed up by a modelling agency and went on to become a household name in fashion.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government and distributed to more than 400 newspapers statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
KALAMAZOO, MI -- The Kalamazoo superintendent is holding virtual town halls this week to discuss families options for school in the fall.

Kalamazoo Public Schools will offer both full-time in-person and fully virtual options for school beginning in the fall, Superintendent Rita Raichoudhuri said.

The superintendent is holding two town halls, one at 11 a.m., and a second at 6 p.m., on Wednesday, April 21, to discuss options parents have for the 2021-22 school year, according to a press release from the district.

Attendees must register in advance. To register for the 11 a.m. session, go here. To register for the 6 p.m. town hall, go here.

KPS was one of few districts across Michigan to remain in virtual school for the entirety of the 2020-21 school year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Parents who prefer to keep their children in virtual school are asked to sign a opt-in form. On Thursday, April 22, the form will be sent to all families, posted on the district website and social media and available in paper copies at the schools, according to a timeline from the superintendent.

Also on Thursday, the superintendent will review the plan for virtual school with the Board of Education and release a recording of the townhall on the district website for those who couldnt attend, the timeline said.

Those wishing to keep their children in virtual school must return the opt-in form by midnight Sunday, May 2, the timeline said.

At the following board meeting on Thursday, May 6, the superintendent plans to review the enrollment data for virtual school. On May 14, letters of intent will be sent to all KPS students confirming in-person or virtual school enrollment.

Also on MLive:

Meet Kalamazoo Countys 43 top-achieving high school seniors receiving $1,200 scholarships

As COVID-19 cases rise in kids, parents should watch for rare complication

One public Michigan university is requiring COVID-19 vaccination for students. Will others do the same?

Hudsonville parents, including some locked out of meeting, urge school district to make masks optional
A man has died after he was attacked by a grizzly bear in Montana that officials think was protecting a moose carcass.

Carl Mock, 40, suffered a massive stroke and other severe injuries after being mauled near a campground just outside Yellowstone National Park.

Officials say that Mr Mock, who is from West Yellowstone, Montana, died at an Idaho Falls hospital on Sunday, several days after the attack.

Investigators and wildlife officials, including bear specialists, visited the area the day after Thursdays attack to assess public safety.

Authorities say that as they made noise to move on any bears still in the area, they were charged by one of the animals.

The older male grizzly was shot and killed by the investigators and died within 20 yards of the group.

Further investigation found the moose carcass within 50 yards of the original attack site, and experts believe the bear had been defending the food source when Mr Mock was injured.

Experts say that attacks by grizzly bears are rare and that the animals tend to move away form humans if they hear them coming.
COLUMBIA  A barrage of lawsuits from women who say the University of South Carolina mishandled their reports of sexual assault and harassment against professors and employees has elicited a series of promised reviews by the administration and provoked a level of student activism not seen on campus in recent years.

Issues with colleges not doing enough to respond to and curb sexual assault and harassment is a decadeslong, pervasive issue, according to federal policy experts.

USC has convened groups to review procedures and has said it will hire outside consultants to make recommendations. This is all while federal guidance changes with shifts from one presidential administration to the next.

But critics say planned new reviews are vague and question whether they will bring real change, as students march to cries of fire all abusers and call for widespread improvements to a system they say shielded assailants.

I think that what we see here is similar to what we see elsewhere, said Sage Carson, manager of Know Your IX, a Washington, D.C., activist organization focused on students and Title IX advocacy. Its easy to blame things on policy. But the violation is were not enforcing the policies we already have and taking this seriously.

The allegations at USC, first reported by The State, include a tenured art professor sued in by several women who said he inappropriately touched students and faculty, and a tenured theater professor accused of sending lewd text messages.

There was an information technology administrator, who was said in a lawsuit to have impregnated an employee and then threatened to fire her if she didnt have an abortion. Most recently, a history professor was sued by a student who said he lured her into a sexual relationship, while a university counselor failed to provide information how to report the abuse to the school.

As reports on lawsuits have brought several cases into the public eye, USC President Bob Caslen has suspended those facing claims.

"Hopefully (students) know I take it seriously. This type of behavior is just unacceptable," he said. "Were going to do what we can do in accordance with the law."

But, ultimately, these men remain on the payroll as the legal challenges mount.

Lawyers for the women argue in legal documents all the accused are in violation of a federal statute called Title IX, which prohibits discrimination based on sex in education.

None of the professors or employees named in the complaints returned messages left by The Post and Courier requesting comment.

Policy questioned

USC Board Chairman Dorn Smith asked the universitys compliance office review the four publicized cases. Yet the review is not about the findings, Caslen said, but to ensure that the case followed proper rules, policies, regulations and procedures.

What is important is, if the policy at the time was bad, it might not meet the actual goal of Title IX, Carson, of Know Your IX, argues. If the policy was flawed, did you actually solve anything?

Take the case involving theater professor Robert Richmond, where those involved are questioning why text messages asking a student what she was wearing, telling her to take it off!!! and stating, I wanted to sleep with you tonight, were referred to as witty banter by Richmond, according to documents published by The State.

Even corroborating witness statements werent considered enough for an investigator to establish "preponderance of evidence," the legal standard, which only requires proof it is more likely than not that harassment occurred.

What do you do if the people themselves enforcing it are biased and are coming out with bad decisions? Carson asked.

But federal policy has been not to second guess schools' decisions as long as they follow their procedures, according to Peter Lake, director of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy at Stetson University in Florida. And different schools have different policies.

The courts may jump in later and say we didnt like what we saw here but thats not terribly helpful to a (college) panel that has to make a decision now, Lake said. I call it being on Title IX island. There arent clear mandates on how to weigh evidence. Two panels can look at identical cases and come up with different results and thats acceptable, which is a little spooky.

2019 investigation underway

Despite federal Supreme Court rulings decades earlier, schools had really only begun to be held accountable by federal regulators for Title IX violations after 2011, following policy guidance by the Obama administration's Department of Education, experts say.

The number of universities under investigation for mishandling reports of assault soared to more than 300.

USC is among those with an active federal investigation, opened in 2019, related to sexual violence, as well as three others related to discrimination based on sex. Other South Carolina colleges under similar sexual violence related investigations include Coastal Carolina University, Francis Marion University and Wofford College, according to a federal database.

Under the Trump administration, those past guidelines were rescinded as Department of Education leadership felt the law had become skewed against alleged assailants. Now schools are adapting to new regulations finalized near the end of President Donald Trump's term.

This confuses the heck out of most people on campus, Lake said of the shifts that come with each new presidential policy. People arent always sure what to do and that creates barriers of access to these systems.

At USC prior to the summer of 2020, when allegations in all of these recent lawsuits took place, case outcomes were investigated and determined by one investigator, said Marc Shook, the university's Dean of Students and Interim Title IX Coordinator.

A second investigator would provide some oversight. Then, if a staff or faculty member was involved, the decision went to a panel made up of staff from the university provost's office, human resources department and the employee's department heads to determine sanctions.

Now, due to the regulatory changes, all results of investigations go to an external officer from a Columbia law firm, unnamed by the university, that hears the case and decides responsibility and sanctions, Shook said.

Critics claim vague response

Despite criticisms of a vague response, Caslen insists that will not be the case at USC once more details can be finalized.

He announced a committee that will view every case prior to a ruling being issued. But makeup of the committee is still being decided, and under federal regulation, it wont be able to intervene, only make suggestions, Shook said.

Caslen also has said he will create a group to look at every case on the books every month.

The group will be made up of personnel from the school's Title IX office, legal team, Equal Opportunities Programs office and Student Affairs office, and will discuss training, status of investigations, support to victims and advising both sides of their rights to legal support.

Inadequate support for victims was a problem cited in the lawsuits of three women who say art professor, David Voros, sexually assaulted or harassed them.

In the first case, the woman said in court documents that Voros propositioned and touched her suggestively during a study abroad semester then kept her in her room and withheld food following a disagreement. When she filed a complaint upon her return, she said the school did not provide case records, failed to communicate with her and ultimately did not take her full allegations into account. Her suit was settled in federal court for $75,000.

In another case that involved a staff member, the woman, in court documents, reported Voros touched her in a closet while holding a plastic doll's head in front of her. She said the school then allowed her to be removed from a number of the classes she taught after her complaint was filed.

The school and Voros deny the allegations in court filings.

Samantha Albrecht, a lawyer for these women, thinks the school needs to look at its Title IX process but also its rules for tenure, which often provides professors with extra contractual and legal protections, "so that it does not become a blanket rule for the freedom to do whatever you want."

Following the news of the lawsuits against Voros another USC student who had reported abuse at the hands of history professor David Snyder to a counselor filed suit, saying she was not informed about the school's complaint procedures as required by law.

Her lawyer, Randall Hood said his client was struck that this was not an isolated incident, saying in court documents that Snyder played on her insecurities as a caretaker for her sick mother before repeatedly suggesting they enter a sexual relationship despite the fact he was her instructor.

This may be endemic to the university and she felt that something needed to be done, Hood said.

Hood said he has since been contacted by one other alleged victim and is aware of another who shared her account on Twitter.

I dont expect a whole lot to be done except to curb the actions of this particular professor, Hood said. Im hopeful, however, this and other lawsuits bring to light the imbalances of power that have existed for a long time and Im hopeful it will cause the university to take actions to protect its students.

Others, like Carson, think this is only the beginning of a new wave of lawsuits that are to come nationally and only enforcement by DOE will create progress.
Colorado Springs, CO (80903)

Today

Isolated thunderstorms early, then partly cloudy after midnight. Low around 60F. Winds WNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Isolated thunderstorms early, then partly cloudy after midnight. Low around 60F. Winds WNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 30%.
Apr. 19The Diocese of Allentown and its parishes and schools across five counties are celebrating the "Year of the Real Presence."

"This year will be an opportunity for Catholics in our Diocese to rededicate ourselves to Christ's real presence in the Holy Eucharist and, as the pandemic slowly lifts, to return to Mass to be 'really present' with our family, friends, parishioners and clergy," Bishop Alfred Schlert said in a news release.

At the Last Supper, as Jesus shared a final meal with his disciples, He instituted the Holy Eucharist, the sacrament that is most central to the Catholic faith. Whenever a priest celebrates Mass, he consecrates bread and wine, changing them by the power of the Holy Spirit into the Body and Blood of Christ.

The transformation is known as the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist.

The yearlong celebration encourages the faithful to rededicate themselves to, and to reaffirm their belief in, the presence of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist. It will be a time for people to rejoice in the gift of their own presence at Mass with families, friends, and clergy, according to information from the diocese.

The diocese celebrates its 60th anniversary this year.

On Jan. 28, 1961, the five counties of the diocese were separated from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia to form the new diocese. On April 11, 1961, the life of the new diocese began with the installation of its first bishop, Bishop Joseph McShea, at the Cathedral of St. Catharine of Siena in Allentown.

For more information on the Year of the Real Presence, visit www.YearOfReal Presence.org.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-20 04:35:51|Editor: huaxia

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Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel speaks during the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) in Havana, Cuba, April 18, 2021. Diaz-Canel was elected Monday the new First Secretary of the PCC Central Committee, as the successor to 89-year-old Raul Castro, local media reported. (Prensa Latina via Xinhua)

HAVANA, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel was elected Monday the new First Secretary of Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), as the successor to Raul Castro, local media reported.

The announcement was made during the final session of the Eighth Congress of the PCC as the island nation marks the 60th anniversary of the victory against the U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion.

"The most revolutionary stand inside the revolution is to always defend the (PCC) party, in the same way, the party must be the major defender of the (Cuban) revolution," said Diaz-Canel while addressing the audience at the closing ceremony of the Congress.

During his political career, Diaz-Canel has also served as the first secretary of the provincial party committee of the PCC in the provinces of Villa Clara and Holguin, minister of higher education, vice-president of the Council of Ministers, and first vice-president of the Council of State, among other responsibilities.

The rest of the members of the new Political Bureau, Secretariat, and Central Committee of the PCC were also elected during the session.

Raul Castro was elected to the top position of the PCC in April 2011 at the PCC's 6th Congress, succeeding his elder brother and ex-president Fidel Castro, who had held that position since the founding of the party in 1965.

During the four-day Congress, participants discussed ideology, updating of the Cuban model, internal functioning of the PCC as well as the economic transformations implemented over the past five years on the island.

Diosvany Acosta, first secretary of Cuba's Young Communist League, told Xinhua that the Cuban youth is committed to actively continuing to participate in the country's social and economic activities.

"We have played a leading role during the COVID-19 pandemic response. That is the result of principles and values instilled by the Cuban revolution into us," said Acosta.

Asked about takeaways from the Congress, Havana residents agreed decisions made at the most important meeting of Cuban communists would be fundamental for the present and future of the island nation.

Maria Antonia Dominguez, a 45-year-old private sector employee, told Xinhua that she felt confident the PCC would continue working together with the Cuban people to build a more prosperous socialism system.

"Socialism is the real solution to the problems affecting humanity," she said, adding "I have no doubt the Cuban revolution will continue moving on the right track for years to come." Enditem
(@FahadShabbir)

KARACHI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 19th Apr, 2021 ) :Pakistan Navy in collaboration with Sahil Welfare Association (SWA) organized various welfare activities to support local populace of Coastal/ Creeks area.

In this context, some 350 ration bags containing daily commodities (one month ration package) were distributed in Damb and Gaddani, said a news release on Monday.

The ration distribution campaign was aimed to help the under privileged families of Coastal areas. The noble efforts of Pakistan Navy and SWA in development/ welfare of Coastal community were appreciated by the local community.
AN elderly couple planning to attend evening mass were informed of a plan to rob their house when they were out and they gave permission to have six officers in the house to catch them in an investigation called Operation Evening Mass.

That was the evidence of the couple, who have been married for 43 years, which was presented to Judge Sean O Donnabhain and a jury of seven men and five women at Cork Circuit Criminal Court.

John Faulkner, 38, of 4 Adelaide Place, St. Lukes, Cork, pleaded not guilty to charges of entering a house as a trespasser to commit a theft at Freemount, Charleville, County Cork, on Saturday, October 19 2019, and endangerment and causing criminal damage to a garda car at Banteer in County Cork.

Prosecution barrister Donal OSullivan read into evidence statements by the elderly couple, with the consent of defence senior counsel Ciaran OLoughlin.

The semi-retired farmer said, Detective Sean told us they had information people were planning to rob our house. The guard asked me for permission to come to my house and catch the fellows when we go to mass.

His wife said, I got an awful fright that people were calling to us. I just buried my sister last week If the guards did not come out to us we might have nothing when we would come out of mass.

Mr OSullivan outlined to the seven men and five women of the jury what he anticipated the evidence in the trial would be but he stressed that this outline was not itself evidence.

Going back to October 19, 2019 gardai had information a burglary was going to take place at the home of an elderly couple in Freemount on that afternoon.

(The elderly man) gave permission to station a number of gardai in the house. Six gardai were put into the house and two other gardai were placed outside the house to keep an eye on what was happening.

A car arrived in the course of the afternoon and two people got out of it Driving the car was John Faulkner. The car drives off. Later in the afternoon (the elderly couple) leave. They are going to mass. As they leave and turn to the left in their driveway a vehicle passed against them.

The prosecution barrister said two persons were arrested at the elderly couples home  one of them inside the house and one outside a window.

Two members of An Garda Siochana saw the car referred to previously and saw John Faulkner driving it, Mr OSullivan BL alleged.

The car takes off and there follows a car chase. The car goes straight through Ballymaquirke Cross towards Banteer and goes around a bend passing another vehicle on the inside. That  the prosecution says  is the endangerment but that is a matter for you (the jury).

At a certain point in time a bag was thrown out the window. The bag was recovered. Another bag goes out the window later. One of those bags has a fob for a gym in Mayfield that belonged to (the man caught inside the house in Freemount).

The car goes through Banteer village at 150 kilometres per hour. The speed limit in the village is obviously not quite that, Mr OSullivan BL said.

The barrister further alleged that the car was later driven into the side of the unmarked garda car, which had a blue flashing light, when gardai tried to get him to stop. These alleged facts resulted in the criminal damage charge.

Faulkner denied all charges against him, principle of which were the endangerment, criminal damage to the garda car and burglary at the elderly couples home.

Mr OSullivan explained in relation to the burglary charge that the jury would have to consider the legal concept of joint enterprise or common design where each defendant does not have to commit each element of a crime committed by a group to be fully part of it.

The trial continues tomorrow.
Its been a long two years for Morning Call fans, but the much-loved local coffee and beignet shop, founded in 1870, has a new home a few blocks from City Park.

Morning Call closed its former location in the parks Casino Building in January 2019. The closing wasnt pretty, happening amidst a swirl of drama over the site's lease and New Orleans's other iconic beignet brand, Cafe Du Monde.

Now I see that losing that lease was a blessing in disguise, says Morning Call co-owner Bobby Hennessey. We would have been on the hook for a lot of money once the pandemic hit.

After the business left its City Park space, Hennesseys search for a new location took him across the city, from Lakeview to Uptown to Spanish Plaza by the river. Securing the empty lot across from the streetcar terminal at Canal Street turned out to be a smart move. He built to suit his own business, as did his soon-to-open neighbor Buds Broiler, allowing the new location of Morning Call to have ample room inside and out for nearly 200 customers.

The recognizable neon Morning Call sign now sits on the corner of Canal Boulevard and City Park Avenue. The sign proclaims its open 24 hours, but thats not the case just yet. Under current Covid restrictions, customers can clamor for fresh fried beignets and chicory-laced cafe au lait from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. For now, its cash only.

Morning Calls coffee was always a big draw, which makes sense. By the time it opened in the French Quarter, coffee was one of the city's leading imports, and thats still true today. One-third of all coffee imported to North America arrives in New Orleans. Folgers operates the largest coffee roasting plant in the world in New Orleans East. If theres a better pairing with hot fried dough than coffee, its hard to imagine.

Morning Calls beignets are presented in pristine form  powdered sugar is in a shaker on the side.

The key to getting the sugar right is spanking the shaker, Hennessey says. Dont unscrew the cap  it will just dump out. Morning Call beignets arent held under the grease like some places do, which makes them lighter, he says.

Morning Call started in 1870 in the French Market. When development threatened its original spot in the 1970s, Morning Call moved to Metairie, near Lakeside Shopping Center. That location closed in 2018. It opened the City Park location in 2012.

Once we get this location up and running, we hope to open another one, Hennessey says.

Morning Call was founded by his stepfathers Croatian grandfather, and Hennessey started working at the business when he was 15.

Although beignets and coffee are its bread and butter, Morning Call also is a haven of New Orleans comfort food. Three mini muffulettas, assembled on Perrone seeded rolls, offer a fine alternative to the Dagwood-sized traditional version. Creamy red beans and rice are offered every day, not just Mondays, and chicken and andouille gumbo is made fresh daily. Jambalaya and crawfish etouffee round out the homestyle menu.

Morning Call shares its large covered front porch with Buds Broiler, so cross pollinating between the two local classics is inevitable. The notion of devouring a dressed char-grilled Buds burger piled with cheese followed by beignets for dessert is no doubt a win-win for traditionalists.

If regulars recognize more than a few faces at the new restaurant, thats no accident.

We brought as many of our original people back as we could, Hennessey says. Between our employees and our customers, its like one big family reunion.

5101 Canal Blvd.

7 a.m.-10 p.m. daily

Cash only to start

Charly Pierre opens Fritai, Haitian restaurant, in Treme In 1809, more than 10,000 Haitians fleeing the revolution taking place in their country came to New Orleans, doubling the citys population. T
Photographs of 48 dogs who are suspected stolen have been released by police, desperate to reunite their owners.

More than 80 animals were seized last month when officers investigating a series of pet thefts raided a Travellers' site on the outskirts of Ipswich.

Suffolk Police said work is ongoing to identify the owners, but due to a lack of identifying features and information the process has proved 'challenging'.

Six people were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to steal in connection with the operation

During the last few weeks officers have been liaising with other police forces around the country, as well as conducting a number of other inquiries, in order to establish where the dogs may have originated from

Detective Chief Inspector Nicola Wallace, senior investigating officer for the operation, said: 'We are keen to hear from anyone who believes any of the dogs in the images may be theirs'

The force said that none of the 83 dogs, of various breeds and ages, have yet been reunited with their owners.

Detective Chief Inspector Nicola Wallace, senior investigating officer for the operation, said: 'We are keen to hear from anyone who believes any of the dogs in the images may be theirs.

'During the last few weeks officers have been liaising with other police forces around the country, as well as conducting a number of other inquiries, in order to establish where the dogs may have originated from.'

Six people were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to steal in connection with the operation.

A 39-year-old man, a 34-year-old man and two women aged 41 and 46 have been bailed until June 17.

A second 34-year-old man and a 35-year-old woman have both been released and will face no further action.

A 39-year-old man, a 34-year-old man and two women aged 41 and 46 have been bailed until June 17

A second 34-year-old man and a 35-year-old woman have both been released and will face no further action

The dogs in the gallery include French bulldogs, cocker and springer spaniels, dachshunds and whippets, and could have come from anywhere in the UK

Suffolk.Police have so far not been able to reunite any of the dogs with their owners with efforts apparently hampered by many of them not having identification microchips.It is thought that some may have had microchips cut out

The dogs were among 83 pets recovered on April 20 when dozens of police officers raided the West Meadows travellers site in Ipswich, Suffolk

Anyone who believes that one or more of the dogs is theirs is asked to email police with proof of ownership at opscout@suffolk.pnn.police.uk

They are asked to do so by May 24 providing a full name, contact details and the image number which relates to the dog, or dogs, in question.

Police stressed that owners should only make contact via the email address, and must not contact the force's contact and control room on 999 or 101.

Proof of ownership can include vet records clearly identifying the dog, or photos of distinctive markings.

The dogs either do not have microchips or have chips which appear to be incorrectly registered, but owners can contact police with further details on microchipping.

Other photos of the dog which prove ownership, purchase details or records of reporting a dog as lost or stolen to police or charities can also be submitted.
Famed film director James Cameron (Titanic, Avatar) considers underwater archaeologist Bob Ballard a personal inspiration and a true exploration pioneer. Now, Ballard delves into his own amazing exploits for Into the Deep, a memoir accompanied by the premiere of a new National Geographic TV special.

Ballard may be best known for finding the long-lost wreck of the luxury liner Titanicafter a secret and successful mission to locate two missing U.S. nuclear submarinesbut thats just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the oceanographers impactful undersea

expeditions. When I found the Titanic in 1985, Ballard says, what fascinated me the most was its high state of preservationwhich led me on a 20-year quest to find shipwrecks as far back into time as I could." Among other important sunken ships hes located and explored are the USS Yorktown, the German battleship Bismarck, and John F. Kennedys Word War II patrol torpedo boat PT-109. But his book also describes several significant scientific discoveries hes made, as well as a shocking personal one.

Ballard has developed robots that can roam the ocean floor, has advanced the knowledge of underwater plate tectonics, and has proved that the ancient mariners used deepwater trade routes. His proudest moment? It was the discovery of the first hydrothermal vents ever seen in the Galapagos Rift, he says. We threw away our biology books and had to rewrite them. Before this 1977 revelation, scientific theory posited that sunlight-triggered photosynthesis was necessary for any kind of ecosystem to develop. But Ballard and his team proved that bacteria living in total darkness, in a harsh underwater environment, were also able to support such a complex community.

In the years since, Ballard says, scientists have come to recognize that these communities hold critical clues as to how life evolved on Earthand could evolve on other planets. Its the discovery that is now driving NASAs efforts to explore moons revolving around Jupiter and Saturn. They have ocean worlds beneath their ice surfaces that are far larger than our own oceans and perhaps have life-forms unknown to us.

And though hes documented some of his 157 voyages before, Into the Deep is the first time hes written about personal tragedies as well, including the death of his 20-year-old son. My past books talk about various things I have discovered hidden beneath the surface of the sea, Ballard says. This book tells you why I was able to do these things before others did them. This book is not so much about what I have done but how I did it.

Those realizations were triggered by the surprising self-discovery he made late in life, after reading a book called The Dyslexic Advantage. Ballard had already surmised that he was a visual thinker, which helped in both his science and his shipwreck searches, but he never understood why he seemed to process information differently from others around him. The book, he says, makes the point that although the brains of those with dyslexia are wired differently, their thinking isnt defective, just differentand a gift. It was a revelation to Ballard to discover his own dyslexia. Tears were streaming down my face as I was reading it, he says. Here I was, 72 years old, and this book, finally, was explaining me to me. Even now I think of it as my first autobiography. Thats how much it mirrored who I am.

Armed with this new self-knowledge, Ballard is prepared to help write the future. The very survival of the human race will depend upon our ability to live in harmony with Mother Earth, he says, and the oceans will play the biggest role in making that happen. Hes also got some more exploring to do, including his longtime quest to find out what happened to famed pilot Amelia Earhart, whose plane disappeared over the Pacific Ocean in 1937. Its a work in progress, he says of that quest. You never want to accomplish something that is easy to do."
Home Instead, the worlds leading provider of in-home care for older adults, was recognized as a top franchise by Franchise Business Review in six categories and by Entrepreneur magazine in three top franchise rosters following recent surveys by these two premiere industry publications. Among these awards, Home Instead is ranked as a top franchise for women and veterans.

These franchise industry accolades reflect our commitment to the homecare industry and creation of outstanding opportunities for entrepreneurs, said Jeff Huber, Home Instead CEO. We are fortunate to have an incredible network of franchise owners who strive to make a positive difference by serving seniors in their communities.

With one in four workers saying they plan to look for a different job when the COVID-19 pandemic subsides, Home Instead offers an opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs to start their own business in a rapidly growing industry. The nations aging population continues to grow, and studies consistently show that 90% of older adults want to remain in their homes as they age. This need became even more prevalent during the pandemic. Home Instead CAREGivers provide the support necessary for older adults to remain independent in the comfort of their own homes.

Franchise Business Review surveys thousands of franchise owners to determine satisfaction and performance. The survey measures employee engagement in the areas of training and support, systems and operations, executive leadership, core values, franchisee community and financial opportunity. This franchisee-driven data informs lists of top-rated franchise brands. Home Instead was recognized by Franchise Business Review on the following lists:



Entrepreneur magazines Franchise 500 list is compiled annually with several metrics. Cost and fees, support, size and growth, brand strength and financial strength/stability are all considered, based on franchisor disclosures. Businesses are scored based on 150 data points, and the highest-scored franchises earn a place on the Franchise 500. Entrepreneur ranked Home Instead for the following awards:



Home Instead also was recognized as the Silver winner of the 2020 Canadian Franchise Association (CFA) Awards of Excellence in Franchising. In addition to the Awards of Excellence, Home Instead also earned the CFA Franchisees Choice designation for the 10th consecutive year.

For more information on Home Instead, including details about franchise opportunities, visit franchises.homeinstead.com.

ABOUT HOME INSTEAD

Founded in 1994 in Omaha, Nebraska, the Home Instead franchise network provides personalized care, support and education to enhance the lives of aging adults and their families. Today, the network is the world's leading provider of in-home care services for older adults, with more than 1,200 independently owned and operated franchises that provide more than 90 million hours of care annually throughout the United States and 14 other countries. Local Home Instead offices employ approximately 90,000 CAREGivers worldwide who provide basic support services that enable older adults to live safely and comfortably in their own homes for as long as possible. Home Instead franchise owners partner with clients and their family members to help meet varied individual needs. Services span the care continuum  from providing personal care to specialized Alzheimers care and hospice support. Also available are family caregiver education and support resources. Visit HomeInstead.com. Connect with us on Facebook and Twitter.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-20 02:39:38|Editor: huaxia

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WASHINGTON, April 19 (Xinhua) -- U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and his Russian counterpart on Monday discussed bilateral relations and the prospect of a U.S.-Russia summit, the White House said in a statement.

Sullivan and Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev discussed "the prospect of a presidential summit between the United States and Russia and agreed to continue to stay in touch," said the statement.

According to the statement, the two officials also discussed a number of issues in the bilateral relationship, as well as regional and global matters of concern.

U.S. President Joe Biden said last week that he had proposed a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Europe this summer to address a range of bilateral issues.

The summit proposal came amid recent diplomatic clashes between Washington and Moscow. Last Thursday, the Biden administration announced the expulsion of 10 Russian diplomats and sweeping sanctions against individuals and entities in response to Moscow's alleged election interference and cyber activities.

In a swift response, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Friday in a statement that it will expel 10 U.S. diplomats, bar eight incumbent and former American high-ranking officials from entering Russia indefinitely, among other restrictions.

The Kremlin repeatedly said that claims of Russia's alleged meddling in the 2020 U.S. elections were baseless and regretful, calling them a pretext for additional sanctions.

Relations between Washington and Moscow have been adversarial for recent years. The two were bitterly divided over Ukraine, Syria, and cybersecurity issues, and they mutually accused the other of domestic political interference. Enditem


The heat in Mumbai is already getting unbearable. But if you thought Mumbai is getting out of control with the heat, we can assure you that the Maldives is going to be the hottest spot in the world, thanks to Disha Patani.



Disha Patani has setted off to the Maldives with her beau Tiger Shroff. The actress had made a visit to the paradise beach city earlier too with Tiger and this time with the Maharashtra Lockdown ongoing, it's perfect time for the actors to step out of the city. Disha has decided to take to her Instagram and give us some glimpse of her perfect holiday life. Disha shared a super-hot click of herself from the beach where we see her in a bikini soaking the sun. The click soars the temperatures.





Disha also takes to her Instagram stories and gives us a glimpse of her scenic home for a few days. The clean beach, the pristine clear waters and the perfect company in tow. Disha has shared another click on her IG story where its a low angle and we see her all smiles. The actress looks too cute and were loving her fun vacay vibes.





Disha Patani and Tiger Shroff have setted off together to Maldives, but they rarely share any click together. We wish they make a difference in this trip. Meanwhile, another B-town couple too has gone to the island and its Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt. The two left this morning and netizens are waiting with bated breath if Alia will share any click with her beau  whos not on social media and loves to remain discreet.
Students from dozens of Minnesota schools walked out of their classrooms Monday afternoon, in a coordinated protest against racial injustice and the killing of Daunte Wright, the 20-year-old man shot by a police officer in a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center earlier this month.

The walkout, organized by a group called Minnesota Teen Activists and coordinated primarily on Instagram, began at 1 p.m. and was to conclude with a moment of silence at 1:47 p.m., the time of Wright's death.

In schools in Fridley, Eden Prairie, Robbinsdale, Elk River and Moorhead, and cities across the metro and beyond, students seized on the shared moment to express hurt and frustration over Wright's death and broader issues of racism and inequality. But for many, it was also an opportunity to highlight problems with racism and discrimination within schools themselves  a topic that's been front and center in many districts this year amid a wave of student activism.

In a statement, student activists with the organizing group  who attend schools in the Osseo, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Fridley and Anoka-Hennepin districts, said they are encouraged by the number and geographic span of students who wanted to speak out against racism with Monday's walkout.

"We are hoping that not only school districts receive our statement of action but as well as the state of Minnesota," the statement read. "We are sick and tired of injustice."

In Minneapolis, a crowd of about 250 students, mostly high schoolers, gathered downtown near U.S. Bank Stadium. As snow fell, they chanted: "You can't stop the revolution," and "We are the students, the mighty, mighty students."

At Minnetonka High School, student organizers of Monday's walkout said their aim was to publicly hold school district leaders accountable for earlier promises to tackle students' concerns about racism, diversity and equity. "No justice, no excellence," read a graphic students shared online to promote the event.

Story continues

Since last summer, a group called the Minnetonka Coalition for Equitable Education has been holding demonstrations and pushing for changes ranging from anti-racism training for school staff to updating curriculum with wider community input. The district has followed through some of the group's requests, like adding hate symbols to the list of items banned in school dress codes, expanding its reach in hiring to target more diverse job candidates and creating an online reporting system for incidents of harassment and discrimination.

District spokeswoman JacQueline Getty said the district has made "significant strides" toward its goal of boosting diversity, equity and inclusion, in part because of students' input.

"Outreach from our students, in particular, certainly influenced the development of this goal and the speed by which we have been working on the elements of it," she said.

But Ahlaam Abdulwali, a Minnetonka senior, said many of the district's responses have been inadequate. She said students of color have been encouraged by the support of individual teachers and community members, but felt dismissed by school district leaders.

As an example, she said students have told the district that they want to hear clear, specific messages of support from school leaders after traumatic events like the deaths of George Floyd and Daunte Wright at the hands of police, or the recent mass shooting in Atlanta in which many victims were women of Asian descent. She said students see the district's unwillingness to acknowledge the specific pain or concerns of Black students, or students in other groups, as evidence that leaders haven't or don't want to make real changes.

"I've seen a really big difference in the attitudes and sentiments that people had last year," Abdulwali said. "It's just the school administration that isn't making solid policies and actionable items that will create a change that's permanent."

Students in two north metro districts  Centennial and White Bear Lake  have voiced similar frustrations with their own school leaders in recent weeks. In both districts, students recently held walkouts after students reported receiving racist messages via text and social media. Both incidents prompted an outpouring of concern from students who said their personal experiences with racism at and around school were far more extensive than the messages, and calls for the districts to do more to combat harassment, re-evaluate curriculum and diversify their staffs.

Days after the walkout in White Bear Lake, district officials released a statement calling the racist messages a hoax  a move that prompted additional outcry from students who said the district was trying to diminish their real-world experiences with racism at school. The district later clarified that the messages had been sent by a "juvenile female" whose goal was to raise awareness of issues of racism and injustice at White Bear Lake schools.

Gretel Tassah, a senior at White Bear Lake High School, said many students of color were already unconvinced that district leaders were serious about fixing problems students have spoken up about this year  and their response to the recent situation didn't help.

"From my perspective it's honestly like they don't know what to do," she said. "This is the first time that the extent of the problem has been thrown in their face."

Jenna Mitchler, assistant superintendent for Bloomington Public Schools, where students have also organized this year to urge for change and call out problems with racism and diversity, said it's important for school leaders to consider the many ways in which educators may have once thought they were listening to students  but perhaps were not.

She said Bloomington and other districts are now developing systems that give students a voice in long-term planning and other school decisions, rather than just having the adults in the room determine what students want and need. In the short-term, specific changes in Bloomington include new "cultural proficiency" training for teachers and changes to how the district categorizes student discipline.

Mitchler said it's clear school districts need to consider students' perspectives in a more meaningful way than they may have in years past.

"We have to listen," she said. "And if we're not creating spaces for it, students are going to create their own spaces."

Staff writer Mara Klecker contributed to this report.

Erin Golden  612-673-4790
Police have vowed they will never give up on missing schoolgirl Quanne Diec, after the coroner found she died by homicide some time after she vanished in Sydneys west more than two decades ago.

Quanne, 12, was last seen on the morning of July 27, 1998, when her mother watched her walk away from their Granville home towards Clyde railway station on her way to school. She never arrived at the station.

Quanne Diec was last seen in 1998.

A witness, who has since died, told police and Quannes family that she saw a young girl matching Quannes description getting into a white van that morning. This is believed to be the last time Quanne was seen.

On Monday, Deputy State Coroner Derek Lee said this observation is strongly suggestive of Quanne meeting with foul play. He found that Quanne died on or after July 27, 1998.
This is the weekly wrap-up of Chinese COVID-19 vaccines' contribution in the global fight against the virus for April 12-18, 2021.This one also focuses on the recognitionof safety and effectiveness that the Chinese vaccines gained around the world.

China has provided anti-epidemic materials to more than 160 countries and international organizations around the world and is providing urgently needed vaccines to more than 100 countries and international organizations, according to Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

China will continue to make efforts to maintain the stability of the global anti-epidemic materials supply chain and provide support to countries in need, Wang said on April 12.

The safety and effectiveness of Chinese vaccines have earned recognition across the world, with dozens of countries authorizing the use of Chinese vaccines.

Over the last week, Gabonese President Ali Bongo Ondimba and his wife Sylvia Bongo Ondimba received their second doses of the Sinopharm vaccine. On Wednesday, China's Ambassador in Somalia Qin Jian joined officials from the country in receiving their first jabs of the Sinopharm vaccine. Meanwhile, Ukraine started vaccinating its Olympic and Paralympic teams with theChinese vaccine.

Chile, Turkey, Indonesia and Brazil studies prove Sinovac vaccine's effectiveness

Chile has found that China's Sinovac vaccine provides significant protection against COVID-19 infection and is more effective in preventing severe cases. The Sinovac vaccine is 67 percent effective in preventing symptomatic infection and 80 percent effective in fending off deaths from the disease, according to a report released on Friday by Chile's Ministry of Health.

A report on the efficacy of the vaccine known as CoronaVac also found it 85 percent effective against hospitalizations and 89 percent effective in preventing severe cases.

The study followed some 10.5 million people in the country who were vaccinated with two doses, one dose, or not vaccinated. It collected the results from those fully vaccinated 14 days after receiving their second dose of the vaccine.

Several other studies have been done on the Sinovac vaccine. Its general efficacy rates range from just above 50 percent in Brazil to 65 percent in Indonesia and over 91 percent in Turkey.

Cameroon,Mauritius and the Solomon Islands receive their first batches of COVID-19 vaccines from China

Cameroon received its first batch of China's Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccines on Sunday, the first COVID-19 vaccine shipment for the country since the start of the pandemic.

Mauritius also received its first batch of China's Sinopharm vaccines on Tuesday. Mauritian Minister of Foreign Affairs Alan Ganoo hailed the arrival of the Chinese vaccines, saying the country is grateful to the Chinese government for providing vaccines to the country at a difficult time.

The Solomon Islands has received a batch of Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccine on Sunday, the first among Pacific island countries.

Chinese Ambassador to the Solomon Islands Li Ming said at the handover ceremony that the vaccines brought Chinese people's friendship and hope to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and save lives.

"The fact has proved that solidarity and cooperation are humankind's most powerful weapons against the pandemic," Li said, adding that ensuring the equitable distribution of vaccines is essential to developing countries' fight against the pandemic.

"China is the first country to provide COVID-19 vaccines to the Solomon Islands through bilateral channels, which showcased the two countries were trustworthy friends and good partners with sincere cooperation," he added.

China currently has five vaccines in use in its mass immunization campaign, three inactivated-virus vaccines from Sinovac and Sinopharm, a one-shot vaccine from CanSino and one from a team led by Gao Fu, head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, in partnership with Anhui Zhifei Longcom.

The effectiveness of the vaccines ranges from over 50 percent to 79 percent, according to the companies.

(CGTN)
New Delhi, April 19 : India's largest refiner, Indian Oil Corporation (IndianOil), on Monday said it has begun the supply of 150 MT of medical oxygen at "no cost" to various hospitals in Delhi, Haryana and Punjab.

The first batch of the lifesaver medical grade Oxygen was dispatched on Monday to Maha Durga Charitable Trust Hospital, New Delhi.

Besides, the company said it has diverted the high-purity oxygen used in its 'Mono Ethylene Glycol' (MEG) unit to produce medical-grade liquid oxygen at its Panipat Refinery and Petrochemical Complex.

The refiner has scaled down the throughput of the unit.

"We have also stepped up the production of raw material for PPEs, and we are now providing lifesaving medical oxygen to hospitals," said IndianOil Chairman S.M. Vaidya.

"Our expertise and assets, including refineries, pipelines, petrochemical units, bottling plants, terminals and aviation fuel stations, will continue to serve the people despite the stiff challenges."
London, April 19 : UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has cancelled his trip to India in the wake of the severity of the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic in the country, the Downing Street confirmed on Monday.

The visit had been scheduled for April 26.

In a statement, it said that Johnson and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi "will speak later this month to agree and launch their ambitious plans for the future partnership between the UK and India", dpa news agency reported.

"They will remain in regular contact beyond this, and look forward to meeting in person later this year," it added.

Johnson was initially scheduled to visit India in January but the trip was cancelled when the UK entered a national lockdown, the third of its kind since the onset of the pandemic last years.

In a report, the BBC said that the UK government had hoped the rescheduled visit in April would boost trade and investment ties, and move the two countries closer to securing a post-Brexit trade agreement.

Last week, Downing Street had said Johnson's visit would be scaled down, rather than across four days as originally planned.

The cancellation comes as India under the second wave of the pandemic has been reporting over 2 lakh single-day cases since the past five days.

On Monday, the overall caseload went up to 15,061,919 after the country registered 2,73,810 new infections in the last 24 hours, the highest single-day spike since the onset of the pandemic.

The death toll increased by 178,769 by another 1,619 new fatalities.

Meanwhile, India is not currently on the UK government's "red list", meaning people returning from the country do not have to quarantine in a hotel for 10 days, the BBC rpeorted.

Susan Hopkins, Chief Medical Advisor for NHS Test and Trace, said the UK did not have enough data yet to determine if India should be put on the list.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed
Johnson Matthey (JM), has unveiled what it says are significant strategic developments in the commercialisation of eLNO  its portfolio of nickel rich advanced cathode materials.

Partnership with Finnish Minerals Group to support development of the previously-announced second commercial plant, which will be in Finland, powered solely by renewable energy and incorporating an effluent treatment solution

Long term sustainable supply of critical raw materials for battery materials production secured, creating an efficient battery electric vehicle supply chain  JM has signed a term sheet for the supply of nickel and cobalt from Nornickel and an agreement for the supply of lithium hydroxide from SQM

In scaling up JMs battery materials business, it has started front-end engineering design for its second commercial plant which will be in Vaasa, on the west coast of Finland.

JM has entered into a partnership with Finnish Minerals Group as it looks to further develop the Finnish batteries ecosystem. Finnish Mineral Group manages the Finnish States mining industry shareholdings and aims to create an integrated electric vehicle battery value chain in the country.

As part of the partnership, Finnish Minerals Group will invest in two key areas. Firstly, to co-develop with JM an integrated solution to treat sodium sulphate, a common manufacturing by-product, providing a sustainable supply chain to conserve natural resources and protect the local environment. Secondly, Finnish Minerals Group will invest in pre-treatment technology of nickel and cobalt sulphates to tailor the materials to the requirements of high nickel cathode materials.

The site will solely use locally generated renewable energy and JM is working with the City of Vaasa to develop a sustainable heat recovery solution, which feeds the local heating system network.



The Finland plant will have a nameplate capacity of 30kT and, subject to board approval following completion of the design, JM expects to start construction later this year.

JM has also signed a term sheet with Nornickel  a supplier of refined nickel products  for delivery of nickel and cobalt from Nornickels metal refineries in Harjavalta, Finland and in the Kola region, Russia. This secures the supply of sustainable, responsibly-sourced raw materials for cathode material production in both Poland and Finland.

In addition to the supply of metals, JM and Nornickel also intend to collaborate on other topics of the battery materials value chain, including the digitalisation of the supply chain, circular economy opportunities, the application of a newly developed metal dissolution technology and further enhancement of the sustainability of the value chain.

JM also announced it has signed an agreement with fellow Global Battery Alliance member, SQM, a supplier of sustainable lithium products, to supply lithium hydroxide from its Salar del Carmen plant in Antofagasta, Chile.

Thematic Reports Are you worried about the pace of innovation in your industry? GlobalData's TMT Themes 2021 Report tells you everything you need to know about disruptive tech themes and which companies are best placed to help you digitally transform your business. Find out more

The partnership with Finnish Minerals Group and the long-term supply of critical raw materials with Nornickel and SQM, are important milestones on our journey towards developing a sustainable battery materials ecosystem and further demonstrate the progress we are making on the commercialisation of our business, said JM chief executive, Robert MacLeod.

With sustainability at the heart our strategy and an increasingly important requirement for our customers and consumers, we are delighted to be working with our partners to deliver sustainable cathode materials to the market.
Indore: In an unusual incident, Bharatiya Janata Party workers on Saturday (April 17) night stopped a tanker carrying over 30 tonnes of oxygen with the motive of performing puja and rituals on it.

While the patients in the city were fighting for every breath, the politicians were holding up the oxygen supply for photo ops. The BJP MPs looked at this moment as a bizarre opportunity to make it into a media spectacle.

The incident took place days after CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan ordered that the oxygen tanks be given ambulance status, which means that the tanks will be escorted by police to ensure there is no hold-up.

The tanker driver had started his journey from Jamnagar in Gujarat at 1 am and stopped only once to get lunch in his 700 km journey. The driver wasnt expecting such a welcome from the local politicians.

ALSO READ: COVID-19 second wave: India's total caseload crosses 1.50 crore after 2.73 lakhs new cases in 24 hours

As per the reports, the tanker was first stopped near Chandan Nagar Square by BJP workers. The halt was a result of local president Gaurav Randives ambition of getting a picture with the oxygen tank. A team of media was already present on the spot to capture the incident in their cameras. Randive was later joined by minister Tulsiram Silawat.

Later on when the tanker arrived at the oxygen plant, BJP MP Shankar Lalwani, and MLAs Ramesh Mendola and Akash Vijayvargiya also took the opportunity to welcome it and further delayed the shipment by hours, as per the reports.

The incident was followed by heavy criticism of BJP leaders of Madhya Pradesh by the opposition. BJP leaders in Indore celebrated the arrival of just one oxygen tanker while 10 people died in Shahdol due to lack of oxygen. This is the height of shamelessness, said PCC spokesperson K K Mishra.

Meanwhile, the COVID-19 situation in India is grim. The country recorded yet again the highest single-day spike of COVID-19 cases with over 2.73 lakh fresh infections and 1,619 deaths in the last 24 hours on Monday, as per the health bulletin.

Live TV




Korean Air B737-900 / Courtesy of Korean Air
May 25  Minneapolis police officers respond to a call shortly after 8 p.m. about a possible counterfeit $20 bill being used at a corner grocery and encounter a Black man, later identified as George Floyd, who struggles and ends up handcuffed and face down on the ground. Officer Derek Chauvin uses his knee to pin Floyd's neck for about nine minutes while bystanders shout at him to stop. Bystander video shows Floyd crying I can't breathe multiple times before going limp. He's pronounced dead at a hospital.

May 26  Police issue a statement saying Floyd died after a medical incident, and that he physically resisted and appeared to be in medical distress. Minutes later, bystander video is posted online. Police release another statement saying the FBI will help investigate. Chauvin and three other officers  Thomas Lane, J. Kueng and Tou Thao  are fired. Protests begin.

May 27  Mayor Jacob Frey calls for criminal charges against Chauvin. Protests lead to unrest in Minneapolis, with some people looting and starting fires. Protests spread to other cities.

May 28  Gov. Tim Walz activates the Minnesota National Guard. Police abandon the 3rd Precinct station as protesters overtake it and set it on fire.

May 29  Chauvin is arrested and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter. President Donald Trump tweets about thugs in Minneapolis protests and warns: When the looting starts, the shooting starts. Protests turn violent again in Minneapolis and elsewhere.

May 30  Trump tries to walk back his tweet. Protests continue nationwide and some turn violent.

May 31  Walz says Attorney General Keith Ellison will lead prosecutions in Floyd's death. The nationwide protests continue.

June 1  The county medical examiner finds that Floyd's heart stopped as police restrained him and compressed his neck, noting Floyd had underlying health issues and listing fentanyl and methamphetamine use as other significant conditions."

June 2  Minnesota's Department of Human Rights launches a civil rights investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department.

June 3  Ellison files a tougher second-degree murder charge against Chauvin and charges the other three officers who were involved in Floyd's arrest.

June 4  A funeral service for Floyd is held in Minneapolis.

June 5  Minneapolis bans chokeholds by police, the first of many changes to be announced in coming months, including an overhaul of the police department's use-of-force policy.

June 6  Massive, peaceful protests happen nationwide to demand police reform. Services are held for Floyd in Raeford, North Carolina, near his birthplace.

June 7  A majority of Minneapolis City Council members say they support dismantling the police department. The idea later stalls but sparks a national debate over police reform.

June 8  Thousands pay their respects to Floyd in Houston, where he grew up. He's buried the next day.

June 10  Floyd's brother testifies before the House Judiciary Committee for police accountability.

June 16  Trump signs an executive order to encourage better police practices and establish a database to track officers with excessive use-of-force complaints.

July 15  Floyds family sues Minneapolis and the four former officers.

July 21  The Minnesota Legislature passes a broad slate of police accountability measures that includes bans on neck restraints, chokeholds and so-called warrior-style training.

Oct. 7  Chauvin posts $1 million bond and is released from state prison, sparking more protests.

Nov. 5  Judge Peter Cahill rejects defense requests to move the officers' trials.

Jan. 12  Cahill rules Chauvin will be tried alone due to courtroom capacity issues. The other officers will be tried in August.

Feb. 12  City leaders say George Floyd Square, the intersection blocked by barricades since Floyd's death, will reopen to traffic after Chauvin's trial.

March 9  The first potential jurors are questioned for Chauvin's trial after a day's delay for pretrial motions.

March 12  Minneapolis agrees to pay $27 million settlement to Floyd family.

March 19  Judge declines to delay or move the trial over concerns that the settlement could taint the jury pool.

March 23  Jury selection completed with 12 jurors and three alternates.

March 29  Opening statements are given.

April 11  Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, is fatally shot by a white police officer during a traffic stop in suburban Brooklyn Center, sparking successive days of protest.

April 12  Judge declines request to sequester Chauvin jury immediately due to Wright shooting.

April 15  Testimony ends.

April 19  Closing arguments begin.
By Barbara Fraser, National Catholic Reporter

Aura Lolita Chavez Ixcaquic, a K'iche' Maya teacher and community leader in Guatemala, was returning home on a bus with other women when armed men boarded the vehicle and demanded to know "Who is Lolita?" Thinking she was about to die, she was about to answer when another woman stood up and said, "I am Lolita." The men began to beat her, when another woman, and then another, said, "No, I am Lolita."

She escaped injury that day, but in 2017, she and other members of the Council of K'iche' Peoples for the Defense of Life, Mother Nature, Land and Territory were attacked after stopping a truck carrying illegally cut timber. Death threats forced her to leave her country that year.

For Chavez, who lived through 24 years of civil war, the peace accords signed in Guatemala in 1996 did not end the violence. A leader in her people's struggle to defend their land against mining, dam construction, and illegal logging, she has been accused of being a guerrilla and a national security threat.

On April 20, she will receive the annual Romero Human Rights Award from the University of Dayton in Dayton, Ohio.

"According to human rights reports, the highest number of killings of human rights defenders happens in Latin America," and most are murdered for their defense of environmental and indigenous rights, Shelley Inglis, executive director of the university's Human Rights Center, told EarthBeat. Chavez, she added, "reflects the spirit and the type of upstanding and human rights advocacy that is needed to really shift our society towards a more sustainable future."

The university established the award, named for St. Oscar Romero, in 2000 to honor individuals or groups who have contributed to the alleviation of suffering or injustice in the world. This year's award ceremony is part of a series of events that began on March 24, focusing on environmental and climate justice.

The earliest award recipients were well-known figures, Inglis said, but more recently the university has highlighted people working at the grassroots. Chavez was one of three finalists for the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 2017, the year she fled Guatemala.

She spoke with EarthBeat from an undisclosed location. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

EarthBeat: What is your homeland like?

Chavez: I'm from a territory in Iximuleu, which the West calls Guatemala. The place is called Quiche. It is a region in the mountains and still has a great deal of biodiversity, although [infrastructure and other] plans and projects have been imposed there. But thanks to our cosmovision, my people  the K'iche' Maya  have a lifestyle closely tied to the web of life. This enables us to maintain our ties to the land.

We plant milpa [a traditional combination of corn, beans, and squash]. We are Corn People, and we are linked to food that comes from the land. Our food is produced by the community itself. The climate is neither hot nor cold, but there are microclimates, and because of that, there are different species, different animals, plants, and other beings that cohabit with us.

We women were cruelly attacked, not only during the time of the [European] invasion, but also during the war. During the war, there were plans for extermination, genocide, a scorched-earth policy, forced disappearances, and that has led to inequality. There is a great deal of inequality in the territory, much poverty, starvation, policies of exclusion by the government of Guatemala. We have our own autonomous organization. Because of that, the various government administrations don't like us. They always attack us through remilitarization.

Street scene in Chajul, in the Quiche region of Guatemala, in December 2014. (Flickr/Adam Jones)

What environmental threats do you face?

There currently are various plans [in the Quiche region], some underway and others still on the drawing board. One is to generate electricity using water. There is an invasion of transnational companies going after the water, because despite climate change and global warming, in my territory  there are rivers and mountains, so we have water. The Chixoy hydroelectric dam, one of the largest in Guatemala, is in the north of Quiche.

There are plans for other hydroelectric dams, and the communities have never been consulted. One of the big questions we raise is: Energy for what, and for whom? Where they generate energy, they don't provide electricity to the communities. They take it for large-scale economic projects.

Because the area is mountainous there are also minerals, so there are mining leases. But community organizations opposed them. There were various community consultations, not carried out by the government, but autonomous, and we managed to block many leases. One of the actions to block the mines was in 2010  and that's when the logging companies moved in. We realized that the government had granted 97 forestry licenses to timber companies.

These are licenses to invade. Since we didn't let the mining companies in, they came with "green capital" plan through REDD+ [reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation]. But that is a false green. They plan forestry [plantations] with companies that eliminate ancestral trees like the teun uman pine, which is a tree very specific to Quiche.

Aura Lolita Chavez Ixcaquic, left, speaks at a rally. (Courtesy Council of K'iche' Peoples)

In what ways do you still feel the effects of the war?

The war had various consequences. One was being stripped of our land. The Maya people have always had our land plundered. There have been forced displacements, and the lands remain in the hands of the oligarchy. The big problem in Guatemala is that most of the land is in the hands of just a few families. That is one of the great consequences of the war: We have little land.

Another is the socioeconomic situation. If you made a map analyzing where the greatest poverty is, it would be where there was more war, more massacres. That relationship has a great deal to do with the extermination plans. In Guatemala there was genocide. And the socioeconomic effects are very marked. There isn't good education. Young people don't have access to art or sports. It's not like they say internationally, that we're "forgotten". We're not "forgotten peoples." We are "hated." The government hates us because we defend our life through our organization.

How have women organized to defend the environment?

At first, we didn't call ourselves defenders. Later we began to understand that being a defender brought international support. We welcome mechanisms such as treaties, declarations by the United Nations and the U.N. special rapporteurs.

We didn't know that we were defenders. We had to seek that [status] because [it helped] us ask for help as we were trying to survive threats, stigmatization, and defamation. They have slandered me, they've called me a guerrilla. They have stigmatized me a lot.

So we analyzed the situation and we organized  not just in the council, [but also] through networks. We women supported each other, because if we didn't, sometimes, the community would not help us. Communities are more likely to recognize men as authorities, because of the machista system. They don't recognize us. And we have to live with the consequences  the attacks on our families, separation from our sons and daughters, rape. Attacks on women are different from attacks on men.

So we got together and organized with national and international networks. That has been a great inspiration: despite being attacked, we have hope that, if we're organized and networked, we will live. And that is a great hope.

Do the networks of women defenders include other Central American countries?

We are united by our histories, ways of life, and experiences.  Companies have regional and continental interests and plans. There are recurrent patterns of attack. The [powerful] families in Honduras, for example, have ties with the [oligarchic] families in Guatemala, and the families who are behind the attacks communicate with each other. The military [leaders] in El Salvador, Mexico, and Guatemala communicate with each other.

The aggressors, those who perpetrate violence, are common to us all: the military, the banks, the drug traffickers. So we women have to be in constant and precise communication, to save lives. We unite not only because we have common agendas and similar situations, but because we need to have regional strategies [and take] urgent action. We need to be able to denounce and demand justice, because otherwise, they'll kill us.

Is the Catholic Church supportive of your work?

More than the Catholic Church as an institution, I would rather speak of a community organization of faith tied to the hope of a decent life. Organized communities and parishes, at the grassroots where the hostile situation really exists, where we're in disputed territory  that's where we find allies in faith groups.  I would speak of the grassroots, the work of faith, of organization, of respect for the land, for the sacred.

That is what unites us. And the people, pastors, and congregations, we join together as one, because if we don't join together, they'll kill them [the church workers] and they'll kill us.  The Catholic Church has a very deep history among my people. The Church was also the refuge for people who were persecuted during the war.  When we had to flee our territories, the church's human mobility ministry saved many lives.

What can non-Indigenous people learn from your people's way of life?

We have the right to live in a territory that for us is sacred. We create a bond of reverence with the water, with the four elements, for example. If only [others] would have that connection, we'd have a great deal for which to thank humanity. If only every day, when we get up, we recognized that we are water, we are earth, we are fire and we are air, that we are in a web of life that is connected with other communities. That we, humanity, are not the center of power, the center of importance in life, but there are other communities that also coexist, and we must listen to them.

When we say that the plants speak, the trees speak, the stones speak, the mountains speak, it's because we listen to them. What we ask of humanity is that we all listen to the voices of the land, the air, the water. They are talking, and we need to listen to them so we can continue to coexist and to live together.

Aura Lolita Chavez Ixcaquic: "It's not like they say internationally, that we're 'forgotten.' We're not 'forgotten peoples.' We are 'hated.' The government hates us because we defend our life through our organization." (Courtesy Council of K'iche' Peoples)

This article is republished from National Catholic Reporter, EarthBeat under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Tokyo, April 19 : The government in Tokyo on Monday called on Myanmar to release a freelance Japanese journalist detained by security forces in Yangon.

Speaking at a news conference here, government spokesman Katsunobu Kato said Tokyo was asking for the early release of the journalist, who was arrested at home on Sunday evening in Yangon, Myanmar's largest city, reports dpa news agency.

Kato did not identify the journalist, but Japanese media named him as Yuki Kitazumi, a former reporter for the Nikkei Business Daily, who now lives in Yangon.

Kitazumi has been under investigation for allegedly disseminating "fake news", Kyodo News reported, citing the Japanese Embassy in Myanmar.

He has been transferred to Insein prison in the city, where many political detainees are incarcerated, according to Kyodo.

In late February, the journalist was also briefly detained by security forces while covering an anti-coup rally, the report said.

On Saturday, the junta granted amnesty to more than 23,000 prisoners as Myanmar began marking its traditional New Year festival, state-run broadcaster MRTV reported, though it was unclear whether anti-coup protesters were among those set free.

The February coup has prompted widespread protests, to which soldiers have responded with a violent crackdown on the population.

Nearly 2,850 have been arrested, and at least 598 have been killed, including 48 children, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), a non-profit organization.
The report " Carotenoids Market by Type (Astaxanthin, Beta-Carotene, Lutein, Lycopene, Canthaxanthin, and Zeaxanthin), Application (Feed, Food & Beverages, Dietary Supplements, Cosmetics, and Pharmaceuticals), Source, Formulation, and Region - Global Forecast to 2026 ", The carotenoids market is projected to grow from USD 1.5 billion in 2019 to USD 2.0 billion by 2026, recording a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.2% during the forecast period. The major factors driving the growth of the carotenoids market includes the growing use of carotenoids in preventive healthcare and as a food colorant in the feed industry.

By application, the feed segment is estimated to account for the largest market share in 2019 in the carotenoids market

Carotenoids are extensively used in animal nutrition products due to their coloring properties and are incorporated in feed to pigment the egg yolks, broiler skin, fishes, and crustaceans. These also help in increasing the immunity and improving the health of livestock by enhancing the quality of nutrition. The fertility of cattle, swine, and horses can be improved by feeding beta-carotene, whereas astaxanthin and canthaxanthin help in improving the growth of salmons and larval fishes.

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The beadlet segment in the carotenoids market is estimated to dominate the market in 2019

On the basis of formulation, the beadlet segment is estimated to dominate the carotenoids market in 2019. Carotenoid beadlets are free-flowing spherical particles developed from spray drying technology. They are usually packed in an aluminum foil bag and stored in a cool and dry place away from direct light, oxygen, and heat. Some of the other major benefits of using beadlet formulations include increased stability, cold water dispersion, and enhanced of shelf life.

The Asia Pacific region is projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period.

The Asia Pacific region is projected to grow at the highest CAGR in the carotenoids market during the forecast period. This is due to the growing application of carotenoids in the health supplements, as they are rich in protein, vitamin, iron, manganese, and antioxidants, which help in preventing cardiovascular diseases and maintaining weight. Asia Pacific offers profitable growth opportunities to manufacturers and suppliers of carotenoids as the processing of carotenoids is cheaper in this region and witnesses a high demand in this region.

The prominent vendors in the carotenoids market includes Koninklijke DSM (Netherlands), BASF (Germany), Chr. Hansen (Denmark), Kemin Industries (US), Lycored Limited (Israel), Cyanotech Corporation (US), Fuji Chemical Industry Co Ltd. (Japan), Novus International (US), DDW The Color House (US), Dohler Group (Germany), Allied Biotech Corporation (Taiwan), EID Parry (India), Farbest Brands (US), Excelvite Sdn. Bhd. (Malaysia), AlgaTechnologies Ltd. (Israel), Zhejiang NHU Co. Ltd (China), Dynadis SARL (France), Deinove SAS (France), Vidya Europe SAS (France), and Divi's Laboratories (India).

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Recent Developments:
Industry Minister Sung Yun-mo, left, takes a look at a semiconductor wafer with Seoul National University researchers at the school's laboratory, April 14. Yonhap



By Baek Byung-yeul



Industry officials and analysts said Monday that they are welcoming the government's push to enact a new law that will be written to support the local semiconductor industry by providing various benefits including tax cuts.



They agreed the government's move seems to be late, saying it is rushing to establish a support measure as U.S. President Joe Biden is pushing forward to enact the CHIPS for America Act, which offers an investment tax credit of 40 percent for equipment or facility costs. The new act came at a time when the U.S. government is trying to increase investment and local chip production.



Given semiconductor companies require an enormous amount of investment to purchase equipment and equip themselves with production facilities, they added the special law would help increase their competence.



"It is true that the support measures have been insufficient. The government have always said that the semiconductor industry is the best card we can play, but their support measures for the industry have been focused on fostering companies in businesses like chip materials, components and equipment. If the new law is enacted, it will definitely help local chip companies boost their investment," an official from the local chip industry said on condition of anonymity.



The ruling Democratic Party of Korea said it will soon launch a special committee to enact support measures for the chip industry.



Rep. Yang Hyang-ja of the party, who once worked as an executive of Samsung Electronics, said it is urgent that the government provides more benefits to chip companies helping them maintain competitiveness in the industry.



"China provides a 10-year exemption from corporate taxes to chip companies and the European Union is also considering offering subsidies to investment costs," Yang said adding that the special committee will try to enact the new law in the National Assembly next month.



Industry officials also expect that the government could provide an exception to chip companies when dealing with chemical substances.



"Due to the current Act on Registration and Evaluation of Chemical Substances, it takes too much time to add a new production line. It is understandable that tight regulations should be applied to semiconductor companies that are dealing with a massive amount of chemical substances but we expect that the new law could also include a fast-track program so we can shorten the approval process," the official said.



The success of the new law depends on how well the act is designed to maintain "continuity," said Lee Jong-hwan, a professor at the Department of System Semiconductor Engineering at Sangmyung University.



"We've seen a lot of cases where decisions made under the previous administration were reversed when a new administration was established. When it comes to the chip industry, it takes about two years to see the effectiveness of the new chip production facility. Considering these characteristics of the chip industry, the new law should be enacted with a long-term view," the professor said.



Industry officials also called on the government to invest more in fostering professionals in the semiconductor industry.



"In the chip industry here, most new employees majored in other disciplines such as chemistry or electronic engineering, not specifically semiconductors. This means chip companies have to spend a lot of time and money to foster the professionals they need," a chip industry official said. "It will be good for both the chip companies and their employees if the newcomers learn practical parts of the chip business in school and then join the company."



In response to the call, Industry Minister Sung Yun-mo announced April 14 that the government plans to foster training for 4,800 people in the chip industry over the next two years.



To achieve the plan, the government will support universities to establish new classes in chip design designed for third-year students, starting from next year. Students who undertake the studies will see greater opportunities to work at chip design companies based on their education, the ministry said.



Lee of Sangmyung University urged the government to come up with a long-term measure so that young people continue to pay attention to the chip industry.



The government should know that young people are very sensitive to their expected income levels. This is why they are paying more attention to information technologies. So, the government should instill a long-term vision that this industry is a promising part of the future and people in the semiconductor industry deserve higher salaries," the professor said.


New Delhi, April 19 : Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Monday slammed BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis 'for hoarding Remdesivir injections which is a life-saving drug for corona patients'.

She tweeted in Hindi, loosely translated as "When people across the country are pleading for making available Remdesivir and struggling for each vial, at this moment one BJP leader who has been on an important post is hoarding the injection which is a crime against humanity." The matter pertains to the Mumbai Police officials, which claimed that at least 60,000 vials of Remdesivir had been stored at different locations in the city such as Vile Parle, Malad, Kandivali, South Mumbai by Bruck Pharma. The police took custody of the representatives of the pharma company, but in a twist, the opposition leader Devendra Fadnavis went to the police office to "rescue" the official of Bruck Pharma, who had been detained by the police for questioning over the supply/sale of Remdesivir injections.

The Pharma company has its manufacturing unit in Daman & Diu. As per reports it was approached by BJP MLC from Maharashtra Prasad Lad who had sought to buy the injections for Covid patients in Maharashtra.

Fadnavis in his defence claimed the pharma company had obtained all permissions and was providing the injections to Maharashtra.

Shiv Sena has accused that the BJP bought the stock to distribute just like the BJP Gujarat state chief had done. "How did a private individual like Fadnavis procure Remdesivir stock from Gujarat when sale is allowed only to the government," asked Sena.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Prior to being fatally wounded during an altercation at Sugar Rush Partyland, Jaime Leal-Rodriguez spent his last moments of his life defending a person from the alleged stabber and tending to an injured person before the suspect attacked him from behind, according to an arrest affidavit.

Anthony Tays Jr., 18, is accused of fatally stabbing Leal-Rodriguez, 22, and injuring five other men. He was served with warrants on April 6 charging him with one count of murder and five counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Furthermore, Tays stepfather, Lester Herrera, allegedly fired shots in the air during the altercation inside Sugar Rush. Herrera, 34, remains at large.

To report his whereabouts, call police at 795-2800 or Laredo Crime Stoppers at 727-TIPS (8477). Information provided via Crime Stoppers may be eligible for a reward of up to $1,000. Callers will remain anonymous.

Shooting

Laredo police officers responded to a shooting at about 4:58 a.m. April 5 at the Sugar Rush Partyland on 4502 McPherson Road. The caller stated there were multiple people injured. First officers on the scene encountered four men ages 25, 26, 29 and 31 with injuries.

Authorities spoke to several witnesses along with band members of the local group Grupo Frontera. All witnesses including the band members were taken to LPD headquarters for questioning. Meanwhile, officers canvassed the area and observed several pieces of shattered glass from beer and liquor bottles. In addition, officers discovered several spent casings scattered on the floor.

While officers were on scene, Laredo Medical Center emergency personnel contacted police saying that Leal-Rodriguez had been dropped off with injuries he sustained at Sugar Rush. Leal-Rodriguez had several cuts and lacerations to his upper torso. He was later pronounced dead at 5:55 a.m.

Crimes against persons detectives took over the investigation.

Shortly after, Doctors Hospital personnel informed police about a 23-year-old man who had a laceration to his arm. The investigation revealed he was stabbed at Sugar Rush, according to the affidavit.

Owners unaware

A walkthrough of the scene at Sugar Rush revealed several spent casings and multiple bullet holes visible on the ceiling inside the party place. Authorities also noticed several pools of blood on the floor.

Sugar Rushs owners arrived at the scene. They stated they had rented their business on Easter Sunday. One owner stated she only had a verbal agreement with a regular customer who had a key to the business.

It is possible that the regular customer and his cousin gained access to the business and hosted a party without the owners knowledge, according to police.

One owner stated she usually allowed the customer and his cousin to have the key for the weekend and return it the following Monday. The owner then allowed police to access the surveillance video.

Caught on camera

Surveillance video showed a young man taking what appears to be a knife or some sort of cutting instrument from his pocket. Authorities would later identify the man as Tays.

Tays enters the video, takes out what appears to be a knife and stabs one man who was giving his back. Then, Leal-Rodriguez appears to defend the man as he punches Tays. Leal-Rodriguez and Tays fell to the floor with Leal-Rodriguez on top, states the affidavit.

Leal-Rodriguez punches Tays in the face several times while Tays continues swiping Leal-Rodriguezs back with the knife. Leal-Rodriguez gets up and staggers toward the entrance door where he is seen tending to another injured person, according to court documents.

However, Tays is subsequently seen on video walking toward Jaime (Leal-Rodriguez). As Jaime (Leal-Rodriguez) is seen directing his attention to the injured party, Tays comes from behind with the knife still in hand and swipes at Jaimes (Leal-Rodriguezs) upper chest area. Jaime (Leal-Rodriguez) immediately grimaces before quickly escaping through the front door where he is seen walking through the shattered glass of the door and to the parking lot. Preliminary medical reports indicate that Jaime (Leal-Rodriguez) subsequently bled out from the apparent stab wounds and ultimately died, states the affidavit.

Further review of the surveillance video showed Herrera shooting a firearm up in the air multiple times.

The video is consistent with the spent casings and bullet holes in the ceiling seen at the business. Further investigation revealed that Lester Herrera is the stepfather of Anthony Tays, states the affidavit.

Tays denies allegations

Tays was the only person armed with a knife while other people used chairs and liquor or beer bottles as weapons, according to police. He arrived voluntarily at LPD headquarters for an interview.

Pursuant to waiving his Miranda warnings, Tays denied being armed with any weapon and stated that he was assaulted by a subject with gray tattoos on his chest (consistent with Jaime Leal-Rodriguez) for no apparent reason. When confronted with still images of him at the party, Tays invoked his right to an attorney, states the affidavit.

Tays appeared in court on Thursday for a habeas corpus hearing seeking his release arguing that his continued detention was unlawful based on evidence without probable cause. But 406th District Court Judge Oscar J. Hale Jr. determined that Tays was lawfully detained.
There are a dozen Connecticut communities where 65 percent or more of their population have received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine, the latest state data shows.

In Middlesex County, more than 72 percent of Old Saybrooks 10,000 residents have received at least the first shot, state data shows. In Lyme, just north and across the Connecticut River, 75 percent of the 2,300 residents have received at least one dose, according to the data.

Gov. Ned Lamont on Thursday highlighted Lyme as the states champion for vaccinations.

Theyre really close to herd immunity there, he said.

The data suggests a few mostly affluent communities are nearing the threshold of 80 percent vaccine coverage most often cited as the gateway to herd immunity against COVID-19.

Josh Geballe, the states chief operating officer, praised the efforts of local health officials.

Its also communities that skew a little older, so theyve had a bit of a head start here, he said.

Geballe also credited strong partnerships between the various vaccine providers, and said demand is still high for shots in communities with lower vaccination rates. The state expects those rates to increase in the coming weeks.

Statewide, about 55 percent of residents 16 and older have received at least a first shot of vaccine, according to the governors office.

But many of Connecticuts largest cities, including Hartford and Bridgeport, still report vaccine coverage percentages well below the state average.

Hartford still ranks last with just under 28 percent of its 122,000 residents having received at least one dose of a vaccine, the data shows. The numbers show Hartfords rate increased about 6 percent since last week.

Bridgeport, with a population of more than 144,000, hasnt fared much better. A little more than 30 percent of residents have received at least one shot, up about 5 percent from the previous week, according to the data.

Waterbury, which Lamont flagged as a hot spot for cases, also ranks low with roughly 31 percent of its 108,000 residents vaccinated.

But its not just cities with low vaccine coverage.

The town of North Canaan, nestled against the Massachusetts border in far northern Litchfield County, sits second-to-last with 28 percent of its 3,200 residents receiving at least the first dose, the data shows.

North Canaans population is similar to nearby Kent, but there is a stark difference in vaccination rates. Kent ranks third in the state with 69 percent of its residents who have received at least the first dose, state data shows.

Often its in the cities where we have a little more hesitancy and real access problems, we gotta continue to do a really good job there, Lamont said. But you can also see in some of our rural areas you can have a town very vaccinated next to one thats less so.

Lamont said that could be attributed to cultural things that will need to be addressed by local health departments.

Weve got to emphasize that its in the interest of the entire state, the entire community, that nobody gets left behind, he said.

Like previous weeks, the data shows communities marked as having a significantly vulnerable population  many of which are located in cities  rank lower. Going down the list of the top communities by vaccine coverage, No. 17 West Hartford is the first municipality to be flagged with a vulnerable population. About 63 percent of the towns roughly 63,000 residents have received at least one shot, the data shows.

The state is also facing the challenge of the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine being suspended this week as federal agencies investigate a rare blood clotting issue in six people who received the vaccine.

As a result, Lamont said the National Guard helped swap out doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine from the states mobile vaccination vans. And because the vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna each require two doses, the vans will need to follow up in several weeks to deliver the second shots.

Its a little more complicated than it was a week ago, were still getting it done with a special emphasis upon equity, the governor said.
April 19, 1956

Actress weds prince in Monte Carlo palace

Actress Grace Kelly was wed to Prince Rainier III in a grand church wedding at the Monaco Cathedral in Monte Carlo.

Kelly, a native of Philadelphia, wore a Lanvin-Castollo gown that was covered with 800,000 rhinestones and pearls. Her groom wore a midnight blue suit adorned with medals and the red sash of St. Charles.

After leaving the cathedral, the couple made the traditional stop at the Church of St. Devote. At the church, Kelly kissed the relics of the St. Devote, a Christian martyr and patron saint of Monaco.

In the afternoon in the court of the Grimaldi Palace, Rainer, using a large knife, made the ceremonial first cut into their 4-foot-high wedding cake. Following the cut, chefs took the cake and prepared slices for the hundreds invited to the palace. There were also tables filled with all sorts of savory treats, such as caviar sandwiches, smoked salmon and pate de foie gras. Waiters walked among the guests, offering glasses of champagne.

At 5 p.m., the royal couple boarded the yacht Deo Juvante II for a seven-week Mediterranean cruise.

The pair was wed April 18 in a civil ceremony at the palace. In the evening, the couple attended a gala event at the Monte Carlo Opera House, featuring opera and ballet performances.

Grand jury goes on a field trip for evidence

A federal grand jury in Scranton went on a field trip to the Army Signal Corps Depot at Tobyhanna. The grand jury was looking into irregularities in the depots construction costs.

Fifteen jurors boarded a bus the morning of April 19 while an additional four jurors opted to drive themselves to the depot. Also on the tour were U.S. Attorney J. Julius Levy and reporters from Pittsburgh newspapers.

Once at the depot, they were given a tour by Col. Robert Angst, the depots commanding officer. Federal Judge John W. Murphy told the jurors to ask questions of any personnel while on their tour.

According to an official with the court, this was first time an investigative panel in the U.S. Middle District had gone on a field trip to see what it was they were investigating.

Shopping at Leonards

Sixty feet of copper tubing was $17.59, adjustable floor supports were $7.89, clothesline kit (steel pulley for 79 cents, 100 feet of sash cord for $1.89 and line tightener for 69 cents), a night latch for doors was $1.89, Clopay accordion door for $8.95 plus a free quart of Spiffy paint, grass rake for 89 cents and a 12-inch lawn roller for $12.89.
James Levey holds a masters degree in China studies from the Institute for Asian Studies at St. Johns University in New York and has traveled to China extensively on business.
Sonia Amroun is a 34-year-old entrepreneur from Paris. Last December, she packed her bags to escape the cold weather and coronavirus lockdown in France. Amroun was planning to spend just a month on the island of La Palma, but when she got there she decided to stay. Now she combines her job as the sales manager for the French startup Mobeelity with running Casa Benahoares, a coliving space in the municipality of Los Llanos de Ariadne. The idea that great minds have to be in a metropolis and living a stressful life to move forward in their careers is over, she tells EL PAIS via a video call. I work 12 hours, seven days a week. But I look at the mountains and I am happy. La Palma is a dream come true.

Sonia Amroun (l), a 34-year-old entrepreneur from Paris, in Casa Benahoares. Van Marty

The tourism industry in Spains Canary Islands has been devastated by the coronavirus pandemic. The streets of the main tourist destinations remain empty, with less than 40% of accommodation (around 17,000 beds) open for business. The Canary Islands is now the Spanish region with the highest level of unemployment and experts warn that this could spark a deep social crisis. But many businesses have been saved by the bid to attract remote workers. The professionals who arrive in the Canary Islands to work remotely have greater purchasing power and spend more. Whats more, they do not bring with them the negative impact of mass tourism.

The number of remote workers in the region has risen 10% a month since last September, when the Canary Islands regional government announced a 500,000-plan to attract 30,000 of these professionals in a decade. The archipelago is currently home to around 8,000 remote workers from a wide range of countries such as Germany, France, the United Kingdom and increasingly from the United States, according to the Canary Association of Coworking Spaces. This is a new movement that is yet to be addressed in traditional tourism surveys carried out by the National Statistics Institute (INE).

A map in a coliving space in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria with photos of the residents pinned to the countries where they are from. Repeople

For 22-year-old Tracy Keogh, the rise of remote working represents a broader change in attitudes. Not only did Keogh move from Ireland to the Canary Islands during the pandemic, but she is also the co-founder of Grow Remote, a startup supported by the Irish government that tries to connect businesses with remote workers from across the world. Its not just about the self-employed deciding to travel. Its a paradigm shift, a new way of working, says Keogh.

Yaiza Castilla, the regional tourism chief in the Canary Islands, agrees that there has been a shift: During this last year, the idea of working remotely from other places has become stronger.

Tracy Keogh, 22-year-old remote worker. quique curbelo

Juan Betancor has also witnessed this trend. His real estate business Living Las Canteras  named after the popular Las Canteras beach in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria  has been running since 2010 and manages a number of properties, including 16 beachfront homes. Up until last year, between 5% and 10% of renters were remote workers. Since October, that number is 90%, he says. But the real estate business is not as profitable as it once was: while a tourist usually pays between 900 and 1,000 for one week of accommodation, a remote worker pays around 1,400 for the whole month.

Fiona Murray is one of the remote workers who has rented a room from Betancor. The 44-year-old from Ireland left London in October to live by the beach. My life [in London] had become a nightmare, says Murray from her balcony overlooking the sea. Now I work more than before, but I swim every day in the Atlantic. Murray is the head of Informa, a company that focuses on trade and brokering in Asia.

Juan Betancor, the manager of the real estate company Living Las Canteras. quique curbelo

And its not just remote workers who are being drawn to the Canary Islands; the region also wants to attract tech companies. On this island [Gran Canaria] alone there are 12 digital-animation and post-production companies, says Cosme Garcia Falcon, the manager of the Society for the Economic Promotion of Gran Canaria (Spegc), which works under the Gran Canaria government. According to his figures, the number of jobs in the tech sector has nearly tripled in just two years, which is allowing local talent to enter the market. Spegc has also just edited a guide called How to Set Up in Gran Canaria, in English and Spanish, which explains the paperwork needed and provides advice for common problems families have when relocating.

Rise of coliving spaces

The growing number of remote workers in the region has seen a rise in demand for different services, especially in cooperative living spaces, says Ignacio Rodriguez, a businessman and executive member of the Global Teleworking Association. With coworking spaces, different professionals share the same office space but carry out their work independently. Cooperative living takes this one step further: it is about creating spaces for residents with similar interests (such as remote working), so that not only do they share an office space, they also share a home where they can continue to exchange work and life experiences. That is what I think is going to grow significantly, given that coworking spaces have been more affected by [coronavirus] restrictions, says Rodriguez.

Larger companies have also jumped on the teleworking bandwagon, such as the hotel chain Grupo Mur, which manages four hotels in Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura. You have to go follow the trends, says Mario Romero Mur, the managing director of the company. Thats why the company will open a new property in the beach neighborhood of Guanarteme in November.

Carlos Jonay Sanchez and Elsa Rodriguez, the entrepreneurs behind the initiative Pueblos Remotos, in Icod de los Vinos in Tenerife. Pueblos Remotos

Interestingly, not all remote workers are heading to the regions big cities. Sonia Amroun is living in an inland municipality of La Palma where there are just 21,000 inhabitants. She is hoping to attract teleworkers like her to Casa Benahoares, the coliving space she now runs. Carlos Jonay Suarez and Elsa Rodriguez, from Tenerife, are also trying to lure remote workers to the countryside with their initiative Pueblos Remotos (or, Remote Villages). We want to connect our rural areas with remote workers, connect local talent with local entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs to one another, and in this way, try to generate socio-economic benefits with the least negative impact, they say by video call. This first project will take place in Icod de los Vinos in the north of Tenerife. Their goal is to bring 10 people from across the world who are willing to work remotely there from May 23 to June 13, on the condition that they will take part in six projects from entrepreneurs in the municipality.

But the coronavirus pandemic will come to an end at some point and many remote workers will likely have to return to their home countries. The region, however, is fighting to ensure that some of them stay or at least return. Fiona Murray, for one, is sold on the idea. In June I will return to London, she says. But I am going to speak with my bosses so that they let me work remotely all of December. I have to keep the Canaries in my life.

English version by Melissa Kitson.
House Bill 4029, Legalize stun guns: Passed 78 to 32 in the House

To repeal a ban on the sale, possession or use of "stun devices" by adults, defined as a device that is capable of creating an electro-muscular disruption  capable of temporarily incapacitating or immobilizing an individual by the direction or emission of conducted energy." This does not include a launchable device, which means Tasers would still be prohibited.

 97 Rep. Jason Wentworth R - Clare Y

 100 Rep. Scott VanSingel R - Grant Y

 102 Rep. Michele Hoitenga R - Manton Y

House Bill 4568, Push back tax deadlines in epidemic: Passed 108 to 1 in the House

To push-back the April 15, 2021, deadline for filing 2020 individual state income tax returns and payments, and the April 30 deadline for corporate income tax filers. The new dates for 2021 only are May 17 and June 1, respectively. This is part of a legislative package that also places in statute delays to city income tax and other 2021 tax deadlines, after the IRS pushed back federal tax filing deadlines in March.

 97 Rep. Jason Wentworth R - Clare Y

 100 Rep. Scott VanSingel R - Grant Y

 102 Rep. Michele Hoitenga R - Manton Y

House Bill 4055, Revise details of certain state scholarships in epidemic: Passed 107 to 3 in the House

To expand the eligibility standard in the 2020-21 school year for a competitive state merit award scholarship, so that students would be eligible if they get a high grade point average, class rank, or other measure of academic success. Under current law the eligibility threshold for these scholarships is a score of at least 1,200 on the SAT test, but most students will not have the opportunity to take that test due to school lockdowns and restrictions.

 97 Rep. Jason Wentworth R - Clare Y

 100 Rep. Scott VanSingel R - Grant Y

 102 Rep. Michele Hoitenga R - Manton Y

House Bill 4343, Mandate public schools give excused absence for playing Taps at military funeral: Passed 105 to 5 in the House

To add a provision to Michigan law requiring that if a public school student who is absent for a day because he or she is playing Taps at a military funeral it is considered an excused absence.

 97 Rep. Jason Wentworth R - Clare Y

 100 Rep. Scott VanSingel R - Grant Y

 102 Rep. Michele Hoitenga R - Manton Y

SOURCE: MichiganVotes.org, a free, nonpartisan website created by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, providing concise, nonpartisan, plain-English descriptions of every bill and vote in the Michigan House and Senate. Permission to reprint this legislative summary in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that MichiganVotes.org is properly cited.

Y = Yes, N = No, X = Not Voting
Press Release

Nokia to deploy indoor 5G small cells solutions with LG Uplus in South Korea

Nokia will expand and enhance LG Uplus' 5G network, enabling seamless 5G connectivity between indoor and outdoor locations

LG Uplus will use Nokia's AirScale indoor solution which can be deployed flexibly and upgraded easily

The deal continues the long-standing partnership between the two companies





19 April 2021

Espoo, Finland - Nokia today announced an agreement with LG Uplus to expand 5G coverage by installing new equipment from Nokia's comprehensive AirScale portfolio across the country, enabling seamless 5G indoor and outdoor connectivity. The dealis expected to accommodate future network expansion and will further deepen the partnership between the two companies, which have already collaborated on LTE, 5G and digital projects.

Being the first deployment of its kind in South Korea, Nokia will install its cost-effective, next-generation small cell AirScale Indoor (ASiR) systems in a range of indoor locations including shopping malls and office buildings. Composed of Nokia's Digital Baseband unit and ASiR-pRRH solution (pico Remote Radio Head), the system features multi-operator and multi-band support and will enable LG Uplus to provide 5G connectivity.

The compact and flexible nature of the ASiR indoor system means it can be deployed quickly in strategic locations when additional capacity is required and is ideal for both consumers and enterprise customers. ASiR facilitates a simple service upgrade to 5G New Radio with minimal on-site working if required, and features a web-based manager, enabling remote configuration without need for a separate application - making it an ideal replacement for traditional, complex and expensive distributed antenna system (DAS) systems - with flexibility further enhanced by cell combination and splitting.

DaeHee Kim, Senior Vice President, Head of Network Infra Technology Group, LG Uplus, said: "Nokia's AirScale system will help provide seamless 5G connectivity in indoor locations and environments. Its cost-effective, flexibility and compact design enables us to enhance our 5G offering."

Tommi Uitto, President, Mobile Networks, Nokia, said: "We are delighted to have been chosen by LG Uplus to provide infrastructure that will be critical to a seamless 5G experience. Having worked with LG Uplus on a number of other recent projects, we believe the AirScale system is the right choice to complement existing solutions and enable next generation 5G connectivity."

Resources:

Webpage: Nokia AirScale (https://www.nokia.com/networks/solutions/airscale-radio-access/)

(https://www.nokia.com/networks/solutions/airscale-radio-access/) Webpage: Nokia AirScale Indoor Radio System (https://www.nokia.com/networks/products/airscale-indoor-radio-system/)

(https://www.nokia.com/networks/products/airscale-indoor-radio-system/) Press Release: Nokia, LG Uplus to trial 5G B2B digital platform in Korea (https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news/releases/2021/03/11/nokia-lg-uplus-to-trial-5g-b2b-digital-platform-in-korea/)





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 highest standards of integrity and security, we help build the capabilities needed for a more productive, sustainable and inclusive world.
Pashinian said last week that Ter-Petrosian told him to surrender lands to Azerbaijan when they met in July 2018. He made the claim when he spoke in the Armenian parliament and blamed his predecessors for Armenias defeat in last years Karabakh war.

That is a complete lie, Levon Zurabian, the deputy chairman of Ter-Petrosians Armenian National Congress (HAK), told RFE/RLs Armenian Service at the weekend.

This ability by Armenias leader to lie poses a threat to our national security because he resorts to the same practice not only in internal politics but also in foreign relations, he said, commenting on Pashinians claim. In a sense, the disastrous consequences which we have had in diplomacy and during the war are also to do with his untrustworthiness, inability to reach agreements and broader systemic flaws of his rule.

Zurabian insisted that Ter-Petrosian said totally different things at the 2018 meeting held two months after the velvet revolution that brought Pashinian to power. He said the ex-president, who had governed Armenia from 1991-1998, simply reaffirmed his strong support for a compromise solution to the Karabakh conflict which had first been proposed by international mediators in 1997.

That peace plan called for Armenian withdrawal from virtually all districts around Karabakh. The disputed territory itself would remain under Armenian control until an Armenian-Azerbaijani agreement on its internationally recognized status.

A Russian-brokered deal which stopped the second Karabakh war on November 10 offered less favorable terms to the Armenian side, reflecting sweeping territorial made by Azerbaijani force during the six-week hostilities.

Weeks before the ceasefire Ter-Petrosian and another former president, Robert Kocharian, offered to travel to Moscow for urgent talks with Russian leaders. Pashinian reportedly refused to authorize them to negotiate on behalf of his administration.

In late November, Pashinian questioned the sincerity and seriousness of the ex-presidents initiative, prompting angry reactions from them. A spokesman for Ter-Petrosian described the prime minister as a nation-destroying scourge who will never be forgiven by the Armenian people.

Like other opposition groups, Ter-Petrosians HAK has blamed Pashinian for Azerbaijans victory. Zurabian insisted in November that Pashinian could have stopped the war earlier and with fewer Armenian territorial losses but did not do that because of his insatiable vanity.
MANCHESTER  A Roodhouse man was arrested Sunday on six charges, including driving under the influence of drugs, after two crashes on U.S. 67 near the Scott and Greene counties line.

Robert Sprague, 48, of Roodhouse, suffered non-life-threatening injuries in the crashes, which happened about 6:15 a.m. Sunday.
CRANBURY, N.J., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- dvm360, the No. 1 multimedia platform in the veterinary industry, in partnership with Banfield Pet Hospital, are pleased to announce they will be hosting a second free virtual veterinary recruitment event on Thursday, April 29, from 3 to 6 p.m. EST.

dvm360 & Banfield Pet Hospital announce they will be hosting a free virtual veterinary recruitment event on April 29

"We are once again proud to partner with Banfield to host our very own career fair," said Mike Hennessy Jr., president and CEO of MJH Life Sciences, the parent company of dvm360. "This is an amazing opportunity to connect our readers with the greater veterinarian community and well-respected employers like Banfield who are looking to hire. Throughout the event, our attendees will be able to network with our expert guest speakers, get industry exposure and gain the confidence to help them land their dream job."

During this one-day event, current students, recent graduates, experienced veterinarians or veterinary support staff members will have the chance to participate in four live interactive Q&A presentations. Topics range from interview best practices, tips and tricks, resume writing, understanding the importance of diversity and inclusion in the veterinary workplace and much more. Attendees will also have the opportunity to connect and network with Banfield associates.

dvm360's chief veterinary officer, Adam Christman, D.V.M., MBA, will moderate the following sessions:

Get the Job You Want!

Health and Well-being When It Matters Most

Make an Impact in Your Community

Why Inclusion & Diversity Matter in the Workplace

"We're excited and always looking to connect with talented veterinarians, credentialed veterinary technicians, and our future veterinary professionals of tomorrow," added Sindy Vasquez, director of talent acquisition of Banfield.

For more information and to register, click here.

About dvm360The leading media-content provider in the veterinary market, dvm360 has been in operation for more than 50 years. It provides readers with top-of-the-line digital and print content that focuses on every aspect of a veterinary professional's life. In addition, dvm360 hosts continuing education (CE) conferences that provide a 360-degree educational engagement experience for veterinary professionals. These conferences include several Fetch dvm360 conferences and the Atlantic Coast Veterinary Conference, CE events that have been a staple in the veterinary community for decades. dvm360 is a brand of MJH Life Sciences, the largest privately held, independent, full-service medical media company in North America, dedicated to delivering trusted health care news across multiple channels.

About Banfield Pet HospitalBanfield Pet Hospital was founded in Portland, Ore. in 1955 and today is a pioneer in preventive veterinary care with more than 1,000 general veterinary hospitals in 42 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico and Mexico. More than 3,600 Banfield veterinarians are committed to providing high-quality veterinary care to over three million pets annually. Banfield collects data from each of these visits in the U.S.'s largest electronic veterinary health records system. Our goal is to be here for pets, people and society. As part of the Mars Veterinary Health family of practices, Banfield is committed to its purposeA BETTER WORLD FOR PETSbecause pets make a better world for us. Press seeking additional information are invited to call the Media Hotline: (888) 355-0595.

dvm360 Media ContactAlexandra Ventura, 609-716-7777aventura@mjhlifesciences.com

View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dvm360-and-banfield-pet-hospital-partner-to-host-second-virtual-recruitment-event-301271780.html

SOURCE dvm360
The other day I killed a couple that were about seven feet in length, said Jose Dagoberto, who works at a ranch on the outskirts of Webb County in Bruni. However, those are just the big ones, these snakes can be found anywhere now thanks to this weather.

Snake sightings  and especially rattlesnake sightings  have grown all over the community as hot weather has settled in the area and the reptile and snake season began.

There have been numerous calls to 9-1-1 of rattlesnakes caught inside residences in Rio Bravo, City of Rio Bravo City Commissioner Julio Cavazos said. Some of them had dangerous encounters. These rattlesnakes cant control their temperature on hot days, so they always look for a place to cool, and most of the places that are cool are peoples homes. It is a very dangerous situation because these snakes are deadly and very territorial.

Rio Bravos fire chief reports that they have indeed had to deal with several of these snakes in residences in the city and in nearby El Cenizo.

We have had four calls already, and they are big snakes, Rio Bravo Fire Chief Juan C. Gonzalez said. They have been mostly around five and a half feet.

He notes that all of these snakes have been aggressive, and can pose danger to both people and pets.

If its too aggressive, like the ones we have encountered, we have had to dispose of them by killing them, Gonzalez said. As for any smaller ones we have encountered, we usually catch them, and we release them on the brush away from the city. But, these four that we have encountered are aggressive and heavy.

He states that people should know when a rattlesnake is acting aggressively because their rattler can be heard as far as 30 feet away. Hissing is also another sign that they are aggressive, which he states it is usually attributed to them feeling in danger.

Usually, they get aggressive because a cat or dog are nearby, so they get real aggressive when this happens, and they are ready to strike, Gonzalez said.

Rattlesnakes are not only common in rural areas but can also be found all over the city, said C. J. Soto, Laredo College lab technician and animal caretaker.

April is a busy month for all reptiles as the climate is ideally in their favor, Soto said. Rattlesnakes are native to this area; it is not uncommon for a rattlesnake sighting during this time of day.

There is also an abundant rodent population that is helping feed and keep these snakes alive right now, he said.

Gonzalez states that people who encounter a snake near them should stop and let the snake go away if they are not heading towards their direction. If the snake and the person are closer than 10 feet, Gonzalez advises for people to start walking slowly backwards to avoid getting bitten. He states that even if the snake starts rattling as they walk away slowly, this is something the snake just does for precaution.

A man from El Cenizo was recently bitten by a rattlesnake, and though he sought medical care right away, he had to be transported all the way to San Antonio to get treated for the bite.

Gonzalez advises that staying calm is one of the best ways to treat an encounter with a snake and also deal with a snake bite as well.

Although it might sound weird, it is important to stay calm and call 9-1-1, because when you get bitten, you are going to start screaming and all that and as the adrenaline starts going into your body, then venom goes faster than when you are calm, Gonzalez said.

Dagoberto states that he has never been bitten by a snake, but he is afraid that they might bite his coworkers or others in the area.

I have gained to love these creatures even though they are pretty frightening to see, Dagoberto said. However, I do hope that I get to continue seeing them from afar or just in pictures as killing them becomes tougher as they get bigger.

He recommends leaving them alone, even if they appear dead. According to Soto, there is not much time to waste after a bite, which is why he states that if someone lives at a ranch or out of city limits to make sure that they have an ambulance meet them halfway. One generally starts to experience serious symptoms after 45 minutes.

If treated with antivenom within two hours of a rattlesnake bite, the recovery is promising, the animal expert adds.

Soto states, however, that people should avoid killing the snakes because they are not out there to cause harm even though they are poisonous. They are just other reptiles roaming freely in the area.

Though I do not believe rattlesnakes sightings have grown, I have seen an increase of people posing with dead snakes more so than ever on social media, Soto said. I promise you the snake looks so much better alive. When our center opens again, you can take all the selfies youve ever wanted with a living-breathing snake. Just be sure to turn off the flash and stay behind the glass.

jorge.vela@lmtonline.com
BOSTON, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Great Learning , a leading global ed-tech company for professional and higher education, announces the launch of MIT Professional Education's Applied Data Science Program with curriculum developed and taught by MIT faculty, and delivered in collaboration with Great Learning. The comprehensive curriculum for the twelve-week program will be delivered on weekdays, followed by sessions over the weekends by Great Learning mentors and industry experts.

As per QS World University Rankings for 2019-2020 , MIT was named the world's top university for the eighth year in a row based on factors such as academic reputation, employer reputation, citations per faculty, student-to-faculty ratio, proportion of international faculty, and proportion of international students

The curriculum for the Applied Data Science Program starts with basics such as Statistics and increases in complexity as it moves into Graph Neural Networks. It is designed for working professionals and entrepreneurs aspiring to learn contemporary and advanced Data Science topics. After successful completion of the program, learners with prior experience in programming and statistics should be able to understand various Data Science techniques and their applications to real-world problems, and how to implement various Machine Learning techniques to solve complex problems and make data-driven business decisions. The program offers hands-on exposure to industry-relevant projects created by Data Science and Machine Learning experts via live and personalized mentored learning sessions.

Speaking about the collaboration Mohan Lakhmaraju , Founder and CEO, Great Learning said, "We started Great Learning 7 years ago with a vision of making high-quality, outcome-driven, impactful learning accessible to all. We are exited to collaborate with MIT Professional Education in the delivery of this program. Collaborations with prestigious institutions such as MIT, assist us in realizing our vision of enabling access to high-quality education and impressive learning outcomes for anyone willing to work hard and upskill."

"The Advanced Data Science Program offered by MIT Professional Education brings together cutting-edge content and teaching from MIT faculty, while reflecting the educational ideals of MIT's founders who were focused on, above all, education for practical application," said Malgorzata Hedderick, Director of Short and International Programs at MIT Professional Education. "We look forward to collaborating with Great Learning on the delivery of the program, and the additional benefit participants will receive from Great Learning's program mentors."

The program will help prepare professionals for sought-after roles including Data Analyst, Data Scientist, Machine Learning Engineer, and Analytics/Data Science Manager. It will also help aspiring entrepreneurs who are looking to build and lead impactful organizations and businesses in tackling complex business problems. Upon successful completion of the program, learners will receive a Certificate of Completion from MIT Professional Education.

Interested professionals and practitioners are invited to learn more about the program from Prof. Devavrat Shah, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Great Learning experts at a webinar on April 21st, 2021, at 11:00 am (ET) by registering at https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/3440095220363437325?source=pr

About MIT Professional Education

For 70 years, MIT Professional Education has been providing technical professionals worldwide a gateway to renowned MIT research, knowledge and expertise, through advanced education programs designed specifically for them. In addition to industry-focused, two-to-five-day live virtual and on-campus Short Programs, MIT Professional Education offers professionals the opportunity to take multi-lingual online-blended learning courses and programs through Digital Plus Programs, attend courses abroad through International Programs, enroll in regular MIT academic courses through the Advanced Study Program, or attend Custom Programs online and in-person designed specifically for their companies. For more information, please visit: professional.mit.edu .

About Great Learning

Great Learning is a leading global ed-tech company for professional and higher education. It offers comprehensive, industry-relevant, hands-on learning programs across various business, technology and interdisciplinary domains driving the digital economy. Great Learning's programs are developed in collaboration with the world's foremost academic institutions, and are constantly reimagined and revamped to address the dynamic needs of the rapidly evolving business landscape. Relying on its vast network of expert mentors and highly qualified faculty, Great Learning has delivered an unmatched learning experience for over 1 million learners from over 160 countries around the world.

Media Contact:

Rishita Chiranewala

[email protected]

PR Head

Great Learning

SOURCE Great Learning
Capitol Police Officer Sicknick Died of Natural Causes From Strokes After Capitol Breach: Medical Examiner

U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick suffered two strokes and died of natural causes a day after the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, the D.C. Medical Examiners office confirmed on April 19, ending speculation that he was beaten to death by Trump supporters.

Sicknicks Jan. 7 death was natural, caused by strokes, according to Francisco J. Diaz, chief medical examiner for Washington.

Diazs office said in a timeline that Sicknick was sprayed with a chemical substance outside the U.S. Capitol at approximately 2:20 p.m. on Jan. 6. He collapsed at the Capitol at 10 p.m. and was taken to a local hospital.

Sicknick died at 9:30 p.m. the next day.

Diaz told The Washington Post that Sicknick did not suffer from an allergic reaction after being sprayed with chemical irritants as he engaged with the crowd at the Capitol.

The examiner said he found no evidence of internal or external injuries, but he added that all that transpired played a role in his condition. Diaz didnt elaborate, citing privacy laws.

Two men are accused of assaulting Sicknick by spraying a chemical irritantpossibly bear maceduring the Capitol breach. But Diaz told the paper theres no evidence suggesting Sicknick suffered an allergic reaction, saying that such a reaction would have caused the officers throat to close.

The D.C. Medical Examiners office has not responded to requests for comment.

Sicknick, 42, collapsed and died hours after returning to the office on Jan. 7, Diaz said. He suffered two strokes at the base of his brain stem, the examiner said, which was caused by a clot in an artery that provides blood to that part of his brain. It isnt clear whether Sicknick had a medical condition that would cause that.

With the development, prosecutors will likely have a much harder time pursuing homicide charges related to Sicknicks death.

Then-Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen stated on Jan. 8 that the officer died of injuries he suffered defending the U.S. Capitol, and added that an investigation was underway, while the Capitol Police said Sicknick died as he was engaging with protesters.

Days after the riots, The New York Times and other news outletsciting anonymous sourcesreported that Sicknick had been beaten with a fire extinguisher. Those reports were updated weeks later to say that his cause of death, at the time, was not determined. The allegation that Sicknick was murdered by protesters was invoked numerous times during the Democrat-led impeachment against former President Donald Trump.

Julian Elie Khater, 32, of Pennsylvania, and George Pierre Tanios, 39, of Morgantown, West Virginia, were charged with assaulting Sicknick with a chemical spray, officials said in March.

According to court documents, prosecutors said that Khater told Tanios to give me that bear [expletive], possibly referring to bear spray, which is a nonlethal deterrent designed to stop aggressive behavior in bears and other wildlife. The documents then stated that Khater is seen in a video spraying a canister into the face of Sicknick and other officers.

Sicknicks mother in late February disputed the account that her son was beaten.

He wasnt hit on the head, no. We think he had a stroke, but we dont know anything for sure, Gladys Sicknick told the Daily Mail in an exclusive interview on Feb. 22. Wed love to know what happened.

The U.S. Capitol Police said it accepts the findings from the medical examiner on Sicknicks death.

This does not change the fact Officer Sicknick died in the line of duty, courageously defending Congress and the Capitol. The Department continues to mourn the loss of our beloved colleague. The attack on our officers, including Brian, was an attack on our democracy, it said in a statement.

Working with the U.S. Attorneys Office for the District of Columbia, the F.B.I.s Washington Field Office and the Metropolitan Police Department, the USCP will continue to ensure those responsible for the assault against officers are held accountable.

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.
Its shocking and disappointing to see some media members and verified Twitter handles are peddling this trash as truth, Lightfoot said. If people hadnt noticed, we have major challenges in Chicago we need to address TOGETHER. This nonsense that some apparently have the luxury of indulging in has not fed one person, stopped the pandemic, housed anyone living on the street or saved one young person.
Several Connecticut state court houses plan to reopen next month as COVID-19 restrictions are eased throughout the state.

The states judicial branch also plans to increase the number of criminal cases at courts that are open in an effort to reduce the backlog of cases in the system.

Beginning May 17, the state plans to reopen the geographical area 5 courthouse in Derby, GA 10 in New London, GA 12 in Manchester, the Judicial District Courthouse in Putnam and juvenile court in Rockville.

As more and more COVID restrictions are being lifted or modified and as more and more Connecticut residents are being vaccinated against the virus, the Judicial Branch is now in a position to cautiously and incrementally move forward with plans to further increase the scope and volume of judicial business being conducted by its judges and employees, a press release from the courts said.

Like most public venues in Connecticut, court houses that have been open during the pandemic have required people who enter to wear masks. Courtrooms normally packed with people have had seating areas reduced with areas marked off. Defendants in custody usually appear in court virtually from lockup through a monitor set up where defendants would stand prior to the pandemic.

The statement from the Judicial Branch said courts that are open also plan to expand the scope and volume of criminal dockets through staggered schedules throughout the day.

Doing so will allow judges, working with the states attorneys and defense counsel, an opportunity to reduce the backlog of cases pending on the criminal dockets, the statement said.

The courts plan to return to near normal operations over the next few months, it said.
Google has announced that it is making it easier for the general public to find the COVID-19 vaccination centres in India, Canada, France, Chile, Singapore and the U.S. This effort by the search giant will let users check the nearest vaccination centres on Google Maps and in search results easily. As more and more countries kickstart vaccination drives across the world, there is a need to increase the vaccination rate in countries like India where the Coronavirus pandemic has a stronghold with over 15 million cases (April 18) and counting.

Dr Karen DeSalvo, Chief Health Officer at Google wrote in a blog post that, Vaccines may be harder for people to access based on factors like where they live, how far they have to drive to a vaccination site, and if they have reliable internet access to book an appointment. And globally, it could be years before some countries even have enough vaccines. Overcoming the pandemic will require a coordinated effort on a global scale.

Google is now making it easier for eligible people to check up on their nearest vaccination centres and schedule an appointment to get immunized. It is as simple as searching for a query on Google Search or Maps and it will show a list of the official vaccination centres. Heres how to find COVID-19 vaccination centres on Google Maps and Search in India.

COVID-19 vaccination centres in India

Searching for a COVID-19 vaccination centre is easy on Google Maps and Search. It is as simple as entering the term vaccination centre or vaccination centres near me on Maps or Search to get a detailed listing of the clinics and hospitals that have been designated by the Indian government to provide Coronavirus vaccine to the general public.

1. Open Google Maps on your phone.

2. In the Search box, enter vaccination centres or follow it up with the name of the city: vaccination centres Delhi.

3. The search results will display a list of the vaccination centres nearest to your location.

4. Google has also highlighted the COVID-19 vaccine location in the search results and also provides additional information such as the prerequisite of an appointment if any.

5. People can just call up their nearest vaccination centres to enquire about the availability of the vaccine and set up an appointment to get the first dose.

Similarly, the feature has also been enabled on Google Search allowing users to just use the search engine to find and locate the nearest COVID-19 vaccination centre. Google sources its vaccination centre data from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India. Apart from details about the vaccination centres, Google is now also showing information about the COVID-19 testing lab on Maps and Search to facilitate Coronavirus testing in India. People looking to get tested for COVID-19 can just simply search for Covid 19 testing centre on Google Maps or the search engine to get information on the nearest testing lab which is conducting tests for COVID-19.
New Delhi: Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has tested positive for COVID-19, an AIIMS official confirmed on Monday. "Former PM Manmohan Singh tests positive for COVID19, admitted to AIIMS Trauma Centre in Delhi," said an AIIMS official was quoted as saying by ANI.

On Saturday, Singh participated in a meeting with top Congress leaders, including Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, on the coronavirus situation in the country.

While on Sunday, the senior Congress leader Manmohan Singh had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the grim COVID-19 situation in the country and recommended ways to tackle the current crisis.

In his letter to PM Modi, Singh stressed ramping up COVID-19 vaccination efforts and suggested that the focus must be put on the percentage of the total population vaccinated instead of absolute numbers.

The key to our fight against COVID-19 must be ramping up the vaccination effort. We must resist the temptation to look at the absolute numbers being vaccinated, and focus instead on the percentage of the population vaccinated," the letter read.

In reply, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Monday shared his response to Singh's letter saying that the history would be kinder to him (Manmohan Singh) if only his own party had followed his advice.
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Violence erupted once again in Northern Ireland tonight as rioters descended upon the streets amid loyalist anger over the post-Brexit trading arrangements.

Rioters set furniture and bins alight on Shankill Road, Belfast, close to where a bus was torched earlier this month, as police officers tried to maintain order and came under sporadic attack.

Calm was restored to the scene by around 9pm however some groups remained in the area and police are monitoring a crowd gathered across Lanark Way and the Shankill Road on the loyalist side of the nearby peace line.

Elsewhere, loyalist protesters were seen walking towards Newtownards police station while holding an anti-Northern Ireland Protocol banner.

It came after the Loyalist Communities Council held a small demonstration outside Irish government offices in Belfast and vowed to resume protest action against post-Brexit trading arrangements that have created new barriers and bureaucracy on trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.

They claim the Northern Ireland Protocol has undermined the region's place within the Union.

Furniture was set alight as rioters descended upon Shankill Road in Belfast during another night of violence in Northern Ireland

Police officers arrive to the scene as loyalist protesters set furniture alight amid loyalist anger over the post-Brexit trading arrangements

Loyalist protesters throw furniture into a fire on Lanark Way in Belfast as officers try to maintain order in Northern Ireland

Youths walks across the street as police officers tried to maintain order and came under sporadic attack on another night of disorder

Earlier this month, 55 officers were injured in a week of clashes between nationalists and pro-British loyalists at the so-called 'peace wall' on Springfield Road.

Despite cross-party pleas from politicians to stay away, around 100 rioters descended on the area and were met with heavily-clad officers with shields and dogs.

They were warned repeatedly they would be targeted with the water cannon if they did not disperse, which most did after the police vehicle started spraying.

Amid the rising tensions, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and even Joe Biden's White House joined calls appealing to the protesters to end the violence, which has involved children as young as 13, purportedly encouraged by their parents.

This month, ministers in the Stormont Executive also condemned the violence and MLAs unanimously passed a motion calling for an end to the disorder.

In a joint statement, the five-party Executive said: 'We are gravely concerned by the scenes we have all witnessed on our streets over the last week, including those at the Lanark Way interface last night.

'Attacks on police officers, public services and communities are deplorable and they must stop.

'Destruction, violence and the threat of violence are completely unacceptable and unjustifiable, no matter what concerns may exist in communities.

'Those who would seek to use and abuse our children and young people to carry out these attacks have no place in our society.

'While our political positions are very different on many issues, we are all united in our support for law and order and we collectively state our support for policing and for the police officers who have been putting themselves in harm's way to protect others.

Loyalist protesters were seen walking towards Newtownards police station this evening while holding an anti-Northern Ireland Protocol banner

A protester damages a police van on Lanark Way, near the 'Peace Gate' in Belfast, as violence erupts once again in Belfast

Calm was restored to the scene by around 9pm however some groups remained in the area and police are monitoring a crowd. Pictured: Loyalist protesters during further unrest on Lanark Way in Belfast

A group loyalists damage police vehicles on Lanark Way, near the 'Peace Gate' in Belfast, amid loyalist anger in Belfast

The latest scenes come after a break of around a week, following a succession of days where violence broke out following a number of loyalist protests across Northern Ireland. Pictured: Furniture is set on fire on another night of disorder in Belfast, Northern Ireland

'We, and our departments, will continue to work together to maximise the support we can give to communities and the PSNI to prevent further violence and unrest.' The Stormont Assembly was recalled from Easter recess for an emergency sitting on Thursday to debate the violence, which has mostly flared in loyalist areas.'

This month Northern Ireland's Education Minister Peter Weir confirmed the reopening of some youth services which operate in areas of heightened community tensions.

Mr Weir said the move is hoped to divert young people from becoming involved in 'risk taking and dangerous behaviours'.

'Youth services play a vital role in supporting young people throughout Northern Ireland,' he said.

'As a society we should all be appalled at witnessing young people and even children being involved in the recent violence on our streets.

'At this time it is even more important that youth services are able to meet the needs of young people in these areas.'

Mr Weir added: 'These measures are intended to safeguard and ensure the welfare of our young people and to divert them from becoming involved in risk taking and dangerous behaviours.'

The latest scenes come after a break of around a week, following a succession of days where violence broke out following a number of loyalist protests across Northern Ireland.

The worst of the trouble came on both sides of the peace wall gates at Lanark Way on April 7 and April 8 where police used plastic bullets and water cannon against the crowds.

Protests were temporarily paused following the death of the Duke of Edinburgh.

Youths burn bins and furniture during a protest on Lanark Way in Belfast as riots continue across Northern Ireland

Protests torch furniture on a street in Belfast as violent clashes continue across the nation over Brexit trading agreements

Loyalist anger at the protocol has been cited as one of the main factors behind the violence that erupted earlier this month.

Another was the decision not to prosecute 24 Sinn Fein members for Covid-19 breaches after they attended a mass republican funeral during the pandemic.

There are also more long-standing concerns held by some loyalists that they have missed out on the gains of the peace process in areas such as jobs, investment and housing.

Nationalists reject the contentions and insist their communities experience just as many problems with poverty.

The violence was unanimously condemned across the Stormont Assembly after it was recalled from Easter recess for a special meeting on April 8.

It was also condemned by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Irish premier Micheal Martin, as well as church leaders.

Labour shadow secretary of state Louise Haigh has called for fresh talks to be called to resolve the issues.
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) is calling for a national emergency response to the COVID-19 crisis unfolding in Ontario and other provinces.

"We are at a critical juncture where a true national approach to combatting COVID-19 will make the difference between more or less lives saved," said CMA President Dr. Ann Collins. "This country must come together to help support provinces most severely impacted."

On April 15, the number of new infections in Canada surged past 9,500, setting a new single-day record. Nearly half of those cases came from Ontario, which reported a record 4,736 new infections. The province recently predicted that number could escalate to more than 30,000 a day by May.

More transmissible variants of SARS-CoV-2 make up a large proportion of the new cases in several provinces and appear to be driving up hospitalizations. Ontario alone accounts for nearly 2,000 of 3,691 COVID-19 hospitalizations across Canada. According to provincial officials, the situation is becoming "dire."

The CMA is calling for "extraordinary" measures to bring the crisis under control, including "marshaling national resources where needed, applying restrictive public health measures, and prioritizing national collaboration to save the most lives."

According to a statement, "this means sharing healthcare resources across provincial and territorial borders to help jurisdictions that are currently at crisis levels in ICUs and where healthcare capacity is overwhelmed." Better public health communication and enhanced paid sick leave are also "urgently required."

"We act as one country when crisis hits with wildfires, floods and other tragedies," said Collins. "We must do everything needed to avoid making unbearable choices as to who lives if resources are not available."

The CMA is also urging the federal government to refocus vaccine distribution on the areas hit hardest by COVID-19, rather than divvying up doses between the provinces and territories based on population.

"If we can't achieve this through voluntary cooperation, then stronger measures might be needed," Collins said.

According to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, any changes in the distribution of vaccines would have to be negotiated with the provinces. "We're happy to continue to work with the provinces on adjusting as the provinces see necessary," he said.

So far, few provinces seem keen to cooperate. Nova Scotia Premier Iain Rankin dismissed the CMA's call for a redistribution of vaccines, arguing that "things can change very quickly."

"We've done the work, we've sacrificed and followed restrictions," he said. "There are still variants of concern across the country."

Ontario's government has reached out to every province and territory asking them to send nurses, respiratory therapists, perfusionists and anesthesia assistants to cover staffing shortfalls. The province is offering to pay health workers "temporary relocation expenses" and said length-of-stay would depend on Ontario's COVID-19 caseload and intensive care capacity.

While Newfoundland Premier Andrew Furey indicated that his province would be willing to pitch in, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney denied the request, stating "we are simply not in a position to send our healthcare workers."

Some health workers have also expressed skepticism about the practicality of sharing human resources across Canada. According to Dr. Christopher Labos, a Montreal-based epidemiologist, "logistically, you can't move people around the country like pieces on a chessboard."

Meanwhile, Ontario has rejected an offer from the federal government to send mobile vaccination teams to Toronto and Hamilton without increasing the province's share of vaccines. According to Premier Doug Ford's office, when it comes to vaccination, "we do not have a capacity issue, we have a supply issue."

Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak
Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba at a meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council proposed a step-by-step plan on how to discourage Moscow from further escalation.

Kuleba wrote this on his Twitter account, Ukrinform reports.

In todays EU Foreign Affairs Council I briefed colleagues on Russias latest dangerous course. I proposed a step-by-step plan on how to discourage Moscow from further escalation. Key element: preparing a new set of sectoral sanctions. Individual ones are not sufficient anymore, he wrote.

The minister noted that the meeting was held online.

As reported by Ukrinform, the Russian Federation has lately been building up troops near Ukraines state border in the north, east and south, as well as in temporarily occupied Crimea.

During an online meeting of the European Parliament's Subcommittee on Security and Defense on April 14, Ukrainian Defense Minister Andrii Taran said that Russia concentrated 56 battalion tactical groups with 110,000 troops along the Ukrainian border.

According to Taran, the real goals of Russia's increase in its military presence near Ukraine's borders may be attempts to force the Ukrainian government to make concessions in the negotiation process and to show readiness to use armed force.

iy
Ki Mo-ran, presidential secretary for disease control and prevention affairs / Courtesy of Ki Mo-ran



By Nam Hyun-woo



Ki Mo-ran, the new presidential secretary for disease control and prevention affairs, is facing doubts about her credibility and capability to fulfill her duties in the new post. The opposition parties are badgering her over her previous remarks, which seem to underestimate the significance of the prompt supply of COVID-19 vaccines in Korea.



Some experts and opposition lawmakers claim that Ki has made "politically biased" remarks favoring the Moon Jae-in administration and are questioning whether she can provide professional and impartial advice to the president.



During a reshuffle of presidential aides last week, Moon created the new post of secretary for disease control and prevention, and named Ki as the inaugural secretary. Cheong Wa Dae said Moon picked Ki for her expertise in preventive medicine and acknowledging her contribution to the country's battle against the pandemic, as the chair of the COVID-19 countermeasure committee at the Korean Society of Preventive Medicine.



Regarding her nomination, the main opposition conservative People Power Party (PPP)'s spokesman, Rep. Bae Joon-young, said that, "Ki has misled public opinion through her comments that there is no necessity for prompt vaccination."



"The medical community is widely concerned over Cheong Wa Dae's move to blend politics into disease control," Bae said in a commentary, demanding that Moon cancel the appointment.



Other PPP lawmakers also voiced worries about Ki's appointment. Rep. Yun Hee-suk said on her Facebook account on Sunday that Moon is dishing out key posts to those who have curried favor with the administration, and Ki has deceived the public through her remarks downplaying the significance of vaccination.



During her appearance on the radio program of local broadcaster TBS on Nov. 20, Ki said, "Securing vaccines is not a matter of extreme urgency, given the trajectory of COVID-19 caseloads," and, "There are about 10 vaccines currently undergoing phase 3 clinical trials. Many vaccines will continue to announce their effectiveness, but even if better ones come out, the Pfizer vaccination contract makes it impossible to return those vaccines when new ones are available."



Ki has appeared on the program hosted by left-wing journalist Kim Ou-joon more than 50 times to provide commentary on the country's vaccination and quarantine policies. The program is currently drawing attention over claims that the host and guests present politically biased commentary.



The remarks drew a backlash, as they were interpreted to be advocating for Korea's slow vaccination. According to the Central Disease Control Headquarters, Korea's inoculation rate stood at 2.5 percent as of April 15, lagging far behind that of Israel with 61.7 percent, the U.K. with 47.6 percent and the U.S. with 37.1 percent.



Controversy is also rising concerning Ki's duties at the post. Cheong Wa Dae said that she will be providing advice about quarantine and prevention policies, not about vaccinations. Securing vaccines and inoculation will remain the duties of the secretary for social policies.



"It is impossible to understand why the presidential office is creating a new post for disease control while not giving it authority over vaccines," Ma Sang-hyuk, vice chairman of the Korean Vaccine Society, wrote on his Facebook page. "This action shows that Cheong Wa Dae is indirectly admitting that Ki's previous remarks have been problematic."



Another concern is that the new secretary's job could overlap with that of Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KCDC) Commissioner Jeong Eun-kyeong, and that Cheong Wa Dae might try to take a control tower role over the KCDC's quarantine policies.



Cheong Wa Dae is denying such concerns, saying that the new position is aimed at strengthening expertise in the government's quarantine efforts.


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New photos show Cambridge graduate Saskia Jones talking to London Bridge terrorist Usman Khan just moments before he stabbed her to death in the Fishmongers' Hall terror attack.

Convicted terrorist Khan, 28, was armed with two knives and wore a fake suicide vest as he stabbed Ms Jones, 23, and fellow Cambridge University graduate Jack Merritt, 25, to death and injured three others at a prisoner rehabilitation event near London Bridge on November 29, 2019.

A witness, former HMP Grendon inmate Gareth Evans, has revealed how he held Ms Jones in his arms and told her 'she was loved and she was beautiful' as she lay dying after being attacked by Khan.

He rushed to her aid after she was stabbed in the neck by Khan, who had earlier been seen chatting to her at the Learning Together anniversary event.

Prison officer Adam Roberts also described how he tried to stem the bleeding, and got Miss Jones, 23, in a protective hug, as an 'aggressive' Khan, armed with two knives and wearing what appeared to be a suicide belt, stood feet away.

On Monday the inquests into the victims' deaths, being held at Guildhall in the City of London, heard how delegates rushed to try to save Miss Jones.

Mr Evans said she collapsed as he took hold of her. Appearing to wipe his eyes, he told the jury: 'I was trying to make sure she felt comfortable and safe.

'I said she was loved and she was beautiful.'

Mr Roberts, who had escorted prisoner Steven Gallant to the event at Fishmongers' Hall on day release, said he tried to stem the bleeding with his jacket and tried to shield her.

Saskia Jones before she was stabbed to death. Convicted terrorist Usman Khan, 28, killed Cambridge University graduates Ms Jones, 23, and Jack Merritt, 25

Usman Khan and Saskia Jones at Fishmonger's Hall shortly before he stabbed her to death in a horrific attack near the London Bridge venue

She was stabbed in the neck by Khan, who had earlier been seen chatting to her at the Learning Together anniversary event

He said: 'It was an attempt to stop the bleeding, but it was almost working out like a hug, and telling her to look at me and not him, so she was looking at someone who was trying to help her rather than something else.'

Mr Roberts added: 'It was an attempt to stop the bleeding and give her a chance.'

Describing Khan's behaviour, Mr Roberts said: 'Aggressive, a very fronting-up sort of stance, with his knives clearly showing, generally being aggressive and shouting.'

He was moving backwards and forwards making 'false charges', the jury heard, 'almost coaxing people to come towards him, but almost like he didn't want them to'.

Fellow attendee James Ford appeared emotional as he gave evidence about how he tried to help Ms Jones.

Recalling the aftermath, he said: 'She was lying on her side, she was bleeding, she wasn't really moving.'

He added: 'I can't bring myself to say it - I saw the attacker.'

Another witness to the attack which left two dead and three wounded said he initially thought killer Khan was 'play fighting' when he launched his murderous assault, an inquest jury has heard.

The killer, who was let out halfway through his 16-year sentence on licence after pretending that he had been de-radicalised, was tackled by heroic members of the public brandishing a decorative pike, narwhal tusk and fire extinguisher before he was then shot dead by police.

Giving evidence at Guildhall in the City of London, Marc Conway, an officer with the Prison Reform Trust, recalled coming face to face with a frenzied Khan during his knife rampage.

'I could see people fighting with Usman Khan,' he said. 'I thought people were messing about, then when I looked more closely I saw Usman Khan with his back to me and people moving out of his way, hitting him. I turned to the side and I saw the knives in his hand.'

He added: 'Before I realised it was serious I said to people 'they're messing about in there, we've been invited to this nice building and you're playing up'. Then I realised, and I said he's got a knife, two big knives. It became apparent something serious was happening.'

Giving evidence at Guildhall in the City of London, Marc Conway, an officer with the Prison Reform Trust, recalled coming face to face with a frenzied Khan during his knife rampage

Usman Khan, 28, was armed with two knives and wore a fake suicide vest as he stabbed Cambridge University graduates Jack Merritt, 25, and Saskia Jones, 23, to death

Usman Khan, 28, who was armed with two knives and wore a fake suicide vest, was tackled by members of the public

Jihadi Usman Khan was photographed sitting one seat away from Saskia Jones, 23, in the banqueting hall at Fishmongers' Hall in central London in November 2019

Khan was challenged outside the Fishmonger's Hall by members of the public, who had a fire extinguisher and a narwhal tusk, before the arrival of police

Bystanders and police surrounding Usman Khan at the scene of the terror attack on London Bridge on November 29, 2019

Metropolitan Police handout photo, which was shown in court today at the inquest of the terror attack at the Fishmonger's Hall in London on November 29, 2019 of a knife and tape

A Metropolitan Police photograph of an improvised explosive device which was shown during the inquest Tuesday

How the Fishmongers' Hall attack unfolded Convicted terrorist Usman Khan killed two talented young people and injured three more in around five minutes during a knife attack at Fishmongers' Hall. An inquest into the deaths of Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt has heard a detailed account of how events unfolded: March 10 1991 : Usman Khan is born in Stoke-on-Trent.

: Usman Khan is born in Stoke-on-Trent. 2010 : Aged 19, Khan is convicted of terrorism offences and spends the next eight years in jail. In that time, he becomes involved with Learning Together organisation.

: Aged 19, Khan is convicted of terrorism offences and spends the next eight years in jail. In that time, he becomes involved with Learning Together organisation. December 2018 : Khan is released from jail on various licence conditions and lives in Stafford.

: Khan is released from jail on various licence conditions and lives in Stafford. March 2019 : Khan maintains contact with Learning Together and is involved with filming a video for the organisation.

: Khan maintains contact with Learning Together and is involved with filming a video for the organisation. June 2019 : He attends a Learning Together event at one of his former prisons, HMP Whitemoor.

: He attends a Learning Together event at one of his former prisons, HMP Whitemoor. November 29, 2019 , 7.30am: Khan travels by train from Stafford to Euston Station in London. He is met at the station by a Learning Together staff member and he travels by Tube and foot to Fishmongers' Hall near London Bridge. On route to London, it is believed Khan straps a fake suicide belt around his waist and covers it with his jacket.

, 7.30am: Khan travels by train from Stafford to Euston Station in London. He is met at the station by a Learning Together staff member and he travels by Tube and foot to Fishmongers' Hall near London Bridge. On route to London, it is believed Khan straps a fake suicide belt around his waist and covers it with his jacket. 11am to noon : The delegates attend a brunch at Fishmongers' Hall.

: The delegates attend a brunch at Fishmongers' Hall. 11.56am : Video footage shows Khan talking 'animatedly' with Saskia Jones at a table, even though they had not known each other before.

: Video footage shows Khan talking 'animatedly' with Saskia Jones at a table, even though they had not known each other before. 12noon : The main Learning Together sessions get under way with speeches in the Banqueting Hall followed by breakout sessions until 1.30pm.

: The main Learning Together sessions get under way with speeches in the Banqueting Hall followed by breakout sessions until 1.30pm. 1.37pm : Jack Merritt leaves the building briefly, returning at 1.40pm.

: Jack Merritt leaves the building briefly, returning at 1.40pm. 1 .4 5pm : A further breakout session is due to begin but Khan goes down to the toilets on the ground floor next to the reception area.

: A further breakout session is due to begin but Khan goes down to the toilets on the ground floor next to the reception area. Around 1.53pm : Mr Merritt goes to the gents toilets.

: Mr Merritt goes to the gents toilets. Between 1.56-1.57pm : Khan launches his attack in the men's toilets at Fishmongers' Hall with two knives strapped into his hands. As he prepares, he leaves a bag containing a third blade in a cubicle and drops a prayer book on the floor. He encounters Mr Merritt in the toilets and stabs him multiple times, causing 12 injuries including a fatal wound to the chest. Khan makes his way to the cloakroom area, where he gestured to a member of staff 'as if to be quiet'. He stabs Ms Jones once in the neck. She staggers up a few steps before collapsing. Khan goes on to stab Stephanie Szczotko in the arm at the bottom of the stairs before stabbing Isobel Rowbotham in the main reception. Over the next few minutes, Khan is confronted by a number of people who take items from the walls to defend themselves, including a ornamental pike and narwhal tusks. Khan returns to attack Ms Rowbotham again as she lies on the ground. He also injures the Fishmongers' Hall porter Lukasz Koczocik, who suffers a stab to the arm. Khan forces a member of staff to open the doors by holding a knife to his chest. He tries to chase a member of the public back inside the hall but is unsuccessful.

: Khan launches his attack in the men's toilets at Fishmongers' Hall with two knives strapped into his hands. As he prepares, he leaves a bag containing a third blade in a cubicle and drops a prayer book on the floor. He encounters Mr Merritt in the toilets and stabs him multiple times, causing 12 injuries including a fatal wound to the chest. Khan makes his way to the cloakroom area, where he gestured to a member of staff 'as if to be quiet'. He stabs Ms Jones once in the neck. She staggers up a few steps before collapsing. Khan goes on to stab Stephanie Szczotko in the arm at the bottom of the stairs before stabbing Isobel Rowbotham in the main reception. Over the next few minutes, Khan is confronted by a number of people who take items from the walls to defend themselves, including a ornamental pike and narwhal tusks. Khan returns to attack Ms Rowbotham again as she lies on the ground. He also injures the Fishmongers' Hall porter Lukasz Koczocik, who suffers a stab to the arm. Khan forces a member of staff to open the doors by holding a knife to his chest. He tries to chase a member of the public back inside the hall but is unsuccessful. 1.58pm : Police receive a call to attend the scene.

: Police receive a call to attend the scene. Around 2.01pm : Khan is pursued on to London Bridge by John Crilly, Steven Gallant and Darryn Frost. During a confrontation on the bridge, Mr Crilly sprays a fire extinguisher at him and Mr Frost jabs at him with a narwhal tusk before they all tackled Khan to the ground with other members of the public.

: Khan is pursued on to London Bridge by John Crilly, Steven Gallant and Darryn Frost. During a confrontation on the bridge, Mr Crilly sprays a fire extinguisher at him and Mr Frost jabs at him with a narwhal tusk before they all tackled Khan to the ground with other members of the public. 2.02pm : Armed City of London Police officers arrive on the bridge and tell members of the public to stand back. Khan is shot and Tasered by police, causing him to writhe on the ground.

: Armed City of London Police officers arrive on the bridge and tell members of the public to stand back. Khan is shot and Tasered by police, causing him to writhe on the ground. 2.10pm : Khan is shot again due to the alleged 'threat' from what police believed was an improvised explosive device strapped to his body.

: Khan is shot again due to the alleged 'threat' from what police believed was an improvised explosive device strapped to his body. 2.12pm Khan no longer shows any signs of life.

Khan no longer shows any signs of life. 2.25pm Ms Jones is pronounced dead from a single neck wound.

Ms Jones is pronounced dead from a single neck wound. 2.33pm : Mr Merritt is pronounced dead. A post-mortem examination later confirms he suffered multiple knife wounds, including some defensive injuries. The fatal wound is to the chest.

: Mr Merritt is pronounced dead. A post-mortem examination later confirms he suffered multiple knife wounds, including some defensive injuries. The fatal wound is to the chest. 2.41pm : An explosives officer moves towards Khan with armed officers and concludes the IED is fake.

: An explosives officer moves towards Khan with armed officers and concludes the IED is fake. 3.07pm : Khan's life is pronounced extinct. Advertisement

Mr Conway said bystanders sought to hit Khan with various items, including a wooden chair, in a bid to stop him. But he said: 'He (Khan) wasn't reacting in a way I think someone hit with a chair would react. There was some added motivation or strength there that I hadn't seen before.'

The policy officer said he phoned 999 and saw Khan burst out of Fishmongers' Hall, making his way on to London Bridge, before turning to face those in pursuit, appearing to cross the knives he was holding across his face as he did so.

Mr Conway, who knew Mr Merritt, then ran across the bridge to try to help wrestle the knives from Khan, before realising that he had what appeared to be an explosive belt strapped to him.

He said: 'I just wanted to help. When someone said he's got a bomb, and you realise that he's got a belt round him, you felt like you was fighting for your life. I stamped on his hands, I may have put a few kicks in.

'One of the knives we managed to get rid of quite quickly, but the other was quite difficult to get off him. After a couple of shouts of 'bomb, bomb', I heard what I thought was a Taser.

'After a couple of seconds they (police) shot him (Usman Khan) twice.'

The inquests then heard from waitress Sandra Bufano, who had helped serve brunch at the event and was covering the cloakroom for a colleague when the attack began.

She heard screaming coming from the nearby men's toilet, where Khan stabbed Jack Merritt, before he emerged and locked eyes with her. 'He was not doing anything, but just staring at me,' Ms Bufano said, describing the look as 'very intense'.

Khan then stepped towards Ms Jones, who was about to leave belongings in the cloakroom, and stabbed her in the neck. 'He wasn't rushing, he was completely calm and collected. He moved without rushing,' Ms Bufano said.

She saw Khan's arm move upwards, and then told the jury: 'At that point she screamed, at that point I thought something really bad is happening here.'

Ms Bufano then saw Mr Merritt looking unsteady on his feet with blood dripping down his arm, and 'panicked' and ran.

Reformed offender Gareth Evans, who attended the conference and helped pin Khan to the ground, told the inquest how he tried to comfort Ms Jones as she lay fatally wounded. 'I took hold of her, she sort of collapsed, I sat down on the steps and I was talking to her,' he said.

Appearing to wipe his eye, Mr Evans added: 'I was trying to make sure she felt comfortable and safe. I said she was loved and she was beautiful and then everything else happened.'

Mr Evans had travelled to the event with Mr Merritt, who he befriended along with Ms Jones through the Learning Together scheme for which she volunteered. The former prisoner helped both Ms Jones and Isobel Rowbotham, who survived the knife rampage, staying with them and sharing comforting words after the atrocity.

After a break, Mr Evans said attendees were preparing for the next conference session when he heard a 'developing commotion.' 'I remembered that I didn't know if they were joking or not so I wanted to go and check,' Mr Evans told jurors.

When he reached the staircase he saw 'Saskia looking distressed and pale,' he said.

'She was pale and she was holding her neck.'

'Did you go towards her?' Mr Hough asked.

'Yes,' Mr Evans replied. 'She collapsed as I caught her and as she let go of her neck I saw a lot of blood came out.'

'Was she saying anything?' the lawyer asked.

'She was trying to,' Mr Evans said. 'It looked like please. 'Like I said she sort of collapsed. I sat down on the steps and I was talking to her...

'I was just trying to make sure she was comfortable and safe so I said she was loved and that she was beautiful.'

Mr Evans asked for help as he placed his hand on Ms Jones' wound to try and stem the bleeding before prison officer Adam Roberts joined him and began CPR, jurors heard.

As Mr Evans moved away to survey the venue, he came across Khan 'hysterical' and waving two knives around which he had taped to his hands, the inquest heard.

He joined in efforts to corner the terrorist near the entrance of the building before seeing Isobel Rowbotham, another Learning Together employee, lying stabbed nearby. 'I knew at that point she was alive because she was moving and breathing and stuff,' Mr Evans said.

'You certainly spoke to her, comforted her, helped her,' Mr Hough said.

Mr Evans started the Learning Together programme while he was still an inmate at HMP Grendon and has credited the scheme with changing his life for the better, jurors heard.

James Ford, an attendee at the event, appeared emotional as he gave evidence about how he tried to help Ms Jones. Recalling the aftermath, when Ms Jones lay bleeding, he said: 'I can't bring myself to say it. I saw the attacker. There were some people standing around him.

'It was a very tense, aggressive situation. I think he (Khan) had blood on him, I remember seeing he had a knife in one of his hands.'

Mr Ford said he remembered meeting Khan at the start of the event, and thought it was unusual that he was wearing a large coat, completely done up.

Recalling a brief conversation he had with Khan, he said: 'I said 'it's nice in here, but it's a bit strange all this', he didn't really respond.

'He was wearing his coat, it was long-sleeve and done up to the neck, I thought it was strange - it was quite warm in there.'

Mr Ford said he later heard a scream when Khan launched his attack elsewhere in Fishmongers' Hall, but said he initially thought the commotion was from a car crash.

Usman Khan (left) stands across the hall from Jack Merritt (right) on November 29, 2019 before Khan carried out the attack

Usman Khan and Saskia Jones sat at a table at a prisoner rehabilitation event at Fishmongers' Hall on November 29, 2018

Usman Khan stands (circled, left) at a drinks reception before the prisoner rehabilitation event at Fishmongers' Hall in 2019

Jack Merritt (circled) in the main event room at the prisoner rehabilitation event near London Bridge on November 29, 2019

Usman Khan (1) and Saskia Jones (2) sit at a table together at the prisoner rehabilitation event near London Bridge in 2019

Steve Gallant (left), who confronted Khan on London Bridge, and Darryn Frost (right), the 38-year-old civil servant working at the Ministry of Justice who fought off Khan with a narwhal tusk

Prison officer Adam Roberts, who had escorted Steven Gallant to the event at Fishmongers' Hall on day release, described how he gave first aid to Ms Jones after she had been stabbed.

He saw her lying on the stairs with someone helping her, and realised 'something was very wrong', the jury heard. 'She was bleeding profusely... from where her neck meets her shoulder,' he said.

Mr Roberts covered the wound with his jacket and tried to shield her, the jury was told. He said: 'It was an attempt to stop the bleeding but it was almost working out like a hug, and telling her to look at me and not him, so she was looking at someone who was trying to help her rather than something else.'

Mr Roberts added: 'It was an attempt to stop the bleeding and give her a chance.'

Police officers then came and performed CPR on Ms Jones, the inquest heard.

Paramedics and air ambulance medics also arrived, and Mr Roberts became angry with one of the team when they told him they had to stop. He said: 'I felt like I'd done everything right, I'd got to her really quickly and I'd done everything that we possibly could.

'In my head we were going to get her into the hands of the paramedics and off to hospital and it was going to be fine.'

Mr Roberts told the jury: 'It didn't make sense to me that you would leave a 24, 23-year-old girl to die... I was angry with him when he said that, because he wasn't there through everything else.

'It felt like he just rocked up and just said 'if she's been down that long that's it'.'

Counsel to the inquest Jonathan Hough QC told the jury that they will hear that there had been a long conversation among the medical staff before the decision to stop was taken.

As Mr Roberts tried to save Miss Jones, he could see that Khan, who was feet away, had what appeared to be an explosive belt around his waist.

He said: 'I pretty much assumed that it was a bomb.'

Describing Khan's behaviour as other attendees tried to tackle him, Mr Roberts said: 'Aggressive, a very fronting up sort of stance with his knives clearly showing generally being aggressive and shouting'.

The 28-year-old was repeatedly shouting: 'Get the f****** police', the jury was told.

He was moving backwards and forwards making 'false charges', Mr Roberts said, 'almost coaxing people to come towards him, but almost like he didn't want them to'.

Jury inquests into the deaths of Mr Merritt and Ms Jones are taking place before coroner Mark Lucraft QC. They are due to go on for six weeks before a separate inquest into Khan's death.
A 16-year-old male was shot in the 2200 block of North Johnson St. in St. Roch and was taken to the hospital Sunday night, where he died, police said.

The New Orleans Police Department released no other details and said it is investigating the homicide.
LOS ANGELES, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP ("GPM") reminds investors of the upcoming May 17, 2021 deadline to file a lead plaintiff motion in the class action filed on behalf of investors who purchased or otherwise acquired CytoDyn, Inc. ("CytoDyn" or the "Company") (OTC: CYDY) common stock between March 27, 2020 and March 9, 2021, inclusive (the "Class Period").

If you suffered a loss on your CytoDyn 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/cytodyn-inc/. You can also contact Charles H. Linehan, of GPM at 310-201-9150, Toll-Free at 888-773-9224, or via email at [email protected] to learn more about your rights.

On August 26, 2020, The Wall Street Journal reported that, despite earlier representations, CytoDyn was not being considered for Operation Warp Speed, the federal government's program aimed at fast-tracking virus treatments. According to a senior administration official, "CytoDyn had only completed a preliminary qualification for being included in the initiative."

On this news, CytoDyn's share price fell $0.66 per share, or 17%, over two consecutive trading sessions to close at $3.15, thereby injuring investors.

On September 3, 2020, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") filed a lawsuit against Iliad Research and Trading L.P. ("Iliad"), CytoDyn's lender, Iliad's principal John Fife ("Fife"), and certain Fife-related entities. Specifically, the SEC alleged that Iliad and its related entities operated as unregistered securities dealers in violation of the federal securities laws by buying convertible promissory notes, converting the notes into newly issued shares of stock, then rapidly selling those shares into the public at a profit.

On November 10, 2020, CytoDyn entered into an amended $28.5 million Secured Convertible Promissory Note with Fife's company, Streeterville Capital LLC, a related entity that was not specifically named in the SEC action against Iliad and Fife.

On this news, the price of CytoDyn's share price closed at $2.02, representing an 80% decline from the Class Period high.

On March 5, 2020, after the market closed, CytoDyn began issuing press releases that described the results of Phase IIb/III testing data for Leronlimab for the treatment of COVID-19. Masked by positive titles, these releases disclosed that the primary endpoint for the study (lowering all-cause mortality at Day 28) was not statistically significant.

On this news, the Company's share price fell $1.14 per share, or 28%, to close at $2.91 on March 8, 2021. On March 9, 2021, CytoDyn shares dropped an additional 19% to close at $2.35, thereby injuring investors further.

The complaint filed in this class action alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and/or misleading statements touting Leronlimab as a potential treatment for COVID-19 to pump up the CytoDyn's stock price while executives aggressively sold their shares. The complaint also alleges that CytoDyn engaged in a wrongful scheme whereby Iliad and other Fife entities operated as an unregistered securities dealer for CytoDyn.

Follow us for updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook.

If you purchased or otherwise acquired CytoDyn common stock during the Class Period, you may move the Court no later than May 17, 2021 to request appointment as lead plaintiff in this putative class action lawsuit. To be a member of the class action 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 action. If you wish to learn more about this class action, or if you have any questions concerning this announcement or your rights or interests with respect to the pending class action lawsuit, 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 [email protected], 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.

SOURCE Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP

Related Links

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Gov. Phil Murphy has conditionally vetoed a bill that would allow patients to receive authorization for medical marijuana in telehealth visits, asking lawmakers to instead pass a measure that further expands telemedicine access.

Murphy sent the bill (S619) back to the Legislature with recommended changes Monday, saying he found it too restrictive for patients.

As is, the bill would allow some of the most vulnerable patients, including those on hospice, in long-term care or with developmental disabilities, to get authorization for medical marijuana via a virtual doctors appointment in the nine months following the laws signing. Other patients could get an initial telehealth authorization, but would then need to see a doctor in person once per year to keep it active.

But Murphy is asking lawmakers to make all patients eligible for telehealth authorization. Under his proposed changes, a doctor may have a patient come to an in-person consultation when necessary, but is not required to hold those appointments if they same quality of care can be conducted virtually.

The bill places undue limitations on the use of telehealth in this context that are overly restrictive and unnecessary for patient safety, Murphy said in the conditional veto, released Monday afternoon. I do not agree with resurrecting old barriers to access, particularly as the pandemic continues.

New Jersey has just over 100,000 registered medical marijuana patients. The program languished under former Gov. Chris Christie, but Murphy has expanded eligibility. Tens of thousands of patients have signed up since he took office.

Murphy also signed a bill that has launched a legal weed market for those 21 and older. Regulators are in the process of rolling that out, which will make buying cannabis legally easier than ever.

The telemedicine bill has been in the works since early 2020. But the measure takes on new meaning amid the coronavirus outbreak. Many patients have conditions that compromise their immune system or make them more susceptible to serious and deadly cases of COVID-19.

An order signed in August temporarily waived the requirement for in-person visits for medical marijuana. The governor said the bill as written may disqualify patients who have already been using telemedicine successfully under the order.

We are making it easier for patients to choose telehealth services for any reason, including to avoid an in-person visit due to the continuing risk of COVID-19, Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal said in a statement at the time.

Lawmakers can vote to concur with Murphys proposed changes, abandon the effort or draft a new measure.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Amanda Hoover may be reached at ahoover@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @amandahoovernj.
Taking place from April 16-19, the 8th Congress will look into the important issues of politics, economics and social life in Cuba. This congress is a turning point, marking the conclusion of the historic leadership transition, which is strategically significant to the nations destiny, ensuring the continuation of the revolutionary process and the irreversibility of socialism.

In the spirit of the Hiron Victory and with the indomitable revolutionary tradition, the 8th Congress of the CPC affirms the determination to overcome all challenges and stay firm on the path of building prosperous and sustainable socialism.

The Cuban revolution succeeded on January 1, 1959, when the Cuban people and patriotic revolutionaries, under the leadership of Fidel Castro, overthrew the Batista dictatorship and established the first state of workers and farmers in the Western hemisphere, bringing the island of freedom to a new era of independence, freedom and socialism.

The birth and existence of the socialist Cuban state has motivated the oppressed peoples of the world to step up their struggles for national independence. However, with hostile forces plots to overpower the young revolutionary state, Cuba has been faced with a great deal of difficulties, especially the policy of blockade and embargo.

Through 62 years and seven congresses, under the leadership of the CPC, the Cuban people have fought steadfastly to foil the plots of hostile forces, successfully safeguarding the revolutionary achievements and taking the Caribbean island firmly on the chosen path.

With creativity and hard work, the Cuban people have weathered numerous difficulties and gradually recorded significant accomplishments. Since 2009, Cuba has been implementing a number of new socio-economic policies. In April 2011, the 6th Congress introduced a policy on updating the socio-economic model, expanding the participation of non-state economic sectors, increasing devolution and autonomy; while stepping up reform, encouraging self-employment, reducing subsidy and implementing a new tax policy.

The first five years of updating the socio-economic model brought about some positive results, with the average growth rate reaching 2.8% during the 2011-2015 period. The Cuban economic growth rate slowed during the 2016-2020 period due to increased blockages and embargoes. In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic exerted profound impacts around the world and Cuba was also faced with numerous difficulties as economic growth was low, healthcare service exports declined and the socio-economic model update process was affected.

In the face of challenges, the Cuban Communist Party and people have shown enormous efforts and determination to push through the cause of building prosperous and sustainable socialism on the heroic island. The 8th Congress will review the economic performance during the 2016-2021 period and outline the development plan until 2030, conduct an overall review of the economic model update, and discuss and approve the documents on updating the guidelines for the coming period.

The Cuban Communist Party and people have affirmed that they will carry on updating the socio-economic model, strive to remove difficulties, protect the recorded achievements, persist with development goals and the path of socialism, maintain and promote the support and solidarity of the worlds people, continue with its dynamic foreign policy, and uphold the example of proletarian internationalism.

The special friendship between the Parties, States and peoples of Vietnam and Cuba, which was formed and constructed on the historical foundation of the indomitable struggles for independence, liberty, sovereignty and self-determination of the two countries, has been nurtured and developed by President Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro and generations of the two countries leaders, bringing about substantive benefits to the cause of socialist construction and defence in each country, weathering the ups and downs of history for more than 60 years.

Cuba was always a symbol and a pioneer in the global movement to support Vietnams just cause of fighting against foreign aggressors and reunifying the country. The Cuban Communist Party and people always show their valuable and effective support for Vietnam while Vietnam always holds the spirit of solidarity, friendship, and sincere, close and transparent cooperation with Cuba.

The Vietnamese Communist Party and people are delighted at the achievements that the Cuban Communist Party and people have been recording for more than 60 years, and believe that, under the leadership of the Communist Party of Cuba, the heroic Cuban people will overcome all difficulties and continue to steer the revolutionary cause to victory. The Vietnamese Communist Party and people would like to extend the warmest congratulations to the entire Cuban Party members, officials and people. May the 8th National Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba be a great success!
Hong Kong (AsiaNews) - The Chinese authorities are lashing out at Western politicians and institutions demanding the release of the media mogul Jimmy Lai and other members of the democratic front.

The attack was launched yesterday by a spokesman for the city commissioner of the Chinese Foreign Ministry who spoke of forces "interfering" in the country's internal affairs, often glorifying "criminals" as "democratic warriors" and obstructing the administration of justice under local law.

China's harsh response was to the criticism of some Western governments of recent jail sentences imposed on Lai, former MP Lee Cheuk-yan and eight other Democratic personalities. They are all accused of organizing and taking part in massive anti-government demonstrations in August 2019. The sentences against them range from a minimum of eight to a maximum of 18 months in prison. Lai is already in prison awaiting trial for threatening national security.

According to the government's People's Daily, the sentencing of democracy activists is a necessary application of the rule of law. It responds to popular expectation of an end to the chaos in the former British colony.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said the sentences were " are unacceptable and incompatible with the non-violent nature of their actions ". For the head of diplomacy in Washington, detainees have the right to exercise their "fundamental rights".

On April 16, a spokesman for the European Union called the sentences "a further sign of the continuing contraction of the democratic space and the erosion of Hong Kong's fundamental freedoms". The EU official added that the latest developments in the city will have an impact on relations with China.

Reports from Reuters and the South China Morning Post claim, however, that Hungary has blocked a joint statement of criticism and a series of sanctions, including the suspension of extradition treaties with China.

The European authorities should have announced the punitive measures against Beijing today, at the end of an informal meeting of the foreign ministers of the member states. Instead, the Union presented its strategy for the Indo-Pacific.

According to the plan, the EU must strengthen "focus, presence and actions" in the region on the basis of promoting democracy, the rule of law, human rights and international law. European diplomats have specified that the strategy is not "anti-Chinese".
GEORGETOWN  COVID-19 hit the food service industry hard, forcing many local restaurants to shrink their indoor dining spaces and invest more in takeout and delivery options. Max Goree, owner of Pawleys Island Bakery, said he and all the restaurants on Grand Strand felt the prolonged blow.

But Goree pointed to people such as Jamie Sanderson as to why many of them were able to stay afloat.

Sanderson ran Georgetown Foodland for more than seven years, a culinary blog with more than 10,000 Facebook followers where he highlighted local restaurants in Georgetown in a positive, non-critical way. But on April 4, Sanderson announced his blog's retirement, saying he took a job in Greenville.

This lack of an ulterior motive of money or a free meal, Goree said, is what set Sanderson apart from the everyday food critic, especially during COVID-19.

"The priority was to promote the business, he wasn't there for self promotion  he has a job and makes a living and has a family and all that, but he's there to promote the business," Goree said. "He made a difference and there was no hidden agenda."

While COVID-19 did impact Sanderson's work, he still found a way to feature restaurants, shifting his coverage to inspire the community by posting photos and stories about the safety precautions restaurants were taking. The last thing Sanderson wanted was for these restaurants  now his friends and colleagues  to falter, so he did his best to let community members know how hard they were trying to provide a safe experience, whether it was dining in or getting takeout.

"There were so many times I found (restaurants) were struggling to get attention even though they were following COVID guidelines, and I wanted people to be aware, 'Hey, we're still functioning at a nominal rate,'" Sanderson said. "These people are still willing to promote and produce food for everybody, so come out, support them, come get your produce."

Sanderson has always had a passion for helping people, but it is only when he was in an accident that resulted in 13 surgeries that he began to think about how he could best do so in his hometown.

Recovering from the accident was a tough time for him, Sanderson said, but it was during that time he discovered a new, bright blue-painted restaurant on Front Street. A photo posted to Facebook of a delectable, finely put together Big Texas BBQ Sandwich from Reflections Grill is what started it all.

Titled "It's Hard To Say Goodbye," Sanderson's final post described his time with chefs and restaurant owners as "priceless," and said he never expected a Facebook photo of a barbecue sandwich to turn into a full-time side gig.

"My family and (the owner's) family developed a friendship, made some memories and eventually (Reflections Grill) closed. But the last meal service there, he named the burger after me. He named one after my wife, Adrianne, too," Sanderson said in the post. "After that night, I knew I had something with what I was doing here and wanted to take it further. I wanted to help all restaurants in the county."

The blog was born out of Sanderson's original passion to write and take photos as a graduate of University of South Carolina's journalism school, but quickly turned into a vessel for his ever-growing interest in culinary arts.

As the years went on, Sanderson was invited to places like Millgrove Farms to see where all his food began, the Culinary Institute of Myrtle Beach to work with students and chefs and even and Charleston's 2020 Wine & Food Festival as an honorary Food Fanatic.

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Not a single penny was made from his work, Sanderson said, and instead he poured in more than $3,000 of his own money over the years to build his website and fund social media ads. It's because it truly was a passion of his, Sanderson said, and nothing beat when he'd post about a restaurant, then go in next to the owners telling him how his post impacted their business.

The most important part of Georgetown Foodland to Sanderson was building relationships with chefs and showing them he cared. He never wanted to be a food critic  when Sanderson took a photo of his first Big Texas BBQ Sandwich, the owner actually thought he would post it with a bad review to Yelp. He asked Sanderson not to, that he would fix his sandwich for free, so long as he didn't leave a negative review.

This stuck with Sanderson, he said, and inspired him in the coming years to build a trust with local restaurant owners that he wanted to help them, not criticize them for clout.

"I tried to present them with somebody who was not your regular, run of the mill critical reviewer, but someone who is about positivity, someone who is about putting them on the map," Sanderson said.

Local chef and owner of Black Rabbit Scratch Kitchen Nick Batchelder said during his time working at several Georgetown restaurants, he has never seen someone care as much about local food as Sanderson.

"It's not like he goes on TripAdvisor and goes down a list, he finds places that are off the grid, you wouldn't really know about it, and puts them on the map," Batchelder said.

Through the power of Georgetown Foodland on social media is how many places around Grand Strand were able to stay afloat during COVID-19, Batchelder said, echoing Goree. Sanderson made it a point, Batchelder said, to go to locally-owned, non-corporate restaurants and make sure they were getting the positive attention they needed, something Batchelder said no one else was doing.

As of right now, Sanderson does not plan on establishing something similar to Georgetown Foodland in Greenville. He said Greenville's culinary scene is very vast, and already has several reviewers like him, so his focus for the first few months will be settling in and working at his new job.

What makes the restaurants and food so special in Georgetown is the people, Sanderson said. The chefs, farmers, restaurant owners and more in the area care so deeply for their crafts, he said, and it's important to him that residents know they have people around them who put their everything into the food that is delivered to the table.

"In all the years of doing this, one of the most persistent, repetitive things I've seen is the beautiful smiles on faces creating beautiful dishes," Sanderson said. "People in this area should be really thankful for the fact that there are people coming to work everyday, loving their craft of creating culinary art and producing great dishes."
A modified version of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine tailored to combat a coronavirus variant first documented in South Africa could be ready by the end of 2021, an AstraZeneca official in Austria said in an interview published on Sunday.

Sarah Walters, AstraZeneca's Austria country manager, told the Kurier newspaper that studies, so far, indicating the existing AstraZeneca vaccine was less effective against the more infectious variant first documented in South Africa were "too small to draw final conclusions".

"In the meantime, AstraZeneca and Oxford University have started on modifications to the vaccine for the South African variant and we expect it will be ready by the end of the year, should it be needed," Walters told the Kurier. Walters blamed challenges - including delivery delays for the AstraZeneca shot in the European Union - on the "complex process" of producing a vaccine, coupled with the extremely high demand arising from the coronavirus pandemic.

"We had to work without keeping a supply in reserve. As a result, we couldn't make up for unexpected events," she said. "We are confident that we will fulfill our commitment to deliver 300 million doses to the European Union this year."

The Kurier interview did not directly address ongoing investigations into health concerns over the AstraZeneca shot. The EU has put a warning label on the vaccine over its possible linkage to extremely rare blood clots, Denmark has completely halted use of the vaccine and Britain has advised people under 30 to get another brand of vaccine.

Asked about "thousands" of people in Austria who are cancelling their appointments for AstraZeneca shots, Walters said the company's plan was "to continue to transparently provide information about efficacy and safety to doctors, so that they can adequately inform people" of benefits and risks.

British and European Union medicine regulators have said that the overall benefits of using the vaccine outweigh any risks of rare clotting.

Also read: WHO mulls mRNA COVID vaccines mass production plan for low, middle income nations
KYODO NEWS - Apr 19, 2021 - 14:07 | All, Japan

Japan will conduct its first large-scale survey on myopia among elementary and junior high school students, to begin as a government digital device rollout nears its conclusion, education ministry officials said Monday.

Amid concerns over the increasing use of such devices and their potential impact on children's health, the ministry will conduct the nearsightedness survey on 9,000 students -- ranging from first-graders in elementary school to third-year junior high school students -- in May and June.

The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology aims to come up with effective measures to protect children's eyes, as pathological shortsightedness can develop into serious diseases with a risk of the loss of sight in later life.

According to the ministry, the rate of students with uncorrected visual acuity worse than 20/20 vision rose to record highs -- 34.57 percent for elementary school children and 57.47 percent for junior high school students -- in school health statistics for fiscal 2019.

Many were believed to have suffered from myopia but it was difficult to carry out detailed exams at schools, the ministry said.

Research data also suggested over 70 percent of elementary school students in Tokyo have myopia. The condition could lead to serious problems such as glaucoma and retinal detachment in adulthood.

During the upcoming survey, medical technologists will measure the axial lengths of 9,000 students. The axial length, or the distance between the anterior and posterior poles of the eye, is usually elongated in cases of myopia.

Students will also be asked how much time they spend using a smartphone and how often they take part in outdoor activities in the survey, which will be conducted in cooperation with the Japan Ophthalmologists Association.

The government's plan to provide one digital device, such as a tablet, per elementary and junior high school student is set to be complete at most of the schools soon, and digital textbook use at schools is expected to increase.

"We would like to push forward measures for protecting children's eyes based on the results of the survey, by formulating proper rules and enhancing outdoor activities (of students) among other things," said a ministry official.

Kyoko Ono, president of the Japan Myopia Society, pointed out that children not having the opportunity to look at things in the distance and not being exposed to sunlight, on top of staring at screens for extended periods, during the coronavirus pandemic may have led to increased myopia among children.

Effective ways to prevent myopia include keeping books or screens at least 30 centimeters from the eyes, looking at something in the distance every 20 minutes or so, and engaging in outdoor activities for at least two hours a day, according to Ono, a professor at Tokyo Medical and Dental University.
Syracuse, N.Y.  If youre sick and looking for a Covid-19 test in Onondaga County, head over to Upstate Community Hospital or the state fairgrounds, not the F Shed.

Cayuga Health System no longer provides symptomatic coronavirus testing at the CNY Regional Market F Shed, said John Turner of Cayuga Health. County officials determined they no longer needed that test site, Turner said.

County officials did not immediately respond to a request for information.

Tests are available weekdays at Upstate Community Hospital at 4900 Broad Road, Syracuse. Tests are administered in the Physician Office Building South, Suite 1K.

Testing is available 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday.

No appointment is necessary. Patients should enter the hospital to sign in and then return to their cars to safely register and speak to a nurse by phone. Once individuals are registered and the nurse assessment is complete, they return to the suite for the test. Walk-ins are welcome.

Also, weekend and weekday testing is still available by appointment at the New York State Fair horticulture building. The fairgrounds test site is open 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday.

To schedule a test at the fairgrounds, go to mychart.upstate.edu or call 315-464-2778, press 0 and follow the prompts.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-20 05:04:15|Editor: huaxia

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KHARTOUM, April 19 (Xinhua) -- The Sudanese government on Monday officially approved a bill cancelling the law on boycotting Israel.

"Today a draft bill abolishing the law on boycotting Israel was approved in a joint meeting for the Sovereign Council and the Council of Ministers," said Justice Minister Nasr-Eddin Abdul-Bari on his Twitter account.

Earlier in the day, Chairman of Sudan's Sovereign Council Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan chaired a joint meeting for the council and the cabinet at the presidential palace in the capital Khartoum.

The abolished law, which was enacted in 1958, forbids dealing and trading with Israel, with a penalty of up to 10-year imprisonment for violators.

On Oct. 23, 2020, Sudan and Israel announced end of mutual enmity and agreed to establish diplomatic and trade relations. Enditem
In addition, founder and CEO Michael Rosenbaum has stepped into the role of Executive Chairman. An entrepreneur and economist, Rosenbaum has guided a similar transition at Catalyte, the company he founded prior to Arena. In 2016, he moved from CEO to Executive Chairman and supported Jacob Hsu as he became CEO and has taken that business to the next level.

Arena has roughly doubled its revenue run rate every year for the past three years, and is now building the capacity to reach a much broader market. Arena, headquartered in Baltimore City, today employs 55, up from 37 as of December 31, 2020.

With a machine learning platform at its core, Arena leverages AI to help enterprises organize their workforces and support individuals finding roles where they will thrive. Initially, Arena was adopted by health systems struggling with organizing their workforces to deliver consistent, quality care. Starting in 2016, Arena's clients expanded across healthcare to include post-acute care, skilled nursing, and senior living providers, and today Arena's platform is deployed into organizations whose applicants represent 18% of the US healthcare workforce, 3.7 million unique job applicants per year. In 2020, Arena expanded to the hospitality and restaurant sectors, and is now exploring applications in additional industries.

Most significantly, the Arena platform reduces biassubconscious and conscious bias based on race, class, and gender, as well as biases such as credentialing, that limit economic mobility and the organization of the most productive workforces. Using techniques originally repurposed from other industries, Arena reduces bias based on race, class, and gender by 92%-99%, enabling organizations to build more productive, diverse, and inclusive workforces and building a more just economy and society.

"Over the last several years Arena has established its product, place in the market, and method of meeting the market. As Arena's massive opportunity to restructure the labor market now lies before it, with increased volatility in labor markets together with an increased focus on the role bias plays in the way opportunity is allocated across the economy, there is no better person to lead Arena than Myra Norton," said Rosenbaum. "She is the heart and soul of the company. She has built the business with me over the past eight years, driving our mission and our customer focus with an unparalleled combination of left- and right-brained skills that run the gamut from exceptional data analytics to empathic human relations. She is exactly what Arena needs as the company enters its next chapter of growth and impact in the world."

"As the daughter of a progressive theologian and minister, I do not take words like 'doing good,' 'making a difference,' and 'mission-driven' lightly," said Norton. "I am deeply honored to have this opportunity to lead a business that truly embodies those concepts. I look forward to growing the Arena team in service of our mission to help millions of people find fulfilling work in healthcare, hospitality, financial services and other people-centered businesses. The tapestry of human wisdom and technological advancement that is the Arena platform enables organizations to identify an increasingly diverse talent pool that delivers the outcomes that matter most to all stakeholders."

Prior to joining Arena at the end of 2012, Norton was the CEO of Community Analytics, an analyst at Northrop Grumman, a professor in Mathematics and Statistics at Temple University, Towson University, and the US Naval Academy, and an administrator in the College of Science and Technology at Temple University. She chairs the Board of the Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO); serves as a member of the Innovation, Development & Entrepreneurship Advisory (IDEA) Board, which champions innovation and entrepreneurship across the Johns Hopkins University; and chairs the BmoreSTEM infrastructure workgroup, working to increase equitable student access and retention in STEM fields.

About Arena (https://www.arena.io/) applies predictive analytics and machine learning to help enterprises organize their workforces and individuals move into roles where they will thrive. By revealing each individual's likely outcomes in specific positions, departments, and locations, Arena is transforming the labor market from one based on perception and unconscious bias, to one based on outcomes. Arena is currently growing dramatically within the healthcare and hospitality industries and expanding its offerings to other people intensive industries.

SOURCE Arena

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Annual General Meeting of Kuros Biosciences approves majority of resolutions

Schlieren (Zurich), Switzerland, April 19, 2021 - Kuros Biosciences (SIX:KURN) today announced that its Annual General Meeting approved the majority of the resolutions proposed by the Board of Directors. Two proposed resolutions relating to the grant of options to the Board of Directors and to an amendment of the Articles for an increase in the conditional capital for employee share options did not reach the required majority.

The Annual General Meeting approved the Annual Report, the Annual Financial Statements, and Consolidated Financial Statements for the year 2020 and took note of the Reports of the Auditors. Shareholders discharged the Board and the Executive Committee, voted in favor of the proposed appropriation of the Annual Results and approved the cash compensation for the members of the Board and the Executive Committee.

Clemens van Blitterswijk was re-elected as Chairman and Leanna Caron, Joost de Bruijn, Scott P. Bruder and Oliver Walker were re-elected as members of the Board. Chris Fair was elected as new Board Member and as new member of the Compensation Committee and Mrs. Caron and Oliver Walker were re-elected as members of the Compensation Committee. The law firm Keller KLG, Zurich was re-elected as independent Proxy. PricewaterhouseCoopers were confirmed for another one-year term as the Company's auditor.

The Annual General Meeting further approved the adjustment to the articles of association regarding the conversion of registered shares into bearer shares as well as the capital reduction through a decrease of nominal value of shares, the latter being a technical step which does not amount to a disbursement or dividend to shareholders.

The required 2/3 majority on an increase and adjustment of the conditional share capital for Employee Participation (up to 1,200,000 registered shares with a nominal value of CHF 0.10 each) was not reached.

The Annual General Meeting took place as a virtual meeting at the Company's headquarters in Schlieren. 8,186,443 shares or 24.9% of a total of 32,811,378 shares were represented.

For further information, please contact:

Kuros Biosciences AG LifeSci Advisors Michael Grau Mary-Ann Chang Chief Financial Officer Investors Tel +41 44 733 47 47 +44 7483 284 853 michael.grau@kurosbio.com mchang@lifesciadvisors.com

About Kuros Biosciences AG

Kuros Biosciences is a leader in next generation synthetic bone graft technologies for targeted and controlled bone healing. Kuros's bone graft substitute, MagnetOs, is commercialized in the U.S. and UK for use in posterolateral spinal fusions. Kuros's lead product in development, Fibrin PTH, a drug-biologic combination for spinal interbody fusion, has entered into a phase 2 clinical trial in the U.S. Kuros is located in Schlieren (Zurich), Switzerland, Bilthoven, The Netherlands and Burlington (MA), U.S. The Company is listed according to the International Reporting Standard on the SIX Swiss Exchange under the symbol KURN. Visitwww.kurosbio.comfor additional information on Kuros, its science and product pipeline.

Forward Looking Statements

This media release contains certain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to be materially different from historical results or from any future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. You are urged to consider statements that include the words "will" or "expect" or the negative of those words or other similar words to be uncertain and forward-looking. Factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by any forward-looking statements include scientific, business, economic and financial factors, Against the background of these uncertainties, readers should not rely on forward-looking statements. The Company assumes no responsibility for updating forward-looking statements or adapting them to future events or developments.
Googles Project Zero is trialing a new vulnerability disclosure policy for 2021. As per the updated policy, the Google security team will wait an extra 30 days before disclosing vulnerability details to the public. Developers still only get 90 days to fix the bugs but Google will wait longer to release the details. This would give users more time to update their systems to the latest patch.

Project Zero will wait an extra 30 days before disclosing vulnerability details

Project Zero has always followed a 90-day vulnerability disclosure policy since its inception back in 2014. This essentially means developers got 90 days to fix the bugs that the Google team has discovered on their software. It even offered a 14-day grace period if requested by the concerned developer.

If the developer fixes the bug within the 90 days period (or during the grace period), Google will release details of the vulnerability immediately. If no fix arrives even after the 90-day window is complete, the company will anyway release the vulnerability details. This would make users aware of the security vulnerabilities their device or software may be having.

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However, it also increased the chances of the users becoming a victim of exploitation. Of course, Google had to release the vulnerability details at some point if the developers arent working on a fix. But publishing the details immediately after a fix is released didnt give users enough time to update their systems to the latest patch. As such, they remain vulnerable to security attacks.

To that end, Project Zero last year launched a trial of a Full 90 policy. Under this policy, Google would wait for full 90 days (plus a 14-day grace period) to disclose the vulnerability details irrespective of when the developer rolls out a fix. So whether the fix arrives in 10 days or on the 90th day, Google would release all details after 90 days only.

However, the latter deadline still didnt address the concerns that users arent getting enough time to update their systems. As such, the company is now trialing a new policy where it would wait until the 120th day to share the details of a vulnerability if the developer patches it before the 90 days (104 days with the grace period).

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A 3-day grace period for bugs that are being actively exploited in the wild

The Project Zero team will also grant a 3-day grace period for bugs that are being actively exploited against users. The current deadline for such security vulnerabilities is 7 days. The 30 days extended wait period applies to these bugs as well. So if these bugs get a fix within the 7-day window (or 10 days with the grace period), Google will disclose the details after 37 days.

Google may disclose the details early with mutual agreement with the developer though. The company says around 97.7 percent of the companys vulnerability reports get a fix within its 90-day disclosure policy. Its updated policy now gives users more time to adopt the fixes, thus reducing the exploitation risk. The new Project Zero vulnerability disclosure policy is in effect starting April 15th, 2021.
DALLAS, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, M Imports announces the addition of historic, family-owned Jose Maria da Fonseca winery to their portfolio with the brands Lancers, Periquita, Domini and Alambre Moscatel de Setubal.

M Imports, LLC

M Imports is the new US Importer for iconic brands of Jose Maria da Fonseca: Lancers, Periquita, Domini and Alambre Moscatel

Founded in 2005, M Imports, LLC is an importer of national scope, with a network of leading wholesale distribution partners across the USA. The company markets more than 60 wines from three continents, 13 appellations and 11 wineries to major retail chains, independent retailers and restaurant customers.

"M Imports is very excited to partner with the Soares Franco family and Jose Maria da Fonseca winery to drive growth for their iconic brands in the USA. The future of the Jose Maria da Fonseca Lancers, Periquita, Domini and Alambre brands has never been brighter. New packaging, powerful marketing and innovative new items will excite the trade and consumers as we move forward," says Mark Macedonio, CEO of M Imports, LLC.

Antonio Maria Soares Franco, Executive Board Member of Jose Maria da Fonseca and member of the 7th generation of the family says, "It is with great enthusiasm that we start this partnership with M Imports, which encompasses two of our most historic brands worldwide and with such a great history in the US market, Lancers and Periquita. We've been following closely the great work that Mark Macedonio and his team have been doing with Portuguese wines. His passion and enthusiasm give us confidence that we will achieve all the goals we have set up with this new partnership. Jose Maria da Fonseca has the strong ambition to grow its business in the US in a significant way, following the strong evolution of the Portuguese category in the last few years."

About M Imports, LLC: Founded in 2005, M Imports, LLC is an importer of national scope, with a network of leading wholesale distribution partners across the USA. The company markets more than 60 wines from three continents, 13 appellations and 11 wineries to major retail chains, independent retailers and restaurant customers.

Story continues

For more information, please visit www.mimportsusa.com

About Jose Maria Fonseca: Family-owned Jose Maria da Fonseca (J.M. da Fonseca) is one of Portugal's best-known and most historic wine producers, founded in 1834. Now run by the 6th and 7th generations of the Soares Franco family, the winemaking is helmed by chief winemaker and vice president Domingos Soares Franco. With 650 hectares of vineyards throughout Portugal, including the top regions of Setubal, Alentejo and Douro, the group produces a wide range of wines that exemplify the best of Portugal's tradition and innovation. For more information, please visit www.jmf.pt

CONTACT: Mark Macedonio, mark@mimportsusa.com

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SOURCE M Imports
New Delhi, April 19 : Flexible workspace company WeWork India on Monday announced the launch of WeWork Business Solutions (WBS) for its members.

A company statement said that WeWork Business Solutions is a platform that aims at offering hassle-free, cost-effective professional, and specially curated solutions to all WeWork members, both existing and new.

"Through this one-of-a-kind offering, WeWork will support its members with holistic expert solutions that enable them to focus on their business growth, while they take care of the rest," it said.

Through this solution, WeWork supports its members to explore and avail multiple services under one umbrella product. In addition to this, WeWork Business Solutions allows them to solely focus on their business growth and scalability by not spending any additional time and effort on outsourcing other professional services, it added.

Nihal Shetty, General Manager at WeWork India, said: "The needs of businesses have undergone a massive transformation in the past year. Hence, it is crucial to have the right set of business tools and solutions to adapt to the ever-evolving market dynamics." As a commitment to provide innovative workplace solutions, WeWork will continue adding more services under the WBS umbrella, based on feedback from its members and enhance their business strategy to accelerate growth, the company said.
Authorities have nabbed a person in connection with a shooting at a busy tavern in southeastern Wisconsin early Sunday that left three men dead and three men injured.

Kenosha County Sheriffs Department spokesman Sgt. David Wright said the suspect is facing a charge of first-degree intentional homicide, with additional criminal charges likely after further investigation. Authorities said earlier they werent sure if there was more than one shooter.

There is no threat to the community at this time, Wright said in a release. He said no further information on the suspect would be released Sunday.

Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth said earlier a suspect was asked to leave the Somers House Tavern in Kenosha County but returned and opened fire. Beth said shots were fired inside and outside the bar, which he described as very busy at the time. He said he believed at least one handgun was used.

Kenosha is about 30 miles south of Milwaukee, not far from the Wisconsin-Illinois border.

Officials originally said two people were injured but said they were checking with hospitals for people who may have been hurt in the shooting. Wright said in the updated release that authorities believe there is one possible unknown shooting victim.

Beth said two people died at the scene. The third person hopped in a car with two other people, who moments later flagged down a police vehicle. The officer drove the victim to a hospital where that person was pronounced dead, Beth said.

Wright said investigators are reviewing surveillance video from the scene. The tavern installed video cameras a couple of years ago, Beth said, but he didnt know if the surveillance video is from the business.

Wright called it a complex investigation that involves several crime scenes.

Detectives have followed up on multiple leads and gathered surveillance video evidence during extensive neighborhood canvasses, he said.

A man who lives near the bar, Peter Ploskee, told WLS-TV that he heard gunshots, looked out a window and saw people running from the bar in every direction.

It was just chaos, he said. People are just running, people screaming.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers called it a senseless tragedy and said he and his wife are thinking of the families and loved ones affected and the entire Kenosha community as they grieve and grapple with yet another tragic incident of gun violence.

It was the latest in a recent string of shootings across the country, including the killings of eight people at a FedEx warehouse in Indianapolis on Thursday. Last month, four people were killed at an office shooting in California, eight people were fatally shot at massage businesses in the Atlanta area, and 10 died in gunfire at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado.

The nearby city of Kenosha was the scene of serious unrest last summer, after police shot a young Black man, Jacob Blake, leaving him paralyzed. A white Illinois teenager was accused of fatally shooting two people during the Kenosha protests. Kyle Rittenhouse of Antioch is charged with homicide and attempted homicide in the Aug. 25 shootings. He has pleaded not guilty and says he fired in self-defense.
Two unidentified militants have been killed in an ongoing encounter that broke out between militants and government forces in Zeipora village of Shopian district on Monday (April 19).

The Kashmir zone police tweeted,  Encounter has started at Zeipora area of Shopian. Police and security forces are on the job. Further details shall follow. @JmuKmrPolice

Encounter has started at #Zeipora area of #Shopian. Police an security forces are on the job. Futher details shall follow. @JmuKmrPolice  Kashmir Zone Police (@KashmirPolice) April 19, 2021

An official said that the Police CRPF and the army have launched a search operation. Joint team of Police CRPF and army launched a cordon and search operation in Zeipora.

He added that as the searching party cordoned the suspected area where the terrorists were hiding, they fired at the search party and thats how the encounter started.

Sources in police said that they suspect there are only two to three terrorists trapped in cordon, however, actual numbers will only be revealed once the operation is over.

Joint operation in progress.

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Lets face it: theres nothing quite like being out on the open water without an outboard motor. If you love fishing, birdwatching or simply being with family and friends, paddling is a great  and largely stress-free  thing to do.

At the height of the pandemic, kayaks and other personal watercraft were ridiculously hard to find in Connecticut. Dicks, Cabelas and other major sporting goods stores sold out as soon as they came in. Local shops kept pace as long as they could, while the second-hand market for boats and paddleboards quickly overheated.

This year, youre more likely to walk into a retail shop and see kayaks, canoes and paddleboards lining the walls  for now. But if youre not ready to commit to a boat or board, paddles, roof rack, straps, life jacket, waterproof bag and other essential equipment, a number of places around the state allow you to rent what you need to hit the water for the day.

Here are a few places to outfit your household for a Connecticut water adventure. (Check for COVID-19 restrictions and other safety protocols from vendors.)

Adventure Mystic, 15 Holmes Street, Mystic, 860-245-6086, adventuremystic.com. Paddleboards, single and tandem kayaks and bicycles for rent on the Mystic River, by the hour or by the week. Ask about the five-man monster paddleboard. Lessons, camps, paddleboard yoga and other adventures available. Open May 1.

Black Hall Outfitters, 132 Shore Road, Old Lyme; and 362 Boston Post Road, Westbrook, 860-434-9680, blackhalloutfitters.com. Rent single, tandem and paddle and pedal-drive fishing kayaks, paddleboards and canoes on the Black Hall and Menunketesuck Rivers. Sunset paddles, eco-tours, camps, group outings and field trips are available. Open now.

Blue Heaven Kayak & Paddleboard Rentals, 2 Washington Street, Mystic, 860-912-4188, facebook.com/blueheavenkayak. Hourly (or more) kayak and paddleboard rentals, local art by the owner, sunset meditations, lessons and more on the Mystic River. Open April 21.

Branford River Paddlesports, 50 Maple St., Branford, 203-980-8451, branfordriverpaddlesports.com. Kayak and paddleboard rentals, tours of the Thimble Islands, lessons, paddleboard yoga and more on the Branford River, with access to the Long Island Sound. Open May 27.

Clarke Outdoors, 163 US-7, West Cornwall, 860-672-6365, clarkeoutdoors.com. Novice paddlers can canoe, kayak or raft your way down a 10-mile section of the Housatonic River, with the famous West Cornwall covered bridge marking the halfway point of the trip. Hot showers are available when youre done. Open early May (most likely).

Collinsville Canoe & Kayak, 41 Bridge Street, Canton, 860-693-6977, collinsvillecanoe.com. Single and tandem kayaks, canoes, paddleboards and bikes for two-hour rentals and up on the Farmington River, plus paddling classes for all levels. Call about opening day.

Cove Landing Marine, 250 Hamburg Road #3451, Old Lyme, 860-434-5240, covelanding.com. Single or tandem kayak and paddleboard rentals in Hamburg Cove on the Connecticut River for two hours up to a full day of paddling. Open April 24.

The Happiest Paddler, 70 Main Street, East Hampton, 860-267-1764 (call after May 2 for availability), happiest-paddler.com. Kayak, canoe, paddleboard and even paddleboat rentals on beautiful Lake Potocopaug. Call after May 2 to check availability.

Indian River Marina, 58 Commerce St., Clinton, 860-664-3704, indrivmar.com. Rent kayaks, canoes and paddleboards or arrange for a sunset paddle on the Indian River, close to where it converges with the Hammonasset and Hammock Rivers on their way to Long Island Sound. Rental season begins May 15.

Main Stream Canoes & Kayaks, 170 Main Street, New Hartford, 860-693-6791, mainstreamcanoe.com. Canoe and kayak trips (6-12 miles) on the Farmington River, or relaxing paddles around West Hill and Winchester Lakes in Northwest Connecticut.

Metacomet Canoe & Kayak, 67 Palisado Ave., Windsor, 860-713-9143, metacometcanoe.com. Canoe and kayak rentals on the Farmington and Connecticut Rivers. Moonlight trips and multi-day rentals available.

New England Watersports, Stony Creek Boat Launch (1 Indian Point Road), Branford, 203- 871-1376, Branford, newenglandwatersports.com. Kayak and paddleboard rentals in the Branford hamlet of Stony Creek into the Long Island Sound. Open weekends from June 12-Sept. 6. (Protip: sign up to paddle during the Branford fireworks on June 26 from 8-10 p.m.)

Quinnipiac River Marina, 307 Front St., New Haven, 203-777-3625, http://quinnipiacrivermarina.com. Kayak and canoe rentals and guided tours on the Quinnipiac River. (Theres also storage for your boat, if you already have one.)

Scoot & Paddle, 28 Naugatuck Ave., Milford, 203-713-8282; and 412 Roosevelt Drive, Derby, 203-343-9126, scootandpaddle.com. Kayak and paddleboard rentals in Milford on the Long Island Sound or on a seven-mile lake in Derby (pack a lunch). Peak season runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day (call for hours during off-peak season).

Sea Kayak Connecticut, 575 Riverside Ave., Westport, 203-557-6033, seakayakct.com. Sit-on-top kayak and paddleboard rentals and tours of Cockenoe and Sprite Islands or Westport Harbor. Celebrate Independence Day by signing up for the July fireworks tour. Call for availability.

SoundWaters Kayak & Paddle Board Rentals, 200 Southfield Ave., Stamford, 203-323-1978, soundwaters.org/sails-rentals/rentals. Kayak and paddleboard rentals at SoundWaters Dock in Stamfords Boccuzzi Park. Group outings available. Open from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

Thimble Island Kayak Rental, Branford, 203-859-0546, thimbleislandkayak.com. Kayaks, paddleboards and canoes seating up to three people close to Stony Creek and the Thimble Islands. All rentals include free delivery and pick up in Branford, All rentals include free delivery and pickup in Branford (pickup/delivery available elsewhere for a fee).

Three Belles Outfitters, 113 Oswegatchie Hills Road, Niantic, 860-691-3001, threebellesoutfitters.com. Recreational and fishing kayak and paddleboard rentals on scenic Smith Cove in Niantic, less than a mile from Long Island Sound (direct access through the Niantic River). Sunset and other tours available, and theres even a kids paddle club.

michael.hamad@hearstmediact.com
[April 19, 2021] GemPharmatech and UC Davis Sign Agreement to Distribute Mouse Models in the US to Better Serve US Academic and Pre-Clinical R&D Communities

GemPharmatech (GemPharmatech Co. Ltd., "GPT") announced the agreement for UC Davis Mouse Biology Program to provide services to re-animate, cryopreserve and ship live mice to GemPharmatech customers in the US. GemPharmatech Co. Ltd. is a leading global provider of animal models including humanized animal models supporting pre-clinical research and development. Since 2017, GPT has been creating a collection of more than 15,000 animal models. The establishment of this relationship will allow GPT clients to receive mice in the US from a US facility with shorter shipping time and lower cost and enables GPT to provide animal models and related services faster and closer to its customers in the R&D communities including large pharmaceutical and Biotech companies, contract research organizations (CROs), universities, and research institutions throughout the US. "As Director of the Mouse Biology Program, I am very happy to facilitate availability and access to GemPharmatech's ever expanding suite of conditional and other scientifically valuable mouse models to research scientists in our hemisphere," said Dr. Kent Lloyd, Professor of Surgery in the School of Medicine and Director of the Mouse Biology Program at UC Davis. "I look forward to working with the research community to use these models to explore the functional role of genes in specific cells and tissues in vivo." The University of California, Davis (UC Davis) Mouse Biology Program (MBP) is an academic resource providing expertise and consultation, including technological assistance, infrastructure and support to the scientific community in the development, application and use of genetically-altered mice for biomdical research on diseases, behavioral abnormalities and developmental disorders. The MBP will support GemPharmatech's distribution efforts in North America, including performing cryo-recoveries to live mice and distribution of germplasm.



"I am delighted to announce this Service Agreement, as I have worked with the Mouse Biology Program in various other roles for over 20 years," said Dr. Moore, President and CEO of GemPharmatech LLC, a US subsidiary of GemPharmatech Co., Ltd. "This arrangement in California with a world class facility gives us easy access to many top research institutions on the west coast and the ability to ship anywhere in the US easily," continued Dr. Moore. About GemPharmatech

GemPharmatech, Co., Ltd (GPT) is a leading provider in animal models and services, especially in the development of humanized animal models, to global Pre-Clinical R&D Communities. The Company is specialized in developing animal models using cutting edge gene-editing technologies with a large collection of cKO/KO (conditional knockout/knockout) mice, humanized mice, immunodeficiency mice and Germfree mice. GemPharmatech provides a one-stop service as model customization, breeding, phenotyping, and pharmacology services including drug efficacy test and mouse phenotyping, CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing, ES HR, transgenic, cryopreservation, assisted reproduction, rapid expansion and derivatives and customized breeding. The company has developed one of the world's largest mouse strain resources to inspire scientific innovation and accelerate drug discovery. GemPharmatech LLC is a wholly owned US subsidiary of GemPharmatech, Co., Ltd., located in Wilmington, Delaware. Visit http://www.gempharmatech.com for details.

About Mouse Biology Program

The UC Davis Mouse Biology Program (MBP) is an internationally recognized academic teaching, research, and service program providing scientists around the globe with state-of-the art technologies and scientific expertise in mouse breeding, embryo manipulation, mutagenesis, and phenotyping expertise, products, and procedures. MBP resources include dedicated infrastructure, technical expertise, and scientific consultation that are made available to assist researchers plan, design, and create mutant mouse models of human and animal pathobiology for hypothesis-generating and hypothesis-driven research. The MBP develops, refines, and implements next generation production and analytical techniques, such as CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing, conditional mutagenesis, ES cell gene targeting, PDX development, in vivo analytical phenotyping, advanced imaging technologies, and comprehensive pathology services to capitalize on the versatility of the mouse as a human surrogate in the preclinical research arena. Products and services are provided to academic users on a fee-for-service basis. Visit https://www.mousebiology.org/ for details. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005214/en/

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The Pathway cafe and support centre offers food, friendship and advice to vulnerable people in Great Yarmouth. Pathway manager Jennifer King reports.

The Pathway cafe and support centre offers food, friendship and advice to vulnerable people in Great Yarmouth. Pathway manager Jennifer King reports.

Bertie's spirit shines in pandemic challenges Lock-down, personal loss and suffering have not thwarted the spirits of Norwich girl Bertie Emes-Ellis who simply lives to give. Read more

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
Australia's most beloved whale Migaloo may be back sooner than expected after photos surfaced showing a white humpback off the coast of Victoria.

The whale was photographed swimming near Cape Schanck off the state's south coast, sending many Migaloo fans into a frenzy.

While the sighting hasn't been confirmed as Migaloo, the white humpback is known to migrate north along the east coast at this time of year.

Macquarie University marine scientist Dr Vanessa Pirotta said if the whale was Migaloo, he could be as far north as Port Macquarie in the coming weeks.

'We're not 100 per cent sure but it could well be him because he is part of the east population that generally migrate this time of year,' she told Daily Mail Australia.

The whale believed to be Migaloo (pictured) was photographed swimming near Cape Schanck off the state's south coast on April 9 sending many fans of the rock star whale into a frenzy

But Dr Pirotta said he has been known to migrate off the coast of New Zealand as well.

'Apparently there's more than one white whale out there, we definitely know there's humpback whales with lots of white colour but not fully white,' she said.

Migaloo, Australia's most beloved and best-known whale. was first sighted back in 1991 and has been seen on and off in Australian waters over the years.

For Dr Pirotta who has seen the whale just once before back in 2015 off the coast of Sydney, another possible sighting is very exciting.

The pictures were taken on April 9.

While the sighting hasn't been confirmed, the white humpback is known to migrate north along the east coast at this time of year (pictured, the whale believed to be Migaloo)

Migaloo was first sighted back in 1991 and has been seen on and off in Australian waters over the years (pictured, the whale on April 9)

'If you see him in real life he illuminates the water around him and as he swims he turns it turquoise,' she said

'Because he's so different, people just want to learn more about him. He's very social and is often seen with his friend Milo.'

The scientist urged whale watchers to remember they must keep a distance of 500m from Migaloo and can face fines of up to $16,500 if they ignore the rules.

Another possible sighting of the white humpback was seen in June last year off the New South Wales coast.

Each year between May and November the humpback whale population makes its annual pilgrimage from Antarctica to the warmer waters off north east Australia.

They then mate and give birth before returning south with their young.

While Migaloo is one of these estimated 40,000 whales he's considered particularly special because of his unusual colouring.

The first sighting of Migaloo dates back to 1991 around Hervey Bay and researchers have been following the creature ever since.

Researchers were fascinated by Migaloo's colouring, as he was believed to be the first fully white whale in the eastern humpback whale population.

He was named 'Migaloo' which means 'whitefella' in several indigenous languages.

Scientists still aren't sure if he's an albino whale or if he is leucistic, meaning he is unable to produce pigment but has coloured eyes.
Auto-rickshaw drivers wait for customers on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan, on August 26, 2019. (FAROOQ NAEEM/AFP via Getty Images)

CCP Has Taken Over Islamic Countries, Muslim Scholar Warns

WASHINGTONThe Chinese communist regime is committing genocide against Uyghurs in Chinas Xinjiang region, yet Muslim countries still remain largely silent, as they have become colonies of China, according to an expert.

Beijing has set its sight on Islamic countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, as they are crucial to its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as One Belt, One Road), which seeks to revive the ancient Silk Road.

Since 2013, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has made the BRI a centerpiece of its plan to grow its geopolitical influence. The initiative pours billions of dollars into building roads, railways, ports, power plants, and telecommunications infrastructure around the world.

Although Chinas BRI has promised to bring economic development to poor countries, so far it has introduced new colonialism, according to Abdulhakim Idris, an Islamic scholar and inspector general of the World Uyghur Congress.

Speaking at a virtual panel on April 19 hosted by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and Campaign for Uyghurs, Idris said Beijing is leveraging its economic power to create a diplomatic advantage and using its political influence for security and military purposes.

The CCP has taken over most Islamic countries, he warned.

He likened the Chinese regime to a wolf in sheeps clothing and accused it of hiding its crimes with propaganda.

Idris is the author of a new book, Menace: Chinas Colonization of the Islamic World & Uyghur Genocide, that exposes the extent of the Chinese regimes power over the Islamic nations and the Western world.

He said that most Islamic countries remain silent over genocide in China despite having historically strong bonds with Uyghur Muslims. These countries are following the orders of the Chinese regime and backing Beijings position on the affairs related to Xinjiang and Hong Kong in the U.N. Human Rights Council, he said.

Abdulhakim Idris, inspector general of the World Uyghur Congress speaks at a virtual event hosted by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and Campaign for Uyghurs on April 19, 2021. (Courtesy of Campaign for Uyghurs)

In January, the Trump administration declared CCPs abuses of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang genocide. The communist regime has detained more than 1 million Uyghurs in internment camps and subjected them to forced sterilization, forced abortion, torture, forced labor, and the removal of children from their families.

Speaking at the panel, human rights experts condemned Beijings efforts to spread disinformation about Uyghurs and exploit Islamic countries.

China has falsely portrayed Uyghur Muslims as a threat to send them to concentration camps and deny them basic rights that millions of people have, said Nihad Awad, co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States.

The BRI encompasses 139 countries, including China. They account for 40 percent of the global economy and 63 percent of the worlds population, according to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

The BRI has contributed to a substantial external debt buildup in many of these countries and made China a major global lender. Beijings nontransparent lending practices have come under fire in recent years, as it has amplified debt vulnerabilities in poor countries.

BRIs massive construction projects are financed mainly through Chinese local government and state-controlled institutions. The initiative has been perceived as a debt trap, raising the risk of economic distress in borrower countries.

China is the only winner in this economic welfare program, Idris said, as Chinese firms and workers are taking the lions share of infrastructure projects in developing countries.

You can look at Pakistan to understand what happened to those who accepted this colonial order, Idris said. Pakistans Prime Minister Imran Khan has admitted that the future of his countrys economy is now dependent on China.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a collection of infrastructure projects in Pakistan valued at $62 billion, caused a balance of payments crisis in the country, necessitating a bailout program from the International Monetary Fund.

According to Idris, Beijing is also exporting its repressive regime mainly to the Islamic governments of Central Asia and the Middle East.

Speaking at the virtual panel, Andrew Bremberg, president and CEO of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, said the Chinese regime could also be exporting its abusive labor practices to the BRI countries.

The labor practices that China is engaged in many of these BRI countries do not comport with normal standard labor law, labor protections, he said.

A recent report sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations stated that an inadequate U.S. response to Chinas BRI has contributed to Chinas rise in emerging markets.

U.S. inaction as much as Chinese assertiveness is responsible for the economic and strategic predicament in which the United States finds itself. U.S. withdrawal [from the competition] helped create the vacuum that China filled with BRI, the report stated.
China is the largest electric vehicle market in the world and the country is also the home for a wide number of electric vehicle manufacturers, be it in the four-wheeler segment or two-wheelers. One such EV maker is the Niu, which showcased a performance-focused electric motorcycle concept last year, dubbed as RQi.

The Niu RQi electric motorcycle is now ready with the production-ready version. The motorcycle was slated for global debut in the second quarter of 2020. However, that got delayed due to the Coronavirus-related crisis. Now, the company is reportedly working on the launch plan for the motorcycle.

The Niu RQi electric motorcycle looks absolutely stylish and it will leave you drooling over the model. The motorcycle comes with an appearance that makes an expression like the motorcycle is ready to hit the track and scorch it.

With a close look, the Niu RQi electric motorcycle looks like has been inspired by the Husqvarna Vitpilen motorcycle. Also, this looks like the Nepalese electric startup developed Yatri Project Zero. It gets a circular LED headlamp with a ring-like LED daytime running light. There are plenty of carbon fibre elements across the body in an attempt to make it rigid and lightweight at the same time.

A fully digital instrument cluster, a sleek tail section with tip mounted LED taillight, alloy wheels, front and rear disc brakes are there. Other features include built-in 5G connectivity, anti-theft systems, GPS navigation, OTA updates etc.

Overall, the production-ready electric motorcycle looks like the concept model. It takes power from a mid-mounted 30 kW electric motor that churns out 40 hp of power. Power is sent to the rear wheel through a belt-driven system. The company claims that this electric motorcycle is capable of running 160 km on a single charge.

At the heart of this electric motorcycle lies a mid-mounted 30kW electric motor which pumps out around 40 horsepower. It transfers all this energy to the back wheel via a belt-drive system, with a claimed top speed of 100 miles per hour, and an impressive 80 miles of range from a single charge.
DETROIT  As lawyers gave their closing arguments in the trial related to the death of George Floyd, Detroits top law enforcement officer said he expects violence regardless of the outcome.

I have no reason to believe that whether hes acquitted or found guilty, there will not be violence, Detroit Police Chief James Craig said in response to a reporters question at a news conference Monday morning. Now, as it relates specific to Detroit, we have no indication.

Former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin, 45, is accused of killing Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, by kneeling on his neck during an arrest on suspicion of using a counterfeit bill on May 25, 2020.

The incident was followed by protests against police brutality  some turning violent  throughout the country, including in Detroit.

Craig was holding a news conference about a separate incident, an officer-involved shooting death that happened early Monday, when a reporter asked him if he expects the city to again become a flashpoint in the wake of a verdict in the Chauvin trial.

RELATED: 27-year-old dead after unprovoked shooting attack on police officers

The charges against Chauvin are second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

The prosecution gave its closing statements, arguing for conviction, this morning. Chauvins defense attorney, arguing for acquittal, continues to give closing statements this afternoon. After both sides rest, the jury will be given instructions and sent to deliberate before rendering a verdict.

The Detroit Police Department is ready for the communitys reaction to the verdict, if any, Craig said.

We certainly embrace the right to free speech, Craig said. We embrace those who protest peacefully, but we have zero tolerance for any violence directed at police officers, any violence directed at members of our community, any damage to property. We will take prompt action; there will be a response to that.

View Craigs statements related to the Chauvin trial at 16 minutes and 30 seconds into this video.

Detroit was able to avoid the burning and looting that other cities experience last summer through the work of not only its police force but also the work of community leaders who stood with us, Craig said.

We have a strong community  strong community support, he said.

READ MORE:

Man shoots wife after she picks up their kids from outside Michigan bar at 1 a.m.

Man critically injured when clinging to truck after telling driver to stop speeding through neighborhood

Michigan coronavirus data for Monday, April 19: Two hopeful signs in the numbers

5 hurt in wrong-way, head-on crash on I-196
Paddling public school students will remain legal in Louisiana.

The state House on Monday rejected a bill that would outlaw the longtime practice.

The vote was 34-61.

State Rep. Barbara Norton, D-Shreveport, sponsor of the bill, said paddling brutalizes students.

Norton said 1,633 public school students were targeted for corporal punishment since 2011.

Louisiana House passes bill to ban paddling of disabled students On the eve of a larger vote, the Louisiana House approved a bill Tuesday night that would ba

On the other side, state Rep. J. Rogers Pope, a former Livington Parish superintendent, called the legislation a bad bill.

Pope said paddling should remain a local option for school districts, which is current law.

A total of 38 of Louisiana's 69 school districts allow paddling.

Norton said 31 states have done away with corporal punishment in public schools.

The scoop on state politics in your inbox Get the Louisiana politics insider details once a week from us. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

"At the end of the day we are teaching our students about violence," she said.

House Education Committee Chairwoman Nancy Landry, R-Lafayette, said she backed the bill because local policies do not have enough safeguards. "A male administrator can spank a female student," Landry said.

Pope said school districts that allow corporal punishment have detailed policies, including requirements that a parent or guardian sign off on the punishment beforehand.

"The key word there is choice," Pope said.

The issue did not spark a lengthy debate in the state House.

A majority of members apparently decided early on that they are comfortable leaving the issue in the hands of local educators.

The legislation emerged from the House Education Committee by one vote, a sign that it would face a major challenge in the full House.

The House last week approved a separate bill that would ban corporal punishment for students with disabilities.

That bill, which is backed by Gov. John Bel Edwards, is awaiting action in the state Senate.

Norton's proposal is House Bill 497.
Co-founder Alexander Farnsworth at Farnsworth Fine Cannabis in Great Barrington. Farnsworth the dispensary was designed to create a sophisticated and welcoming atmosphere.

Great Barrington Dispensary Combines Art, Equity, 'Luxury' Cannabis

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass.  A new Berkshire County dispensary combines sophisticated design, vintage elements, and inclusion to create what the purveyors hope is a unique cannabis shopping experience.

Social media strategist Alexander Farnsworth and his brother Brayden, and fashion designer Adam Lippes launched their joint venture, Farnsworth Fine Cannabis on March 1 with a retail location in Great Barrington. The shop is LGBTQ-plus owned and pledges that 65 percent of the business staff will be made up of LGBTQ-plus, women, racial minorities, and veterans.

Lippes has been a part-time resident of the Berkshires for about 15 years and Farnsworth first had the idea for a high-end dispensary in 2012 when Colorado legalized the plant.

"I kind of fell in love with Great Barrington because it reminded me of a mini Park City where I spent a lot of time growing up," Farnsworth said. "And so one of my very first thoughts upon arriving in Great Barrington was 'this would be the perfect place for a pot shop.'"

Farnsworth said they approached this project with a design-first approach, commissioning London-based architect Simon Aldridge to design the 2,000 square foot space with inspiration from the earliest apothecaries and medical universities in Europe. This includes a minimalist front lobby and an immersive showroom with wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling arched cabinetry.

The duo prioritizes having all of their self-branded cannabis products on display so that customers can be properly educated.

"I think really when it comes to cannabis, it's about the educational experience, I think retailers have a responsibility to provide given that it's such a new legalized industry and there are so many complexities and questions," Farnsworth said. "So how we do that is through the visual merchandising of all the products, every product that we sell is on display so you can clearly see what the gummies look like, what the color of the tincture is, so each and every item, you really get to kind of walkthrough in kind of museum quality display."

The dispensary carries a cannabis cigarette that Farnsworth said is the first of its kind amongst more traditional pot products. They are available in light, classic, and bold varieties and feature a filter that keeps heat away from a person's face, are wrapped with organic hemp paper and are marked with the company's signature hummingbird.

In addition to the cannabis products, the shop carries a selection of vintage items including lighters and a large collection of Farnsworth Radios, produced by famed inventor, and relative, Philo Farnsworth. They also stock silver and gold smoking accessories, jewelry, and apparel. All of the items are for sale except the radios.

Product prices range from $2 rolling papers to a $1,900 lighter, so Farnsworth said there is really something for everyone.

"We have a lighter that was worn by Jack Kerouac, him and the beat poets were huge cannabis activists," he said. "And then in addition to having vintage items from England and from Japan, from India, where cannabis has been used for centuries, we have new items that involve cultural characters like Bob Marley, or Keith Haring. And so it's like a mix of all these items really puts the education and it kind of puts it in the middle of cultures and time periods, and icons that go beyond just the past 50 years in America."

To complement the products, they have a Hummingbird Hotline for customer service needs. This can be utilized for product advice, store hours, and even if a customer has used too many cannabis products for their comfort level.

"The most common question that people who haven't been call with is: 'Can we come in and shop?' And I think customers are so eager for that right now," Farnsworth said. "The answer is definitely yes."

The entire project has taken about three years to come to fruition. They did a gut renovation of the dispensary's location on 126 Main St.  which formerly housed a physical therapy office  to make it accessible and added "all-new everything" from the facade to the foundation.

"It's about having a lens on them and making the physical space, the physical viewpoint, smaller range, because when you had an arch, you take away those sharp edges, so it just focuses the viewer on what's inside the box," Farnsworth said.

"With this design, it's on purpose that you enter into a very normalized Main Street entrance, which is a rarity, especially in the Massachusetts cannabis market, where you can see into the lobby from Main Street, a second exposure, and you can see someone sitting behind marble desk, you get just a little preview of the archways behind the desk. So it's a very welcoming environment."

Since their soft opening on March 1, Farnsworth Fine Cannabis has served more than 750 customers and has had a 15 percent return rate within a 30 day period. Farnsworth noted that some customers have returned as many as six times.

"We don't talk much about normalizing cannabis," he said. "We just try to give an experience that achieves that."
Azerbaijan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued an appeal on occasion of April 18 - International Day for Monuments and Historic Sites.

According to the statement, April 18 is celebrated as the International Day for Monuments and Sites.

"On this occasion, Azerbaijan repeats its grave concern regarding the destruction of its cultural heritage by Armenia in the Azerbaijani liberated territories. Almost all historical, cultural and religious monuments were completely destroyed during the period of occupation. As of today, the Ministry of Culture of Azerbaijan has identified more than 400 monuments that have been destroyed in the Azerbaijani liberated territories. The total number of the monuments in these territories is up to 3,000," the ministry stressed.

The ministry noted that cultural and religious property belonging to Azerbaijan has been looted, desecrated, altered and illegally exported to Armenia. "22 museums and museum branches with over 100,000 artefacts in the liberated territories have been destroyed. Artefacts and ancient manuscripts of 13th century Khudavang monastery situated in Kalbajar district, as well as precious artefacts found during illegal archaeological excavations near Shahbulag fortress of Aghdam district were illegally transported to Armenia. Besides that, illegal excavations have been conducted in Azikh cave in Azikh village of Khojavand region," the statement reads.

"All of these actions constitute to a gross violation of international humanitarian law, including the UNESCO standard setting instruments, such as 1954 Hague Convention and its two protocols, as well as the 1970 Convention," the Azerbaijani diplomats said.

"Regretfully, Azerbaijan's appeals to the relevant international organizations to investigate war crimes including the deliberate destruction, misappropriation, alteration of Azerbaijani cultural heritage, as well as illicit removal of Azerbaijani cultural properties by Armenia have been ignored throughout the 30-year-long occupation. Azerbaijan welcomes the interest now being shown in this respect," the added.

"The cultural heritage situated in Azerbaijan, regardless of its origin, whether secular or religious, reflects the cultural diversity of the people of Azerbaijan, which Azerbaijan values and protects. Ensuring that the unprecedented damage inflicted on Azerbaijani cultural heritage is fully assessed by an independent technical mission stands as a priority for the Government of Azerbaijan and Azerbaijan is closely cooperating with UNESCO in this regard," the appeal reads.
MADRID, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Lleida.net (BME: LLN) (EPA: ALLLN) (OTCQX: LLEIF) earned 475 per cent more in the first quarter of 2021 than in the same period last year.



Driven by sales of its SaaS line, the Spanish listed company turned over 3.98 million, earned 391,000, and posted an Ebidta increase of 46 per cent year-over-year.



"Never in the company's history have we shown such positive results as in this first quarter of the year. Lleida.net is in an ideal situation to face the challenges of business digitalization in the coming years," explained Sisco Sapena, CEO and founder of the company.



The main factor behind this success has been the 46 per cent increase over the first quarter of 2020 in the turnover of the SaaS line, which includes its certified eNotification, eContracting and eSignature services.



In this quarter, the company sold SaaS services worth more than 1.5 million euros.



The company expects that this product line, in which it is already a European benchmark, will account for more than 50 per cent of its revenues this year.



In the past year, the company's sales mix has changed, driven by the digitalization of customers brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.



The acceleration of the digitalization processes, derived from the health emergency, and the implementation of essential projects signed in previous years, is consolidating Lleida.net's commitment to SaaS technology.



During the period, compared to the same quarter of the previous year, the company's Ebitda has grown precisely by 46%, up to 620,000 euros, and now records 17 quarters with positive Ebitda.



Likewise, for the fifth consecutive quarter, the accounts show a net financial debt below the company's cash flow, with 5.6 million euros available, which allows the company to face future business challenges with peace of mind.



Lleida.net continues working on its goal of becoming a world-class player in the eSignature, eNotification and eContracting industry, and betting on innovation, internationalization and intellectual property as the pillars of its strategy.



The company's Board of Directors has already agreed, a few weeks ago, to submit to the General Shareholders' Meeting a 25 per cent increase in this year's dividends.



The company also continues to invest in internationalization. In January of this year, it opened a subsidiary in Dubai to gain a solid foothold in the Middle East and North African market.



More than 60 countries have awarded Lleida.net 203 patents for its methods. The corporation has currently final clients in 160 countries.



In terms of workforce, Lleida.net's workforce has grown by 18% year-over-year.



The incorporation of new talent to consolidate the company's R&D, as well as the opening of new markets in Europe and EMEA, has been critical to the company's results.



Similarly, R&D activations have increased by 15% compared to the last quarter of 2020, up to 193,000 euros.

Lleida.net is already the European leader in the field of registered electronic notification and contracting.

Its stocks trade on the OTCQX Best Market index in New York, Euronext Growth in Paris and BME Growth in Madrid.

Earning results presentation for 1Q2021 can be downloaded here: https://investors.lleida.net/docs/en/20210419_HRelev.pdf

Investors can download the company's Investment Deck at the following link: https://investors.lleida.net/docs/2020-estimated-results.pdf

Media Contact:

The Paloma Project, Media,

[email protected]

+356 7946 7486

https://Lleida.net

SOURCE Lleida.net
It may sound trite, but the keep of Inuyama Castle here really was built for keeps.

A tree-ring analysis showed that the three-tiered, four-storied donjon was built between 1585 and 1590, making it the oldest among the nations 12 remaining original castle keeps, the municipal board of education said.

The board also said the keeps four floors were likely constructed successively, although a study conducted during repairs between 1961 and 1965 suggested that the third and fourth levels were added later.

A significant finding is that the keep already had its upper-floor watchtower when it was built just as it does now, Kazuyoshi Fumoto, a professor of architectural history at the graduate school of Nagoya Institute of Technology, told a news conference in March.

Commissioned by the education board, Fumoto studied the keep of Inuyama Castle, designated a national treasure, with Takumi Mitsutani, a visiting researcher at the Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, known for its expertise on tree-ring dating.

An analysis of growth rings confirmed that a pillar straddling the first and second floors and a beam supporting the fourth floor were made from Japanese cypress trees cut down in 1585 and 1588, respectively.

The floorboards and other parts of the fourth level were also made from timbers presumed to have been felled between 1585 and 1588.
Four Hainan-themed sub-forums held at Boao Forum for Asia 2021

People's Daily Online) 10:04, April 19, 2021

The inclusion of four Hainan-themed sub-forums on the schedule of this year's Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) means more topics on Hainan will be discussed at the event, which kicks off on April 18, according to details given out at a press conference.

Photo taken on April 17, 2021 shows the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) International Conference Center in Boao, south China's Hainan Province. (Xinhua/Yang Guanyu)

While serving diplomatic purposes, the sub-forums are also aimed at giving an overview of Hainan to guests from home and abroad and share Hainans development wisdom, such as its integration into the Belt and Road Initiative while working to build the Hainan free trade port, according to the press conference held on April 15 in Boao, a coastal town in Hainan where the Forum is held.

The first sub-forum, the ASEAN-China Governors/Mayors' Dialogue, will be held on the second day of the BFA. The sub-forum titled 21st Century Maritime Silk Road: Island Economic Cooperation, which has been held four times, will focus on the role islands play in building a maritime community with a shared future.

A sub-forum on the development trend of global free trade ports will be held for the first time after China started building Hainan into a pilot free trade zone covering the whole island. Another sub-forum will focus on poverty alleviation and sustainable development of rural areas.

The four sub-forums will all be held both online and offline as part of COVID-19 prevention and control measures. The BFA, which holds its 20th edition, will be the first major international conference in the world this year to be mainly held offline but partly online. More than 1,500 participants, including over 80 senior Chinese officials, some 60 foreign diplomats in China, and over 130 entrepreneurs from China and abroad, take part in the offline part of the forum's annual conference.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
[April 19, 2021] Promateris has been awarded an EEA & Norway Grant for the production of biodegradable and compostable raw materials

BUFTEA, Romania, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Promateris has initiated an investment project of a new division, Bio Compounds, which aims to locally manufacture raw materials from partially renewable resources, used in the production of compostable packaging. Thus, Promateris consolidates its position as a regional player, building the leading integrated bio-based production capacity in Central and Eastern Europe. The investment is part of the "Bio-based circular solutions to decarbonize the local economy" project and has a value of over 1.65 million euros. The project is supported by a grant of EUR 744.000 provided by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the EEA and Norwegian Financial Mechanism 2014-2021, within the "SMEs Growth Romania" program. The project is developed in partnership with the Norwegian company BioBag.



The new Bio Compounds division will start the production of BioMateris in 2022, a raw material used in the production of compostable packaging. Since Romania is one of the key producers of agricultural outputs within the European Union, Promateris aims to encourage and participate in the development of a strong local bioeconomy and an efficient use of natural resouce. Moreover, the integration of local agricultural chains enables manufacturers of bio-based and compostable packaging to reduce their carbon footprint and to create a stronger local circular economy.

BioMateris is the result of continuous investments in the company's R&D department, as well as the result of several partnerships with research institutes. BioMateris will be used to develop products for the following industries: agriculture (mulch film), retail and HoReCa (food packaging), bio-waste management (bin liners) etc. Promateris has more than 50 years of tradition in the manufacturing of technical & specialty polymer-based compounds, an experience that will strongly benefit the development of this new division. Promateris is a leading European manufacturer of sustainable products and solutions for the circular economy. With a history of more than 60 years in packaging manufacturing, Promateris gained regional leadership and top manufacturing expertise in chemical engineering. Promateris Group invests in developing sustainable packaging products and solutions for the circular economy, R&D and end-of-life solutions. The company also operates a plant dedicated to manufacturing specialty compounding for technical applications. Active in Bucharest, Valencia and Athens through commercial offices, and through distributors in more than 20 countries and 3 continents. Photo- https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1487807/promateris_group.jpg

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[April 19, 2021] Shipsy Eyes Major Expansion in the Middle East Market

GURUGRAM, India, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Shipsy, a leading logistics SaaS company has unveiled its plans to increase its footprints in the Middle East by 2025. Backed with funding from Sequoia's Surge & InfoEdge, Shipsy is sailing high to deepen its presence in the Middle East region. The decision came in accordance with the increasing demand for logistics and supply chain automation, which further skyrocketed during COVID-19 and is expected to boom in the upcoming years. With 50+ large enterprise customers in the region already, Shipsy is looking to treble this number over the next 1 year. The company was founded with a vision to create a platform for data-driven decision making and bringing visibility and operational efficiency in the logistics processes. By facilitating automation of logistics operations, the company has helped enterprises - both Shippers and Logistics companies to streamline their processes and save o the overall logistics cost.



Post going live on the Shipsy platform, here is what one of the largest retail companies in the Middle East had to say: "The prolonged pain of lockdown has made business continuity nearly impossible. However, it spiked the number of online orders, which was also difficult to manage considering the new norms like contactless deliveries and cashless payments.

Shipsy's logistics platform has helped us control the logistics operations through centralized dashboard. It offers features like digitized POD, real-time tracking, end-customer visibility, and more, which not only helped serve our customers better but enhance the customer base significantly over the last 1 year." Choosing Shipsy has helped logistics companies and retailers serve the growing need for e-commerce logistics in the region and automate their last mile operations across their own fleet and 3PL carriers. With a clear value proposition of helping increase business and bring in operation efficiencies, Shipsy's vision to double down on the Middle East is a further sign of companies trying to ride the growing e-commerce wave. As a part of the company's expansion plan, Shipsy is also targeting to set up a regional headquarter to take care of the growing need in the post Covid world along with expanding its partner channel ecosystem. While Shipsy continues reinforcing its position in the Middle East, the key focus over the next five years is to create dedicated support and IT infrastructure to cater to the rising logistics automation demand in the region. Contact: media@shipsy.io | +91-9867999866

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John Raoux/Associated Press

Homes are selling faster than ever, and the low inventory is causing buyers to compete for a limited number of homes available. This increased demand and quick-moving market can often result in multiple offers coming in on a property. While the idea of a bidding war may sound desirable to some sellers, there are a few crucial principles to know to help you stay focused and avoid legal trouble.

Ask your REALTOR to explain your options and alternatives. The REALTOR Code of Ethics requires your REALTOR to protect and promote the interest of their client in multiple offer situations and also denotes that, REALTORS shall submit offers and counter-offers objectively and as quickly as possible. Be prepared that these offers will likely come in fast, and you will need to be ready to make a decision on how to proceed. The good news is you have several options available that your REALTOR can walk you through. For example, you can accept what you deem to be the best offer and reject all others, or you can also invite all potential purchasers to make their best and final offer. You may also choose to counter a selected offer while holding other offers to the side as you await a decision on your counteroffer. Keep in mind that every approach has its advantages and disadvantages.
The government-backed amendments passed by the National Assembly early this month changed the legal mechanism for electing the countrys next parliament.

Armenians have until now voted for not only parties and blocs but also their individual candidates running in nationwide constituencies. In the last two general elections, parliament seats were equally distributed among candidates picked through national party lists and individual races.

The amendments backed only by lawmakers representing Pashinians My Step bloc mean that the forthcoming elections will held only on a party list basis.

One of the two parliamentary opposition parties, Bright Armenia (LHK), denounced the changes to the electoral system as partisan gerrymandering. The other opposition force, Prosperous Armenia (BHK), did not publicly back or oppose them.

Sarkissian announced at the weekend that he will not sign the controversial bill into law, saying that it was passed hastily and without proper debate.

The Venice Commission [of the Council of Europe] believes that changes to electoral legislation must be enacted at least one year before an election, Sarkissians office said in a statement.

The statement also questioned the wisdom of scrapping individual races in the constituencies, arguing that Armenia still lacks an established parliamentary political culture and political parties with clear programs.

At the same time Sarkissian decided not to challenge the legality of the bill in the Constitutional Courts. This means, that the parliaments pro-government speaker, Ararat Mirzoyan, can sign it into law later this month.

A senior My Step lawmaker, Hamazasp Danielian, criticized the presidents stance on Monday.

A quick validation of this very concrete change would have allowed us to carry out the electoral reform ahead of the elections with fewer shocks, Danielian told RFE/RLs Armenian Service. Unfortunately, the president opted for a different path for some reason.

Pashinian effectively reaffirmed plans to hold the snap elections in late June when he visited Armenias southeastern Vayots Dzor province on Saturday.

Under the Armenian constitution, such polls will have to be held within two months if the prime minister resigns and the National Assembly twice fails to elect another premier. The BHK and LHK leaders are understood to have assured Pashinian last month that their parties will not nominate prime-ministerial candidates in the event of his tactical resignation.
Several Texas leaders expressed their thoughts on the devastating news out of Austin where a former Travis County Sheriff detective killed three people Sunday morning.

According to CNN, Austin authorities said they have arrested Stephen Nicholas Broderick, 41, who police suspect shot the victims in the city's Great Hills Trail and Rain Creek Parkway area just before noon. Officials said the victims were pronounced dead at the scene. The shooting appears to be "a domestic situation that is isolated," Austin police said in a tweet.

READ ALSO: Early voting for San Antonio mayoral race, council seats and propositions starts today

Officials said all three victims, two women and one man, were individuals Broderick knew, according to the Associated Press. Travis County authorities said Broderick had been arrested for sexual assault of a child last June and was released on a $50,000 bond. The district attorney's office on Sunday filed a motion to revoke that bond, the Associated Press reported.

After the news broke, former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro tweeted that his heart goes out to the Austin community during this time. He also stated Texas must take action now to address gun violence.

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Houston) also tweeted about the news, writing it is now time to pass major gun safety legislation in the federal government.

"Too many dead people from gun violence and mass shootings," she wrote. "If we have to go it alone, let's go it alone. People are dying!"

READ ALSO: Police: Ex-Texas deputy wanted in deaths of 3 is arrested

Austin City Council Member District 4 Gregorio Casar agrees with Lee and Castro, tweeting "We must commit ourselves to the change necessary to #EndGunViolence."

City Councilmember Alison Alter, who represents northwest Austin, also released a statement on Twitter saying, "We await more details, but common sense gun violence prevention is possible & it is necessary. Prayers are not enough. We need state/federal leaders to treat gun violence like the public health crisis it is."

Austin Mayor Steve Adler wrote in a statement the tragic event is yet another illustration of the gun violence epidemic plaguing the nation and underscores that the state and U.S. Senate leaders must do better.

"We must learn from today's events to prevent another gun death at the hand of an abuser," he wrote in his statement. "We must do even better. Just this year in Austin, we put $2 million of the city's budget towards family violence shelters and over $500,000 for survivor counselors because like cities all across the nation we have seen an increase in violent domestic crimes in recent years."
French President Emmanuel Macron (R) and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hold a press conference following their meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, on April 16, 2021. (Anne-Christine Poujoulat/Pool via AP)

Macron Says Nations Must Define Red Lines With Russia

PARISFrench President Emmanuel Macron says that while dialogue with Russia is essential, clear red lines carrying possible sanctions must also be drawn with Moscow over Ukraine.

Referring to a recent buildup of Russian troops on Ukraines border, Macron said in an interview with American broadcaster CBS News, We will never accept new military operations on Ukrainian soil. The West must demonstrate diplomacy and credibility in making that point, he said.

And I think after an unacceptable behavior, indeed, we have to sanction, Macron said when asked about the possibility of sanctions. And I think we have to define clear red lines with Russia. This is the only way to be credible.

However, he added I think that sanctions are not sufficient in themselves, but sanctions are part of the package.

The interview aired Sunday on Face the Nation. It was recorded after Macron met Friday in Paris with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the two held a virtual conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Macron and Merkel demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops concentrated in western Russia as tensions with neighboring Ukraine rise.

The United States and NATO have described the buildup as the largest since 2014, when Russia annexed Ukraines Crimean Peninsula and fighting broke out in eastern Ukraine between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists. More than 14,000 people have died during the 7-year conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Germany and France helped negotiate a 2015 peace deal for eastern Ukraine in Minsk, the capital of Belarus.

Since taking office in 2017, Macron has worked for a constructive dialogue with Russia on a range of issues, and he continued to promote the need for dialogue in the Face the Nation interview.

Im sure that President (Vladimir) Putin can be ready to reopen dialogue, the French leader said. We need an open and frank dialogue with Russia regarding a raft of topics from arms control to stabilizing world crises.
My son has emerged from the dimly lit bedroom of a sprawling Edwardian sharehouse back into the city to an office, along with workers across the state. My daughter has gone to work in an office she had never entered until now. She finished at one workplace and started at another during Victorias work-from-home lockdowns.

The office I work in sits on the second floor of a building that began life as a 19th-century hotel. Its Victorian features: mahogany staircase balustrades, ceiling roses and an underground cellar are interspersed with a 1970s renovation of veneer panelling, mid-century furniture and drop-down cocktail cabinets.

Melburnians are heading back into the city. Credit: Jason South

Our workplace fell under the essential services banner so we didnt have to close during lockdown. I watched, through my 140-year-old windows that fall apart if I try to open them, as the street below changed to one of empty desolation because people were told to stay home. Months later I watched movement unfurl as people returned post-lockdown and the street came back to life.

I have seen car accidents, cardiac arrests, drug deals and assaults from my second-storey vantage point. I try not to look when couples argue or lone people sit in the car picking their nose.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on Monday hold a meeting through video conferencing with leading doctors of the country to review the COVID-19 situation. He will also hold another meeting with officials of top pharma companies.

The prime minister is likely to conduct the meeting with doctors at 4:30 pm today, while his meeting with pharmaceutical companies is scheduled at 6 pm, sources said.

Also read: COVID-19: Gennova Biopharma to start mRNA vaccine trials this month

Modi has held a series of meeting in the last few days on the rising COVID-19 cases in the country. On Saturday, he reviewed the preparedness of public health response to COVID-19, while on Sunday he interacted with regional public representatives and officials on the coroanvirus situation in his Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi. Earlier, the prime minister had also reviewed the status of oxygen availability to ensure adequate supply to hospitals across the states.

Meanwhile, Modi will be in West Bengal on April 24 to campaign for the assembly elections. He is scheduled to hold four rallies in the day, including one in Bhabanipur, the current seat of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee who is contesting from Nandigram this time.

Also read: PM Modi stresses on 'tracking, tracing, testing' in Varanasi COVID review

The country is reeling under the second wave of coronavirus, with scarcity of hospital beds, oxygen, medicines being reported in many states. India reported 2,73,810 new COVID-19 cases in the preceding 24 hours as of Monday morning, while 1,619 deaths were reported in the same time period.

State governments have been taking measures like night, weekend curfews and other restrictions to slow the spread of infections. While Maharashtra, one of the worst-hit states by COVID-19, is already under a lockdown, the Delhi government on Monday announced a lockdown from tonight till 6 am on April 26.

Announcing the six-day lockdown, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said the curfew is necessary as the national capital has been witnessing a massive spike in coronavirus caseload and the health system may crumble due to it.

Kejriwal said Delhi registered around 23,000 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday, while it has been logging approximately 25,000 fresh cases every day for the last few days.

Also read: Lockdown in Delhi: Guidelines, rules, timings, dates; what's allowed, what's not allowed
(@FahadShabbir)

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th April, 2021) The Russian Foreign Ministry on Sunday announced its decision to expel 20 Czech diplomats in response to the expulsion of Russian diplomats from Prague and gave the Czech diplomatic staff time until the end of Monday to leave Russia.

Earlier in the day, Czech Ambassador to Moscow Vitzeslav Pivonka was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry amid a diplomatic row between the two countries. The diplomat left the ministry after about 20 minutes without providing any comments.

"A strong protest was declared to the ambassador in connection with the unfriendly act of the Czech authorities against the personnel of the Russian diplomatic mission in Prague.

Pivonka was informed that 20 employees of the Czech embassy in Moscow were declared persona non grata," the statement said.

According to the ministry, the Czech diplomatic employees are required to leave Russia before the end of Monday.

"The Czech side was also required to bring the number of employees of the diplomatic mission in Moscow in the category of those hired locally to parity with the number of employees of a similar category in the Russian embassy in the Czech Republic. The ambassador received the relevant note," the statement said.
By Dick Polman





I don't want to malign anyone's religious faith. I really don't. But it's a tad disturbing that 45 percent of the nation's 41 million white evangelical Christians are vowing not to get vaccinated.



As one Texas nutritionist told the press the other day, "It would be God's will if I am here or if I am not here." Has this woman not learned that the virus is contagious? And that we'll never reach "herd immunity" (thwarting the virus due to a dearth of fresh hosts) unless roughly 85 percent of the population is vaccinated? How nice of her to entrust the health of those around her to God's will, without their having a say in the matter.



Granted, a lot of nationally prominent evangelical leaders are trying to talk sense to their parishioners. Rick Warren is telling his people to get vaccinated: "God revealed a lot of his will when he gave you that brain. And he expects you to use it."



Robert Jeffress says: "We talk about life inside the womb being a gift from God. Well, life outside the womb is a gift from God, too." But as Joel Rainey, a West Virginia church leader, reportedly laments, "(Pastors) get their people for one hour, and Sean Hannity gets them for the next 20."



Suffice it to say that unless these evangelical refuseniks live up to what they purport to believe  that God put them on earth to love everyone, that they have a moral duty to care for others as well as themselves  the pandemic will last far longer than it otherwise would. And they will have blood on their hands.



One's religious faith is deeply personal, and my attitude is: Hey, whatever gives you comfort, whatever gets you through the night, whatever helps you make sense of this often-perplexing existence. But if or when one's faith adversely affects others who don't share the faiththen we've got a problem. Especially when the issue is life or death.



As Kevin Schulman, a Stanford University professor of medicine, said the other day, "This (vaccine) is the most important product launch of our lifetime  and we need to get 85 percent market share."



By all accounts, the refuseniks don't trust science and won't be swayed on that basis. Nor do they trust government, even though their idol, Donald Trump, agreed to be vaccinated and recommends it. The best advice, apparently, is to try to persuade these folks by speaking their own language. Connie Schultz, an Ohio-based columnist who grew up in a devout Christian family, suggests this parable from her childhood church:



A town's river has overflowed. Floodwaters are headed for the home of a woman whose faith in God is unflappable. A police officer knocks on Laurie's door. "Ma'am," she says, "Your house will soon be underwater. Come with us, please."



"Oh, no, thank you," Laurie says. "God will save me." An hour later, water is starting to seep into Laurie's second-floor hallway. Emergency workers paddle a boat up to her bedroom window and yell, "Ma'am, you're going to drown. Get in the boat, please."



"God will save me," she tells them, waving goodbye. An hour later, Laurie is sitting on her roof. A helicopter hovers overhead, dangling a rope ladder within her reach. "Ma'am!" a man yells. "This is your last chance! Climb. Up. The rope!"



Laurie cups her hands around her mouth and yells, "God. Will. Save. Me!" Minutes later, Laurie drowns. She arrives at heaven's gate. "Why?" she yells at God. "Why did you let me drown?"



God starts counting on his fingers. "I sent you a police car. I sent you a boat. I sent you a hel-i-cop-ter."



I like that story. But since we're all in this fight together, I like a proverb that first appeared in print 153 years ago, one that is easily tailored to our present circumstance: "A chain is no stronger than its weakest link."





Dick Polman (dickpolman7@gmail.com) is a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a writer in residence at the University of Pennsylvania. This article was distributed by Cagle Cartoons Inc.


South Africa: Police get tough on Jouberton crime

Deputy Minister of Police, Cassel Mathale, has urged swift SAPS intervention in the crime situation and an impasse between the police and the Jouberton community near Klerksdorp, in the North West.

Mathale made the call on Sunday during a community crime prevention imbizo at Matlosana Stadium in Jouberton.

The imbizo was prompted by the torching of 12 houses since February and damage to vehicles in the area. The attacks are alleged to be gang-related.

In a statement, the SAPS said the imbizo created a platform for robust deliberations between provincial and local government, the police and community.

The community gave a first-hand account of how crimes such as gangsterism, gender-based violence and femicide, domestic violence, proliferation of liquor, taxi violence as well as other prevalent contact crimes are affecting their daily lives and well-being, reads the statement.

The Deputy National Commissioner of Policing, Lieutenant General Fannie Masemola, as well as SAPS provincial management led by Lieutenant General Sello Kwena accompanied the Deputy Minister.

SAPS spokesperson Colonel Brenda Muridili said during the engagement, community members aired their frustrations regarding the prevalence of criminality as well as lack of job opportunities in the area.

Community Policing Forum local representatives on the other hand appealed to the dignitaries to support their vision of hosting a seminar to address gangsterism and crime in general in the near future which they envisage will provide sustainable solutions to crime.

"To this end, the management has pledged its support to ensure that the seminar becomes a reality, she said.

Lieutenant General Kwena told the community he had recently established two task teams that specialize in gangsterism and the proliferation of drugs to stabilise the precinct. The intention was to establish a fully-fledged Anti-Gang Unit in the North West, supported by the office of the Deputy National Commissioner: Policing.

A community member - who is also a rape survivor - spoke openly about her and other vulnerable GBVF victims' ordeals, and requested the Deputy Ministry of Police to promise them that action will be taken against this scourge.

Mathale in the meeting acknowledged a clarion call from the community about the safety of police officers in Jouberton, saying if the police members did not have to constantly worry about their own safety, they would be able to fully commit to ensuring community safety.

The Deputy Minister urged the community to work together with the police to fight crime in the community.

"The solutions for the problems you have, are within you. We have heard your concerns and we are here to work together with you to fight crime in Jouberton."

To the police officers, he warned that those who wear the blue uniform and think that they can do as they please, will soon change into an orange uniform.

Mathale has directed Masemola to work with the Provincial Commissioner to resolve pending cases that were raised by the community as well as schedule a feedback meeting with the community.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2021-04-19. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
One person died every 14 minutes in 3 days in B'desh- Covid-19 death toll stands 10,385. Image Source: IANS News

One person died every 14 minutes in 3 days in B'desh- Covid-19 death toll stands 10,385. Image Source: IANS News

One person died every 14 minutes in 3 days in B'desh- Covid-19 death toll stands 10,385. Image Source: IANS News

One person died every 14 minutes in 3 days in B'desh- Covid-19 death toll stands 10,385. Image Source: IANS News

One person died every 14 minutes in 3 days in B'desh- Covid-19 death toll stands 10,385. Image Source: IANS News

Dhaka, April 19 : In Bangladesh, where the overall Covid-19 death toll currently stood at 10,385, one infected person died every 14 minutes in the last three days.

On Sunday, the country registered 102 new fatalities, the highest single-day spike since the first reported Covid-19 death on March 18, 2020.

Both on Saturday and Friday, there were 101 new deaths.

Of the deceased, 59 were male and 43 were female. Sixty-three of them were aged above 60, 23 were between the age range 51-60, 14 were between 41-50, and two people were aged between 31-40.

Sixty-eight of the victims were reported in Dhaka, 22 in Chittagong, four each in Mymensingh and Barisal, three in Rajshahi, and one in Khulna.

The seven-day average of single-day Covid-19 deaths, with Sunday's tally, shot up to 92.2 per cent.

Meanwhile, the Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) hospital with 1,000-bed capacity was inaugurated on Sunday morning as a dedicated COovid facility with all necessary facilities to treat infected patients.

At the iauguration, Zahid Maleque, Health and Family Welfare Minister, told IANS: "Bangladesh is facing a second wave of the pandemic like other countries of the world, and almost all hospitals in the country are filled with Covid-19 patients as both infections and fatalities are gradually increasing.

"It is urgent to extend healthcare facilities to treat Covid-19 patients... The government has prepared the DNCC hospital as a dedicated one within a short time installing all modern equipment to protect the lives of the coronavirus positive patients." As a second wave of the pandemic hit Bangladesh, the government enforced a lockdown from April 5 for a week.

The second phase of the lockdown that began on April 14 will continue until the midnight of April 21.

However, the Covid-19 National Technical Advisory Committee has recommended extending ongoing strict lockdown for one more week in the wake of the unabated resurgence.

The next decision can be taken after observing the situation following the end of the extended lockdown, the committee said in a meeting on Sunday night.

The advisors also suggested preparing the lockdown exit plan gradually as well.

Till Sunday afternoon, a total of 5.6 million people had received the first dose and 1.1 million received the second dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.

The daily infection rate stands at 19 per cent, while the overall rate is 13.9 per cent in the country.

The mortality rate remains at 1.44 per cent, while the recovery rate slightly tumbled to 85.5 per cent.

With the updated data, the country's overall Covid-19 caseload currently stood at 718,950.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
A note of support to the UCT community

Wits extends its support to the UCT community.

The Council of the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) on behalf of its staff, students and alumni, extends its heartfelt sympathy to the UCT community and the people of Cape Town during this very difficult time.

The ongoing fires and the resultant damage to buildings, libraries and property is indeed a national tragedy, which impacts on millions of lives, and our collective historical memory. However, despite this destruction, we are grateful that no fatalities have been reported, and that the UCT community remains safe.

As a sister university, Wits would like to extend its support to the UCT community, and will be liaising directly with the able UCT leadership to determine if we can assist in any way. In the interim, we encourage members of the public to support the relief efforts put forward by UCT.

We wish the UCT and Cape Town communities strength during this challenging period  we know that you are resilient and that you will emerge stronger from this catastrophe. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.
When it came down to it, Ole Anthony would admit to a lot of the bad things people said about him.

My own grandiose bull can get in the way, he told a reporter in 2004. I was a schemer and a promoter. Thats just the way my mind works.

Anthony needed to believe he was special, and he convinced those around him they were part of a spiritual elite. He was at times a huckster. He never stopped being a hustler. He exaggerated and lied about his life to impress people. He dreamed up grand plans to feed his ego and confirm his unmistakable charisma, never letting anything be reined in by humility or other peoples good sense.

But in the process he preached a message of Gods grace to those who wouldnt have heard it otherwise. He founded a radical community of Christians committed to recreating the first-century church. And he took on the work of exposing televangelists who perverted the name of Christ for financial gain as cheap frauds.

According to the small church he founded in Dallas, Anthony was more like an Old Testament prophet than anything else.

Any conversation with him left you pondering your relationship with God, said Gary Bucker, an elder at Community on Columbia.

John Rutledge, another elder, said Anthonys Bible teaching could cut through a listeners fog of self-delusion and clarify the need for redemption. It did for me, at least.

Anthony died on Friday, April 16, at age 82. A long-time pipe smoker, he was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2017 and it spread to his liver and his brain. He stopped teaching his daily 7:30 a.m. Bible study about two years before his death. In some of the final recordings, his pain and struggle are audible.

Theres nothing left to do and there hasnt been anything left to do since Pentecost, Anthony taught in March 2019. There's nothing left to do. Thats which is perfect has come. Do you see how important that is, that theres nothing left to do?

You were meant to be a failure

Anthony was born in Minnesota on October 3, 1938. His family moved to Wickenburg, Arizona, a desert town billed as the dude ranch capital of the world, when Anthony was 10. His father left sometime after, and his mother ran a small nursing home.

By his account, Anthony was a wild youth who got into trouble with girls, drugs, and the law. A reporter for the Dallas Observer found, however, that he worked at a Safeway grocery store, belonged to the National Honor Society and his high schools radio club, and coedited the yearbook. There was no evidence he got in any significant trouble.

At 18, he joined the Air Force and was stationed in South Korea. Anthony became a special weapons maintenance technician. He later inflated that to surveillance operative and analyst, telling stories about how he worked as a spy behind the bamboo curtain in Communist-controlled parts of Asia and witnessed nuclear tests in the South Pacific, including one memorable explosion that he said vaporized an entire island.

Anthonys commanding officer, Captain William D. Ballard, said that wasnt quite accurate, telling one reporter, we were not that kind of field operation. According to Ballard, Anthony installed seismic monitoring systems to detect secret nuclear weapons tests around the world.

Ole always pushed the edge, Ballard told another reporter. I wouldnt have guessed that he would become so religious. But, when he gets into something, he gets into it right up to his eyeballs.

After he got out of the Air Force, Anthony returned to Texas and got involved in Republican politics, working as a consultant for Barry Goldwaters presidential campaign in 1964 and a regional campaign manager for Texas Senator John Tower in 1966. He ran for state legislature himself in 1968 and lost.

Anthony launched a political PR firm in Dallas in 1971, but then had his life changed by Norman Grubb, a British missionary to the Belgian colony of Congo, who spoke about the meaning of the Cross and dying to self.

The words that really got to me, Anthony later said, were: You were meant to be a failure. That is the only way God can use you. Look around you with honest eyes. Dont you see that all human effort is futile, empty and vain? All that is necessary for you is: Abandon yourself, pick up your cross and follow Him.

He frequently compared the conversation experience to a nuclear blastIf you understand that God wants complete surrender from you, its like an atomic bomb going off in your headand made up a story about how hed seen a bomb test. His friend, journalist John Bloom, who became famous in Texas for writing a satirical column about drive-in movies under the name Joe Bob Briggs, said that Anthony was trying to communicate the mystical flash of understanding he experienced.

Its impossible to explain how these things happen, said Bloom, who had his own conversion in 1984.

A community is born

Anthony was changed enough that he abandoned his PR firm and started Trinity Foundation, named after the worlds first nuclear test site in New Mexico. He planned to organize and promote evangelistic events, but failed almost immediately. He tried to buy a TV station, but didnt succeed. He hosted a radio show that was moderately successful in the region, but then got canceled, possibly for being difficult to work with.

One by one all of Oles projects for God came to nothing, Bloom wrote. By the time I met him, the Trinity Foundation appeared to be comatose. In fact, it was just being born.

In 1974, the Trinity Foundation was reduced to a Bible study. Anthony hoped it would attract the Republican officials and businessmen he had previously worked with, but it actually drew people on the margins of Texas society, with trauma and trouble and a need for the message that Jesus loved the downcast and downtrodden and did all the work that needed to be done on the cross.

The people who showed up didnt just bring their Bibles, Bloom said. They brought teenage pregnancies, divorces, bad-check charges, warrants, feuds with parents, child-custody battles, drug habits, alcoholism, car wrecks, and more or less constant illness without benefit of medical insurance. All these trauma dramas poured into the Bible study, sending Ole to the passages in which Paul exhorted Christians to embrace their afflictions and glory in their adversity.

Anthony, going back to those New Testament exhortations, became fixed on the idea that Christians today should be more like the first-century church. He and his followers committed to sharing all that they had with each other and with anyone else in need, following Acts 2:4247.

They bought housing on one street and called it the Block, meeting for daily Bible studies, shared meals, and day-to-day discipleship.

Members agreed to take in homeless people, and Anthony devised a short-lived but much publicized plan to solve the homelessness problem, with every church in the country to take in one or two people in need. Few congregations signed on for the project, though some Dallas churches would send people to the Block with a note they werent set up to help but knew that Anthony was.

Anthony was also influenced by a Messianic Jewish leader named Zola Levitt, and the community started celebrating Jewish feasts and fasts, interpreting Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Purim, Pentecost, the Feast of Ab, and other celebrations as texts about Jesus.

According to the church today, each feast is like a piece of a jig-saw puzzle in time and when the picture is complete, we find ourselves gazing at a portrait of Jesus Christ.

Accusations of spiritual abuse

In the radicalism and the reinvention of the Block, some people were hurt. According to former members, the community lost any sense of personal boundaries, and Anthony dominated the group with his charisma, masking his will as group consensus and controlling peoples lives. He decided who could get married. He told people where to live. He gave away their belongings and put homeless people in their homes without asking.

Perhaps the most destructive practice was a scapegoating ritual the Block called the hot seat. One personcommonly someone who had pushed back against Anthony, former members saywould sit in the center, and the group would assault them with accusations until they broke down.

It was brutal, said Powell Holloway, who sat in the hot seat in 1986. The whole purpose was to die to self, to get in touch with the fact that you were chief of sinners.

When people finally psychologically crumpled, they would stop resisting the worst accusations against them and embrace self-loathing and shame. Members would frequently confess to the worst sins they could imagine, including pedophilia, voyeurism, bestiality, incest, and prostitution. While some of the confessions were true, more were made up to demonstrate total submission to the group.

Anthony, as the leader, did not sit in the hot seat, former members say.

The current church says the community has grown and evolved since then and no longer practices the hot seat. The church nonetheless acknowledges that Anthonys vision of full-contact Christianity could be confrontational and abrasive.

Investigating televangelists

The small group of intense Christians came to national attention in the early 1990s, when Trinity Foundation started investigating televangelists. One of the members of the community told Anthony that when he fell on hard times, he pledged his last $5,000 to Robert Tilton, host of Success N Life, a prosperity gospel program that was on the air in more than 200 television markets.

I needed some snake oil, and he had some snake oil to sell, Harry Guetzlaff would later say. It made perfect sense at the time. I believed that God was active in my life, and Tilton was saying, Give me a buck and God will give you back a hundred.

Anthony and the group were offended by this betrayal of the gospel, and tried to get someone to do something. They contacted National Religious Broadcasters, but got no response. They connected a local prosecutor, but the district attorney was not convinced that Tilton, a cartoonish character who would shadowbox demons on the air, was doing anything illegal. They contacted various media but got no response, until a producer at ABC told them they would need to produce evidence to get any attention and offered a few suggestions for how to find it.

They found what they were looking for in dumpsters behind Tiltons office, his lawyers office, an Oklahoma bank branch, and a computer data management office. Trinity found Tilton was depositing the checks, computerizing the information in the prayer requests, and asking for more money by direct mail. Hundreds of thousands of papers he had promised to read, pray over, and lay hands on were ripped up and dumped in the trash.

It was literally widows and orphans, Anthony said. Thats who supports the televangeliststhe weakest, most vulnerable people in the world.

On November 21, 1991, ABC aired a prime time investigation into Tilton and two other televangelists, using the evidence gathered by the Trinity Foundation. Diane Sawyer interviewed Anthony and shared footage of the trash he and the newly born garbologists had collected. Shortly after the program, five agencies announced criminal investigations into Tilton, and his ministry collapsed.

Trinity went on to do more than 300 other investigations into televangelists, including Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland, and Paula White. The ministry received support from hundreds of donors across the country, sent church members to be trained and licensed as private investigators, and became the only full-time media ministry watchdog organization.

In 1996, the foundation acquired the evangelical satire magazine The Door and occasionally used it in the war against televangelists as well, such as the time it published a Playboy-style photograph investigators had found of a naked W. V. Grant shortly after he was convicted of failing to pay back taxes.

The church and Trinity Foundation were eventually established as independent operations, though they remained closely connected. The church was named Community on Columbia.

In 2007, when a US Senate committee led by Republican Chuck Grassley started investigating prominent televangelists, with an eye toward tightening tax regulation on multibillion-dollar media ministries, Trinity gave the government 38 reports. The Senates final report did not result in any push to change the law.

Anthony was undeterred and spoke out against televangelists when they supported Donald Trump in 2016. He continued to work with journalists interested in exposing prosperity gospel fraud, all while maintaining his daily Bible study and participating in life at Community on Columbia. He took as its motto a Latin phrase attributed to Martin Luther: Crux sola est nostra theologia, meaning, The cross alone is our theology.

In the end, Anthonys message to the televangelists, the needy people who showed up at the Block in Dallas, and his own grandiose schemes were one and the same. As he explained it once to Bloom, A lot of these people are clinging to their miserable little self-images. They dont understand that its about God. Its about them, but only the part of them that contains God. They still think theyre special.

Anthony never married. He will be buried by his nieces in St. Peter, Minnesota. A memorial will be held in Dallas on May 1.
The winter's snow and ice have given way to clearer skies and sunnier days, and with the better weather comes the urge to spend some time outside. But if staking out a spot on one of Connecticut's beaches this season isn't at the top of your summer fun list, there are a host of other outdoor water activities that may suit your fancy.

Maybe enjoying a sunset sail at SoundWaters sailing in Stamford will fit the bill, or perhaps some old-fashion water park fun at Lake Compounce in Bristol will be exactly what you need to get outside this summer. Whatever outdoor adventure works for you, Connecticut has it.

Take a look at what the summer 2021 season has in store.
Two men were killed in Texas after a Tesla they were in crashed Saturday and caught fire with neither of the men behind the wheel, authorities said.

Mark Herman, the Harris County Precinct 4 constable, said that physical evidence from the scene and interviews with witnesses led officials to believe no one was driving the vehicle at the time of the crash.

The vehicle, a 2019 Model S, was going at a high rate of speed around a curve at 11:25 p.m. local time when it went off the road about 100 feet and hit a tree, Herman said. The crash occurred in a residential area in the Woodlands, an area about 30 miles north of Houston.

The men were 59 and 69 years old. One was in the front passenger seat and one in the rear seat, Herman said.

He said that minutes before the crash, the mens wives watched them leave in the Tesla after they said they wanted to go for a drive and were talking about the vehicles Autopilot feature.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said last month that it was investigating nearly two dozen crashes involving Teslas that either were using Autopilot or might have been using it.

The causes of death were unclear Sunday. Positive identification had not yet been made because of the duration of the fire, Herman said.

It took four hours to put out a fire that normally would have taken a matter of minutes, Herman said, adding that it took more than 30,000 gallons of water to extinguish the fire.

Regulators have raised concerns about the batteries used in electric vehicles. The National Transportation Safety Board warned in a 2020 report that the batteries can pose safety risks to emergency responders.

Mitchell Weston, chief investigator at the Harris County Fire Marshals Office, said that while the batteries are generally safe, impacts at high speeds can result in thermal runaway, which causes an uncontrolled contact between different materials in the batteries.

Thermal runaway can lead to fires, as well as battery reignition, even after an initial fire is put out, the safety board warned in its report. Mitsubishi Electric warns that thermal runaway can lead to catastrophic results, including fire, explosion, sudden system failure, costly damage to equipment, and possibly personal injury.

The fire marshals office was investigating the fire in the crash, a spokeswoman said. Herman said his department was working with the federal authorities to investigate.

He said that law enforcement officials had been in contact with Tesla on Saturday for guidance on a few things but declined to discuss the nature of the conversations.

Tesla, which has disbanded its public relations team, did not respond to a request for comment.

Elon Musk, Teslas chief executive, earlier on Saturday had promoted a recent safety report from the company, writing on Twitter that Tesla with Autopilot engaged now approaching 10 times lower chance of accident than average vehicle.

Tesla, which on its website calls Autopilot the future of driving, says the feature allows its vehicles to steer, accelerate and brake automatically within its lane. However, it warns that current Autopilot features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous.

In 2016, a driver in Florida was killed in a Tesla Model S that was in Autopilot mode and failed to brake for a tractor-trailer that made a left turn in front of it.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
KYODO NEWS - Apr 19, 2021 - 20:30 | All, Japan, Coronavirus

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said Monday that the government will secure enough COVID-19 vaccines for all eligible citizens by the end of September after an agreement with U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. on additional supplies.

The agreement was reached after Suga made a request for extra supplies to be able to offer vaccinations to all residents aged 16 or older, or some 110 million people, by the end of September during telephone talks with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla on Saturday, the last day of his three-day visit to Washington.

Japan "will mostly likely be supplied by September," Suga told reporters at his office a day after returning from the trip for a White House meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden.

The prime minister did not elaborate on details such as the number of doses.

Pfizer is the only pharmaceutical firm to have its vaccine approved for use in Japan at present. The country also has supply deals with Britain's AstraZeneca Plc and Moderna Inc. of the United States but their vaccines are pending approval by the health ministry.

Apart from the latest deal, Japan is due to receive enough doses for two shots for 72 million people under contracts with the U.S. pharmaceutical giant.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said the same day the government is considering allowing dentists to administer the vaccine amid concerns there will be a dearth of doctors and nurses once the rollout is at full tilt.

"We will consider what is necessary to ensure the Japanese people can get vaccinated quickly and safely," he said when asked at a press conference about media reports that such a decision could be finalized this month.

Since Japan launched its vaccination program in mid-February, around 1.2 million health care workers have received at least one dose of Pfizer's two-shot vaccine.

A further 13,000 people aged 65 or older have taken the first dose, according to government data.

That adds up to less than 1 percent of the country's population of 126 million. Supply shortage has been the main reason for the slow rollout, with Japan trailing far behind countries such as Britain and the United States.

Upon assuming office last October, Suga had said he planned on procuring enough vaccines for all citizens by the first half of 2021.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 11:51:25|Editor: huaxia

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KHARTOUM, April 18 (Xinhua) -- Sudanese police on Sunday announced the crackdown of a criminal network and seizure of around 15,000 pieces of cannabis goods.

After violent clashes and exchanges of fire, two suspects of the criminal group were arrested, along with the seizure of a vehicle and two Kalashnikov rifles, said a police statement.

The police said they obtained information about the criminal group travelling on a vehicle loaded with cannabis from the production areas in South Darfur State to Khartoum State.

A field team was formed to follow the vehicle, the police said, noting that upon the vehicle's arrival at the outskirts of Khartoum State, the suspects clashed and exchanged fire with the police force.

Three members of the police force were injured and transferred to Ribat University Hospital in Khartoum.

According to statistics from the general administration for combating drugs, Sudan is considered the biggest producer of cannabis in Africa, accounting for 60 percent of the production.

The general administration for combating drugs in Sudan organizes annual campaigns to crack down on cannabis farms. Enditem
Line Of Duty fans were sent wild on Sunday evening as the latest episode ended on a nail-biting cliffhanger as Kate and Ryan were locked in a showdown.

After viewers learnt that Joanne Davidson, played by Kelly Macdonald, was related to gangster Tommy Hunter, the fifth episode ended with Vicky McClure's character Kate Fleming in a tense showdown with Ryan Pilkington, played by Gregory Piper.

Soon after the show aired, Twitter was flooded with wild reaction from fans, who demanded bosses show the next episode now, as the suspense was too much to wait another week to see the outcome of the shoot off.

Line Of Stress! Line Of Duty fans were sent wild on Sunday evening as the latest episode ended on a nail-biting cliffhanger as Kate and Ryan were locked in a showdown

Fans were left reeling after fan favourite Ted Hastings, played by Adrian Dunbar, tipped as being the elusive H again, and Ryan left in a standoff with DI Kate.

In typical AC-12 style, a twist emerged in the form of a throwback clue to the 2019 series showing the word definitely misspelt as 'definately' in Jo Davidson's messages - a clue that previously suggested Hastings could be one of the bent coppers he is so hellbent on finding.

Although fans were already reeling with the twist, the show ended with shock, with the tense cliffhanger seeing PC Pilkington drawing his gun at DI Fleming.

In the closing moments, Kate  a goodie (at least we hope)  and PC Ryan  a baddie through and through  are seen with their guns trained on each other.

Wah! After viewers learnt that Joanne Davidson, played by Kelly Macdonald, was related to gangster Tommy Hunter, the fifth episode ended with Vicky McClure's character Kate Fleming in a tense showdown with Ryan Pilkington, played by Gregory Piper

Look what you've caused: Davidson seemed genuinely distraught when she thought Kate could be shot, however it was her messages that got her in the position

Nail-biting: Soon after the show aired, Twitter was flooded with wild reaction from fans, who demanded bosses show the next episode now, as the suspense was too much to wait another week to see the outcome of the shoot off

Leaving viewers on the edge of their seats, the episode then ended after the duo and Davidson shouted at each other to drop their guns, with two gun shots heard as the screen faded to black.

Has Kate  whom we've watched snaring bent coppers over six series  been killed in the line of duty? Or has she finished off corrupt and psychopathic Pilkington?

And if she's only wounded, will DI Steve Arnott  Kate's partner in crime-fighting  manage to save her?

Kate had managed to send him a text just before the intense final scene, however it remains to be seen if he makes it to her in time to help and catch Ryan.

What's going to happen next? Fans soon flooded social media in both shock and outrage

Fans soon flooded social media in both shock and outrage.

Viewers penned: 'The whole of the U.K. right now after another cliffhanger #LineOfDuty... I mean, that cliffhanger is next level. But honestly, this was my fave part #LineOfDuty... #LineOfDuty another cliffhanger...

'I'm fuming after that Line Of Duty cliffhanger...was Kate able to get Jo an almond croissant???!... When #LineofDuty leaves us on another cliffhanger... The Line of Duty producers leaving the episode of that cliffhanger #LineofDuty...

'Having to wait a week after that cliffhanger #lineofduty... Ummm. Excuse me. Im going to need the next episode of that now. That is a cliffhanger. And my mouth does not know how to close. #LineOfDuty...

Is she alive? Leaving viewers on the edge of their seats, the episode then ended after the duo and Davidson shouted at each other to drop their guns, with two gun shots heard as the screen faded to black

'Im in NYC watching every episode. Just finished tonights cliffhanger. You must be a creative internet user. ie seek and ye shall find. #LineOfDuty #lineofdutyday... Another Line of Duty cliffhanger I cant take it anymore Robbie...

'another week of "line of duty", another week of a cliffhanger... So I just watched last nights @Line_of_duty And yet again its ended on a cliffhanger (of course) what an episode honestly absolutely brilliant acting PS; I hope Kate doesnt die...

'Mother of God, I dont think I can take another week waiting on the outcome of yet another cliffhanger literally heart pounding out of my chest at the end of episode 4 and 5...

'Mother of God, I dont think I can take another week waiting on the outcome of yet another cliffhanger for literally heart pounding out of my chest at the end of episode 4 and 5 of #LineofDuty6 Whilst Im here...Patricia Carmichael for H''.

What's next? Although fans were already reeling with the twist, the show ended with shock, with the tense cliffhanger seeing PC Pilkington drawing his gun at DI Fleming
[April 19, 2021] Edwin R. Loder Ph.D. is recognized by Continental Who's Who

BOYNTON BEACH, Fla., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Edwin R. Loder Ph.D. is being recognized by Continental Who's Who as a Lifetime Achiever for his professional excellence in the Science and Engineering industries and his outstanding leadership as President of ERL & Associates. A full retiree, Mr. Edwin R. Loder, has garnered over three decades of professional excellence in science and engineering. He is currently flourishing as the president at ERL & Associates, where he utilizes his experience and expertise to best lead the company. As a testament to his professional success, he has been featured in various science and engineering publications and currently holds six patents.

Prior to his scientific endeavors, Mr. Loder proudly served with the United States Navy from 1942 until 1952. He later graduated summa cum laude fromSyracuse University in 1952 with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry. Shortly thereafter, he went on to attend the Massachusetts Institutes of Technology, where he was honored as a General Electric Research Fellow in 1954 and obtained a Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1955.





A well-seasoned professional, Dr. Loder's career began as a senior chemist at Eastman Kodak in Rochester, New York. In the following years, he worked with Maumee Chemical as a research director, GAF as a laboratory manager, and DuBois Chemical Co., where he was the executive vice president from 1966 until 1985.



Remaining abreast of the latest advancements in his field, Mr. Loder maintains active memberships with the American Society of Quality Control, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Chemical Society. With a commitment to excellence, he is a fellow of the American Institute of Chemists. Contact: Katherine Green , 516-825-5634, pr@continentalwhoswho.com View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/edwin-r-loder-phd-is-recognized-by-continental-whos-who-301271731.html SOURCE Continental Who's Who

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Sao Paulo began a new phase of easing measures against the spread of the coronavirus yesterday after having recorded the deadliest week of the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazils most populous and wealthiest state. Last week, the government of right-wing Governor Joao Doria (PSDB) also allowed public and private schools to partially reopen for in-person classes.

The new transitional phase, between the red and orange phases of the supposed pandemic containment plan, the Sao Paulo Plan, will allow the reopening of nonessential businesses between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. and the holding of in-person religious ceremonies, both with a maximum capacity of 25 percent. From April 24 on, gyms, bars and restaurants will be allowed to reopen under the same criteria.

Governor Doria, sixth from left, at March 11 press conference announcing "emergency" phase in Sao Paulo (Credit: Sao Paulo Government)

It was the second week in a row that the Doria government updated the Sao Paulo Plan after the state spent 28 days in the emergency phase, between March 15 and April 9, in which even services considered essential were restricted. The main justification for these changes was a slight decrease in ICU bed occupancy rates in recent weeks. On April 9, when the state moved from the emergency to the red phase, the rate was 88.3 percent, dropping to 85.3 percent on Friday, when the transitional phase was announced.

The transitional phase is the latest change made to the criteria of the Sao Paulo Plan in order to reopen the economy, even with pandemic raging. Before, the state could leave the red phase with an ICU occupancy rate below 75 percent, and only essential services were allowed to operate. According to the states economic development secretary, Patricia Ellen, this new phase was born from dialog with the [economic] sectors and their request was that we need to resume activities.

Domingos Alves, a professor at the University of Sao Paulo, told AFP that this change is absurd. How are these new flexibilization measures announced when everything indicates that next week or the week after well have a shortage of supplies to keep people inside the hospitals? He referred to the lack of medications needed to intubate patients in many hospitals in Sao Paulo, which is causing many of them to refuse new patients even with available beds. Since March, 543 patients have died waiting for an ICU bed in the state.

After recording 1,282 deaths last Tuesday, the third deadliest day of the pandemic, last week ended with a record 5,690 COVID-19 deaths, a number almost three times higher than at the peak of the first wave in July. It is the eighth week in a row with an increase in deaths, which has led to the number of deaths in Sao Paulo surpassing the number of births for the first time in history. Sao Paulo, which has 21 percent of the Brazilian population, accounts for 28 percent of the deaths in Brazil. The country, in turn, has registered 25 percent of the deaths in the world. By Saturday, the state had recorded a total of 88,000 deaths and 2.7 million cases.

These figures demolish all attempts by Sao Paulos millionaire governor, who claims to be guided by science in fighting the pandemic, to differentiate himself from the open herd immunity policy of Brazils fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro. Having deemed a number of services essentialincluding industry and several business sectorssince the beginning of the pandemic in March of last year, Dorias policy of putting profits above human lives led Sao Paulos GDP to grow by 0.4 percent in 2020, compared with a 4.1 percent drop in the national GDP.

Last December, Sao Paulo moved to also deem education as an essential service, allowing schools to reopen at any phase of the Sao Paulo Plan. However, the severity of the pandemic forced the government to move school vacations forward by two weeks during the emergency phase and suspend in-person classes in state public schools.

After January recorded the most cases in Sao Paulo along with the detection of community transmission of the most contagious variant from Manaus, in February schools partially reopened and business operations were extended. This explosive result came in March, which saw a 135 percent increase in the number of deaths over the previous month, from 6,459 to 15,159. In the first half of April alone, the state recorded 11,883 deaths, the second deadliest month of the pandemic after March.

During the entire emergency phase, the social isolation rate reached a maximum of 45 percent, 2 percentage points higher than in the previous period and far from the ideal of 60 percent established by the very group of specialists that supposedly guide the actions of the Sao Paulo government. This week, even the bourgeois media could not remain indifferent to the increased circulation of people in the streets and crowded public transportation. According to the director of the Brazilian Society of Immunizations, Monica Levi, this will lead to new outbreaks and an endless cycle [of the pandemic] at the moment when the medical community is calling for total lockdown.

The criminal indifference of the Sao Paulo government to this situation has clear motives: force the population to learn to live with this daily risk, avoid the implementation of more restrictive measures and maintain the extraction of profits from the working class. Part of this policy is the frenetic social media campaign by Sao Paulos Education Secretary Rossieli Soares, repeated incessantly by the bourgeois media, insisting that education is essential and that schools will remain open at any cost.

This effort has been accompanied by the promotion of distorted scientific studies to supposedly show that the reopening of schools does not contribute to the worsening of the pandemic. However, a study released on Wednesday showed that the incidence of COVID-19 cases among teachers in February was three times higher than that recorded by the general population of Sao Paulo. Conducted by the Network of Public School and University Researchers (Repu), the study was based on data collected by the APEOESP teachers union after the government refused to report the number of infections among teachers via access to information law.

Besides distorted data, another element that has helped confuse the public debate about the seriousness of the pandemic and convince the population to expose themselves to the risk of being infected is the propaganda carried out around the vaccination campaign in Sao Paulo. This has also been used by the government to justify the end of the emergency phase. However, by Sunday, just 3 million of the states 44 million inhabitants had received two doses of the vaccine, while the first dose had been administered to almost 6 million people. This week, Sao Paulo started immunizing 65-year-olds, while most of the people hospitalized today are younger than 40.

Even though vaccinations are advancing significantly, top health officials are warning that this cannot be an excuse for abandoning lockdown measures. Last Monday, World Health Organization (WHO) Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, Make no mistake. COVID-19 vaccines are a vital and powerful tool, but they are not the only tool.

On Saturday of last week, as part of the effort to reopen schools early, the Sao Paulo government began vaccinating teachers and school employees over the age of 47. According to Secretary Soares, this will allow even teachers who were assigned to remote work as part of the coronavirus risk group to return to unsafe schools.

Beginning the vaccination of teachers has also been a demand of the teachers union for a supposed safe return to in-person classes. The APEOESP has attempted to differentiate itself from Governor Doria and Secretary Soares by demanding that all education professionals be vaccinated, regardless of age group, which is far from guaranteeing minimal control of the pandemic.

Since the partial reopening of schools in Sao Paulo in February, the APEOSP has subordinated the teachers struggle against in-person classes to the capitalist courts. On Thursday, the full Sao Paulo Court of Justice confirmed the overturning of a late January decision that banned in-person classes in the red and orange phases. However, the union has relied on another court decision, from early March, to do nothing to promote a broader struggle against the murderous reopening of schools. For its part, the Sao Paulo government is claiming that Thursdays decision also overturned the March ruling.

The APEOESP has impotently insisted that the Government has to comply with the court decision ... and there can be no in-person classes until all education professionals are vaccinated. It has repeated that the unions priority is for teachers to file warrants for compliance with the court decision. The union shut down the state teachers strike with the beginning of the emergency phase in mid-March and failed to prepare a broader struggle against the foreseeable government offensive. Now, its decision to limit the struggle to individual actions by teachers in the courts only exposes the APEOESPs complicity with the reopening of schools.

Meanwhile, teachers in Sao Paulos municipal public schools continue to strike against in-person classes. The strike, which has already lasted 70 days, has also been isolated by the municipal teachers union, the SINPEEM, which, like the APEOESP, fears that the movement will develop outside of the control of and the limits imposed by the union bureaucracy.

This month, the state and city governments of Sao Paulo began to deduct teachers wages for every day on strike. Even though this was easily foreseen as early as February, the APEOESP and SINPEEM failed to organize strike pay in advance, forcing many teachers to return to schools.

On social media groups, municipal teachers have expressed their outrage: Who can handle going on strike without getting paid? one questioned. Another teacher wrote that unions need to distribute the strike pay, while another suggested disaffiliating from the union to save the amount and make their own strike fund. One teacher summed up the unions strategy: Divided and weakened. We have the with and without wages, as well as those in remote work and those in-person. Soon we will have the vaccinated and the unvaccinated ... And the unions acting through repudiation notes and timid actions that dont effectively solve anything.

Sao Paulo teachers should be aware that this is not just one more traitorous action of the union bureaucracy, but rather the expression of a long process of the unions transformation from working class organizations into instruments used by the national ruling elites to divide workers and prevent a unified struggle of the working class. Now, with the pandemic, this struggle is in defense of the most alienable right of all: the right to life itself.

The struggle against the reopening of schools, besides demanding a unified movement of the public and private school teachers of Sao Paulo with those throughout Brazil, must develop into a broader struggle with other sectors of the Brazilian working class against the herd immunity policy of putting profits above human lives. For this, the Socialist Equality Group in Brazil calls for the formation of rank-and-files committees, independent of the unions and armed with a socialist and internationalist program.
The Parliament of has announced that the country will hold its presidential election on May 26, while the candidate registration is to begin on April 19.

The announcement was made by the parliament speaker on Sunday.

"It was decided that Wednesday, May 26, will be the presidential election day for Syrian citizens who are in For Syrian citizens who are outside of Syria, the election will be held at diplomatic missions on May 20, from 7 am to 7 pm local time," the decision voiced at the parliamentary session said, as quoted by Sputnik.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who took power in 2000, has not yet officially announced he will stand for re-election, Al Jazeera reported. Earlier, Assad won the previous election in 2014.

As per Syria's constitution, a president may only serve two seven-year terms, with the exception of the president elected in the 2014

The decade-long war in the country has left hundreds of thousands of people dead and millions displaced.

(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 member of the Dalit minority in India, Beena Pallical knows the meaning of descent-based discrimination.

The Dalit, commonly known as the untouchables in India and other South Asian countries, are born into a lifetime of marginalisation, exclusion and human rights violations. They are strictly ranked  based on their descent  and are thereby placed at the lowest echelon of societys classes.

In some countries, descent-based discrimination does not only permeate institutions, social structures and everyday life, it is firmly established under the law.

While Pallical herself came from a family that provided for her needs, including access to education, she says that many of her brothers and sisters from the community did not have such good fortune.

Injustice directed at the Dalit causes profound trauma and suffering across generations. Stigma follows an individual from birth until death, affecting all aspects of life from education, housing, work, access to justice and political participation. Women and girls are often victims of sexual violence, trafficking and are especially vulnerable to early and forced marriage, bonded labour and harmful cultural practices.

According to the International Dalit Solidarity Network, there are an estimated 260 million Dalits worldwide. The Dalit live in South Asia (India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) and in communities who migrated from South Asia across the globe.

Deeply embedded discrimination from birth

It starts from when they are children, Pallical says. They are not allowed to sit at the front of the class, they are not allowed to eat with others, or play with kids from other castes. Very quickly, cliques form, and the Dalit are excluded. They do not know any other way, and their adult life is then deeply impacted.

With a growing desire to support the challenges facing the Dalit, Pallical left a corporate job to move to Delhi and work with the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights. She has been doing this work for the past eleven years, and is now the General Secretary.

To bring the issues to the international arena, she has also worked closely with UN Human Rights, other UN agencies and has co-organised events parallel to the

High-level Political Forum, the main UN platform on sustainable development. She recently addressed the UN Forum on Minority Issues.

I couldnt be doing anything else in my life right now, she says. It gives me a lot of satisfaction, but at the same time it makes me very angry. How can people talk about peace and happiness and religion when they see a young woman pulled out of the field where she is working, and is then raped and killed? We need to be angry, otherwise we wont get anywhere - we wont stop this.

Pervasive violence

Violence against the Dalit is a tragic, daily occurrence. According to the National Crime Records Bureau of India, some 45,935 cases of violence are recorded each year.

In India, around ten Dalit women are raped each day, says Pallical. The perpetrators enjoy total impunity, and have a lot of political support. Because of this, we are unable to break the chain of violence and oppression.

The National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights works with victims of violence to advocate for justice and compensation from the government, while providing economic and psychological services for families.

Abuse in the online space

Hate speech and discrimination against the Dalit minority is another issue of enormous concern for Pallical, and one which she and her organisation are fighting against.

While she acknowledges that the online space has allowed an avenue for marginalised communities to express their views, she says that simultaneously, it has created a dangerous environment for them, where they are vulnerable to abuse from people who are not being held accountable. Many young Dalit women have had to stop using social media out of fear, and because the abuse had reached intolerable levels.

The people who are committing these acts of abuse do it without any conscience, without taking any responsibility for their actions, she says.

Pallical and the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights have been working together with Twitter India to address this rise in hate speech. They are documenting the various abuses and slurs against the Dalit, as well as against other minorities, in order to have the capacity to recognise it and immediately block the perpetrators.

A dream of an equal playing field

For Pallical, if children are given the same opportunities, they have every chance to grow up and flourish. She envisages a day when all children can be on an equal playing field, and be free citizens, deserving of dignity and respect.

She has a list of dreams for a better future for the Dalit people.

My dream is that every Dalit child has the same opportunity as any other child, so that they can be equal citizens in this country. My dream is that every Dalit woman is respected for the work that she does, and that she is not beaten up and raped, just because she is a Dalit.

My dream is that if I say Im a Dalit and Im at the table, I should be respected just like anybody else.

Disclaimer: the views, information and opinions expressed in this article are those of the persons featured in the story and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

19 April 2021
New York, April 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Europe Vegetable Oil Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2021 - 2026)" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p06030502/?utm_source=GNW

Since the very beginning of the pandemic, the major companies across the region have been taking all appropriate prevention and protection measures. The companies are also putting everything in place to minimize the economic impact of this pandemic, and they are firmly committed to ensuring the safety of their employees and serve the customers as best as possible.

- The supply chain of the market studied was vastly affected by the falling production of raw materials and social distancing measures due to the pandemic. According to COPA-COGECA, a union of the two big agricultural umbrella organisations and the strongest interest group for European farmers, the production of rapeseed in European Union is projected to reach 17 million metric ton, declining by 30%, in the marketing year 2020-2021, owing to reduction in planted area caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

- Over the long term, the market is driven by the robust demand for organic health-based products, with increased consumption among health-conscious consumers of high-quality edible oils /cooking oils and the growing demand from various application areas. Additionally, the supporting policies by the regulatory bodies, like Renewable Energy Directive (RED) and European Union Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), are also widely supporting the application of vegetable oil in varied industries, including biofuel, food, animal feed, or cosmetics.

- Rapeseed oil dominates the market studied, owing to its abundant production in the regional market and its wide application in the biodiesel, food, and animal feed industries. Germany and France are the leading consumer of rapeseed oil in the regional market. Palm oil is another highly used vegetable oil in the European market, especially in the food industry, but the region is completely dependent on its import.



Key Market Trends

Supportive Policies on Vegetable Oil Usage in the Region



The European Unions consumption of vegetable oil in biofuel is largely driven by the Renewable Energy Directive (RED). This directive, established in 2009, requires 10% of the energy consumption in road and rail transport in 2020 to be from renewable sources. The European Union Member States (countries) must implement this target with national laws and incentives, such as blending mandates. Among all, palm oil contributes around 20% to the production of biodiesel (fatty acid methyl ester) and renewable diesel (hydrotreated vegetable oil) in the European Union. The other major feedstocks for producing diesel substitutes are rapeseed, sunflower oil, and soybean oil. The current European Union Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) made some strategies to augment the oilseed and pulse production through greening measures, which will have a direct impact on the vegetable oil market of the region. Thus, the regulatory body is projected to ban many pesticides that are commonly used in the United States. As a result, the domestically produced vegetable oil will gain applications in the food, animal feed, and cosmetics industries by taking hold of consumer trust over the quality of vegetable oil used as an ingredient.



Germany Holds the Largest Market Share



After Canada, Germany is believed to be the largest producer of rapeseed oil across the world. Based on its nutritionally well-balanced composition, rapeseed oil has become one of the most common vegetable oils in Germany and all over Europe. It is used as salad and cooking oil on a large scale and serves as an oil component in margarine, mayonnaise, and dressings. The non-food industry is also interested in rapeseed oil. It is used in energy productions, such as biofuels, and serves as an environment-friendly additive in lubricants. Germany is among one of the largest European markets for olive oil. Total consumption is high and stable. Moreover, the market offers good opportunities for organic olive oil. Most consumption in Germany is for virgin olive oil, this, in turn, boosts the demand for vegetable oil in the country.



Competitive Landscape

The European vegetable oil market is fragmented, yet competitive, with a significant share held by the leading player such as Bunge Limited, taking up the maximum market share in the vegetable oil market in Europe. The company is followed by other key players, such as Archer Daniels Midland Company, Olam International Limited, and Wilmar International Limited. Product expansion is the most adopted strategy by key players in the market studied, followed by mergers and acquisitions. These strategies have been adopted with an aim to meet the demand and withstand competition in the market from the global players. The prime factors determining the market players and their positions in the concerned market are the high-quality ingredients used without any addition of preservatives to deliver the completely natural and organic products across the European region.



Reasons to Purchase this report:

- The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format

- 3 months of analyst support

Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p06030502/?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.



__________________________
After being the judges save last week, Katy Perry was hoping Brennan Beane Heplers performance of (Ive Had) The Time Of My Life from Dirty Dancing was enough to keep him singing another week on the show.

Its in your blood. Its in your veins, Perry said. I think you are ready for the stage and to go on tour.

Unfortunately, fans sent the 23-year-old Massachusetts man home on Sunday.

The most incredible ride, Beane wrote on Instagram after the show. Im so grateful for the love that you all have given to me.

This week was the first week where fans voted during the show and the top nine were all announced in the same episode.

Another Berklee College of Music student, Grace Kinstler, was safe.

During Sunday nights episode, Beane also talked about being deaf in his right ear. Last week, MassLive spoke with Beane about the hurdles he faces with this and having type 1 diabetes.

I have to manage that very involved thing throughout this whole process, which has been interesting, to say the least, he told MassLive.

Beane said being deaf in one ear did impact the first few American Idol performances but as the show has progressed hes been able to include accommodations to help him.

It definitely was a hurdle for the first few times that we sang on stage, he said. But now with this performance [Monday] night, we started to have in ear monitors, which definitely make it much easier for me to overcome that.

Beane also told MassLive that win or lose he plans to continue his music career. Hes already planning on releasing a few new songs and hopefully play at outdoor venues this summer.

Theres always going to be people that arent into what you do, he said. That doesnt take away from what you do.

Related Content:
Elevated blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes increase the risk of heart disease. But a large study today reveals that in people with these conditions, increasing activity levels is associated with a reduced likelihood of heart events and mortality.

The research is presented at ESC Preventive Cardiology 2021, an online scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).1

Previous research showed that improvements in physical activity are beneficial to health. However, those studies were performed in the general population. In our study, we were interested to see if there were similar effects in individuals with cardiovascular risk factors such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes." Dr. Esmee Bakker, Study Author, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, Netherlands

The study included 88,320 individuals from the LifeLines Cohort Study. Participants underwent a physical examination and completed questionnaires about their medical history and lifestyle including exercise. The questionnaires were repeated after approximately four years.

Study participants were divided into five groups according to activity levels at baseline and four years: large reduction, moderate reduction, no change, moderate improvement, and large improvement.2 Participants were followed-up for a median of seven years after the first assessment for the occurrence of cardiovascular disease or death.

A total of 18,502 (21%) individuals had high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and/or diabetes at the start of the study.

The average age of this group was 55 years. After adjusting for age, sex, and baseline physical activity, the researchers found that those with a moderate to large improvement in physical activity were around 30% less likely to develop cardiovascular disease or die during follow-up compared to those who did not change their activity level.

The remaining 69,808 (79%) participants did not have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or diabetes at the start of the study.

The average age of this group was 43 years. After adjusting for age, sex, and baseline physical activity, the researchers found that those with large reductions in physical activity had a 40% higher risk of cardiovascular disease or death compared to those who did not change their activity level.

Dr. Bakker said: "Our study suggests that to prevent heart attacks and strokes and boost longevity, healthy individuals should maintain their physical activity levels, while those with risk factors need to become more active. The associations we found were even more pronounced in people who were relatively sedentary at the start of the study, indicating that inactive people have the most to gain."

To prevent heart disease, European guidelines recommend at least 150 minutes a week of moderate intensity or 75 minutes a week of vigorous intensity aerobic physical activity or an equivalent combination.3

Dr. Bakker said: "If you are currently sedentary, walking is a good activity to start with. If you are already hitting the recommended amount, try doing 10 minutes more each day or increasing the intensity."
All these scenarios are years (and billions of dollars) down the line. But, as the saying goes, its never too early to start planning, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said it better: If you want to go to Mars , prepare to die. If humanity is to colonize Mars and standardize space travel, burial rituals need to be regulated, Popular Science agrees.The idea might sound morbid, but death is natural and normal if you strip away all prejudices, mysticism, and religious connotations. Death is tragic, irreversible, and deeply impacting. With space exploration, its the elephant in the room, in that astronauts know it could happen at the slightest accident in a matter of seconds, yet no one talks openly about it. More than 550 people have been sent into space, and 21 of them diedbut just three did so into outer space, Popular Science notes.In a matter of years, space launches will be more frequent, taking both astronauts and civilians onto the outer edge and beyond. Later on, the first settlers will arrive on Mars and, once they hopefully survive the landing and the tough conditions on the Red Planet , start colonizing it. In a matter of years, more people will die in space and, when they do, what happens to their bodies?The video below aims to offer an answer to that question. Theres a lengthier story that goes with it, offering three solutions to the problem that doesnt exist as of now but will surely do so soon. Theres the current alternative of storing the body in the coldest part of the spaceship for a return home. Said return can take place via the resupply vessel or with the garbage, which burns once it enters the Earths atmosphere.The second possibility is offering the deceased a so-called burial at sea, sending the bodies into the void. However, unlike what you see in the movies, this would be far less spectacular and more morbid. Whatever you drop into the void of space would either trail in the path behind a rocket or just linger. With rocket launches picking up in frequency, it would mean navigating a sea of floating space caskets.On the topic of Mars colonization , in particular, the issue poses twice more logistic problems. Assuming the first colonizers survive the months-long journey to the Red Planet, the waves of radiation, and the difficult landing, they would most likely have to deal with the reality of losing crew members in the following interval.Sending the body back to Earth is not a viable alternative: the journey is too long, and space is limited on rockets. A simple burial site is out of the question since NASA has strict rules about contaminating the environment of alien planets.Regarding the disposal of organic material (including bodies) on Mars, Catherine Conley at NASAs Office of Planetary Protection says, we impose no restrictions so long as all Earth microbes have been killed  so cremation would be necessary.Another option for the same scenario is a worst-case type of thing. Cannibalism in extreme situations, when it ensures the survival of the remainder of the crew, is not unheard of and, while barbaric to the outside world, it is deemed acceptable but not desirable, according to bioethicist Paul Wolpe.Arguably, this kind of conversation is unsettling, triggering, or even offensive to most people. Still, NASA working toward expansive space exploration and not considering this aspect would be like preparing for the birth of a child without thinking of solutions for when (and if) something goes wrong during delivery. NASA has no guidelines regarding this in place right now, but thats not to say it hasnt done research on it: in 2005, it conducted a study with eco-burial company Promessa, developing a method that would see a body freeze-dried in space and crushed into icy ash, so that it could be returned to Earth.If man is to go where no man has gone before, NASA and other space bodies have to think of what must be done if man never returns.
Police: Fatal stabbing might have been result of 'robbery gone wrong'

A stabbing victim taken to a Berkeley County hospital Friday night died. Police think the stabbing might be the result of a 'robbery gone wrong.'
The head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard on Monday issued a warning to Israel, saying its "happiness" will be "very short-lived", state television reported. General Hossein Salami was speaking at the funeral of Brig. Gen. Mohammad Hosseinzadeh Hejazi in Tehran.

On Sunday, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced the death of the high-ranking general key to Iran's security apparatus. Hejazi, who died at 65, served as deputy commander of the Quds, or Jerusalem, the force of Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.

The unit is an elite and influential group that oversees foreign operations, and Hejazi helped lead its expeditionary forces and frequently shuttled between Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. Born in 1956 in the city of Isfahan, Hejazi joined the Guard after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and came to lead the paramilitary Basij volunteer corps for a decade - a tenure that saw the force transform into a pillar of the country's security and political apparatus.

Hejazi took up the position of deputy commander of the Quds Force in April of last year after leading the Guard's paramilitary forces in Lebanon. Iranian media reported that he joined forces fighting against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The Guard statement said he died of heart disease, without providing any further details.

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)
New Delhi, April 19 : The Indian Navy seized a Pakistani fishing boat with contraband worth approximately Rs 3,000 crore in the Arabian Sea on Monday.

The fishing boat with contraband was coming from Pakistan's Makran Coastal region and initial probe reveals that the contraband was meant to fund terror activities in India, Maldives and Sri Lanka.m Sri L The Indian Navy said that the boat with its crew has been escorted to the nearest port in Kochi for further investigation.

A total of five crew members, all hailing from Sri Lanka, have been apprehended and the fishing boat along with the contraband has been seized.

Indian Naval ship Suvarna, on surveillance patrol in the Arabian Sea, encountered a fishing vessel with suspicious movements.

To investigate the vessel, the ship's team conducted a boarding and search operation, which led to the seizure of more than 300 kg of narcotics substances.

"The approximate cost of the catch in the international market is estimated to be Rs 3000 crore," Commander Vivek Madhwal said.

The officer also said that it is a major catch not only in terms of the quantity and cost, but also from the perspective of disruption of the illegal narcotics smuggling routes.

The officer explained that the smuggling routes emanate from the Makran coast and flow towards the Indian, Maldivian and Sri Lankan destinations.

"Apart from the human costs from drug addiction, the spoils of the narcotics trade feed syndicates involved in terrorism, radicalisation and criminal activities," the officer said.

Similarly on April 15, eight Pakistan nationals were apprehended from mid sea off Gujarat coast for drug trafficking. The law enforcement agencies had seized 30 kg heroin from them.

The Indian Coast Guard, a maritime law enforcement and search and rescue agency, spotted a Pakistani boat PFB NUH with eight Pakistani nationals near the international maritime boundary line.

They were searched and 30 kg heroin were recovered from their boat.

The coast guard official said that it was a joint operation with Gujarat Police's anti-terrorism squad. It said that the ATS had information about the illegal consignment being smuggled into the state through the coastline.
U.S. Supreme Court justices on Monday appeared reluctant to let people who have been allowed to stay in the United States on humanitarian grounds apply to become permanent residents if they entered the country illegally.

The justices heard arguments in an appeal by a married couple from El Salvador who were granted so-called Temporary Protected Status of a lower court ruling that barred their applications for permanent residency, also known as a green card, because of their unlawful entry.

'They clearly were not admitted at the borders, so is that a fiction, is it metaphysical, what is it? I don't know,' conservative Justice Clarence Thomas asked.

The case could affect up to 400,000 immigrants, many of whom have lived in the United States for years.

U.S. Supreme Court justices appeared reluctant to let people who have been allowed to stay in the United States on humanitarian grounds apply to become permanent residents if they entered the country illegally.'They clearly were not admitted at the borders, so is that a fiction, is it metaphysical, what is it? I don't know,' conservative Justice Clarence Thomas asked

The case involves Jose Sanchez and Sonia Gonzalez, who live in New Jersey. They have four children, the youngest of whom was born in the United States. The couple twice entered the country illegally: in 1997 and 1998. After a series of earthquakes in 2001, the United States designated El Salvador as covered under the Temporary Protected Status program

President Joe Biden's administration opposes the immigrants in the case.

The dispute puts Biden, who has sought to reverse many of his Republican predecessor Donald Trump's hardline immigration policies, at odds with immigration advocacy groups and some of his fellow Democrats.

A federal law called the Immigration and Nationality Act generally requires that people seeking to become permanent residents have been 'inspected and admitted' into the United States.

At issue in the case is whether a grant of Temporary Protected Status, which gives the recipient 'lawful status,' satisfies those requirements.

Some justices suggested it might be a stretch to interpret the law as deeming the plaintiffs 'admitted.'

Liberal Justice Elena Kagan also cast doubt on whether the law broadly considers people who the government categorizes as 'non-immigrants,' including those with Temporary Protected Status, as having been legally admitted.

Some justices suggested that the law's meaning is not so clear cut.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor told Justice Department lawyer Michael Huston, 'If you're asking us to find the better reading of the statute, we should go by its terms: Those people have been admitted.'

Foreign nationals can be granted Temporary Protected Status if a humanitarian crisis in their home country, such as a natural disaster or armed conflict, would make their return unsafe.

There are about 400,000 people in the United States with protected status, which prevents deportation and let them work legally.

The case involves Jose Sanchez and Sonia Gonzalez, who live in New Jersey. They have four children, the youngest of whom was born in the United States.

The justices heard arguments in an appeal by a married couple from El Salvador who were granted so-called Temporary Protected Status of a lower court ruling that barred their applications for permanent residency, also known as a green card, because of their unlawful entry

The couple twice entered the country illegally: in 1997 and 1998. After a series of earthquakes in 2001, the United States designated El Salvador as covered under the Temporary Protected Status program.

The couple received protection under the program that same year. U.S. officials rejected their 2014 applications for green cards because they had not been lawfully admitted.

They sued in federal court, saying that those with lawful status, including Temporary Protected Status recipients, are deemed to have been lawfully admitted, and may apply for permanent residency. Last year, the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the couple.

Besides El Salvador, 10 other countries have such designations: Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.
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Last week, Bernie Madoff, (pronounced made off as in made off with all your money) died in prison. He was serving a 150-year term for defrauding thousands of people of as much as $65 billion dollars. He was a young 82 and had served only 12 years of the 150-year sentence. No word yet on who will cover the other 138 years.

Among his famous clueless victims were the brilliant director and filmmaker Steven Spielberg, the brilliant actor Kevin Bacon and the brilliant Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax. Which in retrospect doesnt make them look so brilliant after all.

One actually brilliant man, independent investigator Harry Markopolos, smelled a rat as early as 2000, but was unable to convince anyone that Madoff was a fake, because nobody could hear him over the loud party music investors were playing as they were celebrating their improbable returns on their investments.

You might ask how he was able to hoodwink so many people for so long. Thats easy. He simply used a version of the well-known pyramid scheme, which was invented in Egypt. Thats where the top man, Madoff in this case, proposes to build a pyramid made out of other peoples money.

Madoff, acting as the pharaoh, convinces all the gullible people he can to fork over their hard earned cash in return for a piece of the pie, I mean, pyramid.

The more people foolishly hand over their money, the more the pharaoh tells them how brilliant they are to be investing in his pyramid. This only makes the people want to question him less and fork over even more money.

Because pyramid schemes (being made of money, not mortar and bricks) are naturally flawed, his pyramid eventually collapsed to the ultimate horror of the investors and building inspectors but mostly to the horror of the Securities and Exchange Commission or SEC. Thats the highly financed, watchdog government agency designed to protect us hard-working taxpayers from people like Mr. Madoff, but which was obviously asleep at the wheel.

So how silly does that make the SEC look? I think the SEC ranks just above FEMA in terms of likeability of government agencies designed to help us. Thats how.

What Madoff was doing was closer to whats called a Ponzi scheme. It convinces people to invest their money blindly and can maintain the illusion of a sustainable investment vehicle as long as new people contribute new funds, and as long as those investing do not ask full repayment and still believe in the non-existent assets they supposedly are entitled to. This incidentally sounds just like our Social Security system. Just giving you fair warning.

In the meantime, just be wary of any investors with get-rich-quick schemes involving three-dimensional objects like pyramids, cubes, cones or arches. Always ask to see the building permit first.




Salary $49,774.40 - $76,065.60 Annually Location Arlington, VA Job Type Full-Time Department Department of Environmental Services Job Number 2812-21A-DES-DB Closing Continuous Position Information

Arlington's Department of Environmental Services (DES) seeks an experienced Heavy Automotive Mechanic/Tire Repair Technician to fill a vacancy within the Operations section of the Auto Equipment Bureau. The Operations section provides maintenance, repair services, and heavy tire repairs to County equipment and fleet vehicles such as: heavy fire equipment, dump trucks, utility trucks, school buses, and snow-related equipment. This mechanic is responsible for performing repairs and replacement of heavy truck and construction equipment tires, preventive maintenance work and routine corrective repairs on heavy, construction and/or emergency vehicles for the day and evening shifts.



Specific duties: Repairing and/or replacing tires for all types of equipment;

Operating shop equipment and vehicles such as the tire machine, computerized tire balance, forklift and wrecker;

Transporting vehicles and heavy equipment;

Repairing and replacement of both heavy truck and construction equipment tires;

Inspecting vehicular equipment;

Troubleshooting and diagnosing repair work on the mechanical, hydraulic and electrical systems using diagnostic scan tools;

Determining scope and sequence of repairs required; and

Performing Virginia State Safety Inspections on vehicles.

Selection Criteria

Minimum:



Trainee Level : High school diploma/equivalent;

6 months of experience performing heavy auto mechanic duties;

Experience in one or more of the following functions: repairing or replacing tires for all types of equipment, diagnosing, repairing gasoline or diesel engines, brake systems, manual and automatic transmissions, or differentials.

Full Performance Level :



High school diploma/equivalent;

One (1) year of experience performing heavy auto mechanic duties;

Experience in one or more of the following functions: repairing or replacing tires for all types of equipment, diagnosing, repairing gasoline or diesel engines, brake systems, manual and automatic transmissions, or differentials.

Must possess or obtain within specified timeframes:

VA State Certified Safety Inspector License (within 12 months of hire); and Class "A" or "B" Commercial Driver's License (within 6 months of hire) and required endorsements (within 9 months of hire). See special requirements section.

Substitution: Additional qualifying experience may be substituted for the education requirement on a year-for-year basis.



Desirable: Preference may be given to candidates with mechanical experience in one or more of the following:



Performing repairs to heavy truck and construction equipment tires;

Performing diagnostic work and/or technical repairs;

Repairing heavy fire equipment, dump trucks, utility trucks, and school buses

Repairing and/or maintaining automobiles and/or trucks;

Using electronic diagnostic equipment for diesel and gasoline engines.

Special Requirements

1. The applicant must possess a valid motor vehicle operator's license and authorize Arlington County to obtain, or the applicant must provide a copy of the applicant's official state/district driving record. Any offer of employment will be contingent upon a favorable review of the applicant's driving record.



2. Applicant must possess or obtain within specified time frames of appointment: Class "A" or "B" Commercial Driver's License within the first six (6) months of employment

Hazardous materials endorsement (H), Tank vehicle endorsement (N), School Bus endorsement (S), and Passenger Carrying endorsement (P) for the CDL within the first nine (9) months of employment; and

VA State Certified Safety Inspector License within the first twelve (12) months of employment.

3. After obtaining CDL and required endorsements H, N, S and P, applicant must be willing to work on and operate the County-owned 2600-gallon fuel truck as requested by the Operations Supervisor.



4. Applicants must provide written consent for Arlington County to obtain from previous employer(s) information required by Department of Transportation (DOT) agency regulations concerning drug and alcohol testing information.



5. Prior to the time of appointment, the successful applicant must pass a pre-employment drug screening and will be subject random drug screening during employment, as required by the Department of Transportation (DOT) standards. Any offer of employment will be contingent upon passing a pre-employment drug screening and alcohol breath test as required by applicable standards.



6. Applicants must be willing to maintain hand and diagnostic tools required by the trade, work in awkward or cramped positions for long periods of time, and work in an environment that includes exposure to noise, odors, dust, grease and dirt with extended periods of standing, walking, bending, crouching and lifting light to very heavy objects and equipment.



7. Must be able to lift heavy objects weighing 25-50 pounds unilaterally; carry 75-100 pounds bilaterally and push/pull 50-75 pounds unassisted.



NOTE:



Anyone hired with less than the required one year of experience will be appointed as a Trainee.

Anyone hired without the VA State Certified Safety Inspector License, or the Commercial Driver's License and required endorsements must obtain the permit/license within the specified time frame.

Once obtained, the CDL and VA State Certified Safety Inspector License must be maintained throughout employment.

Additional Information

Work Hours: Work is conducted on two shifts. Hours may be subject to change. Seasonal overtime may be required. Must be available for call-back in emergencies. Shift hours are as follows: AM Shift: Monday through Friday: 6:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

PM Shift: Monday through Friday: 2:15 p.m. to 10:45 p.m.

If a trainee is hired, depending on qualifications, a training period will be established to last no longer than the equivalent of up to one year. At the end of the training period, the employee must meet experience, training and proficiency requirements for the journey level position. Once the candidate qualifies, the one-year probationary period will begin.



Full performance hourly salary range: $23.93 - $36.57

Trainee hourly salary range: $21.75 - $33.23



Your responses to the supplemental questionnaire are considered part of the selection process and are required for this position. Please do not give "see resume" as a response to the questions. In order to receive full credit for your experience, please ensure that you have included details of all relevant work experience on your application and have completed the Supplemental Questionnaire in its entirety. Incomplete applications will not be considered.



NOTE : This position is listed as "open continuous." Applicants are encouraged to submit their applications as soon as possible. Applications will be reviewed on a regular basis and interviews conducted continuously with qualified applicants. If your application is received later in the recruitment process, it may not be reviewed or considered. The application process will close when the position has been filled or when a sufficient number of qualified applications have been received. Arlington County Government employee benefits depend on whether a position is permanent, the number of hours worked, and the number of months the position is scheduled.



Specific information on benefits and conditions of employment can be found on the Arlington County Human Resources Department website: (see application details)



Permanent, Full-Time Appointments

All jobs are permanent, full-time appointments unless otherwise stated in the announcement. The following benefits are available:



Paid Leave : Vacation leave is earned at the rate of four hours biweekly. Leave accrual increases every three years until eight hours of leave are earned biweekly for twelve or more years of service. Sick leave is earned at the rate of four hours biweekly. There are eleven paid holidays each year.



Health and Dental Insurance : Three group health insurance plans are offered - a network open access plan, a point-of-service plan, and a health maintenance organization. A group dental insurance plan is also offered. The County pays a significant portion of the premium for these plans for employees and their dependents. A discount vision plan is provided for eye care needs.



Life Insurance : A group term policy of basic life insurance is provided at no cost to employees. The benefit is one times annual salary. Additional life insurance is available with rates based on the employee's age and smoker/non-smoker status.



Retirement : The County offers three vehicles to help you prepare for retirement: a defined benefit plan, a defined contribution plan (401(a)), and a deferred compensation plan (457). The defined benefit plan provides a monthly retirement benefit based on your final average salary and years of service with the County. You contribute a portion of your salary on a pre-tax basis to this plan. General employees contribute 4% of pay; uniformed public safety employees contribute 7.5% of pay. Employees become vested in the plan at five years of service. The County also contributes to this plan.



For general employees, the County also contributes 4.2% of pay to a defined contribution plan (401(a)) . The County also matches your 457 contribution, up to $20 per pay period, in this plan. The 457 deferred compensation plan allows you to set aside money on either a pre-tax (457b) or post-tax (457 Roth) basis up to the IRS annual limit. New employees are automatically enrolled with a pre-tax contribution equal to 2% of your base pay.



Other Benefits: The County also offers health, dependent care, and parking flexible spending accounts; long-term care insurance; tuition assistance; transit and walk/bike to work subsidies; a college savings plan; wellness programs; training opportunities; and a variety of other employee benefits.



Permanent, Part-Time Appointments:

Part time employees who work ten or more hours per week receive paid leave and benefits in proportion to the number of hours worked per week.



Limited Term Appointments:

Benefits are the same as permanent appointments except that the employees do not achieve permanent status.



Temporary Regular Appointments:

Temporary regular employees who work 30 hours or more per week are eligible for health, dental, and basic life insurance as described above. They are also eligible for vacation, sick leave, and paid holidays.



Temporary Seasonal and Occasional Appointments:

Temporary employees who work on a seasonal basis or variable hours receive sick leave, but do not normally receive other paid leave or benefits. Exceptions are noted in individual announcements.


Bose Esho, an 18-year-old mother of two, is yet to come to terms with the sad reality. On this years Valentines Day, armed men suspected to be herders killed her 40-year-old husband, Sanya Esho.

A commercial motorcyclist and an indigene of Eggua in Yewa North Local Government Area of Ogun State, Mr Esho and another young man were waylaid and murdered on February 14 while riding on their motorcycles.

The other victim, identified simply as Olawale, hailed from Agbon village but ran a motorcycle spare parts shop in Eggua.

We were preparing to formalise their relationship when the news of Olawales death broke, Titus Elegbede, the septuagenarian chief of Ijabo, a suburb of Eggua, said. Mr Elegbedes 19-year-old granddaughter, Taiye Falola, is pregnant for the late Mr Olawale.

The young womans mother, Elizabeth Falola, said she was afraid of breaking the news of his death to her daughter due to her condition.

Even the police said they were also shocked by the news. Abimbola Oyeyemi, the police spokesperson in Ogun State, told PREMIUM TIMES that the commissioner of police, Edward Ajogun, had just returned from a meeting in the area over the escalating violence when the news broke.

It is disturbing that on that same day we met them, these young men were gruesomely murdered, Mr Oyeyemi said to our reporter in his office.

Protracted crisis

A palace chief in Eggua, Adeyanju Adegbenro, said the crisis started more than 10 years ago but was escalated in 2020 by the growing culture of impunity on the part of the herders.

He said at least 50 men and women died from violent attacks in the Ketu-Yewa axis of Ogun State in 2021 alone. He said many of the victims had been abducted under dreadful circumstances.

You can notice the extent of the damage from the silence enveloping us. The few of us left in the community are talking in hushed voices out of fear. More than 70 per cent of residents have fled. This is an ancient community that is fast turning into a ghost town, Mr Adegbenro told our reporter at the palace.

The police spokesperson could not give the number of the victims of the crisis but said as of February 25 when our reporter visited him in Abeokuta, the state capital, 13 deaths had been reported.

How it all started

The recent escalation of the conflict has forced many villagers to flee the area and take refuge in the neighbouring Benin Republic.

About Ketu-Yewa land

Ketu-Yewa land covers five local government areas of Ogun State including Yewa South, Yewa North, Imeko Afon, Ipokia and parts of Ado-Odo Ota. The area is described as a potential food basket for Ogun State and is on an international commercial route linking Nigeria with Benin Republic, Togo and other West African countries.

With an estimated population of two million people who are predominantly farmers, Yewa shares boundaries with Lagos, Oyo and Republic of Benin. It also shares linguistic and cultural identities with many communities in Benin Republic.

Long years of oppression

For reasons of its vast grazing land and nearness to border posts, Eggua in Yewa North Local Government Area has for long been a camping ground for herders who have formed a large settlement there.

According to the palace chief, Mr Adegbenro, nomadic herders mostly from northern Nigeria usually arrive in the community between September and October every year and stay until March and April when the rainy season begins.

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But their arrivals always mark the beginning of tension as they herd their cattle to graze on farmlands, according to Mr Adegbenro.

Not harvesting your crops whether ripe or unripe by September is at a risk. And when you harvest, you must not store the crops near the farms, or else they would be fed to the cattle at night. This has been the situation for more than 10 years now, said Olugbenga Popoola, the secretary of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Yewa North State Constituency 2 chapter.

A chief in Imeko, headquarters of Imeko Afon Local Government Area, who does not want to be mentioned for fear of reprisals, said attempts to stop the cattle from grazing on farms were usually met with violent attacks by herders, and sometimes by soldiers on the order of these moneybags herders.

The chief recalled an event in 2018 when a brother of the immediate past traditional ruler of Afon in Imeko Afon Local Government Area, Busari Adetona, was slaughtered for stoning cows that invaded his farm.

He said soldiers allegedly mobilised by the herders frustrated the communitys efforts to get the suspects in the murder brought to justice.

Earlier in 2016, a farmer here in Imeko had the whole 27 hectares of his farm completely eaten up by cattle. But after five heads of cattle were found dead on the farm, soldiers invaded our community and beat hapless farmers mercilessly. The farmers were later taken away in military vans for two days before they were released, he said.

The soldiers were said to be from the 35 Artillery Brigade, Alamala, Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital.

The chief said a man in army camouflage, who claimed to be a major from a command in Kano, sauntered into the palace one day and demanded N500,000 damages on each of the dead cows.

He said he owned the cattle being managed by a young herder. The farmers were already crying until our Kabiyesi, Oba Benjamin Alabi, told him that the whole community would rather die than pay him a kobo.

Resort to self-help

As the cases worsened with the years, various communities constituted conflict resolution committees comprising representatives of the palaces, farmers, herders, vigilante groups and officers of the police and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps.

The immediate past governor, Ibikunle Amosun, also inaugurated a committee which directed nomadic herders to register at the palaces of their host communities.

But the head of the farmers association in Imeko Afon LGA, Abdul-Azeez Ismail, said the herders always violated conditions that were jointly set. Thus in 2020, communities across Ketu-Yewa land banned nomadic herders from grazing in their areas.

When we heard this, we called the resident Fulanis in Eggua to advise their visiting brothers not to go to some of these villages, including Asa, Ubeku, Agbon-Ode, Iselu, until all the issues were addressed. But they were recalcitrant, Mr Adegbenro said.

According to residents, in November 2020, villagers in the area chased away some herders from grazing in their villages.

Findings by PREMIUM TIMES revealed that violent engagements between the villagers and herders continued till December 2020, when two herders, identified simply as Baga and Joro, were declared missing.

The development was reported to the police at the Eggua division and later escalated to the state command.

According to another Eggua chief, Samuel Oluwole, the police and community members helped in the search for the missing herders. The police spokesperson, Mr Oyeyemi, said they were last located in Benin Republic.

Mr Popoola said in spite of that, herders had continued to threaten the villagers with dire consequences.

Again, soldiers waded in

On December 19, 2020, soldiers from the same 35 Artillery Brigade accompanied some herders to some villages, including Ubeku and Asa, and reportedly harassed the villagers. A villager who does not want to be named for fear of being attacked alleged that the soldiers were led to the communities by a son of the Seriki Fulani in Eggua town, Mohammed Adamu.

Irked by the development, some traditional rulers in Yewa North LGA addressed a petition to the commander of the brigade, accusing its men of violating the rights of the villagers. The petitioners include the Oniggua of Iggualand, Micheal Dosumu; the Eselu of Iseluland, Akintunde Akinyemi; and the Alademeso of Igan Alade, Gabriel Olalowo.

The petition, which is titled Matter of Urgency and dated January 7, urged the military authorities to identify, investigate and prosecute the suspected soldiers for their connivance and involvement in the attacks on the villagers.

However, another set of soldiers soon returned to the affected villages to further threaten the residents to withdraw their claims in the petition.

The spokesperson for the brigade, Haruna Tagwai, in a telephone interview with our reporter, confirmed the receipt of the petition. He also did not deny the follow-up intimidation.

Yes we received the petition and I can confirm to you that investigation is ongoing, Mr Tagwai, a captain, said.

The villagers said the harassment, killings and abduction of villagers had heightened, and that many could no longer go to their farms.

We continued to live in fear as inter-community movements became increasingly difficult. Our schools were shut for many weeks because the cattle were competing for space in the schools. Things degenerated to the level that we had to go to the police to get clearance before we could go to our farms, Mr Popoola said.

Force headquarters summon

In January, nine community leaders across Yewa North Local Government Area received an invitation from the FIB special tactical squad of the Nigeria Police at the Force Headquarters, Guzape in Abuja.

The invitation, dated January 26, 2021, and signed by Kolo Yusuf, a deputy commissioner of police, accused the villagers of criminal conspiracy, unlawful possession of prohibited firearms, causing grievous hurt and mischief.

The leaders were directed to report to Abuja for interrogation on February 6.

The nine, PREMIUM TIMES findings revealed, are Messrs Popoola and Adegbenro from Eggua; the traditional chiefs of Orile Igbo-Oro and Agbon villages, the regent of Ijoun village, and one Olayode Williams.

The invitation was also extended to the traditional ruler of Igbo-Ita village and a retired teacher from Ijoun village, identified as Mr Fakambi, who are both dead.

The traditional ruler reportedly died two years ago while Mr Fakambi died about four months ago.

Following the invitation, Governor Dapo Abiodun of Ogun State stepped into the matter.

When the matter was escalated to the governor, he intervened and we were told not to bother again. We hope we would not be arrested any moment soon, one of the concerned villagers who does not want to be named told our reporter.

Igbohos intervention

On February 1, the self-acclaimed Yoruba nationalist, Sunday Adeyemo, aka Sunday Igboho, visited Igangan in Ibarapa axis of Oyo State to warn the herders against continued harassment of the villagers. This was later followed by a violent attack on the herders settlement and the burning of their cattle and market.

One of the herders, identified simply as Alhaji Jiji, was reportedly set ablaze in the attack.

Since that day, peace has eluded us, said Mr Adegbenro.

More records of violent attacks

From Igbogila to Eggua, Oju-Ogun, Agbon, Igan Alade, Imeko, Afon, Iwoye-Ketu, Owode-Ketu, Idofa, Ijoun, Oja Odan, and Igbo-Oro, among others, sorrow, tears and blood fill Ketu-Yewa land.

Two days after Mr Adeyemos actions in Oyo State, persons suspected to be herders set the whole of Oju-Ogun village, near Eggua, in Ogun State on fire.

The youth council chairman for Yewa North Local Government Area, Adekunle Akerewusi, conducted our reporter around some affected communities but declined to accompany the reporter down to some of the villages including Oju-Ogun for fear of being attacked.

The deaths are many. We can no longer move after 4 p.m. For more than two weeks I couldnt visit the office at the local government headquarters in Ayetoro. There is even no transportation because everyone is afraid.

According to the Onimeko of Imeko, Benjamin Alabi, in January, Dele Olowoniyi, a young farmer, was slaughtered on his farm at Oha, a suburb of Imeko.

The deceaseds only son and wife were, according to the monarch, taken to Abeokuta by his elder brother.

Also, Yakubu Tiamiyu, a 40-year-old generator repairer and vigilante member in Imeko, was on February 4, stabbed to death allegedly by herders while addressing a conflict on a farm in the community.

His wife, Omowunmi Tiamiyu, told PREMIUM TIMES how Mr Tiamiyu was called early in the morning on the fateful day by his colleagues to some farms invaded by cattle.

Before he left that morning, he gave me N500 to take our three-year-old son, Khaleed, to school since he could not wait to do that. I didnt know it was the last time I would see him, she said.

The deceaseds elder brother, Idowu Tiamiyu, said their aged parents were yet to recover from the shock of the gruesome murder.

On February 24, a farmer in Imeko, Ayinde Oguntade, was stabbed in the eye allegedly by herders who grazed cattle into his farm.

Similarly, on March 1, Elizabeth Pascal, a young woman, was killed on her way to the stream, allegedly by herders at CAC Olorunda Moriwi community in Imeko Afon Local Government Area.

But Yakubu Sanusi, a butcher, was lucky. He was kidnapped but released after parting with N1.25 million as ransom.

I went to buy cow as usual but while we were haggling, we just heard gunshots and all of us started running in different directions. Unfortunately for me, I fell down. That was how they caught me and tied my hands, Mr Sanusi narrated.

He said he was tied up and held in the bush for three days until his family members raised the ransom for his release.

There were also cases of 31-year-old Isiaka Apesin, who was killed in Owode-Ketu, and Bayo Oguntosin, aka Ayangbe, who was murdered in Odan-Iga village, both of them allegedly by herders.

Adam Abubakar, aka Ojonla, a Yoruba interpretation of Friday, is a lieutenant of the Seriki Fulani in Imeko Afon LGA. He decried the escalating conflicts between farmers and herders in the area. He said in the last 35 years that he has lived in the area after moving from his home state of Kwara to Imeko, he had not witnessed such a level of animosity and violence between herders and villagers.

The unfortunate thing is that the name Fulani is being destroyed from far and near. So we are making efforts to join hands with the villagers and farmers to find a lasting solution to the problem. We are also as unsafe as the farmers. But we are sure that there is nothing that is beyond Gods control, he said.

Will Amotekun halt the drift?

Though the state government set up various crisis-resolution committees at different layers and distributed palliatives to some of the affected victims, hundreds of villagers have fled to Benin Republic.

Many of the refugees have vowed not to return home until they are guaranteed security. The villagers said the police officers deployed to various hotspots including Eggua and Ibeku cannot protect them against the herders imported mercenaries.

But the police have pledged to continue to engage the warring factions and increase monitoring and surveillance in the area.

The Chairman, Ogun State herders-farmers conflict resolution committee, Kayode Oladele, sounded hopeful during a chat with PREMIUM TIMES. While acknowledging the severity of the clashes, Mr Oladele said the situation was under control.

Our committee was constituted on February 20 but we couldnt start work until about a week later. What we met on the ground was not palatable; there were so much confusion and animosity. There was also controversy over the matter of refugees whether they have returned or not. But I can tell you that peace has returned to Yewaland.

On the matter of refugees, as you know, in Yewaland, we are one cutting across the two countries of Nigeria and Benin Republic beyond the colonial boundaries. Our land transcends even up to Port Novo, the capital of Benin Republic. So we have those who moved to the other side at the peak of the crisis, but many have returned back home.

So economic activities have resumed, and there is improved security monitoring and surveillance in the area. Apart from the security task force that was set up to tackle the crisis, the government also just inaugurated the Amotekun corps to give support to the joint security task force that was in place in the area.

The governor also emphasised that the first task of the Amotekun will be to give a fillip to the activities of the existing security operatives, he said.

He added that a yet to be released report by his committee will address all pending issues in the quest to bring lasting peace to the area.

But contrary to Mr Oladeles assurance, on April 9, a medical director at Imeko general hospital identified simply as Oladunni, and a nurse, Olajide Durojaye, were abducted at Olubo village along Abeokuta-Imeko Road.

The abductors also attacked the local vigilantes and hunters mobilised to search for the victims, injuring two of them and burning two of their vehicles and 10 motorcycles.

Meanwhile, efforts to get the reaction of the head of herders community in Ogun State, Kabir Muhammed, were unsuccessful. Mr Muhammed, who is also the southwest regional leader for the group, neither picked many calls to his telephone line nor replied messages sent to him.
THE Regal Picturehouse in Henley is set to re-open next month.

The cinema in Boroma Way has been closed since October due to the coronavirus pandemic.

But Cineworld, which owns the Picturehouse, has said that it intends to

re-open its cinemas from May 17, in line with the Governments roadmap out of lockdown.

Chief executive Mooky Greidinger said: We have long awaited this moment when we can welcome audiences back to our Regal theatres and restore our essential role within the communities we serve.

We will be monitoring developments closely in the UK and across Europe as we set to gradually re-open across the world in line with government guidance.

The company has also struck a deal with Warner Bros that gives the cinema chain exclusive rights to show films over streaming services.

The multi-year agreement means Cineworld can show the studios films exclusively in its cinemas 31 days prior to them being made available on premium video on demand platforms for streaming at home.

Cineworld confirmed it had temporarily closed all its cinemas in the UK and America at the start of October, citing the delay of major film releases by big studios as the main reason for the firms financial difficulties.
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A 31-year-old pregnant woman, Rose Etunmisen, has demanded justice over the killing of her husband by hoodlums at Oke-Eletu community at Ijede, Ikorodu Lagos State.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) gathered that Ifeanyi Etunmisen was killed by suspected hoodlums who invaded the premises of Oluwatosin Onamade, an All Progressives Congress (APC) chairmanship aspirant for Ijede LCDA, on Friday.

NAN learnt that the hoodlums also injured Oluwafemi Onamade who is currently receiving treatment at an undisclosed hospital.

At about 7.30 in the evening, my landlady called me and broke the news of the death of my husband to me through a friend.

I want justice to be done, I am pregnant and about to deliver, Nigerians and Lagos State Commissioner of Police should come to my rescue.

The CP should not allow me to suffer this injustice because my husband has gone for ever, she said.

According to her, the deceased was a domestic staffer on the premises where he was killed.

Speaking on the incident, Mr Onamade said he was the target of the attack.

The hoodlums attempted to kill me but in the process, they started shooting sporadically and Ifeanyi was killed by stray bullets.

My sibling was severely injured by the bullets and is currently in coma, the hoodlums carted away the sum of N1.7 million meant for a client.

Im calling on the Acting Inspector General of Police to come to my aid to unravel this mystery, Mr Onamade said.

Confirming the incident, the spokesperson, Lagos State Police Command, Muyiwa Adejobi, said the incident was reported at Ijede Police Station.

We have a case reported to the police in Ijede and the Commissioner of Police has directed that the case be transferred to the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID), Panti, for investigation.

We cannot be judgemental at this stage, we need to widen the scope of our investigation to unravel the incident.

We are on the case and we will get to the root of the matter, the spokesperson said.

(NAN)
The has formed a six-member panel headed by Sudarshan Sen, former Executive Director, to carry out comprehensive review of the working of Asset Reconstruction Companies (ARCs) in the ecosystem.

The panel will recommend suitable measures for enabling such entities to meet the growing requirements of the

RBI in a statement said besides Sen other members of panel are Vishakha Mulye, Executive Director, ICICI Bank; P N Prasad, former Dy. Managing Director, SBI; Rohit Prasad, Professor of Economics, MDI, Gurgaon; Abizer Diwanji, Partner, Ernst & Young; and R Anand, Chartered Accountant.

The Committee will submit its report within three months from the date of its first meeting. RBI governor Shaktikanta Das had articulated intent to form the panel while announcing monetary policy for 2021-22.

The terms of reference for panel include Review of existing legal and regulatory framework applicable to and recommend measures to improve efficacy of It will review business models of

It would study role of ARCs in resolution of stressed assets including under Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code (IBC), 2016 and also suggest ways for improving liquidity in and trading of security receipts.
Lecrae, Prison Fellowship urge Christians to remember those in jail: 'We serve a God of second chances'

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The worlds largest evangelical prison ministry, Prison Fellowship, has teamed up with popular artists in Christian music, including Grammy Award-winning rapper Lecrae, in its annual effort to highlight the month of April as Second Chance Month.

Prison Fellowship, an organization that has offered hope, restoration and healing for prisoners, their families, and victims for more than 40 years, seeks to bring light to the restrictions and stigmas associated with incarceration as many ex-prisoners are doing their best to turn their lives around.

Today, there are 44,000 documented social stigmas and legal restrictions limiting ex-prisoners access to education, jobs, housing, and other things they need to reach their full potential, said Prison Fellowship Senior Vice President for Advocacy & Church Mobilization, Heather Rice-Minus, in an interview with The Christian Post. We use Second Chance Month to raise awareness about these barriers and unlock brighter futures for people with a criminal record.

She said the organization seeks to help reduce the number of restrictions and stigmas by supporting those who have paid their debt to society live up to their full potential.

Along with partnering with churches across the nation, Prison Fellowship has teamed up with famous Christian music artists, including Lecrae, who's always had a passion for prison ministry. He's been known to perform and speak at Prison Fellowships Hope Events in prisons and even take extra time to sit with and minister to incarcerated men.

"It's a passion for me," Lecrae told CP of the partnership. "Theres a lot of things that are important to people, some of them, it may be dealing with different needs in society."

I think this one hits home for me, just being that I have a lot of friends, family members who have been incarcerated or currently are incarcerated. I know from personal experience what their life is like and how difficult it is and how stressful it can be. So it's a world that is severely underserved, so this is something important.

According to the Vera Institute of Justice, the number of people incarcerated in state and federal prisons and local jails in the United States was 1.8 million in mid-2020.

Prison Fellowship and Lecrae have committed to assuring all who are incarcerated that there is hope in Christ and prison doesn't have to be the end of their story.

"As a believer, I think we get the biggest second chance of all, in that we've fallen short of God's glory, and He gives us an opportunity to live up to the expectation that we were created for, Lecrae said. That's a big thing for me. I don't feel like there's anything I've ever done that can make God throw me away. So I don't want any person who's committed any crime to feel like they've been thrown away.

Rice-Minus emphasized that Prison Fellowship stands behind the biblical principle of redemption in Christ because we serve a God of second chances.

From Moses to Paul, our Gospel shows us the far-reaching power of redemption. It extends to every person, including those who have committed a crime, she insisted. As a leader at Prison Fellowship, it has been one of my greatest privileges to get a front-row seat to see the power of redemption take hold of those the world considers the most hopeless and undeserving.

Churches are encouraged to celebrate Second Chance Month by hosting a Second Chance Sunday service during April. Prison Fellowship hosted their own on April 11, which featured worship from Hillsong East Coast and a sermon from Pastor Jon Kelly of Chicago West Bible Church.

Prison Fellowship has provided a Second Chance Sunday toolkit available for download to help equip churches that want to join the movement by hosting a Second Chance service.

"I think we just have to remember that those people are you and I, Lecrae said of those who are in prison. It could be any of us. In reality, it should be me. I just didn't get caught. So if you are comfortable dealing with any person, then you should understand these are human beings.

"We listen to a lot of propaganda, a lot of stories and stereotypes, and there are some dangerous people. But at the end of the day, if we believe in a supernatural power, we believe that power is greater than anything else and has the ability to protect us and keep us and transform people, he said of why people should boldly go into prisons and offer the hope of Christ.

For people who want to get involved in prison ministry but don't know where to begin, the artist, who will soon be releasing his Church Clothes 4 album, strongly recommended that people connect with Prison Fellowship.

They've been doing it for years, started by Chuck Colson, who was also in prison, Lecrae explained. They can begin to understand what's going on in there. It's a full-fledged organization that gives a lot of insight.

He also encouraged Christians to learn about the local ministries involved in this specific realm of evangelism, walking alongside people who've been engaged in prison ministry for a while.

One way Christians can help advocate for justice is by visiting our Justice Action Center, Rice-Minus said. We have several active campaigns where Christians can put their faith into action by contacting their lawmakers in a matter of minutes.

We also invite Christians, churches and small groups to devote one day this month to pray for people in prison and their families and to discuss how we can help support second chances for those with a criminal record, she encouraged.

The Prison Fellowship vice president took it a step further and said people should also look for ways to help those released from prison and are struggling to get reacclimated into society.

The prison ministry reported that approximately one in three U.S. adults has a criminal record. For many, having a criminal record limits their access to education, jobs, housing and other essential things needed to advance in life.

Rice-Minus noted that one of the most impactful ways Christians can offer second chances is by opening up their hearts and homes to formerly incarcerated people.

Its as easy as setting an extra place at your table, offering clothes for them to wear to an interview, or maybe even being an employment reference for them, she advised. By doing life alongside someone and offering them a second chance, you not only impact them, but youre impacting future generations.

Since launching the first Second Chance Month in 2017, Prison Fellowship has helped raise awareness about the many barriers that prevent former inmates from flourishing because of their criminal record.

Finding restoration

The organization believes in a restorative approach for prisoners, former prisoners, and all who are affected by crime and incarceration.

"Across the world, you see restorative justice, Lecrae detailed. Restorative justice is where someone has done something wrong and they are spending time to find restorative work done on them for the crime that they have done.

"America is one of the only nations that uses retribution of justice, he maintained. Retribution is almost as if you have to pay for what you've done wrong. [But] the reality is, there's no real way to pay for certain crimes. Obviously, if you stole money, you can give that money back. But there are some crimes that you can't pay back. So the only hope you can have is that they will be restored, transformed, make amends and move forward in society as a different restored human being.

The social activist said he and Prison Fellowship want to see programs that will not be about punishing people, but also bring restoration.

Prison Fellowship mobilizes Christians to advocate for a more restorative approach to justice that advances proportional punishment, constructive corrections culture and second chances for those who have paid their debt, Rice-Minus added.

Right now, our society locks up more of its citizens than any other nation, she stressed. And frankly, our misguided response to crime has pervasive, devastating and long-lasting consequences.

She stressed that Christians should visit the prisoner, as the Bible commands in Matthew 25.

And yes, we should share with incarcerated men and women that all things are possible through Christ, she said. But we cannot be complacent about a system that, upon their release, holds them back.

Ministering to those in prison is a part of God's commission to the world, and the ministry of Prison Fellowship was grounded on that conviction.

Christ was arrested, convicted and imprisoned for us. Most of the New Testament was written by Paul while he was imprisoned. If God touches prison so closely throughout the Bible, how can prison ministry not be part of Gods Great Commission? Rice-Minus posited. In Hebrews 13:3, it says, Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them. We are directly called to visit people in prison.

Lecrae testified of how his visits to prisons have impacted his own life.

The chart-topping hip-hop entertainer recalled visiting Angola  the Louisiana State Penitentiary  where he witnessed inmates interaction with their children during a special father-children event.

He also highlighted Rashaun Thomas, someone who went to prison depressed, angry and frustrated. But after a few years, he said, Thomas decided that since he couldn't change his situation, he would instead be changed in the midst of it. Thomas now writes for major magazines and teaches families financial literacy to help change legacy.

"You can't go in there with a messiah complex, with an 'I'm coming to save somebody [mentality]. It's a mutual encouragement, Lecrae said.

I'm also coming to learn. I'm coming to not just feed but be fed, because there are some individuals in there who are more spiritually mature and wiser than you are. They've been sitting there for the last 24 years, dealing with some of the worst scenarios in existence and taking in truth and wisdom and learning how to apply it. So there's much that you can learn from talking and walking with people in there.

'God-given potential'

Rice-Minus said that many people in prison feel forgotten and hopeless.

Yes, the Bible is full of reminders that God cares deeply about the incarcerated. In fact, imprisonment is referenced over 5,000 times in Scripture, and some of the Bibles greatest leaders, like Paul, were guilty of serious crimes and experienced incarceration, she said. Being able to share that hope with someone that they are more than their worst choice may be a turn in unlocking that persons God-given potential.

Lecrae said its imperative for those in prison to know their identity is in God.

If you know who you are, if you know that God is your Father, the Son is your Savior, and the Spirit is your helper, then no matter where you are in the world, you can walk with a sense of hope, the rapper told CP.

The Reach Records founder revealed that he reminds those he comes in contact with that "other characters in the Bible who we champion were imprisoned or did terrible things.

We champion a Moses, who murdered a man. We champion a David, who murdered thousands of people. You look at some of the patriarchs who participated in prostitution and things of that nature, he maintained. "We're there to remind them that they're not alone and that there's no story where their redemption is not possible. But they are great candidates for God's mercy and restoration.

Part of Prison Fellowships mission is to share biblical truth and care for the vulnerable and call for a justice system that is fair and redemptive for all.

Rice-Minus said Prison Fellowship has long been fighting for redemptive justice.

As Christians, we believe that no one is beyond the reach of Gods grace. Further, the Bible tells us that All people and things  including governments  were made through God and for Him. So were called to bring the hope of the Gospel to the least and the lost. But we are also compelled as Christians to bring that same redeeming power to unjust systems and structures that hold our brothers and sisters back from their God-given potential, she added.

We believe [it is] our mission at Prison Fellowship to restore those impacted by crime and incarceration. [That] includes not only our ministry to people behind bars, but our advocacy for justice reform that advances proportional punishment, constructive corrections culture, and second chances for those who have paid their debt.

Though the criminal justice system still has a long way to go, there has been some change, said Lecrae and Rice-Minus.

"I think we've seen things change year after year  little things here, little things there  and that's all you can do is to push and pray that your ceiling becomes the next generations floor, and then they can start where you [left off]," Lecrae told CP. Ten years ago, we weren't having a lot of the conversations that we're having now about the justice system.

The Texas native explained that just a few short years ago, there weren't organizations around to help those unjustly incarcerated for crimes they didn't commit to get out of prison. He said he will continue to push and pray that more changes will happen.

Rice-Minus added, One of the more recent changes we have seen in our justice system is a different approach to the restoration of rights, like voting rights.

On a national level, we were very involved with advocating for the passage of the bipartisan FIRST STEP Act in 2018.

This bipartisan legislation expanded rehabilitative programming and earned-time credit opportunities so that people can be prepared to come home as productive citizens. It also provided more flexibility in the use of mandatory minimums.

Rice-Minus concluded by saying that she does believe change will come. But the reality is, we need to continue to change culture to do it.

According to a Barna survey commissioned by Prison Fellowship in 2019, only one in five Christians attend a church that raises awareness about criminal justice issues.

We need to not only be talking about these issues from our pulpits but leading in prayer and action in the public square. Every voice matters, and one by one, we can chip away at that list of 44,000 barriers, Rice-Minus ended.

Lecrae concluded by saying that his hope for Second Chance Month is that it will help people walk away with a sense of hope, hope for themselves and hope for others, that lives are transformed because of this reality.

It's something powerful when society has told you that you are forgotten about, that you are no good, but people still remember you, and they come to serve and help you, he said.
Clarence Asa Jones, age 89, left this earth to be present with Jesus Saturday, April 17, 2021.

He was born March 19, 1932 in Dalton, Ga.

Asa was preceded in death by his wife, Bertice Cook Jones; parents, Ray Jones, Sr. and Lucy Evans Jones; and two brothers, Ray, Jr. and Harold.

He will truly be missed by his surviving nieces, nephews, and many friends and neighbors.

Asa graduated from Georgia Tech in 1962 and had a long and interesting career as an engineer for The Boeing Company, Defense, Space, and Security Division, contracted to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) working on space flights for much of his career.

Asa was a member of First Baptist Church Dalton. He had a strong Christian faith and worshiped at home for the many years he couldn't personally attend corporate worship. He was appreciative of the prayers and attention given to him by his church family.

Family and friends are invited to a graveside service to be held at 1 p.m. on Tuesday, April 20, at New Hope Cemetery, Tunnel Hill-Varnell Road with Rev. Phillip Cannon officiating.

Asa was a generous and caring man giving to many ministries and charities with a special concern for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

Asa enjoyed God's creation in general and beautiful flowers in particular, but in place of flowers, please consider memorial gifts in his honor to one of the following: New Hope Baptist Church Cemetery Fund, 2105 Tunnel Hill-Varnell Rd. Tunnel Hill, GA 30755 or St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, 501 St. Jude Place, Memphis, TN 38105.
Braun Enterprises has added to its portfolio with the purchase of a 90,423-square-foot office building on Old Katy Road.

The multitenant building, located just inside Loop 610 north of Interstate 10, was purchased from Houston Eye Associates, according to Colliers International. The two-story building, situated on 4.2 acres, is in an area with multifamily, industrial and office buildings, not far from Memorial Park and the Heights neighborhood.

Braun Enterprises is thrilled to announce the acquisition of 7155 Old Katy Road and will rebrand and redevelop this unique, boutique building that caters to small tenants, Brauns James Fitch said in an announcement. The company plans to renovate the exterior and interior of the office buildings, including building out a substantial amount of space for its Urban Office concept, locations with office suites, conference rooms and coffee bars.

RELATED: Real estate transactions: United Equities expands industrial portfolio

Renovations will be designed to complement the building's modern design, according to Fitch. The updates include landscaping, new signs, atriums, a common area tenant lounge and an outdoor area to work and hang out in the courtyard.

"We will also enact our food truck program as one of our many building amenities," Fitch said.

Braun's other Urban Office buildings are in the Galleria and Heights areas. The company, which has purchased and redeveloped about 3.5 million square feet of commercial real estate projects, has redeveloped several retail buildings in the Inner Loop and Spring Branch areas.

The deal closes as office vacancy in the Houston continues to rise as the local economy battles the impact of the coronavirus. The vacancy rate rose to 22.3 percent in the first quarter, up from 20 percent a year ago, Colliers reported.

David L. Carter and Taylor Wright of Colliers marketed the property, which is in the North Loop West office submarket where buildings average 17.6 percent vacancy. The sales price was not disclosed.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 20)  President Rodrigo Duterte admitted violence may erupt if the Philippines continues to assert its rights in areas being claimed by China in the West Philippine Sea, despite being well within the country's exclusive economic zone.

"We can retake it only by force. There is no way we can get back 'yung tinatawag nilang [what they call as] (West) Philippine sea without any bloodshed," Duterte said in his national address on Monday night.

Dutete said the Philippines cannot possibly win against China if a bloody war ensues while affirming our jurisdiction over the disputed waters.

"The issue of the West Philippine Sea remains to be question forever until such time that you know, we can take it back. Walang iba, giyera lang (There's no other way but war)," the President said. "If we promote a war against China and America... at what cost to us? Yan ang problema (That's the problem)."

The President even discussed the country's Mutual Defense Treaty with the United States, saying the Western superpower cannot be obligated to defend the Philippines in a war "created" by the latter.

He also claimed the country was the first to "surrender" its claims in the West Philippine Sea.

"Constructive occupation of the West Philippine Sea was completed by the singular act of China not retreating. Sa international law, ganyan 'yan. Ikaw ang umalis, ibig sabihin, hindi iyo (That's the rule in international law. When you are the first to leave, it means that is not yours already)," Duterte declared.

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana earlier assured that Filipino fishermen can freely go to the contested islands and reefs.

"Our ships can go there. In fact regularly, mga barko natin sa Kalayaan, nagre-resupply sa Kalayaan Island Group (our ships are resupplying in the Kalayaan Island Group)," said Lorenzana. "Pati yung ating mga fishermen ay libre nakapangisda na hindi sila ginugulo ng mga Chinese (Our fishermen can freely catch fish there without being harassed by the Chinese)."

Lorenzana's remark was in stark contrast to many incidents of harassment reported by Filipino fishermen involving Chinese vessels in the West Philippine Sea.

Last Jan. 25, fisherman Larry Hugo said he was blocked by a Chinese Coast Guard ship while he was on his way to his regular fishing area near the Philippine-occupied Pag-asa Island in Palawan.

Last April 9, a civilian vessel with a news reporter and a television crew was chased by two missile attack craft of the Chinese Navy just around 90 nautical miles from mainland Palawan and within the country's exclusive economic zone.

But Duterte said he would send Philippine Navy "gray ships" to the area once China conducts oil drills inside the EEZ.

"Kapag kinuha oil, nickel diyan, precious stone, that will be the time we should act on it... Hindi 'yung habul-habulan diyan, 'yung habulin 'yung isang reporter," said Duterte, pertaining to the TV news crew incident.

[Translation: If they drilled for oil, nickel, and other precious stones, that will be the time we should act on it...Not playing tag, like with this reporter.]

Duterte criticized former Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, a staunch defender of the Philippines' claims in the West Philippine Sea who has accused the President of having no sense of urgency in addressing the presence of suspected Chinese militia vessels at the Julian Felipe Reef.

"If the United Nations will ask China to surrender because of that award given to us, ibibigay ba ng China 'yan (will China honor it)? Can the United Nations compel China and do you think China will just give it freely because of the United Nations' demand?" he said. "Iyan ang hindi ko maintindihan sa kanya (That's what I cannot understand about him), he's a dreamer."

RELATED: Carpio sees no concern, future action from Duterte amid presence of suspected Chinese militia in West PH Sea

As of April 14, around 240 Chinese maritime militia vessels were spotted swarming in areas within the country's exclusive economic zone in the West Philippine Sea, according to the National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea.

The Department of Foreign Affairs summoned Chinese Ambassador Huang Xilian over the prolonged presence of Chinese vessels at Julian Felipe Reef. It also reiterated its demand for the immediate departure of other Chinese vessels in other maritime zones of the Philippines.

An arbitral tribunal in 2016 ruled that China's island-building activities on these reefs and four others violate 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 ruling, which also recognized the Philippines' sovereign rights to parts of its EEZ which Beijing contests. The East Asian giant claims almost the entire South China Sea, including areas Manila claims as the West Philippine Sea.
Burma Myanmar Military Regime Troops Killed in Confrontation With Civilians

Junta forces raid in Myingyan. / CJ

Six members of the Myanmar military regimes security forces died and 13 others were injured on Sunday when people from Mandalay Regions Myingyan Township defended themselves against attacks by the juntas forces, according to local residents.

They fired wildly. Large numbers of troops came along with a bulldozer to our barricades in No.6 ward around 7 pm on Sunday. We have built several lines of barricades with sandbags, said a local resident.

The security forces removed the barricades along the main road. After they fired shots for quite a while, young people made guerilla attacks. Sixteen of the regime forces were hit. Four troops died immediately and 12 were injured, said local resident.

That confrontation followed an earlier incident in Myingyan at noon on Sunday, when three civilians were injured after junta security forces opened fire on anti-regime protesters. One man was in a critical condition after being shot in the head while he was closing the shop where he worked.

Two members of the security forces died and one was injured during the attack, said local residents.

Regime reinforcements from Nyaung-U, Meiktila and Mandalay then came to Myingyan on Sunday afternoon and attacked the barricades in No.6 ward using machine guns.

No civilians were injured in the Sunday night shootout but six local residents were arrested.

On Monday, a resident told the Irrawaddy that the juntas forces continued shooting in No. 6 Ward from around 7 am on Monday and that no one dared to go outside until the afternoon.

A KBZ bank branch in Myingyan was also attacked with a bomb on Sunday afternoon. The entrance of the bank was damaged, but no casualties were reported.

A total of 25 anti-regime protesters in Myingyan have been shot dead by junta forces in the period from March 3 to April 17.



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Language is one of the most remarkable abilities humans have. It allows us to express complex meanings and transmit knowledge from generation to generation. An important question in human biology is how this ability evolved, and researchers from the universities of Barcelona, Cologne and Tokyo have tackled this issue in a recent article, published in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

The article has among its authors experts from the Institute of Complex Systems of the UB (UBICS) Thomas O'Rourke and Pedro Tiago Martins, led by ICREA research professor Cedric Boeckx. According to this new study, the evolution of language would be related to another noteworthy feature of Homo sapiens: tolerance and cooperation towards each other.

The study draws on evidence from such diverse fields as archaeology, evolutionary genomics, neurobiology, animal behaviour and clinical research on neuropsychiatric disorders. The authors hypothesize that a reduction of reactive aggression, resulting from the evolution and process of self-domestication of our species, could have led to an increase in our language complexity. According to the authors, this development would be caused by a reduced impact on brain networks of stress hormones, neurotransmitters that activate in aggressive situations, and which would be crucial for how we learn to speak. To show this interaction, the researchers analysed the genomic, neurobiological and singing-type differences between the domesticated Bengalese finch and its closest wild relative.

Looking for keys of the human language evolution in birdsong

A central aspect of the authors' approach in the study is that the aspects that make language special can be elucidated by comparing them to the communication systems of other animals. "For instance, take how children learn to speak and how birds learn to sing: unlike most animal communication systems, juvenile birdsong and the child speech only develop properly in presence of adult tutors. Without the vocal support from adults, the great range of sounds available to humans and songbirds does not develop properly", the researchers note.

Moreover, although speech and birdsong evolved independently, the authors suggest both communication systems are associated with similar patterns in brain connectivity and are negatively affected by stress: "Birds that are regularly under stress during their development sing a more stereotypical song as adults, while children with chronic stress problems are more susceptible to developing repetitive tics, including vocalizations in the case of Tourette syndrome".

In this context, Kazuo Okanoya, one of the authors of the study, has been studying the Bengalese finch for years. This domesticated songbird sings a more varied and complex song than its wild ancestor. The study points out that the same happens with other domesticated species. The Bengalese finch has a weakened stress response and is less aggressive than its wild counterpart. In fact, according to the authors, there is more and more "evidence of multiple domesticated species having altered vocal repertoires compared to their wild counterparts".

The impact of domestication in stress and aggressiveness

For the researchers, these differences between domestic and wild animals are "a central piece in the puzzle of the evolution of human language", since our species and domesticated species share particular physical changes related to their closest wild species. Modern humans have a flattened face, a rounded skull and reduced tooth size compared to our extinct archaic relatives, the Neanderthals. Domesticates have comparable changes to facial and cranial bone structures, often accompanied by the development of other traits such as skin depigmentation, floppy ears and curly tails. Finally, modern humans have marked reductions in measures of stress response and reactive aggression compared to other living apes. These similarities do not stop at physical traits since, according to researchers, the genomes of modern humans and multiple domesticated species show changes targeting the same genes.

In particular, a disproportionate number of these genes downregulate the activity of the glutamate neurotransmitter system, which drives the brain response to stressful experiences. Authors note that "glutamate, the brain's main excitatory neurotransmitter, interacts with dopamine, in birdsong learning, aggressive behaviour, and the repetitive vocal tics of Tourette syndrome".

Alterations in stress hormone balance in the striatum

In the study, authors show how the activity of glutamate tends to promote the release of dopamine in the striatum, an evolutionary old brain structure important for reward-based learning and motor output. "In adult songbirds, the increase in dopamine release in this striatal area is correlated with the learning of a more restricted song, which replaces experimental vocalizations typical of young birds". "Regarding human beings and other mammals" --the authors add--, "dopamine release in the dorsal striatum promotes restrictive and repetitive motor outputs, such as vocalizations, while other more experimental and exploratory behaviours are supported by the dopaminergic activity of the ventral striatum".

According to the study, many of the glutamatergic signaling genes that have changed in recent human evolution code for receptors that reduce the excitation of the dorsal striatum. Meanwhile, these receptors tend not to reduce activity, and even promote the dopamine release, in ventral striatal regions.

The authors say these alterations in the balance of stress hormones in the striatum were an important advance in the evolution of vocal learning in the lineage of modern humans. "These results suggest the glutamate system and its interactions with dopamine are involved in the process in which humans acquired their varied and flexible ability to speak. Selection against reactive aggression in our species would have altered the interaction of these neurotransmitters promoting the communicative skills of our species. These findings shed light on new ways for comparative biological research on the human language faculty" conclude researchers.

###
Stockholm: Lawyers representing victims of chemical weapons attacks in Syria filed a criminal complaint with Swedish police on Monday, calling for an investigation into the role of officials in President Bashar al-Assads government.

Allegations of war crimes can be investigated by Swedish police regardless of where they were committed.

Similar legal actions, taken by groups such as Civil Rights Defenders, the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression, Syrian Archive, and the Open Society Justice Initiative on behalf of victims have already been launched in Germany and France.

People stand in front of damaged buildings, in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria. Credit:AP

The groups call on Swedish judicial authorities to open an investigation into these attacks, so that Syrian officials responsible for these war crimes can be put on trial under the principle of universal jurisdiction, the groups behind the legal action said in a statement.
Hyderabad, April 19 : Dr Satyendra Mishra, a frontline doctor of Bundelkhand Medical College and Hospital in Madhya Pradesh, was on Monday airlifted to Hyderabad for treatment of Covid-19.

The air ambulance carrying Dr Mishra from Bhopal landed at Begumpet Airport in the city and from there he was shifted to Yashoda Hospital in Secunderabad.

Dr Mishra of the Department of Pulmonary Medicine in Bundelkhand Medical College in Sagar city had been treating Covid patients for more than a year. He recently contracted the virus and after his condition turned critical, health authorities in Madhya Pradesh decided to airlift him to Hyderabad for advanced treatment.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had assured all help for Dr Mishra's treatment after his colleagues at Bundelkhand Medical College appealed for help to save him.

In a video message Dr Umesh Patel of Bundelkhand Medical College said, Dr Mishra's condition is critical as 80 per cent of his lungs have been infected.

Dr Mishra's colleague appealed to people to come forward to help for the treatment of the doctor who treated hundreds of Covid patients in Sagar city since the outbreak of the pandemic last year. Dr Patel also appealed to authorities to help save Dr Mishra.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
JUPITER, Fla., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- This week, on Thursday, April 22nd, over 1 billion participants around the world will unite to celebrate Earth Day, and Florida residents will be amongst them. At the same time, VoLo Foundation is hosting Florida Climate WeekSM, to bring Florida residents together for climate action and solutions.

The free virtual summit, which is open to the public, takes place from April 19  23 and presents over 45 events discussing the effects that climate change is having on Florida communities - and how to become part of the solution for a sustainable planet for future generations.

The list of speakers also includes The CLEO Institute Executive Director Yoca Arditi-Rocha, Moms Clean Air Force Florida Organizer Gabriella Da Silva, The Everglades Foundation Chief Executive Officer Eric Eikenberg, and Founder/CEO of Voloridge Investment Management and Founder of VoLo Foundation David S. Vogel.

The keynote event of Florida Climate WeekSM will be the Climate CorrectionTM conference. The symposium will discuss data about climate change and will share ideas, cutting-edge research, and solutions to accelerate positive global change. Climate CorrectionTM will take place virtually on April 23rd from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm ET.

At a regional level, the cities of Clearwater, Deltona, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, Palm Bay, and West Palm Beach have declared the week of April 19th as Florida Climate Week.

Florida Climate WeekSM is sponsored by the British Consulate-General Miami, and the City of Orlando. Media partners are Florida News Network, a state radio news network providing news, resources, and long form programming to radio stations throughout Florida; and The Invading Sea, a collaborative of 26 Florida media organizations that focuses on the threats the state faces from the warming climate. It takes editorials and opinion pieces from newspapers and freelance contributors, posts them on The Invading Sea website and distributes them to its media partners.

SOURCE VoLo Foundation

Related Links

https://volofoundation.org


The campaign manager for a New York City council candidate has sparked backlash after suggesting the Upper West Side is too white and Jewish during a Twitter row.

Quinn Mootz, who is running Sara Lind's bid, told her followers that the wealthy Manhattan neighborhood has a 'diversity problem' in now deleted tweets.

She added: 'Jews are not POC [people of color] for just being jewish sorry.'

In her post on April 13 she noted: 'As of 2018: 10.8% of the population is Asian, 4.1% black, 14.1% hispanic, and 68.4% white. So yeah ima go ahead and say the UWS has a diversity problem.

'Of your 191,000 residents. 130,795 are white.'

Mootz, who is white, Jewish and has worked for Bernie Sanders and Democrat fundraising group the Progressive Turnout Project, also labeled people 's***y' and blasted a critic of woke politics as a 'f**king moron' in other now deleted posts.

Quinn Mootz tweeted: 'Jews are not POC [people of color] for just being jewish sorry'

The campaign manager for a New York City council candidate has sparked backlash after suggesting the Upper West Side is too white and Jewish during a Twitter row

Quinn Mootz, who is running Sara Lind's bid, told her followers that the wealthy Manhattan neighborhood has a 'diversity problem' in now deleted tweets

Mootz, who is white and Jewish and has worked for Bernie Sanders and the Progressive Turnout Project, also labeled people 's***y' and blasted a critic of woke politics as a 'f**king moron' in other now deleted posts

Her comments sparked a backlash online with one user noting: 'What is the world coming to when a political candidate runs on an explicitly racist platform?'

Another added: 'Well this is just charming isn't it? My father came to NY in the 1950's. You see, Germany had been "too Jewish" and he and his family had to leave.'

Upper West Side resident Steven Dzik told The New York Post: 'I have to assume the campaign manager's views reflect the candidate's. Mootz's comment shows contempt for the residents of the neighborhood she hopes to represent.'

Democrat Lind last week tweeted to announce her campaign was coming off Twitter due to the online abuse she says she received

Lind said: 'We've been trolled relentlessly with slurs, sexual assault & death threats, and anonymous cowards spreading misinformation'

Figures show that in 2018 10.8% of the Upper West Side identified as Asian, 4.1% identified as black, 14.1% identified as Hispanic, and 68.4% identified as white

Figures from The New York Times show that in 2013 there were more than 70,000 Jews on the Upper West Side.

The Furman Center notes: 'In 2018, there were about 191,222 people in Upper West Side, with 10.8% of the population identified as Asian, 4.1% identified as black, 14.1% identified as Hispanic, and 68.4% identified as white.

'Median household income in 2018 was $123,840, about 91% more than citywide median household income ($64,850). The poverty rate in Upper West Side was 8.5% in 2018 compared to 17.3% citywide.'

A 2019 estimate shared by the official US Census estimated that 42.7 per cent of people living in Manhattan are white, 29.1 per cent are Hispanic, with 24.3 per cent black, 14.1 per cent Asian and 3.6 per cent said they were mixed race.

Democrat Lind is running to replace current councilwoman Helen Rosenthal, who last June sparked fury by tweeting: 'Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police' as the city was hit by riots and looting

Lind, who faces a primary on June 22, last week tweeted to announce her campaign was coming off Twitter.

She said: 'We've been trolled relentlessly with slurs, sexual assault & death threats, and anonymous cowards spreading misinformation.'
ELGIN (AP)  The desperate pounding on Steinar Andersens door was ominous in the way only loud noises in the night can be.

His wife, Penny, was out with friends at JBs Pub, just two blocks away. She was not among the three women banging on his door to tell him she was in trouble.

Anderson swept his 11-year-old stepson, Travis, out of a peaceful dream and drove him into the middle of a nightmare.

The police arrived at the same time.

It was all chaos, Andersen said. We arrived in a kill zone.

He saw Penny on the side of the road. The tears rushed from her eyes almost as fast as the blood escaped the bullet holes in her left arm and pooled on the ground.

Elgin paramedics tended to her in a triage fashion. There were too many victims to match with all the trails of red drops. No time to wait for more ambulances.

Penny was loaded into a car and taken to St. Joseph Hospital. It would be two hours before Steinar spoke to his wife and learned the extent of her physical wounds.

It would be seven years before the emotional trauma and Pennys disability allowed for some semblance of normalcy.

And it would only be now, 20 years later  and after Penny died from cancer  that Steinar Andersen can say hes found peace in his thoughts of Luther Casteel, the last man Kane County put on death row.

When the call came into the Elgin Police Department to respond to what we would now call a mass shooting at JBs, Bill Wolf thought it might be a prank. Wolf, who would be one of the lead detectives on the case, joked with colleagues just the day before about how slow it had been.

But it was very real. The shooter entered the bar with two shotguns, two handguns and at least 200 rounds of ammunition. As he shouted, I am the king! a torrent of bullets killed two people and wounded at least 16 others.

Schaumburg Police Chief Bill Wolf was one of the lead Elgin police detectives for the shooting rampage at JBs Pub in Elgin 20 years ago. Wolf said he wishes he could hear a logical explanation for why the event occurred.

In what has become part of the legend of the event, a bar patron subdued the shooter when one of the guns jammed. The patrons identity is still unknown to most of the people whose lives he saved. Wolf said the man had a past as a gang member and shunned any recognition for his heroism.

With the shooter in custody, Wolf began his investigation at the Kane County jail. Id never seen someone involved in a case that looked like him, Wolf said. He had shaved his head to look like the guy from the movie Natural Born Killers, but it was a rush job. It wasnt a complete mohawk. He still had hunks of hair in different spots. And he had this gas mask.

Not having been at the scene, Wolf didnt feel the impact of the event until he brought each surviving victim in to identify the shooter in police lineups.

It was their first time seeing him again, said Wolf, who is now Schaumburgs police chief. The emotions that poured out are something Ill never forget. He had just randomly shot these people for no reason, people hed never met for the most part. There was just no reason for it, and thats what made it so difficult to process for all involved.

To this day, if there was ever an opportunity, Id like to try to understand why he did what he did.

Bret McNamara also doesnt know why the shooting happened, but he was as close to the events as any eyewitness.

There was one patron between a 23-year-old McNamara and the 5-foot, 6-inch, 145-pound man who would shoot him in the leg that night.

He watched as the shooter got into an argument with a woman and grabbed a beer bottle by its neck to make a threatening gesture. That was enough for a bartender to call a bouncer to escort him out of the bar.

When the shooter came back an hour later, McNamara heard him before he saw him. My back was to that door, McNamara said. When he started shooting inside, I thought a music speaker blew or something. Everyone started freaking out.

McNamara dove away from the sound of the gunshots and army-crawled behind the DJ booth. A woman fell on him and screamed in terror.

I just grabbed her by the face and said, Weve got to get out of here or this is going to be bad.

Beyond the DJ booth was a door to the outside. McNamara made it out before he realized hed left the friend he came with inside. Looking around, he saw the Taco Bell next door and a police officer with a gun drawn.

Concerned for his friend, McNamara opened the door and went back inside. The shooting was over. His friend was nowhere to be seen. McNamara would catch up with him later. But near the door, McNamara saw Jeff Weides on the ground. Weides, known as Whitey, was one of the bartenders on duty that night.

McNamara worked at a bar in West Dundee and considered Whitey a friend in the local bar industry.

I didnt know what to do, McNamara said. He was bleeding out of his chest. I took off my shirt and put it over his chest and just sat there. He was still kind of breathing, but he wasnt talking. Then he stopped moving. He died when I had my shirt on him. I didnt realize. I was just a kid. I dont know if it was a police officer or a paramedic that pulled me off him.

McNamara walked out, dazed, and tripped over the lifeless body of Richard Bartlett, the first person shot that night. It was only after McNamara was outside that someone pointed to the blood seeping through a rip in his pants. A bullet had penetrated his leg and come out clean on the other side. Twenty years later, McNamara carries a permanent bruise from his knee to his ankle.

That wound was relatively easy to recover from. The 10 years of flashbacks and nightmares nearly every night was more difficult.

It wasnt long after the shooter was convicted and sentenced to death that McNamara left Elgin and eventually settled in Texas to escape the sights that would trigger the flashbacks.

Any time he sees news reports of mass shootings, the images come back. The noise. The blood. His shirt. The nightmare is the night, he said. As the years go on, it happens gradually less. Time has done what time does. Drugs, alcohol dont make it go away. Youve got to face it.
[April 19, 2021] K-Pop & NFTs Together for the First Time Ever: A.C.E Debut Collection on the WAX Blockchain

MIAMI, April 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via InvestorWire -- K-NFT is proud to present a special collection of digital collectibles featuring A.C.E, the K-pop boy band with more than 5.5 million fans across their social networks. The quintet kicked off 2021 in style with collaborations alongside Steve Aoki, Grey, and Thutmose, and now they emerge as the first K-pop act to tokenize their collectibles on the blockchain! The first series of A.C.E collectibles on WAX will feature 106 unique pieces of digital trading cards in five all-kill rarities. This collection features images of members Jun, Donghun, Wow, Kim Byeongkwan and Chan from A.C.Es four albums, and their recently released Fav Boyz'' remix project with Steve Aoki, featuring each A.C.E member, group images, duo shots and clips from their music videos. Fans will be able to open their packs for a unique experience and decide if they want to cherish them forever in their own digital collection or sell and trade on WAX-powered marketplaces and dAPPS. Single WAX NFTs have sold on secondary marketplaces for over $70,000.

Launching on WAX marketplaces means A.C.E fans can buy the packs with a credit card and enjoy them in their WAX Cloud Wallet immediately. Buyers can then easily trade their digital collectibles with others, showcase their inventory on various WAX marketplaces and share on social media.

Known as the King of NFTs, the WAX Blockchain hosts some of the most high-profile NFT sales. In addition, WAX strives to help maintain our planet by offsetting carbon emissions in everyday usage; with no gas fees and a conscious effort to go green, there is no better platform to house such an incredible release. A.C.E will follow popular collections from Star Trek alumni William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy as well as big names like Bratz, deadmau5, The Sandlot, Atari and more.

Fans can choose from two pack sizes:

Pack of 5 NFTs: $9.99

Pack of 15 NFTs: $29.99 This collectible drop will include a chance to redeem perks, including autographed items like albums and photocards as well as online meet-and-greets, giving fans a chance to take part in A.C.E history.

Past NFT pack sales on WAX have quickly sold out in under six minutes, and very high demand is anticipated for these K-pop idols.

K-NFT is proud to work with A.C.E and WAX on the first-ever official K-pop NFT drop, says founder of K-NFT Danny Hyunjin Lee. From the start, WAX understood the vision in bringing the worlds of K-pop and NFTs together in a way that is accessible to both the fans of K-pop and the NFT collectors universe. We appreciate their diligence and partnership on this release.

We have been trying to give new and valuable experiences to our fans, says A.C.E member Kim Byeongkwan on behalf of the group. I believe that A.C.E and our fans can explore the NFT world together through this project. Were also excited that this new opportunity cameso it can help A.C.E accomplish the bigger dreams and requests from our fans, CHOICE.





CEO of Beat Interactive Hye-im Kim adds, A.C.E has taken innovative paths since their debut. This NFT drop will be one of their significant milestones. As the founder and female CEO of a K-pop company, Im happy to also donate a portion of the proceeds to the Asian Women Alliance to support the AAPI community and put an end to anti-Asian hate crimes.



As well, Head Director of Beat Interactive Danny Lee adds, The project will bring new experiences to K-pop fans and NFT collectors. In particular, the project will have a unique value for the fans to have a digital collection of their beloved artists.

K-pop has officially made its way into the mainstream, topping the charts, selling out tours and expanding their merchandising business around the world. Now, fans can enjoy their idols in an entirely new way with NFTs on the WAX Blockchain.

About A.C.E.

A.C.E made its debut in 2017 as a five-member band with Jun, Donghun, Wow, Kim Byeongkwan and Chan. The boy band accumulated a steady fan base even before their debut when performance videos, including a 2016 zombie dance performance and a 2017 cover of BTS, went viral. After sending their debut single "Cactus" to the Billboard charts, A.C.E continued to grow its influence with international tours, performing during the congratulatory party held for Parasite at the 2020 Academy Awards, and earning critical praise to top several year-end lists in 2020 including their single Goblin (Favorite Boys) being named the Best K-Pop Song of 2020 according to DAZED. For 2021, A.C.E showed their global ambitions early with the release of the "Fav Boyz (Steve Aoki's Gold Star Remix), with one version featuring Nigerian-American rapper Thutmose and another featuring an English section by A.C.E. "Fav Boyz" broke into Billboard's Dance/Electronic charts making A.C.E just the fourth K-pop group ever to do so.

For more information, please visit Asian Agent, and follow A.C.E on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. About Asian Women Alliance:

Asian Women Alliance (AWA) is an action-oriented network dedicated to using our collective platforms to help raise awareness and fund nonprofit organizations in order to aid in their continued work of: protecting marginalized AAPI women and our elders; driving social, political, and economic change for AAPI women and youth; and fighting Asian hate. For more information, please visit https://asianwomenalliance.com and follow on Instagram. About WAX:

The Worldwide Asset eXchange (WAX), known as the King of NFTs, is the worlds leading decentralized wallet on the Blockchain. Cofounded in 2017 by William E. Quigley and Jonathan Yantis, WAX delivers the safest and most convenient way to create, buy, sell and trade virtual items (NFTs) to anyone, anywhere in the world. WAX has facilitated the trade of more than 100 million digital items of collections including Blockchain Heroes, Deadmau5 and Capcoms Street Fighter. For more information, please visit https://wax.io and follow along on Twitter and Discord. WAX Contact

Jassy Jackson

marketing@wax.io

800.203.2049 K-NFT Contact

media@k-nft.com



Wire Service Contact

InvestorWire (IW)

Los Angeles, California

www.InvestorWire.com

212.418.1217 Office

Editor@InvestorWire.com ?



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Chennai: Witnessing the surge in COVID-19 cases in the state, the Tamil Nadu government on Sunday imposed a night curfew between 10 pm to 4 am which will come into effect from April 20. Sunday curfew will be implemented from April 25.



According to a statement issued by the state government, no public or private transport will be allowed during night curfew. Intra-state and inter-state public and private transport too will not be operated.

The state government has also postponed the class 12 board exams amid a surge in COVID-19 cases, however, the practical exams will be conducted as already planned.

"Not over 100 people will be allowed in weddings and for funerals, the number stands at 50. Only 50 per cent employees allowed to work in IT firm offices. Others should be given work from home," the statement said.

According to official data, Tamil Nadu has reported 10,723 new COVID-19 positive cases and 42 deaths in the last 24 hours.

The cumulative cases in the state climbed to 9,91,451 while 13,113 people have succumbed to the disease so far. There are 70,391 active COVID-19 cases in the state.
People raise their fists during a demonstration near the George Floyd Memorial in Minneapolis, Minnesota on 18 April 2021 after the shooting death of Daunte Wright ((AFP via Getty Images))

The prosecution has concluded its closing arguments in the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, with the defence to lay out its final arguments next.

Mr Chauvin is currently standing trial for the murder of unarmed Black man George Floyd, who died in the former Minneapolis police officers custody last May.

Before the 12 jurors are sequestered to determine the conclusion of the trial, they will hear a final appeal from both sides as the prosecution and defence deliver their closing arguments.

The jurors will then be sequestered to decide on a verdict, which could take just a few hours or up to several weeks.

Following both sides resting their cases on Thursday, Judge Peter Cahill told jurors to prepare for a lengthy deliberation process, telling them: If I were you, I would plan for long and hope for short.

Read More:

Meanwhile, Minneapolis is bracing for the verdict, with the National Guard stationed and the areas around the Hennepin County Courthouse boarded up, as protests are expected if Mr Chauvin is acquitted.

Minneapolis schools will also move to distance-learning from Wednesday in preparation for any possible disruptions in the city caused by the trial.

The verdict comes amid recent protests in the city relating to the fatal shooting of 20-year-old Black Man Daunte Wright, who was killed by a police officer during a traffic stop last week.

Protesters demonstrated outside of Minneapolis police stations, as they called for an end of police violence against Black Americans.

Read The Independents updates and analysis below.
HOLYOKE  Mental Health Associates, Inc. has begun welcoming residents to 11 Yale St.  the Tudor-style home that will serve LGBTQ clients with addiction or mental health issues.

Bonnie ODonnell, the homes program director, led a tour of the facility last week. I thought they did an incredible job of retaining the integrity of a 1920s house, she said.

The group home has received local and state certifications to operate a 16-bed facility in the residential neighborhood. The Yale Street facility is the sole residential setting for LGBTQ clients in Massachusetts, according to ODonnell.

Were hoping we can have 16 people periodically be able to graduate and go on to live independent lives without needing anything but the support everybody gets in their lives, she said.

The LGBTQ community, particularly transgender clients, need safe environments for recovery, ODonnell said.

They dont feel safe being themselves in a community of people in recovery if theyre not sure if theyre accepted, she said. Recovery is hard enough to do. But when you add on all kinds of other issues such gender discrimination or gender dysphoria, it just adds another layer of difficulty.

The home continues to draw opposition from neighbors and Citizens for Holyoke. No on Yale signs dot lawns, including abutting properties.

Much of the stately homes character remains, including the living room with a large fireplace, side rooms and kitchen equipped with high-end cabinetry and professional-level stove and appliances.

Disabled residents can access specially designed bathrooms and a kitchen.

ODonnell headed to the renovated basement, which holds a large, brightly lit meeting room, private area, laundry and mechanicals. New walls, recessed lighting and wood-look ceramic flooring clad the basement.

The home holds small group meetings throughout the day. A board lists how participants should conduct themselves during meetings.

This white board hangs in the Group Education Room at the MHA Residential Rehabilitation Services program home at 11 Yale St. in Holyoke. (Don Treeger / The Republican)

The staff works with clients 18 years and older on life skills such as relapse prevention, sexuality and gender issues, or how to open a bank account or find an apartment.

ODonnell said addiction could interrupt milestones typically realized in adolescence. Their history has been so long in substance abuse, they stopped growing in these certain areas, she said, which is why its so needed in a place like this. Part of recovery is navigating social environments.

Mental Health Associates educational approach helps clients to continue on the recovery path and independence. Residents are expected to join in cooking and sharing meals, doing laundry, and performing daily chores around the spacious home.

Theres a whole bunch of skills just being in a house, even hygiene skills like how often you do your laundry, ODonnell said.

A few welcome cards arrived in the mail at the home this week. A music shop owner plans to donate ukuleles to form a residents ensemble. Artists and other volunteers also contacted Mental Health Associates.

ODonnell, who stood in the kitchen, said residents would help create weekly menus and assist staff with cooking duties. She said the recovery process is long, and Yale Street represents a small piece along the journey.

The dining room accommodates 16 diners or the number of residents at full occupancy. Most of the bedrooms are located on the second and third floors. Eventually, residents will have their own room once minor repairs are done on the third floor.

One of the many bedrooms at the MHA Residential Rehabilitation Services program home at 11 Yale St. in Holyoke. (Don Treeger / The Republican)

A photo wall of LGBTQ heroes adorns a wall in the living room, including author and Civil Rights icon James Baldwin. An accessible bedroom and bathroom are nearby. Side rooms contain offices for the staff, nurses and clinicians.

Kimberly Lee, Mental Health Associates vice president of Development and Branding, said research shows recovery in a residential program is more successful than individuals placed in an institutional environment.

Weve been looking forward to putting this home online for some time. There are going to be some opinions and some values that were not going to able to change despite our engagement, despite interruptions and outreach, Lee said.

She added, What is so encouraging is the number of people who are welcoming to us. It far outweighs the few who dont, and we hold on to Yes to Recovery.

Mental Health Associates fields calls from providers around the Commonwealth about the Yale Street program, according to Lee.

This has attracted a lot of attention in the provider community. Folks in the LGBTQ community tend to have experienced varying degrees of trauma throughout their lives, Lee said. Adding that with substance abuse makes a program like this that much more important because its very specific.

Cordero Crenshaw, a program supervisor, said, Its essential to create a place where individuals can focus on their recovery and, at the same time, focus on their life skills to be successful once they leave this program.

The staff must maintain a positive attitude, Crenshaw said, with the goal of building a sense of community. When theyre cooking together, its more of a collaborative effort and when it comes to chores as well, he said.

First aid kit and doses of Naloxone, a medication designed to rapidly reverse opioid overdose, hand on wall in the basement of the MHA Residential Rehabilitation Services program home at 11 Yale St. in Holyoke. (Don Treeger / The Republican)

Related content:
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 03:05:58|Editor: huaxia

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Photo taken on April 18, 2021 shows the scene of a train derailment in the Delta city of Toukh, Egypt. At least 97 people were wounded in a train derailment on Sunday in the Delta city of Toukh, north of the Egyptian capital Cairo, the Egyptian Health Ministry said. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa)

CAIRO, April 18 (Xinhua) -- At least 11 people were killed and 98 others were wounded in a train derailment on Sunday in the Delta city of Toukh, north of the Egyptian capital Cairo, the Egyptian Health Ministry said.

A total of 60 ambulances have been sent to the scene and the wounded have been transferred to three public hospitals, the ministry said in a statement.

The accident happened after four carriages of the train, coming from Cairo to the Delta city of Mansoura, derailed, the Egyptian Ministry of Transportation said.

President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi has ordered the formation of a committee to present a report about the reasons for the accident.

An investigation into the accident is underway with the train driver and his assistant, as well as eight other officials at the Toukh train station, the office of the Public Prosecutor said. Enditem
OMAHA, Neb. (AP)  An Omaha police officer has been charged with felony counts and placed on leave after being accused of using a gun to threaten teens who pounded on doors in the officer's neighborhood late at night.
Bird enthusiasts speak in somber tones recalling the evening in May four years ago when nearly 400 winged carcasses were found at the foot of the American National building in Galveston. American Redstarts and Nashville and Blackburnian warblers were just two among two dozen different species found dead. On a migratory path back from warmer confines, their flight pattern shifted low because of a storm to create a deadly collision course with the 32-story downtown building.

The buildings managers tried to sweep up hundreds of tiny carcasses before people reported for work the next week. And they asked local bird experts what they could do to avoid future incidents.

A 2019 study by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology estimated 600 million birds die each year by colliding with buildings. Only Chicago topped Houston for casualties, in both spring and fall, with Dallas third.

The Lights Out for Birds Program began in Houston shortly after the Galveston incident. As is often the case with behaviors, change has come slow.

The past year has seen a stronger push and greater civic response to the Lights Out initiative. Houston this spring is the center of a particularly focused effort to get tall buildings, car dealerships and private residences to turn down non-essential lights in hopes of providing safer passage for an estimated 2 billion birds that pass through the Central Flyway this time of year. Texas is the gateway for that swath of land, as birds begin to spread across North America. The hope is to create a less threatening environment for species like the Allens Hummingbird, the Wood Thrush and others as they do so.

The folks at that building in Galveston didnt want to see that happen again, says Anna Vallery, a conservation specialist at Audubon Houston. Theyve ben proactive about it since. And that was the start of this program. Weve tried to find partners across the state to expand the program.

The program continues to expand. Earlier this month, Mayor Sylvester Turner proclaimed Lights Out Nights for the span recommended by Houston Audubon  April 19 through May 7  encouraging businesses, building managers and residents to turn off non-essential exterior lighting from 11 p.m. until 6 a.m. in hopes of creating a safer migratory space.

The goal was to have City Hall lead by example, Vallery says. So we were hoping City Hall could turn out its lights for spring. The goal is to eventually lower the amount of sky glow Houston has as a whole. With all the brightly lit buildings its basically a target.

She also cited car dealerships as nighttime beacons. But the Audubon Society says homeowners and those who own rental properties can help too, by turning off decorative exterior lighting, turn off pot and flood lights, cut down on atrium lighting, and downshield any essential exerior lighting to minimize its glare.

Spring migration has already begun, but Lights Out seeks to create a safer passage when migratory travel peaks. Vallery points out that 80 percent of North American birds are migratory, and almost all of those birds fly at night. She estimates about 600 species pass through Texas, with more than 400 of those passing over Houston.

Stars and rock stars

Birds have endured a rough half century. A Science magazine study in 2019 found that bird population in North America had fallen 29 percent since 1970.

Isolated efforts to assist some species have been successful: Texas revels in the way it has assisted the comeback of the whooping crane  a population that dwindled to around a dozen birds 80 years ago. Vallery refers to them reverently as sort of rock stars. But not all species enjoy the status afforded those cranes, which flock to the Rockport/Port Aransas area in the fall and depart in March and April.

Theyre these big, beautiful, strange dinosaur-like birds, she says. You dont need expensive binoculars to see them. We dont feel the same sense of ownership for the neotropical birds. Theyre small; they migrate at night.

She points to Cin-Ty Lee, a professor and department chair in geology at Rice University, doing work to better familiarize people with migratory birds. His archive of recordings includes such far flung birds as the flufftail and the nightjar from Madagascar. But he also records from the Rice campus, where he captures the nocturnal flight calls of the green heron, the sora and others.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Colorado State University have collaborated on Birdcast migration maps based on historical radar data and bird surveys that they share with organizations like Houston Audubon to try to predict when birds will pass through the region in hopes of dimming the urban glow.

These migratory birds often do their travel at night, when they encounter fewer predators. The birds also orient themselves with the moon and stars, as well as the Earths magnetic field.

Because they use the stars, the lights in tall buildings can really screw them up at night, says Daniel Brooks, curator of vertebrate zoology at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

Beacons that used to represent the World Trade Center towers in New York  a sentimental memorial  nevertheless caused trouble. Brooks says hes seen videos of birds circling the light, their patterns jarred. Any interruption can cause big problems for them, he says.

Texas greets the birds after a long haul, coming and going. The Purple Martin has been here for a while now, and should be in the midst of nesting. It ranges from Sao Paulo, Brazil, where the bird winters, to Eerie, Pa. Migratory paths are as long as they are treacherous.

Clear skies

Cornell and Colorado State have shared their BirdCast site with the general public. Users can sign up for alerts when migration activity is expected to be high.

Former First Lady Laura Bush recently penned an editorial for the Dallas Morning News urging those in the Dallas-Fort Worth region to do what they could to dim the glow this spring. Protecting migratory birds is an easy way to take care of Texas, she wrote.

Dallas declared a Lights Out Night last fall. Vallery says theres nothing wrong with using that to promote a little Dallas/Houston competition.

We really see this as win win across the board. It conserves energy, lowers the carbon footprint. Its good for the bat people.

Bat people?

Yes, bat people and good also for bats, obviously. And it could help people potentially see stars in Houston.

Not too long after the proposed spring Lights Out, bird enthusiasts will begin planning for the end of summer. Vallery says fall migration starts as early as August.

After a year in which indoor group activities all but disappeared, shes hopeful there could be a renewed interest in birding, which is an international tourism draw along the Gulf Coast.

I feel there has been this opportunity where people have stopped and looked around a little more, she says. And in Houston in spring, these little colorful things can catch your eye. Pandemic aside, I think theres been a renewed interest in the needs of the natural world. But this is just one of those examples of a little thing people could do that makes a big difference.

Those involved in Lights Out feel their efforts have slowly increased since 2017, with hopes for even greater involvement next year.

We certainly havent crested, says Joni Carswell, CEO and president of Texan By Nature, an organization working to coordinate efforts across the state. Industry outreach sometimes a little longer.

But she says large companies that operate big buildings are engaged and trying to balance security with best practices for birds.

Were respectful for the amount of time it takes big buildings to change, to implement downlighting or shielded lighting, she says. But the past year, weve made a lot of progress. And I think theres greater interest, businesses and people, trying to help these birds make their way through Texas.

andrew.dansby@chron.com
Peters has delighted shoppers with the launch of its epic new KitKat ice cream.

The iconic KitKat chocolate bars have been transformed into a range of ice cream sticks, covered in a decadent milk chocolate coating with crispy wafer pieces.

The ice creams are available in a pack of four for $8.50 in the freezer aisles in supermarkets or a single serve for $4 at petrol stations and convenience stores.

Peters has delighted shoppers with the launch of its epic new KitKat ice cream

'We know how much Aussies love their favourite chocolate bar so it's been a privilege to replicate the classic KitKat taste sensation in frozen form,' Peters head of marketing Andrea Hamori said.

'We're confident our new sticks will deliver that unique, have-a-break KitKat experience fans have come to know and love.'

The ice creams feature a new recipe to reflect the 'inimitable taste experience' of the chocolate bars.

The frozen desserts come just months after the brand unveiled a range of chocolate blocks inspired by Australia's favourite ice cream flavours.

Caramel Crisp and Mint Choc Chip have joined the popular range in the chocolate aisle in supermarkets around the country.

The iconic KitKat chocolate bars have been transformed into a range of ice cream sticks, covered in a decadent milk chocolate coating with crispy wafer pieces

Earlier this year, KitKat unveiled a sweet new range of chocolates inspired by some of Australia's favourite ice cream flavours - Caramel Crisp and Mint Choc Chip

The two flavours are available in the iconic chocolate blocks and four-finger bars.

Caramel Crisp includes crisp wafer fingers covered in creamy caramel flavoured choc, topped with French caramel flakes, all on a creamy white chocolate base.

While Mint Choc Chip offers crisp wafer fingers covered in creamy mint flavoured choc, topped with Swiss cocoa crisps, all on a smooth milk chocolate base.
ATLANTA and AUSTIN, Texas, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Parallel, one of the largest privately-held multi-state cannabis operators in the United States (U.S.), today announced it will make a $25 million dollar investment in a new state-of-the art cannabis cultivation, production and retail facility in Texas. This financial commitment expands Parallel's ability to meet the growing patient demand for medical cannabis products in the Lone Star State. The planned 63,000 square-foot facility is expected to create hundreds of new jobs in the San Marcos region.

The company is also introducing its goodblend retail brand, as it is changing the name of Surterra Texas to goodblend Texas (goodblend). This is the second market where Parallel has introduced the goodblend name, joining goodblend Pennsylvania; over time the company will evaluate opportunities to roll-out the brand in its existing markets. The goodblend retail brand reflects Parallel's intent to lead the way to the future of cannabis by providing its customers a trusted, consistent and seamless way for them to connect and learn, and to access innovative, high-quality cannabis products in a variety of form factors. The brand is about welcoming every type of customer and being an approachable source for our customers' well-being.

"With our $25 million dollar investment and name change to goodblend, we are strengthening our Texas roots to meet the needs of cannabis patients for the long term. We see high growth potential in the Texas cannabis market as every day more Texans choose cannabis to help improve their quality of life," said William "Beau" Wrigley Jr., Chairman and CEO for Parallel. "The goodblend brand promise is to make customers feel so good about their experience that they come back again and again. The ethos of goodblend is based on Parallel's commitment to compliance, quality, consistency and innovation, and on our actions to improve diversity, inclusivity and economic empowerment in the cannabis industry and to be a great employer and local community partner."

Texas, one of the most populous states in the U.S., with nearly 30 million residents, created the Texas Compassionate Use Program in 2015, providing medical cannabis to qualifying patients. Parallel's goodblend retail brand (formerly Surterra Texas) provides patients access to high-quality cannabis products in a variety of form factors that are cultivated and produced locally in Texas to ensure the most consistent patient experience. It was the first cannabis operator in the state to offer patients medical cannabis in gummy and lozenge formats.

"We are thrilled to break ground today on our new facility in San Marcos. We look forward to creating economic empowerment opportunities in this community through new jobs and cannabis career-building programs," said Marcus Ruark, President of goodblend Texas. "We are encouraged that there is a growing recognition, trust and demand for our medical cannabis products in Texas. While our customers will now know us as goodblend Texas, we will continue to offer registered patients with the state's largest assortment of cannabis-based product formats."

Medical cannabis patients across Texas already registered in the program, and those interested in learning more about cannabis, can access board certified prescribers, medical cannabis information, services, and products in the following ways:

The goodblend Virtual Clinic is a service in which prospective patients can schedule consultations with a board-certified prescriber through a seamless experience. To get started, visittx.goodblend.com/clinic.

is a service in which prospective patients can schedule consultations with a board-certified prescriber through a seamless experience. To get started, visittx.goodblend.com/clinic. goodblend.com offers a wide variety of products, easy online ordering, and free contactless home delivery, often in as little as three days.

offers a wide variety of products, easy online ordering, and free contactless home delivery, often in as little as three days. goodblend's partner clinics in Plano , Houston , Fort Worth , and San Antonio , provide registered patients a convenient way to pick up goodblend cannabis products at locations in major metropolitan areas.

Commitment to Social Equity

Parallel is committed to advancing social equity through meaningful actions and partnerships that positively impact the communities in which it has operations, as well as the industry at large. Parallel has partnered with many industry advocacy organizations, including Minority Cannabis Business Association (MCBA), Cannaclusive, CultivatED, and CannabisLAB to drive their shared missions forward and to continue to address diversity and inclusion in the industry. To date, Parallel has focused its efforts across all markets on economic and job empowerment, and diversity and inclusion in the industry through job fairs, skills-building training and seminars, fellowships, and social equity grants, among other actions. Parallel is committed to increasing its diverse 1,700-person workforce, which is currently comprised of well over 30% of minority and female-identifying employees, and 40% of Parallel's leadership team consists of female and minority representation. Parallel's proposed slate of seven independent candidates to its public company board of directors, post-closing of the transaction with Ceres, is focused on including at least two female and three BIPOC directors.

About Parallel

Parallel is one of the largest privately-held, vertically integrated, multi-state cannabis companies in the United States with a mission to pioneer well-being and improve the quality of life through cannabinoids. Parallel recently announced that it intends to become a public company through a definitive business combination agreement with Ceres Acquisition Corp. ("Ceres") (NEO: CERE.U, CERE.WT;OTCQX: CERAF), a special purpose acquisition corporation (SPAC). Parallel has ongoing operations in four medical and adult-use markets under the retail brands of Surterra Wellness in Florida; goodblend in Texas; New England Treatment Access (NETA) in Massachusetts, and The Apothecary Shoppe in Nevada. Parallel also has a license under its goodblend Pennsylvania brand for vertically integrated operations and up to six retail locations, in addition to a medical cannabis research partnership with the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Subject to regulatory approval, Parallel will add Illinois as a sixth market when its recently announced acquisition of six Windy City Cannabis licenses is complete. Parallel has a diverse portfolio of high quality, proprietary and licensed consumer brands and products including Surterra Wellness, Coral Reefer, Float and Heights. Parallel operates approximately 50 locations nationwide, including 42 retail stores, and cultivation and manufacturing sites. Through its wholly-owned Parallel Biosciences subsidiary, it conducts advanced cannabis science and R&D for new product development in its facilities in Massachusetts, Florida, Texas and a facility in Budapest, Hungary through an exclusive license and partnership. Parallel follows rigorous operations and business practices to ensure the quality, safety, consistency and efficacy of its products and is building its business by following strong values and putting the well-being of its customers and employees first. Find more information at www.liveparallel.com, or on Instagram and LinkedIn.

For more information on goodblend Texas and its products, access www.goodblend.com and www.facebook.com/goodblendtx.

Media Contact

Taylor Foxman

[email protected]

Forward Looking Statements

Certain information in this press release contains "forward-looking statements" and "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation and U.S. securities law (referred to herein as forward-looking statements), including statements regarding the Transaction and expected future growth. Except for statements of historical fact, certain information contained herein constitutes forward-looking statements, which include, but are not limited to, statements related to activities, events or developments that Parallel or Ceres expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future, statements related to Parallel's business strategy objectives and goals, and Parallel's management's assessment of future plans and operations which are based on current internal expectations, estimates, projections, assumptions and beliefs, which may prove to be incorrect. Forward-looking statements can often be identified by the use of words such as "may", "will", "could", "would", "should", "anticipate", 'believe", expect ", "intend", "potential ", "estimate", "budget", "scheduled", "plans", "planned", "forecasts", "goals" and similar expressions or the negatives thereof. Such statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and are based on Parallel's management's belief or interpretation of information currently available. Forward-looking statements are neither historical facts nor assurances of future performance. Forward-looking statements in this press release includes statements regarding: the Transaction; the consummation of the acquisition of Windy City; Parallel's expansion strategy and plans to grow its market share in existing and new markets, including Illinois; Parallel's investment in new technologies and products; the development and expansion of Parallel's brands; and strategic acquisition opportunities. Forward-looking statements are based on a number of factors and assumptions made by management and considered reasonable at the time such information is provided, and forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. There can be no assurance that the transactions described herein will be completed or that, if completed, the combined public company will be successful.

Risk factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievement to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to the following: (i) the risk that the Transaction may not be completed in a timely manner or at all, which may adversely affect the price of Ceres' securities, (ii) the risk that the Transaction may not be completed by Ceres' qualifying transaction deadline and the potential failure to obtain an extension of the qualifying transaction deadline if sought by Ceres, (iii) the failure to satisfy the conditions to the consummation of the Transaction, including the approval of the Transaction by the stockholders of Ceres and Parallel, as applicable (iv), the receipt of certain governmental and regulatory approvals, (v) the lack of a third party valuation in determining whether or not to pursue the proposed Transaction, (vi) the occurrence of any event, change or other circumstance that could give rise to the termination of the business combination agreement, (vii) the impact of COVID-19 on Parallel's business and/or the ability of the parties to complete the proposed Transaction, (viii) the effect of the announcement or pendency of the Transaction on Parallel's business relationships, performance, and business generally, (ix) risks that the proposed Transaction disrupts current plans and operations of Parallel and potential difficulties in Parallel employee retention as a result of the proposed Transaction, (x) the outcome of any legal proceedings that may be instituted against Parallel or Ceres or their respective, directors, officers and affiliates related to the proposed Transaction, (xi) the risk that the combined public company's securities will not be approved for listing on the NEO Exchange or, if approved, that the combined public company will be able to maintain the listing, (xii) the price of Ceres' and the combined public company's securities may be volatile due to a variety of factors, including changes in the competitive and highly regulated industries in which Parallel operates, variations in performance across competitors, changes in laws and regulations affecting Parallel's business and changes in the combined capital structure and a return on securities of the combined public company is not guaranteed, (xiii) the ability to implement business plans, forecasts, and other expectations after the completion of the proposed Transaction, and identify and realize additional opportunities, (xiv) the risk of downturns and the possibility of rapid change in the highly competitive industry in which Parallel operates, (xv) the risk that Parallel and its current and future collaborators are unable to successfully develop and commercialize Parallel's products, brands or services, or experience significant delays in doing so, (xvi) the risk that the combined public company may never sustain profitability, (xvii) the risk that the combined public company will need to raise additional capital to execute its business plan, which may not be available on acceptable terms or at all, (xviii) the risk that the combined public company experiences difficulties in managing its growth and expanding operations, (xix) the risk that the pharmaceutical industry may attempt to dominate the cannabis industry, and in particular, legal marijuana, through the development and distribution of synthetic products which emulate the effects and treatment of organic marijuana, (xx) the agricultural risks related to insects, plant diseases, unstable growing conditions, water and electricity availability and cost, (xxi) the risk that may arise because cannabis continues to be a controlled substance under the United States Federal Controlled Substances Act, (xxii) the risk of product liability or regulatory lawsuits or proceedings relating to Parallel's products and services, (xixii) the risk that the combined public company is unable to secure or protect its intellectual property, (xxiv) tax risks, including U.S. federal income tax treatment, (xxv) risks relating to the reliance of Parallel on key members of management, (xxvi) risks inherent in businesses related to the agricultural industry, (xxvii) risks relating to potentially unfavorable publicity or consumer perception, (xxviii) Parallel may be subject to the risk of competition from synthetic production and technological advances, (xxix) investors in the combined public company and its directors, officers and employees who are not U.S. citizens may be denied entry into the United States, (xxx) product recalls, (xxxi) results of future clinical research, (xxxii) difficulty attracting and retaining personnel, (xxxiii) fraudulent or illegal activity by employees, contractors and consultants; information technology systems and cyber-attacks, (xxxiv) security breaches, (xxxv) natural disasters and terrorism risk, (xxxvi) restricted access to banking, (xxxvii) risks related to the lending facilities, (xxxviii) risks of leverage, (xxxix) heightened scrutiny by regulatory authorities, (xI) risk of legal, regulatory or political change, (xli) general regulatory and licensing risks, (xlii) Parallel and the combined public company may be subject to the risk of changes in Canadian as well as U.S. federal, state and local laws or regulations, (xliii) limitations on ownership of licenses, (xliv) Nevada regulatory regime and transfer and grant of licenses, (xIv) regulatory action and approvals from the FDA, (xlvi) constraints on marketing products, (xlvii) anti-money laundering laws and regulation, (xlviii) the combined public company's status as an "Emerging Growth Company" under United States securities laws, (xlix) discretion in the use of proceeds, (l) subsequent offerings will result in dilution to shareholders of the combined public company, (li) voting control, and (lii) unpredictability caused by capital structure and voting control. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list is not exhaustive.

Parallel and Ceres undertake no obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances or management's estimates or opinions should change except as required by applicable securities laws.

U.S. Disclaimer

Neither the securities of Ceres nor of Parallel have been registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any state securities laws and may not be offered and sold in the United States except pursuant to an exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act.

Any securities of either Ceres or Parallel sold in the United States will be "restricted securities" within the meaning of Rule 144 under the U.S. Securities Act. Such securities may be resold, pledged or otherwise transferred only pursuant to an effective registration statement under the U.S. Securities Act or pursuant to an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act.

Texas CUP License #0006

SOURCE Parallel

Related Links

http://www.liveparallel.com


Although foreign travel looks set to be heavily regulated this summer, some employees may choose to book trips abroad.

From an employer's perspective, the statutory duties under the Organisation of Working Time Act will always dictate their approach to annual leave. It's perhaps no surprise that the working time legislation doesn't take mandatory hotel quarantine or travel bans into account.

So can employers restrict staff from taking foreign holidays?

Alan Hickey, Service and Operations Director at global employment law consultancy Peninsula explains below.

Can employers restrict staff from taking foreign holidays?

Although foreign travel looks set to be heavily regulated this summer, some employees may choose to book trips abroad. From an employer's perspective, the statutory duties under the Organisation of Working Time Act will always dictate their approach to annual leave. It's perhaps no surprise that the working time legislation doesn't take mandatory hotel quarantine or travel bans into account, so it will really be down to employers and their staff to discuss any concerns around foreign travel before agreeing on how to proceed. Importantly, there is nothing in the law that allows an employer to forbid an employee to travel abroad.

Employer rights around annual leave

Employers have a statutory obligation to provide employees with at least four weeks paid annual leave per year, and many employers provide more than the statutory minimum. Employers only have the discretion to decide the timing around when employees use their annual leave. As above, there is nothing in the law that allows an employer to forbid an employee to travel abroad.

Employer discretion around the timing of annual leave

When it comes to the timing of annual leave, employers may cancel a period of annual leave if they have a legitimate business reason for doing so and they consult with the employee at least one month before the annual leave is due to commence. Provided the employer has fulfilled those two conditions, they will have complied with the law.

Before deciding to cancel annual leave, employers should explore all possible alternatives. There should be a clear business reason for any decision to cancel a period of annual leave. Any such cancellation should only be considered as a last resort and should never happen without at least one month's notice. It is also essential to be mindful that employees may have paid for hotels, travel costs etc. and may be unable to recoup some or all of that money if the employer cancels their annual leave.

What sort of disciplinary action can be taken if an employee ignores a request to cancel annual leave and travels?

Provided the employer has complied with its statutory duty to provide at least one month's notice of the cancellation, an employee who takes an unauthorised holiday is likely to face disciplinary action for failing to follow reasonable management instruction and/or unauthorised absence.

Can an employee who is working from home be sacked for going on holiday? They will be able to self-isolate since they will be working from home.

Suppose an employer cancels a holiday request for a legitimate business reason and provides the employee with at least one month's notice of the cancellation. In that case, the employee can expect to face appropriate disciplinary action for any subsequent unauthorised absence, whether they work from home or on-site. If remote workers can carry out their duties in full while completing any required period of quarantine, there should be no reason for disciplinary action.

What about quarantine periods?

The situation is further complicated at the moment by various travel bans, mandatory home quarantine rules and most recently, mandatory hotel quarantine for arrivals from certain countries. The goalposts are moving from week to week, and it really is difficult for employers and staff to make plans for a trip abroad.

If an employee is required to self-isolate or stay in a hotel during a quarantine period, a one-week holiday becomes a three-week absence and creates an added workforce management difficulty for employers, particularly if the employee is not able to perform their role remotely. Suppose an employee is unable to return to work due to rules around self-isolating or quarantining. In that case, the employer may have reasonable grounds to take disciplinary action as the employee is unavailable to perform their duties once the agreed period of annual leave has concluded.

These are unprecedented times, and employers along with their staff need to work together to find mutually agreeable solutions to these questions that have never been encountered before in living memory.
Former Deputy Minister For Gender, Children, And Social Protection, Rachel Appoh has blamed the Manager of Akuapem Poloo born Rosemond Brown for her predicament.



Akuapem Poloo it may be recalled was slapped with a 90-day jail sentence by an Accra Circuit Court over naked pictures with her son.



The former MP for Gomoa Central reacting to this said Akuapem Poloo's manager contributed to her 'downfall'.



"She was asked to render a public apology which I believe she did...but she was also asked to render a public video apology but her manager refused and we indicated then that it was in Akuapem Poloo's best interest for her to do it....but because the public video apology didn't come; here we are...I'm really sad" Rachel Appoh said in an interview on Neat FM's Me Man Nti programme.



She is confident that had Akuapem Poloo's manager "allowed her to do the public video apology all these would have been avoided".



She recounted how the Manager was "even rude to Social Welfare that I had to even apologize. The Manager caused all these; leading Akuapem Poloo to jail. So people should stop bashing Gender Ministry, social welfare and even the government"



Listen to her in the video below





Source: Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
It was a rescue mission, not a vacation.

Karen Bradley was heading to Florida to bring her mom, Marian Cole, 97, back to New Jersey.

Cole spent the start of the coronavirus pandemic battling a bevy of health concerns in Florida.

At the end of March 2020, Cole, who lived in an independent living facility, fell and fractured her pelvis. After returning home, she fell again and ended up in a rehab facility, and then moved to assisted living, where she was regularly tested for COVID.

By July, her family said enough.

The decision was made with my brother that my mother would be moved to Jersey, Bradley said. I was the one sent to pick her up.

She booked her plane tickets and rented a vehicle through Costcos auto rental program.

Bradley selected a minivan from Budget.

I selected a van since my mom was now confined to a wheelchair, Bradley said. The van was low to climb in and low enough for me to load up her wheelchair easily.

The six-day rental would cost $267.16.

Bradley said she picked up the white Dodge Caravan on July 8 without incident.

But two days later, the van had a flat tire while parked outside the motel.

What should have been easy turned into an evening fraught with frustration, she said.

Her first phone call to Budget was at 9:40 p.m., she said.

I remained on hold for 30 minutes and was then told that I had to determine if the vehicle had a spare tire, which the representative said could be under the vehicle, Bradley said. I qualify for handicapped parking due to mobility issues. Looking under a vehicle is not feasible.

Bradley found a kind man in the parking lot, and he checked under the van. There was no spare tire.

When Bradley called Budget back, it decided to send a tow truck. Then it would send an Uber for Bradley so she could pick up a replacement vehicle.

An hour went by and no Uber, so she called Budget again, she said. They would still send an Uber, she said she was told.

Another hour passed with no Uber.

At midnight, she called again, and this time Budget said it would send a Lyft. It would take her back to the airport 50 miles away to get a Jeep Cherokee.

I explained it was not suitable. The answer was, well then, I could come back the next day for something different, she said. The time is now 12:50 a.m. and its call No. 5, I am physically unable to do anything due to the time. No link for a ride of any kind had ever been sent and the evening was a disaster and I had to sleep.

The next day, Bradley said, she went through Costco again but this time rented a van from Enterprise.

She thought the rental issues were over.

I assumed since the contract with Budget had been voided by their taking possession of their vehicle, I should move on to the task at hand, she said.

She finished moving her mom out of her place and together they flew back to New Jersey.

On July 22, she saw a $322.47 charge on her credit card from Budget.

She called and learned she was charged $55.31 because the gas tank wasnt full and she was charged for all the days of the original contract.

After she explained she didnt have the van to refill it, the company voided the charges, she said.

Bradley then asked to speak to a supervisor about the charges for the days she didnt have the van.

I was not allowed to speak to one, although I was put on hold several times, she said. I was told there was no price adjustment but I could have a coupon for two days in the future.

She declined the offer.

Next, Bradley tried to dispute the charge with her credit card company. Twice the dispute was denied.

It wasnt so much about the money, Bradley said, but the principle of paying for something that wasnt available for use.

Thats when she asked Bamboozled for help.

After reviewing Bradleys timeline and documents, we asked Budget to look at the case.

A few days later, the decision was in.

We sincerely apologize for the service failure Ms. Bradley experienced, a spokeswoman said. Upon investigation, we determined that the rental billing period needed to be adjusted based upon the date of Ms. Bradleys event. We have since made direct contact with this customer to explain the actions we took to adjust the payment and apologized for any inconvenience.

Bradley said she was happy with the resolution, but shed be sure to never let something like this happen again.

As in most of life, there is always something to be learned, she said.

Thanks to the company for doing the right thing by this customer.

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Karin Price Mueller may be reached at KPriceMueller@NJAdvanceMedia.com.
Idaho Gov. Brad Little speaks at a news conference in Boise, Idaho, on March 25, 2020. (Darin Oswald/Idaho Statesman via AP, File)

Idaho Governor Signs Bill Giving Rural Areas More Say on Ballot Initiatives

Idaho Gov. Brad Little, a Republican, signed legislation on April 17 that raises the bar for ballot initiatives, effectively giving rural residents a greater say in shaping the states legal landscape.

By signing Senate Bill 1110, Little implemented a change to Idahos ballot initiative framework, which previously required signatures from 6 percent of voters in 18 legislative districts, but now needs 6 percent from all 35 of the states districts for new legislation to be placed on the ballot for a popular vote. The change, requiring signatures to be collected from a much wider area, will mean urban centers will have less clout.

In a transmittal letter (pdf) explaining his decision, Little expressed his support for legislation that has the goal of ensuring that the rights of all Idahoansnot just those in urban areashave a voice in Idahos initiative process.

Idaho has an important interest in ensuring that our ballots are not cluttered with initiatives that have not demonstrated sufficient grassroots support, he wrote.

Senate Bill 110 has a laudable goal of ensuring that initiatives have a minimal level of support throughout all of Idaho before they are placed on the ballot.

The measure took effect immediately after Little signed it.

Opponents have said the measure would make it much harder to get initiatives on ballots.

Grassroots group Reclaim Idaho said in a statement that it filed a lawsuit over the bill, arguing that it violates the states constitution.

We are angry and deeply disappointed by the governors failure to uphold the Constitution. But this fight is far from over. In fact, the fight to protect our initiative rights is only just beginning, the group stated.

Luke Mayville, co-founder of Reclaim Idaho, said in a video statement that this legislation would make future citizen initiatives virtually impossible in our state. Under this law, were not likely to ever see again a citizen initiative like Medicaid expansion from 2018 or like term limits in the 1990s, or like any number of other initiatives that citizens have brought forward throughout our history, so we are profoundly disappointed with Gov. Little.

Several other Republican-led states, including Arizona and South Dakota, are considering similar moves that would raise the requirements for ballot initiatives after progressive groups successfully used the process to advance liberal policies.
YEREVAN.  The court session on the criminal case against Aram Harutyunyan, head of the opposition National Accord party of Armenia, started Monday at the Court of General Jurisdiction of Yerevan.

The prosecution publicized Harutyunyan's indictment. But the defendant stated that he does not plead guilty and that the charge was not clear to him.

Aram Harutyunyan's attorney, Sergey Harutyunyan, motioned the court to lift his clients pretrial measure of a signature bond not to leave the country.

According to the investigator, Harutyunyan is suspected of committing a crime of medium gravity, and that he may be hiding from the body conducting the proceedings, so it is necessary to remand him in custody.

The defense stated that this basis is not a sufficient criterion for the decision to restrict a person's right to free movement.

The court left that motion unchanged and decided to return Harutyunyan's passport.

Aram Harutyunyan's lawyer submitted another motion that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan be recognized as an injured party in this case and be summoned for questioning.

And according to Aram Harutyunyan himself, Pashinyan has strengthened his security service from the moment he made such a statement.

The court, however, denied the aforesaid motion. "Even if a specific person is recognized as an injured party, it is meaningless to question him because according to the law, the injured party is questioned in connection with the circumstances he knowshas seen, heard, and the damage allegedly caused to him," stated the presiding judge.

The court proceeded to examine the documents in the case, after which they will examine the videos and question the defendant.

According to the indictment, in a video posted on YouTube, Aram Harutyunyan has voiced calls to publicly justify violence against Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

Harutyunyan has been charged under the Criminal Code article on making public calls for using violence, and publicly justifying or preaching violence.
(AP)

White House press secretary Jen Psaki got into it with a Fox News reporter over Joe Biden's apparent turnaround on migrant policty to deal with the crisis that ended up on the border with young people.

On Friday, Biden signed an executive order retaining the Trumps administrations 15,000 refugee cap before committing to the 62,500 cap just hours later. It came after Biden receiving criticism from the progressive wing of his own party, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

At the daily briefing on Monday, Psaki was pressed as to whether that was because of pushback from AOC and other Democrats.

"I think we all have a responsibility to provide all of the context," Psaki said during the heated exchange.

It came after Psaki attempted to walk back comments from the president over the weekend that there was a "crisis" on the border.

Asked if that was now the official White House position, she said that Biden doesn't feel an "influx" of children at the border seeking refuge is a crisis. The real crisis is in Central America, where the "dire circumstances" are causing them to flee.

Turning to foreign policy, Psaki said there would be consequences for Russia if opposition leader Alexi Navalny dies while detained in Russia, but that they would not telegraph the punches of what those consequences would be.

What happens to Mr Nevalny in the custody of the Russian government is the responsibility of the Russian government. They will be held accountable by the international community, she said.

Biden, meanwhile, is being urged to announce a target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, ahead of the Earth Day climate summit.

Biden will host the virtual summit later this week. Scientists and climate campaigners say a 50-per-cent reduction in emissions is ambitious, but it is achievable.
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Prince Charles 'walked and talked' with Prince Harry at Windsor Castle after his father the Duke of Edinburgh's funeral before later taking part in a 'family summit', a source said today.

It is not clear what was discussed at the meeting, but the source said they began the 'long task' of looking at condolence letters sent from around the world.'

The talks come as speculation whirls around when the Duke of Sussex will fly back to LA to be with pregnant wife Meghan Markle.

Prince Harry arrived in the UK on April 11, reportedly with his own US private security team.

According to the Telegraph, the Duke was met at Heathrow Airport by Met Poilce officers, who helped whisk him off to the royal residence of Frogmore Cottage - where he was placed into quarantine ahead of the funeral.

The prince is said to have booked a return flight on British Airways. The airline has just one direct flight to LA, which left Heathrow at 4.30pm. It is not clear if Harry left on that flight.

If Harry did return today, he will miss the Queen's upcoming 95th birthday on Wednesday.

A source told MailOnline it was likely the Prince would leave for LA this afternoon, but that the Prince had managed to hold talks with his family.

The source said: 'Harry and Charles walked and talked at Windsor after the funeral. My understanding is that Harry goes back today. They talked with Harry as a family.'

It comes as a royal expert said that the Queen's new puppies will play an important role as she continues to mourn for her beloved husband of 73 years.

Prince Harry (left) and Prince Charles (right) at Philip's funeral in Windsor Castle on Saturday, where they walked behind his personalised Land Rover hearse

Meghan and Harry personally chose the locally-sourced flowers for their wreath (second from right) - including Acanthus mollis and Eryngium. Pictured: Wreaths from members of the royal family lie against the pews during the funeral

Meghan's note for Prince Philip: Duchess left handwritten card on wreath for Duke of Edinburgh and watched funeral from her LA home at 7am Meghan Markle left a handwritten card on a wreath for the Duke of Edinburgh at St George's Chapel on the day of his funeral. The Duchess of Sussex - who is around six-months pregnant with Prince Harry's second child - was advised not to make the 10-hour flight to Britain for the funeral by her physician. Instead, she watched the ceremony - which began at 7am Pacific time - on television from her and Harry's 11million mansion in California while the Duke of Sussex attended. A wreath from the couple was earlier left in St George's Chapel, Windsor, to mark their respects, sources told PA news agency. Meghan and Harry personally chose the locally-sourced flowers for their tribute - including Acanthus mollis (Bear's breeches), the national flower of Greece, to represent Philip's heritage, and Eryngium (sea holly), to represent the Royal Marines. The wreath also features campanula for gratitude and everlasting love, rosemary to signify remembrance, lavender for devotion, and roses in honour of June being Philip's birth month. Advertisement

Harry made the 10-hour flight to Britain for the funeral this week while his wife Meghan - who is around seven-months pregnant with their second child - remained in LA.

Arrivals from the US must quarantine for 10 days upon landing - but can leave after five days if they provide a negative test under the Government's Test to Release scheme.

Harry was allowed to attend the funeral at St George's Chapel in Windsor on Saturday in line with Government rules that make exceptions for such occasions.

He arrived in England last Saturday, which means - should he have tested negative - the duke no longer needs to isolate in Windsor.

He is understood to be based in Frogmore Cottage for the rest of his stay. He and Meghan lived in the house on the Windsor estate during their time as senior royals.

It is there that he is said to have met Prince Charles, just weeks after the Sussexes plunged the monarchy into crisis when they accused the royals of racism and the institution of failing to support Meghan when she was suicidal in their Oprah Winfrey interview.

Following the bombshell tell-all - which included Harry's claim that he needed to 'educate' his relatives - Prince Charles was said to be 'deeply hurt' but resolved to 'mend the broken relationship' with his son.

Poignant images from Philip's funeral on Saturday showed the Queen sitting alone in St George's Chapel at Windsor, and on Wednesday she will mark her 95th birthday - only able to meet those outside her household in the open air.

But the grieving Queen will have two lively new companions - a corgi called Muick and a dorgi named Fergus - running around her feet and providing a 'distraction', along with her elderly dorgi Candy.

Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty Magazine, said: 'The thinking was enough was enough, and that she was getting too old for new dogs and who would look after them when she was gone.

'But clearly that decision was reversed and, as it turned out, it probably is very fortuitous. I think it's useful to have these puppies in her life now as way of a distraction.'

The Queen's life-long love of horses and dogs is well known and, while Philip spent his final period in hospital, it emerged the Queen had been given the puppies.

Prince Harry speaks to Prince William as they leave the service at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle on Saturday afternoon

The source told MailOnline this morning: 'Harry and Charles walked and talked at Windsor after the funeral. My understanding is that Harry goes back today. They talked with Harry as a family.' Pictured: Prince Philip's funeral

Frogmore Cottage was Harry's old address where he previously lived with his wife Meghan Markle

Duchess of Cornwall dedicates the second season of her online book club in memory of 'great fellow reader' Prince Philip By Jessica Green for MailOnline The Duchess of Cornwall has shared a touching dedication to her late father-in-law the Duke of Edinburgh following his funeral on Saturday. Having launched her very own online book club at the start of this year, Camilla, 73, dedicated its second season in memory of 'great fellow reader' Prince Philip, who died on April 9, aged 99 at Windsor Castle. On Instagram today, the duchess revealed the second four personal picks for her Reading Room - ranging from fantasy novels to romantic tales. She shared the titles alongside a special message, in which she dedicated the second season of her project to Prince Philip. The duchess wrote: 'As Patron of Booktrust, which I inherited from my late father-in-law His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh, I would like to dedicate the next series of my Reading Room to him, in memory of a great fellow reader..... C.' The Duchess of Cornwall has shared a touching dedication (pictured) to her late father-in-law the Duke of Edinburgh following his funeral on Saturday Advertisement

Mr Little believes that, while Buckingham Palace will remain the seat of the royal court, the Queen may make Windsor Castle her permanent home, travelling to the capital for official events.

The Queen's birthday will fall during the period of royal mourning so any public events to mark it - such as the release of an official picture - are likely to be cancelled.

Mr Little said: 'She will mark her first birthday as a widow, and 95 is quite a significant birthday.

'I don't think there would have been a fuss made of it, but nevertheless 95 is quite something. This is going to be a private day for her and that's how it should be.

'Royal mourning continues until Friday so that makes it even more of a sombre occasion.'

In paying tribute to Philip, who died peacefully at Windsor on April 9, aged 99, members of the royal family have been rallying to the Queen's side and said they will continue to support her in the future.

The Queen returned to public duties a few days after the death of her 'beloved' husband and is expected to return to a full diary of official events after the period of royal mourning ends this week.

Mr Little added: 'I think she will be personally devastated by this, but I don't think the death of the Duke of Edinburgh, her husband of 73 years, is going to impact on her working role.

'I think, as monarch, although she doesn't have him there for guidance, I think her role will continue pretty much as it has for the last 69 years.

'There's the public queen and there's the private queen, and she's great at being able to compartmentalise.'

The Queen has been spending the lockdown at Windsor Castle with a reduced number of staff and aides dubbed HMS Bubble and, under Covid regulations, will be restricted in the number of birthday well-wishers she can see outside.

But Philip's funeral would have provided the opportunity for her to speak with the Duke of Cambridge, the Duke of Sussex and her other grandchildren.

Asked about the funeral during a briefing, the Prime Minister's official spokesman highlighted that Boris Johnson had observed the national minute's silence in memory of the duke on Saturday afternoon.

He added: 'Alongside many of us across the country, he thought that the funeral was a poignant and fitting tribute to a much-loved and highly respected public figure, whose extraordinary life we will forever remember with gratitude for his decades of selfless service to this country.'

Sources told the Telegraph official and personal duties cannot be decided separately because they are too closely linked.

Insiders revealed Charles, William and the Queen (pictured on Saturday) will need to discuss whether to continue with thousands of engagements annually or cut them down

The Prince of Wales and Duke of Cambridge (pictured with the other royals on Saturday) are expected to decide over the next few weeks and months how they will tackle the issues

Prince Andrew left his father's funeral in back of his new 220,000 Bentley that replaces older model Prince Andrew left the Duke of Edinburgh's funeral in the back of his new 220,000 racing-green Bentley which he had fitted with personalised number plates. The Duke of York, 61, sat in the back of the 200mph Bentley Flying Spur - which was blue when first delivered in September before being spray-painted. The motor, with its personalised number plate, was pictured driving out of Windsor Castle on the way to nearby Royal Lodge, the home Andrew shares with ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, 61. Prince Andrew left Prince Philip's funeral in a brand new 220,000 racer-green Bentley Just hours earlier, Prince Andrew walked behind his father's coffin as it was slowly carried to St George's Chapel in Windsor on the back of a custom-built Land Rover hearse. Inside the chapel, Andrew sat closest to the Queen - with the family still separated by several empty chairs due to social distancing rules. Previous Bentley: The Duke of York driving a Bentley Continental GT - the old Bentley he replaced Advertisement

Prince Charles is said to be taking the lead in the talks due to him becoming king first and because any immediate decisions will impact his reign.

But he is understood to have wanted his son the Duke of Cambridge involved every step of the way for major policies that affect him when he inherits the throne.

Meanwhile Prince Edward and Sophie, Countess of Wessex are believed to be stepping into the void left by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's exit.

They are expected to take on bigger roles despite already fulfilling 544 duties as of the last year before the coronavirus lockdown.

Harry and Meghan did 558 jobs between them in 2019, meaning the Royals have to review how these will be redistributed.

Prince Andrew, who stepped back from duties after his Newsnight interview over his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, also has roles that may need to be dished out.

The Duke of York, Prince Philip and Prince Harry have hundreds of patronages and military titles that now need to be taken on.

The Prince of Wales and Duke of Cambridge are expected to decide over the next few weeks and months how they will tackle the issues.

They are said to have rocketed in importance for the Queen and Charles after Harry and Meghan's review period ended last month.

But the decline in the Duke of Edinburgh's health followed by his death just over a week ago shifted the focus.

Prince Charles had wanted a smaller monarchy made up of the Queen, Prince Philip, himself, his wife the Duchess of Cornwall, the Cambridges and Prince Harry.

In these plans the Duke of Sussex was expected to help out until William and Kate's children George, Charlotte and Louis grew up and took on roles.

Insiders revealed Charles, William and the Queen will need to discuss whether to continue with thousands of engagements annually or cut them down.

A source said: 'The question is whether you start off by deciding how many patronages and engagements there should be, and then work out how many people are needed to achieve them, or whether you decide how many people there should be, which will dictate how many engagements and patronages they can take on.'

Prince Charles took part in 550 Royal duties in 2019 while the Duke of Cambridge focused on 220.

Prince William is believed to prefer a targeted approach so he can lend more support to each cause.

Currently around 15 members of the Royal Family take part in more than 3,000 duties per year.

Charles' funeral masterstroke: RICHARD KAY on how the prince's off-the-cuff gesture - forcing the royals to WALK together to Windsor Castle after the service - may just reunite his warring sons

Richard Kay for the Daily Mail

On a day of meticulous planning, it was the one and only off-the-cuff decision. And it turned out to be a masterstroke.

As the limousines drew up to take mourners from the Galilee porch of St George's Chapel back to Windsor Castle's private quarters, Prince Charles used the briefest of gestures to send them, empty of their royal passengers, away.

Impromptu perhaps, common sense even, but it was a signal every bit as eloquent as the spine-tingling music that accompanied the coffin containing the earthly remains of his 'dear papa' to its resting place in the royal vault.

For instead of hiding behind the bulletproof glass of their chauffeur-driven cars, the family walked side by side together, ripped off their face masks and talked.

This could have been a moment of risk, instead it allowed us the first glimpse of the possibility that somehow William and Harry can put their bitter split behind them and rebuild that once whisper-close bond.

Chat: Kate Middleton, Prince Harry and Prince William talk as they walk away from the service

It is hard to read too much into this encounter, for it was all too brief, but if there is to be reconciliation between the brothers, this was surely the moment of its inception.

More than a year has passed since they were last seen in public together, a year in which so many assumptions about their relationship have been torn asunder.

The fall-out from Harry and Meghan's Oprah Winfrey interview is still raw and its issues, not least the claims that a member of the Royal Family had made racist comments about the colour of their son Archie's skin, remain unresolved.

That it should be Kate playing the role of peacemaker was significant too.

Her sister-in-law had discourteously referred to Kate's pre-marriage 'Waity Katie' nickname during the interview and claimed that it was the Duchess of Cambridge who had made her cry over the bridesmaids dresses for her wedding  a claim that was met with deafening silence.

For Charles, who needs both his sons now as never before, this was the first sign of his new role as head of the family.

In the past week his life has changed utterly and he now must, above all, ensure that his own difficult and often misunderstood relationship with his father is not repeated with his sons.

Was this what was going through his mind as he led the sombre line of mourners out of the chapel into the sunshine?

By sending his car away he was laying down his first act as the Royal Family's new paterfamilias. The others had to follow and did.

What it demonstrated was that, for all the military precision and formality of the funeral behind which bereavement could seek refuge, there was a willingness to show that the Windsors were as bereft as any family losing a loved one.

Clambering into cars to travel silently back to the castle might have preserved royal dignity, but going by foot allowed us to see them in all their vulnerability.

Crucially it also provided a chance to build bridges between William and Harry and it was Kate who seized the opportunity.

As they emerged into the castle precincts she was already chatting animatedly with Harry. With no cars to collect them there was no alternative but to walk.

Soon William, who had exchanged pleasantries with the Dean of Windsor, the Right Reverend David Conner, had joined them.

And just as she had arrived at Harry's side, Kate then melted away.

By now both brothers had removed their Covid masks and there was just a flicker that the frost between them might be thawing as they began the walk up Chapel Hill.

'Make no mistake, this was as much for the benefit of the cameras as anything substantial', says a royal figure. 'Don't read too much into it. Baby steps maybe.'

Unscripted: The royals walk after Charles sends his car away after the service

All the same the fact that they were talking at all seemed anything but likely when they had emerged from the castle an hour or so earlier.

The distance between them then looked unbridgeable with the impassive Peter Phillips, their former rugby-playing cousin, sturdily between them.

Prince William was as inscrutable as on that September day almost 24 years ago when he walked behind his mother's coffin. He looked neither left nor right, keeping his gaze steadily ahead.

For his part Harry seemed to be taking in the pageantry of the occasion, perhaps in the knowledge that it no longer plays any part in his life now he has stepped back from royal duties.

At the steps to the chapel's west door the cortege paused for the national minute's silence and Peter appeared to pull back as if to allow the brothers a chance to move together.

They did not and William proceeded to his seat along with Peter while Harry walked to his with their other cousin David (the Earl of) Snowdon.

Once inside the chapel they sat apart too. William and Kate on one side of the quire, Harry facing them directly opposite, but alone. If they did make eye contact, the television cameras did not record it.

If there had been hope that their grandfather's death and funeral might mean some kind of royal reconciliation, the hopes at that moment looked to have been dashed.

Since his return to Britain a week ago, Harry had been isolating at Frogmore Cottage, the house given to him and Meghan as a wedding present by the Queen.

But his presence had brought about one change to Saturday's proceedings: the royals' decision not to wear military uniform.

This was to spare Harry, who was no longer entitled to ceremonial dress since being obliged to give up all his military patronages.

There were reports that the brothers had exchanged texts but nothing more.

After the service as they walked back to the castle the two continued to talk and this time Kate was with them.

For a moment it was just like turning back the clock to the years before Meghan came into his life when Harry shared everything  on and off duty  with William and Kate. But with no formal wake because of social distancing the funeral party broke up quickly.

'Everyone stood around in the quadrangle chatting for a little while and then left,' says one insider.

It is understood that Prince Edward and his family did stay for tea with the Queen.

For Prince Charles, his is a future of dizzying and perplexing family problems, not eased by his father's passing but deepened by it.

He must be a rock for the Queen who will depend on him more than ever, but also find the will to restore the unity of the Royal Family by bringing his sons together.

Talk of a family summit and even of Charles taking his son for a walk round Windsor to look at the flowers left in tribute to Prince Philip  just as he did after Diana's death all those years ago  are, I am told, wide of the mark.

Although Harry is understood to have an open return air ticket  meaning he could travel at any time  he is anxious to return to America to be with Meghan, who is thought to be seven months pregnant with their second child.

It is inevitable that Charles will look to William to take the lead in this.

The one hope is a date in the calendar both princes have  the unveiling of the statue of their mother on what would have been her 60th birthday on July 1.

It does not involve their father but it can surely only happen if the brothers are properly talking.

This week Charles has been concentrating on the wider family, speaking to them all and sharing memories of his father.

He has asked them all to pull together to help the Queen. Many watching on were shocked by the Queen's apparent frailty at the funeral but the prince knows that his mother will not slacken her pace.

Life for her revolves around Windsor Castle. All being well, next year will mark her platinum jubilee, 70 years on the throne, and it is already being planned.

For Charles, as sad as his father's passing undoubtedly has been, the priority now is the reintegration of Harry into royal life.

There was palpable tension at Windsor on Saturday.

Some reports yesterday said that neither his aunt Princess Anne nor his uncle Prince Edward acknowledged Harry before or during the service.

If there is to be a dividend from the sadness of Philip's death, Charles will fervently hope that it will come thanks to his decision to send away the cars and force his sons to start to bury their differences. An awful lot depends on it.
Law Enforcement authorities in Panama intercepted a white cat that was being used to smuggle drugs inside the Nueva Esperanza jail. Located in the Caribbean Province of Colon the prison houses over 1,700 detainees, as reported by Daily Mail. On Friday, jail officials found the fluffy white feline hovering just outside the jail.

Speaking at a press briefing, Andres Gutierrez, head of the Panama Penitentiary System, stated that the officials first stopped the cat outside the prison. Upon further looking, they found a white coloured cloth tied to its neck. When they unwrapped the cloth, they found wrapped packages of white powder, leaves and "vegetable matter.

'White Powder' seized

Meanwhile, another official added that the white powder was likely cocaine, crack and marijuana. The case has now triggered a full-fledged probe into the use of animals to smuggle substance inside the prison. Pictures of the captured cat were posted on Twitter by the Police of Panama. Alongside, they revealed that it has been given to the Adopt for Love and Animal Defenders Foundation.

Image Credits: Panama Police

Drugs and their smugglers are ubiquitous in Central America, a land that is still reigned by gang lords. According to reports, the major drug trafficking organisations remain centred in Mexico and Columbia and said to generate a total of $18 to $39bn in wholesale drug proceeds per year. Late last year, Mexico's former Defence Minister was charged with drug trafficking and money laundering while holding public office. General Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, who served from 2012 to 2018, was arrested in Los Angeles. As per BBC, he is scheduled to be produced before the court in California on October 17.

As per reports, Zepeda has been held on four charges which include conspiracy to the distribution of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and marijuana in the United States. Prosecutors have alleged that in exchange for bribe payments, the Former Mexican Defence Minister permitted the H-2 Cartel - a cartel that routinely engaged in wholesale violence, including torture and murder - to operate with impunity in Mexico. If convicted he could face a jail term of a decade or more. As of now, the prosecutors have argued to keep Zepeda in custody stressing that he poses a risk of flight.

Image Credits: ProtegeryServir/Twitter
Two nights after her boyfriend Machine Gun Kelly snuck out of Delilah's with his assistant Olivia Stone, Megan Fox grabbed dinner solo at BOA Steakhouse in West Hollywood on Saturday.

But the Hollywood couple were pictured back together on Sunday afternoon following a sushi lunch date at Nobu Malibu.

The Tennessee-born 34-year-old - who maintains her youthful glow with help from Dr. Simon Ourian - will next celebrate the pop-punk rocker's 31st birthday this Thursday.

Cleavage alert! Two nights after her boyfriend Machine Gun Kelly snuck out of Delilah's with his assistant Olivia Stone, Megan Fox (pictured) grabbed dinner solo at BOA Steakhouse in West Hollywood on Saturday

'They plan to get engaged and married once her divorce from Brian Austin Green is finalized,' a source told E! News last Thursday.

'They are very much in love and have a strong and intense relationship. Her divorce is moving along, and they are hashing out custody details.'

Megan previously indicated she separated from the 47-year-old father of her three sons in November 2019 and officially filed for divorce from him on November 25.

No hard feelings? But the Hollywood couple were pictured back together on Sunday afternoon following a sushi lunch date at Nobu Malibu

'They are very much in love': The Tennessee-born 34-year-old - who maintains her youthful glow with help from Dr. Simon Ourian - will next celebrate the pop-punk rocker's 31st birthday this Thursday

'MGK (born Colson Baker) is slowly getting to know the kids and everything is going well with that,' the insider noted.

'Megan has not wanted to rush them into anything. But she has been incorporating Colson into their life and it's going well.'

Fox originally met the Houston-born Texan in March 2020 on the Puerto Rican set of producer Randall Emmett's directorial debut, Midnight in the Switchgrass.

A source told E! News last Thursday: 'They plan to get engaged and married once her divorce from Brian Austin Green is finalized. They have a strong and intense relationship. Her divorce is moving along, and they are hashing out custody details' (pictured April 9)

'MGK is slowly getting to know the kids': Megan previously indicated she separated from the 47-year-old father (L, pictured in 2019) of her three sons in November 2019 and officially filed for divorce from him on November 25

'Everything is going well': Fox originally met the Houston-born Texan in March 2020 on the Puerto Rican set of producer Randall Emmett's (2-L, pictured in April 2020) directorial debut, Midnight in the Switchgrass

Filmmaker Andrew Baird teased another glimpse of MGK as petty criminal Freddy in action thriller One Way, and he's currently on week five of post-production.

The Daywalker hitmaker's 11-year-old daughter Casie (with ex Emma Cannon) also makes a cameo in the flick as well as Kevin Bacon, Drea de Matteo, Storm Reid, and Travis Fimmel.

Meanwhile, the Jennifer's Body alum will next play the handcuffed widow Emma in S.K. Dale's horror thriller Till Death, which is due out later this year.

On week five of post-production! Filmmaker Andrew Baird teased another glimpse of MGK (born Colson Baker) as petty criminal Freddy in action thriller One Way

Acting with daddy: The Daywalker hitmaker's 11-year-old daughter Casie (R, with ex Emma Cannon) also makes a cameo in the flick alongside Kevin Bacon and Drea de Matteo
A charitable trust in Scotland is being sued for discriminating institutions over their Biblical belief on marriage.

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) and Stirling Free Church filed lawsuits against Robertson Trust, following termination of contracts for the use of its Barracks Conference Centre, The Christian Institute (CI) wrote.

The church had a contract with the Trust to use its facility for Sunday services but Shonaig Macpherson, its chairwoman, canceled the agreement upon learning about it. Macpherson was allegedly opposed to the stance of the church in marriage, believing that it is only between a man and a woman.

When questioned about the cancellation, the Trust reportedly claimed that its policy prohibits using the center on activities promoting politics or religion. But when the church requested for a copy of the policy, it was revealed that no "explicit policy" actually exists and that decisions were made "on a case by case basis."

Rev. Iain MacAskill said that they were shocked with the Trust's decision.

"The Free Church believes marriage is between a man and a woman - a mainstream Christian belief shared with the Church of Scotland and the Church of England. We have had no other option but to resort to legal action," Rev. MacAskill further stated.

According to the UK courts, the church's Biblical belief on marriage is protected under equality and human rights law. The case is expected to be heard by Glasgow Sheriff Court this week.

The BGEA also filed a lawsuit against the Trust, after terminating a contract without explanation.

Roger Chilvers of BGEA said that the association booked a room in the center as a venue for a training course for churches involved in its evangelistic tour in the UK.

"We made it clear to the venue at the time of booking that we are a Christian organisation. It was only later that they came back and said they were cancelling our booking because of our religion," he said.

"It is a neutral space, offered to the public at large. You can't have a situation where religious groups are banned from hiring neutral spaces. That is not a free society. This is anti-religious discrimination, plain and simple, and we are hopeful the court will uphold our claim and recognize the inequities present in this case," Chilvers added.

Simon Calvert, CI's Deputy Director for Public Affairs, criticized the Trust for its discrimination.

"It's quite clear there is some hostility within the Trust towards Christian beliefs about marriage. But these beliefs are protected by equality and human rights law. The courts have ruled again and again that you can't discriminate against people just for believing in traditional marriage," Calverts said.

Speaking to Premier Christian News, Gerry McLaughlin, Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees, denied the discrimination allegation, reiterating its policy.

He continued by sharing the Trust's contribution to the poor communities in Scotland, adding that it has provided more than 2.5 million, funding inclusive community projects of over 130 religious organizations in the country.

CI will represent both the church and BGEA in court.
SAGINAW, MI - A 16-year-old boy is dead after he was shot multiple times Saturday night in Saginaw, police said.

Saginaw police officers responded to reports of a homicide around 8 p.m., April 17 on North Harrison Street between Holland Avenue and Miller Street.

Upon their arrival, officers discovered the male victim, who was pronounced deceased at the scene from the injuries hed suffered in the shooting incident, according to Michigan State Police.

The victims name has not been released.

The Saginaw Major Crimes Unit, consisting of Michigan State Police and Saginaw police detectives, is investigating the incident, Michigan State Police Lt. Liz Rich told MLive Sunday afternoon.

No additional details were available from police at this time.

Read more from MLive:

Motorcyclist dies after being hit by multiple vehicles on I-94

12-year-olds heart transplant inspires Bay City community, creates Aarons Army

Genesee County considers replacement for Genesee Health Plan
New Delhi: Hours after the Allahabad High Court ordered lockdown-like curbs in five cities of Uttar Pradesh, the state government on Monday (April 19) said that it will not impose a complete lockdown.

The government said that the administration will impose strict restrictions in the cities and will submit its reply on the courts observations.

UP Government will not impose a complete lockdown in the cities but impose strict restrictions. The UP Government is submitting its reply before the Court on its observations, ACS- Information, Navneet Sehgal was quoted as saying by ANI.

Earlier in the day, the High Court ordered curbs across five cities including Lucknow, Prayagraj, Varanasi, Kanpur and Gorakhpur in view of the worsening COVID-19 situation.

The court chided the Yogi Aditynath-led state government for not handling the COVID-19 pandemic well enough.

A bench comprising Justices Ajit Kumar and Siddhartha Varma issued a slew of directions which virtually amounts to a lockdown.

"We are of the considered view that in given scenario of present time if people are restrained from going outside their homes for a week in the first instance, the current chain of spread of COVID infection can be broken and this will also give some respite to the frontline medical and health workers." the bench observed.

"All establishments be it government or private, except financial institutions and financial departments, medical and health services, industrial and scientific establishments, essential services including municipal functions, and public transport, shall remain closed till 26th April, 2021. The judiciary will, however, function on its own discretion," the bench added.

It has ordered suspension of all religious activities and establishments till the end of the lockdown period. Shopping complexes and malls would remain shut as well.

Educational institutions and activities of other government, semi government or private organisations shall remain closed as per the order.

Live TV
OMAHA, Neb. (AP)  A teenage boy suspected in a shooting at a Nebraska mall that left one man dead and a woman injured was arrested Sunday on a murder warrant, police said.

Omaha Police said 16-year-old Makhi Woolridge-Jones is facing a first-degree murder charge in the shooting Saturday at the Westroads Mall in Omaha. Brandon Woolridge-Jones, 18, was earlier arrested on a charge of being an accessory to the shooting.
Burma Myanmar Juntas Internet Blackout Leaves Food Delivery Riders Struggling to Survive

A rider from GrabFood is seen in downtown Yangon in March 2020. / The Irrawaddy

Foodpanda rider Ko Myo Myint Maung used to make a decent income that enabled him to support his family, which includes his wife, mother and younger brother, even when the COVID-19 pandemic badly affected Myanmar last year. But he has been out of the work for the last two and half months because of the juntas mobile internet blackout that followed their Feb.1 coup.

Now Ko Myo Myint Maung cannot afford to buy the medicine his mother needs or supplements for his two-month old daughter.

We are even struggling to find the money for three daily meals. We have to keep apologizing to the landlord for delaying payment of the rent, Ko Myo Myint Maung told The Irrawaddy.

He is not the only one who is out of a job following the coup. Thousands of riders from food delivery services across the country are facing the same fate after the military regime cut mobile internet and wireless broadband services to try and prevent news of its bloody crackdowns on anti-coup protesters from being widely seen.

Since the military takeover, the regime has ordered a series of national internet shutdowns after nationwide anti-coup protests gained strong support on social media. In mid-February, the junta blocked internet access from 1:00 a.m. to 9:00 am every day. But with protesters still posting images of the brutal crackdowns on pro-democracy supporters, the junta further throttled communications by blocking mobile internet services in late March. On April 2, the regime ordered the shutdown of all wireless broadband services until further notice.

Most of us have lost our jobs since mid-February because the internet service was on and off so frequently. I have not been able to support my sick parents for months, Ma Malar Htun, a female Foodpanda rider in Yangons Sanchaung Township, told The Irrawaddy.

Food delivery services such as Food2u, Yangon Door2Door, Foodpanda, Hi-So Mall and Grab Food became much more popular in Myanmar in 2019, as smartphone and internet services spread further. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 further boosted demand for food deliveries from the mobile apps as people sought to avoid going to public places. The growing food delivery industry employed thousands of young people in major cities, but especially in Yangon, the commercial capital.

Among them, Foodpanda is one of the most popular food delivery services in Myanmar. More than one million customers nationwide have signed up for its services since the business entered the Myanmar market in December 2019, and over 7,000 people worked as delivery riders.

But now all the food delivery services face an uncertain future thanks to the regimes constant internet disruptions.

Several food delivery riders told The Irrawaddy that they had earned between 80,000 kyats and 150,000 kyats per week before the internet was cut by the junta.

I have had no income from food delivery since the mobile internet was cut. I have a family to feed, it is very difficult for us, Ko Thet Naung Myint, a food delivery rider told The Irrawaddy.

My daughter is just four months old. I am no longer able to afford supplements for her, he said.

Despite being jobless, food delivery riders have taken part in many of the anti-regime protests in Yangon and elsewhere. In early March, a 20-year-old Foodpanda delivery man, Ko Zaw Thein Aung, was shot dead while he was helping an injured woman during a crackdown by the regimes forces in Sagaing Regions Monywa.

Moreover, most of the riders in Yangon have provided a free delivery service for the civil servants who are participating in the civil disobedience movement and refusing to work for the regimes administration.

Our future looks lost, but I still want to help those who are fighting to restore civilian rule, Ko Myo Myint Maung said.

An official from one food delivery service told The Irrawaddy that business was down 80 percent following the coup. They can only deliver to very limited locations and just 20 to 30 riders are able to make delivery services each day by using public Wi-Fi services. However, the app does not work properly due to the internet disruption.

Riders arent able to access GPS services. So it is very hard for them to find customer locations. They dont have mobile internet. As soon as they leave the restaurants, we lose contact with them. It is extremely inconvenient, he said.

Security forces are everywhere in Yangon. It is totally not safe for them as well, he added.

There have been many reports of the regimes forces stealing food and money from food delivery riders in Yangon. On Saturday, security forces reportedly looted food and 500,000 kyats from a Foodpanda rider near Yangons Hledan Centre.

Some food delivery riders have started posting on public Facebook groups that they can buy anything for customers including meals, goods and medicines from Yangons markets.

Our family is struggling for a living. Please help us and just ringI can buy and deliver to your doorstep anything you want, some wrote.

Despite the juntas internet shutdown affecting tens of thousands of people, nobody knows when the regime will reinstate internet access. In late March, the juntas spokesperson said that there is still no plan to reopen internet access.

One 24-year-old female food delivery rider is now offering a service buying medicine and goods for customers. She lives in a hostel in Yangons Sanchaung Township. Until the coup, she gave financial support to her parents who live on the outskirts of Yangon. Now we get around 2,000 to 2,500 kyats for one-way delivery service. Sometimes, I get one or two deliveries a day. But sometimes nobody asks for delivery service, she said.

I could not pay my rent last month or this month, she added.

Ko Thet Naung Myint has also requested customers to call him if there is anything they want delivered from the markets and restaurants, despite living in a township where the security forces are extremely active every day.

We are risking our lives just to get money for our daily meals, he said.

Many people dont want to spend money as they dont know what will happen in the future, he added. Our income is extremely low. Our finances have become too tight. Now, we cant afford to get sick.



You may also like these stories:

Myanmar Villagers Battle Junta Troops to Free Detainees

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Uyghur demonstrators take part in a protest against China in Istanbul on October 1. Murad Sezer/Reuters

China is arbitrarily detaining up to 1 million people in Xinjiang, Human Rights Watch said Monday.

The group said China is justifying its repression in the language of a "global war on terrorism."

HRW said Chinese authorities are committing "crimes against humanity," but didn't label it genocide.

See more stories on Insider's business page.

In the name of a "People's War on Terror," the government of China has waged a campaign of repression against largely Muslim minorities in the province of Xinjiang, arbitrarily detaining as many as 1 million people in a network of prison facilities where torture and forced labor are routine, a leading human rights group said Monday.

In a 53-page indictment of the Chinese state, Human Rights Watch detailed a policy of mass incarceration, torture, disappearances, and cultural erasure in Xinjiang. Located in the westernmost part of the country, the province is home to a largely Uyghur population of Turkic Muslims in a nation that is overwhelmingly Han Chinese.

Although China's government is generally authoritarian, HRW said it was especially repressive toward its Muslim population. Hundreds of thousands of people, it said, have been forced into political reeducation camps, with those outside subject to suffocating police surveillance - a million state employees have slept in the homes of Xinjiang residents - and cultural erasure, with the state dictating everything from appropriate facial hair to the names of one's children.

"Chinese authorities have systematically persecuted Turkic Muslims - their lives, their religion, their culture," Sophie Richardson, HRW's China director, said in a statement. "Beijing has said it's providing 'vocational training' and 'deradicalization,' but that rhetoric can't obscure a grim reality of crimes against humanity."

China has denied wrongdoing and justifies its behavior, like other states, with the language of a war on terror. The Chinese Embassy could not immediately be reached for comment. In 2014, more than two dozen people were killed in an attack by knife-wielding men at a train station in Kunming, in the southwest of the country, an act of terrorism that the state attributed to Xinjiang separatists.

Story continues

That same year, China stepped up its crackdown not just in Xinjiang - leaked documents showed that authorities there preemptively detain any for whom guilt "cannot be ruled out" - but on those who had fled the province. In Thailand, authorities forcibly returned 100 asylum-seekers to China; today, HRW said, their whereabouts are unknown. As Insider's Alexandra Ma reported, China's harassment of Uyghurs even extends to the United States.

The cotton that comes from Xinjiang is also used by Western brands in clothing sold the world over, and is tainted by a reliance on forced labor. Abroad, that has led to calls for a boycott. In China, those calls have in turn spurred a nationalist fervor, with citizens pledging their own boycotts, punishing the likes of H&M for declining to use their nation's cotton.

The use of coerced labor increased alongside China's "War on Terror" initiative, the "Strike Hard Campaign," the report said, with satellite imagery showing new factories being built alongside reeducation camps in Xinjiang. Inmates are forced to work for free as part of their "training."

"It's increasingly clear that Chinese government policies and practices against the Turkic Muslim population in Xinjiang meet the standard for crimes against humanity under international criminal law," Beth Van Schaack, of the Stanford Center for Human Rights & International Justice, said in a statement.

Western governments have labeled China's treatment of its Uyghur minority a genocide, citing evidence of labor camps, forced sterilization, declining birth rates, and a seeming effort to eliminate distinguishing characteristics of their culture. In March, the Biden administration slapped sanctions on Chinese officials for their "genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang."

Genocide, as a legal concept, is not a matter of the number of people killed or abused, but rather of intent - specifically, an "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." That destruction, according to the Genocide Convention adopted in 1948 by members of the United Nations, is effected by means of inflicting bodily or mental harm, curtailing reproduction, and inflicting conditions on a group that are "calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."

Refugees and human rights groups have provided evidence of those means. But HRW is not prepared to define the Chinese government's behavior as some others have, saying it has simply "not documented the existence of the necessary genocidal intent at this time."

The group is calling on the UN Human Rights Council to launch an inquiry into China's actions. Foreign governments should also pursue travel bans and sanctions against the officials responsible, it said, prosecuting them if the opportunity strikes.

"That China is a powerful state makes it all the more important for holding it accountable for its unrelenting abuses," Richardson said.

Have a news tip? Email this reporter: cdavis@insider.com

Read the original article on Business Insider
From A to Z, "The ABCs of HBCUs" gives readers a front-row, all-inclusive tour of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. It is the first children's book to introduce young readers to college campuses like Howard University, Spelman College, Lincoln University and Meharry Medical College.

Readers also learn about time-honored traditions such as the Battle of the Bands, homecoming, and Black fraternities and sororities.

In a recent interview, Walker said, "As a teacher, I know that some students only learn about HBCUs during their senior year of high school, if at all. I want to change that, and ensure that students are exposed to these historical institutions as early as possible."

Award-winning brand-designer Jessica E. Boyd provided the illustrations for the book. Boyd, a double HBCU alumna, captured and translated the essence of the Black college experience into a language that speaks to young children.

This is a debut book release for Walker and Boyd.

About the Author

Claudia Walker is an Oakland based author, speaker, and teacher whose work has been featured in the New York Times, Essence, and Vogue. As a proud second-generation HBCU graduate, her debut book, The ABCs of HBCUs", is inspired by her undergraduate experiences at Spelman College.

Deeply committed to showcasing and celebrating stories that mainstream publications tend to overlook, Claudia launched HBCU Prep School, a publishing company that centers on Black voices and Black joy in children's books.



For media and general inquiries, contact Bryan Walker at [email protected]

Website: https://hbcuprepschool.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asHP9aJEZzg

This press release was issued through 24-7PressRelease.com. For further information, visit http://www.24-7pressrelease.com.



SOURCE HBCU Prep School
A glimpse inside Flower Expo in Chongming

By:Wu Qiong | From:english.eastday.com | 2021-04-19 17:31

The 10th China Flower Expo will open on May 21 in Chongming, by which time a beautiful scene of blooming flowers will greet visitors from all over the country. Surrounded by the Yangtze River and located near the sea, Chongming will be showcased as a flower island on the sea.

Reporters from whb.cn had a glimpse inside the northern part of the China Flower Expo area, which has not been unveiled to the citizens. The highlights should be the three permanent Pavilions: The Century Pavilion, the Rejuvenation Pavilion, and the Bamboo & Rattan Pavilion.





According to a staff member from the construction team, the Century Pavilion is inspired by the Luehdorfia chinensis, a wild butterfly mainly distributed in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and deemed as a "national treasure" by insect experts because of its rarity.





Taking up a construction area of 40,000 square meters, the Rejuvenation Pavilion will house indoor flowers from dozens of Chinese provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities and Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan regions. Its roof is fun and full of creativity in design, like a piece of rectangular paper that has been folded several times. As the name of the pavilion says, the nations rejuvenation journey, which is surging forward with great momentum, has been reflected by the integration of traditional origami and paper-cutting techniques into the architectural design. Moreover, the metal material on the surface actually constitutes the solar power system of the building.





The concept of ecological and environmental protection is reflected by lots of details of the China Flower Expo area. The Bamboo & Rattan Pavilion, for instance, is an important exhibit itself. Above the arched exhibition hall is a cocoon-shaped structure made from woven bamboo. The greenery stretches from the roof to the foot of the arch, so that a full picture of a bamboo forest is formed to display the beauty of Oriental traditions.

As the buildings designer says, a strategy called "de-architecturalization" has been deployed by eliminating traditional architectural elements such as walls and roofs so as to transform the building into a giant bambooware for the exhibition. However, to realize a natural and smooth shape and a delicate texture, the bamboo material needed to be used in a new way. After some exploration, the team chose a new type of composite bamboo material called bamboo steel.





Actually, in the China Flower Expo area, Chinese beauty has been embedded into the design of each Pavilion. For more discoveries, people can go to Chongming from May to July, to have a closer look at the buildings.

(Photos by whb.cn)
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Less than a year after ministering at a memorial to George Floyd in South Minneapolis, chaplains Robert and Frieda Roulds returned to the Twin Cities last week to offer spiritual care in the aftermath of another black mans death at the hand of police.

The husband-wife team arrived in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, three days after Daunte Wright was fatally shot by an officer during a traffic stop. At a memorial erected at the site of the incident, emotions were high as they heard tearful mourners recount their experiences with racism and ongoing frustration with law enforcement.

They dont realize that its one grief after another after another, Frieda Rounds said. They are carrying a lot with them.

The Rouldses, from Illinois, are two of five chaplains deployed to Minnesota by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA)s rapid response team. This is the eighth time in its 20-year history that BGEA has sent chaplains in response to situations it deems civil unrest, most of which stem from police killings.

Though their ministry focuses on temporary emotional and spiritual care after a crisis, theyve returned to the same area for the second time in just under a year and ended up recognizing some of the same people from before.

Minneapolis has endured so much traumaCOVID-19 restrictions and deaths; George Floyds death; the murder trial of former officer Derek Chauvin, who is accused of killing Floyd; and now Wrights deaththat the chaplains say people dont know where to start process everything thats happened over the past year.

If you havent resolved one grief or trauma, you cant move forward and deal with the one youre in right now, said Frieda Roulds. You still have one thats holding on to you that you need to deal with.

The Rouldses were invited by Revive Brooklyn Park Church to support ongoing response efforts by local clergy, who have mobilized amid recent gatherings and protests. With a temporary curfew issued by the Brooklyn Park mayor, many churches have canceled weeknight activities.

Pastor McKinley Moore of Jehovah Jireh Ministries, a Church of God in Christ congregation in Brooklyn Center, said his community is distressed and worried and that people need support from clergy. He organized afternoon prayer meetings in front of the Brooklyn Center Police Department building and at the site of Wrights killing.

It helps when pastors from neighboring communities come in to assist, said Moore, who has lived in Brooklyn Center for 29 years. We appreciate that.

But its more complicated when people arrive from out of state, he said. People from the outside may not understand the community divisions, tensions, and lingering frustrations theyre stepping into. Local pastors have the benefit of knowing their neighborhoods and being there to offer spiritual care and assistance long-term.

The BGEA chaplains see their work as temporary, as a way to help ministry leaders at a time when they may be stretched for capacity. They recognize that doing so in these in civil unrest situations is a particular challenge compared to arriving after a natural disaster or other types of crises.

When theres a disaster, theres loss and grief. But with civil unrest were hearing and seeing a lot of people who are angry, said Robert Roulds. Theres no other grief components; were just dealing strictly with anger.

Before going out for the day, he leads the group in prayer for God to lead hurting people to them and their message. Give us eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart for the people in this community, he prayed.

Because tensions run high, chaplains are trained to watch people closely before approaching to ask how they are holding up.

It takes a greater wisdom on the part of the chaplains to know how to navigate through this type of ministry event and to stay focused on our mission, which is to be a ministry of presence and to share the hope we have in Christ as a solution to the problems that we face as individuals and society, wrote Ken Dunlap, the teams manager of deployment and peer support.

Race is also a major factor in the two police killings and the community response. The Rouldses, who are coordinating the ministry in Brooklyn Center, are African American. Frieda Roulds recalled last year how seeing children afraid of what was happening in their community made her think back to growing up in Birmingham in the civil rights era and being afraid that her family would be targeted with violence.

BGEA has an extensive church network that connects chaplains to communities in need after a crisis, and its goal is to work in partnership with churches so that support efforts can continue even after the chaplains leave.

Josh Holland, assistant director of the BGEA rapid response team, said sometimes BGEA will send in chaplains at the request of an individual church, but not always. The primary factor for us is when an event exceeds a communitys ability to respond, and we have chaplains who are available to come along the local church, he said.

The Rouldses and their team came to Minnesota at the request of Mark Henry, lead pastor of Revive Church in nearby Brooklyn Park.

Robert Roulds prayed with the church last week on Facebook Live and shared about their work, saying even people who look like theyre doing fine on the outside are often really grateful to have someone offer to pray for them. They also attended Revives services on Sunday to meet with anyone from the church who needed counsel or care.

The ministerswho show up on site wearing shirts, jackets, and hats designating them as chaplainsalso hope to ease tensions by hearing out and honoring citizens concerns. Robert Roulds described how the Brooklyn Center Police Department building is barricaded by National Guard troops while protesters stand on their own on an opposite corner.

The residents see one-sidedness and protection for police but not for residents. They feel like their voices are not being heard, and theres a lot of frustration, Robert said. Thats why we are here: to be a ministry of presence and to let them know the world is not against you.

About 70 Minnesota clergy across faith traditions came out to the police department on Thursday night in solidarity with protesters seeking justice for Daunte Wright, and Brooklyn United Methodist Church has assembled a team to stand guard during nightly protests to protect businesses, apartment complexes, and homes from violence.

BGEA chaplains work with the community during the day, but their training has taught them to not engage in conversations with rioters. Robert Roulds said rioters are fueled by their anger and a sense of hopelessness, so during the night chaplains pray and ask God that the solution will be peaceful and there will be no more harm.

He shared with the Revive congregation an encouragement from Galatians 6:9: Let us not become weary in doing good. While his team will be there for two weeks, the deeper work of lament, healing, and reconciliation will take place in the months and years ahead.

Besides Minnesota, BGEA chaplain teams have been deployed this year to a COVID-19 field hospital in California; sites of devastating ice storms in Texas and tornadoes in Georgia; the Boulder, Colorado, neighborhood where a gunman killed 10 people at a grocery store; and now the FedEx facility in Indianapolis where a gunman killed eight people and wounded several others on April 15.

Since 2018, they have responded to 22 shootings.
The Chief Executive Officer of the Atta-Mills Institute (AMI) for Civic Education and Public Policy Advocacy, Mr Samuel Koku Anyidoho, has commended the Beninois authorities for a successful organisation of its April 11 presidential election.

He said the collation centres were not inundated with human traffic as well as "macho men or vigilante groups".



One unique thing is how after the open counting and declaration of results, the returning officers send their duly signed Declaration Forms to the collation centres and leave, he stated.



Observation



Mr Anyidoho said this in an interview after observing the election as a member of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in Benin last week.



It was the second international election monitoring assignment by the AMI after an earlier one it undertook in October 2020 as part of an ECOWAS Observer Team to observe the presidential and provincial elections in Guinea Conakry.



Processes



Mr Anyidoho described the voting processes as smooth as what pertained in Ghana.



Honestly, the ECOWAS Team did not report an incident of violence. Tactile ballots were also available to help those with impaired vision, he added.



He said there were also no queues even though the voting ended at 4 p.m. unlike Ghana where voting ends at 5 p.m.



Ghana Mission

Mr Anyidoho also praised the Ghana Mission in Cotonou for its support, especially the Interim Head of Mission, Madam Louisa Hanson.



Background



Incumbent President Patrice Talon won 86.37 per cent of the votes or 1,984,832 votes in the April 11 polls.



He was followed by rivals Alassane Soumano with 11.29 per cent and Corentin Kohoue with 2.35 per cent.



The turnout was 50.17 per cent or 2,298,401 voters out of a possible 4,802,303.









Source: Graphiconline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
The White House is set to launch a vaccine campaign on social media that will promote the coronavirus vaccines among communities who are hesitant to take the jab. Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat will be assisting the Biden administration's promotional campaign, The Verge reported.

As part of the campaign, Dr. Fauci will participate and appear on Snapchat to target young people who are using the app, New York Post reported. The push for the social media blitz of the White House will commence on Monday, in support of President Biden's deadline for all states to make the COVID-19 vaccine eligible to Americans 16 years old and above.

READ NEXT: Misinformation on Social Media Targets Latino Communities

White House's Social Media Vaccine Campaign

Dr. Fauci, 80 years old, will target the younger audiences with Snapchat clips. Apart from his appearance on the app, Fauci is also expected to appear in local television and radio guesting for interviews.

The media efforts of the Biden administration follow the hesitancy of the remaining population against the COVID-19 vaccines, Axios reported. The administration will focus on specific communities that have higher rates of vaccine hesitancy.

These communities are namely Latinos and Black communities. Conservatives are also part of the demographics who have a higher rate of vaccine hesitancy.

Facebook and Twitter, on the other hand, will send push notifications that will alert the users of the app if they are already eligible for the vaccine.

President Biden is also set to film a direct-to-camera public service announcement that will be published on digital platforms. Vice President Kamala Harris will also take part in the social media publicity. However, details about her social media appearance were not furthered.

Axios noted that the pause for using Johnson and Johnson vaccine may raise concerns and elevate vaccine hesitancy, not only in the United States, but also in other parts of the world. It can be remembered that the CDC panel requested further information on whether the J&J vaccine causes a blood clot. The vaccine brand was halted to be inoculated among Americans in all 50 states of America.

White House's Other Efforts

The White House acknowledged that social media alone may not be the most effective tool to convince some of the parts of the population they are targeting. Because of this, the White House will also hand out social media toolkit to churches and doctors through email. The toolkit can be used to promote the COVID-19 vaccine and destroy vaccine hesitancy.

Apart from social media, the White House will also team up with media such as Telemundo, All Ag News to address the issue with communities high in vaccine hesitancy. The administration will also partner with Rickey Smiley who has a hefty amount of followers from the Black community.

Apart from Dr. Fauci who will participate in the social media campaign, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy will also be available for interviews.

Apart from the vice president's social media appearance, Harris is set for an interview with an African American community weekly newspaper published in North Carolina.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson from Snapchat confirmed with The Verge that the company has been in touch with the White House regarding their vaccine campaign. The social media app added that they are establishing their efforts to support the community amid the pandemic. A spokesperson from Twitter also confirmed their partnership with the White House in a separate email, as they elevate "authoritative information" regarding coronavirus.

READ MORE: 12 States Pressure Facebook and Twitter on Taking Action Regarding Anti-Vaxxers

WATCH: Dr. Anthony Fauci on Herd Immunity & Vaccines for Kids - from NowThis News
CHARLES CITY, Iowa  A Florida man is arrested after gunfire leads to an evacuation at a Charles City motel.

Harry William Luciow II, 52 of Southport, FL, is facing charges of second-degree criminal mischief and reckless use of a firearm. He was booked into the Floyd County Jail on $7,000 bond.

The Charles City Police Department says officers were called to the Super 8 Motel in the 1400 block of South Grand Avenue around 10 pm Saturday after gunshots were reported insidel. Officers arrived and evacuated the rooms surrounding the one where the gunshots were heard.

Police say they contacted the occupant of the room by telephone, Luciow, and got him to surrender himself. Investigators say Luciow fired off a gun six or seven times inside the room, damaging the walls, motel electronics, and motel plumbing. Police say none of the bullets went through the walls into an adjacent room.
IL CAIRO - The second train crash in Egypt in less than a month has left 11 dead and 98 injured, the country's health ministry announced Monday.



The incident occurred Sunday about 40 km north of Cairo.



Four out of eight wagons derailed not far from the station in the Toukh village along the Cairo-Mansoura line on the Nile Delta.



Dozens of ambulances were sent to the scene and Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al Sisi ordered the army to conduct an investigation into the incident.



On March 26, at least 20 people died and almost 200 were injured in a similar rail accident for which no official explanation has yet been released.



Many observers say that the frequency of rail accidents means that there are structural issues with the country's railway system.



In early April, the African Development Bank (AfDB) lent Cairo 145 million euros to deal with the issue.


Canberra, April 19 : Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Monday welcomed the opening of a travel bubble between his country and New Zealand, saying it was a "win-win" for both Canberra and Wellington.

As of Monday, Australians can enter and return from New Zealand without having to quarantine on either side, reports Xinhua news agency.

It marks the first time that Australians can enjoy unrestricted international travel since the country's international borders were closed in March 2020 to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

"Today's milestone is a win-win for Australians and New Zealanders," Morrison said in a joint statement with his New Zealand counterpart Jacinda Ardern on Monday.

He added that it will help drive the economic recovery for both countries while continuing to navigate the global pandemic, especially in the travel and tourism sectors.

"Both countries have done a remarkable job in protecting our communities from COVID and two-way flights are an important step in our road out." He said that the two countries were also considering opportunities to open the bubble to other countries in the Pacific.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the opening of travel marked a significant step in both countries' reconnection with the world.
People aged over 50 could be vaccinated sooner and more mass-vaccination sites opened to speed up the vaccine program, as the first of new bi-weekly national cabinet meetings focuses on the countrys vaccine rollout.

The countrys leaders on Monday will discuss a reset of the vaccination program, including changes to national vaccination strategy and state plans following updated advice from the countrys top immunisation experts on the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

People over the age of 50 could be vaccinated sooner as National Cabinet discusses a reset of the vaccine program. Credit:Bloomberg

Quarantine-free travel also resumes with New Zealand on Monday, and discussions are under way with Singapore and the South Pacific about travel bubbles.

For those travelling elsewhere for essential work or important family business including funerals, vaccinated return travellers may be able to quarantine at home from the second half of the year, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Sunday.
TWO men who caused criminal damage to the windows of Tesco and Lidl stores, also stole alcohol.

Sgt James O'Sullivan said the alcohol was recovered, at last week's Tullamore district court.

At a previous court sitting, Alex Berry, 93 Norbury Woods Green, Tullamore and Alex Crompton, 33, Church View, Tullamore were both ordered to pay compensation for the damage caused.

The details of the offences are that on June 5, 2020 at Tesco, Cloncollig, Tullamore, both men caused 5,000 worth of damage to the store window.

They also caused damage to products in the store to the value of 1,056. In addition they stole 600 worth of alcohol.

On the same date they damaged a store window at Lidl, Church road, causing 4,054.79.

At last Wednesday's sitting Alex Berry brought 100 in compensation.

His solicitor Donal Farrelly said Mr Berry was 19 years of age, he had a small income and was struggling to make ends meet. He was an apprentice carpenter and earned 350 per week. He paid 150 in rent and electricity.

Judge Catherine Staines asked what he did with the other 200. Mr Berry replied that he had a court case in Sligo and had to pay the solicitor there. ''Why did you not get legal aid?'' asked Judge Staines. Mr Berry said he was caught with drugs and the solicitor didn't do legal aid.

Judge Staines told him he should have gone to one that did or the court would have appointed one.

The court was told Mr Berry had no previous convictions.

Judge Staines ordered the 100 compensation to be handed over to the manager of Tesco, Ciaran Rush, adding that she would like to see it distributed among the staff.

She believed Mr Berry was genuinely remorseful and was engaging with Merchant's Quay. She fined him 200 for the criminal damage and took the other charges into consideration.

Alex Crompton, 33, Church View, Tullamore, also aged 19, and an apprentice carpenter, had undertaken a restorative justice programme and had done well the court heard.

He had already paid 680 in compensation and had another 150 in court last Wednesday.

He too was engaging with Merchant's Quay.

Judge Staines ordered his compensation to be divided between Tesco and Lidl.

She said Mr Crompton had made much more of an effort and fined him 100. She took the other offences into consideration.
YEREVAN, APRIL 19, ARMENPRESS. Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok described the ''park'' in Baku and the scene of Ilham Aliyev being photographed in front of the wax mannequins of Armenian soldiers as very unpleasant, ARMENPRESS reports Minister Stef Blok referred to the issue at the parliament, during answering the questions of the MPs.

Those were very unpleasant images. Regarding this conflict, I have announced earlier that I call on the sides to reach a settlement in the sidelines of the OSCE Misnk Group through negotiations and refrain from behavior that will make the final solution impossible, the Minister said.

A so-called "exhibition-park" related to the September-November 2020 war was opened in Baku on April 12, 2021.

In the "park", along with the Armenian military equipment, mannequins of the Armenian military servicemen have been displayed, all of which presented in a degrading manner, in a manner violating human dignity.

It is obvious from the published videos and photos of the "Park" that the exhibition was designed to increase and encourage hatred and animosity towards the population of Armenia and Artsakh, the citizens of Armenia. Exhibitions are with cynicism to publicly humiliate the memory of the victims of the war, the rights of missing persons and captives, to violate the rights and dignity of their families.

Personal belongings of the soldiers of Armenia and Artsakh are displayed with the same cynicism, and the helmets of the killed soldiers are displayed knowing that it will cause additional suffering to their families, to the Armenian and Artsakh society, and will generate new hatred in the Azerbaijani society.

The Azerbaijani authorities also showed scenes of Armenian prisoners in the opened "park". This step is especially reprehensible against the background that in Azerbaijan, prisoners of war and civilians continue to be held illegally, in gross violation of international human rights requirements.

It is obvious to the Azerbaijani authorities that this sensitive issue would cause mental pain and suffering to the families of the missing persons and captives, as well as to the Armenian society in general.
President Joe Biden has for the first time described the surge of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border as a "crisis," days after nearly 300 sheriffs in 39 states sent him a letter urging him to change his policies due to a rise in sex trafficking and concerns about national security threats.

On Saturday, Biden was asked by a reporter in Delaware about his reversal on the refugee admissions cap after his administration released a memo to keep in place the Trump-era 15,000 cap on refugees who can be allowed into the United States.

Were going to increase the number. The problem was that the refugee part was working on the crisis that ended up on the border with young people, Biden said in response. We couldnt do two things at once. But now we are going to increase the number.

Earlier this month, the sheriffs sent a letter spearheaded by Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson of Bristol County, Mass., accusing the president of exposing the nation to cartel trafficking and potential terror threats by enabling mass illegal immigration and overwhelming Border Patrol agents.

Source:The Christian Post
Outside Chicago, as of Sunday, the state was reporting 21 school outbreaks of five or more cases, including six involving at least 11 cases. A dozen outbreaks were sourced to sports, eight to classrooms and one to non-sports activities. In CPS, the number of weekly cases has risen sharply in the two weeks since spring break, surpassing 80 for the first time since numbers peaked in November. Unlike the fall, however, more than one-third of recent cases have been students, and last week saw the highest number of student cases yet.
New Delhi: Amid an unprecedented surge in COVID-19 infections in the national capital, the Delhi High Court on Sunday announced that it will only hear the urgent matters filed in the year 2021 from Monday (April 19) onwards.

The official statement declared that no routine or non-urgent matters will be taken up for hearing for now.

"In continuation of this Courts Office Order No. 223/RG/DHC/2021 dated 8.4.2021, keeping in view the alarming rise in the Covid-19 cases in the NCT of Delhi, it has been ordered that all the Honble Benches of this Court shall, with effect from 19.04.2021, take up extremely urgent matters filed in the year 2021 only, said an order issued by Registrar General.

The order also added that other pending routine or non-urgent matters or hearings listed before the Delhi High Court between March 22, 2021 and December 31, 2020 shall not be taken up by this Court and such matters shall be adjourned "en bloc" as per the dates already notified.

"In case of any extreme urgency, the request in the pending matters may be made on the already notified designated link, the order added.

The decision was taken in the view of rising COVID-19 infections in the city. Earlier, the Delhi High Court and other district courts of the city had barred physical hearing of cases from April 9. The court is going to conduct virtual hearings till April 23.

Live TV
A Moscow court has banned the public from a hearing in a case brought by Russian prosecutors to label jailed Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalnys anti-corruption organization and its regional offices as "extremist" organizations.

The court ruled on April 19 that the case involved a state secret, but Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalnys Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), said the Prosecutor-Generals Office had no evidence on which to base its claim.

Zhdanov also said the decision means Navalnys associates will not be able to view the evidence filed in the case until the day of the hearing, set for April 26, in a special unit of the Moscow City Court. Only lawyers involved in the case can get access to the materials now.

The latest move against Navalnys opposition movement comes as Navalny is in the third week of a hunger strike. The imprisoned opposition leader was transferred on April 19 to a correctional facility hospital amid intensifying pressure from the West.

Russian prosecutors last week accused the FBK, Russias largest opposition network, of working to create conditions for changing the foundations of the constitutional order.

It said the FBK operates "under the guise of liberal slogans as it engages in creating conditions for the destabilization of the social and sociopolitical situation."

The extremist label, if approved, would severely limit Navalnys allies and activists from organizing, criminalizing such things as calling for or participating in protests. Navalny's aides and organizations are already subject to frequent police raids and arrests over their political activities.

The decision to close the proceeding comes as Navalnys aides are pushing for massive nationwide anti-government protests on April 21.

"Before each of us the question arises: are we ready to do something to save the life of a person who has been risking it for us for many years," said Leonid Volkov, the coordinator of the network of Navalny's teams across Russia.

Navalny was sentenced in February to 2 1/2 years in prison on charges he says were politically motivated. He was arrested in January after returning from Germany, where he was treated for a poison attack with a chemical nerve agent from the Novichok group.
Showmax has reduced the price of its mobile subscription plan to R39 per month in South Africa.

The new price reflects a 20% decrease on the previous monthly fee of R49, which has been the price since its launch in November 2019.

We know that consumers are under pressure at the moment and we believe this change will be appreciated by our mobile customers, MultiChoice Group CEO for Connected Video, Yolisa Phahle said.

Showmax Mobile allows its subscribers to access the video streaming services full catalogue on a single mobile device  such as a smartphone or tablet.

Phahle added that the prices of other Showmax products will remain the same.

The standard Showmax plan will stay at R99 per month, while Showmax Pro and Showmax Pro mobile will also remain at R445 and R225, respectively.

Promotional bundles will be unaffected by this change.

The price reduction for the mobile subscription will also be applied in other African countries.

The changes to Showmax Mobile prices are shown in the table below.
811 fresh COVID cases were reported in Rajkot, Gujarat. 683 were in the city area while the death toll at several COVID hospitals was 69 in the last 24 hours as per TOI.

Gujarat is facing a shortage of beds as it tries to battle the pandemic surge.

india.com

The queue of patients outside the Civil Hospital keeps on going up and the long line of ambulances is impossible to miss.

Patients are coming in ambulances, personal cars, auto-rickshaws and light-commercial vans.

india.com

Sources said they had to wait for more than four hours before being checked. The staff was examining critical patients inside the vehicles.

The cases have just been going up and the shortage of beds just shows how much the state is struggling to keep up.


The strain of the coronavirus that was first detected in England has lived up to the threatening reputation that preceded it. The variant was said to be more contagious, and so it has proven to be. While in January it accounted for less than 2% of new cases, now that figure is in excess of 80%, according to the latest data from the Spanish Health Ministry. But there were also fears that it was more lethal, and would push Spains hospitals into a critical condition  something that has not happened so far. This is in contrast to what was seen in the United Kingdom at the start of the year and in France in recent weeks.

Experts consulted by EL PAIS confirm that B.1.1.7, as the variant is known, is indeed causing some more serious cases of Covid-19, although more research is needed to determine whether it is genuinely increasing mortality. The same experts explain that the impact of the strain is having a lesser effect on the Spanish healthcare system. The worst predictions have not come to pass, which is obviously good news, but it also shows that we still lack a lot of knowledge about the pandemic, explains Quique Bassat, an epidemiologist and a researcher from ISGlobal, an institute for global health based in Barcelona. It is not easy to explain why what has happened in other countries has not been repeated here.

According to the latest report on new coronavirus variants published by the Health Ministry, and dated April 12, the British variant accounts for 90% of new cases in six of Spains 17 regions  Andalusia, Asturias, Castilla y Leon, Valencia, Galicia and Navarre  and 80% in the rest apart from Castilla-La Mancha (77%), Aragon (65%) and Madrid (64%).

The intensive care unit at the Clinico Hospital in Valencia in November, 2020. Monica Torres

Its a fact that it has quickly become the dominant strain in Spain, explains Juan Carlos Galan, the head of virology at Madrids Hospital Universitario Ramon y Cajal. What we still need to research more is whether it causes more serious symptoms or higher mortality rates. There is evidence that suggests that it does, in particular in the 40 to 50 age group, but we still need the evidence to back this up, he adds.

There is contradictory and unconsolidated information on this issue, explains Jose Miguel Cisneros, the head of the infectious diseases service at the Virgen del Rocio Hospital in Seville. An article published in [scientific journal] Nature concluded that this variant increases mortality, but a subsequent one did not confirm this.

The experts warn that while the variant has not seen hospitals overwhelmed, it has had a significant impact. We are dealing with serious cases among younger people, Cisneros continues. The age of patients being hospitalized has fallen. It is true that the system has not been overwhelmed, but I have 180 patients hospitalized and I was not expecting to have this many at this stage of the year, with more of the population having been vaccinated and better weather conditions. Its clear that all this is due to the variant, which is contributing in a significant way to the fourth wave.

The vaccination campaign is one of the new variables that could have mitigated the impact of B.1.1.7 in Spain. Jesus Rodriguez Bano, the head of infectious diseases at the Hospital Universitario Virgen de la Macarena in Seville, believes that it is early to know whether this is the case and that it should be noted that other countries that have a similar speed of vaccination are suffering greatly. Its obvious that the vaccines have reduced infections in a direct and indirect way, especially in environments such as care homes, but we still lack perspective and studies to know whether they have been a relevant factor that has deactivated the danger of the variant, he explains.

People waiting in line for a coronavirus test in London on Friday. HENRY NICHOLLS / Reuters

Europe saw a critical moment in January, with the third wave pressuring the majority of countries on the continent. The epidemiological situation was bad, but the forecasts were even worse. The new variants  the British but also the Brazilian and South African  pointed to a future whereby the virus would not only be more serious and more contagious, but also whereby the vaccines could lose their effectiveness.

For Elena Vanessa Martinez, the president of the Spanish Epidemiological Society (SEE), this explains the quick reaction across the continent. Germany, for example, kept its schools closed for months. The European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) warned countries that they should prepare for a possible increase in the pressure on healthcare systems. And the European Union created an ambitious plan with the aim of genetically sequencing up to 10% of positive cases in order to detect new variants and monitor the existing ones.

The reaction was appropriate after the warnings that came from the United Kingdom, Martinez explains. Its normal for new variants to appear, but until then they were almost unheard of because the ones that were known until that moment were not more dangerous. It was then that we saw that the new ones could be more infectious or cause more serious symptoms.

Climate differences

The experts agree that one of the reasons that has allowed for the impact of the new variants to be reduced is that containment measures have remained in place. It has been seen in any event that well-designed restrictions allow, to a certain extent, for daily life to go on, as has been seen by the great job done in schools, the SEE president adds.

For Quique Bassat, however, this does not explain everything, given that these measures are similar between countries, and within Spain, between regions. And despite this, the incidence and hospitalization rate are very different. We dont know why countries like France have had very high incidence rates in recent weeks and not us, Bassat explains. The only clear difference is the climate, which allows for more life in the open air and better ventilation, although I believe that this only explains a small part of the reality.

Once you understand everything that is going on you can design suitable policies, he continues. And right now the exact opposite is happening, and we are applying measures that are not producing the desired results. Or conversely, cases whereby we get better results without doing much at all. This is something that we are seeing when we compare countries, but also regions, without being able to explain the reasons why, he concludes.

English version by Simon Hunter.
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I live in a very secular town and for 40 years have been part of Americas very secular legal academy. During that time, I also have been an evangelical and active in evangelical churches. I travel pretty comfortably in both circles, but at times I am puzzled by the reactions of each group to different issues. Most recently, I have been trying to understand their differing responses to Covid and abortion. Many evangelicals are pro-life on abortion, not on Covid. Secularists generally are pro-life on Covid, not on abortion. (Compare Source and Source). These differences were brought home to me recently by several images when my wife and I drove from the heavily secular Charlottesville, Virginia, to the heavily evangelical Waco, Texas.

As for Covid, in Charlottesville people wear masks in restaurants, crowds, and stores. Someone without a mask is likely to be shouted into compliance. That all changed as we drove south. From Tennessee through Texas, we seldom saw a mask. The Texas attitude is illustrated by the experience of a friend who came to Texas on a business trip. He offered his elbow to a business contact in a friendly, somewhat socially-distanced manner. The Texan smiled and drawled, We dont do that around here, and warmly offered his hand. My friend conceded (and excused himself shortly thereafter to wash his hands).

As for abortion, on the way out of Charlottesville, we drove past a conveniently located abortion clinic (where someone had placed a sadly ironic Black Lives Matter sign). In Waco, one of the largest billboards in town recently pictured a woman crying and read: Lamento mi aborto. Por favor considere una adopcion. When we visited Waco, the local Planned Parenthood Clinic was closed.

These attitudes toward death have consequences in both law and public policy. In recent years, heavily evangelical states (Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, and Louisiana) have passed restrictive abortion laws, while heavily secular states (New York and Virginia) have passed pro-abortion laws. On the Covid front, heavily evangelical states have been less inclined to impose restrictions than heavily secular states. Evangelical schools and schools in heavily evangelical areas have been significantly more likely to remain open during Covid than secular/public schools. (Compare Source and Source).

Why are evangelicals and secularists each internally divided on abortion and Covid? Why is each group so vehemently pro-life on one issue and not-so-much on the other?

The divisiveness of current American politics may be a partial explanation. Many people want to know what the other side of the culture divide thinks so they can oppose it. Masks have become a symbol for a broad range of cultural and political issues.

Other explanations are rooted in the moral values and cultural situation of each group.

First, evangelicals. Evangelicals (and most theists) believe that humans are created in the image of God. (Gen. 1:26-27). The imago dei begins at the earliest stages of life, before a child is recognizably human. In the poetic language of the Psalmist, God knit me together in my mothers wound. (Ps. 139:13). The life of the least of these from the earliest moments is worthy of protection.

But why does this concern with life not carry over to anti-Covid practices? I think there are a couple of possibilities. First, evangelicals generally do not trust experts and elites. This is partially theological  evangelical churches are the least hierarchical churches; they take the priesthood of all believers seriously on all sorts of issues. Evangelicals have become particularly suspicious of public officials. Many of the media, legal, and political elites who push restrictions on Covid are the same people who push pro-abortion measures. They cannot be trusted. And governors in predominantly secular states used Covid as an opportunity to impose greater restrictions on churches than bars, restaurants, and movie theaters (until they were rebuffed by the US Supreme Court).

In addition, whereas evangelicals believe that the unborn child should have the opportunity to live, they may be more comfortable than secularists with the risk of death to themselves and other people. Many work in blue-collar jobs where they are regularly exposed to risk; Covid is just one more risk. In addition, evangelicals believe in life after death--life in this world does not have to be grasped tightly. For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. (Phil. 1:21) Some see disregard of Covid precautions as a matter of trusting God who will keep them safe from deadly diseases. (Ps. 91:3)

My argument to evangelicals is that reasonable safety precautions are one of the means God uses to protect us from deadly diseases. A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it. (Pr. 22:3; 27:12) Moreover, whatever we may feel about risk to ourselves, recognition of the image of God in others should lead us to take anti-Covid measures. In analogous situations, the Mosaic Law required the Israelites to take reasonable steps to protect their neighbors  to pen the goring ox (Ex. 21:29) and to build a railing around their roofs, that they would not have bloodguilt on their house (Dt. 22:8). Wear a mask and get the shot unless you fall into an at risk category. If you doubt the advice of media and political elites, ask the doctor or nurse in your church for advice. It is true that vaccines carry risks. As I write, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been pulled because of a less than one in a million chance of serious blood clotting, but that is far less than the risk of death if one does not get a vaccine. We should take anti-Covid measures are a matter of wisdom, of love of neighbor, and love of Gods image in our neighbor.

And, secularists. The strongest source of moral values for secularists is shared, to varying levels, by all people. It is empathy  I identify with other people and when they hurt, I hurt. I should take anti-Covid measures, not only out of fear that I might get Covid, but so I wont expose other people to risk. Empathy moves us to fight Covid because we can imagine ourselves in the place of those who have suffered and died from Covid, and in the place of their family and friends. Those in the media and elsewhere who want to generate support for anti-Covid measures wisely generate empathy  they show and tell compelling stories of Covid victims.

But why doesnt empathy cause secularists to oppose abortion? The strength of empathy as a source of moral action is that it is grounded in ones identification with another person. The more I identify with a person, the more I feel their pain and the greater stake I have in stopping their pain. But the strength of empathy as a source of moral action is also its weakness. The less I identify with another person, the less I am concerned with their pain. Growth in empathy requires moral imagination. This affects abortion practice and policy in a couple of respects. It is easier to empathize with a woman who looks a lot like me than an unborn child during the first few weeks after conception, who doesnt look like much of anything. My sense of identity with and empathy toward the unborn child grow in the next few weeks as she grows to look like me. Opposition to abortion grows in the later stages of pregnancy, but the childs moral significance is present from the beginning. Those who seek to generate opposition to abortion want people to see sonograms of the child, as the brain, heart, face, hands, and feet develop in the womb.

My argument to secularists is that empathy should push us to be concerned for the unborn. Growth in moral sensitivity is a matter of coming to identify with a broader range of people, including people who are quite different from me. We need moral imagination. In just a few weeks, this little person will be a lot like you and me. The challenges of a pregnancy are great and it is right to empathize with the mother and to seek to address the challenges she faces, but loss of life is surely the greater loss. Moreover, if we are uncertain when life begins, we should protect life. As with Covid, when there is risk of death, we should err on the side of caution. It may be that this unborn child is a person.

For both my evangelical friends and my secular friends, my hope is that we will choose life. We should broaden our sense of empathy to include those quite different from us and those we may never see. Whether life as a gift of God or a gift of forces we cannot imagine, it should be treasured. We may not know whether we will harm our neighbor and we many not know when life begins, but we should err on the side of life.
President Joe Biden's decision to remove US troops from Afghanistan is "a wonderful and positive thing to do," according to former President Donald Trump. Still, he opposed the timing and said the US should get out sooner.

Trump support Afghanistan withdrawal but opposed Biden's timeline

The declaration puts Trump against top Republicans, who have slammed the decision, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) labeling it a grave mistake and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) calling it a disaster waiting to happen. Biden declared that US troops would begin withdrawing from Afghanistan on May 1, 2021, with a complete withdrawal by September 11, as per AXIOS.

Despite his support for President Joe Biden's efforts to send American troops home, the former President encouraged his successor to conclude America's longest war well before the September 11 deadline set by Biden last week. Though Trump claimed that leaving Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive decision to do, he also noticed that he had made a May 1 deadline for the withdrawal and that the US should stay as close to that date as possible.

Trump Slams Biden for 'Politically Correct' Military After Nominating First Female Army Secretary

"For two reasons, I hope Biden did not use September 11 as US troops withdrawal deadline from Afghanistan. First, we should leave sooner. In reality, nineteen years is far too many and far too long," Trump stated his opinion. "September 11 marks a very tragic day and time for the US, and it should be remembered as a day of reflection and remembrance for those lost great souls."

Former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama met with Biden ahead of his decision last week, and Trump is the first former commander in chief to weigh in on his strategy. Biden's decision to conclude the almost 20-year conflict, which has spanned all four administrations, was welcomed by Obama, KDRV reported.

Biden Urges Putin To Ease Tensions in Ukraine's Border, Proposes Summit in a Call

Afghanistan President support Biden's US troops withdrawal

Biden said the removal of American troops would begin on May 1, in accordance with the Trump administration's deal with the Taliban. Any US troops will stay in the country to secure American diplomats, but officials have yet to specify how many.

In an exclusive interview on CNN's "GPS" on Sunday, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said he supports Biden's decision to withdraw US troops from the area, saying the move radically changes the sense of the situation in the country, the region, and the Islamic world. He went on to say that his entire energy is now devoted to operating in that new context.

White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan argued earlier Sunday that US goals in Afghanistan had been met, but he fell short of claiming the battle had been "won." Instead, he told CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union" that the US must now concentrate on the "next 20 years" of fights rather than the previous 20. "The terrorist threat has changed dramatically in the last 20 years," Sullivan said, citing al Qaeda's expansion into Syria, Yemen, Somalia, and Iraq, as examples.

President Joe Biden's Aim For Bipartisan Cooperation Applies Stealthy Pressure

@ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Citibank Korea employees walk around in its head office in Seoul, Monday. Yonhap



By Lee Min-hyung



The union and top management of Citibank Korea are set to escalate their feud amid the lender's decision to shut down its consumer banking business here, with the former threatening to stage an "all-out" strike against any possibly ensuing personnel restructuring.



This came in response to Citi's recent decision to pull its consumer finance businesses  such as loan, deposit and credit card services  out of the Korean market. It remains undecided how the Korean subsidiary of the global banking group will put together a detailed exit strategy.



Citibank Korea will discuss the situation during an upcoming board of directors meeting slated for April 27.



But the lender's management is faced with strong union backlash even before initiating discussions on restructuring measures.



"If Citibank Korea pushes for the sale of or withdrawal from the retail banking business here, this will end up causing mass unemployment," a representative of the union said. "We are going to fight any such move to stabilize job security of employees and protect customers."



According to the union, Citibank Korea started restructuring its consumer banking business in 2012. The lender was operating 221 sales offices nationwide here in 2011, but more than 80 percent of them have since been shut down and only 39 offices are still in operation, the union said.



Earlier, Citibank Korea CEO Yoo Myung-soon said the lender will "take enough time" before initiating a specific exit strategy.



"Citibank Korea's management and board of directors will review all possible action plans carefully," she said.



It remains unclear whether the bank will completely close down its retail banking services, in which case large-scale layoffs are likely to ensue. The lender's retail banking service has a total of 939 employees here as of the end of 2020.



The latest decision from Citigroup reflects on its falling revenues in the Korean market. Citibank Korea's net profit declined by 32.8 percent in 2020 from a year earlier. The lender generated 14.8 billion won in its retail banking business here last year, down by more than 50 percent from the previous year. This is also a decline of around 80 percent when compared with 2018.



Citibank Korea, which started its business here in 2004, was mired in a series of rumors in 2014 and 2017 over its withdrawal from the Korean market. But with the group making an official announcement over the move this time, chances are Citibank Korea's management and union will escalate the dispute.



Citibank Korea plans to enhance its competitiveness in the corporate finance business following the pullout of the retail service, according to the Citibank Korea chief.



Citi's union also stepped up criticism against its global headquarters, saying that it has received 2.9 trillion won ($2.59 billion) from the Korean subsidiary in the name of dividends and service charges over the past decade, but Citibank Korea has not opened any public recruitment for new employees during the same period.



For Citibank Korea, the worst-case scenario is a shutdown of its retail business if the lender fails to find a potential buyer. In 2013, HSBC Korea closed all branch offices handling retail banking services here except for a Seoul office. Most of the firm's employees had to accept voluntary resignation after it failed to find a buyer for the unit.



The financial authorities here remain cautious before taking specific actions over the labor issue surrounding Citibank Korea, as they have yet to receive any specific notification as to how the lender will carry out restructuring.



Watchdogs such as the Financial Services Commission are in a position to keep a close watch and take appropriate measures in accordance with the legal framework in case any disputes erupt, particularly in the areas of labor and consumer protection.




Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on April 15 said that his countrys nuclear programme was peaceful in a visible attempt to allay western concerns over the Islamic Republics latest nuclear venture. Amid ongoing talks with Washington to revive the 2015 JCPOA pact, Tehran commenced advanced centrifuges at Natanz underground atomic facility earlier this week. However, a prolonged power cut at the facility damaged centrifuges, promoting Rouhani to term the incident as nuclear terrorism. On Wednesday, the Shiite leader vowed 60 per cent uranium enrichment in retaliation.

Meanwhile, in a televised address, Rouhani asserted that it was a "mistake" for Europe and the United States to express concerns that the move "means we can enrich to 90 per cent in one go". "Today, we can enrich to 90 per cent if we want to. But we have declared it from day one and we're keeping our word: our nuclear activities are peaceful; we are not seeking to obtain the atomic bomb," he said.

The US along with other western powers have warned that with heightened enrichment, Iran could be aiming to produce nuclear weapons. However, the Islamic Republic has blatantly denied such an ambition highlighting that 60 per cent enriched uranium could be used for its nuclear power ships. However, Times of Israel reported that the country owned no such ships at present.

'suspicious' attack

Earlier this week, Natanzs centrifuges were destroyed in the 'suspicious' attack, that the Iranian agencies widely reported, was carried out by Israels spy agency Mossad Secret Service. Irans Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif openly held Israel responsible vowing revenge. In a state televised remark, Zarif said Zionists will get their answer. Irans top diplomat termed the electrical incident as Israels trap to deter Iran from comprehensive dialogue with the United States and P5+1 in the ongoing Vienna talks, which could have the Trump-era oppressive trade sanctions for the western Asian country lifted.

The JCPOA deal was signed in 2015 which allowed Tehran to scale back its nuclear or uranium enrichment program in exchange for promises of economic relief. However, Donald Trump withdrew the US from the pact in 2018. Earlier this year, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken clearly asserted that the country would only rejoin the deal after Tehran meets its commitment.

Image Credits: Associated Press
He was born in the backyard and moved into my heart one furtive step at a time. Trust is transactional. I earned his on layaway.

Over the next nine years, Paulie Walnuts became my constant companion, writing partner, counselor and confidant  a gifted listener I could lean on when facing an empty screen on deadline. Paulie was always there for me when words played hard to get.

We collaborated on a lot of columns, including this one, which I began writing with Paulie curled around my neck on the back of the recliner on the day we said goodbye.

The cancer was there, too, leering over my shoulder as it stole my best friends sweet face.

During a pandemic that has claimed the lives of 3 million people worldwide, more than 560,000 Americans and over 1,700 Northeast Pennsylvanians, it seems silly to write a eulogy for a cat.

Unarmed Black Americans are still being gunned down by white police. Mass shootings continue to end innocent lives with no adequate response from alleged lawmakers. The Scranton School District remains a hot mess with too many inept chefs in its broken kitchen, and on and on and on.

All this hard news will still be here tomorrow.

Paulie wont.

Last year was an endless lesson in loss. Vaccines, a recovering economy and the arrival of spring offer rays of hope, but the long shadow of COVID still shrouds the days and nights of haunted survivors. Many live with the pain of knowing the lone human contact their loved ones had at the end was a stranger wrapped in linen and latex.

Chrissy and I were with Paulie when he passed, a brittle blessing for which I am immensely grateful. Paulies vet and the technician took incomparable care of him and us. His death was quick, quiet and kind.

Paulie left us on layaway. The cancer was aggressive and inoperable. Surgery would only hasten its spread. The best we could do was love him in the time he had left and put his needs above our grief when it was time to let him go.

Ive lost many pets, but this is the first time I made the call. Scheduling the death of my best friend as if I was booking a dentist appointment broke my heart. Thursday at 3 p.m. Dont forget to bring masks.

I named Paulie after the character on The Sopranos, a murderous wiseguy with a funny haircut and a sharp tongue. Our Paulie was a gentle imp, but like his namesake, he had wings spreading from his temples. He was the loudest, hungriest mouth in the feral crew he led to our back door.

We found homes for most of them, but Paulie and his underboss Silvio Dante (another Sopranos wiseguy) were destined to be family. As I write, Silvio is wandering the house calling for his missing brother. I am alone in the recliner. I cant know what Silvio is thinking, but I know how he feels.

I am blessed to have many loyal friends and a loving extended family who hurt when I hurt. I belong to a support group and a 12-step program that allows me to share my feelings openly and honestly and process them in service of my sobriety and spiritual growth. Without help, I could not have done right by Paulie.

Without Chrissy at my side, I could not have stroked his ear and kissed his head as he left. We met when she was an obituary clerk at The Times-Tribune. She wrote one for Paulie and posted it to Facebook. The response was overwhelming, an outpouring of love, sympathy and grace that soothed our ache as we settled into our first night without Paulie in bed between us. His white fur reflected the glow of streetlights and full moons. Night never seemed darker.

The sun rose on Friday. We rolled out of bed and started our first morning without Paulie following us to the kitchen for coffee and kibble. Life goes on. I wish I could explain that to Silvio, Buddy, Timmy, Typo, Puck and Smudge.

Chrissy and I dont have children. By conventional standards, we have too many cats. Each one of them is a God-given gift of unconditional love that makes our house a home. Paulie was a cat, but he was family.

Writing is my profession, but also my refuge. This is how I grieve. How I say goodbye. How I heal. If you came here today expecting a different column, I beg your indulgence. Ive lost my best friend.

This is the best I could do.

CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, thanks Paulie Walnuts for his years of service to this column. Read his award-winning blog at timestribuneblogs.com/kelly.
The northside of Limerick city has received a boost after Danish furniture retailer Jysk received permission to open its second store.

Jysk Ireland has secured conditional planning permission from Limerick City and County Council to open at the last remaining vacant retail unit at the Ennis Road Retail Park in Caherdavin.

Founded in Denmark in 1979 by Lars Larsen, Jysks design ethic and stylish approach to interiors has made the brand known and loved across the world.

Over the past four decades, Jysk has expanded to 51 countries, with more than 2,700 stores worldwide employing 23,000 people.

Jysk is seeking to construct a new first floor mezzanine, with internal alterations, plus staff and storage areas in the existing unit.

An external canopy at the rear is also planned.

The company, which opened its first Irish store in Naas in April 2019, already operates in five other locations: Drogheda, Navan, Portlaoise Youghal and Waterford.

While Jysk could not be reached for comment, when its previous city store opened, some 25 jobs were created.

Local Fine Gael councillor Olivia OSullivan hailed the announcement as great news.

Theres been a really good reaction locally.

Nobody wants to see vacant units sitting there in what locally is a fantastic shopping centre.

It was awful to see that unit lying empty for so long. Nobody wants to see an empty building. Its not a good indicator of activity locally or demand locally. The reverse of that is seeing them fill up is a sign of economic progress, she said.
The new T-Mobile Home Internet service (4G/5G gateway shown at right) is expected to be available across 30 million U.S. households at launch, including a large swath of rural America. It boasts average downloads speeds of about 100 Mbps (uploads are expected to be in the 10-25 Mbps range).

Cord cutting is coming to home internet access, not just pay TV  but not every embittered broadband customer will be able to fire their current provider and switch to residential wireless from T-Mobile and Verizon.

Both carriers offer connectivity at speeds that may not match those of cable internet but should be fast enough for many home uses. They also dont inflict cables data caps or modem-rental fees. What they cant do yet: match the vast service footprints of incumbent cable providers.

T-Mobile says the $60 5G home internet service it announced April 7 covers more than 30 million households across some 1.6 million square miles (the total U.S. land area is 3.5 million). It hasnt posted a coverage map, so would-be customers must plug in their home addresses at its site to check for service.

A FAQ page touts download speeds of 50 megabits per second, with most new subscribers exceeding 100 Mbps. A separate disclosures page cites upload speeds of 13 to 28 Mbps, well above cable uploads that often start at 3 Mbps.

Verizon launched its 4G LTE home internet service last June; with its most recent expansion, announced Oct. 1, it now reaches parts of 189 markets across 48 states. Here, too, theres no coverage map, so youll have to check your own address at its site. This $60 service ($40 if you already get Verizon smartphone service) offers downloads of 25 to 50 Mbps and uploads of 3 to 6 Mbps.

In 30 cities, Verizon also offers a much faster 5G Home service  $70, or $50 with a Verizon phone plan  with advertised downloads of 300 Mbps and uploads of 50 Mbps. But its reliance on Verizons fragile, short-range millimeter-wave 5G leaves it with excruciatingly limited coverage that PCMag.com found fell short of even that carriers millimeter-wave 5G smartphone service.

Either T-Mobile 5G or Verizon LTE should represent a serious upgrade over aging, slow DSL connections, said Avi Greengart, president and lead analyst at Techsponential.

Story continues

Realistically, even todays 4G speeds are often orders of magnitude faster than DSL, never mind mid-band 5G, he wrote in an email. In other areas, a local cable monopoly will win on speed, but adding an alternative should spur the incumbent to offer a better value proposition.

T-Mobiles 5G, built on mid-band 5G spectrum unmatched at Verizon (or AT&T), has better odds of competing with cable.

Will Townsend, senior analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, pronounced himself very confident in T-Mobile and its competitive position in rural markets because of that spectrum advantage.

He was less optimistic about Verizons prospects even after that carrier puts its own mid-band 5G into service (expect that at the end of this year). Noting the $45 billion Verizon spent to buy that spectrum, Townsend warned that this and other deployment costs will likely result in higher subscriber prices.

T-Mobile, for its part, has warned that the chip shortage may limit how many Wi-Fi gateways it can ship and therefore how many people can sign up. Maisie Heine, a publicist for the company, said it expects to have more than 500,000 subscribers by year-end and 7 million to 8 million total in five years.

That would leave many Americans with subpar connectivity, but any upgrade on the current situation should be welcomed.

Said Greengart: I dont think that fixed wireless will solve all suburban and rural broadband access problems, but Im optimistic that it will have a significant impact.

T-Mobile ups 5G ante: With home broadband, free phone upgrades

What AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile are buying up: The 5G battle between US carriers just got very interesting

Rob Pegoraro is a tech writer based out of Washington, D.C. To submit a tech question, email Rob at rob@robpegoraro.com. Follow him on Twitter at @robpegoraro.

The views and opinions expressed in this column are the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: T-Mobile, Verizon up their bids to be your next home broadband
On November 10, the second war in Nagorno-Karabakh ended with a Russia-brokered ceasefire agreement signed between Azerbaijan and Armenia. While the 44-day war caused severe damages to frontline settlements and civilian casualties on both sides, frequent missile attacks carried out by Armenia towards Azerbaijani cities and infrastructure beyond the frontline raised concerns not only in Baku but also in the EU regarding the security of vitally important energy infrastructure. The possibility of damages to energy infrastructure, particularly the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline, would explicitly put the role of these pipelines in European energy security under question.

BACKGROUND: The Tovuz/Tavush incidents on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan in July 2020 became a prelude to the second war between Baku and Yerevan in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. On September 27, 2020, fighting escalated beyond the established meeting point (Line of Contact) with the involvement of a significant number of military personnel, artillery units and long-range missiles, threatening the geopolitical stability in the Black Sea-Caspian region.

The war quickly increased the risks to energy infrastructure linking Caspian energy resources with major European markets, stirring concerns in Europe regarding the danger of disruptions to oil and gas exports from the Caspian basin and the security of energy-related infrastructure. For instance, British Petroleum (BP)  Azerbaijans largest foreign investor, stated it was deeply concerned after a reported missile attack on the countrys main crude export artery, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, on October 6. According to Azerbaijans Minister of Energy, Parviz Shahbazov, other pipelines were also targeted. However, none of the alleged incidents is believed to have disrupted supplies.

The critical transit energy infrastructure includes two oil pipelines connecting oil-producing fields in the Azerbaijani section of the Caspian Sea to the Georgian Black Sea port of Supsa and the Turkish port of Ceyhan. Thus, damages to energy pipelines leading to interrupted exports would harm not only energy producer Azerbaijan, but also transit (Georgia, Turkey) and consumer (EU) countries. Indeed, BP introduced increased security measures to its facilities in Azerbaijan following the missile attack. Nevertheless, pipelines are difficult military targets since they are buried underground and are protected by Azerbaijans advanced air defense systems.

IMPLICATIONS: The renewed fighting in Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan had critical long-term implications for the entire region, including Turkeys growing influence and its open support for Azerbaijan during the war, as well as the declining influence of the West. In contrast to Ankara, the EUs prolonged silence may have damaged its credibility and long-term partnership with official Baku. In this regard, the EU needs to reinforce it engagement with the South Caucasus and directly contribute to the regions stability.

The second Karabakh war surged only a month before the long-awaited Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) entered the operational phase. TAP, a crucial part of the Southern Gas Corridor, will transport 10 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas per year from Azerbaijans Shah Deniz II gas field to Greece, Albania and Italy, increasing the security and diversification of natural gas supplies to Europe. The new pipeline is of particular strategic importance to Europe, since it can also transfer natural gas from Central Asian in the future, thus linking this region to Western markets. This would seriously challenge the dominant position of Russias energy giant Gazprom on the European market.

Gazprom is already experiencing a reduction in in gas output and export volumes. According to the Russian Central Bank, the export of natural gas in 2020 fell to US$ 11.44 billion compared to US$ 18.65 billion in 2019. The export volume to Europe in 2019 was around 199 bcm, while Gazprom intended to export 170 bcm of natural gas in 2020. At the same time, the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC) allowed Turkey to buy more Azerbaijani gas at a relatively better price, and therefore Turkeys gas imports via SGC increased by 24 percent in 2020 compared to 2019, while Russian gas export to Turkey rapidly decreased.

Although the volume of Azerbaijans natural gas exports will increase, the modest volumes of the SGC project are not sufficient to seriously compete with Gazprom as a leading energy supplier. For this, the project needs additional sources, like Turkmen natural gas. Moreover, the SGCs geopolitical dimension and its potential for future expansion have prompted a policy response from Moscow. Russia has pushed forward its own plans to bring further supplies to Turkey and South Eastern Europe, thus raising the competition for the SGC project.

However, Turkmenistans possible participation in the SGC project would drastically increase its importance for the European gas market. In this regard, a significant development after the end of hostilities was the end of the 30-year feud between Baku and Ashgabat over an offshore oil field located in the disputed area of the Caspian Sea. In mid-January 2021, Ashgabat and Baku agreed to joint development of the large field, now renamed Dostlug (Friendship). The signed Memorandum of Understanding highlighted the ongoing thaw in relations between the two Caspian littoral states. (See February 16, 2021 CACI Analyst)

This rapprochement between two main energy exporters has caused renewed optimism regarding another strategically important energy project  the Trans-Caspian natural gas pipeline, which could feed into the SGC. (See March 12, 2021 CACI Analyst) Azerbaijan seemingly intends to diversify its own energy diplomacy agenda in the post-war period, allowing it to allocate additional funds to invest in the construction of new pipelines and connections. For Baku, the end of the active phase of the conflict eliminated a threat to regional energy infrastructure and opened new opportunities to reinforce its position on the European energy markets by establishing a dialogue with Ashgabat. For Turkmenistan, the agreement with Baku signifies an opportunity to reorient part of its energy exports in the face of the countrys deepening economic stagnation and currency depreciation.

The Dostlug oil field (formerly Kapaz/Serdar) has been an apple of discord between the two countries since the 1990s. With the primary source of the dispute eliminated, Azerbaijan can now refocus on the long-awaited pipeline project, which would bring Baku additional transit revenues and allow it to boost its role in the diversification of Europes energy supply. A major increase in natural gas export (more than 10 bcm annually) to South-Eastern Europe would seriously increase the importance of Caspian energy as an alternative to Russias Gazprom. However, the new joint Dostlug field requires significant development of infrastructure to extract oil and gas for export.

CONCLUSIONS: The second Karabakh war resulted in a full victory for Azerbaijan and shifted the traditional balance of power in the South Caucasus. Turkeys political and economic influence is increasingly felt in the region whereas Russia still retains a strong footprint. However, the outcomes of the war have also allowed Azerbaijan to promote new regional infrastructure and transit projects via the new Nakhchivan corridor, and to reach an agreement unlocking the vitally important Dostlug field.

Azerbaijan has reinforced its foreign policy strategy of stressing the importance of Caspian resources for the West, and has gained more space for political maneuvering to avoid conflict with major powers. Azerbaijan can be expected to redouble its efforts to promote transit and energy-related projects to increase its image as reliable energy and transit partner.

AUTHOR'S BIO:

Fuad Shahbazov(@fuadshahbazov) is a Baku based Senior Research Analyst. He was a Research Fellow (2016-2018) at the former Center for Strategic Studies of Azerbaijan. In 2018, was a Visiting Scholar at the Washington D.C based Daniel Morgan Graduate School of National Security. He covers regional security and defense industry issues.

Image Source: Public Domain


ALBANY  As Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo faces investigations on several fronts, four law firms have confirmed theyre doing legal work for Cuomo or his office.

The attorneys were retained in the wake of an investigation by the state attorney general's office, which is probing multiple sexual harassment and misconduct allegations against Cuomo, and a separate investigation by the FBI and U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn. The federal investigation is examining whether Cuomo's administration deliberately manipulated data on nursing home deaths during the coronavirus pandemic.

Both of the investigations also have prompted senior aides and other members of the governor's administration to retain private counsel.

But as the work by the private attorneys has proceeded for nearly two months, details about the legal arrangements remain murky.

None of the contracts for legal services have been submitted for approval to Comptroller Thomas DiNapolis office, potentially running afoul of state finance law.

Cuomos office also isnt saying whether the governor will front the money for any attorneys representing him personally. In addition, it's unclear whether taxpayers will be on the hook for other state officials legal costs, including members of the governor's coronavirus task force.

DiNapolis office says that under state law a contract over $50,000 cannot be executed or become effective until it's authorized by the comptrollers office.

Matthew Ryan, a spokesman for DiNapoli's office, said Cuomos office has not submitted any of the legal contracts for approval.

It is incumbent upon the agency to timely submit the contact for approval, and a vendor would be working at risk without the required approval from our office, Ryan said.

In a statement, Cuomo senior advisor Richard Azzopardi said none of the four law firms have been paid money.

We are in the process of finalizing these contracts and related documents for review and approval by the comptrollers office, Azzopardi said. We are abiding by all applicable rules and standards and in matters like this it is not uncommon for legal representation to begin while the contracts are simultaneously being drafted for submission. Doing it the other way could potentially leave the Chamber and its employees without representation.

Before approving contracts, DiNapolis office typically reviews the terms of the agreements, including hourly rates for attorneys.

Cuomo and DiNapoli had a similar back-and-forth over the Executive Chambers 2016 hiring of investigator Bart Schwartz, who did significant legal work without having a contract approval.

Paul Fishman, a partner at the firm Arnold & Porter, and Mitra Hormozi, of the firm Walden Macht & Haran LLP, are representing the Executive Chamber as a whole in response to the spate of sexual harassment allegations against Cuomo.

Those allegations are being investigated by two private attorneys appointed by Attorney General Letitia James office.

Another attorney, Rita Glavin, said in an email that she was representing Cuomo in his personal capacity and not the Executive Chamber as a whole. Glavin recently responded on Cuomos behalf to to a female staffers accusation that the governor had groped her in November at the Executive Mansion, which the governor has denied.

Glavin, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan, did not respond to a question about how her work would be funded. Azzopardi also did not answer questions about whether taxpayers would be paying for all four law firms work, including Glavins.

"The contracts are working their way through the process and when they are publicly available you will likely be the first to know, Azzopardi said.

The woman's groping allegation  a matter in which Glavin is personally representing Cuomo  exposes the governor to a potential criminal charge, although the woman who made the accusation has not filed a complaint with police.

In a criminal proceeding, when a state official is being represented by an attorney in an individual capacity, legal costs would typically be fronted by the state employee. Under state law, the employees costs would only be reimbursed by the state if the individual is cleared of wrongdoing. That reimbursement must be approved by the offices of the state attorney general and comptroller.

In 2015, DiNapoli approved a $1.8 million taxpayer-funded repayment to former Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno after he was acquitted of bribery charges during a second federal criminal trial. Bruno had paid $1.5 million for his legal defense with campaign funds, which were later reimbursed to the account by taxpayers.

An acquittal is not necessarily required for a public official to receive taxpayer reimbursement. Depending on the circumstances, a state employees application for reimbursement might also be approved if no charges are filed and an investigation is closed.

Like Bruno, Cuomo would likely be allowed to use campaign funds to pay for any upfront legal costs, rather than paying the cost out of his own pocket. Cuomos 2022 re-election campaign did not respond to a request for comment about whether it would pay any of the legal bills.

The question of reimbursement could also arise for other state officials. For instance, witnesses that testify before grand juries are often eligible to have their legal fees reimbursed by the state.

Jim Malatras, chancellor of the State University of New York, has been a member of the governor's coronavirus task force and is considered a witness by the U.S. attorney's office. He has retained Michael Koenig, an Albany attorney and former trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice.

Malatras was among the Cuomo aides involved in reviewing a July report issued by the state Department of Health to pinpoint whether a directive issued on March 25, 2020, had contributed to the high number of nursing home deaths in New York. Prior to the reports release, certain Cuomo aides allegedly cut out information showing a higher death toll in nursing homes caused by COVID-19, a matter that's now the focus of a federal investigation by the U.S. Attorneys office in Brooklyn.

In March, Malatras said he did not alter and change the Department of Healths original report to exclude the higher death toll figures.

A SUNY spokeswoman said their agency is "not paying any of the chancellors legal fees."

Six weeks ago, attorney Elkan Abramowitz confirmed that his white-collar legal defense firm, Morvillo Abramowitz, had begun representing Cuomos office in response to the federal criminal inquiry. Azzopardi told New York Law Journal at the time that Abramowitz was representing the Executive Chamber.

Ryan, the spokesman for the comptroller's office, said that in March their office approved an exemption request submitted by the state Division of Budget, which is part of the Cuomo administration. The Division of Budget wanted to contract with Morvillo Abramowitz without competitively advertising the opportunity. Since then, however, DiNapolis office has not received a copy of the contract.

Its not clear whether other Cuomo aides have retained attorneys to respond to the federal nursing home investigation, or whether Cuomo himself has done so.

Azzopardi said that Glavin  Cuomos attorney in the sexual harassment inquiry  is not working for the governor on the nursing home matter.

Morvillo Abramowitz has previously represented the Executive Chamber in three criminal matters and one civil case. Some of the work has been funded by Cuomos campaign, while the majority was paid for by taxpayers.

The firm was paid $670,000 by Cuomos campaign in response to a 2014 federal probe into Cuomos shuttering of the Moreland Commission to Investigate Public Corruption.

Taxpayers have funded $3.2 million for Morvillos work responding to the three other criminal inquires. When asked in 2016 why taxpayers were funding the Executive Chambers response to the federal investigation of Cuomos Buffalo Billion program, Azzopardi said the state was the victim in that matter. The investigation resulted in the bribery conviction of Cuomos former top aide and other associates, but prosecutors did not allege wrongdoing by the governor.

In addition to the other current investigations, Cuomo is also facing an impeachment inquiry from the Assembly Judiciary Committee concerning several matters, including the sexual harassment allegations, the purported suppression of nursing home death figures and the administration's handling of a cover-up by the company that built the Mario M. Cuomo Bridge.
Its easy to say monsters arent real when dealing with the run-of-the-mill horror movies filled with jumpscares and transparent apparitions. And when we are completely out-of-mind terrified of whats happening on the big screen, our brains are usually rational enough to say, Hey, chill, its not real. (Even if its usually followed by but what if it was? while you jump away from shadowy corners.)

But that certainly isnt for all horror movies, particularly those that were modelled after real-life demons and incidents. Still, if you think you can handle the long-lasting paranoia that comes after watching such movies, heres a list of scary movies based on real-life incidents that are sure to petrify you for a while.

1. A Nightmare On Elm Street

 New Line Cinema

Often hailed as one of the greatest horror movies of all times, A Nightmare on Elm Street will have you scared to the bones of giving into sleep. Though the characters are fictionalised, you might be surprised to know that the idea of being frightened to death in your sleep is not that far fetched even in reality.



In fact, its based on a condition called sudden arrhythmic death syndrome (SADS), which causes people to suddenly die in their sleep, and was first noted among southeast Asian in the US in 1977. And thats where the director, Wes Craven, drew inspiration from.

2. Annabelle

 Warner Bros

Is there anyone alive who isnt scared of creepy dolls? While the fear might have been cultivated in response to Chucky, the doll from Childs Play, its not as unreasonable as youd think. From voodoo dolls to actual kids dolls like Robert, there are plenty of rumoured haunted dolls to make you want to never buy one again.



Annabelle is one such doll, and it inspired its namesake character and movie in The Conjuring franchise. The doll itself currently resides in paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warrens occult museum.

3. Backcountry

 IFC Films

Everyone knows that the real horrors lie in the jungles, and perhaps thats one of the thrills of camping for some. Still, there are tons of horrifying true stories to be found on humans going against nature, and the 2014 nature survival horror film Backcountry is based on one such story.



Though the characters in the movie are fictionalised, the films based on the story of a wild bear that attacked Mark Jordan and Jacqueline Perry in 2005. If your friends are trying to convince you to go camping and you have no plans of stepping a foot outside, then we suggest planning a movie night and putting this on! Who knows, they might have a sudden change of heart.

4. The Silence of the Lambs

 Orion Pictures

Though ghosts and the paranormal dont exist in The Silence of the Lambs, there are plenty of monsters. This 1991 psychological horror and thriller was based on the 1988 novel of the same name by Thomas Harris. And though the narrative of the story itself is fictional, the horrors inside are inspired by true events and serial killers that have haunted our world.



According to the writer of the book, the characters are based on real-life people, such as the infamous Hannibal Lecter who was based on Dr. Salazar (or Alfredo Balli Trevino), a convicted doctor Harris met in a Mexican state prison. The character of Buffalo Bill was based largely on serial killer Ed Gein as well as others like Ted Bundy and Gary Heidnik.

5. The Exorcism of Emily Rose

 Sony Pictures

Loosely based on the story of Anneliese Michel, a German woman who went through 67 exorcisms in the year before she died. The story might be categorised better as a psychological and legal thriller than horror in the true sense, but made this list due to the elements of real vs. fictional that will keep you up at night wondering what might have really happened to the poor girl, both in the sense of the paranormal and the exorcisms she went through.



It tells the story of a courtroom case after the death of Emily Rose who was diagnosed with epilepsy and schizophrenia and took psychiatric medications to no avail  after which her parents resorted to exorcism due to her descriptions of her delusions.

Of course, this list is by no means an exhaustive one, so wed love to hear your favourites! Leave us recommendations in the comments below, and wed love to hear what you think about the ones mentioned above.
On April 19, 1995, Luther Treanor was at the Social Security office in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to get paperwork for his retirement.

His wife, LaRue, and his granddaughter, 4-year-old Ashley Eckles, were with him.

Julie Welch, 23, worked at the Social Security office. She worked with Spanish-speaking clients.

It was a normal day for all of them that ended in horror.

On Wednesday, April 19, 1995, at 9:03 a.m. a bomb exploded at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

The bombing in the heartland killed 168 people, including 19 children younger than 6 years old. More than 500 people were injured.

Oklahoma City fire Capt. Chris Fields carries 1-year-old Baylee Almon, in this file photo shot Wednesday, April, 19, 1995 at the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. The child died of her injuries. (AP Photo/Charles H. Porter IV, File)ASSOCIATED PRESS

The blast gouged a nine-story high hole in the building.

A former Army soldier had parked a rented Ryder truck in front of the building. He got out, locked it and ignited two fuses.

At 9:03 a.m. the explosion ripped through the building where 500 people worked and children attended Americas Kids day care.

According to history.com, the explosion blew off the buildings north wall.

The building housed the Social Security Administration, Secret Service, Drug Enforcement Agency, ATF and recruiters for the U.S. military.

The truck was loaded with almost 5,000 pounds of explosives - a mixture of fertilizer, diesel fuel and other chemicals.

The bomb destroyed or damaged 324 buildings within a 16-mile radius. A fireman at the scene told the Associated Press, Our firefighters are having to crawl over corpses in areas to get to people that are still alive.

Search and rescue units used dogs, cameras and listening equipment to find survivors.

The Associated Press described the scene.

Their clothes torn off, victims covered in glass and plaster emerged bloodied and crying from the building, which looked as if a giant bite had been taken out of it, exposing its floors like a dollhouse.

Cables and other debris dangled from the floors like tangled streamers in a scene that brought to mind the car bombings at the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983.

Gov. Frank Keating told reporters, Obviously, no amateur did this. Whoever did this was an animal.

The next day police had a suspect and discovered he was already in jail. Just 90 minutes after the explosion Timothy McVeigh had been stopped 90 miles north of Oklahoma City for driving a car without a license plate and carrying a concealed weapon.

On April 21, his co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, surrendered.

Both men were charged. McVeigh was convicted of murder and other charges. Nichols was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and other charges.

McVeigh was sentenced to death and executed on June 11, 2001.

Nichols is serving life in prison.

A third man, Michael Fortier, who knew about the plan to bomb the building, testified against McVeigh and Nichols, and was sentenced to serve 12 years in prison. He was released in 2007 and entered in the witness protection program, according to history.com.

It was the worst act of terrorism in the United States until the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

According to fbi.gov, The bombing was quickly solved, but the investigation turned out to be one of the most exhaustive in FBI history. No stone was left unturned to make sure every clue was found and all the culprits identified. By the time it was over, the Bureau had conducted more than 28,000 interviews, followed some 43,000 investigative leads, amassed 3-and-a-half tons of evidence, and reviewed nearly a billion pieces of information.

McVeigh and Nichols were members of a radical survivalist group. According to history.com, the men were deeply radicalized by such events as the August 1992 shoot-out between federal agents and survivalist Randy Weaver at his Idaho cabin, in which Weavers wife and son were killed, and the April 19, 1993, inferno near Waco, Texas, in which 75 members of a Branch Davidian religious sect died.

McVeigh planned the attack on the Murrah Building, which housed regional offices of such federal agencies as the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives, the agency that had launched the initial raid on the Branch Davidian compound.

McVeigh claimed that he chose the building and the date to avenge the raid on Waco.

In May 1995, the Murrah Building was demolished. The Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum is located on that site.

The memorial and museum includes the outdoor field of empty chairs.

The 168 chairs represent the lives taken on April 19, 1995. They stand in nine rows to represent each floor of the building, and each chair bears the name of someone killed on that floor. Nineteen smaller chairs stand for the children. The field is located on the footprint of the Murrah Building, according to the memorial and museum.

Also, at the site are the Gates of Time.

These monumental twin gates frame the moment of destruction  9:02 a.m.  and mark the formal entrances to the memorial. The East Gate represents 9:01 a.m. on April 19, and the innocence of the city before the attack. The West Gate represents 9:03 a.m., the moment we were changed forever. And the hope that came from the horror in the moments and days following the bombing.

OKLAHOMA CITY, UNITED STATES: Hans and Torrey Butzer, designers of the Oklahoma City National Memorial in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, look out over the memorial April 18, 2000, prior to its dedication on the five-year anniversary of the bombing of the Murrah Building, which killed 168 people. In the foreground is the Survivor Tree, which sat adjacent to the Murrah Building and survived the blast. In the background are 168 chairs representing the persons who died in the blast. (Paul Buck/AFP/Getty Images)AFP/Getty Images

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I have a theory ... a conspiracy theory. I know theres been a national outcry lately about conspiracy theories, and I hesitate to use that term because I might get arrested or put under surveillance by the new head of the FBI, J. Edgar Zuckerberg.

But after months of investigation, I have to go public with my findings about a plot that I suspect involves the U.S. government, Big Tech, little tech, China, the garment district, the textile workers union and the Kardashians. You heard me right.

Even though I should go off the record, Im willing to share my findings with a few loyal readers.

Heres the problem: My clothes are shrinking, and Im convinced theres a conspiracy behind it. I cant find a pair of pants that fits anymore and I havent gained weight... . I swear!

Heres my theory: U.S. clothing brands have been manufacturing their products oversees for decades to cut costs and avoid oversight by the Commerce Department, NASA, the FDA, the CIA, Vogue and whoever else is responsible for regulating clothes shrinkage. Everyone knows whats going on, but nobody does anything about it. Its worse than climate change, and President Joe Biden has to step up to the plate.

Im urging him to sign an executive order banning clothes shrinkage. I know the media is complaining about all those orders hes been signing, but theyre a good thing because they prove we dont need Congress. Were all getting tired of the squabbling anyway. We could turn the Capitol into the international headquarters for Starbucks and put the savings toward the $3 trillion federal deficit. Or perhaps a headquarters for Popeyes?

Im not the first American to shed light on this crisis. I still recall the outcry from that celebrated small businessman George Jefferson in an episode of The Jeffersons, when he tried on his suit and the pants wouldnt reach around his waist.

His wife Louise said he had to lose weight, but George insisted that HE didnt expand  the clothes shrank.

Ive seen evidence of this phenomenon in my own life and the lives of many other unsuspecting Americans. After all, George knew what he was talking about because he owned a chain of dry cleaners, and if theres any force in the known and unknown universe that shrinks clothes, its dry cleaning. Throw in some starch and you have a formula for disaster.

Im also convinced clothes are shrinking when were not watching them. If that isnt a conspiracy, I dont know what is. Maybe the Russians are colluding again. Have you seen how ill-fitting Putins suits are? The sleeves are too long. Clearly, the man needs a good Italian tailor.

Last month, I took five pairs of khakis that Id never worn to Goodwill because they didnt fit. They had pleats and cuffs, which my daughters insisted would get me arrested if I wore them in public. I willingly gave them away so someone else would get arrested.

The pants shrank even before I tried to wear them. Trust me: When no one is looking, clothes are shrinking in the closet.

Of course, nowadays its fashionable to wear tight clothes. Take a walk around Manhattan, and youll see hordes of young corporate ladder-climbers wearing suits that make them look like theyre ballet dancers in Swan Lake. The pants are skin-tight, and they can barely button their jackets.

Prince Harry wore one when he was sharing family secrets with Oprah. Did you notice his pants were three inches short? Strike one. Even though Britain was a great naval power, theres nothing the royal family hates more than high-water pants.

Ive never met a fellow who was happy wearing tight trousers. It defies the laws of physics and digestion. However, it might be different for women. Just look at the Kardashians. They love tight-fitting clothes. The problem with them isnt shrunken fabric  its too little fabric.

Many Americans are confronting this crisis because of the obesity epidemic in our country. Last week when I went to buy a sweat shirt, I couldnt find a size medium. There was only X-large, XX-large and XXX-large. I dont know what comes after that because Roman numerals confuse me. Nevertheless, I bought the X-large because I knew that by the time I got home, it would be medium. And it was.

Joe Pisani can be reached at joefpisani@yahoo.com
Church of England bosses have been accused of racism after its HR department ruled a picture of a banana sent to a black worker was not racist.

The Church's former adviser on race relations Dr Elizabeth Henry - who retired due to a lack of action on race issues in the Church - described a disturbing incident from 2019.

A young black staff member was sent the image of the fruit with his face superimposed on it - along with the caption 'Banana Man'.

Dr Henry said the man took the 'deeply offensive and deeply racist image' to the human resources (HR) department who took note of it, but deemed it not racist.

Dr Henry told the BBC's Panorama: 'That person left, and he received a very small compensation - however he was forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement.'

Another account saw Brazilian vicar Peterson Feital told he needs to 'find a job with people of your kind'.

The Church of England's former adviser on race relations Dr Elizabeth Henry (left) - who retired due to a lack of action on race issues in the church - described a disturbing incident from 2019 involving a black worker being sent a picture of a banana with his face on it. Another account saw Brazilian vicar Peterson Feital (right) told he needs to 'find a job with people of your kind'

Last year the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby (pictured), compared the CofE's attitude to ethnic minorities with that of Nazi-era German churches to Jews

He said the more-senior vicar told him: 'I don't like your preaching, and you are too Brazilian in your compassion, you're not very coherent.'

Feital was a trainee vicar at a mostly white and middle-class London church for seven years, during which he claims to have experienced bullying and racism.

He made several complaints to authorities at the Diocese of London over the racism he experienced - but senior staff told him he'd never be hired anywhere else if he made a fuss, Feital claimed.

The allegations follow a year of Anglican agonising over race.

Last year the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, compared the CofE's attitude to ethnic minorities with that of Nazi-era German churches to Jews.

He also called on cathedrals and churches to examine monuments and statues that may be connected to slavery, saying 'some will have to come down'.

Dr Henry (pictured) - who retired due to a lack of action of race issues in the church - described a disturbing incident from 2019

The Church said it cannot comment on individual claims - but added any racist behaviour is confidential.

It said non-disclosure agreements are used on very rare occasions, such as when ongoing discussions have not reached a conclusion.

Earlier this month, Church of England leaders recommended future bishops should be approved by a representative from black or minority groups in a move influenced by the Black Lives Matter movement.

Reforms to the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) - which picks bishops - have been recommended in a report compiled over three years by senior Church figures.

The plans will go before a meeting of the Church's parliament, the General Synod, this month.

The authors said the BLM movement 'provides a particular context to the conclusion of our work and brings into sharp focus the issues of diversity highlighted throughout our report'.

Earlier this month, Church of England leaders recommended future bishops should be approved by a representative from black or minority groups in a move influenced by the Black Lives Matter movement (pictured in Cardiff)

Its 38 recommendations will shake up the workings of the commission, which includes the archbishops of Canterbury and York, Synod members and a Downing Street official.

The key proposal says a minority representative should join the commission as a non-voting member whenever a new diocesan bishop has to be chosen.

The individual must be listened to by other members.

The report stressed the commission should also be able to pick representatives from other minorities.

This would 'deal with the perception that it fails ... to reflect adequately the diversity of the Church ... in terms not only of theological opinion, but also gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability and social background'.

Names of potential bishops go to the Prime Minister for final approval.

They are usually chosen by a two-thirds majority of CNC members. The report conceded: 'We recognise some will be unhappy with a proposal for a non-voting co-opted member.'

A statement from the Church of England read: 'The allegations  whether involving individuals or the wider structures or culture of the Church  are deeply worrying and there is no place for racism or discrimination within the Church.

On Thursday, the Church will publish a report by the Archbishops Anti-Racism Taskforce.

It will make dozens of specific recommendations to different parts of the Church, with a timetable for action, to make it 'representative of the people of England', the statement added.

The Archbishop of York said: 'The stories we've heard are shocking and there is no doubt that the Church has failed our UK Minority Ethnic brothers and sisters.

'I hope that we are at least now approaching the challenge of tackling racism in a more intentional way and that that this will lead to much greater participation at every level of the Church's life in order that we might become the change that we long to see everywhere.

'The heart of the Christian faith is that in Christ there is a new humanity. The old barriers of separation and exclusion no longer count.

'This is the faith that was born on Easter Day 2000 years ago, a faith that drew in excluded people and I want us to recover that vision of this new humanity where barriers of separation are broken down.'
One of Sydneys most iconic pubs, the art-deco styled Hollywood Hotel in Surry Hills, is on the market for the first time in 42 years with expectations it could fetch as much as $10 million.

The legendary watering holes longtime former owner Doris Goddard, a notable actress and cabaret singer, and a pioneering female publican, passed away in in July 2019 at the age of 89. Goddard, a fierce opponent of Sydneys lockout laws, bought the four-storey property for $175,000 in 1977 after quitting the bright lights of Hollywood to return to Australia.

The Hollywood Hotel on Foster Street, Surry Hills, Sydney is listed for sale.

The larger-than-life publican was born in Forest Lodge in 1930 and travelled the world as a cabaret singer and actress. When she ran the pub, she would often sit on the bar serenading patrons with her ukulele.

With its distinctive art deco facade, the hotel known affectionately as the Hollywood sits on the corner of Foster Street in Sydneys Surry Hills  in the heart of the bustling restaurant precinct that is also home to Chin Chin, Nomad and Poly.
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Three police constables have been killed when one of their colleagues turned his gun against them in Afghanistan's western Badghis province, the latest in a string of insider attacks, local police confirmed on Sunday.

The incident occurred at a police checkpoint in Muqur district, in the north of the provincial capital Qala-e-Naw on Saturday evening, deputy provincial police chief Khwaja Murad Khan told Xinhua.

The shooter took weapons and ammunition from the post and fled the scene presumably joining Taliban militants, he said.

The local police have launched an investigation into the case and details will be released soon, he added.

On Wednesday, three police personnel were killed in an insider attack in northern Kunduz province.
He was left heartbroken after footage of his 'wife' Rebecca Zemek kissing another man emerged on Married At First Sight's explosive reunion.

But just hours after the episode aired on Sunday, Jake Edwards' real life ex-fiancee Paige McCuskey unveiled details about the time he cheated on her in a bombshell new interview.

While Jake, 32, has already confirmed he was unfaithful to his former bride-to-be in the past, Paige told New Idea that the incident happened just two months before their 'dream wedding' - turning her world 'upside down'.

Case of the ex: On Sunday, Jake Edwards' ex-fiancee Paige McCuskey unveiled details about the moment she discovered he cheated on her in a bombshell new interview

'He went out to watch the AFL Grand Final and had a massive bender  we both came home on the Sunday of that weekend,' Paige, 33, claimed.

'I had been away with my girlfriends when his best friend of 20 years prompted me to check his phone. Thats when I got a hold of all the messages between him and another woman. I kicked him out the next day.'

She said the pair - who dated for about three years before getting engaged during a romantic trip to Fiji - had planned to have children together straight after getting married.

Wedding bells: Jake married Perth business manager Beck Zemek (right) on Married At First Sight. However, the pair broke up just before the reunion show

Past: Paige and Jake dated for about three years before getting engaged during a romantic trip to Fiji in December 2018

Paige, who hasn't dated in a year, said watching the trailer for Married At First Sight 'broke' her, adding: 'He went on TV to get married to a stranger after cheating on me. It makes me feel sick.'

In February, Jake confessed to cheating on Paige in the past, telling Who magazine it was 'one of the biggest regrets of his life'.

Describing his behaviour as 'poor', Jake confessed: 'I was with someone I thought I wanted to spend my life with but there was something missing.

'Stupidly, I cheated on her with another woman.

'I lost a lot of things because of it: my house, mutual friends and her family. Im not proud of it.'

Infidelity: In February, Jake confessed to cheating on Paige in the past, telling Who magazine it was 'one of the biggest regrets of his life'

Meanwhile, on Sunday's bombshell finale, Beck left Jake hurt and physically ill after she was busted kissing an old flame on camera.

Beck had flown home to Perth to care for her sick dog, and during that time asked her ex to take the dog to the vet with her.

In the video, she says to camera: 'I spoke to Jake before and made sure he was all okay without us.'

She added: 'I'm only just waiting for the results back (for the dog), but hopefully can get back soon and see Jake again, cause I kind of miss him'.

A man is then seen walking in the room, and the camera fell to the bed.

Cat got your tongue? Married At First Sight's Rebecca Zemek left Jake hurt and physically ill after she was busted kissing an old flame on camera

'Hey, my baby,' Beck said, before the man said 'Hello' back and the pair were heard kissing out of shot as the dog jumped on the bed, obscuring the view.

'That was my brother!' Beck insisted when asked who she was kissing during the reunion, but was quickly shut down by other couples who did not believe it seemed like the kind of kiss one would give their brother.

Once the video was again aired, it was evident the kiss was more than a peck between siblings.

Giving in, Beck then admitted it was in fact a man she was seeing - she still had feelings for him, and had stayed in contact with.

Jake exploded, saying: 'See, the whole time, the whole experiment, there's been no affection. Nothing. We've never had sex. And clearly this is why. It's all adding up to me now.'
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 18) -- The rise of community pantries in different parts of the country can be considered a desperate call for help amid the pandemic, said Senator Panfilo Lacson on Sunday.

Lacson lauded such an initiative amid the health crisis, but noted it's a sign that people can no longer rely on the government to put food on the table.

It is good that through community pantries, we see mutual aid by neighbors and barangay residents. But this is also a sign of desperation, that people can no longer rely on government to help them, said Lacson in a radio interview.

The community pantry initiative, where residents can donate basic goods, started along Maginhawa Street in Quezon City. After going viral on social media over the weekend, more pantries and carts sprang up in various areas in Metro Manila and other regions.

When you realize you cannot rely solely on government, you band together to find ways to survive, added Lacson.

Vice President Leni Robredo also on Sunday expressed hopes that more community pantries will be set up in other areas.

Lacson also voiced his concern after President Rodrigo Duterte claimed that the government has had no shortcomings in addressing the pandemic.

He pointed out that Health Secretary Francisco Duque III and vaccine czar Carlito Galvez, Jr., two of the country's top pandemic response officials, will not improve their performance if the President continues to defend them.

If the President says they have no shortcomings and his subordinates believe it, they will not see the need to make adjustments, said Lacson. But we all know the government had had many shortcomings, including the late purchase of vaccines and over-regulation of the private sector.

Duterte earlier asked the public for patience with the government response, saying that some countries in Europe are also currently under lockdown.
Brisbanes historic Gabba stadium would be essentially demolished as the Queensland government pushes ahead with plans to redevelop and lift the stadium for the 2032 Olympic Games.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the Gabba, which has been home to Queensland sport including cricket and AFL for 126 years, would host the opening and closing ceremonies.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has revealed the Gabba as the proposed main stadium should Queensland host the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Every Games needs a home, the Premier said.

The Gabba has been home to our sport since 1895.
Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C) are calling on the Biden administration to help resettle Yazidi women who were the victims of a brutal Islamic State campaign in Iraq from 2014-2017, according to a letter shared with Axios.

The backstory: Thousands of women from the Yazidi religious minority were enslaved by ISIS and raped by their captors, as the senators note in a letter to Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Many were forced into marriages and made to convert to Islam.

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Many subsequently had children which, because their fathers were both non-Yazidis and often the perpetrators of a genocide against the sect, might not be accepted by the community.

What theyre saying: After the women were liberated, they learned that their young children were at risk of being killed if they brought them back home to the Yazidi region of Northern Iraq, Klobuchar and Graham write.

These women then faced the wrenching decision of whether to return home or remain with their children in halfway houses."

The senators call on the Biden administration to accept some of the Yazidi women as refugees in the U.S., and to push countries in the region to do the same.

The bottom line: "It is time for the United States to exercise its leadership on behalf of these women and children. We ask that you take action to find them a home," they write.

Go deeper: Biden defends not immediately raising refugee cap

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Justin Bieber protegee Madison Beer bared her white bra while grabbing a late lunch in West Hollywood near the Paul Smith boutique on Sunday.

The 22-year-old Long Island native flashed her undergarment beneath baggy, hunter-camouflage overalls and classic Converse high-tops.

Madison made sure to protect herself and others from the coronavirus by wearing a white face mask.

Scantily clad: Justin Bieber protegee Madison Beer bared her white bra while grabbing a late lunch in West Hollywood near the Paul Smith boutique on Sunday

Starting last Thursday, all Californians over age 16 are now eligible to receive the vaccine.

As of Sunday, there have been 1.2M confirmed COVID-19 cases in Los Angeles leading to 23,653 deaths - according to Johns Hopkins University.

That same day, Beer's boyfriend since August - TikTok star Nick Austin - bonded with puppy Bowie, whom she introduced to the world on March 27.

The 20-year-old 'content creator' set his clip to Iann Dior & Trippie Redd's new song Shots in the Dark and he captioned it: 'Bowie meets TikTok!'

Eye contact: The 22-year-old Long Island native flashed her undergarment beneath baggy, hunter-camouflage overalls and classic Converse high-tops

Mandatory: Madison made sure to protect herself and others from the coronavirus by wearing a white face mask

Nick - who's lived in the $12M Hype House mansion - has called the Emotional Bruises songstress the 'love' of his life, his 'best friend,' and 'soulmate.'

Austin gushed on March 5: 'Every day with you feels like I'm dreaming, which I might be. I love you. Forever n ever n ever!'

Madison was said to have previously romanced Jack & Jack's Jack Gilinsky, model-photographer Brooklyn Beckham, and Field Trip Records co-founder Zack Bia.

'Bowie meets TikTok!' That same day, Beer's boyfriend since August - TikTok star Nick Austin - bonded with puppy Bowie, whom she introduced to the world on March 27

'Every day with you feels like I'm dreaming, which I might be': The 20-year-old 'content creator' has called the Emotional Bruises songstress the 'love' of his life, his 'best friend,' and 'soulmate' (pictured March 31)

Last Thursday, Beer - who boasts 48.2M social media followers - announced that she's already come up with a title for her second studio album, which will drop by the end of 2021.

The homeschooled millennial's long-delayed debut studio album Life Support was finally released on February 26.

Madison is next scheduled to perform August 27-28 at the sold-out Reading & Leeds Festival 2021 in Reading, England.

'LOL yes I do!' Last Thursday, Madison announced that she's already come up with a title for her second studio album, which will drop by the end of 2021

Back to back: Beer's long-delayed debut studio album Life Support was finally released on February 26 (posted February 22)
Bernice Blackstock (Samantha Giles) is set to make her grand return to Emmerdale on Monday.

The ex-girlfriend of Liam Cavanagh (Jonny McPherson), Bernice hasn't been seen in the Yorkshire Dales since 2019, when she dumped Liam the night before their wedding and disappeared.

Liam has since moved on with Leyla Harding (Roxy Shahidi), but just as Liam and Leyla's romance is finally back on track with a wedding on the way, Bernice returns to the village.

Trouble ahead: Bernice Blackstock (Samantha Giles) is set to make her grand return to Emmerdale on Monday

Bernice left hurriedly for Australia to look after her former husband, Charlie, who had been involved in an accident.

But now she's back, and about to make life complicated for Liam and Leyla.

Broken-hearted Liam took time to recover after his ex-fiancee disappeared and is likely to be furious that she is returning just as he gets his life together.

She's back: The ex-girlfriend of Liam Cavanagh, Bernice hasn't been seen in the Yorkshire Dales since 2019, when she dumped Liam the night before their wedding and disappeared

As for Bernice's daughter Gabby (Rosie Bentham) - who is pregnant - she, too, is unlikely to be thrilled that her unreliable mother has returned, especially when she's flourishing at Home Farm under the guidance of Kim Tate (Claire King).

Speaking about actress Samantha's return to the soap, Emmerdale producer Laura Shaw said: 'I am thrilled to have Samantha Giles returning to Emmerdale as Bernice.

'Samantha is such a fabulous actress and her portrayal of Bernice is a wonderfully warm, complex mix of tragedy and comedy that always brings a whirlwind of fun and drama.'

She added: 'Constantly misunderstood, often getting things terribly wrong, Bernice promises to cause quite a stir from the moment she lands back in the village and will certainly turn lives upside down as she tries to navigate through the changes since she left.'

Opening up about her decision to return to the Yorkshire Dales, Samantha added: 'As an actress leaving a role that you love is always a hard decision and I'd been lucky to work so consistently for so long which is rare in our business.'

She continued: 'So I knew the time had come to be brave and take the leap back in 2019 to pursue my other passion of writing and focus on getting my first book published.

'I'm a big believer in fate so when Emmerdale offered me the chance to return as Bernice I took it as a sign that it was meant to be.'

Samantha concluded: 'I'm delighted to be returning to play out Bernice's future storylines which I'm sure are going to keep the audience entertained.

'She certainly arrives back with a bang that's all I'm allowed to say right now and I'm looking forward to releasing my next two books whilst juggling her hectic onscreen life!'
Millions of people around the world doubtless experienced a mixture of outrage and bewilderment as they listened to the so-called experts who were permitted to testify last week on behalf of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis, Minnesota police officer whose brutal murder of George Floyd last year was captured on video and touched off mass protests worldwide.

Chauvins trial for murder and manslaughter began on March 8 in an atmosphere of extreme social tension. The Minneapolis courthouse where Chauvin is being tried has been transformed into a war bunker, defended by the Minnesota National Guard and surrounded by concrete barriers, metal fencing and barbed wire. These barricades were erected by county officials at a cost of $1 million.

Defense attorney Eric Nelson, left, and defendant, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin address Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill during motions before the court (Image Credit: Court TV via AP, Pool)

Local authorities around the world, still reeling from the protests last year that drew in tens of millions of people, are bracing themselves for the response of the masses worldwide to the verdict. Chauvins lawyers rested their case on Friday, meaning that jury deliberations are expected to begin today.

On Tuesday, Barry Brodd, a former Santa Rosa, California police officer, took the stand as a police use of force expert. Combining legal sophistry with calculated provocations, Brodds testimony veered from brazenly fascistic to utterly deranged.

Brodd claimed that Chauvin did not use deadly force when he knelt on Floyds neck until Floyd became unresponsive. And at one point, Brodd claimed that Floyd should have been resting comfortably on the pavement as Chauvins knee pressed down on his neck.

Even the veteran prosecutor, Steven Schleicher, was taken aback: Did you say resting comfortably? Brodd answered, Or laying comfortably.

The prosecutor, still taken aback: Resting comfortably on the pavement? Brodd: Yes.

Brodd also testified that Chauvin was using a prone control technique when he was kneeling on Floyds neck. According to Brodds twisted sophistry, the maintaining of the prone control is not a use of force because it is a control technique. Brodd added: It doesnt hurt.

Brodds testimony strung together one inflammatory argument after another: police officers wear uniforms and criminals dont wear uniforms; drug users exhibit superhuman strength and do not feel pain; officers have to act preemptively and do not have to wait for threats to emerge; videos do not show what the officer is actually feeling; Chauvin was restraining Floyd for Floyds own safety; and when Floyd said I cant breathe, this demonstrated that he was able to breathe.

According to Brodd, Chauvin would have been justified in using even more force than he used. In other words, by kneeling on Floyds neck, Chauvin was demonstrating restraint.

Brodd went on to imply, in a manner calculated to be as provocative as possible, that the responsibility for Floyds death actually rested with those who filmed the murder, because they were distracting Chauvin and making him feel threatened. Crowd issues took the attention of the officers, Brodd claimed, classifying the crowd as a threat.

Brodd insisted that Chauvin felt threatened enough that he withdrew his pepper spray canister, and gave verbal commands to the crowd to stay back, so now hes dealing with the bigger threat.

Brodd concluded: I felt that officer Chauvins interactions with Mr. Floyd were following his training, following current practices in policing, and were objectively reasonable.

Brodd and Fowler

In addition to Brodd, Chauvins lawyers called David Fowler, the former chief medical examiner of Maryland, to testify that Floyd did not die from asphyxiation due to Chauvins knee pressing down on his neck.

According to Chauvins experts, Floyd spontaneously died of natural and other causes that were unrelated to any of the conduct of the police. Fowler was permitted to testify in court, without any scientific basis, that Floyd died from carbon monoxide poisoning, allegedly from the tailpipe of a nearby police car, combined with a tumor, drugs, high blood pressure and underlying heart disease.

Fowlers testimony reached the zenith of absurdity when he claimed to have ruled out asphyxia as a cause of death because such a diagnosis was unsupported by any experimental data.

Indeed, there have been no medical experiments attempting to replicate what Chauvin did to Floydbecause any such experiments, in which human subjects would be killed by asphyxiation, would be forbidden by the Nuremberg Code, which was adopted after the trials of Nazi doctors following the Second World War.

It is a scandal and an indictment of the American judicial system that these fascistic provocations were allowed to take place in the courtroom at all. Under the Minnesota rules of evidence, it is the judge who has the discretion to determine whether an expert witness is qualified and whether the experts opinions are scientific, helpful, and reliable.

Judge Peter Cahill would have been entirely within his powers to slam the courthouse door in the faces of Brodd and Fowler. Instead, the judge repeatedly overruled objections that were raised by the prosecutors.

With the testimony of Brodd and Fowler, millions of people are witnessing for the first time the pseudo-legal framework within which police brutality, corruption, and murder are routinely sanctioned in American courtrooms. In fact, experts like Brodd and Fowler have been fixtures of trials involving the police that have been taking place around the country for years.

Police officers in the US shot and killed more than a thousand people in 2020, reaching an all-time high since the Washington Post launched a database tracking police killings in 2015. The federal government and state authorities deliberately work to cover up the extent of police killings. For entirely deliberate reasons, Republican and Democratic administrations alike maintain no nationwide statistics on police uses of force, police shootings, and deaths in police custody on any consistent basis.

Brodd has been working as a professional expert since 1995, when he established the firm of BVB & Associates, Consulting and Expert Witness Services, of which he is the owner. In other words, this is how Brodd makes his livingthis has been his job for more than two and a half decades.

Police use of force experts typically charge thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars per case, and their fees are routinely paid with public funds by the police departments and municipalities who hire figures like Brodd to help defend their officers against complaints brought by victims and their families.

This phenomenon is so widespread and routine that it has led to the creation of a whole layer of highly-paid fascistic police experts like Brodd whose primary job is to testify in court on behalf of police officers. In the case of the Chauvin trial, Brodd was paid $11,400. He charges $275 per hour for preparation for trial and $350 per hour for testimony.

Brodds website lists his services as including: Police Officer Use of Force analysis, Police and Civilian Deadly Force Cases, Carotid Restraint/Choke-hold Restraint litigation, and Police Procedures & Tactics. Brodd testified that he has even been hired by police departments to teach police officers in training.

Brodd has been retained as an expert in no less than 140 cases, and he was almost always retained by the police. Perhaps most notably, he was also called as an expert to testify in the 2018 trial of Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke, who killed 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by shooting him 16 timesanother police murder that touched off furious mass demonstrations.

In case after case, experts like Brodd stridently opine that police brutality is within policy. The prosecutors in the Chauvin trial, wary of the explosive implications of the trial, have largely accepted this framework, confining themselves to arguing that Chauvins conduct was a violation of department procedureas if the whole question of Floyds basic democratic and constitutional rights can be resolved by consulting the police department policy manual to see whether kneeling on his neck is allowed or not.

As for Fowler, it subsequently emerged he is currently facing a lawsuit brought by the family of Anton Black, a teenager who died in police custody in Maryland in 2018. The family alleges that Fowler fabricated an autopsy report that read: In particular no evidence was found that restraint led to the decedent being asphyxiated.

The manner in which Black and Floyd were killedpositional asphyxia or restraint asphyxiais often officially recorded as accidental, having resulted from unexplained or natural causes. If there is no video taken by a bystander or protest organized by family members, these deaths may not even appear in statistical counts of police killings.

On May 26, the day after Floyds murder, the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) issued a statement that read: After Floyd got out [of his car], he physically resisted officers. Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress.

It is now beyond question that the official MPD statement was a fabricationomitting the fact that Floyd said I cant breathe more than 20 times and that Chauvins knee was pressing down on his neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds. Instead, the official statement chalked Floyds death up to unexplained medical distress that he supposedly spontaneously developed on his own.

This demonstrates that it is not just a question of one or another bad apple, but of the whole institutionalized regime of police terror. If the murder had not been caught on film by the witnesses that Brodd bitterly denounced, then unexplained medical distress would have been the official story. Floyds murder would have been just another invisible death in the daily drumbeat of police killings in America.

Despite the massive protests triggered by Floyds murder, the rate of police killings in the US has continued at an average of three per day, notwithstanding all of the promises of reform. Given that many police killings are covered up by dirty medical examiners, the true numbers may be substantially higher.

These relentless killings take place in cities run by Democrats as well as Republicans, and both parties routinely retain the services of experts like Barry Brodd. Last week, fresh protests erupted after Chicago officials released video footage of the police execution of 13-year-old Adam Toledo on March 29, whose hands were raised in a gesture of surrender when he was gunned down.

Contrary to incessant efforts to explain this phenomenon in terms of racial conflict, black victims represented roughly a quarter of those killed by the police in 2020, the year George Floyd was killed. The largest share of victims were white.

There is no doubt that racism plays a role in many episodes of police brutality, leading to disproportionately higher rates of police violence against racial minorities. Bigotry and prejudice are actively cultivated among the reactionary layers of thugs mobilized to carry out state violence, but these subjective motives of individual officers do not explain the epidemic of police brutality itself, which is a function of the social crisis in the United States and the role of the police in capitalist society.

According to the Mapping Police Violence research collective, which gathers statistics on police brutality, no criminal charges were brought in 98.3 percent of police killings from 2013 to 2020. And in most of the cases where criminal charges were brought, the officer was not convicted.
Nearly 700 patients were evacuated Saturday from Johannesburg's Charlotte Maxeke Hospital, where a fire blazed through parts of the facility in South Africa's largest city.

No injuries or casualties were reported. The fire was contained but the hospital has been closed for seven days, said David Makhura, premier of Gauteng province where Johannesburg is located.

Early Saturday morning the fire caused the third floor of the hospital's parking garage to collapse.

Sixty firefighters battled the blaze through the night. The fire started Friday morning and had been doused by the afternoon but then it reignited in the evening and continued burning overnight.

The fire has caused extensive damage to the hospital, which has more than 1,000 beds and serves Johannesburg, a city of 6 million people, and the surrounding Gauteng province. It is one of the biggest public hospitals in the country.

It is also a designated treatment center for COVID-19 in Gauteng. According to Makhura, the hospital had 13 COVID-19 patients, two in ICU and 11 in general wards at the time of the fire. They have all been transferred to other hospitals.

"The fire has been contained into some areas. We are shutting down the hospital as a precautionary measure because there is a lot of smoke that went into other areas, including wards," said Makhura.

The fire started in a storeroom for dry surgical supplies, according to officials.

Firefighters reported that the blaze re-started from smoldering medical supplies, including supplies of personal protective equipment used by staff treating patients with COVID-19, Makhura said. An investigation into the fire will be launched, he said.

"Our firefighters have been receiving help from others in neighboring municipalities. It has been a tedious process trying to move patients. At first, we moved them to wards that were far away from the fire but we started to evacuate them," said Gauteng health spokesperson Kwara Kekana. "That is still a process that is ongoing, we are now referring all patients to other hospitals."
Eighteen minutes might be all it takes to ensure a full recovery for stroke patients in rural South Carolina.

By changing EMS workflows and incorporating telemedicine techniques, physicians at MUSC Health have partnered with Georgetown Memorial Hospital and Hampton Regional Medical Center to significantly shorten the time between a patient's stroke symptom onset and their treatment, as recently reported in the Journal of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Diseases.

Through MUSC Health's Telestroke Network, emergency medical technicians (EMTs) can video chat with stroke specialists to begin a patient's consult before they even arrive at the hospital.

"We realized that if we could start seeing these stroke patients before they came into the emergency room, we could reduce the time it took for us to treat them," said Christine Holmstedt, D.O., the medical director of MUSC Health's Comprehensive Stroke Center.

A stroke occurs when blood flow to the brain is interrupted. In an ischemic stroke, blood flow is clogged by a block in an artery leading to the brain. In a hemorrhagic stroke, there is bleeding into the brain tissue from a burst blood vessel, and in both cases, time is of the utmost importance.

Stroke treatments are extremely time sensitive and need to be started as soon as possible after patients begin experiencing stroke symptoms in order to improve clinical outcomes and reduce their chances of disability or death.

Acute stroke treatments include the intravenous clot-busting agent alteplase (tPA) and/or a mechanical thrombectomy where a device is threaded through the blood vessel to break up the clot. With this quick response, physicians ensure the greatest chance at a recovery, and every minute reduction in treatment improves their patient's chances more. The average human brain contains 22 billion neurons, according to an article in Stroke, and during an acute ischemic stroke, 1.9 million are lost every minute.

The new telestroke workflow in the study involved three-way communication between the stroke specialist, the EMT, the patient and the receiving hospital nurse and emergency medicine physician. EMTs could even start the consult while still at the patient's home and ask family members for a more accurate history of the patient. Performing the consult and examination on the way to the hospital allowed emergency room doctors and nurses to be more prepared for their incoming stroke patient. Holmstedt pointed out a few patients who were rerouted to a comprehensive stroke center while on the way to the closest hospital because the stroke was too severe for the local hospitals. A few patients were even flown to MUSC from their homes if the examination revealed they needed more specialized treatment and care.

Before the telestroke program, stroke patients would be brought directly to the closest hospital, where they would begin their examination soon after their arrival. Their treatment would continue there, or they could be transferred to another hospital. With the new workflow, that examination happens en route, cutting down on critical treatment time.

"A 15-minute reduction in door-to-treatment time leads to patients with reduced complications from tPA and significant reduction in disability or death," said Holmstedt. "They are more likely to be discharged to an acute rehab rather than long-term care, and they have much better functional outcomes." These new protocols influenced that 15-minute reduction even further by bringing average treatment times down from 38 minutes to 20.

This program is especially important in rural areas where patients are spread out geographically. Other programs in the U.S. have been incorporating mobile stroke units, which are armed with vital stroke equipment like CT scanners, but these stroke units can cost upwards of $2,000,000 and are not feasible for South Carolina. By comparison, the telestroke console costs about $2,000 per ambulance and helps rural areas see stroke experts before they even get to the hospital, according to Holmstedt.

In its 2015 infancy, the telestroke program began with a partnership between Holmstedt and Georgetown EMS Director Dale Hewitt and Georgetown Hospital Stroke Coordinator Jessica Hewitt. They started with 5 ambulances in 1 county to test the concept and feasibility of the program and have since grown to 26 additional trucks in 5 different counties throughout the state.

Holmstedt is currently working with the MUSC College of Health Professions and Clemson University to assess the economic impact of the telestroke program and the potential for further expansion.

"These improved outcomes reduce disability and even death for patients seen with acute stroke," said Holmstedt. "And they don't negatively impact the EMT workflow, so we can bring more efficient treatment options to the state's rural population. And that's significant."

###

About MUSC Health

As the clinical health system of the Medical University of South Carolina, MUSC Health is dedicated to delivering the highest quality patient care available while training generations of competent, compassionate health care providers to serve the people of South Carolina and beyond. Comprising some 1,600 beds, more than 100 outreach sites, the MUSC College of Medicine, the physicians' practice plan and nearly 275 telehealth locations, MUSC Health owns and operates eight hospitals situated in Charleston, Chester, Florence, Lancaster and Marion counties. In 2020, for the sixth consecutive year, U.S. News & World Report named MUSC Health the No. 1 hospital in South Carolina. To learn more about clinical patient services, visit muschealth.org.
The National Executive Committee (NEC) of the People's National Convention (PNC), has indicated that the ongoing rift between officers of the party and its leader, Mr David Apasera, over the alleged misappropriation of the party's funds for the 2020 general election has sharply divided the rank of the party.

While dismissing claims by its National Communications Secretary, Mr Awudu Ishaq, over an alleged misappropriation of a supposed GH30,000 by the party's General Secretary, Ms Janet Nabla, the NEC cautioned that the unresolved issues had the potential of diminishing the fortunes of the party.



In a statement jointly issued and signed by the Ashanti Regional Secretary of the party, Mr Sulemana Seidu, and its Northern Regional Secretary, Mr Suale Karim, on behalf of NEC, the PNC urged its officers to resort to the structures of the party to resolve their differences.



Disagreements



The subtle discord among the leadership of the PNC was amplified when Mr Ishaq, in a statement dated April 11, 2021, accused its General Secretary of engaging in financial malfeasance.



He countered earlier accusations by the General Secretary against Mr Apasera of misappropriating the party's funds and failing to render transparent account on how funds that were mobilised for the 2020 election was expended.



Mr Ishaq indicated that the leadership of the party at its last NEC meeting in February this year caused the national treasurer of the party to render an account of how funds realised for the 2020 election was expended.



He said at the said meeting, which was attended by NEC members, including the General Secretary, the accounts rendered by the National Treasurer was deemed largely satisfactory by the NEC.



NEC reacts



In a sharp rebuttal, the NEC dismissed claims by Mr Ishaq that it expressed satisfaction about the account rendered by the treasurer at the said meeting.



We acknowledge the feud between our leader, Mr Apasera and our General Secretary, Ms Janet Nabla, which emanated from a certain GH30,000.00 being an amount received from the Electoral Commission of Ghana and which led to a discussion of another GH1.7 million being funds raised towards the 2020 general election.



An attempt was made to account for the GH1.7 million at the NEC meeting of February 27, 2021 but was clouded with so many clerical and basic arithmetic errors and was never deemed largely satisfactory' as claimed by Comrade Awudu in his statement, it explained.



According to the NEC, it was fully aware of every penny spent as far as the GH30,000 was concerned because we suggested to the General Secretary to give us the money to support our regional offices' rent advances.



It further indicated that it was waiting for the leader to present proper accounts to NEC for further deliberation.



We appeal to our leader, secretary and all interested parties to resort to the structures of the party to resolve their differences instead of bringing them to the media.



These media arguments, consequently, deteriorate the fortunes of the party, it urged.















Source: Graphiconline.com









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Featured Video
An Army paratrooper died Monday at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, while conducting airborne training operations, officials say.

Little information was released about the paratrooper, assigned to the base's elite 82nd Airborne Division.

"Additional information will be released 24 hours after next of kin notification," officials said in a brief announcement. "The incident is currently under investigation."

A Fort Bragg spokesman, Lt. Col. Mike Burns, told Military.com the fatal accident took place before 1 p.m., although the precise timeline was unclear.

While it's not clear how the soldier died, the tragedy underscores the danger inherent in the work of Army paratroopers, even in training.

In January 2020, a Green Beret, Master Sgt. Nathan Goodman, was killed in a free-fall training exercise near Eloy, Arizona.

In September of the same year, an 82nd Airborne paratrooper, Pfc. Jean Cruz De Leon, died in an accident while training at Fort Stewart, Georgia. His parachute had malfunctioned during a static-line jump, officials said.

-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck.
Supplier News

19 April 2021

London - interTouch, the leading provider of cloud-based Internet and guest-facing technologies to the global hospitality industry, and Com.tel, leading telecommunications infrastructure provider in Italy, have announced that they have entered into a strategic partnership with the aim to accelerate mutual growth in the hospitality sector across Italy.

Headquartered in Milan with 20 offices across the country, Com.tel has been servicing the Italian hospitality sector for over 15 years. Today, its leading telecommunications infrastructure solutions are available in over 200 hotels in Italy, and as a strategic partner of interTouch, the company will now be able to offer all interTouch solutions to hotels across the country to help them further enhance their digital guest journey.

"We are very excited to partner with Com.tel to accelerate our growth in Italy by making our guest-facing technology solutions available locally through their expert team on the ground. Com.tel's unrivalled local footprint enables the team to be on site anywhere in the country within two hours to provide the customer support and bespoke innovative solutions our partner hotels have entrusted us with around the world," said Michael Vargosko, Managing Director for Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Latin America and the Caribbean at interTouch.

Over the past 20 years, interTouch has been powering the world's best hotels to deliver superior digital guest experiences. With installations in over 60 countries representing more than 320,000 hotel rooms, interTouch has become one of the largest, most successful and trusted providers of integrated guest-facing technologies that enables hotel guests to connect and control their digital experience.

"Over the course of this year, the hospitality market was the most affected industry by the global health crisis. Com.tel is committed to helping this industry through the transition into what will become the "new normal". In addition to the competencies and skills honed over years in the game, our partnership with interTouch, the leading brand in the market for hospitality technology, will be fundamental in leading the market through the process of renewal and innovation which will allow it to recover and come back stronger than ever," said Mattia Conti, Enterprise Business Unit Director at Com.tel

Augusta Claudia Lizzani, added "The partnership with interTouch is not only strategic, but truly indispensable for the continuation of a process of growth and innovation in the hospitality market. By combining our resources and knowledge of the local market with the skillset of the leading brand in the global technology industry we are certain to be able to further elevate the standard of service we provide to each client, with the passion and dedication which characterises both of our companies."

Through the strategic partnership, all interTouch solutions will be provided locally by Com.tel including interTouch Cloud for guest internet connectivity, interTouch Passpoint for secure WIFI authentication, interTouch Telephony for hotel PBX Solutions, interTouch Cast for in-room casting, interTouch Entertainment for in-room entertainment and interTouch Assistant for in-room virtual assistants.
There were tears, hugs and kisses at airports in Australia and New Zealand today as a quarantine-free 'travel bubble' opened between the two countries more than a year after Covid all-but halted international flights.

After 400 days of travel bans and mandatory isolation periods, those living in New Zealand and Australia are now allowed to fly freely between the two nations.

That means families and loved ones separated for 13 months by the pandemic can now reunite, sparking emotional scenes at arrivals lounges on both sides of the Tasman Sea.

New Zealand and Australia have opened a quarantine-free 'travel bubble' between the two nations, allowing families and loved ones to reunite after 400 days of Covid border closures

There were emotional scenes on both sides of the Tasman Sea today as those separated by the pandemic were finally free to reunite

Australia and New Zealand had effectively closed themselves off to the outside world as part of their Covid strategies, but with cases at rock bottom they have decided to try and reopen

Lorraine Wratt, a New Zealander stranded by the pandemic while visiting family in Australia, told AFP that travelling again was 'wonderful'.

'We came to Australia on December 11 to spend Christmas with our children... planning to go back in February, it's been a bit of a nightmare,' she said.

On a grass embankment at the foot of Wellington Airport's runway, the words 'WELCOME WHANAU' (family) were spelled out in giant letters and Maori dancers Maori dancers performed a traditional greeting in the terminal.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the joyful scenes were like something from a movie.

'Love Actually... I imagine it's pretty close to that,' she said, referencing the 2003 British romantic comedy.

Ardern said she shared the elation, and was preparing to welcome some of her own loved ones back home.

The bubble, which followed months of negotiations between the largely coronavirus-free neighbours, was hailed as a major milestone in restarting a global travel industry that has been crippled by the Covid-19 pandemic.

A woman who has just disembarked a flight from Sydney to Wellington in New Zealand is greeted with a kiss at the airport after the travel bubble opened

A mother and daughter are brought close to tears as they are finally allowed to reunite at Sydney airport after Australia opened a travel bubble with New Zealand

Australia and New Zealand managed to bring Covid cases under control by shutting down international travel, but in the process separated families and loved ones who can now reunite

A man arriving from Australia at Wellington airport in New Zealand embraces a woman who was waiting for him at the arrivals gate

The arrangement means that for the first time since Covid-19 closed borders worldwide, passengers can fly between Australia and New Zealand without undergoing mandatory quarantine on arrival.

'We hope more travel bubbles will be established across the region when it is safe to do so as part of overall efforts to restart international air travel,' International Air Transport Association Asia-Pacific vice president Conrad Clifford said.

Australia and New Zealand have been two world-leading countries at beating coronavirus domestically, with case and death totals just a fraction of those of other nations - while daily life has remained much more normal than it has elsewhere.

But much of their success has been down to the fact that they effectively cut themselves off from the outside world, with borders tightly restricted even to their own citizens trying to return from overseas.

Now, with Covid cases in both nations at rock bottom and following months of negotiations, they have begun opening up again - a move that will be hugely welcome by those separated from loved ones, but which carries infection risks.

A previous attempt to open the travel bubble quickly floundered after Australia shut down flights coming from New Zealand when cases of the South African variant were discovered in the country.

Families are reunited as travellers arrive on the first flight from Sydney to Wellington, in New Zealand as the trans-Tasman travel bubble opens

Friends and relatives wait for passengers arriving from Australia at Auckland Airport

Families wait to be reunited as travellers arrive on the first flight from Sydney in Wellington

Australia was New Zealand's largest source of international tourists before the pandemic, accounting for about 1.5 million arrivals or 40 per cent of total visitors in 2019.

But on the first day of the bubble, most of the travellers were returning New Zealanders, with tourists expected to start arriving in large numbers during the upcoming Australian school holidays.

Queenstown local Sean Mackenzie said the travel bubble was a shot in the arm for the South Island tourist hub, where businesses have struggled without overseas visitors.

'I reckon the future's great for Queenstown now... all the Australians come over and then international, China all of that - it will be packed,' he said

'In six months, I reckon it will be packed. It'll be sweet.'

Australia is home to hundreds of thousands of expatriate New Zealanders and before coronavirus many regularly shuttled back and forth across the Tasman.

'It's like it's one big country, so it's very good to open the borders, it will help all the families,' Mehat El Masri told AFP as he waited to see his Sydney-based son Shady for the first time in 16 months.

The first inbound flight from Australia to New Zealand is pictured taxiing on the runway at Wellington Airport next to a sign saying 'welcome whanau' - meaning 'family'

Tail logos of Air New Zealand and Australian Quantas planes are seen side by side at Auckland Airport as international travel between the two countries restarts

Denise O'Donoghue, 63, told AFP at Sydney airport that the bubble made her feel the world was returning to some sort of normality.

'What normal's going to be from now on I don't know, but I'm just really, really excited today,' she said.

Air New Zealand executive Craig Suckling said the atmosphere at Sydney airport before departure was electric, describing it as 'quite the emotional rollercoaster'.

The airline's chief executive Greg Foran said: '(It's) a real turning point for the airline. It's day one of our revival.'

Australia has previously flagged the possibility of travel bubbles with Singapore, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, while New Zealand is working to allow unrestricted access to small Pacific states such as the Cook Islands and Tuvalu.

But the leaders of both countries warned further border changes in the wake of the trans-Tasman bubble would be a slow process.

'The idea that on one day everything just opens, that's not how this is going to happen,' Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.

'It will happen cautiously and carefully, working very hard on the medical and health protections.'
M. W. Upham, a graduate from Grand Rapids Community College, has completed her new book Running from Blood: a gripping and potent story of a woman who must learn to survive in a new environment while pregnant with the vampire kings child.

Upham writes, Though she supposed it hardly mattered anymore, that part of her life was over. She knew that since she had already lived there, the castle wouldnt be taking her back in anytime soon. She had to focus on where she was now. As she walked home, she thought about how she would make enough money for two mouths. In town, she saw lots of stores. Maybe she could get a job at one of them. She saw that a meat-packing company was looking to hire someone. They were probably looking to hire a strong man, but maybe they would hire her instead? Shed have to try at the very least.

Published by Page Publishing, M. W. Uphams poignant tale chronicles the story of a woman who is forced to leave her only home and must endure the unknown world while expecting a vampires child.

Katherine is a young woman who serves vampire royalty in an old castle hidden away in Germany, and here she was raped by the vampire king. Unfortunately for Katherine, the rape resulted in the creation of a child. Since the king does not want his family members to find out about the pregnancy, he evicts Katherine, solving his problem.

However, Katherine has never left the castle before and she is now being thrown into the unfamiliar and new outside human world. She must find a way to survive while being pregnant with the spawn of a vampire. Readers will find out if she and the child are able to thrive in the human world or if the child will turn out to be like its father, a blood-sucking, heartless monster.

Readers who wish to experience this spellbinding work can purchase Running from Blood at bookstores everywhere, or online at the Apple iTunes Store, Amazon, Google Play, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or media inquiries, contact Page Publishing at 866-315-2708.

About Page Publishing:

Page Publishing is a traditional, full-service publishing house that handles all the intricacies involved in publishing its authors books, including distribution in the worlds largest retail outlets and royalty generation. Page Publishing knows that authors need to be free to create, not mired in logistics like eBook conversion, establishing wholesale accounts, insurance, shipping, taxes, and so on. Pages accomplished writers and publishing professionals allow authors to leave behind these complex and time-consuming issues and focus on their passion: writing and creating. Learn more at http://www.pagepublishing.com.
Peter Ireton, a leading figure in the charity Bothar, was found dead at his home in Limerick yesterday in what has been described as a personal tragedy.

The gardai are not seeking anybody else in connection with the 68-year-olds death.

Mr Iretons death comes as the charity of which he was a founding member and former chief executive, is in crisis following High Court proceedings where, it was claimed, Mr Iretons successor, David Moloney, misappropriated 465,000.

The court granted an order freezing Mr Moloneys assets. Mr Ireton was mentioned in affidavits in the case as being a close associate of Mr Moloneys and questions were raised over payments he received after he had stepped down as chief executive.

Mr Ireton was credited with the idea to establish Bothar in 1990. He came up with the idea to send cows to poor families in Uganda to mark the Limerick Treaty 300 celebrations that year. He set up the charity with three friends, Jim Quigley, Billy Kelly, and Harry Lawlor.

Mr Ireton identified prominent figures to serve on the new charitys board in 1991. Within three years, the organisation had grown to the point where it required paid staff. He took up the position of chief executive. The following year he recruited David Moloney to work for Bothar. In an affidavit at the recent High Court hearing, Mr Lawlor stated that the board reposed a great deal of trust and confidence in Mr Ireton. After all it was Mr Ireton who devised Bothars charitable scheme in the first place Mr Ireton told the board that he wished Mr Moloney to work closely with him and the board was satisfied to accept his recommendation. The court was also told that Mr Ireton stepped down as chief executive in 2011 and was succeeded by Mr Moloney. According to the affidavit, a subsequent investigation into the finances of Bothar discovered Mr Ireton received substantial payments between 2011 and 2015, unbeknownst to the board. Mr Ireton has said he continued to work for Bothar during this period and did nothing wrong. The court was told that there was currently no application for an order against Mr Ireton but investigations were ongoing.

Mr Lawlors affidavit also alleged that when investigations into Mr Moloney were initiated he enlisted the help of Mr Ireton to deflect the focus of investigation. A number of emails between the two men and another employee of Bothar were included in the evidence.

Mr Lawlors sworn statement was critical of both Mr Ireton and another of their co-founders of Bothar, Billy Kelly. Mr Lawlor claimed that both men were involved in attempting to have him removed from the board after investigations into finances were commenced. The affidavit was filed as part of an ex parte application, in which only one side is appearing before the court.

As a result of the allegations coming to light, the charity is facing an uncertain future with the immediate possibility of redundancies among staff.
93%

Website 123spill.no uses latest and advanced technologies. It is very popular on the web, it's within the 1 million most visited websites of the world at position 202125 by Alexa. It supports HTTPS. The main html page has a size of 128 bytes (0.13 kb uncompressed).

This CoolSocial report was updated on 2021-04-19, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want.
Teslas self-automated driving system, known as Autopilot, has increasingly come under the spotlight after a number of recent accidents

Two people have been reportedly killed in an accident involving a ( ) electric vehicle in Texas, with local police saying no-one was in the driver's seat at the time.

The car crashed into a tree while travelling at high speed said the authorities in Harris County. There was no one in the drivers seat," Sgt. Cinthya Umanzor of the Harris County Constable Precinct 4 told local reporters.

The 2019 Tesla Model S missed a curve at high speed, said the report, slid off the road and burst into flames after crashing into a tree.

The two people in the car were sitting in the front passenger seat and back seat of the Tesla, according to Reuters citing Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman.

Teslas self-automated driving system, known as Autopilot, has increasingly come under the spotlight after a number of recent accidents and ahead of the launch of a full driverless option.

US agency The National Highway Traffic Safety Board said in March it has 27 investigations underway into crashes involving Tesla vehicles. At least three occurred recently.

Tesla, which has yet to issue a comment about the crash, says that the driver-assist system, called Autopilot, is not an autonomous-driving program, and drivers must be ready to take control of the vehicle at any time.

However, the National Transportation Safety Board has said previously that the system's design allows it to be left unattended.

The reports also said that responders to the crash in Texas had to call Tesla to ask how to put out the fire as the batteries kept re-igniting.

Elon Musk, Teslas chief executive, said in January that full self-driving software will be hugely profitable for the company and that he was "highly confident" the car will be able to drive itself and that by the end of this year it would be more reliable than people.
Germany and the EU do not consider the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Russia, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has said.

He stated this on Monday after a meeting of EU foreign ministers with the participation of Ukrainian Minister Dmytro Kuleba, according to an Ukrinform correspondent.

"I want to emphasize once again: the territorial integrity of Ukraine is not an option," Maas said.

"In this extremely tense situation that prevails today, Ukraine's diplomatic path deserves our full recognition and respect," he said.

Kyiv has stepped up its OSCE instruments, and "there is still a chance that Russia will honor its voluntary commitments on troop transparency and move from provocations to cooperation," Maas said.

According to him, representatives of Germany and other EU countries reiterated during their conversation with their Ukrainian counterpart that they stand firmly on the side of Ukraine, especially at this difficult time.

Maas also noted that Germany together with France will continue to work on the full implementation of the provisions of the Minsk agreements to resolve the situation in eastern Ukraine. Work in the Normandy format at the working level will continue in the coming days and weeks, he said.

Maas recalled that the possibility of convening a Normandy format summit was discussed during the visit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Paris last Friday and talks with French leader Emmanuel Macron, which were joined by German Chancellor Angela Merkel by video link. However, it is not possible to name possible dates for the summit, Maas said.

Photo: German Federal Foreign Office
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday will interact with leading doctors from across the country and with top pharma companies on the prevailing COVID-19 situation via video conferencing, officials said.

PM Modi will hold a meeting with the doctors from across the country at 4.30 pm and with the top pharma companies at 6 pm.

Earlier in the day, PM Modi chaired an important meeting on the situation at 11:30 am. Though the details of the meet has not been shared officially, yet.

PM Modi has been holding regular meetings to deal with growing COVID-19 pandemic situation.

The meetings come amid a second wave of coronavirus infections in the country. Several chief ministers have complained of a shortage of essential supplies like oxygen and medicines like Remdesivir, and seeking Centre's aide.

India's total COVID-19 caseload crossed the 1.50-crore mark with a record single-day rise of 2,73,810, while the active cases surpassed the 19-lakh mark, according to the latest Union Health Ministry data.
An Egyptian terror group linked to ISIS has executed three men including a Coptic Christian as a warning for supporting the country's armed forces.

Nabil Habashi Salama, 62, a member of Egypt's minority Coptic Orthodox Church, was shown being shot in the back of the head in a video released Saturday.

In the footage, a militant with his face blurred, an AK-47 slung across his chest and index finger raised to the sky, warns the 'Christians of Egypt' that 'this is the price you pay for supporting the Egyptian army.'

An ISIS-linked terror group in Egypt has executed a 62-year-old Coptic man 'as a warning' to the country's Christians not to support the armed forces

Nabil Habashi Salama, who was kidnapped off the streets of Bir al-Abed last November, was the man killed in the footage, Egypt's Coptic Church has confirmed

He then raises the rifle and fires a single bullet into the back of Salama's head, while flanked by two others who are also clutching rifles.

A separate piece of footage then shows two other militants executing two tribesmen in a similar fashion, after accusing them of fighting with the Egyptian armed forces.

Salama had been missing since last November, the Coptic Church said, when he was kidnapped while walking along the streets of Bir al-Abed by jihadists in a car.

A spokesman for the Coptic Church, which confirmed Salama's identity from the video, said he had been involved in rebuilding churches destroyed by Islamists in the region.

He kept the faith till the moment he was killed,' the spokesman said.

'The church affirms its steadfast support of the Egyptian state's efforts in quelling hateful terror acts.'

A separate piece of footage released simultaneously shows two tribesmen being executed for fighting alongside Egyptian armed forces, the jihadists said

Salama was snatched from Bir El Abd in the northern Sinai in November last year, a city in northern Sinai that has been repeatedly targeted by jihadists

Egypt has been fighting a jihadist insurgency in the northern Sinai since at least 2011, including local tribal groups, Al Qaeda, and Wilayat Sinai - a pre-existing militant group that swore allegiance to ISIS in 2014.

Originally founded as Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis according to Stanford University's terror monitoring service, the group's initial aim was to rid nearby Jerusalem of western influence and eradicate any Israeli presence in Egypt.

But following the ouster of dictator Hosni Mubarack in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring, the group switched their attentions to driving the Egyptian army out of Sinai and assuming control of the region.

In 2012 the group carried out its first attacks - on a pipeline exporting gas to Jordan and Israel and on Israeli forces near the border.

When the army removed the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi from power in 2013, Ansar again switched its attentions to government forces, accusing them of suppressing jihadist groups.

A series of deadly and sophisticated attacks on Egyptian forces in 2014 that killed at least 50 soldiers saw the group dubbed 'the most dangerous in Egypt' by the New York Times, and saw the government launch counter-insurgent operations.

Faced with the might of the Egyptian army, the group pledged allegiance to ISIS in November 2014 and renamed itself Wilayat Sinai, or Islamic State  Sinai Province.

An ISIS attack on a Russian passenger plane over the Sinai in 2015 killed all 224 people on board, mostly holidaymakers returning from the Sharm El Shiekh resort

Dual bombings of two churches in the cities of Tanta and Alexandria on Palm Sunday in 2017 killed at least 50 Christians and wounded 100 more

In return for pledging to help ISIS extend its so-called Caliphate - which then spread across Iraq and Syria - into Egypt, the group was given access to funding, weapons and its global recruitment network.

After joining ISIS, the group also turned increasingly to attacks on civilians and in October 2015 bombed a Russian passenger jet.

Metrojet Flight 9268 had taken off from the Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh bound for Saint Petersburg when it was blown out of the sky, killing all 224 people on board.

Then, in 2017, ISIS called specifically for attacks on Christians in Sinai - describing them as 'our first target and favorite prey' - prompting jihadists to begin storming Coptic households in order to kill the occupants and burn them down.

More than 100 were ultimately killed in brutal and callous public executions, often carried out in full view of locals and the victims' families as an intimidation tactic.

Hundreds fled west towards the Suez and Cairo where Egyptian security forces maintained greater control in an attempt to save themselves

But in April, ISIS managed to puncture that security net when it carried out dual bombings against two churches on Palm Sunday.

Suicide bombers struck St. George's Church in the northern Egyptian city of Tanta and St Mark's Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Alexandria, the seat of the Coptic papacy, killing a total of 50 people and wounding dozens more.

Most of those died inside St George's church after a man wearing a suicide vest made it inside, while the second suicide was set off outside St Mark's church after police officers stopped the bomber.

ISIS's deadliest attack in Sinai came in November 2017 when militants bombed a Mosque in the city of Bir al-Abed and then shot fleeing and injured worshippers, killing a total of 235

A month later, another attack on a bus carrying Coptic Christians in central Egypt killed another 28 people and wounded 25 more.

In November that year the group carried out its deadliest attack to date, this time targeting a Sufi Muslim mosque in the city of Bir al-Abed.

Dozens of gunmen arriving on off-road vehicles bombed the mosque while it was packed with worshippers before opening fire on those attempting to flee.

In total, 235 people were killed in the attack with more than 100 wounded.

In response, the military announced a major offensive against Wilayat and other jihadist groups in Sinai starting in February 2018.

According to researchers at the RAND Corporation, the ongoing offensive has involved 88 battalions and 44,000 men of the Egyptian armed forces, and to date claims to have killed more than 7,000 jihadists and captured 27,000.

It has also forced jihadist groups to focus their efforts of guerrilla tactics and remote bombings, with civilians still being targeted.

In July last year, militants attacked the city of Bir al-Abd forcing residents including Coptic Christians to flee out of fear they would be executed.

And army counter-offensive recaptured the town the following month, and the refugees were allowed to go home.

But more than a dozen were subsequently killed by booby-trap bombs left behind by the militants, including children who were targeted with bombs hidden inside toys.
At least five people have been charged, detained, or convicted for allegedly violating the new COVID-19 law during a two-week lockdown enforced in Phnom Penh and Takhmau.

The authorities have arrested at least five men in separate incidents for violating lockdown measures. Three men, including Ung Chanthouk, who is a two-star National Police official, were arrested for social and drinks gathering, which is against current restrictions.

The trio has been charged under Article 4 and 11 of the COVID-19 law, which carries a maximum of three years in prison, said Kuch Kimlong, spokesperson of the Phnom Penh Municipal Court.

Article 4 bans any gatherings that may cause the spread of COVID-19, and Article 11 penalizes intentional obstruction or deterrence of the enforcement of a measure.

Prime Minister Hun Sen also stripped the police official of his rank and was fired from the National Police force, according to a Royal Decree issued on April 17 and seen by VOA Khmer

That man has to be sentenced...dont release him. [He] has to be sentenced, Hun Sen said in an audio voice released on Saturday.

The government last Wednesday enforced a 14-day lockdown in Phnom Penh and Takhmau due to the rapid increase in COVID-19 cases. The government has extended a travel ban to April 28 and also banned the sale of alcohol.

Hun Sen has been critical of people who have attempted to subvert some of the rules, threatening to extend the lockdown.

The presiding judge, Ouk Sovannarith, said the three men have asked for legal representation, according to Kuch Kimlong.

They were sent [Sunday] afternoon [to court] and presiding judge Ouk Sovannarith has put them in a pre-trial detention, he said, adding that a trial could start as early as two weeks.

In two separate cases, Seang Rangsy was arrested for posting a video of himself driving through the city in a Lexus, according to Kuch Kimlong, and another man, Dara Rath Sokun, was detained for cutting police tape to enter a restricted area. Dara Rath Sokun was quickly convicted and sentenced to 12 months in prison.

Human rights experts and observers have been critical of the COVID-19 law, which they say had harsh prison sentences and can be used to violate citizens rights.

Three special rapporteurs, including Rhona Smith who is the special rapporteur for human rights to Cambodia, last week expressed serious concern over harsh new legal and administrative measures to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic in a statement, referring to the Law on Preventive Measures Against the Spread of COVID-19 and other Contagious Diseases.

We are concerned that the administrative and penal measures, including excessive prison sentences and fines provided in the law, appear to be disproportionate and unwarranted. All measures taken to fight the pandemic, including possible punishments, should be necessary and proportionate and not be used excessively, the April 12 statement reads.

The law came into effect on March 11 and was a response to the current cluster of COVID-19 cases and includes harsh punishments such as a 20-year prison term and fines of up to 20 million riels, around $5,000, for those convicted of violations.

Chak Sopheap, executive director at the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, said the government should disseminate more information to the public about their measures to ensure clarity.

I encourage the continued dissemination of information [about these measures] for [better] understanding and for people to participate in fighting the virus spread, she said.

The human rights defender urged that all the arrested people have a right to a fair trial and should be given defense lawyers.

In any circumstance, even before the pandemic, the assurance of the right to a fair trial is very necessary, Chak Sopheap said.
It is an honor to be recognized by the National Multifamily Housing Council, especially with such a significant increase in our ranking that lands us as one of the top 15 companies in the country.

RPM, a full-service property management company headquartered in Austin, Texas, accomplished the biggest leap of the year on the Top 50 List of Apartment Managers by the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC)  scoring the No. 11 place on the highly-regarded list, up 31 spots from No. 42 last year.

The NMHC 50 is the sectors chief ranking of the nation's largest apartment owners, managers, developers, builders and syndicators. The significant jump by RPM is on the heels of exponential growth achieved by the company within the previous year, which includes the recent acquisitions of multifamily management companies Maverick Residential in Phoenix and CF Real Estate Services in Atlanta, GA.

Currently, RPM employs 1,600 associates nationwide across 32 markets to manage its diverse portfolio of 84,000 units. The fast-growing company, which made its debut on the NMHCs authoritative ranking in 2020, found success amid the pandemic by positioning itself for future progress with strategic acquisitions aligned with its commitment to innovative solutions and resident-centric service.

It is an honor to be recognized by the National Multifamily Housing Council, especially with such a significant increase in our ranking that lands us as one of the top 15 companies in the country, said Jason Berkowitz, CEO and founder of RPM. This is a direct result of our teams tenacity and hard work, and it demonstrates how well-positioned we are to continue that momentum in the coming years as we evolve and grow.

For more information about RPM and its national portfolio, visit RPMLiving.com.

About RPM

RPM is a full-service property management company offering an innovative and personalized approach to real estate management services. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, RPM is a NMHC Top 50 Manager and the third largest property management company in Texas managing more than 100 clients, eight regional offices and 84,000 units across Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. Founded by Jason Berkowitz in 2002, the firm has grown to over 1,600 associates nationwide spread across 32 markets, all of whom share the collective vision to enhance clients investments through customized solutions and create quality living environments for residents. RPM continues its aggressive pursuit of new opportunities in thriving markets. To learn more about RPM, visit RPMLiving.com.
ARTIST Francesca Mollett, who

specialises in paintings inspired by water, light and weather, will have selected works on display at the Informality gallery in Henley from April 29.

The exhibition, Wild Shade, features pieces originating from Francescas time spent by a network of wells in Penwith, Cornwall.

The land has been exploited over time as it was a mine for copper and tin and, due to the co-existence of underground water, the springs and wells are said to have holy and healing properties.

Francesca was born in Bristol but lives and works in London where she recently graduated from the Royal College of Art. She was the recipient of the Aidan Threlfall Award (2020) and her work has been shown internationally. Recent exhibitions include; Diaries of a Climate, Baert Gallery, Los Angeles (2021); London Grads Now, Saatchi Gallery, London (2020).

Francesca has co-curated a number of shows and co-ran and founded the Benevolent Association of Excellent Solutions, a set of artist studios and project space in Deptford from 2015 to 2016.

A spokesman for the gallery said: In Wild Shade, we are invited as viewers to experience Molletts enchanting paintings as potential thresholds for transformation.

By visiting the springs, Mollett references the expansive qualities that these places embody and compares this experience to painting. An openness to how corporeal and imaginative states react in a physical process can bring about discoveries beyond our expectations.

Meanwhile, the exhibition From Nature will run until April 24. The gallery in Market Place extended the exhibition after it was forced to close due to coronavirus lockdown restrictions.

This exhibition comprises work produced by artists from around the world with each using different materials for their pieces.

The artists are Forest + Found, Rain Wu, Jamie North, Nienke Hoogvliet, Peter Matthews, Jesper Eriksson and Harriet Hellman.

Materials include coal, wood, root and bone pigment, slag and clay.
Army Spc. 5 Dwight Birdwell, of Bell, was awarded two Silver Star Medals for his valor while serving in Vietnam. One of those medals is being considered for an upgrade to the Medal of Honor, the nations highest honor for valor on the battlefield.
Half of US adults have received at least one COVID-19 shot

Half of US adults have received at least one COVID-19 shot View Photo

WASHINGTON (AP)  Half of all adults in the U.S. have received at least one COVID-19 shot, the government announced Sunday, marking another milestone in the nations largest-ever vaccination campaign but leaving more work to do to convince skeptical Americans to roll up their sleeves.

Almost 130 million people 18 or older have received at least one dose of a vaccine, or 50.4% of the total adult population, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. Almost 84 million adults, or about 32.5% of the population, have been fully vaccinated.

The U.S. cleared the 50% mark just a day after the reported global death toll from the coronavirus topped a staggering 3 million, according to totals compiled by Johns Hopkins University, though the actual number is believed to be significantly higher.

The countrys vaccination rate, at 61.6 doses administered per 100 people, currently falls behind Israel, which leads among countries with at least 5 million people with a rate of 119.2. The U.S. also trails the United Arab Emirates, Chile and the United Kingdom, which is vaccinating at a rate of 62 doses per 100 people, according to Our World in Data, an online research site.

The vaccine campaign offered hope in places like Nashville, Tennessee, where the Music City Center bustled Sunday with vaccine seekers. High demand for appointment-only shots at the convention center has leveled off enough that walk-ins will be welcome starting this week.

Amanda Grimsley, who received her second shot, said shes ready to see her 96-year-old grandmother, who lives in Alabama and has been nervous about getting the vaccine after having a bad reaction to a flu shot.

Its a little emotional. I havent been able to see my grandmother in a year and a half almost, said Grimsley, 35. And thats the longest my entire family has ever gone without seeing her. And well be seeing her in mid-May now.

The states with the highest vaccination rates have a history of voting Democratic and supporting President Joe Biden in the 2020 election: New Hampshire at the top, with 71.1%, followed by New Mexico, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine, CDC data show.

The demand has not been the same in many areas of Tennessee  particularly, rural ones.

Tennessee sits in the bottom four states for rates of adults getting at least one shot, at 40.8%. Its trailed only by Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi  three other Southern states that lean Republican and voted for Donald Trump last fall.

Vaccination rates do not always align with how states vote. But polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research has shown trends that link political leanings and attitudes about the vaccines and other issues related to the pandemic, which has killed more than 566,000 people in the U.S.

A poll conducted in late March found that 36% of Republicans said they will probably or definitely not get vaccinated, compared with 12% of Democrats. Similarly, a third of rural Americans said they were leaning against getting shots, while fewer than a fourth of people living in cities and suburbs shared that hesitancy.

Overall, willingness to get vaccinated has risen, polling shows.

In January, 67% of adult Americans were willing to get vaccinated or had already received at least one shot. The figure has climbed to 75%, according to the latest AP-NORC poll.

Nationwide, 24% of Black Americans and 22% of Hispanic Americans say they will probably or definitely not get vaccinated, down from 41% and 34% in January, respectively. Among white Americans, 26% now say they will not get vaccinated. In January, that number was 31%.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nations top infectious disease expert, said the goal is to get community figures, from athletes to clergy, to encourage vaccinations, particularly as the seven-day national average of cases remains over 60,000 new infections per day.

What we are doing is were trying to get, by a community core, trusted messages that anyone would feel comfortable with listening to, whether youre a Republican, a Democrat, an independent or whomever you are, that youre comfortable, Fauci said Sunday on ABCs This Week.

Fauci also indicated Sunday that the government will likely move to resume use of Johnson & Johnsons COVID-19 vaccine this week, possibly with restrictions or broader warnings after reports of some very rare blood clot cases.

In a series of news show interviews, Fauci said he expects a decision when advisers to the CDC meet Friday to discuss the pause in J&Js single-dose vaccine.

I would be very surprised if we dont have a resumption in some form by Friday, he said. I dont really anticipate that theyre going to want it stretch it out a bit longer.

Fauci, who is President Joe Bidens chief medical adviser, said he believed federal regulators could bring the shots back with limits based on age or gender, or with a blanket warning, so the vaccine is administered in a way a little bit different than we were before the pause.

The J&J vaccine was thrown into limbo after the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration said last week that they needed more evidence to decide if a handful of unusual blood clots were linked to the shot  and if so, how big the risk is.

The reports are rare  six cases out of more than 7 million U.S. inoculations with the J&J vaccine. The clots were found in women between the ages of 18 and 48. One person died.

Authorities stressed that they have found no sign of clot problems with the most widely used COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S.  from Moderna and Pfizer.

___

Mattise reported from Nashville, Tennessee.

By HOPE YEN and JONATHAN MATTISE

Associated Press
[April 19, 2021] Best Essay Writing Services in USA: Trusted Reviews 2021

SEATTLE, April 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Stressays surveyed 24,000 students at 50 American colleges and universities on the subject of essay writing services to determine the most popular companies that students use to get help with their assignments.

62 percent of students said they used PaperHelp either for an essay or homework assignment at least once. We have investigated the current situation on the market and created a list of the best essay writing services in the United States of America. Read our essay writing service reviews below to be able to compare the companies and choose the one that fits your needs best. The following sites were ranked based on popularity, quality of papers they write, writers professionalism, and quality of customer service. Top 5 Essay Writing Services You Can Rely On 1. PaperHelp  the best choice for complex assignments

PaperHelp is a well-known essay writing service not only in the USA, but all over the world. It has been helping students with their essays for over 15 years and gathered a team of passionate and highly-educated essay writers who are capable of delivering orders of any complexity. This is a one-stop solution for all your homework problems. They have great experience in writing admission essays, term papers, solving math equations, providing customers with the editing and proofreading services. You can even order a dissertation written from scratch or ask a professional to proofread or copy-edit one of its sections. PaperHelp has average prices, the cost of essay writing starts at $10 per page. Pros Ph.D. level quality of papers

On-time delivery

Reasonable pricing (from $10 per page)

Rock-solid money back guarantee

Easy-to-use website, easy to place an order

It is possible to pay in any currency (USD, EUR, CAD, GBP, AUD)

Easy-to-use website, easy to place an order

Cons Sometimes its hard to find writers for peculiar subjects like programming or engineering

You have to pay extra for the plagiarism report



2. ExpertWriting  cheap service, good value for money ExpertWriting is a popular academic writing service that delivers original papers on time. Here, you will get original essays of high quality and will be offered to make use of all the options a reliable essay writing service should have. ExpertWriting focuses on the customers major needs. One of them is anonymity. This company never shares your data with third parties or asks you to provide more details than it is needed to make the payment. ExpertWriting delivers original, properly cited papers written by both ENL and ESL essay writers. For this reason, its among the top essay writing services that students hire. Using ExpertWriting is completely anonymous, as even the writers dont get to see any of your personal information. You are identified in the system by a personal ID number, no names shared. ExpertWriting is a good choice for those who want to stay anonymous and certainly for those who value good quality. Pros: Cheap service, good value for money

Regular discounts, generous loyalty program

Quick delivery (3-hour turnaround available)

Very strong aftercare service, the company is willing to improve and respond to negative feedback Cons: Urgent orders arent so cheap

Customer service can be very slow and unhelpful



3. EssayPro  excellent for urgent orders

EssayPro proudly resides on position number three on our list of best writing services for a reason. It definitely has the customers best interest in mind. The main advantage of EssayPro is that its an essay-writing marketplace where you can choose a writer for your task based on their reviews, qualifications and experience. Your essay could be done in just a few hours here. You can choose either an ESL or an ENL writer among hundreds of candidates. This essay writing service offers round-the-clock support and has implemented an unprecedented system f email and SMS alerts customers get when the status of their order has been changed. They dont take control from you. They just help you to manage your tasks and do it better than anyone.



Pros: More than 500 professional essay writers available

Vast choice of subjects and disciplines, you can find a writer for any task

Urgent service, you can have your essay written in 2-3 hours

Cons:

Rare and small discounts, special offers are almost nonexistent

Most writers are from Kenya, its hard to find a writer from the U.S.



4. GradeMiners  the most versatile This is the best essay writing service according to Yahoo , SiteJabber, TrustPilot and other trusted sources. The company has tons of positive feedback online. Although this site is more expensive than others, the quality of writing matches the high price so you can use this service even if you need very complex papers.

GradeMiners has a great in-house team of professional writers who always deliver top-notch papers. All writers who work at GradeMiners hold U.S. degrees, so theres no surprise that this service is more expensive than services that work with ESL writers or freelancers. If you dont want to edit your paper or request multiple revisions, GradeMiners is the best option. Pros: Excellent quality of writing

Good customer support

You can choose a professional essay writer from the U.S.

Numerous discounts and a referral program Cons: GradeMiners is expensive, especially if your deadline is urgent

Rude customer service

Payments are only available in USD



If youre not satisfied with your paper, you can request a free revision within 10 days after receiving the paper. However, most customers note that they didnt even need to request any revisions. This service has a great online reputation so it publishes real reviews from third-party platforms on the website. A simple essay will cost you from $11, but you can get promo codes if you contact the company on social media.



5. 99Papers  popular among international students

99Papers is a renowned paper writing service that is especially popular among students in the U.K. and Canada. This company prides itself in on-time delivery, great quality and reliable customer service. Most of the time, 99Papers delivers papers of good quality. The average grade for an essay written by 99Papers is 80%. It's getting more and more popular, because the company is willing to improve and get better. Previously, 99Papers didn't have a money-back guarantee. However, now that they have started offering it to their customers, you are fully protected in case you're not satisfied with the quality of your paper. 99Papers writes all types of academic papers, including essays, research papers (term papers), theses, dissertations and more. Pros: Good quality

Quick delivery

Generally positive online reputation

Great choice of writers and editors Cons: The company doesnt have a loyalty program

Revisions are needed, some writers dont follow instructions

This isnt a cheap service, especially compared to ExpertWriting

FAQs Is It Illegal to Hire Someone to Write My Essay? Essay writing services are absolutely legal, as there is no law that forbids usage of such services. Essay writing companies break no laws and have the same features as tutoring services. The only thing that could provoke doubts is the final purpose of the papers. Essay writing companies begin their work after signing the T&C agreement with a customer, and a customer must agree that they understand all the risks involved with using such service. Officially, you cant hand in a paper that you bought online. Each essay writing service warns their customers that the papers they provide could be used only as examples for referencing. The customer is responsible for the final use of custom papers he got and has to be familiar with the rules his college follows in this field. Top rated essay writing services provide their help legally and according to their inner policies. These companies help students to improve their grades by assisting them with their homework. They show how they can improve their overall performance and try to prevent missing the deadlines further on. It is a kind of instruction that each student needs at least once on her studying path. Ethical issues might occur only if a student will decide to misuse help he had got and, for example, submit an essay he got as his own. It is against essay writing services rules and probably can harm his reputation. Are Essay Writing Services Reliable? Not all of them, but the majority are. Essay writing companies work hard to earn a good reputation and earn students trust. Even one tiny mistake can cause a total failure, as the main advertising tool  the word of mouth  is still amazingly effective and fast. The best essay writing service reviews are based on real experience, so its worth asking your friends for recommendations. There are quite a few fraudulent companies on the market, but you can easily avoid them by reading trusted college paper writing service reviews on Yahoo, TrustPilot and SiteJabber. Are Essay Writing Services Legit and Safe to Use? Yes, there are many legitimate essay writing services, and ExpertWriting is one of them. This site is popular on Reddit and has a great reputation online. Legitimate companies usually have an offline office where you can come and meet the owner, for example. It is not obligatory, but could be helpful when you will be deciding which service to choose. If essay writing services werent legit, they wouldn't be so popular among students. Read essay service reviews to say away from scams. No one wants to get in trouble, and a trusted essay writing service won't get you into any trouble for sure. How do I Hire Someone to Write My College Essay? The best way to do it is to go to one of the reliable essay writing services and fill up the order form. Or, in case you have too much details and requirements, write the customer support representative to make all the arrangements. Best essay writing services are usually more consistent in quality rather than freelancers that you can hire on Reddit or elsewhere on the internet. Specialized essay writing sites give you more guarantees, so it is reasonable to choose them over random essay writers on the internet, even if they claim that theyre professional. Are Essay Writing Services Worth It? It depends on your assignment and a unique situation that youre in. If you have a full-time job and you cant keep up with all the college assignments, then using a paper writing service is a smart choice. If you have a one-page essay due in, say, five days and youre just plain lazy to write it by yourself, then its not worth it. Its better to overcome the laziness and write your paper by yourself, because this way you will have a chance to improve your essay-writing skills. You wont need any help if you invest time into learning how to write essays and excel at this skill. How to Find Genuine Essay Writing Service Reviews? There are few review platforms that publish real reviews as they have strict policy for new clients. You can find genuine reviews on the websites like SiteJabber, TrustPilot, ResellerRatings. Also, you can find reviews on the essay writing services websites, but they deserve a lower level of trust, as any company can put anything on their website and you wont be able to verify the legitimacy of it. The only sure way to find real and honest best essay writing service reviews is to look for them on Reddit or in social media. Other than that, if you want to know more about some popular website, ask your friends from college who have already used a writing service. No doubt, theyve used them and will be able to provide you with some kind of inside information. If there is a request  there is an offer Students have got an opportunity to get professional academic writing assistance about 20 years ago. At first, it was random websites and freelance writers who offered their help at very low cost. It was more of psychological support. But soon it brought wonderful results and turned into a regular extremely popular service. These five best paper writing services didnt appear out of nowhere. Students have always been struggling with lots of homework and difficult assignments. Today, there are many places where they can come and get essay help, and thats a good thing. All they have to do is to get informed about the risks associated with using such sites. Here are some notable companies that didnt make it to our list due to various reasons: BestEssays, MasterPapers, TopEssayWriting, MyPerfectWords.



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The first two races held on a narrow course laid out in the streets of Monaco in 1929 and 1930 were won by William Grover-Williams and Rene Dreyfus, who both drove Bugattis.On April 19, 1931, at the third edition of the famed Grand Prix, more than half of the cars on the starting grid were also manufactured in Molsheim, an indication of just how good these racing machines were at the time.Among the drivers battling for supremacy in the 100-lap race were four factory Bugatti Type 51s driven by Guy Bouriat, Achille Varzi, Albert Divo, and local hero Louis Chiron.Born on August 3, 1899, in Monte Carlo, Alexandre Louis Chiron had a passion for everything that was powered by an internal combustion engine from an early age.When he was 15 years old, he learned to drive, and by the time the First World War ended, he started entering various Grand Prix as a private Bugatti driver.In the 1928 Gran Prix season, he became a rising star driving a Type 35 C to victory in the Rome Grand Prix, Marne Grand Prix, San Sebastian Grand Prix, and European Grand Prix held at Monza.Unfortunately for Chiron, the following two seasons werent as successful, as he only managed to win the Belgian Grand Prix in 1930. The biggest disappointment was his failure to win the second edition of the Monaco Grand Prix, finishing second.Next year, he came back to his hometown determined to win the already-iconic race. Starting in 11th place, the Monegasque remained among the leading drivers in the midfield before steadily fighting his way to the front. By the end of the 20th lap, he and fellow Bugatti works driver Achille Varzi occupied the leading positions, followed closely by three Maserati drivers.After another 80 grueling laps on the 1.97-mile (3.18-kilometer) makeshift circuit, only nine cars were still racing, and Chirons Bugatti crossed the finish line first, much to the delight of his fellow countrymen.The Type 51 he drove was a further development of the successful Type 35 B powered by a 2.3-liter eight-cylinder with an output of approximately 190 PS (187 hp). The output was made possible in large part because of a new block and cylinder head with twin camshafts driven by spur gears. Additionally, superior airflow as delivered by a Roots-type supercharger. Weighing only 176 lbs (850 kg), this innovative race car was capable of reaching speeds of almost 143 mph (230 kph), and its agility proved unbeatable on such a narrow city circuit.The triumph at Monaco was the culmination of what had been a unique career for Louis Chiron up to that point. He was 31 years old at the time and continued to race until 1938 when he retired. After the Second World War ended, he resumed his career, participating in various competitions, including Formula One until 1958.In a storybook ending, the legendary driver won the 1954 Monte Carlo Rally. Then, a few years before turning 55, he raced a Lancia D50 to sixth place at the 1955 Monaco Grand Prix, becoming the oldest driver to finish an F1 race. That was Chirons last official race, although he continued as a test driver for Scuderia Centro Sud in 1956 and Andre Testuts private team in 1958.He permanently retired as a driver after 35 years of racing but maintained an executive role with the organizers of the Monaco Grand Prix throughout the years.Louis Chiron is remembered as one of the best drivers of his era and among the most influential in the early history of Bugatti. The company honored him by naming the 1999 Bugatti 18/3 Chiron concept car and the 2016 Bugatti Chiron hypercar after him.
On Friday night, hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Logan Square Park on Chicagos Northwest Side to protest the killing of Adam Toledo, the 13-year-old boy who was fatally shot by Chicago cop Eric Stillman in the working class neighborhood of Little Village on the citys Southwest Side early in the morning on March 29.

Demonstrators marched en route to Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoots residence in the Logan Square neighborhood, which swelled to thousands. Police barricades set up near the mayors home prevented the crowd from getting close and police made preparations to suppress demonstrations throughout the weekend and coming days.

Demonstrators protest the shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo, Friday, April 16, 2021, in Logan Park in Chicago. (AP Photo/Shafkat Anowar)

In scenes reminiscent of the protests that unfolded across the US in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd last summer, police were caught on video brutally attacking peaceful protesters at the rally around 10 p.m. Friday night. A 20-second video posted on Twitter by BLMChicago shows officers manhandling protesters, wrestling some to the ground as they try to break free, and using batons to strike those who tried to help fellow demonstrators who had been pushed down by police.

Police arrested at least two non-violent participants in the demonstrations late Friday night. Twenty-year-old Anthony McCollum III was about to leave the protest at Logan Square Park when police began pushing and hitting people with batons, according to McCollums mother, Chicago Black Lives Matter executive director Amika Tendaji, who was beside him at the protest. Chicago police arrested McCollum on misdemeanor charges for reckless conduct, but Tendaji insisted he was trying to shield and pull up people who fell to the ground, according to ABC7 News.

An 18-year-old Logan Square resident, Graham Lefauve, was also arrested and charged with misdemeanor battery for spitting while riding a bike past uniformed officers inside an unmarked police vehicle, according to the Chicago Tribune .

The ongoing protests are the expression of the outrage of the working class, youth and broader public to the April 15 release of police body camera footage of the murder of Toledo and the continuing epidemic of police violence against the working class and youth across the United States. The footage shows Stillman pursuing Toledo on foot in an alleyway in Little Village after responding to reports of shots fired in the neighborhood. In the video, Stillman shouts at Toledo to drop the gun he is holding in his hand.

After complying with Stillmans orders to show me your f*cking hands, the footage shows Toledo unarmed with his hands raised turned to face Stillman. The officer shot him in the chest less than one second later. The boy immediately fell to the ground and was unresponsive to medical aid.

On Saturday, ABC7 Chicago reported that an attorney for the Cook County States Attorneys Office had been placed on administrative leave Friday, following false statements in court that Toledo was holding a gun while shota statement that is blatantly contradicted by video evidence.

The false statements given by the States Attorneys Office in court follow the narrative initially put forward by Mayor Lightfoot, a Democrat, at an April 5 press conference. Lets be clear. An adult put a gun in a childs hand. A young and impressionable child. And one who should not have been provided with lethal force. A weapon that could and did irreparably change the course of his life.

Lightfoots statements have a political purpose. Her attempt to somehow hold the 13-year-old responsible for his own murder by police, before bodycam footage was released to the public, are a part of the Democratic Partys efforts to sweep police violence under the rug and promote the idea that reforms can address the epidemic of police violence which ravages working class communities.

The lies promoted by both Lightfoot and the States Attorneys Office regarding the circumstances of the shooting show that the Democratic Party in Chicago, up to the highest level, will not critically address police violence in the city. Their false and misleading statements parroted the Chicago Police Department (CPD), whose tactical response report following the shooting claimed falsely that Toledo posed imminent threat of battery with weapon and used force likely to cause death or bodily harm. The report, along with the video of the incident that exposes these false statements, is on file with the Chicago Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA).

Before the release of the videos on Thursday, Lightfoot defended Stillman at a news conference. She tried to cover up for the point-blank shooting of a 13-year-old, saying that footage showed that officer spring into action to try to revive Adam, to call for medical assistance I know most officers go through their whole career and they never fire their weapon in the line of duty I also know that every time it happens, its extraordinarily traumatizing for them.  There are a lot of people who will probably be angry hearing me say that, but that is the fact.

Stillmans lawyer, Adam Grace, of law firm Grace and Thompson, has a history of defending Chicago police officers and the police union against misconduct charges. Grace told local news outlet Block Club Chicago, I do not think he will be prosecuted for a crime, and I do believe that  he will be exonerated of any type of a charge.

Lightfoots track record of defending the police won her the support of the ruling class in the 2019 Chicago mayoral elections. The former prosecutor was appointed to lead the Chicago Police Board in 2015 and later became chair of the Police Accountability Task Force. Before that, she worked as a cleaner for the Democratic administration of former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel before her, suppressing the release of footage of the 2014 police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.

Her 2019 mayoral campaign was propped up with the empty promise of police reform in a city where the poorest working class residents have been subjected to decade after decade of brutality at the hands of police. This promise proved to be an abject lie, as Lightfoots administration actively sought to cover up the 2019 police raid on the home of social worker Anjanette Young. Young, who was not the subject of an investigation, was forced to stand naked and traumatized for minutes while cops searched her home, later revealing that they had the wrong address.

Stillman, the officer who killed Toledo, has had three misconduct complaints against him since he joined the CPD in 2015, two of which involve improper search, according to Invisible Institute, an investigative organization that tracks police misconduct. None of the complaints have resulted in disciplinary measures, which is par for the course for the majority of police misconduct allegations nationwide.

Members of Toledos family are distraught after the release of the footage. His older brother, Marco Toledo, told ABC News that Adam was a loving and caring brother and cousin, and spoke out against the attempts to paint his brother as a bad kid like everyone says he was.

No matter what people say, kids will be kids and will make mistakes, but will learn from themsomething my little brother didnt get the chance to do.
Music industrys center of gravity is shifting (again), says Mark Mulligan

In a stance certain to displease stakeholders who have so much invested in music streaming, Mark Mulligan and the analysts at MIDiA are making the case that a coming revolution in creator tools will be as impactful to the entire music business as streaming was.

a new top-of-funnel that sits above distribution companies

By Mark Mulligan of MIDiA and the Music Industry blog

Regular readers will know that MIDiA has been analyzing the creator tool space for some time now and building the case for why the changes that are taking place will be transformational not just for the creator tools space itself but for the music business as a whole. In fact, we believe that the coming creator tools revolution could be at least as impactful on the wider music business as streaming was.

Firstly, it establishes a new top-of-funnel that sits above distribution companies, meaning that creator tools companies are now able to fish upstream of labels for the best new talent. Secondly, audio will become the next tool with which consumers identify themselves, following the lead of images (Instagram) and video (TikTok). But there is another factor too: the fast-growing volume of institutional investment is changing where the centrifugal forces of the music industry reside.

Outside of the currently crippled live business, the record labels used to be the undisputed central force of the music business. Then streaming services grew in scale and attracted the first wave of inward investment into the industry. Alongside labels, streaming services became the joint central force of the music business, around which all else orbited. Big investors started to make bets on either side of a binary equation: rights or distribution.

The publishing renaissance

Then music publishers and publishing catalogues started to attract investment. At the time, the only real place big institutional investors could place their bets on the rights side of the equation was Vivendi  and even then, it was an indirect bet as UMG was just one part of Vivendi. SME is just too small a part of Sony Corporation for the parent company to be a viable music industry bet. Since then, UMG divested 20% of its equity and is on path towards an IPO; WMG went public and Believe is on track to an IPO also.

When growth isnt growth

Investors may be given pause for thought by the way in which leading music industry trade associations such as ARIA in Australia and Promusicae in Spain have restated their 2019 figures, having the effect of making what would otherwise be declines in 2020 instead look like growth. Take a look at Australia (2019 total revenues AUD 555 million here versus 2019 total revenues AUD 505 million here) and Spain (2019 subscriptions 159 million here versus 2019 subscriptions 138 million here).

Publishing catalogues by contrast look more predictable, with performance still largely shaped by non-recorded music market trends, including radio and public performance  though COVID-19 threw a lot of that stability down the toilet. Music publishers used the inward investment to diversify their businesses. Kobalt pushed into artist distribution (recently sold to Sony), neighbouring rights and a PRO; Downtown pushed hard into the independent creator sector (CD Baby, Songtrust); while Reservoir is going public with a Spac merger; and then of course there is Hipgnosis.

The creator tools gold rush

With music publishing catalogue valuations over-heating, big investors started looking for places where they could still play in the music market but get better value for money. Enter stage left creator tools. Key moves include Francisco Partners moves for Native Instruments and Izotope; Summit Partners investment in Output; and Goldman Sachs investment in Splice.

What this means is that the music industry now has an additional gravitational force at its core. Just as music publishers and streaming services used their newfound investment to push into other parts of the music and audio businesses, expect creator tools companies to do the same. With hundreds of millions of dollars pouring into creator tools (and lots more set to follow), investors are making big bets on audio in a broader sense, with bold ambitions that will not be sated by staying in the creator tools lane as it is currently defined. Avids recent move into distribution follows on from LANDRs similar move, and of course Bandlab has 30 million users. Adding label-like services (e.g. marketing, debt financing) and streaming functionality are logical next steps for creator tools companies.

Streaming may be the change agent that has enabled all of these shifts  but streaming is the start of the story, not the endpoint. The process of music business diversification is only just beginning and the next chapter may be the most exciting yet.

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New research is shining light on the importance of farmers' markets' ability to mitigate potential disruptions to distribution networks in the face of system shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic

New research is shining light on the importance of farmers' markets' ability to mitigate potential disruptions to distribution networks in the face of system shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a recent study, the researchers found the markets' regional characteristics play a key role in the decision to move all or parts of their operations online -- and how that decision can help or hinder its surrounding community.

"By building online communities through their social media and website tools, farmers' markets can play a role in keeping the community connected and supporting a sustainable and just food system through the pandemic and beyond," said researcher Josalyn Radcliffe, a PhD student in Waterloo's School of Public Health and Health Systems.

"The decision to transition online must always be anchored in the unique context of the organization."

That is why many southern farmers' markets across Canada were able to go online during the pandemic, but many in the North opted to stay in-person. The Yellowknife Farmers Market was one such case, choosing to pursue an adapted outdoor market, albeit with a "Shop, Don't Stop" message that fits with the emphasis on community expressed by patrons and the event-like atmosphere valued by many.

"While areas south of Yellowknife have more capacity to grow food, challenges regarding equitable access to electricity and internet and the potential for disruption in food access are common issues to markets in the Northwest Territories," said Kelly Skinner, a professor in the School of Public Health and Health Systems.

"Still, online spaces may be a valuable tool to mitigate potential disruptions to distribution networks due to the impacts of climate change and help facilitate the growth of the local food sector in the North."

Skinner collaborated with other researchers at Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University and the Yellowknife Farmers Market on a study of the market, which typically runs from June to September and attracts hundreds of people per week.

They conducted surveys during the 2019 market season, offering both a short flipchart dot survey, completed by 59 patrons and a longer questionnaire, completed by 31 patrons. A vendor survey was postponed due to COVID-19.

The results of the two patron surveys showed that this farmers' market was distinct: 58 per cent of Yellowknife consumers came to eat dinner, enjoy the atmosphere and support local businesses. At other markets across Canada, only two per cent attend primarily for the dining options, prioritizing instead the purchase of fresh and local foods. Most patrons at the Yellowknife market attended as couples and spent more than half their time talking to others.

The study also noted that online farmers' markets can be great opportunities to complement in-person relationships, share knowledge and maintain connections.

###

The study, Virtual barriers: unpacking the sustainability implications of online food spaces and the Yellowknife Farmers Market's response to COVID-19, was published in Nutrition Journal. It was co-authored by Waterloo researchers Radcliffe, Skinner and Professor Warren Dodd, Wilfrid Laurier University's Andrew Spring, Yellowknife grower France Benoit and Yellowknife Farmers Market's Lise Picard.
Stocktrek

A recent opinion piece (Deep South in climate crosshairs April 6) focused on extreme tornadoes in the South as one more reminder that the climate crisis is here now. This extreme weather makes clear the urgency to transition immediately away from fossil fuels.



Gov. Andrew Cuomos administration must reject the application by Danskammer Energy for a rebuilt fracked-gas power plant in Newburgh. Applications for new gas-powered plants are the last gasp of a dying fossil fuel industry.



New York state passed groundbreaking climate legislation in 2019, committing to transition to almost entirely clean energy by 2040. A new fracked-gas power plant cannot possibly conform to the states urgently needed climate goals.



The claim the rebuilt plant would be cleaner than the old one fails to point out that the new plant would run nearly all the time, replacing a peaker plant. The developer asserts the plant would ultimately be hydrogen-powered but that is not currently feasible for this sized plant so the proposal cannot be subject to a full environmental analysis.



The Public Service Commission is one of the key state agencies tasked with implementing state climate policy  and this is a precedent-setting case.



The Siting Board needs to send a clear signal to the energy industry that it is time to invest in renewable energy and battery storage, not fossil fuel plants. Then the Cuomo administration and the Legislature, under the leadership of Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, must pass legislation to ban all new fossil fuel power plants.



Peggy Kurtz

Upper Nyack
Xi attends video summit with French, German leaders

Xinhua) 09:12, April 17, 2021

Chinese President Xi Jinping attends a video summit with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Beijing, capital of China, April 16, 2021. (Xinhua/Li Xueren)

BEIJING, April 16 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping attended a video summit with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Beijing on Friday.

The leaders of the three countries exchanged in-depth views on cooperation in coping with climate change, China-Europe relations, anti-pandemic cooperation, and major international and regional issues.

Xi stressed that he always advocates building a community with a shared future for humanity and stands ready to strengthen cooperation with France and Germany on addressing climate change.

"I announced that China will strive to peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. It means China, as the world's largest developing country, will complete the world's most dramatic reduction in carbon emission intensity, and realize carbon neutrality from carbon peaking in the shortest time in global history," he said.

He said the task is extremely challenging but China will deliver on its promise.

Xi said China has included carbon peaking and carbon neutrality in its overall plan for ecological conservation, and promoted the development of a green and low-carbon circular economy in an all-round way. China has decided to accept the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol and strengthen the control of non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gases such as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), he added.

Responding to climate change is the common cause of all humanity, he said, adding that it should not be a bargaining chip for geopolitics, a target for attacking other countries, or an excuse for trade barriers.

Xi said China will adhere to the principles of equity, common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, promote the implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement, and actively develop South-South cooperation on climate change.

It is hoped that developed economies will set an example in reducing emissions and take the lead in fulfilling their funding commitments to provide adequate technical and capacity-building support for developing countries to tackle climate change, Xi said.

Noting that the COVID-19 pandemic is still spreading globally, and the world faces daunting tasks in global economic recovery, Xi said China-Europe relations are facing new development opportunities and various challenges. He called for firmly grasping the overall development direction of China-Europe ties from a strategic height.

China will expand high-level opening-up and create a fair, just, and non-discriminatory business environment for foreign-invested enterprises, including French and German companies, he said. He expressed the hope that Europe can also treat Chinese enterprises with such a positive attitude and work together with China to strengthen the China-Europe green and digital partnerships and enhance cooperation in combating the pandemic.

Xi said China opposes "vaccine nationalism" and a man-made vaccine divide, and is willing to work with the international community, including France and Germany, to ensure timely access to vaccines for the developing world.

China stands ready to work with the International Olympic Committee to provide vaccines to athletes preparing to enter the Olympic Games, he said.

Macron said that France welcomes China's announcement to become carbon-neutral before 2060. Such a massive commitment reflects China's initiative to assume significant responsibilities. France is willing to work with China to promote the further progress of France-China and Europe-China economic relations, help Africa achieve green development, and help developing countries reduce their debt.

Vaccines should not become a tool for competition among major countries, Macron said. He added that France is willing to strengthen cooperation with China on the equitable distribution of vaccines and strengthen coordination on regional issues, including the Iran nuclear issue.

Merkel said that it is extremely important for Germany, France, and China to strengthen cooperation in tackling climate change. The nationally determined contributions China announced are both ambitious and challenging and are very important in coping with climate change globally.

She said that Europe is willing to strengthen policy communication and alignment with China. China's economy realized a recovery growth first, which is good news for the world. Germany values the opportunities that the implementation of China's 14th Five-Year Plan brings to Germany-China and Europe-China cooperation, and is willing to deepen mutually beneficial economic and trade cooperation with China, strengthen communication on issues such as the digital economy and network security, and treat enterprises from all countries equally and avoid trade barriers.

She expressed the hope that with joint efforts from both sides, the EU-China investment agreement will take effect at an early date.

The three leaders agreed that it is necessary to uphold multilateralism, fully implement the Paris Agreement, and jointly build a fair, reasonable, cooperative, and win-win global climate governance system, and promote this summit to achieve positive, balanced, and pragmatic results.

They agreed to strengthen climate policy dialogue and green development cooperation, and make climate change cooperation an important pillar in China-Europe cooperation.

All sides agreed to coordinate in running the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity to be held this year in China's Kunming, the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Britain, and the 7th International Union for Conservation of Nature's World Conservation Congress in the French city of Marseilles, to create a new pattern of global environmental governance.

The three leaders agreed to support COVAX, promote the healthy, safe, and orderly personnel exchanges, safeguard the smooth and stable industrial chain and promote the international economic and trade cooperation return to normalcy at an early date.

They also support the development of energy supply in developing countries in an efficient, clean, and diversified direction.

(Web editor: Xian Jiangnan, Bianji)
With an aim to remedy the health, economic, and societal ills accentuated by the devastating COVID-19 pandemiceven as the virus again surges in different areas of the United States and Latin Americahealth experts explored a range of topics at the virtual half-day Business of Health Care conference on April 16.

Steven Ullmann, director of the Center for Health Management and Policy at the University of Miami Patti and Allan Herbert Business School, launched the 10th annual conference, themed Policy, Politics, and the Pandemicthe U.S. and Beyond, welcoming the more than 1,200 registered viewers. University President Julio Frenk provided opening remarks.

The most striking aspect of this pandemic is the huge variation in national responses and in their corresponding results, said Frenk, a renowned global public health expert, adding yet that variation provides an opportunity for shared learning.

Frenk highlighted that the confluence of crises in the regionpublic health, financial, and socialexacerbated by the pandemic has revealed that health is not just a result of economic development, but one of its key determinants.

A former health minister for Mexico, Frenk said that while he expects the region will address the first two crises within the next 12 to 18 months, the social emergency is not going to go away anytime soon.

There is much talk about a new normal, Frenk said. Yet I believe we have a once-in-a-century opportunity to build a better normaland we shape it with the decisions we make today.

In a headline Q&A session, Donna Shalala, the longest serving U.S. health secretary, a former congresswoman and former University of Miami president, questioned Alex Azar, health secretary for the former Trump administration, on his role in the U.S. initiative to develop a vaccine to combat the coronavirus, transparency in drug pricing, the current Biden administrations health care agenda, and U.S. support for public health efforts in Latin America.

In detailing his participation in Operation Warp Speed, Azar said that his prior experience in government as legal counsel in helping biological and chemical countermeasures for a previous flu and his 10 years as an executive in the pharmaceutical industry were critical in helping to coordinate an effective response team.

Understanding the risk-adverse nature of the pharmaceutical industry and the power of government to do industrial planning defense department-style served me to bring the many partners together and do the unprecedentedwhich was the largest public-private biomedical enterprise in the history of the world, Azar said.

The notion of alliances, partnerships, and sharing information was a key component of the conference.

Carissa Etienne, director of the Pan American Health Organization, moderated the initial session on Health and the Economy in the Americas with health ministers Daniel Salas Paraza of Costa Rica, Enrique Paris of Chile, and Daniel Salinas of Uruguay.

Etienne noted that while the region as a whole became the epicenter of the pandemic, these three countries, exemplars of enlightened polices, managed the crises far better than others. The ministers highlighted that they continued to share information.

Salas noted that Costa Rica has been able to leverage its existing universal health care coverage to enormous advantage and emphasized the importance of leaders encouraging trust within their populations, especially in times of crisis, by providing appropriate information and showing themselves to be empathetic and having the ability to accept feedback.

Pat Geraghty, president and CEO of Florida Bluea principal sponsor of the health care conference since its onsetmoderated a panel of executives of leading professional U.S. health organizations. The session included Susan Bailey, president, American Medical Association; Matthew Eyles, president and CEO, Americas Health Insurance Plans; Joseph Fifer, president and CEO, Healthcare Financial Management Association; Halee Fischer-Wright, president and CEO, Medical Group Management Association; Ernest Grant, president, American Nurses Association; and Lisa Kidder Hrobsky, group vice president, federal relations, American Hospital Association.

The group highlighted the critical importance of federal government support to the health care system through the pandemic, yet noted the existing sobering realities and huge challenges ahead.

Grant detailed a series of surveys indicating increases in mental health concerns, fatigue, and burn-out among nurses and health care workers, generally.

Burn-out was high before and has increased, said Bailey, emphasizing that its a situational issue, not a moral failing or personal weakness. Several of the panelists highlighted that the stigma of health care workers seeking support for such issues is a problem that needs to be addressed.

In terms of vaccine hesitancy among nurses and health care workers, Grant highlighted that hesitancy, as with the general public, has been reduced by providing accurate information and education.

What we have seen is that once their questions were answered and they understood how vaccines work, not only are nurses and health care workers lining up to get their vaccines, but they are also becoming hugely important in encouraging consumers to sign up as well, he said.

And again, as they did at the last business of health care conference, the representatives of leading U.S. health care sectors expressed unanimous support for continuing and expanding the Affordable Care Act.

Were still bullish on the ACA and believe in its continued evolution and making permanent some of the changes, Geraghty said. Everyone should have coverage, and universal health coverage shouldnt be up for debatethe only debate should be how to do it well and effectively.
A major reset of Australias COVID-19 vaccination program will allow people over 50 to get a dose from their doctor or a state-run mass vaccination hub as Prime Minister Scott Morrison calls for a sprint to immunise the bulk of the nation by Christmas.

GPs will continue to be the main focus of the vaccine rollout but state and territory leaders have agreed in principle to bring forward the vaccinations of people aged 50 to 70 with additional help from state hubs using the countrys stock of AstraZeneca vaccines.

National cabinet has agreed in principle to bring forward vaccinations for those aged over 50. Credit:Brook Mitchell

There are strong, strong arguments for the bringing forward of over-50s with the AstraZeneca vaccine, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said before a national cabinet meeting on Monday afternoon.

The first of the new biweekly national cabinet meetings set the stage for a big reset of the countrys vaccine rollout, which has fallen far behind early targets and led to tension between some state governments and the Commonwealth.
Bottom line: Facebooks idea seems in line with other big tech companies like Microsoft and Twitter that have detailed hybrid workplace strategies. Rather than the usual one size fits all approach, these new models attempt to identify the best working conditions for a division, team or even on a per-employee basis. Some people are simply more efficient when nobody else is around, and the pandemic demonstrated that to a lot of companies.

Twitter early in the pandemic said it would allow employees to work from home indefinitely. Now, Facebook is doing something similar.

Brynn Harrington, Facebooks Director of People Growth, recently told the BBC that some employees have been really thriving while working from home. For example, parents who are closer to their children and are happy to cut their commute time and optimize their work day, they're thrilled to work from home, she noted.

Conversely, its not for everyone.

We have people juggling care giving responsibilities, we have people living in small apartments with roommates, those people desperately want to get back into offices, and we're working really hard to do that, as soon as it's safe to open our offices, Harrington added.

As it stands, Facebook is working to reopen its Silicon Valley offices in May but notes that capacity wont reach 50 percent until September at the earliest.

Worth noting, however, is this bit from Harrington. We pay based on the local cost of labor in a market. So there will be variability in terms of pay for remote workers, based on where they work.

Facebook employees with jobs that are eligible for permanent remote working will need to get approval from their managers to do so.

Images courtesy Sharomka, askarim
Katie Price is reportedly 'relieved' after her son Harvey, 18, received his second dose of the coronavirus vaccine with 'no ill effects.'

The teen was rushed to hospital in February after his first dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine caused his temperature to sky-rocket, but has allegedly suffered little reaction to his second dose.

It comes as it was reported that after being vaccinated herself on Friday, Katie and her boyfriend Carl Woods have fallen ill after suffering a 'bad reaction' to the jab.

Happy news: Katie Price is 'relieved' after her son Harvey, 18, received his second dose of the coronavirus vaccine with 'no ill effects'

After being given his second dose last week, Harvey, who is on the autism spectrum and was born with disabilities including partial blindness, ADHD and Prader-Willi syndrome, is now fully vaccinated against the virus.

The Sun revealed that Harvey has now had his second jab, with an insider saying: 'Katie's very worried - she always fears the worst when it comes to Harvey's health but is trying to remain calm...

'Like any mum would be, she's beside herself with worry. It's dangerous as Harvey hasn't got cortisol in his body to fight like us.'

It has now also been reported that Katie and Carl have fallen ill after getting their first jab, struggling with pain, a fever and nausea.

A source told The Sun: 'They are delighted that Harvey is fine this time but they both feel really terrible with a fever, nausea and fatigue.

'Both of them have had really achy arms and Katie is still struggling with the pain now.

Scary: It comes as it was also reported that Katie and her beau Carl Woods have fallen sick with a fever and nausea after receiving their first dose of the vaccine

Ill: A source said: 'Both of them have had really achy arms and Katie is still struggling with the pain now'

'She is feeling unwell at the moment and constantly sick but can't wait for the side effects to subside.'

Katie's representative confirmed to the publication that she was unwell. MailOnline has contacted her representatives for further comment.

Former glamour model Katie received her first Covid vaccine on Friday as she admitted that she 'hates needles'. She took to Instagram to document the moment as she proudly declared afterwards: 'I did it!'

Difficult time: Harvey was rushed to hospital in February after his first dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine caused his temperature to spike but was discharged the next day

Katie captioned the short clip with: 'Finally had my 1st covid and I hate needles but it actually was over before I could start playing up.'

Harvey was rushed to hospital in February following a bad reaction to the COVID-19 vaccine. Katie took to Instagram at the time with Harvey by her side as she revealed he suffered a reaction after taking the first of his Oxford/AstraZeneca jabs.

The mother-of-five revealed that once she got her eldest son home from the hospital, he was back 'on form', requesting chicken Kiev and chips at 4am.

'Harvey is all good', she told her army of followers. 'Thank you for all your kind messages and best wishes for Harvey he is home, safe and well.'

She then went on to discuss Harvey's reaction to the vaccine, saying: 'So because of Harvey's complex needs and the complex medication that he's on he had his COVID [vaccine], the Oxford one, and had just as reaction...

'The reaction was a really, really high temperature, 39.9 [degrees]. And obviously with Harvey, I have to keep a really keen eye and I couldn't get his temperature down...

'So I phoned Great Ormond Street and they told me to go to the nearest A&E that's what we did. Did all your bloods, did an X-ray, blood, ECG, everything...

'Everything was fine, said it was just a reaction from COVID but today, he's absolutely on form, aren't you?...

'And the doctors and nurses were fantastic so I can't wait to still have my COVID injection and I still recommend everyone else have it and Harvey is safe and well.'

It was later in the video that Katie went on to reveal that Harvey was so much back to his old self that he had a culinary request in the early hours of the morning.

After prompting him to share that he was in hospital the night before, she said: 'What did you ask for at four o'clock this morning? Chicken Kiev and chips!'

Katie also encouraged others to still go ahead with getting the Covid vaccine, saying that despite Harvey's reaction it's still so important for high risk people to have it.

Update: In February, Katie took to Instagram with Harvey by her side as she revealed he suffered a reaction after taking the first of his Oxford/AstraZeneca jabs

She told The Sun: 'I don't want anyone worrying about him as he's fine now at home eating carrot cake. Despite Harvey's reaction, he is one of a kind, the Covid jab is so important especially for those in high risk categories.

'I am so much happier in the knowledge Harvey is safer now he has had his.'

Harvey also sweetly thanked his mum's followers for all their well wishes after the scary dash to hospital in a video shared on Instagram.

When Katie asked if he was happy, Harvey told her 'I'm so happy mum' before adding that he wanted to tell their fans: 'Thank you everyone, I love you.'

The update came after she was said to be 'worried to bits' after her son Harvey was rushed to hospital with 'uncontrollable shaking'.

Hours earlier, Harvey, who is on the autism spectrum and was born with disabilities including partial blindness, ADHD and Prader-Willi syndrome, received his first COVID vaccine, having been declared clinically extremely vulnerable.
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Mandatory paid sick leave is a contentious matter in New Mexico.

From the employee perspective, it is only fair that workers can stay home when ill without worrying about how they will support themselves. However, many employers see mandatory paid time off as government overreaching as well as too great a financial burden.

On April 8, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed the Healthy Workplaces Act into law. Employers should closely review the act for nuance, but the following takeaways should be universally informative.

ADVERTISEMENTSkip



................................................................

Whats in the act?

First, it is important to understand the substance of the act. The effective date of July 1, 2022, gives employers plenty of time to plan and prepare for compliance. Under the act, all employees of private employers, regardless of part-time/full-time, exempt/non-exempt, temporary/permanent status, are eligible to accrue one hour of earned sick leave for every 30 hours worked (exempt employees are assumed to work 40 hours per week) beginning on the employees first day and available for use immediately.

There is no maximum accrual; however, the act does limit use to 64 hours per 12-month period with the balance carrying over from year to year. Employers need not worry about liability associated with the accrued time because the act clearly states that it is not to be paid out upon separation from employment. Employers also get to choose the 12-month period from a list of options that include a calendar year and any fixed 12-month period such as a fiscal year or the employees anniversary year. Employers should consider their ability to consistently administer whichever period they elect.

Under the act, employees may use the leave for a broad array of reasons beyond the employees own physical health, including: mental health, medical diagnosis, treatment of a mental or physical illness, and preventive care for the employee or a family member; meetings at a childs school/childcare provider related to the childs health/disability; and for absences related to domestic abuse, sexual assault, or stalking suffered by the employee or a family member. Family member is defined broadly in the act, so it is best to accept the employees assertion of a family relationship.

No specific period of notice can be required before an employee uses earned sick leave, nor can employees be required to cover their shift. Although the act provides that employees should make all reasonable efforts to provide notice and not unduly disrupt the operations of the employer, these statements are aspirational and employers do not have any recourse if they are not followed. Additionally, employers cannot require documentation such as a doctors note unless the employee uses two or more consecutive days of leave. Employers should be mindful of the confidential nature of the circumstances of leave and set up a strong policy/procedure for properly handling requests and documentation.

What if you already offer PTO?

Next, employers with existing PTO policies may only have to make minimal changes to comply with the act. A PTO policy can no longer be limited to certain classes of employee or require completion of an introductory period, nor should use of PTO be limited to specific reasons, and it must provide for more than one hour of PTO for every 30 hours that each employee regularly works.

We recommend adding a provision stating that time off under the policy is expressly authorized for any reason, including all of the reasons stated in the Healthy Workplaces Act. It is important to note that the acts required accrual exceeds that required under Executive Order 13706, which established paid sick leave for federal contractors (56 hours annual maximum accrual). Therefore, private employer federal contractors may also need to update their policies in order to comply.

Anti-retaliation measures

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the act contains strict anti-retaliation provisions prohibiting any adverse employment action associated with employees use of earned sick leave. Management employees should be trained on the provisions of the act to avoid violations.

Cristin Heyns-Bousliman, Esq., is Principal and Practice Leader of REDWs Human Resources Consulting group. REDW is headquartered in Albuquerque and has offices in Phoenix and Edmond, Oklahoma. Heyns-Bouslimans experience includes human resources management and strategy, employee relations and engagement, and compensation and benefits. As a former litigation attorney specializing in employment law, Heyns-Bousliman has an in-depth legal understanding of federal and state employment laws. The executives desk is a guest column providing advice, commentary or information about resources available to the business community in New Mexico. To submit a column for consideration, email gporter@abqjournal.com.

Editors note: An earlier version of this story included an incorrect spelling of the authors name. Her name is Cristin Heyns-Bousliman.
Authorities in Panama have intercepted an unlikely smuggler - a fluffy white cat, bearing an assortment of drugs in a pouch tied to its body as it tried to enter a prison.

The feline felon was stopped outside the Nueva Esperanza jail, which houses more than 1,700 prisoners, in the Caribbean province of Colon, north of the capital Panama City on Friday.

'The animal had a cloth tied around its neck' that contained wrapped packages of white powder, leaves and 'vegetable matter', according to Andres Gutierrez, head of the Panama Penitentiary System.

A white cat bearing an assortment of drugs in a pouch tied to its body as it tried to enter a prison in Colon, Panama on April 16

A white cat in a cage after being intercepted bearing an assortment of drugs in a pouch tied to its body as it tried to enter a prison in Colon, Panama

They were likely cocaine, crack and marihuana, according to another official.

This is not the first such attempted critter crime.

Prisoners use food to lure animals to them, once the creatures had been loaded with drugs by people on the outside.

The office of the drugs prosecutor of Colon said on Twitter it had opened an investigation into the use of animals for smuggling illegal substances into the Nueva Esperanza Prison.

An assortment of drugs seized in a pouch tied to a cat as it tried to enter a prison in Colon, Panama on April 16

It posted photographs of the drugs, and of the cat caught in the act.

The animal will be taken to a pet adoption center, according to prosecutor Eduardo Rodriguez.

Panama has some 18,000 inmates in 23 prisons, most of them overcrowded.

On previous occasions, authorities have intercepted attempted drug deliveries using homing pigeons and even drones.
Apr. 19Bill McCamley just quit one of the most difficult, demanding and depressing jobs in state government.

He headed the agency that for a year has tried to manage the claims of more than 100,000 unemployed people at a time.

McCamley stuck to canned statements regarding his departure, but he was definitive about one part of his future.

I asked him if he would make another run for Congress.

"No sir," McCamley wrote in a text message.

What are you running for, if anything?

"Nothing," McCamley replied.

He probably expected those questions. McCamley, 43, has been running for public offices for more than a third of his life.

At 26, he was elected as a Dona Ana County commissioner. By 29, McCamley was running for Congress in the 2nd District, which sprawls across the southern half of the state. He lost to an oilman in the Democratic primary election.

At 32, McCamley lost again, this time to a Republican for a seat on the state Public Regulation Commission. He rebounded at 34, winning the first of three terms as a state representative.

McCamley had higher ambitions than the Legislature. He gave up his seat to run for state auditor in 2018.

It was the job he coveted. McCamley holds a master's degree in public policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. The thought of becoming state auditor fit his interests and energized him.

As a legislator, McCamley wouldn't accept so much as a cup of coffee or lunch from lobbyists. He would talk to any constituent or advocate. But he didn't want their gifts or the appearance of being unduly influenced.

Being state auditor would have authorized him to double-check the spending practices of other politicians and their governments.

But McCamley lost by a landslide in the Democratic primary. Fortunately for him, he had a politician's connections.

A fellow Democrat, Michelle Lujan Grisham, was elected governor. She hired McCamley as Cabinet secretary of the Department of Workforce Solutions.

Story continues

In another era, the agency was called the Labor Department. Somehow, labor became a politically loaded word instead of something to take pride in.

More important than the department's name are the drawbacks of the system.

Cabinet positions are political appointments. And the jobs often go to politicians instead of proven administrators.

Aside from the prison system or the mammoth state Department of Health, no agency is as difficult to run as Workforce Solutions. Its leader must learn to navigate the Byzantine federal laws the state has to follow in deciding if someone qualifies for unemployment benefits.

Workforce Solutions had 9,600 unemployment claims on March 9, 2020, the beginning stage of the coronavirus pandemic. The number of claims soared to 150,000 in June. It dipped after that, but still remained above 100,000.

Each week I received calls or emails from people who were desperate. Their unemployment benefits had stalled or been denied. They complained about a heartless bureaucracy.

After checking as far as I could on the more outrageous complaints of government inefficiency, I would call McCamley. He always responded, though he said privacy laws prohibited him from discussing the specifics of any case.

I would provide him with details anyway, and he would listen.

A drug counselor who no longer could work in a county jail because of COVID-19 had stopped receiving his unemployment checks. He didn't have a computer, and he couldn't get anyone from Workforce Solutions on the phone.

McCamley looked into the snag. Soon after, the drug counselor was told he needed to submit another form for his benefits to resume. Someone who'd been worried about surviving got the help he needed.

A retail store worker who'd been grievously injured on the job, then fired, wasn't receiving unemployment benefits. He couldn't understand why.

It took a few weeks, but McCamley's department removed the roadblock. The ousted retail worker began receiving benefits.

In another case, management ordered a worker at a national pizza chain to transfer to another store. The new assignment required many miles of travel, but the worker didn't have a car or other means of transportation. He was out of work because he couldn't get to the new restaurant.

The pizza company fought the worker's claim for unemployment compensation. McCamley ruled for the former employee. He had wanted to work but was thrust into an impossible assignment  during a pandemic, no less.

McCamley and his crew made mistakes, I'm sure. No one  not a CEO or a school principal or a Cabinet secretary  can make thousands of decisions without getting some wrong.

McCamley worried about errors, knowing every decision had human consequences. He also balanced emotion with the law.

Many times people quit jobs to look for something better, then applied for unemployment benefits. They didn't qualify. McCamley's agency had to deny money to people who'd made an uninformed decision.

"The job is heartbreaking," he once told me.

On that day, he had been investigating the unemployment claim of a man living in his truck.

McCamley understands the dignity of work. And he learned that losing elections isn't the worst setback, not by a long shot.

Ringside Seat is an opinion column about people, politics and news. Contact Milan Simonich at msimonich@sfnewmexican.com or 505-986-3080.
The BCA had labelled federal Labors 2018 emissions reductions plan as economy wrecking while the governments 26 per cent target was appropriate and achievable. Now the peak body is calling for a national target of net-zero emissions by 2050. To be fair, his criticism wasnt entirely new. Telstra threatened to rescind its membership in 2018 over its stance on climate change, while Westpac had also expressed concerns. ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENS Monday nights Woodstock for Corporates, otherwise known as the Business Council of Australias annual dinner, held at Sydneys Fullerton Hotel was a chance for the Atlassian contingent to get among the business and political crowd.

The bash, hosted by chief executive Jennifer Westacott and Reed, featured Prime Minister Scott Morrison as guest of honour (again), who attended with cabinet secretary Phil Gaetjens. Other captains of industry include Telstra chief executive Andy Penn, Transurban chief executive Scott Charlton, Mirvac boss Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz and Cochlear chief executive Dig Howitt. The Big Four were well represented, with ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott, NAB chief executive Ross McEwan, CBAs Matt Comyn and Westpacs Peter King on the invitation list. Allens chair Fiona Crosbie was expected to be there as well as newly minted Minter Ellison managing partner Virginia Briggs. Prime Minister Scott Morrison greets (from left to right) Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz (head of Mirvac), Andrew Penn (Telstra) and Alison Watkins (Coca-Cola Amatil) at the Business Council of Australias annual dinner. Credit:Wolter Peeters, Also scoring a gig was Coles regional supermarket manager John Appleby. Appleby kept his local Batemans Bay Coles open for three days as the 2020 summer bushfires ravaged the NSW South Coast even though phone lines were down, electricity was cut and roads blocked. For this he is a finalist in the Biggies Awards, run by the BCA, which recognises positive business contributions to the community. LOUD AND CLEAR Lawyer Chris Murphy only got one of his five imputations up in his defamation trial against The Daily Telegraph newspaper and gossip columnist Annette Sharp. But Justice Michael Lees judgment made for some compelling reading and demonstrated a light touch.

The Federal Court case hinged on whether the article portrayed Murphy as being incapable of representing his clients interests in court due to the ravages of age and hearing loss. Lee found that it did and rejected the tabloid newspapers suggestion that this was substantially true. Lee noted while discussing deafness and court appearances, Murphys barrister Sue Chrysanthou SC made the wry but accurate point that Dauid Sibtain, counsel for the Telegraph and Sharp, while cross-examining Murphy appeared to mishear things a number of times throughout. Murphy told the court at length the article had traumatised him. I have lived with the emotions of clients and their families since 1970 and tried to calm and console the suffering they endured. However, this article hit an emotional vulnerability in an area where I could not conceive of such a blow occurring. It has caused me continuing sleeplessness and stress and still does. But Murphy cant have been altogether happy with Lees summation. The judge described him as a proud man and a self-described robust alpha male. I do consider that some of the evidence he gave as to the extent of his subjective hurt was a tad exaggerated, Justice Lee said. This evidence did not become more compelling by the way Mr Murphy advocated for his own cause; nor did it get more persuasive upon repetition.

Lee also labelled Murphy often non-responsive, long-winded, argumentative and, once or twice, somewhat rude to the cross examiner. But Lee added there was a certain rakish charm about his performance. Lee awarded Murphy $110,000 but rejected aggravated damages. That wont be enough to cover trial costs so its shaping up as a pyrrhic victory. MOVING THE FURNITURE Its farewell to one of Gladys Berejiklians longest serving members of staff. Senior political staffer Ehssan Veiszadeh has resigned as the Premiers director of strategy. He will join the Committee for Sydney as both deputy chief executive and director of strategy. His departure ends one of the most enduring fixtures of Berejiklians political machine. Veiszadeh joined Berejiklian during her time as Treasurer in 2015. He quickly rose to become director of communications with a reputation for ruling the office with an iron fist, before being appointed as the Premiers director of media when Berejiklian ascended to the top job in January 2017. In February, he moved out of the media team into a broader strategy role. He starts at the Committee for Sydney on May 31, ahead of the June budget.
Click here to read the full article on SPIN.

Back in February, Paramount+ announced a slate of new shows that includes Dave Grohl and his mom Virginia Hanlon Grohl turning her book From Cradle to Stage into a six-part television series. Today, the mother/son duo unveiled the shows first trailer and announced its star-studded list of contributors, which features Brandi Carlile and her mom Teresa, Tom Morello and his mom Mary, and Geddy Lee and his mom Mary Weinrib, among others.

I believe that the relationship between a musician and their mother is so important because its the foundation of their understanding of love, which is surely every artists greatest muse, Grohl explained in a statement. Having the opportunity to travel the country and tell the stories of these amazing women behind the curtain not only shed some light on the music that they inspired, but also made me appreciate the love that I was given from my own mother, my best friend. It goes without saying that we are all indebted to the women who have given us life. For without them, there would be no music.

More from SPIN:

From Cradle to Stage is set to premiere on May 6. Watch the first trailer and see the full episode list below.

From Cradle to Stage episode schedule

May 6: Dan Reynolds (of Imagine Dragons) and Christene Reynolds

May 13: Pharrell and Dr. Carolyn Williams

May 20: Miranda and Bev Lambert

May 27: Brandi and Teresa Carlile

June 3: Tom Morello (of Rage Against the Machine) and Mary Morello

June 10: Geddy Lee (of Rush) and Mary Weinrib

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest guitarists of all time, click here.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 18)  Military and defense officials debunked claims that they have withdrawn their support for President Rodrigo Duterte, branding them as "irresponsible propaganda" and "disinformation" by the government's detractors.

Top officials of the Department of National Defense and the Armed Forces of the Philippines issued separate statements on Sunday, dismissing rumors making the rounds on social media about the existence of an alleged Viber group of active and retired military personalities withdrawing their support for the commander-in-chief.

"This is fake news! I am not, and will never be, a part of any such group  neither are the officials at the Department of National Defense, many of whom are also retired military officers," Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said.

The defense chief branded the rumors as "irresponsible propaganda" and "an act of reckless agitation emanating from detractors."

"We call on these destabilizers to cease from propagating malicious statements especially at a time when our people should all be coming together in the face of the challenges that we are all currently facing," Lorenzana said. "You are not helping our country and people at all."

AFP chief Gen. Cirilito Sobejana echoed the same sentiments, adding that the rumors were only meant "to create panic and confusion."

"We advise the public to remain calm and dismiss them as another disinformation," he said.

"We will focus on our mission and continue to perform our constitutional mandates. We will veer away, as we appeal to all quarters to spare your AFP from partisan politics," Sobejana added.

The AFP chief also denied social media posts that there were "warplanes" from various countries taking off and landing at Clark Airbase in Pampanga.

"We have issued a statement dismissing that SMS as fake news. No such landings or taking off of aircraft from other countries are taking place. The AFP is on normal alert as opposed to the claim of that spurious sender," he said.
Litter of all forms can be swept off the land and into rivers, lakes and streams. TDOT estimates that more than 100 million pieces of litter are present on Tennessees roadways. - photo by Tennessee Aquarium/Casey Phillips

A pair of new exhibits at the Tennessee Aquarium show how microplastics can negatively affect the health of the ocean as well as rivers, lakes and streams. Opening today in the River Journey building, the exhibits were funded by a grant from the Tennessee Department of Transportation in support of its Nobody Trashes Tennessee litter reduction campaign.



The new exhibits, which include actual debris taken from the banks of the Tennessee River, demonstrate the connection between land-based pollution and aquatic ecosystems through novel, touchless interactive elements, informative videos and an exhibition of invasive aquatic wildlife such as a Northern Snakehead and Grass Carp. These non-native fish can be seen swimming in one of the exhibits alongside examples  some of them 3D-printed  of common roadside debris such as tires and car batteries, which can wreak havoc on aquatic systems.



The connections between roadside litter, water quality and aquatic systems cannot be understated, said Shawn Bible, beautification office manager, Tennessee Department of Transportation. Nobody Trashes Tennessee aims to educate citizens on the impact of what may be perceived as a minor issue for the state. In reality, the state spends more than $19 million each year to clean up the more than 100 million pieces of litter on our roadways. We are pleased to partner with the Tennessee Aquarium on these interactive exhibits that aim to raise awareness and change behaviors."



A video kiosk in the Rivers of the World gallery is bracketed by two cylinders filled with pieces of microplastic particulate. When inactive, the plastic fragments float to the surface of a water-filled receptacle. Once visitors wave their hands over a sensor, however, a vortex begins to spin the water, causing the debris to descend from the top of the tank like a swirling underwater tornado of plastic particles.



I thought if we could do that with plastic particles in the water, it would be a great visual demonstration of the danger microplastics pose, says Jeff Worley, the Aquariums manager of exhibit services, who designed the display. This interactive, along with the video messages in our kiosk, makes the exhibit much more engaging and informative.



The new exhibit helps visitors to visualize how trash can imperil aquatic ecosystems and impact waterways that millions rely on for recreation and drinking water. Theres tremendous potential for this exhibit to show a wide audience how changing their behavior on land can benefit the health of nearby waterways, says Dr. Anna George, the Aquariums vice president of conservation science and education.



I hope that as people see the exhibit, they will begin to think about single-use plasticsthose plastic items that we use once and throw away, Dr. George says. This is a great opportunity to show how making just a few small changes can safeguard the water we all depend on, human and animal alike.



Anything that is on land moves into our waterways, Dr. George says. If a piece of litter is thrown onto a street, wind might carry it to a stream or river. It might get washed or blown into storm drains and deposited in the nearest body of water. It is a safe assumption that any debris on land has a good chance of winding up in our water.



Throughout the world, a plague of microplastic debris is choking the ocean and imperiling aquatic life, but some people find it difficult to care about or understand a problem they cant see, officials said.



According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 80 percent of garbage found in the ocean comes from inland sources, such as leaked automotive fluids and littering. So even though the Department of Transportation might seem like an odd partner for an aquarium, theres a fundamental connection between activity on land and the health of waterways, says Dr. George.



"Widely publicized images of beaches blanketed by mounds of large single-use plastic litter such as straws, bottles and eating utensils bring attention to an issue thats easy to comprehend. Microplastics, however, are a practically invisible menace. Measuring  at most  a fifth of an inch across, these eroded fragments of plastic and tiny plastic beads drift in unfathomable numbers while stealthily working their way up the food chain," officials said.

See video here.
Liberty University has filed a civil lawsuit against its former leader, Jerry Falwell Jr., seeking tens of millions in damages after the two parted ways acrimoniously last year.

The complaint, filed Thursday in Lynchburg Circuit Court, alleges Falwell crafted a well-resourced exit strategy from his role as president and chancellor in the form of a lucrative 2019 employment agreement while withholding damaging information from the evangelical school about a personal scandal that would explode into public view the following year.

Despite his clear duties as an executive and officer at Liberty, Falwell Jr. chose personal protection, the lawsuit says.

It also alleges that Falwell failed to disclose and address the issue of his personal impairment by alcohol and has refused to fully return confidential information and other personal property belonging to Liberty.

In a statement, Falwell said the lawsuit was full of lies and half truths and called it an attempt to defame him and discredit his record.

I assure you that I will defend myself against it with conviction, he said.

Falwells departure from the Virginia university in August 2020 came soon after Giancarlo Granda, a younger business partner of the Falwell family, said he had a yearslong sexual relationship with Falwells wife, Becki Falwell, and that Jerry Falwell participated in some of the liaisons as a voyeur.

Although the Falwells acknowledged that Granda and Becki Falwell had an affair, Jerry Falwell denied any participation. The couple alleged that Granda sought to extort them by threatening to reveal the relationship.

The lawsuit says that Falwell had a fiduciary duty to disclose Grandas extortive actions, and to disclose the potential for serious harm to Liberty.

Instead, Falwell furthered the conspiracy of silence and negotiated a 2019 Employment Agreement that contained a higher salary from Liberty, the suit says.

The lawsuit argues that Falwell and Grandas actions have injured Libertys enrollment, hurt fundraising, disrupted faculty, resulted in the 2019 agreement that proved detrimental to Libertys interests and damaged the schools reputation. Granda is not named as a defendant in the suit.

University spokesman Scott Lamb said Libertys only word on the subject is the lawsuit itself.

Before the Granda scandal exploded, Falwell had already been on leave after posting a photo on social media that sparked an uproar. It showed Falwell on a yacht with a drink in his hand and his arm around a young woman who was not his wife, their pants unzipped and his underwear exposed.

The complaint, written with a flourish, offers new details reflecting the universitys perspective on its rift with Falwell both before and after the photo scandal.

The time for Falwell Jr. to cash in on Libertys prodigious success had arrived, it says of the contract negotiations. The lengthy treatise includes subsections with titles such as Falwells Auspicious Acts of August of 2020 and Falwell Jr.s Hard Fall, referencing a tumble down the stairs that prompted a 911 call.

According to the lawsuit, after Falwell gave a radio interview about the yacht photo in which he offered a slurred explanation, Becki Falwell stepped in.

The lawsuit says Becki Falwell contacted three members of the executive committee of Libertys board to alert them to what she described as her husbands excessive use of alcohol.

Beckis heartfelt appeal made an impact on Libertys leaders and helped provide a context for understanding Falwells questionable public comments, worrying behavior, and inappropriate social media posts, the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit also alleges there were concerns at Liberty that Falwell smelled of alcohol during work interactions.

It was agreed that Falwell would go on leave and Liberty would pay for his rehab, but a dispute later emerged between Falwell and school leaders over the type of treatment, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit alleges three counts: breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and statutory conspiracy.

On the second count, the lawsuit says it seeks damages in excess of $10 million. On the conspiracy charge, it seeks $10 million in compensatory damages and argues that sum should be tripled, as allowed by state law under limited circumstances, plus $350,000 in punitive damages. Liberty is also seeking other costs and fees.

Falwell, an attorney and real estate developer, had led Liberty since the 2007 death of his televangelist father, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who also founded the Moral Majority, making evangelicals a key force in the Republican party.

In early 2016, Falwell become one of the first conservative Christians to endorse Donald Trump for the presidency. He went on to court controversy and stay in the news, vigorously criticizing Democrats online.

In late August, shortly after Falwells resignation, Liberty announced that it was opening an independent investigation into Falwells tenure as president. The inquiry remains ongoing, and the school has not released any preliminary information from it.

Falwell sued Liberty for defamation in October, alleging the school had damaged his reputation, but dropped the case in December without explanation.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Education Universities
One Hundred Fifty-Six Years Ago: It is difficult to imagine, even having lived through the last year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the manic week endured by the American people beginning on April 9, 1865. That evening, newspapers in Central New York and all across the war-torn nation announced the remarkable news of Robert E. Lees surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia.

President Lincoln was barely a month into his second term. During his inaugural address a few weeks earlier, he made it clear that his administration would act with malice toward none, and charity for all to bring about a just and lasting peace after almost exactly four years of a bloody civil war. Over that time, 620,000 men died to save the union and abolish slavery. Now, with the war over, Lincoln could turn his attention to bind up the nations wounds. A jubilant nation rejoiced.

Thus, the horrific and shocking news reported in the evening edition of the Syracuse Daily Courier and Union on April 15, 1865, Good Friday, was made all the more surreal.

Clipping from Syracuse's April 17, 1865 Daily Courier and Union carried the sad news of the death of President Abraham Lincoln. Courtesy of the Onondaga Historical AssociationCourtesy of the Onondaga Histori

The President had been felled by an assassins bullet during the previous evenings performance of Our American Cousin at Fords Theatre in Washington D.C, and died in the morning in the house across the street. W.W. Green, the editor of the Daily Courier and Union and long-time Lincoln critic, urged his readers in the days that followed to disavow the spirit of malignity and revenge and to render Mr. Lincoln the last sad tribute due to the Chief Magistrate of the Republic.

Over the next several days, readers in Syracuse followed the rapidly developing story, as those feelings of malignity were directed towards the Presidents assassin, John Wilkes Booth, a middling stage actor and the younger brother of Edwin Booth, the Daniel Day Lewis of his day.

As history records, Booth was the leader of a rag-tag group of conspirators that sought to avenge the Confederacy by decapitating Lincolns cabinet through a series of assassinations on the evening of April 14. Yet, the readers of the Daily Courier and Union did not know the extent of the conspiracy.

What was reported on April 17 was that former New York State Governor, Senator, and Lincolns current Secretary of State, Auburns own, William Henry Seward, was lying near death in his home, the victim of a heinous stabbing. (Sewards son, Augustus, was also wounded in the attack). Seward had been stabbed in the face and neck with a Bowie knife by another conspirator, Lewis Powell. In a near miraculous coincidence, Sewards life was saved by a splint doctors used to mend a broken jaw, an injury the Secretary suffered in a carriage accident only a few weeks earlier.

What the American people did not know was that in addition to Lincoln and Seward, Booth charged another conspirator, George Atzerodt, the task of assassinating Vice-President Andrew Johnson. Unlike Booth and Powell, Atzerodt never carried out his attack; instead, he got drunk and aborted the mission, deciding instead to pass out in a D.C. hotel room.

Unfortunately for the United States, John Wilkes Booth, did not get drunk and fall asleep in a hotel room. The dashing actor played the role he cast for himself in this national tragedy to a tee. Around 10 p.m., Booth, finding it unguarded, snuck into the private box where the Lincolns and their guests were enjoying the comedic performance. Booth knew the play. Thus, he barred the door from the inside and waited for a big crowd reaction, then he shot Lincoln in the back of the head with a .44 caliber Deringer pistol. Ever the performer, Booth jumped out of the box and onto the stage. According to the reports printed in Syracuse, Booth caught his spur in the curtain and fell to the stage, breaking his leg; he got to his feet and screamed, The South is avenged before, incredibly, making his escape.

The death of Lincoln, circa 1865. Lincolns body was removed from Fords Theater and taken across the street to the Petersons boarding house. Secretary of War Stanton stands to the right of the bed, holding papers behind his back. Courtesy of the Onondaga Historical AssociationCourtesy of the Onondaga Histori

The terrors of the assassination were spelled out in incredible detail for the readers of the Daily Courier and Union. Underneath the call for a public meeting to discuss Syracuses official response, was a harrowing minute-by-minute recounting of the Presidents final hours that included his pulse and respiration rates. The final entry read, 7:21 oclock: Death. At that moment, Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, who was standing beside the bed where Lincoln died, was said to have uttered, Now, he belongs to the ages. It was according, to one of the headlines, The Darkest Day Since the Rebellion.

Here in Syracuse, like many other cities around the country, the profound national grief took the cathartic form of a mock funeral for the martyred President, a sad tribute indeed. Mayor Stewart announced that all schools, churches, and businesses would close on April 19, for a city-wide procession to coincide with Lincolns actual funeral in the White House. Beginning at sunrise, cannons fired from the armory every half an hour, while thousands reported to their churches in preparation to join the funeral procession, which began at 12:30 p.m.

Each of the citys wards selected pallbearers, which included former Mayor and future Congressman E.W. Leavenworth and local brewing magnate Jacob Pfhol, to follow the elegant and handsome hearse, pulled by six grey horses.

Various military regiments, the fire brigades, members of the Common Council, and all of the citys civic societies marched in the procession to the sound of church bells and funeral dirges. Starting in Hanover Square, the assembled multitudes moved through Clinton Square, crossing the Erie Canal at Clinton Street.

They continued up James, past houses and buildings draped in black crepe and bunting, to Lock Street (State Street) down to Genesee Street on their return to Hanover Square at quarter past three.

In the center of the square stood a large platform tastefully decorated with flags and black and white cloth, around which had gathered what Mr. Green called the largest, most intelligent appearingassemblage ever convened in this city.

After a few remarks by Mayor Stewart and a prayer, former Republican Congressman, Charles B. Sedgwick, a man who worked with the fallen President many times over the years, gave a stirring and erudite eulogy that spoke glowingly of the virtues of Lincoln, who only one week ago, full of life and hope, was laboring with cheerful heart for the public welfare, and the dark clouds of rebellion and treason, which during his whole administration had lowered above, were just beginning to lift.

Hon. Charles B. Sedgwick. Born in Ithaca in 1815, Sedgwick moved to Syracuse in 1848 and opened his law practice. A staunch Republican from the earliest days of the party in the 1850s, he was elected to Congress in 1859. He served two terms, chairing the Naval Affairs Committee. He left Congress in 1863. He died in 1883 and is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Syracuse. Courtesy of the Onondaga Historical AssociationCourtesy of the Onondaga Histori

Ultimately, the war thrust upon him, waged by the rebels with characteristic cruelty to maintain slavery had brought about the end of the institution.

The Hon. Mr. Sedgwick continued to sing the praises of his fallen friends administration, while giving voice to some critiques of the man, of which there had been many. His friends, he continued, have sometimes conceded that he was vacillating, hesitating particularly around the crowning achievement of his administration, the proclamation of emancipation.

The former Congressman disagreed. Pertinacity, not vacillation, was the distinguishing quality of his mind. Sedgwick continued, He is gone, but he has left us the rich inheritance of a redeemed and regenerate and free country. More important than that, Sedgwick told this throng of mourners in a city that had been a great central depot on the Underground Railroad, was the eradication of slavery.

Reaching his rousing conclusion, Sedgwick declared The great stain upon our national character, the great source of strife and contention among our people, by his courage and fortitude, has been wiped out and removed. His name has become historic.

In an incredible coincidence, on the evening of April 26, Lincolns body passed through Syracuse on the trip back to Springfield, Illinois. Earlier that morning, John Wilkes Booth and his accomplice, David Herold, had been trapped in a tobacco barn in Port Royal, Virginia, about 75 miles south of Washington. Herold surrendered.

To force Booth out, the barn was set on fire. In the confusion, Booth was shot by U.S. Army Sgt., Boston Corbett, of the 16th NY Calvary. He died shortly after seven a.m.
Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Soon-to-be home owners are being slugged as much as $100,000 in unexpected costs after signing building contracts as Western Australias construction industry scrambles to cope with trade and supply shortages. The unprecedented demand has been brought about by a perfect storm of dual federal and state building bonus grants, construction time limits to be eligible for the grants, and the inability to recruit interstate or international workers to deal with the overflow. David Orlando and his fiance, Bree, were forced to pull out of their new home contract with Summit Homes after the builder increased the cost by $47,000. Perth resident David Orlando, 33, said he was forced to pull out of a building contract with Summit Homes at the last minute after the builder added $30,000 to his proposed contract over five months between August and December. He said the amount was added after he and his fiance had signed a preliminary agreement and paid a $5000 fee towards their future house on Mr Orlandos Lake Coogee block. It meant the couple missed out on being eligible for the state governments $20,000 Building Bonus grant, which ran between June and December 2020. The pair say they also missed out on $10,000 from the federal governments $25,000 HomeBuilder grant, which was scaled back to $15,000 from January 1.

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We wasted half a year, we put our wedding on hold and weve essentially lost $30,000 worth of grants because we couldnt sign that contract, Mr Orlando said. We couldnt afford it, we already had finance approved for the amount they originally told us. Mr Orlando, who spoke out to warn others of hidden costs, said there needed to be more accountability within the building industry and greater transparency around contract small print. You talk to anyone who is building now, their price increases are pretty much identical to what the grants were, the builders are just absorbing that, he said. However, a Summit Homes Group spokeswoman said the company had at all times acted properly and fairly in relation to its engagement with Mr Orlando, refunding the fees he paid and allowing him to keep the custom home design free of charge. When presented with the contract to construct the home, the clients were not prepared to proceed, she said.

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The introduction of the state and federal grants in 2020 created market conditions which gave rise to significant and unprecedented rises in labour, trade shortages and building material costs which could not be totally absorbed by Summit Homes Group. Regrettably, some of these increased costs had to be passed on to clients. Master Builders Association WA executive director John Gelavis said builders had been caught in the middle of an unprecedented situation. What were finding is, not only are the local trade prices going up for material, but also trade contractor pricing is going up, he said. Its not the builders fault; theyre caught in this process where the amount of increases is frequent and coming at a rapid rate of knots. The brickies rates have gone from $1.60 or $1.70 a brick up to $2.70 or $2.80 a brick  theyve almost doubled in price. Master Builders Association executive director John Gelavis (centre).

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Mr Gelavis said shortages in supplies such as timber and the inability to recruit interstate or international workers exasperated the problem. Every single region around the country is busy because of HomeBuilder so no ones looking to move interstate ... we are going to need to consider a skilled migration policy to facilitate the building in the next few years, he said. Nearly 18,000 West Australian residents applied for the full $25,000 HomeBuilder grant between June and December  more than four times what Treasury forecast. A further 22,671 applications were received for the state government Building Bonus to March 31. New Home Building Brokers managing director Tristan Kirkham said homeowner hopefuls were often unaware of conditions within their contracts which meant builders could pass on unforeseen additional costs. I think in certain situations people have dived in and not understood the ramifications, he said. Most builders will hold their price for 45 or 90 working days so you could be liable [for price increases] if it takes longer than that to get shire approval or if a client doesnt have finance ready.

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The builders can go back saying, Look the brickworks on this house are going up $7000, but some of the major builders are going back with huge numbers ... Ive seen up to $40,000 to $100,000 price increases on houses. Mr Kirkham said for those who did lock in a tight contract with a builder, the company was then at risk of financial stress. If the client signs a contract with a builder and theyre locked in tight and the builder cant go back to them because theyve done everything how theyre supposed to, that builder has to absorb all those increases on a home they sold which now is effectively under-sold unintentionally, and if theyve done that for a lot of homes, that can pull a builder under, he said. Its not a blame game, its just a circumstantial thing how this has happened so right now people need to understand that if youre outside the terms of your contract, a builder has the right to review the price. Australian Bureau of Statistics director of construction statistics, Bill Becker, said building approval figures for February showed private sector housing in WA rose by 16.7 per cent  the second highest in the country after Queensland (25.4 per cent). Dual building stimulus grants have meant thousands of homes in WA are at a similar stage of construction, pushing brickwork costs to nearly double. Credit:Heather McNeill Since the introduction of the HomeBuilder grant in June 2020, [national] private house approvals have risen by almost 70 per cent, he said.

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Sammy Kimmence, from Essex, was warned he faces jail after admitting scamming two elderly men out of 34,000 (pictured arriving at Portsmouth Crown Court this morning)

The boyfriend of Love Island winner Dani Dyer was today warned he faces jail after he admitted scamming two elderly men out of 34,000 by posing as a financial investor.

Sammy Kimmence, from Essex, duped Peter Martin, 90, and Peter Haynes, 80, between 2016 and 2018 by persuading the vulnerable pensioners to allow him to invest their money for them.

The 25-year-old's victims were said to have been clients at a legitimate investment company, S&S Trading Ltd, where Kimmence previously worked.

A previous hearing was told Kimmence took the clients on when the business stopped operating, falsely claiming he was authorised to provide financial services.

Now Kimmence, who had denied all the charges and pleaded not guilty only last week, faces a possible prison sentence after a last-minute change of plea.

Kimmence, appearing at Portsmouth Crown Court, Hampshire, today as his trial was expected to start, pleaded guilty to five counts of fraud, totalling 33,919.

The judge warned him his offences were so serious they crossed the custody threshold and he could be sent to jail.

Standing in the dock, Kimmence, dressed in a black suit with a blue tie, spoke only to confirm his name and plead guilty to each charge.

The court heard Kimmence, who announced the birth of his and Dani Dyer's son Santiago in January, used one of his victims' bank cards to withdraw more than 1,200 for himself and also racked up credit card charges of more than 1,300.

He also admitted to getting Mr Martin to transfer him 22,912 on one occasion, and 400 on another. He conned Mr Haynes in a similar way to the tune of 7,927.

Mr Martin sadly died in November last year aged 91 while Mr Haynes suffers from Alzheimer's.

Kimmence announced the birth of his and Love Island winner Dani Dyer's son Santiago in January (couple pictured together)

Defending, Craig Harris asked for a pre-sentence report to be made and said: 'He is a relatively young man of previous good character, the offences go back into his late teenage years.

'This is a case that crosses the custodial threshold but might be within a range which I argue could be suspended.

He added: 'Quite a lot has gone into this young man's life in the last few years. He is seeking to reimburse the losses he has caused so some time is also needed to allow him to do that.'

The court previously heard how Mr Haynes was diagnosed with Alzheimer's last year and has moved from Okehampton, Devon, to live closer to his daughter in Leeds.

Adjourning the hearing for sentencing today, Recorder Nicholas Haggan, QC, said: 'The offences to which you have pleaded guilty are serious offences, it's accepted they cross the custodial threshold and you are at risk of receiving a custodial sentence.

'Given you are young man of no previous convictions, I am going to order a sentencing report. I am going to grant you conditional bail.'

Dani, who is the daughter of EastEnders star Danny Dyer, rekindled her romance with Kimmence shortly after leaving the Love Island villa

He ordered a pre-sentence report and added: 'I am going to grant conditional bail until the hearing of your case which is on 11 June.

'The fact I am granting bail affords no indication of what the sentence will be. You are at risk of a custodial sentence.'

A further hearing will be held on 11 June.

Dani, who is the daughter of EastEnders star Danny Dyer, shot to fame on Love Island in 2018.

She had previously been in a relationship with Kimmence but struck up a new partnership with Jack Fincham in the villa before going on to win the popular reality show.

But the 24-year-old rekindled her romance with Kimmence shortly afterwards and there have been rumours that the pair may be getting married in the near future.
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

As vaccines that help protect against COVID-19 become available for more people across the United States, questions have been raised about whether institutions like schools and universities should require their students and staff to become vaccinated.

A new study by Simon Haeder, assistant professor of public policy at Penn State, found that a majority of those surveyed supported mandates that required students and teachers to be vaccinated against COVID-19. However, more people supported broader vaccine mandates that don't specifically include those against COVID-19.

Haeder said political partisanship, along with race and gender, helped account for these differences.

"Even if children are less likely to get severely ill, vaccination of students has been shown to have benefits such as lower numbers of community deaths, particularly among the elderly," Haeder said. "Mandates may serve as a crucial policy tool to help reign in COVID-19 and reach herd immunity, which we otherwise might not reach any time soon."

Haeder added that the findingsrecently published in the journal Vaccinesuggest that while the majority of Americans would be supportive of COVID-19 vaccine mandates in educational settings, about one in five would be indifferent and another one in five would be opposed.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, policy makers have debated about how to determine whether educational institutions are safe enough for students to return in person. The development of safe and effective vaccines, Haeder said, offers a potential way for society to eventually return to normal.

He added that while making vaccines mandatoryalso known as vaccine mandateshas been a strategy to control epidemics in the past, they have not been without controversy.

"Massachusetts mandated smallpox vaccinations in the early 1800s, Alaska and California used mandates in the 1970s to control measles, and in more modern times, there are often certain vaccine mandates for living in the dorms on some college campuses," Haeder said. "But these policies have often been met with vocal opposition from certain groups of Americans, and with the pandemic being so politicized, we were curious about how Americans felt about potential COVID-19 vaccine mandates."

For the study, Haeder developed and sent a survey to 2,404 participants in the fall of 2020. The nationally representative survey included questions about how the participants felt about requiring vaccines for students and teachers in three different educational settings: daycares, K-12 schools, and universities and colleges.

The survey also asked participants questions designed to measure political partisanship, political knowledge, and beliefs about whether schools are an appropriate place to deliver health care, as well as demographic information such as race, ethnicity, education and gender.

The researchers found that Democrats were consistently more supportive of vaccine mandates than moderates or Republicans. White Americans and people who believed schools were appropriate settings for providing health services were also more likely to support any vaccine mandate.

Haeder said there are several possible reasons for some of these differences.

"Partisanship has permeated everything related to COVID-19 and lots of misinformation has been spread, including from individuals in leadership positions," Haedaer said. "Additionally, there's a general growing distrust of science and its elites, which when combined with the novelty of the illness and vaccines, could contribute to this lack of support for vaccine mandates in certain groups."

Additionally, the researchers found that in daycare settings, about 70% of participants "definitely" or "probably" supported general vaccine mandates for students, a little over 50% supported COVID-19 vaccine mandates for students, and about 60% supported COVID-19 vaccine mandates for teachers.

For K-12 schools, about 68% supported general mandates for students, just over 50% supported COVID-19 vaccine mandates for students, and just under 60% supported COVID-19 vaccine mandates for teachers. For colleges and universities, the results were about 65%, 55% and 58%, respectively.

Haeder said that in addition to helping to guide policy makers as efforts continue to be made to control the pandemic, the findings have other implications, as well.

"Efforts to provide Americans with more information about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines should be undertaken to help alleviate fears around the COVID-19 vaccines," Haeder said. "Also, efforts could be made to reduce potential barriers for vaccinations, including providing the vaccine free of charge, making scheduling appointments easier, avoiding long travel times, and offering convenient opening hours."

Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak

More information: Simon F. Haeder, Joining the herd? U.S. public opinion and vaccination requirements across educational settings during the COVID-19 pandemic, Vaccine (2021). Journal information: Vaccine Simon F. Haeder, Joining the herd? U.S. public opinion and vaccination requirements across educational settings during the COVID-19 pandemic,(2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2021.03.055
At least eight people were killed, and several others were wounded in a shooting at a FedEx warehouse near Indianapolis Airport. According to police, gunman Bradon Hole, a former employee, started shooting "randomly" almost immediately after leaving his vehicle. There has not been any proof of a motive yet.

FedEx shooting believed to be another hate crime

Reuters reported four members of the Sikh community, three women and one male, were among those killed in the incident. Meanwhile, the names of those killed in the shooting were released by officials on Friday.

Matthew R. Alexander, 32; Amarjeet Johal, 66; Samaria Blackwell, 19; Jasvinder Kaur, 64; Jaswinder Singh, 68; Karlie Smith, 19; Amarjit Skhon, 48; and John Weisert, 74, were the victims identified by law enforcement officials. Since the news broke out that four members of the Sikh religious community were killed in the mass shooting, many people assumed it was just another hate crime, as per MEAWW.

Social media users quickly pointed out that the gunman was aware of the FedEx employees and supposedly attacked them because of their religious affiliation. "This was a targeted hate crime," one person wrote. At that plant, Sikhs made up the bulk of the workforce. This man, an ex-employee, was well aware of it. The fact that his photo will not be released should tell you everything you need to know."

At Least 8 People Dead Including Suspect in Massive Shooting at Indianapolis FedEx Facility

Sikh community calls for gun reforms after FedEx shooting

The members of the city's close-knit Sikh community joined city leaders in calling for gun reforms, Fox News reported. Aasees Kaur, who led the Sikh Coalition, spoke out alongside the city's mayor and other elected officials at a vigil attended by more than 200 people in an Indianapolis park Saturday evening to demand measures to deter future assaults.

The attack came a month after officials said a gunman killed six Asian Americans in the Atlanta area. It came amid continued attacks on Asian Americans during the coronavirus pandemic. According to police, about 90 percent of the employees at the FedEx warehouse near the Indianapolis International Airport are Sikhs.

Kiran Deol, who spoke at the vigil on behalf of the victims' families, said that loopholes in the legislation that made it easier for people to purchase weapons need to be closed now and that anybody trying to buy a gun should get their background checked. The senseless crime has traumatized the entire society, said Satjeet Kaur, executive director of the Sikh Coalition.

Chicago Police Shooting: Who Is the Suspect That Killed 13-Year-Old Adam Toledo, What Is His Motive

According to the coalition, Indiana has between 8,000 and 10,000 Sikh Americans. Members of the community, which originated in India in the 15th century, started arriving in Indiana more than 50 years ago and opened their first Gurdwara, or house of worship, in 1999. The shooting occurred during Vaisakhi, a big holiday festival that commemorates the birth of Sikhism as a common religion, among other things.

The coalition said there are almost 500,000 Sikhs in the United States. Many practicing Sikhs may be identified by their articles of faith, which include the turban and unshorn hair.

The attack is the deadliest act of violence against the Sikh community in the U.S. after a white nationalist opened fire at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in 2012, killing six people. In 2020, a seventh died as a result of complications related to his injuries. During a firefight with officers, the gunman killed himself, as per CBS News.

Daunte Wright, George Floyd Come From Same Minneapolis Area, Have Lots in Common

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A teenage girl has been rushed to hospital after being bitten by a snake on a suburban street in the Northern Territory.

The 16-year-old suffered the bite at around 11pm on Friday night in Karama, Darwin's north.

She was quickly rushed to Royal Darwin Hospital in a stable condition but the type of snake that bit her is not yet known.

A 16-year-old girl was rushed to hospital after being bitten by a snake on a suburban street (stock picture)

The reptiles have been more frequently seen in Karama in recent months and last June a 25-year-old man was bitten in the northern Darwin suburb.

Residents in areas that are prone to snakes have been urged to learn about the steps they must take in the event of a bite.

Victims should immediately immobilise the area and call emergency services.

The bite should also be bandaged and not cleaned so paramedics can take a venom sample if needed.
A manhunt was underway Sunday evening for a former law enforcement officer who is suspected of shooting and killing three people in Austin, Texas in what was described as a domestic situation. Police identified the suspect as Stephen Nicholas Broderick, a 41-year-old former detective at the Travis County Sheriffs Office. Broderick, a former property crimes detective, resigned in June after he was charged with sexual assault of a child.

Police said the suspect should be considered armed and dangerous but it wasnt clear whether he was still in the city. The victims were all known to this suspect, Interim Austin Police Chief Joseph Chacon said. At this point, we do not think this individual is out there targeting random people to shoot. But Chacon did warn there was concern Broderick might possibly take a hostage while the manhunt is ongoing.

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Austin Police Chief Chacon provided an on scene brief today, regarding the incident at Great Hills Trail and Rain Creek Parkway. Please see attached photo of the suspect, Stephen Broderick, 41 years of age, black male who is 5 feet and 7 inches tall. https://t.co/HQu5bOwhlc pic.twitter.com/EVDU64Rph2  Austin Police Department (@Austin_Police) April 18, 2021

The vicitms have not been identified but they were two women and a man. A child was also located but was safe. They were all pronounced dead at the scene of the crime after police responded to a 911 call. Broderick had spent 16 days in jail in June after he was charged with sexual assault of a child. He later posted bail, which was set at $50,000. He was first placed on administrative leave but later resigned. Seven years earlier, Broderick was investigated after he and another officer shot a 78-year-old man who later died from his injuries.

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As authorities searched for the former officer in Austin, authorities arrested the suspected gunman in a shooting early Sunday morning at a bar in Kenosha County, Wisconsin that killed three people and injured three others. The arrest culminated a massive manhunt for the suspected gunman that involved around 100 officers. We do not believe this was a random act, Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth said. We believe our suspect knew who he was targeting.

The two shootings over the weekend continue a recent surge of gun violence across the country. On Thursday night, a gunman went into a FedEx facility in Indianapolis and opened fire, killing eight people.
Connecticut is experiencing one of the biggest sellers markets in its history. And the unprecedented demand is pushing prices up and inventory down.

In 2020, the U.S. Postal Service reported more than 10,000 relocations to Connecticut from New York. Given the COVID-spurred urban exodus, some communities saw double and triple-digit increases in the number of home sales last year. Additionally, realtor.com predicts the Greenwich-Bridgeport corridor will see one of the half-dozen biggest increases in home prices in the nation in 2021.

And thats creating the perfect storm of buyer frenzy, according to local real estate watchers. Well-placed and high-priced homes are flying off the market, and bidding wars among buyers are becoming commonplace.

We spoke to local realtors to find out some of the tactics buyers in Connecticut are using to stand out of the pack.

Cash offers

Many local realtors have stories about the New Yorkers coming into Connecticut and paying cash for homes  sometimes sight unseen. Writing a check is the easiest way to a sellers heart because it dispenses with the haggling and delays that can come with mortgages, said Stephanie Barnes, a Westport-based realtor with Stephanie & Co. at Compass.

Waiving home inspections

While she doesnt recommend it to her clients, Barnes said some buyers waive home inspection to streamline the process. Some reason it makes sense to take the calculated risk of an inspection for informational purposes only or bring a trusted contractor along on a walk-through.

Megan Foggitt, a Wallingford-based real estate agent part the CT Property Sisters associated with Margaret Bennett Realty, suggested waiving a portion of whatever repairs may be necessary. By doing this, Foggitt said buyers can state that they will not ask the home seller to cover any repairs uncovered in the inspection process unless the cost exceeds a particular figure.

Waiving mortgage contingency

Barnes said she has seen some buyers waiving the mortgage contingency that protects a buyers deposit if something unforeseen happens to the final sale. Without it, a seller knows that, should things fall apart, they can quickly cut loose and look for a new buyer.

Escalation clause

Realtor Eric Radecki of Century 21 in Fairfield County suggests considering an escalation clause. The buyer agrees to pay a certain price for the home. If the seller then receives a higher bid, the buyer agrees to increase by pre-discussed increments. This move gives the seller more insight into a buyers commitment in the event of a bidding war, Radecki said.

Pre-approval

Sellers want to know a buyer is serious, realtors said. Getting pre-approval plus from a mortgage lender before making an offer is wise, said Radecki. This is a pre-written mortgage agreement, not just a promise or pre-approval that is in process, he said.

Foggitt also mentioned that she will have the lender associated with her buyer contact the listing agent to share information on how financially well-suited their buyer is to make a home purchase to help expedite the home sale process.

Flexible closing date

Todays market is forcing over-asking price bids. Buyers can consider sweetening the deal with a highest price/best terms model, Barnes said. Being flexible on the closing date or contingencies might be more attractive than a slightly higher dollar amount, she said.

In the end, every seller is different and sometimes honest, open discussion is the ticket to a winning bid.

Every single deal is a unique organism, Barnes said. Even in todays digital world, you need to pick up the telephone and talk.
After four seasons of Below Deck, Eddie Lucas could practically give tours of the Caribbean. So he recently dished about where he would go if given the chance to vacation (and not work) in the Caribbean and why.

Lucas said that while it was hard to narrow down a favorite place, St. Barths topped his list. But he also offered his runner-up choices too and he dished about the magic and magnificence of the Caribbean.

Eddie Lucas from Below Deck | Virginia Sherwood/Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank

St. Barths is the hottest spot for Eddie Lucas

Lucas pointed to the versatility of St. Barths, explaining that the destination fits the bill for those who seek a quiet getaway or who desire a great party town. St. Barths has a lot to do while remaining quaint, he told Forbes.

But its not overdeveloped or westernized. St. Barths is just really, really beautiful. He added that the area offers something for everyone. You can still have time alone and have romantic moments together, he said. But at the same time, there is also great nightlife and restaurants, if theyre looking for a little bit more excitement.

RELATED: Below Deck: Kate Chastain Worries New Florida Home May Be Cursed

Some of the hottest yachts are often spotted in St. Barths. At one point, Harry Styles and Kendall Jenner chartered C2 several holiday seasons ago, Boat reported.

The Centers for Disease Control currently recommends that visitors to St. Barths should be fully vaccinated beforehand and reports a very high level of Covid-19 in the area.

Eddie Lucas recommends two other areas in the Caribbean

Lucas recommends two other gem destinations in the area. He suggested the British Virgin Islands, plus St. Kitts and Nevis. The BVIs have a lot more going on and are quite accessible in terms of getting there, he said. They are also much more developed. Theres a lot of restaurants and clubs and things to do. But it still has, of course, that Caribbean vibe.

He added that the British Virgin Islands is an ideal family spot. I would definitely want to be in the BVIs if traveling with family, he shared. Tortola, St. Maarten, these are a few of the islands that I would recommend for families because theres a lot to do and theres a lot of beautiful things to see. One popular destination that I think is certainly worth visiting, is the Baths.

RELATED: Below Deck: Captain Lee and Colin Macy-OToole Reveal Where Production Crew Sleep and Take Breaks

Lucas likes St. Kitts and Nevis because the area is a bit off the beaten path. St. Kitts and Nevis are just very quiet, and they really feel untouched, he mused. The Caribbean vibe and the Caribbean culture are both still really well intact there. Adding, St. Kitts and Nevis have some amazing landscapes with the volcanoes and some beautiful beaches. Hiking, snorkeling and diving are all extraordinary here.

Lucas filmed every Below Deck season in the Caribbean. Shortly after a hurricane destroyed the area, the series traveled to areas like Tahiti and Thailand. But, when Lucas returned last season, the series when back to filming in the Caribbean.
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PHOENIX  A woman reportedly suffered a leg wound after a shooting at an outdoor concert in Phoenix, but authorities said Sunday that they have been unable to confirm whether shots were actually fired.

Police said officers were dispatched to the Celebrity Theatre parking lot concert about 10 p.m. Saturday after receiving reports of a shooting during an event featuring rapper Lil Durk and others.

Videos on social media showed concertgoers running from the area.

Shots reportedly were heard as the crowd of some 7,000 people were exiting the event.

Police at the scene initially told ABC15 that a woman at the front of the stage was grazed in the leg by a gunshot and another person reportedly suffered scrapes while trying to climb a fence and run from the area.

ABC 15 learned from several witnesses at the scene and a manager who works at the theatre that a microphone was dropped by an artist on stage that may have caused individuals to believe they heard shots fired.

Police said their investigation was ongoing.

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Last Thursday, April 15, the French National Assembly voted to approve the Macron governments global security bill, which significantly expands police powers. The law had already been approved by the Senate in February; with Thursdays vote, it now comes into law.

The law has triggered mass protests since it was first placed before the National Assembly in November last year. Its centerpiece, Article 24, restricts the right of the population to film the police. While presented in the name of defending police officers from targeted attacks, its clear aim is to provide police, who are regularly filmed engaged in violent attacks on protesters and workers, with impunity to violently assault the population, by preventing the population from filming them.

In the face of protests of tens of thousands, the Macron government had pledged to rewrite Article 24. The new version no longer explicitly mentions the sharing of images of police agents. Instead, it criminalizes any act which provoke[s], with the obvious aim that their physical and mental safety will be subject to attack, the identification of an agent of the national police, military or gendarmerie while they are acting as part of a police operation. It carries a maximum sentence of five years jail and a 75,000 fine.

Protesters hold placards reading "Police Blurred, Blind Justice" against the newly voted Global Security law as French President Emmanuel Macron visits the police headquarters in Montpellier, Southern France, Monday April, 19, 2021. (Guillaume Horcajuelo/pool photo via AP)

In practice, anyone who publishes a video identifying a police agent faces the danger of being criminally prosecuted, and the onus will be placed on them to demonstrate that they did not have an obvious aim of bringing about an attack on an officer.

Workers and young people in France and internationally have been outraged at the videos of the violence and brutality of the French state toward peaceful protests. In 2018, millions witnessed the videos of riot police dragging protesters across the road, shooting rubber bullets and tear gas canisters, and using attack dogs and truncheons against yellow vest protesters opposing social inequality.

Last November, hundreds of thousands joined protests across the country in response to incidents of police brutality that were caught on video. On November 26, Loopsider published a video of a vicious police assault on music producer Michel Zecler in his Paris recording studio. Zecler was beaten for over 20 minutes. He was then thrown in prison for 48 hours and falsely charged with assault, and only released after police were presented with the CCTV footage proving what had actually happened.

The following week, police had been filmed on a rampage at the Republic Square in the center of the city, beating refugees who were camped there in protest at the lack of housing and government support.

The Macron government is seeking to oppose the spread of videos of police because it is aware of the explosive opposition to the repression by his government against the working population.

The global security law also includes other measures further strengthening the police. For the first time, it authorizes in legislation the use of drones for police surveillance, which had already been in place in practice. Drones are permitted to be used to monitor all protests. Police are to be equipped with body cameras which are to stream live video directly to headquarters.

The bill includes no restrictions on the use of bodycam footage by automated facial recognition technology. Last December, the Macron government enacted a series of executive decrees which expanded the conditions in which police could collect detailed files on the population, including the views and political activities of citizens. It removed a clause in the existing police rules which explicitly precluded the use of police files by large-scale automated facial recognition technology.

The legal liberties association Quadrature du Net noted at the time: If, via the global security law, all protesters can be filmed at a protest, and  a large portion of them can be identified via facial recognition technology, the [police filing systems] have already prepared for them a complete system for centralizing all the information concerning them, without this surveillance ever being authorized nor weighed by a judge.

Under the global security law, police are also permitted to carry a weapon with them at all times in public places, such as restaurants and cinemas, including when they are off duty.

In an interview with the right-wing daily Le Figaro on Sunday, Emmanuel Macron said he would meet his election pledge to create 10,000 new positions in the police before the end of his five-year term next year. Every French person will see more blue on the ground in 2022 than in 2017, he said.

The National Assemblys vote approving Macrons police-state law came as the official, under-counted death tally of the coronavirus in France surpassed 100,000. The mass death is the result of the policies pursued by Macron, who has refused any scientific lockdown policy that would require the closure of non-essential production. Schools and non-essential workplaces have been kept open so that workers could remain on the job, and profits continue to grow for French corporations.

Alongside this death on a mass scale, the year has witnessed the further enrichment of a tiny corporate elite. Its 42 billionaires now have a combined wealth of $512.2 billion, after an increase of more than 66 percent in a single year. The French ruling class views with fear the eruption of social anger against its policies of profiteering on mass death and is building up the forces of state repression against that.

The Socialist Party, the Greens and Jean-Luc Melenchons Unsubmissive France have all postured fraudulently as opponents of Macrons police law. The Socialist Party has announced that it will be launching a legal challenge against the entire bill.

When it was in power under Francois Hollande, the Socialist Party significantly expanded police powers, including the enactment of a two-year state of emergency under Hollande, and the suspension of civil liberties, voted for at the time by Melenchons La France Insoumise. Macrons global security law expands police powers in the same direction as pursued under Hollande with La France Insoumises support.
Mumbai, April 19 : The ruling Shiv Sena and Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday demanded special sessions of the Lok Sabha and Maharashtra Legislature respectively to discuss the Covid-19 situation.

Terming the present Covid-19 spread as "unprecedented and almost war-like" Sena MP and Chief Spokesperson Sanjay Raut urged the Centre to convene at least a 2-day session of Lok Sabha to discuss the worsening scenario.

"A Special Parliament session should be held I have been discussing this with several prominent leaders of different parties all over and they admit that the situation is tense and veering out of control," Raut told mediapersons.

The Maha Vikas Aghadi ally leader added that there's utter confusion and tensions among the people as the Covid scourge continues to spread with shortages of medicines, medical equipment and other critical requirements.

"It's an unprecedented and almost a warlike situation everywhere. There are no beds, no oxygen, no vaccines, no medicines. A special session of Parliament should be summoned to discuss the situation in all states in the country," Raut urged.

Countering the demand, BJP state President Chandrakant Patil termed the situation as 'grim' in the state and demanded a special session of Maharashtra Assembly.

"The situation has gone out of control of the (MVA) government They have adopted the easy route - do nothing but keep blaming the Centre for everything," Patil said sharply.

The rival demands from the ruling and opposition parties in the state came even as MVA leaders hinted at further tightening of norms with Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray likely to take decision shortly.

Maharashtra currently has a case tally of 38,39,338 and 60,473 deaths notched in the past 13 months, besides a staggering 670,388 'active cases', all figures highest in the country.

Till date, Mumbai has notched the highest deaths (12,354) while Pune has recorded the maximum tally of cases (594,460) in the country.

A total of 37-lakh plus are presently in home isolation or institutional quarantine and 31,06,828 people have been cured and discharged from hospitals till date.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
A $29,000 cigar box and $19,000 hairbrush are among several items that were previously owned by Hitler and sold at a controversial auction in Australia.

Eight items belonging to the former dictator of Nazi Germany were sold under the hammer by JB Military Antiques at Morley, in Perth's north-east, on Sunday.

The auction was slammed by campaigners as a 'cruel celebration' of Hitler's regime and as 'spitting on the grave' of brave diggers, as they called for the sale of Nazi memorabilia to be banned.

Among the items sold was a white metal hand mirror that went for $15,000, a gravy boat that was sold for $11,500 and a metal boot brush that fetched $13,000.

His tableware collection went for $25,000, a cast-iron wall plaque of Hitler sold for $1,300 and a fork that belonged to Eva Braun, Hitler's mistress, was sold for $3,800.

A $29,000 cigar box (pictured) and $19,000 hairbrush are among several items that were previously owned by Hitler and sold at an auction in Australia - but the auction house copped heavy criticism for the 'perverse and twisted sale'

A hairbrush with the Nazi coat of arms and Hitler's initials 'AH' was sold for $19,000 during the auction

Each item was emblazoned with the Nazi coat of arms and Hitler's initials 'AH'.

JB Military Antiques copped heavy criticism for hosting the auction a week out from Anzac Day.

Anti-Defamation Commission chairman Dvir Abramovich condemned the sale of Hitler's items and called a 'celebration of his cruel regime of mass murder and torture'.

'If Hitler was alive today, he would be thanking JB Military Antiques and applauding their lurid trade, delighted that his legacy is being mainstreamed and promoted in Australia,' he said.

'The extermination and dehumanisation of millions should not have a tag price and be offered to the highest bidder.

'The perverse and twisted sale of these blood-stained items that belonged to monster tramples on the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and is a spit on the graves of the valiant diggers who sacrificed their lives to defeat this evil tyrant.'

The sale of such items is already banned or severely restricted across Europe.

JB Military Antiques owner Jamey Blewitt said the sale was just 'business' and that the store did not take a political stance.

'We're not political in any way,' he told The West Australian. 'We're aware that many people find these pieces absolute abhorrent.

'There are good and bad things in history,' he said.

The eight items that once belonged to Hitler were part of 500 military memorabilia sold by the store during the auction.

A metal boot brush fetched $13,000 during the auction at Morley, in Perth's north-east, on Sunday
[April 19, 2021] Embark Expands Senior Leadership Team to Commercialize Self-Driving Trucks

SAN FRANCISCO, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Embark Trucks, Inc. , a leading developer of self-driving trucks, today announced a landmark expansion of its senior leadership team to fuel the company's rapid growth. Citigroup Managing Director Richard Hawwa has been tapped to serve as Chief Financial Officer and former Orrick Partner and GE Executive Siddhartha "Sid" Venkatesan will join as Chief Legal Officer. Richard and Sid bring decades of combined industry expertise and will work to strategically expand Embark's financial and legal functions as the company begins commercializing self-driving trucks. Both Richard and Sid will be the first to serve in their roles. Richard Hawwa, Chief Financial Officer

Richard will join Embark with over fifteen years of investment banking experience, and most recently served as a Managing Director at Citigroup, leading coverage across the global mobility sector. Richard has worked closely with companies advising on strategic matters and assisting on capital raising transactions, including recent transactions for Li-Cycle, Lucid Motors and Ouster. In addition, Richard has experience across the broader mobility ecosystem, having managed transactions for Adient, Allison Transmission, Aptiv, Dana Automotive, Goodyear Tire, Hyundai Motor Group, Lear Corporation, and Tesla. "Having had the privilege of working with many mobility companies during my career, Embark stands out as a special company with visionary founders and a deep and experienced team that will continue to lead the industry of autonomous trucking," said Mr. Hawwa. "Embark has built a unique business model centered around its technology which will enhance the way we live by increasing safety and making the world more environmentally friendly." Siddhartha "Sid" Venkatesan, Chief Legal Officer

Sid joins Embark with nearly two decades of legal ad business experience in the technology and industrial space. Most recently, Sid served as General Counsel, Chief Operating Officer, and Corporate Secretary at Komline-Sanderson, a manufacturer of capital equipment and process solutions for industrial firms.



Before Komline-Sanderson, he was Executive Counsel and Chief IP Counsel at GE Digital, where he led negotiations of commercial deals and M&A totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, including with companies such as Apple, China Telecom, Intel, and others, and oversaw General Electric's Industrial Internet of Things IP strategy. Sid was also a Partner at Orrick, Herrington, and Sutcliffe LLP, where he served Fortune 500 companies and startups alike across a broad array of technology verticals for over twelve years as a technology lawyer specializing in high stakes litigation, intellectual property strategy, and other commercial matters. Sid holds an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, a JD from NYU School of Law, and a BS in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University, concentrating in Automotive Engineering. He was also a software developer for several years.

"Throughout my career, I've helped young and mature companies alike navigate complex legal and regulatory challenges in emerging industries. I could not be more delighted to bring that expertise to a surging company like Embark," said Mr. Venkatesan. "Embark's technology has the promise to dramatically transform the freight industry for the better, enabling shippers and carriers to deliver loads safely and efficiently, while also improving the quality of life for the industry's highly-skilled drivers. I look forward to helping the Embark team execute on its mission to deliver industry-best AV technology while always prioritizing ethics, safety, and compliance." "We are thrilled to welcome Richard and Sid to Embark," said Embark co-founder and chief executive officer Alex Rodrigues. "Both bring the relevant expertise to help Embark remain highly competitive as the freight industry begins adopting AV technology. Together, these leaders offer unique perspectives as change agents and enable Embark to excel, building an organizational culture that supports the transformational change that our technology represents." The expansion of Embark's leadership team comes on the heels of major business developments at the company as it pushes toward the commercialization of self-driving trucks. Earlier this month, Embark unveiled its go-to-market strategy with the launch of the Embark Partner Development Program , an approach that works with the existing freight ecosystem to integrate and scale self-driving trucks within carrier networks. In March, Embark announced the launch of the Embark Universal Interface , an industry-first innovation designed to integrate Embark's self-driving platform with trucks from any of the major US truck OEMs. The company also debuted its work zone navigation technology and announced a first-of-its-kind partnership with the Arizona Department of Transportation to share data and collaborate on highway work zone safety. About Embark Embark, a San Francisco-based developer of self-driving trucks, is building a future where roads are safer, drivers work closer to their homes and families, and goods move faster and are cheaper. Embark is working with the world's leading shippers and carriers to bring this vision to life through a unique model that combines the constancy of automation for long-haul, on-highway routes, with human adaptability for off-highway, short-haul driving. Embark was founded in 2016 and is backed by leading investors including Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital, DCVC, and Y Combinator. Media Contact: Misha Rindisbacher, 909-267-0715, misha.rindisbacher@embarktrucks.com View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/embark-expands-senior-leadership-team-to-commercialize-self-driving-trucks-301271138.html SOURCE Embark Trucks, Inc

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Iraq may face severe water shortages

G7 countries sign deal to tax largest multinational companies

1st round of debates of presidential candidates takes place in Iran

6 die and 5 go missing in Sri Lankan flooding

Powerful blast thunders in Somalia capital

A body found in Artsakh

Nearly 100 people killed in Burkina Faso

Acting PM: It is necessary to create professional army in Armenia

UN demands investigation amid discovery of mass grave of children at Canada school

Acting PM: Armenia is a paradise for business

ICRC representatives visit 6 captured Armenian soldiers

Pashinyan: An absolute record for Armenia has been set for number of registered jobs

Civil Contract party holding fundraising evening

Nikol Pashinyan sends congratulatory message to Bashar al-Assad

South Korean air force chief resigns amid scandal over female sergeant suicide

Nikol Pashinyan visits morgue in Abovyan

Acting PM announces interference of external forces in electoral processes in Armenia

Pashinyan conducts procession in Abovyan

MO: Azerbaijanis carry out engineering work on territories without crossing Armenian border

8 security officials killed in Taliban attack in Afghanistan

Philip T. Reeker's visit to Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia

Biden gives prosecutors more freedom to terminate immigration cases

93 new cases of COVID-19 reported in Armenia per day

Total of 1,557 bodies found in territories not controlled by Artsakh

Twitter launches paid subscription Twitter Blue

Robert Kocharyan: We are able to find solutions

Tennessee boat merchant willing to pay $ 100,000 to anyone who catches specially marked fish

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
The Union of Consumers in Malaga has warned of an "alarming" increase in complaints related to the repair and installation of gas water heaters in homes.

In the last two months, the group says a score of complaints have been received, some relating to the same installation company, and all of them have already been referred to the Junta de Andalucia "to monitor and sanction these actions".

The consumer association explains that in most cases users turned to the internet to find a company that would repair their faulty water heater.

But the consumer group said that they found in many cases that parts fitted did not comply with the regulations and, in a number of cases, they found that butane gas heaters had been fitted in a piped gas installation, or the jets had been tampered with "with the risk that such actions entail".

From consumer groups stressed the importance of always requesting a complaint form if the someone is unhappy with the service. It also advised always using trusted official installers, requesting a quote prior to the repair and an invoice at the end of the work to avoid unwanted problems.
OSCE Chairperson-in-Office and Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs Ann Linde and OSCE Secretary General Helga Schmid have discussed the security situation in and around Ukraine and call for de-escalation.

This was said in a press release published on the OSCE website.

The Secretary General and I have had a fruitful discussion on the concern we share regarding heightened tensions in and around Ukraine. We underlined that participating States should act in accordance with the Vienna Document, which is a key element of our common security and an important confidence building tool to reduce military risks," Chairperson-in-Office Linde said.

She reiterated that Sweden will continue to fulfill its mandate as Chair to contribute to de-escalation and conflict prevention, in accordance with OSCE principles and commitments.

Secretary General Schmid said: I join the Chairs call to refrain from further escalation and to engage in good faith with the mechanisms in the OSCEs comprehensive toolbox, which can be effectively used to de-escalate the situation and to move back to the path of co-operation and dialogue.

As reported, on April 10, the Swedish OSCE Chairpersonship convened a meeting following Ukraines request under Vienna Document Chapter III on risk reduction measures.

On April 14, following Ukraines request to invoke paragraph 16.3 of Vienna Document Chapter III, the Chair, together with the Armenian Chair of the OSCE Forum for Security Co-operation (FSC), held a special joint FSC and OSCE Permanent Council (PC) meeting. The participating States expressed concern about the military activities of the Russian Federation near the border with Ukraine and called on Moscow to de-escalate, making a number of recommendations.

However, Russia refuses to fulfill its obligations under the Vienna Document and to explain its military activities.

ish


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Jennifer Barnhill is a freelance writer with a focus on military family advocacy, a Navy spouse of 15 years and mother of three. She is the chief operating officer for Partners in PROMISE, a Secure Families Initiative volunteer and serves on the National Military Spouse Network's Day of Advocacy steering committee.

The Biden administration recently released its fiscal 2022 Discretionary Spending Request, which asks for increased special education funding. But to understand why special education needs this jump-start, we must look at the history of military special education.

I recently wrote an article for Military.com about why military kids are so vital to fixing special education that only scratched the surface of the military-civilian connection. A recent article, "The Truth About Impact Aid & All the Lies You've Been Sold," released by Military Kids-Special Education Alliance founder Josephine Amato, sheds even more light on the subject.

In her article, Amato discusses the inextricable link between impact aid funding and racism and the impact it has on military-connected students' access to public education.

Following the Funds

"Every year Title VII of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) allocates billions of dollars to support military-connected students' equal access to education," Amato writes. This allocation is commonly referred to as impact aid.

Impact aid is funding allocated for highly mobile military children and other "at-risk" student populations. Amato outlines how this money is not being utilized to support military students in the way it was originally intended. She theorizes that school districts have latched onto one aspect of impact aid: the idea that the funds offset the financial drain military communities place upon communities. But they have forgotten its intent: "to help military students meet the same challenging state academic standards."

As a reporter, I know the power of words and the power marketing has over the actions of others. A sensational headline grabs attention, but a consistent message repeated again and again has staying power.

A Fight for Power: Federal vs. State vs. Local Government

Military students are caught in the middle of a battle over government funds. In her article, Amato cites localities framing military-connected students and their presence as a financial drain upon local economies. "In 2020, Virginia Beach Public Schools Board Member Beverly Anderson went as far as to state, 'Those [military installation] houses are not taxed. We don't get real estate taxes from those areas and that's what the whole thing [impact aid] is all about.'"

At some point, this might have been a valid argument, when the influx of cash paid for infrastructure. But if the bill has been paid, should the states still be the cashing checks?

Today in established communities, military families are not a drain on resources; in fact, they are an asset that helps augment local economies. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, "The DoD contributes billions of dollars each year to state economies through the operation of military installations. This spending helps sustain local communities." They pay rent. Some buy homes where they hope to retire one day. They work and spend money in the local economy. Jobs are created, and lucrative government contract funds flow.

Instead of "If you build it, they will come," it's really "if the military comes, they will also build."

As a result of the value added by the military presence, Amato highlights in her article that -- without proof in the form of accountability in reporting the use of funds from school districts -- it is unclear whether military students are receiving the funding intended to support them. Students don't see benefits if districts are treating impact aid funding like discretionary petty cash.

Protecting Military Students from Discrimination

Did you know that one byproduct of impact aid funding was correcting segregation? In her research, Amato discusses how impact aid started to force resistant school districts that accepted Title VII funds to desegregate. This requirement would allow minority students to attend previously segregated schools to mirror the newly desegregated military.

"In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower took action to ban federal aid from being utilized for segregated public schools operated by or on US bases. The Commissioner of Education under President Eisenhower, Earl J. McGrath, saw Public Law 874's purpose in the same light," Amato writes in her article.

One desegregation case showed that federal education guidelines can be enforced when a school district accepts federal funds. In the United States v. County School Bd., Prince George County, Va., 221 F. Supp. 93 (E.D. Va. 1963), the United States argued that federal funding constituted a contract between the receiving school and the U.S. government on behalf of the military-connected students they represented. When the school district followed state law and did not accept black students, it violated that contract.

Today, discrimination is seen in inequity of educational services provided to military special education students. COVID-19 has exacerbated this situation further. Amato, like many special education parents and advocates, is frustrated by this complex system of funding and state vs. federal law. But through that frustration and complexity, her message could not be more clear:

Funds that are intended to benefit military students should benefit military students.

On this we agree. We hope accountability is on the way with the 2021 National Defense Authorization (NDAA), which outlined a Government Accountability Office study that will determine whether this funding finds its way into special education classrooms and the classrooms of all military-connected students.

-- The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Military.com. If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@military.com for consideration.
America started this boycott nonsense by getting uppity about the Russian invasion of Afghanistan only to invade the country itself two decades later at great cost to itself and others. There are many gloomy super-national threats to humanity at the moment, from viral scourges to looming climate disaster. We should take every opportunity we can to put aside blame and point-scoring and come together as a human family.

Peter Barry, Marysville The responses will be instructive

With the international push to strip the Winter Olympics from China it will be instructive to learn which of our politicians and ore exporters argue for human rights and press freedom and which for self-serving reasons remain silent or reject the call.

John Weston, Melton South The evidence is starkly compelling

As your editorial makes clear, we should be under no illusions that the Beijing Winter Olympics next February will be hosted by a nation engaged in genocidal acts against its Muslim Uighur population. In this instance, comparisons between industrial-scale incarceration, forced sterilisation and torture in remote Xinjiang Province and the historical treatment in the 1940s of Jews in Nazi Germany held in Eastern European concentration camps, deep within the Reich, are neither glib nor undocumented.

The closest parallel in Olympics history, the 1936 Berlin Games, saw Adolf Hitler concealing from the world his growing domestic oppression of German Jews, although acts of genocide were still to be unleashed fully. In the case of the Uighurs, by contrast, the print, oral and visual testimony of their existential plight is already starkly compelling. Nations like Australia cannot in good faith decry other countries humans rights records if they are willing to take part in next years Winter Olympics.

Jon McMillan, Mount Eliza THE FORUM Jobs, growth will follow

As a retired climate scientist, with a Public Service Medal and a share in a Nobel prize, I have long been predicting drastic climate changes in the next few decades if we do not quickly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The consequences will be disastrous for Australia and the world, with rising sea levels, more extreme storms and floods and droughts, etc ...

We must act quickly to reduce GHG emissions and plan for disaster relief, and profit from a massive expansion in renewable electricity from solar, wind and tidal power and the generation of hydrogen and ammonia as transportable and exportable fuels. Jobs and growth will come with renewable energy. It is the urgent future for us all. Renewable energy will provide jobs and growth. Get on with it.

Barrie Pittock, Brighton East Its beyond them

Cheryl Durrant, a specialist in intelligence analysis and scenario planning, said Australia was falling behind other nations in integrating climate policy with national security (Call to tackle warming security risk, 19/4). Intelligence analysis seems beyond the Coalition government. Angus Taylors scenario planning is to shift responsibility to the top three largest emitters and continue business as usual. After empathy training is complete, perhaps government members could attend a lecture by Durrant and Robert Glasser at the Australian Strategic Policy Institutes Climate and Security Policy Centre. Glasser is of the view that we are on the brink of an overlooked, unprecedented and rapidly advancing regional crisis.

What Australias response will be at the forthcoming climate summit is anybodys guess.

Ray Peck, Hawthorn You cant live in a bubble

Those of us north of 80 arent thinking of clots after our first jab, we are just as thankful as we were as kids, lining up for our polio, diphtheria and TB shots. Life cant be lived in a bubble, its a risk no matter what your age.

Margaret Skeen, Point Lonsdale You cant learn after the fact

Louis Taffs reflection on the part he and his male student peer group played in denigrating young women in his social milieu is searingly honest and makes senior men in leadership roles look like amateurs. He acknowledges the uncomfortable truth that misogyny is everywhere and that young men internalise misogynys message (i.e. women are not human) in their early years of socialisation (Schools breed misogyny but we can break the cycle, 18/4)

However, as Taffs correctly says, High school boys did not invent misogyny, its the dominant paradigm that permeates our political, legal, organisational (across workplaces) educational and cultural institutions. So if we want to break the cycle of socialised misogyny in our boys/men, we must commence the correct pedagogy of respectful relationships in early infancy and reinforce it throughout a boys school years. Because if our political leaders think that we can teach grown men (think Andrew Laming) empathy and kindness after the fact of their misogynistic conduct, theyre kidding themselves.

Jelena Rosic, Mornington Not perfect, just fed up

No woman has ever claimed to be perfect, however we are fed up. Fed up at having our statements, views and experiences dismissed or trivialised by some men. Men who, when faced with this uncomfortable truth, attempt to put women back in their place by mocking them, such as in an inappropriate cartoon (Leunig, 19/4).

Samantha Keir, Brighton East

Without this, its all spin

Business leaders and politicians desperate for international borders to open and quarantine to be abolished or at home merely jeopardise our domestic economy, health and relative internal freedom. Until they, including the Prime Minister, are prepared to confront the elephant in the room, vaccine-resistant variants of concern, and focus on acquiring second-generation vaccines to address these, along with immunising children to get us to herd immunity, it is all just dangerous spin. The current AstraZeneca vaccine, being given to vulnerable elderly, appears to have poor performance against the South African variant. Alan Joyce, what medical school did you attend?

Dr Anita White, Kew You get what you pay for

Your correspondent (Letters, 19/4) took a step back and correctly links the decline in public services (such as, but not limited to, roadside clearing and maintenance) to the outsourcing of those services. But the problem goes deeper. People vote for governments that privatise services and cut taxes. However, you always get what you pay for  the cheapest, i.e. worst, service when public services are outsourced, or not enough government employees on the payroll to perform services that we want and need.

You can pay your taxes to employ people to perform these tasks, or you can DIY. But dont vote for governments that outsource services, or cheerfully pocket your tax cuts, then have the gall to complain about the decline in standards in our public utilities and essential services, not to mention the increasing number of unemployed people who then need income support.

Margaret Callinan, Hawthorn A way to calm the nervous

At the start of the vaccination program, in a show of vaccine confidence, Scott Morrison and some other high-profile pollies rolled up their sleeves and got the Pfizer jab. This may have since been criticised as queue-jumping, but it actually served a useful purpose from the point of view of engendering trust in the vaccine. Could we not do a similar thing again, rolling up the sleeves of the next layer of high-profile pollies, celebrities or credible medical personnel to help restore confidence and allay the fears around the AstraZeneca vaccine? AstraZenecas clot risk is very low, but unfortunately enough people are getting sufficiently nervous about receiving it that it may impact the overall effectiveness of the vaccination program unless some positive, strong visual confidence building is undertaken.

Claire Merry, Wantirna This could be embarrassing

On Thursday this week, at the invitation of US President Joe Biden, 40 world leaders including Australias Scott Morrison will participate in a virtual summit on climate change.

Collectively, these nations, invited by President Biden to join with the US to make more ambitious national pledges above and beyond commitments already made, account for more than 80 per cent of the worlds greenhouse gas emissions. The summit however promises to be a massive embarrassment for Australia, long regarded globally as a climate pariah. When Donald Trump was in office, Mr Morrison was happy to describe climate summits as nonsense. But his climate ally is gone, leaving our Prime Minister exposed.

Our governments are still approving new coal mines and Mr Morrison is locked into a gas-led recovery. Mr Morrisons intention to reach net zero emissions as soon as possible and preferably by 2050 might fool some media here, but not US climate negotiators. As one of the worlds leading climate scientists, Michael Mann, has said, the US will not be fooled by the smoke and mirrors the Morrison government appears to be employing to distract from their clear record of inaction on climate.

Neil Hudson, East Melbourne This is not how you do it

Scott Morrison announces late at night on Facebook that he is abandoning vaccination targets. I do not subscribe to Facebook so he might as well have done this on Zimbabwe television.

As Prime Minister if you have a difficult announcement to make then do it in a public forum where it can be discussed. What exactly does our Prime Minister do apart from posing for photo opportunities when he has something positive to spruik?

Brian Glass, Montrose On the right track

On behalf of the thousands of people who waited around the Sandringham line on Sunday to see the volunteers of Steamrail Victoria in action  magnificent, our deepest thanks. Talk about bringing people together. Best of all, a mum and dad clearly in love, with the daughter perched high on dads shoulders exclaiming how does that work as locomotive K190 steamed past. I overheard fragments of rice ... boiling water ... steam that makes our pot lid move around. A child on track in so many ways. Well done, Steamrail.

Ronald Elliott, Sandringham A role reversal is coming

While current drivers of electric vehicles do need to plan their trip, in 10 years time it will be reversed.

Petrol and diesel drivers will be the ones suffering range anxiety. They will need to map out the petrol stations, and calculate driving distances. There will be far fewer petrol stations, the opening hours will be shorter and fuel will be more expensive. It is a question of economics. The income from sales will have fallen, and investment in petrol infrastructure will have dropped away. It will mirror what is happening with coal-fired power stations. They are becoming too costly to keep running. It will not be the fault of the electric car owners. Cheap oil is running out, and using renewable electrical energy is our only long-term transport choice.

Tom Danby, Coburg North Out of the frying pan ...

The trans-Tasman Bubble was inflated yesterday on the judgment that flying across the Tasman can now be COVID-safe. And it might be.

But trying to get travel back to normal, for the minority of us who fly, only undermines our commitment to cut emissions and escalates an even greater threat to our wellbeing: global heating. Flying is the most warming single thing you can do, per kilometre, per hour. Pre-COVID, Australias aviation sector annual emissions were more than those of Australias dirtiest power station, AGLs Loy Yang. In flying over The Ditch were jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.

Mark Carter, Chewton AND ANOTHER THING Australia Post

Parcel post privatisation by stealth (Outcry as Australia Post says no to perishable food, 19/4). Another public service gone.

Barbara Lynch, South Yarra Credit:

Politics

Scott Morrison has a new name for a whiteboard. Its now called national cabinet.

Barry Kranz, Mount Clear Amanda Vanstone occasionally makes me wonder why she is a member of the Liberal Party.

Alan Duncan, Frankston South Its to be hoped that when Scott Morrison talked recently of being on a war footing he didnt have his position with Australian women in his thinking.

Hugh McCaig, Blackburn Social distancing

MCC and AFL, please note that the 75per cent capacity stipulated by the DHHS to be COVID safe doesnt mean shutting off 25 per cent of your ground and cramming us all in the remainder. Sardines cant be socially distant.

Brian Rooney, Glen Iris The ABC

Yes, Anne Rogan (And Another Thing, 19/4), the ABC could certainly do better, if it was properly funded.

Graeme Henderson, Bullengarook
Atlantic bluefin tuna have returned to UK waters and can once again be seen during the summer and autumn months.

Their numbers appear to be increasing, following a long period of absence linked to population decline, according to research led by Cefas and the University of Exeter.

Marine scientists in the UK and Ireland have analysed multiple datasets, spanning a 16-year period, to document the increase in bluefin, which arrive into the waters of the Celtic Seas and off South West England, the Scilly Isles, and North West Ireland to feed in late summer and autumn.

The research is part of the Defra-funded "Thunnus UK" research project.

Thunnus UK was established to improve knowledge of this species, as an essential first step in ensuring a positive future for Atlantic bluefin tuna around the UK.

Central to the project's success has been a concerted effort to share and combine important data on where people have observed Atlantic bluefin tuna.

This will help to identify where and when these fish are found in UK waters.

Nearly 1,000 unique observations were recorded between 2013 and 2018 by citizen scientists, scientists, fishers and eco-tour leaders.

Researchers found that Atlantic bluefin tuna begin to arrive in May and stay as late as January.

However, peak numbers were recorded between August and October each year.

The research draws on five key data sources:

The general public: A total of 80 sightings recorded by the public and submitted to http://www. thunnusuk. org

Eco-tourism: three eco-tourism vessels collecting data on more than 1600 boat tours off the SW coast of England between 2008 and 2018.

Opportunistic scientific surveys: 40 days of surveys with >2500 km of effort conducted by Cefas and University of Exeter experts off the Northwest Coast of Ireland and SW England in 2016 and 2018.

Fisheries independent surveys: (1) data collected by MarineLife during the Peltic survey by Cefas between 2013 and 2015, and (2) data collected by the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group during the Irish Marine Institute's Celtic Sea Herring Acoustic Survey between 2014 and 2018

Bycatch in commercial fisheries: Bluefin tuna were accidentally caught (bycatch) in the Irish commercial fishery for albacore tuna between 2003 and 2017.

Lead author Tom Horton, of the University of Exeter, said: "Atlantic bluefin tuna are once again a feature in nearshore waters off the UK and Ireland.

"We've been able to document this story by using data from a wide variety of sources.

"We need to work together to ensure a future for Atlantic bluefin tuna, both in the UK and Ireland and more broadly throughout their range in the Atlantic Ocean.

"This is a really exciting study and the return of these fish suggest an important role in the UK's ecosystem."

Jeroen van der Kooij, Principal scientist and Peltic Survey Lead, Cefas, said: "The unique data collected during our annual pelagic ecosystem survey of SW English waters is fundamental to this research.

"Marine animal observers from MARINELife on board our research vessel recorded not only the arrival, but also a subsequent year-on-year increase in sightings of bluefin tuna in the area.

"We will continue to collect this information, which, in combination with data on their prey fish and habitat collected during the same survey, will hopefully increase our knowledge of these exciting yet enigmatic animals."

###
"Drivers that install safety devices in their vehicles will pay lower insurance rates. However, before installing any safety devices, drivers should call their insurers to check what devices are approved." said Russell Rabichev, Marketing Director of Internet Marketing Company.

Compare-autoinsurance.org has launched a new blog post that presents several safety devices that will help drivers obtain cheaper car insurance rates.

For more info and free quotes, please visit https://compare-autoinsurance.org/safety-devices-that-lower-car-insurance-rates/

Drivers that are looking to purchase car insurance, should ensure that they will get a policy that offers lots of protection for a small price. Although for many this sounds hard to achieve, there are several methods to obtain lower premiums. For example, drivers that install several safety devices in their vehicles will pay less on their insurance.

Drivers can save car insurance money with the help of the next safety devices:



Rear-view cameras. Drivers that install a rear-view camera on their vehicles will be able to watch on a monitor how they back up and see if there are any obstacles behind the vehicle.

GPS systems. Usually, a GPS system is used to guide people to go from one location to another. However, these systems can work a little differently. Many drivers are using GPS tracking systems. These tracking devices are installed in hidden locations so that the thieves will have a hard time finding them. With the help of these systems, car owners will always know where are their vehicles. If a car fitted with such a device gets stolen, then the authorities will have no trouble recovering the vehicle. For this reason, the insurers will offer a generous discount to drivers that have GPS-based tracking systems in their vehicles.

Anti-theft devices. There are many aftermarket anti-theft devices that drivers can install in their vehicles. Kill switches, alarm systems, armored collars, and other anti-theft devices can help drivers pay lower insurance rates.

Airbags. Although airbags are a standard feature for all new vehicles, some older vehicles are not equipped with airbags. Drivers should ensure that their cars have airbags installed in order to take advantage of a discount.

For additional info, money-saving tips, and free car insurance quotes, visit https://compare-autoinsurance.org/

Compare-autoinsurance.org is an online provider of life, home, health, and auto insurance quotes. This website is unique because it does not simply stick to one kind of insurance provider, but brings the clients the best deals from many different online insurance carriers. In this way, clients have access to offers from multiple carriers all in one place: this website. On this site, customers have access to quotes for insurance plans from various agencies, such as local or nationwide agencies, brand names insurance companies, etc.
IF YOU need evidence that the Democratic administration in Washington is hostile to the Granite State, look no further than its disposition toward our states lawsuit against Massachusetts over the Bay States bad faith policy of imposing its income tax on New Hampshire telecommuters who bot
ALLY joins Greentown Labs ALLY and Greentown are bringing together operators, service companies and new technologies to create an all-inclusive workforce, one that embraces all forms of energy. - Katie Mehnert, CEO of ALLY Energy

Fresh off its largest digital gathering, Energy 2.0, ALLY Energy, the online home for the energy community, announces a new step that will help the entire energy sector transition. ALLY has been selected by Greentown Labs, North Americas largest incubator for climate-focused startups, as an inaugural member of its new operation in Houston.

ALLY Energy Founder and CEO Katie Mehnert will be a featured speaker at the grand opening of Greentown Houston on Earth Day -- April 22, 2021-- along with government dignitaries and top corporate executives. A Livestream at 2 p.m. CDT will be available.

Im thrilled that ALLY Energy has been accepted by Greentown Labs as a seed stage company preparing to scale, Mehnert wrote on LinkedIn. We found our fit. Thank you Greentown and to all of its supporters and partners, many of whom are our clients building the energy workforce and technologies of the future.

ALLY will move its offices into the new Greentown Houston facility, part of the citys Innovation Corridor.

"Greentown Labs is thrilled to welcome ALLY Energy," said Dr. Emily Reichert, CEO of the organization based in Somerville, Massachusetts. "ALLY is dedicated to fostering an inclusive energy transition, and Greentown Labs is eager to partner with them on this effort in Houston -- the energy capital of the world -- and beyond!"

Reichert discussed Greentown, its plans for Houston and climatetech on ALLY's podcast, The Voices of Energy.

Since its founding, ALLY Energy has focused on building diversity and equity in the energy sector. In addition to creating a stronger economy, DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) speeds up efforts to address climate change. The more people with different backgrounds and perspectives have their voices heard, the more we innovate to drive the transition, Mehnert explains.

ALLY Energy is the leading resource in diverse talent, careers, and culture, creating an inclusive workforce for the energy transition. The global community includes professionals in 120 countries in nearly 1,000 companies across energy in oil and natural gas, utilities, and renewables. Our ALLY Council of 40 organizations connects the energy industry to resources and best practices and is a neutral platform for dialogue and actions to address equity, the environment, and the new economy.

Greentown Labs is a community of climate action pioneers working to design a more sustainable world. As the largest climatetech startup incubator in North America, Greentown Labs brings together startups, corporates, investors, policymakers, and many others with a focus on scaling climate solutions. Driven by the mission of providing startups the resources, knowledge, connections, and equipment they need to thrive, Greentown Labs offers lab space, shared office space, a machine shop, an electronics lab, software and business resources, a large network of corporate customers, investors, and more. Greentown Labs is headquartered in Somerville, MA and has supported more than 330 startups since its founding in 2011. These startups have collectively created more than 6,500 direct jobs and have raised more than $1.2 billion in funding. Greentown's second-ever location will open in Houston, TX, in April 2021.


Jodie Prenger will star in a touring production of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Don Black's Tell Me On A Sunday from June.

The production, which first played at the Watermill Theatre in 2016, will open on a national tour at the Malvern Festival Theatre on 15 June 2021, with subsequent dates at Shrewsbury Theatre, Chelmsford City Theatres, Canterbury Marlowe Theatre, Nottingham Theatre Royal, Birmingham Hippodrome, Sheffield Lyceum, Grimsby Auditorium, Edinburgh King's, Curve Leicester, The Lowry Salford and Bury St Edmonds Theatre, with further dates to be revealed.

Lloyd Webber and Black's solo piece follows a young English woman who moves to New York in the 1980s. Alongside Prenger, the show is directed by Paul Foster, with musical direction by Francis Goodhand and musical supervision by Catherine Jayes. It is designed by David Woodhead with lighting design by Howard Hudson and sound design by Tom Marshall.

Producer Jamie Wilson said today: "We are thrilled that we are able to revive the acclaimed Watermill Theatre production of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Don Black's Tell Me On A Sunday to be able to play a part in the reopening of theatres around the UK. Tell Me On A Sunday, with its cast of just one actress, is probably the most naturally socially distanced musical in the world! We are delighted that Jodie Prenger is able to return to this role to reprise her incredible performance as "Emma". This production is the perfect way for audiences to support their local theatre with this classic show."
Beginning April 12, the Philippine government lowered the lockdown over Metro Manila, the national capital region, and the four adjacent provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna and Rizal, to the second highest level. The order rejected the advice of medical experts to extend the stricter protocol imposed on March 29 amid a COVID-19 surge.

With infections at over 900,000 and rising at ten to twelve thousand a day, the highest rate since the pandemic began more than a year ago, the decision to lift restrictions is a death sentence to thousands of Filipino people. The fatality rate for COVID-19 cases in Metro Manila rose over the past month from 1.82 percent to 5.36 percent.

Workers wearing protective suits disinfect a public market to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus in Marikina city, Philippines during the start of a stricter lockdown in Monday, March 29, 2021. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

In the 11 days preceding the decision, confirmed new cases in the quarantined capital and provinces rose to 53,714. This is a severe under-count. Contact tracing was already at an abysmally low three contacts traced for every infected person since March, and only four out of 17 cities in the National Capital Region were in compliance with governments contact tracing protocols. Now tracing has all but collapsed inside the lockdown area as President Rodrigo Dutertes administration scrambled to hire 5,000 contact tracers for the capital.

Moreover, the positivity rate averaged 20 percent nationwide, indicating a dangerous increase in community transmission and the spread of the virus. The testing rate is one of the lowest in the world, just ahead of Indonesia, Bangladesh and Pakistan, where the virus is out of control. While the government is targeting 50,000 a day, and largely not meeting its target, the positivity rate indicates that the required testing should be at least 200,000 a day to be able to trace the spread of the virus.

The COVID-19 surge in the national capital and the provinces has flooded the COVID-19 allocated capacity of hospitals, both public and private, and the isolation centres. According to Rappler, as of April 12, of the 14 hospitals it checked across Metro Manila and Cavite, 310 COVID-19 infected patients were waiting for beds and were being treated in the emergency departments. Some have been reported to have died waiting for a vacant ICU or isolation bed.

A story published by ABS-CBN in late March is doubtless representative of the state of the crisis. The account detailed how a COVID-infected father died in the early hours of the morning outside a hospital emergency room after hours of frantic search for any hospital that would accept COVID-19 patients.

In a tweet, Angelo Barrera stated: My brother was wailing and crying outside with my mother in shock and unresponsive next to him. My dad died in the cold.

As ABS-CBN recounted, Barreras father tested positive for COVID-19 on March 16 and was isolated at home and had a doctor monitoring his vitals and prescribing medicine via text message. He began struggling for breath by the weekend.

We started shipping him to nearby hospitals and calling in advance, Barrera said. This was the worst part. Every single hospital, every one of them, was full. Be it admission, ER, even the wait list for the ER, every single one was full. You name it, from Asian Hospital to St. Lukes. At 2 a.m. we gave up on hospitals and opted for home care.

But then Barreras father stopped breathing and they rushed him to a primary care hospital, which was also in full capacity.

At 5:20 a.m., he flatlined. They used the defibrillator and everything. He was next to the door of the ER, a few minutes away from being able to enter the (intensive care unit).

The doctor on duty, Anna Victorino, interviewed by ABS-CBN, confirmed that they could not admit the patient in the ICU because they were understaffed.

In her own tweet, Victorino urged the public to hold the government accountable:

Screen capture of Twitter Account: Anna Victorino

Medical care workers have been severely impacted as well. Doctors and nurses are forced by under-staffing to work 12- or even 24-hour shifts. The Philippine Star reported on COVID-19 wards where a nurse tended to 12 patients and a nursing aide had 35 patients under her care. From April 4 to April 10, ABS-CBN reported 399 new COVID-19 cases among health workers, including 170 nurses and 53 doctors. A nursing assistant is also reported to have died. Since the pandemic began, 16,510 heathcare workers have been infected, with over 86 dead, including 33 doctors and 21 nurses.

The new lockdown, like previous lockdowns, imposes all the restrictions and hardships on the poor, including curfews and checkpoints, while lifting all meaningful restrictions on business operations, including, significantly, public and privately-owned mass transportation to facilitate herding workers back into factories and offices. Far from aiming to prevent transmission of the virus, the militarized lockdowns terrorize, detain and even kill the working poor.

The sign reads Its too much, were tired! We need mass hiring! [Screen Capture from Alliance of Health Workers Facebook page]

According to Rappler, 28-year-old Darren Penaredondo of Cavite died of a heart condition after being forced by police to do 300 squats as punishment for violating the curfew to buy drinking water. In Laguna, 26-year-old Ernanie Jimenez was allegedly beaten to death by the barangay, or local government, guards. In addition, according to the police, 6,603 persons were warned, fined, and arrested for violating lockdown restrictions.

These horrendous conditions are stoking immense social anger. The Manila Standard reported on April 11 that residents in a Taguig city barangay, excluded from the limited government financial handouts, confronted and threw stones at government officials and their police escorts. On April 9, the overworked and underpaid health care workers and members of the Alliance of Health Workers staged an online protest and demanded the immediate release of their hazard pay and the hiring of more regular health care workers to handle the COVID-19 patients.

Screen Capture of Alliance of Health Workers Facebook page

The governments vaccination program has stalled as vaccine nationalism and geopolitical tensions between China and the US intensify. Indias decision to stop exports of its locally-produced vaccines has hampered supplies worldwide, including to the Philippines, while rising anti-Chinese sentiments, stoked up by local political factions allied with US imperialism, have led to widespread rejection of Sinovax, the Chinese-produced vaccine.

To date, according to Rappler, over 3 million dosages have been delivered to the country, of which 2.5 million are Sinovac, but just half the available dosages have been delivered and only 162,000 people, mostly health workers, military and police, have been fully vaccinated, just 0.23 percent of the 70 million needed to achieve herd immunity.
By Asif Shahzad

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Islamist radicals in Pakistan have released 11 police officers that were taken hostage during violent anti-blasphemy protests against France over the weekend, the interior minister said on Monday.

The officers were snatched by members of the Tehrik-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) during clashes outside the group's headquarters in the eastern city of Lahore. Three TLP members were killed during the violence, according to the Islamists.

Photographs of the captured police, with their heads, legs and arms heavily bandaged, were posted on social media by their captors.

"They've released the 11 policemen they had held hostage," the interior minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmad, said in a video statement.

He said negotiations had with the TLP had begun. The government outlawed the TLP last week after it blocked main highways, rail tracks, and entry, exit routes to major cities, attacking police and burning public property.

At least four police have been killed, and more than 500 wounded in the violence that erupted last week after the government detained the TLP leader, Saad Hussain Rizvi, ahead of a planned countrywide anti-France campaign.

The Islamists are seeking the expulsion of the French ambassador, as a diplomatic response to cartoons in France depicting Prophet Mohammad, which Muslims regard as blasphemous.

Protests broke out last year in several Muslim countries over the response in France to the killing of a teacher who showed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad during a civics class. The cartoons were re-printed elsewhere.

At that time, Prime Minister Imran Khan's government signed a deal promising to present a resolution in parliament by April 20 to seek approval for the expulsion of the envoy and for a boycott of French products.

TLP and its associated groups have issued a call for businesses and transport in main cities to shut, starting with the southern port city of Karachi, the country's commercial hub.

Story continues

France has advised its citizens to leave Pakistan temporarily.

Due to the TLP strike call, the Pakistan Stock Exchange main KSE-100 index opened over 500 points down on Monday, though analysts expect the weakness to be short-lived as the government was already in negotiations with the group.

(Reporting by Asif Shahzad; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
Sofia Vergara and Heidi Klum put their wild eye for style on display as they arrived to the set of America's Got Talent on Monday.

The Modern Family actress, 48, wore a blue cheetah print tank top while her co-star, 47, made her grand entrance in a snakeskin print belt.

Heads were turning as the fashionable duo arrived with huge smiles on their faces onto the sunny Pasadena, California set.

Looking good! Sofia Vergara and Heidi Klum put their wild eye for style on display as they arrived to the set of America's Got Talent in Pasadena on Monday

Even though it was Monday, Heidi was beaming with joy in her flowing white dress with a fringe hem.

The statuesque runway model was a sight to behold strutting onto set in her strappy peep toe heels with a taupe purse on her arm.

She worked a head full of sleek and straight locks, along with stylish fringe.

Sofia was the epitome of California cool in her ripped, rolled up jeans and black Christian Louboutin heels.

High spirits: Even though it was Monday, Heidi was beaming with joy in her flowing white dress with a fringe hem

Jean-ius! Vergara worked a pair of ripped jeans and a pair of Christian Louboutin heels

Straight hair billowing in the breeze, the actress looked radiant with a red tint upon her lips and a glowing shade of blush.

She accessorized the look with a gold choker necklace and dangling turquoise green earrings.

While Heidi and Sofia arrived in their fashionable best, co-judge Howie Mandel looked ready to hit the waves.

Fan favorite! Klum stopped to sign some autographs

Despite being miles away from the nearest beach, the star arrived wearing a wet suit, flip flops, and a boogie board in his arm.

He flashed a thumbs up for everyone, a blue face mask concealing his expression.

Season 16 of America's Got Talent is set to premiere on June 1, and will see familiar faces Sofia, Heidi, Howie, and Simon Cowell returning to judge the latest crop of up-and-coming entertainers.

Terry Crew will also be returning as show emcee.

Season 15 of America's Got Talent was forced to make serious adjustments following the start of the coronavirus pandemic, which included losing a studio absence.
With the eighth anniversary of the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh approaching, the IndustriAll Global Union is urging consumers to join social media action to campaign for safe factories for garment workers.

24 April marks eight years since the industrial tragedy of Rana Plaza, which killed more than 1,000 garment workers and injured thousands more.

Approaching the eighth anniversary of the Rana Plaza collapse, safe factories for garment workers still need to be fought for. Please join the social media action for the fight for safe factories and to support the demand for a global agreement on factory safety, IndustriAll says.

Eight years on from the tragedy, garment workers still need to raise their voices to demand safe factories, IndustriAll says, adding in the month of March alone, over 40 garment workers lost their lives in Morocco and Egypt due to unsafe factories.

The union is asking people to update their Facebook profile picture with a frame calling for safe factories, download a poster from its website, take a photo, and post on social media, and use the hashtags: #GarmentWorkersNeedUnions, #IMadeYourClothes, #RPNeverAgain.



IndustriAll is hosting a live Facebook debate on safe factories at 11 am CET on 23 April with H&M, Asos, Tchibo and Esprit.

This article was first published by the IndustriAll global union.
Minister of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure of Armenia Suren Papikyan today received Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran to Armenia Abbas Badakhshan Zohouri, as reported the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure.

Minister Papikyan emphasized that the unused potential of both countries for economic cooperation can be used and, in this context, underscored the importance of works being carried out within the scope of the intergovernmental commission, as well as the discussions on the draft agreement on the From the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea international transport corridor.

Expressing gratitude for the reception, Ambassador Zohouri reaffirmed Irans willingness for effective implementation of the Armenian-Iranian programs and projects and the implementation of mutually beneficial initiatives that will contribute to the expansion of economic ties.

The interlocutors discussed the agenda for the 17th session of the Armenian-Iranian Intergovernmental Commission, the current results of the joint programs, as well as the launch of design and construction of the Sisian-Kajaran-Agarak sector of the North-South Road Program. They also touched upon the opportunity for expansion of Iranian companies participation in the construction programs for improvement of infrastructures in Armenia.
A family watches the news of the 8th Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba. ALEXANDRE MENEGHINI / REUTERS

A friend of mine just wrote to me to say: I GOT COFFEE!!!! replete with capitals and exclamation marks. Hes happy because he didnt spend the early hours of the morning up a tree hiding from the police, in order to drop down from the branch at dawn and be one of the first in line in a store that accepts US dollars. For once, my friend didnt return home empty-handed, as on so many other occasions.

In Cuba, people are forced to live in this way to survive. They are coping with an existence strained by the 240 measures put in place by Donald Trumps administration against Cuba, cuts in economic aid from its ally Venezuela and the sharp drop in tourism on the island because of the pandemic. President Miguel Diaz-Canel has also led an ill-advised economic reorganization.

The continuity proposed by the government for the next five years in Cuba is a continuation of citizens rights being trampled on

Restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic in Cuba include a 9pm-5am curfew, meaning that many people spend all those hours hidden away in the stairways of buildings, or paying a small amount to sleep on a balcony near stores. Others like my friend climb a leafy tree, in whose branches they can wait undisturbed by the police patrols that circulate to enforce the pandemic protocols. All this effort is simply so they can buy some of the few items available in the stores or markets, in another symptom of the serious economic crisis the country is going through.

Now the countrys leaders and selected members of the only authorized political party in the country  the Communist Party of Cuba  are meeting at the Havana Convention Center. This is the 8th Congress in the history of Cubas Communist Party, and from it will emerge the governmental guidelines that will outline the future of the nation for the next five years. Raul Castro has formally handed over the reins after decades as its first secretary, but few expect much to change.

This has been called the congress of historical continuity, which could be interpreted as a patchwork before the seams come loose. With the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, dead and buried and his heir and brother Raul, retiring at almost 90 years old, a new generation of bureaucrats is taking over. However, the regime has made it clear that the generational handover in the party does not mean a political change in the country. The communists, therefore, call on all to continue with the same formula to keep the status quo of the nation, just without the Castros as guides.

The regime has made it clear that the generational handover in the party does not mean a political change in the country

Their urging that Cuba remain the same, despite the fact that the reality of the island requires an urgent change of direction, is just further proof that Cubans are helpless. This much-vaunted continuity is undoubtedly only for those who are in power or those who benefit from their proximity to it. They are not the same Cubans engaged in a daily struggle to eat, to practice basic hygiene, or to find medicine. They are certainly not those in jail for perpetuating any ideology contrary to that of the government, or for demanding the most basic citizens rights.

It is not a paradox that the 8th Congress, where the future of the nation is being discussed, is held behind closed doors and that the only news we have is what the regime allows. The regime always acts and makes its decisions without listening to its citizens, which is the method it hit upon to keep going for all these years.

In the Convention Center, they turn their backs on the people and on what is really happening out on the streets, where the internet has ramped up political dissidence in recent years. Protests are also taking place with unusual frequency, which speak of a groundswell in support for a new Cuba. At this very moment, Cuban state security is keeping independent journalists, protesting artists, civil society activists and other opponents under house arrest. They risk immediate imprisonment if they step a foot outside their homes during the four-day Congress  a fate which has already befallen some of them.

The continuity proposed by the government for the next five years in Cuba is a continuation of citizens rights being trampled on, and the perpetuation of a system running for six decades strong where the handful of people constituting the Communist leadership arbitrarily decide its future.
Following in the steps of companies worldwide that are removing racist and insensitive words from product titles, Tip Top and Pascall have confirmed the removal of the derogatory term Eskimo from two well-loved products.

Both companies have faced questions about the name in the past but have defended the use because of the decade-long attachment New Zealanders have with TipTops Eskimo Pie and Pascalls Eskimo lollies.

While Pascall Eskimos have been enjoyed in New Zealand for 65 years, it is important to take this action to ensure that the business is part of the solution and helping drive positive change the company said in a statement.

The Eskimo Pie is one of Tip Tops most popular desserts, but the company told Stuff it is no longer comfortable with the name. Over that time, the name has changed meaning and we acknowledge that, said Tip Top director Ben Schurr.

Despite New Zealanders having positive associations with the much-loved products,

The word Eskimo has largely been used as a derogatory way to describe the indigenous people who live in the worlds Arctic region and are largely called Inuit. The majority of them who live in Canda and Greenland, have been asking people to stop using the word for a long time.

Some Inuit do use the word to describe themselves, which is okay. But if you are not of Inuit descent, you shouldnt  even if you arent using the world with offensive intent.

In 2009, Seeka Lee Veevee Parsons, an Inuit from Northern Canada, was visiting New Zealand when she discovered both products. She contacted both companies and informed them of her upset, requesting that they change the names and was told no.

Neither company has announced yet what theyll replace the word and mascots with, but we think the removal of the term and stereotypical imagery is a great step in the right direction.
Comcast is taking another step to make internet access more available to low-income students in the region.

The company announced plans to install WiFi-connected "Lift Zones " at two area community centers.

A WiFi zone has already been installed at the Greater Scranton YCMA, 706 N. Blakely St., Dunmore , and work is scheduled to be completed at the Greater Pittston YMCA, 10 N. Main St., Pittston , this month , said Josephine Posti, Comcast senior public relations manager .

The WiFi coverage is expected to help hundreds of students participate in virtual learning and complete their homework.

Comcast will provide free connectivity to the community centers for the next three years.
If you want to see Republican tone-deafness in action, look at Senator Marsha Blackburns recent attack on the jobs plan. Its not really about infrastructure, she proclaimed; why, it would spend hundreds of billions on elder care. And she apparently imagined that voters would see helping the elderly as a bad thing.

Biden, then, benefits from having a nonthreatening persona and an opposition that has forgotten how to make persuasive policy arguments. But the popularity of Bidenomics also reflects the effectiveness of a party that is far more comfortable in its own skin than it was a dozen years ago.

Unlike Republicans, Democrats are members of a normal political party  basically a mildly center-left party that looks a lot like its counterparts across the free world. In the past, however, Democrats seemed afraid to embrace this identity.

One striking thing about the Obama years, in retrospect, was the deference of Democrats to people who didnt share their goals. The Obama administration deferred to bankers who warned that anything populist-sounding would undermine confidence and to deficit scolds demanding fiscal austerity. It wasted months on a doomed effort to get Republican support for health reform.

And along with this deference went diffidence, a reluctance to do simple, popular things like giving people money and taxing corporations. Instead, the Obama team tended to favor subtle policies that most Americans didnt even notice.

Now the deference is gone. Wall Street clearly has a lot less influence this time around; Bidens economic advisers evidently believe that if you build a better economy, confidence will take care of itself. The obsession with bipartisanship is also gone, replaced with a realistic appreciation of Republican bad faith, which has also made the new administration uninterested in G.O.P. talking points.

And the old diffidence has evaporated. Biden isnt just going big, hes going obvious, with highly visible policies rather than behavioral nudges. Furthermore, these forthright policies involve doing popular things. For example, voters have consistently told pollsters that corporations pay too little in taxes; Bidens team, buoyed by the Trump tax cuts failure, is willing to give the public what it wants.
OTTAWA, ON, April 19, 2021 /CNW/ - Payments Canada applauds the inclusion of the Retail Payments Oversight Framework (RPOF), and its oversight by the Bank of Canada, as part of the 2021 federal budget, A Recovery Plan for Jobs, Growth and Resilience.

Payments Canada - Logo (CNW Group/Payments Canada)

"The implementation of the Retail Payments Oversight Framework is a welcome addition to Canada's payments system," said Anne Butler, Chief Legal Officer and Vice President of Policy and Research. "By including RPOF in the budget, the Canadian government acknowledges the importance of modern payments regulation and broader access to Canada's national payments systems. Implementing RPOF is a key step towards Payments Canada's ability to safely open our systems for payments service providers to participate and compete in Canada's payments market."

RPOF was initially announced by the government in 2019 in response to the rapid pace of innovation in the retail payments space. It will require non-financial institution payment service providers (PSPs) to establish sound operational risk management practices and protect users' funds against losses. RPOF will be a public registry of regulated PSPs, maintained by the Bank of Canada, to ensure their compliance with operational and financial requirements.

Key considerations in implementing RPOF



RPOF is an important step towards broader access: Implementing RPOF is a step towards Payments Canada's ability to safely make Canada's systems - including the Real-Time-Rail (RTR) expected to go live in 2022 - accessible to non-financial institution PSPs. The next step is to introduce required changes to the Canadian Payments Act to support broader Payments Canada membership.

Uniform oversight will level the playing field and enhance trust: By ensuring that all competitors face comparable regulatory oversight, and checks and balances for the functions they perform, there will also be an enhanced level of trust amongst incumbent financial institutions and PSPs.

"A modern regulatory framework for payments is important in attracting investment, improving competitiveness and sustaining growth in Canada's financial services and payments sector," added Butler. "This includes the implementation of the Retail Payments Oversight Framework, which is an important step in supporting the delivery of modern payments solutions for Canadian consumers and businesses that are fast, secure and convenient."

Story continues

About Payments Canada

Payments Canada is a public purpose organization that owns and operates Canada's payments systems, the Large Value Transfer System (LVTS) and the Automated Clearing Settlement System (ACSS). Payments Canada is responsible for the physical infrastructure and the associated bylaws, rules, and standards that support these systems. It also has a duty to promote the efficiency, safety, and soundness of Canada's payments systems while taking into account the interests of end users. In 2020, Payments Canada's systems cleared and settled over $107 trillion - more than $420 billion every business day. Transactions that pass through these systems include debit card payments, pre-authorized debits, direct deposits, bill payments, wire payments and cheques initiated and received by Canadians and Canadian businesses. Payments Canada is working closely with the payments ecosystem to modernize Canada's payments systems to ensure Canada and Canadian businesses remain globally competitive. Payments Canada will launch a new high-value payments system, Lynx, in 2021 and a real-time payments system, the Real-Time Rail (RTR), in 2022.

SOURCE Payments Canada

Cision

View original content to download multimedia: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/April2021/19/c1841.html
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PHOENIX  Health officials in Arizona on Sunday reported 711 new confirmed COVID-19 cases and two additional deaths.

The states coronavirus dashboard listed pandemic totals of 853,761 cases and 17,153 deaths.

The dashboard also shows that over 4.4 million vaccine doses have been administered in the state.

More than 2.6 million people  37.4% of Arizonas population  have received at least one shot and over 1.8 million people now are fully vaccinated.

Arizona Department of Health Services officials said the number of virus-related hospitalizations continued to range between 500 and 600 since late March.

ADVERTISEMENTSkip



................................................................

There were 567 coronavirus-related hospitalizations as of Friday, keeping that metric in the same range where it has been for the past three weeks.

The states seven-day rolling average of daily new cases dropped over the past two weeks,, falling from 653.4 on April 1 to 624 on Thursday, while the rolling average of new deaths rose from 13 to 16.2 during the same period, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

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.
(@ChaudhryMAli88)

The expulsion of Russian diplomats serves the interests of the United States and not Poland's or the Czech Republic's, the Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said on Monday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th April, 2021) The expulsion of Russian diplomats serves the interests of the United States and not Poland's or the Czech Republic's, the Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said on Monday.

"We understand perfectly well that this is not the choice of the people and citizens of these countries [Poland and the Czech Republic], we understand very well that it is precisely those political forces that does not serve the national interests of these countries that are behind this, they serve a political order from Washington, probably well paid, but this is the interest of the United States, not Poland and the Czech Republic," Zakharova told the Channel One Russia broadcaster.

The spokeswoman also said that Prague's decision would have a negative impact on the relations between the Czech Republic and Russia and mentioned that 20 Czech diplomats are being expelled from Russia as a result.

"This is not our choice, this is a response. Prague is now prohibited from hiring personnel for its embassies and foreign missions from Russian citizens, and this is already very serious for them," Zakharova said.

On Saturday, Prague announced the expulsion of 18 Russian diplomats on suspicion of being officers of Russia's special services. They were obliged to leave the country within 48 hours. The Czech authorities explained that the move was prompted by "a reasonable suspicion" that Russian military intelligence officers had something to do with the October 2014 explosion at an ammunition depot in the town of Vrbetice that killed two Czech nationals. In response, Russia decided to expel 20 Czech diplomats.

Last week, Poland declared three Russian diplomats personae non gratae, and Moscow responded by expelling five Polish diplomats.
UAE-based Enoc Group said that its range of petrol engine lubricants has been certified by the American Petroleum Institutes (API) to API SP, the newest global API petrol engine oil specification.



Among the upgraded products, Enoc Protec Flex Energy SAE 0W-20, SAE 0W-30, SAE 5W-20, SAE 5W-30 and SAE 10W-30 have been approved to API SP as well as the latest specification by International Lubricant Specification Advisory Committee, ILSAC GF-6A.



Enoc has also introduced Enoc Protec Flex Energy SAE 0W-16 meeting API SP and ILSAC GF-6B recommended for some of the latest Japanese car models. These products have been developed with a Triple shield formula, which provides protection against sludge, oxidation, and wear.



Saif Humaid Al Falasi, Group CEO, Enoc, said: Meeting the latest API standards demonstrates our continuous efforts geared towards innovation and excellence. It is a testament of our ability to provide best in class products that meets and exceed international industry standards.



The entire range including Enoc Protec Flex Energy SAE 5W-40, Enoc Protec Ultra SAE 10W-40, Enoc Protec Premium SAE 20W-50 and Enoc Protec Premium SAE 15W-40 have also received the API SP approval.



Enoc Protec Flex Energy meeting API SP & ILSAC GF6 standards are formulated using hydrocracked base oils and latest performance additives, while Enoc Protec Ultra & Premium range meeting API SP are formulated using hydrotreated base oils and high-performance additives.



Enocs API SP range is specially tailored for modern Hybrids as well as Conventional vehicles running on petrol, ethanol blended petrol, LPG, and CNG fuels.



Enoc is one of the first in the region to introduce simultaneously an entire range of advanced lubricants approved against the highest industry standards.  TradeArabia News Service
Social media app Clubhouse could be worth as much as $4billion following its latest funding round and just a year after its founding.

The company said yesterday that it had finished a third cycle of fundraising led by Andrew Chen of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which has previously backed prominent startups like Soylent, Coinbase, and Airbnb.

Clubhouse had been valued at $1billion as recently as January when it received another $100million in a Series B funding round, but the new financial package values it at four times that amount, according to a source speaking to Reuters.

Clubhouse had been valued at $1billion as recently as January when it received another $100million in a Series B funding round

Clubhouse and Andreessen Horowitz did not respond to requests for how much the funding round raised, but the former said it would go towards making more programmes like Creator First and expanding its health and community support teams, among other measures.

'While we've quadrupled the size of our team this year, stabilized our infrastructure, launched in beta to help creators monetize, and readied Android for launch, there is so much more to do as we work to bring Clubhouse to more people around the world,' the business remarked.

Other large investors to bankroll Clubhouse in the Series C funding round were Hong Kong-based DST Global, whose past investments have comprised Facebook and Twitter, Tiger Global and serial entrepreneur Elad Gil.

The San Francisco-based company, whose app allows people to discuss varied topics in audio chatrooms, has seen its popularity surge since its creation after appearances by billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

Started by Stanford University graduates Paul Davison and Rohan Seth, the invite-only app was developed out of a podcasting app called Talkshow and was introduced onto the iOS mobile operating system in March 2020.

Its British users have included writer Shaa Wasmund MBE, who told This is Money earlier this year that she had earned over 20,000 on the app in under a month from publicising her digital course.

Clubhouse's popularity has grown as billionaires like Tesla founder Elon Musk have joined

The success of the platform, which recently reported 10 million weekly active users, has demonstrated the potential of audio chat services, particularly as people stay inside homes due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Controversy has consistently followed the business as it has grown though. There are concerns that the app acts as a platform to spread hate speech and false allegations about the Covid-19 pandemic.

Regulators across Europe, such as in the UK, France and Germany, have also questioned the group's data protection and privacy practices.

Signs are already showing that Clubhouse's popularity is weakening. Research group Apptopia estimated that download rates have plummeted by two-thirds since its late February peak

Meanwhile, the company has denied being the victim of hacking after Cyber News reported that the details of 1.3 million users, including people's usernames and social media handles, were posted online.

It tweeted: 'This is misleading and false. Clubhouse has not been breached or hacked. The data referred to is all public profile information from our app, which anyone can access via the app or our API.'

There are further worries that the business could face serious competition from rival services created by much larger technology giants like Facebook, Slack and Spotify.

Signs are already showing that Clubhouse's popularity is weakening. Analytics firm Apptopia estimated that the app's daily active users have dropped by over half since its late February peak, while download rates have plummeted by two-thirds.
The Volta Region House of Chief has congratulated Togbe Afede XIV, the Agbogbomefia of Asogli State and the Africa World Airlines (AWA) on a successful test flight to the Ho Airport.



The Embraer 145 flight landed smoothly on Thursday at exactly 1419 hours from the Kotoka International Airport.



This was contained in a release signed by Togbe Tepre Hodo IV, the President of the Volta Regional House of Chiefs, copied to the Ghana News Agency.



It noted that the leadership and members of the House were thrilled as the historic event was conceived and executed through the collaboration of their very own Togbe Afede, and his business entity.



The statement said that Togbe Afede became the co-pilot of the flight that kick-started processes for commercial flights to begin in earnest.



It noted that it was the hope that the Ho Airport would be considered seriously as an alternative arrival and departure point for flights.



It disclosed that the House was hopeful that other airlines would follow suit thereby enhance the overall fortunes of the aviation industry in the Region and country as a whole.



It urged the people of the Region to patronise AWA flights in order to enhance aviation business and prospects in the Region.



The statement lauded the Regional Minister and governments for executing such initiative, adding that, it has the potential to impact tremendously the growth of the Region, Ghana and West Africa.

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
Historic circa 1900 black-and-white photo of two young women in Gibson-girl outfits inside Glenwood Caverns, then known as Fairy Caves. In addition to the holding the celebration on Earth Day, this year is also the International Year of Caves and Karst. Protecting and preserving this incredible natural resource has always been our top priority, so tying these occasions together makes it even more special to us.

The Historic Fairy Caves, an attraction within Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park in Colorado, was a thriving tourist destination in the 1890s thanks to Charles W. Darrow, a pioneering Glenwood Springs attorney. Darrow and his family homesteaded the top of Iron Mountain, including the cave entrance. At that time, the known extent of the cave was about 800 feet, and visitors could get to the caves by walking up a trail, riding a horse or burro or in style in a horse-drawn carriage. To say that a lot has changed is quite an understatement.

Today, visitors travel to the top of the mountain in the new high-capacity Glenwood Gondola that offers panoramic views of the mountains and river valleys. In addition to touring Glenwood Caverns, which now has more than 16,000 known feet, they can enjoy thrill rides and family attractions, dine, shop and experience outdoor, mountain-top gatherings including Octoberfest, Winter on the Mountain and, hopefully soon, the return of live music.

Steve and Jeanne Beckley, current owners of Glenwood Caverns and the Historic Fairy Caves and Adventure Park, are celebrating the 125th anniversary of the first cave tour in a very 21st century, COVID-friendly style, and on Earth Day to boot.

On Thursday, April 22, theyll host a virtual discussion and streaming of Rocky Mountain PBS Colorado Experience Viewers Choice Episode about the Fairy Caves. Viewers can tune in at 7 p.m. Mountain Time at YouTube.com/GlenwoodCaverns or Facebook.com/GlenwoodCaverns where they can ask questions to be answered in the live discussion after the show concludes.

We worked with Rocky Mountain PBS to hold an in-person premiere of the episode last spring, but it was postponed twice and eventually cancelled when the pandemic hit. It was disappointing after all of the work our teams did to produce the episode to not be able to share it publicly with our community. Watching it air on Rocky Mountain PBS in our homes was nice, though, Steve Beckley, Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park co-owner said. This year, weve decided to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the first tour of the Fairy Caves with an online watch party. Jeanne and I will join you live to give some background and answer questions.

Colorado Experience: Fairy Caves explores the magical Fairy Caves  once dubbed The 8th Wonder of the World. Hidden inside Glenwood Springs Iron Mountain, this living cave network inspires awe. But the caverns were nearly lost to time and were closed for more than 80 years  until an engineer who also happened to be a caver had a vision of how to return the magic to this fantastical place.

Beckley added, In addition to the holding the celebration on Earth Day, this year is also the International Year of Caves and Karst. Protecting and preserving this incredible natural resource has always been our top priority, so tying these occasions together makes it even more special to us.

Filming of the Fairy Caves episode primarily took place May 2019. The Beckleys are featured in the show along with general manager Nancy Heard, natural attractions manager Kathy Miller, executive director of the Glenwood Springs Historical Society Bill Knight, and cave historian and author of Colorado Caves Richard Rhinehart.

###

About Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park

51000 Two Rivers Plaza Road, Glenwood Springs, CO 81601

Visit Online Media Room

Located in scenic Glenwood Springs, Colo., midway between Aspen and Vail, Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park offers a one-of-a-kind mountain-top adventure. The Adventure Park features a gondola ride, walking and wild tours of Glenwood Caverns and Historic Fairy Caves, dining, and year-round attractions including the new Haunted Mine Drop, Alpine Coaster, 4D Motion Theater and Laser Tag Arena. Seasonal offerings include the Giant Canyon Swing, Glenwood Canyon Flyer, Cliffhanger Roller Coaster, Wild West Express family coaster, a climbing wall, gemstone sluice box mining, a Ferris wheel ride and a holiday light display. Ideal setting for groups and birthday parties. Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park operates the new Iron Mountain Hot Springs now open on the bank of the Colorado River in Glenwood Springs.
NEW YORK, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Touchcast unveiled the Touchcast Tower, the world's most stunning and technologically advanced virtual event venue, which is part of their new Iconic Venue Collection of the world's most breathtaking virtual event arenas, theatres, and auditoriums. To mark the unveiling, Touchcast is partnering with legendary musician, producer, and technology innovator will.i.am to host a virtual launch party 1,300 feet above New York City, featuring fireworks, lasers, jaw-dropping beats, views of the Empire State Building, and even a rocket-powered mixing booth, all produced live while will.i.am is at The Future, his studio complex in Los Angeles. The event concludes with a fireside chat with will.i.am and Richard Kerris, Head Of Developer Relations at NVIDIA, and is part of the NVIDIA GTC conference, the world's preeminent artificial intelligence event.

Touchcast Tower is the crown jewel of Touchcast's new Iconic Collection of virtual event venues.

This one-time event can be watched today, Monday April 19th, at 7:00 PM EST here .

Along with hosting virtual events in Touchcast's rapidly growing catalog of proprietary Iconic venues, such as Touchcast Tower, clients can also partner with Touchcast to create digital twins of their own corporate theatres or auditoriums. Using the Touchcast platform, live event presenters are instantly beamed out of their home offices or studios and into incredible mixed-reality sets without requiring a green screen, and with their resulting presentations or performances streamed live in ultra HD 4K. At home attendees are immersed in a gorgeous virtual experience, complete with multiple camera views, lush lighting and special effects, the ability to listen, read or watch in nearly any language, and to chat with other attendees in real-time.

"The future of how we communicate will feature the use of stunning, life-like digital twins, Touchcast is leading this revolution," says Edo Segal, Founder and CEO of Touchcast. "Beginning with our crown jewel, the Touchcast Tower, these are places to meet, dream and get inspired, and they blow away all expectations of what's possible in a digital worldthese are places to truly experience something together and elevate any communication."

"In our new reality, live events need to have the capability to offer both in-person and virtual participation options. Touchcast's technology synthesizes the real world and displays in an amazing way that magnetically attracts the remote audience," said will.i.am, global music artist and tech entrepreneur.

About Touchcast

Touchcast is the world's leading premium communications company. A pioneer in the use of artificial intelligence to break down barriers of space, language and accessibility, Touchcast helps enterprises communicate and collaborate more efficiently, more effectively, and more easily than ever before. Visit us at www.touchcast.com .

SOURCE Touchcast

Related Links

https://touchcast.com


Wahlberg's matriarch Alma Wahlberg has passed away at the age of 78, her sons confirmed.

On Sunday, Mark and Donnie Walhberg shared the heartbreaking news on their social media accounts. The sons spearheaded the A&E reality series "Wahlburgers" from 2014 to 2019 where they usually invited Alma to appear.

Donnie, the elder brother, posted a video obituary to honor their late mother. He also left a lengthy caption as part of his tribute.

"I'm so blessed to have been brought into this world by, raised by, taught by and set on my life's path by, such an amazing woman," he wrote.

Donnie also wished his mother to rest peacefully before assuring her that they will always celebrate her life.

Meanwhile, the 49-year-old star Mark shared a photo of his mother alongside the caption, "My angel. Rest in peace."

Alma Wahlberg Health 2021: Illness, Deteriorating Condition

Both Donnie and Mark did not mention the real cause of her death. But for what it's worth, Donnie usually managed his mother's social media accounts where he always hinted about Alma's deteriorating health.

In July 2020, he updated their fans about his mother's health, saying that he "didn't remember much and was often confused but somehow she was still Alma."

Wahlberg added on Instagram. "She still lights up a room. She still made me smile. She's still stubborn. And she still loves her baby Donnie. I thank you all, for your well wishes. Sending my heartfelt love, and sincerest wishes, to all those away from their loved ones. That you will be together again."

He discussed the same health condition in his Mother's Day video for Alma.

Despite the undisclosed close of death, these hints particularly talked about a progress memory loss problem. Alma might have suffered from a disease like Alzheimer's or dementia. The worst part of these illnesses is the fact that they prevent the patients from communicating and responding during the last stages.

Wahlberg's Friends, Fans Send Love to the Family

On the sons' social media posts, fans and friends of the family left heartwarming messages to support Alma Walhberg's survivors.

Musical artist Spencer Sotelo said, "Sorry for your loss brother. Sending love and positive vibes your way."

"That was a beautiful tribute. I'm so sorry my dear friend. Thank you for introducing the the world to Alma. She was always a complete joy to watch. She will be missed. Sending you love always. Here for you always," Marisa Ramirez added.

One of their followers also left a heartbreaking tribute and said, "What a beautiful tribute to a one of a kind woman. Alma will be loved and remembered always sending you and your entire family so much love, light and peace during this time."

The same commenter also wished for Alma Wahlberg's peace.

Before Alma's passing, she spent most of her childhood days at Dorchester, Boston, before marrying Donald Wahlberg in 1965 and divorcing in 1982. The former couple shared nine children.

Alma appeared multiple times on "Wahlburgers" throughout its 10 seasons run. In total, she joined over 27 episodes of the show. She also worked as a bank clerk and nurse's aide.

See Now: Famous Actors Who Turned Down Iconic Movie Roles
The editor-in-chief of the Babylon Bee had some harsh words for late-night comedians who he says have become unfunny 'self-righteous zealots' in thrall to a 'leftist religion'.

'Over the last decade, late-night hosts across the board began to lay aside their relatable, everyman's brand of comedy and pivot toward lecturing the crowd on their moral values,' wrote editor Kyle Mann in a scathing column for the National Review.

'They went from chasing laughter  no matter who the butt of the joke may have been  to chasing applause. The result has been anything but funny,' he added.

Mann pointed specifically to a recent interview with Samantha Bee, the Full Frontal late-night host on TBS, who admitted that she doesn't like to joke about President Joe Biden because she doesn't want to 'undermine' him.

Kyle Mann, editor-in-chief of the Babylon Bee has harshly criticized U.S. late-night comedians, saying they have become unfunny 'self-righteous zealots' in thrall to a 'leftist religion'

Mann pointed specifically to a recent interview with Samantha Bee, who admitted that she doesn't like to joke about President Joe Biden because she doesn't want to 'undermine' him

'Like, I don't need to make jokes just to make jokes. I like to make really targeted jokes. There are more worthy targets right now, I think,' Bee said of pulling punches with Biden

Bee told Dan Rather earlier this month: 'You're like, okay, well we could be making jokes about, we could be making jokes about the infrastructure plan, but in general, I'm like, 'Wow, this is great. Why would I purposefully undermine something that is, seems to be a great idea, pretty much across the board?''

'Like, I don't need to make jokes just to make jokes. I like to make really targeted jokes. There are more worthy targets right now, I think,' she added.

'Bee's comment that Biden isn't really a worthy target just reeks of desperately needing your audience to agree with you,' Mann remarked.

'The Left often argues that comedy should 'punch up' and 'speak truth to power.' Who's more powerful than the president of the United States?' he wrote.

'If the point of comedy is to make some kind of moral point with every joke, well, comedians like Samantha Bee are quickly going to find that they have simply become defenders of the establishment after all,' added Mann.

Stephen Colbert, who took over The Late Show on CBS from David Letterman in 2015, is seen as the most political of the late-night crowd, frequently railing at Trump

Jimmy Fallon, initially reluctant to wade into politics, grew more strident after taking criticism for 'humanizing' Trump in an interview during the 2016 campaign

Mann is the editor-in-chief of the Babylon Bee, a conservative and Christian satirical news site in the style of The Onion.

He was quick to admit that his publication most frequently lampoons leftists, but noted that it also takes aim at hypocrisy on the right and among Christian leaders.

Indeed, one of the most famous Babylon Bee articles skewered wealthy televangelist Joel Olsteen. The satirical article in 2017, as a hurricane battered Houston, was titled: Joel Osteen Sails Luxury Yacht Through Flooded Houston To Pass Out Copies Of 'Your Best Life Now'.

Mann was working in sales in the construction industry in 2016 when he saw the Babylon Bee on Facebook and submitted his first article on spec.

Mocking elaborate services at megachurches, it was titled: Holy Spirit Unable To Move Through Congregation As Fog Machine Breaks.

'I can understand Bee's comments, along with the desire to poke fun at the opposition more than anyone or anything else,' Mann commented in his new column.

'Yet at the same time, my favorite pieces to write are the ones that punch our audience square in the face, that call out the hypocrisy of the Right, that make fun of inconsistent living among Christians and our failure to live up to what we preach. I love satire that loves its target most of all,' he said.

'Those who hold their beliefs strongly can laugh at the world, their predicaments, and themselves. Those without confidence in their beliefs cannot laugh at all, for fear the whole thing will come crumbling down,' wrote Mann in his column.

ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel is seen above. The editor of the Bablyon Bee is criticizing late-night hosts for 'lecturing the crowd on their moral values'

CBS host James Corden is seen above. In his column, Mann lamented that late-night comedians were unable to set their politics aside to focus on humor

Mann also admitted that conservatives 'can be pretty bad at comedy'.

'Conservatives have tried and failed to put out good comedy shows and films to rival the late-night propaganda emanating from the left every weeknight. The problem with many of these attempts is that they were trying to make a point first and be funny second,' he wrote.

The top broadcast network late-night hosts -- Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Jimmy Fallon -- drew criticism in particular during Donald Trump's presidency for their stridently partisan tone.

Colbert, who took over The Late Show on CBS from David Letterman in 2015, was seen as the most political of the bunch, frequently railing at Trump and regularly interviewing politicians.

In 2018, Bee was forced to apologize after calling Ivanka Trump a 'feckless c**t' in an on-air rant.

Conservatives also complained about the political bent of Saturday Night Live on NBC, which has continued to focus its satire mostly on Republicans even with a Democrat in the White House.

Bill Maher, who hosts the weekly Real Time late-night show on HBO, has shown more willingness to break the mold, at times taking swings at liberals over issues he finds worthy of mockery.

Last week, Fox News launched a conservative rival to the late-night line-up, hoping to capitalize on discontent over the liberal bent of the late-night world and seize viewers who have tuned out from competitors.

Last week, Fox News launched a conservative late night show hosted by Greg Gutfeld

In his first week in the slot, Gutfeld posted strong ratings, beating all cable competitors as well as Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon on broadcast

Hosted by comedian Greg Gutfeld, the 11pm weeknight show blends a familiar mix of monologues and interviews, but focuses on skewering targets on the left.

In his first week in the slot, Gutfeld posted strong ratings, beating all cable competitors as well as Jimmy Kimmel Live! on ABC and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on NBC.

Gutfeld! averaged 1.57 million total viewers and 307,000 in the key 25-54 age demographic, beating all other late-night shows aside from Colbert's Late Show, according to Nielsen data.

In his column, Mann lamented that late-night comedians were unable to set their politics aside to focus on humor.

'If you find yourself unable to laugh at something, unable to find anything worthy of satire  especially in a politician like Joe Biden  you may be blinded by your own worldview,' Mann continued.

'Good comedians set their point of view aside and write the best joke, the 'point' be damned.'
About 230 suspected criminals and commercial sex workers were on Friday dawn arrested by the police at the environs of Soldier bar at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle in Accra.

Those arrested included Ghanaians and other nationals from Togo, Benin, and Nigeria.



Items found on them included 33 motorbikes, 38 wrappers of dried leaves suspected to be India hemp, cash of GH6,750, a Beninese passport, health insurance card, an ATM card, and 153 mobile phones.



Speaking to journalists, the Director of Operations, ACP Arhin Kwesi Annor said the operation commenced around 11 pm on Thursday, April 15, 2021, to 2 am on Friday, April 16, 2021.



So for the past two weeks we have been monitoring their activities, and then yesternight we decided to swoop on them. Fortunately, when we went there we were able to arrest some people or some suspected criminals. The total number of suspects that were arrested is 230, he said.



We believe that some of these motorbikes are used to commit a lot of crimes. You can talk about snatching of mobile phones, snatching of bags among others, he added.



He said the suspects will be screened and those found culpable will be dealt with.



He said such an operation, will be replicated to curb crime in the city.









Source: Graphiconline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
The United States said Monday it was reimposing sanctions on nine state-owned companies in Belarus after strongman Alexander Lukashenko ignored warnings to release political prisoners rounded up from democracy protests.

Since 2015, the United States has regularly issued waivers on sanctions for nine companies including oil firm Belneftekhim in recognition of small progress in Belarus, where Lukashenko has been in power for two and a half decades.

President Joe Biden's administration on May 31 warned it would go ahead with the sanctions unless Belarus releases prisoners and, on Monday, it gave the green light.

"This action is a further consequence of the Belarusian authorities' flagrant disregard for human rights and Belarus' failure to comply with its obligations under international human rights law," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

"The United States calls on the Belarusian authorities to immediately and unconditionally release all those unjustly detained or imprisoned," he said.

The Treasury Department said that companies will have to wind up transactions with the Belarusian firms by June 3 or face US penalties.

Lukashenko, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, claimed to win a sixth term in August elections that were widely criticized internationally and by the opposition as fraudulent.

State authorities responded to demonstrations with force and have sentenced hundreds of people to lengthy jail terms. Opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who says she won, fled to Lithuania.

Lukashenko on Saturday said that Russian authorities had derailed a plot to overthrow the government, a claim that the opposition denounced as a provocation that could be used to stifle dissent further.

sct/ft
Local Enterprise Office Kilkenny is inviting food and drink producers from the county to join the hugely successful Food Academy programme and follow in the footsteps of local companies, such as Goatsbridge Trout, Mooncoin Beetroot, Highbank Orchards, the Little Mill Company, Bob and Joans Juicy Jams and The Fig Tree which have previously taken part.

Now in its eighth year, Food Academy is a unique food business development programme between the 31 Local Enterprise Offices, including Local Enterprise Office Kilkenny, SuperValu and Bord Bia. Participants in the programme receive training in food safety, market research and branding, marketing, finance, sustainability and business development.

The Food Academy programme currently supports 290 Irish food and drink producers including 140 female entrepreneurs, generating 170m in sales. In 2020, there was a 15% growth in SuperValu Food Academy sales with participants earning 28 million. The Food Academy programme supports 1,500 jobs in local communities nationwide and local producers are now being encouraged to apply for the 2021 programme before Monday, April 26.

Fiona Deegan, Head of Enterprise with Local Enterprise Office Kilkenny has welcomed the increase in Food Academy sales through SuperValu in 2020.

STRENGTH

Since it was started up eight years ago by the Local Enterprise Offices, SuperValu and Bord Bia, the Food Academy programme has been hugely successful, going from strength to strength, said Ms Deegan.

It has helped hundreds of food and drink producers, like Mooncoin Beetroot, Goatsbridge Trout and Bob and Joans Juicy Jams in Thomastown, Highbank Orchards in Cuffesgrange and the Little Mill Company in Bennettsbridge, that have graduated through Food Academy to get their products market-ready, giving them an opportunity to sell to a nationwide audience.

Ms Deegan said the Food Academy is part of a suite of LEO supports designed for food and drink entrepreneurs in Ireland, such as the Digital School of Food and Food Starter programmes, both aimed at getting those with food ideas off the ground.

As local food and drink producers grow their sales through these programmes, Local Enterprise Office Kilkenny is on hand to support their expansion plans through further training, mentoring and financial assistance, she said.

Carmel Biggane, Food Academy Manager, SuperValu said SuperValu believes in local business and is proud to continue to support local producers across the country.

In collaboration with the Local Enterprise Office Network and Bord Bia, the Food Academy is a great way for us to help new businesses to grow and get the support they need, she said.

"The programme allows us to use our experience to help small businesses through their journey from start up to getting their products on our shelves all year round. Weve had great success with the Food Academy in recent years, we look forward to welcoming new producers this year and continuing to support local communities. I would call on local food producers across Ireland to get involved and see how Food Academy can help you grow.

The Food Academy Programme is now open for applications until Monday, April 26. To apply, interested food and drink producers from County Kilkenny are encouraged to contact Local Enterprise Office Kilkenny for an application form by e-mailing info@leo.kilkennycoco.ie or by visiting localenterprise.ie/kilkenny.

Further information about the Food Academy is also available at supervalu.ie/real-people/food-academy-programme.
An investigation is underway after a male showed up at Brookwood Baptist Medical Center with a gunshot wound.

Homewood police Sgt. John Carr said at 2:50 p.m. Sunday, authorities received a report of a gunshot victim at the hospital. He was shot in the stomach area.

He told medical workers hed been shot at Walmart on Lakeshore, but Carr said investigators have not been able to confirm that or find a scene. He told hospital staff that the suspect may still be in the car that dropped him off.

The medical worker took that to mean there was an active shooter and the hospital was placed on lockdown. Carr said they checked the hospital grounds and didnt find a suspect but did find the victims car. It looks like he drove himself to the hospital after getting shot,' Carr said.

There was no active shooter, and the hospital is off lockdown. The victim is in surgery with serious injuries.
When the last episode of the current series of Dog Squad Puppy School screens on Tuesday Constable Andrew Smart will be able to look back at just how far he and Talon have come.

The Bay of Plenty pairs journey to becoming operational will feature in the final episode on 20 April, but the time between the show filming and airing means the pair have now been operational for 10 months.

Talon is going well. Hes recently qualified as a Search and Rescue dog so hes doing good, were still finding our feet.

Andrew says while Talon is still pretty young and a bit immature for AOS, the SAR qualification gives him a specialty to add to his general duty work.

The next step for him in terms of further development is to train in victim recovery work.

The past 10 months have also been a learning curve for Andrew, as a first-time handler.

I came from frontline Public Safety Team, he says. Its similar in the sense youre responding to the same type of role but you do feel a lot more responsibility. Its easy to put a lot of pressure on yourself as people are looking to you.

Despite that, hes loving it.

Its a huge learning curve, it doesnt stop, but its great seeing the dog develop. I enjoy the autonomy of the role and knowing I can 100 per cent count on Talon having my back.

Andrew says filming the show put a bit of added pressure on at qualifying time, its also a great reminder of their progress.

And Andrew isn't the only handler moving on from puppy school. Waikato Constable Scott Gosnell and Apex, who graduated with Andrew and Talon in June 2020, are also facing their final appearance on the show.

See how all their hard training paid off on Dog Squad Puppy School at 7.30pm on TV One on Tuesday, April 20. It can also be watched on TVNZ on Demand.

-Police Ten One Magazine.
Hillsboro City Council To Meet Tuesday Evening The Hillsboro City Council will meet in a regular session Tuesday, April 20, at 6 p.m.



A resolution authorizing an advance funding agreement with the Texas Department of Transportation for the Safe Routes to School sidewalk project is on the agenda.



The council will also consider the submission of a Community Development Block Grant application to the Texas Department of Agriculture.



A resolution denying a rate request from Oncor Electric will be discussed.



A replat of 200 Mark Street is also on the agenda for consideration.



The council will consider a request from Carroll Estes to close portions of Elm Street for the Elm Street Rod Run June 25-26.



The meeting will be held at Historic City Hall, located at 127 East Franklin Street in Hillsboro.



It can also be accessed by calling 1-646-749-3112 and entering access code 172-523-125.


Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 19)  Over 600 new cases of COVID-19 variants were recently detected in the Philippines, but an expert assured on Monday that all vaccines work against the variants and can prevent severe infection.

"The 600 cases is really too small compared to those who were given the vaccine in a million already," Dr. Rontgene Solante of the country's vaccine expert panel told CNN Philippines' The Source.

The Health Department said on Sunday that there are 266 more cases of the B.1.1.7 variant, 351 cases of the B.1.351 variant and 25 additional cases of the P.3 variant.

The B.1.1.7 variant was first discovered in the United Kingdom, while the B.1.351 variant was first detected in South Africa. The P.3 variant, meanwhile, was first found in the Philippines but is not a variant of concern.

"All of the vaccines are still effective against any of the variant. Its just based on some laboratory tests, there is a decrease in the ability of the vaccine to fully neutralize the virus. Its not zero. But its high and still effective," Solante said.

"In the Philippines, we dont worry about these variants. Whats important is to focus on the population that we want to receive the vaccine to get the potential benefit of not getting COVID and severe COVID," he added.

Filipinos from the A1 to A3 group are completing their vaccine doses either from the Chinese firm Sinovac Biotech or the British-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca. A1 refers to medical frontliners, A2 to senior citizens, while A3 covers persons with comorbidities.

Sinovac is the top vaccine brand currently available in the Philippines as the government continues to distribute and administer 1.5 million purchased and 1 million donated doses of the Chinese-made coronavirus shots.

Brazilian researchers earlier found in their previous trial data that the brand is only 50.4% effective  barely over the 50% minimum standard set by the World Health Organization.

AstraZeneca was reported to be 79% effective against symptomatic cases, but the country has already used up almost all of the 525,600 that arrived in the country in March. A temporary suspension of vaccination was also previously imposed on the brand after European drug regulators found a link between the coronavirus shot and a few cases of unusual blood clots with low platelet count.

But according to Solante, the benefits still outweigh the risks regardless of the brand.

"If you weigh the risk of those getting thrombosis or blood clots compared to those who did not get it and were protected against getting severe COVID and preventing death, the benefit still outweighs the small risks," he said.

The Health Department bared on Monday that it already approved the recommendation of the Food and Drug Administration to resume the use of AstraZeneca vaccines, noting that there have been no reports of unusual blood clots among Filipinos.

READ: PH to resume use of AstraZeneca vaccines for people below 60

Based on the government's April 18 data, 1,477,757 vaccine doses have already been administered in the Philippines. Of this number, 1,279,223 people already got their first shot while 198,534 already received their second dose.

To achieve herd immunity, the government aims to vaccinate by the end of the year at least 70 million Filipinos out of the country's estimated 108 million population. There have been complaints though from lawmakers and various groups that the slow pace of immunization would mean such target can only be achieved over several years.

Officials said a massive rollout for the other priority groups can be expected between May and June as more vaccines are shipped to the country.
BETHLEHEM  The house fire that killed 65-year-old Michael F. Jeram was not deliberately set, police said.

The town police department disclosed the information Monday as they revealed the name of the man who perished in Saturday's fire at 228 Bender Lane.

Though investigators ruled out arson, the cause of the fire has not yet been made public. Jeram's name was released after an autopsy was completed but police have not disclosed the specific cause of death.

Firefighters arrived at the home at 3 a.m. Saturday to find the building engulfed in flames.

Fire departments responding included Elsmere, Delmar, Selkirk and North Bethlehem. Also assisting at the scene were Albany County Sheriff paramedics and Delmar-Bethlehem EMS.
MOSCOW (AP)  Russia on Sunday ordered 20 Czech diplomats to leave the country within a day in response to the Czech governments expulsion of 18 Russian diplomats it identified as spies for a military intelligence agency that Prague claims was involved in a 2014 ammunition depot explosion.

Czech Ambassador Vitezslav Pivonka was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry on Sunday evening and told that the 20 diplomats must leave by the close of Monday.

Earlier Sunday, a ministry statement called the expulsion of the Russians a hostile step.In an effort to please the United States against the backdrop of recent American sanctions against Russia, the Czech authorities have even surpassed their overseas masters in this regard.

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said Saturday that the expulsions were based on unequivocal evidence provided by the Czech intelligence and security services that points to the involvement of Russian military agents in the massive 2014 explosion in an eastern town that killed two people.

Czech Interior Minister Jan Hamacek, who is also serving as the countrys foreign minister, said the 18 Russian Embassy staffers were clearly identified as spies from the GRU and SVR, Russias military and foreign intelligence services.

At the same time, the Czech police organized crime unit on Saturday published photos of two foreign citizens who visited the country, including where the depot was located, between Oct. 11 and Oct. 16 in 2014 and asked the public for any information about them.

The two men traveled to Prague using Russian passports. Czech police said the names and photos matched two Russians whom British authorities charged in absentia in 2018 with trying with trying to kill former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter with the Soviet nerve agent Novichok, in Salisbury, England.

The Skripals survived, but a local woman who is believed to have touched an empty container bearing traces of the nerve agent died.
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The IRS has been described as the defender of the fisc, that is the federal revenue stream that funds the government.

Students of history know well the value of a cliff to a defender.

The Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944 included a famous ascent by Army Rangers at La Pointe du Hoc. As the Rangers scaled a 100-foot cliff, they were met with machine gun fire and grenades. At great cost, they finally secured the cliffs.

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Similarly, the last great battle of the war included a perilous ascent of a 400-foot cliff on the island of Okinawa called Hacksaw Ridge. This cliff was so challenging that Japanese defenders were unable to establish positions to fire at those scaling the cliff. They instead waited at the top of the cliff.

The 1987 movie The Princess Bride also made use of a cliff. After Fezzik carried himself and three others up the vertical cliff, the swordsman Inigo waited for the Man in Black to finally ascend. Demonstrating his sportsmanship, Inigo allowed his pursuer a chance to recover before beginning their battle.

While lives are not at risk, tax laws that construct cliffs can be perilous to those who seek the benefits of the law.

The American Rescue Plan relies on cliffs.

The plan offers tax relief to unemployment benefits received in 2020, but only to those who can scale a vertical cliff. A single taxpayer with adjusted gross income (AGI) below $75,000 can exclude as much as $10,200 of unemployment benefits from income.

This means that if a single person has $74,000 of W-2 wages, $10,000 of unemployment benefits, and no other income or deductions, he can exclude the entire $10,000 of benefits.

If a single person instead has $75,000 of W-2 wages and $10,000 of unemployment benefits, then all of the unemployment is subject to tax. That additional $1,000 of income translates into $11,000 of additional taxable income. The culprit is an income cliff.

The new law also provides for a $1,400 stimulus payment for qualifying taxpayers and each of their dependents. This benefit has a small phase-out window. If married filing joint (MFJ), the payment is reduced as AGI exceeds $150,000 and is gone when AGI reaches $160,000.

So travel back with me to my family situation of yesteryear. I have four children who once were younger and qualified as my tax dependents. I filed using the MFJ tax status. Using me as an example for the 2021 stimulus, lets determine my family benefit.

To begin, assume I compute the family AGI to be $150,000. I properly compute my stimulus to be $8,400. Thats $1,400 times six.

Unable to contain my enthusiasm, as is often the case for a CPA presented with an interesting calculation, I quickly gather the family for a presentation. Family, I say, I am taking all of us to Disney World for a weeks stay at a Disney-run resort.

Excitement follows. The tiniest of the children pronounces, God bless us everyone! That very day they present me with a T-shirt that says Worlds Greatest Dad. It is indeed a day to remember.

That night, as I clean up the confetti that surrounds the dining room table where my great tax computations were performed, I notice a piece of paper wedged under the seat cushion. It is a Form 1099-MISC. It reports $10,000 of income paid to me.

Must have dropped this, I think. Yet it does not look familiar. I compare it to the calculations done earlier. Ive omitted this income. My pulse quickens. The Worlds Greatest Dad T-shirt darkens with perspiration.

Adding the income to my earlier work raises AGI to $160,000. The stimulus payment drops to zero. My tax liability also goes up by $2,200 based on the added income. This $10,000 of omitted income has cost me $10,600 in tax.

Cliffs are perilous. Try to return a Worlds Greatest Dad T-shirt stained with perspiration. Try to raise money with GoFundMe using a heartstring-tugging story of cliffs and needing the funds available before the kids wake up the next morning.

The 18th century poet Robert Burns said, Suspense is worse than disappointment. Now you know what to expect from the new law.

Jim Hamill is the director of Tax Practice at Reynolds, Hix & Co. in Albuquerque. He can be reached at jimhamill@rhcocpa.com.
A group of asylum seekers brought to Australia for medical care are being shunted around the country without any explanation from the federal government, supporters say.

A group of 17 men who spent more than a year in detention at a Brisbane hotel were abruptly moved on Friday to an immigration centre.

Supporters say they were then taken to the Brisbane Immigration Transit Accommodation but before dawn on Monday were bussed to the airport and flown to Melbourne.

Protests erupted as 17 asylum seekers brought to Australia for medical care have been moved

The men spent over a year at a Brisbane hotel before being moved on to immigration centre

The Home Affairs Department and the Australian Border Force have refused to answer any of the questions asked by AAP since Friday about the whereabouts of the men and the reasons for their relocation.

All of the men were brought to Australia under the short-lived medevac laws, which gave doctors more power to get sick asylum seekers, held offshore on Nauru and in PNG, to the mainland for treatment.

Before the laws were repealed, Prime Minster Scott Morrison and his then-Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton warned they presented a national security risk and that murderers, rapists, and paedophiles could be brought to Australia.

Confirmation that the men were moved on Friday from the Kangaroo Point Central Hotel and Apartments came not from the government, but from refugee support groups and the owner of the property.

Home Affairs Department and Australian Border Force have not disclosed their whereabouts

The Refugee Action Coalition on Monday said the men are now being held at the Park Hotel in Melbourne, one of the private hotels the federal government calls APODS, or alternative places of detention.

The group's spokesman Ian Rintoul has told AAP the men were taken to Brisbane airport before dawn, without their personal possessions including clothes and important documents.

Mr Rintoul and other asylum seeker advocates have long been calling for the release of all medevac detainees.

They say the government has never offered an adequate explanation about why the detention of people in need of medical care was ever warranted in the first place.

Men were brought over through laws allowing doctors to treat sick asylum seekers in Australia

The government has quietly released some medevac detainees from APODS in Brisbane, Melbourne and Darwin in recent months, but it has never explained how it decides who gets to live in the community and who doesn't.

Asylum seeker support groups say they don't know if the relocated men will be released into the community - as others have been - on final departure visas that require holders to make preparations to permanently leave the country.

The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre says the secrecy that shrouds Australia's immigration detention system means the government can do whatever it likes.

'There is a complete lack of transparency and accountability,' the centre's director of advocacy Jana Favero told AAP on Monday.

Asylum Seeker Resource Centre says there is too much secrecy around Australia's immigration

'They can move you around the country, they can take your phone. The government is controlling the information to control the power.'

The men were moved out of the Kangaroo Point hotel on Friday amid a dispute between its owners and a company that leases the property and lets out rooms to Serco, which helps run immigration detention sites for the government.

Lou Menniti, a spokesman for the hotel's owners, said Serco moved the last of its staff and equipment out of the property on Monday.

AAP has sought a comment from Serco but has not received a response.
AVON LAKE, Ohio -- Last week (April 13), Avon Lake school bus safety belt advocate Dr. Rudy Breglia asked the Ohio State Board of Education to support seatbelt installation trials in Ohio school buses, similar to the trials already taking place in Avon Lake and Hudson due to Breglias ongoing advocacy.

But the board did not agree to the resolution.

In my testimony to the board, I told them many states, safety organizations and school districts have decided to move forward and require and/or recommend lap-shoulder seatbelts in school buses to protect their children, Breglia said.

He noted that about 1,200 school bus crashes occur each year in Ohio alone.

I also mentioned the federal research predictions on the annual reduction of childrens injuries and deaths from seatbelt use in school buses, the advantages and the lack of disadvantages of lap-shoulder seat belts, and their low cost.

Costs for equipping school buses with lap-shoulder belts can amount to as low as $5 per student per year, or less than 0.6 percent of the total annual cost of transporting a student, he said.

The board did not give Breglia specific reasons for not agreeing to a resolution at this time. Breglia said he believes they probably received feedback from their Emerging Issues and Standards Committee, and it appears that something in that feedback caused them to decline to support the issue with a resolution.

However, Breglia said, the president of the board, Laura Kohler, did suggest that I direct my future efforts to Ohio legislators for my school bus safety concerns and funding issues. She said she believes the childrens safety is as important as education, but she did not point me in any direction other than speaking to Ohio legislators.

Board member Mark Lamonche commented in support of Breglias testimony: Parity needs to exist with regards to childrens safety, and school buses should be as safe as cars with regards to seatbelts.

Another board member, Meryl Johnson, noted the school district that is purchasing all their new school buses with seatbelts is in her district and she would help me contact those school district officials, Breglia said.

And, since children inspired this safety action, she said she will help mobilize a childrens letter-writing campaign to Ohio legislators to express not only their own feelings of safety for themselves and their classmates, but also their disappointment that other school kids are not fully protected by seatbelts.

Johnson said, I hope that legislators will respond to this direct approach by our most precious cargo.

In the meantime, Breglia will continue his efforts.

I am disappointed that the board will not take any action on this important childrens safety issue. However, I have sent an invitation for me to make a presentation to any school districts with which the 19 board members are associated, he said.

Read more from the Sun Sentinel.
India is being added to the UK's travel 'red list' after Boris Johnson cancelled his visit amid surging coronavirus cases and alarm about a new variant.

Matt Hancock told MPs today that the government had made the 'difficult' decision to place the country in the highest level of restrictions from 4am on Friday.

Some 103 cases of the variant first identified in India have now been identified in the UK, with the 'vast majority' linked to international travel, he said.

'After studying the data and on a precautionary basis we have made the difficult but vital decision to add India to the red list,' the Health Secretary said.

Travel from destinations on the 'red list' is banned, and any British residents returning home must check into quarantine hotels.

Earlier, a joint statement from the British and Indian government said Mr Johnson's trip - already scaled back - will not go ahead 'in light of the current situation'.

Matt Hancock told MPs that the government had made the 'difficult' decision to place the country in the highest level of restrictions

Mr Hancock said the latest move means 'anyone who is not a UK or Irish resident or a British citizen cannot enter the UK if they've been in India in the previous 10 days'.

Hundreds set to fly in before ban begins Hundreds of people will arrive in Britain from India this week before the red list travel restrictions come into effect on Friday. Seven flights from the country arrived at Heathrow airport yesterday, with at least 16 scheduled to land before the tighter rules come into place. Flights run by BA, Virgin Atlantic and Air India are due from Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. Before Friday, travellers from India will have to provide a negative coronavirus test in the three days before flying and then quarantine at home in the UK for ten days. Arrivals can use public transport to travel to their quarantine destination. From Friday, only British or Irish nationals, or those with UK residence rights, can enter on flights from India. They will have to quarantine in a hotel for ten days. Earlier this year, amid concerns about the Kent variant, India limited flights between the countries to 30 a week, compared with almost 70 previously. Advertisement

'UK and Irish residents and British citizens who have been in India in the past 10 days before their arrival will need to complete hotel quarantine for 10 days from the time of arrival.'

He added: 'India is a country I know well and love. Between our two countries we have ties of friendship and family. I understand the impact of this decision but I hope the House will concur that we must act.'

During a visit to Gloucestershire earlier, Mr Johnson told reporters: 'Narendra Modi and I have basically come to the conclusion that, very sadly, I won't be able to go ahead with the trip. I do think it's only sensible to postpone, given what's happened in India, the shape of the pandemic there.

'Countries around the world including our own have been through this. I think everybody's got a massive amount of sympathy with India, what they're going through.

'And I just want to stress that this is, we're going to be going back, the relationship between the UK and India is of huge importance, and I'll be talking to Narendra Modi on Monday, we'll be trying to do as much as we can, virtually.

'Of course it will be frustrating, but we'll try and replicate as much as we can remotely, and then look forward to doing it in person as and when circumstances allow, and hopefully before the Cop summit in November and hopefully we'll get Narendra Modi over for the G7 in June.'

Speculation had been mounting about the fate of the trip as the situation spirals in the India.

Mr Johnson had already pushed the visit back from earlier this year as a result of the UK's third lockdown.

Rather than several days of talks with Narendra Modi and high-profile events, it was only due to be a single day next weekend - but is now off altogether.

Boris Johnson (pictured on a visit to Gloucestershire today) has cancelled his trip to India amid surging coronavirus cases and alarm about a new variant

Infections in India have been spiking and deaths are rising while numbers have dropped off in the UK

The Covid variants circulating in the UK: Public Health England says officially the Indian variant has been spotted 77 times in Scotland and England since March

India is vaccinating some 3million people per day, topping most other countries, but its huge 1.3billion population means only a tiny proportion have been protected (pictured)

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE INDIA VARIANT? Real name: B.1.617 When and where was it discovered? The variant was first reported as being of concern by the Indian government in late March. The first cases appear to date back to October 2020. What mutations does it have? The two main mutations are named E484Q and L452R, which scientists suspect can help it to transmit faster and to get past immune cells made in response to older variants. Those mutations are routinely not found on other variants monitored by Public Health England. How many people in the UK have been infected with it? 77 people so far, according to a report published on April 15. Their locations are unknown. Advertisement

The news comes after an expert warned the Indian coronavirus variant could 'pose a threat' to mr Johnson's roadmap out of lockdown.

It is feared the B.1.617 strain spreads more easily than older versions of the virus and scientists say it has mutations which may help it evade vaccines.

Professor Danny Altmann, an Imperial College London immunologist, said there were vaccinated vulnerable Britons who could 'still be caught out by variants like this'.

Health officials warned yesterday that cases of people in the UK contracting the South African and Kent strains after being vaccinated have already been recorded.

Public Health England says officially the Indian variant has been spotted 77 times in Scotland and England since March.

But analysis of publicly available information on new variant numbers on Saturday suggest cases have risen to 160, suggesting it's spreading rapidly in the community.

PHE currently lists it as a 'variant under investigation', a tier below other troublesome strains including the Kent, South African and Brazilian variants.

But Professor Altmann told Good Morning Britain today: 'My assumption from everything I've seen is that it will become a variant of concern.'

He added: 'I think our road map is going well and at the moment, in this country, we are doing rather well, enjoying unlocking  but out there there is the Indian variant, the South African, Brazilian etc, and they do pose a threat.'

SAGE member Professor Andrew Hayward backed calls for India to be put on the 'red list' to buy experts time to study the variant in more detail.

The infectious disease expert urged the Government to 'err on the side of caution and act sooner rather than later'.

But top experts studying Britain's Covid variants said the Indian variant was unlikely to ever take off in the UK because its mutations were 'not top tier'.

They questioned whether the strain actually is more transmissible than older versions, claiming the evidence was still murky.

Dr Jeffrey Barrett, director of the Covid-19 Genomics Initiative at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: 'This variant has a couple of mutations that are among those that we think are important that should be watched carefully.

A health worker in the Indian capital of Delhi prepares bodies for cremation after the city was plunged into a weekend lockdown to keep Covid cases down

States on UK red list Angola Argentina Bangladesh Bolivia Botswana Brazil Burundi Cape Verde Chile Colombia Democratic Republic of the Congo Ecuador Eswatini Ethiopia French Guiana Guyana Kenya Lesotho Malawi Mozambique Namibia Oman Pakistan Panama Paraguay Peru Philippines Qatar Rwanda Seychelles Somalia South Africa Suriname Tanzania United Arab Emirates (UAE) Uruguay Venezuela Zambia Zimbabwe Advertisement

'But they're actually probably not at the very kind of top tier of mutations, for example in the B.1.1.7  or Kent variant  or the South African variant, that generate the most concern.'

Dr Barnett said the rise of the Indian variant had happened at the same time India suffered a third wave, which may explain its higher prevalence.

'In terms of spread, clearly this variant has increased in frequency in India around the same time as their very large and tragic recent wave.

'But I just don't think we know yet whether there's a cause and effect relationship  is this variant driving that spread? Or is it happening at the same time perhaps due to a coincidence?'

He added: 'And one thing to note is that there were some sequences of this variant B1.617 seen late last year. And so in some sense, if it really is driving this wave, the fuse has been burning for quite a long time, which would make it look, probably less transmissible than B.1.1.7.'

The Indian variant was first spotted by scientists in March when it was described by the government in New Delhi as a 'double mutant'.

They suggested that the variant had formed as a hybrid of two other strains and that it showed signs of being more infectious and less easily targeted by the immune system.

Two key mutations set it apart from others  named E484Q and L452R  with both of them found on the 'spike' that the virus uses to latch onto human cells.

These are not thought to be key mutations of any of the other variants on Public Health England's list, but have appeared in virus samples before.

SAGE's Professor Hayward, an epidemiologist at University College London, backed calls for travel to India to be scrapped.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today Programme: 'It's a balance of harms and benefits and the challenge with that is that the level of harm is quite high because we're highly connected with India  there's a lot of economic interaction as well as family and social interaction.

'And on the other hand, what we have is an unknown level of risk  my own preference in all of this is to err on the side of caution and to act sooner rather than later. But ultimately, that's going to be a political decision.'

But Professor Hayward admitted scientists aren't sure whether the variant is actually more infectious than older versions.

He added: 'The evidence of increased transmissibility and escape from immunity is circumstantial.'
The 4th International Virtual Conference on Clinical Spine and Orthopedics Biomechanics had 315 participants. 133 national and 13 international faculty members contributed to the proceedings

Over 300 experts from across the world converged at the 4th International Virtual Conference on Clinical Spine and Orthopedics Biomechanics, from 16 to 18 April, to discuss various ways of improving the outcome of procedures like Robotic spine surgeon, non-fusion spine technologies, total or partial joint replacement, bone fracture repair, soft tissue repair, limb deformity correction and bone tumour removal.

The conference assumes importance in the wake of rising COVID cases around the world, raising the spectre of prolonged indoor stay that have increased the incidence of musculoskeletal problems in both adults and children, including strain, injuries and fractures.

The 3-day conference was attended by 315 participants, delegates comprising eminent surgeons, engineers, rehabilitation professionals, and industry representatives including 133 faculty members from India and 13 from other parts of the world.

The Indian Spinal Injuries Centre (ISIC), New Delhi was the key host for the conference in which globally-renowned academic institutions such as the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi; Hamburg University of Technology, Germany; The University of Toledo, Ohio, the USA; and Imperial College London, the UK participated to discuss the latest developments in the field of biomechanics and incorporate them in the surgical processes.

A recent study has found that the most common site for orthopedic implant breaks was the shaft of the femur in patients between 17-95 years comprising more than 40 per cent of implant failures. We have also seen how staying indoors for over a year now has affected the musculoskeletal health of both adults and children. This calls for continuous scrutiny and collaboration between the surgeons and implant design professionals as well as the industry. The fact that back pain has been parallel epidemic due to sedentary lifestyle and bad posture during the pandemic and that fractures and injuries can happen even during COVID and can cause emergency makes conferences like this important for the continuous medical education (CME)  COVID has made us all realize the importance of CME and conferences in order to serve the patients faster and better, says Dr H S Chhabra, Medical Director Cum Chief of Spine Services, Indian Spinal Injuries Centre (ISIC), New Delhi.
In this week's episode of New Amsterdam, we finally confirm one doctor's fate, realize Luna is actually a devil child, and that Helen is adopting the "I'm not a regular mom, I'm a cool mom" strategy, to not so great results. Let's dig in!



One thing about this episode: it opens and closes on an Iggy and Martin scene, but the progression between the two feels like a genuine, yet still amazing, sort of conclusion to Iggy's struggles for this entire season so far. This intimacy display is lovely, for one, but it's Iggy's stance on letting Martin see him in something else than almost complete darkness, that truly shows how far Iggy's been able to go since he started upon this journey to heal, or at least manage, his eating disorder. Not everything will be resolved just like that, but it's such a big step for Iggy and definitely deserves to be celebrated. It's also important to point out how supportive Martin has been, and their relationship is truly one of the most enjoyable and sincere ones on the show.



Unfortunately, it isn't all smooth sailing for Iggy because Vijay never shows up to the little celebration gathering Iggy had organized for his return to the hospital. Special mention to "KAPOOP" by the way, it did crack me up which just goes to show how primitive my sense of humor can be.

"And Vijay said that he might have saved the guy's life but... But you saved his soul. That's what you do, Dr. Frome, you just go around saving souls."

"I learned from the best."

"Um, you love kids."

"Very much the opposite."

"Right. Let me rephrase that. You love being my assistant, right?"

"Yes, it's my childhood dream come true."

Unfortunately, we learn that Vijay has informed the neurology department that he won't be coming back and has, in fact, resigned from his position. Iggy wasn't even included in this mass email, and he becomes increasingly angry at Vijay for his lack of communication. They are, after all, best friends, and Iggy is understandably lost without Vijay and his ability to always go the extra mile with patients. After several irrate phone messages on Vijay's answering machine, Ella finally calls Iggy back to explain that it's Vijay's health that won't allow him to come back. The lingering effects of covid and the ensuing aftermath of his hospital stay and treatment, are too much for him to hope to work full time again.In real life, Anupam Kher who plays Dr Vijay Kapoor, has indeed left New Amsterdam because his wife is ill. Dr Kapoor will be sorely missed on the show, and I hope Anupam Kher's wife makes a full recovery.Back to the show, I also hope Iggy will be able to withstand this loss, because their friendship was very enjoyable, and Iggy will need to fare for himself now. But as Ella so astutely puts it:Cue me tearing up a little because it's hard to picturebeingwithout Vijay and Iggy teaming up to save lives (and souls), and Ella brightening up the coffee shop every day.Meanwhile, Max is honoring's previous medical director, who faced the AIDS crisis back in 1985. His enthusiasm is cut short however, when he realizes the portrait has been defaced and he investigates to understand who could be behind it. Thus unfolds an underlying crisis: the fact that "sexually active gay men were banned from donating [blood] in this country, even if they knew they were HIV-negative", and said former medical director threw out all the blood that had been collected under a common name: Howie Cournemeyer when it could have saved countless lives. Back in 2021 (or whatever timeline this is on), nothing has changed since again, according to Dale Rustin who orchestrated the blood donation back in 1985, "gay men can't donate convalescent plasma for COVID right now". Upon learning this, Max embarks on a promise to make things change, and one can only hope he can finally push against this baffling rule.Several HIV positive patients are developing worrisome pathologies however, and it seems like the disease has been distigmatized to a point where the patients forget how deadly it can still be.Max has other pressing problems however, in that his darling little daughter is actually more of a little hellion who bites, and has actually been banned from daycare. I did not know that a child actuallyget banned from daycare at such a young age, but there's a first time for everything! After walking Luna around on a leash, Max finally tasks Sandra with handling Satan's spawn, which Sandra is not overly enthused about (and who would be).Max wants to get a nanny, who, by the sounds of his requests will probably be as easy to find as a unicorn (seriously, he was one step away from asking her to also be a NASA scientist) but there's a ten month wait so Max, like most of us, will just have to lower his extremely unrealistic targets. Meanwhile, after scouring the internet for parenting advice, Sandra quickly realizes that Luna is acting out probably because she misses her grand-parents, and after spending the best part of a year being the center of attention, did not take too kindly to being just one charge amongst her peers in the daycare. Easily fixed: Max caves in and calls Georgia's mom, to ask her to come help out a few days a week. Sidenote: why didn't he think of this before? I was under the impression it was because Georgia's parents lived too far out but I guess not.On the other side of parenthood, Helen finds herself with a full grown teen who has arrived in New York one day early. Mina is the kind of person who worries about being too forward about ordering tea, but who also sees no issue in meeting a stranger from the internet in her aunt's hospital. Helen started off on the wrong parenting foot by immediately wanting to be Mina's friend, rather than her guardian, which I can already tell is not going to end well (does it ever?). Thankfully, Lauren reminds her that children need boundaries lest they grow up like her and her sister, which sobers Helen up on the wholefront.Dr Shin wasn't in this episode so we will have to wait another week to see how he reacts to Helen's new responsabilities. What's even weirder is that Max doesn't even know about this major upheaval in Helen's life. He and Helen seem to be living in parallel universes that never overlap anymore, which is a shame since their relationship is usually such a highlight of the show. I'm not sure howis supposed to keep its appeal with Vijay gone and Max/Helen in some kind of emotional cold war. It's not like Reynolds and Evie's failed engagement is going to generate much allure, since they finally come to the realization that their relationship wasn't strong enough to keep Floyd in San Francisco, and their love not deep enough to survive any obstacles coming their way. The way Evie cut off the phone call was pretty final so it doesn't seem like there's a reconciliation in the cards there either.In the end, Iggy manages to gather everyone again to celebrate Vijay's career and the fact that he survived covid, and will now be able to enjoy life with Ella and his grandchild. So all is well that ends well(ish). That's it for this week! I do hope all these ending relationships allow for new ones to blossom because things are going to be dire if we have to rely only on patients/causes of the week at. As usual, sound off in the comments!
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 19)  The Covaxin and Janssen vaccines can now be used in the country after both were granted emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration.

FDA Director General Eric Domingo confirmed the EUA approvals on Monday.

India's Ambassador to the Philippines Shambhu Kumaran first broke the news about Covaxin on social media Monday, tweeting, "Delighted that #Covaxin has been granted EUA in the #Philippines. Congratulations @BharatBiotech! Thank you @FDAPhilippines."

In an interview with CNN Philippines in March, Kumaran said Covaxin has an efficacy rate of 81% following large-scale clinical trials that involved over 25,000 participants.

Covaxin is an inactivated virus-based vaccine product that uses a killed form of SARS-CoV-2, one of the oldest and tried-and-tested methods of prompting an antibody response.

In the same interview, Kumaran said the company's local representatives have been in contact with concerned officials for a possible purchase, adding they would be ready to supply the country an initial batch of at least 8 million vaccine doses.

Covaxin is jointly developed by Bharat Biotech and government-run Indian Council of Medical Research.

Meanwhile, Domingo earlier said that he expected Janssen to be granted an EUA.

Janssen is a single-dose vaccine developed by American drugmaker Johnson & Johnson which applied for an EUA last March 31.

Janssen's approval was acknowledged by vaccine czar Carlito Galvez during President Rodrigo Duterte's address on Monday night.

"Yung Johnson & Johnson nagpapasalamat po tayo sa FDA kasi lumabas na po 'yung kanyang EUA," Galvez said.

[Translation: We want to thank the FDA because Johnson & Johnson's EUA has been approved.]

Pfizer-BioNTech, Oxford-AstraZeneca, Sinovac, and Gamaleya-Sputnik V were also previously granted EUAs by the FDA.
He recently returned to the studio to host his famous Late Late Show after fronting the series from his home in Los Angeles.

Yet James Corden took time away from the studio to hit the beach with his family as he soaked up the sun with his wife Julia Carey and daughter Carey, six, during which he showed off his impressive one stone weight loss.

The Gavin And Stacey star, 42, gave a nod to his love of all things designer as he sported a pair of 650 Gucci Green Ken Scott Edition Silk Floral Print Shorts, while his wife, 45, donned a scallop-hemmed white ensemble.

Living it up: James Corden took time away from the studio to hit the beach with his family as he soaked up the sun with his wife Julia Carey and daughter Carey, six

James was showing off his beachy style in the Gucci shorts paired with a plain black crew-neck T-shirt and the bold floral patterned shorts.

The TV and film star married his television producer partner Julia in 2012 at Babington House, a grand 18th century Georgian manor in Somerset.

The couple are also parents to Max, five, and Charlotte. three.

James recently insisted that there is 'absolutely no truth' in rumours of him 'replacing' Ellen DeGeneres on her eponymous talk show.

Gucci, Gucci, Louis, Fendi, Prada! The Gavin And Stacey star, 42, gave a nod to his love of all things designer as he sported a pair of 650 Gucci Green Ken Scott Edition Silk Floral Print Shorts, while his wife, 45, donned a scallop-hemmed white ensemble

James put the record straight on his own show as he played a game of Spill Your Guts or Fill Your Guts with Alicia Keys.

The screen star revealed how he 'genuinely' did not know where the rumour 'even came from' and said it would be 'really crazy' to take over from Ellen, 62, who has hosted her own show since 2003.

Asked by Alicia if the rumours were true, the thespian said: 'That is a very... happily I will answer it because I don't even know where, genuinely I don't know where that even came from.

Staying busy: James recently insisted that there is 'absolutely no truth' in rumours of him 'replacing' Ellen DeGeneres on her eponymous talk show (pictured in 2019)

'I think somebody started a rumour somewhere and someone jumped on it. There is absolutely no truth in that story at all - zero.'

Over the last few months, Ellen has faced allegations that she treated staffers with little or no respect and that senior producers allowed and encouraged a toxic work environment.

Earlier this year, the broadcaster kicked off the 18th season of her talk show by telling her virtual audience she was 'taking responsibility' for the scandal, while also acknowledging she was not the villain that several reports had suggested.
YEREVAN, APRIL 19, ARMENPRESS. stable operational situation with no incidents has been maintained along the Armenian-Azerbaijani line of contact of the Armenian state border overnight April 18-19, the Defense Ministry of Armenia told ARMENPRESS.

According to the information provided by the Armenian National Security Service, no border incidents were registered in Vorotan-Davit Bek section of the Goris-Kapan inter-state road which is under the responsibility of the NSS border troops.

The Armed Forces of Armenia and the NSS border troops confidently control the border situation along the entire borderline.
Amid heightened tensions between Washington and Moscow, U.S. national-security adviser Jake Sullivan has discussed with his Russian counterpart bilateral issues, regional and global matters of concern, as well as the prospect of a presidential summit between the two countries presidents.

Sullivan and Nikolay Patrushev, the secretary of the Russian Security Council, agreed in their telephone call on April 19 "to continue to stay in touch," National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne said in a statement, which came after the Kremlin announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin planned to speak later this week at an online summit on climate change organized by the United States.

Patrushev and Sullivan "discussed the preparations for a summit between Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden, as well as possible directions for the development of Russian-U.S. cooperation," Russia's Security Council said in a statement, according to Russian news agencies.

Biden has proposed to meet the Russian leader face-to-face to discuss bilateral relations. Putin has not yet indicated whether he would accept that invitation.

Last month, Biden also invited Putin and other world leaders to the virtual summit on climate change on April 22-23.

But since then relations between Washington and Moscow have entered a new phase of heightened tensions, with Biden announcing punishing sanctions over cyberattacks, election interference, and threats against U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

Further souring the mood -- and raising questions over whether Putin would attend the summit -- has been the issue of the health of jailed Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny, Russia's buildup of troops along the border in eastern Ukraine and Crimea, and new allegations of Russian involvement in a deadly explosion at a munitions depot in the Czech Republic in 2014.

At the upcoming virtual summit, Putin will "outline Russia's approaches in the context of forging broad international cooperation aimed at overcoming the negative effects of global climate change," the Kremlin said in a statement on April 19.

Paris Agreement

The first day of the summit coincides with Earth Day and will "underscore the urgency -- and the economic benefits -- of stronger climate action, the White House said on March 26 in announcing the summit.

Biden also invited Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has not yet said whether he will take part.

The gathering is meant to highlight Washingtons renewed commitment to stemming climate change, and build toward the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) this November in Glasgow, Scotland, the White House said on March 26.

Biden rejoined the 2015 Paris Agreement on his first day in the White House, reversing former President Donald Trump's exit from the landmark climate accord.

The White House has said that climate change is one area where it may be possible to cooperate with China and Russia, even as ties are strained over many other issues.

The United States and China agreed that stronger pledges to fight climate change should be pursued in line with the Paris Agreement, according to a joint statement issued on April 17 after U.S. climate envoy John Kerry visited Shanghai.

"The United States and China are committed to cooperating with each other and with other countries to tackle the climate crisis, which must be addressed with the seriousness and urgency that it demands," the joint statement said.

Based on reporting by AFP, Reuters, and RIA Novosti
By Allison Brace '22

University of Dayton students in this springs Introduction to Criminal Justice course are learning first-hand about life on death row by speaking directly with inmates featured in the book Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row by author Tessie Castillo.

Martha Hurley, professor and director of the Criminal Justice Studies program, partnered with Castillo to integrate this live component into her course. Although this was the pilot semester for the live discussions with inmates, it has been successful in the eyes of students.

It has been really cool to hear all of their personal testimonies and their day-to-day life on death row, said Morgan Ramsey, a first-year psychology major from Kansas City, Kansas.

Castillo coordinated with four inmates from different backgrounds, races and reasons for incarceration to speak to students by phone. They were able to use their designated telephone time to call into the class Zoom sessions. Inmates were able to speak to the class in 15-minute increments before being required to hang up and call back again. The prison allowed them to call up to three times for a total of 45 minutes of conversation with the students.

They are all really motivated by writing for Crimson Letters and telling their stories, said Emma Davies, an undecided first-year student from Fairfield, Connecticut. They said it makes their lives so much better, which was really interesting to hear that under all the circumstances they have to go through that just sharing their stories with other people made such a difference in their life.

During the live sessions students were encouraged to ask the inmates questions. Inmates were limited as to what they could share regarding their crimes and punishment, but they were able to talk about their lives in prison.

Being exposed to the environment directly was really special because you obviously read and hear about what happens on death row, but I think it is a totally different experience hearing from them directly, Davies said.

Students had the opportunity to learn not only about the day-to-day life of the prisoners, but also about the steps they took to share their voices in Crimson Letters, which students read as part of their coursework. Published in 2020, the text combines 30 essays authored in the prisoners own words.

Castillo met the inmates who participated in the book through a writing class she taught at the prison. Prison officials expressed concerns about liability issues related to the book and limited her interactions to one prisoner at a time. In addition, the prison mail system was slow, making it difficult for Castillo to communicate about revisions to the text. The participating inmates also had little to no incentive for participating in the writing process.

Their participation was entirely driven by their own desire for their well-being and the sake of spreading the word, Ramsey said.

Many of the inmates featured in Crimson Letters developed a passion for writing and advocating for changes in Americas criminal justice system. Some are currently fighting for policy changes from inside the prison walls.

Many have also devoted their life to their respective religions. One inmate converted to Catholicism, which he shared with the class. Others have been able to devote their time to taking college courses and even obtaining bachelor's degrees.

As a result of these conversations, I think students came to understand more about human dignity, dying behind prison walls, and justice than they would have in a typical class, Hurley said. I also think students came to recognize the common humanity among a group often perceived as less human.

Upon publication of Crimson Letters, Castillo and inmates spoke to people in nursing homes and other group settings to advertise the book and make the prisoners voices heard. Although the University of Dayton course is not their first classroom setting, it is the first such experiential learning opportunity at UD. This opportunity was made available through the Colleges Experiential Learning Innovation Fund Faculty Grant, which supports the implementation of creative, high-impact curricular experiences in University courses.

The course utilizes a blended format that incorporates reflection on conversations with the inmates and criminal justice research. Students complete a reflection after talking with each inmate, allowing them to think more deeply about their conversations. For their final project, students are working on a research paper that includes topics from the course, as well as what they learned from their direct conversations with inmates.

Davies is doing her research on the topic of wrongful convictions after hearing from one of the inmates, who maintains his innocence and is currently fighting for his exoneration.

This was definitely the most interesting class that I have taken thus far, because it is so pertinent to the real world, Davies said. The death penalty is so relevant to todays society and conversations, so I thought that was really interesting to get a deeper understanding of that and what goes on within the prison system. It definitely changed a lot of perspectives that I had prior to taking the class.

For more information, visit the Criminal Justice Studies programs website.
Watertown, NY (13601)

Today

A few clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 66F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

A few clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 66F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

LOS ANGELES  April 19, 2021  Sherwood Extreme, the free-to-play crossbow shooter with bullet-time and ridiculous co-op action, takes aim at Steam Early Access for PC and Mac on Wednesday, May 12, 2021. Also revealed today, CAGE Studios will bring the full release to Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One in addition to the previously announced Steam version in Q4 2021.



When a horde of goblins rears their ugly faces in Sherwood Forest, who better to save the day than Robin Hood, renowned master of archery, parkour, and sick mid-air headshots? Slow-motion dive to dodge incoming arrows, vault over spinning death wheels, and snipe goblins in stylish form. Claim the treasure at each levels end while racking up a huge combo multiplier, shaving seconds off the clock for the biggest possible score.



From the fiery heart of a volcano to the towers and parapets of Nottingham Castle, a whole kingdom awaits. Search for power-ups, collectible secrets, and goblin heads to explode. Bring the loot back to Robins hideout to obtain ridiculous period-appropriate outfits, fashionable gear buffed with upgrades, and historically accurate weapons like the rapid-fire Minigun Crossbow.



Combine powers with other merry men and women in co-op multiplayer. Grapple onto your partners shoulders from across the map to speedrun together and buff each other with shield abilities. Split up to tackle mini-raids and stand together in wave-based survival levels. Challenge daily Epic and Mythic quests with clever twists like explosive enemy arrows, punishing traps, and an irresponsible number of power-ups.





Tens of thousands of level variations, thousands of unlockables, and fully kitted leaderboards mark Season One of Sherwood Extreme . Each season will herald a new leveling system with hundreds of items available for free, dozens more for Kingdom Pass owners, plus exclusive rewards for the finest archers in the land. Come one, come all, ye speedrunners from corners of the realm, to redefine medieval fashion and pull off sweet backflips!





The best times weve had together have been adventurous, hilarious, and chaotic, said Gabriel Langlois, lead developer and co-founder of CAGE Studios. In our equally outrageous creation, we added mountable boars and chicken jetpacks!



We made this game to give way to those insanely fun and ridiculous times, agreed Salaar Kohari, game director and fellow co-founder. Starting Day One and with every update we make for you, fun comes first, whether you play for free or support us with a Kingdom Pass.



Sherwood Extreme will release for free via Steam Early Access for PC and Mac on May 12, 2021. The debut Kingdom Pass for Season One unlocks hundreds of items and exclusive quests for 500 Cage Coins (equalling around $5 USD). The full release will welcome Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One in Q4 2021.



Join the Sherwood Extreme Discord server for community events, private playtests, and to sharpen your goblin-sniping skills with other medieval assassins. Find CAGE Studios on their official website , Instagram , Twitter , and Facebook .





Assets

About CAGE Studios




BRUSSELS - Between January and March 2021, the total number of illegal migrant crossings made in the central Mediterranean more than doubled to about 8,450, compared with the 2020 (+122%).



These preliminare figures were released by Frontex.



In the month of March there was an increase of almost four times compared with the previous year to almost 1,800.



In general, the number of illegal crossings of Europe's external borders dropped by 7% in the first three months of 2021 compared with the previous year to about 24,000.



This was mostly due to a drop in arrivals in the eastern and western Mediterranean, according to preliminary calculations.



In March, the number of illegal border crossing surpassed 5,750, about 4% more than the previous year.


Containers are seen at an industrial port in Yokohama

By Daniel Leussink

TOKYO (Reuters) -Japan's exports posted their strongest growth in more than three years in March, led by a surge in China-bound shipments, in a sign the economic recovery from last year's deep coronavirus slump remains intact.

However, the trade data is unlikely to completely ease worries about the fragile recovery of the world's third-largest economy, which took an enormous hit from a collapse in global trade due to the pandemic in the first quarter of 2020.

Ministry of Finance data showed on Monday exports surged 16.1% in March from a year earlier, marking the steepest rise since November 2017. That was better than an 11.6% jump expected by economists in a Reuters poll, and followed a 4.5% contraction in February.

"The rebound in exports slowed significantly across Q1 and external demand is unlikely to provide much of a tailwind to growth this year," said Tom Learmouth, Japan economist at Capital Economics.

"The impressive annual figure was down to base effects from the weakness in exports in March 2020."

The exports surge was also marked by especially strong shipments to Japan's largest trading partner China, while the pace of recovery in firms' exports to the United States remained relatively slow, said analysts.

"Most exports to China aren't very high-tech, and there's the possibility there will be restrictions amid rising U.S.-China tensions," said Takeshi Minami, chief economist at Norinchukin Research Institute.

Shipments to China, Japan's largest trading partner, soared 37.2% in the year to March, led by nonferrous metals and plastic materials, and also boosted by stronger exports of semiconductor machinery.

However, Japan's economy was likely to face headwinds from a slower recovery in U.S.-bound shipments, which tend to add more value than those exported to China and elsewhere in Asia, for at least another couple of months, he added.

Story continues

Exports to the United States, the world's top economy, rose 4.9% to post their first year-on-year gain in five months, as strong demand for cars and construction machinery such as bulldozers offset lower shipments of aircrafts.

Shipments to Asia as a whole gained 22.4%, while those to the European Union advanced 12.8% in March.

Imports rose 5.7% in March compared with the same month a year earlier, versus the median estimate for a 4.7% increase, bringing a trade surplus of 663.7 billion yen ($6.11 billion) versus the median estimate for a 490.0 billion yen surplus.

The trade data follows the Reuters Tankan poll on Friday that found confidence among Japanese manufacturers rose to a more than two-year high in April as strong demand in the electronics market boosted prospects for exporters.

($1 = 108.7100 yen)

(Reporting by Daniel Leussink; Editing by Sam Holmes)
April marks the anniversary of two devastating chemical weapons attacks in Syria: the first on April 4, 2017 when the Assad regime deployed chemical weapons on the town of Khan Sheikhoun in the Idlib governate; the second on April 7, 2018 on the city of Douma. The attacks -- with their choking and suffocating poison -- killed scores of innocent women, men and children, and wounded hundreds more.

After World War One, when the horrific suffering from chemical weapons was on tragic display, the international community first banned their use, and then their production and stockpiling as well.

The Assad regimes use of chemical weapons has been confirmed by the United Nations and by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, known as the OPCW.

Speaking at the recent UN Security Council briefing on chemical weapons in Syria, U.S. Representative to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield reiterated the United States continued support for the impartial and independent work of the OPCW and its investigative bodies.

Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield noted that the upcoming OPCW Conference of the States Parties offers an opportunity for the international community to send a strong message to the Assad regime that the use of chemical weapons is simply unacceptable and comes with grave consequences. She urged the States Parties to take decisive action and vote in favor of a draft measure to suspend Syrias rights and privileges under the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Recalling the testimony before the Security Council of Dr. Amani Ballour, who worked for years in Syria, Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield noted that the worst night of the doctors life was when she arrived at a hospital where children were suffocating after being exposed to sarin.

The women and children of Syria are waiting, said Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield. They know the Security Council has said that chemical weapons attacks are unacceptable. They know we have the power to hold the Assad regime accountable. So, let us act. And let us show them that we are worthy of our charge.
Sterling is closing in on the US$1.40 level last seen in February

FTSE 100 down 19 points

Sterling rises by 1.2 cents against the US dollar

Man United shares rise despite ESL drama

5.15pm: Markets slide on both sides of the pond

The FTSE 100 retreated 19 points Monday, a 0.3% loss, to 7,000, while the FTSE 250 lost 31 points, 0.1%, to 22,491.

"A quieter start to the week has seen stock markets drift back on a lack of news, with only the goings-on in European football providing some interest (for those keen on the game anyway)," IG Chief Market Analyst Chris Beauchamp.

Contributing to the slump is stronger sterling, which gained almost 1.2 cents against the greenback to hit US$1.3961.

In the US, the Dow was down 128 points, 0.4%, to 34,073 at midday. The Nasdaq fell 157 points, 1.1%, to 13,895, and the S&P 500 dropped 22 points, 0.5%, to 4,164.

"Aside from Coca-Cola, today has seen a lull in earnings season, although s figures tomorrow promise a return to a more exciting period and a shift away from the bank-dominated opening days of reporting season," Beauchamp wrote. "Investors wil hope that earnings reports can provide fresh support in the other sessions of the week, given that the market is currently trading on high valuations and expectations and thus remains at risk of a sudden decline."

Shares of ( ) improved 0.6% to $54.02 after the company beat Street revenue and earnings expectations.

4.10pm: Sterling gains against US dollar

Londons leading shares are lower on balance, as sterling adds more than a cent against the dollar on foreign exchange markets.

The FTSE 100 was down 16 points (0.2%) but the FTSE 250, whose constituents tend to prefer a strong exchange rate, was up 25 points (0.1%) at 22,548.

Sterling has risen by almost 1.2 cents against the greenback to hit US$1.3961.

We continue to believe that the fast vaccination in the UK will keep offering support to sterling through upbeat recovery expectations for the UK economy. From a positioning perspective, this may imply that sterling may well remain the most overbought currency in the G10. As highlighted in previous positioning notes, GBP positioning in recent years had a tendency to be skewed towards net short positions due to the Brexit uncertainty factors. Now that this factor no longer affects GBP, speculative positioning should see more instances of overshooting towards net long territory, especially considering that the set of fundamentals is supportive for the currency, said Francesco Pesole, a foreign-exchange strategist at ING.

Marks & Spencer Group PLC ( ), up 4.4% at 163.3p, is leading the FTSE 250 higher. It's probably nothing to do with the Colin the Caterpillar dust-up with German retailer and more to do with a generally favourable attitude towards retailers that has also seen ( ) harden 3.2% at 518.5p.

That benevolence seems to be restricted, however, to bricks and mortar store owners because online electrical goods flogger ( ), down 4.8% at 298.2p, is not getting any love.

3.30pm: Proactive North America headlines:

Todos Medical Ltd ( ) initiates Phase 2 clinical trial in Israel of Tollovir to treat hospitalized coronavirus patients

( ) says microgrid contracts surge by 220% in two months to more than $23.5 million

Predictmedix Inc ( ) ( ) to deploy coronavirus screening Safe Entry Stations at major office buildings in Canada, in partnership with Apsen Properties and Juiceworks Exhibits

( ) acquires physical and IP assets of Spanish food ingredients company Agrasys SA

Newrange Gold Corp ( ) ( ) (FRA:X6C) announces closing of non-brokered private placements for combined gross proceeds of around $1.7 million

TomaGold Corporation ( ) (OTCMKTS:TOGOF) (FRA:OTM) strengthens its position around Obalski and Monster Lake properties

Green Battery Minerals Inc ( ) (OTCMKTS:GBMIF) (FRA:BK2P) outlines two year development path for its Quebec graphite asset

Vicinity Motor Corp ( ) ( ) ( ) announces $6M-plus contract for 15 compressed natural gas buses

Ltd ( ) ( ) (FRA:7HIA) inks Memorandum of Intent for a stake in a British Columbia electric vehicle equipment supplier

( ) ( ) (FRA:AC4) and Copperstate Farms strike a major facility agreement

PyroGenesis Canada Inc ( ) (NASDAQ:PYR) ( ) says its Additive Manufacturing NexGen Powder production line now in place and producing powders

Codebase Ventures Inc ( ) (FRA:C5B) ( ) investee InstaCoin launches app designed to let anyone easily create NFTs

KULR Technology Group Inc ( ) appoints Antonio Martinez as its new vice president of Operations

Kodiak Copper Corp ( ) (OTCMKTS:KDKCF) (FRA:5DD1) expands MPD project with acquisition of Axe property from Orogen Royalties

(NYSEAMERICAN:AUMN) ( ) ( ) releases 1Q figures that show it is on track to produce at least 12,000 gold ounces in 2021

Ltd ( ) ( ) adds VALORANT game betting to its platform

Binovi Technologies Corp ( ) ( ) (FRA:2EYA) to buy vision therapy firm Samurai Motion Tracking in a C$2.5M all-stock deal

( ) ( ) ( ) finds palladium, , copper and nickel in new drill assays at Thunder Bay North project

CytoDyn Inc ( ) submits manufacturing section of interim order application for leronlimab as coronavirus treatment to Health Canada

ImagineAR Inc (CSE: IP) (OTCQB: IPNFF) to be granted its seventh US patent next month

Gold Mines Canada Inc ( ) ( ) (FRA:1QB1) identifies new gold target with 600 metres of strike at Baner project

Mirasol Resources Ltd ( ) (OTCPINK:MRZLF) (FRA:M8R) partners with Patagonia Gold on its Nico and Homenaje projects, Argentina

2.48pm: Wall Street on the back foot

The main indices on Wall Street opened in the red on Monday as rising cases of coronavirus around the world rattled market sentiment.

Shortly after the opening bell, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.17% at 34,141 while the S&P 500 dropped 0.14% to 4,179 and the Nasdaq fell 0.25% to 14,015.

While cases are falling in the US, countries such as India and Brazil are experiencing ongoing heavy numbers of new cases, meaning the pandemic is far from over on a global scale.

In terms of company news, shares in football club were up 7.4% at US$17.36 in early deals, as investors seemed to be the only ones greeting the news of the clubs participation in the proposed European Super Leagues positively, in contrast to the uproar that has swept across the rest of the industry today.

Back in London, the FTSE 100 had shifted into reverse into late-afternoon and was down 17 points at 7,002 at around 2.45pm.

12.40pm: Lower start predicted for US stocks

US stocks are set to lose ground today as concerns over rising levels of coronavirus (COVID-19) cases worldwide dampen sentiment.

Spread betting quotes indicate the Dow Jones will open 74 points lower at 14,127 while the broader-based S&P 500 is set for a 9 point fall to 4,176.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 is seen sliding 38 points to 14,004.

On the COVID-19 front, things are not looking too bad for the US, with some reports indicating the more than half the adult population has had at least one jab - or taken one shot as the Americans might put it, albeit at the risk of confusing foreigners who think they have been gunned down or are slamming down tequila.

After rising at a modest pace for a couple weeks, the past four straight days have seen new U.S. Covid cases falling on a week-to-week basis. Sunday's 40K cases, according to the New York Times database, were down 16% compared to Sunday last week, following a 19% drop on Saturday. That's the best two-day performance since late February, reported Pantheon Macroeconomics.

It's not clear why cases have started to fall againand it's too soon to be sure that the emerging down trend will continuebut the fading of Easter effects, the gradual increase in average temperatures, and the accelerating vaccine rollout likely are all playing a part. Changing behaviour in response to soaring cases probably has made a difference too, especially in Michigan and Minnesota, where restaurant diner numbers have plummeted over the past week.

Cases in both states now appear to have peaked, Pantheon noted.

If the pandemic was the major stock market theme of last year, the GameStop saga has been one of the big themes of this year and today ir was reported that the computer gaming retailers chief executive, George Sherman, will quit before the end of July.

The shares were up almost 10% in pre-market trading.

In acquisition news, and Inc have agreed to merge in a US$1.8bn cash-plus-stock deal. Miller will pay US$11 in cash ad 0.32 Miller shares for each share.

Earnings reports ramp up this week with Coca-Cola and IBM in focus today ahead of , and United Airlines tomorrow. The upcoming earnings and forward guidance will allow investors to gauge whether the recent rally has overshot or whether there is more wind in the sails, said Sophie Griffiths at OANDA.

On the cryptocurrency market, Bitcoin recovered some of its poise after a torrid weekend, rising US$642 (1.1%) to US$56,881.

Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies Stabilize After Weekend Rout https://t.co/EWFm50pdOq  wealthbycrypto101.com (@wealthbycrypto1) April 19, 2021

In London, the FTSE 100 is keeping its head above the 7,000 level and is up 19 points (0.3%) at 7,038.

10.50am: Tedious nil-nil draw in London; all eyes on shares in New York later today

Londons leading shares remain mixed; meanwhile, it is all kicking off in the football world.

The FTSE 100 was unchanged at 7,020.

In the football world, football club has sacked its manager, Jose Mourinho, after he reportedly failed to hold a training session in protest at the clubs decision to join a proposed breakaway European Super League.

Across the pond, eyes will be on the PLC ( ) share price when trading starts this afternoon. The stock was down 0.8% at US$16.17 on Friday but is trading at US$$17.96 in screen-based trading, up 11%.

 Sky Sports News (@SkySportsNews) April 19, 2021

According to reports, has stood down from the European Club Association and the clubs executive vice-chairman, Ed , has quit his roles at UEFA, the European football association.

There are other things going on this morning apart from football, such as the release of the house price index (HPI) from Rightmove.

The average asking price for UK houses on sale rose by 2.1% this month to 327,797.

During the first two weeks of April houses sold had been on the market just 45 days on average, as sellers raced to take advantage of the governments stamp duty holiday. According to Rightmove, houses are selling more quickly than they ever have during the property listings website operators existence.

"The Rightmove HPI also shows that while many new properties were put on the market this month, there was still not enough to meet buyer demand. In fact, the average number of days it takes to sell reached its lowest ever level making it a great time for anyone looking to sell their house fast - and signals some issues for buyers who may struggle to find suitable property, said Ross Counsell at GoodMove, the property buying company.

"Given the extension of the Stamp Duty Holiday until the end of June, this surge is not necessarily that surprising, but does propose the question of what will happen after June.

"Looking ahead, we predict the property market will continue to thrive in the first half of 2021; however, following the end of the Stamp Duty Holiday the state of the property market remains uncertain. Therefore, we expect that house prices and demand will ease in the last 6 months of 2021 resulting in a slower housing market, Counsell said.

9.50am: Modest progress despite oil titans weighing things down

Despite the oil giants weighing it down, the FTSE 100 is in positive territory.

Londons index of leading shares was up 15 points (0.2%), with grocery delivery technology company ( ), up 3.4% at 2,254p, leading the leisurely advance.

Also going well is (LON:LSEG), which is up 2.2% at 7,872p, clawing back 172p of recent heavy losses as it prepares for investor opposition to the new remuneration package of its chief executive officer.

refiner ( ) is 1.4% better at 3,230p after it announced a strategic partnership for sustainable battery materials production.

Meanwhile, ( ) and PLC ( ) were off 0.6% and 0.8% respectively, reflecting a softening of the oil price.

Global stock markets remain supported by a combination of the very strong cyclical impulse as vaccinations and better economic resilience to lockdowns spur activity, ongoing monetary policy support and some pretty large fiscal stimulus in some parts of the world, most notably the US, said Neil Wilson at markets.com.

As highlighted by Moodys, the US$5.4tn in excess savings, which is worth around 6% of global GDP, is not to be ignored as consumers come back to the fray. US bank earnings and the release of bad loan loss provisions show the extent to which aggressive policy action has stopped a lot of potential damage to the economy. A retreat in US yields has helped calm nerves but value stocks remain the play as the global economy reopens. Discretionary spend is the name of the game, he added.

Talking of games, and a funny old one at that (according to Jimmy Greaves), Wilson notes that shares in Juventus rose 7% after it was one of the dirty dozen football clubs to announce plans for a breakaway European Super League.

And then I created a #EuropeanSuperLeague even though 4 of the big 6 English teams currently werent in a position to even qualify for the Champions League pic.twitter.com/kZtNMjS4X8  TheFastShow (@TheFastShow1) April 19, 2021

Given how few football clubs are quoted, the development has generated a surprising amount of commentary among the financial community; its almost as if the stock markets is an inherently geezerish place.

ITs RED! A straight red card for Global Neoliberalism United, that is. 12 of Europes top football (soccer) clubs are planning to break away from their already-lucrative elite domestic leagues, and their even-more lucrative Champions League, in order to form a breakaway closed-loop European Super League with no relegation and no cup competitions, said RaboResearch, not so much sitting on the fence as digging the fence up and hurling it onto the pitch in disgust/

In short, the richest (if not most successful) clubs, and the worlds most famous players, are potentially about to walk away from the entire global system of football --including the quadrennial World Cup-- to keep all of the global money in the game rather than sharing just a little of it with others: this is of course backed by Wall Street and private equity to the tune of USD8bn, RaboResearch said.

Even the US football system sees the least successful team get first pick of the draft new players; by contrast, global football has long seen increasing returns to the biggest clubs and their subsequent de-anchoring from their own domestic and now pan-European leagues. Amazingly, this puts UEFA --an institution with the transparency and public affection of a Bond Villain-- in the position of the good guys trying to hold the games gossamer-thin ties to its grassroots. This is, sadly, perhaps what the market wants though: endless Clash of the Titans games with no consequences. No true fans needed, just click-bait viewers.

I would love to have been at the meeting where someone basically said "what if we simply combined the worst elements of major league US sports with the worst elements of club football"  Mike Bird (@Birdyword) April 19, 2021

8.35am: More interest in the football than the Footsie

A little like Harry Maguire bombing with the ball towards the oppositions 18-yard box, the FTSE 100 found itself in nose-bleed territory.

The instinct among Londons trading fraternity was to stop and look for support  much as the Man U defender might.

The portents look reasonably positive. Asias main markets made a buoyant start to the week, while US stock futures were pointing upwards.

So, the blue-chip index may get off the launchpad later in the day.

Progress in the year to date, meanwhile, has been reasonably serene with the Footsie up almost 9% thus far.

The UK is receiving renewed investor attention, as a successful vaccine rollout and resilient economic readings combine with improved sentiment following the next stage of the gradual release from lockdown, said Richard Hunter, head of markets at Interactive Investor.

Long since an investment pariah in global terms, the beaten-down indices have seen the benefit of buying interest based on a valuation gap compared to many global markets, while the cyclical nature of the UK indices is also expected to feel the force of a pronounced economic recovery.

A buoyant copper price appears to be keeping Antofagasta ( ) afloat ahead of its trading update later this week. The stock opened 1.3% higher.

Melrose ( ), the owner of aerospace group , topped the risers with a 1.7% advance after it said it planned to offload Nortek Air Management for around US$3.6bn.

Proactive news headlines

( ) said it has filed an application with OTC Markets Group for its shares to be traded on the OTCQB Venture Market, which it said will make its stock more widely available to investors in North America.

genedrive plc ( ) said it has been included in a Public Health England framework agreement for diagnostic equipment and services

( ) expects revenues will rise to around 15mln in 2021 from 2.2mln in 2020, shifting it into the black.

Shanta Gold Ltd ( ) has completed a further 3,590 metres of drilling at the New Luika gold mine in south western Tanzania and the West Kenya project in Kenya. As a result indicated resources at the Luika underground deposit have increased by 76,461 ounces, before the depletion of first quarter mining activities is taken into account.

( ) has announced results of its final four drill holes from the 2020 drilling campaign at its 100%-owned Scallywag licence, with multiple new targets identified for further drill testing. Greatland's 2021 drilling in the Paterson region is expected to commence in the coming weeks.

PLC ( ) said it had won its second major trophy after its Rocket League team achieved first place in the Rocket League Championship Series (RLCS) EU Spring Regional, held on 15-18 April.

(LON: MTR) said the board of its joint venture Kalahari Metals Ltd (KML) has approved a major drilling programme on the Kalahari Copper Belt.

( ) has announced that its new G+ graphene coating for fabrics has been tested by an independent third party laboratory and found to be suitable for human skin contact.

(LON:DDDD; NASDAQ:LBPS) said it will collaborate with Parkinsons UK as it continues to advance into clinical trials a drug that treats neurodegenerative conditions such as Parkinson's.

( ) said the new date for the Pick 'n Pay Cycle Tour, which was due to take place in Cape Town, South Africa, in March, has now had its new date confirmed for October 10.

( ) lost 572.989 in the year to 31 December 2020. The company had cash in the bank as at 16 April 2021 of 1.23mln. Non-executive chairman Neil OBrien said that for Empire 2020 had been a year of significant forward momentum.

PLC ( ) secured a further short extension to its option to acquire First Development Resources (Pty) Ltd, an Australian private company with copper-gold exploration interests in the Paterson Province in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

( ) said it has appointed Gareth Cave and Felicity Sartain as non-executive directors with immediate effect.

( ) said it is excited about its potential to add value for shareholders in the next 12 months and beyond, as it released its financial results statement for 2020.

( ) told investors it started the workover of the Duff-2 well at the Greater Stanley project in Texas. The Duff-2 well will be recompleted in a zone which is in production at the adjacent Stanley field.

( ) highlighted significant progress with its natural gas focused exploration strategy, as it released results for 2020.

Caledonia Mining Corp PLC (LON:CMCL, NYSE:CMCL) said gold production was lower than anticipated in the first quarter at its Blanket mine in Zimbabwe due to flooding, although it still expects to meet its output target for the year. "Gold production has often been lower in the first quarter of each year and increases in the following quarters, said chief executive Steve Curtis.

( ) that it has received further letters from two shareholders stating their intention to reject the possible offer by .

( ) filed an application with OTC Markets Group for its shares to be cross-traded publicly on the OTCQB Venture Market ("OTCQB") under the ticker "MODE".

( ) has reported an unofficial work stoppage at its Vametco vanadium operation in South Africa. The action has been taken in regard to lower than expected payments under the terms of a recently signed employee participation plan.

( ) announced that finnCap Ltd has been appointed as the company's nominated adviser and sole broker with immediate effect.

( ) announced it appointed Louis Castro as a non-executive director with immediate effect.

( ) announced the purchase of shares in the company by five board directors and senior management. In total, 177339 shares were bought at prices ranging from 13p to 13.5p.

( ) notified investors that it will announce its Q2 and interim results for the three and six month periods ended 31 March 2021, on Tuesday 18 May 2021.

( ) announced that its full year results for the period ending 31 December 2020 will be published on Monday 26 April 2021. Management will host a shareholder call that day at 12.00 BST and will be taking questions.

( ) said its 2021 annual general meeting will be held at its offices at West Strand Business Park, West Strand Road, Preston on Tuesday 18 May.

( ) announced that warrants have been exercised over 210,074 new ordinary shares of 20p each, with an exercise price of 180p per share. Proceeds of 378,133 have been received by Bango in respect of this warrant exercise.

( ) said its annual general meeting will be held on Tuesday 18 May 2021 and will be run as a closed meeting.

( ) notified investors that, due to government guidance in relation to COVID-19, the location of its annual general meeting has been moved to the offices of Greencoat Capital LLP.

6.50 am: Slow start predicted

The FTSE 100 looks set to make a subdued start to proceedings, ignoring the buoyant open to the week on Asias main markets.

Having closed above 7,000 for the first time since February last year, it seems likely that Londons traders will take stock rather than push on from here.

By contrast, Chinas two major markets set the pace in the region as economic recovery hopes continued to drive sentiment.

US futures were also well bid, while treasury yields slipped further.

It was a roller-coaster day for holders of bitcoin as the cryptocurrency fell as low as US$53,511 before recovering to US$56,000. That said, it is well down from its recent high of around US$65,000.

The battle for battery metals moved into a new phase as Aussie groups Orocobre and Galaxy Resources agreed a $4bn merger  a deal that would catapult them into fifth place in the lithium chemical space.

Back here at home, we have updates this week from miners BHP ( ), Rio Tinto ( ), Antofagasta ( ) and Hochschild ( ).

Away from the diggers, there are half-year results from Primark owner Associated British Foods ( ) and a trading statement from ( ).

Around the markets

Pound worth US$1.3850 (+0.13%)

Bitcoin US$56,807.34 (+1.86%)

Gold US$1,778.70 (flat)

Brent crude US$66.52 (-0.37%)

6.50am: Early Markets - Asia / Australia

Stocks in the Asia-Pacific region were mixed on Monday as Reuters reported over the weekend that financial technology giant Ant is exploring options for Jack Ma to divest his stake in the firm and give up control.

The Hang Seng index in Hong Kong gained 0.62% while the Shanghai Composite in China surged 1.18%.

In Japan, the Nikkei 225 fell 0.06% and South Koreas Kospi advanced 0.02%.

Shares in Australia gained, with the S&P/ASX 200 trading 0.10% higher.

READ OUR ASX REPORT HERE

Proactive Australia news:

( ) has hit a new record after fast-tracked assay results from two reverse circulation (RC) holes at Chinook Prospect of the Earaheedy JV Project in Western Australia confirmed a zinc-lead discovery.

Elementos Limited ( ) ( ) (FRA:9EM) has received firm commitments from institutional, sophisticated and accredited investors to raise A$6.1 million through a placement to progress the development of its wholly-owned Oropesa Tin Project in Spain.

s ( ) (FRA:1X8) target acquisition Halucencex Life Sciences Inc has signed a non-binding Letter of Intent (LOI) with leading nanotechnology company Sixth Wave Innovations Inc ( ) ( ) to assess Molecularly Imprinted Polymers (MIPs).

( ) ( ) has strengthened its position at Gonneville Intrusion within the Julimar Nickel-Copper-PGE Project near Perth in Western Australia by entering binding agreements to acquire four additional key private properties.

( ) has completed a strongly supported share placement and received irrevocable commitments to raise A$7.25 million at an issue price of A$0.29 per share.

( ) has received green-loan verification for the debt issued to partly fund development at its flagship Lake Wells Sulphate of Potash Project (LSOP) in Western Australia.

( ) (FRA:YBB) has extended the McTavish East and McTavish North gold anomalies in the second round of air-core drilling at the Kookynie Gold Project in Western Australia.
Cairo: A passenger train derailed Sunday north of Cairo, killing at least 11 people, Egyptian authorities said. It was the latest of several rail accidents to hit the country in recent years.

Four train wagons ran off the railway at the city of Banha in Qalyubia province, just outside Cairo, the railway authority said in a statement. Videos on social media showed wagons overturned and passengers escaping to safety along the railway.

People gather at the site where a passenger train derailed injuring at least 100 people, near Banha, Qalyubia province, Egypt, Sunday, April 18, 2021. Credit:AP

The train was travelling to the Nile Delta city of Mansoura from the Egyptian capital, the statement said.

The Health Ministry said in a statement that besides the dead, at least 98 people were injured, with most of them suffering from broken bones, cuts and bruises.
Motorcyclist killed in Friday night wreck north of Aberdeen

A 27-year-old man died Friday night when his motorcycle and a pickup collided north of Aberdeen, according to the SD Department of Public Safety.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 11:48:38|Editor: huaxia

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MANILA, April 19 (Xinhua) -- The 20-year-old Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) has become more relevant and influential over the years and will "try to provide an 'Asian perspective' for improving global governance," former Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has said.

"The BFA in the last 20 years mirrors the development of China itself. As China's role in the world has increased, similarly, the importance and influence of the Boao Forum have improved, indeed, step by step in the past 20 years," Arroyo told Xinhua in a recent written interview.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the BFA, which was formally inaugurated in February 2001. Since 2002, the BFA has been holding its annual conference in Boao, a coastal town in China's southernmost province of Hainan.

Over 4,000 people will attend this year's BFA annual conference scheduled for April 18-21. As a non-governmental and non-profit international organization, the BFA is committed to promoting regional economic integration and bringing Asian countries closer to their development goals.

"On BFA's 20th anniversary, it would be a useful forum to discuss how to maximize the beneficial effects, not only for Asia but also for the rest of the world, now and in the 'new normal' of the post-COVID-19 era," she said, praising the BFA for having "played an important role in promoting exchanges and cooperation among Asian countries."

Arroyo, a board member of the BFA, hoped that this year's BFA annual conference "will try to provide an 'Asian perspective' for improving global governance."

"I think there is a widespread feeling that many of the successful approaches towards the pandemic are from Asian countries. Thus, voices from Boao on the matter will be listened to with great interest by the rest of the world," she added.

Arroyo will deliver a speech during the forum on the new way of international cooperation in a post-pandemic world.

Arroyo said that coping with COVID-19 and the world's worst recession since World War II are "the most urgent challenges" confronting the world now amid rising uncertainties and instabilities. "Against the pandemic and the recession, and leading to the future, multilateralism is the answer," she said.

Arroyo stressed the importance of multilateralism as "it is in all nations' interests to find a worldwide solution."

"In today's globalized society, it has proven to be physically costly to establish the measures that can protect one's borders from imported COVID-19 infection. But more important, in today's globalized economy, it has proven to be financially costly to isolate one's economy because that is similar to shutting down the economy," she said.

"It is ultimately in each country's self-interest to ensure that no country is left behind," she added. "In today's interlocked world, the weakest link in the chain will sooner or later be a problem for the other links."

Arroyo hailed China for sharing its COVID-19 vaccines with the rest of the world, especially developing countries. "We appreciate that China considers its vaccine against the coronavirus as a global public good."

"In times like this, the best attitude is to look for solutions in cooperation with as many parties and countries as possible that have the means to contribute to the effort," she said.

The first batch of Sinovac vaccines donated by China arrived in the Philippines on Feb. 28, allowing this Southeast Asian country to kick off its vaccination drive. China is also the first supplier of the vaccines purchased by the Philippine government.

Arroyo said the relationship between Manila and Beijing has been good. "As the Belt and Road Initiative and our 'Build Build Build' continue to jell, the benefits will become clearer and clearer to all," especially for the Southeast Asian country's large proportion of young people, who are to benefit from increasing employment opportunities, trade and investment.

"China's assistance in building and developing infrastructure projects in the Philippines has paved the way for new dams, bridges, and railways," she said, citing the "friendship bridge" China helped to build in Manila as "a huge symbol today of the good relationship between our peoples, and of things to come." Enditem
Royal Navy patrol ships have tracked a fleet of Russian warships as they passed through the English Channel.

Portsmouth-based HMS Tyne, Severn and Mersey have been monitoring the seven Russian Federation navy vessels as they sailed close to the UK.

They also tracked a surfaced Algerian submarine as it travelled back to its north African home.

The Russian ships, viewed from astern, is pictured as it passed through the Dover Strait under the watch of the Royal Navy

HMS Mersey, pictured during the operation, kept track on the Russian ships and an Algerian submarine

HMS Mersey met up with a trio of vessels - frigate Admiral Kasatonov, a supporting tug Nikolay Chiker and tanker Vyazma - off Ushant in France and stayed with them through the Channel and Dover Strait and into the North Sea.

A Navy spokesman said: 'Her monitoring mission was made more challenging by adverse weather conditions such as high winds and large sea states which meant the Russian ships took longer than usual to pass through as they sheltered in more confined waters before resuming their journey.

'HMS Mersey's ship's company worked around the clock to ensure that the three Russian ships passed the area safely.'

Navigating officer Lieutenant Thomas Bees added: 'The Russian Federation naval vessels operated in a safe and professional manner throughout their transit.'

The HMS Tyne (pictured) worked with the HMS Mersey to keep watch on four Russian vessels sailing towards the Atlantic

A member of the crew from the patrol ship HMS Tyne keeps close watch on the Russian ships passing close to British waters

The HMS Tyne monitors the Russian task group passing in opposite direction through the Channel

The Tyne, pictured, was one of three Portsmouth-based patrol ships monitoring the presence of the Russian ships

Tale of the tape: How do the Royal Navy and Russian Federation ships compare? HMS Mersey Total displacement: 1,700 tons Length: 79.5 metres Top speed: 20+ knots Troops: 20 Armaments One Oerlikon 20 mm cannon and two General purpose machine guns Admiral Kasatonov Total displacement: 4,500 tons Length: 135 metres Speed: 29.5 knots Armaments: One naval gun, 16 anti-ship cruise missiles and surface-to-air missiles, two torpedo tubes and pedestal machine guns Advertisement

Before the Kasatonov group sailed through the Channel, Mersey worked with HMS Tyne to keep watch on four Russian vessels sailing through the Channel towards the Atlantic.

The Navy spokesman said: 'The quartet - three Ropucha-class amphibious ships capable of landing tanks, Minsk, Kaliningrad and Korolev, and the frigate Boiky - were located in the North Sea and closely followed through the Dover Strait and into the English Channel before reaching the open waters of the North Atlantic.

'As part of the operation, the Portsmouth-based offshore patrol ships worked with several allied Nato ships and aircraft to ensure the Russian force was observed seamlessly.'

Lieutenant Nicholas Ward, Tynes executive officer, added: Once again HMS Tyne demonstrated the fantastic capability that the River-class ships provide.

'We have quickly switched from conducting fishery protection to working with our NATO allies monitoring foreign warships operating close to the UK. Were all proud on Tyne to be part of the team protecting the nations interests.'

The Algerian submarine was tracked on the surface as it returned home to Africa by HMS Severn, which normally trains Royal Navy navigators.

Commander Philip Harper, Severns Commanding Officer said: 'It has been a pleasant duty to welcome our Algerian friends for their transit of UK waters in great weather as they head home.'

Last December the Royal Navy shadowed nine Russian warships around the UK.

The ships included a surfaced submarine, a destroyer and a patrol ship and were spotted in the English Channel, the Celtic Sea and the west coast of Scotland.
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An assurance went out Monday from President Muhammadu Buhari to the newly inaugurated President of Republic of Niger, Mohamed Bazoum, who was in Nigeria on his first international visit: We will stabilize our region for the benefit of the two countries.

President Buhari said Nigerians and Nigeriens are people with similar culture, language and ways of life, and we also share about 1,500 kilometres of land border, so we cannot ignore each other.

The president congratulated Mr Bazoum on winning the recent presidential election, and his successful inauguration into office.

You have been in the system for a long time. The only thing is that you had never been President. Now you are one, the host President said, assuring that Nigeria would assist its close neighbour in diverse ways as required.

On terrorism, as perpetrated by Boko Haram, President Buhari observed that Republic of Niger also suffers high casualties, vowing; We will do all it takes to secure our two countries.

President Buhari was thankful to the immediate past president, Mahamadou Issoufou, for what he calls his understanding and sacrifices to help stabilize the region, urging the successor to maintain the institutions his predecessor had established.

President Bazoum said he was delighted to make Nigeria his first port of call, noting that the two countries have common interests, and, therefore, a good relationship is very important.

On security, he observed that the fact that some Nigerians flee to Niger during terrorist attacks shows that we need to cooperate, and we will face our challenges together.

Femi Adesina

Special Adviser to the President

(Media and Publicity)

April 19, 2021
TICKERS: EMPR; EMPYF

How to Invest in Gold & Silver in the Ground Without Buying Mining Equipment

Source: Streetwise Reports (4/19/21)

Royalty & streaming company Empress Royalty's three strategic partnerships give it access to precious metal projects in different parts of the world.



Empress Royalty Corp. (EMPR:TSX; EMPYF:OTCQB) is a royalty & streaming company with a portfolio of 15 gold and silver investments in Mexico, Mozambique and Canada.

What is a royalty & streaming company, and why are these wealth-creation instruments gaining favor with retail and institutional investors?

Let's start here: if bankers knew how to read drill logsroyalty & streaming companies wouldn't exist.

Lacking the geological expertise to accurately assess riskbig banks typically recoil when they get close to a proposed mine site.

"If we make a bad loan to a one mine company, we own the mine," stated CIBC Capital Markets, "and we don't want to own mines."

Royalty companies give cash to miners in exchange for a share of the mine's future sales.

It's like lending someone $10,000 to build a bakerywith the baker agreeing to give you 1% of all future bread sales. If the bakery never opens, you lose.

If the bakery produces bread for 30 years, you win.

If the price of bread triples, you win.

If the bakery doubles production, you win.

A "streaming" company is similar but it takes 1% of the baked bread, not money from the cash register.

Empress Royalty is solely focused on gold and silver.

Streetwise recently spoke with EMPR's President and CEO, Alexandra Woodyer Sherron. We asked about her background and the changes she's seen in the mining industry over the last 15 years.

"I started at PricewaterhouseCoopers," recalled Woodyer Sherron, "I joined as an analyst at Endeavour Financial, worked my way up through the ranks. Opened the London office and became Director of Structured Finance."

Empress began trading on the TSX.V at the end of the end of December, 2020.

"We are focused on building out that portfolio by bringing in cash producing assets," stated Woodyer Sherron, "Looking at roughly $75 million worth of potential investments right now."

Royalty & streaming companies are heavily leveraged to the commodity prices. Shareholders own an interest in metals that have yet to be extracted from the ground. But they side-step most of the downside risk. They don't own drill-rigs, transport trucks or tailing ponds.

"We don't have the overhead costs of miners," confirmed Woodyer Sherron, "We're much more streamlined. We help the miners by investing capitalto get them into production or expand production. This way, we can create significant value for our shareholders."

Empress has formed three important strategic partnerships:

Endeavour Financial (London)

Terra Capital (Australia)

Accendo Banco (Mexico)

Often a "strategic partner" is code for "downstream end-user" or "smart money"but EMPR's partnerships have deeper, more significant benefits.

"Each partner delivers different advantages to Empress," stated Woodyer Sherron, "Endeavour is a global mining finance company with a serious track record. It gives me access to cash flow modelers, financial analysts, mining engineers and geologists.

"It also gives me access to deal flow," added Woodyer Sherron, "Endeavour has a vast network that we can plug into."

About 10% of Australia's GDP comes from the mining industry. It is the third biggest gold producer, after Russia and China.

"The second partner is Terra Capital in Australia, run by Jeremy Bond," explained Woodyer Sherron, "Bond is also one of our directors and on our investment committee. He's able to quickly decide whether an opportunity in that part of the world is worth pursuing or not."

Mexico produces about 200 million ounces of silver a year.

"Our third partner is Accendo Banco," explained Woodyer Sherron, "We signed the strategic alliance with them in August, which gives us exclusive access to Mexican royalty and streaming deals."

Accendo Banco's mission is to accelerate the growth of medium-sized companies with growth potential through foreign exchange services, fiduciary and credit services, and advisory services to the Mexican mining industry.

On Sunday March 21, 2021, Woodyer Sherron flew to Mexico for meetings with miners, off-takers and Mexican government officials.

Empress Royalty believes in de-risking through geographic diversification.

"We're looking closely at Mexico, South America, Mozambique, Ghana, Kenya, Peru, Brazil and other countries," stated Woodyer Sherron, "We want to make sure we have the right balance in the portfolio. We don't want to be all in Africa, or all in South America."

Total global debt is set to hit $280 trillion this year. Most of that debt is based on fiat currency (paper money), and it is very easy to manipulate supply.

No act of Congress can magically make a tonne of gold appear on the lawn of the White House.

The argument against gold, is thatlike cryptocurrencyit's only valuable if you think it's valuable (industrial uses are insignificant).

But unlike cryptocurrency the value of gold is buried deep in our ancestral psyches.

Shaved flakes of bullion have been found in Paleolithic caves dating back to 40,000 B.C. "Foul cankering rust, the hidden treasure frets," wrote Shakespeare in 1602, "But gold that's put to use  more gold begets."

"I think it's important that investors understand there are different types of royalty companies," stated Woodyer Sherron, "Some are focused on exploration projects, which are longer term. Some companies acquire third party royalties that already exist."

On March 25, 2021, Empress Royalty announced the closing of its upsized bought-deal public offering of CA$15.75 million.

"We're looking for those cash-producing assets that will bring revenue into our company and then allow us to establish a dividend policy for our shareholders."

Empress has approximately 104 million shares outstanding.

[NLINSERT]

Disclosure:

1) Lukas Kane compiled this article for Streetwise Reports LLC and provides services to Streetwise Reports as an independent contractor. He or members of his household own securities of the following companies mentioned in the article: None. He or members of his household are paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None. His company has a financial relationship with the following companies referred to in this article: None.

2) The following companies mentioned in this interview are billboard sponsors of Streetwise Reports: Empress Royalty. Click here for important disclosures about sponsor fees. The information provided above is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

3) The interview does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. This article is not a solicitation for investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company mentioned on Streetwise Reports.

4) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the decision to publish an article until three business days after the publication of the article. The foregoing prohibition does not apply to articles that in substance only restate previously published company releases.
We are excited to be part of the Health Advocates Network team, which will afford even greater opportunities, services and benefits to Staff Todays employees and clients.

Health Advocates Network, Inc., a growing national provider of supplemental staffing solutions, announced the acquisition of the business of Staff Today Inc, a Los Angeles-based provider of clinical and non-clinical supplemental staffing services supporting governmental facilities. The business will continue to operate as a separate business unit under the Staff Today brand.

Staff Today has earned a reputation as being a preeminent leader of supplemental staffing services by providing meaningful careers for its field employees, and exemplary service to its clients at Federal, state and local government levels coast-to-coast, said Paul Mwangi, President of Staff Today Inc. We are excited to be part of the Health Advocates Network team, which will afford even greater opportunities, services and benefits to Staff Todays employees and clients. Health Advocates Networks core values, vision, and experienced executive team with a proven track record made it the perfect match for Staff Today.

I have known Paul Mwangi for fifteen years, and I am very pleased to work with him again, as well as the extremely talented group of internal staffing professionals and field employees that have built the Staff Today brand into a top-tier staffing firm, said Kevin Little, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Health Advocates Network. The acquisition of a scale organization like Staff Today fits perfectly into our strategy of geographic expansion and market segment diversification, said Eddie Albert, Director of M&A, Health Advocates Network. Our acquisition pipeline is robust and we look forward to closing additional transactions this year.

Health Advocates Network is as a rising force in the staffing industry, garnering several awards in recognition of being a great place to work. The Staff Today transaction marks the first acquisition by Health Advocates Network since its inception in 2020. The company continues to gain market recognition by executing its long-term business plan through a combination of organic initiatives and scale strategic acquisitions.

About Health Advocates Network

Founded in January 2020, a provider of quality staffing solutions to healthcare systems nationwide, Health Advocates Network is led by experienced and respected health care staffing executives driven to propel the organization in becoming one of the most successful staffing companies in the nation. The company is built on a foundation of excellence, guided by its core values of quality and career advocacy. Health Advocates Network is headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida. For more information, visit hanstaff.com.
NEW YORK, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Apart from being the CEO and founder of Lions View Development, Josh Aryeh also devotes his time to charity work by visiting sick and underprivileged children. His non-profit organization, Smiles Through Cars, aims to brighten the lives of the youth by dressing up as Batman. To this day, he has visited over 25,000 children and seeks to impact the lives of 1 million people with his team of volunteers.

CEO, Founder & Superhero (PRNewsfoto/Josh Aryeh)

Josh had a fascination with exotic cars. He had the chance to drive luxury cars because his cousin was a member of an exotic car club. One day, a parent humbly requested him to give a girl with cancer a ride. After coordinating the surprise with her parents, he successfully pulled off his first act of kindness. This life-changing moment prompted him to start his mission to change the world one smile at a time.

Unfortunately, Josh's sister died at 18. It was a devastating blow to the whole family, especially for Josh. Despite the tragic event, he never wavered and continued his vocation. He started a movement and encouraged men and women from across the country to volunteer and dress up as superheroes to serve kids in hospitals. "Their strength, courage, belief, and determination amaze me. I always tell people that kindness is something that everyone can afford to give." In 2015, he partnered with the Triple Five Group. They use the American Dream Destination, The Mall of America, and the West Edmonton Mall in hosting private events for children with their families.

Aside from disguising as Batman, Josh also started focusing on bullying due to the increasing cases of bullied children and suicide. "I was a victim of bullying until the age of 16. I wanted to do something about it." In 2019, he met Hersh and noticed that people were making fun of him. Without hesitation, Josh introduced himself and they connected. Soon, he discovered that Hersh was a victim of bullying and lived a tough life. Josh served as a beacon of hope for Hersh while overcoming his fears and doubts. With Josh's help, Hersh now has a full-time job, gained more self-confidence, and is a volunteer for the anti-bullying division that Josh has added to his organization.

CONTACT:

Kim Peterson

www.zavomedia.com

707-278-6742

[email protected]

About ZavoMedia Group: ZavoMedia Group is an NYC-based full-service public relations agency. We are experts in brand management and digital media. ZavoMedia works with small businesses, startups, entrepreneurs, and individuals to help them to become a recognized expert in their niche. ZavoMedia's team of professionals have encompassed a massive amount of experience in managing communications. We are hands-on with every client and work to develop a strategy distinctly crafted to meet your needs and business goals. Our focus is on increasing your brand's awareness, affecting your bottom line, and creating a lasting impression on your customers and target audience.

SOURCE Josh Aryeh

Related Links

https://www.smilesthroughcars.com


What is a natural diamond if it doesnt have a social purpose? Lets take the biggest brand and ask the killer question; what, if anything, do De Beers and their ForeverMark brand really stand for? The answer may inspire you.

By Richard Chetwode. 12th April 2021. Private e-mail: richard.chetwode@btinternet.com

Thirty years ago, the simple perception that a natural diamond represented the Ultimate Gift of Love was good enough for most consumers. The internet and social media didnt exist, and products and brands didnt have to explain themselves; consumers took most aspects of them on trust.

Todays young natural diamond jewellery consumer, the Millennials, Generations Y and Z, value honesty and integrity and more than previous generations, they also care about other people. They seek things to trust in, and they trust in brands that they believe in, associate themselves with, that they have learnt about. They want to know that their luxury purchase didnt only not do harm, but that it did good. They need to feel comfortable that in todays sustainable conscious environment, their friends think that it is a good thing that they are wearing diamonds. They are not just socially conscious, they are increasingly interested in Glocal, (the commercial world is global, but its also local (did the local artisans receive a fair wage; what were their working conditions like?). Young consumers want to know Whats your purpose, whats your social purpose? What good are you doing?. They will form an emotional attachment with a brand that has an obvious social purpose and of coursevice versa.

Only two weeks ago the founder of Scottish Brewery brand Brewdog announced plans to develop their recently acquired 10,000-acre (part of the) Kinrara estate in Scotland into the biggest Native Woodland establishment and Peatland restoration project in the United Kingdom. For every multipack of Brewdog beer purchased, the Company will plant one tree in the end millions of native trees will be planted. The Brewdog Lost Forest should eventually be capable of capturing 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; also included will be a green hotel, a sustainable campsiteetc, all to help people reconnect with nature and all this from a beer brewing company. Why? Because successful companies recognise that today social purpose and sustainability are central to everything they do, in the same way that they are central to everything about successful brands; from the working environment to the way every employee lives, works, eats, sleeps and breaths; from the receptionist to the cleaning person to the driver to the salesperson to the CEO all radiate the values that the company and/or brand stand for. In the end of course, its good for business as well.

And thats a challenge that is yet to be met by some mining companies in general. Many of them have in the past focussed first and foremost on producing (short-term) returns for the shareholders, albeit it as good employers with good working conditions, managing any environment impact within the strict existing rules. Much of their contribution to the communities in which they operated was through employment, taxes (in some countries the tax rates are almost punitive), local outsourcing, upskilling and training. Some have gone further; for instance, donating to local education projects and local small business initiatives, but it is a business environment where shareholders still have absolute primacy over other stakeholders. Too often it seems that Social and Environmental Responsibility and Sustainability are add-ons; something to be done because they tick a box, or because they are a regulatory requirement to be addressed in the Annual Report. For diamond mining companies specifically who after all, mine not an industrial necessity but the Ultimate Luxury, sustainability either becomes a core value in more than just name or trouble may well lie ahead because for the ultimate consumer product the consumer is already watching.

So how do diamonds stack up? The good news is that in general terms, diamond mining is environmentally a very low impact activity. Firstly, there arent many diamond mines in the world and secondly, mining diamonds doesnt involve chemicals which might affect the environment in a permanent way.

If you want to challenge a single diamond company, the obvious one to look at is De Beers and its ForeverMark brand. In both diamond mining and branding they are arguably the biggest and are involved in every part of the diamond pipeline from mine to finger. Full disclosure: I left De Beers twenty years ago but to make this article completely objective, I decided not to speak with anyone there. So here are the questions behind all the corporate slogans and Public Relations speak what do they really stand for? What is their Social Purpose?

Its widely accepted in the diamond industry that De Beers has been a leader in pushing good business practices. Box ticked on that one. It is also accepted that at the core of their mining and sales operations are responsible mining, good and fair working practices, industry leading environmental standards and ethical sourcingetc. Another Box ticked. Great stuff, except that a critic would possibly, very reasonably say  isnt that what any business should be doing anyway? Agreed, so unfair though this may sound, now that weve ticked those boxes well leave it at we are pleased you are doing what we would hope any industry would be doing anyway, and move on. Better question: is that on its own going to be enough for the new consumer of today?

No, indeed it is not but when you do some real digging, then it really gets quite interesting. When you buy a De Beers ForeverMark diamond that was mined at, say the Jwaneng Diamond Mine in Botswana, you arent just buying a responsibly mined diamond. The reason that a little schoolboy or schoolgirl is smiling as they play in the school ground at their school in Jwaneng; that they and their friends are happy, healthy and getting a great education; that they have a future with real opportunities, is likely because their mother and/or father have a highly skilled job working directly or indirectly at the diamond mine. Unlike so many other people in Africa, those children are being given a real chance in life for only one reason - because you just bought that diamond. How can you not be pleased with that purchase?

Just look at what diamonds have done to Botswana; Botswana was one of the poorest countries in the world when in the 1960s De Beers discovered diamonds on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. Today, it is a middle-income country and probably the best example of good government across Africa, and where did that money come from from diamonds.

But as for De Beers itself, they have evolved into a company whose DNA is no longer just about contributing to the communities in which they are involved in terms of the people - they go so much deeper. If you think of natural diamonds as Natures Miracle, then you have to protect the natural world from which they came, and for fifty years or more, De Beers has championed conservation at all of its mining operations.

Today, for every hectare of land that is disturbed by mining, they will manage 6 hectares purely for conservation and what they are doing with this land to help protect some endangered species makes for a pretty inspiring story.

Driven by the seemingly insatiable lust for ivory products in the Asian market, elephants are increasingly endangered throughout Africa, more often than not through poaching. A century ago, there were an estimated 12 million elephants in Africa, now there are less than 400,000 with 20,000 being butchered every year for their ivory. In a few places there are too many. In too many areas, the elephant population has been wiped out by poaching, yet they are so important to the sustainability of the economies of Africa because of ecotourism. More than that what kind of world would we be living in if there were no elephants left?

I remember visiting De Beers Venetia Diamond Mine in South Africa shortly after it was officially opened in 1992; 6 orphaned baby elephants had just been delivered to the 32,000hectare game reserve which surrounds the mine. Today that reserve holds lions, cheetahs, leopards, African wild dogs, giraffe and different types of antelope. except there is a problem - quite a major one. De Beers have done such a good job of protecting the elephants that 270 of these amazing giants now live in an area which can ecologically only support between 60 to 70. Too many elephants in a small space will eventually destroy the entire habitat and endanger the lives of not just all the elephants, but all the other animals that you are trying to protect as well. In other game reserves in years past, when too many elephants are threatening to destroy the entire habitat, hunters would be brought in and (paying huge sums of money) they and guests were allowed to cull the population and the money would (hopefully) be ploughed back into supporting the development of local communities. But if you care about nature, then culling seems fundamentally the wrong thing to do in a world where elephants need to be protected.

So, De Beers got involved in an extraordinary project; they set about transporting 200 elephants 1,700 kilometres from the Venetia Diamond Mine across Africa to a secure area in the Zinave National Park in neighbouring Mozambique. The Zinave National Park covers 400,000 hectares but after decades of war and poaching, only 8 elephants remained. To be part of an industry where a mining company is transporting these elephants across Africa to help the people of the neighbouring country rebuild their eco-tourism and wildlife industry is utterly amazing and this isnt like driving on a western motorway, this driving in rural Africa! I would suggest that anyone who doesnt think Chapeau to you for this project is meanfisted and probably someone you should cross the road to avoid but more than that, what they have done is really the right thing to do.

In Botswana, De Beers and its partner, the Government of Botswana, are the largest breeders and protectors of white rhino in a world where they are being wiped out for the so-called aphrodisiac properties of their horns. How many people knew that when they bought a De Beers ForeverMark diamond they were helping give their grandchildren just a tiny chance that they might actually see one of these rare and magnificent animals in the wild?

But sustainability also means protecting the environment in which you operate, and young new diamond consumers are more than aware that they will be left to deal with the full impact of the damage done to the planet by previous generations. Maybe that explains why many of them are ready to change where they shop if it reduces their environmental impact.

Just as protecting endangered species is a core part of De Beers DNA, so is protecting the natural environment, because the natural world is inherently what natural diamonds are about.

An environmental critic of natural diamonds would probably just point out that to mine a diamond you normally use large diggers to dig a large hole in the ground which remains foreverand you should not be doing that. The answer to that comes in two parts. Firstly, from the mining and processing side, De Beers have committed that their next mine will be carbon neutral. Its relatively common knowledge that they are part of a group that is a leading force in the mining world in the march to zero emissions  intimately involved in the innovative development of green hydrogen power - great! But that same critic might then say that not only have you created a giant hole but when you have extracted the natural diamond from the crushed kimberlite ore (the host rock for diamonds) you have to deposit that crushed ore somewhere in a large pile; a very well-structured pile of course, but its still a pile. How can you justify that? Actually, quite easily, but lets take a step back to understand why.

Only 1% of the rocks in our earth are what are called Ultramafic rocks which means they naturally soak up (and capture) large amounts of carbon dioxide. Kimberlite is one of those Ultramafic rocks, but obviously only when it is brought to the surface does it capture carbon emissions, but even better than that  once it has been crushed during the diamond recovery process, its surface area is dramatically increased thereby increasing exponentially its ability to capture those emissions. Which is why in 2016, De Beers started piloting a project in partnership with a number of internationally based universities to study the potential to capture carbon in Kimberlite. The early research seems to suggest that the entire carbon dioxide emissions from a typical diamond mine would only take up 10% of the rocks carbon emission storage potential leaving 90% available to soak up other carbon emissions. Put it another way, when you dig that hole you are extracting huge quantities of rock that can now absorb carbon emissions far in excess of what they might produce. Which translates into when you buy a natural diamond, you are almost certainly going to be helping the planet.

Greta Thunberg, your future husband or partner better buy you a natural diamond or else!

But thats not all. Theres another key value that De Beers and ForeverMark stand for: Women and Womens Rights. Its true that they are not alone as former US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton put it I believe that the rights of women and girls is the unfinished business of the 21st century, but its still the right thing to do. Seventy odd years ago, Marilyn Monroe launched into the iconic song Diamonds are a Girls Best Friend in the 1953 hit Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. That title probably wouldnt go down very well with many people today, but De Beers has taken the song title to have a completely different meaning in the context of todays world. Natural diamonds cannot just be the friend of the women who get to wear the diamond jewellery; they must be the best friend of every women involved with natural diamonds from the minute they are mined to when they are purchased as part of a piece of beautiful diamond jewellery. To make that so, they have focussed on empowerment and creating opportunities for women in every part of their business, and thats particularly important in an industry that has historically been male dominated. In 2018 they joined with the United Nations programme HE4SHE; which recognises that men have to be part of the solution to womens empowerment, not part of the problem. Their commitment to the United Nations was to achieve parity by 2020.

Natural diamonds make a huge financial, environmental, and social contribution to countries that need employment and need the wealth natural diamond mining creates to work for the betterment of all the people of those countries. The natural diamond story, particularly but by no means exclusively De Beers and ForeverMark, is one of contribution, particularly because most diamonds come from the developing world and are cut and polished in India.

Its why the natural diamond story is an extraordinarily positive one. Natural diamonds have always represented a unique way to express exactly who you are without having to speak. When you put on natural diamonds, more than just the Ultimate Symbol of Love, you are silently projecting another set of values. Beauty, authenticity, rarity, sustainability, and social contribution, thats a great story for natural diamonds and a story that needs to be told.





Richard Chetwode runs a diamond consultancy business. He is also Chairman of Namibian Diamond Mining Company Trustco Resources, is Chairman of the Advisory Board of Australian technology company Fine Arts Bourse as well as consulting to several diamond (and other) businesses. All the opinions in this article are his own.
INDUSTRY INSIGHT

Protect against insider threats with intelligent security

For those in the public sector, the attention and spending on security and hardening computer networks against cyberattacks has never been higher. Whether motivations for nefarious activity are espionage, financial gain or just plain business disruption, cybersecurity threats continue to grow in numbers and complexity and have significant effects on the day-to-day business of government.

Just like the motives behind cyber threats, the actual attacks themselves can be widely varied. Todays government organizations must be on the lookout to combat all types of threats, including malware, denial-of-service attacks, zero-day exploits, ransomware, DNS attacks and many more. Overall, agencies have done a very good job policing these attacks from outsiders, but they may need to start paying more attention to a surprising threat -- their own employees. Insider threats have become an alarmingly significant source of risk. In fact, according to a recent report by Verizon, 34% of all data breaches in the public sector are committed by insiders -- whether intentional or unintentional.

For government agencies, internal security and data protection usually focus on software-driven issues. Virus scanners and firewalls are the most common countermeasures for fighting off cyberattacks. However, the authentication of users and the authorization of access are central and fundamental components of modern internal security. This makes the go-to first step of data security the use of passwords -- which are unfortunately all too easily forgotten, changed too rarely or accidentally disclosed to third parties due to negligence.

The human interface device, the keyboard, is often overlooked when agencies consider implementing internal security measures. It is also the place where almost all insider threats begin. Agencies should prioritize the use of security-enhanced keyboards that can stop threats before they can even be entered into the network.

Many well-known thin-client manufacturers already support the use of secure mode and have integrated the necessary software for deploying secure keyboard. These devices offer two-factor authentication using a smart card, and many now come equipped with a contactless card reader that can read RFID and NFC cards or tags. These new security-equipped keyboards can make an array of secure applications possible; for example, secure keyboards can be used as ID systems for closed user groups, and agency IDs can be easily read in. They can then be partnered with innovative mouse technology that integrates fingertip sensors for user authentication, greatly improving security.

Keyboards can also now be built with a secure mode that ensures maximum protection from "BadUSB" attacks. This means that the authenticity of the device is verified on a certificate-based basis, and the key transmission is encrypted, making it impossible for hardware keyloggers to access sensitive access data and passwords. By blocking the standard keyboard channel, USB sticks that log onto the system as a keyboard cannot inject uncontrolled entries and malicious codes.

With external bad actors constantly finding new ways to attack and threaten data, government agencies must constantly be adjusting and innovating the way they protect themselves. Unfortunately, that means being aware that sometimes cybersecurity threats come from within. Threats have become even more complicated with work from home mandates and a constant increase in the number of devices connecting to the network. Leveraging secure keyboards is a very strong first step in combating internal threats and winning the security battle.
Uyghurs hold placards demanding information about detained relatives in Xinjiang in a demonstration against a proposed extradition treaty between China and Turkey, near near the Chinese consulate in Istanbul, Feb. 22, 2021.

Updated at 1:35 p.m. ET on 2021-04-19

Chinas treatment of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) meets international legal definitions of crimes against humanity and merits a U.N. inquiry, sanctions and efforts to prosecute responsible officials, human rights researchers said in a report Monday.

Since at least 2014, the Chinese government has subjected Turkic Muslims to various crimes against humanity, including mass arbitrary detention, torture and deaths in detention, and enforced disappearances, said Human Rights Watch and the Stanford Law School Human Rights & Conflict Resolution Clinic.

Researchers evaluated Chinese practices toward Turkic Muslims  mostly Uyghurs, but also Kazakhs and Kyrgyz  against crimes against humanity criteria under Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the treaty that set up the International Criminal Court (ICC), and came into force into 2002.

The Rome Statute defines crimes against humanity as specified acts committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack, the HRW/Stanford report notes.

The report says the four criteria are that:

-the attack is widespread or systematic;

-the attack is directed against a civilian population;

-the acts are committed with knowledge of the attack;

-the acts are pursuant to or in furtherance of a State or organizational policy to commit such attack.

HRW researchers and those from the Stanford rights clinic reviewed official documents, witness testimony and other evidence from Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Terrorism launched by Beijing in the XUAR in 2014, and found conditions meet the Rome criteria.

The governments mass incarceration of a million Turkic Muslims across the Xinjiang region meets the requirement of a 'widespread or systematic' attack, said the report.

Turkic Muslims living in the Xinjiang region constitute a specific civilian population. Internal documents disseminated among CCP officials that reference key elements of the crimes targeting the Turkic Muslimssuch as assault style reeducation of uncooperative detaineesillustrate the Chinese authorities knowledge of the attack, it said.

A Uyghur woman (C) walks through a security checkpoint to enter a bazaar in Hotan, in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), May 31, 2019. AFP

Cover up shows organization

The fourth requirement requires that the State or organization actively promote or encourage such an attack against a civilian population, the report notes.

The accounts of former detainees held at different facilities and during different time periods  such as the repeated allegations of the use of a tiger chair, forced political indoctrination, and cultural erasure, as well as similarities in detention conditions  are strikingly similar, which indicates the existence of an organized policy, says the report.

The Chinese governments insistence on and enforcement of secrecy shows a high degree of centralized control over the camps, and an institutional awareness of the need to cover up their internal workings, it adds.

Chinese acts implicate the following crimes against humanity: murder; enslavement; imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law; torture; persecution; enforced disappearance; and other inhumane acts, said the report.

The HRW/Stanford report notes that since January, the U.S. State Department and the parliaments of Belgium, Canada, and the Netherlands have determined that Chinese policies in the XUAR constitute genocide under international law.

Human Rights Watch has not documented the existence of the necessary genocidal intent at this time, it says.

Nonetheless, nothing in this report precludes such a finding and, if such evidence were to emerge, the acts being committed against Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang  a group protected by the 1948 Genocide Convention  could also support a finding of genocide.

HRW notes that Chinas U.N. Security Council permanent membership gives it veto power over Council action. China  along with India, Indonesia, Russia, Turkey and the U.S.  are among major states that are not parties to the ICC.

Farmers pick cotton in a field in Xinjiiang's Hami prefecture, in a file photo. AFP

Commission of Inquiry

The New York-based rights watchdog recommends that the U.N. Human Rights Council adopt a resolution to create a Commission of Inquiry to investigate allegations of crimes against humanity and other abuses against Turkic Muslims in the XUAR, make recommendations to end the abuses, and identify responsible officials and ways to holding them accountable.

The U.N. secretary-general should publicly voice support for a Commission of Inquiry into human rights violations in Xinjiang, and publicly and privately urge Chinese authorities to end abuses against Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang. The secretary-general should publicly express support for accountability for those responsible for crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, says the report.

Such commissions have been empowered by the U.N. to investigate atrocities in places including Darfur in the Sudan, Libya, Syria, North Korea and the Central African Republic.

Concerned countries should work collectively to impose visa bans, travel bans, and targeted individual sanctions under the U.S. Global Magnitsky Act, the EU Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime, and other human rights sanctions regimes in place in Canada, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere, it says.

Those countries government agencies should review all investments in Xinjiang and, where necessary, impose trade sanctions, including divestment, in sectors facing credible allegations of serious abuses such as forced labor, says HRW.

Businesses and investors around the world should conduct human rights due diligence under U.N. guidelines and join global efforts to trace and end the practice of forced labor in the XUAR, it says.

The HRW/Stanford report also offers recommendations to countries, such as Turkey and Kazakhstan, that are home to XUAR exiles and have come under pressure from China to repatriate Uyghurs and others.

Those countries should grant Turkic Muslims access to a fair system for adjudicating asylum requests, facilitate family reunification by allowing family members of Turkic Muslims to join them, [and] end all refoulement and other direct and indirect forced returns of Turkic Muslims to China, the report says.

Uyghurs enjoy life in the XUAR in a frame grab from The Wings of Song. China Film Administration

Controlling the narrative on Xinjiang

Authorities are believed to have held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities accused of harboring strong religious and politically incorrect views in a vast network of internment camps in the XUAR since 2017 and have jailed or detained hundreds of Uyghur academics and other influential members of the ethnic group in recent years.

While Beijing initially denied the existence of the camps, China in 2019 changed tack and began describing the facilities as boarding schools that provide vocational training for Uyghurs, discourage radicalization, and help protect the country from terrorism.

But reporting by RFAs Uyghur Service and other media outlets suggest that those in the camps are detained against their will and subjected to political indoctrination, routinely face rough treatment at the hands of their overseers and endure poor diets and unhygienic conditions in the often-overcrowded facilities.

In recent months, Beijing has sought to undermine reports on abuses through a coordinated campaign to control the narrative on the situation in the XUAR. Methods include government officials and celebrities glorifying life in the region on social media, state media broadcasts highlighting the threat of "terrorism" or include "testimonies" by relatives of exiled activists who appear coerced into slandering their family members, and most recently, a new musical film called "The Wings of Song" which touts the benefits of cultural assimilation in an idealized society under Beijing's rule.

Conveniently omitted is imagery of internment camps and other detention centers, Uyghurs being packed into trains and sent to forced labor details, and a pervasive security system comprised of high-tech digital surveillance and regular checkpoints where Turkic Muslims are forced to produce identification and submit to searches.

Amid increasing international scrutiny, Beijing has faced a growing call for unfettered access by independent monitors to investigate reports on the situation in the region.

China in 2019 organized two visits to monitor internment camps in the XUARone for a small group of foreign journalists, and another for diplomats from non-Western countries, including Russia, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, and Thailandduring which officials dismissed claims about mistreatment and poor conditions in the facilities as slanderous lies.

During the U.N. General Assembly in New York in September last year, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John J. Sullivan told the gathering that these trips and the China-friendly accounts they produced were Potemkin tours in a failed attempt to prove that the camps were humane training centers.

The report documenting Chinese actions in the context of international law is "crucial at this moment," said Rushan Abbas, executive director of the Campaign For Uyghurs, a Washington-based advocacy group.

"As Beijing is spreading propaganda videos and disinformation to deflect from these atrocities and trying to justify them with lies, it should be crystal clear to the world that what the regime is doing is morally bankrupt," she said in a statement.

"With each acknowledgment of the reality of the crimes against the Uyghur people, we are one step closer to justice, but there is a long road ahead," said Abbas.
The 2021 BUILDER Brand Use Study ranks Eldorado Stone first in all four Manufactured Stone categories, including Highest Overall Quality Rating. We are honored to receive this acknowledgement because it indicates our manufacturing and design decisions continue to resonate with trade professionals looking to ensure the best results for their projects.

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Our teams top priority is crafting beautiful products that elevate both the aesthetics and function of any space while also enhancing the design and construction experience, said Sarah Lograsso, Director of Marketing and Product Design for Eldorado Stone. We are honored to receive this acknowledgement because it indicates our manufacturing and design decisions continue to resonate with trade professionals looking to ensure the best results for their projects.

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China will expand digital yuan experiments to more cities, but there is no specific timetable for its official rollout, central bank vice governor Li Bo told an annual gathering on Sunday of top Chinese and foreign policymakers, executives and academics. China is one of the frontrunners in the global race to launch central bank digital currencies to modernise financial systems, ward off the threat from cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and speed up domestic and international payments.

Last year it launched testing in several cities including Suzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu and Xiong'an. Li said testing had shown that the issuance and distribution mechanism of the digital yuan, or e-CNY, are compatible with the existing financial system, and help minimize the impact on the banking sector.

China will continue to improve e-CNY's ecosystem, enhance its security and reliability, and set up a set of legal and regulatory framework, Li said at the Boao Forum in the country's southern island province of Hainan. The forum was cancelled last year due to COVID-19.

The digital currency will be used by Chinese citizens as well as foreign visitors to the Beijing Winter Olympics to be held next year, he said. Li also said the focus of developing the e-CNY will be mainly for domestic use, while cooperating with other countries to find a solution for cross-border payments in the long run.

The yuan internationalisation will be a natural process, and China's goal is not to replace the US dollar or other global currencies, but let the market make choices, Li added. Zhou Xiaochuan, China's former central bank governor, told the same forum that China's initial motivation for developing the digital yuan was for domestic retail payments, not for cross-border payments, which still face many complex issues.

Also read: This Indian is worth millions, 15 months after joining US crypto giant Coinbase
Uber and Bolt drivers in Lagos have begun an industrial action on Monday against the e-hailing transport firms and unfavourable business practises by the companies.

The drivers, under the umbrella of the Professional E-hailing Drivers and Private Owners Association (PEDPA), are asking for an increment in taxi fares amongst other demands.

The drivers had earlier sent a letter to the e-hailing companies for an upward review of the transport fares to reflect the current economic realities or they would withdraw their services from the roads from Monday, April 19, 2021.

Speaking to PREMIUM TIMES on Monday, Idris Shonuga, the National President of PEDPA, said until the demands of the drivers are met, there is no going back on the strike.

Five-point demand

Mr Shonuga listed the five-point demands of the e-hailing drivers to include:

-Immediate and Proper Profiling of all Riders patronizing our Services

 Immediate Joint Upwards review of the Fare to meet the current Economy reality.

N100 /km

N15/min

N500 base fare

N1000 Minimum fare.

-Immediate Review of All accounts blocked unjustifiably

-Adequate Welfare packages for Drivers and compensation to the family of those that lost their lives or permanently disabled

 No more Individual Engagement, all Policies must be reviewed by Driver Union before enacted

Prices ridiculously low

Also speaking on a radio programme on Nigeria Info FM on Monday morning, Mr Shonuga said it was unfortunate that drivers cannot determine the prices of their transport services.

It is quite unfortunate with all these humongous responsibilities embedded in our service, we dont have a say in the price of our service.

We are telling Uber and Bolt that this is wrong. The price is ridiculously low which is not part of our agreement, our initial agreement was N90 per kilometre, N10 per minute when fuel was at 95 per litre in 2015, not the new price of N60 per kilometre made without our consent, Mr Shonuga said.

The president said as far as the e-hailing business is concerned, it is a professional service and drivers have to be certified before they drive.

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Apart from that, we are expected to deploy good customer comportment to any riders we come across, meaning that we are expected to render five-star services.

He noted that despite that the e-cab drivers fuel their cars, ensure that it is in good condition, and are expected to render good customer services, they are not privileged to have a say in such a service.

The groups president said the e-hailing companies are not the commuters, they are not the transporter, we are the transporter, they only deployed technology to facilitate a link between us and the customer. Then why should you (Bolt and Uber) be fixing the price?

Another PEDPA executive, Olaoluwa Alagbe, said the warning strike will last for a week, hoping that they would get a response to their demands.

We have written a letter to them on 1st of April giving them fifteen days notice for them to call us, lets have a round table talk but they refused to yield to our request. That is why this strike is starting today. We have told our members to stay off the road. If they dont respond, then by Friday, we will take it up from there, he said.

Drivers boycott strike

Meanwhile, many drivers with the e-hailing taxi companies boycotted the Monday strike, with some claiming they were unaware of the move.

I dont know about any strike, Im working, a driver, Rasheed Olaniyan, said.

Ordering of rides on both Bolt and Uber was effective with drivers available to take commuters to their destinations.

Few of the drivers that PREMIUM TIMES spoke to also said they were unaware of the strike.

Mr Shonuga described the drivers who claimed to be unaware of the unions strike as saboteurs.

We have been requesting some drivers who are not privy to the strike action to go offline. Strike just starts today, by tomorrow, we shall be doing enforcement, requesting them to join us in the strike, he said.

As of the time of filing this report, the management of Bolt and Uber are yet to respond to enquiries on the strike by drivers.
Key stretches of Highways 1 and 101 cutting through the Richmond District and Cow Hollow could get temporary HOV lanes as soon as this spring under a proposal the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agencys Board of Directors will consider Tuesday.

The proposals are the latest in a nearly yearlong effort by the citys largest transit agency to increase reliability as the pandemic reduced public transit services and turned more San Franciscans to getting around by car.

The plan at the center of Tuesdays public hearings would, if approved, reserve the lanes closest to the curb for high-occupancy vehicles on stretches of these three-lane corridors. The HOV lanes would be implemented on the beginning of Crossover Drive and Lincoln Way through Golden Gate Park and on Park Presidio Boulevard past Lake Street. The remaining lanes would be unaffected, according to presentation documents the board will receive Tuesday.

The other proposed HOV lane would be installed on Lombard Street and Richardson Avenue, running from Lyon Street to Van Ness Avenue. The Muni board will also consider a separate proposal to install temporary transit-only lanes on a busy corridor of the 1-California bus line serving Chinatown.

Last June, the agencys board of directors approved the first batch of temporary emergency transit lanes that reserve curbside lanes to public transit and taxis as a way to reduce travel times and increase service on bus lines.

We are seeing the return of traffic, primarily automobile traffic, and in order for our region to recover we need our transit to also recover, said Paolo Cosulich-Schwartz, spokesperson for the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District, which will benefit from the Lombard Street HOV lanes.

Getting buses out of traffic is one of the ways to make transit more efficient and reliable and doing so on Lombard will ensure people have better transit options, Cosulich-Schwartz said.

The latest proposal could meet resistance from residents who want all three lanes of the highway corridors to remain open to general traffic. About 34% of commuters on Presidio Park and Lombard are high-occupancy vehicles, according to Munis board presentation, resulting in little initial effect on traffic.

The HOV and transit-only lanes will be automatically removed within 120 days after the citys emergency order has been lifted if theres no plan or process to make them permanent, according to the agency. But it appears that Muni will consider keeping at least some of these lane changes. Tuesdays board agenda includes five transit lane projects under consideration for permanent legislation, including the transit-only lanes implemented downtown on Mission Street.

The process for implementing HOV and transit-only lanes has been hastened under the quick-build policy the SFMTA Board of Directors approved in February 2020, which now gives the city traffic engineer the authority to implement changes to some city streets after a public hearing.

Roger Marenco, president of the Transport Workers Union Local 250, said that though hes supported the citys efforts to implement temporary emergency transit lanes during the pandemic, the program has been a mixed bag.

Marenco said that the city should ramp up its enforcement of the lanes to ensure their use is limited to public transit and taxis, not ride-hailing companies such as Uber or other private transit operators.

Ricardo Cano is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ricardo.cano@sfchronicle.com
LOS ANGELESUp and coming alt model Misha Montana suffered a stroke in her sleep last Thursday and is currently recovering in intensive care. Director and close friend Ivan, with whom Montana co-hosts the reality show 2 Russians 1 America, has launched a GoFundMe campaign to assist her with the medical and other bills she's incurring during her rehabilitation.

Ivan reports that Montana was diagnosed with the stroke following a harrowing journey of driving herself to the nearest hospital almost two hours away after she woke up Thursday to find she was unable to formulate words and half her face and arm had gone numb. The stroke was due, doctors determined, to complications from blood clots and an undiagnosed heart condition.

"Misha is one of the strongest people I know," Ivan said. "She is also a grounded and well adjusted, intelligent woman who understands the aspects of humanity and helping others. This is not a setback for this fantastic lady, this is another opportunity for her to show the world her human side as well as the strength of a positive mindset."

Commented Montana, "This has been such an emotional and scary time in my life. I have been working extremely hard on building my brand and producing unique, authentic content. While this health situation tests my limits and abilities, it doesn't define or break me. If anything, I'd like to use this moment as an opportunity of optimism, strength, positivity and perseverance. It's a pivot to keep creating and sharing my story. People need to see the real struggles every human goes through. No one is immune to what life hands us but it's how we react and rebuild from that.

"I plan on showing the world that this setback is simply another motivational tool and I'll use it to make a positive impact in my life as well as the industry as a whole," she added. "I have a positive outlook about making a comeback to porn after a stroke, I'm determined to. I'll just get better at left-handed handjobs."

To donate to Montana's GoFundMe, click here.

To see her daily journal during her recovery, follow Montana's Instagram feed @themishamontana, and see the series following the application of her elaborate Alien Kitty tattoo at www.AltErotic.com. Those who wish to lend support may also do so by purchasing items from the new "Xeno Kitty" merchandise line recently launched by Ivan and Montana; to do so, simply send a direct message through the page indicating which item you'd like. Each purchase over $50 will come with a personalized Polaroid picture.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 05:22:40|Editor: huaxia

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LOS ANGELES, April 18 (Xinhua) -- With about two dozen cargo ships sitting anchored off the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in Southern California's San Pedro Bay this week, local media said it showed the United States was facing a supply chain crisis.

In Seal Beach, a coastal city neighboring Long Beach, Xinhua found on Sunday morning there were at least 20 ships at anchor in the bay area awaiting available berths at the Port of Los Angeles (POLA) and Port of Long Beach (POLB), which form the largest container port complex in the country.

According to the data released by the Marine Exchange of Southern California, a service that monitors port traffic and operations, another six ships were scheduled to arrive this weekend and join the other 20 ships which had been waiting outside the ports for a week.

The two ports, which handle about one-third of U.S. imports, operated as a primary source of imports from China and have been experiencing a "historic cargo surge" and heavy congestions for months. In February, the Coast Guard had videotapes showing over 60 ships at anchor at one time in the San Pedro Bay.

POLA, the busiest U.S. port by container volume, said last Wednesday said it had the strongest March in its 114-year history, noting "as more Americans get vaccinated, businesses reopen and the economy strengthens, consumers continue to purchase goods at a dizzying pace."

The port's Executive Director Gene Seroka disclosed at an online briefing conference that the port processed 957,599 Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) in March, a 113 percent leap compared to March 2020 when global trade slowed to a crawl after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The loaded imports volume reached 490,115 TEUs last month, an increase of 123 percent compared to the same month of the previous year, while loaded exports edged up 1.5 percent to 122,899 TEUs. Empty containers, heavily in demand in Asia, surged 219 percent compared to March 2020, reaching 344,585 TEUs.

The cargo surge in March marked the largest monthly year-over-year increase in POLA's history and its busiest first quarter.

Earlier this month, POLB also announced that it achieved its busiest month and its second-best quarter on record "as consumers continued to practice physical distancing guidelines in March and turned their computers into virtual shopping malls."

"#POLB had its busiest month ever in March. Dockworkers & terminal operators moved 840,387 TEUs last month, a 62.3% jump from March 2020. These numbers mark the 9th consecutive month that POLB has broken cargo movement records for a particular month," it tweeted on April 15.

Kip Louttit, executive director of the Marine Exchange of Southern California, was quoted by the Business Insider website as saying that the two ports were facing more congestion than ever.

The normal number of container ships at anchor is between zero and one, Louttit said, adding that some of the container ships had been waiting off the shore for weeks and one of the vessels had been at berth since April 3.

Of the ships waiting to dock, half of them are what Marine Exchange calls "mega-container ships" or ships with the carrying capacity of 10,000 TEUs. Louttit explained that these huge ships take longer to unload.

"You need more trucks, more trains, more warehouses to put the cargo," he said, otherwise millions of dollars worth of popular imports, including furniture, auto parts, clothes, electronics, and plastics, carried by a cargo ship could only float in the Pacific.

Asked how long he thought the surge might last, POLB's Executive Director Mario Cordero told Xinhua last month, "Our best guess for the duration is early summer." Some experts estimated the surge could run through the summer.

Longer dwell times in harbor, tighter space in warehouses and distribution centers, overflowing container yards, and COVID-19-related dockworker absence contributed to the supply chain bottleneck.

It takes 8,000 trucks to haul cargo away from a ship, Louttit told local KTLA news channel last Thursday, adding that when those trucks hit the road, there aren't enough available dockworkers to unload the next ship in port.

Lately, it takes five to seven days to unload a ship instead of two to three days, said Shruti Gupta, an industrial analyst with consulting firm RSM.

The backlogs got worse after a strike by the teamsters union against one of the trucking companies spread to supporting actions by the longshoremen last week in POLA.

A port spokesperson told NBC News in Los Angeles that there had been some traffic disruptions at one of the port's seven terminals but that the impact against overall port operations and the movement of cargo was minor.

"Any disruptions to the port's operations could come as a significant setback as the Port of Los Angeles continues to make progress in reducing the backlog that peaked in late January and early February," said The Maritime Executive. Enditem
A sheriffs deputy who fell asleep at the wheel of a patrol vehicle near the Vermont border and slammed into another car head-on, killing the other driver, will not face criminal charges, New Yorks attorney general said Thursday.

Susan Harrington, 72, was killed at about 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 19, 2019, in Argyle, New York, when a patrol SUV driven by Washington County Sheriffs Deputy Cori Winch crossed the center line and crashed into her car. Winch, who was finishing an overnight shift that he did not normally work, fractured his ankle and was hospitalized, according to state investigators.

The attorney generals office, which investigates the deaths of civilians involving police, concluded Winch fell asleep immediately before the crash. Investigators said he was not texting or using patrol vehicles computer, and toxicology reports ruled out the influence of alcohol or other intoxicating substances.

Attorney General Letitia James called Harringtons death a horrible and unintentional tragedy.

Deputy Winch may arguably be faulted for failing to perceive that he was at risk for falling asleep while driving a vehicle while fatigued. Under New York law, however, failure to perceive a risk in itself does not give rise to criminal liability, read the report from the AGs Special Investigations and Prosecutions Unit.

Investigators recommended that law enforcement agencies that frequently require officers to drive alone at night in rural areas install advanced safety features in their vehicles, such as lane departure warning systems.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has demanded the dismissal of Nigerias Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, over statements he made in the past in support of Islamic extremist groups.

Audio recordings of Mr Pantamis past teachings where he declared support for Al-Qaeda and Taliban resurfaced last week, generating debates on social media platforms with many Nigerians calling for his removal and others defending him.

Mr Pantami, an Islamic cleric, denied any links with the groups. He, however, admitted making the controversial statements supporting the groups but said on Saturday that his views on such extremist groups have changed.

Some of the comments I made some years ago that are generating controversies now were based on my understanding of religious issues at the time, and I have changed several positions taken in the past based on new evidence and maturity, Daily Trust newspaper quoted him as saying during an Islamic lecture at an Abuja mosque.

Many Nigerians have, however, called on Mr Pantami to resign or be sacked as minister after more Nigerians became aware of his past statements.

On Sunday, Nigerias main opposition party, PDP, joined the call for the ministers resignation.

Our partys position is predicated on the heightening concerns in the public space and in the international arena of possible compromises by the communication minister, who has access to sensitive government documents and information, in addition to data of all individuals including high profile personalities in the public and private sectors as well as the traditional and faith-based circles, the PDP said in the statement signed by its spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan.

The party also charged the State Security Service (SSS) to probe Mr Pantami for allegedly compromising the NIN registration exercise by giving room for the registration of aliens and invaders from other countries as our citizens.

Mr Pantami had in an interview with PREMIUM TIMES, alleged that the calls for his removal were being sponsored by those opposed to the governments policy of mandatory registration of the National Identity Number (NIN) and linking it to all SIM cards. The policy was proposed and is being driven by Mr Malamis ministry.

I have no doubt about this. It has to do with the National Identification Number, he said of the mass criticisms he has faced online in the past week.

Now they have started coming with the news that people are coming from neighbouring countries to register. What they fail to understand is that the National Identification Number is not only for Nigerians; anybody in Nigeria can obtain it. Section 16 and 17 of the Act mention the registrable people in the country  citizens, legal residents, legal permanent residents, and legal residents for a minimum of two years. So, it is not only for citizens. And it is also important to know that this is not just an indication that they are citizens of Nigeria. It is rather an indication that you presented your biometric data, so government has control over your data. And that data of NIMC (National Identity Management Commission), nobody has an access to it in any way he likes. Getting access to it illegally is 10 years in prison. It is there in the law. But people will like to discredit it because they dont like it.

President Muhammadu Buhari, who recently returned to Nigeria from the UK where he spent a fortnight to undergo a medical check-up, is yet to comment on the controversy over Mr Malami.
India on Monday reported a net increase of 128,013 in active cases, the most ever in a day, to take its count to 1,929,329. Indias share of global active cases now stands at 10.57 per cent (one in 9). The country is second among the most affected countries by active cases. On Monday, it added 273,810 cases, the most in a day yet, to take its total caseload to 15,061,919. And, with 1,619 new fatalities, its Covid-19 reached 178,769, or 1.19 per cent of total confirmed infections.

With 1,230,007 more people getting Covid-19 vaccine shots on Sunday, Indias total count of those inoculated reached 123,852,566. The count of recovered cases across India, meanwhile, reached 12,953,821  or 86.00 per cent of total caseload  with 144,178 new cured cases being reported on Monday.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan speaks during the daily press briefing at the White House, on March 12, 2021. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

No Guarantee ISIS Wont Bounce Back in Afghanistan After Troop Pullout: National Security Adviser

National security adviser Jake Sullivan says he cant make any guarantees that terrorist groups such as al-Qaida and ISIS wont see a resurgence once U.S. forces are withdrawn from Afghanistan in the coming months.

Sullivan made the remarks on April 18 in response to questions from Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, who cited pushback about President Joe Bidens decision to pull out the remaining 2,500 to 3,500 U.S. troops by Sept. 11.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell says that were opening the door for the Taliban to come back and raising the possibility that so will terror groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda, Wallace said, playing a clip of McConnell arguing that Bidens decision was gift-wrapping the country for terrorists.

I cant make any guarantees about what will happen inside the country. No one can, Sullivan said.

All the United States could do is provide the Afghan security forces, the Afghan government, and the Afghan people resources and capabilities, training and equipping their forces, providing assistance to their government, he added. We have done that and now it is time for American troops to come home and the Afghan people to step up to defend their own country.

While insisting that the Biden administration will not be sending troops back to Afghanistan, Sullivan said the Pentagon wouldnt be taking its eye off the ball.

We have the capacity, from repositioning our capabilities over the horizon, to continue to suppress the terrorist threat in Afghanistan, Sullivan said.

Bidens decision to withdraw the remaining troops has drawn a mixed reaction on Capitol Hill and from security experts.

McConnell (R-Ky.) called it a big mistake and a retreat in the face of an enemy, while Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said it was dumber than dirt and devilishly dangerous.

William Burns, the recently confirmed director of the CIA, told lawmakers last week, on the same day Biden announced the withdrawal plans, that there is a significant risk once the U.S. military and the coalition militaries withdraw.

The U.S. governments ability to collect and act on threats will diminish. Thats simply a fact, he said, cautioning that al-Qaida and ISIS in Afghanistan remain intent on recovering the ability to attack U.S. targets, whether its in the region, in the West, or ultimately in the homeland.

Some Democrats have also criticized the plan.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) argued the decision could embolden the Taliban to destabilize the country.

Im very disappointed in @POTUS decision to set a Sept. deadline to walk away from Afghanistan. Although this decision was made in coordination w/our allies, the U.S. has sacrificed too much to bring stability to Afghanistan to leave w/o verifiable assurances of a secure future, Shaheen wrote on Twitter after Bidens announcement.

Other Democrats, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), applauded the move.

President Biden recognizes the reality that our continued presence there does not make the U.S. or the world safer, Warren wrote in a statement. Year after year, military leaders told Congress and the American people that we were finally turning the corner in Afghanistan, but ultimately we were only turning in a vicious circle.

Democrat-allied Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also hailed the move as the brave and right decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan and bring an end to the longest war in our countrys history.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in an interview on ABC on April 18, defended the withdrawal, saying that shifting priorities and a dispersed terrorist threat justify the pullout.

The terrorism threat has moved to other places, and we have other very important items on our agenda, including the relationship with China, he said on ABCs This Week.

The notion of a more dispersed threat landscape was echoed by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, who told lawmakers last week that the danger posed by Afghanistan has been eclipsed by threats from countries such as China, which she called an unparalleled priority.

Biden, in announcing the withdrawal, said: After consulting closely with our allies and partners, with our military leaders and intelligence personnel, with our diplomats and our development experts, with the Congress and the vice president, as well as with [Afghan President Ashraf Ghani] and many others around the world, I concluded that its time to end Americas longest war.

Its time for American troops to come home.
New Delhi:

The Allahabad High Court on Thursday acquitted Nupur and Rajesh Talwar in the 2008 murder case of their 14-year-old daughter Aarushi and domestic help Hemraj, saying they could not be held guilty as per the circumstances and the evidence on record.

The verdict ends a nine-year ordeal of the Noida-based dentist couple who were found guilty by a Ghaziabad CBI court on November 26, 2013 and were serving a life sentence in Dasna jail.

A division bench comprising justices B K Narayana and A K Mishra allowed the appeals of the Talwars, holding that neither the circumstances nor the evidence on record established a chain showing their involvement in the murders of Aarushi and Hemraj.

Pronouncing the verdict in a packed courtroom, the bench said that it is a fit case where the benefit of the doubt can be given to the appellants and set aside the judgement of the CBI court convicting the Talwars.

Earlier, on September 7, the court had reserved its judgement in the case, which shook the conscience of the nation and saw several twists and turns.

Reacting to the verdict, the CBI said it would study the high court order and decide the future course of action.

Jailor of the Ghaziabad's Dasna prison Dadhiram Maurya said the Talwars felt they have got justice and were praying.

After having breakfast they were praying. Their schedule was normal. She (Nupur Talwar) said they got justice today and had tears of joy.

Any person after spending this amount of jail will feel happy to get freedom. So they were happy after they were told about the news, he said.

Lawyer Rebecca John, who was part of Talwars legal team, said she was relieved by the judgement. She claimed the whole case was based on innuendos and would not have carried through.

John, who is a family friend of the couple, hoping that the Talwars, who have been in media spotlight for over nine years, will be allowed privacy after their release from the jail.

Jail sources said the couple were likely to walk free tomorrow.

Aarushi was found dead inside her room in the Talwars Noida residence with her throat slit in May 2008. The needle of suspicion had initially moved towards 45-year-old Hemraj, who had gone missing but his body was recovered from the terrace of the house a day later.

As the Uttar Pradesh Police drew flak over shoddy investigation into the case which was making national headlines, the then chief minister Mayawati recommended a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Candace Owens has called on parents to sue woke schools who seek to 'cancel' conservative thinking among students and teachers.

The conservative commentator said: 'Parents have to start speaking out, not just speaking out, but suing. You have to start suing the schools because they're ruining the lives of young children.'

She was joined on Fox News by Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk, who added: 'Where are the adults that are going to start to stand up and realize that the next generation that's standing up for freedom in our country is worthy of protection, in this situation?

'It takes courage to be a young conservative. It's time for adults to start to protect young people's right to organize and speak their mind.'

Their comments came in the wake of two separate controversies that impacted elite New York City prep schools where parents complained their children were being brainwashed with anti-racism ideology.

Owens added: 'This thought process that we keep seeing that conservatives are not allowed to exist, that being conservative is backwards and it's wrong, and especially when it comes to the education system taking part in this, right?

'Smearing and labeling their own students, these students having to transfer out of schools. This is systematic bullying that's happening, but worse than that, it's propagandist.'

She later praised Andrew Gutmann, 45, who pulled his daughter from $54,000 a year Brearley school as 'an absolute hero' before blasting 'meaningless' degrees like gender studies.

Candace Owens has said parents need to start suing woke schools who want to cancel conservative thinking. The conservative commentator said: 'Parents have to start speaking out, not just speaking out, but suing. You have to start suing the schools'

She was joined on Fox News by Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk, who added: 'Where are the adults that are going to start to stand up and realize that the next generation that's standing up for freedom in our country is worthy of protection, in this situation?'

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Owens added: 'What is taking place throughout the universities and colleges and schools is a form of social engineering.

'They are taking your children, undermining parents at every single point in the purpose because they want to turn the children into government activists.

'They want to grow government and depend on government they don't want them to turn to mom and dad for answers, they want them to think mom and dad are wrong and backwards and racist.

'They are handing out meaningless degrees, degrees in gender studies.

Responding to one student's claims that they were punished for studying her as a role model in Black History Month, Owens said: 'This young girl you brought up...picked me, a black person, for Black History Month, and she was accused of being a racist.

'I mean, that is so twisted and perverted and wrong. It would be funny if it wasn't so cruel that led to her actually having to transfer out of this school.'

Kirk added: 'This is a cultural fire alarm. I mean, we have young people that want to start groups or even write an essay, like about Candace, in support of their country, and they are being accused of things that they not only do, but things they don't believe.'

One Monday the math teacher who spoke out against a New York City school's anti-racism curriculum has been 'relieved of his teaching duties', it was confirmed.

Grace Church School teacher Paul Rossi was ousted after he accused the $57,000-a-year school of indoctrinating students last week.

Topher Nichols, the school spokesman, told DailyMail.com Monday: 'I can confirm that Paul was relieved of his teaching duties.

'He has been invited to spend the remainder of his contract with the school contributing to a new task force that will review best practices nationwide around belonging.'

George P. Davison (right) the head of the Grace Church High School in Manhattan, sent a letter to parents and staff saying he was 'disappointed' math teacher Paul Rossi (left) had publicly blasted the private school in a blog post

Rossi said he decided to come forward because he could no longer stay silent while 'witnessing the harmful impact' that anti-racism instruction has on children.

He is now claiming headteacher, George P. Davison, privately agreed the school is 'demonizing white people for being born'. That accusation came Monday in response to a letter by Davison said to have been shared with staff Sunday.

That note from Davison is said to have read: 'You should know that Paul has declined his contract so will not be returning in the fall.

'The wellbeing of our community is our first priority, and we take it seriously whenever students raise concerns about the professionalism of a teacher.

'It is clear to me that Paul cannot be effective as a teacher at Grace any more. I have informed him that he is relieved of his teaching duties, and weve asked two support teachers to take over his math classes for the final quarter.

'He has been asked to not come into the building without prior coordination.'

Topher Nichols, the school spokesman, confirmed to DailyMail.com Monday: 'I can confirm that Paul was relieved of his teaching duties'

Rossi responded, claiming head George P. Davison privately agreed the school is now 'demonizing white people for being born'

The school had told DailyMail.com Thursday that Rossi wouldn't be fired or face discipline over his post.

Rossi then said he received an email from school Principal Davison saying he should stay home until further notice for 'security concerns.'

He is said to have been asked to stay home after another colleague threatened him in the wake of his complaints being published.

By Monday he had been 'relieved of his duties'.

At a second NYC school Andrew Gutmann, 45, announced in an April 13 letter shared by journalist Bari Weiss that he has chosen not to reenroll his daughter in the all-girls Brearley school where annual tuition is $54,000.

He pulled his daughter from the school over its woke antiracism 'obsession.' He accused the school of 'teaching what to think not how to think.'

The school responded by slamming him for being 'offensive.'

On Monday Woke, Inc author Vivek Ramaswamy also blasted what he calls a culture of 'indoctrination'.

He said American schools are 'going down the tubes' because they have been 'infected' with 'woke culture' that has 'sacrificed the idea of excellence' by 'indoctrinating' students.

Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur and the author of Woke, Inc, compared the wave of 'wokeness' in schools to China's Cultural Revolution of the 60s and 70s, when its people were indoctrinated with Maoism by the Communist Party.

Rossi on Tuesday came forward with allegations in a blog post that he published on Substack

Grace Church High School is a $57,000-a-year private school whose famous alumni include actor David Duchovny and New York Times columnist David Brooks

Vivek Ramaswamy (above) spoke out in response to two separate controversies that impacted elite New York City prep schools where parents complained their children were being brainwashed with anti-racism ideology

Ramaswamy told Fox News that these incidents illustrate the extent to which American children are being brainwashed.

'I think it's going to be really damaging, poisoning the minds of our next generation,' he told Fox News.

'The thing about America as a country is that we are not like many other countries throughout history - defined on the basis of a single ethnicity, or a single language, or a single monarch.

'America is an idea, and part of being an idea as a country means this.

'The way we describe America affects that America actually works, that's why we call it the American dream. It's what we aspire to. E pluribus unum (out of many, one). That's what we should be aspiring to, ideas that bind us together.

HEAD OF DALTON RESIGNS AMID ROW OVER WOKE POLICIES Jim Best said he would see out the year at the $50,000-a-year institution then step down to pursue 'other opportunities' The head of the elite Manhattan school Dalton is stepping down this year after being slammed by parents for pushing an 'obsessive', antiracism agenda on students. Jim Best said he would see out the year at the $50,000-a-year institution then step down to pursue 'other opportunities'. His resignation is in response to parents' complaints that Dalton, like other prestigious private schools Grace Church and Brearley, is indoctrinating students with its woke agenda. Dalton parents penned an anonymous open letter to the school earlier this week. 'Every class this year has had an obsessive focus on race and identity, racist cop reenactments in science, de-centering whiteness in art class, learning about white supremacy and sexuality in health class. 'Wildly inappropriate, many of these classes feel more akin to a Zoom corporate sensitivity-training than to Daltons intellectually engaging curriculum,' it read. Advertisement

He added: 'Instead we have been obsessing over diversity, our differences, for a decade now forgetting all of the ways in which we are actually the same, and now that's getting transmitted to the next generation.

'I think the way we describe this country to them will affect the way it works in the next generation, and that's something to be really frightened of.'

Gutmann, who runs his family's chemical business, told the New York Post on Saturday that he penned the 1,700-word letter he mailed to 650 different families because 'someone had to speak out.' He said he does not regret sending the letter.

'She hasn't been brainwashed yet by the school - but she's had me at home. I'm not so sure that's true of the other kids,' Gutmann told the outlet, referring to his daughter.

'Someone had to do it. Someone had to light the match. Everyone's so afraid of cancel culture. We're going to destroy the city, we're going to destroy the country.'

Gutmann said he refused to sign the school's anti-racism pledge in October.

The school had started the required pledge after black alumnae accused the school of racism in posts made to the Instagram account account 'Black at Brearley,' according to the Washington Free Beacon.

The school's antiracism and diversity plans are extensively described on its website.

'I thought they were going to kick my daughter out then,' Gutmann said.

'They didn't, but next year they have the pledge built into the yearly school contract.'

The concerned dad claimed that the school's 'once-rigorous curriculum' completely changed after administrators 'managed to sneak' in an increased emphasis on race during the pandemic 'when everyone was distracted,' the New York Post reported.

'I don't know who's really driving this and nobody does,' he told the outlet.

Gutmann said the thing he resented the most about Brearley is that the school 'has begun to teach what to think, instead of how to think.'

Jane Fried, Brearley's head of school, sent a message to the school's families on Friday in which she slammed Gutmann's letter as 'deeply offensive and harmful.'
An organised mum-of-two has shared the five secrets behind her perfectly organised pantry, and the 'genius' storage system she swears by.

Chantel Mila, from Melbourne, said a tidy kitchen means less time spent rummaging through packaging, and it also saves you money when it comes to preparing delicious and nutritious meals.

'These are my top five tips for transforming any pantry,' Chantel posted on her TikTok page.

The mum has built up a huge following of hundreds of thousands on social media thanks to sharing her tips, tricks and product recommendations.

An organised mum-of-two has shared the five secrets behind her perfectly organised pantry (Chantel Mila's pantry pictured)

Chantel Mila, from Melbourne, said a tidy kitchen means less time spent rummaging through packaging, and it saves you money when it comes to preparing delicious and nutritious meals

1. Clean everything out

The first thing Chantel said you absolutely must do for an organised pantry is clean everything out of your cupboard and throw away anything that is no longer within date or hasn't been eaten.

'Wipe down the shelves carefully,' Chantel said.

You should especially focus on the corners where dirt might have got in and use a disinfectant spray to protect the area from dirt and grime.

The second thing you need to do is look at what containers you have, make sure they are clean and label them (pictured)

2. Look at what items you have and label

The second thing you need to do is look at what containers you have, make sure they are clean and label them.

'My containers and labels are from Pretty Little Designs,' Chantel said.

'They're so good. Opt for quality as the cheaper ones often aren't as good or as airtight.'

Chantel also said she tapes expiry stickers and nutritional labels to the bottom of each label so she can keep track of when her food expires.

Many labelled this tip for storing dried foods as 'genius', as it can be easy to forget how old they are.

The mum-of-two recommends choosing containers that are slightly too large for your foods, which means you're never left with half-full packets when you need to re-fill them (pictured)

3. Choose containers that are slightly too large

The mum-of-two recommends choosing containers that are slightly too large for your foods.

This means you're never left with half-full packets when you need to re-fill them.

When you are looking for containers to store your sugar, flour, cereal and pasta, Chantel explained that clear is always best (pictured)

4. Consistency is important

When you are looking for containers to store your sugar, flour, cereal and pasta, Chantel explained that clear is always best.

Not only does this mean that you can see what you are looking for without having to open every single container, but it also looks pretty in your pantry.

'Consistency is important,' she said.

'Choose clear, airtight containers that can be stacked to save space.'

This also looks good in a pantry and means everything is displayed without looking messy.

Finally, you need containers that fit your pantry in order to make sure you don't waste any vertical space (pictured)

5. Find containers that fit your pantry

Finally, you need containers that fit your pantry in order to make sure you don't waste any vertical space.

The finished result for the pantry was beautiful, and something that many said was worthy of a Pinterest board.

'I love this!' one woman posted.

'Now I want to re-do my pantry,' another added.
We look forward to engaging with local community association board members, as well as sharing our insights and best practices weve gleaned from our collective decades of experience in the industry, said Michael Mendillo, president, FirstService Residential.

Join FirstService Residential, New Jerseys property management leader, at the New Jersey Cooperator Virtual Expo on April 28. FirstService Residential associates will join more than 175 exhibitors and hundreds of industry professionals and residential community association board members for one of New Jerseys biggest condo, HOA and apartment expo.

We are delighted to attend this important virtual event, said Michael Mendillo, president, FirstService Residential. This expo offers a great opportunity for those serving on a condo or HOA board to gather new insights, as well as network with industry experts.

This years expo features sessions covering association management trends and topics, as well as opportunities to share, learn, network and discuss challenges and solutions. FirstService Residentials team will be leading an educational session. The session: Reopening Amenities  Caution, Communication & Community will begin at 11:30 a.m. EDT and cover liabilities and risks to consider, the importance of a good communication plan and maintaining a sense of community. Participants include Michael Mendillo, president, FirstService Residential; Donna Fiore, vice president, FirstService Residential; Ted Gammon, vice president, FirstService Residential and Andrew Batshaw, business development director, FirstService Residential.

We look forward to engaging with local community association board members, as well as sharing our insights and best practices weve gleaned from our collective decades of experience in the industry, said Michael Mendillo, president, FirstService Residential.

Register here for the event and then visit FirstService Residentials booth to learn about the benefits of collaborating with a professional residential property management company. Find out how the right property management firm can play a significant role in optimizing your condo or homeowners associations operational budget and enhancing your property values.

~http://www.fsresidential.com~

About FirstService Residential

FirstService Residential is North Americas property management leader, partnering with more than 8,500 communities across the U.S. and Canada, including low-, mid- and high-rise condominiums and cooperatives; single-family communities; master-planned, lifestyle and active-adult communities; and mixed-use and rental properties. HOAs, community associations and condos rely on their extensive experience, resources and local expertise to maximize property values and enhance their residents lifestyles. Dedicated to making a difference, every day, FirstService Residential goes above and beyond to deliver exceptional service.

FirstService Residential is a subsidiary of FirstService Corporation (FSV), a North American leader in the property services sector. Visit http://www.fsresidential.com.
Videoconference meeting between Ambassador of Belarus N.Ovsyanko and the Minister of Culture of Colombia

On April 16, 2021, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Belarus to the Republic of Colombia Nikolai Ovsyanko held a videoconference with Minister of Culture of Colombia Felipe Buitrago.

During the conversation, the parties discussed the possibility of concluding a framework agreement on cooperation between the ministries of culture of Belarus and Colombia, as well as the prospects for cultural exchanges and mutual visits of art groups of the two countries. An invitation to take part in the XXX International Festival of Arts Slavianski Bazaar in Vitebsk was delivered to the Colombian.

Taking into account the attention paid by the Ministry of Culture of Colombia to the promotion of new technologies, the potential of the Belarus Hi-Tech Park, including opportunities for software development and training of specialists, was presented to Minister F.Buitargo.

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Union finance minister on Monday said the Centre is working with state governments to save lives and livelihoods.

She said this during an interaction with industry chambers on concerns of with respect to the second wave of the pandemic.

She is learnt to have also sought feedback on the impact on businesses and the

Some heads of industry chambers with whom she interacted include Kotak Mahindra Bank managing director (MD) and chief executive officer (CEO) Uday Kotak, who is also president of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Uday Shankar of Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI), Deb Mukherjee of Bengal Chamber of Commerce and TR Parasuraman of Bangalore Chamber of Commerce.

Spoke on the telephone with each of the following business/chamber leaders. Took their inputs on industry/association related matters. Informed them that the government at various levels is responding to Covid management. Working together with states for lives and livelihoods, she said in a tweet.

She also spoke to top corporates, including Tata Steel MD TV Narendran, Larsen & Toubro chairman AM Naik, TCS MD Rajesh Gopinathan, Maruti Suzuki chairman RC Bhargava, TVS Group chairman Venu Srinivasan and Hero Moto Corp MD Pawan Munjal. She took their feedback on the situation arising out of the surging Covid cases and local containments.

Same time around last year, the outbreak had badly hit the economy, which contracted 23.9 per cent in the first quarter (April-June) compared to the previous fiscal year (2019).

However, the government has maintained the stand that India is well prepared to combat the scourge of the second wave. In the finance ministrys monthly economic report of March, it had said that high-frequency data indicates that India is on the path to becoming better and stronger.

The rise in daily cases since mid-February marks the onset of the second wave of the infection in India, the report had said. It added that the country has, however, been able to delay the onset of the second wave  the gap between the first peak to start of the second wave has been 151 days in India while it was much lower in other countries.



The countrys total tally of Covid cases crossed 15 million with a record single-day rise of 273,810 new infections. Active cases surpassed the 1.9 million-mark, according to the Union health ministrys data updated on Monday.

Finmin had also stated in the report that as far as economic activities are concerned, the country has adapted itself to the pandemic. This prospect is further bolstered by the roll-out of vaccination, it said.

Besides, India is emphasising a five-fold strategy to curb the tide of new cases. They include increase in testing, effective isolation and contact tracing of those infected as well as ensuring Covid-appropriate behaviour.
YEREVAN, APRIL 19, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian together with Human Rights Defender Arman Tatoyan paid a working visit to Syunik Province on April 19.

As ARMENPRESS was informed from the press service of the Presidents Office, Armen Sarkissian visited one of the military positions, got acquainted with the living conditions of the servicemen and talked with them.

President Sarkissian awarded a group of servicemen for excellent service.

Armen Tatoyan noted that he has visited that positions a few times, where the servicemen carry out a really heroic duty in harsh conditions.

You carry out your responsibilities best. Help each other, be vigilant and take care of your health. Remember your families, serve your motherland and help each other, President Sarkissian said, wishing all safe service and successful demobilization. ''Be sure, we are all thinking about you. Stay firm'', Sarkissian concluded.
Defense lawyers insisted Ghislaine Maxwell is 'no monster' as they asked an appeals court Monday for her release on bail so she can better prepare for trial on charges she procured girls for Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse.

The lawyers told the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the British socialite has not been given an adequate opportunity to prove that she would not flee if she was allowed to await trial at home under 24-hour armed guard and with collateral posted to support a $28.5 million bail.

The attorneys have thrice failed to convince a Manhattan federal judge to release their 59-year-old client. Maxwell faces an arraignment Friday on sex trafficking charges added to an indictment last month.

Ghislaine Maxwell has asked for bail for a fourth time. Pictured: Maxwell with Jeffrey Epstein in 2005. She is accused of procuring underage girls for the pedophile

A court sketch shows Maxwell at her arraignment hearing on July 14, 2020

Judge Alison Nathan is presiding over Maxwell's case

Her trial is set for July 12 on charges alleging she recruited and groomed teenage girls from 1994 to 2004 to provide sexual massages to her one-time boyfriend. Last week, her lawyers requested that the trial be delayed until next January, saying the new charges require months of investigation.

Maxwell has pleaded not guilty. Epstein killed himself in 2019 in a Manhattan federal lockup as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges.

As they have repeatedly argued before, lawyers for Maxwell wrote that she is being punished in part because Epstein is out of reach.

'She is no monster, but she is being treated like one because of the `Epstein effect,' they wrote.

The lawyers urged the 2nd Circuit to 'test the actual strength' of the government case by insisting on a more thorough bail hearing where they could prove that each story told by the four people who say they were victims of Epstein and Maxwell 'has dramatically changed over the years.'

'At first, none of the anonymous accusers even mentioned Ms. Maxwell. As they hired the same law firm, sought money and fame, joined a movement, and only after Epstein died, did the accusers start to point the finger at Ms. Maxwell. Far from corroboration, this is fabrication,' they wrote.

Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell attend Batman Forever in 1995 in New York City

A spokesperson for prosecutors declined comment.

On Friday, the judge rejected Maxwells arguments to toss charges that she recruited three teenager girls from 1994 to 1997 for then-boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse.

Judge Nathan denied claims that a non-prosecution agreement Epstein reached with federal prosecutors over a dozen years ago protects Maxwell from prosecution.

She also disagreed that some or all charges should be tossed out for a variety of other perceived flaws.

Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell are pictured in 1995

The judge, however, did agree that Maxwell can be prosecuted separately on perjury charges. And she said arguments the defense will make against new sex trafficking charges will be decided later.

The judge also rejected arguments that the charges had to be dismissed 'because of the possibility of missing witnesses, failing memories, or lost records.'

'These are difficulties that arise in any case where there is extended delay in bringing a prosecution, and they do not justify dismissing an indictment,' she said.

She also rejected claims that pretrial publicity spoiled Maxwell's chance at a fair trial or resulted from accusers who fabricated stories based on media allegations.

'The Court will not dismiss the indictment on Maxwells bare assertion that numerous witnesses are engaged in a perjurious conspiracy against her,' she said. 'And the Court will take all appropriate steps to ensure that the pretrial publicity in this case does not compromise Maxwells right to a fair and impartial jury.'

Ghislaine Maxwell, far right, is pictured with Prince Andrew and accuser Virginia Roberts in her townhouse in London. Roberts has filed a criminal lawsuit claiming that she had under-aged sex with Prince Andrew and pedophile Epstein

Maxwell, has been in jail since her arrest on July 2 in Bradford, New Hampshire at her $1 million country home. Pictured: US Attorney for the Southern District Audrey Strauss announced the charges against Maxwell at a press conference last year

Maxwell, has been in jail since her arrest on July 2 in Bradford, New Hampshire at her $1 million country home.

She is accused of enticing girls as young as 14 for Epstein to abuse and in some cases taking part in the abuse.

Maxwell, the daughter of disgraced newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell, also perjured herself in a civil case.

She denies all the allegations.

Last week, Maxwell's family has launched a website in support of the British socialite, insisting she's 'no monster' and protesting her innocence.

The site, realghislaine.com, invites people to 'get to know the real Ghislaine' on the website, where they shared biographical details, information about her upcoming trial, jail conditions, as well as the books she is reading behind bars.

'This website has been developed and is maintained by brothers, sisters, family & friends of Ghislaine Maxwell, the people who have known the real Ghislaine all her life, not the fictional one-dimensional character created by the media,' it states.

'We believe wholeheartedly in our beloved sister's innocence and encourage visitors to this site to sign up for updates from the family on her case by providing your e-mail address below in the strictest of confidence.'

Ghislaine Maxwell's older brother Ian spoke out in his sister's defense in a video on the family's new website, realghislaine.com
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DENVER  A man initially thought to be impersonating the police was briefly detained Monday before authorities determined he was a volunteer for a police department in suburban Denver.

Colorado State Patrol received a report of road rage on U.S. Highway 36, where a witness said a car was speeding in and out of lanes. A trooper stopped the vehicle, which was fully outfitted with a laptop, lights and a push bumper.

The driver, who was wearing a dark blue dress uniform and had a lanyard with Aurora Police Department printed on it, provided his volunteer identification card and was disarmed and detained. Aurora police confirmed the 39-year-old man was a volunteer but not an officer.

Authorities warned the man and confiscated items marked Aurora Police Department. The Colorado State Patrol said in a news release late Monday there is not enough evidence to charge the man with impersonating a peace officer.

The mans name has not been released, and an investigation is ongoing.

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Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 17:54:06|Editor: huaxia

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Artists welcome arriving passengers with their performance at the arrival area of an airport in Christchurch, New Zealand, on April 19, 2021. The opening of the trans-Tasman bubble or quarantine-free travel between New Zealand and Australia on Monday allowed the reunion of many families separated by the Tasman Sea and the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic. (Photo by Li Xiaogang/Xinhua)

WELLINGTON/SYDNEY, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Christchurch resident Priscilla came to the airport an hour earlier to meet and greet her dear daughter Julia.

"It's obviously fine talking on the computer, but there will be something wonderful about seeing her for real," said Priscilla while waiting for Julia to arrive from Sydney.

The opening of the trans-Tasman bubble or quarantine-free travel between New Zealand and Australia on Monday allowed the reunion of many families separated by the Tasman Sea and the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic.

Priscilla, who has not seen her daughter since Christmas 2019, was very excited. She will come to the airport again on Tuesday to meet her 18-month-old grandchild she has never met, coming from Australia.

"Two great days!" Priscilla told Xinhua.

On the other side of the Tasman Sea, Renee Monger was standing outside the arrival exit of the Sydney international airport, expecting her sister and three nieces.

"We haven't seen them in about 18 months. They are due to come here last year at this time, but obviously COVID hit and everything closed, so we are very, very excited to see them," Monger said.

"It's been a very long time. We normally see each other about three or four times a year," she added.

It was the same for Olivia's parents and brother. They have not seen her for about one and a half years. Olivia is a student in Auckland, whose trip to home in Sydney had been hindered by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Olivia told Xinhua that she planned to stay in Sydney for two weeks, and the first thing she would do was to enjoy a home cook for her. She really missed her mum's cooking.

"I went to Auckland in February last year just before we went into lockdown, and then got stuck," she said.

"TRULY EXCITING"

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the travel bubble opening was "truly exciting."

"Be it returning family, friends or holiday makers, New Zealand says welcome and enjoy yourself," she said.

A one-way Safe Travel Zone from New Zealand to Australia was opened last October, with more than 34,000 arrivals in Australia from New Zealand during that period.

The two-way travel bubble, opened on Monday, means reconnecting with loved ones and resuming the trans-Tasman travel. It also brings hope to the struggling tourism sector, and helps with the economic recovery of both countries, according to Ardern.

The trans-Tasman route is Australia's busiest international aviation market, with more than 7 million passengers in the one year ending January 2020.

The aviation industry sees great opportunity. From Monday, Australia's carriers Qantas and Jetstar will initially operate up to 122 return flights per week across the Tasman on 15 routes, offering more than 52,000 seats each week. Qantas will also launch two new routes directly from Auckland to Cairns and the Gold Coast, providing travelers with more options for holidays, according to the airline companies.

A spokesperson with the Australian Trade and Investment Commission (Austrade), an Australian government agency, told Xinhua that the commencement of a two-way travel corridor between Australia and New Zealand will give tourism operators a significant boost, with around 18 percent of all international air arrivals from New Zealand annually and with visitors to Australia now having the opportunity to travel without having to quarantine at either end of their journey.

In 2019, there were more than 1.4 million visitors from New Zealand who spent 1.6 billion Australian dollars (1.24 billion U.S. dollars) on travel and tourism in Australia, statistics show.

Meanwhile, both Ardern and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison have said they would be looking to extend quarantine-free travel to other countries in the Pacific.

GRADUAL OPENING

The flights were the first of many, with Qantas, Jetstar and Air New Zealand saying they were expecting to fly about 10,000 people on trans-Tasman routes on Monday alone, the first day of the bubble opening.

The Christchurch International Airport currently has 52 flights scheduled for the week, similar to the pre-COVID level.

All the digital screens are displaying such messages as "Kia ora! Welcome back Aussie friends and whanau (means 'community')" and "G'day mate! It's great to see you again."

Changes have been made to enable separate processing of so-called "red" (passengers going to isolation and quarantine and who do not come into the public areas of the terminal) and "green" flights (quarantine free), according to the Christchurch airport Chief Aeronautical and Commercial Officer Justin Watson.

"We have physically split the international arrivals area into two distinct pathways to allow simultaneous operations," Watson said, adding the airport's frontline staff have been vaccinated and are looking forward to safely welcoming international travelers again.

In Wellington, preparations at the Wellington International Airport are complete, hotels and operators have experienced a boost in bookings, while family and friends are primed for some emotional reunions.

A 250m x 12m welcome mural has been displayed on the grass area at the northern end of the runway to greet flights and passengers arriving.

However, the authorities have warned that people need to plan for the possibility of having travel disrupted if there is a COVID-19 outbreak. Enditem
UPDATE: Michigan DNR says black bear found near Flint a pretty rare occurrence

FLINT TWP., MI -- Michigan State Police are investigating an accident that left an adult black bear dead in the roadway on I-75 near Beecher Road -- a rarity in this area.

Troopers were dispatched around 1 a.m. Monday, April 19 to investigate the bear in the roadway.

The vehicle involved in the accident had left the scene prior to troopers arriving, according to a Michigan State Police news release.

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources Law Enforcement Division was contacted, and the bear carcass was turned over to that agency for further investigation, police said.

According to the DNRs web site, the black bear is the only species of bear found in Michigan. Most have black or extremely dark brown fur.

Average adult black bears stand less than three feet tall at the shoulder when on all fours and are approximately 3 to 5 feet in length.

Males are typically larger than females, according to the DNR. Adult female black bears weigh approximately 90 to 300 pounds, and adult males weigh about 130 to 500 pounds.

The state says approximately 15,000 to 19,000 black bears, including cubs, roam the hardwood and conifer forests of northern Michigan.

About 90 percent of the bear live in the Upper Peninsula, while the remaining 10 percent are mainly found in the northern Lower Peninsula.

Read more on MLive:

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Three police officers who seized a Bentley Continental from an uninsured driver took it for an unauthorised drive up and down a dual carriage way before impounding it.

Hertfordshire PCs Lewis Mack, Sam Butler and Ian Gould jumped into the Bentley when it was decided it had to be taken back to the police station because the driver did not have insurance.

But after setting off they went on a detour, driving up and down a dual carriage way and taking it in turns to get behind the steering wheel.

Unknown to the trio Bentley Continental GT V8 had a tracker fitted to it and its owner - who was not the man driving it that night - had an app on his phone allowing him to follow its journey.

He could he see they had taken a detour before taking the car back to Cheshunt Police Station in Hertfordshire.

PCs Lewis Mack, Sam Butler and Ian Gould drove a Bentley Continental GT V8 around before driving it to Cheshunt Police Station (pictured) after they seized it from a driver found to have no insurance

While the three officers were in the station and preparing to finish their shift they learned he had made a complaint to police.

The officers appeared before a misconduct hearing on Friday following a two day hearing earlier in the week, to hear that the panel had decided their behaviour that night amounted to gross misconduct.

Chairman of the panel, Akbar Khan, told PCs Lewis Mack, Sam Butler and Ian Gould that public confidence and trust in the police force would have been significantly undermined by the their conduct.

Mr Khan told the officers: 'We have not dismissed you.'

The final written warning will last for two years.

The hearing had been told how late on the night of May 29 last year the black Bentley Continental was stopped as it travelled north on the A10 towards Cheshunt because it was not displaying its lights.

A new Bentley Continental GT V8 sells for more than 150.000.

A number of police officers attended the scene, including the three PCs who were all part of Hertfordshire Police's Operation Scorpion team, a pro active unit which targets burglars, robbers and those involved in drug and vehicle-related crime.

Roadside checks revealed the driver was not insured to drive the car and, after he handed the keys over, it was decided the vehicle would be driven to the rear yard at Cheshunt Police Station where it could be collected by a recovery vehicle.

The black Bentley Continental was stopped as it travelled north on the A10 towards Cheshunt because it was not displaying its lights and after seizing it the officers took turns to drive it on Lieutenant Ellis Way (pictured)

The hearing was told that in radio communications between the three officers, the driver had heard the words 'Shotgun to drive the Bentley back' and 'Shotgun front seat passenger.'

The term 'Shotgun' is similar to youngsters saying 'bagsy' and, the hearing was told, for the officers to have said the word showed a lack of respect and courtesy.

With PC Gould behind the wheel of the vehicle, PC Butler in the front passenger seat and PC Mack on the back seat, the three set off for the short drive to the police station.

Their route should have been to continue north along the A10 and then turn right into Cheshunt and the police station.

However, moments after setting off and after reaching a roundabout, PC Gould took a left turn onto Lieutenant Ellis Way, a stretch of dual carriageway just over one and a half miles in length.

On reaching the end of the road at another roundabout, PC Butler got behind the wheel driving the car up and down the the road.

Finally PC Mack took over behind the wheel still on Lieutenant Ellis Way and headed back onto the A10 and drove back to the police station.

The hearing was told the diversion the three had taken added around six minutes onto their journey time back to the station.

Unknown to the trio Bentley Continental GT V8 (stock, pictured) had a tracker fitted to it and its owner - who was not the man driving it that night - had an app on his phone allowing him to follow its journey

Soon after arriving back at the police station and as they prepared for the end of their shift, they learnt that a complaint had been made about their detour.

The three immediately went to see a sergeant at the station that night and told her about their drive back to the station, how each had taken a turn to drive, and how each had exceeded the speed limit while they were behind the wheel of the Bentley.

As a result, the hearing was told, the officers were moved off the Operation Scorpion team.

Giving evidence, PC Mack said the phrase he had used 'Shotgun front seat passengers' had on reflection been completely unprofessional.

He said having got into the Bentley that night he got caught up the 'luxury' of its interior.

He told the panel: 'I am ashamed to say I didn't have the self control. I didn't consider anything other than I was driving a luxury vehicle at the time.'

He said it was only when they got back to the station and learned that a complaint had been made that 'it dawned on us how wrong our actions were.'

The officer went on 'We decided to be open and honest about our actions and spoke to the sergeant.'

Cross-examined about his time in the Bentley that night, he said: 'It was the luxury side of it that I was focused on and that's why I lost self control.'

He said he believed he had gone over the 50 miles per hour speed limit in lieutenant Ellis Way when he had driven the vehicle.

PC Mack told the hearing that in the car that night 'I must have expressed my interest in wanting to drive this luxury car.'

He said back at the station when he learned of the complaint, his heart had 'sunk.'

The officer told the hearing: 'I realised what I had done was massively wrong. It was not what the public would expect.'

The owner of the car could see it had taken a detour before coming to theshunt Police Station in Hertfordshire (pictured) and reported it to the police

He added: 'I think I just got caught up in the environment and luxury and that's why I didn't think at the time and lost self control.'

He said the car was one that he would never be able to afford in his lifetime and he went on: 'I wasn't thinking like a police officer and, on reflection, I regret that.'

In his closing submission to the panel, barrister George Thomas who brought the case against the three on half of Hertfordshire Police. said they had taken the car on a 'joy ride that night.'

Barrister Kevin McCartney who represented the officers said that although they had behaved with 'blatant stupidity' they had done their very best to be frank and transparent to assist the panel.

The officers had faced three allegations that they had breached the Standards of Professional Behaviour concerning their integrity, by their driving of the car that night for their own pleasure, speeding, failing to challenge one another's behaviour, and failing to show courtesy and respect and by using the term 'Shotgun.'

They were also accused of bringing discredit to the police service by their actions which would have the effect of undermining the public's confidence in it.

The panel found that the breaches of the Standards of Professional Behaviour which had been proved, amounted to Gross Misconduct.
Mumbai, April 19 : ExactLy 13 months after Maharshtra recorded its first Covid-19 death on April 17, the state toll on Sunday crossed the 60K mark to touch 60,473 - just short of Poland's 62,032 fatalities, health officials said here on Monday The state's latest case tally is equally worrisome - 38,39,338, ranking below Italy's 38,79,131, which stands at No. 8 on the Worldometer.

Currently, the state has 670,388 'active cases', higher than Turkey's 544,931 (No.5) 'active cases' but lower than France 10,72,849 (No.4) As the pandemic continues to be on deadly prowl, the state has been setting new records of fresh infections daily - the highest being 68,631 (April 18).

The state also notched its highest death toll in the ongoing 'second-wave' - 503 fatalities (April 18), yanking up the toll to 60,473 till date in the past 13 months.

With the infection spreading, the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government is now contemplating a total strict lockdown with further stringent regulations to discipline the people and rein in the contagion.

"Restrictions will have to be strictly adhered to, or else strict action will be taken," warned a grim Home Minister Dilip Wasle-Patil on Sunday.

Although Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray has not commented on a possible total lockdown, several senior ministers and legislators of the Shiv Sena-Nationalist Congress Party-Congress besides the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party are largely in favour to prevent a collapse of the state health systems.

For most days in April, the state has been reporting 60K-plus new cases daily, straining the healthcare infrastructure to virtually breaking point.

"This is a matter of concern Both deaths and total cases are on rise continuously," said Dr Suhas Pingle, Chairman, Action Committee, IMA-Maharashtra.

A far cry from the early days 13 months back, when the first two Covid-positive cases were notched in Pune on March 9, 2020, followed by the first death of a senior male citizen in Mumbai on March 17, when partial lockdown-style measures were already clamped in Maharashtra.

Seven months later, the contagion peaked with 515 deaths (Sep. 15, 2020) and started on a down-crest till Feb. 2021, enabling the government and health authorities breathe easy.

As lockdown barriers were cautiously eased or opened up, quietly, the Covid-19 again picked up from March 2021 with the grip deadlier than last year, infecting more people daily than ever before, though the fatalities are comparative lower.

Till date, Mumbai has notched the highest deaths (12,354) while Pune has recorded the maximum tally of cases (594,460) in the country.

A total of 37-lakh plus are in home isolation or institutional quarantine and 31,06,828 people have been cured and discharged from hospitals.

This year the health infrastructure is bearing the brunt of the higher case-load with complaints of shortages on all fronts - beds in hospitals, oxygen, Remdesivir injections, besides other medical requirements for which the ruling allies have been pleading with the Centre to provide on urgent basis.

(Quaid Najmi can be contacted at: q.najmi@ians.in)

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed
(Newser)  Post-partum depression and QAnon-style conspiracy theories allegedly combined with tragic results in the case of a California mother accused of killing her three children. Liliana Carrillo was arrested for an alleged carjacking earlier this month, hours after her young children were found dead in a Los Angeles apartment. According to court records seen by the Los Angeles Times, Carrillo, mother of 3-year-old Joanna, 2-year-old Terry, and 6-month-old Sierra, started struggling with depression after the birth of her second child and things got dramatically worse this yearand particularly last month. The records show that partner Erik Denton, father of the children, repeatedly sought custody and tried to get authorities to intervene after Carrillo took the children from their home in Porterville in central California to Los Angeles.

story continues below

In court papers, Denton said that Carrillo had become obsessed with the idea that Porterville was the headquarters of a child-trafficking ring. He said she accused of him of allowing someone to molest their eldest child after she complained of a sore groin, though it was the result of a playground accident Carrillo had witnessed. Denton and his cousin, an emergency room physician, say they warned authorities that Carrillo was very sick and might harm the children. "I dont know when I became a target, but I know that Porterville is the root of all evil right now," Carrillo wrote in an email to an unidentified judge hours before the children's bodies were found. "I am removing myself and my children from this world because nothing will ever be the same." She told KGET-TV last week that she drowned her children because she didn't want them to be "tortured and abused on a regular basis for the rest of their lives." (Read more California stories.)
GET THE niggers, was their slogan, / Kill them, burn, them, set the pace. / Let them know that we are white men. /Teach them how to keep their place. AJ Smitherman, The Tulsa Race Riot and Massacre (1922).

I had just left Harvard University as an assistant professor and was doing Time to Talk, a series of interviews for T&T Television.
OTTAWA, ON

April 18, 2021

Canada

Ontario

Justin Trudeau

Ontario

Sending federal health care staff and equipment to the front lines in Ontario to care for people across the province, particularly in areas that are most impacted.

to care for people across the province, particularly in areas that are most impacted. Boosting rapid testing to help stop the spread of the virus, and working with municipalities and businesses to deploy them to hot spots across Ontario , support contact tracing and isolation, and make workplaces safer.

, support contact tracing and isolation, and make workplaces safer. Investing $84.2 million to support voluntary safe isolation sites, including across Ontario . These sites have already helped 3,900 Ontarians isolate safely to prevent the spread of the virus.

to support voluntary safe isolation sites, including across . These sites have already helped 3,900 Ontarians isolate safely to prevent the spread of the virus. Signing a bilateral agreement between the Government of Canada and the Government of Ontario to enhance virtual health services in the province. This agreement comes with $46 million in funding to expand Ontario's efforts on virtual health care during the pandemic.

and the Government of to enhance virtual health services in the province. This agreement comes with in funding to expand efforts on virtual health care during the pandemic. Providing an additional supply of tocilizumab and other needed drugs for Ontario through reallocation from other provinces and territories. Tocilizumab is used to treat severe pneumonia in COVID-19 patients.

June 30

Hamilton

Ontario

Canada

Ontario

ten dollars

Canada

Canada

Justin Trudeau

Canada

On April 17 , in response to the rapidly rising numbers of COVID-19 cases across Ontario , the Prime Minister spoke to the Honourable Andrew Furey, Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador , the Honourable Dennis King, Premier of Prince Edward Island , and the Honourable Iain Rankin, Premier of Nova Scotia . They spoke about how they can work together to help support Ontarians get through the current situation.

, in response to the rapidly rising numbers of COVID-19 cases across , the Prime Minister spoke to the Honourable Andrew Furey, Premier of and , the Honourable Dennis King, Premier of , and the Honourable Iain Rankin, Premier of . They spoke about how they can work together to help support Ontarians get through the current situation. The federal government's support includes the deployment of essential biomedical equipment, including Cardiohelp systems, AirVo oxygen units, high flow nasal oxygen devices, and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machines.

On July 16, 2020 , the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister announced an agreement to safely restart the economy that involved over $19 billion in funding from the federal government. The Safe Restart Agreement focused on measures over six to eight months to restart the economy while protecting the health of Canadians.

, the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister announced an agreement to safely restart the economy that involved over in funding from the federal government. The Safe Restart Agreement focused on measures over six to eight months to restart the economy while protecting the health of Canadians. This funding has supported the provinces and territories in their response to COVID-19, including for the following priorities:

Testing, contact tracing, and data management



Health care capacity, including mental health and substance use



Protecting vulnerable populations, including seniors



Securing personal protective equipment

On April 6, 2021 , the government delivered the final instalment of $700 million through the Safe Restart Agreement to help provinces and territories to further increase their testing capacity.

, the government delivered the final instalment of through the Safe Restart Agreement to help provinces and territories to further increase their testing capacity. On March 25, 2021 , the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance introduced Bill C-25, which would provide an additional $7.2 billion in support to provinces, territories, municipalities, and Indigenous communities for urgent health care needs, the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, and local infrastructure projects

Government of Canada assists Ontario with COVID-19 response through extension of Mobile Health Units

assists with COVID-19 response through extension of Mobile Health Units COVID-19: Support to provinces and territories

Safe Restart Agreement

Support for testing and contact tracing through the Safe Restart Agreement

/CNW/ - Since the start of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the Government ofhas been working to do whatever it takes  for as long as it takes  to protect and support Canadians. As the number of new cases incontinues to escalate to unprecedented levels due to variants of concern, we are working with the Province to protect the health and safety of Ontarians and support the capacity of our health care system.The Prime Minister,, today announced that the federal government is working to provide additional, emergency support to fight the COVID-19 outbreak inThis includes:These measures build on yesterday's announcement that the federal government is providing a two-month extension on two Mobile Health Units (MHU), until. These MHU were approved in January and are currently deployed in Toronto and. The federal government also stands ready to deploy the Canadian Red Cross to help the province with its mobile vaccination teams, and the Canadian Armed Forces is working with partners to determine what additional support they can provide toThe Government ofis also working closely with provinces and territories to facilitate extra support for, including sending medical supplies and health care workers, and has offered to cover the costs.Eight of everyspent into respond to the pandemic have come from the federal government. This has included support through the purchase of vaccines, personal protective equipment, rapid testing, contact tracing, and funding to help make schools safer for students and teachers. We will continue to provide the provinces and territories support and take a Team Canada approach to beating this virus, so we can keep all Canadians safe and healthy.continues to face an incredibly serious situation, with COVID-19 case counts reaching record numbers in many communities across the country. We are committed to taking a Team Canada approach to beating this virus and keeping Canadians safe, healthy, and supported. I know this is a difficult and frightening situation for Ontarians and all Canadians, but we will continue to look out for one another in these difficult times. Together we will get through this."The Rt. Hon., Prime Minister ofThis document is also available at https://pm.gc.caSOURCE Prime Minister's Office
Sometimes an image is so haunting that you just cant stop thinking about it. One such image was presented last week at the inquest into the murders of 23-year-old Saskia Jones and 25-year-old Jack Merritt at Fishmongers Hall in the City of London on November 29, 2019.

Their killer was Usman Khan, who had been convicted in 2012 of planning terrorist attacks against the Dean of St Pauls Cathedral, the home of the then London mayor, Boris Johnson, the U.S. Embassy and two synagogues. Oh, and the Houses of Parliament. Yet Stoke-born Khan had been released from Belmarsh prison in 2018, on licence: it turned out to be licence to kill.

The jihadist was also a poster boy for a generous-spirited and high-minded (if naive) organisation called Learning Together, an offender rehabilitation initiative run by the University of Cambridge.

Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt were two young, highly educated idealists involved with this programme  and so it was that they and Khan were at that banqueting hall, at an event to mark the fifth anniversary of Learning Together.

Poignant photo: Sitting just feet apart, Saskia Jones and her killer, Usman Khan, at Fishmongers Hall in the City of London on November 29, 2019

The inquest has heard from one witness that Khan told the gathering about how theyd made him see his path was wrong.

And that haunting image shown to the inquest? It is a photo of Saskia Jones sitting almost next to Khan. Minutes after that picture was taken, Khan went downstairs to the lavatories, emerged with knives tied to his wrists and stabbed Jack Merritt and Saskia Jones to death.

Depraved

As I stare at that unbearably poignant image, the words that come to mind are those from Shakespeares Macbeth: Theres no art to find the minds construction in the face / He was a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust.

This point  that we never know what someone is thinking, beneath a plausible manner  applies to the entire business of prisoner rehabilitation: but especially to those, such as Usman Khan, committed to an extremist ideology whose moral code is so depraved.

Saskia Jones (circled, number two) and Jack Merritt were two young, highly educated idealists involved with this programme  and so it was that they and Khan (circled, number one) were at that banqueting hall, at an event to mark the fifth anniversary of Learning Together

Anyone sentenced for a violent crime who wishes to meet the requirements of the parole board for early release is required to acknowledge guilt, and to appear penitent, determined not to re-offend. It is a system which incentivises faked repentance.

By contrast, one reason those genuinely innocent of the crime for which they have been convicted serve much longer time inside is that they refuse to play this game.

Yet the system doesnt change, and the prison service is institutionally reluctant to recognise that all its rehabilitation programmes are, at best, pot luck. Or, as a friend who was a prison psychiatrist told me: We know that a certain proportion of violent criminals released early will reoffend. The trouble is, we dont know which ones.

An especially disturbing example of this was revealed by David Rose in the Mail last month. He exposed how an official report into the Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) Pathway  a prison-based rehabilitation initiative for people assessed as presenting a high likelihood of violent offence repetition and with a severe form of personality disorder  had found that those who had been through the programme were more likely to reoffend after they had been released than other violent and disturbed prisoners who had not been on the course.

But the real scandal that Rose uncovered was that this report, by Professor Paul Moran of Bristol University, completed three years ago, had been sat on by the authorities  and the OPD programme continues to this day.

Such institutional complacency is especially dangerous as it applies to those convicted of terrorist plots. We know this, because of an outspoken former prison governor, Ian Acheson.

After Usman Khans murder of Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt (he also stabbed others attending the same event, who thankfully survived, before he was shot dead on London Bridge by armed police), Acheson revealed what happened when the then Justice Secretary, Michael Gove, asked him, in 2015, to conduct an independent review of Islamist extremism in the prison and parole system.

Shambles

Many encounters with prison officials resulted in jaw-dropping levels of naivety and bureaucratic obfuscation, he said. There was a toxic combination of arrogance, defensiveness and ineptitude. Screening tools to detect and programmes to tackle radicalised behaviour were rudimentary in-house creations, with former terrorist offenders telling us how easy courses were to game. It was a shambles.

Acheson declared that the Usman Khan business will prove to have been an organisational catastrophe that no amount of bureaucratic evasion can fix. His sentence was quashed by the Court of Appeal, replacing an indeterminate one for public protection with a lesser, determinate, sentence.

Family handout photos of Jack Merritt, left, and Saskia Jones, who were stabbed to death by Khan before he was fatally shot by armed police on London Bridge

This probably reduced the options available for his risk management on release from custody, Acheson continued. It certainly brought forward his release.

It was the Labour Home Secretary David Blunkett who introduced the indefinite terms known as IPPS (Imprisonment for Public Protection Sentences). They were abandoned after a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, but those already serving such terms required a British court to lift them  as Usman Khans lawyers managed to achieve.

A retired judge, John Samuels QC, now President of the Prisoners Education Trust, was an especially voluble critic of the IPPS. In 2017, he declared them the most monstrous injustice of all time. Thats going it a bit (what about the Dreyfus affair?), although Samuels may well be right that there were examples of it being applied in a way which was cruel  and it was far from only terrorist plotters who received such a sentence.

Punishment

Khan in an undated handout photo from West Midlands Police

But I wonder what he now thinks of Khans success in overturning his original indeterminate sentence. For Samuels was a guest at that Learning Together event at Fishmongers Hall: he knew Jack Merritt through their work together on prisoner rehabilitation. And last week he gave evidence to the inquest, as he saw Saskia immediately after she had been stabbed: Her face was chalk white. She appeared unconscious to me, or even dead.

I suspect, as a career-long critic of what he sees as a prison system too much geared to punishment and too little to rehabilitation, John Samuels will not have changed his mind.

But it is not just hangers and floggers who think that prison should only be about keeping the public safe, to deter, and to provide the penal service decided by a judge after a jury has delivered its verdict.

The former Director General of the Prison Service, Sir Martin Narey, just a month before Khan murdered those two public-spirited young criminologists, made a speech arguing that rehabilitation of offenders in jail didnt work and should be abandoned: The things we did to prisoners, the courses we put them on, the involvement of charities, made little or no difference, he said.

His advice to an audience of professionals in the field was blunt: Stop fretting about rehabilitation.

This doesnt mean that prisons should be in any way barbaric. But we should stop confusing punishment with therapy. That way lies still more avoidable tragedy.
GREENWICH, Conn., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Source Power Company, a New York regulated retail energy supplier and community solar subscriber acquisition company, today announced it is making donations to the Town of Brighton, the City of Canandaigua, and the Village of Victor. The municipalities will receive $52,000, $18,850, and $4,250 respectively, totaling more than $75,000 in donations. Donations will be presented to each community on Earth Day, Thursday, April 22 in a formal ceremony.

In January 2021, Source Power began serving the Community Choice Aggregation program for each municipality, bringing low-cost renewable electricity to residents. Community Choice Aggregation is a program authorized by the NYS Public Service Commission that enables municipalities to select the energy supplier for their community members after required public input due process is conducted. Eligible residents and small businesses are enrolled in an opt-out basis. The local program names are Monroe Community Power and Gateway Community Power and the participating communities selected Joule Assets as the administrator and Roctricity as the local manager.

Source Power also offers an additional savings to support local renewable energy through their opt in community solar program. For each resident or small business that opted into the community solar portion of the program, the community receives $50. The donations on behalf of Source Power and earmarked for sustainability projects represent the company's commitment to these municipalities and their residents' sustainability efforts and dedication to clean energy.

"We are extremely pleased to be partnering with these communities," said Vincent Palmieri, Managing Director at Source Power. "The participation from the residents of Brighton, Canandaigua, and Victor far exceeded our expectations and is a significant step in our mission of bringing low-cost, clean energy to all corners of New York State."

John Chaimanis, a Co-Founder of Kendall Sustainable Infrastructure ("KSI") the parent company and developer of the newly installed projects said, "We believe that changing the way people get electricity and manage water can be done more resiliently and cleanly. By empowering local companies through project finance and a problem-solving mindset we deliver these very heavily demanded solutions. The companies we empower will grow, their communities will get stronger, and future generations will prosper."

Source Power executives will personally deliver the donations to each community. For media wishing to attend the ceremonies, please see schedule below.

Time: 10am-10:30am



Location: Brighton Town Hall at 2300 Elmwood Ave, Rochester NY 14618



Donation presented to Supervisor William Moehle



Time: 11:30am-12pm



Location: Village of Victor at 60 E Main Street, Victor, NY



Donation presented to Mayor Gary Hadden



Time: 1pm-1:30pm



Location: City of Canandaigua at 2 North Main St, Canandaigua, NY 14424



Donation presented to City Manager John Goodwin

About Source Power Company



Source Power Company is a regulated Energy Service Company and Distributed Energy Resource Supplier in New York State. Source Power provides innovative solutions that pair energy supply with renewable energy generation, providing a unique value proposition to customers and advancing the state's clean energy goals. With roots in the solar development industry through its sister company Source Renewables, Source Power sits strategically at the intersection of project finance, renewable generation, and energy supply. This allows Source Power to match solar generation with power consumers and use its vertical integration to ensure efficiencies are passed along to customers at competitive prices. Source Power represents a reboot of the retail energy industry and is on a mission to improve products and services, through advanced technology and superior customer experience, while helping the environment and strengthening the communities it serves. Find out more about Source Power Company on its website: https://sourcepowerco.com.

Media Contact



Joshua Hobika, Lansons Intermarket



716-698-6573



[email protected]

Local Media Contact



Susan Hughes-Smith; Roctricity



585-244-0244



[email protected]

Related Images



image1.jpg

SOURCE Source Power Company
David Cameron is facing fresh lobbying questions over his 110,000 'public duty' funding from the taxpayer.

Labour has demanded 'full transparency' after a leaked email from the former PM revealed his staff had been 'passing on' approaches from businesses to the NHS.

The message sent to the health service's digital chief Matthew Gould in April last year suggested Mr Cameron's private secretary had flagged 'people who have contacted me with tech solutions they think might be deployed in the UK to help with the Covid effort'.

'Thanks so much for considering these and dealing with them, especially when you're so busy. I do appreciate it,' the email said according to the Sunday Times.

As an ex-PM, Mr Cameron is entitled to up to 115,000 a year in 'public duty costs allowance' to support 'necessary office and secretarial costs arising from fulfilling public duties'. He claimed just over 111,000 in 2019-20.

Allies of Mr Cameron insisted less than half of his private secretary's salary is met from the taxpayer funding.

They said 'numerous' firms approached Mr Cameron with suggestions of how they could help at the height of the pandemic, and his private secretary 'simply forwarded their messages to NHSX'.

Labour has demanded 'full transparency' after a leaked email from David Cameron (pictured in 2019) revealed his staff had been 'passing on' approaches from businesses to the NHS

Meanwhile, the lobbying row spread on to another front today as it was highlighted that hundreds of former MPs still have parliamentary passes

But shadow Cabinet Office minister Rachel Reeves said: 'This email raises serious questions about whether David Cameron opened doors for other private interests to profit from our NHS - especially shocking if that took place at the height of the pandemic.

'We need full transparency from government and from David Cameron that none of his public allowance was used for something like this - and an absolute commitment to cleaning up this Tory sleaze.'

Mr Cameron has been facing a storm for weeks over his lobbying on behalf of Greensill Capital. He has denied breaking any rules, but conceded he should have made approaches to ministers using more 'formal' channels.

Cabinet minister George Eustice insisted yesterday that only 'tweaks' are needed to the system, as he stressed that Mr Cameron had not breached any rules.

But Tory MP William Wragg, who heads the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, has suggested that fiddling at the edges will not be enough.

Meanwhile, the lobbying row spread on to another front today as it was highlighted that hundreds of former MPs still have parliamentary passes.

More than 250 have the 'Category X' clearance, meaning they can still come on to the estate and use dining and other facilities.

Critics claim the passes give lobbyists 'close access to lawmakers' while former standards watchdog Sir Alastair Graham has insisted they should only be issued to those 'who genuinely work in the House of Commons or House of Lords'.

Ex-MPs with the passes include Labour's Michael Dugher who is chief executive of the Betting and Gaming Council, which lobbies for the gambling industry. There is no suggestion any of them have broken any rules.

Mr Cameron previously held a former member's pass, but MailOnline revealed in 2019 that he had dropped off the list after apparently forgetting to renew it.

The number of ex-MPs with the cards has dropped significantly since the pandemic struck, when it was well over 400.

Boris Johnson (pictured on a visit to Gloucestershire today) has been struggling to contain the fallout from the lobbying row

Boris Johnson defended the senior civil service today amid the growing row, insisting they were not all 'double-hatting' with lucrative second jobs.

The PM said it was 'simply not the case' that 'loads of people' were gaming the system to earn eye-watering amounts while on the Government payroll in a potential conflict of interest.

Speaking on a visit to Gloucestershire today, Mr Johnson told reporters: 'People should not, in my view, form the impression that the upper echelons of the British Civil Service have got loads of people who are double-hatting, as it were, doing two jobs - it just isn't true.

'We've got one of the best civil services in the world. They are fantastically hard working people, they have been doing an amazing job throughout this Covid pandemic, apart from anything else, and I just wouldn't want people to get that impression. It is simply not the case.'
Four drugmakers, including Johnson & Johnson and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., will go to trial on Monday over claims they helped fuel an opioid crisis that has resulted in nearly 500,000 overdose deaths in the United States.

The trial is one of several looking to hold companies accountable for the overdose and abuse crisis that are set to take place this year after the coronavirus pandemic delayed litigation, putting renewed pressure on them to enter into multi-billion dollar settlements.

J&J, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., Endo International PLC and Abbvies Allergan unit are accused by several California counties of deceptively marketing painkillers in ways that downplayed their addictive risks to boost sales. If the companies are held liable by Orange County Superior Court Judge Peter Wilson following a trial conducted virtually, the counties say they should have to pay $50 billion to help foot the costs of abating the public nuisance they created plus penalties.

Opioids have resulted in the overdose deaths of nearly 500,000 people from 1999 to 2019 in the United States, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

We need these companies to fund what it takes to try to undo the harms that they have caused, and the scope and scale of that is enormous, Santa Clara County Counsel James Williams said in an interview. His county is suing the companies along with Los Angeles and Orange counties and the city of Oakland.

The drugmakers deny wrongdoing, arguing they acted appropriately in marketing medications approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and that the counties cannot prove their promotion of opioids caused the crisis.

J&J in a statement called its marketing of the drugs appropriate and responsible, Israel-based Teva said it will defend itself against these unproven allegations. Endo and Allergan declined to comment.

More than 3,400 lawsuits brought largely by states and local governments are pending against companies accused of fueling the opioid epidemic.

The state of Oklahoma in 2019 won a $465 million judgment against J&J in only such trial so far. Opioid cases that were set to go to trial in 2020 were put off as a massive new public health crisis made gathering jurors and lawyers in the same room untenable.

DAY OF RECKONING

Some plaintiffs lawyers said the delays benefited the companies at the cost of states, counties and municipalities who say they need settlements to help pay for the costs of addressing a painkiller addiction epidemic that only grew worse during the coronavirus pandemic.

The nations three largest drug distributors  McKesson Corp. , AmerisourceBergen Corp. and Cardinal Health Inc.  and J&J have proposed paying a combined $26 billion to resolve the cases against them. The proposal, a version of which was first put forward in 2019, has yet to be finalized, and some plaintiffs lawyers say that only with trials will they and other companies come to the table to finalize payouts.

They keep putting off the day of judgment, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, a law professor at University of Georgia, said of the companies. You really need trials to create that moment of pressure.

Next month, a closely-watched case is set to go to trial in West Virginia accusing the three drug distributors of ignoring red flags indicating the highly addictive painkillers were being diverted for improper uses. They deny the allegations. That case will be followed in June by a jury trial in New York against several drugmakers and distributors, which was delayed on the eve of trial in March 2020 because of the pandemic.

The day of reckoning is coming, said Hunter Shkolnik, a lawyer at Napoli Shkolnik who is representing New Yorks Nassau County. Theyve been able to slow roll because there was no trial like looming over their heads. Now they have a trial.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston and Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Bill Berkrot)

Topics COVID-19
Zilch, a London, UK-based Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) startup, raised $80M in series B funding round.

Backers included Gauss Ventures and M&F Fund.

The company, which has raised over more than $120m over the last 2 years and is now valued at over $500m, intends to use the funds to launch in the USA and continue to grow in the UK by investing further in product innovation and development.

Led by Philip Belamant, Founder and CEO, Zilch provides an over-the-top (OTT) BNPL product that allows its customers to shop wherever MasterCard is accepted and spread their payment over 6 weeks for zero interest and zero fees.

The startup is fast approaching 500,000 customers as well as quadrupled its internal headcount to 80 over 2020.

Zilch will be hiring an additional 100 people in the coming months, more than doubling the team again.

FinSMEs

19/04/2021
Armenian News - NEWS.am presents the daily digest of Armenia-related top news as of 19.04.21:

The issue of Armenian POWs in Azerbaijan is on the agenda of the plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). The issue will be discussed tomorrow.

The POWs issue was voted on by the PACE because the head of the Azerbaijani delegation Samad Seyidov had submitted an objection. He noted that it would have a destabilizing implication for the region.

132 delegates took part in the discussion of the issue, 93 delegates voted for, 21against, and 18 abstained from voting.

Armenian human rights chief Arman Tatoyan noted that the number of Armenian POWs in Azerbaijan is higher than Baku confirmed.

In an official letter to the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, the Council of Europe and the UN Commissioners for Human Rights, and other international bodies, Tatoyan has provided additional information on the urgency of the return of Armenian captives from Azerbaijan and protection of their rights and missing persons.

"Evidence gathered by the Human Rights Defender's Office confirms that the number of captives held in Azerbaijan is higher than the Azerbaijani authorities have confirmed," he said.

Tatoyan also noted on Monday that Azerbaijan is violating international principles, while the military conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh [Artsakh] continues.

Armenias Ambassador to Israel Armen Smbatyan has been charged.

Smbatyan has been charged under the Criminal Code articles on aiding and abetting abuse of office and on money laundering, as well as an AMD 20,000,000 bail has been as his pretrial measure.

The former minister of culture and youth affairs had been included as a defendant in the aforementioned criminal case and was declared wanted.

The investigation continues.

Armenia kicked off the COVID-19 vaccination campaign with the Russia-made Sputnik V drug on Monday.

The first to receive this vaccine will be the medical workersbetween the ages of 18 and 54who are treating COVID-19 patients.

Armenia has recently acquired AstraZeneca and Sputnik V vaccineswith 24,000 and 15,000 batches, respectively.

Almost 200 people have already been vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine in Armenia, the health ministry noted.

Armenia has 208,818 COVID-19 cases, while the death toll is 3,895.

The country is facing the third COVID-19 wave now.

The health ministry officials said that Armenian hospitals bed capacity for Covid is used up.

Leader of the opposition Homeland Party Artur Vanetsyan has renounced his lawsuit against Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and his spokesperson Mane Gevorgyan.

According to Vanetsyan, 'it's impossible to demand honor from a person who doesnt even have honor.'

Vanetsyan was demanding to oblige the Prime Minister and his spokesperson to publicly refute the actual data that is slander. PM's spokesperson earlier noted that Artur Vanetsyan through the prima facie misuse of official powers and with the help of more fake shareholders obtained shares of Zangezur Copper Molybdenum Combine. Gevorgyan added that the company belonging to Vanetsyans father has also become a large transporter of the cargo of Zangezur Copper Molybdenum Combine.
VioletaStoimenova / Getty Images

Though women have been encouraged to push for equal pay and ask for what theyre worth, a recent study published by the American Psychological Association shows that doing so can have negative consequences.

Find Out: 8 Reasons Women Should Get a Financial Advisor Right Now

Learn More: Pandemic Widens Retirement Planning Gender Gap

In 2013, Sheryl Sandberg published Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead, bringing national attention to the gender pay gap and relationship between status and gender. A recently published study from researchers at Harvard and Dartmouth set out to understand why women are lagging behind in earnings by exploring their experiences when negotiating for higher pay, according to CBS News.

This study found that women, even those in high positions, are asking for promotions and higher pay, yet are three times more likely than men to fail during these negotiations. These results remained the same whether women were negotiating with male or female decisions makers.

Jennifer E. Dannals, one of the studys co-authors and a professor at Dartmouth said the results were somewhat disheartening. The study noted that one of the reasons women were found to face resistance to receiving a raise or promotion was due to ingrained ideas of gender roles.

These results come amid the news that over 2.5 million women have exited the workforce since the pandemic started, according to Reuters. Although there are many reasons to account for high numbers of women leaving the workforce, including layoffs and childcare challenges, the studys researchers noted that women might feel less empowered to negotiate, particularly if finding a new job is difficult right now, CBS News reports.

Overall, this report concludes that the findings have less to do with women asking for what they want and more to do with how companies are responding to these requests.

Check Out: High-Paying Jobs Where Women Outnumber Men

Read Next: The Gender Wage Gap Through the Years

Story continues

The onus doesnt necessarily need to be placed on sort of the individual negotiator to try to navigate how assertive or not assertive they should be, said the studys co-author and Harvard business School assistant professor Julien Zlatev. The onus really needs to be placed on the organization or sort of the structures that they put in place to make sure that, regardless of whether or not people get it right, theyre still going to be getting an outcome that they find beneficial to them.

More From GOBankingRates

This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: Asking for Higher Pay Can Backfire if Youre a Woman, Study Finds
On Tuesday 27 April 2021, at 08:30 CEST, Bilia's report for the first quarter 2021 will be published. On the same day Bilia arranges press and analyst meetings, where

CEO Per Avander and CFO Kristina Franzen will present the report and answer questions.

There will be one meeting in Swedish at 09:00 (CEST) and one meeting in English

at 14:00 (CEST). They are telephone meetings and you call telephone number

+46 (0)8 22 90 90 and enter code 674445.

If you need a toll free phone number outside Sweden, please contact us for a country specific telephone number.

Gothenburg April 19, 2021

Bilia AB (publ)

For information please contact:

Per Avander, Managing Director and CEO, +46

Kristina Franzen, CFO, +46

Facts about the Bilia Group

Bilia is one of Europe's largest car dealers with a leading position within service and sales of cars and transport vehicles. Bilia has about 140 facilities in Sweden, Norway, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium. Bilia sells cars of the brand Volvo, BMW, Toyota, Renault, Lexus, MINI, Dacia, Alpine and transport vehicles of the brand Renault, Toyota and Dacia.

Bilia offers new and used cars, e-commerce, spare parts and store sales, service and repair workshops, tyres and car glass and financing, insurance, car washes, fuel stations and car dismantling under the same roof, which gives a unique customer offer.

Bilia reported a turnover of about SEK 30 Bn in 2020 and had about 4,700 employees.

Attachment
ITs said that if the only tool you have is a hammer then every problem better be a nail. The provinces Better Education Starts Tomorrow plan (Bill 64) is a hammer. The problems to be solved in education are not nails.

Opinion

ITs said that if the only tool you have is a hammer then every problem better be a nail. The provinces Better Education Starts Tomorrow plan (Bill 64) is a hammer. The problems to be solved in education are not nails.

Some of what is proposed by the province makes sense, much of it does not.

The province is right to be concerned about inequities in resource allocation. There are huge differences in spending and in mill rates across the province.

The province is also right to be concerned about achievement gaps for Indigenous students trapped in poverty, and for the many children in care in Manitoba. A 51 per cent graduation rate for Indigenous students is unacceptable. Outcomes for the 11,000 children in care are even worse. We must do better.

The first problem is easily solved. A uniform provincial mill rate and a fair funding formula can correct these inequities if there is the will to correct them.

The second problem  the impact of poverty on outcomes  isnt quite so simple. Poverty affects outcomes, but it doesnt determine them. Schools cant do everything, but they can do something. So what is it that schools can do and how can they do it well? We know what works.

Pre-school programming and parent support works. Helping kids as soon as they experience difficulty works. Frequent feedback and encouragement from teachers works. School nutrition programs work. Culturally relevant programming and staff that reflect the community works.

Keeping expectations and interests high works. High-quality teaching works. Strong, caring relationships and mentorship works.

We also know what doesnt work. Approaches that take students away from good teaching, healthy peers and high expectations dont work. Approaches that label students and blame them for their difficulties dont work.

We dont need broad-scale reform to do more of what works and less of what doesnt. A comprehensive system-wide reorganization will inevitably direct attention and resources away from the important task of making a difference for students.

Beyond the priorities of equity and outcomes, the proposed reforms of Bill 64 are founded on some questionable assumptions. The province asserts that Manitoba has more school divisions than any other province. Manitoba has 37 school divisions. Of the provinces west of Quebec, only Saskatchewan, with 27 school divisions, has fewer. Alberta has 61 school divisions, British Columbia has 60 and Ontario has 76. Vancouver, like Winnipeg, has six school divisions. All have elected trustees.

Bill 64 abolishes all school divisions in favour of a single, unelected and unaccountable education authority. It will almost inevitably be impersonal, bureaucratic and slow to respond. When Winnipeg moved to code red last fall, Seven Oaks School Division established a remote-learning option for 600 students within a week. The province opened its remote-learning centre months later, with a budget of $10 million, to serve 600 students.

Bill 64 establishes a stronger role for parents through advisory councils. Enhancing the power of parent advisory councils has been tried and abandoned in New Zealand and the U.K., for the simple reason that parents participation waned. Parents would much rather come to school to celebrate and support their children; few attend parent council, but everyone goes to concerts and parent-teacher meetings.

The province asserts that Manitobas administrative costs are too high. Those costs are already capped by the province. The administrative costs of Winnipeg school divisions are already lower than those of Calgary and Edmonton.

We continue to weather the pandemic. There is no easy path back to normal. Weve been successful where enough individuals change their behaviour in ways that limit transmission of the virus. The vaccines are the product of dedicated and talented scientists working around the clock. There is no statute or organization chart that will cure COVID-19 or improve schools.

Schools have been working flat-out to navigate the challenge of COVID-19, to stay open and stay safe. Throughout COVID-19, our school systems have demonstrated remarkable resilience and perseverance. And were not done yet. The province is still in code red. High school students still attend only every second day. We have no extra curricular activities. Thousands are still being home-schooled or being taught remotely.

Were not yet clear on the full impact of the pandemic. It has resulted in learning loss, especially for our younger and more vulnerable students, and it has impacted all students mental health and physical fitness. Whats needed now is a period of calm and stability, a period of recovery, a chance for us all to catch our breath.

Schools and the people who work in them need to be valued and supported. They should be thanked for their work throughout the pandemic, not hammered.

Brian OLeary is superintendent of the Seven Oaks School Division.
'Exceptional' sighting of grey whale off coast of Italy.

A grey whale was spotted in the Gulf of Naples over the weekend, three days after another sighting in the waters off the island of Ponza, in what is described as an "exceptional event."

Experts believe the whale seen off the coast of Pozzuoli on the evening of 17 April and the port of Baia the next morning, is likely the same animal seen off the Pontine Islands last week, in what is hailed as the "first visit" to Italy by a grey whale.

Regional maritime authorities have dispatched boats to allow for observation of the whale - estimated at eight metres long - while the local coast guard has ordered all ships away from the area to avoid obstructing the whale's journey.

Noting that grey whales live in the north-eastern Pacific Ocean, between California and Alaska, experts from the Punta Campanella Marine Protected Area say "it remains to be understood how and for what reasons the whale finds itself in the Mediterranean."

The grey whale seen off Ponza last week

"It could be the changing climatic conditions, with the melting of Arctic glaciers, that has caused this incredible migration" - the experts say - stressing that it is essential to report any sighting of the whale, "which appears undernourished and very thin."

In case of sightings, they underline, "remember to keep a distance of about 100 meters, not to interfere with the animal and to contact the authorities immediately, starting with the Harbour Master's Office with the toll-free number 1530."

The researchers also believe that the sighting of a grey whale off the coast of Morocco in March could be the same specimen.

Grey whales (Eschrichtius robustis), also known as Pacific grey whale, or California gray whale, are found regularly in coastal waters of the North Pacific.

Populations of grey whales off the European coast were wiped out before 500 AD, perhaps due to whaling, becoming extinct in the North Atlantic in the 18th century.

This makes the sighting of a grey whale off Italy an exceptionally rare event, although it is not the first time one was spotted in the Mediterranean: after centuries of no sightings, a grey whale was seen off the coasts of Israel and Spain in 2010.

Grey whales can measure up to 15 metres long and can weigh up to 40 tons. Photo La Repubblica.
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., April 19, 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 the appointment of Jon Shear to the newly created position of Vice President, Corporate Development, effective immediately.

"Jon is uniquely qualified for this new role and brings extensive insight and understanding of the medical technologies industry to Nevro," said D. Keith Grossman, Chairman, CEO and President of Nevro. "As a member of our leadership team, he will be responsible for leading Nevro's strategic planning process, overseeing the business development function and driving strong alignment between the company's strategies and its external business development plans as we continue to accelerate toward long-term sustainable growth and strong financial performance for our shareholders. We are delighted to welcome Jon to the team."

"I am very pleased to join Nevro at such an exciting time in its growth trajectory," said Jon Shear. "I look forward to working with Keith and the rest of the Nevro team to execute on the company's long-term growth strategy."

About Jon Shear

Immediately prior to joining Nevro, Mr. Shear founded Westward Medtech, a consulting practice that assisted medtech company clients with strategic planning, decision making and transaction execution. Previously, Mr. Shear was appointed the Vice President of Business Development at Thoratec Corporation in 2002 where he originated and led the corporate development function through the sale of the company to St. Jude Medical in 2015. Prior to joining Thoratec, he spent 13 years with St. Jude Medical through a period of tremendous growth and diversification in a variety of finance, marketing, and healthcare services roles of increasing responsibility, and then serving in St. Jude's Corporate Business and Technology Development Group. Mr. Shear passed the Certified Public Accounting exam from the State of Minnesota and began his career in the financial services industry after receiving a BS degree in Accounting and Business Administration Finance from Minnesota State University, Mankato. Jon Shear has also completed Mergers and Acquisition programs at the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management and UCLA Anderson School of Management.

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


(PA)

Fast-food chain Leon has been bought for 100 million by the Issa brothers, the billionaire siblings who bought Asda just a few months ago.

The brothers petrol forecourt business, EG group, have bought more than 70 Leon restaurants across the UK and Europe with plans to build out the network, including drive-through sites.

Mohsin Issa and Zuber Issa said the deal offered a fantastic opportunity to purchase a  brand we have long admired.

The group has also committed to keeping on Leons management team and staff.

Leon boss John Vincent, who co-founded the firm in 2004, said: In some ways this is a sad day for me.

We have tried hard, done some good things, made a healthy amount of mistakes, and built a business that quite a few people are kind enough to say that they love, he added.

Mr Vincent described the Issa brothers as decent, hard-working business people who would be superb custodians of the Leon brand.

He had previously said Leon was losing around 200,000 a week during lockdown.

That probably means that versus what we would have been making, were losing probably an extra 800,000, he said.

The deal includes 42 company-owned restaurants, as well as 29 franchise sites which are mainly found in airports and train stations across the UK and a handful of European countries such as the Netherlands and Spain.

Leon made sales of about 115m in 2019, running losses to fund its expansion within the UK and overseas before the pandemic stunted its growth plans.

Read More

Under-the-hammer Leon restaurants is one of many ethical firms to suffer from Covid

Leon restaurants founder John Vincent says he hopes Issa brothers will continue his ethical stance
WASHINGTON, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions (CRES) Executive Director Heather Reams today applauded U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for his leadership in introducing the "Energy Innovation Agenda: Conservative Solutions for a Better Climate" in advance of Earth Day. A three-day online summit hosted by McCarthy will feature more than thirty bills and policies championed by congressional Republicans, each addressing a unique environmental or climate change challenge.

"When progressives say Republicans don't care about the environment, here are three dozen reasons why that's just not true," Reams said. "These bills from House Republicans give America a clear-headed alternative to the reckless spending and heavy-handed government control offered by the Biden Administration. Combined into America's Energy Innovation Agenda, these bills and policies present a climate change plan that doesn't sacrifice our country."

In support of McCarthy's initiative, CRES today launched republicanclimateplan.com , an online resource to learn more about America's Energy Innovation Agenda, and to better understand how climate policy can support a thriving American economy. The site provides a direct link to the Minority Leader's live page where visitors can stream live or replay the entire Energy Innovation Agenda Summit.

"Greenhouse gas emissions are a global problemrequiring affordable, reliable solutions that work just as well for India as they do for Indiana," Reams said. "America's Energy Innovation Agenda charts a path towards globally deployable solutions that will grow instead of shrink our GDP. The formula is quite simple: Cut energy costs, not energy choices. Export American innovation, not American jobs. Reduce our emissions, not our economy.

"We know this approach works," Reams continued. "Between 2005 and 2019, America reduced our emissions more than the next twelve countries combined, all while making energy more affordable and growing our economy. The Biden Administration's mandates and restrictions do the oppositedrive up energy prices, replace American jobs with empty promises, and hand over our prosperity directly to our adversaries in the Middle East, Russia, and China.

"America's conservative climate plan starts at the foundationfixing our convoluted permitting process for construction projects," Reams continued. "America can't harness the power of its natural resources, create jobs and reduce emissions, if bureaucratic red tape stymies new clean energy projects and cleaner, modern replacements for our aging infrastructure. Reforms like the BUILDER Act will quickly reduce our emissions, save taxpayer money, and create good-paying, 'Made in America' jobs.

"The Republican agenda offers strong support for American innovation, the world's best hope against climate change, by advancing the rollout of new technologies faster than ever," Reams continued. "At the same time, bills such as The Trillion Trees Act combine ecologic with economic forces to enhance the environment. Natural solutions tap the expertise of Americans already on the front lines of a changing climate  our farmers, ranchers, hunters, fishers and foresters  to help capture carbon and conserve our fields, forests, prairies and wetlands for future generations.

"For too long the environment has been politicized as a red vs blue issue. The truth is, it's a red, white and blue issue, and impacts us all," Reams concluded. "It's time to listen to Conservatives' affordable, rational and reliable solutions that are good for America and for the planet."

SOURCE Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions




By Khoo Ying Hooi



Recently, I had the opportunity to be part of a program on Media Literacy Workshop on Media Representation of Migrants and Refugees in Digital Spaces.

This workshop has four aims: to ensure accurate information on refugees, migrants and other vulnerable populations is disseminated through media platforms and relevant information channels; to promote ethical, balanced reporting, stigma-free language that respects and empowers refugees, migrants and vulnerable population and avoids the use of stereotypical, negative expressions that can create or increase stigma, xenophobia and discrimination; encourage the media to amplify the voices of refugees, migrants and vulnerable populations by focusing on stories that humanize their experiences and struggles; to strengthen 'whole of community' approach in reducing prejudice and promoting social cohesion of refugees, migrants and vulnerable populations in COVID-19 response and efforts.

Migrants and refugees in Malaysia face critical situation as arrests and xenophobia escalate during the pandemic.

As of now, we have nearly 180,000 refugees and asylum seekers registered with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in Malaysia.

There are at least two million migrant workers mostly from Indonesia and Bangladesh, making up 15% of the total employed persons according to the Ministry of Home Affairs in the 2019 data. This statistic of migrant workers as reported however is expected to be lower than the reality, as we too have undocumented migrant workers in the country.

The marginalization of migrants and refugees in Malaysia is not new, and the stereotyping of them has long existed in the society.

Very often, Malaysians forget the contributions of migrant workers to the development and economy of Malaysia is undeniably significant since their arrival in the 1980s.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the issue and has continues to affect the well being of migrants and refugees as they face issues such as forced leave, involuntary repatriation, discrimination and xenophobia.

These issues occur because people are poorly informed about migrants and refugees, and the alarmist narratives by different groups including the media. Therefore, instead of acknowledging the increasing diversity in our society and recognizing how it could enrich us, many see migrants and refugees as threats to the existing social order, and that they are the 'culprits' in our social problems.

In today's column, I would like to highlight the role of media in this issue, how can media help in shaping public perception towards migrants and refugees

As we know, media plays an important role in shaping public perception. Therefore, it is crucial to look at the practice of our media in portraying the migrants and refugees.

The relationship between migrants and the media is not an easy one. Sensational news is important for media, and in the case of migrants and refugees, sometimes the media tends to choose to speak of sensational news involving migrants and refugees, and neglect the responsibility and media ethics to portray them in a neutral, balanced and accurate way.

The media, as an important influencer of the issue especially in the age of social media, media become a very powerful tool and one of the main determinants of public perception.

Media can play a role in counteracting misunderstanding and fear in our society by changing the narratives, as this can help to ensure that the human rights of migrants and refugees are protected with the effects they could produce in the public conversation.

For instance, the language used in the media when covering stories about migrants and refugees often describe them as 'the other' and one of the most common words used in relation to them was 'illegal'. These words oversimplified the condition of a migrant or refugees, for instance they dismiss the journey of how a migrant becomes undocumented.

When the media uses the word, 'illegal' to describe them, naturally it comes with negative perception and that they are seen as 'intruders'. The dehumanizing language should be avoided, as such words also triggered questions such as, who are these people and what do they want from us?

Are they bringing their problems to our country? The problem is made worse by those media outlets when they have desire to sensationalize the news. By saying that, it is important for the media practitioners to be more vigilant with the choice of the words that they pick and the consequences that can come together with it in the process of shaping public perception.

What can be helpful is, the media could consider changing narrative by presenting the situation as an emergency, by communicating what's happening, who's affected, and what's needed the most.

Communication about migrants and refugees could be improved with more diversity as in to report the issues from different perspectives, for instance, by including their voice in reporting.

The common strategies by the media such as simplification, dramatization and sensationalism in the issue of migrants and refugees should be avoided. In related to this, evidence-based reporting is important to ensure the accuracy of information.

In the rise of xenophobic discourses, media practitioners have an ethical responsibility in shaping public perception, as they also play a role in the efforts to protect the human rights of migrants and refugees to ensure that rumors and unfounded stories do not negatively affect their lives.

(Khoo Ying Hooi is Universiti Malaya Senior Lecturer.)
An Ansonia man was sentenced Thursday to 18 months in federal prison after authorities claim he served as a money mule in lottery and romance rackets.

Montrell Dobbs Jr., 28, also faces three years supervised release at the conclusion of his prison sentence, the Connecticut U.S. attorneys office said.

Dobbs served as a middle man, picking up checks and cash sent by the schemes mostly elderly victims from the Ansonia Post Office, according to the U.S. attorneys office. Dobbs would take his cut and then pass the rest of the money to the others in the conspiracy, the U.S. attorneys office said.

Dobbs appeared before U.S. District Judge Stefan R. Underhill via video conference, a press release said.

In a lottery scam, scammers notify victims by telephone, through online communications, or by mail, that they have won the lottery, the release said. The victims are then told that in order to collect the prize, they must pay fees for things like taxes, shipping and processing.

In romance scams, the victims are people looking for companionship, the U.S. attorneys office said. Scammers use fake dating profiles to lure victims in before asking for money, claiming to need it for medical or business emergencies, for travel to see the victim, or other purposes, the release said.

Authorities estimate the scams swindled more than 200 people across the country out of more than $5 million. Many of the victims were elderly and vulnerable, and some victims lost their life savings. One Connecticut victim lost more than $1 million, the release said.

Dobbs is believed to have been directly involved with at least 25 victims who lost upwards of $85,000, authorities said. He was ordered to pay full restitution.

He was arrested March 12, 2020, and pleaded guilty to one count of money laundering on Dec. 21 last year.

Dobbs is free on $100,000 bond and is due to report to prison June 2. Four others accused of being involved are also awaiting trial, the U.S. attorneys office said.

To report cases of internet fraud, call 833-372-8311.
(@FahadShabbir)

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th April, 2021) The Open Skies Transport Agreement between the US and the Republic of the Congo, aiming to streamline civil aviation communication between the two, has come into force, the State Department said in a release on Monday.

"On April 19, the Air Transport Agreement between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Republic of the Congo entered into force," the release said. "The Agreement establishes a modern civil aviation relationship with Congo consistent with the U.S. Open Skies international aviation policy. This includes unrestricted capacity and frequency of services, open route rights, a liberal charter regime, and code-sharing opportunities.

"

The agreement is a US commitment to diversify Congo's economy and leadership to liberalize the civil aviation sector and, as a result, to provide more affordable, convenient, and efficient air services between the United States and Congo, the release said.

Starting in 1992, the US has adopted the so-called Open Skies policy to promote airline globalization and increases travel and trade. As of today, the US has signed Open Skies bilateral agreements with over 125 foreign governments around the world. At the same time, the US maintains more restrictive air transport agreements with a number of other countries, including China.
soona, a Denver, CO-based virtual content creation platform for e-commerce, raised $10.2M in Series A funding.

The round was led by Union Square Ventures with participation from Matchstick Ventures, Starting Line Ventures, 2048 Ventures and Range Ventures.

The company will use the funding to expand its proprietary Camera-to-Cloud technology and introduce a subscription product.

Founded in 2019 by Liz Giorgi and Hayley Anderson, and Hayley Anderson, co-founder and Chief Creative Officer, soona provides a technology platform that powers virtual photo and video shoots, enabling brands to create content for e-commerce and marketing. The platform provides professional custom content with a 24-hour delivery time.

With over 4,000 customers including Lola Tampons, The Sill, and Wild Earth, and three hubs in Austin, TX; Denver, CO; and Minneapolis, MN, soona helps companies sell products online and in-store in four core industries: beauty and cosmetics, fashion and footwear, home goods, and petcare.

FinSMEs

19/04/2021
?? Ahora | La presidenta del Consejo de Ministros, @VBermudezV, y el titular del @Minsa_Peru supervisan, por segundo dia consecutivo, el proceso de vacunacion a adultos mayores de 80 anos en el Campo de Marte.#PongoElHombro ???????? pic.twitter.com/hvmQ0bgHkl
Prince Andrew left the Duke of Edinburgh's funeral in the back of his new 220,000 racing-green Bentley, which he had fitted with personalised number plates.

The Duke of York, 61, sat in the back of the 200mph Bentley Flying Spur, which was blue when first delivered in September before being spray-painted.

The luxury motor was pictured driving out of Windsor Castle on the way to nearby Royal Lodge, the home Andrew shares with ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, 61.

It replaces Prince Andrew's previous Bentley Continental GT, in the same driving-green colour, with an estimated resale value of 130,000.

Just hours earlier, Prince Andrew walked behind his father's coffin as it was slowly carried to St George's Chapel in Windsor on the back of a custom-built Land Rover hearse.

Inside the chapel, Andrew sat closest to the Queen - with the family still separated by several empty chairs due to social distancing rules.

The duke's appearance at the funeral came 18-months after he stepped back from Royal duties following his disastrous Newsnight interview over his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.

His withdrawal from public life meant he did not appear in photos of his daughter Princess Beatrice's wedding to Italian property developer Edo Mapelli Mozzi in July.

In 2019, Prince Andrew said he was willing to help US officials with their Epstein investigations - but was last year accused of providing 'zero cooperation'.

Prince Andrew left Prince Philip's funeral in a brand new 220,000 racer-green Bentley. The Duke of York, 61, sat in the back of the 200mph Bentley Flying Spur (pictured arriving at the funeral) - which was blue when first delivered in September before being spray-painted

Just hours earlier, Prince Andrew solemnly walked behind his father's coffin as it was slowly carried to St George's Chapel in Windsor

Inside the chapel, Andrew sat closest to the Queen - with the family still separated by countless empty chairs due to social distancing rules

The new Bentley joins a fleet of luxury motors belonging to Andrew - including a 115,000 petrol-hybrid Range Rover, The Sun reports.

The green car replaces an old Bentley Continental GT owned by the duke. Depending on the year it was first purchased, the old motor could have been sold for upwards of 130,000 second hand.

It is unclear what happens to cars belonging to members of the Firm when the owner is ready to sell.

In 2019, a Mulsanne owned and used by the Queen was returned to Bentley, where features such as police lights and security communication devices were removed, and the registration number changed before being sold by a private dealership.

On Sunday it was revealed that Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson had made regular visits to see the Queen following Prince Philip's death.

The Queen was left sitting on her own during the Duke of Edinburgh's funeral on Saturday in tear-jerking images that shocked the nation.

However, the royals have rushed to her side following Philip's death, led by Andrew and his ex-wife with sources saying that Prince Edward and Sophie Wessex have also spent 'a lot of time' supporting her.

As the Queen returns to life without her husband of 73 years she will also be staying at Windsor Castle with a 'bubble' of 22 Royal household staff, including some of her closest aides.

It was today revealed that the Windsor 'bubble' will be the only group joining her for her 95th birthday on Wednesday - her first without Philip in seven decades.

Plans to mark the day with a new portrait of her are set to be shelved because she is still in the official period of royal mourning for her beloved husband.

The glaring absence of Prince Philip will be impossible to ignore and the run-up to what should have been a joyous day is set to be overshadowed by speculation about the major rift in her family.

While onlookers were heartened by the sight of William and Harry in conversation as they left their grandfather's funeral on Saturday, sources said a meaningful reconciliation between the brothers was still some way off.

Harry was yesterday said to be flying back to Los Angeles very soon after being seen with his brother and sister-in-law Kate for the first time in more than a year.

That gives little time to heal open wounds and it is not known whether the 36-year-old saw his father Prince Charles outside of Saturday's emotional proceedings.

Previous Bentley: The Duke of York driving a Bentley Continental GT - the old Bentley he replaced. Depending on the year it was first purchased, the car can be sold for upwards of 130,000 second hand

Prince Andrew driving his 115,000 Range Rover on the Windsor estate in December 2020

Kate seemingly broke the ice outside St George's Chapel by speaking to Harry, with whom she had once been so close.

As the family group walked back from the ceremony  an impromptu decision, as a fleet of state cars had been laid on for the mourners  she hung back slightly so the brothers, driven apart by Harry and Meghan's acrimonious decision to quit royal duties and move to the US, could talk.

The body language was stilted and the exchange appeared to be little more than polite chit chat, but it was a start.

Senior royals, including the Queen, Charles, William and Harry, spent more than an hour together outside in the castle grounds before going their separate ways by 6pm.

It was unlikely they had any serious discussions but it was the most time they had spent together as a family since Harry and Meghan quit the UK more than a year ago.

Royal sources however last night warned that 'one swallow does not a summer make' and the rift between the two men, particularly after the string of hurtful and highly damaging allegations made by the Sussexes in their bombshell Oprah interview last month, remained deep.

The Queen bowed her head as she sat alone in St George's Chapel during the funeral on Saturday

The Queen's Bentley followed the coffin from the castle to the church, behind the Land Rover and her family

One insider went so far as to suggest that the acrimony between the brothers could take years to heal, if ever.

And they stressed there was still widespread anger in the Royal Family and the household at large at the accusations levelled against them by the couple  in particularly the claims of racism and that Meghan was left suicidal through lack of support.
The Employees Union (GMEU) has challenged the layoff announced by the company alleging it is illegal. The move comes three days after the Detroit-based automaker invoked Section 25 of the Industrial Disputes Act and retrenched all the 1,419 workers employed by the Talegaon factory. It cited the global pandemic as the reason behind the step. The company stopped selling cars in the domestic market in 2017 and stopped the production completely on December 24, 2020.

Due to the rapid upsurge of the Covid-19, pandemic, we have been forced to lay off the workmen, GM said in a notice on 16 April. It said the company has laid off 1419 workmen under the Industrial Disputes (Maharashtra) Rules, 1957. The workmen are entitled to receive compensation with immediate effect. These workmen shall be paid 50 per cent of the total basic wages and dearness allowances, if any.

Since the lay-off has been declared largely because of Covid-19, being a natural calamity, no prior permission from the appropriate authority has been sought, nor is the same necessary under Section 25-M of the ID Act, said the notice.

In a letter to the company on Monday, GMEU said the retrenchment is illegal as the company is not well within its rights to use the provisions enshrined under Section 25-M. Neither the Central nor the State Government has declared the pandemic as a Natural Calamity. Therefore, GM should have taken prior permission from the appropriate authority.

Amid the pandemic, the Central and the State governments have requested the industries to take care of their employees. Leave aside, taking care, GM under the pretext of the pandemic is laying off people, said GMEU. According to the Union, since the matter is in the District Labour Court and the final order is still pending, India should not have arbitrarily changed the terms of agreement and announced retrenchment, said the GMEU letter. A copy of the letter has been reviewed by Business Standard.

GM had offered employees a separation package but the duo failed to reach an amicable settlement on the terms of separation. GM therefore, resorted to retrenchment for wind-down of operations at the site.

The spokesperson claimed production at the Talegaon plant ceased on December 24, 2020. The company gave employees and the union more than a years notice regarding the end of production. No vehicles have been manufactured since production ended on December 24, 2020, and there is no prospect of the company resuming production at the site.
The second wave of coronavirus has stuck hard, particularly in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. Was the wave surprising or we allowed it to happen? The number of cases are all set to reach a whopping 300,000 per day.The worst hit is Maharashtra, whose chief minister Uddhav Thackeray has taken the strong step of not allowing religious gatherings. The situation in Gujarat, particularly Surat and Ahmedabad, seems critical. Hospitals are overcrowded. Yet, Gujarats incompetence and failure is still not national news. Media appears obsessed with Maharashtra and West Bengal.Last year, when the Government of India imposed lockdown on March 24, the cases were around 550, but at that time there were not many detections, so one can't really believe the numbers that were being dished out.The Indian leadership then seemed confident, hence it converted it into a PR exercise by asking people to bang thalis, clapping and lighting candles to do away with coronavirus. Prime Minister Narendra Modi-sponsored janata curfew a couple of days earlier saw people come out on the streets shouted Jai Shri Ram and clapping, as if they had won the battle against the pandemic.For the next few months we were under severe restrictions. The government allowed no space for planning and imposed a harsh lockdown. Those who build our cities, do the menial work, the informal sector workers, were left to fend for themselves. Their isolation was complete. They were compelled to return to their villages. This fear of death was so powerful that people started taking all the risk just to reach their home and be with their near and dear ones.Factories, schools and railways were closed. Even essential commodities were not allowed to be distributed. The lockdown resulted in a huge humanitarian crisis but the government remained in a denial mode. It enjoyed the power of lockdown and wanted people to remain submissive.The real intentions of the government became visible once it started the unlock process. It felt that lockdown was the best opportunity to hand over Indias resources to a few cronies. It brought in farm laws and labour laws. Air India was put up for sale. Railways was being privatised without consulting the stakeholders, including the employees.Trains were suspended and railways are still running much below of their original capacity. No efforts were made to put the wheel of the economy back on the rails. In fact, the attempt was to hand over all the sectors of our economy to a few cronies, who mainly hail from Gujarat.Elections were organised in Bihar. Then came the turn of West Bengal, Assam, Kerala, Puducherry and Tamil Nadu. While Kerala, Puducherry and Tamil Nadu went to polls on just one day, Assam had three phases. The Election Commission decided to hold elections in West Bengal in eight phases, apparently to please the BJP.The way the Prime Minister and the Home Minister along with other ministers have been campaigning in West Bengal looks like it's municipal electionS. When both of them should have been in Delhi speaking to States and take stock of the situation, they seemed little bothered about it. To thm, winning elections at all costs is more important.With the opposition not speaking much and media completely surrendering and becoming the voice of the ruling BJP, and judiciary not finding time to act, the republic is at a critical stage. Perhaps the crisis is much bigger than the coronavirus itself. The one man who spoke about timely action is Rahul Gandhi, but Modi's ministers tried to humiliate him.The second phase of coronavirus wave has exposed the governments inefficiency which is more worried about its achievements. The Prime Minister and his ministers continued to claim that India has managed the coronavirus crisis better than the powerful Western world. Indias 'sarkari' intellectuals were suggesting that over 1.75 lakh deaths is much less than the people who died in US and UK, but they failed to observe what happened in China which is perfectly normal at the moment.Except for Wuhan, the Chinese actually controlled the crisis much more efficiently than any other country. Similarly, Vietnam, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia managed things far better than India and any other country.As for vaccination, the attitude of the government has been highly disturbing. The attempt was to deliberately destabilise the public sector or government hospitals and bring in the private players into action. It is said that various pharma companies are lobbying for the vast market in India. When Rahul Gandhi spoke for more vaccines, the governments ministers claimed that he was lobbying for foreign companies. But now the government has accepted and allowed import of Sputnik and other vaccines.The last one year should have been used to promote scientific and rational thinking among the people. The government should have promoted ideas that respect humanist values which does not create a stereotypical image of those suffering from coronavirus.Instead, the government and ministers continued to promote religious fundamentalism. Every Muslim was treated as Tablighi last year and blamed for spreading the virus. They did nothing to stop this nonsensical attitude. Ironically, they encouraged people to go to Kumbh and take a dip.The Uttarakhand chief minister went so far as to say that nobody would be denied entry in Kumbh because of the coronavirus norms. Meanwhile, reports started coming in that Kumbh in Haridwar has become a hotspot for spreading the virus. One of the top Sadhus died due to the virus.Though everyone cried foul against the Tablighi Jamaat last year with BJP leaders vilifying all the Muslims for spreading coronavirus, Hindu festivals and political rallies are rarely mentioned. The media jumped on the bandwagon of the illiterate Hindutva netas suggesting that a dip in Ganges will remove all the sins of the people. Now, we are in the Chaitra Ramnavami season and the government has not uttered a single sentence it.Today, Varanasi, Lucknow and Ghaziabad are suffering and the political leadership of the BJP is silent. It is busy campaigning in West Bengal but is keeping mum on the macabre of death in rest of the country due to coronavirus. Now, Uttar Pradesh is going to have panchayat elections. Netas are coming out and campaigning. Nobody is bothered about restrictions.Meanwhile, India has lost a historic opportunity. The government had time to strengthen the national health network on lines of the National Health Services of Great Britain which was on the verge of being privatised prior to Covid-19, but it turned out to be the biggest asset of the country. But our government never bothered about strengthening the health infrastructure. If the Centre failed, the States too showed no urgency.This period would have been the right time for the government to inculcate scientific temper among the people and asking them to be rational in thinking and having faith in modern medicine.But how can one trust a government when its health minister and another minister participate in a programme which made a false claim that Baba Ramdev had developed a corona medicine which has been approved by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Though WHO categorically denied this, the government did not bother.Meanwhile, coronavirus is here to stay for some time. We dont know when it will end but the crisis has exposed the hollowness of our leadership. The war against coronavirus cannot be won by jargons and empty rhetoric but with visionary actions, quick emergency response and long-term investment in medical infrastructure, even as developing scientific temper among the people.---
India: Family beaten, forced into home confinement for converting to Christianity

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A Christian family in an indigenous community in eastern India was beaten and forced to remain confined in their home for months after converting to Christianity and were subsequently charged by police for breaching the peace and public tranquility.

A woman, identified as Asha Korwa, and her family, who live in Khala village of Jharkhand states Garhwa District, converted to Christianity in early January and the harassment began soon after that, Morning Star News reported, noting that Korwa is a mother of two young children, ages 3 and 6.

Taking about one of the earliest attacks on Jan. 31, she told MSN, The mob brought with them the village president, media and police officers. As the media clicked our pictures and videotaped the attack, the police watched as mere spectators. They did not stop the assailants or the media.

The Christian woman said the attack took place around midnight and her husband, Sukender Korwa, and two children were also beaten.

Police officers at Garhwa police station summoned my husband to the police station and told him that he has been held responsible for the breach of peace and public tranquility under Section 107 of the Criminal Procedure Code, Korwa was quoted as saying. They told him that nobody from my family will step out of the village and that, if necessary, they would take our entire family into custody.

Korwa added, The first 10 days of February, we could not breathe in our own home. The police officers were stopping by to inquire if we have committed a breach of peace. They would go to our neighbors to take their report as to whether we behaved well.

The family was also physically attacked on Jan. 22.

Our house is very close to the main road, and they get annoyed by even the slightest of the noises that can be heard when we praise and worship, the woman said. On the day of the first attack on Jan. 22, a batch of strongmen from the community stormed into our home and started badgering us, Why are you shouting hallelujah? How dare you worship a foreign god!

The villagers beat her husband and threatened to chase down and kill the family if they ever heard Christian worship from their home again.

About 40 members of the Korwa community have put their faith in Christ, but they could not gather for prayers even during Holy Week. They worshipped secretly in their homes.

Last month, a mob of about 70 people carrying weapons attacked a group of Christians who were praying at a believers home in Surguda village in neighboring Chhattisgarh states Bastar District, burning Bibles, destroying furniture and injuring at least six Christians, the U.K.-based group Christian Solidarity Worldwide reported at the time.

The persecution of Christians in tribal or indigenous communities in the two states is taking place amid radical Hindu groups campaign to stop the countrys tribal people from converting to Christianity. These groups have been demanding that the government ban those who convert from receiving education and employment opportunities.

Most tribals do not identify as Hindu; they have diverse religious practices and many worship nature. However, the governments census identifies them as Hindu. Radical nationalist groups, which have been working in tribal-majority areas to compete with Christian workers, have influenced some groups among the tribal population.

In three separate attacks in Chhattisgarhs Kondagaon district last September, tribal villagers vandalized 16 houses belonging to Christians from the same tribe and attacked at least one tribal Christian woman, forcing all-male family members to flee into jungles for safety at the time.

The Christian men were able to return to their homes days later after the Bilaspur High Court passed an order in a Public Interest Litigation filed by 12 Christians to seek security for the displaced Christians.

Since the current ruling party (Bharatiya Janata Party) took power in 2014, incidents against Christians have increased, and Hindu radicals often attack Christians with little to no consequences, noted Open Doors World Watch List last year, which ranked India as the 10th worst country for Christians.

The view of the Hindu nationalists is that to be Indian is to be Hindu, so any other faith  including Christianity  is viewed as non-Indian. Also, converts to Christianity from Hindu backgrounds or tribal religions are often extremely persecuted by their family members and communities, Open Doors said at the time.
This scenario besets pre-K in New York City. Mayor Bill de Blasio, with virtuous aims, rapidly expanded free and universal pre-K. Seven years later, most children attend sharply segregated preschools. The average Black child now attends a center of measurably lower quality, relative to the typical white child, as Princeton University scholars have detailed. These racial gaps in pre-K quality have grown wider since de Blasio championed his entitlement in 2014. One-third of preschoolers nationally attend centers in which over nine in 10 kids belong to a single racial group, then continue to fall behind.
Introducing The Color of Music Collective

In this piece, we meet the Color of Music Collective, and organization on a mission to highlight and amplify the work of BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ persons operating in the music business.

Guest post by Michelle Golden from The Orchards The Daily Rind

Meet the Color of Music Collective, an organization with the mission of amplifying the voices of BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ individuals working in the music industry. Founded by Mia Van Allen and Marcella Desharnais, the organization is paving the path for public discussion and promotion of underrepresented communities within the music industry. Lets just say theyre working towards reshaping the narrative of leadership and success within the overall industry. While there is a long way to go, organizations such as Color of Music Collective show the importance of highlighting stories often untold and making a serious change and impact for the next generation of artists and industry leaders.

Tell us a little bit about the Color of Music Collective.

(MIA) My name is Mia Van Allen and I am the Founder of the Color of Music Collective (COMC). Starting at the age of 18, I began my career in the music industry by managing a band in my hometown of Chicago. I was so fortunate to have gotten my foot in the door at such a young age, but I didnt realize until later in my career the lack of diversity in the music industry. Outside of managing a band and being a full-time college student, I was lucky to be able to intern in offices from London to New York City. Even after working in some of the worlds largest cities when it comes to music, I was still always the only person of color in the room. I really wanted to create a space and community where different communities could connect and collaborate.

(MARCELLA) My name is Marcella, my pronouns are she/they, and Im the Executive Director of the Color of Music Collective. Im also currently working in the Release Planning department at Sony Music, managing two upcoming artists, and freelance consulting with other non-profit organizations. I grew up a performing saxophonist and always knew music was my passion. My first experience in the music business was interning with Universal Music Groups Advanced Media department in college, and from then on I was determined to carve my own path in the industry. As a queer woman, I always felt the pressure of adhering to gender norms, to dress more feminine for interviews, and to keep my sexuality to myself. I wanted to do my part to advocate for my community, and Im grateful to COMC for giving me the opportunity to support both the LGBTQIA+ community as well as BIPOC in music.

Why was the Color of Music Collective formed?

(MIA) At one of my previous internships, I was able to meet my now, Co-founder and close friend, Carla Hendershot. Carla is a member of the LBGTQ+ community and is also a first generation. We both really connected because were both for communities that are always looking from the outside-in. After the internship, we stayed in touch and always discussed wishing there was a community like what COMC is today. When I graduated from American University and the job market was at its worst due to COVID-19, I thought now would be the perfect time to start Color of Music Collective!

Fast forward to almost a year, COMC has grown to now having a blog, countless free and virtual networking panels that feature all BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ music executives, a mentorship program, a Clubhouse, and a soon to be masterclass series. Im amazed by how fast COMC is growing but it really shows the importance of a space like this and how it was needed years ago.

What are some initiatives youve launched in the past few months we should know about?

(MARCELLA) 2021 has definitely begun as a year of growth for us already. Towards the end of last year, we wrapped up our first ever mentorship program where we matched 30 of our volunteers with 30 industry professionals who helped them learn about a music business niche of their choice (marketing, A&R, etc.). Were currently working out the logistics of our next mentorship cohort and are really excited to give back to so many of our dedicated volunteers. Weve also launched into themed partnerships. We were fortunate enough to partner with Def Jam for some incredible Black History Month programming and look forward to how we can bring more labels/music companies into these important conversations. Weve also launched our official Clubhouse room, so you can join us there for some great discussions as well!

Youve hosted a number of panels covering a range of topics as they relate to intersectionality and representation. Why is it important to you to change the narrative of leadership and success in the music industry?

(MIA) Thanks for that question. Our main goal at COMC is to elevate and amplify the voices of BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ people in the music industry. Most of our members and viewers are younger people who are just coming to the industry from finishing school or from early in their careers.

I know from my own experience that it is rare to see certain types of people at the middle and upper levels in the music business. What I mean is that the most likely place to see Black people, first-generation people, LGBTQ+ folk, Indigenous peopleare in entry level positions, or not at all. I was nearly always the only Black intern at an office. I was sometimes the only Black person inside the entire office. I know what it feels like to have a great idea, and a plan to execute it, that my boss loves, while at the same time not being able to fit in with the lunch plans of the white interns. I know what it feels when the what is SHE doing here looks are exchanged behind my back.

It is so important to change the way music industry leadership looks at issues of workplace inclusion, mentorship, professional development and promotion for people who have traditionally not been included at the top levels at companies. Young, diverse people think in ways that are creative and fresh. Young, diverse people are coming up with cutting-edge strategies all the time because they have their finger on the pulse of so many different strands of what is going on in societyat the same time. Their experiences are valuable.

In the end, for music companies, the inclusion, mentorship and promotion of under-represented people with intersectional experiences, ideas and strategies, will improve the productivity and success of companies as a whole.

(MARCELLA) The narrative of leadership and success in the music industry is not reflective of the culture that the industry claims. While thats a simplistic way of putting it, what I mean is that, the music business thrives off of the art of POC, LGBTQIA+ folk, etc. So much of that music is derived from struggle, from culture, from the stories of folks who are not accurately represented in the ranks of the music industry. Its frustrating, its unfair, and the least I can do to do my part is to help facilitate these important conversations. Right now, the music business is a connections business. Its often about who you know, who will help you get your foot in the door, and the reality is that those connections are not as readily available to BIPOC, or folks who cant afford higher education, or anyone who doesnt have education-based access to learning more about the music industry. I wanted to do my part to break the gatekeeping of this business, and pave the way for everyone to have a more equal opportunity to pursue their passion in music.

In the end, for music companies, the inclusion, mentorship and promotion of under-represented people with intersectional experiences, ideas and strategies, will improve the productivity and success of companies as a whole.

What do you find happens when people come together on a platform to discuss change?

(MARCELLA) There is so much more power to something when its verbalized. When we host a panel, or a Clubhouse room, we are bringing industry executives to rising professionals and taking those steps towards less gatekeeping, and more equal accessibility. Were pairing a passion for social good with powerful action items, and we find that ultimately, we have created a catalyst for change.

Young, diverse people are coming up with cutting-edge strategies all the time because they have their finger on the pulse of so many different strands of what is going on in societyat the same time. Their experiences are valuable.

What recent discussions have you hosted that you feel attendees walked away with a new understanding?

(MIA) Recently, we hosted a panel about artist campaigns from nominations of 2021 Grammy artists. A lot of our audience members are relatively new to marketing and some are also independent artists. We constantly get asked questions ranging from how to stand out as an artist from any new marketing strategies young execs should look out for. People walked away with a new understanding of how to approach a new campaign, how to stand out in such a competitive industry, and really taking advantage of the age were in now when it comes to A&Rs seeking out new artists through quarantine blogs and TikTok.

(MARCELLA) We recently partnered with the Music Business Association to host a student-led roundtable. It was a discussion amongst some of the youngest game changers of the music business, diving into ways that theyve spearheaded the music culture on campus and their advice to those trying to do the same. I know for me personally, this was a conversation that wouldve been crucial to me while I was attending college. I wanted to hear from other students who were making waves in the business, who were landing my dream internships, and who left college with job offers. We discussed everything from the importance of networking, how to make your creative portfolio standout, taking the initiative to launch your own student organization. It felt like an important conversation for our attendees who had the opportunity to ask their own questions directly to our panelists as well.

Were pairing a passion for social good with powerful action items, and we find that ultimately, we have created a catalyst for change.

To learn more about your organization, where can people follow you?

You can follow us on all social media platforms @colorofmusiccollective. Follow us on Clubhouse as well that we just launched!

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Seoul, April 19 : South Korean President Moon Jae-in will participate in a multi-lateral meeting on climate change this week to be hosted by his American counterpart Joe Biden, the government in Seoul confirmed on Monday.

Moon will join the virtual Leaders Summit on Climate, slated for Thursday and Friday, along with dozens of other heads of state, Yonhap news Agency quoted presidential palace spokesperson Park Kyung-mee as saying in a statement.

Delivering a speech at a session to be held for two hours from 9 p.m. on Thursday (Seoul time), Moon plans to explain Seoul's commitment to strengthening its "climate action" and request global support for the second P4G summit on green growth and sustainable development, which is slated to take place in Seoul in May, Park added.
A bill aimed at freeing young people with an entrepreneurial spirit from worrying about obtaining a license to operate a business passed the Pennsylvania House of Representatives on Monday.

The legislation, while dubbed the free the lemonade stand bill, would extend the license exemption to any business operated by a minor under age 18, that is open for less than 84 days in a calendar year, and generates less than $5,000 in profits.

Rep. Johnathan Hershey, R-Mifflin County, who sponsored House Bill 664, said he was prompted to introduce the legislation after reading a news article about a Washington, D.C., family being fined $500 for allowing their child to operate a lemonade stand without a license. He said he was even more shocked to learn that similar occurrences have happened in places in the commonwealth.

This bill is limited so it allows minor-run businesses to operate without fear of retribution from their local municipality, Hershey said. The short-term jobs that these kids have and the businesses they start benefit them for a lifetime. It teaches marketing skills. It teaches bookkeeping skills and allows our young entrepreneurs the freedom to operate.

The bill bars minors from operating their business in a location where it is in direct competition with a business that is required to get a license. It also states the minors business must be located in a primarily residential area or un-zoned location.

Rep. David Maloney, R-Berks County, said he was disappointed the legislation is even necessary but some municipalities contract out to third-party agencies targeting yard sales and lemonade stands.

He urged his colleagues to unanimously support the bill, which all 201 members did. It now goes to the state Senate for consideration.

Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JanMurphy.
The government has commended the initiative of Filipinos to set up community pantries to help those in need during the crisis. But some senators say while the initiative highlights the bayanihan spirit, it also thrusts into spotlight the government's lack of support for people.

Gerg Cahiles has the story.
Prince Harry wrote his father a 'deeply personal' letter in which he promised to 'respect the institution' before he flew back to the UK for the Duke of Edinburgh's funeral.

The Duke of Sussex, 36, penned the note to Prince Charles after their relationship 'hit rock bottom' in the wake of his explosive Oprah Winfrey interview with Meghan Markle last month.

His decision to reach out to his father also came after he accused Prince Charles of refusing to take his calls.

However the Prince of Wales still remains 'very hurt' by Harry and Meghan's decision to take part in the controversial interview, which was aired while Prince Philip was in hospital, and the pair have not yet mended their fractured relationship.

Prince Harry (left) and Prince Charles (right) walks behind the Duke of Edinburgh's coffin as it makes its way to St George's Chapel in Windsor

Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew, Prince Edward, Prince William, Peter Phillips, Prince Harry, Earl of Snowdon David Armstrong-Jones and Vice-Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence during the funeral of Prince Philip

In his letter, Prince Harry 'outlined his reasons for leaving' his position as a senior royal in order to emigrate to California and said he would 'respect the institution', sources told The Mirror.

The Duke of Sussex, who decided to reach out to his father as he prepared to reunite with his family for the first time after stepping back as a senior royal, was 'forced to write letters' after a 'complete communication breakdown' with Prince Charles, sources claim.

A royal source told The Mirror: 'He wrote a deeply personal note to his dad to try and set things straight but tensions are still running high and things haven't exactly ironed out the way he had hoped.

'There had been a kind of unspoken agreement between everyone to park whatever has been on each person's mind, and solely concentrate on supporting the Queen ahead of Prince Philip's funeral.

'The feeling inside the camp was that it wasn't the time nor the place to go over things, especially at such an emotional time for everybody involved.'

During his interview with Winfrey last month, Prince Harry said he felt 'very let down' by his father Prince Charles, accusing him of refusing to take his calls and then 'cutting him off' financially when he and his wife emigrated.

Asked about his relationship with Prince Charles, Harry said they were now speaking again, adding: 'There's a lot to work through there, you know? I feel really let down, because he's been through something similar.

'He knows what pain feels like, and Archie's his grandson. I will always love him, but there's a lot of hurt that's happened. And I will continue to make it one of my priorities to try and heal that relationship'.

When asked about if he remains close to Prince William he replied: 'I love William to bits. He's my brother. We've been through hell together. I mean, we have a shared experience. But we're on different paths'.

Meghan also claimed that a relative of Prince Harry's asked him 'how dark' their unborn child would be, with the Duchess claiming Archie being mixed-race was a 'problem' for the royals after Winfrey asked her if they were worried their son would be 'too brown'.

The Duke of Edinburgh's coffin, covered with his Personal Standard, is carried on the purpose built Land Rover Defender followed by the Princess Royal, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, the Earl of Wessex, the Duke of Cambridge, Peter Phillips, the Duke of Sussex, the Earl of Snowdon and Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence

Prince Charles walks behind the Duke of Edinburgh's coffin at it makes its way to St George's Chapel

Prince Harry was sat directly across from his older brother and his wife Kate having flown in without his wife Meghan

The Duchess of Cambridge and the Duke of Cambridge look towards Philip's coffin before it was lowered into the Royal Vault

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during their interview with Oprah Winfrey last month

The former Suits star said she would not name the person because it would be 'too damaging' for them but she confirmed that the duke was asked the question  'how dark his skin might be when he's born'  'by family'.

Earlier today a source revealed that Prince Charles 'walked and talked' with Prince Harry at Windsor Castle before taking part in a 'family summit' with both his sons after Prince Philip's funeral.

It is not clear what was discussed at the meeting, but the source said they began the 'long task' of looking at condolence letters sent from around the world.'

The talks come as speculation whirls around when the Duke of Sussex will fly back to LA to be with pregnant wife Meghan Markle.

Prince Harry arrived in the UK on April 11, reportedly with his own US private security team.

According to the Telegraph, the Duke was met at Heathrow Airport by Met Police officers, who helped whisk him off to the royal residence of Frogmore Cottage - where he was placed into quarantine ahead of the funeral.

The prince is said to have booked a return flight on British Airways.

The airline has just one direct flight to LA, which left Heathrow at 4.30pm but it is not clear if Harry left on that flight.

Prince Charles has since travelled to his Welsh cottage in the Brecon Beacons to privately grieve the loss of his father.
HARRISBURG  Its hard enough to be a volunteer firefighter. They rush into burning buildings. They get up in the middle of the night to battle blazes. They save lives.

I personally dont think you should be selling hoagies in the rain, in the freezing cold, on the weekend, Pennsylvania state Rep. Ryan Warner, R-Fayette County, told a group of firefighters assembled at the state Capitol Monday morning.

Hes hoping his recently introduced legislation will do just that  take some of the burden of fundraising off of firefighters.

Fundraisers are what pay the bills for Pennsylvanias volunteer fire companies, but the coronavirus pandemic brought these efforts to a halt with restrictions on in-person gatherings.

At first, some fire companies were holding online raffles, and that was working great, until they were contacted by the state police and their county treasurers offices, saying under their small-games-of-chance licenses, they were not permitted to accept credit or debit card payments. That meant cash payments for raffles and pull-tab tickets, which was next to impossible with the elimination of in-person events.

But legislation introduced Jan. 27 by Warner may lend a helping hand.

House Bill 290, which passed the House by a 193-8 vote, attempts to address some of these issues for fire companies and the states non-profits.

Now before the Senate for consideration, the bill would authorize holders of small games of chance licenses to conduct online raffles and drawings, permitting the use of a mobile payment service, such as PayPal or Venmo, for payment but not credit or debit cards. It also raises prize limits to $4,000 for a single game with a weekly prize limit for the organization of $50,000.

If passed, these changes would expire at the end of the COVID-19 disaster emergency or May 1, 2022, whichever is later.

Marcus Riddell of the Tower City Fire Company organized the rally today. Though fewer than 20 people showed up, hes hoping their voices will be heard inside the halls of the Capitol.

Bob Gabardi, who has been with the Sheppton-Oneida Fire Company in Sheppton for more than 50 years, speaks at a rally at the state Capitol Monday. The rally was held to encourage the passage of legislation that would give non-profits more flexibility in fundraising during the pandemic. (Steve Marroni/PennLive.com).

We as firefighters and non-profits adapted and overcame the situation, he said. House Bill 290 will allow us to start our online raffles legally again. Now were just having a rally to let the Senate know that were here, we need this, we need the money.

He said 83 percent of Pennsylvanias fire companies are volunteer and rely on fundraisers and will be helped by this legislation.

While hes happy Warners bill passed the House, hes hoping some of the more restrictive amendments that were tacked on can be stripped away in the Senate.

The big one is the requirement for online age and Pennsylvania-residency verification system, he said. He said hes fine with verifying age and residency, but noted the restriction was placed on the bill due to opposition from the casino industry, which has the same verification standards. But Riddell argues small fire companies and other non-profits do not have the same resources as casinos, making the cost of verifying age and residency online prohibitive.

Weve been doing raffles and everything through small games of chance since 1988, and we were trusted to verify age and residency when we did it in person, Riddell said. Hes asking for the same trust in online raffles. We dont have the money and resources to have a website and an IT department to make us a system that allows us to do that.

With the loss of in-person fundraisers and the current restrictions for online games of chance, Riddell said his department is just keeping its head above water.

Bob Gabardi, who has been with the Sheppton-Oneida Fire Company for more than 50 years, is seeing the same thing in Sheppton.

Its very annoying to try to pay bills without money, he said.

The online fundraisers worked great for the first few months of the pandemic and really filled in the gap until they were shut down. He hopes the state Senate agrees and gives fire companies the ability to raise funds again. They are all volunteers, and fundraising is where their money comes from, he said.

We probably lost, from last year, $40,000 in fundraisers we couldnt hold, he added.

Joe Gavala, chief of West End Fire & Rescue in Mahanoy City, said fundraising is difficult enough, given the cost of the tools of the trade. An air pack alone costs $8,000, he said.

How many hoagies do you have to sell and how many Bingos do you have to hold for one air pack? he said.

Gavala added firefighters with his department probably conduct 10 to 20 times as much fundraising as they do actual emergency services work.

Helping fire companies is a bipartisan effort, Rep. Warner said, adding its something anyone in the Capitol can get behind.

I still personally think its a shame that we have to fight for this, Warner told the gathered firefighters. I think this is a no-brainer. Were not asking for the world, here, folks. Were asking for non-profits and fire departments to reveal who a winner is on Facebook Live on a small-games-of-chance raffle.

Warner said this bill is a small drop in the bucket for what the state should be doing for volunteer fire companies and non-profits, but its one small step forward.

Riddell said if this legislation becomes law, its less time he would have to spend fundraising and more time that he can spend training to fight fires and spend at home with his family.
[April 19, 2021] Global Spending on Blockchain Solutions Forecast to be Nearly $19 Billion in 2024, According to New IDC Spending Guide

Organizations are forecast to spend nearly $6.6 billion on blockchain solutions this year, an increase of more than 50% compared to 2020. According to a new update to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Blockchain Spending Guide, blockchain spending will continue to see strong growth throughout the 2020-2024 forecast period with a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 48.0%. "This is an important time in the blockchain market as enterprises across markets and industries continue to increase their investment in the technology. The pandemic highlighted the need for more resilient, more transparent supply chains, healthcare delivery, financial services, and so much more, and enterprises around the world have been investing in blockchain to provide that resiliency and transparency," said James Wester, research director, Worldwide Blockchain Strategies. "What is also very important right now is that we are seeing real interest and investment by corporations, financial institutions, and even governments in areas they previously viewed with some uncertainty such as cryptocurrencies, digital assets, central bank digital currencies, decentralized finance, and stablecoins. This investment will have major implications in a very short time on everything from retail to financial services to capital markets." The leading use case for blockchain in 2021 and throughout the forecast is Cross-Border Payments & Settlements, which uses distributed ledger technology to track, trace, and manage payments and settlements. The second largest blockchain use case is Lot Lineage/Provenance, which is used to verify the origin and authenticity of a product as it moves throughout the value chain. Other leading use cases include Trade Finance & Post Trade/Transaction Settlements, Asset/Goods Management, and Identity Management. A graphic illustrating the worldwide spending share of the top 5 blockchain use cases is available by viewing this press release on IDC.com. From an industry perspective, banking leads the way in blockchain spending, accounting for nearly 30% of the worldwide total in 2021. Banking will remain the top industry for blockchain spending throughout the forecast although its share of spending will diminish slightly by 2024. The primary use cases for blockchain within the banking industry are Cross-Border Payments & Settlements and Trade Finance & Post Trade/Transaction Settlements. The next largest industries for blockchain spending are process manufacturing and discrete manufacturing, which together account formore than 20% of all spending worldwide. The leading use case in both industries is Lot Lineage/Provenance. Following the manufacturing industries are professional services, retail, and insurance, which rely on blockchain to trace the movement of payments and products. The industries that will see the fastest growth in blockchain spending over the forecast period are professional services (56.0% CAGR), state/local government (53.3% CAGR), and healthcare (52.7% CAGR).



"While the effects of the pandemic had organizations diverting budget or pausing projects to focus on more essential endeavors, this was not the case with blockchain," said Stacey Soohoo, research manager, Customer Insights & Analysis. "Along with the on-going pressures of digital transformation, COVID-19 made it clearer than ever that in order to have resilient business operations, changes in behavior, demand, and supply have forced companies to adopt a digital-led and blockchain-driven business model to survive lockdowns, supply disruptions, and future crises. Within the current environment, the use of blockchain is coming up especially within banking, manufacturing, professional services, and retail. Specifically, focus has been in tracking items from manufacturer to distribution to the end consumer and related payments and settlements that come with goods movements and management. The market is now reaching a point where successful pilots and deployments have proven the need, but other key factors such as a willingness to collaborate are needed to instill blockchain technology across the entire value chain, with every single participant needing and wanting to be a part of the network." From a technology perspective, IT services and business services (combined) will account for more than two thirds of all blockchain spending throughout the forecast with IT services receiving slightly more investment over the forecast period. Blockchain platform software will be the largest category of spending outside of the services segment and the fastest growing technology category overall with a five-year CAGR of 52.9%,

Spending on blockchain solutions in the United States will be nearly $2.6 billion this year, making it the largest geographic market, followed by Western Europe ($1.6 billion) and China ($777 million). All nine regions covered in the Spending Guide will see exceptional spending growth over the forecast period led by China with five-year CAGR of 54.6% and Central and Eastern Europe (50.0% CAGR). The Worldwide Blockchain Spending Guide (V1 2021) quantifies the emerging blockchain market by providing spending data for ten technologies across 19 industries and 17 use cases in nine geographic regions. IDC (News - Alert) defines blockchain as a digital, distributed ledger of transactions or records. The ledger, which stores the information or data, exists across multiple participants in a peer-to-peer network; there is no single, central repository that stores the ledger. Distributed ledgers technology (DLT) allows new transactions to be added to an existing chain of transactions using a secure digital or cryptographic signature. Spending associated with various cryptocurrencies that utilize blockchain and distributed ledgers technology, such as Bitcoin, is not included in the Spending Guide. About IDC Spending Guides IDC's Spending Guides provide a granular view of key technology markets from a regional, vertical industry, use case, buyer, and technology perspective. The spending guides are delivered via pivot table format or custom query tool, allowing the user to easily extract meaningful information about each market by viewing data trends and relationships. For more information about IDC's Spending Guides, please contact Monika Kumar at mkumar@idc.com. Click here to learn about IDC's full suite of data products and how you can leverage them to grow your business. 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/20210419005059/en/

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Mr. Stringer, who is himself a public school parent, was not a vocal supporter of Mr. de Blasios push to bring students back into classrooms last fall and was sometimes sharply critical of the mayors effort. Mr. Stringer and his wife decided to send one of their sons back into classrooms last fall and keep their other son learning remotely.

As comptroller, Mr. Stringer has also criticized the mayors handling of the citys homeless student crisis, and appeared to briefly jeopardize the rollout of the successful universal prekindergarten program after he raised alarms about the contracting process for some of those programs.

Mr. Stringers promise to put two teachers in every elementary school classroom as mayor is attractive to the union, since it would boost its membership. But the idea has also appealed to education experts who have said adding more teachers could make traditional public schools more attractive to parents who might have considered gifted and talented programs or private schools, which tend to have large teaching staffs.

Mr. Stringer is also one of a small group of mayoral hopefuls who have committed to eliminating the high-stakes exam that dictates entry into the citys top high schools, including Stuyvesant High School. Like many of his rivals, he is skeptical about charter schools, a position that is all but a prerequisite for the U.F.T.s backing.

Mr. Stringers campaign is likely to use the endorsement as fresh evidence that his coalition-building strategy remains viable. Perhaps more than any other candidate in the race, Mr. Stringers candidacy  already supported by a long list of prominent New Yorkers  will test whether endorsements move voters in an unpredictable election unfolding amid a pandemic.

The U.F.T.s choice of Mr. Stringer also carries enormous stakes for the union.

Unlike other powerful city unions, the teachers union has failed to endorse a winning candidate since 1989, when it backed the former mayor David N. Dinkins. That has prompted concern among U.F.T. officials that the unions clout in electoral politics could shrink if it again bets on the wrong candidate.

The former mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who clashed with the U.F.T. throughout his tenure, went so far as to call the unions endorsement the kiss of death during the 2013 race to replace him.
Small-scale fishers in South Africa still trying to claw their way out of Covid-19 restrictions

by Tshego Lepule

April 19,2021 | Source: IOL

The small-scale fisheries industry in South Africa which continues to buckle under the impact of Covid-19 is still awaiting the outcome of an application to the Western Cape High Court to scrap current fishing rights.



This emerged in a webinar hosted by the University of the Western Capes Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) on the effects Covid-19 restrictions had on the sector that contributes billions to the national economy.



Issues around permits, fishermen not being regarded as essential workers, export restrictions as well as issues around policy inconsistencies were highlighted as challenges that heavily impacted communities.



In February, Minister for Environment, Forestry and Fisheries Barbara Creecy announced her intention to approach the High Court to review and set aside the process of awarding small-scale fishing rights in the Western Cape to start afresh following allegations that the previous process was flawed.



Craig Smith of the World Wide Fund for Nature SA (WWF) said they have commissioned a report that looks into what impact Covid-19 had on the sector and found that the sector began feeling the brunt of the pandemic long before South Africa went into lockdown.



The first impacts were felt in the West Coast rock lobster industry when China banned its imports of lobster (before lock down in December). This impacted large scale and small scale fisheries. Storage became a big issue as exports became difficult as they reached capacity for lobster, he said.



Then in hard lock down, people could not get out to sea until fisheries were seen as an essential service, but permits were hard to obtain with officials working at home, which makes it difficult to contact people. We had reports on the east coast of harassment of fisheries, even when they had permits.



Restaurants were closed and that affected small-scale fishers and informal traders which used this market. Small-scale fishers had to engage directly with buyers. Even though there is a lot of sympathy with small-scale fishers, there is a reluctance to buy from them because they are not formalised. The infrastructure is just not there even though there is an expressed interest in the retail sector. We need to look at building the value chain for small-scale fishers for the local market.



PLAASs Tracey Dennis said the beginning of hard lockdown was right around the end of summer season which is when fishermen typically depend on casual work to support families - this was made difficult by the restriction on movements.



Eventually they got permits to go to sea as essential workers but in November when the peak season started again infection rates increased and more people were affected in that wave. The agricultural sector received support but fisheries did not, she said.



Most of the fish is taken out of the community as soon as it's caught and placed in ice trucks to Cape Town and to exports. Covid interrupted this flow in stopping and slowing the demand. So during the peak period in December the price of fish was so low it was not worth going to sea. It was very bad.



Nicholas Taylor, a fisherman from Kleinmond, said: Its very difficult as a community when we cannot go out to sea. But we survived as fishers because there was some support for small scale fishers from the government and WWF also assisted with some vouchers and that helped us out as a community.



In December we tried to get our crayfish out but we couldnt get our permits in time because the government was on lockdown so we couldnt export anything in December. In January we sold a few crayfish but we are still struggling to get fish out of the water because we cant get permits from the government.



We are getting a bit better and are trying to make up for what we have lost. There were food parcels but many people complained they did not get them. It is difficult to find government people who we need for permits because they work from home. Its a very big problem to fish without a permit. The fine is R5 000.

 2021 Independent Online and affiliated companies. All rights reserved

Theme(s): Communities and Organisations.
CLEVELAND, Ohio  Jane Timken and Josh Mandel apparently are trying to paint a brighter picture in regard to their fundraising efforts.

You can listen online here.

Timken and Mandel sent out news releases earlier this month bragging about their fundraising efforts. But campaign finance reports filed this week tell a different story ... Timken $2.1 million haul was boosted by a $1 million personal loan from herself, while Mandels campaign itself actually lost money ... Mandel raised his money through a separate committee, and the rules dont let him spend some of the money he raises that way. In other political news, a proposed tax cut in Ohio would save most filers about 57 cents per week. And the coronavirus pandemic has taken a heavy toll on the childcare industry in Cuyahoga County.

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.

You can get our podcasts delivered directly to your phone, and we have an Apple podcasts channel exclusively for this podcast. Subscribe here.

Do you get your podcasts on Spotify? Find us here.

If you use Stitcher, we are here.

RadioPublic is another popular podcast vehicle, and we are here.

On Google Podcasts, we are here.

On PodParadise, find us here.
People are waiting to receive COVID-19 vaccines at a temporary vaccination centre in Beijing, China, on Jan. 3, 2021. (STR/CNS/AFP via Getty Images)

Chinese Netizens Welcome Pfizer Vaccines, Pass Up Free Chinese Vaccines

On April 13, Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group (Fosun Pharma) announced that the first batch of Pfizer vaccines had arrived in China and clinical applications were to be strictly monitored by Chinas National Medical Products Administration (NMPA). Many netizens planned to get the imported Pfizer vaccine, even at their own expense, foregoing the potentially free domestic vaccine.

The Pfizer vaccine was initially developed by the German company BioNTech. Pfizer partnered with BioNTech to support clinical trials, logistics, and manufacturing. Fosun Pharma, BioNTechs Chinese partner, was reportedly granted the right to market the vaccine in China, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) blocked news of the Pfizer vaccines arrival as soon as it appeared on the internet.

The CCP Refuses to Announce Adverse Reactions to Domestic Vaccines

As of March 28, the CCPs official statistics show that more than 100 million doses of the Chinese vaccine have been administered in China, but no serious adverse reactions or deaths have been publicly reported.

On March 21, the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council of the CCP held a press conference. Wang Huaqing, chief expert in National Immunization Program of Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention was asked about the adverse reactions to domestic vaccines and whether data could be released to the public on a regular basis. He said that adverse reactions include pain, redness, swelling, and hard nodules, but explained that the overall incidence of adverse reactions is relatively low and that no unusual cases have occurred. He added that there are other relatively more common reactions such as headache, fatigue, and low fever but did not address the question on publishing relevant data.

An engineer looks at monkey kidney cells while testing an experimental vaccine for the COVID-19 virus inside the Cells Culture Room laboratory at the Sinovac Biotech facilities in Beijing, China, on April 29, 2020. (Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images)

Wangs response sparked heated discussions among the Chinese public. Many people disclosed some of their reactions after receiving the vaccine, such as muscle ache, arm pain for several days, and sore throat.

Many Chinese Dont Want Domestic Vaccines

Many Chinese are afraid to get domestic vaccines because of the long-standing history of poor food and medicine safety in China and the lack of transparent information.

Mr. Wu, a resident of Wuhan, Hubei Province, told The Epoch Times that he does not want domestic vaccines.

Because the efficacy of domestic vaccines are lower than that of European and American vaccines, there are many contraindications and possible adverse reactions. In addition, there is no protection for the rights of people who have serious adverse reactions to these vaccines, so it is difficult for people to receive them with confidence, Mr. Wu said.

Mr. Wu said his father is an official in the local system, but he is also reluctant to get the vaccine because he thinks it is unnecessary and he is afraid that the vaccine is unsafe.

A retired official in Beijing told The Epoch Times that he didnt want the inoculation either. Hes concerned about adverse effects after the vaccination, such as disability or death in a few days after the vaccination, or any sequelae. I dont dare to have the jab. The general public has this concern (of side effects), and so do I myself, he said.

The CCP Turned Vaccination Into a Political Task

In China, the vaccination of the CCP virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, has changed from voluntary to mandatory and has become a political task in state-owned enterprises, with pressure and incentives at different levels. The CCPs official media has also launched a propaganda campaign, calling on everyone to get vaccinated.

To accomplish this political task, many places have adopted incentive measures, with giving out eggs to people taking the vaccination being the most common, and a cash incentive of $15 to $30 offered in some areas. Some of the neighborhood communities in Beijing offer perks such as entrance tickets to Yonghe Palace, holidays, or better annual performance assessments.

In addition, vaccine recipients are required to sign confidentiality agreements and are prohibited from disclosing vaccination information.

In response, many people commented online that, in order to help Chinese people have confidence in domestic vaccines, the leaders should be administered (with domestic vaccines) first.

Massive Exports of Chinas Domestic Vaccines Continually Receive Negative Reviews

The CCP has been engaged in vaccine diplomacy and has been supplying domestic vaccines to a number of countries around the world, but this effort is continually met with negative news.

Celestino Aos, the archbishop of Santiago, Chile, and auxiliary bishop Alberto Lorenzelli both tested positive for the CCP virus after receiving two doses of Sinovac, one of the front-runner Chinese vaccines, the Chilean Roman Catholic Church said in a Twitter post on April 10.

On April 7, the Philippine Presidential Security Group (PSG) commander Brig. Gen. Jesus Durante III confirmed that 126 PSG staff had tested positive for the CCP virus after receiving Sinopharms inactivated vaccine.

In Hong Kong, 14 people have died after receiving the Sinovac vaccine since the roll-out of the vaccination on Feb. 26, and many others have suffered facial paralysis and strokes. In other countries that received the Chinese vaccine, such as Chile, Turkey, and Pakistan, the number of positive CCP virus cases has increased rather than decreased.

CCPs History of Faulty Vaccines

As early as 2010, China Economic Times, a CCP official daily newspaper, reported that hundreds of children in Shanxi Province had died or fallen ill from the side effects of vaccines over a three-year period. The Shanxi provincial government not only denied that the vaccines were faulty but also dismissed the editor who exposed the incident.

In 2016, an illegal vaccine case in Shandong Province was exposed. Vaccines worth about $88 million, containing 25 types of improperly stored or expired Category 2 vaccines for children and adults, were sold nationwide.

On Oct. 29, 2017, the CCPs Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) recalled two batches of hundreds of thousands of doses of DPT vaccines (a combination of diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis vaccine) produced by Changsheng Bio-Technology that had not been tested for efficacy. However, the incident was concealed by the CCP and only came to light nine months later. An official investigation by the CCP revealed that the company had been producing fake rabies vaccines since April 2014.

In November 2017, Wuhan Institute of Biological Products (WIBP) sold 400,520 doses of substandard DPT vaccines to Chongqing City and Hebei Province.

During this wave of illegal vaccines, Changsheng halted production and more than a dozen executives and major shareholders were arrested. WIBP, which is affiliated with the central enterprise (large state-owned enterprises directly supervised by the CCPs central government), received administrative punishment and resumed production later. WIBPs senior executives and major shareholders have not been arrested.
Over the course of the pandemic, Shreya Yogi lost her job twice.

The Pleasanton mother of two was laid off from a discount department store last April. She resumed her contract position in July, only to lose it again when her reauthorization to work in the U.S. as an immigrant from India experienced processing delays.

While her husband kept his job, Yogi, who isnt eligible to receive unemployment benefits here, said the financial stress of becoming a single-income household intensified because of the pandemic.

We have a mortgage to pay, Yogi told The Chronicle. We were planning to buy a home, but had to put it on hold.

As vaccine eligibility expanded this week to Californians 16 and older and the state eyes a June 15 reopening date, not everyone will quickly recover from the recessions disproportionate toll. Women, particularly women of color, have taken a harder economic hit and may be slower to pick up where they left off before the coronavirus arrived more than a year ago.

Amy Osborne / Special to The Chronicle

According to a Public Policy Institute of California analysis of employment and population data, the states female residents have experienced sharper declines in employment than its male residents. At the depth of the pandemic recession last April, 19% of women were unemployed compared to 15% of men. Around the same period, 28% of women had to settle for part-time work compared to 25% of men.

While those rates have fallen, still more women were unemployed or underemployed than men as recently as January.

The COVID-19-induced recession is the first economic downturn in history in which a far larger number of women lost jobs or left jobs, due to the lack of available care for household members, than men, state Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, said in a March 25 statement. In the month of December alone, women, and specifically women of color, accounted for all of the nations job losses.

According to the PPIC analysis, thats because women and especially women of color were overrepresented as frontline workers and in job sectors most affected by the economic lockdown, including leisure, hospitality and salons.

Expectations of motherhood have presented additional challenges during a year of remote work and distance learning. In many households, it often fell on women, who statistically earn less than their male counterparts, to manage households under lockdown.

Why does it all fall on us? said Shannon Parola, a child care consultant who lives in San Jose with her husband and their 18-month-old daughter. Why are we the ones having to give up our work time?

Like Parola, Angelica Lyke couldnt afford to quit her job to look after her homebound child. Lyke and her husband spent the past year working from their Walnut Creek home with their 2-year-old daughter, whose preschool finally reopened last month. The dual responsibilities of mother and employee created days when Lyke, an executive assistant, wanted to tear her hair out.

Honestly, Disney Channel has helped me, said Lyke, who is expecting another child. And Frozen. I make sure she has snacks and drinks in front of her while shes watching so I can work. And then during my lunch hour I can feed her and take her for a walk.

Single mothers, including those who dont have jobs that let them work from home, walk an even thinner tightrope, said Lourdes Castro Ramirez, secretary of the states Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency.

Seventy-six percent of women-headed households with children are renters, Ramirez told a PPIC panel on women in the economy last month. These women heads of households are having a hard time paying their rent. Theyre more likely receiving an eviction notice. Theyre fighting to stay housed.

Last month, the Legislative Womens Caucus announced it would prioritize 11 pieces of legislation intended to counteract the recessions disparate impact on women. The package includes bills to reinforce the states subsidized child care system, eliminate higher taxes on female products, expand broadband access and address workplace equity in the garment industry.

President Bidens one-year expansion of the federal Child Tax Credit could be its own game-changer, projected to cut child poverty in the Bay Area by 22% and in California by half, according to an analysis by PPIC and the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality.

In the meantime, some employers are hoping to retain female workers by extending adaptive work environments into a reopened economy.

Pat Fong Kushida, CEO of the California Asian American Chamber of Commerce, told The Chronicle that even if other offices reopen, the chamber will continue allowing remote work to be more accommodating of a work-life balance.

Im hoping we can get away from the time that you put in as opposed to the quality of the work product, Kushida said.

Another organization is trying to help women overcome pandemic gaps in their resumes.

According to the Center for American Progress, job applicants with relevant experience who were out of work for more than six months were less likely to be called back than less qualified applicants who were unemployed for less time.

Path Forward, a 5-year-old nonprofit based in New York, is trying to address this through returnships, internship-like opportunities for people who want to resume their careers after long breaks. Amazon and Facebook are among the companies partnering with Path Forward to offer Bay Area returnships. CEO Tami Forman said her return-to-work nonprofit encourages companies to rehire women who left the workforce to become caretakers.

The pandemic has been devastating for womens careers, Forman said. It has exacerbated an existing problem.

But Forman said she also sees opportunities for companies to address preexisting workplace challenges that the pandemic exacerbated.

Schools were closed all summer before the pandemic, and companies were resistant to flexible schedules before the pandemic, she noted. I hope the rebuilding process gives us an opportunity to examine some of the things that were already difficult for women in the workforce.

Lykes company offers three weeks of pandemic leave  a COVID-specific arrangement some offices implemented last year.

Parola, the San Jose child care consultant, wants to see additional child care innovations come out of the pandemic. She said the closing of day cares and a resulting spike in nanny rates left many of her mom clients without options.

Moms were left on the back burner, she said. Some moms have sacrificed our careers, but we have sacrificed our sanity, really.

Chronicle editor Raheem Hosseini contributed to this report.

Malavika Kannan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: Malavika.Kannan@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @malavikawrites
The delay in revising the countrys land laws has made negative impacts on the real estate market with many halted projects due to unclear and overlapping guidelines,

subsequently causing new supply limitations and increasing the risk of a market bubble.

A new Law on Land is needed, but it could take a good three years for a new itineration. Photo: Le Toan

According to previous proposals, the Law on Land 2013 was to be revised at some point after the 13th National Party Congress. A new law was to be considered within the year, with the National Assembly able to discuss the revised draft by the end of 2022. If all goes to plan, the revised law would then need at least three years before being approved.

Simultaneously, and with the party congress now in the rear view mirror and a new government in the process of taking the reins, a summary report of the implementation of the 2013 land law is being led by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MoNRE), involving every ministry and local authority. The summary report will be sent to the government and submitted to the National Assembly in the second quarter of 2023 the latest.

According to Dang Hung Vo, former deputy minister of Natural Resources and Environment, the current Law on Land contains conflicts with many other laws such as those on housing, real estate business, forestry, zoning, and public asset management.

The overlap among those laws is the main reason for limiting the new supply for the real estate market as demand continuously increases. This leads to rocketing price increases and speculation which makes the market unstable, Vo said.

Meanwhile, the weakness of the current Law on Land has also created struggles for administrative policies and implementation of land issues, especially in compensation.

Talking with VIR, Lim Hua Tiong, CEO of Frasers Property Vietnam expressed that a revised land law is necessary to enhance the flow of foreign investment to Vietnam  and that means a law with shorter processes, clearer and less complicated regulations, and elimination of conflicts with other laws that would all help investors make faster decisions and open up major chances for their success in Vietnam.

It must offer equal opportunities for Vietnamese and foreign investors by enabling and granting overseas investors the right to directly obtain land use rights for the purposes of land bank development for new project establishment, said Lim.

He added that any revised land law should clarify the measurement of public land, which can be directly allocated/leased to the investor without public auction. This may shorten the time of the land allocation process and project implementation, respectively, he added.

One official from the MoNRE noted that the revision of the land law must clarify details and remove unfairness for related parties in inheriting profits brought about by investment in land. Especially, the financial framework for land use which includes land leasing rents must be more relevant to the realities of the market.

Moreover, the current Law on Land fails to mention many new types of real estate products such as condotels, officetels, or shophouses so a revised one is in need to deal with those products, said the official.

According to Dang Minh Duc, director of Dong Nai Department of Natural Resources and Environment, a new law must take into account the current land status of localities.

The revised Law on Land should clearly regulate the process of appraisal and land use right auction, and the calculation of the value for land compensation. These issues are seriously impacting the implementation of many projects in Dong Nai province, Duc said.

The MoNRE has revealed that key issues to be considered in the revised land law include the expansion of quotas for agricultural land use of individuals and households; and management of rice land and especially land collection methods for the development of socio-economy of localities.

Also in the frame for a revamp included are taxation policies on agricultural land provided to households and enterprises that are left unused, as well as how to harmonise the rights between foreign enterprises and the government, while avoiding the impacts to the countrys security but ensuring a solid investment environment for overseas investors.

Lim Hua Tiong - CEO, Frasers Property Vietnam Under the current land law, a foreign-owned entity does not have the right to directly obtain land use rights from other land users. This prevents a foreign-owned entity from developing a land bank for new projects. Within a project area, there are several parcels managed by the state such as land with rivers, streams, canals, springs, and special-use water surface. There has not been any obvious regulation to specify the measurement of public land, which can be directly allocated/leased to the investor without public auction. This prolongs the project land allocation process and adversely affects the investor, as they cannot carry out the next investment steps without such land allocation. For project implementation, developers must go through many complicated steps which can take up two years to fully process. In a real situation, many projects take 3-5 years for legal approval. This prevents developers from market advantages because of delayed launch timelines. Also, the inconsistent application of land use fee calculation is a big trouble for real estate developing, not only for foreign investors but also Vietnamese ones which continues to create many disputes. Peter Dinning - Chairman, Colliers International Vietnam has made tremendous advances within the real estate sector including the rights of ownership and the rights to occupy, but we have seen many examples when land has been taken away at below the market value. This leaves the owner in a worse position than they were in before the land is taken away. Further advances in creating a fair system to value property are required to create a more international-standard real estate market. Real estate in Vietnam is still in its infancy and while it is a driver for the economy, real risks are still associated with owning and occupying land. International investors would like to see a system which protects land and property ownership and in the event that for whatever reason it is taken away, a true open market value is paid by compensation. In the UK we have a dedicated department called the Valuation Office whose duty is to protect the rights of the individual when a property is taken away. There is a proper right to appeal and valuation tribunals are available for anyone who disputes the compensation that a developer and or an authority wishes to pay to take over your land. Alain Cany - Chairman, European Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam European enterprises are keen to invest and expand further their business operations and new projects. To capitalise on this trend, the government could enhance the legal framework and cut administrative procedures on land to unlock the full potential of European investment. For instance, reducing the time to complete the investment registration process would be welcome, as would making the procedures for acquiring land clearer and more transparent. Enabling foreign investors to borrow from international lenders would also be a positive step, rather than limiting mortgages just to banks. We have seen some positive developments in the last few months alone. For instance, Decree No.148/2020/ND-CP  in particular its provisions on land lease for small state-owned land parcels  should help to clear one of the bottlenecks for investors whose developments have been on hold for some time. This, in turn, should restore the land fund for project development and create more opportunities for local and foreign enterprises. We encourage the government to build on this success. For instance, a definition of foreign-invested enterprises aligned with the new Law on Investment would be a good step, as current inconsistencies create difficulties.

VIR
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - April 19, 2021) - Santacruz Silver Mining Ltd. (TSXV: SCZ) (the "Company" or "Santacruz") announces that the acquisition of the Zimapan mine assets from Minera Cedros, S.A. de C.V. ("Minera Cedros"), together with the US$17.6 million loan facility from Trafigura Mexico, S.A. de C.V. (the "Trafigura Loan Facility"), are now expected to close on or about April 23, 2021.

Pursuant to the definitive purchase agreement dated February 24, 2021 (the "Purchase Agreement") between the Company's wholly-owned subsidiary, Carrizal Mining, S.A. de C.V. ("Carrizal"), and Minera Cedros, closing of the acquisition of the Zimapan mine, including payment by Carrizal of US$15 million of the purchase price, is required to occur within 60 days of the date of the Purchase Agreement, being April 26, 2021. The US$15M payment will be funded by the Trafigura Loan Facility. The balance of the total US$20 million (plus applicable Mexican Value Added Tax of US$3.2 million) purchase price for the Zimapan mine, after payment of US$5 million in advances to date by Carrizal to Minera Cedros, will be US$3.2 million which will be payable to Minera Cedros within 5 months of the closing date in accordance with the Purchase Agreement.

About Santacruz Silver Mining Ltd.

Santacruz is a Mexican focused silver company that currently owns and operates the Rosario Project. The Company also owns 100% of Carrizal Mining S.A. de C.V. On February 25, 2021 the Company announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement with Minera Cedros, S.A. de C.V. ("Minera Cedros"), a wholly owned subsidiary of Industrias Penoles, S.A.B. de C.V., to acquire outright the Zimapan Mine and all assets related to the Zimapan Mine and mill for US$20.0 million (plus applicable IVA of US$3.2 million), subject to a number of conditions, including receipt of all necessary regulatory approvals including approval of the TSX Venture Exchange ("TSXV") to the transaction which will constitute a "Fundamental Acquisition" pursuant to TSXV Policy 5.3.

The Company is managed by a technical team of professionals with proven track records in developing, operating and discovering silver mines in Mexico. Our corporate objective is to become a mid-tier silver producer.

'signed'

Arturo Prestamo Elizondo,

Executive Chairman

For further information please contact:

Arturo Prestamo

Santacruz Silver Mining Ltd.

Email: info@santacruzsilver.com

Telephone: (604) 569-1609

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

Certain statements contained in this news release constitute "forward-looking information" as such term is used in applicable Canadian securities laws, including statements relating to the agreement with Minera Cedros and the acquisition of the Zimapan Mine by the Company. Forward-looking information is based on plans, expectations and estimates of management at the date the information is provided and is subject to certain factors and assumptions. In making the forward-looking statements included in this news release, the Company has applied several material assumptions, including that the Company's financial condition and development plans do not change as a result of unforeseen events, that the Company will receive all required regulatory approvals and that future metal prices and the demand and market outlook for metals will remain stable or improve. Forward-looking information is subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause plans, estimates and actual results to vary materially from those projected in such forward-looking information. Factors that could cause the forward-looking information in this news release to change or to be inaccurate include, but are not limited to, unanticipated delays in obtaining or failure to obtain regulatory or stock exchange approvals; the risk that any of the assumptions referred to above prove not to be valid or reliable; there can be no assurance that the Company will be successful in completing the acquisition of the Zimapan Mine; market conditions and volatility and global economic conditions, including increased volatility and potentially negative capital raising conditions resulting from the continued COVID-19 pandemic and risks relating to the extent and duration of such pandemic and its impact on global markets; risk of delay and/or cessation in planned work or changes in the Company's financial condition and development plans; risks associated with the interpretation of data (including in respect of third party mineralized material) regarding the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits; the uncertainty of the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits and the risk of unexpected variations in mineral resources, grade and/or recovery rates; risks related to gold, silver, base metal and other commodity price fluctuations; risks relating to environmental regulation and liability; the possibility that results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations, as well as the other risks and uncertainties applicable to mineral exploration and development activities and to the Company as set forth in the Company's continuous disclosure filings filed under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com. There can be no assurance that any forward-looking information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, the reader should not place any undue reliance on forward-looking information or statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking information or statements, other than as required by applicable law.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/80810
YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan -- Residents of this Air Force installation in Tokyo need not surrender their favorite American toilet paper brands, after all, the commanding officer of the 374th Civil Engineering Squadron said Friday.

Flushable wipes and hygiene products are the true culprits for septic system backups that may lead to clogged drains that result in overflows in bathrooms and sinks, Lt. Col. Bradly Bucholz told Stars and Stripes. The newspaper, provided information by a contractor employee that Bucholz said was incorrect, reported Thursday that thicker-ply American toilet paper was the problem.

"Most of these pipes were built in the '70s," Bucholz said. "These older pipe systems can require frequent snaking and can't handle baby wipes, but any toilet paper is meant to dissolve and is fine to use."

Large food scraps and oil going down the kitchen sink can also clog plumbing, he said. Unattended children flushing toys and other bulky objects down the toilet have also caused issues, although that is not a common occurrence.

The 374th Civil Engineering Squadron is considering several base improvement projects that include the residential towers, Bucholz said. Tower 3004, for example, is undergoing a plumbing and wiring makeover.

Yokota's residential towers were last renovated in the 1990s, but still have the plumbing system from the 1970s, he said. Civil engineering investigates repeated calls from the same residences to ensure a larger issue isn't at hand.

"In those cases, nine out of 10 times it has nothing to do with objects flushed down the toilet, but the conditions of the pipes," said Master Sgt. Charles Patterson, the operations engineering superintendent.

The squadron speaks to newcomers during the orientation program, but plumbing isn't an issue big enough to prioritize at the briefs, Bucholz said.

"The biggest takeaway is that wipes clog the pipes," he said.
Strata Manufacturing, the advanced manufacturing company wholly-owned by Mubadala Investment Company has agreed to supply essential personal protective equipment (PPE) to Japanese administrative jurisdiction of Tokushima Prefecture after signing a landmark MoU.

Signed during a virtual ceremony between Ismail Ali Abdulla, Strata CEO, and Kamon Iizumi, Governor of Japans Tokushima Prefecture, the MoU will see Strata establish a stable supply chain of PPE products and supplies between the UAE and Tokushima Prefecture on the island of Shikoku, which is home to more than half a million people.

In addition to the distribution of essential PPE  including the supply of N95 masks produced by Stratas Al Ain facility in partnership with Honeywell  the two parties will also explore potential opportunities within the technological innovation and R&D fields. The MOU will also explore the opportunity to supply medical equipment and PPE to municipalities and government-related organisations within other Japanese prefectures.

Since the establishment of our N95 production line, Strata, in-line with the UAEs international humanitarian efforts, has endeavoured to support the global fight against the pandemic by providing personal protective equipment where it is needed most, explained Abdulla. In addition to furthering this patriotic and humanitarian commitment to export PPE products that are Made with Pride in the UAE around the world, this landmark MOU also facilitates wider collaborations in mutual interests including technology innovation across numerous industry verticals.

Governor Iizumi said: Strata Manufacturing has established a successful N95 production line in its Al Ain facility, providing N95 masks and other medical supplies to the Middle East, USA, UK and more. Our cooperative agreement with Strata Manufacturing will help build a stable supply chain of PPE products and essential medical supplies for our medical system within Tokushima Prefecture.

The cooperation will also extend its efforts to ensure that other municipalities, government and other related organizations are supplied with medical supplies. The agreement will give hope and peace of mind to medical professionals.

In September 2020, Strata and Honeywell celebrated the production of the millionth N95 mask from Stratas Al Ain facility. The collaboration between the two entities has continued to provide critical PPE for the UAEs frontline health workers, while transforming the country into an international exporter of respirator masks to help limit the global spread of Covid-19.

Operated by a combined Honeywell and Strata workforce of 70 highly-skilled production experts, the dedicated PPE manufacturing line is now operating at full capacity and is on track to reach an annual production target of more than 30 million masks.--TradeArabia News Service
Trinny Woodall pulled a clump of hair out of her scalp on Sunday and stored it in a jar as she discussed her recent hair loss as a result of Covid-19 and stress.

The fashion guru, 57, who contracted the deadly virus three-months-ago, revealed she is now taking supplements and seeking the advice of a trichologist to understand the link between hair loss and Covid.

Speaking to her Instagram followers this weekend in a candid video, she said: 'I thought we would have a little Sunday evening chat and I've had a lovely day with Lyla but I want to chat about hair loss.

Alopecia: Trinny Woodall pulled a clump of hair out of her scalp on Sunday and stored it in a jar as she discussed her recent hair loss as a result of Covid-19 and stress

'Because since I did the Lives on Facebook, and I did two Lives. I did a Live with Greg Williams about hair transplants and the following week I did a really nice Live with Shabir at Victoria Health and with Josh Wood.

'And this was pre-my hair starting to fall out, so it's very fortuitous, it's very odd and not like tempting fate, the opposite of that really.'

Trinny, who was seen wearing a bright fuchsia shirt and dewy make-up, revealed her hair started falling out shortly after her discussions with the hair and health experts.

'About a week after I did both those Lives, I started to notice that whenever I did that...' she said as she ran her hand through her chestnut locks, pulling out a chunk of hair in the process.

Container: The fashion guru, 57, who contracted the deadly virus three-months-ago, revealed she is now taking supplements and seeking the advice of a trichologist to understand the link between hair loss and Covid

Placing the strands in front of the camera, she continued: 'I started to get - I don't know if you can see here how much hair I'm getting each time I do that but like this.

'I'm just collecting my hair at the moment.'

She proceeded to show a transparent container full of hair as she tried to keep track of her hair loss.

'There will probably be more hair in this then there is on my head soon.

'I'm being sarcastic because I don't want to get stressed by it but I do want to have an action plan and I want to chat to you about it and I just thought, what always eases my mind is sharing.'

Honest: Speaking to her Instagram followers this weekend in a candid video, she said: 'I'm just collecting my hair at the moment'

Shedding: She ran her hand through her chestnut locks, pulling out a chunk of hair in the process and placing the strands in front of the camera for her 920k followers to see

Trinny then revealed the names of several trichologists recommended to her as she asserted her hair loss is due to coronavirus and stress, not because of the menopause.

Trichology is the study of diseases or problems related to the hair and scalp and was founded in 1902.

According to Sky News, nearly a quarter of Covid sufferers will experience hair loss within six months of contracting the illness, with women at a higher risk.

Research into long-term symptoms in Wuhan, China, discovered that 359 out of 1,655 hospital patients who had the virus suffered from hair loss.

Captioning the Instagram discussion, Trinny added: 'Sunday afternoon chat a bit of hair loss and more.

Cause: Trinny then revealed the names of several trichologists recommended to her as she asserted her hair loss is due to coronavirus and stress, not because of the menopause

Documenting: She also penned a lengthy caption, detailing her hair loss journey

'Hair loss has been on my mind this week still coming out quite happily Ive been to the doctor I know that it is a post Covid symptom and its three months since Ive had Covid which is a cycle of hair after stress that can actually shed so this week Im going to focus on meeting a few good experts and Ill share with you any interesting things I find out.

'Do leave your comments below with your own hair loss stories and remedies as it will help everyone is who is watching.'

Trinny first shared her worries earlier this month after losing a clump of hair in the shower but didn't initially give a specific reason why.

The TV personality took to Instagram to admit her locks were 'coming out a lot' and said she was trying to 'compensate' her hair loss fears with a strong make-up look.

Trinny shared a picture of a clump of her hair after taking a shower to her Story, which she captioned: 'This came out my hair in the shower this morning...'

The fashionista, who recovered from Covid in January, went on to share a makeup tutorial video where she admitted she was probably 'worrying about nothing'.

Trinny opted for a strong eye makeup look and said: 'I'm trying today, to do quite a strong eye makeup to compensate for the hair loss.'

She added: 'It's silly, I'm worrying about nothing but it was coming out a lot. If you're interested about hair loss, do go onto [my] Facebook [page] if you can.'

Worries: Trinny first shared her worries earlier this month after losing a clump of hair in the shower but didn't initially give a specific reason why

After applying her eye makeup, Trinny admitted: 'When you're having a day where you're feeling a bit, "blah, maybe" put on some colour ladies!'

The presenter has previously spoke about hair loss and in 2018 she shared an Instagram video where she discussed her 'damaged' tresses.

Trinny admitted that she used to have 'over processed, broken off and thin hair' but after overhauling her regime her locks were 'twice as thick'.

She said: 'Many of you ask about the thickness of my hair, one day it was very thin, lank and over processed due to too many products on it with heat.'

Makeup look: The TV personality took to Instagram to admit her locks were 'coming out a lot' and said she was trying to 'compensate' her hair loss fears with a strong makeup look

Trinny then showed off her luscious brunette locks and added: 'Today I feel like a Dulux dog in a sauna as there's so much of it!'

The presenter listed the supplements she had been taking, encouraging her fans to seek medical advice before consuming if taking medicine.

Trinny revealed she was having biotin, Superior Hair and IoniCell capsules and that they were her 'three favourite supplements'.

Research shows that hair loss effects 50 per cent of women at some point in their lives.

It can be caused by a variety of factors including stress, a shift of hormones during menopause, low iron or a vitamin D deficiency.

Speaking out: The presenter has previously spoke about hair loss and in 2018 she shared an Instagram video where she spoke about her locks, saying: 'Today I feel like a Dulux dog in a sauna!' (pictured)

In July, Dr. Sandra Lee, best known as Dr. Pimple Popper, explained that people who are shedding a seemingly alarming amount of hair are likely experiencing pandemic-induced telogen effluvium, a form of temporary hair loss that occurs after stress.

'Right now, we're seeing a lot of people in our offices complaining about hair loss,' she said in a TikTok video.

'People are noticing their hair is falling out. They are freaking out. That's normal to freak out, but let me tell you why it's happening and why your hair is going to grow back.'

The California-based physician explained that the hair growth cycle has three phases: anagen, catagen, and telogen.

Spreading the word: In July, Dr. Sandra Lee, best known as Dr. Pimple Popper, explained that people who are shedding a seemingly alarming amount of hair are likely experiencing pandemic-induced telogen effluvium, a form of temporary hair loss that occurs after stress

The anagen phase is the growth phase, which lasts about three to five years. It is followed by the catagen phase, a short transitional phase that signals the end of active growth and lasts a few weeks.

In the final phase, the telogen phase, strands are released and fall out. This 'death' phase, as Dr. Pimple Popper calls it, lasts three to six months.

'People can have a condition  it's really common  called telogen effluvium,' she said.

'If you notice that your hair is falling out now, it could be from a stressful event you experienced three to six months ago like childbirth, like COVID, like stressful events related to COVID. We are seeing a lot of this now.'
I believe it is necessary to rule out any political speculation in regard to this issue. This is what Deputy Head of the State Service for Emergency Situations of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) Boris Avagyan said during todays working discussion hosted by the National Assembly of Armenia in regard to the return of Armenian captives being illegally in Azerbaijan, commenting on why the plane of the Russian peacekeeping contingent in Nagorno-Karabakh flew from Baku to Yerevan without Armenian prisoners of war.

Avagyan stated that there is no point in discussing the issue or the reason why the return of the prisoners of war is in this stage and that every second is real hell for all parents whose sons are prisoners of war.

Im surprised by the strength of the parents who continue to fight for the return of their children. To solve this issue, we need to conduct an analysis, and for that, it is necessary to have an understanding of the information field. Im amazed that the deputies of the ruling My Step bloc of the National Assembly have started misusing office by saying that Armenia needs to address Russia for the return of the prisoners of war. In my opinion this is unacceptable. If a deputy allows himself to tell citizens to address the embassies of foreign countries, that deputy shouldnt be in parliament. It would be better if such deputies didnt give speeches, Avagyan emphasized., adding that such statements make citizens feel discontent and outraged.




Just more than half of U.S. adults have now received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed on Sunday, with nearly 130 million people aged 18 years or more having received their first shot.







That figure makes up about 50.4% of the total adult U.S. population, according to the CDC, marking a milestone for the country that has seen over 560,000 deaths from the pandemic, the highest for any single nation, as the government ramps up the pace of vaccination.







The United States had administered 209,406,814 doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Sunday morning and distributed 264,505,725 doses, the CDC said on Sunday.







Those figures are up from the 205,871,913 vaccine doses the CDC said had gone into arms by April 17 out of 264,499,715 doses delivered.







The agency said 131,247,546 people had received at least one dose, while 84,263,408 people were fully vaccinated as of Sunday.







The CDC tally includes two-dose vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, as well as Johnson and Johnson's one-shot vaccine, as of 6 a.m. on Sunday.







On Tuesday, U.S. federal health agencies recommended pausing the use of JJ's COVID-19 vaccine for a few days after six women under age 50 developed rare blood clots after receiving the shot.







A total of 7,779,273 vaccine doses have been administered in long-term care facilities, the agency said. (Reuters)


Movie theaters in China are being ordered to screen patriotic films with titles like The Sacrifice and The Red Sun. Elementary students in some cities are being told to create paintings and calligraphy extolling the Chinese dream. Buses and subways are broadcasting nationalistic messages about revolutionary heroes.

Chinas Communist Party is gearing up for a patriotic extravaganza to celebrate the 100th anniversary of its founding on July 1. Officials are going into overdrive to make sure commemorations go off without a hitch  and hammer home the message that the party alone can restore China to what Beijing considers the countrys rightful place as a global power.

While much of the focus will be on the past, the partys centenary will have significant repercussions for Chinas future. The celebrations will give Chinas top leader, Xi Jinping, a forum to present himself as a transformative figure on par with Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Mr. Xi, 67, is maneuvering to stay in power indefinitely, an effort that appears to have taken on greater urgency as a new American president builds alliances to curb Beijings influence.

We need to educate and guide the whole party to vigorously carry forward the red tradition, Mr. Xi said during a recent conference call with political leaders about the centenary, according to Peoples Daily, an official newspaper.
New Delhi:

Reacting to the Allahabad High Courts acquittal of Rajesh and Nupur Talwar in the murder case of their daughter Aarushi and domestic help Hemraj, former CBI director AP Singh said that courts argument that evidence was insufficient to prosecute Talwars, is exactly what he had said in the beginning.

The court has not said they are innocent, it has said it is giving them the benefit of the doubt," AP Singh said to NDTV.

"Only weakness we found was that scene of crime had been badly tampered on the 1st day itself. As a result, after that we got nothing of value from the scene of crime. That was the major lacuna in the entire investigation," said AP Singh.

AP Singh was heading the CBI when the agency had stated in the court that it thought that Talwars killed Aarushi but could not prove it and wanted to close the case.

Despite the agencys desire to close the case, the judge of CBI court instead framed charges of murder and destruction of evidence against Rajesh and Nupur Talwar.

Aarushi was found dead inside her room in the Talwars Noida residence with her throat slit in May 2008. The needle of suspicion had initially moved towards 45-year-old Hemraj, who had gone missing but his body was recovered from the terrace of the house a day later.

As the Uttar Pradesh Police drew flak over shoddy investigation into the case which was making national headlines, the then chief minister Mayawati recommended a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Surveillance video caught the horrific moment a man executed his wife and another man at a California restaurant earlier this month.

The video shows Jing Yixin, 38, pulling out a gun from a brown paper bag before he fired multiple shots at the man, Zhaiming Li, 37, as the man sat at a table at Music BBQ Bar in Monterey Park.

The shooter's wife, Ling Ling Wang, 36, then got up from the table where she had been sitting with Li and pushed her husband away.

Yixin subsequently repeatedly fired at Wang, the mother of his 9 and 12-year-old daughters before she fell to the floor.

Yixin then reloaded the weapon and fired several shots at Li and later shot Wang before escaping.

WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT

Jing Yixin pulls out a gun from a paper bag before he murdered his wife Ling Ling Wang and a man identified as Zhaiming Li at Music BBQ Bar in Monterey Park, California, on April 5. Yixin was apprehended the following day near the Mexico border. Bail has been set a $2 million for Yixin, who was scheduled to be arraigned in court Monday

Still image from a surveillance video shows Jing Yixin (pictured) aiming his gun and firing at Zhaiming Li, a man who was sitting at a restaurant table with his wife Ling Ling Wang

Yixin and Wang were parents to two daughters, ages 9 and 12.

According to court documents, the case involves a 'suspected child abuse report.'

It's not clear what the suspected report contains and more details weren't immediately available.

A witness also recorded the horrifying scene on his cell phone.

'I heard about six shots and then there was gap,' the witness told KTLA. 'Then I heard another six to eight shots sand then that's when the chefs started walking out, started running.'

Zhaiming Li, one of two customers gunned down April 9 at a Los Angeles-area restaurant

Ling Ling Wang (right) confronts her husband Jing Yixin (left) after he executed Zhaiming Li. Yixin would later shoot and kill Wang before he fled. The couple were parents to two daughters, aged 9 and 12.

Authorities have not provided an official motive for the killings, which took place April 5.

Yixin fled towards the United States-Mexico border, where the police apprehended him April 6 with help of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the FBI.

He was taken back to the Monterey Park Police Department.

Yixin, who is being held at the Los Angeles Inmate Reception Center, was scheduled to be arraigned Monday.

A judge set Yixin's bail at $2 million.
Compensation scheme: LCF situation is 'unique and exceptional' says the Treasury

The Treasury has announced plans to hand 120million in compensation to around 8,800 mini-bond investors who lost out in the collapse of London Capital & Finance.

The creation of the compensation scheme - which will require legislation - is due to the 'unique and exceptional nature of the situation', said the Government.

The Treasury will pay four fifths of an original investment up to a cap of 68,000 to people not already receiving payouts from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

LCF's demise in January 2019 swept away the savings of many elderly and inexperienced investors who were hoodwinked into believing they would receive returns of 8 per cent from tax-free Isas.

The 237million failure of LCF recently sparked a row between the governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, and a former judge who wrote a damning report into the scandal, Dame Elizabeth Gloster, over whether he had tried to avoid being named as personally responsible.

Bailey was formerly boss of the Financial Conduct Authority, but moved over to lead the Bank last spring.

Mini-bonds have been popular in recent years among people seeking a better return than savings, but wanting to avoid stock market risks and volatility.

You are effectively buying company debt for a set period, in exchange for regular interest payments - but the money you make back depends on the firms issuing them not going bust. Read more here.

In addition to announcing the compensation scheme for investors not covered by FSCS protection, which is capped at 85,000, the Treasury announced a consultation into bringing the issuance of mini-bonds into FCA regulation.

City watchdog bans promotion of speculative mini-bonds The FCA slapped a permanent ban on firms pushing risky mini-bonds to ordinary investors after thousands lost money. But there are exemptions to its marketing ban for retail bonds that are heavily traded, companies raising funds for their own commercial or industrial activities, and products which fund a single UK income-generating property investment. Read more here.

LCF itself was authorised by the FCA, but the firm issued mini-bonds which were unregulated to around 11,625 investors, and according to the Treasury then 'speculatively invested the funds received in a number of underlying businesses'.

investors lost a High Court case over compensation last month because they had been left out of FSCS compensation.

This was because the scheme only covers regulated activities, like being given financial advice by LCF or transferring money from their Isa, but not the actual buying of unregulated mini-bonds.

The Economic Secretary to the Treasury, John Glen, said today: 'This has been a very difficult time for LCF bondholders, many of whom are elderly and have lost their hard-earned savings.

'It is an important point of principle that government does not step in to pay compensation in respect of failed financial services firms that fall outside the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

'However, the situation regarding LCF is unique and exceptional and the government has decided to establish a compensation scheme for LCF bondholders in this instance.

'The scheme appropriately balances the interests of both bondholders and the taxpayer and will ensure that all LCF bondholders receive a fair level of compensation in respect of the financial loss they have suffered.'

The Treasury says the FSCS is strictly limited in scope and it is only able to pay out when a relevant regulated activity has been undertaken.

It has been able to protect around 2,800 bondholders, paying out over 57million in compensation, according to the Treasury.

It adds that around 97 per cent of all LCF bondholders invested less than 85,000 and therefore will not reach either the Treasury's or the FSCS's compensation cap.

The Treasury adds: 'Bondholders should be vigilant to the risk of scammers posing as services to help them claim.

'They do not need to do anything at this stage and government will provide further details on how the scheme will operate in due course.'

The FCA announced today that 'given the exceptional circumstances' it would make 'ex gratia payments' to a small number of investors, not already compensated by the FSCS, who contacted it about LCF between April 2014 and December 2018.

They were given incorrect information which may have led them to conclude their investment would be safer than it was, the FCA admits.

'While we do not believe this was the primary cause of these investors losses, those direct communications may have been a factor in their decision to invest, or to remain invested,' it said.

'We will be contacting those investors directly to discuss the details of the payments and how they will interact with the government compensation scheme and any payments made by the FSCS.

'We will contact investors in this group irrespective of whether they have yet made a complaint to the FCA.'

The regulator said that following the publication of Dame Elizabeth Glosters report into its regulation of LCF, it had acknowledged that the collapse has had 'a significant impact on the lives of many individuals who invested money they could not afford to lose'.

'We are very sorry for the errors we made in our handling of this case. We accepted, and have committed to implementing, each of the recommendations which Dame Elizabeth Gloster made for the FCA in her review.'

The FCA also said: 'Together with the Serious Fraud Office, the FCA is continuing to investigate the circumstances surrounding the sale of mini-bonds issued by LCF.'
BOCA RATON, Fla., April 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Saxena White P.A. has filed a securities fraud class action lawsuit (the Class Action) in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland against Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (Emergent or the Company) (NYSE: EBS) on behalf of all persons or entities who purchased or otherwise acquired Emergent common stock between July 6, 2020 and March 31, 2021, inclusive (the Class Period).



If you purchased Emergent common stock during the Class Period and wish to apply to be lead plaintiff, a motion on your behalf must be filed with the Court no later than June 18, 2021. You may contact Lester Hooker (lhooker@saxenawhite.com), an attorney and Director at Saxena White P.A., to discuss your rights regarding the appointment of lead plaintiff or your interest in the Class Action. You may also retain counsel of your choice and need not take any action at this time to be a class member.

Emergent is a specialty biopharmaceutical company that develops vaccines and antibody therapeutics for infectious diseases. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Emergent signed deals with Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and AstraZeneca worth a combined $875 million to provide contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) services to produce the companies COVID-19 vaccine candidates, and received another $628 million from the United States government as a part of Operation Warp Speed, for a total of $1.5 billion in COVID-19 deals.

Following the deals, Emergents CEO Robert G. Kramer Sr. stated that the Company was uniquely prepared to answer the call for [the] COVID-19 pandemic because of its proven manufacturing capabilities in place. Indeed, throughout the Class Period, Defendants repeatedly assured investors of Emergents ability and capacity to mass manufacture COVID-19 vaccines at its Bayview manufacturing site in Baltimore, Maryland (Bayview). The announced deals sent the Companys stock soaring  peaking at over $134 per share on August 13, 2020.

As discussed in the Class Action Complaint, however, the Company failed to disclose to investors myriad issues at Bayview that would detrimentally affect its ability to manufacture the vaccine. Investors began to learn the truth on March 31, 2021, after the close of markets, when media reports revealed that employees at Emergents Bayview facility mixed up ingredients for the J&J and AstraZeneca vaccines, contaminating up to 15 million doses of the J&J vaccine. It was further revealed that this was not an isolated incident and part of a history of manufacturing issues at the Companys plant. Media outlets called the massive contamination a significant setback and public relations debacle and highlighted longstanding contamination risks and quality control issues at the Companys facilities, leading to a string of FDA citations, including a persistent problem with mold, poor disinfection of some plant equipment leading to growth of bacteria, the repeated approval of raw materials that had not been fully tested, and poor employee training.

In response to this news, shares of Emergents stock price fell $14.29 per share, or over 15% over the next two trading days, from a close of $92.91 per share on March 31, 2021, to close at $78.62 on April 5, 2021.

You may obtain a copy of the Complaint and inquire about actively joining the Class Action at www.saxenawhite.com.

Saxena White P.A., with offices in Florida, New York, Delaware, and California, is a leading national law firm focused on prosecuting securities class actions and other complex litigation on behalf of injured investors. Currently serving as lead counsel in numerous securities fraud class actions nationwide, Saxena White has recovered billions of dollars on behalf of injured investors.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Lester R. Hooker, Esq.

lhooker@saxenawhite.com

Saxena White P.A.

7777 Glades Road, Suite 300

Boca Raton, FL 33434

Tel: (561) 206-6708

Fax: (561) 394-3382

www.saxenawhite.com
Big I of Michigan

Jared Burkhart will be the next CEO of Big I Michigan (MAIA), the association announced.

Burkhart joins the Big I team on May 3 and succeeds the current CEO, Bev Barney, who is retiring Aug. 31.

Burkharts professional mission is to help others achieve at their highest level possible. He has been an association executive for the past eight years and a governmental policy professional for the prior six years.

He is the current CEO for the Michigan Chapter, American Academy of Pediatrics, and the previous executive director for the Michigan Council of Charter School Authorizers. Prior to joining the association world, he served in a legislative policy advisor role in the Michigan House of Representatives.

Burkhart holds the Certified Association Executive (CAE) designation from the American Society of Association Executives. He is the current Chair of the Board of Directors of the Michigan Society of Association Executives.

J.M. Wilson

Managing general agency and surplus lines broker J.M. Wilson has promoted three underwriters in its Portage, Michigan, and added Kaleb VanderMaiden as assistant transportation underwriter in Arlington Heights, Illinois.

Jennifer Tonthola was promoted to executive transportation underwriter. She has been with J.M. Wilson for 18 years and is responsible for underwriting a wide variety of new and renewal transportation risks.

Robin Beach was promoted to senior transportation underwriter. She has been with the company for five years and is responsible for underwriting new and renewal public and business auto risks and maintains strong relationships with carriers and independent insurance agents in Michigan.

Devan Dodd was promoted to property/casualty Underwriter. He joined .JM. Wilson in 2014 and is responsible for underwriting a wide variety of P/C risks and serves independent insurance agents in Michigan.

VanderMaiden assists underwriters with a wide variety of new and renewal commercial transportation accounts, and maintains relationships with carriers and independent insurance agents in Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska.

Topics Agencies Michigan
MASON CITY, Iowa  Stealing from a convenience store means probation for a Clear Lake woman.

Hollie Annette Tatro, 50, pleaded guilty to second-degree theft for stealing money while working at the Caseys General Store on Plaza Drive in Clear Lake in September 2020.

Tatro has been sentenced to two years of supervised probation and ordered to pay $2,885 in restitution.

Tatro received a deferred judgment, which means this conviction will be removed from her record if she fulfills all the terms of her sentence.
His Holiness Pope Francis is following events in eastern Ukraine with great concern and calls for peace and reconciliation.

He said this in his Sunday address to the faithful, with whom he prayed for peace in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories, Ukrinform reports with reference to Vatican News.

I am following with great concern events in areas of eastern Ukraine, where violations of the ceasefire have multiplied in recent months, the Pope said.

Expressing his deep concern about an increase in military activities in the area, he said: I strongly hope an increase in tensions will be avoided, and, on the contrary, that gestures be made that are capable of promoting mutual trust and fostering reconciliation and peace, which are so much needed and so much desired.

The Pope also highlighted the grave humanitarian situation affecting the population in the areas where tensions continue and said he is close to the people.

As Ukrinform reported, the Russian armed forces have recently been building up troops near the state border of Ukraine in the north, east and south, as well as in occupied Crimea. In addition, the number of ceasefire violations by the armed formations of the Russian Federation in eastern Ukraine has increased; there are losses among the soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. At the same time, the Russian Federation is conducting a propaganda campaign to justify possible aggression against Ukraine.

The U.S. and the EU announced their support for Ukraine and called on Russia to withdraw its troops from the Ukrainian border.

Photo credit: Vatican Media

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Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was among a handful of Republicans in the U.S. Senate who voted against advancing a bill aimed at addressing hate crimes against Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The bill was ultimately advanced for further debate Wednesday after a bipartisan 92-6 vote, breaking an early filibuster, but it remains unclear whether Republicans will oppose it in the future.

READ ALSO: Asian Americans in Texas are struggling to get the COVID vaccine. Here's why.

The COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act was introduced in March by U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, and U.S. Rep. Grace Meng, D-New York. It aims to expedite the process of reviewing COVID-19 hate crimes by designating a specific employee in the U.S. Justice Department for that task.

If passed, the bill would also issue guidance on how to make the reporting of hate crimes more efficient and the process easier to understand for the public, along with guidance detailing best practices to mitigate racially discriminatory language in describing the COVID19 pandemic, according to Hironos office.

In a statement to The Texas Tribune, Cruz acknowledged that hate crimes and racist violence directed at anyone, including Asian Americans, should be vigorously prosecuted. But he lambasted the bill as nothing but a Democratic messaging tactic.

Cruz said the bill is not designed to do anything to prevent or punish actual crimes. It is instead a Democratic messaging vehicle designed to push the demonstrably false idea that it is somehow racist to acknowledge that Covid-19 originated in Wuhan, China and that the Chinese Communist Party actively lied and suppressed information about the outbreak, allowing it to become a global pandemic.

He also accused Democrats of not taking racism seriously because they didnt call out the Justice Department for withdrawing an affirmative action lawsuit against Yale University that argued the school discriminated against Asian and white applicants through race-based admission quotas. The lawsuit was filed under former President Donald Trump and was withdrawn in February after President Joe Biden took office.

When Democrats decide to take hate and racism seriously that means they will address this and not ignore it because it doesnt fit neatly into their messaging tactics, Cruz said.

In a written statement, Meng said the derogatory rhetoric of many Republicans has fed hostility against people of Asian descent.

COVID: Ted Cruz says he's 'done' with wearing a mask at the U.S. Capitol

Before this pandemic started, I urged everyone  including elected officials  to not blame Asian Americans for the virus. My words were not heeded, she said. The former president and his Congressional Republican enablers trafficked racist, bigoted terms to describe COVID-19. In doing so, their language stoked peoples fears and created an atmosphere of intolerance and violence, which persists even today.

Trump regularly called COVID-19 the China virus. A few weeks ago, a Republican candidate for a Texas congressional seat said that she does not want Chinese immigrants in the United States at all.

They steal our intellectual property, they give us coronavirus, they dont hold themselves accountable, said Sery Kim, whos running to replace the late U.S. Rep. Ron Wright, who died in February, weeks after testing positive for the coronavirus.

A congressional committee held a hearing to discuss discrimination against Asian Americans in March, just two days after six Asian women were among eight people shot and killed at three Atlanta-area massage businesses.

U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Austin, criticized that hearing as the policing of rhetoric in a free society. He condemned the Atlanta shooting by making a reference to lynching, which drew backlash.

According to Stop AAPI Hate, an organization thats been tracking incidents of discrimination against Asian Americans for more than a year, nearly 3,800 incidents of racism directed at Asian Americans around the country were reported to the organization from March 19, 2020, to Feb. 28, 2021  including 103 in Texas.

The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans  and engages with them  about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 19:30:35|Editor: huaxia

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N'DJAMENA, April 19 (Xinhua) -- More than 300 terrorists were killed and 150 others, including three top leaders, taken prisoner on Saturday in Chad's western Kanem province, a Chadian army spokesperson said on Monday.

"We also deplore five martyrs and 36 wounded," said Azem Bermandoa Agouna, spokesman for the general staff, referring to Chadian army personnel killed and injured in the fighting.

He said the army also seized 26 vehicles from the enemy, 16 of which were equipped with heavy weapons.

Since April 11, the day of the presidential poll in Chad, militants of the Front for Alternation and Concord in Chad (FACT), an armed rebel group based in neighboring Libya, have made incursions into the province of Tibesti, in northern Chad.

On Saturday evening, Chadian government spokesperson Cherif Mahamat Zene said on social media that the recent "adventure of mercenaries from Libya has come to an end."

In a statement released on Sunday, the FACT claimed that it has proceeded on Saturday with the "liberation" of Kanem.

Also on Sunday, several opposition parties and civil society organizations in Chad called on the warring parties to reach a ceasefire, and asked the government to open an inclusive national dialogue to ease tensions. Enditem
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The NSW public school system needs to recruit at least 11,000 full-time teachers over the next 10 years to meet student enrolment growth but is already struggling with shortages, especially in the bush and in key subjects such as maths.

If the present student-teacher ratio is maintained and enrolment meets predictions of 17 per cent growth to around 950,000 in 2031, forecasting by education economist Adam Rorris estimates the workforce will need to grow from 54,500 to 65,500 full-time equivalent (FTE) teachers, based on Australian Bureau of Statistics data.

That would represent an increase of almost 20 per cent on the present workforce, Mr Rorris forecasting, commissioned by the NSW Teachers Federation, found.

NSW will need 20 per cent more teachers by 2031, a Teachers Federation analysis has found. Credit:Quentin Jones

These projections do not include the additional teachers on 2020 numbers that are required to address current shortages, in rural schools, in disciplines such as maths, and in specialist teachers for students with disabilities, Mr Rorris wrote.
[April 19, 2021] Loft Labs Open-Sources Virtual Cluster Technology for Kubernetes

Loft Labs, which makes Kubernetes easily accessible to developers, today announced that vcluster, a first-of-its-kind virtual cluster technology for Kubernetes, is now freely available on GitHub and on www.vcluster.com. Rather than creating heavyweight, resource-hungry, isolated clusters over and over again, companies can now launch lightweight, fast vclusters that are backed by a single Kubernetes cluster, which consolidates workloads, allows for resource sharing, and ultimately saves a lot of infrastructure cost. "vcluster is the first actually working virtualization technology for Kubernetes," said Fabian Kramm, CTO of Loft Labs. "There are other similar solutions being developed however, vcluster is the only one that is already being used in production by a variety of companies. We have decided to open-source it because the demand for a standalone vcluster technology is huge and there needs to be an open-source and freely available solution."



With Loft, any Kubernetes cluster becomes a self-service platform where engineers can create namespaces and virtual clusters whenever they need them. At the same time, Loft's sleep mode and cluster sharing technologies help eliminate idle workloads and save cloud computing costs. "There is a large demand for Kubernetes virtualization. Apple (News - Alert) noted that in their keynote at KubeCon Europe last year," said Lukas Gentele, CEO of Loft. "Launching our vcluster technology under the permissive Apache-2.0 license will enable anyone to explore virtual clusters and even contribute to it. Currently, there are over 90 companies, including three Fortune 500 enterprises, that have started utilizing our vcluster technology."

"Virtual clusters for Kubernetes is a game changer that is the equivalent of virtual machine technology in the 1990s that swept in the era of cloud computing," said Abby Kearns, CTO at Puppet Labs. "The team at Loft Labs has created a well-architected technology and I see the potential of vclusters to improve developer experience with Kubernetes, something that I have been passionate about for years in my previous role as CEO at Cloud Foundry Foundation." Loft is used by platform teams in enterprises to create internal Kubernetes platforms for developing cloud-native software, executing continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, or running artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) experiments. It is also valuable in production use cases, where IT teams use Loft's virtual clusters to surpass the scalability limits of regular Kubernetes clusters and where companies need to provision full-blown demo environments or securely-isolated instances of their managed software products. About Loft Labs The company was founded in 2019 to create open-source developer tooling and virtual cluster technology for Kubernetes, enabling users to gain secure but unimpeded access to cloud resources and to make the switch to truly cloud-native engineering practices. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005152/en/

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Our planet's worst mass extinction event happened 252 million years ago when massive volcanic eruptions caused catastrophic climate change. The vast majority of animal species went extinct, and when the dust settled, the planet entered the early days of the Age of Dinosaurs. Scientists are still learning about the patterns of which animals went extinct and which ones survived, and why. In a new study in PNAS, researchers found that while extinctions happened rapidly in the oceans, life on land underwent a longer, more drawn-out period of extinctions.

"People assumed that because the marine extinction happened over a short period of time, life on land should have followed the same pattern, but we found that the marine extinction may actually be a punctuation to a longer, more drawn-out event on land," says Pia Viglietti, a postdoctoral researcher at Chicago's Field Museum and the lead author of the PNAS study.

"The focus for studying terrestrial extinction has basically been, 'Can we match up the pattern in the terrestrial realm with what's observed in oceans?' And the answer is, 'Not really,'" says Ken Angielczyk, the paper's senior author and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Field Museum. "This paper is the first really focusing on vertebrates and saying, 'No, something was going on that was unique to the terrestrial realm.'"

Part of why scientists had looked to the marine extinctions for clues as to what happened on land is that there's a more complete fossil record of life underwater. If you want to become a fossil, dying by water, where your body will rapidly get covered by sediment, is a good way to make that happen. As a result, paleontologists have known for a while that 252 million years ago a mass extinction hit at the end of the Permian period, and within 100,000 years, more than 85% of the species living in the ocean went extinct. And while that seems like a long time to us, that's very quick in geologic time. The marine version of the end-Permian extinction took up 100,000 years out of the entire 3,800,000,000 years that life has existed--the equivalent to 14 minutes out of a whole year.

To learn what happened to life on land, Viglietti, Angielczyk, and their colleagues examined fossils from 588 four-legged fossil animals that lived in what's now South Africa's Karoo Basin at the time of the Permian mass extinction.

"The region where we found the fossils for this study is absolutely beautiful. The green mountainous slopes are so inviting on a crisp summer morning, it makes the heat that is still to come bearable," says Zaituna Skosan, the paleontology collections manager at the Iziko South African Museum and one of the paper's co-authors. "Finding good fossils is the best feeling, but also short lived as you must focus and continue to look for your next find. Even the best fossil finder overlooks a great find sometimes."

The researchers created a database and separated the fossils by age, grouping together specimens by 300,000-year time intervals. This approach allowed the researchers to quantify the appearance and disappearance of different species and look at the bigger picture of life over time, rather than just relying on individual specimens to tell the whole story.

"Our approach unifies the data and says, okay, within this time bin we have these species, but as we go up, we have these other species. By applying sampling methods to these bins, we can help correct for issues like having more or fewer specimens collected in different time intervals or places. Ultimately, it lets us quantify how much extinction is happening and how quickly new species are appearing," says Viglietti. "Instead of putting too much focus on any one fossil, you compile hundreds of observations roughly in the same time interval."

"To figure out patterns of extinction based on hundreds of fossils we used a type of math called statistics. When a species disappears it could either have gone extinct, or it could still be out there, waiting to be discovered, but so far undetected," says Roger Benson, a professor of paleobiology at the University of Oxford and one of the study's co-authors. "We had to deal with that before we could have any confidence about the timing of extinctions. The math is already understood so the statistical work involved writing computer algorithms to extract that all-important signal of extinction from the data."

One of the species that helped reveal patterns of extinction and recovery was Lystrosaurus, an herbivorous early mammal relative that ranged from the size of a small dog to a cow, depending on the species. "It had a beak and tusks, it wasn't the most attractive animal, but I have a soft spot for Lystrosaurus because it was like the first animal I studied as a grad student, so coming full circle with Lystrosaurus in this study made me quite happy," says Viglietti.

Lystrosaurus is what paleontologists call a "disaster taxon"--a group that thrived during a time when most other life was struggling. "Lystrosaurus is like a poster child for the end-Permian extinction that's always been portrayed as this animal that flourishes in the aftermath of all this extinction and just takes over," says Viglietti. "But we see Lystrosaurus appearing before the extinction even got started, it was already abundant. It got us thinking about what was driving that abundance--if Lystrosaurus just took over the barren landscape after other animals went extinct, or if the environment was changing and Lystrosaurus adapted to these changes that were causing extinction for all these other species. Our best guess is the latter."

Examining fossils like Lystrosaurus showed the researchers that the Permian extinction looked very different on land than it did in the oceans--it was a much longer, more drawn-out affair. Using the earlier comparison, if the history of life on Earth were compressed into a single year and the end-Permian extinction killed 95% of the ocean's animals in a matter of 14 minutes, the land extinction would have taken ten times as long, about two hours and twenty minutes.

It's not clear exactly why the mass extinction event happened so much more slowly on land. "The changes to the Earth's climate were cumulative and added up over time. Ecosystems were slowly disrupted, and then it just got to a point where everything collapsed, like the straw that breaks the camel's back," says Viglietti. "Everything's fine, until it's not."

One reason for the discrepancy could be that the oceans can absorb chemical changes and stabilize themselves, up to a point. "In today's climate crisis, the oceans can absorb a lot of carbon dioxide or rise in temperature without people realizing, and then all of a sudden you get sudden ecosystem breakdowns like ocean acidification and coral bleaching," says Viglietti. The same might be true for the late Permian oceans.

Understanding what happened in the end-Permian mass extinction gives us clues about the rise of the dinosaurs--many of the ancient mammal relatives went extinct, leaving ecological vacancies that dinosaur ancestors evolved to fill. But the end-Permian extinction also provides insights into the mass extinction event that the Earth is currently undergoing due to climate change and habitat destruction.

"The environmental changes that we are causing and the impacts we are having on animal and plant species are getting to the point where the scale is such that there isn't really anything in human history that is comparable," says Angielczyk. "The fossil record can give us some idea of what massive biodiversity crises are like and how they proceed."

"It takes a long time to recover from extinction. When we lose diversity, it's not going to recover in our lifetime, it's going to take hundreds of thousands of years, or even millions," says Viglietti. "Studies like this one show what our society should be focusing on."

###

This study was contributed to by the following authors: Pia A. Viglietti, Roger B.J. Benson, Roger M.H. Smith, Jennifer Botha, Christian F. Kammerer, Zaituna Skosan, Elize Butler, Annelise Crean, Bobby Eloff, Sheena Kaal, Joel Mohoi, William Molehe, Nolusindiso Mtalana, Sibusiso Mtungata, Nthaopa Ntheri, Thabang Ntsala, John Nyaphuli, Paul October, Georgina Skinner, Mike Strong, Hedi Stummer, Frederik P. Wolvaardt, and Kenneth D. Angielczyk.
A former employee stole more than $12,000 from a Scranton title insurance company, using some of the money to pay personal bills as she shuffled funds among client accounts in a bid to cover up the theft, investigators say.

Cristine A. Palermo, 47, 1185 Monkey Hollow Road, Monroe Twp. in Wyoming County, surrendered Monday at the Lackawanna County Criminal Justice Center to face theft and related charges.

Palermo, a former closing associate at Reliable Abstract Co., 224 Adams Ave., was released on $12,000 unsecured bail after her arraignment by Magisterial District Judge Paul Keeler. Her preliminary hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday.

She used her position at Reliable Abstract to steal $12,443 from the firm between 2017 and December, according to an arrest affidavit filed by county Detective Lisa Bauer.

The district attorneys office opened its investigation in February after it was contacted by attorney William Steppacher and his wife, Mardi Steppacher, who are the owners of the title insurance company.

The Steppachers initially became concerned and started looking at how Palermo was handling clients money after Mardi Steppacher discovered a file containing checks, some dating back to 2017, on Palermos desk in September, the affidavit said.

The Steppachers said it eventually became clear Palermo was taking money from client accounts and attempted to conceal the activity by moving funds around in dozens of accounts, according to the affidavit.

The district attorneys office used search warrants to obtain records for Palermos account at Wayne Bank, along with records of certain payments made using Reliable Abstract or its client accounts.

The investigation found Palermo issued a total of 12 checks totaling $7,971, including five checks for $3,884 to herself, four checks for $1,824 to Pennsylvania American Water, two checks to Comcast for $600 and one check for $1,663 for a vehicle payment, the affidavit said.

Palermo, who previously lived on Throop Street in Dunmore, diverted another $4,472 in cash for her personal use, investigators said.

In an interview at the district attorneys office on April 7, Palermo admitted paying personal bills with the missing money and spending some on her children, the affidavit said.

In addition to theft by unlawful taking, Palermo is charged with access device fraud, receiving stolen property and misapplication of entrusted property.
EUGENE, Ore. -- Around 40 community members came together Sunday afternoon at Maurie Jacobs Park in Eugene to honor the lives of the many minority men and women killed by police violence.

Organizers and community members painted on posters and cardboard to make signs protesting against police brutality.

"Folks who we have all lost to police violence-- even if they are not in our state or direct in our community,"one of the organizers Avery Temple said. "We have all lost lives too soon in an entirely preventable way."

This event was sparked by the recent killings of Daunte Wright in Minnesota and Adam Toledo in Chicago.

"This violence is not inevitable. This violence is not something that always has to be here and that has always been here," said Temple.

During the event, members took a moment of silence in honor of the victims.

Attendees were asked to donate to the victims' families if they were able.
CHICAGO, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the new market research report "Medical Composites Market by Fiber Type(Carbon and Ceramic), Application (Diagnostic Imaging, Composite Body Implants, Surgical Instruments, and Dental), and Region (Europe, North America, APAC, Latin America, and MEA) - Global Forecast to 2025", published by MarketsandMarkets, the global Medical Composites Market size is expected to grow from USD 922 million in 2020 to USD 1,478 million by 2025, at a CAGR of 9.9% during the forecast period. Medical composites are extensively being used in Diagnostic imaging, composite body implants. The increasing use of medical composites-based composites materials in the automotive & transportation end-use industry is expected to drive the demand.

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Carbon fiber type of medical composites comprises a major share of the medical composites market in terms of value and volume

Carbon fiber composites comprise carbon fibers and different matrix resins. The use of carbon fiber composites in medical applications provides strength, stiffness, and fatigue resistance. These composites are radiolucent and non-magnetic, thereby giving minimum after-effects during diagnostic imaging. In orthopedic and body implant applications, these carbon fiber composite products reduce the risk of allergies. The carbon fiber composites-based medical equipment market has been growing significantly over the last three to five years owing to increasing demand in imaging components, prosthetic applications, wheels-chairs, surgical tables, and oncology treatment, among others. The market growth is also driven by technological innovations and increased use in new medical devices such as tabletops of X-ray machines and patient positioning tables.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had adverse effects on the supply chain and demand for composite materials in 2020. As most of the countries worldwide were in strict lockdown during the peak time of COVID-19, it has resulted in disruption in the supply chain as movements of goods were restricted. Also, the pandemic has resulted in less demand for diagnostic imaging equipment, surgical equipment, and composites body implants due to the cancellation of elective surgeries and treatments. These factors resulted in reduced demand for composite materials in 2020.

The diagnostic imaging application accounts for the largest market share in the global medical composites market during the forecasted period in terms of value and volume

Carbon fiber composites have found wide use in applications such as patient imaging tables and accessories used in X-ray, Computerized Tomography (CT), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) systems, and Positron Emission Tomography (PET). The physical properties and characteristics of carbon fiber make it an excellent material for use in medical devices. Composites manufactured using carbon fiber are radiolucent. They absorb very low levels of radiant energy, thereby minimizing signal attenuation to enable capturing clear images of target body parts. Composites are ideal for improving positioning accuracy for optimum imaging results. The impressive strength-to-weight ratio, rigidity, and radiolucent properties of carbon fibers make them a material of choice for supporting limbs being x-rayed or treated with radiation.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an adverse effect on the value chain of the composites industry in 2020, with disruption of the supply chain and less demand from end-use applications. This led to reduced demand for medical composites-based composites in 2020

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North America is expected to account for the largest market share in the medical composites market during the forecast period

North America has significant consumption of medical composite materials due to the rising number of manufacturing industries in the region. The medical composites market in this region is expected to grow rapidly during the forecast period due to the rising use of these materials for dental and diagnostic imaging applications. The major advantages of medical composites are corrosion resistance, high strength-to-weight ratio, excellent fatigue endurance, good impact resistance, and malleability. Owing to their different biomechanical and biocompatible properties, these composites can be easily molded into complex designs. In North America, medical composites are also used in the production of prosthetics and body implants for orthopedic procedures.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the North American medical composites market, as the US is one of the worst hit by the pandemic. Orthopedic doctors have been redeployed to attend to COVID-19 patients, and all orthopedic surgeries have been rescheduled. Dental care and plastic surgery procedures have also been rescheduled or canceled by the patients.

The key players in medical composites market the 3M (US), Toray Industries, Inc. (Japan), CeramTec GmbH (Germany), Dentsply Sirona (US), Royal DSM N.V. (Netherlands), and SGL Carbon (Germany), Isotek AG (Switzerland), and among others. These companies are involved in adopting various inorganic and organic strategies to increase their foothold in the medical composites market.

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As President of the UNSC in April, Vietnam will organise a high-level open debate on the role of regional organisations in promoting confidence-building and dialogue in conflict prevention and resolution on April 19.

A session of UNSC (Photo: VNA)

The event will be presided over by State President Nguyen Xuan Phuc, marking the first time a high-ranking leader of Vietnam has chaired an event within the framework of the UN Security Council. This is also the first important multilateral diplomatic event of the Vietnamese President since the 13th National Party Congress.

Building trust and dialogue

Deputy Foreign Minister Dang Hoang Giang said that Vietnam has presided over the making of, and actively consulted to pass the Statement of the UN Security Council President.

The Statement will affirm the importance of cooperation between the United Nations, its Security Council and regional organisations in conflict prevention and settlement through peaceful measures, on the basis of respecting basic principles of international law and the UN Charter, and underlined confidence-building and dialogue measures as essential elements to contribute to conflict prevention and settlement.

The Statement will call for efforts to strengthen cooperation between the UN, its Security Council and regional organisations as well as between regional organisations in conflict prevention and settlement towards the building of sustainable peace, while encouraging the UN and the international community to support the improvement of capacity of regional organisations in conflict prevention and settlement, post-conflict reconstruction, and peace maintenance.

The role of regional organisations in promoting trust building and dialogue in conflict prevention is the most important and inclusive theme of the UN Security Council which is the UNs main body in the prevention of wars and conflicts and maintenance of international peace and security, Giang said, adding that as a member of many important regional mechanisms, especially ASEAN, Vietnam wants regional organisations to further promote their roles, improve their images and share responsibility with the UN in preventing and solving conflicts in the region, for the stability and prosperity of the region and the world.

Do Hung Viet, head of the Foreign Ministrys Department of International Organisations, emphasised that when building priorities for the working term as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council for 2020-2021, Vietnam determined to promote the role of regional organisations in cooperation with the UN Security Council in particular and the UN in general.

The upcoming high-level open debate will elevate Vietnams initiatives to contribute to maintaining international peace and security. Through this event, Vietnam wants to affirm its commitment and efforts to address global challenges facing the international community, Viet added.

In particular, President Nguyen Xuan Phucs presiding over the event is the affirmation at the highest level about Vietnams foreign policy of independence, self-reliance, diversification, multilateralism, and proactive and active international integration during its new stage of development.

State President Nguyen Xuan Phuc will preside over a high-level open debate on the role of regional organisations in promoting confidence-building and dialogue in conflict prevention and resolution on April 19. (Photo: VNA)

Intensifying ASEANs role

According to Viet, as a member of ASEAN, Vietnam wants ASEAN to have an increasing voice, position and role in matters directly related to the region as well as enhancing the bloc's presence as a regional organisation at the UN.

Through this event, Vietnam will contribute to drawing the attention of the international community and the United Nations to cooperation with ASEAN, and strengthening the blocs role at international forums and institutions in the coming time.

The open debate will be also an opportunity for leaders of the UN and regional organisations such as ASEAN, the European Union (EU), the African Union (AU), as well as the UN Security Council member states to assert the important role of regional organisations, share experience of each regional organisation in dealing with difficulties and challenges in their respective regions.

Vietnam expects this to be the start of a longer process at the UN Security Council on issues related to regional organisations and their role in promoting trust building and dialogue in conflict prevention, thus contributing to the UNs joint efforts to maintain peace, security and development in the world./.VNA
Explosive experts have uncovered 100kg of fireworks, firearms, hundreds of kilograms of explosives and volatile liquid mercury at an elderly man's property.

Detectives searched the 72-year-old's estate in Eubenangee, near Cairns in Far North Queensland, on Tuesday following tip-offs from the public.

About 24 firearms were allegedly found in shipping containers strew across the 100-acre property during the police operation, including a working .55 calibre anti-tank rifle from WWII, two semi-automatic rifles, and a series of silencers and detonators.

Mine experts were called to perform a series of controlled explosions in a four-day effort to ensure the area was safe for officials.

Police allegedly found 24 rifles (pictured) on the property of a 72-year-old man on Tuesday

Detectives also allegedly found hundreds of kilograms of ammunition (pictured) and had to call in mine experts to ensure the area was safe

Police allege the man had been collecting arms for decades but did not suggest he was actively using them.

Far North police Det Acting Insp Kevin Goan told Cairns Post police were concerned the materials could be used to manufacture explosives if they fell into the wrong hands.

'Some of the weapons and ordnance, had they gone into the wrong hands could quite easily have been appropriated for nefarious use which would likely have been hugely problematic to police and other members of the community,' he said.

Detectives allege some of the weapons were acquired by the man in the early 1970s and predating anti-gun legislation drafted decades later in the '90s, but he did not register the arms or dispose of them.

Far North police Det Acting Insp Kevin Goan said police were concerned the materials could be used to manufacture explosives if they fell into the wrong hands. Pictured: A rifle allegedly found on the property

The man was hit with a string of charges, including four counts of unlawful possession of weapons

The man was hit with a string of charges, including four counts of unlawful possession of weapons, one count of unlawful possession of 10 or more weapons, three counts of authority required to possess explosives.

He was also charged with two counts of prohibition on possession of particular magazine and one count each of secure storage of weapons, fail to take care and fail to store small ammunition and power device.

He will appear at Innisfail Magistrates Court on May 3.
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In future, waste from agriculture and forestry could serve as the basis for environmentally friendly building materials, insulation foams or fuels. Over the past four and a half years, an EU project involving the University of Augsburg has explored the potential of such products. The results also show how much a holistic view is needed when using them in order to avoid undesirable side effects.

Wood, bark, straw and other natural waste are suitable as a basis for new types of materials. In the construction industry, for example, green insulation foams, adhesives or concrete additives could be used in the future, while biofuels are one of several components for the transformation into green mobility. The EU project REHAP has examined the economic and ecological potential of such products in recent years. 16 partners from 7 EU countries were involved, including researchers from the University of Augsburg.

Among other things, we have investigated where in the EU such residues occur and in what quantities, and what the consequences of their use would be, explains Lars Wietschel. The industrial engineer is doing his doctorate at the University of Augsburg in the Department of Production & Supply Chain Management under Prof. Dr. Axel Tuma. Among other things, he is working on the life cycle assessment of products made from renewable raw materials. "Replacing conventional materials with green alternatives has consequences in different ecological areas - we also talk about impact and damage categories," he says. "If you try to achieve an optimal result in one of these categories - for example emitting as few greenhouse gases as possible - you run the risk of buying into undesirable side effects in other areas."

One example is biofuels from energy crops such as rapeseed: Their mass cultivation has indeed reduced the burning of fuels that are harmful to the climate. At the same time, however, their cultivation required arable land that was no longer available for agricultural production. As a result, agricultural imports from countries such as Brazil increased, with negative consequences for the rainforest in the Amazon region. Residual materials such as straw or wood waste do not compete with food production, explains Wietschel. They are therefore considered environmentally friendly raw materials for second-generation biofuels. Nevertheless, their use also has disadvantages."

There is a good reason why the farmer leaves the stubble after the maize harvest and ploughs it under later: The measure helps to maintain the nutrient and humus balance in the soil. If all plant residues were used for biofuels, the quality of the soil would decline; in addition, farmers would have to fertilise more. "This is just one of many interactions that have to be considered," explains Dr. Andrea Thorenz, who heads the Resource Lab at the University of Augsburg. "We are looking for sweet spots where we can buy the greatest possible advantages in one area with the least possible disadvantages in another."

To do this, the researchers use computer programmes with which they can map the interrelationships algorithmically. In this way, it is possible to visualise how the optimisation of one parameter - for example carbon dioxide emissions - affects another parameter - for example land use or soil quality. The sweet spots can thus be identified. "However, the software cannot weigh up the damage categories against each other," emphasises Thorenz. "Setting priorities on the basis of the information, if necessary, remains the task of policy makers."

Because there is usually no objective silver bullet. But the scientists are convinced that working with damage categories and making their mutual influence visible allows for more informed decisions. They are not so much concerned with the specific problem of biofuels. Our approach points beyond that, emphasises Prof. Dr. Axel Tuma. "It can be understood as a kind of blueprint on how to make decision-making processes that require weighing up different goals more transparent."

The Augsburg scientists also examined the economic framework conditions under which sustainable materials can compete with their conventional counterparts. At the moment, they usually cannot compete with fossil-based products in terms of price. But that could be changed through tax relief on the environmentally friendly alternatives or a CO2 tax. Technological progress should also contribute to the new materials becoming significantly cheaper in the future.
NEW YORK, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Funds managed by Crestview Partners announced today a majority investment into AutoLenders, a leading regional platform for financing, buying and selling automobiles with approximately $700 million in annual revenues. Headquartered in Berlin, New Jersey, AutoLenders leverages a unique dataset accumulated through decades of involvement across the full lifecycle of automobiles to originate and manage a ~$1 billion portfolio of new automobile leases, acquire vehicles directly from consumers and operate previously owned automobile dealerships in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. With Crestview's investment and support, AutoLenders expects to continue to expand its operations throughout the east coast as the next step towards becoming a nationwide leader.

The used car market represents the largest single domestic consumer category in the United States, with approximately $840 billion in annual sales, but has notably low e-commerce penetration and remains highly fragmented, with the industry leader at only ~2% market share. AutoLenders has developed a unique business model to succeed in this fast-evolving marketplace. The company utilizes an omnichannel platform for buying and selling, allowing its customers to choose between or combine online and in-store shopping experiences, and by maintaining a differentiated supply of the highest quality previously owned vehicles for sale in the industry.

Key to AutoLenders success is that it participates throughout the entire lifecycle of an automobile, starting with providing low-mileage leases to super-prime customers, supporting new car purchases. By retaining many of these vehicles as they come off lease and sourcing additional vehicles directly from consumers, AutoLenders consistently generates the highest quality inventory in the industry without any reliance on acquiring vehicles through auctions, profitably solving the most significant bottleneck for the used car industry.

Mike Wimmer, founder and CEO of AutoLenders, said, "Our strategy has always been for AutoLenders to provide market-leading service and innovative products to our customers. By creating a data-driven and customer-centric business, AutoLenders has been able to expand at multiples of the industry growth rate and become a leading player in our geographies.

"We are now at the point where we want to take advantage of the favorable market trends for the automotive retail industry and continue to grow throughout the east coast, with the ultimate goal of becoming a nationwide leader in the fast-evolving previously owned vehicle market," added Mr. Wimmer. "We are extremely pleased to be partnering with Crestview on this next step of the company's journey. They are experienced investors with a history of backing businesses poised for growth beyond their core geographies."

Dan Kilpatrick, Partner & Head of Financial Services at Crestview, added, "AutoLenders sits at the intersection of many of Crestview's investments across the automotive landscape, in specialty finance companies and behind businesses with rapid dealership expansion strategies. As we have gotten to know the company, it has become clear that the team at AutoLenders is set to thrive in an increasingly digital and dynamic automotive marketplace. By leveraging proprietary data analytics, coupled with decades of experience from every vantagepoint of automotive retail, AutoLenders is able to nimbly target the right vehicles to profitably finance, buy and sell."

Alex Rose, Co-President & Partner at Crestview, continued, "Mike and Brad Wimmer and the rest of the AutoLenders team have built a platform which we believe is uniquely positioned to benefit from several favorable tailwinds across this large and resilient, but still highly fragmented market. The used car industry is ripe for disruption and while there are many exciting business models pursuing this opportunity, AutoLenders has built a differentiated business model with advantages which are exceedingly difficult to replicate, positioning it for long-term success."

AutoLenders was advised by UBS Investment Bank and Mayer Brown LLP. Crestview was advised by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.

About AutoLenders

Auto Lenders Liquidation Center, Inc. ("AutoLenders") is a leading regional platform for financing, buying and selling automobiles. Started in 1979 and headquartered in Berlin, New Jersey, AutoLenders generates approximately $700 million in annual revenues. AutoLenders is an online-first omnichannel platform, providing customers with the opportunity to buy or sell vehicles online or through a network of highly rated previously owned car dealerships in the Mid-Atlantic region. Additionally, through its Certified Automotive Lease Corp. subsidiary, AutoLenders is a leading provider of low-mileage leases to super-prime customers supporting new car purchases. For more information, please visit www.autolenders.com.

About Crestview Partners

Founded in 2004, Crestview Partners ("Crestview") is a value-oriented private equity firm focused on the middle market. The firm is based in New York and manages funds with over $9 billion of aggregate capital commitments. The firm is led by a group of partners who have complementary experience and distinguished backgrounds in private equity, finance, operations and management. Crestview has senior investment professionals focused on sourcing and managing investments in each of the specialty areas of the firm: financial services, industrials and media. For more information, please visit www.crestview.com.

For more information, please contact:

Jeffrey Taufield or Daniel Yunger

Kekst CNC

(212) 521-4800

[email protected] / [email protected]

SOURCE Crestview Partners

Related Links

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Officials in diverse fields of national security, policy formulation and the media have called for collaboration between state institutions and the media in Nigeria.

The panellists spoke at a webinar organised to strengthen the relationship between state security institutions and civil society in Nigeria.

The programme, organised by the Whiteink Institute for Strategy Education and Research (WISER), held on Thursday, via Zoom.

The event brought together state actors, civil society organisations, journalists and others to discuss the rights, privileges and responsibilities of each in sustaining a free press.

In her opening remarks, the moderator of the event, Nnenna Elendu-Ukeje, a former member of the House of Representatives, said the role of the media could be related to national security and open civic space.

She said the media is an essential tool for democracy and nation-building.

In his keynote address, the chairman of the event, Abdulrahman Dambazau, a former Chief of Army of Staff, said the role of the media, if well utilised, is as important as the governments role.

Mr Dambazau argued that the actions of the media in recent times is jeopardizing national interest.

He added that the interest of the mass media should not be in conflict with national interest.

In his contribution, the Lead Partner, SBM Intelligence, Cheta Nwanze, said apart from the primary function of the media to disseminate information, it also has an obligation to promote citizens fundamental rights and speak truth to power.

This, he said, can only be achieved when the state gives free space for dissent.

He also called for partnership between the media, civil society organisations and state institutions to attain national security.

In his submission, Sani Usman, a former spokesperson of the Nigerian Army, said the media plays a tremendous role in shaping democratic space.

According to him, checking the excesses of society is an area the media should pay more attention to.

Speaking on misinformation and fake news, Mr Usman said the spread of unverified news has undermined journalistic standards, adding that journalists should shift from propaganda and unverified news.

The former army publicist said he has had several instances where media outfits including national dailies infringed individual rights and neglected the basic ethics of Journalism.

In her closing remarks, Catherine Angai thanked the panellists, saying the main objective of the programme was to have a conversation that would guide and provide improved communication and partnerships between state agents and the Nigerian media.

The general purpose of the webinar is to highlight the importance of collaborations between state institutions and the mass media in Nigeria, she said.

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This, she said, is to ensure the peace and stability of the nation alongside a thriving and liberal civic space.
For years now we have all agreed that if our family or our neighborhood or our business operated like our government, meaning barely, such dysfunction would be addressed and resolved.

Indeed, Democrats, Republicans and independents are united behind this one nonpartisan truth: that Washington is broken. But we are all wrong, says politics innovator Katherine Gehl. Washington isnt broken, its fixed. In other words, Congress will not work because it cannot work -- by design.

Our parties arent the problem, social media isnt the problem, gerrymandering isnt the problem, even campaign financing isnt the problem. Also, our government isnt paralyzed by a lack of centrists or moderates in Congress. According to Gehl, founder of the Institute for Political Innovation, our system is dysfunctional because it doesnt permit healthy competition. Having spent her career in business as the (now former) president and CEO of Gehl Foods, a $250-million high-tech food production company based in Wisconsin, Gehl knows competition is the vital ingredient to motivating peak performance. Without it there is no innovation, no accountability and ultimately no results. Incumbents keep getting reelected and we get gridlock.

Gehl notes that Congress performance -- as reflected by its approval rating -- is not connected to incumbents prospects of getting reelected, because that rating was 19% before the 2020 election yet incumbent retention rates were between 90% and 100% in 42 states.

Currently, candidates compete for victory in a party primary, and can win without support from a majority of the people they represent. With 86% of House seats already set in deep red or blue congressional districts, only the primary election matters. Whoever wins that first contest -- long before November -- will also win the general election. Since its all over before Election Day, general election voters simply dont matter. It is only the engaged partisans, and single-issue activists, who choose the primary winner. It is only they who matter. Once that candidate arrives in Washington, the only people in their district they need to perform for to keep their job are those primary voters -- most of whom do not want the officeholder to compromise and reach across the aisle, and will choose someone else if their member does.

To reverse this, Gehl designed a solution to repair the perverse incentives created by party primaries and plurality voting. Gehl's innovation, which she has termed Final Five Voting, combines top-five primaries with instant runoffs in the general election. The change 1) ends party primaries and creates open, nonpartisan primaries that send the top five vote-getters to the general election and 2) ends plurality voting with ranked-choice instant runoffs for those five candidates in the general election so a winner is chosen by a majority of voters.

Gehls construct is not a political reform but an innovation, one that is nonpartisan and can be implemented in years, not decades. It is designed so the victor is the candidate who appeals to the broadest coalition of voters, and then can only be reelected by -- again -- working in the interest of that broadest coalition of voters and no longer just a narrow slice of partisans. It is not designed to change the outcome; it changes incentives -- for how candidates campaign and then how politicians govern.

In a wide open primary, more candidates, of all parties, can compete on a level playing field in an effort to win one of the top five spots. Currently, fear of the spoiler effect means independent and third party candidates cannot take on the duopoly and win, so most of them dont try. Just look at how fast Democrats ran Howard Schultz off stage in 2019 when he announced his interest in running as an independent. Any Democrat or Republican seeking the defeat of President Trump was immediately opposed to Schultzs his candidacy -- even if they agreed with his platform and experience -- because they knew his vote share would only help Trump by taking votes away from the eventual Democratic nominee. This happens in congressional races as well.

Gehl explains it all in a TED Talk, with a sample election that is easy to understand. In it, eight great Americans in history compete in the open primary with the top five heading to the general elections where voters rank their choices of preference from 1 through 5. At first, Aaron Burr comes out ahead with 30%, but then the last place finisher is dropped, and instant runoffs are held by adding in second-choice votes -- and so on -- until a candidate secures a majority. Ultimately, when Alexander Hamilton wins with 68%, he has done so by having appealed to the most voters overall.

The Constitution gives states the power to set the rules for elections, so we don't have to rely on a gridlocked Congress to fix itself. (H.R. 1 and S. 1, the For the People Act, however, would end states election authority.) Last November, a modified version of this process, with four finishers instead of five, passed as a ballot initiative in Alaska. As a result, while Trump threatens to challenge incumbent Republicans in their primaries next year, Sen. Lisa Murkowski -- one of his top targets -- is not fretting his wrath. Should she run, in an open primary she will likely advance to the general election, having appealed to a larger number of voters than a GOP primary electorate. Gehl is pleased that some of Murkowskis fellow U.S. senators have expressed interest in FFV but said she cannot yet reveal who they are or which states they represent. (Maine instituted a ranked-choice voting system in 2018.)

Final Five Voting has now been introduced in the Wisconsin state legislature by Dale Kooyenga, a Republican state senator, and Daniel Riemer, a Democratic state assemblyman, and Gehl said she is hopeful it may become law in the next year or two. In an op-ed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the two lawmakers argued that state legislators can no longer view the dysfunction in Washington at a distance. We at the state level share responsibility for cleaning up the mess at the national level, because as elected state leaders, we have the power to do something about it, they wrote.

Following the Alaska model, Gehl said, if only four other states also eliminated both party primaries and plurality voting, Congress could have 10 senators and numerous members in the House who could deny the partisan leadership of both chambers and parties the chokehold it now has on the legislative process. She expects FFV to break through in enough states within three election cycles.

In the House of Representatives, FFV has the support of two lawmakers known for their bipartisan outreach who contributed a foreword to the book Gehl co-authored with Harvard business professor Michael Porter, The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.), both veterans who came to Congress in 2016 and 2018, respectively, wrote that they had entered office to serve their country as they had in the armed forces and were "dismayed" to find their status as members of different political parties was "seemingly more potent than our shared love for America." The two conclude, "The system is built to tear us apart," but that it doesn't have to be, and that Gehl and Porter's book proves the point. They urge their fellow Americans to "[p]lease engage -- we owe it to our extraordinary country to do so."

Gehl and Porter began their advocacy for political innovation with a critical stakeholder in the political industrial complex -- the business community. The two have warned: There is no greater threat to American economic competitiveness and social progress -- no greater threat to the combination of free-market economies and liberal democracies that has delivered more human advancements than any other system -- than our passive acceptance of a failed political system.

Yet that tolerance of the status quo appears to be waning. While for many years corporate leaders have acknowledged the long-term risk a paralyzed government would pose to the free market economy, they have mostly waited out periods of Democratic control to enjoy tax cuts and regulatory relief when Republicans control Washington. Gehl said the need for change -- and stability -- has reached an inflection point.

There is a potential silver lining in the level of crisis we have reached: that it has people coming to terms with the limits of the way they have engaged with the system up until now, Gehl said. What it does to the overall competitiveness of the economy, as well as to their employees and customers lives, and their own lives and families lives, will rise to be a bigger benefit than the loss of an ability to perhaps weigh in in a self-interested way in a completely dysfunctional system.

Gehl has coined her goal as free market politics, a change that will inject dynamic competition to produce results, innovation and accountability into our system, which currently requires none. America was founded on the greatest political innovation of modern times, she said. This is freeing up the system of that kind of advancement that America was known for.

In this new free market, there are no losers. On the other side of this systemic change, no one loses a job. Political ads still get made, funds are raised, strategists and consultants shape campaigns. The candidates are just tailoring their messages to a larger group of voters, and since they aim to be those voters second or third or fourth choices if not first, they are no longer using nasty negative messaging against the other candidates.

That the notion of legislators actually legislating and serving the public interest seems radical is a measure of how badly our system has deteriorated, but we must acknowledge how dangerous the status quo is and reject it.

FFV wont guarantee that Congress will fix our problems, Gehl says, but it ends the guarantee that Congress wont.
Hole ELR20-041 intersected 0.3m of 8.17/t Palladium (Pd), 8.34g/t Platinum (Pt), 7.15% Copper (Cu) and 0.30% Nickel (Ni) from 341.5m  341.8m downhole located in the Escape Lake Deposit area 350m north of the centroid of the Escape South High Grade Zone.





from  downhole located in the Escape Lake Deposit area north of the centroid of the Escape South High Grade Zone. Hole ELR21-037 intersected 9.0m of 1.47g/t Palladium (Pd), 1.28g/t Platinum (Pt), 0.61% Copper (Cu) and 0.27% Nickel (Ni) from 373.0m  382.0m downhole located between the Escape South High Grade Zone and the Steepledge North Zone.





from  downhole located between the Escape South High Grade Zone and the Steepledge North Zone. Hole ELR21-043 intersected 9.0m of 1.37g/t Palladium (Pd), 1.14g/t Platinum (Pt), 0.52% Copper (Cu) and 0.36% Nickel (Ni) from 317.0m  326.1m downhole located between the Escape South High Grade Zone and the Steepledge North Zone.

The recent discovery of a high-grade massive sulphide lens in the Escape Lake Deposit (Figure 2) and similar material previously discovered in the Current Lake Deposit (Figure 3) are considered to be transported material and exploration vectors to a potential larger source area. A third drill and local crew has now mobilized to the project site and has commenced drilling on the first of six high priority massive sulphide targets on the Thunder Bay North Property (Figure 4). The targets are high conductivity geophysical features identified in basal structural and stratigraphic locations with high potential to host massive sulphide mineralization (Figure 1). A total of 15,000m in 25-30 holes has now been allocated to testing of the initial six massive sulphide target areas.

The fertility of the Escape Lake magma conduit deposit is well illustrated by the recent mineral resource update, reported on January 20, 2021. The Escape Lake Deposit has an overall Indicated mineral resource of 505,369 ounces at 3.67g/t PdEq in 4,286,220 tonnes and is geologically open along trend. The Current Lake Deposit in turn has an Indicated mineral resource of 1,328,789 oz PdEq at an average grade of 3.44 g/t PdEq in 11,999,177 tonnes (pursuant to the January 20, 2021 NI 43-101 Technical Report and Mineral Resource Estimate for the Thunder Bay North Project, Thunder Bay, Ontario, prepared by Nordmin Engineering Ltd. with QP Glen Kuntz, P.Geo, as posted to SEDAR on March 4, 2021).

Abraham Drost, CEO of Clean Air Metals stated that "the Company confirms the high-level similarities of the magma conduit chonolith system and structural and stratigraphic controls on mineralization at Thunder Bay North with the Talnakh complex, one of the world's foremost Nickel-Copper-PGM mining camps. Based on the recent resource update and discovery of massive sulphides in the Escape Lake Deposit with favorable metal ratios and the recent completion of a structural analysis and MT geophysical surveys, we are committing to a substantial ramp up of our drilling exploration efforts on multiple bullseye ultra-low resistivity targets at the base of both the Escape Lake and Current Lake magma conduit deposit systems."

Table 1: New Assay Results Update  Escape Lake Zone, Thunder Bay North

Hole ID Company From,

m To, m Length,

m Pt+Pd

(g/t) Cu+Ni

(%) Pt

(g/t) Pd

(g/t) Cu

(%) Ni

(%) ELR21-037 AIR 286 288 2.0 1.29 0.17 0.63 0.67 0.10 0.07 ELR21-037 AIR 294 312 18.0 1.52 0.50 0.68 0.84 0.32 0.18 ELR21-037 AIR 318 322 4.0 1.29 0.44 0.57 0.71 0.21 0.22 ELR21-037 AIR 330 353 23.0 1.65 0.57 0.74 0.91 0.32 0.25 ELR21-037 AIR 357 360 3.0 1.64 0.55 0.73 0.90 0.31 0.24 ELR21-037 AIR 366 370 4.0 1.81 0.56 0.83 0.97 0.35 0.21 ELR21-037 AIR 373 382 9.0 2.75 0.88 1.28 1.47 0.61 0.27 ELR21-039 AIR 297 299 2.0 1.05 0.21 0.45 0.61 0.06 0.14 ELR21-039 AIR 339 341 2.0 1.09 0.39 0.50 0.60 0.19 0.20 ELR21-041 AIR 336.9 337.57 0.7 20.18 7.32 8.63 11.55 4.93 2.39 ELR21-041 **incl 336.9 337.57 0.7 14.38 7.26 6.45 7.93 4.76 2.50 ELR21-041 AIR 341.5 341.8 0.3 16.51 7.45 8.34 8.17 7.15 0.30 ELR21-043 AIR 274 280 6.0 1.16 0.41 0.50 0.66 0.24 0.17 ELR21-043 AIR 296 300 4.0 1.37 0.49 0.63 0.74 0.26 0.23 ELR21-043 AIR 317 326.1 9.1 2.51 0.88 1.14 1.37 0.52 0.36 ELR21-043 AIR 334 336 2.0 1.36 0.41 0.63 0.73 0.23 0.18 ELR21-044A AIR 318.4 319.9 1.5 2.49 0.68 1.17 1.32 0.46 0.22 ELR21-047 AIR 341.8 346.53 4.7 1.99 0.65 0.90 1.08 0.39 0.26



Note: 1) All intercepts are estimated to be >95% of true width based on drill hole inclination 2) Mineralized intervals calculated at 1 ppm Pt+Pd cutoff ** Previously reported composite assay interval on March 18, 2021 on a Rush basis

COVID Policy

Clean Air Metals has adopted COVID-19 avoidance and personal protection measures for its geological staff, drilling contractor and service suppliers. Personnel are required to maintain physical distance, use Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), self-monitor and self-isolate or elect to work from home. Management had previously eliminated plans for a camp setup to service a planned diamond drill campaign on the Escape Lake Project. The Company is aware of Thunder Bay Health Unit guidelines that provide for "mandatory" self-isolation for returning overseas travel. The guidelines also "strongly recommend" self- monitoring and self-isolation as needed after travel into the Northwest region from other areas of the Province and interprovincially. Mineral Exploration and Development has been deemed an essential service in the Province of Ontario (http://www.netnewsledger.com/2020/03/23/ontario-covid-19-business-allowed-to-remain-open-list-march-23-2020/ ). The Company has procured the services of a locally staffed and serviced diamond drilling contractor to complete the diamond drilling program.

Qualified Person

Mr. Allan MacTavish, P.Geo. a Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101 and VP, Project Manager of the Company, has reviewed and approved all technical information in this press release.

Social Engagement

Clean Air Metals Inc. and its wholly-owned subsidiary Panoramic PGMs (Canada) Ltd. acknowledge that the Thunder Bay North Project is on the traditional territories of the Fort William First Nation, Red Rock First Nation and Biinjitiwabik Zaaging Anishinabek. The parties together are the Cooperating Participants in a Memorandum of Agreement dated January 9, 2021 and the issue of Warrants, reported January 28, 2021.

About Clean Air Metals Inc.

Clean Air Metals' flagship asset is the 100% owned, high grade Thunder Bay North Project, a platinum, palladium, copper, nickel project located near the City of Thunder Bay, Ontario and the Lac des Iles Mine owned by Impala Platinum. The Clean Air Metals project hosts the Current Lake deposit and magma conduit and the Company is actively exploring the Escape Lake deposit, a twin structure to the Current Lake deposit. Executive Chairman Jim Gallagher and CEO Abraham Drost lead an experienced team of geologists and engineers who are using the Norilsk magma conduit stratigraphic and mineral deposit model to guide ongoing exploration and development studies. As the former CEO of North American Palladium Ltd. which owned the Lac des Iles Mine prior to the sale to Impala Platinum in December 2019, Jim Gallagher and team are credited with the mine turnaround and creation of significant value for shareholders.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

"Abraham Drost"

Abraham Drost, Chief Executive Officer of Clean Air Metals Inc.

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.

Cautionary Note

The information contained herein contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation, including statements regarding the potential of the Thunder Bay North Project and the Escape Lake and Current Lake deposits and timing of technical studies and mineral resource estimates. Forward-looking statements relate to information that is based on assumptions of management, forecasts of future results, and estimates of amounts not yet determinable. Any statements that express predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance are not statements of historical fact and may be "forward-looking statements." Forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ from those reflected in the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation: political and regulatory risks associated with mining and exploration; risks related to the maintenance of stock exchange listings; risks related to environmental regulation and liability; the potential for delays in exploration or development activities or the completion of feasibility studies; the uncertainty of profitability; risks and uncertainties relating to the interpretation of drill results, the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits; risks related to the inherent uncertainty of production and cost estimates and the potential for unexpected costs and expenses; results of prefeasibility and feasibility studies, and the possibility that future exploration, development or mining results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations; risks related to commodity price fluctuations; and other risks and uncertainties related to the Company's prospects, properties and business detailed elsewhere in the Company's disclosure record. Should one or more of these risks and uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements. 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, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. Actual events or results could differ materially from the Company's expectations or projection.

SOURCE Clean Air Metals Inc.

Related Links

https://www.cleanairmetals.ca/


Elvis paid a special visit to Helen Keller Hospital on Monday!

The hospital posted video of the performance on Facebook. It was for a hospital employee, Brenda Blakeslee, on her birthday.

Blakeslee and her husband had been planning a trip to Graceland, but coronavirus put the trip on hold.

Her husband wanted to bring Graceland to the Shoals for her birthday. He did just that! Helen Keller Hospital said.

Elvis surprised Blakeslee with gifts and her own personal performance, which you can watch below.
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, has said Nigeria must review its foreign policy to protect its national interest in the changing global community.

Mr Gbajabiamila said this in Abuja at a conference on the review of Nigerias Foreign Policy, organised by the House Committees on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora on Monday.

He said the review was long overdue, adding that so many things have changed since the 1960s when Nigerias foreign policy first came into play.

Technology has changed the way we conduct business and has created an opportunity for millions across the world.

It has also made us vulnerable because the technology platforms and tools that have become such important parts of our lives are themselves susceptible to the people who will seek to use them to hurt us.

Terrorists, criminals and bad actors of all faces now have access to tools that would enable them to operate with ease while avoiding detective agencies.

No country in the world can meet these challenges alone, we need a global response and we need each other, he said.

Mr Gbajabiamila added, Our nations foreign policy should define our terms of engagement with the rest of the world so that we can each survive together.

If we say the world is dynamic and we live in one global village, it is time for us to review our foreign policy.

He said a deep look into Nigerias foreign policy might reveal aspects the country needs to fix.

So sometimes, inherent in foreign policy are contradictions, so Im sure if we look deeply in our foreign policy we might have some contradictions, contradictions that may work for us and contradictions that may not work for us and that is why this review is very important.

This is why the review is very important; foreign policy can shape economic, social and political issues and must be taken very seriously, he said.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs Geoffery Onyeama defined foreign policy as a set of self-interest strategies chosen by a state to safeguard national interest.

He said the aim was to achieve set goals in a nations relationship with other countries at the multilateral level.

The minister said foreign policy was dynamic and highly responsive to changing priorities and interests.

According to Mr Onyeama, Nigerias foreign policy has been evolving in line with its strategic national interests.

Under President Muhammadu Buhari, the Buhari doctrine is anchored on the pillars of good neighbourliness, peaceful coexistence with all countries, on African regional cooperation and multilateralism.

Under Buhari, it focuses on sustainable economy, social inclusion and poverty reduction, increased agricultural output for security, energy sufficiency, transport expansion and infrastructure development, education, healthcare, good governance, he said.

ADVERTISEMENT

The Chair, Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, Adamu Bulkachuwa, described the retreat as the right step that will move the nation in the right direction to achieve a favourable foreign policy.

He said many things had changed since 1960 and that with the end of the Cold War, even Russia had become a capitalist state.

He said many countries like the Asian Tigers had emerged strong but most African countries were still struggling to survive.

This is why this conference is so important because, with foreign policy, we can change the situation; but we have to first realign our own domestic policy.

Foreign policy must be based on our interest; we have an enormous challenge, it is therefore imperative that we review not only our foreign policy but indeed the totality of our system politically, socially and economically, he said.

The Chair, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Yakub Buba (APC-Adamawa), said the need for periodic review of foreign policy in a fast pace and highly dynamic world cannot be overemphasised.

He said it was about time Nigeria had a comprehensive document that can be addressed as the foreign policy of the country.

Foreign policy in its true nature is dynamic; such a policy must maximize the gains of its relationship with the outside world.

READ ALSO: Gbajabiamila criticises past administrations for failing to pass PIB

With the 54 gentlemen and women chosen from a long list of career diplomats, scholars in various fields and quality and experienced individuals of diverse competencies, we will be here to jaw jaw over various presentations.

This is to fashion a way forward for our country to assume its place of pride within the global diplomatic circles of the 21 century, he said.

The Chair, House Committee on Diaspora, Tolulope Shadipe-Akande (APC-Oyo), drew attention to the plight of Nigerians in Diaspora and the state of Nigerian foreign missions and embassies across the globe.

(NAN)
PALMETTO, Fla., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- It Works!, an international award-winning independent distributor is celebrating its 20th year in business by relaunching the original products that put the company on the map.

It Works! specializes in health, wellness, and beauty products, and has reimagined two of its classic products with a new, modern look: The Ultimate Body Applicator, a tightening and toning contoured body wrap, is now the Skinny Wrap, and Facial, a skin-revitalizing sheet mask, has been reformulated to the Hydrating Facial Mask.*

With two decades of thriving as a leader in the space, It Works! maintains its commitment to placing product innovation at the core of its business strategy; by focusing on creating great products, It Works! continues to help and empower people to earn extra income through the resale of its products. Today, It Works! has a selection of over 40 amazing beauty, nutrition, and lifestyle products.

"The biggest challenge in this industry  and really the worldwide market  is to offer an uncommon solution, a true original, that captivates people and offers them something they never thought was possible before," according to Mark Pentecost, founder and chief executive officer of It Works! "We knew we had something special to share with the world."

It Works! was founded by Mark and his wife, Cindy Pentecost, in 2001, with a product offering that would turn out to be one of their best sellers: the Ultimate Body Applicator. Soon after, the company would expand into new markets and products. It Works! continues to expand globally; in 2021 It Works! has over 100,000 team members in over 23 countries.

To this day, the company is still family-owned and places a high value on integrity and innovation. It Works! extends thanks to its customers for 20 years of trust and looks forward to continuing to deliver more innovative, first-to-market products to customers in the years to come.

Visit itworks.com for the latest products and best-sellers!

*Individual results can and will vary. It Works! cosmetic products are purely cosmetic in nature and do not claim to cure/treat/prevent any skin & hair related disorders. If you are allergic to any ingredients listed, or are under treatment or on medication for your skin, please consult with your physician prior to use.

About It Works!

It Works! is a Palmetto, Florida-based direct sales company that was founded in 2001, known for its Skinny Brew coffee. The company's innovative product line includes nutrition, lifestyle, and beauty products, including collaborations from celebrities, such as the world-renowned Dr. Paul Nassif. It Works! has received countless awards and accolades. For five consecutive years, It Works! earned a spot on Inc. 500 and Inc. 5000's list of "Fastest-Growing Private Companies in America." In 2016, the company was ranked as a "Top 20 Fastest-Growing Direct Sales Organization in North America" by DSN Magazine. Direct Selling News honored the company in 2017 and 2018 with its "Best Place to Work" award, and, in 2020, It Works! received Platinum Status by the Consumer-Centric Recognition Program that's hosted by Direct Selling News. The company has expanded into 23 countries and currently has over 150,000 independent distributors worldwide and maintains a debt-free status to date. With a strong brand culture founded on values of connection, friendship, fun, and freedom, It Works! continues to provide science-backed, real solutions for its community of entrepreneurs and consumers.

Visit www.ItWorks.com for additional information.

Follow It Works! on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

CONTACT INFORMATION:

Tiffany Kayar

[email protected]

Related Images

it-works-20th-anniversary-birthday.png

It Works! 20th Anniversary Birthday Relaunch

SOURCE It Works!
Chaffin Luhana LLP, a national plaintiffs-only law firm with offices in Pittsburgh, is pleased to announce the launch of its first Teacher of the Month outreach effort.

Chaffin Luhanas goal with this campaign is to draw attention to and raise awareness of incredible teachers in Pittsburgh who are truly changing the lives of the students they teach. To continue celebrating the work educators are doing to better their communities, Chaffin Luhana is planning on highlighting one teacher each month based on nominations made from students, parents, faculty, staff and peers throughout Pittsburgh and surrounding areas. Nominations can be made at ChaffinLuhana.com/Nominate.

In line with their mission of Doing Good by Doing Right, the selected teacher will receive a $250 gift card, and the teachers photo will be featured on one of Chaffin Luhanas billboards during the month of May.

We wanted to find a way to highlight the teachers who work so hard for their students, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Eric Chaffin who is the Managing Partner of Chaffin Luhana. With Teacher Appreciation Week being May 3rd through May 7th this year, it felt like the perfect time to launch this initiative and show our support for our local teachers.

This is the latest of Chaffin Luhanas community endeavors. The firm sponsors an annual Turkey Giveaway, organized the #10KSandwiches event at the start of the pandemic and is currently working with 3WS radio to recognize Pittsburghers doing good with a $100 award as part of its Good Deed of the Week project.

About Chaffin Luhana

Chaffin Luhana LLP is a plaintiffs-only law firm with a national trial practice with offices in Pittsburgh, PA, West Virginia, and New York City, focused on representing injured victims in catastrophic and complex cases, and drug and products liability litigation. With over 130 years of experience and over $1 billion recovered by our attorneys, our hard-working team includes former federal and state prosecutors, former state and federal judicial law clerks, former large defense firm attorneys, court-appointed leaders in the national plaintiffs bar and an on-staff social worker.

Yet, despite our tremendous success inside and outside of the courtroom, our attorneys and staff remain grounded and true to our humble roots. We pride ourselves in being compassionate and empathetic toward our clients and communities and treat them like family.
Mensaje del Presidente del Jurado Nacional de Elecciones, Jorge Luis Salas Arenas, quien hace un llamado a la ciudadania con motivo de las #Elecciones2021 que se realizan este domingo #11Abril. pic.twitter.com/fWKxJEUPeB
The police officer who watched helplessly as her partner's life ebbed away after being shot in a hail of automatic gunfire says his death 'must not be in vain'.

Senior Constable Brett Forte, 42, was killed when Ricky Maddison opened fire on a police vehicle in the Lockyer Valley, west of Brisbane, on May 29, 2017.

Maddison, 40, was later shot dead after being warned to surrender more than 80 times during a 20-hour siege.

Senior Constable Cath Nielsen has said her partner Senior Constable Brett Forte's death 'must not be in vain'

Senior Constable Brett Forte, 42, (pictured with wife Susan) was killed when Ricky Maddison opened fire on a police vehicle in the Lockyer Valley, west of Brisbane , on May 29, 2017

Senior Constable Cath Nielsen survived the shooting that killed her partner and gave evidence to an inquest on Monday.

The decorated officer held back tears, describing Sen Const Forte as a good friend and an ethical man.

Maddison had been on the run for more than two months avoiding an arrest warrant for a domestic violence incident.

Finally, police tracked him down the day of the shooting following him along the Warrego Highway before he veered on to a dirt road.

Officers Forte and Neilsen were leading the pursuit, with Sen Const Forte calling out a warning over the police radio: 'Just be aware he has firearms ... If there is a takedown, be careful.'

Senior Constable Brett Forte died after Ricky Maddison (pictured) opened fire on police officers following a 20 hour siege

Police followed on Wallers Road until the road narrowed and Maddison's vehicle slowed to a stop at the crest of a rise, and the mood in the lead patrol car suddenly changed, Sen Const Neilsen said.

Both experienced officers had considered the possibility of a confrontation with Maddison.

'He wasn't just going to let me put the cuffs on him and walk him to the car,' she said.

Maddison used the high ground advantage and opened fire on the police.

'It was like a shooting gallery. That's exactly what it was that day. It was narrow, very steep, and he was on top  He was shooting down at us essentially.

'We came up behind him, and as quick as anything, he got out of the vehicle, turned toward us and started firing.

Snr Constable Cath Nielsen asked questions about reports automatic gunfire had been heard near Maddison's rural property before the ambush

'I couldn't believe it was automatic gunfire ... how does that happen?'

'At the same time, I've got my gun out and started shooting through my windscreen,' Sen Const Nielsen said.

'I continued shooting as we've gone down ... Brett obviously got hit, and that made the car swerve.'

Sen Const Nielsen said officers smashed the patrol car's windscreen to try dragging Sen Const Forte to safety, but it was too late.

'It was like something out of the streets of Beirut.

'It took a long time to make a hole big enough to get Bretty out. I pulled him back on top of me ... that's when I realised the amount of blood.

'There was a bullet hole in his arm, it was a mess.'

Despite his wounds, she tried desperately to reach her partner, who was making groaning noises.

She asked if he could hear her, but then his 'colour changed'.

Snr Constable Brett Forte's wife Susan Forte (pictured) leaving Toowoomba Court House following the inquest into her husband's death

The inquest was also told of deep divisions within the tactical crime unit, with some officers 'kept in the dark' from key information.

In the days and months after Sen Const Forte's death, mourning turned to anger as Sen Const Nielsen asked questions about reports automatic gunfire had been heard near Maddison's rural property before the ambush.

She said through tears she had been vilified and ostracised by other police before her service firearm was taken away.

'My life was made a living hell for asking these questions. I have done nothing wrong, nothing wrong.

Snr Constable Brett Forte's picture is carried during a funeral procession

'Not only am I dealing with the death of my mate, but I was dealing with s*** from that office because I asked questions.'

Sen Const Nielsen said if the officers at the scene of the ambush had known there was a possibility Maddison could be armed with automatic weapons, the outcome may have been different.

'If I had all the information that everyone else knew, yes, it could be very different,' she said.

'I am proud of being a police officer, I am proud of what I do and I am proud of my brothers and sisters in blue .... but Brett Forte's death cannot be in vain.

'We have to change cultures.

'We have to do better because this can never happen again.'

The inquest, set down for two weeks, continues.
Florid Gov. Ron DeSantis listens to a report from a member of his administration during a meeting at the governor's office in Tallahassee, Florida, on April 1, 2021. (Screenshot/Epoch Times)

Florida Gov. DeSantis Signs Anti-Riot Bill Into Law, Creating Tougher Penalties for Violent Protesters

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill that intends to crack down on violent protests and riots in the state.

DeSantis, a Republican, signed the so-called anti-riot measure in Polk County on April 19, saying its the strongest anti-rioting, pro-law enforcement piece of legislation in the country.

The signing comes amid protests, riots, looting, and arson incidents in several major cities around the United States in the wake of an officer involved-shooting death in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. Meanwhile, a verdict is expected to be handed down by a jury in the murder trial of former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin, who was seen kneeling on George Floyd before his deathwhich sparked months of riots and demonstrations.

The law, known as HB1, increases criminal penalties for assault, defacing monuments, and vandalizing public property during riots. Local governments that interfere with law enforcement trying to contain violent demonstrations will be penalized. Meanwhile, a citizens appeal process will be set up when counties and cities try to reduce their respective police force budgets.

DeSantis said during the signing event that the left-wing cries of defund the police that echoed throughout Black Lives Matter demonstrations last year is an insane theory and is not going to be allowed to ever carry the day in the state of Florida.

Democrats and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have said that the law is designed to intimidate Black Lives Matter and related protesters.

Demonstrators participate in a protest in Miami, Fla., on June 12, 2020. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Micah Kubic, executive director of ACLU of Florida, said in a statement, The bill was purposely designed to embolden the disparate police treatment we have seen over and over again directed towards black and brown people who are exercising their constitutional right to protest.

The law went into effect immediately after DeSantis signed the bill on April 19.

According to the text of the bill, other new measures include changing the definition of what a riot is in the state of Florida. A riot will be defined as a violent public disturbance involving three or more people acting with a common intent that causes damage to public property or injuriesor can cause imminent injury or damage.

The law creates a new second-degree felonyaggravated riotfor any riot involving more than 25 people and resulting in grievous bodily harm or more than $5,000 in property damage. It would also apply if participants use or threaten to use a deadly weapon, or block roadways by force or by the threat of force.

Florida state Sen. Danny Burgess, a Republican who sponsored the measure, said the law defines the difference between a peaceful demonstration and a riot.

Not only did we do that to put the public on notice as to what constitutes a riot, but also to make it clear to both protester and law enforcement where that line in the law is drawn, Burgess said, according to News Channel 8.
(Natural News) In response to Resident Bidens continued assault on Americans gun rights, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a proclamation via Twitter that calls on his states legislature to pass a bill designating the Lone Star State as a Second Amendment sanctuary state.

Biden is threatening our 2nd Amendment rights, Abbott wrote. He just announced a new liberal power grab to take away our guns. We will NOT allow this in TX. Its time to get legislation making TX a 2nd Amendment Sanctuary State passed and to my desk for signing.

Abbott went on to commend Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey for signing legislation in his state on April 6 that bans law enforcement from enforcing any federal gun control laws that infringe upon the Second Amendment.

This is what Im seeking for Texas  a law to defy any new federal gun control laws, Abbott further wrote. It will make Texas a Second Amendment Sanctuary State. Legislation is moving in the Texas House and Senate. I look forward to signing it.

On April 7, Hunters dad announced several new gun control measures in response to the Boulder false flag shooting at King Soopers, as well as the Atlanta massage parlor false flag shooting.

China Joe says these two reported incidents represent a gun violence public health epidemic in America that can only be cured by erasing portions of the Second Amendment and punishing law-abiding gun owners.

One day prior, the Texas House State Affairs Committee approved House Bill 2622 to make the state a Second Amendment sanctuary state. Abbott says he supports the bill, as it would forbid Texas state agencies and local governments from enforcing new federal gun laws or rules.

At a hearing last week, bill author Rep. Justin Holland told a committee that his legislation does not and cannot prevent federal government from enforcing their new laws, regulations, and restrictions.

We just wont enforce or allow their policies, or direct state resources to any federal efforts in Texas, he clarified.

The Texas Senate has proposed a similar bill, Senate Bill 541, that would accomplish much the same thing. It is still being considered.

Will Americans allow Resident Biden to take their guns?

Beijing Biden, meanwhile, is under the gun by gun control advocacy groups that want something to be done quickly to make it harder for Americans to purchase firearms and ammunition.

He doesnt have all the time in the world, said Kris Brown, president of the gun control advocacy group Brady, about Biden. He needs to move forward with legislative changes today, now, because whats at stake is real human life.

So far, Biden has unveiled six executive actions that aim to restrict Americans access to firearms and ammunition. One of them involves directing the Department of Justice (DoJ) to draft red flag laws for states, as well as a new report on firearms trafficking.

Bidens executive orders also target ghost guns, which are made using build-it-yourself kits that do not come with a registration number or background check. Brady is reportedly thrilled with this announcement from the White House.

Biden is also calling on the Senate to pass two proposals already passed by the House that would expand background checks for firearms purchases.

The bill hes referencing, which would repeal the immunity Congress gave years ago to the gun industry, that is being sponsored, and has been every year in Congress, by the incredible Representative Adam Schiff, says Brown.

He is moving forward with reintroducing that bill and we want to hear the president continue to echo and push Congress to act.

To learn more about the Democrat assault on the Second Amendment, check out SecondAmendment.news.

Sources for this article include:

TheEpochTimes.com

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com

MSN.com
Private investment firms Ardian Growth and MCH Private Equity have teamed up to acquire Logalty, an electronic signature company.

Swen Capital Partners, a long-term investor of MCH, also contributed to the investment.

With the support of Ardian and MCH, Logalty hopes to consolidate its position in Spain and bolster its international growth, with a focus on Mexico and Portugal.

The RegTech company hopes to build new technological capabilities, expand its reach in the SME market and provide its services to more blue chip customers.

Founded in 2005, Logalty helps ensure legal security of online transactions through digital identity and electronic signatures for contracts. The Spanish companys digital identification services include video identification and ID card identity validation.

Its clients include Santander, Mercedes Benz, BBVA, Sabadell Consumer and Grupo Planeta.

For the past two years, the RegTech has experienced 20% growth in sales year-over-year and doubled its EBITDA.

MCH Private Equity senior partner Andres Pelaez said, Logalty is the only Spanish player to have penetrated major accounts and managed to maintain long-lasting relationships.

It is a very attractive company with great potential in a market that is in the process of consolidation. Together with Ardian Growth, we are confident that we will be able to take the company to new levels of growth.

Ardian recently closed its seventh buyout fund on 7.5bn, with 1bn of that coming from co-investments.

The vehicle is aimed at businesses operating within healthcare, food value chain and technology.

Copyright  2021 AltAssets
Theres no guarantee of war-stricken Afghanistans future after the remaining over 2,500 US troops leave the Middle Eastern country, said top White House official on April 18 even as Washington stressed that it would continue to be focussed on the terrorist threats emanating from Kabul. White House National Adviser Jake Sullivan told Fox News in a televised interview that he cant make any guarantees about what will happen inside Afghanistan when asked about the risk of a repeat of what happened in Iraq.

In Iraq, Islamic State militants had seized territory after the American troops withdrew in 2011. US President Joe Biden on Wednesday had announced that the US would withdraw its remaining troops from Afghanistan by September 11 which also marks the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks that started Americas longest war. In 2011, the attacks by the extremists had pushed former US President Barack Obama to sent troops back into Iraq. While answering questions on Fox News, Sullivan also said that Biden has no intention of sending US troops back to Afghanistan.

He said, I can't make any guarantees about what will happen inside the country. No one can."

"All the United States could do is provide the Afghan security forces, the Afghan government and the Afghan people resources and capabilities, training and equipping their forces, providing assistance to their government. We have done that and now it is time for American troops to come home and the Afghan people to step up to defend their own country, he added.

US Likely To Increase Number Of Soldiers In Afghanistan Before Withdrawal

The Pentagon said last week that the United States will likely increase its troop presence in Afghanistan temporarily before full withdrawal by September. As per the Associated Press report, Pentagon chief spokesperson John Kirby declined to provide further details about the governments plan with its troops in Afghanistan but said that specifics are still being put in place. Kirby also said that it was logical to assume that logistics are required to help along with some engineering. So, he added, some addition to force protection would also contribute.

Image credits: AP
West Shore Home, a leading technology-enabled home improvement company, today announced that it has completed its acquisition of the Tennessee-based home remodeling company Hullco, Inc.This acquisition is West Shore Home's seventh since 2018. Headquartered in Pennsylvania, the company also operates offices in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas, with over 20 operational locations. Hullco, Inc. recorded $20 million in sales in 2020."Hullco has built a solid reputation in the industry.We have shared common values including a customer-first philosophy, superior work product and community involvement," said B.J. Werzyn, president, CEO and founder, West Shore Home. "We look forward to building upon Hullco's foundation in the Chattanooga and Knoxville communities."West Shore Home specializes in window, door and bath remodeling and replacement, with most projects completed in just one day. With a goal of "bringing happiness to every home," the company ensures each customer receives "honest, reliable and quality service.""West Shore Home will continue to provide that 'wow' customer experience that Hullco customers are accustomed to," said Matt Hullander, president and owner, Hullco. "It's been a great honor for me and my family to serve the Chattanooga and Knoxville communities for the last 45 years. I want to thank my great team of employees for their attitude to always make it better and go the extra mile. I am more than confident they are in good hands with West Shore Home."West Shore Home's proven customer-focused business model is propelling West Shore Home nationwide. Its ability to provide fast, seamless business integrations is changing perceptions in the industry."We understand that for sellers, the transition is filled with many emotions. Our goal is to make the process as smooth and comfortable as possible," said Andrea Hayden, director of mergers and acquisitions, West Shore Home. "Each acquisition is handled with personal care and attention to detail, ensuring it is a win-win for both parties. Our mission is to bring happiness to every home and that starts within our own team."The company recently announced a company-wide $15 minimum wage, building on its longstanding principal to provide its employees with a living wage well above the federal requirement. "This wage, coupled with its expanded ranking as the largest bathroom remodeler in the nation, furthers its goal as America's most admired home improvement brand," officials said.
2020 was a year marked by hardships and challenges, but the Prince William community has proven resilient. The Prince William Times is honored to serve as your community companion. To say thank you for your continued support, wed like to offer all our subscribers -- new or returning --

4 WEEKS FREE DIGITAL AND PRINT ACCESS.

We understand the importance of working to keep our community strong and connected. As we move forward together into 2021, it will take commitment, communication, creativity, and a strong connection with those who are most affected by the stories we cover.

We are dedicated to providing the reliable, local journalism you have come to expect. We are committed to serving you with renewed energy and growing resources. Let the Prince William Times be your community companion throughout 2021, and for many years to come.
A monk in Thailand chopped off his own head using a guillotine as an offering to Buddha in the hope he would be reincarnated as a 'higher spiritual being'.

Thammakorn Wangpreecha, 68, had reportedly been planning the bizarre ritual sacrifice for more than five years.

The monk believed that making the offering to the deity would bring him good luck in the afterlife - a belief known in Buddhism as 'making merit'.

The monk was found dead on April 15 at the Wat Phu Hin temple in Nong Bua Lamphu province, in north-eastern Thailand.

Thammakorn Wangpreecha, 68, a monk in Thailand, chopped off his own head using a guillotine as an offering to Buddha in the hope he would be reincarnated as a 'higher spiritual being'

He had reportedly been planning the bizarre ritual sacrifice for more than five years. Pictured: The makeshift guillotine used by the monk

His nephew Booncherd Boonrod discovered the body and said that a slab of marble had also been inscribed with his uncle's plans.

Booncherd said: 'In the letter it was stated that chopping his head off was his way of praising Buddha. In the letter he said that he had been planning this for five years now.

'His wish was to offer his head and his soul so that the Lord could help him reincarnate as a higher spiritual being in the next life.'

The monk allegedly used a makeshift guillotine next to a Buddhist God statue so that the religious figure would appear to be holding his head after it had been cut off.

The monk believed that making the offering to the deity would bring him good luck in the afterlife - a belief known in Buddhism as 'making merit'

Following the monk's death, more than 300 local devotees arrived at the temple to prepare his body for a rite

The monk, who had served the temple for 11 years, had allegedly previously informed the other priests that he would be leaving the monkhood but he did not tell them about the guillotine.

Police took the body from the temple to the hospital so medics could perform a post-mortem examination and record the cause of death before returning it to the family for funeral rites.

Following the monk's death, more than 300 local devotees arrived at the temple to prepare his body for a rite.

The monk's body was laid inside a coffin while his head placed in a jar before his followers and family members carried his remains to the forest where it was burned.

The monk was found dead on April 15 at the Wat Phu Hin temple in Nong Bua Lamphu province, in north-eastern Thailand

Yu, one of the monk's followers, said: 'He had been planning this for five years now. He fulfilled his goal and met enlightenment.'

Despite some followers praising Thammakorn, the National Office of Buddhism asked the local government to help them explain to residents in the area that such practice was not being encouraged in the religion.

Buddhists believe that carrying out good deeds is a way of praising the Lord Buddha, which brings them good karma in what they believe will be their next life.
KYODO NEWS - Apr 19, 2021 - 19:32 | World, All

A Japanese freelance journalist detained by security forces in Myanmar's largest city Yangon has been investigated for allegedly spreading fake news, the Japanese Embassy in Myanmar said Monday.

Yuki Kitazumi, a former reporter for the Tokyo-based Nikkei business daily who now lives in Yangon, was detained by security forces in Yangon on Sunday, local media reported. The embassy said earlier Monday that Kitazumi was transferred to prison.

Kitazumi's reports on protests against the Feb. 1 coup in Myanmar have been carried by Japanese media and he has also posted about the situation in the country on social media, which could be regarded as information disadvantaging the ruling military and "fake news."

But the embassy said Kitazumi did not suffer any injuries.

The 45-year-old journalist was also briefly detained by security forces while covering an anti-coup protest in Yangon on Feb. 26.

On Sunday night, he was detained at his house and taken away in a police vehicle, local media reported.

Kitazumi has been moved to Insein prison in Yangon where many political detainees are imprisoned, the embassy said.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said the embassy is seeking information regarding Kitazumi's detention.

"We will do our best to protect Japanese nationals in the country," Suga told reporters.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said in a press conference, "We are urging the Myanmar government to release the journalist as soon as possible."

According to posts on social media, some people saw Kitazumi forced to raise his hands and kneel down by security forces and they brought out cardboard boxes from his house after searching it.

Local people responded to Kitazumi's detention by saying they wish he is soon freed from security forces.

A social media user named Aung Lin posted a message saying "Release the Japanese reporter immediately!" and another user, Moe Myint, wrote "wishing him to be free from harm and for quick release."

The military has detained many journalists including foreign nationals since the coup that ousted the elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi. It has also increasingly suppressed free speech by stripping local media companies of their licenses and restricted use of the internet.

The offenses of spreading fake news and fanning social unrest are punishable in Myanmar by up to three years' imprisonment.
The relations between the European Union and Russia are not improving, tensions are rising in various areas, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell said Monday in a video address ahead of an informal online conference of the EU foreign affairs ministers.

"All in all, the relations with Russia are not improving. On the contrary, the tension is increasing in various areas," Borrell said. "There are two blocks [to be discussed at the talks]. First, the issues related to Russia." "We are starting with the Czech expulsion of Russian diplomats. We will be informed by our Czech colleague," TASS cited him as saying.

"[We will also discuss] the situation on the Ukrainian border with the deployment of Russian troops. It is a very dangerous situation, and we call on Russia to withdraw their troops from the Ukrainian border," he underscored, pointing out that Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba was invited to share Kievs view on the current situation with the EU foreign ministers.
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MORE ON THAT I-40 MOTORCYCLE DRAMA: After a wreck closed Interstate 40 on April 10, readers have sounded off on both the event and how it was handled.

Jerry Shea emails, I am absolutely flabbergasted at the seeming police response to the outrageous blocking of I-40 this past weekend by those crotch-rocketeers. They are telling us that boys will be boys or something? We should be careful not to rile them? Surely I missed something. IMHO, the police should have cordoned them off and impounded their bikes!

And Fishburn emails, Ive written about this before, and in your response you said the various police agencies would be instituting policies to keep roads open or reopened as quickly as possible. This has not happened.

This is the kind of (thing that angers) New Mexico motorists. This was I-40 today for a motorcycle accident. It appears the motorcycle is on the shoulder in front of one of the police cruisers, but all four lanes were closed. If it was the typical police response this probably lasted for at least an hour.

ADVERTISEMENTSkip



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I drove a tow truck years ago in California. When I, and possibly other tow trucks drivers, responded to an accident we were immediately under pressure from the cops to get the vehicles cleared away so they could reopen the road. That is definitely not the case in New Mexico.

For a little background, this was no single-vehicle accident. And this is not the first time motorcyclists have taken over a freeway here to do stunts. The Albuquerque Police Department has said an investigation is ongoing. The April 12 Journal included a brief item on it, and the day of the highway closure, Rebecca Atkins, APD communications specialist, put out this news release:

On Saturday, April 10, at approximately 4 p.m., a serious injury crash occurred on westbound Interstate 40 near the river between a vehicle and a motorcycle. A large group of motorcycles was traveling westbound on I-40 and were blocking all lanes of traffic; many were performing tricks and stunts. Witnesses provided information that the motorcycles would slow to approximately 35 mph at times while on the interstate.

A white 1997 Ford truck was also traveling westbound on I-40 and was attempting to get around the large group that was impeding traffic and entered into the left shoulder to pass. The Ford truck entered back into the left lane and collided with a 2001 Honda motorcycle that was in the left lane.

The rider and a passenger of the motorcycle sustained serious injuries and were transported to UNMH. After the collision several of the motorcyclists surrounded the truck and began banging on the windows and intimidating the driver. The driver of the truck felt threatened and then ran from the scene. The driver was contacted by officers.

Stay tuned.

Editorial page editor DVal Westphal tackles commuter issues for the metro area on Mondays. Reach her at 823-3858; dwestphal@abqjournal.com; or 7777 Jefferson NE, Albuquerque, NM, 87109.
(ANSA) - ROME, APR 19 - A 74-year-old Italian man was arrested in Santo Domingo on Friday and will be extradited to serve a five-year sentence for sexually abusing underage girls while posing as a pranotherapist, an Indian healer of suffering with hands.

Luciano Scibilia had settled down with a locally born wife and their four children at Samana, about 200 miles north of the Dominican Republic capital and was continuing to get his monthly pension via a woman friend who picked it up for him in Rome, police said.

The man was the only Italian on Europol's list of 19 most wanted sex offenders.

He was sentenced some years ago to five years and two months in jail for abusing friends of his then partner's daughter after promising them miracle cures with his methods of pranotherapy, judicial sources aid. (ANSA).


Hon. Boakye Agyarko, former Energy Minister and one of the interested persons in the NPP Presidential Race for 2024 has paid a visit to the National Chief Iman Sheikh Osmanu Nuhu Sharubutu at his residence in Fadama-Accra.



The visit was to share with the Chief Imam a word of prayer as Muslims across the world begin their holy fast , Ramadan.



Hon. Agyarko used the opportunity to sincerely thank him for his remarkable leadership on various national issues and the fact that he has been able to forge strong harmony and peace amongst Muslims to their benefit and the nation at large.



He further pledged my support to assist in the key development initiatives of his office and my willingness at all times, to honor his invitation.



The former Minister was accompanied by some Nasara Executives of the NPP, friends and associates.



Hon. Agyarko is noted for sharing Friday Jummah Prayers with muslims across the world and is know for his keen support for the Nasara Wing of the New Patriotic Party.

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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Their stories - harrowing as they are - have become familiar across the commonwealth over the years.

Five sisters sexually assaulted and exploited by the family priest. A young boy - now a man fighting for justice - brutally raped by a Harrisburg Catholic school teacher. A girl repeatedly raped by a family member, another by her music teacher. A boy and his classmates raped by priests at their Philadelphia Catholic school.

Those were the gut-wrenching stories shared on Monday as dozens of victims and advocates urged the Pennsylvania Senate to advance legislation that would provide a temporary period of time for victims - all of them now adults and out of legal recourse - to seek justice.

The state Senate this week is poised to consider a bill that would pave the way for victims timed-out of the legal system to get a two-year reprieve to file civil claims - facing predators in court, or at the very least, the institutions that turned a blind eye to their abuse. The state House of Representatives has already approved the bill.

How much longer do we have to wait, said Patty Fortney, a victims of clergy sex abuse. Please hear us. The time is up. Victims lives cannot wait any longer.

The measure, which the House approved this month by a vote of 149-52, would allow lawsuits outside the statute of limitations against both public and private entities. Some legislators are aiming to change the state law while also pursuing an amendment to the state constitution.

Efforts to provide a window for victims to sue have been defeated time and again. Pennsylvania is the only northeast state that hasnt fully reformed child sex crimes to offer retroactive windows that would temporarily lift expired statute of limitations, allowing victims to seek recourse in civil court.

Senators, your greatest duty is to protect the children of this commonwealth, said Patrick Duggan, who delivered an emotion account of his brutal rape as a boy at the hands of his teacher from St. Francis of Assisi Catholic School in Harrisburg.

The midday rally coincided with the return of lawmakers to the legislative session. Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who led the 2018 grand jury investigation, attended the rally, along with several Democratic lawmakers, including state Sens. Steve Santarsiero, Judith Schwank, Katie Muth, Tim Kearney, Maria Collett and Anthony Williams.

Its time for justice, said Marci Hamilton, a University of Pennsylvania law professor and one of the countrys leading advocates for statute of limitations reform. We are close and we are hopeful.

Hamilton called on Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman and Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward to advance House Bill 951, which would open a two-year retroactive window.

Almost all of the victims standing on the Capitol steps have been here before. Since 2005, they and their families, as well as advocates have been fighting for this narrow opportunity at justice, momentum sustained in the wake of grand jury investigations, but only to fall short at the end at the legislative level.

Please hear us, said Fortney, a member of the Harrisburg-area family of five sisters who were all sexually abused by a priest. In 2018, she testified before the 40th Statewide Grand Jury that documented the widespread and systemic sexual abuse of thousands of minors by Catholic priests.

The Fortneys, like so many of the other victims and their families, have become the foot soldiers in Pennsylvania fighting to fully reform the law.

It took 16 years in New York, Hamilton said. Lets cap it at 16 in Pennsylvania.

In 2005, the first of several grand jury investigations - that one out of Philadelphia, began the uncovering of decades of clergy sex abuse across the Roman Catholic faith community in Pennsylvania.

In 2016, a grand jury out of Altoona-Johnstown and again in 2018, a statewide grand jury, published the results of findings detailing decades of abuse of thousands of minors. Jurors consistently recommended that a retroactive window be open to allow these childhood victims - now all adults - a chance at justice.

Since 2002, 37 states, plus the federal government, have extended statute of limitations. An additional 21 states have revised those laws and 14 have completely eliminated statute of limitations, something Pennsylvania did last year, after years of fighting for that reform.

The bill before the Senate is part of a two-prong approach to reform. Last month, lawmakers took the first step to amend the state Constitution to create such a window. But lawmakers must also pass the constitutional amendment in the next legislative session before it would go to voters for final approval, meaning it wouldnt take effect until 2023 at the earliest. So lawmakers and advocates are moving to create a window for victims through regular legislation.

Kathryn Robb, the executive director of CHILD USAdvocacy, implored Senate members to stand with survivors and not be co-conspirators in the abuse of thousands of minors.

Its either or, she said. You gotta pick a side.

Duggan, whose son took his own life after years of dealing with his fathers emotional wounds, implored Senate members to pass the pending reform and send it to Gov. Tom Wolf.

Now is the time for senators to quit shuffling papers around their desks, Duggan said. Extraordinary evil requires extraordinary results. Justice delayed is justice denied.

Shapiro told the gathering that the Senate had enough votes to pass the legislation. He commended victims and advocates for unleashing a national and global reckoning that has reached as far as the Vatican.

Your voices have led to that change, he said.

Shapiro said he was confident that the measure has the backing of enough GOP lawmakers in the Senate to push it through all the way.

The votes are there to put the bill on the governors desk, even by weeks end, he said.

In a written statement, Santarsiero said:

Throughout the debate around a two year window for childhood sexual assault survivors to sue their abusers, we have heard moving testimony about the trauma these victims experienced and the solace that would come from being able to seek justice in court. We can, and must, act today to ensure there is no further delay in bringing victims of childhood sexual assault closer to the justice they have been denied for too long. They must have their day in court.

The commonwealth earlier this year was on track to put the question to voters in May, but a blunder by the Department of State kicked the effort back to square one. Earlier this year, the Wolf administration announced it had failed to advertise the constitutional amendment as required.

The Legislature had to restart the lengthy process. The misstep also led then-Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar to resign from her post.
ONTARIO  Lawyers and advocates say that the sweeping court order requiring reforms in Snake River Correctional Institutions COVID-19 protocols is a landmark. The case, they say, not only raised questions about the quality of medical care at the prison but also exposes problems endemic to the Oregon Department of Corrections handling of the pandemic.

Its an extensive, expansive order on the issue of masking, and really hopeful, said Tara Herivel, coordinating attorney of the Oregon Habeas Strike Force.

Herivels organization has handled over 400 civil lawsuits alleging that the Oregon Department of Corrections has left vulnerable prisoners in unconstitutional conditions during COVID-19. Sixteen lawsuits involved the Snake River prison.

Less than 10 COVID-19-related habeas corpus cases have made it to trial so far due to the backlog in the courts. In cases where judges have ruled, most have ordered relief for a particular inmate, but most judges have not wanted to touch the COVID claims, Herivel said.

Multnomah Circuit Judge Amy Baggio ruled that the Ontario prisons masking compliance has been inadequate and creates an unjustifiable risk throughout the prison.

She ordered prison officials to document how SRCI is enforcing the masking policy, including proof of specific enforcement; (and) consideration of a plan to engage in mass COVID testing at SRCI, particularly rapid testing of staff prior to entry.

Jennifer Black, communications manager for the Oregon Department of Corrections, declined to answer specific questions from the Enterprise. She said that to do so would run the risk of preempting the courts decision-making process regarding the detailed report that SRCI must submit to Baggio by the end of April.

The findings by Baggio conflict with what prison officials have been telling the public for months.

Last September, for example, prison officials suggested corrections workers and inmates  referred to by the agency as adults in custody  were following COVID-19 orders.

We continue to require employees and (prisoners) to wear masks when social distancing is not possible, as well as requiring employees to be screened prior to entry into the facility, Amber Campbell, public information officer for SRCI, said in a Sept. 22 email to the Enterprise.

But the report of a Feb. 6 inspection at the prison, submitted to the judge, showed that only 80% of staff at SRCI was wearing their masks correctly.

Some staff remark to AICs (prisoners) that they already had COVID, according to the inspection report. Observed AICs and staff pull down masks to talk and/or do not wear them properly.

Zach Erdman, operations and policy manager at the Oregon Department of Corrections, wrote in a Sept. 17 email that many staff have been verbally counseled, resulting in immediate and cooperative compliance. DOC does not track these minor corrections. To date, a few employees are in investigative processes which could lead to discipline. Non-compliance with face covering directives has not yet led to a dismissal, but it could.

But the accountability processes Erdman spoke of were not effective in preventing the 20% mask noncompliance rate documented in the February evaluation. And in the court ruling, SRCIs assistant superintendent, Jason Bell, testified under oath that there was widespread noncompliance, but only one staff member had progressed in discipline to step six (of six possible disciplinary steps) for mask violations.

Kate Edwards, the Hillsboro attorney who tried the Snake River case, said that the culture of mask noncompliance in Ontario wasnt unique, but reflected a problem across the Oregon Department of Corrections.

As an organization, they have kind of thrown up their hands and said, What do you want us to do about it? We have all of these policies in place, she explained. But on the ground, its not trickling down, its not being enforced.

We dont have the top-down ability or will to enforce the kinds of precautions that are required to keep people safe, said Herivel. Its this attitude (among prison staff) that comes with, Youre not going to tell me what to do. But the most serious way to spread the virus is through staff, who are the vectors coming in and out. If they can choose to not wear masks and there are people that can be infected, then they are still a lethal threat.

Herivel said that hesitance on the part of Department of Corrections leaders to discipline their officers likely has to do with understaffing that the agency has experienced throughout the pandemic.

The Department of Corrections really capitulated to the union, she said.

According to Herivel, her group reached out to the union to join the effort to make the prison more safe, thinking that nobody wants to spread disease. She said they couldnt connect with union representatives.

Alan MacLean, a prison correctional officer and president of the local of the Oregon AFSCME Corrections union, didnt respond to a request for comment from the Enterprise.

However, emails included in court filings showed Oregon Department of Corrections officials begging staff to comply with masking recommendations.

Team, I need your help, said Heidi Steward, agency deputy director wrote in an email dated July 13. Steward warned her staff that the agency was facing legal action for not following our face covering protocol and implored officers to get on board.

It is becoming difficult to stand our ground on our current directive (regarding masks), as not all of us are following it. If we do not pull together and wear our face coverings when we cant maintain 6 feet of social distancing, we may be mandated to wear masks at all times.

Stewards warning was prescient. By November, all prison officers were required to wear a mask on duty at all times regardless of distancing.

Dr. Mark Baskerville, an ICU doctor with OHSU Hospital who has been an expert witness for inmates suing the state, said that social distancing was virtually impossible in a prison setting.

You can limit how many people sit at tables, and put dots on the floor for the med line, but a lot of this is in a kind of dormitory setting where you can reach your arm out and touch your bunkmate, he said.

But Herivel said that at Snake River, there had been more chance than at other prisons for social distancing because it is a newer, larger facility. She said that the 13 COVID-19 deaths that have occurred there seemed especially tragic given that context.

They couldve prevented the outbreak and the deaths more easily than other facilities. It was not just hesitancy, but refusal to comply to a lot of these standards that ended in completely preventable deaths, she said.

The overarching theme was that a lot of what they were doing was haphazard and inconsistent at times, said Baskerville. The virus is going to exploit any weak link in your system.

Because of its relatively advanced medical infrastructure, Snake River has become the receiving facility for prisoners with COVID-19 across Oregon. Yet, as at other institutions in the Oregon Department of Corrections, prisoners who report COVID-19 symptoms are isolated in the Disciplinary Segregation Unit, otherwise known as the hole.

The threat of being sent to the hole created what Baskerville called a conspiracy of silence.

The inmates dont want to tell anyone that theyve got a cough or they have symptoms of COVID because they essentially get punished for it, Baskerville said. Having talked to a lot of inmates, its like, Listen, Id rather just take my chances than be sent to the hole for 14 days. If I told them I have the symptoms of COVID, I would be treated the same way as if I punched a guard.

The judge in the Snake River prison case was persuaded by testimony that that was the case.

Plaintiff and defense evidence established that AICs (adults in custody) hide symptoms to avoid placement in the (hole) and that some AICs threaten others against reporting symptoms of illness, according to the ruling.

The ruling questioned the reliability of the medical care given at the prison.

The prisons chief medical officer, Dr. Garth Gulick, testified under oath that he did not believe that fever was an indication of COVID infection. That contradicts guidance from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on management of COVID-19 in detention settings.

Gulick also testified that he believed that COVID-19 testing was harmful and said that it can be the enemy, again despite CDC guidance showing otherwise.

Dr. Gulicks opinions on fever as a symptom of COVID and the efficacy of testing at stopping the spread of the virus undermines the reliability of his medical opinion on the many relevant questions of fact related to this topic, according to the ruling.

Black said that the agency disagrees with the judges findings regarding Gulick.

Dr. Gulick and his team have not only provided frontline COVID care to all adults in custody (AICs) in Eastern Oregon since the beginning of the pandemic, but have also taken extraordinary measures to ensure continuity of care for non-COVID medical conditions, said Black. SRCI will continue to rely on Dr. Gulick for his extensive medical training, knowledge, and expertise.

The agencys top chief medical officer, Dr. Warren Roberts, also came under attack this year in a January habeas corpus case in which Marion County Circuit Judge Claudia Burton highlighted Roberts history of malpractice. Roberts was the subject of a formal complaint by the Oregon Board of Medical Examiners, and was at one point ordered to stop performing surgeries.

Dr. Roberts technical competence as a physician is at least questionable, the judge wrote. I agree with plaintiff that Dr. Roberts is an unreliable witness who lacks credibility.

Baskerville said that during COVID-19, it is particularly egregious how medical staff at the Oregon Department of Corrections has forced medically vulnerable prisoners to ration albuterol inhalers, used to treat asthma and other lung conditions.

Even during the pandemic, inmates have been prescribed inhalers that cannot be refilled as often as medically needed, forcing them to either use the inhaler less than is necessary or risk running out. This issue came up in the court ruling, and according to Baskerville, it is widespread.

The worst case scenario is using their cellmates inhaler if theyre low or running out, said Baskerville. Thats probably the worst way to spread (COVID-19).

Baskerville, Herivel, and Edwards also concurred that Oregon prisons regularly ignore common hygiene practices like handwashing in their design.

Edwards said the inmates frequently dont have access to soap and even then they dont have anything to dry their hands on, so they dry them on toilet paper, or on their dirty clothes.

Then there is the vaccine. The Oregon Department of Corrections estimated that 45% percent of staff would refuse the vaccine, and incomplete available figures show the actual vaccination rate as closer to 35%, according to reporting by the Willamette Week. On the other hand, 69% of inmates have accepted the vaccine since one lawsuit in February resulted in making it available immediately to all inmates.

Herivel said the government was remarkably inefficient by engaging in costly litigation to fend off claims of improper care that in some instances were subsequently proven founded.

I think its extraordinary that we have had to use these singular cases and also this class-action case to get our prison systems to take minimally basic protective steps which, from what we hear from our reports, really havent been effectuated to date, she said.

Edwards echoed that.

All theyre asking for is for the facilities to adhere to CDC guidelines, she said. Its shocking to me that (inmates) have to go to court to achieve that.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held in the Hyatt Regency in Orlando, Fla., on Feb. 26, 2021. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Sen. Josh Hawley Introduces Antitrust Bill to Bust Up Big Tech Like Google, Amazon

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced an antitrust bill that would ban Amazon and Google from running an online marketplace and selling goods on that marketplace at the same time.

Big Tech companies like Google and Amazon have been coddled by Washington politicians for years. This treatment has allowed them to amass colossal amounts of power that they use to censor political opinions that they dont agree with and shut out competitors who offer consumers an alternative to the status quo, Hawley said in a statement to news outlets. Its past time to bust up Big Tech companies, restore competition, and give power back the American consumers.

The so-called Bust Up Big Tech Act bars firms such as Amazon from selling Amazon-branded products on Amazons market, where competitors also do business.

In a separate tweet, Hawley said the practice allows Amazon to destroy its competitors.

No one company should be able to control e-commerce AND privilege its own products on the same platform AND control the cloud, he wrote. [Amazon] should be broken up.

The Missouri Republicans tweet referenced a Wall Street Journal article saying the Seattle-based firm strong arms partners using its power across multiple businesses.

According to a statement from his office, the Bust Up Big Tech Act would also bar Amazon from simultaneously owning a large amount of cloud computing services that other companies use while running its retail business.

Amazon runs Amazon Web Services (AWS), which courted controversy earlier this year after deplatforming free speech social media website Parler while still hosting Parler competitor Twitter on AWS.

Parler has since filed and dropped a lawsuit, then filed a new lawsuit against Amazon. The latest lawsuit, filed in a Washington court in early March, accused Amazon of anticompetitive behavior and a breach of contract.

Amazon didnt immediately respond to a request from The Epoch Times for comment.

Amazon, in a blog post published last fall, criticized what it called fringe notions on antitrust laws, saying they would simultaneously destroy small businesses and hurt consumers.

Certain flawed regulatory ideas rely on the false narrative that Amazons interests are not aligned with those of the thousands of small and medium-sized businesses thriving as sellers in our store, stated the blog post, which was written by Amazon staff.

The opposite is true: Amazon and sellers complement each other, and together we create a better customer experience than either could create alone.

The April 19 proposal came after Hawley last week unveiled a separate bill targeting other antitrust issues surrounding Big Tech. Titled the Trust-Busting for the Twenty-First Century Act, it would ban mergers and acquisitions by firms that have a market capitalization of more than $100 billion.

Hawley has said hes willing to work with any member of Congress, including Democrats, on the prospect of breaking up Big Tech firms, Reuters reported.
Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Manh Hung said that 5G is not just an opportunity to improve connection services and change Vietnam's telecommunications rankings, but also an opportunity to develop the country's ICT industry.

VietNamNet would like to introduce the full text of the speech by Minister Hung at the conference on Vietnams reform and innovation in November 2018:

Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Manh Hung speaks at a conference on Vietnams reform and innovation.

In 1990, the world witnessed the rise of 2G technology. Only three years later, in 1993, Vietnam launched the 2G mobile phone network. In 2000, 3G technology appeared in the world, but it was only in 2010, 10 years later, that all of the three largest carriers in Vietnam opened their 3G mobile phone networks. And when 4G came out, the story was almost the same. Until 2018, eight years after the world saw the appearance of 4G technology, we did not grant new frequencies to make 4G - the 4G network that carriers opened in 2017 due to the accumulation of 3G frequency.

And what was the result? Thanks to the early adoption of 2G technology and the promotion of competition, Vietnam's mobile networks used to be in the top 50 in the world. But when it switched to 3G and 4G technology, because of lagging behind in terms of technology and the lack of new competitive factors, Vietnam's telecommunications ranked 108th. For example, in terms of broadband mobile subscribers, in 2017 the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) ranked Vietnam 115th out of 193 countries and territories, which meant that Vietnam was below the world average.

The 5G technology is coming, and this is an opportunity for Vietnam to change our rankings. To change rankings, we must go first. Not being first on a national scale, we can be first in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. The Ministry of Information and Communications advocates providing 5G frequencies for testing from 2019, and by 2020, when the world starts to deploy 5G, Vietnam will also be one of the the first countries to deploy 5G.

The 2G and 3G network equipment were wholly imported. When deploying 4G, we had Made-in-Vietnam 4G devices for the first time, but it was also eight years after 4G appeared. For 5G, we will have devices from the first day of implementation officially in 2020. This will be the biggest change, the most significant change, and also the biggest quality transformation in the local electronic and telecommunication industry.

The Ministry of Information and Communications encourages and creates all conditions for Vietnamese technology enterprises, both public and private, both large and small, to research and manufacture telecommunications equipment, including network and terminal equipment, so for the first time in the history of the country, Vietnam's telecommunication network is built by Vietnamese equipment. Vietnam must also become the 5th country in the world to export Made in Vietnam telecommunications equipment, including all network and terminal equipment.

2G technology is pure telephone technology. 3G technology is half phone, half data. 4G technology is purely data, but for person to person. 5G technology is data technology, but is the first technology designed for connecting things, with many new features, such as low latency and low power consumption. 5G technology will create a revolution in connectivity.

2G/3G/4G connects 7 billion people, while 5G will connect trillions of devices, conveying the entire physical world into the virtual world. With 5G, communications infrastructure becomes the infrastructure of the economy for the first time. And it fundamentally changes human life. This is the mission of 5G, and that mission is placed on the role of Vietnam's ICT industry, on the shoulders of the people sitting here today.

Connecting things will require a completely different investment from a cellphone network for connecting only people. Mobile carriers must be aware of their responsibility to the country, to the nation. The 5G network is the infrastructure for connecting things - the most important infrastructure of the Industrial Revolution 4.0. If Vietnam wants to be at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution 4.0, the 5G network must be first. The network must come first; the connecting infrastructure must be there first. Investment must come before doing business. This must be the business philosophy of all mobile carriers. Vietnam's 5G network for connecting things must be among the best in the world. The number of BTS stations for 5G will have to be much larger than previous technologies. Therefore, sharing infrastructure, sharing telecommunications infrastructure with electricity, water, and transport infrastructure is very important to reduce social costs.

5G is not only an opportunity for connectivity services, an opportunity to change Vietnam's telecommunications rankings, but also an opportunity to develop the country's ICT industry. With huge demand for network equipment, and especially terminal equipment, and the need for safety, network security as well as the need of the entire population for applications, an infinite market for Vietnamese tech-firms will be created. Let's consider Vietnam as the cradle to develop technology and products and from here conquer the world. This opportunity falls on our generation. And we must take this as our historical responsibility towards the people.

Vietnam's telecommunications market also needs new competitive factors to promote development, to have new breakthroughs in broadband subscriber development, to put Vietnam in the Top 30-50 in the world: in terms of service structure, voice and text messaging, to account for less than 30% of total revenue; to increase per capita data consumption; in terms of digital transformation, carriers will be the first to do a thorough digital transformation and create digital transformation platform for other businesses; in terms of Industrial Revolution 4.0, carriers will be the first and effective applicators of AI, Big Data, and IoT technologies; in terms of innovation, carriers will develop X-Techs, such as FinTech, AgriTech, and EdTech, to create major changes in industries.

Regarding telecommunications policies, ICT policies, and policies for the Industrial Revolution 4.0, we must be at the forefront to attract the people, technology and products of the world, and thus, Vietnam will become the center of the world.

The Government has assigned the Ministry of Information and Communications to cooperate with the World Economic Forum on making policy for the new technologies of the Industrial Revolution 4.0, as well as new business models. At this forum, I urge experts, scholars, businesses, consultants, associations, and the people to cooperate with the Ministry of Information and Communications to formulate policies in a timely manner, suitable for development, to help Vietnam to be at the forefront of new technology, the first of which is 5G technology that we are discussing today.

Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Manh Hung
After months in lockdown across 2020, Postcards is ready to celebrate a re-opened Melbourne and Victoria.

New executive producer of Nines Postcards Mel Zahra born and raised in the southern state capital, has worked with Nine across a 30 year period, most recently on multiple Logie Awards, Carols by Candlelight and My Room Telethons.

I think Melbourne is a beautiful city. Ive traveled to other cities around the world, not too extensively but somewhat, but I love Melbourne. Sydney has the harbour, you cant deny it, but Melbournes beautiful.

Post-lockdown were out traveling again, enjoying things that we might have taken for granted. I think it just feels like a really good time to be re-exploring. Or if people may not have done enough exploring, because maybe they hibernate during the winter, any time is a good time to get out and have a look around your backyard or further afield. Its a beautiful state. A beautiful country.

Postcards Victoria has been running for 22 years, screening weekends on Nine and repeated on 9Life. In 2021 Shane Crawford takes the reins as host with presenters Livinia Nixon, Todd Woodbridge, Brodie Harper, Shane Crawford, Lauren Phillips, Sam Groth, Madeline Slattery and Shane Delia.

The show focusses on tourist destinations, food, accommodation, arts, history and culture.

Its a bit about scratching the surface of the destinations that we visit and connecting with the community thats there. So whether thats an inner city suburb, or whether thats further afield and regional. Its not just about a pretty shop, but the people and communities behind them.

Adding more activities in 2021, Zahra says the show will also be getting our hands dirty a little bit more than we might have in the past.

She also wants to incorporate more story ideas from viewers.

Everyones got a camera on their phone, showing us where theyve been, such as the best pies shops, or the best parmas theyve found in the best pub on the way. Food is always part of the destination that we showcase but theres lots more that surrounds that.

Ive got a gun team of producers that have been on board for a couple of years and theyre travel enthusiasts themselves and lovers of life. Every direction, theres something to offer. It doesnt have to be just in your backyard.

Sometimes the show also ventures interstate but, rather ironically, is a travel show with a limited travel budget. That leaves sponsorship as a possible solution.

Usually its a day shoot, within a 10 hour timeframe and that includes travel time. Where possible we look to get on board with sponsorship so we can go further afield. Travel is expensive when weve got a crew that we need to accommodate and travel. So weve got a an episode coming out of the Port Lincoln area in South Australia -thats a sponsored segment.

If wee going north, you might do two or three stories, but it often involves two or three presenters. So travel is always the factor that we need to accommodate. A three hour one way trip is probably your limit for a day trip.

The sponsorship is integrated. I dont have a budget, necessarily, to fly my team to South Australia. But theyre very keen to get Victorians to visit South Australia so they come to us and we work out a sponsorship arrangement for us to travel.

Viewers can contact Postcards via Ria Pflaum here.

Postcards airs 5:30pm Sunday on Nine.

Related
A motorist has claimed he narrowly missed hitting a child who wandered onto a busy highway in the dead of night - sparking an eight-hour police search

Dashcam footage appears to capture the moment his car, driving north on the Hume Highway near Bardia, south of Sydney, just before 8pm on Sunday night, narrowly misses hitting the child.

NSW police confirmed to Daily Mail Australia they received an emergency call about the child at 7.43pm on Sunday night.

Several police cars attended the scene and searched the area, however no child was found and the search was called off at 3.45am Monday morning.

The motorist who claims he filmed the footage is Gold Coast businessman Mitch Kuhne, who runs a motorbike accessories company, Shark Leathers.

He posted the footage to his Instagram account claiming the police told him the child had been found and was safe.

However, police have confirmed they did not find a child, and did not tell Mr Kuhne they had, either.

Pictured: A grab from the dashcam that the motorist claims is a 'child'

In the footage, the child appears just seconds before the driver's car speeds past.

The motorist reportedly called the police immediately before alerting them a second time when he recovered the dahscam footage from his car.

The footage shows a silhouette in the middle of the left-hand lane.

A close up of the grab only shows a silvery image (above)
You can listen to the latest episode of Today in Pa at this link, or on any of your favorite app including Alexa, Apple, Google, Spotify and Stitcher. Episodes are available every weekday on PennLive. Feel free to subscribe, follow or rate Today in Pa. as you see fit!

Today in Pa. Daily Podcast | April 19, 2021

Pennsylvania lawmakers are looking to push a bill that would ban the use of cellphones by drivers, potentially making violations a primary offense. The Department of Labor and Industry might bring back work search requirements in order for people to claim unemployment benefits. Students across the state will have to take PSSAs this year. And a new study has found out which athletes born and bred in Pennsylvania are the most iconic.

Those are the stories we cover in the latest episode of Today in Pa, a daily weekday podcast from PennLive.com and hosted by Claudia Dimuro. Today in Pa is dedicated to sharing the most important and interesting stories pertaining to Pennsylvania that lets you know, indeed, whats happening today in Pa.

Todays episode refers to the following articles:

If you enjoy Today in Pa, consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts or on Amazon. Reviews help others find the show and, besides, wed like to know what you think about the program, too.
Over the past few years, as the Trump administration imposed stringent sanctions on Cuba and the tourism industry was decimated by the pandemic, Cubans have seen their countrys economy plummet once again, with many waiting for hours in bread lines. The countrys lauded health care system is frayed. And the number of Cubans trying to leave the island is going up, though it is still far from the exoduses of the 1980s and 1990s.

The Communist Party lives off the achievements of a long time ago, from when they began, said Claudia Genlui, an activist with the San Isidro political movement, a collective of artists who have protested against the Communist Party in recent months. Although the group is small, it has surprised the nation with its continued defiance.

The party does not represent my generation, it does not represent me, Ms. Genlui said, adding that there is a lack of generational connection, of interests, of priorities, and all of that somehow drives us away.

Mr. Castro, to some extent, would agree.

Although Fidel held fast to his rallying cry of socialism or death until he died in 2016, the younger Mr. Castro grew to realize that reform was necessary to quell growing discontent and began opening up the countrys economy.

After Fidel formally resigned from the presidency in 2008, Raul Castro prioritized recruiting younger Cubans into the Communist Party and putting younger members into top government positions. On Monday, the party held elections for its 17-member Politburo, selecting younger members to the body to replace the last of what Cubans call the historics, veterans of the armed revolution.

That has sat well with some Cubans.

I think weve got to move on to a new generation, younger people with new ideas, said Osvaldo Reyes, 55, a taxi driver in Havana, while voicing his support for Mr. Castro and the Communist Party. A revolution should keep transforming, keep doing the best for people.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP)  NASA chose SpaceX on Friday to build the lunar lander that will eventually put the first woman and person of color on the moon.

The announcement came a few hours after SpaceX's most international crew of astronauts yet arrived in Florida for a liftoff next week.

Elon Musk's Starship  the futuristic, shiny steel rocketship that's been launching and exploding in Texas  beat out landers proposed by Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Dynetics, a subsidiary of Leidos. The contract is worth $2.89 billion.

We won't stop at the moon, said NASA's acting administrator Steve Jurczyk. Mars is the ultimate goal, he told reporters.

WEATHER NEWS: 'MORE ACTIVE' HURRICANE SEASON PREDICTED IN 2021

NASA declined to provide a target launch date for the moon-landing Artemis mission, saying a review is underway. The Trump administration had set a 2024 deadline, but on Friday, NASA officials called it a goal.

We'll do it when it's safe," said Kathy Lueders, who leads NASA's human space exploration office.

She indicated NASA and SpaceX are shooting for later this decade. The astronauts will fly to the moon on the NASA-launched Orion capsule, then transfer to Starship in lunar orbit for the ride down to the surface and back.

NASA has said at least one of the first moonwalkers since 1972 would be the first woman on the moon. Another goal of the program, according to the space agency, is to send a person of color to the lunar surface.

On Friday, Jurczyk greeted the four astronauts arriving at Kennedy Space Center for SpaceX's third crew launch in less than a year. By coincidence, their flight to the International Space Station is set for next Thursday  Earth Day. It's a reminder of NASA's core mission of studying the home planet, Jurczyk said.

The three men and one woman represent the U.S., France and Japan: NASA's Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Thomas Pesquet and Akihiko Hoshide, all experienced space fliers.

It's definitely getting real, Kimbrough, the spacecraft commander, said after arriving by plane from Houston.

This will be SpaceX's first crew flight to use a recycled Falcon rocket and Dragon crew capsule. NASA turned to U.S. private companies for crew transport after the space shuttle program ended in 2011.

Certainly, I think all of them, until we get several years under our belt, should be considered test flights, Kimbrough told reporters.

SpaceX uses the same kind of rocket and similar capsules for supply deliveries, and recycles those as well.

McArthur is the only member of the crew who has yet to visit the space station. She flew the shuttle to the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009. And launching out of Kennedy is new to Pesquet after more than 11 years as an astronaut.

Were living in the golden age of human spaceflight, said Pesquet, a former Air France pilot. Looks like everybody, every country, has a project or a spacecraft.

The astronauts left the runway in a pair of white gull-winged Teslas; SpaceX founder Musk also runs the electric car company. They had an early bedtime to sync up with what will be pretty much an all-nighter Thursday. Liftoff time is 6:11 a.m.

The four will replace the SpaceX crew that launched last November. Those four will return to Earth at the end of April. A fresh three-person Soyuz crew, meanwhile, arrived at the space station last week from Kazakhstan, replacing two Russians and one American due back on Earth this weekend.
SNELLVILLE, Ga., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Advanced Urology today celebrates the one year anniversary of revolutionary same-day discharge outpatient robotic surgery in their ambulatory surgery centers. They are the first group in the country to utilize a novel zero narcotic protocol and discharge patients home the same day! Dr Rut Patel, the Director of Robotic surgery comments "We are happy to change the future of urology by providing higher quality, superior outcomes, and a better patient experience." Dr Neal Patel, Chief Technology officer adds "This is a win for patients, payers, and providers by bringing inpatient surgery in the hospital setting to the outpatient setting with zero narcotic use."

Advanced Urology is the leading urology group in the country with a unique quintuple aim (1. Unwavering focus on the best patient experience 2. Superior patient outcomes 3. Delivering high quality, evidenced based medicine 4. Creating amazing culture 5. Practicing medicine in an economically sustainable, outpatient focused model).

For context, over 99.5% of robotic pelvic surgery is done in a hospital setting. Advanced is changing the paradigm with their innovative model and focus on quality.

Advanced is comprised of 10 surgery centers throughout metro Atlanta. They are performing outpatient Robotic prostatectomy, robotic ureteral reconstruction, laparoscopic hysterectomy, robotic sacrocolpopexy, and robotic kidney surgery at their Center for Special Surgery in Alpharetta utilizing the DaVinci X Robot.

Learn more at www.advancedurology.com

Media Contact: Rebecca Sutcliffe, [email protected]

SOURCE Advanced Urology Institute of Georgia

Related Links

http://www.advancedurology.com


Disney is said to be working on a new musical comedy currently dubbed the "Untitled Cinderella Evil Stepsisters" movie.

Helmed by Oscar-nominated writers Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo (Wiig is pictured above), the piece is a revisionist twist on the classic Cinderella tale (about a put-upon girl who meets a Prince at a ball after meeting her fairy godmother), centred around Cinderella's two stepsisters Anastasia and Drizella Tremaine, who are generally known for terrorising their younger family member.

Jessica Elbaum and Will Ferrell from Gloria Sanchez Productions will produce, with it being unconfirmed if Wiig and Mumolo will also star in the film (though reports suggest that they will not take on the two main roles, even if they were on-screen).

Disney currently has a penchant for films and series based on the stories of their iconic villains, with Gaston and LeFou (based on the Beauty and the Beast characters) heading to Disney Plus with Luke Evans and Josh Gadd, while Cruella will debut online and in cinemas next month.

A live-action film version of Cinderella, directed by Kenneth Branagh and led by Lily James, premiered in 2015. It is unknown if James will return for this stepsisters project.

There are a few ''Cinderella' projects in the work right now  Camilla Cabello has created a film version, while Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical is preparing to open in in the West End this summer.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has delivered another 120.96 tonnes of humanitarian cargo to the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, according to the Ministry for Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine.

"Today, April 19, 2021, six trucks delivered humanitarian cargo weighing 120.96 tonnes to the Russian-occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine. It was transferred from all member states of the Geneva Conventions that contribute to the global budget of the International Committee of the Red Cross," reads the report.

Thus, six trucks carrying humanitarian aid, namely food packages, crossed the Novotroitske checkpoint. In addition, another truck with humanitarian aid weighing 2.732 tonnes crossed the Shchastia checkpoint on Friday, April 16.

The presidents spokesperson, Iuliia Mendel, earlier reported that in 2020 international organizations sent 76 convoys with humanitarian aid to the occupied territories of eastern Ukraine, while Russia sent only five convoys.

ish
Protesters hold signs supporting the newly formed opposition National Unity Government as they demonstrate against the military coup in Shwebo, in Myanmars Sagaing region, April 18, 2021.

Activists and regional analysts are slamming ASEAN for inviting the Burmese junta chief to a special summit called for this coming weekend to discuss the turmoil in member-nation Myanmar after the military coup.

Myanmar military ruler Min Aung Hlaing is among leaders of the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) expected to attend the meeting, which is to take place at the regional blocs headquarters in Jakarta on April 24, a spokesman for the Thai foreign ministry said.

I can confirm that Brunei [the ASEAN] Chair has proposed the date April 24 with venue at the Secretariat in Jakarta. Several leaders have confirmed their attendance including Myanmars MAH. Some leaders have yet to confirm, spokesman Tanee Sangrat told BenarNews via a text message.

Indonesia and Malaysia were the two ASEAN members to first push for a leaders summit to discuss the situation in Myanmar. However, in the run-up to the special meeting officials from across the bloc, including host-nation Indonesia, have mostly been tight-lipped about the summit.

Indonesian President Joko Jokowi Widodo will attend the meeting, a source close to him confirmed to BenarNews.

But Thai PM Prayuth Chan-o-Cha will not be attending, and the country will likely be represented by its top diplomat, Don Pramudwinai, and the deputy prime minister, Tanee said. Prayuth, the former Thai junta chief, has decided to opt out of going to the ASEAN summit, the Bangkok Post reported on Monday, citing a government source who did not elaborate about the decision.

Irine Putri, a lawmaker from the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP), said Min Aung Hlaing should not be welcomed in Jakarta.

The government of Indonesia must not grant recognition to the junta as the legitimate government of Myanmar, because this regime has massacred civilians and suppressed the democratic movement, Irine said in a statement.

More than 700 people, mostly anti-coup protesters, have been killed by the Burmese military and security forces since the generals toppled Aung San Suu Kyis elected government on Feb. 1, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a Myanmar human rights group based in Thailand.

Irine said ASEAN should invite representatives of the National Unity Government (NUG), a parallel government launched Friday and that comprises lawmakers who won seats in the November 2020 election, which the Myanmar military overturned by force.

Myanmar is on the brink of a civil war, and we know that NUG and the people of Myanmar will not back down. ASEAN needs to pressure the military regime to return the mandate to the civilian government, she said.

The NUG also has representatives from the countrys major ethnic groups, most of which have their own armies.

ASEAN needs to be clear that it is not recognizing the junta of member-state Myanmar and must talk with the NUG, said Scott Marciel, the former American ambassador to Myanmar.

ASEANs agreement to let Min Aung Hlaing represent Myanmar at the upcoming summit raises the stakes for the bloc, Marciel said via Twitter on Sunday.

To avoid major damage to its standing, ASEAN needs to consult with the NUG and come out of the summit with tangible actions to show it is not accepting the junta.

The post-coup killings by Myanmars military regime tests key principles of the blocs charter, such as the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, he pointed out.

This will be an important meeting for Myanmar, but even more important for ASEAN. One of its member states has been taken over by a murderous force that has no legitimacy and threatens regional stability. A direct challenge to ASEANs charter and its centrality, Marciel had tweeted earlier.

Bridget Welsh, a political scientist at Nottingham University based in Malaysia, echoed the calls by Marciel and Irine.

There is no need to bring a murderer to the table, Welsh told BenarNews.

ASEAN might as well give them the guns to kill Myanmar people. Some are also doing this, enabling the murders. Instead, the NUG should be there.

Min Aung Hlaing should be behind bars, according to Simon Adams, executive director of the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect.

General Min Aung Hlaing is responsible for crimes against humanity and belongs in handcuffs. He should be arrested under universal jurisdiction if he leaves Myanmar, Adams tweeted over the weekend.

The National Unity Government should be invited to ASEAN summit instead.

ASEAN condemned by Myanmar activists

On Monday, 88 Generation Peace and Open Society, a group named after the 1988 pro-democracy uprising that brought Aung San Suu Kyi to prominence, condemned ASEANs invitation to the new junta chief. The Southeast Asian bloc, more often than not, has overlooked the lack of democracy in Myanmar, the group said.

[T]hroughout Myanmars struggle for democracy over the last 30 years, ASEAN had always sided with the military, the group said in a statement posted on Twitter and Facebook.

We, therefore, severely denounce and condemn ASEANs invitation offered to the junta and will hold ASEAN responsible for further oppression enacted by the repressive regime in the future, emboldened by ASEANs acceptance.

Hundreds of social media users, meanwhile, posted tweets with the hashtag ASEANrejectSAC, launched on Sunday, in a bid to ensure that ASEAN disinvites Myanmars commander-in-chief. The hashtag refers to the juntas official name, the State Administrative Council.

The Milk Tea Alliance, a movement which has organized pro-democracy protests in Asia, on Monday urged the United Nations and ASEAN to act firmly to address the humanitarian and political crisis in Myanmar and completely disengage with the military junta.

Cowardly responses from the international community for decades have emboldened the Myanmar military to commit the gravest crimes with impunity, the alliance said in a statement.

The pattern needs to change, and it needs to change now.

The NUG, for its part, deplored Min Aung Hlaings expected presence at the Jakarta meeting.

If ASEAN is considering actions related to Myanmar affairs, I would like to say it will not work unless negotiating with the NUG, which is supported by the people and has full legitimacy, NUG Deputy Foreign Minister Moe Zaw Oo told Voice of America on Sunday.

ASEAN countries were still weighing their stance on the NUG, Nottingham Universitys Welsh said.

This is being discussed as I understand. ASEANs reservations on recognizing NUG would probably be because they want things simple. Some in ASEAN also like the Tatmadaw, she said, using the official name of Myanmars armed forces.

Welsh was alluding to how ASEAN has its share of former military leaders and one-party states.

Among ASEAN members, Thai leader Prayuth became prime minister after a coup he spearheaded as the army chief in 2014. The former general retained the post in a 2019 election, which opposition parties viewed as rigged in the militarys favor.

Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam are all one-party states. And Brunei, this years holder of the ASEAN chair, is a sultanate.

In the decades after Myanmar joined the grouping in 1997, ASEAN served as a diplomatic umbrella shielding Myanmars previous military regimes and their human rights violations from criticism from the international community, led by Western countries, Naing Khit, a commentator on political affairs, wrote last week in The Irawaddy, a regional news website.

ASEAN has been roundly criticized for not reaching a consensus on how to deal with Myanmars junta.

At a March meeting, foreign ministers from the member-states couldnt come to a consensus in calling for the release of Suu Kyi and other democratically elected Myanmar leaders detained by the military since the coup. Instead, ASEAN merely called for a halt to violence in Myanmar and urged dialogue to end the crisis.

On Monday, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was disappointed by divisions within ASEAN that have prevented the regional grouping from a united response on Myanmar.

The situation requires a robust international response grounded on a unified regional effort. I urge regional actors to leverage their influence to prevent further deterioration and, ultimately, find a peaceful way out of this catastrophe, Agence France-Presse quoted the U.N. chief as saying during a video conference of Security Council leaders.

Presence of junta important

Ideally, the contending sides in the Myanmar turmoil should be represented at the summit, analysts said.

Of course [Aung San] Suu Kyis camp needs to participate in the meeting, Dewi Fortuna Anwar, an international political expert at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), told BenarNews.

The presence of the military junta at the ASEAN summit will definitely complicate consensus. However, without the presence of the junta, ASEANs efforts to find a solution to the Myanmar conflict will not be successful.

Dewi said ASEAN should press the junta to end violence and open up access to humanitarian assistance from the international community.

An inclusive dialogue process must involve all major components of Myanmar society to restore political stability, security and democracy in Myanmar, she said.

Teuku Rezasyah, a lecturer in international relations at Padjajaran University in Bandung, said the presence of Myanmar's military leader in the summit was of strategic importance.

If ASEAN wants to push for an immediate end to violence, open access to humanitarian aid, then the most appropriate thing is to talk directly to the military. I think this is a very important opportunity, Rezasyah told BenarNews.

But a solution that satisfies both sides is increasingly out of reach, former Indonesian foreign minister Marty Natalegawa said.

Day by day, were seeing that each side moves further with their own separate pathways, he told a YouTube podcast last week, citing the juntas electoral commissions decision to declare the results of last years election null and void.

In the early days [after the coup] we could still imagine a situation where walking back was possible without anyone losing face. But now the stakes are becoming higher and higher and room for reconciliation is narrower, he said.

ASEAN, he said, needs to be innovative to persuade both sides to come to an agreement.

All parties need to be made feel that they have a stake in the agreement, he said, adding that military leaders who participated in the killing of civilians need to be legally held accountable.

Nontarat Phaicharoen in Bangkok, Kunnawut Boonreak in Chiang Mai, Thailand, Tria Dianti in Jakarta, and Hadi Azmi in Kuala Lumpur contributed to this report.
New Delhi:

Bharti Airtel will acquire Tata Groups loss-making mobile telephony business, almost for free, boosting its spectrum holding and raising subscriber base while saving the Tatas from the prospect of having to shut down the struggling unit.

Airtel, for whom it will be the 7th acquisition in five years, will from November 1 take over 4 crore customers of Tata Teleservices Ltd (TTSL) and Tata Teleservices Maharashtra Ltd (TTML) in 19 telecom circles or zones on a debt-free cash-free basis, the two groups announced in separate but identical press statements.

TTSL and TTML employees in the 19 circles, managing the consumer mobile business, along with 178.5 MHz of spectrum across 800, 1800, 2100 Mhz (3G, 4G) bands would be transferred to Airtel.

While all of the Rs 31,000 crore debt will remain with the Tatas, Airtel will assume payment of close to 20 per cent of the Rs 9,000-10,000 crore deferred payments for the spectrum to the government. Tatas will pay the rest.

The telecom sector is in a consolidation mode since the September 2016 entry of Indias richest man Mukesh Ambanis Reliance Jio, which has given incumbent operators a run for their money through free voice calling and cheap data offers. Jio has gained 12.8 crore subscribers with in a year.

In February, Airtel absorbed Telenors operations in seven circlesAndhra Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Gujarat, UP (East), UP (West) and Assam in a similar no cash deal.

Earlier this year, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular agreed to merge their operations to create the countrys largest telecom operator worth of more than USD 23 billion (roughly Rs 1,51,153 crore) with 35 per cent market share.

With this deal, Airtel will have over 32 crore customers, way below 40 crore users with the merged Vodafone-Idea entity.

Instead of closing down the consumer mobile business, which would have entailed a much higher cost and involved letting go of employees and vendors etc, we have chosen this route, Tata Group chief financial officer Saurabh Agrawal told PTI.

He said Tatas will retain stake in the tower company, Viom, and explore transferring the enterprise business to Tata Communications and retail fixed-line and broadband business to satellite TV arm Tata Sky.

The board of the two firms will evaluate the opportunity and decide in 4-6 weeks, he said.

The struggling mobile consumer business, Agrawal said, should have been restructured long back and when new group chairman N Chandrasekaran took over in February, he reached out to people who could help out.

Agrawal, who in July joined Tatas from Aditya Birla Group, said closing down the business would have been against the ethos of Tata Group and would have rendered employees jobless.

Through this deal Tatas have taken all the pain associated with the business and ensure that business is not shut, employees not sacked and vendors and other trades associated with it are not thrown out of business, he said.

Without giving the exact number of employees being transferred to Airtel, he admitted that the Sunil Bharti Mittal firm may look at optimisation of staff on ground after the merger.

The merger is being done on a debt-free cash-free basis, except for Bharti Airtel assuming a small portion of the unpaid spectrum liability of Tatas towards the Department of Telecom, which is to be paid on deferred basis, the statements said.

While Bharti Airtel will also have an indefeasible right to use for part of the existing fibre network of Tata, TTSL and TSMLs consumer mobile business operations and services will continue as normal until the completion of the transaction.

The 19 circles coming to Bharti represent bulk of Indias population and customer base, it said.

Tata and Bharti Airtel will work together to further explore other mutual areas of cooperation, that will be value accretive for both the Groups, the statement said.

This is a significant development towards further consolidation in the Indian mobile industry and reinforces our commitment to lead Indias digital revolution by offering world-class and affordable telecom services through a robust technology and solid spectrum portfolio, said Sunil Mittal, chairman of Bharti Airtel.

Goldman Sachs (India) Securities Pvt Ltd acted as financial adviser to Tata.

We believe todays agreement is the best and most optimal solution for the Tata Group and its stakeholders, said Chandrasekaran. We have evaluated multiple options and are pleased to have this agreement with Bharti.

For all the Latest Business News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
It is about time we accept the harsh reality - this global pandemic is not going away anytime soon, and we need to ensure that all our guards are up to ensure safety. Wearing a mask and sanitizing yourself, is something we can control and it is the least we all can do.

Simply put, a mask is one of the best weapons that acts as a shield in this pandemic. When you wear your mask, youre protecting not only yourself from the disease but your loved ones too!

In a bid to remind people that we are battling a global pandemic, Croma tied up with The Times Group for 'The Times Power of Print (POP)' campaign. The idea was to inspire millions of young creative minds to devise impactful campaigns to remind people to stay safe from the raging pandemic.

The 4th edition of Power of Print (POP) saw Croma, partner with The Times Group for the second time, seeking ingenious ideas to uphold the tenor of this years brief  'wear a mask not to protect yourself, but to protect the world from you.

Croma

What was the inspiration?

This years winning entry Spot the Serial Killer conceptualized by WYP Brand Solutions endorsed the use of wearing masks in order to reduce the chances of contracting the virus.

The winning team has won not only the Power of Print trophy but also an opportunity to see their the campaign released in the pages of the Times of India Group publications.

The POP campaign works as an extension to Cromas approach towards providing a safe and ambient shopping environment for all. Right from ensuring that all safety protocols are followed at the stores - like donning a mask, sanitization stations, social distancing, to introducing other convenient shopping channels.

Croma has introduced several features that allow the customers to shop from the comfort of their very homes. Here are some of the top features.

1. The Shop with Video feature - This feature allows shoppers to connect with the store staff via a live video call and close the purchase without having to visit the store.

2) Connect to store feature - This feature allows a customer to simply book a slot or speak to the store manager before they visit the store.

With this powerful print campaign, Croma also launches its summer campaign Cool Life, which provides cooling solutions for every cooling need. Shoppers can choose from over 250 ACs, 300 Refrigerators, 100+ Fans & Coolers, and avail of No Cost EMI options, Cashbacks, and much more.

So, what are you waiting for? Shop for this and more from the Croma website.
Pakistan has begun talks with an extremist group it banned last week in a bid to control religious violence, which is becoming a major challenge for Prime Minister Imran Khan as he struggles to revive the economy.

Talks between Khans administration and Tehreek Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), an Islamic party thats demanding the expulsion of the French ambassador, are ongoing after violent protests in Lahore killed at least three people, according to a statement by Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed and reports by the local media.

Supporters of Tehreek Labbaik Pakistan block a road and shout slogans protesting the arrest of their party leader Saad Rizvi in Lahore on Sunday. Credit:AP

On Sunday, the proscribed group released 11 police officials it had taken hostage earlier in the day, Ahmed said.

Days of rioting prompted Khans government to ban TLP on Thursday but that didnt stop the protests called to expel the ambassador over remarks by President Emmanuel Macron last year regarding the publication of cartoons ridiculing Islams Prophet Muhammad.
One woman told the judge she would come home after a long day at the factory to find her young daughter huddled in the basement, crying in the dark. Another man testified that after his son was badly burned in the home by boiling water, Malinek refused to let him be taken to a hospital for treatment of third-degree burns.
China's CoronaVac vaccine has proven to be "very effective," says Chilean official

Xinhua) 14:23, April 19, 2021

SANTIAGO, April 18 (Xinhua) -- The CoronaVac vaccine against COVID-19 from Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac has proven to be very effective in preventing infections, hospitalizations, admissions to intensive care units and deaths, said a Chilean official on Sunday.

Minister of Science, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation Andres Couve made this comment here while receiving the eighth shipment of the vaccines to the country.

The official cited a study the Chilean government presented Friday, which indicated that the CoronaVac vaccine has an efficacy of 67 percent in preventing symptomatic COVID-19.

The study also showed that the vaccine is up to 85 percent effective in preventing hospitalization, 89 percent effective in preventing admission to an intensive care unit, and 80 percent effective in preventing death caused by the virus.

Chile began mass vaccinations in February after the inoculation of health personnel in December 2020 and January 2021.

According to the latest data from the Chilean Ministry of Health, more than 7.6 million people have been inoculated against the virus in Chile to date, with 5.2 million having received both doses.

A total of 1,124,718 COVID-19 cases have been reported in the country, with 25,177 deaths, the health ministry said on Sunday.

Chile has been facing an increase in COVID-19 cases for several weeks. A large part of the Chilean population, including those in the entire Santiago Metropolitan Region, is now under quarantine to curb the spread of the disease, and the government has ordered the closure of the borders.

(Web editor: Xian Jiangnan, Liang Jun)
President Joe Biden speaks about jobs and the economy at the White House on April 7, 2021. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Biden Administration Orders ICE, Border Patrol to Stop Using Term Illegal Alien

The White House has ordered officials in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to stop using several terms, including illegal alien, alien, and assimilation, The Epoch Times confirmed.

Memos sent by Tae Johnson, acting director of ICE, and Troy Miller, acting head of CBP, were distributed to top leaders within the two agencies.

Terms that are to be changed include alien, which is now noncitizen or migrant; unaccompanied alien children is now noncitizen unaccompanied children; undocumented alien is now undocumented noncitizen, undocumented individual, or simply migrant; and illegal alien is now undocumented noncitizen, undocumented individual, or simply migrant, according to the memos obtained by The Epoch Times.

In addition, assimilation has been changed to integration, or civic integration.

As the nations premier law enforcement agency, we set a tone and example for our country and partners across the world, Miller said in the CBP memo. We enforce our nations laws while also maintaining the dignity of every individual with whom we interact. The words we use matter and will serve to further confer that dignity to those in our custody.

Johnson, meanwhile, issued a similar comment.

This guidance, he said, applies to communications such as agency outreach efforts, internal documents, and overall communications with stakeholders, partners, and the general public.

On social media and in statements, ICE and Border Patrol often use the term illegal alien to refer to individuals who have been taken into custody after illegally crossing into the United States. Previously, the agencies and other federal agencies used the term illegal immigration to refer to the phenomenon.

A group of illegal immigrants is processed by Border Patrol after crossing the U.S.Mexico border in La Joya, Texas, on April 10, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

Immigration advocacy groups and Democrats typically favor terms such as noncitizens, undocumented, unauthorized, or without status, while eschewing terms with the illegal moniker. Previous proponents of the illegal immigrant term have said that undocumented doesnt properly convey that such individuals have, in fact, crossed the border and remain in the United States illegally.

Immigration advocates also say the terms illegal immigrant or illegal alien are dehumanizing, while the latter evokes images of UFOs and space aliens.

The two memos appear to be part of a broader push by the Biden administration to scrap Trump-era immigration rules, including the Remain in Mexico policy, and halt construction of the U.S.Mexico border wall. However, Republicans and some Democrats have argued that former President Donald Trumps policies and messaging were effective, and rejecting them has led to a historic surge in illegal immigrants along the southern border.

Biden proposed removing the term alien from federal immigration laws in a citizenship bill he sent to Congress on Jan. 20, his first day as president, according to the White House. It would be replaced by noncitizen.

In March, meanwhile, Border Patrol agents apprehended 172,000 illegal immigrants, according to data provided by the agency. The head of the National Border Patrol Council, Brandon Judd, said it may have been the biggest surge that weve ever seen in the history of the Border Patrol.

The Washington Post first reported on the administrations order over the weekend.
"The situation today and the level of tension at the border is absolutely counterproductive and unacceptable," Macron said in an interview that aired on Sunday, DPA news agency reported.

Paris, April 19 (IANS) French President Emmanuel Macron said it was "unacceptable" that Russian troops are amassing along Ukraine's eastern border and called for a tough stance against the threat of fresh military aggression from Moscow.

While he was in favour of accelerating diplomatic efforts to ease the tensions, Macron said the discussions with Moscow needed to be "clear and tough".

"I think we have to define clear red lines with Russia," Macron told US television channel CBS.

"This is the only way to be credible. I think that sanctions are not sufficient in itself, in themselves, but sanctions are part of the package," he said.

Macron has put himself at the forefront of the diplomatic push to ease the latest flare up in Ukraine's conflict.

He held discussions with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday. The three demanded Russia pull back troops and urged that a shaky ceasefire in eastern Ukraine be recommitted to.

New consultation-level talks with Franco-German mediation are planned for Monday, according to Zelensky.

Anxiety is growing about the conflict that erupted between the Ukrainian military and Russian-backed separatist rebels in 2014, the same year that Russian forces annexed the Crimean peninsula further south.

Parts of Ukraine's eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions along the Russian border have been controlled by rebels supported by Moscow for nearly seven years.

--IANS

int/pgh
Faith played an "important and under-appreciated role" in the UK's choice to leave Europe, with Anglicans more likely to back Brexit, a major new study shows.

One in five Brits had religious beliefs that made them more likely to vote Leave and a quarter of voters' faiths meant they were more likely Remain voters.

Catholics, Presbyterians and regular churchgoers and those with the strongest religious beliefs were most likely to oppose Brexit.

This is the most detailed study yet of Christian religion and support for EU membership and the findings are outlined in a new book Religion and Euroscepticism in Brexit Britain, which traces how religion altered views on EU membership since the UK joined in 1973, through to the referendum itself in 2016 and its aftermath, including the 2019 General Election.

"Anglicans were very likely to vote leave," said Brunel University London's Dr Stuart Fox who co-wrote the book with Dr Ekaterina Kolpinskaya at the University of Exeter.

"A typical Catholic would vote to remain in the European Union," said voter behaviour expert Dr Fox. "Catholics are used to the idea of a cross-national authority as in the Pope and the Vatican, so for them, the idea of being governed by an international body like the EU is quite normal.

"Anglican history, meanwhile, is defined by trying to remain separate from the European superblock, and to do that you need a strong independent nation state. For them, anything that challenges it isn't going to be something they're a fan of."

The experts used data from the British Election Study and the Understanding Society survey.

In the 2016 Referendum, for example, a total of 55 per cent of Anglicans voted Leave. Experts believe being a member of the Church of England helps foster an attachment to the English heritage and national identity, and Anglicans are more likely to have conservative views about social, economic and political change and the power of the British state.

A total of 61 per cent of Catholics voted Remain, possibly because their faith means they are less attached to the English national identity or institutions.

People who 'practically never' attended religious services were also more likely to support Brexit.

Religiously inactive Anglicans were 27 percentage points more likely to support Brexit than religiously active and devout Catholics - a difference similar to that between university graduates and non-graduates.

Faith will also affect how people are likely to vote in the forthcoming local elections in May, pointing to evidence of a long-running change that saw Labour's traditional support among Catholics collapse and virtually all Christian groups become more likely to vote Conservative.

"There is still a substantial 'religious vote' in British politics," said Dr Kolpinskaya. "Our study shows the nature of a religious vote changes - with formerly strong ties between Labour and Roman Catholics, for example, weakening. The Conservatives, by contrast, have consolidated much support among Christians by growing their Protestant vote and adding Catholics to it.

While not the only thing that swayed the vote, religion played a significant part in explaining why more Brits than expected voted Leave, Dr Kolpinskaya said. "Faith also contributed to the rising Euroscepticism that pressed David Cameron to hold a Referendum in the first place, and the stunning victory for Boris Johnson's Conservative Party in the 2019 General Election."

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Auto supplier Brose to scale up business in China

From:ChinaDaily | 2021-04-19 10:14

German automotive supplier Brose is expecting its China business to account for a quarter of its global sales revenue by 2025, up from around 20 percent last year, as it looks to tap into the growth potential of the world's largest vehicle market.

Last year, its sales in China stood at 1.1 billion euros as the country was the first to curb the COVID-19 pandemic. The company's global sales revenue was 5.1 billion euros in 2020.

Brose is the world's fourth-largest family-owned automotive supplier. Every second new vehicle across the world is equipped with at least one product from the company, from vehicle doors and seats to electric motors, drives and electronics.

"Honestly, the 25 percent goal is a conservative one," said Jenny Xiang, president of Brose China, in an interview last week.

She said the COVID-19 pandemic is causing continuous uncertainties in Europe and the United States, where it may take longer for the auto market to recover. In China, the segment has seen fast growth and the rising trajectory will continue.

A total of 6.48 million vehicles were sold in the first quarter of the year, up 75 percent from the three months hit hard by the pandemic last year, according to statistics from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

Brose entered China in 1996 and has been growing its business. Its investment in China over the past five years totals over 400 million euros.

Xiang said the company is enhancing local research and development efforts to meet demands of international brands in the country and Chinese carmakers.

She said local carmakers will generate additional revenue for Brose, as its customers have long been international brands in the country, including Volkswagen and Ford.

Brose has begun localizing electric climate compressors, which are crucial to the new energy vehicle industry.

It has also won new orders from Chinese carmakers on its latest products including side doors and customized front-seat structures.

"Looking back over the past 25 years, Brose has witnessed the boom of the Chinese automotive market, which boosted the rapid growth of our China business," Xiang said.

"We will continue to diversify our customer base, proactively optimize our product portfolio and advance our overall local competitiveness to reach our strong growth targets by 2025."
[April 19, 2021] CEOs from HSBC USA, DonorsChoose and Intuit Mentor Student CEOs During Virtual Enterprises' Executive Conference, April 20

Michael Roberts, CEO of HSBC Americas, along with Charles Best, founder and CEO of DonorsChoose and Lara Hood Balazs, executive vice president, chief marketing officer and general manager of Intuit (News - Alert) , will join nearly three dozen other C-suite and top-tier executives during the Virtual Enterprises (VE) Executive Conference on April 20. The event provides an opportunity for the executives to engage, interact and mentor VE student CEOs to improve their business skills and acumen. The Executive Conference kicks off Tuesday, April 20 at 11 a.m. ET with an executive panel discussion led by Roberts, Best and Hood Balazs, followed by breakout sessions with all executives and VE student-entrepreneurs from noon through 1 p.m. Both events will be livestreamed and available for public viewing. The Executive Conference is one part of VE's annual Youth Business Summit (YBS), a series of events held April 20-22 that will attract over 5,000 student-entrepreneurs globally. It is the largest gathering of virtual businesses in the world. A complete listing of events can be found at the YBS website. HSBC Bank USA, N.A., (HSBC) and Intuit are major sponsors of the YBS. HSBC announced a $1 million grant to the VE program to support the nonprofit's national growth. "So many students, particularly those at schools in underserved communities, have lost so many hours of learning over the past year, yet they have demonstrated impressive commitment and resiliency in their studies," said Roberts. "Through this grant, HSBC extends a nearly 25-year partnership with VE that will help bridge the learning gap." Over the course of its relationship with VE, HSBC will have provided a total of $3.8 million in financial support, and HSBC employees have given thousands of volunteer hours. In 2020, 295 employees contributed a total of 831 hours to support VE programs, offering their international banking and business expertise to participating students. Best, who was a VE instructor in the late the 1990s, launched DonorsChoose during his years as a Bronx high school teacher. Since, DonorsChoose has been named one of the "50 Most Innovative Companies in the World" and Mr. Best has been named a pioneer in crowdfunding, a term which didn't exist when he launched his nonprofit 21 years ago. In addition to Hood Balazs aforementined roles, she also leads Intuit's ProConnect group and Corporate Responsibility efforts which focus on diversity and inclusion, job creation and readiness. Since 2018, VE students have benefitted from these and other Intuit resources, like mentorships from Intuit employee mentors in multiple U.S. states, professional Intuit workshops and networking events like QuickBooks Connect.



Celebrating its 25th year, Virtual Enterprises is a unique, year-long program which teaches students how to start and run a virtual business together with their classmates throughout the school year. Highlights of VE's annual Youth Business Summit include its National Business Plan Competition (NBPC), as well as national competitions in Human Resources, Marketing, Finance and QuickBooks. Additionally, a Global Innovation Challenge will ask international teams of students to present their solution to climate change and YBS's International Online Trade Show will feature the simulated businesses started by the 5,000+ students scheduled to be in attendance. Through the International Online Trade Show, VE firms will connect with each other as well as industry professionals in an effort to buy and sell products and services from one another. Note to editors:

About Virtual Enterprises International Virtual Enterprises International (VE) is a national nonprofit that transforms students through authentic business experiences which prepare them for fulfilling, financially secure futures. Since the inception of the Virtual Enterprises (VE) program in 1996, it has served over 175,000 high school students, including many from economically disadvantaged communities. In 2015, VE introduced the VE-JV Career Academy, a similar two-year program which enables 7th and 8th grade students to develop technology and entrepreneurial skills by starting and managing business ventures. We currently support 16,500 students across the U.S. each year and are part of a global network spanning 40 countries and 7,500 student-run businesses. Learn more about VE on our website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn pages. About HSBC HSBC Bank USA, National Association (HSBC Bank USA, N.A.) serves customers through retail banking and wealth management, commercial banking, private banking, and global banking and markets segments. It operates bank branches in: California; Washington, D.C.; Florida; Maryland; New Jersey; New York; Pennsylvania; Virginia; and Washington. HSBC Bank USA, N.A. is the principal subsidiary of HSBC USA Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of HSBC North America Holdings Inc. HSBC Bank USA, N.A. is a Member of FDIC. Investment and brokerage services are provided through HSBC Securities (USA) Inc., (Member NYSE/FINRA/SIPC) and insurance products are provided through HSBC Insurance Agency (USA) Inc. HSBC Holdings plc, the parent company of HSBC, is headquartered in London. HSBC serves customers worldwide from offices in 64 countries and territories in its geographical regions: Europe, Asia, North America, Latin America, and Middle East and North Africa. With assets of US$2,984bn at 31 December 2020, HSBC is one of the world's largest banking and financial services organizations. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005081/en/

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Differing fates of the two projects demonstrate the challenges involved in remaking a 760-acre stretch of industrial land along the river north of the Loop, where the city changed land use policies to allow nonindustrial towers in 2017. The policy changes freed up prime riverfront real estate to be redeveloped, which also could generate zoning-change fees and property taxes for the city.
When New York City parents found out on April 8 where their children had been accepted for general education public school kindergarten, the news came with a huge shocker: A whopping 12 percent fewer students applied this year than last year. Add to that the fact that, for the 2020-21 year, enrollment at even some of New York Citys highest-performing, most coveted elementary schools was down as much as 20 percent across all grades, and this is fantastic news for those whove been pressing for integration.

Save for a handful of exceptions, NYCs high-performing schools tend to be majority wealthy and majority white. School integration activists  Mayor Bill De Blasio counts himself among them  have been lamenting the status quo for decades. Theyve tried rezoning some neighborhood schools and even unzoning entire districts, to little effect. The citys schools remain the most segregated in the country.

However, now that these top schools are no longer filling up exclusively with students from their local catchment area, they should finally have space to accept children from outside their neighborhood, outside their district, maybe even outside their borough!

Except theres a fly in the ointment.

Even as popular schools went undersubscribed last fall, the Department of Education put a moratorium on student public school transfers. Even if a school had room and was willing to accept a child from outside its zone, the city Department of Education wouldnt approve it.

Related: I May Have to Leave the City I Love: Parents in New York City, Grappling with a Dysfunctional School Shutdown and the Uncertain Academic Year Ahead, Voice Frustration  and Fear

The official reason was that it didnt want to defund one school by letting students transfer to another. (Its the same reason some advocates give for getting rid of gifted and talented programs and banning charter schools.)

The idealistic hope is that having 12 percent fewer students apply to kindergarten for September 2021 means that schools will enroll a wider variety of kids, racially and socio-economically, including those who previously never would have had a chance of getting in because they did not live in the zone.

Story continues

The cynical fear is that neighborhood schools will hoard those seats through the summer (when wait lists traditionally shrink the most), in the hope that children who moved out of the city during COVID-19 will return in September and take their rightful places.

As de Blasio told radio interviewer Brian Lehrer, A lot of people who have been away are coming back. I expect a lot of people who are not sure what they wanted to do in terms of their kids education will solidify their plans.

Many schools have, in the past, held back seats for those who might move into the neighborhood at the last minute. Ive worked with families whove relocated into a school zone as late as the Friday before Labor Day and gotten a seat for their child, even as hundreds of out-of-zone children had languished on the wait list since March. The districts ban on letting families transfer between public schools this year appears to support such actions, restricting spots to zoned kids only.

Related: Adams: How Can NYC Halt an Exodus of Students Worried About Going Back to School in the Fall? Create a Remote Learning District

It isnt fair. Or equitable. Shouldnt those families who proved their loyalty to both the city and the public school system by sheltering in place and continuing to spend their dollars to prop up the local economy get first crack at the top schools? Even if they arent zoned for them?

Shouldnt the families who left town  de Blasio called them the worst epithet he could think of: privileged  and didnt even fill out a kindergarten application have to get in line behind those who followed the rules?

Otherwise, its as if the city is prioritizing those very same privileged souls by not giving away their school seats, hoping they  and their money  might deign to return. You wouldnt want to make them angry by telling them theres no room at the schools they should have applied to in the spring. Why, they might turn around and move right back out again, and take their money with them.

New York City finally has a chance to make school admissions fairer. It finally has a chance to give the have-nots a leg up and to reward them for sticking with a system that spent most of the year jerking them around, with little evidence that matters will improve in the fall.

Will the city be brave enough to embrace this unprecedented opportunity  and face the potential consequences?

Or will city officials continue to claim they want integration while sticking with the status quo, and wringing their hands, lamenting that, alas, there is nothing they can do about it?

Related: Sign up for The 74s newsletter
Paducah Murder Suspect Appears in Court

By West Kentucky Star Staff

PADUCAH - A man charged with the 2018 murder of his girlfriend and her unborn child was in court Friday.Epionn J. Lee-McCampbell appeared for a case review. The McCracken Circuit Court Clerk said a jury trial was scheduled for May 24.Police were called to his home in March of 2018, where officers allegedly found 19-year-old Ja'Lynn N. Ragsdale unresponsive. She was taken to a local hospital, where she later died.In late August 2018, the state medical examiner's office determined that Ragsdale died of asphyxiation consistent with suffocation and that she was pregnant at the time of her death.Lee-McCampbell faces charges of murder and fetal homicide.
Police traffic cameras should be used to catch drivers and passengers who drop litter from cars and trucks, a former environment secretary has insisted.

The call for litter-cams by Theresa Villiers comes as new technology makes it possible to snap louts hurling rubbish from vehicle windows.

Miss Villiers said: We need to get tougher on enforcing our litter laws. Litter disfigures the places where we live. It damages wildlife and costs council taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds every year.

She added: Not long ago, the Government changed the law so that if prosecutors show that litter was thrown from a vehicle, they can fine the owner and do not have to prove the identity of the person in the car at the time.

'This important legal change should open the way for widespread use of litter-cams. Deploying the national automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) network on this task could make a big impact on cracking down on litter offences.

The call for litter-cams by Theresa Villiers (pictured) comes as new technology makes it possible to snap louts hurling rubbish from vehicle windows

The rubbish can be a hazard for other drivers if blown into the paths of cars or for wildlife (file image)

Fines for dropping litter from a vehicle range from 90 to 120. It is a huge problem across the UK  leaving many A-roads and motorway slip roads looking like tips. The rubbish can be a hazard for other drivers if blown into the paths of cars or for wildlife.

The ANPR network, which has 11,000 cameras around the country, is used to monitor vehicles, including tracking stolen cars and movements by criminals. The Government has said it is not currently possible for the cameras to detect litter crime.

In a written response to a question by Miss Villiers, environment minister Rebecca Pow said: The ANPR cameras are not suitable for use in gathering evidence of littering or fly-tipping in progress due to the system recording vehicle images and number plates only.

Fines for dropping litter from a vehicle range from 90 to 120. It is a huge problem across the UK  leaving many A-roads and motorway slip roads looking like tips

The ANPR network, which has 11,000 cameras around the country, is used to monitor vehicles, including tracking stolen cars and movements by criminals (file image)

However, Miss Villiers called for the option to be explored in future.

She said: Why not adapt and upgrade these cameras so they capture images which can be used to fine people who throw rubbish out of cars? The state of the roadside shows it is often drivers and their passengers who are responsible for litter.

Andrew Kemp, of the LitterCam artificial intelligence company, said: Picking up litter is a huge waste of valuable resources. It makes a lot of sense to have cameras detecting litter crimes.

His firms technology, linking litter to cars, has been adopted by Maidstone Council in Kent.

Miss Villiers also voiced support for the Great British Spring Clean, calling volunteers heroes. The campaign, organised by Keep Britain Tidy and backed by the Mail, runs from May 28 to June 13.
Several hundreds of people on Sunday gathered in Helsinki city centre, protesting against the restrictive measures taken in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, Daily Finland reported.

The law-enforcers arrested 17 demonstrators at the spot, as they did not pay heed to a police order to disperse, said the Helsinki police.

The police said about 300 people gathered without giving any prior notice, thereby, violating the restriction on gathering of more than six people.

The protesters planned to bring out a procession to the Helsinki Railway Square via parliament building and violated the rules that limited gatherings in the region to six people.

The police ordered the people to disperse but all of them did not pay heed to the police order, which prompted the law-enforcers to arrest 17 people. Out of them, 14 protesters were fined for violating police orders while two others were fined for not obeying the rules.

The police estimated that about 200 to 300 people took part in the rally and procession.
We arent convinced that people should be able to vote over the internet or that our state should mail ballots to voters who havent asked for them  or even mail applications to people who havent asked for them, although some counties do make requesting an absentee ballot more cumbersome than it needs to be. We havent heard a good reason to change state law to let people vote the day they register to vote.

But theres no good reason to make most voters under age 65 stand in long lines on Election Day in order to participate in our democratic republic. And theres no good reason to squander our valuable tax dollars buying enough voting machines and hiring enough poll workers to eliminate long lines.

Not when we have such a safe and easy alternative, which has worked without significant problems for decades for everyone 65 and older, along with people who are sick, out of town or meet one of a handful of other special exceptions for casting an absentee ballot.

Indeed, we have a hard time defending a system that allows people to cast an absentee ballot because they decide to go on vacation on Election Day while denying that option to people who could risk losing their job if they wait too long in line to vote  or who have to give up their right to vote because the line is so long that they have to leave to pick up their kids before their child-care center closes.

For years now, the S.C. House and Senate have agreed that we need to allow all registered voters to cast absentee ballots, and theyve been passing bills to allow that. It just wasnt enough of a priority for the two bodies to agree on the details.

The pandemic changed that, at least temporarily, as the Legislature opened absentee voting to all registered voters and not just those who were old, sick or out of town on Election Day.

And it worked spectacularly: No one alleged, even without evidence, that South Carolinas voting was tinged by fraud. Expanded absentee voting didnt cause massive technical problems. South Carolinians clearly liked the idea, with half of all the votes cast before Election Day. And that meant polling places were less crowded and waits were much shorter for those who preferred to cast their ballots in person on Election Day.

The great absentee voting experiment of 2020 also demonstrated that making voting easier isnt the gift to Democrats that some Republicans feared  at least not in South Carolina. The GOP picked up seats in both the House and the Senate, and in Congress, and throughout much of the state.

Sign up for our opinion newsletter Get a weekly recap of South Carolina opinion and analysis from The Post and Courier in your inbox on Monday evenings. Email

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So it should be no surprise that the Legislature is once again considering bills to expand early voting opportunities. Last week, the House Election Laws Subcommittee took testimony on H.3822, by Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, which would allow all registered voters to cast absentee ballots by mail or in person. This Wednesday, the panel will hear testimony on another early voting bill, H.4150, by Rep. Weston Newton.

Neither bill is perfect.

H.3822 includes some of those provisions we arent convinced are necessary, such as allowing same-day registration and requiring the state to mail out ballots to all registered voters. H.4150 is less generous than it should be about how many absentee voting sites some counties could operate, and it greatly reduces the allowable reasons for casting mail-in absentee ballots, which means people aged 65 to 74 or who are caring for sick relatives or attending funerals or who have to be out of town on Election Day could only cast in-person absentee ballots.

Letting people vote on any of 14 days certainly is better than limiting them to one particular day. But there have not even been allegations of organized absentee ballot fraud in our state in decades (we know lots of people commit fraud, by saying they qualify to vote absentee when in fact they dont), so theres no good reason to require absentee ballots to be cast in person  and certainly not to reduce the number of people currently allowed to mail in their ballots.

The good news is that between them, the two bills contain all the elements we need for a voting law that removes unnecessary restrictions to voting, holds down the cost of elections and provides reasonable protections against fraud. Rep. Cobb-Hunter made it clear at Thursdays hearing that she doesnt expect her bill to survive intact, and Rep. Newton told Columbias State newspaper that he was open to compromise on his bill.

The House panel would do well to amend one the bills to allow no-excuses absentee voting by mail or in person, just like we had in the 2020 elections, and to allow counties to open multiple (although not unlimited) in-person voting sites. We've spent too long arguing over the details while South Carolinians waste time waiting in too-long lines to exercise their most important civic duty.
Rafoat Hoshimova and her family moved out of their house in the northern Tajik city of Khujand six years ago after it was announced their neighborhood would be demolished.

City officials and private Chinese investors had signed an agreement to build a massive residential and leisure complex called Chinatown in the neighborhood, replacing its one-story houses with modern apartment blocks and recreational facilities.

More than 30 houses were bulldozed in the picturesque area on the banks of the Syrdaryo River when the project officially kicked off in August 2015.

The excited residents were promised new homes in Chinatown's first buildings, which authorities said would be completed within one year.

The huge project would consist of 15 residential buildings with 1,200 apartment units, a four-story school, a car park, and a string of shops and restaurants.

The project, which also included recreational and leisure facilities, was supposed to be finished in 2020. It seemed too good to be true.

It was.

Six years later, more than 300 people are still waiting for their new apartments while being stranded in rented homes or living with relatives.

Khujand officials say the Chinese investors abandoned the project in 2018 after complaining the area wasn't suitable for a major construction project because of its proximity to the river.

It's unknown why such a key issue wasn't checked before construction, when the land was surveyed.

Officials at the Chinese company Husnoro-1, which was in charge of building the project, haven't commented publicly since they withdrew from the project.

"It was such a letdown for us," Hoshimova says. "We've been left in limbo. It's very painful."

Who's To Blame?

Hoshimova and her husband, Komil, say that "it all happened in a big rush" when city officials ordered the residents of Rahmon Nabiev Avenue to "quickly" vacate their houses.

Komil, a migrant worker who was in Russia at the time, had to return to Khujand to sign documents giving consent for the demolition of his home.

The couple shared a large house with their two sons, daughters-in-law, and several grandchildren.

The three families were placed in a single rented apartment, sharing a kitchen and single bathroom. Despite the inconveniences, the family reluctantly agreed, in the hope it was a temporary arrangement. Initially, their rent was paid by Husnoro-1.

But alarm bells began to ring when several months passed with no progress at the construction site.

Hoshimova, who frequently visited the site of her former family home, recalls: "The only work they did was to demolish the houses and dig holes in the land. Eventually, the holes filled with water."

That was the end of any work at the site. The worried residents approached city authorities to demand some clarification.

Several meetings were held with Khujand officials and Chinese investors in 2016 and 2018. Tajik authorities sought to appease people by saying the Chinatown project was still on track despite some unforeseen delays.

City authorities publicly acknowledged three years ago that the Chinese investors had abandoned the project. But officials didn't give a detailed explanation of what had happened or who was to blame.

They pledged to provide permanent homes for affected families and pay their rent until the new homes were ready.

Lives Put On Hold

In August 2020, the local government announced that new apartments were being completed in another part of the city to house the families who had lost their homes because of the project.

Hoshimova and others were told they would celebrate the New Year in their new apartments in Khujand's 18th District. But it didn't happen.

In February 2021, the mayor's office said the families would move into their new homes in a nine-story complex just before Norouz, the Persian New Year, marked on March 21.

That deadline passed as well, with Hoshimova and the others still without their new apartments.

City officials now accuse the families of being partially responsible for the delays.

"They don't want the apartments on the ground floor and they also dont like the ones on the upper floors," city spokesman Maamur Yusufzod said on April 13.

Many people in Tajikistan avoid living on the upper floors of tall buildings because they often have extremely low water pressure and there are problems with the elevators. The ground floors are also unpopular in some neighborhoods due to security concerns.

Yusufzod said the authorities had now decided to distribute new apartments among the families by randomly selecting them in a lottery.

Hoshimova said she had gained two new grandchildren since the family moved out of their home, with the children being raised in the cramped rented home.

Several others say they have had to postpone weddings and other major life events as they put everything on hold.

Meanwhile, the construction site has since turned into a garbage dump and the Chinatown project is officially dead.

Khujand city authorities are now promising to build a new residential complex -- called Khujand City -- with local investors. It will be just 100 meters from the site of Khujand's ill-fated Chinatown.

RFE/RLs Tajik Service contributed to this report
A blaze advanced along South Africa's iconic Table Mountain toward central Cape Town on Monday after ravaging university buildings, while firefighters battled strong winds in their efforts to control it and officials evacuated residential areas.

The fire broke out Sunday morning in the foothills of the mountain and spread to the University of Cape Town (UCT), destroying buildings and part of a library housing a unique collection of African archives, while causing students to flee.

The blaze had been largely contained on Monday, but firefighters were still battling to control it.

Cape Town mayor Dan Plato said efforts were currently focused on the mountain above the Vredehoek suburb, with residents being evacuated "as a precautionary measure".

"Strong winds are placing pressure on firefighting staff as it shifts the direction of the fire," Plato told reporters.

Aerial firefighting support has been forced to remain aground due to the wind.

The cause of the fire is under investigation, with one suspect taken into custody overnight, city official safety chief JP Smith said.

Flames have already destroyed the Rhodes Memorial Restaurant, private homes and historical structures such as the 18th century Mostert's Hill windmill.

"It is not only the historic buildings themselves that have been lost, but their contents and collections," said the Cape Town Heritage trust in a statement written from an office "enveloped in a pall of smoke".

At least three UCT buildings have suffered major damage, including the African studies section of the library -- named after South African businessman and benefactor John William Jagger -- and its parquet-floored reading room.

"Some of our valuable collections have been lost," wrote the head of UCT Libraries Ujala Satgoor in a Facebook post, adding that a full assessment of the damage had yet to be carried out.

Photos accompanying the post showed flames and smoke billowing from the roof and windows of the 1930s column-lined building.

Story continues

No casualties have been reported so far apart from four firefighters who have been injured.

- 'Inspiring' place lost -

Thick smoke hovered over a deserted UCT campus on Monday, blocked off to students and staff.

One student, 20-year-old Kosmas Joannou, walked over from his nearby home to gauge the situation.

Dozens of terrified students had fled their dormitories on foot the previous day, spilling out along the main road.

"It was just horrible," Joannou told AFP.

The sky "was orange, there was ash everywhere and everyone was screaming. It was chaos."

Joannou, a student in business studies, added: "All the history that was lost in the library, that destroys me."

Hundreds of students housed closer to the blaze have been moved to temporary accommodation, with donors sending food and other essentials.

"All my readings are there," said social sciences student Mpho Mogale, 19, evacuated to a hotel with only the t-shirt, trousers and flip-flops he was wearing.

"I have assignments to submit," he worried, biting into a slice of toast.

"I don't know how we are going to work," he added. "Since all the library is burnt... I don't know how we are going to read."

Anthropology researcher Jess Auerback, who graduated from UCT in 2008, remembered the Jagger library as "one of the most inspiring places on campus".

"It was a place where as an African undergrad you could go and see the magnitude of the richness and knowledge (from the continent)," she told AFP via telephone.

str-sch/sn/mjs
India has reported more than 200,000 COVID-19 cases daily since April 15, more than double the number recorded in any other country in the world. Despite this, Indias far-right Narendra Modi-led government has refused to take any measures to curb the spread of the pandemic.

On Saturday, the health ministry reported 234,692 cases during the previous 24 hours. A new daily record was set Sunday with 261,500 new infections, taking the number of active cases to a record 1.8 million. Underscoring the virus spread across India, the five states with the most new infections were Maharashtra in the west (67,123), Uttar Pradesh (27,734) and Delhi (24,375) in the north, Karnataka in the south (17,489), and Chhattisgarh (16,083) in the center-east.

Health workers screen residents for COVID-19 symptoms at Deonar slum in Mumbai, India, Saturday, July 11, 2020. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)

According to epidemiologist and Public Health Foundation head Giridhara Babu, this dire situation is set to deteriorate still further. He warned the caseload could increase to 300,000-400,000 per day by May 5.

To date, India has had 14.5 million recorded COVID-19 infections, the second-highest number of cases in the world. But by May 1, this total could rise to 18 million.

The official death toll rose Sunday to 177,150 following a record 1,501 fatalities in the previous 24 hours. Indias relatively low official death figures have been disputed by medical experts, who say that authorities are vastly undercounting the dead.

An Indian news site, The Wire reported on the situation in Madhya Pradesh as an example of the undercounting of deaths: There were 37 bodies waiting to be cremated on April 12 at Bhopals Bhadbhada facility whereas the Madhya Pradesh bulletin listed only 37 deaths in the whole state on that day, noted the report. Similarly, on April 8, 35 bodies had to be cremated in Bhopal alone, but the bulletin specified only 27 deaths; on April 9, it was 35 bodies vs. 23 in the bulletin.

Criminal responsibility for the massive surge of cases lies with the Modi government and the Indian ruling elite as a whole. The Modi government has followed the policy of herd immunity, refusing to impose necessary lockdown measures or provide Indias impoverished masses with the means to shelter at home. After ending last springs ill-prepared lockdown, which triggered a social calamity due to the absence of assistance for working people, the Modi government and its counterparts at the state levelincluding those led by the opposition partieshave maintained an open-economy policy while downplaying the deadly risk of the virus raging throughout India and internationally.

Modi repeatedly boasted about Indias capability to produce vaccines and said that India was launching the worlds biggest vaccination programme. Authorities even put his photograph on the vaccination certificate issued to those who have been inoculated along with the slogan, Together, India will defeat COVID-19.

By March 23, at the beginning of the new wave, the Indian government had only vaccinated 39 million people or 2.7 percent of the population. By April 12, the percentage remained below four percent.

States like Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Delhi complain that they are facing a shortage of vaccines. Media reports have also emerged from several other states of vaccine centers shutting early or turning people away due to supplies running out.

To bolster the governments propaganda of normalcy, New Delhi allowed the ongoing mega Hindu religious event Kumbh Mela to go ahead, with millions of Hindu devotees from all over the country congregating at Haridwar on the shores of the Ganges. However, yesterday Modi hypocritically told religious leaders the festival should be symbolic. At least 2,000 people, including religious leaders, are already reported as infected in the city of Haridwar alone.

The Modi government has also launched mass election propaganda campaigns in the state of West Bengal along with other political parties, without paying attention to public health rules, including social distancing. More than seven candidates, including candidates from Modis Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party, have reportedly tested positive for COVID-19.

Fourteen states have reported their highest number of daily infections during the last few days. Among them, five states including Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, and Kerala have 68 percent of the active cases nationwide.

The UK variant of the coronavirus is reported in 18 to 19 states or 70 to 80 districts in India, while the South African and Brazilian variants are also found in a lesser number of districts. Double mutant variants, which may be more infectious or reduce vaccine effectiveness, have been found in Maharashtra, Delhi, West Bengal, Gujarat, Karnataka, and Madhya Pradesh.

Feigning concern at the raging pandemic, Indias health minister, Harsh Vardhan, said on April 16: The number of cases is rising across the country. That is why we are visiting various hospitals to assess the situation and also talking to doctors and everyone for further preparations.

However, Indias current health care spending is less than 1.5 percent of its gross domestic product, among the lowest in the world. As the pandemic has resurged, the government has not announced any supplementary budgets to improve health care infrastructure or to expedite the manufacturing of vaccinations. By contrast, it is lavishly spending on defence, including allocating an additional $18.5 billion for weapons procurement in the 2021-22 budget announced on February 1.

Shortages of hospital beds, including oxygen-equipped and intensive care unit beds, have been reported from around the country. The government has been compelled to import 50,000 metric tonnes of medical oxygen due to increased demand.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray announced limited lockdown measures last week, after saying the states active COVID-19 caseload could double in 15 days from the present half a million. However, public transport, including trains and bus services, and the manufacturing sector were all allowed to continue operating at a maximum of 50 percent capacity. Thackeray has requested military help from the central government to tackle medical personnel shortages.

Delhi has become one of the worst-hit cities in India, with close to 50,000 active cases, and infection rates on the rise. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announced a weekend curfew that will not disrupt big business. Even cinema halls remain open at 30 percent occupancy.

At the end of March as the surge in infections began, Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain declared: Lockdown, not a solution, learn to live with Covid. He went on to say, It is a recurring disease. Experts said from the beginning, Do not believe it will be finished immediately. We will have to learn to live with it.

In Chhattisgarh hospital beds are no longer available. The press club in Rajnandgoan has been converted into a makeshift hospital and in the same town a garbage truck was reportedly used to ferry away dead bodies.

In Chhattisgarhs state capital Raipur, the main government hospitals freezers have run out of space to store dead bodies. Reports described bodies piling up everywhere, with trucks ferrying them ten at a time to the cremation grounds. According to Umesh Kumar, who watched as his fathers body was taken to cremation at a funeral pyre in Naya Raipur, They are dragging the bodies like animals from the mortuary to the truck and then from the truck onto the funeral pyre.

Under these horrifying conditions, the Modi regime and opposition parties are agreed that business must continue as usual. This policy of placing corporate profits ahead of the protection of human lives amounts to social murder. While hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost and millions are suffering from the pandemic, the number of pandemic profiteers is rising in India as in other countries. According to an OXFAM study, Indias more than 100 billionaires increased their wealth by 13 trillion rupees ($US 174 billion), from March 2020 to January 2021.

Citing domestic demand, the Modi regime suspended vaccine exports during the last week of March, promising to resume them in June. This decision will have a devastating impact on many middle-income and poor countries which depend on India for cheaper generic drugs and vaccines.

Adar Poonawalla, the CEO of the Serum Institute of India (SII), the worlds largest vaccine manufacturer recently complained that since New Delhi pays it less per shot than it earns from exports, it needs 30 billion rupees ($408 million) from the government to boost its currently very stretched production capacity.

At the same time, US imperialisms brutal vaccine-nationalist policy is heavily impacting India. In early February, newly elected US President Joe Biden invoked the Defence Production Act to ban the export of raw materials related to vaccine production.

The US, said Poonawalla last Friday, needs to lift its embargo on raw material exports to help ramp up vaccine production. The US, he continued, has invoked the Defence Act and banned export of raw materials. This is as good as banning vaccines.

According to the Washington Post, the aim of Bidens export ban is to enable Pfizer and Moderna to step up US vaccine production so mass inoculations against the coronavirus can be accelerated. In reality, Bidens actions have nothing to do with any concern for saving lives, and everything to do with boosting the profits and market share of these two US-based companies, whose life-saving products will be used by the US ruling elite to advance its predatory geopolitical interests. SIIs main customer for COVID-19 vaccines is the British-Swedish company AstraZenika.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global problem, which requires a global solution. It must include a globally coordinated vaccination program, the shutdown of all nonessential production until the pandemic is contained, and the seizure of the wealth of the super-rich in India and the major imperialist powers to provide wages for all workers forced to shelter at home and funding for quality health care for all. It will only be implemented through the mass mobilisation of the working class on the basis of a socialist program.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 17:41:11|Editor: huaxia

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LILONGWE, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Malawi President Lazarus Chakwera has fired Labor Minister Ken Kandodo after an audit report implicated the minister in the unlawful use of 613,000 Malawi Kwacha (about 778 U.S. dollars) of COVID-19 funds on a foreign trip.

The president made the announcement in a televised address Sunday evening following the release of the audit report on the abuse of 7.87 million dollars that the government released in August 2020 to government ministries, departments and agencies to help fight COVID-19.

Following local media reports that the COVID-19 funds were being abused, Chakwera suspended dozens of controlling officers, including district commissioners and chief executive officers, across the country in February, before he ordered an audit of the funds.

The audit report, which has just been released, found senior government officers and the private sector to have been involved in the plunder of up to 1.3 million dollars of the COVID-19 funds through procurement and allowances irregularities, among others.

According to the audit report, among those implicated in the abuse of funds is the labor minister, who "borrowed" from the COVID-19 funds an equivalent of 778 dollars for his allowance on a foreign trip.

"As for the minister of labor, who was named by the audit report as having spent COVID-19 funds amounting to 613,000 Malawi Kwacha on his allowances for a foreign trip, I have dropped him from my cabinet accordingly," Chakwera said in his Sunday address.

"Even though the minister has since returned the money, his usage of the funds means that the money was unavailable for its intended purpose when it was needed most," the president said. "I cannot have in my cabinet any individuals who spend money budgeted for one thing on something else."

Chakwera said the audit is only the beginning and that similar audits will be conducted into other funds spent on COVID-19 before he took office, as well as into other public funds spent by various institutions.

"I want all the thieves hiding in the civil service to mark my words: If the finger of evidence points to you as one of the thieves who stole COVID-19 money for saving lives while hundreds of our people were dying, you are going to prison," he said.

The government will use the relevant laws to ensure that the culprits pay back what they stole, Chakwera said.

The president has ordered the suspension without pay of public officers on whose direct watch the financial mismanagement occurred.

The Malawi Police Service has made 13 arrests of senior public and private individuals in connection with the abuse of the COVID-19 funds. Enditem
Cairo, April 19 : At least 11 people were killed and 98 others were wounded in a train derailment on Sunday in the Delta city of Toukh, north of the Egyptian capital Cairo, the Egyptian Health Ministry said.

A total of 60 ambulances have been sent to the scene and the wounded have been transferred to three public hospitals, the ministry said in a statement, Xinhua news agency reported.

The accident happened after four carriages of the train, coming from Cairo to the Delta city of Mansoura, derailed, the Egyptian Ministry of Transportation said.

President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi has ordered the formation of a committee to present a report about the reasons for the accident.

An investigation into the accident is underway with the train driver and his assistant, as well as eight other officials at the Toukh train station, the office of the Public Prosecutor said.

Egypt has a long history of train accidents due to degrading infrastructure and poor management. At least 20 people died and 199 others were injured on March 26 in a deadly train crash in the country's southern province of Sohag.

Egypt's Public Prosecution said in a report released on April 12 that human errors and gross negligence by railway staff were behind the two-train collision in Sohag.

The worst train accident in Egypt took place in February 2002 in El-Ayyat, 70 km south of Cairo, when a train travelling from Cairo to Luxor caught fire that killed 383 people.
What is the meaning of security of the person and right to liberty in a state of emergency (SoE)?

The security of the person is a basic and most fundamental of all human rights (as guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), and involves the liberty of the person, the right not to be unlawfully detained, or the right to be detained only with due cause or with due process.
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In between camping on the ground and going all in as a vanlifer (i.e. sell the home, move everything into a van, RV, tiny or any other type of motorhome, and hit the road), theres Bruno. Bruno is the latest from Kuckoo , a company based in Lochgau in Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, described as an all-terrain, all-season capable squaredrop camper trailer.Bruno is tiny but still distinctly elegant and with a strong personality; more importantly, Bruno aims to be mighty competent . Launched earlier this year, according to German-speaking publication Stern , its meant to serve as a base station and not as a rolling mini-apartment. The distinction between the two is important: this camper trailer is perfect for sleeping and cuddling, and thats it because its not of standing height.In that capacity, as a base station, it offers almost every amenity needed to make regular outings more comfortable. Almost is the key word here.In a sense, Bruno is a rolling bedroom with included storage and an indoor/outdoor kitchen. But Bruno is more than that, if only because it renders itself to further personalization, and comes with its own terrace space and roof rack. Measuring 4.45 m in length, 1.85 m in height, and 1.94 m in width (14.6 x 6 x 6.3 feet), it can be towed by most passenger vehicles and doesnt require a special permit. Its also small enough to fit into most garages, which means the Sunday vanlifer it was designed for wont have to worry about special storage.Available as a standard braked chassis, it has a very low curb weight of just 530 kg (1,168 pounds), with a total payload between 750 kg and 1,300 kg (1,653 and 2,866 pounds). Because of its angular shape, it packs more amenities into a compact space than a teardrop trailer . Its coated in fiberglass but comes with a real wood interior that offers a more rustic, unfussy vibe. Kuckoo says choosing real wood over plastic helps keep production costs down and add sustainability to the project.The cabin holds a full-length bed, with the kitchen at the head of the bed. When the weather doesnt permit it, all cooking can be done inside the cabin, but the kitchen can also be used outside thanks to a lateral slide. The standard offer is with the slide and kitchen storage, but everything else (one-burner stove, sink, and cooktop combo, fridge/freezer combo) will add to the final bill.The cabin offers ample storage in the form of three generous cupboards and pockets and shelves. Above the bed is a skylight that allows you to stargaze yourself to sleep or even to sleep in the open airmore or less. Up top is the terrace. Its nothing fancy, but a platform you can use while you enjoy your morning cup of Joe or haul gear like bikes and boards because it comes with a roof rack.Part of the standard offer are the windows with integrated blinds and mosquito nets, interior and exterior LED lighting, and 12V power supply and outlets. Kuckoo offers add-ons like solar panels on the roof and an inverter, an outdoor shower, kitchen gear, and an awning that turns the outdoor kitchen into a more home-like space. Youll have to bring your own toilet if camping at dedicated sites is not your idea of getting away from it all.The Bruno starts at 15,990, which is roughly $19,228 at the current exchange rate.
by Sumon Corraya

A top-billed actress from the 1970s and 1980s, she is taken by the pandemic. Born into a Hindu family, she was also a member of the Awami League.

Dhaka (AsiaNews)  Actress and former lawmaker Sarah Begum Kabori died from COVID-19 at the age of 71. She was one of Bangladeshs most revered silver screen stars.

In the 1970s and 1980s she became a legend, the sweet girl whose smile earned her the favour of millions of people.

Bangladeshi President Abdul Hamid and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina led the nation in paying tribute to her. In 2008 she was also elected to parliament with the Awami League for the Narayanganj-4 constituency.

A two-time National Film Award winner, Sarah Begum Kabori was taken to Kurmitola General Hospital after testing positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus on 5 April.

After her condition worsened, she was moved three days later to an intensive care unit at the Sheikh Russel Hospital where she died on Saturday.

Born Meena Pal in a Hindu family in Chittagong, she used the name Kabori in films. Married and divorced twice, she debuted on the big screen at 13 gaining huge popularity from many films in the 1970s and 1980s, most notably Sujon Sokhi and Sareng Bou alongside Farooque.

On screen she often teamed up with Razzak, but it was mainly the film Devdas, with Bulbul Ahmed, that won her critical acclaim.
A federal judge on Thursday affirmed Gov. Ned Lamonts emergency powers used during the COVID-19 pandemic when he dismissed a lawsuit filed by New Haven restaurant owners who claimed the executive orders violated the constitution.

The suit, from the owners of the 50's Lounge in the Westville neighborhood, argued that Lamonts executive orders violated the owners constitutional rights by limiting gathering sizes and preventing them from earning a living.

U.S. District Judge Michael P. Shea wrote in his ruling Thursday that the owners had largely failed to show how the orders violated their rights.

Our states constitution is unambiguous  the governor has broad authority during public health and civil preparedness emergencies to take steps that save lives. The federal courts decision today affirms what we already know and leaves no doubt that the governor's actions during this pandemic have been fully lawful and justified, Attorney General William Tong said in a statement.

The restaurant owners, Michael Amato and Joy Monsanto, argued in the lawsuit first filed on April 3, that Lamonts executive order violated their right to assemble and right to freely associate with their customers and their friends protected by the First Amendment.

The suit had sought to have the executive orders declared unconstitutional, an injunction that would lift the order and compensatory and economic damages.

The plaintiffs' complaint simply does not show how the executive orders impinged on their First Amendment rights  there are no allegations as to their attempts to assemble or to associate with anyone, Shea wrote in the ruling.

In his ruling, Shea acknowledges that more than 7,800 people have already died from COVID-19 during the pandemic.

Shea wrote in the ruling that Lamonts orders are narrowly tailored to achieve the compelling government interests of slowing the spread of COVID19 and preventing the overwhelming of the health care system, and they were issued relying on expertise from public health agencies.

The lawsuit also contended that Lamonts orders deprived the owners of the right to earn a living.

In his order, Shea wrote that restaurants were allowed to sell food and beverages for off-sight consumption, and the orders have since been replaced with mandates that allow for restaurants to operate for in-person dining with social distancing and a curfew.

The suit from the owners of 50s Lounge also brought claims against New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, but those were also dismissed by Shea.

The lawsuit was one of several that have challenged Lamonts executive powers since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic last year. In most cases, judges have upheld Lamonts authority to issue the orders meant to stop the spread of the virus.

The COVID-19 pandemic has touched thousands of Connecticut residents and has required immense personal sacrifices of all kinds, but nothing is more important right now than saving lives and protecting public health. We will get through this together if we wear our masks, continue to social distance and get vaccinated, said Tong, whose office has represented the governor in the matters.
"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
There was insufficient support from residents of a Derry street for an Irish language road sign to be erected in their area.

Applications were recently made for new Irish street signs at Ballynagard Crescent and Hatmore Park.

Once an application is made to Derry City and Strabane District Council, the council then writes to the residents in the streets to find out their views on the street sign application.

From those who reply to the council's correspondence, a minimum of 67% of respondents must support the new street sign proposal for it to be granted.

In January of this year, the council agreed to reduce this threshold to 15%.

However, the applications for new street signs at Ballynagard Crescent and Hatmore Park were all based on the previous threshold.

In relation to Ballynagard Crescent, a total of 54 households were contacted in relation to the application.

Of these households, 22 responded to the council and 65% of them were in support of the new street sign being erected.

However, because this did not meet the current threshold of 67%, the proposed new road sign will not be installed.

At Hatmore Park, 106 households were contacted by the council.

Forty responses were received and 91% of the Hatmore Park households who responded were in support of the new street sign, with 9% opposed to it.

As a result, a new Irish street sign will be erected in the street.

January's decision by the council to reduce the bilingual street sign threshold from 67% to 15% was criticised by unionist councillors.

They described it as a 'backwards' step for cross community relations in the local area.

However, those who backed the decision said it would promote equality within local communities.
NEW HAVEN  Kayla Garner said its been too long since she could meet up with friends after classes at Gateway Community College to slurp on noodles at Mecha Noodle Bar on Crown Street in New Haven.

But on Monday, Gov. Ned Lamont announced that college students like Garner are in luck: the state is planning a full return to college campuses in the fall, with some hybrid or virtual course offerings available.

Were open for business; come back, he said to students.

Protocols including mask-wearing and social distancing still will be required.

Garner, president of the Gateway Community College undergraduate student government, said in-person education is part of the student experience.

Its a place for us to come together and connect, she said.

Lamont and several college and university presidents said they will monitor public health guidance, and some restrictions will remain.

Currently, Lamont said that while he wants residents 16 and older to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, the state does not expect to require it as a condition of attendance in the states public schools. He said, instead of requiring vaccines, the state is encouraging them.

We will find out later in the year if thats enough, he said.

Yale University announced Monday that students on campus must be vaccinated against COVID-19.

William Brown, CEO of Gateway Community College, said schools are following the data and the science and will not rush a return. However, there are no plans to require students to be vaccinated as a condition of enrollment.

Southern Connecticut State University President Joe Bertolino said his campus is reopening gradually beginning June 1 in anticipation of being fully open by Aug. 1. He said more than 70 percent of courses this fall will have an in-person element, with a minimum three feet of space between students in classrooms.

LikeSCSU, private universities such as Quinnipiac University have offered students an opportunity to live and learn on campus this year  albeit with depopulation efforts in dormitories and classrooms. Both Bertolino and Quinnipiac University President Judy Olian said students on campus overwhelmingly adhered to protocols.

They have been remarkable mature and responsible, Olian said, with very few infractions. Given the increasing rate of people receiving vaccinations in the state, Olian said it instills confidence in her that a statewide return to campuses is possible when students managed under tougher circumstances than what they should face in the fall.

Shoreline-West Regional Community College President Thomas Coley said online courses still will be offered in the community colleges.

The idea is to be flexible, he said.

College leaders said there has been a decline in enrollment during the pandemic, but they hope to return to the numbers they had before. According to system leaders, there was a 15 percent drop in community college enrollment statewide and a 5.5 percent drop in enrollment in the four public universities under the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system as of October.

Most students are waiting, Bertolino said, although he expressed optimism that Mondays announcement about a full return to campuses would change minds. Olian said she recognizes that students and families need to kick the tires before making a decision to enroll for four years.

brian.zahn@hearstmediact.com
Having an epidural during childbirth is not associated with a greater risk of autism in the child, according to a study led by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the University of Manitoba.

The study, which will publish online April 19 in JAMA Pediatrics, helps resolve questions raised by an earlier, widely criticized report on the topic.

"We did not find evidence for any genuine link between having an epidural and putting your baby at increased risk of autism spectrum disorder," said the study's senior author, Alexander Butwick, MD, associate professor of anesthesiology, perioperative and pain medicine at Stanford. The study should help reassure both physicians and pregnant women about the favorable safety profile of epidurals, he added.

Epidurals are the most common form of pain relief for childbirth, used by about three-quarters of women in labor in the United States. Autism is a developmental disorder that affects one in every 54 children nationwide.

"The epidural is the gold standard in labor pain management," said the study's lead author, Elizabeth Wall-Wieler, PhD, assistant professor at the University of Manitoba. "The vast majority of evidence around epidurals, including that from our new study, shows that they are the most effective means of providing pain relief to women during labor and that serious complications are rare."

Questions raised by prior study

During an epidural, anesthetic is given by catheter into the space around the woman's spinal cord. Epidurals relieve pain from labor contractions while allowing women to stay alert and push during birth. They also have other important, yet underappreciated, advantages. For example, epidurals can provide anesthesia to laboring women who require unplanned, and often urgent, cesarean sections. They also pose a lower risk to the mother and baby than general anesthesia, which may be necessary if a woman who has not already had an epidural needs an emergency C-section.

In October 2020, a study of California births said epidural use was associated with a 37% greater risk of later autism diagnosis for children. But the study was widely criticized for failing to account for many socioeconomic, genetic and medical risk factors for autism -- separate from the epidural -- that could be more common among women who choose epidurals. Experts also noted that it was biologically implausible for epidurals to raise autism risk. Shortly after that study's release, several professional societies issued a statement saying that the study did not provide credible scientific evidence that epidurals cause autism.

Controlling for social, medical and family factors

The new research examined epidural use during childbirth and later diagnoses of autism in Manitoba, Canada. It included 123,175 children who were born between 2005 and 2016 and were followed until 2019.

"Manitoba has these wonderful, linked data sets that are population-wide," Butwick said, noting that the research team was able to access information that linked together individuals' medical records, prescriptions, other health-related data, socioeconomic information, and information about children's academic achievements. "It's extraordinary information that is super rich," he said.

All of the children in the study were born via vaginal delivery and were single births -- not twins or other multiples. Of those studied, 38.2% of the children were exposed to epidural anesthesia during labor; the rest were not. Of children exposed to epidurals during labor, 2.1% were later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, compared with 1.7% of children not exposed to epidurals.

But then the researchers controlled for factors thought to potentially influence autism risk -- many more such factors than in the prior study. Those included socioeconomic factors (mothers' education, marital status, neighborhood socioeconomic level and receipt of welfare during pregnancy); mothers' pre-pregnancy medical history (including diabetes, hypertension, anxiety and depression); medical conditions during pregnancy; mothers' smoking, alcohol and recreational drug use; mothers' hospitalization for mental illness during pregnancy; mothers' use of several types of prescription medications (benzodiazepines, antidepressants and antiepileptics); medical complications of delivery; and factors related to the mothers' pregnancy and labor, including the length of the pregnancy, whether labor was induced or augmented and whether the fetus was large or in distress during labor.

The researchers also analyzed pairs of siblings in which the mother received an epidural during one child's birth but not the other. This comparison gave a way to account for genetic and familial factors, which influence autism risk.

Once the researchers had adjusted for all the confounding factors, there was no statistically significant difference in autism risk between children whose mothers received epidurals during their birth and those who did not. Accounting for genetic and family-related factors reduced the difference between the groups even more.

The team conducted many different analyses, said Wall-Wieler, and repeatedly found a lack of association between epidurals and autism. "That makes us really confident in how robust our results were," she said.

"Our study has a stronger finding because we accounted for limitations the first study had," Butwick said. "An epidural remains a well-established and effective means of providing pain relief during labor, with several benefits associated with it."

###

Brian Bateman, MD, Stanford Medicine's incoming chair of the anesthesiology, perioperative and pain medicine, also co-authored the study. (Bateman is currently chief of obstetric anesthesia at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.) Other scientists from the University of Manitoba also contributed to the work.

The study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
Third phase of 13th Shanghai Biennale ongoing

By:Zheng Qian | From:english.eastday.com | 2021-04-19 15:04

Initiated last November as a nine-month extended program, the 13th Shanghai Biennale is now operating at a crescendo with the third phase exhibition having kicked off on April 16.

(Concept image for the 13th Shanghai Biennale by Paula Vilaplana de Miguel)

Themed Bodies of Water, the biennale looks into the liquid nature of human, more-than-human, and post-human bodies, and into the fluid ways in which they infiltrate, constitute, and relate to one another. It explores the historic and contemporary tensions, the over and under-explored possibilities, and the forms of consensual, dissident, and alternative forms of being that are made possible by these metaphorical bodies of water.

There are a total of 64 participants, and 76 works, of which 33 have been newly commissioned for the Biennale, the most commissioned works in the history of the biennale. Made up of sculptures, installations, drawings, paintings, performances, manifestos, videos and films, the artworks expand the ideas of what Bodies of Water may be.

One of the most influential art events in Asia, the Shanghai Biennale, with an open perspective, has been exploring social changes and knowledge production trends in the global context.

Dream after Screen is an interactive video installation, through which the author Ayesha Tan Jones is exploring alternative ways of being in relationship to a planet and society that is crumbling. Audiences are invited to alter the destiny and journey of Una Jynxx, a character embodied by the artist, simply by connecting their IRL (in-real-life) hands to the soil. In a world away from the prison of the screen, audiences follow her through wastelands, jungles, oceans, forests and hills, as she explores modes of survival in post-apocalyptic landscapes, foraging for food, divining directions and cultivating her own energy from the true source.

(Dream after Screen by Ayesha Tan Jones, exhibited at the 13th Shanghai Biennale.)

As chief curator Andres Jaque said in a press release, the 13th Shanghai Biennale advocates for the momentous contribution that art plays in the reconstruction of a world shaped by environmental, social, and political distress. The Biennale is sensitive to the way art constitutes and infiltrates life itself, and to its capacities for bodied reparation, transformation, and dissidence.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-20 04:50:07|Editor: huaxia

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RABAT, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita and his Danish counterpart Jeppe Kofod pledged on Monday to further develop the relations between the two countries, and strengthen coordination and cooperation on major international and regional issues, official RIM radio reported.

The two ministers made the remarks during a phone conversation to establish a post-pandemic agenda for their cooperation, RIM said.

They hailed the excellence of bilateral relations, marked by regular political dialogue and good economic partnership.

Bourita and Kofod pledged to promote, within international bodies, cooperation in several priority areas, such as the fight against climate change. Enditem
That is why Google Maps can now be used not only to get from point A to point B more efficiently, but to also explore certain locations across the world, access healthcare information, find data about shops and restaurants, and get transit details in some of the largest cities across the world.But some users living in Austin, Texas have also come across a feature thats been around for a while but rarely shows up in Google Maps. Its a shooting warning thats displayed on the map, with Google Maps specifically pointing to the location where its all happening in an attempt to keep everyone safe.The recent Austin shooting that left three people dead quickly triggered emergency alerts on Google Maps, as seen in this photo posted on reddit shortly after the incident.While this feature made its debut in Google Maps back in 2018, it actually signals a bigger problem and shows just how the world of technology responds to issues that should eventually be addressed in a different manner.While were not here to talk about Americas gun violence, users needing Google Maps warnings to keep them safe because of mass shootings is something which at the end of the day, proves not only that technology can be literally a life-saving weapon but also that weve reached a point where gun violence has gotten out of control.In the meantime, theres more good news on the Google Maps front, as the Mountain View-based search is working on several big new features for the app , including a new routing model based on fuel efficiency. In other words, Google Maps no longer suggests the fastest route to a specific destination but the most fuel-efficient alternative.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- Protesters took to the streets Friday, April 16, in Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo to let their voices be heard. Organizers from both events voiced similar sentiments, saying they were tired.

Im sick and tried of seeing my people die at the hands of those who took a vow to protect and serve, said Alyssa Bates, president of the Justice for Black Lives group in Grand Rapids during a rally at Rosa Parks Circle in downtown.

About 150 people attended the Call to Action: Justice for Daunte Wright before marching through the streets for about 30 minutes.

30 Justice for Daunte Wright rally in Grand Rapids

RELATED: Tired of seeing my people die, says organizer of Grand Rapids protest over Minnesota shooting

Around the same time in Kalamazoo, about 80 people gathered outside the Kalamazoo County Courthouse.

We are so tired, said activist Ryan Singleton. We are mourning, and you cant tell us how to mourn. We are mourning to be Black in America and to be constantly be in a state of mourning.

Protesters marched down West Michigan Avenue and through the Kalamazoo Mall, chanting Black Lives Matter, No Justice, No Peace, No racist police.

The protesters ended their march at the intersection of West Michigan Avenue and North Rose Street, chanting Whose Streets? Our Streets, in the same area where people were tear gassed while lying on the ground last summer.

RELATED: Were so tired, says organizer of Kalamazoo protest about the fatal police shooting of Daunte Wright

The Brooklyn Center officer who shot Wright, Kim Potter, resigned and now faces manslaughter charges. The shooting occurred while another former Minnesota police officer, Derek Chauvin, is on trial charged in the May 2020 death of George Floyd.

As closing arguments begin and the jury prepares for deliberations this week in Chauvins trial, some local activists are planning additional demonstrations. The group Justice for Black Lives in Grand Rapids has announced plans for a 5 p.m. protest downtown on the day of the verdict.

34 Kalamazoo holds Black Lives Matter protest after the death of Daunte Wright

Also on MLive:

Rhetoric helped fuel racism against Asian Americans, legislator says at Grand Rapids anti-hate rally

Protesters should stay out of streets, Kalamazoo chief warns ahead of scheduled protest

WOOD TV 8 reporter Barton Deiters dies after battling West Nile Virus
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (WLFI)-A new revenue forecast for the state of Indiana projects tax collections going up by more than 4 percent in each of the next two years. That could mean about $2 billion more available for the new two-year state budget that is being completed. Several lawmakers have come out and said they would like to see the money be put towards education.

This comes as the Senate version of the budget reduced the median household income for a family of 4 to qualify for a voucher.

In the House versions, it was around $150,000 a year. The senate reduced that salary cap to $95,000 a year.

One main thing our local lawmakers would like to see the money go towards is teachers' pay.

"With the expansion of vouchers in the budget I'd that be offset so that we are giving that money to the traditional public schools to we can fund them and see teachers raises in the state," said Democratic State Representative Chris Campbell.

"All the money 100 percent of the money I am lobbying leadership and the governor to give to teacher pay increases," said Republican Senator Ron Alting. "It only makes sense and it's the right thing to do. "

Representative Campbell said she would also like to see some of that additional revenue be put towards mental health services and food banks. Alting added that the state made a promise to teachers that they would get a raise and it's time the general assembly keep that promise. Representative Sharon Negele in a phone conversation said some lawmakers are talking about possibly using some of the extra revenue for infrastructure programs, which is something she would support considering here rural district.

The legislative session is expected to end on Wednesday that's when lawmakers expect they will have a balanced budget. But they could meet on Thursday if negotiations aren't finished.
Agiomix has been selected by the project as the Official Operator; under its roles Agiomix will provide technical and operational support for the project as per the signed contract with the Egyptian Center for Research and Regenerative Medicine, that will be entrusted to run the project.

Dr. Walaa Allam, Associate Director of Business development at Agiomix, commented on the news: "We take great pride in being part of the 'Egyptian Genome Project' family; we believe that our expertise with Genomics in the region will enable us to provide the necessary support to this ambitious project."

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New Delhi:

Rajesh & Nupur Talwar may be released on upcoming Monday after they were acquitted by the Allahabad High Court in the 2008 Aarushi-Hemraj murder case, said their lawyer. The lawyer also said that the High Court order's copy has still not been received.

The court had said that the Talwar couple could not be held guilty as per the circumstances and the evidence on record.

The verdict ended a nine-year ordeal of the Noida-based dentist couple who were found guilty by a Ghaziabad CBI court on November 26, 2013 and were serving a life sentence in Dasna jail.

A division bench comprising justices B K Narayana and A K Mishra allowed the appeals of the Talwars, holding that neither the circumstances nor the evidence on record established a chain showing their involvement in the murders of Aarushi and Hemraj.

Pronouncing the verdict in a packed courtroom, the bench said that it is a fit case where the benefit of the doubt can be given to the appellants and set aside the judgement of the CBI court convicting the Talwars.

I think release orders will be received by jail superintendent by afternoon& Talwars will be released by 4 pm: Tanveer A Mir,Talwars' lawyer pic.twitter.com/0RngIjJsQZ  ANI (@ANI) October 13, 2017

The Allahabad High Court said that the learned trial court judge cannot act like a maths teacher who is solving a mathematical question by analogy after taking certain figures for granted.

Jab tak order nahi aayega tab tak jail se koi karyawahi nahi ho sakti: D Maurya,Jailor, Dasna Jail on Talwars' release order #AarushiVerdict pic.twitter.com/lKSp7bekIZ  ANI (@ANI) October 13, 2017

The Bench also said that the learned trial Judge had prejudged things in his own fashion. drawn conclusion by embarking on erroneous analogy conjecturing to the brim on apparent facts telling a different story propelled by vitriolic reasoning.

Further, the bench claimed that the learned trial Judge cannot act like a maths teacher who is solving a mathematical question by analogy after taking certain figure for granted. In all criminal trials, analogies must be drawn and confined within the domain and realm of the evidence, facts and circumstances on record.

#TopStory: Rajesh & Nupur Talwar to be released from Ghaziabad's Dasna Jail after they were acquitted in 2008 #Aarushi-Hemraj murder case.  ANI (@ANI) October 13, 2017

Moreover, the Allahabad HC said that it is apparent that the trial judge was unmindful of the basic tenets of law and its applicability to the given facts and circumstances of the case and failed to properly evaluate evidence and analyze various circumstances of this case.

The learned bench also said that the trial court judge acted like a film director and tried to thrust coherence amongst facts inalienably scattered here and there. Further, he was criticised by Allahabad HC for not giving any coherence to the idea as to what in fact happened.

The HC also said that possibility of presence of other people and outsiders besides Hemraj having accessed to the apartment in the fateful night cannot be ruled out. The bench also said that the clear and credible evidence of alternative hypothesis available on record substantially demolishes the prosecution's theory that the crime was committed by the appellants alone as there was no proof of any outsiders having access into the apartment











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A card's trip cancellation or interruption insurance may help recover the cost of nonrefundable expenses.



By MELISSA LAMBARENA

NerdWallet

In 2020, I was looking forward to leaving Los Angeles for a socially distanced vacation in San Diego. I had stocked up on food, hand sanitizer, wipes and masks.

To stay safe and distant, I had booked two cottages near the beach with my travel credit card. My friend and his significant other would stay in one, and my roommate and I would take the other. That was the plan, until one friend tested positive for the coronavirus and had to isolate at home.





. . .
A Inc. electric car that no one appeared to be driving crashed late Saturday in Texas, erupting into flames and killing the two passengers, according to local authorities.

One victim was found in the front passenger seat of a 2019 Model S and the other was in the rear, Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman said in a telephone interview. The car ran into a tree in the Carlton Woods subdivision near The Woodlands after traveling at high speed and failing to navigate a turn.

The position of the victims, statements and other physical evidence suggest that no one was driving the vehicle at the time of impact, Herman said. Its still under investigation.

Herman said his office is coordinating with federal authorities, without specifying which ones, and didnt know whether the Autopilot feature was engaged. It took more than 30,000 gallons of water to extinguish the fire, which burned for four hours, he added.

didnt immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.

Federal officials have criticized for fire risks related to the battery packs in its cars and for not doing enough to keep drivers from using its driver-assist function inappropriately. In a hearing last year, the National Transportation Safety Boards chairman said that its time to stop enabling drivers in any partially automated vehicle to pretend that they have driverless cars.

Tesla Chief Executive Officer has defended the safety record of his companys vehicles. This week, he shared a report on Twitter, saying that a Tesla with Autopilot engaged is now approaching a 10 times lower chance of an accident than an average vehicle.
A wax bust controversially attributed to Leonardo da Vinci was not sculpted until 300 years after the death of the Renaissance master, radiocarbon dating has proven.

The sculpture  of Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers and spring  is held in the collections of the Bode (formerly Kaiser Friedrich) Museum in central Berlin.

It was acquired for the museum from a London gallery for the sum of a few pounds in 1909 by Wilhelm von Bode, who proudly declaimed it to be a lost da Vinci.

Berlin Museum authorities were said to have been delighted to have 'snatched a great art treasure from under the very noses' of the British art community.

The next year, however, it was alleged that Flora was really the work of British artist Richard Cockle Lucas, who was said to have sculpted the bust based on a painting.

Mr Lucas' son, Albert, described how he and his father made the bust and stuffed its hollow interior with objects, including a letter dated to the 1840s.

When the base of the sculpture was removed, museum staff found that the debris from inside Flora matched Albert Lucas' descriptions exactly.

Nevertheless, von Bode stuck to his claims, for which he was frequently criticised by the London-based art critic Paul George Konody in the very pages of the Daily Mail.

Meanwhile, theories abounded as to Flora's true origins, including the notion it was crafted in the 16th-century artist, albeit by a different artist than da Vinci.

While the latest findings may not resolve the question of Flora's provenance, they do this theory  and the claim of von Bode  to certainly be incorrect.

A wax bust (pictured) controversially attributed to Leonardo da Vinci was not sculpted until 300 years after the death of the Renaissance master, radiocarbon dating has proven

The Flora bust was acquired for Berlin's Kaiser Friedrich museum from a London gallery for the sum of a few pounds in 1909 by Wilhelm von Bode  who proudly declaimed it to be a lost work by the Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci, depicted above

THE REAL ARTIST?ABOUT RICHARD COCKLE LUCAS Richard Cockle Lucas (18001883) was a British sculptor and photographer. His work  many of which were homages in wax to the art of previous times  included a relief of 'Leda and the Swan' and reproductions of the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon. He also produced various etchings depicting not only his own sculptural works but also biblical stories and scenes from 18th century poetry. Late in life, Mr Lucas is said to have become rather eccentric  declaiming his belief in fairies and riding around the city Southampton, near where he lived, in a Roman chariot. Advertisement

The dating of the sculpture was undertaken by Ina Reiche of the Chemistry Research Institute of Paris and her colleagues.

'Many works of art have been attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, the great artist-scientist-engineer of the Italian Renaissance, however, art historians have struggled to find definitive proof to connect Leonardo to these art pieces,' the team wrote.

'The Flora wax bust in the Bode Museum, Berlin, was attributed to Leonardo because her face resembles several Leonardo portraits, but this attribution has the subject of intense debate since the bust's acquisition in 1909.'

Until recently, scientific analyses had proven inconclusive when it came to proving a conclusive age the bust that would settle for once and for all whether it was forged in the 16th or 19th century.

In their new study, Dr Reiche and colleagues developed a new calibration method to date the sculpture, which was made primarily of spermaceti, a type of wax produced in the head cavity of sperm whales, but also some beeswax.

The team compared Flora with 'Leda and the swan'  a sculpture of similar wax composition made by Mr Lucas in 1850  as to determine the correct ratio of spermaceti to beeswax to calibrate the carbon dating curves for the two materials.

'The result dates the Flora materials to the 18-19th c., which proves that the bust was not produced during the Renaissance, and therefore cannot be attributed to Leonardo,' the researchers concluded.

'While it is somewhat disappointing to learn that the bust cannot be attributed to Leonardo, this information does provide useful insight into history,' the team added.

'The sperm whale population suffered a serious decline in the 1740s when sperm whaling started on an industrial scale.'

Berlin Museum authorities were said to have been delighted to have 'snatched a great art treasure from under the very noses' of the British art community. Pictured: the German art historian and museum curator Wilhelm von Bode, who acquired Flora in 1909

In 1910, it was alleged that Flora (left) was the work of British artist Richard Cockle Lucas (right), who was said to have been commissioned to sculpt the bust based on a painting

The team compared Flora with 'Leda and the swan' (pictured)  a sculpture of similar wax composition made by Mr Lucas in 1850  as to determine the correct ratio of spermaceti to beeswax to calibrate the carbon dating curves for the two materials

'The use of spermaceti in art objects shows how widespread the use of sperm whale products was and highlights the whaling industry's importance during the industrial revolution,' the researchers continued.

'There is a need for art historical research to integrate natural science investigations in order to provide information allowing an improved attribution of art works and allowing to give another dimension to the historical value of such objects.'

The full findings of the study were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

The sculpture of Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers and spring, is held in the collections of the Bode (formerly Kaiser Friedrich) Museum in central Berlin, pictured
Driver was 'expelled' from France after serving four-month prison sentence

The courier, identified as Dhia Edine D. by local media, was convicted in January for refusing to transport orders of kosher food to Jewish customers

nterior Minister Gerald Darmanin said the Deliveroo rider, who was illegally living in France, was deported on Saturday

France has deported an Algerian Deliveroo rider who was convicted of anti-Semitic discrimination for refusing to transport orders of kosher food to Jewish customers.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said the courier, who was illegally living in France, was 'expelled from the country' on Saturday after serving his four-month prison sentence.

Strasbourg Criminal Court convicted the Deliveroo rider, identified as 19-year-old Dhia Edine D. by local media, in January for refusing to deliver food made by a kosher restaurant in Strasbourg to Jewish clients.

The restaurant's owner had filed a complaint with police for discrimination after the driver refused to handle their food. Following his arrest, the courier was found to have been living illegally in France.

France has deported an Algerian Deliveroo rider who was convicted of anti-Semitic discrimination for refusing to transport orders of kosher food to Jewish customers (stock image)

'As I promised, the delivery man who said he did not want to serve Jewish customers was expelled from the country today, after having served his prison sentence,' Mr Darmanin said on Saturday.

'Anti-Semitic hatred has no place in France.'

At the time of the restaurant owner's complaint in January, a regional Jewish institution, the Israelite Consistory of the Bas-Rhin region, said another kosher restaurant had reported that drivers working for Deliveroo were not delivering to Jewish customers.

The consistory said the group and restaurants had filed a legal complaint, denouncing what it called 'openly anti-Semitic discrimination'. Only one deliverer - Dhia Edine D. - was involved in the court action.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin (pictured) said the courier, who was illegally living in France, was 'expelled from the country' on Saturday after serving his four-month prison sentence

Mr Darmanin said at the time the Algerian courier would be deported after he completed his prison sentence.

'I decided to expel from the national territory the food 'deliverer'...who said he did not want to handle deliveries to Jewish clients,' Darmanin wrote.

The Strasbourg prosecutor's office had opened an investigation into 'discrimination based on ethnic origin in the framework of providing a service,' according to a prosecutor's aide.

Deliveroo spokesman Damien Steffan told local broadcaster France Bleu in January that the company thinks 'anti-Semitic acts, like all racist or discriminatory acts of all kinds, are unacceptable.'

Deliveroo has around 14,000 drivers in France and has seen business grow considerably during the coronavirus pandemic.

The case drew the national government's attention amid long-running efforts to fight anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination.

France's minister for citizenship issues, Marlene Schiappa, met in January with the management of Deliveroo France.
By Ivan Ssenabulya

The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) has awarded medals and certificates to Ugandan soldiers for their outstanding contribution in peace buildings.

Soldiers, from Battle Group 29, were awarded at a ceremony presided over by the AMISOM Force Commander, Lt. Gen. Diomede Ndegeya, also attended by the Contingent Commander Brig. Gen. Don William Nabasa.

Lt. Gen. Ndegeya commended the soldiers, for securing the coastal town of Barawe and the surrounding areas, and paid tribute to soldiers who lost lives in the line of duty.

The soldiers deployed to the mission in December 2019 under the command of Col. Edward Kaddu, are due to rotate out of the mission, after completion of duty.

The contingent is to be replaced by Battle Group 32, commanded by Col. Jonathan Ojok Och.
MONTREAL, April 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bombardier Inc. ("Bombardier" or the "Corporation") announced today that its cash tender offer previously announced on March 22, 2021 (as amended by the Corporation's press release dated April 5, 2021, the "Tender Offer") to purchase for cash up to US$1,571,000,000 aggregate purchase price (exclusive of Accrued Interest) (the "Aggregate Maximum Purchase Amount") of three series of its outstanding senior notes (collectively, "Notes") due 2021, 2022 and 2023 as identified in the Offer to Purchase (as defined below), expired at the Expiration Date, 11:59 P.M., New York City time, on April 16, 2021. Capitalized terms used but not defined herein shall have the meanings assigned to such terms in the Offer to Purchase dated March 22, 2021 (as amended by the Corporation's press release dated April 5, 2021, the "Offer to Purchase") with respect to the Tender Offer.



On the Early Settlement Date, April 6, 2021, the Company accepted for purchase and purchased, US$955,552,000 aggregate principal amount of the 2021 Notes (93.91%), US$315,754,000 aggregate principal amount of the 2022 Notes (63.15%) and US$225,000,000 aggregate principal amount of 2023 Notes (18.00%). As a result, on the Early Settlement Date, the aggregate total purchase price payable under the Offer to Purchase for Notes validly tendered and not validly withdrawn at or prior to the Early Tender Date and accepted for purchase reached the 2023 Tender Cap with respect to the 2023 Notes and was within US$786,032.24 of reaching the Aggregate Maximum Purchase Amount for all Notes.

After the Early Tender Date, but at or prior to the Expiration Date for the Tender Offer, an additional US$913,000 aggregate principal amount of the 2021 Notes were validly tendered and not validly withdrawn, an additional US$3,043,000 aggregate principal amount of 2022 Notes were validly tendered and not validly withdrawn and an additional US$1,142,000 aggregate principal amount of 2023 Notes were validly tendered and not validly withdrawn.

In accordance with the terms of the Tender Offer as set forth in the Offer to Purchase and as permitted by applicable law, all additional Notes that were validly tendered after the Early Tender Date, but at or prior to the Expiration Date, will be accepted for purchase by Bombardier, upon the terms and conditions contained in the Offer to Purchase, on the Final Settlement Date.

All such Notes that are being accepted for purchase by the Corporation will be settled on the Final Settlement Date in accordance with the terms of the Tender Offer as set forth in the Offer to Purchase. Bombardier expects such Final Settlement Date to be April 20, 2021.

"Bombardier has taken an important step in deleveraging its balance sheet," said Bart Demosky, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. "With this tender now complete, and the repayment of our senior secured credit facility announced in February, Bombardier has deployed approximately $2.4 billion of available cash towards debt repayment, including proceeds from the sale of Bombardier Transportation. These actions will play a key role in reducing annual cash interest costs, and represent a critical step towards executing on the strategic plan outlined at our Investor Day this past March."

This announcement does not constitute an offer to buy or sell or the solicitation of an offer to sell or buy any securities.

Certain statements in this announcement are forward-looking statements based on current expectations. By their nature, forward-looking statements require us to make assumptions and are subject to important known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which may cause our actual results in future periods to differ materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. For additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties, and the assumptions underlying the forward-looking statements, please refer to the Offer to Purchase.

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China and Russia are among the foreign actors amplifying online disinformation rooted in QAnon conspiracy theories in the US, according to a new report published Monday.

Analysis by The Soufan Center, a New York-based research firm with a focus on national security threats, concludes that QAnon beliefs constitute a mounting domestic terrorism threat.

International adversaries are seeking to sow further societal discord and division among Americans and compromise legitimate political processes by encouraging online dissemination of the theories, the report asserts.

QAnon conspiracy theories centre around a belief that senior Democrats and Hollywood stars are part of a child-eating, Satan-worshipping, sex trafficking cult that runs the US government.

The report sets out how QAnon conspiracy theories foster a process of radicalisation and violence similar to that fueling other violent extremist movements.

It draws similarities to some of the beliefs that created a hospitable environment for al-Qaeda and ISIS.

As the QAnon movement continues to evolve, the report warns that it has the potential to exploit widespread societal grievances to incite more acts of violence in the future.

The report cites the radicalisation of people in online echo chambers by false narratives, who may then be inspired by other attacks, such as the violent insurrection on 6 January at the US Capitol. During the storming of Congress, many QAnon signs and flags were evident in the crowd.

On top of that, the report specifically notes that racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists, including white supremacists, are actively seeking to recruit QAnon followers to expand their influence  often using antisemitism as a gateway.

The national security and broader policy implications of the sustained influence of QAnon conspiracy theories are profound, says Naureen Chowdhury Fink, executive director of The Soufan Center.

As such, addressing this challenge will require a joined-up response from the US government, private sector, civil society organisations, and others in countering the spread of QAnon-related conspiracy theories, and greater investment in preventing and countering terrorism at both government and local levels.

Story continues

The research was conducted with Limbik, a company that uses AI and predictive modelling to analyse and counter weaponised information online.

The report also identifies how the QAnon movement has received support through intense amplification efforts of multiple external actors.

Our data collection and analysis has demonstrated that QAnon has been weaponised by Americas adversaries, says Zach Schwitzky, founder of Limbik.

Actors from Russia, China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia have all entered the fray amplifying QAnon messaging, most likely as a means to sow further discord and division among the American population.

Nearly one-fifth of 166,820 QAnon-related Facebook posts between January 2020 and the end of February 2021 originated from outside the US, the report states.

According to the report, Russia dominated the space for much of the last year, responsible for 44 per cent of foreign QAnon content on the platform.

In 2021, though, other actors have overtaken Russia, with 58 per cent of such content coming from China in January and February.

The mysterious Q began posting online in 2017, making wild predictions that gained traction in some parts of the internet.

He is supposed to be a highly placed intelligence official with top security clearance, and many posts refer to Donald Trump as a messianic figure battling those that secretly control the US government.

An HBO documentary released in March, Q: Into the Storm, speculates that the identity of Q is father and son duo James and Ron Watkins, responsible for running message boards 8chan or 8kun. The younger Mr Watkins seems to all but admit that he is Q.

Since the end of the Trump presidency, Q has been silent, leaving followers of the conspiracy to reinterpret previous posts to fit current events  most recently a wild claim that the cargo ship that ran aground in the Suez Canal was being used to traffic children.

Despite these wild stories, a recent survey carried out by Limbik found that approximately 20 per cent of respondents self-identify as QAnon believers and an even larger portion subscribe to one or more QAnon-narratives, including allegations of voter fraud and suspicions about the reality of Covid-19.

The findings of this report conclude that it is imperative to protect freedom of speech, but social media companies also need to tackle how they handle disinformation on their platforms, either through deplatforming, or refining algorithms to stop recommending more toxic QAnon-related content.

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Nearly half the Senates Democrats, including both of Californias, are urging President Biden to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba  a symbol of lawlessness and human rights abuses  and complete a task that President Barack Obama failed to accomplish.

For nearly two decades, the offshore prison has damaged Americas reputation, fueled anti-Muslim bigotry, and weakened the United States ability to counter terrorism and fight for human rights and the rule of law around the world, the senators said Friday in a letter to Biden.

The lead authors were Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the Appropriations Committee chairman. Signers included Californians Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla, 21 other Democrats and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who caucuses with the Democrats.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in February that it was our goal and our intention to close Guantanamo. But she made no promises, unlike the unfulfilled pledge by Obama on his second day of office in 2009.

While Republicans had not prevented President George W. Bush from transferring or releasing more than 500 of the prisons inmates, they fiercely opposed Obamas attempts to close it, and sponsored legislation prohibiting transfer of Guantanamo inmates to U.S. soil.

Obama managed to transfer 201 prisoners to foreign countries, most of whom had never been tried or sentenced and were found to pose no security risk, but was unable to close the facility. President Donald Trump promised to load it up with some bad dudes and revive the use of waterboarding, which U.S. law classifies as torture, but he took neither step, and released one inmate to complete his sentence abroad, bringing the population down to 40.

Located on a naval base that the U.S. installed in Cuba in 1903, the prison was opened by Bush in 2002 to hold suspected terrorists and enemy combatants. But attempts to prosecute detainees for war crimes were largely derailed after the Supreme Court ruled that they were entitled to at least minimal legal protections, and a number of inmates told their lawyers that they had been subjected to waterboarding and other forms of torture.

The remaining inmates include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, whose trial on capital charges has been repeatedly postponed in disputes over evidence allegedly obtained through torture. About 10 current inmates await trial before a military commission, six have been recommended for transfer abroad, and the rest are being held indefinitely based on military officials conclusions that they are too dangerous to release.

In their letter, the 24 senators said that in addition to $540 million a year in taxpayer costs, the prison also comes at the price of justice for the victims of 9/11 and their families, who are still waiting for trials to begin.

They asked Biden to re-establish a State Department office seeking to close Guantanamo, to pursue plea agreements with detainees who face federal charges based on untainted evidence, and to negotiate transfers to foreign countries for inmates whose sentences exceed the time they have already spent at the prison.

Biden must also reverse Trumps position, the senators said, that the Constitutions Due Process Clause does not apply to the men detained there.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko
A Missouri House committee has recommended Lees Summit Rep. Rick Roeber be expelled from office after finding that he sexually and physically abused his now-adult children when they were young.

In the House Ethics Committees report released late Monday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers deemed the freshman Republicans accusers  including his ex-wife and three of his four children  credible. They testified he had committed acts that under Missouri law would constitute sexual contact or deviate sexual intercourse, according to the report.

The committee also found accusations of physical abuse by Roeber, including beatings and an incident that left one child with a scarred eyelid. The evidence in the case, which included testimony from five witnesses, was clear and convincing, the committee said.

Witnesses described to the committee a household terrorized by an alcoholic Roeber who sexually abused two children and physically abused all four, frequently beating the children with a belt, and at one point drowned several puppies.

The state of Missouri has failed these children over 20 years, the committee wrote.

The grim findings came less than a week after the House unanimously took the unusual step of forcing Roeber to remain a state representative while the committee finished its investigation, with lawmakers citing the seriousness of the allegations.

Roeber had tried to resign as the committees investigation neared its conclusion, after being told of the committees recommendations and initially indicating he would object to them in a formal hearing, according to the report. After lawmakers rejected his resignation last Thursday, he is now likely to become only the second Missouri House member ever expelled. The first was in 1865, for disloyalty to the Union.

The vote to expel, which will require a two-thirds majority, is expected this week. Roeber turned in his state capitol entry badge last week, the committee said.

Story continues

Lawmakers have indicated they support further consequences for Roeber, including criminal prosecution. In the reports conclusion, the committee emphasized Roebers alleged actions constitute felonies. House leaders earlier had contacted prosecutors about the investigation.

Testifying in his defense before the Committee, Roeber was combative, defensive, defiant and at times angry, according to the report. He called the accusations a political hit and said, all my kids are Democrats.

Roebers adult children went public with accusations of abuse last fall in interviews with The Stars Editorial Board. The allegations, which date back to the early 90s, were also documented in a sworn deposition nearly 20 years ago.

The Stars report was published after Roeber had already run unopposed in the 2020 Republican primary to succeed his wife, Rep. Rebecca Roeber, who died in July 2019 after being seriously injured in a car crash in March.

In November 2020, he beat the Democrat Chris Hager by 301 votes.

He was expelled from the Republican caucus upon taking office.

Anastasia Roeber, Roebers adopted daughter, has said he made improper sexual advances toward her in 1990, when she was 9. Samson Roeber said he suffered physical abuse as a child. And Gabrielle Galeano said she was aware of the alleged abuse while living with Anastasia, Samson and another sibling.

Three of four Roeber children testified to the House committee, as well as Roebers ex-wife. The children, not named in the report, are referred to as Child 1, Child 2 (who did not testify), Child 3 and Child 4.

His ex-wife said Child 1 told her about being sexually abused by Roeber years after it occurred. She said Child 2 then told her that the two had also been sexually abused around the same time in 1990.

In one incident, when Child 2, then a toddler, knocked something over, Roeber flipped the child over and just started beating [the childs] ass, she said. The childs eyelid was struck by a nail in a board and left a permanent scar, she said.

She told the committee that although the Division of Family Services found probable cause abuse had occurred, the Child Abuse and Neglect Review Board overturned the finding. Roeber wanted the finding removed from the Central Registry because he was trying to get a position at a church that involved working with children, according to the report.

The ex-wife also testified that a judge denied her request for a protective order preventing Roeber from seeing the children.

Child 1 testified to being sexually abused and groomed by [Roeber] from a very young age.

When we would ride in the car, hed have his hand on my upper thigh just kind of rubbing it, the witness testified, according to the report.

Child 1 testified that when they were 9, Roeber took the childs hand and put it on his genitals. He told the child if they told anyone, he would go to jail and the family would be ruined, the report said.

Child 3 testified to receiving constant beatings from Roeber, and Child 4 testified to similar physical abuse. Both also said Child 2 suffered intense abuse.

Roeber denied all accusations to the committee and said he had been an alcoholic but did not suffer from any memory loss. Two of the children testified the abuse continued after he stopped drinking. Roeber said the accusations stemmed from a bitter divorce from his ex-wife that spilled over to the children.

He submitted to the committee what he said were emails between himself and Child 2 from September 2007 to February 2008, in which Child 2 appears to apologize for lying. But Roeber did not produce any additional emails the committee requested, and the committee unanimously agreed that this was not credible evidence, according to the report.

Last week, House Speaker Rob Vescovo, an Arnold Republican, wrote to Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker, requesting she help ensure the safety of a child Roeber currently has regular contact with, the Missouri Independent reported. The child is Roebers step-grandson who has weekend visits in his home, the committee said.

Vescovo and Rep. Travis Fitzwater, the Holts Summit Republican who chairs the Ethics Committee, wrote we have learned information that needs to be forwarded to the proper authorities in your jurisdiction.

Roeber made no mention of the investigation in his resignation letter, saying only that he and his fiance would be moving out-of-state.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 08:23:33|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, April 19 (Xinhua) -- The following are the updates on the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

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QUITO -- Ecuador reported 2,389 cases and 43 more deaths from COVID-19, bringing the total number of cases to 360,546 and the death toll to 12,720, the Ministry of Public Health reported on Sunday.

Another 4,983 deaths are considered to be COVID-19 related, but not verified, according to the ministry.

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HAVANA -- Cuba registered 1,037 cases and 13 more deaths from COVID-19, the highest daily death toll on record, the Ministry of Public Health reported on Sunday.

The ministry stated that the number of cases has reached 93,511 and the death toll has climbed to 525.

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NEW YORK -- The COVID-19 hospitalizations in New York State dropped to 3,754 on Saturday, compared with 3,834 one day earlier, the lowest since Nov. 29, said Governor Andrew Cuomo in an official release issued on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the single-day COVID-19 test positivity rate went down to 2.35 percent on Saturday from 2.78 percent on Friday, he said, adding that the statewide 7-day average positivity rate fell below 3 percent for the first time since Nov. 24.

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TEHRAN -- Iran's health ministry reported on Sunday 405 more COVID-19 deaths, raising the death toll of the pandemic in the country to 66,732.

As reported by the official website of the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education between Saturday and Sunday, 21,644 new infections were detected in the country, taking Iran's overall count to 2,237,089.

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ANKARA -- Turkey on Sunday reported 55,802 new COVID-19 cases, including 3,101 symptomatic patients, as the total number of positive cases in the country reached 4,268,447, according to its health ministry.

The death toll from the virus in Turkey rose by 318, highest single-day count so far, to 35,926, while the total recoveries climbed to 3,687,590 after 43,856 more cases recovered in the last 24 hours.

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JERUSALEM -- Israel's Ministry of Health reported 130 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday, raising the total number in the country to 837,012.

The death toll from the virus rose by three to 6,334, while the number of patients in serious conditions decreased from 202 to 196, out of 326 hospitalized patients.

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ADDIS ABABA -- The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Africa has reached 4,421,627 as of Sunday, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said.

The Africa CDC, the specialized healthcare agency of the 55-member African Union (AU), said the death toll from the pandemic stood at 117,696 while 3,960,793 patients across the continent have recovered from the disease.

- - - -

RABAT -- Morocco's COVID-19 tally rose to 505,811 on Sunday as 364 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours.

According to a statement by the Ministry of Health, the death toll rose to 8,945 with one new fatality during the last 24 hours, while 430 people are in intensive care units.

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LONDON -- Another 1,882 people in Britain have tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 4,387,820, according to official figures released Sunday.

The country also reported another 10 coronavirus-related deaths. The total number of coronavirus-related deaths in Britain now stands at 127,270. These figures only include the deaths of people who died within 28 days of their first positive test.

- - - -

MUSCAT -- The Omani health ministry on Sunday announced 3,363 new COVID-19 infections, raising the total number of confirmed cases in the country to 180,031, the official Oman News Agency reported.

Meanwhile, 3,479 people recovered during the past 72 hours, taking the overall recoveries to 160,324, while 57 deaths in three days' time were reported, pushing the tally up to 1,878, according to a ministry statement quoted by the report. Enditem
Reporter

Heather Bellow, a member of the investigations team, joined The Eagle in 2017. She is based in the South Berkshire County bureau in Great Barrington. Her work has appeared in newspapers across the U.S.
For over fifty years, it has been a recurring promise of conservative candidates running for election that they will stand up for our constitutional rights and support the appointment of judges and Supreme Court justices who will uphold the Constitution.

Yet time after time, the left seems to win both ideological and legal battles on monumental issues such as abortion, marriage, gun control, immigration, racial preferences for minorities, and the ever-expanding size and scope of government  no matter what the text of the Constitution actually says.

In The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties, (2020; ISBN 978-1-5011-0689-7) author Christopher Caldwell advances the thesis that the Constitution of 1788 has been effectively nullified by our elites and supplanted with a "new constitution" that originated in, and reflects the values of, the "Civil Rights Era" of the 1960s. Though the civil rights movement began as a reformist movement within the old order, it evolved into a "revolution" that has nearly triumphed over the polity created in the 18th century:

The changes of the 1960s, with civil rights at their core, were not just a major new element in the Constitution. They were a rival constitution, with which the original one was frequently incompatible[.] ... Much of what we have called "polarization" or "incivility" in recent years is something more grave  it is the disagreement over which of the two constitutions shall prevail: the de jure constitution of 1788 ... with centuries of American culture behind it ... or the de facto constitution of 1964, which lacks this traditional kind of legitimacy but commands the near-unanimous endorsement of judicial elites and civic educators and the passionate allegiance of those who received it as liberation.

Caldwell argues that the new "de facto constitution" has been used to supersede the Bill of Rights and the black-letter law of the traditional Constitution. Forced busing and forced integration violated the First Amendment right to freedom of association, as did affirmative action for blacks and women. Racial and sex-based preferences offend the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. These policies were enacted despite opposition from most Americans. Speech codes and political correctness designed to cater to the sensitivities of minorities infringe on the right to freedom of speech and freedom of the press. The "right" to an abortion, which existed nowhere in the traditional Constitution and was opposed by a majority of the people (with limited exceptions), was essentially created by the Supreme Court.

(It should be noted that not all of those "judicial elites" were far-left Democrats. Indeed, a fair amount of damage was done by Republicans. Harry Blackmun, author of Roe v. Wade, was appointed by Nixon; Anthony Kennedy, appointed by Reagan, wrote the majority opinion in the marriage-redefining case Obergefell v. Hodges; Bush appointee John Roberts voted to uphold Obamacare; and Ford appointee John Paul Stevens wrote a virulent dissent in District of Columbia v. Heller, denying that the Second Amendment gave any right whatsoever to anyone not enrolled in the National Guard).

While most white Americans outside the Deep South supported fairness for blacks at the time the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, Caldwell believes that the act created a bureaucratic and judicial Frankenstein's monster that well intentioned whites never anticipated. The Civil Rights Act of 1964

empowered the federal government to reform and abolish certain institutions that stood in the way of racial equality and to establish new ones. By ... subjecting to bureaucratic scrutiny any company or institution that received federal money ... by laying out hiring practices from all companies with more than 15 employees ... by creating ... the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), with the power to file lawsuits, conduct investigations, and order redress ... the act emboldened and incentivized bureaucrats, lawyers, intellectuals, and political agitators to become the "eyes and ears," and even the foot soldiers, of civil rights enforcement. Over time, more of the country's institutions were brought under the act's scrutiny. Eventually all of them were. The grounds for finding someone guilty of discrimination expanded[.] ... Civil rights transformed the country not just constitutionally, but also culturally and demographically. In ways few people anticipated, it became the mightiest instrument of domestic enforcement the country had ever seen.

But the new civil rights bureaucracy, and the Great Society entitlements it began to confer on minorities and "oppressed" groups in terms of jobs, educations, welfare, and housing, cost money  money that most Americans, including many who supported civil rights, were unwilling or unable to pay. By the 1980s, a backlash was developing among white working-class voters to the cost and the intrusiveness of the new bureaucracy.

Caldwell reserves special criticism for Ronald Reagan, who figured out a middle ground between traditional Americans and the newly entitled. Reagan gave the white working class tax cuts, and he gave corporations tax cuts, cheap immigrant labor, and global trade incentives, while paying the civil rights/entitlement constituency off with debt:

Reaganomics was just a name for governing under a merciless contradiction that no one could admit was there: Civil rights was important enough that people could not be asked to wait for it, but unpopular enough that people could not be asked to pay for it. Reagan permitted Americans to live under two social orders, two constitutional orders, at the same time. There was a pre-Great Society one and a post-Great Society one. Paying for both soon got expensive[.] ... Reagan saved the Great Society the same way that Franklin Roosevelt is credited ... with having "saved capitalism." That is, he tamed ... its very worst excesses and found the resources to protect his own very angry voters from consequences they would otherwise have found intolerable.

But all Reagan did was kick the can down the road  not resolve the tension between traditional America and the newly empowered "civil rights" constituency. So did his successors, in both parties. In 1987, the national debt was roughly $1 trillion, or 34% of GDP; today it is nearing $30 trillion and 130% of GDP.

Caldwell believes that the upshot of Reagan's failure to undo the Great Society was the empowerment of minorities, women, immigrants, and wealthy globalist corporate elites (who turned out the be "woke" leftists in contrast with the conservative, buttoned-down corporate culture of the past). The losers were the white, working-class, traditional Americans who still believed in the old Constitution while under relentless wage pressure from immigration, affirmative action, and the offshoring of jobs  and were relentlessly mocked and sneered at by the media, politicians, and corporate oligarchs.

Caldwell ends the book by inferring that the growing backlash among disaffected traditional Americans, the accumulating national debt, and the cluelessness and haughty arrogance of the post-1960s ruling class could produce a political reaction in the 2016 election. However, he does not discuss or address the Trump presidency.

If Caldwell's thesis can be criticized, it is for understating his case  things have proven to be worse than he described.

In hindsight, the Trump presidency exposed the fact that the elites and the Deep State are now completely untethered by the original Constitution of limited and enumerated powers and by the Bill of Rights. They have demonstrated that they are willing to use the FBI to surveil presidential candidate and to fabricate a false narrative for the purposes of impeaching him. They have demonstrated that they will side with illegal aliens over American citizens, and that they will freely let black BLM and communist Antifa agitators run riot in the streets while ruthlessly prosecuting and suppressing as "domestic terrorists" patriotic and nationalist groups who caused a ruckus at the Capitol. They have demonstrated that they are willing to turn a blind eye to vicious and violent attacks by blacks against whites, but drop the hammer of "hate crimes" on any "deplorable" white who has the slightest dispute with a black, or on any cop making a traffic stop of a black criminal. They have demonstrated that they will continue to expand so-called "civil rights" to include all manner of insanity and freakishness, such as "transgenderism."

Our elites are willing to make explicit racial appeals to minorities and immigrants in order to create a one-party dictatorship for the foreseeable future, while mercilessly demeaning whites and stripping the public sphere of symbols of our past such as statues of Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, and Lincoln. Our black U.N. ambassador recently denounced America's founding documents as "white supremacist." They have demonstrated that they are willing to completely ignore the black-letter law of the Second Amendment and ignore the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment with "red flag" laws. Colleges and corporations have openly and brazenly implemented racial and sex-based quotas in the name of "equity." Bureaucrats have prosecuted Christian bakers of wedding cakes and used COVID as an excuse to shutter churches and gun shops. They will prosecute any business-owner for refusing to serve or hire gays or blacks or women, while applauding tech companies that censor and deplatform conservatives, and universities that refuse to hire Republicans or conservatives. They have openly stated their willingness to pack the Supreme Court with leftist ideologues, to flood the country with third-world immigrants, and to change voter laws to ensure that they get what they want  forever.

Caldwell does not propose a solution to this situation. But recognizing the problem is a necessary first step in finding one. "Civil rights" has been used as an effective battering ram against conservatism and against the Constitution of the 1780s; conservatives can no longer allow themselves to be browbeaten by "civil rights" activists. The rigged election of 2020 and the double-impeachment of Trump should have awakened conservatives to the fact that merely voting Republican and asserting your "constitutional rights" is no longer enough. But it may be too late.

In 2014, Gov. Cuomo sneered that conservatives have no place in the state of New York. Increasingly, our elites have adopted the attitude that conservatives have no place anywhere in the country, and they are willing to act on it.

Image: kolyaeg via Pixabay, Pixabay License.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
A teenager who had been turned away three times from Broken Hill Hospitals emergency department Googled can pain kill you? on his tablet device before he died from septic shock.

John Braes wept before the NSW Coroners Court on Monday as he recalled the final hours of his son Alex, who he remembered as a ray of sunshine with red hair and an infectious laugh.

Broken Hill teenager Alex Braes, who died of an infected toenail.

Mr Braes told the inquest that even once Alex became gravely ill, there was no ambulance available to take him to Broken Hill Hospital, no hospitals willing to admit him in Adelaide and no pilot available to fly him to Sydney.

His wife was left sitting on the tarmac of Broken Hill Airport for hours waiting for a plane to come from Sydney to retrieve their 18-year-old dying son.
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For the third time in seven years, U.S. officials are scrambling to handle a dramatic increase in children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border alone, leading to a massive expansion of emergency facilities to house them as more kids arrive than are being released to close relatives in the United States.

More than 22,000 migrant children were in government custody as of Thursday, with 10,500 sleeping on cots at convention centers, military bases and other large venues likened to hurricane evacuation shelters with little space to play and no privacy. More than 2,500 are being held by border authorities in substandard facilities.

The government failed to prepare for a big rise in the number of children traveling alone as President Joe Biden ended some of his predecessors hard-line immigration policies and decided he wouldnt quickly expel unaccompanied kids from the country like the Trump administration did for eight months.

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So many children are coming that theres little room in long-term care facilities, where capacity shrank significantly during the coronavirus pandemic. As a result, minors are packed into Border Patrol facilities not meant to hold them longer than three days, or theyre staying for weeks in the mass housing sites that often lack the services they need. Lawyers say some have not seen social workers who can reunite them with family in the U.S.

Both former presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama faced similar increases in Central American children crossing the border alone in 2019 and 2014. The numbers have now reached historic highs.

The Trump administration had predicted the strain on capacity, documents show. Projections from a former top official in the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, which cares for migrant children until theyre reunited with family, said the agency would run out of beds by mid-January or early February. On Feb. 22, the Biden administration reopened a tent facility used during previous increases as smaller shelters ran out of beds.

HHS spokesman Mark Weber said the Biden administration has taken aggressive actions to expedite transfers out of Border Patrol facilities and shorten stays at the large emergency sites.

Theyre just not able to keep pace with the need, said Wendy Young, president of Kids in Need of Defense, which provides legal services to immigrant children. We are not thrilled by the fact theyre using these mega ad hoc emergency facilities, but I will say better to have kids there than a Border Patrol situation, or in Mexico.

Eleven emergency sites have opened since mid-March. At two recently visited by attorneys, children said they had not met with case managers tasked with reuniting them with family.

Attorneys have long pressed for expanding HHS capacity to vet sponsors and prepare children to be released promptly  not continually add more bed space to keep them detained, said Peter Schey, president and executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law.

Had they done that, this entire crisis could have easily been avoided, he said. The solution was to pour a lot more money into case managers.

The Border Patrol encountered 18,663 unaccompanied children in March, the highest monthly total by far on record.

The number of children in custody rose after eight months of expulsions that began in March 2020, when Trump invoked a section of an obscure public health law amid the pandemic. More than 15,000 unaccompanied children were expelled between April and November last year, according to government figures.

In response to a 2019 uptick in crossings, the Trump administration had increased the number of beds in small and medium-size shelters that are better prepared to handle family reunifications  to 13,000 by early 2020.

But pandemic restrictions brought down actual capacity to 7,800 beds by November, said Mark Greenberg, who was acting assistant secretary for the Administration of Children and Families at U.S. Health and Human Services during Obamas second term and part of Bidens transition team. A February government tally had it at 7,100 beds.

Throughout 2020, they didnt rebuild capacity, Greenberg said of the Trump administration. For much of last year, the number of children in custody was very low, and they had 8,000 available beds, and the government was expelling children at the border. It was in that context that they didnt rebuild the loss of supply.

During the last months of Trumps term, unaccompanied minors were allowed to stay after a federal judge ruled in November that the government couldnt use the pandemic as a reason to expel them. In January, an appeals court said the government could resume the practice, but Biden decided against it.

The numbers quickly rose under Biden, who ended other Trump policies, including one that made asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for court hearings in the U.S.

Jonathan H. Hayes, who directed Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement from February 2019 to March 2020, said the Biden administration needed to listen to estimates on capacity needs before undoing Trumps policies.

Projections of arrivals threatened to strain the system and should have prompted officials to hit pause, considering the time it takes to get licensed shelters up and running, Hayes said.

BC-USImmigration-Migrant Children

Eds: UPDATES: With AP Photos. Fixes grammar in summary; minor edits throughout.

New migrant facilities crop up to ease crowding, again
Press Release

April 19, 2021 DA dared: Save farmers' produce from low prices, lack of buyers and give them to community pantries Amid reports of Luzon vegetable farmers dumping their produce, Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto challenged the Department of Agriculture "to buy these, truck them to Manila and quietly give them to community pantries." "May mga pictures na tinatapon na lang ang kamatis kasi walang bumibili. Bakit hindi na lang ito bilhin ng pamahalaan at ipamigay sa mga komunidad na nagtayo ng sarili nilang food banks?" Recto said. Recto said "poor farmers are giving our bureaucrats with doctorates in their names a master class in bringing their produce to the cities." "You don't have to be a genius to dispatch sweeper trucks and buy directly from vegetable farmers. You help both the farmers and the consumers," he said. "And that's the least that an agency which spends money telling people not to waste a single grain of rice can do. Kung sinasabi na huwag mag-aksaya ng butil ng bigas, bakit tone-toneladang mga gulay ang nabubulok? O kung kayang mag-angkat ng baboy mula Brazil, bakit hindi kayang ibaba ang gulay mula Benguet?" Recto said. "But what is happening now is that the food-producing poor are helping the food-consuming poor. If they can do it, why can't big-budgeted agencies do the same?" Recto said. To boost their stock, community pantries could benefit from "government support" but it should be done "quietly and sans fanfare," he added. "Some agencies have the mandate and the funds to do it. But they must have the finesse to not make epal. Food donations need not be trumpeted," Recto said. "My suggestion is to give anonymously, because the best way to ruin a people's initiative is for government to brusquely come in. That will be a Midas touch in reverse," he said. Recto said the DA's P150 million budget for Kadiwa ni Ani at Kita could be used to establish a "food rescue" distribution system where farmers' produce in danger of being spoiled for lack of buyers or low prices could be brought by the government to food banks in depressed areas. He said the DSWD's 2021 budget of P176.6 billion can also be used for food donations. Recto said funding for direct feeding of children is also a regular feature of the national budget, with P6 billion for DepEd and P3.8 billion for DSWD this year. Recto said with self-rated hunger at record high of 30.7 percent, food banks have been the direct response of citizens to the growing number of GNP - Gutom na Pilipino.
Gloom has rightly settled all around the country. Be it Twitter or other social media platforms, everywhere, you are seeing people being in dire need of hospital beds, oxygen cylinders, plasma, and other health care facilities.



The so-called second wave of the lethal Covid-19 pandemic has taken India by a storm and has threatened to shake the entire foundations on which the country's health care sector is based on.

 Dnaindia

On Monday (April 19), as per the health ministry, India reported 2,73,810 new Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours, the highest one-day surge so far in the country.



With common people already struggling to lift the deadly weight of the pandemic which has taken the country's Covid caseload past the 1.5 crore mark, we are also seeing some renowned celebrities come up in the news undergoing treatment for the disease.

Amongst one of these is Bollywood guitarist Ankur Mukherjee, who suffered a Covid-induced brain stroke and has been in the ICU from April 16 in an induced coma.

 Facebook

The 47-year-old musician is known for his work in films like Border, Dev D, Omkara, Parineeta, Piya Basanti, Taare Zameen Par, 3 Idiots, Raajneeti, Lootera, Barfi, Andhadhun, and Gulabo Sitabo.



According to reports, Ankur requires a prolonged medical treatment for which there has been a need for financial support.

His sister Paroma, who has been raising funds for the medical treatment, has started a fundraiser through which she helps to raise Rs 70,00,000.

Following the report of the fundraising, some leading members of the Indian film industry, as well as the music industry, have come in support of Ankur and Paroma.

Filmmaker Imtiaz Ali along with music maestros Amaal Malik, Armaan Malik, and others, have come together to raise funds for Ankur's treatment.

 Wikipedia

The Jab We Met director took to Instagram to share a picture of Ankur in his element and requested people to help the musician.



"My friend Ankur, perhaps the best sessions guitarist Ive worked with, is in the ICU now due to a Covid induced Brain Stroke. Paroma.mukherjee has started a fundraiser for this urgent requirement. pl go to the story and swipe up or click the link on my profile to donate and spread the word for this guy who is as pure as his smile." Imtiaz wrote on Instagram.

The link to the fundraiser was also shared by the talented music brother duo of Amaal and Armaan Malik, who further requested the Indian music industry to offer support to Ankur.

 Indiaforums

Amaal even asked composers to clear any past dues belonging to Ankur in case there were any.



We all hope that Paroma gets all the finances that are needed for Ankur's treatment and the musician recovers soon.
Actually, the location is more like North east Northland and near World's Of Fun.

Here's the word . . .



Police responded just before 7 p.m. to a Kansas City, Missouri shooting near the 4300 block of North Corrington Avenue on a reported shooting.

Outside of apartments nearby.



Detectives were notified today that the victim in this case has died, and Homicide Detectives have taken over the investigation.



This is the 45th homicide so far in 2021 compared to 44 at this time late year - In 2021 KCMO broke a historic record for killings.



Developing . . .


Updated April 19 at 9:15 a.m.

Authorities have arrested the former Travis County Sheriff's detective accused of shooting and killing three people in a North Austin apartment complex.

The Travis County Sheriff's Office along with the Manor Police Department took 41-year-old Stephen Broderick into custody at around 7 a.m. Monday in Manor after a civilian spotted the man and called 911. Manor is about 12 miles northeast of Austin.

In a statement, Sheriff Sally Hernandez said she was "truly heartbroken" that a former Travis County Sheriff's deputy is a suspect in the "horrific incident."

"TCSO is standing by to provide any, and all assistance we can to the families of the victims in their time of need," Hernandez said. "Im proud of the integrity and professionalism shown by the men and women of TCSO, (The Austin Police Department) and other law enforcement agencies, who worked tirelessly throughout the night to locate Stephen Broderick."

Two of the victims have been identified as Willie Simmons III and Alyssa Broderick, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

BREAKING NEWS: Sign up to get updates delivered directly to your inbox.

Three people were shot to death Sunday in an apparent domestic disturbance that rattled the capital city and a nation already on edge, coming amid a string of mass shootings across the country.

Just before 5 p.m. Interim Austin Police Chief Joseph Chacon said authorities lifted a shelter-in-place warning for the city's northwest suburbs, an area that has seen enormous growth in recent years as part of a booming tech scene. The effort, he said, had shifted to a fugitive search and he warned residents to remain vigilant.

Bronte Wittpenn/Associated Press

"We do not think this individual is out there targeting random people to shoot them," Chacon said. "That does not mean he is not dangerous. We do think that he is armed and he is very much dangerous."

Authorities identified the suspected gunman as Stephen Broderick, 41.

Chacon said Broderick was a former deputy law enforcement officer with the Travis County Sheriff's office.

Broderick was arrested in June 2020, on a charge of sexual assault of a child, according to the Travis County District Attorney's office.

He was released from custody that month after posting $50,000 bail, the district attorney's office said. Prosecutors have filed a motion to revoke his bail. The office said it is "actively supporting the Austin Police Department and law enforcement who are using all available resources to apprehend Mr. Broderick.

"Our office has been clear that acts of violence committed in our community will not be tolerated," Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza said on Twitter. "I am grateful to the courageous members of our law enforcement who are actively working to bring Mr. Broderick into custody. When Mr. Broderick is apprehended, he will be held accountable."

Chacon asked residents to call 911 if they see the alleged gunman.

"Obviously, this is a tragedy," Chacon told reporters a briefing near the site of the shootings. "We have people who have lost their lives out here. We're going to be doing our very best to conduct the best investigation we can, and also to get this person into custody as quickly as possible."

Chacon said the victims were two Hispanic women and a Black man who were known to Broderick, but did not give details of their relationship to him or each other. He said a child also had been identified and was safely with authorities.

The killings came amid an especially unnerving string of deadly gun violence across the country in recent weeks. Authorities in Indianapolis still were working to piece together why a 19-year-old man stormed a FedEx facility there late Thursday, killing eight people.

Earlier this month, four people were shot to death in Allen, Texas, and 18 people were killed last month in shooting sprees at a Colorado grocery story and spas in Atlanta. On Sunday, three people were killed and two seriously wounded in a shooting at a busy tavern in southeastern Wisconsin.

Chris Combs, a special agent in Austin with the Federal Bureau of Investigations, said the three deaths Sunday were believed to part of a domestic dispute.

"At this time, we do not see any federal nexis to this," he said.

Emergency responders first were called to the scene shortly before noon on Sunday after receiving a 911 call, Chacon said.

Josh Katzowitz, who had been shopping at the nearby Trader Joes on Sunday, told the Associated Press that police and ambulances came pouring in to the area as he was leaving. He said he did not hear any shooting.

The cops had their guns out, he said. Some had pistols, some had rifles and they were strapping on bulletproof vests. There were all of a sudden ambulances, sirens and police cars. There were cops coming from everywhere.

Local and federal law enforcement spent much of the day searching the Great Hills Trail and Rain Creek Parkway area in northwest Austin where the killings took place.

Local police and federal agents were on scene throughout the afternoon, with dozens of emergency and tactical vehicles stationed near an apartment complex where the shootings were believed to have taken place. The area includes a strip mall containing several retail stores and large apartment complexes situated near wooded rolling hills.

Reporter Rebecca Carballo and the Associated Press contributed to this story.



jeremy.blackman@chron.com

This is a developing story.
ALBANY, N.Y.  The New York State attorney general has opened an investigation into Gov. Andrew M. Cuomos use of state resources as he wrote and promoted his recent pandemic memoir, the latest inquiry to engulf the embattled three-term Democrat.

The investigation followed disclosures that junior staff members and senior aides worked on Mr. Cuomos book, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic, including editing early drafts, sitting in on pitch meetings, and menial tasks like printing and delivering manuscript pages to the governors mansion.

Mr. Cuomo has insisted that any work done by government employees on the book  which garnered a seven-figure advance  was voluntary, allowing that some minor work may have been incidental.

The misuse of public resources has led to the downfall of numerous political figures, including a former state comptroller, Alan G. Hevesi, who resigned and pleaded guilty to a felony in 2006 after he used a state driver to run errands for his wife.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 23:00:29|Editor: huaxia

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File photo taken on Oct. 12, 2017 shows huge tanks that store contaminated radioactive wastewater in Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. (Xinhua)

BEIJING, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Chinese experts have condemned Japan's unilateral decision to discharge nuclear wastewater into the sea, calling it "extremely irresponsible."

Dumping wastewater resulted from the accident at Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea is not Japan's only option, said Liu Senlin, a researcher with the China Institute of Atomic Energy.

Japan's unilateral decision to release the wastewater into the ocean is extremely irresponsible, Liu said. The choice, which involves the lowest economic cost to Japan, was made before seeking consensus with the international community and stakeholders, and before exhausting all available options.

According to Liu, there are several other options for wastewater disposal include burying it underground or evaporating it into the air, but Japan merely opted for the cheapest plan.

"The decision passes the responsibility that should be borne by Japan itself to the whole world, setting a very bad precedent," he noted.

The ultimate responsibility for ensuring safety of spent fuel and radioactive waste management rests with the State, he said, citing Convention on Nuclear Safety, and Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management.

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, to which Japan is a signatory, also requires that contracting states take all measures necessary to ensure that pollution arising from incidents or activities under their jurisdiction or control does not spread beyond the areas where they exercise sovereign rights.

People protest against Japan's decision to dump radioactive wastewater from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean outside Japanese embassy in Seoul, South Korea, April 14, 2021. (Photo by Xu Ruxi/Xinhua)

Japan should implement prudent measures in a manner that takes responsibility for its own people and the international community, said Liu, adding that it should choose the best way to dispose of the nuclear wastewater with participation and supervision from stakeholders.

It is also doubtful whether or not Japan's treated wastewater truly meets discharge standards, said Zhao Chengkun, an expert with the China Nuclear Energy Association.

As of December 31, 2019, 73 percent of the nuclear wastewater still exceeds Japan's discharge standards after treatment by an advanced liquid processing system (ALPS) capable of removing most contaminants, according to a report from an organization researching the treatment of wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear accident.

Moreover, Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operator handling wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear accident, has a record of covering up and falsifying information, Zhao noted.

Liu Xinhua, a researcher with the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, added that there is a fundamental difference between wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant accident and liquid effluents from the normal operation of nuclear power plants in terms of source, radionuclide type and processing difficulty.

The liquid waste discharged after the Fukushima nuclear plant accident contain radionuclides and extremely toxic transuranium elements such as Plutonium and Americium. However, liquid effluents discharged normally from nuclear power plants do not directly come in contact with the fuel pellets and barely have the transuranium elements, Liu Xinhua said. 
Umayra Tagiyeva has been working in the field of hydrometeorology since 1990. She now heads the National Hydrometeorological Service of the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan, and is "responsible for the weather" throughout the country. Vestnik Kavkaza talked with Umayra Tagiyeva about the climate and ecology of the Azerbaijani regions recently liberated from the occupation.

- During the almost 30-year occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent regions, Azerbaijani forecasters constantly gave weather forecasts in these territories. How did you collect forecast data?

- We considered it our duty that every day it sounded on the air. Yes, our citizens were not there, but these are our lands. We were doing our duty. Now we feel joy that the districts have been liberated, and now the forecasts will be more accurate. Previously, we had no supporting material. In Soviet times, ten hydrometeorological stations functioned on the territory of Karabakh, which were later destroyed. Also on the Karabakh rivers until 1990, there were about 17 meteorological posts. Moreover, some observations at meteorological stations covered a period of more than 100 years. This is very valuable information.

During the occupation, forecasts were made by interpolation, based on data that we received from the nearest regions, that is, based on data from stations located in Dashkesan, Gadabay and other settlements. Of course, this affected the accuracy of the forecasts. In the next 4-5 years, we plan to install modern automated observation stations in Karabakh.

By the way, since last year, 25 of the most modern automatic stations have been put into operation on the country's rivers. In the coming years, we plan to renew the observation network in Karabakh, three of them will be located on the Terterchay River and on other main waterways of Karabakh.

- How will summer look in Karabakh?

- In recent decades, during the summer, there have been more and more prolonged periods of abnormal heat waves as a consequence of climate change. Of course, long-term forecasts are a thankless task. Because their justification in world practice is not higher than 60-70%. Despite this, meteorologists around the world prepare seasonal weather forecasts. Based on the model of world weather centers, we can say that the trend of high temperatures will continue in Azerbaijan in the summer. Therefore, in Karabakh, according to our preliminary forecast, the overall average air temperature will exceed the climatic norm by 1.5-2 degrees. On some days, possibly even higher. This is a general trend in recent decades - every year during the summer there are long periods of abnormal heat.

- What damage was caused to the environment during the occupation? How did this affect climate change in the region?

- Undoubtedly, over 30 years huge damage has been done to the ecosystems of Karabakh. About 25% of the forest fund of Azerbaijan is located on the territory of Karabakh. The invaders mercilessly cut down these forests. Of course, this affects the ecosystem and, in general, the climate system of not only Karabakh, but the whole of Azerbaijan. Work is underway to assess the damage.

One of the main tasks today is the restoration of the biodiversity of Karabakh. Now we are talking about the release of fry of various fish species into the rivers. Soon we will release trout fry in the place where Akarichay and Berguushadchay meet. This action is symbolic and will contribute to the restoration of the ecological balance of the aquatic ecosystem. In the Kubatly region, we will have a forest planting campaign. 70% of 2000 species of flora and fauna are listed in the Red Book on the territory of Karabakh. These are rare, endemic species of flora.
Native forest logging across the country would be exempt from national environmental protections under a bill proposed by Nationals Senate leader Bridget McKenzie.

In an unusual move for a member of the government, the proposed changes were lodged as a private members bill and would reduce the powers of her colleague in the Environment portfolio, Sussan Ley.

National Senator Bridget McKenzie says the forestry industry needed certainty through exemptions from national environment laws, following a landmark court ruling for logging in Victoria. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen.

Senator McKenzie says her bill would make explicitly clear the roles for state and federal governments in regulation of hardwood forestry operations.

Senator McKenzies bill follows a landmark ruling of the Federal Court in May, which set a precedent for logging to be subject to the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
NEW YORK, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Jensen Partners, a women-owned executive search and corporate advisory firm for the alternative investment management industry, was named "Best Recruitment Company for Investor Relations & Asset Raising" by the readers of Private Equity Wire, a leading source for PE news and features. This is the second consecutive year that Jensen Partners has won the title in the European award set and follows its win in the 2020 U.S. awards last October.

This win comes as part of the publication's annual set of awards, honoring the best managers, investors, consultants, advisers and service providers in a range of categories in the private equity space for the year prior. The 2021 Private Equity Wire European Awards were celebrated at a virtual ceremony on March 25.

"In what has been a shape-shifting year for the private equity industry, it is an honor to be named the best recruiting firm for IR and asset raising in back-to-back years," said Sasha Jensen, Founder and CEO of Jensen Partners. "We look forward to continuing our work with private equity firms in Europe and around the world, with a renewed focus on helping these firms make measurable and demonstrable progress on their efforts around diversity, equity and inclusion."

Jensen Partners specializes in the sourcing and placement of capital raising and investment professionals for the alternative investment industry by leveraging its extensive investor relationships as well as its proprietary market mapping and big data recruitment model. Jensen Partners' model is based on the firm's global database of more than 25,000 global alternative capital raisers and investment professionals, which includes professionals from private equity firms, private credit firms, real estate investment firms, real asset investors, infrastructure investors and hedge funds.

Since 2014, Jensen Partners has tracked more than 12,000 marketing moves across the alternative investment industry. In 2016, Jensen Partners began publishing a quarterly newsletter that highlights key trends and capital raising hiring activity across the alternative investment industry. In 2017, Jensen Partners began tracking the diversity of marketing talent to better meet the demand for diverse hires, and in 2020 the firm began tracking the movement of marketers specializing in ESG and impact investing. Jensen Partners makes this innovative data and insights about trends in the alternative investment industry available exclusively in its quarterly newsletter.

Jensen Partners is also the recipient of awards for its executive search and recruiting work from industry trade publications HFMWeek, Alt Credit Intelligence and The Drawdown for the firms' expertise in hedge funds, private credit and private equity, respectively.

About Jensen Partners

Jensen Partners is a women-owned global advisory, corporate development and executive search firm specializing in the placement of leading investment and capital-raising candidates for the alternative asset management community. The firm leverages a data-driven approach to all human capital management, combining quantitative and qualitative information to source and place the best candidates for each specific role. Using the firm's proprietary DiversityMetrics platform, Jensen Partners has built a database with verified demographic data (e.g., race, gender, seniority, age, education, etc.) on more than 25,000 investment and distribution professionals, providing asset managers with the breadth and depth of information necessary to quantify, measure, report and improve workforce diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). In addition to executive search, Jensen Partners also offers LP/GP referencing, proprietary 360 Investor Referencing, and compensation benchmarking and analysis. Learn more at www.jensen-partners.com.

SOURCE Jensen Partners

Related Links

http://www.jensen-partners.com


YEREVAN.  As of Monday morning, 298 new cases of the coronavirus were confirmed in Armenia, and the total number of these cases has reached 208,818 in the country, the National Center for Disease Control and Prevention informed Armenian News-NEWS.am.

Also, 17 more deaths from COVID-19 were registered, making the respective total 3,895 cases.

Two more cases of coronavirus patients dying from some other illnesses were recorded in Armenia in the past one day, and the corresponding overall death toll in the country is 982 now.

The number of people who have recovered over the past one day is 1,551, the total respective number so far is 189,017, and the number of people currently being treated is 14,924which is a drop by 1,272 in one day.

And 2,176 COVID-19 tests were conducted in Armenia over the past one day, while 937,603 such tests have been performed to date.
New Jersey would mandate safety courses in order to get a gun permit, require lockboxes for out-of-use firearms and change state law to hold firearm makers liable for harm stemming from gun use, among other changes proposed in the dozen new gun control measures Democratic Governor Phil Murphy unveiled on Thursday.

Murphy proposed the election-year agenda in Newark, the states largest city, during a more than an hourlong, rally-like event in a crowded community center. The Democrat-led Legislature will have to weigh in on most of the measures, and in a sign of legislative support, influential state lawmakers like state Sen. Teresa Ruiz and Assembly Majority Leader Louis Greenwald attended the event and spoke.

Newark-native Lt. Gov. Sheila Olivers voice cracked as she lamented the gun violence that has disproportionately affected cities. Half of the states deaths from guns last year came in just five cities, according to Murphy.

We are tired of funerals and memorials, Oliver said. Growing up in Newark, I tell young people I could go to any section of this city by myself or with my friends. Our young people cannot do that today.

Anticipating political pushback, Murphy rejected the idea of not enacting more gun control laws because New Jersey already has strict firearm safety measures in place.

Just because weve got among the strongest gun safety laws in the nation does not mean they cant be stronger and thats why were here today, he said.

The measures, a mix of legislation and executive actions, would:

Set aside $10 million in the current budget to fund gun violence intervention programs.

Require gun permit applicants to first pass as safety course.

Mandate that all guns not in use be kept in a lockbox or gun safe.

Increase the purchasing age for a firearm to 21, from 18.

Mandate microstamping technology so that fired rounds can be traced.

Require ammunition sales to be tracked electronically.

Ban .50-caliber weapons.

Close what Murphy called a loophole that allows those moving to the state to not have to meet New Jerseys requirements to get a gun.

Make it easier to hold gun manufacturers liable for violence stemming from the use of firearms. Murphy said the proposal would amend public nuisance laws to bar the gun industry from endangering public safety through the sale, manufacture, import or or marketing of guns

Direct the state Education Department to overhaul active shooter drills to minimize the stress on students.

Hold a gun safety summit among governors.

Convene a gun safety commission within the state.

The proposals come after shootings again made headlines across the country, including in Colorado and Georgia, and after President Joe Biden ordered a series of gun control measures.

Murphy said the new proposals didnt stem from what was going on in other states, but the recent shootings have further emboldened us without question.

The proposals were embraced by local advocates, as well as groups with national footprints, like Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, whose red T-shirt-clad supporters applauded on Thursday.

Sharon Redding, a volunteer with the Newark Community Street Team, said she lost two nephews to gun violence, one in 2009 and another in 2017. Her son, she said, was wounded by gunfire in 2017.

She said the fact that the governor came to Newark showed that people like her have a seat at the table and a voice in the discussion.

Im a Newark resident all my life. South ward all my life. Even with all thats going on around us, this is a day to celebrate, a day of light in a season of darkness, Redding said.

Second Amendment rights groups have had little luck gaining traction against Murphys push for stricter gun control, which included a half-dozen new measures signed into law in 2018. The laws lowered the limit on the number of rounds allowed in a magazine from 15 to 10 and included a red-flag law, among other provisions.

Scott Bach, the executive director of the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs, opposed those changes, and decried the new proposals as well, saying they amount to the micro-management of law-abiding gun owners.

Murphy is running for reelection this year. New Jersey and Virginia are the only other two states with gubernatorial elections in the fall.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics New Jersey
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The timing of the White House paint job was quite convenient. Representative/movie critic Mike Pence, a man weary of double-clicking a mouse over fears that its too suggestive, had just sponsored the Truth in Domain Names Act of 2003, which became a law that made it illegal to use deceitful URLs to trick people into viewing obscenity. And considering Parisi had already spent years cybersquatting a whole host of other domains, like madonna.com and wallstreetjournal.com, maybe it was the right time to take a break from GoDaddy.

Parisi considered selling the site altogether  not to a terrorist or another porno company, but to an interested party like whitehousefoods.com, which had presumably grown tired of emails from chagrined visitors who failed to troubleshoot pleasuring themselves to still lifes of turnips and oats. But ultimately, like a dad who could never part with his box of old Playboys in the basement, he chose to keep the domain.

Whitehouse.com Theres nothing sexy about todays hybrid model.

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In 2005, the site shed its adults-only image and embarked on its present journey of showcasing an ever-changing grab bag of dot-com garbage. Over the years, its highlighted real estate listings, local town hall meetings, and resistance-era politicking, and in its present incarnation, it's both an outdated election betting site and an outdated resource for COVID-19 information.

Since whitehouse.coms inception, its been called one of historys worst websites and one of historys most important websites. It seems to me theyre both right: building a porn business around an easy-to-make typo may not have been the most noble pursuit, but the site nevertheless taught a generation of web users (but sadly, not enough) not to take things on the Internet at face value. And even though whitehouse.com was never at the apex of web design, content, or good taste, its hard to see how an early dot-com cash grab could further sully the image of a building constructed by enslaved people.

Greg Ott (@_gregott) is a digital video producer at Cracked. He, like you, has a podcast.

Top image: Icsnaps/Shutterstock
Nothing stays the same for long in the tech world. Just ask Scott Farqhuar and Mike Cannon-Brookes, who have long raged against the Business Council of Australia for its stance on climate change.

But something must have changed along the way. The duos software behemoth, Atlassian, is now a member of the industry group. A BCA spokesman confirmed Atlassian had quietly signed on as a member of the heavyweight peak body late last year.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison speaks on Monday night at the Business Council of Australias annual dinner. Credit:Wolter Peeters

BCA president Tim Reeds long stint as MYOBs chief executive gave him the tech-bro credentials needed to get the billionaires into the BCA fold.

Certainly Cannon-Brookes didnt leave anything on the table in January last year when he branded the BCA a strongly regressive force on climate change after a horror bushfire season. A year earlier, his private investment vehicle, Grok Ventures, joined international investment heavyweights in urging BHP to suspend its membership of the BCA, arguing the peak body was undermining Paris climate change goals.
Parit Penguin Chiwarak speaks from the back of a truck during a rally outside the 11th Infantry Regiment in Bangkok, Nov. 29, 2020.

Thai activist Parit Chiwarak appeared in court in a wheelchair Monday, looking extremely frail after a 35-day hunger strike, and telling officials he had been unable to gather evidence for his defense against sedition and royal-defamation charges because he was repeatedly denied bail, eyewitnesses said.

Parit, a university student and prominent figure in youth-led pro-democracy protests that sprang up here last year, had to be wheeled into the Bangkok Criminal Court for the closed-door hearing on charges related to a Nov. 13, 2020, incident at the Democracy Monument. It led to royal defamation charges being filed in February against him and six other anti-government protesters.

In March, Parit announced his hunger strike, vowing to fast on water, syrup and milk until the court would grant bail to all the defendants.

Parit addressed in the court that he missed the opportunities to acquire evidence because he is denied bail. He is not accepting the justice system, Krisadang Nutcharus, a lawyer from Thai Lawyers for Human Rights (TLHR), which had been representing Parit in court through Monday, said after the hearing.

Krisadang said Parit would be moving on without his legal assistance. He noted that, on April 9, the defendant had announced his plan to dismiss the lawyers representing him.

The plaintiff can continue the investigation, but two other lawyers and I will withdraw. The reason is that the lawyers are not able to help his case at all, Krisadang said.

Another TLHR lawyer questioned actions by corrections officers in the courtroom.

The atmosphere in the court was unusual. Many correctional officers were present and stood alongside the defendant, said Yaowalak Anuphan, leader of the TLHR team.

The defendant was not allowed to speak with lawyers or relatives. After the lawyer wrote a note, a correctional officer pulled the note out of the lawyers hand without asking for permission, Yaowalak said.

Mothers concern

Parits mother, Sureerat Chiwarak, who was in the courtroom, said he had lost more than 20 kg (44 pounds).

His hands were shaking while he was addressing the court. He had to sit down to gather his thoughts before answering the court, Sureerat told reporters. He must have lost all of his energy, but he pretended to be strong so I would not be worried.

But I know that he is doing badly, sitting in a wheelchair while getting IV fluids. He could barely stand up straight, Sureerat said. He showed signs of extreme fatigue and looked extremely frail.

The TLHR lawyers said Sureerat offered to produce 200,000 baht (U.S. $6,400) if her son were granted bail on his 11th application, so he could be treated at a hospital. The court rejected the offer as it had done for all previous requests, and did not set a date for the next hearing.

Krisadang said the lack of bail had other negative effects on Parits life, pointing out that parents and friends from Thammasat University told the court that the student activist was having trouble completing his studies. Parit has missed several exams and could be forced to drop out.

Since their first rally in mid-July 2020, pro-democracy demonstrators have protested for three demands to be addressed  for Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha to step down, for the Constitution to be amended and for the monarchy to be reformed. Their three-fingered salute, borrowed from The Hunger Games movies, is a symbol for these demands.

Parit and a group of other organizers including Panusaya Rung Sithijirawattanakul, Panupong Mike Jadnok, Jatupat Pai Boonpattararaksa and Arnon Nampa, have faced charges related to those protests and have been jailed since February.

Lese-Majeste

The activists are accused of violating Lese-Majeste, the strict royal defamation law stipulated under Article 112 of the Thai criminal code. Prior to November 2020 when Prayuth announced the law would be enforced for the first time in about two years, authorities had filed charges of sedition against the protesters.

Authorities have filed at least 86 charges of violating Lese-Majeste, including 79 against at least 20 activists linked to the protests. Lese-Majeste carries a sentence of up to 15 years for each conviction.

The Thai justice system draws criticism within and outside the country because defendants are being detained without trial, contradicting the universal human rights principle, according to Salai Bawi, a political analyst at Chiang Mai University.

This process is wrong from the beginning. Penguin and other activists have not been proven guilty and therefore they should not be sent to prison, Salai told BenarNews, using Parits nickname.

It is wrong according to the basic human rights principle and the rule of law. What is even worse is that the hunger strike of Penguin and Rung does not put pressure on the Thai justice system.

On March 31, Rung, Parits fellow activist, announced her own hunger strike on March 31.

Yostorn Triyos in Bangkok contributed to this report.
Philip Antonacci grew up in one of the most prominent harness racing families, but he has always been fascinated by the world of Thoroughbreds.

His father, Frank Antonacci, whose Lindy Farms has won five Hambletonians, has been inducted into the Harness Hall of Fames Hall of Immortals. Yet, the 26-year-old Connecticut native has opted for a change of pace and embarked on a quest to succeed as a Thoroughbred trainer.

Antonacci, who has worked for several of the worlds most respected Thoroughbred trainers to achieve that goal, notched his first major milestone as a Thoroughbred trainer Saturday (April 17) at Gulfstream Park, where he saddled his first winner, Advanced Strategy, in the one-mile optional claiming allowance feature on turf. Owned by Lindy Farms, Advanced Strategy was Antonaccis fifth starter.

Hell definitely have a home forever, being my first winner, said Antonacci, who has 15 horses stabled at Payson Park.

Although he has become focused on his Thoroughbred career, Antonacci has hardly left the Standardbred world behind. In fact, he is teaming with Jimmy Takter, the retired Harness Hall of Fame legend who has ventured into Thoroughbred racing to assist Antonacci.

Hes like the D. Wayne Lukas of Standardbred racing. He retired three years ago. He always had an interest in Thoroughbreds, so when I decided to go on my own, he said, Id like to come along and help and assist. We can put our minds together and come up with our own training plan, said Antonacci. Hes at the barn quite a bit. Its been a great team effort.

Unfortunately, Takter was unable to attend the races Saturday.

I was on the phone with him. Hes won a lot of Hambletonians, but he said he was relieved to get this one across the line, Antonacci said.

Antonacci, a graduate of Godolphins Flying Start program, became interested in Thoroughbred racing while attending the races at Saratoga and went on to work for trainers Wesley Ward, Australias Gai Waterhouse and Todd Pletcher.

I grew up summers in Saratoga, so thats when I started to get into it, said the University of Pennsylvania graduate. I actually started off working for Wesley at Saratoga. He helped me a lot getting started, and hes the one who introduced me to Gai Waterhouse, who put me in touch with the Flying Start program. If it wasnt for them, I never would have gotten started in the Thoroughbred game.

(Gulfstream Park)
UC Davis paid consultants at least $175,000 to clean up its online image after students and alumni were pepper sprayed by campus police during an otherwise peaceful protest in 2011.

Newly released documents obtained by the Sacramento Bee show the university worked to clean up both its own image and that of Chancellor Linda Katehi.

In one case, UC Davis worked with Maryland company Nevins & Associates on a six-month contract that paid $15,000 a month, according to a copy of the contract. That contract was signed in January 2013, just a few months after the UC regents agreed to pay a settlement to 21 UC Davis students and alumni who sued the university.

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The widely criticized November 2011 incident, captured in videos that quickly went viral on the Internet, triggered nationwide controversy about the forceful response by university police to student protesters.

The videos showed an officer spraying seated students directly in their faces at close range during an Occupy rally. At the time, the Occupy Wall Street movement had spilled onto college campuses, combining with student anger over rising tuition and cuts to higher education to spur protests and sit-ins.

In addition to public outrage, the episode also spawned a raft of Internet memes that featured the casually pepper spray everything cop.

As part of its contract, Nevins & Associates said it would work to remedy the venomous rhetoric about UC Davis and the chancellor through strategic placement of online content.

UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi is escorted from the stage after speaking about the pepper-spraying incident on campus in 2011. (Paul Sakuma / Associated Press)

The company agreed to launch an aggressive and comprehensive online campaign to eliminate negative search results through modifications to existing and future content and by creating more original content as needed.

One means of doing this, the company said, is by diluting negative viral content with a surge of positive stories on different topics. Nevins & Associates also suggested UC Davis adopt Google platforms to expedite the eradication of references to the pepper spray incident in search results.

In June 2014, the university awarded the PR firm IDMLOCO a contract for $82,500 to design a comprehensive search engine results management strategy. The documents outlining the contracts were released to the Sacramento Bee in response to requests filed under the California Public Records Act.

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IDMLOCO said it would be able to achieve a reasonable balance of positive natural search results and identify key messages and themes the company could use to counter negative results.

The company was awarded two more contracts last year  one for $8,000 a month up to a limit of $96,000 and another for $22,500 a month, or a maximum of $67,500.

Under those contracts, IDMLOCO said it would create an integrated social media program for executive communications and provide an assessment of the Universitys Strategic Communications redesign.

In a statement Thursday, UC Davis officials said that reporting on the value of the campus was an important part of overall communications strategy.

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It is important that the excellent work underway at UC Davis with respect to educating the next generation of students, pursuing groundbreaking research, and providing important services to the state is not lost during a campus crisis, including the crisis that ensued following the extremely regrettable incident when police pepper-sprayed student protesters in 2011, the statement said.

Police at first contended that the spray was the most appropriate tool on hand to deal with what they described as an unruly mob encircling the officers.

However, a UC report in April 2012 declared that the pepper spraying violated policy and that school leaders badly bungled the handling of that campus protest. The investigating task force strongly rebutted campus police claims that the Occupy demonstrators who had pitched tents on a UC Davis quad posed a violent threat.

In 2013, the former UC Davis police officer who pepper sprayed the campus protesters received $38,055 in workers compensation after claiming he suffered depression and anxiety as result of the public outcry.

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John Pike, who had filed for the compensation from the University of California system, also cited the stress he endured from death threats he received after the incident. Pike was fired in July 2012, after being on paid administrative leave for eight months.

On Thursday, Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D-Glendale) said it was time for Katehi to resign.

The chancellor serving on the board of a textbook company was sufficient enough grounds to suspect that the best interests of the students werent being served, Gatto said in an emailed statement. But the recent disclosure that the university made substantial, questionable PR expenditure cemented it in my mind.

The contracts demonstrate an extensive effort to quell the storm of negative publicity that followed.

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Online reputations in particular are important to manage because of the sheer volume of people who surf the web, said Ira Kalb, an expert in branding, image creation and marketing at USC. Managing these reputations and protecting them from being hijacked is a growing field, he said.

Online is really an interesting thing because there are people who say all sorts of things, he said.

Certain software enables firms to pick up feeds from social media, Kalb said. The software detects when a companys name is mentioned and analyzes if its a positive or negative comment.

Gatorade, for example, has a mission control room to monitor online feeds from Twitter and Facebook, Kalb said. The company uses any positive reviews they find for their marketing campaigns and works to fix any negative reviews they see to get ahead of the story.

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Its very important to manage a reputation, and people often dont realize that, Kalb said. So many companies have been seriously damaged for not having a strategy for handling this.

For more local and breaking news, follow me on Twitter: @sarahparvini

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April 19, 2021 Bong Go hails second batch of Visayan frontliners deployed to NCR, reaffirms gov't commitment to ensuring welfare of medical workers Senator and Chair of the Senate Committee on Health Christopher "Bong" Go sincerely thanked the second batch of medical frontliners from the Visayas who volunteered to be deployed to overwhelmed hospitals and health care facilities in the National Capital Region following the rising number of COVID-19 cases in the region. On Friday, April 16, a ceremonial send-off was held in Cebu City for 30 nurses from Central Visayas. Twenty nurses are assigned to the National Center for Mental Health in Mandaluyong City while the rest will be deployed to the Las Pin~as General Hospital and Satellite Trauma Center. "Last week, dumating na sa Maynila ang unang batch ng health workers mula sa Visayas, at ngayon may panibagong batch na naman na kayong ipapadala para tumulong sa mga kababayan natin sa NCR Plus areas. Maraming salamat sa inyong patuloy na pagmamalasakit sa ating kapwa Pilipino," Go said in video message. "Bawat isa naman sa atin ay may ginagampanang papel sa laban kontra COVID-19. Hindi ito laban ng gobyerno lamang, kung hindi laban ito ng sambayanang Pilipino at ng buong mundo," he added. Last April 8, a similar send-off was conducted for the first batch of volunteers composed of 50 medical frontliners, including 11 doctors, 35 nurses and four medical technologists, from the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center in Cebu City and Department of Health - Central Visayas. To address the growing need for medical human resources, the Senator had earlier appealed to health workers in non-critical areas to help boost the number of medical frontliners serving in critical areas. In line with this call, he launched an initiative, in collaboration with the Office of the Presidential Assistant to the Visayas (OPAV), DOH regional offices, local government units, hospitals with Malasakit Centers, and Project Balik Buhay member-private hospitals, to mobilize volunteer medical frontliners to assist in the health situation. Each volunteer will be given an additional 20% premium on their basic salary for emergency hiring, based on Bayanihan 2 funds, and a separate incentive from OPAV. A volunteer from Central Visayas shall likewise receive an additional allowance from the provincial government of Cebu and the Cebu City government. Meanwhile, all COVID-19 testing and transportation expenses to NCR will be covered by the DOH. The receiving hospital, in turn, will shoulder all food, accommodation, and transport costs upon the volunteer's arrival. In his message, the Senator reaffirmed that medical frontliners remain the top priority of the government's vaccination drive. He strongly advised them to get vaccinated when offered the opportunity in order to ensure they are adequately protected against the virus. "Hindi madali ang trabaho ninyo dahil mabagsik at agresibo ang kalaban natin ngayon. Hindi natin alam kung nasaan itong COVID-19 dahil hindi natin ito nakikita. Sinisikap natin na mauuna ang mga frontliners sa bakuna dahil kayo dapat ang bigyan ng proteksyon sa giyerang ito dahil kayo ang nasa unahan, kayo ang mga frontliners," said Go. He highlighted the importance of all sectors coming together in a holistic manner, and called for the public's cooperation in order for the country to successfully overcome the challenges brought by the ongoing crisis. "Natutuwa ako na makita na nananatiling buhay ang diwa ng bayanihan sa kabila ng sunod-sunod na pagsubok na dumating sa bansa ... In these trying times, a whole-of-nation approach is needed to fully overcome this pandemic. I am sure that, with everybody's cooperation and support, we will be triumphant," he ended.
A former employee of a Pennsylvania town who was fired after admitting he was selling illegal drugs from his home cannot receive unemployment compensation, a Commonwealth Court panel ruled Monday.

In an opinion by Judge Patricia A. McCullough, the court rejected Christopher Masters argument that he should get jobless aid because his alleged drug sales occurred when he was off-duty and didnt affect his performance as a public works employee for Monroeville.

Masters was fired in September 2019 after Monroeville police raided his home. A detective said officers found a bag of heroin, a bag of cocaine, packaging for drugs and a scale. Master was charged with drug crimes and was fired before his case went through the Allegheny County Court.

The Monroeville manager testified that Masters was terminated for violating a provision that bars workers from committing crimes or other acts that reflect badly on the municipality.

McCullough noted that Masters admitted during a hearing on his unemployment comp case that he had a drug problem. He also asked his former employer for help to get clean, she wrote.

He admits he used illegal drugs and dealt illegal drugs from his home. He does not contest that drug dealing is a violation of (Monroevilles) rules and policies. He also does not contest that his drug possession and drug dealing were the reasons he was fired, the state judge wrote. He contends, however, that because these crimes occurred off- premises and while he was off-duty, (Monroeville) was required to demonstratethat his misconduct affected his work performance. "

No, it wasnt, McCullough concluded.

Court records show Masters, 46, pleaded no contest to a drug possession charge and was sentenced by a county judge to 9 months of probation last month.
The Bay Area restaurant industry is in the middle of its biggest staffing crisis yet due to the pandemic.

The labor market was already tight pre-pandemic because of San Franciscos notoriously high cost of living and relatively low wages. Then, the first shelter-in-place order hit and restaurants laid off workers, who have left the region en masse, started their own small businesses or found jobs in other industries. Although California just passed a law guaranteeing laid-off hospitality workers their old jobs, few actually want them, owners say.

Now, to lure workers back as more restaurants reopen dining rooms, owners say they need to make changes. Immediately.

Many restaurant owners are boosting wages, re-examining benefits packages and focusing on workplace culture in an effort to draw and retain talent  fearing the labor pool will shrink even further when restaurants are expected to resume full indoor capacity in June. Its not just a Bay Area problem, either. Restaurants nationwide are struggling to staff up at the same time.

Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle

In the short term, the staffing shortage means restaurants may take longer to fully reopen than anticipated. But a small labor pool could have longer-term impacts. Clay Walker, president of burger chain Gotts Roadside, predicted some restaurants will have no choice but to permanently close if they cant hire enough help to turn a profit. Mike Lanham, who runs San Francisco fine-dining pop-up Anomaly, believes restaurants will need to get used to running with smaller staffs indefinitely.

Were well past a time where we can afford to have someone who just cooks, Lanham said. If you cant also go into the dining room, youre not useful anymore.

Another contributing factor to the shortage: the loss of international workers who came on a J-1 visa to gain experience. Fine-dining restaurants often relied on these foreign cooks for low-level kitchen roles, and after the pandemic hit, many returned to Brazil, Turkey, the Philippines or wherever else they came from.

William Tsui, who reopened his hip Asian American cocktail bar Viridian in March after a year of minimal takeout, described the pandemic as the great catalyst, shaking out the ones who needed to pivot or had doubts about their future in the culinary industry.

So who is left? Tsui and other restaurant owners reached out to former employees to learn theyd moved to Texas or gotten jobs in construction. People who held low-wage kitchen positions at restaurants couldnt afford to stop working during the pandemic, so they left or changed careers  and often dont have any interest in returning.

As a result, Tsui and his three other front-of-house colleagues took turns washing dishes for three weeks. He bumped up the dishwashers rate from minimum wage  $14.36 in Oakland  to $16 per hour. At a time when executive chefs are everywhere but there are few line cooks and dishwashers to go around, Tsui hopes to see the wage gap in restaurants narrow.

Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle

Chef Melissa Perello also wants to see more pay equity between servers and cooks. Since she completely shut down both of her upscale San Francisco restaurants, Frances and Octavia, last March, shes taking her time in staffing up so she can make improvements.

In our reopening process, were basically a new restaurant, so were in a position to create a new dynamic, she said.

Hourly wages will go up for back-of-house employees, and Perello is shifting the tip pool so those employees also get significantly more. While her restaurants always offered medical benefits, she is considering adding a retirement plan.

Word might be getting out about the changes, which would result in less money for front-of-house employees  shes barely seen any server applicants.

Finding servers wasnt too difficult for Nelson German, who recently reopened his Afro-Latino lounge Sobre Mesa after a yearlong hiatus. But he still needs bussers, food runners and a host; his wife has been helping out, but shes getting tired of taking diners temperatures.

Over at Germans more casual seafood spot, alaMar Kitchen & Bar, hes been advertising for a cashier role for two months. Bartenders have been filling in, but thats not sustainable given that he wants to open alaMar indoors soon. Realistically, hell need to hire at least four more people before they can handle indoor service.

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

Stephen Lam / The Chronicle

Before, wed get 100 resumes and now were getting five in a month, he said. A lot of us are looking for experience, but now you cant even look for that  just someone who is into customer service and is smart.

Training becomes much more important during a staffing shortage. Nelson, too, has raised pay by at least $2 per hour and is considering more  higher wages are crucial now, he said, because tips have been low or nonexistent on takeout and delivery orders at alaMar.

In Berkeley, Yoshika Hedberg has been searching for employees for the past two months so she can expand hours and add indoor service at her izakaya, Fish & Bird. She needs servers, bartenders and kitchen help  but she cant afford to increase pay or improve benefits. Her dream is to one day offer a supportive workplace with decent wages. For now, shes still dealing with a wrecked budget because of the pandemic.

I think people need to make a little more money, but in order to do so, restaurant prices are going to go up, she said. Are people willing to pay for better-quality food, better-quality service? Thats a big question mark, and thats scary.

Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle 2020

But for some restaurants scrambling for employees, these efforts may be too late. Many workers dont plan to return to the Bay Area, or have found fulfillment in their pandemic hustles. After losing her sous-chef gig at a San Francisco restaurant, Emily Lim started delivering laksa under the moniker Dabao Singapore. The pop-up turned out to be a hit, and she hired two other laid-off chefs.

Restaurants are also famously challenging workplaces with long hours and low wages. During the pandemic, increased vulnerability has pushed many to consider career routes other than the classic restaurant. Even though Lim has been working hard to grow her new business, its nothing compared to spending 12 hours a day, six days a week at a restaurant, where you sometimes dont finish until midnight.

If youre working at busy restaurants, you dont really have a life, and thats not something I want to return to again, she said. I never got to see a sunset, but this year Ive seen quite a few sunsets.

Janelle Bitker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: janelle.bitker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @janellebitker
Conservative Party Leader Erin O'Toole unveils his party's carbon pricing plan at a press conference in Ottawa on April 15, 2021. (The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld)

Conservative Alberta Unhappy With OTooles Carbon Proposal

Albertans more than those in any other jurisdiction are opposed to a carbon tax, and many in the heart of Tory territory are expressing displeasure with the Conservative Partys newly introduced price on CO2.

Franco Terrazzano, Alberta director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF), told The Epoch Times that many in the province are upset.

A lot of taxpayers blood is boiling right now, Terrazzano said, noting Conservative Leader Erin OTooles previous promises not to impose a carbon tax if he became prime minister, including when he was running for leadership of the party last summer.

At a CTF media event last June, OToole signed a pledge where he promised to Immediately repeal the Trudeau carbon tax; and reject any future national carbon tax or cap-and-trade scheme, should he be elected.

However, on April 15 this year, he proposed a carbon pricing system where a levy on consumer purchases would give the buyer so-called loyalty points. These could be spent on government-approved products to live a greener life, such as buying a bike or transit passes or making homes and cars more energy-efficient.

OToole characterized the plan as a smart, market-based, transparent approach to reduce emissions.

This is not a tax, he said. Not a cent goes to Ottawa.

Terrazzano says a tax is a tax by any other name no matter what messaging is used, and says its unacceptable to hammer Canadians with higher fuel bills through a carbon tax.

The carbon pricing scheme starts at $20 a tonne, but OToole promises it wont go past $50. Terrazzano has his doubts.

Remember, Liberal Party politicians told us that they had no intention of raising the carbon tax past $50 per tonne, and now were getting a Trudeau tax up to $170 per tonne [by 2030], so I think Canadians should be highly skeptical, he said.

Rumours of a Conservative carbon tax plan began to surface in early March. A Mainstreet Research poll conducted last September suggested OToole might gain votes from an extra 1.7 percent of Ontarians if he embraced carbon taxes.

However, a more recent Mainstreet Research poll conducted March 21 and 22 showed carbon taxes had dropped in popularity over the previous six months. The results suggested an OToole flip-flop would lose the leader 16 percent of the vote in Alberta if an election had been held that month. And he would lose 15 percent of the vote in the Saskatchewan-Manitoba zone, 10 percent in B.C. and Ontario, and 4 percent in Quebec.

Barry Cooper, political science professor at the University of Calgary, believes the proposed policy is a gift to western independence parties already invigorated by the Supreme Court of Canada decision at the end of March, which declared Trudeaus carbon pricing policy to be constitutional.

Thats a losing strategy, he said.

Trevor Tombe, an economics professor at the University of Calgary, says a price on carbon is as good a tool as any to lower carbon emissions.

The carbon tax is just one way of putting on that price to provide an incentive for individuals to think about their own circumstance and make decisions to lower emissions in the cheapest way possible for them, Tombe told The Epoch Times.

This is in contrast to other ways that governments tend to approach emissions reductions, by subsidizing technologies or mandating firms to adopt certain types of equipment, or mandating that fuel is composed of this or that share of biofuel.

Kenneth Green, an environmental scientist and a senior fellow with the Fraser Institute, called OTooles plan a new twist on the carbon tax in a commentary for the institute.

The OToole plan is nothing new and will probably satisfy no one other than, perhaps, peddlers of low-carbon goods and services who will get a new captive market, he wrote.

The new program (like the old program) probably wont actually reduce GHG emissions in any way that might actually influence the climate, no matter how serious one holds climate change to be.

OTooles proposal includes both a carbon price and government mandates. Terrazzano expressed concern about the added complexity, the added administration in the OToole plan, which he called extremely paternalistic.

If OToole wants to form an environmental plan, he needs to go back to the drawing board and figure out one that doesnt hammer Canadian families, workers, and businesses, he said.
Scott Morrison has announced a Royal Commission into veteran suicide days after calling Aussie troops home from Afghanistan.

At least 500 Afghanistan veterans have taken their own lives since Australia went to war in 2001.

The prime minster will also establish a National Commissioner to make sure any recommendations made by the two-year inquiry are implemented.

Scott Morrison has announced a Royal Commission into veteran suicide

Mr Morrison was emotional when he thanked Australia's troops for their service

'I think and I hope it will be a healing process. I hope it will be a process by which veterans and families can find some comfort, but it obviously can't replace the loss. We understand that,' Mr Morrison said.

The prime minister has been under pressure from veterans families' to call a Royal Commission for months to find out why so many veterans have taken their own lives.

Tasmanian Senator and former soldier Jacqui Lambie has been urging the prime minister to establish the inquiry immediately.

'Wake up. We need that royal commission. There is nothing stopping him for calling it today,' she told Sky News.

Veterans Minister Darren Chester will lead a public consultation process on the draft Terms of Reference and Mr Morrison will consult with state leaders.

The prime minister said the Commission will take between 18 months and two years to complete.

Last week Mr Morrison announced Australia will pull its last 80 remaining troops out of Afghanistan by September.

The Prime Minister was visibly emotional when he announced the news at a media conference in Perth and read out the names of the 41 soldiers who had lost their lives in the war-ravaged middle-eastern nation.

'These brave Australians are amongst our greatest ever who have served in the name of freedom,' he said.

What will a Royal Commission do? The Government intends that the Royal Commission and the National Commissioner for Defence and Veteran Suicide Prevention will be established together and operate in a complementary way to achieve long-term change. The Royal Commission will look at past deaths by suicide (including suspected suicides and lived experience of suicide risks) from a systemic point of view, while the National Commissioner will have a forward-looking role, including overseeing the implementation of the Royal Commissions recommendations. The National Commissioner Bill currently before the Parliament will be amended to ensure their work complements the work of the Royal Commission and examines deaths by suicide in the defence and veteran community that occur after the Royal Commission has handed down their final report. Given the complex issues for consideration, and the importance of hearing from Australian Defence Force members, veterans and their families, the Government envisages that three Commissioners will be needed to lead the inquiry. Consultation is underway to appoint these candidates. Minister Chester will lead a public consultation process on the draft Terms of Reference and the Prime Minister will write to First Ministers inviting their contributions to the draft Terms of Reference with the view of a joint Commonwealth-State Royal Commission. The Federal Government is committed to ensuring all the systems of support for our veterans and their families are working together, and importantly that when someone who may be struggling reaches out for help, which we are there to support them. Source: PMO Advertisement

'This day, we dedicate to their memories. We think of their families, their friends, the life they would have lived. But they gave that for others they did not know.'

With his voice quivering, Mr Morrison added: 'We can be so proud of them, of their service... we thank them for their service humbly and gratefully.'

Asked if the war was worth it, Mr Morrison said: 'Freedom is always worth it'.

Australia joined the war in Afghanistan in November 2001 after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York, the worst terror attack in history.

The US-led coalition swiftly deposed the Taliban government before year's end, but western troops had stayed for 20 years since, dealing with lingering pockets of resistance and trying to train the local army.

At the peak of the war, Australia had 1,500 troops in Afghanistan and in total 39,000 Australian Defence Force personnel have been deployed on Operations SLIPPER and HIGHROAD.

Since the end of 2013, Australia has only maintained a small training force in Afghanistan rather than active combat troops.

Mr Morrison's announcement comes after US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday he will withdraw remaining U.S. troops from the 'forever war' in Afghanistan, declaring that the September 11 terror attacks of 20 years ago cannot justify American forces still dying in the nation's longest war.
Pearson Online Academy logo We know that parents are more concerned this year about learning loss due to school disruptions caused by the pandemic. Online summer school is a convenient and flexible way to give students the boost they need and make up any lost ground.

Pearson Online Academy, a U.S.-based accredited virtual private school, has opened enrollment to K-12 students across the country and abroad for their 2021 online summer school. Families are invited to register for the fully online program where students can choose from more than 100 core, elective, and NCAA-eligible courses, with rolling start dates beginning June 1 through July 2, 2021.

We know that parents are more concerned this year about learning loss due to school disruptions caused by the pandemic. Online summer school is a convenient and flexible way to give students the boost they need and make up any lost ground. For more than a decade, our program has helped students pursue credit recovery, enrichment opportunities or graduate early, said Hannah Rinehart, director of Pearson Online Academy. Our online school program is designed specifically for the virtual environment. Beyond our engaging curriculum and technology platform, individual attention and one-on-one support from our teachers is a defining factor in our students success.

Summer school enrollment opens on the heels of a new opinion poll released by Pearson that found parents see a future with online education in an increasingly digital world. The 2021 Parent Pulse Report, released in March, found that 60 percent of families will consider staying with online school even after the pandemic has ended and 76 percent of parents who took a more active role in their child's online education over the past year found the experience gratifying.

Students who enroll in summer school online with Pearson Online Academy will work with experienced teachers specially trained to teach in the online environment, utilize an easy-to-use learning portal, and have the flexibility to pursue academic excellence while accommodating busy summer schedules.

Pearson Online Academys summer school course options include:



Summer Smarts Math and Reading Programs gives kindergarten through eighth grade students a chance to review foundational skills and keep sharp for the new school year.

Elementary and Middle School Courses offer younger students an opportunity to learn English or Math core concepts, to learn a new language, or begin exploring career interests.

Original Credit Courses encourage high school students to satisfy graduation requirements, explore their interests or accelerate their academic progress.

High School Credit Recovery Courses ensure students earn the credits to move forward and acquire the skills to succeed.

High School Honors Courses and Advanced Placement Courses in grades 9-12 provide students with rigorous assignments for enrichments, honors credits and Advanced Placement(R) (AP) courses. Teachers engage students in discussion and facilitate independent exploratory projects.

Pearson Online Academys program consistently earns high marks with parents and caregivers96% agree that the curriculum is high quality, 97% are satisfied with teachers helpfulness and 93% say the technology tools improve their childs learning experience, according to the 2020 parent satisfaction survey.

Parents who want to learn more about online summer school for grades K-12 can visit the schools website or contact an admissions advisor at 877-804-6222. Pearson Online Academy's summer school program is also available for school districts anywhere in the United States that have a need for summer courses for their students. Interested schools can contact: Angela Bryant at 919-709-8772.

About Pearson Online Academy

Pearson Online Academy, formerly International Connections Academy (iNaCA), is an accredited, online private school serving students in grades K-12 throughout the United States and abroad. Recognizing individualized instruction as the key to student academic and personal success, Pearson Online Academys highly trained, certified teachers offer instruction tailored to each student's strengths and challenges using an award-winning computer-based curriculum, real-time instruction, and time-tested course materials from leading publishers. Pearson Online Academy currently serves students in 66 different countries around the world and is part of the global learning company Pearson. For more information, visit https://www.PearsonOnlineAcademy.com.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 05:58:09|Editor: huaxia

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SKOPJE, April 18 (Xinhua) -- Lawmakers in North Macedonia's parliament on Sunday voted unanimously in favor of the fifth coronavirus-relief package worth 156 million euros (around 187 million U.S. dollars), according to Media Information Agency.

The package includes a set of measures in support of self-employed citizens and employers for the payment of salaries of February and March 2021, in order to overcome the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The government has so far spent some 860 million euros on four stimulus packages, about 82 percent of which has been implemented, according to Prime Minister Zoran Zaev, who expects the economy to expand by 4.1 percent in 2021.

The World Bank has projected 3.6 percent growth for North Macedonia's economy in 2021, whereas the International Monetary Fund forecast 3.8 percent growth. (1 euro = 1.20 U.S. dollars) Enditem
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The Senate on Monday said the independence of the judiciary was not negotiable.

Chair Senate Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters, Opeyemi Bamidele, said this in an interview with journalists in Abuja.

Mr Bamidele was reacting to the ongoing strike by the Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria (JUSUN).

JUSUN began a nationwide indefinite strike on April 6 over the non-implementation of judicial financial autonomy as enshrined in the Constitution.

President Muhammadu Buhari had signed an Executive Order granting financial autonomy to the judiciary and State House of Assembly in May 2020, after several agitations.

However, the gazetting of the order was suspended after Mr Buhari met with governors, who later expressed concern over its constitutionality.

Reacting to the development, Mr Bamidele ,who said the independence of the judiciary was non-negotiable, added that no democracy could survive without Rule of Law and independence of the judiciary.

For me as a Nigerian, it is laughable that we still need at this point, to be grappling with the need to grant judiciary independence at whatever level be it at the federal, state and local government level.

Our laws are very clear on this, he said.

He said the National Assembly had guaranteed the independence of the judiciary at the federal level calling on state houses of assembly to do the same.

For the National Assembly, we have done the needful by making necessary laws that can guarantee independence of the judiciary at the federal level. So for us, it is not an issue because we have done the needful.

What is left is for our state houses of assembly to also do what they are supposed to do.

And that is why as a principle, as a policy, members of the Senate Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters have tried not to call on those who are protesting to stop such protest.

We do not want protest but definitely we will rather talk more to our state governors, to our state houses of assembly and to the stakeholders that are supposed to do the needful to please do the needful in overriding public interest.

We cannot continue to call on the judiciary to give peace a chance when we know the conditions under which they work cannot guarantee a passionate and enhanced delivery of justice.

We must not be left behind by the rest of the civilised world. Nobody stands to lose anything by granting judiciary independence at the state level. It has been done at the national level.

(NAN)
HONG KONG  Ant Group is exploring options for founder Jack Ma to divest his stake in the financial technology giant and give up control, as meetings with Chinese regulators signaled to the company that the move could help draw a line under Beijings scrutiny of its business, according to a source familiar with regulators thinking and two people with close ties to the company.

Reuters is for the first time reporting details of the latest round of meetings and the discussions about the future of Mas control of Ant, exercised through a complicated structure of investment vehicles.

China Forces Restructuring of Ant Group into Financial Holding Firm Chinese Insurtech Waterdrop Faces Regulatory Pushback on Planned IPO: Sources

The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Ma had offered in a November meeting with regulators to hand over parts of Ant to the Chinese government.

Officials from the central bank, Peoples Bank of China (PBOC), and financial regulator China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) held talks between January and March with Ma and Ant separately, where the possibility of the tycoons exit from the company was discussed, according to accounts provided by the source familiar with the regulators thinking and one of the sources with close ties to the company.

Ant denied that a divestment of Mas stake was ever under consideration. Divestment of Mr. Mas stake in Ant Group has never been the subject of discussions with anyone, an Ant spokesman said in a statement.

Reuters could not determine whether Ant and Ma would proceed with a divestment option, and if so, which one.

The company hoped Mas stake, worth billions of dollars, could be sold to existing investors in Ant or its e-commerce affiliate Alibaba Group Holding Ltd without involving any external entity, one of the sources with company ties said.

But the second source also with company connections said that during discussions with regulators, Ma was told that he would not be allowed to sell his stake to any entity or individual close to him, and would instead have to exit completely. Another option would be to transfer his stake to a Chinese investor affiliated with the state, the source said.

Any move would need Beijings approval, both sources with knowledge of the companys thinking said.

The accounts provided by all the three sources are consistent in terms of the timeline for how discussions have evolved over the past few months.

On the company side, one source said Ma met regulators more than once before the Chinese New Year, which was in early February. And the second source said Ant started working on options for Mas possible exit about a couple of months ago.

The source familiar with the regulators thinking said Ant had told officials during a meeting sometime before mid-March that it was working on options.

The source familiar with the regulators thinking has direct knowledge of conversations between Ant and officials, while one of the sources with company ties has been briefed on Mas interactions with regulators and Ants plans. The other one has direct knowledge of Ants discussions about options. They requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

The Ant spokesman did not provide any comments from Ma. Alibaba referred questions to Ant. Jack Mas office did not respond to Reuters request for comment made via Ant. The State Council Information Office, PBOC, and CBIRC, also did not respond to requests for comment.

The high-stakes discussions come amid a revamp of Ant and a broader regulatory clampdown on Chinas technology sector that was set in motion after Mas public criticism of regulators in a speech in October last year.

Mas exit could help clear the way for Ant to revive plans to go public, which stalled after the tycoons speech, both sources proximate to the company said.

Ant was expected to raise about $37 billion in what would have been the worlds largest IPO, but the plans were scuppered the day after Mas Nov. 2 meeting with regulators.

Indeed Jack Ma stepping away may help the companys share price re-rating by removing uncertainty and resolving the perception that the Chinese governments issue with the company is with the individual, said Devan Kaloo, global head of equities at Aberdeen Standard Investments.

Kaloo said he does not see Ma divesting his Ant stake as much of a concern. There is a strong, well-established professional management team who have run the various group companies for some time, he noted.

Hong Kong-listed shares of Mas Alibaba dropped as much as 1.9% on Monday in a positive market.

Too Big for Their Britches

Beijing has since late last year unleashed a series of investigations and new regulations that have not only reined in Mas empire but also swept across the countrys technology sector, including other high-profile, billionaire entrepreneurs.

For Ma, 56, who also founded Alibaba and once commanded cult-like reverence in China, the consequences have been particularly severe. The tycoon completely withdrew from the public eye for about three months and has continued to keep a low profile after a brief January appearance.

Chinas antitrust regulator fined Alibaba a record $2.75 billion on April 10 following an antimonopoly probe that found it had abused its dominant market position for several years.

A couple of days later Ant was asked by the central bank to become a financial holding company, bringing it under the ambit of banking rules that it had managed to avoid so far and allowed it to grow rapidly.

China still likes to promote its technology firms as global leaders just as long as they dont get too big for their britches, said Andrew Collier, managing director of Orient Capital Research.

Controlling Stake

Although Ma had previously stepped down from corporate positions, he retains effective control over Ant and significant influence over Alibaba.

While he only owns a 10% stake in Ant, Ma exercises control over the company through related entities, according to Ants IPO prospectus.

Hangzhou Yunbo, an investment vehicle for Ma, has control over two other entities that own a combined 50.5% stake of Ant, the prospectus shows. Yunbo can decide all matters related to Ant and exercise the combined voting power of the three entities, the prospectus shows.

Ma holds a 34% equity interest in Yunbo, the prospectus shows.

One of the sources with company ties said theres a big chance Ma would sell his equity interest in Yunbo to exit from Ant, ultimately paving the way for the fintech major to move closer to completing its revamp and reviving its listing.

Reuters could not reach Yunbo for comment. Ant did not provide a comment on behalf of Yunbo.

(Reporting by Julie Zhu in Hong Kong and Cheng Leng in Beijing; additional reporting by Simon Jessop in London; editing by Sumeet Chatterjee, Paritosh Bansal, Edward Tobin and Himani Sarkar)

Photograph: In this Oct. 26, 2020 file photo, a view of the signage of Ant Group in the headquarters compound of the fintech giant in Hangzhou in eastern Chinas Zhejiang province. Photo credit: Chinatopix Via AP, File.

Topics China
The president of the Junta de Andalucia, Juanma Moreno, has called on the Spain's central government to convene a meeting of regional presidents "now".

"It does not make sense that during the first wave we had a lot of presidents' meetings, and that in the second and third waves, which have been much more virulent in some regions, none were convened," said the Juntas head, who considers that there are many issues to discuss but, in particular, he has put one on the table.

Juanma Moreno has called for a debate on the possibility that people who have received their two doses of the Covid-19 vaccine can move around more freely and access events such as concerts, theatrical performances or bullfights with a vaccination certificate.

Moreno suggests that such mobility that would also help reactivate the economy.

The regional president has pointed out that Andalucia has been working on such a QR certificate since October so that Andalusians who have had both doses could move from one province to another.

"In Andalucia we have 600,000 people fully vaccinated and who should be able to move around," said Moreno who also considered that a measure of this type could be applied at the national level, so that immunised people, with their vaccination certificate, would have the freedom to move between the regions and to access events.

"I would like to open this debate with the other regions and with the central government," said the Andalusian president during a media briefing in Almeria together with the president of the Murcia region, Fernando Lopez Miras.
When Calusa was built in 1967, West Kendall was an idea. Builders were trying to convince homeowners to move away from the urban center by promising a peaceful community around 168 acres of green space protected by a 99-year covenant. Those in pursuit of a different quality of life bought homes and raised families; the surrounding community grew around this tranquil green space.

The Calusa neighborhood runs from Kendall Drive to Killian Pkwy  that is, Southwest 88th to 104th streets  between 127th to 137th avenues. It has a hidden oasis with 168 acres of green space that the Miami-Dade Comprehensive Development Master Plan designates as parks and recreation.

G.L. Homes and Facundo Bacardi want to change all that.

How did we get here? The proposed 550-home development on the 168 acres of green space could be Exhibit A in how to prioritize profit over people: buy property for the low price of $2.7 million because of its parks and recreation designation, let it fall into disrepair and then convince county commissioners to ditch the pesky land-use restriction. When its nothing but a fenced-off private vacant lot, ask to develop only 550 homes, and be sure to point out that the community should be thankful because you could be asking for more.

What should local residents do now? Commissioners refuse to speak with residents about their concerns, citing the Jennings Rule. Residents cannot go to a town hall meeting because there arent any for unincorporated Miami-Dade. Residents cannot ask our Community Councils for advice, even though they were created to make zoning decisions more accessible for residents. In sum, Residents are told to wait for the public hearing to plead their case before commissioners.

Which, of course, is too late.

At the March 17 County Commission zoning meeting, Commission Chair Jose Pepe Diaz said: If you are against [the development] and you are going to say the same thing, just say Im against the project. . . . We will accept it and we will understand.

Story continues

We will save a lot of time, and I dont want to lose quorum in the middle of this.

Shortly after, residents statements were cut from two minute to one minute. This is a regular occurrence when there are a large number of speakers. Why are monthly zoning meetings so at risk of losing quorum that they need to be rushed? It minimizes residents only opportunity to involve themselves in major decisions affecting their community. Where is the community engagement and outreach and consideration of available solutions? This disconnect is a breakdown in the process meant to help residents.

Our elected officials should reconsider the zoning process and provide a mechanism to hear and discuss residents concerns. Perhaps sunshine workshops, or a community task force that reports back to commissioners? Honestly, almost anything would be an improvement over one minute of public comment at the final hearing. Because what is not debatable is that if we dont improve this process, residents will continue to lose out.

Members of the Calusa community will continue to voice their concerns with this development to ensure residents are informed and engaged. Calusas history and context matter  the destruction of this green space will cause irreparable harm. Will county commissioners prioritize residents needs and quality of life or allow large-scale development in Calusa?

We are still hopeful about the importance and power of communities. However, we are asking that elected officials increase resident involvement in zoning decisions. As the renowned planner Jane Jacobs said: Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.

Amanda Prieto is a Calusa resident and community advocate.
By Sonali Paul

MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Australia plans to accelerate the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines to people over 50 after advising under-50s not to get the AstraZeneca jab due to blood clot concerns, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Monday.

State leaders agreed to bring forward vaccinating over-50s, going beyond frontline workers, the elderly, the disabled and people with underlying medical conditions, at a national cabinet meeting, with formal approval due on Thursday, Morrison said in a statement.

They also agreed to set up mass inoculation sites as vaccine supplies increase.

Australia's vaccine rollout has stalled due to supply hold-ups in Europe and concerns about blood clots tied to the AstraZeneca vaccine, which Australia has banked on for most of its supply.

So far 1.59 million shots have been given in a population of 25 million.

The country has expanded orders of the Moderna and Pfizer shots for younger people, but those batches are only due to arrive in the fourth quarter.

Morrison has said even if people are vaccinated he will not rush to open the country's border, defying calls from state premiers urging him to ease travel curbs.

"Right now in Australia, we are living in a way that the rest of the world is not. Vaccination will be an important mechanism to ensure that remains the case," Morrison told reporters ahead of the national cabinet meeting.

"But I must stress this also, the international borders are also an incredibly important protection for Australians and I'm not about to relax those restrictions lightly," he said.

So far, Australia only has a travel bubble with New Zealand, which reopened its border to visitors from across the Tasman Sea on Monday.

"I don't agree with comments made last week to say that even if the vaccine's rolled out to the population, that we still can't travel. I don't buy that," New South Wales state premier Gladys Berejiklian said ahead of the national cabinet meeting.

(Reporting by Sonali Paul, Editing by William Maclean)
Syracuse University alumna Liz Sawyer and her fellow journalists are accusing police in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota of harassing reporters covering Daunte Wright protests.

CNN reports at least 100 demonstrators have been arrested during protests in the Minneapolis area over the death of Wright, a 20-year-old Black man who was shot and killed by Brooklyn Center Police Officer Kim Potter during a traffic stop. Potter, who is white, allegedly meant to use her stun gun but accidentally drew her gun instead; she has since resigned and been charged with second-degree manslaughter.

USA Today videographer Jasper Colt said he and other reporters at the protests were also detained by police and forced to lie on their stomachs Friday while cops photographed them and their credentials before letting them leave.

They were the ones with the guns, so we were like, OK, well, we have to do this, Colt told USA Today.

Sawyer, a reporter for The Star Tribune, posted a video on Twitter showing media being ushered to a checkpoint where state police took pictures of each journalists credentials and face. She also tweeted a photo of herself wearing a huge badge that identifies her as PRESS while filming the alleged processing by law enforcement.

Heres a photo of me filming members of State Patrol process my colleagues, including @shijundu. Our credentials are huge.

 by @benjovland pic.twitter.com/HBwWfbkcyA  Liz Sawyer (@ByLizSawyer) April 17, 2021

Sawyer, a 2014 graduate of SUs Newhouse School and a former news editor at The Daily Orange, also shared tweets from her colleagues accusing police of firing rubber bullets that injured reporters. One suffered a broken finger that will require surgery, leaving him unable to hold a camera for six weeks, and another had an extremely ugly bruise on his thigh almost the size of a dinner plate.

Joshua Rashaad McFadden, a photojournalist covering the protests for the New York Times, also said officers beat him with wooden batons while trying to pull him out of his car earlier this week. CNN producer Carolyn Sung was allegedly grabbed by her backpack and thrown to the ground by state troopers, who zip-tied her hands behind her back and arrested her.

The Associated Press reports U.S. District Judge Wilhelmina Wright issued a temporary restraining order Friday prohibiting police from arresting journalists or using force against them, including flash-bang grenades, nonlethal projectiles, pepper spray and batons, unless they know the person committed a crime. The order also prohibits police from forcing reporters to disperse along with the rest of the crowd and from seizing their equipment.

But freelance photographer Tim Evans told the AP that police appeared to ignore the order when a 10 p.m. curfew passed Friday. Evans said officers charged into the crowd and started pepper-spraying and tackling people; one allegedly punched Evans in the face and tore off his credentials, forced him onto his stomach and pressed a knee into his back.

I was yelling press. He said he didnt care and to shut the (expletive) up, Evans said. Im extremely upset... I felt like they were targeting the press in general. Im out there doing what Im doing because I have such strong convictions about the importance of this work.

Publications include the Minneapolis Star Tribune, CNN and USA Today condemned the actions by authorities as a violation of both the restraining order and the press First Amendment rights.

Leita Walker, an attorney who represents multiple media outlets, said Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, DPS Commissioner John Harrington and State Patrol Chief Matt Langer apologized Saturday for how reporters were treated.

A free press is foundational to our democracy. Reporters worked tirelessly during this tumultuous year to keep Minnesotans informed. I convened a meeting today with media and law enforcement to determine a better path forward to protect the journalists covering civil unrest, Walz said on Twitter.
A father-of-two who threatened to burn down the house of a business owner if he did not give 58,000 to his godfather has been jailed for four-and-a-half years.

Robert Redmond (32) was sent to collect this debt by a man who the court heard was his godfather in the Catholic sense rather than the Al Pacino sense.

Redmond of Streamville Road, Kilbarrack, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to making an unwarranted demand with menace at Newton Industrial Estate, Coolock, on September 26, 2019. He has 90 previous convictions, including for drugs and road traffic offences.

Detective Garda Michael McCallion told Philip Rahn BL, prosecuting, that the owner of Spring Valley Meats based in the industrial estate in Coolock had previously subletted part of his premises to a man in October 2016.

Det Gda McCallion said that on the date in September 2019, the business owner was at his premises in the industrial estate when Redmond and another man arrived in a van.

Redmond told the business owner that he owed his godfather, the former tenant, 58,000 and was there to collect. He said he knew where the man lived and he would go there in a few hours to collect the money.

The business owner later received a phone call from Redmond who told him his gaff would be burnt down with his mot inside it. He called the victim three more times, but the victim did not answer.

Redmond sent a text saying that he had tried to do things the easy way, that the victim owed his godfather and that if he wanted to know who he was dealing with he should check the last six Sunday Worlds.

Gardai identified Redmond from CCTV and he voluntarily attended for an interview. During the interview he accepted he was at the scene about a debt, but did not accept that there were threats made.

Mr Rahn told the court the former tenant was Redmond's godfather in the Catholic sense rather than the Al Pacino sense. He told the court that the victim's position is that no debt was owed.

Det Gda McCallion agreed with Michael O'Higgins SC, defending, that his client would be known to gardai as having a drug problem. He agreed the accused is remorseful.

The detective agreed that Redmond had been asked by his godfather to go down and demand the money. He agreed it was fair to say that the accused was in an awkward position by view of his connection to this man.

Mr O'Higgins said that when his client was aged 10 his father was jailed and his mother left the family home, leaving him to be raised by his older sister. He said his client had a good work history prior to developing an issue with drugs aged 18.

Counsel said his client was not standing to be the beneficiary and was not the brains behind any attempted extortion. He said his client has two children.

Judge Martin Nolan said it was very serious what the accused had done. He noted that he had pleaded guilty, made admissions and was remorseful.

Judge Nolan sentenced Redmond to four-and-a-half years imprisonment.
Nearly a decade after the Connecticut General Assembly authorized the creation of a green bank to finance solar arrays and other clean energy systems, U.S. Sens. Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal have revived a proposal for the federal government to create a national green bank.

The proposed Green Bank Act of 2021 would allow the U.S. Department of the Treasury to issue up to $50 billion in green bonds to provide backing for state-based programs like the Connecticut Green Bank. The Hartford-based authority provides upfront financing for clean-energy projects that are paid off through varying means, including one mechanism under which project owners pay off amounts due through additional assessments on property taxes over time.
Format for print or mobile

Confronting Global Apartheid Demands Global Solidarity

AfricaFocus Bulletin

April 19, 2021 (2021-04-19)

(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor's Note "The COVID-19 pandemic has both revealed and deepened structural inequalities around the world. Nearly every country has been hit by economic downturn, but the impacts are unevenly felt. Within and across countries, the people who have suffered most are those already disadvantaged by race, class, gender, or place of birth, reflecting the harsh inequality that has characterized our world for centuries." Regular readers of AfricaFocus Bulletin will already be familiar with the US-Africa Bridge Building Project, founded by Imani Countess, on which I am working as a consultant. This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains the first essay in the project's Transnational Solidarity Playbook, which is being released on the project website today. The format for that website was designed by Go!Creative and Village Green Consulting, and is much more professionally designed and attractive than the workable but out-of-date home-made format constructed for AfricaFocus by your editor more than 15 years ago.So do check out the links above in this paragraph. That essay is accompanied by excerpts and an embedded video from the Steve Biko Memorial Lecture by Angela Davis in South Africa in 2016. Other original essays as well as other material for the Playbook will appear in later months, authored by a diverse set of authors with activist experience and scholarly knowledge of a range of transnational solidarity movements. For an earlier set of essays by Imani Countess and me based on similar perspectives, see "Beyond Eurocentrism and U.S. Exceptionalism: Starting Points for a Paradigm Shift from Foreign Policy to Global Policy," at http://www.africafocus.org/usa-2020.php. For another recent article on U.S. policy and Africa, by Elizabeth Schmidt and me, published on April 8, see https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/04/08/in-africa-an-acknowledgement-that-counterterrorism-has-failed/. ++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++

Confronting Global Apartheid Demands Global Solidarity

by Imani Countess and William Minter

This essay is part of a series that will be included in a Transnational Solidarity Playbook to be published by the US-Africa Bridge Building Project. The series is based on the premise that progressive forces must increase our capacity to join forces across national borders, defeat authoritarian regimes and movements based on hate, and find the strength to build a future based on common humanity and justice for all.

Imani Countess is the project director for the US-Africa Bridge Building Project. William Minter is a consultant for the Project and the editor of AfricaFocus Bulletin.

The COVID-19 pandemic has both revealed and deepened structural inequalities around the world. Nearly every country has been hit by economic downturn, but the impacts are unevenly felt. Within and across countries, the people who have suffered most are those already disadvantaged by race, class, gender, or place of birth, reflecting the harsh inequality that has characterized our world for centuries.

This deepening inequality haunts our global future. According to a report released by Oxfam in January 2021, Billionaire fortunes returned to their pre-pandemic highs in just nine months, while recovery for the worlds poorest people could take over a decade.

International scientific collaboration has yielded multiple vaccines against the novel coronavirus. But the most vulnerable people and countries have been last in line for doses, or are not in line at all, threatening a vaccine apartheid. If that continues, it will be impossible to end the pandemic, as the virus will continue to mutate and spread across borders.

Global apartheid is more than a metaphor

The term apartheid comes from South Africa, notorious in the 20th century as the last stronghold of white minority rule. Political apartheid in South Africa ended in 1994 with free elections open to South Africans of all races. But South Africa and the world are still embedded in an international system of inequality reflecting the history of European conquest and domination.

In this system, wealth and power are still structured by race and place, both within and between nations. Whether or not one labels it global apartheid, there are striking parallels with South African apartheid.

In July 2020, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in the annual Nelson Mandela lecture, addressed what he called the inequality pandemic and called the world to a new social contract. Such a contract, it is clear, will not happen quickly. But it will not happen at all unless millions around the world mobilize to make it happen.

South African apartheid was part of a global system of unequal rights

South Africa shares a history of white supremacy with other white settler states, including the United States, as Senator Robert Kennedy acknowledged in a speech to students in Cape Town in 1966. Its apartheid regime was part of a world order defined for centuries by hierarchies of racial privileges both between and within countries.

Since the discovery of diamonds and gold in the late 19th century, South Africa and its neighbors in the Southern African region had been linked closely to Western economies, particularly the United States, England, and continental Europe. Internally, apartheid in South Africa was a multilevel system of labor control and differential rights, paralleling the global hierarchy. There were gradations of privilege for whites, Asians, Coloured, and natives, as well as for natives in urban areas, those in rural homelands, and foreign natives.

Beginning in the 1960s, when independent African countries joined the United Nations, the end of political apartheid played out on a global stage. Exposure of the South African regimes inhumanity, including forced labor, torture, and attacks on neighboring states, led the United Nations General Assembly in 1974 to designate apartheid as a crime against humanity.

Transnational solidarity was essential to the anti-apartheid movement

Over the next two decades, the regime maintained highly visible repression within its borders while also waging proxy wars that devastated the entire Southern African region. The human toll on South Africans and their neighbors mounted into millions of lives lost. South Africas Western allies, despite growing willingness to speak against apartheid, stubbornly maintained their military and economic ties with the regime.

In opposing white minority rule, the South African liberation movements relied on mobilizing internal opposition, but they also issued appeals for support worldwide. They called for sanctions against the white minority regime and for direct support for South African liberation, including support for armed struggle. This outreach was essential because of the extent to which rich Western countries both profited from and sustained the South African economy and state.

Those calls were answered in different ways by governments, by multilateral bodies such as the Organization of African Unity and the United Nations, and by hundreds of solidarity organizations in almost every country of the world.

Solidarity was based on the recognition of common humanity

By the 1980s it was possible to speak of a transnational anti- apartheid movement. But it was a movement that drew in many different constituencies, with varying connections to and understandings of the situation in South Africa. For people in Africa and other world regions who had themselves experienced European conquest and colonial rule, the connection was clear. In the United States, too, the long history of the Black freedom movement closely paralleled that in South Africa. And the entire world recalled the anti-fascist struggle of the mid-20th century and its promises of freedom. South Africans seeking solidarity understood that they were speaking to specific audiences, not to an undifferentiated global community, and they strove to meet people where they were.

The fundamental message of the transnational anti-apartheid movement was, and remains, equal rights for all, applicable not only in South Africa but around the world. We must learn to live and work together on the basis of our common humanity, as expressed in the African concept Ubuntu.

That does not mean calling for neutrality or covering up the realities of injustice and oppression. It does mean rejecting the principle of separation (the literal meaning of apartheid) and bringing people into more inclusive communities with a common vision of justice for all.

Collective action relied on diverse strategies and multiple constituencies

In the 1980s, activists developed a range of collective action strategies to support South African calls for political liberation. These included divestment of corporate, pension, and municipal funds from institutions invested in apartheid, as well as protests, mobilizations, and campaigns. Local activists used their own experience and knowledge of specific places and specific institutions to craft appropriate strategies and tactics.

The movement drew in politicians and civil servants in national governments, staff of multilateral institutions, leaders of religious, student, trade union, professional, and social justice organizations, and grassroots leaders in local communities. These diverse actors built collective power and worked together for a common cause. In doing so, they had to look beyond racial and national divides, work through internal debates about strategy, and overcome conflicts driven by ideology and personal ambition.

The same general principles apply today to movements confronting a global pandemic, the climate crisis, and rising overt threats from authoritarianism, xenophobia, and racism. But today's global movements must also confront not only new global realities but also enduring injustices not addressed by the anti-apartheid movement or other national freedom struggles of the 20th century.

The victory against South African apartheid was real but incomplete

The victory we celebrated with the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994 was real, as were earlier victories in freedom struggles in other times and places. But that victory was by no means complete. Democratic political rights, in South Africa or any other country, are essential prerequisites for social and economic justice  but provide no guarantees. Indeed, the 21st century has brought steadily widening inequality and mounting threats to democracy, in South Africa and in countries around the world.

Today we have a new set of intersecting crises, with the authoritarian playbook of divide and rule gaining ground in many countries. In meeting this moment, we can take inspiration and guidance from the collective victories of earlier generations. We must take seriously the truth that none of us are free until all of us are free. This principle, voiced over the years by Emma Lazarus, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Martin Luther King Jr., must apply across all the intersecting divisions that separate us from each other, including national borders as well as the familiar triad of divisions by race, class, and gender.

The transnational anti-apartheid movement is one powerful illustration of how this principle can be applied. First, the movement built strong personal and organizational ties across borders in commitment to a common cause. Second, global leadership came from those most endangered by South Africa's apartheid regime, namely movements in South Africa and its neighboring countries.

But that movement also had internal shortcomings. The greatest limitation, as in other movements targeting national, racial, or class injustice, was the failure to address gender injustice. Despite public celebration of women in the struggle, failure to listen to womens voices, and even tolerance of gender violence, was more the rule than the exception. That remains the case today worldwide, despite the profusion of pledges to address gender equity.

New movements give hope for global solidarity

Over the past decade, as global inequalities have deepened, a wave of movements has been charting new strategies and paths forward. These movements include, to give just a few examples, Black Lives Matter, the climate justice movement, movements for women's rights and LGBTQ rights, and union organizing among care workers and those in the informal economy, who are disproportionately women and youth.

These emergent movements build on new understandings of history as well as on an analysis of the current moment. As Angela Davis noted in the Steve Biko Memorial Lecture in 2016, our work must be rooted in history yet must go beyond the limitations of the past. That means building structures that raise the voices of those who have been barred historically from leadership positions in social change movements. From the local to the global level, organizations and movements must feature inclusiveness, interconnectedness, interdependency, intersectionality, and internationalism, Davis told the audience at the University of South Africa.

The obstacles may seem overwhelming. But we can redefine the possible, argues Varshini Prakash of the Sunrise Movement, the youth movement that has put the Green New Deal at the center of the political debate on climate change in the United States. In your demands and your vision, don't lead with what is possible in today's reality but with what is necessary.

Whether on climate, on the Covid-19 pandemic, or on rising inequalities by race, gender, class, and place of birth, joining forces for justice across national boundaries is not a choice. It is a necessity.

A movement, not just a leader by Imani Countess Nelson Mandela, the imprisoned leader of the African National Congress, was the best-known face of the anti-apartheid movement. Millions around the world watched as Mandela was released from prison in February 1990. Two months later, I sat in Londons Wembley Stadium with 70,000 others celebrating Mandelas release and the start of a difficult but hopeful transition in the movement against political apartheid. Several Americans sat in front of me. It turned out they were from Pikesville, Maryland; I was born and raised in nearby Baltimore. Pikesville was a majority-white suburb of folks who fled the city in the 1960s and 70s in response to desegregation efforts. Nonetheless, there we were in London, joined together in celebrating the success of a transnational solidarity movement led by Black and Brown South Africans. That movement included not only iconic leaders like Mandela, but also grassroots leaders not in the international public eye. Just as important, it included countless activists around the world  a complicated mix of campaigners, national liberation parties, political formations and organizations, UN agencies, faith-based organizations, unions, students, and scholars. Such a coalition is just as essential in confronting today's global apartheid.

Selected Resources on the Transnational Anti-Apartheid Movement

Have You Heard from Johannesburg?

https://www.clarityfilms.org/haveyouheardfromjohannesburg/

7-part video series on the transnational anti-apartheid movement, available as video-on-demand.

The Road to Democracy in South Africa: International Solidarity

http://www.sadet.co.za/road_democracy_vol3.html and http://www.sadet.co.za/road_democracy_vol5.html

Extensive studies by South African and other scholars from the South African Democracy Education Trust. Some chapters are downloadable.

African Activist Archive Project

https://africanactivist.msu.edu/

On-line digital documentation (more than 10,000 items) from national and local activist groups in the United States

The Anti-Apartheid Movement

https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/anti-apartheid-movement-aam

Brief summary and selected documents from South African History Online

Walter Bgoya: From Tanzania to Kansas and Back Again

http://www.noeasyvictories.org/select/04_bgoya.php

The key role of Tanzania in Southern African liberation struggles

O. R. Tambos forgotten speech at Chatham House

https://mg.co.za/africa/2020-07-09-exclusive-or-tambo-chatham-house-speech/

Speech by ANC President Oliver Tambo, 1985





AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus Bulletin is edited by William Minter. For an archive of previous Bulletins, see http://www.africafocus.org,

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AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please write to this address to suggest material for inclusion. For more information about reposted material, please contact directly the original source mentioned. To subscribe to receive future bulletins by email, click here.
In the spring, a young turkeys fancy turns to love. Tennyson said that, and I realized truer words were never spoken as I looked out the window and saw four tom turkeys on the lawn, fanning their tail feathers, strutting their stuff and competing with one another to lure a mate ... while the hens were completely oblivious of the pomp and circumstance and trotted away in the opposite direction. Isnt that always the case?

Watching those toms looking for action has to unnerve males of any species. Theyre almost as bad as the young guys who hang out at bars on spring break and fan their tail feathers. I dont know whether I feel sympathy for them or second-hand embarrassment.

Signs are everywhere that spring is in the air: turkeys pooping all over the lawn, pollen polluting my nasal passages, and thousands of college students causing mayhem on beaches and in bars.

Weeks later, theyre probably still partying in Miami Beach. It makes me wonder: If students can celebrate without masks, why am I teaching college classes with Zoom instead of in-person?

All the revelry has Floridians begging for an end to what CNN will probably describe as mostly peaceful partying.

Only a week or two after videos showed crowds of teens and twenty-somethings partying on South Floridas beaches, health officials are finding a surge of coronavirus infections in younger people, the Palm Beach Post reported.

The locals are in an uproar, according to ABC News, which reported: Miami Beach residents have been protesting outside City Hall over the chaos caused by spring breakers.

This really bothers me. Why cant retirees enjoy spring break and cause a little chaos? Its discrimination. If President Joe Biden got me that stimulus check in time, I could have been in Miami Beach with the youngsters, twerking on top of Cadillacs and playing bikini volleyball on the beach. When is that cash coming anyway ... and who hid my Speedo?

Spring break shouldnt be a privilege of only one class. Im a progressive wannabe who believes we all should be allowed to go crazy one week of the year, call in sick, board the dog in a kennel and send the grandkids back to their parents, so we can frolic in the sun and stay out after our curfew.

Instead of Miami Beach, retirees could incite mayhem in St. Petersburg, once famously known as the retirement capital of America, which is what it was called during my years working at the St. Petersburg Times.

After watching videos of hundreds being arrested, I decided to put spring break on my bucket list. Im hoping my grandkids will take me down there someday, even if I have to use a walker, but that day is a long way off because they just enrolled in kindergarten, and the kindergarten idea of spring break is a six pack of chocolate milk and twerking with dinosaurs at Peabody Museum. Take my advice, kids  stick with the chocolate milk.

Sadly, I never went on spring break. For that matter, I also missed Woodstock because I had a paper due in metaphysics for the Rev. McCool SJ. In retrospect, I should have gone to Woodstock because I got a lousy grade on the paper.

When I was a student and spring break came around, my father had other plans. No fun in the sun. He had this prearranged deal with my cousin Larry, who was a bricklayer. To pay my college tuition, I had to work, mixing mortar, carrying bricks, setting up scaffolding and taking abuse from a lot of bricklayers who took delight in proving they were smarter than a college kid. They were. Instead of studying Plato, they learned a trade. They never went on spring break either. They got up every morning, went on the job and worked hard to support their families.

Thats why I feel a special bond to my students. Like me, most of them are the first generation in their families to go to college. For some, English is a second language, others have kids to support, and a few are single moms.

All of them are working a job, if not two, while taking courses. Theyre the ones who deserve a spring break. So the air fare is on me if I ever get that stimulus check.

If not, well charge it to Joe Bidens infrastructure bill.

Joe Pisani can be reached at joefpisani@yahoo.com.
Lucknow, April 19 : Bowing to mounting pressure, the King George's Medical University (KGMU, one of the premiere Covid hospital in the state, has decided that the Trauma Centre will continue to function as usual while the KGMU has been converted into a Covid hospital.

KGMU Vice-Chancellor Lt. Gen (retd) Dr. Bipin Puri said, "Since we do not know which patient will be Covid positive, we will convert the ground floor as a holding area where RT-PCR test will be conducted on patients. Till their report comes, they will receive emergency treatment in the holding area. If positive, they will be shifted to Covid hospital, otherwise they will be shifted to the department concerned in the trauma building." The government had initially decided to convert the entire KGMU as a Covid hospital from April 19, stating that only cardiology and gynaecology emergencies will be addressed by it.

However, sources said that both PGI and Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) hospital have informed the government that they did not have expertise to deal with trauma cases.

The KGMU authorities also stated that trauma patients after stabilization had to be shifted out to departments concerned for further treatment which will now be a problem as all wards will have Covid patients.

Besides, converting a trauma centre into a Covid facility would make it out of bounds for emergency patients.

Several KGMU teachers were also raising concerns in the interest of patients.

Following these deliberations, sources said that it has been agreed upon that KGMU will lend its trauma expertise as before but once trauma patients have been stabilized at the trauma centre, the health department will have to make sure that patients are taken over by PGI and RML.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Line Of Duty has become infamous for storylines with more twists and thrills than a roller coaster, and this Sundays episode was arguably the most thrilling  and baffling  yet.

Nearly 10million viewers watched as revelation followed revelation and, just when you thought the web couldnt get any more tangled, writer Jed Mercurio threw in a new character  retired detective Marcus Thurwell played by James Nesbitt  and a new investigation, the historic death of black teen Lawrence Christopher in police custody.

But none of that could compete with the cliffhanger.

DI Kate Fleming, tricked into meeting her boss, Acting Det Supt Joanne Davidson, in a deserted lorry park, ended up in an armed stand-off with corrupt PC Ryan Pilkington and shots rang out as the screen faded to black.

At the heart of Line Of Duty is the identity of H, suspected to be a senior police figure in the pay of an OCG (organised crime group).

And surely one of the latest plot twists will finally hold the key to the identity of this mysterious figure.

DI Kate Fleming, tricked into meeting her boss, Acting Det Supt Joanne Davidson, in a deserted lorry park, ended up in an armed stand-off with corrupt PC Ryan Pilkington

Actor Adrian Dunbar, who plays Supt Ted Hastings, head of anti-corruption unit AC-12, said yesterday: A lot of Line Of Duty fans know whats going on. All will be revealed in the fullness of time. Theres been a very big clue. Theres a clue out there as to what happens next.

But what could that clue be? Mercurio has been candid about his enthusiasm for leads that go nowhere.

As Line Of Duty series six heads for its penultimate episode, Alison Boshoff investigates the likely red herrings and the possible red hot leads.

BANG, BANG!

As the credits rolled at the end of episode five, two shots rang out.

A split second earlier DI Kate Fleming (Vicky McClure) had been face to face with juvenile thug turned police officer Ryan Pilkington, with guns pointed at each other.

What every Line Of Duty fan wants to know now is: Is Kate dead? Is Ryan no more? Or perhaps its Det Supt Jo Davidson (Kelly Macdonald)  who lured Kate to the deserted Menton Road lorry park and witnessed the stand-off  who has died? Did AC-12 arrive just in time?

On the surface, things dont look good for Kate or Jo. The BBC synopsis for next Sundays episode says: As AC-12 struggle to deal with the repercussions of tragic events... Surely Ryans death wouldnt be considered tragic.

Meanwhile, actor Craig Parkinson, who played DI Matthew Dot Cottan, also hinted that this was the end of Vicky McClure.

Actor Adrian Dunbar, who plays Supt Ted Hastings (pictured), head of anti-corruption unit AC-12, said yesterday: A lot of Line Of Duty fans know whats going on. All will be revealed in the fullness of time. Theres been a very big clue. Theres a clue out there as to what happens next

Recalling that his character was shot dead, he said: Dots time came when it was time to serve the story and thats what Jed will always do, so I dont want to put anything out there, but Jed serves the story.

And asked about whether Vicky McClure would return, Dunbar said: Its hard to tell. I wish I could tell you. All of which makes it sound very much as if she wont.

However, a screen grab from a trailer for episode six appears to show the two women standing side by side, wearing the same clothes and in the lorry park, with Davidson raising her hands in the air.

Also, both women are on the cast list for the next episode. Although, with Mercurios talent for misdirection, this could mean nothing.

Red herring or red hot lead? Most likely a red herring  the shooting seems created to confuse. Probably the only thing proved at the lorry park is that Kate Fleming isnt H, because the OCG wouldnt try to kill her if she was.

DEFINATELY MAYBE

On Sunday, Jo Davidson was seen continuing a conversation with an unidentified gang leader via an encrypted instant messaging app on her computer. This was identical to the one used previously by the OCG.

During the conversation she said that she was going to do one final thing for the OCG  hand over Kate Fleming to be killed.

The mystery criminal then wrote definately  a misspelling that also turned up during an online conversation with OCG member Lisa McQueen in series five.

But the only person who has been seen getting this spelling wrong previously is Ted Hastings himself, when he went online to impersonate an OCG member. So is the head of anti-corruption the rotten apple in the first place?

Actor Adrian Dunbar says not. In an interview earlier this month he said that the conclusion of the show was a relief for me, as I spent all this time playing this character and I always thought Ted had a sense of duty and a moral core. He adds: To have found out I was this arch villain... I would have been in real difficulty accepting that. He went on: Jed is aware of our audience and they know Ted has a sense of moral fortitude.

On Sunday, Jo Davidson was seen continuing a conversation with an unidentified gang leader via an encrypted instant messaging app on her computer

I am glad he came out of it with flying colours. So whoever misspells definitely, its definately unlikely to be Hastings.

Red herring or red hot lead? Probably a red herring  Mercurio loves to play to the gallery, and knows that the definately clue was picked up by fans previously.

FAMILY SECRETS

JOANNE Davidsons DNA was last weeks cliffhanger, and we now know that the person she has links to is OCG boss Tommy Hunter.

As DI Steve Arnott announces: Davidsons DNA is a partial match for Tommy Hunter, but thats not the worst of it.

Theres an unusually high percentage match for runs of homozygosity.

While its not explicitly explained in the show, a run of homozygosity is a genetic sign that can be read as an indicator for incest.

Eagle-eyed viewers will have spotted a note stuck to a computer screen making the matter clearer yet, stating: A match has been made to TOMMY HUNTER, stating she is both his niece and daughter.

Hunter was ambushed in series two and later killed in hospital. But this DNA evidence still doesnt explain exactly why Jo Davidson is working with the OCG, who appears conflicted by her situation. Its also still unclear what this clue has to do with Tommys son Darren Hunter, a thug who assaulted Lawrence Christopher in 2003.

Red herring or red hot lead? Red herring: Another fascinating storyline, but again seems unlikely to point to the identity of H.

MASSIVE MISDIRECTION?

Up to now, the focus has been on Operation Lighthouse  the murder of journalist Gail Vella. She had been investigating the paedophile ring that preyed on the Sands View boys home.

But on Sunday, Steve Arnott (DI in AC-12) said that he had been told by corrupt lawyer Jimmy Lakewell  just before he was killed in prison by the OCG earlier in series six  that Vella was actually looking into the murder 20 years ago of black teenager Lawrence Christopher

The home and its links with the police and organised crime had previously been the focus of series three.

But on Sunday, Steve Arnott (DI in AC-12) said that he had been told by corrupt lawyer Jimmy Lakewell  just before he was killed in prison by the OCG earlier in series six  that Vella was actually looking into the murder 20 years ago of black teenager Lawrence Christopher.

Christopher died in police custody after being hit in the head by a lead pipe during a gang attack, and was mocked and racially abused by police instead of being treated for a skull fracture.

The gang included Darren Hunter  son of Tommy. And the investigating officer was Marcus Thurwell, now retired, played by actor James Nesbitt.

Red herring or red hot lead? Red herring or red hot lead? Likely to be a red hot lead: This may be the puzzle piece that links all the threads.

Marcus Thurwell, who covered up the bungled Christopher investigation, was also involved in the bungled investigation into the death of a social worker who had been a whistleblower into the Sands View abuse. Plus he worked with now-jailed Det Supt Ian Buckells on the Christopher investigation  all roads lead to him.

PLAYING (POLICE) POLITICS

It emerges that Chief Constable Philip Osborne was involved in the Christopher cover-up. Hes also the one-time boss of Steve Arnott. Had he been pulling the strings behind the scenes to stop Gail Vella from exposing police incompetence or corruption?

Another high profile suspect for H is Police and Crime Commissioner Rohan Sindwhani who urges Ted Hastings to fight with whatever time he has left before AC-12 is disbanded. But he was interviewed by Gail Vella, and in an unbroadcast interview she accused him of colluding in a cover-up.

The gang included Darren Hunter  son of Tommy. And the investigating officer was Marcus Thurwell, now retired, played by actor James Nesbitt (pictured)

Sindwhani has already been proved to be a liar, fibbing about the outcome of Operation Pear Tree which uncovered no institutional links between the police and organised crime. Additionally, his right-hand woman used to be legal adviser Gill Biggeloe  found to have been corrupt in series five.

Many are also suspicious of DCC Andrea Wise, who is disbanding AC-12 and warns Ted: Dont waste your last roll of the dice chasing a phantom.

Red herring or red hot lead?

Probably a red herring: You could argue all of them would want Gail Vella dead, and Ted out of the way  but there would need to be a lot of explaining in the next two episodes.

RIDDLE OF THE RETURNING CARMICHAEL

Detective Chief Superintendent Patricia Carmichael tried to pin corruption on Ted Hastings last series  and failed.

Now shes back to take over AC-12  put in place by DCC Andrea Wise.

Played with icy aplomb by Anna Maxwell Martin, pictured, she announced to the room on Sunday: For those of you for whatever inexplicable reason dont know, Im Patricia Carmichael.

She then cancelled surveillance on witness Terry Boyle and cops Ryan Pilkington and Jo Davidson  enabling the attempt on Kate Flemings life.

Red herring or red hot lead?

Red hot lead: Its distinctly possible that she holds the key. Some even say that her name is a clue, with Jimmy Lakewell telling Steve Arnott to look into the race claim  race claim is an anagram of Carmichael, minus H.
After 52 million subscribers tuned in for the Netflix melodrama Ginny & Georgia, the series has officially been renewed for a season two.

Antonia Gentry, 23, and Brianne Howey, 31, will return as mother-daughter duo Ginny and Georgia, respectively, in 10 all-new episodes on the streaming network, Deadline reported on Monday.

Season one of the young adult drama made headlines when Taylor Swift slammed the show for a 'deeply sexist' joke about her dating history.

Peach! After 52 million subscribers tuned in for the Netflix melodrama Ginny & Georgia, the series has officially been renewed for a season two, Deadline reported Monday

The sophomore season of Ginny & Georgia will be produced in Toronto with the same all-female creative team behind season one, Deadline reported.

No date was given for when production will resume or when fans can expect to see new episodes roll out on Netflix.

'We are so appreciative of the incredible response and love you all have shown Ginny & Georgia. We're especially grateful to Brianne and Toni, who set the highest bar every step of the way. We can't wait to return to Wellsbury for season two,' said showrunner Debra J. Fisher and creator Sarah Lampert in a statement.

The series follows teenaged Ginny and her 30-year-old mom Georgia as they start anew in the posh suburban town of Wellsbury.

Hit series: The sophomore season of Ginny & Georgia will be produced in Toronto with the same all-female creative team behind season one, and no date was given for when production will resume or when fans can expect to see new episodes roll out on Netflix

In season one, Ginny finds herself in a complicated love triangle at her new high school - made even messier by the fact that she has the hots for her new best friend's brother who also happens to be her next door neighbor.

Meanwhile her bombshell of a southern belle mom, Georgia, tries to outrun her checkered past while establishing herself in town - and with the hunky, single mayor ... who is also her boss.

The series debuted on February 24 and joined the likes of 2021 Netflix juggernauts like Brigerton and Lupin, being watched by an astounding 52 million subscribers in its first 28 days.

Iconic: Antonia Gentry, 23, and Brianne Howey, 31, will return to Wellsbury as mother-daughter duo Ginny and Georgia, respectively, in 10 all-new episodes on the streaming network

Season one ended with Ginny and Georgia at odds and the teenager running away with her little brother Austin.

The finale also contained a throw-away joke about Taylor Swift's long list of exes that, in todays climate, didn't sit well with the superstar.

The 31-year-old Grammy-winner took to her considerable Twitter platform to hit out at Netflix for airing what she referred to at the time as a 'deeply sexist' and 'degrading' joke.

Taylor tweeted: 'Hey Ginny & Georgia, 2010 called and it wants its lazy, deeply sexist joke back,' Taylor wrote. 'How about we stop degrading hard working women by defining this horse s*** as FuNnY.'

Drama: Season one of the young adult drama made headlines when Taylor Swift slammed the show for a 'deeply sexist' joke about her dating history

She went on to take a swipe at Netflix, pointing out: 'Also, @netflix after Miss Americana this outfit doesn't look cute on you,' before adding a broken-heart emoji, and noting the irony that the controversy was kicking off on the first day of Women's History Month.

In the episode, teenager Ginny Miller (Antonia Gentry) makes an off-the-cuff comment about Taylor's dating life while arguing with her mother Georgia about her relationships.

After Georgia questions her daughter about whether she has had sex with someone, Ginny yells back: 'What do you care? You go through men faster than Taylor Swift.'

Taylor took issue with this joke: 'What do you care? You go through men faster than Taylor Swift.'

Rude! Taylor was quick to point out that the joke not only felt dated but was used during Women's History Month ... just weeks after her own doc Miss Americana aired on the same network

Following Taylor's criticism, Antonia shared lengthy statement expressing her gratitude for fans support: 'Thank you for the love and support you have shown me and our show, Ginny and Georgia, over the last week.

'I never would have imagined something like this as a young girl -- that is, having a voice capable of impact.

'It is so meaningful to see the hundreds of messages from fans in my inbox who feel seen, heard and understood because of the show and its characters. It has also been fun to hear from those who were just happy to be along for an entertaining ride.

Adding in part: 'As someone who grew up feeling voiceless and unimportant, and who did not see herself reflected on screen, Ginny Miller was finally a reprieve.'
The relative advantage for Mr Morrison was based in part on stronger support in NSW and Queensland as well as among voters aged 55 and over. Mr Albanese, in contrast, has his strongest support among voters aged below 34, a cohort where he enjoys a net positive rating of 17 per cent. Resolve director Jim Reed said the results, based on dozens of questions to 2006 voters earlier this month, suggested many Australians were choosing to park their votes with minor parties. We find that those people moving from the Coalition to minor parties and independents are far more likely to be uncommitted and to be using that vote to protest or send a message, he said.

They want the major parties to focus and lift their game. There are always a number of factors at play, but our analysis is pointing to the handling of COVID-19 being a major focus, including the interaction between federal and state governments. Many people decide their vote as we near an election, so its natural to have people moving around at this point in the cycle, especially when we have such a dynamic political environment. Mr Morrison vowed on Monday to proceed carefully and cautiously with the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines but has admitted to problems with the program, as Mr Albanese attacks him for dropping the original target to complete first doses for adults by October.

The Coalitions primary vote has slipped from 43 to 41 per cent in NSW, 39 to 33 per cent in Victoria, 44 to 39 per cent in Queensland and 44 to 39 per cent in Western Australia since the election. Labor has also lost ground in the two biggest states, with its primary vote falling from 35 to 29 per cent in NSW and 37 to 34 per cent in Victoria, but it has increased its support from 27 to 30 per cent in Queensland and surged from 30 to 40 per cent in Western Australia. The findings raise the possibility that state factors, such as support for Labor Premier Daniel Andrews in Victoria and Liberal Premier Gladys Berejiklian in NSW, are influencing voter attitudes to federal parties. The national trend is strong enough to give Labor a small advantage over the Coalition in two-party terms, but the lead is within the margin of error of 2.2 per cent for the poll, which surveyed 2006 voters earlier this month.

The swing against the Coalition was spread evenly across most demographic groups but was more pronounced among those on higher incomes, with support falling from 49 to 43 per cent among those earning more than $100,000 a year. Labor gained support from the same workers, with its primary vote rising from 29 to 33 per cent. Respondents were asked who they supported at the last election and who they would support if an election was held this month. Again, however, the figures revealed a big shift in primary vote toward the Greens, One Nation, other minor parties and independents  up from 25 to 30 per cent among those earning less than $50,000 a year, 24 to 30 per cent among those earning $51,000 to $100,000 a year and 22 to 25 per cent among those earning more than $100,000 a year.

The results lifted the Greens primary vote nationwide from 10 to 12 per cent, at least 1.5 per cent above the partys result at the last federal election. Loading The poll shows an even bigger shift towards One Nation, with its vote jumping from 3 to 6 per cent, twice as much as its support at the last election. Because the poll asked voters to nominate their primary votes in the same way as they filled in their ballot papers for the lower house at an election, there is no undecided category in the results, a key difference with some other surveys. In another departure from some other surveys, the Resolve Political Monitor asks a pre-emptive question about whether respondents are registered to vote, discarding results from those who are not.
Over the last few weeks, Helen kept saying, I am so proud of our family. We have a good family, and you need to tell all of them how much they are loved. Helen Johnsons love of everyone was repeatedly spoken up to the end of her beautiful life. She made it to 100 years old and made sure everyone knew by saying, You know, I am 100! Helen earned her angel wings on April 8, 2021. Her Funeral Service will be held on Saturday, April 17, 2021 at 1:00 PM at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Fairfield, MT with Burial to follow at St. Paul Cemetery.

Mary Helen Johnson was born in Great Falls, MT on September 8, 1920 to Fred and Eva Holyoak. She was the first of ten children. Helen moved around as a child while her parents farmed. She spent time in Rieblng, MT, Cascade area, Great Falls, Chestnut Valley, Riverdale, MT and Power, MT. Along the way, Helens brothers and sisters joined the family. They include Harold (deceased), Opal, Stew (deceased), Gene (deceased), Charlotte, Susie (deceased), Bob, Shirley, and Lee. Helen has fond memories of irrigation ditches from her childhood. Irrigation ditches remained a staple in our family for many years. They were a place where memories were made, and the laughter and squeals of children rang loudly every summer for several decades.

When they had moved to Power, Helen started dating her neighbor, Melvin (Mel) Johnson, and they were married in Great Falls on November 30, 1940. She remembered their first date fondly as it was when they attended the Presidents Ball in Power. It was a cold January night in 1938, and that was where their love of dancing began. Helen danced well into her 80s and could not hold her feet still if any style of Polka music could be heard! Helen and Mel knew all of the hopping spots to dance including Power, the Norwegian Hall in Fairfield, Semingsons in Fort Shaw, the Sun River Hall (with wagon springs under the floor) and two dance halls in lower Sun River. In the 50s, Helen and Mel joined a square-dancing class and could be found at the Moose or Eagles Lodges as well as the 45+ club in Great Falls on most weekends.

Helen and Mel began their life of farming together in Power, MT and had two children. Neal Johnson of Great Falls was born on November 5, 1941 and Karen (Hanson) of billings was born on August 19, 1943. It was also during this time that Helens sister, Shirley and brother, Lee, were born. It was shortly after that when Helen purchased her first sewing machine and began sewing for the family, as clothes were hard to get during the war. She loved sewing and had quite the gift for doing it perfectly. Another gift that Helen had was making bread and rolls. One cherished memory is that of Helen making the dough for her bread and the smell of that bread filling the air at the house. Karen and Neal knew that meant there was also enough dough left for a pan of caramel of cinnamon rolls. To this day, Karens measure of a good cinnamon roll is how it measures up to Moms rolls, and very few rolls stand a chance!

Helen said goodbye to her beloved husband, Mel, when he passed away of cancer on December 8, 1982. They were married for 42 years. She spent much of her time the following years with her family including her grandchidlren. Neal and Ruth had a son, Kurt Johnson of Power, and a daughter, Tanya Johnson of Fort Collins, CO. Karen and Dick Hanson had two daughters, Michelle Morgan of Billings and Nicole Rice of Sheridan, WY. Helen was dearly loved by her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Isaiah Rice, Aidan and Kaylee Morgan, Ruqaiya Siddiqui, Harper and Khloe Johnson, and Lane and Josey Hinderager.

Helens favorite pastimes included quilting, crocheting, and knitting afghans and prayer shawls. Helen moved off the farm to Great Falls in October of 2001, and that is when Kurt purchased the house. Helen remained in Great Falls and made many new friends during her stay at The Lodge Senior Living community. She just loved people. As we all used to say, Helen never met a stranger, only a new friend.

Helen is survived by her children, Neal (Ruth) Johnson of Great Falls, MT, Karen (Dick) Hanson of Billings, MT; siblings, Opal Barnwell, Charlotte Brady, Bob Holyoak, Shirley (Dave) Kidd, and Lee (Mary) Holyoak; grandchildren, Michelle Morgan, Nicole Rice, Tanya Johnson (Yusuf Siddiqui) and Kurt (Stephanie) Johnson and many great-grandchildren.

Years ago, Helen lovingly typed out her family story and made copies for her children and grandchildren. It is an absolute treasure to have her words on paper  what a gift. Her final two sentences sum up her love of family and life. I marvel that over all these years and so many people involved, there has never been a rift or squabble among us. It has been a blessed and good life. Now, Helen can continue that good life of happiness and peace as she shares endless waltzes and polkas in heaven with Mel.

Condolences may be shared with the family at www.croxfordfuneralhome.com
 

EBRD loan of $65 million in hryvna-equivalent to support Datagroup-Volia merger

Consumers to reap benefits of consolidation

Largest EBRD loan for Ukraines telecommunications, media and technology sector

Datagroup, a leading national fibre infrastructure and digital services provider in Ukraine, is purchasing Volia, the countrys leading pay-TV and cable broadband service provider in the retail segment, with the financial backing of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

The EBRD is providing a local currency loan equivalent to $65 million to Datagroup, which is majority owned by a fund managed by Horizon Capital. This will primarily finance the acquisition of Volia to help build a stronger, more competitive telecommunications operator with improved quality of service and an expanded product range.

Matteo Patrone, EBRD Managing Director, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, said: At the EBRD we believe in the power of technology to bring about change for the better. Ukraines increasing digitalisation requires large-scale investments to expand coverage, accelerate speed and improve quality. Soon Ukrainian consumers will reap the benefits of Datagroup and Volia joining forces. The merged entity will invest in better infrastructure, innovation and excellent customer service, making it easier for all to connect with each other.

Lenna Koszarny, Horizon Capital's Founding Partner and Chief Executive Officer, added We are delighted that the EBRD is backing our vision of bringing Datagroup and Volia together. This merger will create a platform of sufficient scale to attract substantial capital investments to modernise Ukraines last-mile and national fibre infrastructure. The EBRD is a valued partner of Horizon Capital and its portfolio companies, providing expansion loans to increase production capacity, acquisition financing to grow businesses and fund commitments to attract private capital to the region. The success of Datagroup and Volia will serve to promote Ukraines investment attractiveness and ultimately bring more foreign direct investment to the country.

Mikhail Shelemba, Datagroup Chief Executive Officer and shareholder, stated: "We are delighted to announce our cooperation with the EBRD resulting in the provision of $65million in financing. These funds will be invested in the business to support growth and development  the acquisition of Volia as well as full-scale network modernisation. This financing supports our development plans, ensuring our network is the most modern in the Ukrainian telecommunications market, bringing quality of services to a whole new level and ensuring we surpass customer expectations as their reliable partner. We believe this is just the beginning of a long-term collaboration with the EBRD and look forward to many opportunities and large-scale projects ahead.

Under the cooperation with the EBRD, Datagroup is also committing to expand its internship programme and provide greater training and employment opportunities for young women and men.

The EBRD is the largest institutional investor in Ukraine. In the past two years alone, the Bank has committed 2 billion to the economy. The investments are combined with support for policies that promote the fight against corruption, good governance of state-owned enterprises, structural reforms and a more transparent business environment.

Horizon Capital is a leading private equity firm in emerging Europe, backed by over 40 institutional investors with a capital base of over $350 billion, managing four funds with assets under management of over $850 million and a tenure of 25 years in the region. The firm is a growth equity investor, backing visionary entrepreneurs leading transformational businesses in Ukraine and the near region. Horizon Capital is known for its strong team, high governance standards, value creation and successful track record.

Datagroup is an all-Ukrainian communication solutions provider. For businesses it provides a wide range of services, including the construction of corporate networks, internet services and television, access to banking services, cybersecurity and protection against DDoS attacks, telephony and outsourcing contact centre, cloud and data centre services. For individuals, Datagroup provides internet, television and telephony services. Datagroup is one of the fastest-growing telecommunications companies in Ukraine.
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BRUSSELS  The European Unions foreign policy chief said Monday that in the face of the big military buildup of Russian troops near Ukraines borders, it will only take a spark to set off a confrontation.

In a glum assessment of relations with Moscow, Josep Borrell also said that the condition of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was critical and that the 27-nation group would hold the Kremlin accountable for his health and safety.

Despite the developments, Borrell said after a virtual meeting of the EU foreign ministers that, for the time being, there is no move in the field of more sanctions to be imposed on Russia.

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He also said there wasnt a request for a synchronized EU diplomatic move of expulsions in the standoff between Czech Republic, an EU member state, and Russia following Pragues accusation that Moscow was involved in a 2014 ammunition depot explosion.

More dangerous at this time, Borrell said, was the massing of Russian troops, including military field hospitals, and all kinds of warfare.

It is the highest military deployment of the Russian army on the Ukrainian borders ever. Its clear that its a matter of concern when you deploy a lot of troops, Borrell said. Well, a spark can jump here or there.

Initially, Borrell told reporters that theres more than 150,000 Russian troops massing on the Ukrainian borders and in Crimea, and doubled down on the figure later before his services had to correct it in the transcript, saying the real figure was over 100,000.

Nevertheless, Borrell said that the risk of further escalation  its evident.

Borrell declined to say where he got the initial 150,000 Russian troop number from, but called it my reference figure. It was higher than the 110,000 estimate provided by Ukrainian Defense Minister Andriy Taran on Wednesday.

More than 14,000 people have died in seven years of fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine that erupted after Russias 2014 annexation of Ukraines Crimean Peninsula. The EU has steadfastly opposed the annexation but has been unable to do anything about it.

Efforts to reach a political settlement have stalled and violations of a shaky truce have become increasingly frequent in recent weeks across Ukraines eastern industrial heartland known as the Donbas.

Diplomats had expected there was little to no chance of immediate new sanctions on Moscow, but they now will seek to apply more pressure nevertheless through diplomacy.

Moscow must switch from provocation to cooperation, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said.

And over the weekend, French President Emmanuel Macron said that while dialogue with Russia is essential, clear red lines carrying possible sanctions must also be drawn with Moscow over Ukraine.

All in all, the relations with Russia, are not improving, but the contrary, the tension is increasing in different fronts, Borrell said.

We call on Russia to withdraw their troops, Borrell said.
Uzbekistans Ministry of Energy has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Siemens Energy AG of Germany and agreed on a roadmap for future, joint projects between the two entities.

Cooperation between the two parties is anticipated in several areas, including projects to build new generating facilities; power audit facilities in Uzbekistan to introduce of energy-efficient technologies; hydrogen energy; and training of personnel.

The MoU was signed by Energy Minister Alisher Sultanov, and Siemens Energy AG President, Christian Bruch, who was visiting Uzbekistan.

The MoU expresses the interest of both parties to explore the potential to expand a strategic partnership in Uzbekistan and pursue the implementation of joint projects.

Sultanov said: Uzbekistan is continuing its momentum of working with best-in-class international partners, to deliver on our energy strategy. We are aiming to lead the hydrocarbon-producing world and meeting our climate management commitments. Siemens is globally renowned and we look forward to deepening our relationship.

In particular, the roadmap includes projects to:

 Introduce cogeneration technologies on Public-Private Partnership (PPP) principles;

 Construction of a new thermal power plant (TPP) with a capacity of 1300-1600 MW;

 Participate in the modernisation of the Hajabad compressor station; and

 Create innovative training centres.

A formal working group to take collaboration forward will be established within 10 days of the MoU being signed.

It is envisaged that the MoU will yield immediate activity during 2021, with a site determined for the TPP in May 2021, and agreements anticipated for developing hydrogen and renewable energy by the summer. -- Tradearabia News Service
Civil war era crystal and gold ring declared treasure

A 350 year old gold and crystal ring discovered on the Isle of Man has today been declared Treasure by the Isle of Man Coroner of Inquests, Mrs Jayne Hughes.

Discovered in December 2020 by metal detectorist Lee Morgan, the ring is 21.5mm in diameter, made from gold, with a crystal stone 12mm diameter, covering gold lettering of the initial capital letters J (or I) and D.

Each shoulder of the ring is decorated with an engraving of a leaf inlaid with black enamel. It dates to the mid to late AD 1600s and is a Stuart-period mourning ring, sometimes distributed at funerals to commemorate the person who had died, usually including their initials.

Allison Fox, Curator for Archaeology at Manx National Heritage said: The ring is small and quite delicate in form, but of a high quality and intact. The quality suggests that it was made for, or on behalf of, an individual of high status. It is unlikely that we will be able to establish for certain who owned the ring or whom it commemorated, but there is a possibility that it may have been associated with the Stanley family, previously Lords of Man.

The initials JD may refer to James Stanley, 7th Earl of Derby and Lord of Man, a supporter of the Royalist cause in the Civil War. Letters and documents from the time show that he signed his named as J Derby, so the initials JD would be appropriate for him.

James Stanley was executed by the Parliamentarians in October 1651 and his wife Charlotte, Lady Derby, was keen to ensure his name was remembered.

The memorial ring is Lees third Treasure find on the Isle of Man. In 2013 he discovered a hoard of silver coins dating to around AD 1320, and in 2019, he discovered a silver ingot dating to between AD 950 and 1075.



Allison continued: Public finds, such as those found by metal-detectorists, walkers and farmers make an immense contribution to our knowledge of the archaeology and history of the Isle of Man. MNH would like to formally thank both the finder and the landowner for their assistance with this unique find.

When finds of archaeological artefacts are made on the Island there is a legal requirement to report them to Manx National Heritage. If the artefacts fall under the categories in the Treasure Act 2017 (which include being so closely connected with Manx history and national life that their loss would be a misfortune, and/or being of outstanding significance for the study of any branch of Manx art, learning or history), the find must also be reported to the Coroner of Inquests. The Coroner decides whether or not an artefact is Treasure. If the find is declared to be Treasure, a financial reward is usually paid to the finder and landowner.

The crystal and gold ring was discovered in the south of the Island, although the find location will remain a closely guarded secret to protect the integrity of the site.

The ring will go on display at the Manx Museum, prior to travelling off island for review by the Treasure Valuation Committee, an independent Committee which meets at the British Museum, providing advice on antiquities.
DALLAS, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Dallas Bar Association, one of the largest bar associations in the U.S., announced yesterday that, in a unanimous vote of its Board of Directors, it will change the name of its headquarters from "Belo Mansion." The new name has yet to be determined, but the renaming process has begun.

Dallas Bar Association's review of its headquarters' namesake's ties to the Confederacy began during the summer of 2020 following the death of George Floyd.

In a March 2021 announcement by A. H. Belo Corporation, owner of the Dallas Morning News , CEO Robert W. Decherd stated, "We are keenly aware that the relationship of our company's name to a person who figured prominently in the Confederate Army is the source of discomfort, even pain, for many of our fellow citizens. And that is intolerable to the leaders of this enterprise." Similarly, the company has sought shareholder approval to rename the organization to "Dallas News Corporation."

A.H. Belo was a prominent officer of the Confederate Army and remained known for that service over the following 37 years of his life and business career. Throughout his life, A.H. maintained connections and associations with the Old South and capitalized on his service to the Confederacy. Both in business and socially, he used his Confederate military title of "Colonel" throughout his life.

The building was built by A. H. and his wife as their home, but A. H. died less than a year later in 1901. When the Dallas Bar Association, in a visionary move, purchased the building as its headquarters from a granddaughter, Helen Belo Morrison, in 1977, it began referring to it as the "Belo Mansion". The building had been listed in the 1975 National Registry of Historic Places as the "Alfred Horatio Belo House."

Other than this building, there is no connection between A.H. Belo and the legal profession in Dallas.

The Dallas Bar Association has a storied and notable history in the City of Dallas, as well as regionally and nationally among all bar associations. Purchase of the headquarters building was broadly regarded as bold and farsighted, but also risky. The visionaries' purpose was to grow and invest in a vibrant association membership that offered free legal education, and was committed to access to justice, service to the community and support of the judicial system. The Association moved into its new headquarters in 1979 with 3,600 members and it has grown to more than 11,000 members today.

Dallas Bar Association President, Aaron Tobin, said, "The Dallas Bar Association is one of the strongest bar associations in the country. Our ability to hold events in a venue that is welcoming to every member of our diverse Association and City is vital to this strength. Our review, and ultimately our Board's decision to rename our headquarters building properly reflects who we are as an Association and doubles-down on our commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion."

Another press release will be issued when the renaming process is complete and we can announce the new name of the Dallas Bar Association headquarters.

The Dallas Bar Association is viewed as a gold-standard bar association among major-metro bars in the United States. It offers connection, relevant education, understanding and proven roadmaps to enrich lawyers' lives through every stage of their careers. www.dallasbar.org

Contact : Deborah McMurray, Content Pilot LLC 972-897-4921 | [email protected] / Aaron Tobin, Dallas Bar President 214.265.3851 | [email protected] // Alicia Hernandez, Dallas Bar Executive Director 214-220-7401 | [email protected]

SOURCE Dallas Bar Association

Related Links

https://www.dallasbar.org


Washington, April 19 : In a historic feat for humankind, NASA on Monday successfully launched the first powered, controlled flight of its Ingenuity Mars Helicopter on another planet.

The mini helicopter began its flight approximately at 3:45 p.m. (India time) and the data was received at NASA headquarters around 4.25 p.m. (India time). It took off a few feet from the ground, hovered in the air for about 20 to 30 seconds, and landed.

After this feat, the team will now attempt additional experimental flights of incrementally farther distance and greater altitude. After the helicopter completes its technology demonstration, Perseverance rover will continue its scientific mission.

"Every step we have taken since this journey began six years ago has been uncharted territory in the history of aircraft," Bob Balaram, Mars Helicopter Chief Engineer at JPL, said recently.

The mini helicopter flew to Mars while being attached to the belly of NASA's Perseverance rover, which made a February 18 touch down on the Red Planet.

The original flight date of April 11 shifted several times as engineers worked on preflight checks and a solution to a command sequence issue. It also survived its first night alone on Mars' frigid surface.

The sole mission of Ingenuity, a technology demonstration, is to conduct flight tests in the thin atmosphere of Mars; the helicopter carries no science instruments.

Within 30 Martian days, or sols (a Martian day is 24.6 hours), on the surface, Ingenuity will complete its testing, and Perseverance's scientific exploration of Jezero Crater will kick into high gear.

The Perseverance rover will provide support during flight operations, taking images, collecting environmental data, and hosting the base station that enables the helicopter to communicate with mission controllers on Earth.

The data returned could benefit future explorations of the Red Planet -- including those by astronauts -- by adding the aerial dimension, which is not available today.

"When NASA's Sojourner rover landed on Mars in 1997, it proved that roving the Red Planet was possible and completely redefined our approach to how we explore Mars. Similarly, we want to learn about the potential Ingenuity has for the future of science research," Lori Glaze, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters, said in a recent statement.

"Ingenuity is a technology demonstration that aims to be the first powered flight on another world and, if successful, could further expand our horizons and broaden the scope of what is possible with Mars exploration," Glaze added.
LONDON, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Qualitest, the world's leading AI-powered, engineering-driven software testing and quality assurance company, announced today that it has acquired Chicago-based Olenick & Associates. The combination of the two companies enhances the company's deep Quality Assurance expertise in the utilities space and expands its footprint with three new offices in Chicago, Buenos Aires and Northern Ireland. This is Qualitest's third high-profile acquisition in 2021. Specific terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded in 1997, Qualitest offers a wide range of AI-powered quality engineering and testing solutions, designed to mitigate the business risk associated with software releases. Qualitest achieves this by deploying engagement models tailored to the precise testing needs of technology platforms in the technology, financial services, retail, telecom, healthcare, insurance, aerospace, media and utilities industries, among others.

For the past 22 years, Olenick & Associates has grown to be a global pioneer in software quality engineering practices, with a focus on the utilities, legal, financial services and logistics sectors. With more than 250 experienced quality consultants, the company further expands Qualitest's already vast global footprint in the UK, US, Israel, India and Romania. Olenick's expertise enhances Qualitest's existing deep experience and comprehensive solutions for these industries.

Norm Merritt, Qualitest CEO, said: "Qualitest and Olenick share a common approach to achieving client satisfaction: providing high-touch, highly customized quality engineering solutions rooted in innovation and excellence. Olenick's deep utilities experience in seasonal readiness and real-time operation technology converging with information technology is unparalleled. We couldn't be more thrilled to have them join us, kickstarting our 2021 expansion strategy."

Tom Olenick, Olenick & Associates Founder and President, said: "The Olenick team has long admired the work of Qualitest and we are thrilled with the opportunity to partner with them on a global scale. The term 'better together' is really what this is all about and we look forward to integrating our complimentary areas of expertise and specialist tooling to serve clients on a broader spectrum."

About Qualitest:

Founded in 1997, Qualitest offers a wide range of AI-powered quality engineering and testing solutions, designed to mitigate the business risk associated with software releases. Qualitest achieves this by deploying engagement models tailored to the precise testing needs of technology platforms in the technology, financial services, retail, telecom, healthcare, insurance, aerospace, media and utilities industries. It has operations in Israel (where it was founded), the US, UK, and Romania, and serves over 250 blue-chip customers worldwide. Qualitest is majority-owned by international private equity group Bridgepoint, which acquired the company in October 2019 via its 5.7 billion flagship fund BE VI. To learn more about Qualitest, visit www.qualitestgroup.com.

About Olenick & Associates:

Olenick is a global leader in software quality engineering with over 250 consultants and four global locations. Olenick ensures delivery of successful projects by providing software testing and quality assurance, requirements and project management, and DevOps services. Olenick partners with companies in the utilities, legal, financial services and logistics sectors.

SOURCE Qualitest
The highly anticipated James Bond film No Time To Die is going to have the world's largest premiere ever witnessed when it releases in September this year. According to a report, the makers of the movie have set aside a whopping budget of $10 million for the grand event in the UK.

No Time To Die slated to have world's largest premier to the tune of $10 million

No Time To Die was originally scheduled to release last year but was delayed due to the ongoing pandemic. According to The Mirror UK, MGM and the film's producers are keen to host the premiere on a grand scale at a large stadium in London like the Wembley Arena. A source told the media outlet that those behind the scenes think that they can pull off the biggest in-person movie premiere in the post-pandemic era and the event in England will signal the return of such flashy movie launches that were missing last year. The source further revealed that the makers are looking at the biggest venues in London starting from Wembley and have also talked with Staples Center in Los Angeles for the US premiere. He added that the Bond team and MGM always wanted the movie to launch with a red carpet event and this was one of the reasons why they were okay with the delays happening.

About No Time To Die's release date

Originally scheduled to release in April 2020, No Time To Die will now release in the UK on September 30, 2021, and in the US on October 8, 2021. No Time To Die is touted to be the last film in the franchise to feature Daniel Craig as James Bond. The movie marks to be the 25th film in the James Bond franchise and will revolve around the premise of James Bond enjoying a peaceful life in Jamaica after leaving his active service. However, he jumps back to action after his old friend Felix Leiter from the CIA asks him for help.

Besides Daniel Craig as James Bond, the No Time To Die's cast includes Jeffrey Wright as Felix Leiter, Lea Seydoux as Madeleine and Ramil Malek as the antagonist Safin.

(Promo Image Courtesy: 007 Instagram)

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.
(Newser)  Authorities say they have apprehended a person in connection with a shooting at a busy tavern in southeastern Wisconsin early Sunday that left three men dead and three men injured, the AP reports. Kenosha County Sheriff's Department spokesman Sgt. David Wright said the suspect is facing a charge of first-degree intentional homicide, with additional criminal charges likely after further investigation. Authorities said earlier they weren't sure if there was more than one shooter. There is no threat to the community at this time, Wright said in a release. He said no further information on the suspect would be released Sunday. Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth said earlier a suspect was asked to leave the Somers House Tavern in Kenosha County but returned and opened fire. Beth said shots were fired inside and outside the bar, which he described as very busy at the time.

story continues below

He said he believed at least one handgun was used. Officials originally said two people were injured but said they were checking with hospitals for people who may have been hurt in the shooting. Wright said in the updated release that authorities believe there is one possible unknown shooting victim. Beth said two people died at the scene. The third person hopped in a car with two other people, who moments later flagged down a police vehicle. The officer drove the victim to a hospital where that person was pronounced dead, Beth said. Wright called it a complex investigation that involves several crime scenes. Detectives have followed up on multiple leads and gathered surveillance video evidence during extensive neighborhood canvasses, he said.

(Read more Wisconsin stories.)
Tiger Shroff's fashion sense is unlike other B-town celebrities. He honestly doesn't think much before taking out his clothes from the wardrobe and dressing up. To him, comfort is a priority. But say what may, the sort of ensembles he wears, only he can pull it off with confidence and panache.

 Viral Bhayani

 Viral Bhayani

He has also managed to ace some bizarre trends, including balloon pants and then wearing sneakers that looked like they were made of gold. But somehow, his latest appearance was one for the books. He was seen flying out of the city, with Disha Patani at Mumbai airport. We haven't seen Tiger make a statement in a casual outfit for a very long time, as he often wears his long pants and hoodie. This one, on the other hand, looked super versatile for his physique. On top of that, his sneakers sure stole all the thunder.



Take a look:

 Asics

Japanese brand, Asics in 2019 announced that actor Tiger would be the brand ambassador for Asics. The sneakers under this brand seamlessly fuse fitness and curate styles that help one look fashionable. Hence, Tiger is often seen wearing his Asics. This time he wore yet another outstanding pair. He can be seen wearing a pair called Gel-Quantum 180 Men.



 Asics

This shoe is formed with mesh and synthetic leather panelling, which adds to the contemporary aesthetic of the pair. Furthermore, the upper construction of the pair comes with a series of angular lines, that adds to the dimension of the design.



 Asics

As for more, it's paired with a bold GEL logo on the heel counter and the pair is layered with 180 degrees GEL technology, along with cushioning in the midsole for comfort.



Surprisingly, the price of the pair is also not sky-high. We often see celebs wear sneakers worth more than a lakh but these are as cheap as Rs 9,999. That's not so bad.

 Viral Bhayani

Coming to his outfit, he was seen in his usual self. He wore a full-sleeved navy blue T-shirt and paired it with blue cargo pants. We really the silhouette of these pants and the addition of large pockets, added more appeal to the look. As for his accessories, he can be seen carrying a messenger bag in his hand whereas the black wayfarers too are sitting perfectly with this look.



In all, that's one dope pair to fly in style and we are also totally on-board with Tiger's super chill ensemble. Way to go, Tiger.
New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/19/2021 -- The global Metal Cleaning Chemicals Market is forecast to reach USD 27.03 Billion by 2027, according to a new report by Reports and Data. Chemicals used for metal cleaning are used to wash off inorganic and extraneous materials from the metal's surface. They are used to remove any oil, unwanted surfaces, grease, corrosion oxides, and other particulates that can damage the performance efficiency of the metals. Cleaning of metals prevents the corrosion of the product and removes fouling by organic materials such as microbes, algae, animal fats, and hydrocarbons, and inorganic materials such as hydroxides, sulfides, silicates, carbonates, and phosphates, among others.



Chemicals used for metal cleaning are used to clean heavy machines and equipment in automotive, manufacturing, transportation, and aerospace. Heavy machinery and equipment being used in the transportation and manufacturing sector requires consistent maintenance and sustain performance efficiency. Major growth in the demand among end-users for these chemicals is propelling the market in the Asia Pacific region. However, stringent regulations regarding the usage of non-toxic chemicals will hamper the growth of the market. The emergence of environmentally sustainable and bio-based chemicals is expected to create ample growth opportunities during the forecast period



The Asia Pacific dominated the market due to a growth in aerospace, manufacturing, metal & mining, automotive, industries. Developed countries such as Japan, China, and India are expected to propel the demand for metal cleaning chemicals in the coming years. The Asia Pacific is anticipated to grow with the fastest CAGR during the forecast period. North America and Europe will witness a slow demand during the forecast period.



The COVID-19 impact:

The spread of the Coronavirus has also already impacted foundries. The foundries have been closed, stopping further production along with overstocked inventories. Another issue regarding foundries is that requirement for cast components is diminished by the far-reaching production stop in the industrial and automotive sectors. This has hit especially hard medium and small factories, which generate mainly components for the industry. The market for chemicals for cleaning metals is witnessing sluggish growth, but the demand is anticipated to pick up after the lockdown has been lifted from the developing regions.



Ask for Sample Report at: https://www.reportsanddata.com/sample-enquiry-form/3419



Further key findings from the report suggest:

Aqueous cleaning chemicals consist of detergents containing surfactants such as alkylphenol ethoxylates, linear alkylbenzene sulphonates, or alcohol ethoxylates, and anticorrosives like ethanolamines. The cleaning efficiency of the product depends on physiochemical phenomena such as emulsification, sequestration, wetting, solubilization, dispersion, and saponification, and is enhanced by mechanical and thermal energy.

The steel industry held a larger market share of 4.9% in the year 2019. Cleaning the metallic surface is a general quandary, and to resolve the issue, metal cleaners are used. The high level of production of steel is fostering the demand for the market. World Steel Association, in 2018, declared Asia produced 1278.0 Mt of crude steel, which was an increase of 5.6% as compared to 2017.

The manufacturing sector has been witnessing an increase in the Asia Pacific region, especially in China, Japan, India, and Indonesia. The growth rate of manufacturing industries in China is expected to double in the coming years, according to the Chinese ministry of commerce. The Government of India released the same data, in which there is expected to be a 4% increase in the next two years in the manufacturing sector. This is expected to benefit the market for metal cleaning chemicals.

Europe is forecasted to hold the second-largest share in the market. The region will witness stable growth on account of growing manufacturing, automotive, and rising demand from nations such as Italy, France, and Spain. Moreover, the presence of key market players is also encouraging market demand.

Key participants include Stepan Company, Houghton International Inc., Eastman Chemical Company, Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., The DOW Chemical Company, Quaker Chemical Corporation, Oxiteno, Rochester Midland Corporation, Emerson Electric, and Eastman Chemical Company, among others.



For the purpose of this report, Reports and Data have segmented the global Metal Cleaning Chemicals Market on the basis of Chemical Type, End-Use, Application, and region:



Chemical Type Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion; 2017-2027)

Aqueous

Solvent



End-Use Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion; 2017-2027)

Automotive

Construction

Manufacturing

Appliances and Utensils

Others



Application Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion; 2017-2027)

Steel

Copper

Aluminum

Others



Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion; 2017-2027)

North America

U.S

Canada

Europe

Germany

U.K

France

BENELUX

Rest of Europe

Asia Pacific

China

Japan

South Korea

Rest of APAC

Latin America

Brazil

Rest of LATAM

MEA

Saudi Arabia

UAE

Rest of MEA



The Metal Cleaning Chemicals Market report is updated with the latest economic scenario with the value, drivers, constraints, demand and supply ratio, production capacity, import/export status, growth rate, and others. Additionally, the report also undertakes SWOT Analysis and Porter's Five Forces Analysis to assess the leading companies.



Key Questions Answered in the Report:

Who are the prominent distributors, vendors, and manufacturers of the market?

What are the driving and restraining factors of the growth of Metal Cleaning Chemicals market throughout the forecast period?

What are the current and future market trends of the Metal Cleaning Chemicals market?

What are the expected opportunities for the companies and new entrants in the coming years?



Thank you for reading our report. For further details or to inquire about customization, please let us know and we will offer you the report as per your needs.



Table of contents

Chapter 1. Market Synopsis

1.1. Market Definition

1.2. Research Scope & Premise

1.3. Methodology

1.4. Market Estimation Technique



Chapter 2. Executive Summary

2.1. Summary Snapshot, 2019-2027



Chapter 3. Indicative Metrics



Chapter 4. Global Refinery Catalysts Market Segmentation & Impact Analysis

4.1. Global Refinery Catalysts Market Material Segmentation Analysis

4.2. Industrial Outlook

4.2.1. Market indicators analysis

4.2.2. Market drivers analysis

4.2.2.1. Favorable Government Regulations

4.2.2.2. Increasing Refinery Throughput

4.2.3. Market restraints analysis

4.2.3.1. Raw Material Volatility And Declining Crude Oil Prices

4.2.3.2. Lack of skilled labor during COVID-19

4.3. Technological Insights

4.4. Regulatory Framework

4.5. ETOP Analysis

4.6. Porter's Five Forces Analysis

4.7. Competitive Metric Space Analysis

4.8. Price trend Analysis

4.9. Customer Mapping

4.10. Covid-19 Impact Analysis

4.11. Global Recession Influence



Chapter 5. Global Refinery Catalysts Market By Material Insights & Trends

5.1. Material Dynamics & Market Share, 2019 & 2027

5.2. Zeolites

5.2.1. Market estimates and forecast, 2017  2027 (USD Billion)

5.2.2. Market estimates and forecast, By Region, 2017  2027 (USD Billion)

5.3. Metallic

5.3.1. Market estimates and forecast, 2017  2027 (USD Billion)

5.3.2. Market estimates and forecast, By Region, 2017  2027 (USD Billion)

5.4. Chemical Compounds

5.4.1. Market estimates and forecast, 2017  2027 (USD Billion)

5.4.2. Market estimates and forecast, By Region, 2017  2027 (USD Billion)

5.5. Others

5.5.1. Market estimates and forecast, 2017  2027 (USD Billion)

5.5.2. Market estimates and forecast, By Region, 2017  2027 (USD Billion)



Chapter 6. Global Refinery Catalysts Market By Application Insights & Trends



Chapter 7. Global Refinery Catalysts Market Regional Outlook



Chapter 8. Competitive Landscape



Chapter 9. Company Profiles

9.1. Clariant

9.1.1. Company Overview

9.1.2. Financial Performance

9.1.3. Technology Insights

9.1.4. Strategic Initiatives

9.2. Arkema

9.2.1. Company Overview

9.2.2. Financial Performance

9.2.3. Technology Insights

9.2.4. Strategic Initiatives

9.3. Zeolyst International

9.3.1. Company Overview

9.3.2. Financial Performance

9.3.3. Technology Insights

9.3.4. Strategic Initiatives

9.4. BASF SE

9.4.1. Company Overview

9.4.2. Financial Performance

9.4.3. Technology Insights

9.4.4. Strategic Initiatives

9.5. Chevron Corporation

9.5.1. Company Overview

9.5.2. Financial Performance

9.5.3. Technology Insights

9.5.4. Strategic Initiatives

9.6. Johnson Matthey

9.6.1. Company Overview

9.6.2. Financial Performance

9.6.3. Technology Insights

9.6.4. Strategic Initiatives

9.7. Exxon Mobil Corporation

9.7.1. Company Overview

9.7.2. Financial Performance

9.7.3. Technology Insights

9.7.4. Strategic Initiatives

9.8. Evonik Industries AG

9.8.1. Company Overview

9.8.2. Financial Performance

9.8.3. Technology Insights

9.8.4. Strategic Initiatives

9.9. DuPont

9.9.1. Company Overview

9.9.2. Financial Performance

9.9.3. Technology Insights

9.9.4. Strategic Initiatives

9.10. Albemarle Corporation

9.10.1. Company Overview

9.10.2. Financial Performance

9.10.3. Technology Insights

9.10.4. Strategic Initiatives



Continued..
Company expands its team while commemorating a quarter century of helping global brands deliver iconic digital experiences

HAMBURG, Germany and ARLINGTON, Va., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CoreMedia, developer of the agile content management and digital experience platform, CoreMedia Content Cloud, today announced its 25th anniversary as the technology engine behind many of the world's most iconic online brands. The company is capping this milestone by welcoming a new addition to its leadership team - Chief Marketing Officer, Gretchen Nemechek. With the help of this new leadership, the company will focus on expanding its global market presence and enhancing its core technology platform in 2021, delivering increased business flexibility, openness, affordability and faster time to value.

CoreMedia began in 1996 as a software project in the Computer Science department at the University of Science and Technology in Hamburg, Germany. Its founders included the company's current CEO, Soeren Stamer, his fellow student, CoreMedia Distinguished Engineer, Andreas Gawecki, and their academic advisors, Prof. Joachim W. Schmidt and Prof. Florian Matthes.

The company developed its advanced content management and brand orchestration engine by working with some of the world's most demanding and competitive organizations, including T-Mobile, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Emerson Electric, and the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada. It has brought these same capabilities - including composability, flexibility, scalability and speed - to a new generation of clients in the retail and fashion space including Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Under Armour, and Deckers Brands.

"As we enter our second quarter century as a company, I could not be prouder of the team and what we have accomplished," said Stamer. "But we would not have achieved any of it were it not for our amazing customers and partners. It is the effort of these iconic brands and allies that have really made this possible. As we move forward, the pace of change will only accelerate. As business spins faster and information is exchanged quicker than ever, we will have to collaborate even more closely to build the models that will sustain the next generation of brands and futureproof organizations."

The company's new Chief Marketing Officer, Gretchen Nemechek, comes to CoreMedia from SAP where she led Product Marketing for their Customer Experience Solutions and acted as SVP for Sales Learning Strategy, Enablement Programs and Content. Gretchen brings more than 20 years of experience in enterprise software, holding leadership roles in Marketing, Sales Enablement, Product Management, Product Marketing, Business Development, Channel Management, and Go-To-Market strategy. She is also passionate about advancing equality, diversity and inclusion in the workplace and the power of connected leadership.

"CoreMedia is in a very unique position in the market-having been one of the first content technology companies on the scene at the dawn of eCommerce," said Nemechek. "During the last 25 years, their platform and continuous innovation has set the tone for the digital experiences of some of the world's most iconic brands. In fact, CoreMedia has been a pretty well-kept secret among such brands."

"What attracted me to CoreMedia is their mission and the opportunity to bring their best-in-class digital experience platform to a broader range of brands across the globe," Nemechek added. "This is a company with a very loyal customer base and an amazingly talented team - with expertise and tenure in this industry that is difficult to match. I am thrilled to be joining CoreMedia at such a momentous point in their history and to help lead the strategy for driving ever higher levels of market awareness and customer satisfaction."

One of the first goals of the expanded leadership team will be a series of technology and business initiatives designed to drive innovation and growth - as well as to modernize the company's core software architecture and expand its global footprint - thus ensuring that the company is prepared to achieve even greater success in its next quarter century and beyond.

About CoreMedia AG

CoreMedia is the digital experience and content management engine behind today's most iconic online brands. Our flagship product, CoreMedia Content Cloud, is a flexible, composable Digital Experience Platform (DXP) built on an agile CMS and advanced DAM that enables leaders in all industries to orchestrate personalized experiences and deliver them to any channel - reliably, efficiently, and at enterprise scale. Marketers, merchandisers, and developers can work collaboratively and efficiently on omnichannel experiences that drive engagement, increase loyalty, improve brand visibility, and boost revenue. Leading global B2C companies (including Deckers Brands, Under Armour, Luxottica, PVH Corp, Finnair, and T-Mobile) as well as major B2B firms (Continental, Claas, Emerson, DMG-Mori) create world-class digital experiences powered by CoreMedia. For more information, or to set up a demo, visit us at www.coremedia.com. You can also follow us on LinkedIn, on Twitter @contentcloud, or read our blog at blog.coremedia.com.

Contact: Doug Heise

Phone: +1.415.371.0400

Email: doug.heise@coremedia.com
A ruthless killer who stabbed a mother-of-three in the chest and throat and left her to die in a pool of her own blood during a botched robbery has been found dead in his jail cell.

Scott Alan Murdoch was sentenced to life behind bars with a non-parole period of 36 years in May 2020 for stabbing Kylie Blackwood multiple times in her Pakenham home, in Melbourne's south-east, in August 2013.

He was also convicted for hammering a knife into the throat of defenseless grandmother Ilona Prohaska just three months prior.

At about 6am on Monday morning, the 43-year-old was found dead inside Melbourne Assessment Prison.

Scott Alan Murdoch (pictured) had a history of violence against women and was sentenced to life behind bars with a non-parole period of 36 years

Kylie Blackwood (pictured) was stabbed repeatedly in her own home and left for dead in 2013

The jail was plunged into emergency lockdown and his death will be investigated by homicide detectives, as is standard for all deaths inside prisons.

'The exact circumstances relating to the death have yet to be determined,' Victoria Police told Daily Mail Australia.

A source told the Herald Sun that Murdoch did not call for help before he died.

Little explanation has been provided as to why Murdoch butchered Mrs Blackwood in 2013, but detectives believe it may have been a robbery gone wrong.

During a pre-sentence hearing in March last year, his barrister gave some explanation as to how Murdoch felt, but no indication as to why he did it.

At about 6am on Monday morning, the 43-year-old was found dead inside Melbourne Assessment Prison (pictured)

'I know I've destroyed her [Ms Blackwood's] husband and kids' life. I'm sorry,' a letter penned by Murdoch stated.

'If I could take it back, I would. I hate myself for what has gone on.'

Mrs Blackwood's twin daughters Mia and Holly, now 18, made their own way home from school on August 1, 2013, when their mother never showed up, and found her dead on the couch.

Their gut wrenching victim impact statements were read to Murdoch during the hearing.

Kylie Blackwood's 11-year-old daughters walked home from school and found their mother (pictured) dead on the couch

'Images I will never be able to stop seeing, of her in agony, broke my heart in a million pieces,' Mia wrote.

'It hurts so deeply. It's unfair and it's heartbreaking.'

Holly spoke of her sheer terror and despair that awful day.

'You have taken away a mother and daughter bond that no-one can replace,' she stated.

'After doing what you did... how can you call yourself a human being?' I hope you suffer and get what's coming to you.'

Ms Blackwood is survived by her two daughters, her son and her husband Peter (pictured)

Just three months before Mrs Blackwood's (pictured) stabbing murder, he rung the doorbell of elderly woman Ilona Prohaska's house and struck as soon as she answered

Both daughters spoke of their futures without their mother  in particular their wedding days and the birth of children  in detailing their loss.

Their older brother, Chase, had urged Justice Dixon to 'bring justice to my family please'.

'No child should go through this,' he stated.

Just three months before he stabbed Mrs Blackwood, the killer rang the doorbell of elderly woman Ilona Prohaska's Endeavour Hills home and struck as soon as she answered.

In her basement, Murdoch bashed her head in and used a hammer to repeatedly drive a knife into his victim's neck before stabbing her all over her body.

When Murdoch fled, Ms Prohaska somehow managed to drag herself upstairs where she found her medical emergency device and alerted the authorities.

Pictured: Scott Murdoch being taken into the Victorian Supreme Court in Melbourne on August 8, 2019

Pictured: Kylie Blackwood's family leave the committal hearing for Scott Alan Murdoch in Melbourne on December 4, 2017

The now 81-year old continues to live in fear and told the court she had 'nothing to live for'.

A ten-year sentence was included in Murdoch's overall jail term for her horrific attack, which he did while on parole for attacking another woman.

Supreme Court Justice Jane Dixon described Murcdoch as a coward who had shown little remorse for his actions.

She said he was unlikely to be rehabilitated in jail and the community must be protected from him.

Murdoch would have been 78 by the time he was eligible for parole.
Burma Myanmar Regime Steps Up Arrests of Doctors as Strike Movement Takes Toll

Medics on strike in Yangon in March.

In its sweeping attempt to crack down on the countrys striking medics, the Myanmar military regime has opened lawsuits against 139 doctors under incitement laws in less than a week and is trying to arrest them for their refusal to work under its rule.

The juntas latest attack on the countrys striking medics began on Tuesday with the announcement of lawsuits against 19 doctors, including a director of the Health Ministry, for their encouragement of other government workers to join the Civil Disobedient Movement (CDM) while supporting the countrys shadow government formed by deposed lawmakers.

Since then, the regimes charge list against doctors had swelled to 139 as of Monday and is updated on a daily basis. The regime said there will be more to come. On the list so far are medical superintendents, specialists and assistant doctors who have been on strike at government hospitals in major cities like Yangon and Mandalay as well as provincial towns across the country.

According to the regimes daily announcement, the doctors have been charged under Section 505(a) of the Penal Code. It said, Attempts to arrest those who have been charged are now under way.

If arrested and found guilty, each doctor faces three years imprisonment.

While the charges and efforts to arrest them pose a threat to the doctors on the list, they are also a testament to how hard the regime has been hit by the medics CDM.

Following the coup on Feb. 1, many doctors, nurses and others in the countrys health sector initiated the CDM. They left the hospitals to take to the streets to condemn the takeover, demanded that the regime release the countrys detained leadersPresident U Win Myint and State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyiand denounced military rule.

Inspired by their counterparts in the countrys health sector, government staff from other ministries left their desks to join the CDM. Even major private banks have found it hard to operate as their staffs have joined the movement.

Doctors on strike told The Irrawaddy that the nationwide movement initiated and motivated by the healthcare sector has become a powerful weapon, making it impossible for the regime to govern the country.

Due to the movement, the regime has not received any income to run the machinery of the country, as many revenue-collection offices are closed and people have stopped paying taxes to the junta as part of the CDM.

The junta has been badly hit by the movement. They cant function any more, as all income has been stopped, while it has to pay its staff and other bills, said a surgeon at a Yangon hospital.

He added, The CDM is a kind of rope tying up the junta so that it cannot move. But, we cant depend only on the movement. We need other things to kill [the junta], the surgeon said.

The medics contribution to the CDM alone has had a real impact. In late February, coup leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing bemoaned that nearly one-third of Myanmars 1,262 public hospitals had not functioned for nearly three weeks.

He also accused the doctors and nurses on strike of being unethical and threatened to take action against them if they did not go back to work soon.

Caught off guard by the medics movement, the regime hastily opened their military hospitals to the public and sent their medical corps to local hospitals to fill the vacuum. They said they have treated more than 100,000 outpatients and nearly 5,000 serious cases, while delivering more than 9,200 babies from Feb. 5 to April 18. However, they still havent disclosed the daily patient numbers at their hospitals or how many medics in uniforms have been deployed at how many public hospitals across the country.

Despite the above figures, the senior generals warning in February and his latest legal campaign under Section 505(a) suggest the medics in uniform may not be able to cope with the overwhelming need for public healthcare, probably due to their limited facilities and human resources.

Doctors in the movement also said that the regimes ability to maintain the healthcare system is one of the main ways in which its governing of the country will be judged, and crucial to its public image.

But the junta has been unable to re-establish those sectors due to the CDM of healthcare workers and others, said a medic who is participating in the CDM in Mandalay.

That is one of the reasons that striking medical doctors are being targeted, he said.

In a recent press conference, regime spokesperson Major General Zaw Min Tun accused the medics on strike of killing people in cold blood by being absent from hospitals when patients were in need.

He may have turned a blind eye to one important fact, however.

Many doctors supporting the CDM have been providing free treatment for patients whose medical records are held with government hospitals at private and free clinics, despite ongoing harassment from the regime.

Also, many doctors and healthcare workers joining the CDM have set up charity clinics for those needing emergency treatment, and have gone undercover to treat patients wounded during the crackdowns on anti-regime protests.

Meanwhile, mobile medical teams and secret medical clinics including those set up by social organizations to provide medical treatment to peopleincluding wounded anti-regime protestershave been increasingly targeted with violence and arrests.

On April 5, junta forces raided a charity clinic in Sanchaung Township of Yangon and arrested four volunteer medical staffDr. Aung Kyaw Oo, Dr. Soe San Phyo, Dr. Chan Myae Zaw and Ma Khin Sus Tunalong with five other volunteers.

On April 2, Dr. Nay Myo, a physician providing free medical treatment, was also arrested by plainclothes police in Bago Region after leaving his clinic.

Over the past two months, at least six striking medics, including some providing free treatments to patients, were arrested by junta forces.

They [regime] will never win, no matter how much more they torture, suppress or arrest striking doctors and civil staff. Because the main ambition, to reject the regime totally, is firmly based in the hearts of those doctors and civil staff taking part in the CDM, said the doctor in Mandalay.



You may also like these stories:

Villagers Flee Heavy Fighting Between KIA and Myanmar Military

Thai PM Wont Join ASEAN Summit on Myanmar: Bangkok Post

Myanmar Juntas Internet Blackout Leaves Food Delivery Riders Struggling to Survive
Webinar: How to Get a Job in Canada, Brought to you by CanadaVisa and Scotiabank

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Mexico's President announced his plan to propose to U.S. President Joe Biden an extension of one of his welfare programs to Central America to curb migration and make migrants stay in their homeland countries.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador issued the statement on Sunday as the U.S. continues to experience a surge of migrants from Mexico and Central America crossing the border illegally.

It can be recalled that the Biden administration recently struck a deal with Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala to control the surge of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The three countries have placed more troops on their borders to stop and discourage Central American migrants from fleeing their home countries to seek asylum in the United States.

However, some migrant advocates are not in favor of the international deal, arguing that migrants fleeing their homes are entitled to be protected.

READ NEXT: Roberta Jacobson, Biden's Border Czar, Steps Down Amid Migrant Crisis

Mexico's President on His Welfare Programs Proposal

In a video message from Palenque in southern Mexico, Lopez Obrador said he wanted to extend his project called "Sembrando Vida," which translates to "Sowing Life" in English, Reuters reported.

The Sembrando Vida program aims to provide work and support for the agricultural sector in Central America, Al Jazeera reported. Lopez Obrador noted that the welfare program would not force people to migrate and help the environment at the same time.

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris recently talked with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, and they both agreed to address the root causes of immigration in the United States. Biden tapped harris to lead the efforts of the White House in addressing border issues last month.

Mexico President's Sembrando Vida for Migrants

Mexico's Ministry of Welfare is in charge of the Sembrando Vida. In Mexico, the program reinforces or supports the agricultural areas in the country that need it the most.

The said program is extended among 19 states of Mexico including Duarango, Campeche, Colima, Puebla, Tabasco, and Sinaloa. Currently, the project supports locals who have about 2.5 hectares of land in rural areas available for the agroforestry project.

Apart from the financial aid that Mexico awards to the benefactors of the welfare program, experts in the field will also work with the locals to share and impart knowledge with each other as they work on agroforestry production.

Reuters noted that migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras are driven by hunger and poverty as they attempt to cross the United States' borders.

Lopez Obrador noted that the program could create thousands of jobs across southern Mexico and the Central American nations.

He said that participants of the welfare program could also earn working visas for the U.S. after three years and eventually apply for U.S. citizenship after another three years. Lopez Obrador gave no further details.

According to an Associated Press report, more than 22,000 children were in U.S. government custody as of Thursday.

READ MORE: Pelosi Says Surge of Migrant Children At U.S.-Mexico Border Is a 'Humanitarian Crisis'

WATCH: Joe Biden Meets Mexican President Amid Migration Issues - From WION
Ballia : , April 19 (IANS) Three medical personnel, including two doctors, and their driver were injured after their car was attacked by a group of people when they had gone to give medicines to a Covid patient.

The incident took place at Paswan Chowk village in Ballia on Sunday and according to a complaint lodged at the Bairia police station, the medical team's vehicle was surrounded by about 60 people and was attacked.

Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP) Sanjay Yadav said. "The team had gone to the village to give Ghanshyam, a Covid patient, his medicines and check on his home isolation status." In his complaint, medical officer Neeraj Kumar Singh, who was injured in the incident, said around 60 persons, including women and children, surrounded our government vehicle, and attacked the team." The motive behind the attack is not yet known.

"Members of the team somehow managed to escape from there. Dr Neeraj Kumar Singh, Dr Amit Kumar Gautam, lab assistant Upendra Prasad and driver Lal Bahadur Yadav were injured," the ASP said.

On Jitendra has been arrested in this case.

Ballia district magistrate Aditi Singh said the administration is planning to book the accused under the stringent National Security Act (NSA).
Security forces kill at least one person and arrest dozens more nationwide between Sunday evening and Monday morning.

Myanmars military junta has charged more than 100 healthcare workers for their refusal to return to government hospitals in protest of the militarys violent crackdown on dissent over the Feb 1. coup, sources in the country told RFA.

For taking part in the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), the junta charged the healthcare professionals, including experienced doctors and specialists, with violating Section 505 (A) of Myanmars penal code for spreading dissent against the military.

Tens of thousands of physicians nationwide are participating in the CDM nationwide, with many still providing care to the people through unofficial channels.

As doctors, we want to provide medical treatment to the sick. We have gone through many years of schooling to study to become doctors, a doctor facing charges for her participation in the CDM told RFAs Myanmar Service.

The militarys arrests of doctors make it impossible for us to continue working. What has happened is unacceptable from any point of view, whether it is from a medical or human rights standpoint, she said.

The doctor, who requested anonymity for security reasons, worked at the 500-bed hospital in the western city of Sittwe. She is currently in hiding to avoid arrest and has been providing medical advice over the phone since refusing to work in the government-run facility.

Tay Za San, a medical doctor and protest leader in Myanmars second-largest city Mandalay, told RFA that the doctors refusal to work was a means to treat the country itself.

We are not sitting at home. Doctors and other medical personnel are joining in anti-military protest movements and helping people who need medical treatment from wherever we can, Tay Za San said

They have even joined protesters on the ground and picked up the bodies of those killed and injured. We are not just sitting at home relaxing, he said.

Myanmar has about 30,000 physicians, approximately 20,000 of whom work in government hospitals. Of those, an estimated 75 percent are participants in the CDM movement.

The junta has arrested more than 30 medical doctors for their involvement in the CDM. The military has killed four healthcare workers including a medical student.

A physician from the countrys largest city Yangon told RFA on condition of anonymity that the juntas security forces have opened fire on hospitals and threatened medical personnel with weapons.

We were forced at gunpoint to write false reports. For example, there was a protester on a motorcycle who they shot and killed, we were forced to write a death certificate that said he was killed in a motorcycle accident, the physician said.

For a man whose ribs were broken in brutal beatings, we were forced to write a report that said he broke his ribs by falling off a ladder, said the physician.

Among the 100 with arrest warrants are doctors from a 1,000-bed hospital in the captial Naypyidaw's Zabuthiri township who gave medical treatment to the first protester shot by security forces following the coup, Mya Thwe Thwe Khaing.

Police shot her in the head on Feb. 19 while she took part in protests. She died in the hospital later. Though the junta said of the incident that it had fired only rubber bullets, the medical team at the hospital said her injuries were from live ammunition.

Some medical personnel face punishment for refusing to treat patients loyal to the military. Among the doctors arrested was a pediatrician who refused to treat a child of a police officer.

Another doctor from Mandalay told RFA that the military is reporting incorrectly that hospitals are reopening.

Hospitals have not yet been reopened. The military is just saying they are, but they are not. No doctors are showing up and no patients are being seen, the Mandalay doctor said.

But in parts of the country some medical staff have returned to work.

Yangon General has resumed operations according to sources close to the hospital, but Mandalay General has not reopened. The State Administration Council (SAC) has threatened to suspend licenses of doctors found giving treatment at private hospitals.

A Yangon resident told RFA the shortage of doctors in government hospitals has driving up the price of treatment in private hospitals.

They say the people can go to military hospitals, but no one does. Only those who support the military go there. Everyone else goes to private hospitals, but those who cant afford it just take medicine at home, the resident said.

A Mandalay-based physician, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said military hospitals offer sub-par treatment.

The qualifications of the doctors at the military hospitals are not as good as the ones in public hospitals. The people do not want to go to the military hospitals, he said.

Another doctor in Yangon said there were not even enough medical staff in hospitals to ensure that certain vaccines were kept properly.

Measles and polio vaccinations have all stopped and we do not know when they can be restarted. The military has also confiscated all the COVID-19 vaccines, and no one can say whether these are still effective. One could say that the health system is totally down, said the Yangon doctor.

Despite junta threats and pressure, medical personnel involved in the CDM have declared that they will not return to work until a popularly elected civilian government returns to power.



Violence

Protesters defend themselves from the troops in Kale, Sagaing region, Myanmar March 28, 2021 in this picture taken March 28, 2021 obtained by REUTERS.

At least one person was killed and several others were injured across the country between Sunday evening and Monday Morning.

In the Mandalay region, security forces shot and killed 20-year-old Thein Min Soe in the city of Myingyan.

Sources told RFA that hospital officials reached out to a local aid group to retrieve Thein Min Soes body, saying that he had been shot by the military. RFA was not able to independently confirm how he was shot and killed.

A man who declined to be named told RFA that he witnessed some of the days violence in Myingyan.

Two more were wounded this morning. We were able to rescue one but there was no chance to get the other, so I dont know his condition, the man said.

There are police and soldiers at every corner, and no one dares to leave their houses. The situation is very bad. In Ward 6, they are now searching house to house, he said.

Residents said the army and police injured two others when they opened fire at some youth who were trying to rebuild barricades that had been removed by the army and police overnight.

As of Monday afternoon, security forces were removing barricades in Myingyans Wards 3 and 4.

Soldiers and police fired at random. They also started a fire that destroyed a house and four motorcycles parked there, a resident who saw the barricade removal operation told RFA.

Security forces injured two more men Sunday night as they cleared the barricades. Two more were injured Monday, bringing the total to six injured by shooting over a 24-hour period.

One of the wounded was rushed to Mandalay city at 11 a.m. Sunday and the rest were undergoing treatment in Myingyan, a local resident said.

The army and police also raided security cameras installed in some homes. Since the coup began Feb. 1, at least 23 Myingyan residents have been killed while protesting.

Meanwhile, the Ward Administration Office on Khine Shwewah Road in Ward No 10 (South) of Thaketa Township, Yangon, caught fire at around 1 p.m. Monday. The fire was put out by locals and did not spread to nearby houses. Its cause is currently unknown.

Arrests

Anti-coup protesters shout slogan with a banner reading ''Carry on revolution! We do not accept as the military slave,'' in Kamayut township of Yangon, Myanmar, Monday, April 19, 2021. Anti-coup protesters kept public demonstrations going despite the threat of lethal violence from security forces. Credit: RFA





In Yangons Insein township Monday, security forces arrested 14 youth.

A witness told RFA, we were taking a rest from the protest when military and police vehicles arrived from both ends of the road and arrested them. There must have been about 40. I didnt see much violence but 14 got nabbed.

As of Monday evening, the arrested youth were still at the Insein police station, sources said.

Police in Mandalay arrested 10 youths after crashing into their motorcycles in unmarked cars. Among the 10 were students from the All-Burma Federation of Students Unions (ABFSU).

The arrests occurred at about 8 p.m. Monday following a protest march that went smoothly earlier in the day involving 400 people.

In Mohnyin, Kachin State, two youths were arrested at around 9:30 a.m. Monday for protesting against the military council.

The authorities were already there in civilian clothes when we started the protests. One of the leading girls was arrested during the melee and we dont know where she is being held now, said a leader in the Mohnyin protest.

RFA was able to confirm the identities of the two as Myat Noe Wai, a senior math major at Myitkyina University, and protest leader Kyaw Myint Tun.

Since the Feb 1. coup, three residents of Mohnyin have been killed and 60 have been arrested.

Arrest warrants have been issued for 12 students from the Mohnyin University Students Union and Mohnyin Technology University Students Union, two protest leaders and a freelance journalist. All are charged with Section 505 (a) for defamation of the military.

In Mogok, Mandalay, police Sunday arrested Sai Wunna, a member of the Ta'ang Literary and Cultural Association, at around 10 p.m. in connection with anti-military protests, residents said.

Monday Morning, security forces searched for Aung Chan Thar Ward Administrator U Byar Lay, who had joined the CDM. They arrested his daughter Mary Oo when they could not find him.

Residents also said Aung Thein, a town elder, and his son, Joshua, were also arrested. Two people were killed, and seven others were injured in the violence in Mogok on Saturday, April 17.

The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), a Thailand-based Myanmar NGO, says that as of Monday, 738 people have been killed and a 3,261 people have been detained by the military regime.

Reported by RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
NEW YORK, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- WeissLaw LLP is investigating possible breaches of fiduciary duty and other violations of law by the board of directors of Sterling Bancorp ("Sterling" or the "Company") (NYSE: STL) in connection with the proposed acquisition of the Company by Webster Financial Corporation ("WBS") (NYSE: WBS). Under the terms of the merger agreement, Sterling shareholders will receive 0.463 shares of WBS common stock for each Sterling share that they own, representing implied per-share merger consideration of approximately $26.56 based upon WBS's April 16, 2021 closing price of $57.37. Upon consummation of the transaction, current WBS shareholders will own approximately 50.4% of the combined company and Sterling shareholders will own approximately 49.6% on a fully adjusted basis. The transaction is valued at approximately $10.3 billion.

If you own Sterling shares and wish to discuss this investigation or have any questions concerning this notice or your rights or interests, visit our website:

http://www.weisslawllp.com/STL/

Or please contact:

Joshua Rubin, Esq.

WeissLaw LLP

1500 Broadway, 16th Floor

New York, NY 10036

(212) 682-3025

(888) 593-4771

[email protected]

WeissLaw LLP is investigating whether (i) Sterling's board of directors acted in the best interests of Company shareholders in agreeing to the proposed transaction, (ii) the merger consideration adequately compensates Sterling's shareholders, and (iii) all information regarding the sales process and valuation of the transaction will be fully and fairly disclosed.

WeissLaw LLP has litigated hundreds of stockholder class and derivative actions for violations of corporate and fiduciary duties. We have recovered over a billion dollars for defrauded clients and obtained important corporate governance relief in many of these cases. If you have information or would like legal advice concerning possible corporate wrongdoing (including insider trading, waste of corporate assets, accounting fraud, or materially misleading information), consumer fraud (including false advertising, defective products, or other deceptive business practices), or anti-trust violations, please email us at [email protected]

SOURCE WeissLaw LLP

Related Links

http://weisslawllp.com


(L-R) U.S. Supreme Court Justices John G. Roberts, Stephen G. Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Neil M. Gorsuch attend the State of the Union address in Washington D.C. on Jan. 30, 2018. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Supreme Court Rejects GOP Challenge to Pennsylvania Election Rules

The Supreme Court declined on April 19 to hear a lawsuit regarding a Pennsylvania voting dispute nearly six months after the Nov. 3, 2020, election.

The court rejected an appeal from a Republican congressional candidates unsuccessful challenge of the states mail-in ballot initiatives, which is the final Nov. 3-related action to be dismissed related to Pennsylvanias voting laws.

In a two-line order (pdf), the Supreme Court wrote: The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit with instructions to dismiss the case as moot.

The decision is the Supreme Courts latest rejection of a slew of election lawsuits that came before and after the Nov. 3 election, as President Donald Trump and his Republican allies attempted to challenge the results.

The suit, which was filed by GOP congressional candidate Jim Bognet, concerned whether the Pennsylvania Supreme Court exceeded its authority by allowing greater access to early and mail-in voting in Pennsylvania, which, he argued, circumvented the state General Assemblys authority. Four individual voters joined Bognet, who ultimately lost his congressional bid.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court had ruled in 2020 that extended mail-ballots could come in until three days after Election Day.

Trump and other Republicans have said that President Joe Biden had unfairly benefited from relaxed mail-in balloting measures that were implemented due to the CCP virus pandemic.

Bognets case was initially dismissed by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, saying that neither Bognet nor the other challengers had the legal right to bring the case.

This case presents an opportunity for the court to resolve these issues in an orderly manner on full briefing and argument, rather than on the shadow docket under the time pressures of an ongoing election, David Thompson, a lawyer for Bognet, said in court documents.

Thompson then argued that the state Supreme Court rewrote election deadlines and said that the Constitution gives authority to state legislatures and not state judges to handle federal election laws.

Although Election Day has passed, the disputes around these questions are not going away, Thompson said. This Courts intervention is needed to resolve splits in the lower courts. Federal courts of appeals have reached directly contrary holdings for which parties have standing to bring claims under the Elections.

Robert Wiygul, a lawyer for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, told the Supreme Court that they shouldnt intervene in the case, adding that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court responded during the CCP virus pandemic and amid U.S. Postal Service delays.

It is undisputed that the total number of ballots challenged by petitioners is less than the margin of victory in each of Pennsylvanias federal races. Further, the vote totals certified by Pennsylvania do not include any of the ballots to which petitioners take exception, he wrote (pdf).

The case is: 20-740 Jim Bognet, et al. v. Degraffenreid, Acting Sec. of Pa.


Around 8,800 pension savers and others with millions of pounds trapped in a failed investment scheme will be paid approximately 120 million from the Government.

The Treasury said that investors in London Capital & Finance (LCF) would be able to claim back up to 80% of the money they had invested in the collapsed scheme, after a review found that authorities had failed to properly protect consumers.

Payments will be capped at 68,000, meaning that approximately 97% of LCF investors will get the full 80% that the compensation scheme offers.

This has been a very difficult time for LCF bondholders, many of whom are elderly and have lost their hard-earned savings, said Economic Secretary to the Treasury John Glen.

However, the situation regarding LCF is unique and exceptional and the Government has decided to establish a compensation scheme for LCF bondholders in this instance.

The scheme appropriately balances the interests of both bondholders and the taxpayer and will ensure that all LCF bondholders receive a fair level of compensation in respect of the financial loss they have suffered.

The Government had said in December that it was considering a scheme which would help compensate some of the small investors who were left out of pocket when LCF collapsed in January 2019.

It made the promise after a report by former High Court judge Dame Elizabeth Gloster, who criticised failures at the Financial Conduct Authority.

Investments of around 237 million owned by 11,625 bondholders were trapped in 2019 when LCF collapsed.

Investors were first told they would be ineligible to claim any money from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) which protects some retail investments.

However officials at the FSCS later re-assessed and found that some of the investors might be eligible to get up to 80,000 back.

After a long process, which left many investors in limbo, FSCS has now paid out more than 57 million to around 2,800 investors.

The new Treasury scheme will help those who were not covered by FSCS.
SAN DIEGO, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CliniComp launched a new brand and a complete health records solution that is perfectly suited to meet the needs of community hospitals and healthcare systems. CliniComp's new product, ORIGINTM, marks the transition to a complete product offering. ORIGIN's architectural framework sets the data free, continually adapting and dissolving boundaries, resulting in advanced analytics and a lifetime patient record.

Hospital costs are increasing, and the traditional status quo of obsolete and overpriced technology is no longer acceptable. To stay competitive, organizations need a healthcare technology disruptor that improves outcomes and revenue while decreasing costs. CliniComp's ORIGIN is that disruptor. ORIGIN is a cost-effective, integrated turnkey system designed for clinicians by clinicians. It is focused on streamlining workflows to enhance usability and improve overall outcomes.

"With the release of ORIGIN EHR, CliniComp sets a new standard of functionality. It represents real-time clinical and financial metrics combined with change management tools that result in continuously improved population and financial outcomes," said Chris Haudenschild, chairman and CEO of CliniComp. "Our system maintains the highest levels of adaptability, performance and reliability enjoyed by our customers for decades."

What sets CliniComp apart

Adaptable, interoperable architecture  Ever-changing data across time and place will not break the informational structure of the system allowing for seamless, comprehensive, real-time data viewing of a population or patient.

 Ever-changing data across time and place will not break the informational structure of the system allowing for seamless, comprehensive, real-time data viewing of a population or patient. Comprehensive solution  One single global management system supports the needs of clinicians, pharmacy, radiology, and laboratories.

 One single global management system supports the needs of clinicians, pharmacy, radiology, and laboratories. Unparalleled, reliable performance  Redundant, scalable servers support virtually no downtime.

 Redundant, scalable servers support virtually no downtime. Secure, layered protection  The system exceeds the most stringent U.S. government security requirements and syncs with redundant local and remote servers.

 The system exceeds the most stringent U.S. government security requirements and syncs with redundant local and remote servers. Commitment to ROI  CliniComp is upfront and transparent about every service to help improve the overall outcomes-to-cost ratio. There are no hidden costs for data acquisition, custom configurations, or ongoing support.

 CliniComp is upfront and transparent about every service to help improve the overall outcomes-to-cost ratio. There are no hidden costs for data acquisition, custom configurations, or ongoing support. Dedicated, dependable support  From implementation to ongoing operation, CliniComp's customer support team of subject matter experts is available 24/7 for any client need.

"User-centered design makes CliniComp different. Their solution provides a one-stop shop for everything I need to see and do," said Claibe Yarbrough, M.D., Chief Pulmonary and Critical Care, National Program Director, VHA North Texas Health Care System. "I can review massive amounts of data in an intuitive dashboard and generate detailed clinical notation. The responsiveness of the CliniComp team is really outstanding."

About CliniComp

CliniComp, a global healthcare tech provider for almost 4 decades, helps organizations make a difference in the communities they serve. As hospital operating costs continue to rise, CliniComp's ORIGIN enables clients to be more competitive by providing immediate and ongoing improvements to clinical and financial outcomes that are continually measured and managed in real-time. ORIGIN's core technology offers interoperability that adapts to everchanging data across disparate systems and devices. Designed by clinicians for clinicians, each tailored solution is backed by an unrivaled, decades-long track record of performance and reliability, with virtually no downtime  even in the most complex hospital environments. With customers supported globally 24/7, we offer fast deployment, competitive cost of ownership and full support from a company you can trust. For more information, visit www.clinicomp.com and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn.

Contact: Rita Haudenschild, 858-546-8202, [email protected]



SOURCE CliniComp, Intl.

Related Links

http://www.clinicomp.com


Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 19)  The Far Eastern University High School has condemned "in the strongest terms" reports of sexual harassment involving some of its faculty members which have surfaced on social media.

The school issued the statement on Monday, saying its administration "takes these claims seriously."

"We strongly urge our students to report these kinds of incidents to our Human Resources Office by sending an email along with supporting evidence to hr@feuhighschool.edu.ph, so these matters may be handled accordingly," it said.

It added students may also seek assistance from their respective guidance counselors. The FEU high school assured that the identities of the parties involved shall be strictly kept confidential.

"We assure the FEU High School Community that this matter is one that we take very seriously, and all efforts are being made to maintain a safe school environment free from any gender-based sexual harassment," it added.

#FEUHSDoBetter has trended on Twitter after members of the high school, including alumni, shared multiple allegations of sexual harassment. Several of these claims tagged some teachers as perpetrators, who groom students before taking advantage of them.

A number of Twitter users have also criticized the institution for supposedly falling short of protecting its students and in implementing appropriate actions even after some victims have come forward.

On the other hand, the FEU High School Student Government slammed the reports of sexual harassment on students.

We unequivocally condemn the alleged sexual misconduct and acts of inappropriateness by select FEU High School employees, both former and current, read the statement.

Arrangements and conventions are in place for the appropriate filing of reports of such malicious incidents [] We call for accountability and justice to engage in efforts to inquire upon the issue and to effect changes in our system, it added.
Kim Kardashian landed back in Los Angeles amid reports estranged husband Kanye West is 'super annoyed' that fans think she was the one to initiate the divorce.

The 40-year-old reality star was seen exiting a private jet on Saturday wearing a black halter maxi dress after a short trip to Miami in which she attended the star-studded grand opening for the Goodtime Hotel.

No doubt it has been an interesting time in the life of the KKW Beauty founder as a source for Page Six said on Monday that her 43-year-old rapper estranged husband is 'super annoyed that the story is being constantly presented as her divorcing him.'

Scroll down for video

Interesting: Kim Kardashian landed back in Los Angeles amid reports estranged husband Kanye West is 'super annoyed' that fans think she was the one to initiate the divorce

Ouch: No doubt it has been an interesting time in the life of Kardashian, 40, as a source for Page Six said on Monday that estranged husband Kanye, 43, is 'super annoyed that the story is being constantly presented as her divorcing him,' they are seen together in November 2019

The insider - who was said to have noted the Kardashian's family's 'huge spin machine ' - added: 'Actually it was him saying for a year that they have nothing in common except the kids and he wanted out.

'She pulled all the stops to try to save the marriage.'

The source goes on to claim that West let Kardashian 'file first in order to give her dignity.'

This comes just a week after West finally responded to estranged wife Kim's February 19th divorce petition, asking for joint custody of their four children.

Jetsetting: The 40-year-old reality star was seen exiting a private jet on Saturday wearing a black halter maxi dress after a short trip to Miami

Squad goals: Kim had attended the star-studded grand opening of the Goodtime Hotel in Miami; Pharrell Williams, David Beckham, Kim , Victoria Beckham, David Grutman, and Isabela Grutman are seen left to right

The rapper/fashion designer's filings are practically the same as his reality star ex's, according to TMZ, with West asking for joint legal and physical custody of North, seven, Saint, five, Chicago, three, and Psalm, almost two.

Joint custody would not necessarily mean a 50/50 arrangement, with Kim, likely to be their primary caretaker.

Going forward, the couple almost certainly work out an arrangement to be approved by the court.

Split: This comes just a week after West finally responded to estranged wife Kim's February 19th divorce petition, asking for joint custody of their four children. They're seen in March 2020 above

As previously reported, the pair are committed to co-parenting.

Neither Kanye or Kim - both Forbes billionaires - will seek spousal support. Both have agreed to pay for their own legal fees.

A prenup is already in place, likely providing a strong framework for how the pair will divide their assets.

Interestingly, neither party indicated a date of separation in their paperwork.

Mommy: Joint custody does not necessarily mean 50/50, with Kim likely to act as primary caretaker of North, seven, Saint, five, Chicago, three, and Psalm, almost two

Kardashian has hired top Hollywood divorce lawyer Laura Wasser, reportedly the inspiration for Laura Dern's Oscar-winning role in Marriage Story.

The attorney also represented her when ending her second marriage to husband Kris Humphries, which lasted only 72 days. Prior to that the star was wed to producer Damon Thomas from 2000 to 2004.

According to TMZ, Kim may get to hold on to the family's Hidden Hills home so as not to uproot the children.

End of the road: Kim finally filed for divorce this February after about a month of rumors that she and Kanye West were on the verge of breaking up; pictured in 2019

Kim officially filed for divorce back on February 19th, with sources saying it had been months since she and Kanye last spoke.

'It's gotten to the point where they haven't spent time together as a married couple in months,' a source told E! News in January, before things were made official.

'They've seen each other for the sake of the kids but have been living separately. Kim knows the marriage is over. She's known for a while.'
Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Company Ltd was fined Rs.10 lakh by the insurance regulator for violation of the Insurance Act and its Motor Insurance Service Provider (MISP) guidelines.

The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) in its order has said Bajaj Allianz General had solicited 2,214 motor insurance policies between November 2017 - January 2018 involving a premium of about Rs 1.44 crore.

The regulator had said the company had sold the policies through 90 unregistered entities.

Exercising its powers under Section 105C of the Insurance Act the IRDAI levied a penalty of Rs 10 lakh on Bajaj Allianz General.

According to IRDAI, the penalty should be paid online after debiting the company shareholder's account.

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.
Montreal group has a plan to combat antisemitism, which is on the rise amid pandemic
"Over the years, the Toyota Dream Car Art Contest has evolved from an art competition to an opportunity for children to bring forward their world-changing ideas," said Larry Hutchinson, President and CEO of Toyota Canada and one of this year's Canadian judges. "I'm truly impressed by their ideas  from making our planet more sustainable, to fighting virus and bacteria, to making the world more inclusive through physical accessibility."

Hundreds of young Canadians shared their inspirational and innovative designs for a 'dream car' to help make the world a better place, and three finalists were chosen in each category:

Under 8 Years Old

Yuffie Chen (age 6, Vancouver, BC ). Yuffie's "Weather Car" not only forecasts the weather ("sunshine, snow, rain, wind, rainbows or lightning"), but also flies around the world to protect it from global warming. The "Weather Car" delivers snow to the Arctic to rescue polar bears and rain to the Amazon to extinguish forest fires.





Yuffie's "Weather Car" not only forecasts the weather ("sunshine, snow, rain, wind, rainbows or lightning"), but also flies around the world to protect it from global warming. The "Weather Car" delivers snow to the Arctic to rescue polar bears and rain to the Amazon to extinguish forest fires. Emily Hao (age 6, Oakville, ON ). Emily's entry  "The Shopping Car" - makes shopping more accessible for everyone by allowing them to fly around stores to collect items. It comes with an "auto-arm grabber" which helps reach items in high places and carry heavy goods.





Emily's entry  "The Shopping Car" - makes shopping more accessible for everyone by allowing them to fly around stores to collect items. It comes with an "auto-arm grabber" which helps reach items in high places and carry heavy goods. Bellina Man (age 6, Maple, ON ). Bellina's entry  "Planet Forerunner"  turns space debris into new and livable planets. "Planet Forerunner" also brings hope to humans on Earth, as we look to travel, explore and live on new planets in the future.

8 to 11 Years Old

Chantel Mei (age 11, Calgary, AB ). Chantel's entry  "Ying Yang"  turns bad into good to clean and protect our ocean and wildlife. "Ying Yang" sucks in polluted water and breaks down debris to create marine wildlife.





Chantel's entry  "Ying Yang"  turns bad into good to clean and protect our ocean and wildlife. "Ying Yang" sucks in polluted water and breaks down debris to create marine wildlife. Shaivee Bhatt (age 11, Brampton, ON ). Shaivee's "BeeMobile" takes care of the bees that play a vital role in our ecosystem. It keeps harmful pesticides away from the bees so they can pollinate flowers, grow honey and "live a sweet long life".





Shaivee's "BeeMobile" takes care of the bees that play a vital role in our ecosystem. It keeps harmful pesticides away from the bees so they can pollinate flowers, grow honey and "live a sweet long life". Lindsay Qui Ru Lin (age 8, Vancouver, BC ). Lindsay's "Back to the Ecology" is a turtle-shaped underwater vehicle that offers refuge and fresh water to fish, mammals and other marine wildlife. The "Back to Ecology" vehicle also helps restore our oceans by removing garbage from our waters and giving our animals a pollution-free home.

12 to 15 Years Old

Nathalie Dai (age 14, Vancouver, BC ). Nathalie's entry  "Sportecc" - stands for "sport, electric charging car". "Sportecc" is powered by human exercise, "a renewable energy source", and motivates people to live a healthier lifestyle.





Nathalie's entry  "Sportecc" - stands for "sport, electric charging car". "Sportecc" is powered by human exercise, "a renewable energy source", and motivates people to live a healthier lifestyle. Mike Huang (age 12, Vancouver, BC ). Mike's "OALPS Explorer" stands for "oceanic, animal life preservation society". The "OALPS Explorer" allows humans to explore our oceans, and combines with "med-bots" programmed to help injured animals.





Mike's "OALPS Explorer" stands for "oceanic, animal life preservation society". The "OALPS Explorer" allows humans to explore our oceans, and combines with "med-bots" programmed to help injured animals. Harvey Jiang (age 12, Scarborough, ON ). Harvey's "Virus Be Gone" is a mobile airborne disease exterminator to save society from pandemics by purifying our air. The vehicle's three-filter engine sucks in harmful air and converts it into clean air, while a UV light adds an extra layer of protection by killing any remaining bacteria.

A panel of distinguished Canadian judges was tasked with assessing hundreds of entries from kids across Canada. In addition to Hutchinson, this year's Canadian judges included:

Jennifer Flanagan - CEO of Actua

- CEO of Actua Petrina Gentile - automotive journalist, children's book author and publisher

- automotive journalist, children's book author and publisher Buzz Bishop - journalist, broadcaster and blogger at CyberBuzz Media

Caitlin Keeley - Executive Creative Director at Dentsu McGarryBowen

Here's what the judges had to say about the submissions to this year's contest:

I am so inspired by these young artists and inventors. They put an incredible amount of thought, creativity, heart and talent into their visions of what their 'dream car of the future' will look like. It was amazing to see their imaginations interpret how mobility can help solve our most pressing global challenges and create a sustainable future.

- Jennifer Flanagan, CEO, Actua

Amazing artistry, creativity, and unique perspectives, all focusing on timely subject matter - from viruses to environmental issues - in beautifully created cars of the future.

- Petrina Gentile, Canadian Automotive Journalist, Children's Book Author and Publisher

This year's entries really showed a reflection of our times. As always, tapping into the imagination of youth is a remarkable way to peek at what our future holds. I can't wait to see what they innovate next!

- Buzz Bishop, Journalist, Broadcaster, Dad Blogger

There were so many inventive entries, it was very hard to pick winners. Kids have the best ideas and the most fun. I hope everyone who entered keeps drawing and creating imaginative concepts for a better world and future.

- Caitlin Keeley, Executive Creative Director, Dentsu McGarryBowen

The nine Canadian finalists will now be entered into the World Finals of the contest for a chance to win a prize valued at $15,000 USD. Each finalist will receive a $250 online retail gift card to KiwiCo.

First held in 2004 and now one of the world's largest global art contests for children, the Toyota Dream Car Art contest invites future artists, designers and engineers to share their ideas about the future of mobility.

For more information about the Toyota Dream Car Art Contest, visit www.toyota.ca/dreamcarartcontest and to see the winning artwork, visit the Toyota Canada Newsroom.

About Toyota Canada Inc.

Toyota Canada Inc. (TCI) is the exclusive Canadian distributor of Toyota and Lexus vehicles. Toyota has sold over six million vehicles in Canada through a national network of 286 Toyota and Lexus dealerships. Toyota is dedicated to bringing safety, quality, dependability, and reliability to the vehicles Canadians drive and the service they receive. TCI's head office is in Toronto, with regional offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal and Halifax, and parts distribution centres in Clarington and Vancouver. Toyota also operates two manufacturing facilities in Canada. Having produced more than nine million vehicles, popular Canadian models built at these facilities include Toyota RAV4, Toyota RAV4 Hybrid, Lexus RX 350 and RX 450h hybrid. Recent investments at its facilities in Ontario will allow for increased production of the top-selling Toyota RAV4 and RAV4 Hybrid models for the North American market.

SOURCE Toyota Canada Inc.

For further information: Nirali Raval, Corporate Communications Consultant, Toyota Canada Inc., [email protected]

Related Links

http://www.toyota.ca


Highlights Pixel Buds A is reportedly coming.

It will be an affordable version of the Pixel Buds.

It might ditch the signature swipe to adjust the volume feature.

Google is working on quite a few products now, including the Pixel 6, Pixel 5a, Pixel Watch and will also be releasing Android 12 update. Now we hear reports about affordable Pixel Buds in the making. A new report says that these TWS earbuds will be dubbed as Google Pixel Buds A.

This approach is similar to what we have seen from Google in the smartphone space. The software giant releases affordable A series smartphones cutting down a few corners of their flagship lineup.

To remind you, Google released its first wireless TWS Pixel Buds back in 2017, which was updated last year. The 2020 version of the Pixel Buds received a lot of praise, but it was definitely a costly purchase at $179, and not everyone could afford it.

In response to which Google is working on Pixel Buds A, which is expected to follow the same design language as the Pixel Buds but will come at a much lower price range. Now that the Pixel Buds A is in the launch pipeline, we decided to stack everything we know so far about the Pixel Buds A. 9to5Google first reported that Google might call its new earbuds Pixel Buds A.

Pixel Buds A features

--The Pixel Buds A, as hinted before, will look akin to the Pixel Buds. An FCC listing with GPY2 model number popped up to reveal that the upcoming Pixel Buds A measure 27 x 20 x 15mm, which is almost the same as the Pixel Buds, making us believe that there's no change, at least on the design front.

--Further, we are informed that the Pixel Buds A will ship in two colour options, all white and forest green option. The charging case will also look similar to what we have seen in the past but in two new colours matching the earbuds, i.e. White and Green.

--While the 2020 variant had a prominent black accent over the charging case and the earbuds, the Pixel Buds will feature a similar colour accent throughout.

Photo Credit- 9to5Google, Pixel Buds A revealed in a Google Nest email

--Interestingly, Google also revealed the Pixel Buds A in an email to those on the Google Nest mailing list. The image showcases the upcoming Pixel Buds A in a green colour option. Another noticeable thing in the picture is that the charging indicator has moved to the top of the charging case, unlike the Pixel Buds, which had the charging indicator below closer to the charging port.

--Another leak coming up suggests that Google Pixel Buds A might ditch the swipe to adjust the volume feature. This has been again discovered by 9to5Google while decompiling the latest Pixel Buds app version (1.0.367372739). It is also found that the upcoming buds are being referred to as "type-two", whereas the previous Pixel Buds were referred to as "type-one". Further, the code reveals that the Pixel Buds A will not have a charging indicator inside the case, which is in line with the leaked picture of the Pixel Buds A. Finally, it also reveals that Pixel Buds A will not have volume controls on the earbuds themselves.

Photo Credit - 9to5Google, Pixel Buds A on the left and Pixel Buds on the right

--The touch controls are meant to stay on the Pixel Buds A too. As per a report, the touch controls will be available for both media controls and Google Assistant.

--Most important, Google is likely to fix the connectivity issue on the Pixel Buds A. The last iteration of the Pixel Buds was prone to frequent disconnection issues, and Google is making some changes to fix this in their upcoming model. While these new Pixel Buds use the same Bluetooth bands as the current generation, the power output is significantly higher  8mW/16mW on 2020 Pixel Buds versus 13.24mW/19.82mW on this new model, i.e. the Pixel Buds A. This should help boost the signal strength and fix this issue.

--Some corners will indeed be cut down on the upcoming Pixel Buds A to keep its pricing down. We are still unsure what those will be and hope that more information pops up in future leaks.

Pixel Buds A India launch

The last Pixel Buds were announced in the Made by Google event in 2019. However, it was released in April 2020. Through which we can predict that we could hear about the Pixel Buds during the Google IO slated to take place between May 18-20. However, other reports suggest that it will be revealed later in Q2 when the Pixel Phones arrive.

Pixel Buds A India price

Currently, there's no information around the pricing of the Pixel Buds. However, Pixel Buds recently received a price cut of $50, bringing the price down to $129, which makes us expect that the Pixel Buds may start shipping at a starting price of $120, around Rs 9,000 in India.
Jimmy Lai, founder of the media group Next Digital, was sentenced to 14 months in prison on April 16 for organising unauthorized assemblies in late August, 2019. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) strongly condemns the sentencing of Lai and calls for his immediate release.

Jimmy Lai arrives at the Court of Final Appeal in Hong Kong for a bail hearing on February 9, 2021. Credit: ISAAC LAWRENCE / AFP

On April 1, Jimmy Lai Chee-ying and six other pro-democracy campaigners were found guilty of organising and taking part in an unauthorised assembly on August 18, 2019.

On April 7, Lai, along with Lee Cheuk-yan, the general secretary of the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions, and Yeung Sum, a local legislator, pleaded guilty for taking part in an unauthorised assembly on August 31, 2019.

It was the first time that Lai, who has been detained since December in a separate national security trial, received a prison sentence. In addition to Lai, the other nine pro-democracy campaigners received jail time or suspended sentences for taking part in the unauthorised assemblies.

The two protests in August 2019 were part of a series of demonstrations and assemblies in protest against police brutality and the now withdrawn anti-extradition law.

A critic of the Chinese Communist Partys encroachment on Hong Kongs autonomy and civil liberty, Lai has faced repeated arrests and prosecutions over the past year for his involvement in the 2019 protest movement and democratic activism. Lai has also been charged with collusion with foreign forces under the national security law and accused of conspiracy to assist an offender and fraud.

The IFJ said: Freedom of expression and assembly are enshrined principles in the Sino-British Joint Declaration and Hong Kongs Basic Law. The sentencing and punishment of pro-democracy leaders who took part in peaceful demonstrations is a clear attack on the fundamental rights of the people of Hong Kong. The IFJ calls for all charges against Lai to be dropped and demands he be released immediately."
PETALING JAYA, Malaysia and IQUIQUE, Chile, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Atacama Bio Natural Products S.A. ("Atacama Bio") and Nexus Wise Sdn Bhd ("Nexus Wise") announce an exclusive distribution partnership to commercialize NatAxtin branded Astaxanthin products in Malaysia and Singapore

As a leading nutraceutical company in Asia, Nexus Wise specializes in supplying remarkable natural ingredients. The partnership with Atacama Bio will expand its portfolio with NatAxtin, an Astaxanthin range of products sustainably produced in the Atacama Desert in Chile.

Atacama Bio Natural Products

"This is a significant milestone for our company. Nexus Wise's current prime product is produced in a way that mimics its natural growing process, the same concept behind the production of NatAxtin. Having an alignment on what we believe is the most important differentiation of a natural product makes our collaboration a solid one," declared Jose Luis Arenas, Founder CEO of Atacama Bio.

Atacama Bio's proprietary production process cultures Haematococcus pluvialis, taking advantage of the unique and ideal environmental conditions of the Atacama Desert to create a product "Made as nature intended." The same propitious conditions allow Atacama Bio to have highly cost-effective, unparalleled production capacity.

Chris Tan, Executive Director of Nexus Wise, stated, "At Nexus, we demand more than just being a healthy ingredients distributor. Our mission is to nourish billions of lives worldwide, requiring a committed partner to put this to work. Both Atacama Bio and Nexus have been acknowledged for their innovation and share a common interest in developing high-quality products supported by strong clinical evidence. We are therefore more than delighted to begin our collaboration with Atacama Bio on shaping a better and healthier world."

Natural Astaxanthin is known as "The King of Carotenoids" for its potent antioxidant activity. The parties will actively seek growth of the regional Astaxanthin market with NatAxtin range of products, including oleoresin, microencapsulated biomass, and cold-water-dispersible formats.

ABOUT ATACAMA BIO NATURAL PRODUCTS S.A.

Atacama Bio Natural Products S.A. is a private biotechnology corporation based in Chile that cultures Haematococcus pluvialis to extract NAXA verified Astaxanthin, the most potent antioxidant for healthy ingredients and supplements. The company's name comes after the surrounding Atacama Desert, world-famous as an astronomer's paradise because of its pristine atmosphere. Along with the highest solar irradiance in the world and access to pure underground water from the Andes Mountains, these privileged conditions translate into a cost-efficient, sustainable, and closer-to-natural growth of Haematoccocus pluvialis. We produce Astaxanthin as nature intended.

For additional information, please contact:

Tomas Arenas

VP Global Marketing

Atacama Bio Natural Products S.A.

www.atacamabionatural.com

Phone: +1 425 442 6432

Email: [email protected]

ABOUT NEXUS WISE SDN BHD

Nexus Wise is a science based healthcare organization with HALAL, GMP and ISO 9001: 2015 certified in delivering Healthcare solutions. We emphasize on a combination between Nature, Science and Innovation, art of blending resources from the nature with modern sciences to introduce range of comprehensive innovations for the Food & Beverages and Nutraceuticals industry. We supply not only raw materials, processing, quality, innovative ingredients, our solutions address the world's biggest concerns of to lead a healthier lifestyle while creating societal, environmental and economical value for our society.

For additional information and sales inquiries in Malaysia and Singapore, please contact:

Angelene Ong

Marketing Specialist

www.nexuswise.com

Tel: +603-7728 1637 / +6013 386 1665

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Atacama Bio Natural Products

Related Links

http://www.atacamabionatural.com


Homeschool students could get more educational and co-curricular opportunities in public schools under a bill that is advancing in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.

A bill, sponsored by Rep. Jesse Topper, R-Bedford County, would require school districts to allow a student who resides in their district and is enrolled in a home education program to take up to four academic courses in the district. It also would allow a home educated student to participate in activities such as band or orchestra that have an academic class attached to them as well as in a career and technical education program.

The bill passed the House Education Committee by a party-line 15-10 vote on Monday. It now is positioned for further consideration in the House of Representatives.

Topper, a graduate of a home education program, said some districts already provide these educational opportunities to the states approximate 25,000 homeschooled students but not all do. He said his bill seeks to add consistency to the process.

Rep. Mark Longietti, D-Mercer County, said the legislation would bring a sea change to the states educational landscape. He said school districts have the option of allowing students in home education programs to take district-offered academic courses but if this bill was enacted, We are now mandating it.

Further, Longietti, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said it could open the door for homeschool students to spend half their day in a school district school  or a full day if they enrolled in a half-day career and technical educational program plus took the maximum four academic courses.

He urged the committee to tap the brakes on moving this bill until a hearing could be held to vet it.

But Rep. Andrew Lewis, R-Dauphin County, who also graduated from a homeschool program, said there already has been a sea change in the K-12 educational landscape that was brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. He said it gave parents a front row seat to their childrens education now going on 13, 14, 15 months and have very much been involved as quasi-homeschoolers now for quite a while and I think that is not going to change.

He said this bill would provide maximum educational flexibility that parents in his House district desire as well as allow home educated students to benefit from the property taxes their parents pay.

Rep. MaryLouise Isaacson, D-Philadelphia, however, argued that homeschooled students do not count toward a school districts student population for the purposes of calculating their state funding. She said this proposed change would place a funding burden on school districts.

Topper took issue with that argument. He said parents of home-educated students foot the bill for their childs academic program from buying textbooks to transporting them to extra-curricular activities. But further he pointed out the school code already requires nonpublic and homeschooled students enrolled part-time in public schools to be counted on a pro-rata basis.

Longietti said the state Department of Education opposes the bill. Topper said superintendents in his House district support it.

I would think that most of the opponents to this bill would actually like to see more of these students as opposed to students that are leaving the school district and going to other opportunities because it will certainly cost the school district a great deal less, Topper said. I truly see this as a win-win.

Longietti argued if enacted, it could create a managerial nightmare for superintendents particularly in small districts, where they could encounter difficulty managing their employee complement not knowing if or how many home educated students might be enrolling in classes.

Topper described that argument as borderline nonsense given the circumstances of this past year where superintendents managed having half their student population coming in and out on different days of the week and closing schools and pivoting to remote instruction if the COVID-19 case count went up.

The idea that school districts and superintendents cant handle that is simply an excuse to say no to a very good piece of legislation, he said. If a parent feels that home education is the best for their student for a great deal of subjects but there is some subject matter that can be enhanced through the school district, this would present a wonderful opportunity.

Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JanMurphy.


Defence Minister Rajnath Singh addressing the IAF Commanders at the Air Force Commanders' Conference at Air Headquarters, New Delhi. Photo: IAF

NEW DELHI (PTI): Top commanders of the Indian Air Force have brainstormed over ways to reorient the operational philosophy of the force to further enhance its combat prowess to deal with all future challenges across all threat domains, officials said on Friday.



At a three-day conference, the commanders also deliberated on a roadmap for effective utilisation of assets and future inductions as well as organisational aspects of air defence and joint command structures, they said.



In his address, Chief of Air Staff Air Chief Marshal RKS Bhadauria emphasised the need for incorporation of new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and 5G while calling for enhanced utilisation of cyber and space domains, an IAF spokesperson said.



The officials said the IAF chief also stressed on the need for continuous updating of "doctrines, tactics and procedures" for operational efficiencies.



"The actions and follow-up plans for implementing the directions given by the Prime Minister during the Combined Commanders' Conference were discussed by the participants," the spokesperson said.



The combined commanders' conference had taken place at Kevadia in Gujarat last month.



"The other key subjects included reorientation of the IAF for future challenges across all threat domains, and the roadmap for effective utilisation of assets and future inductions," the official said.



The conference began on Wednesday though it was formally inaugurated by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday.



In his address, Air Chief Marshal Bhadauria also called for empowerment of junior leadership through comprehensive reforms in the human resources aspects and increasing efficiency through organisational restructuring.



He also highlighted the requirement for innovative and low cost solutions for enhancing training effectiveness as well as adopting a scalable contingency response model, the official said.


Amazon recently announced nine new utility-scale wind and solar energy projects in the U.S., Canada, Spain, Sweden, and the UK. One of its newly announced projects is a 350 MW wind farm off the coast of Scotland.



The project is poised to be Amazon's largest wind project in the country. It is also the largest corporate renewable energy deal announced by any company in the UK to date.



The company now has 206 renewable energy projects globally, including 71 utility-scale wind and solar projects and 135 solar rooftops on facilities and stores worldwide, which will generate 8.5 GW of electricity production capacity globally. With this latest announcement, Amazon becomes the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in Europe, with more than 2.5 GW of renewable energy capacity, enough to power more than two million European homes a year.



These projects supply renewable energy to Amazons corporate offices, fulfilment centres, Whole Foods Market stores, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers, which power Amazon and millions of AWS customers globally. The renewable energy from these projects also helps Amazon meet its commitment to produce the clean energy equivalent to the electricity used by all consumer Echo devices. All of these projects put Amazon on a path to power 100% of its activities with renewable energy by 2025five years ahead of the original target of 2030. Investing in renewable energy is one of the many actions Amazon is taking as part of The Climate Pledge, a commitment to be net-zero carbon by 2040, 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement.



Amazon continues to scale up its investments in renewable energy as part of its effort to meet The Climate Pledge, our commitment to be net-zero carbon by 2040, said Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder and CEO. With these nine new wind and solar projects, we have announced 206 renewable wind and solar projects worldwide, and we are now the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy in Europe and globally. Many parts of our business are already operating on renewable energy, and we expect to power all of Amazon with renewable energy by 2025five years ahead of our original target of 2030.



Amazon continues to play a key role leading the corporate transition to renewable power worldwide and demonstrating that ambitious renewable targets are both achievable and widely beneficial, said Gregory Wetstone, President and CEO of the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE). The companys nine new clean energy projects bring them to an impressive record total of 8.5 gigawatts of global renewable capacity and include Amazons first solar plus storage project, using advanced technology to help deliver a clean, reliable grid.



Leading companies like Amazon know the value that solar can bring to their businesses and the planet, said Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). Were thrilled to see that Amazon is following through on its climate commitments and is investing in renewable energy assets across the world. Wall Street, customers, and international businesses are all watching what American companies are doing about climate change, and this type of leadership can have a major impact on the climate crisis.



Towards the end of last year, Amazon announced it had signed a 10-year corporate power purchase agreement with rsted to offtake the output of 250MW from its planned 900MW

Borkum Riffgrund 3

offshore wind farm in Germany. The 250MW CPPA, the largest ever for offshore wind in Europe, and is rsteds second CPPA with Amazon, following the 2016 agreement on the 253MW Amazon Onshore Wind Farm Texas in Scurry County, Texas.



This was followed by news in February 2021 that Amazon signed agreements with Shell Energy Europe BV and Eneco to source renewable power from the

Hollandse Kust Noord

subsidy-free offshore wind farm being constructed off the coast of the Netherlands. Starting in 2024, Amazon will offtake 250 MW from Shell and 130 MW from Eneco, for a total of 380 MW.

For more information on offshore wind farms worldwide,

click here

.
Even if you weren't born as a boomer or a millennial, there is pretty much a chance of you catching up on old Bollywood movies while flipping channels on a lazy afternoon while munching on some biscuits with your parents.

Well, if you do fall under that category, there is a high probability of you being the victim of witnessing awkward love-making scenes on the screen which made you think of digging a deep hole to hide your face.

 Gulfnews.com

If it wasn't the sight of two flowers brushing against each other, it was the strange manner in which the hero and heroine physically represented their idea of love.



If it made you uncomfortable watching it, one must think how it must have felt when you are actually a part of it.

Shedding some light on the art of lovemaking scenes in Hindi films, Bollywood actor and director Pooja Bhatt spoke on how she used to cater to the role of being the intimacy coordinator in her movies long before when the designation was a thing, at least in Bollywood.

As the term suggests, an intimacy coordinator is a member who ensures the well-being of actors participating in sex scenes or other intimate scenes in films and television.

While the role has been popular in the West especially amidst the #MeToo movement, it is still reported to be fairly new in the Bollywood industry.

However, according to Pooja, while she was directing the John Abraham and Bipasha Basu starrer Jism in 2003, she acted as the film's intimacy coordinator for Bipasha so that she could comfortably act in the scenes.

 Cinestaan.com

"For intimate scenes, I handpick the crew who won't make an actress feel uncomfortable on the set because it's important to have the gaze right. In 2002, when I was making Jism, an erotic thriller, I told Bipasha Basu that as a woman and as an actor I won't be asking you to do anything you're not comfortable with."



"The film had no nudity, but there was un-held-back sexuality, she had to seduce John Abraham. I told her it has to be convincing, you can't be awkward or hesitant, but you decide how far you want to go," said Pooja, while talking to BBC.

The 49-year-old filmmaker also shed some light on her experience as an actor while filming an intimate scene for her recently released Netflix series, Bombay Begums.

The series did not have an intimacy coordinator on the sets, however, she says that her director Alankrita Shrivastava made her feel comfortable during the filming.

"Alankrita and I discussed in great detail how we were going to do the intimate scenes. We trusted each other, we trusted the director and the co-stars. I didn't go home feeling icky or soiled," said Pooja.
This elegantly striking shade of black comes with the same quality, performance and material benefits of SILGRANIT, BLANCO's patented material that is stronger and more durable than other sink surfaces. Nonporous and food-safe, SILGRANIT's Hygienic Plus surface formula acts as a shield against dirt and bacteria while reducing bacterial growth by up to 98%.

"We are excited to introduce Coal Black to the SILGRANIT collection," says BLANCO's Director of Brand & Communications for North America, Edyta Drutis. "Black is such an important element and a true embodiment of modern, contemporary, and industrial interiors. It has become a staple element of interior design. It brings a special dynamic, timeless elegance and stylish sophistication. Coal Black is our take on this quintessential color with a beautiful, deep matte-black result. We are looking forward to seeing this color in residential kitchens."

Coal Black will be the ninth addition to the SILGRANIT color family, which also includes Biscuit, Cafe, Cinder, Concrete Gray, Metallic Gray, Truffle, White and Anthracite. Anthracite is BLANCO's legacy shade of black, which has a subtle, sparkly sheen while Coal Black is a rich, pure black with a matte finish. BLANCO's carefully curated spectrum of nature-inspired sink and faucet neutrals are designed to transform any kitchen space while remaining classic and timeless.

About BLANCO

BLANCO is all about residential kitchen water hub systems that are meticulously designed down to the finest detail. The brand has won over consumers worldwide with its modern design, ergonomic handling and reliable product quality. All components, from the kitchen faucet to the sink and accessories, are perfectly integrated with one another. BLANCO systems make a significant contribution towards sustainably upgrading kitchens around the globe with everyday convenience when it comes to preparing food, drinking and cleaning.

Founded over 95 years ago, the company is now a leading manufacturer worldwide. With subsidiaries in Europe, North America and Asia, plus its trading partners, BLANCO has a presence in approximately 100 countries and offers its customers a portfolio that is tailored to consumer needs. The company headquarters and key production sites in support of North American demand are in Southwest Germany and Canada.

Established in 1925 by Heinrich Blanc, BLANCO is part of Blanc & Fischer Family Holding.

blanco.com

Connect with us on social

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SOURCE BLANCO
SANTA ROSA, Calif. (AP)  Vandals left a pigs head at the one-time California home of a use-of-force expert who testified on behalf of the officer accused of killing George Floyd, police said.

Blood was also smeared on the house in Santa Rosa, north of San Francisco, that once belonged to Barry Brodd, a retired police officer who was on the stand in the Minneapolis murder trial last week, according to a police statement Saturday.

It appears the suspects in this vandalism were targeting Mr. Brodd for his testimony, the Santa Rosa Police Department said. Mr. Brodd has not lived at the residence for a number of years and is no longer a resident of California.

Officers responding around 3 a.m. Saturday found a severed pigs head on the front porch and blood on the residence, police said.

Because Mr. Brodd no longer lives in the city of Santa Rosa, it appears the victim was falsely targeted, the statement said.

Investigators believe the same vandals also smeared blood on the statue of a large hand in front of nearby Santa Rosa Plaza and left a sign that said Oink, oink, police said.

No arrests were announced.

Brodd, a former Santa Rosa police officer, testified at the murder trial that he believes Officer Derek Chauvins restraint of Floyd was in keeping with proper police practice.

In a statement released after Brodds testimony, Santa Rosa Police Chief Rainer Navarro distanced himself from his departments former officer.

We are aware of former Santa Rosa Police Officer, Barry Brodd, providing testimony in the Derek Chauvin trial, Navarros statement said. His comments do not reflect the values and beliefs of the Santa Rosa Police Department.
Burglary Suspect Faces Additional Charges

By West Kentucky Star Staff

MCCRACKEN COUNTY - A Paducah man charged in connection to an April 15 burglary is now facing additional charges.On January 29, McCracken County deputies were on patrol at the old Farley Elementary School on Husband Road when a deputy noticed a bicycle and trailer near the rear door.Over the course of the investigation, deputies located a handgun, tools, and other items inside of the school.While investigating a burglary that took place on April 15, detectives interviewed 35-year-old Justin Campbell about the school burglary.Detectives say Campbell admitted to entering the school then fleeing when authorities arrived.Campbell was charged with third-degree burglary, possession of burglary tools, and drug paraphernalia possession.On the Net:
The recent announcement by the White House sources that US President Joe Biden has proposed that he and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin hold a summit in a third country in the coming months, has increased hopes of a rapprochement between the two old rivals.

This personal invitation was extended during a telephonic conversation between the two leaders trying to address deep differences, including Russia's recent troop build-up near Ukraine.

Biden during the call with Putin stressed his commitment to Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, while expressing concern over a Russian troop build-up on Ukraine's borders.

The White House said Biden also made clear that the US would defend its national interests in response to Russian actions including "cyber intrusions and election interference".

The call took place as Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Brussels to meet Ukrainian officials and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) allies.

NATO has called on Russia to end the military build-up. The Russian move has sparked concerns of a major escalation in the conflict between the two countries, which has simmered since the Kremlin invaded it in 2014.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin confirmed the two leaders discussed a possible summit, saying Biden "expressed interest in normalising the state of affairs on the bilateral track." Russian manoeuvres

The Russian build-up along Ukraine has been impossible to be ignored by the international community. In response there were reports of two US warships reportedly heading for the Black Sea and Russia's Foreign Ministry warning them off "for their own good".

As the hostile rhetoric and military moves around Ukraine have intensified, Western politicians have begun fearing an open invasion and urging Putin to "de-escalate".

In response Russia has refused to oblige. The Russian Defence Ministry insisted that its moves were in response to "threatening" NATO exercises in Europe.

However, a rational analysis of the recent and past events leads one to surmise that it is all a part of the political brinkmanship, by both the Americans and the Russian establishment. And in this game Biden has blinked first, giving advantage to Putin.

The invitation for a summit contrasts to Biden's earlier actions and statements and his overall political ideology, which observers describe as being built on the principles of American pre-eminence.

This invitation comes just weeks after the US president agreed with an interviewer that the Russian leader was "a killer". A comment which sparked international concern.

President Biden's new move has started a new debate - whether it is disaster prevention or a mistaken concession - but in reality, now the risk of a major military action by Russia has certainly waned.

Russia's recent ostentatious troop movement always looked like grandstanding by a country that has given up trying to be liked by and now wants the West to fear it instead.

When Vladimir Putin sent troops and hardware into eastern Ukraine seven years ago, those were secret operations that are still denied to this day. However, this time, Russia seems more intent on sending signals rather than soldiers.

Another angle to the whole issue is the recent reinforcements in eastern Ukraine by Kiev government and the recent Russian actions are seen to avert any move to retake areas controlled by Russian-backed militants, by Kiev.

One senior Kremlin official has warned that such military action would be "the beginning of the end of Ukraine", whose government was children "playing with matches".

Moreover, Russia has another excuse to intervene in the region: some half a million people in the self-proclaimed "People's Republics" of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine have been issued with Russian passports since fighting broke out in 2014. And it would be plausible for Russia to come to their rescue if these 'republics' faced any threat.

Russian message However, one is led to infer that the real aim of troop amassing on the Ukrainian border is not the real intention. Instead the goal is somewhat different.

It seems that Russia is trying to avert the tough, new sanctions that the Biden administration is threatening in retaliation for Russia's election meddling, hacking attacks and more.

Last week, the US president signed an order to introduce sanctions against Russia. In particular, the US prohibits its companies from buying Russian state bonds issued by the Central Bank, National Wealth Fund or the Finance Ministry after June 14, 2021. Washington also imposed sanctions against 16 organisations and 16 individuals allegedly involved in meddling in US elections. The sanctions also covered eight people and companies, connected to Crimea, including members of the regional government. Besides, the US expelled 10 diplomats working in the Russian Embassy in Washington. Which started a series of expulsions by Russia and Czech republic, as tit for tat.

This game of sanctions and offer to hold a summit simultaneously is perplexing for Moscow and international community, both. Moscow considers it strange to impose sanctions and simultaneously offer to deepen the dialogue on strategic stability.

Putin's intentions may become clearer next week when he's due to make his annual "state of the nation" address, a podium he's often used for sabre-rattling against the West.

But the call from Biden may have given him chance to pull back from this particular fight. The US has also decided to cancel sending two US warships to the Black Sea, a move which is seen as being conciliatory.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said that Moscow will act out of the principle of reciprocity towards Washington and its sanctions. According to Peskov, the new sanctions will not facilitate the summit proposed by Biden.

In the end a lot depends on how the two leaders interact at the summit and what more conciliatory and mollifying steps are taken by the two to deescalate the regional tension and work towards normalising the bilateral relationship. However, chances of a rapprochement seem too far-fetched, as each rival wants to lead the new world order.

(Asad Mirza is a political commentator based in New Delhi. He can be contacted at asad.mirza.nd@gmail.com. The views expressed are personal)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
OKOLONA, Miss. (WTVA) - One organization is working to make sure people get vaccinated.

The Northeast Mississippi Coalition against Covid-19 is traveling to different locations in Northeast Mississippi to vaccinate smaller communities. On Sunday, the organization traveled to Okolona.

"I was nervous because when I took the flu shot, it made me sick so I was caution about taking this one," Deja Brandon said.

Brandon was one of the 46 individuals that got vaccinated at Zion Spring Missionary Baptist church.

"It felt okay," Brandon said. "I didn't feel it at all so that was good."

The Northeast Mississippi Coalition against Covid-19 hosted its second vaccination event, this time using the Moderna vaccine. Their goal is to bring vaccines to people in smaller towns. The organization has vaccinated over 200 individuals, but they don't want to stop there.

"So many areas that need the vaccine," Doctor Vernon Rayford said. "We are hoping that we can get as many as we can possibly get."

The organization's first event took place in Shannon. Now, in Okolona, Dr. Nancy Hooks said she wants people like Deja Brandon to know they are here to help.

"We love getting out in the community and helping individuals," Hooks said. "So, with us coming here, it says that we are here to help."

As for Deja Brandon, she said she saw on Facebook that the organization was coming to Okolona, so she wanted to get vaccinated to protect her grandmother.

"I stay with my grandmother," Brandon said. "She is an older lady and if she would have caught it, she would have been sicker because I could have been a carrier."

On May 22 the organization will be back in Okolona at Zion Spring Missionary Baptist church to give a second dose.
PODCAST

PROJECT 38: Can agencies force contractors to get the COVID-19 vaccine?

COVID-19 vaccinations are rolling out across the country and as that happens, federal agencies and many of their contractors are encouraging their employees to get inoculated.

But can agencies require contractor employees to get vaccinated and how can they formalize that requirement? We get some answers in this episode from Al Krachman and Brooke Iley, partners at law firm Blank Rome who specialize in government contracts and labor who wrote this article on what such a requirement could look like.

Much is still TBD, but Krachman and Iley told Washington Technology Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers that there is some precedence for such a requirement and an emerging view across industry that it will happen for COVID-19 vaccinations. Their advice is to both not be surprised and to start preparing for such requirements.
Some nine prisoners who broke jail in Nigeria on April 5 have been arrested in Ghana. They were re-arrested by the Ada District Police Command in the Greater Accra Region. The escapees are suspected to be part of over 1,800 inmates who escaped from a prison in Nigeria after it was attacked by gunmen earlier this month.



The attackers reportedly entered the Nigerian prison yard in the South-Eastern town of Owerri by using explosives to blast the administrative block.



According to the police, the fugitives closely monitored based on intelligence as they crossed the Volta River into Ada Foh on Sunday, April 18. The investigative team, however, tracked them to an area known as Clinic Junction Lorry Station and seized the Sprinter bus which had the Nigerian suspected jailbreakers on board.



The nine, including a female in the bus with registration number, ER 1657-14, were captured while were preparing to leave for Accra.



They are Freedom Yusuf 25, Emmanuel Obinnah Chiedozie, 27, Steve Eyenuku 33, Enebeli Lucky 29, Yommi Usmah 29, Kelli Ekureni 33, Obi Onuora 38, Patrick Chanar 47 and Bless Eyenuku 25.



They had with them some personal belongings, passports, ID cards, and local and Nigerian currency.



The escapees have been handed over to the Ghana Immigration Service in Tema to assist with investigations.





Source: myjoyonline,com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Hamad International Airport (HIA), managed by MATAR, the Qatar Company for Airports Management and Operation, has achieved ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certification, following an extensive assessment of the Airports Information Security Management System by Bureau Veritas in October 2020.

ISO/IEC 27001:2013 is a globally recognised certification for Information Security Management System. Achieving this certification affirms the Airport's ongoing commitment to implement industry best practise to manage airports information security and to continuously enhance its information security management system.

While striving to provide a seamless and secure experience for HIAs customers; the airport has developed and implemented an effective Information Security Management System that complies with one of the most stringent international standards and enables further resilience against cyber risks.

During the official handover ceremony at HIA, the ISO certificate was presented to Suhail Kamil Kadri, Senior Vice President Technology & Innovation at HIA, by Hossam Refaey, Country Chief Executive of Bureau Veritas.

Kadri said: We are proud to achieve the esteemed ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certification from Bureau Veritas, as it reflects the efforts our teams has put in to ensure our cyber security controls and procedures are reliable and also meet industry standard and best practice. With technology at the core of our airport strategy, it is imperative that we continue to assess, improve and adapt our information security management systems.

Refaey said: We would like to congratulate the entire team of HIA, for their collective efforts that has resulted in being certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2013 international standard. This accomplishment is a testimony of HIAs commitment towards Information Security Management System. We are pleased to welcome HIA as an integral part of Bureau Veritas family of over 100,000 certified clients worldwide. This global recognition by Bureau Veritas Certification will certainly instill confidence in HIAs stakeholders. We take great pride in this association with MATAR and look forward to taking this partnership forward and achieving many more challenging objectives in its journey towards benchmarking best international practices in management systems.

HIA has been ranked the Third Best Airport in the World by the SKYTRAX World Airport Awards 2020. HIA is also the first airport in the Middle East and Asia to be awarded a 5-Star Covid-19 Airport Safety Rating by Skytrax. - TradeArabia News Service
DALLAS, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In partnership with Bottle Rocket (an Ogilvy Experience company), SCL Health has launched a new streamlined experience that empowers its patients to take a more active role in their health. Through the new SCL Health app, patients can schedule appointments, connect to a doctor virtually using their smartphone, access health and wellness tips, and receive important medical reminders. The easy-to-navigate front-end user experience gives patients the ability to make informed decisions about their care options, with a 24/7 virtual access point.

Terri Casterton, SCL Health's Vice President, Innovation & Virtual Health states, "It is up to healthcare systems to meet the changing needs of our consumers in order to make a positive impact on health. This is a scalable platform that can bend with changing consumer needs, shift with value pools, and blend with leading-edge technologies for years to come. This new easy-to-use tool is not only great for consumers and patients today, but also serves as a solid foundation to build additional functionality within a seamless experience in the future."
Retail in Slovakia mobilising to sue government over lockdown

Support and aid schemes are insufficient, they say.

Font size: A - | A +

The last Sunday of March 2021 marked the 100th day since small brick and mortar shops were shut down as a part of epidemiological measures against the spread of the coronavirus in Slovakia.

As of this date, they have been closed 40 days longer than they were during the first wave of the pandemic, without counting the two-week lockdown that took place during the time of nationwide testing in October.

The Initiative of Retail Businesses (ISKM) stated that the current situation can be summed up with the words intentional liquidation and desperation.

Related article Manufacturing companies top the list of biggest receivers of direct pandemic aid Read more

ISKM unites over 80 non-grocery retail stores ranging in size. In Slovakia, over 300,000 people are employed in retail. ISKM members own over 800 brick-and-mortar shops all over Slovakia.

Entrepreneurs in retail say they are working on a way to sue the government for reparations for the damage done to them.

They insist the government ignores their requests, preferring to leave the businesses to solve the problem by themselves. The ISKM stated that the support is insufficient since it barely covers the wages paid out to the businesses' employees and only some of the rent. There is no support for other expenses such as energy costs, phone bills, internet bills, leasing bills, interest on loans, seasonal goods etc.

Related article Most entrepreneurs encounter problems with state pandemic aid, survey shows Read more

Other countries have taken a far more flexible approach to support small businesses and are reacting to changes in the overall status of the pandemic, ISKM claims.

Even in cases where brick and mortar shops are closed for extended periods, support upon support packages are approved, which allow affected sectors to survive. At home, we are still using only two schemes to support retail - one for covering employee wages and the other for covering rent expenses, which were covered during or shortly after the first wave. Since then, nothing has changed.

6. Apr 2021 at 11:59 | Compiled by Spectator staff
Chennai, April 19 : A domestic air passenger was fined for not wearing a mask inside the flight on Monday, a police official said.

According to police, the passenger from Kerala's Kannur had boarded the flight to Chennai, but despite several requests by the cabin crew, pilot and others, refused to wear a mask. He also argued with the cabin crew on that count.

As per norms, passengers have to wear a mask inside an aircraft while travelling to prevent spread of coronavirus.

The pilot then contacted the airport control tower and relayed the matter about the troublesome passenger.

On landing, security personnel took the passenger away and handed him to the police.

The police booked the passenger for not wearing the mask and fined him, the official said.
[April 19, 2021] The European Equity Fund, Inc. Announces Annual Meeting of Stockholders

The European Equity Fund, Inc. (NYSE: EEA) (the "Fund") announced today that the Annual Meeting of Stockholders for the Fund will be held at 10:30 a.m., Eastern time on June 24, 2021 As part of precautions regarding the coronavirus or COVID-19, the meeting will be held virtually via live webcast this year. Details on how to participate in the virtual meeting will be included in the proxy statement for the meeting. Holders of shares of common stock of record of the Fund at the close of business on April 30, 2021 are entitled to vote at the meeting and any postponements or adjournments thereof. At the meeting, stockholders of the Fund will consider the election of Directors and approval of auditors. In addition, stockholders of the Fund will be asked to consider a stockholder proposal if it is properly presented at the meeting. Details of the proposal will be set forth in a proxy statement expected to be mailed to stockholders in May. For more information on the Fund, including its most recent month-end performance, visit dws.com or call (800) 349-4281. Important Information Investing in foreign securities, particularly those of emerging markets, presents certain risks, such as currency fluctuations, political and economic changes, and market risks. Any fund that concentrates in a particular segment of the market will generally be more volatile than a fund that invests more broadly. The shares of most closed-end funds, including the Fund, are not continuously offered. Once issued, shares of cloed-end funds are bought and sold in the open market through a stock exchange. Shares of closed-end funds frequently trade at a discount to net asset value. The price of a fund's shares is determined by a number of factors, several of which are beyond the control of the fund. Therefore, a fund cannot predict whether its shares will trade at, below, or above net asset value.



Investments in funds involve risk. Additional risks of the Fund are associated with international investing, such as currency fluctuations, political and economic changes, market risks, government regulations and differences in liquidity, which may increase the volatility of your investment. Foreign security markets generally exhibit greater price volatility and are less liquid than the US market. Additionally, the Fund focuses its investments in certain geographical regions, thereby increasing its vulnerability to developments in that region and potentially subjecting the Fund's shares to greater price volatility. Some funds have more risk than others. These include funds, such as the Fund, that allow exposure to or otherwise concentrate investments in certain sectors, geographic regions, security types, market capitalization, or foreign securities (e.g., political or economic instability, which can be accentuated in emerging market countries). The European Union, the United States and other countries have imposed sanctions on Russia in response to Russian military and other actions in recent years. These sanctions have adversely affected Russian individuals, issuers and the Russian economy. Russia, in turn, has imposed sanctions targeting Western individuals, businesses and products. The various sanctions have adversely affected, and may continue to adversely affect, not only the Russian economy, but also the economies of many countries in Europe, including countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The continuation of current sanctions or the imposition of additional sanctions may materially adversely affect the value of the Fund's portfolio.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results. War, terrorism, economic uncertainty, trade disputes, public health crises (including the recent pandemic spread of the novel coronavirus) and related geopolitical events could lead to increased market volatility, disruption to US and world economies and markets and may have significant adverse effects on the fund and their investments. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer or solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the laws of such state or jurisdiction. NOT FDIC/ NCUA INSURED * MAY LOSE VALUE * NO BANK GUARANTEE

NOT A DEPOSIT * NOT INSURED BY ANY FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AGENCY The brand DWS represents DWS Group GmbH & Co. KGaA and any of its subsidiaries such as DWS Distributors, Inc. which offers investment products or DWS Investment Management Americas, Inc. and RREEF America L.L.C. which offer advisory services. (R-082643-1) (04/21) View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005574/en/

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Wanted: DX Editor for Echo Ireland

Echo Ireland Editor Veronica Holohan is still seeking a volunteer to fill the role of DX correspondent for the quarterly IRTS publication. If you are interested, please email newsteam at irts dot ie.

Our thanks to outgoing correspondent Don Brennan EI6IL who did an outstanding job writing HF Happenings since Summer 2018.

Articles for publication in Echo Ireland are always very welcome and the deadline for inclusion in the summer edition is May 30th.

IRTS
The Australian Embassy in Hanoi and UNICEF on Monday unveiled a landmark A$13.5 million (US$10.5 million) package to help support the successful introduction and delivery of COVID-19 vaccine doses in Vietnam.

The Australia-UNICEF partnership will provide a unique and holistic package that will assist Vietnam across a range of areas that are vital to the successful delivery of a mass immunization program against the coronavirus, the UN body said in a press release the same day.

Our support will help Vietnam purchase cold chain equipment to store and transport vaccine doses to where they are needed around the country, provide training courses and materials to ensure Vietnams health workers and officials are ready, and assist with the development of immunization plans in Vietnams remote provinces to ensure equitable and uniform vaccine coverage, Robyn Mudie, Australian Ambassador to Vietnam, was quoted as saying in the press release.

Introducing a new vaccine especially for COVID-19 is a colossal task for any government with many important steps involved, said Rana Flowers, UNICEF representative in Vietnam.

UNICEF is committed to working with the Vietnamese Ministry of Health and other partners to support the introduction and roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines in Vietnam, thanks to the partnership with the Australian government, Flowers added.

No one is safe until everyone is safe, so mass vaccination against COVID-19 is an important step to contain the pandemic, protect frontline workers who serve children and for Vietnam to reopen to the rest of the world, she remarked.

The package will help Vietnam reach the prioritized 20 percent of its population by the end of 2022 and set the foundation necessary for immunizing the remainder as vaccines are rolled out nationwide.

Funding is drawn from Australias A$523.2 million ($407 million) regional Vaccine Access and Health Security Initiative, as well as from its bilateral development cooperation program with Vietnam.

In total, Australia has committed A$40 million ($31 million) over three years to support Vietnams vaccine procurement and delivery efforts.

On April 1, 811,200 AstraZeneca doses arrived in Vietnam as part of 30 million shots the COVAX scheme had promised to supply to the country free of charge this year.

The COVAX scheme is a facility co-led by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), Gavi, the World Health Organization (WHO), and UNICEF to accelerate the development and manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines as well as ensure fair and equitable access for every country.

The Southeast Asian country received the first-ever shipment of 117,600 AstraZeneca shots via direct purchase from the eponymous company on February 24.

The government has vaccinated over 79,000 people since it launched the national inoculation campaign on March 8, according to the Ministry of Health.

Vietnam has registered 2,791 coronavirus patients as of Monday evening, including 2,475 recoveries and and 35 deaths, according to the health ministrys data.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
" " The U.K. is considering imposing a tax on its most frequent fliers to help curb aviation-related carbon emissions. Nikada/Getty Images

Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, airline travel was growing globally. As countries bring infections rates down over the next few years, restrictions are expected to lift and air travel is expected to rise again. The very idea of jetting off to somewhere  anywhere  new sounds good to a lot of people.

But maybe not as many people as you think, and it has nothing to do with COVID. Before the pandemic, 70 percent of flights originating in the U.K. were made by only 15 percent of the country's population. More than half of the country  57 percent of the population  didn't fly abroad at all, according to the BBC.

Advertisement

And in the United States, only 12 percent of the population is responsible for two-thirds of the flights originating there. If we look at the entire globe, only 3 percent of the world's population flew in 2017.

So why does that matter? Well it's that small amount of frequent fliers who are generating so much of the aviation-related carbon emissions. The Committee on Climate Change found that "aviation is set to be the biggest source of U.K. emissions by 2050." To curb this trend, the committee recommended a frequent flyer levy. It's a progressive tax on airline tickets, with the fee going up with every flight you take.

The proposed levy aims to limit frequent flying by making the wealthiest fliers  those who are also the most frequent fliers  pay more.

According to the proposal published in April 2019, "The tax increases with each additional flight the individual takes (e.g., the tax on the third flight is double that on the second) thereby aiming to actively restrain the number of flights. The key goal of the policy is to deliver social justice, given that a relatively small number of people benefit from frequent flying, whilst the environmental damage it causes is spread across the global population."

The trick would be in implementing the levy, which most people admit would be complex. There are data and privacy concerns to consider, as always, and it could impose a burden on those who must fly frequently for work. But it would be easy enough to claim any trip was for work, and it would be difficult to impose the levy on passengers who hold multiple passports.

But the frequent flyer levy would potentially limit the number of flights, which also impacts noise levels for those living near airports. A survey in the U.K. found that most people felt this levy would be more fair than other, less progressive taxes on air travel, such as fuel taxes that are spread across all travelers equally.

Now That's Eye-opening If you're curious about your own carbon footprint when you fly, The Guardian has a handy and kind of horrifying calculator for that. Enter your starting and ending airports to learn how much CO2 your flight will generate and some context for those emissions. For instance, a long flight from Seattle-Tacoma International to Heathrow in London produces 3,225 pounds (1,463 kilograms) of CO2. The calculator notes that there are 67 countries where the average person produces less carbon dioxide in an entire year than this one nine-hour flight.
In the intensifying race for mayor of New York City, numerous endorsements have trickled out, but few with the star power of the one jointly given to Raymond J. McGuire last week: Jay-Z, Diddy and Nas.

For Mr. McGuire, one of the highest-ranking and longest-serving Black executives on Wall Street, the endorsement from the three entrepreneurial giants of the hip-hop world was meant to reinforce a message: He was not merely a candidate who emerged from, and was favored by, big business; he could be a mayor to heal New York from its financial crisis and its racial inequities.

Six months ago, Mr. McGuire entered the crowded race for mayor at the urging of several top business leaders, who hoped that he could translate his success on Wall Street into a viable candidacy for mayor, and be a more business-friendly choice than most of the other major candidates.

He quickly raised more than $7.4 million to fund his campaign, and a super PAC has raised another $4 million. He has also spent far more on political advertising than any other candidate: $1.2 million, with the super PAC spending another $1.7 million.
A not unexpected but certainly significant recent event has been the formal conclusion by Millicom, a telecommunications group with a strong focus on developing markets, of its Africa divestiture programme.

The company has, pending the usual approvals, agreed to sell its operations in Tanzania and to divest its stake in the AirtelTigo joint venture in Ghana operated with India's Bharti Airtel.

The government of Ghana will be the new owner of the Ghanaian operation, for which Millicom says it will secure $25 million, though no other figures are available. The Madagascar-based Axian Group will add Tigo Tanzania to a presence in a number of countries, including Senegal, where Axian, which operates in a number of sectors in Africa including telecommunications, was part of a consortium involved in a deal with Millicom in 2018.

Millicoms Tigo brand is said to have more than 52 million mobile subscribers across 11 countries in Latin America and Africa. That, however, will soon change once the latest African deals go through. In recent years Millicom has also left Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Senegal.

It was in 2000 that Millicom started investing in Asia, Africa and Latin America. In 2004, it conceptualized the Tigo brand. It now seems that returns from Africa just werent good enough compared to those from Latin America, although Axian, apparently, has high hopes for the Tanzanian market, its first anglophone country, which it regards as having strong potential.

According to the UKs Financial Times, Axian owns Telma, a telecom firm operating in Madagascar, Comoros, Reunion Island and Mayotte. It also has a presence in Senegal through Free Senegal, the former Tigo-branded group, and in Togo, through Togocom.

Axian is also one of the biggest investors in EASSy  the 10,000km submarine cable system running along the east and south coast of Africa.
When Joe Biden addressed the nation for the first time as President of the United States, he reminded Americans that their history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we are all created equal and the harsh, ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear, and demonization have long torn us apart.

Biden, a white septuagenarian whose ascent to the presidency was made possible by overwhelming support from Black voters, has made confronting systematic racism a priority for his administration in hopes of fulfilling a vow he made last June  the day after Trump administration officials ordered the use of tear gas and rubber bullets against protesters  that his presidency would be an era of action.

To that end, the Biden administration has leaned into addressing issues of race and identity to an extent that would have been unthinkable under previous presidents, including Barack Obama, under whom Biden served eight years as vice president. For those eight years, Republicans turned the first Black presidents attempts to address race relations and police violence into fodder for racialized attacks that ultimately drove down his approval ratings.

Bidens forays into the same political minefield have not brought about the same degree of backlash, however: As his first 100 days in office come to a close, he retains an approval rating well above 50 percent. In private conversations, some Republican operatives attribute their partys inability to land a glove on the president to the fact that hes an older white man. But in an interview withThe Independent, one of the presidents highest-profile Black advisers was not willing to chalk up the fact that Biden has been able to talk about matters like police reform more easily than Obama to the 46th presidents race alone.

Speaking by phone from his West Wing office last week, former Louisiana Representative Cedric Richmond hesitated when pressed on the matter before replying: Im not sure. After a short pause, the 47-year-old Louisianan  now a senior adviser to Biden and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement  conceded that the presidents GOP critics certainly cant say he wasnt born in America, and that hes not an American citizen, referring to the discredited birther conspiracy theory which Donald Trump used to jump-start his political career.

Asked once more about a statement by a GOP consultant who toldThe Independent that it was harder to attack Biden because the president is an affable, gentlemanly white man who says nice, positive things most of the time, Richmond replied: I think whoever said that has some real issues.

Offering up his own theory of the case, Richmond, a national co-chair of the Biden 2020 campaign who was instrumental in pushing Biden to reorient his focus on South Carolinas Black voters following a string of early primary losses, argued that the president and Vice President Kamala Harris have been able to talk about matters like police violence and racism in the justice system without giving oxygen to critics because theyve tried to lead by example.

Even when people were calling [to] defund the police, he said hed like to increase funding by $300 million because he thinks theres a desperate need for real community policing, de-escalation training, and other facets of policing that will make communities and people that police those communities have a better relationship, he said.

Few serving in the White House understand police reform issue better than Richmond, who is a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and an original co-sponsor of what is now the Biden administrations preferred legislative vehicle for police reform, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020.

That bill, which among other things would ban law enforcement from using chokeholds and end the blanket immunity from civil lawsuits enjoyed by most police officers, remained bottled up in the GOP-controlled Senate and faced White House opposition under the Trump administration. Now, with Democrats in control of both Congress and the White House, the bill has the full support of the Biden administration. According to Richmond, thats because Biden and Harris understand the frustration thats out there.

We need real reform. These incidents are not made-up, these incidents are real, theyre captured on TV, he said. Theres a real distrust between communities and the police that police them, and a real anger, frustration, and just pure exhaustion in the African American community.

Though the Biden administration has placed its hopes for police reform in the Justice in Policing Act, even Senate control does not guarantee success thanks to the upper chambers filibuster rules. Because that rule effectively requires a 60-vote threshold to pass most legislation under most circumstances, Democrats would have to convince 10 of their GOP counterparts to join with them in favor of the Justice in Policing Act to enact it into law.

Proponents of the Senate filibuster say requiring a supermajority to enact most legislation forces Democrats and Republicans to fashion compromises when addressing controversial issues. But what was once a rarely used maneuver that required a Senator or group of Senators to continuously hold the floor during debate has turned into a veto that any one Senator may exercise by simply sending an email. And while such tactics were at one time deployed against only the most contentious of bills, Republicans began using the filibuster to block most Democratic-backed legislation during Obamas presidency.

Richmonds tenure in Congress coincided with an expansion of the GOPs use of the filibuster meant to deny the first Black president even the smallest of legislative victories. He said Bidens experience of watching Republicans fight tooth-and-nail to obstruct Obamas agenda in hopes of making it appear as if his presidency was a failed one made an impression on the then-vice president. That experience, he explained, is why Biden has not hesitated to endorse use of the Senates budget reconciliation process to pass infrastructure and tax reform legislation without any Republican votes, even as he continues to express a desire to engage in the sorts of bipartisan compromises that were his stock in trade over nearly four decades representing Delaware.

[Biden] watched and saw how hard both he and President Obama worked to try to improve peoples lives and make things right. But he also saw the visceral backlash from Republicans who tried to block President Obama on everything he did and criticize him for anything he did, Richmond said. We will try to work with them where we can, but at the end of the day, we wont let them hold up meaningful progress that is important to the American people.

Yet many parts of the Biden legislative agenda  including the Justice in Policing Act and the Democrats election and voting rights package known as the For the People Act  remain subject to the Senates filibuster rules. The latter bill, a sweeping elections and ethics measure which election law experts say would be the largest expansion of voting rights in a generation, has taken on new importance for Democrats in light of recent Republican efforts to limit access to voting.

Republicans have expressed near-universal opposition to most of the voting rights bill, with many of them justifying their positions by repeating many of the same lies cited by the pro-Trump insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol in hopes of preventing certification of Bidens win this past January.

When asked how the Biden administration would move the ball forward on voting rights when Republicans largely remain committed to a Trumpian alternative reality, Richmond pointed to Bidens role in shepherding in a reauthorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act to a 98-0 vote in the Senate. That, he said, was evidence that the president can make progress on an issue Republicans have turned into a political litmus test.

That 98-0 vote took place nearly two decades ago in a far less polarized political environment, long before Trump began making the acceptance of outrageous lies about the conduct of elections in America a non-negotiable aspect of Republican dogma. Yet the ex-congressman said the president could help move the ball downfield on voting rights if he continues to level with the American people fight disinformation and lead by example, and suggested that a more targeted piece of legislation focusing on restoring provisions in the Voting Rights Act that were previously invalidated by the Supreme Court could garner more support than HR 1. But he would not elaborate further on how Biden could get such a bill past the Senates 60-vote threshold, telling The Independent: I dont want to at least now spend a lot of time talking about the process, because everybody knows that making legislation is about making sausage.

We dont have a lot of time to worry about what people say about us  were trying to deal with a pandemic  and an economic crisis  were trying to deal with a policing problem in America, were trying to deal with breaking down systemic racism, he said. So we have our hands full, and what weve decided to do is keep our head down and just work.

But Richmond was far more blunt when pressed further on the subject of combating the disinformation and conspiracy theories that have infected the discourse around voting rights, immigration, and other matters.

One such conspiracy theory  dubbed the great replacement  posits that a shadowy cabal of elites want to replace white voters with Black and brown immigrants in order to create a new electorate that will keep Democrats in power indefinitely. Such beliefs were once solely the province of fringe figures and avowed white nationalists; however, they have lately found a receptive audience among more mainstream Republican figures. One popular conservative television personality  Fox News Tucker Carlson  has made claims that Democrats efforts to make it easier for Americans to vote are part and parcel of a plan to replace white voters into a staple of his nightly program.

Asked how the Biden administration could conceivably find common ground on voting rights with a party that embraces such openly racist beliefs, Richmond said the solution is to educate people on whats true and whats not in the face of concerted efforts to spread disinformation by the GOP. What Republicans have been able to do for too long is to give people somebody to blame for whatever it is theyre talking about, he said. So whether it is rural people who are not happy with whatever is going on, or whether its inner city people blaming either Black people or minorities or Asian Americans, we have to fight against that.

Continuing, Richmond posited that the popularity of Biden administration initiatives will remain high because voters will react well to a positive message and continued transparency: Were not going to do it like Republicans which is to cut funding, stop investing in the American people and their destiny and their future, and blaming other people Were going to lift everybody up, he said. When you do that, you educate the American public that what theyve been sold for so long is just a bad bill of goods, and that you actually have a president who is an honest broker telling them the real deal, and that his actions are moving people in the right direction, people are feeling better about themselves and government Some people are going to be slow to come along, but theyll come.

When it comes to the $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill Biden signed into law last month and the $2.3 trillion infrastructure and tax plan he unveiled a few weeks ago, Richmond may be correct. According to recent polling, more than 70 percent of Americans approved of the former bill when it was enacted, while the latter has the support of roughly two-thirds of Americans, including seven out of every 10 independents and three in 10 Republicans.

But the news isnt all good. Although some GOP officials at the state and local levels have expressed support and even enthusiasm for the Biden infrastructure plan, both House and Senate GOP leaders have indicated that it will receive the same obstruction treatment as the Obama administrations legislative agenda. Having watched Republicans attempts to kneecap the last Democratic president from his seat in the House, Richmond had harsh words for those who would deploy similar scorched-earth tactics against the one he now serves as a senior adviser: That they would use anything they could to tear somebody down, and the fact that theyre just looking to tear President Biden down is shameful. Theyre not doing it on policy reasons. theyre just trying to figure out how to get a leg up for the next election. And I think that that is where we have to draw the line as Americans, he said.

Continuing, Richmond asked: Youre going to make things in the country so bad to [the point] where people dont want to vote to re-elect him, which means youre going to negatively affect peoples lives for the next political race  instead of all of us joining hands together and wishing success to President Bidens administration so we can get out of this pandemic, restore the economy, invest in families?  Theyre going to sit back and just look for ways to destroy him? I think thats a sickness, and I think its going to hold this country back. So I hope that a majority of them dont feel that way.
Apr. 18All University of Maine women's basketball star Blanca Millan wanted was an opportunity to showcase her talents at a WNBA training camp. She learned Sunday morning that she has earned that chance.

The 6-foot-1 guard from Spain wasn't selected in the WNBA draft on Thursday night, but she received a free-agent contract from the Washington Mystics and will fly to Washington, D.C., on Monday morning.

The Mystics were the only one of the 12 WNBA teams that did not have a selection in the three-round, 36-player draft.

"This is a great opportunity. This is a dream come true," Millan said Sunday afternoon. "I can't wait to meet everyone and start working."

"The coach [Mike Thibault] called me and told me they were very excited to have me," said Millan, who was thrilled the head coach took the time to call her.

"He told me they had one guard spot open," Millan said. "I'll see what I can do."

Thibault, who is also the general manager, is the league's all-time winningest coach and is a three-time WNBA Coach of the Year. He previously coached the Connecticut Sun.

Millan said having a chance to play in the WNBA is the reason she came to the United States and the University of Maine for college.

She has visited Washington D.C. and said she loved it.

She will quarantine for a day and will begin individual workouts. The Mystics will have their first practice on April 25.

"Getting a chance to compete against some of the best players in the league will make me a better player and a better person," she said. "I'm very excited."

Millan said she isn't sure about the terms of her contract.

The Mystics open the 2021 season on May 15 against Chicago.

She will be the third UMaine player to earn an opportunity to play in the 25-year-old WNBA, following Cindy Blodgett and Jamie Cassidy.

"We could not be more proud and excited for Blanca. She has worked so hard for this opportunity," UMaine head coach Amy Vachon said. "She is one of the best ever to play at UMaine.

Story continues

"We are so excited to follow her journey and cheer her on. Blanca has always set her goals high and we are so excited to watch her chase her dreams," Vachon said.

Millan, who opted not to return to UMaine for a sixth season under the NCAA's COVID-19 waiver, finished her career as the program's No. 5 scorer with 1,974 points. She is second in steals with 324 and third with 216 3-point field goals.

She concluded her career with her best season as she averaged 21.4 points and 2.9 steals to rank 15th nationally in both categories. She also averaged 7.5 rebounds and 2.3 assists while becoming the first player in America East history to twice be named Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year.

The three-time America East First-Team and All-Defensive team selection was recently named the 2021 World Exposure Report International Player of the Year. She was also a finalist for the Becky Hammon Mid-Major Player of the Year award.
Ghana has been chosen as the location for Germany's West African Centre for Global Health and Pandemic Prevention. German ambassador to Ghana, Christoph Retzlaff disclosed this in a tweet he shared on Thursday April 15. He added that the Ghanaian centre is one of eighth others worldwide.



The announcement came days after social media giant, Twitter also announced that it will siting its African headquarters in Ghana.



The tweet read;



Excellent news: Germany will support launch of a new German-West African Center for Global Health and Pandemic Prevention. It will be located in Ghana and be part of 8 new centers worldwide to fight global challenges.









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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Photo: Albert Van Santvoort

Huawei Technologies CFO Meng Wanzhou has applied to court to delay her extradition hearings to August, citing a document issued by Hong Kong court that could be used as evidence.

The adjournment would delay court proceedings in the Meng case by three months.

Defence lawyer Richard Peck said Huawei recently came into possession of the documents issued by Hong Kong court, which the defence argues involves the facts surrounding the relationship between Huawei, its Skycom subsidiary and the bank HSBC.

The new documents have been sealed by Hong Kong court for the parties in that lawsuit only (Huawei as the plaintiff, HSBC as the defendant) and will be subject to a publication ban if admitted in the Meng extradition proceedings.

Peck reassured Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes that - while the judge had said she wanted an expedited conclusion to the hearings, perhaps by May - the new Hong Kong documents need to be assessed for admissibility in order for the court to fulfill its duties to justice.

At no time during these proceedings have we come before the court with frivolous information, Peck said. ... No one is asking for adjournment for adjournments sake.

The U.S. is accusing Meng of fraud - which involves her allegedly making false presentations to HSBC in 2013 to assure Skycom and Huawei were separate entities, and Skycoms operations in Iran does not mean HSBC had to cease banking relations with Huawei in order to avoid U.S. penalties for violating sanctions.

Peck also noted that the current, variant-driven third wave of the COVID pandemic in Canada is a consideration, given that a number of defence and crown counsel are based in Ontario and have to travel to B.C. to participate in the hearings.

A small adjournment would allow this to abate, he said.

The hearings are currently scheduled to resume on April 26.
PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Regulatory News:

The Combined General Meeting of Axway (Euronext: AXW) scheduled for Tuesday 25 May 2021 at 2:30 pm will be held in closed session and streamed live.

Due to the ongoing health crisis and in accordance with legal provisions and measures taken by the French government to slow the spread of the virus, the Axway Chief Executive Officer, acting on the instructions of the Board of Directors, has decided to hold the Combined General Meeting of 25 May 2021 in closed session, without the physical presence of shareholders. No admission cards will therefore be issued.

Shareholders are asked to exercise their voting rights prior to the General Meeting and encouraged to vote remotely or, where applicable, grant a proxy to the Chairman of the General Meeting or a third party.

Shareholders are also asked to favour electronic means for the communication of all requests and documents, as well as online voting using the VOTACCESS platform.

All of the terms and conditions relating to the exercise of shareholder rights are detailed in the convening brochure, the notice of the General Meeting to be published on Friday 7 May 2021, and on the Company's Investors website.

Sopra GMT, represented by Christophe Bastelica, and Sopra Steria Group, represented by Etienne du Vignaux, the shareholders with the largest number of votes, were appointed as vote-tellers for the General Meeting.

The event will be streamed live over the Internet or by telephone, enabling shareholders to participate remotely and submit questions. Shareholders are asked to familiarise themselves with the practical guidance on streaming the Meeting on the Shareholders Meeting page of the Axway Investors website:

https://investors.axway.com/en/shareholders-and-investors/shareholders-meeting

A replay of the meeting will also be available subsequently on this same page.

About Axway

Axway (Euronext: AXW.PA) empowers customers to succeed using hybrid integration to connect people, systems, businesses, and digital ecosystems. Axways hybrid integration platform, Amplify, helps enterprise power users, IT specialists, developers, and partners accelerate digital transformation, create captivating experiences, and innovate new services. Amplify speeds integrations by combining traditional integration patterns with API Management and Application Integration (providing over 150 prebuilt connectors). Over 11,000 organizations in 100 countries rely on Axway for their data integration challenges.

To learn more, visit investors.axway.com/en

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005667/en/

Investor Relations: Arthur Carli  +33 (0)1 47 17 24 65  acarli@axway.com

Press Relations: Sylvie Podetti  +33 (0)1 47 17 22 40  spodetti@axway.com

Source: Axway Software
BY: Hood Richardson

I have written and spoken a lot more about North Carolinas Open Meetings Laws, ethics, honesty, and back room deals than I have wanted to. But, it seems, the more I write the worse things get. The last 30 minutes of the April Beaufort County Commissioners meeting glaringly focused on and brought into full public light what I have complained about for the last five years. The back room deal.

Based on questions posed by this writer, it is obvious that the Chairman of our Board, Frankie Waters, and some of the staff are clueless about ethical standards. The dictionary defines ethics as Moral principles that govern a persons behavior or the conditions of an activity. Our moral standards in our western society come mostly from biblical teachings and our laws.

Some try to make ethics complicated. It truly is not. Being ethical simply means doing the right thing. And it is a bit like being pregnanteither you are or you are not. There is no Mulberry Bush to beat around.

The open meetings laws direct that the only legally enforceable actions by commissioners must take place in an open to the public, advertised to the public, meeting with a majority present. All business, discussions, and votes must be done in an open to the public meeting. The general statutes then defines certain activities that may be conducted behind closed doors. Even these activities must be handled in very precise ways. Some of these are, negotiations to purchase real estate, some personnel matters, given direction to the attorney etc.

Open meetings mean all commissioners are present and are receiving the same information nominally at the same time.

Within a board of county commissioners, no commissioner has any more authority than any other commissioner. The chairman is empowered to conduct the meeting in an orderly way. The chairman must vote on all matters just like the other commissioners. The majority rules. The only other powers of the Chairman are to declare a state of emergency in the absence of the majority. Commissioners are taught in their training that no individual commissioner has any authority outside of a meeting. The only authority they have is when in a legal meeting.

To be legal, a public notice must be published before the meeting takes place, unless it is an emergency meeting. Minutes must be taken and these minutes become a part of the public record.

North Carolina law and dozens of appellant court cases have clearly established that the publics business must be conducted in public.

Now for the ethics part. It is the open meetings law and the general statutes that guide the ethical (just substitute honest for ethical) behavior of all commissioners including the chairman.

During the past five years, Beaufort County has suffered from board chairmen have represented themselves as spokesmen and mediators for the entire board. This is back room dealing. Chairman Waters has repeatedly told the School Board that he has four votes to do this or that. His recent claim is that he has four votes to resolve the Sheriffs School Resource Officer (SRO) issue. Chairman Waters found out at the joint meeting with the School Boart that he did not have four votes. Is lying un-ethical? Waters had an opportunity to do the right (ethical, honest) thing by calling a meeting of Commissioners to deal with the situation before the Board of Commissioners met with the School Board. Waters refused to call the meeting, continuing to tell the School Boat about his four votes. Waters refused to allow the Board of Commissioners to act as a board by majority vote. This is un-ethical.

Another example of un-ethical (just substitute dishonest) behavior by Chairman Waters was when he attempted to summon the Chairman of the School Board and the Sheriff to his home to deal with the situation. Waters graciously allowed each to bring one person with them. This violates the law. This would have been a private meeting, in a private home, away from the publics view and without the presence of the press. How many laws did and would have Chairman Waters violate by making the written offer of a meeting. Wisely, the School Superintendent refused to take part in such a shady situation.

Nothing shows how clueless Frankie Waters is about the Law and ethics than for him to have had the County Clerk to send the invitation. The Clerk needs a full course in ethics. She is an accomplice to this illegal act and should not have sent the illegal notice.

For those of you who believe you are dealing with the Board of County Commissioners when Frankie Waters tells you he has four votes, unless the board has already voted in open session, he is not telling the truth. Call the Clerk, ask for the vote count and date. It is un-ethical (just say dishonest) for any commissioner to tell anyone he has four votes unless the votes have already been done in a public and open session. There are no guarantees until the board meets and votes.

Another unethical (just say dishonest) trick that has been used is for the Chairman to take one or two commissioners with him to meet with someone to handle an issue. Unless the entire board meeting in open session has voted and designated the chairman and/or others to meet, all who represent themselves as representing the board are acting unethical, (just say dishonest).

Whenever, commissioners are presented with anything and told we have no choice but to vote for them, watch out something crooked is going on. This recently happened with the contract with Pitt County to keep prisoners. There was no negotiation and no notice to commissioners and Beaufort County got taken advantage of.

It was the Chairman of the Board and the Sheriff who shut down the jail about two years ago over the jail doors. They did not notify Commissioners. A meeting to address the situation was requested. The meeting was denied. This is a great example of back room dealing. Unethical, just say dishonest. That cost us 2.5 million dollars.

It became embarrassingly apparent during the April Commissioners meeting that Frankie waters does not have a clue about ethics, or the law. Waters defense for his bad behavior was that the has attended two (two hour) ethics courses. Unless a person has a sense of fair play and a knowledge of the laws that apply, ethics courses are useless.

This article only scratches the surface of Chairman Waters unethical behavior. Check back later for more.

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Editor's addendum: The Beaufort Observer made a formal Public Records request on March 30 asking for copies of email related to this issue. To date we have not received any response except a acknowledgment that the request had been received. Just one more example of Beaufort County Government thumbing its nose at the law.
S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster and his wife, Peggy, joined the ranks of over 1.6 million South Carolinians on Monday by receiving their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

They received their Pfizer shots at a CVS Pharmacy in Columbia. In a tweet, McMaster wrote, "To those who want a shot, get your shot!"

Aiken Regional Medical Centers is holding two upcoming Moderna vaccine clinics at USC Aiken.

The clinics will be held between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. this Wednesday and April 28 at the university's Student Activities Center, 471 University Parkway.

There will be 900 first-dose vaccines available to walk-ins on a first-come, first-served basis. There are also 1,740 second doses scheduled between the two clinics, requiring an appointment.

The Moderna vaccine is available to anyone over the age of 18. Attendees must bring a valid photo ID and wear a mask.

As of April 19, South Carolina has received 3,775,870 total doses of the COVID-19 vaccine and has administered 2,759,442.

A total of 47,134 Aiken County residents have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Almost 27% of South Carolinians are fully vaccinated.

To find a COVID-19 vaccine provider, visit scdhec.gov/vaxlocator or call DHEC's COVID-19 Vaccine Information Line at 866-365-8110.

The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control confirmed seven COVID-19 cases in Aiken County on Monday, along with 518 cases and 13 deaths across the state. None of the deaths were in Aiken County.

The data reported Monday is for the date of April 17.

Monday's report brings the total confirmed number of COVID-19 cases in Aiken County to 12,686, with 176 confirmed coronavirus-related deaths.

Aiken County also has reported a total of 4,205 probable COVID-19 cases and 42 probable coronavirus-related deaths.

Neighboring Barnwell and Edgefield counties confirmed four virus cases each Monday.

Across the entire state, there are 505 COVID-19 patients hospitalized. There are currently seven COVID-19 beds occupied in Aiken County.

The total number of individual test results reported to DHEC statewide Monday was 15,887, and the percent positive was 4.4%.

The total number of cases statewide is now 476,123, with 93,909 probable cases, 8,235 confirmed deaths and 1,117 probable deaths.
"I'd like to see a provision that makes it really clear, particularly for people who are driving automobiles and they have to drive so many miles  there are people who will drive 20,000 miles a year just for commuting purposes only in my district. Let's come up with a salary," Gaughran said. "Let's figure out what the maximum salary is to qualify for it and then give these folks an exemption so that they're not unduly subsidizing this program. We can tailor some sort of a rebate program specifically for people like that as it relates to automobile users who have no alternatives at this time."

Environmental advocates pointed Gaughran and other legislators to debate provisions in the Climate and Community Investment Act that they say protect low- to moderate-income state residents. Eligible taxpayers would automatically be enrolled in the Household and Small Business Energy Rebate Program, though the legislation states rebates would only be paid if there is enough money in the fund. The rebate would apply to 60% of state households. Benefits could include transit vouchers for public mass transit, utility assistance or a weatherization grant or "other forms that comply with this subdivision." Lawmakers asked pointed questions about how the gasoline tax rebate would be structured, but environmental advocates had no firm answers for them other than taxpayers would be automatically enrolled in the rebate program if they qualify and that people could save money in the long run with more efficient vehicles and heating systems in their homes.
There are only a small number of current public-sector chief information security officers who have served as the top cybersecurity leader in multiple states.Add if you consider those with both state and local government experience, as well as time in a federal government role, and top that all off with private-sector work, the number gets even smaller. In fact, I am only aware of one such person: Keith Tresh. Mr. Tresh has an amazing background , which includes experience as the former CISO for the state of California, having been appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2011 and remaining in that position until 2013.Previous to that, he was employed for nearly 12 years with the California National Guard, working initially as a telecommunications manager before serving as the CIO and IT director from 2006 to 2011.Between 2014 and 2016, Tresh was CISO for Orange County, Calif., and later served as CIO for the California High-Speed Rail Authority in 2016. He would go on to serve as the commander of the California Cybersecurity Integration Center for Gov. Brown's Office of Emergency Services between 2016 and 2018.This Techwire.net video shows Keith being interviewed back in 2012 while in his California CISO role.I have known Keith for more than a decade, first meeting him when I was CSO in Michigan. I have always been impressed with his knowledge and leadership skills, and I am delighted that he agreed to be interviewed.Keith Tresh (KT): I spent about 18 months working in the private sector and the rest of my career has been in the public sector. I think there were two specific differences I experienced during my time working in the private sector.First, since the focus of most private-sector entities is profit, it made my work more focused on targeted networking and at times making cold calls to folks for leads. I am not a guy who is good at that, so it was a struggle for me to manage my time and goals.The second difference I experienced was that you must be much more aware of the leadership qualities and alliances and how that can affect your work and the climate of the workplace. One of the two companies I worked for had a dynamic and strong CEO whom I truly respected and thought was a great leader. He was focused and up front, but also very generous. I loved working for him.KT: Being the CISO for California was my first experience in state government, so it was filled with new experiences and challenges every day. I enjoyed my time with and for Carlos Ramos, and I learned a lot about the differences between the sphere of influence and scope of the job federal folks have versus state employees. It was a great experience, and I worked with a lot of great people. And in California the scope of the position was very big.When I entered my role as the Idaho CISO, I did not realize just how differently each state operates their IT and IT security. I also had to re-learn my sphere of influence and how to create and maintain trusting professional relationships. Having worked in California for so many years, I was a known quantity to most of the IT folks there. Here in Idaho, I am working hard to try to become known as a trusted partner and advocate for the security professionals in state government. It is not a quick or easy process, but it is my most important mission.KT: We faced the same remote worker struggles everyone else has experienced, but with a twist. Idaho is going through modernization, and so that exacerbated the level of challenges we faced.KT: The Idaho Information Technology Services crew stepped up to make sure all the workers had what they needed to work remotely and that the network was equipped with different levels of security to minimize the risk.I think that we were able to meet the challenges head on, and after some struggles in the beginning we put an efficient remote workforce program in place.KT: Idaho is pretty much in the same boat as most other states and in the federal area when it comes to cyber talent shortages. The good news is that there are several different entities inside Idaho that have workforce development plans and are working with the state universities to create a larger pool of cyber warriors through their degree programs.Another way we are addressing the issue is through my Idaho Cybersecurity Consortium. This is a public-private partnership of cyber subject matter experts that we put together whose mission is to foster a culture of cybersecurity through education, information sharing, workforce development and economic growth to address the evolving cyber threat environment and increase overall cybersecurity resilience for nonprofit, private sector and governmental agencies within the state of Idaho.KT: First is making sure we support and oversee the security aspects of phase III of the Idaho IT Modernization Project that our organization (Information Technology Services) is preparing for.Next, we are focusing on outreach to counties, municipalities, small businesses and the education sector (including K-12). Our goal is to help these entities assess their level of cyber risk and provide them with actionable threat intelligence and cyber education and awareness training.KT: Our funding is about the same as it has been for the past few years. We are hoping to be able to take advantage of the new federal stimulus money the state will be receiving this year to help fund some of our initiatives. This includes a statewide threat intelligence platform.KT: Pay attention to the level of funding and manning resources each entity has. Cold calls without doing homework and research to see what we actually need can be frustrating to us and to vendors, and will probably lead to vendors not being able to close a deal for any state or local government business.KT: I think the biggest threat everyone will face is the evolution of the threat landscape and the bad actors. So far this year we have had two newthreats pop up that we had to deal with. This trend, I predict, will continue, and keep security teams on their toes. Creating and maintaining strong networks of trusted security professionals is one way to keep on top of the current threat situation, and is truly a must for all who are in this field.KT: I have worked at the federal, state and county levels as a cybersecurity professional, and I have experienced some true successes and a few shortcomings during my career. The best lessons learned advice I can impart to cybersecurity professionals comes from many years of experience from my work in the public sector.First,try to get people to support security by scaring them or being a sky is falling security person. This might work once or twice, but once people realize that the sky is falling too many times, they become numb and no longer trust you as a security person. If that happens, you will fail miserably. Always work with the business side to be realistic about what level of security makes sense for your organization.And the other advice I give to cyber professionals is to always be honest, own your mistakes and do your best to create trusting relationships with all of the stakeholders within your sphere of influence for cybersecurity. If people do not trust you, you cannot be successful as a cybersecurity professional, and your program might end up being stymied due to lack of commitment from the business side of your agency. Work as a partner with your stakeholders and always remember that a good cybersecurity program is one that finds, assesses and manages risk efficiently and effectively!KT: I am passionate about this field because it is ever-changing and very important to the success of all public and private entities. But the threats continue to get more difficult to predict and prevent. Everyone in this fieldkeep up with the current threats and threat actors if they want to be successful. And just as important to your success as a security professional is a trusting and supportive relationship with the leadership of your agency. Without their support, you will always struggle to keep up with the threat actors and landscape.
As millions of K-12 students return to in-person learning, school districts across the country have looked to pooled testing as a cost-effective means of monitoring the deadly virus. The method  which minimizes the number of tests by using combined samples, and only testing individuals if a combined sample turns out positive  has been touted by officials and test providers as the most feasible way for schools with limited resources to test large numbers of teachers and students.On April 8, the Boston-based biotechnology company and COVID-19 test provider Ginkgo Bioworks announced a partnership with San Diego diagnostics company Helix Diagnostics to provide pooled tests to school districts throughout the West Coast. According to a news release , the partnership aims to promote pooled testing to about 2,000 districts.Ginkgo CCO Matt McKnight said the company had been providing nasal swab tests used for pooled testing programs in hundreds of school communities, including in Baltimore, Newark and Montgomery County, among others. According to McKnight, Ginkgo is now the largest American provider of classroom pooled testing to K-12 schools.When COVID came to Boston [this time last year], we knew that we had to commit our efforts to getting our communities out from under this pandemic, McKnight said. It wasn't obvious that it would be possible to do broad-scale, regular testing of the type required to get groups of people back together in a risk-conscious manner, so we started from scratch and focused on the problem of large-scale, frequent testing."Ginkgo currently works with the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, which established its statewide pooled-testing program earlier this year. Through programs such as these, state officials say schools can receive pooled testing for about $3 to $5 per individual, compared to other individual tests that can cost upward of $150 per individual.Superintendent Meg Dussault of Sharon Public Schools, Mass., said her district adopted pooled testing through Ginkgo earlier this year. Since then, Dussault said the method has proven itself highly effective in efforts to monitor the virus amid in-person learning.Many of the students and faculty who participate in testing speak about the reassurance that they feel when they have that negative pool result, Dussault said in an emailed statement to Government Technology. As we have moved into an in-person model, more families continue to sign up for pool testing. It has been a highly effective tool for providing data to support that the levels of COVID-19 are minimal in our schools.According to Helix President James Lu, Helix can deliver about 150,000 results a day from an automated diagnostics lab. He said the goal of the Ginkgo-Helix partnership is to provide accurate testing services for less than $10 per individual, similar to the price range offered in states like Massachusetts.I would say, think less of scientists looking at individual tubes as much as a fleet of robotics, he said, comparing Helix's process to other kinds of labs.Lu said Helix pivoted its focus from genomic research to COVID-19 diagnostics when the pandemic hit the U.S. last year. According to a company news release, Helix has since delivered over 4 million COVID-19 tests for various entities, including several public school districts.Lu and McKnight both noted that a recent report from the Rockefeller Foundation recommends testing teachers and staff twice a week and students once a week, but Lu said such goals are not feasible without cost-effective testing programs. He said this will be a central focus of the partnership moving forward.Our view is that that price point has to be sub-$10 for this to be cost effective enough for schools to maintain, not only for the rest of the school year but through the fall, so thats where were aiming, he said, adding that they aim to provide tests for about $6 per individual.We think its the best of both worlds. You get a procedure thats easy to do, you get a price point thats digestible to do repeat testing and you get the accuracy and sensitivity of the PCR test to really ensure those asymptomatic populations are caught early.
Britain plans to force those working for foreign governments to sign a central register in a bid to counter hostile spy activity, the Home Office has confirmed.

Boris Johnson, according to the Times, is looking to formally announce the proposal in the Queens Speech next month, making it a criminal offence not to declare work in the UK on behalf of a foreign government.

The newspaper said the foreign agent registration scheme  which had already been announced by the Home Office  is part of the Prime Ministers ambitions to strengthen powers to evict and prosecute spies operating in Britain for hostile states such as Russia and China.

The scheme follows the consideration of similar concepts by allies such as Australia and the US, according to the Home Office.

The move is understood to be a follow-through on the Governments response to the Intelligence and Security Committees (ISC) report last year into allegations of Russian interference in British politics.

In its response, the Government vowed to be resolute in defending our country, our democracy, and our values from such hostile state activity.

The Times report said that other changes being prepared for May 11 would include an update to the Official Secrets Act so it can be used on state actors working from abroad, such as cyberhackers targeting Britain at the request of aggressive states.

Following the ISCs findings, the Government said it would work with allies to counter disinformation, as well as to bear down on illicit finance, combat influence operations, and fend off cyber-attacks.

The development comes as relations with Moscow disintegrated further after Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the UK Government stands in full support with the Czech Republic as it seeks to catch two men who were using passports with the same names as those believed to be responsible for the Salisbury Novichok attack.

Czech authorities published photos of two foreign citizens who visited the country in 2014 and asked the public for any information about them in a move thought to be linked to a huge ammunition depot explosion in the town of Vrbetice in 2014.

The two were using Russian passports and were identified as Alexander Petrov, 41, and Ruslan Boshirov, 43.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab (Commons)

Petrov and Boshirov are wanted by police in the UK after the Crown Prosecution Service authorised charges against them in connection with the attempted killing of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury on March 4 2018.

Mr Raab said: We are as determined and committed as ever to bring those responsible for the attack in Salisbury to justice, and commend the actions of the Czech authorities to do the same.

Russia must desist from these actions, which violate the most basic international norms.

In a further sign of escalating tensions, the Russian ambassador to the UK Andrey Kelin said he had not seen Mr Raab for more than a year.

On Monday, former MI6 chief Sir John Sawers estimated that only 10% of Russian aggressive intelligence operations taking place in Europe are uncovered.

He told BBC Radio 4s Today programme: It shouldnt be a surprise that Russian intelligence are very active across Europe, and I think the Czechs have pieced this together really rather well.

It all has the hallmarks of a Russian intelligence operation, and I think the Czechs have got these two people who tried to assassinate Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, I think theyve got them bang to rights.

He added: We see the extent of Russian aggressive intelligence activities across Europe, we probably only know 10% of what theyre doing. There will be a great deal that intelligence services do that were simply not aware of.

Last week, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) joined US counterparts as it declared it was highly likely that Russias foreign intelligence agency SVR was behind the so-called SolarWinds hack, a major cyber attack on the West.

Mr Kelin was summoned to the Foreign Office to be told the UK will continue to work with allies to call out and counter malign operations by Moscows spies.

Andrey Kelin, Russian Ambassador to the UK, said he has not spoken to Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab for more than a year (Jeff Overs/BBC)

Speaking to the BBC, Mr Kelin said: If Dominic Raab is really seeing how Russia interferes or demolish (sic) democracy, I am ready to discuss it with him.

But I havent seen Secretary Raab for more than a year.

When I came here a year and some months ago, I was full of aspirations that we can do better but in recent years our relations have become worse.

The Queens Speech, in which the monarch sets out the Governments legislative agenda, is set to be a scaled-down affair due to the pandemic.

The State Opening of Parliament normally forms the most colourful event of the parliamentary year and is steeped in tradition and customs dating back centuries.

But Downing Street has said this years event, in light of restrictions to curb infections, will involve significantly fewer MPs and peers in attendance, a reduced royal procession into the House of Lords where the speech is given from and no diplomatic or non-parliamentary guests will be permitted.
A six-year-old girl suffered severe abrasions to her legs after she was sucked under her father's Peloton Tread+ treadmill, her dad said Monday amid a safety warning from a federal safety regulator.

'It was pretty traumatic,' Brandon Ratliffe recounted to Good Morning America.

He shared photos of his daughter, Jocelyn, that showed bruising and severe scrapes on her legs.

Jocelyn was dragged under the device feet-first, her dad said.

The photos come as the US Consumer Product Safety Commission warned people with young children and pets over the weekend to stop using the $4,300 treadmill after they released their own video showing a young boy being dragged under one of the machines. Luckily, he walked away from his encounter.

Regulators said they needed to 'warn the public quickly of the hazard' after nearly 40 incidents have come to light of children becoming 'entrapped, pinned, and pulled under the rear roller' of the Peloton Tread+.

They are investigating one death associated with the device.

Scroll down for video

Jocelyn Ratliffe, 6, suffered from severe abrasions to her legs after being sucked under a Peloton Tread+, her dad said Monday, sharing these photos. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said people with young children and pets should stop using the machines

Brandon Ratliffe, right, recounted to Good Morning America how his daughter, Jocelyn, 6, had been sucked under a Peloton, and scraped her legs as a result

'It is believed that at least one incident occurred while a parent was running on the treadmill, suggesting that the hazard cannot be avoided simply by locking the device when not in use,' the commission said in a statement.

'Reports of a pet and objects being sucked beneath the Tread+ also suggest possible harm to the user if the user loses balance as a result.'

The machine poses 'serious risks to children for abrasions, fractures, and death', representatives from the commission said.

'A lot of injuries happen with treadmills, but not like this,' Joe Martyak, director of communications for the commission, told Good Morning America.

Since 2019, the CPSC has received 22,500 reports of injuries from many different kinds of treadmills, but Martyak said the reports from the Tread+ were especially troubling.

In the video released by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a young boy is seen walking behind the Peloton Tread+ with a large pink ball while a young girl is on it, which gets pulled under the treadmill. Luckily, he walks away from his encounter with the device

The boy in the video struggles to get free from underneath the Peloton Tread+ before eventually breaking free

The commission released a harrowing video of a young boy being sucked beneath a Peloton Tread+ and grappling to free himself from the exercise machine with its warning on Saturday, and are in the process of investigating an incident in which a child had been killed by a Peloton Tread+.

It had issued an administrative subpoena requiring Peloton to name the child with family contact information within 24 hours so the agency could continue investigating, federal regulators told the Washington Post last week.

Peloton co-founded and CEO John Foley speaks on stage during 'Peloton Gears Up' at Vanity Fair's 6th Annual New Establishment Summit in Beverly Hills in October 2019

The news has hammered Peloton's share price, with it's stock down more than 9 percent again on Monday. Still, it's a darling of the pandemic and is up more than 240 percent over the past year even after the recent losses.

Jessica Kleiman, a spokesperson for Peloton, said that the company did not provide personal information about the child to the agency because it 'respects its customers' privacy,' the outlet reported.

The child's family 'asked us not to provide the information to the CPSC,' she said. However, officials claimed that the company complied.

An official familiar with the case told the outlet: 'This doesn't happen with other treadmills.'

The official said regulators were concerned that the Peloton treadmill seemingly has a 'different hazard pattern than is typically seen.'

Despite these concerns, company representatives have fired back at the commission's notice, claiming in a statement that the warning is 'inaccurate and misleading' and that the Tread+ is safe so long as safety instructions are followed.

'The Consumer Product Safety Commission's unilateral press release about the Peloton Tread+ treadmill is inaccurate and misleading,' the statement read.

'The Tread+ is safe for Members to use in their homes and comes with safety instructions and warnings to ensure its safe use.'

Peloton's stock has plummeted 9% since the CPSC issued a warning about the Tread+ over the weekend.

Foley shared news of the fatality in a letter addressed to owners of Tread+

Peloton is fighting a federal safety recall and has allegedly delayed an investigation into potential safety problems it was revealed that a child died

'Like all motorized exercise equipment, the Tread+ can pose hazards if the warnings and safety instructions are not followed.'

The company said the machine is 'not for children under 16' and that it warns users to keep children and pets away from it.

'Peloton warns Members not to let children use the Tread+ and to keep children, pets, and objects away from the Tread+ at all times,' said Peloton.

'Any owner of a treadmill  whether made by Peloton or not  should follow these warnings, as they are included in the applicable safety standards, which the Peloton Tread+ meets.'

Meanwhile, the federal commission warned that if consumers do continue to use the product, they should keep it in a locked room, out of reach of children and pets and keep all objects away from it.

The CPSC said the machine should be unplugged and stored safely away when not in use and any incidents reported to CPSC.
(Newser)  Israel, which leads the world in COVID vaccination rates, dropped its rule requiring people to wear masks outdoors on Sunday, reports Reuters. In the US, the rule remains in place throughout much of the country, though there appears to be a growing sentiment to do away with it. Witness three op-ed pieces by writers who are unanimous in their support for indoor masking and all the usual safety protocols, but all of whom think it's high time to relax the outdoor rules (plus a fourth opinion piece on a related note):

Masks are extremely effective in warding off COVID, writes Derek Thompson in the Atlantic. But to him, the evidence seems clear that while masks are essential in poorly ventilated indoor locations, the need for them outdoors is close to nil. "As more and more of the population is vaccinated, governments need to give Americans an off-ramp to the post-pandemic world," writes Thompson. "Ending outdoor mask mandatesor at the very least telling people when they can expect outdoor mask mandates to liftis a good place to start, for a few reasons."

story continues below

In the New Republic, Natalie Shure takes note of the argument that wearing a mask outdoors builds a sense of solidarity. "But the purpose of mask-wearing isn't to send a message," writes Shure. "If it were, we could just iron whatever slogan we wanted to onto a T-shirt. The point of mask-wearing is to reduce infection, and there is simply no reason to believe that wearing a mask while walking to the grocery store accomplishes this, whether or not someone might pass you on the way."

At Slate, Shannon Palus agrees with all of the above and argues that unnecessary outdoor mask rules might do more harm than good. "Being overly vigilant about masks when they are not important makes it more difficult to keep wearing them when they are," writes Palus. "Also, I fear that it is making us look a little ridiculous."

The last entry isn't specific to outdoor masks, but David Leonhardt of the New York Times makes a point about people with "irrational" fears about the virus by borrowing an anecdote a Yale law professor shares with his students each year: If a god offered society a magic invention that would improve life immeasurably but cost 1,000 young lives, many would reject the deal as too costly. And yet, we embrace the automobile. Leonhardt draws a parallel between that example and people obsessing over COVID fears even though vaccination all but eliminates one's risk of serious disease. "We're not going to get to a place of zero risk," says a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist. "I dont think thats the right metric for feeling like things are normal."

(Read more COVID-19 stories.)
$700 Billion in Farm Supports Being Repurposed To Incentivize Green Transition, Rather Than Food

April 18 , 2021 (EIRNS)There were two prominent farm/food events this past week, pushing the theme of farmers as agents of change for the green transition, which feeds into the UN World Food Systems Summit planned for September at the time of the UN General Assembly. Denmark hosted an extravaganza April 15-16, titled, Better Food for More People, the fifth such yearly event. Day one was moderated by Brent Loken, the World Wildlife Funds Global Food Lead Scientist, infamous for his EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health, which hides behind concern for nutrition, while staying within planetary boundaries.

Timed with the Danish international event, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization-USA hosted an event April 15, featuring U.S. and European farmers, co-hosted by the Danish Embassy in Washington, titled, Farmers as Agents of Change in Greening Agriculture: Challenges & Opportunities.

The World Bank spokesman declared that, worldwide, farmers get some $700 billion in subsidies which must be repurposed to incentivize farmers to pursue green practices, and not just focus on food production. They must not be supported to over-use fertilizer and such. The changes must take place in less than 10 years. He said that 500 million farmers in this world are on the frontline of climate change, so focus on giving them a voice. He spoke droopily about how farmers and miners should be helped in the transition, and understood as victims of a system that needs to be greened. Rural transition is a problem for farmers the way that coal miners have a problem with mines shutting down. (Does your food come from the grocery store, and your electricity from solar, when the Sun dont shine?)

In fact we need a new food finance system for global agriculture, said the FAO North America Senior Liaison Officer Tom Pesek. FAO-North America Director Vimrenda Sharan reiterated this, with the pandering message that, we must integrate farmers into being the voice of change for the global [green] agenda.

The Chairman of the Danish Agriculture and Food Council Soren Sondergaard stressed the code expression climate smart agriculture, and referred to the infamous CERES global climate taskforce. Formed in 1989, CERES is part of the big food cartel action mechanisms, operating in tandem with Green Finance institutions. In October 2020, CERES announced its Roadmap for 2030 for radical agriculture emissions reduction.

Californias administration is in the vanguard of this, as it was for reducing vehicle emissions years ago, and shutting down nuclear power, etc. Californias Secretary of Food and Agriculture Karen Ross spoke, praising such things as the Memo of Understanding signed in January between California and Denmark on reducing greenhouse gases from dairy cows.
EAST GRAND RAPIDS, MI  The owner of Roses restaurant on Reeds Lake is asking permission to offer 12 pontoon boat rentals, historic tour boat rides, and to-go alcohol sales.

Greg Gilmore, whose company owns The B.O.B. and several other West Michigan restaurants, made the request to the East Grand Rapids Planning Commission. He said in a March 17 letter to the city that adding the rentals at Roses 62-slip boat dock would increase the opportunity for all to enjoy Reeds Lake.

However, the proposal has drawn opposition from residents.

Don Condit, a surgeon who lives on Reeds Lake, says the prospect of 12 additional pontoon boats operating on the lake poses a safety hazard.

The lake is at capacity already many times, and to add 12 pontoon boats there is a bad idea, he said.

Gilmore declined an interview request.

He first introduced the idea in March 2020. However, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit Michigan just about that time, the proposal did not advance beyond the review stage.

Documents submitted to the city do not provide a cost or a timeline for the proposal.

Gilmore presented his idea to the planning commission last week, said City Manager Shea Charles. No action was taken because the presentation was designed to introduce commission members to the concept and provide Gilmore with an opportunity to answer questions, he said.

I think the biggest concerns were the size, potential speeds of the boats, Charles said. He noted there were also questions about whether the boats would be rented to individuals with enough experience to safely operate them.

Charles said the next step is for Gilmore to take the feedback provided by commissioners, formulate a response, and bring the proposal back to the commission for formal consideration. Gilmore did not indicate at the meeting when he would bring his proposal back to the commission, Charles said.

Quite a bit of concerns were expressed by multiple residents about the potential rental operation, Charles said.

In addition to the rentals, Gilmore has proposed adding a fuel pump at the boat slips behind Roses. He also proposed adding a 40-foot to 60-foot historic tour boat reminiscent of the SS Ramona steamship that operated on Reeds Lake between 1923 and 1954.

The boat docks behind Roses, 550 Lakeside Dr. SE, have space for about 60 boats, Charles said.

Gilmores letter to the city states that, were his proposal to be approved, he would use four of his marinas slips for fueling boats, four slips for transient boats, 12 slips for boat rentals, and 42 slips for seasonal rentals.

Gilmore has indicated the boat dealer Tommys would oversee the pontoon rentals and that training would be provided to each renter. He said his proposal does not call for an expansion of Roses boat docks.

Condit, the resident who expressed concern about Gilmores proposal, said his opposition to the development isnt based on trying to restrict the publics access to Reeds Lake.

Its already a community resource, and its not just people that live on the lake that are able to enjoy that resource, he said. Theres plenty of access to people who live in the greater West Michigan community.

He suggested the additional pontoon boats could pose a risk to other boats, children who go tubing on the lake, as well as kayakers and other paddlers.

Its a dangerous proposition, he said. Theres bigger lakes that can accept and tolerate parties on pontoon boats. But this lake cant. Its already at capacity.

Read more:

COVID knocks Saginaw boxer Jermaine Franklin out of televised bout

Calls for justice ring out in West Michigan cities at protests held in wake of Minnesota shooting

Volunteers remove 10,000 pounds of trash from homeless camp near Northern Michigan river
"As marketers evolved their strategies in the second half of 2020, our latest MQR report shows greater adoption of tools that mitigate ad fraud and brand risk around digital content," said Tony Marlow, Chief Marketing Officer, IAS. "These unique insights also showcase the huge opportunities for marketers related to contextual targeting and emerging platforms such as CTV. Right now, every impression counts and ensuring ads are viewable by real people in the environments that align with campaign objectives has never been more important."

As consumers continued to focus on digital media during stay-at-home orders, viewability rates showed mixed results. With the continued growth of CTV viewership and ads, this MQR report includes inaugural data for connected TV (CTV) viewability, which topped the video viewability rankings worldwide. CTV viewability reached 93.3% globally, while mobile app video, another new metric for H2 2020, followed closely at 92.6%. Mobile web video viewability followed at 73.7%. A shift in consumer behaviors contributed to the greatest year-over-year (YOY) growth for viewability in mobile app display environments, with North American markets yielding improvements, an increase of 8.1 percentage points in the U.S. and 7.1 percentage points in Canada.

As marketers adopt the latest tools to measure and prevent fraud, global ad fraud rates improved overall and optimized-against-ad-fraud levels dropped across all devices and environments reported. The global fraud rates among optimized campaigns dropped between 0.3% to 0.8% worldwide, while non-optimized campaigns registered 5.1% to 8.6% based on format and environment.

During a period of unexpected news and events, IAS data shows that brand risk increased across several categories. IAS measures brand risk globally based on the number of pages scored as medium or higher risk to brands. Adult content was the primary driver of increased brand risk across all formats globally, generally followed by hate speech. The report uncovered that while mobile web video remained the safest inventory when optimized against ad fraud, holding steady at 0.3% for all of 2020, it was the highest for global brand risk at 8.6%. The data reflects hate speech content more than tripled its share of brand risk for desktop video in the U.S., in tandem with the presidential election, while adult content doubled its share year-over-year. The U.S. registered one of the largest increases in brand risk for desktop video content, up 2.9 percentage points, when compared to H2 2019, while Canada was the only market to witness a decrease in brand risk and lower shares in the alcohol and illegal drugs categories, driving brand risk down 2.4 percentage points year-over-year to 5.4%.

Integral Ad Science's H2 2020 Media Quality Report provides insights on brand safety, ad fraud, and viewability trends across display and video ad formats, as well as connected TV (CTV), desktop, mobile web, and in-app environments. The Media Quality Report analyzed trillions of global data events from ad campaigns that ran between July 1 and December 31, 2020. The H2 2020 report covers 20 countries, including five new markets: Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Poland, and Vietnam.

About Integral Ad Science

Integral Ad Science (IAS) is a global leader in digital ad verification, ensuring that ads are viewable by real people in safe and suitable environments. IAS's mission is to be the global benchmark for trust and transparency in digital media quality for the world's leading brands, publishers, and platforms. We do this through data-driven technologies with actionable real-time signals and insight. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in New York, IAS works with thousands of top advertisers and premium publishers worldwide. IAS is part of the Vista Equity Partners portfolio of companies. For more information, visit integralads.com .

SOURCE Integral Ad Science, Inc.

Related Links

www.integralads.com


Mumbai, April 19 : Good writing is the need of the hour, feels actor Boman Irani, to sustain audience interest at a time when OTT provides a surfeit of choice.

"The OTT platform gives an opportunity not only for writers but also actors and technicians. However, on OTT, there are thousands of choices. It takes 10 to 15 minutes to reject if you cannot engage the audience in their home. This can be avoided with good writing, which also applies for the rest of the show. Writing has become the superstar on the OTT platform," Irani tells IANS.

"If your script is not good, your acting won't come off well, and I say this even for theatrical releases. Why should you have weaker scripts just because it is in the theatrical space?" he adds.

Theatrical release of a lot of films, including big-ticket ones, have been postponed amid the ongoing second wave of the Covid pandemic. While this spells losses for Bollywood, Irani sees a silver lining.

"The pandemic has created a lot of problems. I am hopeful and saying this in a positive tone that once things open up, people will be dying to get back to the theatres and there will be a big surge of footfalls in theatres again," he hopes.

Quizzed if the OTT platforms will eventually replace the big screen experience, the actor replied: "When television came, footfalls reduced in single screen cinemas and then again there was a surge. I think the big screen is a completely different experience, there will be movies made for the big screen. I don't think it can be replaced, because it is a family experience which people look forward to especially in India. A huge screen and great sound cannot be permanently erased by something which is screened on your phone." Boman Irani recently celebrated his screenplay writing workshop 'Spiral Bound' completing a year. "It started maybe two years ago when we launched Irani Movietone (his production house). I flew down Alex Dinelaris, the writer of 'Birdman', who came and did a workshop and that set the journey. Before lockdown I had five to six young writer-directors who used to consult me on their scripts. During lockdown, we started coordinating over zoom call. That's how it actually started. Now we have a huge amount of people joining in," the actor recalls.

Irani is known for effortlessly nailing the characters he plays on screen and especially for his impeccable comic timing. Any words of advice for budding actors? "Find out within the script what is the character searching for, what is its quest. The moment you get that, believe me acting becomes easier! Also, just as musicians do their riyaaz every morning, as an actor you should also practice something everyday, don't just land up on the set and spew your lines," he concluded.

Irani's upcoming projects include "83", "Jayeshbhai Jordaar" and Ajay Devgn's "Mayday".

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
The Indian coronavirus variant could 'pose a threat' to Boris Johnson's roadmap out of lockdown, an expert warned today.

It is feared the B.1.617 strain spreads more easily than older versions of the virus and scientists say it has mutations which may help it evade vaccines.

Professor Danny Altmann, an Imperial College London immunologist, said there were vaccinated vulnerable Britons who could 'still be caught out by variants like this'.

Health officials warned yesterday that cases of people in the UK contracting the South African and Kent strains after being vaccinated have already been recorded.

Public Health England says officially the Indian variant has been spotted 77 times in Scotland and England since March. But analysis of publicly available information on new variant numbers say cases have risen to 160, suggesting it's spreading rapidly in the community.

PHE currently lists it as a 'variant under investigation', a tier below other troublesome strains including the Kent, South African and Brazilian variants.

But Professor Altmann told Good Morning Britain: 'My assumption from everything I've seen is that it will become a variant of concern.'

He added: 'I think our road map is going well and at the moment, in this country, we are doing rather well, enjoying unlocking  but out there there is the Indian variant, the South African, Brazilian etc, and they do pose a threat.'

SAGE member Professor Andrew Hayward backed calls for India to be put on the 'red list' to buy experts time to study the variant in more detail.

The infectious disease expert urged the Government to 'err on the side of caution and act sooner rather than later'.

But top experts studying Britain's Covid variants said the Indian variant was unlikely to ever take off in the UK because its mutations were 'not top tier'. They questioned whether the strain actually is more transmissible than older versions, claiming the evidence was still murky.

It comes ass Boris Johnson today cancelled his trip to India amid surging coronavirus cases and alarm about the new variant.

The Covid variants circulating in the UK: Public Health England says officially the Indian variant has been spotted 77 times in Scotland and England since March

Professor Danny Altmann (left), an Imperial College London immunologist, said there were vaccinated vulnerable Britons who could 'still be caught out by variants like this'. SAGE member Professor Andrew Hayward (right) backed calls for India to be put on the 'red list' to buy experts time to study the variant in more detail

Dr Jeffrey Barrett, director of the Covid Genomics Initiative at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: 'This variant has a couple of mutations that are among those that we think are important that should be watched carefully.

'But they're actually probably not at the very kind of top tier of mutations, for example in the B.1.1.7  or Kent variant  or the South African variant, that generate the most concern.'

Dr Barnett said the rise of the Indian variant had happened at the same time India suffered a third wave, which may explain its higher prevalence.

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE INDIA VARIANT? Real name: B.1.617 When and where was it discovered? The variant was first reported as being of concern by the Indian government in late March. The first cases appear to date back to October 2020. What mutations does it have? The two main mutations are named E484Q and L452R, which scientists suspect can help it to transmit faster and to get past immune cells made in response to older variants. Those mutations are routinely not found on other variants monitored by Public Health England. How many people in the UK have been infected with it? 77 people so far, according to a report published on April 15. Their locations are unknown. Advertisement

'In terms of spread, clearly this variant has increased in frequency in India around the same time as their very large and tragic recent wave.

'But I just don't think we know yet whether there's a cause and effect relationship  is this variant driving that spread?

'Or is it happening at the same time perhaps due to a coincidence?'

He added: 'And one thing to note is that there were some sequences of this variant B.1.617 seen late last year.

'And so in some sense, if it really is driving this wave, the fuse has been burning for quite a long time, which would make it look, probably less transmissible than B.1.1.7.'

The Indian variant was first spotted by scientists in March when it was described by the government in New Delhi as a 'double mutant'.

They suggested that the variant had formed as a hybrid of two other strains and that it showed signs of being more infectious and less easily targeted by the immune system.

But scientists say there is 'no evidence' to suggest it is a 'recombination variant', when two strains merge. Instead, it is more likely to be another variant that randomly spawned.

Two key mutations set it apart from others  named E484Q and L452R  with both of them found on the 'spike' that the virus uses to latch onto human cells.

These are not thought to be key mutations of any of the other variants on Public Health England's list, but have appeared in virus samples before.

SAGE's Professor Hayward, an epidemiologist at University College London, backed calls for travel to India to be scrapped.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today Programme: 'It's a balance of harms and benefits and the challenge with that is that the level of harm is quite high because we're highly connected with India  there's a lot of economic interaction as well as family and social interaction.

'And on the other hand, what we have is an unknown level of risk  my own preference in all of this is to err on the side of caution and to act sooner rather than later. But ultimately, that's going to be a political decision.'

But Professor Hayward admitted scientists aren't sure whether the variant is actually more infectious than older versions.

He added: 'The evidence of increased transmissibility and escape from immunity is circumstantial.

'That said, it's going to take a number of weeks at least before that evidence gets firmed up and we find out more.

Dr Susan Hopkins (pictured), chief medical adviser for NHS Test and Trace, reassured that vaccines were a primer for the immune system and would help reduce hospitalisations and deaths

Infections of South African and Kent coronavirus variants have already been recorded in vaccinated people Cases of people contracting the South African and Kent variants of the virus after being vaccinated have already been recorded, an NHS expert warned yesterday. Dr Susan Hopkins, chief medical adviser for NHS Test and Trace, reassured that vaccines were a primer for the immune system and would help reduce hospitalisations and deaths. But she said: We have seen some people who have had their first dose of the vaccine who have had the South African variant and the variant that arose in Kent. Thats to be expected, we know that these vaccines arent 100 per cent protecting you against infection and thats why we ask people to take caution. She told BBCs The Andrew Marr show: You can see that [the vaccines are] not as good against the South African variant as they are against our own [variant] B117 at preventing infection and transmission. However, she added: When your immune system is exposed to a variation of the same virus it responds faster and more adequately to protect you against severe disease. It comes as scientists in Brazil have identified two cases where people were simultaneously infected with two different variants of Covid-19, according to a study. Advertisement

'Certainly some countries and areas have taken the view that that's enough for them to be quite concerned  so for example, Hong Kong has put on a two-week travel ban, which will allow them to find out a little bit more.'

PHE's official variant list, which is updated weekly, says the Indian variant has been picked up 77 times in the UK.

But Professor Paul Hunter, an epidemiologist at the University of East Anglia, analysed publicly available information on new variant numbers this Saturday and compared them to the previous Saturday and found that the number of genetically-confirmed cases had risen in a week from 79 to 160.

Because only around a quarter of identified Covid cases undergo genomic sequencing to identify the strain, he feared the true figure was at least 400.

It comes as an NHS expert warned yesterday that cases of people contracting the South African and Kent variants of the virus after being vaccinated have already been recorded.

Dr Susan Hopkins, chief medical adviser for NHS Test and Trace, reassured that vaccines were a primer for the immune system and would help reduce hospitalisations and deaths.

But she said: We have seen some people who have had their first dose of the vaccine who have had the South African variant and the variant that arose in Kent.

Thats to be expected, we know that these vaccines arent 100 per cent protecting you against infection and thats why we ask people to take caution.

She told BBCs The Andrew Marr show: You can see that [the vaccines are] not as good against the South African variant as they are against our own [variant] B117 at preventing infection and transmission.

However, she added: When your immune system is exposed to a variation of the same virus it responds faster and more adequately to protect you against severe disease.

It comes as scientists in Brazil have identified two cases where people were simultaneously infected with two different variants of Covid-19, according to a study

Both cases were women in their 30s who had typical moderate flu-like symptoms and did not become severely ill, according to the report in the journal Virus Research.

Earlier this month the Lancet also reported a case from Nevada where a man was infected by two different strains of the coronavirus  which is officially known as SARS-CoV-2. The second infection was more severe than the first.

The study authors warned: Previous exposure to SARS-CoV-2 might not guarantee total immunity in all cases.

Separately, Environment Secretary George Eustice said there is no evidence that the new Indian variant of coronavirus is able to get around the vaccine.

The Prime Minister today abandoned plans to travel to India amid surging Covid infections linked to the B.1.617 variant.

A joint statement from the UK and Indian government said the diplomatic trip, already scaled back, will not go ahead 'in light of the current situation'.

Mr Johnson had already pushed the trip back from earlier this year as a result of the UK's third lockdown. Rather than several days of talks with Narendra Modi and high-profile events, it was only due to be a single day next weekend.

India last month blocked the shipment of 5million doses of AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine headed to Britain.
YARDLEY, Pa., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Crown Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: CCK) today announced its financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2021.

Highlights

Earnings per share $1.57 versus $0.65 in 2020

Adjusted earnings per share increased to $1.83 over the $1.13 in 2020

Global beverage can volumes grew 8%; capacity expansion projects on schedule

Solid food can demand

Announced agreement to sell European Tinplate business

Announces Investor Event

Net sales in the first quarter were $3,078 million compared to $2,757 million in the first quarter of 2020 reflecting increased sales unit volumes in all segments and favorable currency translation of $92 million.

Income from operations was $384 million in the first quarter compared to $246 million in the first quarter of 2020. Segment income was $433 million in the first quarter compared to $298 million in the prior year first quarter primarily due to increased sales unit volumes and $11 million of favorable currency translation. In addition, the results for European Food and the other segments in 2020 included unfavorable impacts of $18 million and $16 million, respectively, arising from the carryover of tinplate costs from the prior year end inventory.

Commenting on the quarter, Timothy J. Donahue, President and Chief Executive Officer, stated, "The Company's performance during the first quarter was excellent, as adjusted earnings per share and segment income grew 62% and 45%, respectively, from prior year results. Each of our global businesses executed well both commercially and operationally in the face of the challenges posed by the continuing pandemic. Beverage can volumes were strong across all global regions, led by North America, as consumers and customers alike continue to increasingly prefer the infinitely recyclable aluminum can over other packaging options. Transit Packaging, having successfully implemented several cost reduction initiatives, exceeded our expectations and is well positioned for continuing improvement as global manufacturing activity further accelerates.

"On April 8th the Company announced an agreement to sell its European Tinplate business, which is comprised of 44 manufacturing facilities in Europe, the Middle East and Africa that produce food cans and ends, aerosol cans, metal closures and promotional packaging for various consumer brands. We are very pleased that the business will have a strong owner in KPS Capital Partners to support future profitable growth and innovation initiatives. Net proceeds from the transaction will be used for debt reduction, beverage can capital projects and share repurchases over time.

"To meet accelerating demand for beverage cans, which now account for approximately 75% of our income from operations, the Company is implementing several capacity expansion projects globally, which include both the construction of new plants and the addition of production lines to existing facilities. Between 2020 and the end of 2022, we expect to add 15 billion units of annual capacity to the 2019 base of 70 billion units. During 2021, we will be commercializing approximately 6 billion units of annual capacity with projects including a new, two-line facility in Bowling Green, Kentucky and a new one-line plant in Vung Tau, Vietnam as well as additional production lines in Olympia, Washington and Rio Verde, Brazil."

Interest expense was $71 million in the first quarter of 2021 compared to $80 million in 2020 primarily due to lower outstanding debt balances.

Net income attributable to Crown Holdings in the first quarter was $211 million compared to $88 million in the first quarter of 2020. Reported diluted earnings per share were $1.57 in the first quarter of 2021 compared to $0.65 in 2020. Adjusted diluted earnings per share increased to $1.83 over the $1.13 in 2020.

A reconciliation from net income and diluted earnings per share to adjusted net income and adjusted diluted earnings per share is provided below.

OutlookThe Company currently expects second quarter adjusted earnings to be in the range of $1.70 to $1.80 per share. This guidance includes the results of the European Tinplate operations, which will be reported as discontinued operations beginning with the second quarter results.

The Company's full year adjusted earnings guidance of $6.60 to $6.80 per share is consistent with its previous guidance, as the assumed dilution from the sale of the European Tinplate business in the third quarter is expected to be offset by improved performance in the remaining operations.

Investor EventThe Company will present to the investment community on Thursday, May 27, 2021 during its virtual investor day. Crown senior management will discuss trends, opportunities and key metrics of the Company followed by a question and answer session. Additional information will be provided in a future communication.

Non-GAAP MeasuresSegment income, adjusted free cash flow, adjusted net leverage ratio, adjusted net income, the adjusted effective tax rate, adjusted diluted earnings per share and adjusted EBITDA are not defined terms under U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (non-GAAP measures). Non-GAAP measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for income from operations, net income, diluted earnings per share, effective tax rates, cash flow or leverage ratio data prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP and may not be comparable to calculations of similarly titled measures by other companies.

The Company views segment income as the principal measure of the performance of its operations and adjusted free cash flow and adjusted net leverage ratio as the principal measure of its liquidity. The Company considers all of these measures in the allocation of resources. Adjusted free cash flow has certain limitations, however, including that it does not represent the residual cash flow available for discretionary expenditures since other non-discretionary expenditures, such as mandatory debt service requirements, are not deducted from the measure. The amount of mandatory versus discretionary expenditures can vary significantly between periods. Reconciliations of estimated adjusted diluted earnings per share for the second quarter and full year of 2021 to estimated diluted earnings per share on a GAAP basis are not provided in this release due to the unavailability of estimates of the following, the timing and magnitude of which the Company is unable to reliably forecast without unreasonable efforts, which are excluded from estimated adjusted diluted earnings per share and could have a significant impact on earnings per share on a GAAP basis: gains or losses on the sale of businesses or other assets, restructuring and other costs, asset impairment charges, asbestos-related charges, losses from early extinguishment of debt, pension settlement and curtailment charges, the tax and noncontrolling interest impact of the items above, and the impact of tax law changes or other tax matters. The Company believes that adjusted net income, the adjusted effective tax rate and adjusted diluted earnings per share are useful in evaluating the Company's operations as these measures are adjusted for items that affect comparability between periods. The Company believes that adjusted free cash flow and adjusted net leverage ratio provide meaningful measures of liquidity and a useful basis for assessing the Company's ability to fund its activities, including the financing of acquisitions, debt repayments, share repurchases or possible future dividends. Segment income, adjusted free cash flow, adjusted net leverage ratio, the adjusted effective tax rate, adjusted net income, adjusted diluted earnings per share and adjusted EBITDA are derived from the Company's Consolidated Statements of Operations and Cash Flows and Consolidated Balance Sheets, as applicable, and reconciliations to segment income, adjusted free cash flow, net leverage ratio, the adjusted effective tax rate, adjusted net income, adjusted diluted earnings per share and adjusted EBITDA can be found within this release.

Conference CallThe Company will hold a conference call tomorrow, April 20, 2021 at 9:00 a.m. (EDT) to discuss this news release. Forward-looking and other material information may be discussed on the conference call. The dial-in numbers for the conference call are 630-395-0194 or toll-free 888-324-8108 and the access password is "packaging." A live webcast of the call will be made available to the public on the internet at the Company's website, www.crowncork.com. A replay of the conference call will be available for a one-week period ending at midnight on April 27. The telephone numbers for the replay are 203-369-3560 or toll free 800-879-1876.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking StatementsExcept for historical information, all other information in this press release consists of forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors, including the future impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the Company's operations, including the Company's ability to continue to operate its plants, distribute its products, and maintain its supply chain; the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on demand for the Company's products; the future impact of currency translation; the continuation of performance and market trends in 2021, including consumer preference for beverage cans and increasing global beverage can demand; future demand for food cans; the Company's ability to close the European Tinplate sale in the third quarter of 2021, or at all, and the impact of the transaction on the Company's earnings; and the Company's ability to successfully complete its previously announced capacity expansion projects and begin production within expected timelines, including any delays related to the pandemic, that may cause actual results to be materially different from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause the statements made in this press release or the actual results of operations or financial condition of the Company to differ are discussed under the caption "Forward Looking Statements" in the Company's Form 10-K Annual Report for the year ended December 31, 2020 and in subsequent filings made prior to or after the date hereof. The Company does not intend to review or revise any particular forward-looking statement in light of future events.

Crown Holdings, Inc., through its subsidiaries, is a leading global supplier of rigid packaging products to consumer marketing companies, as well as transit and protective packaging products, equipment and services to a broad range of end markets. World headquarters are located in Yardley, Pennsylvania.

For more information, contact:Thomas A. Kelly, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, (215) 698-5341Thomas T. Fischer, Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Affairs, (215) 552-3720

Unaudited Consolidated Statements of Operations, Balance Sheets, Statements of Cash Flows, Segment Information and Supplemental Data follow.

Consolidated Statements of Operations (Unaudited) (in millions, except share and per share data) Three Months Ended March 31, 2021 2020 Net sales $3,078 $2,757 Cost of products sold 2,401 2,220 Depreciation and amortization 127 122 Selling and administrative expense 164 162 Restructuring and other 2 7 Income from operations (1) 384 246 Pension settlements and curtailments 37 Other pension and postretirement (1) (6) Foreign exchange (2) (12) Earnings before interest and taxes 387 227 Interest expense 71 80 Interest income (2) (4) Income before income taxes 318 151 Provision for income taxes 75 38 Equity earnings 2 1 Net income 245 114 Net income attributable to noncontrolling interests (34) (26) Net income attributable to Crown Holdings $211 $88 Earnings per share attributable to Crown Holdings common shareholders: Basic $1.58 $0.66 Diluted $1.57 $0.65 Weighted average common shares outstanding: Basic 133,616,057 134,082,846 Diluted 134,612,182 135,044,981 Actual common shares outstanding at quarter end 134,909,337 134,654,046 (1) Reconciliation from income from operations to segment income follows.

Consolidated Supplemental Financial Data (Unaudited) (in millions) Reconciliation from Income from Operations to Segment IncomeThe Company views segment income, as defined below, as a principal measure of performance of its operations and for the allocation of resources. Segment income is defined by the Company as income from operations adjusted to exclude intangibles amortization charges and provisions for restructuring and other. Three Months Ended March 31, 2021 2020 Income from operations $ 384 $ 246 Intangibles amortization 47 45 Restructuring and other 2 7 Segment income $ 433 $ 298 Segment Information Three Months Ended March 31, Net Sales 2021 2020 Americas Beverage $ 993 $ 871 European Beverage 389 346 European Food 460 402 Asia Pacific 331 301 Transit Packaging 557 522 Total reportable segments 2,730 2,442 Other segments (1) 348 315 Total net sales $ 3,078 $ 2,757 Segment Income Americas Beverage $ 188 $ 134 European Beverage 62 39 European Food 63 33 Asia Pacific 52 45 Transit Packaging 70 66 Total reportable segments 435 317 Other segments (1) 37 19 Corporate and other unallocated items (39) (38) Total segment income $ 433 $ 298 (1) Includes the Company's food can and closures businesses in North America, aerosol can businesses in North America and Europe, the promotional packaging business in Europe, and beverage tooling and equipment operations in the U.S. and United Kingdom.

Consolidated Supplemental Data (Unaudited) (in millions, except per share data) Reconciliation from Net Income and Diluted Earnings Per Share to Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted Diluted Earnings Per Share The following table reconciles reported net income and diluted earnings per share attributable to the Company to adjusted net income and adjusted diluted earnings per share, as used elsewhere in this release. Three Months Ended March 31, 2021 2020 Net income/diluted earnings per share attributable to Crown Holdings, as reported $211 $1.57 $88 $0.65 Intangibles amortization (1) 47 0.35 45 0.33 Restructuring and other (2) 2 0.01 7 0.05 Pension settlements and curtailments (3) 37 0.28 Income taxes (4) (14) (0.10) (24) (0.18) Adjusted net income/diluted earnings per share $246 $1.83 $153 $1.13 Effective tax rate as reported 23.6% 25.2% Adjusted effective tax rate 24.3% 25.8% Adjusted net income, adjusted diluted earnings per share and the adjusted effective tax rate are non-GAAP measures and are not meant to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for net income, diluted earnings per share and effective tax rates determined in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles. The Company believes these non-GAAP measures provide useful information to evaluate the performance of the Company's ongoing business. (1) In the first quarters of 2021 and 2020, the Company recorded charges of $47 million ($36 million net of tax) and $45 million ($34 million net of tax) for intangibles amortization arising from prior acquisitions. (2) In the first quarters of 2021 and 2020, the Company recorded net restructuring and other charges of $2 million ($2 million of tax) and $7 million ($5 million net of tax) primarily related to business reorganization activities. (3) In the first quarter of 2020, the Company recorded charges of $37 million ($30 million net of tax) arising from pension plan settlements. (4) In the first quarters of 2021 and 2020, the Company recorded income tax benefits of $11 million and $20 million related to the items described above. Also in the first quarters of 2021 and 2020, the Company recorded tax benefits of $3 million and $4 million related to tax law changes in India.

Consolidated Balance Sheets (Condensed & Unaudited) (in millions) March 31, 2021 2020 Assets Current assets Cash and cash equivalents $ 588 $ 765 Receivables, net 1,868 1,554 Inventories 1,817 1,668 Prepaid expenses and other current assets 330 263 Total current assets 4,603 4,250 Goodwill and intangible assets, net 6,280 6,142 Property, plant and equipment, net 4,190 3,752 Other non-current assets 1,107 1,389 Total $ 16,180 $ 15,533 Liabilities and equity Current liabilities Short-term debt $ 80 $ 100 Current maturities of long-term debt 82 78 Accounts payable and accrued liabilities 3,594 3,060 Total current liabilities 3,756 3,238 Long-term debt, excluding current maturities 7,875 8,631 Other non-current liabilities 1,741 1,611 Noncontrolling interests 431 389 Crown Holdings shareholders' equity 2,377 1,664 Total equity 2,808 2,053 Total $ 16,180 $ 15,533

Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows (Condensed & Unaudited) (in millions) Three months ended March 31, 2021 2020 Cash flows from operating activities Net income $ 245 $ 114 Depreciation and amortization 127 122 Restructuring and other 2 7 Pension expense 12 43 Pension contributions (5) (5) Stock-based compensation 11 10 Working capital changes and other (777) (898) Net cash used for operating activities (1) (385) (607) Cash flows from investing activities Capital expenditures (135) (110) Proceeds from sale of assets 2 Other 13 14 Net cash used for investing activities (120) (96) Cash flows from financing activities Net change in debt (3) 953 Dividends paid to stockholders (27) Common stock repurchased (12) (57) Dividends paid to noncontrolling interests (9) (11) Other, net (4) (3) Net cash provided by/(used for) financing activities (55) 882 Effect of exchange rate changes on cash and cash equivalents (11) (21) Net change in cash and cash equivalents (571) 158 Cash and cash equivalents at January 1 1,238 663 Cash and cash equivalents at March 31 (2) $ 667 $ 821 (1) Adjusted free cash flow is defined by the Company as net cash used for operating activities less capital expenditures and certain other items. A reconciliation from net cash used for operating activities to adjusted free cash flow for the three months ended March 31, 2021 and 2020 follows. (2) Cash and cash equivalents includes $79 and $56 of restricted cash at March 31, 2021 and 2020. Three months ended March 31, 2021 2020 Net cash used for operating activities ($385) ($607) Interest included in investing activities (3) 13 14 Capital expenditures (135) (110) Adjusted free cash flow ($507) ($703) (3) Interest benefit of cross currency swaps included in investing activities.

Consolidated Supplemental Data (Unaudited) (in millions) Impact of Foreign Currency Translation by Segment  Favorable/(Unfavorable) (1) Three Months Ended March 31, 2021 Net Sales Segment Income Americas Beverage $4 European Beverage 21 $2 European Food 36 5 Asia Pacific 6 1 Transit Packaging 17 3 Corporate and Other 8 $92 $11

(1) The impact of foreign currency translation represents the difference between actual current year U.S. dollar results and pro forma amounts assuming constant foreign currency exchange rates for translation in both periods. In order to compute the difference, the Company compares actual U.S. dollar results to an amount calculated by multiplying or dividing, as appropriate, the current U.S. dollar results by current year average foreign exchange rates and then multiplying or dividing, as appropriate, those amounts by the applicable prior year average foreign exchange rates.

Reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA Twelve MonthsEnded Twelve MonthsEnded Q1 2021 Q1 2020 Full Year 2020 March 31, 2021 March 31, 2020 Income from operations $384 $246 $1,264 $1,402 $1,180 Add: Intangibles amortization 47 45 180 182 182 Restructuring and other 2 7 34 29 2 Segment income 433 298 1,478 1,613 1,364 Depreciation 80 77 301 304 308 Adjusted EBITDA $513 $375 $1,779 $1,917 $1,672 Total debt $8,211 $8,037 $8,809 Less cash (1,173) (588) (765) Net debt $7,038 $7,449 $8,044 Adjusted net leverage ratio 4.0x 3.9x 4.8x

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/crown-holdings-inc-reports-strong-first-quarter-2021-results-301271849.html

SOURCE Crown Holdings, Inc.
Over the years, 420 has become slang for getting high, a time of the day to partake and a date on the calendar to celebrate all things weed. As legalization sweeps across the country and cannabis goes corporate, the grassroots event has turned into a marketing opportunity for billion-dollar, publicly traded marijuana companies to commercialize.
Arriving passengers to Incheon International Airport on Monday go through the airport officials' questioning regarding their health and safety from the new coronavirus. Yonhap



South Korea has confirmed 70 more cases of contagious variants of the new coronavirus, bringing the total to 449, according to health authorities Monday, amid concerns that the country's virus battle may be exacerbated by the more transmissible viruses.



The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said the 70 people were confirmed to have been infected with three kinds of variants that are known to be more transmissible over the past week.



Of them, 35 people were local infections and 35 were imported cases, the KDCA said.



By nationality, 41 of them are South Koreans and 29 are foreigners, the authorities said.




President Joe Biden View Photo

President Joe Biden recently spoke with President Putin of Russia.

Biden was Mondays KVML Newsmaker of the Day. Here are his words:

Earlier this week, I spoke with President Putin of Russia about the nature of our relationship  the relationship between our two countries. And I was candid and respectful; the conversation was candid and respectful.

Two great powers with significant responsibility for global stability. And President Putin and I have had a significant responsibility to steward that relationship. I take that responsibility very seriously, as Im sure he does.

Russia and Americans are both proud and patriotic people. And I believe the Russian people, like the American people, are invested in peaceful and a secure future of our world.

During the campaign for my  for the presidency, I was unequivocal that if I was elected President, Id respond to any attempt to influence our elections  the last election  and  because elections are sacred. Theyre sovereign undertakings, and theyre an expression of the will of the American people, and we cannot allow a foreign power to interfere in our dome-  democratic process with impunity.

And I told him: If it turned out that the invest-  as I thought  that there was engagement in our elections, that I would  that Id respond.

Later, during the transition, as we learned more about the SolarWinds cyber intrusion, I made clear that I would respond once we determined who had, in fact, conducted a hack on the scope and scale that occurred.

When President Putin called me in January, after I was sworn in, to congratulate me, I told him that my administration  we were looking very carefully, now that we had access to all the data, at the issues that  to assess Russias role and then determine what response we would make.

When we spoke again this week, I told him that we would shortly be responding in a measured and proportionate way because we had concluded that they had interfered in the election and SolarWinds was totally out of the  inappropriate.

Today, Ive approved several steps, including expulsion of several Russian officials, as a consequence of their actions. Ive also signed an executive order authorizing new measures, including sanctions to address specific harmful actions that Russia has taken against U.S. interests.

I was clear with President Putin that we could have gone further, but I chose not to do so, to be  I chose to be proportionate.

The United States is not looking to kick off a cycle of ecs-  of escalation and conflict with Russia. We want a stable, predictable relationship.

If Russia continues to interfere with our democracy, Im prepared to take further actions to respond. It is my responsibility, as President of the United States, to do so.

But throughout our long history of competition, our two countries have been able to find ways to manage tensions and to keep them from escalating out of control.

There are also areas where Russia and the United States can and should work together. For example, in the earliest days of my administration, we were able to move quickly to extend, for five years, the New START Treaty, and maintain that key element of nuclear stability between our nations. That was in the interest of the United States, of Russia, and, quite frankly, of the world, and we got it done.

When I spoke to President Putin, I expressed my belief that communication between the two of us, personally and directly, was to be essential in moving forward to a more effective relationship. And he agreed on that point.

To that end, I proposed that we meet in person this summer in Europe, for a summit to address a range of issues facing both of our countries. Our teams are discussing that possibility right now.

And out of that summit  were it to occur, and I believe it will  the United States and Russia could launch a strategic stability dialogue to pursue cooperation in arms control and security. We can address critical global challenges that require Russia and the United States to work together, including reining in nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea, ending this pandemic globally, and meeting the existential crisis of climate change.

I also made clear to President Clutin [sic] that the United  Putin  that the United States is unwavering in our support of our allies and partners in Europe. In that vein, I expressed concern about Russias military buildup on Ukraines border and occup-  and in occupied Crimea. I affirmed U.S. support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. And I strongly urged him to refrain from any military action.

Now is the time to de-escalate. The way forward is through thoughtful dialogue and diplomatic process. The U.S. is prepared to continue constructively to move forward that process.

My bottom line is this: Where it is in the interest of the United States to work with Russia, we should and we will. Where Russia seeks to violate the interests of the United States, we will respond. And well always stand in defense of our country, our institutions, our people, and our allies.

Thank you very much for your time.

Q Mr. President, did President Putin give you any indication in that call that he is willing to change his behavior?

THE PRESIDENT: We indicated we would talk about it. I laid out, as I said, very simply  I told  I said during the campaign; I said when he called to congratulate me on being elected; I said, subsequent to that, this last conversation, that if it turned out that he was engaged in the activities that hed been accused of in cybersecurity and SolarWinds and interfering in our elections that I would respond in kind.

I urged him to respond appropriately, not to exceed it, because we can move as well. My hope and expectation is well be able to work out a modus vivendi. And  but its important that we have direct talks and that we continue to be in contact with one another.

Thank you.

Q (Cross-talk.)

THE PRESIDENT: Pardon me?

Q Why not  on Nord Stream, why didnt you keep going with the sanct-  sanctions on Nord Stream 2, Mr. President?

THE PRESIDENT: Nord Stream 2 is a complicated issue affecting our allies in Europe. Ive been opposed to Nord Stream 2 for a long time, from the beginning, when I was even  when I was out of office and even before office, when we  before I left office as Vice President. But that still is an issue that is in play.

Thank you very much.

The Newsmaker of the Day is heard every weekday morning at 6:45, 7:45 and 8:45 on AM 1450 and FM 102.7 KVML.
New Delhi, April 19 : The UK will impose travel restrictions on air passengers coming from India due to the fast-spreading coronavirus variant in the South Asian country, reports said on Monday.

India was added in the 'Red List' of countries, or those countries, whose citizens can not freely travel to the UK.

Reports quoted UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock terming the decision as a difficult but vital one to make.

As per norms, non-UK or Irish citizens will not be allowed to enter the European country post early morning on Friday.

Presently, Vistara, Air India, Virgin Atlantic and British Airways operate flights between the two countries.

Last year, India had suspended all flights to and from the UK from December 23 in the wake of the new mutant strain of novel coronavirus found in the European country.

Lately, rising Covid cases in India has forced many state governments to implement fresh Covid-19 restrictions during last two-three weeks.

The country's medical infrastructure is also facing heavy strain due to the rising numbers.
STAMFORD  For more than two decades, downtown Stamford was like a second home to David Bond.

The 67-year-old Stamford native often frequented the area, wearing his gray beanie and a black jacket, walking behind a shopping cart filled with his most prized possessions, different articles of clothing and his favorite books.

When he wasnt walking the city streets, Bond often spent his time reading or talking to friends in Latham or Scalzi parks.

But that all changed earlier this year, on Jan. 3, when Bond was struck by a car while crossing West Main Street, near its intersection with Spruce Street. Police later determined that Bond had walked across the street during a green light, so the driver faced no charges and was allowed to walk from the scene.

Bond was not so lucky.

The accident left him incapacitated and fighting for his life, his brother said. He suffered collapsed lungs, fractured ribs, a broken left leg, his left shoulder pulled out of socket with nerve damage, brain damage and a spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed from the waist down.

More than three months later, Bond is still on a ventilator and struggling to recover.

When I heard, it left me with a sad and sunken feeling, said his brother Melvin Bond, who lives in Virginia. All of Davids future dreams were shattered because of the accident.

3 1 of 3 Melvin Bond / Contributed photo Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Melvin Bond / Contributed photo Show More Show Less 3 of 3





Prior to the collision, the Boston College grad expressed an interest in returning to school and studying subjects such as African heritage, Ki-Swahili and the Egyptian Hieroglyphic Numbering System.

Maybe I can teach in the field, Bond told the Stamford Advocate in December. Teaching is a field where they dont just cut you off at 65.

Betsy Lopez, senior program operations manager at the New Covenant Center, which runs a food pantry and soup kitchen, said she was saddened to hear about Bonds accident.

I noticed he hadnt been around here in a while, but I had no idea, she said.

For years, Bond ate both lunch and dinner at New Covenant on almost a daily basis, Lopez said.

Though Bond wasnt homeless, he often frequented places like New Covenant and Pacific House for his meals.

Lopez said she remembers Bond as always being polite. She said he would often enjoy his meals alone, though he could carry a good conversation when prompted.

He was a loner when he ate here, he usually just kept to himself, she said.

Improving pedestrian safety

Bond is one of eight people who have been struck by a car and injured in Stamford since the start of 2021.

Pedestrian-involved crashes have been an issue in Stamford in the past, but in recent years the city the city has introduced several initiatives aimed at making it safer for pedestrians.

Last year, the city broke ground on a $1.6 million project aimed at improving problematic Summer Street intersections at Main Street, Broad Street, North Street and Hoyt Street.

The plan, which will take until the end of the year to complete, will bump out the curb line to give more room to pedestrians on those 12 corners, while installing high-visibility thermo plastic crosswalk treatments. Lighted signs will also be put in place to let drivers know when to yield to pedestrians.

Stamford will also be the first municipality in the state to have the Leading Pedestrian Interval system implemented, which will give pedestrians a several-second window before motorists are given a green light.

Frank Petise, interim chief of Transportation, Traffic and Parking Department, said that while any pedestrian-involved crash is not good, the citys efforts to improve in this regard have paid dividends so far.

Despite improvements being made by the city, pedestrian-involved accidents like these still occur on a regular basis.

This week the city saw its eighth such collision, which left a 41-year-old Stamford resident with life-threatening injuries.

In 2020, there were 66 pedestrian-involved crashes  down from 86 in 2019. In 2018, there were 84 such accidents. There was only one fatal accident recorded in each of those three years, Petise said.

However, Petise said that while the city still has improvements to make, it is doing fairly well when compared with cities of a similar size.

For example, New Haven recorded 98 pedestrian-involved crashes, nine of which were fatal, in 2020. There were 96 such crashes over that same span in Hartford, and 69 in Bridgeport.

A tragic situation

While pedestrian-involved accidents are trending downward in Stamford, each crash carries with it the potential to irrevocably change an individuals life, or worse.

In Bonds case, not only did it leave him paralyzed and fighting for his life. The crash also could also have long-term implications on Bond and his family even if he fully recovers.

At the time of the collision, Bond didnt have any insurance, his brother explained.

With no insurance to help, Bond has already racked up nearly $60,000 in medical bills, his brother said, and theres still a long road ahead in his recovery.

Its a just a tragic situation because hes just a very self-reserved person who is very opinionated about what he does and doesnt want, so he didnt have anyone  no wife, no kids  up there to help take care of him, Melvin Bond said.

To help with the mounting medical costs, Melvin Bond launched a GoFundMe page. He is seeking $50,000 in the hopes it will help pay for his brothers prolonged hospital stay and the long-term acute rehabilitation care he will need in the future. In the two weeks since its launch, the GoFundMe has raised a little over $2,000.

I just want to be able to take care of whatever is needed for him, he said.

Melvin Bond said the hope is that when this is all over, his brother can resume the humble and private life that hes built for himself over the years in Stamford.
(CNN)  President Joe Biden says his roughly $2 trillion infrastructure plan will help create millions of jobs. But many of the proposed jobs are in historically male-dominated fields and experts worry the plan won't do enough for America's women, who lost more jobs during the pandemic.

The massive spending plan is slated to improve the nation's infrastructure and move toward a greener economy over the next eight years. This would include investments in sectors like transportation, manufacturing and housing, which have historically employed more men than women.

While infrastructure improvements are important for all, they don't address the increased inequality in the pandemic economy, labor economists told CNN Business.

Women  particularly women of color are more likely to work lower-paying jobs, take on care responsibilities at home and work in the sectors affected the most by the pandemic, such as hospitality. Between February and April of last year, 13.4 million women lost their jobs, accounting for more than half of the total job losses during that period, according to government data.

Everyone uses roads, drinks water and has challenges finding housing, which the infrastructure plan promises to address, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Center. But where is the targeted investment in America's women?

The Biden plan allocates $400 billion to caregiving for aging and disabled Americas by expanding services under Medicaid and improving the wages of home health workers. This would help women a lot, Gould said, as they accounted for more than 90% of home health aides, at a salary of about $12 an hour, as well as more than 80% of personal care aides last year.

However, the stimulus could go much further, said labor economist Michelle Holder. What's missing is a recognition of gender inequities within industries as well as how women were disparately affected during the pandemic.

Aspects of the plan are laudable, said Holder, noting the $100 billion earmarked for workforce development in low-income communities in addition to funding for child care facilities and elder care.

One potential solution, she said would be to allocate 5% to 10% of the $621 billion proposed for transportation infrastructure and $300 billion earmarked for manufacturing to train women in the jobs being created in those respective fields.

"Let's make sure women, as 50% of the workforce, get 50% of those jobs," she said.

The White House is expected to follow up the infrastructure bill with a separate package focusing on the "care economy" in the coming weeks, which could be a game changer for some women. They account for a disproportionate amount of employees in the care sector and still shoulder much of the care responsibilities at home, as the pandemic showed.

Investing in the infrastructure of care would help overall economic activity, but it would also be a lengthy endeavor, said Kate Bahn, economist and director of labor market policy at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. The improvements won't happen by the snap of a finger.

"This is why it needs to be paired with other economic safety net policies," such as paid family leave, paid sick leave and flexible scheduling, Bahn said, noting those and other efforts would help parents  especially those forced out of the workforce during the pandemic  to participate again in the labor market.

On Thursday, the administration announced $39 billion of last month's $1.9 trillion relief package will be used to help child care providers stay in business or reopen. The funds can be used to pay rent, mortgages, bills and payroll incurred because of the pandemic. States can also provide direct subsidies to families to help cover the costs of care.

Last month, the Brookings Institute laid out a seven-point policy plan to help and empower essential workers, including raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, extending tax credit and instituting hazard pay and expanding paid leave.

Help for those who can't work

The infrastructure stimulus combined with various safety net measures could be beneficial in countering the she-cession, say women left unemployed or underemployed by the pandemic.

In the Bay Area, Kristen Campos has been unemployed since March 13, 2020. Until schools are back open and she can secure child care, she can't start work.

And without work, Campos can't pay for childcare for her now four-year-old son. She's hopeful the American Jobs Plan can help address those concerns and perhaps create a path back for her into the workforce.

Campos, 32, had built a career in the hospitality industry, which was decimated during the pandemic. She started as a cook and worked her way to a management position that allowed her to be home more for her kids, just before the pandemic started. It didn't last.

"I am more than willing to change career paths, if there is an affordable option for me to do so and I will receive a livable wage at the end of my training," she told CNN Business. "I can dedicate the time if my children are in safe hands while I do that. I would be unable to pay for childcare and my training while waiting to start a new job with no income."

She added: "I think there is enormous potential, and I hope that it actually helps."

Carol Armen, a 57-year-old single mother in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, has experienced a precipitous drop-off in how much she's able to work during the pandemic.

Armen, a freelance legal writer who's in the process of getting her law license back to active status, has needed to dedicate more hours to helping her 6-year-old son with special needs prepare for and attend remote classes. The shift from in-person schooling has been hard on her son, and it's been difficult for him to engage online without assistance.

Federal economic stimulus efforts such as the infrastructure plan should include dedicated funding for special needs education, she said.

"Throughout the pandemic, and in fact any time anyone speaks of education, they ignore kids with special needs," said Armen. "For instance, universal day care will do nothing for those kids."

--Tami Luhby contributed to this story.

This story was first published on CNN.com "Joe Biden's infrastructure plan could leave too many women behind".
MOSCOW (AP)  The Russian military said Monday that its airstrike killed about 200 militants in eastern Syria.

Rear Adm. Alexander Karpov, the head of the Russian military's Reconciliation Center in Syria, said Russian warplanes hit two militant hideouts northeast of Palmyra.

Karpov said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies that the air raid killed some 200 militants and destroyed 24 vehicles and about 500 kilograms (over 1,100 pounds) of ammunition and explosives. He said the militants' base had served as a staging ground for terror attacks across Syria.

Russia has waged a military campaign in Syria since 2015, helping President Bashar Assad's government retake control over most of the country after a devastating 10-year conflict.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported the airstrikes, saying they preceded a sweep by Russian troops and the Syrian Fifth Corps in search of Islamic State militants cells in the Homs desert. The Observatory said 26 IS militants were killed.

The Observatory said the raid might have been in response to the Islamic State group's claims that it had killed two Russian soldiers in the desert. The ground operation began Monday under the heavy cover by Russian military helicopters.
Biden calls border a 'crisis' after state officials raise concerns over national security, trafficking VP Harris skips border, plans to visit Guatemala to address 'root cause' of mass immigration

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President Joe Biden has for the first time described the surge of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border as a "crisis," days after nearly 300 sheriffs in 39 states sent him a letter urging him to change his policies due to a rise in sex trafficking and concerns about national security threats.

On Saturday, Biden was asked by a reporter in Delaware about his reversal on the refugee admissions cap after his administration released a memo to keep in place the Trump-era 15,000 cap on refugees who can be allowed into the United States.

Were going to increase the number. The problem was that the refugee part was working on the crisis that ended up on the border with young people, Biden said in response. We couldnt do two things at once. But now we are going to increase the number.

Earlier this month, the sheriffs sent a letter spearheaded by Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson of Bristol County, Mass., accusing the president of exposing the nation to cartel trafficking and potential terror threats by enabling mass illegal immigration and overwhelming Border Patrol agents.

President Biden is knowingly and intentionally undermining Americas Sheriffs and our collaborative efforts with our local, state and federal public safety partners to enforce the rule of law, Hodgson said, according to the Sun Chronicle. He and the policies of his administration are placing our citizens, neighborhoods and our nation in public safety and public health danger.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents apprehended 172,331 migrants along the border in March, which is a 71% increase from February. That number included 18,890 teenagers and unaccompanied children, which is a 100% increase since February and has led to massive overcrowding at border facilities.

Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, described it as the biggest surge that weve ever seen in the history of the Border Patrol, during a roundtable with Republican members of Congress, Texas landowners, and law enforcement on April 7, as reported by The Epoch Times.

In the letter to Biden, Hodgson and over 270 sheriffs noted how both the Trump and Obama administrations recognized the threat posed by illegal immigration and said it's critical that he respond.

You must act now before our nations public safety resources are overwhelmed with the criminal side effects of unchecked illegal immigration, including transnational gangs, guns, dangerous drugs and human trafficking, the sheriffs added in the letter. Americas Sheriffs urge you, Mr. President, to reverse course and help us protect our communities by securing the southern border.

Prominent evangelical leader and president of Samaritans Purse, Franklin Graham, posted a portion of the letter on Facebook last Monday, sharing the sheriffs' concerns.

I appreciate the boldness of this group of law enforcement leadersthey are right, Graham wrote. Lets pray together that President Biden will heed this warning, and that God would give him wisdom and strength to do the right thing and find solutions to this crisis quickly. We need a safe process for legal immigration that works.

Hodgson appeared on "Fox and Friends" after sending the letter to discuss the impact of the border crisis on the rest of the nation in greater detail.

Sheriffs across this country are mobilizing. , Hodgson said. Open borders dont work and they are exposing our citizens to more transnational gangs, violence in our communities, more drugs pouring into our communities, sex and human trafficking out of control and national security threats.

This comes after several Republican states have filed lawsuits against the Biden administrations border and immigration policies.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a lawsuit Tuesday, which asked a federal judge to order the Biden administration restart the Remain in Mexico policy, The Washington Times reported.

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich also filed a lawsuit arguing that the relaxed immigration policies caused the surge and an environmental disaster, which violated the National Environmental Policy Act.

Former Trump officials have also called on the Biden administration to respond to the crisis.

"Id say the vice president (Kamala Harris)  needs to go to the border, needs to understand the conditions that are being experienced, needs to understand and talk to the men and women of the Border Patrol  because its all interrelated," former acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf said at a Heritage Foundation news briefing, Fox News reported.

Biden appointed Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the charge in responding to the border crisis through diplomatic efforts. Since being tasked with this on March 24, Harris has not visited the southern border, which has sparked heavy criticism.

Harris said, plans are in the works to travel to Guatemala and Mexico soon to address the root causes of immigration, she said at a Northern Triangle security roundtable on Wednesday, Fox News reported.

Until Saturday, the Biden administration had refused to call the historic surge in immigration a crisis, instead calling it a challenge.

Last week, Biden tapped Chris Magnus, police chief of Tucson, Arizona, and vocal critic of Trumps immigration policy, to head Customs and Border Protection, The New York Times reported.

Despite Biden signing an executive order to halt the Trump administrations border wall construction, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told department employees that they might begin rebuilding gaps in the wall, The Washington Times added.
Oil steadied near $67 a barrel as the benefits of a weaker dollar were offset by the sweep of the coronavirus pandemic across key importer India.

Brent futures traded little changed, paring an earlier decline as the dollar slipped, making commodities priced in the currency more attractive. Yet India reported record Covid-19 infections on Monday in a further blow to fuel demand.

Last week, crude futures were boosted by a wave of positive economic data from the U.S. and China, a drawdown in stockpiles, and optimistic assessments of the prospects for consumption over 2021 from both the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and the International Energy Agency.

RELATED: Iran looms large for oil markets this week

Oil has risen almost 30% in 2021 in a stuttering advance as Covid vaccinations are rolled out, but infection flare-ups in some countries continue to weigh on demand. After OPEC and its allies presided over supply cuts to drain bloated stockpiles, the cartel now plans to start restoring barrels in May. Yet high global Covid-19 cases temper hopes for an imminent end to the pandemic.

With global virus cases hitting new records, the prospect for a sustained rally at this stage seems limited, said Ole Hansen, head of commodities strategy at Saxo Bank A/S. Oils true upside potential cannot be realized before it can fire on all cylinders; that is currently not the case.

Traders are also following high-level talks between Iran, the U.S. and other nations aimed at ending a standoff over the nuclear deal abandoned by former President Donald Trump. Washington described negotiations as constructive, while the Islamic Republic signaled it was ready to debate details to revive the accord. An agreement could see U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil exports lifted.

In Asia, some physical crude grades have grown in value in recent weeks. Russias ESPO crude, a staple of Asian refiners, is trading at a premium of more than $2 a barrel to the benchmark Dubai price. However, its a different picture in Europe, where Caspian CPC Blend is trading at a one-year low.
NASHVILLE --- The Asian Carp Advisory Commission heard a presentation on bio-acoustic fish fence, the Asian Carp Harvest Incentive Program, and established committees to address marketing and business development.

It was the second meeting for the Commission held at the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agencys Region II Building on April 1. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed an Executive Order in September 2020 establishing the Asian Carp Advisory Commission to study and provide advice regarding the best methods for mitigating the invasion of Asian carp into the states lakes and river systems. State Senator Mike Bell is serving as the Commission chair.

Dr. Teresa Lewis, Director of the Midwest Fisheries Office, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, joined the meeting by Zoom to make a presentation on the bio-acoustic fish fence (BAFF). A BAFF sends a curtain of bubble, sound, and light from the riverbed to the water surface to guide or block fish. The BAFF, part of an experimental project, was unveiled at Barkley lock in late 2019.

TWRA Fisheries Chief Frank Fiss, who also serves on the commission, gave an introduction on the Asian Carp Harvest Incentive Program (ACHIP). Since it was implemented in September 2018, close to 7 million pounds of Asian carp have been removed from the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers.

Rob Goad, from the Paris-Henry County Industrial Committee, was a guest to give the countys perspective. Clay Young, of North American Caviar was also a guest to give a wholesaler fish dealers perspective in ACHIP.

Near the conclusion of the meeting, a Business Development committee was formed. TWRA Assistant Director Chris Richardson, along with Advisory Commission members and Bob Deacy (TVA) and Dennis Tumlin (Department of Tourism), will serve on the committee. The Commissions next meeting will be held in Henry County on June 24. A location and time will be announced later.

---TWRA---
Residents of Ejisu in the Ejisu Juaben Municipality of the Ashanti Region have expressed gratitude to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, for the nomination of their Member of Parliament (MP), Hon. John Ampontuah Kumah, as a Deputy Finance Minister.



According to them, John Kumahs nomination is an ample indication of the confidence the President has reposed in him to occupy such a high-profile office as the Deputy Finance Minister.



They assured the President and his government of their support for Hon. John Kumah in all ways to ensure that, he performs and excels in that position to justify the confidence reposed in him.



The Ejisu residents also congratulated Hon. John Kumah on his nomination and assured him of their support to enable him live up to expectation as the Deputy Finance Minister should he be given the nod by the Legislature after its vetting processes.



John Kumah, until his election as the MP for Ejisu, was the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme, (NEIP) where he created over fifty five thousand (55,000) jobs for the youth, who hitherto, had lost hope of finding jobs that could sustain them.



Mr. John Kumah is credited with a lot of innovations he brought on board as the CEO of NEIP, among which was the greenhouse project, that has transformed the agricultural sector of the country and eventually portrayed the government of Nana Akufo-Addo as a pro-poor government



Below is the personal profile of Mr. John Kumah, Deputy Finance Minister Nominee



Lawyer John Ampontuah Kumah was born in 1978, some 42 years ago, in Ejisu, in the Ashanti Region of Ghana, and he is commonly described by his constituents as a man of integrity with focus on job creation, and a man who inspires hope for the future in both the young and the old.



He is full of energy, courage, and determination to make a difference in his nation and the lives of his constituents, in contribution to fulfil the developmental agenda of the NPP government.



All who know him are quick to speak about his trustworthiness in fulfilling his promises, his humility, and easy accessibility.



John Kumah has very humble beginnings, having been born and brought up by poor farming parents in Aduaprokye, a village in the Ejisu district of the Ashanti Region.



With sheer determination, he defied the obstacles in his life through education. After becoming a Lawyer in 2013, he now holds a doctorate degree in Business Administration, with specialty in Business Innovation from the Swiss Business School, Switzerland.



He obtained a BA degree in Economics with Philosophy from the University of Ghana (Legon), and holds double Masters  Applied Business Research from the Swiss Business School, and an Executive Masters in Business Administration (Finance) from GIMPA, Accra.



John Kumah therefore serves as a good example of determination to overcome odds in life, and inspires hope in the youth, the poor and disadvantaged in society.



In his professional career, he was the founding Managing Director of Majak Associates Ltd, a building and construction firm with footprint construction projects all over Ghana. Upon becoming a Lawyer, he founded the Aduaprokye Chambers, and was the Managing Partner of the law firm, until the President appointed him as the CEO of the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (NEIP) in 2017.



At the helm of NEIP, he oversaw the training of 45,000 start-ups in three years, under the Presidential Business Support Programme, and supported 10,000 beneficiaries, leading to the creation of numerous jobs for the youth all over the country.



He has over 17 years of continuous working and leadership experience, which exhibit his creativity, innovation and resourcefulness in creating jobs, promoting entrepreneurship, and supporting youth development.



He was adjudged the most Efficient, Prominent Government Appointee in 2018 and was listed among President Akufo Addos top 20 Most Humble and Respectful Appointees in 2019.



As a loyal member of the NPP, he has worked for the party from the grassroots since 1992. He is the founding father of the Young Patriots, a youth political activist and pressure group of NPP. He is a member of the Communication Team of the NPP.



John Ampontuah Kumah was elected MP (NPP) in the December 2020 general elections to represent the Ejisu Constituency in Ghanas Parliament.



In fulfilment of promises made to his constituents in Ejisu, he has successfully solicited and secured substantial funding to execute several infrastructure and job creation projects in the constituency.



John Kumah is a unifier and peace maker. He is a family man with six children, and married to Apostle Mrs. Lilian Kumah, founder and Senior Pastor of Disciple of Christ Ministries Worldwide.



Lawyer John Kumah is currently the Vice Chairman of the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee of the 8th Parliament of Ghana



He is also a member of the Appointment Committee of the 8th Parliament of Ghana as well as a member of the Subsidiary Legislation Committee of the 8th Parliament





Source: Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
The fate of Walden developer/landowner/attorney John Andersons latest skirmish in his long battle to develop a large tract of land in the heart of Walden as a nominal village center  despite the fact that it does not conform to the definition ofvillage center spelled out in the towns zoning ordinance  is now in the hands of a Bradley County circuit court judge.

The development, which would be located on the former Lines Orchids site, would contain a 43,000-square-foot grocery store, 10,000 square feet of retail and/or office space, a gas station and a parking lot for 220 vehicles.

Judge J. Michael Sharp is expected to rule soon in Anthony et al v. Town of Walden and LOP, LLC, a lawsuit which contends that Andersons proposed grocery store/fuel center/office complex does not qualify for VC-1 zoning.

In the lawsuit, plaintiffs contend that former Mayor Bill Trohanis and Alderwoman Sarah McKenzie erred when they voted in 2019 to approve the VC-1 rezoning request, despite the fact that the project fails to include five of the six required components. For example, they point out, as proposed the development includes neither residential properties nor an internal network of streets, both of which are mandatory in a village center.

Last week, attorney/developer Anderson outlined his justifications for the controversial rezoning in a 10-page summary brief submitted to Judge Sharp.

In his summary, he argued that the actions taken by the former mayor and alderwoman were rational because both publicly outlined their reasons for voting as they did.

The petitioners may not think these are good reasons, attorney Anderson told the judge, but they are (their) reasons. The court should not look to the intrinsic correctness of the decision, but whether it is rationally based.

Further, the developer/landowner/attorney contended, the courts have no business second-guessing local officials zoning decisions.

Zoning is a legislative matter and as a general proposition the exercise of the zoning power should not be subjected to judicial interference unless clearly necessary, he wrote. In enacting or amending zoning legislation, a court cannot substitute its judgment for that of a local governing body in cases where the zoning ordinance is fairly debatable.

Plaintiffs attorney Donald Aho responded in a final brief of his own, Respondent LOP, LLC asserts that a zoning decision must be upheld where it was fairly debatable or where there was any rational basis for the decision  whether or not it violates statutes or ordinances, attorney Aho noted.

This is not the law, he declared. There are no fairly debatable or rational basis exceptions to the rule that the town was required to follow the law.

Further, attorney Aho continued, the town of Walden also failed to comply with a variety of mandatory procedural safeguards designed to protect the community.

For example, he noted, the former mayor and alderwoman failed to adopt regional planning commission-recommended amendments to the proposed VC-1 rezoning request.
The Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority is ready to restore the Amtrak Downeasters pre-COVID-19 schedule this spring.

The Downeaster will add a fifth round trip starting May 3; the train had been operating four round trips since July 2020, the service said. In addition, seasonal service will resume to Old Orchard Beach.

The mid-morning departure from Brunswick and mid-afternoon return trip from Boston will provide more travel options.

Passengers have requested more mid-day trains for years, said Natalie Bogart, NEEPRA spokesperson.

One other change is aimed at making the train more passenger-friendly, she said. The late train departing Boston will begin operating on a more flexible schedule to serve events in Boston.
Authorities in Hong Kong on Monday announced plans to begin terminating the contracts of civil servants who refused to take an oath of allegiance to the Hong Kong government.



Secretary for the Civil Service Patrick Nip told lawmakers that 129 out of 170,000 civil servants haven't signed a written declaration of loyalty, with some writing on the form that the requirement infringed their right to free speech.



The declaration vows that the officials will "bear allegiance to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the Peoples Republic of China ... and be responsible to the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region."



Nip's civil service bureau said 25 civil servants had resigned, and the rest have been suspended or put on unpaid leave.



"Because as a permanent resident or as a civil servant of the Hong Kong SAR, it's the basic responsibility to bear allegiance to Hong Kong and the administration," he said.



"We will be fast-tracking the procedures. This will be over and done with within a couple of months, I am sure," Nip told the Legislative Council (LegCo).



The requirement to pledge loyalty to the government comes amid a citywide crackdown on peaceful dissent and political opposition since a draconian national security law was imposed on Hong Kong by the CCP from July 1, 2020.



In January, Hong Kong government broadcaster RTHK terminated the permanent civil service contract and benefits of a journalist known for her hard-hitting questions of government officials, the staff union said.



Management had offered TV current affairs anchor Nabela Qoser a choice between resigning and taking a short-term contract, in a move that was widely condemned as political interference in the media.



Qoser's contract was terminated after she fired a series of hard-hitting questions at chief executive Carrie Lam about a July 31 attack by armed thugs on train passengers in Yuen Long, prompting Lam and other top officials to walk out of a news conference.

Protest slogans



Lawyers for detained opposition politician Tam Tak-chi on Monday applied for proceedings against him to be halted, taking aim at the legal basis for his detention on suspicion of "sedition" for shouting protest slogans.



Tam, who is vice chairman of the opposition party People Power, could be tried for sedition in the District Court, with no jury following a ruling earlier this month.



His defense attorney Philip Dykes argued that the colonial-era sedition law is incompatible with the city's mini-constitution, the Basic Law, which guarantees freedom of expression.



"The definitions of seditious intention ... are so general or vague that [the law] fails to inform what's safe to say or publish," Dykes told the District Court. Judge Stanley Chan adjourned the hearing and reserved his ruling until April 26.



Tam appeared relaxed in court, and made a victory "V" gesture to the public gallery.



Chan reprimanded Tam's supporters in the public gallery after they made a splayed, five-finger gesture referring to the five demands of the 2019 protest movement, which included fully democratic elections.



"Maybe this defendant is very popular in the eyes of the public, but the court would like to remind the public that they are in a courtroom," Chan said. "In criminal cases, the court should be respected as a place that represents the independence of the judiciary. It is not a place for people to play or dance around."



Tam was arrested in September 2020 for using the protest slogans "Free Hong Kong, Revolution Now!" and "Five demands, not one less!" while giving speeches on the streets of Kowloon between March and July.



Tam is also accused of shouting: "Dirty cops, hope your family members all die!" and of making complaints relating to police inaction during a July 21, 2019 mob attack on train passengers in Yuen Long, and to riot police attacks on passengers in Prince Edward MTR station on Aug. 31, 2019.

Takeover 'just for show'



Meanwhile, the chairman of Hong Kong-based Chinese-language broadcaster Phoenix Media Investment, Liu Changle, announced he would sell almost all of his stake in the company to the CCP-backed Bauhinia Culture Holdings and to Common Sense, which is owned by Pansy Ho's Shun Tak empire.



The board does not expect the proposed [shares transfers] will have any negative impact on the business operations of the company, Phoenix said in a document filed to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Sunday.



A journalist based in the northern province of Hebei who gave only a surname, Song, said the transfer of Liu's stake showed Beijing taking over more obvious control of a broadcaster that was founded by a former People's Liberation Army (PLA) radio reporter.



"Bauhinia Culture is a state-owned asset," Song said. "For it to take back control of Phoenix TV is just for show."



"I think we will see a further trend towards central [government] control of all of Hong Kong's media organizations," he said.

"This could mean that they centralize all privately-owned media, including publishing houses, and place them under the same management as they would have in mainland China, or maybe even more strictly controlled."



Reported by Chan Yun Nam and Lau Siu Fung for RFA's Cantonese Service, and by Qiao Long for the Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
China urges "responsible attitude" from Japan on disposal of nuclear wastewater

Xinhua) 16:10, April 18, 2021

BEIJING, April 18 (Xinhua) -- China has expressed "grave concern" over Japan's decision to dump nuclear wastewater into the sea and urges the Japanese government to take a responsible attitude toward its own people and the international community, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment said.

Despite opposition from its own people and doubts from the international community, the Japanese government unilaterally made the decision without fully consulting neighboring countries and the international community and without exhausting the means of safe disposal, the ministry told Xinhua.

"As a close neighbor of Japan and a stakeholder, we are seriously concerned about this decision," said a spokesperson with the ministry.

It is hoped that the Japanese government will conduct further in-depth study and deliberation of various means of safe disposal and discharge paths, release information in a comprehensive and timely manner, and make prudent decisions after full consultation with stakeholders, the spokesperson said.

The ministry also said there is a fundamental difference between the wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant after the accident and the liquid effluents from the normal operation of nuclear power plants in terms of their source, radionuclide type and difficulty of processing.

The ministry said it will closely follow the situation, carefully assess the possible impact on the marine ecology, strengthen the monitoring of marine radiation, and ensure the safety of China's marine environment.

(Web editor: Meng Bin, Bianji)
Johanna Love steers the newsroom as editor. Her time off is occupied by kid, dog, biking, camping and art. She loves to hear from readers with story tips, kudos, criticism and questions.
Germanys environmentalist Greens have chosen co-leader Annalena Baerbock to make their first bid for the chancellery in the countrys September election.

Ms Baerbocks nomination was unveiled by the partys other co-leader, Robert Habeck, in a smoothly staged announcement that contrasted with the increasingly heated standoff in Chancellor Angela Merkels centre-right Union bloc.

The September 26 parliamentary election is unpredictable, in part because the incumbent is not seeking re-election.

Mrs Merkel vowed in 2018 not to seek a fifth four-year term.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is not running for re-election (Markus Schreiber/AP)

Recent polls have shown the Greens running second behind the Union and ahead of Germanys traditional big centre-left party, the Social Democrats.

Ms Baerbock, 40, has been a legislator in the national parliament since 2013 but lacks government experience.

She said: I stand for renewal, others stand for the status quo.

Ms Baerbock said she stands for a Germany at the heart of Europe, a country in which climate protection creates the future foundation for prosperity, freedom and security.

She and Mr Habeck have led the Greens since early 2018.

A pragmatic and harmonious duo, they have presided over a rise in poll ratings.

Annalena Baerbock with co-leader Robert Habeck (Kay Nietfeld/dpa via AP)

The Greens are in opposition nationally but sit in 11 of Germanys 16 state governments.

Recent polls show support for the party of 20-22%, more than twice the 8.9% it won in the 2017 election.

The choice of candidate will need endorsement from a party congress in June.

The Greens last month unveiled a programme that proposes speeding up Germanys exit from coal-fired power, raising carbon prices and massively increasing infrastructure spending.

They are pro-European Union and take a tough line towards Russia, calling for an end to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project.

Whatever the election outcome, the Greens may hold the key to forming the next government.

The traditionally left-leaning and once notoriously chaotic party was the junior partner in centre-left chancellor Gerhard Schroeders government from 1998 to 2005.

It has become increasingly open to alliances with centre-right parties, and is part of a wide variety of coalitions at state level.

Armin Laschet, left, and Markus Soeder are battling to become the candidate to succeed Angela Merkel (Tobias Schwarz/Pool Photo via AP)

Mrs Merkels Union bloc, meanwhile, was still waiting for a candidate on Monday.

The governors of Germanys two most populous states, Armin Laschet and Markus Soeder, are battling for the nomination to succeed her.

They missed a self-imposed deadline to agree by Sunday.

Mr Laschet, the leader of Mrs Merkels Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and Mr Soeder, the head of its smaller Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), both declared their interest in running for chancellor on April 11.

They did not specify how they would decide their competition.

A standoff ensued that many supporters fear could cause lasting damage.

Mr Laschet and Mr Soeder are the state governors of North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria respectively.

Mr Soeder has much better poll ratings, but Mr Laschet is the recently elected leader of by far the bigger of the sister parties.

Bavarian governor Markus Soeder with German Chancellor Angela Merkel (Michael Sohn/Pool/AP)

Last Monday, Mr Laschet rallied the CDU leadership behind his bid and called for a quick decision.

But Mr Soeder said the matter should not be resolved only in a small back room.

On Tuesday, the contenders addressed a meeting of the Union blocs joint parliamentary group that laid bare divisions in the CDU.

Parts of Mrs Merkels party favour Mr Soeder, while others are appalled by his power play for the top job.

German media reported that Mr Laschet, Mr Soeder and close aides met late on Sunday night, apparently without a result.

Shortly before, leaders of the Unions youth wing had come out for Mr Soeder.

The Social Democrats, who provided three of Germanys eight post-Second World War chancellors but have long been stuck in a poll slump, nominated finance minister Olaf Scholz as their candidate for chancellor months ago.
The Daily News-Miner encourages residents to make themselves heard through the Opinion pages. Readers' letters and columns also appear online at newsminer.com. Contact the editor with questions at letters@newsminer.com or call 459-7574.

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Letters to the editor

Send letters to the editor by mail (P.O. Box 70710, Fairbanks AK 99707), by fax (907-452-7917) or via email (letters@newsminer.com). Writers are limited to one letter every two weeks (14 days.) All letters must contain no more than 350 words and include a full name (no abbreviation), daytime and evening phone numbers and physical address. (If no phone, then provide a mailing address or email address.) The Daily News-Miner reserves the right to edit or reject letters without consulting the writer.
Srinagar, April 20 : The two terrorists killed in an encounter in Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian district on Monday belonged to the proscribed terror outfit Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, they were given an opportunity to surrender but they fired indiscriminately at the security forces triggering the encounter, officials said.

Police said on a specific input regarding presence of terrorists in Zeipora area of Shopian, a joint cordon and search operation was launched by the police, army's 34 RR and 178 Bn of the CRPF in the said area.

"During the search operation as the presence of terrorists got ascertained they were given an opportunity to surrender, however, they fired indiscriminately upon the joint search party, which was retaliated leading to an encounter," police said.

"In the ensuing encounter, two terrorists were killed and their bodies were retrieved from the site of encounter. They have been identified as Sabzar Ahmad Ganie of Sehpora Kulgam and Amir Ahmad Bhat resident of Malibugh, Imamsahib Shopian." Police said as per its records they were part of groups involved in many terror crime cases and linked with proscribed terror outfit HM.

Arms, ammunition and other incriminating materials were recovered from the site of encounter. All the recovered materials have been taken into case records for further investigation and to probe their complicity in other terror crimes.

"The last rites of the killed terrorists shall be performed after conducting medico-legal formalities and their nearest family members shall be allowed to participate in the last rites," police said.

Police have registered a case and investigation has been initiated.
Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren on Sunday informed that the state government has sought help from Bangladesh to import the drug Remdesivir for 50,000 vials for emergency use. With an increasing number of COVID-19 cases and decreasing availability of the drug, the Jharkhand Government reached out to pharma companies in Bangladesh. The drug is used to treat critical COVID-19 patients.

CM Hemant Soren has written to union minister DV Sadanand Gowda for permission of import.

With the increasing demand for #Remedisivir for critical patients in Jharkhand & its unavailability, we have reached out to to Pharma companies in Bangladesh for buying around 50,000 vials for emergency use. I have written to @DVSadanandGowdaji for permission to import ASAP. pic.twitter.com/23XlxCp6gi  Hemant Soren (@HemantSorenJMM) April 18, 2021

In the two-page letter, CM Hemant Soren wrote that the state is experiencing a massive shortage of the drug. He also wrote that contrary to the assumptions that vaccine and herd immunity will prevent the spread of the virus, currently a large number of patients are showing critical symptoms. The CM added that due to the shortage of Remdesivir the recovery rate is falling and the fatality rate is increasing. The state started witnessing the shortage at the beginning of this month, according to CM Hemant Soren.

50,000 vials of Remdesivir from Bangladesh

The Chief Minister in his letter mentioned that since Indian manufacturers could not meet the demand of the state, officials started exploring foreign companies. A quotation from Bangladesh's BEXIMCO has reached Jharkhand with a cost of one million dollars. The Jharkhand Government is ready to procure the cost and approve the quotation for the medicine.

Jharkhand COVID-19 cases

Another single-day spike in COVID-19 cases in Jharkhand with 3,992 fresh cases with more than 28000 active cases in last 24 hours. The state, on Sunday, recorded 50 deaths taking the toll to 1,456. 17 fatalities were reported from East Singhbhum alone followed by Ranchi with 11. The capital city of Ranchi is reporting highest number of fresh cases that on Sunday stood at 1,073 infections. Meanwhile, the vaccination process is also in full swing in the state with 35,855 total inoculations on Sunday.
Because of their extensive experience with systems like ours, TargetX was an easy choice as we work to re-imagine and digitize the full student journey.

In the past, Community College enrollment has surged in the wake of economic recessions, however that does not appear to be the case following the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reports that Community Colleges are seeing a steep decline in enrollment today, particularly among historically underserved populations.

As institutions across the country observe Community College Month, major Community Colleges and systems are sharing how they plan to combat this decline. Raritan Valley Community College, Mid Michigan College and the Technical College System of Georgia have turned to TargetXs Community College Suite, a comprehensive CRM, to improve their recruitment, admissions and student success operations  all while better engaging prospective applicants through the user-friendly, mobile-first technology.

The Technical College System of Georgia is obsessed with student success: Our programs utilize the best available technology to complete our workforce development mission by delivering lifelong education and training to all Georgians and industry partners. We are now expanding our use of best-in-class technology to engage students just as they begin exploring educational opportunities with our colleges, said Steven Ferguson, Chief Information Officer of the Technical College System of Georgia. Because of their extensive experience with systems like ours, TargetX was an easy choice as we work to re-imagine and digitize the full student journey.

When you combine the effects of the pandemic and the ensuing economic impact on enrollment and retention, this could be a make or break year for many Community Colleges, said TargetXs Katie Doviak. At TargetX, were dedicated to ensuring that our clients have all the tools they need to support and engage students from their first moment of interest through completion of their program.

Changes to the employment landscape have hit the East and Southeast regions particularly hard, said TargetXs Ashley Crocker. As people adjust their educational and career paths accordingly, Community Colleges will have to respond to these prospective students with unprecedented levels of agility and engagement. TargetX gives these institutions the tools they need to quickly identify and effectively communicate with new and diverse applicant pools in order to get their enrollment and retention numbers back on track.

With TargetXs Community College Suite, the three systems join the TargetX community of nearly 200 Community and Technical College campuses in: Addressing the specific needs of first-generation, dual-enrollment, adult and other students from diverse backgrounds; Implementing mobile-first tools to improve and automate processes for recruitment, admissions and student success on campus and beyond; Eliminating manual tasks and optimizing limited resources with a student-centric, one-stop-shop CRM; Creating a far-reaching sense of community, which is especially valuable for colleges that serve commuter students through multiple campuses and online learning hubs.

Community and Technical Colleges looking to combat their own enrollment declines should visit targetx.com/community-colleges today for access to this proven suite of powerful tools.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-19 16:07:49|Editor: huaxia

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LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Nine militants have been killed and three others injured in cleanup operations conducted by government forces in Marja district in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province, provincial police said in a statement released here Monday.

A large number of arms and ammunitions were also seized from the Taliban hideouts in the operations launched Sunday, according to the statement.

The security forces have also discovered and defused scores of anti-vehicle and anti-personnel mines from the area, it said.

No casualties have been reported in security personnel or civilians during the operations, the statement said.

Taliban militants, who have intensified activities recently, have not made comment on the casualty report. Enditem
(AP)

Joe Biden is being urged to announce a target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, ahead of the Earth Day climate summit.

Mr Biden will host the virtual summit later this week. Scientists and climate campaigners say a 50-per-cent reduction in emissions is ambitious, but it is achievable.

Meanwhile, the president was joined by his former boss, Barack Obama, in a TV special to promote coronavirus vaccines on Sunday night.

Mr Obama told Americans: I want to make sure that our communities, particularly ones, African-American, Latino, as well as young people understand that this will save lives and allow people to get their lives back to normal.
A nationwide household survey found 15.2% of Michigan adults are hesitant to get a COVID-19 vaccine, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Across the U.S. the census estimates 15.6% of all American adults are hesitant to receive the vaccine, meaning Michigan is just under national averages.

Cant see the chart? Click here https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/Hpv6K/2/

When it comes to reasoning for hesitancy, Michiganders said they were concerned about possible side effects, planned to see if it was safe and did not trust the vaccine. These reasons were on par with the reasons of all hesitant Americans.

Each respondent was able to select several reasons they are hesitant to get a coronavirus vaccine. Respondents who said they will probably probably not or definitely not get a vaccine, or said they will not get all doses, were considered hesitant.

As of Friday, 43% of Michigan residents age 16 and up had received at least a first dose of coronavirus vaccine. The states goal is to vaccinate 70% of the eligible population.

RELATED: 43% of Michigan adults have received first vaccine dose; see numbers in your county

Cant see the map? Click here

According to census data, state of Wyoming residents are the most hesitant of the COVID-19 vaccine (33.2%). On the other hand, Vermont residents are the least vaccine hesitant (8.5%). This puts Michigan in the middle, as the national average is 15.6%.

When it comes to which Michiganders are hesitant, there are a few differences when it comes to adult demographics.

Women significantly selected side effect concerns as hesitancy reasoning more than men

In more than half of categories for hesitancy reasoning, female Michiganders outweighed males. The most notable category is concerns about possible side effects, where women largely outweigh men.

In addition, women trust the vaccine less than men, want to wait and see if its safe more and think others need it more than them.

Men slightly outweigh women in reasoning categories like lack of trust in the government, concerns about cost and saying their doctor has not recommended it.

COVID-19 vaccinations are provided at no cost to the patient. The patients insurance will be billed an administrative service, but the vaccine will have no out of pocket costs. Those without insurance are not charged for a vaccine.

RELATED: Vaccine eligibility opens to Michiganders 16+ April 5, heres what you need to know

Michigan men and women are consistent with one another when it comes to citing uncertainty about the vaccine working, however this was a less cited reason overall to be hesitant of the vaccine.

Cant see the chart? Click here: https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/4VWIy/3/

Some reasons for coronavirus vaccine hesitancy vary among race and ethnicity

Michigan residents who identify as Latino or Hispanic point to concerns of side effects (29%) significantly more than other race and ethnicities. However, white Michigan residents cited this concern more than others as well (21%).

Health professionals report mild side effects such as a fever, body ache or chills are normal after receiving the coronavirus vaccine and are a symptom of the body building immunity.

Cant see the chart? Click here https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/68gC4/1/

Black Michiganders selected waiting to see if the vaccine is safe as a reason for their hesitancy (25%) more than other races and ethnicities.

Those who are bi-racial or identify as another race or ethnicity were more likely than others to lack trust in COVID-19 vaccines (24%).

Those in the highest household income bracket were the most likely to cite lack of trust in government, COVID-19 vaccines as hesitancy reasoning

While concerns about side effects remained steady across income levels, those who are in households who make $200,000 or more per year were significantly less likely to cite vaccine safety as a reason for their hesitancy.

Those who said their reasoning for hesitancy was due to a lack of trust in government was the highest at the $200,000 or more household income level (19%). Pointing to a lack of trust in COVID-19 vaccines was also the highest at this level (22%). Citing others needing it more as a reason for hesitancy was also the lowest across income brackets at this level.

Cant see the chart? Click here https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/q0hsy/2/

Those who had COVID-19 are vaccine hesitant because they believe they dont need it, among other reasons

Concerns about side effects were similar among Michigan residents who have had COVID-19 and those who have not.

Those who previously had COVID-19 were more likely than their counterparts to select the following reasons for their vaccine hesitancy: They believe they dont need it, other people need it more and they dont trust the coronavirus vaccine.

COVID-19 does create natural immunity, however scientists arent sure how long it lasts. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend those who recovered from it to get vaccinated.

RELATED: Myths and facts about the COVID vaccine shot as Michigan opens access to all - mlive.com

Those who have not had a COVID-19 infection were more likely to select a lack of trust in the government and other as reasons for being hesitant of the coronavirus vaccine.

Cant see the chart? Click here https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/RUMBc/2/

Read more on MLive:

Apple closes all Michigan stores temporarily due to COVID-19 surge

Could we need a yearly COVID-19 vaccine like the flu shot?

Michigan expands mask requirement to children ages 2 to 4, extends gathering limits

43% of Michigan adults have received first vaccine dose; see numbers in your county
She showed off her scintillating red bikini the day before after arriving in sweltering Palm Springs.

And Kylie Jenner showed it in action the following day as she enjoyed a lazy Sunday by the pool at her mother Kris Jenner's $12 million vacation home while wearing her revealing suit.

The 23-year-old Keeping Up With The Kardashians star also lightened up the mood by sharing some adorable photos to Instagram of her daughter Stormi, three, looking unbearably cute in a chicken costume.

Red hot: Kylie Jenner, 23, sizzled in a red-and-pink checker bikini as she soaked up the sun at her mother Kris Jenner's Palm Springs vacation home in Instagram photos posted Sunday

Kylie was photographed flipping her long raven hair back as she leaned back toward the sky to show off her outstanding figure.

She wore a red-and-pink checker-patterned halter bikini which left little to the imagination.

The knit swimsuit also featured a pair of high-cut bottoms with ragged strings dangling down her thighs.

The 5ft6in beauty added some extra sparkle to her pristine look with her thick gold hoop earrings.

Revealing: Kylie's knit swimsuit also featured a pair of high-cut bottoms with ragged strings dangling down her thighs

All pleasure: Kylie spread out in the pool and let the water envelop her as she leaned back gracefully toward the sky. 'Happiness over everything and anything,' read her hedonistic caption

Kylie spread out in the pool and let the water envelop her as she leaned back gracefully toward the sky.

'Happiness over everything and anything,' read her hedonistic caption to one of the photos.

The photos appeared to have been snapped on Saturday, when the cosmetics mogul showed off the same bikini prior to her pool session.

She had hopped on her $72.8 million private jet to head to Palm Springs for the weekend, despite the desert community only being about a two-hour drive from her home.

She was vacationing with her BFF Stassie Karanikolaou, though she wasn't picture in her most recent snaps.

Pool days: She had hopped on her $72.8 million private jet to head to Palm Springs earlier in the weekend, despite the desert community only being about a two-hour drive from her home

Too cute! Earlier on Sunday, the faux billionaire shared some sweet photos of her daughter Stormi dressed up in a cute chicken costume

Can't handle it: 'Is that a chiiiiicken ?' Kylie teased in the caption. 'KYLIE!!! stop im crying,' commented her older sister Kendall Jenner

Earlier on Sunday, the faux billionaire shared some sweet photos of her daughter Stormi dressed up in a cute chicken costume.

Her face popped out below the chicken's visage, and there were holes for her arm under it drooping wings.

The toddler was enjoying a bowl of something while she got her picture taking, so she didn't bother smiling.

Kylie shares her daughter with her former partner, rapper Travis Scott.

Cinema fan? Over on Twitter, several users were drawn to the bookshelf behind Stormi, which appeared to paint someone in the family as a cinephile

Cinephile: The shelf had books on Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese, plus Adam Nayman's book on the directing duo of the Coen brothers, though it wasn't clear if it was snapped at Kylie's home or Kris' vacation house

'Is that a chiiiiicken ?' Kylie teased in the caption.

'KYLIE!!! stop im crying,' commented her older sister Kendall Jenner.

Khloe Kardashian was similarly overcome by emotion seeing the cute snaps.

'Kylie!!!!!!!!! Get out of here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!' she commented, adding in a another post, 'I cant handle this!!!!!!!!!!'

Over on Twitter, several users were drawn to the bookshelf behind Stormi, which appeared to paint someone in the family as a cinephile.

The decorative shelf featured film books on the directors Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese, as well as film scholar and critic Adam Nayman's volume on the films of the Coen brothers.

However, it wasn't clear if the picture was snapped back in Kylie's home, or if she was at her mother's vacation home, in which case Kris might be the family cineaste.

Reunion: On Friday, Kylie had a family reunion with all of her siblings, minus her brother Rob Kardashian

On Friday, Kylie had a family reunion with all of her siblings, minus her brother Rob Kardashian.

The ladies put on their best looks for a night on the town, culminating in some playful family photos in which various people flipped off the camera.

They didn't specify what the occasion was, but Sunday marks her sister Kourtney's 42nd birthday, so they may meet up again for another family celebration.
The Japanese government may be edging closer to declaring another state of emergency, based on a request from the western prefecture of Osaka.

The number of infections has been on the rise there in recent weeks partly due to more contagious variants.

Officials in the prefecture reported 719 new infections on Monday... a record for that day of the week.

Local health authorities are asking hospitals to secure more beds amid a shortage. 254 have been set aside for severe COVID-19 cases. But 302 people are in serious condition.

The central government is sending 90 nurses to help ease the strain on the medical system.

Osaka officials have decided to ask the central government to declare a state of emergency for the prefecture so they can further restrict the movement of people. It would be the third time that measure has been taken there since the pandemic came to Japan's shores.

They plan to ask bars and restaurants, department stores and amusement parks to shut temporarily.

The number of new infections is also rising in Tokyo. Health authorities reported 711 cases on Tuesday. That's an increase of over 200 from a week ago.

Officials in the capital are also considering requesting an emergency declaration ahead of a weeklong holiday that starts in late April.
Funeral Announcements A daily list of current funeral annoucements as heard on KXRA 1490 AM/100.3 FM

News Updates The daily news, sports, and events delivered daily from Voice of Alexandria.



Sports Update This current sports headlines delivered daily from Voice of Alexandria.

Upcoming Events This email is the events of the area delivered daily from Voice of Alexandria.

Breaking News The big news. Sent only as it happens.
Chandigarh: Mohali, along with the rest of the tri-city, will remain under complete lockdown on Wednesday, on the occasion of Ram Navami, to avoid gatherings amid the surging Covid cases in the region.

The decision was announced by Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Monday during a high-level Covid review meeting.

Captain Amarinder Singh

The Chief Minister said he had received a request from Chandigarh UT advisor for a lockdown in Mohali, as part of a lockdown in the entire tri-city, and the necessary notification would be issued accordingly.

Captain Amarinder also appealed to people across all other districts in Punjab to avoid gatherings and large celebrations during the festival, in view of the spike in cases.
Mayor Sylvester Turner will appear on primetime TV tonight and could discuss a key piece of infrastructure Houston has been wanting.

Lester Holt will interview Turner on "NBC Nightly News" Monday night as part of the program's week of coverage on the climate crisis. Holt is broadcasting from Houston.

STOCK YOUR KIT: 'More active' hurricane season predicted in 2021

Holt and Turner will discuss how cities can better prepare for weather events that may be worsened by climate change. Houstonians are no stranger to severe weather; Hurricane Harvey dumped record-breaking rainfall and flooded Greater Houston in 2017, and most recently, dozens died in the February winter storm that knocked out power for millions of Texans.

Turner will possibly sport a button proclaiming, "BUILD THE IKE DIKE" during the interview. The button was gifted to him by former Houston Chronicle opinion editor and Ike Dike super-proponent Evan Mintz.

The Ike Dike, the proposed coastal barrier nicknamed after 2008's Hurricane Ike, would protect the Greater Houston area from deadly storm surge. Turner has been a vocal supporter of the Ike Dike and has requested federal support to fund it.

IKE DIKE?: President Biden sure seems to be thinking about the Ike Dike in his $2 trillion infrastructure plan

I dont know how many chances we are going to have ... Whatever it may be that can mitigate storm surge, then thats what I am in favor of, Turner said after Hurricane Laura narrowly missed Houston in 2020, AP's Juan A. Lozano reported. What I do know is we cant keep just talking about it.

Holt's interview with Turner will air at 5:30 p.m. Monday night on NBC.
This post is part of a series sponsored by Old Republic Surety.

If youre confused about the letter designations that stand for thousands and millions, youre not alone. And its not your fault. In fact, its one of our most frequently asked questions. Heres why youre confused and what to do about it.

Western civilization has had two powerful influences  the traditions of the Greeks and the Romans, and there is often conflict. The Greeks would refer to the god of the sea as Poseidon, where the Romans would call him Neptune. For the Romans, the god of wine would be Bacchus, and for the Greeks it would be Dionysus. These differences carry themselves into many parts of our culture, including financial analysis.

As a young banker in the mid-80s, I learned what had been taught for many decades before, that we abbreviate thousands in our analysis with a letter M. If we wanted to denote millions, we would show that as MM. For this, we should credit the Romans. M is the Roman numeral for thousand and MM is meant to convey one thousand-thousand  or million. To take it further; one billion would be shown as $1MMM or one-thousand million.

However, truth be known, if there were an ancient Roman here and we asked him to interpret our use of Roman numerals, we would find that technically MM means two thousand and MMM means three thousand, so there are flaws in this tradition. This reminds me of the old joke about an ancient Roman that goes into a bar, holds up two fingers in a peace sign to the bartender and says, Five beers, please.

Wait a minute, you say. I know I have seen jobs posted that pay $50K, and K is meant to stand in for thousand. And you would be correct, thanks to the Greeks. K comes from the Greek word kilo which means a thousand. The Greeks would likewise show million as M, short for Mega. So if we stay consistent with the Greek abbreviations, then billion would be shown as a letter G (Giga). Think of your computer expressing bytes of memory as kilobyte, megabyte or gigabyte. However, when it comes to billion, we dont really see G or MMM as the abbreviation for billion. We are more likely to see a headline that reads the government spent $60B on a new project. They are using B for billion. What can I say? B for billion isnt Greek or Roman; it is just the first letter of the word billion. So much for consistency.

I saw a headline recently in The Daily Journal of Commerce that read the new downtown post office was to be built for $89M. In the world of accounting and financial analysis, that reads $89 thousand dollars, but we know from context that the headline writer meant $89 million dollars. We sometimes have to code switch and use context to determine what the author is telling us. I referenced the 2021 Associated Press Stylebook used by the majority of journalists to see if the guide would weigh in on how to abbreviate thousand or million. When writing, the guide advises, use figures only for anything less than a million, but spell out million, billion, and trillion for numbers of 1 million or greater, such as 2.4 billion. Furthermore, Associated Press recommends abbreviating millions as M and billions as B in headlines.

Agents will also commonly see us communicate M as thousands when we quote surety rates or agent commissions. For example, the standard Class B rate starts at $25/M for the first $100M; then $15/M for the next $400M; then $10/M for the next $2MM. Those rates are expressed per thousand and the MM denotes millions. Likewise, we may quote you a single and aggregate contractor line of authority. That line may be expressed, for instance, as $5MM single and $15MM aggregate. If you are an agent or a contractor, you may have seen an email from your surety underwriter that says something like, The customer should increase their bank line to $1MM. You now know that years of tradition have trained us to show one million dollars this way.

While the fields of accounting, banking and finance have adopted the Roman tradition, other fields such as computer programming and the high-tech industry have adopted Greek-influenced abbreviations. As we mix our traditions, it sometimes becomes difficult to know what someone intends to convey expressing thousands or millions in an abbreviation. It is an imperfect world.

At Old Republic Surety we seek to deliver you transparency and clarity in our communications. If you see an abbreviation that is confusing or unclear, please reach out to your local underwriter or branch for clarification, even if you are just asking for a friend.
By Norihiko Shirouzu and Yilei Sun

SHANGHAI (Reuters) -A global shortage of semiconductors is hitting autos production in China, jeopardising hopes the world's biggest car market might spearhead a recovery in the sector, industry executives warn.

around the world have had to adjust assembly lines due to the shortages, caused by manufacturing delays that some semiconductor makers blame on a faster-than expected recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

Volkswagen AG, China's biggest foreign automaker which hopes to sell over four million vehicles in the country, said the situation had not improved in the second quarter.

The German group's China chief, Stephan Woellenstein, told reporters on Sunday it was hard to gauge how much production Volkswagen might lose week to week, or even month to month because of the chip shortage.

"It's really like fire-fighting ... In some cases, we have switched to another chip so we changed suppliers," he said, ahead of the Shanghai auto show which opens on Monday.

"It is like a perfect storm," BMW's China chief Jochen Goller said at Shanghai show, adding the shortage had put pressure on BMW's purchasing. However, he said BMW had not lost production due to the issue, as it made early orders of chips.

William Li, chief executive of Nio Inc, told Reuters on Monday he expected a "relatively big impact" from the chip shortage on its electric vehicle production in the second quarter.

China, where over 25 million vehicles were sold last year, has been a ray of hope for automakers, including Volkswagen and General Motors, after the global industry was hit hard by the pandemic.

But China is also where news of the chip shortage first emerged last year. The problem was worsened by a fire in Renesas Electronics' chip factory in Japan in March.

In 2019, automotive groups accounted for roughly a tenth of the $429 billion semiconductor market, according to McKinsey, with NXP Semiconductor, Germany's Infineon and Renesas among key suppliers to the sector.

Automakers, including Nissan Motor, Ford Motor and Nio have said they have cut production due to the chip shortage.

Li Shaohua, a senior official at the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, said the chip supply shortage hit Chinese auto production by 5% to 8% in the first two months of this year. It expects the impact to ease from the third quarter.

As a result, the China Automobile Dealers Association said it expects car inventories to continue to drop in China, and that supplies of some models might not be able to meet demand.

(Reporting by Norihiko Shirouzu and Yilei SunEditing by Alexandra Hudson and Mark Potter)

(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.)
Amidst the continued surge of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases, caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), vaccination efforts continue to mitigate the spread of the virus.

Vaccination rollouts have commenced in many countries. One of the vaccines approved via an emergency use authorization (EUA) by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was the University of Oxford's AstraZeneca COVID-19 ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 SARS-CoV-2 viral vector vaccine.

As countries started using the vaccines, reports surfaced of rare instances of blood clots, with low platelets detected in some individuals inoculated with the vaccine.

A recent study by researchers at the University of British Columbia (B.C.) shows that the benefits of continuing the COVID-19 vaccine of front-line workers with the AstraZeneca vaccine outweigh the increased risk of prothrombotic thrombocytopenia.

In the study, posted to the pre-print server medRxiv*, the researchers aimed to determine the risks and benefits of delaying vaccination of front-line workers in B.C.

Predicted and observed cases of COVID-19 per age group in BC

Increased risk of blood clots

On March 29, 2021, Canada's National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) recommended against using the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in younger adults to allow for investigation of the risk for vaccine-induced prothrombic immune thrombocytopenia (VIPIT).

British Columba stopped its front-line workers' vaccination program, which used the AstraZeneca vaccine. However, the province received additional 246,700 doses of the vaccine through the U.S. and COVAX up until April 11, which are enough to provide the first dose of vaccine to all unvaccinated front-line workers.

Meanwhile, it is unclear if an alternative vaccine will be provided immediately for front-line workers, particularly healthcare personnel.

The study

To arrive at the study findings, the researchers reviewed the latest evidence to compare the expected number of deaths due to COVID-19 and VIPIT under the situations of immediately continuing vaccination of front-line workers with the AstraZeneca vaccine or delaying it in favor of mRNA vaccines.

The team also compared the individual mortality risk of receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine with delaying getting the vaccine in favor of waiting to receive an mRNA vaccine.

The study findings estimated that if B.C. continues with the vaccination of front-line workers with the AstraZeneca vaccine, it is expected to see about 27,000 fewer cases of COVID-19, 500 fewer hospital admissions, 80 fewer COVID-19 deaths, and 1,400 fewer cases of long COVID between April 1 and October 1, 2021, for expected VIPIT-related death of 0.674.

Further, the team found that in the same period in high transmission areas, the estimated excess risk of mortality or death due to COVID-19 and VIPIT was markedly higher in the delayed vaccination with mRNA vaccine situation than that of immediately vaccinating with the AstraZeneca vaccine for people aged 30 to 69.

For individuals below 30, however, the immediate vaccination with the AstraZeneca vaccine posed a higher risk than delayed vaccination with an mRNA vaccine.

The team noted that the analysis from an individual risk perspective reveals that the risk of getting COVID-19 and dying from it due to delayed vaccination is higher than the risk of dying from VIPIT in those over 40, and also in those over 30 years old in high-risk areas.

The study findings were based on currently available rates of 1 in a million to 1 in 100,000 for VIPIT, which might need correction if more cases of the complication are reported.

In a nutshell, the researchers concluded that the benefits of immediately vaccinating front-line workers with the AstraZeneca vaccine far outweigh the risk for people aged 40 and above and those who are 30 years old above, living in high-risk regions.

"Ultimately, in dynamic situations like this where the evidence is uncertain and evolving, vaccine rollout decisions are judgment calls that need to take a complex network of medical, epidemiological, ethical, logistics, and societal considerations into account," the researchers noted in the study.

*Important Notice

medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
The Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) has indicated that there will be an interruption in water supply parts of the Greater Accra Region from Thursday, April 22, to Monday, April 26, 2021. The interruption is to allow for the replacement of a damaged transmission pipeline between Kpong and Tema.



The Management of Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), wishes to inform the general public, that there will be an interruption of water supply to the eastern part of the Greater Accra Region from Thursday the 22nd to Monday the 26th of April 2021.



GWCL engineers will be replacing two hundred meters(200m) of a weak session of the main 42-inch transmission pipeline from Kpong to Tema, around Gbetsele junction, which is causing GWCL to lose several volumes of water daily and consequently having a serious impact on the volumes available for consumption, a statement from the GWCL said.



Consumers have been advised to store enough water for consumption.



AFFECTED AREAS

The areas envisaged to be affected include; Afienya, Apallonia, Gbetsele, Ashaiman, Katamanso, Kakasunanka, Adjei Kojo, East Legon Trasaco. All the communities in Tema (Community 1 to 25), Free Zones enclave, Tema Industrial Area, Dawhenya, Prampram, Spintex Road, Batsonaa, Coca Cola, Kasapreko, Manet, Lashibi, Klagon, Sakumono, and surrounding communities.



The GWCL has assured Ghanaians that the necessary equipment, logistics, and personnel required to execute the project have been secured to ensure the timely completion of the project.



The company has also put in place some measures listed below to serve the affected areas:



The Governments COVID-19 free water reservoirs will still be filled with water tankers to enable consumers to fetch for free. Essential service providers like the hospitals and schools will also be served with water tankers.

Most importantly, consumers should/must store water ahead of the shutdown to reduce the impact of the shutdown.









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
Livestock rustlers have stolen 75 sheep from a remote farm in the Scottish Highlands, with police saying the animals could have been taken as far back as December.

The blackface sheep were stolen from a farm near Tomatin anytime between December 2020 and this month.

The sheep consisted of 40 breeding ewes and 35 wether hoggs.

All the animals have the letters 'MSF' branded on their right horn, along with a red spot mark on their right side.

Police Scotland said: "Any information regarding this incident should be passed to police officers in Inverness by calling 101 quoting Ref No. NN/2070/21"

Farm animals worth an estimated 2.3m were stolen from farms in 2020, making it one of the most costliest crimes for farmers, according to NFU Mutual.

How can I help prevent livestock rustling?

Modern livestock thieves scout the countryside for targets and come equipped to steal with large vehicles.

Protecting flocks requires increasingly sophisticated measures, NFU Mutual says:

 Ensure stock is clearly marked and records are up to date

 When possible graze livestock in fields away from roads

 Check stock regularly - and vary times of feeding/check ups

 Consider a high-tech marking system such as TecTracer which puts thousands of coded microdot markers into a sheeps fleece

 Join a Farm or Rural Watch scheme to share information about rural crime in your area

 Ask neighbours to report any suspicious sightings to the police, or to give information 100% anonymously to the Crimestoppers Hotline 0800 555 111

 Dial 999 immediately if an incident is taking place - do not approach criminals
The company also said it produced more than 144 Bitcoins during the quarter that ended on March 31, 2021

CleanSpark said its recent financing transactions have positioned the company to continue to make strategic, accretive moves

( ) has reported that its executed microgrid sales contracts have increased by 220% since February 12, 2021, to more than $23.5 million as of April 18.

The company also said it produced more than 144 Bitcoins during the quarter that ended on March 31, while mining a total of 205 Bitcoins since acquiring its cryptocurrency operations on December 10.

From having 95% non-carbon-based electricity powering our mining operations, to our rapidly-growing partnership program, it's clear that our focus on an ESG-centered approach to growth continues to be validated, CleanSpark executive chairman Matthew Schultz said in a statement.

Schultz added: Global events, from the recent power disruptions, taking Chinese BTC mining offline, to the massive, sustained outages in our own country have resulted in a significant increase in inquiries surrounding our microgrid and energy offerings as residential, industrial and commercial customers recognize the fragile state of the current power distribution model.

Our recent financing transactions have positioned the company to continue to make strategic, accretive moves, and we look forward to sharing the results with our shareholders.

The company noted that the majority of its executed contract backlog, valued at about $14.3 million, relates to its residential microgrid and energy storage initiatives, which are expected to be completed over the next 12 months or less.

As well, CleanSpark said it is holding more than 143 Bitcoins on its balance sheet as of April 18, all of which have been produced by its mining operations.

It added that its total hashrate capacity is expected to increase to over 1.1 exahashes (EH) per second by August 2021 and exceed 3.2 EH by September 2022, which at current difficulty rates would result in Bitcoin production increasing by about one additional Bitcoin per day every month.

CleanSpark, which is based in Bountiful, Utah, has developed software to help companies and homes become more energy-efficient, and is also now big in Bitcoin mining.

The company designs and builds microgrids while providing engineering, consulting and turn-key implementation services. It also offers software for energy monitoring and system controls.

CleanSpark's software - mPluse and mVSO (Microgrid Value Stream Optimizer) - enables a microgrid to be scaled to the user's specific needs and can be used by agricultural, commercial, industrial enterprises as well as the military and municipal governments, and residential users.

Contact Sean at sean@proactiveinvestors.com
An Essex County deputy has sued Sheriff Armando Fontoura and his department, claiming she has been discriminated against for her race, gender and for political purposes.

Shai Carr claims in court papers she has endured ongoing harassment  including being banned from Democratic fundraisers, stripped of her detective title and banished to work in the basement  because she is a Black woman and because her superior was jealous over her youth and appearance, the lawsuit claims.

Carr said it stems from a conflict with Jacqueline Jones, who is the countys deputy director of human resources and who is the wife of Leroy Jones, chairman of the countys Democratic Party.

A spokesman for the county said the employees named in the lawsuit had no comment. He referred all calls to Courtney M. Gaccione, an attorney for Essex County.

Gaccione declined comment about the case on Monday, saying the county does not comment on pending litigation.

The lawsuit, filed recently in U.S. District Court Newark, claims Sheriff Armando Fontoura told Carr she was to no longer attend Democratic functions in the county because Jones has a problem with her being there, states the suit.

Carr recorded at least one of her conversations with Fontoura, sharing the recording with NBC-NY, which first reported the story.

Fontoura, a Democrat, is an elected official who has served as sheriff in Essex County for more than 30 years.

Carr objected to being told she couldnt attend fundraisers on her personal time and continued to go anyway. The suit alleges Fontoura once dragged her out of a fundraiser held at Mayfair Farms banquet hall in West Orange.

In addition, Carr claims her issues with Fontoura and Jones led to her transfer from the detective bureau to the transportation department, where she was forced to work in the basement.

Carr claims she was explicitly told by Internal Affairs that she is forbidden from walking through any portion of the building besides the basement.

The lawsuit also alleges that she was stripped of her detective status and given a new badge that read officer, that she was berated by supervisors, and that her name was left out of an awards ceremony until the last minute.

In one instance, Carr claims she went to her car for feminine hygiene products and was then forced by a male supervisor to explain in front of male deputies that she was experiencing her menstrual cycle.

The lawsuit accuses Fontoura, Jacqueline Jones, one of Carrs supervisors and other employees named and unnamed of retaliation, violating her freedom of association, along with creating a hostile and abusive work environment.

Carr claims she was discriminated against because she is an African American woman and that the discrimination violates federal civil rights laws.

Each instance of alleged harassment and discrimination caused Carr to suffer severe emotional distress, public humiliation and loss of reputation, the lawsuit claims. The suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages, along with costs of the suit.

In an answer to the lawsuit filed recently in federal court, attorneys for the county denied the most serious allegations contained in Carrs lawsuit.

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.
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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.  There are lots of science, technology, engineering and math-related jobs available in New Mexico, but companies seeking potential employees need better ways to connect with STEM professionals.

To help bridge the divide, the University of New Mexicos Alumni Association and STEM Boomerang  which works to hook up in-state and out-of-state STEM professionals with local employers  will offer a STEM-focused career fair Thursday for UNM alumni, students approaching graduation, and their spouses and partners. The online event, which runs from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., will feature presentations by 17 companies looking for talented employees in the space, biotechnology and general technology industries in New Mexico.

The states national labs and three industry groups  NewSpace NM, the New Mexico Technology Council and the New Mexico Biotechnology Association  will participate, with ample opportunity for companies and STEM professionals to meet individually in breakout sessions, said retired University of New Mexico biology professor Maggie Werner-Washburne.

The states growing startup ecosystem has generated a broad array of small technology-related companies seeking talent across New Mexico, Werner-Washburne said. And with the post-pandemic recovery gaining momentum, many established firms are seeking new employees as well.

The timing is perfect as the economy starts to heat up, Werner-Washburne said. The number of jobs here is growing a lot.

ADVERTISEMENTSkip



................................................................

Funding through the states Job Training Incentive Program and Local Economic Development Act is helping many New Mexico companies to expand and hire more people, said Monica Sandoval Johnson, STEM Boomerang CEO and a JTIP board member.

Everyone is talking about jobs, because so many companies are starting up or coming to the state and growing their operations in the space industry, in biotechnology and in technology businesses in general, Sandoval Johnson said. There are lots of small companies looking to hire. STEM jobs here have grown exponentially.

STEM Boomerang, which launched in 2017, holds its own annual, year-end career fair for STEM professionals that have attracted hundreds of job-seeking individuals who left the state and want to return, or who are studying or recently graduated and need connections to local industry and resources. Many have found jobs by networking through STEM Boomerang, prompting the UNM Alumni Association to request its assistance in organizing this weeks career fair.

STEM Boomerang will launch a new career portal website in late May to connect employers with STEM professionals year-round using advanced algorithms to match job seekers with companies.

To register for this weeks job fair, or to get more information, visit https://stemboomerang.org/career-fair-2021/, send an email to alumni@unm.edu, or call the UNM Alumni Relations Office at 505-277-5808.
Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford increased their income by more than 1million in the last year.

The TV presenters' business accounts record an influx in earnings, with their firm Holmes and Away - which receives income from radio broadcasting - raking in 500,000 in 2020 while 116,241 is owed in corporation tax.

Eamonn and Ruth, both 61, also profit from Eamonn's outfit Red, White and Green - which holds 1.1million in cash and investments of 1.7million.

Wow: Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford, both 61, increased their income by more than 1million in the last year (pictured presenting their show How the Other Half Live)

There is also Ruth's 'theatrical' business company Hey-Ho Ltd - which boasts overall resources of 1.5million.

The This Morning stars' earnings were reported by The Sun.

The paper detailed Eamonn and Ruth's profits, pointing out that their Surrey mansion is also worth millions.

The doting parents also bring in high amounts from their various TV commitments.

Despite his millionaire status, Eamonn has suffered ill health recently, having detailed his chronic health battle openly on social media.

The Northern Irish star has been struggling with pain after a dislocated pelvis made his back go 'out of alignment', which caused him difficulty to walk.

High earners: The doting parents also bring in high amounts from their various TV commitments

But this week Eamonn shared how circulation boosters have helped him 'get back out there' doing daily activities.

According to The Sun, Eamonn said of the treatment: 'I had a bit of difficulty with waking before and after a double hip operation.'

As well as using the circulation booster, Eamonn has helped alleviate his pain with physiotherapy and ice cold showers, which have left him feeling 'invigorated' amid his health woes.

Eamonn first spoke about his dislocated pelvis back in March and had an MRI scan recently to have further tests done after being left in chronic pain.

Earlier this month, Eamonn detailed how a dislocated pelvis started his chronic health battle as he waited for results of an MRI scan because his pain has escalated.

He joked in an interview with the Irish Independent that his injury is 'nowhere near as erotic as it sounds'.

Pain: Eamonn first spoke about his dislocated pelvis back in March and had an MRI scan recently to have further tests done after being left in chronic pain (pictured in 2020)

He told the publication: 'I mysteriously dislocated my pelvis and I don't know how  it's not as erotic as it sounds. My back is now out of alignment as a result.'

The Belfast native went on to reveal that since he spoke of his gruelling pain on social media, he found it 'absolutely scary' the number of people who are also living with chronic pain.

'Nobody knows what it's like unless they live with someone who has it.' he said. 'I'm in huge pain and nobody knows how to stop it.

'This hurts like hell and I need to find a way to overcome it. It has lasted a month and it feels like I can't remember what life was like without the pain.'

Eamonn and Ruth got married in 2010 following a 13-year romance, and are doting parents to teenage son Jack, 19.

Eamonn also has children Declan, Rebecca and Niall from his previous marriage to Gabrielle Holmes.
dvm360 & Banfield Pet Hospital announce they will be hosting a free virtual veterinary recruitment event on April 29 Tweet this

During this one-day event, current students, recent graduates, experienced veterinarians or veterinary support staff members will have the chance to participate in four live interactive Q&A presentations. Topics range from interview best practices, tips and tricks, resume writing, understanding the importance of diversity and inclusion in the veterinary workplace and much more. Attendees will also have the opportunity to connect and network with Banfield associates.

dvm360's chief veterinary officer, Adam Christman, D.V.M., MBA, will moderate the following sessions:

Get the Job You Want!

Health and Well-being When It Matters Most

Make an Impact in Your Community

Why Inclusion & Diversity Matter in the Workplace

"We're excited and always looking to connect with talented veterinarians, credentialed veterinary technicians, and our future veterinary professionals of tomorrow," added Sindy Vasquez, director of talent acquisition of Banfield.

For more information and to register, click here.

About dvm360

The leading media-content provider in the veterinary market, dvm360 has been in operation for more than 50 years. It provides readers with top-of-the-line digital and print content that focuses on every aspect of a veterinary professional's life. In addition, dvm360 hosts continuing education (CE) conferences that provide a 360-degree educational engagement experience for veterinary professionals. These conferences include several Fetch dvm360 conferences and the Atlantic Coast Veterinary Conference, CE events that have been a staple in the veterinary community for decades. dvm360 is a brand of MJH Life Sciences, the largest privately held, independent, full-service medical media company in North America, dedicated to delivering trusted health care news across multiple channels.

About Banfield Pet Hospital

Banfield Pet Hospital was founded in Portland, Ore. in 1955 and today is a pioneer in preventive veterinary care with more than 1,000 general veterinary hospitals in 42 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico and Mexico. More than 3,600 Banfield veterinarians are committed to providing high-quality veterinary care to over three million pets annually. Banfield collects data from each of these visits in the U.S.'s largest electronic veterinary health records system. Our goal is to be here for pets, people and society. As part of the Mars Veterinary Health family of practices, Banfield is committed to its purposeA BETTER WORLD FOR PETSbecause pets make a better world for us. Press seeking additional information are invited to call the Media Hotline: (888) 355-0595.

dvm360 Media Contact

Alexandra Ventura, 609-716-7777

[email protected]

SOURCE dvm360
Two charities are the beneficiaries of a 10,000 donation from Kilkennys Newpark Hotel after the local hotel managed to win top prize in the Hibernian Healthcare Jerusalema Challenge competition.

Readers will remember the hit viral video which quickly racked up hundreds of thousands of views and was the talk of the county, and further afield. Part of The Flynn Hotel Collection, Newpark Hotel pulled out all the stops to create an entertaining, innovative and fun video to impress the judges, with 15 hotel staff invited from across all areas to join in and share their talents.

Directed and designed by Operations Manager Niall Dunne, choreographed by general manager Paul Beehan and edited by duty manager Peter Cullen, stand out stars included members of the health club team and Irish dancers Lisa Doyle and Sinead Brennan performance  and a cameo role from Fluffy the rabbit!

With 25 entries to the competition, Hibernian Healthcare invited Sinead OCarroll of Irish pop group B*Witched and Leighann Goodwin of LG Dance Company Dunshaughlin to judge the many creative entries to the competition.

Announcing Newpark Hotel as the winning entry, Hibernian Healthcare awarded the hotel with a total of 10,000, with 5,000 of this to go to a national charity and 5,000 to a local charity of their choice.

With careful consideration Newpark Hotel, Kilkenny chose Childrens Health Foundation Temple Street and Amber Womens Refuge, Kilkenny.

We are very proud of what the hotels have achieved with their Jerusalema Challenge videos and to have won the Hibernian Healthcare competition for Newpark in Kilkenny is wonderful, said Allen Flynn, CEO of the Flynn Collection.

Our charity partnerships are at the core of what we do at the Flynn Hotel Collection and their importance has been highlighted even more so in the past 12 months. We now have an additional 10,000 for two charities thanks to GM Paul Beehan and his creative and talented team in Newpark, Kilkenny.

The two charities chosen are Amber Womens Refuge a local charity to Kilkenny & Childrens Health Foundation Temple Street."

The Collection challenge was started by our Cork hotel, The Imperial and was also done in Old Ground in Ennis. Ennis are also fundraising for Clare Haven Services who support families experiencing domestic violence. I would like to extend sincere thanks to Hibernian Healthcare for this wonderful initiative and also to all who donated to the Ennis fund which is still ongoing.

Manager of the Amber Womens Refuge in Kilkenny Lisa Morris welcomed the good news. We are extremely grateful for the donation of 5,000 from the Newpark Hotel and Hibernian Healthcare which will go directly into services for our clients, said Ms Morris.

Now more than ever we need the support of local businesses and the general public to fund services as domestic abuse is at an all time high and is being referred to as the shadow pandemic during these unprecedented times. In 2020, there were 485 referrals to Amber Womens Refuge Services.

Denise Fitzgerald, Chief Executive of Children's Health Foundation also praised the Newpark team for the creativity and effort to make the video.

Wed like to say a huge congratulations to Newpark Hotel, Kilkenny for winning the Hibernian Healthcare Jerusalema Challenge with their fantastic dancing skills and an even bigger thank you for donating 5,000 of their prize to support sick children and their families in CHI at Temple Street, she said.



Pictured with a cheque for 5,000 for the Temple Street Foundation were Niall Dunne (Operations Manager, Newpark Hotel), Paul Beehan (General Manager, Newpark Hotel and Alan Moran (Group Managing Director, Hibernian Healthcare)

This wonderful donation will be put to work where it is needed most in the hospital during this challenging time. From all of us here in Childrens Health Foundation and on behalf of the staff, patients and families in CHI at Temple Street, thank you to the teams in Newpark Hotel and Hibernian Healthcare for your kindness!

Hibernian Healthcares Director of Sales and Marketing Steve Hartnett said the Hibernian Healthcare Jerusalema Challenge was an opportunity to recognise the great spirit that has kept people going during lockdown.

So many people have contributed to keeping the country going so were delighted the winners, Newpark Hotel Kilkenny, come from one of the hardest hit sectors, he said.

The Newpark team put so much spirit into their performance that the judges were blown away. The charities that theyve chosen, Amber Womens Refuge and Temple Street Foundation, do amazing work locally and nationally and are very deserving of the 10,000 prize money.

Hibernian has a team of healthcare professionals and tutors currently providing vaccination teams for HSE and also training thousands of vaccinators to help protect us all from Covid-19. We recognise teamwork and its clear that everybody in Newpark was involved so wed like to also give a 250 One For All gift card to the hotel to raffle off to a team member.

The views of Kilkenny and the Castle were fantastic and they also showed off the hotel at its best. Congratulations to everyone involved and thanks to the hundreds of people who were involved in all of the entries we received.

Visit youtu.be/FDuIg5b9ug4 to view the Newpark Hotels Jerusalema Challenge video.
A Sydney Liberal mayor with interests in property development has given thousands of dollars to the party despite a ban on developers making political donations.

Strathfield mayor Antoine Doueihi, who declared he wasnt a property developer in material lodged to the NSW Electoral Commission, is a director and shareholder of multiple companies with dealings in the property industry, including one behind a 24-apartment complex in Sutherland.

Strathfield mayor Antoine Doueihi. Credit:Strathfield Council

While property developers are not prohibited from sitting on local councils, they are banned from making political donations in NSW. Cr Doueihi donated almost $10,000 to the Liberal Party team running for Strathfield council during 2017 local government elections. He has donated small amounts to the party since.

Cr Doueihi did not respond to questions from The Sydney Morning Herald before deadline.
[April 19, 2021] The Central and Eastern Europe Fund, Inc., and The New Germany Fund, Inc. Announce Annual Meetings of Stockholders

The Central and Eastern Europe Fund, Inc. (NYSE: CEE) and The New Germany Fund, Inc. (NYSE: GF) (each, a "Fund," and, collectively, the "Funds") announced today that the Annual Meeting of Stockholders for each Fund will be held at 10:00 a.m., Eastern time on June 24, 2021 at the offices of DWS Investment Management Americas, Inc., 875 Third Avenue, New York, New York 10022. As part of precautions regarding the coronavirus or COVID-19, the meeting will be held virtually via live webcast this year. Details on how to participate in the virtual meeting will be included in the proxy statement for the meeting. Holders of shares of common stock of record of the Funds at the close of business on April 30, 2021 are entitled to vote at the meeting and any postponements or adjournments thereof. At the meeting, stockholders of the Fund will consider the election of Directors and approval of auditors. For more information on the Funds, including their most recent month-end performance, visit dws.com or call (800) 349-4281. Important Information Investing in foreign securities, particularly those of emerging markets, presents certain risks, such as currency fluctuations, political and economic changes, and market risks. Any fund that concentrates in a particular segment of the market will generally be more volatile than a fund that invests more broadly. The Central and Eastern Europe Fund, Inc. is non-diversified and can take larger positions in fewer issues, increasing its potential risk, and also concentrates its investments in the energy sector. Investing in foreign securities presents certain risks, such as currency fluctuations, political and economic changes, and market risks. Emerging markets tend to be more volatile and less liquid than the mrkets of more mature economies, and generally have less diverse and less mature economic structures and less stable political systems than those of developed countries. Any fund that focuses in a particular segment of the market or region of the world will generally be more volatile than a fund that invests more broadly.



The shares of most closed-end funds, including the Funds, are not continuously offered. Once issued, shares of closed-end funds are bought and sold in the open market through a stock exchange. Shares of closed-end funds frequently trade at a discount to net asset value. The price of a fund's shares is determined by a number of factors, several of which are beyond the control of the fund. Therefore, a fund cannot predict whether its shares will trade at, below, or above net asset value. Investments in funds involve risk. Additional risks of the Funds are associated with international investing, such as currency fluctuations, political and economic changes, market risks, government regulations and differences in liquidity, which may increase the volatility of your investment. Foreign security markets generally exhibit greater price volatility and are less liquid than the US market. Additionally, the Funds focus their investments in certain geographical regions, thereby increasing their vulnerability to developments in that region and potentially subjecting the Funds' shares to greater price volatility. Some funds have more risk than others. These include funds, such as the Funds, that allow exposure to or otherwise concentrate investments in certain sectors, geographic regions, security types, market capitalization, or foreign securities (e.g., political or economic instability, which can be accentuated in emerging market countries).

The European Union, the United States and other countries have imposed sanctions on Russia in response to Russian military and other actions in recent years. These sanctions have adversely affected Russian individuals, issuers and the Russian economy. Russia, in turn, has imposed sanctions targeting Western individuals, businesses and products. The various sanctions have adversely affected, and may continue to adversely affect, not only the Russian economy, but also the economies of many countries in Europe, including countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The continuation of current sanctions or the imposition of additional sanctions may materially adversely affect the value of the Funds' portfolios. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. War, terrorism, economic uncertainty, trade disputes, public health crises (including the recent pandemic spread of the novel coronavirus) and related geopolitical events could lead to increased market volatility, disruption to US and world economies and markets and may have significant adverse effects on the fund and their investments. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer or solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the laws of such state or jurisdiction. NOT FDIC/ NCUA INSURED * MAY LOSE VALUE * NO BANK GUARANTEE

NOT A DEPOSIT * NOT INSURED BY ANY FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AGENCY The brand DWS represents DWS Group GmbH & Co. KGaA and any of its subsidiaries such as DWS Distributors, Inc. which offers investment products or DWS Investment Management Americas, Inc. and RREEF America L.L.C. which offer advisory services. (R-082642-1) (04/21) View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210419005569/en/

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A Central Railway employee, in an exceptionally courageous act, risked his own life and managed to rescue a child who had fallen on the railway tracks from being run over by an approaching train at the Vangani Railway Station in Mumbai. Pointsman Mayur Shelkhe has received praise for this courageous act from Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal, who shared a CCTV video of the incident on Twitter.

The child had slipped from the platform and fallen onto the railway tracks on which a train was fast approaching. Shelkhe ran towards the approaching train to rescue the child. He was able to lift the child from the railway tracks onto the platform just in the nick of time. Shelkhe then flung himself onto the platform before the approaching train passed him.

Praising Shelkhe, Goyal wrote on Twitter, "Very proud of Mayur Shelke, Railwayman from the Vangani Railway Station in Mumbai who has done an exceptionally courageous act, risked his own life & saved a child's life.".

Very proud of Mayur Shelke, Railwayman from the Vangani Railway Station in Mumbai who has done an exceptionally courageous act, risked his own life & saved a child's life. pic.twitter.com/0lsHkt4v7M - Piyush Goyal (@PiyushGoyal) April 19, 2021

The Ministry of Railways also shared the video on Twitter. The Ministry saluted Shelkhe for his "exemplary courage and utmost devotion to the duty".

Twitterati also praised Shelkhe for his courageous act. Some even requested Goyal to award Shelkhe for his bravery.

Wonderful : Salute to the railwayman Shri Mayur Shelke Ji for the selfless courages deed in saving a child. Much Appreciation to you, Our Shri Piyush Ji - Venkatesapalani Thangavelu (@Ven070670) April 19, 2021

We request you @PiyushGoyal Ji, to reward Mayur for this courageous act. This is one of the greatest example of bravery ! - Pandeyji Speaks (@malhar_pandey) April 19, 2021

Pls reward him and give him double promotion. These real-life heroes should be duly appreciated @PiyushGoyal - Lakshmi Narayan  (@tamilan_ts) April 19, 2021

Exceptional bravery...hats off to him..he literally risked his life to save the young kid.. - Capt Sanjeev Tiwari (@SanjeevSTiwari) April 19, 2021

Also Read 'When world came to standstill, Railwaymen never took a day off': Piyush Goyal thanks 'Railway family'
COVID-19 patients who are overweight or obese are more likely to develop a more severe infection than patients of healthy weight, and they require oxygen and invasive mechanical ventilation more often. There is no increased risk of death . These conclusions, for which more than 7,000 patients were studied, appear from international research in eleven countries, including the Netherlands (Radboud university medical center).

The study, led by Australian researchers, examined over 7000 patients from eleven different countries who were admitted to 18 hospitals. Of this group, over a third (34.8%) were overweight and almost a third (30.8%) were obese. COVID-19 patients with obesity required oxygen more frequently and were 73% more likely to require invasive mechanical ventilation. Remarkably, no greater mortality was observed in these groups of patients than in patients of healthy weight. The international results have now been published in scientific journal Diabetes Care.

Immunologist Siroon Bekkering of Radboud university medical center, principal investigator of the Dutch part, explains that never before so many different data on obesity have been combined in one large study. "Several national and international observations already showed the important role of overweight and obesity in a more severe COVID-19 course. This study adds to those observations by combining data from several countries with the possibility to look at the risk factors separately. Regardless of other risk factors (such as heart disease or diabetes), we now see that too high a BMI can actually lead to a more severe course in corona infection."

One explanation for this is that overweight and obesity are characterized by chronic inflammation, which can perhaps lead to increased susceptibility to viruses. This is also the case with the flu virus. Also, obese people are more likely to suffer from shortness of breath, which may lead to an increased need for ventilation.

Different risk factors for severe COVID-19 infection

More risk factors emerge from the study. For example, this study, similar to other international studies, confirms that men are more likely to have a more severe course of COVID-19 infection. In addition, this study also shows that people older than 65 years of age needed supplemental oxygen more often and are at greater risk of death.

Cardiovascular disease and pre-existing respiratory disease may be associated with an increased risk of in-hospital death, but not with an increased risk of using oxygen and mechanical ventilation. For patients with diabetes, there was an increased risk of needing invasive respiratory support, but no additional increase in risk in those with both obesity and diabetes. There was no increased risk of death.

###

About the Study

Participating in the study were hospitals from the United States, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Italy, Austria, China, Singapore, Indonesia, South Africa and the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, Erasmus MC, Franciscus Gasthuis & Vlietland, Amphia ziekenhuis, Bernhoven, Sint Maartenskliniek, Jeroen Bosch Ziekenhuis, Canisius Wilhelmina Ziekenhuis and Radboud university medical center participated.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian says the country must change its coronavirus vaccine rollout approach to become far less rigid, adding NSW already has the capacity to ramp up its distribution.

Ms Berejiklian singled out the lagging distribution of vaccines to over 50s ahead of Mondays national cabinet meeting, saying the rollout needed to become more flexible given the supply of AstraZeneca in NSW.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian on Monday morning. Credit:Brook Mitchell

I think we should be far less rigid in how we approach the vaccination rollout given we know there is no issue with anyone over 50 having the AstraZeneca and theres quite considerable supply in Australia at the moment, we need to really crack on with it, Ms Berejiklian said.

These are conversations Im looking forward to having and these are conversations we need to have ... I think we can do better.
Stephen Broderick, 41, identified as a suspect by Austin interim police Chief Joseph Chacon after three people were shot dead at an apartment complex, poses in an undated photograph released by the FBI's San Antonio office, April 18, 2021.

FBI San Antonio/Handout via REUTERS.
Making such a non-invasive tool available could accelerate medical research to progress in this field

A study carried out by a team of researchers led by an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Hyderabad, Dr Brince Paul, has resulted in the development of a new device that can generate sweat at resting and detect markers and transmit through a mobile phone. This sweat based non-invasive point of health diagnosis technology would be an alternative to blood based invasive diagnosis.

As a postdoctoral researcher, Dr Paul conducted this study in the Ecolepoly technique federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland.

Making such a non-invasive tool available could accelerate medical research to progress in this field. For example the direct chloride level in sweat is useful for screening cystic fibrosis.

Similarly, potassium level correlated with plasma for ambulatory monitoring and sweat quality control, pH as an indicator of metabolic alkalosis, glucose for screening pre-diabetic conditions or monitoring tool for diabetes, and lactate for assessing metabolic efficiency etc., are some of them.

Researchers are presently in the process of accommodating more markers from the sweat and other fluids (surface needle based) to make it useful for real time daily usage purposes including exercise condition (which includes ions, metabolites such as glucose and lactate, and different proteins).

The actual clinical device innovation can be realised when we collaborate effectively with engineers, clinicians, product designers, and along with an industry partner towards a common solution by allowing them to stand their own experts platform, said Dr Paul.
British Prime Minister on Monday cancelled a planned trip to India, scheduled to take place next week, due to the current situation in India, Johnson's office said.

Johnson had already postponed the trip once from January, when COVID-19 infections were high in Britain. Infections in India are currently surging as the country endures a second wave of the virus.

"In the light of the current situation, Prime Minister will not be able to travel to India next week," a joint statement from the British and Indian government, released by Johnson's office, said.

"Instead, Prime Ministers Modi and Johnson will speak later this month to agree and launch their ambitious plans for the future partnership between the UK and India." Relations with India are seen as a key component of both Britain's post-Brexit ambitions to reinvigorate trade with countries outside the European Union, and a diplomatic push to gain more influence in the Indo-Pacific region.



MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said the decision was taken as permutual agreement by both sides. "Both leaders attach the highest importance to taking the India-UK partnership to its fullest potential and propose to remain in close touch in this regard and look forward to an in-person meeting later in the year," he said.

"In view of the Covid-19 situation, it has been decided by mutual agreement that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom will not visit India next week. The two sides will be holding a virtual meeting in the coming days to launch plans for a transformed India-UK relationship," said Ministry of External Affairs.



Britain has invited India to attend the G7 summit it is hosting in June.

British health officials said on Sunday they were investigating a COVID-19 variant originating in India, but as yet they did not have enough evidence to classify it is as a variant of concern.
Hyderabad: Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday (April 19).

News agency ANI reported the state Chief Secretary saying that he has mild symptoms and he has been advised to isolate himself for the quarantine period. A team of doctors is monitoring his health.

Telangana reported 4009 new COVID-19 cases and 14 deaths on Sunday (April 19), said the state health bulletin.

The number of active cases in Telangana stands at 39,154. The total count of COVID positive cases in the state stands at 3,55,433 including 3,14,441 discharges and 1,838 deaths.

As many as 83,089 samples were tested for COVID-19 till 8 pm on Sunday, taking the total number of tests in Telangana to 1,18,20,842. However, 5104 reports were still awaited.

According to the bulletin, the case fatality rate in Telangana is 0.51 per cent and the recovery rate is 88.46 per cent.

Meanwhile, India reported 2,73,810 new COVID-19 cases, 1,619 fatalities and 1,44,178 discharges in the last 24 hours, as per Union Health Ministry.

Live TV
A stalker who claims Taylor Swift is communicating with him on social media was arrested for trespassing after trying to break into the pop star's Manhattan apartment.

Hanks Johnson, 52, was arrested at 8.30pm Saturday after a 911 caller reported he was inside Swift's Tribeca building without permission, a police spokesperson said.

When officers arrived Johnson allegedly told them: 'She knows that I'm coming here, we're friends.'

The Shake It Off hitmaker did not appear to be home at the time, as media reports suggest she is currently staying with boyfriend Joe Alwyn in London.

Johnson was charged with criminal trespass and released on his own recognizance after an arraignment Sunday night.

Outside the courthouse, Johnson made a show of sending direct messages to Swift's Instagram account and claimed the predictive text suggestions on his phone were replies from her, according to the New York Daily News.

Hank Johnson, 52, was arrested for trying to break into Taylor Swift's Manhattan apartment on Saturday. Pictured: Swift leaves the apartment in Tribeca on July 21, 2018

Johnson claimed Swift had invited him to her apartment (pictured) for a 'presentation'

'"Taylor's," that means that she wants to work with me. You get that?' Johnson told reporters at the courthouse.

He described himself as a motivational speaker and said Swift invited him to her apartment to 'make a presentation' so they could 'place America back on top' and 'increase the vibrations in America'.

'She messaged me from her place, I think, and she invited me to come over, that's why I went there,' he said.

'I went to Franklin St. just to communicate with her about the presentation... and that's when the police came.'

Johnson also showed off a restraining order barring him from contacting models Bella and Gigi Hadid, who are friends of Swift's, the Daily News reported.

Swift is pictured at the 63rd Annual GRAMMY Awards in March

According to a criminal complaint Johnson had turned up at Swift's building to ring the doorbell at least five times in the past six months.

The head of security at the building repeatedly told Johnson he was not welcome inside.

Swift, who is back at the top of the charts with her rerecording of 2008's 'Fearless', has been plagued over the years by stalkers at her homes on both coasts.

In 2019 serial stalker Roger Alvarado, 23, was sentenced to two to four years in prison after breaking into Swift's apartment for a third time.
ATLANTA, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- After a year of isolation and disconnection for many teens due to the pandemic, Boys & Girls Clubs of America is bringing teens together in a meaningful way by hosting its first-ever Military Teen Summit. This free event  open to ALL teens  will bring learning and engagement opportunities to both Military-connected and non-Military-connected teens worldwide. The Summit will highlight the unique experiences of Military-connected teens while also focusing on issues that all teens face every day.

"The last year has been a tough one for all teens, both Military and non-Military. The topics we're covering in the Military Teen Summit  from mental health awareness to suicide prevention to diversity, equity and inclusion  were brought forward by our teen planning committee as top issues in their lives," said Jane Rodgers, national vice president of partnerships & growth for Boys & Girls Clubs of America. "It is part of our responsibility as youth advocates to provide a platform for teens to voice their concerns, offer peer-to-peer advice and share solutions and coping mechanisms from experts in the field. We're thankful to have Boys & Girls Clubs of America-affiliated Youth Center teens helping to guide these important conversations."

One of the highlights of the Summit is a townhall discussion on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) titled "Elevate. Activate. Lead." This townhall will be moderated by Boys & Girls Clubs of America's DEI Officer, H Walker, and features social justice and youth advocates Justin Simmons, safety for the Denver Broncos; Damaris Lewis, actress, dancer, philanthropist and entrepreneur who is also a member of Boys & Girls Clubs Alumni Hall of Fame; and Dr. Daphane Carter, State Superintendent and Chief Academic Officer for KIPP Texas Public Schools. Two Boys & Girls Clubs of America Military Youth of the Year who grew up as Military-connected teens round out the panel.

The virtual Military Teen Summit runs April 22-24, 2021 through Boys & Girls Clubs of America's youth development website www.MyFuture.net. Though free to participate, registration is required at www.bit.ly/MilitaryTeenSummit21. Once registered, participants will receive instructions on how to access the content which will be made available each day at 10 a.m. in an on-demand format.

For more information on Boys & Girls Clubs of America's partnership with the U.S. Armed Services, which is now in its 30th year, visit www.bgca.org/military.

About Boys & Girls Clubs of America

For 160 years, Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA.org) has provided a safe place for kids and teens to learn and grow. Clubs offer caring adult mentors, fun and friendship, and high-impact youth development programs on a daily basis during critical non-school hours. Boys & Girls Clubs programming promotes academic success, good character and leadership, and healthy lifestyles. More than 4,700 Clubs serve 4.6 million young people through Club membership and community outreach. Clubs are located in cities, towns, public housing and on Native lands throughout the country, and serve military families in BGCA-affiliated Youth Centers on U.S. military installations worldwide. National headquarters are located in Atlanta. Learn more about Boys & Girls Clubs of America on Facebook or Twitter.

SOURCE Boys & Girls Clubs of America

Related Links

http://www.bgca.org


Slight changes to gathering sizes and retail business capacity limits are Manitoba's "last chance" to reduce COVID-19 case counts before stricter rules have to be implemented, the province's top doctor said Monday.

Slight changes to gathering sizes and retail business capacity limits are Manitoba's "last chance" to reduce COVID-19 case counts before stricter rules have to be implemented, the province's top doctor said Monday.

Doctor's orders As of 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, the following restrictions will be in place. The restrictions are in effect until May 12. click to read more As of 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, the following restrictions will be in place. The restrictions are in effect until May 12.  All households can have only two designated visitors indoors; Before the change, two households were allowed to form a bubble together and visit each other.  Outdoor gatherings on public and private property will be limited to a maximum of 10 people, including household members; Before the change, one household plus 10 people were allowed to gather on private property, and 25 people were allowed to gather on public property.  Faith-based gatherings will be limited to 25 per cent capacity or 50 people, whichever is lower, with indoor mask orders in place except while household groups are seated at a service, are appropriately distanced from other groups and are not singing; The slight change reduces maximum capacity to 50 people rather than 100 people.  Weddings and funerals will be reduced to 10 people, in addition to an officiant and photographer. Before the change, 25 attendees were allowed.  Personal-care home workers who've already been vaccinated are now allowed to work in more than one facility. Last spring, in response to deadly outbreaks within the homes, the province issued public-health orders to prohibit staff from moving between homes. That requirement is no longer in effect for vaccinated workers. As of Wednesday (April 21), at 12:01 a.m. the following additional public health order will come into effect:  Retail store capacity will be limited to one-third of the store or up to 333 people, whichever is lower. Shopping malls will be limited to 33 per cent of the facilitys capacity. Before the change, capacity limits were set at 50 per cent or 500 people. Close

Fine-tuned public-health orders, promised last week, will limit indoor gatherings to two designated people, and further restrict outdoor gathering sizes and retail store capacity. None of the changes requires businesses to shut down, schools to close or people to wear masks outdoors (although outdoor masks are still recommended).

"We had significant restrictions in place as of now, so we've bolstered them with this. We see that our numbers are climbing so we needed to do more. And I think this is a measured response right now, but I do think from a public-health perspective, this really is our last shot at reducing our numbers before we do need to move into more of a lockdown scenario," Dr. Brent Roussin said Monday.

"We cannot overwhelm our health-care system, and so we are at risk of that if our numbers continue to climb at the pace they are. So this is our chance right now to change that trajectory."

The changes were made because public-health officials projected case numbers would grow by at least 50 per cent week over week without tightened rules, largely because of the spread of highly contagious strains of the virus.

Manitoba isn't entering into a lockdown, closing its borders or requiring masks in church as long as people sit far enough apart.

When asked why the province isn't implementing lockdown measures now considering surging infection rates in neighbouring provinces, the rise in highly contagious variants and the pace of the vaccine rollout, Premier Brian Pallister said Manitobans have largely followed strict rules and the post-Easter and Passover spike in cases here was "fractional compared to other provinces."

"Manitobans don't deserve a lockdown because Manitobans did the right things, but they do deserve to have a long-term sense that we're moving in the right direction," Pallister said, referring again to the pandemic as a "marathon."

Pallister said Manitoba has been "relatively speaking, an oasis" during this pandemic, not as hard-hit as other places, and there's a real concern Manitobans may be complacent about following tighter rules.

"If you want to get away from these rules, then follow the rules now, because if you don't, they're going to be here longer, unfortunately," Pallister said.

COVID-19 hospitalizations are already on the rise here, although they're considered a lagging indicator of the virus's spread. Case counts aren't as high now as they were before tightened restrictions were imposed in the fall during the second wave. In October 2020, the daily average COVID-19 case count in Manitoba reached 120. That number was 98 between March 15 to April 15, the month public-health officials acknowledged the arrival of the third wave.

On Monday, 108 COVID-19 infections were reported, and the test-positivity rate was 5.7 per cent, both in Winnipeg and across the province. More infectious strains of the virus account for roughly two-thirds of all cases in Winnipeg. Also Monday, 132 patients were in hospital receiving treatment for COVID-19, including 30 in intensive care.

"It was definitely time to do something. The real underlying question is, was what's been now suggested enough?" said Dr. Philippe Lagace-Wiens, medical microbiologist at St. Boniface Hospital. He said he is "underwhelmed" by the new restrictions. They could be enough to curb the third wave, he said, but only if everyone follows them.

"The way human behaviour is, I almost am starting to believe that a hard, circuit-breaker-type lockdown is necessary just to bring those numbers down to the point where they can be more easily managed and contact-traced. To try to take this more moderate approach, because not everybody's going to follow it, will probably not result in the control of the numbers that they're looking for."

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Dr. Brent Roussin, chief provincial public health officer, announces changes to health restrictions at press conference at the Legislative Building on Monday.

As Ontario's intensive-care units overflow with COVID-19 patients, Pallister said Manitoba has issued a "call to action" to retired nurses to re-register to help out in Ontario. The province is also in talks to send ventilators and other equipment to Ontario. When asked what Manitoba is doing to strengthen its own health-care workforce during the third wave, Pallister said the province has "taken steps to do that" and will continue, "but I don't think it's fair to disregard the needs of a neighbour at any time."

In an interview on Friday, deputy chief public health officer Dr. Jazz Atwal said Manitoba could avoid a situation similar to what's happening in Ontario. That province, he said, reacted too late.

"Just because something is rising doesn't mean it won't plateau, but if we don't behave properly, if we don't adhere to the orders, if we don't stay at home when we're sick, don't send your kids to school when you're sick or your kids are sick or go get tested, we will run into further trouble," Atwal said.

He described the "window of opportunity" Manitobans have now.

"The worst-case scenario is a complete lockdown. That might have to happen. We are trying to do what we can to make sure that doesn't happen, and this is where the callout is to Manitobans, is we don't want to go there. So let's do what we can so that doesn't happen. We have a window of opportunity here, but again, it's going to be about all Manitobans doing what they need to do to limit those interactions, to mitigate that risk and to adhere to the messaging," Atwal said.

 With files from Danielle Da Silva

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay
White House press secretary Jen Psaki wouldn't condemn Rep. Maxine Waters for saying Black Lives Matter protesters should 'get more confrontational' if Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is found not guilty.

'Well, I can speak to the president's view,' Psaki said when asked specifically about Waters' remarks. 'He has been very clear that he recognizes the issue of police violence against people of color, communities of color is one of great anguish and it's exhausting and quite emotional at times.'

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Capitol Hill reporters Monday that Waters didn't need to apologize as her comments didn't incite violence, despite calls from Republicans to have Waters punished for her remarks.

Waters made her initial comments Saturday evening while demonstrating in Minneapolis, where the trial over George Floyd's death is taking place, and where BLM activists are also responding to the police shooting of Daunte Wright.

'I hope we get a verdict that says guilty, guilty, guilty,' she told the press. 'And if we don't, we cannot go away. We've got to stay on the street. We get more active, we've got to get more confrontational. We've got to make sure that they know that we mean business.'

White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about Waters comments and didn't condemn them. Instead she talked about President Biden's views on police violence against communities of color

Rep. Maxine Waters, a Democrat from California, was in Minnesota Saturday night, saying that demonstrators needed 'get more active, more confrontational' as they marched for police reform

Psaki reminded reporters that Biden had met with Floyd's family shortly after the Minneapolis black man's Memorial Day death at the hands of Chauvin, a white police officer.

Chauvin is being tried for second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

Psaki said Biden is closely following the trial.

'And is committed to undoing this long-standing, systemic problem,' she said.

'His view is also that exercising First Amendment rights and protesting injustice is the most American thing that anyone can do, but as he also always says, protests must be peaceful that's what he continues to call for and what he continues to believe it the right approach for responding,' Psaki added.

In the past, Psaki has linked rhetoric to violence, chiding former President Donald Trump for using terms like 'China virus' and 'Kung flu' as hate crimes against Asians in the United States have increased.

'I think there's no question that some of the damaging rhetoric that we saw during the prior administration, blaming - calling COVID, you know, the 'Wuhan virus' or other things led to, you know, perceptions of the Asian American community that are inaccurate, unfair that have  elevated threats against Asian Americans, and we're seeing that around the country,' Psaki said at a White House briefing last month, on the heels of the shootings at spas in Atlanta, Georgia, where the majority of victims were Asian women.

Speaking to the Grio on Monday, Waters defended her comments saying, 'I am nonviolent.'

'Republicans will jump on any word, any line and try to make it fit their message and their cause for denouncing us and denying us, basically calling us violent,' Waters continued.

'Any time they see an opportunity to seize on a word, so they do it and they send a message to the white supremacists, the KKK, the OAth Keepers, the [Proud] Boys and all of that,' she said.

She also accused Republicans of using the tactic to raise money off the Democrats' backs.

Walters said she was 'not worried that they're going to continue to distort what I say.'

'This is who they are and this is how they act,' she added. 'And I'm not going to be bulled by them.'

On Sunday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy threatened to bring 'action' against Waters after she joined protesters in Minnesota on Saturday night.

The House Republican leader warned he would do so if Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not.

'Maxine Waters is inciting violence in Minneapolis  just as she has incited it in the past. If Speaker Pelosi doesnt act against this dangerous rhetoric, I will bring action this week,' he wrote on Twitter.

Pelosi told Capitol Hill reporters on Monday that Waters didn't need to apologize for her comments.

'No, Maxine talked about confrontation in the manner of the Civil Rights movement,' Pelosi said. 'I myself think we should take our lead from the George Floyd family. They've handled this with great dignity.'

'No, I don't think she should apologize,' Pelosi added.

McCarthy said Monday afternoon that he planned to propose a resolution to censure Waters that could remove her from her committee assignments - but given Democratic control of the House, it will go nowhere if Democrats stick together.

'We've heard this type of violent rhetoric from Waters before, and the United States Congress must clearly and without reservation reprimand this behavior before more people get hurt. But Speaker Pelosi is ignoring Waters' behavior,' McCarthy said. 'Thats why I am introducing a resolution to censure Rep. Waters for these dangerous comments, and I hope that all my colleagues  both Republican and Democrat  will stand up for peace on Americas streets,' the California Republican first told Breitbart.

Republicans pounced on Waters remarks to the Black Lives Matter protesters.

Sen. Ted Cruz and controversial Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene also criticized Waters, who, over the weekend, joined demonstrations over the police shooting of Daunte Wright, a black 20-year-old shot and killed at a traffic stop by a white police officer, Kimberly Potter.

But many of these Republicans accusing Waters of inciting violence did not make the same charge against then-President Donald Trump in the wake of the January 6th MAGA riot on Capitol Hill, that left five dead and trail of destruction throughout the Capitol.

Cruz and Greene were some of Trump's most ardent defenders. McCarthy did take to the House floor to declare Trump, who riled up the crowd with his false claims the election was stolen, 'bears responsibility' for the attack on Congress. McCarthy later flew to Mar-a-Lago to make peace with the former president after Trump became furious at him for his words.

Republicans have turned Waters into a punching bag before - notably for her urging the public to harass Trump White House staffers when they saw them in public.

A bullet hole is seen in the windshield of a Minnesota National Guard vehicle that was targeted in a drive-by shooting early on Sunday. Two Guardsmen suffered minor injuries

Demonstrators gather on Sunday for a solidarity rally lead by community organizers in the Black and Asian communities in memory of George Floyd and Daunte Wright

The city of Minneapolis prepares for a verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial with National Guard on patrol in the streets

Waters traveled to Minneapolis the weekend before closing arguments in the trial of Derek Chauvin, charged with murdering George Floyd on May 25.

The city is bracing for the verdict in the Chauvin case. More than 3,000 members of the National Guard are in Minneapolis, in addition to 1,100 officers from public safety agencies across the state as part of what has been termed Operation Safety Net.

In the early hours of Sunday, two members of the National Guard were injured - although not seriously - in a drive-by shooting.

Waters said she hoped Chauvin was found guilty.

'I am not happy that we have talked about police reform for so long,' Waters said, demanding a guilty verdict in the Chauvin trial and adding: 'If we don't [get it], we cannot go away. We've got to stay on the street.'

She added that protesters needed 'get more active, more confrontational' and they should ignore the curfew in place.

'Weve got to stay on the street and weve got to get more active, weve got to get more confrontational. Weve got to make sure that they know that we mean business,' she said when it comes to police shootings.

Hours after Waters' passionate speech, a Minnesota National Guard and Minneapolis police team were fired upon in a drive-by shooting.

People gather at George Floyd Plaza in the Powderhorn Park neighborhood of Minneapolis Minnesota to listen to the families of victims of police violence

A bullet hole in a National Guard vehicle is seen after Guardsmen were targeted on Sunday

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senator Ted Cruz, and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene blasted Rep. Maxine Waters for her comments in Minneapolis

The team was providing neighborhood security in Minneapolis when, at about 4.19am local time, a light colored SUV drove by and blasted shots at an occupied National Guard vehicle.

No team members were seriously injured, though two National Guard members suffered minor injuries: One was injured by shattered glass and taken to a local hospital, while the other suffered only superficial injuries.

Cruz accused Waters and fellow Democrats of seeking to 'to tear us apart.'

'Why is Maxine Waters traveling to a different state trying to incite a riot? What good can come from this?' asked Lauren Boebert, representative for Colorado.

Fellow Colorado representative Ken Buck said: 'Why is a sitting member of Congress encouraging protesters to get confrontational?'

Arizona Republican Andy Biggs added: 'The Radical Left dont care if your towns are burning, if theres violence in your streets, or if the police are too defunded to defend their communities.

'As long as the Left appeases their anti-America base, their job is done.'

And Marjorie Taylor Greene, congresswoman for Georgia, called for her to be expelled from Congress.

'As a sitting United States Congresswoman @MaxineWaters threatened a jury demanding a guilty verdict and threatened violence if Chauvin is found not guilty. This is also an abuse of power. #ExpelMaxineWaters'

She called Waters 'a danger to our society.'

On Twitter, others joined in the outrage at Waters' remarks.

'Of course she'll get away with saying that while anyone else would've been thrown in jail,' Rick Santella tweeted.

Another user tweeted, 'Good grief lady, leave get out of here.'

One person also accused Waters of 'stirring people up again with her calls for violence.'

Pictured: Congresswoman Maxine Waters leaving the protest at the Brooklyn Center Police Department on Saturday

Maxine Waters (D-CA) joins demonstrators in a protest outside the Brooklyn Center police station on Saturday night

Maxine Waters (D-CA) joins demonstrators in a protest outside the Brooklyn Center police station on Saturday night

Waters is planning on staying in town until Monday.

According to CBS Minnesota, officials stated that there was a brief altercation between reporters and protesters as Waters was leaving on Saturday, the first reports of any skirmishes.

The Pioneer Press reports demonstrators gathered Saturday afternoon at the home of Washington County Attorney Pete Orput, responsible for the second-degree manslaughter charges against Potter

The protesters stood outside of Orput's home before marching through is neighborhood in Stillwater.

Black Lives Matter activist Nekima Levy Armstrong said that Orput left his home briefly to engage in a conversation with protesters.

Pictured: Peaceful protesters in front of the Brooklyn Center Police Department on Saturday night

Demonstrators raise their fists at Union Station near the U.S Capitol, during a march in Washington, D.C. on Saturday

A demonstrator holds a Black Lives Matter sign during a protest outside the Brooklyn Center police station on Saturday

Protests have also been taking place in Chicago following the death of 13-year-old Adam Toledo, as well as New York City and across the rest of the United States.

On Friday night, many protests across the nation started off peacefully before sporadic clashes broke out between Black Lives Matters protesters and the police.

University of Minnesota medical students and doctors also marched on the Brooklyn Center Police Department on Saturday, a day after it was the site of most of the night's unrest.

Peaceful protests on Friday devolved into clashes between protesters and police, with flash bangs and pepper spray utilized by the cops.

There originally was not expected to be a curfew for the first time in several days, before one was suddenly imposed during the night's demonstrations.

Media members were briefly detained and 136 people were arrested.

A temporary restraining order was filed to prevent police from arresting or harming journalists.

'Following feedback from media, and in light of a recent temporary restraining order (TRO) filed in federal court, MSP will not photograph journalists or their credentials,' the Minnesota State Patrol said in a statement.

According to the Washington Post, several protesters were arrested on Saturday night. It's unclear why they were arrested, as the protest of about a hundred was drawing to a close.

Earlier in the day, there were peaceful protests across the nation, including Columbus, Ohio, and Philadelphia.

According to NBC Philadelphia, crowds in that city walked through City Center towards City Hall peacefully in a protest that lasted around five hours.

Nevertheless, some businesses did board up and 1,000 National Guard troops were preemptively deployed.
Korea Times file



Illegal migrant children who are born and have lived in South Korea for more than 15 years will be given temporary stay permits, the Ministry of Justice said Monday, as part of efforts to recognize their fundamental and equal rights and inherent dignity.



The policy, which runs until February 2025, is limited to children who graduated from elementary school before Feb. 28, 2021. Middle or high school kids will be granted the D-4 visa, and those who already graduated from high school will get the one-year G-1 visa.



Those who benefit from the policy should dutifully attend school and comply with the local laws, or the permits could be revoked, the ministry.



The limits on the scope and duration of the policy are meant to prevent the policy from being abused as a way of illegal immigration, the ministry said.






For the first time, U.S. Army staff has gotten a look this week at the Sikorsky S-97 Raider helicopter in flight, one of two initial prototypes of a new generation of aircraft the Stratford manufacturer hopes will become the backbone of the U.S. military for decades.

Sikorsky and parent company Lockheed Martin are proposing a refined version of the aircraft called Raider X as the replacement for the Bell OH-58 Kiowa helicopter, which has been used for scout missions dating back to the Vietnam War.

With a stacked set of rotors that revolve in opposite directions, the Raider is similar in design to the Defiant X prototype that Sikorsky is developing as the militarys next utility helicopter to replace the current fleet of Sikorsky Black Hawks and Seahawk maritime helicopters.

Bell, a subsidiary of Providence, R.I.-based Textron, is also in the running for the armed scout helicopter the U.S. Army wants as a replacement for the Kiowa. Bell has yet to complete assembly of its initial Bell Invictus prototype, which will resemble conventional helicopters with a single set of rotor blades.

As a potential Black Hawk replacement, Bell is separately developing the V-280 Valor, which builds on the tilt-rotor technology the Texas manufacturer pioneered alongside Boeing with the V-22 Osprey used by the U.S. Marine Corps. Like the Osprey, the Valor has two rotor sets mounted on wings that lift the aircraft vertically, then swivel to propel it forward.

Sikorsky test pilots Christiaan Corry and Bill Fell took the S-97 through the paces this week in Alabama, with Lockheed Martin posting video snippets of the flight on Vimeo.

In a written statement released by Lockheed Martin, Corry highlighted the helicopters rear-mounted pusher prop that propels the aircraft to higher speeds than a conventional helicopter can achieve.

In low-speed flight we are as capable as a conventional helicopter, but when we engage the prop, we are able to operate in a whole new way, Corry was quoted saying. Its much more like flying an airplane.

The winner of the Armys Future Vertical Lift competition will be set up for decades of steady work, as the case with Sikorsky when the Black Hawk emerged as the Pentagons choice in the early 1970s. The company had jut over 8,400 employees in Connecticut at last report.

Sikorsky is partnering with Boeing on the bid, with the companies having yet to specify whether manufacturing would be centered at Sikorskys Stratford plant or split both there and at Boeing helicopter factories in Pennsylvania, Arizona or elsewhere.

The Department of Defense does not expect full-production orders for the new generation of vertical-lift aircraft for another decade.

Sikorsky is already set up for an extended run in Stratford producing as many as 200 CH-53K King Stallion helicopters for the Marines a fleet of V-97 Marine One helicopters for the White House; and more than 110 HH-60W Jolly Green II combat rescue helicopters for the Air Force which completed developmental testing in Florida this week, nearly two years after flying for the first time.

Last week, the White House released President Bidens overarching priorities for a $715 billion DOD budget he will seek for the 2022 fiscal year, but has yet to detail dollar amounts it will earmark for specific programs.

In January, Lockheed Martin installed Paul Lemmo as Sikorsky president replacing Dan Schultz, with Lemmo previously general manager of a Lockheed Martin division that develops radar, sonar, sensors and other advanced military technologies.

Sikorskys work on coaxial rotor design dates back to its days as a division of United Technologies, which sold Sikorsky to Lockheed Martin in 2016 then merged itself last year with Raytheon.

UTC funded the early development without government assistance, with Sikorsky successfully flying the Raiders predecessor X2 helicopter for the first time in 2010. The National Aeronautical Association awarded Sikorsky its Robert J. Collier Prize as the top technical achievement in flight that year. No helicopter has won the prize since.

Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-842-2545; @casoulman
Chinese communications giant Huawei was able to eavesdrop on any conversation taking place on one of the biggest mobile networks in the Netherlands.

Hauwei staff were able to monitor all of KPN's mobile users and eavesdrop on their private conversations - and even knew which numbers were tapped by police or intelligence agencies, according to Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant.

The newspaper cited a report prepared by consultancy firm Capgemini for KPN, which it said flagged that Huawei could have been accessing users' calls in 2010 without KPN knowing.

Even phone calls by the former Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, government ministers and Chinese dissidents were allegedly able to be monitored by Huawei.

Chinese communications giant Huawei was reportedly able to eavesdrop on any conversation taking place on one of the biggest mobile networks in the Netherlands

Dutch MPs from across the political spectrum today called for the government to respond to the report about Huawei's role in the KPN mobile network.

The Dutch telecoms company today said that Huawei had not to its knowledge improperly monitored any of its mobile users or that customer data was stolen.

KPN confirmed the existence of the report, which has not been released by KPN or De Volkskrant, but said it had been intended to analyse risks associated with Huawei.

The report's findings were so shocking that the internal report was kept secret, de Volkskrant reports.

'The continued existence of KPN Mobile is in serious jeopardy as licenses can be revoked or government and businesses can relinquish their trust in KPN if it is known that the Chinese government can eavesdrop on KPN mobile numbers and shut down the network,' the report said.

The report added that Huawei staff - both in KPN buildings and abroad in China - had the ability to access unlimited KPN mobile numbers and eavesdrop on their calls. At the time, the company's mobile network had 6.5 million subscribers.

The report added that Huawei staff - both in KPN buildings and abroad in China - had the ability to access unlimited KPN mobile numbers and eavesdrop on their calls. Pictured: President Xi Jinping

Meanwhile Huawei, KPN's main supplier for equipment in its 3G and 4G mobile networks, rejected outright any suggestion that it could have improperly monitored the telecom firm's users.

Michel van Eeten, a professor at Delft University and a member of the Cyber Security Council told the newspaper that the telecommunications market was extremely competitive in 2010.

'That is how cheap Huawei got in,' he said. 'At that time, security was not as important. That way of working would be considered unacceptable now.'

'No supplier of KPN has 'unauthorized, uncontrolled or unlimited' access to our networks and systems, or is capable of eavesdropping on KPN clients,' a KPN spokesperson said, referring to the De Volkskrant story.

KPN added that the Capgemini report had not established whether Huawei had monitored any users or taken data.

'In all years, we have never observed that Huawei took client information,' the company said.

It added: 'Partly on the basis of the risk analysis in question, KPN at the time decided not to outsource full maintenance of its core mobile network.'

Capgemini declined to comment, citing customer confidentiality.

Huawei Netherlands said its workers did not have unauthorized access to KPN's networks and data.

'Since we began in the Netherlands 15 years ago, we have never been accused by government bodies of acting in an unauthorized way,' it added.

Huawei Netherlands' chief operating officer, Gert-Jan van Eck, said allegations in the De Volkskrant story that even calls by the country's then-prime minister might have been monitored were 'completely not credible.'

The newspaper's sources said the conclusion of the report were shared with the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD - but it has so far declined to comment.

In April 2019, the agency said it was 'undesirable for the Netherlands ... to depend on the hardware or software of companies from countries running active cyber programs against Dutch interests,' naming China and Russia.

In July 2019, a Dutch government task force recommended stronger vetting of telecoms equipment suppliers but did not say Huawei should be banned, despite pressure from the U.S. government and warnings by the Dutch intelligence agency about the dangers of Chinese espionage.

However, the Dutch government decided to exclude Huawei from having a role in developing a new 5G network in the country on the advice of the AIVD.

In October 2020, KPN said Ericsson would build its core 5G mobile networks.

A month later, the government introduced new security measures for the telecoms sector, including a background check for persons with access to networks.

A number of Western countries have voiced national security concerns over Huawei.

The UK Government announced in January last year that Huawei would be granted a role in building Britain's new 5G network.

But ministers then performed a U-turn in July, with the firm banned from the network while all of its existing 5G technology will be stripped out by 2027 over national security concerns.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Tugendhat claimed at the time that Huawei's continued involvement in Britain's 5G network would be 'extremely problematic' because the company is 'actually owned by the Chinese Communist Party'.

He said that allowing Huawei to build up the 5G architecture would be 'putting billions and billions of pounds' into the hands of the Chinese security state.

Mr Tugendhat added that the choice was between a few months' delay in rolling out 5G across the UK or a 'lifetime of dependence' on Beijing.

The decision to ban Huawei from the 5G network promoted a furious response from Beijing.

China's ambassador to the UK Liu Xiaoming hinted at retaliation over the 'disappointing and wrong' decision to strip Huawei out of Britain's 5G network - adding it was 'questionable' if the UK can be an 'open and fair' business environment for firms from other countries.

Mr Xiaoming tweeted: 'Disappointing and wrong decision by the UK on Huawei.

'It has become questionable whether the UK can provide an open, fair and non-discriminatory business environment for companies from other countries.'

Liu Xiaoming, the Chinese ambassador to the UK, tweeted: 'Disappointing and wrong decision by the UK on Huawei'

Under the Government's plans telecoms firms are now prohibited from purchasing any new Huawei 5G equipment and all of its hardware will be removed from the network over the next seven years.

The UK's decision to ban Huawei came after the US had urged its allies not to use the company's technology because of national security concerns - concerns which have always been rejected by the firm.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump in 2019 banned Huawei from buying vital U.S. technology without special approval and effectively barring its equipment from U.S. telecoms networks on national security grounds.
(Newser)  If anyone knows what it feels like to have colleagues try to remove you from your job, it's Marjorie Taylor Greene, the GOP congresswoman from Georgia who's had her committee roles stripped away and even had a resolution filed against her to expel her from the House. That isn't stopping Greene from trying to do exactly the same to Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, who Greene says should be expelled for her "continual incitement of violence." The Georgia lawmaker announced on Sunday she'll introduce a resolution to propose that fate for California's Waters, per the Hill. Greene cites as an example Waters' words Saturday in Brooklyn Center, Minn., where protesters converged after the April 11 police shooting of 20-year-old Daunte Wright. Waters said, among other things, that she was "going to fight with all of the people who stand for justice."

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Waters also spoke about the possibility of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin not being convicted in his murder trial over the death of George Floyd. If Chauvin is acquitted, Waters said, per Fox News: "We've got to stay on the street and we've got to get more active, we've got to get more confrontational. We've got to make sure that they know that we mean business." Greene tweeted on Sunday that Waters "is a danger to our society," suggesting that what Waters said prompted a drive-by shooting against a National Guardsman team in Minneapolis early Sunday, injuring two. GOP Sen. Ted Cruz also jumped into the fray, tweeting a Daily Mail article about Waters' remarks and adding, per Insider: "Democrats actively encouraging riots & violence. They want to tear us apart." The Hill notes there's still no word on who fired those shots, and that there's been no suggested link to Waters' comments from the National Guard itself. (Read more Marjorie Taylor Greene stories.)
Heres a quiz for the Republican politicians among you. Check as many as apply.

Do you support:

 Repairing and rebuilding Americas deteriorating network of roads and bridges, including the interstate highway system brought to life by GOP President Dwight D. Eisenhower?

 Ensuring that every American public student isnt drinking water out of lead pipes and doesnt attend class in buildings riddled with toxic chemicals?

 Giving every American access to reliable and affordable broadband internet service?

 Making sure that Americas electric grid is reliable so theres not a repeat of the debacle in Texas?

 Building up the nations electric vehicle infrastructure so that we can continue the pivot away from fossil fuels, all the better to hand a cleaner environment to our children, and to their children after them?

Because, guess what, Republican members of Congress? When it comes to all of the above, Americans are way ahead of you.

As The Washington Posts Jennifer Rubin noted, a Politico-Morning Consult poll finds that six in 10 respondents favor President Joe Bidens sweeping $2 trillion infrastructure package. And support for individual items within the plan is even higher, with 77% favoring modernizing highways and roads. Majorities even support items not traditionally thought of as infrastructure issues: 80% support refurbishing Veterans Affairs hospitals and improving care giving (76%), Rubin wrote.

And when it comes to Bidens plan to pay for it all by increasing corporate taxes, yep, Americans are down for that, too, according to the Politico-Morning Consult poll, with 65% of registered voters large portions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. That 2017 tax reform helped create the best American economy of my lifetime.

So if the GOP is against all the things that the American public so clearly favors, its only reasonable to ask what they support.

Some of the more immediate answers appear to be turning the reins of the party over to Trump loyalists who deny the reality of the Capitol insurrection and who propagate the myth of the stolen election. They fight make-believe culture wars over Dr. Seuss books. And theyre doing all they can to push racist voter suppression bills over the goal line.

The GOP remains a cult of personality for the worst president in U.S. history. It has become a bastion of irrationality, conspiracy mongering, racism, nativism and anti-scientific prejudices, the Posts Max Boot wrote in a separate column this week.

The White House, knowing the public is with them, is moving on without the GOP, by teeing up the infrastructure bill for approval through the parliamentary maneuver known as budget reconciliation, which would not require Republican support.

Biden forcefully rebutted the GOP criticisms, saying the idea of infrastructure has always evolved to meet the aspirations of the American people and their needs. And it is evolving again today He also left the door open to compromise, even as Republicans contort themselves to oppose spending and a vision of government they once embraced: An America that thinks and builds big.

So, Ill try to frame the choice confronting the GOP in the only language they seem to understand:

What would you do if it were 2022?

Would you stomp and fidget at the chance to build bridges?

Would you stick a cork in a bottomless container of government pork?

Would you play pointless games of political chess, while your voters say Yes! Yes! Yes!?

Would you continue bloviate and obfuscate with speeches of great sonority while slipping further into the minority?

What would you DO if it were 2022?

American voters already have spoken. So dont be surprised if they just turn the page on the Party of No.

John L. Micek can be reached at jmicek@penncapital-star.com and on Twitter @ByJohnLMicek.
McCracken Kindergarten Ready Event Today

By West Kentucky Star Staff

PADUCAH - The McCracken County Early Childhood Council is hosting a Kindergarten Ready Drive Thru event today from noon until 2 pm in the parking lot of Heartland Church, 4777 Alben Barkley Drive.Chairperson Kristy Lewis said, The purpose of the McCracken County Early Childhood Council is to build innovative, collaborative partnerships that promote school readiness for children so that all children can begin school ready to learn or have the proper supports in place to be successful. Our Council felt that a drive thru event was the safest way to get this important school readiness information to our families.Market House Theatre will be the main draw for the event this year. Their crew will be acting out highlights from the popular children's book "You Are Not Small" in three stops along the route. Other stops include information about the domains of learning, educational materials, books, school information, surveys and door prize information.Paducah Public Schools Tornado Take Out food service program will be giving a healthy snack as the last stop on the drive thru route.There are five domains of school readiness that the Council focuses all educational efforts on. These domains are General Knowledge and Math; Health and Well-Being; Social Emotional Development; Language and Communication Development; and Approaches to Learning.This event is sponsored by Paducah Head Start, Paducah Public Schools, McCracken Preschool, McCracken County Schools, and the Purchase Area Community Early Childhood Council.
The Duchess of Cornwall has shared a touching dedication to her late father-in-law the Duke of Edinburgh following his funeral on Saturday.

Having launched her very own online book club at the start of this year, Camilla, 73, dedicated its second season in memory of 'great fellow reader' Prince Philip, who died on April 9, aged 99 at Windsor Castle.

On Instagram today, the duchess revealed the second four personal picks for her Reading Room - ranging from fantasy novels to romantic tales.

She shared the titles alongside a special message, in which she dedicated the second season of her project to Prince Philip.

The duchess wrote: 'As Patron of Booktrust, which I inherited from my late father-in-law His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh, I would like to dedicate the next series of my Reading Room to him, in memory of a great fellow reader..... C.'

The Duchess of Cornwall has shared a touching dedication (pictured) to her late father-in-law the Duke of Edinburgh following his funeral on Saturday

Having launched her very own online book club at the start of this year, Camilla, 73, dedicated its second season in memory of 'great fellow reader' Prince Philip (pictured together, alongside Prince Charles)

The Duke of Edinburgh, an avid reader, was the proud patron of Booktrust, the UK's largest children reading charity, for several years before passing the role on to Camilla in 2011.

Camilla's Instagram followers appeared touched by her gesture, with one commenting: 'Beautiful tribute, looking forward to reading this selection,' while another wrote: 'Love this. The Duke would be so proud.'

The duchess, who has attracted more than 100,000 literary enthusiasts to her Instagram site, launched the second season with The Book of Dust Volume 2: The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman, Girl by Edna O'Brien, A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles and The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain.

From the world of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials - which was adapted into a BBC series and based on the notion of parallel worlds - The Book of Dust Volume 2: The Secret Commonwealth continues to follow the adventures Lyra Silvertongue.

By contrast, A Gentleman in Moscow is set in the Russian city's Metropol Hotel, where the dashing Count Rostov is condemned to lifelong house arrest in 1922.

On Instagram today, the duchess revealed the second four personal picks (pictured) for her Reading Room - ranging from fantasy novels to romantic tales

Reaction: Camilla's Instagram followers appeared touched by her gesture, with one commenting: 'Beautiful tribute, looking forward to reading this selection'

Elsewhere, The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain is a romantic tale set in Paris and sees bookseller Laurent discover a notebook containing offbeat thoughts, which capture his imagination, before he sets out to find the owner.

Lastly, Edna OBrien's Girl is a harrowing portrayal of a young woman abducted by Nigerian terrorists.

The second series of her Reading Room was meant to start on April 15 but was postponed until today following the Duke of Edinburgh's passing.

The second series of her Reading Room was meant to start on April 15 but was postponed (above) until today following the Duke of Edinburgh's passing

A statement read: 'The start of Season Two of The Reading Room has been postponed until after the funeral of His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh and will begin again on Monday 19th April.'

Camilla was inspired to set up her free initiative as a result of the phenomenal response to two suggested reading lists she published during the first lockdown, as well as research which showed that book sales soared by 400 per cent.

The duchess and her team decided to set up a more permanent platform to celebrate and explore literature from around the world - @duchessofcornwallsreadingroom.
Three young men were taken into custody Sunday after reports of machine gunfire at McKenzie Court in Tuscaloosa.

Police responded just before noon to the apartment complex off Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard after receiving calls that men were shooting hundreds of rounds from machine guns, said Tuscaloosa police spokeswoman Stephanie Taylor.

A Tuscaloosa police sergeant responded and notified other officers about a silver BMW he saw speeding from the area. Multiple units responded, stopping the vehicle in the area of Interstate 359 and 35th Street.

3 men were arrested in Tuscaloosa Sunday, April 18, 2021 after reports of machine gunfire at an apartment complex. (TPD)

Officers searched the vehicle and recovered two pistols (one that had been reported stolen in Tuscaloosa), a 22-caliber AR-style rifle with a 25-round magazine, an AR pistol, vials of THC oil, two small packaged bags of marijuana, an orange ski mask, gloves and arm sleeves.

Members of the West Alabama Narcotics Task Force responded and charged the following :

- Robert Johnson, 18, first-degree possession of marijuana

- Jaivoen Dubose, 20, second-degree possession of marijuana

- Kenneth Duncan, 19, second-degree possession of marijuana

The investigation is ongoing, with additional charges expected.

This story was updated Monday, April 19, with a correction from Tuscaloosa police. Initially authorities said a short-barreled rifle with a 100-round magazine was seized. That was corrected to say the weapon was an AR pistol.
Over 190 cases of infection with the UK coronavirus strain and more than 20 cases of the South African strain have been detected in Russia as of April 19, Head of the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing Anna Popova reported on Monday.

"We isolated 192 samples of the British strain, 21 [samples] of the South African one and so far, [we] have not discovered any other mutations already described by other colleagues. Yet we do have mutations that we are describing in the Russian Federation, the mutations uncharacteristic so far of any strain described abroad. We have observed the formation of a Siberian variant, and the formation of a northwestern variant <...>. And, as soon as the material will be ready for publication we will submit it to you," she said at the general meeting of the department of medical sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The top sanitary doctor reported on the formation of a mutated coronavirus variant in Siberia back in November 2020. Later, however, the press service of the sanitary watchdog told journalists that it was not some exclusive case typical only for Siberia and presumed that this mutation had already been widespread abroad, TASS reported.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the VOC-202012/01 coronavirus variety appeared in the UK last September. In South Africa, the 501Y.V2 strain has been present since early August, while the P.1 strain has been circulating in Brazil and Japan since December.
"It's an honor to grace the very first cover of Black Cannabis Magazine," said Goldberg. "As a long-time cannabis advocate and entrepreneur, I'm happy to support the launch of a new publication focused on starting conversations and covering issues that educate, entertain, and inspire people of color in the cannabis community."

As the first quarterly publication by and for people of color in cannabis, Black Cannabis Magazine will explore all facets of the cannabis culture, community, and commerce, spanning professional sports, celebrities, entrepreneurs, politics, music, fashion, and more.

"The legal cannabis industry so many of us enjoy and benefit from today is deeply rooted in Black culture, yet until now there's been no prominent media source focused on supporting and celebrating the many contributions people of color are making to move the industry forward," said founder Hazey Taughtme. "To have true social equity in cannabis, you first need an equal share of voice. I founded Black Cannabis Magazine as a must-read cultural hub and content mecca highlighting Black excellence in cannabis."

April's issue features an exclusive interview with Whoopi Goldberg to announce her new cannabis lifestyle management brand, Emma & Clyde by WHOOPFAM. Named as a tribute to Goldberg's mother and brother, Emma & Clyde's elevated and socially conscious product line will include a range of edibles, pre-rolls, flower, and accessories for medical and recreational consumers.

Additional topics in the issue range from a profile of Corvain Cooper, a man whose life sentence for a non-violent cannabis charge was commuted earlier this year, to a review of Monogram by Jay-Z; and from pro tips for a crossover career in cannabis to a primer on terpenes and cannabinoids.

Said Taughtme, "I believe that legal marijuana can and will change the economic trajectory for people of color. Black Cannabis Magazine is on a mission to shed light on the positive impact of legal marijuana on the global marketplace and the role people of color are playing to educate, advocate, and help rewire long-outdated beliefs and social mores surrounding this plant."

To celebrate the launch, Black Cannabis Magazine will host an invitation-only red carpet launch event which will be held in Los Angeles on Tuesday, April 20th.

Black Cannabis Magazine will be issued quarterly in print and digital versions. For more information, visit www.blackcannabismagazine.com .

About Black Cannabis Magazine

Black Cannabis Magazine is the first quarterly print and digital publication by and for people of color in cannabis. The magazine was founded by L.A.-based Steven Palmer, a.k.a. "Hazey Taughtme," the entrepreneur, D.J., and media personality best known for creating the popular internet radio station Haze. Taughtme co-founded and co-owns cannabis brand, "Laze," with his business partner "Just Mary."

Media Contact:

Lisa Weser

Trailblaze

[email protected]

SOURCE Black Cannabis Magazine

Related Links

https://blackcannabismagazine.com


Australia is in discussions with Singapore about creating a travel bubble that would allow passengers to fly between the nations without quarantine.

The plan would mirror the bubble with New Zealand which is allowing Aussies to enter from today.

Singapore has escaped the worst of Covid-19 with just 30 deaths and has only been recording between 10 and 40 cases per day over the past two weeks.

Health Minster Greg Hunt said about 5,000 people were expected to fly between Australia and New Zealand on Monday

Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack said the government has been in early discussions with Singaporean counterparts.

'We're in discussions with Singapore. We're having those chats, those initial chats with other countries as well, and as vaccines are rolled out here and elsewhere, these travel bubbles will be created, and it will get us back to some sort of pre-COVID normality,' he told Nine's Today Show on Monday.

Last week Trade Minister Dan Tehan revealed the government will take a 'systematic' approach to opening the borders which will see travels bubbles set up with individual nations.

'Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam have all been mentioned as potentials in that area,' he said, without giving any dates for when bubbles may start.

As the first Australians left for New Zealand on Monday morning, Mr McCormack said the travel bubble was boosting economic activity.

'The activity that's healing at our airports is on the up and up and up. Qantas, Virgin, they want to fly again.

'They want to get people back in their jobs. Planes in the air means jobs on the ground and that's what it's all about,' he said.

'It shows confidence. It shows we're on the pathway out of COVID and back to some sort of normality.

'It's going to benefit both nations. We love New Zealand. New Zealanders love Australia. And it's a good thing.'

Australia is in discussions with Singapore (pictured) about creating a travel bubble that would allow passengers to fly between the nations without quarantine

Health Minster Greg Hunt said about 5,000 people were expected to fly between Australia and New Zealand on Monday.

Qantas boss Alan Joyce revealed his company has put on an extra 16 return flights to cope with demand.

Mr McCormack also revealed a National Cabinet meeting on Monday will discuss the possibility of home quarantine for vaccinated travellers - instead of hotel quarantine.

But he warned it was only a proposal and would not be implemented anytime soon.

'Let's face it, this is just a proposal. It's just initial talks. This is what you would expect the Prime Minister and the Premiers and the Chief Ministers of the territories to be chatting about, to see where we can get to, to see where they can land,' he said.

'This is what the National Cabinet process has done all the way through, consensus, taking on the best health advice.

'That's what it's been about all the way through.'
Two sisters heading to a Florida grocery store over the weekend were killed in a hit-and-run crash involving suspected street racers.

Lt. Jeff Spears, a spokesman for the Palm Bay Police Department, said of the victims that 'their car was hit with such force that it essentially disintegrated. It rolled over several times.'

Noemi Hammen, 61, and Maria Ramirez, 58, were turning into the Publix supermarket at 4711 Babcock Street at 8.30pm on Saturday when a speeding dark blue Chrysler 300 slammed into them, flipping their Nissan sedan multiple times.

Noemi Hammen, 61 (left), and Maria Ramirez, 58 (right), were killed in a hit-and-run crash possibly involving street racing in Palm Bay, Florida, on Saturday night

The sisters were traveling in this white Nissan on their way to a supermarket when a speeding car smashed into their vehicle, causing it to roll over several times

One of the sisters was pronounced dead at the scene and the other died at the hospital.

'She was my baby, she was my love, she was everything to me,' Ramon Villanueva, Hammen's husband of 20 years, told Fox 35 through sobs.

Hammen's family said the she suffered extensive injuries to her face, rendering her almost unrecognizable.

Hammen's daughter Marcela Wilson broke down in tears, talking about her mother's face.

Police say a Chrysler 300 and this black Mercedes may have been street racing at the time of the collision

One of the sisters was pronounced dead at the scene, and the other succumbed to her injuries at the hospital (pictured with Hammen's children, right)

'She was so beautiful,' she said.

The Chrysler fled the scene. Witnesses told Florida Today the car was badly damaged and appeared to be dragging its front bumper along the pavement.

Police were looking into witness accounts alleging that the Chrysler had been racing a black Mercedes before striking the sisters' Nissan.

The Mercedes remained at the scene. Its two occupants suffered minor injuries, reported ClickOrlando.com.

The driver of the Mercedes, who has not been named, was said to be cooperating with the investigation.

Hammen's face was so severely injured that he family said she was rendered almost unrecognizable

Hammen's family, including (L to R) husband, son, and two daughters, appealed to the driver of the Chrysler to come forward

Police were looking for surveillance video to help locate the driver of the Chrysler.

Wilson, Hammen's daughter, made a direct appeal to the driver of the Chrysler: 'Be a human being. Be decent and just come forward and face the consequence for what you did because you messed up. ... You killed two innocent people.'
Chicago, unlike any other city in the country, has shown me what love looks like, Hallmon said on Sunday. It does this in a way that New York doesnt understand. In a way that Los Angeles, with its Hollywood arrogance, doesnt have the capacity for. In a way that D.C., with its obsession with politics, cant comprehend. I dont care who you are or how much money or education you do or dont have, that city champions culture and says it is for everybody. When Im there, I feel like I can breathe. Theres something so special about it. There just is.
Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands:--- CCRIF has provided financial support in the form of a grant of US$2,209,000 (approximately EC$6.0 million) to the Government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines following the eruption of the La Soufriere Volcano. According to CCRIF CEO, Mr. Isaac Anthony, This support to the Government has been made possible because CCRIF operates as a developmental insurance company, whereby our members have our commitment to support them in times of crises; seek out opportunities to enable them to enhance their resilience to current and future natural hazards; engage donors and collaborate on programmes designed to reduce vulnerability; negotiate the best prices for reinsurance; and advance disaster risk management and ecosystems-based solutions for the betterment of the peoples of the Caribbean and Central America in keeping with Agenda 2030 and the thrust to leave no one behind.

CCRIF believes that this support will provide much needed liquidity to respond to the ongoing relief and recovery efforts in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Although CCRIF does not currently offer cover for volcanic eruptions it believes that as the dedicated disaster risk financing facility in the region, it has a moral obligation to respond as best as possible to the needs of its members when confronted with such dire circumstances. St. Vincent and the Grenadines has been a member of CCRIF since the inception of the Facility in 2007.

CCRIF extends its sympathies to the Government and people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines recognizing the devastating impact of this disaster on the people and communities in the north of the island, their infrastructure, homes, and the psychosocial impacts being experienced by the general population.

Last month, CCRIF also provided a small grant in the amount of US$17,000 to the UWI Seismic Research Centre (SRC), to purchase new communication and ground deformation equipment to be added to those already deployed in St. Vincent, increasing the SRCs capacity to understand the volcanos eruptive processes and to better monitor it and be able to provide advanced warning of hazardous activity.

In 2007, CCRIF was formed as the rst multi-country risk pool in the world and was the rst insurance instrument to successfully develop parametric policies for natural catastrophes. CCRIF limits the nancial impact of natural hazard events to Caribbean and Central American governments by quickly providing short-term liquidity when a policy is triggered. The Facility is a working example of an effective disaster risk financing instrument and one of a suite of such instruments available to governments to assist in post-disaster recovery and to help close the protection gap.

CCRIF is working to bring new parametric insurance products to market for drought and the agriculture sector and will give consideration in its new strategic planning cycle, starting this year, to providing coverage for volcanic eruptions considering that there are 19 live volcanoes in the Eastern Caribbean, with every island from Grenada to Saba subject to the direct threat of volcanic eruptions.

Since the Facilitys inception, it has made a total of 50 payouts to 16 of its member governments, totaling approximately US$200 million on their tropical cyclone, earthquake, and/or excess rainfall policies.
THE woman who has been at Ian Baileys side since before the Sophie Toscan du Plantier murder said she has moved on after confirming the couple had broke up.

Jules Thomas confirmed to The Echo this morning that they have broken up.

I have moved on," she said. "He is looking for somewhere else to live.

"I have not evicted him.

The couple have been living together in Liscaha, near Schull, and have been together for almost three decades.

Jules confirmed she will feature in a series to be broadcast on Sky next month spearheaded by director Jim Sheridan.

She would not reveal why the couple have broken up, saying: There are a lot of personal reasons.

At a trial held in France, Ian Bailey was found guilty in his absence of the 1996 murder of the French film producer.

Last October, a third attempt by France to have him extradited in connection with the murder was rejected by the Irish High Court.

Mr Bailey has always denied any involvement in the murder. He was arrested twice as part of the murder investigation in Ireland but was never charged.

When asked if she still believes her former partner had nothing to do with the death of Ms Toscan du Plantier, Ms Thomas said: "He had nothing to do with that murder."

When contacted, Mr Bailey said this morning that he is not taking calls.
RTHK: Hugs, tears as Australia-NZ travel bubble opens

Emotions ran high on Monday as excited passengers set off on the first flights to take advantage of a quarantine-free travel bubble between Australia and New Zealand, allowing families split when borders closed almost 400 days ago to finally reunite.

"(I'll) yell, scream, cry, hug, kiss, (feel) happy  all of these emotions at once," said Denise O'Donoghue, 63, at Sydney airport as she prepared to board her flight.

The arrangement means that for the first time since the pandemic closed borders worldwide, passengers can fly in either direction across the Tasman Sea without undergoing mandatory Covid-19 quarantine when they arrive.

"It's a very big day and exciting for families and friends," said New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who hailed the success of both countries in containing the virus as a key factor in allowing the travel corridor.

Australia was New Zealand's largest source of international tourists before the pandemic, accounting for about 1.5 million arrivals or 40 percent of total visitors in 2019.

But on the first day of the bubble, most of the travellers were returning New Zealanders, with tourists expected to start arriving in large numbers during the upcoming Australian school holidays.

On a grass embankment at the foot of Wellington Airport's runway, the words 'WELCOME WHANAU' (family) were spelled out in giant letters.

In the airport terminal, Maori dancers performed a traditional powhiri welcoming ceremony for the arrivals.

Lorraine Wratt, a New Zealander stranded by the pandemic while visiting family in Australia, said it was "wonderful" to be able to travel again.

"We're very excited to be heading back home but we're going to miss our family (in Australia) big time," she said. "We came to Australia on December 11 to spend Christmas with our children... planning to go back in February, it's been a bit of a nightmare."

Australia is home to hundreds of thousands of expatriate New Zealanders and before coronavirus many regularly shuttled back and forth across the Tasman on three-hour flights.

"It's like it's one big country, so it's very good to open the borders, it will help all the families," said Mehat El Masri as he waited to see his Sydney-based son Shady for the first time in 16 months.

"We appreciate it. We're doing very well in New Zealand and Australia with precautions and keeping things under control... we're fortunate compared to the rest of the world." (AFP)

This story has been published on: 2021-04-19. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
The has decided to reinforce its strategic focus, presence and actions in the with a long-term perspective, saying it has "big stake" in its peace and stability and will work to ensure an architecture that keeps the region "open and rules-based".

The grouping of 27 countries came out with a comprehensive strategy for the that lists its priorities and vision for the region that the EU said represents the world's "economic and strategic centre of gravity".

The EU strategy for cooperation in the was adopted on Monday by the foreign ministers of the bloc's member states, demonstrating its recognition of the growing importance of the region.

The EU said the policy initiative sets out its intention to reinforce its strategic focus, presence and actions in the region of prime strategic importance for the grouping's interests.

"The aim is to contribute to regional stability, security, prosperity and sustainable development, at a time of rising challenges and tensions in the region," it said in a media statement.

It said the renewed EU commitment to the Indo-Pacific, a region spanning from the east coast of Africa to the Pacific Island states, will have a long-term focus and will be based on upholding democracy, human rights, the rule of law and respect for law.

The EU said it has a "big stake" in the Indo-Pacific region, and has every interest that the regional architecture remains open and rules-based.

"Current dynamics in the Indo-Pacific have given rise to intense geopolitical competition adding to increasing tensions on trade and supply chains as well as in technological, political and security areas," it said.

"Human rights are also being challenged. These developments increasingly threaten the stability and security of the region and beyond, directly impacting on the EU's interests," it added.

Referring to India, the strategy paper said the EU will continue to explore deepening economic relations with India.

The evolving situation in the Indo-Pacific region in the wake of China's increasing military muscle-flexing has become a major talking point among leading global powers.

India, the US, Australia and Japan have vowed to work collectively under the framework Quad or Quadrilateral coalition towards maintaining a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific region.

The EU said its approach and engagement will look to foster a rules-based order, a level-playing field, as well as an open and fair environment for trade and investment, reciprocity, the strengthening of resilience and tackling climate change.

"Free and open maritime supply routes in full compliance with law remain crucial.

The EU will look to work together with its partners in the Indo-Pacific on these issues of common interest," it said.

"The EU will continue to develop partnerships in the areas of security and defence, including to address maritime security, malicious cyber activities, disinformation, emerging technologies, terrorism, and organised crime," it said.

The EU said it along with its regional partners will also work together in order to mitigate the economic and human effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and work towards ensuring an inclusive and sustainable socio-economic recovery.

The EU also said it will aim to expand its security and defence dialogue to include more partners and engage strongly in the ASEAN Regional Forum.

The strategy paper said the EU will aim to conclude free trade agreements with Australia, Indonesia and New Zealand and take further steps towards the comprehensive agreement on investment with
A glamorous Sydney couple have opened their wallets to renovate a run-down harbourside property - even though they don't own it.

Top Sydney artist Dina Broadhurst, 45, and her boyfriend, Max Shepherd, 30, didn't let a lease stop them from transforming their Vaucluse rental in the eastern suburbs into the dream home they've always wanted.

So the couple spent two weeks working around the clock freshening up the rustic property into a stunning modern home with panoramic water views.

Max Shepherd and partner Dina Broadhurst (pictured together) spent many hours renovating their Vaucluse rental home which doubles as her art studio

All ceilings, doors, windows and walls throughout the two story home were repainted pure white. Pictured on the couch is the couple's French bulldog Rio

The lino kitchen floor and carpets were ripped out to show the floorboards underneath

They revealed to Daily Mail Australia the DIY job involved ripping out the old lino kitchen floor and carpets to inject a new lease of life into the original floorboards underneath.

The kitchen cabinets were given a makeover by painting them matt black inside and out.

Ceilings, doors, windows and walls throughout the five bedroom two-storey home were also spray-painted pure white to provide an abundance of light.

KITCHEN BEFORE: The cupboards were repainted to give the room a fresh look

KITCHEN AFTER: Dina working on the floor towards the end of the kitchen renovation

The couple were tight-lipped about how much they spent on the makeover, but a DIY expert estimated it would have cost between $4,000 and $10,000.

Ms Broadhurst admitted that most people think it's 'crazy' to do up a rental home - but for her it made perfect sense.

She had been looking for an art studio separate to where she lived - a place where she could drip paint on the floor and not have to worry about 'ruining things'.

But finding such a space proved difficult so she decided to combine the studio and the home.

BEFORE: The master bedroom with carpet and wallpaper and old fashioned-style curtains

ALMOST FINISHED: The master bedroom halfway through the renovation

AFTER: Dina in the finished master bedroom which was stripped back to show the original floor boards and freshly painted white walls

They fixed up the living areas like the kitchen, bedrooms and bathrooms but left the rest of the house untouched.

'The property was quite unliveable and looking back I can't believe that we managed to pull it off,' Ms Broadhurst told Daily Mail Australia.

'It was actually a huge project and a massive workload but when I first walked in I just had that naivety of a child to get it done.'

The rustic eastern suburbs home was given a new lease of life by the glamorous couple

Ms Broadhurst admitted that most people think it's 'crazy' to do up a rental home - but for her it made perfect sense. Pictured: The home's outdoor dining area

The gruelling DIY job was made a fair bit easier thanks to the couple's experience in the building industry.

Ms Broadhurst previously ran her own interior decorating business and carried out a large number of renovations, while Mr Shepherd still works in the building sector.

The owners were about to knock the place down and couldn't have been happier when they found out about the couple's plans.

'It was in a state of disrepair and it wasn't something they could put money into, so we were their perfect match,' Ms Broadhurst said.

BEFORE: The original living area boasted a cream carpet and old cream wallpaper

ALMOST FINISHED: Dina in the living area halfway through the renovation, where she is pictured painting the walls white

AFTER: The finished living area, with original floorboards, white washed walls and trendy new furniture

The couple have named the property CASA Studio - meaning House Studio - in a nod to Ms Broadhurst's Italian-Australia heritage.

With over 175,000 followers on Instagram, she looks at the renovation costs like a business investment as she plans to host art shows and events in the near future.

Ms Broadhurst said traditional art galleries can often be very 'prescribed' and 'typical'.

'I really want to show art in a different way so I'm definitely going to do some shows of my own art at CASA Studio, as well as other artists that I admire and love,' she said.

'The space gives a feeling of energy. It's very pop and very colourful and it's in your face.

It's very contemporary mixed with historic. That's a combination I'm very drawn to.

'I just love keeping the old bones of places and injecting a totally new life to it. It's very invigorating and very inspiring.'

The entire home is covered in artworks by Ms Broadhurst. Pictured: The home's dinning room

Ms Broadhurst is pictured working on her creations after transforming her home into a living art studio

Artist Dina Broadhurst (right) and her partner Max Shepherd (left) invested much time and money into transforming their rental into their dream home
Villages in E China turn tourism resources into fortune, embrace vitalization

By Lao Jiang (People's Daily Overseas Edition) 10:23, April 19, 2021

Photo taken on Oct. 13, 2020 shows terraced fields on Fuzhi Mountain of Lingnan Township, Shaoxing, east China's Zhejiang Province. (People's Daily Online/Pan Weifeng)

As rape flowers started to blossom in the 23,000 terraced fields, which cover 2,300 mu, or 153 hectares on Fuzhi Mountain of Lingnan Township, Shangyu District, the township kicked off its 12th rape flower festival.

It is reported that the 23,000 terraced fields of the township located in Shaoxing, east China's Zhejiang Province, have a history of over a thousand years.

Together with traditional local residential buildings beside them, these terraced fields attracted flocks of tourists, including livestreaming hosts and enthusiasts of traditional Chinese costumes, who wanted to experience the natural beauty of the terraced fields and the charm of the local residence.

Rural business forms must be enriched to vitalize the countryside, and the cultural and tourism sector is a major area where efforts shall be taken. China's 14th Five-Year Plan proposed to vigorously develop leisure agriculture, rural tourism, B&Bs and other featured business forms in the countryside. To do this, featured resources are a prerequisite.

Located two and a half hours' drive from Shanghai, Lingnan Township enjoys favorable geographical advantages. Besides, it has abundant ancient towns lying beside creeks or rivers, which gives it a unique and antique taste.

"Apart from the resources, it's also important to respect the people, their traditions, and local customs in rural areas, and help them solve practical problems, meet their expectations for development, and extend their history, so as to achieve sustainable development of rural tourism," said an expert.

Lingnan Township has conformed to its residents' expectation to improve their life quality. It planted rape flowers which both keep farmlands fertile and increase the income for villagers. Roads, bathrooms, as well as other infrastructure projects have been built in the township for better development of tourism, and it also introduced sewage disposal facilities to improve the life quality of villagers.

Besides, the township is also working on the renovation and protection of ancient residential buildings to maintain their original appearance. With mud-made outer walls, wood beams and French windows, the residential buildings look both antique and modern. "It's a great experience to live in them," said a tourist.

Realizing the value of their local culture, a great number of young people who worked out of town decided to go back to their hometown.

"Our history and culture are here, and so are our families. We can both take care of our children and make money here," said Wang Yongyong, a man in his thirties who returned with his family and started a B&B hotel. The man now earns a decent income.

In today's era, to better transform "resources" into "assets," internet offers a great channel, especially new media. An online rape flower festival was held this year in the township, attracting over 600,000 visits. The township also hosted an online photography competition, winning more attention on its traditional villages.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
The First Obstacle Is Our Confidence That Things Wont Get Worse

Commentary

Between 1961, when the Berlin Wall was built, and 1989 when it came down, many daring escapes were made across the wall to freedom. By some accounts, around 5,000 people managed the feat, risking their lives in some audacious way like crawling through tunnels, using fake passports, flying in hot air balloons, walking tightropes, or busting through the wall in tanks, hoping not to be shot by border guards. Many thousands of people made the attempt and a couple of hundred are thought to have died in the attempt.

These individuals were willing to risk their lives to be free. Yet they did not bother to escape from East Berlin before the wall was built. For a dozen years, East and West Berlin almost seemed like they were still one city and travelling into West Berlin to defect was one of the easiest ways to escape East Germany. Hundreds did so every dayso many, in fact, that in August 1961, East German authorities resolved to shut the door. On Aug. 13, 1961, shocked residents of East Berlin awoke to find barbed wire between them and the West. Two days later, construction of the wall began. Why did some people wait? They may have been confident that conditions could not get worse.

Many people seem to believe that now. When COVID lockdowns began in March 2020 for two weeks to flatten the curve, some of us warned that a dangerous precedent had been set from which we would not easily recover. Crises are an ideal time for the state to advance into territory from which it will not wish to retreat, I wrote last spring, In this new era, we will discover that leaders of all political stripes have more than a little Lenin in them. Some dismissed the sentiment with a wave of the hand. Dont worry about it, they said, just a temporary measure to get us through a difficult spot.

Thirteen months later in Ontario, Premier Doug Ford has announced the extension of the present stay-at-home order. Ontario Provincial Police have established checkpoints at the Quebec and Manitoba borders to bar travellers. Non-essential retail businesses are closed. Labour inspectors will visit offices to check for compliance with provincial guidelines. Police have been granted powers to stop people on the street or in their car upon suspicion that they are headed to a social gathering and ask for their address and the purpose of their trip. Papers please, comrade. Quarantine hotels are our gulags. Soon, vaccine passports will be our barbed wire.

Western liberal democracies, especially Canada, have descended into authoritarianism. COVID appears to be the reason, but this transformation has long been underway. The virus simply unleashed the gathering storm. Over time, managerial states have steadily expanded their reach into every aspect of modern life. Governments supervise behaviour and speech, mainstream media propagandize, public schools and universities indoctrinate, and professional regulators require ideological comportment. The chattering classes now demonize the ideas upon which their own civilization is based, including the sovereignty of the individual over the group, freedom of speech, and equality of treatment under the law. While we once celebrated liberties and achievements, people are now fearful, ashamed, dependent, and obedient.

The law will not protect us. The law is a product of culture, and when the culture turns, the law goes with it. Yes, our Charter of Rights and Freedoms appears to guarantee liberty and the fundamental freedoms of conscience, thought, belief, opinion, expression, peaceful assembly, and association, as well as mobility rights to enter and leave Canada and to live in any province.

Some of those rights are now infringed, but so far, courts have mostly said meh. Charter rights are subject to reasonable limits in Section 1 and the Supreme Court of Canada has long guarded the ability of the managerial state to do what it thinks best. As former chief justice Beverley McLachlin once wrote, The bar of constitutionality must not be set so high that responsible, creative solutions to difficult problems would be threatened. What constitutes responsible and creative, of course, is for the government and the courts, not the individual, to decide.

The historical record shows that Western freedom is an aberration. Human civilization tends to consist of tyranny, oppression, slavery, and violence. The present period of relative liberty may be fading fast, a fragile blip in a panoply of misery. As Professor Gary Morson of Northwestern University has written, One sometimes hears that the pendulum is bound to swing back. But how does one know there is a pendulum at all, rather thanlet us saya snowball accelerating downhill?  What meets no resistance does not stop.

If we continue to acquiesce, perhaps sanity, liberty, and individualism will return next year. Perhaps they will take 20 years. Or perhaps they will be gone for good.

Bruce Pardy is professor of law at Queens University.

pardyb@queensu.ca Twitter @PardyBruce

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Months after the inauguration of President Joe Biden, One America News Network, a right-wing cable news channel available in some 35 million households, has continued to broadcast segments questioning the validity of the 2020 presidential election.

Theres still serious doubts about whos actually president, OAN correspondent Pearson Sharp said in a March 28 report.

That segment was one in a spate of similar reports from a channel that has become a kind of Trump TV for the post-Trump age, an outlet whose reporting has aligned with the former presidents grievances at a time when he is barred from major social media platforms.

Some of OANs coverage has not had the full support of the staff. In interviews with 18 current and former OAN newsroom employees, 16 said the channel had broadcast reports that they considered misleading, inaccurate or untrue.

To go by much of OANs reporting, it is almost as if a transfer of power had never taken place. The channel did not broadcast live coverage of Bidens swearing-in ceremony and inaugural address. Into April, news articles on the OAN website consistently referred to Donald Trump as President Trump and to Biden as just Joe Biden or Biden. That practice is not followed by other news organizations, including the OAN competitor Newsmax, a conservative cable channel and news site.

OAN has also promoted the debunked theory that the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 were left-wing agitators. Toward the end of a March 4 news segment that described the attack as the work of antifa and anti-Trump extremists  and referred to the president as Beijing Biden  Sharp said, History will show it was the Democrats, and not the Republicans, who called for this violence. Investigations have found no evidence that people who identify with antifa, a loose collective of anti-fascist activists, were involved in the Capitol riot.

Charles Herring, president of Herring Networks, the company that owns OAN, defended the reports casting doubt on the election. Based on our investigations, voter irregularities clearly took place in the November 2020 election, he said. The real question is to what extent.

Herring Networks was founded by Herrings father, tech entrepreneur Robert Herring, who at age 79 runs OAN with Charles and another son, Robert Jr. About 150 employees work for the channel at its headquarters in San Diego.

Nielsen does not report viewership statistics for OAN, which is not a Nielsen client. (Charles Herring cited Nielsens heavy fees.) In a survey last month, Pew Research reported that 7% of Americans, including 14% of Republicans, had gotten political news from OAN. By contrast, 43% of Americans and 62% of Republicans had gotten political news from Fox News, the survey found.

While OAN appeals to a relatively small audience, its coverage reflects views commonly held by Republicans. In a Reuters/Ipsos poll last month, about half of Republicans said they believed that the Jan. 6 attack, which left five dead, was largely a nonviolent protest or was the handiwork of left-wing activists. Six in 10 Republicans surveyed said they also believed Trumps claim that the election was stolen.

OAN, which started in 2013, gained attention when it broadcast Trumps campaign speeches in full before the 2016 election. In recent months, it has courted viewers who may have felt abandoned by Fox News, which on election night was the first news outlet to project Biden as the winner of Arizona, a key swing state. In a mid-November promotional ad, OAN accused Fox News of joining the mainstream media in censoring factual reporting.

OANs stories appeal to people who want to believe that the election was not legitimate, said Stephanie Edgerly, an associate professor at Northwestern Universitys Medill School of Journalism. These are two mutually reinforcing narratives of people who want to believe it and continue to get that fire stoked by OAN.

Marty Golingan, a producer at the channel since 2016, said OAN had changed in recent years. At the start of his employment, he said, it concentrated more on neutral coverage based on reports from The Associated Press or Reuters. He saw it as a scrappy upstart where he could produce cheeky feature stories, he said.

During the Trump presidency, it moved right, Golingan said. And when he was watching coverage of the pro-Trump mob breaking into the Capitol, he said, he worried that his work might have helped inspire the attack.

He added that he and others at OAN disagreed with much of the channels coverage. The majority of people did not believe the voter fraud claims being run on the air, Golingan said in an interview, referring to his colleagues.

He recalled seeing a photo of someone in the Capitol mob holding a flag emblazoned with the OAN logo. I was like, OK, thats not good, Golingan said. Thats what happens when people listen to us.

Charles Herring defended OANs coverage. A review process with multiple checks is in place to ensure that news reporting meets the companys journalist standards, he said. And, yes, weve had our fair share of mistakes, but we do our best to keep them to a minimum and learn from our missteps.

Golingan added that since Inauguration Day, OANs news director, Lindsay Oakley, had reprimanded him for referring to Biden as President Biden in news copy. Oakley did not reply to requests for comment.

OANs staff White House reporters use the term President Biden and then may use Mr. Biden, Charles Herring said. The term Biden or Biden administration may also be used. He declined to reply to a question on the channels use of President Trump for Trump.

Allysia Britton, a news producer, said she was one of more than a dozen employees who had left OAN in the wake of the Capitol riot. She criticized some of what the channel had reported, saying it was not up to journalistic standards.

Many people have raised concerns, Britton said in an interview. And the thing is, when people speak up about anything, you will get in trouble.

Charles Herring confirmed that about a dozen OAN workers had left in recent months, saying many of them were not high-level employees.

Assignments that the elder Herring takes a special interest in are known among OAN staff as H stories, several current and former employees said. The day after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, Herring instructed OAN employees in an email, which The New York Times reviewed, to report all the things Antifa did yesterday.

Some H stories are reported by Kristian Rouz, an OAN correspondent who had written for Sputnik, a site backed by the Russian government. In a report in May on the pandemic, Rouz said COVID-19 might have started as a globalist conspiracy to establish sweeping population control, one that had ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, billionaires George Soros and Bill Gates, and the deep state.

Britton, the former OAN producer, recalled checking a website that Rouz had cited to back some of his reporting. It literally took me to this chat room where its just conservatives commenting toward each other, she said.

In an email to staff last month, Oakley, the news director, warned producers against ignoring or playing down Rouzs work. His stories should be considered H stories and treated as such, she wrote in the email, which the Times reviewed. These stories are often slugged and copy-edited by ME as per Mr. Hs instructions.

OANs online audience is significant, with nearly 1.5 million subscribers to its YouTube channel. One of its most popular videos, with about 1.5 million views since it went online Nov. 24, criticized Dominion Voting Systems, the election technology company whose equipment was used in more than two dozen states last year, including several won by Trump. Hosted by the OAN White House correspondent, Chanel Rion, the video shows a man who said he had infiltrated Dominion and heard company executives say they would make sure Trump lost.

Dominion has sued Fox News and two of Trumps lawyers, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, accusing them of making or promoting defamatory claims. A lawyer for Dominion, who did not reply to requests for comment, has said the company is considering further legal action.

Golingan, the producer, said some OAN employees had hoped Dominion would sue the channel. A lot of people said, This is insane, and maybe if they sue us, well stop putting stories like this out, he said.

Weeks after Dominion filed its first defamation suits, OAN broadcast a two-hour video in which the chief executive of MyPillow, Mike Lindell, made his case that widespread voter fraud had occurred. YouTube removed the video the day it was posted, saying it violated the platforms election integrity policy. Last month, an OAN report described Dominions voting machines as notorious.

Two of the current and former employees interviewed for this article  Dan Ball, a talk-show host, and Neil McCabe, a former reporter  described OANs coverage as unbiased. McCabe, who now writes for The Tennessee Star, said the network gave a voice to people that are just not covered.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Filipinos queue for free food and other goods offered at a roadside community pantry in the Maginhawa neighborhood of Quezon City, north of Manila, April 19, 2021.

Ana Patricia Non says she started a community-run pantry in Quezon City to help feed fellow Filipinos who are facing hard times because, in her view, they cannot rely on a government struggling to contain a burgeoning coronavirus outbreak.

The 26-year-old artist and activist launched the roadside pantry this month in a neighborhood of the Manila suburb, after seeing similar initiatives in other countries during the global pandemic.

Right now, we can count on no one, but each other, Non told BenarNews. It is sad that there are those who are hungry, but we are also slowly realizing that we have to start acting, even if it means acting by ourselves for our own sakes.

People have been lining up on the curbside of the busy street since Non and her helpers began leaving boxes of food and other essential items that theyd gathered from donors in the neighborhood.

Barely a week later, other pantries are sprouting up here.

I thought of those who do not have the option to stay home because their income depends on their everyday work, Non said, referring to a COVID-19 lockdowns imposed by the Philippine government in Metro Manila and nearby areas.

The spokesman for President Rodrigo Duterte praised the pantries set up by Non and other charity-minded Filipinos but denied that these reflected a criticism of the governments slowness in responding to the needs of impoverished people amid the pandemic.

The community pantry represents the best in the Filipino. I dont think anyone can claim to be a founder of that, spokesman Harry Roque told reporters in a virtual news conference on Monday. Its part of our psyche to help one another, so I dont see that as a condemnation of government, it simply shows the best in us during the worst of times.

Since the public health crisis started more than a year ago, the government has provided a one-time payment of up to $80 in social assistance to 80 percent of the populace, officials said.

As of Monday, the total number of coronavirus cases detected in the Philippines since the outbreak began in early 2020 was closing in on 1 million. The cumulative caseload had reached nearly 946,000 resulting in 16,408 deaths.

For the past three weeks, the country has logged an average of 63,000 new COVID-19 cases per week. Meanwhile, delays in deliveries of vaccines have hampered a national program to inoculate the population against the virus.

Residents queue for free food and other essential items at a roadside community pantry in Quezon City, Metro Manila, April 19, 2021. [Basilio Sepe/BenarNews]

People can relate

The pandemic forced Non to shut her small wood-making business. She had employed a construction worker and a jeepney driver who had previously lost their jobs.

Now, both help her to run the Maginhawa Community Pantry, as her project has come to be known. The mutual aid project allows those in the Maginhawa, a neighborhood of Quezon City, to give what they can and take what they need.

Im sure there are those who have excess food, they just dont know where they can offer it, Non said.

The project sparked a movement after people from different neighborhoods and cities in the capital region, as well as those from as far away as Mindanao in the southern Philippines, started replicating the idea.

When you think of why it became mainstream, its because people can relate and everyone understands that there is that need to feed the hungry, Non said.

Its inspiring how other people did it in their own places, but it also presented us a sad reality that many are hungry, she said.

Randy Calumag, a 39-year-old farmer from the northern province of Tarlac, was one of the first to donate to the roadside pantry.

The pandemic adversely affected Calumag and his fellow farmers in the town of Paniqui. With most transportation cut off, and many markets and shops shut down, the price of the produce had dropped so steeply that it made more sense to just donate the food.

We didnt count how many sacks we gave out for free as it is in our instinct that when someone is in need, we help. Its hard to count the help that you give, Calumag told BenarNews.

For rickshaw driver Jojo Borja, 44, the pantry was heaven-sent.

I saw my neighbors bringing vegetables and rice while I was looking for scrapped junk and they told me to go here, said Borja, who was initially hesitant to join the queue.

Ill just leave if its not yet allowed, its almost lunchtime and I have to get food for my family one way or another, Borja said in Tagalog.

But to his surprise, a volunteer encouraged him to get whatever he needed for the day.

Borja had lost his job as a welder. Left with zero income and six mouths to feed, Borja used some of the $160 in government aid last year to buy a side-car that he can use to trade junk.

I still have two kids who need diapers and milk, and on top of that I also had debts to pay, he said.

It was only a week since Borja was able to go back to the streets to scavenge for junk after the government eased the quarantine restrictions.

I cant stay home and just look at my family starving, he said.

On bad days, Borja feeds his wife and their five children with the relief packs he can get from the neighborhood. If not, they just sleep the hunger off until its a good day in the junk trade again.

This community pantry is a very big help for us. Its a big load off my shoulders as regardless of how much Ill earn for the day, I know my family can eat, Borja said.
Collaboration Marks The Shoe Surgeon's First-Ever Burger-Inspired Shoe Design Celebrating the Return of the Indulgent Steakhouse Angus Thickburger

FRANKLIN, Tenn., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Carl's Jr. and Hardee's have joined forces with famed sneaker designer and long-time Carl's Jr. fan, Dominic Ciambrone, otherwise known as The Shoe Surgeon, to announce the creation of original Angus Kicks in celebration of the launch of the decadent Steakhouse Angus Thickburger.

Carl's Jr & Hardee's Team Up With The Shoe Surgeon For Custom Angus Kicks

As The Shoe Surgeon's first-ever collaboration with a burger brand, the kicks are inspired by the luxurious flavor of the Steakhouse Angus Thickburger, which made its limited return to Carl's Jr. and its debut at Hardee's earlier this month. The burger features a perfectly seasoned one-third pound 100% angus beef patty, A.1. Sauce, crispy bacon, melty swiss cheese and more, all on a premium potato bun.

The custom-made sneakers, which include an exclusive pair each for Carl's Jr. and Hardee's to be raffled off to two lucky fans, feature a chunky sole on a trainer-inspired silhouette, the beloved Happy Star logo, and texture and material combinations unique to each brand. The luxurious sneakers also boast a secret stash pocket in the tongue tag perfect for ketchup packets and 'shoegredients.'

"We're excited to bring back the decadent and luxurious Steakhouse Angus Thickburger to our Carl's Jr. fans and introduce it for the first time at Hardee's with a one-of-a-kind partnership with The Shoe Surgeon," said SVP, Marketing of CKE Restaurants, Inc., Patty Trevino. "As we continue to offer impossible-to-ignore culinary innovations for our guests, partnering with The Shoe Surgeon is a natural fit to bring the burger to life with head-turning original kicks."

"I grew up on Carl's Jr., so working with these brands on our first-ever burger collaboration brought me back to my childhood," said The Shoe Surgeon, Dominic Ciambrone. "I had a lot of fun drawing inspiration from the upgraded Steakhouse Angus Thickburger for these shoes. We added really unique touches to each design like the tongue tag featuring a secret stash pocket for money or ketchup packet, which I think burger and sneaker enthusiasts alike will enjoy."

Story continues

Fans can enter for a chance to win the Angus Kicks by purchasing unlimited raffle tickets for $10 on www.TheSurgeon.com , available today through April 23. See www.TheSurgeon.com for additional details and Official Rules. Proceeds from the raffle will be donated to Stars for Heroes, Carl's Jr. and Hardee's annual fundraising campaign that benefits military-focused organizations and is a cause Ciambrone cares deeply about as he has a brother who is a veteran.

Follow Carl's Jr. and Hardee's on social media for the latest product news and promotional offers.

Twitter: @CarlsJr and @Hardees

Instagram: @CarlsJr and @Hardees

Facebook: www.facebook.com/carlsjr and www.facebook.com/hardees

About CKE Restaurants Holdings, Inc.

CKE Restaurants Holdings, Inc. ("CKE"), a privately held company based in Franklin, Tennessee, runs and operates Carl's Jr. and Hardee's, two beloved regional brands, known for one-of-a-kind premium and innovative menu items such as 100 percent Black Angus Thickburgers, Made from Scratch Biscuits and Hand-Breaded Chicken Tenders. With both a US and international footprint, Carl's Jr. Restaurants LLC and Hardee's Restaurants LLC have over 3,900 franchised or company-operated restaurants in 44 states and 42 foreign countries and U.S. territories. For more information about CKE, please visit www.ckr.com or its brand sites at www.carlsjr.com and www.hardees.com .

About The Shoe Surgeon

Founded by Dominic "The Shoe Surgeon" Ciambrone, Surgeon Studios is a Los Angeles-based collective of creatives, built to inspire creativity, further the industry and push the unique and timeless craft of custom shoe making and design. By offering a wide array of custom tailored solutions  from design and development, to integrated marketing and branded experiences  we strive to invigorate our clients at the highest level. Based on our philosophy and dedication to the craft, we don't compromise on materials or time. The products we create are made to last and made to wear.

Cision

View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/carls-jr--hardees-team-up-with-the-shoe-surgeon-for-custom-angus-kicks-301271633.html

SOURCE CKE Restaurants Holdings, Inc.
HOLYOKE  One potential buyer wanted to build a combination marijuana business and restaurant.

Another had plans for a brewery.

Another wanted the Gateway City Arts complex on Holyokes Race Street for a warehouse.

It was very close that we might sell. But none of them were very close to our vision. Its so important for the downtown, said Vitek Kruta, an artist and along with partner Lori Divine, owner of the Gateway City Arts complex. We were not very happy.

But now they are happy with a partnership  first announced over the weekend  with concert promoter DSP Shows of Ithaca, New York.

Kruta and Divine announced four months ago that theyd closed Gateway City Arts and would likely have to sell it, unable to keep going under tough COVID-19 protocols that have been hard on performance venues including Springfields The Bing Arts Center, which was sold.

DSP Shows  which has booked shows at Gateway City Arts, the Academy of Music in Northampton and Springfield Symphony Hall  will take over programming at the large, 500-seat main hall (the Hub) with live music and other shows.

Thatll leave Kruta and Divine to revive the other aspects of Gateway City including restaurants Judds, The Bistro and Race Street Tacos, rental artists studios, a co-working space, a smaller theater and art gallery. They started Gateway City Arts in 2012.

We will probably start this summer with the biergarten outside, Kruta, a native of the Czech Republic, said.

John Sanders, a booker and partner in DSP shows, said itll probably be September before hell be able to book live indoor shows again. The outdoor Green River Festival in Greenfield, set for august, will be a good barometer both of feasibility and the publics desire to risk gatherings.

That goes for Gateway City and other indoor venues, he said.

There is a lot of activity already geared toward indoor shows for the fall. We are certainly planning for it, Sanders said. We cant wait until we know the restrictions are going to be lifted in order to start planning.

11/20/2019 -Holyoke- Owner Vitek Kruta looks out over downtown Holyoke from the roof of the Gateway City Arts complex on Race Street which offers event space, restaurants, bars, co-work areas and more. (Don Treeger / The Republican)

He said hell have another local partner at Gateway City, but cant give more details.

As for Gateway Citys facility. Sanders pointed to the outpouring of sentiment when Kruta and Divine announced their plans to sell.

It has a ton of community support, Its a good size for the types of shows we want to do.

He cant yet talk about dates or artists.

Gateway City Arts hosted 70 shows in 2019 and plans to do about 100 in 2020 before the pandemic made that impossible.

For Aaron Vega, a former state representative who now heads Holyokes office of Planning and Economic Development, the news of DSP Shows involvement is a boost to economic development in the neighborhood.

I think it means we can count on live music being back down on Race Street, Vega said. When you think about the other industries. Thats key

He said restaurants that are open or looking to reopen, like Avalon Game Cafe and Blue Door Gatherings, as well as Holyokes growing cannabis industry, will benefit from an active Gateway City Arts. There are more than 100 people working right now in cannabis businesses in Holyoke, and Vega expects that number to swell to 200 by the end of the year.

They are all going to be looking for someplace to go after work, he said.

Kruta said Gateway City is working to get Shuttered Venue Operators Grant and Paycheck Protection Plan loans, both from the Small Business Administration, and then start hiring back restaurant employees and other workers.

Kruta said the artists studio portion of Gateway City Arts never fully closed. A puppet maker kept working and used the space to livestream puppet shows. A woodworker kept renting and used a woodshop in the basement.

We have heard from more artists looking to rent space, Kruta said. We are willing to do that. There is so much space here. We can spread people out.

He said the Gateway City Arts co-working space might prove the most difficult business to restart. He said people might be used to doing office jobs from home and not need to rent office space.

Vega, when asked about the other suitors looking to buy Gateway City Arts, said hes always interested in talking about new business ideas, especially in the marijuana industry.

But there are other vacant properties, and cannabis businesses have already secured a lot of available space in Holyokes older mill buildings.
The global CTI market is estimated to reach $981.8 million by 2023, finds Frost & Sullivan

SANTA CLARA, Calif., April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- As the volume and complexity of attacks increase exponentially, security-conscious organizations bolster cybersecurity spending and look for innovative solutions that enable them to understand and prevent cybercrime. Frost & Sullivan's recent analysis finds that cyber threat intelligence (CTI) is the cornerstone of mature cyber defense programs and a sought-after product category that allows organizations to adapt their security posture to the rapidly evolving threat landscape. CTI is a segment of the threat intelligence services market, which also includes threat intelligence platforms and digital risk protection. The global CTI market is estimated to witness a two-and-a-half-fold growth, reaching $981.8 million by 2023 from $392.2 million in 2020, up at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 35.8%. North America will continue dominating the industry through 2023, followed by Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and Asia-Pacific (APAC).

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1490647/cyber_intelligence_Frost_and_Sullivan.jpg

For further information on this analysis, Cyber Threat Intelligence to Power the Next Generation of Cybersecurity, please visit: http://frost.ly/5ka

"With the growing cost of cybercrime and increasing confrontations between geopolitical rivals in the cyber domain, organizations turn to CTI providers to learn the modus operandi of attackers and increase their chances of anticipating and preventing damages," said Mikita Hanets, Cybersecurity Research Analyst at Frost & Sullivan. "Customer demand for consolidated solutions that are more affordable and easier to use is encouraging vendors to address several intelligence needs at once. As a result, most vendors aim to provide insights about relevant cyber activity and take a more active role in operationalizing threat intelligence with either homegrown software or partnerships with other security vendors."

Hanets added: "The emergence of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model presents new opportunities for CTI vendors. A growing number of threat intelligence providers are repositioning themselves as SaaS vendors that support a range of intelligence-related use cases."

Market participants should focus on the following growth opportunities:

Expansion into the digital risk protection (DRP) market : Convergence between the CTI and DRP segments will help vendors become go-to suppliers of CTI, ranging from indicator of compromise feeds to information about leaked credentials. It will also allow them to penetrate the midmarket with DRP use cases and upsell other intelligence products over time.

: Convergence between the CTI and DRP segments will help vendors become go-to suppliers of CTI, ranging from indicator of compromise feeds to information about leaked credentials. It will also allow them to penetrate the midmarket with DRP use cases and upsell other intelligence products over time. Broadeninto the threat intelligence platforms (TIP) market: The addition of use cases going from the aggregation of threat feeds to basic threat hunting functionality will enable CTI vendors to provide a comprehensive SaaS offering that enables customers to access threat intelligence and operationalize it on a single platform.

The addition of use cases going from the aggregation of threat feeds to basic threat hunting functionality will enable CTI vendors to provide a comprehensive SaaS offering that enables customers to access threat intelligence and operationalize it on a single platform. Partnerships with security vendors: Security vendors should market a more expensive version of the product (e.g., endpoint security) enhanced by threat intelligence in collaboration with one or several CTI vendors. These partnerships would enable threat intelligence providers to drive revenue growth and increase market share.

Cyber Threat Intelligence to Power the Next Generation of Cybersecurity is the latest addition to Frost & Sullivan's Security research and analyses available through the Frost & Sullivan Leadership Council, which helps organizations identify a continuous flow of growth opportunities to succeed in an unpredictable future.

About Frost & Sullivan

For 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

Cyber Threat Intelligence to Power the Next Generation of Cybersecurity

MFD3-74

Contact:

Srihari Daivanayagam,

Corporate Communications

P: +91 44 6681 4412

E: srihari.daivanayagam@frost.com

http://ww2.frost.com
The 3iQ CoinShares Bitcoin ETF is aiming to provide investors with exposure to Bitcoin as well as the opportunity for long-term capital appreciation

3iQ Corp, Canadas largest asset manager, has said its 3iQ CoinShares Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) (TSX:BTCQ) has begun trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX).

The company said the ETF will look to provide investors with exposure to Bitcoin as well as the opportunity for long-term capital appreciation.

Today is yet another milestone for the 3iQ team, bitcoin enthusiasts, and investors across Canada. Backed by deep industry expertise, we are thrilled to be adding the 3iQ CoinShares Bitcoin ETF to our offerings and especially to partner with CoinShares, 3iQ chairman and chief executive Fred Pye said in a statement.

The ETF is the fourth Bitcoin ETF to list in Canada and another sign of the countrys increasing willingness to offer crypto trading products to investors.

These developments also follow the approval of Ether ETFs by Canadian regulators last week, placing the North American nation streaks ahead of its southern neighbour, with US regulators having yet to approve any form of Bitcoin ETF.

Bitcoin was down 0.6% at US$55,293 in late-afternoon trading in London on Monday.
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Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-20 05:00:10|Editor: huaxia

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UNITED NATIONS, April 19 (Xinhua) -- United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday said that the cooperation between China and the United States is important and expressed the hope that big countries will commit to net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by the middle of this century.

"The China-U.S. cooperation is vital. It was vital for the Paris Agreement. It remains vital today, together with other important partners," the secretary-general said at a press conference to launch the State of the Global Climate in 2020 Report when responding to a question regarding the joint statement issued Sunday by China and the United States on coping with climate change after talks in Shanghai.

The statement was issued after talks between Xie Zhenhua, China's special envoy for climate change affairs and U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry from Thursday to Friday in Chinese city of Shanghai.

Replying to a question about his expectations for this week's virtual climate summit, the top UN official said, "My hope is that, in this week's summit, a number of countries, the most important countries in relation to climate change, will be able to commit to net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by the middle of the century and to commit to a drastic reduction of emissions for the next decade in the context of the review of their Nationally Determined Contributions. And this is very important in this summit."

U.S. President Joe Biden on March 26 invited 40 world leaders to attend a virtual summit on climate change on April 22 and 23.

Chinese and Russian leaders are invited to the summit, according to a White House statement. Enditem
A driver who claims he almost ran over a child wandering across a busy highway in the dead of the night has insisted police called him later that night to let him know they had found the toddler.

Mitch Kuhne was driving north on the Hume Highway near Bardia, south of Sydney, just before 8pm on Sunday when he claims to have spotted the child.

Eerie dashcam footage captured the moment a small child-like figure appeared from the darkness on the left side of the four-lane motorway.

Mr Kuhne, who was travelling back to the Gold Coast with his parents after racing bikes in Goulburn, said the child looked no older than six and appeared to be wearing a blue parka.

Dashcam footage recorded an alleged child walking on the Hume Highway south of Sydney

Mitch Kuhne was driving north on the Hume Highway near Bardia, south of Sydney, just before 8pm on Sunday when he claims to have spotted the child

'It just happened so quickly and obviously (was the) last thing to expect,' Mr Kuhne told Daily Mail Australia.

He said he was about three to four kilometres away from the Liverpool exit sign in Bardia when he spotted the child.

The sportswear co-CEO was unable to pull over in his ute while towing a toy hauler, so his mother - who was in the passenger seat - called Triple 0 at 7.41pm on Sunday night, which NSW police have confirmed.

'Mum made the 000 call while I got our exact location... for the police,' he said.

The call log shows the conversation lasted five minutes.

Mr Kuhne made a 44-second call to Macquarie Fields Police Station at 8.29pm on Sunday - 45 minutes after the initial emergency call - and said he offered his dashcam footage.

Mr Kuhne said he was travelling with his parents while towing a toy hauler (pictured) when he saw what looked like a young child

Driver was 3-4 kilometres away from the Liverpool exit sign in Bardia when they saw the figure

He claimed a male officer told him the child had been found, and they would not need the footage.

'The only reason I posted the video (of the dashcam footage on social media) is because I thought the kid was safe and felt okay posting it,' said Mr Kuhne.

Police told Daily Mail Australia they searched the area, however no child was found and the search was called off at 3.45am Monday morning.

Officers said there were no reports of a missing person in the area.
The collaboration with Sixth Wave Innovations Inc will provide an avenue to gain better understanding of the use of psychedelic compounds for a range of treatments and health benefits.

Recent Californian legislative changes regarding the use of psychedelic compounds may benefit CPH.

s ( ) (FRA:1X8) target acquisition Halucencex Life Sciences Inc has signed a non-binding Letter of Intent (LOI) with leading nanotechnology company Sixth Wave Innovations Inc ( ) ( ) to assess Molecularly Imprinted Polymers (MIPs).

Sixth Wave is focused on MIPs, which are deployed to capture and extract target materials as small as parts-per-billion for imprinting, capturing and releasing substances.

The MIP technology of Sixth Wave results in more efficient extraction with higher yields and a purer product.

Californian legislation

Creso Pharma also welcomes a recent legislative change in California regarding the possession and use of psychedelic compounds, which may benefit it and Halucenex in the future.

This highlights ongoing acceptance and regulatory shift towards psychedelics as an alternative treatment route for debilitating mental health conditions.

Very pleasing development

Creso Pharma chairman Adam Blumenthal said: The recent LOI with Sixth Wave is a very pleasing development for Halucenex and has the potential to provide considerable upside to near-term clinical trial initiatives and cultivation activities.

We also applaud recent regulatory developments in California, which will pave the way for acceptance for the use of psychedelic compounds as an alternative treatment route for debilitating mental health conditions.

Much like recent cannabis reform, we anticipate that there will be a considerable legislative shift to promote the use of psychedelic compounds and through Cresos pending acquisition of Halucenex, we are positioned to benefit from these reforms.

Sixth Wave LOI

Vancouver-based Sixth Wave has developed fully scalable systems underpinned by MIPs, which are expected to replace antiquated and traditional extraction processes delivering considerable improvements including cost savings and higher yields.

Under the LOI, Halucenex will work with Sixth Wave to develop a definitive agreement by May 31, 2021, further to which the parties will define system requirements, identify target molecules to be purified and develop psilocybin separation.

Sixth Wave will develop the MIPs and both companies will work to develop beads and columns for producing psilocybin, allowing Halucenex to produce a natural pure psilocybin product for R&D, and for dosing psilocybin for the treatment of mental disorders.

Sixth Wave president and CEO Jon Glucklman said: The growth in medical evidence showing botanical psychedelics treatment efficacy for atypical depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and other conditions is compelling and suggests that the market for these substances in both clinical treatment and potentially outpatient micro-dosing will grow substantially.

The application of our nanotechnology to this exciting market is an extension of our existing Affinity cannabinoid purification system.

As Sixth Wave is in the final commercialisation efforts for Affinity this is a perfect time to be exploiting the design of that system to a new set of molecules.

Further research

Further, both companies will also develop beads and columns of other wellness components of psilocybe mushroom strains such as baeocystin and norbeocystin.

This will allow Halucenex to perform research into the health and wellness benefits of these molecules without the hallucinogenic effects of psilocybin present.

According to Halucenex, the work undertaken with Sixth Wave will also complement the Advanced Extraction agreement and the Growing Together Research (GTR) Inc.

Halucenex and GTR will be able to identify key psilocybe genetic markers, enabling the extraction and separation processes to provide purity and consistency of the compounds.

Halucenex founder and CEO Bill Fleming said: The agreement with Sixth Wave is a very important step and will provide Halucenex with another avenue to best understand the use of psychedelic compounds for a range of treatments and health benefits.

We look forward to working with the group and utilising their patent-pending technology, alongside agreements with other key partners, to further our R&D initiatives, which will help us in our clinical trials and future product development.

Legislation to decriminalise pyschedelics

Creso Pharma is encouraged by a move towards the legalisation of psychedelic substances in California.

The legislative shift occurred on April 13, 2021, when the Senate Public Safety Committee approved Senate Bill 519, which would make a wide range of psychedelic substances legal to use and possess for adults over the age of 21, as well as expunge prior criminal offences for use and possession.

For psilocybin, the legislation repeals provisions in the Californian statute that prohibited the cultivation or transportation of any spores of mycelium capable of producing mushrooms or other material that contain the psychoactive ingredient.

The bill has been introduced to progress a more health-focused approach to the use of psychedelic compounds and to address the current mental health crisis in the US and it also marks the ongoing push towards acceptance of psychedelic compounds as an alternative treatment route.

Fleming said: Recent legislative shifts in California highlight the massive opportunity that Halucenex and Creso have and this agreement is going to provide a strong foundation for us to capitalise on a highly lucrative and emerging market segment.
Lausanne North America (L-NA) is committed to extending the influence and passion of Lausanne Movement by connecting influencers and ideas on mission and evangelism for Christ and His Kingdom. Read more from this column.

Image: Lausanne North America

As you may be aware, the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center also houses the regional offices of Lausanne North America, which is 1 of 12 regions part of the Lausanne Movement. Billy Graham saw the need for evangelicals to unite towards the task of world-wide evangelization. This desire and dream led to the First International World Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne Switzerland in July 1974 and the birth of the Lausanne Movement. Since 1974, there have been two other World Congresses that have metManilla, Philippines in 1989 and Cape Town, South Africa in 2010. As part of the process of preparing for the World Congress in 2024 the Lausanne Movement has been hosting listening calls for each region to discuss five questions. Lausanne North American held our listening call on March 3 with close to 200 evangelical leaders from across various sector and disciplines. In this series, we want to share with you the five questions Lausanne is asking as well as the most recurring answers/themes to those questions coming out of North America. We hope this series will be informative as well as catalytic. If you have additional thoughts, suggestions, or answers to the questions posed in this series, please send them to Dr. Josh LaxtonAssistant Director of Lausanne North Americawho has been compiling this list for the Lausanne Movement. His email is Joshua.laxton@wheaton.edu.

Question 1: What are the most significant gaps and remaining opportunities in North America toward the fulfillment of the Great Commission?

In this question, Lausanne wants each region to assess the churchs ground-game in advancing the gospel in its context. In this post, we want to note the four most recurring gaps people shared with us on our listening call.

1. The Credibility Gap

The credibility of Christians has been on a downhill trajectory since the Jimmy Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart days. Now with news traveling at the speed of a tweet and a repost, the credibility gap continues to widen. And it widens from a plethora of issuesissues consisting of sexual misconduct, domineering behavior, political affiliation infatuation, touting conspiracy theories, misogyny, racial overtones, to lavish lifestyles and everything in between.

There is certainly a holiness problem within the church, which means there will be a credibility problem for us in the world. Holiness is our distinction from the world. The author of Hebrews notes that without holiness no one will see the Lord. While the author meant that statement to be applied to peoples relationship with God, we can also transpose that to our situation in North America. We are the body of Christ, the manifesting presence of God in the world. Yet, when we live soiled lives, we prevent the world from seeing the glory of God. The credibility gap is indeed one we must work to close.

2. The Unity Gap

John 17, Jesus High Priestly prayer, gets thrown around like a cute quote from fortune cookie. But what do you do after reading the little slip of paper pulled from the cookie? You throw it away and dont really think about it anymore. That seems to be what the church is doing to John 17:21 when Jesus prays, May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The further apart we are as the people of God, the harder it is for the world to see the transforming power of the Gospel.

Today the unity gap can be clearly seen in at least three ways.

First, it can be clearly seen by the enclaves we have created for our own tribal groups. And it seems that Evangelical tribes continue to grow at an alarming rate. We definitely struggle with the same thing the church at Corinth did as they had factions/tribes that followed Paul, Apollos, or Cephasonly today is I follow Andy, I follow Mark, I follow John, or I follow Tom.

Second, the unity gap can be seen in the manner of our disputes and hurled insults over secondary and tertiary theological, methodological, and practical issues. We dont know how to disagree well. We dont know how to converse over difficult issues. What happens is that in our disagreements we drop relational atom bombscutting off relationships. Our King died to save us from our sin and to one another, not so we can drop cute impersonal and passive aggressive tweets damaging our relationships with brothers and sisters in Christ. We must work on this unity gap for the sake of Gods fame among the nations.

Third, the unity gap can still be clearly seen in the segregation of our churches. (More coming on this.)

3. The Generational Gap

A tagline of Lausanne, which was crafted by John Stott, is evangelization requires the whole church to take the whole gospel to the whole world. Todays evangelical church in North America struggles with the whole church part of this tagline. Were struggling in at least two ways.

First, Boomers and GenXers are struggling to share leadership with Millennials. If the North American church doesnt start sharing some of the more weightier leadership responsibilitiesin our churches, organizations, institutionswith millennials, by the time they become old enough in our eyes to assume weightier leadership, it will be too late. We will have squandered our opportunity.

Second, and in connection with this, the church is losing GenZ. GenZ is positioned to be the least religious, least churched, and most biblically illiterate generation. Decades ago, churches were known for their incredible and thriving student ministries. Those days are long gone. Not that striving student ministries dont existtheyre just becoming more and more extinct like DVDs.

Unless the North American church changes some things, to share leadership with Millennials and to leverage GenZers to reach their generation, the church we will be on the brink of losing the coming generations. Rememeber, the whole church is needed to reach the whole world.

4. The Innovation Gap

When it comes to innovation, evangelicals particularly the more regulative principle guys get a little squirmy. Those who have a difficult time understanding the need and place for innovation either dont understand the contextual facet of mission or the concept of innovation.

The whole notion of mission begins with the belief that the gospel is to be taken to the ends of the earth. Therefore, the gospel is meant to cross geography, national borders, cultures, etc. While the gospel never changes, depending on the context the delivery methods might. This is not only clear throughout the history of the church, but also in the book of Acts.

The church in North America finds herself in a rapidly changing and secularly progressing culture. The church models and strategies of previous eras are antiquated for our new reality, for our new context. This is where innovation comes in.

According to Ted Esler in his forthcoming book, innovation is arranging existing components in a new way, combining things that already exist to create something that does not. Take Uber and Airbnb for instance. Both companies leveraged something already in existence and turned it into a service-industry whereby people could turn their personal vehicle and dwelling place into a way to make a living or extra money.

The church of the 21st century must become innovative. We must find new, creative, and imaginative ways to take the never-changing gospel message (and its implications) and share and show it with a dark and dying world. We must also find new, creative, and imaginative ways to sustain and accelerate funding models of gospel churches, ministries, organizations, and institutions other than relying solely on a donor-based model.
The Czech authorities plan to exclude Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom from the tender to expand the Dukovany Nuclear Power Plant against the backdrop of a political scandal between the two countries.

Within a few days Rosatom will be excluded from the opportunity to bid in the tender, Czech Deputy Prime Minister and Industry and Trade Minister Karel Havlicek said in an interview with a Czech publication.

He also said Rosatom will not be able to participate as a subcontractor. This is virtually impossible, as not a single candidate will go with a supplier from the Rosatom Group, Havlicek said when asked about this.

On Saturday the Czech Republic announced a decision to expel 18 Russian diplomats, who it said are intelligence workers operating under diplomatic cover. The reason for the decision is that the Czech authorities believe Russian intelligence services were involved in an explosion at a Czech arms depot in 2014 that killed two people.

On Saturday evening, Czech police issued arrest warrants for two Russian citizens, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov. The police did not give details about the case they are suspected of being involved in, but said it was a serious crime.

In March 2021, Elektrarna Dukovany II, a.s. (EDU-II), a division of Czech energy company CEZ Group, received permission from the country's nuclear safety authority to build a new nuclear power plant in the municipality of Dukovany. This is expected to be followed by the announcement of a tender to select a contractor.

The application to expand the Dukovany NPP was submitted to the regulator in March 2020. The application concerned the construction of two new generating units at the plant with capacity of 1,200 MW each, CEZ said at the time.

Rosatom has repeatedly said it plans to bid in Czech tenders to build new nuclear generating capacity. In November 2016, its subsidiary Rusatom Overseas said that the state company had given the Czech Industry Ministry and CEZ Group a package of documents on potential participation in a project to build new nuclear generating units. Prior to this, in October, Rosenergoatom said the Czech Republic was considering Rosatom's proposal for the construction of new generating units in the country to replace the Dukovany plant.

The Czech Republic now has two nuclear power plants: Dukovany with four units with VVER-440 reactors and the Temelin NPP with two units with VVER-1000 reactors built according to Soviet designs.
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Brandon Scott Hole, 19, was a 'Brony' who posted about My Little Pony just before killing eight people on Thursday

The gunman who killed eight at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis was a 'Brony' obsessed with the children's cartoon My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, who was allowed to legally purchase rifles despite having his own shotgun seized.

Brandon Scott Hole, 19, never had a competency hearing after police seized his gun over suicide concerns last year under Indiana's 'red flag' gun law, records show.

If a judge had found him dangerous or incompetent at the hearing, Hole would have been barred from buying another gun. If not, his shotgun would have been returned to him under state law.

Public records show his gun was seized last March 3, after his mother called the authorities over concerns Hole had said he wanted to commit 'suicide by cop'. However, the nation then went into lockdown as the coronavirus pandemic gripped the globe, closing courts, which may explain why he never received a hearing.

Meanwhile, investigators continued to seek a motive in the massacre as Hole's bizarre final Facebook post offered little insight on what drove him to the shooting.

'I hope that I can be with Applejack in the afterlife, my life has no meaning without her,' wrote Hole on Facebook at 10.19pm on Thursday, less than an hour before the massacre, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Applejack is the main character of the children's show My Little Pony.

Hole had two Facebook accounts, which the company deleted soon after the shootings at the request of law enforcement, Facebook said in an internal memo obtained by the Journal.

Investigators had hoped Hole's online history would shed light on his motives - but Facebook said in the memo that his accounts focused mostly on My Little Pony.

Known as 'Bronies' -- a mashup of 'bro' and 'ponies' -- the subculture of adult men obsessed with the kid's show 'has displayed elements of far-right and white nationalist extremism,' the memo said, but added that Hole's postings showed no clear indication those were motivations in the shooting.

Brony subculture first emerged soon after the show's 2010 debut, and in the early days had links to the military, with many active-duty service members professing their love for the sweet children's cartoon.

'I hope that I can be with Applejack in the afterlife, my life has no meaning without her,' Hole wrote on Facebook soon before the shooting in Indianapolis. Applejack (above) is the star of the popular children's cartoon.

Officials load a body into a vehicle at the site of a mass shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis, Indiana. Investigators are still seeking a motive for the shooting, which killed eight, including four members of the Sikh community

The first 'BronyCon' gathering in 2011 attracted just 100 adult fans, but swelled in size to more than 10,000 before the organizers held the last event in 2019, citing dwindling interest.

What are Bronies? 'Bronies' -- a mashup of 'bro' and 'ponies' -- is the subculture of adult men obsessed with the kid's show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Brony subculture first emerged soon after the show's 2010 debut, and in the early days had links to the military, with many active-duty service members professing their love for the sweet children's cartoon. The first 'BronyCon' gathering in 2011 attracted just 100 adult fans, but swelled in size to more than 10,000 before the organizers held the last event in 2019, citing dwindling interest. While the subculture mostly consists of innocent fans of the show's wholesome themes, it has also been known to attract pedophiles and white supremacists, who spread hateful messages through fan art of the cartoon ponies with racist themes. Advertisement

While the subculture mostly consists of innocent fans of the show's wholesome themes, it has also been known to attract pedophiles and white supremacists, who spread hateful messages through fan art of the cartoon ponies with racist themes.

'This is a fan community that has prided itself on a permissiveness and pushing boundaries and cloaking themselves in irony and the idea that they can make the mainstream uncomfortable,' Anne Gilbert, an instructor of media studies at University of Georgia and expert on the My Little Pony fandom, told the Atlantic last year. 'That has been a source of pride.'

Hole died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound following the shooting at the FedEx facility on Thursday night.

Authorities have not revealed a motive in the shooting, but the Sikh Coalition has called for an investigation into 'bias as a possible motive' after it was revealed four of the eight victims were from their tight-knit community.

Hole was fired by FedEx sometime last year, and had worked at the facility he targeted, where members of the Sikh community make up an overwhelming majority of the workforce.

The Marion County Coroners office identified the dead late Friday as Matthew R. Alexander, 32; Samaria Blackwell, 19; Amarjeet Johal, 66; Jaswinder Kaur, 64; Jaswinder Singh, 68; Amarjit Sekhon, 48; Karli Smith, 19; and John Weisert, 74.

Last spring Hole was briefly placed under psychiatric detention by police when his mother reported her concerns that he was contemplating 'suicide by cop,' according to the FBI. A shotgun was seized from his home, and was not returned to him.

FBI agents who interviewed the teenager last April found no criminal violation at the time and determined he possessed no 'racially motivated violent extremism ideology,' said Paul Keenan, special agent in charge of the FBI's Indianapolis field office.

A trace of the two guns found by investigators at the scene revealed that Hole legally bought the rifles last July and September, officials with the Indianapolis police said Saturday.

Bronies are seen at the final BronyCon in 2019, at the Baltimore Convention Center. The subculture of adult men obsessed with the kid's show 'has displayed elements of far-right and white nationalist extremism,' according to Facebook

Fans dressed as "My Little Pony" characters take a photo during the last BronyCon convention in 2019

The police did not say where Hole bought what they described as 'assault rifles,' citing the ongoing investigation, but said he was seen using both rifles during the shooting.

Details about the weapons' make, model and caliber won't be released until the investigation is complete, said Genae Cook, a spokesperson for the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.

Republican Senator Todd Young on Sunday questioned whether Indiana's red flag gun laws 'were actually enforced' to prevent the shooting.

Indiana has had a 'red flag law' allowing police or courts to seize guns from people who show warning signs of violence since 2005.

It became one of the first states to enact such a law after an Indianapolis police officer was killed by a man whose weapons had to be returned despite hospitalization months earlier for an emergency mental health evaluation.

The law is intended to prevent people from purchasing or possessing a firearm if they are found by a judge to present 'an imminent risk' to themselves or others.

Senator Todd Young, R-Ind., speaks with members of the Sikh Coalition at the Sikh Satsang of Indianapolis. Young on Sunday questioned whether Indiana's red flag gun laws 'were actually enforced' to prevent the shooting

Maninder Singh Walia, a leader of the Sikh coalition of the Sikh Satsang of Indianapolis, speaks during a vigil at Monument Circle for the victims of the mass shooting at the FedEx facility on Sunday

Members of the Sikh community gather at the Sikh Satsang of Indianapolis on Sunday following the shooting

Authorities have two weeks after seizing someone's weapon to argue in court that the person should not be allowed to possess a gun.

Officials have not said whether a Hole's case was brought before a judge. Michael Leffler, a spokesperson for the Marion County Prosecutor, said Sunday that the office is 'looking into this matter.'

Young also called for more mental health services across all level of governments.

'We know that we have a Hoosier family who cried out for help, knowing they had a child who required mental health treatment. We know we have members of our law enforcement community who, for a period of time, responded to that call for help. And we know that in the end, that wasnt enough,' he said before addressing a gathering at the Gurdwara Sikh Satsang, a Sikh house of worship on the east side of Indianapolis.

Gaganpal S. Dhaliwal, a member of the Sikh community who also spoke at the gathering Sunday, added that victims' families want to see 'common sense gun laws' and stricter hate crime policies.

'This shooter had a shotgun confiscated, but he was still able to get his hands on rifles,' Dhaliwal said. ' We need to make sure that guns dont end up in the wrong hands.'

Dhaliwal also called for roughly two dozen fast-tracked visas from the U.S. and Indian governments to allow relatives to travel for funeral ceremonies that will take place in the next two weeks, he said.

Victims: Amarjit Sekhon, 48, (left) was a mother of two boys, 22 and 16, and a member of the Sikh community, Jasvinder Kaur, 50, (right) moved to the U.S. in 2018 and had two children, a daughter and a son

Amarjeet Kaur Johal, 66, was a member of the Sikh community, as well as a grandmother

Pictured: Jaswinder Singh, 68, and Samaria Blackwell, 19, one of the youngest victims

Pictured left to right: John Weisert, 74, was the oldest victim; Karli Smith, 19, who had contact with her family before the shooting; and Matthew R. Alexander, 32, who was a former student at Butler University

Hole was a former employee at the FedEx facility who left his job last year, police said. Authorities have not yet announced a possible motive for the attack.

Holes family said in a statement they are 'so sorry for the pain and hurt' his actions caused.

The attack was another blow to the Asian American community a month after authorities said six people of Asian descent were killed by a gunman in the Atlanta area and amid ongoing attacks against Asian Americans during the coronavirus pandemic.

About 90 percent of the workers at the FedEx warehouse near the Indianapolis International Airport are members of the local Sikh community, police said.

The shooting is the deadliest incident of violence collectively in the Sikh community in the U.S. since 2012, when a white supremacist burst into a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and shot 10 people, killing seven.
Scott Distler: Finding a way out of 'the cave'
Queen Elizabeth II has been known for her stoic approach. But losing her husband is a different story she has to deal with.

Following Prince Philip's funeral, multiple media websites claimed that the Queen did not cry throughout the procession. They also reasoned out that the head of state should always observe stoicism no matter what heartbreaking event comes in.

However, Queen Elizabeth II has feelings, too, and royal fans slammed the idea.

Multiple monarchy supporters retweeted the posts and shared their sentiments over unfair journalism.

One royal fan said, "She was married to man for over seventy years. What do you think?"

Another one wrote, "Is it just me or is it that our media covers royalty like British tabloids only worse.. Leave them all the - alone and let them mourn in peace."

Author and journalist Sophia Nelson also shared her reaction to the non-sense reporting.

"This is an awful headline. Just awful. She is human. She just lost her partner of 73 years. Of course she weeps. #WindsorCastle," she wrote.

Her Majesty cried during the ceremony, but the cameras failed to cover that due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Meanwhile, a photographer from the Royal Central appeared to have captured Queen Elizabeth II wiping away her tear as she drove away from Prince Philip's resting place.

The Queen wipes away a tear as she says goodbye to her husband of 73 years #PrincePhilipFuneral pic.twitter.com/nX0WDJyNXe  Charlie Proctor (@MonarchyUK) April 17, 2021

Queen Elizabeth II's Capacity to Withhold Emotion

Throughout her reign, Queen Elizabeth II has been known for keeping her emotions inside and maintaining her composure. As the reigning monarch, she needs to look firm and staunch to wholly represent the British monarchy.

However, she has been seen tearing up multiple times in public - debunking all the claims that she never cried.

For instance, royal commentator Rachel Bowie told the "Royally Obsessed" podcast how the decommissioning of the Royal Yacht Britannia caused Her Majesty to weep in public.

"I love the use that they got out of it. It was decommissioned in 1997," Bowie said. "I think it was just such a part of so many family memories for the entire royal clan."

The Queen and Prince Philip attended the decommissioning with 30,000 well-wishers in the Clydeside.

During the 2019 Remembrance Sunday, Queen Elizabeth II also let her guard down as soon as Prince Charles laid the first wreath. The event was held in honor of the fallen war heroes at the Cenotaph Memorial Central in London.

See Now: Famous Actors Who Turned Down Iconic Movie Roles
NEW RINGGOLD  After 30 years of service as a medic in Panama, Iraq and Afghanistan, veteran Gilberto Cruz was ready to share his story.

He came to author Cindy Ross, who was interviewing veterans for her book Walking Toward Peace: Veterans Healing on Americas Trails. The VA told Ross that if she published Cruzs story, they would never work with her again. Ross replied, Who do you think youre hurting?

On Sunday, after years of writing and research, Ross held an open house and book signing at her New Ringgold home to celebrate the release of Walking Toward Peace.

We had some leaders at the VA who didnt want this book to come out, Cruz said in a tearful speech to the gathered crowd. I told Cindy No, were gonna do it. Youre not doing it for profit, youre doing it to take care of us. 

The book tells the stories of veterans who turned to hiking in order to manage their trauma. Ross describes it as walking off the war. There were hug-filled reunions with Ross hiking buddies, veterans who were featured in the book and helped by Ross nonprofit, River House PA. River House takes veterans on excursions in nature in order to heal them and better integrate them into civilian life.

These are the guys that keep me away from drinking, Cruz said about his fellow veterans. I just couldnt take it anymore until I met Cindy and Todd.

Ross home is a remote rustic cabin that smells richly of wood. It is surrounded, as if protected, by wood sculptures carved by her husband, Todd Gladfelter. All around were the sights and sounds that Ross has used improved the lives of veterans  a little pond swarming with tadpoles, the crunch of fallen leaves and the crackle of an open fire in a mossy pit.

Mario Kovach tended to the fire. Kovach, who drove from upstate New York to reunite with Ross, was an Air Force explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) technician from 1998 to 2018. His chapter in Walking Toward Peace describes the tattoos on his forearms  the names of his colleagues who died from explosions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hiking on trails has provided me the foundation to reverse a bit of the side effects of a 20-year career in EOD, Kovach said.

A childhood marked by substance abuse made him skeptical of prescription medication as a treatment for the mental and physical ailments faced by veterans.

We can do other and more simple things than throwing money and pills at veterans, he said.

Nature became a place for him to heal. When hiking the Susquehannock Trail System, Kovach sought shelter from the rain in an old quarrying explosive shed. He appreciates the irony.
(Newser)  A gay couple who lives in the African nation of Namibia saw their family expand to five with the birth of newborn twins via surrogate. One big problem: The girls aren't being allowed into the country, reports Reuters. On Monday, a Namibian court refused to let Phillip Luhl bring the twins into the nation from South Africa, where they were born. As a result, Luhl is stuck in Johannesburg with them, while his husband and their 2-year-old sonalso born via surrogateare in Namibia. Authorities are demanding that Luhl prove his genetic link to the twins before they can travel to the country, per the BBC. Luhl and husband Guillermo Delgado say it's discriminatory to make the demand of them when it wouldn't be required of a single woman or a heterosexual couple.

story continues below

"It comes as quite a shock," Luhl tells AFP. He previously described the country's stance as "state-sanctioned homophobia." Sexual contact between men is illegal in Namibia, though the rule is seldom enforced. The nation doesn't recognize same-sex marriage, unlike neighboring South Africa, where the men were married. Last month, the Namibian government said its home affairs minister "did not agree to a request to issue the twins Namibian travel documents, because their entitlement to Namibian citizenship by descent had not been determined." On Monday, the court declined to overrule that decision. Luhl and Delgado are now considering their next steps. (Read more Namibia stories.)
Rioting is a frequent phenomenon, complete with a professional traveling cadre that moves into a city when a spark ignites anger  as most recently happened in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. Take a look at the people arrested in Brooklyn Center:

With so many people and resources being expended, a bit of strategic thinking is being brought into play. Poor Blacks burning their own neighborhoods hurts the (nonprofessional) rioters and their families and is a burden that does not affect most people. It also doesn't win a lot of friends among the supposedly oppressed people the itinerant professional rioters seek to lead.

Now we are seeing signs that the urge to riot will be directed from above at the affluent and comfortable, a property destruction analogue of the slogan "Eat the Rich" that has enjoyed great popularity on some quarters. Anthony Gockowski reports in Alpha News:

A Minneapolis City Council candidate encouraged those who "feel like burning shit down" to target the city's wealthiest residents instead of causing further damage to poor communities. "Just a personal thought  just in case y'all feel like burning shit down, the poor community is not your oppressors. FYI  lake of the isles has more then [sic] needed and won't be missed," Rita Ortega wrote on her personal Facebook page, which is under her full name of Margarita, according to screenshots shared widely on social media Friday.

Margarita Ortega, running for #Mpls City Council Ward 9, suggests that those who want to burn things go to Lake of the Isles area.



Posted on Facebook. She has since changed the 1st post to private/not public.@ritaforward9



These are your replacements for current incompetence. pic.twitter.com/9MGv8413Mc  CrimeWatchMpls (@CrimeWatchMpls) April 16, 2021

Gockowski also reports: "According to her campaign website, Ortega was a policy aide at Minneapolis City Hall and spent ten years working in city government."

Lake of the Isles is a gorgeous neighborhood full of luxury mansions and is only a few blocks from the upscale Uptown shopping district that saw looting in the first wave of riots that followed George Floyd's death while in police custody. Lake Street, the largest east-west street in the south half of the city, was the scene of the greatest destruction, miles of it, and it terminates just beyond Uptown and just before Lake of the Isles.



Lake of the Isles (photo credit: Bjoertvedt, cropped CC By-SA 3.0 license).

In other words, it would be no stretch for the rioters to move into Lake of the Isles and sack the multi-million-dollar mansions that surround it.

A resident reported the threat to the Minneapolis Police, and they say they are taking it seriously:

FOLLOW UP: A resident from the Lake of the Isles area (and others) contacted MPD about @ritaforward9's comments & summarized the reply they got saying that it's being considered a "credible threat" & that person/s in MPD have forwarded the info to other units for investigation. pic.twitter.com/5pPbgaioil  CrimeWatchMpls (@CrimeWatchMpls) April 17, 2021

But Minneapolis is not the only city where this thinking is taking hold. In Denver over the weekend, the governor's mansion as well as other upscale homes was vandalized.

Sister station CBS Denver reports most of the targets were the city's Cheesman Park neighborhood. "Woah, nice house bro, gentrifiers," "Police make white people feel safe from minorities," and "Abolish police" were among the phrases spray-painted on walls and garage doors.

Jason Whitlock reports that his affluent neighborhood is also seeing gunfire:

There's been a shooting on my block 4 straight weekends. My block is rather expensive. Local or national media won't discuss. Doesn't fit the narrative. Our politicians and corporate media are pushing a dangerous level of lawlessness. Far more violence on my block than Jan 6.  Jason Whitlock (@WhitlockJason) April 18, 2021

Once the organized rioters spread to affluent neighborhoods, fear will grip a much wider swath of society than before. My guess is that it will trigger a backlash. But so pervasive is the propaganda urging white people to feel guilt that I cannot be confident that this will be the net effect.

The summer, AKA riot season, threatens to be even worse than last year.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
Israel dropped the requirement to wear face masks outdoors and fully reopened schools on Sunday due to a successful vaccination drive against the coronavirus.

The mandatory wearing of face masks in outdoor public spaces, ordered a year ago, was scrapped on Sunday, although face masks are still mandatory in indoor settings.

All primary and secondary school students returned to classrooms on Sunday, marking a full return to education.

Students will still be required to wear masks indoors but will be allowed to take them off during physical education (PE), when they eat, and in between classes, The Times of Israel reported.

The education ministry said that schools should continue to encourage personal hygiene, ventilation of classrooms and to maintain social distancing as much distance as possible during breaks and lessons.

Removing the mask requirement outdoors and reinitiating in-class studies is a calculated risk, Israels coronavirus czar, Nachman Ash, told public radio on Sunday.

After suffering a third wave, Israel has carried out a world-leading vaccination programme, with 53 per cent of its 9.3 million citizens having received both shots of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

Cases have dropped significantly since the start of the vaccination programme. Only 84 new cases were recorded on Saturday and 206 people were seriously ill with the virus, according to the latest figures.

The successful vaccine campaign has allowed Israel to fully open its economy and the country. Last week, Israel announced it would be reopening the country to vaccinated foreign tourists in May.

Since the start of the pandemic last year, Israel has recorded over 836,000 cases of the coronavirus and at least 6,331 deaths, according to the Health Ministry

Israel counts East Jerusalem Palestinians among its population and has been administering the vaccines there.

However, it has faced criticism for not sharing more of its supplies with the 5.2 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the Islamist Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, where the vaccination has been slow to take off.

Source: Press Association / The Independent/ TOE
While a picture may be worth a thousand words, the opportunity to walk about and experience that picture in real time is worth much, much more.

Thats why Texas A&M International University has reopened its on-campus tour appointments for potential students as part of its cautious and planned move to a full on-campus TAMIU experience this fall.

Weve all become adept at virtual approaches to much of life this past year, but now feel that we can begin to offer carefully planned and delivered tours of our beautiful campus for potential students and their families, said Jessica Trevino, director of TAMIUs Office of Recruitment and School Relations.

All tours will be pre-scheduled to maintain spacing protocols and conducted with all participants masked and distanced. Our student tour guides will conduct tours for groups limited in size to three. We offer two types of tours: a 45-minute guided tour and a 20-minute guided tour. The extended tour can also be customized to include individual areas of interest, such as planned areas of study. Tours are available Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., Trevino added.

She said the university is excited to welcome tour participants back to campus.

Were excited to once again share our beautiful 300-acre campus through student tours. As our president, Dr. Pablo Arenaz, has said, we have followed the science, and our strict adherence to safety protocols, aggressive testing and vaccination programs at TAMIU has kept our prevalence among the lowest in The Texas A&M University System, throughout the pandemic response. We continue to offer on-campus rapid testing and vaccination opportunities, and require on-campus face coverings, social distancing and rigorous hand-washing, Trevino explained.

She said her office has also designed a special campus tour welcome package for student visitors that includes information, a special visitor pin and an assortment of university-branded goodies, including an official TAMIU face mask.

Our welcome package is just another way of us sharing our campus experience and helping students to feel right at home here. We believe that once they join us for a campus tour, theyll see that their journey to becoming a TAMIU Dustdevil begins right beneath their feet, she concluded.

The university is also planning a special Future Dustdevil Car Parade on campus Thursday, May 6 from 6-8 p.m. It is a drive-thru opportunity for new or transferring students to visit the campus and preview fall plans. It will include giveaways and food offered curbside.
The Military Aviation Museum in Pungo, Virginia has begun what promises to be a fascinating series of webinars covering a variety of subjects varying from the WWII era aircraft in their collection, to significant aircraft elsewhere and aviation-related historical events. These online seminars are bound to be fascinating for everyone interested in historical military aviation and will provide viewers with an in-depth examination of each topic at hand. The webinar series will begin with a close look at the museums PBY Catalina this coming Wednesday (April 21, 2021), but subsequent presentations will cover the diverse topics from the Berlin Airlift, to the recovery of the B-17E known as Swamp Ghost and the role which Norwegian pilots played in fighting Germany from within the RAF during WWII (and the Norwegian Spitfire Foundations restoration of Supermarine Spitfire Mk.IX PL258). Check for details about each of these webinars and how you can sign up to take part at the links below. We feel sure this will prove to be an excellent experience for all!

The Cat: Flying the Consolidated PBY

The Cat:

Flying the Consolidated PBY

Guest Speaker: Bob Hill

Museum Pilot

Wednesday, April 21st, @ 7 pm Eastern

Join 19-year veteran Military Aviation Museum pilot Bob Hill as he details the systems and flying characteristics of the PBY Catalina. Hill will also explore the types historical significance and provide a virtual walk-around tour of the Military Aviation Museums very own PBY-5A Bu.48294 which saw service across the Atlantic during WWII.

Register Here for This Webinar

The Urban Island

The Urban Island

Guest Speaker: Patrick ONeill and Nick Saborio

Air Mobility Command Museum

Wednesday, April 28th @ 7 pm Eastern

In 1948, the United States Air Force was barely a year old when it faced its first major challenge. Due to political tensions, the Soviet Union had blockaded the former German capital city of Berlin which was, at the time, marooned inside the newly-formed East Germany, essentially a Soviet satellite-state. The Soviets halted the transportation, by road or canal, of all supplies to the beleaguered city in their efforts to starve and freeze Berliners into submission and, ultimately, annexation. Find out how a fleet of Allied aircraft kept the peace and a city alive in a special presentation on the Berlin Airlift by the Air Mobility Command Museum.

Register Here for This Webinar

Norwegian Wings over Europe in WW2

Norwegian Wings over Europe in WW2

Guest Speaker: Tor Idar Larsen

Wednesday, May 5th @ 4 pm Eastern

**This presentation begins at 4 pm Eastern time** Join Tor Idar Larsen of the Norwegian Spitfire Foundation to discuss the role which free Norwegian forces would play alongside the Royal Air Force in WWII. From the earliest days of the war, defending their country in obsolescent Gloster Gladiators, to the formations of 331 and 332 Squadrons which operated Spitfires and Hurricanes, and their eventual return to their once-occupied homeland in 1945. Larsen will also describe the current effort in Norway to restore Spitfire PL258.

Register Here for This Webinar







AIRACOBRA!: Restoring the Military Aviation Museums P-39

AIRACOBRA!: Restoring the Military Aviation Museums P-39

Guest Speaker: Restoration Team from Pioneer Aero Ltd., New Zealand

Wednesday, May 12th @ 7 pm Eastern

Join the restoration team from Pioneer Aero Ltd. in New Zealand for a look behind the scenes at the restoration of the Military Aviation Museums rare Bell P-39 Airacobra. The shop, best known for their work on the Curtiss P-40 family of aircraft, completed the P-39 in 2019, making it one of the newest additions to the Museums airworthy collection.

Register Here for This Webinar

Memphis Belle: American and Air Force Icon

Memphis Belle: American and Air Force Icon

Guest Speaker: Jeff Duford

Senior Historian at the Air Force Research Laboratory

Wednesday, May 19th @ 7 pm Eastern

Join Jeff Duford, Senior Historian at the Air Force Research Laboratory as he explores the significant place which the Boeing B-17 known as Memphis Belle occupies in both U.S. Air Force and American history. In addition to reviewing the wartime service of this iconic aircraft, Duford will also dispel many of the myths which have emerged about it over the years. The presentation will also take a detailed look at the aircrafts comprehensive 13-year restoration at the National Museum of the US Air Force.

Register Here for This Webinar

Magnificent Obsession: Ravings of a Wreck Chasing Man

Magnificent Obsession: Ravings of a Wreck Chasing Man

Guest Speaker: Alfred (Fred) Hagen

Adventurer and Documentary Film Maker

Wednesday, May 26th @ 7 pm Eastern

In this photo-enriched presentation, join Alfred (Fred) Hagen for a circuitous ramble through the earliest days of World War II with a special focus on Hagens own family history. Discover the details of his own work searching for MIA aircraft and salvaging warbirds highlighted by Aviations Holy Grail: The B17 Swamp Ghost.

Register Here for This Webinar

Regia Aeronautica: Italys Involvement in WWII

Regia Aeronautica: Italys Involvement in WWII

Guest Speakers: Moreno Mo Aguiari and Luigino Caliaro

Saturday, June 5th @ 11 am Eastern

**Time and date moved to accommodate international speaker, 11am Eastern** Join Moreno Mo Aguiari of Warbirds News/Warbird Digest, and author/photographer Luigino Caliaro for a deep dive into the history of the Regia Aeronautica during WWII. The presentation will explore the often overlooked Mediterranean theater in great detail, while looking at the complex relationships that some of Italys finest pilots had with Fascism and Nazi Germany.

Register Here for This Webinar












With a new episode on tonight, lets do a recap of the shows outing last week, which signified Lucy ad Jacksons first day as non-rookies.



The episode starts up with a lovely montage of our rookie trio in their academy days, as a gift John has made for his friends moving up to being P2s. (Shout out to a Cpt. Andersen cameo. We miss you Zoe!!). After a season plus long absence (though in the shows timeline it probably amounts to 5-6 months) Ben shows up to celebrate everyone graduating as well, only to know find out John has been held behind and unknowingly break some news to John about giving Henry a job, which clearly throws our remaining rookie off balance. When enquiring Henry about it for more information we find out its a full time job offer, for which Henry will be dropping out of school for. Consider John officially shook and disappointed. Sentiments he pettily takes out on Ben, who in turn very astutely points out John might be lashing out a little out of jealousy.





Meanwhile Lucy and Jackson expect their first day as proper officers to be celebrated and glamorous. Sadly they find themselves in for a rude awaking when Grey shuts any kind of attempt at decorum down, and on their first call theyre tasked with the mundane task of guarding possible evidence that turns out to be literal garbage. They close out the day with wrestling with two bridezillas fighting over a dress. The tussle ends with them doused in champagne and covered in feathers. This last bit is witnessed by both their former T.Os who are at the bridal salon shopping for Angelas wedding dress. How did Officer Bradford and Dt.Lopez find themselves in that position you ask?Well, you see after Angelas friends made her feel like crap over the dress picking process, she turned to the only person who she knew would be both straight with her and comforting: Tim. He says all the right things and makes Angela feel happy and good about herself validating every single one of her wedding choices. He boosts her up with so much confidence and joy he practically pushes her to come to the only logical conclusion that he has to step in as her Man of Honor.Tim reluctantly accepts. But its when he fires the original Maid of Honor, who is far too eager to get rid of the job and he sees how Wesleys mum is driving everyone insane with micromanaging the wedding that he fully embraces the responsibility. This is Angelas day and his job is to give her the wedding she wants. Patrice can answer to him, and I for one cant wait to see those two butt heads.On another personal front, Nyla is having boy problems, with Alonzo (ie Hot Music Class Dad), with whom shes stuck chaperoning a camping trip. She thinks there might be some bad blood after a few date cancellations on both sides, but it all turns out to be a misunderstanding, and they are both still well into each other, so much so they actually follow through with a date plan by the end of the episode. Still shes stressed as she hasnt dated since the divorce. However trust John to be a good sounding board for her, and giving her some hard earned perspective about moving on.On the policing portion of the episode, Harper and Nolan stumble upon a bank robbery gone awry, as by the end of the standoff the banks security guard shot our very agitated bank robber, Cooper, dead, leaving John with a lot of questions. The case only gets curiouser the deeper they delve into it, as Coopers house seems abandoned and his family is missing. After some investigating, despite Harpers instruction to let it be John comes up with a lead to visit Coopers wifes work place at the diamond district and make enquiries. Its then that the pieces fall into place as it seems the whole family was held for ransom that they couldnt come up with, so both Cooper and now his wife Alice were forced into crime to come up with the cash. While Nolan and Harper stall the members of the crew that are keeping an eye on Lisa, Jackson and Lucy are on the hunt to find where they might be holding her daughter. Some good intel from Alice and some excellent investigating from the both of them lead them to where they have the kid held captive.Its an excellent way for both the newly minted P2s to be reminded why they do they job in the first place, especially after their first disappointing day. And Grey is happy to both drive that point home and commend them for a job well done, so much so hes putting them both up for a medal. Its particularly gratifying for Lucy who also had to deal with her parents disapproval over her life choices yet again. Earlier in the episode her mother shows up and turns what Lucy thought would be a celebratory dinner, into a lecture that shes wasting her life on a thankless job. Youd think after that a medal would be enough to make thing better but trust Jackson I come from a cop family West to go above and beyond. Besides putting Mrs. Chen in her place telling her unless she apologises to Lucy shes no longer welcome in their home, he also gives her a St. Michael pendant from his family, like they gave him, and takes her out for an actual celebratory dinner.The episode closes out with John apologising to Ben, acknowledging he might indeed be feeling a little left behind, and is probably projecting some of his own hold ups onto Henry. Ben reassures him hes just being a parent and they patch things up, like the true, genuine and old friends they are: clearing air and setting aside any hard feelings.I feel weve been beaten the John is feeling left behind/like a failure horse dead now and to be completely honest I think Im ready for the show to move on. It is starting to feel redundant when weve seen him readjust his plan and put things in motion to see it to fruition. I understand how the Henry/Ben news would have stirred things up again, and while it was great to see them both back, to do so for this felt slightly reductive. That minor gripe aside it was an excellent episode all around, which allowed all the wonderful male/female friendships this show has beautifully build up to shine. Every moment between Angela and Tim, Lucy and Jackson, and Nyla and John was a lovely reminder that this show has always relied on its characters and their dynamics to shine.Thats that for last weeks episode. Tune in tonight for a brand new instalment of
DALLAS  Matthew McConaughey commands more support to be Texas next governor than incumbent Greg Abbott, according to a poll released Sunday by The Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas at Tyler.

However, the film actor and political newcomer could hit potholes in either major partys primary if he enters next years governors race, the poll found.

For months, McConaughey has teased political pundits and TV talk show hosts with musings that he might enter politics in his home state.

If he were to take the plunge and run for governor, the poll found, 45% of Texas registered voters would vote for McConaughey, 33% would vote for Abbott and 22% would vote for someone else.

McConaugheys double-digit lead over the two-term Republican incumbent is significant. The poll, conducted April 6-13, surveyed 1,126 registered voters and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.92 percentage points.

But 56% of Republican voters said theyd vote for Abbott, compared with only 30% for McConaughey.

While Democrats broke 66% to 8% for McConaughey, and independents 44% to 28%, more than twice as many Democratic primary voters  51%  said they wanted a progressive candidate for governor than wanted a centrist  25%.

That could pose a problem. McConaughey, who has criticized both major parties, has suggested hes more of a moderate.

And in the GOP gubernatorial primary, thats also not obviously a ticket to success. Solid majorities of poll respondents who described themselves as conservative, evangelical or retirement-age Republican primary voters said theyd vote for Abbott.

Only 20% of GOP primary voters preferred a more centrist Republican, and 18% wanted someone more like former President Donald Trump. Fourteen percent preferred someone more conservative than Abbott, who has been avidly courting the right wing of his party in recent weeks after several staunch conservatives, including former state Sen. Don Huffines of Dallas, were mentioned as possible challengers to him in the primary.

Some of the Trump supporters warm to celebrities, and that sentiment, along with the wishes of one-fifth of the primary electorate for a more moderate nominee, might open a lane in the GOP primary for McConaughey, said UT-Tyler political scientist Mark Owens, who directed the poll.

Matthew McConaughey gets a huge boost from tremendous name recognition and recognition for what he does to help Texans and add to the celebration of the states successes, Owens said. Most of our survey respondents know his story, but many are waiting to see how he opens his next chapter.

Mark Harp, a conservative independent voter from Midlothian, said McConaugheys appeal is similar to Trumps: Hes a political outsider with a message that the system is corrupt, ineffective and in need of reforms.

Hes popular, hes colorful, and hes not afraid to tell it like it is, said Harp, 47, a construction manager. He has some of the same qualities of Donald Trump, and that will play well in Texas.

Still, pollster Owens noted that in seven years as the states chief executive, Abbott has held together a traditional coalition of Texas Republicans and independents who continue to support him.

The poll, part of an ongoing collaboration between The News and UT-Tylers Center for Opinion Research, was taken as debate over guns heated up in the Legislature, which has just more than six weeks left to complete work in this years session.

By 58% to 26%, Texans oppose a bill the House approved  and sent to the Senate Friday  that would allow people to carry handguns without a permit. Last month, opposition was greater  64% to 23%.

As a constituent of Tyler GOP Rep. Matt Schaefer, a co-author of the bill, Owens said, Ive received multiple interest group messages on this.

In two polls by The News and UT-Tyler early last year, a majority of Texas registered voters endorsed a national ban on the sale of semiautomatic assault weapons. This month, that slipped to support by a plurality, 48% for and 33% against.

Poll respondent Dylan Tramel, 25, a Rockwall County native who is temporarily posted in another state as a member of the armed services, said he opposes gun control measures and supports permitless carry of handguns.

Im for constitutional carry, he said, using proponents label. Its just taking the Second Amendment at face value.

At the same time, confidence that elected officials are doing enough to prevent mass shootings has ebbed. In early 2020, not long after Trump, Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick mused publicly about possible gun law changes in the wake of the August 2019 slaughters in El Paso and Odessa-Midland, up to 47% of Texans agreed that elected officials were doing enough to avoid repetition of the tragedies.

This month, 38% agreed and 59% disagreed  including 86% of Black people, 65% of Hispanics and 46% of Republicans.

Nearly half a century after the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade established a womans right to an abortion, at least in the first three months of pregnancy, a majority of Texans  and Republicans, if barely  said the court should not overturn Roe.

Among all Texas registered voters, 61% said Roe should not be overturned, while 37% said it should be. Republicans split 51%-49% against overturning, as did women, 63%-35%. White evangelicals favored voiding the controversial ruling, 56%-43%

Both GOP-controlled chambers of the Legislature are advancing a half dozen measures to restrict abortion.

In The News and UT-Tylers poll, a plurality of Texas registered voters (42%-37%) supported a Senate-passed bill that would ban virtually all abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, usually about six weeks into pregnancy, except in medical emergencies. Texas law currently bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy  or up to 22 weeks from the last menstrual period.

Though about two-thirds of Republicans and white evangelicals support the so-called heartbeat bill, women narrowly oppose it, 40%-38%, as do Democrats, 47%-31%.

As the new Biden administration in Washington struggles to get control of a crush of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, most Texans say those seeking political asylum at the border should be required to stay in Mexico while their claims are processed. While 37% say asylum seekers should be allowed into the U.S. while they wait, 61% say they should be made to stay in Mexico.

Biden, whos under almost daily fire from Abbott over the sharp rise in Border Patrol encounters with migrants last month, gets low marks from Texans for managing the situation.

While a plurality of Texans approve of the overall job Biden is doing as president (48%-41%), a slight majority  52%  disapprove of his performance at handling immigration at the border. Just 30% approve.

Abbott enjoys a higher job-approval rating among Texans than does Biden: 50% approve, 36% disapprove. But its Abbotts lowest showing in eight tests by The News/UT-Tyler poll since January 2020  and down from a high of 61% in April 2020. Thats when, near the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, Texans appeared to rally around his shutdown orders.

Asked if they trusted the leaders to keep their communities healthy and safe during the public health crisis, Texans narrowly said they trust Biden, 51%-44%.

However, a narrow plurality now distrusts Abbott to protect their communities from COVID-19: 46% trust the Republican governor, 47% do not. Its the first time in six polls that Abbott has sunk underwater on the question. In this months poll, hes especially lost ground among independents (30% trust him, 59% distrust him) and Black people (20% trust, 71% distrust).

As for activities during the pandemic, Texans are more comfortable gathering with friends now: 44% are extremely comfortable, while only 23% felt that way in April 2020.

Texans are not as comfortable, though, being in crowds: 16% are extremely comfortable now, very close to the 15% who said they were extremely comfortable last April.

Sixty percent of Texans say they have been or definitely will be vaccinated against COVID-19, up from 57% last month. An additional 14% say they probably will get immunized. If they all do, as many as 74% could be inoculated, approaching the level many experts say is needed to achieve herd immunity. If all the state were Democrats, combining the three responses would produce an 89% acceptance rate, compared with 69% among Republicans and 66% among independents.

Abbott political adviser Dave Carney has proclaimed the governor to be in a strong position to win a third term next year, though stressing that the incumbent, 63, is not taking anything for granted,

However, McConaughey, 51, has said hes giving honest consideration to running. Politics is a broken business, and its time for someone with his aggressively centric approach, he told the Austin American-Statesman last month.

Owens, the pollster, said such talk resonates with the 33% of the electorate that does not identify as a partisan. McConaughey has a 16-point advantage with independents, and his electoral path would have to include these voters, who make up 31% of his potential coalition, he said. The breakdown of Abbotts coalition? 65% Republican, 27% independent, and 8% Democratic.

Even among voters who approve of the job Abbott is doing, 35% prefer McConaughey over the incumbent, Owens noted. While 54% of Texans say Abbott did well or very well in responding to the electricity and utility outages caused by Februarys storm, among the 44% who said he did not well or not well at all, McConaughey clobbers him, 57%-9%. Only among Texans over 45 does Abbott have an edge. Among younger voters, the actor dominates.

Several veteran Texas political strategists, though, said the buzz created by McConaugheys novelty could change quickly. As soon as hes put into a party nominating contest, hell draw fire, they said. And in Texas governor races, the alternatives  running as an independent or for a third party, such as the Libertarian Party  have never yielded success, they noted.

McConaugheys strong name recognition reminds Vinny Minchillo, a North Texas-based GOP political consultant, of now-fading talk that Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan might run for office.

McConaugheys fame far eclipses that of the entertainer Kinky Friedman, who managed only a fourth-place finish running as an independent in the 2006 contest won by then-Gov. Rick Perry.

Despite an early edge in polls, McConaughey would have a bumpy ride against Abbott, who can raise up to $80 million or more, activate a large voter-turnout organization and cast McConaughey as not fit for office, Minchillo said.

What it really comes down to is, do you want the Dazed and Confused guy running the state? Minchillo said. McConaughey was one of the stars in the 1993 coming-of-age film set in Texas.

Harp, the Ellis County admirer of McConaughey, said it would be interesting to see whether the actor chose to run as a Republican or Democrat, adding that being an independent candidate is a losing battle.

One Republican who responded to the poll said Abbott had nothing to worry about regarding 2022.

Ive been so happy with him, said Dallas resident Linda Green, 65. Hes been very steady.

Green, a former nurse, said shes disenchanted with national Republicans but pleased with Texas GOP leaders  largely because theyre seeking to end abortion.

She defended Abbotts performance on the winter storm that left millions without power and factored into the deaths of at least 133 people.

Its human nature that when you suffer you want to find someone to blame, she said. A leader has to trust the people underneath him. And the extreme weather did not cause the problem, it revealed the problem.

McConaughey and his wife, Camila, have been raising money for storm victims through their Just Keep Living Foundation. Also, McConaughey recently wrote a motivational book, Greenlights. It has been on The New York Times bestseller list for 22 weeks, ranking No. 11 in the combined print and e-book nonfiction category as of April 10.

Those would seem high-profile efforts from which to launch a candidacy.

Operatives close to Abbotts much-vaunted political organization, though, have said privately that they doubt McConaughey will run in 2022 because hed need time to untangle business commitments. McConaughey, who in 2014 won a best actor Oscar for his performance in Dallas Buyers Club, has prolifically endorsed products and companies.

They include Houston-based Reliant Energy, an electricity retailer thats a major participant in the Texas grid that lethally failed in February. That could be a problem for him  as could, with different constituencies, his 2016 agreement to serve as creative director for Campari Groups Wild Turkey Distilling Co. of Lawrenceburg, Ky.

Colin Strother, a Democratic consultant in San Antonio who worked on Friedmans campaigns, said McConaughey should forgo a candidacy and instead commit to campaigning for Democrats, especially in red counties that Beto ORourke stumped through in 2018. ORourke has said hes not planning to challenge Abbott.

I dont think he can be successful as a candidate, Strother said, but he can be tremendously successful as an ally and partner for state Democrats.

Jason Stanford, who managed the campaign of second-place finisher and Democrat Chris Bell in the 2006 gubernatorial race, said McConaughey poses no threat to Abbott.

There doesnt appear to be a huge groundswell of discontent for Abbott, Stanford said. Once McConaughey declares as a Democrat or Republican, reality will set in with Texas voters, he added.

If you ID as a Democrat or a Republican, youre going to get different answers about him in polls, Stanford said. Hes fun, but once you put him in a political context, things will change.



METHODOLOGY

The Dallas Morning News/UT-Tyler Poll is a statewide random sample of 1,126 registered voters conducted April 6-13. The mixed-mode sample includes 290 registered voters surveyed over the phone by the University of Texas at Tyler with support from ReconMR and 836 registered voters randomly selected from Dynatas panel of online respondents. The margin of error for a sample of 1,126 registered voters in Texas is +/- 2.92 percentage points, and the more conservative margin of sampling error that includes design effects from this poll is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points for a 95% confidence interval.

The online and phone surveys were conducted in English and Spanish. Using information from the 2018 Current Population Survey and Office of the Texas Secretary of State. The samples gender, age, race/ethnicity, education, metropolitan density and vote choice were matched to the population of registered voters in Texas.
When are you getting vaccinated?

I've heard that question often since the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out started in New York. Id be asked sometimes multiple times a day by everyone from the staffer at the post office to longtime readers to family and friends.

My response: I dont know. Im not eligible.

While that statement was factual, if I was being honest I wouldve said, I dont know ... if I want it.

My lack of eligibility was a convenient aid, of sorts, allowing me to not make the decision.

But all that changed when Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo opened the coronavirus vaccinations to anyone older than 30 earlier this month.

Comorbidities were no longer a requirement. BMI did not matter. As long as you were born in 1991 or earlier, you were in.

That day, I was asked the question again  this time, by a good friend.

You know, I admitted. Im not sure I want it.

Im pretty sure I wouldve shocked her less if I said Im going to become a polygamist and join a political fringe group.

Many of you know I broke down crying in Market 32 last spring. Im also the one who wore a respirator to BJs before masks were even required in New York (and generated plenty of stares and comments in the process).

I rarely dined inside restaurants the past year and relied heavily on grocery pickup. So, yeah, being vaccine-hesitant, as it is called, would surprise most.

To be clear, Im far from an anti-vaxxer. I get my flu shot and any boosters (such as tetanus) along the way. I even got vaccinations while pregnant, despite some extremists telling me Id kill my unborn child.

And yet here I was, unsure I wanted something I so desperately wished for a year ago.

My rationalizations, if thats what you can call them, were multi-level.

I questioned the safety of a treatment that made it to market nearly 10 times faster than typical vaccines. I thought about the fact Im young(ish) with no underlying health conditions or factors that make me more vulnerable to the wrath of coronavirus. I considered the fact that, despite being in favor of vaccinations, I take other medications minimally as the bottles of half-used prescriptions and expired Tylenol in our cabinets show.

While I'm an educated, well-read adult, Im sure the deluge of unverified nonsense on social media may have infiltrated my thinking a bit. And that, frankly, is embarrassing to admit. I criticize those people and call them out, yet I read what they share in order to do so.

But then I thought about the conversations Ive had with several doctors  none of whom are my personal physicians.

They shared how the speed of approval was due to the lack of bureaucratic red tape.

One, a doctor who has studied COVID-19 extensively at an area hospital, told me vaccines leveraging mRNA (essentially recipes to make proteins) have been studied for years now in other diseases (SARS and ebola for example) and haven't hurt people to date. And this would only be a rearranging of the ATGCs in the mRNA essentially.

Another doctor talked about colleagues all over the political spectrum who had been vaccinated. They do not not agree on much outside the office, said this doctor, but they all strongly believed in the importance, efficacy and safety of the vaccine. And, well, science.

I may have failed my chemistry Regents the first time around (oh yes), but I know science is essential to the human condition.

I also thought about the fact the death rate in America was 16 percent higher in 2020 than it was in 2019, according to the CDC. While there may be disagreement over exactly how many deaths to attribute to the coronavirus in the case of underlying health conditions, people cannot argue death tolls overall.

They also cannot dispute the fact the highest number of deaths occurred in the U.S. in April and December  two peak months for COVID-19 hospitalizations and a time when many hospitals were at or beyond capacity. While the majority of the deaths were in people 80 and older, people my age also died. Plenty of those in my demographic who became ill ended up hospitalized or with long-term complications.

While those conversations  and those grim facts  helped sway me, I still did not make an appointment.

Then I spoke with someone on vaccine day. Knowing this person's political beliefs  as well as their age and good health  I would not have been surprised if my friend had opted out.

Instead, we talked about how this person and their spouse both had COVID-19. The spouse could have died.

The virus caused the spouse to develop severe complications. Fortunately the spouse noticed something wasnt right, got immediate medical care and is doing well now.

I also learned about my good friend's childhood friend. This person is younger than we are, in optimal health and physical shape and is in the hospital due to COVID-19.

And on a ventilator.

Right now.

Combining those stories with other first-person accounts about people in their 30s and 40s who had a mild case of coronavirus with serious complications later, inspired me to sign up.

It was my aha moment.

I was still nervous, and a bit apprehensive, but I knew getting the vaccination wasnt just for me, but for my children and for all the people around us who are not able to receive the shot, due to their immune system.

Its part of being a good citizen.

A considerate human.

And a good American.

I made an appointment at UAlbany and received my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine last week.